LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) Authorities say they have arrested a Louisiana man for participating in last weeks riot at the U.S. Capitol. Fifty-year-old Vaughn A. Gordon, of Lafayette, made an initial appearance Thursday via videoconference before U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick Hanna in Lafayette. He faces two charges, including one count of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. The U.S. Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Louisiana announced the arrest via Twitter. Gordon told The Advocate that he was able to wander the building for nearly two hours, adding he remained peaceful and didnt vandalize anything. Advertisement An Italian photographer has spent two years travelling the world capturing pictures of people with albinism, in a bid to highlight the discrimination that still exists against them in many parts of the world. Silvia Alessi, 44, from Bergamo, took photos of people with the disorder, which is caused by pigment being completely or partially missing from skin and hair, for her latest art project after being inspired by an Instagram post. Among her subjects are three elderly siblings from India, who have never been photographed together before, and a Kurdish boy with white hair and very pale skin who lives in a house decorated completely in white. Scroll down for video A young Kurdish boy named Arya, who is seen posing amongst the pristine white decor of his family's home, features in Skin Project by Italian photographer Silvia Alessi, who spent two years taking pictures of people with albinism Stigma: the photographer says there's still prejudice around the world against people who are born with the condition, which is caused by pigment being completely or partially missing from skin and hair (Pictured Kurdish boy Arya posing in his family home) The project was inspired by a young girl named Namira who Alessi spotted on Instagram before she travelled to Mumbai and photographed her in person The piece of art, entitled Skin Project saw Alessi contacting people who had shared their story on what it's like to live with albinism on social media, before she travelled to take their photographs, others she simply met while en route. Albinism is a genetic disorder characterised by the complete or partial absence of melanin in the skin, hair, and eyes. It is thought to affect around one in 20,000 births. As well as having a sensitivity to light, those with albino skin are also susceptible to sunburn and skin cancers. Alessi says many of the people she met told her they still face exclusion from their communities over the way they look, with many young people she met with the condition fearing they wouldn't meet someone they could fall in love with. Thought to affect around one in 20,000 births, albinism is a genetic disorder characterised by the absence of melanin in the skin, hair, and eyes, leaving those who have it with white hair and very pale skin (Pictured: Three elderly Indian siblings who have the condition) The two sisters, Mena and Meena, and their brother Ramesh have never been photographed together before, says Alessi Alessi travelled to New Delhi and Mumbai in India, and Sulaymaniyah in Iraq, to capture her subjects including an Indian lady pictured in traditional dress Up close: Alessi asked her subjects to close their eyes to be photographed so they would completely relax...and says the project highlights the stigma that still exists around albinism Two brothers, who both have the disorder but present in different ways, lie side by side The idea of the project is to highlight underlying social issues around the world', says the Italian photo-artist Many of her subjects were found on social media, while others she simply met on her travels She said: 'The idea of the project is to highlight underlying social issues around the world. For example, albino girls are often too afraid to marry for fear of people making fun of them.' In one image, Namira, 18, who inspired Alessi to photograph Albino people, is captured as she studies her reflection in a mirror. Alessi spotted the teenager on Instagram and travelled to meet her. Alessi, 44, from Bergamo in Italy, spent two years travelling the world trying to capture the beauty of albinism Many of those she met can't go out until after dark because the sun would leave their skin vulnerable to burning and potential skin cancers In Asia, albinism is still considered a taboo subject with many women fearing they won't find a life partner because of the way their skin looks Indian sisters Mena and Meena were both born with the condition, along with their brother Ramesh WHAT IS ALBINISM? Albinism is a genetic disorder characterised by the complete or partial absence of melanin in the skin, hair, and eyes. It is thought to affect around one in 20,000 births. As well as having a sensitivity to light, those with albino skin are also susceptible to sunburn and skin cancers. Advertisement 'Namira was stood on a suburban train in Mumbai and I fell in love with her. Mumbai is a city of twenty million inhabitants but with the help of some friends, I was able to find her family home. 'Like many other albino people , Namira can't see in daylight so she only leaves her house after sunset. 'I noticed many of my subjects relaxed when I photographed them with their eyes closed.' In search of others with the condition, Alessi travelled to New Delhi and Mumbai in India, and Sulaymaniyah in Iraq. Another photo shows a striking image of a young Kurdish boy named Arya, who is seen posing amongst the pristine white decor of his family's home. She also met three siblings in the twilight of their lives who posed together for the first time. Alessi explained: 'I particularly loved meeting Mena, Ramesh, and Meena - three elderly albino siblings. It was their very first time being photographed together.' New Delhi, Jan 15 : Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi and former party chief Rahul Gandhi on Friday joined a protest march here to show solidarity with the protesting farmers, and walked towards Raj Niwas which houses the residence and office of Delhi's Lt. Governor. Later, both went to Jantar Mantar and joined the ongoing protest of the Punjab MPs against the newly passed farm laws. Speaking on the occasion, Rahul Gandhi said: "Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not respect the farmers... the party is with farmers in support of them till these laws are withdrawn." Slamming the BJP, the Congress leader said the government is working for businessmen and these laws are not in favour of the farmers. The Congress has been opposing these farm laws for long. They were passed in Parliament after the Congress MPs were suspended along with MPs from the TMC. The Congress on Friday staged protests at all Raj Bhavans (Governor's House) across the country and demanded the withdrawal of the farm laws. In Delhi also a Congress march was taken out against the contentious farm laws. The party has been demanding the repeal of the laws by the Centre, as demanded by the farmers' unions who have been on the streets near the borders of Delhi for more than 50 days. The Congress workers assembled near the Chandgi Ram Akhara and marched towards LG House. They were, however, stopped midway by the police. In Uttar Pradesh too, state party president Ajay Kumar Lallu and several Congress workers were detained on Friday as they attempted to march towards Raj Bhavan to observe 'Kisan Adhikar Diwas'. Scuffles between Congress workers and the police were reported from other places as well as party workers attempted to reach the Raj Bhavans. Ajay Kumar Lallu said that the Yogi Adityanath government of Uttar Pradesh was infringing on their democratic right to hold a peaceful protest. "The Congress will continue its fight against this kind of oppression," he said. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed DUBLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Glycobiology Market, By Product (Enzymes, Instruments, Reagents and Kits), By Application (Drug Discovery, Disease Diagnostics, Virology, Cell Biology, Oncology, Others), By End User, By Region, Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Glycobiology Market was valued at USD 938.76 Million and is expected to grow at a doubled digit CAGR of 13.83% during the forecast period. The Global Glycobiology Market is driven by the growing prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetics, renal diseases, among others, which has increased the demand for personalized medicines. This in turn has increased the drug discovery process around the globe, which is anticipated to positively impact growth of the market during the forecast period. Also, increasing grants by different governments especially in the developing nations for R&D activities is further expected to bolster the growth of the market over the next few years. Furthermore, increasing research activities in glycomics, technological advancements and rising government initiatives is also among the major drivers for the Global Glycobiology Market. The Global Glycobiology Market is segmented based on product, application, End-user, company, and region. Based on product, the market can be categorized into enzymes, instruments, reagents, and kits. Among the following, enzymes contribute the majority of share in the market nearly about 35%. Based on enzymes, they can be further bifurcated into glycosidases & neuramidases, glycosyltransferases & sialytransferases, carbohydrate kinases, carbohydrate sulfotransferases, protein sulfotransferases and others. The glycosidases & neuramidases segment is leading the market is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period as well. This can be ascribed to their pivotal role in metabolism, antibacterial defense & pathogenesis, glycosidase probe design for ABPP represents an important task in chemical proteomic & glycomic research. Based on instruments, the market is fragmented into HPLC, mass spectrometry, MALDI-TOF, antibody arrays, lectin arrays, and others. The HPLC segment is attributed to dominate the market in the coming years. Based on reagents, the market is segmented into glycoproteins, oligosaccharides, monosaccharides, and others. Based on kits, the glycobiology market is sub-segmented into glycan releasing kit, glycan purification kit, glycan labeling kit, and others. Regionally, the glycobiology market has been segmented into Asia-Pacific, North America, South America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. Among these, North America is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period in the overall glycobiology market owing to the presence of many research laboratories and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the region. Major players operating in the Global Glycobiology Market include Merck & Co., Inc., Agilent Technologies, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, New England Biolabs, Inc., Shimadzu Corporation, Takara Bio Inc., Waters Corporation, Asparia Glycomics S.L., Bruker Corporation, RayBiotech, Inc., Z Biotech, LLC., Chemily Glycoscience, Dextra Laboratories Ltd., Lectenz Bio, Ludger Ltd, R&D Systems, Inc., Glycotope GmbH, Danaher Corporation, S-BIO (subsidiary of Sumitomo Bakelite Co. Ltd., Japan), Bio-Rad Laboratories and others. The companies are developing advanced technologies and launching new services in order to stay competitive in the market. Other competitive strategies include mergers & acquisitions and new service developments. For instance, in 2018, Shimadzu Corp. collaborated with premier Biosoft, a global company in the field of bioinformatics solutions, with an aim to introduce its LCMS-9030 Quadrupole Time of Flight (Q-TOF) mass spectrometry system for advance glycomics and lipidomics data research analysis. Years considered for this report: Historical Years: 2015-2018 Base Year: 2019 Estimated Year: 2020 Forecast Period: 2021-2025 Objective of the Study: To analyze and estimate the market size of the Global Glycobiology Market from 2015 to 2018. To estimate and forecast the market size of the Global Glycobiology Market from 2019 to 2025 and growth rate until 2025. To classify and forecast the Global Glycobiology Market based on type of enzyme, type of kit, application, End-user, company and regional distribution. To identify dominant region or segment in the Global Glycobiology Market. To identify drivers and challenges for the Global Glycobiology Market. To examine competitive developments such as expansions, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, etc., in the Global Glycobiology Market. To identify and analyze the profile of leading players operating in the Global Glycobiology Market. To identify key sustainable strategies adopted by market players in the Global Glycobiology Market. Key Target Audience: Glycobiology enzymes, kits & instruments, manufacturers, suppliers, distributorsand other stakeholders Government bodies such as regulating authorities and policy makers Organizations, forums and alliances related to glycobiology Market Research and Consulting Firms The study is useful in providing answers to several critical questions that are important for the industry stakeholders such as manufacturers of enzymes, kits & instruments used in glycobiology techniques, suppliers and partners, End-users, etc., besides allowing them in strategizing investments and capitalizing on the market opportunities. Report Scope In this report, the Global Glycobiology Market has been segmented into following categories, in addition to the industry trends which have also been detailed below: Global Glycobiology Market, By Product: Enzymes Instruments Reagents Kits Global Glycobiology Market, By Enzyme: Glycosidases & Neuramidases Glycosyltransferases & Sialytransferases Carbohydrate Kinases Carbohydrate Sulfotransferases Protein Sulfotransferases Others Global Glycobiology Market, By Instruments: HPLC Antibody arrays Lectin arrays MALDI-TOF Mass spectroscopy Others Global Glycobiology Market, By Kit: Glycan Releasing Kit Glycan Labelling Kit Glycan Purification Kit Others Global Glycobiology Market, By Application: Drug Discovery Disease Diagnostics Virology Cell Biology Oncology Others Global Glycobiology Market, By End-user: Research Institutes Diagnostic Centers Hospitals Clinical Laboratories Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies Others Global Glycobiology Market, By Region: North America Europe Asia-Pacific South America Middle East & Africa Competitive Landscape Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies present in the Global Glycobiology Market. Available Customizations: With the given market data, the analyst offers customizations according to a company's specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report: Company Information Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players. Companies Mentioned Merck & Co., Inc. Agilent Technologies, Inc. Thermo Fisher Scientific New England Biolabs, Inc. Shimadzu Corporation Takara Bio Inc. Waters Corporation Asparia Glycomics S.L. Bruker Corporation RayBiotech, Inc. Z Biotech, LLC. Chemily Glycoscience Dextra Laboratories Ltd. Lectenz Bio Ludger Ltd R&D Systems, Inc. Glycotope GmbH Danaher Corporation S-BIO (subsidiary of Sumitomo Bakelite Co. Ltd., Japan ) ) Bio-Rad Laboratories For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/g18oov 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 Staenberg familys generosity deserves communitys deepest gratitude In my 50+ years of residence in St. Louis, I have never written to the Jewish Light. However, learning of Michael Staenbergs decision to step back from lead fundraising I wish to add my name to the torrent of appreciation which will be tendered to the Staenbergs. We have been blessed to have the Staenbergs as members of our community. Their good deeds are boundless. Kol Hakavod to this wonderful family. Harvey Friedman, University City Counterpoint to recent column ADVERTISEMENT After I read Marty Rochesters op-ed in the Dec. 30 issue, I found myself confused and even a bit insulted. He would have us believe that Americans are idiots because they cant be sure of the founding date of the United States (the United States was not founded in 1619 or 1776 but 1789) or the stagnation of civics proficiency test scores. This is after he pointed out that the 2020 Presidential election turnout was a record 73.7% and that both candidates exceeded previous election numbers making Bidens win even more impressive. I find it more upsetting that he concludes that this is the worst combination of participation alongside growing ignorance. He goes on to cite the demonstrations by Black Lives Matter or those protesting the manner in which the COVID-19 pandemic has been handled. Perhaps Rochester needs to become informed as to the reasons there have been responsible demonstrations by Black Lives Matter, those concerned about the COVID pandemic and the following incomplete list: the need for police reform, attention to the immigration crises, income inequality, gender inequality, climate change, access to health care, gun violence, white supremacy, air and water pollution. These are some of the reasons we look to government for leadership and services. Lets not waste more newsprint debating the importance of the words of the Gettysburg Address or whether college graduates can associate Franklin Roosevelt with the New Deal. If we focus on the many crises our country faces, we can begin to begin to address the many issues that divide us. Participation then becomes more than nice declarations and speeches that we memorized in school. Real civics is about citizens and government officials becoming informed and taking action to correct the inequities and injustices in our system so that everyone has an equal chance for a safe and meaningful life It may be worth listening to children. The Jan. 2 New York Times published submissions from 11 children, 5 to 13 years old, who offered their ideas to President-elect Biden about access to health care, poverty, treating people fairly, etc. This is the real civics lesson. Gary Ratkin, Creve Coeur Pollard arrives in Israel Regarding the Dec. 30 online story, Jonathan Pollard arrives in Israel 35 years after arrest for spying: As readers of the Light may be aware from my past letters, my contempt and hatred for Pollard knows no bounds. To have sold out his own country to a foreign nation albeit, a friendly ally, Israel was a deplorable act that should be excoriated by any true American patriot. To see that Pollard was welcomed with open arms by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was nauseating and disgraceful. My wish is that he live a very long life so he can contemplate and reflect upon the egregious, abhorrent, reprehensible, act he committed against the country of his birth. God may be able to forgive him for his transgression, but I know one thing for sure: I never will. Gene Carton, University City A closer look at call for less government In the Dec. 30 article Meet 2 new liberty loving legislators and Jewish Republicans, new state representatives Michael Davis and Adam Schwadron favor making Missouri a freer state. Davis wants less government and for Missourians to have more freedom. Really? Is that the same less government that Republicans historically invoke when they restrict abortion or gay marriage rights? One has to wonder, what freedoms are white, Jewish Missourians being deprived of? Davis proposes that front license plates, required in Missouri, are an infringement on peoples freedom. Hit-and-run drivers often are intoxicated and flee accidents. Law enforcement uses plate photos as a tool to enforce driver accountability. Theyve worked great against me on restricted-turn intersections, but based on their potential benefit to law enforcement compared to impositions on my freedom I hardly think they should be eliminated. I am suspect of those who claim the banner of smaller government because they are the first to impose government on peoples personal lives. Davis contention that the Democratic Party tries to use minorities in a way where they want everyone to think that they are being oppressed is nothing more than a middle-class white person ensuring that those who start with nothing do not get away with anything. Schwadrons belief that he should not rely on the government to provide for me, seems disingenuous for someone who like me, grew up in the cradle of St. Louis, white, Jewish privilege. The call to public service is noble but I caution that there are many who do not come from Creve Coeur or Maryland Heights who look to government to improve their opportunities. There is a temptation to punish those with less; I hope that they both consider the consequences of enforcing the contemporary edicts of less government. Richard Cassell, Los Angeles The Bachelor's Laura Byrne shared an Instagram story on Thursday that left some of her followers giggling. The former reality star, who is currently expecting her second child with Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson, even caught the attention of popular account Celeb Spellcheck as she gushed over her latest outfit. 'This dress!! So comfy, without feeling like you're wearing a moo moo,' she wrote. Insta-fail! The Bachelor's Laura Byrne, 34, (pictured) suffered an embarrassing fail as she humorously misspelled the name of a popular style of dress while promoting comfortable designer dress 'Perfect to chuck on over swimmers,' she continued before tagging the brand. The mother-of-one was actually meant to write 'muumuu', referring to a loose dress of Hawaiian origin. Celeb Spellcheck, a profile dedicated to correcting influencers' bad spelling, reposted Laura's Instagram story alongside a snarky caption. Caught out! Celeb Spellcheck, a profile dedicated to correcting influencers' bad spelling, then reposted Laura's Instagram story alongside a snarky caption She's in good company! It appears Laura wasn't the only one confused, with many of the account's followers quick to admit that they too have been spelling the name of the dress incorrectly 'Lady and a [cow emoji],' they wrote in reference to her Instagram handle, Lady and a Cat. But it appears Laura wasn't the only one confused, with many of the account's followers quick to admit that they too have been spelling the name of the dress incorrectly. 'Who would have thought this page was both entertaining AND educational?! I thought it was spelt moo moo,' one user commented. A second wrote: 'Don't have a cow man.' Whoops! The mother-of-one was actually meant to write 'muumuu', referring to a loose dress of Hawaiian origin Celeb Spellcheck has attracted criticism in recent months, with the likes of Skye Wheatley and Tayla Damir accusing the page of 'bullying' them by correcting their spelling. The admin has denied bullying the influencers she features on the account, saying: 'This page is meant to be lighthearted and fun. I have definitely posted things in the past that I'm not proud of, but I do try to never cross the line.' The account previously made headlines when it shared a screenshot of model Elyse Knowles misspelling 'voila' as 'wallah'. The gaffe went viral in December when it was picked up by U.S. social media sensation Joshua Ostrovsky, a.k.a. The Fat Jewish. Hitting back: The account has attracted criticism, with the likes of Skye Wheatley and Tayla Damir (pictured) accusing the admin of 'bullying' them by correcting their spelling Rangers at the Ba Na Nui Chua Nature Reserve forest have detected three new groups of red-shanked douc langurs in the first weeks of 2021. The groups of five-six members each were spotted in the reserve that lies on the border of Quang Nam Province and Da Nang City, said Tran Viet Phuong, head of the Da Nang Forest Protection Department. Dubbed the "queen of primates" thanks to their distinctive and unique appearance, the red-shanked douc langurs are identified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and listed in Vietnams Red Book of rare animals that must be protected. Rangers had seen the langurs earlier in 2016, but were unable to either keep track of them or take any photographs, as they have been able to do this time. There is no official number for red-shanked douc langurs in Vietnam, but the Son Tra Peninsula in Da Nang houses the biggest population of this endangered species in the nation. A study conducted in 2017 on behalf of the city by the Green Vietnam Biodiversity Conservation Center, a non-government organization, counted 1,300 red-shanked douc langurs in the peninsula. Poaching and loss of habitat pose the gravest threat to their existence. The peninsula lies 40 km (25 miles) from Ba Na Nui Chua forest. "The appearance of the new groups of red-shanked douc langurs at Ba Na Nui Chua forest has proven that the living conditions and environment as well as the management and protection of forests in this area are good," Phuong said. Let's face it: It's been a turbulent 2021 already. When you couple that with the fact Americans have been cooped up due to the global pandemic, many Americans are longing to get back into travel mode again, searching for the best getaways for 2021. Even though some travel destinations are still off-limits because of COVID-19, other countries are beginning to open up for travelers. The travel search site Kayak revealed recent flight searches out of U.S. airports that are on the rise for trending domestic and international destinations, according to Conde Nast Traveler's Jessica Puckett. "While travel has largely been hold this past year, people are starting to get back out there as vaccine news restores travelers' confidence," Kayak CEO's Steve Hafner stated. Here are some of the top 5 flight searches, according to Kayak: St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands Yes, there's an unmistakable allure to blue waters, pristine beaches and a cool island vibe to get away from it all in 2021. According to Kayak's data, flight searches for St. Thomas are trending upward, nearing pre-COVID-19 numbers. The other good part: Americans don't need a passport to visit St. Thomas, but you must show a negative COVID-19 test. Key West, Florida When you head over to Key West, you'll be greeted by the charm of this coastal seat. Indulge in sailing, kayaking and snorkeling in this Florida travel hotspot. From Duval Street to the Ernest Hemingway Museum, it's a top draw for a vacation getaway. Although flight searches to Key West are still 24 percent lower than before the pandemic, it's still at the top of Kayak's most searched destinations. Oranjestad, Aruba Who doesn't want a refreshing island getaway after 2020? If you're interested in a beach retreat, the capital of Aruba features stunning beaches and some of the best snorkeling to private islands. Flight searches to Organjestad rank at the top of Kayak's list for 2021. Quick note to travelers--if you provide a mandatory negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of arriving, you can avoid a quarantine. Anchorage, Alaska During the pandemic, so many Americans headed to state and national parks to soak in the natural beauty. Flight searches for Anchorage are trending up in 2021, according to Kayak. Travelers to Alaska are drawn to the hiking, camping and backcountry adventures during the summer high season. Venture out to Denali National Park or the Tongass National Forest to get the most out of your trip. Atlanta From the High Museum of Art to a larger-than-life aquarium and thriving restaurant scene, Atlanta was one of the top five destinations Americans are most interested in visiting in 2021. While flight searches to Atlanta are down approximately 38 percent compared to pre-pandemic times, it's still a top draw for Kayak's flight searches in 2021. ALTON Each week award-winning photographer John Badman of The Telegraph captures images of the Riverbend area. Here is a sampling of his photographs from this week. They also appear in the weekend issue of The Telegraph. 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. History shows that many outrages are hidden by the fog of war: the state of turmoil and confusion that inevitably arises during conflict. Likewise, many dire injustices are concealed by the fog of the current pandemic. One of the most urgent, for women in Northern Ireland, is the scandalous lack of abortion provision. After decades of suffering, endless court battles and failed political interventions, abortion was at last made legal in Northern Ireland in October 2019. So why, in January 2021, are we going back to court? Because women with crisis pregnancies are still being denied their rights, still being betrayed, still being ignored and abandoned by their political representatives. This week, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) launched a landmark legal action against the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Executive, and the Department of Health for their failure to commission safe, accessible abortion services. Each of them have refused to take responsibility. Les Allamby, head of the NIHRC, said: "We have entered a Kafkaesque world where the NIO claims it is taking all reasonable steps to enable a service, the Department of Health claims it cannot get agreement to commission and fund a service through the NI Executive, and the NI Executive says it is a matter for the Department of Health." This is often how politically controversial issues are treated in our part of the world. It's the same with flags and painted kerbstones - no authority wants to take it on. As Les Allamby points out, "it is a game of 'pass the parcel' where the music never stops, except it is not a game but an issue of women's health and wellbeing." Amnesty International believes that the failure of the NI Executive and Department of Health to agree to fund and commission these services breaches the European Convention on Human Rights. Health trusts have been left, in the middle of a pandemic, struggling to fund and resource abortion care themselves. The fact that any provision exists at all is down to a handful of committed, dedicated and exhausted staff, determined to help women, but too isolated and too few in number to keep the system going. No wonder it is falling apart. The South Eastern Trust currently has no early medical abortion (EMA) service because a doctor involved in providing it has gone on maternity leave. Between October of last year and early this year, the Northern Trust could not provide any services, and no other trust had the capacity to accept referrals. Desperate women, unable to access care, must travel elsewhere to obtain an abortion, against all stay-at-home pandemic advice, or seek abortion pills online. Some women have turned to backstreet abortions. Others, in complete despair, have even attempted suicide over the lack of care they need. As the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has warned, "this harm cannot be overstated". Yet Health Minister Robin Swann maintains that commissioning services is a "controversial issue" which must be referred to the Executive. Sorry, Mr Swann. Not good enough. You are under no obligation to seek the approval of the Executive on this matter. Your obligation is to implement the law. This is not about absurd sectarian issues like flags and kerbstones. This is about real lives, real suffering. You are the minister for health, yet you are presiding over a disaster in women's healthcare, having washed your hands of responsibility. Mr Swann has previously stated that he is "pro-life". Of course, he is perfectly entitled to that view. What he is not entitled to do is deprive women of their legal rights to safe healthcare, and health professionals of the resources to provide those rights, in perpetuity, on the dubious pretext of waiting for Executive permission. Should Mr Swann continue to abdicate his duty of care to the women of Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, as secretary of state, must intervene on their behalf. After all, he's already said how "proud" he is that the UK Government ensured abortion rights in NI. Let's see that pride in action, at the point of delivery. At the very minimum, Mr Lewis must ensure that telemedicine services are urgently put in place so that women aren't forced to resort to potentially unsafe or desperate measures. We cannot wait until the shroud of fog, caused by the pandemic, eventually lifts. Indeed, once Covid restrictions are removed, the small number of healthcare staff who are currently able to assist with interim abortion services - due to the reduction of their normal duties - will diminish still further as they return to their pre-pandemic roles. There's no time to lose. This is a wrong which must be righted now. Total will not renew its membership in the American Petroleum Institute (API) for 2021 due to divergences with the main U.S. oil lobby over climate policies, the French oil and gas supermajor said on Friday. For 2019 and 2020, Total found APIs positions partially aligned to its own, but some divergences remain. Those include APIs support for the rollback of U.S. regulation on methane emissions, which Total opposed in November 2019, and APIs membership in the Transportation Fairness Alliance, which is opposed to electric vehicles subsidies. The API also has differing positions than those of Total regarding carbon pricing. Moreover, API gave its support during the recent elections to candidates who argued against the United States participation in the Paris Agreement, Total said in a statement. As part of our Climate Ambition made public in May 2020, we are committed to ensuring, in a transparent manner, that the industry associations of which we are a member adopt positions and messages that are aligned with those of the Group in the fight against climate change, Totals chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanne said. Total is betting on profitably growing its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and renewable businesses as part of its new strategy and net-zero agenda. Related: Goldman Sachs Warns Of Bullish Perfect Storm For Natural Gas Pouyanne told French newspaper Le Parisien in September that the firm aims to be among the worlds top five producers of renewable energy. The companys operations mix today is 55 percent oil, 40 percent gas, and less than 5 percent electricity from renewables, Pouyanne said, noting that in 2050, Totals operations will be divided into 20 percent oil, 40 percent gas, and 40 percent renewable energy. Total is not the only Europe-based oil supermajor to have quit major American oil lobbies over differences in climate policies. Last year, BP quit three U.S. energy trade associations, the main refining lobby group, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), after finding in an in-depth review that those three associations dont have climate policies aligned to BPs goals and its support to the Paris Agreement. A year earlier, Shell quit the refining lobby because of material misalignment in climate-related positions. By OPC Markets More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Samsung has just recently announced the upcoming arrival of its latest Galaxy S series, starting with the S21 and the S21 Plus, which are available at $799 and $999, respectively, as well as probably the best phone yet to date, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which retails at $1,199. Announcement of Samsung Galaxy S21, S21 Plus The announcement was done via their online announcement event, Galaxy Unpacked, which went live on YouTube this Thursday, January 14, 2021. Although the prices of the devices aren't exactly cheap, the features we get compensate for that, plus, it does come with Samsung's "toughest front glass ever" to ensure you don't just drop your $1000 phone. The announcement started with the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro as well as SmartTags, then came the highlight of the online event: the Samsung Galaxy S21 and the Galaxy S21 Plus, which are available for pre-order and will be launching on January 29. The Samsung Galaxy S21 is slightly smaller at 6.2 inches, while the S21 Plus has a 6.7-inch edge-to-edge AMOLED brilliant displays for vibrant colors and vivid viewing experience, with 2400 x 1080p resolutions with a 120Hz refresh rate. But compared before, the tech giant has also made another leap of faith and developed the device with an adaptive refresh rate from 48Hz to 120Hz. This feature helps change the refresh rate depending on what you're doing on your phone. New Display, Camera Settings, and More The devices also have a stunning, new design, combining the camera shell with the phone's gold frame, which also ensures that the camera lenses are well-protected. Speaking of lenses, both Galaxy S21 and S21 Plus have three camera lenses, which include a 12MP Ultra-wide lens, a 12MP wide lens, and the 64MP telephoto lens, plus a 10MP front-facing camera that helps you capture any scenery, portrait, or even a photo of your dog. Both devices have AI support to ensure your photos come out great, especially with its enhanced auto white balance that ensures your natural skin tone will appear in any selfie. If you have photobombers, you can instantly remove them with But, perhaps, what's even more amazing is that you can now take 8K videos, which have a higher definition than 4K videos and are much sharper, combined with the Director's View, a feature that allows you to change angles when you are taking videos. Another amazing feature is the Single Take, which allows users to take both a photo and a video at the same time. Of course, what's under the hood is as spectacular as what we see outside. Read More: Future Samsung Phones Will Have AMD Graphics Cards, A Win for the Mobile Gaming Community Better Speed, Energy, Efficiency, and Privacy The company guarantees the new Galaxy S21 series will have more speed, energy, and efficiency, thanks to its Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset (which is also available for Galaxy S21 Ultra) 5-nanometer processor for 20% faster CPU, 35% faster GPU, and 2x faster AI. The devices are available at 8GB RAM with choices for 128GB to 256GB storage capacity. Moreover, the company wants to ensure that the new series will be their "most private and most powerful yet," so they have included an enhanced security system that can go against even the most advanced hardware attacks known as the Samsung Knox Vault with several features such as the Private Share, where you can choose which date to share with your friends and how long they can see it. The Galaxy S21 has a 4000mAh battery, while the S21 Plus has 4800mAh, which can help the device last longer, even with 5G. Gamers will also be overjoyed to know that Samsung will keep its partnership with Microsoft to bring Xbox Game Pass games to the device, plus they are also partnering with Unity and other developers, including Riot Games, Square Enix, and miHoYo. The tech giant guarantees the device can handle gaming without battery draining and overheating which is common when you play hardcore game titles. You can now block calls and messages, and the phone reallocates AP and memory, thanks to the new One UI 3 interface. Unveiling of Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Besides the Galaxy S21 and S21 Plus, the company has also announced the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which is well on its way to becoming the best smartphone as of now, not just within Samsung but in the entire industry. It is slightly bigger than the S21 Plus at 6.8 inches with the OLED, 3200 x 1440 display with the 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, 12GB RAM with up to 512GB of storage capacity, as well as 5000mAh battery that can definitely last you a whole day of use. It basically has everything the S21 and S21 Plus have, and more. But what made the S21 Plus is its amazing camera setup, complete with a 12MP Ultra-wide camera, 10x 10MP Telephoto lens, another 3x Telephoto camera, a 108MP wide camera, and a laser Auto-focus sensor. Basically, you can capture images even at night, when you practically can't see anything, which means you can definitely capture much more stunning images in daytime, with the best lighting. Most of all, you can now get the best details possible even at 100x Zoom, thanks to its double folded lens, a super resolution AI that makes sure the image is as crisp as possible, and an intelligent zoom lock to avoid shaky images. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra also uses Wacom technology, so it's compatible with S Pen, a first for the Galaxy S series There are two versions: the S-Pen Standard model that will be available at launch, and the S-Pen Pro that allows you to use Bluetooth actions, which will be available for all Samsung devices that support S-Pen. The Pro version will be available later on after the launch. Related Article: iPad pro 2021 Leak Shows Apple Tablet With Slimmer Bezels, Internal Upgrade Also Expected This article is owned by Tech Times Written by: Nhx Tingson 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A police reform bill that passed 60-50 during the Illinois legislatures last day of session Wednesday has law enforcement officers feeling like theyre the ones being handcuffed. I hope people realize that were doing the best job for our city but lawmakers are handcuffing us, Beardstown Police Chief Martin Coad said. It leaves the public in limbo. Illinois House Bill 3653 now is on its way to Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office to be signed into law. While it initially included language that would have done away with law enforcement officers qualified immunity from job-related lawsuits, the Black Caucus leadership had it stripped from the bill. Proposed stricter use-of-force guidelines also were cut from the final bill. Still, law enforcement officers are unhappy with the bills no-cash bail stipulation and a requirement that all police will have to wear body cameras by 2025. Those cameras are to be paid for by the officers department. If you do the crime, you should have to pay to get out, Coad said, adding that he understands the need for reform but feels the stipulation is going to free criminals to go out and commit more crime. Theyre just going to go right back out and do it again. Under the bill, all law enforcement departments in the state will be required by 2025 to have officers wear body cameras and departments would have to fund both the cameras, the ongoing training and storage for the footage created by them. That will give us some time to budget it all in, Coad said of the timeline. But there are no grants out there for this type of thing. With 11 full-time officers and three part-time officers in Beardstown, Coads timeline to budget for the body cameras is not his top concern. Storage of the footage is, especially since what that will require hasnt been specified. The storage portion of it is going to be the killer, he said, adding that some counties, like Sangamon County, pay around $100,000 a year for video storage. Cass County States Attorney Craig Miller also believes the no-cash bail stipulation will make his job harder, he said. I know it will make our jobs difficult, he said. Miller said he still needs to learn more about the 700-plus page bill, but he doesnt agree with how the bill was passed. There should have been more time for everyone to read and analyze what was on the table, he said. Pritzker said Wednesday that he was pleased the bill has passed. This criminal justice package carries with it the opportunity to shape our state into a lesson in true justice for the nation by abolishing cash bail, modernizing sentencing laws, instituting a certification and decertification system for police officers statewide, requiring body cameras, reforming crowd control response, and amplifying law enforcement training standards. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 22:15:02|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. - - - - ADDIS ABABA -- COVID-19 cases on the African continent amounted to 3,176,575 as of Friday, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said. According to the continental disease control and prevention agency, the death toll related to the pandemic stood at 76,752 as of Friday with 2,594,088 recoveries. - - - - ADDIS ABABA -- COVID-19 cases on the African continent amounted to 3,176,575 as of Friday, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said. According to the continental disease control and prevention agency, the death toll related to the pandemic stood at 76,752 as of Friday with 2,594,088 recoveries. - - - - DHAKA -- Bangladesh reported 762 new COVID-19 cases and 13 new deaths on Friday, making the tally at 526,485 and the death toll at 7,862, the Directorate General of Health Services said. The official data showed that 13,678 samples were tested in the last 24 hours across Bangladesh. - - - - MANILA -- Foreign nationals travelling from or transiting through the United Arab Emirates and Hungary will be barred from entering the Philippines starting Jan. 17, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Friday. The newly announced restriction is in the Southeast Asian country's further efforts to curb the spread of the new and more contagious coronavirus variants. - - - - TEHRAN -- Iran's health ministry reported 6,485 daily COVID-19 cases on Friday, raising the total nationwide infections to 1,318,295. The pandemic has so far claimed 56,621 lives in Iran, up by 83 in the past 24 hours, said Sima Sadat Lari, the spokeswoman for Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, during her daily briefing. - - - - BEIJING -- An international expert team of the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in China and started quarantine at a hotel in Wuhan on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Friday. The 13-member team will conduct joint scientific research with Chinese scientists on the origin-tracing of the novel coronavirus, Zhao told a press briefing. - - - - KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia reported 3,211 new COVID-19 infections, the health ministry said on Friday, bringing the national total to 151,066. Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that five of the new cases are imported and 3,206 are local transmissions. Eight more deaths have been reported, pushing the death toll to 586. Enditem (Natural News) I have had enough of the left pretending to have some moral high ground when it comes to political violence. After the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday, there are several Democrats calling for Trump to be removed from office despite having nothing to do with what happened. (Article republished from TruePundit.com) Nothing at all. The Democratic Party has zero moral high ground on this issue. Theyve done nothing to quell the violence and unrest on their side, which started right after Trump won the presidency. The media wont bring this up, but in the aftermath of Trumps election in November 2016, the left began protestingand those protests typically ended in violence. For the third night in a row, anti-Donald Trump demonstrators took to the streets in several big cities and on college campuses across the United States, including an outburst of smashed windows and a dumpster fire in Portland that police countered with pepper spray and flash-bang devices, reported USA Today just days after Trumps upset victory over Hillary Clinton. Roughly 4,000 protesters gathered in downtown Portland the Thursday following the election, chanting We reject the president-elect! before heading over to Portlands Pearl District, where the windows of several businesses were smashed. A local news station said, The protest was mostly peaceful until demonstrators met with an anarchist group, after which demonstrators vandalized buildings, kicked cars and knocked out power. READ MORE Listen to the insightful Thomas Paine Podcast Below Read more at: TruePundit.com and LiberalMob.com. IRCON International rose 1.21% to Rs 92.15 after the company announced the completion of 30 km Korichhapar-Dharamjaigarh section in Chhattisgarh. IRCON International announced opening the 30 km section between Korichhapar to Dharamjaigarh within the targeted date i.e., 31.12.2020. A trial run was carried on 31 December 2020. The cost of this line is approximately Rs 325 crore and the work is executed by Ircon International under an SPV named Chhattisgarh East Railway. South Eastern Coalfields, IRCON and Chhattisgarh Government are shareholders for the Chhattisgarh East Railway. A section of 44 km length between Kharsia to Korichhaparis already made operational by IRCON in October 2019. Now, with the completion of Korichhapar-Dharamjaigarh, the complete section of 74 km between Kharsia-Dharamjaigar his functional. Commencement of this section will help in evacuation of coal from North Chhattisgarh Area. This 74 km is the first stretch being commissioned under the PPP model. Following this development, the goods train can reach upto Durgapur, Baroud and Chhaal mines of South Eastern Coalfields. On a consolidated basis, IRCON's net profit rose 1.5% to Rs 84.07 crore on a 15.9% fall in net sales to Rs 1,040.41 crore in Q2 FY21 over Q2 FY20. IRCON International is an engineering and construction, specialized in transport infrastructure and is wholly owned by the Ministry of Railways. As on 31 December 2020, the Government of India held 89.18% stake in IRCON International. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 15 : Kerala Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac on Friday presented the state's Budget of the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government in the Assembly, promising to generate eight lakh employment opportunities in the state. Addressing the Assembly, Issac said that it was a "people-centric and welfare-oriented Budget" and that schemes proposed in it would help support the underprivileged and downtrodden people amid the coronavirus pandemic. He said that the Kerala government had tried to address the growing unemployment crisis and would support 2,500 start-up initiatives to ensure employment to 20,000 youths. The state also proposed to raised Minimum Support Price (MSP) of rubber from Rs 150 to Rs 170 per kg to boost rubber industry. The MSP of coconut is proposed to be Rs 32 per kg and of paddy Rs 28 per kg. Other highlights of the Budget include continuation of free distribution of food kits to all ration card holders; 10 kg rice at Rs 15 per kg to blue and white ration card holders; and eight lakh job opportunities -- five lakh earmarked for educated unemployed persons and three lakh for unemployed in all categories. He also proposed increase in social welfare pensions to Rs 1,600 from Rs 1,500 per month from April 2021 onwards. As many as 4,000 new posts would be created in Health Department. Under the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board, development projects worth Rs 1,50,000 crore would be completed, Issac told the Assembly. Similarly, women not working but sitting at home would be trained/skilled to help them get professional assignments. The Kerala bank, Kerala State Financial Enterprise and Kerala Financial Corporation would provide loans to people working from home. The Budget also proposed support to provide jobs to 20,000 persons in five years via digital economy. Details of professionals who could take up voluntary assignments and those who received training would be made available on digital platforms. Laptops would be made available at all households and 25 per cent subsidy given to poor families. Internet would not be made a monopoly in the state by any organisation or company. Fellowships of Rs 1 lakh would be provided to young research scholars in sciences, Rs 56 crore earmarked for infrastructure development at government colleges and Rs 52 crore for the handloom sector. The Budget provides for Rs four crore for handicrafts and Rs five crore for Kerala Bamboo Corporation Ltd. The Champions Boat League would be provided Rs 20 crore, the Minister said. Construction of three industrial corridors would be undertaken, for which the Budget has earmarked Rs 50,000 crore. A new park for the construction of a special ward for cancer patients would be made a reality. For senior citizens, schemes such as Karunya@home, 500 clubs for senior citizens and home delivery of medicines was also promised by the state government in the Budget. The Research department at Kerala Health University would be named after late Padmanabhan Palpu, a noted doctor from Kerala. The Budget proposals include increase in pension of journalists by Rs 1,000. The Press Club with residential facilities for woman journalists would be constructed at Thiruvananthapuram. As many as 1.5 lakh homes for the deprived and underprivileged sections of society under the LIFE mission have been earmarked. As much as 6,000 crore is proposed to be allocated for this initiative. The regional cancer centres would be allocated Rs 71 crore, the Malabar cancer centre Rs 25 crore and the Cochin Cancer centre completed in this financial year. As much as Rs 320 crore has been earmarked for the welfare of the transgender community, Rs 42 crore for minority welfare and Rs 5,000 crore for the fishermen community. Meanwhile, opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said that the Budget is a "farce" and that the Finance Minister is "beating about the bush without any concrete solutions to the growing financial issues facing the state". Speaking in the Assembly, the Congress leader said: "Issac's Budget is a bluff; he has not done anything to address the woes of the common man in the state but announced measures that are easy to dream about but can't be implemented. Issac is living in a dream world and cannot even support less than 10 per cent of society." The activists of Kerala unit of BJP Yuva Morcha burnt copies of the Budget in front of the Assembly, leading to a minor scuffle with the police. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A woman who stole from a school group a decade ago, then again recently from a Grand Rapids business, is now heading to prison. Terry Jo Lamore, 42, was sentenced to two to 20 years in prison this week. Employees at the Grand Rapids screen printing business had to forgo Christmas bonuses because of the embezzlement, according to a human resources official. Everyone was really shocked, The Screen Print Departments new human resources manager, Renee Orr, told MLive. We just felt really betrayed. Lamore in 2010 took more than $13,000 from a Kelloggsville Schools parent-teacher group. She had served as the groups treasurer and president at different times and, before that, was on the school board. More recently, she was working as the human resources and accounts payable specialist at The Screen Print Department in Grand Rapids when she was caught embezzling funds. A financial review showed she took more than $151,000 over at least 14 months. At her sentencing, Kent County Circuit Judge Curt Benson said he viewed the crime as very serious. You befriend people. They take you into their trust and confidence and then you betray them, he said. Lamores attorney, Alida Bryant, said Lamore had a gambling addiction and other issues. The embezzlement caused hardship at The Screen Print Department. The revelation about Lamore and the lost funds came just before the coronavirus pandemic hit last year. The companys 45-person workforce had to forgo bonuses around the holiday season, Orr said. Lamore had worked for the company about five years, starting in customer service, and took on the human resources position in early 2019. She was well liked. She was good as an HR type person, really good at talking to employees, Orr said. There was no background check when she started the job. She had worked at a different screen printing business with no complaints, Orr said. Investigators determined Lamore had been writing checks to herself, disguising them as vendor checks in a computer system. We had no idea those checks were actually cashed to her, Orr said. Lamores co-workers were both surprised and dismayed at the discovery, according to Orr. At her sentencing Wednesday, Lamore talked about the harm she caused. No one in their right mind would have betrayed you the way I did, she said, asking for forgiveness, healing and closure. Benson ordered the prison term, but also said Lamore must pay $151,546 to her former employer. She was out on bond until the sentencing. More from MLive Michigan National Guard preparing for armed protest at Capitol Sunday Flint residents, city leaders say justice falls short after announcement of water crisis charges Wife of former Kalamazoo pastor accused in sex scandal now faces charges herself A South Jersey school district has paid an employee $55,000 to settle a lawsuit in which he claimed he was harassed and discriminated against as a gay man and a foster parent, including being told by co-workers that he needed to find a woman and that he was not a real parent. Joseph Longo III sued the Salem City School District in 2018 alleging violations of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, citing harassment based on sexual orientation and familial status and gender stereotype discrimination. Longo, who has been employed by the district for more than 20 years and is a social worker with the child study team, is described in the lawsuit as a homosexual male and a foster parent. His foster parenting was the basis for the discrimination alleged in the lawsuit, which was filed in state Superior Court. Soon after telling Pamela Bates-Thomas, district director of Special Services, in 2016 that he was taking classes to become a foster parent, Bates-Thomas and Dale Garner, the districts transition coordinator, began making disparaging comments, according to the suit. Those remarks, which were made frequently, included, You dont need foster kids, you need to find a woman and have kids with a woman, and You dont need kids, just get another pet, according to the suit. The two allegedly suggested that since Longo was a single man he didnt know what he was doing. They also encouraged Longo to drop the foster kids off at the state Department of Children and Families office because he did not need this. After learning that two foster children had recently left his home, Dr. Billy Slaughter, the school psychologist, allegedly stated, I hope you learned your lesson, you dont need any children. When he took in a new foster child in May 2017 and the child became ill, Longo took a day off from work for a trip to the doctor. When he returned the next day with a doctors note and submitted a request to use a family personal day, Bates-Thomas told him she would not approve the family personal day because he did not deserve it and suggested he use a sick day instead. She allegedly went on to claim that Longo was not a real parent and told him he needed to choose between being a foster parent and his career, the suit states. Bates-Thomas submitted Longos request to the superintendent, Dr. Amiot Patrick Michel, and Longo was asked to provide district officials with his guardianship paperwork. Michel then began asking Longo invasive and harassing questions, such as whether he intended to adopt this child and also asked if he was being paid to take care of the child. The superintendent allegedly told Longo that he was not a real parent if he was paid to care for a foster child. Longo was then told his family personal day request had been denied and that he should submit a new form to use a personal day. Bates-Thomas allegedly told Longo that he was not entitled to the same rights as an adoptive/natural parent because, Arrangements can be made to return the child to the organization, which would not occur if it is your own child. In court papers previously filed in response to the suit, the district said the family day Longo sought was not allowed under his union contract. Also, all of (the districts) actions were based on legitimate, non-retaliatory and non-discriminatory business reasons. In addition to the foster care issue, Longo alleged in the suit that Bates-Thomas made disparaging remarks about the LGBT club that had recently been created at the district high school. She told Longo, I cant believe they have this club and, regarding another employees involvement in the group, said, She likes those LGBTs and She needs to focus on the kids instead of that silly LGBT stuff, the suit claimed. Under the settlement, which was reached in October and first reported by open public records advocate John Paff, the district admited no wrongdoing and Longo agreed to drop all related claims against the district. Longo received $29,135.88 of the settlement figure, while his attorney, Costello & Mains, LLC, received $25,864.12. Longo referred questions about the settlement to his attorney. The attorney and district officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. When John le Carre died last month, we lost the undisputed king of the spy novel. For nearly 60 years hed dominated the genre and raised it to the status of literature. In novels such as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he moved away from the James Bond type to portray the spy as a morally compromised soul struggling to prevail in a seedy world where it was often impossible to tell heroes from villains. Mick Herron's Slough House novels are peopled by a group of MI5 no-hopers. Credit:Mikael Buck Nor did the end of the Cold War stop his invention. He turned to the corrupt and dangerous worlds of the Middle East, arms smuggling, drug lords, Big Pharma, dodgy banks, corporations and politicians. These spheres too had their spies. And in his last novel, the 2019 Agent Running in the Field, he had a go at some very contemporary phenomena, including Brexit, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. But now hes gone, where can we turn for our spy stories? While theres no obvious heir to the throne, there are plenty of contenders. My current favourite is the British novelist Mick Herron, whose Slough House series of novels features a group of MI5 no-hopers exiled from the mainstream for various crimes, misdemeanours and stuff-ups, and abounds in crackling dialogue. Who says spy fiction has to be deadly serious? On Jan. 4, when the first group of returning teachers were due to report in person, about 60% were marked present, according to CPS data. But the figure was up to more than 70% by Monday, the day the first students preschoolers and children in some special education programs returned. That still left more than 500 teachers not in attendance; of those, 145 were deemed absent, and on Tuesday, they were locked out of their Google Classroom accounts and their pay was withheld. That figure dropped to 100 later in the week. By Friday, the number of AWOL teachers was down to 87, but the percentage of total staff members who showed up was the lowest since Monday. Advertisement New York's vaccine rollout grew even more chaotic Thursday as hundreds of desperate residents lined up for hours and traffic was jammed for eight blocks outside a vaccination site in New York City after false rumors spread on social media that 'spare' doses were being given away. Reports on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp that more than 400 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were available to anyone aged over 18 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal sent New Yorkers into a frenzy Thursday night. New York City officials tried to put the confusion to bed, tweeting that this was 'misinformation' and sending in staff and cops to disperse the crowds. The chaotic scenes come amid a vaccine rollout system that has been plagued by challenges from the get-go. Less than 4 percent of the state's population have so far been vaccinated, according to data from Bloomberg. Now, more than one month on from the day the first American - a New Yorker - received the shot on December 14, pressure is building on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to ramp up the rollout as cases, deaths and hospitalizations soar. In other states, such as Washington DC, people have managed to get their hands on the vaccine by waiting outside pharmacies at closing time for leftover doses that would otherwise be thrown out. New York's vaccine rollout grew even more chaotic Thursday as hundreds of desperate residents lined up for hours and traffic was jammed for eight blocks after false rumors spread on social media that 'spare' doses were being given away Footage circulated on social media shows huge lines of people snaking along the sidewalk outside the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, New York City Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have pushed the blame for the slow rollout onto the federal government, pointing out that the Trump administration is currently sending just 300,000 doses each week to the state where 7 million are currently eligible. At the current rate of distribution, Cuomo said it will take six months for the eligible group - including healthcare workers, people aged 65 and over and the immunocompromised - to get an appointment and de Blasio warned the Big Apple will run out of doses as soon as next week. Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital on Thursday was forced to turn away New Yorkers because it didn't have enough doses to go around - despite them having appointments. But while Cuomo and de Blasio are hitting out at the federal government for a lack of supply, neither the state nor the city is getting the supply it currently has into the arms of residents. The state has received almost 1.9 million doses from the federal government to date, but just 767,814 doses or 41 percent of available shots have been administered. In New York City, the figures are even worse with just 38.2 percent or 303,671 shots administered out of 794,650 currently available. New York Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Democrat, told DailyMail.com Thursday the state's vaccination program is a 'complete mess' and warned that his constituents are growing 'livid' with Cuomo over the holdup. With no end in sight for eligible residents - let alone New Yorkers many months away from eligibility for the vaccine - reports that there were doses going spare Thursday triggered a mad rush to the vaccination site in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Thursday night. Reports on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp that more than 400 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were available to anyone aged over 18 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal sent New Yorkers into a frenzy Thursday night Cars were backed up bumper to bumper in both directions for several blocks in the area around the vaccination site Who can get vaccinated under the current Phase 1B? Individuals 65 and older Immunocompromised people First responders Public safety officers Teachers and other school staff In-person college instructors Childcare workers Grocery store workers Transit workers Individuals living and working in homeless shelters Corrections officers Advertisement 'We need to give out 410+ doses in next 4 hours at Brooklyn Army Terminal (by 7pm) , taking anyone in community age 18+, walk-ins, or earlier than scheduled,' one of the messages on social media read. Around 500 New Yorkers flocked to the vaccination park to try to get their hands on the surplus doses. Footage circulated on social media by Stephen Lurie shows huge lines of people snaking along the sidewalk. Meanwhile cars were backed up bumper to bumper in both directions for several blocks. One person in the line told the New York Post soon after 6 pm that she had been waiting in line since 4:37pm. Alexandra Frankel, 27, said she was getting mixed messages from staff at the center and law enforcement drafted in to get people to move on. 'Someone having to do with the site, she came and said it was very reasonable that we were going to get our shots,' she said. Cops turned up and 'said everyone needs to leave', she said. She stayed and said she was one of 10 people let in through a gate by a security guard before the cops made them leave. 'It's frustrating because I was waiting online for two hours and I don't even know now if this is legit,' she said. Security guards and police officers told the line to go home but many stayed put. Footage online shows a security guard reassuring people that the vaccines were being given out to eligible people with appointments only as he urged people 'please go home'. 'We need to give out 410+ doses in next 4 hours at Brooklyn Army Terminal (by 7pm) , taking anyone in community age 18+, walk-ins, or earlier than scheduled,' one of the messages on social media read New York City officials tried to put the confusion to bed, tweeting that this was 'misinformation' and sending in staff and cops to disperse the crowds New York City hospital forced to turn away patients as vaccine doses run out A New York City hospital said Thursday it had been forced to turn away patients after it ran out of COVID-19 vaccine doses. Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital canceled vaccination appointments for eligible New Yorkers from Friday through to Tuesday - despite them already having appointments. 'Unfortunately, due to sudden changes in vaccine supply, we have been forced to cancel our existing public vaccination appointments from Friday, Jan. 15, through Tuesday, Jan. 19,' said hospital spokeswoman Lucia Lee. 'We will inform our patients when more vaccine supplies become available and reopen vaccination appointments for eligible patients. 'For anyone with appointments scheduled after Tuesday, we will provide updates as soon as we know more.' A source at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx told New York Daily News appointments had also been canceled this week. Some pharmacies, which were added as vaccination sites this week, are yet to receive any doses at all. Fairview Pharmacy & Homecare Supply in Port Jefferson Station said desperate New Yorkers were calling the pharmacy for appointments after it was added to the state's website for them to have to turn them away as it has nothing to give. 'It brought my business to its knees for probably three days,' said owner Michael Nastro. 'The whole thing was just rolled out unbelievably bad,' Nastro said. 'It was a disaster, an absolute disaster.' Advertisement De Blasio's office quickly dismissed the rumors, telling New Yorkers it was 'misinformation' and insisting 'there is NOT available vaccine for people without appointments.' 'There is NOT available vaccine for people without appointments. This was misinformation and the notification did not come from the NYC gov,' Press Secretary Bill Neidhardt tweeted around 5:30pm. 'We are sending people to Brooklyn Army Terminal to ask people in line to return home if they don't have appointments.' He added: 'Unfortunately, the friend on FB sharing rumors about vaccine doses without appointments is not correct.' Neidhardt reassured New Yorkers that the message circulating was a fake made to look official. 'We've found a whatsapp message that did all it could to look official, stating a bunch of vax was about to go bad and it was first come first-serve at BAT. That seems to be the spark that led to the friend's FB post that led to these tweets,' he wrote. His message sparked more confusion with people replying to him that a line had been set up outside the facility for walk-ins. And online footage of a doctor at the facility addressing the crowd shows her saying the site had accepted some walk-ins as a one-off. 'It was a single event. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer walk-ins anymore,' she said. Neidhardt later admitted that sites do have plans for what to do with extra doses that 'every now and then' are available. 'All sites must have plans for expiring/extra doses (from those nice extra-full vials) but that doesn't seem to be what happened here. The original (not 100% sure on that yet) whatsapp message indicated 400 doses,' he tweeted. 'Standard operating procedure at a site. You want to keep the line of people with appointments moving smoothly. 'And every now and then there are vials with an extra dose or someone doesn't show up to their appointment so sites are ready to form lines for if that happens.' DailyMail.com has contacted de Blasio's office to clarify whether some non-eligible people did or did not manage to get walk-in appointments. Claims of doses going to spare is not unheard of with non-eligible residents in Washington DC this week lining up at pharmacies and getting their hands on doses that would otherwise have been tossed. Similarly, in Los Angeles, health officials announced Thursday that health providers should not throw away unused doses if people miss appointments. Instead, exceptions could be made in this instance and doses given to people who don't currently meet the criteria. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines must be stored in extremely cold temperatures and be administered shortly after they thaw. They cannot be refrozen and they spoil after being out the fridge for 12 hours. Less than 4 percent of New York's population have so far been vaccinated, according to data from Bloomberg Each Pfizer vaccine vial is designed to hold five doses, but many contain six, and Moderna vials are designed to hold 10 but many contain 11, meaning there are likely to be spare vials each day. If appointments are missed this would also create a surplus supply. 'The fact that there's some doses left at the end of the day is the nature of the beast,' Saad Omer, a vaccinologist and the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, told the Atlantic. 'It's obviously not ideal to have that kind of a situation, where you have high-risk groups and they're not receiving it. 'One thing I hope people realize is that the staff there are trying to do their best.' At present, New York has not revealed what it does with these spare doses or whether they are thrown out. DailyMail.com has reached out to both de Blasio's and Cuomo's offices for information on what happens to spare doses and how many doses are currently going to waste. Cuomo has warned hospitals and vaccination sites that they will be fined and lose their license if they administer vaccines to people not eligible in the current phase. Last week, medical providers said they had been forced to throw out vaccine doses because of the limited scope of eligible people at the time and the threat of such penalties. The state entered phase 1B of the rollout Monday which includes residents over the age of 75, teachers, transit workers and police, in addition to healthcare workers who were covered in Phase 1A. The new phase also broadened the types of healthcare workers that can receive the vaccine to include anyone who interacts with the public, such as licensed practical nurses, pharmacists, dentists and podiatrists. Cuomo had not planned to include those aged 75 and older in the phase, previously insisting the elderly come after healthcare workers, before bowing to pressure and adding them to the priority list. Cuomo has hit out at the federal government for a lack of doses and warned that eligible individuals could be waiting six months to be vaccinated given the current rate of supply People get the vaccine at Manhattan's Javits Center which recently opened as a COVID-19 vaccination site on January 13 On Tuesday, the CDC then recommended expanding eligibility to people aged 65 and over, as well as people who are immunocompromised - a recommendation Cuomo took on. Cuomo said the expansion means seven million New Yorkers are now eligible for the vaccine but the state is still only receiving 300,000 doses each week. The governor blasted the federal government's allocation of the vaccine, saying that with the expanded eligibility, people can now expect to wait a staggering six months for a shot. 'At our current rate of supply, it will take close to six months to vaccinate everyone who's currently eligible,' Cuomo said Tuesday. 'Is that helpful? I don't think so. I don't think this creates national confidence. I think it creates national frustration.' De Blasio has echoed Cuomo's attack on the federal government warning Monday that New York City is on track to run out of COVID-19 vaccines next week. Speaking at his daily press briefing, de Blasio said Wednesday he has 'no patience' for the federal government and the vaccine manufacturers for the slow rollout of shots and demanded the Trump administration releases the second doses currently being held back from states. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing second doses held in reserve. But sources told the Washington Post Friday these reserves have already been depleted with doses already being taken directly off the manufacturing line. This is how the test positivity rate across the state of New York varies across different regions of the state Washington DC residents line up outside supermarket pharmacies from 4am and wait for up to 9 HOURS to see 'if they get lucky' Dozens of people are forming long lines from 4am by supermarket pharmacies in Washington D.C. to receive leftover doses of the COVID-19 vaccine before it spoils, despite not yet being eligible. Pharmacies in D.C. are following a recent mandate issued by Capitol officials that recommends no vaccine dose should go to waste, even if people fail to show up for their appointments. As the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines must both be stored in extreme cold, administered shortly after they thaw, and cannot be refrozen, some D.C. supermarket pharmacies are asking those who happen to be nearby at closing time if they would like a leftover dose rather than being forced to throw it out. Yet as stories spread on social media of people finding themselves in the right place at the right time to receive the leftover dose, others made plans to ensure they were near one of the pharmacies at closing time with hopes that they could be called on. It has led to large lines forming at the pharmacies in Safeway and Giant stores in D.C. with some people waiting up to nine hours to ensure their spot in the queue and even forming their own waiting system. As the lines of hopefuls have grown, endangering both themselves and store staff by crowding out corners of the store and making it more difficult to social distance, it has led to criticism from experts that a better system has not been established to ensure no vaccine goes to waste. According to WJLA, the station received three calls from different pharmacy workers last week complaining about the line of people hoping to snag the extra doses. One pharmacist told the station she was close to tears because of the unexpected extra workload and had at times been preventing from filling out her normal prescriptions. Pictures of the lines have shown people crowding up the area around the pharmacy by early afternoon. One image WJLA acquired from a Safeway in the D.C. area showed a long standby line, yet only one vaccine dose was leftover by closing time, forcing the others to begin their vaccine vigil again the following day. 'I think a lot of the time that we spent waiting here for three-and-a-half hours was just anticipation and a little bit of anxiety,' the 33-year-old woman who received the extra vaccine told the station. 'And just remembering to stay out of the hair of the pharmacist just because they do look like they're running around.' Some residents extra eager to get the vaccine but not yet eligible have returned on multiple occasions but are thwarted by the early risers who are staking out their spots at the front of the line from 4am. In a Giant supermarket in the Shaw neighborhood, non-employees have established a system where they give a numbered ticket to waiting newcomers. 'Yesterday was a little bit of a disaster,' one woman told The Atlantic on Sunday. 'So that's why we started doing the informal deli-number systemto try to create some order.' On the same day in this Giants, Samir Balile, who is in charge of clinical programs at all 153 Giant pharmacies in the Mid-Atlantic, told the Atlantic hat he was forced to intervene and sent many people home. 'Please don't even come back,' Balile said. 'It's too dangerous.' And the lines have only grown as other residents share their lucky stories on social media. One story on Twitter told how a friend had received a vaccine after happening to be in a Safeway when the announcement went out. Government contractor Rob Towner, 36, also shared a video to Twitter of him receiving the vaccine after arriving to a Safeway in D.C. at around 2pm and waiting until closing. 'There were stories about how in Israel, that if there were leftover vaccines, that technicians would grab an Uber driver or a food delivery person.' He told DCist/WAMU. 'Then I began to see in Washington, D.C., to my surprise that there were Giant and Safeway locations where the pharmacists were effectively doing the same thing.' According to Giant supermarkets, its five pharmacies in D.C. are first administering excess doses to their staff, before offering it to people who look over 65 and then those over 18 if needed. Those who receive the first dose in this manner will also be scheduled for an appointment to get the second. 'The DC Department of Health has made it clear to Giant that if doses of the Moderna vaccine will expire, they should be administered to anyone willing to take it,' the company said in a statement. 'The Moderna vaccine is viable for six hours after the first dose of the 10-dose vial is given. 'The Moderna vaccine is valuable and lifesaving, and we are happy to not waste it by giving doses to our associates and customers should a healthcare worker not show up for their appointment.' Advertisement Biden announced Thursday in his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package plans to tackle the nation's 'dismal failure' in vaccine rollout by allocating $160 billion to a national vaccination program. He vowed to get 100 million Americans vaccinated in the first 100 days of his administration. Dr Fauci, the nation's top doctor, told NBC's Today Show on Friday that this goal is 'quite feasible'. 'We've discussed it with the Biden team, and we think it's quite feasible that we can do that. Right now, even now, we've gone from half a million a day to 750,000 a day,' he said. 'I believe strongly that it's doable - and if we do it, stay on target to get the overwhelming majority of the country vaccinated.' But while the two New York Democrats Cuomo and de Blasio push the blame onto the Trump administration, frustrated residents on the ground are pointing to critical issues on a state level. New York Assemblyman Kim, also a Democrat told DailyMail.com Thursday the state had a vaccination plan and protocols in place for when the need arose but had bypassed them to centralize the rollout in an effort to 'make private hospitals look good'. He said his constituents - particularly the elderly who have isolated for the best part of a year - are growing 'livid' with Cuomo and the governor is quickly 'losing the trust of people on the ground'. Kim, who represents the 40th District of New York, which includes portions of Whitestone, Flushing, College Point, and Murray Hill in Queens, said the state is now passing the blame onto the federal government because 'things aren't going their way'. 'Back with the testing even the governor said the buck lies with him. He said that, but it seems like when things aren't going their way they're punting the blame on the city and the federal government,' he said. 'And I think the public especially now they know there is a potential cure for them to go back to normality - especially seniors who have been isolating - are so livid and angry that there is this potential cure but because of a lack of efficiency and administrative planning it is not happening.' The lawmaker acknowledged that there 'isn't an abundance of supply' from the federal government but said the lack of efficiency in the rollout is a 'complete mess'. 'We're at a point where we don't even know how many vaccines are being wasted - no one is keeping track,' he said. Kim pointed to several problems: a lack of forward planning and a move to centralize the vaccination rollout. 'The conversations happening now in terms of vaccine planning should have taken place months ago even before they had the vaccine as it was going to happen sooner rather than later so why has it taken so long?' he asked. He explained that there the state has a standard vaccination plan and protocols for distributing vaccines. This is 'a local driven plan' leaving the distribution to local healthcare professionals with the state's role just being to track and monitor it. But 'the state bypassed this protocol and centralized the operation,' he said. 'And when I ask people on the ground - the doctors and medical professionals - everyone is saying they made the call to do this to make private hospitals look good,' he said. 'The people making the decisions are about controlling their image and politics and they should really pass [responsibility] to medical professionals and scientists who will make much better decisions.' Cuomo this week appeared to backtrack on the state's centralized plan announcing that around 500 pharmacies would begin offering the shots, and that another 700 had agreed to also join up. Kim said that the booking systems are missing off some local pharmacies that now have doses so residents don't even know they are available there. People are 'losing trust in the government,' he said. His comments come after New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer hit out at the city's cumbersome online appointment system at the weekend. Stringer highlighted glaring issues in the city's process to sign up for a vaccine appointment in a Twitter thread late Sunday. Stringer said when he checked the sign-up website, which can only be accessed after creating an account on a separate site, there were over 200 slots available for January 12 at one of the sites. He pinned the large number of vacancies on both the 'bewildering' complexity of the sign-up process - which includes a 51-question gauntlet rife with technical issues - and on city officials' failure to mobilize people to seek appointments. 'The @NYCHealthy site for signing up for a COVID vaccination is complex, burdensome, and buggy,' Stringer tweeted. 'It will present an obstacle for too many people particularly seniors trying to sign up. This is a major problem.' Stringer pointed out that the system is especially challenging given the fact those currently eligible are elderly workers who are typically less tech-savvy. The city responded by creating an option for people to call 311 for an appointment but this system was also racked with flaws as people were on hold for almost half an hour on the line. New vaccination sites have been springing up across the city and the state to try to increase the rollout on the ground. Cuomo announced the opening of a new vaccination site at the Fort Washington Armory in Washington Heights Thursday as the state tries to ramp up the rollout of the shots it does have. On Saturday, NYC Health and Hospitals Corona in Queens will shift to a 24/7 operation and both the Mets and Yankees are turning their stadiums into vaccination sites. Delays in vaccine rollout could cost lives with cases, deaths and hospitalizations rising and a growing number of the new more infectious COVID-19 strain being recorded in the state. On Thursday, 8,823 people were hospitalized with the virus. Of these, 1,536 were in the ICU and 956 were intubated. New York officials announced another 202 people died and 13,661 tested positive, with the statewide positivity rate now at 6.42 percent. Just 32 percent of hospital beds are still free statewide with the Mohawk Valley region having just 19 percent remaining. Other states are also facing challenges with the vaccine rollout. West Virginia is performing strongest with 78.6 percent of available doses given to residents while just 4.8 percent of doses have been given in the Marshall Islands. Panic has also set in in other states besides New York with eligible Californians waiting in line for hours at Disneyland Wednesday as Orange County expanded eligibility to those aged 65 and over and the site opened with a capacity to vaccinate 7,000 a day. Those in line had appointments but people in their 60s and older still sat for two hours in their cars waiting for a dose. Over in Rhode Island, health officials learned a special link given to employers for their eligible workers to register for vaccinations had been shared with non-eligible people who were using it to jump the line over more vulnerable groups. On average, just 38.8 percent of doses distributed to states have been administered. A total of 11.9 million people have so far been vaccinated nationwide, accounting for just 3.6 percent of all Americans. This editorial appears in the January 15, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. [Print version of this editorial] EDITORIAL The Fight for Truth in the American Elections Is for the World Jan. 4Not many media outside imperial London would be arrogant enougheven after what they believe to be their successful coup against President Donald Trumpto publish a lengthy editorial titled, An Overhaul of U.S. Democracy, with a kicker that the United States cannot be allowed a 2024 presidential election under the present Constitutional system of the republic. Abolition of all the inconvenient American Constitutional practices was published as orders to be carried out through a high-level commission, to be created by low-level Joe Biden in one of his first acts. This was done by the Washington Post Sunday edition on January 3, with a follow-up editorial the next day on the same subject. The Post for decades has been a newspaper voice and leak sheet of the U.S. and British intelligence services; now, under increasingly interventionist ownership of worlds richest man Jeffrey Bezos, it is also speaking for the intersection of giant IT companies like Amazon with the military-industrial complex in the post-9/11 surveillance state. The editorial demanded: Eliminate Article II, Sections 1 and 2 of the Constitution, in which the role of state legislatures and electors is specified. Eliminate Article I, Section 4 and the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, to abolish the role of the Congress in the election of the President. Change the 1887 Electoral Count Act to further ensure that Congress has no role in certifying electoral votes. Dont allow the House of Representatives to decide a tied or multi-candidate electoral result for President. In fact, eliminate the threat of third-party spoilers to the two-party duopoly entirely. Eliminate partisan state elected officials from administering elections; again, Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution must go. And more: Eliminate the role of states and counties in registering voters and keeping registration rolls, by mandating universal registration and possibly mandatory voting. Keep better organized polling places open more often, and longer than others; thus eliminating equal due-process under law in elections. Above all, expand mail-in voting to make it as near universal as possible. Republicans must not be allowed from here on, to scale back the huge mail-in voting of 2020. All this, and there is much that a democracy commission could consider. With these editorials the Post directly attacked those organizing through and beyond January 21 for the restoration of truth and Constitutional practice in elections. But this warning is to the world as a whole. The City of London and Wall Street, with their interlinked intelligence services, will not again allow any nationalist republican leader to become a head of state, as in 2016. Not another FDR or JFK in America, nor another Jean Jaures or Charles de Gaulle in France; nor an Aldo Moro or Matteo Salvini in Italy; for that matter, with Dominion Systems counting the votes, not another Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. National election commissions will make sure elections are conducted in such corrupt and colonialist ways that only candidates selected for backing by the City and Wall Street can win. Above all, no other Lyndon LaRouche, nor one of LaRouches supporters, is to be allowed so much as a few delegates or electors, or to become spoilers as they did around the United States in the 1980s. The real issue is Alexander Hamiltons American System of economics, its adoption in many nations in Europe and Asia. LaRouche fundamentally advanced Hamiltons core idea that human creative discovery is the driver of economies, and more progress requires more people; better skilled and more creative human beings; great development projects across continents. That is available to any and all nations, whose citizens wake up in sufficient numbers in this crisis and take responsibility for a better future. It is what those who just spoke their demands through the Washington Post, are determined never to allow a President like Donald Trump even to consider. Only the Great Reset to economic austerity and zero-carbon primitivism can be allowed, or so they believe. But in fact, citizens openness to LaRouches ideas and movement are growing as it has not since his very public persecution and imprisonment in the 1980s. We fight for his exoneration now to unleash that process like a Renaissance. We call for Presidential pardons for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden now, to throw over the surveillance state game for which the Washington Post thinks it is appointed a judge and referee. And we organize for a summit of great powers in which Hamiltons and LaRouches American System becomes a new international system of credit for development. WALTHAM, Mass. and LYON, France, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., (NYSE: TMO), the world leader in serving science, and Groupe Novasep SAS (Novasep), a leading supplier of services and technologies for the life sciences industry, today announced that Thermo Fisher has completed the acquisition of Henogen S.A., Novasep's viral vector manufacturing business in Belgium for approximately 725 million in cash. Novasep's viral vector manufacturing business provides contract manufacturing services for vaccines and therapies to biotechnology companies and large biopharma customers. With two locations in Seneffe and Gosselies, Belgium, Novasep's viral vector business offers more than 7,000 square meters of state-of-the-art clinical and commercial manufacturing capacity. Founded more than 20 years ago, the business has approximately 400 employees with substantial operational and technical expertise in a broad range of viral vector classes and estimated 2020 revenue of 80 million (or approximately $95 million). "Novasep's viral vector business is an excellent strategic fit as Thermo Fisher continues to expand its capabilities for cell and gene vaccines and therapies globally," said Michel Lagarde, executive vice president of Thermo Fisher. "The addition of their manufacturing capabilities in Europe complements our four development and manufacturing sites in North America. In addition, they bring an incredibly talented team with more than two decades of experience across a broad range of viral vectors. The combination will benefit our global customers seeking support and capacity in the region as well as European customers bringing new medicines to patients inside and outside of Europe." Michel Spagnol, president and chief executive officer of Novasep said, "Thermo Fisher is an outstanding partner for our viral vector business and its future development. Our diverse customer base will benefit from the combination of our viral vector services capabilities with the scale and capabilities of Thermo Fisher. Our talented employees will bring deep expertise to an organization that shares our commitment to providing ground-breaking new medicines to patients." The business will be part of the Pharma Services business within the Laboratory Products and Services Segment. About Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with annual revenue exceeding $25 billion. Our Mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. Whether our customers are accelerating life sciences research, solving complex analytical challenges, improving patient diagnostics and therapies or increasing productivity in their laboratories, we are here to support them. Our global team of more than 75,000 colleagues delivers an unrivaled combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and pharmaceutical services through our industry-leading brands, including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services and Patheon. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com. About Novasep Novasep is a global provider of cost effective and sustainable manufacturing solutions for life sciences molecules. Novasep's unique offering includes process development services, purification equipment and turnkey processes, contract manufacturing and complex active molecule services for pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, fine chemical, food and functional ingredients as well as fermentation and chemical commodities industries. https://www.novasep.com Safe Harbor Statement The following constitutes a "Safe Harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties relating to: the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic; the need to develop new products and adapt to significant technological change; implementation of strategies for improving growth; general economic conditions and related uncertainties; dependence on customers' capital spending policies and government funding policies; the effect of economic and political conditions and exchange rate fluctuations on international operations; use and protection of intellectual property; the effect of changes in governmental regulations; and the effect of laws and regulations governing government contracts, as well as the possibility that expected benefits related to recent or pending acquisitions may not materialize as expected. Additional important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements are set forth in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, under the caption "Risk Factors," which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available in the "Investors" section of our website under the heading "SEC Filings." While we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so, even if estimates change and, therefore, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today. Media Contact Information: Ron O'Brien Phone: +1 781-622-1242 E-mail: [email protected] Investor Contact Information: Ken Apicerno Phone: +1 781-622-1294 E-mail: [email protected] For Novasep Agnes Catineau Phone: +33 7 78 50 95 46 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE Thermo Fisher Scientific Related Links http://www.thermofisher.com The incoming Biden administration unveiled a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan on Thursday that offered a wish list of spending measures meant to help both people and the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, from state and local aid and more generous unemployment benefits to mass vaccinations. Below, we run through a few of the plans biggest provisions, how they would work and what they might mean for the United States economy as it struggles through a winter of surging coronavirus cases and partial state and local lockdowns. Lets put that headline number in context. That $1.9 trillion figure is a lot of money, to put it mildly. Congress passed a $900 billion relief program in December, and its package in March was about $2 trillion. By way of comparison, the major financial crisis spending package the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 clocked in around $800 billion. The administration is looking for $1,400 checks. President Biden is trying to make good on Democrats promise to send more money to households in the form of one-time checks. Its proposal would send out $1,400 per person for those under certain income thresholds, topping off the $600 checks that came as part of the December relief package. BELLEVILLE Caritas Family Solutions has received a $25,000 grant from the Tracy Family Foundation to purchase and install a virtual reality therapy system at St. John Bosco Childrens Center, a residential treatment facility for children who have experienced profound trauma. The grant will also provide funds to train the clinical manager and five therapists on the new system. The therapy approach known as Virtual Reality (VR) Prolonged Exposure will allow trained clinicians to work with youths who have experienced profoundly traumatic abuse and/or neglect and have developed significant mental health diagnoses such as ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder or most commonly, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result. VR therapy is a promising practice that has been studied with combat veterans and is now being applied to others with significant trauma histories. Innovation is a core value of Caritas and we could not be more excited about this opportunity, said Caritas Family Solutions CEO Gary Huelsmann. Our purpose is to provide services to individuals who are experiencing one of lifes unexpected hardships and instill life-lasting positive change. This new treatment method may not only engage youth at St. John Bosco Childrens Center who might typically shy away from traditional methods of therapy, but could also successfully change the trajectory of their lives. The children we work with at St. John Bosco Childrens Center are kids who have experienced such profound trauma, that living in a traditional foster care environment is not currently possible for them, said Director of Residential Services Mike Philbin. They gain the skills needed to be safe and successful in a home and this new technology will be a very beneficial way to aid that effort. Our mission is to advance innovative, collaborative, and sustainable change in communities, said Tracy Family Foundation Executive Director Dan Teefey. Were proud to support Caritas Family Solutions wonderful work and to be a part of their impact through the St. John Bosco Childrens Center. St. John Bosco Childrens Center is one of only two providers in Southern Illinois that is deemed a severe level provider for children who have experienced profound trauma. It is the only facility in Southern Illinois that provides residential behavioral health treatment to children 12 and younger, as well as girls with severe behavioral health needs. The Childrens Center is nearing completion of a renovation which will allow them to serve more children and will address the shortage of youth residential treatment facilities in Illinois. The attempts of indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton to keep secret the cost of bringing a frivolous lawsuit in a disastrous attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election is yet another public disservice. All we know at this point is state taxpayers are footing a $12,000 bill for printing charges. Paxton has refused to reveal much else about the litigations expenses, asserting the information is exempt from disclosure. In other words, this public official doesnt think the public gets to know how much his office spent trying to overturn the presidential election. Why arent taxpayers allowed to know how Paxton has squandered their money to erode democracy? We cant believe we have to even ask such a question, but we cant believe in 2018 voters chose Paxton over the supremely qualified Justin Nelson, valedictorian of Columbia Law School and legal ninja. But we digress. Paxtons lawsuit was summarily denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found Texas lacked legal standing. The lawsuit, which 17 state Republican attorneys general had joined and 126 Republican members of Congress supported, had sought to throw out election results in four battleground states that had gone for President-elect Joe Biden. Paxtons lawsuit argued emergency pandemic-related election rule changes that were adopted by governors or other officials without the approval of state legislatures were unconstitutional. He also made unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. Besides the printing charges, it is unclear what other costs might be associated with the case. The state was represented pro bono by special counsels Lawrence Joseph and Kurt Olsen, Hearst Newspapers reports. Even so, taxpayers need to know the price tag on that donated legal work. Is Paxton reporting it as a political contribution? Texas taxpayers have the right to know. It is all about maintaining an open government and accountability. Hearst Newspapers requested information on the litigation in early December, as did state Rep. Chris Turner, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a member of the public. The requests also asked for communications between the office and the Trump administration, the Trump legal team and any other affiliates. Turner has blasted Paxton for using public funds in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election. Through an incomplete response to my public information request, we have so far learned that the taxpayers of Texas are on the hook for about $12,000 in printing costs for a bogus lawsuit that was dismissed out of hand by the U.S. Supreme Court. In reality though, the price paid by Texas and America is far greater. Ken Paxtons lawsuit was an assault on our democracy, plain and simple, Turner said. We find it deeply troubling that the denial of the request for the lawsuit cost information is being handled by Paxtons own employees. The attorney generals office is seeking a ruling from Paxtons open government division on whether some of the records are required to be disclosed under the Texas Public Information Act. Where are the checks and balances on this? What this all means is there will likely be further litigation to keep the information secret, meaning the tab to taxpayers will only continue to increase. This isnt exactly surprising, unfortunately. Paxton spoke at the Save America rally before the insurrection and hasnt joined letters from other attorneys general condemning the insurrection. As the president might say, it is what it is. Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma issued an apology Thursday to his Black constituents for months of casting doubt on the election of Joe Biden, including going so far as to suggest that last weeks Electoral College certification be postponed to investigate whatever absurdist fraud allegations were cooked up by President Donald Trump. In a letter addressed to My friends in North Tulsa, portions of which were published by Tulsa World, Lankford said his questioning the legitimacy of the election caused a firestorm of suspicion among many of my friends, particularly in Black communities around the state. I was completely blindsided, but I also found a blind spot. Advertisement What I did not realize was all of the national conversation about states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, was seen as casting doubt on the validity of votes coming out of predominantly Black communities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit, Lankford wrote. After decades of fighting for voting rights, many Black friends in Oklahoma saw this as a direct attack on their right to vote, for their vote to matter, and even a belief that their votes made an election in our country illegitimate. 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. I can assure you, he wrote, my intent to give a voice to Oklahomans who had questions was never also an intent to diminish the voice of any Black American. Lankford faced significant criticism from Black leaders in the city over his support of Trumps election claims, and some called for the senators removal from the 1921 Race Massacre Centennial Committee, an effort to commemorate the racist massacre of Black citizens in an affluent Tulsa community known as Black Wall Street. Lankfords apology stopped well short of a full mea culpa for his destructive behavior or its disproportionate impact on Black American voters, but did acknowledge how Black Oklahomans felt about his participation in a Republican effort to discredit vote tallies in largely Black districts. I should have recognized how what I said and what I did could be interpreted by many of you, Lankford wrote. I deeply regret my blindness to that perception, and for that I am sorry. A woman who blocked a man she was talking to has told how she was left 'impressed' by the amusing way he tried to get back in contact with her. The woman, from the US, took to TikTok to explain that she ended it with the man she was dating after she found out he was talking to a friend of hers at the same time. However, rather cheekily, she had still been logging in to watch movies and series on his Netflix account - having remembered his password. But she was in for a shock when one day, she logged in to see he changed the usernames of each of his Netflix profiles in a big to get her attention. And it wasn't long before social media users took to the comments section to praise the man for his efforts and demanded she 'unblock him.' A woman (pictured), from the US, who blocked a guy she was talking to has told how she was 'impressed' by the way he tried to get back in contact with her The man in question changed the names of his Netflix profiles to read: 'Please unblock me' (pictured) 'I'd give him a second chance. I mean he's letting you use his Netflix still, plus that's really cute,' wrote one, while a second commented: 'Wait I love this so toxic but the effort is A+. Unblock him. A third joked: 'Tell him "You throw Hulu and Amazon Prime with the Netflix and you got a deal!' Depending on the actual reason you blocked him, you might want to unblock him. I mean, you gotta give him points for creativity. Meanwhile, others took the opportunity to share the amusing ways in which they got back at their exes through the use of Netflix. After seeing his efforts, the woman went on to joke: 'Is it wrong that I am kind of impressed' (pictured) Taking to the comments section, one person joked: 'Tell him "You throw Hulu and Amazon Prime with the Netflix and you got a deal!' 'My ex used my Netflix. I let him continue to use it until he got to the final episode of the show...then changed my password,' wrote one, while a second recalled: 'I was on my ex's Netflix until he cheated and he was in the middle of a long series. I fast forwarded through each episode so he couldn't tell where he was at.' The woman in question then went on to offer her followers an 'update' on the story - adding that it wasn't the first she'd caught him acting 'shady'. 'Even after being presented with hardcore facts and proof, he denied everything so I blocked him,' she explained. 'Just to clarify, I do have my own Netflix but my reasoning at the time was he used me for months, so I'm going to get a free month of Netflix. 'Moral of the story, know your self worth and if he tries to communicate with you through Netflix - run.' Dozens of Hong Kong residents fleeing a crackdown on public dissent and peaceful protest under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by Beijing since July 1, 2020 have applied for political asylum in Canada, with 14 applications already successful, an Alberta-based voluntary group has said. The New Hong Kong Cultural Club Canada (NHKCC) said Canada had become the first country in the world to grant asylum to people fleeing arrest for their part in the 2019 protest movement. "Since 2019, the NHKCC has assisted over 40 HK freedom fighters who went into exile," the group said in a statement on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. "Nearly 30 of them in the group have received claimant status which means they are pending approval ... with full medical, welfare and work or study permits during the wait," it said. "There are 14 of them who have successfully been granted [status] as Canadian political refugees and will be able to apply for permanent residency right away," the group said. It said more than 100 potential applicants were still waiting to get to Canada, after being hampered by quarantine restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. 'The only way out' One of the group's founders, who gave only a nickname Bruce, said anyone in the pro-democracy, or "yellow," camp in Hong Kong is vulnerable to political persecution under the current crackdown. "They are charging peaceful and non-confrontational lawmakers under the national security law, so the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is only going to step up its oppression of Hong Kong," Bruce told RFA. "When you are in a place where there is no rule of law and you want to leave, [political asylum] is the only way out if you are young and have no money to emigrate with," he said. "[Such people] are very vulnerable to political persecution in Hong Kong right now, [but] this problem was created by the communist-backed regime in Hong Kong, not by these young people," Bruce said. "It is not reasonable to expect young people to put up with all of this." Police checks at the airport Anyone trying to leave still has to get past police checks that are now ubiquitous at the airport, he said. "They are specifically stopping and checking young people going to certain countries, even just for tourism," Bruce said. "They would rather keep this group of people in Hong Kong where they can deal with them." "[Rather that than] have too many go abroad and keep exposing the behavior of the regime, which is embarassing for the regime," he said. The group also said Ottawa would also be announcing details of a Youth Talent Scheme "as a lifeboat for fleeing young Hongkongers" soon. The group's statement comes after Canadian immigration minister Marco Mendicino said in November 2020 that Canada would facilitate working visas and relax immigration criteria, offering a potential pathway to permanent residence to people fleeing the crackdown in Hong Kong. On Jan. 15, the United States designated six PRC and Hong Kong officials for sanctions in connection with the arrest of more than 50 pro-democracy politicians and activists under the National Security Law "We condemn PRC actions that erode Hong Kongs freedoms and democratic processes and will continue to use all tools at our disposable to hold those responsible to account," said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The State Department designated You Quan, vice chairman of the Central Leading Group on Hong Kong and Macau Affairs; Sun Wenqing AKA Sun Qingye, deputy director of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong; and Tam Yiu-Chung, a Hong Kong delegate to the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee. National Security Division of the Hong Kong Police Frederic Choi Chin-Pang, Kelvin Kong Hok Lai, and Andrew Kan Kai Yan were targeted for "coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning individuals under the authority of, or in developing, adopting, or implementing, the NSL." Reported by Man Hoi Yan for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. https://www.aish.com/atr/Is-the-Oral-Torah-a-Later-Development.html Ask the Rabbi My parents were both of the belief that only the Torah itself is sacred, and that the Talmud and the Oral Torah were developed much later. They were the attempt of self-appointed rabbis to interpret the Scripture, but it is not the Torah itself. My parents saw the Oral Law as having developed slowly over the years, adding layer upon layer upon the Torah itself and that we should really just keep Gods word rather than the invented interpretations of the rabbis. Im sort of confused about this topic myself and would like to hear your take. Do we have any way of knowing if my parents understanding is accurate or not? Thank you for raising the very important issue. Ill write up front that our belief is very different from that of your parents. We discuss this at length elsewhere. Ill write a brief summary of the traditional view and then will add a few reasons why I believe it is clearly the most plausible explanation. The traditional view on this is that God gave Israel both the written Torah and the Oral Law together at Sinai. The written Torah contains very many broad, inspiring-sounding laws and principles, but it leaves out most of the details about what God actually wants us to do. It provides us with noble directives, such as Fear God, serve Him, and cleave to Him (Deut. 6:13), You shall be holy for I am holy (Leviticus 19:2), Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it (Exodus 20:6), and You shall bind them as a sign on your arm and as frontlets between your eyes (Deut. 6:8). Clearly, more detail is required if we are to know what God actually wants from us. Some oral explanations must have been given with the written. (See this past response for more information, as well as the additional links it contains.) A clear example of this is slaughtering an animal. The Torah states, "You shall slaughter your cattle as I have commanded you" (Deut. 12:21). Moshe thus makes mention of the fact that he instructed us how to slaughter animals but there is no verse in the Torah which discusses this. It is thus a clear allusion to an oral body of knowledge which existed together with the written Torah. There is therefore no question that an oral explanation accompanied the written Torah. The question which remains is: Is this more or less the Talmud as we have it? Perhaps the oral law which existed earlier was very different and forgotten, and the Talmud which came only after many centuries was basically a rabbinical invention? Alternatively, perhaps the original oral law was very simple and straightforward, and the Rabbis later created layer upon layer of their own interpretation making a very pure and simple religion extremely detail-heavy and onerous? Both such premises are very difficult for two reasons. First of all, the Talmud is the ultimate peer-reviewed document. It was not the work of one or a few rabbis in a short time. It was developed by hundreds of great rabbis over several centuries. It records opinions of rabbis from as early as around the 3rd century B.C.E. till as late as the 5th century C.E. So many major and minor issues were debated with ample verses brought to back up positions that it inconceivable that there was some grand conspiracy to invent a new canon. No single rabbi could have ever gotten away with adding or changing something that the others knew was not legitimate. Had any one rabbi ever suggested something out of the ordinary or suspiciously novel, twenty other rabbis would have immediately jumped on him to disagree. (Anyone who has ever studied the Talmud before even minimally or superficially will realize how accurate a depiction this is.) In addition, even with the many arguments, the vast majority of the laws of the Torah are undisputed. The debates are generally on minute details, infrequent laws, rabbinical extensions, and precise sources. Often all rabbis agree to a certain conclusion such as that thou shall not cook a kid in its mothers milk is not meant to be taken literally and they merely debated how one can derive this from the relevant verses. In such cases, all rabbis agreed to the veracity of a law which had most surely been handed down as part of the Oral Torah. They only debated how one can prove the law from the Torahs wording itself. A second reason why it is difficult to imagine the Oral Law was a later invention is because the law was in observance ever since it was given at Sinai. People knew what Tefillin looked like because every male was wearing a pair since the time of Moses. If Tefillin did not mean as we understand them today, and a rabbi came along later and tried to introduce funny black boxes with straps, insisting that this is what the Torah wants us to wear, everyone would have laughed him off. The entire nation knew what Tefillin did look like (or if they meant a literal object to be worn at all). It is inconceivable that an imaginative rabbi could have pulled off getting an entire nation to believe his wild new creation if no one had been wearing Tefillin until then. On this topic, its interesting to note that there have been and to a very small extent still are groups which have accepted the written Torah but not the Oral Law, such as the Sadducees of antiquity and the Karaites of today. There were several famous debates recorded in the Talmud between the Pharisees and Sadducees of old. And there is something very significant about them. Without exception, they relate to laws regarding which the written Torah seems to say the opposite of our oral tradition such as if the counting of the Omer begins the day after Passover or the day after Shabbat (see Leviticus 23:15 and Talmud Menachot 65a). It therefore seems very clear that contrary to the common understanding, the Sadducees did not reject the entire Oral Torah. They only refused to accept it when it appeared to disagree with the written law. But for example, we never find them debating if Tefillin should be worn. There was obviously some meaning to the vague verses which command us to bind something upon our arms and head. Even those who questioned the oral tradition had no better explanation for Tefillin as well as no doubt about the meaning of the vast majority of the laws of the Torah (as heard from Rabbi Yochanan Zweig). Its interesting to note that some Tefillin with cylindrical boxes have been found in the Cairo genizah (where old religious (and secular) writings and artifacts were stored in an attic of an ancient synagogue in Fustat for many centuries). Ive heard the suggestion made that this is what the Karaites of the time wore because they insisted on doing things differently from the Rabbis. This would mean that in past generations the Karaites did wear Tefillin since again what on earth else could Deuteronomy 6:8 and several other verses mean? However, they made them slightly differently from the passed tradition that they must be square to show that they were not bound to rabbinical traditions. Along those lines, it is known that there were Jews in earlier times Sadducees and their equivalent who would literally wear their head Tefillin between their eyes as Exodus 13:9 and other verses seem to state. The Mishna (Megillah 4:8) likewise states that if a person wears his head-Tefillin on his forehead or his arm-Tefillin on his palm, this is the way of the heretics. (It is actually easy to show from the Torah itself that the phrase between the eyes actually means the front part of the head, as Deuteronomy 14:1: and you not shall place baldness between your eyes on account of a dead person.) Based on all of the above, it seems clear that there was no serious debate that there was some type of Oral Torah which clarified the meaning of the written. In fact, the Sadducees and Karaites of old (as well as no doubt the Cutheans (or Cuthites, Samaritans)) appeared to have observed much of the Oral Law as the rest of the Jewish people, only refusing to accept specific laws in which the oral and written laws seemed to be at odds. Of course, as any living body of law, the Torah grew and developed as it was being observed, as new questions arose, and as additional rabbinical safeguards were added. (See here about the obligation to follow rabbinical law.) But that is to be expected in a thriving society which took its laws and practices seriously. Its easy to study the Mishna today and to see that Jewish observance has remained essentially unchanged for the last 2000 years and to me, its a stretch to claim that the first 1200 years were drastically different. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: 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Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting 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return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd 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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. Deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill, PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne and First Minister Arlene Foster pictured at a press conference at the Hill of The ONeill in Dungannon, Co Tyrone. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye It may only have been a momentary snapshot of the effect of the pandemic in Northern Ireland. But, for once, there was more to encourage us than cause further concern. Importantly, the rate of transmission of the virus has fallen below 1 to 0.7-0.9, indicating that the tough lockdown restrictions imposed just after Christmas Day are now paying off. Equally importantly, First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill appeared to be singing from the same hymn sheet, and both voiced concerns about the role of the Irish Government in combating the virus. Mrs Foster revealed that several Executive ministers had vented frustration that Dublin had not shared passenger locator forms and said that the issue would be raised with the Taoiseach. Mrs ONeill said the Taoiseach, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the joint heads of the Executive needed to get together to have a common, two-island approach on travel. What did become clear is that soon international travellers coming here would need to show a negative Covid test before they set out. It is a move that many have demanded for some time and has been given increased urgency due to the number of mutations the virus has gone through, increasing its ability to spread quickly. There was more good news with the announcement that almost 103,000 people had been vaccinated, and that in 97% of care homes residents had received their first injection, while in 72% of the homes a second dose had been administered. That is a good start in the rollout of the vaccination programme and ensures that many of the most vulnerable people in this society are now protected against the virus. What must happen now is that sufficient quantities of the vaccines are delivered to ensure all target groups get their jabs in line with the predicted schedule. It would be remiss not to praise the vast majority of people for their common sense approach to the lockdown. Although Chief Constable Simon Byrne revealed that his officers had issued 40 notices a day to people who were breaking the rules, he was generous in his tributes to the rest of society. But this is just one snapshot. The virus can mutate and is still as virulent as ever, and the First Minister was right not to be drawn on whether restrictions would be eased from February. We may be heading towards the light at the end of the tunnel, but there is still a dangerous distance to go. Bengaluru, Jan 15 : All arrangements have been made to begin vaccinating 16-lakh Covid warriors at 243 centres across Karnataka from Saturday, said state Health Minister K. Sudhakar on Friday. "Covishield vaccine will be administered at 237 centres and Covaxin at 6 centres across the state after Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually unveils the drive in Bengaluru on Saturday from New Delhi through video-conferencing," Sudhakar told reporters here. Arrangements for the drive include 10 walk-in coolers, 4 walk-in freezers, 3,210 ice lined refrigerators (ILRs), 46,591 vaccine carriers and 2,25,749 ice packs. The state has received Covishield from the Pune-based Serum Institute of India and Covaxin from the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech to first inoculate the frontline warriors, including healthcare workers, civic and police personnel. "Modi will inaugurate the vaccination drive at the state-run Bengaluru Medical College and 9 other centres across this tech city, including private hospitals like St. Johns Medical College," said Sudhakar on the occasion. Covishield will be used in 24 of the 30 districts across the state and Covaxin in 6 districts - Ballari, Chamarajanagar, Chikkamagalur, Davangere, Hassan and Shivamogga in the state's northern, central and southern regions. "We have 8,14,500 doses of vaccines for the jab in the first phase. The second dose will be given 28 days after the first shot. Senior citizens above 50 years and persons with comorbidities will be given the vaccine in the second phase, said Sudhakar, who is a medical doctor by profession. The minister reviewed preparations in all 30 districts across the state with their deputy commissioners, zilla parishad chief executives and health officials through video-conferencing from the state secretariat in the city centre. Of the 7,17,439 healthcare warriors across the state, 24,300 will be vaccinated on the first day and the rest will be given the first shot over the coming days. They have all registered on the Co-Win online platform for the vaccine shot. "Arrangements have been made for emergency medical service at all centres in case of side effects to any of the warriors. They will be under observation for 30 minutes after the jab to ensure they are safe to go home without side-effects," asserted Sudhakar. Allaying fears about the safety of both vaccines, the minister said beneficiaries or people should not believe in rumours circulating in the social media about their efficacy. "Follow the information given on our government portals or handles as they are genuine and authenticated by experts. Both vaccines are safe for use," Sudhakar reiterated. The digital platform, developed by the Union Ministry of Health, will facilitate real-time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and tracking of each beneficiary across the country. The ministry has also set up a dedicated 24x7 call centre - 1075 to answer any query on the Covid pandemic, vaccine rollout and the Co-Win app software. The ministry has also sent a factsheet to all states on both vaccines with details on the rollout, physical specification, dosage, cold chain storage requirements, contra-indications and minor adverse event following immunisation (AEFIs). Vaccine will not be administered to pregnant women and lactating mothers. Each dose will be 5ml at a time and repeated after 28 days initially and 14 days later. Sunrise panellist Samantha Brett suffered a very unfortunate hair fail during a live broadcast on Friday. The Channel Seven journalist appeared on the morning show to discuss a car park clash over a woman trying to reserve a spot. However, all eyes were on Samantha's hair. That's unfortunate! Sunrise panellist Samantha Brett (pictured) suffered a very unfortunate hair fail as one of her extensions was seen poking out during a live broadcast on Friday As she discussed the video, Samantha's hair extensions could be clearly seen poking out between her natural hair. This isn't the first time a Channel Seven star has suffered an unfortunate fail. In May, Weekend Sunrise host Matt Doran experienced an awkward moment on live television. Hair fail: The Channel Seven journalist appeared on the morning show to discuss a car park clash over a woman trying to reserve a spot. As she discussed the video, Samantha's hair extensions could be clearly seen poking out between her natural hair The 36-year-old was left red-faced when the breakfast program suffered technical issues and failed to switch to the next segment. After Matt threw to reporter Sarah Greenhalgh in Italy, the screen suddenly switched to Sportsbet's Inside Trading hosted by Simon Marshall. Simon was shown reading his script while casually dropping the F-word. Awkward: This isn't the first time a Channel Seven star has suffered an unfortunate fail. In May, Weekend Sunrise host Matt Doran experienced an awkward moment on live television As the footage continued playing, Sportsbet analysts Julian Vallance and Ben Clifton could also be heard having a conversation. The segment then switched back to Sarah reporting on coronavirus cases in Italy. Back in the newsroom, Matt brushed off the technical gaffe and said: 'Sarah Greenhalgh reporting there and let's get some more news now with Sally.' As President Donald Trump exits the White House, Australians face a decision. We can choose to keep following America or we can choose to learn from its mistakes. Sorry is the hardest word, but its even harder to refrain from saying I told you so. Trump at the tail end of his presidential term proved that his instincts were as bad as many had feared. Thats no reason to gloat. The underlying issues which convinced Americans to risk it all on an unstable genius remain, and there are similar dynamics in Australia. At the end of 2019, the director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute Sam Roggeveen published a paper in which he described the hollowing out of the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties. The parties, Roggeveen said, no longer represent coherent or well-defined social and economic forces. The candidate who beat Donald Trump in 2020 was Trump himself:. Credit:The White House The same was true of the US Democratic and Republican parties well before Trump. Trump harnessed dissatisfaction with establishment politics and positioned himself as an outsider, despite running with the benefit of all the infrastructure available to a Republican candidate. It is tempting to see the elevation of Joe Biden to the presidency as a re-embrace of establishment politics, but it would be wrong. Ernest Luning: "Jeff Toborg, the 50-year-old mayor of the fast-growing town of Parker, Colorado, wants everyone to know he made a mistake." Perhaps no one should be surprised that Rep. Liz Cheney came out as a Trump traitor. She was one of the few Republicans who joined the Democrats in her infamous vote to impeach him. And it's not surprising. Her dad and his colleagues of decades past all got their notches on their bedposts by fomenting war, here, there and everywhere. That is how they all got rich. Trump is anti-war. He wants to bring our troops home, especially from Afghanistan and Syria, but also Germany, too. So the Cheneyites have got the vapors. Liz apparently read the tea leaves wrong when she cast her vote to impeach, and she thought her party would be on board. Sadly, nine other stupid ones were. How out of touch are these people? They are so far out of touch that they might as well be UFOs. Liz Cheney's act was so offensive, so outrageous, to so many voters that she just ended her budding career in the GOP. She is the Benedict Arnold of the current Congress, a quisling. She is now the most hated Republican member of that body, a feat not easily achieved, since so many of them are only in the business of getting rolled and are thus justifiably in disrepute. The few exceptions to that rule are stand-outs: Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Steve Scalise, Andy Biggs. There are likely more in the new House. God bless them, including women like Marjorie Taylor Greene. She, like the Washington Post, fifteen minutes after President Trump was inaugurated, wrote that of incoming President Biden, that "the impeachment has begun." She has vowed to submit articles of impeachment against Biden, for whom there are many good reasons. Sauce for the gander... But it's actually more than that. If ever there were two people ripe for impeachment, they are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden never once spoke out against the riots that devastated so many cites over campaign summer. Harris blatantly excused the billions of dollars of damage they did and vowed that the riots "would not stop before the election or after." Then she raised money to bail out those who actually were arrested for their crimes. She has refused to release the records of the money raised for her cause and how many rioters, arsonists, and looters were released. Like the rest of the left, they loved the riots because they thought they were hurting Trump. How idiotic is that? They truly thought that their "defund the police" mantra would win over a population sufficiently indoctrinated with their anti-Trump nonsense. As usual, they assumed we are all dumb as bricks and cannot see the writing on the wall. What minority community wants to give up its police? Not one, anywhere in the country. Law-abiding Americans of every color and creed need and depend on law enforcement. The left's "defund them" campaign was a Mr. Potato Head moment, stupid beyond belief. But back to Liz Cheney. Once upon a time, we liked her, donated to her campaign, and assumed she was an actual conservative. Nope! She's a Deep-Stater through and through. Deep-Staters need and love war. It's how they get so fabulously wealthy, with all those consulting contracts and more. They need wars to continue. They need to foment more of them. They need the nation-building, the literacy programs for Afghani girls. Cheney's primary problem with Trump has been his attempt to bring troops home from wars of attrition like Afghanistan and Syria, and from cash cow places where they are not needed, like Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Moreover, Trump has blasted the policy of endless war, laying the blame on the Bush and Obama administrations, both of which continued them and saw their minions feed from the same trough. So now follow the money. Cheney's fury at Trump and her thoroughly misguided support of this ridiculous snap impeachment will be her political and personal downfall. She betrayed her president and the 80-some million people who voted for him, precisely to be rid of people like her. She will never, never recover. Nor will House minority leader Kevin McCarthy for defending her and dissing Trump. Nor will the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell; what a turncoat, what a Judas. As for the nine non-entities who voted with her? No one will ever remember their names, for they have already rendered themselves irrelevant, same as Liz Cheney. Image credit: ABC The View / Fox & Friends video screen shot, via shareable YouTube. 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. After staying basically level for four years, Trumps approval ratings in several polls dropped roughly 10 points across several polls in a week. The most popular piece on the Christianity Today website is headlined, We Worship With the Magi, Not MAGA. In the world of secular conservatism, The Wall Street Journal editorial page called on Trump to resign. Addressing Trump supporters, conservative talk show host Erick Erickson wrote, Everything from the storming of the Capitol to people getting killed to social networks banning you to corporations not giving you money everything is a logical consequence of you people lying relentlessly for two months and taking advantage of American patriots. (CNN) Chinese technology company Huawei is backtracking on a patent application it filed for a facial recognition system intended to identify Uyghurs from other Chinese ethnicities. Filed in July 2018 by Huawei and the government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Sciences, the patent application said the "identification of pedestrian attributes is very important" in facial recognition technology. "The attributes of the target object can be gender (male, female), age (such as teenagers, middle-aged, old) [or] race (Han, Uyghur)," the application said. It was revealed in a new report from the BBC and IPVM, an independent group which monitors video surveillance technology. A Huawei spokesperson said in a statement to CNN Business that the company would "amend" its patent, adding that the ethnicity identification feature should "never have become part of the application." "Huawei opposes discrimination of all types, including the use of technology to carry out ethnic discrimination," the spokesperson said. "We are continuously working to ensure new and evolving technology is developed and applied with the utmost care and integrity." The use of facial recognition technology in policing and domestic security is widespread across China but especially in the western region of Xinjiang, where up to 2 million people from Uyghur and other ethnic Muslim minorities have allegedly been put into internment camps, according to the US State Department. Beijing maintains that the camps are vocational training centers that help to deradicalize citizens. But Uyghur exiles have described the crackdown as "cultural genocide," with former detainees saying they were indoctrinated and abused. IPVM political director Conor Healy said that Huawei needed to explain why the feature had been part of the patent application in the first place. "What possible reason could there be that they would go file patents and develop a facial recognition system that literally involves hours and hours of training a computer to detect what race somebody is?" he told CNN Business. "There are very few uses for that kind of technology that benefit humanity." Huawei wasn't the only company that IPVM said had filed this kind of patent. According to IPVM, Chinese tech startup Megvii submitted a patent application in June 2019 for a system which mentioned an "ethnicity classification" that would include "Han, Uyghur, non-Han, non-Uyghur and unknown." In a statement to CNN Business, Megvii said that it would "withdraw" the 2019 patent application, which it said was "open to misunderstanding." "Megvii has not developed and will not develop or sell racial or ethnic labelling solutions," the statement said. IPVM also found another Chinese tech startup, Sensetime, mentioned in a patent application in July 2019 that it could identify people by ethnicity, specifically singling out "Uyghur" as a possibility. Sensetime told CNN Business that the reference to Uyghurs was "regrettable," adding that it was "one of the examples within the application intended to illustrate the attributes the algorithm recognizes." "It was neither designed nor intended in any way to discriminate, which is against our values," a spokesperson said in a statement. "We will update the patent at the next available opportunity." IPVM's report is the latest in a series of revelations about the questionable facial recognition practices of Chinese technology giants. In December, Alibaba said that it would no longer try to identify faces by ethnicity after IPVM reported that a division of the company had shown clients how their facial recognition system could detect Uyghurs. In the same month, the Washington Post alleged that Huawei had tested facial recognition software capable of sending automatic "Uyghur alarms" to government authorities if a member of the ethnic minority was detected by its camera systems. At the time, Huawei had denied that it would "develop or sell systems that identify people by their ethnic group." "We do not condone the use of our technologies to discriminate against or oppress members of any community," the company said in a statement posted to its website. The latest report comes as governments around the world are increasingly pressuring companies whose products may be linked to alleged forced labor camps in Xinjiang. On Wednesday, the US government announced that it would ban all cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang. One day earlier the UK government declared that it would fine companies that hid economic connections to Xinjiang, as the government attempted to crack down on products of forced labor entering the country. In analysis written for its latest report, IPVM said that the inclusion of Uyghur tracking in the patent applications for top China tech companies showed "how prevalent this racist technology is" in the country. "This is a clear example of People's Republic of China's human rights abuse against Uyghur people, and also represents a long-term risk for the broader video surveillance industry's reputation," IPVM said. -- Michelle Toh contributed to this report. This story was first published on CNN.com China's Huawei backtracks after filing for patent to identify Uyghur faces Gettyimagebank By Yi Whan-woo The ASEAN-Korea Centre will host an online forum, Jan. 19, focusing on the topics of sustainable infrastructure and digital innovation as part of efforts to help the 10 ASEAN member countries recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Seoul-based center is tasked with cooperating with ASEAN. Titled "ASEAN-Korea Partnership for enhancing ASEAN connectivity in the post-COVID-19 era," the eighth ASEAN Connectivity Forum will be livestreamed on YouTube starting at 1:30 p.m. The two topics are among five strategic areas, including seamless logistics, regulatory excellence and people mobility, as defined in the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) 2025. Introduced in 2016, MPAC is a blueprint seeking to improve connectivity and integration in the region. "For the past seven years, the annual ASEAN Connectivity Forum has become one of the flagship events for supporting the Korean business community to take part in the ASEAN region's connectivity-related projects," ASEAN-Korea Centre Secretary General Lee Hyuk said. He noted the forum contributed to building a more connected and integrated ASEAN and a mutually beneficial partnership between ASEAN and Korea. "As COVID-19 has disrupted many face-to-face interactions among business communities in the two regions, I hope this forum will serve as a valuable platform for them to gain the latest information and explore opportunities for collaboration," Lee added. The forum is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Construction Association of Korea and the ASEAN Secretariat. The meeting will begin with an opening ceremony followed by two sessions starting with a panel discussion and presentations from speakers. During the opening ceremony, Secretary General Lee, Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-moon, and Thai Ambassador to Korea Rommanee Kananurak, who chairs the ASEAN Committee in Seoul (ACS), will deliver speeches. The panel discussion will focus on the challenges and future direction of ASEAN connectivity in the post-COVID-19 era. Panelists will represent the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Korea Overseas Infrastructure and Urban Development Corporation (KIND) and the Embassy of Japan in Korea. Kim He-jin, head of the ASEAN-Korea Centre's Information and Data Unit, will moderate the discussion and the Q&A session. The presentations will deal with the latest updates on projects in the sectors of transport, energy and smart cities. Officials from the Department of Public Works and Highways of the Philippines, the Indonesian Investment Coordinating Board, the Ministry of Energy and Mines of Laos, Tenaga National Berhad of Malaysia, the Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications of Brunei, the Nay Pyi Taw Development Committee of Myanmar, the Digital Economy Promotion Agency of Thailand, and the Quang Ninh Province of Vietnam will give briefings. They will share potential areas for cooperation with the Korean business community in the post-pandemic era. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil futures settled sharply lower on Friday as worries about energy demand resurfaced amid rising coronavirus cases and tighter restrictions on movements in several countries, including China. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for February ended down $1.21 or about 2.3% at $52.36 a barrel. Brent crude futures were down $1.40 or about 2.5% at $55.02 a barrel a little while ago. Coronavirus cases cross two million in Germany today, prompting authorities to consider a 'mega-lockdown.' Portugal imposed a new nationwide lockdown while Britain said entry into the country will require negative tests. Brazil and Lebanon too tightened restrictions on movements. Fresh curbs on populations were announced from Brazil to Lebanon. Amid fears of surging cases, Germany is considering a 'mega-lockdown'. France is introducing tougher restrictions for anyone entering the country from outside the EU. Elsewhere, China has put about 22 million people on lockdown due to new outbreaks of Covid-19 in the north and northeastern parts of the country. Meanwhile, a report from Baker Hughes said the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil rose by 12 to 287 this week, rising for an eighth successive weak. The total U.S. rigs count went up by 13 to 373, according to the report. Concerns over rising Sino-U.S. tensions also weighed on the commodity after the U.S. government blacklisted Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp and ten other companies over alleged military links. 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. TAMPA, Fla., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New Horizons Computer Learning Centers is one of the largest independent providers of career and technology training and today the company announced expanded corporate management in 12 new markets. Among those are Livonia, Kalamazoo, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Troy in Michigan; Chicago and Rosemont in Illinois; Nashua, New Hampshire; New York City and Westchester in New York; Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio. This expansion will provide clients throughout the major markets on the East Coast and Midwest all the technology, leadership and development courses and certifications for reskilling and upskilling their staff. Accelerated Instructor-led classes delivered in New Horizons' high-tech virtual classroom combined with more offerings are available as companies adjust and manage their training needs during the pandemic. "New Horizons is the largest independent provider of technology training and these newest markets add significantly to our market share of company-managed markets," said Allen Middleton, New Horizons' Vice President of Corporate Sales. "The New Horizons brand is growing across the globe which means a broader portfolio of courses for our corporate customers seeking to upskill, reskill, and improve productivity through highly-effective training and development courses and certifications." New Horizons has been on a rapid pace of accelerating corporate managed markets as companies seek to retrain their workforce for remote working situations. As companies now consider how to bring employees safely back to the office, training opportunities are in high demand, thus driving this most recent expansion project by New Horizons corporate office. About New Horizons Computer Learning Centers New Horizons IT and Business Training solutions have kept businessesfrom startups to global enterprisesahead of the technology curve for over 35 years. The New Horizons Global Franchise network spans six continents and over 30 countries. New Horizons provides measurable return on any company's training investment while our learning methods meet the styles, demands and schedules of today's management and employees. New Horizons combines the resources of the world's largest IT training company with the responsiveness of a local partner. New Horizons is certified as a Microsoft Partner with a Gold Learning competency, Cisco Partner for Learning Solutions, CompTIA Authorized Platinum Partner, and VMware Authorized Training Center. For more information, visit www.newhorizons.com. SOURCE New Horizons Computer Learning Centers Related Links https://www.newhorizons.com By Sophie Yu and Kevin Yao BEIJING (Reuters) - From cancelled hotel bookings ahead of the Lunar New Year to steel piled up at mills because of transport curbs in Hebei province, China's battle against a new wave of COVID-19 infections clouds what has been a dramatic economic recovery. New cases in China are at 10-month highs, prompting the lockdown of 28 million people in two provinces, disrupting logistics and industrial activity, with millions expected to scrap holiday travel plans in a blow to China's efforts to get consumption back on track. China's economy ... 7 out of 8 people with severe mental health conditions are not receiving any treatment or support. And where there is treatment, medication is the typical solution. SupportRoom makes mental health support accessible, affordable, and provide ongoing support for patients. According to MIND, in the UK: 1 in 4 of us has a severe mental health condition 1 in 6 experience anxiety or depression 1 in 5 has suicidal thoughts 1 in 14 commit self-harm 1 in 15 attempt suicide And only 1 in 8 adults with a mental health problem receives treatment. Suicide is a single biggest killer of men below the age of 45 and takes almost 6,000 lives in the UK each year. People are suffering needlessly: living half-lives with mental health conditions when - often - all they need is to talk to someone who understands; without fear of judgement or ridicule. Thats why I set up SupportRoom. Ash Vipani - CEO Why is SupportRoom needed? Anyone who has tried to access mental health services in the UK is likely to have met a barrage of barriers. Starting with a GP appointment, a patient may be referred to a counsellor or a psychologist for assessment before any treatment begins. But, it can take weeks to get an appointment; even longer to get treated. And then treatment is over before it started. 7 out of 8 people with severe mental health conditions are not receiving any treatment or support. And where there is treatment, medication is the typical solution. SupportRoom believes that this is not good enough. Poor mental health illnesses are more common than physical health conditions, yet accessing treatment is a battle. SupportRoom wants to change this, making mental health support accessible, affordable, and ongoing. SupportRooms therapy platform is designed to optimise access to essential, reactive, ongoing, and always-on therapeutic services using innovative web technology. Exclusive platform tools allow clients to track, manage, and reflect upon their wellbeing over time. SupportRoom works 24/7, accessible by standard smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. Who is SupportRoom? SupportRoom is the brainchild of founder, Ash Vipani. The suicide of a close family member brought the need for this service sharply into focus. After years of experience in developing tech startups, Ash knew that it was possible to create an always-on platform, providing round-the-clock mental health support. So, he gathered together a team of mental health professionals and technology experts and set about creating SupportRoom. How SupportRoom works Poor mental health has no schedule, yet mental health provision - whether privately or through the NHS - works on an appointment-only basis. And average waiting time for an assessment appointment is between 4-8 weeks. But what happens when a person suffering from anxiety is wide awake at 4 am; stressed, lonely, and desperate to talk to someone who understands? SupportRoom offers a network of qualified therapists, ready to support a broad spectrum of mental health conditions and disorders; available 24/7, 365 days a year. SupportRoom takes minutes to join, and can provide same-day treatment, support, and reassurance, over instant text- and voice messaging, and face-to-face video consultationsall within a single application. Mental health issues arent solved with medication or a single therapy session. SupportRoom believes that therapy is a journey and requires immediate and ongoing support. SupportRoom is ready to go SupportRoom pairs individuals with appropriate, experienced therapists in minutes - offering immediate, always-on, and ongoing support; not in two months when an appointment becomes available. The innovative, tried-and-tested platform is ready and waiting to address the growing epidemic of poor mental health. How SupportRoom works for the client Prospective patients can sign up and complete a short questionnaire that pairs them with a suitable therapist. Then, they get free, immediate support. Subscription costs are super-affordable, with tariffs to suit every pocket. SupportRoom also offers ongoing support for organisations through their Employee Assistance Programme, helping maximise productivity by looking after workforce wellbeing. For more information, check out SupportRoom.com or email them at info@supportroom.com. Page Content I would like to take this opportunity to ask you when was the last time you took a moment to think about the word EDUCATION. What does it mean for you? Have you completed your education in the way you wanted? Students leave Sint Maarten every year to go abroad to further their education. Are these students returning to Sint Maarten after completing their studies? This question of students returning home was a topic of discussion last week when the countries of Aruba, Curacao, the Netherlands and Sint Maarten had their consultative meeting. Other topics like the challenges students face during their studies, was on the agenda and part of the discussions. Sint Maartens students in the Netherlands who are recipients of study financing are guided during their first and second year of studies by a group of well qualified persons. These guidance counselors are responsible for monitoring and checking on our students. On Sunday 17 January 2021 from 2 pm to 4 pm a virtual meeting will take place between these persons and Sint Maarten, and can be viewed via the Government of Sint Maartens Facebook Page: Facebook.com/SXMGOV The guidance Counselors and the work they do together with the division of study finance will be some of the discussion points of the virtual meeting. The link will be made available during the week so that all who wants to take part or listen to the meeting can do so. I would certainly like to congratulate the University of Sint Maarten for being awarded the seat of a research chair that will be shared with The University of Aruba and the University of Curacao. This is a great thing for Sint Maarten and the Ministry of Education is ready to support USM in making this a successful experience for all who would be involve. Ford announced on January 11 that it will end its production of cars in Brazil, shutting down its three plants in the cities of Camacari, in the state Bahia; Taubate, in the state of Sao Paulo; and Horizonte, in the state of Ceara. According to Ford, 5,000 workers will be laid off in Brazil. But tens of thousands more jobs are directly associated with its production chain, and a wave of dismissals is expected. In a statement to its Brazilian customers, Ford declared: As you know, the global automotive industry is undergoing a transformation process driven by new and emerging technologies in connected services, electrification and autonomous vehicles, with consumer demands and regulatory items reshaping the market. Brazilian Ford workers outside the plant in Taubate, Brazil, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, the day after Ford Motor Co. announced it will close three plants in Brazil and stop producing automobiles in the South American country where it has been operating since 1919. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) This restructuring of production is, in other words, a massive destruction of jobs and wage cuts globally being enacted by Ford and the entire auto industry. The latest wave of job and cost cuts began several years ago, escalating in 2018 and 2019 with a major downturn in the auto industry already then on the horizon. In 2018, Ford announced a worldwide restructuring aimed at a multibillion-dollar reduction in costs. The goal is to streamline the organization. Its a cascading process. It will mean a reduction in workforce, explained Mark Truby, the companys vice president of global communications. The following year, the company fired 7,000 white-collar workers and laid off 12,000 workers as it closed five European plants. In Brazil, Ford closed one of its main facilities, a truck factory in Sao Bernardo do Campo, in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area, in October 2019. On that occasion, 3,000 direct employees and 1,500 outsourced workers were laid off, not to mention the approximately 20,000 workers at the related auto parts plants. The slashing of jobs being promoted now by Ford follows thousands of other layoffs in Brazils auto industry that occurred last year. Last December, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would shut down its car production in Brazil, firing the 370 workers at its luxury vehicle plant. Renault-Nissan slashed more than 1,000 jobs in 2020, and Volkswagen announced that it would cut one third of its workforce, having opened on Monday a voluntary layoff program for this purpose. Fords announcement of the closure of its plants was answered by workers with protests. On Tuesday, contract and outsourced workers from the Ford Northeast Industrial Complex in Camacari demonstrated at the factory gates demanding to keep their jobs. A new protest was held the next day in front of the Legislative Assembly of Bahia (Alba), where representatives of the Camacari Metalworkers Union met with Alba President Nelson Leal. In Taubate, where Ford produces engines and transmissions, a demonstration was held on Tuesday. Workers voted to set a vigil to block both people and materials from entering and exiting the factory for an indefinite period. The unions are, in turn, already preparing a betrayal of the workers resistance to job cuts and the closure of plants. The Camacari Metalworkers Union, linked to the CTB union federation and the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), already takes Fords closures for granted. According to the president of the union and PCdoB activist, Julio Bonfim: [The] way out so that thousands of workers dont lose their jobs ... [is] the construction of an auto parts industrial park ... or either the arrival of another automaker [that] can guarantee jobs, investments and, consequently, the intense flow in the economy of the Metropolitan Region [of Salvador]. This corporatist vision is the same advocated by the governor of Bahia, Rui Costa of the Workers Party (PT), whom Bonfim is joining in a working group, which, according to the union itself, is looking for companies interested in investing in the industrial park where Ford Camacaris headquarters used to be, considered the largest automotive plant in South America. The Metalworkers Union of Taubate and Region (Sindmetau), linked to the CUT union federation and the PT, is working to divert the Ford workers struggle through empty demands to the state. To fulfill these treacherous purposes, the main leaders of the CUT, including the CUTs president, Sergio Nobre, were mobilized to participate in a meeting held Wednesday on Sindmetau. The main measure adopted at this meeting was the holding of a public hearing in the Legislative Assembly of Sao Paulo, advocated by PT state congressman Teonilio Barba, who declared that the intention is to seek greater involvement of the state government. The CUTs president also declared: All pressure is needed at this time. The country is deindustrializing because the government is encouraging deindustrialization. The unions and parties like the PT and PCdoB, as they work to divert workers opposition into safe channels within the bourgeois state, seek to establish an opposition to the administration of Brazils fascistic President Jair Bolsonaros that is based on the reactionary interests of Brazilian national capitalism. Speaking to his supporters outside the government palace on Tuesday, Bolsonaro said, Im sorry for 5,000 jobs lost, but Ford has failed to tell the truth. According to him, They want subsidies. Do you want to keep giving them 20 billion [reais], as you have done in recent years? he said in reference to the incentives paid by the Brazilian government to Ford since 1999 (equivalent to US$ 3.85 billion). In response to Bolsonaro, the president of the National Association of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (Anfavea), Luiz Carlos Moraes, declared that these subsidies would have functioned as a way to correct the distortions of the Brazilian tax system, according to O Globo. We have been pointing for years to measures that need to be taken to improve competitiveness in Brazil, said Moraes. This consists mainly of a pro-capitalist tax reform. Anfaveas arguments are not in any way different from those of unions and bourgeois nationalist parties like the PT and PCdoB. The CUT and other union federations for years have advanced as their fundamental program the creation of tax incentives for companies, especially in the auto industry. They criticize the governments that succeeded the PT in power for not having an auto program to stimulate competitiveness for production in Brazil. Defending the same perspective as Anfavea, of reducing taxes to the capitalists, the PTs Governor Rui Costa declared in a note on Fords closure: Unfortunately, there are hundreds of industries that are closing, week after week, since we have a country that does not take care of its economy, does not guarantee institutional security to its investors and does not make the necessary reformsincluding the tax [reform] that we need so badly. While fighting for the competitiveness of Brazilian capitalism, the unions are employing against Ford workers today the same methods they used to suppress resistance to the closing of the Sao Bernardo do Campo plant in 2019. On that occasion, the ABC Metalworkers Union, also linked to the CUT, did everything to wear out a 42-day strike, isolating the workers locally and preventing independent actions. It ended up signing an agreement that accepted the closing of the plant. The union then acted in practice as the representative of a business group interested in buying the plant, negotiating bank loans for the group and offering low wages to attract its investments. Despite this, the negotiations failed. Ford workers urgently need to take the reins of this struggle and lead it in another direction. It is necessary to break with the corporatist unions, forming independent rank-and-file committees to unify the struggle among all the plants and with the working class as a whole. It is also of fundamental importance to overcome the capitalist and nationalist perspective defended by the unions. Against the malign global restructuring plans of the transnational auto corporations, workers must advance their own strategy of a globally unified struggle, which is fought for by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International. By Chris L. Gadsden We were expecting more from the mayor. The mayor led off his recent State of the City address with the terroristic attack on our community. After the horrific attack, I saw Hasidic and Black leaders coming together, and the mayor wasnt too reflective of that in his State of the City Address. The mayor talked about school funding. The mayor wanted to create an appointed school board; he rescinded it because the decision wasnt politically expedient. That was a diversion, and the mayor needs to further elaborate on how the schools will be funded by the municipal government of Jersey City for the 2021-2022 school year. Most residents dont know the mayors plan for police reform. We havent seen a discipline matrix, are unaware of de-escalation training, have never been invited to see police video after an incident, and dont know about new improvements and technology for law enforcement. The mayor missed an opportunity to have a true discussion on police reform in Jersey City after the George Floyd murder. The mayor needs to work harder in bringing the community and law enforcement together -- because not everyone wants to defund the police. The $1,500 in rental assistance is appreciated, but what are his efforts to stop the displacement of people because they cant afford to live in Jersey City after that one-time check? The pain and suffering of the homeless of Jersey City cant be fixed with showers and a short-term hotel stay. Please build more shelters. The mayor needs to put more focus on recreation, youth development, violence prevention and support services. The opening of food pantries is indicative of the need for people to survive and reside in Jersey City. Moving forward, the mayor has to show more compassion. People are really suffering, people have not only lost their love ones to COVID, but there are children wondering how they are going to cope with the loss of their parents due to the senseless violence. The mayor has a tough job, but he needs to ensure that the state of the city is strong. He has to be a more emphatic leader, who will bring communities together to ensure that everyone in Jersey City has a stake in its success. Chris L. Gadsden of Jersey City is a former Ward B councilman. Send letters to the editor and guest columns for The Jersey Journal to jjletters@jjournal.com. Sorry! This content is not available in your region To the editor: Mr. John Moolenaar, 4th District U.S. Representative, you took the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. The law firm that successfully sued Apple and five major publishers for colluding to fix e-book prices in 2011 has now filed a class action suit against Amazon, accusing the company of colluding with the Big Five publishers to restrain price competition in the e-book market. The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York on January 14 by Seattle-based firm Hagens Berman, comes a day after a Wall Street Journal article disclosed that Amazon was under investigation in Connecticut for potentially anti-competitive behavior in the e-book market. The suit names only Amazon as a defendant. However, it labels each of the Big Five publishersHachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin Random Houseas co-conspirators in an alleged scheme to use various forms of a Most Favored Nations clause (MFN) to squelch consumer price competition and keep e-book prices artificially high. In violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Defendant and the Big Five Co-conspirators agreed to various anti-competitive MFNs and anti-competitive provisions that functioned the same as MFNs, the complaint states. Amazons agreement with its Co-conspirators is an unreasonable restraint of trade that prevents competitive pricing and causes Plaintiffs and other consumers to overpay when they purchase e-books from the Big Five through an eBook retailer that competes with Amazon. That harm persists and will not abate unless Amazon and the Big Five are stopped. Among the relief requested, the suit seeks monetary reimbursement for consumers who purchased e-books through Amazons competitors, damages, and injunctive relief that would require Amazon and the publishers to stop enforcing anti-competitive price restraints. Hagens Berman was the first to sue Apple and five of the then six major publishers for e-book price-fixing in 2011, in a case that would eventually draw suits from a number of states and the Department of Justice. The five publishers settled their claims for some $166 million, while Apple lost at trial and paid out some $400 million to consumers. Amazon had no comment on the lawsuit. All the publishers named in the filing had no comment as well. This is a developing story and will be updated. A bus was left dangling from an overpass in New York City after it careered off a road in a crash that caused serious injuries to the driver. The articulated bus crashed just after 11pm on Thursday at the interchange between the Cross Bronx and Major Deegan expressways in the Bronx. Videos taken by bystanders showed one part of the bus still resting on the bridge, with the other half dangling nearly completely vertical, with its smashed front end resting on the highway ramp below. Seven passengers suffered non life-threatening injuries, according to New York City Fire Department. FDNY Acting Battalion Chief Steven Moore and Deputy Chief Paul Hopper discusses operations on scene of a tandem bus accident this morning in the Bronx. Read more: https://t.co/sCfNYIOtrs pic.twitter.com/8eMb4dKAZO FDNY (@FDNY) January 15, 2021 The passengers and the driver were taken to hospital for treatment. Read More The bus fell approximately 50ft on to the access road. The patients suffered injuries consistent with a fall from such a great height, Deputy Fire Chief Paul Hopper said in a social media post. Firefighters were securing the fuel and any other hazardous materials before pulling the bus fully on to the road, Acting Battalion Chief Steven Moore said. No other vehicles were involved in the crash. 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. UK Prime Mnister Boris Johnson said at today's Commons Liaison Cttee that the Govt was worried about a new variant strain of Covid-19 found in Brazil. Worrying perhaps also for Portugal, Madeira, etc in view of the fact that there remain very close connections with the former colony. Edited: 17 January 2021, 18:45 As many as 2,99,500 doses were flown by GoAir flight to Nedumbassery airport at Kochi, as part of 4,33,500 doses proposed to be sent to Kerala in the first batch. The second consignment of 1,34,000 doses will reach Thiruvananathapuram on Wednesday evening. Thiruvananathapuram, Jan 13 (IANS) A consignment of nearly 3 lakh doses of coronavirus vaccine as part of the first batch arrived in Kerala on Wednesday, officials said. As many as 1,19,500 doses will be transported to Kozhikode from Kochi for distribution in north Kerala. The vaccine doses will be stored at facilities created at Thiruvananathapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi, before they are transported to other districts in Kerala through refrigerated vans. Storage facilities have also been created in all districts, from where the vaccine doses will be ferried to 133 centres across Kerala where the vaccination drive is proposed to be taken up. Health Minister KK Shailaja told the media that the state was ready for the vaccination drive. --IANS aal/tsb Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. A coalition of health organizations and technology companies, including Microsoft and Oracle, are working on a project that verifies who has received the coronavirus vaccination and prevent others from making false claims they have. Called Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), the venture aims to help people get encrypted digital copies of their immunization records stored in a digital wallet. VCI says it is working to make the credentials using the SMART Health Cards specification, which is designed to let people store immunization or lab results in a digital wallet, and could come in the form of a QR code to scan for verification. However, digital passports and paper credentials are raising concerns among privacy groups that believe 'until everyone has access to an effective vaccine, any system requiring a passport for entry or service will be unfair,' as stated by Privacy International. 'The vaccine is a public health exercise, and must not be a new discriminator,' the group shared on its website. The group does agree that such records are 'probably necessary,' but worries they could 'open a can of worms.' 'To what degree does this documentation need to be trusted to be reviewed by other providers? And who else will want access? That is where things get more complicated. And that's where ambitions lie,' says Privacy International. Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) aims to help people get encrypted digital copies of their immunization records stored in a digital wallet. The initiative is building off of The Commons Project Foundation's CommonPass (pictured) VCI does not seem to be looking at its project as being fair, but as a way to help society return to pre-pandemic life and doing so safely. The initiative is building off of The Commons Project Foundation, which is working on its Common Pass that allows travelers to present vaccination record's or coronavirus test results when flying and crossing borders in to other countries. A few airlines, including United Airlines and JetBlue, are currently testing CommonPass. Paul Meyer, chief executive of The Commons Project, said: 'The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records so they can use tools like CommonPass to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy.' However, digital passports and paper credentials are raising concerns among privacy groups that believe 'until everyone has access to an effective vaccine, any system requiring a passport for entry or service will be unfair 'Open standards and interoperability are at the heart of VCI's efforts and we look forward to supporting the World Health Organization and other global stakeholders in implementing and scaling open global standards for health data interoperability.' VCI includes big names in tech like Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle, as well as US health care nonprofit Mayo Clinic. Bill Patterson, an executive vice president and general manager at enterprise software firm Salesforce, said his company wants to help organizations 'customize all aspects of the vaccination management life cycle and integrate closely with other coalition members' offerings, which will help us all get back to public life.' The digital vaccination passports are in anticipation that airlines, stadiums, workplaces and other establishes may soon require proof of a jab prior to allowing entry 'With a single platform to help deliver safe and continuous operations and deepen trust with customers and employees, this coalition will be crucial to support public health and wellbeing.' The group foresees the digital passports being vital to air travel and want to make showing verification of a vaccine 'as easy as online banking.' However, individuals without smartphones would receive paper printed with QR codes containing the credentials. In the United States, where vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have been authorized for emergency use, vaccinated individuals receive a vaccination card or printout. Vietnam is always a leading partner of the Netherlands in Asia, said the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Sigrid Kaag, at an online meeting with Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh on January 14. The minister, who attended the meeting with the CEOs of 13 major Dutch companies, said the EVFTA is expected to open up big opportunities for businesses of the two countries and now is a suitable time for the two sides to deepen their cooperation. She noted that the two countries have worked closely together in various fields, particularly industry, clean energy, renewable energy, circular economy and emissions reduction towards sustainable development. Minister Tuan Anh welcomed the Dutch government and businesses interest in collaboration with Vietnam in trade, industry and energy. He took the occasion to explain issues of interests of each participating Dutch business and clarify contents related to the enforcement of the EVFTA including taxation, intellectual property, trade in services and Government procurement. He also made clear what Vietnam can do to help Dutch investors implement a strategy to turn Vietnam into a production and consumption hub in the ASEAN. The minister emphasized that Vietnam has been, and is still a reliable destination for Dutch investors, urging the business communities of the two countries to work harder to seek new business and investment opportunities and optimize the benefits brought about by the EVFTA. Speaking on behalf of the participating Dutch businesses, Ingrid Thijssen, chair of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers, said Vietnam is a strategic market in Asia for Dutch businesses, which are willing to invest more in the country. Concluding the meeting, the two ministers affirmed that they will create favourable conditions for the two countries businesses to make full use of opportunities brought about by the EVFTA. Statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Trade show the Netherlands is the biggest export market in the EU for Vietnamese goods, and also the biggest EU investor in Vietnam. Bilateral trade has been growing at an average 11.78 percent a year in the past five years. In 2020, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnams exports to the Netherlands in the January-November period still rose 0.22 percent year on year to 6.26 billion USD. Its imports from the European country in the period decreased by 4.13 percent to 582.4 million USD. As of the end of November 2020, total Dutch investment in Vietnam reached 10.4 billion USD in 375 projects./. A Brazilian-born Gold Coast Instagram star has created an OnlyFans account in a bid to make money while she's stuck in hotel quarantine. Leila, 27, will call the Westin Hotel in Brisbane home for the next two weeks after Queensland Health forced 127 people to quarantine again as it moved to contain the highly contagious UK strain of the coronavirus. Leila had just completed a two-week stint at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, only to be told she would be placed in lockdown for another 14 days. She told Daily Mail Australia on Friday the decision left her in 'disbelief' and forced her to join the adult site to pass the time, earn some extra cash and stop herself from feeling depressed. Leila (pictured above) is facing another two weeks in hotel quarantine in Brisbane Instagram favourite Leila (pictured above) is facing another two weeks in quarantine as Queensland Health look to stop the spread of the mutant UK strain of the coronavirus 'I created an OnlyFans page on January 3, early in my first time in quarantine,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'A friend suggested I give it some thought and things went from there. 'My partner Fabian is supportive of me doing it, we discussed it. 'I haven't been able to work in Australia since May last year due to Covid, I have to do something.' Leila confirmed she is posing nude for subscribers on OnlyFans as well as in racy lingerie and bikinis. She is currently in the 'top 2.6 per cent' on the website, with fans seemingly increasing by the hour. She was moved to the Westin this week after six guests at the Hotel Grand Chancellor contracted the B.1.1.7 strain of Covid-19. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said said held grave concerns about the Hotel Grand Chancellor (pictured) cluster, which has grown to six cases of the highly-contagious UK virus strain 'I was supposed to check out at 10.30am on Wednesday but I was given a call at 8.30am to tell me I was to be moved to the Westin for another 14 days quarantine,' Leila told the Gold Coast Bulletin. 'With my bags packed I asked if I could please leave the hotel as I had done my two weeks but the next thing I know I'm being told I must get into an ambulance and taken to another hotel in full PPE gear, like I was infectious. 'We were treated like we were all sick, but I had done two tests in Brazil, both negative and two tests since I had returned. I can't see why they didn't let me leave to self-isolate at home.' Leila was born in Brazil before settling on the Gold Coast six years ago. She has approved permanent residency, with her partner an Australian citizen. She left the country after her bridging visa expired late last year, and after her initial quarantine stint at Hotel Grand Chancellor, was keen to work locally. The Instagrammer said she's trying to remain positive but will do everything she can to get out of quarantine earlier than expected Faced with another two weeks in quarantine, she admitted she will 'struggle' to tan as her room at the Westin has no balcony. After being told her transfer to the Westin was mandatory, Leila said she 'cried on the phone' and begged not to quarantine all over again but that 'there was no option'. When she arrived at The Westin in Brisbane, the Instagrammer said she was 'pleasantly surprised' with her new room. But while she noted it was 'nicer than the last one', she became upset when she realised it was 'missing a balcony' for her to tan herself on. 'There's no balcony, so I hope we can get some sun in here so that I can tan,' she explained as she panned the camera around the hotel room. 'Good luck to me, I have Netflix, zoom workouts and OnlyFans to pass the time.' Leila tearfully explained that she was missing her social life, her friends 'and everything out there' and said she's 'simply so frustrated right now'. Leila had her bags packed and ready to go on Wednesday when she received a phone call from Queensland Health about 8.30am - two hours before she was due to check out 'I am not sick, and I want to get out of here,' she said. The Instagrammer said she's trying to remain positive but will do everything she can to get out of quarantine earlier than expected. She also offered her room number to her followers in case they wanted to send her gifts to cheer her up while in isolation. Brisbane's Grand Chancellor Hotel was evacuated on Wednesday as officials scrambled to work out how the UK super-strain of Covid-19 was transmitted on the seventh floor. She offered a tour of her new room at the The Westin in Brisbane, which she said was 'nicer than the last one Guests at the Hotel Grand Chancellor have been moved to other hotels in Brisbane after the coronavirus cluster grew to six cases. Pictured is two guests on their balcony at Hotel Grand Chancellor on Wednesday Police are investigating by checking CCTV and engineers are checking if virus particles travelled in the air conditioning. Some 226 employees who have worked at the hotel since December 30 must also be quarantined and tested. An additional 250 guests who have left quarantine since December 30 and remain in Queensland are being contacted as they must undergo another 14 days of hotel quarantine. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the evacuation and re-quarantining process has been backed by Health Minster Greg Hunt and the AHPPC. Around 600 people have been forced into quarantine due to the Hotel Grand Chancellor cluster. Pictured are paramedics at the Brisbane hotel on Wednesday STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. A Scottish court rejected on Friday the third appeal put forward by the family of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer who was convicted in connection with the Lockerbie bombing that killed three Staten Islanders in 1988. Megrahi died in 2012, but in March an independent Scottish review indicated his family could proceed with a third appeal after it found a possible miscarriage of justice, Reuters reported. The evidence gathered by Scottish, U.S. and international law enforcement agencies has again been tested in the Appeal Court; and the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi stands, Lord Advocate James Wolffe said in a statement. Kathleen Jermyn, 20, of Annadale, a student at the SUNY College at Oneonta; David Platt, 33, of New Dorp, who worked for an architectural firm in England, and Daniel Rosenthal, 20, of St. George, a student at Vassar College, were among the victims. What happened that day was an earth-shattering experience, Raymond Jermyn, Kathleens father and a retired city Fire Department lieutenant, told the Advance/SILive.com in 2004. The terrorist attack on her plane was one of the earliest attacks of that kind to happen. When you think back to what happened, you think of how ridiculous it all was. It remains ridiculous to this day. We were supposed to be concerned with airport security back then, and were supposed to be concerned with airport security today. Things havent changed very much. Kathleen Jermyn, 20, of Annadale, was one of the victims of the Dec. 21, 1988 bombing. The deadly attack on Dec. 21, 1988, blasted apart a Boeing 747 just 38 minutes after the plane had taken off from Heathrow Airport in London bound for JFK International Airport in Queens. The plane blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The disaster was at that time the deadliest air attack in U.S. history and still remains the deadliest terrorist attack on UK soil. For 32 years the families of the 270 people murdered on the night of 21 December 1988 have shown dignity in the face of the loss they have suffered. Our thoughts are with them again today, Wolffe added. Though Megrahi still remains the only person convicted over the attack, authorities charged the alleged bomb-maker at the end of last year. Megrahis family is planning to appeal to the UK Supreme Court, as his son maintained his fathers innocence and is determined to fulfill the promise he made to clear his name and that of Libya, their lawyer told Reuters. Abu Agela Masud Kheir Al-Marimi (Masud), was charged last month with destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle used in interstate or foreign commerce by an explosion resulting in death, the Advance/SILive.com previously reported. Libyan intelligence officials directed Masud to fly to Malta with a suitcase he had been instructed to prepare, which was capable of carrying concealed explosives, said a criminal complaint. He met two co-conspirators in Malta Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and remained there for several days, said officials. On the morning of the explosion, Masud set the timer on the device in the suitcase to go off 11 hours later, as his co-conspirators had instructed him, the complaint said. The suitcase, a medium-sized Samsonite, was placed on a flight in Malta to Frankfurt, Germany. Through a feeder flight, it made its way to Londons Heathrow airport, where it was loaded onto the Pan Am flight bound for the U.S., said officials. Three months after the attack, Masud and Fhimah met with then-Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and other officials who thanked them for carrying out a great national duty against the Americans, said authorities. Qaddafi declared the operation a total success. Fhimah was acquitted of all charges. -- Associated Press material was used for this report. Bengaluru, Jan 15 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be on a two-day visit to Karnataka from Saturday, during which he will launch several projects besides addressing a political rally in Belagavi district. According to the itinerary released by the Karnataka government here, Shah will participate in foundation stone laying ceremony of the Rapid Action Force (RAF) centre in Bhadravathi in Shivamogga, Chief Minister Yediyurappa's home district, on Saturday followed by the launch of Emergency Response Support System (ERSS), a nationwide unified emergency system to attend to emergency requests from citizens in the country, in Bengaluru. After this, he will visit Chief Minister's chamber and few minister's chambers besides he will chair the senior police officers meeting at the Conference Hall in Vidhan Soudha here. On Sunday, Shah will launch Ethanol project in newly inducted Karnataka minister, Murgesh Nirani's Sugar factory in Bagalkot district. From there, he will proceed to Belagavi, where he will visit, BJP Rajya Sabha MP headed K.L.E. Medical college and in the evening he will address a political rally here. Though on the face of it, the Home Minister's visit to Belagavi is to celebrate BJP's win in the recent gram panchayat polls and to tell the new members of their responsibility as gram sevaks (village servants). But his rally in Belagavi also assumes significance for another reason, as Belagavi Lok Sabha constituency is heading for by-elections in the wake of BJP leader and Union Minister of State for Railways Suresh Angadi succumbing to coronavirus in Delhi on September 23 last year. After addressing a rally, Shah will also meet Angadi's bereaved family members and convene a special meeting of party office bearers here and after this he will be departing to New Delhi from Belagavi. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding star Paddy Doherty is seriously ill with Covid-19, his family has revealed. The British Boxer (61) has been placed on oxygen to help him fight the infection while he is also suffering from pneumonia. Taking to Facebook, Paddys son Simey Doherty shared the news. He wrote: Can everybody please keep my father in prayer as I was just speaking to him and he has got double pneumonia. "Also claw seen in the lungs and tested positive for Covid. He's also on oxygen. Keep my father in prayer. Read More Paddys wife Roseanne Doherty commented: Please will everything pray for my Paddy - he has been taken in to hospital. He is not very well [sic]. The 61-year-old won Celebrity Big Brother in 2011 and has opened up in the past about his health struggles. In 2020, he revealed that he battled prostate cancer for seven months after receiving the all-clear in April. While taking part in a ten-part travel series with Daniel Coll from Emmerdale, Paddy spoke about the early stages of his cancer and why he decided to go to the doctor. He explained: I wont tell a lie. I was going to the toilet to have a wee. It was slowly coming on and I was having to push harder and harder. When I went for a few pints Id have to go into the cubicle and people would think: Oh, he is nervous. The pain was getting so bad I had to roar. My grandchildren said: Is granddaddy alright, nanny? I dont know what it is like for a woman to have a child, but I know it is bad. To me, there was no pain like that. My woman, Roseanne, she said: Paddy you have to go to the doctor. He was then told that he would have to undergo two operations, which ended up being a double operation because he was in so much pain. The bare-knuckle boxer rose to fame in the UK after featuring on Channel 4s documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Read More 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. We use it with every email Throughout the day, we find ourselves typing emails using the @ or at sign. Where did this symbol originate? Who used this punctuation mark in the first email message, and what year did it occur? In a New York Times blog, called The Lede, I read an article saying the first use of the @ symbol was in 1536. Though I entered this world during the 1950s, even I know there wasnt an email system 485 years ago during the Medieval period. During the medieval years, people sending paper parchment correspondence used private messengers, including healthy and very physically fit relay-runners. Riders upon horseback, mules, and donkeys carried attachments containing Medieval paper messages. During the medieval period, most messages sent during times of war were coded. In this case, the code is the messenger wearing an innocent disguise, hiding the message inside their clothing, shoe, or walking staff. As a youth, I recall seeing the @ symbol used on signs at the local stores. A sign on a shelf advertising a product would say, 5 cartons @ $1.99 each. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica, reported in 2000 that Giorgio Stabile, a professor of the history of science at La Sapienza University in Rome, had found the @ symbol used in a Medieval merchants letter used for conducting commerce. The letter containing the @ sign was by a Florentine merchant named Francesco Lapi. Lapi used the @ in a hand-written letter he wrote May 4, 1536, to describe units of wine, called amphora, shipped in clay jars. According to Stabile, Francesco Lapis letter sent from Seville, Spain, to a Rome colleague, described the cargo on the three ships that had just returned to Spain from Latin America. There, an amphora of wine, which is one 30th of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats, Mr. Lapi wrote in his letter. Lapi represented amphora with the letter a wrapped in its tail, appearing as the now-familiar @ sign. The @ sign found its way onto typewriter keyboards as an accounting shorthand phrase meaning at the price of. In 1971, Ray Tomlinson, an engineer and computer programmer, used the @ symbol on his teletype keyboard, embedding the @ punctuation character in the first email address. Using the @ symbol, he could send a mail message electronically to another computer system over the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). The ARPANET, as you know, is the predecessor of todays internet. Tomlinson developed his unique @host email system by combining the computer programs SNDMSG, a local inter-user mail program, with CPYNET, an experimental file transfer program. Asked why he chose the @ sign, Tomlinson replied, The primary reason was that it made sense. Amphoras didnt appear in names so there would be no ambiguity about where the separation between login name and host name occurred. I used the at sign to indicate that the user was at some other host rather than being local. The first email message was sent in late 1971 by Tomlinson between two host computers physically located side-by-side on the same floor. The network connection was through the APRANET. Tomlinson said the first email message he sent likely contained the word QUERTYIOP or something similar. Asked if he invented the @ sign, Tomlinson responded, No, I did not invent the at sign! The at sign has been around for centuries. Its possible I saved the at sign from extinction since some were considering removing the at sign from the keyboard and it would have followed the cent sign into exile. You can see a photograph of the two computers and teletype machines from which the first email message was sent and received through the ARPANET at https://bit.ly/3hZX3NE. Raymond Samuel Tomlinson passed away March 5, 2016, at age 74. My email address is bitscolumn@gmail.com. Continue to stay safe out there. Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/15/2021 -- Investor Relationship Management Software Market Comprehensive Study is an expert and top to bottom investigation on the momentum condition of the worldwide Investor Relationship Management Software industry with an attention on the Global market. The report gives key insights available status of the Investor Relationship Management Software producers and is an important wellspring of direction and course for organizations and people keen on the business. By and large, the report gives an inside and out understanding of 2020-2025 worldwide Investor Relationship Management Software Market covering extremely significant parameters. Key Players in This Report Include, Vertice Technologies, LLC (United States), Ledgex Systems (United States), Foundersuite, Inc. (United States), Imagineer Technology Group (United States), Allvue Systems (United States), iPR Software, Inc. (United States), Temenos AG (United States) and Confirmit (United States) Free Sample Report + All Related Graphs & Charts @: https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/sample-report/131078-global-investor-relationship-management-software-market Brief Summary of Investor Relationship Management Software: Investor management software is a software that manages the relationships that businesses, typically financial services institutions, have with their investors. It performs various functions including everything from organizing investor newsletter creation to targeting potential new investors and more. This software contains targeting and surveillance tools, which leverage market data to churn out potential investors to target. It has numerous benefits such as complex relationship and interested party mapping, detailed investor transactions and valuations, e-signature and online document and compliance submissions, automated PPM generator, streamlined mail-merging and other benefits. Influencing Market Trend - Increased Adoption of Cloud-Based Solutions Market Drivers - Increased Numerous Applications of Investor Relationship Management Software - Ease of Use and Implementation of the Software - Increasing Use of Investor Relationship Management Software in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Opportunities - Technological Upgradation in Investor Relationship Management Software - Growing Demand from End-user Industry Restraints - Technological Complications Associated with Software Challenges - Risk of Cyberattack and Virus Might Hinder the Investor Relationship Management Software - Intense Competition in the Market may Hamper the Growth The Global Investor Relationship Management Software Market segments and Market Data Break Down are illuminated below: by Enterprise (Small and Medium Enterprises, Large Enterprises), Deployment (Cloud-based, On-Premise), Subscription (Annual Subscription, Monthly Subscription, Other) This research report represents a 360-degree overview of the competitive landscape of the Global Investor Relationship Management Software Market. Furthermore, it offers massive data relating to recent trends, technological, advancements, tools, and methodologies. The research report analyzes the Global Investor Relationship Management Software Market in a detailed and concise manner for better insights into the businesses. Regions Covered in the Investor Relationship Management Software Market: - The Middle East and Africa (South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Egypt, etc.) - North America (United States, Mexico & Canada) - South America (Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, etc.) - Europe (Turkey, Spain, Turkey, Netherlands Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.) - Asia-Pacific (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia). Enquire for customization in Report @ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/enquiry-before-buy/131078-global-investor-relationship-management-software-market The research study has taken the help of graphical presentation techniques such as infographics, charts, tables, and pictures. It provides guidelines for both established players and new entrants in the Global Investor Relationship Management Software Market. The detailed elaboration of the Global Investor Relationship Management Software Market has been provided by applying industry analysis techniques such as SWOT and Porter's five-technique. Collectively, this research report offers a reliable evaluation of the global market to present the overall framework of businesses. Attractions of the Investor Relationship Management Software Market Report: - The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, historic market (2015-2019) and forecast (2020-2026) - The report covers in-detail insights about the competitor's overview, company share analysis, key market developments, and their key strategies - The report outlines drivers, restraints, unmet needs, and trends that are currently affecting the market - The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and start-up's details that are actively working in the market - The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenario Get 10% 25% Discount on The Report @ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/request-discount/131078-global-investor-relationship-management-software-market Key Points Covered in the Table of Content: Chapter 1 to explain Introduction, market review, market risk and opportunities, market driving force, product scope of Investor Relationship Management Software Market; Chapter 2 to inspect the leading manufacturers (Cost Structure, Raw Material) with sales Analysis, revenue Analysis, and price Analysis of Investor Relationship Management Software Market; Chapter 3 to show the focused circumstance among the best producers, with deals, income, and Investor Relationship Management Software market share 2020; Chapter 4 to display the regional analysis of Global Investor Relationship Management Software Market with revenue and sales of an industry, from 2020 to 2022; Chapter 5, 6, 7 to analyze the key countries (United States, China, Europe, Japan, Korea & Taiwan), with sales, revenue and market share in key regions; Chapter 8 and 9 to exhibit International and Regional Marketing Type Analysis, Supply Chain Analysis, Trade Type Analysis; Chapter 10 and 11 to analyze the market by product type and application/end users (industry sales, share, and growth rate) from 2020 to 2026 Chapter 12 to show Investor Relationship Management Software Market forecast by regions, forecast by type and forecast by application with revenue and sales, from 2021 to 2026; Chapter 13, 14 & 15 to specify Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data source of Investor Relationship Management Software market buyers, merchants, dealers, sales channel. Browse for Full Report at @: https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/reports/131078-global-investor-relationship-management-software-market Investor Relationship Management Software Market research provides answers to the following key questions: - What is the expected growth rate of the Investor Relationship Management Software Market? - What will be the Investor Relationship Management Software Market size for the forecast period, 2021 2026? - What are the main driving forces responsible for changing the Investor Relationship Management Software Market trajectory? - Who are the big suppliers that dominate the Investor Relationship Management Software Market across different regions? Which are their wins to stay ahead in the competition? - What are the Investor Relationship Management Software Market trends business owners can rely upon in the coming years? - What are the threats and challenges expected to restrict the progress of the Investor Relationship Management Software Market across different countries? About Advance Market Analytics Advance Market Analytics is Global leaders of Market Research Industry provides the quantified B2B research to Fortune 500 companies on high growth emerging opportunities which will impact more than 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Our Analyst is tracking high growth study with detailed statistical and in-depth analysis of market trends & dynamics that provide a complete overview of the industry. We follow an extensive research methodology coupled with critical insights related industry factors and market forces to generate the best value for our clients. We Provides reliable primary and secondary data sources, our analysts and consultants derive informative and usable data suited for our clients business needs. The research study enable clients to meet varied market objectives a from global footprint expansion to supply chain optimization and from competitor profiling to M&As. For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. JCPenney is partnering with the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii) JCPenney has partnered with the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii) to improve its supply chain sustainability performance related to energy, water, and chemicals in 2021 and beyond. Aii is a strategic partner of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), an industry collaboration of leading brands and retailers. Its Clean by Design programme helps SAC members like JCPenney, Target, Gap, and Levi Strauss provide strategic suppliers with subsidised environmental engineering support to improve energy efficiency and transition to more sustainable fuel sources, such as biomass and solar energy. Programme costs are shared between Aii, the company, and the supplier, highlighting the collaboration and collective investment needed to create a positive impact and move the apparel and textile industry forward. "We are pleased to see JCPenney take this leadership position by recognising the serious environmental impacts of wet processing activities in tier 2 production by joining our Clean by Design programme," said Lewis Perkins, president, Apparel Impact Institute. "As the world seeks to build back with better solutions, JCPenney is 'leaning in' to this opportunity to improve existing facilities in the ways that will have the most positive impact for both sustainability and production cost." JCPenney began participating in the Clean by Design programme in 2015 with select Chinese suppliers and is now collaborating with suppliers Daysun, Masood, Nishat, and Soorty to enrol four additional facilities in the programme in Pakistan and Vietnam. The selected mill and laundry facilities are strategic production partners for JCPenney private brands located in high water stress communities and have demonstrated a commitment to improving their sustainability performance. These types of tier 2 facilities often represent the largest emissions hotspots, making them prime candidates for Aii's Clean by Design programme. Enrollment in Aii's Clean by Design programming will continue on a yearly basis. The new ownership group of JCPenney launched a search for a new CEO last week to replace Jill Soltau who stepped down from the role at the end of last month. Research published at the end of last year pointed to wet processing as the weak link in fashion supply chains, and offered recommendations for fashion brands to move towards more sustainable practices. A new 'Wet Processing Guidebook' has also been launched to help clothing and textile companies to reduce the use of water, energy and harmful chemicals during the wet processing stage. Actor Amit Sadh, who plays Kargil war hero Major Deependra Singh Sengar in an upcoming web series Jeet Ki Zid, offered his best wishes to the brave officers of the Indian Army on the occasion of Army Day on Friday Image Source: IANS News Actor Amit Sadh, who plays Kargil war hero Major Deependra Singh Sengar in an upcoming web series Jeet Ki Zid, offered his best wishes to the brave officers of the Indian Army on the occasion of Army Day on Friday Image Source: IANS News Mumbai, Jan 15 : Actor Amit Sadh, who plays Kargil war hero Major Deependra Singh Sengar in an upcoming web series Jeet Ki Zid, offered his best wishes to the brave officers of the Indian Army on the occasion of Army Day on Friday. "Every Indian soldier is a shining example of valor and courage. They are the sole reason that every Indian citizen can sleep peacefully. There is nothing that can even come close to the selfless work our Indian Army does to protect us. I offer my best wishes and salute the brave officers of the Indian army on the occasion of Army Day and I feel honoured to have essayed the role of Major Deependra Singh Sengar in 'Jeet Ki Zid'," said Amit. The series, which also features Amrita Puri and Sushant Singh, is directed by Vishal Mangalorkar and produced by Boney Kapoor, Arunava Joy Sengupta and Akash Chawla. The makers of the show got expert help from Special Forces consultants and mission choreographers Colonel Ashok Galoth and Major Arjun Galoth on the show. "I am glad I could be part of such a project which shows the dedication and sheer will of the Indian Army. I am glad that the makers of the show reached out to us and took our suggestions to help create this show. It was indeed a fulfilling experience," said Colonel Ashok Galoth. Major Arjun Galoth shared that Major Deependra Singh Sengar's story is not only an "inspiration for us, but for the entire world", adding: "We have helped the team in our own little way with the basics of our routine, but the actual credit goes to the makers of the show who thought of creating an entire web series on such an inspirational story". Jeet Ki Zid is slated to premiere on January 22 on Zee5. In the footsteps of Pope Francis, the president of the Pakistani Bishops Conference has announced that the Church in Pakistan would observe the current year as the Year of St. Joseph. By Robin Gomes The Pakistan Catholic Bishops' Conference (PCBC) has announced that it is dedicating 2021 as the Year of St. Joseph. PCBC president Archbishop Joseph Arshad of the Diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi made the announcement of the yearlong celebration in a video message on 12 January on the archdiocesan YouTube channel Ave Maria Catholic TV. The Pakistani bishops initiative comes in the footsteps of Pope Francis, who on 8 December issued an Apostolic Letter Patris corde (With a Fathers Heart), proclaiming a Year of Saint Joseph, starting on 8 December 2020 and ending on the same day in 2021. The Popes letter marked 150 years since the decree of Pope Pius IX, Quemadmodum Deus, which declared St Joseph Patron of the Universal Church. In his video message, Archbishop Arshad recalled that Blessed Pope Pius IX had also declared 1870 as a Year of St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church. To celebrate the anniversary, he said, we, in our diocese, also began this year on January 1, 2021, so that we may give more reverence to St. Joseph and change our lives. Archbishop Arshad lauded St. Joseph as a tender and loving father who cared for Jesus and his family. He was also a righteous man who, faithful to the will of God, contributed to our salvation. His life was full of love and simplicity. He noted that St. Joseph worked hard as an ordinary carpenter and cared for his family so that the task God had entrusted to the Child Jesus might be accomplished. Just as he is the head of the Holy Family and the protector of Mother Mary and Jesus, the archbishop noted, he is also the protector and defender of the Church and of the poor, the needy and all of suffering humanity. As we are celebrating the Year of St. Joseph, the Pakistani bishops president noted, the role of parents and especially of fathers is very important for us. The father of the family needs to follow the footsteps of St. Joseph in caring for and protecting his family. Archbishop Arshad concluded his message praying that the Year of St. Joseph might be a blessing for all people and for their families, as well as for the Church. WASHINGTON - As rioters overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, an officer guarding the building shook hands with two people in the mob and admitted defeat, according to the account the men provided FBI agents. Robert Bauer and Edward Hemenway told an FBI agent that after they rushed into the building with the crowd, one Capitol Police officer shook their hands, gave one a partial hug and told them both that "it's your house now." "Sorry," Hemenway recalled telling the officer. "It's your house now, man," he said the officer replied. Bauer told the FBI he "believed that the policeman was acting out of fear," according to an affidavit filed Thursday in federal court in the District. No specific officer is identified in charging papers by federal law enforcement officials, who are relying on the defendants' own recounting of their experience inside the Capitol. Other court documents have described Capitol Police officers' failed attempts to hold back the crowd. One said he was unable to detain a rioter because there were too many others threatening him. More than 50 D.C. police officers and an unknown number of Capitol Police officers suffered injuries. But the actions of some Capitol Police officers have come under scrutiny. Several have been suspended and more than a dozen others are under investigation for suspected involvement with or inappropriate support for the protest. "The department is actively reviewing video and other open source materials of some USCP officers and officials that appear to be in violation of department regulations and policies," a Justice Department spokeswoman said. "Our Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating these behaviors for disciplinary action, up to, and including, termination. Several USCP officers have already been suspended pending the outcome of their investigations." The chief of the Capitol Police and House and Senate sergeants at arms have all resigned in the wake of the attack that left a Capitol Police officer and four rioters dead. It took nearly four hours to secure the building from rioters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Another court record unsealed Friday, after the arrest of a Rochester, N.Y., man named Dominic Pezzola, highlights fears of what could have happened had the rioters reached the public officials formally counting the electoral college votes. A witness told the FBI that after the riot, Pezzola said "they would have killed [Vice President] Mike Pence if given the chance." The mob came very close to reaching Pence, who was not evacuated from the Senate chamber until about 14 minutes after Capitol Police announced that the complex had been breached. Pezzola used a Capitol Police riot shield to break one of the building windows, according to the FBI. He is accused of trespassing, destroying government property and obstructing an official proceeding; the final charge is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors said in court papers that Jacob Anthony Chansley, the shirtless, tattooed man often referred to as "QAnon Shaman," likewise wanted to "capture and assassinate elected officials" and left a note on Pence's chair reading, "It's only a matter of time, justice is coming." Later, in a hearing in federal court in Arizona, where Chansley was arrested, Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Allison walked back the claim of an assassination plot, saying that while it "may very well be appropriate at a trial," raising it at this stage could "mislead the court." Allison asked that the reference to an assassination plot be stricken from the record. Defense attorney Gerald Williams said in court that his client "was there merely acting as a protester" and that there was no evidence he engaged in violence. But Magistrate Judge Deborah Fine ordered him held until trial, citing evidence that he incited the mob inside the Capitol and ignored pleas from police to desist. "This is not a protest. This is a riot. This is an insurrection," she said. "Mr. Chansley's idea of protesting is committing the unlawful acts that we're discussing here," which she described as "frightening not only to people at the Capitol but people across the United States of America." In the District, acting U.S. attorney Michael Sherwin downplayed the idea Friday of a specific conspiracy or plan to kidnap or kill lawmakers. "We don't have any direct evidence of kill capture teams," Sherwin said at a news briefing. Sherwin said federal prosecutors have charged 98 people in last week's riot and had 275 open investigations, and he expected that number to swell in the days and weeks ahead. "Even your friends and family are tipping us off," said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven D'Antuono. "So you might want to consider turning yourself in instead of wondering when we're going to come knocking on your door. Because we will." Officials noted that among those already charged were current law enforcement officials, including two from Virginia. "We don't care what your profession is, who you are, who you're affiliated with," Sherwin said. "If you were conducting or engaged in criminal activity, we will charge you and you will be arrested." Pezzola is associated with the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group with ties to white nationalism that has been linked to previous violence in Washington. A Texas man was arrested Friday and charged in connection with making threats regarding the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, allegedly including that he and others would return on Jan. 19 carrying weapons and massing in numbers so large that no army could match them, prosecutors said. Troy Anthony Smocks, 58, of Dallas, was charged by criminal complaint with knowingly transmitting threats in interstate commerce. A D.C. police affidavit alleges that Smocks traveled to the Washington area on Jan. 5, then posted Parler messages under the name "ColonelTPerez" or "@Colonel007." In messages viewed tens of thousands of times, Smocks allegedly said that he and others would "hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are," specifically threatening "RINOS, Dems, and Tech Execs," prosecutors said. In a post copied and pasted on another social media site where it was viewed at least 54,000 times, a D.C. police affidavit said, Smocks went on to say, "We now have the green light. [All] who resist US are enemies of Our Constitution, and must be treated as such. Today, the cowards ran as We took the Capital. ... It wasn't the building that We wanted. . . it was them!" Smocks has made a flight reservation to leave the United States Jan. 15, police said. Also arrested was a woman prosecutors say triumphantly carried out a piece of a wooden sign for the speaker of the House. Bauer traveled to the Capitol from Kentucky with his wife, according to court papers, stopping along the way to pick up his cousin Hemenway in Winchester, Va., according to the court papers. Both are charged with trespassing; it was not immediately clear whether they had attorneys. Bauer's wife is not accused of entering the Capitol; according to the court records, when they approached the building, she went back to her hotel. They came for the rally because of "crazy things" they heard on social media, Hemenway told the FBI. Then President Donald Trump said "something about taking Pennsylvania Avenue," and they followed the crowd to the Capitol, according to the court papers. As they approached the scaffolding set up for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, Bauer said he saw people throwing objects at police in riot gear. He said he told them: "What the hell are you doing? They have stood down." They then followed a crowd into the building, where they encountered the police officer who allegedly told them they had won. Another woman charged Friday, Jennifer Leigh Ryan, of Texas, planned to storm the Capitol before Trump spoke, according to court documents. "We're going to go down and storm the Capitol. They're down there right now, and that's why we came and so that's what we are going to do. So wish me luck," she said in a video posted on Facebook that morning. Later, the FBI said, she posted a video of herself entering the building and saying: "Life or death, it doesn't matter. Here we go." Turning the camera to her face, she added, "Y'all know who to hire for your Realtor. Jenna Ryan for your Realtor." Ryan told a local news station that she flew to D.C. on a private plane "because our president . . . asked us to go." It was not immediately clear whether Bauer, Hemenway, Pezzola or Ryan had attorneys. - - - The Washington Post's Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report. Dallas, Texas, Jan. 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Most people are familiar with the term resisting arrest. While you may think you know what it means, are you truly familiar with how someone can get charged with resisting arrest in Texas? Specifically, are there ever instances in which its okay to resist arrest? What if a police officer is placing you under arrest even though you havent done anything wrong? Police officers in Texas are required to make a lawful, proper arrest any time they take someone into custody. There are rules for officers just as there are laws the public must follow. When police officers violate these rules, someone who is wrongfully charged with resisting arrest may be able to get the charges against them reduced or dismissed. Rules for Texas Police When Making an Arrest Police officers in Texas must follow the law when it comes to placing an individual under arrest, and are only permitted to arrest someone under one or more of the following circumstances: The officer must have an arrest warrant issued by a judge. The officer must have probable cause to believe the individual carried out a crime. The officer must witness the person commit a crime firsthand. Assuming the police can justify placing someone under arrest based on any of the foregoing circumstances, they must do so without engaging in excessive or unnecessary force. In fact, theyre supposed to use only the minimum amount of force required to safely take the person into custody. Obviously, the level of force will increase if the person is fighting the arrest. For example, if the person is hitting or kicking the police officer, the officer has the right to protect himself or herself while making sure the person doesnt sustain injuries due to being combative. Do You Ever Have a Right to Resist Arrest? The short answer is: no, you dont have the right to resist arrest in Texas, even if you think the police are wrong to arrest you. Under Texas law, a person can be charged with resisting arrest if they stop a police officer from making an arrest. This can involve trying to stop the office from arresting them personally or getting in the way of an officer who is trying to place a third party under arrest. Its important to note, however, that an individual in Texas cant claim that their resistance was justified or excusable because an officer carried out an unlawful arrest. To put it another way, you cant resist arrest just because you believe you did nothing wrong or that the police officer broke the law by arresting you unlawfully. Understandably, many people find this controversial. After all, no one wants to be arrested when they havent done anything wrong or when an officer is acting wrongfully, but you must consider that by complying, you are protecting yourself. If you resist arrest, you risk having excessive force used against you, including a taser or other weapon. As a general rule, you should be respectful toward the police. While you dont have to volunteer any information to them beyond your basic identifying information, its a good idea to be polite. If you disagree with the arrest itself, you should wait to take it up with a civil rights lawyer in the civil system. Ultimately, its always best to cooperate with the police and then contact a Texas criminal defense lawyer as soon as possible. Depending on the facts of your case, you could have a civil claim against the arresting officer or police department that could result in you receiving money damages in the event you can show the officers used excessive force and violated your constitutional rights. The Penalties for Resisting Arrest Prosecutors in Texas take resisting arrest charges very seriously. If youve been charged with resisting arrest its in your best interest to get in touch with a Texas criminal defense lawyer as soon as possible. A knowledgeable criminal defense lawyer can analyze the facts in your case and make recommendations for the best course of action in your case. If you get charged with resisting arrest in Texas, you can be charged with a Class A misdemeanor for a first office. However, if you have a criminal record and you get charged with resisting arrest you could be facing a state jail felony. This could result in a sentence of up to one year in state jail, along with a maximum $4,000 fine. Discuss Your Case with a Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer In many cases, prosecutors stack a resisting arrest charge onto a long list of criminal charges against an individual. This can result in a conviction that leads to a longer prison sentence. If you have been wrongfully charged with resisting arrest, its important to discuss your case with an experienced criminal defense lawyer in TX. About Dallas Criminal Defense Attorney Mick Mickelsen Contact Info Defense Lawyers Broden & Mickelsen, LLP 2600 State St Dallas, Texas 75204 (214) 720-9552 Broden & Mickelsen Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Sources: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.38.htm Media Contact: For media contact and to arrange an expert interview with Dallas Defense Lawyers Broden & Mickelsen, contact KISS PR: Az@kisspr.com This news has been published for the above source. Broden Mickelsen Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers [ID=16406] Disclaimer: The information does not constitute advice or an offer to buy. Any purchase made from this story is made at your own risk. Consult an expert advisor/health professional before any such purchase. Any purchase made from this link is subject to the final terms and conditions of the website's selling. The content publisher and its distribution partners do not take any responsibility directly or indirectly. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the company this news is about. Attachments The House of Representatives impeachment debate did not suggest the GOP is moving in the right direction An explosion caused by a police munition lights up the US Capitol building as supporters of Donal Trump gather during last week's disturbance. Photo: Reuters/Leah Millis Last Tuesday night, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the number three Republican in the House, announced that she would support impeachment by issuing a blistering attack on President Donald Trumps role in instigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the constitution, she declared with Margaret Thatcher-style moral clarity in a statement. Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been telling associates that he, too, believes Mr Trump committed impeachable offenses. So I tuned in to the House impeachment debate on Wednesday, with popcorn and a cup of coffee close at hand, full of anticipation. Would this be the day when the Republican Party finally began to turn the page on the odious Trump era? Would this be the moment when the GOP rediscovered some higher principle beyond Trump can do no wrong? I was searching hard for signs of hope, and I found a few but not nearly as many as I would have liked. Read More For the most part, the Republican members of the House who rose to speak sounded just like the anchors and guests on Fox News which is no doubt where most of their tedious talking points came from. Few Republicans actually defended what Mr Trump did in inciting a mob to invade the Capitol just as a year ago, when Mr Trump was last impeached, few defended his attempted blackmail of Ukraine. Once again, Republicans resorted to denial and deflection. Most of their arguments this time were procedural claiming that House Democrats were rushing the impeachment process by not holding hearings and gathering witnesses. Of course, if Democrats were to launch a lengthy investigation, Republicans would argue that its too late to impeach after Mr Trump leaves office. They simply have no credibility complaining about the process, given that Senate Republicans refused to call any witnesses during Mr Trumps first impeachment trial. For that matter, Senate Republicans trampled on democratic norms by refusing even to hold confirmation hearings for President Barack Obamas choice for the Supreme Court during his last year in office and then rushing to confirm Mr Trumps choice right before an election he lost. Republicans bring up due process for the same reason that criminal defence lawyers often make procedural objections: because they cant challenge the overwhelming evidence of their clients guilt. Another GOP tactic is whataboutism citing alleged Democratic offences to excuse Mr Trumps misconduct. They could not, of course, find any evidence that Democrats had masterminded an attack on the Capitol. So they simply lied and claimed that Democrats had approved of violence during Black Lives Matter protests. In point of fact, leading Democrats from Joe Biden on down consistently denounced the violence; Mr Biden certainly never called on anti-racism protesters to be wild, as Trump did with Maga protesters. Republican Ken Buck had to stoop to equating rhetorical insults against Mr Trump from entertainers Robert De Niro, Madonna and Kathy Griffin with the storming of the Capitol. Sorry, theres no comparison. The Trumpist cult of victimhood was also much in evidence. It reached its ultimate absurdity with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-aligned Republican from Georgia, who gave her nationally televised floor speech in the House while wearing a face mask that read Censored. The most consistent Republican theme was calling for unity and alleging that impeachment would be too divisive. To hear them tell it, the obligation to bring the nation together rests entirely with Democrats. House Republicans did not call on Mr Trump to renounce his lies about the election, and not a single one of the 139 House Republicans who voted to toss out votes for Joe Biden last week apologised for trying to subvert democracy. Even as they were preaching unity, Republicans were attacking Democrats. Trevor Noah of The Daily Show captured the absurdity, tweeting: EVERY GOP CONGRESSMAN: To all my Radical Dumbocrat colleagues: We need healing and unity. I say this not just to the Commies, but also to the Libtards. This House debate wasnt as dismaying as the one during the first impeachment. Ten principled House Republicans actually voted to impeach this time around up from zero last time. And even though House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was a no-vote, he went further than most of his colleagues by admitting that the president bears responsibility for Wednesdays attack on Congress by mob rioters. Read More But on the whole, judging by the House debate, most Republicans are not ready to move on from the worst president in US history. Some are Maga (or QAnon) true believers. Some are afraid of being physically attacked if they call Mr Trump to account. Many others are simply afraid of the political consequences of crossing a president who still has the support of roughly 75pc of their base. In the end, 95pc of House Republicans put loyalty to Mr Trump above loyalty to the constitution. That is not good news for the future of the GOP. Lets hope the Senate does better, whenever it gets around to holding the trial. (Washington Post) DRESDEN, Germany, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Steinbach nutcracker manufactory from Germany is currently presenting the new collection for 2021 in their showroom in Atlanta. In addition to Santas, Kings and Fairy Tale Characters, this year there is an absolute specialty: The COVID-19 Fighter. He is a doctor who crushes the coronavirus and thus symbolically saves human kind. CEO Rico Paul proud of his COVID-19 Fighter nutcracker Product image of the COVID-19 Fighter nutcracker "For centuries the traditional purpose of nutcrackers has been to protect people from evil spirits and create beautiful moments. This is exactly the meaning of our COVID-19 Fighter, who should bring back the hope of freedom - parallel to the start of the global vaccination," says Rico Paul, CEO of Steinbach Volkskunst GmbH. "The sales started during the trade fair in Atlanta and the response has been overwhelming. We sold out the entire inventory within a few minutes only and now have to reproduce as quick as possible," continues Paul. Nutcrackers found their way into peoples living rooms in Germany more than 100 years ago. The sight should cheer up the owners during hard times and spend happy moments. The legend says that a nutcracker represents power and strength and serves like a trusty watch dog guarding your family from evil spirits and danger. A fierce protector, the nutcracker bares its teeth to the evil spirits and serves as the traditional messenger of good luck and goodwill. This tradition was carried to America by German emigrants. Steinbach has been producing handmade nutcrackers in Germany for decades, especially for the American market, to create golden hours and make people happy. More information about the company and the history of nutcrackers www.steinbach-volkskunst.com Contact Information CEO Rico Paul phone +49 (0) 172 7502092 E-Mail: [email protected] Steinbach Volkskunst GmbH Leipziger Strae 33 01097 Dresden / Germany SOURCE Steinbach Volkskunst GmbH New Delhi, Jan 15 : Over 22 billion records were exposed worldwide amid 730 publicly disclosed data breaches in 2020, a new report revealed on Friday. Thirty five percent of breaches were linked to ransomware attacks, resulting in tremendous financial cost, while 14 per cent of breaches were the result of email compromises, according to an analysis of breach data by cyber exposure company Tenable's Security Response Team (SRT) from January through October last year. One of the overarching themes of the threat landscape in 2020 was that threat actors relied on unpatched vulnerabilities in their attacks as well as chaining together multiple vulnerabilities as part of their attacks. "Every day, cybersecurity professionals in India and the rest of the world are faced with new challenges and vulnerabilities that can put their organisations at risk," said Satnam Narang, Staff Research Engineer at Tenable. "The 18,358 vulnerabilities disclosed in 2020 alone reflects a new normal and a clear sign that the job of a cyber defender is only getting more difficult as they navigate the ever-expanding attack surface," Narang added. From 2015 to 2020, the number of reported common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) increased at an average annual percentage growth rate of 36.6 per cent. In 2020, 18,358 CVEs were reported, representing a 6 per cent increase over the 17,305 reported in 2019, and a 183 per cent increase over the 6,487 disclosed in 2015. "Pre-existing vulnerabilities in virtual private network (VPN) solutions - many of which were initially disclosed in 2019 or earlier -- continue to remain a favorite target for cybercriminals and nation-state groups," the report mentioned. Web browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge are the primary target for zero-day vulnerabilities, accounting for over 35 per cent of all zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild, it added. "In 2021, it's essential that we have the tools, awareness and intelligence to effectively reduce risk and eliminate blind spots. It's only through looking at where we've come from that we can effectively plan for what lies ahead," Narang noted. SPRINGFIELD Anthony Deordio, 46, of North Adams, was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in federal prison for child exploitation, manufacturing and distributing child pornography. It is the lengthiest sentence of the sort in Springfields federal court in recent history. U.S. District Court Mark Mastroianni sentenced Deordio, tacking on a lifetime of supervised release, although Deordio will be 106 if he survives the penalty. In August, Deordio pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, three counts of advertising child pornography, two counts of distribution of child pornography, two counts of transportation of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography, according to court records. In November 2017, Deordio used a minor victim to produce child pornography, Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a statement. The video file he produced was later recovered in a separate jurisdiction, and further investigation led to the identification of Deordio as the perpetrator. Deordio was previously convicted of possession of child pornography in state court in 2006. He still faces a state charge of child rape aggravated by age difference. The Berkshire District Attorneys Office alleged previously that Deordio raped an 8-year-old girl in North Adams on Nov. 1, 2017. A status hearing in is scheduled for Jan. 20 in Berkshire Superior Court. Man from Varanasi held for abducting DGCA employee: Police India oi-Deepika S New Delhi, Jan 15: A 24-year-old man and a taxi driver were arrested for allegedly abducting an employee of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and stealing his mobile phone, police here said on Friday. The accused were identified as Vaibhav Chaturvedi and Kawar Singh (37), the cab driver, they added. Chaturvedi came to Delhi from Varanasi on January 7, the police said, adding that as his plane was about to land in the national capital, he wanted to go to the washroom but was not allowed by the flight staff, which led to an argument between the two sides. The next day, Chaturvedi, along with the taxi driver, went to the DGCA office to lodge a complaint about the incident. He claimed that he saw three-four persons in an inebriated state at the DGCA office and got angry, the police said. Chaturvedi then posed as a senior official and took Surender Singh, a junior secretariat attendant at the DGCA office, to the Safdarjung Hospital forcibly in the taxi to conduct his medical examination, according to the police. The medical examination could not be conducted but Chaturvedi took away the DGCA employee''s mobile phone and identity card. He also took away the mobile phone of one of Singh''s colleagues at the hospital, a senior police officer said. The accused subsequently dropped the DGCA employees near the Kotla traffic signal on BP Marg but did not return their phones. Instead, he gave his mobile phone number to them and fled the spot, the officer said. Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Atul Kumar Thakur said during the investigation, CCTV footage was obtained from the DGCA office and the Safdarjung Hospital and a detailed enquiry was carried out. Chaturvedi was found to be living in Rohini. He was apprehended from his house and at his instance, the taxi driver was also arrested. Two mobile phones and a DGCA identity card were recovered from the possession of the accused, the officer said. Chaturvedi is a native of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. He did his graduation in business administration and law and had worked as a contractor for road construction in Varanasi but was currently unemployed, the police said. Chaturvedi knew the taxi driver for the last six months, they said, adding that he hired his vehicle on several occasions. The taxi driver told the police that he followed the instructions of the accused as he thought that the latter was a senior officer. Former Nairobi Woman Representative aspirant Karen Nyamu has come out to speak about her dating life after media reports linked her to Kikuyu benga musician Samuel Muchoki alias Samidoh. Speaking on Radio Jambo, Nyamu explained that Samidoh is a good friend. I dont care what people say about me, I dont have the time, they can say all they want. I know my truth, I know him as a man who loves his wife and family, she said. Karen also confirmed that she knows Samidohs wife. Yes, I know her, but our circles are different and I know she has no beef with me. Because she knows the truth. She knows Samidoh is my friend. Asked about the viral video she posted of herself and Samidoh in Dubai, Karen said: Samidoh is my friend. I thought I would post it like my friend but kwa comments, ilileta mambo mingi and because when posting the video, that was not my intention, I decided to pull it down. I had to consider that he is a brand. And normally I dont delete content, but I saw his family would be affected. The lawyer also revealed that she was in a relationship with a married politician who was violent. Karen said she was in her early 20s and the relationship lasted more than two year. She said the experience changed her mind about marriage forever. I dont believe in marriage when it comes to my life. I love children, I love my children, but I dont want to get married. There are good men out there, but I have made that decision from a past experience I went through, she said. My experience in marriage was not good, there was violence, he was so overprotective, obsessed and insecure. Nyamu said she never reported the politician to police because she was afraid and was working in his company. I did not report because it would have been a waste of time, but I am proud I got out of that situation, she said. I was very young and the guy was famous. I felt very intimidated that even if I report, nothing would be done to him, and so I did not report. I thank God I left the relationship. If 2020 showed us anything, its how everything can change in an instant and that theres an inextricable link between Customer Success and the resilience of SaaS organizations in bouts of upheaval. ChurnZero, ESG, and Higher Logic released the inaugural Customer Success Leadership Study, which uncovers the latest trends and challenges facing the Customer Success industry and the influence they have within their organization. In this study, 586 Customer Success professionals were surveyed about their goals, processes, and technology. The majority of survey respondents work at B2B SaaS companies with 51 to 200 total employees and $5M to $10M in annual revenue. This debut report is just the start as we aim to continuously survey the Customer Success community to uncover trends over time, said Abby Hammer, Chief Customer Officer at ChurnZero. Because if 2020 showed us anything, its how everything can change in an instant and that theres an inextricable link between Customer Success and the resilience of SaaS organizations in bouts of upheaval. After analyzing hundreds of survey responses and consulting a team of Customer Success experts to distill the data into top conclusions and recommendations, the report surfaced four key focus areas for Customer Success leaders: Influence Within the Organization Organizational Alignment Customer Success Operations Goals and Aspirations By sharing the top initiatives and issues facing Customer Success leaders today, we hope to move the Customer Success conversation forward from achieving industry validation to innovation, scale, and maturity, said Michael Harnum, CEO at ESG. Read the full Customer Success Leadership Study here- https://esgsuccess.com/report-inaugural-customer-success-leadership-study/ About ChurnZero ChurnZero helps subscription businesses fight customer churn. Its software solutions allow businesses to understand how their customers use their product, assess their health and their likelihood to renew, and give businesses the means to personalize the customer experience through timely and relevant touchpoints. ChurnZero is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and is backed by leading angels and venture capital firms such as Baird Capital, Grotech Ventures and MIddleland Capital. For more information, visit https://churnzero.net/. About ESG ESG delivers Customer Success as a Service (CSaaS), enabling you to build, operationalize, and transform your CS organization. Were here to help you improve metrics and accomplish your ultimate goal of reduced churn and increased retention. Our services combine consultation, process development, people, and automation to increase the capabilities of your Customer Success organization. Learn more at https://esgsuccess.com. About Higher Logic Higher Logic, the industry-leading, human-focused engagement platform, delivers powerful online communities and communication tools to engage your users at every stage of their journey. With Higher Logic, you get a robust platform plus over a decade of experience in building sophisticated community engagement programs. We serve over 3,000 customers and 50 million users across 21 countries worldwide and support 2.4 billion community interactions annually. Learn more at https://www.higherlogic.com. Nurse Nicole Metko, right, vaccinates nursing student Allison Chang with the first of a two-dose shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Jeff Miller The demand for COVID-19 vaccines continues to outpace supply, forcing public health officials to decide who should be first in line for a shot, even among those in the same pool of eligible vaccine recipients. To assist these efforts, researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Health have developed a tool that incorporates a person's age and socioeconomic status to prioritize vaccine distribution among people who otherwise share similar risks due to their jobs. The tool helps identify those who are at greater risk of severe complications or death from COVID-19. UW Health has implemented the prioritization algorithm to equitably provide limited doses to frontline health care workers. Other organizations can also access the freely available tool to guide their own vaccine distribution plans. While the UW-Madison tool was designed with the first phase of eligible recipients in mind, it could be used as vaccine distribution expands to larger populations. As the eligible population increases, the gap between initial supply and demand could grow, making such prioritization tools even more helpful. "Knowing we're going to have limited vaccine for some time, we wanted to develop an algorithm to equitably distribute vaccinations within these risk groups," says Grace Flood, the director of clinical analytics and reporting in the Office of Population Health at UW Health, who helped lead development of the tool along with the Health Innovation Program within SMPH. In addition to age, the algorithm uses the Social Vulnerability Index to measure a person's susceptibility to severe COVID-19 based on where they live. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed the SVI metric to help emergency responders identify which neighborhoods and towns will require the most support following natural disasters or public health emergencies. The SVI incorporates 15 measures in four categories: socioeconomic status, housing composition and disability, minority status and language, and housing and transportation. Race and ethnicity have been closely correlated with higher COVID-19-related hospitalizations and mortality. Flood and her team incorporated the SVI in accordance with a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that recommended using the index to fairly distribute vaccines. Because Wisconsin publishes data about COVID-19 deaths at the census-tract level, "we were able to determine the relationship for risk of mortality between age and SVI," says Flood. This relationship allowed the researchers to verify that age and SVI combined provide an accurate estimate of an individual's risk. Since age and SVI are readily available pieces of information about an individual and each contributes to COVID-19 risk, an algorithm that incorporates both elements may serve as one of the best ways to distribute vaccines until supply catches up to demand, says Flood. The researchers have published their algorithm in the Annals of Family Medicine COVID-19 collection and made it available for download on the project's website. Explore further COVID-19 vaccine recommended for all Americans over 65 More information: Flood, Grace et al. A prioritization algorithm for healthcare personnel for the CDC's COVID-19 Phase 1a vaccine distribution plan: Journal information: Annals of Family Medicine Flood, Grace et al. A prioritization algorithm for healthcare personnel for the CDC's COVID-19 Phase 1a vaccine distribution plan: deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/163774 Even before the pandemic, Indias banks were struggling. With among the highest ratios of bad loans in the world, at least five lenders have had to be rescued from collapse since late 2018. Several more were in a precarious state. Already creaking under the strain, the sector now faces one of its biggest tests: emerging intact from the crisis. A strict lockdown in place for several months from March was devastating for the businesses of borrowers big and small. This in turn prompted a historic economic contraction forecast by the IMF at 10.3 per cent for the year ending in March that was worsened by the spiralling Covid-19 caseload. But while emergency government relief measures for borrowers helped soften the immediate blow to banks, this support is now being phased out. This is like being in the middle of a storm, said Uday Kotak, chief executive of Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of Indias largest private banks, which like most banks took advantage of the support. One hopes that most of the boats reach the other side of the shore, but you cant take it for granted. Mr Kotak, who is one of the richest bankers in the world with a net worth of more than $16bn, added that with lockdowns now lifted and case numbers on a downward trend: For the financial sector players who are able to get on to the other side, there will also be significant opportunity. Swords hanging over the system Pandemic-hit borrowers had until the end of 2020 to apply to restructure debts with banks through a one-off scheme designed to prevent a sharp rise in defaults. Other measures including a moratorium on loan repayments in place from March to August, followed by a Supreme Court order instructing banks not to classify loans as defaults mean the extent of problems will only become apparent in the months to come. The Reserve Bank of India expects the ratio of non-performing banking assets to rise from 7.5 per cent in September 2020 to 13.5-14.8 per cent in September 2021 Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India, the countrys central bank, acknowledged that the relief measures may have masked the extent of the damage, saying in a report last month that the asset quality of the banking system may deteriorate sharply, going forward. By any measure, the ratio of non-performing banking assets is expected to shoot up. The RBI is forecasting an increase from 7.5 per cent in September 2020 to between 13.5 per cent and 14.8 per cent in September 2021. Fitch said last year that Indias banks will need anywhere from $15bn to $58bn in recapitalisation by 2022. There are still quite a few swords hanging over the banking system, said Ajay Mahajan, chief executive of rating agency Care and a former executive at several Indian and foreign banks. Well have to see the outcomes to pass a judgment as to how the system has reacted to the entire pandemic. Chronic bad debt problems The countrys banking system is dominated by a dozen state-owned banks that control about two-thirds of assets, the legacy of a 1969 socialist-era bank nationalisation. But private competitors like Kotak Mahindra and HDFC Bank have gained share since the 1990s and 2000s as the economy has liberalised. Foreign names like Citibank, HSBC and Deutsche Bank have also built up local operations focused on niche markets like retail banking for the wealthy and distressed debt. The sectors chronic bad-debt problems have prompted several near-misses. In early March last year, the central bank had to intervene to rescue scandal-hit Yes Bank, one of the countrys largest private lenders, from collapse. In November it stepped in once again to oversee a takeover by Singapores DBS Bank of Lakshmi Vilas Bank, a regional lender whose decline predates the pandemic and had rattled markets. Private competitors like HDFC Bank have gained market share since the 1990s and 2000s as the economy has liberalised Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg Some worry that the sector, already weak before the crisis, will burden the financial system for years to come. Capital Economics, a consultancy, warned in a note that the need to address rising non-performing loans will drain profitability and restrict lending and, ultimately, growth in what had been one of the worlds fastest-expanding economies. Others hope the pandemic will force a shake-up of a moribund, scandal-prone sector that has been held back for years by the cosy nexus between tycoons, bank executives and politicians that results in the misdirection of capital into expensive vanity projects that often fail. Analysts said the best-run banks, mostly private but some state-owned, are well placed to gain market share. A recent rally in India equities, which pushed the benchmark Nifty 50 index to an all-time high this month, has helped the likes of State Bank of India and Kotak Mahindra to recapitalise swiftly, raising billions in capital to bolster their balance sheets and increase their cover against non-performing loans. An opportunity for overseas money Following the takeover of Lakshmi Vilas by DBS, other overseas banks sense an opportunity to expand if regulators have become more open to foreign capital after years of reticence. This whole Lakshmi Vilas Bank, the way the [central bank] has handled it does show some indication of things to come . . . of the fact that theres a need for foreign money, said Kaushik Shaparia, Deutsche Banks India chief executive. The [public-sector] banks ability to absorb all this is limited. Deutsche has invested some $1bn in India since late 2018, Mr Shaparia said. Foreign investors have also circled other distressed financial-sector assets. Oaktree Capital Group, the LA-based fund, is one of the final bidders for the books of Dewan Housing Finance, a shadow bank that collapsed into bankruptcy in 2019 and is the first financial company to restructure using the countrys four-year-old insolvency code, which aims to speed up the process. Some hope greater foreign participation in the financial system will address a chronic shortage in domestic capital willing to take risky bets and help speed up the often tortuous process of turning around ailing lenders. But executives and analysts said it is hard to say how much the ownership make-up of Indias banks will change and, with the impact of the pandemic still unclear, the investment case remains to be seen. Following the takeover of Lakshmi Vilas Bank by DBS, other overseas banks sense an opportunity to expand if regulators have become more open to foreign capital Alamy The later months of 2020 saw improvements in corporate earnings, demand indicators and the daily Covid-19 caseload has fallen to below 20,000 from nearly 100,000 in September. But it is unclear how many borrowers will have viable businesses once the last of the relief measures runs out and they continue repaying their debts. One has to look at the ground level reality in terms of return of the small businesses and employment to see what will be the quality of the balance sheets, said Sanjay Nayar, chairman of KKR India. The jury is out until at least March if not June to see whats the quality of the books. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state's supply of coronavirus vaccines is running low and that a majority of available doses are in arms. During a press conference on Friday morning, Cuomo revealed 74 percent of more than 1.1 million shots have been administered. Cuomo said he expected more doses of the vaccine from the federal government after officials said it would release doses in reserved. Instead, the state got 50,000 fewer doses, with its allocation dropping from 300,000 doses per week to 250,000 per week. This means there may not be enough doses to vaccinate all 7.1 million eligible people in the state after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expanded federal guidelines to include anyone 65 years old or older in the first phase. Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday (pictured) that 74% of the state's 1.1 million coronavirus vaccine doses have been injected into arms and he expected a boost in supply after federal guidelines were expanded Instead, the Trump administration cut New York's weekly allocation from 300,000 doses per week to 250,000 per week. Pictured: A nursing home resident receives the COVID-19 vaccine by a CVS Pharmacist at Harlem Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in New York, January 15 So far, in New York, 827,715 doses have been administered with 731,285 going to first doses and 96,430 for second doses At the news conference, Cuomo lamented that the Trump administration increased vaccine eligibility but did not boost the supply. Last week, federal officials recommended that all people aged 65 and older be eligible to get the shot, which New York agreed to. Cuomo said this increased the number of people eligible to be vaccinated in New York state from 2.1 million to seven million people. 'All of this volume and it has to go through the point of a needle, literally and figuratively,' he said. 'That's the situation that the federal government created. Our constraint is the federal supply. That is creating a scheduling backlog and it's creating pressure on what was supposed to be the prioritization process.' The governor said that he expected with increasing eligibility, the Trump administration would increase the number of doses sent to the state. Instead, New York's weekly allocation fell from 300,000 doses to 250,000. 'You increase the eligibility, you don't increase the supply, and now you have a very complicated situation,' Cuomo said. ' Not only did we not get more supply, we actually got less this week. 'We went from 300,000 doses to 250,000. What they did was like opening the flood gates of eligibility and you have a rush of seven million people.' Meanwhile, the state's supply is close to running out. Cuomo said 74 percent of the vaccine it receive over the first four weeks of distribution have been injected in arms. Across the state, 827,715 doses have been administered with 731,285 going to first doses and 96,430 for second doses, Cuomo said. However, the governor said not enough hospital workers have been vaccinated, which could lead to staff shortages if they contract COVID-19. 'If you're not vaccinating the nurses and the doctors, they will get sick...they will be super-spreaders,' Cuomo said. What's more, on Friday, The Washington Post reported that there is no federal reserve supply so that additional doses can be released to the states. This led many states, like New York, to increase eligibility because they believe they would be receiving more doses. 'I believe what [the administration] did was politically motivated,' Cuomo said. 'So on their way out the door they can say they made it available to everyone, and we increased supply...except they didn't.' Even if New York is soon able to get more doses, it's unclear how quickly people will be able to vaccinated. Several mass vaccination sites set up by the state, such as at the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse, say all appointments through April are full. Jurors, judges and lawyers are masked up, court rooms have been reassembled and hand sanitiser is at the ready welcome to a jury trial in the time of coronavirus. The pandemic forced the traditionally archaic justice system to ditch the four walls of the court and run cases online. The Supreme Court jury sits in the body of the court, while the lawyers have been moved up to the side. Credit:Paul Jeffers Though plea hearings, bail applications and sentencing were heard over video link, the heads of Victoria's County and Supreme Courts resisted moving jury trials online, suspending those cases in March because of the transmission risk of having so many people in one room. With some silks struggling with the mute button and judges working from home competing with barking dogs in the middle of a hearing, the profession has welcomed the return of jury trials in court. 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. OTTAWA - Only half of Canada's promised COVID-19 vaccine doses by Pfizer-BioNTech will arrive in the next month, federal officials revealed Friday, blaming production issues in Belgium that will affect immediate vaccination plans. A health-care worker prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccine clinic in Toronto on Thursday, January 7, 2021. Procurement Minister Anita Anand says production issues in Europe will temporarily reduce Pfizer's ability to deliver vaccines to Canada.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette OTTAWA - Only half of Canada's promised COVID-19 vaccine doses by Pfizer-BioNTech will arrive in the next month, federal officials revealed Friday, blaming production issues in Belgium that will affect immediate vaccination plans. Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Canada faces an "unfortunate" delay that is nonetheless expected to be made up by the end of March, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted most Canadians will still be vaccinated by the fall. News of the Pfizer delay drew immediate concern from Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who said the province's strategy for the two-dose regime depends on steady shipments. "We have been planning our vaccine rollout based on this schedule, including second dosages," said Moe, noting he expected 11,700 doses a week in February. "If this has changed, they need to advise us immediately." In British Columbia, where all available doses are being deployed as they arrive, Health Minister Adrian Dix said the delay will have "some significant effect" on when priority groups get their shot. "Obviously, when you receive fewer doses you immunize fewer people," said Dix. The delay could also affect the wait time between each shot of the two-dose regime, he said. Although Pfizer-BioNTech suggests a second dose 21 days after the first, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has said that could be extended to 35 days. A spokeswoman for Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube said the temporary slowdown reinforced the province's decision to wait up to 90 days to administer the vaccine's second dose. "The strategy remains the same: we must give a boost now and vaccinate as many vulnerable people and health workers as possible, as quickly as possible," said Marjaurie Cote-Boileau. Alberta decided earlier this week to push back its second shots to 42 days. The province's health minister, Tyler Shandro, said Friday he had hoped to soon announce all seniors over 75 and Indigenous people over 65 would be eligible for the vaccine, but the delay makes that out of the question. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the province was evaluating the impact of the delay and "will adjust as necessary." Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, who is leading the national vaccine distribution, said Pfizer's production delays would reduce deliveries by an average of 50 per cent over the coming weeks. He said that won't be felt until after next week because Canada's upcoming shipment has already been prepared. But the final week of January will bring "about a quarter of what we expected." "The numbers will pick right back up after that to about half of what we had expected (and) progressively grow into the rest of February," said Fortin. "Pfizer is telling us it will impact us for four weeks." According to the government's website, more than 200,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine were expected in each of the next two weeks and 1.4 million doses were expected in February. Trudeau said Ottawa was "working day in and day out to get vaccines delivered as quickly as possible" but acknowledged that Pfizer-BioNTech doses have been derailed in the short-term. Trudeau said this is why Canada has one of the most diverse vaccine portfolios in the world, pointing to seven bilateral agreements he says ensure "flexibility when it comes to supply chains." "I want to be very clear: this does not impact our goal to have enough vaccines available by September for every Canadian who wants one," Trudeau said from outside Rideau Cottage. Anand said all countries that receive vaccines from Pfizer's European facility have been affected but that Canada has been assured it will receive four million doses by the end of March. "This is unfortunate. However such delays and issues are to be expected when global supply chains are stretched well beyond their limits," Anand said at a news conference. "It's not a stoppage." Pfizer Canada spokeswoman Christina Antoniou said the production facility in Puurs, Belgium, is undergoing modifications in the coming weeks to increase the number of doses it can pump out. Pfizer hopes to double its 2021 production to two billion doses. Pfizer Canada will continue to pursue its efforts in anticipation that by the end of March, we will be able to catch up to be on track for the total committed doses for Q1, Antoniou said. The news came as Ottawa released federal projections that suggested the pandemic may soon exceed levels seen in the first wave, rising to 19,630 cumulative deaths and 10,000 daily infections in a little over a week. The modelling shows total cases could grow to nearly 796,630 from about 694,000, and that another 2,000 people could die by Jan. 24. Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam urged sustained vigilance as a long-range forecast suggested rapid growth would continue without "quick, strong and sustained" measures. Tam said that's especially so in national hot spots of Quebec and Ontario, where a steady increase in hospitalizations has strained the health system's ability to keep up with critical care demands. The post-holiday projections do not take into account Quebec's recently implemented four-week curfew or Ontario's new stay-at-home orders. Tam emphasized the need to reduce community spread to help relieve some of the pressure on hospitals and long-term care homes. "The vaccine alone is not going to make a dent in some of that," she said. Ontario reported 100 deaths linked to COVID-19, although that took into account a difference in database reporting between one of its health units and the province. The province's newly resolved tally added 46 deaths from Middlesex-London that occurred earlier in the pandemic. Ontario also reported 2,998 new cases of COVID-19 with 800 of those new cases in Toronto, 618 in Peel Region and 250 in York Region. Quebec reported 1,918 new COVID-19 cases and 62 more deaths, including nine that occurred in the past 24 hours. Concern also remained in Atlantic Canada's hot spot of New Brunswick, which reported 25 new cases and remains at the province's second-highest pandemic alert level. Saskatchewan, with the highest rate of active cases in the country with 329 per 100,000 people, reported another 382 infections and four deaths. By Cassandra Szklarski in Toronto with files from Catherine Levesque and Mia Rabson in Ottawa, Shawn Jeffords in Toronto, Stephanie Taylor in Regina, and Hina Alam in Vancouver. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 15, 2021. Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version misstated the number of Pfizer-BioNTech doses expected in February. It is 1.4 million doses. In 1926 Catherine, a trainee nurse in London, fell pregnant. Desperate, she sought help from the National Vigilance Association (NVA), established in 1885 for the enforcement and improvement of public morality. Fearful her matron would hear of her pregnancy, Catherine returned to Ireland and gave birth to a son in St Patricks Home, Dublin. She returned to London a few weeks later to continue her training. In a series of heartbreaking letters, Catherine and her babys sad story plays out. A Miss Cruice, of St Patricks Guild, wrote to the NVA demanding money to cover the costs of the adoption. My society could not adopt the child under a fee of 40 to 50, but this amount could be paid in instalments. I would only be too glad to help this girl in any way possible, but the strain on my resources has been very great during the last year, and I am reluctantly compelled to refuse cases for some time past. Ms Baker of the NVA then wrote to the Archbishop of Westminster, do you think it will be possible to have the child adopted so as to give the poor girl a chance in life? Monsignor de Wiart-Carton, of the Archbishops house, agreed to pay 40 to St Patricks Guild so long as the child was placed within a Catholic institution. Catherine repaid the NVA every month. However, in January 1928 she ran into difficulty and wrote to a Mr Simpkins of the NVA. Unforeseen financial disappointments have been the sole cause of my want of punctuality. "I really must beg of you to defer the settlement of my instalments till Saturday, she said. Simpkins expressed his frustration. Dear Miss R., I do not like to have to write these letters to you about a faithful undertaking. Catherine replied: Dear Sir, I am really grieved to think I have caused you such annoyance. Enclosed you shall find 1 10s being amount due. I promise faithfully you shall not have to write once again. In June 1929, a letter to Catherine read: I have not heard from you for some considerable time. If I do not hear from you within a week, I shall send a lady round to call on you at the hospital. Catherine replied: I really do try to be punctual, but it is really difficult sometimes. Sometimes I feel as though life is not worth living for. "But I thank God I have a faithful friend in you. I never forget to pray for you when I go to Church. In a letter to the Archbishops House explaining Catherines difficulties, Sempkins revealed there is in this case, no hope of obtaining any assistance from the father. The Monsignor responded: If she were quite unable to pay I would not, of course, insist for a moment on repayment, but if she is, it is well to teach her a lesson. However, in January 1931 the Archbishops House released Catherine from her monthly repayments. A letter to Simpkins said our name was never mentioned, and we do not wish it to be mentioned at present. The money sent by Catherine each month for four years to the NVA was redirected to the Archbishops House in Westminster. Catherine was never aware of this. Inhumane treatment of unmarried Irish mothers forced many to flee to Britain for most of the 20th Century. Exhaustive research by NUIG academic Dr Lorraine Grimes has unearthed sad accounts of Irish women spanning the years from 1927 to 1973, including that of Catherine. 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. If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president and former Chief Minister Kamal Nath on Friday extended support to farmers protesting the three agriculture laws by driving a tractor in the state's Chhindwara district. Rajya Sabha MP and senior leader of the Congress Digvijay Singh also rode a tractor in Sehore as part of the protests. The party had organised a nationwide agitation in a show of support for farmers camping in Delhi, whose demonstration entered its 51st day. ALSO READ: 'BJP Will Have to Take Back Laws': Rahul Gandhi Leads Congress Protest in Support of Protesting Farmers Labelling the new legislation as "agri-marketing" laws, Nath criticised the state and Central governments and said, "Most of the farmers in the country don't get minimum support price benefits. Once the three laws are implemented, possibilities for the farmers will end." "Dozens of farmers have already lost their lives during the course of this protest. The Centre must shun its high-handedness and roll back the three draconian farm laws at the earliest," the former CM said. Former ministers and MLAs of the Congress attended similar events across the state, the party's organisational in-charge Chandraprabhas Shekhar said. "The common man and farmers participated in the protests organised at more than 500 locations in MP," he added. ALSO READ: PM Has No Respect for Farmers, Wants to Tire out Protesters of Farm Laws: Rahul Gandhi Former minister PC Sharma, district party president Kailash Mishra and others protested in the state capital of Bhopal and courted arrest. Explaining the future course of action, Sharma said that the Congress will continue its agitation on the issue and its leaders and workers will proceed towards New Delhi after holding a mahapanchayat in Morena on January 20. "On January 23, the party will gherao the Raj Bhawan in Bhopal," he said. Police stopped Congress leaders and workers in Bhopal's Roshanpura following which a tussle ensued. Many were arrested for hindering road traffic. Party workers staged demonstrations in Jabalpur, Indore, Gwalior and other places. ALSO READ: UPCC President, Congress Workers Detained During Protest Against Farm Laws in UP Protests were held by Congress workers and leaders in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Several leaders of the state's Haryana unit including former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Randeep Singh Surjewala were detained. In UP, state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu and several workers were allegedly taken into custody while trying to march towards the Raj Bhawan. Rahul Gandhi led the party's protest in New Delhi. He was accompanied by AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and other leaders of the Delhi Congress outside the Delhi LG's residence. ALTON School officials are reminding students and parents of the districts mask requirements when in-person learning resumes on Tuesday. Students and staff will be required to wear masks at all times while inside of schools and on buses, Alton Superintendent Kristie Baumgartner said in a Friday letter to parents. Please note the Madison County Health Department has stated that neck gaiters are not acceptable face coverings and therefore not permitted in place of face masks. Appropriate masks should cover both the mouth and nose, she said in a letter. Social distancing will also be employed to the highest degree possible. Baumgartner said Alton students should only come to school when they are healthy, free of symptoms and have not been in contact with sick family or friends. Each day, parents are asked to assess their children to ensure they do not have any of the COVID-like symptoms. IDPH and local guidelines will be followed regarding the required length of time out and/or the documentation required in returning to school. By sending a child to school or placing them on a bus each day, parents are self-certifying that they do not present any of these symptoms, Baumgartner said. Proper self-certification is the key to maintaining a safe learning environment, she said. Student temperatures will be taken each day when students enter the Alton schools. Students who display COVID-like symptoms will be sent home immediately. Siblings of such students will also be sent home, even if asymptomatic, as required by Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) guidelines for household contacts. Students are encouraged to bring a bottle of water with them to school each day. AMS and AHS students should bring a clear water bottle, Baumgartner said. If a student should forget to bring water, bottles of water will be available at each school. Hand sanitizing stations are provided in every classroom and located throughout our hallways, Baumgartner said. Students will be asked to maintain hand hygiene throughout the day, including hand sanitizing and handwashing. In-person learning will start Tuesday using the Red-Gray attendance schedule. On Tuesday, students on the Gray Schedule will begin in-person learning. Students on the Red Schedule will begin in-person learning on Wednesday. The in-person student schedule is: Alton High School and Alton Middle School: 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. East, North and West Elementary: 8:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Eunice Smith, Gilson Brown, Lewis and Clark and Lovejoy: 8:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Students are permitted to arrive at school no sooner than 30 minutes before the start of classes. Bus schedules are on the district website; students should arrive at their stop 10 minutes b efore the scheduled pick-up time. AHS and AMS students receiving remote-only instruction will continue to follow their current school schedule for classes. Elementary students receiving remote-only instruction or remote instruction provided by their classroom teacher (4th and 5th grades) should review communication from the teacher regarding the daily schedule for instruction. Alton elementary schools will offer after-school care on days that students attend in person. AHS and AMS students will receive a grab and go meal bag when they leave each day after in-person instruction. The bag will include breakfasts and lunches. Elementary students will eat breakfast and lunch at school each day of in-person attendance using classrooms, outdoors and other spaces. Elementary students will also take a grab and go meal bag home for hybrid remote days. Remote-only students may pick up meal bags at Alton High School on Mondays and Wednesdays 4-6 p.m. each week. Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Eric Lis factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesnt plan to expand operations -- a reticence that could slow the pace of Chinas economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.Surging prices of raw materials means margins are compressed, explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co. Ltd., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity, he adds.The combination of higher input prices, uncertainty about export prospects and a weak recovery in domestic consumer demand meant Chinese manufacturing investment from January to April was 0.4% below the same period in 2019, according to official statistics (comparing to 2019 strips out the distortion of last years pandemic data).Due to the vast size of Chinas manufacturing sector, that poses a risk both to the nations growth -- which is currently predicted to reach 8.5% in 2021, according to a Bloomberg tally of economists estimates -- and to a global economy thats grappling with supply shortages and rising prices.Falling ProfitsWeaker-than-expected investment could have a sizable impact on GDP growth this year, said Citigroup Inc.s China economist, Li-gang Liu. Lower investment may dent imports of capital goods and equipment from developed economies like Japan and Germany, which in turn could drag their economic recovery and rebound as well, he added.AnHui HERO Electronic Sci & Tec Co. Ltd. is one of those companies feeling the squeeze. Based in the eastern province of Anhui, the company manufactures capacitors used to make electronic circuits, with sales mainly in the domestic market. Jing Yuan, the founder, says orders are up as much as 30% year-on-year, but profits are down 50% due to increasing materials costs that are not easily passed onto clients.The company is under huge cash pressure as it needs to pay half a month in advance of delivery in order to secure copper and other metals, which they previously paid for months after receiving, he said. The commodity issue has to be addressed by the government, he added.What Bloomberg Economics Says...Chinese industry is absorbing significant cost pressures from rising commodity prices -- damping the inflationary impact for the rest of the world. Will it last? Our analysis of gross margins suggests it could for a while longer: downstream industries -- where the cost crunch is most severe -- still have a small cushion.David Qu, China economistFor the full report, click here.Input shortages mean some manufacturers arent able to make use of their existing facilities, so expansion would be of little use. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. suspended production at one of its factories last month, due to a shortage of microchips.Modern Casting Ltd., which makes iron and steel products in Guangdong, issued a note to clients this month saying it would not be able to meet its current orders due to high raw material costs. A member of staff who answered the phone at the companys office confirmed the note, but declined to give further details.Growth TransitionOn top of the higher input costs, Chinese companies face a bumpy transition toward domestic consumer spending to sustain its post-pandemic recovery.Exports, Chinas strong-suit last year, may begin to slow as vaccine roll-outs cause consumers in wealthy countries to shift spending back to services. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Chinese consumer spending has yet to fully recover.Investment sentiment among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises is below levels seen even in 2018-9 when uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade war were a brake on expansion plans, according to a regular survey of more than 500 Chinese companies by Standard Chartered Plc.Demand is still mainly underpinned by exports, so domestic companies are aware that this is not sustainable, said Standard Chartereds China economist, Lan Shen.While some export-oriented sectors have been pushed to their limits, large amounts of slack remain for manufacturers targeting Chinese consumers due to subdued domestic demand.Retail sales growth was 4.3% in April on a two-year average basis, which strips out base effects from the pandemic, less than half pre-pandemic growth rates. Overall capacity use at Chinas manufacturers fell to 77.6% in the first quarter from 78.4% in the previous three months, with the automotive sector hit hardest by overcapacity following three years of declining sales volumes.Even for electric vehicles whose sales are surging, most companies have already built their capacity and will now focus on incremental upgrades. The majority of the investment has been done, said Jochen Siebert of JSC Automotive Consulting.China ordered state-owned companies to expand last year, with their investment growth of 5.3% in 2020 from the prior year easily outstripping the 1% increase in private investment. But for a sustainable pick-up in investment, the market, not the state, needs to feel confident.Carsten Holz, an expert on Chinese investment statistics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, estimates that privately-owned companies have accounted for 87% of manufacturing investment in 2015, the most recent year of available data. They are more sensitive to input costs.There is a pandemic plus insecurity about future trade given a new U.S. administration, neither of which is conducive to investment that relies on long-term growth prospects, Holz said.Mixed PoliciesTransport bottlenecks are also a challenge for export-oriented manufacturers. Gordon Gao, who exports gardening products from China, said that he has had to reject 80% of orders this year due to port delays. In one case, an order placed before mid-February could only be shipped three months later when a client finally secured a container.Beijing has tried to improve conditions for private companies by ordering a crackdown on speculation to curb commodity prices and easing access to bank loans.Yet the government continues to gradually withdraw fiscal and monetary stimulus measures introduced amid the pandemic last year. It set a relatively unambitious target of above 6% growth for this year, and the Communist Partys Politburo signaled last month it would prioritize reforms to control house prices and debt growth.The policy stance has definitely shifted away from supporting growth and back toward de-risking the financial sector, said Adam Wolfe, an economist at London-based Absolute Strategy Research. The risks for economic growth seem tilted to the downside, especially for capital-intensive, construction-linked sectors.For manufacturers such as Li, a longer period of domestic growth and control over input prices will be needed before capacity expansion is on the cards. While his company of 200 workers took on new permanent staff before the pandemic, for now hed rather pass the risks of investment on to others.I wouldnt do that now, I would rather hire some temporary workers and outsource the rest, he said.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. The demand for doctors and medical workers is high, but the workforce for the healthcare sector is produced only by several public schools. This has prompted private schools to jump on the bandwagon. Many private universities have announced that they will enroll students for healthcare majors in the 2021 enrollment season. In 2016 and earlier years, healthcare-related majors were only available at a few schools, such as Hanoi Medical University, HCM City Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Thai Nguyen Medical University and Can Tho University. But things have changed in recent years. More and more private schools have opened majors related to healthcare. Hong Bang International University has announced the opening of eight new majors related to healthcare, including traditional medicine, medical imaging techniques, oral health, midwifery, nutrition, child care (nursing), rehabilitation techniques and hospital management. If counting majors that it had opened before, the schools will have a total of 12 healthcare related majors. The figure is even higher than prestigious schools specializing in healthcare majors like Hanoi or Thai Nguyen Medical universities. In the race to open more healthcare majors, Van Lang University has opened two, raising the total number of healthcare related majors to six. HCM City University of Technology plans to open two new healthcare majors, including nursing and medical engineering tests, during this year's enrollment season. The Hanoi University of Business and Technology, Dai Nam University and Duy Tan University have also joined the race. The fact that private schools are rushing to open healthcare training majors has raised concerns about training quality. People have questioned if the teaching staff and facilities of the schools can satisfy requirements for training. According to the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), schools open training majors to satisfy demand in the labor market. In principle, all types of higher education establishments are equal before the law. This means that if the private schools can satisfy requirements as stipulated by law, they will be equal to public schools and have the right to provide these majors. However, the ministry stressed that the prerequisite is that schools must meet all the requirements for quality assurance. Circular No 22 released by MOET clearly shows the requirements and procedures to open new training majors. The schools that provide healthcare majors, in addition to requirements stipulated in the circular, have to observe the regulations on curricula, and plans and contracts on practical training, as well as requirements for practical training organization. This means that all documents applying for new healthcare training majors must be certified by the Ministry of Health as meeting conditions stipulated in Decree 111 dated in 2017. Thuy Nga Vietnam to accelerate digital transformation in higher education In 2021, Vietnams education sector will accelerate the National Digital Transformation Program and implement digital transformation. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 17:24:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SYDNEY, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Businesses and residents in Papua New Guinea's (PNG) second-biggest city Lae are suffering from the blackout on a daily basis because of the nation's unstable power supply, local newspaper Post Courier reported on Thursday. Local businesses complained the electricity cost was already high in the city and the continuous blackouts added even more burden on them as they had to buy a power generator as a standby power source. A long-time businessman and owner of a motorist retail shop in Lae called PNG authorities to relax the current power regulations so the alternative energy sources, like solar power, can be legally adopted by the local businesses to address the electricity outage issue. A Lae female resident echoed the complaints from business and said many times the local households were unaware of the length of the power outage and unprepared when the blackout stuck as it just came without notice. PNG's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Commerce and Industry Sam Basil acknowledged the electricity supply was a major problem affecting local businesses and assured them that he would look into the matter, according to the report. Enditem MPs have called for health and safety risks in Parliament to be reassessed (PA) Health and safety risks in Parliament should be reassessed due to a security worker dying after contracting Covid-19, MPs have urged. Tributes have poured in for father-of-two Godfrey Cameron, 55, who MPs said showed selfless care for others and was a hard-working member of parliamentary security staff. The SNPs Chris Stephens has now tabled a motion in the Commons asking the House authorities to work with trade union officials to carry out an updated risk assessment in relation to health and safety on the parliamentary estate. The MP for Glasgow South West added they must take all appropriate measures to help keep staff safe. His motion has been supported by a further 25 MPs, including Labour former shadow chancellor John McDonnell. PCS was saddened to learn of the untimely death of our member Godfrey Cameron, who has died suddenly aged 55 after contracting Covid-19. https://t.co/smEB2xL4A8 pic.twitter.com/dbbYRfD1zS PCS Union (@pcs_union) January 15, 2021 The House of Commons has insisted Parliament is a Covid-19 secure workplace, adding it continues to meet all Government guidance and its measures have been supported by Public Health England (PHE). This statement came after Labour frontbencher Valerie Vaz on Wednesday told MPs that public health officials were ready to close Parliament before Christmas given the high numbers of people on the estate. She told a debate: I think its fair to say that public health was so concerned about what was happening on the estate the number of people who were coming before Christmas, they were ready to close us down. Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle told the same debate that the House of Commons Commission, which is responsible for the administration and services of the House, takes seriously its duty of care to those who work in the building and has been guided by PHE advice. Remote participation in the Commons was extended after Christmas to cover debates in a bid to limit numbers on the estate, with face masks now advised to be worn in the chamber following a surge in Covid-19 infection rates across the country. He is a model of the type of service we are fortunate to have in this House Jacob Rees-Mogg The motion from Mr Stephens states: That this House is deeply saddened by news of the death of Godfrey Colin Cameron, a hard-working member of parliamentary security staff and member of the PCS trade union who passed away aged just 55 after contracting Covid-19. (The House) extends our sincere condolences to his devoted wife Hyacinth, children Leon and Renee, his sisters Arlene and Cynthia, his brother Carlton, and fellow members of the PCS. (The House) notes that Godfrey was a private man who showed selfless care for others, hoped to retire to his late parents homeland of Jamaica and was a fanatical fan of Liverpool FC. (The House) sends our deepest sympathies to all those who knew and worked with Godfrey, and our heartfelt thanks for the contribution of all those workers who have continued to serve the public during this public health crisis. And calls on the House authorities to work with trade union representatives to undertake an updated risk assessment in relation to health and safety on the parliamentary estate, and take all appropriate measures to help keep staff safe. On Thursday, Sir Lindsay and Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg led tributes to Mr Cameron. Mr Rees-Mogg said: He was an heroic figure. He managed to stop a young lady jumping off Westminster Bridge. He is a model of the type of service we are fortunate to have in this House. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: We are all deeply saddened at PCS by the loss of Godfrey. He was a hard-working, dedicated member of our parliamentary security branch who was devoted to his job and his colleagues across Parliament. It is imperative the Government resumes a remote, virtual parliament to protect staff from contracting Covid-19, which has caused over 80,000 deaths in the UK alone. Market participants said they expected a slight downward correction in scrap prices , which resulted a slight decrease in billet prices in Turkish domestic, export and import markets.Fastmarkets weekly price assessment for steel billet, domestic, exw Turkey was $625-635 per tonne on Thursday, widening down from the $630-635 per tonne last week. Fastmarkets weekly price assessment for steel billet import, cfr main port Turkey was $615-625 per tonne... Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said his governments dispute with Washington over Ankaras purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system can be resolved through dialogue with the incoming administration. We are saying lets not break things up in this way. Lets sit down and talk and find a solution, Akar told reporters in Ankara on Wednesday. If the US side wants a solution, a solution could be found with work on the technical level. Responding to pressure from Congress, the Trump administration in December imposed limited sanctions the first of their kind against a NATO ally on Turkey over its multibillion-dollar purchase from Moscow. The long-awaited sanctions targeted the countrys defense procurement agency and its senior officials, but not Turkeys financial system. It is a very problematic situation to turn back from the point we have come to. We invite [the United States] to distance themselves from threatening language such as sanctions, Akar said. The defense minister added that Turkey was in talks to receive another shipment of S-400 missiles, which the United States says pose a threat to NATOs air defense capabilities and may compromise the security of its own F-35 stealth fighter jets. The Trump administration booted Turkey from the Joint Strike Fighter program in July 2019, and Ankara later tested the S-400 systems. Despite the sanctions, Akar told reporters he was hopeful Turkey would return to the F-35 program. "We want to return to the F-35 program; we are always optimistic. We want this decision to be undone," Akar said. The sanctions present a challenge for President-elect Joe Biden, who has called Turkeys president an autocrat and is expected to take a harsher stance on US-Turkey relations when he takes office next week. Relations between the NATO allies have worsened in recent years, in part due to Ankaras military actions against the Syrian Kurds, its Mediterranean Sea dispute with Greece and Cyprus; and a US criminal case against a state-owned Turkish bank. Northbrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/14/2021 -- The report "Abrasives Market by Raw material (Natural & Synthetic), Product type (Coated, Bonded, and Super), End-use Industry (Automotive, Machinery, Aerospace, Metal fabrication, Electrical & electronics equipment, Others), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025" The global abrasives market size is projected to grow from USD 46.4 billion in 2020 to USD 58.0 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 4.5% from 2020 to 2025. The market is projected to witness significant growth in the next few years with the growing automotive, metal fabrication, electronics, electrical, medical, and construction industries. Abrasive is a material or substance such as pumice, sandpaper, or emery, which is used for grinding, cleaning, polishing, and smoothing. Abrasives are used in a wide range of domestic, industrial, and technological applications. Download PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=16531756 In terms of value and volume, the synthetic segment is estimated to be the fastest-growing raw material in the abrasives market during the forecast period. The synthetic segment, by raw material, is projected to be a faster-growing segment in the abrasives market owing to its sturdiness and durability property. The machinery segment is estimated to be a larger end-use industry in the abrasives market in 2019. The machinery segment, by end-use industry, accounted for a larger market size for abrasives in 2019, in terms of both value and volume. Development in machinery and equipment utilized in manufacturing the components of machines, which is expected to be one of the significant factors providing opportunities in the abrasives market. Moreover, rising demand for heavy machinery will spur the demand for industrial abrasives in the machinery industry such as alumina zirconia oxide. Manufacturers are expected to modernize and replace obsolete conventional machinery to increase the level of automation and improve product quality and consistency. These factors dominate the machinery industry in the abrasives market. Speak to Analyst @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=16531756 The Asia Pacific region is projected to account for the largest share in the abrasives market during the forecast period. The growth in the Asia Pacific region is driven by factors such as the augmented demand for automobiles, rise in the sales of electronic devices, efforts towards standardization, expanding application segments, increasing urbanized population in China and India, along with the growth in disposable income in these countries are driving the growth of the Asia Pacific abrasives market. At a global level, companies such as Robert Bosch GMBH (Germany), 3M Company (US), Saint-Gobain Abrasives, Inc. (US), and Fujimi Incorporated (Japan) are providing abrasive products. Large construction players such as LafargeHolcim (France), Balfour Beatty PLC (UK), Kier Group PLC (UK), and Carillon PLC (UK) have scope to enter into abrasive services. Other players in the market include Henkel AG & CO. KGAA (Germany), Tyrolit Group (Austria), Asahi Diamond Industrial Co., LTD (Japan), Sak Industries (India), Deerfos Co., Ltd (Korea), and Carborundum Universal Limited: (India). Get 10% Customization on this Report @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestCustomizationNew.asp?id=16531756 Recent Developments : - In May 2019, Henkel acquired all shares of Molecule Corp (US). This acquisition strengthens the adhesives technologies business unit's, technology portfolio in the field of 3D printing & industrial inkjet solutions. - In May 2018, Bosch extended its new product in the range of abrasives by developing 2 step grinding system for angle grinders that enable higher removal rate and offer finer surfaces. The abrasive product helps in saving time up to 25%. The launch of this product has strengthened the company's product portfolio. - In May 2018, Saint-Gobain Group in Thailand launched a brand new abrasive product called "Weber by Norton" at The Architect Fair 2018. The new "Weber by Norton" diamond blade range was the very first new product among many others to come. The company is now offering a new range of products under the Weber brand in Thailand, including 4" diamond blades, thin wheel, GC grinding wheel, flap disc, and fiber disc. The launch of this new product was due to the collaboration of the company with the Weber Team in Thailand. 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's 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 sales@marketsandmarkets.com Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein and Matthew Broderick are among those remembering Election actress Jessica Campbell, who has died at age 38. Campbell, who played Tammy Metzler in the 1999 film about three high school students running for student body president, died suddenly and unexpectedly at home on Dec. 29, according to her professional website. After success in Hollywood also appearing in TVs Freaks and Geeks and the 2001 film The Safety of Objects she became a naturopathic physician and had a practice in Vancouver, Wash. Jessica Campbell wearing a sandwich board featuring the slogan, "Tammy Metzler for President" in the 1999 film Election. She played a gay teen who ran against her brother (played by Chris Klein) as well as overachiever Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) for student body president. (Photo: CBS via Getty Images) A GoFundMe in her name was established for her 10-year-old son, Oliver, as well as to cover the unexpected cremation, memorial and probate expenses. Campbell was described as a true adventurer in every sense of the word, packing a staggering amount of experiences into her tragically short lifetime... Traveling the world, acting, becoming a doctor, being mom to the coolest kid ever; these bucket list items wove the quotidian fabric of her reality. Her passion for life and the people in it was astounding. Her cousin Sarah Wessling, who set up the online fundraiser, told TMZ the family is awaiting autopsy results from the Multnomah County Medical Examiner. Campbell had a normal day seeing patients. While visiting with her mother and aunt later, she collapsed on the bathroom floor. They said Campbell had congestion, thinking she was coming down with a cold, but the family didnt suspect COVID. Jessica Campbell had become a naturopathic physician and had her own practice in Washington state. (Photo: GoFundMe) Election director Alexander Payne and Freaks and Geeks executive producer Judd Apatow were among the top donors listed on the GoFundMe and there has been no shortage of tributes to Campbell. Witherspoon, whose character Tracy Flick went up against Tammy Metzler in the Election election, wrote that she is so heartbroken to hear the news. Working with Jessica on Election was such a pleasure. Im sending all my love to Jessicas family and loved ones. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Chris Klein, who played Campbells brother and opponent in the film, wrote he was shocked and saddened to receive the news. He said Election was the first big film for both of us. I will be forever grateful fo the experiences we shared on that journey. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Broderick, who played civics teacher Jim McAllister, told The Hollywood Reporter, "When I think of Jessica I remember a shy, incredibly sweet, very pink-cheeked teenager who liked to discuss with me what is best to order at Applebees. She was very dear and an extremely good actor. Heartbreaking news. My deepest sympathy to her son and the rest of her family." Jessica Campbell (as Tammy Metzler) in Election. (Photo: CBS via Getty Images) Apatow shared on Twitter that some of his favorite memories of making Freaks and Geeks are of watching Jessica Campbell and @sethrogen figure their relationship out in improvisations, as she played tuba player Amy Andrews, a love of interest of Rogen's Ken Miller for two episodes in 2000. Jessica was so funny and an amazing, thoughtful actress. What a terrible loss. (Rogen reshared Apatows post.) This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Campbells professional website details how she long considered a career in traditional medicine, but after some soul searching she realized that holistic medicine was what truly spoke to her. And due to a strong family history of cancer, she knew that she wanted to focus on integrative cancer care. Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on January 14 was warned by Russia's Federal Prison Service (FSIN) that he will be arrested immediately if he returned to his home country Russia. President Vladimir Putin's 44-year-old political rival informed that he was planning to return to Russia on 17 January, months after his recovery in Germany after he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. Navalny was aboard a domestic Russian flight and was poisoned on the course of his journey from Siberia to Moscow. According to the sources of Moscow times, Russia's prison service told the state press that it will be 'obliged' to detain Navalny who is due to return to Moscow from Germany this Sunday. In a statement to the press, Navalny said, Russia is his country and Moscow his city that he misses. And therrefore, he planned to return to Russia. "There was never any question of 'returning or not' for me. Simply because I didn't leave. I wound up in Germany, having arrived in a resuscitation box, for one reason: they tried to kill me. I survived," Navalny wrote in an Instagram post. However, the Russian authorities warned that upon entry in Russia the Kremilin critic wil face detention and the police will be "obliged to take all actions to detain". The fraud charges, however, were ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights. Read: Russia Prison Authorities Threaten Kremlin Critic Navalny To Return Back Or Face Jail Read: Russia's Prison Service Tells Navalny To Appear Or Face Jail FSIN asks Navalny to 'come home' According to a statement issued by FSIN, Navalny was supposed to report to them at least twice a month as part of his probation period that ended on Dec. 29 last year. He, however, did not report for registration on six occasions, and each violation led to official warnings. The FSIN asserted that Navalny's suspended sentence was now replaced with real incarceration. The federal prison service urged Putin's rival to "come home". Earlier, Moscow launched a probe against Navalny for fraud, alleging that his Anti-Corruption firm FBK used more than 356 million rubles ($4.8 million) charity funds for personal use, including paying expenses from a holiday overseas. Russias Investigative Committee, separately, also commenced an investigation against the former for defamation of a Moscow district court judge, according to sources of Russian news agency TASS. Navalny now faced a criminal case against charges of embezzlement of 356 million rubles collected from nonprofit organizations. Read: Russia Launches Criminal Investigation Against Alexei Navalny's Ally, Lyubov Sobol Read: Putin's Chef Sues Navalny, His Ally For Defamation Citing 'moral Injury' To Business Officials in Worcester on Thursday spoke with cautious optimism for the first time during a COVID-19 briefing since the start of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. In the same week the city began providing coronavirus vaccines to first responders, the number of new cases was similar to the total last week. City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said Worcester experienced 1,219 new cases of COVID with Saint Vincent Hospital and UMass Memorial Health Care reporting 33 new deaths. While the totals hint at a potential plateau, they remain some of the highest since the start of the pandemic. This is about the highest daily averages that weve seen, said Dr. Michael Hirsh, the citys medical director. Theyre still higher than the spring. In the spring, Hirsh said the city averaged about 120 new cases per day. The numbers provided by Augustus on Thursday equate to about 175 new cases per day. We still are surging. I think the city manager is possibly correct that we might be in a plateauing phase. I think we need a couple more points on the graph to tell that, Hirsh said. Were still essentially averaging 200 cases a day and thats too many. Hospitalizations in the city decreased by 24 to 244 overall, while patients in the ICU increased by one to 60. Since the start of the pandemic, Worcesters two health care systems have reported 542 deaths. People are coming in after testing positive saying I dont know how I got it, Hirsh said. We think the answer is, its just a more transmissible kind of a virus right now. Theres not much we can do to reassure people they arent going to get it. The only thing they can do is really try to keep in their bubble. The good news during the weekly briefing came through vaccine numbers. Over three days this week, the city administered the Moderna vaccine to 754 first responders from Worcester, Grafton, Holden, Leicester, Millbury, Shrewsbury and West Boylston. Of those eligible for the vaccine in Worcester, 45.4% received it. Within the fire department, 204 of its 410 members received the vaccine. Within the police department, 208 of 488 received the vaccine. Im not detecting a lot of second-guessing, Hirsh said I think people know this is our ticket out. Augustus was confident that by the end of next week, that more than 75% of Worcesters first responders will have received the vaccine. First responders fall within Phase 1 of the states vaccination guidelines. Phase 2 is expected to begin the first week of February. Hirsh believes Worcester remains on track to advance to the second phase early next month if not earlier. Phase 2 includes teachers and other essential workers along with anyone age 75 or older. Individuals 65 or older with at least two comorbidities are also eligible. That category of folks in the city of Worcester measures in the tens of thousands, Augustus said. So we need to have a super site as well as expanded capacity in our sites. Its all about getting folks trained. This week in Worcester, Gov. Charlie Baker revealed plans for Gillette Stadium to offer vaccines. Baker said the site will begin administering about 300 vaccines per day but work up to a capacity of 5,000. Worcester vaccinated nearly 400 individuals during its first day of providing it to first responders. We wanted to walk before we ran, Hirsh said. So we were a little cautious in how we cracked the whip in churning out vacations. Hirsh said the city has about 600 medical students from UMass Medical School that it could call upon to volunteer at vaccination centers like the one on Providence Street. Those volunteers waiting in the wings allow the city to become more aggressive in expanding vaccination sites. Every arm that we get vaccinated and add more capacity, its just one more brick in the wall of protection against this virus, Augustus said. Related Content: Charred remains of shelters after a fire at the Rohingya refugee camp at Nayapara, Bangladesh, on 14 Jan. 2021. (AFP or licensors) United Nations agencies and Caritas Bangladesh have swung into action to help Rohingya refugees who lost their homes and everything they owned in a 14 January fire in their camp in Nayapara. By Vatican News staff writer A massive fire that broke out early Thursday morning in a refugee camp for Rohingya in south-east Bangladesh, has gutted more than 500 homes and 150 shops, leaving over 3,500 refugees homeless. No deaths were reported in the fire in the Nayapara refugee camp in Coxs Bazar, said an official from the state-run Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC). Several people were injured before firefighters, police and soldiers put down the fire. The Nayapara camp hosts some 22,500 refugees, of whom about 17,800 are women, children and the elderly. The cause of the fire in the overcrowded camp is still unknown. Mohammad Shamsud Douza, additional commissioner of RRRC, told UCA News that about 3,500 homeless people have been taken to learning centres (used for child education), where they are being provided with food, clothing and medicines. The Commission is collaborating with aid groups to rebuild shelters as soon as possible. UN agencies UN agencies have been on the ground since early Thursday morning, assessing the damage and helping the affected. Marin Din Kajdomcaj, an official with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Coxs Bazar said they are working with the government, NGO partners, other UN agencies and Rohingya refugees to help those affected. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is providing emergency food assistance, including hot meals to families in need. Alongside them, humanitarian partners from the Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), Bangladesh Red Crescent and NGOs are also assisting the affected people. Caritas and Catholic agencies Caritas Bangladesh, the social and development arm of the Catholic Church of Bangladesh, said everything will be done to assist the refugees and rebuild their homes. Inmanuel Chayan Biswas, head of operations of Caritas emergency response programme, lamented the loss of the little that the refugees had, and said government and NGOs are collaborating to rebuild their shelters. He recalled that last year, some 400 shelters were burned in fires. Caritas has been active in the Rohingya refugee camps since 2017. With funding from Catholic agencies across the globe, Caritas has reached out to over 140,000 refugees with aid including food, non-food items, water and sanitation in the past years. In November, Caritas joined hands with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and the US-based Catholic Relief Service (CRS), and launched a new project called the Multipurpose Adolescent Centre. It aims to help the psychological development of children, provide counselling and skill development to adolescents, care for expectant mothers, childcare and care for children with special needs. Pope Francis On several occasions, Pope Francis has expressed his closeness to Rohingya refugees. In a moving meeting during an inter-religious and ecumenical in the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, on 1 December 2017, the Pope listened to the stories and pain of sixteen Rohingya refugees from Coxs Bazar. Who are the Rohingya? The Rohingya are a largely Muslim ethnic people who mostly live in Western Myanmars Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh. Buddhist-majority Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though they have lived in the country for generations. Denied citizenship under a nationality law passed by the governments military regime in 1982, they are virtually stateless and are denied freedom of movement and other basic rights. More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since a brutal crackdown by Myanmars military in 2017, bringing the total number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to some 1.3 million. They are mostly sheltered in about 30 refugee camps in Coxs Bazar in southeast Bangladesh. NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CureDuchenne, a leading global nonprofit focused on finding and funding a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, announces a new initiative centered on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and Duchenne community needs. CureDuchenne is the ideal conduit for providing the Duchenne community with critical education, advocacy and support. This COVID-19 vaccine initiative rollout continues to cement its leadership position with a multi-step approach prioritizing vaccine education, greater access and support for the global Duchenne community: Educating the community: CureDuchenne is hosting a webinar on January 22 , 2021 entitled, "COVID-19 Vaccines - What the Duchenne Community Needs to Know", about the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and its impact on those living with Duchenne. Due to CureDuchenne's unique reputation and position in the science community, this rare webinar event will feature an incredible roster of panelists, including a "who's who" in COVID-19 vaccine development organizations and from American regulatory bodies: , 2021 entitled, "COVID-19 Vaccines - What the Duchenne Community Needs to Know", about the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and its impact on those living with Duchenne. Due to CureDuchenne's unique reputation and position in the science community, this rare webinar event will feature an incredible roster of panelists, including a "who's who" in COVID-19 vaccine development organizations and from American regulatory bodies: Peter Marks , MD, PhD , Director of FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research , Director of FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Georgina Peacock , MD, MPH, FAAP, Director of Division of Human Development and Disability, CDC National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities , MD, MPH, FAAP, Director of Division of Human Development and Disability, CDC National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities William Gruber , MD, Senior Vice President, Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, Pfizer, Inc. , MD, Senior Vice President, Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, Pfizer, Inc. Oscar "Hank" Mayer , MD, Director of Pulmonary Function Laboratory, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia , MD, Director of Pulmonary Function Laboratory, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Kathy Mathews , MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology, Vice Chair for Clinical Investigation, Department of Pediatrics, University of Iowa , MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology, Vice Chair for Clinical Investigation, Department of Pediatrics, Debra Miller , Founder and CEO, CureDuchenne , Founder and CEO, CureDuchenne Moderated by: Michael Kelly , Chief Scientific Advisor, CureDuchenne , Chief Scientific Advisor, CureDuchenne A fresh, continuously monitored suite of up-to-date COVID-19 vaccine related resources and content is available on CureDuchenne's COVID-19 webpage. Informing key decision makers of the vaccine rollout: CureDuchenne submitted a comment letter to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) advocating that all Duchenne patients within the approved age groups be prioritized to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Supporting the Duchenne community: Our CureDuchenne Cares team of experts is available to connect with families across the country on an individual basis to help guide, inform and support them throughout the process. "We are a leading voice for the Duchenne community and steadfast in our commitment to support and educate on anything related to COVID-19, including the vaccine," said Debra Miller, founder and CEO, CureDuchenne. "Our team worked tirelessly to develop a suite of support tools that educate and inform our community with the facts that matter to them the most. As we work with states and local officials, we look forward to advocating on behalf of the entire Duchenne community while the vaccine rollout progresses. Our goal is to inoculate everyone affected by Duchenne." For more information on how to get involved with CureDuchenne and helping the Duchenne community or if you have experienced a recent diagnosis, please visit CureDuchenne.org. The "COVID-19 Vaccines - What the Duchenne Community Needs to Know" webinar will be available to download at CureDuchenne.org after the event takes place. About CureDuchenne CureDuchenne is recognized as a global leader in research, patient care, and innovation for improving and extending the lives of those with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. As the leading genetic killer of young boys, Duchenne affects more than 300,000 individuals living today. CureDuchenne is dedicated to finding and funding a cure for Duchenne by breaking the traditional charitable mold through an innovative venture philanthropy model that funds groundbreaking research, early diagnosis, and community education. For more information on how to help raise awareness and funds needed for research, please visit www.cureduchenne.org. SOURCE CureDuchenne If you go WHAT: Sennett Town Board public hearing on Sennett Meadows proposal WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21 WHERE: Teleconferenced via Zoom.com. Click "Join meeting" button and use meeting ID 897 1983 0626 and passcode 607070. People can also call into the meeting by dialing (929) 205-6099. WHAT: Cayuga County Planning and Economic Development Department's General Municipal Law 239 l, m & n Review Committee WHEN: 9 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 21 WHERE: Virtual link at 8x8.vc/cayuga/greg.colucci with call-in number of (209) 844-4600, access code 93452645# There could be a crisis in school premises where, in order to follow physical distancing guidelines, students from one class will have to be split up into different sections. DC Image Hyderabad: Even as the Telangana State Teachers United Federation (TSTUF), a government teachers body, has welcomed the decision to reopen schools for in-person classes from Class 9, it has raised major concerns. There is a major dearth of teaching staff in government schools, especially with the blended form of learning that includes online and in-school classes to be put in place from February 1. There could be a crisis in school premises where, in order to follow physical distancing guidelines, students from one class will have to be split up into different sections, said Chava Ravi, general secretary, TSTUF. "There are at least 7,000 vacancies in 5,000 high schools for subject teachers. We have tried reaching out to the government to fill the vacancies, without which it will be a Herculean task to hold classes, especially in schools where only one or two teachers are present. However, there has been no response to our demands, he said. Another issue is that of regular sanitisation of schools. Even as the government has directed local bodies and gram panchayats in each district to undertake sanitisation of schools, the TSTUF is demanding that service persons be appointed to each school to examine the cleanliness and hygiene, as has been the case in the past four years. Meanwhile, district education officers as well as headmasters have been asked to provide a detailed set of standard operating procedures to the government, with logistical, seating and medical plans by January 18. Unity can prove more imagined than real. When James Buchanan spoke in 1857, three years before the Civil War, he claimed that all agree that under the Constitution slavery in the states is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective states themselves wherein it exists. Rutherford B. Hayes, whose presidency was marked by the retrenchment of federal troops from the post-Civil War South and ongoing resistance from Southern whites to equal rights for Blacks, declared during his 1877 inaugural that true peace could be achieved through the united and harmonious efforts of both races and the honest work of local self-government. Kim Cattrall's exit from the Sex and the City franchise left open a possible vacancy for a new actress to join the famous foursome. Legally Blonde's Jennifer Coolidge, 59, has been suggested by many on social media as the perfect person to step into Samantha Jones' high heels in the upcoming SATC limited series. However, during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen this week, Coolidge revealed that she isn't interested in the role since no one 'can replace' Kim. Irreplaceable: Jennifer Coolidge revealed that she isn't interested in replacing Kim Cattrall on Sex and the City during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen this week (Pictured in 2020) 'I was a huge, and still am a huge, Sex and the City fan,' Coolidge told Andy. 'It's one of those shows you can just watch the reruns and never get tired of them.' Cohen had prefaced his question to Jennifer by saying that there has been a growing number of people on social media floating Jennifer's name to join the cast of And Just Like That .... Despite the support, Coolidge explained that she doesn't think she - or anyone else for that matter - could do what Kim did for six seasons on HBO and to films. 'I have to say I am such a Kim Cattrall fan, and I don't see anyone being able to replace her in that part,' Jennifer said via video chat. 'It was just the perfect ... I don't think you can replace her.' 'I was a huge, and still am a huge, Sex and the City fan,' Coolidge told Andy. 'It's one of those shows you can just watch the reruns and never get tired of them.' 'I have to say I am such a Kim Cattrall fan, and I don't see anyone being able to replace her in that part,' Jennifer said via video chat. 'It was just the perfect ... I don't think you can replace her.' Ironically, Coolidge played a small role in an episode of the series back in 2003. She's most famous for her role as Paulette in Legally Blonde and the sexually charged 'MILF', Stiffler's mom, in American Pie. It seems that SATC star Sarah Jessica Parker agrees that there is no replacing Samantha and said recently that there would be no fourth character added in the reboot. The entrepreneur made the revelation as she was seen heading to the Seaport location her SJP shoe boutique in New York City on Wednesday morning. For the fans: Cohen had prefaced his question to Jennifer by saying that there has been a growing number of people on social media floating Jennifer's name to join the cast of And Just Like That ... (Kim Cattrall pictured as Samantha Jones) 'We're not looking to create a fourth character, we have New York City as a fourth character and it will be an interesting new character that we are excited about,' when asked by Adam Glyn of YouTube page Adam's Apple. It's yet to be revealed how the writers will handle the Samantha Jones character in the forthcoming limited series which follows Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda now in their 50s. SJP and Kim Cattrall have a longstanding feud and Cattrall has made it abundantly clear that she has zero interest in being Samantha Jones ever again. Perfect fit: Coolidge played a small role in an episode of the series back in 2003. She's most famous for her role as Paulette in Legally Blonde and the sexually charged 'MILF', Stiffler's mom, in American Pie (Pictured) Earlier this week Cattrall threw some thinly-disguised shade at her former castmates by 'liking' a fan tweet that 'applauded' her decision to 'put herself first' and refuse to take part in the upcoming reboot of the HBO show. The 64-year-old actress has yet to make a public statement about the news of the series' revival, but she made her feelings about it perfectly clear with her reaction to the tweet, which praised the star for 'doing what is best for her'. The tweet read: 'I absolutely love Sex and the City and whilst I am saddened that Samantha will not return, I applaud doing what is best for you and think this is great example of putting yourself first. Well done @KimCattrall.' 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All 50 deaths occurred in January 2021. The median age of those who died was 82 years, and the age range of those died was 45-96 years. No further deaths of healthcare workers or people aged under 30 were recorded. It brings the total number of Covid-19 related deaths to 2,536 while there has now been a total of 166,548* confirmed cases in Ireland. Read More Validation of data at the Health Protection Surveillance Centre has led to the denotification of seven cases which is reflected in the total figure. As of 2pm today, 1,850 Covid-19 patients are in hospital, with 184 in ICU. There were 118 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours. Of the cases notified today: 1,576 are men / 1,906 are women 54% are under 45 years of age The median age is 42 years old 1,182 are in Dublin, 421 in Cork, 258 in Limerick, 187 in Galway, 164 in Waterford, and the remaining 1,286 cases are spread across all other counties. Read More Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health said: "New variants of Covid-19 have recently been identified in Brazil, and in travellers to Japan from Brazil. There is no evidence of these variants in Ireland. "Anyone who has travelled from Brazil in the last 14 days is advised to self-isolate for 14 days, from the date of arrival, and identify themselves, through a GP, for testing as soon as possible. It is essential that anyone arriving from Brazil self-isolate for 14 days from the date of arrival before entering/re-entering the workplace. "We are particularly appealing to employers to enable their employees to protect each other by staying at home for the full 14 days. Marmorstein: You might soon be living in a million dollar home unfortunately CCP Virus Updates: Mexico Hits Another Record for Virus Cases Mexico posted a record spike in CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus cases on Friday, with 21,366 newly confirmed infections, about double the daily rate of increase just a week ago. The country also recorded 1,106 more deaths. It was unclear if the spike was due to the presence of the UK virus variant, of which only one case has so far been confirmed in a visiting British citizen. The country has now seen almost 1.61 million total infections and has seen registered over 139,000 deaths so far in the pandemic. Wuhan Lab Scientists Had COVID-Like Sickness in Fall 2019: State Department Several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with symptoms similar to those caused by the CCP virus in the Autumn of 2019, contradicting claims by a senior researcher from the institute who said there were no infections among the staff scientists. The revelation is part of a fact sheet released by the U.S. Department of State on Jan. 15 which slams the CCP for obsessive secrecy around the origin of the virus. Pfizer Temporarily Reduces European Deliveries of Vaccine U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer confirmed Friday it will temporarily reduce deliveries to Europe of its CCP virus vaccine while it upgrades production capacity to 2 billion doses per year. The EU Commission chief said shed immediately called Pfizers CEO. But in an indication the issue might go beyond Europe, Canadas government said it was also affected. Spain Rejects Virus Confinement While most of Europe kicked off 2021 with earlier curfews or stay-at-home orders, authorities in Spain insist the new virus variant causing havoc elsewhere is not to blame for a sharp resurgence of cases and that the country can avoid a full lockdown even as its hospitals fill up. Infection rates ebbed in October but never completely flattened the surge from summer. Cases started climbing again before the end of the year. In the past month, 14-day rates more than doubled, from 188 cases per 100,000 residents on Dec. 10 to 522 per 100,000 on Thursday. UK to Close All Travel Corridors Britain will further tighten entry restrictions by closing all its travel corridors with other countries in order to stem the spread of new CCP virus variants, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday. The change means all passengers must have a recent negative virus test and transfer immediately into isolation upon arrival. The isolation period lasts for 10 days, unless the passenger tests negative after five days. Highly Transmissible Variant Detected in 10 States At least 10 state health departments in the United States have detected the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant of COVD-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus, according to an update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Health officials warned that models have shown the B.1.1.7 strain of the virus has the potential to increase the U.S. pandemic trajectory in the coming months and warrants universal and increased compliance with mitigation strategies, including distancing and masking. Germany Passes 2 Million Cases Germany has passed the mark of 2 million confirmed CCP virus infections since the start of the pandemic. The countrys disease control agency said Friday that there were 22,368 newly confirmed cases over the past 24-hour period, taking the total to 2,000,958. The Robert Koch Institute said there have been 44,994 deaths linked to COVID-19, an increase of 1,113 in a day. Vaccine Side Effects May Have Led to 13 Deaths: Norway Norway has changed its CCP virus vaccination guide to state that very frail people should no longer receive the jab, citing 13 post-vaccine deaths in the country from side effects that appear to be linked to Pfizer and partner BioNTechs mRNA vaccine. The country has so far reported a total of 23 post-vaccine deaths out of roughly 25,000 shots. After examining 13 of the deaths, the agency said side effects from the mRNA vaccines may have led to deaths. Chinas Lack of Transparency Had US Flying Blind U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that Chinas lack of transparency and action had left the United States flying blind and compromised its early response to the CCP virus. In remarks during an online seminar with the Heritage Foundation, Azar spoke about the Trump administrations actions in response to the CCP virus. He said that the CCP had repeatedly denied offers of help from the United States, and in doing so compromised efforts from the Trump administration to learn more about the virus and take action. US Pharmacies Wont Check ID Before Administering Vaccines Many U.S. pharmacies, including those inside Kroger Co supermarkets and the drugstore chain of CVS Health Corp, say they will not be checking IDs before administering CCP virus vaccines, leaving the door open to those who do not meet states guidelines to jump the line. While the United States has distributed more than 30 million vaccine doses, a little over 11 million had been administered as of Thursday, a lag that prompted U.S. health secretary Alex Azar to call on states to begin vaccinating the vulnerable older population and those with certain chronic health conditions to get more vaccines into arms. Reuters, and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Chattanooga Police said a woman who refused to stop stabbing another woman was shot by officers at a motel on Lee Highway early Friday morning. At approximately 7:27 a.m., Chattanooga Police responded to America's Best Inn at 7717 Lee Highway on a reported stabbing call. The caller said a woman was stabbing another woman and holding her against her will in a room with the door locked. The female suspect did not respond to officers' commands to exit the room or release the victim. Officers announced their presence and called for the suspect to exit the room.The female suspect did not respond to officers' commands to exit the room or release the victim. Officers heard a female screaming from inside the room, then forced entry. Officers witnessed the suspect actively assaulting the victim with a knife. Shots were fired by two officers with the suspect sustaining non-life threatening injuries. Officers rendered medical aid to the stabbing victim and the suspect until EMS. The ambulance was already en route due to the initial stabbing call. Both the suspect and the victim were transported to a local hospital by Hamilton County EMS. A man in an adjoining room received a minor injury. The cause was unknown, and medical treatment was declined on scene. Per Chattanooga Police Department policy, all officers involved will be placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office will be handling the criminal investigation. As more information or evidence becomes available during the investigation, CPD will work in conjunction with HCSO and the Hamilton County District Attorney's Office to release more. Sheriff officials said, "Earlier this morning, at the direction of Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston, the Hamilton County Sheriffs Office Criminal Investigations Division (CID) responded to the 7700 block of Lee Highway to investigate an officer involved shooting involving personnel with the Chattanooga Police Department (CPD). "Once the investigation has concluded, the HCSO Criminal Investigations Division will turn their findings over to the District Attorney." Huntsman spiders that eat tiny frogs have been discovered in Madagascar. Researchers suspect that the spiders construct traps using leaves to lure the frogs into them with the promise of protection from the sun before trapping them. Back in 2017, Scientists discovered spiders belonging to the genus "Danastes " clutching tightly a Heterixalus andrakata tree frog. It was the second time that the Madagascar spiders had been spotted eating frogs. The Huntsman spider was seen crouching inside a pocket-like shelter made of two leaves enjoying its meal. The well-crafted shelter was attached to a tree and the edges of the leaves were sealed with spider silk with a small opening left Shortly, the scientists found three additional spiders, gathered together in makeshift shelters. Even though they weren't eating frogs at the time, studies suggest that the pocket like makeshift shelters were constructed with the sole aim of setting traps against frogs looking for a shade to rest. ALSO READ - The New Master of Disguise : Peculiar Ancient Insect Becomes New Genus, Looks Like a Scrub Brush Damastes Spiders Surprisingly, the Damastes spiders are smaller than their prey. A co-author of this study, Dominic Martins of the department of Biodiversity, Macroecology, and Biogeography at the University of Gottingen in Germany, said Heterixalus andrakata frogs are about 1 inch (32 millimeters) long and slightly bigger than Damastes spiders. Damastes, the frog-eating spider was found by researchers hiding between a pair of silk-woven leaves with its fangs pierced deep into a frog's head. When they saw the frog, it was static suggesting that the frog was dead. However, they saw four other frogs near the tree that were still alive. The researchers had in 2017 and 2018 found three additional spiders crouching in similar resting postures in different varieties of trees. The leaves were neatly woven together and surrounded by silk but there were small openings at the base close to the stem. The openings, scientists suspect, are designed to allow prey to enter the pocket-like traps. Lifestyle of Other Spiders Around The World Spiders all over the world eat about 880 million tons of insects every year. It's possible that they can also eat animals with a backbone. For instance, tropical spiders eat fish, lizards, frogs, and mammals. They are also known to cause deaths to small vertebrates in the Peruvian Amazon. Other bat-eating spiders live across the world except for Antarctica. Some popular photos have depicted various other spider prey including pet goldfish in South Africa, tadpole in the west of India, and a pygmy possum in Southern Tasmania. Spiders are popular with building retreats, this way they can hide from their own predators and at the same time, they can target their own prey. The tactics the Damastes spiders used to get at their prey suggest that they weave the leaves to serve as traps to catch the frogs that seek shelter during the daytime. "The frogs may be tempted to hide between the neatly joined leaves in an attempt to avoid dehydration and predation from, for example, birds " Martins added. However, it will require the monitoring of the Damastes spider using cameras while they build their traps to determine whether or not they are targeting amphibians or insects. Martin said spiders spend days without eating and therefore makes it very difficult to record their behavior. RELATED ARTICLE - Fungi Grows in Man's Blood After Injecting Self With Shroom Tea For more news, updates about spiders and similar stories, don't forget to follow Nature World News! MOSCOW - Russia said on Friday that it will withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities after the U.S. exit from the pact, compounding the challenges faced by the incoming administration of president-elect Joe Biden. FILE - In this June 28, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin walk to participate in a group photo at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Russia says it will withdraw from an international treaty allowing observation flights over military facilities following the U.S. exit from the pact. Russias Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday, Jan. 15, 2021 that the U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty last year significantly upended the balance of interests of signatory states, adding that Moscows proposals to keep the treaty alive after the U.S. exit have been cold-shouldered by Washingtons allies. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) MOSCOW - Russia said on Friday that it will withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities after the U.S. exit from the pact, compounding the challenges faced by the incoming administration of president-elect Joe Biden. Russias Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty last year significantly upended the balance of interests of signatory states, adding that Moscows proposals to keep the treaty alive after the U.S. exit have been cold-shouldered by Washingtons allies. The ministry said that Russia is now launching the relevant procedures to withdraw from the pact "due to the lack of progress in removing the obstacles for the treaty's functioning in the new conditions. The Russian parliament, which ratified the treaty in 2001, will now have to vote to leave it. The treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West by allowing the accords more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each others territories to collect information about military forces and activities. More than 1,500 flights have been conducted under the treaty, aimed at fostering transparency about military activity and helping monitor arms control and other agreements. Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting via video conference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. Russia announced Friday that it will withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty allowing observation flights over military facilities following the U.S. exit from the pact. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty, arguing that Russian violations made it untenable for the United States to remain a party. The U.S. completed its withdrawal from the pact in November. Russia denied breaching the treaty, which came into force in 2002. The European Union has urged the U.S. to reconsider and called on Russia to stay in the pact and lift flight restrictions, notably over its westernmost Kaliningrad region, which lies between NATO allies Lithuania and Poland. Russia has argued that the limits on flights over Kaliningrad, which hosts sizable military forces, are permissible under the treatys terms, noting that the U.S. has imposed more sweeping restrictions on observation flights over Alaska. As a condition for staying in the pact after the U.S. pullout, Moscow unsuccessfully sought guarantees from NATO allies that they wouldn't transfer the data collected during their observation flights over Russia to the U.S. Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said in televised remarks Friday that Russia could review its decision to withdraw if the U.S. decides to return to the pact, but acknowledged that the prospect looks utopian. Moscow has warned that the U.S. withdrawal will erode global security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, particularly amid Russia-West tensions after the Russian annexation of Ukraines Crimea in 2014. The demise of the Open Skies Treaty follows the U.S. and Russian withdrawal in 2019 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The INF Treaty, which was signed in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, banned land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres (310 to 3,410 miles), weapons seen as particularly destabilizing because of the shorter time they take to reach targets compared with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The only U.S.-Russian arms control pact still standing is the New START treaty that expires in three weeks. Moscow and Washington have discussed the possibility of its extension, but have so far failed to overcome their differences. Biden has spoken for the preservation of the New START treaty and Russia has said it's open for its quick and unconditional extension. But negotiating the deal before the pact expires on Feb. 5 appears extremely challenging. New START was signed in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance. Arms control advocates have warned that its expiration would remove any checks on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, striking a blow to global stability. Researchers say they may have found proof of theorized axions, and possibly dark matter, around group of neutron stars A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars. First theorized in the 1970s as part of a solution to a fundamental particle physics problem, axions are expected to be produced at the core of stars, and to convert into particles of light, called photons, in the presence of a magnetic field. Axions may also make up dark matter - the mysterious stuff that accounts for an estimated 85 percent of the total mass of the universe, yet we have so far only seen its gravitational effects on ordinary matter. Even if the X-ray excess turns out not to be axions or dark matter, it could still reveal new physics. A collection of neutron stars, known as the Magnificent 7, provided an excellent test bed for the possible presence of axions, as these stars possess powerful magnetic fields, are relatively nearby - within hundreds of light-years - and were only expected to produce low-energy X-rays and ultraviolet light. "They are known to be very 'boring,'" and in this case it's a good thing, said Benjamin Safdi, a Divisional Fellow in the Berkeley Lab Physics Division theory group who led a study, published Jan. 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters, detailing the axion explanation for the excess. Christopher Dessert, a Berkeley Lab Physics Division affiliate, contributed heavily to the study, which also had participation by researchers at UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota. If the neutron stars were of a type known as pulsars, they would have an active surface giving off radiation at different wavelengths. This radiation would show up across the electromagnetic spectrum, Safdi noted, and could drown out this X-ray signature that the researchers had found, or would produce radio-frequency signals. But the Magnificent 7 are not pulsars, and no such radio signal was detected. Other common astrophysical explanations don't seem to hold up to the observations either, Safdi said. If the X-ray excess detected around the Magnificent 7 is generated from an object or objects hiding out behind the neutron stars, that likely would have shown up in the datasets that researchers are using from two space satellites: the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray telescopes. Safdi and collaborators say it's still quite possible that a new, non-axion explanation arises to account for the observed X-ray excess, though they remain hopeful that such an explanation will lie outside of the Standard Model of particle physics, and that new ground- and space-based experiments will confirm the origin of the high-energy X-ray signal. "We are pretty confident this excess exists, and very confident there's something new among this excess," Safdi said. "If we were 100% sure that what we are seeing is a new particle, that would be huge. That would be revolutionary in physics." Even if the discovery turns out not to be associated with a new particle or dark matter, he said, "It would tell us so much more about our universe, and there would be a lot to learn." Raymond Co, a University of Minnesota postdoctoral researcher who collaborated in the study, said, "We're not claiming that we've made the discovery of the axion yet, but we're saying that the extra X-ray photons can be explained by axions. It is an exciting discovery of the excess in the X-ray photons, and it's an exciting possibility that's already consistent with our interpretation of axions." If axions exist, they would be expected to behave much like neutrinos in a star, as both would have very slight masses and interact only very rarely and weakly with other matter. They could be produced in abundance in the interior of stars. Uncharged particles called neutrons move around within neutron stars, occasionally interacting by scattering off of one another and releasing a neutrino or possibly an axion. The neutrino-emitting process is the dominant way that neutron stars cool over time. Like neutrinos, the axions would be able to travel outside of the star. The incredibly strong magnetic field surrounding the Magnificent 7 stars - billions of times stronger than magnetic fields that can be produced on Earth - could cause exiting axions to convert into light. Neutron stars are incredibly exotic objects, and Safdi noted that a lot of modeling, data analysis, and theoretical work went into the latest study. Researchers have heavily used a bank of supercomputers known as the Lawrencium Cluster at Berkeley Lab in the latest work. Some of this work had been conducted at the University of Michigan, where Safdi previously worked. "Without the high-performance supercomputing work at Michigan and Berkeley, none of this would have been possible," he said. "There is a lot of data processing and data analysis that went into this. You have to model the interior of a neutron star in order to predict how many axions should be produced inside of that star." Safdi noted that as a next step in this research, white dwarf stars would be a prime place to search for axions because they also have very strong magnetic fields, and are expected to be "X-ray-free environments." "This starts to be pretty compelling that this is something beyond the Standard Model if we see an X-ray excess there, too," he said. Researchers could also enlist another X-ray space telescope, called NuStar, to help solve the X-ray excess mystery. Safdi said he is also excited about ground-based experiments such as CAST at CERN, which operates as a solar telescope to detect axions converted into X-rays by a strong magnet, and ALPS II in Germany, which would use a powerful magnetic field to cause axions to transform into particles of light on one side of a barrier as laser light strikes the other side of the barrier. Axions have received more attention as a succession of experiments has failed to turn up signs of the WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle), another promising dark matter candidate. And the axion picture is not so straightforward - it could actually be a family album. There could be hundreds of axion-like particles, or ALPs, that make up dark matter, and string theory - a candidate theory for describing the forces of the universe - holds open the possible existence of many types of ALPs. ### The study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Research Program; Advanced Research Computing and the Leinweber Graduate Fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the National Science Foundation; the Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics (MITP) of the Cluster of Excellence PRISMA+; the Munich Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics (MIAPP) of the DFG Excellence Cluster Origins; and the CERN Theory department. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 14 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab's facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. DOE's 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, please visit energy.gov/science. Well-known geologist and philanthropist Grigor Gabrielyants, Director of the Museums of the City of Shushi SNCO Lusine Gasparyan and the Ministry of Culture of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) are actively negotiating with the Russian side to save the museum samples that are still preserved in the city of Shushi transferred to the enemy and remove them from the city. This is what Lusine Gasparyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am and voiced hope that it will be possible to at least save pieces of the tremendous cultural heritage of Shushi through the mediation of the Russian side. Before the war that broke out in September 2020, there were 4 state and 2 private museums operating in Shushi, which is considered the center for culture in Artsakh. Unfortunately, during the war, only the samples of a private rug museum were removed from the city, and the samples of 3 of the 4 museums operating as part of the SNCO were moved to a bomb shelter. I was in Shushi in early November, and moved to Yerevan on November 5. During that period, it didnt cross anyones mind that the city could be transferred to the enemy and it would be necessary to remove the collections kept in the bomb shelter. We moved all the samples to the bomb shelter amid shooting, and if we had known that the city might be transferred to the enemy, we would have moved the collections to Stepanakert, Gasparyan said stressed that the authorities of Artsakh and Armenia hadnt informed her and the others about the intention to hand the city, and until November 9, the Ministry of Defense insisted that Shushi was under Armenians control. There are 197 monuments representing the history and culture of Shushi, nearly 800 paintings, graphic works and sculptures of the Museum of Fine Arts and over 700 samples of the Geology Museum of Shushi that are currently under the control of the enemy. Today the Azerbaijani side doesnt even want to hear about the return of collections remaining in Shushi, but these collections are the cultural heritage of us Armenians and need to be returned to us. Knowing the enemy, we dont have good expectations from the negotiations, but we have to do everything we can to save whatever there is, Gabrielyants said. Gasparyan added that she is regularly following the scenes published in Azerbaijani sources showing that the museum wasnt destroyed during shelling. According to her, this shows that the samples moved to the bomb shelter couldnt have been damaged before November 9, and if the Azerbaijani side refuses to return the samples or declares that they havent been preserved, the only thing left to do is to conclude that we are dealing with another war crime. Rumours of a public listing for ThaiBev's beer business have resurfaced, with Reuters reporting that the group could launch an IPO later this year. Could ThaiBev float its brewing operations, including Chang, this year? Citing unnamed sources, Reuters said earlier today that the owner of the Chang beer brand could raise around US$2bn from an offering in Singapore. The claim comes just over a year after ThaiBev, which is itself listed in Singapore, brought in advisors at what the company said at the time were "exploratory or early stages". In its report, Reuters said the assets that could be included in the listing comprise ThaiBev's brewing operations in its home market of Thailand as well as in neighbouring Vietnam. ThaiBev has a majority holding in Vietnam's Saigon Beer Alcohol Beverage Corp (SABECO), with the country's authorities poised to offload their 36% stake having transferred it to a government-owned investment company in September. Reuters' sources in today's article "declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to the media". Should an IPO be launched, ThaiBev would follow Anheuser-Busch InBev in floating its Asian beer assets. A-B InBev raised $5bn from an IPO for Budweiser Brewing CO APAC in late-2019. As well as Chang and the SABECO controlling interest, ThaiBev is present in soft drinks and spirits, owning brands including Thai spirits favourites Mekhong and SangSom Special Rum as well as Scotch whiskies Balblair and Old Pulteney through its International Beverage Holdings division. The beer category in 2020 - just-drinks' Review of the Year The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Prices of television sets are set to rise sharply this quarter and possibly beyond as companies battle an increase in component costs. The price rise threatens to derail the sectors growth momentum of 2020 when people cooped indoors ordered new and bigger TVs for their homes. According to industry stakeholders and experts, the cost of open-cell display panels has risen significantly amid a global shortage of integrated circuits, and a general rise in prices of other raw materials. The industry is left with no choice but to pass on the burden to customers, they said. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Jaipal Singh, associate research manager, client devices, at International Data Corporation (IDC), said prices of 32-inch TV panels have jumped from $33-35 a few months ago to $60-65 currently. Even though vendors are willing to pay, they are not getting inventory on time. Most vendors have struggled with panel supplies," he added. Arjun Bajaj, chief executive and founder of Delhi-based electronics brand Daiwa, said prices could go up by 20-30% due to market constraints. Brands such as Xiaomi, Samsung and OnePlus have already increased their TV prices by 10-15% in India. The global market is currently witnessing a surge in inputs costs. i.e., OC (open-cell) panels used by TV manufacturers across the globe, and that has contributed to an increase in overall TV prices. Despite the new changes, we believe this will open up new avenues for the Smart TV manufacturing ecosystem in India," said Eshwar Nilakantan, who heads the Mi TV Business for Xiaomi India. The founder of another television brand said the supply concerns are also a result of political tensions between the US and China and China and India. The US has control over most ICs (integrated circuits), so theyre causing all kinds of troubles for China. China, in turn, controls most open-cell manufacturing, and theyre making trouble for everyone," the person said, on condition of anonymity. Factors such as an increase in other input costs, especially freight charges, and raw materials like copper and aluminium have also contributed to the pricing pressure on manufacturers. Freight cost between China and India has jumped three to four times, said Nilesh Gupta, director at Vijay Sales, an Indian electronics retail store. Industry experts are meanwhile worried that higher TV prices could stem demand in the sector, which saw healthy growth last year. Panel shortage, increase in prices of open-cell panels and also of freight charges has put a lot of pressure on vendors. As a result, we didnt see the price correction we were expecting," said IDC Indias Singh. Restrictions to curb the pandemic, remote working and a boom in video-streaming services have triggered a spurt in demand for TVs in 2020. Many people also opted for bigger screens that cost slightly more. Companies like Chinas Xiaomi saw the biggest growth in demand for TVs with 4K resolution last year, with 50% growth in sales of 50- and 55-inch TVs. These TVs comprised 30-35% of the total shipments for the company. Rival TCL, too, saw a 47% jump in sales of 4K TVs in 2020. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Pierogi can be simply boiled, or boiled first, then pan-fried in butter and served with sour cream or fried shallots or onions. (Sentelia/Shutterstock) Potato Pierogi Are the Best Pierogi But however you fill or cook them, these Polish dumplings are little bites of comfort Despite having grown up eating these Polish dumplings, especially around Christmas, I had to re-learn how to say their name as an adult. Two generations removed from speaking Slovak at home, we kids had transformed pierogi to padokee. And as with another popular Polish food, paczki, the word pierogi is already plural (who could eat just one?) from pierog. So the anglicized pierogies is a bit redundant. But the recipe didnt deviate, I thought: boiled dumplings with potato and cheese filling. Wed confronted the occasional sauerkraut-stuffed pillows, but as kids we stared those down and relegated them to the far side of our plates. Potatoes or nothing, Mom. Sweet, Savory, Holy? We kids thought kraut was a bridge too far, but the oldest recorded recipe, from a 1682 Polish cookbook, called for kidney, veal fat, greens, and nutmeg. In fact, potatoes didnt get to Europe until the Spanish and English brought them from the New World, from the Incas in present-day Peru. Fast forward a few decades, and I found myself in the homeland of pierogi, in Krakow during their annual pierogi festival. Beets, meats, kraut, and sweetsit didnt matter. Dessert dumplings or savory supper fare, sweetened poppy seeds or wild mushrooms with herbs, there were no limits. However, by my estimation, what I considered the standard was indeed the most abundant. Theres a patron saint of pierogi, because of course there is: St. Hyacinth, a Polish monk, who legend credits with introducing them in the 13th century. Hes said to have staved off starvation for the masses after the Mongol invasion in 1240 with pierogi. That might have been the kidney variety, so theres a mixed blessing there. Regardless, the Poles took to invoking the pierogi patron whenever things were looking grim, crying, Swiety Jacku z pierogami! (Oh, St. Hyacinth with pierogi!) in hopes of divine intervention. Making pierogi. (M-Rackham/Shutterstock) Potato and cheese pierogi became popular in the last century or so, but has been known as pierogi ruskieRuthenian pierogi, often mistranslated as Russian pierogisince World War II. The Ruthenians are an ethnic group in the region formerly considered eastern Poland and now within Ukraine. Poles living in that part of Poland made them using quark. Ethnic Ukrainians called them Polish pierogi. When these Poles relocated west into Polands post-war borders, the dish picked up the Ruthenian moniker. My own pierogi-feasting forebears were actually Slovak, from a village just south of the border of modern Poland, all of which would have been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time. But I digress. How Do You Like Em? While my grandmother made perfect little tender dumplings, my brother and I perhaps borrow from Russian brutalism. Still delicious, but not so beautiful. Often at Christmas, tired of turkey and ham, we work up a batch. Our family always served them boiled, smothered with browned butter. In some cases youll find them boiled first, then pan-fried in butter and served with sour cream or fried shallots or onions. As much as I am stuck on nostalgia, I admit to enjoying them this way from time to time. Oven baking (400 degrees F for 20 minutes) and deep-frying (3 to 4 minutes in 350-degree oil) are also options. Experiment as you wish, but here is a recipe for the straight-up comfort food variety. Potato and Cheese Pierogi Makes about 30 pierogi For the Filling 1 cup mashed potatoes 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar For the Dough 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 eggs 3 tablespoons water 1/2 cup sour cream and/or 2 tablespoons softened butter (optional) To Serve 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter Prepare the filling first. Add cheese to your mashed potatoes while still hot, until you find them cheesy enough. Cheddar stands out nicely. For the dough, mix together the flour and salt. In another large bowl, whisk the eggs and water. Stir in the sour cream and butter, if you choose (it is said to keep the pierogi dough from getting too tough when fried, though weve never done it). Then mix in half the flour. Add the rest of the flour gradually until you get a mass that is elastic and workable. You may need to adjust the amount of flour based on that consistency. It should not be too dry; the dough needs to stick together when you pinch your dumplings shut. Flour your working surface to prevent sticking, and divide the dough into three parts. Roll each until about 1/8-inch thick. We use a knife to cut the dough in squares (about 2 1/2- x 2 1/2-inch) to make pillow-shaped pierogi, but culinary artists and Instagram chefs may prefer the iconic half-moon shape. In this case, a 2- to 2 1/2-inch diameter circular cutteror the top of a glasscan be used. Place a spoonful of the filling in the middle of each dough square/circle. Start small; you may be surprised how little filling it takes to make closing them difficult. Then fold the two sides together and pinch them shut, making sure the seal is complete. Let them dry a bit on a floured surface. They also freeze well at this stage. To cook, use a large pasta pot to boil ample water and a pinch of salt. Boil the pierogi for about 3 to 4 minutes. They should float when ready, but be sure they cook until tender. (If you go with alternative fillings, especially meat, make sure you cook it all first. The boiling process wont be long enough to properly cook fillings.) To make brown butter, melt a stick of butter in a small pan over medium heat. Watch it closely as it starts to turn brown in the pan. If youve reached the desired brownness, pour it out of the pan. We just turned the burner off early and let the residual heat finish it in the pan. Kevin Revolinski is an avid traveler and the author of 15 books, including The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an American Teacher in Turkey, and several outdoor and brewery guidebooks. He is based in Madison, Wis., and his website is TheMadTraveler.com 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. A recognizable voice is leaving ESPNs Louisiana airwaves. That would be Jordy Culotta, who had been working at 104.5 ESPN in Baton Rouge since 2010. Most recently, Culotta (seen at left above) had been co-hosting morning show Off The Bench with T-Bob Hebert (seen at right above), with that show also simulcast on ESPN Radio stations in New Orleans and Alexandria. Culotta posted about his departure on Facebook and Twitter Thursday: I will always be grateful to the opportunity extended by @FlynnFoster & @glrush3 I poured my heart and soul into the company and show for almost a decade. Great memories and lessons I look forward to the next challenge life serves up. Thank you to everyone for the support! https://t.co/FDtDlb2Tcc Jordy Culotta (@JordyCulotta) January 14, 2021 Many colleagues paid tribute to Culottas work at 104.5, including Hebert: I dk what things will look like from here but again Im just thankful for everything @JordyCulotta has done for me The outpouring of support is a testament to the man he is and how beloved he is in this town T-Bob Hebert (@TBob53) January 14, 2021 Here are some reactions from other colleagues, other members of the media, and fans: Jordy is one of the best to do this job. Im honored to have gotten to learn from and work with him. I wouldnt have woken up at 4 am for many others. I mean, has anyone ever made Dicky V so mad, so regularly? This is sad but I know that no matter whats next, Jordy will kill it. https://t.co/7iCWB4SUi7 Rivers Hughey (@RivsHughey) January 14, 2021 Jordy has been a mentor and friend to me since my senior year in college. Im fortunate to have worked alongside him for close to 3 years. His next chapter will be great! https://t.co/twmJG2it9n Matthew Musso (@MussoMatthew) January 14, 2021 Jordy is the man. Ill forever cherish my Culotta and the Prince koozie https://t.co/AyryaYbtMH James Moran (@SmartestMoran) January 14, 2021 Im completely shocked that @JordyCulotta was let go by @GuarantyMedia today. Him and @TBob53 on @OTB_ESPN were the best show they had. Gonna miss waking up to those two. Andrew Christopher Stan Account (@diabsoule) January 14, 2021 Man this @JordyCulotta news ruined my day. Mornings will not be the same without him. ??@OTB_ESPN @TBob53 Chris Landry (@chris_m_landry) January 14, 2021 Well see whats next for Culotta, and for ESPN Radios morning plans in Louisiana. [Barrett Sports Media] A teenage girl has died after she was pulled from the water at a public swimming pool in the Hunter region on Friday afternoon, where she had been enjoying a family day out. The 13-year-old was swimming at Maitland Aquatic Centre when she got into trouble about 3.30pm and was pulled out by lifeguards who performed CPR. Paramedics continued resuscitation efforts before the girl was taken to Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital in a critical condition. She later died. Police remained at the pool on Friday afternoon placing yellow evidence markers at the poolside. Aaron 'AK' Knight first rose to fame on season two of Australian Survivor and then returned in the recent All Stars season. Now it seems the 33-year-old has turned to video-sharing service Cameo as a way to monetise his reality TV stardom. Cameo is a website that allows celebrities to send personalised video messages to fans for a fee. Cashing in: Aaron 'AK' Knight has turned to video-sharing service Cameo as a way to monetise his reality TV stardom The reality TV villain charges fans a whopping $1,000 for a video message. Australian celebrities who have joined the bandwagon include Married At First Sight's Cyrell Paule, who charges $25, and her Love Island star boyfriend Eden Dally, who's fee is $20. A video from former Bachelor turned actor Tim Robards charges $45, while a message from influencer Alli Simpson fetches $70. That's a bit much? Cameo is a website service that allows celebrities to send personalised messages to fans for a fee. AK is charging a whopping $1,000 for a video message Reasonable price: A video from former Bachelor turned actor Tim Robards charges $45 Getting pricey: while a message from influencer Alli Simpson fetches $70 Whoa: The only celebrity to charge the same amount as AK is KIIS FM radio king Kyle Sandilands at $1,000 for a video message The only celebrity to charge the same amount as AK is KIIS FM radio king Kyle Sandilands at $1,000 for a video message. Daily Mail Australia has contacted AK for comment in regards to his fee. Last year, AK candidly discussed his body insecurities as he hit back at trolls making comments about his weight. Insecurities: Last year, AK discussed his body insecurities as he hit back at trolls making comments about his weight Old AK: In a lengthy Twitter post in February 2020, the Adelaide-based wedding DJ explained that he used to be 'obsessed' with body image and being 'ripped' in his youth In a lengthy Twitter post in February 2020, the Adelaide-based wedding DJ explained that he used to be 'obsessed' with body image and being 'ripped' in his youth. 'The funny thing is, I was once that person. Not attacking people on social media, but never understanding why someone would let themselves not be "jacked" or "ripped" and become overweight,' AK revealed. Looking in hindsight, he said: 'I am truly happy, Ive never been happier in life and I am truly content with who I am as a person and the way I look.' KYODO NEWS - Jan 15, 2021 - 16:06 | All, Japan, Coronavirus The Hiroshima prefectural government in western Japan said Friday it is considering conducting free coronavirus testing of up to 800,000 people in what would be the largest such testing campaign in the country, as it struggles to contain a recent rise in infections. The voluntary polymerase chain reaction testing would target all residents and workers in the heart of Hiroshima city, where the virus situation is deemed to be at Stage 4, the worst level on the central government's four-point scale, it said. The prefectural capital with a population of about 1.2 million has recently seen an explosive spread of coronavirus infections. The cumulative total has reached 2,900 cases in the city. According to the prefecture, about 600,000 people reside in the city's central wards of Naka, Higashi, Minami and Nishi, and around 100,000 to 200,000 people are estimated to be employed there. The Hiroshima government said it is now discussing details of how and when to carry out the virus testing campaign, including the expansion of PCR testing centers and provision of mail-in test kits. It is also preparing to secure more hotel rooms for those showing mild symptoms, with the number of people confirmed positive for the virus set to increase as a result of the large-scale testing. Yasutoshi Nishimura, minister in charge of Japan's coronavirus response, said Thursday the central government regards the city of Hiroshima as an area requiring anti-virus measures similar to those adopted by local governments under the state of emergency. The virus emergency is currently in place in 11 prefectures based on a law to address the spread of the virus. Hiroshima Prefecture, including its capital, is not included in the 11. Dining and drinking establishments in the western Japan city will receive up to 60,000 yen ($578) per day in financial support if they comply with the government's request to shorten their business hours to help curb infections. The amount is tantamount to financial assistance provided to such facilities in the 11 prefectures, which include Tokyo, Osaka and Aichi. The Hiroshima prefectural government has reinforced its virus measures as well, asking all restaurants and bars including those not serving alcohol in the city to close by 8 p.m. The local government has not requested the central government to add Hiroshima Prefecture to areas subject to the state of emergency. The declaration of the virus emergency gives local authorities legal grounds for requesting restaurants and bars to shorten operating hours and make public the names of those that do not comply with the measure, among others. The central government declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and three adjacent prefectures on Jan. 7, and expanded the scope to include seven other prefectures, including Osaka, Aichi and Fukuoka on Wednesday, drawing criticisms for failing to do so in one go. Nishimura said Thursday the central government could boost support to other areas as well if they are also regarded as requiring anti-virus measures similar to those under the state of emergency, depending on the infection situations and strain on health care systems. He said the government will discuss with prefectural governors about the need to increase state support. Related coverage: 742 bil. yen in reserve funds added to subsidies for restaurants in Japan Government to suspend athletes' coronavirus entry exemptions Universal Studios Japan delays opening of Super Mario attraction Igor Popov, the Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, has specifically denied Pashinians claims that the three mediating powers pressured the Armenian side to give seven districts around Karabakh back to Azerbaijan and offered it nothing in return. Pashinian repeatedly criticized their peace proposals during and after the recent war with Azerbaijan. He dismissed critics arguments that he could have prevented the disastrous war by accepting the proposals based on the so-called Madrid Principles of a Karabakh settlement, which were first put forward by the U.S., Russian and French mediators in 2007. In a January 4 article, Pashinian claimed that the most recent version of the peace plan drafted by Russia and backed by the two other co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group amounted to a proposed surrender of lands to Azerbaijan in return for nothing. He said it left open the key question of Karabakhs status. Popov bluntly denied that in written comments posted on the Russian Foreign Ministrys website on Wednesday. He argued that under the Minsk Group plan Karabakhs population would be able to determine the disputed territorys internationally recognized status in a future legally binding referendum. Popov also stressed that the plan tied Armenian withdrawal from two of the seven districts, Lachin and Kelbajar, to the determination of Karabakhs status. Therefore, the claims that Russia proposed [the Armenians] to return the seven districts for nothing, forget about the status and calm down do not correspond to reality, he said. Neither the Armenian nor the Azerbaijani side rejected these proposals, even though a full agreement [between the two sides] was never reached. But the bottom line is that negotiations were held on a regular basis up until 2018 when Yerevan came up with new approaches, Popov added in another jibe at Armenias current leadership. Pashinian and his office declined on Thursday to comment on Popovs extraordinary remarks. Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian acknowledged in that regard that Moscow has never neglected the issue of Karabakhs status. I definitely agree with Mr. Popov in that Artsakhs status has been and remains the most important aspect of the conflicts resolution, he told reporters. Asked about the clear contradiction between Pashinians and Popovs statements, Ayvazian said: I dont comment on the prime ministers statements and other comments which are often taken out of context. Meanwhile, Armenian opposition figures -- and former President Serzh Sarkisians political allies in particular -- seized upon Popov's statement to again denounce Pashinian's policies on the Karabakh conflict. Armen Ashotian, the deputy chairman of Sarkisians Republican Party (HHK), said Popov branded the Armenian prime minister a liar. In Ashotians words, the Russian mediator also effectively accused Pashinian of torpedoing the Karabakh peace process and paving the way for the autumn war won by Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani army recaptured four of the seven districts which had been occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces in the early 1990s. Baku agreed to stop its military operations on November 10 in return for an Armenian pledge to withdraw from the three other districts. The Armenian opposition blames Pashinian for the defeat and demands his resignation. The latter rejects these demands. (Newser) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that she wants to know whether any of her colleagues helped the mob that stormed the Capitol last week. That would put them in criminal jeopardy, she said. "If in fact it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection, if they aided and abetted the crime," Pelosi said, "there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecutions." Suspicions have been raised by House Democrats that Republicans gave tours to rioters before the attack, and they've asked Capitol Police to see visitor logs. "That will be looked into," said Pelosi. She also said she's asked retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore to assess security at the Capitol, per NPR. "We must subject this whole complex to scrutiny," Pelosi said. story continues below Honore was critical of the efforts to counter the rioters last week, per WVUE. "It's like the Capitol Police was doing security by Zoom," he said. The general added: "I've just never seen so much incompetence, so they're either that stupid, or ignorant or complicit. I think they were complicit." Steven Sund, who resigned as chief of the Capitol Police after the attack, said Friday that he believes the mob's assault was part of a coordinated attack. In discussing the insurrection, Pelosi became emotional about the showings of bigotry in the Capitol, especially the "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt one rioter wore. "To see this punk with that shirt on and his anti-Semitism that he has bragged about to be part of a white supremacist raid on this Capitol requires us to have an after-action review," Pelosi said. (Read more Capitol attack stories.) By Kim Hyun-bin LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo's "New LG" initiative has found great synergy and success across the diverse businesses of the conglomerate. Since Koo took the helm of the corporation in June 2018, LG Group's market capitalization has soared by 70 trillion won, reaching a total of 163.3 trillion won. LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo 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. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has closed its investigation into potential corruption at British American Tobacco (BAT). In 2017, the fraud team launched a probe into the Dunhill cigarette maker, its subsidiaries and associated persons. On Friday, the SFO confirmed that the results of its investigation and review 'did not meet the evidential test for prosecution'. It is understood the tobacco giant was under investigation over allegations it paid bribes in east Africa to undermine anti-smoking policy. The Serious Fraud Office launched an investigation into British American Tobacco in 2017 concerning allegations of bribery in Africa. Following a three-year probe the SFO said there was insufficient evidence to support a prosecution British American Tobacco welcomed the SFO's announcement. It said: 'BAT remains committed to the highest standards in the conduct of its business' Paul Hopkins, who worked for BAT in Kenya for 13 years, told BBC's Panorama in 2015 he had begun paying bribes after being told it was the cost of doing business in Africa. BAT told Panorama at the time: 'The truth is that we do not and will not tolerate corruption, no matter where it takes place.' In a statement to shareholders, the FTSE 100 company said: 'BAT is pleased that the SFO has closed its investigation and that the SFO is taking no further action in respect of this matter. 'BAT remains committed to the highest standards in the conduct of its business.' The company operates in 180 countries around the world, with sales of almost 26 billion in the last financial year and profits of 9 billion. In April, BAT said it was also under investigation in the US for a possible breach of sanctions. The London-based firm said it was co-operating with the Justice Department and the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces economic sanctions. If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here Deputy Communications Director of the NPP, Mame Yaa Aboagye has sent a word of caution to students and parents ahead of nationwide reopening of school today. To prevent the spread of the Coronavirus disease, Mame Yaa stated that although government has put in place all necessary measures by procuring Veronica Buckets to ensure frequent hand washing, made provision for regular free supply of water, the parents also have a responsibility to ensure their children stay safe. She therefore asked them to assist the government in making sure the school children observe the COVID-19 safety protocols. Government has already disinfected almost all the schools, provided them with Veronica Buckets and other measures for a smooth reopening but it is the duty of we, the parents, to ensure our children abide by all these protocols by not hugging or eating with anybody whilst in schools because children value the words of their parents more than anyone. I am also a mother and the safety of our children are so important to us so as parent we should provide some basic needs of the covid-19 protocols like, hand sanitizers, nose mask even though government has already made the provision but we should also help them to prevent the spread of the diseaselet our wards know that we are all involve. She also advised the students to be extra conscious of the safety protocols by washing their hands regularly, constantly sanitizing their hands and wearing their nose masks all the time. She commended the government for the decision to reopen schools for the continuation of academia in the country. 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 Further round of pandemic business support planned from Welsh Government This article is old - Published: Friday, Jan 15th, 2021 Further support for business is set to be announced in the coming weeks, as the First Minister had a political jibe about taking Conservative spending advice. With certain sectors getting support before Christmas and now during January we asked First Minister Mark Drakeford about future plans as it appears lockdown will be continuing for several weeks yet. Prior to the hospitality specific lockdown Wrexham.com saw consultation documentation that described the support packages in a worked example as covering six weeks of closure plus a week of shutdown and a week of reopening, so a two month period in all. With the hospitality closure taking place in early December that would mean the calculated cover for that support will be approaching the end of the coverage period. We also asked the First Minister about wider support for other sectors, who are impacted but are trying to continue with their business as best as possible, for example office based businesses who are working from home but continue to have a range of overheads as they maintain unusable offices. The First Minister said, We are working very actively on a further round of support for businesses in Wales. I hope that well be in a position to say something about that within the next couple of weeks, and before the time frame of the help were currently offering comes to an end. The first minister also had a political jibe about taking spending advice from the Conservative party. It comes after Welsh Secretary Simon Hart apologised after claiming that funding being allocated to the Welsh Government was new money, a claim that was echoed locally, and highlighted by the First Minister. The @GOVUK have taken quick and decisive action giving an additional 227 million to the @WelshGovernment to support businesses https://t.co/cjFPCMDXAU Sarah Atherton MP (@AthertonNWales) January 5, 2021 Mr Drakeford said: We are dependent to significant extent on the flow of funds from the UK Government to us. You will have seen last week that the Treasury announced that 227 million pounds was coming to Wales because of help that was being provided to businesses in England only for them to correct that the following day to say that nothing was coming to Wales. It was all included in money weve had already. We are in continuing conversations with the Treasury about that, among other things, too. Conservative MPs in North Wales made, well, lets be kind, they misunderstood the position and made a big fuss last week saying that the Welsh Government had a billion pounds that we hadnt spent. In December we were three quarters the way through the financial year, and we spent three quarters of our budget. Were up to 80% of our budget, in the second week of January, that billion pounds is what we have for the rest of this financial year. So if we had spent it all before Christmas we would have had literally nothing left. So had you been asking me your question about extra support for businesses, Id had to have say theres nothing we can do, because we took the advice of conservative MPs in North Wales and spent all the money last year. Now, luckily, we didnt take their advice. We have money left for this quarter and that what we will be drawing on to provide further support to businesses and to do many other things that we need to do, including supporting the vaccination program, the testing program, the TPP program, and all the other things that we have to keep going. So by keeping the money to be able to use it in the last three months, we hope to be in a position to be able to make further announcements on business support. Sanofi, France's biggest pharmaceutical company, could help produce foreign-developed Covid-19 vaccines pending the launch of its own vaccine, which will not be ready for months, a government minister said Friday. Industry Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told Radio Classique that vaccines developed by BioNTech, which partners with Pfizer, and Janssen, owned by Johnson and Johnson, were the most likely choices for Sanofi to lend a helping hand. The world has been scrambling to develop and produce enough anti-Covid vaccines, with innoculation drives hampered by limited stocks of doses and logistical constraints. Also on Friday a French government source said that it expected a "sharp fall" in deliveries of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine in coming weeks because of supply chain problems in Belgium. France has already received 1.5 million doses of the vaccine, and was hoping for over half a million more next week. The delay will force an adjustment if the pace of vaccinations, the source said, but would not endanger the ongoing vaccine campaign. France -- which has been criticised for lagging behind neighbouring countries with its vaccine rollout -- had high hopes that its national champion Sanofi would contribute to a first wave of coronavirus inoculations, but the company's vaccine will not be ready before the end of the year. Pannier-Runacher said she had therefore begun talks with Sanofi to act as a sub-contractor for other firms while it completed its own Covid jabs. "We are looking at this together with them," she said, "and they are examining with BioNTech on the one hand and Janssen on the other whether it would be possible." Sanofi itself told AFP that it was evaluating "the technical feasibility of temporarily carrying out some production stages to support other makers of Covid-19 vaccines," without naming either BioNTech or Janssen. Talks were still "at a very preliminary stage," it said. Story continues Pannier-Runacher said the main question was whether Sanofi had the spare capacity to make the doses in three to five months, with active ingredients adding another a few months, in a process "that usually takes 12 to 18 months." The minister rejected criticism of Sanofi's tardiness in developing its vaccine, saying the company was only "three months late" compared to its July target, and that its performance was still "extraordinary." Delpharm, a French sub-contractor for the pharmaceutical industry, said in November that it would produce the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine in its factory in northwestern France. Recipharm, another sub-contractor, will produce the vaccine developed by Moderna starting late February or early March, Pannier-Runacher said last week. Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said Friday that any vaccines produced in France would be part of the total number of doses ordered by the European Union, and distributed in France as part of the national quota negotiated between EU members. bur/jh/wai Jefferson County prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty against a Birmingham woman charged with capital murder in the 2019 shooting death of her 5-year-old relative, according to court filings. Rickkia Allen, 30, was indicted in October 2020 on capital murder in the shooting death of 5-year-old TaNarius TJ Moore. Moore, a kindergartener at Center Point Elementary School, was shot in the head in December 2019 when he was caught in family crossfire, according to police. North Precinct officers responded just after 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, to a call of a person shot at 33rd Terrace North and F.L. Shuttlesworth Drive. Upon arrival, officers found TJ unresponsive and suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. A neighbor said she heard multiple shots fired, and then saw a man cradling the wounded boy in his arms. TJ was taken to Childrens of Alabama where he was pronounced dead. Police said two women both family members of the boy were engaged in an altercation. Both fired weapons at each other and the boy was struck. In a court filing Wednesday, Jefferson County prosecutors said they intend to seek the death penalty against Allen, citing TJs age. Barn destroyed by Wednesday morning fire Fire destroyed a barn about five miles southeast of Watertown Wednesday, according to a report from Watertown Fire Rescue. New research from CU Cancer Center member Jing Hong Wang, MD, PhD, and recent University of Colorado Immunology program graduate Rachel Woolaver, PhD, may help researchers develop more effective personalized immunotherapy for cancer patients. Working within Wang's specialty of cancer immunology and head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs), the researchers worked to establish a mouse model that would help them understand why some hosts' immune systems reject tumors easily, while others have a harder time doing so. Their research was published last week in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. It's particularly interesting now because the field of cancer treatment has really been going in the direction of immunotherapy, where you give drugs that can reactivate the immune system and get it to kill the tumors on its own." Rachel Woolaver, PhD, Immunology Program Graduate, University of Colarado That's in contrast to chemotherapy and radiation, which can kill other cells along with tumor cells. "We're just trying to figure out how can we contribute to the field of understanding what causes heterogeneity (differences) in anti-tumor immune responses," she says. Wang, Woolaver and other cancer researchers on the Anschutz Medical Campus started the research by transplanting HNSCC tumors into genetically identical mice. Theoretically, their response to the cancer would be identical, but it turned out that 25% of the mice spontaneously rejected the tumor. The researchers started looking more closely at both the mice and the tumor cells to try to understand what was causing the mice to kill the cancer on their own. What they discovered is that it all depended on the types of the immune cells known as CD8 T cells that were present in the mouse. Even identical twins have different T cells due to the random DNA recombination event generating these T cells, Wang explains, so the genetically identical mice had different arrays of the T cells as well. The mice's response to cancer depended on how their specific T cells matched up with the set of mutated proteins known as neoantigens that were present in the tumor they were fighting. "Each of your T cells has a different receptor, and each T cell will be specific to a neoantigen," Woolaver says. "If you have T cells that are specific to all of them or majority of them, you're going to be able to get rid of your tumor and have a good anti-tumor immune response." What the researchers showed in the publication, Wang explains, is that the mice that spontaneously rejected tumors had vastly different T cell receptors from those that succumbed to tumor development. For the next phase of their research, Wang and her team members plan to study how to enable a cancer patient to develop a more diverse T cell response so they have a better chance of successfully fighting off a tumor. "Because patient tumors are very heterogenous from each other, it's very difficult to study them," Woolaver says. "In our paper, we characterize a new model of tumor heterogeneity that has a lot of interesting immunological aspects that we can study to try to help improve the immune response to cancer." Wang adds that the research can be important in developing new types of immunotherapy. "I don't think it's well recognized in the field that intrinsic differences in the immune system can make an impact," Wang says. "Most people just focus on 'Why are all the T cells not activated,' or 'The T cells are exhausted,' or something like that. But maybe a patient doesn't have the right T cells from the beginning. If they don't have the right T cells that can recognize neoantigens, how can they have the effective anti-tumor immune response?" Kathmandu, Jan 15 : Ahead of signing a major Covid vaccine deal with India, probably on Friday, Nepal's Department of Drug Administration (DDA) has given permission for the emergency use of India-made coronavirus vaccine Covishield in the country. Nepal's Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali is currently in New Delhi to take part in the sixth meeting of Nepal-India Joint Commission. One of the major agreements that both sides are likely to ink is on cooperation in Covid vaccine manufactured in India. The vaccine, developed by the Oxford University and Astra-Zeneca and produced by the Serum Institute of India, has been given conditional permission for emergency use, the department said. The DDA had two days ago called for the registration of vaccines to be used for emergency use. This is the first time that any Covid-19 vaccine has been approved for use in Nepal. Other manufacturing countries like China and Russia were also interested in providing vaccines to Nepal but due to climatic conditions, pricing, logistic facility and ease of import, Nepal preferred the Indian Covid vaccine. India has already permitted the use of Covishield as well as Covaxin of Bharat Biotech. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on Thursday announced special session legislation addressing K-12 student learning loss and the adverse effects on Tennessee students proficiency in reading and math after extended time away from the classroom due to COVID-19. COVID-19 has disrupted every aspect of education and we are on the cusp of severe consequences for our students if we dont act now, said Governor Lee. Data suggests that Tennessee third graders are facing an estimated 50 percent drop in reading proficiency and a projected 65 percent drop in math proficiency and that is not an acceptable path for our kids. I thank Lt. Gov. McNally, Speaker Sexton and members of the General Assembly for acting quickly on behalf of our students and taking up intervention measures during the special session. He said the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports that only 34 percent of Tennessee students are proficient or advanced readers by fourth grade. Research shows that students who do not achieve reading proficiency by third grade are more likely to drop out of high school, be incarcerated or experience poverty as adults. In addition to learning loss interventions and accountability hold harmless measures, Governor Lee said he will propose adding funding for teacher salaries. Educators across the state are working tirelessly to turn the tide for their students and help them regain critical math and reading skills, said Governor. Lee. We believe they should be compensated for their efforts and look forward to working with the General Assembly to provide funding for our teachers. Intervening to Stop Learning Loss SB 7002 Requires interventions for struggling students including after-school learning mini-camps, learning loss bridge camps and summer learning camps, beginning summer 2021 Program prioritizes students who score below proficient in both reading (ELA) and math subjects Creates the Tennessee Accelerated Literacy and Learning Corps to provide ongoing tutoring for students throughout the entire school year Strengthens laws around a third grade reading gate so we no longer advance students who are not prepared Building Better Readers with Phonics SB 7003 Ensures local education agencies (LEAs) use a phonics-based approach for kindergarten through third grade reading instruction Establishes a reading screener for parents and teachers to identify when students need help, well before third grade Provides training and support for educators to teach phonics-based reading instruction Accountability to Inform SB 7001 Extends hold harmless provisions from the 2019-20 school year to the 2020-21 school year so that students, teachers, schools and districts do not face any negative consequences associated with student assessments Provides parents and educators with assessment data including TCAP testing to provide an accurate picture of where Tennessee students are and what supports are needed to offset any learning losses Companion bills will be filed in the coming days. Lavva sells stake to trade and VC investors Refocused Australian food manufacturer Health and Plant Protein Group has invested in EVR Foods, the holding company behind US plant-based yogurt brand Lavva. Health and Plant Protein Group, also known as HPP, has spent US$300,000 on convertible promissory notes issued by the US firm, which sells plant-based dairy products at US grocers including Whole Foods and Wegmans. HPP's backing for Lavva is through a co-investment package with US venture-capitalist S2G Ventures, which also bought $300,000 of notes issued by the New York-based firm. Under the terms of the deal, HPP and S2G Ventures can on an exclusive basis conduct due diligence in Lavva with a view to potentially entering into an agreement that could ultimately see them buying a controlling stake in the US business. HPP would assume management control of Lavva. Dennis Lin, HPP's executive director, said: "The investment in Lavva is consistent with our core strategy of building HPP, including through the high-growth categories of plant-based milk and yogurt." He insisted HPP and S2G Ventures believe together they can "continue to grow Lavva through our expertise in supply-chain development and management, the strong potential of incorporating macadamia ingredients into [the] Lavva nutrition concept and introducing Lavva to customers in Australia and Asia within a short time-frame". Australia and Asia have "a growing appetite for wholesome nutrition with great provenance", he added. Liz Fisher, who set up the Lavva business in 2014, said HPP "can clearly bring insight to our business and help us fully realise the brand's potential". She said she is aiming to "making Lavva one of the world's best and leading clean-label, plant-based yogurt and dairy brands". Until November, HPP was known as Buderim Group, the long-standing Australian supplier of ginger and macadamia products. In September, the company sold its ginger division consisting of confectionery and other ginger-based products, including tourist-related assets to the Himstedt family. HPP has operations in Australia, the US and Fiji, including MacFarms, which is based on the island of Hawaii and manufactures macadamia-based products for the retail and foodservice channels under the Royal Hawaiian brand. TOPEKA, Kan., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Kansas families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Kansans are hosting 311 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. "The disruptions of this past year have underlined the continued need for all the types of schools Kansas families choose for their children," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Now is the time to build up more affordable, effective education options in Kansas. This National School Choice Week, let's talk about how families and educators need school choice that works for them." In Kansas, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Kansas students in underperforming schools meeting certain income guidelines can qualify for state-run scholarship programs. Kansas families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Kansas school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, www.visitschoolchoiceweek.com/kansas. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike has called on the Security Chiefs to resign in order to allow for fresh ideas and strategy in tackling ... Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike has called on the Security Chiefs to resign in order to allow for fresh ideas and strategy in tackling the threats to internal security in the country. Wike made the call during the wreath-laying and parade ceremony to mark the 2021 Armed Forces Remembrance Day in Port Harcourt on Friday. The governor, who acknowledged the efforts made so far by the countrys security chiefs in the battle against insurgents, noted, however, that despite full military engagement with Boko Haram and killer bandits, the threats appear to be overwhelming the countrys security agencies. He said Boko Haram, bandits, and killer herdsmen have continued to overrun communities, randomly killing and abducting helpless people, adding that these insurgents have also destroyed private and public property with relative ease, and it is time for the Federal Government to take decisive action and end such a menace. A country is as strong as its Armed Forces. Her inability to defeat the Boko Haram insurgency despite years of full military engagement shows that all is not well with our approaches and commitments to the battle against internal insecurity. Today, therefore, also raises the need for all of us to be worried by the deteriorating security situation across the country and restate the call on the Federal Government to do everything necessary to bring the security threat by Boko Haram and armed bandits to a decisive end in the shortest time possible. We thank the Service Chiefs for their efforts so far in the battle against the insurgents. But we also align with the concern of citizens that having seemingly reached their wits end, they should now give way for fresh hands and ideas to give the fight the impetus that it so strongly needs to ensure that Boko Haram and killer bandits are comprehensively defeated and smoked out of existence. The time has come for the Federal Government to stop the pretence, change strategy, seek help from our friends and confront the urgency of the internal insecurity situation in Nigeria with every weaponry at its disposal to stop the killing, free all hostages and improve the physical security of our country for all Nigerians, Wike said. The Governor said the least duty every Nigerian owes the soldiers, veterans, and their families was to continue to remember, honour, and celebrate them for their extraordinary courage in service and sacrifice to the country. We also salute and honour every serving member of the Nigerian Armed Forces carrying on today in the noble tradition of those before them dutifully defending our nations territorial integrity. They are fighting to keep us safe and secured in the face of insurgencies from Boko Haram, Bandits and other criminal elements threatening our peace and security across the country. U.S. President Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus has been the most divisive, at least in the United States. In fact, according to reports, his response, or the lack of it for some, might have been one of the significant reasons for his defeat in the November Presidential elections, which saw President-elect Joe Biden win the Presidency. In January, Trump had said that the US administration has the pandemic "totally under control" and that "it's going to be just fine". From that statement about a year ago to now, as US reels through increasing virus cases and is the worst-affected country in the world, things have changed rapidly. Trump's critics blame the pandemic's effects solely on him, while his supporters insist that he did all that he could. (Image: Reuters) We are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, President Donald Trump exhorted his screaming supporters before they marched on the U.S. Capitol last week, saying hed go with them. He did not and what unfolded was a deadly breach of the citadel of American democracy that has left Trump's world crumbling in the final days of his presidency. Trump had wanted to join the thousands of hardcore followers who assembled at Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. He told aides in the days leading up to the rally that he planned to accompany them to demonstrate his ire at Congress as it moved to certify Democrat Joe Bidens November election victory. But the Secret Service kept warning him that agents could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump relented and instead hunkered down at the White House to watch television images of the mob rioting he is accused of triggering. The storming of the U.S. Capitol left five people dead, including a police officer, and threatened the lives of Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress, deeply wounding what remained of Trumps presidency ahead of Bidens swearing-in on Jan. 20. Trumps fiery, grievance-filled speech from the Ellipse park on the southern outskirts of the White House was a central focus of this weeks hastily arranged proceedings in the House of Representatives that led to his impeachment on a charge of inciting insurrection. With Wednesdays vote, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, as 10 of his fellow Republicans joined Democrats in denouncing him. But it appears unlikely to lead to his ouster before his term ends since there are no plans to convene a vote in the Republican-led Senate, which alone has the power to remove him. Even so, the Houses unprecedented rebuke capped a week that has been perilously unstable even for a presidency where chaos has long reigned. Trumps last days in the White House have been marked by rage and turmoil, multiple sources said. He watched some of the impeachment debate on TV and grew angry at the Republican defections, a source familiar with the situation said. Trump has suffered a sudden rupture with his vice president, the departure of disgusted senior advisers, his abandonment by a small but growing number of Republican lawmakers, the loss of his cherished Twitter megaphone, and a rush by corporations and others to distance themselves from him and his businesses. Reuters spoke to more than a dozen Trump administration officials with a window into the closing act of his presidency. They described a shrinking circle of loyal aides who are struggling to contain an increasingly fretful, angry and isolated president one seemingly still clinging to unfounded claims of election fraud - and to keep the White House functioning until Biden assumes power. Everybody feels like theyre doing the best job they can to hold it all together until Biden takes over, one Trump adviser told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The White House declined to comment for this story. The Secret Service declined to comment about Trumps purported desire to travel to the Capitol on Jan. 6. FOCUS ON PARDONS Even as Trump has spent time venting to aides and confidantes, one tangible issue he has been focused on is how to apply his power to pardon before his term ends, three White House sources said. The biggest question is whether he will issue an unprecedented pardon to himself, in addition to family members, before leaving office. While Trump has not publicly signaled his intention to take a step that some legal analysts say could be unlawful, one White House official told Reuters: Ive been expecting that. The chances of Trump making such a contentious move may have multiplied due to the uproar over his Jan. 6 speech in which he repeatedly urged his supporters to fight for him. Some legal experts say this could open him up to lawsuits or even criminal charges. Addressing the crowd, Trump suggested several times that he would join in their march to the Capitol and appealed at least six times to Pence to do the right thing and refuse to certify Bidens victory in the formal counting of the electoral vote in Congress that day. Trump and his surrogates had built up a false narrative that Pence, whose role in the certification process was mostly ceremonial, could somehow throw the election to his boss. Trump's speech followed an exasperated conversation with his vice president, a longtime loyalist, earlier on Jan. 6 when Trump called Pence a pussy for not being willing to overturn the vote, a source briefed on the matter said. The exchange was reported earlier by The New York Times. On the day of the rally, Trump once again expressed his desire to accompany his supporters to the Capitol. The Secret Service told Trump he couldnt go with the crowd though presidents do have the power to overrule their security details. They waved him off that day, a source familiar with the situation said of the Secret Service. They said it would be way too dangerous. So when throngs of flag-waving followers drifted away from the speech site toward the Capitol, Trump retreated to the walled confines of the White House, where aides said he watched the ransacking of the landmark building on television with rapt attention. Among the mob that battled police, shattered windows and invaded legislative chambers were individuals who waved Confederate flags and wore clothing carrying insignias and slogans espousing conspiracy theories and white supremacist beliefs. It would be hours before Trump appeared in a video on social media in response to entreaties to say something to rein in his supporters. When he did, he told them he loved them and to go home while repeating his baseless claims of a rigged election. Some of Trumps own aides were left stunned by his conduct. When people are storming the Capitol, you walk to the press room and do a press conference and call on them to stop, instead of cutting a video eight hours later, said a long-time Trump adviser. SMASHING GUARDRAILS The riot of Jan. 6 followed a two-month campaign by Trump to delegitimize the November election with false claims of fraud. It began when what he had vowed would be a landslide victory over Biden turned into a defeat once all mail-in ballots, which skewed heavily Democratic, were counted. Trumps focus on claims of voter fraud, egged on by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, consumed most of his days. Two days after the election, said a source familiar with the meeting, daughter Ivanka Trump was in a meeting with senior White House staff and said words to the effect that, We accomplished so much and we had a great run. A representative for Ivanka Trump declined to comment. But no one in Trumps orbit could convince him to explicitly acknowledge defeat and use his remaining weeks in office to hold events to tout accomplishments that he and his aides are proud of. Advisers felt Trump could make himself a force in the Republican Party for years to come, a kingmaker, and possibly even win a second term in 2024. His political future could now be in jeopardy as a result of the Capitol violence. If convicted by the Senate in a trial that would occur after he has left the White House, Trump could be banned from holding federal office again. Trump watched Wednesdays rapid-fire impeachment proceedings on television from the White House, sources said, stepping away briefly to hand out National Medal of Arts awards to country music artists Toby Keith and Ricky Skaggs. Even before the riot, Trumps mood had been darkening as dozens of court cases filed by his legal team and surrogates failed to overturn the voting results in key swing states, people familiar with the matter said. Aides who would enjoy dropping by the Oval Office to check on Trump found themselves avoiding him lest he give them an assignment related to voter fraud that they knew was impossible, three sources said. His mood has only worsened since the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. He has fumed in private about the decision by Twitter, his favorite means of communication with his followers, to permanently suspend his account on the grounds that it was concerned he could incite further mayhem, two people familiar with the matter said. With Trump scrambling to find an alternative platform, his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner helped head off an attempt by other aides to get him signed up on fringe, far-right social media sites, believing they were not the best format for the president, said an administration official. A representative for Kushner declined comment. Pence and Trump did not speak for days after the Capitol riot. The vice president had to be spirited to safety in the Capitol basement after rioters, some chanting Hang Mike Pence, penetrated the building. Current and former White House officials say they were aghast at how Trump treated Pence, who has been a steady and loyal lieutenant. They were stung by the presidents criticism and false insistence that the vice president could intervene to overturn the Electoral College results. Trump also never called Pence to check on him during his ordeal, an aide said. On Monday, the two men met alone in the Oval Office, likely following efforts and appeals by Ivanka Trump and Kushner, according to one White House official. The two men walked out of the meeting in good spirits, chuckling together about something. The body language was good, the official said. The next day, Pence wrote to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he would not exercise the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to remove the president from office for incapacitation, despite pressure from Democrats. STAFF EXODUS Other aides have not been as forgiving. Deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, a leading aide on Trump's China policy, quickly quit in what two sources said was an act of protest against the presidents response to the rioting. Pottinger did not respond to requests for comment. He was followed by at least five other senior foreign policy aides. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also resigned in protest. Some other Trump officials say they have gritted their teeth and stayed put despite anger over Trumps perceived role in the violence. National security adviser Robert OBrien and White House counsel Pat Cipollone were among those convinced to remain by others, including lawmakers, former government officials and corporate executives, four sources familiar with the matter said. The White House declined comment. Some who remain in the administration have seized the opportunity to push through significant policy shifts before leaving office, several administration sources said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, has pressed ahead with controversial international moves, sometimes, according to two people familiar with the matter, without coordinating fully with the White House. The timing of one decision caught some National Security Council officials by surprise, the sources said: Pompeos scrapping of longtime curbs on U.S. government interactions with Taiwan officials, which angered China. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Other Pompeo actions over the past week have included returning Communist-ruled Cuba to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and designating Yemens Iran-aligned Houthi movement a terrorist organization. While mostly disengaged from policymaking, Trump on Tuesday, at his aides behest, paid a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border wall near Alamo, Texas. Erecting a barrier across the border was a signature promise of his winning 2016 campaign platform. Only portions got built. Decisions on a final round of presidential pardons are expected to occupy much of Trumps few remaining days in office. He has stirred controversy in recent weeks by pardoning allies convicted in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, security contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians, and Kushners father, Charles, a real estate developer sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to tax evasion and other crimes. Trump and his family have potential legal exposure of their own, including investigations in New York over tax and business dealings. One White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested Trumps final act as president could be a preemptive pardon for family members and for himself just before Biden is sworn in. Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not violations of state law. A self-pardon would be an extraordinary use of power never before tried by a U.S. president, and constitutional lawyers say there is no definitive answer on whether it can be done lawfully. One thing Trumps staff dont expect: a resignation. I would be floored if that were to happen, another White House official said. A FINANCIAL technology company founded by two Limerick students will no longer be the payment processor for Donald Trumps campaign web site. It comes after the violent protests on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, by supporters of the outgoing president, who have been left angered at what they feel was not a fair election. Five people have lost their lives following the incident, which saw demonstrators lay siege to the heart of American democracy. The incident has led to social networks Facebook, Twitter and Instagram banning and removing Mr Trump for what they feel was his role in the incident. Now, financial tech firm Stripe, founded by Castletroy brothers John and Patrick Collison, will no longer be taking payment. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, the presidents campaign account had violated the firms policies against encouraging violence. In its terms and conditions, Stripe asks its users to agree that they wont accept payments for high-risk activities, including for any business or organisation that engages in, encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence or physical harm to persons or property, according to its website. The company has previously disabled accounts in the wake of violent acts including Gab.com, a right-wing social-media platform where the alleged Pittsburg synagogue shooter posted anti-Semitic messages before killing 11 people in 2018 in the Californian city. The Trump campaign has not yet commented on the Stripe ban. John and Patrick Collison, who attended Castletroy College and won the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in 2005, are Irelands youngest self-made billionaires. They are worth a staggering 2.9bn each, according to various reports and surveys. Despite this, the pair live modest lifestyles in the Silicon Valley. United Nations: India is set to ratify two key global conventions on combating child labour which a top UN official described as a great step forward in bringing all the worlds children under the ambit of the legislations. International Labour Organisation (ILO) Director-General Guy Ryder, in his statement for World Day Against Child Labour, marked annually on June 12, said ILOs Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182) have now been ratified by 169 and 180 member states respectively. Tomorrow (June 13) I will have the honour of receiving Indias ratification of both the conventions. That great step forward towards universal ratification will mean that almost all children in the world will be covered by Convention 182; and that coverage of Convention 138 will leap from 60 per cent to 80 per cent, Ryder said in a statement issued yesterday. Together with the near universal ratification of the convention on the Rights of the Child, that sends a resounding message about our common cause and our common standards that protect childrens human rights, he added. The government of India had in March this year approved ratification of two fundamental conventions of the ILO to address concerns related to child labour. With the ratification, India would join majority of countries that have adopted the legislation to prohibit and place severe restrictions on the employment and work of children. Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi had said that Indias decision for ratification of Convention 182 and Convention 138 was long overdue in providing justice to the countrys children. After the total prohibition of child labour, this is yet another important step in protecting all our children from exploitation and abuse. It now remains a collective responsibility of everyone to do their bit to remove the scourge of child labour from the country, Satyarthi had said. The ILO said children in areas affected by conflict and disasters are among the most vulnerable, making a strong call for an end to the scourge, especially as children trapped in crises risk falling prey to trafficking or being forced into hazardous work. All children have the right to be protected from child labour. Yet, around the world, there are still 168 million children in child labour. Eighty-five million of them are engaged in hazardous work, Ryder said. A significant portion these children find themselves undertaking dangerous work, living in areas affected by conflict and disaster and they are the focus of the 2017 commemoration of the World Day Against Child Labour. As the world strives to achieve the elimination of child labour by 2025, the UN underlined that conflicts and disasters have a devastating impact on peoples lives. They kill, maim, injure and force people to flee their homes; destroy livelihoods, push people into poverty and starvation, and trap many in situations without basic safeguard for their rights. The UN said the first to suffer from human rights violations and abuses are often boys and girls. Their schools are destroyed and basic services are disrupted and many children are internally displaced or become refugees in other countries, and are particularly vulnerable to trafficking and child labour. Today, we are facing the greatest refugee crisis for decades, said Ryder, referring to one of the main drivers of child labour. Globally over 1.5 billion people live in countries that are affected by conflict, violence and fragility. At the same time, around 200 million people are affected by disasters every year. While a huge part of the worlds responsibility to provide sanctuary and support to children and their families is shouldered by neighbouring host countries, ILOs Director-General says much more needs to be done to share fairly the responsibility to protect refugees. Ryder particularly asked support to those States on the front line in the affected regions, so that they can provide access to the labour market for adult refugees and access to education for their children. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. The discovery of possibly the oldest piece of rock art catalogued to date could point the way to even older art, made by the ancient humans who travelled through the Indonesian archipelago thousands of years ago. A research team including experts from Griffith University has uncovered the striking image of a pig in a limestone cave in the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi. This drawing on an ancient cave wall has been dated to at least 45,500 years old. Credit:Maxime Aubert The image has been dated to at least 45,500 years old, which would make it the oldest human rock art on record. One of the team leaders, Professor Adam Brumm from Griffiths Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, said the image was familiar to researchers, as it crops up again and again in local cave paintings. President-elect Joe Biden already faces the daunting task of steering a newly announced $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill through a closely divided Congress as the pandemic and its economic fallout grow. Now Biden will have to do it with President Donald Trumps impeachment trial beginning potentially as soon as his first day in office. The confluence of events amounts to one of the most politically and logistically complicated openings to a new administration in modern history, requiring Biden to try to move the country into a post-Trump era even as senators debate Trumps most divisive acts. Its going to be incredibly challenging, said former Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat. Theres only so much bandwidth in the Congress. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who will have a significant role to play in ushering Bidens agenda through the Senate as chair of the Budget Committee, underscored how much is on Democrats plate during Bidens first few months in office. We dont have the time to spend an enormous amount of time on impeachment, and then were going to go to Bidens nominees and then we have to deal with legislation, the independent senator said. Were going to have to move simultaneously in a whole bunch of areas. Biden has so far stayed largely out of public deliberations over Trumps impeachment for inciting a riot. After the House vote, Biden was forceful in denouncing the violent attack on the Capitol that precipitated the impeachment charge, but he also said hed work as president to ensure Americans stand together as a nation and called on the Senate to find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation. His hands-off approach to the matter is in keeping with his stance throughout the campaign and into his transition, even as Trumps ever-growing controversies have overwhelmed the news cycle. Biden took his time in endorsing the first impeachment of Trump in 2019, only expressing support for the move weeks after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the formal effort. Decades before, when Richard Nixon was impeached, Biden cautioned his Senate colleagues to consider the weight of the moment and give Nixon a fair trial. Democrats on Capitol Hill say they largely want to see Biden continue his even-keeled approach and focus on his agenda, rather than on impeachment, once he enters office. President-elect Biden has a big job. So let him do his job and let the Senate do their work, said California Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat. But once the proceedings start, its certain to be tougher for Biden to completely avoid them, with the trial dominating the news cycle and forcing his former opponent back into the spotlight, even as Biden tries to stay focused on the coronavirus pandemic. And theres the prospect they could further exacerbate the already fraught atmosphere on Capitol Hill, politicizing Bidens agenda and making it tougher for him to get support from winnable Republican senators. Trumps most fervent supporters are going to have an opportunity to attack Democrats, not for their programs and not for their ideas, but as the evil caricature that they have come to portray them, said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. People who were potentially gettable as votes for some of Bidens legislative agenda are going to be much more hesitant to go along with Democratic plans while Democrats are openly being vilified. Biden was known as a dealmaker in the Senate and has long relationships with many Republican senators after his 36-year career there. Hes also been in touch with leadership of both parties during the transition. But as Virginia Sen. Mark Warner points out, theres the risk that impeachment poisons the well for Biden with those senators who dont know him well. At least half the Republican caucus has never served with Joe Biden, said Warner, a Democrat. His ability to navigate with those new members, if their first impression is driven by what could end up being decided on partisan lines, thats going to make his job more difficult. For now, Biden is staying focused on his agenda. On Thursday, in announcing his COVID-19 relief package, he emphasized that he hopes to work with lawmakers from both parties and expressed optimism that despite the $1.9 trillion price tag, were ready to get this done. I know what I just described does not come cheaply, but we simply cant afford not to do what Im proposing, Biden said. And Democrats on Capitol Hill are barreling ahead as well, refusing to accept the prospect that impeachment will deter them from their legislative goals. What the Senate is going to have to do is show the world that it can walk and chew gum at the same time, Sanders said. Related Content: Advertisement News that she and her on/off beau Ryan Seacrest split 'some time ago' was revealed in June 2020. And seven months later, Shayna Taylor showed what the 46-year-old television host was missing as she showcased her fit form during a swim in the ocean during her Mexico holiday. The 28-year-old chef wowed in a tiger print bikini as she frolicked in the water with her friends in the stunning locale of Tulum, Mexico on Thursday afternoon. Stunning lady: News that she and her on/off beau Ryan Seacrest split 'some time ago' was revealed in June 2020. And seven months later, Shayna Taylor showed what the 46-year-old television host was missing as she showcased her fit form during a swim in the ocean during her Mexico holiday The blonde beauty put her flat midriff and her pert derriere on display in a tiny burnt orange and black string bikini; the low-cut rectangular-shaped top highlighted her cleavage, paired with the tie-string bottoms. She styled the eye-popping look with rings and layered necklaces, adding sparkling earrings for a pop of glamour to her summer ensemble. The beautiful chef pulled her blonde hair back into a high bun while opting to go makeup-free, revealing her stunning natural beauty. Shayna was seen running into the water grinning ear to ear as the waves splashed her; she then headed back to the beach where she lounged with her pals. Wow factor: The 28-year-old chef wowed in a tiger print bikini as she frolicked in the water with her friends in the stunning locale of Tulum, Mexico on Thursday afternoon Beaming beauty: The blonde beauty put her flat midriff and her pert derriere on display in a tiny burnt orange and black string bikini; the low-cut rectangular-shaped top highlighted her cleavage, paired with the tie-string bottoms Having so much fun! She styled the eye-popping look with rings and layered necklaces, adding sparkling earrings for a pop of glamour to her summer ensemble The beauty was also seen enjoying a chat on her smart phone as well as chatting it up with one of her pals in her friends group. Hours earlier, Shayna shared a snap of herself in the middle of a yoga pose while in her bikini; the pose was a modified handstand with her legs bent in different directions. In the caption, the chef wrote: 'Life is a balancing act - a constant juggle between work, relationships, health, happiness... the list goes on and on. We all know how crucial feeling balanced is to our wellbeing, but I want to know: what's your favorite way to achieve balance?' She continued: 'For me, I know it's about taking breaks. As a culture, we're led to believe that the "grind" is the easiest way to achieve success. I know that for me to feel productive, I must also rest, relax and recharge. This break is doing just that for me.' Soon after, Shayna posted a photo of herself on a swing tied to a tree; she captioned the ethereal post: 'When people ask where my favorite place is that I've traveled to, I can never decide or even narrow it down - for me, a vacation is extremely successful if I can relax, get my toes back in the dirt or sand, and feel aligned with Mother Nature.' Splash! The beautiful chef pulled her blonde hair back into a high bun while opting to go makeup-free, revealing her stunning natural beauty Friends: Shayna was seen running into the water grinning ear to ear as the waves splashed her; she then headed back to the beach where she lounged with her pals Pretty: The beauty was also seen enjoying a chat on her smart phone as well as chatting it up with one of her pals in her friends group Yoga lover: Hours earlier, Shayna shared a snap of herself in the middle of a yoga pose while in her bikini; the pose was a modified handstand with her legs bent in different directions Thoughts: Hours earlier, Shayna shared a snap of herself in the middle of a yoga pose while in her bikini; the pose was a modified handstand with her legs bent in different directions Her beach comes seven months after it was revealed that her and beau Ryan had gone their separate ways for the third time; news of their split came seven years after they first met. Dailymail.com spoke to a spokesperson in June 2020 who said: 'Ryan and Shayna decided to end their romantic relationship amicably some time ago. They remain good friends, each other's biggest supporters and will always cherish their time together as a couple.' News of their split came at the same time as Ryan was spotted in Cabo San Lucas holding hands with a mystery blonde woman; The woman he was holding hands with resembled Shayna. Former: Her beach comes seven months after it was revealed that her and beau Ryan had gone their separate ways; news of their split came seven years after they first met; seen September 11, 2018 in NYC The way it was: Dailymail.com spoke to a spokesperson in June 2020 who said: 'Ryan and Shayna decided to end their romantic relationship amicably some time ago. They remain good friends, each other's biggest supporters and will always cherish their time together as a couple' In March 2020, he posted a throwback snap of the two of them to his Instagram as he wished Shayna a happy birthday. Ryan and Shayna first met at a restaurant in LA in 2013 before a brief split in 2014; they rekindled their romance and moved in together in 2017 before splitting in February 2019 for the second time. They were seen on a yacht together in Positano, Italy in summer 2019 and reconciled by September 2019. During an episode of ABC's Live With Kelly and Ryan last month, Ryan wished Shayna a 'happy third anniversary', explaining: 'It is our third time together... so we've gotten together, broken up, gotten together, broken up.' Bittersweet: In March 2020, he posted a throwback snap of the two of them to his Instagram as he wished Shayna a happy birthday Shayna and Ryan: News of their split came at the same time as Ryan was spotted in Cabo San Lucas holding hands with a mystery blonde woman Kelly teased Ryan saying that it wasn't really an anniversary, to which Ryan responded: 'No, it's an eight-year run, but it's our third run together. So we celebrate each trial.' Then Kelly joked further, adding: 'You know, third time's a charm!' Ryan joked that the relationship was like a roller-coaster, explaining: 'You know, when we drive by an amusement park, I always look at the roller coaster and go, 'Look, there we are. It's all definitely upside down loops. It's no Thunder Mountain, it's definitely the Mind Bender.'' Before getting together with Shayna, Ryan enjoyed a two-year romance with Julianne Hough from 2010 to 2013. He also counts former Playboy Playmate Of The Year Sara Jean Underwood among his former girlfriends. They dated on and off for a couple of years beginning in 2009. In March 2006, during an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, Ryan confirmed that he was dating Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher. Dated: Before getting together with Shayna, Ryan enjoyed a two-year romance with Julianne Hough from 2010 to 2013 The director of the Indian Health Service has said that he will resign, giving President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. a chance to install new leadership at an agency that has drawn intense criticism for its failures to provide adequate care to tribal communities both before and during the pandemic. The director, Rear Adm. Michael Weahkee, a member of the native Zuni Tribe who has been in the job since April after leading the agency on an interim basis since 2017, said in a letter this week that his resignation would be effective Jan. 20. It has been a sincere honor to have been entrusted to serve in this role, he said in the letter, noting that his departure was typical during presidential transitions. I believe the I.H.S. is more capable now than ever before of fulfilling our vision of healthy communities and quality health care systems through strong partnerships and culturally responsive practices. Admiral Weahkee has overseen a health care agency that critics say has been routinely neglected by Congress and successive administrations. It is riddled with vacancies across its hospital system and has left the Native American communities it served with some of the worst health outcomes in the country. The name of Robert A. Millikan, shown here in 1930 with a device he used to determine the source of cosmic rays, is being removed from the Caltech campus. His cosmic ray theory was proved wrong, by the way. (Associated Press) Having traveled the difficult road of coming to terms with racism in its own past, Caltech on Friday said it would remove the names of Robert A. Millikan and five other important figures in its history from campus. The reason is their association with the Human Betterment Foundation, a major promoter of the discredited science of eugenics and of programs to forcibly sterilize those whom eugenicists labeled "feeble-minded" or "unfit." The move amounts to a major reckoning with the university's history. That's especially true as it applies to Millikan, who has traditionally been more closely identified with Caltech's emergence as a leading scientific institution than any other individual. It would fly in the face of historical truth to excuse sexism, racism, and xenophobia as inevitable and universal in Millikan's time. Caltech Committee on Naming and Recognition Millikan served as Caltech's president for 24 years, longer than anyone else. He was the institution's first Nobel laureate in physics in 1923, for establishing the elementary charge of the electron. His name has adorned buildings, rooms and a pond on the campus as well as a biology professorship and numerous academic awards; the nose on his bust overlooking a campus walkway has been worn to a bronze luster by generations of students rubbing it for luck before taking their exams. (The bust will be removed from its location, Caltech says.) All the campus features will be renamed in accordance with the recommendations of a committee on naming and recognition that were made public Friday, after they were accepted by Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum. Among other changes, the Robert A. Millikan Library will be renamed Caltech Hall. "This is not about erasing history," Rosenbaum told me. "You have to understand your history and make sure that you tell your history in its full richness, good and bad. But there is a distinction between history and monumentalization. Buildings are monuments they're symbolic and they're powerful statements of what an institution is about." Story continues Rosenbaum says he strived to make the historical reconsideration a community effort. The committee comprised faculty, staff, students, graduate students, alumni and trustees. "I charged them with looking at original sources let's get the history right about Millikan, eugenics, his role and all his contributions," he says. Among the other historical figures whose names will be excised from the campus is Harry Chandler, publisher and proprietor of The Times from 1917 until his death in 1944. From 1935 to 1941, The Times published a weekly column titled Social Eugenics by one Fred Hogue, a eugenics enthusiast. In one 1936 column , Hogue praised the movement in Germany and other Nordic countries of Europe for the elimination of reproduction of the unfit. Chandler's name will be removed from a dining hall on campus. The other figures are Ezra Gosney, founder of the Human Betterment Foundation, whose name is on a research fund; Albert Ruddock, whose name is on a residence hall and a biology professorship; Henry M. Robinson, whose name is on a laboratory building; and William B. Munro, whose name is on a seminar series. Ruddock, Robinson and Munro were all founding trustees of the foundation; Millikan and Chandler joined its board after its creation, Millikan in 1937. During his reign at Caltech, from 1921 to 1945, Millikan was one of the best known and most respected scientists in the country. Simultaneously, he was helping to steer the Human Betterment Foundation, which tarnishes a legacy that extends well beyond Caltech Millikans name adorns streets and public schools across the Southland. The drive to reconsider the honors bestowed on Millikan and the others began last summer, after the death of George Floyd spurred a wide-scale reckoning with racism embedded in American society and led to the removal of honorifics of historical figures associated with racism from coast to coast. In June, Caltech alumnus Michael Chwe publicly posted a petition calling for Millikan's name to be struck from the campus. The Black Scientists and Engineers of Caltech issued a statement around the same time asserting that a lack of racial diversity permeates the campus. Of 1,299 graduate students at Caltech, the group said, only 11 were Black. Chwe on Friday said he and his colleagues in the petition drive "are all glad that Caltech is able to take this step toward integrity and basic moral decency," which he called "one of many steps necessary to make Caltech, and science and engineering in general, a place that welcomes and values everyone." The process of historical reconsideration was plainly a wrenching one for Caltech, and not without its missteps. In September, Sarah Sam, the only Black student on the renaming committee, abruptly resigned from the panel. Sam issued a broadside in which she asserted that the membership of this committee neither has the background nor is willing to address institutional racism at Caltech. She suggested that some committee members seemed intent on minimizing the impact of eugenics and the Human Betterment Foundation on the victims of sterilization. (I couldn't reach Sam for a reaction to the committee report Friday.) "The committee was unequivocal in its condemnation of eugenics," Nicolas Wey Gomez, a Caltech history professor and committee member, told me. "It is dehumanizing, it is wrong. Central to moving forward as an institution, we on the committee felt a deep sense of obligation to renounce any part of our past that is inconsistent with the Caltech of today." The committee's report considered and bluntly rejected the defense that eugenics was an accepted scientific pursuit in Millikan's time. "Millikan's stances on gender, race, and ethnicity may have been more common in his time, and even the norm for his socioeconomic status," the report says. "But it would fly in the face of historical truth to excuse sexism, racism, and xenophobia as inevitable and universal in Millikan's time." In any case, by the time Millikan joined the Human Betterment Foundation as a trustee in 1937, "eugenics and its claims for the hereditary nature of human behavior and character had fallen into disrepute," the report states. It was Millikan's responsibility "to exercise the scientific due diligence of determining whether the HBF had its science right, which it did not." The HBF's views and policies were further tainted by class distinctions. Eugenicists tried to give objective labels to their targets "feeble-minded" and "unfit." But in reality, the report noted, "the predominant victims of these policies" were ethnic and racial minorities and those labeled "white trash." "What made members of all these groups the object of eugenic attention," the report observed, "was that they were likely un- or ill-educated and at the lower end of income distribution." What delivered the reputational death blow to eugenics may have been its association with Nazi doctrine in Germany. But forced sterilizations along the lines of the Human Betterment Foundation's principles were imposed on an estimated 60,000 people in the U.S. "By the HBF's calculations in 1938," the Caltech report says, "the population of the 'mentally deficient' potentially targeted for sterilization in the U.S .... was on the order of 6.5 million people." The practice may even be continuing today: A whistleblower charged last year that hysterectomies were being performed on Spanish-speaking immigrants detained at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Georgia without their consent. The committee was forced to delve into the thorny issue of the relationship between a distinguished scientist's professional achievements and his personal views and conduct. Research presented to the committee painted "a disquieting picture of Millikan's views on gender, race, and ethnicity," the committee reported. The panel confirmed that during his reign as president, "Caltech did not hire a single woman to its faculty." Millikan "held negative stereotypes about Jews," though he did hire some Jewish males as faculty. The balancing of Millikan's role in building Caltech as a leading institution and his personal views had to change with the times, the committee found. "As we take stock of our history ... different aspects of Millikan's life and work come to the fore" and his role with the Human Betterment Foundation as well as his personal views "have come to stand in direct opposition to Caltech's purpose." Rosenbaum acknowledges that the renamings on campus are just a step in a process aimed at re-creating Caltech as a community open to diversity. Last year the university pledged to publish more detailed data about the diversity of its faculty, staff and students, conduct a campus climate survey to glean the personal experiences of Caltech students and provide training for search committees on the campus to eradicate unconscious bias. "This is about the future, creating an environment for Caltech where scholars from every background can come here and feel welcome," Rosenbaum says. "That is essential for Caltech. We're in the business of talent. We cannot ignore any segment of society that can contribute." This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. (Newser) A pigeon in Australia can coo in peace after his marking as an American almost got him killed. The emaciated pigeon, spotted Dec. 26 in Melbourne, was wearing a leg band that identified it as a racing pigeon who'd left Oregon in October. Australian authorities therefore assumed the pigeonnamed Joe, after US President-elect Joe Bidenhad traveled 8,000 miles by hitching a ride on a cargo ship, bypassing the country's strict rules on importing animals, and vowed to kill it. "It poses a direct biosecurity risk to Australian bird life and our poultry industry," the Agriculture Department said Thursday, per the AP. It has since changed its tune, however, after Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack vowed to look into the matter and a rep for the American Racing Pigeon Union said the leg band was counterfeit. story continues below The number on the band actually belongs to an American Blue Bar pigeon, which appears grey, not white and brown like Joe, rep Deone Roberts tells the AP. He says counterfeit bird bands are becoming increasingly common in step with a resurgence in pigeon racingone bird sold for $1.9 million two months ago. The bird found in Australia "is not from the US," Roberts adds, though it's unclear why he was wearing the band. Other experts believe Joe is a local Turkish Tumbler pigeon and likely just three or four months old, per the BBC and Guardian. As a result, the Agriculture Department concluded Friday that "Joe the Pigeon is highly likely to be Australian" and no further action is needed. That's happy news for Kevin Celli-Bird, who originally found Joe and has made a home for him in his backyard. (Read more pigeon stories.) As a result of enemy shelling, one Ukrainian defender was slightly wounded by shrapnel. Over the past day, January 14, Ukraine's Joint Forces reported six ceasefire violations on the part of Russia-controlled armed groups across Donbas. All truce breaches were recorded in the zone of responsibility of the Army's East tactical grouping, the Joint Forces Operation HQ reports. The enemy opened fire using an automatic heavy-duty grenade launcher and a large-caliber machine gun near Hnutove, resulting in a Ukrainian defender sustaining light shrapnel wounds. The soldier was promptly taken to a hospital where he received medical assistance. Read alsoInvaders violate ceasefire in Donbas six times on Jan 13In the suburb of Maryinka and near Vodiane in the Azov Sea littoral, the enemy fired towards the Ukrainian positions employing automatic heavy-duty grenade launchers, and near Maryinka also from small arms. In the area of the settlement of Talakivka, the enemy launched grenades of various types and fired small arms. Ukrainian soldiers returned fire to the enemy shelling. OSCE monitors were informed about the ceasefire violations through the Ukrainian side to the Joint Ceasefire Control and Coordination Center. Silence regime was observed in the area of responsibility of the North tactical grouping. Since day-start on Friday, January 15, no ceasefire breaches have been recorded along the entire line of contact. Donbas "truce": Background Since midnight on July 27, 2020, a full and comprehensive ceasefire has been in effect on the contact line in the area of the Joint Forces operation in Donbas. Russian occupation forces regularly violate the ceasefire terms. On September 6, they killed a Ukrainian soldier and wounded another one in the attack in a gross breach of truce. On October 30, 2020, the enemy opened fire near Vodiane, killing two military servicemen. On November 24, 2020, a soldier with the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade Vyacheslav Minkin was killed by a Russian sniper near Avdiyivka. On January 11, 2021, another Ukrainian soldier was killed in a Russian shelling. Reporting by UNIAN New evidence from the Ministry of Education shows that 20% of positive coronavirus cases in pupils and staff can be traced back to school. The ministry launched an ambitious large-scale testing campaign after children had stayed at home for three weeks, with 120,000 test invitations sent out to pupils between the ages of 4 and 19 who reside in Luxembourg. However, the response rate was low, as only one in five had a test done. On the other hand, 41% of teachers and school staff agreed to be tested. According to figures provided to RTL by the ministry, large-scale testing found 20 positive cases amongst school staff and 106 amongst pupils. Moreover, a government report obtained by RTL indicates that the education ministry has found that 20% of cases that were detected amongst children and staff could be traced back to infections that took place in schools. In an RTL interview, education minister Claude Meisch said that schools are logically places where infections take place. He pointed out though that there is no way of knowing conclusively that the mentioned 20% of infections actually occurred in schools. Infections can never be entirely traced back. However, Meisch did concede that it appears that schools have had an impact on the spread of the pandemic. The report also states that predominantly young teachers became infected. The minister explained this by stressing extra-curricular factors that may have played a role. De Claude Meisch, Extrait 1 The ministry is also currently considering rapid tests for schools. It remains to be seen whether it makes sense to deploy them at schools and how these can be used. The regional test units that carry out tests at schools have been increased from 12 to 19. According to the minister, it may not be long until such rapid tests will be used for pupils who are showing symptoms. Meisch further said that there is always the possibility that school children who display Covid symptoms may in fact carry a different disease. De Claude Meisch, Extrait 2 Regarding carbon dioxide detectors, 9,000 such devices were ordered from two suppliers. The first 2,000 have since been delivered. The delivery to secondary schools is scheduled for Friday. Until the carnival break in February all primary and secondary schools and competence centres will be equipped with such detectors. RTL-NEWS: Eischt CO2-Detektere ginn e Freideg un d'Lyceee geliwwert However, Meisch said that on the recommendation of the ministry of health air filters are not being considered. Such air filters could malfunction and give a false sense of security. Given that they also need to be operated and regularly replaced by medical experts, the ministry decided to rely on the more conventional carbon dioxide detectors. De Claude Meisch, Extrait 3 The education minister has also confirmed the purchase of FFP2 masks for school staff. These will also be supplied to local musical schools. The Nifty50 snapped its five-day winning streak and corrected more than one percent to form a bearish candle on the daily charts as closing was lower than opening levels on January 15. Weak global cues despite US unveiling plans for a $1.9-trillion stimulus package weighed on sentiment. Selling pressure was seen across sectors with the Nifty IT, metal, pharma and financial services indices declining 1-2 percent, while the broader markets also fell 1 percent. For the week, the Nifty50 gained 0.6 percent and formed a Doji pattern on the weekly scale as closing was near the opening level. The Nifty50 opened flat at 14,594.35 and hit an intraday high of 14,617.45 in early trade but immediately slipped into the red to hit the day's low of 14,357.85. The index fell 161.90 points or 1.11 percent to close at 14,433.70. Experts say further sell-off is possible if the index breaks 14,357 in the coming session and if the trend favours the bears, then a sharp correction of 10-15 percent can't be ruled out. Intraday traders should create fresh shorts if the Nifty trades below 14,357 levels for more than 30 minutes on January 18 for a modest target of 14,220 by placing a stop loss above intraday high, Mazhar Mohammad, Chief Strategist Technical Research & Trading Advisory at Chartviewindia.in told Moneycontrol. "Bulls were choked in Friday's session as the Nifty failed to witness buying on declines, which apparently looks like a sign of changing trend. Moreover, today's fall seems to have erased almost all the intraweek gains which resulted in a Grave Stone Doji kind of formation on weekly charts with a close near to the lowest point of the week," Mohammad said. If the index closes below 14,357 in the next session then it shall confirm the trend reversal in the favour of the bears, he said. In that scenario, the Nifty may get initially dragged towards 14,050 13,950 kinds of levels, he said. However, if the recent high of 14,653 levels proves to be a multi-week top then eventually a bigger correction of 10-15 percent can't be ruled out, according to him. In the near term, "strength in the index shall not be expected unless the Nifty closes above 14,617 levels". Meanwhile, any attempt for a pullback can be an opportunity for aggressive traders with a high-risk appetite to create positional shorts for bigger targets with a stop above 14,617 on a closing basis, he said. India VIX was up by 4.61 percent from 23.02 to 24.09 levels. Volatility spiked by around 24 percent this week, creating a pause in the positive momentum. It needs to cool down below 20 to again get the bullish stance going, Chandan Taparia, Vice President | Analyst-Derivatives at Motilal Oswal Financial Services said. On option front, maximum Put open interest was seen at 14,000 followed by 13,500 strike, while maximum Call open interest was at 15,000 followed by 14,500 strike. Call writing was seen at 14,500 then 14,600 strike, while Put writing was seen at 13,500 and unwinding at 13,700 strike. The options data indicated that the Nifty could see an immediate trading range of 14,300 to 14,600 levels in coming sessions. The Bank Nifty opened lower at 32,508.90 and hit an intraday low of 32,044.35. It moved in a wide range of 500 points and saw some recovery in the last hour of the day. It closed the day with losses of 273 points at 32,246.80 and formed a bearish candle on the daily scale and a Doji candle on the weekly scale, which indicates the absence of follow up at new high territory. "The Bank Nifty has to hold near to 32,000 to witness an upmove towards 32,500 and 32,750, while on the downside, support is seen at 31,750 and 31,500," Taparia said. Positive setup was seen in Tata Motors, IDFC First Bank, Bharti Airtel, Apollo Hospitals, UPL, PVR, Piramal Enterprises and Grasim, while weakness was seen in Tech Mahindra, HCL Technologies, Apollo Tyres, NMDC, Hindalco, Asian Paints, Motherson Sumi, UltraTech Cement, Divis Labs, Havells, Jubilant Foodworks, Colgate Palmolive, Mahanagar Gas and Nestle India, he added. Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. Stocks to watch today: Here is a list of top stocks that are likely to be in focus in Friday's trading session based on latest developments. Investors are also awaiting December quarter earnings that are scheduled to be released today. Companies set to announce their earnings are HCL Tech, PVR: HCL Tech, PVR, Shoppers Stop, L&T Finance Holdings, Hathway Cable and Aditya Birla Mone. Share Market News Live: Sensex rises 50 points, Nifty at 14,595; Bajaj twins, NTPC, HCL Tech top gainers Bharti Airtel: MSCI Global Standard Indexes said that the telecom operator's stock will be a part of its February quarterly review. The move follows an approval to increase foreign investment limit in the telecom major to 100% from 49%. Steel Authority of India: The government's sale of its 5% shareholding in the steelmaker was over-subscribed 3.6 times on its opening on Thursday. The OFS for retail investors opens today. L&T Infotech: The company to expanded its multi-year global alliance with IBM to help businesses transform their operations through open hybrid cloud adoption. PNC Infratech: PNC Bithur Kanpur Highways, subsidiary of the company, has received communication from National Highways Authority of India confirming the achievement of financial closure for project (Four Laning of Aligarh-Kanpur section in UP). IRCON International: The company completed 30 KM section between Korichhapar to Dharamjaigarh within the targeted date. Bharat Dynamics: The company and Thales have signed a Teaming Agreement to work in partnership on the STARStreak Air Defence system with the support of both the Governments of India and the United Kingdom. Strides Pharma: The company received US FDA approval for Emtricitabine & Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Tablets used to treat HIV. Digicontent: The company approved the appointment of Ajay S Nair as CFO. Earnings today: HCL Technologies, L&T Finance Holdings, PVR, Shoppers Stop, Bhakti Gems and Jewellery, Aditya Birla Money, Gautam Gems, Hathway Cable & Datacom, Indo Asian Finance, Mardia Samyoung Capillary Tubes, Next Mediaworks, Onward Technologies, Plastiblends India, Soril Infra Resources, Yaarii Digital Integrated Services and Ardi Investment will announce their December quarterly earnings today. By Alexander Winning JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Millions of coronavirus vaccine doses secured by the African Union (AU) will be allocated according to countries' population size, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday. Ramaphosa, who is the current AU chairman, said on Wednesday that vaccines from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca would be available this year, but he did not specify how much each African country would get. No African countries have begun large-scale coronavirus vaccination campaigns and the AU's 270 million shots, if administered two per person, would still only cover around 10% of the continent's 1.3 billion people. "The Africa CDC has already worked out the allocations that each country will be able to get, and the allocation is going to be worked on the size of your population," Ramaphosa said, referring to the AU's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC did not respond to a request for further detail. LOOKING TO CHINA Its director John Nkengasong cautioned on Thursday that vaccines would not be a magic bullet for Africa as it would take time for them to be rolled out and a second wave of infections had not yet peaked. The continent's confirmed cases have passed 3.1 million, with more than 76,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally. Speaking to South African news website Eyewitness News and 702 radio, Ramaphosa also suggested that the AU would access vaccines from China. "China will also be part of that, although they will join later," he said. South Africa itself plans to access doses via three sources: the AU arrangement, the COVAX facility co-led by the World Health Organization, and direct deals with manufacturers. "We have decided that we should have a multi-supplier process ... we are already getting ready for the distribution (and) the vaccination programme," he said. South Africa has recorded the most coronavirus infections and deaths in Africa, at roughly 1.3 million and 36,000. (Reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne) Nepals Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali met with the Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday to co-chair the 6th Joint Commission between India and Nepal at Hyderabad House in Delhi. The joint commission played a significant role in strengthening the bilateral ties between the two countries. Nepals Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali met with the Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday to co-chair the 6th Joint Commission between India and Nepal at Hyderabad House in Delhi. The joint commission played a significant role in strengthening the bilateral ties between the two countries. The meeting was held subsequent to Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringlas high-level diplomatic visit to Kathmandu. As per the reports of MEA several issues including the economy, trade, water resources, oil, and gas, political and security matters were discussed during the joint commission. Nepal also voiced its support for Indias permanent inclusion in the expanded UN Security Council to reflect variations in the power equilibrium. As the meet emphasized the need to enhance cross-border movement involving both goods and people, India announced that will be starting with the construction of a new ICP at Bhairahwa to facilitate the same. While Gyawali states that Nepal has always maintained good relations with its neighbors, border markings have become the major bone of contention between India and Nepal since the KP Oli led government issued a new political map last year. The map had shown the Indian territories of Kalapani, Lipulekh, and Limpiyadhura as a part of Nepal. However, these issues were not discussed in todays meeting. Earlier MEA spokesperson had also denied the possibility of any such discourse, calling both JCM and border issues separate matters. Also read: Nepal FM on 3-day India visit: Prachanda accuses India of directing its constitutional crisis Also read: India gears up for Covid-19 vaccination drive on January 16: Rollout underway across states A significant issue that was raised during the commission was that of the Covid -19 vaccine. Nepal hailed India for their successful production of covid-19 vaccines while requesting early access to the same. This comes amid Nepals approval of the Covishield vaccine that is being manufactured in India. Nepal who as per the sources is in need of 12 million doses is showing its preference towards Indian vaccines over Chinas Sinovac for tackling the pandemic. While the Indian government has made it clear in the past that exports would only be considered after fulfillment of domestic needs, bordering countries will nevertheless be getting a priority over others when it comes to vaccine exports. We see our location as an opportunity, being benefitted by the economic growth of our neighbouring countries stated Gyawali. He further stressed that while Nepal maintains good relations with its neighbours, its soil wont be misused for illegitimate interests of bordering nations. Also read: US imposes ban on cotton from Chinas Xinjiang region; How will it impact India? 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 World Health Organization (WHO)-led team investigating the origin of the coronavirus cases will commence the virtual meetings with the Chinese hosts including Australian virologist Dominic Dwyer in Wuhan. The meeting was postponed earlier after two officials took coronavirus antibody tests in Singapore and tested positive. "Team now undergoing the mandatory 14 days quarantine and being treated very well by our hosts. Work begins today, day 1, in a teleconference with China team," tweeted team member Peter Daszak, a zoologist. According to sources of the Australian Associated Press, the WHO team arrives in China amid the alert over a resurgence of coronavirus cases in its northeast. The Chinese experts collaborated with the teams to complete the first phase of research as countries like the United States called for transparency around the initial outbreak of the virus. Australian virologist Dwyer told AAP, "There's always politics with this sort of scenario but one of the things that COVID-19 has shown us is if you have good science, you then inform the politics. He added, You want to fill the scientific vacuum with the answers so that people can make more informed and, therefore, presumably more sensible decisions. Read: Nepal Approves Use Of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 Vaccine Covishield Produced In India Read: Covid-19 Vaccination FAQs: No Vaccine Switching, Not For Pregnant Women, 18+ Yr-olds Only 15 members had all tested negative According to WHO, the two absent team members who had undergone the antibodies test at transit in Singapore had deferred the virtual meetings. Meanwhile, at least 15 members had all tested negative as they left the home countries. In a statement to AAP, Dwyer said that the team of scientists will visit the research institutes, hospitals, and the market where the first human cases of the disease were first detected at the start of the virus outbreak. "Getting an understanding of how they (markets) work physically by seeing them is helpful because one's trying to work out how viruses might have come into the market from outside and spread within the market, or parts of the market, and then spread to the community, Dwyer said. Furthermore, he informed, that the teams will not mix while in quarantine. "It's in the room for two weeks," Dwyer said about the online conferences, adding that the rooms are a good size and they've given everyone exercise equipment and meals are delivered. Read: COVID-19: China Aims To Vaccinate 50 Million As Lunar New Year Celebrations Loom Large Read: COVID-19: WHO Deplores 95% Of COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Limited To 10 Countries (Image Credit: AP) 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. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... DENVER A Denver woman has filed a complaint against Mayor Michael Hancock, who flew to visit family for Thanksgiving despite sending messages on social media and to city staff asking them to avoid travel. The complaint filed by Tonia Wilson with the citys Ethics Board said the mayors actions were unethical and showed him abusing his office for his own benefit and for the benefit of his immediate family members, KCNC-TV reported Wednesday. Mayor Michael Hancock is unfit for office, Wilson said. The mayor does not demonstrate the high levels of ethical conduct, honesty, integrity, nor accountability required of his position. The ethics board voted unanimously to seek a response from Hancock regarding Wilsons complaint. Hancock had traveled to meet his wife and daughter in Mississippi despite championing public health suggestions to avoid holiday travel. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Stay home as much as you can, Hancock tweeted about an hour before he boarded his flight. Host virtual gatherings instead of in person dinners. Avoid travel if you can. Hancock later apologized for his actions and acknowledged he went against his own public guidance. As a public official, whose conduct is rightly scrutinized for the message it sends to others I apologize to the residents of Denver who see my decision as conflicting with the guidance to stay at home for all but essential travel, he tweeted. Kristin Bronson, Denvers city attorney, told KCNC-TV that the ethics complaint was based on bad facts or bad assumptions, but she declined to elaborate. She said Hancocks office would cooperate with the ethics board. The HSE has defended the use of non-critical care nurses in intensive care units (ICUs) saying it is better than the alternative. Irelands ICUs are coming under huge pressure due to the surge in admissions of patients with Covid-19. Last night there were 169 people in ICU as well as around 210 patients in ordinary wards who require non-invasive advanced respiratory support. The Irish Independent yesterday reported on the concerns of senior ICU medics that non-specialist staff were being deployed to help the most critically ill patients. Dr Enda OConnor, director of ICU in St Jamess Hospital said he was happy to have the staff who have been given training in the core aspects of ICU care but they are working outside their comfort zones. At the Mater Hospital in Dublin nurses who trained in critical care up to a decade ago and later went into other specialties are being pulled back in to deal with the crisis. Serena OBrien, clinical nurse manager in critical care at the hospital said the situation is scary. She spoke of how critical care nursing is a highly skilled profession and said: You are asking a nurse to come in and look after a ventilator. They have never seen one. They havent a clue... How would they? They have a different skillset out on the ward. At a HSE press conference the organisations chief clinical officer, Dr Colm Henry, was asked if he was concerned about the situation. He said the core capacity in ICU is 286 beds and that there is up to 350 available to cater for a surge in admissions. He said the HSE believes the same quality of care can be provided for if the full 350 capacity is used, but it is reliant on redeploying staff from other services. Read More Dr Henry added: Clearly we would be in a better position... if we never had to expand intensive care capacity to go into surge with Covid-19. But he said the development of that capacity with redeployed staff enables us to provide care. As things stand were now beginning to go into that surge, Dr Henry said, adding that permanent ICU staff are supervising the care in ICUs. Its better than the alternative, he said. HSE chief executive Paul Reid said he has spoken to ICU consultants and nursing managers and they are taking all precautions. He said 1,600 people trained for the ICU surge and some of those staff are being used. Mr Reid said theres a kind of buddy system where they are teamed up with experienced ICU nurses and that he has got very strong feedback about how people have mobilised together to support demands in some hospitals. Earlier Mr Reid outlined the difficulties facing the health service given the increase in virus cases. He called the situation volatile and one of the greatest challenges that weve experienced. He praised health staff as a team of champions but also said its quite grim at the moment and its going to continue to get worse. Mr Reid said hospital staff have never seen a situation where 169 people are being treated in ICU for the same illness. He said its unprecedented and It is in all senses a race to save lives in all our hospitals today... Unfortunately on many occasions our teams may not succeed. Mr Reid urged the wider community to stick with public health actions in the days and weeks ahead saying: it does make a big difference. Mr Reid insisted that despite the serious situation we are keeping the hospital system and health care system in general within the required levels of control. INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Indiana families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Indiana families, schools, and organizations are hosting 925 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of most notable of these will be a virtual party celebrating schools around the state on Jan. 28. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Indiana, the Indianapolis Power and Light Company Building will light up in red and yellow and the building lights will spell out "NSCW" on Jan. 24. Additionally, the Big Four Bridge at Waterfront Park will light up in yellow from sunset to 1 a.m. on Jan. 22-24. Governor Eric Holcomb has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Indiana School Choice Week. In addition, the city of Veederberg has recognized the Week with its own proclamation. "Pandemic or no pandemic, every parent wants their child to be happy and prepared for the future, and a personalized education is the best route toward that," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "There are many types of schools that families can choose from in Indiana. This Week shines a positive light on those options, celebrating great schools and educators across the state." In Indiana, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. Parents in Indiana can take tax deductions for private school or homeschool expenses, and families under a certain income level can qualify for state-run scholarships for private schools. Indiana families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Indiana school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/indiana National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Francesca Paris covers North Adams for The Berkshire Eagle. A California native and Williams College alumna, she has worked at NPR in Washington, D.C. and WBUR in Boston, as a news reporter, producer and editor. Find her on Twitter at @fparises. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form The Shawn Mendes Bowl added to menu for a limited time to support youth change makers NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) today announced it is partnering with Shawn Mendes and the Shawn Mendes Foundation to launch "Wonder Grants" supporting young innovators in sustainability, as well as a "Shawn Mendes Bowl" on the Chipotle app and Chipotle.com for a limited time in the U.S. and Canada. PR Asset hero Chipotle partners with Shawn Mendes and the Shawn Mendes Foundation to launch Wonder Grants and the Shawn Mendes Bowl The Shawn Mendes Bowl at Chipotle Bringing Purpose to the Menu For every Shawn Mendes Bowl sold, Chipotle will donate $1 toward the Shawn Mendes Foundation in support of changemakers.1 The new digital menu item features Cilantro-Lime Cauliflower Rice, the brand's latest menu innovation that was launched earlier this month. Shawn Mendes Bowl: Cilantro-Lime Cauliflower Rice, black beans, chicken, roasted chili-corn salsa, romaine lettuce, and guac This marks the first time Chipotle has launched a philanthropic entree on its menu. Wonder Grants Chipotle and Shawn Mendes are also awarding "Wonder Grants" to young activists focused on sustainability. "Wonder Grants" are designed to help young changemakers with big ideas but insufficient resources to launch or complete innovative projects across a range of fields including music, film, activism, education, science, environment and technology. To learn more about the Shawn Mendes Foundation, fans can visit www.shawnmendesfoundation.org. The sustainability Wonder Grant recipients will be announced in the coming weeks. "It is important to me to partner with a company that values sustainability I'm excited to partner with Chipotle and appreciate their support for my Foundation and young changemakers who are leading the charge in these crucial efforts," said Shawn Mendes. "We are thrilled to partner with Shawn Mendes and use the power of our real food to back the next great innovations in sustainability," said Chris Brandt, Chief Marketing Officer. "Together with Shawn's team and our passionate fans, we continue to pursue our mission of cultivating a better world." Cumulative Real Foodprint Chipotle is also introducing a new extension of its Real Foodprint feature that will allow fans to view the cumulative potential impact of all their Chipotle orders, as compared to orders using conventional ingredients, in one comprehensive dashboard on the Chipotle app and Chipotle.com. Real Foodprint, introduced in October 2020, is a sustainability impact tracker that uses data provided by HowGood to compare average values for each of Chipotle's real ingredients to their conventional counterparts against five (5) key metrics. The Real Foodprint computed for a Shawn Mendes Bowl is: Less Carbon in the Atmosphere 1.4 grams Gallons of Water Saved 1.7 gallons Improved Soil Health 1.8 sq ft Organic Land Supported 1 sq ft Antibiotics Avoided 42.3 milligrams At the conclusion of the campaign, Chipotle will share a Real Foodprint for all Shawn Mendes bowls ordered to demonstrate the potential impact of his ingredient choices at Chipotle on the environment and animal welfare. ABOUT CHIPOTLE Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE: CMG) is cultivating a better world by serving responsibly sourced, classically-cooked, real food with wholesome ingredients without artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Chipotle had over 2,700 restaurants as of September 30, 2020, in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany and is the only restaurant company of its size that owns and operates all its restaurants. With more than 94,000 employees passionate about providing a great guest experience, Chipotle is a longtime leader and innovator in the food industry. Chipotle is committed to making its food more accessible to everyone while continuing to be a brand with a demonstrated purpose as it leads the way in digital, technology and sustainable business practices. Steve Ells, founder and former executive chairman, first opened Chipotle with a single restaurant in Denver, Colorado in 1993. For more information or to place an order online, visit WWW.CHIPOTLE.COM. ABOUT THE SHAWN MENDES FOUNDATION: The Shawn Mendes Foundation seeks to inspire Shawn's audience, the youth generation of todayto learn about those causes that they are passionate about, and help empower them to use the voice they have to bring change to the world by taking action & giving back. As part of its ongoing mission, the Foundation provides resources and support to amplify the voices, messages, and platforms of young leaders driving positive change. SMF recently partnered with Global Citizen Year to launch the Global Citizen Academy, a first-of-its kind leadership experience for 2020 high school graduates from around the world to learn powerful and practical skills for a lifetime of social impact. Most recently, SMF provided $250,000 in need-based scholarships to ensure that tuition is not a barrier to entry and students of all economic backgrounds can participate in the Academy. The Foundation has worked with Forests Ontario to plant seven acres of trees outside of Ontario, Canada, while the SMF and Shawn have aligned with various partners in recent years across various philanthropic fields, including Pencils of Promise, VH1 Saves the Music, the Ryan Seacrest Foundation, the TJ Martell Foundation, Global Citizen, Global Changemakers, and Fridays for Future. SMF also continues its work with their primary Canadian partner, SickKids Hospital in Toronto by giving a grant to support COVID-19 testing, and will remain an active partner to provide support to the hospital through various efforts and events. The Shawn Mendes Foundation is a sponsored program of the Social Impact Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. For information, including how to donate, please visit ShawnMendesFoundation.org. 1 For every purchase of the Shawn Mendes Bowl in the Chipotle app and on Chipotle.com between January 14, 2021 through January 28, 2021 in the US and Canada, $1 of the purchase price will go to The Shawn Mendes Foundation, a fiscally sponsored project of the Social Impact Fund. Minimum donation $10,000, and up to $50,000 USD. Visit https://www.chipotle.com/shawn to learn more. SOURCE Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. Ukraine calls on Swedens Chair of the OSCE to pay attention not only to Donbas but to Crimea as well in order to help settle the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Special attention in facilitating resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict must be paid to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, temporarily occupied by Russia. The ongoing accelerated militarization of the Crimean peninsula and its surrounding waters has in fact created a new security reality in the Black Sea and the wider Mediterranean region, Ambassador Yevhenii Tsymbaliuk, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the International Organizations in Vienna, said at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting on January 14. He added that systematic persecutions of dissenting voices, mass media, civil activists and human rights defenders continue unabated. We call on the Swedish Chairpersonship not to limit its activities only to the existing Donbas-related mechanisms. Crimea is Ukraine. Crimea must be on the OSCE agenda, notwithstanding Russias illegal stance on this issue, Tsymbaliuk stressed. As reported, on January 1, 2021, Sweden took over the Chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for a period of 12 months. On Thursday, OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden Ann Linde presented the program and priorities of Swedens Chair at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting. She stated, in particular, that a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine should take place with full respect for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol. ol EACH AND EVERY DAY, my colleagues and I hear about how New Hampshires high property taxes are an unsustainable burden on hardworking Granite Staters. According to a recent report from US News and WalletHub, New Hampshire has the third-highest property tax rates in the country. For young wor The states top elections official is floating the idea of setting up COVID-19 vaccine sites near polling places for the local elections scheduled this spring, a time period that lines up with an expected availability of the shots to more segments of the population. In a Tuesday letter to Gov. Charlie Baker, Secretary of State William Galvin suggested a pilot program that would take advantage of upcoming municipal elections by staffing adjacent locations with temporary medical personnel to serve defined populations, such as over 75 years of age. He noted that communities including Newton, Lexington, Wellesley and Duxbury have March elections scheduled, and many others have elected planned in April. With planning, this opportunity presents geographically organized populations which are specifically identified and where appropriate age can be verified, Galvin wrote. He said wide-scale vaccine distribution is like an election in that both involve an army of trained temporary workers and enough space to accommodate large crowds with detailed record-keeping. A widow suing for 400,000 after her RAF officer husband fell 20ft to his death from a hotel window at a friend's wedding has today won her fight for a payout from the hotel's owners. Sergeant Christopher James suffered fatal head injuries when he hit the pavement after slipping from the 'very low' window sill of his second-floor bedroom at the Grade-II listed White Lion Hotel, in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire. The 41-year-old lost his balance after opening the sash window to get more air and smoke a cigarette in the early hours of a sweltering July night in 2015. Judges found that his death could have been prevented by the fitting of a window catch costing just 7. Deborah James, who sued for 400,000 after her RAF officer husband Sergeant Christopher James fell 20ft to his death from a hotel window at a friend's wedding, has today won her fight for a payout from the hotel's owners. (The couple, above) Mr James suffered fatal head injuries when he hit the pavement after slipping from the 'very low' window sill of his second-floor bedroom at the Grade-II listed White Lion Hotel (above), in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, in July 2015. Judges found that his death could have been prevented by the fitting of a window catch costing just 7 His widow, Deborah - a 43-year-old teacher from Par in Cornwall - sued the owners of the White Lion Hotel, winning an initial victory at the High Court in Bristol in January last year. The ruling was appealed by The White Lion Hotel partnership, but today three senior judges in London confirmed Mrs James' victory, handing her the right to a substantial payout. Lady Justice Nicola Davies said the tragedy could have been avoided altogether if window restrictors costing as little as 7 had been fitted to the 'very low' sash window from which he fell. The Appeal Court heard that Mr James had gone to the wedding reception with three friends who were also staying in the hotel. They were informed of the tragedy the following morning. The veteran airman was hailed by his widow as a 'very loving father' who was always smiling. 'He was full of life, very fun, jovial, certainly an extrovert,' she said. In documents put before the appeal hearing, her QC, Robert Weir, sketched out the likely events leading up to the fall, which he said resulted from a combination of a low window sill, the fact that the window could be opened fully, and the sash mechanism being defective. Mrs James (above with her husband) - a 43-year-old teacher from Par in Cornwall - sued the owners of the White Lion Hotel, winning an initial victory at the High Court in Bristol in January last year. The ruling was appealed by The White Lion Hotel partnership, but today three senior judges in London confirmed Mrs James' victory, handing her the right to a substantial payout 'Mr James had opened a sash window in his second-floor bedroom at night as he was struggling with the heat and was considering smoking a cigarette,' he explained. 'The window sill was much lower than normal height, the lower window could be opened to its full height and the sash mechanism of the lower window was defective such that he ended up sitting on the window sill, adopting a slightly awkward position to hold the sash up, and leant out to cool down. 'At some point he lost his balance and fell from the window to his death on the pavement below.' The hotel partnership subsequently pleaded guilty to a health and safety offence, admitting that it had failed to 'carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the windows'. The low sash window presented a 'low risk' that someone might injure themselves and window restrictor devices should have been put in place, which would have prevented the fall, the appeal judge said. At the High Court last January, Judge Barry Cotter QC found the hotel liable for the fall, although he said Mr James had contributed to the accident himself and was 60 per cent to blame. He ruled Mrs James was entitled to compensation after finding Mr James was 'mildly to moderately intoxicated' when he returned to his hotel late at night, but that 'he was not drunk'. Although it was his choice to sit on the sill, had the hotel not breached its health and safety duty, he 'would not have been in a position to open the sash window fully and so would not have accidentally fallen out'. The fall was a direct consequence of the failure to fit window restrictors, he said. Appealing against the ruling, lawyers for the hotel argued that Mr James was 'the author of his own misfortune,' having taken an 'obvious risk of which he was aware'. A grown man who takes an obvious risk like sitting on a window sill cannot then sue someone else when he falls out, said the hotel's barrister Ronald Walker QC. But giving judgment today, Lady Justice Davies, sitting with Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing and Lady Justice King, said Judge Cotter had been right to find the hotel liable for the fall and Mr James' death. 'At the time of the deceased's fall, there was an identified risk which arose from the state of the premises, namely the ability to fully open the lower sash of a window with a low sill, which gave rise to the risk of a person falling out of it,' she said. 'The window was not safe for all normal activities as, if opened, which is the very purpose of sash windows, it presented the risk of a fall as it was so low relative to the centre of gravity of many adults.' She added: 'There is no absolute principle that a visitor of full age and capacity who chooses to run an obvious risk cannot found an action against an occupier on the basis that the latter has either permitted him so to do, or not prevented him from so doing.' The hotel's appeal was rejected, meaning Mrs James is entitled to a payout. (JTA) Rabbi Moshe Azman, a prominent Ukrainian cleric with ties to several Trump associates at the heart of last years Ukrainegate scandal, endorsed Wednesdays violent attempt to prevent the certification of President-elect Joe Bidens election win, comparing the clashes to his own countrys recent pro-democracy revolution. Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, Azman, a Hasidic rabbi who is one of several figures claiming to be the chief rabbi of Ukraine, posted on Facebook that the Maidan has begun in the USA, referring to the widespread protes... gettyimagesbank 'Rapid increase in household debt may trigger gov't fiscal crisis' By Lee Kyung-min Concerns are mounting that the rapid increase in household debt could escalate into a financial crisis, as a sudden fall in the values of homes and stocks could put many overleveraged borrowers into default, experts warned Sunday. They said the Korean economy could fall into a vicious cycle whereby the financial status of lenders becomes compromised and worsens rapidly due to reduced fiscal headroom brought on by fast-growing government debt amid the COVID-19 pandemic. If debtors are unable to repay their loans following a sharp drop in the value of assets notably homes commercial banks will see their financial health deteriorate precipitously, prompting the government to intervene to prevent a chain reaction of defaults at financial institutions. However, a large number of defaults following steeper-than-expected asset price falls could overwhelm the government's fiscal tools, limiting the effectiveness of its crisis management capabilities and the economy will suffer as a result. "Household debt is only as significant as where the borrowed money was spent," Seoul National University economics professor Lee In-ho said. Government and household debt should be treated separately, according to Lee, because unlike the former, which represents the fiscal health of a country, the latter is a matter concerning individual finances, defined by people's ability to repay loans. There is no problem if a borrower is able to pay their monthly installments, with the value of the asset purchased continuing to rise. But the latest developments in the financial markets suggest otherwise. Many young Koreans bought homes with borrowed money during the Moon Jae-in administration, pushing up apartment price indices here to record highs over the past few years. But the shock will materialize once a few defaults trigger price adjustments, Lee said. The peak will then be followed by a nosedive, since more people will dump their once-overvalued assets to avoid bankruptcy. "In that very probable scenario, banks will not be able to retrieve loans, with pressure increasing to set aside greater loss reserves. Their business will take a dive, requiring the help of a government that may not have much room to maneuver," Lee said. BOK Governor Lee Ju-yeol also warned Friday against a steep rise in leveraged household borrowing to invest in stocks. "Investors may have to endure an intolerable level of loss when a (share) price is adjusted at a time when the stock market index has recently been rising rapidly," Lee told reporters in an online press conference. "When the index grows too fast, there is ample chance for the stock price to be readjusted due to external unpredictability such as any changes in major economies' monetary policies, geopolitical risk factors and possible supply disruptions of COVID-19 vaccines," he said. The series of grim predictions is gaining traction, as illustrated by Bank of Korea data showing outstanding household loans from commercial banks standing at 988.8 trillion won ($898 billion) in 2020, up 100.5 trillion won from a year earlier. This is an explosive increase from annual increases of 60 trillion won seen in the previous two years. Of them, mortgages jumped by 68.3 trillion won, while lending statistically categorized as "other loans" mostly credit (non-secured) loans increased by 32.4 trillion won. Data from the Institute of International Finance showed Korea's household debt-to-GDP ratio standing at 100.6 percent in the third quarter of 2020, surpassing the 100 percent mark for the first time. This contrasts with figures for the U.S. (81.2 percent) and advanced countries which average 78 percent. "The pace of the increase should be monitored as well as where the borrowed funds are flowing into," professor Lee said. Governor Lee said that the central bank will keep a close watch on risks associated with the soaring household debt. "The rapid increase of household debt is somewhat inevitable due to the pandemic, a problem that cannot be solved in a short period of time. Continued monitoring is required along with macroprudential measures by the financial authorities. We will discuss ways to manage household debt with related risks factored in," he said. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Onlookers said 100 police swooped on the scene at Clyde Road, Seven Sisters Police confirmed tonight they had handed fines to 42 attendees of travller wake Met Police said officers were met with aggression from booze-drinking crowd Police have been accused of failing to stop more than 100 'travellers' who broke lockdown rules to 'attend a wake' on a static caravan site. Onlookers said 100 police swooped on the scene at Clyde Road, Seven Sisters, London, in 15 vans last night. ADVERTISEMENT But locals claim little was done to break up the celebration, which was attended by around 70 people and went on until around 2am. Police confirmed this evening they had handed fines to 42 attendees - and arrested one person on suspicion of an unrelated theft. Scotland Yard also claim that their officers tried to break up the wake but were met with aggression from the alcohol-drinking crowd. This comes as the Home Office issued a video warning Covid rule breakers they 'can't be chillin' and police forces up and down the country hand out hundreds of fines a day. Onlookers said 100 police rushed to the scene in a residential street in Seven Sisters, London, last night, arriving in around 15 vans Photos show masked police officers lined up outside of the gates, where the celebration was being held, as one officer spoke with gatherers through the metal bars Officers were called to Star Nails in Stockwell Head, Hinkley, Leicestershire, where they found women being pampered Police approached a woman sat on a park bench and asked her to move as they patrolled Hyde Park today Police patrol Hyde Park in central London this morning - as the Met urges people to stick to the rules Parties, car meets and snowball fights as people ignore the rules Southwark house party: On Wednesday night, Met officers broke up a party at an industrial unit in Southwark, south London, where they found at least 20 revellers on top of the building. Local residents cheered when police arrived. Two people were arrested, one on suspicion of carrying an offensive weapon, the other for suspected drug dealing. Five people were handed fines for breaching Covid restrictions Hertfordshire party: An illegal house party attended by up to 100 people in South Mimms, Hertfordshire, was also broken up by police. Police seized alcohol and music equipment from the organiser. One officer was hurt while trying to disperse the crowd and one person was arrested. At least 12 people were handed fines Brent car meet: And over the last week, the Met responded to a bar which was still open and serving customers. In Brent, 14 people attended a car meet, intentionally breaking the rules and potentially spreading the virus. In both of these cases, fixed penalty notices were issued by officers Leeds snowball fight: Around 200 youngsters took part in a snowball fight in Hyde Park, Leeds, on Thursday Oxfordshire leisure drive: Three friends from Oxfordshire who drove 21 miles to visit Cotswolds have been fined 200 each Devon surfing: Devon police have slammed a group who travelled from London to Woolacombe on Thursday in a camper van to go surfing Nottinghamshire lock-in: Pub owners, staff and four customers have been fined after the venue was found serving alcohol inside The Metropolitan Police tonight said in a statement: 'More than 100 people had come together to mourn the loss of a member of the traveller community. ADVERTISEMENT 'Some of those attending were consuming alcohol and became aggressive towards police when advised that they were breaching coronavirus regulations and needed to disperse.' They also said officer patrols in the area would be stepped up. Acting Chief Inspector Steve Connolly said: 'Covid-19 legislation does not allow for gatherings of this type to take place. 'Although 30 people are allowed to attend a funeral, related gatherings such as these fall outside of what it legally permitted. 'Although we know that the community has suffered a loss, we also know that large meetings of people from different households are behind the rapid spread of the virus through London.' In the past week, revellers have been caught enjoying house parties, a pub lock-in, an evening at a shisha bar, and snowball fights. People have also been fined for travelling across the country to go surfing and for being pampered in a nail bar. One force said it was issuing 'so many fines at the minute to people who just don't seem to care,' adding, 'Is having your nails done really that important?'. Staggering footage released today captured the moment officers found 29 people enjoying an evening in a shisha bar. The Metropolitan Police bodycam video shows officers bust open the bar, which was operating out of a unit on an industrial estate in Southall, west London. Scotland Yard said: 'Officers were called to the unit following concern from members of the public and after arriving on scene, found 29 people inside, one of whom tried to run out of the unit as police entered. ADVERTISEMENT 'The gathering was not only a potential breeding ground for the virus, but the poor management of the shisha pipes inside presented a fire hazard. 'The owner of the property has been reported for consideration of a fixed penalty notice, police continue to monitor the area for additional breaches.' The Met has now issued a warning to people to abide by lockdown rules over the weekend or face hefty fines. The force said officers would be 'responding swiftly to reckless breaches' such as house parties, unlicensed music events or other dangerous gatherings. When the restrictions were first announced, the Metropolitan Police dished out 4.5 fines a day on average between March 27 and April 13. In comparison, more than 300 people a day are now getting fixed penalty notices, with almost 4,000 penalties handed out so far in London. In Leicestershire meanwhile, two women have been fined 200 each for flouting lockdown rules after they were caught getting nail treatments at a beauty salon. Officers were called to Star Nails in Stockwell Head, Hinkley, where they found two customers inside being pampered by staff. Three friends from Oxfordshire who drove 21 miles to visit the Cotswold town of Stow on the Wold in breach of lockdown have also been fined 200 each by police. Cotswolds Police tweeted last night: 'Officers stated that they had no reasonable excuse to be in a car together so far from home.' The incident comes after more than 50 tourists were spoken to by police in the North Cotswolds on Sunday and many were told to go home. In Nottinghamshire, pub owners, staff and four customers have been fined after the venue was found serving alcohol inside. Locals said very little was done to break up the celebration, which was attended by around 70 people in Seven Sisters last night Video footage from the scene shows swarms of people in the street talking to police officers in raised voices as they disperse from their gathering Staggering footage released today captured the moment officers found 29 people enjoying an evening in a shisha bar in London The car park at National Trust site Selsley Common in Stroud, Gloucestershire, was packed today Walkers gathered on Primrose Hill in North London this afternoon Officers asked a woman to move on as she sat on a bench in London this morning Police visited The Plough Inn in Cropwell Butler on January 13 to find four people sat around a table drinking and watching television with a member of staff. Environmental Health and licensing officers have now served its owners a fixed penalty notice of 1,000 and police have issued 200 fines to all customers and the three owners and staff present at the time of the breach. The business has been closed and also received a prohibition notice ensuring it cannot allow individuals to enter the premises to consume food or drink. Devon police, meanwhile, have slammed a group who travelled from London to Woolacombe on Thursday in a camper van to go surfing. A police spokesman said today: 'Beggar's belief - despite all the messaging-a campervan load travelled down from London last night as they fancied a surf. 'Tickets given and turned back. Vast majority are following the guidance - to the minority blatantly breaching - we are out and about.' Locals were furious at the lockdown flouters for putting them in danger. One resident said on social media: 'Don't fine them - no point - take their license away or impound their vehicle.' Another added: 'And there's me worried about driving to Woolacombe from Ilfracombe...makes my blood boil.' Another said: 'Thank you police for being so vigilant and turning back these utter morons. 'It is the minority that are blatantly defying the Government guidelines and keeping the lockdowns and this virus going.' Two women caught getting their nails done at a beauty salon are fined 200 each for flouting lockdown rules Officers were called to Star Nails in Stockwell Head, Hinkley, Leicestershire, where they found women being pampered Two women have been fined 200 each for flouting lockdown rules after they were caught getting nail treatments at a beauty salon. Officers were called to Star Nails in Stockwell Head, Hinkley, Leicestershire, after being alerted by CCTV operators last Saturday. They discovered two customers inside being pampered by staff and promptly issued them with fixed penalty notices for breaching Covid laws. Leicestershire Police said the salon worker who was attending to the two women was also slapped with a 200 fine. Hinckley Police wrote on Facebook: 'We are issuing so many fines at the minute to people who just don't seem to care! Over 1,500 more deaths today. Is having your nails done really that important?' A total of 57,800 penalty notices were dished out across their force area between last Friday and Sunday. Earlier this week, police released video footage shaming those who were caught breaking the regulations. They included a group of boy racers who gathered for a car meet in Castle Donington and a house party of more than 30 people in Leicester city centre. Another person had travelled over 110 miles from York to Leicester, via Birmingham, just to visit a mate. Police were also called to an address in Stretton where six men from different households claimed they were having a business meeting over beer and food. Three people caught in the same car together told police they were 'just chilling' after work and pleaded 'it's only been for five minutes.' Scotland Yard Deputy Commissioner Sir Steve House said officers were 'accelerating more quickly' to enforcement rather than listening to excuses from Covid rule breakers this time around. 'We have seen a significant increase in the amount of fixed penalty notices that were issued,' he said. 'The number is increasing quite rapidly day on day. I wish it weren't so. I wish everybody was abiding by the regulations.' Between March 27 and December 20, the force handed out 1,761 penalties for breaking the rules, including for being outside home without a reasonable excuse, not wearing a mask or organising a mass gathering. Click here to resize this module Home Secretary Priti Patel has told police they can question people if they find them sitting on park benches. Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick has ordered officers to take a more hardline approach during this lockdown, saying it is 'preposterous' to suggest that the public would be unaware of the need to follow the rules. Yesterday her deputy said it was clear the public were not taking the rules as seriously this time around and the police had been asked by the Government to step up enforcement. Pictured: Leeds today Pictured: Leeds today Sir Steve described his frustration at anti-lockdown protests, citing a demonstration in Clapham, south London, last week where protesters were heckled by the public. 'As they were walking down Clapham High Street members of the public who were legitimately out started shouting at them and telling them they were a bunch of idiots,' he said. 'I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that view.' He also told the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee that his officers urgently needed vaccines and the force were happy to vaccinate their own officers and staff. ADVERTISEMENT Around 1,700 Metropolitan Police staff are off sick or self-isolating. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Friday received his first dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. In comments after he took the jab, Iohannis urged everyone who has the opportunity to take the vaccine, stressing ''the vaccination and the restriction measures, will take us out of the pandemic.'' Romania has had 684,917 registered cases of COVID-19 and 17,035 deaths according to figures from the Johns Hopkins University. An 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew is currently imposed as well as localized lockdowns. (Image Credit: AP) (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Ahead of the coronavirus vaccination drive that starts on 16 January, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan took to Twitter to bust some myths surrounding vaccination. Posting a series of graphics on the microblogging site, the Union Health Minister answered questions on the side-effects of the Covid-19 vaccine and whether it can cause infertility. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states On side-effects of the Covid-19 vaccines, Harsh Vardhan said some individuals may have side-effects such as mild fever and pain at the site of injection and body ache. However, these side-effects are temporary and should go away on their own after some time, he added. After being administered #COVID19Vaccine, some individuals may have side effects like mild fever, pain at injection site & bodyache. This is similar to the side effects that occur post some other vaccines. These are expected to go away on their own after some time. #StaySafe pic.twitter.com/VCnJzXu70S Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) January 14, 2021 Can a person catch Covid-19 from the vaccine? You cannot contract Covid-19 because you have been inoculated with a vaccine, but it is possible to have caught Covid-19 and not realise you have the symptoms until after your vaccination appointment. Temporary side effects such as mild fever should not be confused as having contracted Covid-19. You cannot contract #COVID19 because you have been inoculated with a #COVID19Vaccine Temporary side effects such as mild fever should not be confused as having contracted #COVID.#StayInformedStaySafe @PMOIndia @MoHFW_INDIA pic.twitter.com/ZkZgLU8tpy Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) January 14, 2021 Can the Covid vaccine cause infertility in men or women? There is no scientific evidence to suggest that the Covid vaccine could cause infertility in either men or women. Infertility is not known to occur as a result of Covid-19 disease either. Please trust only official channels of communication of the government to get correct information about Covid-19. Kindly do not pay heed to such rumours or information from unverified sources. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that #COVIDVaccine could cause infertility in either men or women. Kindly do not pay heed to such rumours or information from unverified sources.#StayInformedStaySafe @PMOIndia @MoHFW_INDIA pic.twitter.com/6ii2EFgpB0 Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) January 14, 2021 Nearly three lakh healthcare workers will get vaccine shots at over 3,000 sites across the country on the first day of the massive nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive. As India aims to inoculate 30 crore, essential workers, in the first phase of vaccination, the government has purchased 1.1 crore doses of Covishield vaccine from SII at the cost of 200 per dose, excluding taxes, while 55 lakh doses of Covaxin are being procured from Bharat Biotech India Limited. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. A former Woodlynne Police officer pleaded guilty Thursday for one count of simple assault after he pepper-sprayed a man and a teen without provocation last year, authorities said. As part of his plea deal, Ryan Dubiel, 32, of Wenonah, was sentenced to one year of probation, was prohibited from having contact with the man and teen, and, must abide by any additional terms deemed appropriate by probation, according to a statement from the Camden County Prosecutors Office. Dubiel also agreed to forfeit his position at the department and was prohibited from holding any public office in New Jersey, including working as a police officer, the office said. On June 4, 2020 at 1:30 p.m., video footage showed that at the time of the OC spray deployment, the individuals were not observed physically resisting or attempting to harm others or themselves, the prosecutors office said in a previous statement, using an abbreviation of oleoresin capsicum, an oily extract from pepper. On Thursday, the office called his use of the spray, not consistent with the State of New Jersey use-of-force policy. Body cam footage showed Dubiel running after two suspects while unleashing pepper spray. He was suspended without pay after videos of the incident surfaced on social media and charged on June 10 with two counts of simple assault after the office said it carefully and impartially review(ed) evidence. With this resolution, there is a guarantee to the public that this individual will not serve in any position of public trust in Camden County or anywhere else in the state, Acting Camden County Prosecutor Jill S. Mayer said in a statement. We hope this serves as a reminder that no one is above the law and we take all accusations and abuse of power seriously. Dubiel served as a Woodlynne officer for 10 months, marking the ninth police department where he worked, according to officials. At the time Dubiel was charged, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal called the alleged assault an appalling and completely unjustified use of force, and credited the county prosecutor for handling the investigation. 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. New Delhi: The Cyber Crime Unit (CyPAD), of Delhi Police, took note of various WhatsApp messages getting circulated, wherein the recipients were being induced and enticed to download an App through the link given in the WhatsApp messages. The inducement was regarding daily commission earning of up to Rs.3000 in less than 30 minutes of time spent on the App. As per the messages being circulated, the stated task being performed through the app was of promoting internet celebrities on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Since the messages were coming from ISD numbers, (which could be virtual numbers), and were inducing the recipient to download an app, NEWWORLD.APK, through a short (encrypted) URL, hence the activity was identified as suspicious and the Malware Forensic Lab of CyPAD-NCFL was asked to examine the URL, the App as well as other linked aspects. The apps functioning showed that it claims to add Rs. 6 in the Users account if the task given to the app user on Facebook, YouTube, etc., is completed. To earn more money, the App provided for VIP accounts. But to use these VIP accounts, the user had to add money in his app account. Analysis of money trail revealed that the amount was being routed to various Indian bank accounts. Malware analysis of the Mobile App NEWWORLD.APK reported that several dangerous permissions were being obtained by this App, such as permission to download and install new software packages (Apps), take pictures and videos, read/modify/delete SD card contents, etc. The App was flagged as a Malwareby a reputed Anti-Virus. The malware App was accessing Users contact book and sending messages to their contacts. It was found that the malicious App was able to discreetly download QQ Browser App, which is an App of the QQ family of Apps which have been banned by Ministry of Electronics and IT in June, 2020. Further, the website and the App were hosted and connecting to IPs that were found assigned to Chinese companies. Meanwhile, a complaint was received from a victim of this fraud, wherein it was alleged that she was cheated of an amount of Rs.50,000/- by using an app which she got in the form of a link through her colleague. The complaint was enquired and it was found that the defrauded money was being routed to the same bank accounts. Accordingly, based on the above facts and circumstances, a Case FIR was registered under various sections of IT Act and IPC and investigation taken up by Cyber Crime Unit (CyPAD), Special Cell. Investigation Live TV Considering the seriousness of the matter, a special team constituting of Insp. Parveen, Insp. Hansraj, Insp. Brahm Prakash, SI Sunil, SI Ajit and others were formed under the supervision of ACP Aditya Gautam to take prompt action. During the investigation, it was found that the defrauded money was being routed to multiple bank accounts registered in the name of various Pvt. Ltd companies. The addresses of these companies and the profile of their Indian Directors raised suspicion. In some of the companies, Chinese nationals were found to be the main Directors at various points of time. The Indian Directors were the ones who were working as accountants, office boys, drivers, etc., for these foreign nationals. The money trail analysis revealed that the defrauded money was being laundered through multiple shell companies and through Crypto-wallets. The key operatives behind these shell companies were identified through the field and technical surveillance and they were arrested on 13/01/2021 in simultaneous multiple raids conducted at several locations across Delhi-NCR. In the raids, a total of 12 persons have been arrested, including two Chinese nationals: 1. Ms Chaohong Deng Daoyong r/o Sichuan, China Aged 27 Years 2. Ms Wu Jiazhi r/o Sichuan, China Aged 54 Years A cash amount of Rs.25.42 Lakh of the defrauded money has been recovered from the possession of the Chinese nationals. 12 Bank Accounts, Crypto-Wallets and Payment Gateway IDs have been blocked and a total of Rs. 4 Crore 75 lakh of the defrauded money has been frozen. The accused have also used the cheated money to purchase Crypto-currency (Tether) and over the last two weeks, crypto-transactions worth over Rs. 4.5 Crores have been made to siphon out the funds. The connected wallet currently has Tethers worth over Rs. 8 lakhs which has been frozen. The Payment Gateway used by the accused has confirmed a total of 39,781 victims who have been defrauded by this App till now. Modus Operandi: The arrested Indian accused have disclosed that two Chinese nationals, Yangqing Zhang @ Jonathan and Bao Peng @ Eric, are the main kingpins of this huge criminal conspiracy to cheat and defraud Indian citizens and hack into their devices through malicious mobile Apps. These two are likely to be operating from a foreign location outside India. They launched this 'online scheme' to induce and cheat a maximum number of people by promising lucrative returns based on a multi-level marketing model. In the garb of this scheme, they designed and circulated malware to illegally capture personal data of unsuspecting people for illegitimate purposes. They also created mega social media influencers in a clandestine manner, by promising cash incentive for Follows and Likes, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. The origin and ownership of the majority of these Facebook, YouTube and Instagram accounts are unknown. These profiles can be used in future by external elements to manipulate and influence Indian users who follow these accounts. The arrested Indian Directors and employees also revealed that after circulating the defrauded money in these shell companies, a significant portion was being withdrawn in cash and handed over to local money mules. Two such operatives have been arrested. The entire criminal activity and the underlying criminal conspiracy could be categorized into four segments: 1. Exponential circulation of website registration and App download links through WhatsApp using MLM-based referral method. 2. Inducing the link recipient to download their malicious mobile App which, once downloaded, gains almost complete control over the device/phone of the user. 3. Inducing user to like and follow Facebook, Instagram and YouTube profiles and posts suggested by the App. It is common knowledge that once a user follows a particular profile from his account, the content posted by that profile will regularly come on the users timeline. Further, the mere liking of a post on a social media App by a user will make it visible to other users who are friends/followers of that user, who may also follow that profile, which is being pushed by the malicious app. By doing such concerted actions with millions of Indian users, this malicious App ends up creating thousands of social media profiles of unknown origin and ownership that are being followed by crores of Indians. Such a massive control over what Indian social media users can see and listen could have serious future national security implications, especially in view of the fact that the origin and ownership of most of these accounts are not known. 4. Inducing users of the App to pay for VIP accounts and siphoning out the money thus accumulated, through multiple shell companies and crypto-wallets. A significant portion of the defrauded money is ending up in the hands of local money mules. The case is under investigation and help is being obtained from the labs of CyPAD to retrieve crucial digital evidence. Efforts are being made to identify the involvement of others. Citizens are advised to: 1. Never download and install any App through links sent over WhatsApp with promises of quick money. These Apps are not verified and listed by genuine App Store/Play Store and may undertake malicious activities. If any such App has been downloaded, the same may be got uninstalled at the earliest. 2. Never mechanically like or follow the social media accounts being pushed through such fraudulent applications. These social media accounts of unknown origin and ownership may infest your social media timeline with content that is detrimental to you as well as the society at large. 3. Never pay any money to such malicious, fraudulent Apps after getting swayed by their inducements and false claims and promises. Rep. Greene to Submit Articles of Impeachment Against Joe Biden A newly-elected Georgia congresswoman says she will submit articles of impeachment against President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 21. On Jan. 21, I will be introducing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for abuse of power, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told The Epoch Times, accusing Biden of withholding foreign aid to Ukraine and pressuring them to complete a deal with his son Hunter Biden. When he was Vice President of the United States, he abused the power of his office, she said, by basically saying that he would withhold a billion dollars of foreign aid to Ukraine until he got a deal for his son, Hunter Biden, with a Ukrainian energy company. The article of impeachment will also focus on widespread evidence that came to light through Hunter Bidens laptop, referencing allegations from former business partner Tony Bobulinski that the Biden family was engaging in deals with Chinese energy companies, with communist China. Greene believes she can get support for impeachment in the House because theres huge support among Republican voters and the American people are fed up with corruption. We cannot have a man in office in the most powerful seat of our country and arguably the world, who is willing to sell out America, sell out his position just so that his son Hunter Biden can get a paycheck, Greene added. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is searched by U.S. Capitol Police after setting off the metal detector outside the doors to the House of Representatives Chamber in Washington on Jan. 12, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) The subject then moved on to the recent second impeachment of President Donald Trump. Nancy Pelosi has lowered the bar of impeachment, basically to the basement, by what she did yesterday, which was the final show of a 4-year-long witchhunt that they started on day one with President Trump. President Trump was guilty of no crimes and they impeached him twice, she said. Democrats in the House of Representatives, joined by 10 Republicans, voted to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time, in a 232197 vote on Jan. 13. The single article of impeachment alleges that the president incited an insurrection that resulted in the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. They impeached him when he told his supporters at the rally at the White House to march to the Capitol peacefully and patriotically, Greene said. Greene believes that it is actually Democrat party members who are guilty of inciting violence. Democrats are the ones who are guilty of inciting violence in this country and they should be held accountable for that. They support violence, Antifa, BLM, violent riots that caused billions in damage over the past year, burned cities, attacked police officers, occupied cities, ruined peoples businesses and their livelihoods, and took over police precincts. Greene also expressed astonishment at Republicans who may have benefitted from Trump but subsequently voted to impeach him, adding that Republicans all over the country are taking notes. Ivan Penchoukov contributed to this report. IT major HCL Technologies will announce its quarterly earnings today, 15 January 2021. Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI) plans to expand its multi-year, global alliance with IBM to help businesses transform their operations through open hybrid cloud adoption. With the proposed center, LTI will help their clients migrate and modernize core business applications leveraging IBM's open hybrid cloud platform built on Red Hat OpenShift. Ircon International achieved milestone by opening the 30 KM section between Korichhapar to Dharamjaigarh within the targeted date i.e., 31.12.2020. A Trial run was carried on 31 December 2020. The cost of this line is approximately 325 crores and the work is executed by Ircon International under an SPV named Chhattisgarh East Railway. Bharat Dynamics and Thales have signed a Teaming Agreement to work in partnership on the STARStreak Air Defence system with the support of both the Governments of India and the United Kingdom. HFCL's consolidated profit after tax jumped 86.2% to Rs 85.11 crore on 49.7% rise in revenue to Rs 1277.48 crore in Q3 December 2020 over Q3 December 2019. DEN Networks' consolidated profit after tax jumped 390% to Rs 60 crore on 8% rise in revenue to Rs 342 crore in Q3 December 2020 over Q3 December 2019. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Active Country LLC became the winner of the investment competition to attract an investor to the implementation of the project "Arrangement of the attraction cable car crossing the Dnieper River from the Arch of Friendship of Peoples to Trukhaniv Island" follows from the order of the Kyiv city state administration dated January 11, 2021, published on the official portal of the capital. The Department of Economics and Investments of the Kyiv City State Administration was instructed to conclude an investment agreement with the winner and the customer of the project - the Pleso communal enterprise for the protection, maintenance and operation of lands of the water fund of Kyiv. It is said that the territory for arranging the attraction consists of two land plots: one on 0.02 hectares is located near the Arch of Friendship of Peoples in Pechersky district, the second on 0.05 hectares is located on the territory of Trukhaniv island in Dniprovsky district). The approximate total cost of the investment object implementation is UAH 3.6 million. Under the terms of competition, the construction of capital structures on the territory of the investment object is prohibited. The exclusively collapsible temporary structures should be installed, without arranging foundations, without damaging the natural objects located on the territory. In addition, the investor is obliged to ensure the technical possibility of dismantling all the components of the attraction without damaging the territory and natural objects located on it. "From the written conditions of the investment competition, it becomes clear that the arrangement of the attraction of the cable car has nothing to do with the implementation of the large-scale construction of an engineering and transport infrastructure object - a cable car with public facilities along the route: People's Friendship Arch - Poshtova Square - Trukhaniv Island. Now this project is at the stage of resolving all property and legal issues, only after that conditions of the competition will be formulated, in particular, the approximate timeframe for the construction of the facility," the Department of Economics and Investments of the Kyiv City State Administration reported. LLC "Active Country" has built 32 objects to date. According to the information on the company's website, it has facilities in Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Poltava, Zakarpattia and Tbilisi (Georgia). Source: AP The racing pigeon appeared to have traveled far, from Oregon, when it showed up weak and hungry in a backyard in a Melbourne suburb. Someone decided to name it Joe, after President-elect Joe Biden. But Australian officials, fearing the spread of germs from a foreign bird, would not bend the rules: The bird must die. Lady Gaga to sing national anthem to mark Joe Biden-Kamala Harris inauguration on January 20 The tale of the bird that traveled more than 8,000 miles only to end up on Australias death row caused a stir on the internet. It began when a man named David Celli-Bird (no relation), a building inspector, found Joe on Dec. 26 after it flew into his backyard in Officer, a quiet suburb in Melbournes southeast, with a band dangling around one leg. When it landed, it was very weak and in an emaciated state, Celli-Bird said in an interview Friday. He fed the pigeon to bring it back to health. Driven by curiosity about its origins, he searched online for the numbers on the birds leg band. They matched those of a bird from an Oregon pigeon race that began Oct. 29. He discovered that a male bird had gone missing. Celli-Bird said he inquired with the American Racing Pigeon Union, which said the bird he had found was registered to someone in Alabama. With this information in hand, he and some friends thought it made sense to name the pigeon after a notable American figure. We were sitting around, having a laugh, throwing around names, he said. We thought, Well, Joes the incoming president; well give him that name. They did consider Donald, Celli-Bird said, but we thought it might not be politically correct with whats going on. International news outlets picked up the strange tale of a bird named Joe, and the internet marveled at its journey. The authorities said they believed it had most likely hitched a ride on a cargo ship. Brad Turner, secretary of the Australian National Pigeon Association, told The Associated Press that he had heard of cases of Chinese racing pigeons reaching the Australian west coast aboard cargo ships. The greatest long-distance flight recorded by a pigeon is claimed to have started in Arras, France, and ended in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1931, according to the website Pigeonpedia. The distance was 7,200 miles, and it took 24 days, the website says. Celli-Bird thought it was all a bit of good fun, but the Australian authorities had a different take on the situation. The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment said Joe posed a direct biosecurity risk to Australian bird life and our poultry industry. It intended to euthanize him, local media reported. Australia has notoriously strict biosecurity laws. In 2015, Barnaby Joyce, then agricultural minister, threatened to euthanize actor Johnny Depps two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, because they had not been declared to customs when they arrived in Queensland aboard a private jet. Luckily, arrangements were made for the two dogs to be flown back to the United States. Amber Heard, then Depps wife, later pleaded guilty in a Queensland court to providing false information on her passenger card after she and the dogs landed on the Gold Coast to visit the actor, and the couple offered an apology. Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack showed no mercy about the pigeon matter at a news conference, saying: If Joe has come in a way that has not met out strict biosecurity measures, then bad luck, Joe. Either fly home or face the consequences. Faced with the prospect of Joes demise, Celli-Bird had second thoughts about the name he had given the bird. Last night I thought maybe we should have called him Donald, he said. Maybe we could have gotten a presidential pardon or diplomatic immunity. But on Friday, information suddenly emerged that may give the bird a reprieve: Joe may not be an American pigeon after all. A local pigeon rescue group said on Facebook that it had seen plenty of local birds wearing the same type of band found on Joes leg. We believe he is not an American pigeon at all rather an Australian pigeon wearing a knockoff American ring that anyone could buy off eBay, the organization said. A spokesperson for the American Racing Pigeon Union also said that Joes band was probably a counterfeit and that he was in all likelihood an Australian pigeon, according to The Associated Press. The Department of Agriculture said it was investigating the authenticity of the U.S. identification tag. Celli-Bird said he had been in contact with the Melbourne Pigeon Rescue and the Department of Agriculture, and officials were planning to try to capture Joe on Friday to determine the birds origins. Im happy for them to come out and clarify for everyones peace of mind who or where the bird came from, he said. He stressed that he had no intention of misleading anyone. Another matter was weighing on Celli-Birds mind: whether the bird will get to keep its new name. If it turns out that the pigeon is, in fact, female, he said, we might have to change it to Joanna or something. (Author: Yan Zhuang )/(c.2021 The New York Times Company) DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) The head of the Iowa National Guard says Iowa is sending 250 soldiers and airmen to the U.S. Capitol, after officials called for additional support for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next Wednesday. Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Ben Corell says initially Iowa had been scheduled to send 15 airmen to Washington, D.C., but because of the attack last week guard soldiers from all states and territories were asked to send support. He and Gov. Kim Reynolds agreed to send 250 additional Iowa National Guard members by this weekend. Corell says so far no Iowa National Guard support has been needed for security at the Iowa Capitol. Support Local Journalism Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free. Please support us by subscribing or making a contribution. In an effort to alleviate their teachers workloads and minds, LISD and UISD have worked to find multiple ways to help their frontline workers. At LISD, teachers rejoiced when they heard that their board of trustees will start a rotation schedule for all LISD employees, not just teachers. Each rotation will last three weeks, and teachers will not serve more than 10 students at a time. The news came during a board meeting, where members of the Texas State Teacher Associations protested and demanded outside for the schedule changes. Moving forward through the next six weeks, the district will continue to adjust schedules for teachers, but the addition of a rotation schedule has already put many teachers already at ease. While teachers are still expected to stay on call in case of an increased demand on campus, it is expected that there will be less employees on LISD campuses for the remaining school year. Meanwhile, UISD will start by having its first planned fully asynchronous day on Monday. The day will focus on providing teachers time to prepare their student engagement, course work and other details they may need. Additionally, teachers can participate in Professional Learning Communities and plan intervention lessons for students that have struggled throughout the pandemic, UISD stated. For students, the day will consist of a pre-recorded lesson by their teachers and be an opportunity to improve their grades through review, lesson adjustments and a day to work through their classwork. The district clearly stated that on-campus students are not to report to campus. Despite students not going to school, UISD will still provide Grab and Go meals, and the wi-fi buses will be operational. Students will still be expected to attend class Monday and log in to do their assigned classwork. As the week ends, UISD Deputy Superintendent Gloria Rendon said that paper packets will be provided for students to work on. The asynchronous days will be spread out throughout the remaining months. According to UISD, they will be on Feb. 12, April 23 and May 21. cocampo@lmtonline.com Brazilians intent on reaching Britain have said the new travel restrictions banning all arrivals from South America and Portugal won't stop them making it to the UK. It comes as Britons have been left stuck abroad after all flights were cancelled amid growing concerns about a mutant coronavirus strain which has emerged in Brazil. The ban, which also covers the Central American state of Panama and the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, came into force at 4am this morning. All flights to and from the countries on the banned list have now been cancelled, including routes to London Heathrow from Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. The variant has caused a surge of cases in the Amazon city of Manaus, where the overwhelmed public health system has seen its hospitals run out of oxygen. But those preparing to come to Britain from Brazil's international airports told MailOnline yesterday that they would find a way to bypass the restrictions. With all direct flights to London which had been due to leave Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo cancelled last night, travellers were purchasing tickets on other airlines and planning instead to then take another flight from a European country not on the list. Air passengers speak to staff at a check-in desk at Rio de Janeiro Airport in Brazil yesterday Ainee Barroso, 29, was waiting for her evening flight to Amsterdam at Rio's Galeao international airport yesterday. She said intended to join other Brazilians she knew in the UK to live and work there. She said: 'I bought my ticket last year. The last few weeks have been very uncertain, there have been a lot of cancellations and I didn't know what to expect when I got here. It's been very stressful. Which countries does the travel ban apply to? The new travel ban applies to anyone who has travelled from, or through, the following countries to Britain: Argentina Brazil Bolivia Cape Verde Chile Colombia Ecuador French Guiana Guyana Panama Paraguay Peru Portugal (including Madeira and Azores) Suriname Uruguay Venezuela Advertisement 'Fortunately I had bought a ticket to Amsterdam and my flight is still going ahead. I've got another flight to London 24 hours later, on Saturday morning. So then I'll try to enter the UK.' She said she understands where Britain wants to ban Brazilians. 'It's no-one's fault, the whole world's going through a difficult situation,' she said. 'It's very complicated in Brazil. A part of the population are trying to protect themselves, stay at home and isolate themselves from others, but the other part aren't doing the right thing. They aren't taking any precautions and are making it worse for everyone.' Another traveller, Samuel, 25, who didn't want to give his full name, said he had managed to buy a ticket on the KLM flight to Amsterdam after his direct flight to London on British Airways flight was cancelled. The trained chef, who has Italian nationality due to his grandparents, said he planned to spend a few days with friends in Holland before buying another flight to London, where he hoped to find work. He said: 'I have friends in London who can find me work when the lockdown's over. They're working as delivery motorbike drivers in the meantime, and that's what I intend to do until all this is over. 'Brazil is chaotic at the moment, everyone's losing their jobs, everyone's struggling. Friends of mine have lost their relatives, parents, grandparents, from Covid. I want to get out of here and start a new life. 'The UK will be back to normal before any other country because they're really pushing ahead with vaccines. I don't think Brazil will be out of this for at least a year.' A board at Rio de Janeiro Airport yesterday shows that a flight to London has been cancelled Some passengers including Ainee Barroso (pictured), 29, were still flying from Rio de Janeiro Airport yesterday despite the pandemic Ticket gates in the departures area of Rio de Janeiro Airport in Brazil are pictured yesterday Another Brazilian man, who didn't want to be named, also vowed to reach the UK, where he said he was going to visit his girlfriend. Which countries will you need a negative Covid test from before entering England? From 4am on Monday January 18, 2021, anyone travelling to England must have proof of a negative coronavirus test, taken in the three days before starting their journey. This will apply to arrivals who began their journeys in every country of the world, with the following exceptions: Ireland Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Isle of Man Jersey Guernsey Ascension Falkland Islands St Helena There will also be an exemption until 4am on January 21 for people who began their journey in: Antigua and Barbuda St Lucia Barbados The test must meet performance standards of 97% specificity, 80% sensitivity at viral loads above 100,000 copies/ml. This could include tests such as: a nucleic acid test, including a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test or derivative technologies, including loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) tests an antigen test, such as a test from a lateral flow device Advertisement He said: 'She's Brazilian but lives in Bristol. We kept putting it off because of the pandemic, thinking things would get better. But it's been a year now since we met and I have to go and see her. 'I'm taking a flight to Brazil, where I spent some time working a few years ago. From there I'll find a way to get to her.' Brazil is in the midst of a devastating second wave and now has more than 207,000 deaths which is the second highest Covid death toll worldwide. The country registered its highest daily average of infections this week, with 54,784 confirmed cases on average per day - up 51 per cent on two weeks ago. Deaths averaged 993 deaths per day, a rise of 49 per cent compared to two weeks ago. Intensive care units in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are said to already be 90 per cent full. In Manaus, the populous capital of Amazonas state where the new strain of the virus emerged, has been put in a state of emergency as the health system collapsed. In Sao Paulo's Guarulhos airport, there was a similar scene as travellers turned up to find their flights to London cancelled. Rosangela, 42, said she was returning to the UK, where she lives, after visiting her family, including an aunt who died from Covid while she was there. After her direct flight back was cancelled, the Brazilian, who was with her teenage daughter, said she had bought a TAP Portugal flight to Porto, from where they would try to reach the UK. She said: 'I don't think it's wrong to shut the borders. I used to think differently, but then I lost my aunt to Covid so now I agree they need to be tough. But we need to find a way to get back. 'We found a ticket with another airline to Portugal. We're hearing that they might have banned flights from Portugal too, so we'll just have to see what we have to do when we get there. We'll have to find a way.' Juliana, 42, was also travelling back to the UK with her husband Marcus and four-year-old daughter. After finding her direct flight cancelled, the family planned to fly to Madrid with another airline, and there buy another ticket to London. Three passengers arrive at London Heathrow Airport wearing protective suits this afternoon Passengers wear protective suits, masks and face shields as they arrive at Heathrow today Passengers wearing face masks walk through arrivals at London Heathrow Airport today Passengers walk through the international arrivals area of London Heathrow Airport today A display board shows expected flight arrivals at London Heathrow Airport this morning She said: 'We came here for the holidays. I think they are right to shut the borders, the UK government should have done it a long time ago. The situation there is out of control. New rules requiring negative coronavirus test are delayed New rules requiring travellers arriving in England to have a negative coronavirus test have been delayed 'to give international arrivals time to prepare'. The requirement for passengers arriving in England by boat, train or plane - including UK nationals - to test negative for Covid up to 72 hours before leaving the country of departure was due to come into force at 4am today. But it has been pushed back until the same time on Monday, amid concern that guidance on which tests would be accepted had not been published early enough. Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, described the delay in introducing the new rules as 'truly shocking'. She said last night: 'Questioned PM repeatedly today on why border testing/quarantine is weaker than other countries. Repeatedly he said Government is bringing in new testing (months later than elsewhere but due Friday). But now it's not. More delays. As they haven't published guidance in time.' Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the situation was another 'complete mess'. 'Yet again we've got a Prime Minister and a Government that's late, slow and even now, at the 11th hour, they're putting testing back another few days' he told reporters during a visit to a mass vaccination centre in Stevenage. Downing Street defended the delay, with the Prime Minister's spokesman saying the testing law would come into place today as planned but that a 'grace period' would allow passengers 'a little bit more time' to get the tests required. Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, said: 'This saga is yet another lesson to Government that it takes time to implement major changes to border controls and they can't be rushed through.' Travellers will need to present proof of a negative test result to their carrier on boarding, while the UK Border Force will conduct spot checks on arrivals. New arrivals who flout the rules will face a minimum 500 fine, while the operator who transported them will also be fined. Advertisement 'We've seen on the government website that you don't need a Covid test to get into the country until Monday, so hopefully we'll make it to London before then. 'I'm not looking forward to the lockdown when I get back. Here we were always out, and my daughter was always outside enjoying herself, and when we get back we'll have to be shut indoors.' The city registered more hospitalisations in the first week of 2021 than in the whole month of December, with over 1,500 people admitted to hospital in a single day on Saturday. Distressing scenes emerged as hospitals ran out of oxygen for virus patients, with desperate staff fighting to keep patients alive through manual ventilation. Refrigerator trucks have once again been deployed to store bodies, while structures to hold 22,000 coffins in horizontal 'drawers' are hastily being constructed. In a widely shared video from the region, a female medical worker asks the internet for help: 'We're in an awful state. Oxygen has simply run out across the whole unit today.' 'There is no oxygen and lots of people are dying,' she says in the clip. 'If anyone has any oxygen, please bring it to the clinic. There are so many people dying.' Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has been blamed for allowing the crisis to get out of control after consistently downplaying the pandemic and describing Covid as a 'little flu'. Meanwhile some Britons have been left stranded in Portugal after the ban on UK entry was brought in due to the country's strong travel links with Brazil. One Twitter user from Manchester posted: 'So I'm stuck in Portugal, how nice. I moved to a whole different country so I wasn't stuck here - f*** you, corona.' A second, David Curle, of Lighthorne, Warwickshire, added: 'My flight home from Portugal on February 1 with BA has been cancelled for the fourth time. 'Looking to come back on February 22. I was due to come back on December 31. Hope the milk in the fridge has not gone off.' And a third, Charlotte, wrote: 'I'm so jealous, my grandparents are stuck in Portugal.' Jonny Wilso, from London, added last night: 'On the last flight back to UK, all flights cancelled from Portugal because of 'Brazilian variant'. F***, I'm in a movie still, when does it stop?' Scientists analysing the Brazilian variant believe the mutations it shares with the new South African strain seem to be associated with a rapid increase in cases in locations where there have already been large outbreaks of the disease. British and Irish nationals and others with residence rights are exempted from the ban, which was backed by the Scottish Government, though they must self-isolate for 10 days along with their households on their return. There is an exemption also for hauliers travelling from Portugal to allow the transport of essential goods. ** Are you a Brit stuck abroad? Please email MailOnline at: tips@dailymail.com ** Advertisement Today, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps insisted the ban on travellers from Portugal and South America is needed to help with Covid vaccine measures in the UK. He said the move was to combat a new strain of coronavirus found in Brazil, telling Sky News: 'Scientists aren't saying that the vaccine won't work against it. 'But we are at this late stage now, we have got so far - we have got jabs into the arms of three million Brits now - that's more than France, Spain, Germany, Italy put together, and we do not want to be tripping up at this last moment. 'Which is why I took the decision, as an extra precaution, to ban those flights entirely.' Mr Shapps added: 'Everybody coming from anywhere not on a travel corridor must, by law, quarantine. And there are not exceptions to that and you can end up with a criminal record if you don't.' People sit at London Heathrow today as limited air travel continues during the pandemic Social distancing signs are keeping people spread out at London Heathrow this afternoon A man checks his phone while walking through Heathrow with his luggage this afternoon A woman sits with her suitcases at London Heathrow Airport this afternoon Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the ban was a 'necessary step' but accused ministers of incompetence and 'lurching from one crisis and rushed announcement to another'. Meanwhile a leading UK virologist said one of two Brazilian coronavirus variants was detected in Britain ahead of the South America travel ban being brought in. Professor Wendy Barclay, who is advising the Government's Covid-19 response, said the variant may have been 'introduced some time ago' but it was unclear whether it was the highly-infectious strain that prompted the ban. Her comments came after Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he was 'not aware' of any cases of the strain that led him to impose the restrictions. Professor Barclay, head of the G2P-UK National Virology Consortium, a new project set up to study the effects of emerging coronavirus mutations, said: 'There are two different types of Brazilian variants and one of them has been detected and one of them has not. 'In the databases, if you search the sequences, you will see that there is some evidence for variants from around the world, and I believe including the Brazilian one, which probably was introduced some time ago. That will be being traced very carefully.' Portugal flight cancellations on a phone on the London Heathrow Airport app this morning Flights at London Heathrow to and from destinations in Portugal have been cancelled The Imperial College virologist added that both Brazilian variants - one of which was detected by travellers in Japan and the other which is more prevalent in Brazil currently - have mutations that suggest 'they might impact the way that some people's antibodies can see the virus'. British travel ban is 'absurd', Portuguese foreign minister says Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva Britain's decision to suspend flights from Portugal because of concerns about a new coronavirus strain in Brazil is 'absurd', Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said. Santos Silva told the state-owned news agency Lusa that he had requested a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to clarify the situation. Mr Silva said: 'This is an absurd measure, and we don't understand what it is based on.' There is no evidence that the Brazilian strain is present in Portugal, according to health authorities. Flights between Portugal and Brazil remain available as part of a wider Portuguese policy of maintaining travel to countries with large Portuguese diasporas. Mr Silva criticised the short notice given by Britain for the new measure. He said Portugal had not banned travel from Britain when a new strain of the coronavirus was first identified in the UK, but had followed European Union policy by simply requiring a negative coronavirus test from travellers. 'I believe in the value of reciprocity,' he said. Advertisement 'It is really important that we carry out this work now, and carry it out carefully, and in several different laboratories, to really firm up those results because they have big implications,' she added. Earlier, Mr Shapps described the ban, which includes an exemption for British and Irish nationals, as a 'precautionary' measure to ensure the vaccination programme rolling out across the UK was not disrupted by new variants of the virus. Asked if the Brazilian strain was currently in the country, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Not as far as we are aware, I think, at this stage. 'There haven't been any flights that I can see from the last week from Brazil, for example.' Dr Mike Tildesley, an epidemiologist who advises the Government on its scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling group, said the UK was late in imposing the travel ban but that it should minimise the risk from a 'more transmissible' variant. 'We always have this issue with travel bans, of course, that we're always a little bit behind the curve,' he told BBC Breakfast. 'My understanding is that there haven't really been any flights coming from Brazil for about the past week, so hopefully the immediate travel ban should really minimise the risk.' Dr Tildesley said although scientists 'don't believe there is anything to worry about' in terms of vaccine efficacy, the higher transmissibility could mean 'people potentially might end up developing severe symptoms more rapidly which could cause more issues with our health service'. The move came as the latest figures showed the number of people across the UK to have received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine has passed 2.9 million. Public Health England (PHE) also released data showing infection rates had fallen in most regions of England across all age groups apart from the over 80s, in a further sign that lockdown measures are having an impact. At the same time, however, the PHE surveillance report noted that there were more people being admitted to hospitals and intensive care units. People enjoy a drink sitting at tables of the Janis bar at Cais do Sodre in Lisbon on Wednesday NHS England said around one in five major hospital trusts in England had no spare adult critical care beds on January 10. The time lag between a fall in cases and an impact on the death toll means grim figures are likely to remain a factor for some time. The latest official figures showed a further 1,248 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK as of Thursday. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is coming under renewed pressure from Tory lockdown sceptics to set out how he will ease the restrictions on people's liberties as cases come down. Young people sit in the sunny but cold weather at Ribeira das Naus in Lisbon on Wednesday Former minister Steve Baker - who co-ordinated opposition to Theresa May's Brexit deal - suggested Mr Johnson's leadership would be 'on the table' if there was not a change of direction. He urged colleagues on the Covid Recovery Group to make their views known to the chief whip, saying: 'People are telling me they are losing faith in our Conservative Party leadership because they are not standing up for our values as a party. 'If we continue forward with a strategy that hammers freedom, hammers the private sector, hammers small business owners and hammers the poor, inevitably the Prime Minister's leadership will be on the table: we strongly do not want that after all we have been through as a country.' After his comments leaked, Mr Baker later tweeted: 'I am clear Boris is the only person to lead us out of these difficulties and I support him in that endeavour.' ** Are you a Brit stuck abroad? Please email MailOnline at: tips@dailymail.com ** In this Jan. 12, 2021, file photo, Walgreens pharmacist Chris McLaurin prepares to vaccinate Lakandra McNealy, a Harmony Court Assisted Living employee, with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Jackson, Miss. The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but some states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but four states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates that have alarmed health experts and frustrated residents. In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, less than 2% of the population had received its first dose of a vaccine at the start of the week, according to data from the states and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As in other parts of the country, states in the South face a number of challenges: limited vaccine supplies, health care workers who refuse to get inoculated and bureaucratic systems that are not equipped to schedule the huge number of appointments being sought. But other states have still managedat their bestto get the vaccines into the arms of more than 5% of their populations. Though it's not clear why the Deep South is falling behind, public health researchers note that it has typically lagged in funding public health and addressing disparities in care for its big rural population. "When you combine a large percentage of rural residents who tend to be the hard-to-reach populations and have lower numbers of providers with trying to build a vaccine infrastructure on the fly, that's just a recipe for a not-so-great response," said Sarah McCool, a professor in public health at Georgia State University. In this Dec. 16, 2020, file photo, a registered nurse prepares a syringe with the first round of the Pfizer COVID vaccination in Ridgeland, Miss., as state medical leaders received inoculations. On Friday, Dec. 18, 2020, The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but some states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) In Georgia, the state's rural health system has been decimated in recent years, with nine hospital closures since 2008, including two last year. Local health departments have become the primary vaccine providers in some locations, as officials work to add sites where doses can be administered. "If we're the only game in town, this process is going to take a long time," Lawton Davis, director of a large public health district that includes Savannah, said at a news conference on Monday. Alabama and Mississippi have also been hit hard by rural hospital closures. Seven hospitals have shut down in Alabama since 2009 and six in Mississippi since 2005, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina's Sheps Center. Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi ranked in the bottom five of U.S. states in their access to health care, according to a 2020 report from a not-for-profit foundation connected to insurance giant UnitedHealth. But overall, experts say it's too early in the vaccine rollout to draw conclusions about the region's shortcomings, and they can't easily be attributed to a particular factor or trend. "We're sort of building this plane as we're flying, and there are going to be missteps along the way," said Amber Schmidtke, a microbiologist who has been following vaccine dissemination in the South. In this Jan. 9, 2021, file photo, Brent Myers, a CVS pharmacist, second from left, speaks with residents of the Mississippi State Veterans Home in Jackson, Miss., about their receiving the Pfizer covid vaccination. The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but some states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) Officials in the individual states have cited a number of challenges, but also acknowledged shortcomings. "We have too many vaccines distributed that are not in arms yet," said Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who noted that some hospitals in the state are not using their vaccine doses. He said that practice "has to stop." Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp cited a similar challenge and warned providers holding on to vaccines that the state would take their unused doses even if that required "firing up" his pickup truck and doing it himself. But in South Carolina, hospital officials say it is the state that has moved too slowly to expand access to the vaccinations, leaving them with unused doses. The state recently did offer the vaccine to those 70 and older. Mississippi's Reeves said one of the biggest weaknesses in the state's vaccination system is the federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens to administer vaccinations in long-term care facilities. The pharmacy chains have been slow in hiring enough people to do the work in Mississippi, the governor said. In this Jan. 9, 2021, file photo, boxes containing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine are loaded into a truck for shipping at the McKesson distribution center in Olive Branch, Miss. The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but some states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, Pool, File) CVS Health said in a statement that it has "the appropriate resources to finish the job" at long-term care facilities. Walgreens did not respond to an email. During an online forum hosted by Jackson State University in Mississippi on Thursday, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who is Black, noted the reluctance of many African Americans to be vaccinated. He cited a general mistrust of medical systems stemming back to a now-defunct government study that started in the 1930s and left Black men untreated for syphilis for decades. So far, only 15% of COVID-19 vaccinations in Mississippi have gone to Black people, who make up about 38% of the population, state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during the forum. Officials in all four states also said some health care workersamong the first groups eligible for a vaccineare choosing not to get inoculated. And some stressed that states were dealing with limited supplies and high demand and implored people to be patient. "Yes, the phone lines will be busy. Yes, the websites will certainly crash," Kemp said Tuesday. "There are simply vastly more Georgians that want the vaccine than can get it today." In this Dec. 23, 2020, file photo, members of the Mississippi Air and Army National Guard Guard receive the first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Flowood, Miss. The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but some states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) Mississippi officials said the state's website and telephone hotline were overwhelmed after the governor announced Tuesday that vaccinations were available to people 65 or older or people who have underlying medical conditions. Liz Cleveland, a 67-year-old retired state employee who lives in Jackson, waited hours on the website using her cellphone, computer and tablet only to encounter unknown errors. "It's like gambling. You may hit or you may bust," Cleveland said. About 2 a.m. Wednesday, she was finally able to book appointments for herself and her husband next week in Hattiesburg, which is 90 miles (145 kilometers) away. Mississippi officials said Thursday that they will open an additional drive-thru site for vaccinations soon in the state's largest county. Alabama officials also have been inundated with requests for appointments since announcing the state will begin vaccinations for people over 75 next week. A state hotline received more than a million calls the first day it was open. In this Jan. 11, 2021, file photo, Naomi Adams checks on residents after they received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Monarch Villa memory care facility in Stockbridge, Ga. The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but some states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File) Celia O'Kelley of Tuscaloosa said she couldn't get through to anyone to get an appointment for her 95-year-old mother. "I am scared because Tuscaloosa is a hot spot," she said. Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. File image: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell walks from the Senate floor to his office on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Image: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) United States President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for a historic second time on January 13, charging him with incitement of insurrection over the deadly mob siege of the US Capitol last week. The House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, voted 232-197 to impeach Trump, with just a week to go before his presidential tenure ends. President-elect Joe Biden is scheduled to be sworn-in on January 20. As many as 10 Republicans joined forces with the Democrats to push through the Article of Impeachment at lightning speed. Trump is now the only US president to be impeached twice. It was the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in modern times, more so than against Bill Clinton in 1998. Read: Here are other US presidents who met the same fate What happens next? The next step is for the US Senate the Upper House to vote on the Article of Impeachment. While it is unlikely that the vote will take place before Trump leaves office on January 20, the negative outcome will have a larger bearing on the 74-year-olds political future. If the Senate votes in favor of removing Trump, he would be barred from holding federal office again. This would end his hopes of running for the office in 2024. But his removal would require the support of 2/3rd of the Senate. With the Democrats clinching two more seats in the recent election, the Senate would have 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans when the vote takes place. So, at least 17 Republicans would have to vote against Trump. Thus, all eyes are on Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, the current Senate majority leader who had sided with Trump in the past. Read: Now that Donald Trump is impeached (again), what's next? Who is Mitch McConnell? While McConnell is set to lose his position as the majority leader to Democrat Chuck Schumer, he would still be in a position to influence Republican votes as a minority leader. If McConnell decides to vote against Trump, more Republicans are likely to follow suit. So far, McConnell has maintained a neutral stand and said that he is still undecided. However, some news reports suggest that he is in favor of voting against Trump. The New York Times reported on January 12 that McConnell has told his associates that he believes Trump has committed impeachable offenses and he is pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him. All English universities and colleges adopt blanket feeds for Manx students Manx students will pay home fees to attend all English universities and colleges from 2021 after clarification was received from the UK Government. While the vast majority of universities currently charge Island students the same as those from the UK, an anomaly has meant some have charged international fees that may add tens of thousands of pounds to the cost of a university place. An increasing number of higher education institutions in England had indicated to the Isle of Man Government that they were planning to adopt this approach in the near future. In light of this the Chief Ministers of the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey requested the UK Government undertook a review of this position, as part of legislative work in the run up to the end of the Brexit transition period. This week, the UKs Secretary of State for Education confirmed that students from the Crown Dependencies will be treated the same as UK students with regard to home fee status [at English universities] in the next academic year. A former Philadelphia insurance executive is taking steps toward a potential Republican campaign for Pennsylvania governor next year, according to two people familiar with his plans. Daniel J. Hilferty, the former CEO of Independence Health Group, has been calling potential donors and gauging interest among supporters for a prospective candidacy, according to one person with direct knowledge of the matter. Both people spoke on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to discuss it publicly. Hilferty, 64, announced in September that he would retire as president and CEO of Independence at the end of 2020, after 10 years leading the regions largest health insurer. The company said he would remain as an adviser through 2022. During the coronavirus pandemic, he has appeared in Independence television commercials urging people to follow public health guidelines. Hilferty, who lives in Ardmore, has built a reputation as a major civic leader in Philadelphia. He raised money for big events like Pope Francis visit to the city in 2015 and for the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center the following year. Hes a former chairman of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia and now serves on the groups board. A lot of people have spoken to me about a variety of opportunities for the next chapter of my life, Hilferty said in a statement to The Inquirer Thursday evening. Right now my focus is on my family. Pennsylvania has two competitive statewide races next year, with open seats for governor and U.S. Senate. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolfs second term expires at the end of 2022, and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey isnt seeking reelection. A plethora of candidates in both parties are expected to run in each race. READ MORE: Pat Toomey's retirement makes the 2022 elections in Pennsylvania a total free-for-all A Hilferty campaign in a statewide GOP primary would test whether a moderate Republican with decades of experience in corporate America could win support within a party that has embraced President Donald Trumps populist rhetoric and appeal to cultural grievance. Hilferty, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1994 as a Democrat, may also face questions about his support for Democrats over the years. He was on the host committee for Joe Bidens first fund-raiser as a presidential candidate in 2019 at the Philadelphia home of Comcast Corp. executive David L. Cohen. And Hilferty contributed $5,600 the maximum amount permitted under federal law to Bidens campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. He gave $80,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fund-raising committee formed by the Biden campaign and Democratic Party committees. He also gave tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and groups this past election. Trumps standing among Republican leaders in Washington has diminished since the election, with many faulting him for the partys losses in two U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia and then for inciting supporters who stormed the Capitol in an attack on American democracy that left five people dead. The assault on the Capitol led to Trumps impeachment in the House on Wednesday, making him the first president ever impeached twice. But there is little evidence that Trumps strong bond with Republican voters has taken any similar hit. The vast majority of House Republicans, including all nine from Pennsylvania, voted against impeaching him. Gubernatorial candidates will likely need to raise tens of millions of dollars to be competitive. Wolfs campaign spent about $30 million on his successful 2018 reelection bid. GOP nominee Scott Wagners campaign spent about $20 million. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Due to recent actions in Washington, D.C., MTA officials have been encouraged that significant financial aid is on the way. On Thursday, MTA Chairman and CEO Pat Foye released a statement praising the American Rescue Plan, a coronavirus (COVID-19) relief package proposed by president-elect Joe Biden. President-elect Biden has always been an ardent supporter of mass transit, and were gratified to see it continues to be one of his key priorities as he prepares to take office next week. The American Rescue Plan is a strong start that will make significant investments in agencies hit hardest by COVID, such as the MTA, Foye said. The plan calls for a massive investment of $20 billion into the countrys hardest-hit public transit systems. This relief will keep agencies from laying off transit workers and cutting the routes that essential workers rely on every day, while making these transit systems more resilient and ensuring that communities of color maintain the access to opportunity that public transportation provides, according to the plan. In November, the MTA presented its worst case scenario budget proposal, outlining major cost-cutting measures that the agency would have been forced to consider in the absence of additional federal funding. The proposed cuts include the potential layoff of nearly 10,000 workers, in addition to major reductions in bus, subway and railway service. However, in December, the MTA revised its doomsday budget proposal, holding off on previously proposed service reductions, layoffs and wage freezes, with the agency expecting to receive $4.5 billion in federal aid in the coming months; an expectation that now seems increasingly likely to become a reality. LONG-TERM CONCERNS REMAIN Even if the agency does receive the $4.5 billion in federal aid for 2021, the MTA remains in an untenable long-term financial position, with the agency needing an additional $7.5 billion to make its way through the 2021-2024 Financial Plan. To be clear, $4.5 billion will not solve our total deficit. We still project nearly $8 billion in deficits in 2022, 2023 and 2024 that we will need to take action to address. Our total request to the federal government remains at $12 billion for 21, 22, 23 and 24, Foye said at the December board meeting. The deficits continue, and we are going to have to take actions to offset those deficits in the future absent additional federal support and those include service reductions, permanent wage freezes, additional fare and toll increases, above the 4% that weve already projected within the financial plan, and possible deficit financing, said MTA Chief Financial Officer Bob Foran. FEMA FUNDING In Thursdays statement, Foye also praised Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Biden for securing an additional $2 billion in coronavirus relief funds for the state of New York from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The funds will be used to reimburse additional costs associated with the coronavirus pandemic, such as the MTAs enhanced disinfecting protocols and employee safety initiatives. I also thank the president-elect and Senator Schumer for fixing the policy preventing full FEMA reimbursement for our coronavirus pandemic-related expenses, such as our aggressive disinfecting program, and efforts to stockpile personal protective equipment and provide health screenings for our heroic employees, Foye said. Since the start of the pandemic, the MTA has distributed over 13 million masks, 16 million pairs of gloves, nearly 100,000 gallons of hand sanitizer and close to 11 million individual sanitizing wipes. The agency has also implemented enhanced cleaning protocols throughout the system and established coronavirus screening programs for its employees. WASHINGTON - The National Park Service formally announced Friday morning that it will temporarily close the National Mall for nearly a week in preparation for right-wing protests this weekend and the inauguration on Jan. 20. The closure began at 11 a.m. Friday and will extend to at least Thursday, Jan. 21, according to a statement. The Park Service will allow activities related to the inauguration and permitted protests to occur in designated areas of the Mall. The Park Service also said the Memorial Bridge and parts of major thoroughfares downtown, including Constitution, Pennsylvania and Independence avenues, would be blocked. District of Columbia and federal officials scheduled a noon news conference during which they were expected to announce additional security measures. Speakers were to include D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, D, and officials from the Metro transit system and the National Guard. The measures are the latest in a tightening security cordon around the nation's capital that already includes a downtown security zone and more than 20,000 National Guard troops stationed around the city. Officials are trying to head off a repeat of the violence that struck the Capitol on Jan. 6. Threats of violence have surfaced on social media around rallies planned for Sunday and Inauguration Day. The extraordinary measures will largely bar the general public from viewing the inauguration in person. District of Columbia officials have urged people to stay away from the city over the next week. Federal officials asked Virginia authorities to close bridges into Washington from Saturday to next Thursday, except for the Key and Chain bridges, according to people familiar with the calls. No final decision had been made by Thursday evening. The U.S. Capitol Police also announced Thursday that the Capitol will be closed to the public on Inauguration Day. Metro officials are closing 13 rail stations and divert bus routes in a security perimeter that encompasses the White House, Capitol and parts of downtown Washington beginning Friday. Airbnb has canceled or blocked reservations for the metro area for the week leading up to the inauguration. Read more: For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. Remarks were made during a meeting with Peruvian Army Major Ingrid Rivera Borda and Air Force Captain Ruth Sedano Espinoza, who have been appointed to serve as military observer and Staff Officer, respectively, in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). Currently 37 women are part of the Peruvian military personnel assigned to different peace missions in the world. Six (6) of them serve as General Staff officers, five (5) as military observers, and 26 make up the military group of the Peruvian Engineering Contingent . All of them are part of the total of 236 Peruvian military members. Taking into account Resolution No. 1325 of the Security Council , the United Nations has been implementing and executing strategies that seek to increase female military participation in its peace operations, with certain percentages of participation in each task. The experiment was performed at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) in Osaka. The research team, lead by scientists from TU Darmstadt and the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy-Ion Research, and from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, discuss the new findings in a contribution to the latest issue of the journal "Science". The strong interaction binds neutrons and protons together to atomic nuclei. The knowledge of properties of nuclei and their theoretical description is basis for our understanding of nuclear matter and the development of the universe. Laboratory-based studies of reactions between atomic nuclei provide means to explore nuclear properties. These experiments allow to test and verify theories that describe properties of extended nuclear matter at different conditions, as present, for instance, in neutron stars in the universe. Several theories predict the formation of nuclear clusters like helium nuclei in dilute nuclear matter. This effect is expected to occur at densities significantly lower than saturation density of nuclear matter, as present in the inner part of heavy nuclei. A theory developed in Darmstadt by Dr. Stefan Typel predicts that such a condensation of helium nuclei should also occur at the surface of heavy nuclei. Goal of the experiment, which is presented in the latest issue of "Science", was the verification of this prediction. The present experiment bombarded tin isotopes with high-energy protons and detected and identified the scattered protons as well as knocked-out helium nuclei. Dr. Junki Tanaka and Dr. Yang Zaihong could demonstrate that the reaction occurs as a direct "quasi-elastic" scattering of the protons off preformed helium nuclei in the surface of tin nuclei. The extracted cross sections for different tin isotopes reveal a decrease of the formation probability with the neutron excess of the nuclei, which impressively confirms the theoretical prediction. This new finding, which has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of nuclei and nuclear matter, will now be studied in more detail in experimental programs planned at RCNP, and in inverse kinematics at RIKEN and the new FAIR facility at GSI, where also unstable heavy neutron-rich nuclei are accessible. ### The publication: Formation of clusters in dilute neutron-rich matter", https:/ / science. sciencemag. org/ content/ 371/ 6526/ 260 Contact: Prof. Dr. Thomas Aumann Institut fur Kernphysik der TU Darmstadt Tel.: 06151/16-23530 E-Mail: taumann@ikp.tu-darmstadt.de About TU Darmstadt The Technical University (TU) of Darmstadt is one of Germany's leading technical universities. TU Darmstadt incorporates diverse science cultures to create its characteristic profile. The focus is set on engineering and natural sciences, which cooperate closely with outstanding humanities and social sciences. Three research fields shape the profile of TU Darmstadt: I+I (Information and Intelligence), E+E (Energy and Environment) sowie M+M (Matter and Materials). We dynamically develop our portfolio of research and teaching, innovation and transfer, in order to continue opening up important opportunities for the future of society. Our 312 professors, about 4,500 scientific and administrative employees and about 25,400 students devote their talents and best efforts to this goal. In the UNITE! network, which unites universities from seven European countries, the TU Darmstadt is promoting the idea of the European university. Together with Goethe University Frankfurt and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, TU Darmstadt has formed the strategic Rhine-Main Universities alliance. http://www. tu-darmstadt. de MI-Nr. 03e/2021, Aumann/Typel/sip Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. POTTSVILLE A Pottsville man was arrested Thursday after he shot another man while shooting at a dog in public in the 300 block of Market Street, police said. Seth Clayton Howard, 34, of 1711 W. Market St., was charged by Pottsville police Cpl. Renee Truscott with one felony count each of aggravated assault and aggravated cruelty to animals; 10 misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person; and one misdemeanor count each of simple assault and disorderly conduct. In her affidavit of probable cause filed in district court, Truscott said around 1:30 p.m., Howard intentionally fired multiple shots from his Glock 23 .40-caliber at a pit bull, killing it. One of the shots fired by Howard struck the owner of the dog, a 35-year-old Pottsville man, Truscott said. That man suffered serious injuries when struck in his right thigh and was flown to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, Allentown, for treatment. Pottsville Police Chief Richard F. Wojciechowsky said that Howard put the handgun down after the shots were fired and a Pennsylvania State Constable in the area at the time assisted with securing the weapon. Pottsville police arrived and immediately took Howard into custody, the chief said. Truscott said Howards actions also placed multiple people in the area, both on foot and passing motorists in close vicinity, in danger of death or serious injury, and also caused a substantial alarm and risk to residents of the area. When police examined the firearm, Truscott said, it was found to contain one round in the chamber and two rounds in the magazine. A total of 10 spent .40-caliber shell casings were recovered at the scene that were consistent with the ammunition loaded in the gun, Truscott said. Witnesses heard multiple gunshots and saw a man in a gray sweatshirt with a gun in each hand and another man in Army fatigues sitting on the First United Methodist Church steps with his arms up. Officers were seen just after 2 p.m. kneeling around the black and white dog on the sidewalk. Two police officers then carried the dog to the back of a city dump truck that had arrived. The truck then pulled away. People were yelling at the officers, upset that the dog was being put in a dump truck. Madison Accordino and Wendy Lamp, receptionists at Pottsville Dental Center, reported hearing multiple shots while inside the business located on West Market Street. When she looked out the window, Lamp said she saw the man with the guns and the other man on the steps. Accordino and Lamp said police arrived very quickly. Howard was arraigned by Magisterial District Judge James K. Reiley, Pottsville, and committed to Schuylkill County Prison unable to post $75,000 straight cash bail. Howard will now have to answer to the charges at a preliminary hearing before Reiley at 10 a.m. Jan. 25. The leaders discussed the situation in Ukraine and Germany related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a Friday phone talk with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the German leader to assist in supplying the COVID-19 vaccines to Ukraine. At the beginning of the phone talk, the leaders congratulated each other on New Year's holidays. After that, they discussed the situation in Ukraine and Germany related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the supply of vaccines, as reported by the Ukrainian president's press service. Read alsoPM Shmyhal names condition for greenlighting Chinese vaccine in UkraineZelensky asked Merkel to assist in supplying the COVID-19 vaccines to Ukraine. "The main task now is to protect the most vulnerable categories of citizens: elderly people, doctors, military personnel. The emergence of certified vaccines gives us all hope," Zelensky said. Vaccines for Ukraine: Background In March, the first batch with 8 million doses of the vaccine is expected to be shipped to Ukraine under the COVAX Facility. These doses are enough to vaccinate 4 million people as two jabs per person are required. Medics, senior citizens, and seriously ill patients will get vaccinated first. On December 24, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that his ministry was working out a plan to increase the vaccine quota as part of the COVAX global initiative from 8 million to 16 million doses. On December 22, Ukraine's Health Ministry approved a plan for vaccination of the population against COVID-19. The goal of this plan is to vaccinate at least 50% of the population of Ukraine (20 million people) in 2021-2022. On December 30, the Ukrainian Health Ministry signed a contract for the supply of China's Sinovac Biotech COVID-19 vaccine to Ukraine. The purchase provides for 1,913,316 doses at UAH 504 (US$18) per dose. China plans to obtain permission to use the vaccine inside the country and abroad in January next year, and the vaccine will also be submitted for retraining to the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2021. The contract for supplies to the territory of Ukraine has been signed with Lekhim JSC, which, according to official confirmations from Sinovac Biotech, is the only authorized representative of the vaccine manufacturer in Ukraine. Under the terms of the contract, the first batch of 700,000 doses will be delivered to Ukraine within 30 days after official registration in China, or by one of the competent authorities of the United States, Great Britain, the Swiss Confederation, Japan, Australia, Canada, Israel, India, Mexico, Brazil, or under a centralized procedure by the competent authority of the European Union. On January 6, some 13 countries of the European Union called on the European Commission to provide access to COVID-19 vaccines for the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries, including Ukraine. Reporting by UNIAN FLINT, MI - Michigan officials say former Gov. Rick Snyder will have to ask the state to cover his legal fees in connection with misdemeanor charges related to the Flint water crisis. The state currently doesnt have any agreement to do so. If requested by current or former state employees who were charged to cover legal expenses, the state will do so insofar as the law permits, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer spokeswoman Tiffany Brown said. At present, the state has not entered into any such agreements. Snyder on Thursday, Jan. 14, wearing a face covering and navy suit, appeared with his attorney from the Genesee County Jail for a video arraignment on two counts of misdemeanor misconduct in office in connection with the Flint water crisis. Eight other state officials were arraigned on charges ranging from involuntary manslaughter to extortion and perjury. It would be a travesty to waste additional taxpayer dollars pursuing these bogus misdemeanor charges, Snyder attorney Brian Lennon said following the charging announcement. We are confident Gov. Snyder will be fully exonerated if this flimsy case goes to trial. Michigan taxpayers have paid nearly $27 million to date in legal defense fees related to the Flint water crisis. Its unclear how much that bill will grow with the renewed prosecution. The state also paid $8 million to an outside law firm that investigated the case. The state moved to terminate all existing contracts with Flint water crisis defendants on Oct. 11, 2019, according to a legal services policy document provided to MLive by Brown. At present, the state has no contracts to cover legal services ... in connection with the Flint water crisis, the document said. Whitmers administration crafted a new legal services policy that aims to ensure consistency between departments and caps legal defense costs. Details of the policy impose a budget ceiling of $175,000 for all legal services before and during a trial, limits attorney rates to no more than $225 per hour and limits billable hours for pretrial and plea proceedings to a maximum of 75 hours. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, after scrapping the charges filed by her predecessor Bill Schuette in 2019, launched a renewed investigation led by Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy and state Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud. Resulting charges were announced this week. Worthy, during the charging announcement Thursday, said minimal additional costs were incurred during the investigation, since the prosecution is being handled by seasoned prosecutors who are on salary. They get the same salary whether they work 40 hours a week, 80 hours a week, and many as much as 90 hours a week, Worthy said, so there was no overtime. Documents obtained by MLive in March 2019 showed Schuette at the time had paid more than $8 million in legal fees to contracted attorney Todd Floods Royal Oak-based law firm for its work investigating the crisis. In court action Thursday: Former Gov. Rick Snyder stays silent as barrage of media asks questions after his video arraignment on charges related to the Flint water crisis on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 outside the Genesee County Jail in downtown Flint. (Cody Scanlan | MLive.com) Snyder was arraigned and released on his own recognizance, obligated only to notify the state if he intends to leave the state. He faces up to a year in jail and up to $1,000 in fines for each count. Nick Lyon, former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), faces nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, each count punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and a misdemeanor count of willful neglect of duty, punishable by up to a year in jail. Eden Wells, a former chief medical executive with MDHHS is charged with nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, punishable by up to 15 years in prison and or a $7,500 fine, as well as two counts of felony misconduct in office, punishable by up to five years in prison and a misdemeanor count of willful neglect of duty, punishable by up to a year in jail. Darnell Earley, a former Flint emergency manager, is charged with three counts of felony misconduct in office, punishable by up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Gerald Ambrose, the former Flint emergency manager succeeding Earley, is charged with four counts of felony misconduct in office, punishable by up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Richard Baird, a former senior aide to Snyder, is charged with a count of perjury, punishable by up to 15 years in prison; extortion, punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine; obstruction of justice and misconduct in office, both felonies punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Nancy Peeler, who is the current Early Childhood Health Section Manager for MDHHS, is charged with two counts of felony misconduct in office, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine; and a misdemeanor count of neglect of duty, punishable by up to a year in jail. Jarrod Agen, Snyders former chief of staff and communications director, is charged with a count of perjury, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Howard Croft, the former Flint Department of Public Works Director, is charged with two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty, each punishable by up to one year in jail and up to a $1,000 fines. Snyder, 62, a Republican who still lives in Michigan, served as governor from 2011 until 2019. The water crisis became Snyders most crushing failure and he apologized for it, but the governor was not among 15 state and city employees who were initially charged by Schuette with crimes related to Flint water. Snyders attorney this week called the prosecution a public relations smear campaign. Snyder appointed a series of emergency financial managers to run Flint city government before and during the water crisis, and those managers made decisions that resulted in the citys water source being switched to the Flint River in April 2014. That caused transmission pipes to release lead in homes and businesses in Flint with lead water-service lines. Snyder eventually apologized for state governments role in the resulting health emergency, but he has denied prior allegations that he was warned about risks related to the crisis and failed to act until it was brought to light publicly. More on MLive: Snyder appears for arraignment Former Flint DPW director charged with two counts of neglect of duty in water crisis probe AG Nessel to announce outcome of Flint water crisis criminal investigation Thursday Flint residents hopeful water crisis charges against Snyder, other officials will bring justice Former Gov. Rick Snyder charged with willful neglect of duty in Flint water crisis For Israel, the past few days have been full of diplomatic activity. On Jan. 5, the Foreign Ministry picked Ambassador Eytan Naeh to head its future mission in Abu Dhabi. A few days later, the ministry picked former Ambassador David Govrin to head its future liaison office in Rabat. According to other reports, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi had met this past weekend with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi. The discreet meeting had focused on promoting strategic interests, including issues pertaining to the security, economic and civil ties between the two countries. The two men had met last at the beginning of December. On Jan. 13, the Emirates announced that Israeli tourists could now enter the country without a pre-requested visa. On the very same day, Israeli and Moroccan representatives signed aviation agreements to establish direct flights between Rabat and Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been busy diplomatically. On Jan. 11, he participated in an international online forum with six other heads of states, exposing Israels relentless mass vaccination drive. The forum had been established last April, in the midst of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The idea was for these countries to share their experiences in successfully battling the pandemic. The driving forces behind this forum were Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Netanyahu. One could say that this list is indeed impressive, reflecting Israels vitality on different diplomatic stages. However, Israel chose to avoid one major diplomatic rendezvous that took place last week in Cairo. The foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, France and Germany met Jan. 11, in an attempt to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The four ministers had invited Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers to join them in Cairo. In order to facilitate things, they offered Ashkenazi and Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Malki to meet with them on the same day, at the same venue, but separately. Ashkenazi was quick to respond that he would not be coming. The official reason was the nationwide lockdown imposed throughout Israel as of Jan. 7 at midnight for a two-week period. Without any commercial flights, Ashkenazi could hardly get to Egypt, his people reasoned. Still, Ashkenazi did not propose any virtual meeting instead. It seems that he preferred to keep his distance. Netanyahu, for his part, made no reference once or ever to this upcoming quartet meeting. With that, Malki decided not to come. He did tough send a message for the participants. A joint statement issued at the end of the Cairo meeting hinted at the disappointment over Ashkenazis reaction. "The ministers discussed their recent contacts with their Palestinian and Israeli counterparts and the views of each party. They also took note of the message addressed by the Palestinian Foreign Minister to the host of the meeting H.E. Sameh Shoukry," the statement read. It continued, "At the end of the meeting, the ministers agreed to reach out to the Palestinians and the Israelis conveying their common vision on the way forward towards peace." The quartet meeting was significant for several reasons. It followed a first meeting between the four parties last July, with the same goal of reviving Israeli-Palestinian negotiations perhaps through an international conference. Then in September, at his address to the UN General Assembly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas took up this idea again, offering it international visibility. The European Union had made it a habit of initiating every year or so international conferences and forums for peace in the Middle East. But this habit came to a halt with French President Emmanuel Macron, who decided to leave the Israeli-Palestinian stage to US President Donald Trump. Now that Trump is on his way out, France has apparently decided to step into that arena again. The reasons behind the French-Egyptian initiative are clear to Israel. Jerusalem knows that with the Biden administration, things could look very different compared with the years Trump spent in the White House. People close to President-elect Joe Biden had already hinted as such during the election campaign and after his November victory. Jerusalem knows that Biden will not offer annexation of West Bank parts, will not hail Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights and will certainly not play the one-sided mediator, the way Trump did. The new administration will push for renewal of talks. Still, that does not mean that Jerusalem would like to see Paris stepping into the picture. An Israeli diplomat told Al-Monitor Jerusalem is in a bind over the initiative. Over the years, Jerusalem had pushed aside and ignored several French Middle East initiatives. It refused to participate in the 2016 and 2017 Paris Peace Conferences organized by the people of former President Francois Hollande. But ignoring an initiative that involves also Cairo would be more delicate. After a long period of almost two years without an ambassador in Cairo, Israel has now the very experienced and active Amira Oron heading the embassy there. Paradoxically, it is Paris itself that is cementing Jerusalems resistance to such an imitative. On Jan. 12, it issued a statement condemning Israels decisions to advance the construction of homes in West Bank settlements, calling on the Israeli authorities not to implement these decisions. A statement issued by the French Foreign Ministry said, "It calls on the parties to avoid any unilateral measures that could undermine the two-state solution based on international law and the agreed parameters." The silence of Jerusalem vis-a-vis this statement spoke volumes. Jerusalem did not even bother rejecting it. Police officers at Mexican border state in Tamaulipas are under investigation for the case of the kidnapping of two underage teenagers. The police officers are accused of delivering the minors to members of a cartel. The said underage teens are still missing and relatives and locals demand the return of the kidnapped teens, according to a Breitbart exclusive report. The two minors were detained by Tamaulipas state police officers last week for a traffic violation in Ciudad Mier. The police then took them to the nearby border city Miguel Aleman, where they were said to be released to the Gulf Cartel. Relatives and locals in Ciudad Mier held protests and were demanding the safe retrieval of the two teens. The said minors were aged 14 and 13-years-old, according to another Breitbart report. Due to the case, residents blocked the main highway in Ciudad Mier that runs through the city. It remains unclear if the missing teens are connected to or worked as lookouts for one of the criminal groups that operate in the area. Authorities did not yet release an official version of the events. Related story: Notorious Mexican Cartel Leader Using Children as Shields in Gang War Investigation of the Events The case triggered an investigation to the highest level in the Tamaulipas government. The sources said that there is a particular significance regarding the location of the arrests and where the victims were transferred. Ciudad Mier is an area under the operations of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas, according to U.S. law enforcement sources in Mexico. The current guess of Tamaulipas investigators suggests that the teenagers were working with the XDN-Los Zetas in some capacity. Cartels Turning to Kidnappings A record of 1,700 kidnappings occurred in 2013, according to data from the Mexican National System of Public Security. Kidnappings fell briefly in 2015, with a recorded number of 1,069 kidnapping case. However, numbers are starting to climb once again with about 1,200 kidnappings that took place in Mexico in 2017. Between January and March 2018 alone, almost 400 people were reported to be kidnapped. The increase in kidnapping cases in Mexico is part by the insatiable U.S. demand for drugs, according to a Vox report. Criminal groups began using kidnapping around the start of 2006. Research professor at the Autonomous University of Coahulia, Victor Manual Sanchez Valdes, said that ransom money is being used to fund kidnapping activities. "They had to find other sources of income, which gave the hitmen in these groups carte blanche to participate in activities like kidnapping and extortion," he was quoted on a report. Valdes also said that kidnapping methods have also changed, saying that express kidnappings, in which victims are taken for a short time until small payments are met, have become more common in recent years. In 2016, the National Institute for Statistics and Geography in Mexico shower that express kidnapping is made up of 66 percent of all kidnapping crimes. Related story: DEA Seized $35 Million Cash, Ammo, Drugs From Suspected Mexican Cartel Members Russia is launching domestic procedures to withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies following the U.S. exit from the pact, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday. "Given the lack of progress in efforts to remove obstacles preventing the functioning of the treaty in a new situation, the Russian Foreign Ministry is entitled to announce the start of domestic procedures to pave the way for Russias withdrawal from the Treaty on Open Skies," the statement reads. "Once the procedures are completed, notifications will be sent to the treaty depositories," TASS cited the ministry as saying. The Treaty on Open Skies was signed in March 1992 in Helsinki by 23 member-nations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). It was drafted with Moscows active participation. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the treaty is a major tool of strengthening trust and security. The Open Skies main goals are to build transparency, render assistance in monitoring compliance with existing or future arms control agreements, broaden possibilities for preventing crises and managing crisis situations. The accord establishes a program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants. Now, the treaty has more than 30 signatory states. Russia ratified the Treaty on Open Skies on May 26, 2001. Ravi Teja and Shruti Haasan have collaborated together on Krack. The entertainer hit the theatres five days back and its collections at the box-office prove that it is a big hit. The film has been facing competition from new Telugu releases but is flying above them all in Tamil Nadu. Krack made Rs 6.30 crore on its first day, followed by Rs 3 crore on day two, Rs 2.60 on day three, Rs 2.55 crore on day four and on Thursday it made Rs. 2.20 crore pulling the total up to Rs 16.65 crore. The film was made on a budget of Rs 16.50 crore and has already made more than that in merely five days. Ravi Teja and Shruti Haasans film has left behind Vijays action entertainer Master too as Vijays film made Rs. 1.65 crore yesterday on its first day at the box-office which was less than the day fifth collections of Krack. Ravi and Shrutis film is on its way to become the first blockbuster of COVID-19 times at the cinemas and we congratulate the team for the same. 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. A Palestinian refugee who spent much of 2020 on hunger strike in a row with the Home Office over his age is ruled to be 31 years old - despite insisting he is 26. The man - who cannot be named for legal reasons - came to the UK in 2007 claiming to be 14. But an assessment at the time found he was 19. In 2019, the man was granted leave to remain in the UK and requested that his records reflect what he said was his accurate date of birth. He was turned down as a nightingale hospital volunteer in 2020 because the age he claimed to be differed from the age his paperwork said he was - prompting a mental health breakdown, the Court of Appeal heard. He went on hunger strike following the row and his supporters - who launched a legal battle to get his age changed - said he views it as a key 'part of his own identity'. But three Court of Appeal judges today ruled that the Home Office had done its age assessment of the man 'necessarily and properly'. A leading campaign group calling for immigration reform claims the case gives 'entirely the wrong message' to people who may be tempted to lie about their age when claiming asylum. Alp Mehmet, Chairman of Migration Watch UK told MailOnline: 'This is another example of entirely the wrong message going out to migrants and traffickers. 'The case clearly shows that it pays to lie and deceive the authorities at the point of entering the UK because whatever happens after that the chances are you will be allowed to stay. 'Our immigration system really has gone to pot.' Home Office figures show that between 2016 and 2020, just over half of all asylum seekers whose age was checked after they claimed to be under 18 were found to be adults. A Palestinian refugee who spent much of 2020 on hunger strike in a row with the Home Office over his age is ruled to be 31 years old by three Court Of Appeal judges - despite insisting he is 26. Pictured: The Royal Courts of Justice which houses the Court Of Appeal Judges ruling on the case of the Palestinian refugee said the evidence available was not capable of establishing that his claimed birth date was right. It is understood the man does not stand to gain anything from being officially recognised as being older. Home Secretary Priti Patel said the man's circumstances evoked the 'greatest sympathy', but stood by the Home Office assessment. The man fled Gaza in Palestine after he had been 'severely mistreated' by militant group Hamas for refusing to become a suicide bomber. He came to the UK as an asylum seeker and settled in Bristol after he was granted indefinite leave to remain. He has lived in the city since then but suffered a mental health breakdown when he volunteered to help at Bristol's Nightingale Hospital last year. The judges said he suffered a severe relapse in his mental health after he was turned down as a volunteer because of a discrepancy between the age he said he was, and the age his official paperwork said he was. Judges said that rejection had triggered a 'serious relapse' in his mental state, he had refused to eat or drink and was admitted to hospital. He was in critical condition for a time. Last summer his supporters and adopted family appealed for help to mount the legal challenge to his age assessment. They said the man saw the issue of how old the UK Government said he was to be a key part of his own identity. He was turned down as a Nightingale Hospital Bristol (file image) volunteer in 2020 because the age he claimed to be differed from the age his paperwork said he was - prompting a mental health breakdown, the Court of Appeal heard He was supported by mental health charity Mind, The Guardian reports, who told the Home Office in the summer: 'His date of birth is part of his identity as it is with all of us, but that sense of identity is overlaid with the most traumatic of experiences: loss of country, parents and being subject to torture and multiple mental disorders. 'Any further loss of identity, such as the day you were born, can therefore become catastrophic to the sense of self.' He went on hunger strike for months and was admitted to Bristol's Southmead Hospital in April. The NHS mounted its own legal challenge for the right to force feed him - but in July, the courts ruled the man had the right to refuse food. Judges said he was now accepting 'some clinically assisted nutrition and hydration' pending the outcome of the appeal, but warned his life was in 'imminent danger'. In July, hospital bosses responsible for the man's care asked a judge in the Court of Protection - where issues relating to people who might lack the mental capacity to take decisions for themselves are analysed - to consider the man's case. The man went on hunger strike for months and was admitted to Bristol's Southmead Hospital (pictured) in April Mr Justice Hayden decided against authorising medics to provide the man with nutrition and hydration by artificial means against his will. The judge said every effort should be made to 'persuade, cajole and encourage' the man to accept nutrition and hydration. But the judge concluded that the man should be allowed to say 'no' if he wanted to. The Home Office is under no obligation to change the man's date of birth, judges said. Judges were concerned about the impact their decision would have on the man and Lord Justice Phillips said 'no effort' should be spared in encouraging him to 'choose life'. A spokesperson for the Home Office said: 'Three separate Court of Appeal judges and the High Court have unanimously ruled that the Home Office handled this case 'necessarily and properly.' 'We handle cases like this as sensitively as possible and hope this individual is able to make a full recovery.' Washington, Jan 15 : US President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill, which includes another round of direct payments to individuals, aid for state and local governments, increased unemployment benefits, as well as more funding for testing and vaccine distribution. Calling the recently approved $900 billion bipartisan relief package "an important first step," Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday night that "we need more action, more bipartisanship, and we need to move fast", Xinhua news agency reported. "Just as we are in the midst of a dark winter of this pandemic as cases, hospitalisations, and deaths spike at record levels, there is real pain overwhelming the real economy," the president-elect said in the speech to the nation. Biden's proposal includes direct payments of $1,400 per person for working families, which is on top of the $600 checks approved in the $900 billion relief package, bringing the total relief to $2,000. It would boost federal unemployment benefits to $400 per week, up from the $300 per week approved in the $900 billion package, and extend the measure through the end of September 2020. The proposal also includes $350 billion in state and local government aid, a measure that has been sought by Democrats for months but has been rejected by Republicans in previous rounds of relief negotiations. "I know what I just described does not come cheaply, but failure to do so will cost us dearly," Biden said. "But the consensus among leading economists is we simply cannot afford not to do it." The nearly $2 trillion price tag will likely draw backlash from some Republican Senators, who have aimed to hold down the overall cost of further Covid-19 economic relief, especially after December's $900 billion bill. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Patong drug raid leads to four arrests PHUKET: Police have announced the arrests of four suspects in drug raids that together netted 168.5 grams of crystal methamphetamine (ya ice) and 1,041 pills of methamphetamine (ya bah). drugscrimepatong By The Phuket News Friday 15 January 2021, 04:31PM The first raid in Patong led to the arrest of four suspects, with police now investigating a hotel in Phuket Town and searching for a suspect who fled a raid in Rassada. Photo: Patong Police The first raid in Patong led to the arrest of four suspects, with police now investigating a hotel in Phuket Town and searching for a suspect who fled a raid in Rassada. Photo: Patong Police The first raid in Patong led to the arrest of four suspects, with police now investigating a hotel in Phuket Town and searching for a suspect who fled a raid in Rassada. Photo: Patong Police The first raid in Patong led to the arrest of four suspects, with police now investigating a hotel in Phuket Town and searching for a suspect who fled a raid in Rassada. Photo: Patong Police According to a police report issued today (Jan 15), the raids were conducted yesterday, led by Maj Suchart Chumphusaeng of the Patong Police Investigation Division. The first raid saw Orraphan Tik Phanphian, 34, Thanakorn Man Khaosombut, 19, and Wichai Tong Nimmanotham, 29, arrested at a hotel on Phra Metta Rd in Patong. The three were arrested after they were found with 156.2 grams of ya ice and six other items of evidence that included a Ranong-registered Honda Wave motorbike, said the report. They were taken to Patong Police Station and charged with possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell, confirmed the report. After questioning the suspects, officers are now investigating a hotel on Kra Rd in Phuket Town, the report added. Questioning of the three arrested in Patong also led officers to a house in Rassada, where Ketsaraporn Kay Srisawat, 32, was arrested after she was found with 12.3g of ya ice and 1,041 pills of ya bah. In placing Ketsaraporn under arrest, officers also seized as evidence a Phuket-registered Yamaha M-Slaz, valued at about B40,000 and two phones. Ketsaraporn was taken to Phuket City Police Station and charged with possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell, the report noted. Questioning of Ketsaraporn has now led police to pursue a friend she named only as Mr Ton, 37, who fled when police moved in to raid the house in Rassada. Police are now preparing to request a warrant for Mr Tons arrest and are now searching for him, the report concluded. Former Minister For Finance Mattias Cormann Prime Candidate For OECD Post Former Senator Mathias Cormann has emerged as one of the prime candidates to head up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) after playing a pivotal role in Australias COVID-19 response as federal Finance Minister. According to reports by the Sunday Morning Herald on Jan. 14, Cormann now stands alongside two other top contenders Swedens Cecilia Malmstrom, who is the former European Unions trade commissioner, and Switzerlands Philipp Hildebrand, the CEO for investment company Blackrock after a phase of screening left only ten nominees. Both Hildebrand and Malmstrom are strong competition for Cormann, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison believes he is uniquely qualified for the responsibility. His financial stewardship helped to position Australia to withstand better the economic shocks of COVID-19 than most other nations, Morrison said in his nomination statement. He has made an indispensable contribution to shaping Australias response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences will be invaluable guiding the OECDs work to help all nations and the global economy to recover from the pandemic, he said. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and former Finance Minister Mathias Cormann in the Main Committee Room at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on Oct. 8, 2020. (Photo by Sam Mooy/Getty Images) American Candidate Dropped By New Zealand Americas candidate and dual citizen of New Zealand, the U.S. deputy chief of staff to the Trump Administration, Chris Liddell has struggled to garner support, the Sunday Morning Herald reported. New Zealands opposition leader Judith Collins withdrew her partys support for Liddell a week after a rally organised in Washington DC by the Trump administration on Jan. 6, ended in a breach of the Capitol Buiding and the death of five people. Collins said: Mr Liddells ties to the Trump Administration cannot be overlooked here, making it difficult to see how he would be suitable to uphold the OECDs strong commitment to democracy, a post on Twitter said. Nominees with the least support will be removed from candidacy in the next few weeks before a consensus is reached. The replacement for Angel Gurria will be revealed in March and start their five-year stint as Secretary-General in the middle of the 2021. Bengaluru: Union minister for railways, consumer affairs, commerce and industry, Piyush Goyal on Friday said that skill development will play an important role to give confidence to young entrepreneurs to surge through failures. Goyal added that todays young generation have an immense entrepreneurial streak, as they look to be job creators instead of job seekers. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Skill development is another area which will play a very important role in fostering the entrepreneurial spirit of giving confidence to other entrepreneurs. I'm sure if we can build that confidence then failure should not be looked down upon. Failure is only a stepping stone to success. To be able to really get more and more of it, youngsters should experiment with their ideas to see what more can be done to expand their horizon and the frontiers of their engagement," said Goyal, who was speaking at Startup Indias international summit, Prarambh, 2021, hosted by the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT), ministry of commerce and industry, government of India. Goyal added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi might have started the startup story in India five years ago with the launch of the Startup India initiative. However, the journey is still at a nascent stage with close to 41,000 startups registered with the commerce department, and many more in the offing in different parts of the country. The minister also invited startups from neighbouring South Asian countries to come together and collaborate. We invite startups from other countries in the neighbourhood in South Asia to engage with our startups in India [...] We see huge potential in this collaboration, because we will see new ideas prospering. We'll see young minds, working together collectively and collaboratively coming up with new ideas, new innovations and new inventions, taking research and development to the very next level," added Goyal. Along with this the minister also appealed to Indian investors to look at investment opportunities in new-age companies which are a part of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) countries. Today, I would like to encourage Indian capital and Indian investors to look at the larger region, our neighboring countries, and work towards creating engagement through investments, mentorship and support to startups within the BIMSTEC region. This way we can truly demonstrate to the world, our joint and collective commitment, and our efforts to make a strong startup ecosystem," added Goyal. BIMSTEC countries include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka. During the launch of the event, several representatives and union ministers of these countries provided their keynote. Speaking at the occasion and giving examples of technology innovation was also Union minister of civil aviation, housing and urban affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri, who added that the ministries have been leveraging drone technology to improve surveillance as well as experiment deliveries of medicines and essentials, especially during disaster management. Today, there are over 130 startups in the domain of drones. This is another area where we are keen to support our startups, as drones can not only be used for surveillance, but also for delivering supplies during disaster management delivery of medicines. Based on my experience with civil aviation and housing, drones are being used today to monitor projects on a real time basis to give us precise real time information on a host of activities," added Puri. Puri added that the progress made in the area of drones and applied technology will position India not just as a regional but also global leader in terms of drones the country will be flying. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. A NUMBER of male adults gained access to an online class of second year students at a post-primary school this week and engaged in inappropriate behaviour, it has emerged. The class, which took place on the digital platform Microsoft Teams, was stopped immediately and school authorities have reported the matter to gardai, the family agency Tusla, and the Department of Education. The Co Meath school has also sent a message to the parents of the pupils, who are aged about 14, advising them of what happened and offering any supports necessary. It is understood a small number of male adults were involved in the breach. The school, which operates under the patronage of Louth Meath Education and Training Board (LMETB), also shut down the use of the Teams platform pending its ongoing investigation into the matter The incident has prompted LMETB to review security settings on the platform to ensure online events cannot be breached in this manner. A spokesperson for LMETB said the incident was very regrettable and that nothing like this had happened before. He said they were continuing to look into the matter from an IT perspective to establish exactly what occurred . In the meantime, they believe they have removed any possibility of a further instance through the application of robust security measures on the online platform. The spokesperson said Wednesdays incident had been reported to the relevant authorities. Both the gardai and Tusla have been informed, as a precautionary measure. LMETB has also advised the Department of Education, with a view to ensuring that any lessons to be learned from it are shared with schools nationwide. The incident has emerged only days after more than 900,000 pupils in 4,000 primary and post-primary schools returned to remote learning as a result of high Covid infection rates . Now LMETB has sent out guidance to every staff member in relation to settings on the platform, specifically about control over who can admit guests. LMETB runs about 20 post-primary schools and details of the incident were shared with principals at a meeting yesterday. Separately, a routine meeting of senior officials from education and training boards was briefed. Press Release 15 January 2021 room2, the world's first hometel brand, has completed the sale and leaseback of its flagship offering, room2 Southampton, to a fund managed by Aberdeen Standard Investments ("ASI"), the UK's largest active asset manager. The disposal price of c. 10 million reflects a prime net initial yield of 4.98% with a 30 year indexed linked lease in place. The hometel concept, a sub sector of the extended stay space, is the brainchild of brothers Robert and Stuart Godwin, former members of the British Olympic Development Sailing Team. room2 was advised by Savills and ASI was advised by Knight Frank. Advertisements The transaction marks the first institutional acquisition of a hometel and a further investment for ASI in the fast growing yet undersupplied extended stay sector, which accounts for just 4% of total UK accommodation supply. It also represents one of a small number of institutional acquisitions in the sector since the start of the pandemic and follows its outperformance of the wider hotel market during 2020, reflecting a trend seen over the longer term demonstrating the counter-cyclical features of the sector during downturns. The outperformance has been underpinned by the sector's more flexible room offering and ability to address evolving guest needs, including catering for longer stays. Aberdeen will benefit from room2's established management and operational platform, with room2 Southampton continuing to trade under the room2 brand on a long-term index linked lease. James Dunne, Head of Transactions at Aberdeen Standard Investments, commented: "The room2 platform in the extended stay market has demonstrated its resilience through an unprecedented period of disruption. The ability to pivot between long and short stay augments the lean operational model without compromising on service. This not only protects business in a downturn but, as importantly, should allow for future outperformance with the quality facilities and flexibility of the product being attractive to both business and leisure travellers when markets normalise. We are pleased to be joining the room2 journey and look forward to a successful long-term relationship." room2's low-risk and lean hometel model has proved its resilience during the pandemic, remaining profitable with both room2 Southampton and room2's hometel in Hammersmith continuing to trade since the government-imposed lockdown on March 23 last year. During 2020 room2 achieved a blended monthly occupancy rate of 70%. This compares favourably to the national serviced apartment average occupancy of approximately 47%, which itself is 9% ahead of the national hotel average[1]. The model has benefitted from its flexible cost base, enabling the hometels to adjust the service offering to cater to longer term guests, whilst capturing new markets and therefore protecting margins. Constructed in 2018, room2 Southampton boasts 71 studio bedrooms each with its own kitchenette, an open plan 'Living Room' at ground floor including a cafe and cocktail bar providing all day dining, along with flexible meeting room and event spaces and a fitness studio. It occupies a prominent position in central Southampton, with spectacular views over Queens Park and the harbour. Robert Godwin, Managing Director at Lamington Group and room2, commented: "The sale and leaseback of room2 Southampton was instructed to test the room2 and Lamington Group covenant strength in the market. Agreeing this transaction with ASI allows us to take the step to institutional grade where the strengths of the brand, model, positioning and real estate backed covenant are fully valued. Furthermore, completing it during Covid-19 demonstrates the long-term belief that ASI has in room2 hometels, proving the durability of the model against this challenging economic backdrop. The sub 5% yield helps to underpin development values for the opportunities we are appraising with our future partners, and gives confidence that room2's strategic positioning is aligned with the future, whilst further indicating that we are out to do business. "We hope this partnership will lead to further investment into more room2's in the near future. The proceeds of the disposal are earmarked for reinvestment into acquisition opportunities as we remain on track to deliver 5,000 keys by 2030." Richard Dawes, director in the Hotel Capital Markets team at Savills, added: "This is an important step for the growth of the room2 brand and a landmark transaction in the UK extended stay sector. Securing one of the UK's leading institutional partners for Lamington Group, at pricing levels that reflect the robust performance of the asset through the pandemic, is a significant endorsement in both the platform's long-term prospects as well as the team behind it. The extended stay sector has demonstrated its flexibility to adapt and perform resiliently over recent months and we expect this theme to continue and support the continued role out of what is a truly exciting concept." About Aberdeen Standard Investments Drivers for app-based ride-hailing and delivery services filed a lawsuit Tuesday to overturn a California ballot initiative that makes them independent contractors instead of employees eligible for benefits and job protections. The lawsuit filed with the California Supreme Court said Proposition 22 is unconstitutional because it limits the power of the Legislature to grant workers the right to organize and excludes drivers from being eligible for workers compensation. The measure, which was passed in November with 58% support, was the most expensive in state history with Uber, Lyft and other services pouring $200 million in support of it. Labor unions, who joined drivers in the lawsuit, spent about $20 million to challenge it. Prop. 22 doesnt just fail our state rideshare drivers, it fails the basic test of following our state constitution, said Bob Schoonover of the Service Employees International Union. The law as written by Uber and Lyft denies drivers rights under the law in California and makes it nearly impossible for lawmakers to fix these problems. Drivers bringing the lawsuit have several hurdles to clear, but their arguments are compelling, said Mary-Beth Moylan, associate dean of McGeorge Law School in Sacramento. The first challenge is getting the California Supreme Court to take the case instead of kicking it to lower courts to weigh the facts, which could delay the case for years. To do so, the high court would have to find the arguments are legal, not factual, and there is urgency to decide the issue, Moylan said. The second challenge is that courts have generally granted broad deference to voters to pass such initiatives. Generally speaking, courts in California dont like to overturn the will of the people, Moylan said. But the petitioners claim is that the people did not really have the power to do what they did. There are instances where the California courts have come in and said its nice that this is what the people wanted to do, but our constitution doesnt permit the people to do this. The lawsuit is the latest round in the high-stakes fight between labor and the titans of the gig economy, all based in San Francisco. Proposition 22 was written by Uber and Lyft and supported by DoorDash, Postmates and Instacart to challenge the landmark labor law AB5 passed by Democrats in 2019. The law expanded a California Supreme Court ruling that limited businesses from classifying certain workers as independent contractors. The measure granted the delivery services an exemption from the law that would have required providing drivers with protections like minimum wage, overtime, health insurance and reimbursement for expenses. Under the measure, drivers remain independent contractors exempt from mandates such as sick leave and workers comp but would receive alternative benefits, including a guaranteed minimum wage and subsidies for health insurance if they average 25 hours of work a week. Uber and Lyft did not comment hours after being contacted, but a group that supported the ballot initiative issued a statement criticizing the lawsuit as an effort to overturn the vote. Voters across the political spectrum spoke loud and clear, passing Prop. 22 in a landslide, Jim Pyatt, an Uber driver in Modesto, said in the statement. Meritless lawsuits that seek to undermine the clear democratic will of the people do not stand up to scrutiny in the courts. The lawsuit claims the measure interferes with state lawmakers authority to establish and enforce a workers comp system, which would require a constitutional amendment. Theyre making this argument that this should have been a constitutional amendment, not a statutory amendment, Moylan said. I think that argument probably has some legs. She said the outcome of that could turn on whether the statute actually changed the workers comp provisions or did something less. Another claim in the lawsuit alleges the measure violates a rule limiting ballot measures to a single subject. Moylan said courts have generally interpreted that broadly and have not found violations based on that claim. I think its an intellectually meritorious argument, she said. I dont think its a winner. Related: Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits California Personal Auto Sharing Economy Ridesharing Justice Department Charges 14 Leaders of MS-13 Gang With Terrorism Offenses Fourteen of the highest-ranking leaders of the gang MS-13 have been indicted on a series of charges related to terrorism, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. These members of the gang allegedly operated as the groups board of directors, known as Ranfla Nacional, and directed the criminal activity that was carried out around the world for nearly two decades, the department said. A 31-page criminal indictment was unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York that laid out the details of the gangs activity. The indictment announced today is the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictment targeting MS-13 and its command and control structure in U.S. history, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said in a statement. This indictment reflects an important step toward achieving the goal of eliminating MS-13 leaderships ability to operate the gang and direct its criminal activity, he added. The department had created Joint Task Force Vulcan (JTFV) in August 2019 as a whole-of-government approach to combat MS-13. The efforts to combat MS-13 came as a result of President Donald Trumps 2017 Executive Order ordering several federal departments to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to dismantle transnational criminal organizations such as MS-13 and improve American public safety. The MS-13 gang, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, was initially formed by Salvadoran immigrants fleeing the civil war in their home country. It is widely viewed as one of Americas most violent criminal groups, specifically endangering the safety of communities in the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The gangs motto is kill, rape, control and routinely uses brutal assault methods on victims to instill fear and force compliance. It was also designated as a transnational criminal organization by the Department of Treasury in 2012 and became a priority for the DOJs Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces in 2017 under the Trump administration. The administration also made MS-13 a focus for its crackdown on drug trafficking and illegal immigration. The FBI is committed to combatting all forms of terrorism that threaten the American people as well as our international partners, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in the statement. In collaboration with our federal, state, local, and international partners, we took aggressive steps to target and pursue some of the highest levels of leadership of MS-13. This operation is a clear signal to others who engage in this type of transnational criminal activity: the FBI will work tirelessly to bring them to justice wherever they are based. The indictment alleges that Ranfla Nacional comprises the highest level of leadership in MS-13. The leaders and other members of the gang began establishing a hierarchical command and control structure in 2002 in order to implement their orders, including acts of violence and murder in El Salvador, the United States, and other countries, the document states. Military-style training camps for its members and the ascertainment of military weapons such as rifles, handguns, grenades, improvised explosive devices, and rocket launchers were also ordered by the gangs leaders. The Ranfla Nacional allegedly exercised influence over the Government of El Salvador by intimidating government officials, law enforcement, and El Salvadorans by acts of violence, the indictment states. For example, the gang leaders had ordered the killing of law enforcement and government officials in El Salvador as well as a FBI Special Agent detailed to El Salvador investigating MS-13 and its members. The gangs leadership also allegedly directed the expansion of MS-13 activities around the world such as in Mexico. Among those indicted is Borromeo Enrique Henriquez, aka Diablito de Hollywood, who is the widely recognized and most powerful members of the Ranfla Nacional, the department said. Three other defendants who were indicted currently remain at large. Federal authorities are encouraging members of the public to come forward with any information relating to their whereabouts. JTFV is comprised of members from DOJs National Security Division and the Criminal Division; federal prosecutors from across the country; the FBI; the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. NUR-SULTAN -- Kazakhstan's newly elected parliament has voted to keep Prime Minister Asqar Mamin in the post following the recent elections as the country looks for continuity to attract foreign investment into its oil, gas, and mining sectors. During its first session since the elections on January 10, deputies in parliament's lower chamber, the Mazhilis, voted 78 to zero with 21 abstentions on January 15 in favor of Mamin. He had resigned, as dictated by law, to allow the new parliament to take power. He had been prime minister since February 2019 before stepping down. Despite international observers describing the vote as "not competitive" and devoid of "genuine political alternatives to choose from" President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev said in an address to the legislature that the polls "opened a new page in the development of our nation." "This important event once again proved our statehood's stability. Kazakhstan performed its society's political culture and civil achievements," Toqaev said. International election observers have characterized past elections in Kazakhstan as being neither free nor fair, citing electoral fraud, repression of opposition candidates, and restrictions on a free press. After the exclusion of many opposition groups that applied to get on the ballot and a boycott by another, the balloting left the same three parties in parliament as after the previous elections, led by the ruling Nur Otan with over 71 percent. In Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, the leader of the unregistered opposition Democratic Party, Zhanbolat Mamai, held a single-person protest on January 15, calling for the "immediate dissolution of the parliament." "Members of so-called new parliament should understand that they illegally obtained their seats. Nobody elected them.... I consider that they usurped power via rigging the elections. Therefore, all the laws, decisions made by them and words said by them are illegal," Mamai said. It was the Central Asian nation of around 18 million people's first parliamentary elections since the resignation in early 2019 of longtime President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who still holds considerable power despite handpicking Toqaev as his successor. Despite having stepped down, Nazarbaev maintains vast influence over the country's politics. He is the head of the Nur Otan party, as well as the powerful Security Council and enjoys almost limitless powers and immunity as "elbasy" -- leader of the nation. The lack of competition in the election dashed the hopes of the country's Western partners, who had hoped for deep political reforms. Reporters without Borders (RSF) issued a statement on January 15 criticizing the Kazakh authorities for preventing journalists from covering the parliamentary elections, citing several such cases. "The obstruction of media coverage of the elections casts doubt on the tentative transition towards freedom of expression in Kazakhstan and the credibility of President [Toqaev's] reformist discourse," the head of RSFs Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, Jeanne Cavelier said, urging the authorities to investigate all cases of violations of journalists' rights registered during the elections. According to the official results, Nur Otan secure a majority in Mazhilis with 76 of 107 seats. Two other parties, Aq Zhol (Bright Path) and the People's Party (formerly the Communist Peoples Party) widely seen as pro-government parties won 12 and 10 seats respectively. The Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, an advisory body controlled by Nazarbaev, elected nine members to the Mazhilis as outlined by election legislation. The All-National Social Democratic Party (OSDP), which describes itself as an opposition party, boycotted the January 10 vote, saying nothing had changed this time around despite Nazarbaev's pivot to a less conspicuous public role after he stepped down. Several activists were detained in the run-up to the vote, and police kept up the pressure on election day, detaining dozens more in other cities across the country. A Florida substitute teacher has been fired after allegedly telling her students that the Capitol riots were paid Antifa members. In a video taken by a student from the back of the teacher's class and posted to Instagram and shared by an account called 'Know your racists', the teacher can be heard ranting to the class about last week's Capitol riots. She falsely claims that it was members of Antifa - not Trump's MAGA supporters - who started the Capitol riots on January 6, despite the conspiracy theory alleging Antifa's involvement being debunked by the FBI and politicians on both sides. According to the video's caption, the incident took place during a language arts class at Bok Academy in Lake Wales, Florida. The principal of the school Dr. Damien Moses told TMZ that the teacher in the video had bee dismissed. He said: 'We met with her and she has been dismissed not only from our school, but also from the Lake Wales Charter School System.' The student who filmed the video claims that the unnamed teacher brought up the claims about antifa unprompted. 'She (the teacher) just randomly started talking about this in first period,' the caption said. 'It was language arts class and we were about to do work when she started talking about the Capitol raid.' In a video taken by a student from the back of the teacher's class and posted to Instagram and shared by an account called 'Know your racists', the teacher (pictured) can be heard ranting to the class about last week's Capitol riots, claiming Antifa were behind the violence The teacher can be heard falsely claiming that three members of Antifa, the anti-fascist movement, were paid to storm the Capitol during last week's failed coup attempt that saw five people lose their lives, including a police officer. These three people, the teacher said, were solely responsible for the riot. In the video, you can hear the student recording the video disputing the teacher's claims, telling the teacher that the rioters were wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump flags. 'Anybody can put on a MAGA hat,' she replies. 'When they're paid to be there, and cause a riot, they want to make it look like Trump supporters, so they wear Trump hats and carry Trump flags. 'Does that make them Trump supporters? No.' The false claim that Antifa were behind the Capitol riots on January 6 has been touted by a number of Trump's supporters, with an Axios report on January 12 claiming that the president himself made the claim on a phone call that day. The FBI, however, have dismissed such claims, with FBI Assistant Director Steven D'Antuono saying on January 8 'we have no indication of that (Antifa being involved), at this time.' The mostly maskless crowd, wearing pro-Trump clothing and holding 'Stop the Steal' banners flooded the halls of the Capitol with little resistance from Capitol Police Trump on January 6 had told his supporters during a 'Save America' rally that they needed to 'fight' to overturn the election in the hours leading up to the Capitol riots Where Capitol rioters were when they posted gloating Parler siege videos: Hack of banned right-wing app geo-locates GPS tracking data obtained through a hack of the suspended Parler shows that many users of the social media app stormed into the US Capitol Building and posted about it during the riot. Many of the thousands of supporters of President Trump who stormed the Capitol in last week's riots have since have been identified as users of the app which had billed itself as a 'free speech' alternative to Twitter. The app has since been blocked by Google and Apple, and vanished from the web on Monday when Amazon pulled its web hosting services because Parler did not do enough to stop 'incitements to violence'. Using the data, technology news website Gizmodo mapped almost 70,000 geo-located Parler video posts, finding hundreds published on January 6 from near or even inside the Capitol. Researcher Kyle Mcdonald also created a map of the posts nationwide. Hailed by Donald Trump supporters as a conservative-friendly alternative to Twitter - which permanently suspended the president on Friday - the site was a magnet for die-hard Trump supporters who believe discredited claims that the election was 'stolen' through fraud. Before it was removed, a hacker archived all of Parler's deleted posts, saying they provide 'very incriminating' evidence in the wake of the attack at the US Capitol. The GPS metadata legally obtained by the hacker, who asked Gizmodo to use her Twitter handle @donk_enby, shows that some Parler users reached as far as both chambers of Congress as well as the offices of key politicians. Pictured: When MacDonald's data map is superimposed over the Capitol, it shows many of the posts were made from inside the building Advertisement The substitute teacher was likely referring to an article published by the Washington Times from last week with the headline 'Facial Recognition Claims Antifa Infiltrated Trump Protesters who Stormed Capitol.' But the story has since been retracted after the Singapore-based tech company XRVision refuted the report. Kevin McCarthy, the fiercely loyal House Minority Leader, strongly pushed back against Trump's claim that the rioters were Left-wing agitators intent on discrediting Trump and his followers - a claim made by staunchly pro-Trump congressman Matt Gaetz, and repeated by Fox News' anchors and pundits. 'It's not ANTIFA, it's MAGA,' McCarthy replied, according to Axios. 'I know. I was there,' McCarthy said, according to a White House official and another source familiar with the call. McCarthy later reiterated his position during a two-hour meeting with Republicans in the House, telling them there is 'undisputedly' no evidence that people linked to ANTIFA participated in the insurrection. The theory that anti-Trump agitators stirred up the unrest has been decisively debunked. Those arrested so far for their part in the riots have in many cases a long and public history of supporting the president: none of those detained has been a supporter of ANTIFA. Trump, during the tense 30 minute conversation with McCarthy on Monday morning, also continued to insist that the election had been stolen from him. McCarthy, exasperated, told him: 'Stop it. It's over. The election is over.' Other Trump supporters also parroted the false claims. Speaking on the house floor after the riot, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said 'If the reports are true, some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. 'They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,' he said, according to USA Today. Alabama Republican, Rep. Mo Brooks, shared similar beliefs on Twitter. 'Please, don't be like #FakeNewsMedia, don't rush to judgment on assault on Capitol,' Brooks wrote. 'Wait for investigation. All may not be (and likely is not) what appears. Evidence growing that fascist ANTIFA orchestrated Capitol attack with clever mob control tactics.' According to the New York Times, the conspiracy theory was shared more than 150,000 times on Twitter and thousands of times more on Facebook by the evening of January 6. 'Altogether, the accounts pushing the rumor had tens of millions of followers,' the Times reported. The Times cited tweets from Trump supporters that posted pictures of people who they alleged were members of Antifa, when in reality the pictures were of people with ties to far right movements. Even the president, the Times pointed out, acknowledged that his supporters - not left-wing activists - had invaded the Capitol, telling them at one point on Wednesday: 'We love you.' In addition to the FBI, the Associated Press also undertook extensive analysis of those involved in the riot, reviewing social media posts, court files, public records and voter registrations for more than 120 people involved. 'The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the presidents behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals,' the news agency reported last week. 'Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently released from prison for attempted murder.' AP 'reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee. 'The evidence gives lie to claims by right-wing pundits and Republican officials such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs rather than supporters of the president.' Trump supporters, egged on by the president himself, stormed the Capitol on Wednesday Investment company Scale Capital was reportedly considering a mobile services launch, following up to its recent acquisition of DirecTV's broadcast business. Oliver Flogel, head of the Chilean private equity company, told local media it was considering which what other services we can offer, but noted it was still very early as the company is yet to finalise its pay-TV launch, however, it did not rule out entering another route of business, reported CommsUpdate. This is a market like any other, and our ability to make a highly technological and asset-light company allows us to do business in any scenario, said Flogel, a former chief executive of both Microsoft and Telefonicas Chilean units. TeleGeography noted Scale Capital has experience in the Chilean mobile market with its MVNO brand Simple Moviles. Through the acquisition of DirecTV the investment company also gained its 2.6GHz 4G licence (bought for $120 million) awarded in 2014 and is valid until 2029. DirecTV was acquired from US operator AT&T which sought to shut down Chilean operations due being caught between restrictions imposed by the US and Venezuelan government. 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. Anyone hoping that they would be rolling the dice in a luxury Texas casino or openly smoking marijuana in 2021 can keep dreaming, because the state isn't poor enough, according to one media executive. The casino industry has flooded the Texas Capitol with cash and lobbyists hoping to pick the plum and 20 bills have been introduced aimed at legalizing marijuana in the state with the hope that budget shortfalls caused by COVID-19 would push the state over the hump. Saratoga County Sheriff BALLSTON SPA - A former Galway man who pleaded guilty to letting his mother die while she was in his care was sentenced to five years of probation on Thursday in Saratoga County Court. Richard Carr III, 29, pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of an incompetent person, a plea deal that spared him a jury trial for manslaughter. The US Senate has the opportunity to make Donald Trump the first American President in history to be convicted. A series of moves by Mr Trump aimed at bucking democratic norms and traditions had led to his being impeached a second time on January 13, when he left behind Andrew Johnson (1868) and Bill Clinton (1998) as Presidents who had been impeached. Charged with inciting an insurrection after trying to cling to power by overturning an election he had indubitably lost, Mr Trump committed a treasonous crime in encouraging his hardcore followers into invading institutions of democracy on Capitol Hill the House of Representatives and the Senate. Worse, as supporters vandalised the Capitol and hunted for vice-president Mike Pence, the President ignored pleas to rein in his crazed and violent army of followers. He showed no remorse after the protests against the highest symbols of democracy, giving lip to words denouncing the violence only with an eye to avoid legal complications. Appropriate, he said of words like fight like hell he had earlier spoken in whipping up passions that led to the invasion of Capitol Hill. The Republican Party has two choices forgive him and vote on partisan lines for a President whose four-year reign is all but over or punish him for his misdemeanours by voting with their conscience and ridding the party of a troublesome leader who could make a run for the presidency again in 2024. If at least 17 Republican Senators vote with 50 counterparts of the Democratic Party, a first-ever man who was President to be convicted in a Senate trial would be toast. A simple majority vote in the Senate would then be sufficient to stop Mr Trump from running for any office in future. There may be other provisions in the American statutes that could bring about the same desirable ending for the most controversial US politician but they would be subject to interpretations by the Supreme Court, which Mr Trump has managed to stuff with likeminded Conservatives. It is apparent many in his party are distancing themselves, though not in sufficient numbers considering that as many as 197 lawmakers voted against his impeachment in the House of Representatives. The democratic world waits with bated breath to see if American lawmakers have the gumption to condemn Mr Trump for a rule that has left the USA fractured and disunited, angry and confused. Faith in the system has also eroded at a time when the pandemic has killed more Americans than World War II and Vietnam War combined. The chapters in history in which the US was a shining light for democracy seemed to have ended. It is small relief that Mr Trump has been boycotted by Big Tech platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which have denied him the megaphones with which he had wreaked havoc on his country even as he played ducks and drakes with foreign policy to earn more enemies than friends around the globe. Regardless of the Senates ultimate decision under Kamala Harris chairmanship during the presidency of Joe Biden, Mr Trump will have cleaved America like no President before him. He may not have been the first demagogue in the White House be he was certainly the one that did the most damage. (Newser) More than two months after the election, the rival presidential campaigns have had their first direct contact with each other. VP Mike Pence called Kamala Harris to offer his congratulations and help, reports the Hill. However, President Trump has yet to call Joe Biden, notes the AP. By all accounts, the call between Pence and Harris was described as friendly, and the Pences may have Harris and her husband over for a visit before next week's inauguration, reports the New York Times. However, those plans will be scrapped if the visit is deemed to be too much of a security risk, especially given Pence's close call with rioters during the siege on the Capitol. story continues below Pence is still expected to attend Wednesday's inauguration, though Trump is not. According to the latest plans, the president will depart the White House for his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Wednesday morning, just ahead of Biden's swearing-in. The Times reports that Trump is trying to arrange a pomp-filled sendoff, complete with marching band, a red carpet, and a military presence. Trump has kept a low profile of late, with Pence assuming many of the duties an outgoing president would typically carry out in his final days, notes both the AP and the Hill. (Read more Mike Pence stories.) New York: A Civil War-era sedition law being dusted off for potential use in the mob attack on the Capitol was last successfully deployed a quarter-century ago in the prosecution of Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks. An Egyptian cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, and nine followers were convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy and other charges in a plot to blow up the United Nations, the FBIs building, and two tunnels and a bridge linking New York and New Jersey. Applications of the law making it a crime to conspire to overthrow or forcefully destroy the government of the United States have been scant. But its use is being considered against the mob that killed a police officer and rampaged through the Capitol last week. Demonstrators clash with law enforcement as they attempt to enter the Capitol. Credit:Bloomberg Michael Sherwin, acting attorney for Washington DC, has said all options are on the table, including sedition charges, against the Capitol invaders. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, after lawmakers voted to impeach Donald Trump for a second time. Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty The second impeachment of Donald Trump for inciting last weeks deadly rampage at the Capitol could set off a bitter Senate fight that entangles the early days of his successor Joe Bidens term. Mr Trump became the first president in US history to be impeached twice when the House voted 232-197 on Wednesday to charge him with inciting the riot. Ten of Mr Trumps fellow Republicans joined Democrats in approving the article of impeachment. But the swift impeachment is unlikely to lead to Mr Trumps removal before president-elect Mr Biden takes office on January 20. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, rejected Democratic calls for a quick impeachment trial, saying there was no way to finish it before Mr Trump leaves office. Read More That raised the prospect of a bitter trial in the Senate during Mr Bidens first days in the White House, something he urged Senate leaders to avoid. Mr Biden said work on the economy, getting the coronavirus vaccine programme on track and confirming crucial Cabinet posts was too crucial to delay. I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their Constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation, Mr Biden said. Expand Close US President Donald Trump / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp US President Donald Trump The House passed one article of impeachment equivalent to an indictment in a criminal trial accusing Mr Trump of incitement of insurrection over an incendiary speech he delivered to thousands of supporters shortly before the riot. In the speech, Mr Trump repeated false claims that the election was fraudulent and exhorted supporters to march on the Capitol. The mob disrupted Congresss certification of Mr Bidens victory over Mr Trump in the November 3 election, sent lawmakers into hiding and left five people dead, including a police officer. Under the Constitution, impeachment in the House triggers a trial in the Senate. A two-thirds majority would be needed to convict and remove Mr Trump, meaning at least 17 Republicans in the 100-member chamber would have to join the Democrats. Even if Mr Trump is already out of the White House, conviction in the Senate could lead to a vote banning him from running again. Mr McConnell has said no trial could begin until the Senate was scheduled to be back in regular session on next Tuesday, the day before Bidens inauguration. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, set to become majority leader this month, said that no matter the timing, there will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate; there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors; and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again. House leaders did not say when they would send the charge to the Senate for consideration. Asked if it would be a good idea to hold a trial on Mr Bidens first day in office, Representative Madeleine Dean, one of the House members who will prosecute the trial, said: I dont want to preview it, but certainly not. We have a president and a vice president to swear in, we have to restore the peaceful transfer of power, which Donald Trump deliberately incited violence against. With the National Guard standing watch, the emotional impeachment debate unfolded in the same House chamber where lawmakers had ducked under chairs and donned gas masks on January 6 as rioters clashed with police outside the doors. Read More The president of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion against our common country, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said on the House floor before the vote. He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love. At a later ceremony, she signed the article of impeachment before, saying she did this sadly, with a heart broken over what this means to our country. No US president has ever been removed from office. Three Mr Trump in 2019, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 were impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment. In a video statement released after Wednesdays vote, Mr Trump did not mention impeachment and took no responsibility for his remarks to supporters last week, but condemned the violence. A scientist works on the MALDI (matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization) mass spectrometer at Berkeley Labs Molecular Foundry. Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab One of the aspects of lithium-ion batteries least understood by scientists has now been elucidated by a new research approach, opening the door to major improvements in battery performance, according to a new study by Berkeley Lab scientists. Their study, recently published in the journal Joule, used a technique developed by Berkeley Lab battery scientists in the Energy Technologies Area to illustrate the structures of large organic molecules generated during battery operation. These molecules are known to reside in a part of the battery called the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer, which is poorly understood but has a critical impact on battery performance. "The findings reveal a new dimension of chemical composition inside lithium-ion batteries and enables a new direction for rational engineering of the battery's electrolyte system," said lead author Chen Fang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area. The researchers used a unique technique of "on-electrode chromatography" coupled with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) diagnostic capability at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry to separate and illustrate the structures of large organic molecules generated during battery operation. On-electrode chromatography allows the separation of organic molecules on the surface of the electrode. MALDI is typically used to characterize biomolecules such as proteins and peptides. This coupled approach, used successfully for the first time in battery research, is highly adoptable as it uses commercially available instrumentation. It will allow scientists to precisely, quickly, and conveniently identify the molecules in the battery, including their structures and weight distributions. Designing a better electrolyte system will enable next-generation batteries, said battery scientist Gao Liu, the study's corresponding author. "The current electrolyte system works very well at ambient temperatures and with existing battery chemistries," he said. "However, the current electrolytes do not work well with the high energy density batteries, high-voltage batteries, or batteries working in extreme cold and with extreme fast charging." More information: Chen Fang et al. Large-Molecule Decomposition Products of Electrolytes and Additives Revealed by On-Electrode Chromatography and MALDI, Joule (2021). Journal information: Joule Chen Fang et al. Large-Molecule Decomposition Products of Electrolytes and Additives Revealed by On-Electrode Chromatography and MALDI,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2020.12.012 Bill and Melinda Gates talk to reporters about the 2016 annual letter from their foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in New York, Monday, Feb. 22, 2016. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo) Bill Gates Is Now Americas Biggest Owner of Farmland: Report Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and the fourth most wealthy person in the world, has acquired more than 242,000 acres of farmland across the United States, making him the top private farmland owner in the country. The Land Report, a magazine provided by the Realtors Land Institute, said that based on its research, Bill and Melinda Gates obtained an estimated 242,000 acres of farmland overall. That farmland portfolio stretches across 18 states, according to the report. The Gates largest holdings are in Louisiana with about 69,000 acres, Arkansas with about 47,000 acres, Nebraska with about 20,000 acres, and more, according to The Land Report. It is not entirely clear how Gates farmland is being used, or whether any of the land is being set aside for conservation, Forbes noted. Cascade Investments, Gates personal investment company, did not return Forbes request for comment, while The Epoch Times has reached out for comment. A spokesperson for Cascade also declined to comment on The Land Report. However, there is some indication that the land could be used in a way that aligns with the foundations values. Cottonwood Ag Management, a subsidiary of Cascade, is a member of Leading Harvest, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable agriculture standards that prioritize protections of crops, soil, and water resources, according to Forbes. According to The Land Report, it appears the Gates started to purchase farmland relatively recently. The Gateses largest single block of dirt was acquired in 2017: a group of farmland assets owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Based in Toronto, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board began assembling an agricultural portfolio in 2013, when it acquired AgCoA, aka, Agricultural Company of America, the report noted. This private U.S. farmland [Real Estate Investment Trust] was a joint venture between Duquesne Capital Management and Goldman Sachs that launched in 2007. Over the next five years, AgCoA acquired more than 100,000 acres in nine states. By the time it was sold to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in 2013, AgCoA ranked as one of the leading institutional owners of row crop farmland in the U.S. Cascade noted that Gates also purchased a large stake in about 24,800 acres of land just west of Phoenix, Arizona. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been involved in agriculture initiatives in other countries, including in sub-Saharan African and South Asian ones. Forbes magazine notes that Gates has a net worth of about $121 billion. Forbes noted that Gates is not the largest individual landowner in the United States. That spot belongs to Liberty Media Chair John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres of ranches and forests. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, owns about 420,000 acres of land primarily in West Texas. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, by Order G-12-21, the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) approved the Insurance Corporation of British Columbias (ICBC) request for a 15% decrease to Basic insurance rates on an interim basis, effective May 1, 2021. The interim rate will remain in effect until the BCUC decides on the final permanent rate. The BCUC has established an open and transparent public proceeding to review ICBCs 2021 Revenue Requirements application, which includes an opportunity for public comment and participation. There are several ways to participate in the review process, outlined below. Request intervener status: Persons who are directly or sufficiently affected by the BCUCs decision or have relevant information or expertise, and who wish to actively participate in the proceeding, can request intervener status by Thursday, February 4, 2021. Persons who are directly or sufficiently affected by the BCUCs decision or have relevant information or expertise, and who wish to actively participate in the proceeding, can request intervener status by Thursday, February 4, 2021. Submit a letter of comment: Members of the public can submit letters of comment to contribute views, opinions, and impact or potential impact, with respect to a matter before the BCUC, to the public record. Members of the public can submit letters of comment to contribute views, opinions, and impact or potential impact, with respect to a matter before the BCUC, to the public record. Register as an interested party: Interested parties can register online to receive updates on the proceeding. By Order G-13-21, the BCUC also approved changes to ICBCs Tariff pages, in part, to provide rebates to Basic insurance policyholders from implementing a new insurance model called Enhanced Care, as directed by the BC government in Orders in Council 633 and 631. More information about the proceeding can be found on the ICBC 2021 Revenue Requirements Application proceeding page. Background On December 15, 2020, ICBC filed its 2021 Revenue Requirements application with the BCUC seeking approval for, among other things, a 15% decrease to Basic insurance rates. The Insurance Corporation Act sets out the BCUCs role in regulating ICBCs Basic insurance. In particular, ICBC must make Basic insurance available in a manner that the BCUC considers is adequate, efficient, just and reasonable. The BCUC must also follow government directives when regulating and fixing rates using the factors, criteria and guidelines as provided. The BCUC does not regulate optional automobile insurance. About the BCUC The BCUC is an independent regulatory body, responsible for regulating British Columbias energy utilities, as well as its compulsory automobile insurance rates, and intra-and provincial pipelines rates. The BCUC is also responsible for administering BCs Fuel Price Transparency Act. It is the BCUCs role to balance the interests of customers with the interests of the businesses it regulates. The BCUC carries out fair and transparent reviews of matters within its jurisdiction and considers public input where public interest is impacted. CONTACT INFORMATION: Krissy Van Loon Manager, Communications Phone: 604.660.4727 Email: Krissy.VanLoon@bcuc.com We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. Dealer sources told Mopar Insiders that Jefferson North Assembly Plant will stop making the Durango Hellcat in the sixth month of the year over manufacturing and fed-related circumstances on the architecture. The cited publication doesnt go into detail about those circumstances, but I can tell you that Dodge is gearing up for at least one fuel-sipping powertrain.Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the UAW signed a contract in 2019, and the document in question lists huge investments for the automakers assembly division. Jefferson North is going to receive a grand total of $3 billion in the near future, and part of that money will go toward the Durango mHEV The most obvious candidate for mild-hybrid assistance is the Pentastar V6, but do remember that Ram offers the HEMI V8 with an integrated starter/generator as well. The eTorque system is different in these applications, which is why the e-motor of the V6 provides up to 39 pound-feet (53 Nm) of torque while the V8 is assisted with 49 pound-feet (66 Nm).Turning our attention back to Dodge, care to guess the primary engine options of the Durango? Those would be the Pentastar and HEMI, which means that we could be treated to a couple of mild-hybrid choices.As for the Hellcat, well, Dodge hasnt mentioned a thing about the potential to go hybrid in some way or another. On the other hand, we should remember that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has signed a deal with ZF Friedrichshafen for an eight-speed hybrid transmission with an electric motor integrated into it. Based on a few quotes from head honcho Tim Kuniskis , the Challenger and Charger are going to receive this gearbox in a few years' time. Tripp to remain MRG shareholder Murray River Organics, an Australia-based dried fruit snacks maker, has announced its CEO and managing director Valentina Tripp has resigned, with immediate effect, after almost three years in the hot seat. Birol Akdogan, currently the CFO of the Sydney-listed business, will take over the CEO role on an interim basis, effective today (15 January). Tripp has made herself available for three months to "assist with the transition as required", Murray River (MRG), which counts Premium Australian Clusters amongst its brands, said in a statement. Akdogan only joined the business last September having replaced Albert Zago, who left MRG in March 2020 for an unspecified reason. In 2019, MRG made the strategic decision to reduce exposure to non-core farming assets and accelerate investment in marketing, branding and new product development to increase its share of the growing market for organic products in Australia and internationally. It also completed a AUD30.6m (US$23.6m today) re-capitalisation exercise the same year and obtained a AUD63.9m multi-option bank debt facility. Chairman Andrew Monk said in today's statement: "The board recognises the work Val has put towards building and developing a highly capable team of people, overseeing the restructure, recapitalisation and strategic re-positioning of the company. Val is a top 30 shareholder and we are pleased that she has indicated she will continue to invest in MRG's future." Tripp added: "The growth of organics is strong and so is MRG's future. After three big years, I have decided to take some time out with my family and will be seeking to develop my non-executive career and other opportunities." Thiruvananthapuram, January 15 : Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala on Friday assailed the final budget of the current LDF dispensation, terming it as full of false promises. The nature of the budget was a tell that the LDF government was sure they would not be voted back to power, he said, adding that the state government had not even fulfilled the promises made in the previous full budget. The finance ministers promise to reduce the states debt came to naught. The LDF government was saddling the state with debts. The budget failed to spell out a roadmap for the financial management of the state, the opposition leader charged. What happened to the packages announced in the previous budget? Chennithala asked, charging that the packages announced in the previous budget remained only on paper and funds were not earmarked for them. The opposition leader alleged that finance minister Thomas Isaac was hoodwinking the fisherfolk by announcing a new package for them in the current budget when the LDF government had failed to implement the package announced for them in the previous budget. The announcements in the new budget were but false promises aimed at hoodwinking the voters ahead of the impending assembly elections, he said. Coming down on the finance minister, Chennithala accused him of having reduced the concept of budget to a farce, charging that the budget was replete with announcements detached from reality. Muslim league national general secretary P K Kunhalikutty also slammed the budget presented by Thomas Isaac. The muslim league leader lamented that the budget failed to put forward any concrete proposal to address the issue of rampant unemployment in the state. He echoed the opposition leaders charge that the budget was but a collection of hollow promises aimed at enticing the voters in the run up to the assembly elections. On Thomas Isaacs dismissive remarks on the NYAY scheme proposed by the UDF in its draft manifesto, Kunhalikutty said that the UDF was ready to debate the finance minister on the schemes feasibility. WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Teamsters Airline Division and The Aviation Mechanics Coalition (TAMC) are elated that the Promoting Aviation Regulations for Technical Training Act (PARTT 147) was signed into law last month as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 133). PARTT 147 requires the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to reform technical education in a way that promotes innovative curriculum development for aviation mechanics. A critical way it accomplishes this is by allowing schools to adjust their curriculum as needed to be more aligned with the latest Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) Airman Certification Standard (ACS). "In 2019, the Teamsters Airline Division and the TAMC joined a diverse coalition of organizations from labor, industry and academia - led by the Aviation Technical Education Council (ATEC) - in support of PARTT 147; we also signed on to two letters supporting its passage," said Capt. David Bourne, Director of the Teamsters Airline Division. "We are proud to be a part of the coalition that helped get this important legislation passed." "PARTT 147 is a great step forward in creating the next generation of aviation maintenance technicians," said Chris Moore, TAMC Chairman. "It will allow FAA certified technicians to enter the industry with the most relevant skills needed to work on the latest generation of aircraft." PARTT 147 also moves airman training to a competency-based standard and removes the hours of training requirement, which will allow students to test sooner if they can prove they meet the knowledge and skill requirements of the ACS. These new rules will help students save tuition dollars and replenish the rapidly depleting A&P technician talent pipeline. The Teamsters Airline Division and the TAMC recognized early on that the A&P mechanic shortage was coming and have worked tirelessly to promote the craft. Whether it's been meeting with congressional leaders and the FAA or attending STEM and other industry events, they continue to be at the leading edge of the movement to make a career in aviation maintenance more attainable. PARTT 147 will contribute greatly to this mission. PARTT 147 is only one piece of the puzzle and both the TAMC and the Teamsters Airline Division will continue to work with Department of Defense, the Teamsters Military Assistance Program (TMAP), regulators, Congress, educators, employers, labor coalitions, and other parties interested in promoting aviation maintenance as a career. 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: Kara Deniz, (202) 497-6610 [email protected] SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters Related Links http://www.teamster.org Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling his Republican colleagues President Trump's impeachment trial will be a 'vote of conscience' an absence of pressure that effectively allows them to vote guilty. McConnell has already communicated that he himself has not made up his mind on whether to convict Trump following reports of his fury after a MAGA mob ransacked the Capitol, with one crowd of invaders stopped steps from McConnell's leadership office. 'His message to me was this would clearly be a vote of conscience,' North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer said. 'He's always been respectful of members that way.' House leaders also called the House impeachment vote this week a 'vote of conscience' and 10 Republicans including Conference Chair Rep. Liz Cheney joined Democrats, with 232 voting to impeach Trump. In the Senate, Democrats would need at least 17 and possibly 18 Republicans to convict putting individual senators to weigh their feelings as well as the views of some of their angry constituents - or some to simply not turn up at all; conviction is by a two-thirds majority of those who vote. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel says he hasn't made up his mind on how he will vote. After he elected not to take emergency steps, the trial likely won't begin until Trump leaves office 'VOTE OF CONSCIENCE': Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), right, ' says Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has told him impeachment will be a 'vote of conscience,' without leadership pressure to convict or acquit President Trump Cramer, center, received a religious blessing from supporters during a rally supporting Trump the before a MAGA mob ransacked the Capitol Feel free to convict him: Mitch McConnell signaled that he had no problem with other Republican senators declaring Donald Trump guilty and may do so himself 'A conviction of Trump may mean he doesn't run again, but it doesn't mean he gives up without a fight,' Cramer told Business Insider. 'All my pro-Trump Republican friends want to take my head off for not blowing up the Constitution.' His comments offer the first insight into the dynamics inside the 50 Senate Republicans, some of whose votes are needed by Democrats to convict Trump. Cramer said he himself did not want to vote to convict, but did not rule it out. So far the only known votes are those of Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham, who have come out against the trial taking place at all - which it will - with Cotton saying the Senate cannot try a former president. Cramer's reference to 'wanting to take my head off' also hints at the pressure Republican senators feel under for their own safety. In the House Peter Meijer, a freshman Republican who voted to impeach, said he was buying body armor and that other Republicans were requesting armed guards when they travel. McConnell refusing to guide his caucus on how to vote allows him ample room for maneuver. Currently the Republican base is strongly pro-Trump and senators with upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024 would fear being primaried by Trump loyalists if they vote to convict. But the public's view of Trump is not static, and polls have showed a dip in support since Trump supporters broke windows, stole equipment, clashed with police, and took part in a riot that ended up in the deaths of five people. Washington D.C. will not be in virtual lockdown for the inauguration, with 20,000 National Guard forces securing the city for the handover. Seven Republican senators voted along with House members who objected to the certified electoral votes from Pennsylvania, and six did so for the votes from Arizona. Cramer, along with most of his colleagues, voted to count the votes that made Joe Biden the winner. Cramer, who like almost all Republicans backed Trump throughout his stormy tenure, said he didn't want to vote to convict but might vote to prohibit him from holding any office of public trust after the MAGA riot in the Capitol. That question, which comes on a majority vote following conviction, has major political implications both for the nation and for the party, with several political rivals to Trump in 2024 holding seats in the chamber. Two of them, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, were leaders of the effort to toss out votes, and stood by their position even after rioters trashed the Capitol. House leaders also made impeachment a 'vote of conscience,' and 10 Republicans joined with Democrats to charge Trump with a single article of 'incitement of insurrection' WHAT GOP SENATORS SAY ABOUT CONVICTING TRUMP COULD VOTE TO CONVICT Mitch McConnell, leader (Kentucky) Told other senators it is a 'conscience vote' and said: 'I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments.' Ben Sasse (Nebraska) 'The President was derelict in his duty to defend the Constitution and uphold the rule of law.' Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) President Trump's words incited violence. I will listen carefully and consider the arguments of both sides. Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) Already called on Trump to resign POSITION UNCLEAR Kevin Cramer (North Dakota) Doesn't want to convict but if there is a conviction would vote to ban from future office CERTAIN NOT TO Tom Cotton (Arkansas) Says impeachment is moot when Trump leaves office Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) 'The last thing the country needs is an impeachment trial of a president who is leaving office in one week' Advertisement How other senators vote is harder to tell. McConnell is not up for re-election until 2026, when he would be 84 and he is not alone in being unlikely or certain not to run again. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania who is not running previously called for Trump to resign. The other two oldest Republicans are Richard Shelby of Alabama and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who are both beloved among their states' Republican base and at best not certain to run again. Trump also offended Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski and John Thune, and none feel personal loyalty. Mitt Romney is a sworn enemy, although he has not stated his position. Democrats want to use senators' own experience of being rushed off the floor by armed guards and taken to safe rooms to build the case for conviction. Ahead of opening arguments, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, another impeachment manager, suggested senators will be asked to focus on their own experiences the day of the attack. 'You dont have to tell anyone who was in the building twice what it was like to be terrorized,' Swalwell said. Ottawa, Jan 15 : The population growth in Canada slowed to 1.3 per cent in large urban regions between July 2019 and July 2020, compared with 1.7 per cent of the same period of a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada. However, the long-term trend of urbanization continued over that period, as the other regions of the country grew at a lower rate of 0.6 per cent, Xinhua news agency quoted Statistics Canada as saying in a report issued on Thursday. In July 2020, some 27.3 million people, or 71.8 per cent of Canadians, lived in large urban regions, namely census metropolitan areas. Despite lower international migration (permanent and temporary) due to travel restrictions aimed at reducing the spread of Covid-19, international migration accounted for 90.3 per cent of the growth in census metropolitan areas from July 2019 to July 2020. In comparison, it accounted for just over one-third of the population growth in other regions of the country. Excess mortality attributable to the pandemic has had a limited impact on the slowing population growth in urban centres, despite them being the epicentres of the pandemic. More people are opting to live outside of Canada's largest urban centres, which is contributing to ongoing urban sprawl. Despite still showing overall positive population growth, mostly due to international migration, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver continued to see more people moving out to other regions of their province rather than moving in. The desire to live outside the largest urban centres was also reflected in the rapidly increasing housing costs in neighbouring real estate markets. Personal health, the ability to work remotely, and higher housing costs are among the most important factors contributing to the decision of many Canadians to continue or to no longer continue living in large urban centres hardest hit by the pandemic, said Statistics Canada. Azerbaijan will begin vaccinating its population against COVID-19 next week using a vaccine developed by China, government spokesman Ibrahim Mammadov said. He did not disclose which Chinese vaccine would be used but said it would be the same one as Turkey had acquired. Turkey is using shots developed by Chinas Sinovac Biotech Ltd, Reuters reported. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 16) The Philippines earned another distinction from international travel website Big 7 Travel after it was named the world's second most "Instagrammable" place for 2021. Big 7 Travel noted the country's natural wonders and vibrant culture and history in placing it second in the list, which gathered 50 places around the world. "From the bustling capital of Manila complete with colorful colonial streets to the absolute oasis of Boracay, the gram opportunities here are endless," it said in its article. The Department of Tourism thanked the international travel website for including the Philippines in the list. "The Department of Tourism celebrates the inclusion of the Philippines in the Most Instagrammable Places in the World list of the renowned travel website Big 7 Travel for the year 2021," said in a statement. The Philippines is among the three Asian places in the Top 10 list, along with top choice Tokyo, Japan and sixth-ranked Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Paris, France came in at third while New York City finished fourth. Completing the Top 10 are fifth placer Istanbul, Turkey, seventh placer Havana, Cuba, eighth-ranked Sydney, Australia, ninth-ranked London, United Kingdom, and tenth placer Chicago, Illinois. Big 7 Travel came up with the list using a scoring system that analyzed the number of hashtags per destination, survey results from their social audience, and input from their editorial team. The international travel website feted Palawan and Boracay last October as part of the 50 most beautiful places in the world tally. Palawan was ranked eighth, while Boracay Island landed 18th in the list. The India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) is hosting its annual Retrospect and Prospects program sponsored by ABP News in New Delhi on the 21st. January. This will be the first physical event after lockdown. Says IAA President Megha Tata, " This is a program that sets the tone and pace for the year ahead. We are delighted to have Rajeev Chaba President and Managing Director of MG Motors presenting this program for us". Adds Avinash Pandey Chairman Retrospect and Prospects Committee & CEO, ABP Network " I have been associated with this wonderful program from its debut many years ago in New Delhi. It is an event where a top marketer presents the highs and lows of the year that was in the Marcom industry and does some serious crystal ball gazing into the what the year ahead holds for the industry. A must for every senior Marcom professional" Champaign, IL (61820) Today Cloudy skies with showers and a possible thunderstorm late. Low 57F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.. Tonight Cloudy skies with showers and a possible thunderstorm late. Low 57F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Brendan Neligan has joined Risk Placement Services as a marine producer, in the companys Chicago property brokerage office. Neligan will support the growth of the RPS marine portfolio, serving retail independent agents and brokers nationwide. Previously, he was regional vice president at AXA XL, where he was responsible for the development of the inland and ocean marine portfolio with an emphasis on profitability and strategic growth for the central United States. Neligan holds both Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and Associate in Marine Management (AMIM) professional designations. Source: RPS PFAS investigation in Pellston completes second round of samples Officials discovered polyfluoroalkyls in Pellston residential water sources in late 2019. The airport is believed to be the source of the substances. 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. ROME, N.Y. Rome police are looking for leads after shots were fired outside Stans Seafood on West Dominick Street in Rome Wednesday. Officers were called to the scene around 10 p.m. after receiving multiple calls reporting shots fired on the 700 block of West Dominick Street. Police say the building was damaged by bullets, but do not believe anyone was injured during the incident. Rome police are asking for any video footage from nearby residents who may have surveillance or doorbell cameras at their home. Anyone with information regarding this incident should call Det. Kevin James at 315-339-7715 or leave an anonymous tip with Mohawk Valley Crime Stoppers by calling 1-866-730-8477 or online here. Thursday morning, Florence City Schools unveiled the "Falcon Feeder." It's a state-of-the-art brand new food truck that will serve students and the community. "How do we serve the community and students as whole?" said Florence City Schools Superintendent Dr. Jimmy Shaw. Shaw said the Falcon Feeder is the answer to that question. The idea was born from the pandemic as schools shut down and the district saw just how many kids still needed food and some couldn't get to the to-go meals the district had. "What we noticed was that even though we set up locations across Florence to make it easily accessible, there were simply many kids that didn't have a way to get to us and we didn't have any way to get to them. While the pandemic brought this to light, food insecurity is a problem year-round," said Florence City Schools Nutritionist, Tara Talmage. Talmage said now they can pack meals up and have them delivered to students so no one will go hungry in any situation. "This is a total game changer in the event of a school closure again. Hopefully, we don't have too many of those in our future, but we know aside from pandemic situations, there's natural disasters and certain things that will come up that will occasionally close schools. This will give us an immediate access plan to get food to those that really need it," said Talmage. Talmage said they're finalizing routes and plans on how the delivery will work. "We're working on building delivery routes that will be somewhat similar to bus routes that we currently operate. We will have drop locations, set times and certain places where families know to bring their children or within walking distance of some neighborhoods, for kids to come pick up breakfast and lunch from us," said Talmage. The nonprofit, No Kid Hungry, donated $100,000 to the school system so they could get their Falcon Feeder. Talmage is the one who applied for the grant. She said she thought it was a long shot but they decided to go for it and it paid off. Barn destroyed by Wednesday morning fire Fire destroyed a barn about five miles southeast of Watertown Wednesday, according to a report from Watertown Fire Rescue. BOSTON - The Study on Stress, Spirituality and Health (SSSH), a cutting-edge proteomics analysis, suggests that religious beliefs modulate protein expression associated with cardiovascular disease in South Asians in the United States. The research, published by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in Scientific Reports, demonstrates that spiritual struggles, in particular, significantly modify the impact of unique proteins on risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) in U.S. South Asians, a community that has especially high rates of CVD. This study represents the first proteomics analysis ever conducted on protein levels in relationship to CVD within a U.S. South Asian population and the first published study to analyze proteomics signatures in relationship to religion and spirituality in any population. "Before we can develop the best interventions to reduce CVD disparities, we need to understand the biological pathways through which health disparities are produced," says the study's principal investigator and co-senior author Alexandra Shields, PhD, director of the Harvard/MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations and Health Disparities at the MGH Mongan Institute and associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). "As this study shows, psychosocial factors - and religious or spiritual struggles in particular - can affect biological processes that lead to CVD in this high-risk population. Spirituality can also serve as a resource for resilience and have a protective effect. Given that many of the minority communities that experience higher levels of CVD also report higher levels of religiosity and spirituality, studies such as the SSSH may help identify new leverage points, such as spiritually focused psychotherapy for those in spiritual distress, that could reduce risk of CVD for such individuals." Results of the study, which included 50 participants who developed CVD and 50 sex- and age-matched controls without CVD from the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) Study (100 participants), indicate that there may be unique protein expression profiles associated with CVD in U.S. South Asian populations, and that these associations may also be impacted by religious struggles, in which, for example, individuals experiencing adverse life events feel they are being punished or abandoned by their God, or have a crisis of faith. The MASALA study includes 1,164 South Asians who were recruited from the San Francisco Bay Area and the greater Chicago area and followed for approximately eight years with the goal of investigating factors that lead to heart disease among this high-risk ethnic group. MASALA is one of the original cohorts participating in SSSH, through which this research was conducted. "Understanding the pathways of this mechanism at the molecular level using proteomics technology is crucial to developing potential interventions that can help reduce CVD incidence in this population," says Long H. Ngo, PhD, lead author and co-director of Biostatistics in the Division of General Medicine at BIDMC and associate professor of Medicine at HMS. Co-senior author Towia Libermann, PhD, director of Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Center at BIDMC, adds: "The kinds of blood-based protein biomarkers used in this study are particularly effective in assessing CVD risk because they carry clinical information about risk of disease and are the most commonly used molecules for diagnostic applications." ### Other investigators included Alka Kanaya, MD, professor of Medicine at UCSF and principal investigator of the MASALA Study; Austin Argentieri, MPhil, research associate at the Harvard/MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations, and Health Disparities; and Blake Victor Kent, assistant professor of Sociology at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California. The research was funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. About the Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The Mass General Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with annual research operations of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In August 2020, Mass General was named #6 in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals." Safeguard yourself from falling victim to online trading scams An Offaly pharmacist, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Tribune this week that HSE admin staff should not receive the Pfizer vaccine prior to frontline staff. "What I have been told, and it's a strong rumour doing the rounds, is that quite a few HSE admin employees have been vaccinated, even though they are working from home; whereas some frontline staff still haven't been inoculated. If it's true, it's shocking, but it wouldn't surprise me." The pharmacist criticised the government and the HSE for the slowness of the Pfizer rollout. "Pharmacies should definitely be administering the vaccine but we haven't been contacted by the HSE about it, we haven't been told about any plan involving the pharmacies and the inoculation, which is unbelievable really. You would think there would be much more urgency at this stage." He pointed out that no pharmacy staff in Ireland have yet been been inoculated. "We will have to be inoculated ourselves first before we start administering, but no one has contacted us about that. The silence is deafening." Pharmacies have struggled badly during 2020 with front of shop sales significantly down, particularly the sale of beauty and cosmetic items. The pharmacist was speaking as the Tullamore Tribune, Midland Tribune and Offaly Express launched an online petition this week backing local pharmacies to deliver the Covid 19 vaccines to our communities - and we need you to sign up! CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW Gardai are hunting for a burglary gang involved in several crimes across Dublin using a Toyota Prius. The gang are suspected of targeting a number of homes and cars across south Dublin in the early hours of yesterday morning with the stolen hybrid vehicle. Detectives are currently trying to identify the gang members involved after they fled from officers by driving the wrong way down a dual-carriageway before escaping. The attempted break-ins happened in the Greenhills and Perrystown areas of the city shortly after 2am yesterday morning. Its understood a five-man gang were involved and attempted to target a number of properties in the area while cars were also broken into. Read More Sources said the gang were using a Toyota Prius that was stolen in a creeper burglary earlier that night in the Rathgar area. From initial inquiries it appears the hybrid car was stolen before being used by the gang to drive around other areas of south Dublin. No arrests have yet been made and gardai are hopeful of identifying those involved with the help of CCTV footage taken from properties in the area a source said. This gang would have continued targeting homes in the area but thankfully locals alerted gardai who responded quickly, the source added. After gardai were notified searches were carried out for the car involved. Expand Close Thief breaking into car (stock) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Thief breaking into car (stock) Read More However, the suspect vehicle is understood to have sped down the wrong side of the Naas Road in the direction of the M50 and escaped. A source added: This was a highly dangerous tactic used by the gang to escape undetected and is unfortunately becoming a more common occurrence. Last year one man was killed when a suspect vehicle that fled from gardai drove the wrong way along the N7 before colliding with his car. The car involved had earlier come to the attention of gardai but was not being pursued at the time of the collision. During a separate incident last January a teenager died after driving his car the wrong way down the Naas Road before crashing into a van carrying two people along with a nine-year old boy. A Garda spokeswoman said that investigations into yesterdays incidents is ongoing. Gardai are investigating an unauthorised taking of a vehicle which occurred in Maxwell Rd, Rathgar, Dublin 6 on January 13, 2021. No arrests have been made. Investigations are ongoing. Gardai are also investigating an attempted burglary which occurred in the Greenhills area, Dublin 12 on January 13, 2021 at approximately 3:30am. No arrests have been made to date. Investigations are ongoing, the spokeswoman added. LUHLEKO The Simelane family has finally laid their rightful loved one to rest. After the traumatic ordeal the family endured in burying a woman they believed to be their mother Gabisile Simelane, they were able to obtain a court order late on Wednesday evening to lay Make Simelane to rest. According to impeccable sources close to the matter, the family obtained the court order on Wednesday evening, which gave them the authority to exhume the unknown womans body, and finally bury their mother at the family burial site at Luhleko. The burial of the correct body of Make Simelane was done that very evening after the court order was obtained. It is said that Dups Funeral Home and Crematorium personnel arrived at the Simelane home at around 7pm on Wednesday in a hearse, carrying the body of Make Simelane. Exhuming They assisted in exhuming the buried corpse, which they took with them back to the funeral home. With Ministry of Health officials and police officers from Malkerns Police Station present, Make Simelane was laid to rest about an hour after the arrival of personnel from Dups. Community members also came to assist the Simelane family to exhume the body of the unknown woman. The unknown body was then transported back to Dups on the same evening. The news was also confirmed by a Simelane family representative, Isaiah Hlatshwayo, who said that Make Simelane had been buried on Wednesday evening. However, when questioned on whether the family had found peace after finally laying Make Simelane to rest, Hlatshwayo requested not to comment any further, as he could not properly articulate how the family felt, especially because it was such a large family. I cannot clearly articulate the sentiments of the entire family, but we are still mourning the loss of our mother, he said. Meanwhile, Luhleko Headman Muzi Maseko said the community of Luhleko heaved a sigh of relief after Make Simelanes body arrived and was respectfully laid to rest, adding that the family needed to pray and find peace on the matter. On the other hand, Dups Funeral Home and Crematorium General Manager Kyle De Sousa said they owned up to their mistake and everything had been resolved. Ailments Leading up to the exhumation of the unknown womans body, De Sousa said this happened at the peak of death figures due to COVID-19-related ailments. The funeral parlour has been a hive of activity in recent weeks as COVID-19-related deaths are daily reported in double digits. It was a human error that occurred as a result of breach of our strict identification procedures. The error occurred when a corpse was released to another family. The high number of corpses that our staff handle per day and night has resulted in excessive physical and mental fatigue brought about by long hours of work, De Sousa said. He again extended an apology to all concerned parties and the distress this had caused. He said after it was brought to the funeral parlours attention that a mistake had happened, action was taken immediately. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his government resigned on Friday over a harrowing scandal that saw thousands of parents wrongly accused of child benefit fraud. Rutte, one of Europe's longest serving leaders, said he would stay on in a caretaker capacity until elections in March to avoid disrupting the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The 53-year-old said the benefits system had gone "terribly wrong", with many innocent parents forced to pay back large amounts of money in child allowance and ending up financially ruined. Some families were targeted for investigation by tax officials because they had dual nationality, underscoring longstanding criticisms of systemic racism in the Netherlands. "The buck stops here," Rutte, the leader of the liberal VVD party, told a news conference after a meeting during which his four-party coalition cabinet unanimously decided they had to quit. "The rule of law must protect its citizens from an all-powerful government, and here that's gone terribly wrong. Mistakes have been made that have resulted in great injustice to thousands of parents." Rutte was booed as he cycled out of the government buildings in The Hague on his way to formally hand his resignation to Dutch King Willem-Alexander at the Huis ten Bosch Palace. However opinion polls say Rutte's party would likely come first in the elections due on March 17, with the public still backing his handling of the coronavirus crisis, putting him in line for a fourth term in office. - 'Lives destroyed' - Pressure had been mounting on Rutte, who was leading his third coalition government since coming to power in 2010, with the government facing a possible confidence vote next week. A hard-hitting parliamentary investigation in December said civil servants cut off benefits to thousands of families wrongly accused of fraud between 2013 and 2019. Many were required to pay back benefits totalling tens of thousands of euros (dollars). Reports said several couples had split up as a result of the strain. Story continues The clamour grew after opposition Labour party chief Lodewijk Asscher, who was social affairs minister in Rutte's previous cabinet, resigned on Thursday over the scandal. Rutte defended the decision to resign in the middle of a pandemic, with the Netherlands under its toughest Covid-19 restrictions yet and facing a surge in cases of a new variant first found in Britain. "Our fight against coronavirus continues," said Rutte, adding that the caretaker cabinet would "do what is necessary in the interests of the country". Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, known for his strong stance against immigration and Islam, said it was "right" that the government had quit. "Innocent people, were criminalised, their lives destroyed," Wilders said on Twitter. "It is not credible that officials should continue as if nothing had happened." Green-Left party leader Jesse Klaver, another leading voice who had called for Rutte to resign, said the decision could be a "new start, a turning point" for the Netherlands. - 'Teflon Mark' - Dutch media said some 26,000 people had been affected by the scandal. Tax officials were also revealed to have carried out "racial profiling" of 11,000 people based on their dual nationality, including some of those hit by the false benefit fraud accusations. The Dutch government announced at least 30,000 euros ($36,000) in compensation for each parent who was wrongly accused but it has not been enough to silence the growing clamour over the scandal. Victims lodged a legal complaint Tuesday against three serving ministers and two former ministers including Asscher. Several parents released a video calling for the government to quit and "Rutte resign" has been trending on Twitter since Tuesday. The scandal has led to the downfall of a man nicknamed "Teflon Mark" for his ability to dodge political crises and awkward questions during his time in office. His pragmatic leadership has guided the Netherlands through the global financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, but he has also been accused of pandering to the right on issues including immigration. The plain-speaking Rutte is also a divisive figure in Europe due to his calls for more austerity and adherence to the rule of law. Questions remain about what difference Rutte's resignation will actually make to the Dutch political landscape. "I think it's mostly a symbolic gesture and I think it's a good symbolic gesture -- but in practice nothing really will change because the elections are coming up anyway," international relations student Jacco van der Veen, 26, told AFP in The Hague. dk-smt/har ANN ARBOR, MI A man convicted for crashing into a fire truck on I-94 while texting and driving, seriously injuring his daughter and killing her friend in 2017 has lost his first appeal. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Thursday, Jan. 14, the conviction of Charles Edward Horn who was found guilty on two felony charges associated with the fatal crash. Horn, 37, was convicted by a jury June 12, 2019 on one count each of reckless driving causing death and reckless driving causing serious impairment in the crash that killed Lincoln High School student Christina Snyder. Washtenaw County Trial Judge Darlene OBrien later sentenced Horn to serve 10 to 30 years and eight to 25 years in prison for his crimes, respectively. His sentence was enhanced for being a habitual offender. I never wanted this to happen, man who killed teen in distracted driving crash says In his appeal, Horn argued the evidence presented at trial was not enough for a reasonable jury to convict and that there was juror bias that went unchallenged by his attorney. The court disagreed on both arguments. The court ruled that, although the evidence at trial was circumstantial, it is not the role of the appellate court to interfere with the trier of facts role of determining the weight of the evidence or the credibility of witnesses, according the courts ruling. Viewing the evidence in this case in a light most favorable to the prosecutor, there was sufficient evidence to allow a rational jury to find defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on both counts, the court wrote. Horn argued six jurors were biased on account of having been in car accidents or having had close friends or relatives die in car accidents. He also argued that one juror made statements about being unsure about his impartiality. The court found no merit in either argument. Horn and his daughter, then 15, were taking Snyder home after attending Sumpter Fest on Memorial Day, May 29, 2017, when he crashed into an Ypsilanti Fire Department truck at the scene of an earlier crash on westbound I-94 near Grove Street. He and his daughter were critically injured in the crash and are still suffering lingering effects of their injuries. Snyder died at the hospital shortly after the crash. Prosecutors argued throughout the trial that Horn was not paying attention to the roadway and the crash would not have happened had he kept his eyes on what was in front of him. The firetruck, which was responding to a rollover crash, was on the freeway for 20 minutes before Horn crashed into it. Evidence collected in the investigation showed Horn was texting his daughters ex-boyfriend before the crash. At 11:01 p.m., 34 seconds before the crash, Horn sent a text to his daughters ex-boyfriend that read, but Ill be hanging out at red rooster in 15 min if U feel like U need to talk. The ex-boyfriend testified during the trial that he and Horn had been arguing through text messages for days, and Horn told him to stay away from his daughter. He believed Horns last text was a threat to fight him. Horn previously attempted to sue the city of Ypsilanti, alleging the trucks lights were off while it blocked a lane for a separate crash when he struck it. Officials disputed the claim that the lights were off, and the case was dismissed without prejudice in August 2018. Additionally, Horn was on parole for armed robbery at the time of the crash. State mandates require Horns sentence not to begin until he has finished his armed robbery sentence. Horn can appeal the decision with the Michigan Supreme Court. He will be eligible for parole again in 2029. More from the Ann Arbor News: Michigan National Guard preparing for armed protest at Capitol Sunday Missing dog retuned home, Airbnb investors may sue city: Ann Arbor top headlines Jan. 9-14 A closer look at $1.4B in projects in Ann Arbors new capital improvement plan Kate Winslet in 2018. KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images In an interview with Marc Maron on his podcast "WTF With Marc Maron," Kate Winslet said she felt "bullied" by the media after her role in "Titanic." Winslet said: "I was subject to a lot of personal physical scrutiny, I was criticized a lot and the British press were quite unkind to me." The Oscar-winning actress said at the time she hoped her fame would pass as a result, but also told Maron that she thinks people "globally" have got a little better at "celebrating real women." Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. Kate Winslet said she felt "bullied" by the media after "Titanic" came out back in 1997, and hoped her fame would pass as a result. The Oscar-winning actress was speaking to Marc Maron on his podcast "WTF With Marc Maron." Winslet had already appeared in several acclaimed movies including Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures" in 1994 and Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility" in 1997, for which she was nominated for best supporting actress. But it was James Cameron's "Titanic" that launched Winslet into new levels of stardom. Winslet, who was only 21 at the time, spoke of this intense experience with Maron, saying she went into "self-protective mode" as soon as the hit movie came out. "It was like night and day from one day to the next. I was subject to a lot of personal physical scrutiny, I was criticized a lot and the British press were quite unkind to me. I felt bullied if I'm honest," Winslet said. "I remember thinking, 'this is horrible and I hope it passes' - it did definitely pass but it made me realize that, if that's what being famous was, I was not ready to be famous, thank you, no, definitely not." Kate Winslet earned an Oscar nomination for best actress for "Titanic." David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images/Paramount Pictures/20th Century Fox "Titanic" went on to become one of the most successful movies of all time, winning 11 Academy Awards, the joint-most of any film ever along with 1959's "Ben-Hur" and, later, 2003's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." The movie was also the highest-grossing movie ever for 12 years after Cameron beat his own movie with "Avatar." Both were eventually overtaken by MCU juggernaut "Avengers: Endgame," leaving "Titanic" third in the all-time rankings with a total of $2.195 billion. Story continues However, the success of the movie brought a level of fame that also gave Winslet a lot of negative attention. Winslet recalled how the press would talk about her as "being different because [she] was bigger than average." "Meanwhile, I was like a size six or whatever, I have no idea. But that stuff was so shocking to me because then I would just push back and say: 'Well, this is just who I am,'" Winslet said. "Well, then I was labelled as being ballsy. Then I was labelled as being headstrong. No, I'm just telling you that I like calves. What's wrong with that?" Winslet also told Maron, however, that she thinks this is an area where "we are doing, globally, a little better - celebrating real women." Winslet said that back in the 1990s when she was labelled "curvy Kate," Hollywood was full of "very, very slender women" in a way "not entirely balanced." Winslet said she thinks this trend has gone slightly now. "I think we're much more able to not comment quite so much, not judge. Back in those days, we were judging, judging, judging all the time." After "Titanic," Winslet went on to star in a slew of indie films, avoiding blockbuster pictures almost altogether until her 2014 "Divergent" role. Before then, she earned more critical praise for performances in movies like 2004's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Finding Neverland," and 2008's"The Reader," for which she won an Oscar after five prior nominations. Winslet also starred in 2011's "Contagion," which she recently warned her friends off of watching during the pandemic. Winslet recently reunited with "Titanic" director James Cameron with a role in the upcoming "Avatar" sequel. Winslet spoke to Maron about her experience on the set, saying she "lost track of how many" sequels Cameron was shooting at once. The actress is currently promoting her new film "Ammonite," in which she plays lovers opposite Saoirse Ronan. Read the original article on Insider Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will pay as much as $190 million for the cleanup and rejuvenation of San Franciscos oldest recreational marina to settle a decades-old legal dispute over pollution from a former coal gasification plant. City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced the settlement Friday afternoon. San Francisco sued PG&E in 2001 over chemical compounds discovered in soils and sediments near the Marina Small Craft Harbor, not far from the site of the former gas plant, which closed nearly 90 years ago. Im pleased that PG&E is finally doing the right thing in this instance and paying to clean up its pollution, Herrera said in a statement. Its unfortunate we had to take them to court and then negotiate for years to get this outcome. But this settlement is going to benefit not only the residents of this area, but all San Franciscans, by increasing opportunities for waterfront recreation. The settlement calls for PG&E to clean up pollution in the East Harbor, located just west of Fort Mason and commonly known as Gashouse Cove; replace failing docks; and help fund projects to improve public access there and at the West Harbor. PG&E will be responsible for up to $190 million of the cleanup and rehabilitation costs, according to the city attorneys office. Depending on the final cost of the work, the city could have to repay a small portion of the overall cost over 30 years. The project will be overseen by the citys Recreation and Park Department. The settlement still needs to be approved by the the citys Recreation and Park Commission and the Board of Supervisors. A PG&E spokesman said the settlement was part of an ongoing discussion with the city to remediate environmental damage and improve recreation and public access. As part of PG&Es commitment to environmental responsibility and public safety, PG&E worked together with city departments and regulatory agencies to address our historical impacts as part of the Citys marina improvement project in the East Harbor, said spokesman Jeff Smith. In the early 1900s, PG&E generated gas for San Francisco customers from coal and oil plants in the Marina and Fishermans Wharf that deposited their waste into the ground and in waters that flowed into San Francisco Bay. The last plants closed at least 89 years ago. But in 2010, two large black rocks in a Marina residents yard were tested by PG&E and found to contain toxic levels of hydrocarbons the type once generated by the power plants. Around the same time, members of the commercial herring fleet were drawing a connection between pollutants from the plants and the decline in the local herring population. In 2018, PG&E settled a lawsuit with the San Francisco Herring Association, which claimed that carbon gases and coal tars from the long-shuttered plants were seeping into the bay and killing herring. The settlement included $4.9 million in payments as well as required monitoring and cleanup. Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan Man Photographed Holding Confederate Flag During US Capitol Breach Charged: DOJ A man who was photographed holding a Confederate Battle flag inside the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 has been charged, the Justice Department announced. A criminal complaint (pdf) has charged Kevin Seefried and Hunter Seefried for their alleged participation in the U.S. Capitol breach last week. Prosecutors alleged that Kevin Seefried was the man who was holding the Confederate flag in a widely circulated photo (pdf). Both men have been charged with one count of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and one count of depredation of government property. Citing video footage, authorities say the pair entered the Senate Building through a broken window. They say shortly afterward Kevin Seefried was photographed holding the flag. The men were part of a larger group who verbally confronted several U.S. Capitol police officers, court documents alleged. The FBI was able to identify the two men after receiving a report by Hunter Seefrieds co-worker, who said the man had bragged about being at the Capitol with his father on Jan. 6. The tipster also confirmed Hunter Seefrieds presence in a photo on a Metropolitan Police Department flier of the breach. The pair confirmed their participation in the events to the FBI in separate interviews on Jan. 12. Kevin Seefried told agents that he brought the Confederate flag to the Capitol from his home in Delaware. He also told agents that Hunter Seefried was asked by an unknown individual to assist with clearing a window, which allowed people to enter the building, court filings said. Over the past week, authorities have been identifying protesters who allegedly participated in the Capitol breach on Jan. 6 when lawmakers were counting electoral votes. Left-wing activists and some protesters waving American and Trump flags illegally stormed the Capitol building. Among the protesters was Black Lives Matter activist John Earle Sullivan. Sullivan, 26, told FBI agents last week that he was at the Capitol during the breach, according to court documents. Sullivan had illegally entered a window and was shooting footage inside the building. Videos also showed Sullivan joining others in breaking the barricade and encouraging other protesters to enter the building, according to authorities. He was charged this week with unlawful entry, disorderly conduct, and attempted obstruction of law enforcement. Other protestors who were arrested include Richard Barnett from Arkansas, who was allegedly photographed sitting with his foot on a desk inside House Speaker Nancy Pelosis office; Derrick Evans, a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates; and Adam Johnson, 36, who apparently appears in a widely circulated photo carrying Pelosis podium. The DOJ said it has opened at least 170 cases linked to the Jan. 6 events and have charged over 70 individuals. Individuals are being charged with various offenses ranging from simple trespass, theft of mail, theft of digital devices, assault on local and federal officers to more serious offenses such as theft of potential national security information or national defense information and felony murder, Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, said during a press conference on Tuesday. The top prosecutor for the district also said that federal prosecutors are working to build seditious and conspiracy charges which carry a maximum prison term of 20 years. The mayhem on the grounds resulted in at least five deaths, including a police officer, and dozens of police officer injuries. The violence at the Capitol has been condemned by President Donald Trump, President-elect Joe Biden, as well as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. The event has sparked various investigations and reviews and prompted officials to ramp up security for the upcoming inauguration on Jan. 20. A mortuary worker transports the body of a COVID-19 victim on a stretcher at the morgue of a hospital in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020. After successfully bringing the daily death count down from over 900 in March to single digits by July, Spain has seen a steady uptick that brought deaths back to over 200 a day this month. With that relapse, the body collectors have returned to making the rounds of hospitals, homes and care facilities. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 2 million Friday, crossing the threshold amid a vaccine rollout so immense but so uneven that in some countries there is real hope of vanquishing the outbreak, while in other, less-developed parts of the world, it seems a far-off dream. The numbing figure was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The number of dead, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It is roughly equivalent to the Cleveland metropolitan area or the entire state of Nebraska. "There's been a terrible amount of death," said Dr. Ashish Jha, a pandemic expert and dean of Brown University's School of Public Health. At the same time, he said, "our scientific community has also done extraordinary work." In wealthy countries including the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already been given some measure of protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed with revolutionary speed and quickly authorized for use. But elsewhere, immunization drives have barely gotten off the ground. Many experts are predicting another year of loss and hardship in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world's deaths. A patient with coronavirus breathes wearing an oxygen mask in an intensive care unit at the hospital in Stryi, western Ukraine, on Tuesday Sep. 29 2020. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million. The milestone was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It took eight months to hit 1 million lives lost. It took less than four months after that to reach the next million. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) "As a country, as a society, as citizens we haven't understood," lamented Israel Gomez, a Mexico City paramedic who spent months shuttling COVID-19 patients around by ambulance, desperately looking for vacant hospital beds. "We have not understood that this is not a game, that this really exists." Mexico, a country of 130 million people, has received just 500,000 doses of vaccine and has put barely half of those into the arms of health care workers. That's in sharp contrast to the situation for its wealthier northern neighbor. Despite early delays, hundreds of thousands of people are rolling up their sleeves every day in the United States, where the virus has killed about 390,000, by far the highest toll of any country. All told, over 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the world, according to the University of Oxford. Corazona Pena's body lies wrapped in plastic by a Peruvian COVID-19 specialized government team in Pucallpa, in Peru's Ucayali region, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million. It took eight months to hit 1 million lives lost. It took less than four months after that to reach the next million. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) While vaccination drives in rich countries have been hamstrung by long lines, inadequate budgets and a patchwork of state and local approaches, the obstacles are far greater in poorer nations, which can have weak health systems, crumbling transportation networks, entrenched corruption and a lack of reliable electricity to keep vaccines cold enough. Also, the majority of the world's COVID-19 vaccine doses have already been snapped up by wealthy countries. COVAX, a U.N.-backed project to supply shots to developing parts of the world, has found itself short of vaccine, money and logistical help. As a result, the World Health Organization's chief scientist warned it is highly unlikely that herd immunitywhich would require at least 70% of the globe to be vaccinatedwill be achieved this year. As the disaster has demonstrated, it is not enough to snuff out the virus in a few places. In this Monday, April 6, 2020, Aurelia reacts next to her husband after he died of a respiratory illness at their home in Barcelona, Spain during a visit by medics. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million. The milestone was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It took eight months to hit 1 million lives lost. It took less than four months after that to reach the next million. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) "Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in a few countries, it's not going to protect people across the world," Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said this week. Health experts fear, too, that if shots are not distributed widely and fast enough, it could give the virus time to mutate and defeat the vaccine"my nightmare scenario," as Jha put it. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the 2 million milestone "has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort." He added: "Science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed." Meanwhile, in Wuhan, where the scourge was discovered in late 2019, a global team of researchers led by WHO arrived Thursday on a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the virus, which is believed to have spread to humans from wild animals. Nurse Ginevra Fattori gets ready before entering the sub-intensive care unit of the San Filippo Neri hospital in Rome, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million. The milestone was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) The Chinese city of 11 million people is bustling again, with few signs it was once the epicenter of the catastrophe, locked down for 76 days, with over 3,800 dead. "We are not fearful or worried as we were in the past," said Qin Qiong, a noodle shop owner. "We now live a normal life. I take the subway every day to come to work in the shop. ... Except for our customers, who have to wear masks, everything else is the same." It took eight months to hit 1 million dead but less than four months after that to reach the next million. While the death toll is based on figures supplied by government agencies around the world, the real number of lives lost to is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of inadequate testing and the many fatalities inaccurately attributed to other causes, especially early in the outbreak. Police clash with protesters in downtown Barcelona, Spain, Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. Clashes have erupted in a central Barcelona square between anti-riot police and hundreds who had gathered to protest the mandatory closure of bars, restaurants and other businesses in the latest effort to rein in on coronavirus outbreaks. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) "What was never on the horizon is that so many of the deaths would be in the richest countries in the world," said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases expert at Britain's University of Exeter. "That the world's richest countries would mismanage so badly is just shocking." In rich and poor countries alike, the crisis has devastated economies, thrown multitudes out of work and plunged many into poverty. In Europe, where more than a quarter of the world's deaths have taken place, strict lockdowns and curfews have been reimposed to beat back a resurgence of the virus, and a new variant that is believed to be more contagious is circulating in Britain and other countries, as well as the U.S. Even in some of the wealthiest countries, the vaccination drives have been slower than expected. France, with the second-largest economy in Europe and more than 69,000 known virus deaths, will need years, not months, to vaccinate its 53 million adults unless it sharply speeds up its rollout, hampered by shortages, red tape and considerable suspicion of the vaccines. A patient infected with COVID-19 is treated in one of the intensive care units (ICU) at the Severo Ochoa hospital in Leganes, outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday, Oct. 9, 2020. Spain has become the first western Europe to accumulate more than 1 million confirmed infections as the country of 47 million inhabitants struggles to contain a resurgence of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) Still, in places like Poissy, a blue-collar town west of Paris, the first shots of the Pfizer formula were met with relief and a sense that there is light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. "We have been living inside for nearly a year. It's not a life," said Maurice Lachkar, a retired 78-year-old acupuncturist who was put on the priority list for vaccination because of his diabetes and his age. "If I catch the virus I am done." Maurice and his wife, Nicole, who also got vaccinated, said they might even allow themselves hugs with their two children and four grandchildren, whom they have seen from a socially safe distance only once or twice since the pandemic hit. "It is going to be liberating," he said. Throughout the developing world, the images are strikingly similar: rows and rows of graves being dug, hospitals pushed to the limit and medical workers dying for lack of protective gear. Cemetery workers carry the remains of 89-year-old Abilio Ribeiro, who died of the new coronavirus, to bury at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. Manaus declared on Jan. 5 a 180-day state of emergency due to a surge of new cases of coronavirus. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros) A woman wearing a face mask asks for alms as people rush to catch the train outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj train terminus in Mumbai, India, Monday, Nov. 9, 2020. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million. The milestone was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It took eight months to hit 1 million lives lost. It took less than four months after that to reach the next million. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) A nurse rests her knees on the floor as she looks at a computer screen during the day shift at the COVID-19 ICU of the La Timone hospital in Marseille, southern France, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole) Residents, some wearing masks, ride on a ferry in Wuhan on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million. The milestone was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It took eight months to hit 1 million lives lost. It took less than four months after that to reach the next million. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) A medic works with corona patients in a hospital in Idlib, Syria, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020. At one of two coronavirus hospitals in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province, overwhelmed medical staff tend to patients drifting in and out of consciousness. As confirmed case numbers rise to as many as 500 a day, so does the demand for beds in the intensive care ward (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed) Medical workers and patients are seen in the treatment hall of a temporary hospital for coronavirus patients in the Krylatskoye Ice Palace in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020. The resurgence of the outbreak has swept the Russia since September, with the number of daily new cases spiking from roughly 5,000 in early September to over 22,000 this week. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin) Vivian Zayas holds onto the walker once belonging to her recently deceased mother Ana Martinez while her family prays before Thanksgiving dinner, Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020, in Deer Park, N.Y. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million. The milestone was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It took eight months to hit 1 million lives lost. It took less than four months after that to reach the next million. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Wearing masks and plastic gloves amid the spread of the new coronavirus, girls raise her hands during class in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Nov. 2, 2020. Tens of thousands of school children returned to class Monday in Havana for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic prompted authorities to shut the island down in April. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) Head nurse Mirco Perruzza, right, and nurse Edoardo Lucci help a patient with coronavirus to wear a CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) helmet in the ICU of the ICC Casalpalocco COVID-19 spoke hospital in Rome, Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis) In Peru, which has the highest COVID-19 fatality rate in Latin America, hundreds of health care workers went on strike this week to demand better pay and working conditions in a country where 230 doctors have died of the disease. In Brazil, authorities in the Amazon rainforest's biggest city planned to transfer hundreds of patients out because of a dwindling supply of oxygen tanks that has resulted in some people dying at home. In Honduras, anesthesiologist Dr. Cesar Umana is treating 25 patients in their homes by phone because hospitals lack the capacity and equipment. "This is complete chaos," he said. Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. EAST LANSING, Mich., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Michigan State University Foundation announced today that it is one of the recipients of the Tibbetts Awards given by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). A non-profit organization, the MSU Foundation's mission supports research, entrepreneurship, economic development, and placemaking activities at Michigan State University (MSU) and beyond. The Tibbetts Award 2020 honors outstanding small businesses and individuals who participate in the SBA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Named after Roland Tibbetts, selected organizations and individuals from across the United States receive the award based on promise and models of excellence in high technology. "We place a very strong emphasis on startup companies that we're helping seek SBIR/STTR funding to help bring new technologies to market," said MSU Foundation Executive Director, David Washburn. "We've put resources in place to ensure our entities can compete for and win these awards to help advance the science." The MSU Foundation is made up of four entities: Spartan Innovations, Red Cedar Ventures, Michigan Rise, and University Corporate Research Park (UCRP). Spartan Innovations drives venture creation by working directly with entrepreneurs to develop their ideas, create business plans, and successfully launch highly technical businesses. "Our team has been instrumental in supporting high-tech, small businesses originating from MSU," said Dr. Brad Fingland, Director of Venture Creation, Spartan Innovations. "Since 2018, our startups have won 20 SBIR/STTR awards for a total of $6.6 million." "One example of a higher impact activity is our Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program," said Dr. Fingland. "These entrepreneurs' author and oftentimes act as principal investigators in proposals. A recent EIR success story is Dr. Keith Evans, former EIR and current CEO at Great Lakes Crystal Technologies, who was essential in winning five SBIR/STTRs as an EIR." The Tibbetts Award is presented to those who have leveraged SBIR/STTR investment or as is the case for the MSU Foundation helped others do so, generating measurable impact that demonstrates the spirit and mission if SBIR/STTR programs. MSU Foundation's focus on technology commercialization and economic development have been essential in strengthening the role a SBIR/STTR has in building successful small businesses. "The SBIR/STTR program is a foundational tool in our efforts to bring groundbreaking technologies from the laboratory to market," said Washburn. "We are thankful to be included as one of the recipients of the prestigious Tibbetts Award." About the Michigan State University Foundation Established in 1973 as an independent non-profit, the Michigan State University Foundation is committed to the commercialization of cutting-edge technologies invented by MSU faculty, staff, and students. The MSU Foundation's overarching goal is to support research, innovation, and entrepreneurship at the University. Additionally, the MSU Foundation operates Spartan Innovations, Red Cedar Ventures, Michigan Rise, and the University Corporate Research Park. More information on the organization's notable achievements, services, leadership, and history are available at www.msufoundation.org . SOURCE Michigan State University Foundation Related Links https://www.msufoundation.org DUSHANBE -- Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have resumed air flights that were suspended in mid-March last year because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The director of Tajikistan's Agency of Civil Aviation, Ikrom Subhonzoda, said on January 15 that the decision was made by the governments center for the prevention of the spread of the coronavirus in coordination with the Uzbek side. According to Subhonzoda, Uzbekistan Airways Company will operate one return flight between Tashkent and Dushanbe each Wednesday, while Tajikistan's Somon Air will run one flight connecting the two capitals every Friday. Subhonzoda added that all passengers travelling from Dushanbe to Tashkent and back must have a negative COVID-19 test result not older than 72 hours before the flight. Passengers must also wear masks and gloves during flights. With reporting by Khovar The White-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari is a boar-like hoofed mammal found throughout Central and South America. These animals roam the forest in bands of 50 to 100 individuals, eating a wide variety of foods. In Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, they prefer the fruit of the jussara palm Euterpe edulis. The jussara is very abundant in this biome, probably thanks to vast amounts of dung, urine, and soil trampling by peccaries as well as tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) and other fruit-eating animals, or frugivores. This behavior releases forms of nitrogen, a key element in plant growth. A study supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP and published in the journal Functional Ecology showed that in areas free of these frugivores the level of ammonium, a form of nitrogen in soil, was up to 95% lower. The findings evidence for the first time the importance of these animals to the nitrogen cycle and serve as yet another warning of the ecosystem losses caused when large mammals disappear from tropical forests. "Any farmer knows how crucial the nitrogen cycle is to achieve high crop yields. Studies in other environments have already shown that the presence of ruminants stimulates the growth of grasses thanks to the effect of their excretions on the nitrogen cycle, including optimization of microorganism activity. Our latest study has now shown that large fruit-eating mammals provide the same service in tropical forests," said Nacho Villar, first author of the article. Villar is a researcher affiliated with Sao Paulo State University's Institute of Biosciences (IB-UNESP) in Rio Claro, Brazil. Currently he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). The study also shows that these animals redistribute nitrogen, fertilizing areas that would otherwise be nutrient-poor, and hence sustain plant growth. According to the researchers' estimates, such areas receive four times more ammonium and 50 times more nitrate than areas without frugivores. The study was part of the Thematic Project "Ecological consequences of defaunation in the Atlantic Rainforest", for which the principal investigator was Mauro Galetti, a professor at IB-UNESP, and was conducted under the auspices of FAPESP's Research Program on Biodiversity Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use (BIOTA-FAPESP)). The researchers used South America's leading herbivore exclosure experiment, comprising 86 forest plots measuring 15 square meters in Serra do Mar State Park (Sao Paulo State), Brazil's largest continuous Atlantic Rainforest reserve. Half the plots have been fenced since 2010 to prevent the entry of large mammals. All animals can roam freely into and out of the other plots. Camera traps on fenced and open plots demonstrated the presence or absence of White-lipped peccaries, Collared peccaries (Pecari tajacu) and tapirs, among other frugivores. Microorganisms, ammonium and nitrate In this study, the researchers analyzed soil samples from eight exclusion plots and their paired open controls, collected in the wet and dry seasons. Jussara palm abundance varied across the different plots. In soil from open plots, ammonium levels were 95% higher, and rates of nitrification (conversion of ammonium to nitrate) were also higher owing to the frugivore-driven abundance of microorganisms in the soil. Although plants absorb ammonium, their metabolism can immediately use nitrate, which is therefore considered more valuable in terms of plant growth. "Peccaries account for 80% to 90% of the total mammal biomass in the Atlantic Rainforest. Large groups of these animals roam extensive territories, fertilizing the forest," Villar said. "Tapir density is lower, so their contribution to the nitrogen cycle isn't as great, but the amount excreted by each individual is considerable, as is each animal's range as it disperses seeds." Another study by the same group had already shown how peccaries and tapirs contribute to plant species diversity and abundance (read more at: https:/ / agencia. fapesp. br/ 31840 ). This large frugivore biomass is attracted by the vast amount of fruit from jussara palms, whose abundance is due to fertilization of the soil by the animals' excretions (which also probably increase the palms' fruit-bearing capacity). The outcome is a virtuous cycle for animals, plants and soil microorganisms (also stimulated by the excretions), leading the researchers to propose the term "fruiting lawns" as a description of such areas. The term is considered analogous to the concept of grazing lawns, which refers to the positive feedback between ruminant food consumption and food availability in African savannas and other grassland landscapes. The next steps in the group's research will include investigating whether the increase in nitrogen due to plants' interaction with large mammals boosts their carbon absorption and reduces the release of greenhouse gases from the soil. If so, plant-animal interaction should play a major role in regulating global climate change. ### About Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) Ukraine calls on Swedens OSCE Chair to pay special attention to human rights violations in Crimea and the occupied areas of Donbas, which have turned into a "territory of lawlessness." Ambassador Yevhenii Tsymbaliuk, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the International Organizations in Vienna, made a corresponding statement at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting on January 14. Every week, in the meetings of the Permanent Council, we inform participating States on the ongoing abuses of human rights and fundamental freedoms by aggressor state in Crimea and parts of Donbas. These areas were transformed into a territory of lawlessness, including forced imposition of Russian citizenship, violence, torture, persecutions, humiliation of human dignity and illegal detention of political prisoners, Tsymbaliuk said in response to presentation of Swedens priorities in the OSCE for 2021. Ambassador Tsymbaliuk drew attention to the severe economic, social and environmental hardships, faced by Ukrainian citizens forced to live under Russias temporary occupation. The number of IDPs in Ukraine, the number of those who directly suffered from the armed hostilities brought by the Russian aggression, and the number of Russian citizens illegally transferred to the occupied parts of Ukraine, runs into the hundreds of thousands, he said. Ukraines Permanent Representative stressed that the scale and multifaceted character of these security challenges requires the full involvement of the OSCE and its structures under the guidance and leadership of the Swedish Chairpersonship. Defending European security order, one of your top three priorities, definitely starts with Ukraine, the territorial integrity and sovereignty of which was flagrantly violated seven years ago by the Russian Federation. The temporary occupation and attempted annexation of parts of Ukraines territory remain the most severe challenge to the security architecture in Europe, Tsymbaliuk said, addressing OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden Ann Linde. As reported, Sweden took over the OSCE Chair on January 1. ol 1. Yes. The public must have assurances that ethical standards are met by everyone. 2. Yes. As long as an independent board hears the grievances, its a worthwhile idea. 3. No. The concept is too broad. It should be limited to the citys elected officials. 4. No. There are plenty of stipulations in place already. An ordinance is a waste of time. 5. Unsure. Its hard to say without seeing how it would be structured and applied. Vote View Results Rachel Rodriguez of San Antonio, Texas was arrested for allegedly operating a massive ballot harvesting scheme. Authorities discovered this after undercover video footage showed her committing illicit activities such as election fraud. Breitbart News reported that aside from election fraud, Rodriguez was also charged with illegal voting, unlawful possession of an official ballot, and unlawfully assisting people voting by mail. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced her arrest this week. Under Texas law, those unlawful acts are felony charges and could result in a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Paxton noted that many continue to claim that there is no such thing as election fraud. "We've always known that such a claim is false and misleading, and today we have additional hard evidence," Paxton said in the report. According to Paxton, this is a victory for election integrity, and a strong signal that anyone who attempts to defraud the people of Texas, deprive their vote, and undermine the integrity of elections will be brought to justice. Two videos caught Rodriguez operating a massive ballot harvesting scheme. Watchdog group Project Veritas released the footage. In one video, Rodriguez acknowledged that what she was doing is illegal and could go to jail for it. Rodriguez reportedly claimed to be working with elected state and county officials in forcing voters and voting on behalf of people. The Texas Attorney General's office released a statement saying that they are fiercely committed to ensuring the voting process is secure and fair throughout the state. Paxton added that his office is prepared to assist any Texas county in combating this un-American form of fraud. Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams lauded Rodriguez's arrest, saying that Texas is leading the nation in effective ballot harvesting investigations. Paxton said that the investigation into the scheme case is ongoing. He encouraged people involved with or who knows the operation to come forward. Related story: Trump Says 'Biden Can't Be President' If Election Fraud Is Real Election Fraud Claims Republican donors were reported to use a dark-money group. According to a CNBC report, it means a group was used to funnel millions of dollars to high-profile conservative organizations that pushed or investigated election fraud claims before and after President Donald Trump was defeated by Joe Biden. President Donald Trump and his team earlier made allegations of election fraud upon losing to Biden. Meanwhile, well-known lawyers who supported Trump's claims of election fraud are now facing serious legal and financial problems of their own, according to a former Department of Justice lawyers and legal experts. The Guardian reported that Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who helped fuel Trump's baseless charges of election fraud and gave a provocative talk to the Trump rally right before the march on the U.S. Capitol started, could be entangled in a federal investigation of the attack and is facing a disbarment complaint. Pro-Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Cleta Mitchell had also been struck with a defamation lawsuit for making false claims. Giuliani earlier said in the Save America rally in D.C. before the Capitol attack that he's willing to stake his reputation on the fact that they are going "to find criminality there." He also said, "Let's have trial by combat." Last year, it was reported that Giuliani had discussions with Trump about a presidential pardon that seems connected to another federal inquiry in New York of whether he violated foreign lobbying disclosure laws while in Ukraine digging for Biden's dirt. A former GOP house member said there is no doubt that Giuliani is seeking a pardon. Last week, two House Democrats asked the New York State Bar Association to investigate Giuliani for his call for "trial by combat." Read also: No Proof of Systematic Fraud in 2020 US Elections, Report Shows STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- New York Citys middle and high schools, which remain closed due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, could reopen before the end of the school year, according to a new report by PIX11 News. On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed a glimmer of hope that the citys older students could return to the classroom before June, with New Yorks educators now eligible for the coronavirus vaccine. Since New York City teachers became eligible for the vaccine on Monday as part of priority group 1b, over 17,000 teachers have signed up to receive the shot, according to the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). While failing to provide specific criteria for when middle and high school students might be able to return to the classroom, the mayor said that the city will continue to assess the public health risks and consider reopening school buildings. If we have a very different health-care situation, we are going to re-evaluate everything and offer people to come back who have been doing remote, but we are not there yet, de Blasio told PIX11 News. City Councilman Mark Treyger, chairman of the Education Committee, said that its not just about getting people vaccinated, but also about ensuring that there is enough staff to handle kids returning to the classroom. I think that thats one of the biggest reasons why middle and high schools arent open, is because of the staffing issue, Treyger told PIX11 News. ABOUT SCHOOL CLOSURES Schools across the city were closed temporarily on Nov. 19 after the coronavirus positivity rate surpassed 3% over a seven-day rolling average citywide, the threshold de Blasio said would trigger a shutdown of all city public schools. Elementary schools, preschools and District 75 schools, which teach special education students, reopened in December with increased coronavirus (COVID-19) testing. As of Wednesday, a total of 878 New York City public schools were open, with 247 of them offering five-day-a-week in-person instruction at buildings. That means they have effectively gone back to normal for the students who signed up for in-person instruction, de Blasio said Wednesday. Now, to put that in perspective, that number of schools, that alone, those 247 schools would constitute alone the eighth largest school district in America. Thats the magnitude of whats been achieved here in terms of returning to five-day-a-week instruction. And we want to build on that. It remains unclear when middle and high schools will reopen, though the mayor has indicated it could happen before the end of the school year. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. Employees of Glossy Bay Construction Ltd. and Gloss Bay Marina in Canouan, who are returning to that Grenadine island from any other part of the state, will now have to enter a 10-day period of quarantine. This is the recently enforced directive from both companies in what they say is an effort aimed at safeguarding the health of all employees and guests, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Any worker leaving the island for whatever reason and irrespective of the period spent off island, is obligated to quarantine for ten days prior to returning to work. The 10-day period is to be counted as unpaid leave unless an employee applies it against accrued vacation leave, and neither can it be applied as sick/medical leave. Interestingly, and according to a memo circulated to employees, if a rerunning employee has a roommate, that person will also be required to quarantine. Employees have also been advised to make arrangements to have visitors abode at accommodation separate from theirs, and that if they should come into contact before tens day, they will have to quarantine. The company has also directed all staff that on returning to the island, they should contact a (named) doctor to have a COVID-19 test administered. Before they enter quarantine. On day five of the quarantine, they are to contact the doctor to have a second test and arrange to have another test on day ten, before they are given the all clear to return to work. In addition to the quarantine directive, the Companies have implemented mandatory wearing of masks by all employees while on the compounds, especially when interacting with guest; on all company vehicle and whenever they leave the compound of any one of the companies. Needless to say, some employees have questioned whether the quarantine and conditions attached are legal. Efforts to speak with someone in authority to ascertain how the regulations were working, proved unsuccessful. SIOUX CITY, Iowa A Wright County man is headed to federal prison over meth and gun crimes. Bobby Hernandez, 50 of Eagle Grove, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. The U.S. Attorneys Office says Hernandez distributed at least 750 grams in the Eagle Grove and Wright County areas between January 2017 and October 2019. On April 29, 2019, Hernandez was arrested in Webster County on April 29, 2019 for a probation violation. At the time of this arrest, officers seized over 7 grams of methamphetamine. Prosecutors say Hernandez also distributed over 6 grams of methamphetamine on two occasions in June and August of 2019 to individuals cooperating with law enforcement. He was arrested again on August 15, 2019, in Fort Dodge on an outstanding warrant. During the arrest, officers seized a bag under the car seat where Hernandez had been sitting. The bag contained small quantities of methamphetamine and heroin, and a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol with a homemade silencer affixed to the barrel. Hernandez has now been sentenced to 12 years and eight months in federal prison, followed by four years of supervised release. The case was investigated by the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement, Wright County Sheriffs Office, Eagle Grove Police Department, Fort Dodge Police Department, and Iowa DCI. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Four members of the Olongapo City police force were arrested during a raid at a clandestine shabu laboratory inside the Subic Bay Freeport on Friday. A police report said Police Lieutenant Reynato Basa Jr. and Police Corporals Gino dela Cruz, Edesyr Victor Alipio, and Godfrey Duclayan Parentela were caught during a buy-bust operation in the underground drug laboratory. At least 300 grams of suspected shabu were confiscated, along with equipment used to manufacture drugs. Philippine National Police Chief Debold Sinas wants stiff criminal and administrative penalties against the four cops. He ordered their restrictive custody to ensure their availability during investigations. Sinas also ordered all personnel of the Olongapo City Police Office to undergo drug testing. The talks with Russia on the second batch of S-400s continue as planned and no country can determine Turkey's moves on defense, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. "We don't know what the incoming Biden administration would say but we're not in a position to ask for permission," Erdogan told reporters, as he reiterated Turkey's determination to proceed with the S-400 deal despite U.S. opposition. He noted that Turkey will hold talks with Russia regarding the second batch of the S-400s by the end of January. "We are a NATO member and will not accept any fellow members to shape our policy," Erdogan said, as he noted that the U.S. has failed to give Turkey the F-35s even though Ankara had paid for them already. Referring to the U.S.s failure to give the F-35s a "mistake," Erdogan said he hopes the incoming Biden administration will take positive steps in this regard. Meanwhile, regarding Turkeys relations with the EU, Erdogan said Turkey has been trying its best to keep relations favorable, Daily Sabah reported. The development of a COVID-19 vaccine with 90-plus percent efficacy in under a year is a miracle. The glorious medical nerds really scienced the hell out of this thing and as a result, theres a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, it still might be a train. The lack of anything resembling a national distribution plan has led to individual states each devising their own plans for getting shots into arms. This is the pandemic equivalent of Trump flying down to Puerto Rico to lob paper towels at the crowd.miss every vaccination benchmark. I think we can all agree that front line workers and first responders should be given priority, but at a certain point you need to get shots into arms. Keep it simple. Send teams into hospitals and nursing homes and start injecting. Got doses left over? Fantastic, vaccinate the pizza guy, the mail carrier or anybody else walking by. Teachers and anybody over 65 next, but also the delivery drivers and anybody else in your field of vision. Get rid of the ponderous online eligibility forms that require senior citizens to fill out multi page questionnaires and start vaccinating until the doses are gone. Create as many dead ends for this virus as we can. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. 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. The World Health Organization's director-general said Friday he wanted Covid-19 vaccination campaigns taking place in every nation across the globe within the next 100 days. "I want to see vaccination under way in every country in the next 100 days so that health workers and those at high risk are protected first," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva. Meanwhile, European governments said the credibility of their vaccination programmes was at risk on Friday after U.S. pharmaceutical firm Pfizer announced a temporary slowdown of deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccines. Shots developed by Pfizer with its German partner BioNTech began being delivered in the EU at the end of December, but around nine of the 27 EU governments complained of "insufficient" doses at a meeting this week, a participant said. Turkey's health ministry data showed that it has vaccinated more than 600,000 people in the first two days of administering COVID-19 shots developed by China's Sinovac, among the speediest rollouts globally. Britain recorded 55,761 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, an increase on the 48,682 cases recorded the previous day, as the number of infections rises despite hopes that lockdowns across the country could start to help push rates down. (With Reuters inputs) More than 4,000 delegates to the 13th National Party Congress will be tested for COVID-19 twice from January 18-23. Medical practice before the 13th National Party Congress. Photo: Pham Hai The information was revealed by Director of the Hanoi municipal Health Department Nguyen Khac Hien during an online meeting on January 14. The meeting was chaired by Vice Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee and head of the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control Chu Xuan Dung. Hanoi has gone through 150 consecutive days without new local transmissions, adding that districts and communes enhanced inspection and punished those who violated regulations on pandemic prevention and control, Deputy Director of the municipal Health Department Hoang Duc Hanh said. Vice Commander of the Hanoi Capital High Command Maj. Gen. Do Thai Son expressed his concern over the complicated developments of illegal entries into the country in recent times, asking the city to direct units to thoroughly review concentrated quarantine facilities and strictly comply with regulations in the regard. The Vietnam Fatherland Front chapters, mass organisations and residential areas were also urged to promptly discover illegal entries as the Lunar New Year is drawing near. Concluding the event, Dung warned of the high risk of the virus resurgence in the community. He reminded districts, communes, townships to raise public awareness of prevention and control measures as recommended by the Health Ministry. He simultaneously ordered to strictly crack down on those breaching the rules on the COVID-19 prevention and control such as not wearing face masks in public places. The 13th National Party Congress is scheduled to take place in Hanoi from January 25 to February 2. Aviation security control tightened to serve 13th National Party Congress Passengers receive securiy check before handling boarding procedures The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) on January 14 requested aviation security control be raised to Level 1 before, during and after the 13th National Party Congress. Accordingly, aviation security control measures will be enhanced at all units in the sector, including airport authorities, airports, aviation service providers, air traffic service suppliers, Vietnamese airlines, and foreign carriers operating in Vietnam. They will have to increase personnel for aviation security control; examine and supplement equipment, weapons, and support tools; and thoroughly prepare response plans for any circumstance. In particular, relevant forces will apply various security control measures such as increasing visual inspection, random check, and screening by explosive detection devices so as to opportunely uncover abnormal acts and prevent unexpected incidents, thus ensuring absolute aviation security and safety for the 13th National Party Congress. The 13th National Party Congress is scheduled to take place in Hanoi from January 25 to February 2. Under current regulations, when there are high risks to aviation security, security control measures will be tightened according to three levels. Level 1 is applied in case of nationally important socio-political events or complicated situation of political security and social order./.VNA Thanh Nam Press centre for 13th National Party Congress to open on January 22 A press centre for the 13th National Party Congress is to be opened at the National Convention Centre in Hanoi on January 22. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan The National Council for Women (NCW) along with Egypt National Railways (ENR) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) put their hands together to make Egypts railway network safer for female passengers. The trio agreed to launch an awareness campaign against sexual harassment on public transport in particular and violence against women in general. Safaa Habib, NCWs political coordinator, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Al-Sekka Aman (Railway is Safe) campaign includes billboards and promotional videos on social media platforms that will be used on the busiest train routes. The campaign which has already started is assigning volunteers who will inform the public about the campaign and its goals. In addition, passengers will be informed via different social media platforms on how to contribute to a more open dialogue about safe transport in Egypt, Habib said. According to Habib, the ENR has set up hotline 15047 and [email protected] to report any harassment incident against females while travelling via the railway network. The hotline is connected to the railways police officers who will receive the report and take the necessary legal action against the harasser. The campaign also informs women how to report any harassment incident and follow up on it. Until now 11 posters have been distributed to railway passengers and employees raising their awareness about gender equality as well as the legal consequences of sexual harassment, Habib said. Habib pointed out that the campaign educates a wide range of citizens with a variety of social and economic backgrounds on the campaigns messages which contributes to spreading awareness of womens issues. The NCW has excellent experience in a previous media campaign which took place in the underground metro where it increased peoples awareness about family planning issues, sexual harassment, the harm done from early marriage and participation in work. ENR is the second oldest railway company in the world and is considered one of the major daily transportation means for passengers in Egypt, with about 1.2 million passenger journeys per day. By improving safety on trains and platforms, ENR Chairman Ashraf Raslan expects the number of women travelling on its network to increase from 16.8 per cent in 2015 to 19.8 per cent in 2022. According to a press release, EBRD has donated more than 400 million to strengthen safety and security on public transport and to promote gender equality by renewing its ageing fleet and improving the safety and quality of railway passenger services. Hoda Gado, an employee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, noted that the campaign is an excellent initiative during these difficult days. This will encourage me to travel more often by train to my parents instead of by car. I have to travel almost every day to check on my parents in Banha, Gado said. Mona Ahmed, a university student who lives in Alexandria and commutes to Cairo to attend her classes, said she had heard about the campaign from her friends. Though I never had a problem with travelling by train and I never experienced any sexual harassment while travelling, I believe it is a good step towards the protection of women against any violation of their rights and privacy, Ahmed said. *A version of this article appears in print in the 14 January, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly. Short link: 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. KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Swaggerty Sausage Company, for the eighth consecutive year, receives the highest possible grade from BRC Food Safety auditors. From 2015 to 2020, Swaggerty's grade has been AA, with top grades of A received in 2013 and 2014. BRC is a globally recognized consumer protection organization used by more than 29,000 certified suppliers in over 130 countries, and BRC Food Safety audits are considered the "gold standard." A focus on quality for food safety has been a tradition with Swaggerty's for the last ninety years, since Lonas Swaggerty founded the company in 1930. The tradition continues in his honor, evidenced in these recent high marks for the quality department, skilled experts, and tenured workforce of this 3rd generation, American-family-owned and operated company. Quality assurance programs, certifications, and training by specialized food safety organizations like HACCP, PAACO, and Pork Checkoff serve to maintain best-in-class safety practices and assurances for brands like Swaggerty's. This highest possible grade in international food safety standards indicates to shoppers, retailers, and fans of Swaggerty's around the US that Swaggerty's maintains a steadfast focus on food safety through quality assurance and many other programs. Information about Swaggerty's Farm premium pork sausage, including recipes or where to shop, can be found on their website at http://www.swaggertys.com. And read about the benefits of the "gold standard" here: https://www.brcgs.com/our-standards/food-safety/benefits/ About Swaggerty's Farm: Since 1930, the Swaggerty Family has been making what is quite possibly the best pork sausage you'll ever taste. Today Swaggerty Sausage Company, Inc. is a modern USDA inspected processing facility still located in the same small valley and operated by the third generation of the Swaggerty's Family. Swaggerty's premium sausage products are now shipped nationwide and available in over 10,000 retail grocers, wholesale distributors, and foodservice establishments. Photos: https://www.prlog.org/12854145 Press release distributed by PRLog SOURCE Swaggerty Farms Related Links http://www.swaggertys.com 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 Farmers unions-SC appointed panel to meet on January 19 India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: The Supreme Court-appointed panel on farm laws is likely to hold its first meeting on January 19 at Pusa campus here, one of its members Anil Ghanwat said on Thursday and asserted the committee will have no "ego or prestige issue" if it has to go to farmers' protest sites to talk to them. The panel members were scheduled to have a virtual interaction earlier in the day to discuss its future course of action, but it could not take place after ex-MP and farmer leader Bhupinder Singh Mann recused himself from the committee. The existing members can hold their virtual interaction on Friday now, Ghanwat said, while asserting that he will not leave the committee unless asked by the apex court and he does not expect any other member to recuse. Farmers doubtful even as Centre willing to hold next round of talks On January 11, the apex court had appointed a four-member committee to look into the new farm laws against which the farmers, especially from Punjab, Haryana and parts of Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at Delhi borders for over 40 days. "The first sitting will have to be held before January 20. It will be held with existing members. Most probably, the meeting will be on January 19 in Pusa campus," Ghanwat told PTI in an interview. Asked if the committee will continue to function with existing members, he said, "The existing three-member committee will function unless the Supreme Court gives a direction to add one more member." Ghanwat is the President of the Maharashtra-based farm organisation Shetkari Sanghatana. Asked about the scheduled virtual meeting of panel members, he said, "Since Mann recused himself from the committee, the meeting could not take place. It can take place tomorrow." In the virtual interaction, the panel members were to decide about convening the first meeting before January 20 and the terms of reference among others. On the possibility of other members resigning from the panel, Ghanwat said, "I have been appointed by the Supreme Court. Till the apex court asks me to level, I will not leave the committee. I don't think other members will recuse. But everyone has their own opinion and is free to act as per their will." On some protesting farmer unions alleging that the committee members were all supporters of farm laws, Ghanwat said, "I don't know on what parameters the Supreme court has chosen us. It must have seen our track record. I respect their decision." He also thanked the protesting farmers that it was due to their agitation that agriculture is being discussed at such a level for the first time, else farmers were always taken for granted. "Because of them, there is an opportunity to frame a good law. I feel blessed that I have got an opportunity to work," he added. On the government holding parallel talks with protesting farmers, scheduled for January 15, after the SC appointed the panel, Ghanwat said, "I think this will be their last meeting with the government. They will say henceforth you (farmers) have to sit with the committee, which will give a report to the Supreme Court." Farmers protest: Delhi borders with Haryana, Uttar Pradesh continue to see restrictions Asked about protesting farmers' unwillingness to take part in the committee proceedings, he said, "We will go before them. We are their brothers. We have worked together in the past. We will reach out to them, sit with them and discuss the issue. There is no problem." Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News He further said, "We are neither scared nor we will feel ashamed to go to them for talks. There is no prestige issue. I have been working my entire life for farmers' welfare. Those sitting on protest have also sacrificed their lives for farmers' sake. If our intention and goal is one, then there is no issue of ego or prestige." Asked if there will be a fair hearing, he said, "Of course. Our duty is to listen to their demands and place it before the Supreme Court. Suggestions will be given on how their demands can be met. We will try our best to satisfy them and we will not allow them to feel they have been fooled. In the course of the discussion, I am confident that protesting farmers will say -- implement these laws." A Foreign Office countryside estate that hosts high-level discussions about global security was besieged by a cyber attack last month. Hackers targeted Wilton Park, a government agency operating out of a 16th century mansion in West Sussex, it was revealed tonight. There is no evidence they stole any data but the outpost's security operation is being stepped up. Sources said that the National Cyber Security Centre was called in to help investigate following the breach. Hackers targeted Wilton Park, a government agency operating out of a 16th century mansion in West Sussex, it was revealed tonight It is understood the attack is not connected to the devastating cyber attack on the Solar Winds Orion software, which US officials pin on Russian hackers. The Foreign Office has not commented on any suspects of its investigation, but tonight confirmed the breach, which was first reported by The Sun. A Government spokesperson said: 'We take data security very seriously. There is no evidence at this stage that data has been taken following a cyber incident at Wilton Park.' Officials stressed that Wilton Park's computer system is less secure than the Foreign Office's IT, which holds classified information. However it is understood Wilton Park's cyber defences will be upgraded in light of the hack. There is no evidence hackers stole any data but the outpost's security operation is being stepped up (stock image) Based in an imposing countryside house looming over the 6,000 acres of the South Downs National Park, Wilton Park is used for forums with political, diplomatic and business leaders. It was established in 1946 and takes its name from the Wilton Park estate in Buckinghamshire, which was used as a Prisoner of War camp during World War II. The government describes Wilton Park as 'a global forum for strategic discussion'. 'It organises over 50 events a year in the UK and overseas, bringing together leading representatives from the worlds of politics, business, academia, diplomacy, civil society and media.' New Jersey health officials reported 5,490 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 67 additional deaths on Friday as vaccination locations reported a huge surge in appointments with the eligibility expansion that started a day earlier. Gov. Phil Murphy provided the latest update Friday afternoon after touring the states third vaccination mega site to open. The site at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center in Edison is among six total planned. More than 310,000 people have been vaccinated in New Jersey so far. We are ready to move forward with an aggressive expansion of our vaccination efforts, Murphy said. We just need the supply from the feds to meet the demand. We are ready, they are not. There were 3,543 patients hospitalized in New Jersey with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases as of Thursday night. Thats 96 fewer than the previous night and the second consecutive the number of people hospitalized dropped. The state of 9 million residents has now lost 20,320 residents in the COVID-19 outbreak 18,229 confirmed deaths and 2,091 considered probable. New Jersey has already announced 1,130 confirmed deaths this month, following 1,890 in December. New has now reported 555,299 total confirmed cases out of more than 8.6 million tests administered since officials announced the states first case March 4. There have also been 60,787 positive rapid antigen tests, which the state began reporting publicly last week, though the state has cautioned that could overlap with the confirmed PCR tests. The statewide rate of COVID-19 transmission remained increased slightly Friday to 1.11, up from 1.10 a day earlier. A transmission rate over 1 indicates the outbreak is expanding. The seven-day average for new confirmed cases is 5,587, up 15% from a week ago and 18% from a month ago. The positivity rate for tests administered on Monday, the most recent day available, was 9.63% out of 70,055 tests. The positivity rate had been at 10% or higher since Dec. 22. New Jerseys top health official warned Wednesday the state is preparing for a surge in hospitalizations from the latest spike cases that could come as soon as next week and may trigger a new round of restrictions, particularly with elective surgeries. While hospitalizations have remained between 3,500 and 3,900 for weeks, far below the more than 8,000 peak in the spring, Department of Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said that hospital officials are concerned about the weeks ahead due to available staffing. We are preparing for the predictive surge that may start as early as next week into the middle of February, Persichilli said Wednesday. What we will not have is the appropriate level of staffing that people are familiar with, conventional staffing, she said. So we will be working with our hospitals if they need to progress to what we call contingency staffing, and hopefully never crisis staffing. Murphy has warned that hospitalizations above 5,000 patients would likely trigger some new restrictions particularly on elective surgeries, which include procedures like removing tumors. Hospitalizations as of 1/13/21 CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage VACCINATIONS More than 310,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered in the state as of Friday, according to the states COVID-19 dashboard. Of those, 273,335 were the first of two doses people will receive, while 35,512 were the second, according to the dashboard. The single-day high so far was Jan. 8, when 24,482 doses were administered, according to the state. New Jersey has averaged about 9,500 shots a day through the first 30 days of the program, including Christmas Day when no doses were administered. The state has been averaging about 17,000 shots a day over the last seven days, state records show. The state has faced criticism for rolling out inoculations too slowly. Officials stress there may be an undercounting of the number of vaccines administered because of reporting delays and New Jersey, like other states, is depending on the federal government for its supply. Murphy announced Wednesday people over 65 years old, as well as people with chronic health conditions and smokers are now eligible to get vaccinations. Officials have said doses should be available for the general public by April or May. Health officials have said they hope to vaccinate 70% of its adult residents about 4.7 million people by the end of May. In recent days, the state has opened the first two of its six planned mega-sites for mass vaccinations. There are also vaccines currently available at 130 locations throughout the state, including local health departments, ShopRite stores, and pharmacies. More than 1.5 million people have registered to get their vaccine. VACCINE DOSES ADMINISTERED BY COUNTY ATLANTIC COUNTY - 10,811 doses administered BERGEN COUNTY - 34,325 doses administered BURLINGTON COUNTY - 15,038 doses administered CAMDEN COUNTY - 17,465 doses administered CAPE MAY COUNTY - 4,535 doses administered CUMBERLAND COUNTY - 4,477 doses administered ESSEX COUNTY - 25,037 doses administered GLOUCESTER COUNTY - 13,033 doses administered HUDSON COUNTY - 11,033 doses administered HUNTERDON COUNTY - 4,937 doses administered MERCER COUNTY - 7,342 doses administered MIDDLESEX COUNTY - 23,017 doses administered MONMOUTH COUNTY - 24,521 doses administered MORRIS COUNTY - 22,675 doses administered OCEAN COUNTY - 16,679 doses administered PASSAIC COUNTY - 14,294 doses administered SALEM COUNTY - 1,520 doses administered SOMERSET COUNTY - 12,317 doses administered SUSSEX COUNTY - 5,248 doses administered UNION COUNTY - 14,728 doses administered WARREN COUNTY - 3,227 doses administered OUT-OF-STATE RESIDENTS - 15,104 doses administered UNKNOWN COUNTY - 9,232 doses administered HOSPITALIZATIONS There were 3,543 patients hospitalized in New Jersey with confirmed (3,313) or suspected (230) COVID-19 cases as of Thursday night. It was 96 fewer than the previous night and the second consecutive the number of people hospitalized dropped. It included 626 in critical or intensive care (18 fewer than the previous night), with 438 on ventilators (19 fewer). There were 452 COVID-19 patients discharged Thursday and 427 admitted, according to the states COVID-19 dashboard. SCHOOL CASES There have been 111 in-school coronavirus outbreaks in New Jersey involving 557 students, teachers and staff since the school year began in late August, according to the state dashboard. Those numbers do not include students or staff believed to have been infected outside school or cases that cant be confirmed as in-school outbreaks. Though the numbers keep rising every week, Murphy has said the school outbreak statistics remain below what state officials were expecting when schools reopened for in-person classes. New Jersey defines school outbreaks as cases where contact tracers determined two or more students or school staff caught or transmitted COVID-19 in the classroom or during academic activities at school. The number of New Jersey school districts with all-remote learning has increased as students return from winter break, Murphy said on Monday. There are 339 districts that started 2021 remotely an increase of 18 all-remote districts from Dec. 21. Only 77 school districts are returning with full in-person instruction (down from 82 on Dec. 21), and 348 are returning with a hybrid of in-person or remote instruction (down from 362). Another 47 districts are using some combination of in-person, hybrid, or all-remote across multiple buildings one more than Dec. 21. AGE BREAKDOWN Broken down by age, those 30 to 49 years old make up the largest percentage of New Jersey residents who have caught the virus (31.3%), followed by those 50-64 (23.8%), 18-29 (19.2%), 65-79 (11.2%), 80 and older (5.5%), 5-17 (7.3%) and 0-4 (1.5%). On average, the virus has been more deadly for older residents, especially those with preexisting conditions. Nearly half the states COVID-19 deaths have been among residents 80 and older (47.49%), followed by those 65-79 (32.29%), 50-64 (15.68%), 30-49 (4.14%), 18-29 (0.36%), 5-17 (0%) and 0-4 (.03%). At least 7,606 of the states COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. That number has been rising again at a steeper rate in recent months, with deaths at the states nursing homes nearly tripling in December. There are currently active outbreaks at 428 facilities, resulting in 6,510 active cases among residents and 7,034 among staffers. GLOBAL NUMBERS As of Friday morning, there were more than 93.3 million positive COVID-19 tests across the world, according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University. More than 1.99 million people have died from coronavirus-related complications. The U.S. has reported the most cases, at more than 23.3 million, and the most deaths, at more than 388,700. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. A 29-year-old man was sentenced Thursday to three decades in prison the murder of a New Brunswick resident, prosecutors said. Christopher C-Dub Thompson must serve 41 years and eight months of his 48-year total prison term on a bevy of offenses, including the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Larenz OGarro, shooting another man, weapons-related offenses and fleeing to Georgia after the attacks, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutors Office. Thompson fatally shot OGarro on Oct. 28, 2018 in New Brunswick after an altercation involving a second unnamed victim and a co-defendant, prosecutors said in a statement. He fled the state, but was arrested by U.S. Marshals at a home in Lithonia, Georgia, according to authorities. Another man, Eric E-Z Inman, was separately charged and pleaded guilty. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. 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. Man Charged After Fake Vaccine Given to Elderly Woman in London Home Police in London say they have charged a 33-year-old man over allegedly administering a fake COVID-19 vaccine to an elderly British woman. David Chambers, of London, is accused of allegedly tricking the 92-year-old woman into paying 160 for the fake vaccine. The City of London police said in a statement on Jan. 15 that Chambers had been charged with two counts of fraud by false representation and one count of common assault. He was also charged with two counts of breaching laws enacted to stem the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus. Chambers is remanded in custody and will appear in court on Feb. 12. In the UK, vaccines are provided for free by the NHS, with the government deciding on the priority groups of the rollout. The elderly have been in the first priority group. Various police forces have warned the public to be aware of vaccine scamsalthough the numbers are currently low. The national reporting centre for fraud, Action Fraud, said it had received 57 reports relating to vaccine scams by Jan. 7. Thankfully, the number of reports into Action Fraud are relatively low but we have seen an increase in the last two months, particularly around scam text messages, Pauline Smith, head of Action Fraud, said in a statement. Remember, the vaccine is only available on the NHS and is free of charge. The NHS will never ask you for details about your bank account or to pay for the vaccine. If you receive an email, text message or phone call purporting to be from the NHS and you are asked to provide financial details, this is a scam. According to Action Fraud, some scams have sent out text messages claiming to be from the NHS, offering them the opportunity to sign up for the vaccine. The text includes a link to an online form that looks very similar to the NHS website, asking for personal and financial details. In December, Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust issued a warning about a similar text message scam that used the SMS payment system. Some people are receiving fraudulent calls and text messages offering the COVID-19 vaccination, said the warning. In some cases, people are asked to press a number on their keypad or to send a text message to confirm they wish to receive the vaccine. Doing so is likely to result in a charge being applied to their phone bill. A black box from an Indonesian jet which crashed minutes after take-off last week has confirmed that both engines were working when it smashed into the sea. Divers hoisted the flight data recorder (FDR) of the Sriwijaya Air plane from the seabed and downloaded the data in hopes of solving the mystery surrounding the cause of the crash. The data successfully downloaded from the FDR confirmed that both of the 26-year-old Boeing Co 737-500's engines had been operating when it hit the water, according to Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT). News that the plane's engines were both working means the cause remains unknown - though investigators revealed on Friday that they had recovered the plane's second black box, the cockpit voice recorder. Naval officers said they had recovered the body and homing beacon portions of the voice recorder, and are now searching for the memory unit that could contain vital clues about what caused the plane to crash last Saturday, killing 62. A black box from an Indonesian jet which crashed minutes after take-off last week has confirmed that both engines were working when it smashed into the sea. Pictured: An Indonesian rescue team worker walks past debris found in the waters around the location of the crash site Police officers carry part of the aircraft recovered from Java Sea where the Sriwijaya Air passenger jet crashed Members of the Indonesian navy carry recovered debris from flight SJ 182 that has been recovered from the sea 'We've found the (CVR) body or casing, we've found the beacon and now we're looking for the memory,' officer Abdul Rasyid told reporters aboard the navy ship Rigel. The KNKT had previously stated that it believed both engines had been fully operational at the time of Flight SJ182's crash based on the wreckage. The FDR contained 330 parameters which were 'all in good conditions', the KNKT said in a statement on Friday. Parameters are a reference to the amount of data recorded from various aircraft systems including the flight path, speed, engine power and flaps configurations. Experts say most recorders have a strengthened housing containing the memory or tape, a chassis designed to fix it in place and an underwater locator beacon. Abdul was confident divers would find the memory unit within the next few days, adding that a plane's black boxes were usually strong and could withstand a considerable impact. The KNKT plans to issue a preliminary report within 30 days of the crash, in line with international standards, the agency's head told Reuters on Thursday. The search operation, which was initially planned for a week, has been extended for three more days to find more victims and recover parts of the plane. The Sriwijaya crash is the biggest airline disaster in Indonesia since October 2018, when 189 people were killed onboard a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX that plunged into the Java Sea soon after take-off. Diving teams are continuing to search for debris as well as the remains of the 62 people on board the plane when it crashed A command centre has been set up at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, where remains and debris have been collected Pictures from Jakarta showed 36 body bags laid out on the ground, containing the remains of some of the victims On Thursday, the funeral for one of the victims of the air crash - Okky Bisma, a flight attendant - was held, with pictures showing his wife in mourning as his coffin was carried to his grave before being lowered into the ground. It came as the remains of some of the 62 people killed in the crash were sprayed down with disinfectant after being recovered from the wreckage. Pictures from Jakarta showed 36 body bags laid out on the ground, as Red Cross workers sprayed them down at Tanjung Priok port, which has acted as a base of operations for the rescue efforts. Workers wearing hazmat suits and chemical tanks on their backs were seen walking between the bodies, spraying disinfectant as they moved up and down the rows. Rescuers have found parts of the plane and human remains at a depth of around 75ft. Workers wearing hazmat suits and chemical tanks were seen walking between the bodies, spraying disinfectant as they moved up and down the rows on Thursday. 36 body parts and one bag of debris have been recovered from the crash site of Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 Pictures from Jakarta showed a reported 36 bodies laid out in rows on the ground of a dock, and disaster response workers spraying the body bags with disinfectant An Indonesian Red Cross worker sprays disinfectant on bags containing body parts of passengers of the Sriwijaya Air flight SJ 182, which crashed into the Java sea, at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, January 14 While the exact cause of the crash remains unknown, Tempo newspaper on Thursday reported the plane had experienced recurring problems with the autothrottle system that automatically controls the engine power settings since returning from storage last month. Sriwijaya did not respond immediately to a request for comment. KNKT chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said if the autothrottle system was not working, the pilots could control the settings manually with their hands. Indonesian divers have resumed a search for the remaining bodies of the 62 victims and the cockpit recorder, officials said on Thursday An Indonesian rescue worker stands in front of bags with body parts of passengers of the Sriwijaya Air flight SJ 182, which crashed into the Java sea, at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, January 14 An airline pilot who was not authorised to speak publicly said it was considered acceptable for a plane to fly when the autothrottle system was not working, though it would increase the pilot workload and could prove distracting in an emergency situation. Most air accidents are typically caused by a range of factors that can take months to establish, according to safety experts. Indonesia's transport ministry revealed on Tuesday that the Sriwijaya Air jet had passed an airworthiness inspection last month, having been grounded between March and December because of the pandemic. Members of Indonesian search and rescue (SAR) carry bags containing human body parts from Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 at Tanjung Priok port, north of Jakarta on January 14 The plane - a Boeing B737-500 - is understood to have fallen 10,000 feet in less than 60 seconds just four minutes after it took off The Boeing 737-500 passed its inspection on December 14, flew five days later with no passengers and then resumed commercial flights on December 22, the transport ministry said. Initial findings by Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) showed a jet engine was running when it hit the water, based on damage seen on parts retrieved from the sea. 'The damage on the fan blade showed that the engine was still working on impact,' KNKT chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said - ruling out a mid-air break-up as the explanation for Saturday's disaster. 'This is consistent with the hypothesis that the plane's system was still working at an altitude of 250ft,' he said, noting the plane was transmitting data at that altitude. The flight data recorder was found after a navy ship picked up pings being emitted by the black boxes, at least one of which was buried in seabed mud under tons of sharp objects in the wreckage. Aldha Refa, wife of Okky Bisma, a flight attendant and one of the 62 people aboard Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 which crashed shortly after takeoff on January 9, mourns at the grave of his husband during a funeral ceremony in Jakarta on January 14 People carry the coffin of Okky Bisma, a flight attendant and one of the 62 people aboard Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 People place the coffin of Okky Bisma, a flight attendant and one of the 62 people aboard Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 A colleague holds a photo of Okky Bisma, a flight attendant and one of the 62 people aboard Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182, at his funeral in Jakarta on Thursday Actually coloured bright orange, the boxes are built to survive at vast depths and in extreme heat, and are fitted with a beacon which can emit a signal for one month. Navy chief admiral Yudo Margono said at least 160 divers were searching for the devices on Tuesday, while more than 3,600 rescue personnel, 13 helicopters, 54 large ships and 20 small boats also search the area. So far, the searchers have sent 74 body bags containing human remains to police identification experts who on Monday said they had identified 29-year-old flight attendant Okky Bisma as one of the victims. His wife, Aldha Refa, who is also a flight attendant for Sriwijaya Air, shared her grief in a series of posts on social media. 'My husband is a loving, devout and super kind man,' she wrote on Instagram. 'Heaven is your place, dear ... be peaceful there.' The Indonesian navy vessel KRI Semarang looms over rescue boats piloted by navy divers and other rescue workers on Tuesday A rescue worker wearing a mask holds a piece of wreckage after the Boeing 737 came down in less than a minute on Saturday Navy divers stand on a rubber boat during the search and rescue operation, as it emerged that the plane had passed an airworthiness inspection only weeks before the catastrophe Indonesian rescue workers move a plastic container carrying one of the black boxes off their rubber boat in waters off Jakarta Family members have been providing samples for DNA tests and police say results are expected in four to eight days. A child's Marvel backpack was among the items found by the search team as they sifted through the wreckage from the plane which had plunged 10,000ft in a minute before the crash. National Police spokesman Rusdi Hartono said about 53 samples for DNA testing have been collected but more are still needed, especially from parents and children of victims. All 62 passengers and crew aboard the flight were Indonesian, including seven children and three babies. The plane's captain, Afwan, a 54-year-old father of three, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, was a former air force pilot with decades of flying under his belt. His nephew Ferza Mahardhika told BBC Indonesia that the pilot had left home quickly on the day of the flight, complaining that 'his shirt hadn't been ironed, when usually he is really neat'. Afwan also apologised to his children for having to leave home to board the doomed flight. Ferza Mahardhika said: 'He was a very good man. He often gave advice, wise advice. He was a prominent figure in his neighbourhood and was well-known for his kindness.' Indonesian divers scouring the Java Sea for the wreckage of the plane which crashed on Saturday have found a huge amount of debris and passenger belongings A child's Marvel backpack was among the distressing items found by the search team as they sifted through the wreckage Underwater footage of their rescue mission shows the divers examining the huge amount of debris from the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 Shrapnel from the Sriwijaya Air plane was lifted from the crash site around the Thousand Islands as investigators say the jet was likely intact when it smashed into the water Health workers spray disinfectant over body bags containing human remains recovered from the crash site of Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 at the port in Jakarta on January 10 Another passenger, Ratih Windania, posted a selfie with her three children laughing as the family boarded the plane from the Indonesian capital. She said: 'Bye bye family. We're heading home for now.' Her brother Irfansyah Riyanto said the family were originally planning to take a different flight but they changed at the last minute. 'Pray for us,' he wrote on Instagram. His sister and her two children had been at the end of a three-week holiday and were taking the 460 mile trip home to Pontianak on the island of West Kalimantan. 'I was the one who drove them to the airport, helped with the check-ins and the luggage ... I feel like I still can't believe this and it happened too fast,' Irfansyah said. Rapin Akbar, who gave a blood sample to the hospital to help police identify any bodies retrieved, had five relatives on board including an older sister, a nephew and his wife and their seven-month-old baby. '(My nephew) had planned to go back to Pontianak on Sunday but changed his mind and decided to fly on Saturday instead,' the shocked Akbar told AFP news agency. 'He called me to say the flight was delayed and sent me a picture of their baby. It was (their) first.' At the police hospital, the brother of co-pilot Diego Mamahit said he had been asked for a blood sample. 'I believe my younger brother survived, these are just for the police procedure,' Chris Mamahit said. 'Diego is a good man, we still believe Diego survived.' On his LinkedIn profile, Mahamit had written 'I really love to fly.' Underwater divers were searching for the plane's black boxes which will help explain why the jet plunged so quickly An investigator with Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) said the jet possibly broke apart when it hit waters based on debris found so far Investigators have so far been unable to say why the 26-year-old plane crashed just four minutes after takeoff from Jakarta The plane's captain, Afwan, a 54-year-old father of three, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, was a former air force pilot with decades of flying under his belt Ratih Windania posted a selfie with her three children laughing as they boarded a plane in Indonesia on Saturday in a heartbreaking final message The family's final message was sent just before they boarded the plane from the Indonesian capital after a three-week holiday They were originally planning to take a different flight but they changed at the last minute Irfansyah said his relatives (pictured at the airport) had originally been due to take an earlier flight operated by Sriwijaya's unit NAM Air and he was unclear why that was changed Also on board was Dinda Amelia, who had gone to Jakarta on holiday for her 15th birthday, seaman Angga Fernanda Afrion who became a father for the first time last week, and newly-married couple Ihsan Adhlan Hakim and Putri Wahyuni. Agus Minarni and Muhammad Nur Kholifatul Amin travelled to Jakarta to attend the funeral of Amin's father and visit their son at boarding school. A family of five is also missing from the flight, with Rizki Wahyudi, 26, his wife Indah Halimah Putri, also 26, their 7-month-old son, and Wahyudi's mother and cousin all on board the flight. They were due to fly home on January 5 but were made to take a Covid test which delayed their flight until Saturday. Minarni's brother Yudiansyah Yunus said he will now take care of the couple's orphaned teenage children. Father and businessman Yohanes Suherdi is also feared dead after he took a work trip to Jakarta and was due to fly back to his family. His wife Susilawati Bungahilaria told CNN she spoke with him shortly before take off. 'His last message to me was not to forget to take our son to see a doctor because he had a fever,' she said. Indonesian Navy sailors are seen on the KRI Semarang as it is docking and preparing to continue rescue process for Sriwijaya Air flight SJ 182 A health worker sprays disinfectant at a large part of a plane recovered from the waters off Java Island where Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182 crashed on Saturday, at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, Indonesia Rescuers have discovered body parts and pieces of clothing during a desperate search for Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 Indonesian rescue members check a body bag as a huge team continues their search to find wreckage and passengers Officials are seen inspecting one of the engines recovered from the crash of Sriwijaya Air flight SJ18 A fisherman named Solihin told the BBC that he had been at sea when he witnessed the plane crash into the water near to his ship. 'The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water. It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship. 'We thought it was a bomb or a tsunami since after that we saw the big splash from the water. 'It was raining heavily and the weather was so bad... We were very shocked and directly saw the plane debris and the fuel around our boat.' Locals on a nearby island said they heard two explosions before discovering metal pieces, cables and fragments of a pair of jeans floating in the sea. President Joko Widodo offered sympathy to all of the victims on Sunday. 'We are making our best efforts to find and rescue the victims and we all pray that they can be found,' he said. The missing plane is an older model than the Boeing 737 MAX jet involved in two earlier fatal crashes - including the Indonesian Lion Air crash in 2018 which killed 189. That accident - and another in Ethiopia - saw Boeing hit with $2.5 billion in fines over claims it defrauded regulators overseeing the 737 MAX model, which was grounded worldwide following the accidents. Sriwijaya Air, which flies to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has said little about the plane, which was previously flown by US-based Continental Airlines and United Airlines. The Indonesian carrier has not recorded a fatal crash since it started operations in 2003. Rescuers are seen bringing up one of the engines. At 2.40pm - just four minutes after takeoff - the Boeing B737-500 plunged nearly 10,000ft in less than 60 seconds Navy divers are seen retrieving wreckage from the aircraft. Police asked families to provide information to help identify any bodies retrieved such as dental records and DNA samples Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi on Sunday said authorities launched a widespread search for the Boeing 737-500 after narrowing down 'the possible location of the crash site' The Boeing B737-500 plunged nearly 3,300 metres in less than 60 seconds to an altitude of just 75 metres. Pictured: debris discovered in the ocean Navy divers pull out a part of an airplane out of the water during the search operation for the Sriwijaya Air passenger jet A medical officer sprays disinfectant onto the washed up debris as rescuers desperately search for survivors The National Search and Rescue Agency of Indonesia (BASARNAS) conduct a search and rescue operation A plane flies over Indonesian search and rescue teams scattered in several points as they look for debris Police asked families to provide information to help identify any bodies retrieved such as dental records and DNA samples How Can We All Embrace Phileo Love This Year? Are you a loyal friend? At some point in your life, youre going to need a loyal friend. Resolve right now to be that friend to someone else. All around us are people who are hurting, struggling, and in need of help. This year, instead of focusing only on what is going on in your own life, I want to encourage you to reach out to the person next to you in the pew on Sunday. Men, go to that Mens event at your local church and make new friends. Women, go to that ladies' event and meet the other women of your local church. To be a loyal friend, you first need to reach out to other people with a hand of friendship. You may not always connect with everyone, which is okay, but be willing to reach out nonetheless. I assure you that youll find people at your local church with whom youll naturally connect with, but dont settle only for those you easily connect with; reach out to those who are neglected in your church. By doing so, you are not only being a loyal friend but a true disciple of Jesus Christ, one who loves to reach out to those who are lonely, broken, and outcasts. Please, brothers and sisters in Christ, be a caring friend. We live in a world where challenges on every side confront us. Many of us have gone through the wringer, and the last thing we want or need is a cynical and judgmental friend who questions our situations and motives at every turn. Do not be that type of friend. As Christians, we are called at times to speak hard words to one another. We have the credibility to do so in the eyes of our friends because weve shown them that we are loyal and caring. Ive been the receiver of such hard words, and I can verify that they are not fun to hear. Ive often had harsh words delivered to me by people who didnt know what was going on in my life. Ive also heard these words from people who I assumed cared about me but spoke those hard words in such a way that made it hard to listen. Photo credit: Getty Images/monkeybusinessimages by Sumon Corraya After completing a deradicalisation programme run by the countrys anti-terrorism unit, they will start a new life with the support of the state. Their desire is to return to normality. Most Bangladeshis are in favour of the fight against extremism. Dhaka (AsiaNews) Nine Islamist militants reunited with their families yesterday after announcing that they were giving up the armed struggle. Six of the nine Muslim radicals belonged to Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the rest to Ansar-al-Islam. After completing a deradicalisation programme run by the Rapid Action Battalion, the country's elite anti-terrorism unit, they received some money and educational assistance from the government to start a new life. At the ceremony that saw the former militants start their journey back to their families, Home Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal condemned Islamist groups for killing members of religious minorities, stressing that the authorities, like most people in Bangladesh, will not tolerate extremism. Radicalised groups began to emerge in Bangladesh in 2004. Many of their members were trained and indoctrinated in the Middle East. Their bloodiest attack came on 1st July 2016 when a commando stormed the Gulshan Cafe in Dhaka, killing 29 people people, including nine Italians. As the she spoke about her story, Abida Jannat Asma, one of nine former militants, expressed regrets for taking the wrong path. She became radicalised after marrying an extremist she met at university. After that, she was on the run, unable to take part in any social activity. Now she wants to get back to some form of normal life, and she encourages her husband and other Islamist militants to do the same. For Shaon Muntaha Ibn Shawkat, another one of the deradicalized militants, people's hearts cannot be won over by violence. He explained that he radicalised himself on the internet and got his family involved. We have lived for years hunted by the police. Militancy was ruining the life of my wife and children. From today things will change and I will fight against extremism. Urges Board to Create a Special Committee to Ensure Objectivity Announces Intention to Nominate Four Exceptional Director Candidates to the Board NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blackwells Capital LLC (together with its affiliates Blackwells), an alternative investment management firm that owns approximately 4% of the outstanding shares of common stock of Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation (NYSE: MNR) (Monmouth or the Company), today announced its support for the strategic alternatives process announced by Monmouth, while demanding the Board of Directors (the Board) create a Special Committee of independent directors, unaffiliated with the Landy family. Jason Aintabi, Chief Investment Officer of Blackwells, said, We made our $18 per share offer for Monmouth, noting that Monmouth was not suited to being a public company investors have grown weary of the Landy familys control and poor capital allocation, and the lack of liquidity in the stock which has further dampened investor interest. We are pleased that the Board has taken our direction, and is now running a strategic alternatives process. If that process is conducted in earnest, we expect it will lead to a sale of the Company. Blackwells remains concerned that the Landy family, whose members and friends constitute a majority of the Board, has a strong desire to have Monmouth remain an independent company and preserve the familys effective control. Blackwells noted that Monmouth has devoted significant shareholder capital to a non-core securities portfolio that supports a company in which the Landy family has separate interests. And, Blackwells believes the Landy familys legacy ownership position has a low cost basis, which may make a sale of the Company less attractive to the Landy family than to other owners, as a matter of tax and estate planning. For the strategic alternatives process to be credible and reach an objective conclusion, the Monmouth Board must not allow the Landy family members and their friends to have undue influence, continued Mr. Aintabi. We believe the Board should establish a Special Committee, consisting of entirely independent directors, to oversee the review process, ensuring shareholders reach an optimal outcome. Blackwells has previously provided the Company with notice of its intention to nominate four candidates for election to the Board at the upcoming 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The professionals that Blackwells has nominated have experience in real estate, capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and public company governance. If elected, the Blackwells nominees will be independent of Landy family influence and help Monmouth consider all alternatives fairly and objectively. Blackwells nominees to the Monmouth Board are: Craig M. Hatkoff. Mr. Hatkoff has served as Executive Chairman of LEX Markets, a real estate and alternative asset fintech start-up, since April 2019. He was the Co-Head of the Real Estate Investment Banking Unit of Chemical Bank and serves on the Board of Colony Capital, Inc., a public real estate investment trust that focuses on global digital infrastructure, and SL Green Realty Corp., a public real estate investment trust and the largest owner of commercial real estate in Manhattan. He served as a Director of Taubman Centers, Inc., a real estate investment trust engaged in the ownership, management and leasing of retail properties, from May 2004 to January 2019, and was a Co-Founder and Director of Capital Trust, Inc., a real estate investment management company, from 1997 to 2010. Mr. Hatkoff has served as Executive Chairman of LEX Markets, a real estate and alternative asset fintech start-up, since April 2019. He was the Co-Head of the Real Estate Investment Banking Unit of Chemical Bank and serves on the Board of Colony Capital, Inc., a public real estate investment trust that focuses on global digital infrastructure, and SL Green Realty Corp., a public real estate investment trust and the largest owner of commercial real estate in Manhattan. He served as a Director of Taubman Centers, Inc., a real estate investment trust engaged in the ownership, management and leasing of retail properties, from May 2004 to January 2019, and was a Co-Founder and Director of Capital Trust, Inc., a real estate investment management company, from 1997 to 2010. Jennifer M. Hill. Ms. Hill has served as the Founder and CEO of Murphy Hill Consulting, a Connecticut-based consulting business providing consulting services focused on the financial services, asset management, insurance and risk management industries, since October 2017. She served as the Chief Financial Officer of Bank of America Merrill Lynch from 2011 to 2014. Prior to joining Bank of America, Ms. Hill was Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Finance at Royal Bank of Scotland, the Chief Financial Officer of Tisbury Capital Management and a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, & Co. Ms. Hill is a director of Santander Asset Management, an international asset manager; Melqart Funds, which are London-based hedge funds focused on event-driven strategies; LaCrosse Milling, a Wisconsin-based oat milling company; and Arkadia Asset Management, a Swiss-based hedge fund. Ms. Hill has served as the Founder and CEO of Murphy Hill Consulting, a Connecticut-based consulting business providing consulting services focused on the financial services, asset management, insurance and risk management industries, since October 2017. She served as the Chief Financial Officer of Bank of America Merrill Lynch from 2011 to 2014. Prior to joining Bank of America, Ms. Hill was Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Finance at Royal Bank of Scotland, the Chief Financial Officer of Tisbury Capital Management and a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, & Co. Ms. Hill is a director of Santander Asset Management, an international asset manager; Melqart Funds, which are London-based hedge funds focused on event-driven strategies; LaCrosse Milling, a Wisconsin-based oat milling company; and Arkadia Asset Management, a Swiss-based hedge fund. Allison Nagelberg. From 2000 until her retirement in December 2019, Ms. Nagelberg served as the General Counsel of Monmouth. Ms. Nagelberg also served as General Counsel of UMH Properties, Inc., a public REIT and related company of Monmouth that owns and operates manufactured housing communities, from 2000 to 2013. Ms. Nagelberg served as General Counsel of Monmouth Capital Corporation, a public REIT investing in net-leased industrial properties, from 2000 to 2007, at which time Monmouth Capital became a wholly owned subsidiary of Monmouth. From 2000 until her retirement in December 2019, Ms. Nagelberg served as the General Counsel of Monmouth. Ms. Nagelberg also served as General Counsel of UMH Properties, Inc., a public REIT and related company of Monmouth that owns and operates manufactured housing communities, from 2000 to 2013. Ms. Nagelberg served as General Counsel of Monmouth Capital Corporation, a public REIT investing in net-leased industrial properties, from 2000 to 2007, at which time Monmouth Capital became a wholly owned subsidiary of Monmouth. Todd S. Schuster. Mr. Schuster was as a Senior Partner for Ares Management, a global alternative asset manager with over $140 billion of assets under management, from June 2013 to September 2015. While at ARES, Mr. Schuster served as Global Head of Real Estate Credit Investments and in that role served as the Co-Chief Executive Officer, then sole Chief Executive Officer, of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, a publicly traded specialty finance company and real estate investment trust. Mr. Schuster previously founded, and served as the Chief Executive Officer, and as a member of the Board of Directors, of CW Financial Services LLC, an investment and financial services firm, from 1992 to 2009. Since July 2020, he has served as a member of the board of directors of TPG Real Estate Finance Trust, a publicly held commercial real estate finance company. Mr. Schuster served on the Board of Directors of ACRE from April 2012 to September 2015, including as an independent director and member of the audit committee until May 2013. CERTAIN INFORMATION CONCERNING THE PARTICIPANTS BLACKWELLS CAPITAL LLC (BLACKWELLS) STRONGLY ADVISES ALL SHAREHOLDERS OF THE COMPANY TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND OTHER PROXY MATERIALS AS THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. SUCH PROXY MATERIALS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT NO CHARGE ON THE SECS WEBSITE AT HTTP://WWW.SEC.GOV. IN ADDITION, THE PARTICIPANTS IN THIS PROXY SOLICITATION WILL PROVIDE COPIES OF THE PROXY STATEMENT WITHOUT CHARGE, WHEN AVAILABLE, UPON REQUEST. REQUESTS FOR COPIES SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO BLACKWELLS. The participants in the proxy solicitation are Blackwells, Jason Aintabi, Craig M. Hatkoff, Jennifer M. Hill, Allison Nagelberg, and Todd Schuster (collectively, the Participants). As of the date hereof, Blackwells beneficially owns 200,100 shares of the Companys common stock, par value $0.01 per share (the Common Stock), including 125,000 shares of Common Stock underlying call options exercisable within sixty (60) days of the date hereof. Additionally, Blackwells beneficially owns options that provide the holder the right to sell an underlying 25,000 shares of Common Stock which are exercisable within sixty (60) days of the date hereof. As of the date hereof, Mr. Aintabi beneficially owns 3,725,134 shares of Common Stock, including (i) 200,100 shares of Common Stock owned by Blackwells, of which Mr. Aintabi may be deemed the beneficial owner, as Managing Partner of Blackwells, (ii) 3,370,034 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned by BW Coinvest Management I LLC, which Mr. Aintabi, as the owner and President & Secretary of Blackwells Asset Management LLC, the owner and sole member of BW Coinvest Management I LLC, may be deemed to beneficially own and (iii) 155,000 shares of Common Stock underlying call options exercisable within sixty (60) days of the date hereof. Additionally, Mr. Aintabi may be deemed to beneficially own options that provide the holder the right to sell an underlying 75,000 shares of Common Stock which are exercisable within sixty (60) days of the date hereof. As of the date hereof, Ms. Nagelberg is the beneficial owner of 64,089.5767 shares of Common Stock, and Mr. Schuster is the beneficial owner of 102,248 shares of Common Stock. Neither Ms. Hill nor Mr. Hatkoff owns any shares of Common Stock as of the date hereof. Collectively, the Participants beneficially own in the aggregate approximately 3,891,471.5767 shares of Common Stock, including (i) 280,000 shares of Common Stock underlying call options exercisable within sixty (60) days of the date hereof, representing approximately 4.07% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock. About Blackwells Capital Blackwells Capital was founded in 2016 by Jason Aintabi, its Chief Investment Officer. Since that time, it has made investments in public securities, engaging with management and boards, both publicly and privately, to help unlock value for stakeholders, including shareholders, employees and communities. Throughout their careers, Blackwells principals have invested globally on behalf of leading public and private equity firms and have held operating roles and served on the boards of media, energy, technology, insurance and real estate enterprises. For more information, please visit www.blackwellscap.com Contact: Gagnier Communications Dan Gagnier / Jeffrey Mathews 646-569-5897 Blackwells@gagnierfc.com Comment SolarWinds fallout makes secure communications a critical first line of defense Over the past weeks, U.S. government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and private sector organizations have been scrambling to address what is now being considered a "significant cyber event." Though comprehensive damage assessments could take months, we know that the impact of the SolarWinds attack will likely result in demonstrable harm to U.S. national security interests. Hackers have breached the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Treasury, Commerce, Energy (including the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the country's nuclear stockpile) and the National Institutes of Health. Among other compromises, the breaches allowed the actors to monitor internal email traffic at these government agencies. And the most concerning aspect -- the event is not over. By all accounts this adversary is highly sophisticated, has shown an ability to exploit software supply chains, is making extensive use of anti-forensic obfuscation techniques and is targeting key personnel and incident response staff. In fact, the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency at DHS has determined that the threat poses "a grave risk" to impacted organizations based on the demonstrated patience, operational security, and complex tradecraft observed in the intrusions. Given that profile, we should assume that the actors are still lurking in these sensitive networks and have created alternate access points that we have yet to discover. With unfettered access to these networks, the adversary is, right now, likely observing communications to orchestrate internal defensive measures. They are watching as incident responders use their security infrastructure to increase detection, set up alerts and reporting, and seek remediation efforts. The adversary is quietly observing executives, customers, partners, and law enforcement collaborate on assistance, implications, narrative, and strategic next steps. The intelligence gleaned from this level of visibility will enable the adversary to pivot before being discovered. They're collecting critical insight into tactics, timing, standard operating procedures, contacts, checklists and secondary information to improve their tradecraft and their foothold in the network. According to DHS/CISA, discussion of findings and mitigations or external communications to stakeholders and media should be considered very sensitive and organizations should use out-of-band communications in these cases. This type of communication method must be end-to-end encrypted, approved by the organization for enterprise use and compliance, and offer the necessary capabilities (e.g., voice, video, messaging, file share) to coordinate while networks cannot be trusted. Using unauthorized communication methods, such as consumer-based secure applications or shadow IT, should be strictly prohibited as it could result in breaches of regulatory or compliance policy, only making a bad situation worse. The scope of this attack is shaping up to be the worst in decades. Crisis situations like this one can induce the fog-of-war and lead to tradeoffs during remediation. While some seem ready to dismiss the hack as routine espionage, the scope of the campaign and the precision in targeting specific U.S. defense and national security interests is chilling. While we may not know the full extent of the damage for some time, as is always the case in an event like this, we need to stop the bleeding. We must not afford the adversary an easy path to more information. Operational Security measures addressing sensitive communications are imperative as a critical first line of defense, to ensure that enterprises and government agencies can defend themselves against further compromise and to establish strong, resilient crisis response plans to prevent and mitigate future intrusions. India's COVID-19 caseload rose to 1,05,27,683 with 15,590 people testing positive for the infection in a day, while the recoveries have surged to 1,01,62,738, according to the Union health Ministry data updated on Friday. The country's death toll increased to 1,51,918 with 191 daily new fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 1,01,62,738 pushing the national COVID-19 recovery rate to 96.53 per cent, while the COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.44 per cent. The COVID-19 active caseload remained below 3 lakh. There are 2,13,027 active cases of coronavirus infections in the country which comprises 2.02 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated. India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19. According to the ICMR, 18,49,62,401 samples have been tested up to January 14 with 7,30,096 samples being tested on Thursday. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. [January 14, 2021] Interxion: A Digital Realty Company Collaborates With PCCW Global To Deliver Submarine Cable Gateway To Europe MARSEILLE, France, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Interxion: A Digital Realty Company (NYSE: DLR) and leading European provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral colocation data centre solutions, has signed an agreement with PCCW GLOBAL to locate the Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) subsea cable system's termination and interconnection equipment in Interxion's MRS2 data centre in Marseille, France. The collaboration will enable low-latency access to over 160 connectivity providers along with multiple content, cloud, gaming and video streaming platforms. The high-speed, 15,000km PEACE subsea cable system will offer high capacity, low-latency routes connecting China, Europe and Africa. In addition to France, the cable will land in Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Djibouti, Kenya, Pakistan and other countries and regions with onward terrestrial connectivity to China. The PEACE cable will be the fifthteenth subsea cable system to land in Marseille, further enhancing the value of Network Hubs deployed on PlatformDIGITAL, Digital Realty's global infrastructure solution, in the region as enterprises seek greater resiliency and performance for interconnecting global workflows. The collaboration represents a strategic expansion of both PlatformDIGITAL and Console Connect, PCCW Global's Software Defined Interconnection platform. Both platforms enable new and existing customers to deploy and manage hybrid IT services quickly and efficiently. Console Connect is available to Interxion customers at MRS1, MRS2 and MRS3, providing them with instant access to a global ecosystem of cloud, SaaS, UcaaS, IX and IoT partners, as well as extended coverage to more than 400 data centers in 47 countries worldwide. Interxion customers in Marseille can also access Console Connect's new Internet On-Demand service, which offers high-performance internet access on-demand across PCCW Global's leading Tier 1 IP network. Interxion's Marseille campus is one of the world's leading digital hubs for intercontinental data traffic with a thriving community of numerous connectivity providers, digital media and cloud segments along with local and global enterprises, providing customers a strong foundation to execute their digital transformation strategies and scale globally. "Interxion's fluid interconnection environment in Marseille enables the PEACE subsea cable to efficiently service the needs of the vibrant community of interest on the campus, while extending the system's reach to additional markets such as Frankfurt and Paris," says Sameh Sobhy, Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at PCCW Global. "Selecting the right data centre in Europe for the PEACE subsea cable to interconnect with is a critical component to ensure the project's commercial success. We know that with Interxion we have made the right strategic decision," says Sun Xiaohua, Chief Operating Officer of the PEACE Cable International Network Co. Ltd. The PEACE system will provide the most direct and high-capacity route from Asia to Europe. These features, combined with exceptionally low latency, are vitally important for a wide array of commercial and consumer applications. Moreover, PEACE deploys a state-of-the-art "system within a system" cnfiguration that gives each party the required flexibility to design its own subsystem with reconfigurable bandwidth for different points over the lifetime of the cable. "This collaboration with PEACE and PCCW Global not only solidifies Marseille's future as an intercontinental hub with access to state-of-the-art communication services, but also affords Interxion's global customer base entry into new markets and the ability to connect their often geographically dispersed infrastructure in close proximity to the connected community via PlatformDIGITAL," says Mike Hollands, Senior Director, Market Development at Interxion. "The PEACE cable is well placed to meet the burgeoning exchange of data and video traffic between Europe, Africa and Asia, enabling enterprises to extend their global workflows and efficiently execute their digital transformation strategies." About Interxion: A Digital Realty Company Interxion: A Digital Realty Company, is a leading provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre solutions across EMEA. With more than 700 connectivity providers in over 100 data centres across 13 European countries, Interxion provides communities of connectivity, cloud and content hubs. As part of Digital Realty, customers now have access to 49 metros across six continents. For more information, please visit www.interxion.com. About Digital Realty Digital Realty supports the world's leading enterprises and service providers by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL, the company's global data center platform, provides customers a trusted foundation and proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture PDx solution methodology for scaling digital business and efficiently managing data gravity challenges. Digital Realty's global data center footprint gives customers access to the connected communities that matter to them with more than 280 facilities in 49 metros across 24 countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 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. With a network footprint reaching over 3,000 cities in 160+ countries across 5 continents, 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 pccwglobal.com. About PEACE Cable International Network CO., LTD PEACE Cable International Network CO., LTD, founded in 2018 and registered in Hong Kong. PEACE aims to be leading international submarine cable system operator. PEACE submarine cable system, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, provides an open, flexible and carrier-neutral services for its customers. PEACE is targeted for completion in 2021. When complete, the high-speed PEACE cable system will offer the shortest routes from China to Europe and Africa, interconnecting three of the world's most populous continents whilst at the same time dramatically reducing latency, delivering a superior connectivity experience which will be ideal for a vast array of commercial and consumer applications. To learn more about PEACE Cable System, please visit peacecable.com. Media Inquiries Marc Musgrove Digital Realty (415) 508-2812 mmusgrove@digitalrealty.com Alex Pehlivan Interxion: A Digital Realty Company +44 7740 248867 alexp@interxion.com Ivan Ho PCCW Group +852 2883 8747 ivan.wy.ho@pccw.com Investor Relations John J. Stewart / Jim Huseby Digital Realty (415) 738-6500 InvestorRelations@digitalrealty.com Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements related to the PEACE subsea cable, our Marseille campus, the European and French metros, PlatformDIGITAL and the global exchange of data. For a list and description of risks and uncertainties, see the reports and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/interxion-a-digital-realty-company-collaborates-with-pccw-global-to-deliver-submarine-cable-gateway-to-europe-301208993.html SOURCE Digital Realty [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Myanmar & COVID-19 Myanmar Secures Second IMF COVID-19 Loan A medic takes a nasal swab from people who need to travel in December. / Htet Wai Yangon The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday approved a second emergency loan to Myanmar, valued at US$350 million (466.5 billion kyats), to address COVID-19 after approving a $356.5 million (474 billion kyats) loan in June last year. Last month, Myanmars government negotiated with international development organizations, including the IMF, to secure more than $950 million (1.3 trillion kyats) to fund the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines under a World Health Organization program. The government has sought $350 million (467 billion kyats) from the IMF, $250 million (333 billion kyats) from the Asian Development Bank, $60 million (80 billion kyats) from the World Bank and 30 billion yen (395 billion kyats) from the Japan International Cooperation Agency. The IMF said on Jan. 13 that its assistance will help minimize the pandemics economic and social impacts while supporting vulnerable people and health care providers. The countrys economy is suffering from extensive lockdowns, no tourist income and supply chain disruptions, according to the IMF. The investment will help address Myanmars urgent financing needs related to the COVID-19 shock, the IMF said. Myanmar expects that 40 percent of its 54.4 million inhabitants will be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of 2021. The remaining 60 percent are expected to be vaccinated during the 2022-23 financial year. Myanmars government is also seeking donations from the public to buy COVID-19 vaccines, earmarking $251 million (335 billion kyats) itself. Through diplomatic channels, Myanmar ordered 30 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, covering 15 million people, from the Serum Institute of India, which is producing COVID-19 vaccines called Covishield developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. The doses are due to arrive in February. Myanmar has initially paid $75 million (100 billion kyats), half the amount for the vaccine order, the Presidents Office said last week. Each Covishield dose is costing about $5 (6,700 kyats). The total costs could reach $550 million (733 billion kyats) for the whole population, with two doses needed per person. In addition to the vaccine, storage and other logistical costs will be significant, according to the Ministry of Planning, Finance and Industry. Myanmar is also trying to buy COVID-19 vaccines from China, the UK, USA and Russia. Individuals, businesses and religious organizations are donating to the COVID-19 vaccine fund in response to the government request for help. The government said the total amount donated will be announced in the state-owned media soon. Since Dec. 19, Myanmar has seen a decline in daily COVID-19 cases. Fewer than 1,000 new cases are now being reported per day across the country. On Thursday, Myanmar reported 132,865 COVID-19 cases, including 2,912 fatalities and 116,100 recoveries. Cases have been reported at about 300 townships across the country. In Asean, Myanmar is fourth in terms of COVID-19 cases, behind Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. You may also like these stories: Myanmars Shangri-La Hotel Temporarily Closes Amid COVID-19 Impact Myanmar Closes Eight Temporary COVID-19 Hospitals in Yangon The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Dr. Monte Junker, an Oregon dentist, is waiting for his turn to get vaccinated for Covid even though he considers himself a front-line health worker. "If they offered it to me today, I would be there," he said. In December, just before the first vaccines were cleared for emergency use, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immunization advisory board recommended that health care workers as well as nursing home residents and staff members be the first to be inoculated because of their high risks of infection. But Oregon is one of a handful of states, including Colorado, North Carolina and Texas, that have put dentistslower in priority order than other health professionals who treat patients even though they have their hands in people's mouths and are exposed to aerosols that spray germs in their faces during procedures. As a result, dentists in those states must wait while many of their peers got their shots in December. Dr. Tam Le, president of the Connecticut State Dental Association, was vaccinated in December along with employees at his practice in Cheshire. He said he lobbied the state to include dentists with other front-line hospital and health workers. "In Connecticut, we are doing really well," he said, noting that the state set up an online registration system for eligible health workers and then contacted them about when and where they could get the vaccine. Le said he and his staff went to a nearby community health center for their shots. Dentists gained goodwill from state officials last spring by donating gloves and masks to hospitals, Le said. They also offered to help administer the shots since they have experience with that. States are increasingly diverging from CDC guidance in their vaccination plans, according to an analysis by KFF. "Timelines vary significantly across states, regardless of priority group, resulting in a vaccine rollout labyrinth across the country," the report said. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.) The American Dental Association said it's aware that the lack of a national immunization strategy has meant that dentists and their staffs are not being treated equally across the country. The CDC advisory board included dentists when it recommended that front-line health workers get priority. "Each state government's approach to vaccination will be different based on populations and need, but all dental team members should be prioritized in the first-tier distribution as the vaccines roll out by the different state and county public health departments," said Daniel Klemmedson, the ADA president. An oral surgeon in Arizona, he has been vaccinated. In Florida, dentists and their staffs are included among front-line workers eligible for vaccines in the first wave, but a lack of supply has hindered some from getting their shots, according to Drew Eason, CEO of the Florida Dental Association. Some county health departments have also incorrectly turned dentists away, he added. Dr. Cindy Roark, a Boca Raton dentist and chief clinical officer of Sage Dental, which has 15 offices in Florida and Georgia, said she has no idea when she'll get vaccinated. She said Georgia dentists in her company have been vaccinated, while those in Florida must wait. The only exceptions appear to be the relatively few dentists affiliated with hospitals. "We are equally vulnerable," she said. Still, Roark said she is not upset. "I know I can protect myself," she said, adding that her office staffers wear N95 masks, face shields and gloves to protect themselves and patients. "Most dentists feel completely safe running their practice and preventing transmission." Junker, regional dental director at Advantage Dental in The Dalles, Oregon, said he understands that intensive care staff members, emergency department workers and the elderly in nursing homes need the vaccine first. "But we are definitely up there for the copious quantities of aerosol in our faces each day," he said. "The atmosphere is highly concentrated" with virus. He's upset at the poor planning and coordination between states and the federal government to make dentists a priority. In cases where hospital staffers are declining the vaccine because they don't trust it, Junker said, hospitals should offer shots to dentists and others who are eager for them. "I don't think it's fair for them to sit on the vaccine for a month or two. It needs to get used, and if the hospital workers later decide to get vaccinated, they can get back in line," he said. Dr. Stan Hardesty, a Raleigh, North Carolina, dentist and president of the state dental society, said it's disappointing to see dentists in other states get the vaccine while he and his colleagues have been told to wait. "We have been advocating on behalf of our members to have dentists and our team members included in phase 1a as recommended by the CDC," he said. "Unfortunately, the decision-makers [in the state government] have decided to utilize a different prioritization in their vaccine implementation." North Carolina dentists will be in "phase 1b," which includes adults 75 and older, essential workers such as police officers and firefighters. Spains conservative Popular Party (PP), the main opposition in parliament to the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, is debating whether to come out publicly in defence of sections of the army and fascist Voxs coup plot conspiracy to impose a dictatorship. It takes place after Trumps January 6 fascistic coup aimed at toppling the US government and overturning the results of the 2020 election and days before the inauguration on January 20. There are growing signs that far-right elements are planning a second coup attempt. At the same time, the entire political establishment spearheaded by the Democratic Party is engaged in a frenzied effort to cover up the high-level support for the insurrection within the Republican Party and the military-police apparatus. Members of Military Emergency Unit arrive at Abando train station, in Bilbao, northern Spain earlier this year. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos) Yesterday, three online newspapers reported about the PPs anticipated parliamentary questions to PSOE Defence Minister Margarita Robles. These questions apparently leaked from within the PP to the liberal pro-Podemos Infolibre and right-wing sites, Vozpopuli and El Confidencial Digital. The PPs questions reproach Robles January 6 speech for condemning the top retired officers who sent letters and a manifesto to King Felipe VI, appealing for him to back them against the PSOE-Podemos government. Some of these officers signed the 2018 pro-Franco manifesto and discussed shooting 26 million leftist voters. Robles tried to downplay the letters, stating that they came from an insignificant minority and deserve the most absolute rejection. She was continuing the efforts of the PSOE-Podemos government, including deputy Prime Minister and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, to downplay the fascist coup threats. In response, the PP drafted three questions to Robles last Monday, which implicitly endorsed the fascist officers. They have yet to be formally submitted in parliament. They are the following: What is the reason for the Minister of Defence to publicly question the right of retired military personnel, as full citizens that they are, to publicly express their point of view on any matter, within the margins of the laws? In the opinion of the Minister of Defence, what are the legal precepts that could have been violated by the retired officers when they publicly expressed their points of view? Does the Minister of Defence consider that retired officers should have their civil rights restricted as a result of their previous professional career? The questions have been signed by the PP spokesman in the Defence Commission, former Major General of the Army Fernando Gutierrez Diaz de Otazu, and another 12 PP lawmakers. Gutierrez was one of a number of former top military officers who joined the PP and Vox in the 2018 and 2019 elections. Normally, questions to be submitted in parliament are not leaked to the press, as the answers are more important than the questions. Nor would they merit special press coverage. However, after the January 6 coup in Washington and the far-right conspiracy in Spain code-named Operation Albatross to install a dictatorship under the guise of a PSOE-PP-Vox national unity government, they take on a different light. They also come days after retired Lieutenant General Emilio Perez Alaman wrote to Robles, condemning her speech and demanding she change the course of the PSOE-Podemos government. Clearly, mounting forces within the PP are preparing to align themselves with the fascist campaign for a national unity dictatorship and a fascist coup, amid rising working class opposition to the PSOE-Podemos governments herd immunity policy on the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past two years, PP leader Pablo Casado has been shifting its policies to the right to compete with Vox, while at the same time attempting to nominally distance the PP from the fascists. Last October, the PP voted against Voxs no-confidence motion targeting the PSOE-Podemos government, and Casado made a criticism of Vox widely applauded by the bourgeois press. However, the PP also continued ruling with Voxs support in the regions of Madrid, Murcia and Andalusia. In December, Casado condemned the fascist letters, calling them unacceptable and reprehensible. Others within the PP refused to condemn the letters, however. PP leader in Madrid Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the PPs most visible representative after Casado, applauded them as concerned citizens. By submitting these questions in parliament, sections of the PP are putting Defence Minister Robles on record. This is significant because in Operation Albatross, the officer corps has reportedly chosen Robles as the figurehead of such a national unity government. The questions would force Robles to either publicly disavow the fascist generals comments or she would be forced to back pedal her remarks, acknowledging her availability to be such figurehead. Other candidates for such a role being openly discussed by the bourgeoisie include Josep Borrell, the current High Representative of the European Union; Nadia Calvino, Minister of Economy and widely regarded as the EUs person in the Spanish cabinet; and Jose Bono, former Minister of Defence. In the past weeks, Bono has been widely promoted in the press and on television. Such are the advanced conspiracy plans reflecting mounting desperation and confusion within the top echelons of the government. According to El Confidencial Digital, Pedro Sanchez had to come out in defence of Robles during a cabinet meeting, saying her loyalty is unquestionable. On Wednesday, Podemos Secretary of State for the 2030 Agenda, Ione Belarra, widely considered the partys number two leader after Pablo Iglesias, accused Robles on Twitter of being the candidate of the right, accusing her of aligning herself with the right and the [right-wing] extremists. Its disappointing, she added. The truth is that if Vox and the military, now joined with sections of the PP, are continuing the far-right conspiracy, it is precisely because of the bankrupt role of Podemos. They count on Podemos to downplay the fascist danger and to suppress the historically rooted opposition to fascism in the working class. In December, Iglesias went on prime-time television to brazenly insist nothing important had been revealed in the fascist letters appealing to King Felipe VI. He said, What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat. He aimed to dampen mounting outrage among workers and youth, notably on social media. Iglesias arguments have since been exposed as a fraud. La Marea leaked videos showing soldiers chanting and dancing to neo-Nazi songs while making the fascist salute, and Publico leaked soldiers fascistic WhatsApp chats. Iglesias has remained silent on these revelations. Meanwhile, Vox party leader Santiago Abascal is openly defending Trump, denouncing Twitters ban on the US president after his coup attempt. Today Abascal will meet in Barcelona to discuss free speech with US Republican operatives Grover Norquist and Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation think tank; far-right European Trump supporters like Giorgia Meloni of far-right Fratelli dItalia and Matias Karlson of think tank Oikos; and far-right Chilean politician Jose Antonio Kas. The rise of fascistic politics in the United States, the center of world imperialism, is powerfully impacting Europe, where the ruling elite is turning toward authoritarianism and dictatorship. The urgent political imperative is for the working class to intervene on its own programme and perspective. This discussion will be at the centre of this weekends online meeting on Sunday, January 17, 1:00 p.m., US EST with leading members of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and Germany organised by the WSWS. They will speak on the world significance of the rise of fascism in America, its social and political origins, and the necessary strategy for the working class to fight back. LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Jan, 2021 ) :Provincial Minister for Industries & Trade Mian Aslam Iqbal met with Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar at his office on Thursday and apprised him about the ongoing cleanliness drive. CEO LWMC Imran Ali was also present. The Chief Minister directed to take every step to remove the garbage. He directed that dysfunctional machinery should be rectified and brought to roads for cleaning purposes. He further directed that government officials and LWMC should join hands to remove garbage and special attention be paid to cleaning of the walled city, poor localities and posh areas. The roads should be scrubbed with mechanical sweepers and zero-waste operation be completed as soon as possible, the CM added. Usman Buzdar said that LWMC should work with renewed zeal and special attention be paid to fixing of streetlights and patchwork. Dedicated support of commissioner Lahore and DG LDA would be available, he assured. Therefore, every effort should be made to ensure best cleanliness arrangements for making Lahore a neat and clean city, the CM stated and added that he would conduct a detailed visit soon to monitor cleanliness situation and availability of civic amenities to the citizens of Lahore. Mian Aslam Iqbal informed that 85 per cent garbage had been removed by utilizing 40 per cent machinery and 6300 tons of solid waste would be removed by tomorrow (Friday). The LWMC staff was actively engaged in the cleanliness of the city and 40 main roads would be cleansed by mechanical sweepers, he added. Regrettably, billions were wasted in the name of cleaning in the past but the incumbent government would achieve the target with less money and nothing would be hidden from the people, added the minister. At least 239,174 doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered so far in Massachusetts as the state prepares to start immunizing homeless individuals, residents of group homes and inmates next week. In the last seven days, 52,239 people have been administered first doses of either the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which both require two shots several weeks apart. Since vaccinations began last month, a total of 206,190 first doses have been administered so far in Massachusetts, according to data from the state Department of Public Health. Second doses started being administered this month, according to data, and 31,673 second shots went out in the last seven days. A total of 32,984 second doses have been administered so far. In the last week, 16,500 doses of the Moderna vaccine and 1,950 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been shipped to Massachusetts, data indicates. Cumulatively, 347,450 doses have been shipped to the state thus far, with 205,100 from Moderna and 142,350 from Pfizer. Hospitals have administered 177,313 shots and 36,883 have gone out through the Federal Pharmacy Partnership Program, according to the data. Of Massachusetts residents 70 and older, an age group considered at high risk for complications of the coronavirus, 18,379 have received one dose and 677 are fully vaccinated. There are 74,210 people ages 50-69 with one dose and 12,565 fully vaccinated. Of residents aged, 30-49, first shots have gone to 78,608 and 14,465 are fully vaccinated. There are 33,976 residents ages 20-29 with a first dose and 5,203 who are fully vaccinated. Of people 0-19, there are 1,017 with a first dose and 74 who are fully vaccinated. Immunizations started this week for public safety personnel. On Monday, immunizations will begin for those in congregate care settings, including people in prisons and jails, people staying in homeless or domestic violence shelters, patients and staff of residential substance use disorder treatment programs, patients and staff of residential mental health treatment programs and residential programs for adults with autism, intellectual disabilities and severe behavioral challenges. Gov. Charlie Baker this week said he believes 94,000 people fall into the congregate care category. Related Content: 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. MEXICO CITY, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The United Mexican States (" Mexico ") previously announced an offer to purchase for cash (the " Tender Offer ") its outstanding notes of series set forth in the table below (collectively, the " Old Notes "), on the terms and subject to the conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase, dated January 14, 2021 (the " Offer to Purchase "). Mexico has instructed Citigroup Global Markets Inc., as the billing and delivering bank for the Tender Offer, to accept, subject to proration and other terms and conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase, valid Preferred Tenders and Non-Preferred Tenders in aggregate principal amounts for each series of Old Notes as set forth below. All capitalized terms used but not defined in this communication have the respective meanings specified in the Offer to Purchase. The Tranche A Maximum Purchase Amount is 659,161,000 principal amount. The Tranche B Maximum Purchase Amount is 328,254,000 principal amount. The aggregate principal amount of Preferred and Non-Preferred Tenders of each series of Old Notes and the aggregate principal amount of Preferred and Non-Preferred Tenders of such series that have been accepted are shown in the tables below. Appropriate adjustments will be made so that purchases are made in the minimum denominations set forth in the Offer to Purchase. Table 1: Accepted Principal Amounts of Tranche A Notes Old Notes Aggregate Principal Amount of Preferred Tenders Aggregate Principal Amount of Preferred Tenders Accepted Aggregate Principal Amount of Non- Preferred Tenders Aggregate Principal Amount of Non- Preferred Tenders Accepted 2.750% Global Notes due 2023 111,160,000 111,160,000 123,978,000 123,978,000 1.625% Global Notes due 2024 53,000,000 53,000,000 22,359,000 22,359,000 1.625% Global Notes due 2026 172,563,000 172,563,000 0 0 1.750% Global Notes due 2028 135,531,000 135,531,000 40,570,000 40,570,000 Table 2: Accepted Principal Amounts of Tranche B Notes Old Notes Aggregate Principal Amount of Preferred Tenders Aggregate Principal Amount of Preferred Tenders Accepted Aggregate Principal Amount of Non- Preferred Tenders Aggregate Principal Amount of Non- Preferred Tenders Accepted 2.875% Global Notes due 2039 59,595,000 59,595,000 11,550,000 11,550,000 3.000% Global Notes due 2045 257,109,000 257,109,000 0 0 The settlement of the Tender Offer is scheduled to occur on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 (the " Tender Offer Settlement Date "), subject to change without notice. Failure to deliver Old Notes on time may result, in the Billing and Delivering Bank's sole discretion, in any of the following: (i) the cancellation of your tender and your becoming liable for any damages resulting from that failure, and/or (ii) the delivery of a buy-in notice for the purchase of such Old Notes, executed in accordance with customary brokerage practices for corporate fixed income securities, and/or (iii) in the case of Preferred Tenders, the cancellation of your tender and your remaining obligated to purchase your allocation of New Notes in respect of your related Indication of Interest. Mexico reserves the right, in its sole discretion, not to accept any or all Tender Orders and to terminate the Tender Offer for any reason. The Dealer Managers for the Tender Offer are: Banco Santander, S.A. 2 Triton Square Regent's Place London NW1 3AN United Kingdom Collect: +44 7418 709 688 / +44 7742 403 679 Barclays Bank PLC 5 The North Colonnade Canary Wharf London E14 4BB United Kingdom Collect: +44 20 3134 8515 Toll free: +1-888-603-5847 BNP Paribas 16, boulevard des Italiens 75009 Paris France +33 1 55 77 78 94 Citigroup Global Markets Inc. 388 Greenwich Street New York, New York 10013 Collect: +1 (212) 723-0859 Toll-Free: +1(800) 558-3745 The Billing and Delivering Bank for this Tender Offer is: Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Questions regarding the Tender Offer may be directed to the Dealer Managers at the above contact. The Offer to Purchase may be downloaded from the Information Agent's website at www.dfking.com/ums or obtained from the Information Agent, D. F. King & Co., Inc., at [email protected] or from any of the Dealer Managers. * * * Important Notice The distribution of materials relating to the Tender Offer and the transactions contemplated by the Tender Offer may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. The Tender Offer is void in all jurisdictions where it is prohibited. If materials relating to the Tender Offer come into your possession, you are required by Mexico to inform yourself of and to observe all of these restrictions. The materials relating to the Tender Offer, including this communication, do not constitute, and may not be used in connection with, an offer or solicitation in any place where offers or solicitations are not permitted by law. If a jurisdiction requires that the Tender Offer be made by a licensed broker or dealer and a Dealer Manager or any affiliate of a Dealer Manager is a licensed broker or dealer in that jurisdiction, the Tender Offer, as the case may be, shall be deemed to be made by the Dealer Manager or such affiliate on behalf of Mexico in that jurisdiction. Owners who may lawfully participate in the Tender Offer in accordance with the terms thereof are referred to as "holders." This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities nor will there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction. In Belgium, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer are not directly or indirectly, being made to, or for the account of, any person other than to qualified investors (gekwalificeerde beleggers/investisseurs qualifies) within the meaning of Article 2(e) Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017 on the prospectus to be published when securities are offered to the public or admitted to trading on a regulated market, and repealing Directive 2003/71/EC. (Reglement (UE) 2017/1129 du 14 juin 2017 du Parlement europeen et du Conseil concernant le prospectus a publier en cas d'offre au public de valeurs mobilieres ou en vue de l'admission de valeurs mobilieres a la negociation sur un marche reglemente, et abrogeant la directive 2003/71/CE / Verordening (EU) 2017/1129 van het Europees Parlement en de Raad van 14 juni 2017 betreffende het prospectus dat moet worden gepubliceerd wanneer effecten aan het publiek worden aangeboden of tot de handel op een gereglementeerde markt worden toegelaten en tot intrekking van Richtlijn 2003/71/EG), as amended or replaced from time to time (Belgian Qualified Investor), that do not qualify as consumers (consumenten/consommateurs) within the meaning of Article I.1, 2 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law of February 28, 2013 (Wetboek van economisch recht/Code de droit economique), as amended or replaced from time to time (Consumers). A Consumer within the meaning of Article I.1, 2 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law is any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside their trade, business, craft or profession. As a result, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer do not constitute a public takeover bid pursuant to Articles 3, 1, 1 and 6, 1 of the Belgian law of April 1, 2007 on public takeover bids (Wet op de openbare overnamebiedingen/Loi relative aux offres publiques d'acquisition), as amended or replaced from time to time. Consequently, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer and any material relating thereto have not been and will not be, notified or submitted to, nor approved by the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (Autoriteit voor Financiele Diensten en Markten/Autorite des Services et Marches Financiers) pursuant to the Belgian laws and regulations applicable to the public offering or tendering of securities. The New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer as well as any materials relating thereto may not be advertised, nor distributed, directly or indirectly, to any person in Belgium other than Belgian Qualified Investors acting for their own account who are not Consumers, and may not be used in connection with any offering in Belgium except as may otherwise be permitted by law. The New Notes and the Old Notes will not be registered under Chilean Law No. 18,045, as amended, with the Comision para el Mercado Financiero de Chile (Financial Market Commission of Chile, or " CMF ") and, accordingly, the New Notes and the Old Notes cannot and will not be offered or sold to persons in Chile except in circumstances which have not resulted and will not result in a public offering under Chilean law, and in compliance with Norma de Caracter General (Rule) No. 336, dated June 27, 2012, issued by the CMF. The New Notes may not be offered, sold or negotiated in Colombia, except in compliance with Part 4 of Decree 2555 of 2010. The Offer to Purchase and the New Notes Offering do not constitute and may not be used for, or in connection with, a public offering as defined under Colombian law. The New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer have not been and will not be approved by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, as neither constitute a public offer in accordance with the EU Prospectus Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/1129) nor the Danish Capital Market Act. This announcement does not constitute an offer to the public in France. It is not a prospectus within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation. No prospectus (including any amendment, supplement or replacement thereto) has been prepared in connection with the New Notes Offering that has been approved by the French Autorite des marches financiers (" AMF ") or by the competent authority of another Member State of the EEA and notified to the AMF under the Prospectus Regulation; the materials relating to the New Notes have not been distributed or caused to be distributed and will not be released, issued or distributed or caused to be released, issued or distributed, directly or indirectly, to the public in France, or used in connection with any offer for subscription, exchange or sale of the notes to the public in France. Any such offers, sales and distributions have been and shall only be made in France to (i) qualified investors (investisseurs qualifies) acting for their own account, and/or to (ii) investment services providers authorized to engage in portfolio management services on behalf of third parties and/or to (iii) a limited group of investors (cercle restreint d'investisseurs) acting for their own account, all as defined in, and in accordance with, Articles L.411-2, II, D.411-1, D.411-4, D.744-l, D.754-l and D.764-1 of the French Code monetaire et financier. In the event that the New Notes purchased or subscribed by investors listed above are offered or resold, directly or indirectly, to the public in France, the conditions relating to public offers set forth in Articles L.411-1, L.411-2, L.412-1 and L.621-8 to L.621-8-3 of the French Code monetaire et financier must be complied with. Investors in France and persons into whose possession offering materials come must inform themselves about, and observe, any such restrictions. The Tender Offer is made in the Federal Republic of Germany (" Germany ") to existing holders of the Old Notes only. The prospectus supplement does not constitute a prospectus compliant with the Prospectus Regulation and does therefore not allow any public offering in Germany. No action has been or will be taken in Germany that would permit a public offering of the New Notes, or distribution of a prospectus or prospectus supplement or any other offering material relating to the New Notes. In particular, no prospectus (Prospekt) within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation and the German Securities Trading Act (Wertpapierprospektgesetz) or any other applicable laws in Germany has been or will be published in Germany, nor has any prospectus or the prospectus supplement been filed with or approved by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) for publication in Germany. The prospectus supplement is strictly for use of the person who has received it. It may not be forwarded to other persons or published in Germany. With respect to persons in Hong Kong, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer are only made to, and are only capable of acceptance by, "professional investors" within the meaning of the Securities and Futures Ordinance (Cap. 571) of Hong Kong (the " SFO ") and any rules made thereunder. No person or entity may issue or have in its possession for the purposes of issue, whether in Hong Kong or elsewhere, any advertisement, invitation or document relating to the New Notes, Old Notes or the Tender Offer, which is directed at, or the contents of which are likely to be accessed or read by, the public of Hong Kong (except if permitted to do so under the securities laws of Hong Kong) other than with respect to the Old Notes which are or are intended to be tendered, or New Notes which are intended to be purchased, only by persons outside Hong Kong or only by "professional investors" as defined in the SFO and any rules made under thereunder. The Old Notes and the New Notes, and the Offer to Purchase and the New Notes Offering prospectus supplement, and any other documents or materials related to such offers have not and will not be registered with the Italian Securities Exchange Commission (Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa, or " CONSOB ") pursuant to applicable Italian laws and regulations. The Offer to Purchase and the New Notes Offering are being carried out pursuant to the exemptions provided for, with respect to the Offer to Purchase, in Article 101 bis, paragraph 3 bis of Legislative Decree No. 58 of 24 February 1998, as amended (the "Consolidated Financial Act") and Article 35 bis, paragraph 4, of CONSOB Regulation No. 11971 of 14 May 1999, as amended; and, with respect to the New Bonds Offering, in Article 1, paragraph 4, letter c), of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129. Holders or beneficial owners of the Old Notes that are resident and/or located in Italy can tender the Old Notes for purchase, and the New Notes Offerings can be offered, sold and delivered, through authorized persons (such as investment firms, banks or financial intermediaries permitted to conduct such activities in Italy in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, the Consolidated Financial Act, the CONSOB Regulation No. 20307 of 15 February 2018, as amended, and Legislative Decree No. 385 of September 1, 1993, as amended) and in compliance with any other applicable laws and regulations or with any requirements imposed by CONSOB or any other Italian authority. Each intermediary must comply with the applicable laws and regulations concerning information duties vis a vis its clients in connection with the bonds or the relevant offering. In Luxembourg, this announcement has been prepared on the basis that the offer of the New Notes, the Tender Offer and the potential exchange offer will be made pursuant to an exemption under Article 1 (4) of the Prospectus Regulation from the requirement to produce a prospectus for offers of securities. Neither the Offer to Purchase, nor any other documents or materials relating to the Offer to Purchase have been approved by or will be submitted for the approval of, the Mexican National Banking and Securities Commission (Comision Nacional Bancaria y de Valores, or the " CNBV ") and, the New Notes have not been and will not be registered with the Mexican National Securities Registry (Registro Nacional de Valores) maintained by the CNBV, and therefore the Old Notes and New Notes have not and may not be offered or sold publicly in Mexico. However, investors that qualify as institutional or qualified investors pursuant to the private placement exemption set forth in Article 8 of the Mexican Securities Market Law (Ley del Mercado de Valores), may be contacted in connection with, and may participate in the Offer to Purchase, and can be offered or purchase New Notes. The participation in the Offer to Purchase or the acquisition of New Notes will be made under such investor's own responsibility. In Norway, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer are made only in accordance with applicable exemptions from the requirement to prepare a prospectus or offer document in accordance with the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. Accordingly, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer have not been and will not be filed with or approved by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority, the Oslo Stock Exchange or the Norwegian Registry of Business Enterprises. The Tender Offer is not intended for any person who is not qualified as an institutional investor, in accordance with provisions set forth in Resolution SMV No. 021-2013-SMV-01 issued by Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores (Superintendency of Capital Markets) of Peru, and as subsequently amended. No legal, financial, tax or any other kind of advice is hereby being provided. The New Notes Offering prospectus supplement, the accompanying prospectus and the Offer to Purchase have not been and will not be registered as a prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The Offer to Purchase does not constitute an offering of securities in Singapore pursuant to the Securities and Futures Act, Chapter 289 of Singapore (the " SFA "). The New Notes will not be offered or sold or cause that such New Notes to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase and will not offer or sell such New Notes or cause such New Notes to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase, and has not circulated or distributed, nor will it circulate or distribute, this prospectus supplement or any other document or material in connection with the offer or sale, or invitation for subscription or purchase, of such New Notes, whether directly or indirectly, to persons in Singapore other than (i) to an institutional investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA) under Section 274 of the SFA, (ii) to a relevant person (as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA) pursuant to Section 275(1), or any person pursuant to Section 275(1A), and in accordance with the conditions specified in Section 275 of the SFA and (where applicable) Regulation 3 of the Securities and Futures (Classes of Investors) Regulations 2018 of Singapore or (iii) otherwise pursuant to, and in accordance with the conditions of, any other applicable provision of the SFA. Where the New Notes are subscribed or purchased in reliance on an exemption under Sections 274 or 275 of the SFA, the New Notes shall not be sold within the period of six months from the date of the initial acquisition of the notes, except to any of the following persons: an institutional investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA); a relevant person (as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA); or any person pursuant to an offer referred to in Section 275(1A) of the SFA, unless expressly specified otherwise in Section 276(7) of the SFA or Regulation 37A of the Securities and Futures (Offers of Investments) (Securities and Securities-based Derivatives Contracts) Regulations 2018 of Singapore. Where the New Notes are subscribed or purchased under Section 275 of the SFA by a relevant person which is: a corporation (which is not an accredited investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA)) the sole business of which is to hold investments and the entire share capital of which is owned by one or more individuals, each of whom is an accredited investor; or a trust (where the trustee is not an accredited investor) whose sole purpose is to hold investments and each beneficiary of the trust is an individual who is an accredited investor, securities or securities-based derivatives contracts (each term as defined in Section 2(1) of the SFA) of that corporation or the beneficiaries' rights and interest (howsoever described) in that trust shall not be transferred within six months after that corporation or that trust has acquired the New Notes pursuant to an offer made under Section 275 of the SFA except: to an institutional investor or to a relevant person as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA, or (in the case of such corporation) where the transfer arises from an offer referred to in 276(3)(i)(B) of the SFA or (in the case of such trust) where the transfer arises from an offer referred to in Section 276(4)(i)(B) of the SFA; where no consideration is or will be given for the transfer; where the transfer is by operation of law; as specified in Section 276(7) of the SFA; or as specified in Regulation 37A of the Securities and Futures (Offers of Investments) (Securities and Securities-based Derivatives Contracts) Regulations 2018 of Singapore . None of the offer materials related to the New Notes Offering or Tender Offer have been approved or registered in the administrative registries of the Spanish Securities Market Commission (Comision Nacional del Mercado de Valores). Consequently, the securities may not be offered, sold or distributed in Spain except in circumstances which do not constitute a public offer of securities in Spain within the meaning of Article 35 of the restated text of the Securities Markets Act approved by Royal Legislative Decree 4/2015, dated October 23, 2015 (Real Decreto Legislativo 4/2015, de 23 de octubre, por el que se aprueba el texto refundido de la Ley del Mercado de Valores), Royal Decree 1310/2005, dated November 4, 2005 (Real Decreto 1310/2005 de 4 de noviembre), or otherwise in reliance on an exception from registration available thereunder. The prospectus supplement is not intended to constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase or invest in the New Notes described therein in Switzerland, except as permitted by law. The New Notes may not be publicly offered, directly or indirectly, in Switzerland within the meaning of the Swiss Financial Services Act (" FinSA ") and will not be admitted to any trading venue (exchange or multilateral trading facility) in Switzerland. Neither the prospectus supplement nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the New Notes constitutes a prospectus as such term is understood pursuant to the FinSA, and neither the prospectus supplement nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the New Notes may be publicly distributed or otherwise made publicly available in Switzerland. Neither this communication, the Offer to Purchase nor any other offer material relating to the Tender Offer or the New Notes Offering has been approved by an authorized person for the purposes of section 21 of the UK Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. This communication, the Offer to Purchase and the prospectus supplement are only being distributed to and are only directed at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the " Order ") or (iii) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom it may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (e) of the Order (all such other persons together being referred to as " relevant persons "). Any investment or investment activity to which the Offer to Purchase or the New Notes Offering relates will only be available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire the same will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. The New Notes will only be available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire the New Notes will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on the Offer to Purchase, the prospectus supplement or any of their contents. The New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer qualifies as a private placement pursuant to section 2 of Uruguayan law 18.627. The New Notes and the Old Notes are not and will not be registered with the Central Bank of Uruguay to be publicly offered in Uruguay. Contact information: D. F. King &Co., Inc. 48 Wall Street, 22nd Floor New York, NY 10005 E-mail: [email protected] Call Collect:: +1 (212) 269-5550 Call Toll-Free: +1 (800) 488-8035 website: www.dfking.com/ums ANY DISCLAIMERS OR OTHER NOTICES THAT MAY APPEAR AFTER THIS MESSAGE ARE NOT APPLICABLE TO THIS COMMUNICATION AND SHOULD BE DISREGARDED. SUCH DISCLAIMERS OR OTHER NOTICES WERE AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED AS A RESULT OF THIS COMMUNICATION BEING SENT VIA BLOOMBERG OR ANOTHER EMAIL SYSTEM. SOURCE The United Mexican States New Delhi: Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has flagged off a first flight to the newly constructed Hisar airport in Haryana from Chandigarh under the Regional Connectivity Scheme Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (RCS-UDAN). The flagging off marked the operationalisation of the 54th airport under the UDAN scheme, said a Ministry of Civil Aviation statement on Thursday. To date, 307 routes and 54 airports including five heliports and two water aerodromes have been operationalized under the Regional Connectivity Scheme. Hisar airport is a public licensed airport that is suitable for 18 seat type aircraft. The development of the Hisar airport was undertaken by the MoCA as it aligns with the dual objectives of the UDAN scheme; "letting the common citizen of the country fly" and make air travel affordable and widespread in the country. Live TV Subsequently, the government of India had sanctioned Rs 28.60 crores for the development of the interim civil aviation operations. The land was handed over to the AAI for the up-gradation and development of the Hisar airport. The upgrade included the construction of the new terminal building, hangars, strengthening of the runway, installation of night-flying equipment, ATC, security equipment, etc at the Hisar airport. The airline Aviation Connectivity and Infrastructure Developers Pvt. Ltd (Air Taxi) was awarded the Hisar Chandigarh Hisar route under the UDAN 4 bidding process. The airline has become the first startup airline in the country to assist the nation with Air Taxi services. "These UDAN flights will reduce the journey time between Hisar to Chandigarh from 4.50 hours to a comfortable 45 minutes journey that too at an affordable fare since financial incentives in the form of Viability Gap Funding (VGF) is being provided from the Centre, state governments and airport operators to selected airlines to encourage operations from unserved and underserved airports under the scheme," it said. It said, "This air connectivity will fulfill the aspirations of the people of Haryana and Chandigarh. Many people travel frequently between these two cities for personal as well as professional purposes. Hisar is the administrative headquarters of the Hisar district of Hisar division in the state of Haryana." "The place is India's largest galvanized iron manufacturing city. The commencement of the flight operations on the route will provide impetus to the local economy and enhance the aerial connectivity of the region," it added. Notably, the inauguration was attended by the senior officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and Airport Authority of India (AAI). [January 14, 2021] Burke & Herbert Bank Welcomes New Commercial Banking Executive Burke & Herbert Bank announced today that Gregory P. Mellors will join the Bank on January 19, 2021 as Senior Vice President, Commercial Banking. In this role, Mr. Mellors will manage the Bank's commercial banking business line and play the lead role in developing and implementing strategies to enhance and grow this important business for the Bank. In particular, Mr. Mellors will focus on expanding the Bank's commercial and industrial (C&I) banking program, which is a top priority for the Bank. "I am delighted to welcome Greg Mellors to Burke & Herbert Bank," stated David P. Boyle, the Bank's President & Chief Executive Officer. "Given the importance of the commercial business to the Bank's continued growth and success, we conducted an extensive search to identify the right person for the commercial banking leadership role, and I am confident that we have made a great choice. Greg's significant experience in the financial services industry and in all aspects of commercial banking - new business development, credit and risk management, financial performance, and team leadership and development - is just what we need to move forward with our expansion program." He added, "Greg's knowledge of our local market also is a big pls." "I am excited about this opportunity to join Burke & Herbert Bank - an institution in the market with a long history of success serving customers and the community," said Mr. Mellors. "I look forward to taking on the challenge of enhancing and expanding the commercial business to drive additional success for the Bank and its shareholders, leveraging my experiences at both large and small financial institutions." Mr. Mellors has close to twenty years of experience in commercial banking in a variety of roles. Most recently, he was in a commercial banking leadership role at Wells Fargo (News - Alert) Bank, responsible for leading the Bank's commercial banking teams in five separate markets throughout central and western Virginia. Prior experience includes business development and credit management roles with increasing levels of responsibility at Insignia Bank and Orion Bank, both in Sarasota/Bradenton, Florida, and at BB&T in Sarasota/Bradenton, Florida and in Charleston, West Virginia. Mr. Mellors earned his MBA at the Mason School of Business Administration at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and holds a BS degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland, Smith School of Business in College Park, Maryland. Burke & Herbert Bank is the oldest bank in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the oldest continuously operating bank in the Washington, DC area. The Bank offers a full range of personal and business banking products and services designed to meet customers' banking, borrowing, and investing needs. Burke & Herbert Bank is headquartered in Alexandria and operates more than 20 branches in northern Virginia. Member FDIC; Equal Housing Lender View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114006053/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Mumbai, Jan 15 : In another major haul within a week, Mumbai Police seized over 345 kg marijuana or 'ganja' valued at around Rs 52 million, officials said here on Friday. Following a tip-off regarding a huge consignment of contraband hidden in a building in Sangharsh Nagar, a Chandivali suburb in north-east Mumbai, a team of Saki Naka police station raided the premises, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 10) Maheshwar Reddy said. The 'ganja' was found hidden in a small flat in building no. 10 in the Slum Redevelopment Authority complex. The team scrutinized CCTV footage from the area and zeroed in on 39-year-old Ashok M Metre, who was arrested and booked under the NDPS Act, said Reddy. The area was notorious for drug peddling and was put under extra surveillance to unearth the illegal goings-on, a police official said. On January 9, the Narcotics Control Bureau had raided two locations in Bandra and Khar and seized over 200 kg of high-end drugs like OGKhush. British national Karan Sajnani, an Indian-origin businessman living in Mumbai for over a year, was arrested along with sisters Rahila and Shaista Furniturewala, who are said to be managers of a Bollywood actress. Sajnani's interrogation led to the arrests of 'Muchhad Paanwala' co-owner Ramkumar Tiwari, and Sameer Khan, the son-in-law of Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik, this week. The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) through the HAL Education Committee has called for applications in prescribed format from qualified and experienced candidates for filling Twenty-Seven (27) vacancies to the post of Junior Office Assistant (JOA), PRT, TGT and PGT staff in HAL through direct recruitment to be posted at HAL Schools in Bengaluru, Karnataka in India on a fulltime basis. The offline application process towards the same started on January 13, 2021 and closes on January 30, 2021. CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Junior Office Assistant (JOA), PRT, TGT and PGT staff in HAL Organisation Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Educational Qualification B.E/B.Tech/M.Sc in Computer Science/IT or MCA/ BCA; Graduation with B.Ed in relevant discipline; Post-Graduation with B.Ed in concerned discipline; B.Com Experience Two to five years of teaching experience in CBSE/ICSE Schools Job Responsibilities null Skills Required Good communication skills in English and Teaching Job Location Bengaluru Salary Scale In the range of Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 71,000 per month as per the post Industry Hal Education Committee Application Start Date January 13, 2021 Application End Date January 30, 2021 HAL Recruitment 2021: Age Criteria And Fees Candidates interested in applying for HAL School Staff Jobs 2021 through HAL Recruitment 2021 must fall in the age group between 35 to 50 years of age as on June 1, 2021 with relaxation (upper age limit) for reserved categories as per the HAL norms as specified in the HAL Recruitment Notification 2021. For details regarding application fee for HAL School Staff Jobs 2021 through HAL Recruitment 2021, refer to the official HAL Recruitment Notification 2021 given at the end of the article. Also Read: IBPS Recruitment 2021 For Analyst Programmer And IT Engineer Posts, Apply Online Before February 8 HAL Recruitment 2021 Vacancy Details PRT - 17 TGT - 08 PGT - 01 JOA - 01 Total - 27 HAL Recruitment 2021: Education And Eligibility Desirous candidates applying for HAL School Staff Jobs 2021 through HAL Recruitment 2021 must possess a B.E/B.Tech/M.Sc in Computer Science/IT or MCA/ BCA; Graduation with B.Ed in relevant discipline; Post-Graduation with B.Ed in concerned discipline; B.Com from a recognised University/Institution with two to five years of teaching experience in CBSE/ICSE Schools as detailed in the HAL Recruitment Notification 2021. Candidates must possess good communication skills in English and Teaching. HAL Recruitment 2021: Selection And Pay Scale The selection of candidates to HAL School Staff Jobs 2021 through HAL Recruitment 2021 will be done through Shortlisting, Interview and Document Verification as notified in the HAL Recruitment Notification 2021. Candidates selected as HAL School Staff Jobs 2021 through HAL Recruitment 2021 will be paid emolument in the range of Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 71,000 per month as per the post. Also Read: IBPS PO Prelims Result 2020 Declared HAL Recruitment 2020: How To Apply Candidates applying for HAL School Staff Jobs 2021 through HAL Recruitment 2021 must fill the application form in a prescribed format post-download from the HAL website and send the same to the "Secretary, HAL Gnanajyoti School, HAL East Extension Township, GBJ Colony, Marathahalli Post, Bangalore - 560037" along with relevant supporting documents on or before January 30, 2021 by 6:00 pm through ordinary post, speed post, registered post, courier only as detailed in the HAL Recruitment 2021 Notification. Download HAL Recruitment 2021 PDF Application Form Download HAL Recruitment 2021 Notification PDF for Junior Office Assistant (JOA), PRT, TGT and PGT staff Police at the scene of the fire on Donegall Pass, south Belfast (David Young/PA) A multi-cultural centre in Belfast has been badly damaged in a fire. Investigations are ongoing to establish whether the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association property on Donegall Pass in the south of the city was started deliberately. Vehicles belonging to people working at the centre have been previously vandalised in hate crime incidents. More than 50 firefighters fought the blaze, which started around 8.30pm on Thursday night. Seven fire appliances were used to bring the flames under control. Incident Donegall Pass: Attending crews brought the fire under control using breathing apparatus, jets, and high reach appliances. Small number of appliances and crews remain at the incident to make the scene safe. Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (@NIFRSOFFICIAL) January 14, 2021 No-one was inside the building when the fire started and there were no injuries reported. The building had been used as a food bank, with volunteers distributing packages to vulnerable people during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a statement, the association said it had been on the receiving end of a lot of hostility and Islamophobia for years. We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow, it said. Expand Close Police are investigating the blaze (David Young/PA) PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police are investigating the blaze (David Young/PA) We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all. A Hollywood man faces up to a year in prison after accidentally slamming his drone slammed into an LAPD helicopter, forcing it to make an emergency landing last year. Andrew Rene Hernandez, 22, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft and his conviction is believed to be the first in the nation, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Cops responding to a burglary call at a pharmacy in Hollywood requested air support on September 18, according to the complaint filed in United States District Court. Hernandez heard police sirens near his home and the helicopter overhead. Curious about the police activity, he flew his drone 'to see what was going on,' according to court documents. Andrew Rene Hernandez, 22, has pleaded guilty to unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft His conviction is believed to be the first in the nation and he's set for sentencing in April The pilot saw Hernandez's drone as it was ascending and attempted to evade it, but were not successful. The drone 'smacked' into the helicopter, which had two police officers inside, damaging its nose, antenna and bottom cowlings and forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing. 'If the drone had struck the helicopter's main rotor instead of the fuselage, it could have brought the helicopter down,' an affidavit filed with a criminal complaint reads. Cops found parts of the drone near nearby and identified Hernandez from its memory card Cops found parts of the drone near the pharmacy and discovered a car damaged by the drone when it dropped from the sky. Investigators reviewed the drone's camera and memory card, which identified Hernandez as its operator. The FBI raided his home in October, when he admitted to operating the drone. Cops arrested Hernandez in November during National Drone Safety Awareness Week, which is sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration and seeks to promote drone safety. RULES FOR DRONES You must not fly above 400ft (120m) and must keep a direct line of sight. You must not fly your drone near emergencies such as car crashes, firefighting, and search and rescues. You can only fly drones during the day. You must not operate your drone in restricted areas such as near airports. You must not fly above crowded areas such as sporting events and beaches. Advertisement Hernandez is slated to be sentenced on April 12. According to federal law, a drone operator can be charged with unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft if the person either knowingly or recklessly interferes with an aircraft carrying at least one occupant. The Federal Aviation Administration has noted evidence of a 'considerable increase in the unauthorized use of small, inexpensive [drones] by individuals and organizations.' Drone operators are required to register any drones that weigh more than 250 grams with the FAA, according to the agency's website. Drones under that weight limit and that are being used recreationally or as a hobby do not need to be registered with the FAA. Federal law requires drone operators who are required to register to show their certificate of registration to any law enforcement officer if asked, the FAA said. Failure to register a drone can result in civil penalties up to $27,500 or criminal fines up to $250,000 and up to three years in prison. An artistic rendering of the XMM-Newton (X-ray multi-mirror mission) space telescope. A study of archival data from the XMM-Newton and the Chandra X-ray space telescopes found evidence of high levels of X-ray emission from the nearby Magnificent Seven neutron stars, which may arise from the hypothetical particles known as axions. Credit: D. Ducros; ESA/XMM-Newton, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars. First theorized in the 1970s as part of a solution to a fundamental particle physics problem, axions are expected to be produced at the core of stars, and to convert into particles of light, called photons, in the presence of a magnetic field. Axions may also make up dark matterthe mysterious stuff that accounts for an estimated 85 percent of the total mass of the universe, yet we have so far only seen its gravitational effects on ordinary matter. Even if the X-ray excess turns out not to be axions or dark matter, it could still reveal new physics. A collection of neutron stars, known as the Magnificent 7, provided an excellent test bed for the possible presence of axions, as these stars possess powerful magnetic fields, are relatively nearbywithin hundreds of light-yearsand were only expected to produce low-energy X-rays and ultraviolet light. "They are known to be very 'boring,'" and in this case it's a good thing, said Benjamin Safdi, a Divisional Fellow in the Berkeley Lab Physics Division theory group who led a study, published Jan. 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters, detailing the axion explanation for the excess. Christopher Dessert, a Berkeley Lab Physics Division affiliate, contributed heavily to the study, which also had participation by researchers at UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota. If the neutron stars were of a type known as pulsars, they would have an active surface giving off radiation at different wavelengths. This radiation would show up across the electromagnetic spectrum, Safdi noted, and could drown out this X-ray signature that the researchers had found, or would produce radio-frequency signals. But the Magnificent 7 are not pulsars, and no such radio signal was detected. Other common astrophysical explanations don't seem to hold up to the observations either, Safdi said. If the X-ray excess detected around the Magnificent 7 is generated from an object or objects hiding out behind the neutron stars, that likely would have shown up in the datasets that researchers are using from two space satellites: the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray telescopes. Safdi and collaborators say it's still quite possible that a new, non-axion explanation arises to account for the observed X-ray excess, though they remain hopeful that such an explanation will lie outside of the Standard Model of particle physics, and that new ground- and space-based experiments will confirm the origin of the high-energy X-ray signal. "We are pretty confident this excess exists, and very confident there's something new among this excess," Safdi said. "If we were 100% sure that what we are seeing is a new particle, that would be huge. That would be revolutionary in physics." Even if the discovery turns out not to be associated with a new particle or dark matter, he said, "It would tell us so much more about our universe, and there would be a lot to learn." Raymond Co, a University of Minnesota postdoctoral researcher who collaborated in the study, said, "We're not claiming that we've made the discovery of the axion yet, but we're saying that the extra X-ray photons can be explained by axions. It is an exciting discovery of the excess in the X-ray photons, and it's an exciting possibility that's already consistent with our interpretation of axions." If axions exist, they would be expected to behave much like neutrinos in a star, as both would have very slight masses and interact only very rarely and weakly with other matter. They could be produced in abundance in the interior of stars. Uncharged particles called neutrons move around within neutron stars, occasionally interacting by scattering off of one another and releasing a neutrino or possibly an axion. The neutrino-emitting process is the dominant way that neutron stars cool over time. Like neutrinos, the axions would be able to travel outside of the star. The incredibly strong magnetic field surrounding the Magnificent 7 starsbillions of times stronger than magnetic fields that can be produced on Earthcould cause exiting axions to convert into light. Neutron stars are incredibly exotic objects, and Safdi noted that a lot of modeling, data analysis, and theoretical work went into the latest study. Researchers have heavily used a bank of supercomputers known as the Lawrencium Cluster at Berkeley Lab in the latest work. Some of this work had been conducted at the University of Michigan, where Safdi previously worked. "Without the high-performance supercomputing work at Michigan and Berkeley, none of this would have been possible," he said. "There is a lot of data processing and data analysis that went into this. You have to model the interior of a neutron star in order to predict how many axions should be produced inside of that star." Safdi noted that as a next step in this research, white dwarf stars would be a prime place to search for axions because they also have very strong magnetic fields, and are expected to be "X-ray-free environments." "This starts to be pretty compelling that this is something beyond the Standard Model if we see an X-ray excess there, too," he said. Researchers could also enlist another X-ray space telescope, called NuStar, to help solve the X-ray excess mystery. Safdi said he is also excited about ground-based experiments such as CAST at CERN, which operates as a solar telescope to detect axions converted into X-rays by a strong magnet, and ALPS II in Germany, which would use a powerful magnetic field to cause axions to transform into particles of light on one side of a barrier as laser light strikes the other side of the barrier. Axions have received more attention as a succession of experiments has failed to turn up signs of the WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle), another promising dark matter candidate. And the axion picture is not so straightforwardit could actually be a family album. There could be hundreds of axion-like particles, or ALPs, that make up dark matter, and string theorya candidate theory for describing the forces of the universeholds open the possible existence of many types of ALPs. Explore further Looking for dark matter near neutron stars with radio telescopes More information: Malte Buschmann et al, Axion Emission Can Explain a New Hard X-Ray Excess from Nearby Isolated Neutron Stars, Physical Review Letters (2021). Journal information: Physical Review Letters Malte Buschmann et al, Axion Emission Can Explain a New Hard X-Ray Excess from Nearby Isolated Neutron Stars,(2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.021102 Joe, the US pigeon, was actually Australian. Kevin Celli-Bird/AP Australia no longer intends to kill a pigeon thought to have flown there from the US over biosecurity concerns. Joe the pigeon was wearing a leg tag that traced it to Alabama, but the American Racing Pigeon Union told Insider the blue band belongs to a different bird. The pigeon is likely Australian, according to the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment. The department said it doesn't plan on taking any further action. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. Australia no longer intends to kill a pigeon that was believed to have made an 8,000-mile journey across the world from the US. Reports earlier this week suggested that Australian officials were concerned the bird - which was thought to be from Alabama - posed a biosecurity risk. But the pigeon, nicknamed Joe, was likely Australian all along, according to a statement the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment shared with Insider on Friday. "Following an investigation, the department has concluded that Joe the Pigeon is highly likely to be Australian and does not present a biosecurity risk," the statement said. The Washington Post, Associated Press, and BBC, among other news outlets, reported on Thursday that Melbourne resident Kevin Celli-Bird found "the exhausted bird" in his backyard and that Australian authorities were planning to kill the animal because of "bird diseases" it might carry that pose a threat to native birds. (At the time of writing, the AP has updated its article in light of the new information shared by the ARPU.) According to Pakenham Gazette, a local news outlet, Celli-Bird made the discovery that the bird might be American after taking a closer look at the tag around its leg. He googled the number which led him to the American Racing Pigeon Union (ARPU), telling the AP that the union told him the bird belonged to someone in Montgomery, Alabama. When contacted by Insider on Thursday, the ARPU said the blue band around the pigeon's leg was "counterfeit" and that the number belongs to a different bird. Story continues "The band is counterfeit. The bird's home is in Australia somewhere, not the US," a representative for the union told Insider. Read more: 50 stunning wildlife photos that will make you see animals in a whole new light Australia's Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment initially shared a statement with Insider on Thursday saying that "the only possible outcome to manage the biosecurity risk is humane destruction of the bird." In a follow-up statement shared on Friday, however, the department said that they are "satisfied that the bird's leg band is a fraudulent copy of a legitimate leg band." The statement added that "no further action will be taken by the department in relation to this matter." Insider was unable to reach Celli-Bird for comment. The saga of Joe the pigeon began over the holidays Joe had been getting stronger in Celli-Bird's backyard. Kevin Celli-Bird/AP Celli-Bird found the pigeon in his backyard on December 26, 2020, according to the AP and Pakenham Gazette. "It rocked up at our place on Boxing Day," Celli-Bird told the AP, speaking of the pigeon. "I've got a fountain in the backyard and it was having a drink and a wash. He was pretty emaciated so I crushed up a dry biscuit and left it out there for him." Celli-Bird says Joe has become stronger in the last couple of weeks and continues to hang out in his backyard with other birds. He named the pigeon Joe after US president-elect Joe Biden. "We had some friends here and were trying to come up with a name. We thought it had to be American and someone suggested Donald, but I just said no, no, absolutely no," he told Pakenham Gazette. The number on the pigeon's leg tag was on the wrong bird The ARPU told Insider that the number on Joe's tag that was reported by Celli-Bird belongs to a homing pigeon. A homing pigeon perched on a birdhouse. The bird mentioned in the story is not pictured here. Getty Images Homing pigeons, like the one pictured above, have striking strips across their body and wing, something that Joe does not appear to have in the photos published by the AP. A representative for the ARPU told Insider on Thursday that "a race handler who had the pigeon" had confirmed that the reference number noted on the tag around Joe's leg belonged to "a blue bar homing pigeon, not the bird you see in the photographs that have been published." The ARPU told Insider on Friday that it is not sure what kind of pigeon Joe might be. Read the original article on Insider President-elect Joe Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill that would add $1,400 to the $600 direct payments granted under a law signed by President Donald Trump late last month. The proposal would also extend unemployment benefits and help schools reopen. And it includes $350 billion for state and local aid a top Democratic priority, Im convinced were ready to get this done, Biden said Thursday in Wilmington, Delaware, as he advanced his plan. The very health of our nation is at stake. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., quickly welcomed Bidens plan. We will get right to work to turn President-elect Bidens vision into legislation that will pass both chambers and be signed into law, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a joint statement. Biden said he wanted to work across party lines, but if Senate Republicans balk, congressional Democrats could use a procedure known as reconciliation to prevent a filibuster and pass the stimulus plan by a simple majority vote in each chamber. Thats the same procedure the GOP used to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to pass a tax law that the Congressional Budget Office said increased the federal deficit by $1.9 trillion over 10 years, the same size as Bidens stimulus proposal. Besides increasing the total direct payments to $2,000, the Treasury Department would make sure that the initial round of $1,200 checks under the CARES Act went to eligible families that have yet to receive them. Biden said that the $600 payments in the stimulus plan that was enacted on Dec. 27 were simply not enough if you still have to choose between paying rent and putting food on the table. Even for those who have kept their jobs, these checks are really important. The proposal provides long-sought assistance to states and localities of $350 billion to help pay the salaries of police officers, health care workers, teachers and other public employees. Of that money, $3 billion would be earmarked for the Economic Development Administration to help create jobs. These crises are straining the budgets of states, cities, and tribal communities that are forced to consider layoffs and service reductions, Biden said. It means the people putting their lives at risk are the very people now at risk of losing their jobs. In addition, state and local governments would be reimbursed for providing family and medical leave to employees, and the federal government would cover the full cost of state emergency response efforts, including deploying the National Guard. There also would be funding to increase nutrition programs, and expand and extend paid family and medical leave. This wont be the last spending program proposed by Biden to combat the coronavirus-induced economic downturn. He said he would offer a major package of investments in infrastructure, clean energy and worker training before a joint session of Congress last month. Here are other highlights of Bidens stimulus package: -- Eviction protection. The moratorium against evictions would be extended to Sept. 30, $25 billion would go to renters and small landlords to help cover rents, and $5 billion would go to the low-income home heating assistance program and other programs to cover home energy and water costs -- Health insurance. Biden, who was vice president when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, proposed expanding tax credits to lower premiums and subsidizing the cost of insurance for those who were laid off but are eligible for coverage under COBRA. -- Higher minimum wage. Biden called for a $15 per hour minimum wage, a long-sought goal of progressives. The minimum wage in Massachusetts increased to $13.50 on Jan. 1, 2021. -- Public transit. Another $20 billion in aid would go to the hardest-hit public transportation agencies. -- School aid. The proposal has $170 billion for schools, including $130 billion to help schools reopen, $35 billion for public colleges and public and private Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority serving institutions, and $5 billion for governors to support early childhood, elementary or secondary educational programs hardest hit by the coronavirus. -- Small businesses. The hardest-hit businesses would be eligible for $15 billion in grants. There also would be $35 billion for state, local, tribal and nonprofit financing programs for small businesses, which the Biden transition said would generate up to $175 billion in low-interest loans and venture capital. Businesses with less than 500 workers would be reimbursed for expanded family and medical leave through a refundable tax credit. -- Unemployment insurance. Biden proposed extending pandemic unemployment insurance programs past their March expiration date, as well as increase to $400 a week from $300 the extra federal payment. -- Worker protections. As their price for protecting businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits, congressional Democrats demanded standards to protect employees. Biden said he wanted Congress to let the Occupational Safety and Health Administration set standards that cover all workers, not just under the agencys jurisdiction, and called on more funding so the government can enforce those rules. The total package is similar in size to House-passed legislation in the last Congress, as well as the $1.8 trillion in spending offered by Trump last fall. And it is more than twice as large as the $900 billion stimulus passed last month. SEATTLE (January 15, 2021) - A University of Washington physician and professor, whose team of researchers identified the first case of the coronavirus in the United States, has been named "Washingtonian of the Year." Dr. Helen Chu of the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine (BBI) at the UW's School of Medicine, was cited for the discovery and ongoing work leading to COVID-related therapies, treatments, and vaccines, all of which "has helped shape the state's response to the coronavirus." Chu is one of the principal investigators of the Seattle Flu Study (SFS), a collaborative research project to detect, monitor and control the flu in Seattle in partnership with BBI, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Children's. Last year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the SFS led to the creation of Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), a group of medical, public health and research organizations, including Seattle-King County Public Health, working together to understand the spread of virus in the greater Seattle region. The goal of SCAN is to understand the outbreak more completely and, along with other data sources, help inform public health decisions. "I am humbled by and deeply appreciative of this award honoring not just me and BBI, but more importantly, all faculty and staff associated with the Seattle Flu Study and SCAN," Chu said. "There remains much we do not know about COVID-19. It is imperative that we continue to study transmission, infection, and treatment." In announcing the award on behalf of the Washington State Leadership Board, the Office of the Lieutenant Governor called out the efforts of the SFS team last February to request federal approval to test swabs already collected for the coronavirus. That request was denied, however, as the coronavirus spread from China to other nations, the team decided to analyze the swabs without federal authorization, leading within days to the first documented positive case in the United States. "Their discovery and ongoing work has helped shape the state's response to the coronavirus," according to the statement. "Congratulations to Dr. Chu and her team on being recognized for their significant contributions to tracking COVID-19," said UW President Dr. Ana Mari Cauce. "Leaders like Dr. Chu have been key to our ability to play a lead role in the fight against the pandemic, and I am incredibly proud of the work happening at the UW as exemplified by Dr. Chu." This was not Chu's first award recognizing her COVID-related work. She was named Health Care Researcher of the Year for 2020 by the Puget Sound Business Journal and was honored with a national Emergent Ventures Prize for Social Leadership from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. "Dr. Chu's leadership has been integral to BBI's success," said Dr. Jay Shendure, BBI's Scientific Director. "The recognition she and the SFS team have received reflects their uncompromising commitment to leading edge scientific study." Chu joined the UW in 2012 after residency at Harvard University; she earned her medical degree from Duke University in 2005. In addition to her affiliation with BBI, she is a board-certified physician with UW Medicine, a UW associate professor of Medicine and Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and an adjunct associate professor of Epidemiology and Global Health. Since 1975, the state leadership board has hosted the annual Washington Leadership Awards ceremony. In addition to Chu, the other honorees in 2021 are: Northwest Harvest for Organization of the Year, Community Passageways for the Washington Justice For All Award, and Bill Gates Sr. and Jim Ellis for the Washington Legacy of Service Award. Past award recipients include community leaders and philanthropists, such as Paul Allen and Priscilla Bullitt Collins. "It is important that as a state, we recognize and elevate the people and organizations who exemplify outstanding leadership," said Lt. Governor Denny Heck. "This year's recipients have each demonstrated a tireless commitment to improving the lives of others, showing us all what strong, thoughtful leadership looks like. I am proud our state will recognize their enormous contributions." An awards ceremony will be held virtually at 6 pm on Tuesday, February 16th. For more information, contact info@wastateleadershipboard.org. ### CONTACT: Dean R. Owen, Director of Communications The Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine at the University of Washington's School of Medicine dean1227@uw.edu; +1.253.906.8645 https:/ / brotmanbaty. org/ ABOUT BBI: The Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine, or BBI, was founded in November 2017 by UW Medicine, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Children's. Its mission is to have a transformative impact on biomedical research and patient outcomes through the development and application of precision approaches to healthcare. Its world-renowned investigators work together on shared scientific interests in areas including medical genetics, cancer biology, infectious disease and technology development. On one occasion, those ties probably saved his life. During the assault on the Freedom Riders in Birmingham, a group of Klansmen, seeing Mr. Lankford shooting pictures, dragged him into an alley. But before they could hit him, another Klansman said not to touch him, because he was Bulls boy. They left him alone but took the film from his camera; one of them offered him a dollar as compensation, according to Diane McWhorter, who interviewed Mr. Lankford for the 2013 edition of her book Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. At the same time, as he recounted to Ms. McWhorter, Mr. Lankford worked as a one-man intelligence unit for Vincent Townsend, the powerful assistant publisher of The Birmingham News. Mr. Townsend was a racial moderate and no fan of Mr. Connor, but above all he wanted to keep tabs on anyone who might disturb the citys business community. Mr. Lankford was happy to help, and used an expense account provided by Mr. Townsend to buy equipment to spy on civil rights leaders. Sometimes Mr. Lankfords allegiances conflicted. In 1961, as part of a plan by Mr. Connor to undermine Tom King, a relatively progressive mayoral candidate whom Mr. Townsend backed, Mr. Connor arranged for a Black man to shake Mr. Kings hand unexpectedly. Mr. Lankford, positioned nearby, took a photo, copies of which Mr. Connors forces spread around town, implying that Mr. King was opposed to segregation. He lost decisively. Then, a year later, during a vote over whether to do away with the citys commissioner jobs including Mr. Connors Mr. Lankford wiretapped a meeting between Mr. Connor and leaders of the local firefighters union, a story he recounted for T.K. Thorne, a former Birmingham police officer and the author of the forthcoming book Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birminghams Civil Rights Days. On the recording, Mr. Connor promised the firefighters a raise in exchange for their support. Mr. Lankford gave the tape to Mr. Townsend, who used it in a radio ad that helped sink Mr. Connors campaign. He left office in 1963, near the end of Martin Luther Kings campaign to desegregate Birminghams lunch counters and department stores. 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. Russia says it is beginning the procedure to withdraw from the international Open Skies Treaty after the United States last year left the accord, which allows unarmed aerial surveillance flights over dozens of participating states. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement on January 15 that the U.S. pullout "significantly upended the balance of interests of signatory states," and that Russia's proposals to keep the accord alive had been shrugged off by Washington's allies. "Given the lack of progress in efforts to remove obstacles preventing the functioning of the treaty in the new situation, the Russian Foreign Ministry is entitled to announce the start of domestic procedures to pave the way for Russia's withdrawal from the Treaty on Open Skies," the ministry said. The United States formally withdrew on November 22 from the arms-control and verification agreement that Washington repeatedly said Moscow "flagrantly violated," six months after giving notice of the pending exit. At the time, Moscow condemned the decision, saying it was detrimental to the security of Europe, the United States, and its allies. The U.S. move was the latest blow to the system of international arms control that outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly scorned, complaining that Washington was being either deceived or unfairly restrained in its military capabilities. The Open Skies Treaty was signed in 1992 and entered into force in 2002, allowing its 34 members to conduct short-notice, unarmed observation and surveillance flights over one another's territories to collect data on military forces and activities. More than 1,500 flights have taken place under the agreement. The treaty's proponents say the flights help build confidence by showing that, for example, adversaries are not secretly deploying forces or preparing to launch attacks. Delhi airport (File image: PTI) Bird flu has not just impacted menus on the ground but also forced a tweak in what one could eat in the air. Airlines, including IndiGo and Vistara, have gone all vegetarian to keep the flu at bay. Don't be surprised if the chicken tikka sandwich goes missing from IndiGo's 6E Tiffin menu. Nor will there be any keema with kulcha. One will have to suffice with poha, upma, or the veg sandwiches. As in the country's largest airline, the story is similar in Vistara, whose customers otherwise look forward to its gourmet dishes. The airline, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, now is forced to restrict its menu to vegetarian options. "As the cases had increased in Delhi, the state government had asked restaurants to avoid chicken and egg preparations. While this was just within the municipal areas, and thus is not applicable to the airlines, Vistara has taken a call to remove chicken and egg preparations, and replace them with vegetarian options," a senior executive said. While the change will already be visible to passengers flying from Delhi, the new menus will start reflecting on flights from Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Pune from January 16. "It's a psychological thing. The food is absolutely safe as long as it is well cooked. But the airlines don't want to take any chances, especially given that fliers are wary about health and safety due to COVID-19," said an executive from the industry. All the municipal corporations in Delhi had on January 13, banned the sale and storage of poultry. While there were reports that the ban has been lifted, a day later, many eating joints in the capital region continued to keep chicken and egg off their menus. On January 13, Delhi had reported over 50 incidents of bird deaths because of avian influenza. Bird flu has been now reported in over 10 states across the country. Over 11,000 birds have been reported to be culled in Maharashtra. The aviation industry would be hoping that bird flu cases ease quickly enough, as they are keen to avoid any development that impacts "traveling sentiments." While air passenger traffic has continued to recover, since domestic flights resumed in May last year, the numbers are still way below pre-COVID-19 levels. Though numbers grew by 12 percent month-on-month in December, the pace has cooled down. Read more about bird flu's impact: Bird flu is impacting sale of chicken, but not online Venezuela is opening up to foreign investment in its oil industry, President Nicolas Maduro said this week, in a bid to reverse a catastrophic drop in its output under the weight of U.S. sanctions. Jorge Jraissati reported for Anadolu Agency this week that Maduro said in its annual accountability speech that Venezuela will aim to pump 1.5 million barrels of oil daily, which will need help from foreign partners. Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA already has foreign partners, in all fairness. However, foreign investments in Venezuela's oil industry are capped at 49 percent of any given project to protect state control of the industry. Now, with the industryand Venezuela's whole economyin tatters, this may have to change. Indeed, a year ago, there were reports that the Caracas regime was ready to cede control of its oil industry to a foreign company, with names such as Russia's Rosneft, Spain's Repsol, and Italy's Eni rumored to be among the potential suitors. The pandemic interfered with whatever plans were being made before March 2020, but there is legislation approved by the Venezuela National Assembly that allowed Maduro to effectively privatize PDVSA. The law, dubbed "Anti-Blockade Constitutional Law for National Development and Guarantee of Human Rights," aims to counter the effects of U.S. sanctions on the Venezuelan economy by offering new ways for foreign investors to participate in this economy and also giving more powers to the government. According to critics, the new law would threaten Venezuela's sovereignty by inviting more private capital and opening up opportunities for privatization in strategic economic sectors. Meanwhile, Venezuela's crude oil production has dropped to the lowest since 1940, at 557,000 bpd, according to the latest OPEC monthly report. Reversing this and boosting it to 1.5 million bpd will require substantial investment at a time when global oil demand is still weak. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: I like it in theory finding a small moment of unity during a pandemic that has revealed and amplified our inequities and prompted us, too often, to turn against one another. The few times I headed to the South Loop for its nightly ritual, I was moved to tears by the beauty and the juxtaposition of coming together when so much feels as though its coming apart. 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. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, seen speaking during the Conservative Political Action Conference 2020 Feb. 28, 2020 in Maryland, said, The U.S. Department of Labor is taking these steps to strengthen wage protections, address abuses in visa programs, and protect American workers from being undercut by cheaper foreign labor. But Indian American immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta told India-West: The Labor Department has tried to be reasonable, but it is still out of whack. They have skewed prevailing wages and artificially inflated them so that employers will have to pay higher than market wages. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images) Panaji, Jan 15 : Union Minister of State for Defence Shripad Naik, who was injured in a road mishap earlier this week, is on the path to recovery and may be shifted out of the CCU after some days, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said on Friday. Since the Minister was on recovery path, doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi may not examine Naik again, Sawant told reporters at the Goa Medical College, where Naik has been admitted since January 11. "He may be shifted out of the coronary care unit after some days. His health is improving day by day," the Chief Minister said. "AIIMS doctors will not be required to fly in again to examine him. Doctors at the Goa Medical College are coordinating with them," Sawant said. Earlier in the morning, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu visited the hospital and met Naik to ask after his health. "Naidu spoke to Naik and wished him speedy recovery," Sawant said. Meanwhile, Medical College Dean Dr Shivanand Bandekar said that although Naik's health parameters are normal, his discharge date has not been decided yet. Naik's wife Vijaya and Personal Secretary Deepak Ghume died of injuries after their car met with an accident in Yellapur in Karnataka on Monday night. Naik's driver and Personal Security Officer are recuperating at the Goa hospital. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 19:43:10|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Ankara, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China's CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine has drawn a positive response in Turkey, as the country begins a mass vaccination campaign. Turkey launched Thursday the mass vaccination program against COVID-19 with the vaccines developed by China's Sinovac company. According to the Turkish Health Ministry, the first doses will be given to over 1 million health workers across the country, followed by adults living in nursing homes. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday received his first dose of the vaccine. Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Wednesday received the Chinese COVID-19 Sinovac vaccine along with Turkey's advisory science council members, one day before the nationwide vaccination began. Turkey received the first shipment of 3 million doses of vaccines from China at the end of December, as part of a deal for a total of 50 million, and expects to get the rest in the upcoming period. Editor: The insurrection in our nations Capitol was instigated by President Trump, his false claims of election fraud and his opportunistic enablers who supported and amplified his delusions and demagogic actions. At Trumps rally on Jan. 6, just hours before Congress was to fulfill its constitutional obligations certifying Joe Biden as our next president, Trump specifically directed his band of domestic terrorists to march to the Capitol and disrupt constitutionally mandated processes because he could not otherwise steal an election he lost by 7 million votes. His words and deeds led to a womans death, as well as the outrageous spectacle of Congress being overrun. Almost as horrifying was the praise and blessings he lavished on his sycophants after Congress had been violated. This sorry excuse for a man now has blood on his hands and should be broadly condemned, if not removed from office immediately before he can do more harm. Condemnation of Trump and his enablers should not just come from national leaders and national media. Local and statewide leaders and our local media should not stay silent; they should not acquiesce in the horrors our nation has endured; they should have the courage to take the lead in denouncing Trump and the domestic terror he has instigated. And they should encourage their counterparts in other cities, towns and villages to do the same. Local voices magnified across towns and regions and states can help preserve and strengthen our democracy. For those who are tentative or reluctant, be inspired by artist Norman Rockwells portrait of the modest local laborer speaking his piece at a New England town hall meeting. We have seen something; now say something. THOMAS CLAUSS NEW CANAAN, CONNECTICUT Editor: While driving through the Midvalley area recently I passed several trailers filled with slogans of election seasons past. Alongside the road were several smaller signs of support for the current presidents failed campaign. While I do not challenge the right of individuals to continue to maintain their support, I thought the election law in Pennsylvania required that these little signs on public property must be taken down right after the election. Then I remembered that our crybaby in chief continued to believe that after more than two months and some 60 adverse judicial rulings that he still had a chance to win a second term. He paraded a series of supposed legal experts who advanced a host of unproven changes that massive election fraud has cost him his chance. He browbeat elected officials to find him just 11,000 or more votes in Georgia to overturn the result in that state and promoted the attempt of countless Republican senators and representatives to illegally challenge the constitutional process of choosing a president, all in the hope that he could somehow overturn his rightful defeat. The sight and sound of an American president pandering to such depths in search of personal gain is so unsightly. Who knows what impact it will have on the countrys standing in the world? Will there be a lasting, negative effect on the concept of democracy in our country? We have never seen such selfish, degrading behavior in our nations history. The Democrats selling out their 1876 presidential nominee, Samuel Tilden, to secure the end of Reconstruction may be an exception. Review the presidential election of 2000 to see how true Americans behave when they have lost and not by such overwhelming numbers a presidential contest. Just hope that soon this terrible nightmare will be over. GERALD BURNS THROOP Editor: I was disheartened that 220 of our NEPA neighbors joined a caravan to Washington, D.C., in support of the demonstrations advocating the disenfranchisement of 80 million of Americas citizens. After the demonstration became an illegal, dangerous and seditious riot, I was even more disappointed to read that our neighbors self-described patriots chose to accept no responsibility for the violence that placed the U.S. Capitol under assault. Peaceful protests are protected by our Constitution and are our right. But if you participated in any manner in this assault upon democracy, you must accept some responsibility for the result. Perhaps you werent the ones who looted our sacred Capitol or attacked the Capitol Police. However, if you cheered on President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr. and others who advocated sedition and called for trial by combat, as Giuliani said, you are responsible for encouraging the mob. If you marched to the Capitol along with the mob and stood outside cheering or waving a Trump flag, you are responsible for emboldening the invaders. If you went beyond the Capitols protection barriers that were torn down by the rioters, you engaged in criminal trespass. So, dont innocently say, I bear no responsibility. You do. DON RYAN SOUTH ABINGTON TWP. Editor: Now that we have spent four years musing whether President Trump is a fascist dictator wannabe, he removed all doubt by committing a crime against democracy. Encouraging his followers to ravage our sacred Capitol and applauding their efforts was clearly the crime of inciting a riot, the final nail in this farcical coffin of a presidency The beginning of his descent into criminality was his call to Georgias Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger requesting him to find 11,000 more nonexistent Trump votes, a blatant act of the same sedition charges he repeatedly has leveled against the Democratic electorate. Even his puppet, Texas U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert after he and other Republicans lost a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence that called on him to defy the Constitution and throw out Electoral College votes requested that we dub all the court decisions irrelevant and take to the streets, thereby abetting Trump in his abominable rampage. We have but two weapons against tyranny, the press and the ballot box. Trump has had little success trying to stifle the press and the judiciary. His failed coup attempt at the Capitol, and the ballots within, has finally laid waste to the man and taken his presidency with it. EARL BAILEY SCRANTON Haiti - News : Zapping... Customs : Postponement of the Goods Compliance Program The General Customs Administration informs the public in general and Economic Operators, in particular, that the implementation of the Merchandise Conformity Verification Program is postponed to March 1, 2021. Education : fear of a new political crisis Faced with the proliferation of demonstrations announced by the radical opposition until February 7 Pierre Agenor Cadet, the Minister of National Education on Thursday asked the spolitic ledader concerned that the right to education be respected and not to violate the rights schoolchildren, stressing that a new political crisis could once again jeopardize children's education. Maritime territorial limits Dominican Chancellor Roberto Alvarez commenting on the commitments made jointly by the Dominican Republic and Haiti on Sunday January 10 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-32758-haiti-flash-9-joint-commitments-between-haiti-and-the-dominican-republic.html made it clear that "the territorial limits between the Dominican Republic and Haiti are not negotiable." It is only a matter of clarifying these limits in Haiti and jointly negotiating how to monitor compliance. Haiti-EU cooperation strategy Important working meeting between representatives of the Delegation of the European Union in Haiti and some of its member states, and several Directors General and executives of different ministries with the aim of formulating the new Haiti-EU cooperation strategy for the period 2021-2027 and to lay the foundations for the following steps in order to define the next areas that will constitute the pillars of the Haiti-EU cooperation 2021-2027. 1,000 tonnes of Taiwanese humanitarian rice Arrival of 1,000 tonnes of Taiwanese humanitarian rice. In addition to supporting agricultural production in Haiti, the Taiwanese Government is also providing food cooperation in order to support the Haitian Government in dealing with the most pressing problems of food insecurity. The DG of the State Lottery tested positive Madame Marie Margareth Fortune, Director General of the Haitian State Lottery (LEH) tested positive for Covid-19. LEH employees and executives unite with her family in wishing her a speedy recovery. HL/ HaitiLibre The City of Melbourne has been threatening to fine people protesting against the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers under bylaws designed to stop buskers disturbing the peace. Victoria Police officers have worked with council officers to penalise the protesters under a little-known bylaw that restricts the use of "excessive noise" that is "capable of interfering with the reasonable comfort of any person who may be in the vicinity of [a] public place". Protesters have been protesting outside the Park Hotel regularly. Credit:Jason South The practice has been described as outrageous by advocates who say the right to protest is being undermined by a misuse of the council bylaws. Protesters have been holding daily rallies outside the Park Hotel, where more than 60 men who were medically evacuated to Australia from detention in Manus Island and Nauru are being held. Pelosi: Retired Lt. General to Lead Capitol Security Review A retired lieutenant general will lead a review of the U.S. Capitol security following the Jan. 6 breach, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday. We must subject this whole complex to scrutiny in light of what happened and the fact that the inauguration is coming. To that end, I have asked Lt. Gen. Russel Honore to lead an immediate review of security infrastructure, interagency processes, and command and control, Pelosi told reporters in Washington. She called Honore, who headed the Hurricane Katrina Task Force, a respected leader with experience dealing with crises. Theres strong interest in Congress designating an outside 9/11-type commission to conduct an after-action review, she added. The idea of an independent commission is supported by several Republican senators. Honore hasnt yet commented on the review. His social media pages are littered with posts against President Donald Trump and the Trump administration and he has called to put Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who refused to go through a metal detector on Capitol Hill this week, on a no-fly list. Honore didnt respond to a request for comment. Protesters stormed the Capitol last week, interrupting a joint session of Congress convened to count electoral votes. They wrought damage to the inside of the building and clashed with law enforcement officers, leading to the death of U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. Four others died from injuries suffered that day, including an Air Force veteran, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a different officer while trying to enter the Speakers Lobby. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks to reporters in Washington on Jan. 15, 2021. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images) Protesters speak to U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo) Federal prosecutors wrote in a motion filed late Thursday in a case against Jacob Chansley, who was seen inside the Capitol shirtless, wearing a hat with horns, that some of the people who entered the building wanted to capture and assassinate elected officials. Members of the House are progressing with strong oversight of what unfolded, Pelosi said. Democrats and some Republicans blamed what happened on Trump, who gave a speech at The Ellipse, a park about two miles away from the Capitol when police lines began being broken through. Lawmakers impeached Trump on Wednesday and a Senate trial is expected to commence later this month. Trump and his advisers have defended the speech and pointed out that there are signs the breach was planned. Theyve also noted that some people who dont support Trump took place in the breach, including a Black Lives Matter activist. Another review will be handled by the inspector generals of the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice, the agencies said Friday. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) The Department of Interior and Local Government will advise local governments to limit the number of COVID-19 vaccines to purchase so they could fund other coronavirus response efforts, an official said Friday. "In the advisory that we will be releasing next week, local government units may procure up to 50% of their requirement in the LGUs. For instance, the population of the LGU for inoculation purposes is 100,000, the local government unit may procure up to 50,000," Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing told a Senate hearing. The rest of their vaccine requirement will be provided for by the national government, Densing said. He said the cap would let LGUs "reallocate their resources for other anti-COVID activities," adding that the LGUs are not required to buy their own vaccines. Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez said in the same hearing local officials still want to secure their own supply to revive the local economy and "help the national government." A number of cities and private companies have signed deals for the advance purchase of the AstraZeneca vaccine. RELATED: LIST: LGUs allot funds for COVID-19 vaccination Local governments and private businesses that wish to buy vaccines are required to enter into a tripartite agreement with the national government and drug makers since vaccines granted emergency use authorization or EUA cannot be distributed commercially. Officials said part of the deal is half of the purchase of the private business will be donated to the government, while the other half will be administered to the employees that pitched in. This is to ensure equitable access to experimental vaccines amid a pandemic. The national government and its partners will administer the vaccines. Private sector should follow the priority protocol Meanwhile, government officials said private firms that purchased COVID-19 vaccine doses using their own funds should also administer the vaccine based on priority groups. For instance, their frontline workers must be vaccinated first. "What the DOH wanted is that it [vaccination in the private sector] should follow the equity of access and no-privilege [rule]," Galvez said. "It was said to us by AstraZeneca that our families cannot be part of it [vaccination]. That has been clear during all the meetings with the private sector companies," Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion said in the same hearing. He added that the executives and business owners cannot also receive the COVID-19 jabs. He made the clarification as Senator Cynthia Villar questioned the priority protocol. She noted that businesses have the right to distribute the doses to all employees and family members. "Makikialam pa rin ang DOH kung sino ang bibigyan ng kumpanya? (The DOH will still interfere as to whom the company wants to give the vaccine doses?) Why will they buy if they cannot give them to their employees? That is impractical," Villar said. Israeli National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat, center left, elbow bumps with an Emirati official as he leaves Abu Dhabi, Arab Emirates, on Sept. 1, 2020. (Nir Elias/AP) State Department Signs Historic MOU With Morocco NGO to Combat Anti-Semitism The U.S. State Department signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Mimouna Association, a Moroccan NGO aiming to promote and preserve the Moroccan Jewish culture, in a move lauded by Moroccos ambassador to the United States, Princess Lalla Joumala Alaoui. The partnership is historic, because it incorporates a commitment to combating anti-semitism together, also combating anti-Zionism and Islamophobia, explained Ellie Cohanim, the U.S. deputy special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism, in an interview by The Epoch Times American Thought Leaders program. Those are really the challenges that extremists and those who promote hate presented both the United States to Morocco and really to the world community. These are global issues. And the MOU, again, is groundbreaking in the sense that we really confront these issues head-on, she said. Cohanim explained the origins of Mimouna: They were a group of college students, Moroccan Muslim students, who organically were interested in the history of Jews in Morocco. And so these students got together and they started to just study the very long history of Moroccan Jewry, which actually dates back to antiquity. And they went on to then gain interest in Holocaust issues and created the very first Arabic language Holocaust curriculum. The MOU is also notable because it adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. This is the definition adopted by the Trump administration in the December 2019 Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism. This groundbreaking agreement is an extension of the Abraham Accords, a series of Middle East peace deals brokered by the Trump administration that Cohanim called one of his most historic and proud achievements, she said. The Abraham Accords is almost like a reconciliation of history, she said, adding that its incredible to watch that there are new Jewish communities being built and new synagogues being built. And so, Im very hopeful for a brighter future for this [Middle East] region. She also believes that besides combating anti-semitism, its important to teach history about the Jewish tradition and promote Philo-Semitism, as well as looking into the future for cooperation. Trump Receives Highest Award From Morocco for Middle East Peace Works President Donald Trump on Friday received Moroccos highest award for his work in advancing a normalization deal between Israel and Morocco, a senior administration official told Reuters. In a private Oval Office ceremony, Princess Lalla Joumala Alaoui gave Trump the Order of Muhammad, an award given only to heads of state. It was a gift from Moroccos King Mohammed VI. White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz received other awards for their work on the Israel-Morocco deal, which was reached in December. The United States in the last five months helped broker deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. The agreements are aimed at normalizing relations and opening economic ties. Reuters contributed to this report. This article was updated with more content. Correction: This article adjusted the headline to better reflect the news item. The Epoch Times regrets the error. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 22:55:52|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DHAKA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Despite the impact of COVID-19 in Bangladesh, the completion of a symbolic international exhibition center in Purbachal on the outskirts of the capital city of Dhaka has been achieved. The Bangladesh-China Friendship Exhibition Centre (BCFEC), funded by China, was built by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC). The Beijing Institute of Architectural Design formulated an eye-catching design for the center which covers 80,000-square-meters of land. BCFEC's on-site construction includes exhibition halls, garages, supporting plant rooms and other facilities. In the exhibition center, there are two exhibition halls comprising 400 exhibition booths respectively, one 600-square-meter multifunctional hall, one dining room that can seat 500 people, offices, a prayer room, a staff dormitory, a children's activity area and related functional auxiliary rooms. The main body of the exhibition center boasts a red ceramic panel exterior curtain wall and an aluminum gray wavy roof which symbolizes the ship of friendship between China and Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi government has been developing the area as a self-contained township with all modern facilities and opportunities. Chen Long is the project's director for the technical construction team from the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC). He said they received the official commencement instruction from the government of Bangladesh in October of 2017, and the project was officially completed in November of 2020. "We're now preparing a training program for the Bangladeshi engineers and staff members and the handover to the government of Bangladesh," Chen said. According to Chen, the exterior shape of the project resembles a big ship, which represents the ship of friendship between Bangladesh and China. The project includes two exhibition halls in the east and west respectively with a total of 800 exhibition booths, he said and added its supporting facilities include one multi-functional hall, one conference room, one dining hall and other facilities. During the project construction process, Chen said engineers and workers from both countries communicated harmoniously by exchanging construction techniques as well as their respective cultures. "We completed this project successfully. From my personal point of view, I think the total project is excellent in every way including the overall project quality, design and construction." He said this project is also an outcome of the Belt and Road Initiative. "We're very proud to be engaged in this project on behalf of CSCEC. Personally, I'm also very glad because I held the position of Project Director of a technical construction team." The project has further strengthened the friendship between China and Bangladesh. Md Shahinur Rahman, a Chinese translator, said initially he worked as a supervisor. "With my strong willingness and determination, I tried to learn Chinese on YouTube. Gradually, I have become an interpreter and have now been working as an interpreter for this wonderful project." "Now I've received a pay rise," he added. He is so happy working as an interpreter for the project, he said, because it is a symbol of the friendship between Bangladesh and China. "I have spent a lot of time with Chinese people and they are very friendly. I am also happy that this project is going to be handed over to the government of Bangladesh soon," said Rahman. Liu Xing, another project worker, said the design concept, architecture and cultural facets are magnificent. "The design of both the interior and exterior showed our respect for the Bangladeshi culture, and it also demonstrates the friendship between Bangladesh and China. Even during the impact of COVID-19, we finished the project successfully," Liu added. Enditem Meanwhile, the Congress party shored up its attack against the Centre over the issue, with Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi leading protests in New Delhi The ninth round of talks between the Centre and protesting farmers also ended inconclusively, with another round scheduled to be held on 19 January. Protesting farmer unions stuck to their demand for a complete repeal of the three contentious farm laws at their ninth round of talks with three central ministers, but the government asked them to be more flexible in their approach and expressed willingness for necessary amendments. Meanwhile, the Congress party shored up its attack against the Centre over the issue, with Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi leading protests in New Delhi, while state units of the parties also held demonstrations at various places. Farmers, Centre to meet again on 19 Jan Farmer leader Joginder Singh Ugrahan said told reporters after the meeting that the unions urged the government to repeal the three laws, but the Centre was unwilling to do so. "We decided to meet again on 19 January at 12 pm," he said. Ugrahan said the union leaders also raised the issue of NIA raids on transporters in Punjab who are supporting farmers' protests and were providing logistic support for the agitation. At the meeting that lasted for nearly five hours, including a lunch break, farmers unions said they are committed to continuing holding direct talks to resolve the over a month-long deadlock over three agri laws, even as a committee has been formed by the Supreme Court to resolve the deadlock. In his opening remarks, Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar urged farmer leaders to be flexible in their approach as has been done by the government. Besides Tomar, Minister of Railways, Commerce and Food Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash were also part of the government's delegation talking with representatives of around 40 farmer unions at the Vigyan Bhawan. "Both the government and farmer unions have reaffirmed their commitment to continue with the direct dialogue process," All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee member Kavita Kuruganti, who is part of the meeting, said. "In his opening remarks, Tomar ji said you keep saying that the government is adamant and making it an issue of ego, even though we have accepted several demands. Don't you think you should be flexible and not stick to one single demand of repealing the laws," said Baljit Singh Bali of Punjab Kisan Morcha. Farmer leader Darshan Pal said there was a good discussion on all three laws. "There is a possibility of some resolution. We are positive," he added. Another leader Rakesh Tikait said: "Government has told us that solution should be found through dialogue and not a court. Everyone is of the same views. There is a possibility of some solution." Govt urges farmers to form informal group for talks, negotiations Urging farmer unions to form an informal group among themselves to prepare concrete proposals to be discussed in the next meeting, Tomar said on Friday after the ninth round of talks. "We suggested they can form an informal group of people who can understand the laws better and prepare some concrete proposals, detailing what are farmers' expectations and what clauses are problematic for them, which the government can consider with an open mind," the minister said. Tomar also addressed questions on talks between the Centre and farmers continuing despite the Supreme Court appointing a panel for a solution of the issue. He said everyone is fully committed to the apex court and the government will also present its side before the committee panel when invited. "Unions want to continue the dialogue with the government and we have no problem with that. The SC-appointed panel will also work for the welfare of farmers," he said. The minister said a solution can emerge from the government-farmers talks as well as from the SC-appointed panel's deliberations. "Our effort is to resolve the issue through dialogue and we want the protest to end at the earliest given the adverse weather conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic situation," he said. IMF says farm bills have potential to reform agri sector The IMF believes the farm bills passed by the Indian government have the potential to represent a significant step forward for agricultural reforms, but a social safety net is needed to protect those who might be adversely impacted during the transition to the new system, a spokesperson of the global lender said. Gerry Rice, Director of Communications at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said the new measures will reduce the role of the middlemen and enhance efficiency. "We believe the farm bills do have the potential to represent a significant step forward for agricultural reforms in India," Rice said at a news conference in Washington on Thursday. "The measures will enable farmers to directly contract with sellers, allow farmers to retain a greater share of the surplus by reducing the role of middlemen, enhance efficiency and support rural growth," he said. "However, it is crucial that the social safety net adequately protects those who might be adversely impacted during the transition to this new system," the spokesperson said responding to a question on the ongoing protests by farmers against the laws in India. This can be done by ensuring that the job market accommodates those that are impacted by the reforms, he said. And of course, the growth benefits of these reforms will depend, critically, on the effectiveness and the timing of their implementation, so need to pay attention to those issues as well with the reform," Rice said. Congress stages protests in solidarity with farmers The Congress party's state units staged protests in various parts of the country including Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, with its former president Rahul Gandhi leading the charge in New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not respect farmers and wants to tire out those protesting against the Centre's new agri laws, Gandhi alleged at a protest meet in Delhi. He also said that the talks that are being held with the protesting farmer leaders are part of the government's delaying tactics. Farmers will not relent till the laws are repealed, said Rahul Gandhi at Jantar Mantar, where he along with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joined party MPs in their demonstration against the legislations. "The talks are being held only to delay. PM Modi thinks he has the power and will tire the farmers out, but he is mistaken," Rahul Gandhi told reporters. "Narendra Modi does not have basic respect for farmers. He does not even care if over 100 farmers die. He thinks he has the power and the protesting farmers will tire out after some days, but they will not relent," he said. Rahul Gandhi said this agitation has just started and the laws will have to be repealed. "They (the government) do not know the strength of farmers, they will not relent. PM Modi does not understand this. Had he understood this, the government would have taken back the laws today itself," he said at the Jantar Mantra where Congress MPs Ravneet Singh Bittu, Jasbir Singh Gill and some other legislators from Punjab have been staging the protest for over a month. Asked about objections being raised over the proposed tractor rally by protesting farmers on Republic Day, he said, "If farmers want to come out and take out a tractor parade on Republic Day, what is the harm in it." "The prime minister misunderstands, he thinks this country is run by four to five industrialists, who control him," Rahul Gandhi said, adding that the country is run by farmers, labourers and the youth. He said if anyone "attacks" farmers, it is an attack on the country. The country's farmers have maintained the country's independence by ensuring food security and the day food security is lost, the country will lose its independence, Rahul Gandhi said. "This is a financial issue, not a political issue. PM Modi wants to hand over everything that farmers have to his corporate friends," the Congress leader alleged. He also raised strong objections to protesting farmers being dubbed as "Khalistanis". The agriculture minister, however, sought to make light of the Opposition leader's comments. Speaking to PTI, Tomar said, "Rahul Gandhi's statements and actions are laughed at within his own party also." "The Congress manifesto in 2019 itself promised these reforms and therefore Sonia and Rahul Gandhi should tell us whether they were lying at that time or are lying right now," he said. Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. On 8 January, the eighth round of meeting had remained inconclusive as the Centre ruled out repealing the three contentious laws claiming nationwide support for the reforms. However, farmer leaders had said that they were ready to fight till death and their 'ghar waapsi' would happen only after 'law waapsi'. In the sixth round held on December 30 last year, some common ground was reached on two demands -- decriminalisation of stubble-burning and continuation of power subsidies. Enacted in September 2020, the government has presented these laws as major farm reforms aimed at increasing farmers' income, but the protesting farmers have raised concerns that these legislations would weaken the minimum support price (MSP) and "mandi" (wholesale market) systems and leave them at the mercy of big corporations. The government has maintained that these apprehensions are misplaced and has ruled out a repeal of the laws. The Supreme Court on 11 January had stayed the implementation of the three laws till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse. Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann, however, on Thursday recused himself from the committee. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are the other three members on the panel. With inputs from PTI NDC MP for Kpando Constituency, Della Sowah, has reacted to NPP MPs storming Parliament of Ghana at dawn over sitting arrangement. She wrote: Still at home preparing for the day. Superior tactics at play. It's interesting when the opponent mispredicts your strategy. We are not fighting today ooo. We already won. We have a Speaker who is good for our democracy. No rush to be in Parliament this morning. Sit where you like. Seats don't determine your outcome You all have a great day See her Facebook... 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 Moderna is actively recruiting San Antonio participants to test the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate in adolescents. Moderna's vaccine, mRNA-1273, is currently approved by the Federal Drug Administration for those 18 and older. Phase 2 of the study is targeting children ages 12-17. San Antonio is one of four active trial site locations. The study is also recruiting in is in Houston, Meridian, Idaho and La Mesa, Calif. Sites like Minneapolis and Oklahoma City are in queue. RELATED: 22 Mayors to Biden: Give cities direct allotments of vaccines An estimated 3,000 participants are needed overall. Moderna was not immediately available to comment on how many local adolescents are needed to meet the goal. According to TrialScope, a website used to connect studies with participants, the volunteers will be tracked by medical staff for 13 months. The trial includes six visits to a site clinic and two by phone or video with a study doctor. The young volunteers will either receive the vaccine or a placebo at random assignment with a 2:1 ratio, meaning there is a 67 percent chance the participant will be inoculated, according to online details. This isn't the first time San Antonio's youth has been part of an important vaccine campaign the city was also a testing site during the polio crisis. In 1954, nearly 14,000 kids in Bexar County, called the "Polio Pioneers," were administered Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine against the potentially paralyzing illness. To qualify for the current trials, volunteers must be between the ages of 12-17, have never tested positive for COVID-19 and be in good health. Individuals who have traveled outside of the U.S. in the past month, have participated in another trial in the last month or are a smoker or have a history of smoking are ineligible. Interested families are asked to complete a six-question eligibility survey online. Upon completion, parents are prompted to share contact information with TrialScope to connect the sponsor with potential volunteers. Moderna is working with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) on the study, which dosed the first adolescent participant in December, according to a news release. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said the goal of the study is to provide enough data to support the use of the vaccine in younger populations ahead of the 2021 school year. "We hope we will be able to provide a safe vaccine to provide protection to adolescents so they can return to school in a normal setting," he said in the release. During a press conference on Tuesday, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the scientific head of Operation Warp Speed, noted Moderna's "real challenge" to find participants. Only 800 participants have signed up so far, he said during a press conference. "It's really very important for all of us, for all the population in America, to realize that we can't have that indication unless adolescents aged 12 to 18 decide to participate," Slaoui said during the press conference. Those interested in participating in the study can check eligibility here. Madalyn Mendoza covers news and puro pop culture for MySA.com | mmendoza@mysa.com | @maddyskye Denton, TX (76205) Today Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 07:52:19|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy said on Thursday that the Yemeni issue must be resolved through the UN-led peace negotiations. "China has taken note of the decision announced by certain country against the Houthis. We agree with the UN secretary-general, Undersecretary-General (Mark) Lowcock, Executive Director (David) Beasley of the World Food Programme and many countries in their evaluations and comments, and are seriously concerned over the possible political and humanitarian impact of this move," Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told a Security Council virtual meeting on Yemen. "I want to emphasize that the Yemeni issue must be resolved through the UN-led peace negotiations. This is the primary goal for which all parties in the international community should play a constructive role," the Chinese UN ambassador stressed. Zhang noted that efforts must be made "to speed up the political process." He said that last month, Yemen's new government was sworn in, which is a key progress in the implementation of the Riyadh agreement, as well as an important step toward stabilizing the situation in Yemen, improving state institutions and enhancing political cooperation among parties. "China welcomes this achievement and appreciates the responsible attitudes shown by the relevant parties in Yemen and the contributions made by countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates." "The UN-led comprehensive and inclusive political process is the only way to end the conflict in Yemen," Zhang said. The Chinese envoy called for efforts to achieve ceasefire and stop the violence in the war-torn country as soon as possible. "Facts have repeatedly shown that military means cannot solve the problem, and that the use of force can only bring disaster," he noted. "We call upon all parties to the conflict to heed the call by Secretary-General (Antonio) Guterres and special envoy (Martin) Griffiths for ceasefire and immediately cease hostilities to create conditions for advancing the political process," said the ambassador. "The international community, especially the donor countries, must increase financial and in kind assistance to Yemen, to prevent further deterioration of the humanitarian crisis on the ground and make every effort to avoid the spread of famine," said Zhang. Enditem 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. Dire wolves (Canis dirus) are considered to be one of the most common and widespread large carnivores in Pleistocene America, yet relatively little is known about their evolution or extinction. Previous analyses, based on morphology alone, had led scientists to believe that these long-extinct canids were closely related to modern gray wolves (Canis lupus). To reconstruct the evolutionary history of dire wolves, an international team of genetic researchers sequenced five genomes from the fossilized remains dating from 12,900 to more than 50,000 years ago. Their results, published in the journal Nature, indicate that dire wolves were a separate lineage that split from living canids around 5.7 million years ago. Dire wolves were large wolf-like canids around 68 kg, about 25% heavier than gray wolves and among the most common extinct large carnivores of the American Late Pleistocene megafauna. Their remains are present in the North American paleontological record from at least around 250,000 to about 13,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Other canid species that were present in Late Pleistocene North America include the slightly smaller gray wolf, the much smaller coyote (Canis latrans) and the dhole (Cuon alpinus), although dire wolves appear to have been more common overall. Dire wolves are generally described as a sister species, or even conspecific with, gray wolves. The leading hypothesis to explain their extinction was that, owing to their larger body size compared with gray wolves and coyotes, dire wolves were more specialized for hunting large prey and were unable to survive the extinction of their megafaunal prey. Dire wolves have always been an iconic representation of the last ice age in the Americas and now a pop culture icon thanks to Game of Thrones, but what we know about their evolutionary history has been limited to what we can see from the size and shape of their bones and teeth, said co-lead author Dr. Angela Perri, a researcher in the Archaeology Department at Durham University. With this first ancient DNA analysis of dire wolves we have revealed that the history of dire wolves we thought we knew is actually much more complicated than we previously thought. Instead of being closely related to other North American canids, like gray wolves and coyotes, we found that dire wolves represent a branch that split off from others millions of years ago, representing the last of a now extinct lineage. The terrifying dire wolf, a legendary symbol of Los Angeles and the La Brea Tar Pits, has earned its place among the many large, unique species that went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, said co-author Professor Robert Wayne, a researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dire wolves are sometimes portrayed as mythical creatures giant wolves prowling bleak frozen landscapes but reality turns out to be even more interesting, said co-lead author Dr. Kieren Mitchell, a researcher in the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. For the study, the researchers screened 46 sub-fossil specimens of dire wolves for the presence of preserved DNA. They identified five samples from Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee and Wyoming, dating to between 12,900 and more than 50,000 years ago, that possessed sufficient DNA to obtain both mitochondrial and nuclear genome sequences. They found no evidence for the flow of genes between dire wolves and either North American gray wolves or coyotes. The absence of any genetic transference indicates that dire wolves evolved in isolation from the Ice Age ancestors of these other species. We have found the dire wolf is not closely related to the gray wolf, said co-author Dr. Alice Mouton, a researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Further we show that the dire wolf never interbred with the gray wolf. In contrast, gray wolves, African wolves, dogs, coyotes and jackals can and do interbreed. Dire wolves likely diverged from gray wolves more than 5 million years ago, which was a great surprise that this divergence occurred so early. This finding highlights how special and unique the dire wolf was. The ancestors of gray wolves and much smaller coyotes evolved in Eurasia and are thought to have moved into North America less than 1.37 million years ago, relatively recently in evolutionary time. The dire wolf, on the other hand, based on its genetic difference from those species, is now believed to have originated in the Americas. The authors also suggest the dire wolves stark evolutionary divergence from gray wolves places them in an entirely different genus, Aenocyon, as first proposed by paleontologist John Campbell Merriam over 100 years ago. When we first started this study, we thought that dire wolves were just beefed-up gray wolves, so we were surprised to learn how extremely genetically different they were, so much so that they likely could not have interbred, said senior author Professor Laurent Frantz, a researcher in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary University of London and the Department of Veterinary Sciences at Ludwig Maximilian University. This must mean that dire wolves were isolated in North America for a very long time to become so genetically distinct. _____ A.R. Perri et al. Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage. Nature, published online January 13, 2021; doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-03082-x The United States has charged 14 leaders of the international criminal gang MS-13 on terrorism charges, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday, part of an intensified crackdown on the group. The indictment, filed in Central Islip, New York, and unsealed on Thursday, charged the individuals with conspiracies to support terrorists, commit acts of terrorism and finance terrorism, according to the department. 'The indictment announced today is the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictment targeting MS-13 and its command and control structure in U.S. history,' said Jeffrey Rosen, acting Attorney General, in a statement. Borromeo Enrique Henriquez, known as 'Little Hollywood Devil' and considered the main leader of MS-13, has been charged with terrorism by the U.S. Justice Department Gang members are seen inside a cell at Quezaltepeque jail in El Salvador in September. Those pictured are members of Barrio 18 - sworn enemies of the MS-13 gang Gang members in an overcrowded cell protected by a heavily-armed guard in September Jeffrey Rosen, the acting Attorney General, announced the charges Thursday in a statement The department said that Borromeo Enrique Henriquez, considered the most powerful member of Ranfla Nacional, which the U.S. government said comprises the highest level of MS-13 leadership, as well as 10 other people were in custody in El Salvador. Henriquez, aka 'Diablito de Hollywood' (Little Hollywood Devil) is widely recognized as the most powerful member of the Ranfla Nacional. The United States would 'explore options for their extradition,' it said. Three of the defendants, Fredy Ivan Jandres-Parada, 45, known as 'Lucky de Park View'; Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, 42, known as 'Oso de Stoners' (Stoners' Bear) and 42-year-old Hugo Armando Quinteros-Mineros, aka 'Flaco de Francis' (Skinny Francis) remain at large and should be considered armed and dangerous, the department said. El Salvador's prisons are famously overcrowded and dangerous, and now COVID-ridden The FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have offered $20,000 in rewards for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the three, the statement said. In July, the department said it was stepping up a crackdown on the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang and would seek the death penalty against an accused New York gang leader facing murder charges. Donald Trump has previously linked the fight against the gang with his campaign against illegal immigration. Critics of the administration's tactics argue that the crackdown has also unlawfully detained immigrant teens accused of gang affiliation. New Delhi: Salman Khan and kabir Khan jodi's forthcoming film 'Tubelight' which is happened to be one of the most anticipated movies of the year, has only a couple of days left to hit the screens across India. Amid this last minute promotion and marketing Dabang Khan on Tuesday took to photo-blogging site Instagram to share yet another heart-melting picture with his little co-star Matin Rey Tangu. "Main aur mera matin #Tubelight", Salman wrote while sharing the picture with his followers. In the duo Salman is seen enjoying a beautiful cycle ride on empty forest road surrounded by natural beauty. Earlier, in May famous trade analyst Taran Adarsh also shared a beautiful poster featuring Salman along with his child artist Matin Rey Tangu in the forefront. The equally beautiful backdrop of the poster, depicting a platoon of soldiers has made the scenario as attractive as it can get. The historical war drama which is set against the backdrop of the 1962 Sino-Indian War has been widely shot in the mindblowing locations of Manali, Leh and Ladakh. Also Read: Tubelight new song: Tinka Tinka Dil Mera will leave your eyes teary Besides a bunch of all new posters and wonderful teasers the kabir Khan and team had also released a number of different songs which has already managed place in hearts of million. 'Radio Song', 'Tinka Tinka Dil Mera' and 'Nach Meri Jaan' are among those hit numbers. Also starring chinese actress Zhu Zhu, Sohail Khan, and late actor Om Puri, 'Tubelight' is scheduled to release on 25th June 2017. Also Read: Amid 'Tubelight' promotion Salman shares cutest ever moment with Ahil For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. 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Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 00:02:58|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TEHRAN, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday that foreign and domestic investment in Iranian free trade zones (FTZs) has increased by 56 percent in the current Iranian year starting March 20, 2020, official news agency IRNA reported. This increase means the U.S. maximum pressure and the White House's "economic terrorism" have failed, Rouhani said during an online inauguration ceremony for 61 projects across the country. With the new service system, anyone who wants to invest in the FTZs does not need to travel to the area, the President added, noting the investment job can be done through the website and the maximum time it takes is 30 days. Rouhani expressed hope for reducing the time to 20 days by the end of his term in office. Enditem CARSON CITY, Nev., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Nevada families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Nevada families are hosting 250 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the biggest activities will be a statewide photo contest in which teachers and families have the opportunity to take creative school choice-themed photos to win prizes. Another notable activity will be two virtual open houses hosted by Nevada State High School. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of Nevada communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Nevada county of White Pine and the city of Henderson. "Nevada's population is rapidly growing, and families' needs are increasingly diverse," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "School choice meets those needs, helping each family find a learning environment that challenges and inspires their child. Show gratitude for a teacher or school you love this National School Choice Week, or speak up for the learning options your child is still waiting for." In Nevada, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Families below a certain income level qualify for a state-run scholarship program. Nevada families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Nevada school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/nevada. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Francesca Paris covers North Adams for The Berkshire Eagle. A California native and Williams College alumna, she has worked at NPR in Washington, D.C. and WBUR in Boston, as a news reporter, producer and editor. Find her on Twitter at @fparises. GLEN CARBON Two suspects face charges Friday following the shooting of a Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) student near campus Thursday night, according to Illinois State Police. Jacob S. Godoy, 16, of Woodson Terrace, Missouri, was charged as an adult with attempt first-degree murder and aggravated battery with a firearm, both Class X felonies. Jimmy R. Ortiz, 19, of Hazelwood, Missouri, was charged with aggravated battery with a firearm, a Class X felony. Bail for Godoy was set at $500,000. Ortizs bail was $250,000. According to court documents, on Jan. 14 Godoy took a substantial step toward committing murder when he personally discharged a firearm at the victim, who was struck in the neck. Charging documents claim Ortiz or one for whose conduct he is legally responsible for shot the victim. The 26-year-old male student from Chicago was transported to a regional hospital with life-threatening injuries after the shooing occurred on the ramp from Illinois Route 157 to Interstate 270 eastbound in Glen Carbon at approximately 9:34 p.m. Thursday. Following the shooting, the victim was transported by private vehicle to South University Drive just north of the intersection of University Park Drive in Edwardsville. From there, he was then transported to the hospital by EMS. Madison County States Attorney Tom Haine charged the two suspects. Thanks to excellent police work, these suspects were quickly found and have been promptly charged, he said. Sadly, this is another example of the kind of cross-river crime that is attempting to gain a foothold in our community. Swift and strong punishment is the only way to deter it. Illinois State Police District 11 patrol officers responded to the scene and located an abandoned vehicle on the ramp, where witnesses had observed people fleeing on foot into the nearby wooded area. Glen Carbon Police Department and Madison County Sheriffs Department assisted Illinois State Police in setting up a perimeter. Additional Illinois State Police additional resources were activated to assist in the search including air operations and canine units. Police apprehended four suspects in relation to the incident. Illinois State Police had three suspects in custody by approximately 12:40 a.m. Friday morning, while Glen Carbon Police took the fourth suspect in at roughly 2 a.m. All four suspects were safely taken into custody without incident, according to state police. A separate report of alleged gunshots was reported at AXIS Apartments around 11:20 p.m. Thursday. Officers responded to the apartments on Puma Boulevard and saw no evidence of foul play. Police and SIUE say the reports are unrelated but the situation is being investigated. In a joint statement just before 8:30 a.m. Friday morning, SIUE administration said the incident appears to be a random act of gun violence and shared their sympathies for the student. Our thanks to the Illinois State Police, who quickly apprehended four suspects, the statement reads. We greatly appreciate the collegial, collaborative working relationship that the SIUE Police Department has with local and regional law enforcement agencies. The SIUE Police Departments quick response to a 911 call led to police presence on campus last night related to the search for suspects. Illinois State Police Crime Scene Services was called to assist and the Illinois State Police Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) Zone 6 is the lead in the ongoing investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact the ISP DCI Zone 6 at (618) 301-6182 or Crime Stoppers at (866) 371-8477. University leaders emphasized that SIUE Police provides a personal escort service to those individuals who feel apprehensive about walking alone, in addition to the one-button emergency telephones throughout the campus. More information about safety services is available on the SIUE Police website. More information about coping with grief was also provided by the university, such as Counseling Services on SIUE campus, 618-650-2842; National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-8255; Crisis Text Line, Text HOME to 741741; and local community resources such as NAMI and Heartlinks. Two days after the impeachment of President Trump for his incitement of last week's deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday urged her fellow lawmakers to be dispassionate as they prepare for his Senate trial. But Pelosi admitted that she couldnt help but be overcome with anger when she saw one of Trumps supporters who stormed the Capitol wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words Camp Auschwitz. To see this punk with that shirt on, Pelosi said during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill, and his anti-Semitism that he has bragged about, to be a part of this white supremacist raid on this Capitol requires us to have an after-action review to assign responsibility to those who were part of organizing it and incentivizing it. The man was seen in a widely circulated photo with Trump supporters inside the Capitol building who were holding a piece of a sign with Pelosis name on it. A man inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot is seen wearing a sweatshirt with the words Camp Auschwitz on it. (ITN/DOJ) Pelosi recalled that a year ago while taking a congressional delegation to visit Israel to observe the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland, which is built on the site of the former German Nazi extermination camp. To see the dehumanizing of people that was perpetrated there was so, so overwhelming, she said. Pelosi stressed the need for lawmakers to carry out their solemn duty despite the raw emotions they may be feeling. I find this to be a very emotional time, the House speaker said. I said to the members, were very passionate to our reaction to this assault on our democracy, on this temple to democracy. Were very passionate about our reaction, but we must be dispassionate in how we make decisions to go forward. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday at her weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) On Wednesday, the House voted to impeach Trump for his incitement of insurrection in connection with the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. Ten Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach Trump, who is the first president ever to be impeached twice. He now faces a Senate trial that will likely start after he leaves office. Pelosi has yet to transmit the article of impeachment she signed Wednesday to the Senate, which would formally set in motion the process for Trumps trial. At the press conference Friday, she would not say when she plans to do so. ____ Read more from Yahoo News: Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hunan are investigating prominent rights activist Ou Biaofeng, who is currently under criminal detention for "subversion," for supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, RFA has learned. A person familiar with the case told RFA on Friday that the Hunan police's line of enquiry had emerged after they summoned several fellow activists and questioned them about Ou's activities during a trip to Hong Kong as early as 2014. "The state security police are claiming that he went to Hong Kong to 'study,' which likely refers to [alleged] training by hostile foreign forces," the person said, adding that they had also questioned people about whether Ou had received money from anyone while he was in the city. "Going to collect money also points [in their minds] to collusion with hostile foreign forces," the person said. "There's not much a rights activist can do when they decide they are going to charge you with that kind of thing." Ou Biaofeng was taken away from his home in Hunan's Zhuzhou city by officers of the Lusong district police department on Dec. 3, who held him under administrative detention for 15 days for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble." However, he wasn't released at the end of the 15 days, prompting concerns that the authorities were planning to pursue criminal charges. The person familiar with the case said the charge of "subversion of state power" had been recently added by state security police, who now seem to be trying to find evidence to support it. Police access accounts Ou's account on the messaging app Telegram recently showed him online, suggesting that police, who confiscated his devices, have been accessing his account. "He was shown as online, then went offline again after a few minutes," the person said. "I thought that was strange, because how could he get online if he doesn't have his phone?" The person said the police had likely forced Ou to hand over the passcodes to his devices. "He had two phones -- both iPhones, which can't be accessed without a password -- so I don't know what has transpired [in the detention center]," he said. "The state security police typically like to copy all of the data on [suspects'] devices and then go through it with a fine-tooth comb." Called for Hong Kong democracy Ou's investigation came to light as the United States designated six PRC and Hong Kong officials for sanctions in connection with the arrest of more than 50 pro-democracy politicians and activists under the National Security Law. "We condemn PRC actions that erode Hong Kongs freedoms and democratic processes and will continue to use all tools at our disposable to hold those responsible to account," said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The department designated You Quan, vice chairman of the Central Leading Group on Hong Kong and Macau Affairs; Sun Wenqing AKA Sun Qingye, deputy director of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong; and Tam Yiu-Chung, a Hong Kong delegate to the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee. National Security Division of the Hong Kong Police Frederic Choi Chin-Pang, Kelvin Kong Hok Lai, and Andrew Kan Kai Yan were targeted for "coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning individuals under the authority of, or in developing, adopting, or implementing, the NSL." Prior to his detention, Ou had been a vocal supporter of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, starting from the 2014 Occupy Central campaign for universal suffrage, which later broadened into the Umbrella Movement, and continuing with his support for the 2019 anti-extradition movement, which broadened to include demands for full democracy and accountability for police violence against largely peaceful protesters. In August 2020, after national security police raided the headquarters of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper and its parent company Next Digital, Ou posted a photo of himself to social media holding a copy of the Apple Daily. He also expressed his support for Next Digital's founder, pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai, who is currently behind bars awaiting trial under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong from July 1, 2019. Ou also called on his friends to mail copies of the Apple Daily to Hunan to show support for the paper, as Hongkongers lined up to buy copies in solidarity following the raid. Ou's wife Wei Huanhuan told RFA she was recently suspended from her teaching job, with her employer citing the coronavirus pandemic. "They started out saying there had been a directive from higher up because of the coronavirus pandemic," Wei told RFA. "They said that's why the school was putting me on furlough." "Then they said they knew I'd been pretty busy lately, and that that I'd continue to be busy," she said. "I thought, what is that supposed to mean?" Wei, who has been the sole breadwinner for the household for some time, said she is now seeking legal advice. "They know very well that what they're doing is illegal ... it's a bit crazy ... They've taken away my classes." Reported by Gao Feng for RFA's Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Post when: May 19 2021 18:37:06 on: PHUKET XTRA - May 19 || Brought to you by @PVC Phuket All foreigners now allowed to register for vaccine |:| Flight passengers without documents refused boarding |:| Pushed back: school to start June 14? |:| COVID could force release of 50k inmates |:| Thailand COVID update Hosted by: JP Mestanza || #Phuket 1- Vaccination registration opens for foreigners in all Phuket businesses MORE: Phuket mass vaccination resumes with goal to inject 14,000 people per day 2- Flight passengers to Phuket without documents to be refused boarding 3- Pushed back: School to start on June 14 instead 4- Govt considers releasing 50,000 inmates as COVID hits prisons MORE: 29 COVID deaths, over 3,000 new cases nationwide Phuket COVID update Actress Bella Thorne has come to the defense of Armie Hammer after he denied sending disturbing messages about rape fantasies, BDSM and cannibalism to a woman that were leaked last week. 'I honestly can't believe this people are crazy to fake this kinda s*** this poor guy and his kids like leave him and his family alone. No way he's a freaking CANNIBAL..' the 23-year-old wrote on social media. It appeared that the former Disney star was confused by the allegations - which were about alleged sexual fantasies and not actual cannibalism. Thorne added: 'Also theres a million fake screen shots going around.' Hammer, 34, has addressed the reports of disturbing messages to women, telling DailyMail.com in a statement: 'I'm not responding to these b******* claims but in light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for 4 months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic.' Speaking out: Bella Thorne DEFENDS Armie Hammer against 'cannibal' allegations telling her fans: 'there's a million fake screen shots going around' On Wednesday DailyMail.com obtained concerning videos showing Hammer looking 'out of it', cracking open a beer while driving and licking white powder off his friend's hand. The 34-year-old is seen in two separate clips, declaring 's**t's getting weird' after polishing off a white substance from a friend's hand and in another saying 'sending love, boys' after taking a swig from his beer can while behind the wheel. Hammer began to trend on Twitter over the weekend after a series of sexually graphic Instagram DMs that he allegedly penned to a woman were leaked publicly by an anonymous, now-private account, House of Effie. On Wednesday DailyMail.com obtained concerning videos showing Hammer looking 'out of it', cracking open a beer while driving and licking white crystals off his friend's hand Armie Hammer is seen in concerning videos obtained by DailyMail.com looking 'out of it', cracking open a beer while driving and licking white powder off his friend's hand Hammer's estranged wife Elizabeth Chambers, whom he split from in July 2020, is said to be currently 'shocked and sickened' over the recent revelations. A close friend exclusively told DailyMail.com: 'Armie had a whole other side to him that she wasnt aware of. Whether it was always there and he kept it hidden, or something happened that changed him completely, she doesn't know.' The Social Network star has also confirmed he was dropping out of his latest film - Shotgun Wedding with Jennifer Lopez - after the news was first reported earlier on Wednesday. He said: 'Lionsgate is supporting me in this and I'm grateful to them for that.' A Wednesday report from Page Six claimed that the actor was exiting the project, with production spokesperson saying: 'Given the imminent start date of 'Shotgun Wedding,' Armie has requested to step away from the film and we support him in his decision.' Meanwhile, Hammer's estranged wife is said to be distraught over the leaked messages, which date back to 2016 and some are as recent as February 2020, a time period where Hammer was still married. A close friend exclusively told DailyMail.com: 'Armie had a whole other side to him that she wasnt aware of. Whether it was always there and he kept it hidden, or something happened that changed him completely, she doesn't know' The two announced their 10-year marriage was over in July, as a source close to Chambers admitted she was aware of his infidelities, including being romantically involved with Lily James as DailyMail.com revealed last year, which led to their split. But Hammer's alleged extreme kinks are a 'complete shock' to the mother-of-two, with the friend adding: 'Armie appears to be a monster.' The friend said: 'A lot of these women have reached out to Elizabeth and although she didn't want to admit it to herself at first, she knows now they are speaking the truth. 'Armie had a whole other side to him that she wasnt aware of. Whether it was always there and he kept it hidden, or something happened that changed him completely, she doesn't know.' Though the messages are unverified, the user attempted to prove their authenticity by sharing private photos alleged to be from Hammer. One includes a photo that seems to be sent from Hammer's official Instagram account where he grabs his neck, presumably to imitate choking himself (pictured) The insider claims that one of the women who contacted Chambers about her experience with Hammer was left so traumatized that she entered an 'intense rehab and therapy program because of his emotional and maybe physical abuse.' The source added: 'He preyed upon her when she was coming out of a relationship. He made her feel very uncomfortable, the things he wanted to do made her very scared.' The graphic Instagram DMs that Hammer allegedly penned to a woman included talk of rape fantasies, BDSM and cannibalism. A dog day: After Bella made her remarks, she posted several images of herself to social media where she was with her dog Playful: Instead of clearing up her comments, the Shake It Up actress said, 'Can't work out with ma' In one exchange, Hammer is seen to write: 'I am 100% a cannibal. I want to eat you.' 'F**k. That's scary to admit,' the message continues. 'I've never admitted that before.' The authenticity of the screenshots has not yet been verified, however the woman behind the House of Effie account shared new alleged correspondences with Hammer on Tuesday, in which he appeared to refer to her as his 'slave'. 'You just live to obey me and be my slave,' a message purported to have been sent from Hammer's official Instagram account reads. Having fun at home: And the part-time singer also shared an extreme closeup photo that gave a good look at her pearl and diamond necklaces 'I will own you. That's my soul. My brain. My spirit. My body. Would you come and be my property till you die?' The message continues: 'If I wanted to cut off one of your toes and keep it with me in my pocket so I always had a piece of you in my possession?' House of Effie attempted to prove their authenticity by sharing private photos alleged to be from Hammer. After Bella made her remarks, she posted several images of herself to social media where she was with her dog. Instead of clearing up her comments, the Shake It Up actress said, 'Can't work out with ma.' And the part-time singer also shared an extreme closeup photo that gave a good look at her pearl and diamond necklaces. UW Researchers Resolve Controversy Over Energy Gap of a Van der Waals Material TeYu Chien, a UW associate professor of physics and astronomy, and Dinesh Baral, a UW graduate student, led research that used scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements that clearly reveal a much smaller energy gap value of a van der Waals material -- chromium tribromide. Their work, recently published online in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, resolved previously controversial values of the energy gap, which were based on various optical measurements. This artwork, created by Baral, will be used by the journal for the cover of its upcoming print edition. (Dinesh Baral Photo) Previously controversial values of the energy gap of a van der Waals material -- chromium tribromide -- were reported based on various optical measurements. A University of Wyoming faculty member and his research team used scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements that clearly reveal a much smaller energy gap value and resolved the controversy. Our results settled a long controversy on one important material property -- the energy gap of the material, says TeYu Chien, an associate professor in the UW Department of Physics and Astronomy. Our scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements clearly revealed that the energy gap is around 0.3 electron volt (eV), which is much smaller than those measured by optical methods, which ranged from 1.68 to 2.1 eV. Chien says his teams data further explain those previous optical measurements as being the transitions from various conduction and valence band features rather than detecting the energy gap of the material. Van der Waals materials are made up of strongly bonded two-dimensional layers that are bound in the third dimension through weaker van der Waals forces. For example, graphite is a van der Waals material that is broadly used in industry in electrodes, lubricants, fibers, heat exchangers and batteries. The nature of the van der Waals forces between layers allows researchers to use Scotch tape to peel the layers into atomic thickness. Chien is the corresponding author of a paper, titled Small Energy Gap Revealed in CrBr3 by Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy, that was published Dec. 8 in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, an international journal for the publication of cutting-edge original work in physical chemistry, chemical physics and biophysical chemistry. The paper has been selected into the journals hot articles, a theme collection featuring the hottest work published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. This work also will be featured on the outside front cover of the upcoming print edition. Dinesh Baral, a UW graduate student from Nepal, was the lead author of the paper. He carried out the experimental works on scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurement, and data analysis. Other researchers who contributed to the paper are Assistant Professor Jifa Tian, Professor Yuri Dahnovsky and Jinke Tang, a professor and department chair, all from UWs Department of Physics and Astronomy. Graduate students involved with the research included Zhuangen Fu and Aaron Wang, both from China; Uppalaiah Erugu, of India; Rabindra Dulal and Narendra Shrestha, both of Nepal; and Andrei Zadorozhnyi, of Russia. Since the first isolated graphene -- atomically thin graphite -- in 2004, various van der Waals materials with properties of metal, semimetal, semiconductor, insulator and superconductor have been confirmed. The magnetic van der Waals materials did not join the graphene family until 2017. Chromium trihalides are one family of the key van der Waals magnetic materials and have been used to explore the potential for spintronic applications, in which the magnetic moment of the electron is used for computing and information storage rather than using the charge properties of the electrons for conventional electronics. Because van der Waals materials have very weak interlayer interactions and relatively stronger intralayer atom-to-atom bonding, this allows researchers to peel them and stack them for any combination of materials at atomic thickness. This peeling of the van der Waals materials is like peeling the onion skins, but at the atomic level, Baral explains. Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy is an imaging tool capable of measuring atomic resolution images, along with the electronic properties in that scale. Chromium tribromide flakes were peeled off from bulk crystal into atomically thin thickness and transferred onto a conducting substrate, such as highly oriented pyrolytic graphite, for the study. The understanding of the energy gap of chromium tribromide resolves the existing controversy for the scientific community, Chien says. This also is the key in better controlling the spintronics devices involving chromium tribromide. The results of the study will provide researchers a better understanding of this important material for applications in spintronics and quantum materials, Chien says. Materials having such properties have potential applications in engineering at minimizing the size of the electronic and spintronic devices toward atomic level, he says. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, and EPSCoR (Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research). Baral was supported by an Energy Graduate Assistant Fellowship from UWs Office of Academic Affairs. Actor Akshay Kumar Actor Akshay Kumar took to his Twitter on Monday, 18 January, to share the news of his contribution towards the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. A nationwide donation drive for the temple started on Friday, 15 January, and will continue till 27 February. The actor asked the public to also donate towards the construction of this grand temple, with how much ever they were comfortable with. ... l , l pic.twitter.com/5SvzgfBVCf Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) January 17, 2021 President Ramnath Kovind donated Rs 5 Lakh Along with Akshar Kumar, President Ramnath Kovind had also donated Rs 5,00,100 for the construction of Ram Temple to the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust that is managing and overseeing the project. Close Related stories New enrolments under EPFO, ESIC lowest in three years Facebook lifts ban on posts claiming COVID-19 is man-made Uttar Pradesh: 20 people given wrong 2nd dose of COVID-19 vaccine, probe ordered The trust's co-president Govind Dev Giriji Maharaj, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) working president Alok Kumar, temple construction committee's chief Nripendra Mishra and RSS leader Kulbhushan Ahuja met the President on January 15, reported NDTV. "He is the first citizen of the country so we went to him to initiate this drive. He donated a sum of 5,00,100," ANI quoted the VHP's Kumar as saying. MP CM donated Rs 1,00,00 cheque According to ANI, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan donated a cheque of Rs 1,00,000 towards the fund. He also said one brick from his family will be placed at the construction site. The trust has decided that it will not use any government funds, money from abroad, or corporate donations. Instead, volunteers of various organizations will collect a contribution of Rs10, Rs100, or Rs 1,000 from Hindu households for the construction. BJP leader Sushil Kumar, while launching the Samarpan Nidhi Sangraha Abhiyan in Patna, hoped that every Hindu family in Bihar will come forward to donate towards the temple's construction. According to NDTV, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was asked if people from other religions can also donate, he clarified saying, "Why not? But the thing is if it is a mosque, it is expected that Muslims will be at the forefront. So, it is the Hindu community's responsibility that they come forward for Lord Ram's temple. We will certainly take cooperation from the followers of other religions too." It is a matter of great pleasure that the construction of our grand temple of Shri Ram has begun in Ayodhya Now it is our turn to contribute. I have started, hope you will join too. Jai Siyaram, the actor wrote. OKLAHOMA CITY, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the ninth time in ten years, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Oklahoma School Choice Week by the state's governor. This year, Gov. Kevin Stitt proclaimed the Week, which seeks to celebrate and raise awareness about K-12 school choices. Gov. Stitt joins more than a dozen other governors and hundreds of city and county leaders nationwide in issuing similar proclamations. National School Choice Week has turned virtual this year, and Oklahoma community members have planned 407 virtual or socially-distanced activities, including a weeklong virtual Parent Power Summit for moms and dads statewide. The week will be full of timely conversations about the educational opportunities parents want for their children, and the importance of every child receiving an effective education. Nationwide, more than 33,000 safe and fun activities will take place. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will join in the celebration. "When it comes to education, parents have choices, and this is a time to celebrate those choices and work to expand learning opportunities," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are so grateful for the dedication and involvement of Oklahoma families and educators who celebrate School Choice Week." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/oklahoma . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com PFAS investigation in Pellston completes second round of samples Officials discovered polyfluoroalkyls in Pellston residential water sources in late 2019. The airport is believed to be the source of the substances. Add CoolSocial badge. Show it by adding this HTML code on your site: Chennaicrm.com scored 40 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team This CoolSocial report was updated on 22 Feb 2013, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. Add a widget like this on your site: click here The total number of people who shared the chennaicrm homepage on StumbleUpon. The total number of people who shared the chennaicrm homepage on Delicious. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the chennaicrm homepage on Twitter + the total number of chennaicrm followers (if chennaicrm has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the chennaicrm homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. 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Twitter account link TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND ORANGEBURG, S.C. South Carolina State University has signed a memorandum of understanding with Samsung Electronics America, Inc. The partnership agreement formally recognizes the Samsung STEM Scholars program aimed at preparing SC State students for careers in STEM-related fields. We are thrilled about this commitment being made by Samsung Electronics America, said SC State University president James E. Clark. Establishing this partnership with Samsung is in alignment with SC State's goal of transformation through collaboration. This institution is committed to partnering with corporations to provide students with access and affordability to education that will allow our students to compete in a technology-driven world. The MOU between SC State and Samsung covers a two-year period, through October 2022. During that time, Samsung will award $150,000 in scholarship dollars to qualified students. Students will also be exposed to educational and training opportunities, including internships and career mentoring with Samsung, which has had a large presence in South Carolina since establishing its manufacturing facility in Newberry County in 2017. At Samsung, we are committed to realizing our global vision of "Together for Tomorrow! Enabling People" by supporting inspiring young minds to pursue studies and careers in science, technology, engineering, and math and fulfill their true potential, said Ann Woo, senior director of Corporate Citizenship at Samsung Electronics America. As part of our ongoing commitment to the communities in South Carolina, we are honored to partner with South Carolina State University to establish a scholarship program that supports students in pursuing STEM degrees and helping them in their academic journey. Students selected to participate in the Samsung STEM Scholars program must meet eligibility requirements. They must have a declared major in the College of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Transportation (STEM-T). They must also have a 3.0 GPA, be enrolled full-time, and must successfully complete a background check. According to SC State University Trustee and alumnus Hamilton R. Grant, who was instrumental in coordinating the two parties, the agreement made between SC State and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. is a historic partnership that will have a positive impact on students. As the cost of higher education increases, every scholarship dollar assists students with staying in school and making it across the stage at graduation. Thank you, Samsung, for intentionally investing in our historically black colleges and universities, said Grant. Leaders from both SC State and Samsung Electronics America, Inc view this agreement as an opportunity to further strengthen a broader relationship. 7th Pay Commission: Why the TA for CG employees will not increase despite rise in DA 7th Pay Commission: Delay in restoration of DA likely as key meet gets postponed 7th Pay Commission: Variable DA for CG employees hiked, all you should know 7th Pay Commission: CG employees could expect a double bonanza soon India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: Two positive developments are likely with regard to the 7th Pay Commission. The first would be a 4 per cent hike in Dearness Allowance (DA), expected this month itself and the second would be the Dearness Relief (DR), which was approved by the Union Cabinet with effect from January 1 2020. The increase of the DA by 4 per cent would mean Central Government employees will get more salary. This would mean that the DA would be hiked from 17 to 21 per cent. While reports say that the hike in DA would come into effect this month, the government is yet to announce the date officially. 7th Pay Commission: Govt employees to get more payment as Centre revises night duty allowance norms The finance ministry had announced that there will be an increase of 4 per cent over the existing rate of 17 per cent of the Basic Pay/Pension to compensate the employees for the rise in price. This would cost the Centre's exchequer Rs 12,150 crore per year for the DA. In the case of the DR, the exchequer would be burdened by Rs 14,595 crore in FY 2020-21 for the period between January 2020 and February 2021. This would benefit around 48.34 lakh CG employees and 65.26 lakh pensioners. In another development relating to the 7th Pay Commission, the government decided to extend the Disability Compensation for all serving employees. This decision would go a long way and especially provide relief for those in the central armed police force (CAPF), personnel of the BSF, CISF, BSF etc. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 11:53 [IST] The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. After the deaths of 10 people who passed away soon after having been inoculated against the novel coronavirus disease, Specialists from Germany's Paul Ehrlich Institute are looking into it. Brigitte Keller-Stanislawski, the head of the institute's department of the safety of medicinal products and medical devices, said on Thursday. READ | COVID-19: Two WHO Team Members To Wuhan Test Positive, Being Retested In Singapore The deceased were aged between 79 to 93, all with antecedent diseases. The time between vaccination and death ranged from several hours to four days, according to the medical expert. "Until yesterday we had nine cases; we have to wait for the data from Lower Saxony [about another alleged case], then there will be 10. We are talking about patients in extremely grave condition, with multiple diseases, who were receiving palliative treatment. I have already said that we are studying these cases ... Based on our current data we assume they died from their main diseases, coinciding in time with the vaccination," Keller-Stanislawski said at a press conference. READ | COVID-19: UK Travel Ban On South America, Portugal Over New Variant Fears Germany's Vaccination Campaign Using the vaccine developed by the companies Pfizer and BioNTech, Germany launched a vaccination campaign against COVID-19 in late December. Till this date, 842,000 people have received the vaccine. Those over 80 are the first ones to get vaccinated followed by the residents and staff at nursing homes as well as medical personnel. The institute also reported six anaphylaxis (severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction) cases. So far, including 51 severe ones, there have been 325 cases of side-effects allegedly related to the vaccine. Those results are within expectations and correspond to the US vaccination statistics, Keller-Stanislawski stated. READ | Pope Francis, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Receive First Dose Of COVID-19 Vaccine READ | COVID-19: Queensland Planning To Use Mining Camps As Quarantine Facilities For Travellers (With ANI Inputs) Registered Nurse Stephanie Cal receives the COVID-19 vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Scott Heins/Getty Images Coronavirus vaccines are the main chance the US has to dig itself out of the pandemic, and 10.6 million people have gotten their first shots so far. People are desperate to get vaccinated so they can protect themselves, see loved ones, and return to normal. The rollout so far has been slow and messier than planned, but US health officials say they're hitting the gas pedal in the weeks ahead. Here's what you need to know about the vaccine, from timeline to cost and side effects. Have a burning question you don't see here? Email reporter Kimberly Leonard at KLeonard@insider.com. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Coronavirus vaccines are finally out the door and going into people's arms. It's the best shot the US has to dig itself out of a vicious pandemic that has killed more than 389,000 people and otherwise shows no signs of slowing. So far, the rollout has been slow and messy. But now that the vaccine is here, you're probably wondering what it means for your loved ones and for you. You might be desperate to get the vaccine as soon as you can so that you can protect yourself, knowing that you'd otherwise face serious illness from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Maybe you want to make sure your grandparents get it before you do. Perhaps you're not ready to get the vaccine just yet. Or you got your shot and are now wondering what to do next. Maybe you're concerned about its side effects. To help, we've answered some of the biggest questions everyone has about the coronavirus vaccine. The sooner hundreds of millions of people get the vaccine, the sooner the country can overcome the pandemic. At least 75% of people in the US will need to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government's top infectious diseases expert. Don't see a burning question answered? Send it over to KLeonard@Insider.com. A half-dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine initially could mean we have double the number doses available when it's approved by regulators. Siphiwe Sibeko/Pool via AP What's the best time to get a shot? Story continues You should get a coronavirus vaccine as soon as your turn comes if you want it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the first doses go to frontline healthcare workers and nursing home residents. But states are free to determine how they want to distribute the doses and the vast majority of them are following CDC guidelines. A few are doing things differently. Florida, for instance, decided early-on on a broader prioritization group of anyone 65 years and older. After frontline healthcare workers and nursing homes have been offered their initial doses, a CDC expert group recommended that people above 74, and certain essential workers - such as teachers, emergency responders, and grocery store employees - should be next in line. On January 12, the Trump administration also encouraged states to open up vaccines to people 65 and older and to people with chronic conditions. The best place to start is to check your state and community's COVID-19 websites. How will I know when it's my 'turn'? It all depends on your job, age, health status, and your location. Every state and even city does things a little differently. Keep an eye on announcements in your local newspaper, and see what information your doctor has. Talk to your friends, community and faith leaders. Tune in to news conferences from your local health department. Also check your local pharmacy. Major pharmacy and big-box retailers - including Walmart and Costco - are getting ready to help speed the vaccine rollout in the coming weeks and months. If you're a healthy, young adult then you're likely to be last in line in most states. That changes, though, if you have an "essential" job, including working at a grocery store or in a meatpacking plant. If that's the case, you'll probably have access sooner because you're at higher risk of getting infected. Once the vaccine becomes more widely available you'll be able to see where you can get one on the Vaccine Finder website. How can I jump the line? You may have read stories about how some people who aren't in high-priority groups have still managed to score a vaccine. What's happening is that some pharmacies and hospitals are finding themselves with already thawed leftover shots at the end of the day after they vaccinate people who are eligible for shots. In some places, healthcare facilities are giving out those remaining shots to anyone who'll take them, whether it's the nearest shopper in the store or an employee who'd otherwise have to wait longer. Those precious vaccines would otherwise go in the trash. A lot of places have policies saying that any extra vaccines should first go to other workers in the building, such as pharmacists, hospital, and grocery store staff, before being doled out to whoever happens to be nearby and is willing to get inoculated. If you go the route of trying to find a leftover shot, you may have to wait in line for a long time. The lines may be indoors, and so you'll have to consider the risks of exposing yourself to the coronavirus while you wait with other people. This isn't a surefire way to get a vaccine. Some people have waited in line for hours and still ended up going home empty-handed. Read more about how Insider reporter Kimberly Leonard tried her luck at landing a leftover vaccine. Can I just call a hospital and see if they'll take me? Hospitals are focused on vaccinating their staff, but sometimes they do open up vaccines to more people. Keep your eyes peeled for announcements from your local hospital, but also bear in mind that there's a nationwide surge in coronavirus cases, and nurses and doctors are overwhelmed. Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association, recommended people check each of their state's COVID-19 websites to see when they can get a shot. "At this point, we do not recommend that people call hospitals to try to schedule a vaccination," she said. "Hospital staff are incredibly busy trying to care for a large number of hospitalized patients." Which shot should I get? The short answer is - you should get the shot that's offered to you. There probably won't be much of a choice, as supply is very limited. Both Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines are highly effective in preventing COVID-19 infections. FG Trade/Getty Images Should I talk to my doctor first? You're not required to talk to a doctor before getting vaccinated. But consider talking to your doctor about it if you have any questions or a major pre-existing condition. Your doctor may recommend waiting to get a vaccine until more data becomes available, or may be able to provide tips about where you can get your shot. Be aware that some doctors charge for these kinds of consultations. What if I'm healthy? Great news! These vaccines are for you. Vaccinations are designed to protect healthy people from future infections, not to treat diseases we already have. That's why safety regulations for approved vaccines in the US are so stringent. Moderna and Pfizer have both been granted a special FDA emergency use authorization for the pandemic, which is a bit less rigorous than the normal approval, but still tough. If you're healthy, go ahead and get a shot. What if I already had COVID-19? You can get a vaccine if you already had COVID-19, but if you're still sick, it's best to wait until you've recovered. The CDC recommends waiting 90 days, since it's highly unlikely you'll get reinfected again within the first three months post-infection. It's possible you may have developed some level of immunity from your infection, but that immunity could be incomplete, or it could wane over time. For the surest level of protection against all circulating variants of the virus, it's best to supplement any potential natural immunity you might've built up through infection with a vaccine. Moderna and Pfizer's vaccine trials didn't include very many people who'd had prior COVID-19 infections, but the data so far suggests that these vaccines have been safely administered to hundreds of people with previous COVID-19 infections, and the vaccines seem to protect them well from additional infections, particularly the severe kind. (Remember: reinfection is rare, but possible). Immunologist James Hildreth recently suggested at an FDA meeting on COVID-19 vaccines that people who've had the virus could just get one shot, instead of two - with their infection serving the place of the initial, or "primer" dose, and the single shot as a "booster" - but that shot-saving strategy hasn't been tested out yet in people, so it's impossible to know if it would work. Do I really need to go back for a second shot? Technically, no. No one is going to force you to get a second shot. But it's a good idea. Both Pfizer and Moderna's shots have been designed to work best in two doses, administered several weeks apart. Vaccine-takers get some degree of protection from their first shot - but it's only full-strength after the second one. And it's unclear how long that first shot protection would last, without the booster. How will I know when it's time to go back for that second shot? The CDC is giving everyone vaccination cards to keep track of when they get each shot. For Pfizer's vaccine, the recommendation is to get the second shot 21 days after the first, while for Moderna, it's 28. But, if you're a few days late, worry not: go ahead and get that second shot. In the trials, not everyone was perfectly on time for their second dose either, and a few days of lag time shouldn't be an issue. What if I lose my vaccine card? When you get your vaccine card, take a picture of it, so you remember the date you got your first shot. That way, you can still keep track of when it's time to get the second jab, even if you lose the little white card. Travelers wearing face masks arrive at Orlando International Airport on the day before Christmas. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images Can I throw my mask away after I get the vaccine? Unfortunately, scientists don't yet know whether the vaccines protect people from carrying the virus and passing it on to others. That information is coming. For now, you'll still need to wear a mask and keep physical distance from those outside your household. Once more and more people are vaccinated, the guidelines about mask-wearing and social distancing will change. How long will it take for me to become immune to COVID-19 after I get the vaccine? In vaccine studies of tens of thousands of volunteers around the world, most people started to gain the benefit of some protection from infections after their first shot. This protection usually began to kick in at about the two-week mark after shot number one. But, it's still important for people who've received one shot to keep wearing a mask in public, and adhering to social distancing, because the protection is not complete, and you could still easily get infected with just one shot on board; indeed, many people already have. It's only after the second dose of the vaccine that your risk of infection can plummet to as little as 5%. Scientists measured that efficacy level beginning one week (for Pfizer) or two weeks (for Moderna) after the second shot. That's when you can expect the vaccine to have fully kicked in. It's still not known whether you could be an asymptomatic carrier after vaccination is complete, so it'll still be important to wear a mask to protect others after that. I have severe allergies, should I skip the vaccine? The odds that you will have a reaction to these vaccines, even if you have some severe allergies, are incredibly slim. As of January 6, the CDC had counted up just 29 reports of people having allergic, anaphylactic reactions after vaccination, among nearly 5 million people who had received the shots. If you have a history of severe allergies, talk to your provider before you get your shot, make sure they have epinephrine on hand just in case, and wait on-site for 30 minutes after your vaccination to make sure a reaction isn't at hand. The only adults the CDC is recommending should not get vaccinated are those who've had an allergic reaction after a previous dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. How will I know if I get an allergic reaction? What should I do if I get one? Reports of allergic reactions to coronavirus vaccines have been rare, but a few people in both the US and the UK have had non-life-threatening anaphylactic reactions in the moments after their vaccination. Tell-tale symptoms have included rashes, swollen lips and/or tongue, hoarseness, wheezing, and, in a couple of the most severe cases, trouble breathing or swallowing. The CDC has recommended healthcare providers administering shots have EpiPens on hand just in case of an allergic reaction. Will I get tested for preexisting conditions before getting the shot? The healthcare provider who gives you a vaccine will ask you to fill out a form about your health status. It's likely to ask about allergies, your history with vaccination, your pregnancy status, and your medication regimen. You'll have the opportunity to ask questions of the healthcare worker who gives you the vaccine before you take it. A CVS pharmacist gives the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a resident at the Emerald Court senior living community in Anaheim, California. Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images Will it hurt? As much as any other needle-in-the-arm vaccine hurts, yes. But many people who've had it say it's not an unusually painful jab. If you've ever had a flu shot, you likely already know what the moment it hits your arm muscle will feel like. There are some side effects to prepare for after you go home: most people report some pain at the injection site, fatigue, and headaches, typically lasting a few days after vaccination. For some, the arm pain and drowsiness in those hours and days after vaccination can be somewhat severe. How can I report any side effects? After you get your vaccine, the CDC will send you a survey called V-Safe to fill out over text message that'll ask you whether you're having any symptoms. You'll be able to opt out if you choose, but opting in will help public health experts track any side effects they didn't know about before. You'll get the survey every day for a week. If you report a serious illness, someone from the federal government will follow up with you to get more information. You can also report any side effects from the shot with the federal government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. What if I'm pregnant or breastfeeding? Scientists haven't evaluated the safety or effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines during pregnancy. This is common. Few drugs and vaccines are tested during pregnancy for ethical reasons, including concerns about harming a developing fetus. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that people can have conversations with their doctors about getting the coronavirus vaccine while pregnant or breastfeeding. The group also says these discussions shouldn't be required if a patient is comfortable going ahead and getting vaccinated. It's important to keep in mind that people who get infected with the coronavirus while pregnant face an increased risk of death and severe illness, including the risk of giving birth prematurely, according to the CDC. The World Health Organization has issued its first COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women who are considering receiving Pfizer's shot. More guidance is expected soon for Moderna's. In its guidance about the Pfizer vaccine, the agency said there's still not enough data to know for sure what the risks and benefits might be of getting vaccinated during pregnancy. For now, the WHO recommends pregnant women who work in high-risk settings such as healthcare and frontline workers, and those with pre-existing conditions get these vaccines. Is there anyone who shouldn't get the vaccine? For now, children don't qualify. Pfizer's vaccine is only approved for people above the age of 16. Moderna's is for those 18 and above. The CDC is also discouraging people from getting the second dose of the vaccine if they had a bad reaction to their first shot. People who are currently infected with the coronavirus should also wait until their illness has passed before they get the vaccine. How is the vaccination campaign going across the US? Nearly 10.6 million people in the US have received their first dose as of early January, according to the CDC. The federal government's vaccine initiative, called Operation Warp Speed, has taken charge of securing the supply of doses and shipping them to states. Beyond that, states are in the driver's seat when it comes to putting shots into arms. Warp Speed has distributed more than 31 million doses to date, but only about one-third of those have been used so far, according to CDC data. Warp Speed has faced criticism for overpromising and underdelivering, falling way short of reaching its goal of starting 20 million vaccinations by the end of 2020. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to receive his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health on December 22, 2020 in Bethesda, Maryland. Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images Can my employer force me to get a vaccine? Yes, and some workplaces will mandate coronavirus vaccines. States will have different rules, and there may be exemptions for religious or medical reasons. Where Fauci works at the National Institutes of Health, annual flu vaccines are already required for anyone who works directly with patients. That's common for lots of healthcare facilities. Fauci said he expects COVID-19 vaccines to follow suit. "I have to get certified every year," he recently told Newsweek. "If I didn't, I couldn't see patients. So in that regard, I would not be surprised, as we get into the full scope of [COVID-19] vaccination, that some companies, some hospitals, some organizations might require [COVID-19] vaccination." Already, at least one major nursing home chain is. Read more: Yes, your boss can require you to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Labor lawyers weigh in on what rights employees have. How much will the vaccines cost? Does my insurance pay for it? President Donald Trump signed a bill into law last year that aimed at ensuring that patients don't get charged for coronavirus vaccines. Insurance companies are supposed to pick up the full tab, and doctors, pharmacies, and hospitals aren't expected to bill patients for the shot. The vast majority of people probably won't have to pay anything, but some costs - even small fees- might end up slipping through the cracks. After all, coronavirus testing and care were also supposed to be covered without charging patients. But as Insider reported last year, many people faced charges anyway. Be sure to ask whether there will be any fees associated with your vaccine visit. If you get a charge, call your insurance company and healthcare provider to ask about what's going on, and point out that you're supposed to get free vaccines under federal law. There may just be a mix up or something that may have gone wrong in the process of billing for the vaccine. Sometimes doctors charge when you ask questions about another health ailment during the visit, or if you have other tests done while you're there. What if I'm uninsured? You qualify for a free shot. Healthcare providers are supposed to bill the federal government for all vaccines they administer to patients who don't have health insurance. Did you get charged for a coronavirus vaccine? Tell us about it by emailing KLeonard@insider.com. Read the original article on Business Insider A pedestrian wears a mask as he walks past "Store Closing" signs in the window display of a Debenhams store in Manchester, northern England, on Dec. 2, 2020. (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images) UK Could Lose 400,000 Retail Jobs as Pandemic Accelerates Shift to Online Shopping: Report UK towns and cities could lose nearly 400,000 jobs and up to 40 percent of their retail offerings as consumers shift to online shopping due to the impact of the pandemic, a new KPMG research report reveals. Online sales have grown by 50 [percent plus] in nine months, accelerating a trend that would have taken five years plus to deliver in normal circumstances, Paul Martin, head of retail at KPMG in the UK, said in the report published on Thursday. Forty to 50 percent of all non-essential retailing is expected to shift online going forward, an increase from 30 percent before the pandemic. This accelerated rise in online shopping could affect up to 5 percent of the local labour force. Basingstoke, Bracknell, and Guildford have been identified as the most severely impacted areas and with the highest risk of job losses. Up to 2,602 jobs could be affected in Basingstoke, representing 3.8 percent of total employment and 39 percent of total retail jobs. London is estimated to lose 122,146 retail jobs, accounting for 2.3 percent of the total workforce and 30 percent of retail jobs. Larger cities such as London, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester could show more resilience as they have larger and more varied cultural offerings to attract visitors, which may offset the impact of less commuter flow and the loss of retail offerings. People walk past an entrance to the Topshop store at the Oxford Street, in London, on July 2, 2020. (Hannah McKay/File Photo/Reuters) Business for retailers across the UK has been in decline for some years, and the pandemic has worsened the downturn, especially for non-essential shops. Sir Philip Greens Arcadia Group, which owns major brands including Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, and Miss Selfridge, went into administration at the end of last year, putting 13,000 jobs at risk. The UKs oldest retail chain Debenhams confirmed on Wednesday that it will shut six of its shops, including its flagship store on Oxford Street in London. The company went into liquidation last December, affecting 1,300 jobs. The pandemic has also had a mixed impact on UK property values, with retail and hospitality properties suffering the biggest fall. December 2020 retail property valuations could be somewhere around 50 [percent] of the previous peak, and in some cases much lower, with 2021 bringing further reductions in non-food retail property valuations, Andy Pyle, head of real estate at KPMG UK, said. Earlier this month, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak offered one-off top-up grants for retail, hospitality, and leisure businesses worth up to 9,000 ($12,225) per property as part of the extra 4.6 billion support package for businesses hit hard by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus lockdown measures. While the grants may help retail shops to survive the downturn, customers may not return to the old ways of doing things post-pandemic. The high streets of the future will need to become multi-purpose locations, combining retail and hospitality amenities with residential, education, healthcare, cultural, technology, community and more, Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UK, said. 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. 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. The discovery of possibly the oldest piece of rock art catalogued to date could point the way to even older art, made by the ancient humans who travelled through the Indonesian archipelago thousands of years ago. A research team including experts from Griffith University has uncovered the striking image of a pig in a limestone cave in the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi. This drawing on an ancient cave wall has been dated to at least 45,500 years old. Credit:Maxime Aubert The image has been dated to at least 45,500 years old, which would make it the oldest human rock art on record. One of the team leaders, Professor Adam Brumm from Griffiths Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, said the image was familiar to researchers, as it crops up again and again in local cave paintings. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close The logo of Chinese company Huawei at their main UK offices in Reading, London, on Jan. 28, 2020. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images) Is It Huawei or the Highway? Chinese telecom giant goes on the offensive in UK, Europe after Trump defeat Commentary With President Donald Trump set to leave office on Jan. 20, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is wasting no time in picking up where it left off before Trump came to power and spoiled its expansion plans into Europe. Huawei, a Chinese regime-owned 5G vendor, has been linked to cyberattacks, sanction violations, the theft of IP and trade secrets, and corrupt local officials, among other egregious offenses. A New Campaign for Business? In the wake of the U.S. presidential elections, the Chinese regime is pressuring the United Kingdom to reconsider its decision to purge Huawei equipment nationwide by 2027. Huawei has similar challenges with Europe as well. Of course, the pressure from the CCP and Huawei is hardly subtle. Huaweis vice president warned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently that now that Trump has been defeated, Johnson should reconsider his decision. The statement also pushed the narrative that the UK is in no economic condition to refuse Huaweis help. Additionally, a tweet featuring the image of Chinese leader Xi Jinping labels the UK as Americas Dupe and threatens that British businesses may face consequences if it bans Huawei. Apparently for the CCP, its Huawei or the highway. But really, why wouldnt Huawei put the heat on the UK to re-insert itself into Britains telecom infrastructure? British Weakness Huawei sees possible weakness in Johnson. After all, in January 2020, Johnson allowed Huawei to have a limited level of participation in the UKs 5G infrastructure buildout. Furthermore, with Trump out of the way and a British economy weakened by a lousy Brexit deal and extended pandemic lockdowns, Huawei pressuring the UK makes sense. Still, it may not be as easy to penetrate British 5G network build-out plans as it was before. The British are now aware of the many risks that come with using Huawei equipment, but they will also have to weigh the risks against the possible consequences that Xi has threatened. The EU: Not So Easy But it isnt just the UK that Huawei and the CCP have their sights on; theyre focused on Europe as well. Europe, however, and particularly the European Union, will likely be a tougher row to hoe than the UK. European skepticism toward the CCPs most valuable state-owned enterprise is deep and probably past the point of no return, regardless of whos in the White House. Though the EU hasnt put a total ban of Huawei equipment in place, its strongly recommending that member states dont do business with telecommunications companies that lack democratic checks and balances. The obvious target of that remonstration is, of course, Huawei. Democracies Fighting Back As a result of these and other developments, such as the 50-plus alliance of democracies formed to establish and maintain secure telecom networks explicitly against Huawei, the formerly dominant network equipment supplier has seen its reputation and its business suffer considerably. In the past year or so, Huaweis foreign business roster has collapsed to only 12 from 90. Such a dramatic loss in business revenue in such a short period of time, which amounts to billions of dollars, is no doubt another motivation behind Huaweis pressure campaign to re-acquire lucrative business opportunities that have all but gone away. Strategic Dimensions But it isnt just business losses that are in play, though they are significant and growing. The challenge that Huawei and China itself represents is multidimensional and fluid. Business dominance, after all, leads to political dominance and often, technological denial. Huawei is a key part of the CCPs grand plan to gain global technological dominance through IP and data theft of cutting-edge technology. There is also a fundamental geopolitical aspect of both the UK and the EU for China, and both are important factors in Beijings Huawei calculations. Gaining a significant technological foothold in either or both regions could undercut the strategic relationships between the United States and the UK or between the United States and NATO European allies. Either outcome would be a major victory for the CCP. Given the aforementioned alliance of democracies favoring secure telecommunications and the current antipathy toward Huawei in general, the prospect of a strategic decoupling from the United States looks unlikely for both the UK and the EUat least for the moment. But on the other hand, strategic alliances demand leadership and visionor in the case of Trump, the proper motivation clearly, if not brashly, articulated. The U.S. drive to deny Huawei and the CCP the lions share of the 5G network business in Europe and the UK came with stout demands and a simple choice: Do business with China or the United States. Now that Trump is leaving, the Chinese regime may feel that it has more latitude in which to operate vis-a-vis the UK and the EU. That may or may not be true. In either case, with the CCPs asset President-elect Joe Biden soon to be seated in the White House, no doubt that Xi will feel emboldened to push hard against the UK and perhaps even Europe, without having to worry about what the United States will do. James R. Gorrie is the author of The China Crisis (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 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. (Photo : Youtube/ Papa Duran Parra) Canon satellite launched for CES 2021 Canon showed something different at the CES 2021, instead of releasing new cameras, the company lets users take pictures from space. Canon has unveiled an interactive site that allows people to use its CE-SAT-1 satellite that has a lightly modified 5D Mark III DSLR, to get simulated pictures of locations including the Bahamas, New York City and Dubai. Canon let's you take pictures from real satellite Canon launched the microsatellite back in June 2017. The said satellite is as big as a wine barrel and it holds an EOS 5D Mark III camera that is fitted with a 40cm Cassegrain-type 370mm telescope mirror. The said satellite is orbiting at a 600 km orbit or 375 miles, it gives about a 36-inch ground resolution within a 3x2 mile frame, according to Canon. To compare, the world's highest-resolution satellite, the WorldView-4, can resolve down to 12 inches. The satellite also caters to PowerShot S110 that is used for wider images. Also Read: Look: New Proposed Rocket Design Could Solve SpaceX Launch Delays Due to Bad Weather The interactive demo from Canon allows you to take images from multiple locations, with each shot showing the location and the altitude of the image you took. However, it uses pre-captured imagery, which means you are not actually grabbing live or unique photos. If it was live capture, CE-SAT-1 would be orbiting around the Earth at almost 17,000 miles per hour, circling around in just an hour and a half. The demonstration does give you an idea of the capabilities and the resolution of the satellite. The experience is narrated by astronaut Marsha Ivins, who then explains everything about the satellite's purpose and design. The microsatellites are much smaller and they are much cheaper than regular satellites, and Canon wishes to build a billion dollar business around them by 2030. After launching the CE-SAT-1 back in 2017, Canon also tried to launch CE-SAT-1B in 2020. However, the said satellite was lost when RocketLab's Electron rocket failed minutes after it was launched. Canon's CE-SAT-1B In July 2020, Canon announced they were going to launch the CE-SAT-IB satellite camera, which was set to included as one of the six other satellites aboard RocketLab's Electron vehicle as part of its mission. The mission named "Pics or It Didn't Happen" didn't go as planned as it was reported then that all payloads were destroyed during its ascent because of a rocket failure. According to RocketLab, the Electron vehicle which housed Canon's Earth-imaging camera and six other satellites was not able to take its journey from Mahia Peninsula on North Island, New Zealand. In a Twitter post that was shared on July 4, 2021, Peter Beck, the CEO of RocketLab, apologized to the consumers stating that he is sorry that they failed to deliver the satellites and that they would correct and fix the issue and launch again. The specific cause was not shared at the time, but in the launch video, which was live-streamed for the world to see, shows the video feed from the rocket cutting out just six minutes into its flight. Not long after, a team member can be heard saying that there was mishap. Related Article: Canon Mirrorless Cameras List for 2021: Specs, Price, Release Date and More This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Sieeka Khan 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Greg Gulli, 18, Sunbury, is a senior at the Milton Hershey School in Derry Township, Pa. Through the school's agriculture program he has raised sheep, cows and goats. He hopes to study animal science in college and possibly become a veteranarian. Provided photo With the 2021 Pennsylvania Farm Show pushed online because of the pandemic PennLive profiles farmers and exhibitors who would normally be showing in Harrisburg this week. The Milton Hershey School is older than the Pennsylvania Farm Show, by eight years. Founded in 1909 by chocolate magnate Milton Hershey and his wife Catherine, the Milton Hershey School is a pre-K through 12 boarding school in Hershey, Pa. Kenny Casey and Greg Gulli are both 18-year-old seniors at the school and both are passionate about farming. They are both members of the schools Agricultural and Environmental Education program and hope to pursue careers in agriculture, Casey as a game warden and Gulli as a veterinarian. The ag program at MHS has about 30 high school students in it and provides students with a possible pathway to agricultural careers like veterinary, horticulture, hydroponics, natural resource management, and even the culinary arts. Both seniors would be showing livestock at this years Farm Show, had it not been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Casey is from Foster, R.I., and grew up on a beef farm. He has shown at the past three farm shows. I miss showing in general. Being there, surrounded by people who love agriculture. Teaching them about what we do. Casey said. He would have shown Hotpocket his Herford steer, who he raised from birth. Until the pandemic limited access, he would work with the animals every day after school. Gulli, from Sunbury, also raised a steer this year, Herald, and also shows goats and sheep. I like showing cows because you put so much effort into them, Gulli said. " You get to watch them grow. Because of the pandemic, other possible shows were canceled and so both animals will be sold at auction. Historical photo of Milton Hershey School students attending the 1931 Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, Pa. Provided photo Greg Gulli, 18, Sunbury, is a senior at the Milton Hershey School in Derry Township, Pa. Through the school's agriculture program he has raised sheep, cows and goats. Provided photo Kenny Casey, 18, is from Foster, R.I., and grew up on a beef farm. He raised "Hotpocket" from birth on the Milton Hershey School's farm in Derry Township. And learned to care for it through the school's Agriculture and Environmental Education program. His goal is to become a game warden. Provided photo. If you normally exhibit something you make or grow at the Farm Show and would like to be profiled by PennLive please contact Mark Pynes, (717) 975-0555 or at mpynes@pennlive.com. As part of the agreement, Kwanza will handle international sales for more than 40 hours of content produced in 2020 and 2021. Titles include Battle of Okinawa: Operation Iceberg, Chenonceau: Royals of the River, and 1945: The Year that Changed History. Commenting on the deal, Thibaut Martin, general manager of RMC Production, said: For 15 years, Kwanza has been a force to be reckoned with on the international level, developing an impressive roster of broadcasters. This agreement gains us a global audience for our documentaries. Benjamin Ternynck, CEO of Kwanza, added: I am delighted about this deal with Altice France. RMC Production has an amazing team with plenty of know-how in both production and narrative style. Whatever the topic, whatever the genre, they know how to tell stories. Our foreign customers always appreciate the quality and pace of their documentaries. (Natural News) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is promoting the idea of a congressional commission to rein in the media and stop them from spreading what is deemed to be false information (Article by Niamh Harris republished from NewsPunch.com) 1984 anyone? AOCs latest idea might just be her worst on yet: A Ministry of Truth. RT reports: During an Instagram livestream on Tuesday night, Ocasio-Cortez at one point answered a question from a viewer asking if there were discussions in Congress for truth and reconciliation or media literacy initiatives, and she confirmed there are. I do think that several members of Congress, in some of my discussions, have brought up media literacy because that is a part of what happened here and were going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you cant just spew disinformation, and misinformation, the congresswoman said. AOC suggests adding media literacy as a mandate for a congressional truth and reconciliation committee pic.twitter.com/sv7UXMwvaO Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 13, 2021 The Squad member added that she and other lawmakers are looking into this vague committee idea because its one thing to have differentiating opinions but its another thing entirely to just say things that are false. Ocasio-Cortez did not detail how such a committee would go about policing speech in the media or what powers over speech she believes Congress actually has. False information regarding election fraud, Ocasio-Cortez believes, is partly to blame for the storming of the US Capitol last week. The New York Democrat also described her experience during the Capitol riot during her lengthy Instagram discussion, claiming she thought she would die and also saying she was fearful that white supremacist members of Congress would turn her over to the rioters. I didnt even feel safe around other members of Congress, she said. Told at one point to shelter with other members of Congress by US Capitol Police, Ocasio-Cortez said there were QAnon and white-supremacist sympathizers and, frankly, white-supremacist members of Congress in that extraction point who I know and who I have felt would disclose my location and would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, et cetera. Ocasio-Cortez has called on any Republicans who have amplified lies to undermine our democracy, encouraged an attack on our Capitol, and tried to overturn our election to resign following events at the Capitol, specifically targeting conservative members of Congress and Trump supporters like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri). Read more at: NewsPunch.com It is often said that most beautiful places in the world are never found on the map. One such place is a hamlet called Lalbazar ensconced comfortably amid the forests of Jhargram, West Bengal. Lalbazar recently grabbed news headlines for its beautiful mural-covered houses -- painted by the members of the local tribal inhabitants, the Lodha community -- and is at the precipice of turning into an important tourist location. The village is so beautiful that it has been rechristened as khwaabgaon which means a village of dreams. Lalbazar's dwellers - Lodhas - who are identified by the Central Government as a denotified tribe, and are similar to the Sabar tribe of West Bengal had historically been forest product collectors, farmers and daily wage workers. But, as their artistically painted houses draw many tourists to their village, they have turned to other creative endeavours like making katumkutum dolls, Katha art as well as eco-painting to earn a living. In 2014, when Kolkata based artist, Mrinal Mandal wandered into Lalbazar, he recalls that it looked like any other tribal settlement, with thatched roofed mud houses. "There were about 80 inhabitants, who made little money from daily labour jobs, and farming. At the time, I was mesmerized by the natural beauty of the place. It was isolated and cosy, with a single road leading up to it, and nothing but forests surrounding it. I had thought that it would serve as a wonderful retreat or studio for urban artists," he said. " However, the more I got to know the Lodhas I was fascinated by their intuitive understanding of creative processes -- like sculpting and painting -- and how they pass down such knowledge through the generations. Young kids learn so quickly here, by just watching their elders. They know so many things about art instinctively, which we have to go through the rigour of academics to imbibe. Therefore, I shifted my focus to empowering the Lodhas," pointed out the artist. Mandal, who is the founder of Chalachitra Academy, a collective of like-minded artists, and intellectuals who work on documentation, preservation and promotion of dying art forms from rural, underprivileged communities, finally began working with the Lodhas in Lalbazar in 2018. "The first step was to establish a workshop for the tribal kids in Lalbazar on different art forms like eco prints, vegetable dye, pattachitra, burnt earth pottery etc. They learned them diligently, and when we initially asked the permission to paint murals on the exterior of the houses in the area, the villagers readily agreed and gave us a helping hand," said Mandal. In the last three years, all the houses in the village have been painted with colourful wall art. The walls of the mud houses are retouched every year, which means the paintings have to be done on a yearly basis too, and Mandal said that this year it was the villagers who did the majority of the painting. " Our basic brief was that they should draw from their surroundings and experiences. And, we saw that they chose animals like the ducks, cattle and hens. Sometimes, elephants visit their village too, so they have drawn elephants as well. There is a tiny zoo nearby, therefore, whatever animals they see in the zoo, they paint. The wall art also depicts scenes of their festivals like Bandhna parab," said Mandal. Only a four-hour drive from Kolkata, Lalbazar has already started attracting a large hoard of tourists. While that is good news for the villagers because it increases their chance to make a living off their art, it is a double-edged sword, pointed out Mandal. "While the fact that creative objects are being sold from this village on a daily basis is a heartening development, tourists flocking at Lalbazar routinely is a source of both joy and concern. It worries me that if too many people crowd the village on a regular basis, it would completely disrupt the everyday lives of the lodhas," said Mandal. Also, people nowadays have little respect for the places they travel to. We have already put up a notice board that asks for donations to the locals, from those tourists who want to take pictures. It is, of course, voluntary, and there is no fixed amount. But it can help the locals, so the tourists should pay, said the artist. Mandal who has been working for 22 years with backward communities, and trying to preserve their art and history, told News18, our aim is not to develop Khwaabgaon into a tourist space, because if that happens, no one will be able to do any work there. But we do want to empower the locals so that they can make a living from their art. Many inhabitants, irrespective of their age and gender, are already learning to make kantha, eco-painting and batik, and we are introducing them to the channels through which they can sell their works." "We had also taught the villagers the art of mime by collaborating with Jogesh Mime Academy. We plan to construct an artist studio in Lalbazar so that artists from other villages and cities can also visit and live in Lalbazar, and learn the art, he added. 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. EDWARDSVILLE A St. Louis man was charged with multiple drug, weapon and vehicle-related charges Friday in Madison County. Juan O. Barnes, 29, was charged Jan. 15 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class X felony; offenses relating to motor vehicles and unlawful possession of a stolen firearm, both Class 2 felonies; unlawful possession of weapons by a felon, a Class 3 felony; and aggravated unlawful use of weapons, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. According to court documents, on Jan. 14 Barnes was found to be in possession of between 15 and 100 grams of methamphetamine, a stolen 2015 Honda Civic and a stolen HiPoint JCP .45 caliber gun. It was noted that Barnes had a prior 2015 conviction for manufacturing/delivery of controlled substance out of St. Louis, and the firearm was loaded was uncased, loaded and immediately accessible. Bail was set at $150,000. Other felony charges recently filed by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include: Ronald W. Artis, 31, of Granite City, was charged Jan. 15 with unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, a Class X felony; and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 1 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. According to court documents, on Jan. 14 Artis was found to be in possession of more than 15 grams of Ecstasy with intent to deliver. Bail was set at $150,000. Kendra D. Thomas, 33, of Collinsville, was charged Jan. 15 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 2 felony; and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. According to court documents, on Jan. 14 Thomas was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine, and less than 15 grams of fentanyl. Bail was set at $50,000. Sarah E. Powell, 40, of Granite City, was charged Jan. 14 with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. According to court documents, on Jan. 14 Powell was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $25,000. Holden R. Mollett, 23, of Granite City, was charged Jan. 15 with two counts of aggravated fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer, both Class 4 felonies. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. According to court documents, on Jan. 15 Mollett attempted to flee in a 1998 Ford Ranger from a Granite City police officer, going more than 21 miles over the speed limit and disobeying several traffic control lights. Bail was set at $25,000. Timothy J. Farrar, 30, of Lawrenceville, was charge Jan. 15 with offenses relating to a motor vehicle, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Illinois State Police. According to court documents, on Jan. 14 Farrar was found to be in possession of a stolen 2011 Ford Fusion. Bail was set at $50,000. But before Wednesday, many scientists, doctors and the public did not know about this strategy this calculus at all. That issue had been quietly bubbling away for months as animal and human trial data pointed to difficulties in making vaccines that achieve "sterilising immunity" total immunity from infection, versus immunity from getting seriously ill. Concerns circulated among scientists and doctors on social media. Professor Raina MacIntyre, head of biosecurity at the Kirby Institute, released a video raising the issue on January 4. When you get down to a vaccine thats 60 per cent effective, you basically need to vaccinate 100 per cent of people [to achieve herd immunity], she told the ABC two days later. And thats not feasible. But when the opportunity came to meet the story at the pass on Tuesday by explaining whether Australia was hoping to use vaccines to stop the virus circulating Health Minister Greg Hunt chose to largely ignore the issue and launched a personal attack on "commentators". The story was ready to explode. On Tuesday, it did. The Australasian Virology Society and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology both told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald the government should pause its rollout of AstraZenecas vaccine, due to concerns the data we had so far did not clearly show it would stop the virus circulating. Word leaked before the story could go to press, leading to an extraordinary internal debate within the AVS. About 6.30pm on Tuesday, the society decided to change positions and pull its objection to the rollout of the vaccine. Loading We dont want to undermine the confidence in the vaccine. And we dont have the full picture. We need to go with the most effective vaccine so we can have herd immunity. But we just dont have the full picture at the moment with the AstraZeneca vaccine, society president Professor Gilda Tachedjian said. After coming under tremendous pressure, the Society for Immunology would also reverse its position on Wednesday. But the story was already out. Herd immunity, explained Herd immunity describes the scenario many people imagine: everyone has protection against the virus, leaving it with no hosts to jump to, and causing the epidemic to eventually die out. Is it attainable for COVID-19? To calculate a virus "critical vaccine level" the level of protection needed in the community to reach herd immunity scientists look at how infectious a virus is, measured by a value known as R. R represents the average number of people each infected person passes the virus on to. If that number is over 1, the virus will spread; if it is below 1, the virus will die out. In most countries, the R value varies between 1.5 and 3.5. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video In March last year in Melbourne as the first wave of the virus spread and before the first lockdown the R value was between 1.4 and 1.8, a team of modellers estimated in Nature Communications. To achieve herd immunity, we would need to cut the R value by between 45 and 55 per cent, said Associate Professor James Wood, a University of NSW vaccine modeller and member of the federal governments Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. That would theoretically be achievable with a vaccine with 70 per cent efficacy against transmission but would require in particular high coverage in the 18-35 year group, which appear to contribute a greater fraction of transmission. But there is now a complicating factor that did not exist six months ago: the emergence of B.1.1.7, a variant of the coronavirus that is substantially more transmissible. That virus has an R that is plausibly 30 to 50 per cent higher, said Wood. That means herd immunity is even harder to reach. A third wrinkle: it is plausible immune responses from the vaccines will wane over time, and plausible the virus will mutate to evade vaccines. "If you ask experts in this area, none of them think that the virus is going to be eliminated from Australia long-term," said Wood. "What we do expect is that if youve been previously vaccinated or infected, then you will experience a much milder disease course and that after a couple of transition years COVID-19 will become just another variety of the common cold." Loading Vaccinating the herd Australias current vaccine strategy is to use Pfizers mRNA vaccine to vaccinate the most vulnerable starting from mid February; we have enough on order for 5 million people. At this stage, the rest of the population will be getting a jab made by AstraZeneca; we have 53.8 million doses on order, enough to cover the entire population. Importantly, it is being made here by CSL, guaranteeing supply. A third vaccine on order, under development by Novavax, is yet to report results from phase 3 clinical trials. Can either of these vaccines provide herd immunity? Phase 3 clinical trial data published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December estimates Pfizers jab provides 95 per cent protection against symptomatic COVID-19. However, available data does not allow us to know if it stops people passing on the virus, which is key to herd immunity. It may be you can still catch and pass on the virus without showing symptoms. For AstraZeneca, the data is much cloudier. Some 4440 people were given the jab in two standard doses. Interim analysis, published in the Lancet, shows it offers 62.1 per cent protection against symptomatic COVID-19. But a second group of 1367 accidentally received a lower dose. Yet that offered 90 per cent protection. Between the two groups the average was 70.4 per cent. How do you reconcile those three numbers? Thats not yet clear. AstraZeneca is doing further trials of the lower dose. The British government has started administering the jab at the standard dose, so we will soon get data on how it behaves in the real world. Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has taken to citing the vaccines efficacy as a range: between 62 per cent and 90 per cent. Lets assume the vaccine is 70 per cent effective. Can we use that to get to herd immunity? Data suggests AstraZenecas vaccine does cut infectiousness [to] some degree, wrote Professor Allen Cheng, co-chair of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation on Twitter on Wednesday. But even if all adults were vaccinated, it probably would not achieve herd immunity. Does herd immunity matter? When the story ran on Wednesday, it sent health authorities into a scramble. Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly did the circuit of morning shows and a midday news conference. Reporters were briefed on background. Information that had been jealously guarded suddenly poured out. Herd immunity was not being pursued as a short-term strategy, health officials said. Primarily, this was because on current data we do not know if any of the vaccines available could confer herd immunity, because we do not know if they will cut or prevent transmission. Thats as true for AstraZeneca as it is for Pfizer and Moderna. We seek herd immunity, Hunt told The Age. [But] that outcome will depend on the longevity of protection, the coverage of the population (expected to be high by global standards in Australia), and the impact on transmission, which are yet to be determined for any vaccine. Loading Scientists dont know if the vaccines we have available will stop transmission, but they do know this: Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZenecas vaccines will all save lives. Of the 5807 volunteers in AstraZenecas interim analysis who received the vaccine at any dose from 21 days after injection not a single one was hospitalised, there were no serious cases of COVID-19, and there were no deaths. Given the virus has killed nearly 2 million people around the world, the calculus on what to do is pretty simple. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 23:16:28|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close By Xinhua writers Guo Xiaoyu, Liu Hongxia and Yu Jiaxin BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Embracing its fifth anniversary on Saturday, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) remains committed to promoting economic growth and social progress in pursuit of more inclusive and sustainable development, and keeps forging cooperation with more parts of the world. In half a decade since kicking off operations, the Beijing-headquartered multilateral development institution has grown from 57 founding members to more than 100 approved members from all around the globe. In addition, it has continued to maintain the highest credit rating with a stable outlook from the largest credit rating agencies, including Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch. HELPING HAND IN PANDEMIC With the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc across the globe, the AIIB has unveiled immediate measures to help its members weather economic and healthcare strains. The bank has created a COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility to support AIIB members and clients in mitigating economic, financial and public health pressures brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Between April 2020 and Oct. 16, 2021, the facility is expected to offer up to 13 billion U.S. dollars worth of financing to both public and private sector entities in AIIB members facing or at risk of adverse pandemic-induced impacts. Apart from supporting emergency public health needs, such as health infrastructure for emergency preparedness and clients whose infrastructure investments are severely impacted by the pandemic, the facility aims to provide financing for other productive sectors hit by the COVID-19 pandemic to sustain production capacity. Targeted assistance has been offered to those hit hard by the pandemic. To help Bangladesh respond to COVID-19, the bank has approved a loan of 100 million dollars to help the country ramp up testing, tracing and treatment capacity and improve long-term pandemic preparedness. Shedding light on the project in Bangladesh, Laurel Ostfield, director general of AIIB's Communications Department, said the bank is part of the coordinated international response to support its members in navigating the health and economic impacts of the pandemic. She expected the investment to help Bangladesh contain COVID-19 and strengthen its pandemic preparedness. "A well-managed and robust development institution must be nimble enough to deal with external shocks and responsive enough to adapt to the changing needs of its clients while also adhering to our mission of promoting economic and social development in Asia," said Jin Liqun, AIIB president and chair of the board. The international community needs to come together to pool resources to help the world navigate the current pandemic and economic upheaval, Jin said, adding that AIIB is committed to fully playing its role. MUTUAL PROSPERITY Since its launch, the AIIB has been dedicated to promoting infrastructure construction, regional connectivity and mutual development in Asia. To date, the bank has provided over 22 billion dollars in infrastructure investment for its members and approved 108 projects. The latest progress can be seen in Sri Lanka, where the AIIB's first affordable public housing project in the country broke ground in November 2020. Scheduled to be completed and opened by July 2022, the project aims to build 700 housing units in the northern Colombo suburb of Applewatta. "We thank AIIB for all the cooperation given to us. We are hoping to cooperate more and more with them in order to accomplish his excellency the president's vision, which is that shelter is a right for everybody," said Sirinimal Perera, secretary to the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing. The AIIB has provided much-needed funding and resources to countries that are still in their early stages of development, said Zhu Ning, professor of finance and deputy dean at Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is also providing a very important working mechanism among different countries in terms of trying to provide much needed developmental financing and trying to help the economy grow in different parts of the world, Zhu added. GREENER FUTURE Looking forward to Asia's post-pandemic future, the AIIB has highlighted green and social infrastructure among its five key focus areas. Stressing expanding green infrastructure investment, Jin called for efforts to help its members complete their shift to new energy, adding that infrastructures should minimize the use of energy in urban construction of Asian countries. Continued efforts have been made by the AIIB in pursuit of its green endeavor in recent years, including initiating a project for low carbon energy transition and air quality improvement in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. By approving financing worth 500 million dollars, the project aims to increase the availability of natural gas to help reduce coal consumption and related emissions in the region. Meanwhile, the bank has decided that climate financing will account for half of its total financing approvals by 2025. Green infrastructure will help relevant countries and regions accelerate economic transformation and upgrade, as well as move toward carbon neutrality, Jin said. Such infrastructure will also facilitate economic and social development without "leaving footprints" on the environment, he said. Enditem (Xinhua reporters You Zhixin in Shanghai and Liu Chuntao in Dhaka contributed to this story) 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 STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. The deadline to register for the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), which is used to offer admission to eight specialized high schools in New York City, is Friday, Jan. 15. Students are offered admission to the eight schools based on their score on the SHSAT. These schools are: Staten Island Technical High School in New Dorp; Stuyvesant High School; Bronx High School of Science; Brooklyn Latin School; Brooklyn Technical High School; High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College; High School for American Studies at Lehman College; and Queens High School for Sciences at York College. New York City announced sweeping changes to its middle and high school admissions for the 2021-2022 school year. At the high school level, the SHSAT will be administered in students own middle school to reduce travel and mixing of different cohorts of children amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Other students will take the SHSAT at city Department of Education (DOE) locations. Registration for the SHSAT closes on Friday. Testing will begin on Jan. 27. Heres how to register, according to the DOE: Families should log into their MySchools account and click Get Started. Then click the SHSAT tab. List any and all of these schools in preference order, starting with the top choice as number one. Submit the registration for the test. Families can apply through a virtual Family Welcome Center the Staten Island centers email is PetridesFWC@schools.nyc.gov. Applications can also be submitted by calling the Parent Support Line at P311. Just say schools to be routed to the proper person. After taking the SHSAT, students will be considered for admission to the specialized high schools. For the one audition specialized high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, families should apply by registering their child to audition by Feb. 23, then submitting the audition materials. The SHSAT is not used for admission to LaGuardia. Families should log into their MySchools account and click Get Started. Then click the LaGuardia tab. There are six programs at LaGuardia High School, and students can audition for just one program, all six, or anything in between. Submit the registration to audition by March 1. All high school auditions will take place virtually. Applicants will submit audition files through a new Virtual Audition Submission Tool, which is not yet open. The DOE will notify schools and families when it is accessible. Updated requirements for audition programs are available on the DOEs High School Auditions page and will be posted in the MySchools directory in the coming weeks. FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- WEY, the premium SUV brand of Great Wall Motor (GWM), said its all-new flagship SUV is named Mocha, whose relation to the GWM's Coffee Intelligence platform is apparent at the first glance. Teaser photo of Mocha; photo credit: WEY As the first Coffee-powered vehicle, the Mocha will be equipped with Qualcomm's 8155 automotive chipsets, AR-HUD (augmented-reality head-up displays), Level 3 autonomous driving domain controller as well as the automotive-grade 5G+V2X system and LiDAR. Launched in July 2020, Coffee Intelligence is an intelligent system designed for future mobility, covering intelligent cab, intelligent driving and intelligent electronic/electrical architecture. As planned, the Coffee Intelligence system will be applied to WEY flagship models first, and then introduced successively into all brands and models of GWM in the future. According to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the yet-to-be-launched SUV measures 4,875mm long, 1,960mm wide and 1,690 tall, larger than that of the WEY VV7. Its wheelbase spans 2,915mm, versus 2,950mm for the VV7. The Mocha is likely to come in both fuel-burning and plug-in hybrid versions. The oil-fuel one is powered by an E20N 2.0T engine that pumps out up to 157kW and uses the Miller cycle to deliver a thermal efficiency of over 38%. The PHEV version will get power through the combined efforts of an E20N 2.0T engine and an electric motor. WEY brand sold 78,500 new vehicles through 2020, a year-on-year decrease of 21.53%. Last year, it became the first Chinese luxury SUV brand that hit the 400,000-unit sales milestone. 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. LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Arkansas families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Arkansas families, schools, and organizations are hosting 462 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the most exciting of these will be a free drive-in movie screening of "Miss Virginia" for families in the Little Rock Area on Saturday, Jan. 20. The week will also feature a statewide "Wear Yellow Day," a student essay contest, a virtual town hall for parents, and a dance challenge. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Arkansas, the Union Plaza Building in Little Rock will light up from dusk to dawn all week from Jan. 24- 30. Governor Asa Hutchinson issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Arkansas School Choice Week. In addition, a growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Arkansas counties of Logan, White, and Crawford and the cities of Rogers, Decatur, Ash Flat and Hot Springs. "After a year filled to the brim with pandemic and politics, Arkansas families are joining forces to celebrate an unchanging truth: all children deserve an inspiring, challenging education," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This School Choice Week, let's celebrate great schools of all types and work to create more personalized learning options for families." In Arkansas, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with some open enrollment options, charter schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, private schools, and online schools. Arkansas offers a state-run scholarship program for students with an IEP or in foster placement. Arkansas families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Arkansas school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, including a video from Gov. Hutchinson, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/arkansas National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Search engine giant Google reviewed hundreds of loan apps on the Play Store and found that an unidentified number of apps violated the Play Store's safety policies. The company has removed these apps from its platform. Google's crackdown on lending apps in the country comes after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that it was forming a working group to regulate digital lending. The Silicon Valley-based firm said it will be implementing strong measures to prevent abuse following reports that these fake loan apps were targeting vulnerable borrowers and then going to extreme lengths to recover money. Additionally, the company asked the developers of the remaining loan apps to demonstrate that they are in compliance with the local laws and regulations. The internet giant has given 5-day time to the developers to provide information regarding--'minimum and maxim periods of repayment', 'maximum annual percentage rate', and 'representative example of the total loan cost'. "We have asked the developers of the remaining identified apps to demonstrate that they comply with applicable local laws and regulations. Apps that fail to do so will be removed without further notice. In addition, we will continue to assist the law enforcement agencies in their investigation of this issue," said Google in its blog. Google said it will only allow only personal loan apps "with full repayment required in greater than or equal to 60 days from the date the loan is issued". Recently, borrowers have identified several lending apps like 10MinuteLoan and Ex-Money that granted instant loans to people and levy huge interest and processing charges. They then resort to systematic abusing, harassing, and threatening the defaulters. Many borrowers have been fallen prey to such illegal and unauthorised loan apps. While some victims have revealed their plight, others have killed themselves after they were harassed by app-makers to an extreme level. Since December 20, six people died of suicide in Telangana due to harassment by fraud loan apps. The state police have arrested four Chinese nationals and registered 50 cases related to loan app scam. The Reserve Bank of India has also raised concern over the recent spurt in online lending and cautioned users against loans being offered by unauthorised digital platforms. The Central bank requested people to verify the background of entities that were offering easy and lucrative loans. The RBI also urged people to never share copies of KYC documents with unidentified persons, unverified/unauthorised apps. Also read: Cyber attacks can plunge India's COVID vaccination drive into pandemonium: experts Also read: BT Insight: How to save long-term capital gains on equity mutual funds The first employee was last at school Jan. 7 and notified the district of a positive COVID-19 test the next day, according to CPS. Over the weekend, contact tracers identified and notified close contacts, asking six staff members to quarantine, CPS said. The second case, confirmed Wednesday, involved one of those close contacts, who did not report to school Monday. Contact tracers identified two close contacts of the second case who were not also contacts of the first case and asked them to quarantine as well. ILLINOIS Gov. J.B. Pritzker will send 250 members of the Illinois National Guard to the State Capitol in response to warnings of armed protests planned across the country this weekend. Another 100 Illinois guardsmen and women are headed to Washington, D.C., to defend Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, joining about 200 Illinois National Guard troops already there and more than 20,000 others from all across the country. Officials said the National Guard will not interfere with peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, but will aid local authorities in enforcing street closures and maintaining designated perimeters. "Our state public safety agencies, including the Illinois State Police (ISP), Secretary of State Police and Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) are working in tandem with local and federal counterparts to protect the residents of Illinois while safeguarding the right to peaceful protest," the governor's office said in a news release Friday morning. Illinois National Guard Commander Maj. Gen. Rich Neely praised the troops in a statement on Friday. Our Soldiers and Airmen come from every community across Illinois and each has sworn to protect their communities, their state and their nation, he said. We draw our strength from our communities and are proud to serve in our communities. A pro-Trump mob assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to keep Donald Trump in the White House, and officials began sounding the alarm earlier this week that more violence was being planned. Gov. Pritzker said at a news conference Friday afternoon that he does not know of any specific threats to the state, but that internet chatter points to a general threat, and Illinois would be prepared. He also said he would be skipping President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration to make sure all hands are on deck back at home. "We've got real challenges, crises here in Illinois," the governor said. Story continues On Wednesday, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. The latest charge: incitement to insurrection for falsely claiming he won the election, calling his supporters to Washington, and directing them toward the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory. Following the violent siege at our nations capitol and reports from federal law enforcement on threats to state capitals, I am bringing all resources to bear to protect our residents and our democratic process, Gov. Pritzker said Friday. Our exemplary members of the Illinois National Guard will be working closely with our State Police as well as local and federal authorities to keep our capital city safe. We will continue to be fully transparent with the public on any new information and the steps we are taking to respond. On the evening of Jan. 6, Pritzker called on Trump to be removed from office before he could incite more violence, saying he didn't make that statement likely. "I say this after careful thought and reflection on my responsibilities as an American and as Governor of Illinois," Pritzker said. "We are in the middle of a deadly pandemic that continues to need the full time and attention of our state resources. We are working to oversee a massive vaccination effort that will require the full focus of our state agencies and first responders. "Because of today's events incited by the President, I had to ask the Illinois State Police and other law enforcement resources, engaged in important life-saving missions, to redeploy to heighten their presence at government buildings and the Capitol in Springfield." The governor accused Trump of praising the attackers and said there are real questions about whether he obstructed efforts to end the siege. Last week, as rioters ran amok in the halls of Congress and elected officials hid in barricaded offices, Trump watched the violence unfold on television seeming to enjoying the spectacle, according to the Washington Post, refusing to send in the National Guard and waiting hours before begrudgingly asking his supporters to go home in a now-deleted tweet that seemed to glorify the insurrection. "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots," he tweeted to his supporters, who had just bludgeoned a police officer to death, telling them to "Remember this day forever!" Pritzker said there was no doubt in his mind that Trump's efforts to encourage a coup represented high treason and said "Donald Trump's efforts to unleash the forces of hate and divide our nation ... must end." This article originally appeared on the Across Illinois Patch NEW YORK, NY & SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 14, 2021 / Xpansiv CBL Holding Group Limited (Xpansiv ) today announced its successful pre-IPO capital raise from existing and new investors. Xpansiv had targeted US$35M for the raise but increased the amount to US$40M to accommodate investor demand. Xpansiv is the leading market for ESG-inclusive commodities, connecting buyers and sellers in a global liquidity hub that accelerates the transition to a net-zero future. The company's ever-expanding ecosystem of Intelligent Commodities-like RECs, carbon offsets, and differentiated fuels-provides a clear path to action for companies seeking to meet voluntary and compliance-based ESG goals. "The newly raised capital will finance the expansion of our burgeoning platform," said Xpansiv Executive Chairman Will Stewart. "It will also fund strategic acquisitions, enabling us to expand our influence in the rapidly evolving Digital Commodity Ecosystem." Xpansiv is an unlisted, Australia-based company formed in 2019 through a merger with leading commodity spot exchange CBL. A pre-IPO capital raise is a common vehicle for funding early-stage, entrepreneurial companies in Australia, and subject to market conditions, the company is moving toward an IPO listing in 2021. In addition to its global marketplace, Xpansiv is also an innovator in developing new products like Digital Natural Gas (DNG) which tracks information such as GHG profiles at the point of production, and the Global Emissions Offset (GEO), which streamlines the purchase of high-quality offsets, establishing a benchmark that brings scale, transparency, and liquidity to voluntary offset markets worldwide. In 2020, trading volumes on Xpansiv exchange CBL grew by more than 172% over the previous year (Nov.-Nov.), and the company launched its XSignals market data business, along with pioneering initiatives like the H2OX mobile app that enables customers to connect to global commodity markets anytime, anywhere. "Our capital raise and planned IPO come at a critical moment," said Xpansiv CEO Joe Madden. "We believe ESG-based commodities are an entirely new asset class, and the markets where they trade must scale exponentially to meet climate-mitigation targets pledged by governments, companies, and entire industries. Xpansiv is at the forefront of this wave, and we now have additional resources to expand our leadership position." The funding round, led by Shaw and Partners, includes existing strategic investors and prominent new Australian investors. "We greatly appreciate the participation of Australia's elite institutions joining our strategic investors in this oversubscribed capital funding," Stewart concluded. "Their investment bolsters our vision that leading-edge science, technology, and market-based solutions will play a pivotal role enabling the transition to a low-carbon future." About Xpansiv Xpansiv is the world's first commodity marketplace built for a data-rich, resource-constrained world. We bring transparency to global markets through innovative, ESG-inclusive commodity products and price information. The company's main business units include XMarkets, XSignals, and XRegistries. Xpansiv.com US Contact: Rob Dalton, Xpansiv VP Marketing & Communications-rdalton@xpansiv.com Australian Media: Michael Mullane, Edelman-michael.mullane@edelman.com Related Images SOURCE: Xpansiv CBL Holding Group Limited View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624411/Xpansiv-Completes-Successful-Pre-IPO-Capital-Raise Young people contribute wisdom to Shanghai rural plan By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-01-15 10:19 As China is advancing rural revitalization, more and more young Chinese people are utilizing their knowledge and wisdom in the design and construction of villages. A countryside design competition was held recently in Shanghai to encourage the young to contribute more to villages development. About 2100 young designers submitted 198 pieces of design works for 6 places across Shanghai, including Yueshi Village in Baoshan district, Jianghai Village in Fengxian district, Maoqiao Village in Jiading district, Hemu Village in Qingpu district, Dongshi Village in Songjiang district and the whole Jinshan district. (Exhibition of excellent countryside design works) Shi Shuaibo, a grade one graduate student majored in architecture in Dongnan University, is one of those being awarded in this competition. His renovation plan for Jiadings Maoqiao Village got the widest praise from the expert judges and won the first prize in the creativity group. In his view, village tourism is no more than agritainment. In his renovation plan, tourists will not only see original farming scenes but also real rural life. In addition, internet technology will be used to expand sales channels of the farming products. What is mostly in shortage in rural areas is people, especially young people. Most of the young and middle-aged people are working in nearby cities with the elderly and children left behind. I think in rural construction, a comfortable working and living environment suitable for young people should be created to attract them back, said Shi, who also hopes to establish more maker bases in the pleasing natural rural environment. NEW DELHI: Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait on Friday said that the Centre must scrap the three contentious farms laws and give a legal guarantee on the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and its continuation in future. "Government needs to devise a plan to scrap the three laws and give a legal guarantee for the MSP," BKU Spokesperson Rakesh Tikait said. Tikait also warned that they would walk out of the meeting in case the government remained stuck on its earlier position on the three farm laws. Delhi: Farmer leaders reach Vigyan Bhawan to hold ninth rounds of talks with the Central government over the new farm laws. "Govt needs to devise a plan to scrap the three laws and give legal guarantee for MSP," says BKU Spokesperson Rakesh Tikait. pic.twitter.com/U5vBFzf1yB ANI (@ANI) January 15, 2021 Tikait added that the farmers would withdraw the Republic Day tractor parade if the Supreme Court orders. In response to the proposed procession to be held by the farmers on Republic Day, Tikait said, "If the SC will order, farmers would not hold the proposed parade on Republic Day." "We would conduct the rally on some different day," he further added. The Bharatiya Kisan Union leader had earlier in the day said, "If the government is afraid of fulfilling the demands of the farmers on the central farm laws, there is no use of continuing the dialogue." His remarks came minutes ahead of the commencement of the 9th round of talks between the Centre and the protesting farmers at the Vigyan Bhawan. Three Union Ministers, including Union Minister Narendra Tomar, Piyush Goyal, and the representatives of farmer groups earlier reached the Vigyan Bhawan to hold ninth rounds of talks to resolve all issues concerning the new farm laws. Ahead of the talks, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that the Centre is looking forward to positive discussions with the farmers. Tomar said the government is ready to hold discussions with farmer unions leaders with an open mind. Todays talks come a day after Bhartiya Kisan Union national president Bhupinder Singh Mann recused himself from the four-member committee appointed by the Supreme Court to resolve the deadlock between farmers and the Centre over the new agri-marketing laws. The 4-member committee was asked to submit its report to the Supreme Court within two months of its first sitting, which is to take place within 10 days. Meanwhile, Bharatiya Kisan Union has sought support from the members of the committee appointed by the Supreme Court to resolve farm laws deadlock. A BKU leader said that the panel members should follow the suit of Bhupinder Singh Mann and not be on the "wrong side of history". Mann, the national president of Bharatiya Kisan Union, on Thursday expressed gratitude over his nomination into the four-member committee but recused himself saying he would give up any position to prevent farmers' interests from being compromised. "Mann's decision is a welcome move. The other three members of the panel, who have shown pro-new farm laws stance should also follow Mann's suit. This ongoing agitation for rollback of the three agri laws is history in the making, and we urge they should not be on the wrong side of history," Bharatiya Kisan Union (Lok Shakti) spokesperson Shailesh Kumar Giri said. Apart from Mann, Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati were appointed on the panel. So far, eight rounds of talks have been held between the protesting farmers and government over their demand for the repeal of new farm laws. The Supreme Court had on Tuesday stayed the implementation of three farms laws until further orders and formed a four-member committee. Farmers have been protesting on the different borders of the national capital since November 26 against the three newly enacted farm laws - Farmers` Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; the Farmers Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and farm Services Act 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. Live TV Union minister Shripad Naik taken off ventilator, shifted to high flow nasal oxygen Shripad Naik to be discharged from Goa Medical College in four to five days Shripad Naik recovering well, doctor says; PM Modi also dials India oi-Deepika S Panaji, Jan 15: Union AYUSH Minister Shripad Naik is recovering well and his vital parameters are normal, Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) said on Saturday evening. Naik, injured seriously in a car accident, has been admitted at the state-run GMCH near here since Monday. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Naik over phone. Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, who is on Goa visit, also met Naik. In a medical bulletin, GMCH Dean Dr Shivanand Bandekar said that the minister was recovering well. "All his vital parameters including blood pressure, pulse rate and oxygen saturation are within normal limits. He still continues to be on High Flow Nasal Cannula oxygenation system," Bandekar said. "(Reports of) Blood tests and urine tests conducted today are all within normal limits," he said. "Left elbow passive mobilization has been started today. Bed side sitting and lower limb mobilization have been done by physiotherapists," the bulletin said. Naik was admitted to GMCH on Monday night after he was seriously injured in a road accident in adjoining Karnataka. His wife and a close aide died in the car accident. "Naik''s condition has improved a lot and all his health parameters are stable. In some days, he will be discharged from the hospital," Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant told reporters earlier in the day. Sawant acompanied Vice President Naidu who met the minister at the hospital. Before that, Prime Minister Modi spoke to Naik over phone and enquired about his health. "During a short conversation, the PM asked Naik to take care of his health," Naik''s Officer on Special Duty (OSD) Suraj Naik said. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 20:44 [IST] Fast-moving consumer goods companies are increasingly eyeing direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels as urban Indians warm to the idea of shopping online for their daily needs. Tata Consumer Products (TCP), which sells Tetley Tea and Sampann brand of spices and pulses, already has Tata Nutrikorner.com, a platform it set up as a pilot in September 2019 for online shopping. The company could now add more offerings and scale the platform, said Sushant Dash, president, packaged beverages (India, Bangladesh and Middle East) at TCP. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states He said the company is looking at ways to add more of its beverages portfolio onto a direct-to-consumer platform. So, we are looking at that and evaluating the options in terms of how it works for the beverage part of it," said Dash. TCP has a portfolio of beverages including Tata Tea, Eight OClock Coffee, Tata Coffee Grand and Himalayan Water. More companies are looking at e-commerce stores to upgrade their D2C initiatives. The need for such efforts has picked up post the outbreak of the pandemic as companies try to ensure and extend online connect with consumers, said analysts tracking the sector. The move helps brands not only with sales but also build brand awareness. Companies can also reserve more premium, exclusive online products for their own websites to build salience and even roll out subscription models wherever possible," said Saurav Chachan, engagement manager at consulting firm RedSeer. Even though online sales of groceries are a small part of the overall retail trade, covid has pushed companies to look at several trade channels as the pandemic resets consumer behaviour. Sales via e-commerce contributed to 3.1% of FMCG sales by value in the third quarter of calendar year 2020, market researcher Nielsen said in an earlier report. This is largely derived from sales on marketplaces. Very clearly there is growth that is happening in terms of the digital world, people are getting more and more comfortable shopping online, we are clearly seeing that growth happening. Now, one needs to obviously examine and look at the viability and whether it makes sense for our brands to have a direct-to-consumer channel. It is work in progress," said Dash. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Home > 2021 > Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Jan 16, 2021 On January 15, the 9th round of talks took place between the representatives of protesting peasants and the Government of India over the three contentious Farm Laws. There is a continuing stalemate with no end in sight. o o India is all set for a national launch on January 16 of vaccination campaign against Covid-19 by using Covishield and Covaxin vaccines which still need further trials and have been approved for emergency use only. In the past ten days, a number of bodies of health professionals have raised serious questions about the regulatory approvals process for these drugs. Sections of the media close to the government and to the ruling BJP have cast aspersions on all those raising concerns regarding the process of regulatory approval to the vaccine candidates. In any democracy, people have the right to ask questions and to demand that due process be followed. We have just learnt via media reports that the Election Commission of India data will be used for purposes of drawing up lists of people for vaccination and is to deleted by health authorities once the vaccination exercise concludes. This does raise the issue of safe use of this data, we still do not have a law governing data security. The pandemic is still in full swing and talk arrival of Covid 19 vaccine is being presented as a magic potion that will fix all and that we can set aside the prevention measures that have been observed over the past year. Cinemas are reopening across India after the government gave the go-ahead, Delhi and Rajasthan are gradually reopening their educational institutions. Schools in the two states will begin operations for classes 10 and 12 from January 18. And now we are told that one of the largest religious congregations in India the Kumbh Mela 2021 has begun in Haridwar on January 14 and will go on till April 2021. The Kumbh Mela brings together millions of people and one fails to understand how the health authorities will ensure public safety measures and prevent possible huge scale spread of Covid-19. o o In the US the outgoing President Donald Trump has been impeached in the US House of Representatives and now the trial will take place in the Senate after he leaves office. The swearing-in of the incoming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is to take place on Jan 20, 2021. The risk of right-wing terror attacks is being considered as very real as a result, there is an unprecedented deployment of US security personnel on the Capitol Hill and in all of Washington DC in real terms there are more troops deployed there now than the number of US troops present in Afghanistan. On January 6, after the US Capitol was stormed by a mob of Trump supporters, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube suspended the Presidents account to prevent him, from possibly inciting violence. Also, thousands of accounts of suspected members of the far-right groups have been suspended. This move has come too late, social media platforms have allowed hate-spewing propagandists to operate with impunity for too long. The online presence of Hindutva right-wing in India has flourished all these years on social media with practically no restrictions and we to pay a very heavy price for it. Social Media continues to be used to pedal falsehoods, whip up prejudice against minorities and by the far-right groups to organise in South Asia. Will these social media platforms that have acted firmly in the US do the same in South Asia? Tributes: Ved Mehta, the celebrated writer for The New Yorker where he recounted life and times of modern India through his own autobiographical pieces, died on January 9 at his home in Manhattan, New York. He was 86 Former union minister and Rajya Sabha MP Kamal Morarka passed away on January 16. He was 74. We pay our tributes to the above people. January 16, 2021 The Editors Plant pathologists working at universities across 26 corn-producing states in the United States and in Ontario, Canada, compiled data about annual corn reductions caused by diseases. Estimated loss from each disease varied greatly by region. "This group of plant pathologists takes a step back to estimate what has gone wrong in corn fields in each of their states," said Iowa State University plant pathologist Daren Mueller, who was involved in this project. "Collectively, and across years, corn disease loss estimates provide folks a zoomed out view of what diseases are affecting corn in the U.S. and Canada." To Mueller, these data represent one of the pieces of a good research project. Researchers can use these data to justify new research projects that can help mitigate the impacts of certain diseases. These data can also serve as a benchmark to measure the impact their research might have on corn production. "It's interesting to compare the losses over the years," Mueller said. "We started doing these estimates in 2012." All diseases loss data are posted on the Crop Protection Network. Mueller is also encouraged by the excellent collaboration among scientists across so many states. The last four years of their data are compiled in an article recently published in Plant Health Progress. According to Mueller, "If you grow, breed, scout, study, eat, or really anything with corn, it is good to know what can go wrong when growing the crop. This article provides an overview of the effect of diseases on corn over the past four years." ### Read more about this research in "Corn Yield Loss Estimates Due to Diseases in the United States and Ontario, Canada, from 2016 to 2019," published in the December issue of Plant Health Progress. Police detained four journalists in eastern Turkey on 6 October and raided their homes and offices following their reporting on allegations of Turkish security forces torturing two Kurdish villagers and throwing them from a helicopter. The International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ and EFJ) call for an immediate release of the journalists. Police detained reporters Adnan Bilen and Cemil Ugur, who work for Mezopotamya Agency (MA), and Sehriban Abi and Nazan Sala, working for Jin News, in the province of Van, located in eastern Turkey, on the morning of 6 October. The premises of MA and Jin News and the journalists homes were raided. News agency MA reported that the police did not reveal the reason for the raids and barred the journalists from witnessing the roundups. They also confiscated working devices such as cameras and journalistic material. The journalists were taken to the Provincial Security Directorate and barred from speaking to a lawyer for 24 hours. On 7 October, their detention period was extended for another four days, according to an update by MA. The journalists reported that Turkish security had allegedly tortured Kurdish villagers Servet Turgut and Osman Siban and had thrown them out of a helicopter. One of the victims, Servet Turgut, died from his injuries on 30 September. The journalists revealed documents confirming their accusations, including a hospital report acknowledging that the two villagers suffered severe injuries due to a fall from a great height. News agency ETHA reported on Thursday that the Public Prosecutors Office imposed a publication and broadcasting ban on the incident. Turkey is one of the countries with the most imprisoned journalists worldwide. A survey by the Turkish journalist union (TGS) from May 2020 found that 85 journalists were imprisoned at that time. New arrests and cases occur on a regular basis. The IFJ has repeatedly called for the release of imprisoned journalists. IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: Journalistic work is essential to uncover state abuses that otherwise remain hidden to the public and, therefore, go unpunished. These arrests are another scandalous proof that the Turkish authorities do not tolerate a free press. Adnan Bilen, Cemil Ugur, Sehriban Abi and Nazan Sala must immediately be released. "In situations of potential human rights violations," said EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutierrez, "the role of journalists as watchdogs of democracy is essential. The arrest of journalists who have just done their job in this context is particularly worrying. We demand their release but also complete clarity about the facts they were covering." 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. Dubinsky asks leadership of Servant of People to hold faction's meeting to consider issue of imposing sanctions against him by U.S. Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksandr Dubinsky (Servant of the People faction) insists on immediate holding of the faction's meeting to consider the issue of imposing sanctions against him by the U.S. Treasury Department, his colleague Oleksandr Kachura said on his Telegram channel on Friday. "I insist on the urgent holding of a meeting of the faction, because in the media and on social networks our political opponents use this situation as an object of blackmailing the President of Ukraine and the parliamentary majority that supports him," Dubinsky said in a letter dated January 15 addressed to faction head David Arakhamia, the scan of which was published by Kachura. According to Dubinsky, this situation requires immediate discussion and the provision of information to members of the faction personally from him. Dubinsky regards the sanctions against him as "another dirty provocation by his dishonest opponents." A copy of the letter was addressed to head of the Servant of the People party, first deputy chairman of the eponymous faction Oleksandr Korniyenko. As reported, on Monday, January 11, Washington included 11 individuals and organizations in the sanctions list for Ukraine. Seven citizens of Ukraine fell under the sanctions, in particular, MP, member of the Servant of the People faction Oleksandr Dubinsky, and four organizations based, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, in Ukraine. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, these individuals are associated with Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach, against whom the United States imposed sanctions in September 2020 "for trying to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election." The Department of the Treasury calls Derkach himself "agent of the Russian intelligence services" in the press release. Dubinsky denies any connection with MP of Ukraine Andriy Derkach. The Servant of the People parliamentary faction intends to study the situation regarding the inclusion of deputy Dubinsky in the U.S. sanction list against individuals and organizations of Ukraine for meddling in elections, said deputy head of the faction Yevhenia Kravchuk. DUBLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Key Insights into the Indian Electric Two-wheeler Industry, 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The two-wheeler industry in India is arguably the biggest two-wheeler market in the world and has been undergoing significant changes in the last 5 to 6 years as a result of multiple factors. These include government regulations, OEM innovation and development, customer demographics changes, and the overall economic health of the country. For example, one major change that has occurred in the recent past has been the government's mandate to OEMs to reduce the levels of pollution from two-wheelers by transitioning the industry from the Bharat stage IV emission standard to the Bharat stage VI. OEMs were given a period of three years to change over their products and sell their inventories before the deadline that passed this year at the end of March. However, the most anticipated change that is expected in the industry amongst all stakeholders and customers alike is the evolution of vehicles from petrol power to completely electric powertrains. Over the last few years, both the central and state governments in India have provided various guidelines and incentives to OEMs and end customers to boost the sales of electric vehicles in the country. These initiatives and reforms have given birth to new companies in the market that have managed to design, manufacture, and sell in the country and also distributors of imported products, mostly from China. However, the anticipated growth has not come to fruition due to several factors including the high cost of vehicles (owing to the expensive batteries), poor charging infrastructure, lack of service centers, and overall lack of knowledge about the product. Therefore in order to further boost the growth of the electric two-wheeler industry, more measures are required especially from the government side. Key Features Key growth metrics of the industry in terms of revenue and unit sales Growth drivers and restraints Key findings from a holistic point of view in the industry Current market trends in terms of technology and competition Key government regulations defining the industry Current and expected electric charging infrastructure Electric vehicle and supplier production snapshot in the country Comparative cost analysis between a current electric and petrol-powered vehicle for the end customer Electric two-wheeler market snapshot in terms of competitors, products, sales, and market share, especially for low and high-speed electric vehicles Brand profiles of key low and high-speed electric scooter companies Expected retail strategies for key electric two-wheeler brands Future battery subscription plans to enable cheaper transportation solutions Mobility services and plans that offer electric mobility Market growth strategies in terms of OEMs and government mandates Future expected growth strategies Key Topics Covered: Strategic Imperatives Why is it Increasingly Difficult to Grow? The Strategic Imperative The Impact of the Top Three Strategic Imperatives on Electric Two-wheeler (2W) Industry Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine Key Insights into the India Electric 2W Market Electric 2W Market Overview in India 2W Market and OEM Segmentation The Need for Electric 2Ws Key Findings Overall Market Development Key Growth Metrics Electric 2Ws Market - Growth Drivers Electric 2Ws Market - Growth Restraints Current Market Trends Key Government Regulations Snapshot of Key State Government Regulations Policy Roadmap for EVs in India Electric 2W Charging Infrastructure Electric 2W Production Snapshot Electric 2W Key Component Production Snapshot Comparative Cost Analysis Overall 2W Market Snapshot 2019 Electric 2W Sales Market Overview Electric 2W Market Segmentation Snapshot of Electric Two-wheeler Models Electric 2W Sales - High Speed e-Scooters in India Unit Shipment Forecast Key Brand Profiles - Okinawa Key Brand Profiles - Hero Electric Key Brand Profiles - Ather Energy Key Brand Profiles - Ampere Vehicles Key Brand Profiles - Revolt Motors Key Brand Profiles - Low-speed e-Scooters in India Key Mergers, Acquisitions, Partnerships, and Expansions Electric 2W Retail Strategies Fintech Startups Driving EV Sales Battery Subscription Plans Mobility Service Plans Future Expectations Growth Opportunity Universe Key Growth Opportunities Growth Opportunity 1: Government Initiatives for Electric 2W Market Boost, 2019 Growth Opportunity 2: Localization of Manufacturing (EVs as well as Components), 2019 Growth Opportunity 3: Development of the Charging Infrastructure, 2019 For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/369m4y 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 Last Saturday at 9 p.m., as residents across Quebec sat indoors to obey a new pandemic curfew, the police patrolling the sleepy city of Sherbrooke observed a perhaps unlikely crime: a woman walking her boyfriend, attached to a leash, as he padded along the sidewalk on all fours. Asked by the police why she was breaching curfew, which requires that residents remain indoors between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., the woman replied that she was merely taking her dog for a walk. After all, dog-walking close to home is one of several activities, along with trips to the pharmacy, exempt from the curfew. The police, unconvinced, slapped the couple with a total of nearly $3,100 in fines. This week, I called the Sherbrooke Police to confirm the human canine tale, as it reverberated around the world. A police spokesman, Martin Carrier, told me the couple were part of a small movement of protesters across the country who have been chafing under new coronavirus restrictions and putting their own lives and the lives of others at risk. Its discouraging to see that people arent taking the rules seriously at a time when hospitals are overwhelmed, Mr. Carrier said. 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. Proudly I say it: Im a lefty. An inner-city (outer inner-city), chardonnay-guzzling (actually Irish whiskey, just a tipple on weekends), latte-sipping (though I prefer flat whites, and never after 11 am or I wont be able to sleep at night), tree-hugging (just the one tree, Im a strict mahoganist) loony lefty. And as a loony lefty, Im always on the lookout for other loony lefties to chat with anyone wearing a pair of round John Lennon glasses, maybe a jazzy hipster hat, possibly carrying a hand-painted ukulele that they cant play even though theyve been in a ukulele orchestra since the late 2000s. As a loony lefty, Im always on the lookout for other loony lefties to chat with. Credit:CSA Images Two weeks back I spotted one in my local park: a middle-aged woman wearing round glasses, a wacky vintage jacket, floral flared pyjama-pants, and chunky massager euro-sandals. Holy hacky-sacks! As lefties go, she looked about the looniest. I was walking my dog, she was walking her dog, so I greeted her with a traditional lefty dog-owner greeting; I said Is your dog a rescue? and she said Yes! And yours? and I said Of course! then we both waggled our poop-filled doggy-bags with an air of smug self-satisfaction. We launched into a bit of lefty-smalltalk: she said Nice day! and I said Yes it is, and the days will be even nicer when we finally get rid of Donald Trump, that malevolent devil-horned sack of dung who reminds me of Klaus Kinski at the end of Werner Herzogs Aguirre, the Wrath of God a deranged psychopath adrift on a raft with nothing but his crazed mob of swarming monkeys! (Lefty-smalltalk tends to escalate pretty fast. We have opinions that must be expressed both angrily and pretentiously). Several fast-food chains have lined up for battle, executing their strategy in a quest to be victors of the 2021 fast-food chicken war. According to a report by Business Insider, there is yet another chain with plans to enter the foray - Taco Bell. Business Insider cited Taco Bells global chief food innovation officer Liz Matthews, who told them that customers can expect to see significant menu innovation from the chain when it comes to chicken in 2021. Matthews, in a recent interview, told Business Insider: I love watching the competitors. She said, I think a lot of players out there are doing a great job, but what I will say is that we will interrupt that with what were going to do on chicken. In the past, Taco Bell has offered several fried chicken options, the report noted, including, a test run of chicken tenders in two cities in 2019; and in 2017, the Naked Chicken Chalupa - a chalupa that uses fried chicken as its shell - a repeat limited-time offering since its debut. What will the new fried-chicken offering be? Taco Bell has announced they plan to enter the 2021 fast-food chicken war, but theyve yet to reveal their fried-chicken weapon. The mystery chicken menu item is part of a wider range of new and returning items slated to hit Taco Bells menu in 2021, the report said. 2021 sees a renewed battle over chicken that began in 2019. The battle for chicken sandwich dominance began rather quietly, in 2019. A report by Restaurant Business, recalls that on August 12, 2019, the launch of Popeyes now-famous fried chicken sandwich went largely unnoticed. But, when rival Chick-fil-A touted its sandwich on Twitter, as the original, the hoopla began. Bun + Chicken + Pickles = all the for the original. pic.twitter.com/qBAIIxZx5v Chick-fil-A, Inc. (@ChickfilA) August 19, 2019 Popeyes retaliated, and the chains gentle tweet dripping with Southern charm, prompted a social media frenzy, Restaurant Business said. The stress on this tweet is palpabale. What is Popeyes doing in the Impact zone? Chicken Wars are upon us. https://t.co/9QrP8WI9ut Kazeem Famuyide (@Kazeem) August 19, 2019 That social media skirmish garnered Popeyes sandwich a lot of attention, and within a week, huge lines of customers were out the door at Popeyes locations. Many of which completely sold out of fried chicken sandwiches for the day, the report said. @jonathanmaze they did not limit the number of sandwiches that someone could order. I seriously just watched one lady carry out a huge cardboard box of chicken sandwiches. This is absolutely nuts. They couldve controlled the chaos & still created a buzz, but now all bets are off BSC_Consulting (@BSC_Consulting) November 3, 2019 The fried chicken sandwichs success was largely responsible for the 38% jump in Popeyes same store sales reported in Q4 2019 - and other chains took notice, the report said. They wanted a piece of the action too. Restaurant Business noted that some chains already had a chicken sandwich, but were badly in need of an upgrade, while others already had upgrades in the works prior to Popeyes debut, and still others saw the categorys potential and got to work developing a product they hoped could rise above the rest. As new fried-chicken sandwiches began to appear on the scene, battle lines were drawn, Restaurant Business reported. Sandwich components most often touted by new contenders included a larger, juicier breast fillet, premium bun and crisp pickle slices. Heres a timeline of the chicken-sandwich war and a list of its contenders: The Restaurant Business report notes that in the last 18 months, at least 20 new chains have entered the chicken-sandwich war. Heres the list of major players, compiled by Restaurant Business, including how and when each has marched into combat: Crispy fried chicken breast topped with pickles, slathered with a choice of mayo or spicy Cajun sauce, and layered on a brioche bun. Five-ounce brined chicken breast fillet hand-breaded with seasoned flour, dipped in batter and fried; topped with signature zing sauce and pickles on a house-baked yeast bun. May 2020 - KFC This upgrade rolled out in test with plans to go national; double-breaded extra-crispy chicken fillet topped with thick pickle slices and mayo on a buttery brioche bun. A spicy version is also available. July 2020 - Fatburger, Kings Hawaiian Crispy Chicken Sandwich A relaunch elevated with a Kings Hawaiian bun, its layered with hand-breaded crispy chicken, fried avocado slices, Buffalos medium sauce and pickles. September 2020 - Chick-fil-A, Honey Pepper Pimento Chicken Sandwich Currently in test, this update of the original features a chicken fillet drizzled with honey, topped with pimento cheese and served on a warm, toasted bun with mild pickled jalapenos. October 2020 - Churchs, Churchs Chicken Sandwich Chicken breast fillet hand-breaded with Churchs proprietary seasoning, cooked crisp and layered on a toasted brioche bun brushed with honey butter and topped off with crunchy pickles and mayo. A spicy version is also available. An upgrade of the original, featuring a premium, crispy chicken fillet topped with mayo, lettuce, tomatoes and pickles on a bun. Double hand-breaded chicken breast meat, fried and served on a buttery, toasted split-top bun with thick pickle slices and a choice of Zax Sauce or Spicy Zax Sauce. Crispy brined chicken breast topped with jalapeno-infused pickles, hot honey and spicy mayo on a potato bun. October 2020 - Fuku, Spicy Chicken Sando David Changs entry is a boneless chicken breast marinated in habanero brine, breaded with rice flour/all-purpose flour blend and fried, then topped with kimchi-infused mayo and pickle slices on a potato bun. Crispy chicken fillet topped with pickle slices and mystery sauce on a brioche bun. January 2021 - Carls Jr., BLT Ranch Big Chicken Sandwich Crispy-fried chicken fillet dusted with Southern spices and topped with bacon, lettuce and tomato. Crispy chicken breast glazed with gochujang sauce on top of white kimchi slaw, topped with sesame seeds on a bun. February 2021 - McDonalds, Crispy Chicken Sandwich White meat chicken filet topped with pickles on a buttered potato roll. Two variations include a Spicy Chicken Sandwich with and a Deluxe Chicken Sandwich lettuce and tomato. There still are contenders scheduled to enter the war in 2021. In addition to Taco Bell, there will be other contenders who join the war. According to a Jan. 13 report by Restaurant Business, Burger King executives with big operator Carrols, the Syracuse, N.Y.-based franchisee, told investors earlier this week it is planning to launch an upgrade of its chicken sandwich, with a rollout to be completed to its restaurants 1,000 locations - by May. Restaurant Business cited Carrols, who described the sandwich upgrade as hand-breaded and somewhat unique in that its made with fresh chicken, rather than frozen. In an announcement provided to PennLive today, Boston Market revealed it will enter as a contender with its all new, oh-yeah-youre-gonna-sweat, Nashville Hot Crispy Chicken Sandwich. The rotisserie everything experts describe their first-ever crispy chicken sandwich as a crispy chicken breast with a smoky Nashville Hot sauce, pickles and ranch dressing on a brioche bun. This Boston Market newcomer, which is sure to fire up your taste buds will be available for a limited time, starting Jan. 18, the announcement said. Randy Miller, president of Boston Market, said in a statement: 2020 is behind us, and so are the chicken sandwich wars. Weve been bringing the heat in our rotisserie ovens for more than 30 years, and our new Nashville Hot Crispy Chicken Sandwich proves that theres only room for one chicken expert in this country. Boston Market is and always will be king, Who started the war? The chicken sandwich wars and the growing competition in that category can be attributed to the immense success of Chick-fil-A - the fastest-growing big restaurant chain in the U.S. and now the third-largest domestic concept, Restaurant Business stated. The chain still touts itself as Home of the original chicken sandwich, and as these wars have proven - weve heeded its call to Eat Mor Chikin. READ MORE: 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. A UC Berkeley conservation ecologist has discovered that an elusive glass frog species (Sachatamia orejuela) uses both high-pitched calls and visual signaling in the form of hand-waving, foot-waving and head-bobbing to communicate near loud waterfalls. Credit: Rebecca Brunner Most frogs emit a characteristic croak to attract the attention of a potential mate. But a few frog species that call near loud streamswhere the noise may obscure those crucial love songsadd to their calls by visually showing off with the flap of a hand, a wave of a foot or a bob of the head. Frogs who "dance" near rushing streams have been documented in the rainforests of India, Borneo, Brazil and, now, Ecuador. Conservation ecologist Rebecca Brunner, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, has discovered that the glass frog Sachatamia orejuela can be added to the list of species that make use of visual cues in response to their acoustic environments. This is the first time a member of the glass frog family (Centrolenidae) has been observed using visual communication in this manner. "A handful of other frog species around the world use visual signaling, in addition to high-pitched calls, to communicate in really loud environments," Brunner said. "What's interesting is that these species are not closely related to each other, which means that these behaviors likely evolved independently, but in response to similar environmentsa concept called convergent evolution." Sachatamia orejuela glass frogs are native to the rainforests of Ecuador and Colombia. They are especially unique because they are almost exclusively found on rocks and boulders within the spray zones of waterfalls, where rushing water and slippery surfaces offer some protection against predators, and their green-gray color and semi-transparent skin make them nearly impossible to spot. As a result, little is known about this species' mating and breeding behavior. Brunner captured video of the Sachatamia orejuela glass frog waving its arm, likely in an effort to attract a mate. This is the first time a member of the glass frog family has been observed using visual signalling. Credit: UC Berkeley video Brunner, who studies the bioacoustics of different ecological environments, was chest-deep in an Ecuadorean rainforest stream recording the call of a Sachatamia orejuela when she first observed this visual signaling behavior. As soon as she saw the frog repeatedly raising its front and back legs, Brunner climbed a slippery rock face and balanced on one foot to get video footage of the behavior. "I was already over the moon because I had finally found a calling male after months of searching. Before our publication, there was no official record of this species' call, and basic information like that is really important for conservation," Brunner said. "But then I saw it start doing these little waves, and I knew that I was observing something even more special." While she filmed, the frog continued to wave its hands and feet and bob its head. She also observed another male Sachatamia orejuela glassfrog a few meters away performing the same actions. Brunners colleague captured a photo of her climbing a slippery rock face to film the glass frog. Credit: Rebecca Brunner Glass frogs are named for their semi-transparent skin. Credit: Rebecca Brunner "This is a really exhilarating discovery because it's a perfect example of how an environment's soundscape can influence the species that live there. We've found that Sachatamia orejuela has an extremely high-pitched call, which helps it communicate above the lower-pitched white noise of waterfalls. And then to discover that it also waves its hands and feet to increase its chances of being noticed that's a behavior I've always loved reading about in textbooks, so it is beyond thrilling to be able to share another amazing example with the world," said Brunner. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has put a pause on Brunner's fieldwork, she hopes to return to Ecuador soon to continue her research, which links bioacoustics and conservation. "One of the best things about fieldwork is that nature is always full of surprisesyou never know what discoveries you may happen upon," Brunner said. "I hope our findings can serve as a reminder that we share this planet with incredible biodiversity. Conserving ecosystems that support species like Sachatamia orejuela is important not only for our well-being, but also for our sense of wonder." Juan M. Guayasamin, professor of biology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, is a co-author of this research, which appears in the journal Behaviour. Brunner's fieldwork was supported by a National Geographic Explorer Grant (EC-57058R-19) and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Explore further Native frogs had hard year, faced fires and harsh ecology More information: Rebecca M. Brunner et al. Nocturnal visual displays and call description of the cascade specialist glassfrog Sachatamia orejuela, Behaviour (2020). Rebecca M. Brunner et al. Nocturnal visual displays and call description of the cascade specialist glassfrog Sachatamia orejuela,(2020). DOI: 10.1163/1568539X-bja10048 Photo: The Canadian Press Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Ahmed Hussen Several Black organizations were denied federal funding through a program designed to help such groups build capacity after Employment and Social Development Canada told them their leadership was not sufficiently Black. Velma Morgan, the chair of Operation Black Vote, said her group received an email from the department on Tuesday saying their application did not show "the organization is led and governed by people who self-identify as Black." The department sent a second email the next day, saying their applications were not approved because it did not receive "the information required to move forward," she said. "As if we're incompetent or foolish and we're going to believe the second email over the original email," Morgan said in an interview with The Canadian Press. She said Operation Black Vote, a not-for-profit, multi-partisan organization that aims to get more Black people elected at all levels of government, is one of at least five Black organizations that were not approved for funding. Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen said the initial letter his department sent to unsuccessful applicants was "completely unacceptable" and that he demanded a retraction as soon as he saw it. In a thread on Twitter Thursday night, Hussen said he discussed with his department's officials how such a mistake could have happened and implemented measures to make sure it does not happen again. Morgan said the Liberal government should hire more Black people to sit at every decision-making table. "This is an example of what happens when we don't have representation," Morgan said. New Delhi, Jan 15 : The new year had brought better prospects for country's trade with exports rising 16.2 per cent year-on-year between January 1-7 driven by good performance from engineering goods and petroleum products. In value terms, the exports in the first week of the new year grew by $866 million with the bulk of this increase (73.5 per cent) coming from 51.8 per cent or $686.8 million growth in exports of engineering goods. Engineering goods performance was led by a 30 times rise in exports to South Africa at by $462.2 million. Petroleum products also contributed to increase in the exports and accounted for 13.2 per cent of the total increase. The exports increased by 17.3 per cent YoY at $114.7 million. This was driven by increase in exports to South Africa (+$71 million) and Australia (+$93 million). Some of the increase in exports in week one was offset by decrease in exports of readymade garments (-26.0 per cent YoY, -$87.3 million), man made yarns (-22.0 per cent YoY, -$23.2 million) and inorganic and organic chemicals (-5.5 per cent YoY, -$22.0 million). During the week, overall imports grew by 1.1 per cent YoY or an increase of $92.4 million. Imports of pearls, precious and semi-precious stones increased by 86.5 per cent YoY (+$220.6 million) accounting for 238.8 per cent of the overall increase. The import growth was led by increase in imports from UAE (63.4 per cent YoY, +$74.2 million) and USA (345.8 per cent YoY, +$47.6 million) Vegetable oil also registered significant increase of 88.2 per cent YoY (+$121.4 million) accounting for 131 per cent of the total increase Some of the increase in imports was offset by decrease in imports of Transport Equipment (-59.8 per cent YoY, -$425.4 million), Petroleum Products (-14.5 per cent YoY, -$324.6 million) and Fertilizers (-35.9 per cent YoY, -$88.0 million). The operator of a number of izakaya pub chains in Japan says it is closing down about 20 percent of its outlets in Tokyo. It hopes to mitigate the impact of shorter business hours due to the coronavirus pandemic. Monteroza, which operates the Shirokiya, Uotami and other casual dining and drinking places, announced on Friday that it will close 61 of its 337 outlets in the capital. The company's outlets have been complying with a government request for restaurants and drinking establishments to close by 8 p.m. The request was made when the government declared a state of emergency for the Tokyo area last week. Monteroza says the shorter business hours mean the establishments are not profitable. The company also says major operators like itself are not eligible for the grants of 60,000 yen, or about 580 dollars, per day being offered by the Tokyo government to smaller operators that comply with the request. Big restaurant chains are also expressing concern about the impact of shorter operating hours. The president of the Saizeriya restaurant chain, Horino Issei, told reporters on Wednesday that major operators employing a large number of workers could face a critical situation. He called on the central government to support them in some way. 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. Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Eric Lis factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesnt plan to expand operations -- a reticence that could slow the pace of Chinas economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.Surging prices of raw materials means margins are compressed, explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co. Ltd., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity, he adds.The combination of higher input prices, uncertainty about export prospects and a weak recovery in domestic consumer demand meant Chinese manufacturing investment from January to April was 0.4% below the same period in 2019, according to official statistics (comparing to 2019 strips out the distortion of last years pandemic data).Due to the vast size of Chinas manufacturing sector, that poses a risk both to the nations growth -- which is currently predicted to reach 8.5% in 2021, according to a Bloomberg tally of economists estimates -- and to a global economy thats grappling with supply shortages and rising prices.Falling ProfitsWeaker-than-expected investment could have a sizable impact on GDP growth this year, said Citigroup Inc.s China economist, Li-gang Liu. Lower investment may dent imports of capital goods and equipment from developed economies like Japan and Germany, which in turn could drag their economic recovery and rebound as well, he added.AnHui HERO Electronic Sci & Tec Co. Ltd. is one of those companies feeling the squeeze. Based in the eastern province of Anhui, the company manufactures capacitors used to make electronic circuits, with sales mainly in the domestic market. Jing Yuan, the founder, says orders are up as much as 30% year-on-year, but profits are down 50% due to increasing materials costs that are not easily passed onto clients.The company is under huge cash pressure as it needs to pay half a month in advance of delivery in order to secure copper and other metals, which they previously paid for months after receiving, he said. The commodity issue has to be addressed by the government, he added.What Bloomberg Economics Says...Chinese industry is absorbing significant cost pressures from rising commodity prices -- damping the inflationary impact for the rest of the world. Will it last? Our analysis of gross margins suggests it could for a while longer: downstream industries -- where the cost crunch is most severe -- still have a small cushion.David Qu, China economistFor the full report, click here.Input shortages mean some manufacturers arent able to make use of their existing facilities, so expansion would be of little use. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. suspended production at one of its factories last month, due to a shortage of microchips.Modern Casting Ltd., which makes iron and steel products in Guangdong, issued a note to clients this month saying it would not be able to meet its current orders due to high raw material costs. A member of staff who answered the phone at the companys office confirmed the note, but declined to give further details.Growth TransitionOn top of the higher input costs, Chinese companies face a bumpy transition toward domestic consumer spending to sustain its post-pandemic recovery.Exports, Chinas strong-suit last year, may begin to slow as vaccine roll-outs cause consumers in wealthy countries to shift spending back to services. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Chinese consumer spending has yet to fully recover.Investment sentiment among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises is below levels seen even in 2018-9 when uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade war were a brake on expansion plans, according to a regular survey of more than 500 Chinese companies by Standard Chartered Plc.Demand is still mainly underpinned by exports, so domestic companies are aware that this is not sustainable, said Standard Chartereds China economist, Lan Shen.While some export-oriented sectors have been pushed to their limits, large amounts of slack remain for manufacturers targeting Chinese consumers due to subdued domestic demand.Retail sales growth was 4.3% in April on a two-year average basis, which strips out base effects from the pandemic, less than half pre-pandemic growth rates. Overall capacity use at Chinas manufacturers fell to 77.6% in the first quarter from 78.4% in the previous three months, with the automotive sector hit hardest by overcapacity following three years of declining sales volumes.Even for electric vehicles whose sales are surging, most companies have already built their capacity and will now focus on incremental upgrades. The majority of the investment has been done, said Jochen Siebert of JSC Automotive Consulting.China ordered state-owned companies to expand last year, with their investment growth of 5.3% in 2020 from the prior year easily outstripping the 1% increase in private investment. But for a sustainable pick-up in investment, the market, not the state, needs to feel confident.Carsten Holz, an expert on Chinese investment statistics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, estimates that privately-owned companies have accounted for 87% of manufacturing investment in 2015, the most recent year of available data. They are more sensitive to input costs.There is a pandemic plus insecurity about future trade given a new U.S. administration, neither of which is conducive to investment that relies on long-term growth prospects, Holz said.Mixed PoliciesTransport bottlenecks are also a challenge for export-oriented manufacturers. Gordon Gao, who exports gardening products from China, said that he has had to reject 80% of orders this year due to port delays. In one case, an order placed before mid-February could only be shipped three months later when a client finally secured a container.Beijing has tried to improve conditions for private companies by ordering a crackdown on speculation to curb commodity prices and easing access to bank loans.Yet the government continues to gradually withdraw fiscal and monetary stimulus measures introduced amid the pandemic last year. It set a relatively unambitious target of above 6% growth for this year, and the Communist Partys Politburo signaled last month it would prioritize reforms to control house prices and debt growth.The policy stance has definitely shifted away from supporting growth and back toward de-risking the financial sector, said Adam Wolfe, an economist at London-based Absolute Strategy Research. The risks for economic growth seem tilted to the downside, especially for capital-intensive, construction-linked sectors.For manufacturers such as Li, a longer period of domestic growth and control over input prices will be needed before capacity expansion is on the cards. While his company of 200 workers took on new permanent staff before the pandemic, for now hed rather pass the risks of investment on to others.I wouldnt do that now, I would rather hire some temporary workers and outsource the rest, he said.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. Fans of The Wonder Years vividly remember Kevin Arnolds puppy love crush on Winnie Cooper, played by Danica McKellar. They watched him have his first kiss with her, date her, followed their breakup, and when the pair ultimately parted ways for good. Following the series end, some fans often wondered about what happened to McKellar, who is now a mathematician, author, and actor. At one point in her career, she crossed paths with Marvel star Chris Pratt and they had quite the fun evening. Danica McKellar attends the Build Series, December 2019 | Jim Spellman/Getty Images Danica McKellar and Chris Pratt were co-stars After Danica McKellar waved goodbye to Winnie Cooper, she kept stacking acting credits and in 2005, starred alongside Chris Pratt in a Sci-Fi Channel (now Sy-Fy) television movie titled Path of Destruction. The film is about a nanotechnology experiment gone wrong and the resulting cover-up. A logline from the movie on IMDb reads: The companys CEO manages to sidestep blame by framing a meddling young reporter (Katherine), who now holds the only surviving evidence needed to expose the truth. All the while, the dangerous nanoparticles having escaped from the explosion into the stratosphere threaten to destroy nearby cities with wildly destructive weather patterns. Among the chaos of the storms, and on the run from the authorities, Katherine must with the help of a young scientist get the evidence to the government to enlist their help before its too lateand the deadly disaster turns worldwide. While McKellar played Katherine, Pratt tapped in as the weather scientist Nathan McCain. By the end of the film, their two characters saved the world and went on a date. Chris Pratt during The Lucky/Cargo Club Upfront Week Hospitality Suite, 2004 | Sylvain Gaboury/FilmMagic/Getty Images RELATED: The Wonder Years Star Danica McKellar Was Once at the Center of a Harsh Prank on Impractical Jokers McKellar says she went ham with Chris Pratt In November, McKellar was a guest on Jaleel Whites Ever After podcast, and she joked about having little experience in life rebelling or letting loose. After White explained to her the meaning of going ham, he asked if she ever did anything remotely wild. McKellar brought up her experience filming Path of Destruction with Pratt. They shot the movie on location in Bulgaria in 2004, and one day after work, McKellar, Pratt, and her mother hit the town. Chris Pratt and my mom and I, my moms very cool we all went to this Turkish bar where you literally dance on the tables, McKellar said. And its full Im sure we were all high just by being in that room and I was drunk, and we all danced on the tables. But thats it. Thats as far as it went, she recalled. McKellar added that it felt wild to her because she was tipsy, and they didnt leave the place until 4 in the morning. Giggling, she said, It was so dark and smoky and weird that you couldnt really see who was in front of you. It was a really strange night. But nothing happened! But she agreed with White that in that moment, she lived the definition of going ham: I went ham with Chris Pratt in 2004! McKellar cracked that she may have finally earned some cool points. As for that old flick, Path of Destruction is currently only available for streaming on demand. (CNN) China's leader has called on Starbucks' former chairman Howard Schultz to help promote US-China relations, according to Chinese state media. State-run news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping had written to Schultz, encouraging the American billionaire and the global coffee giant he ran for years to improve economic and trade ties. Xi's letter was in response to a message from the US businessman. According to a person familiar with the matter, Schultz recently sent the Chinese president a translated copy of his latest book, "From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America." The correspondence included a letter to Xi, which pointed to Starbucks' longstanding commitment to China and its employees there, the person added. According to Xinhua, Xi suggested that Schultz and Starbucks "continue to play a positive role in advancing" relations between the two countries. Xi also emphasized that China was working to open up further to "enterprises from across the world, including Starbucks and other American companies," the agency reported. In a statement, Schultz said it was a "great honor" to have received a reply from Xi. "I truly believe Starbucks' best days are ahead in China and that the values of creativity, compassion, community and hard work will guide the company toward an even greater business and community contribution, while continuing to build common ground for cooperation between our two countries," he added. Schultz stepped down as chairman of Starbucks in 2018, after which he took on the honorary title of chairman emeritus. At the time, he said that he was exploring a run for president as an independent candidate in 2020. Those plans were eventually called off. Schultz is outspoken on political issues. During his four decades at Starbucks, he positioned the company as a progressive champion in corporate America. Schultz has also addressed US-China ties. In 2018, he lamented the effects of the trade war, saying that US tariffs on Chinese goods wouldn't help American jobs. China is Starbucks' top overseas growth market. "Every time that we have had a conflict of trade, and there have been trade wars, it has resulted in a downturn of the economy of the United States," he told CNN at the time. "This is what I really believe. The country [of] America should not be building walls of any kind. We should be building bridges." SILVER SPRING, Md., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington entered a consent decree between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Valley Processing, Inc. of Sunnyside, Washington, along with the company's owner and president, Mary Ann Bliesner, to stop distributing adulterated juice products until the company complies with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) and other requirements listed in the consent decree. In a complaint filed on behalf of the FDA on Nov. 6, 2020, the agency stated that Valley Processing, Inc.'s juice products contained inorganic arsenic and patulin toxins at levels that can pose health risks to consumers. In addition, during an inspection by the FDA, investigators observed that the defendants processed juice under grossly insanitary conditions and failed to adhere to relevant food safety standards. This included storing grape juice concentrate contaminated with filth and mold in off-site storage tanks and covered barrels outside for several years. Despite the contamination, the defendants combined this juice concentrate with newer lots and distributed the mixture to consumers. This included the distribution of juice for use in school lunch programs. The complaint states that the defendants promised to discontinue using the contaminated juice, but a subsequent inspection by the FDA in 2019 showed the defendants continued to blend the older juice with newer juice for distribution. "Food processors who do not comply with FDA regulations can put consumers' health and well-being in danger. With this consent decree, we're taking action to protect Americans, including children in this case, from consuming foods that have been processed in violation of the law," said Judy McMeekin, Pharm.D., FDA's Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs. "The FDA is fully committed to taking appropriate measures against those who disregard food safety standards and distribute adulterated food to the public." The consent decree of permanent injunction entered by U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Bastian prohibits Valley Processing, Inc. from receiving, preparing, processing, packing, holding, labeling, and/or distributing FDA-regulated products unless and until it completes corrective actions. The defendants represent in the decree that at the time of the entry of the decree, Valley Processing, Inc. had already ceased its juice processing activities. Under the consent decree, Valley Processing, Inc. must destroy any juice still in its possession. Before processing or distributing any juice or food in the future, the defendants first must notify the FDA in advance, comply with specific remedial measures set forth in the injunction, and permit the FDA to inspect their facilities and procedures. The U.S. Department of Justice filed the complaint on behalf of the FDA. Media Contact: Courtney Rhodes, 202-281-5237 Consumer Inquiries: 888-723-3366 The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products. SOURCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration Related Links http://www.fda.gov Sweden's King Carl XI and Queen Silvia received their first shots of the coronavirus vaccine today. The Swedish king, 74, and queen, 77, received the shots at Stenhammar Castle this morning despite the vaccine not being rolled out to over-70s till next month for the country's wider population. They are both in good health after the dose, Sweden's Royal Court director of information Margareta Thorgren confirmed. It comes as Sweden became one of six EU nations to complain about a delay in receiving the Pfizer vaccine today. The health ministers of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia all signed a letter complaining about a delay in shipments of the vital vaccine. Sweden's King Carl XI (pictured) and Queen Silvia received their first shots of the coronavirus vaccine at Stenhammar Castle today Today, Ms Thorgen said the royal couple are happy that vaccinations have started in Sweden and hope they can set an example. She declined to detail why the royals received a dose before Phase 2 of the vaccination process begins in Sweden, when over-70s are due to begin receiving the vaccine. Ms Thorgen told Aftonbladet: 'It is on the advice of the royal family's life doctor.' In a statement, the king said: 'The great vaccination against Covid-19 is now underway around our country. 'It is my hope that everyone who has the opportunity to be vaccinated in these coming months chooses to do so, so that together and as soon as possible we can get through this difficult time.' The announcement comes days after Buckingham Palace revealed the Queen, 94, and the Duke of Edinburgh, 99, have been given the Covid-19 vaccination at Windsor Castle King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway received their first dose of the vaccine yesterday while the UK's Queen, 94, and the Duke of Edinburgh , 99, were given the Covid-19 vaccination at Windsor Castle on Saturday. The vaccine - developed by Pfizer with German partner BioNTech - started being delivered in the EU at the end of December. US biotech firm Moderna began delivering its shot this week. Yet about one third of the 27 EU governments cited 'insufficient' doses at a video conference of health ministers on Wednesday, a person who attended the virtual meeting told Reuters. In a letter sent on Friday, six EU governments asked the European Commission to pressure Pfizer-BioNTech 'to ensure stability and transparency of timely (vaccine) deliveries'. 'This situation is unacceptable,' said the letter, signed by the health ministers of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. 'Not only does it impact the planned vaccination schedules, it also decreases the credibility of the vaccination process.' Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she had spoken to Pfizer and been reassured that scheduled deliveries will be made in the first quarter of 2021. Pfizer said there would be a temporary impact on shipments in late January to early February caused by changes to manufacturing processes to boost production. 'Although this will temporarily impact shipments in late January to early February, it will provide a significant increase in doses available for patients in late February and March,' Pfizer said in a statement. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Amarc Resources Ltd. ("Amarc" or the "Company") (TSXV:AHR)(OTCQB:AXREF) will be exhibiting at the 2021 AME Remote Roundup Conference from January 18 to 22. We invite conference delegates to visit us at our Virtual Booth in the Exhibit Hall to discuss recent developments and plans for Amarc's three expansive, 100%-owned coppergold districts located in British Columbia - the IKE, JOY and DUKE. These districts are host to four known coppergold deposits that are prime for moving toward development, and also 10 porphyry copper-gold deposit targets that are fully permitted and ready for drill discovery. The Company also advises investors that the January 2021 Corporate Presentation will be available on the Amarc website on Monday, January 18. Mark Rebagliati, P. Eng., a Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical content in this release. For further details on Amarc Resources Ltd., please visit the Company's website at www.amarcresources.com or contact Dr. Diane Nicolson, President & CEO, at (604) 684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Dr. Diane Nicolson President and Chief Executive Officer Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor any other regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking and Other Cautionary Information This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All such statements, other than statements of historical facts that address exploration drilling, exploitation activities and other related events or developments 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 the forward-looking statements. Assumptions used by the Company to develop forward-looking statements include the following: Amarc's projects will obtain all required environmental and other permits and all land use and other licenses, studies and exploration of Amarc's projects will continue to be positive, and no geological or technical problems will occur. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, potential environmental issues or liabilities associated with exploration, development and mining activities, exploitation and exploration successes, continuity of mineralization, uncertainties related to the ability to obtain necessary permits, licenses and tenure and delays due to third party opposition, changes in and the effect of government policies regarding mining and natural resource exploration and exploitation, exploration and development of properties located within Aboriginal groups asserted territories may affect or be perceived to affect asserted aboriginal rights and title, which may cause permitting delays or opposition by Aboriginal groups, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions, as well as risks relating to the uncertainties with respect to the effects of COVID-19. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on Amarc Resources Ltd., investors should review Amarc's annual Form 20-F filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov and its home jurisdiction filings that are available at www.sedar.com. SOURCE: Amarc Resources Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624535/Visit-Amarcs-Virtual-Booth-at-the-2021-AME-Remote-Roundup-Conference US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan As California struggles to get potentially lifesaving vaccines into as many arms as possible, concern is mounting that the rapid spread of multiple, highly contagious variants of the coronavirus around the world could lead to another, perhaps deadlier surge. So far there is no evidence that any of the more contagious variants are spreading widely in the United States, though at least one a variant that took off in the United Kingdom has been identified in a few dozen cases across the country, including in California. But at some point soon the new U.K. variant or another mutation of the virus, including one that might evade or partially evade coronavirus vaccines could get a foothold and lead to a new spike in cases, even as California battles a surge that has caused 5,700 deaths statewide in just the first 14 days of the year. Were really in a race now, and this only increases our urgency to mass vaccinate the population before additional variants evolve and emerge, Dr. Charles Chiu, director of viral diagnostics at UCSF, said during a virtual presentation on Thursday. Its critical therefore to vaccinate wide swaths of the population as quickly as possible, and certainly much faster than the state has been, experts say. Chius presentation, part of a UCSF roundtable discussion, came amid growing concern about the discovery of several new variants many months into the pandemic. In addition to the U.K. variant, which has become the dominant virus type there, other troubling mutations have been found in South Africa and Brazil. The United Kingdom on Thursday banned flights from Latin America to prevent the Brazilian variant from entering the country. The U.K. already banned flights from South Africa to keep that variant at bay as much as possible. The South African variant is especially concerning, Chiu said, because lab studies suggest it could at least partially evade the current coronavirus vaccines being deployed in the United States. A UCSF lab that does genome sequencing for the state is awaiting results on hundreds of samples from recent cases, but so far has not found any of the U.K., South Africa or Brazilian variants in the Bay Area. Nonetheless, experts expect some of the variants will be here soon, if they are not already. Only a small sample of virus cases are sequenced, so the type of virus is not known for most infections. The warnings issued by Chiu and other scientists come as Californias vaccine campaign continues its chaotic and confusing rollout. California has one of the worst records for administering vaccines in the U.S. less than a third of all doses delivered in the state actually had gone into peoples arms as of Wednesday. The state on Wednesday expanded the categories of people eligible to receive vaccines right away to include anyone age 65 and older. But many counties and providers were not prepared to start administering all of those doses, leaving patients flustered and frustrated at the mixed messages. Bay Area counties are distributing vaccines differently, with some relying mostly on large hospital systems to notify their patients and others setting up mass vaccination sites for the public or contracting with Safeway and Rite Aid to vaccinate residents. The inconsistencies in the nine-county region reflect the states rocky vaccine rollout in the absence of a clear and uniform plan. Though vaccines will likely be available at pharmacies and grocery stores in the future, right now counties are in very different places. Some counties are estimating theyll vaccinate most people by summer Marin is eyeing June, Santa Clara is shooting for August while others say it may not be until fall. San Francisco officials said theyre relying mostly on large providers, such as Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, for distribution. The city will cover the remaining 5% of patients who are uninsured or in its health network and started vaccinating patients 65 and older in that system across 14 clinics on Wednesday, officials said. People 65 and older in Contra Costa County can now sign up to receive the coronavirus vaccine, Contra Costa Health Services said. Vaccines are still being administered to those in the first priority group, namely health providers, and appointment dates may be weeks away for some people. Those in a higher-risk group, especially people who are 75 or older, might receive an earlier vaccine appointment. Santa Clara County, which has been one of the most impacted by the pandemic, said it hopes to vaccinate 85% of its population by Aug. 1. The county reached a somber milestone Thursday, surpassing 1,000 COVID-19-related deaths, officials announced. County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody called it a devastating and tragic milestone for the community. The harsh reality is that COVID-19 continues to be extremely widespread in our county and throughout the state, she said in a statement Thursday. Even though weve all been sacrificing for almost a year to fight this virus, prevent infections, and return to our normal lives, we must remain vigilant or we will see more deaths and extreme challenges for our hospitals and healthcare systems. Intensive care units were stretched nearly to the limit in Santa Clara County, and 47% of the occupied beds were for COVID-19 patients, the county said. The California Hospital Association and medical ethics experts said Thursday that although hospitals have not yet triggered crisis care plans that would ration medical care, overwhelming COVID-19 patient loads make them very concerned that some hospitals are near that point especially in Southern California. Hospitals are stretching every opportunity they have, every resource they have, every inch of space they have, to be able to address the demand of the need for COVID-19 treatment, said Carmela Coyle, the hospital associations president and CEO, during a news briefing Thursday. The circumstance in the southern part of the state is quite dire. The challenging part is literally this weekend and over the next two weeks we are on the cusp of what we think may be yet another peak of the surge. Los Angeles County scientists estimate that 1 in 3 county residents have been infected with the coronavirus, an astonishing sign of how rapidly the virus is spreading in the hard-hit region, according to the Los Angeles Times. The figure, based on scientific modeling, translates to more than 3 million of the countys 10 million residents, including nearly 13,000 who have died. Bay Area hospital capacity is in relatively better shape than the extreme pressure reported in Southern California, Coyle said. In San Francisco County, about 9% of hospital patients are there because of COVID-19, data from the California Hospital Association shows, compared with 45% of patients in Riverside County, 42% in San Bernardino and 56% in Imperial County. In a heartening sign, Californias seven-day positivity rate the percentage of positive results from coronavirus tests dropped to 12.6%, down from 14.3%. But the crisis is far from over, Coyle said. We have a long way to go and many, many people yet will be hospitalized as a result of this infection spread. Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tatiana.sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Traffic fatalities on Staten Island streets have crept back up over the past two years, following three straight years of decline, prompting transportation advocates to call for safer street designs throughout the borough. In 2020, there were 11 traffic fatalities on Staten Island, three more than the eight traffic fatalities the borough saw in 2019 and four more from the seven traffic fatalities in 2018, according to the Department of Transportation (DOT). The year-to-year increases from 2018 to 2019 and from 2019 to 2020 mark a departure from previous trends, which saw Staten Islands number of roadway fatalities fall each year from 2015 to 2018. In 2015, there were 25 roadway fatalities throughout the borough. That number then dropped to 17 in 2016, 15 in 2017, and then all the way down to seven in 2018, before starting to trend back up over the past two years, according to DOT data. In 2018 and 2019, for the first time ever in the history of a single Borough we had annual fatalities in the single-digits on Staten Island. While we did record 11 total fatalities in 2020, that happened during the COVID crisis, over a year marked by increased deadly speeding nationwide. Nevertheless, the Vision Zero era has been the safest ever on Staten Island; it is worth remembering that in 2001, we recorded 31 fatalities, said DOT Borough Commissioner Tom Cocola. BREAKDOWN OF TRAFFIC FATALITIES The DOT categorizes traffic fatalities into four groups: pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and motor vehicle occupants. Here is a look at the breakdown, according to the data. In 2020, of the 11 traffic fatalities on Staten Island, five were pedestrians, one was a cyclist, one was a motorcyclist and four were motor vehicle occupants. In 2019, of the eight traffic fatalities on Staten Island, five were pedestrians, one was a cyclist and two were motor vehicle occupants. In 2018, of the seven traffic fatalities on Staten Island, four were pedestrians, one was a motorcyclist and two were motor vehicle occupants. In 2017, of the 15 traffic fatalities on Staten Island, five were pedestrians, four were motorcyclists and six were motor vehicle occupants. In 2016, of the 17 traffic fatalities on Staten Island, seven were pedestrians, one was a cyclist, two were motorcyclists and seven were motor vehicle occupants. In 2015, of the 25 traffic fatalities on Staten Island, 11 were pedestrians, one was a cyclist, two were motorcyclists and 11 were motor vehicle occupants. CALLS FOR SAFER STREETS With citywide and Staten Island-specific traffic fatalities increasing in each of the past two years despite the citys continued implementation of the Vision Zero initiative, more and more New Yorkers are feeling the impacts of unsafe streets. A recent survey conducted by Transportation Alternatives and Siena College found that 30% of New York City residents have been injured in a traffic crash and 70% of residents knew someone who was hurt or killed in a traffic crash, prompting nearly 80% of all respondents to deem traffic violence a serious or very serious problem. Behind each traffic crash statistic is a devastated parent, child, friend and community. Todays poll results prove that far too many New Yorkers have been impacted, and irrevocably damaged, by unsafe streets, said Amy Cohen, co-founder of Families For Safe Streets. Mothers like me, who lost a child on an unsafe street, are members of a club that nobody should have to join, and we urge our current mayor and those running to succeed him to implement plans that once and for all put an end to the preventable plague of traffic violence, Cohen added. According to the survey, Staten Islanders have been the most-impacted of anyone, with 48% of borough residents saying theyve been injured in a traffic crash and 88% saying they know someone who was hurt or killed in a crash. Nearly half of Staten Islanders have been injured in traffic crashes. This is unacceptable, said Rose Uscianowski, Staten Island organizer at Transportation Alternatives. With 2021 elections upcoming, leaders on Staten Island and citywide must make safer streets for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers a priority. Year after year, Staten Island gets left behind, and its past time for City Hall -- and its new occupant next year -- to focus on saving lives on our streets on Staten Island. Transportation Alternatives and Families For Safe Streets will host a Vision Zero Cities Spring Pop-Up conference in early March, bringing together transportation advocates, city planners and policy makers to discuss the rising number of traffic deaths in recent years. US prosecutors now believe supporters of President Donald Trump planned to "capture and assassinate elected officials" in their siege of the Capitol building last week, according to a new court filing. The filing, submitted by Justice Department lawyers late Thursday, sought the detention of Jacob Chansley of Arizona, the QAnon conspiracy theorist pictured in the riot dressed as a horned shaman at the desk of Vice President Mike Pence. "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government," prosecutors said of the January 6 siege. They said Chansley, 33, left a note for Pence at the dais in the Senate Chamber where the second-in-command had been standing just minutes before, which read: "it's only a matter of time, justice is coming." The filing gives further insight into the FBI probe on the day of chaos at the center of American democracy, which left elected officials holed up fearing for their lives and at least five people dead, including one police officer. It comes as authorities lay charges against individuals involved in the riot, including a man who flew the confederate flag inside the building, a man who wore a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt and a US Olympic swimming gold medalist. Chansley is due to appear in court on Friday. Prosecutors said he is a regular drug user and likely has mental health problems. "Chansley has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality," the filing read. Prosecutors requested he be detained as he "poses serious risks of flight and danger to the community." Chansley subscribes to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory blamed for fueling a section of Trump's supporters at the Capitol building. Social media platforms have started cracking down on its followers, who believe Trump is waging a secret war on a liberal cult of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. In a bipartisan vote, Trump was impeached Wednesday for "incitement of insurrection" by egging on a huge crowd of his supporters to march on Congress. The center of Washington was in lockdown early Friday as more than 20,000 armed National Guard troops were mobilized after officials warned of the threat of more violence at the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, as well as in state capitals. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 21:25:30|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Malawi on Friday deposited its Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) ratification instrument to the African Union (AU) Commission as the number of African countries bound by the continental free trade pact grows. "Congratulations to Malawi, which has become the 35th Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) State Party after depositing its instrument of ratification today," African Union (AU) Commissioner for Trade and Industry, Albert Muchanga, said on Friday. The African continent on January 1, 2021 started trading under the AfCFTA Agreement. The AfCFTA, which was launched in March 2018 in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, has so far garnered 54 AU member signatories, offering new hope and continental exhilaration in terms of boosting intra-African trade, and eventually facilitating Africa's development and industrialization. Eritrea is the only non-signatory country. Once fully operational, the African free trade accord has the potential of boosting the level of intra-Africa trade by more than 52 percent by the year 2022, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Enditem Thanks for insightful article Fatima Shaiks recent essay on the implications of recent events in the light of events that occurred during the Reconstruction era in New Orleans is insightful, smart and fascinating. It is a troubling and wonderful piece. William Luhr, Ph.D, Professor of English and Film, Saint Peters University, Jersey City Christie nailed it I have always liked Chris Christie even though I never voted Republican. He is a straight-shooter who is not afraid to say what is on his mind. After he was criticized by Islamophobic bloggers in 2015 for appointing a Muslim American to a state judgeship, he succinctly said, Im tired of dealing with the crazies. Sharia law has nothing to do with this at all. The guy is an American who has been an admitted lawyer to practice in the state of New Jersey, swearing an oath to uphold the laws of New Jersey and the Constitution of the United States of America. He was dead on! When Democrats were debating in May 2019 whether to impeach President Trump or not, Christie said it would be politically stupid for Democrats to start the impeachment process of President Trump in Congress and dared them to do it. He then eloquently said, Either do it or dont. Otherwise, lets have a political election in 2020 and people can decide. On the day the pro-Trump mob stormed and vandalized the Capitol, Christie tried for 25 minutes to reach President Trump to ask him to have his supporters leave the Capitol ground, but Trump did not bother to answer the call. This week, Gov. Christie is 100 percent right about the need to impeach Trump and so are 65% of Americans who said Trump should be removed from office, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday. Gov. Christie, a longtime friend and ally of President Trump, publicly said, If inciting to insurrection isnt (impeachable), then I dont really know what is. So far, President Trump has not said a word about the Nashville bombing or the siege of the U.S. Capitol. I stand by former Gov. Christie; impeach Trump. Mahmoud El-Yousseph, retired U.S. Air Force veteran, Westerville, Ohio Education is the answer In response to the Faith Matters column Parish caresses a community of hope in Jersey City: I graduated from Our Lady of Sorrows Elementary School in June of 1954, and at that time the neighborhood was thriving and and enjoyed by many. It went downhill in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The spiral continued downward, and it appears there are still some problems. I tried and tried to understand and adjust -- all to no avail. I moved from Jersey City in 1975 to North Caldwell and finally to Florida in 2004. Life here is fine, but I see similar problems like the ones still in Jersey City. Until education becomes a priority, life will be on the down side. J. Kevin Moran, Palm Beach, Florida Send letters to the editor and guest columns for The Jersey Journal to jjletters@jjournal.com. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form E-commerce giant said that its inclusion in the 2020 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy issued by the office of the Representative is ill-informed and incorrect. SoftBank-backed said the USTR report is a blinkered view of the world and wilfully disregards the well-established laws and policies of various countries around the world. The report released by USTR tarnishes the image of worlds leading marketplaces, including Amazon, Mercado Libre, Pinduoduo, Shopee, Snapdeal, Taobao, Tokopedia and many others on the basis of incorrect understanding of the practices and the laws applicable to various markets, said a spokesperson. The four other Indian markets that have found mention in the list are Heera Panna in Mumbai, Kidderpore in Kolkata and Palika Bazaar and Tank Road in Delhi. Aizawl's Millennium Center was mentioned in the last list of notorious markets. It has now been replaced by Palika Bazaar. Snapdeal said the report reflects a poor understanding of the governing laws in various jurisdictions, including India. While courts in India continue to uphold and assert the distinction between marketplaces and sellers, Snapdeal said the USTR report willfully blurs this distinction to further a flawed point of view. In doing so, it ignores clear and well-established regulatory and legal frameworks under which marketplaces operate, said the company. The company said the comments made with regard to Snapdeal are factually incorrect and repeat the falsehoods contained in the 2019 report, which the firm had strongly rebutted. It said the lack of diligence is evident in including reference to related sites that have ceased to operate four years ago. Snapdeal said the report omits to mention the various on-going, proactive and preventive anti-counterfeiting efforts of the firm. These include Snapdeals robust reporting and swift takedown process program - Brand Shield, which has been in operation now for more than 2 years. This has led to close and effective collaboration with leading national and international brands. Building on this Snapdeal has formed alliances with various brands to provide additional protection for brands with registered trademarks. ALSO READ: USTR backs action against India's equalisation levy, finds it burdensome The company said the report also fails to acknowledge the continuing close co-operation between platforms, brands and law-enforcement agencies, all of which have led to significant and productive outcomes. It said the report not only fails to make a distinction between the respective roles of brands, sellers and platforms but also wilfully ignores the applicable laws in various jurisdictions, including in India. The USTR had said Snapdeal remains a concern for right holders who report that the volume of counterfeit products on this platform has increased over the past year. However, Snapdeal said the report is also factually incorrect on many counts. There have been no criminal accusations against the founders for selling counterfeit products. Such negligent statements and unverified reporting by USTR is defamatory and unacceptable, said the firm. It said the process of collating inputs by USTR continues to be outdated, opaque and based on unverified inputs. We firmly disagree with the findings of the report, specifically in its observations relating to Snapdeal, said the company. Jhansi : , Jan 15 (IANS) Three more cases of sodomy against a former BJP city vice-president have come to light, a day after he was arrested and sent to jail. The police had arrested the accused, Ram Bihari Rathore, a retired revenue official from his house in Konch area of Jalaun district, two days ago, after parents of two minor boys lodged a complaint of sodomy against him. His involvement in three more cases came to light on Thursday during investigation. Police suspect more cases will surface during the scrutiny of the hard disc, laptop and DVR seized from his house during a raid. The accused is also said to be involved in running gambling and betting den at his house. Rathore was also the BJP city vice-president of Konch before he relinquished the post in December last. Rathore was sent to jail on Thursday after a case was lodged against him under sections 328, 377, 506 IPC, section 3/4 of POCSO Act and section 6/7 of IT Act. SP Jalaun, Yashveer Singh, faced the anger of parents and kin of the victim who have demanded hanging of the accused. The SP said that the police have found some explicit clips during initial scrutiny of the devices seized during the raid and a detailed analysis is being done by the cyber cell. The SP said three more similar cases have surfaced, taking the total number to five so far while many more are likely to surface. The matter came to light when on January 9, Rathore lodged a named complaint to police against one of the minor victims, alleging that the boy had stolen a digital video recorder (DVR) from his house. During police investigation, the minor boy told the police that he had deliberately taken the device to hand it over to the police and reveal the shameful activities of Rathore. "Rathore has been indulging in similar activities since 2017 apart from being also involved in running gambling den in his home. Irrespective of his political or social status, we will take appropriate action against him based on the investigations," SP Jalaun said. Meanwhile, BJP Jalaun district president, Ramendra Singh Bana, said, "After I came to know about Rathore's misdeeds on Wednesday, I immediately got him out of the party though I was also informed by the city president that he had given his resignation a month earlier." The case is similar to that of a junior engineer of UP irrigation department in Chitrakoot who was arrested by CBI in November last for sodomizing dozens of minors and selling their explicit videos on dark sites. Gov. Charlie Baker signed a $627 million omnibus bill that weakens zoning laws to boost housing production, funds small business grants and codifies a Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights. The economic development bill enacted by lawmakers early Wednesday in the final hours of the two-year legislative session also authorizes funding for several municipal projects, funds initiatives to stimulate the tourism industry and offers other COVID-19 relief for business owners. Residents of the commonwealth experienced unprecedented disruption as businesses complied with restrictions I put in place to slow the spread of the virus, Baker said in a letter to lawmakers Thursday. Although we have since reopened much of the economy and started the economic recovery process, we have much work to do in the months ahead to assist those who lost jobs, to help businesses recover and to restore the same economic vitality the Commonwealth enjoyed prior to the pandemic. The law incorporates Bakers housing choice legislation, changing zoning laws to allow local officials to approve zoning changes with a simple majority rather than a two-thirds majority. The only part of the housing choice proposal Baker didnt like was the provision delaying its implementation by 90 days. The governor vetoed that section of the bill, making it take effect immediately. He also vetoed sections of the bill that would have required the Housing Development Incentive Program tax credit to go to developers whose buildings have at least 10% affordable units. Adding an affordability requirement will make these projects more difficult to finance and add a layer of administrative complexity that is not consistent with the programs goals, Baker wrote, saying the program is meeting its goal of producing hundreds of market rate unit in Gateway cities. While a variety of projects were tacked onto the spending bill, Sen. Eric Lesser and House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said the bill they led negotiations on aims to bring relief to residents during the pandemic, whether theyre college graduates or restaurant owners or construction workers seeking new projects. The economic development package authorizes $25 million for microbusinesses and another $35 million in grants that would ultimately support women- and minority-owned businesses. This new set of laws will help millions of people in our commonwealth and will chart a course toward a faster, more equitable recovery, said Lesser, a Longmeadow Democrat. 11/23/2020 - Springfield - State senator Eric Lesser on the train platforms at Union Station in Springfield. (Hoang 'Leon' Nguyen / The Republican) Many grants funded in the bill must be disbursed in a way that promotes geographic, social, racial and economic equity, according to the new law. The Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights requires the Division of Banks to license all student loan servicers, which means the state will monitor them for signs of deceptive practices. The new law also creates a Student Loan Ombudsman office that will review complaints and educate borrowers, as well as submit annual reports on conduct, complaints, resolutions and trends in student borrowing. The Bill of Rights provision is based on a bill filed by Lesser and Rep. Natalie Higgins, a Worcester Democrat. Lesser said the law creates new protections for more than 1 million student loan borrowers in Massachusetts. What was vetoed In total, Baker rejected 11 outside sections. That includes the proposed affordable housing requirements and the delay of housing choice implementation. Baker raised concerns that a rural jobs tax credit would fail to deliver on its promises to attract new industries to rural communities and create jobs. He suggested a provision giving tenant associations right of refusal on certain residential property for sale would have a chilling effect on housing production. The proposed special commission to study the participation of minority- and women-owned businesses in public construction projects was unnecessary, Baker said, because there had already been several reports on the matter. He filed a bill that aimed to expand opportunities for these businesses in the 2019-20 session; he expects the bill to be refiled this session. Baker also vetoed a provision to seal no-fault eviction records, saying the proposal would actually apply to cases where a tenant was endangering other tenants or engaging in criminal activity. However, the final language enacted by the Legislature specifically allows tenants in no-fault eviction cases to petition to have the records sealed. The proposal defines a no-fault eviction as one where the notice to quit, notice of termination or complaint does not include an allegation of nonpayment of rent or of a violation of any material term of the tenancy by the tenant or occupant; provided, however, that a no-fault eviction shall include an action brought after termination of a tenancy for economic, business or other reasons not constituting a violation of the terms of the tenancy. Baker also said an eviction-sealing provision would have imposed a greater burden on the courts at a time when theyre dealing with other challenges because of the coronavirus pandemic. The trial courts have indicated this section would impose a significant administrative burden he said, especially in light of the challenges caused by the need to process cases remotely during the state of emergency, and the need to focus limited judicial resources on eviction diversion for the foreseeable future. Related content: By Xie Ruiqiang NANJING, Jan. 15 -- The press conference of the 9th World Radio Detection & Ranging (Radar) Expo and the 1st "Radar and Future" Summit was held in Nanjing on the morning of January 14. Sponsored by the Equipment Development Department of Chinas Central Military Commission (CMC), the World Radar Expo is the only national and professional radar industry exhibition in China. Since 2001, it was held every two years and has become an important platform for international scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation, as well as for product display. The exhibits cover military radar systems, as well as civil radars and related equipment for aerospace, aviation, shipping, detection, meteorology, rescue and so on. The 9th World Radar Expo will be held in Chinas Nanjing from April 22 to 24, 2021, with the 1st "Radar and Future" Summit also held at the same time. The summit aims to gather related talents in the global radar industry to jointly discuss the application and innovation of radar and electronic information engineering technologies in economic and social development. In addition, there are also several themed forums to be hosted during the Expo, such as "Radar and Intelligent Manufacturing,""Radar and 5G Communication,""Radar and Smart Air Traffic Control," and "Radar and Disaster Prevention and Mitigation". It is learnt that more than 500 multinational companies from countries and regions including China, Germany, Russia, etc., as well as tens of thousands of international professionals, will be invited to attend the exhibition and participate in related activities. State Police Working with Law Enforcement Partners to Secure Capitol and Surrounding Areas January 15, 2021 In advance of anticipated demonstrations at the Michigan Capitol Building in Lansing on Sunday, the Michigan State Police (MSP) has increased both personnel and protective measures, and is working in coordination with local and county law enforcement, the Michigan National Guard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Following the January 6 siege on the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. and the resulting online promotion of marches at capitols in all 50 states, the MSP increased its visible presence at the Capitol beginning on January 11. These additional uniform resources are in addition to the MSP state properties security officers who are assigned to provide security at the Capitol. Security enhancements that have been put in place include both seen and unseen measures, stated Col. Joe Gasper, director of the MSP. I can assure you that we take our responsibility for safeguarding the Capitol and those who work and visit here seriously and, together with our law enforcement partners, we will be prepared to ensure law and order. In anticipation of an unknown number of demonstrators expected to gather on the grounds of the Capitol on Sunday, January 17, the MSP is again increasing its uniform presence by mobilizing troopers from across the state. MSPs resources will be complemented by uniform personnel from the Lansing Police Department, Ingham County Sheriffs Office and the Michigan National Guard to ensure that the greater downtown area is also protected. Details about the number of officers or their specific security missions will not be shared. In general, we dont discuss security measures so as not to provide an advantage to those wishing to inflict harm and cause disruption, but its important for the public to know that law enforcement is working together and has a coordinated plan to do everything within our power to ensure safety, Gasper added. We remain hopeful that those who choose to demonstrate do so peacefully, without violence or destruction of property. There will be several road closures in effect for downtown Lansing on Sunday to facilitate ingress and egress. 'I am with Trinamool': Disgruntled MP Satabdi Roy to stay in party India oi-Deepika S New Delhi, Jan 15: TMC MP Satabdi Roy dismissed speculation that she would be joining the BJP after an hour-long meeting with Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee in Kolkata. The actor-turned-politician said, "I am with the Trinamool. My problems with the party have been addressed by Abhishek Banerjee. All my abhimaan (pride) has been placated. I came to politics for Mamata Banerjee. I am with her." Roy, in a Facebook post, had claimed that she is not being informed about party events in her constituency and this has caused "mental pain" to her. The three-time Birbhum MP had said she will inform the public at 2 pm on Saturday if she takes any "decision", causing ripples in the TMC. West Bengal elections 2021: BJP hurls phone tapping allegations against TMC Roy is having differences with Birbhum district TMC chief Anubrata Mondal. "I have a close connection with this constituency. But recently many people have been asking me why I am missing from several party programmes. "I want to tell them that I want to attend all programmes. But I don''t get to know about many programmes and if I am not even informed about events in my constituency, then how can I attend. I was mentally pained because of this," Roy''s post in her fans'' club page read. Roy said she has spent more time with the people of her constituency than her own family in the last 10 years and even her enemies can''t discredit her on this account. "So, this year I am trying to take some decisions so that I can spend the entire time with you. I am grateful to you. You have been supporting me since 2009. Hope you will support me in the coming days too," the post read. "If I take any decision, will let you know on January 16, Saturday at 2 pm," it added. When contacted, Roy confirmed that the post was indeed made by her. "I have tried to reach out to the leadership but it has been of no use. If I am not able to work for the masses then what is the use of continuing in the post," she told reporters. Roy had twice given resignation from the Tarapith Unnayan Parishad but those were not accepted, sources close to the MP said. When asked whether there are chances of joining the BJP, she had refused to reply. After a long and successful career in the Bengali film industry, Roy joined politics in the final years of the Left Front government in the state. She was part of the TMC''s cultural brigade of celebrities with mass appeal in Mamata Banerjee''s attempt to unseat the Left from power in the state. Roy had first contested and won the Birbhum seat on a TMC ticket in 2009. She went on to win the seat in 2014 and 2019. Not just Roy, another senior TMC leader and state minister Rajib Banerjee, who has been maintaining distance with the party, also said in a social media post that he will reveal his next step in a Facebook live on Saturday afternoon. In the biggest single-day exodus from the TMC, political heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, along with 35 party leaders including five MLAs and an MP, joined the BJP during Shah''s rally in Medinipur on December 19, setting off a churning as several disgruntled leaders rallied behind him. Since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP bagged 18 seats from the state, 14 legislators of the TMC, four from the Left Front and two from the Congress have joined the saffron party. None of them, however, have resigned from their posts. Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 22:19 [IST] The St Patrick's Day parade in Belfast has been cancelled for the second year running due to the pandemic. The festival, which is one of the highlights of the year on the citys cultural programme, involves a massive parade as well as concerts, street music and performances. However, Belfast City Council say that there will be some kind of event to celebrate Ireland's patron saint. Newry, Mourne, and Down District Council say they are also having to rethink St Paddy's Day celebrations, which are held annually in Downpatrick, Saint Patricks famous resting place. A Belfast City Council spokesperson told the Belfast Telegraph: "Belfast's usual St Patrick's Day Parade and concert will not be going ahead this year due to the ongoing pandemic. "Members of Belfast City Council have agreed to develop an alternative programme of activity to mark St Patrick's Day. The delivery and format of these events is being kept under review and will be dependent on the ongoing pandemic and any restrictions that may be in place at that time." Read More There have been suggestions that the St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin could also be cancelled for the second year in a row. One of Ireland's top immunologists, Dr Lara Dungan, of St Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin has previously stated: "I think it will take months and months before we can get everybody [immunised]. I don't think we'll have a normal March, I don't think we'll have a St Patrick's Day parade." In a statement, a spokesperson for Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council said their approach for St Patrick's Day celebrations was to deliver "an engaging programme of events online". Derry City and Strabane District Council also said they were considering their options as the holiday approaches. Belfast SDLP councillor Brian Heading said that there may not be enough public confidence to go ahead with events in the city this year or next. He said: "It may not even be there next year, so there's an opportunity here to see how the council will mark cultural events that the community can get involved in." In another desperate measure to curb the heightening coronavirus spread in Japan, authorities are now mulling to impose harsher punishments on violators such as prison sentences and hefty fines. Japan recently reported a never seen before the third strain of coronavirus leaving authorities flinching to stop its spread. On January 15, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare met to discuss more stringent measures as overall cases climbed to 302,623 with over 4,233 people dead, as per tally by John Hopkins University. New COVID-19 restrictions As per the Kyodo news agency, the Yoshihide Suga led administration earlier floated a revision of infectious disease law to crack down on flouters of restrictions measures. The health officials largely approved the rules proposed by the Suga government, the news agency reported. As per the regulations, those refusing to be hospitalized would face a maximum fine of 1 million yen ($ 9,600) or a prison sentence of up to one year while people who hamper contact tracing effort can expect a maximum fine of 500,000 yen or jail time of up to six months, the agency reported. Read: Japan Minister Says "anything Can Happen" With Tokyo Games Read: Return Of 23 Indian Sailors From China Delayed As MV Jag Anand's ETA At Japan Deferred Earlier this week, the Japanese government decided to expand its state of emergency to Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyogo. The three prefectures had asked the central government to expand the state of emergency in order to contain the outbreak. Japan has already declared a state of emergency for Tokyo until February 7. Read: Japan Mulls Over Expanding State Of Emergency To Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo As Cases Surge According to Japan Times reports, Aichi and Gifu prefectures are also mulling over sending a request to the centre to impose a state of emergency. Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura said that he will be working with Gifu authorities and ask the central government to expand the emergency declaration. Omura also said that he will be arranging an online conference with Japanese economic revitalisation minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is also overseeing the governments response against the COVID-19 virus. Read: Japan Detects Cases Of Mutant Coronavirus Different From That Of UK And South Africa As the Hollywood menu offers some 18 film references within 11 courses, that seems like a safe bet. This might be the first something-for-everyone menu the Alinea Group has ever assembled. Combine the whimsy of movie magic with Achatz and Tomaskas particular set of skills, and its hard not to be wowed. The silver-screen riffs range from the bitingly clever to the obvious (well, nobodys perfect), but the attention to detail is impressive throughout. This is a kitchen that never takes the easy path. Sahin Boydas, the founder of a remote-work startup who had lived in San Francisco and its suburbs over the last decade, saw all of that. He looked at his wife and two young children, working and learning from home while crammed into a Cupertino rental that had seen better days. Much of the late summer, the air was full of smoke from wildfires. For days, electricity would go in and out at his house. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 00:03:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Commercial banks in China have been barred from conducting fixed-term deposit and term-current optional deposit business on third-party Internet platforms, according to a regulation published Friday. The regulation, jointly issued by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and the People's Bank of China, requires commercial banks to carry out deposit businesses through Internet platforms in accordance with the law and regulations, and must not use the Internet to violate or circumvent regulatory requirements. Commercial banks should strengthen the assessment and monitoring of business risks, enhance asset and liability management as well as liquidity risk management, while reasonably controlling the cost of debt, according to the regulation. It also requires commercial banks to strengthen sales management and network security protection when carrying out deposit business through the Internet and effectively protect the lawful rights and interests of consumers. Enditem LEHI, Utah, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New U Life, a wellness company that creates products that unify the body and mind to help individuals achieve whole body health, recently pre-launched into New Zealand and Australia, allowing the individuals in these countries to experience the enlivening benefits of SomaDerm. SomaDerm is a transdermal gel with homeopathic glandulars, botanicals, and somatropin a protein that is manufactured to be nearly identical to the main form of the naturally occurring growth hormone. Introducing SomaDerm to these markets will prepare individuals to experience New U Life's powerful products and allow for more growth and business opportunities within these regions. Pat Berry, New U Life's Vice President of International, shared, "The Australia and New Zealand Direct Sales market has performed amazingly well in recent years, with the region playing an increasingly important role in the Australasia and global economy. We are excited to open our industry leading products via the NFR model to allow individuals in ANZ to experience these unique and innovative products." Founder and CEO of New U Life Alexy Goldstein is looking forward to introducing New U Life to these markets. "I am so excited to share SomaDerm and the message of whole-body health with our Australian/New Zealand family. This has been a tremendous year for international growth, and we couldn't have done it without our New U Life family." In addition to New Zealand and Australia, the past year has proved to be a year of growth for New U Life as they saw several other markets pre-launched or launched which included Canada, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with its headquarters being in the United States. New U Life is excited to welcome individuals in New Zealand and Australia to the family and will continue to develop plans for further expansion across the world. About New U Life New U Life was founded to set a new standard in product innovation and quality while changing lives for the better. New U Life's marquee product, SomaDerm, contains key ingredients demonstrated in independent research to increase natural growth hormone levels. To learn more, visit www.newulife.com. SOURCE New U Life Related Links https://newulife.com/ Blog Archive Apr 2010 (22) May 2010 (25) Jun 2010 (8) Jul 2010 (12) Aug 2010 (18) Sep 2010 (19) Oct 2010 (29) Nov 2010 (30) Dec 2010 (18) Jan 2011 (13) Feb 2011 (21) Mar 2011 (23) Apr 2011 (19) May 2011 (31) Jun 2011 (36) Jul 2011 (46) Aug 2011 (26) Sep 2011 (12) Oct 2011 (15) Nov 2011 (17) Dec 2011 (7) Jan 2012 (18) Feb 2012 (4) Mar 2012 (12) Apr 2012 (18) May 2012 (10) Jun 2012 (21) Jul 2012 (8) Aug 2012 (15) Sep 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (17) Nov 2012 (20) Dec 2012 (10) Jan 2013 (58) Feb 2013 (59) Mar 2013 (60) Apr 2013 (98) May 2013 (135) Jun 2013 (204) Jul 2013 (293) Aug 2013 (351) Sep 2013 (363) Oct 2013 (348) Nov 2013 (374) Dec 2013 (442) Jan 2014 (547) Feb 2014 (476) Mar 2014 (526) Apr 2014 (527) May 2014 (469) Jun 2014 (408) Jul 2014 (472) Aug 2014 (522) Sep 2014 (443) Oct 2014 (472) Nov 2014 (497) Dec 2014 (536) Jan 2015 (539) Feb 2015 (520) Mar 2015 (582) Apr 2015 (658) May 2015 (679) Jun 2015 (673) Jul 2015 (728) Aug 2015 (803) Sep 2015 (923) Oct 2015 (924) Nov 2015 (802) Dec 2015 (791) Jan 2016 (782) Feb 2016 (835) Mar 2016 (929) Apr 2016 (866) May 2016 (947) Jun 2016 (1044) Jul 2016 (882) Aug 2016 (1035) Sep 2016 (967) Oct 2016 (918) Nov 2016 (854) Dec 2016 (885) Jan 2017 (881) Feb 2017 (777) Mar 2017 (897) Apr 2017 (872) May 2017 (851) Jun 2017 (851) Jul 2017 (971) Aug 2017 (1040) Sep 2017 (998) Oct 2017 (1144) Nov 2017 (1046) Dec 2017 (838) Jan 2018 (873) Feb 2018 (769) Mar 2018 (885) Apr 2018 (809) May 2018 (827) Jun 2018 (820) Jul 2018 (840) Aug 2018 (854) Sep 2018 (844) Oct 2018 (852) Nov 2018 (870) Dec 2018 (912) Jan 2019 (919) Feb 2019 (827) Mar 2019 (957) Apr 2019 (913) May 2019 (1007) Jun 2019 (935) Jul 2019 (950) Aug 2019 (936) Sep 2019 (910) Oct 2019 (920) Nov 2019 (874) Dec 2019 (908) Jan 2020 (942) Feb 2020 (849) Mar 2020 (898) Apr 2020 (848) May 2020 (822) Jun 2020 (789) Jul 2020 (819) Aug 2020 (858) Sep 2020 (841) Oct 2020 (873) Nov 2020 (812) Dec 2020 (780) Jan 2021 (765) Feb 2021 (716) Mar 2021 (819) Apr 2021 (805) May 2021 (692) Contracts Specialist (Corporate Partnerships), Geneva Organization: UNICEF - United Nations Childrens Fund Country: Switzerland City: Geneva, Switzerland Office: UNICEF Geneva Grade: P-4 Closing date: Thursday, 28 January 2021 Temporary Appointment: (364 days): Contracts Specialist (Corporate Partnerships) P4, # 115407, PFP, Geneva, Switzerland Job no: 537142 Position type: Temporary Appointment Location: Switzerland Division/Equivalent: Partnerships School/Unit: Geneva, Switzerland Department/Office: Private Fund Raising and Partnerships Categories: Private Fundraising and Partnerships, P-4 UNICEF works in some of the worlds toughest places, to reach the worlds most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. And we never give up. For every child, Hope The Private Sector Fundraising (PSFR) section within PFP works with National Committees and UNICEF country offices to maximize income and drive income growth. There are five units within the PSFR section, the Corporate Fundraising unit one being one of them. The purpose of the Corporate Partnerships team is to drive impact, defined as financial resources in addition to other valuable assets and opportunities, to optimize the value of the partnership to achieve UNICEFs strategic goals. The team supports key UNICEF Divisions with partnership strategies as well as supporting National Committees and Country Offices with their strategies for growth. The team also champions and drives global best practice, partnership strategy and issues guidance and policies globally. Team members also play a role in the relationship management of key partners. The UNICEF General Counsels Office has exclusive accountability to provide legal advice and guidance to all business units of the organization, including PSFR section and in particular the Corporate Partnerships team; the UNICEF General Counsels Office works closely with that team in the development and negotiation of, and in advising on, partnerships with the corporate sector and agreements setting out such partnerships. Purpose of the Job: Under the supervision of the Corporate Alliance Manager, Markets and Strategies, the Corporate Partnerships Specialist supports the Corporate Partnerships Team at PFP by (a) utilizing the templates provided by the General Counsels Office for Corporate Partnerships and indicating which template is appropriate b) supporting the partnership focal point on preparing draft private sector partnership agreements (c) providing guidance on parameters for negotiations with selected corporate partners, including advising on business terms and alignment with relevant UNICEF policies, rules and procedures d) identifying any training and capacity building needs or needs related to template evolution e) monitor and track the portfolio of partnerships ensuring they are moving efficiently through to signed status e) acting as a knowledge centre of best practice around template use to Corporate Partnerships focal points globally How can you make a difference? Main Tasks: Provide timely advice on the required templates, to PFPs Corporate Partnerships Team and designated National Committees and Country Offices. Advise on specific business and operational queries related to agreements and partnerships with corporates If an existing template cannot be used, connect with OED Legal to request allocation of a focal point. Provide input and support to the Corporate section on partnership agreement negotiations. Review business terms and agreements to identify risks and areas for escalation to senior management colleagues, including those requiring guidance from the UNICEF General Counsels Office. Refer all legal terms and issues re same to the UNICEF General Counsels Office. Provide possible options to address and mitigate business and operational risks should they be identified. Monitor the pipeline of agreements, identifying any challenges with timeline and ensuring that priorities are clear, and deadlines met. Collaborate effectively with the focal point for Corporate Partnerships / PFP within the UNICEF General Counsels Office and ensure that legal queries are routed in a timely manner. Provide inputs to General Counsels Office on development of templates, training and guidance. Act as a knowledge center on use of templates and ensure best practice is re-applied consistently. Deliverables: Efficient and effective delivery against the above accountabilities will result in a strong, strategic and integrated management of several large international partnerships with corporates. This will secure a significant income for UNICEFs programmes annually but also find these corporates actively engaged in UNICEF work through CSR or advocacy for example. Efficiency from the incumbent in the execution of the above functions will furthermore result in in best-in-class relationship management of these corporate partners, in an effective and satisfying work-relationship with the National Committees and Country Offices taking part in these partnerships, and in efficient intra UNICEF stakeholder management. Estimated Duration of the contract: 364 days REPORTING TO: The incumbent will report to the Corporate Alliance Manager, Markets and Strategies WORK PLACE: Geneva, Switzerland To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have... Education: A Masters degree in a relevant field (for example, business, commercial law, or procurement), noting that this position is not a legal position and the incumbent will not be providing legal advice. Alternatively a bachelors degree in the same related fields combined with an additional two years work experience would be considered equivalent. Experience: Eight years working experience in agreement negotiation and management. Understanding the UN System and legal parameters is an asset. Tags commercial law financial resources fundraising procurement Must have excellent writing and drafting skills. Demonstrated skills in drafting and review of partnership agreements with companies for philanthropic giving or in the CSR area. Good commercial awareness and proven business acumen. Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and prioritize while working against multiple deadlines. Experience working with the UN an asset. Language Requirements: Fluency in spoken and written English (verbal and written) is required. Knowledge of an additional UN Language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) is considered an asset. For every Child, you demonstrate... Core Values Care Respect Integrity Trust Accountability Core competencies: Driver for Results (L III) Communication (L III) Working with people (L II) Functional Competencies: Analyzing (LII) Deciding and Initiating Action (LIII) Formulating Strategies and Concepts (LIII) Persuading and Influencing (LIII) Leading and Supervising (LII) Relating and Networking (LII) Entrepreneurial Thinking (LII) UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization. Remarks: UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. For more information on remuneration and benefits, please visit UNICEFs Entitlements page. If you would like to find estimates for entitlements, you may use the online Salary Estimate Calculator. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. Advertised: Dec 24 2020 W. Europe Standard Time Application close: Jan 28 2021 W. Europe Standard Time 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. 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. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) displays a signed article of impeachment against President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 13, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images) Insurrection Redefined in the Revolutionary Dictionary Commentary Insurrection is the name that Democrats have settled upon to describe the high crime President Donald Trump is supposed to be guilty of, in order to justify their vote to impeach him. Until Jan. 6, an insurrection was defined as armed rebellion, but I think you will find that that definition no longer appears in the Democrats revolutionary dictionary. Its just one of the words they have redefined while we old-fashioned speakers of English werent looking. Last September in these pages (what a long time ago it now seems!), I pointed to the redefinition of the word liefirst, during the George W. Bush era, to mean mistake (as in the lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) and then, more recently, by the so-called fact-checkers of the age of Trump to mean no more than something that they disagree with. Its important to keep up with these changes in the language, as you can get in trouble nowadays if you dont. Especially if you are now or ever have been a Republican or a Trump supporter. There are some among that disreputable bunch, for example, who still apply the words hypocrites or racists to Democrats or the more radical of those who support themin apparent ignorance of the fact that these words have now been re-defined so as to apply only to themselves. As applied to revolutionary Democrats, hypocrisy is now to be known as whataboutism insteadand to reflect back negatively onto the accuser rather than the accused. Likewise, racism is now something that only white people can be guilty of. It once meant invidious discrimination (by anyone) based on race, but it now means only something said or done by white people thats displeasing to one or more persons of colorsuch as not using revolutionary jargon terms like persons of color. Are persons of color, then, the same as colored people? No! That is a term that only racists use. Its not so confusing, once you get the hang of it. The new speech police will explain it to you if youre having trouble. At least on a first offense. Probably. Sexual Preference You might not get off so lucky, however, if you use the term sexual preference. As we learned in last autumns hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, that termuntil then generally thought to be unexceptionablecan now only be used by bigots seeking to deny that gay or transgender people were born that way, in the words of the song. If you know whats good for you in this age of media supremacy and its concomitant cancel culture, you need to be aware of a few more terms of art in our political life that have been lately redefined in the revolutionary dictionary. Socialism, for example, used to mean ownership by the state of the means of production and distribution. Now, it only means whatever Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Sen. Bernie Sanders has most recently said that it means. In a sort of inversion of the process by which insurrection has now been redefined, we learned last summer that peaceful (or mostly peaceful) now means violence, so long as it is practiced by Antifa or Black Lives Matter revolutionaries, or against the police. Antifa itself was redefined on the fly by President-elect Joe Biden in one of last falls debates to mean no more than an ideanot, that is, in any way applying to the gang of thugs in Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, who have been attacking the police (and others) in those cities for months. That also gives you an idea of how the word debate has also been redefined to mean mindless repetition of insulting language and imputations of immorality by one political faction against another. I can no longer remember what the word used to mean. Insurrection Getting back to insurrection, the reason for its redefinition isnt far to seek. In the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, added in the aftermath of the Civil War (186165), it says that anyone guilty of insurrection against the United States shall not be eligible to hold elective office in the United States. The authors of that amendment pretty obviously had in mind those Confederate rebels (as they were then called) who had just fought a bloody war against the United States. Hence: armed rebellion. But now, it appears, that definition has been broadened. You dont have to take up arms against the United States to be guilty of insurrection anymore. Since Jan. 6, all you have to do is use the word fightor, possibly, wildin an address (or a tweet) to your supporters, some of whom later prove unruly, andboom! Youre guilty of insurrection. At least you are if youre Trump and therefore, a certified threat to democracy. Guess what! Democracy is another of those words that the revolutionary dictionary has kindly redefined for us. It used to be generally understood to mean rule by the peopleor, since that was impractical in a country of this size, rule by the men or women that a majority of the people voted for. This definition the revolutionaries of the appropriately named Democratic Party now mean to change to: rule by the person or persons that a majority of the people voted forso long as that person is not Trump. Hes ineligible, you see, now that hes been deemed guilty of insurrection. If youre thinking of objecting to this linguistic legerdemain on the grounds of fairness, however, forget it. Free speech has also been redefined so as to apply only to speech approved by the revolutionary tribunal of the Democrats. Oh, wait. That redefinition isnt scheduled to come into effect until next week. For now, free speech means speech that is free for anyone who isnt Trump. Or his supporters. Theres one more word that has now been redefined, according to the latest news. That word is unity. If you thought that it meant a coming together of people who agree to sink their differences in a common cause, youre out of date. According to the Jan. 13 USA Today, there can be no unity that includes supporters of Trump. A professor (at the Naval War College, no less) there tells readers that there is to be no unity until his morally bankrupt defenders get over him and repent. Repent? What do you suppose a word borrowed from religion is doing in this context? I think Ill leave you to work that out for yourselves. But are you beginning to see a pattern here? All these redefinitions by the revolutionists have one thing in common: They all serve to make thought or discourse impossible, unless it serves the revolution. James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The author of Honor: A History, he is a movie critic for The American Spectator and the media critic for the New Criterion. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Romania's on-line national COVID-19 vaccination appointment scheduling platform has not been blocked due to multiple accesses, but it being updated. "Considering that the transition from the first stage was made starting at 15:00hrs, at this moment the transfer of all services from the platform available for stage 1 to the updated version for stage tow is being made. We are hereby informing that the platform https://programare.vaccinare-covid.gov.ro/ has not been blocked due to multiple accesses, but it has been updating, " the Special Telecommunications Service (STS), the platform operator, said in press statement on Friday. According to the quoted source, STS specialists are carrying out the necessary technical actions to ensure the safe operation of the vaccination appointment scheduling platform. Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. 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. The Victorian government is preparing a February 15 "V-Day" launch for the most potent COVID vaccine, with its newly formed local public health units to play a critical role in delivering the life-saving jab. The DHHS plan is for phase one of the roll-out to deliver 15,000 doses a week of the Pfizer vaccine, with hospital staff and residents, people working in aged care facilities, quarantine and border workers among those first in line for inoculation. Auslag Westling, a resident at a Swedish nursing home, gets the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine on January 7. Credit:Getty Images Phase two of the roll-out, slated to begin in mid-March, will administer the less effective but more readily available AstraZeneca to the broader population. Victorias provisional time frame and dose targets for the Pfizer vaccine, contained in an internal briefing to a major hospital group obtained by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, is not confirmed by the Federal government, which is yet to set a start date for COVID vaccinations. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is set to unveil Thursday a coronavirus response plan that includes boosting the rate of vaccinations and helping counter the economic effects of the pandemic. Biden is scheduled to detail the program in an evening address. He has already set a goal of administering 100 million vaccine shots in the first 100 days after he takes office on Jan. 20, and his plan is expected to include funding to expand the vaccination campaign. The U.S. government has approved two different vaccines for emergency use. Both require a two-shot regimen, and so far, more than 10 million people have received the first dose of vaccine. Biden's plan is also expected to include a new round of direct payments to U.S. households. A previous coronavirus relief bill was delayed last month amid disagreements about how big the stimulus payment should be. Alliant Fortifies Insurance Consulting Offering in Northern California Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. has announced the acquisition of STANCE Renewable Risk Partners, an insurance due diligence and consulting firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The acquisition brings a team of highly skilled consulting veterans to Alliant who will help to broaden its capabilities. STANCE is led by co-founders Sam Jensen and Anthony Retort, providing a streamlined, quality experience for clients with an emphasis on consulting for projects in the renewable energy space. Their unique process integrates seamlessly into project flow, allowing clients and counsel to focus on the broader picture of their company's goals. John Ludwig, Co-COO, lliant Specialty, stated: "The STANCE team is a great addition to Alliant; they complement our existing Nashville consulting operations nicely and help to further strengthen our energy consulting offerings." "STANCE is excited to be joining the Alliant team," said Sam Jenkins, Co-Founder, STANCE. "The continued growth of renewables, coupled with hard insurance market conditions, has resulted in a more complex and dynamic landscape in terms of placements and financing. From our perspective, broadening the energy consulting division will benefit the industry as a whole." Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. About Alliant Insurance Services Headquartered in Newport Beach, CA (News - Alert) , Alliant Insurance Services, Inc., provides property and casualty, workers' compensation, employee benefits, surety, underwriting, claims advocacy, and financial products and services to clients nationwide, including public entities, general contractors, tribal nations, healthcare providers, energy and marine corporations, law firms, real estate developers and owners, financial institutions, agribusinesses, and airlines and air ambulances. More information is available on the company's website at alliant.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005541/en/ Authorities are searching for a Walker County convicted sex offender who they believe is now back in the U.S. illegally. Jose Javier Rojas-Lasso pleaded guilty to first-degree rape in Walker County in October 2019, said sheriffs spokesman T.J. Armstrong. He received a split sentence with time served and was deported back to his native Colombia. At the time of his deportation, Rojas-Lasso was also facing additional charges with another undisclosed law enforcement agency. Since his deportation, Armstrong said, Rojas-Lasso has been harassing his victim and the victims family, making serious threats. These threats are being received by text message and telephone calls. He has also threatened sheriff investigator Brian Keeton, who worked the initial case. According to Alabama State Law, no convicted sex offender shall have any contact with the victim or victims family at any time, directly or indirectly, through electronic means, or a third party. Investigators believe Rojas-Lasso has illegally re-entered the country and is likely living in the Sarasota area. He also could also be back in Walker County under an unknown alias. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call the Walker County Sheriffs Office at 205- 302-6464. The total damage is estimated at nearly $530,000. A Russian navy officer is under investigation for conspiring to steal two bronze propellers from his own ship, according to Russian state media. "An officer, as part of an organized group, together with other military personnel and civilians, stole two bronze propellers with a total weight of 26 tons from the ship," said Sergei Sharshavykh, chief of the Baltic Fleet's military investigation department, according to Maritime Executive citing Interfax. Sharshavykh identified the suspect as the commanding officer of the warship Bespokoynyy, a Sovremenny-class Soviet destroyer commissioned in 1991. Read alsoRadio equipment stolen from Russia's "Doomsday Plane"Bespokoynyy had been drydocked at the Yantar Baltic Shipyard in 2016 for permanent conversion into a museum ship. During the docking, her screws and propeller shafts were removed and her hull was sealed in order to ensure that she stays afloat at her permanent mooring. Since 2018, she has been berthed at the Baltic Fleet's Kronstadt naval base outside St. Petersburg. The CO and his co-conspirators, investigators believe, stole the ship's bronze screws and replaced them with similar ones made out of a cheaper material. The total damage is estimated at nearly $530,000. Reporting by UNIAN President-Elect Joe Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion stimulus package that includes direct payments to Americans, a $15 minimum wage, aid to small businesses, and a national vaccination program, among many other provisions. While Congresss bipartisan action in December was a step in the right direction, it was only a down payment. It fell far short of the resources needed to tackle the immediate crisis, according to the statement accompanying the details of the plan. We are in a race against time, and absent additional government assistance, the economic and public health crises could worsen in the months ahead. US President-elect Joe Biden holds his facemask as he answers questions from the media about the Covid-19 pandemic at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware on January 8, 2021. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) The $1.9 trillion legislation includes $1,400 stimulus payments on top of the $600 being distributed, the extension of key unemployment programs that are set to expire in the spring, aid to small businesses, $350 billion to state and local governments, increase in tax credits for low- and middle-income families, and $160 billion for a national program on vaccination and testing. The $2,000 direct payments would be an increase from the $600 direct payments currently being distributed, meaning eligible Americans would potentially receive an additional $1,400 (as well as an additional $1,400 for each dependent). The legislation would also expand the additional bonus for dependents from each dependent under 17 to each dependent of any age. The extra weekly amount in unemployment benefits would be increased to $400 a week, up from the current $300 a week. Bidens plan would also extend those benefits through September currently, the additional benefit lapses on March 14. Under his plan, Biden would also extend the program that provides jobless benefits to workers who typically dont qualify for regular benefits. Read more: Here's what to do if you haven't gotten your stimulus check The plan would put in place a federal moratorium on evictions and foreclosures until the end of September. Bidens proposal would also increase the child tax credit and expand the eligibility requirements for the Earned Income Tax Credit. It also would allocate billions of dollars toward food insecurity. Story continues Biden also plans to introduce a second economic recovery plan in the coming weeks that targets creating jobs and addresses climate change. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. A bill will have a chance to be considered on the Senate floor Bidens proposal comes less than a month after the latest $900 billion deal was signed into law after months-long gridlock in negotiations. Democrats initially came to the table with their $3.4 trillion HEROES Act, while the GOP came up with a $1 trillion HEALS Act during the summer. Many of the provisions in these two proposals were trimmed or left out. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. While the House previously passed two versions of the HEROES Act that never made it to the Senate floor, now that Democrats will control both chambers, they could put the legislation for a vote. All that seems apparent is a bill will have a chance to be considered on the Senate floor, Mark Harkins, a former congressional staffer and senior fellow at Georgetown's Government Affairs Institute, told Yahoo Money. I am hopeful that all senators will weigh the economic situation at that time and cast their votes accordingly rather than supporting or opposing because of their party label. Denitsa is a writer for Yahoo Finance and Cashay, a new personal finance website. Follow her on Twitter @denitsa_tsekova. Read more: Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa on Friday delayed the start to its new school year by two weeks to Feb. 15, in order to prevent schools becoming transmission centers for COVID-19, as new cases have hovered around 20,000 a day for the past week. School was out for about a third of last year, when South Africa was in the grip of its first wave of coronavirus infections. The closures widened an already stark educational divide between elite schools that easily shifted classes online and the rest with little or no capacity for digital learning. "CEM (council of education ministers) took this difficult decision, having considered all factors ... regarding the current state of the health system," Deputy Basic Education Minister Reginah Mhaule told a news conference in the capital Pretoria. "We need to take care of the lives of teachers and ... of learners," she said. South Africa has reported more than 35,000 deaths from COVID-19, the highest in Africa. The start of the school year, which had already been scheduled two weeks later than normal, on Jan. 27, would be delayed for two more weeks. Mhaule said the minister herself, Angie Motshekga, was unwell at home but recovering, declining to answer a question about whether she had COVID-19. Like much else in South Africa, education remains divided between a top 10% of schools that have world-class teaching and facilities for the well-heeled, and the poor majority. Many of the latter were built under apartheid in predominantly black townships and rural areas, and suffer from overcrowding and poor internet access. For most of those, school simply stops when the pupils can't come into class. "We are working very hard to improve on the e-learning," the deputy minister said. "We still have difficulties in rural areas, where we have a challenge of connectivity, but we are working with all service providers ... to improve (it)." (Reporting by Tim Cocks; editing by Philippa Fletcher) Appointment 15 January 2021 Charles Lasvigne brings a passion for service with an extensive food and beverage background to his new role as Hotel Manager at Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia at Comcast Center, including having previously led the Food and Beverage division for the Hotel as Food and Beverage Director. Growing up a 76ers fan, Lasvigne has had sights on Philadelphia and joined Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia in 2017 as part of the pre-opening team. During this tenure as Food and Beverage Director, Lasvigne assembled an incredible team opening Jean-Georges Philadelphia, Vernick Fish, JG Sky High and Vernick Coffee Bar while creating a collaborative culture sharing a vision of excellence. Lasvigne graduated from the Hospitality School of Strasbourg. An 18-year Four Seasons veteran, he has travelled the globe with the company, as well as created a Four Seasons love story with wife Verena Lasvigne-Fox, whom he met while working together at Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris. Together with their two children, they have completed assignments in Paris, Morocco and the Seychelles islands. An avid music lover who plays the guitar, Lasvigne loves big motorcycles and finds peace in the kitchen. You can follow his creations on Instagram at @charleslasvigne. 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 1. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR NEW ROLE AT MICROSOFT. 2. YOU'VE WORKED IN INNOVATION PROGRAMS FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO NEW YORK CITY, AND FINALLY IN NEW YORK. WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT TRYING INNOVATION AT THE CITY LEVEL? DID THAT CHANGE WHEN YOU TRIED THE SAME APPROACHES AT THE STATE LEVEL? 3. THE COVID-19 RESPONSE IN NEW YORK GOT A LOT OF RECOGNITION. HOW DID TECHNOLOGY AID IN THE STATE'S RESPONSE, AND WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN THE PROCESS? 4. WHAT NEW TECHNOLOGY TRENDS AND BEHAVIORS DO YOU THINK ARE HERE TO STAY POST-PANDEMIC? 5. HOW SHOULD GOVERNMENT IT LEADERS BE THINKING ABOUT PARTNERSHIPS IN THIS NEW ERA OF RAPID CHANGE AND DISRUPTION? From the World Bank to the state of New York, including stops at the City and County of San Francisco and New York City, Jeremy Goldberg has a track record as a catalyst for public-sector innovation . Most recently as the former deputy secretary for government, technology and innovation and interim state CIO for New York state , Goldberg led the states technological response to COVID-19 . Goldberg now begins a new journey with Microsofts Worldwide Public Sector group where he will focus on digital government and critical infrastructure. Goldberg talked toabout his next steps, his journey in the public sector, and what hes learned about innovation along the way.Im joining Microsofts Worldwide Public Sector group where Ill focus on digital government and critical Infrastructure. I look forward to helping to further drive public-sector transformation, especially in light of COVID-19. I know first-hand that the future of government technology is scalable, flexible, and just as importantly, practical. As governments around the world rethink their technology strategies, theres an opportunity to not only replace outdated systems, but also to connect the dots and build truly cohesive systems that work together.When you work on innovation at the city level, you are always very close to the action. You feel the temperature rise in the room when meetings at the Board of Supervisors heat up, and see firsthand how elected officials lead when theres a public protest, how they respond to headlines and meet (or miss) residents expectations of their government. I observed how hard it is, even in an innovative city like San Francisco, to make an impact and tackle problems with new approaches. Relationships matter and innovations are not the highest priority. They are still a hard sell. Its important to work with city leaders and agency heads and to engage with different agendas to make sure youre solving a real problem. In New York City, where the number of constituents is so vast and the stakes are so high, you really have to work to get buy-in for every move you make. I also, time and time again, learned by actions not words, theres an appetite in industry to engage and help to make change. They want to help, and theyre willing to give back: time, talent and technology. The catch, of course, is finding the right way to help channel that goodwill into real results. MOUs and agreements between industry and government are cumbersome, and its often not much easier when the work is pro bono.At the state level, procurement is even more difficult, and everything is higher profile. During the COVID-19 crisis and our Tech SWAT response effort , I think the emergency executive order helped the process to move faster and allowed us to make an impact more quickly. At New York state, I served in multiple roles and, although it wasnt the plan at the start, wore a few hats. This was an outstanding opportunity to learn state government, how agencies are organized, operate and how the policy and operations co-exist. New York state has over 19 million residents and your work can reach almost all of them. The scale really does make the work different, and Ill always be grateful for the opportunity to have worked on behalf of the governor and so many New Yorkers, especially at ITS and during the first wave of COVID-19.COVID revealed that, potentially more than any other core function or infrastructure, technology is the backbone of public organizations. The emergency demanded constant, flawless communication and that required our digital teams undivided attention. The emergency management and logistics efforts required sophisticated technology. As has been widely reported, cyberthreats escalated, and our teams stepped up to keep us secure. Lifeline services that often required in-person visits and complicated applications suddenly had to be moved to more digital formats. It really is not an exaggeration to say that technology undergirded every single facet of the public response. It was a challenging but ultimately proud moment for so many lifelong civil servants.When everyone started working from home in March, we had to move quickly to support moving the workforce to nearly fully remote operations. In both the public and private sectors, there were a lot of unknowns during those early weeks. Since then, new policies have put in place, capacity of key technologies has been expanded, and, perhaps most importantly, people have simply grown more comfortable with the tools available to them. Remote work will be a major feature of the post-pandemic landscape for governments across the globe, but I think it will look different than it does right now. When people are able to work from the office again, I think we will see a more flexible, hybrid model and employers supporting arrangements that allow people to come into the office when they need or want to, but regularly work remotely. This crisis has forced governments to develop and adopt new technologies at a far faster rate than usual. That also means agility is more important than ever. Technologies like micro-services that can be reused and repurposed are especially important and will be adopted more regularly moving into the future. As more transactions move online, being able to plug into a common payment service is an example that has a clear connection to delivering services and generating much needed revenue. Governments are also leaning into automation, using technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) to help make processes more effective and efficient. Weve seen the popularity of this technology rise dramatically, and I suspect we are just scratching the surface of what is possible. Given the budgetary constraints state and local governments are likely to face in the new few years, I expect this will continue to grow out of a short-term need, but mature into core technology that helps agencies operate more effectively on a day-to-day basis. Hardly a day goes by at this point without another op-ed on the importance of Internet connectivity, and with good reason. The educational and professional disadvantages people face when they dont have access to reliable Internet access have been in full view over these last 10 months. Broadband and fiber deployment are top of mind across the country, and I think we can expect to see major investments aimed at bridging the digital divide in the next 12 to 24 months.Budget uncertainty and the onslaught of new needs during and beyond COVID mean that partnerships with industry are critical for filling gaps in public infrastructure and funding. That will require industry to do more, be more flexible on contractual terms and service delivery, and frankly, pitch in more than they ever have before. On the government side, pursuing strong partnerships without meaningful investments could mean harsh consequences. Partnerships have to be just that -- true partnerships. This isnt about industry parachuting in to save the day; its about collaborating to solve problems that neither would be able to solve alone, and thats true whether that partnership is pro bono as with our Tech SWAT effort or a more traditional procurement. For government IT leaders looking to invest their effort in building strong partnerships, first look at the local network and ecosystem. There are organizations there who want to help and a lot of them dont know how. Find them and bring them on board. Also, look to see what has worked in other places, like our Tech SWAT program or Civic USA. Finally, there are national organizations like U.S. Digital Response and Code for America that are eager to assist. They have an incredible amount of experience working with governments across the country and have helped put the right people in the right place to solve some really difficult problems. INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the tenth consecutive year, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Indiana School Choice Week by the state's governor. Around the country, National School Choice Week raises awareness about opportunity in education, encouraging families to celebrate their school options and be actively involved in their children's education. Gov. Eric Holcomb joined more than a dozen other governors, as well as hundreds of county, city, and town leaders, who have officially recognized the Week. Indiana parents, schools, and other organizers have planned more than 900 virtual events and activities, including virtual information-sharing, school spirit days, at-home family celebrations, and more. These activities aim to spark conversations about the educational opportunities parents want for their children, and the importance of exploring and identifying the best school fit for each child. Nationally, more than 33,000 events have been planned for the Week. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will join in the celebration. "Indiana families have many educational choices and this is a week to celebrate and raise awareness about those options," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We hope that all students can find a learning environment where they are challenged and inspired, and we're grateful to Gov. Holcomb for officially recognizing the Week." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/Indiana SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Britain believes it can resolve post-Brexit "teething issues" that have disrupted exports of Scottish fish to the European Union, a minister said on Thursday, in comments that further charged tensions with Scotland's largest political party. Since Britain completed its journey out of the EU at the end of last year, Scottish fish companies have seen some of their exports rejected by several nations in the bloc after new customs demands delayed the arrival of their produce. Some businesses have said they face ruin. The disruption, and comments by various ministers downplaying the issue, have angered Scottish National Party (SNP) lawmakers who never supported Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit project and want to press on with a second independence vote. Trying to ease concerns, food minister George Eustice told parliament his staff had held meetings with Dutch, French and Irish officials to try to "iron out some of these teething problems". "They are only teething problems," he said. "When people get used to using the paperwork goods will flow." Eustice said with no grace period to introduce the rules, the industry was having to adapt to them in real time, dealing with such issues as what colour ink can be used to fill in forms. Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the lower house of parliament for the governing Conservative Party, later went on to argue that the fish were now happier being British. "The key is that we've got our fish back. They're British fish and they're better and happier fish for it," he told parliament. The comments have only fuelled anger in the SNP, which has called for compensation and says the disruption underlines that Scotland would be better off as an independent nation. Scots voted against breaking away from the United Kingdom by 55% to 45% in a referendum in 2014 but the country favoured remaining in the EU in the UK's 2016 Brexit poll. An opinion poll published on Thursday found the SNP is on course to win a record majority in elections for Scotland's devolved parliament in May, which would signal a new push for independence by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. But a spokesman for Johnson, who has repeatedly refused to grant Scotland another vote on the issue, said the government was looking at ways to compensate those affected by what he described as "temporary issues". The government says it has handed the Scottish government almost 200 million pounds to help minimise any disruption, which ministers say they had flagged for months before Britain ended a transition period with the EU on Dec. 31. Asked by one lawmaker what the government would do about the disruption, trade minister Liz Truss told the SNP to ask what their party's own leader Sturgeon had done to help companies. "Two hundred million pounds was given to the Scottish government to prepare to minimise this disruption so I suggest he (the lawmaker) takes up that issue with Nicola Sturgeon to know how that money is being spent to help Scottish exporters." Details: 9 a.m., MLK Day of Service board chair Patty Kim will kick off the event at Wildheart Ministries, 333 S. 13th St., Harrisburg, and volunteers will be holding clean-up efforts in the Allison Hill neighborhood; 9:30 a.m., community assistance from utilities (Zoom Meeting ID: 830 0623 9460, Passcode: 2386250; 10 a.m., children game time, learning about Dr. King and Civil Rights (Zoom Meeting ID: 743 8919 8779, Passcode: fzq6jV); 10:30 a.m., helpful information for customers of Capital Region Water; 11 a.m., one neighborhood, together, responding to Pittsburghs Synagogue tragedy with loving-kindness (ZOOM Meeting ID: 820 8950 2835); noon, honoring Dr. King through Words: Authors and Poets; 1 p.m., helpful information for customers of Capital Region Water; 1:30 p.m., health resources for our community (ZOOM Meeting ID: 834 5634 8233, Passcode: 786615); 2:30 p.m., helping those without a home (Zoom Meeting ID: 852 1069 6873); 3:15 p.m., attention renters and landlords: legal aid assistance available here; 4 p.m., closing ceremony. No criminal charges will be filed in a Pennsylvania case where mail-in ballots for the November 2020 general election were found dumped in the trash, a federal prosecutor said Friday. The incident caused a political furor in September after former U.S. Attorney David Freed announced his office and the FBI were was investigating the incident involving a small amount of ballots in Luzerne County. Freed, a Trump-era appointee who resigned his post in the U.S. Middle District last month, said in September that The FBI found a number of documents relating to military ballots that had been improperly opened by county elections staff. This meant the ballots were removed and discarded or removed and placed separately from the envelope that contained confidential voter information. In announcing the closure of that investigation Freeds successor, Acting U.S. Attorney Bruce D. Brandler, said no criminal intent was uncovered by the probe. After a thorough investigation conducted by the FBI and prosecutors from my office, we have determined that there is insufficient evidence to prove criminal intent on the part of the person who discarded the ballots, Brandler said. Therefore, no criminal charges will be filed and the matter is closed. He said the FBI investigated at the request of the county district attorney after the DA learned that nine military ballots had been dumped in the trash by a former temporary election bureau worker. The probe revealed that the nine completed military ballots were subsequently retrieved from a Dumpster, Brandler said. Seven of those ballots were outside of envelopes and were votes for President Donald Trump, who criticized the voting process both before and after the election and for weeks refused to concede that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential race. Russia has quit the Open Skies treaty which allows nations to carry out reconnaissance flights to check if their counterparts are preparing for war. Moscow's decision to pull out of the 1992 agreement, observed by 34 states, comes two months after Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the treaty. The Kremlin said Washington's exit 'significantly upended the balance of interests of signatory states,' adding that Moscow's proposals to keep the treaty have been cold-shouldered by America's allies. A Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter takes off during an air show at the Teknofest festival at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul on September 17, 2019 The treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West by allowing the accord's more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each other's territories to collect information about military forces and activities. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow is now launching the relevant procedural moves to withdraw from the pact. Trump declared Washington's intention to pull out of the Open Skies Treaty in May, arguing that Russian violations made it untenable for the United States to remain a party. The US completed its withdrawal from the pact in November. Russia denied breaching the treaty, which came into force in 2002. The European Union has urged the US to reconsider and called on Russia to stay in the pact. Moscow has argued that the US withdrawal will erode global security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, particularly amid Russia-West tensions after the Russian annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014. It comes just five days before the inauguration of Joe Biden and could be the beginning of Vladimir Putin beginning to test the new administration's resolve. Russia's move deepens doubts about a major nuclear arms control treaty, New START, which expires next month. Russian President Vladimir Putin during a video conference working meeting at Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, on Thursday (left) and President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks on the public health and economic crises at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware (right) Biden has said he is keen to renew the agreement which imposes the last remaining limits on US and Russian deployments of strategic nuclear arms to no more than 1,550 each. America's European partners had decried Trump's withdrawal from Open Skies in November. NATO chiefs last year agreed 'on the importance of arms control, and on the need to bring Russia back to compliance.' 'A number of allies expressed concern that the U.S. may be leaving the treaty,' the official added. As The Verge reports, the Galaxy Buds Pro, a formidable Apple AirPods counterpart boasts of active noise cancellation, deep sound features, that has ANC support and Voice Detect Mode. The best news is that the long wait is now over, you can have your pre orders now. The Galaxy Buds Pro has just been launched by the brand. Samsung has released its official pricing for $199.99, which is just $30 more from its predecessor, the Galaxy Buds Live. It's available in different colors such as Phantom Black, Phantom White or Phantom Violet. However, the Phantom Violet is said to be region specific. How to Preorder the Galaxy Buds Pro On the date of its launch, it's also set for shipping, so don't forget to set your pre orders now. In order to set your preorder, head over to Samsung's official Website. There, you will find an option that says "Buy Now". Alongside the option to Buy, Samsung releases a notice. "For a limited time, get $50 enhanced trade-in credit with our Audio Trade-in Program." So when you order with the trade-in credit, you can get the Galaxy Buds Pro $149.99. Read more: Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro Vs AirPods Pro: Which One Is Better? A Review You Need to Know Here are some other retailers where you can preorder the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro According to The Verge, here are other retailers where you can have your pre-orders: Amazon Best Buy AT&T Verizon More about the Galaxy Buds Pro As CNN says, the Galaxy Buds Pro is a huge leap from Samsung's previous wireless buds. It features the active noise cancellation feature, along with multiple sound modes. It also offers a stylish design available in three colors, Phantom Black, Phantom White and the Phantom Violet. Samsung promises its users that the new Galaxy Buds Pro can decrease background noise with 99% through its noise cancellation feature. The brand also improves users' experience with the Ambient Sound mode which offers for levels of volume for users. As compared to its predecessor Galaxy Buds Live, the latet Galaxy Buds Pro has more advanced features and has more promising specs. This is also the reason why many tech enthusiasts think that the Galaxy Buds Pro is a competitive counterpart for the Apple AirPods. One of the important features is the Voice Detect that switches to Ambient sound when you speak in a call/ video call. Auto Switch also allows seamless switching between phones and tablets with the new Buds Pro. For streaming, the Buds Pro offers 360 Audio powered by Dolby Head Tracking for a more optimal experience. It's also a IPX7 water resistant device to make it resilient to sweat and water. The SmartThing find Support can help you locate your earbuds through your Android when you misplace them. So far, it has great features with its price. That's all the information we have for available pre-order options as of now. Related Article: Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro Set for Release- Better than Airpods Pro? This article is Owned by Techtimes Written by Nikki Delgado 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As part of the new "Imagine That" campaign, Sun-Maid will appoint its first "Board of Imagination," pulling together some of its newly-titled research and development department, insights team and executives with the most imaginative minds kids. As its first order of business, Sun-Maid's Board of Imagination will grant its employees a paid company holiday: "Imagination Day." Sun-Maid's Imagination Day will take place on April 30, which is also National Raisin Day, when Sun-Maid will encourage staff to take part in an activity that will enrich their thinking and enhance their creativity. "Imagination has always been at the heart of Sun-Maid's purpose we nurture childhood and help Mom find new, better-for-you snacking options that provide both the health benefits that she wants and the delicious tastes that her kids crave," said Harry Overly, President & CEO and newly-named "Chief Imagination Wrangler" of Sun-Maid Growers of California. "Now it's time to demonstrate how dedicated we are to imagination not just in creating innovative snacks, but as a core value for how we operate and work every day." Board of Imagination Begins Recruitment in February Starting in February, parents will have the opportunity to nominate kids ages 6-12 for one of five open seats on Sun-Maid's Imagination Board. As board members, kids will learn about Sun-Maid's 100+ year history as a growers' cooperative, how raisins are made, sustainability practices and how Sun-Maid transforms whole fruit raisins into innovative snacks. The group will also provide input to guide future decision-making at the company. Applications will be available in February, and families will be asked to fill out a short questionnaire on the Sun-Maid website to apply. Each child will receive $5,000 for themselves in the form of a 529 donation, and $5,000 to go to their school. The kids' schools will also enjoy a year's supply of Sun-Maid snacks. The Board of Imagination will convene virtually in April for its first meeting. A Day Devoted to Imagination At the April meeting, the Board of Imagination members will officially approve Imagination Day and help suggest a list of activities employees can use as inspiration for how to use the time off. Employees will be asked to report back to their manager with ideas and creativity that grew from the time away. "Imaginations have never been so important new routines, ways to entertain the kids, multitask, make meals and constantly manage the requests for snacks 2020 tested us and showed the value of creativity," commented Overly. "It's crucial that we give each other the space and time to nurture imaginations, which is one of our most important assets. Not only are we planning to give our employees a paid Imagination Day in 2021, but we are encouraging other companies to do the same. Just imagine what a day to recharge and find inspiration would yield not only in employee morale but in actual creativity." Imagine That Marketing Campaign Consumers will see Sun-Maid's commitment to imagination with a new national TV spot and 360-marketing campaign that highlights the imaginative, whole-fruit snacks that Sun-Maid creates every day. The multi-pronged creative campaign spans national television, streaming video, social, search, PR and influencers. "Our creative campaign showcases Sun-Maid's imaginative world of whole-fruit snacks like Sour Raisin Snacks and Bites all made possible by the humble raisin," said Overly. "We worked in conjunction with our agency partner quench, to visually realize the innovative process we go through to keep our snacks with whole-fruit at the core, wrapped in new flavor possibilities." The campaign highlights three of Sun-Maid's most recent snacking innovations: Sour Raisin Snacks: Sun-Maid Sour Raisin Snacks are whole fruit snacks that taste like sour candy. Taking the raisin up a level, Sun-Maid uses golden raisins and simply adds a little sour pucker of natural fruit flavoring. No added sugar, and nothing artificial these treats provide an entirely new flavor experience. Sour Raisin Snacks come in four flavors for other tastes including Watermelon and Mixed Berry in addition to Strawberry and Blue Raspberry. Bites: Like every Sun-Maid snack, Bites start with naturally sweet whole fruit. Crunchy nuts and toasted oats make them Mom-approved, while no artificial flavors and five grams of added sugar or less keep Bites as good as they are delicious. Available in four kid-friendly flavors Birthday Cake, S'Mores, PB&J and Banana Split the new snacks are bite-sized and better-for-you. Yogurt Covered Raisins: Non-GMO and made with natural flavors, Yogurt Covered Raisins feed cravings and feature the whole raisin at the core. The various flavors including Chocolate, Vanilla, Peanut Butter, PB&J and Strawberry wrap around the fruit to pack delicious flavor along with nutrition. For more information about Sun-Maid snacks or its commitment to imagination, visit www.sunmaid.com/imagine that. Also on the website, consumers can use the product locator to find the brand's whole fruit snacks in a store nearest them, or visit the Sun-Maid Market to purchase snacks. For more updates on the brand and its products, follow Sun-Maid on Facebook (facebook.com/sunmaid) Twitter ( @Sun_Maid ) and Instagram ( @SunMaid ). About Sun-Maid Growers of California Founded in 1912, Sun-Maid Growers of California is a farmers' cooperative of 750 grower families with vineyards in California's Central Valley. From childhood to adulthood and generation to generation, Sun-Maid snacks have grown up with you. And while some things change, our ingredients haven'tthey're real, minimally processed and consistently good. The timeless and trusted go-to snack that's simple, healthy and versatile, Sun-Maid fills each day with moments of sunshine, one little red box at a time. For more information about Sun-Maid, visit www.sunmaid.com. MEDIA CONTACT Alison Bruder on behalf of Sun-Maid Growers of California Havas Formula 619-416-8734 [email protected] SOURCE Sun-Maid Related Links http://www.sunmaid.com Samsung, Huawei and Motorola are already into the market for foldables, and it's only a matter of time before more companies join. Xiaomi looks to be making steady progress in that direction as a Galaxy Fold-like phone with MIUI 12 onboard has been spotted in spy shots in the Chinese subway, wrapped in what looks like a pre-production design-concealing case. We are unsure of the state of the unit pictured, but if it's ready to be taken out in the wild than it's probably nearing the end of its development. Xiaomi foldable phone The image can only tell us this device runs MIUI 12 and we can also read it has 256GB internal storage. Also, there is no selfie camera to be seen - not on the top or bottom or any corners. The power key and the volume rocker are on the right side when the device is unfolded) and this is pretty much everything we know about it. This isnt the first time we hear about Xiaomi planning to go in the direction of foldables. Back in December, industry insiders revealed the company is expected to launch one in 2021, alongside Oppo, vivo, and perhaps even Google. Source (in Chinese) | Via WASHINGTON (AP) President-elect Joe Biden is nominating New York emergency department commissioner Deanne Criswell to serve as the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator and has tapped former CIA deputy director David Cohen to return to the agency in the same role he served during the Obama administration. The picks, along with a trio of other new nominations confirmed to The Associated Press by the Biden team, come as the president-elect is putting a premium on experience, and perhaps familiarity, as he looks to fill out top positions at federal agencies with less than a week to go before his inauguration. Biden also is tapping former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler to help lead the COVID-19 vaccine drive. Kessler has been advising Biden as a co-chair of his advisory board on the coronavirus pandemic. The pick of Kessler comes after Biden on Thursday called the Trump administrations rollout of coronavirus vaccines a dismal failure and says he will unveil his own plans on Friday to speed up inoculations. Criswell, who also spent more than five years in top posts at FEMA during the Obama administration, is the first woman nominated to head the agency, whose primary responsibility is to coordinate responses to major disasters inside the United States that require federal attention. Nancy Ward served as the agency's acting administrator in the early months of the Obama administration before his pick, Craig Fugate, could be confirmed. Cohen, who was deputy CIA director from 2015 to 2017, has traveled the world for years tracking money flowing to terror groups, such as the Islamic State group, and other bad actors on the international stage. His work directing the Treasury Departments intelligence unit earlier in his career earned him the nicknames of financial batman and sanctions guru. In 2019, Cohen, who has been leading the financial and business integrity group at the law firm WilmerHale, made a cameo appearance on the HBO series Game of Thrones. Story continues Nominees are required to disclose details of their finances and complete ethics agreements as part of the confirmation process. Once confirmed, federal ethics laws can require the officials to recuse themselves from working on issues that could impact their previous business interests. Biden throughout the 2020 campaign lashed at President Donald Trump, saying he eroded public trust in government. Biden pledged his team will abide by the highest ethical standards. Cohen is not a registered lobbyist, but his firm does millions of dollars in lobbying work each year on behalf of clients that include the Beer Institute, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Walgreens and American Financial Group. The president-elect is also nominating Shalanda Young, the top staff aide for the House Appropriations Committee, to serve as deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget and Jason Miller, who was deputy director of the White House National Economic Council in Obama's administration, to serve as deputy director for management at the agency. Young brings a wealth of Capitol Hill experience in budget policy and politics to the budget office, along with close relationships with powerful House Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Miller was steeped in manufacturing policy in the Obama administration, including an update of automobile fuel efficiency standards. Biden is tapping Janet McCabe, an environmental law and policy expert who spent more than seven years as a top official at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration to return to the agency as deputy administrator. Each of them brings a deep respect for the civil servants who keep our republic running, as well as a keen understanding of how the government can and should work for all Americans, Biden said of his picks in a statement. I am confident that they will hit the ground running on day one with determination and bold thinking to make a meaningful difference in peoples lives. Criswell has served as New York Citys emergency management commissioner since June 2019. In her earlier work at FEMA, Criswell served as the leader of one of the agencys National Incident Management Assistance Teams and as a federal coordinating officer. In New York, part of her duties included leading the coordination of the citys emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between her stints at FEMA and in New York, Criswell was a principal at Cadmus Group, a firm that provides homeland security management consulting and training services for federal, state and local government agencies and private sector companies. The company made about $68 million between the time she joined the firm in 2017 and when she left in June 2019, according to a tabulation of contract spending data from the site USASpending.gov. She also served as the head of the Office of Emergency Management for the city of Aurora, Colorado. Criswell also served in the Colorado Air National Guard, including 21 years as a firefighter and deputy fire chief with deployments to Qatar, Afghanistan and Iraq. ___ Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report. 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. DENVER, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Colorado families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Colorado families, schools, and organizations are hosting 499 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the biggest activities will be a school choice car parade and drive-in movie screening in Colorado Springs on Saturday, Jan. 30. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Colorado, the McNichols Civic Center in Denver will illuminate in red from dusk to dawn on Jan. 24-30. Additionally, Governor Jared Polis has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Colorado School Choice Week in the state. "National School Choice Week unites educators, leaders, and families in pursuit of a common goal: educating and inspiring children for the future," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "During this challenging year, let's show our gratitude for Colorado's great schools and educators, and talk about how to better serve families." In Colorado, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling. Colorado families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Colorado school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/colorado. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com The MAGA rioter accused of viciously beating a police officer with an American flag pole during last week's Capitol siege who said 'Death is the only remedy for whats in that building' has been arrested. Peter Francis Stager, of Arkansas, was arrested and charged with obstructing, impeding, or interfering with a law enforcement officer on Thursday for hitting a uniformed Metropolitan Police officer guarding the entrance to the Capitol during the January 6 riot. Stager was identified after videos showing the moment a mob of Trump supporters attacked and repeatedly hit a police officer on the ground on the steps of the Capitol circulated online, the FBI said in a court affidavit. In the clip Stager, wearing a camoflauge print jacket, repeatedly strikes the officer with the pole affixed to the US flag he was carrying. MAGA rioter Peter Francis Stager, of Arkansas, was arrested Thursday for allegedly beating a police officer with a large American flag during the January 6 protest at the Capitol. He was identified after videos of him circulated on social media including one where he said: 'Everybody in there is a treasonous traitor. Death is the only remedy for whats in that building.' A screenshot of that video above Stager (with a red box around him) was identified after videos showing the moment a mob of Trump supporters attacked and repeatedly hit a police officer on the ground on the steps of the Capitol circulated online, the FBI said in a court affidavit Some of the rioters 'were throwing and swinging various objects' at police when they grabbed this officer, who was identified as 'B.M.', pulled him down the stairs of the Capitol and hit him on the head and body, officials said. In a second video, shared on social media, Stager brazenly says, 'Everybody in there is a treasonous traitor. Death is the only remedy for whats in that building', referring to people in the Capitol. The FBI said a person recognized him in the videos and alerted authorities. A second person also identified the man in the videos as Stager, telling authorities he spoke to Stager after the riot and Stager allegedly told him he thought the person they were hitting was part of the Antifa movement. The FBI shared footage of Stager, circled in red, striking the officer with the pole attached to an American flag he was carrying during the January 6 Capitol rampage Some of the rioters 'were throwing and swinging various objects' at police when they grabbed this officer, who was identified as 'B.M.', pulled him down the stairs of the Capitol and hit him on the head and body, officials said The FBI shared this photo circling the area where the attack on the cop took place However, the police officer was in a police uniform with 'Metropolitan Police' clearly visible on the back of his clothing. The same informant told the FBI that Stager told him he planned to apologize to his children and turn himself in to police. Stager told the second informant he was 'wired up' from either pepper spray or tear gas and thats why he made his comments in the video about treason and death. The affidavit says Stager 'was able to clearly see the police markings on B.M.s uniform and was aware that the individual who he was striking was, in fact, law enforcement.' Stager lives in Conway, a city of 68,000 north of Little Rock in Arkansas. Stager pictured left in the red circle showing the assault on the police officer in the January 6 riot Hes at least the second Arkansas resident to face criminal charges in the riot. Richard Barnett, 60, of Gravette, turned himself into police on Friday for breaking into the Capitol building and entering Nancy Pelosis office where he was photographed with his feet propped on her desk. Stager was just one of several rioters who were arrested Thursday. Richard Barnett, 60, of Gravette, Arkansas, turned himself into police on Friday for breaking into the Capitol building and entering Nancy Pelosis office where he was photographed with his feet propped on her desk Retired Pennsylvania firefighter Robert Lee Sanford Jr., 55, accused of throwing a fire extinguisher that hit three police officers was also arrested. US Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died as a result of injuries sustained in the riot, was hurt in a separate incident, as per the Washington Post. Kevin Seefried, who was photographed holding a Confederate flag inside the Capitol, turned himself in to authorities in Wilmington, Delaware Thursday morning. He and his son Hunter Seefried, are charged with misdemeanor counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct. Hunter is additionally accused of destruction of property. Utah man John Earle Sullivan, 26, was also charged with entering the building and recording the moment Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was shot by an officer as she attempted to climb through an opening outside the Speakers Lobby. In the video he shared online Sullivan is heard saying: 'There are so many people. Lets go. This [expletive] is ours!... Lets burn this [expletive] down!' as per charging papers. A man crosses a bridge near an apartment complex in Beijing, China, on Dec. 1, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images) Founder of Chinese Website That Exposes Officials Corruption Sentenced to Five Years The founder of a Chinese news site was convicted of illegal business operations and sentenced to five years in prison on Jan. 7. Li Xinde, a news reporter since the 1980s, dedicates himself to exposing government corruption. The veteran citizen journalist founded China Public Opinion Surveillance Net on Oct. 1, 2003, a website that reports on alleged misconduct and corruption of Chinese officials. The site gained popularity and international recognition in June 2004 when it published photos depicting Li Xin, then-deputy mayor of Jining city, Shandong Province, kneeling in front of his business partner, apparently begging her to stay silent. The report alleged that he laundered money, kidnapped and intimidated a female whistleblower, and generally abused his power as a public official. A year later, Li Xin was convicted of extorting over 4.5 million yuan (about $695,000) by abusing his position of power. He was sentenced to life in prison. Authorities also confiscated all of his personal property. Li Xinde (no relation) told Reuters in 2006 that his news site had been shut down before and that many of his blogs were regularly blocked; however, he persistently dodged the Chinese regimes censorship mechanism to get the news out to the public and hold officials accountable for their wrongdoing. According to Lis profile on the website of the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent nonprofit that promotes press freedom worldwide, China Public Opinion Surveillance Net published an article on Oct. 16, 2019 alleging that a businessman was wrongfully convicted by the Second Intermediate Peoples Court in Tianjin city. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported two days later that Tianjins public security bureau (Chinese police), mentioned in the Oct. 16 article, had called Li to demand that the article be removed. Days later, police from Pizhou county, Jiangsu Province traveled to Beijing and arrested the journalist on Oct. 23 on the charge of conducting illegal business operations, according to a report by Radio Free Asia. Li Xindes son, Li Cao, was arrested on the same day with the same charge, in Fuyang city, Anhui Province, the familys hometown. Li Xindes attorney argued that the stories on the website were verified, reported fairly, and did not constitute illegal business operations. On Jan. 7, 2021, Li Xinde was convicted by Pizhou Peoples Court, sentenced to five years in prison, and fined 300,000 yuan (about $46,335). His son pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year, and fined 50,000 yuan (about $7,722). Many journalists who report on peoples complaints and scrutinized public officials have been arrested, Beijing human rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan told Taiwans government-run Central News Agency (CNA). Liu also pointed out that the son, Li Cao, was pressured into pleading guilty so he could be released on bail to see his ailing mother, who passed away in October 2020, according to the CNA report. Li Xinde disagrees with the courts verdict and plans to appeal it. China Public Opinion Surveillance Net appears to have been shut down. Past domains yuluncn.com and yulun.in could not be accessed. Switzerland will hold a referendum on whether to strip the government of its power to impose lockdown measures. Campaigners handed in a petition with 86,000 signatures on Wednesday, well above the 50,000 required to trigger a nationwide vote under the country's system of direct democracy. The Covid-19 Act, passed in September last year, has infuriated the famously liberal Swiss as it grants central government unchecked powers to impose indefinite rules to stop the spread of the virus. But it could now be repealed in June, when the referendum is scheduled, making Switzerland the first and only country to allow its citizens a direct vote on the swingeing lockdown restrictions faced across the world. Switzerland recorded 2,474 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and another 65 deaths, continuing a downward trend since Christmas. The country has been recording an average of 2,581 new infections - that's just 31 percent of the peak in early November. There have been a total of 492,832 cases and 7,904 coronavirus-related deaths recorded since the pandemic began 'In our opinion, the [government] is taking advantage of the pandemic to introduce more control and less democracy,' Christoph Pfluger, board member of Friends of the Constitution which spearheaded the campaign, told the Financial Times. 'The long-term problems that will arise from this kind of approach will be grave. We are a movement that says crisis management cannot be done without the will of the sovereign the people. You cannot govern without the people.' Prior to the Covid-19 Act passing in September, the Federal Council in Bern could only issue edicts under the Epidemics Act, which were time-limited and hampered by parliamentary opposition. However, the Bern executive had continued to operate in a relatively laissez-faire manner much to the irritation of Switzerland's Alpine neighbours, furious that skiers were still being invited into the country. Powerful lobby groups in the Swiss financial sector have been able to impress upon the government the catastrophic economic impacts of any further restrictions. Meanwhile the populace have been thoroughly in favour of looser measures, with 55 percent telling the state broadcaster in November that they were worried about their liberty being restricted. SRF's survey also found that a third of respondents believed an 11pm curfew for bars and restaurants was too harsh. But on December 18, with a rising tide of infections and fear spreading across Europe, Switzerland shutdown its bars, restaurants and leisure facilities. Yesterday, the rules were extended to include non-essential retail. In the wake of the changes last month, Mr Pfluger told the FT his team had been 'astonished' at the level of support which they had gained for their campaign in recent weeks, allowing them to gather thousands of signatories. A policeman patrols Verbier, the affluent Swiss ski resort has been in the spotlight after a number of British tourists fled quarantine measures. Famously liberal Switzerland has also infuriated its Alpine neighbours by keeping its ski resorts open Critics of their campaign say that the pandemic will have retreated by the time the referendum is held in the summer and that the legal basis for the Covid-19 Act will have dissolved. But the campaigners argue that defeating the act in a referendum 'is part of a bigger puzzle' to prevent the government from introducing such onerous rules in a future emergency. Switzerland recorded 2,474 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and another 65 deaths, continuing a downward trend since Christmas. The country has been recording an average of 2,581 new infections - that's just 31 percent of the peak in early November. There have been a total of 492,832 cases and 7,904 coronavirus-related deaths recorded since the pandemic began. ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Minnesota families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Minnesotans are hosting 482 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among these will be a "Why School Choice Matters to Me!" social media campaign to bring families information about the state's school options. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Minnesota cities of Minneota, Centerville, Aitkin, and Rice Lake. "In Minnesota, community members are sharing the message that families benefit from choices and flexible learning opportunities," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's celebrate how great educators and schools of all types inspire kids to learn, grow, and give back to their community." In Minnesota, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Minnesota parents are eligible for tax deductions on educational expenses, including tuition payments and homeschooling expenses. Minnesota families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Minnesota school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/minnesota National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir may not be a household name yet, but thats poised to change with his scene-stealing performance as Malcolm X in Regina Kings One Night in Miami.... The film, which imagines an electric meeting between the civil rights icon, Sam Cooke, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown in February 1964, is currently available on Prime Video. The 35-year-old has been a working actor for over a decade and has had more than a few heartbreaks and near-breaks along the way. In his first film, World War Z, his speaking line with Brad Pitt was unceremoniously cut. Then there was the Ang Lee Muhammad Ali film that he spent years testing and months in active training for (he was to play Ali) that ended up losing its financing. One Night in Miami... was almost a missed opportunity, too. His agents first suggested him for Clay. He declined (I felt too old) but said to call him if anything happened to the actor playing Malcolm. Ben-Adir said he was partially joking, but that call did come. He officially got the part just 12 days before he was due on set. I thought, I dont know if I can prepare Malcolm X in 12 days, Ben-Adir said. Then I was like, I have to do it. Ben-Adir spoke to The Associated Press hours before hed pick up the breakthrough actor award at the Gotham Awards about finding the humanity in the icon and the tricky logistics of playing both Malcolm X and Barack Obama at the same time. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity. ___ AP: Was Malcolm X a figure in your life growing up in the U.K.? Ben-Adir: I grew up knowing exactly who he was. Id read the autobiography at an earlier stage and he was someone who I was definitely aware of. I cant say the same for the education syllabus here. We werent taught much about African American history at all and Black British history is almost non-existent in my school. AP: Who is Malcolm X at this moment in 1964? Ben-Adir: Regina and I were trying to figure out how far we could push the exploration of showing Malcolm as a father and as a husband and as a man who at this moment in time was in a very, very vulnerable situation. He was on a ban from the Nation of Islam and his relationship with Elijah Muhammad, who essentially was his father figure for 12 years, was really crumbling. There was a sense that his life was in danger and theres a feeling that Malcolm knew that his time was maybe coming to an end. Theres this wonderful opportunity with this movie to explore the humanity of this fearless demagogue. Story continues Malcolm described to his friend Dick Gregory that he felt weak and hollow and that nobody knew the torments that he was going through at this time. Dick talks about Malcolm as a sweet and bashful man, a kind man and a good-humored man and someone who would be embarrassed if he could hear us talking about him in this way now. And I just thought that was just gorgeous. AP: That seems to belie the imagery that we always see of him. Ben-Adir: I feel like all of the all of the imagery that were used to, the stuff on YouTube and the soundbites... its always Malcolm responding to usually the next day or on the same day as the most hideous instances of racism or police brutality or political injustice. Its no wonder hes riled up and impassioned and angry in so much of that archive footage. Watching him when he wasnt speaking, when he was listening and watching him in the moment in the transition between listening and when he was just about to respond, this humanity opened-up. I dont know how to describe it. Also, I think I was a little bit in la la land by the end of it. I wasnt eating. I was kind of wired. My blood was full of nicotine and caffeine and my mind was just sort of filled with these ideas. The whole process was just a little bit surreal and a little bit of a whirlwind. AP: Are Denzel Washington in Spike Lee's 1992 film on your mind during this? Ben-Adir: I made a decision to sort of just leave that. I knew that this Malcolm needed to be different. AP: Is it true that you were doing this while you were also playing Barack Obama in The Comey Rule"? How does that work? Ben-Adir: I shot Malcolm for three and a half weeks and then on a Friday I jumped on a plane to Toronto and shot Barack for four or five days and then jumped on a plane and went straight back to Malcolm. As a working actor, the schedules are set and you have to work around it. I was like, listen, Youve been asking for this kind of opportunity for the last 10 years. Now youve got two at the same time. Youve just got to make it work. Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr Two Donald Trump supporters from Virginia who were arrested on weapons charges near the Pennsylvania Convention Center as votes from Novembers election were being tabulated are facing additional election-related charges after a preliminary hearing Thursday. Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Charles Hayden dropped the gun charges against Joshua Macias, 42, a cofounder of Vets for Trump, because he had a gun permit in Virginia. Prosecutors said they disagreed and intended to refile those charges. But Hayden upheld the gun charges against codefendant Antonio LaMotta, 61, a bodyguard who had no permit. Both men were held for trial on new charges that include attempting to interfere with an election, a felony. Hayden declined to revoke their bail, as prosecutors had requested, due to their attendance at last weeks pro-Trump rally that led to a deadly attack on the Capitol building. He did, however, bar them from attending rallies or using social media while the case is pending. Prosecutors allege that on November 5, Macias and LaMotta drove up from Virginia, in a Hummer displaying the insignia of the QAnon conspiracy movement, with handguns, an AR-15-style rifle, 160 rounds of ammunition, and a samurai sword, to interfere in the vote counting process in Philadelphia. READ MORE: Two men outside Philly vote count in Hummer with QAnon stickers face weapons charges, police say A video played in court Thursday shows Macias referring to ballot stuffers in back rooms shortly before his arrest near the Convention Center. District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement Thursday that a lock-picking kit was also found in the Hummer and that Macias and Antonio were in Philadelphia for purposes far more nefarious than sightseeing. We should all be relieved and grateful that we will never know what would have happened on November 5th if it wasnt for the quick thinking and decisive action of Philadelphia Police, acting on information from the FBI, Krasner said. Officers located and arrested these individuals near the Convention Center while election workers dutifully canvassed votes without interruption. Macias attorney, William J. Brennan, said Macias committed no crime. He certainly is not on the same side politically as the district attorney, but to charge him criminally for exercising his right of free assembly and right of free speech, thats a very dangerous thing, Brennan said outside the Criminal Justice Center. LaMottas attorney Lauren Wimmer declined to comment Thursday. Assistant District Attorney Andrew Wellbrock said after the hearing that prosecutors will present evidence that LaMotta and Macias were planning to disrupt the election, and wanted to stop the vote count. They remain free on 10 percent of $750,000 bail. Used syringes are discarded at a needle exchange clinic where users can pick up new syringes and other clean items for those dependent on heroin in St. Johnsbury, Vt. on Feb. 6, 2014. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Judges Rule Against Opening Supervised Site To Inject Opioids in Philadelphia A divided federal appeals court on Jan. 12 ruled against the opening of what would be the first supervised injection site in the United States, saying plans for a site in Philadelphia ran afoul of a federal law originally passed to shut down drug dens. Though the opioid crisis may call for innovative solutions, local innovations may not break federal law, wrote Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, siding with U.S. Attorney William McSwain of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who had sued to block the site. Tuesdays 2-1 ruling overturned a lower court ruling in favor of Safehouse, a Philadelphia non-profit formed in 2018 that had for years attempted to open the first site in the city. According to the nonprofit, the supervised injection site would allow individuals to bring illegal opioids and inject them in the presence of medical professionals who could treat them for overdoses. The Third Circuits opinion is a faithful reading of the statutes plain language and is consistent with Congresss intent to protect American neighborhoods from the scourge of concentrated drug use, McSwain said. But Congress has made it a crime to open a property to others to use drugs. And that is what Safehouse will do, the ruling stated, highlighting a 1986 federal law known as the crack house statute. Philadelphia is known around the world as the birthplace of our wonderful nation and of liberty itself. Due to the dedicated work of those at the U.S. Attorneys Office, it will not be known as the birthplace of heroin injections sites, the opinion said. Similar efforts were also pushed back in Seattle this week following Tuesdays ruling. Ilana Eisenstein of DLA Piper, who represents the nonprofit, said that it is disappointed with the decision. We remain confident that the law was not intended to force Americans to stand by as idle witnesses while our brothers and sisters are dying. Conscience compels us to pursue all legal options, and we shall. Around 80 percent of all heroin addicts start their habit through prescription painkillers. In 2018, more than 67,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, and almost 70 percent of those involved an opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC said last month that deaths from drug overdoses are accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overdose deaths were already increasing in the months before the pandemic started, but the latest numbers suggest a further acceleration, the agency said. Over 81,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in the 12 months ending in May 2020, the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period, according to provisional data the CDC released. According to the agency, thats an 18 percent increase since the previous 12-month period. Synthetic opioids, primarily the illicitly manufactured fentanyl, appear to be the primary driver in the increased number of overdose deaths. Those deaths increased by 38.4 percent during the period in question, when compared to the 12-month period ending in June 2019. Overdose deaths where the victims took cocaine increased by 26.5 percent. Many of the deceased who used cocaine also used fentanyl or heroin, or took cocaine that was contaminated with one or the other. And overdose deaths involving psychostimulants such as methamphetamine increased by 34.8 percent. The Courts decision re-affirms that safe injection sites are a violation of federal law, Acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said. The Department supports efforts to curb the opioid crisis ravaging this country, but injection sites are not the solution. Zachary Stieber and Reuters contributed to this report. 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. SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) Police in San Francisco have arrested a teenager in connection with a the killing of a man during a large sideshow that occurred in the city's Excelsior District last year. On Sept. 7, officers responded to the area of Persia Avenue and Paris Street just after midnight after a report of a sideshow that allegedly involved some 300 spectators and 50 vehicles. Once at the scene, officers learned of the shooting and found a man nearby, later identified as 21-year-old Sacramento resident Cesar Corza, suffering from gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Two other men, a 20-year-old and a 19-year-old, were also hospitalized with gunshot wounds, but survived. After an investigation, officers identified the suspect as a 17-year-old boy from Sacramento. The teen is in custody in Sacramento in connection with an unrelated attempted murder charge, police said. San Francisco police have since arrested him on suspicion of murder, assault and discharging a firearm in public. Police said Sacramento County will likely prosecute the San Francisco murder, as the case could be connected to other crimes in Sacramento County, police said. Copyright 2021 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. The Centre has informed all states and union territories that interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines is not permitted and that the coronavirus vaccination is available only for those above 18 years and won't be inoculated to pregnant or lactating women. The Union Health Ministry also said if required, COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines should be separated by an interval of at least 14 days. India's vaccination drive will start from January 16 after two COVID-19 vaccines, Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covaxin manufactured by Serum Institute of India and Bharat Botech's Covishield were granted emergency use approval earlier this month. The ministry has listed precautions and contraindications for COVID-19 vaccination along with a comparative factsheet for both the vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin) which contains information on vaccine platform, physical specifications, dosage, cold-chain storage requirements, contraindications and minor AEFIs (adverse event following immunization). The information should be disseminated to programme managers across all levels and through them to cold-chain handlers and vaccinators for ready reference, said the ministry.Around three lakh healthcare and frontline workers will be inoculated at 2,934 sites across the country on the first day of the nationwide vaccination drive. The letter mentions mild AEFIs for both vaccines. In the case of Covishied, some mild AEFI may occur like injection site tenderness, injection site pain, headache, fatigue, myalgia, malaise, pyrexia, chills and arthralgia and nausea. Some mild AEFIs in case of Covaxin include injection site pain, headache, fatigue, fever, body ache, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, dizziness-giddiness, tremor, sweating, cold, cough and injection site swelling. Paracetamol may be used to provide symptomatic relief from post-vaccination adverse reactions, the letter added. Also read: India COVID-19 update: 15,590 fresh cases; recovery rate reaches 96.53% Also read: PM Modi to virtually roll out COVID-19 vaccination drive on Jan 16 A century-old home in Monte Vista, with stained glass and elegant woodwork, recently hit the market. Built in 1907, the distinctive property at 109 East Woodlawn Ave. was once divided into multiple units. Now a single-family home, it is for sale for $875,000. Barbara Faulkner of Keller Williams Heritage has the listing. Palm trees line the median on East Woodlawn, one of the streets within the Monte Vista Historic District. A squat concrete strip mall sits on one side of No. 109. The house's first-floor porch wraps around the other. READ ALSO: San Antonio woman accused of election fraud out on bond San Antonio Board of Realtors The listing for the property says it was touted as a "New Art" design when it was built. The home hasn't lost its unusual grandeur in the 114 years since. Stained glass in the front door and windows throughout the house has been maintained, along with original light fixtures and chandeliers. In the entryway, a curved staircase with a wooden seat to rest on the landing leads to the second floor. The first room at the top of the stairs is a living area, which has several glass doors opening onto a balcony. There are three bathrooms and five bedrooms spread out across the 4,820 square-foot home. A wardrobe room with the original carpentry connects two of the bedrooms. Downstairs, a parlor leads to a formal dining room with fresco painted walls and two doors that open to a tiled tea room. The house has a basement accessed from the outside. Check out the Monte Vista home below. San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors San Antonio Board of Realtors Scottish fishermen are willing to sail an extra 48 hours to Denmark, where their catch can fetch twice as much after prices at home collapsed in the aftermath of Brexit. A boat loaded with 15 tons of monkfish arriving on Thursday night was expected to net its Scottish captain 225,000 kroner ($36,700) more than it would in Peterhead, Britain's biggest fishing port, said Jesper Kongsted, a fish auctioneer in Hanstholm on Denmark's North Sea coast. Purchasers in the U.K. are turning away from more expensive varieties of fish because red tape and queues can mean it is not fresh when it reaches European customers. Seafood From Scotland said prices for many species of seafood have fallen 40% to 50% just this week, with some dropping as much as 80%. "Boris Johnson probably forgot to explain what leaving the EU would mean for fishermen's ability to sell to the European market," Kongsted said. The impact of the Brexit transition on the Scottish seafood industry has been far-reaching, ranging from computer failures to a lack of clarity on paperwork, rendering efforts to export "all but impossible," Donna Fordyce, the chief executive at Seafood From Scotland, said in a statement. With about a third of Scottish vessels moored and others redirecting to Denmark, many fishermen are on dry land and the processing industry, which employs 10,000, is suffering. In a letter, The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations accused the British premier Boris Johnson of sacrificing the industry and being dishonest about which rights fishermen had obtained in the trade deal between the U.K. and EU. "It is not that, in the end, you were forced to concede in the face of an intransigent and powerful opponent that has caused such fury across our industry, it is that you have tried to present the agreement as a major success when it is patently clear that it is not," the federation's letter said, according to Business Matters. James Withers, chief executive officer of industry group Scotland Food & Drink, estimates seafood merchants are currently losing 1 million pounds ($1.4 million) of exports a day because of the customs chaos. The U.K. landed almost 1 billion pounds of fish in 2019, much of it in Scotland. "No party can fix this issue overnight, but losses for the sector are mounting, and the situation is urgent," Fordyce said. "We have days to fix it -- not weeks." The U.K. government has pledged a 100 million-pound package to help rebuild the country's fishing fleet and the industry's aging infrastructure. As the Brexit deal was struck on Christmas Eve, a lack of business preparedness may cause temporary disruptions in the first quarter, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior U.K. Economist Dan Hanson said. Back in Denmark, Kongsted reckons boats unloading in the Nordic country are rushing to solve an immediate issue and that the number of arriving trawlers might eventually dwindle as solutions are found in the U.K. [January 15, 2021] Save the date: Hoist Finance Capital Markets Day STOCKHOLM, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hoist Finance will host a virtual Capital Markets Day on Thursday 25 February 2021, starting at 13:00 CET. Presentations will be held in English by members of the Executive Management Team. A formal invitation with agenda and details on how to register will be sent out closer to the event. CONTACT: For further information, please contact: Andreas Lindblom, Head of Investor Relations Telephone: +46 (0) 72 506 14 22 This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/hoist-finance/r/save-the-date--hoist-finance-capital-markets-day,c3268520 The following files are available for download: Trump Impeachment an Example of Unbalanced Legal System: Adviser President Donald Trump getting impeached for outlining qualms about the 2020 election highlights how the legal system is unbalanced, an adviser said Thursday. The American people are entitled to state their positions. If it is somehow seditious to do so, then Nancy Pelosi and pretty much every Democrat who said that the election was stolen, which perpetrated the Russia hoax, in 2016, should be charged with that same sedition, because the rules have to be the same for all Americans, Boris Epshteyn, a Trump campaign adviser, said on War Room. We cannot have a different legal system for Republicans than Democrats, he added. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) alleged in 2017 that the 2016 election was hijacked as special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate alleged Russian interference in the election. Even after Mueller found no evidence of collusion between Trump or his campaign and Russia, Pelosi and other Democrats kept alleging a connection. She said last year that Trump and his campaign welcomed and relied on a hostile foreign powers interference in the 2016 election. Epshteyn also cited the case of former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe as an example of an allegedly unbalanced legal system. McCabe was fired after an inspector general found he lied multiple times but the Department of Justice ultimately decided not to pursue criminal charges against him. Trump was impeached on Wednesday for incitement of insurrection. Democrats and 10 Republicans alleged he stoked anger that led to the breaching of the U.S. Capitol. A timeline of Jan. 6 shows the crowd at the building turning unruly before Trump finished speaking at the Ellipse, a 45-minute walk away from the Capitol. CNNs putting out articles saying this was a planned attack, the terrible events at the Capitol were a planned attack. If they were a planned attack, how could they have been incited at the speech? Thats point one, Epshteyn said. Point two, the president said at the speech that people should march peacefully and patriotically toward the capitol. There was no incitement of violence whatsoever. President Donald Trump at the Stop the Steal rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jenny Jing/The Epoch Times) A group of protesters enter the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) The timing of when an impeachment trial will commence remains an open question. As of now, it appears it will not start until at least Jan. 19. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he wouldnt call the Senate back into session to start the trial before then. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), poised to become majority leader later this month after Georgia Democratic Sens.-elect Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are sworn in, wanted the trial to start this week. One option for Republicans is to bring forward a motion to dismiss when the Senate returns to session. It would put republicans in a place of having to answer, why are you not voting to dismiss. It puts them under the bright lights, Epshteyn said. We know its just a political tool to try to force President Trump not to run in 2024. How could you not vote to dismiss it? Another is to ask a court to weigh in on the constitutionality of trying a president after hes out of office, something thats never been done before in U.S. history. Several legal scholars have questioned doing so, including constitutional attorney Alan Dershowitz. If the trial ends up happening, it would give the Trump team an opportunity to bring out all of the fraud that weve been talking about for weeks, for months, Epshteyn said. We have a wealth of talent in Virginia Beach and neighboring cities such as Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk. The excellence we deliver reflects the excellence of our workers. We provide economic security for our employees and personal safety for our clients. 100% U.S.-Made Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for Stopping the Spread of COVID-19 Virginia Beach, VA, January 12, 2021 AmeriShield, makers of customizable PPE products, announces increases in hiring and manufacturing. The company now employs 277 workers, producing up to 1.25 million disposable face masks per day. These achievements follow the production of the companys 50 millionth disposable face mask. Economic Security and Personal Safety AmeriShield attributes its success to its recruitment and hiring of workers in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. We have a wealth of talent in Virginia Beach and neighboring cities such as Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk. The excellence we deliver reflects the excellence of our workers. We provide economic security for our employees and personal safety for our clients, says Vitali Servutas, CEO of AmeriShield. About AmeriShield Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, AmeriShield designs and develops 100% U.S.-made PPE products for businesses, hospitals, schools, government agencies, and consumers. For more information, visit https://www.premium-ppe.com and https://www.getUSAmask.com. 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. 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. Two West Virginia school bus drivers who were suspended for attending a rally for President Donald Trump in the nations capital have been cleared of wrongdoing following hearings, an attorney said Wednesday. Attorney John Bryan, who is representing the employees in a separate lawsuit against the Jefferson County School District, said one employee was cleared Tuesday and the other on Wednesday. No evidence was presented against them, Bryan said. Bryan said he is still proceeding with the federal lawsuit against school Superintendent Bondy Shay Gibson. Bryan is representing bus drivers Tina Renner and Pamela McDonald. The lawsuit said Renner and McDonalds actions were protected under the First Amendment when they traveled last week to Washington to support Trump. Renner and McDonald rode on a charter bus Jan. 6. After hearing Trump speak at a rally, they walked to the U.S. Capitol, remained in an area designated for public occupation and did not participate in illegal activities, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said attending the rally was unrelated to the bus drivers employment and they had enough leave days available to attend the rally. Renner and McDonald each received a phone call after returning informing them that they would be placed on paid administrative leave. Both also received letters from Gibson. A Capitol police officer died from injuries suffered when a mob violently ransacked the U.S. Capitol after the rally, and police fatally shot a woman during the riot. Three others died in what authorities said were medical emergencies. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Personal Auto Virginia EBRD US$ 58 million loan to TEB for on-lending to local businesses Loan follows 1.7 billion of EBRD investment in Turkey in 2020 Financing to help businesses adapt to pandemic The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is providing a loan of up to US$ 58 million to Turk Ekonomi Bankasi A.S. (TEB) in support of local small businesses facing liquidity shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic. The EBRD funds will be on-lent as short-term capital and liquidity support to private companies with a special focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) affected by a severe fall in demand. The new loans follows 1.7 billion of investment provided by the EBRD for the Turkish economy in 2020, helping businesses adapt to the pandemic and addressing peoples urgent needs. Founded in 1927, TEB is the seventh largest private bank in Turkey. It has a strategic partnership with BNP Paribas, providing banking services to retail, corporate and SME clients. The EBRD loan comes under the Banks Resilience Framework, a set of measures to support existing clients affected by the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis. Following the outbreak of the pandemic, the EBRD significantly stepped up its engagement and expects to dedicate the entirety of its investment of up to 21 billion in the period 2020-21 to combat the impact of Covid-19. The EBRD is a major investor in Turkey and to date, the Bank has invested almost 13 billion in the country through 334 projects, 95 per cent of which is in the private sector. The EBRDs 7 billion portfolio in Turkey is the largest among the 38 economies where the Bank invests. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Some 200 employees were displaced after Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation decided to end local refining operations last year. Paulo Gavino, the oil firm's external relations manager, told the House Committee on Energy that not all jobs from its base in Tabangao, Batangas were saved as of now. "About half of them have found new jobs within Shell in the Philippines and about 25 opted for early retirement. 'Yung balance, hinahanapan pa namin ng trabaho [We are still looking for opportunities for the remaining staff]," Gavino said during the Friday virtual hearing. Shell is among the worlds biggest oil refiners and retailers. It announced in August 2020 that it will end local refining operations in its remaining site in Batangas and will instead convert the facility into an import terminal, similar to its existing hub in Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao. Gavino said that while economic activity in Tabangao has declined, construction works are underway for the site conversion. READ: Lower refinery output in PH may push fuel prices up report Meanwhile, the Department of Energy acknowledged that the current tax regime likely added to the burden of oil refiners. "When you are a direct importer, inimport mo 'yan ngayon, since finished product na siya, bukas or two days from now maibebenta mo kaagad," DOE Oil Industry Management Bureau Director Rino Abad said. "Here comes a refiner -- kukuha muna siya ng crude oil and it will take him around one to two months bago ma-produce niya." [Translation: When you are a direct importer and you import that today, in one or two days you can sell that because it's a finished product. Here comes a refiner -- he will get crude oil first and it will take him around one to two months before it is produced.] Abad added that the recovery of the value-added tax is the main difference between the two set-ups, with refiners needing to wait longer than importers, who can sell the finished product quicker. However, he noted that Shell assured that local supply will not dwindle as the amount of petroleum it refines will be matched through imports. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. A woman who is uncomfortable with her father's decision to date a teenager has sparked a debate about getting involved in parent's love life. Posting anonymously on Reddit, the American woman, 18, explained she found out that her 59-year-old father is dating a woman aged 19, after going to his house unexpectedly. She said her father has been divorced from her mother for seven years, and went on to have a relationship with a woman around his own age, which ended two years earlier. The daughter said she find it's 'really weird' that he's now seeing a teenager and is her first boyfriend, but doesn't know how to broach the subject. Responses to the post were divided as some argued children shouldn't get involved in their parents' love life, while others branded her father a 'predator' and urged her to seek advice from other family members. An anonymous woman has sparked a debate about getting involved in parent's relationships, if it makes you feel uncomfortable (file image) Explaining the situation, she wrote: 'My dad's been divorced from my mom for seven years now. He had a girlfriend of almost his age and they broke up about two years ago. Now he's dating a 19-year-old girl. 'She seems comfortable with it, but I can't help but worry, first off for my dad since this is really uncharacteristic of him, and second for the girl. She seems kinda innocent and I don't know if this could be bad for her in the long run. 'The girlfriend's mom said my dad is her first boyfriend and that's very worrysome. I don't think it's a healthy relationship, but I also know I don't have the right to interfere in other people's lifes (my dad leaves my relationships pretty much alone). 'He hasn't told anyone of the family, not even my 24-year-old sister (who lives in another country), I found out by going to his house while she was there. 'I worry for both of them since I don't know if that could be a healthy relationship. Some part of me also worries that the girlfriend might be trying to take economic advantage of my dad, but I prefer not to think so badly of her. 'Should I talk things out with them somehow? Or just leave their relationship alone?' Posting on Reddit, the woman explained her father has been divorced for seven years and the rest of her family are unaware he's dating a 19-year-old Many responses to the post argued there isn't anything the woman can do about the situation because her dad and his girlfriend are consenting adults. One person wrote: 'It's their business. If the girl and her parents are OK (but as she is legal age their consent is not required) - it's OK and none of your business. It's just the same with opposite situation when woman is older' Another agreed, saying: 'Midlife crisis, sex drive, a need to feel young again, economic advantage, whatever. You have no business to worry about who your father is f*****. If it is illegal, call the police, if you feel it is immoral then move away'. Many responses to the post argued the woman shouldn't get involved in her father's relationship Others argued the woman should confront her father or at least ask the rest of her family for their opinion. 'Your dad sounds like a predator and if I'm being honest, I doubt there's much you can do. It's often in these situations where if you try talking things out, they won't care and they'll just be mad at you. However, you definitely should try. She clearly sounds inexperienced to be going for someone triple her age,' one said. 'Your dad is a predator. Ignore the people in the comments j***** in their own palms about having sex with teenagers saying it's fine. The reason why your dad hasn't told anyone is because he knows he's being a creep. Put him on blast and tell your whole family,' one wrote. Another said: 'If you want to be really petty can ask your dad if she is a substitute for you. Make it awkward.' A third added: 'Sometimes people enter into relationships in a vacuum and it seems to work because there is no outside voice saying "you sure?" to check the reality of the situation. My advice is to tell your older sister so at least you have someone to talk to about it.' Its still dark! But here are some thrillers to help with all the time we are spending indoors. The title of the Australian writer Jane Harpers latest novel, THE SURVIVORS (Flatiron, 374 pp., $27.99), refers to two things. The first is a sculpture memorializing a shipwreck whose ghostly remains lie off the coast of Evelyn Bay, a tiny summer community in Tasmania. The second are the traumatized, secrets-harboring residents left behind when a devastating storm killed three of the towns young people 12 years ago. After a long exile, Kieran Elliott has returned to Evelyn Bay with his girlfriend and their baby to help his parents move out of the family house. But it is a complicated homecoming. Kieran was indirectly responsible for two of the storm deaths one of the victims was his brother and there are those who will never forgive him. Also, theres a new body to contend with, that of a young waitress and art student whose drowned corpse is found, fully clothed, on the beach. In this tightknit place, everyone is a suspect, and everyone is grieving, in one way or another. Its hard to keep track of all the relationships who loved or hung around with or betrayed or fought with whom, back when Kieran was a teenager and again now but its worth making the effort. Evelyn Bay, utterly dependent on the sea, is a character of its own. As always, Harper skillfully evokes the landscape as she weaves a complicated, elegant web, full of long-buried secrets ready to come to light. There are so many ways to kill, observes a character in RV Ramans A WILL TO KILL (Polis, 282 pp., $26), a modern-day take on the classic locked-room murder mystery, transported to a remote mansion high in the hills of southern India. People drown in rivers, fall down stairs, have heavy objects fall on them, die of suffocation in airless rooms or dungeons, and even get scared to death. [January 15, 2021] Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP Announces Proposed Settlement in the Chemical and Mining Company of Chile Securities Settlement The following statement is being issued by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP regarding the Chemical and Mining Company of Chile Securities Settlement: UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK X MEGAN VILLELLA, Individually and on : Civil Action No. 1:15-cv-02106-ER-GWG Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, : (Consolidated) Plaintiff, : : CLASS ACTION vs. : : SUMMARY NOTICE OF PROPOSED CHEMICAL AND MINING COMPANY OF CHILE INC., et al., : SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION : Defendants. : X TO: ALL PERSONS WHO PURCHASED CHEMICAL AND MINING COMPANY OF CHILE INC., A/K/A SOCIEDAD QUIMICA Y MINERA DE CHILE S.A. ("SQM") AMERICAN DEPOSITARY SHARES ("ADSS") DURING THE PERIOD BETWEEN JUNE 30, 2010 AND MARCH 18, 2015, INCLUSIVE ("CLASS" OR "CLASS MEMBERS") THIS NOTICE WAS AUTHORIZED BY THE COURT. IT IS NOT A LAWYER SOLICITATION. PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE CAREFULLY AND IN ITS ENTIRETY. YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that a hearing will be held on April 2, 2021, at 10:00 a.m., before the Honorable Edgardo Ramos at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street, New York, NY, 10007 to determine whether: (1) the proposed settlement (the "Settlement") of the above-captioned Litigation as set forth in the Stipulation of Settlement ("Stipulation")1 for $62,500,000 in cash should be approved by the Court as fair, reasonable and adequate; (2) the Judgment as provided under the Stipulation should be entered dismissing the Litigation with prejudice; (3) to award Lead Plaintiff's Counsel attorneys' fees and expenses out of the Settlement Fund (as defined in the Notice of Pendency and Proposed Settlement of Class Action ("Notice"), which is discussed below) and, if so, in what amount; (4) to pay Lead Plaintiff for its costs and expenses in representing the Class out of the Settlement Fund and, if so, in what amount; and (5) the Plan of Allocation should be approved by the Court as fair, reasonable and adequate. The recent outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a fluid situation that creates the possibility that the Court may decide to conduct the Settlement Hearing by video or telephonic conference, or otherwise allow Class Members to appear at the hearing by phone or videoconference, without further written notice to the Class. In order to determine whether the date and time of the Settlement Hearing have changed, or whether Class Members must or may participate by phone or video, it is important that you monitor the Court's docket and the Settlement website, www.SQMSecuritiesSettlement. com, before making any plans to attend the Settlement Hearing. Any updates regarding the Settlement Hearing, including any changes to the date or time of the hearing or updates regarding in-person, telephonic or videoconference appearances at the hearing, will also be posted to the Settlement website, www.SQMSecuritiesSettlement.com. Also, if the Court requires or allows Class Members to participate in the Settlement Hearing by telephone or videoconference, the phone number for accessing the telephonic conference or the website for accessing the videoconference will be posted to the Settlement website, www.SQMSecuritiesSettlement.com. IF YOU PURCHASED SQM ADSs BETWEEN JUNE 30, 2010 THROUGH MARCH 18, 2015, INCLUSIVE, YOUR RIGHTS ARE AFFECTED BY THE SETTLEMENT OF THIS LITIGATION. To share in the distribution of the Settlement Fund, you must establish your rights by submitting a Proof of Claim and Release form ("Proof of Claim") by mail (postmarked no later than April 8, 2021) or electronically (no later than April 8, 2021). Your failure to submit your Proof of Claim by April 8, 2021 will subject your claim to rejection and preclude your receiving any of the recovery in connection with the Settlement of this Litigation. If you purchased SQM ADSs between June 30, 2010 through March 18, 2015, inclusive, and do not request exclusion from the Class, you will be bound by the Settlement and any judgment and release entered in the Litigation, including, but not limited to, the Judgment, whether or not you submit a Proof of Claim. If you have not received a copy of the Notice, which more completely describes the Settlement and your rights thereunder (including your right to object to the Settlement), and a Proof of Claim, you may obtain these documents, as well as a copy of the Stipulation (which, among other things, contains definitions for the defined terms used in this Summary Notice) and other Settlement documents, online at www.SQMSecuritiesSettlement.com, or by writing to: SQM Securities Settlement Claims Administrator c/o Gilardi & Co. LLC P.O. Box (News - Alert) 43327 Providence, RI 02940-3327 Inquiries should NOT be directed to SQM, the Court, or the Clerk of the Court. Inquiries, other than requests for the Notice or for a Proof of Claim, may be made to Lead Counsel: ROBBINS GELLER RUDMAN & DOWD LLP Ellen Gusikoff Stewart 655 West Broadway, Suite 1900 San Diego, CA (News - Alert) 92101 Telephone: 1-800-449-4900 IF YOU DESIRE TO BE EXCLUDED FROM THE CLASS, YOU MUST SUBMIT A REQUEST FOR EXCLUSION SUCH THAT IT IS POSTMARKED BY MARCH 12, 2021, IN THE MANNER AND FORM EXPLAINED IN THE NOTICE. ALL CLASS MEMBERS WILL BE BOUND BY THE SETTLEMENT EVEN IF THEY DO NOT TIMELY SUBMIT A PROOF OF CLAIM. IF YOU ARE A CLASS MEMBER, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO OBJECT TO THE SETTLEMENT, THE PLAN OF ALLOCATION, THE REQUEST BY LEAD PLAINTIFF'S COUNSEL FOR AN AWARD OF ATTORNEYS' FEES NOT TO EXCEED 17.5% OF THE $62,500,000 SETTLEMENT AMOUNT AND EXPENSES NOT TO EXCEED $1,400,000, AND/OR THE PAYMENT TO LEAD PLAINTIFF FOR ITS COSTS AND EXPENSES NOT TO EXCEED $20,000. ANY OBJECTIONS MUST BE FILED WITH THE COURT AND RECEIVED BY LEAD COUNSEL AND SQM'S COUNSEL BY MARCH 12, 2021 IN THE MANNER AND FORM EXPLAINED IN THE NOTICE. DATED: December 18, 2020 BY ORDER OF THE COURT UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK ____________________ 1 The Stipulation can be viewed and/or obtained at www.SQMSecuritiesSettlement.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005002/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close What just happened? As Donald Trump approaches the end of his term, the president is putting the pressure on a Chinese giantbut this time, it's not Huawei. The outgoing administration has designated Xiaomi, the world's third best-selling phone maker, a 'Communist Chinese military company,' adding it to a blacklist that could force U.S. investors to divest. As noted by Reuters, a 1999 law requires the Defense Department to compile a catalog of companies owned or controlled by the People's Liberation Army. The Pentagon has added 35 companies so far, including chipmaker SMIC. Huawei is on the list, too, due to its telecoms infrastructure business that is worrying some governments. Both Huawei and SMIC are also part of the US Commerce Department's 'entity list', which prevents American organizations from exporting to the blacklisted companies without a government license. Hence the lack of Google Apps and U.S. hardware in the latest Huawei phones. The newly added companies will be subject to an investment ban that forces American investors to divest their holdings on November 11, 2021assuming the Biden administration doesn't overturn the order. Xiaomi, which was accused of recording users' incognito web browsing last year, currently takes the third-largest share of the global smartphone market, sitting behind number one Samsung and second-place Huawei, according to IDC. Xiaomi, in a statement to The Verge, said that it is "operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses." The spokesperson contends that Xiaomi "is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a 'Communist Chinese Military Company' defined under the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act]." The company is reviewing the consequences of the designation before taking action. A fire in Perth's foothills that damaged at least one house and threatened others in High Wycombe has been brought under control by firefighters. The blaze was reported at 11.35am Friday and within half an hour had escalated to emergency status, but by 3.25pm it had been downgraded to an advice after crews managed to contain the inferno. The fire threatened homes in High Wycombe. Credit:Nine News Perth According to Department of Fire and Emergency Services crews, a house neighbouring bushland on Lambertia Crescent was impacted by the fire. Flames were also spotted in a front yard on Norwich Way, and embers and ash were blowing onto properties on Epping Court and Larwood Crescent. Residents on Adelaide Street were helped by firefighters to contain flames at the rear boundary of a property while crews are also working to put out a scrub fire in nearby Hawkesvale Reserve. 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. "Media forgets 1983 leftist attack on US Capitol" Big Media these days is claiming that the recent breach of the Capitol was the worst attack on the building since the British burned it in the War of 1812. Not so! The media and Democrats conveniently forget the attack in 1983 which did a million dollars in damage in a bombing outside the Senate chamber. That attack was the work of the far left. The bombing was conducted of two far left women activists of the M19, an offshoot of the Marxist terrorist Weather Underground. Both were apprehended, convicted and sentenced to 58 years in prison, but were pardoned by President Bill Clinton at the request of Congressman Jerry Nadler. Two former leaders of the Weather Underground terrorist group were key supporters of Barack Obama in his Chicago days and another was a key mentor in her youth to one of the co-founders of BLM. One of those US Capitol bombers currently works in a highly paid top leadership job for a leftist group, Thousand Currents, that provides major legal and administrative support to BLM.. BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The pound fell against its major counterparts in the European session on Friday, as worries about rising U.S.-China tensions and tighter Covid-19 restrictions coming into force around Europe dampened risk sentiment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants a 'mega-lockdown' after the country suffered its deadliest-ever day of the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday. The French government will tighten its border control with non-EU countries including the UK from Monday and moved forward the night curfew by two hours to 6 p.m. for at least a fortnight. Optimism over Biden's coronavirus rescue plan receded, as it could be opposed by many Republicans. In economic releases, official data showed that Britain's economy contracted at a slower than expected pace in November. Gross domestic product shrank 2.6 percent month on month in November but slower than the 5.7 percent fall economists' had forecast. The pound weakened to 1.2163 against the franc and 1.3637 against the greenback, after rising to 1.2101 and 1.3698, respectively in early deals. The pound may locate support around 1.18 against the franc and 1.34 against the greenback. The pound reached 0.8901 against the euro, falling from more than a 2-month high of 0.8866 seen at 3:00 am ET. Should the pound slides further, 0.92 is likely seen as its next support level. The pound slipped to a 3-day low of 141.38 against the yen, after a rise to 142.12 at 6:30 pm ET. Further decline in the pound may find support near the 138.00 mark. Looking ahead, U.S. PPI, retail sales and industrial production for December, business inventories data for November and University of Michigan's preliminary consumer sentiment index for January will be featured in the New York session. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de (Natural News) More than 170 people who attended President Donald Trumps Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 are now considered to be suspects in an investigation into alleged sedition against the government. What, then, will become of those who back in the summer did much worse by burning down businesses and looting merchandise in honor of George Floyd? According to acting U.S. Attorney in Washington Michael Sherwin, law enforcement officials are treating the staged false flag invasion of the Capitol building as an act of terrorism, which requires a full international counter-terrorism investigation. Were looking at everything money, travel records, Sherwin says about those the government is pursuing. No resource will be unchecked. The Department of Justice (DoJ) has created a task force of senior national security officials to pursue sedition and conspiracy cases against each of these individuals. The sentences for their alleged crimes could be as long as 20 years, Sherwin says. The probe is one of the most expansive criminal investigations in the history of the Justice Department, with a wide assortment of agencies helping to build cases, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Marshals, Bloomberg reported. All 56 FBI field offices are involved. Why are left-wing terrorists always let off the hook for their crimes? One would think based on all the hysteria that actual terrorists stormed the Capitol building and burned it down with everyone inside, conveniently leaving behind passports pointing to some foreign regime that the military-industrial complex now wants to invade and supersede. In reality, however, it was a ragtag bunch that was intentionally let inside the facility to snap a few photos and make a media spectacle, which hardly qualifies as terrorism unless you consider the mainstream media to be terrorists. Meanwhile, the federal government has done nothing to pursue justice against the hordes of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa terrorists who wreaked violent havoc in the streets of America throughout the summer, including in our nations capital. BLM and Antifa terrorists committed much worse crimes against We the People than anyone who was in D.C. on Jan. 6, in other words. And if We the People are the purveyors of our own government that is by us and for us, then this means that BLM and Antifa terrorists also committed sedition against our country, and need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. BLM has openly admitted that it exists to protect black criminals, many of whom have targeted government buildings and government employees with terrorism. Will they be held accountable with a full-scale counter-terrorism investigation? The answer, of course, is no. Only right-wing patriots, or at least those who pose as them, are ever held to account, and typically to the maximum extent allowable as political punishment. Meanwhile, angry, violent leftists are free to riot, loot and assault people without any retribution because they are brave freedom fighters bucking systemic racism. The false flag raid on the Capitol Building yesterday, led by Antifa and BLM operatives dressed as Trump supporters, set the stage to justify the final betrayal of America as Dems and Republicans voted to install Joe Biden as president, even after irrefutable proof of widespread election rigging and fraud across the swing states, warns Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. The Left is using the storming false flag event to whitewash all evidence of election fraud, he adds. The Left is once again pretending to occupy the moral high ground, even as they operate as criminals and scumbags. More of the latest news about the Capitol false flag siege can be found at FalseFlag.news. Sources for this article include: Archive.fo NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com Guangzhous Liwan district carried out nucleic acid tests throughout Wednesday night and Thursday in a bid to control the spread of Covid-19. The southern metropolis is under pressure to prevent imported infections, after a person was confirmed Friday to have contracted a strain of the coronavirus first found in India. The city reported three new cases, one local and two imported, on Wednesday May 27, 2021 05:09 PM Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Tandav Twitter Reactions: Netizens Share Negative Reviews For Saif Ali Khans Political Drama; Call It Mediocre Ali Abbas Zafars Tandav was undoubtedly one of the most awaited web shows of Amazon Prime Video. The political drama not only marks the filmmakers digital debut but also brings together an ensemble cast of extremely talented actors such as Sunil Grover, Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub among others. Sadly, the web show failed to meet expectations of the audience and many even stopped watching after the first episode. Tandav has also been referred to as anti-national and mediocre. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ali Abbas Zafar (@aliabbaszafar) However, some have lauded Saif and Sunils performances and feel they did justice to their characters. For example, one viewer tweeted: Completed watching #Tandav & To be honest, It's an average one time watch. The political set up was good. But, I personally didn't like the deliberate Glorification of left wing in the series. Performances were top notch, Music was great. Saif and Sunil were awesome. Meanwhile another wrote: Watched 1 Episode for Saif.. Didnt like it. Seems its a Routine Political drama.. Dont want to waste more time on this.. #Tandav is relevant but unengazing. Watch out specially for the superior performances of #SaifAliKhan and Sunil Grover. And yes it has enough materials for Bhakts to trend Boycott Amazon Will keep them busy in next few weeks Debi (@WhoDebi) January 15, 2021 All the politics aside, #Tandav was a very mediocre story. Couldn't make the connection between the student politics plot-thread and the national politics plot-thread at all towards the end. Tarun Balraj (@btarunr) January 15, 2021 #Tandav Hindi Web Series: Watched 1 Episode for Saif.. Didnt like it. Seems its a Routine Political drama.. Dont want to waste more time on this.. pic.twitter.com/80PVw4MUpv Christopher Kanagaraj (@Chrissuccess) January 15, 2021 The OTT #Tandav is used by anti-national gang to glorify the JNU incident and to mock Hindu deities. Their agenda was to defame "Hindus", "Brahman", "Modi", "India". Still, if you favour Secualrism in India, then you are not a true Indian for me. pic.twitter.com/fHwWK7oggS Torchbearer (@belwether_ankur) January 15, 2021 #Tandav review /5 Anti-national, fake secularism Saif acted well and others too. Overall bad writing and direction too.#TandavOnPrime Bad watch pic.twitter.com/Drzq2OFf3Y Aman Rao (@_amanrao) January 15, 2021 #Tandav is poorly written political drama which does not have the novelty or is engaging. Great casting of Saif Ali Khan, Simple Kapadia and Zeeshan Ayub playing his tailor made JNU student role Disappointed with @aliabbaszafar who made Tiger/Sultan pic.twitter.com/Eb1MuPMH6a Satyajith (@satyajithpinku) January 15, 2021 Completed watching #Tandav & To be honest, It's an average one time watch. The political set up was good. But, I personally didn't like the deliberate Glorification of left wing in the series. Performances were top notch Music was great. Saif and Sunil were awesome pic.twitter.com/N7D06U3MTX Aaftab Rehman (@AaftabRehman1) January 15, 2021 #Tandav#TandavOnPrime@vivekagnihotri@KanganaTeam Nothing new to offer.Same stereotypes Bollywood dishes out regularly. Neither original nor intelligent. Shallow, biased web series with same template of bad upper caste, victim minority and Dalits , messiah leftist ...ugh! Shalini Singh (@singhshalini041) January 15, 2021 Saif did tremendously well in his debut web show Sacred Games, which is why many of his fans decided to give Tandav a chance. It is also the first time that comedian Sunil has played such a serious character on-screen. What is your review of Ali Abbas Zafars Tandav? Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed today said the city is taking every step to ensure peace amid calls for protests in capital cities nationwide. I am directing (Police) Chief (Ernest) Finley and the Montgomery Police Department to use every resource at their disposal and authorized extra manpower, Reed said. We have open lines of communication with the Governors Office and have been actively engaged with ALEA for months. In addition, we are working with federal agencies, including the Secret Service and FBI, who have been a source for insight and consultation. Regardless of the challenge, Montgomery is Ready. The FBI has warned of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington, D.C., in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration, stoking fears of more bloodshed after last weeks deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol. Dozens of people gathered peacefully on the steps of the state Capitol on Jan. 6, as rioters breached the nations Capitol, WSFA reported. We need our country. We need our country saved, and we need to support our president, and we need to see him be victorious. And right now, as we speak, theyre rejecting electoral votes. Its awesome news, said Rick Shaver at the Alabama protest, according to WSFA. ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) The University of Central Florida plans to terminate a psychology professor over allegations unrelated to his tweets over the summer that many students described as racist. The investigation found that Charles Negy created a hostile classroom environment, deterred students from filing complaints about his classroom conduct, failed to report that a student said she had been sexually assaulted by one of his teaching assistants and provided false information during the investigation, the Orlando Sentinel reported. The universitys investigation of Negy began over the summer after officials received more than 500 messages about him. The findings led the university to notify Negy on Wednesday that it intends to fire him. Following his tweets over the summer, many students and former students called for the associate professors firing, saying they deemed his posts to be racist, sexist and transphobic. However, the universitys Office of Institutional Equity noted that the First Amendment protects a public employees right to speak about matters of public concern. University spokesman Chad Binette told the newspaper Negys posts did not play a role in the universitys decision to seek his firing. None of the findings in the investigation are a result of Dr. Negys comments on Twitter, which are protected as free expression, or comments in the classroom that were the subject of some students complaints but that the university determined were protected by academic freedom, Binette wrote in an email to the newspaper. Over the past few months, investigators from the university interviewed more than 300 people over the past several months about Negys conduct, reviewed hundreds of documents and listened to many hours of audio, Binette said. I disagree with almost all of the allegations, and thats all I can say right now, Negy told the Orlando Sentinel. Nagy has been on paid administrative leave since Jan. 5 and is not teaching this semester. The university said his termination for misconduct would take effect Jan. 25. Tosha Dupras, the interim dean of UCFs College of Sciences, wrote in a letter to Negy that he has until Jan. 25 to submit a written response to the allegations. Dupras said upon receipt of the response, the university will make a final decision. Dupras said the accusations against Negy are serious, and investigators found that students were hesitant to report incidents because he discouraged them from submitting complaints to the university. You repeatedly gave students the impression that you were insulated from complaints because of tenure, she wrote. University leaders condemned Negys tweets last year, but said the university must honor the principles of free speech and academic freedom. In one post in June, Negy wrote: Sincere question: If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming `systematic racism exists? Over the summer, thousands of people signed online petitions calling for Negys firing. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. 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. Etawah, Jan 15 : Four girls who went missing from Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district earlier this week, have been traced in Mumbai, police said. "The girls, aged between 13 and 18 years, had left their houses on Monday morning for school and were reported missing since then. Their families had lodged a missing complaint with the police. The girls have been traced in Mumbai and a local police team has left for Mumbai to bring back the girls to Etawah," the police said. Three of the four girls are sisters. Inspector, Civil Lines police station, Anjan Kumar Singh, said: "The girls claimed that they had left their houses after quarrelling with their parents owing to some domestic issues." He said that through surveillance, the police managed to track the girls' location in Mumbai. Singh added said that the girls will be questioned after they are brought back to Etawah. Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said her relationship with her counterparts in the other nations of the UK has not been affected (Jeff J Mitchell/PA) Scotlands Health Secretary has apologised to Matt Hancock after her vaccine deployment plan mistakenly published sensitive details about supplies from manufacturers. Jeane Freeman said she regrets publishing the figures for weekly supplies, information which UK Government ministers consider to be commercially confidential. The Scottish Conservatives have accused her of breaching the ministerial code, citing the figures in the deployment plan and Ms Freemans mention of a vaccine storage location in England which the Scottish Government later said should not be reported. Scotlands vaccine deployment plan was temporarily taken offline after UK ministers raised concerns, but it has since been republished without the figures relating to expected weekly supplies from manufacturers Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna. I regret that what was done, with the right intentions I firmly believe, has caused some upset and I apologise for that Jeane Freeman, Scottish Health Secretary The UK Government believes manufacturers may come under pressure from other countries if the UKs allocation of finite supplies is made known. Ms Freeman was asked about the deployment plan during the Scottish Governments coronavirus briefing on Friday. She said: I regret that we published information that the UK Government considers to be sensitive Ive had those conversations with them and respect their view. Weve withdrawn that information and the plan, with that part removed, everything else there is back up on our website. She said the Scottish Government wants to be open with the public about the pandemic, but she takes responsibility for the mistake. She said: From day one, the First Minister said that she wanted to have an adult relationship with the people of Scotland and I think that was exactly the right approach to take. Ms Freeman said she apologised directly to UK Health Secretary Mr Hancock on Thursday evening, saying: I regret that what was done, with the right intentions I firmly believe, has caused some upset and I apologise for that. I am confident that those I have spoken to are now content and we can move on. It has not damaged the relationships between myself and the Secretary of State at UK Government level or my colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland, and I know that because I spoke to all four of them last night. Expand Close UK ministers have concerns that the information could put vaccine suppliers under pressure (Matt Alexander/PA) PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp UK ministers have concerns that the information could put vaccine suppliers under pressure (Matt Alexander/PA) She said decisions relating to alleged breaches of the ministerial code are a matter for the First Minister to consider. The Scottish Conservatives said the code requires those in Government to respect confidentiality and security. The party also referred to a statement Ms Freeman gave in the Scottish Parliament in which she mentioned a vaccine site in England. In a letter to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Tory health spokesman Donald Cameron said: The dissemination of a location involved in the Covid-19 vaccine distribution chain that Scottish Government officials say should not be reported appears to be contrary to the quoted section of the ministerial code. We also have concerns that the publishing of the original Covid-19 vaccination plan, including sensitive figures on the supply of the vaccine, may have also breached the code, particularly since the latest plan states that the Government is unable to provide specific details due to limitations of this being commercially sensitive information. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) A local court has ordered the arrest of nine dismissed cops involved in the fatal shooting of four Army intelligence officers in Jolo, Sulu last year, the Department of Justice confirmed. The warrants of arrest were issued on Friday, days after their release from police custody due to their dismissal from service. Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said the court also granted the DOJ's urgent motion for hold departure orders to prevent the accused from fleeing the country. "I will direct the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) to help implement the service of these court processes," Guevarra said in message to reporters. The four soldiers were on their way to an intelligence mission when they were gunned down by the policemen on June 29. The Sulu Provincial Police Office initially said the cops claimed self-defense, but later in a Senate investigation, the accused admitted they were not sure who fired first between them and the Army officers. The NBI has filed a complaint for murder and planting of evidence against the policemen. The Armed Forces earlier expressed disappointment on the release of the cops, but the Philippine National Police explained they could no longer be held without an arrest warrant since they have been dismissed from service. 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. The federal government through the National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Sani Aliyu, has debunked news that another lockdown is imminent in the country. Mr Aliyu in a video shared on social media said information that the country may impose a lockdown due to spike in COVID-19 cases was not true. We are aware of the message going wrong that we have declared lockdown in the country, this is absolutely not true, Mr Aliyu said. I call on Nigerians to ignore this message and continue with their normal activities and also abide by all non-pharmaceutical measures. In a separate statement signed by Willie Bassey, Director of Information, Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF), the PTF said it was not considering another lockdown. The attention of the Presidential Task Force on COVID -19 has been drawn to some misinformation circulating on the social media to the effect that the Federal Government is contemplating another lockdown this weekend. The PTF wishes to state categorically that there is no such consideration at any of its meetings nor has any recommendation been made to this effect to the President, the statement reads. The statement indicated that such unpatriotic misinformation is capable of causing unnecessary panic and anxiety among the populace. It urged Nigerians to disregard the misinformation and join hands with the government to contain the spread of the virus by adhering to Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) as recommended by the PTF. Lockdown fears Amidst the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic, some Nigerians are worried the government may impose another lockdown in the country. The virus was first detected in Nigeria on February 27, in an Italian engineer that travelled from Milan via Istanbul to Lagos on Turkish Airlines. It took another 11 days for the second case to be confirmed in the country, a contact of the Italian national, on March 9. As more cases were recorded, President Muhammadu Buhari imposed a five-week lockdown on the country in March last year. This was part of measures to limit the spread of the virus. Amidst high concerns of the rapid spread of the new COVID-19 variant found in the United Kingdom (UK) and some parts of the world, there are concerns for restrictions of incoming flights. Nigeria was one of the last countries to shut its airport activities during the first wave of the pandemic, a decision some said should have been taken earlier to curtail the spread of the virus. The reason Nigeria took a harder than necessary hit during the first wave of the #COVID19 virus is that the Federal Government failed to heed the warnings of well-meaning Nigerians, like myself and others, to shut down our borders once the virus became a pandemic, Atiku Abubakar, a former presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wrote on Twitter. He said the new strain could further add to the countrys health emergency if flights to and from the affected countries are not halted. We must learn from history or we stand the risk of repeating it, Mr Abubakar said. ADVERTISEMENT As a follow up, federal authorities announced new travel rules for passengers coming in from South Africa and the United Kingdom, countries where the new variant of the virus is currently causing panic and concern. Mr Aliyu said that a special register would be open at the airports for passengers from these two countries specifically to track and ensure they present for COVID test on day seven. He said effective from Monday, December 28th, all passengers coming into the country from the UK and South Africa on direct flights, must use the Nigerian International Travel Portal to register, fill in the health questionnaire and must upload a negative COVID-19 PCR result with a validity of not more than five days and must pay for a COVID PCR test at day seven of arrival in country without which they will not be allowed to board the flights. Increasing cases On Sunday, Nigeria crossed the grim milestone of over 100, 000 infections as health officials call for stricter enforcement of safety measures. The 1,398 new cases recorded on Wednesday pushed the total number of infections in the country to 103,999 One in every six persons (16 per cent) tested for COVID-19 in Nigeria in the past two weeks tested positive for the virus, indicating how far the virus has spread. PREMIUM TIMES review of official data showed that Nigeria set a weekly record of reporting about 10,000 cases last week. The spike in infections is resulting in fatalities. Nine people died from the disease on Wednesday, taking the death toll to 1,382 in total. LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- History was made in 2007, as the History Channel premiered their first ever full-length documentary, diving into the hidden secrets of Naples via Naples Underground (Napoli Sotterranea) founded and run by lead Speleologist Enzo Albertini. The program, titled "The Secret Cities'' begins at a depth of 6 metres, in the excavations of San Lorenzo, traveling all the way into the Decumani area, situated below the Spanish Quarters. Naples Underground (Napoli Sotterranea) founded and run by Enzo Albertini appears on the History Channel. Naples Underground (Napoli Sotterranea) founded and run by Enzo Albertini appears on the History Channel. The program aired on Sky channel 406, quite the momentous occasion as it was the first time the History Channel shot a documentary on Naples. In the past, they had only broadcast an in-depth study on the Napoli Liberation, a program which was made up of local footage and computer reconstructions of the Pompeii eruption, but no real footage was shot at the time. This time, the History Channel documentary was filmed by a cohort of American television producers led by Executive Producer Dolores Gavin, accompanied by Producers Sarah Wetherbee and Emre Sahin who worked with Vincenzo Albertini to explore the underground city in a way which also tells the stories of a world long ago and their rich history. Their relationship and conversations with Mr. Albertini over the course of their many days and excursions there, allowed for an in-depth level of conversation into which aspects of Italy's great history accounts for the current geological marvels that exist within Naples Underground (Napoli Sotterranea). It was especially in these moments of conversation, that we see a National hero and honorary Tourism Ambassador Vincenzo Albertini shining through in his depth of knowledge and ability to paint such an inviting sense of adventure and intrigue over the city of Naples. This dynamic troupe of storytellers, begin their journey by visiting the Pompeii excavations and showing the entire world how Naples was saved from the eruption of 79AC. They then make their way into the entrance of the Anticaglia house, from a trap door which descends into the stalls of the Roman theater, the remains of the Teatro di Nero. The tour then continues under the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Naples where the Seat of San Lorenzo was born and where the remains of the columns of the ancient Court can still be seen today. At each of these great points in the unique landscape, Vincenzo Albertini continues to supply extensive insight into exactly which geological features we are seeing at the moment in time and also giving us the historical context, seamlessly merging story, lore and geology, bringing it into the Naples Underground (Napoli Sotterranea) of today. After exploring the secrets hidden in the underground, the History Channel cameras arrive in the hypogeum of Naples and for the first time they show the city. This momentous broadcast of Naples to the world was celebrated by Italians everywhere and a special salute was given to Vincenzo Albertini and his team. Instagram @napoisotterraanea Contact: Lizzie Maria +44 (0) 7570 82 0089 [email protected] SOURCE Napoli Sotterranea 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. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. As President Trumps White House days dwindled, he took strong action to shore up measures that will make the asylum process more secure and less fraudulent. The Department of Homeland Security issued a new set of guidelines that went into effect nine days before President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration and will ensure border crossers dont bypass asylum in other safe countries specifically to gain U.S. admission. Most migrants deem the U.S. a nation that offers more generous affirmative benefit programs than other possible destinations, and is therefore a preferred landing spot. For the most part, the updated DHS regulations will reinforce the existing Remain in Mexico directive and U.S. Code Title 42, which require that prospective border crossers, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador seeking U.S. asylum through the Southwestern border will first have to request asylum in Mexico. In March, the Supreme Court ruled that remain in Mexico could stay in effect. President Trumps critics call the new regulations death to asylum and draconian, predicting that the revised rules will make it more difficult for migrants to pass a credible fear claim. Toughening up on unverifiable, hearsay credible fear allegations is a goal that every U.S. citizen should hail. Understanding why tighter asylum procedures are necessary, especially in light of assembling Central American caravans headed north, is important. The website Immigration Equality explained that once a migrant arrives at a designated U.S. port of entry without a visa, he can claim that he fears returning home would endanger his life. At that point, an asylum officer must grant an interview, during which he will inquire about explicit fears. The asylum officer presumes that the information gathered is all true. If the asylum officer finds that a person does not have credible fear of persecution, ICE may remove that person. But an asylum seeker has two more chances at a favorable ruling. He can challenge the asylum officers finding before an immigration judge, who will review from scratch the original finding, and then make a de novo decision. If the second judge also rules against the asylum seeker, a third re-interview or a reconsideration of the original finding may be requested.Although not often granted, the weeks and months that elapse between the first and third requests present ample time for the migrant to disappear into the general population, where his deportation likelihood is slim. Tellingly, nearly 90% of those who claim credible fear when they arrive at the border pass the initial screening. But then, immigration judges grant asylum to less than 20%, and for Central Americans, the total drops to less than 10%. Over the last several years, credible fear claims have soared as smugglers and immigration advocacy groups have taken advantage of legal loopholes that clog up the asylum processing system and, in the process, ensnare valid petitioners whose likely approval claims become backlogged for years. Through October, there were 1.3 million cases pending in immigration court, and 43% were asylum claims. Most migrants come to the U.S. for economic or family reunification reasons, neither valid for asylum. In 2019, the anti-Trump, pro-immigration New York Times debunked migrants credible fear claims. In More Migrants Are Crossing the Border This Year, the Times story stated that murder rates in the Northern Triangle countries have been declining in recent years, and economic imperatives are believed to be the most important push factor for the majority of recent arrivals. Given the evidence that the Times and immigration analysts have laid out, which cast doubts on credible fear allegations, objections to migrants staying in a safe country while the U.S. considers their asylum appeals are ill-advised and partisan. Word that Biden will reverse President Trumps policy that returns asylum seekers to Mexico has spread throughout Central America. Predictably, large migrant groups are traveling north or have formed at the border. Biden would do well to leave President Trumps safe nation policy in place until he comes up with a more manageable plan. Otherwise, Biden will begin his presidency coping with a chaotic border influx similar to the ones that plagued Obamas administration in 2014 and 2016. As Mark Morgan, the acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner ruefully told The Washington Times: The unfortunate groundwork for a new border crisis has already begun. Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. He can be reached at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. But a bipartisan commissions sincere effort to restore faith in our election system is a good way for a new president to encourage the millions who voted against him, and still doubt the legitimacy of his victory, to take a fresh look at the November election, and perhaps grudgingly appreciate a heartfelt attempt to protect the integrity of future ones. The Ohio General Assemblys 2019-20 session, which ended Dec. 31, was notable not for what it did, but for what it failed to do. The Senate failed to pass a highly promising school-funding reform the House backed. Neither chamber acted to repeal House Bill 6, the nuclear power plant bailout passed in 2019. Last summer, a federal grand jury indicted then-House Speaker Larry Householder and four other Statehouse figures for $60 million worth of alleged pay-to-play corruption in connection with HB 6. And the legislature didnt rein in so-called dark money political contributions whose donors arent publicly revealed. Nor are there signs on the horizon the new 134th General Assembly is ready to act to repeal or replace HB 6 or to get to the bottom, itself, of the regulatory and political failings that allowed this goodie bag for FirstEnergy and its then-subsidiary operating the nuclear plants to sail through the legislature in record time. It took the courts to step in to halt the ratepayer subsidies that were due to start Jan. 1. Its not that the legislature is poorly paid. Far from it. Thanks to a 3% raise passed in late 2018 that took effect this year, the base salary for state representatives and state senators is now $67,493, for a part-time job. Caucus leadership jobs or committee chairmanships add pay on top of that -- allowing the House speaker and Senate president to award choice committee leadership posts to loyalists. The only time many Ohioans hear about state legislators is when she or he ballyhoos a newly introduced bill. That may well be the point: publicity, not policy. While numbers arent final, it appears that perhaps only one in ten bills introduced in 2019 and 2020 reached Gov. Mike DeWines desk. Bystanders sometimes argue that the less legislators do, the safer taxpayers are. But school funding is still a mess, so Ohios future its school pupils arent better off. Nor are Ohio voters, still propagandized with dark money. To genuinely serve Ohioans, rather than special-interest lobbyists, Ohios new General Assembly, the 134th, needs to do much better than its predecessor. About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization. Have something to say about this topic? * Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication. * Email general questions about our editorial board or comments or corrections on this editorial to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com. The Cheltenham Festival is as much an Irish institution as it is a British one. Whether it's the big-hitters like Willie Mullins and the Riccis, Gordon Elliott and the O'Learys, or the smalltime Irish trainers and owners with the horse of a lifetime, a ticket to Cheltenham is the holy grail. That ticket is now far more expensive in the post-Brexit era with owners facing VAT bills if bringing horses from Ireland into the UK for any race meeting. That's according to a report in the Racing Post where Irish training supremo Willie Mullins is quoted as saying VAT bills required stand at 19% the value of the horse itself. Irish-owned and trained racehorses are among the best in the world and often fetch sums far-exceeding six figures. That means VAT bills for owners could extend to tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands for those with multiple horses. Almost 200 Irish horses cross the Irish Sea to compete at Cheltenham every year with the Prestbury Cup tally of Irish vs British winners a running commentary thread throughout the week in Gloucestershire. That could become a foregone conclusion in future years if these mounting costs exclude some Irish runners. Speaking to the Racing Post, Willie Mullins explained that the VAT charges are refundable but could take months to be returned, meaning the financial burden, although temporary, could result in some owners revising plans of a Cheltenham raid with their horse. "I'm told we have to pay 19 per cent of her value in VAT and we mightn't get that back for three months so that would be a bit of a worry," the Carlow handler said. He said the sums of money involved would have to be "colossal" and he doesn't believe it is sustainable, adding, "there has to be a better mechanism in place for Cheltenham." Cheltenham Racecourse owner, Jockey Club Racecourses, told the newspaper that they are working on finding a solution since becoming aware of it. Nevertheless, the situation for the 2021 festival, due to take place in March, is very much uncertain for Irish connections. Avenues being explored for possible solutions by Jockey Club Racecourses include "working with the various authorities, including Horse Racing Ireland, to seek to resolve financial burdens." In response to our requests, a spokesperson for Horse Racing Ireland said: "Ireland is the worlds largest exporter of thoroughbreds, as well as having some of the best horses in training in the world. Anything that impacts on the movement of horses into and out of the country or impinges on that trade was always going to cause great concern, which is why we have consistently spoken about the great difficulties that Brexit would cause for Irelands racing and breeding industry. "VAT is one of a number of issues that have already arisen for both horse racing and breeding, as in many other industries. Horse Racing Ireland is working with the relevant bodies, both here and in Britain, to deal with the consequences of the new environment which follows their departure from the Single Market and the Customs Union," they concluded. [January 15, 2021] Bold Group Brings Productivity to the Field with Launch of Sedona-X Mobile Financial Management App for SedonaOffice Colorado Springs, Colo. , Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bold Group, an industry-leading purveyor of event monitoring, business automation, and cybersecurity solutions for the electronic security industry, has launched Sedona-X Mobile , a financial management application that integrates with Bolds SedonaOffice software, the premier enterprise-level financial management system designed specifically for the security industry. The Sedona-X Mobile app provides security companies with the ability to streamline field service management and dial up productivity of technicians in the field on an Android or iOS device. Sedona-X Mobile can accept immediate, secure, PCI-compliant payments from anywhere. Credit card and ACH payments can be done within the app, and an optional, PCI-compliant Bluetooth card reader is also available. Sedona-X Mobile offers biometric data security including face and/or fingerprint recognition for a secure, functional experience. The ability to accept payments in the field has been an important priority for our customers and were excited to be able to offer this feature securely in Sedona-X Mobile, said Alison Forsythe, Presidentof Bold Group. This immediate, mobile payment capability will help our security customers boost revenue, as well as their overall productivity. With several project management features, SedonaOffice users can easily manage customer interactions from start to finish within the Sedona-X Mobile application . Some of the key productivity features include the ability to: Manage calendars and appointments Instantly access customer equipment and service history Manage dispatches and arrivals Add parts and notes to work orders Capture photos and signatures Sedona-X Mobile is available on both iOS and Android. For more information on Sedona-X Mobile and additional features, please visit: https://pages.boldgroup.com/sedona-x-mobile/ # # # About Bold Group For over three decades, the Bold Group has served the electronic security industry with the most comprehensive array of alarm monitoring and integrated financial management solutions tailored to achieve optimal business performance. Bold Groups product portfolio features the renowned alarm monitoring systems Manitou, stages, and SIMS. These leading alarm monitoring systems are complemented by the industrys top accounting and business management systems: the SedonaOffice suite and the bestselling AlarmBiller system. For more information on Bold Group, visit www.boldgroup.com or call 1-800-255-BOLD. Media Contact: Jill Petersen (206) 683-5225 Jill.Petersen@ballardcomms.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] 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 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. 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. Ministry said getting vaccinated will be voluntary. The Union Health Ministry has informed all states and union territories that interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines is not permitted, and pregnant and lactating women should not be administered the shots as they have not been part of any anti-coronavirus vaccine clinical trial so far. The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had recently granted emergency use authorisation to two COVID-19 vaccines Covishield, developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin. India will launch its COVID-19 vaccination drive from January 16 in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called the world's largest inoculation programme. Ahead of the vaccination drive, in a letter to all states and UTs, the ministry highlighted that under the emergency use authorisation, coronavirus vaccination is indicated only for 18 years and above. 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 Follow our LIVE blog for the latest updates of the novel coronavirus pandemic Around three lakh healthcare and frontline workers will be inoculated at 2,934 sites across the country on the first day of the nationwide vaccination drive. The ministry has already said that getting vaccinated for COVID-19 will be voluntary. Here are all developments related to the COVID-19 vaccine in India: > A consignment of an anti-COVID vaccine comprising its 93,000 doses reached Himachal Pradesh's capital Shimla on January 14, said State Health Secretary Amitabh Avasthi. The consignment of Covishield vaccine had been airlifted from Pune to Chandigarh, from where it was brought to Shimla by road, he said. > A consignment of 18,500 COVID-19 vaccines, to be used in the first phase of inoculation, arrived in Aizawl from New Delhi on the day. > The first consignment of 32,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Arunachal Pradesh in a vaccine van from Guwahati on the day. Also read | India's COVID-19 vaccine: Who'll get it, when and how - All you need to know > Nagaland received its first consignment of 26,500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, said an official. The vials arrived from Delhi at Dimapur Airport in an aircraft, he said. > A Maharashtra government official has said it will take six to seven months for the vaccine to become available for those who are not in the high-risk category. > Around 1.62 lakh COVID-19 vaccine has reached all the 24 districts of Jharkhand for the scheduled first phase of the vaccination drive on January 16, according to a top Health department official. (With inputs from PTI) Follow our full coverage on COVID-19 here 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. [January 15, 2021] Coloradans Prep for Virtual Celebration as Governor Polis Proclaims Jan. 24-Jan. 30 "Colorado School Choice Week" DENVER, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gov. Jared Polis' recent recognition of Jan. 24-Jan. 30 as Colorado School Choice Week marks the eighth time in ten years that the state's governor has proclaimed the Week. Around the country, National School Choice Week raises awareness about opportunity in K-12 education, encouraging information-sharing and celebration of learning options. This year, parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 499 virtual or socially-distanced activities across the state of Colorado, including a car parade, a drive-in movie screening, and virtual events. These activities aim to spark conversations about the educational opportunities families have, or want to have. More than 33,000 virtual or socially-distanced events have been independently planned for the week nationwide, attesting to parents' enduring commitment to seeking flexible choices for their children. "This Week is a reminder tht we can work toward a future where every child is challenged and inspired by their education," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We wish Coloradans a very happy National School Choice Week and thank Gov. Polis for his recognition." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/colorado . View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coloradans-prep-for-virtual-celebration-as-governor-polis-proclaims-jan-24-jan-30-colorado-school-choice-week-301208082.html SOURCE National School Choice Week GARDAI have confirmed they are investigating allegations that a person claiming to be Minister of State Patrick ODonovan was abusive towards staff at a County Limerick hotel after they were unable to make a reservation before Christmas. The probe, which is being carried out by gardai in Newcastle West, relates to a phone call which was made to the Rathkeale House Hotel on the evening of December 13, 2020. It is understood a complaint has been received that a caller became abusive and aggressive when they were informed there was no availability and that their request for a reservation in the restaurant could not be accommodated. During the call, the individual is alleged to have suggested that he was the Fine Gael TD and minister of state with responsibility for the OPW. When contacted by the Limerick Leader, a garda spokesperson confirmed that an investigation is underway into an alleged breach of the Postal and Telecommunications Act 1983. Its understood phone records will be obtained as part of the investigation and that gardai will also speak with members of staff who were working at the hotel on the night. Mr ODonovan has confirmed that he is aware of the garda investigation but that he will not be making any further comment. Its a garda matter, he said. Every week the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is compiling a list of the top news articles from across the world in which it is mentioned. Check all the international media coverage of IFJ, divided by language, in the period between 8 and 15 January, 2021 US prosecutors now believe supporters of President Donald Trump planned to "capture and assassinate elected officials" in their siege of the Capitol building last week, according to a new court filing. The filing, submitted by Justice Department lawyers late Thursday, sought the detention of Jacob Chansley of Arizona, the QAnon conspiracy theorist pictured in the riot dressed as a horned shaman at the desk of Vice President Mike Pence. "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government," prosecutors said of the January 6 siege. They said Chansley, 33, left a note for Pence at the dais in the Senate Chamber where the second-in-command had been standing just minutes before, which read: "it's only a matter of time, justice is coming." The filing gives further insight into the FBI probe on the day of chaos at the center of American democracy, which left elected officials holed up fearing for their lives and at least five people dead, including one police officer. It comes as authorities lay charges against individuals involved in the riot, including a man who flew the confederate flag inside the building, a man who wore a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt and a US Olympic swimming gold medalist. Chansley is due to appear in court on Friday. Prosecutors said he is a regular drug user and likely has mental health problems. "Chansley has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality," the filing read. Prosecutors requested he be detained as he "poses serious risks of flight and danger to the community." Chansley subscribes to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory blamed for fueling a section of Trump's supporters at the Capitol building. Social media platforms have started cracking down on its followers, who believe Trump is waging a secret war on a liberal cult of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Story continues In a bipartisan vote, Trump was impeached Wednesday for "incitement of insurrection" by egging on a huge crowd of his supporters to march on Congress. The center of Washington was in lockdown early Friday as more than 20,000 armed National Guard troops were mobilized after officials warned of the threat of more violence at the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, as well as in state capitals. jfx/rma Anyone hoping that they would be rolling the dice in a luxury Texas casino or openly smoking marijuana in 2021 can keep dreaming, because the state isn't poor enough, according to one media executive. The casino industry has flooded the Texas Capitol with cash and lobbyists hoping to pick the plum and 20 bills have been introduced aimed at legalizing marijuana in the state with the hope that budget shortfalls caused by COVID-19 would push the state over the hump. (Natural News) In order to design more advanced robots, researchers from the Penn State Department of Mechanical Engineering are looking at one unlikely animal for inspiration: fish. We essentially want to study locomotion in fluids, by learning how fish swim and then use that fundamental knowledge to optimize robotic swimming, Bo Cheng, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, said. Cheng and Asok Ray, a professor of mechanical engineering, will be acting as principal investigators in a bid to develop a bio-inspired robot fish platform, as well as the corresponding learning algorithm needed to control and optimize its movements in underwater environments. Cheng and Ray, for this project, will be working in collaboration with the University of Houston and the University of Virginia. As reported by Penn State, researchers from the University of Houston will develop a stretchable skin peppered with sensors which will then gather flow and pressure data while the robot is moving within the water. Researchers at the University of Virginia, meanwhile, will study the physics of the fluid and its corresponding impact on the structure of the robot. According to Cheng, data from both Houston and Virginia will be used to improve the robot they are building at Penn State, making it a truly collaborative project. For instance, Penn States robot fish platform will use the sensors developed by Houston to detect nearby objects and adjust its path accordingly. At the same time, it will use the data from Virginia to optimize the control strategy of the robots movement in the fluid. Through this collaboration, the key problem we hope to understand is the fundamental nature of fluid-structure interaction in the context of underwater locomotion, investigated as a biologically-inspired, cyber-physical system, Cheng said. Cheng, in an earlier statement, noted that their research findings will have the potential to enhance biologically inspired robotics that can glean more information in shallow, murky underwater environments where visual and sonar systems could prove difficult to use. The idea is inspired by what animals can do, Cheng stated, noting that fish can perceive even the smallest changes in pressure, such as a fisherman casting a line on the surface of the water. As noted in the Penn State report, the project will be funded for three years by the NSF Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program, which supports extensive research into systems that focus on the seamless integration of computational and physical components. The work is truly in the spirit of CPS, it merges the physical challenges of moving within water and how the different disciplines inside the robot are sensing, controlling and learning, Ray said. According to Cheng and Ray, by taking this deep dive into the physics of fish locomotion, they hope to make discoveries that will influence a new understanding of robotics development. For instance, the researchers said, their studies could help improve search-and-rescue missions in the ocean or in confined underwater environments or even help develop nanoscale technology that could deliver medical treatments by swimming in blood vessels. Swim to the future? This wont be the first fish-inspired creation to make a splash in the robotics scene. The Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), for instance, unveiled SoFi a soft robotic fish that can independently swim alongside real fish in the ocean in 2018; while researchers from Cornell University in New York revealed a working robotic lionfish powered by artificial blood early last year. (Related: Updating fluid-powered machines: Scientists design bizarre-looking lionfish powered by a blood-like compound.) SoFi, according to its creators, can be used to track elusive creatures in the depths of the ocean, making it easier for humans to document endangered species without subjecting them to unnecessary stress. The robot is capable of close observations and interactions with marine life and appears to not be disturbing to real fish, CSAILs Daniela Rus said. The Cornell robot, on the other hand, will be used to check the feasibility of using liquid batteries that can be used to power different types of machines in the future. For more stories about advances in the field of robotics, visit Robots.news. Sources include: Newswise.com News.Engr.PSU.edu News.MIT.edu There is no main lead in Tandav India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: There is no main lead in "Tandav", says actor Gauahar Khan who believes that the highlight of the upcoming political drama is the diversity of its massive ensemble cast. Created and directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, the nine-part political drama is set in Delhi and aims to take viewers inside the closed, chaotic corridors of power and uncover the manipulations, charades as well as the dark secrets of people who will go to any lengths in pursuit of power. The show also stars Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Kumud Mishra, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub, and Sunil Grover, among others. Bollywood actor Sonu Sood meets NCP chief Sharad Pawar in Mumbai Khan, known for her work in films like "Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year" and "Ishaqzaade", said Zafar treated every actor at par with each other. "There is not a single lead or one character that can drive this kind of a series. The strength of this series is the variety of characters that come in and add to the story. "I think he is smart enough to know how important each element is for the show. And that's how he treated us even on set. Each character was given such weightage on the show that it was really impressive," the 37-year-old actor told PTI in an interview. Khan said she realised the large scale of the series when Zafar, known for directing blockbusters like "Tiger Zinda Hai" and "Sultan", sent her the script. "I was like, 'Wow, this is a huge show with so many characters.' At the time, I didn't know who was going to play which character. I just knew that there will be a lot of very strong characters and my part is one of them. "And when I got to know that Saif is on board with such an amazing cast and finally Dimple ma'am came towards the end, I was very excited." Khan, who plays Maithili Sharan, the confidante of Kapadia's politician Anuradha Kishore on the series, said she loved portraying a character that remains "calm in the storm". "She's not someone who would panic and come under pressure, and that is why she is so close to Dimple ma'am's character Anuradha. Maithili is a special character to me because of this overall power that she has in this game of power." The actor was all praise for Zafar, who represents the new crop of directors in the industry. "He is very new age and does not have the typical Bollywood mindset that only men can lead a film. He understood the essence of the show. Actor Esha Deol's Instagram account hacked "One of the strongest points of 'Tandav' is that there are so many women who play really strong characters. It is interesting to watch even women in power. So, it's not just for effect. It is actually what 'Tandav' is all about." Since her debut with "Rocket Singh" in 2009, Khan has been quite selective with her projects. Her last feature was the 2017 period drama "Begum Jaan", alongside Vidya Balan. "I'm not choosy but I do relate to quality. For me, the kind of production house and the people I'm working with matters a lot. Every year, I have done projects that have stood out. So for me, quality matters and not that I should just keep churning out things back to back." "Tandav" is also Khan's first project to come out since her Christmas wedding with dancer Zaid Darbar. "I found love and got married in a year like 2020. My life is always about being happy and positive. That's how I have been and that's how I plan to lead it in the future as well." Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News "Tandav" started streaming on Amazon Prime Video from Friday. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 11:01 [IST] 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. Photo: BIV Huawei Technologies CFO Meng Wanzhou appearing outside a Vancouver courthouse with security staff from Lions Gate Risk Management The bail hearings for Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. CFO Meng Wanzhou this month may be considered to be not a main part of the extradition fight between the Chinese tech executive and U.S. authorities seeking her arrest, but testimonies revealed several noteworthy tidbits about Mengs stay in Vancouver including the fact she had been threatened by at least one individual. The revelation came during the bail hearings before Justice William Ehrcke, where witness Doug Maynard president and COO of Lions Gate Risk Management, the company appointed by the court to prevent Meng from leaving Vancouver in order for her to partake in the extradition hearings confirmed there were instances of threatening letters being mailed to Mengs residence in Shaughnessy in the months of June and July of this year. At that time... there were a number of threatening letters coming by mail, Maynard said. They were easily identifiable by markings on the outside, and we were working with Vancouver Police hand in hand to attempt to seek out evidence thats as pristine as possible. In liaison with Ms. Meng, it was agreed that our staff would receive the mail... and on their guidance we would open the letter. They [Mengs staff] would then give a quick translation confirming the letter is a threatening one. Sometimes, there were bullets inside the envelopes, so we want to secure that evidence as best we could. The threats were serious enough to catch the attention of Beijing, who tried to intervene to ensure Mengs safety, Maynard told the court. In the beginning of our risk assessment process, we identified numerous risks, Maynard said. Some were of physical harm to Ms. Meng, her family, her staff in the form of threatening letters delivered to her residence. At the beginning, when the threats were investigated, there was an immediate demand made through Global Affairs Canada to have Ms. Meng return to China because of the threats... That request was made from Chinese consul to Global Affairs. That was not the only instance where Chinese officials may have been involved in facilitating Mengs departure from Canada if she were allowed to leave legally, court heard. Back in May, while awaiting the decision on dual criminality in the extradition case, there were reports that Mengs side may have anticipated victory and a stay of proceedings, leading to a group of Meng and her associates taking a victory photo in front of the provincial court house in Vancouver days before the decision was due. This weeks testimony also revealed that had Meng been freed after winning the dual-criminality argument someone had chartered a Boeing 777 passenger jet from China Southern Airlines, ready to take the Huawei executive back to China directly after Meng leaves the court house after the decision. I was asked to prepare a plan for the eventuality of a pending [flight] at the Vancouver International Airport for her departure, Maynard told the court. ... I liaise with the Vancouver International Airport support staff as well as the RCMP on-site, and we were eventually able to determine that the plane would be a commercial-grade aircraft a Boeing 777 that was being charted by the Chinese government. While Maynard said airport staff and officials told him of the origins of the flight, Meng defence lawyer Bill Smart countered by saying it was no secret that a plane was coming to pick Meng up in Vancouver, adding that it may not have been Beijing who ordered the plane. If I suggested to you that the plane was chartered by a subsidiary of Huawei, are you in a position to disagree with that? Smart asked Maynard. No, Im not, Maynard replied, noting the information on who chartered the plane was given to him by Lions Gate resources on the ground at YVR. Regardless of who chartered the flights, the information is irrelevant, argued Meng defence lawyer Mona Duckett who noted Meng had zero violations of bail conditions during her two years in Vancouver besides one minor incident of attempting to fix a broken heat lamp on a patio at her home after 10 p.m. There are no guarantees in this business, Duckett said. There can be no guarantee that Ms. Meng will remain and comply. However, to suggest that she would intentionally make herself a fugitive by fleeing instead of continuing to vigorously fight this extradition... is not a realistic risk, in our respectful submission. The Meng defence also called into question Lions Gates motivation in testifying against Mengs application to loosen bail conditions, which would allow her to shed Lions Gates security detail during daytime outings outside her home and to drive herself around Vancouver (instead of always being escorted in a Lions Gate vehicle). Testimony revealed a complex relationship between Meng and Lions Gate. The latter was sought out by Mengs Vancouver lawyers after her arrest in December 2018 to satisfy the initial bail conditions addressing Mengs potential flight risk. But testimony revealed that the two sides signed an expanded agreement in January 2019 for Lions Gate to provide additional protection to Meng specifically her home outside of bail conditions. Smart noted and Maynard agreed that Meng and Lions Gate did not always see eye-to-eye on what security measures are necessary, and Maynard admitted there was tension at times stemming from those disagreements. That expanded agreement was thus terminated in July 2020 although Lions Gate continues to provide its court-appointed duties of safeguarding against the risk of Meng leaving Vancouver before her hearings conclude. Smart further contended in court that Lions Gate is estimated to lose about $170,000 in monthly revenue if the bail conditions are loosened, which meant Meng would no longer be required to pay for a security detail during her daytime public outings. That, Smart argued, may be part of the rationale for Maynards stance during bail hearings testimonies. When asked by Crown counsel John Gibb-Carsley whether being paid by Meng affects Lions Gates duty to the court, Maynard emphasized the security firms priority is to follow the courts orders on bail conditions, no matter who is footing the bill. In this case, I think it gives a perception that because [Meng] is paying that they determine the measures that are at play, Maynard said. I believe it has to be us who determine the least intrusive way to enforce bail conditions in a most reasonable way. Its somewhat tricky, and I dont blame them [Mengs team] for feeling that way. But its just the nature of how the arrangement is. Ehrcke is expected to issue his decision on Mengs bid to loosen bail conditions on Jan. 29. Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Doctors have expressed fears over 'fake news' causing South Asian people to reject the Covid vaccine over false claims that the jabs contain alcohol or meat and can alter patients' DNA. It comes as Leeds-based Imam Qari Asim, who is chair of Mosque and Imams National Advisory Board, said a slow uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine within Muslim communities could 'fan the flames of Islamophobia'. Dr Harpreet Sood, a Global Digital Health Advisor, said language and cultural boundaries are partly responsible for the false material spread via social media and WhatsApp. The practising doctor is working on an NHS anti-disinformation campaign with South Asian influencers and religious leaders to disprove myths about the jab. Much of the false information appears to be targeted at Muslims, who do not drink alcohol or eat pork, and Hindus, who consider cows to be sacred. An undated document released by Sage on Friday found 'marked difference existed by ethnicity, with black ethnic groups the most likely to be Covid-19 hesitant, followed by Pakistani/Bangladeshi groups'. Dr Harpreet Sood (pictured), who is NHS England's Associate Chief Clinical Information Officer, said language and cultural boundaries are partly responsible for the false material A recent study showed 57 per cent of people from BAME backgrounds would be likely to take a Covid-19 jab if advised to by their GP or health professional (file photo) It follows research from last month suggesting that people from minority ethnic backgrounds are significantly less likely to take the Covid vaccine. Dr Sood told the BBC: 'We need to be clear and make people realise there is no meat in the vaccine, there is no pork in the vaccine, it has been accepted and endorsed by all the religious leaders and councils and faith communities.' He added: 'We're trying to find role models and influencers and also thinking about ordinary citizens who need to be quick with this information so that they can all support one another because ultimately everyone is a role model to everyone.' Around 100 mosques are using Friday prayers to raise coronavirus awareness and dispel myths around vaccinations, and Imams have agreed to be filmed being vaccinated in a bid to 'inspire confidence' in their communities and show that jabs are permissible and halal. The congregation at the Makka Mosque in Leeds. Imam Qari Asim said a slow uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine within Muslim communities could 'fan the flames of Islamophobia' Imam Asim said: 'Some of the campaigns that have been run - we are seeing that because of the webinars, people are changing their views on these vaccines and there is a greater uptake of these vaccines in the Muslim communities. Imams to use Friday prayers to dispel Covid vaccine myths Around 100 mosques are using Friday prayers to raise coronavirus awareness and dispel myths around vaccinations. The campaign, run by the Mosque and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), will also include Imams and community leaders filming themselves being vaccinated to reassure communities the jabs are permissible and vital to defeat the virus. Leeds-based Imam Qari Asim, who is chair of MINAB, said: 'MINAB strongly recommends people to take the vaccines. 'The Covid vaccines administered in the UK are halal, permissible from Islamic perspective, and there should be no hesitation in taking them from a moral perspective. 'MINAB is advocating this position through its proactive endeavour for the BAME communities to be vaccinated, as BAME communities are at very high risk of being infected by this lethal virus.' Imam Asim has written a special sermon which tackles some of the 'fake news' about the vaccine which is circulating on social media. 'My message to Muslim communities is to make an informed choice and take up the offer when their turn for being vaccinated comes,' he said. 'Don't miss the opportunity by believing in 'fake news' about the vaccines. 'It is our ethical duty to protect ourselves and others from potential harm. 'By taking the vaccine, we are protecting ourselves and others from being infected by this deadly virus that is sweeping through our country and potentially saving lives.' Advertisement 'Misinformation can result in someone losing their life and it is one of the core principles of Islam that protection of life is extremely important. 'My message to Muslim communities is that it is our ethical obligation, moral duty to take the vaccine whenever the opportunity arises.' False information was reportedly shared through social media and WhatsApp messages, wrongly claiming the vaccine contains meat or alcohol. Iman Asim added: 'We saw that happen in the first lockdown when the mosques were closed, but actually an extreme far-right was spreading rumours and misinformation using historic footage to say that mosques are open. 'We don't want any community to be scapegoated during this pandemic. 'I think it's extremely concerning that even during this pandemic there are people that are exploiting opportunities and also spreading misinformation online and scapegoating communities.' Dr Samara Afzal, who works in Dudley, West Midlands, said many South Asian patients have been refusing appointments when offered the vaccination. Reena Pujara, a Hindu beauty therapist from Hampshire, said her social media has been flooded with the 'fake news'. She said: 'Some of the videos are quite disturbing especially when you actually see the person reporting is a medic and telling you that the vaccine is going to alter your DNA.' Iman Asim, who is chair of MINAB, said: 'MINAB strongly recommends people to take the vaccines. 'The Covid vaccines administered in the UK are halal, permissible from Islamic perspective, and there should be no hesitation in taking them from a moral perspective. 'MINAB is advocating this position through its proactive endeavour for the BAME communities to be vaccinated, as BAME communities are at very high risk of being infected by this lethal virus.' A recent study showed three-quarters (76 per cent) of the British public would take a Covid-19 jab if advised to by their GP or health professional, according to polling for the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH). This fell to 57 per cent of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds who would be likely to, compared with 79 per cent of white respondents. Imam Asim (pictured) has written a special sermon which tackles some of the 'fake news' about the vaccine which is circulating on social media Confidence was lowest among respondents of Asian ethnicity, with 55 per cent likely to say yes to a jab. The RSPH previously said there was an issue with anti-vaccination messages being 'targeted at different groups, including different ethnic or religious communities', adding that these groups 'continue to be most at risk of getting ill and most at risk of dying'. And 70 per cent of the lowest earners were likely to say yes to a vaccine, compared with 84 per cent of the highest earners. Men were more likely to get the jab than women, and 14 per cent of Londoners said they would be 'very unlikely' to get vaccinated - the highest proportion in the UK. Overall, just 8 per cent of those surveyed said they would be very unlikely to take a coronavirus vaccine. BAME respondents who said they were not willing to be vaccinated were open to offers of further health information from their GP. A recent poll by YouGov, posted to Twitter (above) today, shows that people in Britain are the second most willing of any nation to take the Covid-19 vaccine More than a third (35 per cent) said they would be likely to change their mind if they had more information about a vaccine's effectiveness, compared with 18 per cent of white respondents. RSPH chief executive Christina Marriott previously said: 'It is highly concerning that both those living in poorer areas and those from minority ethnic communities are less likely to want the vaccine. 'However, it is not surprising. We have known for years that different communities have different levels of satisfaction in the NHS and more recently we have seen anti-vaccination messages have been specifically targeted at different groups, including different ethnic or religious communities. 'But these are exactly the groups which have suffered most through Covid. 'They continue to be most at risk of getting ill and most at risk of dying. So the Government, the NHS and local public health must rapidly and proactively work with these communities.' The Beacon Hospital has said it offered a state-of-the-art Vaccination Centre to the HSE free of charge and at no cost to the State. In a statement, the hospital said they have no contract with the HSE and all vaccination work has been carried out by staff as a goodwill gesture. To date, over 1000 HSE frontline workers have been vaccinated at the Centre along with a proportion of Beacon Hospitals frontline clinical staff from the ED, ICU and Theatre, a spokesperson said. In addition, the staff that have volunteered to administer the vaccine have also been vaccinated. The remainder of Beacon Hospitals 1,700 staff will be vaccinated when scheduled by the HSE, she added. The Beacon said it will vaccinate 460 HSE staff in the coming days and 90 staff members have volunteered to administer the vaccine. Read More It said they will continue to provide support to the healthcare system through arrangements with public hospitals and under the terms of the National Treatment Purchase Fund. They said between 15pc to 20pc of surgical work over the past two weeks has been for public patients and approximately 55pc of its ICU capacity is being used to treat public patients. It came after it emerged staff in the private hospital have been vaccinated ahead of thousands of public healthcare workers because it is earmarked as a vaccination centre. Tanaiste Leo Varadkar suggested to make the Denis OBrien-owned Beacon Hospital a vaccination centre should be reviewed. Speaking outside Government Buildings, Mr Varadkar said designating the Beacon as vaccination centre is at odds with the hospitals refusal to sign a deal that allows the HSE use bed capacity in private hospitals when it is struggling to meet with the rising demand caused by a major outbreak of Covid-19. Mr Varadkar said he did not know if there was a review clause in the contract but said if there is perhaps it should be looked at. The prioritisation that the Government has agreed puts healthcare workers in three categories. Number one; those who are dealing with patients, particularly those dealing with Covid patients and number two; those dealing with samples for example, people working in labs and pathology and then in third those healthcare workers who are not dealing with patients, that is the Government policy and we believe that should be adhered to, Mr Varadkar said. However, Labour Party leader Alan Kelly said it is scandalous that private healthcare workers who are not dealing directly with Covid-19 are being prioritised ahead of public health workers who are treating coronavirus patients everyday. Why healthcare staff in places like Nenagh Hospitals pleading with the minister for vaccinations when other non-Covid facing staff and in some case private hospital staff have been vaccinated? Mr Kelly asked. This is scandalous and wrong and completely disheartening to Covid facing frontline staff, he added. Yesterday, HSE chief Executive Paul Reid said he was concerned about the Beacon being made a vaccination centre after they refused to sign the private hospital deal. It is, to be frank, at odds with the fact that we dont have an agreement currently with the Beacon Hospital, a signed agreement in relation to the surge safety net agreement. That is a concern of mine, Mr Reid said. But bizarrely, Mr Reids own organisation released a lengthy statement announcing that the Beacon would be a vaccination centre. There is serious anger among private hospitals that did sign a bed-capacity deal over the Governments decision to designate the Beacon as a mass vaccination centre. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has refused to explain why the Beacon was chosen ahead of other private hospitals that signed the bed capacity deal. WASHINGTON - Blinded by smoke and choking on gas and bear spray, stripped of his radio and badge, District of Columbia police officer Michael Fanone and his battered colleagues fought to push back rioters trying to force their way into an entrance to the U.S. Capitol. The officers had been at it for hours, unaware that others in the mob had already breached the building through different entrances. For them, the West Terrace doors - which open into a tunnel-like hallway allowing access to an area under the Rotunda - represented the last stand before the Capitol fell. "Dig in!" Fanone yelled, his voice cracking, as he and others were being struck with their own clubs and shields, ripped from their hands by rioters. "We got to get these doors shut." An officer since 9/11, the 40-year-old Fanone, who has four daughters, had been working a crime-suppression detail in another part of the District on Jan. 6. He and his partner sped to the Capitol when dispatchers broadcast an urgent citywide emergency call. "They were overthrowing the Capitol, the seat of democracy, and I f---ing went," Fanone said. The officers at the West Terrace eventually pushed people away from the doors. It was only then that Fanone saw the immense, volatile crowd stretched out in front of him and realized what police were up against. "We weren't battling 50 or 60 rioters in this tunnel," he said in the first public account from District police officers who fought to protect the Capitol during last week's siege. "We were battling 15,000 people. It looked like a medieval battle scene." Someone in the crowd grabbed Fanone's helmet, pulled him to the ground and dragged him on his stomach down a set of steps. At around the same time, police said, the crowd pulled a second officer down the stairs. Police said that chaotic and violent scene was captured in a video that would later spread widely on the Internet. Rioters swarmed, battering the officers with metal pipes peeled from scaffolding and a pole with an American flag attached, police said. Both were struck with stun guns. Fanone suffered a mild heart attack and drifted in and out of consciousness. All the while, the mob was chanting "U.S.A." over and over and over again. "We got one! We got one!" Fanone said he heard rioters shout. "Kill him with his own gun!" - - - District police had been worried for weeks about trouble on Jan. 6, when Congress would meet to tally the electoral votes and formalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Supporters of President Donald Trump who believe his false claims that he was the real winner called for a mass demonstration, with Trump tweeting, "Be there, will be wild!" The 3,800-member District police force, responsible for protecting city streets, not federal buildings, had all hands on deck that day and asked neighboring jurisdictions to line up help if needed. The mayor asked the District National Guard to assist with traffic control, freeing officers for more-urgent duties. But no such preparations were being made at the Capitol building, a prime target on social media postings calling for an armed insurrection. The Capitol has its own 2,100-member police force controlled by Congress. Its police chief at the time, Steven Sund, who resigned in the riot's aftermath, said that he began to worry Jan. 4 and that his requests to enlist the Guard were repeatedly thwarted until the Capitol was already overrun. Acting District police chief Robert Contee III has said District officers "saved democracy" by coming to the rescue of Capitol Police personnel overwhelmed by the crowd. Authorities said the attack resulted in the deaths of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who had been confronting the mob, as well as four rioters, including a woman fatally shot by a Capitol officer. This account is based on interviews with Contee, in the top job just four days before the riot, along with members of his command staff and officers on the front lines. These police leaders talked of battles using metaphors typically reserved for wars, describing fighting on three fronts, including the West Terrace, one of the few places where police prevented rioters from breaking through. Had those rioters succeeded, authorities said, thousands more people could have poured into the Capitol, with possible catastrophic consequences. Nearly 60 District police officers and an unknown number of Capitol officers were hurt in the siege, with injuries that included bruised and sprained limbs, concussions and irritated lungs. Sicknick, who police said physically engaged rioters, died the next day. Authorities said he was injured, but they did not elaborate. A time-lapsed security-camera video police played for The Washington Post shows the crowd building along First Street, near the Capitol Reflecting Pool, around 11:15 a.m. First, a couple hundred showed. Trump started his incendiary speech outside the White House shortly before noon. Inside the Capitol, the House convened at noon and the Senate at 12:30 p.m. in preparation for the joint session, with some Republican lawmakers preparing to contest the count. By then, thousands of Trump supporters were starting to stream toward the Capitol. The demonstrators were mostly White people, many wearing red Make America Great Again hats or other similar regalia, and some carrying Confederate battle flags. They began encircling an expanse of grass protected only by some makeshift metal fences and bicycle racks - and only a few Capitol Police officers. At 12:50 p.m., protesters jumped bike racks, the first of many breaches that day, and headed en masse toward the Capitol steps and the towering scaffolding prepared for the inaugural viewing stands and media tower. Capitol Police called District police for help around 1 p.m., and the first officers quickly arrived, dressed in bright yellow jackets. Within 15 minutes, they streamed down the Capitol steps toward the surging crowd, led by Robert Glover, the District police on-scene commander who this week was promoted to the rank of commander. He declared a riot at 1:50 p.m. By then, congressional staffers were being told to rush to secure locations. Suspected pipe bombs had been found outside the grounds. Glover, a 26-year veteran who headed the force's Special Events Branch, overseeing security for presidential inaugurations and large-scale demonstrations, met with a Capitol Police supervisor to coordinate a response. Glover sent in two civil-disturbance units and kept a third on standby. The front of the Capitol is divided into terraces linked by stairs, and Glover first positioned officers on the middle terrace. Cmdr. Ramey Kyle of the District police was directing officers on a lower terrace. Capitol Police turned their focus inside the building, confronting protesters who had gotten inside and securing members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence, there in a ceremonial roll overseeing the proceedings. Rioters who had scaled the scaffolding were on an upper terrace pelting officers with debris from above. Others were hitting them from below, armed with metal poles ripped from scaffolding, wooden 2-by-4 boards, bats, sledgehammers, table legs and 50-pound fire extinguishers. The mob erected a barricade from the debris, using bleacher and scaffolding parts to block officers from moving along the upper terrace. Police had exhausted their chemical munitions, which Glover said had done little to slow the attackers, and rioters inside maneuvered through the many passageways, only to suddenly appeared in the middle of police lines, causing further havoc. "As we're pushing, literally foot by foot, we were taking law enforcement injuries, serious in nature," Glover said. Glover ordered officers to take back the inauguration bleachers first, the "high ground," to stop attacks from above. Help soon arrived. Police from Virginia - from Arlington and Fairfax counties, along with state troopers - and from Maryland, from Montgomery and Prince George's counties, replaced hurt and tired District officers on the front lines. Pushing people down from the Capitol proved difficult. "We were literally taking 15 to 20 minutes to get each stair back," Glover said. Looking over the chaotic scene in front of him from the Capitol steps, Glover grew concerned as the battle raged. There were people caught up in the moment, he said, doing things they would not ordinarily do. But many appeared to be on a mission, and they launched what he and the police chief described as a coordinated assault. "Everything they did was in a military fashion," Glover said, saying he witnessed rioters apparently using hand signs and waving flags to signal positions, and using what he described as "military formations." They took high positions and talked over wireless communications. Authorities would later learn that some former members of the military and off-duty police officers from across the country were in the pro-Trump crowd. Glover called it disturbing that off-duty police "would knowingly and intentionally come to the United States Capitol and engage in this riotous and criminal behavior against their brothers and sisters in uniform, who are upholding their oaths of office." In all the commotion, Glover lost sight of Kyle. - - - Kyle has the rank of commander and works in the criminal investigation division, two things that on most occasions keep him out of immediate danger. He went to the Capitol to help process mass arrests and found himself battling. At Glover's direction, Kyle went to an area where the crowd at first did not seem overly hostile. That quickly changed. "I was fairly certain we were going to be overrun," Kyle said. "I scouted out an area we could fall back to another fighting position." He ended up retreating through West Terrace doors. It had been a public entryway before it was closed several years ago for security. The ground-floor entrance leads into a tunnel-shaped hallway that ends at a T-section. To the left are private offices for lawmakers. To the right is the basement on the House side. Kyle got the officers inside and closed the doors. He thought they were safe, that the Capitol doors and windows were fortified to withstand blows and bullets. He found out quickly they were not. Thirty seconds later, people outside had already bashed them open and were headed inside. Officers raced forward to confront the mob in the vestibule. The violent standoff would last hours. Officers lined up six deep and five abreast. "We all just made a decision," Kyle said. "We weren't going to let these individuals in the building. No matter what." Rioters employed bear spray and other chemical irritants that blinded officers and threw smoke grenades that turned the tunnel pitch black. "If you didn't have a gas mask," Kyle said - and many officers didn't - "it was almost impossible to breathe." The number of officers changed by the minute - anywhere between 30 and 60 - depending on injuries and how long it took to step aside, recover from the gas that seared their lungs, and get back into battle. "We all believed we were fighting for our lives," Kyle said. "We believed at the time that we were the only door in jeopardy of being breached." Rioters took shields and batons and used them against the officers. One person threw a ladder. Kyle wondered whether police could keep holding the door. As rioters yelled "Heave ho" for one big push, he grabbed injured officers and told them: "I know you're in pain. I know you're fatigued. But you have to get up and get back in the fight." - - - District officer Daniel Hodges, assigned to a civil-disturbance unit, entered the Capitol grounds with the riot well underway. He was quickly separated from colleagues, and someone in the mob grabbed his radio. The 32-year-old waded through the hostile crowd, only to be knocked down. Someone tried to gouge his eyes and others piled on top of him before a fellow officer wrested him free. He reached the Capitol and got inside. With no assignment and no way to find his supervisor, he went "looking for work." He found it at the West Terrace doors. He had a gas mask and put it on, then worked his way to the front of the police line. He tried to hold the rioters back "as best I could," he said. Shortly after 3 p.m., Hodges got caught between the interior glass doors, sandwiched by rioters pushing forward and by police behind him pushing the other way. His arms were trapped, then his head, on the rioter's side. "I really couldn't defend myself at that point," he said. A rioter grabbed his gas mask from the bottom and shoved upward, tearing it off his helmet. Another took his baton "and started beating me in the head with it." He took face-fulls of bear spray with no way to shield himself, and a video captured his agonizing groans and twisted face as the assault continued before he was finally freed and pulled back. "The zealotry of these people is absolutely unreal," said Hodges, who suffered from a severe headache but otherwise emerged unhurt. "There were points where I thought it was possible I could either die or become seriously disfigured." Still, Hodges said, he did not want to turn to his gun. "I didn't want to be the guy who starts shooting, because I knew they had guns - we had been seizing guns all day," he said. "And the only reason I could think of that they weren't shooting us was they were waiting for us to shoot first. And if it became a firefight between a couple hundred officers and a couple thousand demonstrators, we would have lost." - - - Fanone and his partner, Jimmy Albright, entered the Capitol through a door on the east side and rushed through the building. They ended up at the West Terrace, where they saw the backs of officers pressing against the mob. Another officer, dressed in a white uniform worn by upper-level supervisors, an eight-point hat and a trench coat, was doubled over in a hallway, hacking from the bear and pepper spray. Fanone recognized him as Kyle, whom he first met 20 years ago when both were on the Capitol Police force. Still coughing, Kyle stood and turned toward the officers holding the tunnel: "We got to hold this door." Fanone made his way to the front of the line, relieving officers who by then could stay upright only by leaning on someone else. "It was body against body, just crushing, like a barbaric scene," Fanone recalled. He yelled for officers who needed a break. "Nobody was volunteering," Fanone said, adding that they all pointed at others and said, "This guy needs help." Fanone and Albright had started their Wednesday tour as usual at 7:30 a.m. Assigned to a crime-suppression unit in the 1st District, which includes Capitol Hill, they usually patrol in plain clothes. But to increase visibility on a day fraught with tension, they had been ordered to wear their uniforms. Now they were in the thick of things. Injured officers were passed back through the line, one bleeding from the mouth and nose. As people in the mob dragged Fanone down the steps, he said he feared he would be stripped and dragged through the Capitol. "I was being beat from every angle," he said. "I thought, maybe, I could appeal to somebody's humanity." With other officers swinging clubs, Albright pulled Fanone back inside. - - - The Washington Post's Aaron Davis, Paul Kane, Mike DeBonis and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report. ZURICH, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb today announced that Philip Bancroft, Executive Vice President of Chubb Group and Chief Financial Officer, plans to retire from the company on July 1 after 19 years of service. Peter Enns has agreed to join the company on or before April 1 as Executive Vice President, Finance, Chubb Group and succeed Mr. Bancroft upon his retirement. Mr. Enns has more than 30 years of finance and investment banking experience. He spent over 20 years with Goldman Sachs in various senior roles, including partner of the firm's U.S. Financial Institutions Group based in New York, head of its Asia Financial Institutions Group based in Hong Kong, and chief executive of its business operations in Canada. More recently, Mr. Enns held a number of roles with HSBC, including his last assignment as Global Co-Head of Investment Banking Coverage based in Hong Kong. Mr. Enns will report to Evan G. Greenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and join the company's Executive Committee. Mr. Bancroft is expected to remain with the company in an advisory capacity for the balance of the year and be available to support Mr. Enns. "On behalf of all my colleagues and our Board of Directors, I want to extend our deepest gratitude to Phil Bancroft," said Mr. Greenberg. "Phil has contributed a great deal to our company's success over his nearly 20 years. He has been a key member of the executive team that helped transform the company to become what it is today, the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurer. Under his leadership, Phil has built and groomed an outstanding finance team. I wish Phil and his wife Denise much happiness in his retirement." "I am delighted to welcome Peter Enns to Chubb," Mr. Greenberg said. "Peter and I have known each other for more than 15 years. He has the right background to lead our finance organization, with proven experience in corporate finance, investment banking, accounting and public markets. Peter's broad experience across financial services includes property, casualty and life insurance as well as asset management. He is a seasoned international executive with deep knowledge and operating experience in the Asia region, including China. His character, integrity and style are an excellent fit for the Chubb culture." Mr. Enns joined Goldman Sachs in 1996 and for over two decades held positions of increasing authority. He served as Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada from 2014 to 2017; Head of the Asia Financial Institutions Group from 2010 to 2014; and Partner of the U.S. Financial Institutions Group from 2006 to 2010. Earlier in his Goldman Sachs career he served as Managing Director and Senior Coverage Banker for the North America Financial Institutions Group and as Vice President, Managing Director and Senior Coverage Banker for Goldman Sachs Canada. Mr. Enns joined HSBC in 2018 as Global Head, Financial Institutions Group and subsequently served as Global Co-Head of Corporate Finance Coverage and, most recently, as Global Co-Head of Investment Banking Coverage. Mr. Enns holds an MBA degree in Finance and Accounting from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Business degree from the University of Western Ontario. Mr. Enns is a Chartered Financial Analyst. About Chubb Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries and territories, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London, Paris and other locations, and employs approximately 33,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: www.chubb.com . SOURCE Chubb Limited Related Links http://new.chubb.com Christians in Pakistan say they are worried and in pain as they cry for justice after two women were raped and killed. On Jan. 7, Christians in Makhan Colony Pakistan cried in agony for justice as they wail over the remains of the two women who were abducted, raped, and killed. In the funeral of the two ladies killed by Muslim men, the Christians expressed their concern for the family as well as their worry over the increasing violence inflicted on believers. Abida, 23, and her sister Sajida, 25, were buried after disappearing months ago. Theit grieving mother was not allowed to see her daughters' faces during the funeral, according to Union of Catholic Asian News. "Their faces were beyond recognition. I couldn't see them for the last time, Rani Bibi, the mother of the two victims said. "In dreams I see them agonizing in pain. I can't tolerate this," she added. On Nov, 26, the sisters went out together to go shopping and did not return. Days passed and the family still did not receive any update on the siblings' whereabouts. On Dec. 11, police officers found the dead body of Sajida in a sewerage tunnel near her workplace. Her neck was slit and her body showed signs of struggle. Authorities later found her sister's body floating on another drain. Abida's dead body was found on Jan. 4, handcuffed with signs that she was choked to death. Naeem and Mumtaz were among the three suspects arrested by the police. They were from the same medicine factory where Abida and Sajida worked. In a statement released to the police, two of the three suspects claimed that they had affairs with the sisters. They admitted the crime and said they were forced to do so because the sisters were blackmailing and demanding them to give money. Police deputy Inspector General Shariq Jamal released their statements in a press conference. "They have confessed to killing the two sisters because they were blackmailing them on the basis of some obscene videos, Jamal said. "The sisters had taken some money from them and had been demanding more. They had a relationship which turned sour. We have recovered a sharp paper cutter," he added, UCA News reported. During a hearing at a Lahore session court on Jan. 11, the victims' families refused to believe the suspects' confessions. The family accused the suspects of murdering the Abida and Sajida after the sisters rejected them. The mother added that the two Muslim suspects forced the sisters to convert to Islam and marry them. "Sajida had left her job at the factory two weeks before her disappearance, Bibi said. "Their husbands are sanitary workers," she added. Abida and Sajida's case are in addition to the existing reports of Christian girls in Pakistan suffering abduction, rape, harassment, forced marriages as well as forced conversions to Islam, making it the fifth most dangerous country for Christians to live in. From Nov. 2018 to June 2019, Legal Evangelical Association Development, an advocacy group providing legal aid to persecuted minorities reported a total of 28 Christian girls who suffered almost similar cases. On Jan, 6, Punjab chief minister Sardar Usman Buzdar condemned the killing and assured the family of justice at any cost and strict implementation of punishment to the accused. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Home Regional News East We could be seeing more empty exam halls this year (stock image) Pressure is growing on Education Minster Norma Foley to consider an alternative to the traditional Leaving Cert. Several TDs raised the issue with the minister in the Dail yesterday, with some supp- orting a return to calculated grades this year or a "hybrid model", and all seeking an early decision on the fate of the exams. A survey of more than 20,000 members of the Irish Second-Level Students Union (ISSU) is expected to show an appetite for change from normal arrangements. The findings are due to be released over the weekend, but ISSU president Reuban Murray last night gave a clear indication of the mood. He said up to now the conversation had been around how the exams were going to happen, but it had to move to a place where the discussions were not solely focusing on that. Against a groundswell for an alternative to be found, teacher unions have reiterated their support for the trad- itional exams. The Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) said "the highly trusted, externally-marked Leaving Certificate must take place in 2021". It added: "Our experience of calculated grades last year has left the union in no doubt that the customary state examinations are more reliable and enjoy significantly greater trust among the public at large and, critically, among stud-ents and teachers." Earlier, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) president Ann Piggott said the Leaving Cert exams should run as normal in June. Breakthrough She was responding to a call from Fianna Fail senator Timmy Dooley, who said the "best worst option" would be the cancellation of Leaving Cert 2021 because the virus made it highly unlikely that students would enjoy the same face-to-face teaching time that would usually take place between now and June. More attention turned to the Leaving Cert after a breakthrough that may see pupils with special needs back in school from next Thursday in the first phase of a post-Christmas return. After a meeting between Ms Foley, junior minister for special education Josepha Madigan and the education partners, the ministers said they had a "shared ambition" for a reopening of special schools and special classes in primary schools on January 21. It may be the following week in post-primary schools. Schools may also bring back children with special needs who do not participate in special classes and other vulner- able children. Ms Foley said she also "very much" hoped that the ongoing negotiations would set out a pathway for the return of all children at all levels of schooling at the start of February. This would be subject to public health advice. Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 03:36:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close People wait to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at a health services center in Rehovot, central Israel, on Jan. 14, 2021. Israel's health ministry reported 10,933 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the total number in the country to 528,204. (Photo by Gil Cohen Magen/Xinhua) JERUSALEM, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Israel's health ministry reported 10,933 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the total number in the country to 528,204. The death toll from COVID-19 in Israel reached 3,860 with 57 new fatalities, while the number of patients in serious condition increased from 1,094 to 1,117, out of 1,802 hospitalized patients. This figure marked a new record of patients in serious condition since the outbreak of the disease in the country in February 2020. The total recoveries rose to 446,175, after 10,357 new recovered cases were added. The active cases rose to a record high of 78,169. Also on Thursday, the number of active coronavirus cases among Israeli soldiers reached 1,546, the Israel Defense Forces said, the highest morbidity figure in the Israeli army since the outbreak. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission 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. Brazil's health ministry said on Thursday that a flight to India to seek two million off-the-shelf doses of Astrazeneca's coronavirus vaccine has been pushed back a day to Friday. In a statement, the ministry cited "international logistical issues," adding that the flight will take off from the northeastern city of Recife at 11:00 pm local time on Friday and that its return date is still to be decided. Also read: PM Modi to virtually roll out COVID-19 vaccination drive on Jan 16 Solar energy farm builders will now need to submit their plans before building in West Baton Rouge Parish after the parish council approved a measure Thursday that would give them more oversight on those projects. Parish leaders last month halted solar plant construction because of concerns touching mainly on how the project would impact the parish's aesthetics. The council on Thursday unanimously passed an ordinance that requires companies to seek permits anytime they want to build on land zoned as agricultural. "We're basically here tonight to protect both the landowner, the developer and the resident," said council member Alan Crowe, whose district includes the area where a newly proposed solar plant would go. West Baton Rouge leaders pump brakes on solar farm construction to address resident complaints After a California company applied to build a second, larger solar farm in West Baton Rouge Parish, local leaders tapped the brakes on the pro The decision comes as residents and parish leaders raised concerns about San Francisco-based firm Bueche PV1 LLC's plans to build a second, larger solar farm north of Port Allen on Bueche Road. That plant would follow Capital Region Solar, a 50-megawatt solar energy plant west of Port Allen that went online earlier this year. As the first utility-scale solar farm in the state, it has gotten somewhat of a lukewarm reception among some residents and parish leaders, who have complained of unkempt grass and ditches. Some residents at Thursdays meeting also touched on worries about what effects those projects may have on property values. "We felt like we had to do something," said Council Member Carey Denstel. "This kind of blindsided us in November, and we just felt like we needed to get moving. Because the parish lacked any rules on where a solar farm can be built, developers were not required to submit plans when building on land zoned as agricultural. The new ordinance also gives the council the ability to set certain rules and require studies or further information for solar projects. Helios, the company managing Capital Region Solar, said it's planning to build fences to screen the facility and address other public responses it's received. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up The parish council also lifted a temporary ban on solar farm construction that it had passed last month. According to the filing submitted to the Louisiana Economic Development, the latest project is estimated to cost about $240 million, with construction starting in 2022 and finishing at the end of the following year. Its expected to bring 430 temporary construction jobs and create one permanent position once completed. The company also submitted plans for two similar projects in Pride and East Feliciana Parish. Solar energy is becoming more prevalent throughout the state, a trend driven largely by a steep price reduction in solar panel material. Entergy, for example, has increasingly looked to solar power projects to meet rising energy demands. The company seeks to add up to 300 megawatts of solar resources by 2023. About 25% of electricity Entergy customers receive comes from carbon-free sources, including nuclear, hydroelectric and other sources. With that trend likely to continue, officials in West Baton Rouge Parish say they had little information or guidance to when Capital Region Solar was built. District 2 Council Member Chris "Fish" Kershaw said he would like to see the council address specific stipulations at a later date, such as buffers and other requirements for solar farms. We're kind of cutting our teeth, he said. We're trying to do the best we can. I think this is a good move forward. Wednesdays news that people 65 and older could now get the coronavirus vaccine began kindling a bit of hope for millions of older Californians and their family members. But on Thursday, they were greeted not with needles or appointments, but with busy phone lines, overwhelmed websites and physicians who said they had little idea when theyd be able to give their senior patients vaccinations. Information seemed more scarce than the vaccine itself. Kaiser Permanente patients reported receiving a message that they would have to wait as long as four hours to speak to anyone who could schedule an appointment. They had better luck than Sutter Health patients, who said they found the phone lines were down, along with the health care providers website. And Stanford Health Care patients said their website and mobile phone apps were operating, but offered scant information about vaccination availability for seniors. Frustration was growing Thursday amid a sputtering vaccine rollout in the Bay Area and across California. There is no information available or anybody who can tell us about it, said Vijay Khasat, an 80-year-old insulin-dependent diabetic from Hayward, in an email. We contacted our health care providers who also gave us the silent treatment. Carolee Ziegenhagen, 74, of Alameda, said her sister in Florida got her first shot last week and is due with the second scheduled for Feb. 3. Meanwhile, she cant get an answer from her doctors, medical group, insurers or pharmacy. I would love to know when I can sign up for mine, she said. In Richmond, Mayor Tom Butt said he has been unable to get any information from his provider, Kaiser, about when he can sign up for a vaccine. Butt, who is 76, said he signed up on the Contra Costa County website Wednesday morning. Im a little baffled Im not hearing anything from Kaiser, he said. I went to their website and Im not finding anything there. Late Thursday afternoon, Kaiser Permanente Northern California announced it would contact all members 65 and over to discuss the availability of vaccines but warned that the supply was limited. A Sutter Health spokeswoman acknowledged Thursday night that phone lines were overwhelmed and the website problems are being investigated, though both are working. Patients who qualify for vaccines should now be able to schedule them. "At this time, Sutter is prioritizing the states most vulnerable populations including those who are 75-plus years of age and our community health care workers," spokeswoman Angeline Sheets said. Sutter's phone appointment line will be staffed over the three-day weekend and scheduling would soon be available through its online portal. At UCSF, spokeswoman Elizabeth Fernandez said the health system has sent out messages to its members about the status of vaccines, including the limited and sporadic supply. We have almost finished vaccinating our health care workers, she said. On Friday, she said, we are starting with our primary care patients aged 75 and over, and hope to move to patients age 65 to 74 soon. San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney said the city is erring by relying on health care providers hospitals and doctors to provide the inoculations. Instead, to ensure that vaccines get into arms faster, he said the citys health department should launch mass immunization sites at places like stadiums, arenas, parking lots and parks, as other cities have done. The current situation is just outrageous, he said. Weve known about this for months, and there doesnt seem to be a clear plan for widespread distribution by public health. A representative from San Franciscos Department of Emergency Management said the health department is vaccinating patients over 65 in the citys health network in two clinics. As more vaccine comes available, this will be scaled to other clinics, the representative said, adding that the city is working with private health care providers to find additional facilities and accelerate vaccination. Adding to the frustration for older Bay Area residents is the knowledge that friends in other counties and states are getting vaccinations while they wait on hold or continue refreshing their web browsers. While people older than 75 can get vaccinations in Fresno County, Haney said, my parents, who are 92 and 93 and live in San Francisco, cant even get any information. Some of the lucky few who are able to get answers arent very happy with them. Allen Podell, an 83-year-old engineer, lives in Palo Alto, 2 miles from Stanford Hospital. But when he started digging deep to find out where he might be able to get a vaccination, Stanford Health recommended Pinole, Danville and south San Jose all long drives hes not willing to make. So Im just nailed, he said. Nobody else will take me, so I have to wait for Stanford, but theyve fumbled the ball again. Im 83, nearly 84, so Ive learned to be patient. But its really a matter of life or death for us. I can picture these guys sitting around fiddling. Were held accountable to our local county for our vaccine supply and who we vaccinate. We were instructed yesterday that we may begin vaccinating patients who are 75 years and older. Weve been actively preparing for the opportunity to vaccinate our patients, Dr. Niraj Sehgal, Chief Medical Officer for Stanford Health Care said in a statement. Merle Kahree, 71, a retired television news writer, lives in San Francisco, where her doctor told her he wouldnt be getting vaccine to give to patients until June. And thats just the first dose, she said. Kahree said she knew that distribution of the vaccine would be slow but figured there would at least be some general information so people would know what to expect. I just want guidance, she said. How long do I have to isolate at home? But I know Im lucky. Im healthy I think and I have a roof over my head. Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan The only reason Ford told Woodward he eventually decided to pardon Nixon anyway was, not for Nixon, not for myself, but for the good of the country. In his testimony before Congress on Oct. 17, 1974, Ford said: I was absolutely convinced as I am now that if we had had this serious indictment and trial, conviction and anything else that transpired after that, that the attention of the presidency, the Congress and the American people would have been diverted from the problems that we had to solve and that was the principle reason for granting the pardon. While the impeachment efforts against Donald Trump seek to ensure that he can never run for the office of president again, for that to happen the US Senate must convict him in a trial after he leaves office. The US Senate would have to vote to disqualify him, and get a simple majority, for him to be unable to run for a federal office. In this situation, all eyes are right now on Republican senators and the one who holds the key is Senator Mitch McConnell. Who is McConnell? McConnel is a senior senator from Kentucky and current Senate majority leader. So far he has sided with Trump and protected him during the impeachment proceedings. While he is set to give up his position as majority leader to Democrat Chuck Schumer, even as a minority leader, he can sway the vote. Also read: Donald Trump Impeached for the Second Time: Here's What Will Happen Next Why does he hold the key? The Associated Press reports that Republican leader holds great sway in his party even though convening the trial could be among his last acts as majority leader. Huffpost reported that if McConnell votes against Trump, more senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania are likely to follow suit. The report said that if the veteran Kentucky Republican sticks with Trump, conviction is unlikely. If McConnell votes against Trump, all bets are off as Democrats seek 17 Republican votes they will need for the first-ever Senate conviction in a presidential impeachment trial. Also read: Twitter & Facebook 'Did A Poor Job of Dealing With Trump For Very Long Time', Says Wikipedia Founder McConnel has told the media that he is undecided on his vote. However, he has told his associates that he is done with Trump. Amid speculation on his decision, McConnell has said, While the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate. McConnells public neutrality on impeachment is widely seen as an effort to restrain Trumps behavior, with an acquittal largely contingent on Trumps ability to persuade his supporters not to incite more violence. McConnells public neutrality on impeachment is widely seen as an effort to restrain Trumps behavior, with an acquittal largely contingent on Trumps ability to persuade his supporters not to incite more violence. The New York Times reported last week that McConnel was probably in favour of voting against Trump because it would then be easier for him to be purged from the Republican party. RALEIGH, N.C., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- You usually find Carolina Ballet Soloist Courtney Schenberger and Principal Dancer Marcelo Martinez in the spotlight with performances like Swan Lake or The Nutcracker. For that they've earned standing ovations and national recognition. But now the Leith Automotive Group presents their leaps, lifts and grands jetes (big jumps) on television in a new series of commercials for LeithCars.com. Carolina Ballet Soloist Courtney Schenberger and Principal Dancer Marcelo Martinez bring a Happy Dance to our screens in a new advertising campaign for LeithCars.com. The spots showcase a Happy Dance the result of getting more than expected for trading in your car. With dozens and dozens of dealerships, Leith can manage this. They find the one dealership that will pay you more. The surprise and joy of getting a bigger check is aptly portrayed by classically trained dancers who take celebration to new heights. In fact, on the day of filming, their leaps of joy caused casual passersby to stop and applaud. The new Leith Happy Dance Campaign starts Jan. 15 with 15-second spots that open and close station breaks. For further information, contact Mark Arsen at 919-832-3232. LeithCars.com is one of the largest automotive groups in North Carolina. A family business created in Raleigh, Leith Cars has been serving the Triangle community for over 50 years, incorporating over 1,900 North Carolinians into its family. The number one place to buy vehicles in the Raleigh metro area for four years running, according to a Marshall Marketing Survey, the auto dealer has 39 franchise locations throughout the state. For more information, visit www.leithcars.com . SOURCE LeithCars.com Related Links http://www.leithcars.com Teagasc Highlight Farm Diversification Opportunities Farm Diversification is the establishment of a new enterprise on a farm. The term usually used when considering a non-agricultural or novel enterprise. Many farmers and rural dwellers are interested in diversifying their farm enterprise and there are countless possibilities. Teagasc has produced a comprehensive body of information to help those interested, in trying to identify a realistic option that suits them, for generating additional household income. Teagasc Highlight Farm Diversification Opportunities A suite of 79 farm diversification factsheets have been published on the Teagasc website along with a suite of videos to provide information on a range of ideas and possible options for individuals to explore. Many farmers have already found success by diversifying into alternative enterprises. Teagasc run a weekly webinar every Tuesday at 11:00am called Farm Business Options, which provides detailed case studies from diversification champions around Ireland. Barry Caslin, Teagasc Energy and Rural development specialist said: Diversification may not be practicable for every farmer, but well planned and seasoned projects can create new sources of income for farmers, and can enhance the range of facilities available in Irelands rural areas. Our farm diversification factsheets compiled by Teagasc colleagues, cover a wide range of topics including: organics, food, equine, horticulture, poultry, renewable energy, goats, forestry and tourism. They are an excellent starting point for innovative rural dwellers to begin to find out more information on possible business options that might suit them. The factsheets and videos along with recorded and upcoming webinars can all be accessed from https://www.teagasc.ie/rural-economy/rural-development/diversification/ Past and planned Farm Business Options webinars at www.teagasc.ie/farmbusinessoptions Head of the Teagasc Farm Management and Rural Development Department, Fintan Phelan said: Niche opportunities exist for farmers to examine which could provide a diversified income stream, by utilising their existing resources and expertise. We would urge all those interested to start by gathering all available information on their topic of interest. The Teagasc factsheets area a good starting point and might help to stimulate the development of ideas that can lead to a diversified business. Bhupinder Singh Mann, President of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Mann), who recused himself from the 4-member committee appointed by over the new farm laws, on Friday said that there was no point in being a part of the committee as farmers had announced that they will not appear before it. "The people we are supposed to listen to (farmers) are saying that they won't appear before the committee. What is the point?" Mann told ANI. When asked what took him two days to recuse himself, Mann said that he had not been intimated about the appointment till the 14th. "On January 12 when the decision was taken by the SC, I was contacted by several people asking me if I was the one who was appointed in the committee. I had no idea about this. I told reporters that till I am officially communicated to about it, I cannot say anything. I only received communication on January 14," he said. He added that after receiving the appointment letter, he spoke to the Chief Justice and informed him about his position in the matter. "I spoke to the Chief Justice and told my position and informed him that I want to recuse myself," he said. On Tuesday, the stayed the implementation of the Centre's three farm laws and asked the committee formed by it concerning the laws to submit its report within two months. The panel comprised of agricultural economist Ashok Gulati, BKU president Bhupinder Singh Mann, Pramod Kumar Joshi - Director, South Asia, International Food Policy Research Institute and Shetkari Sanghatana president Anil Ghanwat. The committee has been directed to hold a dialogue with farmers and submit its recommendations pertaining to the farm laws within two months from the date of its first sitting. However, the leaders of farmers' unions rejected the committee, saying their members were already in favour of the farm laws. Farmers have been protesting at different borders of the capital since November 26, 2020, against the three newly enacted farm laws - Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. (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.) International Criminal Court work highlighted in upcoming virtual lecture CARBONDALE, Ill. An international law professor will discuss the impact of sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration against the International Criminal Court during a Jan. 24 virtual presentation co-sponsored by the SIU School of Law. Milena Sterio will present The International Criminal Court under Assault as part of a program by the United Nations Association USA, Southern Illinois Chapter. The virtual event at 7 p.m. is free and open to the public by registering via Zoom or via the Carbondale Public Librarys programs page or the programs Facebook page. Cindy Buys, a professor of the SIU School of Law, said Sterio, the Cleveland-Marshall Law Schools Charles R. Emrick Jr.-Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law and masters program director, will discuss her role in a recent lawsuit against the Trump Administration to enjoin its economic sanctions against the ICC and its staff. Sterio and the other plaintiffs allege that the sanctions unconstitutionally infringe on their work with the ICC providing expert advice and working with the ICC to bring justice to victims of war crimes around the world, Buys said. The Trump Administration imposed sanctions, in part, because it is unhappy that the ICC prosecutor is investigating possible war crimes in Afghanistan, including some situations that may implicate U.S. military service members. Incoming President Joe Bidens administration will need to decide to what extent it will cooperate with the ICC, Buys said. Americas relationship with the ICC will have implications for U.S. service members and other U.S. citizens abroad as well as the United States reputation and stance on issues of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sterio is the author of seven books and numerous law review articles. She is co-chair of the Women in International Law Interest Group at the American Society of International Law and chair-elect of the National Security Law Section at the American Association of Law Schools. Sam Frost is celebrating four years on Home and Away this year. And while most actors use the long-running soap as an opportunity to springboard into Hollywood, the 31-year-old is staying put in Summer Bay. This week she returned to Palm Beach in Sydney to continue filming, after spending the Christmas holidays with her family in Melbourne, The Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday. Back to work! Sam Frost returned to the set of Home and Away to begin shooting the new season of the hit soap this week In images obtained by the publication, Sam was spotted on set this week. Luckily for the actress, she was able to jet to Victoria last year after finishing filming her scenes for the show just before a cluster of COVID cases hit the Northern Beaches in December. The blonde beauty shared photos from her festive family reunion featuring her brothers Josh and Alex. 'Home. Finally back in Melbourne with my brothers. Only two out of four pictured. I cannot even tell you how happy I am!!! My heart feels so full,' she added. Good to be back! The blonde beauty shared photos from her festive family reunion featuring her brothers Josh and Alex. She wrote: 'Finally back in Melbourne with my brothers' From reality TV to acting: Sam, who first rose to fame as Australia's first Bachelorette, is marking four years on Home and Away. Pictured left to right is Sarah Roberts, Emily Symons, Georgie Parker and Lynne McGranger with Sam Sam's return to set comes as her character, Jasmine Delaney, embarks on a sizzling romance with Lewis Hayes, played by Luke Arnold. Luke, who became a household name starring as Michael Hutchence on the 2014 mini-series INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, spoke to Daily Mail Australia about joining the long-running soap. 'It's such a staple of Australian TV, and everyone is so friendly, and it's such a well-honed machine, so I have had a really great time on it,' he said. New to The Bay: Sam's return to set comes as her character, Jasmine Delaney, embarks on a sizzling romance with Lewis Hayes, played by Luke Arnold (pictured) He also revealed that working with Sam made working on the soap a 'joy', but they have so much fun that it can be 'dangerous' at times. 'Sam is just the loveliest. The most dangerous thing about working with Sam is that she is so bubbly and fun, that you're having such a great time, then they call "action," he joked. 'But it's been great working with her and it makes work a joy.' Home and Away returns on February 1 on Channel Seven .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Production started in October 2019 for News of the World. The leap from page to screen would take some magic to re-create the fabric, mood and detail of Texas during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. Director Paul Greengrass assembled some of the top creative collaborators to make this happen. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ The project was starkly different from any of his previous work. When I read Paulette Jiles wonderful book, I connected to it in a deeply intuitive way, Greengrass says. Plus, every director wants to do a Western; it takes you back to that romantic notion of the American West in all its mystery and adventure. I couldnt say no. Adding to the draw was the opportunity to work with Tom Hanks again. Tom is a wonderful actor and such a lovely man, Greengrass says. We had a great time making Captain Phillips, so that clinched it. The best decisions are always the instinctive ones; I knew it would be fantastic fun. Cast and crew would embark on a 53-day odyssey across the forests and mountains surrounding Santa Fe. Hanks worked all 53 days. Co-star Helena Zengel worked nearly as many. Producer Gregory Goodman says each film poses different demands. I work hard to understand the underpinnings of the film a director means to make and come up with a durable plan to accomplish that, Goodman says. News of the World is based Jiles novel and is set five years after the end of the Civil War. It follows Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, played by Hanks, who is a widower and veteran of three wars as he moves from town to town as a nonfiction storyteller. He shares the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, catastrophes and adventures from the far reaches of the globe. In the plains of Texas, Kidd crosses paths with Johanna, played by Zengel, a 10-year-old taken in by the Kiowa tribe six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Johanna, hostile to a world shes never experienced, is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will. Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles into the wilderness, the two face challenges of both human and natural forces as they search for a place that either can call home. According to the New Mexico Film Office, the production filmed through November 2019 and employed more than 200 New Mexico crew members and 25 New Mexico actors. The film was released on Christmas in theaters just in time for Oscar consideration. Beginning on Friday, Jan. 15, the New Mexico-filmed production will be available on demand through Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Vudu and Xfinity. Producer Gary Goetzman hopes that viewers will embrace the compassion and heart of the story. We never know what movies are going to mean when they reach the audience, Goetzman says. And this one speaks to hard times, difficult situations, things that weve gone through as a country before and ones well hopefully never go through again. Interestingly, this story is finding its meaning in the world were living in today. Scouting in New Mexico During the 53-day shoot, multiple locations were used in and around Santa Fe. To set in motion the 400-mile odyssey through the frontier towns and wide-open spaces of Texas, the filmmaking team scouted locations across the landscape that once marked the Western frontier. Although the instinct of location manager and native Texan Hilton Clay Peres was to chart a course through his home state, he found a more ideal option. I had read the book a few years earlier and loved it, says Peres. So to help the filmmakers find a canvas for a story set near where I grew up was a huge privilege. But to create that sense of travel, I knew wed need dramatic shifts in terrain within a limited geographic footprint, so I fed Paul Greengrass and the producers every possible option in terms of environments that were both topographically accurate and cinematic. Peres says Santa Fe checked all the boxes. You can drive 30 minutes in any direction and find yourself on wildly different terrain endless flats with gorgeous mountain peaks in the distance, rolling hills, pine forests, tons of rivers, he says. It has an amazing variety of environments, and no other state has as many Western towns so close to each other as New Mexico does. As a lifelong fan of Westerns, Greengrass knew that the landscape had a story to tell. One of the most resonant elements in the lives of these characters has been the power and presence of the natural world, Greengrass says. To make a film out on these epic landscapes is to be reminded of what it must have been like crossing America in the 19th century when youre at the mercy of the elements, when privation is everywhere, and a 20-mile journey can mean life or death. Its astonishing because you look at the wagons and this unforgiving terrain and think, How did they do it? With rare exception, all locations that would be traversed by the production were remote, off the beaten path and surrounded by breathtaking natural vistas that stretched out as far as the eye could see. In New Mexico, no matter where you look, its beautiful, says stunt coordinator and second-unit director Jeffrey Dashnaw. You cannot get a bad shot there. New Mexico crews know Westerns, so they know what theyre in for. But no matter where we are from, we jump in. Everybody was invested in Paul succeeding. 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. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has advised his daughter against running to succeed him in the upcoming 2022 election, saying the presidency is not for women. The 75-year-old leader is often criticised for his offensive and sexist comments. And yet again, in a televised speech, he dismissed speculation that his daughter would succeed him next year and added that the presidency is not a job for women because of their emotional differences to men. During the launch of a highway project, Duterte said, My daughter (Sara) is not running. I have told Inday not to run because I pity (her) knowing she will have to go through what I am going through. This is not for women. You know, the emotional set-up of a woman and a man is totally different. You will become a fool here. So... that is the sad story. Even if you serve it to me on a silver platter or give me ten more years for free, I am done, he added. READ: Philippines To Probe Unauthorized Vaccination Of Soldiers, Chinese Workers: Report READ: Virtual Art Exhibit Aims At Strengthening Ties Between India, Philippines Duterte criticised by human rights group According to Bloomberg, Sara Duterte, who succeeded her father as mayor of Davao City, came top in a recent opinion poll that asked the public to choose a preferred candidate from a list of possible contenders from the 2022 elections. The 42-year-old chairs an alliance of political parties and she stepped in the national spotlight in 2019 by campaigning for Senate candidates, most of whom won. In response to Dutertes comments, Cristina Palabay of human rights group Karapatan said that women are as capable as men in any job. She added that what matters most especially when one talks about the presidency and public office is if the interests of the poor majority are upheld. Meanwhile, the Philippines has had two women presidents in the past - Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from 2001 to 2010 and Corazon Aquino from 1986 to 1992. It is worth noting that presidents in the Philippines are allowed only one six-year term in office. Arroyo was, however, for a longer period of time as she had taken over the presidency from an impeached former president. READ: Union Cabinet Approves Signing Of Revised Bilateral Air Service Agreements With Afghanistan, Philippines READ: Philippines Set To Raise Age Of Sexual Consent From 12 To 16 To Protect Youngsters Marmorstein: You might soon be living in a million dollar home unfortunately Malawi is struggling to quarantine migrant workers returning from South Africa who were being tested for the coronavirus. At a facility this week, returnees upset over living conditions clashed with police, and authorities said about 20 returnees escaped. One migrant laborer, Glory Kayira, returned to Malawi after working in South Africa for five years because she lost her job amid the pandemic. "As foreigners," she said, "we were living in rented houses. We were supposed to buy food on our own, but we could not manage that. Kayira is one of about 600 Malawians who returned Saturday and were quarantined at Mapanga Prison Training School. The facility was set up to stop the importation of coronavirus cases. Migrants returning from South Africa account for 40 percent of Malawis caseload. But returnees on Sunday torched buildings to protest the poor living conditions. Police used tear gas to end the riot. 'We slept on the floor' Some returnees said authorities did not inform them they were going to be quarantined. We slept on the floor," said returnee Isaac Chikadza. "Mattresses were in short supply. He said the food was good but the hospitality they received did not meet their expectations. Officials said all returnees were informed of the quarantine and alleged that some might have been seeking to avoid paying taxes. More than 150 of those being held tested positive for the coronavirus and were being isolated. These people will go home under escort so they will not be missed out in the community," said Penjani Chunda, the government's environmental health officer. "Then they will be handed over directly to the respective health office. Malawian authorities were searching for 20 returnees not yet tested who escaped during Sundays revolt. Major Emanuel Mzima, deputy commissioner for prisons, said he thought the search would be simple "because immigration authorities have their passports, so it's easy to check and see who is missing." Thirty-nine other returnees were arrested and charged with planning the scuffle. 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. With the sharpest revenue decrease in history, mobile phone retail chains in Vietnam experienced a memorable year in 2020. The Gioi Di Dong Group reported a 7 percent revenue increase in the first 11 months of 2020 The Gioi Di Dong Group (Mobile World) reported a 7 percent revenue increase in the first 11 months of 2020 in comparison with the period in the year before. However, if considering mobile phone and home appliance sales alone, the retailer witnessed the sharpest ever decline in growth rate. The sales of mobile phones decreased by 12 percent, while Dien May Xanh (Green Home Appliance), which distributes home appliances, saw a modest growth rate of 0.3 percent. These are the sharpest declines since its listing in 2014. FPT Shop was in a similar situation. The revenue of FPT Retail, the holding company of FPT Shop, in the first nine months of 2020 declined by 14 percent compared with the same period of the year before, while the gross profit decreased by 5 percent. Explaining the minus growth, FPT Retail said the Covid-19 crisis had an adverse impact on the companys business performance. The situation worsened as people tightened their pursestrings and cut spending on electronics and valuable products. Meanwhile, the retail chain is making heavy investment to develop the Long Chau drug store chain, which led to investment cost increases. 2020 was an unprecedented year in the history of the mobile phone retail sector. In the peak months of the pandemic, March and April, about 30 percent of stores of The Gioi Di Dong, FPT Shop and other chains had to close temporarily during a lockdown. At that moment, the chains had to limit the number of people entering stores. Buyers were given chairs and asked to sit two meters from each other. The Gioi Di Dong even showed phone numbers of shop managers, so that buyers could call the managers. After calling managers, officers would bring products out of the shops to show to customers outside. Since retailers did not have experience, they applied social distancing in different ways. Some shops only received loyal clients, while others applied a half-open policy. With the sharpest revenue decrease in history, mobile phone retail chains in Vietnam experienced a memorable year in 2020. At the moment when the share prices plunged because of Covid-19, Nguyen Duc Tai, co-founder and president of The Gioi Di Dong, predicted that the outbreak in the country would be contained by June (2020) and the purchasing power would recover. With a vaccine, it would be controlled, but, if not, businesses would suffer in the future. Most of Tais predictions were correct. The pandemic has been controlled well in Vietnam and the market has recovered. Thanks to investments in Bach Hoa Xanh five years ago, The Gioi Di Dong still gained growth in revenue and profit. 2020 a successful year for Apples officially distributed products Covid-19, plus new policies, helped the market for iPhone products that are distributed via authorized resellers. But iPhone products imported through unofficial channels was worse than in previous years. Because of Covid-19 and lockdown, very few products could be carried to Vietnam across border gates by travelers last October, when the iPhone 12 was officially launched on the market. In addition, phone traders now hesitate to import and sell iPhone products with unclear origin because of Decree 98, which imposes heavy fines on making and trading counterfeit and prohibited products, and on individuals trading smuggled goods. Apple introduced four iPhone 12 models in 2020. Of these, iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro were marketed on October 23, and iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max in early November. In the years before, private shop owners earned big money because they had next-generation iPhones for sale sooner than iPhone authorized resellers. But in 2020, officially distributed iPhone 12s became available in Vietnam soon, on November 27, or just two weeks after they were launched in other markets. Meanwhile, unlike previous years, the prices of officially distributed iPhones were not much higher than the prices of unofficially distributed products. All these factors prompted consumers to turn their back to products with unclear origin. At that moment, some private shop owners told VietNamNet that they had stopped retailing products carried across border gates. Later, some of them shifted to sell products that Apple officially distributes in Vietnam. Apple recently said it will sell Macbook running M1 chip in Vietnam very soon with competitive prices. Analysts say that the manufacturer took the move to eliminate unofficially distributed products in Vietnam. Stiff competition 2020 also witnessed stiff competition in the distribution of mobile devices. The last stores of Vien Thong A shut down in January 2020. Vien Thong A was considered the oldest brother in the mobile phone distribution sector, which once dominated the domestic market, especially in HCM City. Analysts said mobile phone retailers will have to adapt to the new normal in 2021, or they will be excluded from the market. Hai Dang Mobile phone retailers shift to other services as market saturated The mobile phone retail business is believed to be saturated and will continue to face difficulties in growth. US President-elect Joe Biden has announced the final members of his cabinet of 24. Its a team, he says, that looks like America. It is the first-ever cabinet to be evenly composed of women and men, and the first with a majority of people of colour. Plus, Biden said, it has more than a dozen history-making appointments, including the first female treasury secretary, the first African American defence decretary, the first openly gay cabinet member, the first Native American cabinet secretary. US President-elect Joe Biden has announced the final members of his cabinet. Credit:AP What he didnt brag about is that its also one of if not the oldest cabinets in US history, with 46 per cent of its members in their 60s or 70s. If Biden himself who, at 78, will be the oldest person ever to become president, and his 56-year-old Vice-President are included, the average age of the cabinet is 58.5 years. Were it not for 38-year-old Pete Buttigieg, nominated for Secretary of Transportation, it would be even older. Of course, in the US politicians, judges and business leaders (and, yes, even journalists) have a much longer shelf-life than is usual in Australia. Embattled Clackamas County Commissioner Mark Shull on Thursday dug in and said he would hold onto his office, rebuffing a large chorus of community and elected leaders who have called for his immediate resignation. At the same time Shull inexplicably voted in favor of a resolution censuring him and calling for him to step down for making derogatory, offensive, insensitive, and racist remarks that damaged the reputation of Clackamas County. Although the five-member board is nonpartisan, Republicans Tootie Smith and Paul Savas, as well as Democrats Sonya Fischer and Martha Schrader, voted for the resolution. By law, the board cannot force Shull to resign; the resolution serves as a public rebuke of his conduct. Shull was unmoved and barely acknowledged the controversy engulfing him since a Clackamas County resident brought public attention to xenophobic Facebook posts he had made over the past year and a half. Screenshots of the posts show Shull has made comments about Islam, Muslim people, as well as transgender people and the Black Lives Matter movement, which he called a pawn for the rise of neo Marxism. In brief remarks, Shull said: Its my intention at this time to continue to carry out the work for the people of Clackamas County. Shull did not respond to an email seeking comment from The Oregonian/OregonLive on his future plans, why he voted for the resolution and about additional information involving his background that has come to light. His colleagues did not hold back their anger. Fischer said voters were deceived by candidate Shull and had they known his true views, they would have rejected him. I do not believe candidate Shull is the real Mark Shull, which is demonstrated on your comments on your personal Facebook page, which were hateful and full of bigotry, she said. If Shull wont resign, Fischer said she would call on all community leaders and residents of the county to do the right thing and work to remove you from office. Schrader, too, addressed Shull directly. She said his comments have caused irreparable damage. It really is causing deep rifts in our community and in our ability to govern, she told him as she looked into the camera during the boards Zoom meeting. Cris Waller, the resident who brought Shulls views to light, also asked him to resign. She said she would move ahead with a recall effort if he refused. Elected officials cannot be recalled until six months into their terms in Oregon. Shull, who lives in Sandy, was elected to the commission in November, defeating incumbent Ken Humberston. Mr. Shull, it is time to step down now that you have been exposed for what you truly are, Waller said. We will not tolerate your bigotry. Waller, a leader in the countys Democratic Party, asked him to clear the way for the board to appoint someone who truly represents the people in this county. At the close of the meeting, Smith, the board chair, told the rest of the commissioners not to discuss the Shull controversy with reporters in the coming days because we dont need to continually fuel the fire on this issue. On Wednesday, county leaders called off a ceremonial swearing-in ceremony for the commissioners after Shull faced threats during a board meeting the day before that was broadcast on YouTube. County officials have declined to say how Shull was threatened, but sources briefed on the matter said one of the handful of messages online at Tuesdays board meeting included a target symbol. Another said: Its best to get him some security. A death threat against Shull was also phoned into county offices this week. Shull had said that he planned to meet Thursday with Muslim community leaders but offered no details. His Facebook page, which he has taken down, was replete with anti-Muslim posts, according to Wallers screenshots. Last year, for instance, he said When you interact with a Muslim, you are being deceived. Period. In a post earlier this month, he wrote ISIS is Islam. Islam is ISIS. Seemab Hussaini, a board member of the Oregon chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he is unaware of any Muslim leaders in the region meeting with Shull. We are not sure who he is meeting with, he said. The Muslim community leaders who we spoke to dont have any knowledge of this meeting. Hussaini said the community remains united in calling for his resignation. The damage is incredible, he said. It definitely runs very deep. He has to work a lot more on his accountability. Hussaini, who lives in Washington County, said the Muslim community in Clackamas County has been hesitant to build a mosque due to the areas conservatism. There is a reticence that has been in that community, he said. The Clackamas County Board of Commissioners is all white in a majority white county. According to the Census Bureaus 2019 American Community Survey, the county is 81% white, 9% Latino, 7% Asian, 2% Black and 1% Native American. As the controversy around Shull has swirled, two court cases involving him have entered the mix. In 2011, Multnomah County court records show Shull was acquitted of violating a restraining order involving his then-spouse, Galina Shull. Galina Shull alleged in court records that Mark Shull violated a restraining order by sending her a package at a womens shelter. The package contained chocolates and a note written in Russian, which said, Your (sic) home and bed are waiting for you. Tiger in eternal love, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in court. According to the court record, Shull said the couple met through a Russian dating website and married the previous year. Shull told police he was aware of the restraining order but denied violating it. He said two of his nicknames are Tarzan and Tiger, the prosecutors affidavit says. The restraining order stemmed from a December 2010 incident, court records show. At that time, the Clackamas County Sheriffs Office was called to Shulls home after his wife reported that Shull had pointed a gun at her and threatened her. Galina Shulls teen son told police that Shull had broken a dinner plate after a dispute over ketchup. The teen told the deputy that Mr. Shull was upset because there was high fructose corn syrup in the ketchup. The teen, according to the report, said Shull took the condiment and threw it into a potted plant, causing the pot to break. The teen said Shull ran after the mother and son as they left the house and threw a tea pot at them, but they were not struck, according to the report. The police report noted inconsistencies in the accounts provided by the mother and son. Shull told the deputy that he was upset that the teen viewed him as an American dog with a wallet and gave only one-word responses when Shull tried to talk to him. According to the police report, Shull acknowledged that he had gotten upset and broke his dinner plate over the teens plate and that hed thrown a bottle of ketchup. He said he had thrown a tea pot but not at the mother and son. He denied carrying a gun that day. The deputy concluded the report by saying he found Shulls account to be more credible than Shulls wife and her teen son. They appeared intentionally vague and untruthful regarding Shulls possession of the gun that day, the deputy wrote. He wrote that the two appeared to share contempt for Shull. Clackamas County District Attorney John Wentworth, who was then a deputy prosecutor, reviewed the case at the time and declined to prosecute Shull. In his memo, he cited insufficient evidence and conflicting accounts from Shulls wife and her son. Wentworth is now among the many elected leaders and public officials calling for Shull to resign. -- Noelle Crombie; ncrombie@oregonian.com; 503-276-7184; @noellecrombie Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. There is "huge relief" amongst the residents and staff of a HSE Laois nursing home with the start of Covid-19 vaccinations this week. Sylvia Mathews, a 102-year-old woman from Portarlington, was the first person in a Laois nursing home to be vaccinated against COVID-19 a week after the staff at Portlaoise hospital received the first vaccines delivered in the county. Sylvias vaccine was the first Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to be administered by vaccinators at the HSE St Vincent's Community Nursing Unit in Mountmellick on Thursday, January 14. Diane OToole Clinical Nurse Manager 2 (below) is the first staff member to be given the vaccine. Its wonderful to get the vaccine and its a privilege to be among the first in Laois to get vaccinated. I wanted to get the vaccine to protect myself and those around me from Covid-19 and it is a huge relief that we finally have protection from this terrible virus. I also want to acknowledge the team on St. Pauls ward who have support the residents and each other with kindness and compassion," she said. The HSE has said that each person receiving the vaccine was given a HSE vaccine information leaflet, along with more detailed manufacturers patient information leaflet, before getting the vaccine. Afterwards, each person vaccinated was given a vaccine record card, showing the name and batch of the vaccine they have received. They will each return for their second dose, to be fully protected, in three weeks. Below: CNM 2 Diane O'Toole the first staff member of staff to get the vaccine given by CNM 1 Sheila Slevin. Sarah McBride is Chief Officer of Midlands Louth Meath Community Healthcare Organisation. This is a day of hope for a better future. It is a good day for the residents and staff of St Vincent's Community Nursing Unit in Mountmellick and we are delighted that we can start rolling out the vaccine for our community. I would particularly like to thank all of the healthcare workers in Midlands Louth Meath who worked tirelessly to make this day possible. "I would also like to thank healthcare staff who have worked so hard at the frontline over the past year to protect our community from Covid-19 and support those who were affected by the virus. "While today does offer us hope for a better future, it is important that we continue to adhere with all of necessary guidelines to keep safe while the vaccine is being rolled out over the coming weeks and months. It is important to remember that by wearing a face covering, maintaining physical distancing and practising good hand hygiene, youre supporting frontline workers to maintain essential health services for the people of Midlands Louth Meath. Paula Phelan DON from the Community Nursing Home thanked her staff. I am so proud to lead the team of staff here in St Vincents CNU who have worked above and beyond the call of duty to care for our residents. Having all our residents and staff vaccinated over the last two days by our peer vaccinators has been wonderful and gives us all so much hope for the future. Every department and staff member have played a part of making the last two days happen. The target completion date for all 580 Public, Private and Voluntary Nursing Homes is February 28, although the HSE says that COVID outbreaks may interrupt vaccination. The HSE notes that worldwide, vaccines save at least 2-3 million lives each year and protect many more from crippling and lifelong illnesses. Only COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorised by the European Medicines Agency, having met stringent safety and effectiveness standards, will be used in Ireland. All COVID-19 vaccines will be carefully monitored over time and updated safety data and information will be published and shared by the HSE, on our website and in our printed information materials. Vaccination in the community by GPs and pharmacists is expected to start by March after the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is approved. Global software consultancy provider ThoughtWorks on Friday announced it has raised $720 million at at enterprise value of $4.6 billion. GIC, Siemens AG, Fidelity Management and Research LLC, and Mubadala Investment Company participated in the latest funding round. "It's wonderful that GIC, Siemens, Fidelity and Mubadala see ThoughtWorks to be a strong investment and this is an endorsement of the strength and relevance of our business and people," said Guo Xiao, president and chief executive officer, ThoughtWorks. Founded in Chicago over 25 years ago, ThoughtWorks has grown to become a leading global software consultancy with more than 7,000 employees worldwide. "The company's unique offerings are pivotal to the digitisation of many businesses which we see accelerating in 2021 and beyond," said Tim Breen, executive director, Technology at Mubadala. The company has 46 offices in 15 countries, including in India. "Over our 25+ year history, we have helped our clients solve complex business problems where technology is the differentiator," it said. The company said that the new funding will be used to repurchase equity from existing investors, as well as invest in international expansion. The news comes after ThoughtWorks agreed to acquire Gemini Solutions, a Silicon Valley software development and consulting services firm, for an undisclosed sum. 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. Home Search ICH Question Everything! Purpose and Intent of this website: Pompeos Desperado Vandalism By Finian Cunningham January 15, 2021 " Information Clearing House " - What an ignominious end to the Trump administration. Apart from the president being impeached for the second time, Trumps top diplomat Mike Pompeo has been frantically sabotaging as many foreign relations as possible. In recent days, Secretary of State Pompeo has been going through a to-do list like a maniac. He accused Iran of being the new international base for Al Qaeda terrorism, thus setting up the Islamic Republic as a target for airstrikes in the name of war on terror. No matter that Pompeo presented zero evidence to back up his crazy, unhinged claim, and no matter that it is absurdly illogical given the historical Wahhabi-Shia antipathy. No matter too that Irans military alliance has been wiping out Al Qaeda-type terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. Clumsy Mike doesnt do logic and intelligence. Hes a thuggish propagandist for US imperialism. Then Pompeo moved quickly to also slap Cuba back on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism again without any evidence and based on the ropy accusation that Havana supports Venezuelas elected socialist President Nicolas Maduro. The real state sponsor of terrorism here is the United States which has been economically strangling Venezuela for years and Cuba for decades. The to-do list continued: Pompeo announced that the US was placing Yemens Houthi rebels on a list of foreign terror groups. That move was widely denounced by the United Nations and European states for the disastrous impact it will have on blocking humanitarian aid efforts to reach millions of Yemenis caught up in the five-year US-backed Saudi war on that country the poorest in the Arab region. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter But Mike Pompeo, who professes to be a devout Christian, appeared too busy to consider the horrendous consequences. For he was having dinner with the head of Israeli spy agency Mossad in Washington DC during which they reportedly discussed (that is, shared intelligence) on Israeli air strikes which were launched on eastern Syria two days later, resulting in dozens of deaths. Next for evangelical Mike was China and Russia. Pompeo declared the opening of official contacts between the US and Taiwan, the breakaway Chinese territory, thereby furthering undermining Chinas sovereignty and infuriating Beijing. As for Russia, the US State Department is lining up more economic sanctions against European companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Ironically, when Trump was impeached again this week for inciting a deadly riot at the US Capitol on January 6, the outgoing president issued a statement condemning illegal conduct, saying violence and vandalism has no place in our country. Well, thats news for Pompeo who has been filling his final days in office with violence and vandalism instead of diplomacy. Its obvious that Pompeo is on a final wrecking-ball mission to ensure that the new Biden administration will be encumbered in foreign relations. Of course, Bidens team could theoretically reverse a lot of Pompeos final acts of madness. But because of bureaucracy in procedures that undoing could take months to achieve. Burning bridges takes time to reconstruct and rebuild confidence. Theres no doubt the nefarious aim is to damage relations with Russia and China, for example, so badly that it will be politically difficult for Biden to repair if he even wants to. For if Biden overturns Pompeos latest moves, then the new Democrat president is open to vilification for going soft on Moscow or Beijing. It is deplorable that US foreign policy is subject to the thuggish mentality and behaviour of Pompeo. Formerly, the head of the CIA, he once boasted that his operating credo was cheating, lying and stealing. In the final days of his reign at the State Department, we are seeing this playing out with appalling recklessness. No wonder that Pompeo had to cancel a farewell trip to Europe this week after it emerged that European foreign ministers were refusing to meet with him. It looks like even the normally obsequious European politicians couldnt stomach the odious US diplomat any longer. Pompeo personifies the outgoing Trump administration: cheap, criminal and utterly ignorant. Good riddance Mike: dont let the door hit you on the way out. Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Masters graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. - - " Source " - Post your comment below Registration is necessary to post comments. We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive language. Please be respectful of others. See also Search Information Clearing House The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Click Here To Support Information Clearing House Your support has kept ICH free on the Web since 2002. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. So far all of the Oneida County Health Department vaccination points of dispensing (PODs) have been fully booked. Thats 250-300 vaccines a day. The process starts with an appointment, and then theres a series of steps within the vaccination POD. The first thing thats going to happen is you need your temperature taken. Youll have to fill out a health questionnaire and likely wait in a few lines before getting a shot. Oneida County Health Department Executive Director Daniel Gilmore is asking for your patience. "The supply is coming in, but were not all going to be able to be vaccinated at the same time, the same day, the same week even. This is going to take 14 months or greater perhaps according to estimates by the State." Once you receive your vaccination youll go to the recovery area where a nurse will monitor your vital signs. This process can take 15 minutes to a half hour depending on how your feeling. If you'd like to get a shot, it's now required to make an appointment on-line through Oneida Countys website ocgov.net. The Oneida County Office for the Aging is also helping individuals having trouble navigating the online process. "Appointments are important because we have to plan the number of vaccinators and the number of other personnel on site during the administration of the vaccines." The entire process can take up to an hour and a half, and you do need an appointment in order to get a vaccination. Oneida County Office for the Aging Utica Walk In Office: 800 Park Avenue Monday Friday 9:00am 4:00pm Rome Walk In Office: 300 West Dominick Street Monday Friday 9:00am 4:00pm 315-798-5456 Monday Friday 8:30am 4:30pm The COVID-19 crisis leaves many migrant workers in Thailand unable to find jobs - Illustrative image (Photo: https://www.dw.com/) Hanoi - Global brands and small firms are actively providing assistance to migrant workers in Thailand, who are meeting difficulties after a jump in COVID-19 cases in the Southeast Asian nation.Thailand is "struggling" to respond to its worst coronavirus outbreak, with more than 200 new infections reported each day. The country has so far counted more than 11,000 cases, including 69 deaths.In Samut Sakhon, a province south of Bangkok where an outbreak began at a shrimp market late last year, many migrant workers are struggling to survive while local authorities imposed a social distancing order here since December last year.According to activists, an estimated 400,000 migrant workers, mainly from Myanmar, are working in the province. The health crisis has left many migrant workers unable to find jobs.The Raks Thai Foundation, a legal aid charity that has an office in Samut Sakhon, said it had received donations from many foreign and local companies since December.A representative from the foundation said that migrant workers help support the Thai economy and they should be given equal rights.Kimberly Rogovin, a coordinator for Global Labor Justice International Labor Rights Forum, an organisation to ensure labourers rights, stressed the need to do more to address the current crisis and prevent future disasters.She proposed the private sector to ensure workers are paid decent wages, have access to healthcare service, and do not bear the burden of paying for COVID-19 tests. There is no federal coronavirus vaccine stockpile with reserve doses, a shocking new report claims. On Tuesday, Health and Humans Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar announced the Trump administration would be releasing all shots that had been held back. But state and federal officials tell The Washington Post that when that vow was made, the reserve had already been depleted. In fact, as early as the end of December, the White House had been shipping doses to states that had just been newly manufactured. The HHS has refused to comment if or when they are getting more doses from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna. On Tuesday, HHS Secretary Alex Azar announce the federal government would be releasing the coronavirus vaccine stockpile. Pictured: Azar speaks during a news conference on Operation Warp Speed on Tuesday But a new report reveals the Trump administration that the reserve had already been exhausted when that announcement was made with Pfizer being stopped last year and Moderna last weekend. Pictured: A healthcare worker prepares a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at Queens Police Academy in New York It remains unclear when the federal government will receive more doses with just 11.1 million people vaccinated so far (above) Because both vaccines given emergency use authorization in the U.S. require two doses, the administration initially planned to hold back 50 percent of the supply to ensure that people received their second dose. However, three people told The Post that doses of Pfizer's vaccine stopped being stockpiled at the end of 2020. This past weekend, the same thing occurred with Moderna. HHS officials did not immediately return DailyMail.com's request for comment. In a statement to CBS News, Pfizer said Operation Warp Speed - the government's plan to fast track vaccine doses - asked the pharmaceutical company to start shipping doses second doses 'recently.' 'We have on hand all the second doses of the previous shipments to the US,' the statement read in part. 'We have provided OWS with a specific schedule and we foresee no issues in delivery on the commitments we made.' Additionally, according to tracking data from Bloomberg, 1.78 million more doses were distributed as of Friday than had been on Thursday. However, it is not clear how this will affect distribution next week. It is not clear how vaccine distribution will occur next week and how many doses will be coming off the manufacturing lines Governors Kate Brown of Oregon, Jay Inslee of Washington and Andrew Cuomo of New York expressed their frustration and said they are running out of doses (above) The Post reported that the policy change about releasing reserve doses because federal officials believe the supply chain could keep up with producing booster shots. The news was a shock to governors and health officials across the country who had been hoping to increase the amount of doses they could get into arms. Instead, they will have to conserve their already stretched-thin vaccine supply and determine who gets doses until more can be manufactured. 'Last night, I received disturbing news, confirmed to me directly by General Perna of Operation Warp Speed: States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses,' Oregon Governor Kate Brown tweeted on Friday. 'This is a deception on a national scale. Oregon's seniors, teachers, all of us, were depending on the promise of Oregon's share of the federal reserve of vaccines being released to us.' Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York addressed the news during a Friday press conference, particularly as the CDC increased federal guideline eligibility recommending everyone 65 and older receive a shot. 'You increase the eligibility, you don't increase the supply, and now you have a very complicated situation,' Cuomo said. 'I believe what [the administration] did was politically motivated. So on their way out the door they can say they made it available to everyone, and we increased supply...except they didn't.' Washington state Governor Jay Inslee also responded to the controversy. 'Governors were told repeatedly by @HHSgov there was a strategic reserve of vaccines, and this week, the American people were told it'd be released to increase supply of vaccine,' he tweeted. 'It appears now that no reserve exists. The Trump admin. must answer immediately for this deception.' The announcement about releasing the reserve came after President-elect Joe Biden's team said it planned to release all doses. HHS Secretary Azar was initially against such a policy, saying it was unethical to release doses and make people potentially miss booster shots. However. by the time he announced the policy change, he neglected to mention that the stockpile no longer had reserve doses. The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form AFTERSHOCKS By Nadia Owusu Where are you from? If someone were to ask, you might cite your current ZIP code or share where you were raised. You might mention where your ancestors lived. You might explain whether you grew up rooted to one cul-de-sac, one city block, one country. But for Nadia Owusu, the question is not so simple. The daughter of a Ghanaian father who worked for a United Nations agency and an Armenian-American mother, she has lived a nomadic life she was born in Tanzania, then, as a child, lived in Uganda, Ethiopia, Italy and England. Later, when she was 18, she moved to New York for college and stayed there for her entire adult life. Confused? she asks. Me too. I never know how to answer the question of my origin. Owusus debut memoir, Aftershocks, is her attempt to explain. In Aftershocks, Owusu reflects on her childhood and her 20s, feeling untethered from the world because of her fathers diplomatic background and from her family, which is complicated by divorce and death. The narrative is straightforward but Owusu uses formats like a resettlement intake form and symbols like a recycled blue chair found on the streets of New York City to tell her story. The dominant motif, however, is an earthquake. Owusu opens the book with a chapter titled First Earthquake and chapters are grouped under sections with labels that include Foreshocks, Faults, Aftershocks and more. Federal authorities on Friday arrested a Spring man in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, making him the first in the Houston area to be charged in the deadly insurrection. Joshua Lollar, 39, faces three criminal charges after the FBI combed through his Facebook page and found a myriad of now-deleted posts detailing involvement in the riot, in Washington, D.C., according to court documents. He is one of at least 100 people who have been arrested and 47 charged in federal court over the event, numbers that are expected to mushroom as FBI authorities said they were "aggressively" seeking out people in the violent mob. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died as a result of the riot by supporters of President Donald Trump. A large group of them stormed the government building after the president called for them to fight Congress eventual vote approving the results of Joe Bidens election. Lawmakers took shelter and were evacuated as some of the mob raided the building, even entering some members offices. Lollar was believed to be at the front of a group trying to push past a line of Metropolitan Police officers into the Capitol, a FBI special agent wrote in court documents. Given the close proximity of the MPD officers to the camera lens, and the fact that there is no person or property visible in between the camera and the bodies of the MPD officers, it appears that Lollar was at the front lines of a physical confrontation with MPD officers, the agent wrote. Lollar spoke with investigators and admitted to traveling to and being at the riot, the agent said. He willingly handed over his cellphone, as well as his password. The Spring resident made his initial appearance in a Houston federal court Friday afternoon. Handcuffed, he told U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Edison that he understood the charges against him. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Johnson said he would oppose Lollars release on bond until he forfeits his guns. Johnson told the court that Lollar said that he owned guns but refused to tell investigators what type of weapons he owned and where they were located. Were not comfortable with him being out until then, Johnson said. Authorities first heard of Lollar through a tip to the FBIs National Threat Operations Center, according to court documents. The tipster said he believed the defendant was one of many Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol following the presidents speech at the Ellipse. The tipster said he was friends with Lollar on Facebook and saw many photos and a livestream video of him clashing with police officers. He sent several screenshots, including a photo with the caption, Busting in, and another with the caption inside the Capitol. Another screenshot showed the post: Sorry they are jamming the phones so I cant do much about a live stream or uploading. Ill do my best, its about to get spicey boi! After one of his Facebook friends asked how the riot was going, federal prosecutors allege that the profile associated with his name wrote, They ran us out of the Capitol area. Antifa was randomly in our groups. They forgot to take off the black block. I dont know what tomorrow will bring but I will try to do more vids. Authorities interviewed Lollar on Monday. He said he had driven from Spring to Washington, attended Trumps speech, and then followed the crowd to the Capitol, the special agent said. He told them he did enter the Capitol and recorded several videos for Facebook most or all of which were removed but were still on his phone. In the photos and videos on the device, Lollar was seen at times wearing a Keep America Great cap, a tan body armor vest and a gas mask, the filing alleges. Another video showed Lollar as part of a crowd unsuccessfully attempting to push through a line of law enforcement officers, documents show. That night, he posted, Yeah, Im good. Just got gassed and fought with cops that I never thought would happen. The post continued, I dont know what we can do, but Im trying my best to get it done peaceful. We cant loose (sic) our America. A Facebook user appearing to be Lollars sister urged him multiple times to remove the posts because of the potential of federal prosecutions. Lollar is not currently employed and receives disability benefits, he told Edison on Friday. He is being charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building without lawful authority and impeding or disrupting official functions; obstructing or impeding law enforcement officer during civil disorder and obstruction federally protected functions; and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Those charges could result in various fines and up to one year in prison, five years in custody and six months in custody for the respective charges. Lollars charges fall under the same process anticipated for most of the riot-related prosecutions. U.S. attorneys not based in Washington are mostly expected to help out with local arrests and search warrants in connection with prosecutions of the mob participants, U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick said. Several other Texans have been charged in the riot, including real estate agent Jenna Ryan, who bragged on social media about storming the Capitol. The licensed broker based in Fresno was charged Friday with disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and knowingly entering a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. Larry Brock Jr., an Air Force veteran from Grapevine, was released from custody on Thursday. He is charged with knowingly entering a restricted building without lawful authority and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. A prosecutor said Brock intended to take hostages, the newspaper reported. After initial appearances in court, many defendants will be moved to Washington for further proceedings, Patrick said. Patrick, who represents the Southern District of Texas, said Justice Department officials in Washington will likely pursue cases that involve violence, theft, property damage, criminal mischief, trespassing or knowingly entering or remaining in restricted building or grounds without permission. If someone involved in the melee lived in the sprawling 43-county Southern District, Patrick said, he would investigate locally whether the person planned in advance to travel to Washington to incite a riot. The Houston Police Department officer who was believed to be at the Capitol has not yet been charged. The former lawman, Tan Pham, resigned Thursday. Christina Garza, spokesperson for the FBI in Houston, said the agency welcomes tips that will help identify people who instigated rioting and violence at the Capitol and elsewhere in Washington. Witnesses with information, photos, multimedia or videos related to this investigation can submit materials through a form at fbi.gov/USCapitol or call 1-800-CALL-FBI or 1-800-225-5324. Lollar is due back in court at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Gabrielle Banks contributed to this report. samantha.ketterer@chron.com Britain's vaccination programme is ahead of schedule after more than 300,000 jabs were delivered in a single day. Some 3.2million doses have now been doled out far more than in any other European nation. Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance hailed the rollout as a 'miracle', with the NHS confirming that 316,694 jabs were administered on Thursday an increase of almost 70,000 compared with the previous day. The figures raised hopes that Boris Johnson will meet his target of vaccinating everyone in the four most vulnerable groups by February 15. Mr Johnson said yesterday that 'jab by jab, we will win this fight' but warned it was still too soon to consider easing the lockdown as any 'false sense of security' could lead the disease to 'run riot in the younger generations'. Sir Patrick also cautioned against lifting curbs too soon. 'This is not a natural peak that is coming down on its own,' he said. 'Take the lid off now and it's going to boil over for sure.' Chief medical officer Chris Whitty said major changes would have to wait until April. 'We're not going to move from a sudden lockdown situation to nothing,' Professor Whitty said. 'It will have to be walking backwards by degrees, testing what works.' More than 3.2million people across the UK have now received a coronavirus vaccine Nurse Gemma Reid gives Pamela Eddington, 86, the vaccine at Lichfield Cathedral Britain's vaccination programme is ahead of schedule after more than 300,000 jabs were delivered in a single day. Some 3.2million doses have now been doled out Mr Johnson said around 1.3million people aged 80 or over have had at least one vaccination dose nearly 45 per cent of that age group. 'We are steadily building up that immunity, that protection, for the vulnerable, for the NHS and for us all,' he said. 'So when the call comes, please do get the jab.' The Prime Minister stressed that restrictions could only be eased once the most vulnerable have been vaccinated. The four groups at the top of the priority list for jabs cover care home residents and staff, frontline health workers, everyone over 70 and anyone deemed clinically extremely vulnerable. Mr Johnson warned, however, that protecting these groups against Covid was just the start. 'It does affect huge numbers of younger people, often very badly, and the risk is that those numbers would be greatly inflated if we let go too soon in circumstances where the disease really was rampant,' he said. 'That is not to say that we don't want to try to get to [relaxing lockdown rules] as soon as we reasonably can, but there's a lot of things that have to go right.' Professor Whitty said lifting restrictions too soon could leave the NHS unable to treat cancer and heart patients. People receive their jabs inside Lichfield Cathedral which had been turned into a vaccine hub A member of the medical team administers a Covid-19 vaccine injection at the NHS vaccination centre in Robertson House, in Stevenage Warning that hospital admissions and deaths would continue to rise over the next few days, he predicted that things are 'generally going to improve in the spring'. He continued: 'I don't think anybody thinks that suddenly in spring is that it's all over and that's the whole thing done. What we expect is for things to be substantially better than they are at the moment.' Mr Johnson reiterated the dangers of catching the virus via direct contact, saying Covid is 'widely transmitted' by handling things which have been touched by others. In a video posted on Twitter, he also urged people not to leave home this weekend unless doing so is essential. Warning that one in three people with coronavirus does not have any symptoms, he called on everyone to act as if they have the virus and 'think twice' before leaving home. 'As we go into the weekend I just want to thank everyone for following the rules and staying at home,' he said. 'Jab by jab, we will win this fight against Covid. We've already vaccinated hundreds of thousands more people than in any other country in Europe, and this extraordinary national effort is only going to accelerate... but until the job is done, we must keep this virus under control. 'Remember that one in three with Covid have no symptoms they're silent spreaders unwittingly infecting others, and that could be you. 'It's safest to assume that you may have Covid, so please really think twice before leaving the house this weekend, and only do so if it's absolutely necessary.' Mr Johnson's comments came days after he was spotted cycling in London's Olympic Park seven miles away from his home in Downing Street. The company was not named in the charges, but his bio on the Plainfield Township website as well as his LinkedIn page show he held a chief financial officer position at PSC Group, LLC, a Schaumburg-based company that provides technology consulting services for small to mid-size businesses. A company representative could not immediately be reached. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Naomi Watts knew all about the angry side of magpies from when she was swooped while horse riding through a forest near Canberra many years ago. "Obviously there was nesting going and a bunch of magpies just came down and bombed us," she says. "It was kind of terrifying." Naomi Watts and a magpie co-star in Penguin Bloom meet Sam Bloom on the set (aka Sam's house). Credit:Cameron Bloom Her boyfriend of the time knew they should swing their arms around as they rode to scare away the marauding birds and all ended well. But Watts was still unprepared for another run-in with a magpie making Australian film Penguin Bloom. Showing no regard for Watts as a two-time Oscar nominee with a flourishing Hollywood career, the magpie co-star shat on her head. "It was very early on possibly even the first day and I was still getting warmed up to this whole experience of birds crawling all over me," Watts says via Zoom from New York. "The bird was on my head and [the trickle] went all the way down my face and then oh my god it slipped warmly into my mouth. It was the most horrific experience." Watts moved on from that awkward moment to play Sam Bloom, a surfer, seasoned traveller and mother of three young sons from Sydney's northern beaches who was paralysed in a near-fatal fall on a family holiday in Thailand in 2013. After arriving back home after seven months in hospital, Bloom and her family were helped through the crisis by a wounded magpie chick. The bestselling book by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive. Credit:Louise Kennerley Advertisement Based on a bestselling book written by her photographer husband Cameron and Bradley Trevor Greive, the film focuses on Sam as she struggles to come to terms with her new life. In one harrowing scene, she knocks a jar of honey off a kitchen bench in a gesture that suggests both her pain and the fragility of life. As shown in her affecting performances as a grieving widow and mother in 21 Grams and as a doctor caught up in a tsunami in The Impossible, Watts is an actor who can dig deep to express raw emotion on screen. "I'm not afraid of the darkness," she says matter of factly. "I think it lives within all of us." So what is it that allows her to tap into these extreme emotions? "Darkness is part of all of us, whether you're up for embracing it or not," Watts says. "I feel, rather than hiding it, I want to embrace it because when I go [to watch a film], I feel less alone about my darkness when I see someone cracking themselves open on the screen. 'I'm not afraid of the darkness. I feel less alone about my darkness when I see someone cracking themselves open on the screen.' Actor Naomi Watts "I feel like I can relate and I feel like life is not so scary when I see other people who are willing to open up like that and are willing to go there. Advertisement "There's a real need for that level of storytelling, just as there is with the complete opposite: we all need to feel good and watch a funny, goofy comedy as well." Watts sees value in viewers imagining themselves going through Bloom's experience. English actor Andrew Lincoln plays photographer husband Cameron Bloom. "It teaches us something about survival by watching somebody else manage through it," she says. "It becomes a story of survival and hope. "Sam embraces to this day that her life took a very dark turn and she managed to get through it: 'It's still a continuing path ... but it's my path and I'm going to have to own it and muscle through it somehow' [she says]. That's impressive and brave." Watts decided to make the film after reading the book with her kids on a lazy Sunday morning and realising how the story made the family feel more connected. "We were laughing one minute then we were going 'oh no' and 'oh my god' - crying - and really feeling all of those feelings together," she says. "It struck me that this is something powerful. That's what should be gleaned from the experience of watching this film: the powerful bonding that a family creates through the ups and downs." Advertisement Kitchen aid from a magpie in Penguin Bloom. Credit:Joel Pratley Two decades on from her breakout role in Mulholland Drive (2001), Watts has powered on through her forties and early 50s, regularly taking control of her work as a producer and executive producer. While her highest-profile roles in the past decade have been in The Impossible (2012), Diana (2013) and Birdman (2014), she has also starred in the Divergent films (2015, 2016) and the television dramas Twin Peaks (2017) and Gypsy (2017). More recently, she played Gertrude in Ophelia (2018), a female take on Hamlet from Australian director Claire McCarthy, and journalist Gretchen Carlson in the mini-series The Loudest Voice (2019). Even during the worst of the pandemic in North America, she starred in and produced the thriller Lakewood with Australian director Phil Noyce in Canada. "New York got hit so intensely so early on that they figured out how to manage it," Watts says, although this was before another surge in virus numbers. "There were drastic numbers early on so everyone said, 'OK, we're wearing masks, we're doing this'. My kids are in school twice a week. It's nerve-wracking but we're adapting. This is the world we live in now." Watts feels the pandemic has made films like Penguin Bloom more relevant. A scene in Penguin Bloom. Credit:Joel Pratley "In any art form, I feel like we're just craving stories," she says. "We're lacking that physical connectivity. We're left with this longing so to wrap ourselves into other people's stories is what we need to do to escape our own or identify with our own. This is a story of hope and survival and it feels like we need those kinds of stories right now." Advertisement Loading So what was it like producing the film presumably having to worry about everything that happens daily on set like falling behind schedule, the timing of lunch breaks and the budget while leaving enough energy to act? "The producing hat for me was very much in the development stage: finding the right group of people and being unified with how we wanted to tell this story," Watts says. "Once we got on the set, obviously we hire really good people and make sure they're managing the time and the lunch and everything. "But you do start worrying about time when you're running out of light and things like that: 'Come on, let's get this and let's not lose the shot.' 'The birds are creating magic over there in the corner and we're missing it'. Stuff like that. You're 100 per cent committed at all times." To enhance the authenticity of the filmmaking, director Glendyn Ivin (The Cry, Safe Harbour) chose to shoot in the actual Bloom family's house at Newport. Costume designer Joanna Mae Park raided Sam Bloom's wardrobe and recreated key pieces for Watts to wear during filming. And Bloom let Watts read her journals, which revealed the depths of her pain after the accident. Naomi Watts with Sam Bloom in November 2018. Credit:Cameron Bloom "That was the most personal gesture," Watts says. "I've played real-life people enough to know that it's a big responsibility, especially if that person is still around. You want to make sure you honour their story. Advertisement 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 New Jersey National Guard troops are ready to protect the states capital ahead of potential violence during the final days of Donald Trumps presidency. We will have 100 Guard members prepared to support local and state law enforcement, Lt. Col. Barbara Brown wrote in an email. Soldiers were part of a Quick Reaction Force, she said, which can help when requested by proper authorities. New Jerseys top Homeland Security official has warned of a possible armed march in Trenton and other capitals in the coming days, although officials have stressed there are no specific or credible threats facing the state. Local Second Amendment groups have also warned gun owners against rallying. Nonetheless, Gov. Phil Murphy is closing state offices as a precaution Wednesday, the day of the presidential inauguration. Fears stem from last weeks deadly riot, when a mob loyal to Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. Trentons federal courthouse was partially boarded up as of Friday, and sheets of wood were visible behind street-level windows and doors. It was not immediately clear if other buildings are nailing up plywood. Calls to the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees security at federal courthouses, were not immediately returned. Friday, January 15 2021 - Street-level windows and two of the three entrance doors in the Clarkson S. Fisher Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Trenton have wood behind them ahead of possible armed protests on Sunday.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com Protests involving ten or more people at New Jerseys Statehouse require a permit. The State Police said only two groups had been approved for the entire month of January: NJ Parents for In-Person Learning was given the green light to rally earlier this week, and NJ Right to Life is planning on bringing 400 people to the capital later this month. No group has been approved to march in the coming days through Jan. 20, when President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in, according to Sgt. Lawrence Peele. Any gathering of 10 or more persons on State Capitol grounds without a permit will be asked to disperse, Peele wrote in an email. Residents have to apply at least 72 hours ahead of time, meaning somebody couldnt ask today to protest Sunday. Many windows at the Statehouse are already boarded up amid ongoing renovation. The State Police have previously declined to give details about what security precautions theyre taking, but troopers on horseback could be seen patrolling the road Friday. Friday, January 15 2021 - Two New Jersey State Troopers mounted on horseback walk the perimeter of the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton two days ahead of possible armed protests on Sunday. The statehouse is in the midst of a $300 million renovation project.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Blake Nelson can be reached at bnelson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCunninghamN. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. The scene featuring Trump and Culkin was shot in the Plaza Hotel, which the real estate developer-turned-politician owned when the movie hit theaters. Culkins character, a child who gets separated from his family while on vacation, asks Trump how to get to the lobby and is pointed down the hall. 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. HAMDEN Police have arrested a 16-year-old New Haven male juvenile after a Hamden resident said he was robbed at gunpoint in his car earlier this week. On Tuesday, Hamden police were called to a home on Helen Street after a reported carjacking, police Capt. Ronald Smith said. The 26 year-old victim stated that he was warming up his motor vehicle, when a black BMW pulled alongside, Smith said. Two males got out and one pointed a firearm at the man while the other searched the mans car, according to police. The thieves took the mans car, wallet and cellphone, but no injuries were reported, Smith said. Throughout the day, members of the Hamden Police Department Detective Division, in close collaboration with the New Haven Police Department, investigated the carjacking, he said. Information gathered by police led to them to the home of the 16-year-old New Haven resident, where they found evidence of the carjacking. Police said he was responsible for the car jacking and had been the suspect who was armed. The 16-year-old, who police have not identified, was charged with first-degree robbery and first degree larceny. He was released to a guardian and is due in juvenile court Jan. 25, Smith said. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 20:00:30|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MANILA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Foreign nationals travelling from or transiting through the United Arab Emirates and Hungary will be barred from entering the Philippines starting Jan. 17, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Friday. The newly announced restriction is in the Southeast Asian country's further efforts to curb the spread of the new and more contagious coronavirus variants. Roque said that foreign travellers from the UAE and Hungary shall be prohibited from entering the Philippines from Jan. 17 to 31, 2021. Arrivals before Jan. 17 will be required to undergo an absolute facility-based 14-day quarantine even if their coronavirus tests show negative results, Roque added. Roque said Filipino citizens shall be allowed to enter the Philippines. Filipino travelers are also required to complete a 14-day quarantine even if coronavirus tests show negative results, he added. The Philippines has earlier imposed travel restrictions on 33 countries and regions with confirmed new strains until Jan. 31. The addition of the UAE and Hungary brings the total to 35. The Philippine government included the UAE in the travel restriction list after a 29-year-old Filipino man who visited Dubai tested positive for the new virus variant. The patient, who traveled to Dubai on Dec. 27, returned to Manila on Jan. 7. The travel restriction list also includes Australia, Britain, the United States and China. The Philippines now has reported 496,646 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 9,876 deaths. Enditem Josephine Skriver had to postpone her wedding amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But the Danish model is staying busy with work, as the fashion industry takes precautions against the coronavirus. She braved the New York City public transit system without a face mask Thursday, as she modeled a grunge chic look for a Maybelline campaign shoot. Working girl: Josephine Skriver braved the New York City public transit system without a face mask Thursday, as she modeled a grunge chic look for a Maybelline campaign shoot The 27-year-old donned a nude slip dress, layered with a black leather motorcycle jacket and matching Doc Marten combat boots. She carried a bouquet of pink flowers as she ran down the stairs from an elevated MTA stop in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. Skriver strutted down the steps, as she was followed by a cameraman and some crew members. She showed off her glam beauty look in a behind-the-scenes video posted by makeup artist Erin Parsons, which Skriver captioned: 'Back with the @maybelline fam.' Grunge chic: The 27-year-old donned a nude slip dress, layered with a black leather motorcycle jacket and matching Doc Marten combat boots Cameras rolling: She carried a bouquet of pink flowers as she ran down the stairs from an elevated MTA stop in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. Skriver strutted down the steps, as she was followed by a cameraman and some crew members Glam display: She showed off her glam beauty look in a behind-the-scenes video posted by makeup artist Erin Parsons, which Skriver captioned: 'Back with the @maybelline fam' All smiles: Parsons also snapped a candid of the Victoria's Secret Angel smiling with her flowers, as she was lit on set Parsons also snapped a candid of the Victoria's Secret Angel smiling with her flowers, as she was lit on set. Skriver has otherwise been enjoying lockdown, telling Flare in September: 'I think loungewear is definitely here for more than a moment and I am not mad about it!' She also explained the importance of models learning to use their platform over the past year: 'I was raised to stand up for what you believe in. If I want to be true to myself and my values, I think it's important to know when to use your voice. 'There are many people who unfortunately don't have that luxury to be able to use their voice freely; we want to advocate for those voices.' It comes after she and fiance Alexander DeLeon, 31, postponed their wedding in May, after getting engaged under the Northern Lights in Finland back in November of 2018. Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. A demonstrator holds flags of Taiwan and the United States in support of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during an stopover after her visit to Latin America in Burlingame, Calif., on Jan. 14, 2017. (Stephen Lam/Reuters) Trumps Parting Shot to China Should Be Full US Recognition of Taiwan Commentary President Donald Trumps two greatest foreign policy accomplishments both involve departures from outmoded paradigms that had, for decades, enraptured bipartisan neoliberal elites: unprecedented Arab-Israeli rapprochement in the Middle East and an assertive China containment strategy in the Asia-Pacific. On the former front, Trump boldly departed from the misbegotten inside-out conflict resolution approach, which elevated to the forefront the need for Israeli capitulation to Palestinian-Arab intransigence; on the latter front, Trump became the first president since Richard Nixons famous 1972 trip to China to openly call into question our relationship with that ascendant, hegemonic Communist regime. The key difference is that, as Trump prepares to ride off into the sunset, progress on the latter is likely at greater risk of a prompt post-inauguration reversal from his Democratic successor. The physical moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one of the Trump administrations myriad displays of staunch friendship with the Jewish state, is unlikely to be undone. Nor would any sane politician seek to nix the Abraham Accords, the series of landmark peace deals between Israel and Islamic nations that the administration helped negotiate. But pugnacious China-skeptical rhetoric, hardline opposition to Huaweis emergent 5G telecommunications network, and harsh tariffs on Chinese imports are the sort of moves that would be all too easy for a longtime China dove such as Joe Biden to quickly reverse. In order to help box in his successor and secure the continuity of our long-overdue recalibration with our preeminent 21st-century geopolitical threat, there is one farewell action above all that would stick in the craw of the Chinese Communist Party, or the CCP, and redound to Americas substantive benefit. Trump ought to formally recognize Taiwan (also known as the Republic of China) as an independent state, distinct from the Beijing-based regimeand he must do so, with all the diplomatic accoutrements that such a formal recognition entails, posthaste. There are few territorial disputes about which the CCP is more adamant than its insistence that both mainland China and Taiwan are part of a single, unified Chinese statewith the Beijing-based Peoples Republic of China, or PRC, as the sole legitimate representative of that state. It has also been de facto, if not quite official, U.S. policy since the Jimmy Carter administration. As with most other Carter-era foreign policy initiatives that are remnants of a capitulatory Cold War posture, this stance is misguided and counterproductive: It is past time for the United States to formally repudiate the one-China policy and open an embassy in Taipei. The one-China policy was predicated upon the belief that, through appeasement and economic liberalization, the PRC could become less authoritarian and ultimately better integrated into the much-ballyhooed liberal world order. Whatever merit such an idea might have had as a theoretical musing has now been decisively disproven by history. The PRC under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping is a rapacious hegemony that commits genocide against unwanted minorities, operates a nonpareil system of Orwellian state surveillance, steals intellectual property, commits predatory trade practices, and unleashes deadly pandemics upon the world. Worse, that same much-lauded post-1972 economic liberalization has both made Americans complicit in CCP crimes against humanitythink of Disney filming its recent Mulan film partially in Xinjiang, where a genuine genocide is currently unfolding against Uyghur Muslimsand contributed to the hollowing out of our industrial base, the loss of mass blue-collar jobs, and the concomitant proliferation of drug overdoses across the American heartland. Trump had both the instinct and courage to change course. He can help solidify those gains by ending the one-China policy, converting the de facto embassy that is the American Institute in Taiwan into an official embassy, and formalizing all relevant diplomatic channels to the Taiwanese government. Taiwan is everything the PRC is not: It is a free-market-oriented, pro-Western bastion that, with proper Western fortification, would do wonders to keep the Peoples Liberation Army at bay due to its strategic position. It would meaningfully deter Jinpings menacing wolf warrior diplomacy and help anchor a comprehensive China containment strategy spreading from South Korea and Japan through the Philippines and down all the way to Australia. And much like Trumps moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a formal christening of an American embassy in Taipei is an action that would be politically difficult to undo. Earlier this week, John Fund of National Review reported that many U.S. officials have been urging Trump to officially recognize Taiwan. It would be a fitting capstone to the first presidency in a half-century to recognize the PRC for the arch-foe that it is. Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training, is an opinion editor for Newsweek, a podcast contributor with BlazeTV, of counsel at First Liberty Institute, and a syndicated columnist. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Local school districts anticipate receiving perhaps four times more money in the latest round of federal pandemic relief grants than they gained in the spring. While the Pennsylvania Department of Education still is calculating how much to give each district, the state has $1.9 billion to distribute, compared with $400 million available to public schools in May 2020. The challenges created by the pandemic for schools have been massive, and our educators have done their best to overcome them, state Rep. Tarah Toohil, R-116, Butler Twp., said in an email. This funding will assist them in that effort as they strive to continue providing students with a quality education under these most difficult circumstances. Toohil is still trying learn how schools can use the funds. She said the money might help school boards avoid tax increases, provide internet access and devices for families of children studying from home, and for behavioral therapy, counseling and medical evaluations for children who havent had access to health care during the pandemic. Many schools will incur additional costs for cleaning and safely reopening classrooms to elementary students in the second semester, as the state recently recommended. Hazleton Area Superintendent Brian Uplinger doesnt know yet when the funds will arrive. We will be looking to increase a number of different services (and) programs offered by the district, Uplinger said in an email. He plans to discuss the funding with the school board. Preliminary estimates show Hazleton Area could receive between $15.08 million and $15.6 million, or more than 9% of the districts total budget. Tamaqua Area Superintendent Raymond Kinder said his district has lots of choices on how to spend an estimated $1.75 million. These could include masks, technology, capital project issues, disinfectant equipment, supplies and mental health services, Kinder said. If, however, the state experiences shortfalls and reduces other assistance to schools, expenses due to the pandemic could fall to districts and their taxpayers. That will be detrimental to the educational program offered to the community, which can lead to unwanted cuts, Kinder said. In Weatherly Area, where a grant is estimated at a half million dollars, Superintendent Teresa Young said some of the money will go toward cleaning services, though there are other areas of need. It would be extremely helpful if the money could be used to help offset the increase in cyber education costs, but that is not an approved use at this time, Young said. Weatherly Area, she said, spent tax dollars this summer advertising and recruiting families for its cyber school because the district pays $13,500 to every student who transfers to a private cyber school. The payment is $30,000 for each special education student who transfers. Crestwood Business Manager Peter Bard heard that his district will receive $910,505, but another estimate from the state said Crestwood might receive $1.32 million. In any event, Bard said in an email, we are going to use the funds to continue to support our students and our continuity of education plans. We are going to ensure our students have the necessary tools moving forward to continue to be the best performing students in the state, like they have been. Schools have until September 2023 to spend the grants, which gives them time to plan how to maximize their spending, Bard said. Although the minimum estimated grant is more than double the total federal funding in Crestwoods budget for this year, the district would receive a lower grant than others in the Luzerne Intermediate Unit. Crestwood gets about 1% of its funds each year from the federal government. Thats partly because it has a smaller percentage of students from families with low incomes than other districts in the intermediate unit. A large share of federal funds come to districts through Title 1, a program that serves students from low income families. In the first round of pandemic assistance in spring 2020 when Pennsylvania public schools gained $400 million, the federal government required states to dispense funding through the Title 1 formula. States had more leeway in the next round when Pennsylvania gave out $174 million to public schools. In a method passed by state lawmakers in June, each Pennsylvania district got $120,000 plus $67 per student. That method that skewed payments away from districts where a high portion of students were black or Hispanic or from families with low incomes, the Keystone Research Center concluded in a report. Charter schools received $70 million in the first round; and in the next round, $25 million went to charter schools, intermediate units and career and technical high schools, the report said. Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters of Pennsylvania, said Wednesday that 90% of the latest round of pandemic funds are to be allocated through the Title 1 formula. Its unclear how the other 10% will be awarded, Spicka said. Good morning, its Friday, Jan. 15, 2021, the day of the week when I reprise a quote meant to be inspiring or elucidating. Todays comes from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., born this day in 1929. His address on Oct. 26, 1967, in Philadelphia wasnt about civil rights per se, although he would talk on that subject at Saint Josephs University that same day and then deliver opening remarks at a Stars for Freedom event at the Spectrum featuring Harry Belafonte, Sidney Portier, and Aretha Franklin. First, however, King delivered a fatherly pep talk to the student body at Barratt Junior High School in Philly. Included in that 20-minute address were words to live by -- for people of any race, of any age, in any era. They are as uplifting now as they were 54 years ago. Before reciting them, Id point you to RCPs front page, which presents our poll averages, videos, breaking news stories, and aggregated opinion pieces spanning the political spectrum. Todays lineup includes Alisyn Camerota (CNN), Rebecca Traister (New York magazine) and Daniel Flynn (American Spectator). We also offer original material from our own reporters, columnists, and contributors, including the following: * * * 2009 Redux? Biden Cites Urgent Need for His $1.9 Trillion Stimulus. Phil Wegmann reports on last nights announcement, which harkened back to the plan overseen 11 years ago by then-Vice President Joe Biden. Impeachments Biggest Loser. Liz Peek writes that Democrats rush to judgment suggests the president-elect is not really in charge of his political party. Big Techs Conservative Purge Changes the Free Speech Debate. Alfredo Ortiz argues that its time for regulating web-hosting companies in ways akin to rules for public utilities. Electoral College Needed Now More Than Ever. Jennifer C. Braceras explains why the protests that took place last week would become more frequent if a national popular vote system were put in place. Five Facts on the U.S. Capitol Police. At RealClearPolicy, No Labels has this primer. I Work at an ICE Processing Center. The Media Is Wrong. Also at RCPolicy, Brandi Buendel counters the narrative that poor care is rendered at immigration facilities. Why Returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal Is Unwise. At RealClearWorld, Jacob Nagel urges Biden to seek a new agreement that brings Israel into the negotiations. The Path to States Going 100% Renewable. At RealClearEnergy, Jane Marsh outlines a way forward. New EPA Rule Follows the Science. At RealClearScience, Joseph Annotti defends a policy change restricting the agencys ability to impose regulations that rely on scientifically unfounded research. Education in Americas Ideals. At RealClearWire, Mike Sabo focuses on how the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal promotes a revamped civics education curriculum, among other goals. * * * Speaking to a nearly all-black student body, King prefaced his central message by bolstering their self-esteem, beginning with their skin color, hair, and physical features -- telling them that they should be proud of how they look and embrace the concept that Black Is Beautiful. But the heart of his message was that they should have a blueprint for their lives. Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, he said. And that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, as the model for those who are to build the building. And a building is not well erected without a good, sound, and solid blueprint. The Rev. King then got to the heart of his message, which is that whatever endeavors they chose to pursue in life they must be determined to achieve excellence. Opportunities were about to unfold for them, he predicted, that had not been open to previous generations of African Americans. They must aim high. Dont set out to be just a good Negro doctor, a good Negro lawyer, a good Negro school teacher, a good Negro preacher, a good Negro barber, a beautician, a good Negro skilled laborer, he said. For if you set out to do that, you have already flunked your matriculation exam for entrance into the University of Integration. Set out to do a good job and do that job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn couldnt do it any better. Then, in words that apply to all of us -- or should -- Dr. King continued: If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera and sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. And thats our quote of the week. Carl M. Cannon Washington Bureau chief, RealClearPolitics @CarlCannon (Twitter) ccannon@realclearpolitics.com 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. Google, Facebook on the Defense After Capitol Attack Google and Facebook executives were placed on the defense this week as they were questioned on the role their platforms played in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol. Protesters who stormed the Capitol used Google-owned YouTube and Facebook, among other platforms, before and during the storming. Pressed on whether Alphabet, Googles parent company, missed the extent of the danger, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said this week that the company had been worried about the possibility of real world harm and incitement of violence. I dont want to say we clearly anticipated what happened last week, but the potential for violence was something concerning. There had been intelligence leading up to it, Pichai said during the Reuters NEXT conference. Just like with elections four years ago and the potential for foreign interference, we are constantly learning from these moments, and the Internet I think as a whole needs to come to terms with what kind of information can spread, and its definitely more to do from all our sides, he added. YouTube removed thousands of videos for promoting theories of widespread fraud in the weeks after the 2020 election and, following the Capitol breach, suspended President Donald Trump, accusing him of inciting violence. Google removed Parler, a Twitter competitor, from its online store for alleged failure to properly moderate the platform. Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on Dec. 11, 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, speaks during a conference in Germany on Jan. 20, 2019. (Lino Mirgeler/DPA/AFP via Getty Images) Posts were also made on Twitter and Facebook about the protests in Washington. At one point, Hang Mike Pence, a reference to killing the vice president, was trending on Twitter. Gab, another rival, half-jokingly called for Facebook and Twitter to be banned from online stores, noting stories about organization of the Capitol breach taking place on Twitter, and organization of the Jan. 6 protests on Facebook. The account of at least one man charged in the breach, remained live on Twitter on Friday. Parlers CEO John Matze told The Epoch Times this week that the platform was being held to a different standard than Facebook and Twitter by companies that deplatformed it. He condemned people using Parler for violence and pushed back against claims that his company did not take responsibility for content posted on the site. Twitter didnt reply to a request for comment. Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg said in an interview broadcast during the Reuters conference that the breach was organized online but pointed blame elsewhere. We know this was organized online. We know that we, again, took down QAnon, Proud Boys, Stop the Stealanything that was talking about possible violence last week. Our enforcements never perfect, so Im sure there were still things on Facebook. I think these events were largely organized on platforms that dont have our abilities to stop hate and dont have our standards and dont have our transparency, she said. Facebook announced Monday that it was removing all content that contains the phrase stop the steal ahead of President-elect Joe Bidens Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. A Facebook spokeswoman told reporters on Twitter that Sheryl began by noting these events were organized online, including on our platformswith the clear suggestion we have a role. She was making the point, which has been made by many journalists and academics, that our crackdowns on QAnon, militia, and hate groups has meant large amounts of activity has migrated to other platforms with fewer rules and enforcement, the spokeswoman added. Jack Phillips contributed to this report. In an incident that is causing outrage among police officers in Kerala, Kochi's City Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) reportedly sent a constable on punitive duties after the latter failed to recognise her. IPS officer Aishwarya Dongre, the new Kochi DCP, is facing flak from police officers and social media for sending a constable from the city's Town North on traffic duty for two days as punishment for failing to recognise her during a recent visit to the station. Dongre, who took charge of her new role as DCP on January 1, 2021, visited the station in plainclothes on Sunday as part of an inspection drive. According to reports, the DCP had parked her official car at a distance from the station's entry. When she tried to enter the station, the woman posted as sentry allegedly stopped Dongre and asked her for identification. This irked the young DCP, who then meted out punitive duties to the constable. Following outrage at the apparent high-handedness of the new Deputy Commissioner, Dongre told media that the punishment was in response to the constable failing at her duties, which was to recognise a senior officer and show proper protocol on the day of an inspection. The incident, however, has not sat well with police bodies with officials from the Kerala Police Association lodging protest against the DCP's response to the simple mistake. Speaking to The News Minute, a senior official NV Nishad said that though it was the rule for junior recognise senior officers, the mistake was pardonable due to the coronavirus restrictions which mandate the wearing of masks. Nishad contended that wearing masks sometimes hinders recognition as only half the face of a person is visible. "...Since it is the COVID-19 situation, the senior officer was wearing a mask. Sometimes we don't even recognise people whom we meet daily," Nishad said, adding that the constable was also following Covid-19 protocols which restricted entry to stations. He also said that the punishment was "not right". Officials from the Association have also written to the CPI(M) leadership, adding that the woman constable who was punished was only discharging her duties by asking the purpose of the DCP's visit. They have also sought an audience with Dongre herself to discuss the matter. Kochi Police Commissioner Nagaraju C H also expressed his displeasure at the incident. Speaking to The New Indian Express, the commissioner said that Dongre had been advised against taking such measures in future. He attributed the incident to the young DCP's "inexperience". Kerala's Home department also reprimanded Dongre for her behaviour and told her not to misbehave with Kochi civil and police officials who already suffered enough work-load. Dongre is the youngest IPS officer in Kerala. (Image: PTI) The new year seems to have brought cheer for the Indian Air Force (IAF) with the government approving Indias largest-ever indigenous defence procurement deal to buy 83 Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas, from the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). According to Ministry of Defence (MoD) sources, the HAL is to deliver 73 Tejas Mk 1A and 10 Tejas Mk 1 trainer jets to the IAF by 2026. The Rs 48,000-crore compact includes design and development of infrastructure sanctions worth Rs 1,202 crore. In a tweet last on January 13, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that the HAL has established second line manufacturing facilities at its Nasik and Bengaluru divisions to steer LCA-Mk1A production for timely deliveries to the IAF. The government has also given the nod for the IAF to develop infrastructure for handling repairs or servicing of these aircraft at its base depots so that the turnaround time for mission critical systems would be reduced, thereby enhancing operational readiness. Designed and developed indigenously by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and built by HAL, the Tejas is a single-engine, delta wing aircraft designed for aerial combat and offensive air support. The multi-role lightweight fourth generation fighter is equipped with a range of air-to-air and air-to-surface precision guided missiles, and has a service ceiling of 15 km carrying a payload of 3,500 kgs at supersonic speeds. The state-of-the-art composite materials used to build the aircraft have apparently helped its designers to cut the jets weight dramatically, which helps in evading radar detection. Another major plus of the Tejas is that it is designed to offer easy integration for both European and Russian weapon systems. This is enormously useful for planners considering the fact that the IAF has a fleet replete with Russian as well as European platforms. Interestingly, this also augments the LCAs potential for export, since foreign buyers will have the option of integrating different platforms on the aircraft. The LCA, however, has had a troubled journey from the drawing board, with its final operational clearance slipping for years before it finally came through in February 2019. There was more turbulence ahead for the LCA even after the MoD firmed up the mega-deal to buy 83 Tejas Mark 1As for the IAF as price negotiations with the HAL dragged on. But all that is history now as the Cabinet Committee on Security has given the green light for this nimble fighter to join the IAF fleet in numbers that once seemed improbable. Sources indicate that the IAF plans to have 40 Tejas Mk 1s and 83 Tejas Mk 1As initially, followed by around six squadrons of Tejas Mk IIs eventually. The impact of New Delhis decision to plump for an indigenous fighter for the IAF will be three-fold. First, the governments Make in India mantra will resonate louder, giving a big boost to the idea of self-reliance, or Aatmanirbhar, in Indias defence preparedness. Second, the deal depends significantly on technology inputs outsourced from the industry. From all accounts, scores of private companies such as Larsen and Toubro and Dynamatic Technologies are supplying aircraft parts (like wing and fuselage) to the LCA project. This will certainly provide more employment opportunities. The third and perhaps most crucial impact of the deal will be felt by the IAF. The air force is staring at an alarmingly depleting fleet strength, which currently stands at 30 squadrons each with 18 fighter aircraft as against a sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons. At this rate, without inducting the 36 Rafale fighters and 123 indigenous LCA, the IAF will probably be left with a mere 24 squadrons in, say, another 10 years. The situation will worsen as the air force phases out four squadrons of its mainstay MiG 21 Bis ground attack jets by 2023, ceding the IAFs numerical superiority to the Pakistani Air Force and Chinas Peoples Liberation Army Air Force on the western and eastern flanks respectively. The best bet for India to resolve this looming threat may be to speed up the development of the LCA Mk II: a twin-engine variant of the LCA. The LCA Mk II has its role cut out: to fill the void left by the phasing out of the IAFs Mirage-2000 medium weight fighters which is expected to happen in 2027. But the LCA Mk II will only make its maiden flight next year and is not scheduled to get into production for at least another six years. So its induction into the IAF, when it does happen, will not have come a moment too soon. Anna Naghdalyan, Spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of Armenia, has commented on the statements of the president of Azerbaijan made during his meeting with the Director-General of ISESCO. Naghdalyans comment reads as follows: The statements of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev made on January 13 during the meeting with Salim bin Mohammed Al-Malik, Director-General of ISESCO, once again demonstrate that the Armenian cultural heritage in the territories under the Azerbaijani control is seriously endangered, and the state of Azerbaijan cannot be the guarantor of the proper protection of cultural and religious heritage. The distortion of the identity of the Armenian heritage is an attempt of cultural looting, which is also a gross violation of the relevant international legal instruments. Thousands of Armenian religious and secular monuments were created centuries before Azerbaijan was established and have no relation to the Azerbaijani identity. The attempts to alienate these monuments from the Armenian people have no historical, religious or moral grounds. It is noteworthy that in order to justify the destruction of the Armenian cross stones (khachkars) in Nakhijevan Azerbaijan also put forward the thesis of Albanisation, and this demonstrates the perilousness of the practice of destroying and distorting the identity of the Armenian monuments. The fake thesis of presenting the Christian heritage of Armenians or other peoples of the region as Caucasian Albanian has no serious circulation outside of Azerbaijan and is not perceived by the international academic community. Notably, President Aliyev made this statement in the presence of the Director General of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization thus trying to introduce a religious dimension to the issues of protection of cultural heritage. By undermining the efforts of the international community aimed at preserving Artsakhs [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] cultural heritage, Azerbaijan continues to hinder the access of the international specialized organizations, primarily UNESCO, to the region by accusing the latter of being biased. Meanwhile in fact, Azerbaijan is the one to speculate irresponsibly on the religious factor while Armenia has always pursued the policy of inter-religious dialogue and cooperation between civilizations, considering cultural heritage as a universal and common value. The preservation of many Armenian historical-cultural and religious monuments that fell under Azerbaijani control must be an important part of the peace process, taking into account the numerous facts of systematic destruction of the Armenian cultural and religious heritage in the past. In this context, the Azerbaijani leadership and state propaganda machine must immediately put an end to the deplorable approach of misappropriation, distortion of the identity of Armenian churches, and at least demonstrate due respect towards cultural and religious monuments. The misappropriation and distortion of the cultural values of the Armenian people, the violation of the rights of the Armenian people do not contribute to regional peace. In this regard the proper protection of religious sites, both from the physical and spiritual perspectives, can create preconditions for peace in the region. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. Legendary Drag Queen Courtney Act has spoken out on the mass speculation that she'll be the host of RuPaul's Drag Race Australia, which begins filming on January 29. The 38-year-old performer - whose real name is Shane Jenek - was thought to be the frontrunner to host the new season, which Daily Mail Australia understands will air later this year as a Stan Original. But Courtney appeared to dispel the rumours on Friday's The Project - saying it would be logistically impossible, seeing as she's just completed a two-week quarantine in Sydney rather than New Zealand, where the show will be filmed. Not me! Legendary Drag Queen Courtney Act - aka Shane Jenek - has spoken out on the mass speculation that she'll be the host of RuPaul's Drag Race Australia, which begins filming on January 29 'Everyone's trying it, but I promise you I have nothing to do with Drag Race, and I'll tell you why,' Shane said. 'I was reading that RuPaul and 16 people have landed in Auckland to film Drag Race - so I can assure you that if I were involved, that I would not fly to Sydney to quarantine for two weeks, only to fly to Auckland to quarantine for two weeks.' Indeed, New Zealand's LGBT+ Express Magazine claimed last week that RuPaul Charles himself had checked into a quarantine hotel in New Zealand, in preparation to host the new series in a matter of weeks. Nope! Courtney appeared to dispel the rumours on Friday's The Project - saying it would be logistically impossible, seeing as she's just completed a two-week quarantine in Sydney rather than New Zealand where the show will be filmed Speculation: Indeed, New Zealand's LGBT+ Express Magazine claimed last week that RuPaul himself has checked into a quarantine hotel in New Zealand, in preparation to host the new series in a matter of weeks. Pictured: RuPaul Charles And it's not beyond the realm of possibility, as his husband, Georges LeBar, is an Aussie and he regularly visits his in-laws Down Under. Despite being filmed in New Zealand, the show is titled RuPaul's Drag Race Australia and will feature both Aussie and Kiwi queens. A source told Daily Mail Australia earlier this month: 'It's 100 per cent going ahead. Queens have been cast and they've signed NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] to keep it hush-hush.' When contacted by Daily Mail Australia, Stan declined to comment. Rumoured cast members include Sydney's Vanity Faire, Felicia Foxx and Coco Jumbo, as well as Brisbane's Scarlett Fever and Sellma Soul. The British and American versions of RuPaul's Drag Race are available to stream on Stan in Australia Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Ireland has administered over 77,300 vaccines as of Wednesday, the HSE chief executive Paul Reid said. Of that figure, 69,378 were for frontline healthcare workers, with 7,925 for residents and staff in long-term care facilities. In addition, over 4,000 healthcare workers have now completed training to administer the vaccine, a HSE briefing on Thursday heard. Ireland is aiming to vaccinate 700,000 people by the end of March, and up to four million by the end of September, under projections from Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. #OurHealthService Florence OaReilly and Nancy Keogh who are both residents at Navan Rd Community Nursing Unit were delighted to get the #CovidVaccine last week. aAnything that minds your health is good to get,a said Nancy. Read more: https://t.co/GjDCFuNR8p@HSECHODNCC #HoldFirm pic.twitter.com/VDjYd8pwkd HSE Ireland (@HSELive) January 14, 2021 That will depend on additional vaccines, such as AstraZeneca, being approved by the European Medicines Agency which could happen by the end of January. Its arrival would greatly help the rollout of the vaccine programme in Ireland, the HSE said. HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry said: The AstraZeneca vaccine first would make a big difference in terms of where it can be used. It isnt as precious a vaccine, in every sense of the word. In terms of transport, in terms of its storage, in terms of its shelf life. So it lends itself much more easily to the traditional vaccination settings, thats to say pharmacies, GP settings. And also to mass vaccination centres. Mr Reid warned that the situation in our hospitals remains quite grim, with 1,838 Covid-19 cases in hospitals, 169 in intensive care units and 100 patients on ventilators. In many hospitals, the proportion of patients who have acquired Covid within the hospital setting is half, or even more, of the total number of patients Dr Colm Henry Dr Henry said Irelands 14-day-incidence rate is now 20 times what it was in December, the second worst figure in Europe. He also raised concerns about the number of people who are acquiring the virus in hospitals. Speaking on Thursday, he said: In many hospitals, the proportion of patients who have acquired Covid within the hospital setting is half, or even more, of the total number of patients. In other words, us modelling off these figures (daily cases), predicting the impact on hospitals, doesnt take account of what happens with a hugely disruptive infective outbreak. The Tanaiste has warned that the outbreak of coronavirus cases in Irelands hospitals remains precarious. Leo Varadkar said the struggle to contain the pandemic will continue over the coming weeks. He urged people to support health staff by following health regulations. Hundreds of nurses and doctors who signed-up to "On Call for Ireland" are job-ready but have not been deployed, while our hospitals are struggling to keep beds open due to staff shortages. This must be addressed immediately.#Covid19Ireland @PearseDoherty pic.twitter.com/k2X3lzVvNQ Sinn FAin (@sinnfeinireland) January 14, 2021 Read More We need to decrease the number of people getting Covid and going into hospital, and that is the best way we can turn the corner in the situation, he told the Dail. What is somewhat encouraging is the number of admissions to hospital yesterday, which was 149, but the number of discharges was 128, so the net increase in the last day is much smaller than previous days. He added, however, that there is a glimmer of hope. Cases have been falling now for a number of days, we may see the total number of people being hospitalised starting to fall in about a weeks time, he added. Mr Varadkar went on to warn that it will be a very precarious and dangerous time in hospitals for the next two weeks. Sinn Feins Pearse Doherty said the situation in Irelands hospitals is continuing to deteriorate, adding that the daily figures make for grim reading. The (health) staff are facing something that is unimaginable Pearse Doherty, Sinn Fein He said the latest reports show there are 13 hospitals without any ICU capacity, and seven other hospitals have only one ICU bed left. ICU capacity, we are told, are expected to be used up by the weekend, Mr Doherty added. I want to express my solidarity to all the staff and indeed the patients. The staff are facing something that is unimaginable. It is a very worrying time, they are overworked, they are exhausted, they are anxious about the period ahead and many of them are angry that they are left in this situation. He also said that the Governments failure to build additional capacity has left hospitals relying on surge capacity. Mr Varadkar said the deal struck with private hospitals allows the State to use up to 60% of the private hospital capacity. However, he said that while 30% capacity has been secured, there are discussions under way to use the additional 30%. While many teachers in Oneida County struggled to make COVID vaccine appointments only to have them canceled because the provider ran out of doses, staff in the Camden School District merely went to the high school gym on Thursday. The district partnered with Upstate Family Health Center, in Utica, for COVID testing, and revisited that partnership for vaccinations. "I called Rich up and I asked him if we could partner up together in a manner in which we would use their medical license and their organization and they would host a vaccination event here at Camden High School," said Superintendent Dr. Ravo Paul Root III. The school district vaccinated 100 of their roughly 420-member staff Thursday. Their school nurses helped clinic staff. Distribution was blind. "We did a survey of all of our staff and we asked them if they would like to get the vaccine, we created a list of people, and then we used a computer program to randomize that list so that everybody was on equal footing," said Dr. Root. Oneida County Executive, Anthony Picente, had a conference call with county school superintendents on Thursday. He said he'd like to explore doing mobile vaccination pods at county schools, but says the supply chain, currently, is too unreliable. "We got 1,300 on Tuesday and we had gotten 3,000 the week before, so I don't know....we're still trying to figure out the rhyme and reason." says Picente. "It's not-existent at St. Elizabeth's, Rome Hospital. Federal Qualified Health Clinic, on Noyes, is about to run out." Camden Schools plan to vaccinate approximately 150 more staff at a similar event in the near future. The district resumes adaptive hybrid learning Tuesday, January 19th. This article is part of a yearlong reporting project focused on redistricting and gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. Its made possible by the support of Spotlight PA members and Votebeat, a project focused on election integrity and voting access. HARRISBURG With partisanship in the Pennsylvania legislature at peak levels, lawmakers this year are gearing up for the once-a-decade brawl to redraw political districts and the stakes couldnt be much higher. The state is set to lose a congressional seat. The representation of millions of people is on the line. And after a bruising 2020 marred by politicized court battles and misinformation, Republicans will have to do what seems impossible get along with Democrats. Every decade, states undergo a process called redistricting, in which the boundaries of state legislative and U.S. House of Representative districts are redrawn to account for shifts in population as accounted for in the decennial census count. In Pennsylvania, state lawmakers determine which voters are placed in which districts. They can manipulate the lines to all but guarantee legislative majorities and their own job security that enable political control over policy-making decisions for the next decade. Its what Republicans did in 2011, when they controlled all three branches of government. They used that power to approve maps that experts and courts said were heavily skewed to favor their own political interests, through a tactic called partisan gerrymandering. While they still control the General Assembly, Republicans this year will have to work with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who can veto the congressional map. The GOPs other adversary, the Democrat-dominated state Supreme Court, is also able to throw out legislative and congressional maps if it deems them unfair or illegal. The pandemic, delays in completing the U.S. Census data that drive the redistricting process, and the probable loss of one congressional district due to Pennsylvanias declining population are sure to further complicate the process. At the same time, redistricting reformers are hoping lawmakers agree to hold themselves more accountable by adding more criteria and transparency to the map-drawing process. If history is any guide, however, the legislature will be loath to give up any of its power. How redistricting works There are different processes that govern the drawing of the states congressional boundaries and the state House and Senate districts. Still, both fundamentally put control in the hands of the most powerful lawmakers in Harrisburg. Every decade since 1971, a reapportionment commission made up of the majority and minority leaders from the state House and Senate has been tasked with drawing legislative district maps. Those lawmakers are supposed to choose a fifth, nonlegislative member to serve on the commission, but have rarely agreed on one, so the state Supreme Court justices pick for them. This year, because the court has more Democrats than Republicans, Democrats may have a 3-2 majority on the reapportionment commission. The commissions maps are considered final unless a citizen or lawmaker makes an appeal to the state Supreme Court. Last decade, the court then in Republican hands threw out the first maps, saying the commissioners drew districts that cut through too many municipalities. The commission drew a new set of maps, which the justices approved in 2013. The congressional map is drawn by the legislature and only needs a simple majority to pass. While Republicans have a six-member advantage in the Senate and a 22-seat advantage in the House, the map will still need to go to Wolf, a Democrat, for approval. As long as he has a veto somewhere, hes got leverage somewhere, said Keith Gaddie, a University of Oklahoma political science professor whose research focuses on redistricting and voting rights reform. Gaddie said Republicans might play it safe, designing a map that satisfies both parties to avoid a repeat of 2018, when the state Supreme Court ruled the congressional map was politically gerrymandered (under that map, Republicans had a 13-5 advantage in the states delegation). That decision, coupled with election and pandemic rulings from 2020, has fueled GOP anger toward the court. As a result, Republicans are seeking to exert more power over the judiciary. A constitutional amendment proposed by Rep. Russ Diamond (R., Lebanon) would require appellate court judges to run in regional judicial districts, rather than statewide contests. The districts would be solely drawn and governed by state lawmakers. Diamond has argued the appellate courts, whose judges primarily live in Allegheny County or Philadelphia, should be more geographically diverse. Opponents counter that letting lawmakers draw judicial districts would result in a map skewed toward their own political ambitions. A constitutional amendment needs to pass twice in consecutive General Assembly sessions before going to the voters. Diamonds proposal already passed last session, and now needs approval in the state House and Senate before Feb. 18 to get onto the primary ballot in May. If approved, it would go into effect immediately, and lawmakers could begin drawing the judicial districts based on 2020 Census data. Data delays may mean a later start This year, with the U.S. Census Bureau behind schedule in releasing population data because of the pandemic and legal battles brought by President Donald Trumps administration, the redistricting process is likely to take place later than usual. Michael Li, senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justices democracy program, said census block data that get down to the street level wont be available until at least later this spring. A spokesperson for the House Democratic caucus estimated that delays receiving the census data would push back the map-drawing processes by at least two months, into late spring. Republican leadership did not respond to questions about the schedule for drawing legislative and congressional maps. Even without census data available, estimates show that like in 2011 Pennsylvania will likely lose a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives because of declining populations, putting an end to the 9-9 partisan divide. Where the population has declined will have some influence over which district will disappear, and both parties will try to ensure that one of their members doesnt have their district absorbed. What reformers say needs to change Advocates for redistricting reform such as Fair Districts PA are again pushing for lawmakers to follow better criteria and add more transparency to the process. In 2011, the legislative commission held public meetings and made the census data they used to draw the maps available online, though those transparency measures arent required. Republicans in the state legislature, meanwhile, unveiled the congressional map in public for the first time in December that year. Gov. Tom Corbett signed off on the plan less than 10 days later. Introduced for the first time last year, the Legislative and Congressional Redistricting Act would prevent lawmakers from diluting the votes of people who are racial and language minorities and require them to keep communities of interest intact. Plans designed to protect incumbents or unfairly discriminate against political parties would also be prohibited. The bill would also require the state to hold several public meetings on both the congressional and legislative maps. Any Pennsylvania resident would be able to submit their own map and would have online access to the same data lawmakers have. It would also add qualifications for the fifth legislative commission member. Right now, anyone including lobbyists and relatives of legislators can be considered. Rep. Wendi Thomas (R., Bucks), who plans to introduce the bill again this year, said todays technology makes it simple to inject transparency into the process so citizens can be involved. I really havent had people say, No I dont think the bill is a good idea, " she said. Thomas measure didnt get a vote in the House State Government Committee last year, though she thinks competing priorities including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to that. Also left unconsidered is a measure redistricting reformers have been pushing for several years: an independent, citizen-led commission that they say would lead to fairer maps. Its impossible for such a panel to be in place to oversee the drawing of the legislative maps in 2021, as that change would require a constitutional amendment a lengthy process. The legislature could, however, put an independent commission in charge of drawing the congressional maps by simply passing a bill, something Wolf supports. Redistricting commissions in nine states are free of politicians, while several more comprise a mix of legislators and citizens. Supporters say getting lawmakers out of the process is essential to stopping gerrymandering. Thomas, who also supports an independent redistricting commission, said her bill to add transparency to the process needs to pass soon if it is to be in effect for the 2021 redistricting. Its a good-government bill, she said, adding it has bipartisan support. My best shot is to continue to talk about the transparency piece of it. 100% ESSENTIAL: Spotlight PA relies on funding from foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results. Become a member today at spotlightpa.org/donate. Sharma was born in Mau district of UP Arvind Kumar Sharma, one of the trusted bureaucrats of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has generated curiosity in political circles after he joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh on January 14, days after seeking voluntary retirement. A 1988 batch IAS officer, Sharma has been associated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he became the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001. Sharma was secretary to the then Gujarat chief minister Modi and joined the prime ministers office (PMO) as a joint secretary when Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014. From CMO to PMO, a Modis Man Born in Uttar Pradeshs Mau district in 1962, Sharma did schooling from his home district before graduating from Allahabad University. He did masters in Political Science before joining the civil services in 1988. As an IAS office with the Gujarat cadre, his first posting was as a Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM). In 1995, he took charge as district magistrate, Mehsana. In 2001, Sharma joined Modis chief ministers office in Gujarat as a secretary and remained there till 2014 before shifting to the Centre. Those who have followed Sharma closely, say that he has also been a low-profile officer and a doer who became a go-to man for CM Modi. He is said to have coordinated the Vibrant Gujarat, a biennial investor summit that played a significant role in bringing in foreign investment to Gujarat. Sharma is also said to have played a key role in getting the Tata Nano plant moved from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand in Gujarat in 2008. He remained CM Modis secretary until 2014 when Modi became the Prime Minister. While he joined the PMO as a joint secretary in 2014, he was elevated to the additional secretary rank in 2017. After his long stint in PMO, Sharma was, in May last year, entrusted with the charge of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) ministry, the sector affected badly due to pandemic. The ministry, headed by Nitin Gadkari, has been seen as crucial for the countrys economic revival in the aftermath of the pandemic. He, however, sought retirement from the post of secretary in the minister last week, one-and-a-half years before his due retirement. A few days later, he took a plunge into active politics from Uttar Pradesh, where Yogi Adityanath government faces elections in 2022. With the 18 years of association with Modi and the trust he enjoys, Sharma is known as Modis Man in the corridors of power. New role in Yogi Adityanath government? After the induction ceremony in Lucknow in presence of UP BJP state chief Swatantra Dev Singh, Sharma said he felt honoured. There are many political outfits in the country. I have no political connections, but such a step can only be taken by a leader like PM Modi and a party like the BJP, he said. Sharma is BJP's nominee for the legislative council polls on January 28. The BJP announced the names of four nominees on January 15. BJP circles are abuzz that he might get a significant role in the Yogi Adityanath government. Rumours also say that he might replace one of the two deputy chief ministers assisting Yogi Adityanath in the government or might as well become the third deputy to the CM. Reports suggested that Many say Sharma will be Prime Minister Modis nominee in the Yogi Adityanath government in its last year now. While time will tell his role, but that he will play an important role in UP in days to come cannot be denied. They postponed their 200-person wedding that was scheduled for October 2020, and the couple married on New Years Eve at an Airbnb property in Mount Kisco, N.Y. And, in true pandemic fashion, their 14 guests, which mostly included close relatives, sent screen shots of their negative Covid-19 tests before arriving. [Like this newsletter? Sign up to receive it in your inbox.] After months of isolation, some singles are willing to take the risk of meeting (and cuddling) with new people while trying to be as safe as possible. Heres how theyre navigating the strange terrain of casual pandemic hookups. For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. Two children have tested positive for Covid-19 in Northern Irelands only youth prison. The prisoners, who are being held in Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre in Bangor, Co Down, had also tested positive before being admitted to the facility. Justice Minister Naomi Long said she was aware of the two new cases in Woodlands and explained that the children had been placed in the facilitys isolation unit upon their arrival. In line with protocols, the young people have been tested again and, as both received positive results, they will remain in the isolation unit where they will be cared for in line with Public Health guidance, added the Alliance Party leader. Woodlands, which is based at Rathgael Road on the outskirts of Bangor, comprises six units each with eight en suite bathrooms. It has a capacity for 48 boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 17, who are given private bedrooms and are allocated a dedicated key worker. A normal day is spent taking part in educational classes and life-skills programmes. Commenting on the positive cases in the facility, Ivor Dunne, chair of the NI Prison Officers Association, said he hopes the track and trace system will help protect Woodlands staff. Hopefully the track and trace within the prison service family will help anyone that has been in contact with those who tested positive, he stated. Public Health Agency guidance must be observed, such as isolation. The Justice Minister confirmed in March 2020, that twice as many children from Catholic than Protestant backgrounds have been held at Woodlands. Responding to a question from Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan, Ms Long explained that in the previous five years 63% of children at Woodlands are from a Catholic background. She added that the over-population of Catholic children at the facility is not directly within the control of the Youth Justice Agency. Woodlands is the recipient of children sent by police and courts, they must accept and work with every child referred, and have no right to exclude, nor options to assess suitability, before accepting a child from court, she said. As corporate parents, Woodlands staff deliver all necessary supports and services to children in their care, including providing for their spiritual and religious needs. China has honoured a virologist of a controversial Wuhan-based bio-lab, which was at the centre of COVID-19 storm, as a WHO team arrived at the Chinese city to probe the origins of the coronavirus. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology who has earned the moniker of 'Bat Woman' for her passionate research into bats and viruses was honoured as an "advanced worker of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)", the state-run Global Times reported, citing a WIV announcement on Friday. Outgoing US President Donald Trump has alleged that the novel coronavirus emanated from WIV before it spread across the world and claimed millions of lives and shattered global economies. Ever since the virus outbreak came to light in Wuhan in December last, speculation has been rife on whether the viral strain originated from China's premier virology institute or from its nearby Huanan Seafood Market. Shi was honoured along with 20 advanced workers during the CAS 2021 annual work conference held in Beijing, said Liu Lijun, director of the National Commendation and Rewarding Office of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. She was praised as adhering to the scientific values of innovation, serving the country and benefiting people, and fought hard and never flinched in the face of difficulties and challenges, the report said. Shi came under the spotlight of local and global media after Trump's allegation. Trump had asked China to permit the US to conduct a probe, which Beijing ignored. Curiously, after her name appeared in the local and foreign media early last year, Shi conspicuously disappeared for months amid rumours that she had defected to a western country. But she suddenly resurfaced in official Chinese media and denied reports of her defection to the West and questioned Trump's allegation that the virus emerged from WIV. "Trump's claim jeopardises and affects our academic work and personal lives. He owes us an apology," she was quoted by official media. Significantly, Shi's "honour" by CAS coincides with the arrival of the 13-member World Health Organisation (WHO) team to Wuhan on Thursday to probe the origins of COVID-19. The WHO experts are currently put up in a hotel in Wuhan to serve 14-day quarantine. Their site visits in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December 2019, are expected to include the WIV and the wet market, where the deadly virus was suspected to have been transmitted from live animals like bats to humans. The market remained closed and sealed since early last year. The WHO team's visit has become a bone of contention as Beijing, which questions the widely-held view about the virus' origins in Wuhan, delayed granting permission to it. China says the virus has appeared in many places in the world and it only reported first. Meanwhile, China on Friday permitted one of the two WHO experts, earlier barred from travelling to Wuhan for testing COVID-19 positive, to join his colleagues in the Chinese city. A British and a Sudanese scientist from Qatar tested positive for COVID-19 in Singapore, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing here on Friday. As a show of support to WHO, China has agreed to conduct the required tests again, he said The results of the British expert showed negative but the Sudanese expert from Qatar still showed positive. So we have agreed for the British expert to travel to China, Zhao said. We will remain in contact with WHO on this relevant matter and jointly work towards greater cooperation on this origin tracing work, he said. The WHO team includes virus and other experts from the US, Australia, Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia, the Netherlands, Qatar and Vietnam. Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases continue to rise in China after it managed to contain the virus earlier. China's National Health Commission on Friday reported 144 new COVID-19 cases, of whom 135 were locally transmitted. Of the locally transmitted cases, 90 were reported in Hebei, 43 in Heilongjiang and one each in Guangxi and Shaanxi, the commission said. On Wednesday, China reported its first death due to coronavirus in eight months. Hebei province, bordering Beijing, continues to be the new hotbed for the spread of the virus. Several cities with millions of people in Hebei are under lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus. China has largely brought the virus under control through quick mass testing, stringent lockdowns and tight travel restrictions. China has so far reported 87,988 COVID-19 cases and 4,635 deaths due to the disease. According to Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker, over 93,227,340 people have been confirmed with the disease across the world and more than 1,996,620 people have died. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. * Username This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely! External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday held talks with his Nepalese counterpart Pradeep Kumar Gyawali with a focus on various key aspects of the bilateral relations. The talks are taking place under the framework of the Indo-Nepal joint commission meeting (JCM), officials said. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Gyawali arrived here on Thursday on a three-day visit. He is the first senior political leader from Nepal to visit India after the ties between the two countries came under strain following a border row. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava on Thursday gave clear indication that the boundary issue is unlikely to be discussed at the JCM. Responding to questions on the border row, he said at a media briefing: "Our position on the boundary issue is well known. Let me say that the JCM and boundary talks are separate mechanisms." He said the JCM is an important mechanism that provides the opportunity of reviewing the entire gamut of bilateral partnership and providing political guidance to further enhance the unique ties between the two countries. "We look forward to constructive discussions on the numerous sectors that encompass our bilateral agenda," he said. PTI MPB DV DV Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. 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. Seeking an end-run around an investigation by the New York attorney general, the National Rifle Association said Friday that it was declaring bankruptcy and would reincorporate in Texas. The gun group was set up in New York after the Civil War. The groups effort to circumvent New Yorks legal jurisdiction raised immediate questions from Letitia James, the New York attorney general and a Democrat, who is seeking to use her regulatory authority to dissolve the N.R.A. She has been conducting an investigation into corruption at the gun group since 2019. The N.R.A.s claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt, Ms. James said in a statement Friday. While we review this filing, we will not allow the N.R.A. to use this or any other tactic to evade accountability and my offices oversight. Ms. Jamess investigation has come as the N.R.A. has been racked by infighting and discontent, including the bitter departures of its president, Oliver L. North, and its top lobbyist, Chris Cox. Long the nations most powerful gun lobby, the N.R.A. played a diminished role in the 2020 election, hampered by financial woes and a host of legal challenges. 2021-01-14 Maeci Today, democratic Tunisia celebrates its tenth anniversary. The Tunisian people can be proud of having achieved important results in this decade, in terms of political freedoms and individual rights, the holding of free and transparent elections, the peaceful transition of power at the highest level of the State. Democracy is for all a long and complex process. The Tunisian institutions can continue to rely on the strong support of Italy to consolidate the rule of law, encourage the full implementation of shared democratic values and carry out the useful reforms for instilling renewed confidence in the economy. Italy intends to stand with Tunisia in its irreversible democratic choice, also with the help of concrete projects targeting businesses and the younger generations. One of Italys largest-ever mafia trials has hit an immediate snag after the three judges assigned to the case asked to be recused, saying they had been involved in earlier aspects of the investigation. Their request will be reviewed by a separate court, which will delay proceedings for several days, lawyers said. The trial opened on Wednesday with more than 330 suspected mobsters and their associates facing an array of charges, including extortion, drug trafficking and theft. Read More The case targets the Ndrangheta clan, which is based in Calabria, the toe of Italys boot, and is considered by prosecutors to be the most powerful mafia group in the country, easily eclipsing the more famous Cosa Nostra gang in Sicily. The trial is being held in a converted call-centre in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme, with metal cages installed for the defendants and rows of desks set up for the hundreds of lawyers, prosecutors and spectators expected to attend. Many of the accused are white-collar workers, including lawyers, accountants, business people, local politicians and policemen, who chief prosecutor Nicola Gratteri says willingly aided the Ndrangheta in building its crime empire. Speaking to reporters as he entered the courthouse, Mr Gratteri said the investigation had encouraged locals to speak out. In the last two years we have seen a surge in lawsuits from oppressed entrepreneurs and citizens, victims of usury, people who for years have lived under the threats of the Ndrangheta, said the prosecutor, who has spent more than 30 years fighting the mob. The state will call on 913 witnesses and draw on 24,000 hours of intercepted conversations to support the myriad charges. Mr Gratteri said he expected the trial would take a year to complete, with the court due to sit six days a week. Another 92 suspects have opted for a fast-track trial in the same case, with their hearings due to start later in January, while a much smaller group of defendants will stand trial in February over five murders including the killing of a mafia hitman who was shot dead because he was gay, prosecutors say. Read More The last time Italy tried hundreds of alleged mafiosi simultaneously was in 1986 in Palermo in a case that represented a turning point in the fight against Cosa Nostra, marking the beginning of the groups sharp decline. That trial had a huge impact because it targeted numerous mob families. The Calabrian trial focuses primarily on just one group - the Mancuso clan from the province of Vibo Valentia - leaving much of the Ndranghetas top hierarchy untouched. Farmers, most of them from Punjab and Haryana, want the new agri farm laws scrapped. The ninth round of talks between the farm leaders and the government ended without any breakthrough with the Centre refusing to repeal the three contentious laws. The government, however, said it was hopeful to end the impasse through talks. Today's talks with farmers unions were not decisive. We will hold talks again on 19th January. We are positive to reach a solution through talks. The government is concerned about the farmers protesting in cold conditions: Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar pic.twitter.com/izobQHE7B5 ANI (@ANI) January 15, 2021 "We are positive to reach a solution through talks. The government is concerned about the farmers protesting in cold conditions," Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said after the meeting at Delhi's Vigyan Bhawan. The farmers, on their part, remained adamant on their demand of repealing laws and a legal guarantee on minimum support prices (MSP) for their crops. "The government wanted us to form an informal committee. We have said no. If they do not want to repeal the laws, why call meetings," Hannah Mollah, All India Kisan Mahasabha general secretary and CPI (M) leader said after the meeting. The next meeting will be held on January 19, he said. The meeting on January 15 was the first meeting between the two sides after the January 12 Supreme Court order putting a stay on the implementation of the three farm laws until further orders. The top court also set up a committee of experts that will talk to both sides and suggest changes wherever needed in the enactments as opposed by the farmers. The farmers have, however, refused to appear before the committee. They alleged that all the four members of the SC-appointed committee were pro-laws. Bharatiya Kisan Union spokesperson Rakesh Tikait said, after the meeting, that the farmers will not talk with the SC-appointed Committee constituted by the Supreme Court and talk to Centre only. Before the meeting, while the the government said that it was hopeful of ending the impasse in todays meeting, farmers are adamant that nothing less than the repeal of the three farm laws will end their protest. Follow our LIVE BLOG on Farmers' Protest here In the first half of the meeting, Tomar reportedly told farm leaders that the government is ready to make amendments to the objectionable clauses of the three laws, an offer that was refused by farm union leaders. Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Prakash, apart from agriculture minister Tomar, represented the government side. The Centre also suggested that states having to decide on whether to implement the laws or not could also be worked out. Farm leaders refused this suggestion too. Thousands of farmers, primarily from Punjab and Haryana, have been camping at several Delhi border points for 51 days, demanding the repeal of the laws, and a legal guarantee on MSP for their crops. The second half of the meeting on January 15 saw discussions on minimum support price (MSP). The last round of talks between the two sides on January 8 hit a deadlock with the government refusing to repeal the laws. On January 12, the Supreme Court put on hold the implementation of the three farm laws and announced the setting up of a committee of agri- experts. Read | Farm bills have potential to represent significant step forward for agricultural reforms in India: IMF After farmers refused to appear before the SC-appointed panel, Bhupinder Singh Mann, the national president of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), one of the four members, recused himself from the committee. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi, and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are on the panel, apart from Mann. The farmers have said that they will go ahead with the scheduled peaceful tractor march on Republic Day. Also read | By staying the implementation of the three farm laws, the SC has sent out the wrong message The two sides had arrived at some common ground in the sixth round of talks held on December 30 with the government agreeing on two of the four demands of farmers removing stubble burning penalty on farmers and withdrawing provisions in the draft Electricity Amendment Bill, 2020, which intend to change the mode of subsidy payment to farmers. Architectural rendering of the new Parliament building, proposed to be built as part of the Central Vista project. (Image courtesy: Twitter/@LokSabhaSectt) The construction work of the new Parliament building started on January 15, over a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the project under the government's ambitious Central Vista redevelopment plan. The new Parliament building will have a triangular shape and is expected to be completed by the 75th anniversary of India's independence in 2022. The government plans to hold the monsoon session of Parliament in 2022 in the new building. "The construction work of the Parliament building has started," an official said. PM Modi had laid the foundation stone for the new Parliament building on December 10 2020. Earlier this week, a 14-member heritage panel gave its approval to the new Parliament building while also giving the go-ahead to the Central Vista redevelopment project. The Supreme Court had asked the Centre to seek prior approval from the panel and other relevant authorities before starting the construction of the new building. The construction work could not start earlier as the government had assured the Supreme Court that no construction or demolition work would commence till the apex court decided the pending pleas on the issue. The new building is being constructed by Tata Projects Ltd. The project is estimated to cost Rs 971 crore. Tata Projects Ltd. said despite the 35-day delay in the commencement of the construction work, it is confident that it will be able to deliver the project on or before time. "Our plans of action are already in place to accelerate the schedule by augmenting resources like skilled manpower and formwork etc," said Sandeep Navlakhe, vice president and business unit head of Tata Projects Ltd. "Our reinforcement required to be placed in the raft and walls are already made ready. Other off-site activities like procurement of stone for external cladding, MEP LLEs, carpets, etc. happened during these 35 days. We are more than confident that we will be able to deliver this building to the nation on or before time," he said. The new structure will come up in front of the existing Parliament that was built nearly 94 years ago at a cost of Rs 83 lakh at that time and would eventually be turned into a museum. The new Parliament building will house larger Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha halls with capacities of 888 seats and 384 seats to accommodate an expanded Parliament after the freeze on its expansion lifts in 2026. The Lok Sabha Hall will also have an additional capacity, up to 1,272 seats, to host joint sessions. According to the plan, provisions will be made in furniture for smart displays and biometrics for ease of voting with an intuitive and graphical interface, digital language interpretation and recording infrastructure to produce real-time metadata, programmable microphones that put the control of managing the house with the Speaker. Besides the new Parliament building, the redevelopment of the Central Vista -- the nation's power corridor -- envisages a common central secretariat, revamping of the 3-km Rajpath from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate, new Prime Minister's Residence and Prime Minister's Office, and a new Vice-President Enclave. WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI While vaccination clinics are finally up and running, Washtenaw County health officials remind residents there currently is not enough vaccine for everyone now eligible to receive it. There are at least 80,000 Washtenaw County residents currently eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations, Washtenaw County Health Department officials said. This includes people age 65 and older and frontline, essential workers with frequent or ongoing exposure as a part of their work, including first responders, police officers, jail and prison staff, pre-K-12 teachers and workers in childcare centers and protective services. But just when they can make an appointment to get these vaccinations remains unclear as there is not enough vaccine to go around, county health officials said. Vaccinations currently are still being given to health care providers in the first phase who have not been vaccinated through a local health system or provider, officials said. Vaccine supplies, allocated by the state, come at a limited rate, health officials said. Individuals are prioritized based on state guidelines and local vaccine availability. Residents should go to www.washtenaw.org/covid19vaccine to learn eligibility or to make an appointment. If you cannot complete Washtenaw Countys eligibility survey online, call 734-544-6700. The vaccine is currently only available through the Washtenaw County Health Department and local health systems, while long-term care facilities are working with pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS to vaccinate residents and employees. Those employed by a Washtenaw County school district, will receive appointment information from their district when available, health officials said. School employees age 50 and older are prioritized due to the large number of school employees and this groups increased risk of severe illness, health officials said. Despite vaccination efforts, people still need to continue using prevention strategies, such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing and quarantining when necessary, health officials said. READ MORE FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS: Supply holding back Jackson County COVID-19 vaccination efforts, health department says Michigan prosecutor will look the other way when it comes to certain kinds of prostitution Whos eligible for COVID-19 vaccine and what else to know about program expansion The Victorian government is preparing a February 15 "V-Day" launch for the most potent COVID vaccine, with its newly formed local public health units to play a critical role in delivering the life-saving jab. The DHHS plan is for phase one of the roll-out to deliver 15,000 doses a week of the Pfizer vaccine, with hospital staff and residents, people working in aged care facilities, quarantine and border workers among those first in line for inoculation. Auslag Westling, a resident at a Swedish nursing home, gets the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine on January 7. Credit:Getty Images Phase two of the roll-out, slated to begin in mid-March, will administer the less effective but more readily available AstraZeneca to the broader population. Victorias provisional time frame and dose targets for the Pfizer vaccine, contained in an internal briefing to a major hospital group obtained by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, is not confirmed by the Federal government, which is yet to set a start date for COVID vaccinations. Beneficiaries of UNODC Coffee Project in Bolivia Receive First Payment for Exporting High-Quality Beans to France Getty Images / Jannoon028 La Paz (Bolivia), 14 January 2021 The beneficiaries of the UNODC supported coffee export project in La Asunta in Bolivia received their initial payment for the export of their high-quality beans to France. In a ceremony in the community of La Asunta coffee producers and UNODC staff celebrated this achievement. The grassroots project was launched in 2018 by the community of La Asunta, with the technical assistance of UNODC and the financial support of France. Mr. Rafael Andia Sarmiento, the president of the local association for agroecological producers "El Mirador" (AIPAEM), expressed his gratitude for the support received. He took note of Bolivia's current social context where the spread of COVID-19 represents a threat not just to the health and wellbeing of vulnerable communities, but to their local economies. Mr. Andia Sarmiento thanked UNODC on behalf of association members for the Organization's ongoing support. This successful project is the result of a joint initiative between the La Asunta community, UNODC and France, to reactivate local coffee exports. After a 15-year hiatus in the local coffee industry, a total of 207 bags equivalent to 12,420 kilos of high-quality coffee beans were finally exported last year. Destined for the French, Belgian and Swiss markets, the fruits of their labor generated a profit of 41,000 USD for the community. Today, around 600 families from La Asunta work together alongside UNODC in pursuit of an ambitious goal: to regularly export 20 shipping containers worth of coffee to Europe every year, over the next five years. By revitalizing the local industry, the project is improving the quality of life of coffee producers. The initiative provides regular employment and a source of income; while fostering peace by providing a viable alternative to surplus coca production. The importer of these high-quality coffee beans is the Malongo company based in Nice, France. They source beans from local producers worldwide and roast more than 8,000 tons of coffee every year. Malongo is famed for its commitment to environmental issues and drive for innovation, marketing their gourmet coffee varieties to hotels, restaurants and supermarkets in France and offering them directly to customers through the "Les Malongo Cafes" chain. They also export their roasts to European neighbors and are known for being the first coffee roasters to sell their product in vacuum-sealed metal containers; which preserves the freshness and distinctive flavour of their sophisticated coffees from all around the world. Within the framework of the UNODC's Global Program for Alternative Development, the French firm also offers a range of coffee beans produced in Burma, under the new Shan Mountain Coffee line. Through the new project with La Asunta in Bolivia, high-quality Bolivian coffee will soon join its ranks. Two leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement claim in a lawsuit they were arrested by Paterson police two years ago after speaking at a rally held following the death of Jameek Lowery. Lowery, 27, died in a hospital Jan. 7, 2019, two days after showing up at Paterson police headquarters pleading for help. Officers had sent him away in an ambulance and family members believed he had been beaten. A state medical examiner later determined Lowery died from drugs and medical problems and not at the hands of police. Days of protests followed Lowerys death. On Jan. 11, 2019, about 50 people assembled outside Paterson City Hall for a rally seeking Justice for Jameek. A vehicle draped with a cloth honoring Jameek Lowery during a memorial service at Canaan Baptist Church in Paterson. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media Among the speakers were Zellie Thomas, a teacher from Paterson, and Walter Hawk Newsome Jr., a law student from The Bronx, New York, according to the complaint filed earlier this month in Superior Court of Passaic County. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, claims Thomas and Newsome were arrested after they gave speeches critical of the Paterson Police Department. Attorneys for the police department on Friday did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the lawsuit. Both Thomas and Newsome were charged with obstructing highways and other public passages and interference with transportation, according to the suit. The police officers accused Thomas and Newsome of blocking a portion of Market Street and delaying traffic. The men were held at police headquarters for several hours before being released with summonses to appear in court, the suit states. A Paterson Municipal Court judge dismissed the charges in December 2020 and ordered the mens records expunged, the suit states. Thomas and Newsome claim Paterson police violated their right to free speech by arresting them and not others at the rally. Additionally, Thomas claims he missed several days of work in a city school. Newsome claims he was studying for the bar exam in New York and was unduly distracted by the charges. The suit, which also alleges unlawful arrest and violations of The New Jersey Constitution, seeks unspecified monetary damages. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription. Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Theyre not just the money, said Nancy Koehn, a historian at Harvard Business School. Theyre also this collective seal of approval. They carry an enormous amount of weight, regardless of your political loyalties. For decades, the Republicans were seen as the party of big business. Their support for low taxes and light regulation was manna to executives eager to raise profits and avoid government entanglements, and chief executives and big companies were reliable funders of Republicans up and down the ballot. Mr. Trump has frayed those bonds. Four years ago, few major chief executives supported Mr. Trump during his first campaign. And throughout his time in the White House, executives from many of the companys biggest brands publicly sparred with the president on everything from gun control to climate change to immigration. I cant remember a time when the business community has spoken out so strongly in opposition to an administration on so many important issues, said Rich Lesser, chief executive of Boston Consulting Group. Its not just a break with Trump but potentially with the Republican Party, said Richard Edelman, chief executive of the global corporate communications firm Edelman. Its not OK whats going on in America, and businesspeople are going to hold you to account. Even as they objected to some of Mr. Trumps stances, however, business leaders continued to take seats at the table, working with the Trump administration on issues including taxes and trade policy. If the company's track record is anything to go by, the speed of the project and not the capacity to manufacture LCA should raise concerns In a major decision aimed at boosting the domestic aerospace industry, India on Wednesday approved a much-awaited deal with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) worth Rs 48,000 crore to procure 83 indigenously-developed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas for the Indian Air Force. The decision to procure the fleet was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said. Touted as a 'game changer' for the domestic aviation industry, the news did provide a shot in the arm to HAL with its stocks surging by 10 percent on Thursday after the announcement of the deal. Singh commented that the move will strengthen government's self-reliance programme Atmanirbhar Bharat while commenting on HAL's capacity-building measures to ensure top of the line product. He said that 50 percent of the parts will be manufactured indigenously; this figure is expected to go up to 60 percent by the end of the programme. R Madhavan, chairman and managing director of the HAL, said the production rate of Tejas is being augmented from eight to 16 aircraft per year through the creation of a new infrastructure in Bengaluru. However, if the company's track record is anything to go by, the schedule of deliverables should raise concerns and not the PSU's capacity to manufacture it. Long history with inordinate delays The PSU was dragged into an unsavoury controversy over a deal with France's Dassault Aviation to home-produce 108 of the 126 Rafale aircraft ordered by India. The negotiations finally fell apart for reasons unknown, with the NDA-lead government eventually buying 36 aircraft in fly-away condition and blaming the HAL for the soured deal. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had at the time insinuated that Dassault had refused to take responsibility of aircraft that would be produced by HAL. It insisted on signing separate contracts for 108 and 18 aircraft, India Today reported. Stepping a little further back in time, HAL was facing criticism as its efforts to develop a basic trainer under the HTT 40 program was delayed by over five years. The HTT 40 was first promised in 2012 and the talk of procuring 106 units began in 2015. HAL rolled out the first prototype on 2 February 2016, and the production finally started only last year. A deal for 106 aircraft was signed in August 2020, with the first batch of deliveries expected in 2022 and at least 70 aircraft expected by 2026, The Print reported. The second group of 36 aircraft will be procured after operationalisation of the HTT-40 within the Indian Air Force. The delay in delivery of these aircraft meant that the IAF had to face a severe shortage in its fleet, forcing it to cut down on training programmes. The force currently relies on the Pilatus PC 7 turbo trainers for the first stage of training. In 2012, 75 of these aircraft were bought on an emergency basis but another deal purchase of 38 more aircraft was shelved last year as the Swiss manufacturer was facing corruption charges in the deal. Another indigenous programme to develop an intermediate jet trainer (IJT), developed by HAL to replace the ageing Kiran aircraft fleet, was delayed by over 14 years. The project was sanctioned in July 1999 with a grant of Rs 180 crore. First powered by a French engine and then a Russian one, the aircraft was expected to get initial operational clearance by 2006 with deliveries to the IAF planned a year later. However, it only completed a crucial flight test in November last year, with no indication from IAF if it was any longer interested in ordering the aircraft, a report in Hindustan Times said. The delay was caused reportedly after all efforts to prove the aircraft fit for service failed and HAL is believed to have consulted a US-based firm to rectify the aircraft at a cost of Rs 90 crore, The Economic Times reported. There were similar delays in the delivery of Sukhoi 30 jets. HAL was scheduled to deliver the last of a set of 140 Russian-origin fighters by 2014-15. But the last batch of 12 Sukhoi-30MKI fighters was delivered in 2019-20, while the delivery of another four was held up by the COVID-19 lockdown. The first squadron of the aircraft was commissioned finally in January 2020. Delays were also reported in the overhaul of functioning Sukhois in the media. According to a New Indian Express article published in March 2019, a three-year delay on part of HAL caused over 20 SU-30 MKI fighters to be grounded. "Initially, the schedule to complete the overhauling was 14 months but HAL wanted the time raised to 22 months. However, HAL has not been able to meet even this target as it takes around 27 months to overhaul/service one SU 30 MKI," the article states. Every fighter jet goes for an equipment overhaul after completing 1,200 flight hours. Air Force and Navy veterans have also criticised the PSU supposedly for its lower quality equipment and shoddy overhaul practices. Group Captain (Retd) Murli Menon criticised the PSU's "slipshod work and slippages in the quality of overhaul and timeframes, servicing, and quality control across the board, for aircraft and equipment alike" in his article published in IPCS. "The initial stages of the Light Combat Aircraft's (LCA) conception were world class in terms of contemporary technology and tradecraft. However, the past few decades have seen this premier aircraft manufacturer slip down the abyss and being unable to provide even basic value for money," Menon wrote. The article was published in the wake of the Mirage 2000 crash in Bengaluru in February 2019 that killed two pilots. Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd), in an article for The Print, blamed the lack of accountability for a 'high' failure rate of HAL projects. "That HAL had failed to acquire adequate aircraft/engine design and production skills became evident in a number of unsuccessful or abortive aircraft projects, coupled with a history of failures (often resulting in fatalities) in the IAFs MiG-21 fleet and other HAL products. Remarkably, neither MoD, nor the airworthiness, quality control and aviation regulatory authorities in India, have ever held HAL accountable for lapses leading to mishaps," claimed Prakash. Another article in The Indian Express quoted anonymous sources from the IAF who said the quality of Sukhoi jets indigenously manufactured was reportedly inferior to the jets procured from Russia in fly-away condition. The sources quoted in the article claimed that they "have seen the difference in the quality of the production standard between HAL-produced aircraft and the original Russian-supplied aircraft." They said that the home-produced aircraft had an array of issues that had to be pointed out from time to time, indicating a "lack of proper quality control and lack of awareness" at HAL. HAL defends projects, says undue criticism heaped on it to 'score points' The HAL has, however, blamed the delays on unpaid bills by the IAF, 'liquidity issues' and bureaucratic and technical delays. It has denied the concerns about quality on 'myths and wrong notions'. In a 2018 interview to Business World, Madhvan had blamed the delay in the Sukhoi project on hold up in technology handover from the Russian side, frequent design changes by the IAF and other technological and bureaucratic delays. "There is some delay on LCA (Light Combat Aircraft) as FOC (Full Operation Capacity) is yet to come. Even though the order was placed with us in 2006, the IOC (Initial Operation Capability) came in 2013 from Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and that is why we could not start production. Even after IOC, there were a large number of drawing changes and amendments, and as a result we could hardly produce anything in the first two years. Now, as we try to stabilise it, FOC is going to come in December (2018). If it doesnt, there might be problems next year (2019), as we have set up assembly lines for 16 aircraft. This was also understood by the Secretary for Defence Production. Assuming that FOC comes in December, we are also making the structure parallely believing that there will be no more changes in the drawing. So next year, we will be able to meet the targets. In case of a delay in FOC or other complications, we may not be able to meet the target. In respect of all other platforms we are on time." Likewise, GS Jamadagni, a former HAL official, sought to dismantle the quality control 'myth' in a 2018 article for The Hindu. Jamadagni quoted data from a 1993 government committee on fighter aircraft accident that the rate of Technical Defect (TD) accidents on fighters, trainers, helicopters and transport aircraft of HAL origin is nearly 50 percent of the rate of accidents on aircraft of non-HAL origin of comparable technology and vintage. "It established beyond doubt that HAL-made aircraft have been superior in quality and performance to those purchased directly from the OEM. In view of this, Dassault's demand for work share guarantee does not hold any water," he writes. Gopal Sutar, Chief of Media Communications of HAL, also denies the IAF charge of "unsatisfactory performance in the past" in an article published in The Indian Express. The question of quality compromise does not arise in any of the HAL products. This is raised time and again just to score points. It seems that a very few understand how quality issues are taken care of in aerospace manufacturing. Generally, the quality is built into the product in the aerospace industry, and this includes our Su 30 MKI because of the nature of the production process. Besides, HAL has consistently stood guarantee for the quality of its products with the monitoring level of quality assurance by the Government-owned Quality Assurances authorities as a customers representative. So why raise the quality issue? Sutar was quoted as saying in the article. The debate on the aviation behemoth's capability and the rounds of allegations between IAF and HAL are decades old. The challenges hide between the need to develop an effective defence mechanism and enhancing state-run company's capacity to help it honour it's deadline and quality commitments. The ninth round of talks between protesting farmer unions and three central ministers got underway here on Friday afternoon to break the over-a-month-long deadlock on the three new agri laws. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash, who is an MP from Punjab, are holding the talks with the representatives of around 40 farmer unions at the Vigyan Bhawan here. Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. On Thursday, Tomar had said that the government's ninth round of negotiations with protesting farmer unions would take place as scheduled and the Centre was hopeful of positive discussions. "The government is ready to hold talks with farmer leaders with an open mind," Tomar had told reporters here. The Supreme Court on January 11 had stayed the implementation of the three laws till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse. Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann on Thursday recused himself from the committee appointed by the apex court. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are the other three members on the panel. On January 8, the eighth round of meeting remained inconclusive as the Centre ruled out repealing the three contentious laws claiming nationwide support for the reforms. However, farmer leaders had said that they were ready to fight till death and their 'ghar waapsi' would happen only after 'law waapsi'. Though talks till now have remained inconclusive, in the sixth round held on December 30 last year some common ground was reached on two demands -- decriminalisation of stubble-burning and continuation of power subsidies. (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.) Since the beginning of the Corona pandemic, MOBOTIX thermal cameras have been increasingly used in the healthcare sector, as well as airports, train stations, public authorities, and companies, to detect temperature anomalies in people without contact and thus contain the spread of the virus. However, this aspect is only one area for which MOBOTIX technology is currently providing special services. The MOBOTIX 7 Platform, with its intelligent and cyber secure camera systems M73 and S74, predestined MOBOTIX video technology even before the pandemic to ensure comprehensive, digital support in healthcare clinics and the care of the elderly and disabled. The reliable, high-quality video systems made in Germany reduce hospital and nursing staff's workload, provide digital care for patients and residents, and optimise care and workflow processes. Parking lot management Basic safety and pandemic protection in healthcare Also, during the pandemic, a special duty of care applies to employees, patients, and residents as a risk or high-risk group. MOBOTIX video technology is used in numerous clinics, retirement, and care facilities worldwide to ensure that patients, residents, and employees have a carefree stay and can work safely. Dangers and sources of risk are detected, and the intelligent systems warn, report, or directly initiate assistance and rescue measures. With the MOBOTIX 7 platform and the versatile apps, MOBOTIX offers exceptional application possibilities This allows staff to concentrate on their work, while hospital patients and nursing home residents can recover more quickly and get the rest they need. 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But it is also about sensitive, personal data that must not fall into the wrong hands under any circumstances. MOBOTIX video systems consist of high-quality components. Developed, produced, and comprehensively tested at the company's German headquarters in Langmeil/Rhineland-Palatinate, the company creates products and solutions that are impressive not only because of their outstanding image quality - even in the most challenging lighting conditions. One hundred percent DSGV-compliant, the decentralised MOBOTIX systems stand for the highest possible cyber security and comprehensive data protection. Unauthorised persons cannot read the stored data. Intelligent video technology Relieving the workload of hospital and nursing staff with "digital care Using intelligent video technology from MOBOTIX can significantly reduce the hospital and nursing staff's workload Hospital and nursing staff often work at the breaking point. 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At the same time, patients and residents can be sure that help will arrive quickly in an emergency. Even at night, helpless individuals are detected immediately, ensuring their safety and preserving their independence. By incorporating audio systems, MOBOTIX video solutions for healthcare also enable patients to be addressed and communicated directly with. Licence plate recognition Optimise hospital and care processes Smooth organisation of routines helps hospitals and retirement and care facilities be efficient and profitable Smooth organisation of important routines helps hospitals and retirement and care facilities be efficient and profitable. Numerous processes can be automated and optimised with MOBOTIX video technology, from the facility's journey to check-out. For example, professional parking management with licence plate recognition can ensure that only authorised vehicles can access specified areas. In this way, ambulance access routes can be kept free, or parking fees can be billed in a straightforward, fast, and accurate manner. Queues in registration or examination areas can be avoided, and smooth administration and medical and care areas can be enabled. University hospitals or teaching institutions can use high-resolution camera systems, e.g., in operating theaters, to fulfill their teaching and training mission without disruptions. Customers can develop further apps that enable completely individual solutions themselves or have them created by MOBOTIX and its technology partners and certified concerning cyber security. Advanced video technology Comprehensive solutions with the best return on investment Healthcare is a market that is extremely important to MOBOTIX. The high level of solution expertise digitises processes and work steps in everyday hospital and home life, using intelligent and future-proof video technology. Thus, simplifying work and making it safer also relieves the healthcare budgets' pressure and increases profitability (ROI). Kent Nishimura / TNS Calling the incipient effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom the California coup might have been dismissed as harmless partisan hyperbole in normal times. But as everyone other than the leadership of the California Democratic Party appears to understand, these are not normal times. State Democratic Chairman Rusty Hicks glib use of the C-word could not have been more ill-advised or ill-timed than in the aftermath of an actual attempt to seize the U.S. government by illegal and violent means. Hicks said this week that the recall effort, which really ought to be called the California coup, is being led by right-wing conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers and groups who encourage violence on our democratic institutions. But in contrast to the assault on the Capitol and Congress incited by President Trump and his allies last week, the organizers of the campaign against Newsom are gathering signatures for a recall election under procedures authorized by the California Constitution, for better or worse, more than a century ago. 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. For the 14th day in a row, San Antonio health officials reported more than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19, a sign of the continuing rampant spread of the virus throughout the community. The 1,829 cases added Thursday tipped Bexar Countys total since the pandemic began to 140,614. Half those cases about 70,000 have been reported within the last two months. Yet the number of cases confirmed by positive test results represents a fraction of the number of people currently infected across the county. Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger, San Antonios coronavirus czar, said Thursday that health officials estimate that there are nearly 18,000 active infections this week alone. You need to assume everyone around you has the virus and act accordingly, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said, urging residents to avoid crowded situations. As the spread of infections has surged across San Antonio, so too has the number of residents dying of the disease. Nirenberg said Thursday that COVID-19 killed 19 more people, whose deaths occurred within the last two weeks. All were over age 70, with the exception of one man in his 50s who died at home. The vast majority were residents of assisted living facilities or nursing homes. Bridger said health officials havent identified outbreaks in specific nursing homes and assisted living facilities instead, cases and deaths have risen in general, mirroring the community as a whole. But residents and the medical providers who care for them could soon see relief. The federal government contracted with private pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate long-term care facility residents and staff members. Bridger said the process to administer both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine is almost complete. They are finishing up the second doses over the next week to 10 days, Bridger said. So that should help. Thursdays double-digit death count came a day after the city reported 25 new deaths a near record. Since the pandemic began, only one other day has been more deadly: Aug. 12, when the record of 26 was set. The countys total death toll stands at 1,704. COVID-19 patients also continued to flood area hospitals, with 158 people admitted in the last 24 hours. On Thursday, hospitals were caring for 1,407 COVID-19 patients, a slight dip from 1,411 the day before. Of those, 382 people were critically ill and needed intensive care, down slightly from 393 on Wednesday. The number of patients needing ventilators to breathe also inched down, to 231 from 237. The mayor cautioned San Antonians against letting their guard down because of the plateau of cases in the last few days. (Hospitals are) at high stress right now, and the numbers have not shown much mercy, Nirenberg said. While weve had a few days that have leveled off a little bit, thats certainly not a trend. Staff writer Liz Hardaway contributed to this report. marina.riker@express-news.net Credit: Transmission Films Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England's Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809. Her discoveries included the first complete Icthyosaurus (although it was her little brother who first stumbled across the skull, Anning spent the next year excavating and preparing the rest of the fossil), the first complete Plesiosaurus and subsequent plesiosaur species, a perfectly preserved belemnite complete with anterior sheath and inkbag, and the first pterodactyl Dimorphodon. Her fossil finds were sought out by the "rockstar" palaeontologists of the day such as William Buckland and Richard Owen as they debated the age of the Earth, theories of extinction and, later, of evolution. Although she died in 1847 at the age of 47, her impact on our understanding of the diversity of marine life in the Jurassic seas has left an indelible legacy. True tales and tall tales The new film Ammonitenamed for the whorl-shelled cephalopod fossil commonly found in Lyme Regis and sold as a "curios" in Anning's timeis a fictionalized sensual love story between Anning (Kate Winslet) and her friend and fossicking partner Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan). Duria Antiquior (A more Ancient Dorset), watercolour by geologist Henry De la Beche, 1830, based on fossils found by Mary Anning. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Since news of this film broke, there has been much discussion as to Mary Anning's true sexual orientation. Depicted as a lesbian, the film's writer and director, Francis Lee, has defended this choice by stating Ammonite is not a biopic. While it is true Anning never married, and may have had a passionate love affair as shown in the film, I was curious as to how scientifically and historically accurate other details in the film were. Ammonite begins in the 1840s, with Anning fossicking along the Lyme Regis coast, living in poverty with her mother (to whom she barely speaks) at the back of their family shop, Anning's Fossils and Curios. In reality, Anning sold fossils from a shop called Anning's Fossil Depot she purchased at the age of 27. Prior to that, she sold fossils alongside her brother Joseph and mother Molly outside their family home. Anning and Murchison were firm friends in real life, and did indeed meet when Murchison's geologist husband, Roderick, introduced them in Lyme Regis. But while the film depicts Murchison as a younger, helpless, melancholic wife, Murchison was Anning's senior and a geologist in her own right. Murchison was friends with other scientists including Mary Somerville (the first person to be called a "scientist", rather than "man of science"). She worked alongside her husband on various geological field trips, and demanded the right to attend geological lectures at King's College, London. It is unfortunate that, in telling this story of one female scientist, the film diminishes the complexity and success of another. I wish Ronan's Murchison had been given the chance to be depicted as the passionate geologist she truly was. For the love of science Anning's lifeboth in fiction and realitywas centered around searching the coastline for fossils to sell. The film version of Anning discusses and dismisses what her fossicking partner has found, including limestone (relatively fossil poor in that region of the world), calcite crystals, and the ammonites found in abundance: all accurate for the geology of the Blue Lias. Illustration of coprolites from Lyme Regis, in Buckland, William. Transactions of the Geological Society of London. ser. 2, v. 3 (1835). Credit: Digitized by the California Academy of Sciences She only pauses when examining a coprolite, a nice nod to the fact Anning was the first to correctly identify what were known as "bezoar stones" as fossilized feces. The film also accurately depicts the nature and dangers of the Dorset Coast. Landslides were and are common, revealing new fossil finds at the risk of injury or death. Although not depicted in the film, Anning lost her pet dog Tray to a landslide in 1833. She wrote to Murchison: "Perhaps you will laugh when I say that the death of my old faithful dog quite upset me, the cliff fell upon him and killed him in a moment before my eyes, and close to my feet, it was but a moment between me and the same fate." Anning, sensitively played by Winslet, is a woman in poverty, who collects, prepares and sells fossils to survivebut treasures them nonetheless. When given the opportunity to either live in comfort with Murchison and continue their relationship in secret, or return to a life of fossicking the treacherous Dorset coast, she chooses the latter. Landslide on the Dorset Coast, England. Truth, openness and the freedom of finding fossils are more important to Anning than a closeted relationship with the woman of her dreams. Unfortunately, while Ammoniteeven with its liberties with the known factsoffers us an opportunity to reflect on the true story of this remarkable woman, Lee's film is somewhat lumbering and poorly paced. But through all of this, Winslet's Anning is not a dispassionate scientist. She is a complex character who has suffered through poverty, loneliness and dismissal, and fiercely guards the life she has built for herself. Ammonite is in cinemas now. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Gang Chen, who works as the director of Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center was arrested on Thursday by the U.S authorities for allegedly keeping his Chinese funding under wraps. Gang Chen, who works as the director of Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center was arrested on Thursday by the U.S authorities for allegedly keeping his Chinese funding under wraps. In a statement released by U.S. District Attorneys Office, the MIT professor was charged with the federal crimes of committing wire fraud, making a false statement in the tax return, and not filing foreign bank account reports with the authorities. As per Andrew E. Lelling, the prosecutor for the case, Chen was working for the Chinese government while securing U.S. research dollars. Since 2013, Chen had received over $19 million in federal grants for his research work. At the same time, he was also receiving foreign funding, a total of $29 million, of which $19 million came from Chinas Southern University of Science and Technology. Chen had allegedly been collaborating with the Chinese government to stimulate scientific growth and technological development in the country, in return for receiving monetary compensation. He also had a bank in China holding more than $10,000 in 2018 which he failed to disclose while applying for research grants. It is not illegal to collaborate with foreign researchers. It is illegal to lie about it said the prosecutor while addressing the media. Also read: Gyawali to meet Jaishankar today; co-chair India-Nepal Joint Commission Also read: Kashmir issue raised in UK Parliament: Indian mission invites MPs for a dialogue The MIT professor who will be making an appearance in the court today can face up to 20 years of prison sentencing, 3 years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine for wire fraud. Further punishments for making false statements and failing to file a foreign bank account can each go up to 5 years of prison sentencing, 3 years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. Also read: Indias Vaccine roll out: PM Modi to launch the worlds largest immunization drive tomorrow (Natural News) Newly released video shows former Black Lives Matter organizer John Sullivan both allegedly instigating protesters to commit crimes and committing crimes himself while inside the Capitol Building yet somehow it appears he has managed to escape any charges. (Article by Chris Menahan republished from InformationLiberation.com) The Grayzone Projects Max Blumenthal created this excellent compilation which he shared Wednesday night on Twitter: I studied video shot by Sullivan (Jayden X) in the Capitol and compiled some moments of him zealously celebrating the invasion & instigating the mob all the way up to Ashli Babbit's shooting. Watch with audio on. No committed BLM activist would say or do this and he isn't one pic.twitter.com/uE5VmUf6mU Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 Blumenthal reported that BLM suspected him of being a federal informant/agent provocateur: The night of the Capitol riot, Sullivan was welcomed on @andersoncooper to present himself as the heroic journalist who recorded Babbit's shooting. Cooper falsely called him a "left-wing activist" and didn't ask why he was actually in the Capitol. This was fodder for the Right. pic.twitter.com/LPezi5Hv09 Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 Seated w/Sullivan on CNN is Jade Sacker, a photojournalist who followed him into the Capitol to film his exploits as part of a documentary project. Here she's heard congratulating him "We did it!" and he says, "Is this not gonna be the best film you've ever made in yr life?" pic.twitter.com/KWLVfgKPA7 Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 I learned that Sacker's project has major backers: It's being "advised" by Bryan Fogel, Academy Award winning maker of Icarus and The Dissident. Here's Fogel with Dissident producer Thor Halvorssen, a neocon operative whose Oslo Freedom Forum trains US-backed oppo activists. pic.twitter.com/b1RIxIGiio Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 While John Sullivan is playing one side, his brother James Sullivan is playing the other and their father is a retired Air Force General: There are so many bizarre layers to this story. Sacker's doc also focuses on Sullivan's brother, James, a Utah-based pro-Trump activist who helped recruit fellow Black Republicans for the DC mayhem. The brothers are at odds in public, but on the same side on January 6. pic.twitter.com/cnbpOQ3A7T Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 This is retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Sullivan, the adoptive father of John and James Sullivan. James has taken on his father's conservatism while John has apparently delved into "burn it all down" nihilism, sabotaging the cause of BLM at every turn. pic.twitter.com/Qs4yHVP96w Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 Seems pretty straight-forward to me! In June 2020, John Sullivan emerged practically out of nowhere and began organizing BLM-esque rallies in Utah. The first one spiraled into chaos, led to this shooting where he was present, prompted mass arrests, and triggered the formation of the Utah Citizen's Alarm militia. pic.twitter.com/44XVziF9rb Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 Video of the Provo shooting here. The night after the Capitol riot, John Sullivan was spotted fraternizing with Utah Proud Boy leader Thad Cisneros outside DC's Hamilton. A source sent me this photo. In fact, John platformed Proud Boy Thad at a July 2, 2020 rally in Provo, Utah. pic.twitter.com/7olWNZu8td Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 (Thad held a bizarre press conference together with a BLM supporter in Sept 2020 to denounce white supremacy.) Moments later, John Sullivan was detained by DC Metro PD and questioned by the FBI. After an hour or so, despite the copious documentation of his role in the Capitol riot, he was let go. (Jade Sacker filmed throughout) https://t.co/Tsbc92jh71 Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 It just gets better and better: Now, Sullivan is back in Salt Lake City and is seeking to organize an "armed march" at the Utah State Capitol to "end government control" this month. Note that he is not calling for a march for Black liberation, or Black lives, or anything to do with BLM. This is from his site: pic.twitter.com/zDKPhWLm9S Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 I havent seen anyone telling people to go to any of these armed marches and Ive only seen the FBI promoting them. Many BLM activists call John Sullivan an "agent provocateur." Some suspect he is a law enforcement asset, which he denies. Others say he's simply a nihilist who is dedicated to chaos above all else. What's clear is he is not BLM or Antifa, and is out to wreck their cause. Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 14, 2021 It seems pretty clear hes out to wreck all these causes. The question you have to ask is why isnt he being prosecuted? How come a father of five is being frog-marched for carrying Nancy Pelosis podium a few feet for a funny photo-op while this guy who is on video appearing to smash a window and encourage others to commit all manners of crimes is all over TV and seemingly walking free? It looks to me like the feds had a hand in turning these mostly peaceful protests violent and now theyre planning to roll out PATRIOT Act 2.0 to turn all dissent into terrorism. Read more at: InformationLiberation.com New brand strategy and future ambitions revealed in digital showcase Corporate name changed from 'Kia Motors' to 'Kia' Company puts its 'Plan S' long-term strategy into action to create sustainable mobility solutions for customers Seven new dedicated electric vehicles to launch by 2027 Kia turns to recyclable materials and renewable energy for more sustainable manufacturing Kia's first dedicated BEV and new design philosophy to be revealed soon SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kia has announced new details of its new brand purpose and ambitions for the future during a digital showcase event. Supported by a new brand slogan, 'Movement that inspires', Kia today reveals new details of a strategy which will see the company go beyond vehicle manufacturing to create sustainable mobility solutions for customers. Signaling the brand breaking away from its traditional manufacturing-driven business model, Kia has announced a new corporate name. Removing the 'Motors' from its name (previously 'Kia Motors Corporation'), Kia will expand into new and emerging business areas by creating innovative mobility products and services to improve customers' daily lives. Ho Sung Song, President and CEO of Kia Corporation, comments: "At Kia, we believe that transportation, mobility, and movement represent a human right. Our vision is to create sustainable mobility solutions for consumers, communities, and societies globally. Today we start putting this vision into action with the launch of our new brand purpose and strategy for the future." The 'New Kia Brand Showcase' can be viewed on the Kia Global YouTube channel from 09:00 Korean Standard Time on Friday January 15, 2021 (01:00 CET, January 15 / 16:00 PST, January 14): https://youtu.be/U67RlX9ibfo Introducing Kia's new brand purpose and slogan: 'Movement that inspires' Kia's new brand slogan, 'Movement that inspires', is introduced today at the heart of a brand manifesto which reflects Kia's new purpose of inspiring consumers through products and services, and their experiences with the brand. Kia's new brand purpose emphasizes that movement is at the genesis of human development. Movement enables people to see new places, to meet new people, and to have new experiences. For more information on new Kia brand, please visit Kia's media center: https://www.kianewscenter.com/ Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420738/New_Kia_Brand_Showcase_1.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420739/New_Kia_Brand_Showcase_2.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420740/New_Kia_Brand_Showcase_3.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420741/New_Kia_Brand_Showcase_6.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420742/New_Kia_Brand_Showcase_7.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420743/New_Kia_Brand_Showcase_8.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420527/Logo.jpg Clarity AI tech platform delivers insights on the social and environmental impact of over 30,000 organizations Data science and machine-learning help clients develop sustainability insights BlackRock announced minority investment in Clarity AI BlackRock Inc. (NYSE: BLK) today announced a minority investment in Clarity AI, a sustainability analytics and data science platform, as the firm continues to invest in delivering sustainable investing analytics and software for clients. BlackRock will integrate Clarity AIs capabilities with Aladdin, BlackRocks end-to-end operating system for investment professionals. Clarity AI uses big data and machine learning to create actionable sustainability and impact insights and expand these to a uniquely broad universe of companies, countries and local governments. Its proprietary technology and data science capabilities across environmental and social impact analyze more than 30,000 companies, spanning almost 200 countries. Clarity AI also supports regulatory and client reporting to help investors meet new sustainability disclosure obligations. Investors are galvanized around sustainability as a critical consideration in managing immediate and future risks, and better data is foundational to this, said Mary-Catherine Lader, Head of Aladdin Sustainability at BlackRock. As BlackRock makes sustainability its standard for investing, we are committed to raising the standards for ESG data and technology. Were investing in new analytics and software in Aladdin and are also integrating capabilities from strategic partners like Clarity AI so clients can understand their investments social and environmental impact and risks. Clarity AIs capabilities use machine learning to help Aladdin clients analyze a broader universe of companies, address their disclosure obligations and build more sustainable portfolios. BlackRocks investment in Clarity AI and the integration of our capabilities and comprehensive ESG, sustainability and impact data into BlackRocks Aladdin platform will be transformative, bringing Clarity AI data and analytics to more of the worlds largest and most significant investors, said Rebeca Minguela, Founder and CEO of Clarity AI. This strategic partnership with BlackRock reflects the growing demand for our innovative approach in helping investors assess the impact of companies on our society and planet. Demand for sustainable investing accelerated rapidly in 2020. Global investors in mutual funds and ETFs invested $326billion in sustainable assets in the 12 months to November 2020, a 97% increase over the same period in the prior year1. In addition, a recent survey2 of global investors shows that their allocations to ESG strategies are expected to double by 2025. Within the survey2, 53% of respondents cited concerns about poor quality or availability of ESG data and analytics as their biggest barrier to adopting sustainable investing. As more investors look for ways to evaluate the social and environmental impact of their investments, the need for improved ESG data and analytics in individual investments and across whole portfolios will continue to grow. Clarity AI builds on the existing sustainability dataset in the Aladdin platform with additional forward-looking sustainability analytics and models, generated from data about companies. These insights complement traditional corporate ESG disclosures. This investment is the latest step from BlackRocks Aladdin platform as it continues to invest in its sustainability capabilities, which last year added 1,200 sustainability metrics and established data partnerships to help investors understand ESG and physical climate risks and opportunities. BlackRock also recently unveiled Aladdin Climate, which helps investors understand and act on climate risk. It is the first software application to offer investors measures of both the physical risk of climate change and the transition risk to a low-carbon economy on portfolios. BlackRock will join existing investors including Deutsche Borse, Kibo Ventures, Mundi Ventures, Seaya Ventures and Founders Fund. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. About BlackRock BlackRocks purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/corporate About Aladdin Aladdin is BlackRocks end-to-end investment management and operations platform used by institutional investors including asset managers, pension funds, insurers and corporate treasurers. It combines sophisticated risk analytics with comprehensive portfolio management, trading and operations tools on a single, unified platform. Also customized for wealth managers, the Aladdin platform provides a common language across the investment lifecycle and enables a culture of risk transparency among users. About Clarity AI Clarity AI is a global data science and technology platform that uses machine learning and big data to deliver environmental and social data that empowers investors to measure the impact of their portfolios. Clarity AIs platform analyzes more than 30,000 companies, 200,000 funds and 400 countries and local governments, delivering data, analytics and software applications for investment and corporate research and reporting. Founded in 2017, Clarity AI has offices in the US, UK and Spain and a client network with over $10 trillion assets under management. Clarity AIs team is specialized in technology, sustainability and research, with collective experience from leading organizations, businesses and research institutions including NASA, the World Bank, Google, McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Harvard, M.I.T and more. For additional information on Clarity AI, please visit www.clarity.ai 1 Simfund, Broadridge, GBI. Data as of Nov 2020. Closed-end funds, FoFs excluded; Money Market funds included. 2 BlackRock 2020 Global Sustainable Investing Survey, which includes responses from 425 clients in 27 countries representing an estimated $25 trillion in assets under management: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/publication/blackrock-sustainability-survey.pdf View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114005665/en/ Meant to inspire and unite everyone from love birds to loved ones, the gift of GODIVA shines through this special collection, comprised of heart-shaped boxes filled with limited edition chocolate pieces. Through culinary artistry, masterful chocolate innovation, and passionate creativity, GODIVA Chef Chocolatier, Jean Apostolou, created this limited-edition collection to celebrate how hearts full of love inspire and unite soulmates of all kinds. "For this collection, I was inspired by the magical element of love and by the sense of harmony that we feel as we open our hearts and express love on Valentine's Day. Each piece tells its own unique tale of the essence of love through decadent flavoring and indulgent flavor combinations," says Chef Jean Apostolou. "This collection captures the togetherness of Valentine's Day, which we are all especially eager to embrace this year whether near or far." The collection's vibrant and elegant packaging showcases overflowing pink and red hearts, symbolizing the sweetness of romance and heartfelt feelings. Inside the festive packaging is where chocolate lovers will find the four new GODIVA chocolates, with each piece telling its own unique tale of the essence of love. GODIVA's 2021 Valentine's Day Collection DARK CHOCOLATE MOLTEN LAVA CAKE: Intense 85% dark chocolate ganache blended with chocolate cream and covered in decadent dark chocolate. Intense 85% dark chocolate ganache blended with chocolate cream and covered in decadent dark chocolate. MILK CHOCOLATE CREME BRULEE: A delicious combination of creamy vanilla and dark chocolate ganache with liquid caramel in a milk chocolate shell. A delicious combination of creamy vanilla and dark chocolate ganache with liquid caramel in a milk chocolate shell. WHITE CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRY CREME: Sweet and luscious strawberry and vanilla filling covered in white chocolate. Sweet and luscious strawberry and vanilla filling covered in white chocolate. MILK CHOCOLATE CAPPUCCINO: Rich and creamy cappuccino and vanilla infused ganache coated in delicate milk chocolate. Additional GODIVA Valentine's Day gift offerings available this year include classic Gold Ballotin boxes, chocolate covered strawberries, cherry cordials, fabric hearts, Valentine's Day teddy bear with foil hearts, G-Cube heart tins and more. GODIVA is also excited to announce the return of its Valentine's Day Masterpieces, Goldmark Collection, and assorted Chocolate Domes to the chocolate aisle as well as the launch of new novelty items including the Dark Chocolate Goldmark Collection. The festive and accessible Valentine's Day collection, perfect for casual gifting and sharing, can be found in national retailers, including grocery and drug stores. The GODIVA Valentine's Day collection is now available for purchase nationwide in boutiques, and online at GODIVA.com as well as in the chocolate aisle where consumers shop every day. Freshly made treats are made daily in GODIVA boutiques. For more information on GODIVA's offerings, please visit GODIVA.com. About GODIVA Chocolatier GODIVA Chocolatier is the global leader in premium, artisanal chocolate. The company was founded in Brussels in 1926 by Belgian Chocolatier, Pierre Draps. Nearly a century later, every piece of GODIVA is still bursting with quality, Belgian craftsmanship, and the world's finest ingredients. GODIVA has distribution in more than 100 countries across the globe. Customers can experience GODIVA at the iconic brand's chocolate boutiques, GODIVA.com, and at many fine retailers. GODIVA is committed to innovative and delicious food and beverage products that exceed consumer expectations and create wonderful moments. From its famous truffles and shell-molded chocolate pieces to its European-style biscuits, individually wrapped chocolates, Croiffles , gourmet coffees and teas, hot cocoa, soft serve and other indulgences, GODIVA is dedicated to bringing the ultimate chocolate experience to the world. As a socially responsible business, GODIVA has global practices and programs designed to provide meaningful support to cocoa farmers, safeguard our environment, and empower the communities where we live and work. To learn more about these powerful initiatives, visit GODIVA Cares. Contact: Nicole Arzoomanian: [email protected] SOURCE GODIVA Chocolatier Related Links http://www.godiva.com 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. New Delhi: Pakistan, which is always in the designs to see India's devastation, has been shown by its friendly country. Malaysia has seized a Boeing 777 passenger plane of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). In fact, the aircraft was leased and the aircraft was seized due to non-repayment of the loan amount, according to the Pakistani media. Pakistan's nefarious actions bore the brunt of its innocent public when the passenger and crew were thrown off at Kuala Lumpur airport amid embarrassment. Pakistan's position is that the country is currently in debt to the throat. This has led to reports of chaos from the country over the past few years. The problems of Pak are constantly on the rise, but even then it is trying to plot against India. Let's say Pia has been in controversies before. A report revealed that 40 percent of Pia pilots are bogus. Pakistan was fiercely in the world after the revelations. Pia is a state-made airline company in Pakistan. Pakistan is once again dishonored after the loan is not repaid after leasing. Also Read:- Rajnath Singh inaugurates country's first indigenous driverless metro car IMF's big statement amid farmers' agitation, says in support of agricultural laws Fatal Road mishap in Karnataka: PM Modi expresses grief! It could have been so much deadlier. That may sound like a perverse thing to say about last weeks seditious riot at the U.S. Capitol, in which five people died, including one member of the Capitol Police. But its true: If Washington D.C. was like the 30 states that allow citizens to openly carry loaded long guns on capitol grounds, many more of the rioters would have been armed and many more lives could have been lost. This is not a theoretical threat. The FBI recently issued a warning: Law enforcement should be aware of possible armed protests at all 50 state capitols starting this weekend. Which means that officers may soon have to contend with far-right protesters who arrive at the capitol dressed in tactical gear and armed to the teeth, as if they were preparing for war, not a peaceful demonstration. Armed intimidation is not free speech This is also not a new threat. We saw it in Michigan, where protestors who were upset with Gov. Gretchen Whitmers decision to issue a stay-at-home order showed up at the capitol bearing arms, demanded to be let on to the House floor, and reportedly screamed Heil Whitmer. We saw it in Virginia, where heavily armed gun rights activists hijacked an annual Lobby Day at the state capitol in Richmond. We saw it in Kentucky, where the state house which allows guns but bans potential weapons like umbrellas was taken over by gun-toting militants. Twitter pic And as the FBI made clear, we are likely to see more of it in the coming days. Some gun extremists contend that the Second Amendment protects carrying firearms just about anywhere but they are wrong. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia noted in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision, "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings." This is simply common sense. Because contrary to what you hear from the gun lobby, open carry of loaded weapons is not free speech it is armed intimidation, and it has a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of other citizens. As Garrett Eps wrote in The Atlantic, The right to bear arms in political debate is not the power to speak for oneself; it is, at least implicitly, the power to silence others. Story continues Capitol chaos: Sacking of U.S. Capitol adds to rare national security failures. Police the police. And it must not be forgotten that guns have the power to silence others for good which should worry lawmakers in all states that allow open carry. The research shows that visible guns have been found to make people more aggressive; therefore open carry makes it more likely that disagreements will turn into violent conflicts. Thats exactly what happened this summer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when a young man carrying a semi-automatic rifle shot three people two of whom died during a protest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The danger of open carry is obvious The shooter in Kenosha considered himself a stalwart supporter of law enforcement, and went to the protests with the intention of helping police officers. But in fact, open carry makes life more dangerous for the people whose actual job it is to keep the peace. David Brown, the former Police Chief of Dallas, put it like this: We dont know who the good guy is versus the bad guy when everyone starts shooting. So, it should come as no surprise that Texass open carry law had been opposed by a majority of state police chiefs. Once upon a time, even leaders of the National Rifle Association seemed to get it. In 2015, the National Rifle Association responded to a Texas rally supporting open carry with a statement describing the practice as downright weird. But the NRA has grown more extreme by the year, and in the days leading up to the Capitol riot, organization president Wayne LaPierre urged members to fight back starting now, youll soon face the real threat of having your guns forcibly confiscated which is patently false. Capitol riot: Trump's exit won't end the far-right violent terrorism threats he fueled One short-term solution to this clear and present danger is obvious: Lawmakers in the 30 states that allow loaded long guns to be openly carried at and around their capitols should ban this intimidation tactic as soon as possible. Michigan lawmakers did exactly that on Monday, when the states Capitol Commission voted unanimously to ban open carry. Put simply, our nations political conversation should not be held at the barrel of a gun. Especially in these times of division and rancor, Americans need the freedom to talk to each other and their lawmakers without fearing for their lives. John Feinblatt is president of Everytown for Gun Safety. Follow him on Twitter: @JohnFeinblatt You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ban open carry guns at state capitols. Intimidation is not free speech. There are four paths for us to take to make Nikol Pashinyan resign. This is what member of the Supreme Body of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun political party Ishkhan Saghatelyan declared during a meeting in the Armenian city of Gyumri today. First, if Pashinyan had understanding and responsibility and thought about the country, he would resign. Second, if the My Step faction of the National Assembly realizes that it is also betraying Armenians by defending Nikol Pashinyan, it will convene a special parliamentary session and impeach him. Third, the opposition Homeland Salvation Movement has already submitted a report to the Prosecutor Generals Office with the demand that the latter brings a charge against and detains Nikol Pashinyan under the article of state treason. Fourth, if two-thirds of the government (10 ministers) undertake an initiative, Nikol Pashinyan will resign, Saghatelyan said, adding that consistent efforts need to be made in these four directions. There are many people who are telling us to go and kill Nikol Pashinyan. There are others who say he is a traitor and is still in power. Dear citizens, this is not the path to take. We need to force Pashinyan to step down by demanding consistently as a nation. The people need to come out to the streets and make the authorities resign, and Nikols resignation is a matter of time. The longer he stays in power, the more losses we Armenians will suffer. We have to do this together. There are some deputies elected from Gyumri, and one of them showed dignity and left parliament. You have to exert pressure and make the other deputies submit their resignation letters. This is the path to take, Saghatelyan said. Nguyen Quang Dong, Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and Media Development, talks about Vietnams efforts to master science and technology production to help it achieve the goal of becoming a high-income country in 2045. Vinaphone's booth for experiencing 5G products and services as the telecom group announced offering of 5G coverage in Hanoi and HCM City mid-December last year. The Make in Vietnam strategy that started a year ago has been seeing positive results. How has this strategy helped address Vietnams existing problems via new technology? Vietnam aims to become among the high-income group of countries and a prosperous, developed middle power by 2045, the year marking the 100th anniversary of its foundation and independence. To realise this goal, the digital economy is the most important driving force that will open up many possibilities. It needs to be stressed that digital economy will be key to unlocking a hard puzzle that we havent been able to truly solve after 30 years of open-door and oi moi (reforms) policy labour productivity, which if left unaddressed would mire the country in the middle-income trap. Vietnam is currently enjoying a golden opportunity to create new breakthroughs in enhancing labour productivity and shake off the threats of the middle-income trap, thanks to its abundance of young, well trained and technology-savvy labour forces. Of course, to get far with digital technology, we cannot rely on foreign technology. Vietnamese businesses, with its own homegrown products and digital solutions must make breakthroughs and solidify its leading role. I can ascertain that if Make in Vietnam strategy succeeds, so will our 2045 goal. Taiwan or South Korea pursued similar strategies 30-40 years ago and managed to bring comprehensive changes to their economies. Do you think Vietnams implementation of this strategy at this point might have been a little too late? If we consider that digital technology makes up a large part of the Make in Vietnam strategy then the opportunities are still ample and out there for us to seize. In fields like manufacturing or electronics that are based on a strong and solid science and technology capacity as well as heavy investment into research and development, Vietnam does not have an advantage nor do we have the resources to play catch-up with the abovementioned countries. But the opportunities we have in digital technology with its core being information technology which doesnt really require as much infrastructure investment are wide open. In addition, digital technology focuses on more of a good base of IT human resources, along with a large market of young people that are highly interested in new technology. The cycle of a product or a solution, from research to market deployment, is short and could enjoy capital support from venture capitalists. These play to Vietnams advantages. There is also a healthy generation of Vietnamese intellectuals and business people who are teaching, studying or working in worlds major technological centres like the US. In an increasingly borderless world enabled by digital technology, Vietnam can totally rely on this community to contribute to its development. In little over a year, Make in Vietnam strategy has spawned 38 Vietnamese-made technological platforms. How do you assess this result? Thats certainly an impressive start. The speed and innovation of the Vietnamese businesses showcased in these products bodes well for the future. More importantly, the digital solutions and platforms have really penetrated deeply into economic fields creating improvements in the efficiency of management, operations and productivity for businesses, especially in the banking-finance, e-commerce, tourism and education sectors. On a macroeconomic level, this is even clearer when the Total factor productivity (TFP) index, which indicates economic efficiency, has shown distinct improvements in the last five years (2016-20) compared to previous periods. A very welcome sign, Id say. However, there is still the test of whether Vietnamese products can reach the global market. Taking over the domestic market is a must, but the measure for success in the future will involve global market penetration. At this moment, most Vietnamese businesses or their products havent been able to do this, and more time is needed to see if they can. But on a macrolevel, support and orientations for businesses that have a global ambition and vision are critical. How do you propose we change Vietnams tax for technology/innovation businesses from the current collection of 15-20 per cent against their revenues, given that many countries are carrying out tax incentives? Its true that our policy environment is not facilitating enough for businesses, in terms of tax, regulations and permits. I think that tax incentives should only be extended to effective businesses who have products and technology that are accepted by the market or ones that can reach the global market. Tax policies should be adjusted to ensure fairness between domestic technology businesses and their foreign counterparts, as well as businesses in other industries. The more important thing, I believe, is more streamlined procedures to obtain business licences and permits, as currently, the complicated procedures and legal risks have caused many to opt to set up an entity based in Singapore instead of Vietnam. Authorities are still struggling to deal with new emerging types of businesses given the unprecedented nature. Vietnam is only one in the six leading economies of Southeast Asia region to not have a regulatory sandbox to let companies experiment innovative solutions and products. I think this is much more important than tax incentives. Addressing these issues is all within reach of the ministries but it requires stronger, well thought out coordination. On a macro-level, the Governments messages are always open and welcome, but the implementation level concerning ministries and agencies leaves a lot to be desired. VNS/KT&DT 'Make in Vietnam' and the challenge of digital transformation When solving the challenges of the 4.0 era and setting 'impossible' goals for themselves, digital technology businesses will help Vietnam grow significantly. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi has called a meeting of party leaders from Kerala next week to discuss the upcoming Assembly polls in wake of the setback the party received in the recent local body polls, sources said. The leaders called include former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, state President M. Ramchandran and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ramesh Chennithala. The Congress in the state is pitted against the ruling Left Democratic Front, but not making headway despite the anti-incumbency factor, due to its internal rifts with factions led by Chandy and Chennithala scrambling for supremacy, party insiders say. The divisions in the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) came out in the open in December after it faced a rout in the local body polls despite performing well in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. After the poll debacle, Ramachandran, Chennithala and Chandy had said that party will introspect. Congress MP K. Sudhakaran and other state leaders had lashed out at the state Congress leadership and said democracy needs to be reinstated in the party. "We need to reinstate democracy inside the party. The party should bring in leaders who can instill confidence in the minds of party workers and the civil society. Then we can save the party," Sudhakaran had told the media. The Congress allies, including the IUML, had asked it to examine why it did not do well in the polls. As the world's largest vaccination drive is about to start in India on Saturday, one of the two vaccines approved so far has been Oxford-AstraZeneca's 'Covishield.' 'Covishield' has been manufactured in Serum Institute of India, in Pune. According to sources, 95 per cent of the 1.1 crore doses of Covishield vaccine purchased by the government have been delivered and shipped to nearly 60 consignee points across India in two days. But before the vaccine is actually rolled out - how did it come about? Tonia Thomas, Vaccine Knowledge Project Manager at the University of Oxford and Rachel Colin-Jones, Visiting Academic, Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford explain the process behind what went into making the vaccine in a piece published in The Conversation. They explain how, "Typically, developing a vaccine takes decades but we have several available for COVID-19 after just 12 months. Heres how we managed this for the Oxford vaccine." They also added how they had a head-start for the vaccine, even before Covid-19 was first detected in China. "We had already developed a delivery method or platform for our vaccine and had been testing it for other diseases for almost ten years. Known as the ChAdOx1 viral vector technology, this platform was created by modifying a harmless adenovirus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees." They added that they chose ChAdOx1 as it can generate a strong immune response and is not a replicating virus, so it cannot cause an infection. It had already been used safely in thousands of subjects in clinical trials of vaccines for other diseases including Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS), which is caused by another type of coronavirus. The reason they were already on a vaccine? 'Disease X.' The ongoing research into ChAdOx1 was part of preparing for 'Disease X,' one of eight diseases prioritised for research by the World Health Organization (WHO) due to the risk they pose to public health. Also Read: What is 'Disease X'? Deadlier Than Covid-19, Ebola and May Become the Next Pandemic They added how once researchers in China had mapped the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, they were able to quickly produce the COVID-19 vaccine by combining the ChAdOx1 vector with the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The preparation for Disease X ultimately allowed "our research team to move straight into testing our vaccine in animals in early 2020, and then to combine the data from these tests with data we had already gathered in previous trials using ChAdOx1, to show that what we were developing worked." Other than India, the vaccine has been approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom, Morocco, Argentina and El Salvador. Serum Institute of India (SII) chief executive Adar Poonawalla on Tuesday said there are plans to provide 50 to 60 million vials to the government either by January or February, even as 11 million doses of Covishield vaccine are currently being rolled out. Speaking to the select media persons at the SII facility, Poonawalla said the real challenge lies in taking the vaccine to the "common man, to the vulnerable groups of people and to healthcare workers." He also said that once the SII get the requisite permission, the vaccine will be made available in the private market at the cost Rs 1,000. "We have given priority to India. We will provide as many doses as the nation demands. Rest of the vaccine, we will export. We are getting request from Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Africa, and there are COVAX partners also," said Poonawalla. He also added that the SII's production capacity is bigger than the world and that is why the company is under the maximum pressure to manufacture. Responding to a query on the safety of the vaccine, he said all COVID-19 vaccines have passed all the safety parameters. "DCGI (Drugs Controller General of India) will not provide the license to a vaccine unless its efficacy and safety are not proved. All Indian vaccines are safe, effective, and it is advisable that people should take them." US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan The New York Times Johnson & Johnson expects to release critical results from its COVID-19 vaccine trial in as little as two weeks a potential boon in the effort to protect Americans from the coronavirus but most likely wont be able to provide as many doses this spring as it promised the federal government because of unanticipated manufacturing delays. If the vaccine can strongly protect people against COVID-19, as some outside scientists expect, it would offer big advantages over the two vaccines authorized in the United States. Unlike those products, which require two doses, Johnson & Johnsons could need just one, greatly simplifying logistics for local health departments and clinics struggling to get shots in arms. Whats more, its vaccine can stay stable in a refrigerator for months, whereas the others have to be frozen. But the encouraging prospect of a third effective vaccine is tempered by apparent lags in the companys production. In the companys $1 billion contract signed with the federal government in August, Johnson & Johnson pledged to have 12 million doses of its vaccine ready by the end of February, ramping up to a total of 100 million doses by the end of June. Federal officials have been told that the company has fallen as much as two months behind the original production schedule and wont catch up until the end of April, when it was supposed to have delivered more than 60 million doses, according to two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Carlo de Notaristefani, lead manufacturing adviser for Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine development program, acknowledged a delay but said the company might be able to catch up with initial production goals by March. I agree there was a problem, de Notaristefani said. But he added, Manufacturing of pharmaceuticals is not a black box where you turn the key and start counting. Any delay could be critical because the federal government has secured only enough vaccine doses to inoculate 200 million of the roughly 260 million eligible adults in the first half of this year. With the nation in the grip of its largest surge of the coronavirus to date and the death toll escalating to as high as 4,000 a day, Americans desperate to be vaccinated are lining the sidewalks outside vaccination centres. Fears about the virus have only escalated with the scientific discovery last month that the country has been seeded with a new, highly contagious variant. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced it would no longer hold back vaccine stocks for second doses in order to get more people at least partly vaccinated more quickly. Dr. Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnsons chief scientific officer, said he expected to see clinical trial data showing whether his companys vaccine is safe and effective in late January or early February. But he declined to provide details about the companys production capacity. We are not ready to release the numbers month by month at the moment, as we are in the discussion with the FDA, he said. If the data is positive and the Food and Drug Administration authorizes the vaccine for emergency use, he added, hopefully somewhere in March well be able to contribute to the nations vaccination drive. That Johnson & Johnsons timetable has slipped is not unusual given the frantic pace of vaccine development amid the worst pandemic in a century. But the delay also highlights the unrealistic promises of Operation Warp Speed. The premise of the program was that the federal government would front the costs of development and manufacturing so that vaccine makers could mass-produce doses even before the vaccines were proved to work. Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser for Warp Speed, said in December that Johnson & Johnsons vaccine would be a game-changer in the pandemic. But at a Tuesday news conference, Slaoui said that instead of 12 million doses envisioned in the contract by the end of February, the company was likely to have in the single-digit millions. He also said the company was trying to make that number get as close to a double-digit number as possible, and then a larger number in March and a much larger number in April. Another person familiar with the companys progress said it was poised to deliver only perhaps 3 million or 4 million doses of its vaccine by the end of next month. In a statement, a Johnson & Johnson spokesman said: We are confident we can meet our contractual obligations to supply our vaccine candidate to the U.S. government. De Notaristefani, Operation Warp Speeds manufacturing chief, said the governments contracts with vaccine makers were written at a time of great uncertainty, with the understanding that unforeseen obstacles could throw off the timetables. Numbers are never cast in stone when you start a new process, he said, adding that the company had to transfer its manufacturing from the Netherlands to a plant in Baltimore. I really think that technically they couldnt do it earlier. Dr Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said that state health officials were clearly excited about Johnson & Johnsons one-dose vaccine. You can get it, and youre done, he said. Everybody is eager to have it out there. It has a lot of potential. But even if Johnson & Johnsons vaccine pans out, Plescia said, it wont be enough. He predicted that state health departments would need a total of four vaccines in the next six months if they hope to reach their goals of offering a vaccine to every American who wants one. Or else the public is going to get very frustrated, because theyre ready for it to be opened up, and there isnt adequate supply to do that, Plescia said. Johnson & Johnson is by no means alone in its manufacturing delays. Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizers chief executive, told investors in the fall that his company had agreed to deliver 40 million doses of its vaccine to the federal government in 2020, assuming it proved successful in clinical trials. In the end, the company had only half that many ready to ship. No one including company executives knows whether Johnson & Johnsons vaccine will work. But Lynda Coughlin, a virus expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who is not involved in the trial, said that the design of the vaccine and the results from early trials made her optimistic. Hopefully the results from Johnson & Johnson are just really going to knock it out of the park, she said. Johnson & Johnsons COVID vaccine is fundamentally different from the authorized vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. Those two consists of genetic molecules encased in oily bubbles. Johnson & Johnson built its vaccine from a virus that causes common colds, known as an adenovirus. Testing the vaccine on monkeys, the researchers found that a single shot was enough to protect the animals from infection. When they tried out different formulations of the vaccine in early clinical trials, they were pleased to see that the vaccine prompted a strong antibody response with a single dose. On Wednesday, Johnson & Johnson researchers and their colleagues published the full details of these early clinical trials in the New England Journal of Medicine. They reported that when they checked the blood of volunteers 71 days after receiving a single dose, their levels of coronavirus antibodies were still high. In some cases they were still increasing. As results of the early clinical trials emerged over the summer, the company had to make a high-stakes decision: proceed with a clinical trial of two doses, which had the most likelihood of success, or try one with a single dose, which would be far more useful for getting shots to the masses if it worked. The company decided to roll the dice with a single-shot trial. We know from vaccination campaigns that the simpler the logistics, the more successful the program, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virus expert at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who pioneered adenovirus vaccines in the early 2000s and collaborated with Johnson & Johnson researchers on the trial. If many people began developing immunity from a single-shot dose, it might become harder for the virus to move from person to person, bringing down the high rates of new cases and easing the burden of the pandemic. A vaccine that is one dose would have a tremendous, tremendous public health impact, of course for low-income countries, but also in high-income countries, said Ruth Faden, a professor of biomedical ethics at Johns Hopkins University. While other vaccine developers moved quickly into late-stage trials, Johnson & Johnson deliberately moved more slowly so it could focus on ramping up manufacturing of its vaccine. At a facility in the Netherlands, researchers grew cells in which their adenoviruses could multiply. Adjusting the chemistry in giant vats, the scientists found a recipe for producing the vaccine at a fast, reliable rate. Johnson & Johnson also began working early with other companies to prepare to manufacture the vaccine across the world. In April, it announced a partnership with Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions to manufacture the vaccine for the United States. Researchers from Johnson & Johnson began visiting Emergent BioSolutions starting that month to help it prepare for producing the adenoviruses. It was much more than a paper exercise: Heres the recipe, follow this, said Remo Colarusso, vice president at Janssen Supply Chain. This is complex manufacturing. By the fall, Emergent BioSolutions was growing cells that were spewing out new adenoviruses. When Johnson & Johnson announced the start of its final Phase 3 trial, executives began making aggressive projections. We are now committed to make more than 1 billion doses during 2021 and more after that, Stoffels said at a September news conference. The company then secured more deals to provide the vaccine to countries around the world. In 2021, Johnson & Johnson has promised to supply 200 million doses to Covax, an international partnership seeking to distribute coronavirus vaccines to nations that would not otherwise be able to afford them. It will supply another 300 million to Covax in 2022. Soon after Johnson & Johnson started its trial, cases surged around the world. All the Phase 3 clinical trials of COVID vaccines accelerated because trials end only after a specified number of volunteers from both the placebo and vaccinated groups get sick. In November, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine trials both delivered impressive results, with efficacy rates around 95 percent. The FDA authorized both vaccines for the United States, and other countries soon followed suit. But these two vaccines had some major shortcomings that soon became impossible to ignore. Both vaccines have to be kept in a deep freeze to prevent them from degrading. Once they reach a hospital or clinic, they have to be used before they spoil. In New York City and elsewhere, unused vaccines have ended up in the trash. Once data collection is complete at the end of January or early February, an advisory board will review the data and report its analysis on safety and efficacy to Johnson & Johnson. FDA regulators are already evaluating manufacturing data weeks ahead of when Johnson & Johnson is expected to apply for emergency authorization. Hiccups as small as mold in part of a facility could spur further delays. Carl Zimmer, Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland c.2021 The New York Times Company Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. If you see a stuffed blue elephant at San Francisco International Airport, you could potentially brighten one person's day. A Portland-area woman en route to St. Petersburg, Russia to go back to school sent out a call for help on Reddit about a beloved blue elephant plush she believes she lost at SFO. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment from SFGATE. The woman stored the plush in a carry-on tote bag underneath her seat during her Jan. 10 flight, she explained in the post. "I think I lost it," she said, "on my way out of the arrivals level to the international terminal, since I was outside and in a rush pushing some rather heavy suitcases." She explained that she most likely lost it while waiting for a connecting Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul, mulling about while she waited to board. But it was only after she arrived at St. Petersburg that she realized she lost her toy. Since then, she's reached out to every airport she stopped at to no avail. Redditors responded to her loss kindly: Some are taking it upon themselves to call and email SFO; she's based out of St. Petersburg for the time being, so international calls are out of the question. One user even offered to help her purchase a similar toy, which she said she won out of a "crane machine" a decade ago. "I realize that a toy isnt very important, but it meant a lot to me and Im honestly devastated," she said, and would be "incredibly grateful" for any leads that could reunite her with the toy. If you'd like to help, a ring or email to SFO from a few kind strangers may help speed the process up. Representatives for SFO did not immediately respond to a request for comment from SFGATE. Politico faced a backlash from its staff on Thursday after it handed its Playbook newsletter, a popular morning read in Washington, to the right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro for a day. A month after the exit of Playbooks two longtime writers, Politico has brought in a series of guests to handle the daily missive. In recent days, they have included Chris Hayes of NBC News; Eliana Johnson, the editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon; and James Bennet, the former New York Times opinion editor. Politicos decision to give Mr. Shapiro a turn drew criticism from Politico journalists. More than 200 members of the staff joined a Zoom call with the editor in chief, Matthew Kaminski, on Thursday afternoon to discuss the move. Many argued that Politico should not have given the platform to Mr. Shapiro, the host of the podcast and radio program The Ben Shapiro Show, according to two reporters on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations. In his edition of the newsletter, Mr. Shapiro wrote that Republican leaders were justified in opposing the second impeachment of President Trump because of a deep and abiding conservative belief that members of the opposing political tribe want their destruction, not simply to punish Trump for his behavior. Petrosian gave no reasons for the move. Officials in the provincial administration said he will not comment before the resignation is accepted by the Armenian government. Petrosian, 41, has governed Shirak since February 2019. He is not affiliated with any political party. The government replaced three other provincial governors following a Russian-brokered Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement that stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh on November 10. Two of them are senior members of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinians Civil Contract party who were told to resign. The third, non-partisan governor, Hunan Poghosian, appeared to have quit at his own initiative. Poghosian ran southeastern Syunik province directly affected by the war. The Armenian sides defeat in the war sparked opposition protests and growing calls for Pashinians resignation. The prime minister has refused to step down, pledging instead to reshuffle his cabinet and offering to hold snap parliamentary elections. He replaced six government ministers in late November and early December. Director of National Intelligence nominee Avril Haines speaks after being introduced by President-elect Joe Biden as he introduces key foreign policy and national security nominees and appointments at the Queen Theatre in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 24, 2020. (Mark Makela/Getty Images) Confirmation Hearing for Bidens Director of Intelligence Nominee Postponed The confirmation hearing for President-elect Joe Bidens nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has been postponed to next week, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced on Thursday. The confirmation hearing for Bidens spy chief nominee Avril Haines was initially scheduled to take place virtually on Friday. Despite the unusual circumstances on Capitol Hill, the committee is working in good faith to move this nominee as fast as possible and ensure the committees members have an opportunity to question the nominee in both open and closed settings, acting Intelligence Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), the committees vice-chair, said in a joint statement. The Director of National Intelligence plays a crucial role in overseeing the 18 agencies that make up our nations Intelligence Community, and the committee looks forward to holding a hearing next week with Ms. Haines. Haines hearing was the first nominee in Bidens proposed cabinet scheduled for a confirmation hearing at Capitol hill. The postponement means Haines will have to join other nominees who will face senators in a confirmation hearing. The hearing for Antony Blinken, Bidens nominee for secretary of state, is scheduled for Jan. 19. Haines may face some tough questioning during her hearing. Rubio has previously expressed his concerns over Bidens cabinet picks. Bidens cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of Americas decline. I support American greatness and I have no interest in returning to the normal that left us dependent on China, he posted on Twitter in November. Meanwhile, Warner has expressed support over Haines nomination. Avril is smart and capable, with a background that will serve her well as Director of National Intelligence. While I expect that she will face rigorous questioning from Senators on both sides of the aisle, the sooner we can get a confirmed DNI in place to start fixing the damage the last four years have done to our intelligence agencies, the better, Warner wrote in a statement. A financial disclosure form (pdf) for Haines revealed that she worked as a consultant and principal at WestExec. She also reported $180,000 in fees from Palantir, the analytics company. WestExec is an advisory firm co-founded by Blinken after his tenure as Deputy Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Officials for Joe Bidens transition team in an interview with Fox News on Thursday are urging the Senate to quickly confirm Bidens nominees for his national security team. Our national security is at stake as the United States fights its way out of this unprecedented public health crisis and historic economic downturn, Andrew Bates, spokesman for the team, told Fox News. And in the face of urgent threats, including more actions planned by violent extremists after the storming of the Capitol, we cannot afford gaps in national security leadership or more delays on the part of Senate Republicans. Jack Phillips contributed to this report. Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today Cloudy with a few showers. High 59F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low near 35F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) The Supreme Court postponed the oral arguments on the Anti-Terrorism Act for two weeks upon the request of government top lawyer Jose Calida, who reported that his Assistant Solicitor General and some staff members caught the coronavirus. The schedule has been moved from January 19 to February 2 at 2:30 p.m., the high court announced Friday in a statement signed by Clerk of Court Edgar Aricheta. "No further postponement will be allowed," the statement read. According to the Supreme Court, an Assistant Solicitor General and some of Calida's staff who were supposed to assist him during the much-anticipated oral arguments tested positive for COVID-19. Their names were not disclosed. Calida was allowed to bring with him up to three lawyers to help him defend the controversial measure. The law was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte six months ago despite calls against it, including from UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. The Anti-Terrorism Act is now the most challenged law in the Supreme Court's recent history. Lawyers and framers of the Constitution, legal experts, and human rights advocates say the "unconstitutional" measure relaxes safeguards against abuse, something authorities have repeatedly denied. Calida previously asked the high court to cancel the oral arguments, citing the coronavirus pandemic, and insisting that it should not be a trier of facts. Whether or not the petitioners direct resort to the Supreme Court is proper will be among the issues expected to be discussed by Anselmo Cadiz, the Solicitor General during the previous Aquino administration. There are 37 sets of petitioners, but they were asked to choose only eight lawyers to argue their case. They have submitted seven names, including Cadiz, and have asked the Supreme Court to also accommodate six alternates. The court also allowed the other petitioner groups to send one counsel each to physically witness the discussions. They were asked to manifest their attendance by January 13 so the necessary logistical arrangements can be made and social distancing ensured amid the COVID-19 crisis. CNN Philippines' Anjo Alimario contributed to this report. De-escalation techniques by Laredo police officers helped save a mans life, according to authorities. Laredo police officers responded to a domestic disturbance at about 2 a.m. Wednesday in the 3000 block of South Ejido Avenue. Officers learned that a black Dodge Ram was leaving the scene. Officers spotted the Dodge a few blocks away and conducted a traffic stop. Officers then noticed the driver holding a large knife against his neck, according to police. He was threatening to hurt himself, authorities said. Officers requested a negotiator and set up a security perimeter around the vehicle. A patrol officer was able to build a rapport with the man and convinced him to throw the knife out of the vehicle and exit the Dodge, according to police. The man was secured and transported to a local hospital for emergency treatment. The compassionate officers of the Laredo Police Department are well trained in de-escalation techniques and applied that training in this scenario that saved the mans life. No charges were applied in this case, LPD said in a statement. Before the giant middle finger most Republicans lawmakers gave democracy this week by voting to grant Trump a pass for inciting an insurrection, there were the tears we were told only we libtard snowflakes shed. Rep. David Cicilline, one of the impeachment articles coauthors, told reporters that Republican lawmakers told him they feared for their safety and the safety of their families if they supported the measure. On Meet the Press, Rep. Jason Crow told host Chuck Todd that he had lots of conversations with Republican colleagues who expressed similar anxiety. A couple of them broke down in tears saying they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment. Crows response? Not to be unsympathetic, but welcome to the club. Allow me to be unsympathetic because that club Crow is talking about is founded by and filled with women, particularly of color, who dont have the luxury or privilege of cowering and relying on someone else to do the right thing. Take it away, AOC. On Twitter, a white reporter wrote that he knew for a fact several members *want* to impeach but fear casting that vote could get them or their families murdered. Not spinning or covering for anyone, he said. Just stating the chilling reality. To which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded with some chilling reality of her own about politicians who were fine with the threats hurled at female Democratic colleagues until they were on the receiving end, too. I get it, but some of us just spent the last 2 years taking stances that have led to repeated attempts on our lives, she tweeted. Its a privilege if this is their first time. It got me thinking about how were shown every day, in small and big ways, of just whose lives are deemed to matter by how institutions recognize and prioritize their safety. For years now, the Squad a diverse group of Democratic women elected to Congress that includes AOC has faced threats and harassment from the president and his fanatical followers, including Fox News pundits. But it wasnt until that intimidation was directed at mostly white Republican lawmakers that it was suddenly taken seriously. What? Public servants are being threatened? Bring in reinforcements, including new metal detectors at the Capitol that some of the more morally corrupt Republicans made a big show of refusing. Heres what that spectacle overlooks: This kind of obscenely juvenile behavior puts everyone at risk. It shouldnt be this hard for adults to understand that things are better for everyone when everyones mistreatment is taken seriously. Consider how differently things at the Capitol might have gone had anyone listened to the hundreds of Black Capitol Police officers who have sued the department for racial discrimination that included white officers calling Black colleagues racial slurs and subjecting them to unprovoked traffic stops. We got Jan. 6 because no one took us seriously, a former Capitol Police officer told ProPublica. At least 12 officers are under investigation for their parts in the riots incited by Trump. When Trump deemed news fake and declared the media the enemy, he made all journalists (including white men) a target. But he also unintentionally revealed a similar hypocrisy. Women, especially of color, who have suffered these attacks have long been told that it was part of the job. Get a thicker skin, they said. But once men were facing similar levels of vitriol, the threats and harassment were swiftly deemed legitimate. These women, whether lawmakers or journalists, deserve a lot of credit for not breaking under pressure that includes the added injury of long-standing lack of support. (That includes the journalists youve probably heard of: Yamiche Alcindor, Abby Phillip, Weijia Jiang, Cecilia Vega, but also many more you havent from a local newsroom near you.) Its a testament to their courage, no doubt. But its also confirmation that they are used to standing on their own. In this handout released by the U.S. Navy, Lt. Wade Miller, from Orlando, Fla., treats a patient aboard the hospital ship USNS. (Ryan M. Breeden/US Navy via Getty Images) Orange County Records More than 3,300 New COVID Cases SANTA ANA (CNS) Orange County on Jan. 14 reported 16 more COVID-19 fatalities and 3,331 new cases, but the positivity rate is decreasing, an official says. The countys positivity rate has been declining over the past several days, Orange County chief Frank Kim said. Five days ago, it was 19.75 and now its down to 18, Kim said. Testing demand is also slowing, he added. Of the fatalities reported Jan. 14bringing the death toll to 2,195two were skilled nursing facility residents and one lived at an assisted living facility. Since the start of the pandemic began, the virus has killed 707 skilled nursing facility residents and 242 assisted living facility residents. Since Jan. 10, the county has reported 154 deaths. Last week, the county logged 140 deaths. The death reports are staggered and sometimes take weeks to be logged, but December was the deadliest month for the county since the pandemic began, with 476 fatalities reported so far. That tops the summer peak, when 379 died in July and 367 in August, according to Orange County Health Care Agency statistics. The deadliest day so far was Dec. 22, when 27 died. The countys state-adjusted intensive care unit (ICU) bed availability remains at zero, and the unadjusted figure increased from 6.9 percent to 7.4 percent. The state created the adjusted metric to reflect the difference in beds available for COVID-19 patients and non-coronavirus patients. The Southern California region remains at zero ICU availability. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form While the mutating coronavirus speeds up, California drags its feet on vaccinations. This will cause excessive deaths and serious disease. Why are we so slow compared to many other states? What vaccination obstacles are so big and unusual here, and how can we borrow other places best practices to fix this as soon as possible? Lisa Schneider, Albany Control the crowd The security in our nations Capitol last week had a difficult job, and I support their effort. However, it is quite clear that there is a different standard when it comes to protesters who are white. If it had been people of color who stormed the Capitol, I have no doubt shots would have been fired. In the upcoming inauguration, people should be allowed to protest peacefully. However, when they become violent, it is no longer a protest but an insurrection. And the guns should be drawn this time. Gilbert Bagaman, San Francisco Dont be intimidated The president sees no need to defend himself from actions that he considers acceptable despite an avalanche of indignation. What arguments do we hear to prevent impeachment and conviction? There is one primary agreement. Let us not raise the temperature or fan the flames, let us not stir up more anger and division. This is a classic form of enabling: Do not criticize or punish an offender. Let him alone or he will have a nasty tantrum and others just want the problem to just go away. That rationale, in this case, amounts to cowing to a bully and condoning an insurrection. Punishing the president will anger his diehard followers. To some, that is more dangerous than pursuing justice. And serious threats against congressmen and women bears this out. It is, though, appeasement plain and simple. Criminals and crime syndicates like the mafia depend on this kind of threatening behavior but it has no place in our government. Bill Nichols, San Francisco GOPs failed conscience A steady stream of Republican congressmen and congresswomen stood before the speaker of the House to voice their objection to the article of impeachment, finger-pointing across the aisle, exclaiming, but look what they did to condone and justify the betrayal of the Constitution by a treasonous president while sounding like insolent, petulant children. Many in the Republican caucus publicly promoted and perpetuated conspiracy theories and election malfeasance rhetoric despite being elected on that same alleged fraudulent November ballot, stoking the fires of rebellion and insurrection to delude their gullible supporters. With blood on their hands, these so-called representatives of the people shirked the solemn oath they swore to protect our countrys democracy by demanding due process and offering bipartisanship and healing in exchange for holding the president accountable for fomenting sedition. Their fraud and hypocrisy was on full display for all the world to see. Not only will the 197 Republicans be judged by their country for dereliction of duty and for abdicating all moral and ethical code of conduct, but they will live forever with a failed conscience. Brion LaPointe, Los Altos Time for a recall I cannot understand how it is that the officials who run California have had the better part of a year to plan a vaccination program and yet even now are making things up every day. They cant blame this on the feds. We need someone who knows how to run things, not just someone to set up strike teams that dont fix anything. The Employment Development Department and the Department of Motor Vehicles are still big messes. Wheres that recall petition? Victor Gold, Berkeley McCarthy is also at fault Never forget. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been President Trumps sycophant from day one. He has been a willing and eager leader in trying to de-legitimize the election. He played a major role in fomenting the Jan. 6 insurrection. He must resign and be prosecuted. Joshua Bloom, Berkeley Dont blame the teachers Regarding Reluctant teachers (Letters, Jan. 13): I am a retired teacher with three grandkids involved in distance learning. I believe the author has his facts wrong. First, even in normal times, teachers spend long hours outside of school planning lessons and preparing materials. Distance learning has vastly increased those hours. These teachers do not get up five minutes before their first class and have an easy day. Teachers are working late into the night, even on weekends, to keep up with the extra demands of distance learning. Secondly, the distance learning our grandchildren are receiving is excellent. They miss their friends, but the education itself is top rate. If the author knows children who are suffering irreparable educational harm, he should not blame the teachers he should approach his local board of education to find out why they are not providing a better program. Thirdly, it is not safe to have in-school classes now. Too many people who spread the virus are symptom-free. Nurses, doctors and other heroes have to be in physical contact with their patients. Teachers do not need to risk their lives, in order to provide quality education. Joan McIntire, Carmel Valley Immoral acts on display For those who object to impeachment, remember Al Capone. He didnt go to prison for his numerous acts of murder, robbery, racketeering or any other of his myriad of mob activities. It was tax evasion. Use what youve got and what will work. Its the same with Donald Trump. The number of illegal and immoral acts hes undertaken as president are countless but this was one we all watched in real time. So, use what youve got. Alan Mirviss, San Francisco Arbitrary judgment Regarding Lessons missed in renaming effort (Jan. 12): Kudos to Heather Knight for another outstanding column. Her main point: Imagine the learning ... if kids got to research their schools namesake and help decide its fate. Unfortunately, politics is sadly more important than education in this city. And that making adults feel good is more important than teaching kids. You note that the San Francisco Board of Education panels top-down process in its decision-making rests entirely on itself with no input solicited from schools, students, parents and historians. This has resulted in inadequate research and arbitrary judgments about renaming of schools and, most important, loss of a tremendous learning opportunity for students and their communities. What a shame! Can this process be changed? Peter Grenell, San Francisco Delayed distribution Why does everything have to be overthought these days? It should not be difficult getting people vaccinated. In fact, it should be one of the easiest medical procedures the medical establishment has to perform. If the current medical situation is truly urgent, then the Department of Public Health should treat it as such and get people vaccinated. Every day theres a COVID-19 vaccine sitting on the shelf is another day someone could get infected and lead to hospitalization and death. The Department of Public Health is acting negligently. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. UPDATE (10:24 a.m.): The deal is done as second baseman DJ LeMahieu agrees to return to the New York Yankees. Read the details here. UPDATE (9:59 a.m.): The Athletics Jim Bowden reports the length of a new contract could be the final sticking point between the New York Yankees and second baseman DJ LeMahieu. Read more about that here. Good news, Yankees fans. It looks like second baseman DJ LeMahieu will be returning to the Bronx in 2021 (and beyond). Per MLB Networks Jon Morosi: Source: DJ LeMahieu is finalizing an agreement to return to the #Yankees. The deal could be completed as soon as today. According to Yahoo Sports, LeMahieu is nearing an agreement to re-sign with the Yankees. MLB.coms Mark Feinsand reports the deal could be done sometime today. Introducing Yankees Insider: Get exclusive news, behind-the-scenes observations and the ability to text message directly with beat writers MLB Networks Jon Heyman reported Thursday on WFAN the Yankees were still the clear favorite to sign to sign the 32-year-old LeMahieu. On Tuesday, with talks dragging, SNYs Andy Martino reported the New York Mets and LeMahiueu have mutual interest. Btw, amid increased chatter about DJ LeMahieu and the Mets, it remains a tricky fit for the same reason that George Springer now does: After Lindor/Carrasco trade, Mets dont have $25M of luxury cap space. There is some mutual interest between Mets and LeMahieu. But theres a long way from that to a big contract. As reported the other day, the Mets do have salary-shedding deals they could make if they really want to execute another big signing. ESPNs Jeff Passan reported Tuesday that the Yankees are daring LeMahieu to leave. On Monday, MLB Network Radio analyst and former MLB GM Jim Duquette said that right now, Toronto would be, in my opinion, a real threat to the Yankees re-signing LeMahieu. Talks between the Yankees and LeMahieu are not making progress, MLB Networks Jon Heyman reported Monday, opening the door for the Los Angeles Dodgers as well. Heymans reporting came one day after Yahoo Sports Tim Brown reported LeMahieu has become dismayed by the slow-play tactics of the Yankees, along with other clubs. LeMahieu, who finished third in voting for the American League MVP Award, led the majors with a .364 batting average in 2020. That made him the first person in the modern era to win batting titles in both leagues. LeMahieu led the National League with a .348 batting average for the Colorado Rockies in 2016. 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. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription. Mike Rosenstein may be reached at mrosenstein@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. Ben Ainslie is all smiles after a storming start to his 2021 America's Cup challenge in New Zealand By James Toney Sir Ben Ainslie knows the importance of timing and he got his spot on as his Great Britain team flew out of the blocks at the Americas Cup. Since arriving in Auckland, Ineos Team UK havent been able to buy a win but they started their challenge in the Prada Cup, a three-boat challenger series for the right to take on defending champions Team New Zealand, in storming style. With four-time Olympic champion Ainslie at the helm and defending Olympic champion Giles Scott calling the tactics, the British boat didnt just beat challengers American Magic and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli - they crushed them. Their boat Britannia, seemingly sluggish in recent weeks, just flew - rising through above the waters and soaring to new heights, as they hit speeds of 40 knots. This is drag racing on water and fans of that sport will be aware of the term sandbagging - which sees drivers deliberately underperform only to suddenly surge through the field when it matters. They can be no doubt that the British crews problems of recent weeks were genuine but the manner of these opening wins underlines it pays never to underestimate Ainslie, whose turnaround has been assisted with the support of F1 technicians at Mercedes GP. Christmas was certainly cancelled as Ainslie ordered a radical overhaul to his boat, the lights in the British team shed always last to turn off as they raced against time to be competitive. It feels a lot better than six losses or whatever it was. We left it a bit late, nice to find the pace when it counts, said Ainslie. Giles did a great job calling the breeze and the guys sailing it fast and handling it. It was a team effort and I have got to say our entire team back on the dockyards, the designers, the engineers, the shore team, the boat builders, they had three epic weeks working to turn this boat around. This is for them but I said to the boys we are long way out of the woods yet, its a couple of good races. Its time to make the most of the momentum now. Story continues The whole boat has had a makeover, weve pretty much changed everything we could and have worked around the clock to make this happen. There is still a lot of work to do, especially to get the maximum out of this boat in lighter wind conditions. Its a good start but there is a long way to go. The three challengers will race each other four times over the next two weeks with the top team then progressing to the best-of-13 Prada Cup final, for the right to take on the defending champions and hosts for the oldest trophy in international sports. The remaining two boats will race off for the chance to face them. 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 Tammin Sursok updated fans on her husband Sean McEwen's coronavirus battle on Thursday. The 37-year-old actress said Sean, 47, is suffering from a fever, but is taking vitamins, which 'seem to be working'. '[He] still has a fever but not as high as 103 and his night time hallucinations aren't happening. Thank goodness,' she wrote on Instagram. Update: Tammin Sursok shared an update on her husband Sean McEwen amid his battle with COVID-19 on Thursday 'After just using vitamins, we finally got ivermectin and a Z pack. That was the first time things started moving in the right direction. Dr wants blood tests and X-rays, but can't do this if you are COVID positive unless you are in ER,' she said. Tammin went on to say: 'There is only one hospital in Austin that is accepting COVID patients because there is no room. So now have to figure out how to get him there without exposing the kids and myself.' 'He can't drive so this is where we are as of now. Thank you for the outpouring of love and support,' she ended. 'Thank you for the love and support: The 37-year-old actress said Sean is suffering from a fever but is taking vitamins, which 'seem to be working' Tammin tearfully announced that her husband, film producer Sean, had contracted coronavirus on Wednesday. In an emotional Instagram post, the heartbroken mother of two said she was 'scared' of what could happen to her family as she quarantines with her daughters in Texas. 'My husband has Covid and I'm scared. Today I'm not as scared as yesterday, but yesterday I felt very out of control,' she said. 'It was rough and touch and go. All the hospitals are full and his fever of 103 wouldn't break for days and it got to a very scary place,' she added. Tammin explained that she and her daughters, Phoenix, six, and Lennon, two, have tested negative and aren't showing symptoms. However, they've been quarantining together and following Covid-19 guidelines to stay safe. Positive result: Tammin tearfully announced her husband, film producer Sean, had contracted coronavirus on Wednesday 'We have been in the same place in Austin for two months now. Haven't seen friends and family, haven't eaten out, [Phoenix] is homeschooled,' she said. 'The only place we could have got it is the grocery store [because] we haven't been near anyone and the whole family is always masked. 'Covid is real. It's scary and I now see it first hand. I've been really scared and in a dark place... I'm struggling and I love you all and this community.' The former Home and Away star finished by urging people to 'please wear a mask', before saying: 'This is not something you want to get.' Tammin met her husband in 2007, when she was auditioning for his film Albino Farm. The couple married in 2011 in Florence, Italy. Large restaurants providing prepared meals to supermarkets for sale is causing the Government some concern as it says this is adding to additional customer traffic at those supermarkets, as it wants less movement of people during the State of Emergency. ANNAPOLIS, Md., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Maryland families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Maryland families are hosting 487 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Maryland, the Maryland Government House will light up in yellow from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Jan. 25. Governor Lawrence Hogan, Jr. issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Maryland School Choice Week. In addition, the city of Morningside issued a proclamation recognizing School Choice Week in their community. "This National School Choice Week is a time to set aside politics and talk about education partnerships," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "It's a time to celebrate great school communities, where parents and teachers work together to customize education for kids. It's a week to work together for affordable, workable learning options for all Maryland kids." In Maryland, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Maryland families under a certain income level may qualify for a state-run scholarship program. Maryland families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Maryland school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/maryland. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Advertisement President-elect Joe Biden has asked his nominee for deputy attorney general and former President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, to serve as a temporary homeland security adviser leading up next week's inauguration. 'Ms. Monaco will assist the president-elect and work with the incoming national security adviser, the incoming Homeland Security adviser, and current security and law enforcement officials, including with the United States Secret Service on their plans for the inauguration,' a spokeswoman said. She is Biden's pick to be deputy attorney general, but her involvement in the massive security operation suggests that it will not end immediately after the inauguration. Monaco, a career prosecutor and former chief of staff to Robert Mueller when he led the FBI was an Obama-era DOJ official and then his homeland security and counterterrorism advisor for his second term. Already a rehearsal for the inauguration has been postponed due to security concerns amid mounting fears of violent clashes in DC. The rehearsal was scheduled for Sunday but has now been pushed back to Monday, according to Politico, who cited two people with knowledge of the decision. Biden's team had also canceled an Amtrak trip from Wilmington to Washington on Monday due to heightened security concerns, the report added. Biden will be inaugurated on Wednesday, January 20. It comes after FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed Thursday that his organization was looking into individuals who could possibly threaten the safety of the inauguration. 'When we talk about potential threats, we have to say about that we are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter about a number of events surrounding the inauguration,' he stated. The National Guard has also been authorized to use lethal force to protect the Capitol, police officers and members of Congress as hundreds of troops flood into the nation's capital. In charge: Lisa Monaco, who was Obama's homeland security advisor and is Biden's pick to be deputy attorney general. She will now be involved in inauguration security Armed camp" The extraordinary scale of military presence in the capital was still growing Friday as Joe Biden's team became more deeply involved in preparations Stop and check: National Guard troops deployed near the White House where roads are blocked A rehearsal for U.S President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration scheduled for Sunday has been postponed because of security concerns Workers put concertina razor wire along the top of the 8-foot 'non-scalable' fence that surrounds the U.S. Capitol, with national guard troops watching on, the day after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump for the second time January 14 following the January 6 attack on the capitol by Trump's MAGA supporters The rehearsal was scheduled for Sunday but has now been pushed back to Monday, according to Politico , who cited two people with knowledge of the decision Barbed wire is installed on security fencing surrounding the U.S. Capitol on Thursday as security is tightened Hundreds of National Guard troops hold inside the Capitol Visitor's Center to reinforce security at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 13 National Guard troops continue to flood into the capital and have been told they are authorized to use deadly force against any terror threat Members of the National Guard occupy the U.S. Capitol, rest in preparation for the upcoming pro-Trump rally Jan 17 and the inauguration in Washington, DC on Thursday Vice President Mike Pence elbow bumps with a member of the National Guard as he speaks to troops outside the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021. The vice president was the target of some of last week's MAGA rioters who were heard shouting 'where's Pence' as they stormed the building on January 6 The Secret Service will take control of inauguration security preparations from today and road closures are now in effect across parts the downtown Washington DC area until after the inauguration. Further perimeters and additional road closures are expected in the coming days A presidential inauguration traditionally draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to Washington, but the ceremonies have been scaled back dramatically because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are also fears of unrest taking place across the city on the day. Officials have warned of plans for armed protests in Washington and all 50 states and activist groups have been concerned about the potential for violence. The warnings follow last week's assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump that left five people dead. Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol last Wednesday, trying to halt the certification by Congress of Biden's election win. Workers place concrete jersey barriers at the base of perimeter fences ahead of the inauguration next Wednesday The National Guard arrives to secure a large perimeter in the downtown area near the White House ahead of the presidential inauguration Flowers are placed on a fence, a week after a pro-Trump mob broke into and took over the Capitol, in memory of slain Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick on January 14 A member of the National Guard provides security at the US Capitol on January 14, 2021, in Washington, DC, a week after supporters of US President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol Workers put up Biden-Harris branded bunting along the inaugural parade route near the White House on Thursday A fence topped with razor wire surrounds the U.S. Capitol grounds ahead of the upcoming presidential inauguration set for January 20, in Washington, U.S. January 14 National Guard soldiers stand guard on the grounds around the US Capitol in DC on Thursday as security intensifies Members of the Military Police are pictured sleeping in the Dirksen Senate Office on Thursday morning National Guard soldiers are seen on Capitol Hill on Thursday Barbed wire is installed on the top of a security fence surrounding the US Capitol on Thursday as security intensified ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration next week Stores have boarded up their windows amid fear of further violence in D.C. in the lead up to Inauguration Day FBI Director Chris Wray spoke more than a week after that riot warning the agency is monitoring major new 'potential' for armed violence nationwide around Biden's inauguration. He appeared at a briefing on the inauguration security plans with Vice President Mike Pence Thursday and bluntly warned about the potential for armed protests in Washington D.C. and nationwide. Wray said more threats were coming in ahead of January 20th's inauguration ceremony. 'Right now we're tracking calls for potential armed protests and activity leading up to the inauguration,' he noted. Wray spoke as National Guard troops continued to flood into the capital and were told they are authorized to use deadly force against any terror threat. He said much of the work was being done behind the scenes to get ready for next Wednesday, when Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States. Wray assured the American people that they 'should be confident that there's an awful lot of work all across the country, going on behind the scenes out in spotlight.' A presidential inauguration traditionally draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to Washington, but the ceremonies have been scaled back dramatically because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pictured: President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 pandemic during an event at The Queen theater, Thursday, Jan. 14 2017 Inauguration: : U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives for the inauguration ceremonies swearing him in as the 45th president of the United States on the West front of the U.S. Capitol. The scenes this year will be a stark contrast from the previous inauguration, with heightened security and Covid-19 restrictions in place limiting attendance Briefing: Chris Wray, the FBI director who has not been seen since the MAGA mob stormed the Capitol, briefed Mike Pence on inauguration security at the Federal Emergency Management Agency Vice President Mike Pence thanks guardsmen during a stop at the Capitol on Thursday His words come as law enforcement on Capitol Hill was criticized for not being better prepared for last week's attempted insurrection. Wray acknowledged last Wednesday's riot and said the FBI have already made 100 arrests of MAGA rioters and said they have 100 more suspects identified. 'We're looking at individuals who may have an eye towards repeating that same kind of violence that we saw last week,' he said. 'My advice to people who might be inclined to follow in the footsteps of those [from last week] is to stay home,' Wrap said. 'From January 6th alone, we've already identified over 200 suspects. So we know who you are, if you're out there, and FBI agents are coming to find you.' Pence thanked the group for their work and acknowledged the complications caused by the MAGA riot on Capitol Hill last week, when a group of pro-Trump insurgents swarmed the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Joe Biden's victory. 'We all lived through that day, January 6. As the President made clear yesterday, we are committed to an orderly transition into a safe inauguration. The American people deserve nothing less,' he said. He vowed to make sure that Biden and incoming Vice President Kamala Harris 'are sworn in as the President and Vice President of the United States in a manner consistent with our history and traditions.' Starting from Wednesday, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said that anyone inside the inauguration perimeter might be stopped and questioned. Starting Friday, all parking garages in the downtown restricted zone will be sealed until after the inauguration Workers set up barricades surrounding the U.S. Capitol late on Wednesday as additional warnings were sent out by the FBI The warnings follow last week's assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump that left five people dead Dozens of rioters stormed the Capitol last week (pictured), following a MAGA rally held by Donald Trump A dire bulletin put out by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Justice and Homeland Security Departments on Wednesday warned of threats from armed militia groups and racist extremists. It did not detail specific plots to target next week's inauguration but warned that extremists largely viewed the violent breach of the Capitol as a success. The joint intelligence bulletin, obtained by the New York Times, said extremists 'may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States'. The warning has been sent out to law enforcement agencies across the country. The FBI has already warned of armed protests being planned in Washington and all 50 state capitals in the run-up to the inauguration, including three separate plots to attack the Capitol. In a call with thousands of police chiefs across the country on Wednesday, the FBI also urged law enforcement to be on high alert for any extremist activity and to share any intelligence they come across. The FBI said it was closely monitoring online activity related to planned plots and extremists but urged local law enforcement to be aware of lone wolf attacks, as well as violence planned by larger groups. Warnings have also been issued about possible armed protests from the Boogaloo Boys - a movement that aims to start a second Civil War. Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton told NBC's Today that he would be more concerned about lone wolf militant attacks rather than plots involving larger groups. He warned that states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota were at higher risk of local attacks because of the less strict gun laws and militia history. 'I'd be more concerned about what you don't see in terms of serious militant type who'd try to upset this event rather than the large crowds we saw on January 6. But, thankfully the law enforcement officials are united this time,' Bratton said. The FBI is warning police chiefs across the US to be on 'high alert' for extremist activity because the deadly siege on the Capitol will be a 'significant driver of violence' during Joe Biden's inauguration A member of the Military Police stands besides equipment in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday The FBI is warning police chiefs across the US to be on 'high alert' for extremist activity because the deadly siege on the Capitol will be a 'significant driver of violence' during Joe Biden's inauguration. Members of the Military Police are pictured assembling in DC on Thursday morning A total of 20,000 National Guardsman have now been authorized to descend on Washington to help safeguard the capital ahead of Biden's inauguration. There are already 6,200 troops on the ground in DC and at least 10,000 will be in place by Saturday. The troops have now been cleared to carry handguns and rifles after previously only been authorized to carry protective equipment. National Guard members operate under strict rules of engagement on the use of force. It is not yet clear how many Guardsman will be armed. The troops, thousands of other law enforcement officers and layers of eight-foot, anti-climb steel fencing are among the reinforcements being used to fortify DC a week out from the inauguration in a bid to protect the capital from any violence. The Secret Service, the FBI and the National Guard are among 50 agencies and private companies that have formed a 'Multi-Agency Command Center' (MACC) to fortify Washington, D.C. Workers move boxes onto a truck on West Executive Avenue between the West Wing of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House on January 14, as President Trump prepares to move out Jared and Ivanka Trump are moving out of their Washington, DC home. Pictured: Movers taking art and loading it into a truck in front of Jared and Ivanka's Washington, DC home The task force met for the first time on Wednesday at the Secret Service's Washington field office where hundreds of people will work in 12-hour shifts to protect the city. Private companies that have joined the task force include Amtrak, whose fleet of trains frequently travel through the nation's capitol. 'Everyone can just rest assured they are throwing the kitchen sink at this event,' one Secret Service official involved in the planning told The Washington Post. Another former Secret Service agent told the publication that the establishment of the MACC ensures proactive security measures are being taken, and help will be on hand in the event a volatile situation erupts. 'Unlike January 6 [when the Capitol came under siege], nobody has to ask for the National Guard anymore,' they stated. 'Nobody has to send out an emergency call for the FBI SWAT team. They're all there, pre-positioned and ready. Radiation protection. Bomb detectors. Amtrak sweeps. All the security personnel - they're all now in place.' In message to China, Army Chief says dont test our patience India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: You all are aware of ongoing tension with China on northern borders. Regarding conspiracy to unilaterally change status quo on borders. A befitting reply was given. I want to assure the country that the sacrifice of the brave hearts of Galwan would not go in vain, Army Chief General M M Naravane said. Speaking at the Army Day parade on the occasion of Army Day, General Naravane said that India is committed to finding the resolution for our disputes through discussions and political efforts. However no one should make the mistake of testing our patience, he also said while adding that the last year was a difficult one for the Army. Indian Army Chief General Naravane sends powerful message on 73rd Army Day Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News On the situation at the border with Pakistan, he said that there are around 300-400 terrorists waiting to infiltrate into Indian territory. The number of ceasefire violations went up by 44 per cent last year, which only shows the nefarious intentions of Pakistan. Last year the Army eliminated over 200 terrorists near the Line of Control, he also said. The Army is taking concrete steps towards its modernisation. Under emergency and fast-track schemes, Army procured equipment worth about Rs 5,000 crores and signed contracts worth Rs 13,000 crores in the last year under capital procurement, the Army Chief also said. The Co-operation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) and EU's newly established Rule of Law Mechanism were among the subjects discussed by Romania's Justice Minister Stelian Ion and Vice President of the European Commission Vera Jourova at a virtual meeting on Friday. According to a press statement released by the Justice Ministry, Ion praised the European Commission for its constant involvement in justice reform in Romania, adding that meeting the benchmarks under CVM is a priority of his term of office. He also underscored the importance of establishing the Rule of Law Mechanism at EU level. The European official expressed full readiness to co-operate with Romania in order to secure sustainability and stability of the Romanian judiciary reform process. Progress until the next CVM report could determine lifting the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism, according to the Justice Ministry.Jourova is quoted as saying in the statement that it is important to see Romania's sustainable and irreversible progress. Romania's success means the success of the European Commission and the Union as a whole. The European Commission is a supporter of Romania's justice reform.Ion voiced intention to finalise and submit to Parliament in April 2021 three draft laws of justice, put up for public debate in September 2020."We will fix the laws of justice. The process will involve the judiciary and Parliament alike. The legislative process itself must be of quality, characterised by dialogue and commitment. We want to achieve our goals, but not to the detriment of quality. We will continue to consult with the European Commission, the Venice Commission and GRECO. We continue to count on the support of the European Commission, which has proved to be a reliable partner," Ion is quoted as saying Posted Friday, January 15, 2021 6:56 am State health officials said they will need to double, if not triple, the pace of immunizations to vaccinate and protect about 70% of Washington's adult population from the novel coronavirus. Immunology experts use 70% as a rough target for herd immunity, the point at which enough of society is immune that the virus cannot readily spread between people. The state aims to reach its goal, among people 16 and older, in about seven months, said SheAnne Allen, the state's COVID-19 vaccine director, during a meeting of the state's Vaccine Advisory Committee. Currently, the state is using about 15,000-20,000 doses of vaccine each day. "We need about 45,000 doses in arms a day," Allen said. "It's a big goal." The goal illustrates the importance of picking up the pace of vaccination in Washington, and gives a rough approximation of when Washington residents' lives might feel closer to normal. Workplace clinics and pop-ups State officials during the committee meeting also described their strategy to rapidly expand vaccination infrastructure, by helping support workplace clinics, mass vaccination clinics, mobile vaccination teams and pop-ups at community centers or places of worship to accelerate vaccination. For now, state officials maintain that a consistent, reliable vaccine supply from the federal government remains a primary hurdle and said requests for doses from vaccine providers exceed what the state can direct to them. As supply opens up, the state first hopes to assign more doses to pharmacies and expand capacity through a federal partnership program. Next, the state will look to supply employer-based clinics, which can handle vaccine logistics through employee health programs. "In flu season, we know a lot of adults get vaccinated through their employer," said Michele Roberts, the state Department of Health's acting assistant secretary. The state is finalizing contracts for companies to assist at mass vaccination sites and plans to involve the National Guard in that effort. Mobile and pop-up clinics will help ensure people who are harder to reach in the medical system are not left behind. "We need to have those plans in place. We are working to develop them now, knowing that supply is still the limiting factor," Roberts said. "We have to be ready when this switches from not enough vaccine to more vaccine." Data gaps State officials told the advisory committee they are scrambling to figure out data problems that have left them unable to publicly explain large gaps between vaccine delivery and administration. "This is absolutely the biggest challenge we have going on right now, besides vaccine supply," Roberts said, saying the state needed better real-time data on administration and vaccine storage. State officials said at least 201,660 doses of vaccine have been used in Washington state as of Jan. 11. Washington has received 624,975 doses as of Wednesday, meaning that a minimum of 32% of doses had been administered. The health department maintains the actual percentage is higher because of lagging administration data. Roberts said those administering vaccines needed to submit data more quickly, and that health department workers were determining if there were problems in how the state compiles data. "We, as a system of all of us, are not accurately telling the story to anybody on where are the doses, how many have been given," Roberts said. "We need to be able to answer that question for the public." Roberts said the state knew that more doses were being administered than are reported, because the health department is surveying vaccine providers separately and coming up with different statistics than what the state reports. It isn't realistic to continue the time-consuming survey efforts, Robert said. Using a data-entry system to send immunization information to the state's database is cumbersome, and it can take several data-entry clerks to submit information for a few hundred people, said Dr. Rachel Wood, health officer for Lewis County Public Health and Social Services. Expanding access State officials also told the committee they were considering changes to its prioritization plan after the Trump administration urged governors to expand vaccine access to anyone 65 and over or anyone with a comorbidity. No decision has been made. "We are looking at that information, actively seeking more information, and quite frankly, waiting for what the Biden administration's decisions are," Roberts said. "They're actually in charge next Wednesday." Some vaccine advisory committee members, including Dr. Susan Westerlund, of the Washington Academy of Family Physicians, urged state health leaders to update their phase guidance to find a place for those age 65-69 in the state's priority plan. "It would be nice to have them listed somewhere. Otherwise, it looks like you're not considering the ... group," Westerlund said. Committee members noted they had received a flood of questions from this group and others, trying to understand their places in the prioritization line. The federal policy changes which caught state leaders by surprise have prompted outrage among some people in that age group, who see other states vaccinating their peers. "The whole country seems to be saying 65, and Washington state seems to be saying, 'don't worry about those folks, throw them under the bus, they can wait until April or May,' " said Steve Hirsch, a 65-year-old in Seattle, during a Thursday interview. "I understand everybody is putting up their hand and saying, 'Me, me, me.' ... That argument, we don't have enough going around, it's hard to make when they can't use what they've got." Access, long lines and confusion have been a problem in some states that are offering the vaccine more widely, as demand far outstrips supply. Roberts told the committee the state's complex prioritization plan is designed to promote equity and to help protect workers who are more likely to contract the virus in addition to the most vulnerable. Roberts also argued that the federal government's announcement that it would no longer reserve booster shots and would send all available doses to states, had left the impression that supply was suddenly swelling. "They were not very clear publicly, this announcement of more vaccine coming is in a couple weeks," Roberts said. "It's a huge public-relations nightmare." ___ (c)2021 The Seattle Times Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Illustrative photo (Source: VNA) Hanoi - Vietnam will remain at the centre of Asian supply chains and one of the most competitive manufacturing locations in the Asia-Pacific region, said analysts at the Economist Intelligence Unit in a report on the country released on January 13.The report entitled Rising star: Vietnam's role in Asia's shifting supply chains, focused on examining Vietnams labour market, investment attraction policy, and trade relationships.Accordingly, low-skilled manufacturing wages rise will be kept at a moderate pace relative to Vietnams regional competitors. However, specialised labour in manufacturing and services professions will remain scarce. In the field of investment, high-tech manufacturers will continue to enjoy incentives for many years to come. In addition, Vietnam has joined many trade agreements and maintained good relations with trading partners, helping to reduce transaction costs for local businesses.EIU Senior Analyst John Marrett said tax and foreign direct investment policies as well as measures to control foreign trade and exchange are the main strengths of the Vietnamese business climate compared to other countries in the region.These are underpinned by the countrys domestic political stability, which is higher than that of most other Southeast Asian countries with similar economic development level, he added.The EIU is a global leading resource for economic and business research, forecasting and analysis. Italys former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been hospitalized in Monaco after suffering a cardiac problem while he was in his French residence, his doctor said. "I ordered the hospitalization in Monaco because I did not think it was prudent to transfer him back to Italy," Berlusconis personal doctor Alberto Zangrillo told Italian news agency ANSA, specifying that his patient had "an arrhythmical cardiac problem." Berlusconi was staying in southern France, near Nice, where he also spent part of the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic last year. Zangrillo said he urgently went there on Monday, due to a worsening" in Berlusconis conditions. Earlier on Thursday sources at his Forza Italia party told ANSA that Berlusconi was undergoing regular checks in Monaco and would have been back home in a few days. The 84-years-old three-time premier and media mogul, who underwent surgery in 2016 to have an aortic valve replaced, was also hospitalized in Milan for COVID-19 in September. When he left the hospital at the time, he said that was "the most dangerous and frightening experience" of his life. 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. Gov. Tom Wolf said Thursday 450 Pennsylvania National Guard members have been placed on active duty around the state to bolster security efforts in the wake of the attack at the U.S. Capitol last week. Wolf said the mobilization of the guard troops will coincide with heightened security measures leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. More than 1,000 Pennsylvania National Guard troops have already deployed to Washington, D.C. to aid local authorities in security efforts for the inauguration. I will not allow what happened at our nations capital to happen here. That is why I am taking the necessary measures to ensure everyones safety and security across our great commonwealth, Wolf said in a statement Thursday. Some of the national guard troops will support efforts to guard the Capitol Complex in Harrisburg. They will join Capitol Police and Pennsylvania State Police in the event of possible violence. The Pennsylvania National Guards presence around our State Capital and surrounding community will enhance law enforcements ability to provide continued public safety and critical infrastructure security during these unprecedented times, Wolf said. The FBI has warned of the possibility of armed protests at all of the 50 state capitals around the nation in the days leading up to Bidens inauguration. Law enforcement have been on high alert following the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol last week. Five people were killed when scores of President Trumps supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to count the electoral votes, the final step before Biden becomes the nations 46th president. A Capitol police officer was killed and dozens of others were injured. Wolf has ordered the Capitol to be closed for two days next week around the swearing in of three state row officers. The Pennsylvania National Guard has about 19,000 members, making it the nations second largest guard in the country, according to the governors office. Maj. Gen. Mark Schindler, Pennsylvanias acting adjutant general, said the National Guard members are up to the task. Assisting and supporting local authorities during times of need is one of the core missions of the National Guard, Schindler said in a statement. The men and women of the Pennsylvania National Guard are trained and prepared to ensure our citizens and infrastructure are safe and protected. More from PennLive How Pennsylvania is getting the state Capitol prepared amid threats of attacks Ronan Keating on stage in 2020 (Thomas M Jackson/Getty Images) Ronan Keating has invited Boris Johnson to meet with him for a talk about the music industry, saying: I think its time we had a chat. The Irish singer suggested he and the Prime Minister get together in a park because coronavirus pandemic restrictions means they cant meet at one of their homes. Keating reached out after The Independent reported that the government rejected an offer for UK musicians to tour Europe without needing visas post-Brexit, after blaming Brussels for throwing out the deal. Read more: Boyzone bandmates stayed with Stephen Gately's coffin night before funeral Taking to Twitter, Keating wrote: Its unbelievable and unforgivable. Will we see most of the UK artists/musicians leave the UK and live in the EU. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Protect the arts in the UK please this current government clearly doesnt care, he urged. Keating, 43, followed it up with another message asking the Prime Minister to meet him for a socially distanced chat. Ok @BorisJohnson, he posted. I think its time we had a chat. I cant come to yours nor can you come to mine. But can we meet in a park socially distant and discuss how this government is effecting UK musicians and the arts. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. One person tweeted that Keating may want to get some British artists to state their case with him. Read more: Boyzone's Shane Lynch splits from wife under pressure of lockdown This is regarding the industry in a country I have been lucky enough to call home for 20 years and the country that allowed an Irish band start a career, the star replied. Something I fear may never happen again due to recent government decisions. Boris Johnson speaks during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons (PA) Another person tweeted to say plenty more people would want to be there if Keating and Johnson did meet. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Ill find a large park, the Boyzone star replied. Watch: Ronan Keating 'finds it hard' to listen to the song Robbie Williams wrote for Stephen Gately John Kennedy spends much of his day next to a concrete divider in the Walmart parking lot on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden. Hes not there by choice, although passers-by may think so. That, however, may change with a partnership that evolved among the Hamden Police Department, the Hamden Community Development Department and the Cornell Scott Hill Healthcare Homeless Healthcare team. They want to give Kennedy and other homeless people a chance to get on their feet and into jobs that will change their lives for the better. The partnership came about five months after the COVID-19 pandemic slammed into Connecticut and forced Gov. Ned Lamont to lock down businesses to prevent the spread of the virus. That, in turn, led to a collapse of the economy, forcing tens of thousands of residents to seek unemployment benefits. People already on the edge of survival such as Kennedy didnt qualify as they had no work before the pandemic hit. Instead, Kennedy is homeless and left to beg for loose change and dollar bills for food because life dealt him a bad hand that he couldnt play well. He doesnt drink, do drugs or harm himself or others in any way, he said. He, like many other homeless people, cant seem to find a way out. The stereotype surrounding the homeless suggests they made mistakes that put them in that unfortunate situation. While that may sometimes be true, there are a lot of homeless people who simply got the short end of the stick. According to the Connecticut Department of Labor, Hamden is 15th highest in the state in terms of unemployment, with just under 2,500 residents without work. Kennedy and his girlfriend, Deidre Gonzalez, are two of them. We try our best to survive, Gonzalez said. It does get hard when John and I are here trying to make an honest living for food and survival and certain thieves who are on drugs take our things. Gonzalez said some people who are homeless because of drug and alcohol abuse seek money to feed their addiction. She and Kennedy arent in that group, she said. We just save up money for normal things, Gonzalez said. The biggest thing I buy that is a guilty pleasure is cigarettes, but I havent done any drugs since being homeless and even was starting work prior to the COVID-19 shutdown. Gonzalez said she has been homeless for just more than a year. Kennedy, who has been homeless for at least a year, is in a similar spot, so the two are working through the struggles together. I had no father and my mother died shortly after I graduated high school, Kennedy said. We always had problems financially, and after my mom was gone all I had was my grandmother. She needed help paying for her house, and I gave her everything I had. I had to take out a loan after that, which set me back and put me in debt, and after she died I havent been able to recover. Kennedy said people dont realize how hard it is to get hired when homeless. People say to get a job but dont realize I have no ID and cant just go get them with no money and no proof of identity, since I dont even have a home address, said Kennedy. I was able to go to the St. DePaul shelter, Gonzalez said. I only ended up being able to stay two weeks. Some five months after the pandemic hit the state, Hamden police spokesman Capt. Ronald Smith said the agency began noticing a rise in homeless people begging for money on the citys main commercial thoroughfare, Dixwell Avenue, and near the ramps to Route 15, also known as the Merritt Parkway. Instead of making arrests, police partnered with the Hamden Community Development Department and Cornell Scott Hill Health Center Homeless Healthcare team in an attempt to address these issues, Smith said. Hamden police officers now check in on the homeless and work to find them safe shelters and medical help if needed. Obviously we deal with a lot of things on a daily basis, and homelessness is one of them, said police officer Steve Teague. It is always good to go over and spread a positive word to them, since you never know what people are going through on a daily basis, especially in these times. We ask them if they want a meal, usually they say yes but sometimes they do not, which is totally fine, too. A helping hand coming from somewhere they may not expect certainly means a lot. Hamdens approach is complicated by COVID-19 and the spike of unemployment because of it. The difference in types of homeless people doesnt make it any easier, and Gonzalez and Kennedy recognize that may be a point of confusion for both residents and police. I get why people see us the way they do, Kennedy said. It doesnt help when other homeless people prove the citizens right, since they are the ones who make us look bad. I dont blame them for pooling us together because one time I saw a man try to give someone a burger and the homeless guy threw it back at him. Oftentimes when I get money, they say, Dont touch the car, or throw (the money) at me so I dont get too close. I often think to myself, I dont want to bother you or touch your car, I just want to eat. But I get why, like I said. Few cars stop at the Dixwell Avenue barrier where Kennedy and Gonzalez ask for money. The two are not aggressive in their approach and let cars pass unbothered. Kennedy and Gonzalez store their sleeping bags, clothes and signs in the caged area around a dumpster where they also sleep. They said their lives are compressed into this boxed area. They alternate going to the Walmart parking lot entrance with a sign asking for money. One begs while the other stands watch over their belongings. Other homeless people are more aggressive and some said they work in groups, including several who ask for money at the Route 15 intersections near the Welcome to Hamden sign. They declined to provide their names. A lot of people are near the sign at all hours, but not in the plaza at night since the stores are closed. Kennedy and Gonzalez said life in shelters is harder than many think. The shelters have not been the place I would want to be, Kennedy said. They are wet shelters, so there are a lot of belligerent drunks in there giving folks a hard time that dont deserve it. They are not very nice, but I have heard that theres been improvements. Maybe if it is somewhere I would want to live and it would help more than hurt, I would consider. The Hamden police, meanwhile, said their partnership should eventually help all homeless find somewhere to stay. Quality of life issues are a top priority, Smith said. During normal times, but especially in unprecedented times, helping the vulnerable is priority number one. Matthew Nygaard is a journalism student at Quinnipiac University. The European Union added Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad to its sanctions list, according to a decision published Friday in the official journal. "In view of the gravity of the situation in Syria, and considering his recent appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faisal MEKDAD should be added to the list of natural and legal persons, entities or bodies subject to restrictive measures in Annex I to Decision 2013/255/CFSP", Sputnik cited the decision as saying. On 22 November, Mekdad was appointed to the post of the Syrian foreign minister. In May 2011, the European Union introduced sanctions "against Syria and persons responsible for the violent repression against the civilian population." Later in 2017, the EU also imposed sanctions on Syrian officials who were allegedly involved in the country's chemical weapons programme. Syrian authorities vehemently denied the accusations, stating that international organisations didn't find any evidence of chemical weapons development. Advertisement All-inclusive holidays don't get much posher than this a breathtaking seven-night break to not one but two paradise enclaves, one at sea and one on land, with helicopter transfers (and a whole lot more) thrown in. For anyone who's been saving for a post-Covid trip of a lifetime, it's surely a contender. The three-night first stage of the 'surf and turf' package, by Private Islands Inc, sees guests flown by helicopter to Gladden Island, a mesmerising castaway island in the dazzling Belize Barrier Reef. Here they can allow feelings of lockdown cabin fever to float away in the warm Caribbean air. The three-night first stage of the 'surf and turf' package, by Private Islands Inc, sees guests flown by helicopter to Gladden Island (pictured) The staff at Gladden Island reside 'unseen' on a smaller island, 'ready to respond to any request at a moment's notice' Private Islands Inc describes the accommodation there as 'a casually elegant villa designed for just one or two couples, with the all-inclusive service of a luxury resort'. We're told the staff reside 'unseen' on a smaller island behind Gladden, 'ready to respond to any request at a moment's notice'. They can set up a dining experience anywhere on the island, and in-between meals guests can casually loll in the warm waters or perhaps call the boat captain for a trip 'to some of the world's best snorkelling and diving spots'. Private Islands Inc describes the accommodation at Gladden Island as 'a casually elegant villa designed for just one or two couples, with the all-inclusive service of a luxury resort' Activities on Gladden Island that are available include spearfishing, kayaking and generally lolling around in atolls Belize's Unesco-listed barrier reef system, at 300km in length (186 miles), is one of the world's largest coral reefs and harbours coastal lagoons, offshore atolls, mangrove forests, marine turtles and over 500 species of fish. The waters can also be explored using Private Island's Hobie Cat, kayaks and paddleboards. Spearfishing and deep-sea fishing are also available. The next stage of the almost preposterous package is four nights at Gladden's sister property, a recently opened jungle hideaway called Valley Stream. Luxury in the tropics: Valley Stream, the incredible jungle-y sister property of Gladden Island Private Island says that Valley Stream, with its 'master suites tucked under a roof of native thatch', is the 'ultimate jungle hideaway' Secluded: Guests at Valley Stream are immersed in Belize's magical tropical vegetation It's a 30-minute helicopter ride away from the island in a thickly forested spot that's about a one-hour drive from Belize Airport. Private Island promises 'the same unparalleled level of solitude, service and amenities as Gladden'. It says of the property: 'A waterfall cascades past the 5,000-square-foot timber and stone house, its pair of master suites tucked under a roof of native thatch, creating the ultimate jungle hideaway. Access to the richness of Belize's mainland activities - ancient Mayan ruins, treetop zip lines, cave tubing - are just moments away.' At Valley Stream, Private Island promises 'the same unparalleled level of solitude, service and amenities as Gladden' At Valley Stream, access to the richness of Belize's mainland activities - ancient Mayan ruins, treetop zip lines, cave tubing - 'are just moments away' The 'surf and turf' package includes all meals, cooked by a private chef - and wine, Champagne and spirits One of the luxurious ensuites at Valley Stream, where your all-inclusive dreams come true The price of the holiday isn't cheap it's US$25,865 (19,025) for two or US$30,905 (22,732) for four. But what's included is eye-opening those helicopter transfers from Belize Island to Gladden and then on to Valley Stream (said to be jaw-dropping), land transfers to the airport on departure, exclusive use of both properties (there are no other guests), all meals prepared by a personal chef, a personal boat and captain on Gladden, massages and spa treatments on Gladden, couples massages at Valley Stream, using of mountain bikes at Valley Stream and unlimited mainland excursions, plus a half-day of diving at Gladden. And yes, wine, Champagne and spirits are thrown in, too. But not the really good stuff. That's extra. For more information, visit www.gladdenprivateisland.com/valley-stream. Other mind-blowing trips to paradise are available. By Subrat Patnaik (Reuters) - Airbnb Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky on Thursday predicted travel would permanently change due to the pandemic with people seeking out thousands of smaller cities and spending more time visiting friends and family. Traditional tourism and sightseeing at top global destinations would be significantly reduced by travelers who will drive to smaller communities and fly less for business meetings. Travelers are "yearning for what was taken away from them," Chesky said at the Reuters Next conference in an interview with Jonathan Weber, ... NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Tennessee families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Tennesseeans are hosting 861 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the biggest activities will be a statewide classroom photo contest and student video contest, with winners announced on Jan. 29. Tennessee's celebrations will also include Facebook Live "Choice Chats" with education experts throughout the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Tennessee, the State Capitol building in Nashville will light up from dusk to dawn from Jan. 22-24. Governor Bill Lee has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Tennessee School Choice Week. Additionally, a growing number of Tennessee cities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week in their community, including the counties of Megis and Cocke and the cities of Kingston, Martin, and Madisonville. "This National School Choice Week, let's pause to recognize the impact a child's education has on their ability to achieve their dreams, attain a healthy economic future, and give back to their community," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Across Tennessee, different schools help different students succeed, and all great schools are worth celebrating and supporting." In Tennessee, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Tennessee students with special needs may be eligible for a publicly-funded Individualized Education Account. Tennessee families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Tennessee school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/tennessee. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Champaign, IL (61820) Today Cloudy skies with showers and a possible thunderstorm late. Low 57F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.. Tonight Cloudy skies with showers and a possible thunderstorm late. Low 57F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 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. COVID Update: Opening of Schools Likely to be Feb 1st as Lockdown Extended Chief Minister Fabian Picardo chaired a meeting of the COVID Platinum Command group this morning, and later gave an updated statement to Parliament, with the latest statistics and restrictions moving forward. Statement to Parliament COVID-19 Update 'Mr Speaker, This morning, I chaired a meeting of the COVID Platinum Command Group. Together with His Excellency the Governor, the Deputy Chief Minister, the Minister for Civil Contingencies and the Minister for Public Health, and all other attendees, we considered how best to address the continued rise of infections of COVID-19 in our Community. Today, Mr Speaker, I can report that Gibraltar has already fulfilled: 140,000 tests for COVID-19. 66 new cases in our Community today. 99 individuals are now considered to have been recovered from the disease. That leaves 967 active cases, importantly under 1000. To date we have had 160 people admitted to hospital since the spring just with COVID-19. At the moment there are 39 patients in the COVID wards at St Bernards Hospital. I said WARDS because we now have more than one WARD with COVID patients. JOHN WARD has in part now been adapted also. There are 11 people in the COVID CCU. That means that we presently have 50 inpatients at St Bernards Hospital with COVID-19. Of those 11 in the Critical Care Unit, 9 are on ventilators. This puts huge pressure on our GHA staff at the CCU, as those patients require manual handling as they are not conscious. I am very sorry to have to report to the Community a total now of 30 deaths from COVID-19. The last two have touched me deeply as one was a member of my extended family and another was one of my former teachers. With 30 deaths, every family will now have been touched to some extent by a death from COVID- 19. And to think, Mr Speaker, there was a time when we had avoided any deaths from this deadly disease. Mr Speaker, our frontline services continue to be impaired with the GHA and the RGP continuing to suffer a casualty rate in excess of 10% in each of people in isolation or positive with COVID-19. At the same time, Mr Speaker, after a magnificent effort with the support of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in London and in the Convent in Gibraltar and the support also of the MOD in the United Kingdom and in Gibraltar, in particular the RAF, we received our first doses of the PFIZER vaccine last weekend. There was, as Honourable Members will recall, huge expectation in Gibraltar, not least because of the weather, on the potential for the arrival and landing of that RAF A-400 aircraft. Since then, Mr Speaker, I commend the GHA for a magnificent effort under the auspices of Health Minister, Minister Sacramento for a vaccine programme that has gone without a glitch until now. Many have commented to me how well treated they have been in the process of making appointments and their treatment during the vaccination process. To date, 4,188, correct as at last night, have received the first dose of the PFIZER vaccine. 1,215 frontline GHA staff. 28 GHA patients 437 ERS staff 152 ERS patients 2,339 over 70s 17 patients at Ocean Views. Most importantly, I am able to report to the House that NO DOSES HAVE BEEN WASTED AT ALL! Mr Speaker, until the vaccine is in our bodies and has had time to take effect, our people remain at risk and our ability to deliver services remains at risk. For that reason, Mr Speaker, we have agreed in COVID Platinum today that the correct way to continue to see a downturn in the numbers of infections recorded daily is to continue with the restrictions on mobility for a further seven days. We are seeing a downturn, but the growth is still there. We are no longer seeing 170 or 180 cases a day, as we were a week or two ago. But we are still seeing high double figure growth. The R number is now well below 1, likely in the region of 0.77. The curve of infections is coming down, but it is still far, far too high for us to safely release the restrictions. I must tell the Community today that the restrictions are likely to be renewed AGAIN in seven days time. I do not take that for granted. We will NOT renew the restrictions if we are able to loosen them of course. But we will be unlikely to be able to do so. For that reason, I also do not believe that it will be possible for us to commit to reopening schools by Monday 25th of January although that will of course continue to be our aim. We will continue to work with our teachers in order to ensure that when our schools do return, they return in a way that is safe for our teachers and our pupils. It is more likely that we will still see schools able to reopen safely on Monday 1st of February. That now appears to be a more realistic potential reopening date. On St Martins, Mr Speaker, we are working for an even earlier date of reopening if possible. We are conscious of the difficulties being experienced by the parents of children with special needs in particular. We will ensure our teachers are going be in the very first round of those to be vaccinated beyond the at risk groups and the teachers at St Martins will be the first of the first. Until then the relevant Ministers are working to provide additional facilities for children and persons with special needs at parks, and the RGP are aware of the specific provisions in our regulations for persons with learning difficulties, an innovation we did not have during the first lockdown but which Minister Sacramento specifically carved out this time. That is also likely to be 1st February, more realistic date on which we might start to see the lifting of restrictions. If we can lift restrictions next week, of course we will do so. But it will be the number of infections that will determine that. Also, Mr Speaker, it is important that I give the community a heads up that when we do start to lift restrictions, we will do so in a gradual and safe way only. I believe we may see that as we lift lockdown, we may have to maintain a curfew, for example. We may also have to maintain some restrictions in other respects. I DO NOT DISCARD THE POTENTIAL NOW OF A TERRITORIAL RESTRICTION ON MOVEMENT OTHER THAN FOR WORK OR FOR MEDICAL EMERGENCIES. Also, Mr Speaker, I will shortly be engaging with our catering industry as, at the moment, we do not think it will be safe to open our catering establishments at the same time as we release other aspects of the lockdown. I will be engaging directly with the Gibraltar Catering Association again in coming days. They have been extraordinarily responsible in the work they have done with us and I look forward to that continuing active and positive engagement with them. Mr Speaker, we have already started working with our business sector in payments under what we are calling BEAT 5.0. We will continue to do so. But what is clear around the world, as I said in my New Years message, is that all nations are facing public finance problems, even the oil-producing states, as a result of the COVID pandemic. For that reason, we must ensure that Gibraltar moves quickly to undo the issues of instability that arise for our public finances as a result of COVID and indeed, the additional whammy of BREXIT. In order to assist me in addressing those issues as Minister for Public Finance, I have appointed Sir Joe Bossano as Minister with responsibility for Financial Stability, alongside his responsibilities for Economic Development and his other portfolio responsibilities. That will enable us to work together directly with the Financial Secretary, Albert Mena, in addressing the issues which will arise as we cast our first post BREXIT, post COVID Budget for this Community. This is something we are already working on and Sir Joe has asked me to advise the House this afternoon that he is holding a meeting with the Financial Secretary this afternoon in preparation for this exercise and for that reason has not attended Parliament. I know that we will all take comfort in this Community from the extraordinary experience that the Government can count on in Sir Joe and the extraordinary ability that the Government can count on in Albert Mena as we prepare for these new estimates. I must, Mr Speaker, before I conclude thank our magnificent frontline, public sector staff. All of them. In the GHA, the RGP, CUSTOMS, GDP, ERS everyone. I cannot list them all as I will leave some out. Also in the private sector, our supermarket staff, the delivery persons who bring food to our homes, and our pharmacy staff how are also so essential. I will have left people out. A deep thank you to everyone who has helped at all in this effort. Today I saw a report of Francis Huart, a good friend, who is trying to be a friend to everyone he can by delivering what he can as necessary. What an example he is. His is one case of so many volunteers seeking to help as much as they can. Mr Speaker, I must end thanking everyone in our community for complying with the COVID restrictions. Incidences of failure to comply with the rules are low. The vast majority are complying with the rules. Those few that do not are letting themselves and each other down. SO PLEASE I URGE ALL MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY- HELP US TO LIFT THESE RESTRICTIONS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE BY CONTINUING TO COMPLY WITH THE RULES. STAY AT HOME UNLESS IT IS ESSENTIAL TO GO OUT. GO OUT ONLY FOR ESSENTIALS OR ESSENTIAL EXERCISE. FOLLOW THE RULES AND TOGETHER WE WILL EMERGE MORE QUICKLY OUT OF THESE DIFFICULT TIMES. Mr Speaker, I will be happy to clarify any aspects of this statement that Honourable Members might wish me to address. Mr Speaker, I commend this statement to the House.' Manitoba hit a milestone this week: for the first time since mid-October, the daily number of new cases of COVID-19 fell below 100 on Tuesday. Manitoba hit a milestone this week: for the first time since mid-October, the daily number of new cases of COVID-19 fell below 100 on Tuesday. That wasnt the only good news: the provinces test positivity rate also declined, from highs above 14 per cent in November to less than 10 per cent this week. Despite an increase in gatherings at private residences over the holidays, Manitoba did not see a major spike in cases during the two-week incubation period that followed. Declining case numbers have provided hospitals with some relief, including fewer COVID-19 patients in intensive-care units. The number of major outbreaks at personal-care homes has also fallen dramatically. Manitobas improved circumstances are in stark contrast to deteriorating conditions in other parts of Canada, where case numbers and hospitalizations are soaring. Governments in Ontario and Quebec have imposed fresh rounds of restrictions on individuals and businesses. RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitobas chief provincial public health officer, has spoken often about the need to strike the right balance between protecting Manitobans against the virus and mitigating harm caused by government interventions. The question for Manitoba is: what restrictions if any should be lifted once current orders expire on Jan. 22? Manitobans know all too well the dangers of reopening the economy too soon and letting their guards down prematurely. Combined with a woeful lack of preparedness by the provincial government in areas such as testing, contact tracing and the protection of personal-care homes, complacency in the fall led to record caseloads, hospital overcrowding and the second highest COVID-19 deaths per capita in Canada. Its a mistake Manitoba must not repeat. However, the financial hardship on those disproportionately affected by the provinces code-red restrictions cannot be ignored. Many small-business owners and not-for-profits have been devastated by public-health interventions. Some have lost their livelihoods; others are on the brink of bankruptcy. Any adjustment should be done slowly and carefully. The province has provided some supports. However, Premier Brian Pallister has been hesitant to adequately compensate those most affected. Support programs have been limited and slow to materialize; theyve fallen well short of preventing bankruptcies or near financial ruin. Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitobas chief provincial public health officer, has spoken often about the need to strike the right balance between protecting Manitobans against the virus and mitigating harm caused by government interventions. As case numbers fall and hospital capacity improves, that balance should be reassessed. If infection rates continue to fall as Jan. 22 approaches, there may be room to loosen restrictions. Some small businesses could be allowed to reopen with limited capacity, as long as they do so safely and in accordance with strict public-health measures (such as mask wearing, hand sanitizing and social distancing). JOHN WOODS / CANADIAN PRESS FILES Manitoba is still months away from immunizing enough people to safely open large segments of the economy. If restrictions within the province are eased, consideration should be given to maintaining or reimposing restrictions and self-quarantine requirements on travel to and from more seriously afflicted regions. Any adjustment should be done slowly and carefully. Removing measures only to reinstate them a few weeks later would be disruptive and would undermine confidence in public-health orders. What the province should not do is bow to the demands of a small minority of businesses that have been fined in recent days for violating public-health orders, including a tattoo parlour in Winnipeg that reopened in contravention of provincial regulations. Restrictions only work when everyone buys in. While the businesses frustration is understandable, defiance is a fruitless and unacceptable response. Manitoba is still months away from immunizing enough people to safely open large segments of the economy. Until then, everyone including business owners must hang on a little longer. Easing some restrictions would provide struggling businesses with much-needed relief. It would also give Manitobans a morale boost at a time when they sorely need one. Paxton, IL (60957) Today Rain showers early then thundershowers overnight. Low 52F. SSW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.. Tonight Rain showers early then thundershowers overnight. Low 52F. SSW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Bennington, VT (05201) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. A Porsche driver facing charges after a horror Melbourne crash will fight separate allegations he put a noose around a woman's neck. Richard Pusey was freed on bail in October while awaiting trial on charges of reckless conduct endangering life and drug offences linked to a crash on the Eastern Freeway in April that killed four police officers. The officers had stopped Pusey's Porsche on the freeway when a truck ploughed into them and he is accused of filming a dying policewoman. Pusey was arrested and faced court last month on a series of fresh charges over alleged incidents at a Fitzroy property on December 27. Richard Pusey (pictured above) is facing new allegations he put a noose around a woman's neck on December 27 last year (L-R): Constable Glen Humphris, Senior Constable Kevin King, Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor and Constable Joshua Prestney (pictured above) all lost their lives at the horror smash last April. Richard Pusey is accused of filming Lynette Taylor as she lay dying Documents show an allegation the 42-year-old assaulted a woman, put a noose around her neck and threatened to kill her. On Friday Pusey appeared via video link before magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg at a Melbourne court. Pusey's lawyer, Chris McLennan, said his client and the woman denied the allegations. But Mr Rozencwajg said police claim to have seen Pusey assault the woman. 'Unfortunately for Mr Pusey there's police officers who saw him put a noose around her neck,' the magistrate said. Pusey is also accused of sending abusive and derogatory text messages and making menacing phone calls to another individual, and committing offences while on bail. Part of Pusey's bail conditions included a curfew and a requirement that he answer the door to police when requested. He has been charged with breaching that condition twice, including on Christmas Day. Pusey did not apply for bail on Friday and is due back in court on March 9. HELENA, Mont., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Montana families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Montanans are hosting 77 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. "Pandemic or no pandemic, Montana students thrive when they are learning in schools that match their unique talents, strengths, and needs," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "National School Choice Week is a time for families to celebrate schools and educators, and to learn more about school options for the 2021-2022 school year." In Montana, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Montana also offers a tax credit scholarship program with universal eligibility for students. Montana families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Montana school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/montana. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah (L) meets with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) in Bandar Seri Begawan, capital of Brunei, on Jan. 14, 2021. (Photo by Jeffrey Wong/Xinhua) BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah met with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi here Thursday, and both sides pledged to carry on joint fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and promote bilateral cooperation in all areas to new high. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, both countries have joined hands in fighting the virus and deepened mutual trust and friendship, demonstrating the real nature of the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership, Wang said. He noted that as both countries celebrate the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations this year, bilateral ties have reached a new historic point. He called on both sides to fully implement the consensus reached by leaders of the two countries and align China's Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 with Brunei's national vision, the Wawasan 2035, so as to promote bilateral cooperation in all areas to a new level. Wang pledged to carry on joint fight against the pandemic and build the "fast tracks" for personnel movement and discuss the building of "green lanes" for goods movement. He called on both sides to speed up cooperation projects such as Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd's oil refinery and petrochemical project and Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor, push forward cooperation in agriculture and fishery, create new growth opportunities in sectors of 5G, big data and cloud computing so as to contribute to Brunei's economic diversification drive. Wang said China supports Brunei in taking over as the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will take the chance of the 30th anniversary of the China-ASEAN dialogue relations to elevate the China-ASEAN relations, build blue economy partnership consensus and put into effect the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership at an early date. China has always appreciated and supported the dual-track approach proposed by Brunei in addressing the maritime issue, and wish to strengthen cooperation and solidarity with all ASEAN countries and properly manage disputes, so as to ensure that the South China Sea is a peaceful and stable sea, he said. Hassanal, for his part, said China is Brunei's traditional, friendly neighbor and important cooperation partner, and the relations between the two countries are established on the basis of mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win. Expressing gratitude to China for its valuable support to Brunei in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Hassanal congratulated China on successful research and development of COVID-19 vaccines, and hoped to conduct cooperation with China in the field of vaccines so as to provide guarantee for the people to people exchanges and the cooperation in all fields between the two countries. Hassanal said his country firmly adheres to the one-China principle and stands ready to dovetail its national vision Wawasan 2035 with China's Long-Range Objectives Through the Year of 2035 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between the two countries, boost cooperation with China in the sectors of agriculture and fishery, press forward the construction of important projects including Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd's oil refinery and petrochemical project and the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor as well as deepen the strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries. He said Brunei, which holds the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year, is willing to play its role in promoting mutual trust and cooperation between ASEAN and China and maintain regional peace and stability. On the same day, Wang Yi also held talks with Haji Erywan, Brunei's Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Haji Mohd Amin Liew, Minister at the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister of Finance and Economy, and co-chaired the second meeting of the China-Brunei intergovernmental joint steering committee. Wang Yi also attended the logo launching ceremony for the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brunei, and met with ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi. For many, Battle.net is the portal into their favourite PC and macOS video games. Blizzard-owned titles such as Overwatch and World of Warcraft, but also Activision releases such as Call of Duty: Warzone. As PC Gamer explains, though, the client has barely changed in the last eight years. Thankfully, a long overdue update has arrived. The general layout has been overhauled, and its now possible to favorite games for easy access. The social pane has been reworked too, alongside a new notifications hub for messages and checking downloads. The update will be headed first to North America, followed by other regions in the coming weeks, according to a blog post. So if you dont have it already, just hold tight. If youre curious, heres a full breakdown of everything thats changed: President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday proposed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill that would add $1,400 to the $600 direct payments granted under a law signed by President Donald Trump late last month. The proposal would also extend unemployment benefits and help schools reopen. And it includes $350 billion for state and local aid a top Democratic priority, Im convinced were ready to get this done, Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware, as he advanced his plan. The very health of our nation is at stake. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., quickly welcomed Bidens plan. We will get right to work to turn President-elect Bidens vision into legislation that will pass both chambers and be signed into law, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a joint statement. Biden said he wanted to work across party lines, but if Senate Republicans balk, congressional Democrats could use a procedure known as reconciliation to prevent a filibuster and pass the stimulus plan by a simple majority vote in each chamber. Thats the same procedure the GOP used to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to pass a tax law that the Congressional Budget Office said increased the federal deficit by $1.9 trillion over 10 years, the same size as Bidens stimulus proposal. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage Besides increasing the total direct payments to $2,000, the Treasury Department would make sure that the initial round of $1,200 checks under the CARES Act went to eligible families that have yet to receive them. Biden said that the $600 payments in the stimulus plan that was enacted on Dec. 27 were simply not enough if you still have to choose between paying rent and putting food on the table. Even for those who have kept their jobs, these checks are really important. The proposal provides long-sought assistance to states and localities of $350 billion to help pay the salaries of police officers, health care workers, teachers and other public employees. Of that money, $3 billion would be earmarked for the Economic Development Administration to help create jobs. These crises are straining the budgets of states, cities, and tribal communities that are forced to consider layoffs and service reductions, Biden said. It means the people putting their lives at risk are the very people now at risk of losing their jobs. In addition, state and local governments would be reimbursed for providing family and medical leave to employees, and the federal government would cover the full cost of state emergency response efforts, including deploying the National Guard. This plan meets every need with a real lifeline to American families, real support for state and local governments and for our vaccination efforts, and a real vision for our post-pandemic economic future, Gov. Phil Murphy said. I have said many times that history would not dismiss us for going big and bold but that history would judge us if we fail to ensure that the many needs of our people and our states are adequately met. This is a moment unlike any in American history, and we cannot let it slip away unanswered. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the proposal would provide more money for distributing vaccines, increasing testing and hiring public health employees. These investments will protect the health of the American people and help us crush this virus so we can rebuild our economy., said Pallone, D-6th Dist. There also would be funding to increase nutrition programs, and expand and extend paid family and medical leave. This wont be the last spending program proposed by Biden to combat the coronavirus-induced economic downturn. He said he would offer a major package of investments in infrastructure, clean energy and worker training before a joint session of Congress last month. Here are other highlights of Bidens stimulus package: -- Eviction protection. The moratorium against evictions would be extended to Sept. 30, $25 billion would go to renters and small landlords to help cover rents, and $5 billion would go to the low-income home heating assistance program and other programs to cover home energy and water costs -- Health insurance. Biden, who was vice president when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, proposed expanding tax credits to lower premiums and subsidizing the cost of insurance for those who were laid off but are eligible for coverage under COBRA. -- Higher minimum wage. Biden called for a $15 per hour minimum wage, a long-sought goal of progressives. New Jersey is phasing in the $15 minimum wage. Its current minimum wage is $12. -- Public transit. Another $20 billion in aid would go to the hardest-hit public transportation agencies, possibly including NJ Transit. -- School aid. The proposal has $170 billion for schools, including $130 billion to help schools reopen, $35 billion for public colleges and public and private Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority serving institutions, and $5 billion for governors to support early childhood, elementary or secondary educational programs hardest hit by the coronavirus. -- Small businesses. The hardest-hit businesses would be eligible for $15 billion in grants. There also would be $35 billion for state, local, tribal and nonprofit financing programs for small businesses, which the Biden transition said would generate up to $175 billion in low-interest loans and venture capital. Businesses with less than 500 workers would be reimbursed for expanded family and medical leave through a refundable tax credit. -- Unemployment insurance. Biden proposed extending pandemic unemployment insurance programs past their March expiration date, as well as increase to $400 a week from $300 the extra federal payment. -- Worker protections. As their price for protecting businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits, congressional Democrats demanded standards to protect employees. Biden said he wanted Congress to let the Occupational Safety and Health Administration set standards that cover all workers, not just under the agencys jurisdiction, and called on more funding so the government can enforce those rules. The total package is similar in size to House-passed legislation in the last Congress, as well as the $1.8 trillion in spending offered by Trump last fall. And it is more than twice as large as the $900 billion stimulus passed last month. Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. SUV EV Spokesperson Justin Pagtalunan let it slip to our friends at Cars Direct that consumer demand is to blame, which is borderline obvious if you remember that diesel has never been popular in the United States in terms of passenger cars and SUVs. Even the EU is transitioning back to gasoline before it bans the sale of internal combustion-engined vehicles for good.Speaking of the Old Continent, the Japanese automaker has discontinued the Mazda6 with the SkyActiv-D, which is pretty interesting if you ask me. For starters, the mid-size sedan and station wagon are on their last legs. And secondly, the next generation has already been confirmed with rear-wheel drive and at least two straight-six engine options, including a turbo diesel.It would be counterproductive for Mazda to keep making the SkyActiv-D 2.2 for the U.S. market as the remainder of the lineup in the rest of the world transitions to a different engine, dont you think? But still, Mazda has greater plans for North America in the guise of the MX-30 compactIn addition to battery-powered, the quirky crossover with rear doors inspired by the RX-8 will be available as a range-extended electric vehicle with a rotary engine. SkyActiv-R is how the engine is called, and the U.S. will receive this variant of the MX-30 in 2022 , probably as a 2023 model.If I may turn our focus back on the SkyActiv-D with 2.2 liters of displacement, the 2020 Mazda CX-5 with the 168-horsepower turbo diesel used to retail at $41,300. Although $4,100 costlier than the gasoline-fueled configuration, the SkyActiv-D isnt all that efficient either because it returns 29 miles to the gallon (7.9 liters per 100 kilometers) on the combined cycle. MILAN - Italys fashion chamber is opening on Friday the first Milan Fashion Week that won't have VIPS populating runway front rows, as the reality of Italy's persistent resurgence of the coronavirus has forced an all-virtual format for presenting menswear previews. FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018 file photo, Carlo Capasa, head of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, attends the Fendi women's 2019 Spring-Summer fashion show, during the Fashion Week in Milan, Italy. Italys fashion chamber opens the first Milan Fashion Week on Friday with no VIPS populating runway front rows, as the reality of the persistent virus resurgence in Italy has forced an all-digital, no physical week of menswear previews. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File) MILAN - Italys fashion chamber is opening on Friday the first Milan Fashion Week that won't have VIPS populating runway front rows, as the reality of Italy's persistent resurgence of the coronavirus has forced an all-virtual format for presenting menswear previews. The National Fashion Chamber maintained a live element during the July and September fashion weeks in Milan. But after planning to stage live shows with guests during this round, Fendi, Etro and outdoor brand Kway announced their events will be livestreamed from behind closed doors. Dolce & Gabbana cancelled its runway show entirely, citing restrictions in place due to COVID-19. The other 36 participating fashion houses on the pared-down calendar -- including Zegna and Prada -- will all have digital-only presentations. We did everything to preserve some runway shows, but the anti-COVID norms in this moment dont allow us to have guests, and therefore, the runway shows will be closed-door, fashion chamber president Carlo Capasa said. The organizers of Paris Fashion Week plan to hold audience-free mens and haute couture shows later this month. Prospects for Milan's February shows of mostly womenswear previews remain unclear; the Italian government on Friday announced a new round of virus-control restrictions through Feb. 15 that extend a ban on travelling between regions. Capasa acknowledged that closed-door shows deprive fashion of some of its energy. But the pandemic, which has all but shut down global travel and closed retail stores for long periods , has made fashion houses quickly update their digital communication strategies and e-commerce platforms, he said. There is some evidence the investments are paying off, with one-quarter of online luxury sales last year to consumers who went high-end for the first-time, Capasa said. The Italian fashion chamber found that 45 million people streamed Milan Fashion Week shows in September, a number that Capasa said was beyond his wildest dreams a year ago. Still, the fashion industry is in dire financial straits. The Italian industry recorded a 25% drop in revenues to 50.5 billion euros ($61.2 billion) in 2020 compared with 2019, with exports down 22% to nearly 43 billion euros ($52.1 billion). A more drastic decline was avoided thanks to so-called revenge shopping in China, with eager consumers returning to luxury shopping as soon as lockdowns expired, and moves toward e-commerce and a bump in global luxury sales in October, Capasa said. In Europe, where governments have ordered new lockdowns, the market remained weakest. Capasa said the industry, one of the biggest generators of Italy's gross domestic product, is seeking a share of the governments recovery funds to help improve innovation and to keep small artisanal businesses from failing. He said he hopes to see a gradual return to normality in fashion show calendars and travel this summer, as vaccines reduce the threat of the coronavirus. For now, we need to do the best we can, in the moment we are living, Capasa said. BEREA, Ohio -- A U.S. mail carrier, 62, drove herself to Southwest General Health Center Jan. 9 after she was attacked and bitten by a loose German shepherd-rottweiler mix while delivering mail at about 1:30 p.m. on Hamilton Street. The dog had escaped a home through the front door as a woman -- who lives in the home and co-owns the dog with her husband -- checked the mailbox. The dog knocked over the woman as she ran past her. The womans husband chased the dog, but didnt catch her right away. The dog pushed the mail carrier to the ground. The mail carrier shoved her satchel into the dogs mouth and pepper-sprayed the dog. Nevertheless, the dog started biting the mail carriers leg. The mail carrier punched and kicked the dog. The dogs co-owner then pulled the animal off the mail carrier. Police notified the Cuyahoga County Board of Health about the incident. The mail carriers supervisor stopped mail service to the dogs owners. 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Serving as vice chair of the states Democratic Party, Street logged hundreds of thousands of miles traversing Pennsylvania over the last four years, drumming up voter enthusiasm. Along the way, more than one farmer has tested the city kids knowledge on issues like retention ponds, the best way to split wood, and, yes, manure. Street recalled one farmer pointing to a field ready for planting and asking which type of manure hog, cow, or chicken would be best for his crops. Street said he surprised the farmer by expounding about the various benefits and drawbacks in what farmers call nutrient management. Pro tip: Chicken poop is best, even if they dont produce as much as cows and pigs. The larger lesson: Street says President Donald Trump was terrible at governing but excellent at marketing, speaking plainly to people who are sick of political jargon. He thinks Democrats need to speak more directly to white, rural voters, explaining what concerns they have in common education, health care, wages with people in cities. That, he hopes, can forestall midterm election losses in 2022. History holds that the party controlling the White House pays a political price two years later. READ MORE: Pat Toomey's retirement makes the 2022 elections in Pennsylvania a total free-for-all And where did Street learn so much about manure? He credits Saturday and Sunday trips in his youth to farms and rural markets with his father, former Mayor John Street, who grew up on a farm in Montgomery County and was always eager to talk agriculture. He never stopped talking about it, Street said of his fathers interest. I never thought it would have any value. Now he knows better. Street says hell form an exploratory committee for a Senate run sometime in the spring. Hell make a decision on formally entering the race closer to the end of the year. The seat is open because Sen. Pat Toomey, a Lehigh Valley Republican, is not seeking a fourth term. A stampede of Democrats and Republicans is expected to enter the race. Clout wonders if any of them have been thinking about it as long as Street. We found him on a list of 23 young achievers published by Ebony magazine as they prepared to graduate from high school in 1992. Street, then a Central High senior, was described as an aspiring public servant who planned to eventually run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. I guess Ive been thinking about it for a while, Street said, laughing about Clouts archival find. John Fetterman says Josh Hawleys soul is dipped in dog Speaking of excrement, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has some thoughts on Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican leader in the effort last week to overturn the presidential election. Fetterman, a Democrat also sizing up a Senate run, appeared Tuesday on The New Abnormal, a podcast from the Daily Beast. He recounted his procedural tussle last week with state Senate Republicans about seating a Democratic member who had been reelected. Then he zeroed in on Hawleys Ivy League education, noting the Missouri Republicans attempt to block certification of the election results was garbage, considering that he stuck to it after last weeks insurrection at the Capitol. You know, I dont care what your political beliefs are, Fetterman said. If youre willing to damage and endanger over your ambition, your soul is dipped in dog. I dont know how else to say it. Fetterman, who appeared with his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, said his announcement last week that hes exploring a Senate run prompted more than $500,000 in donations from more than 15,000 donors from all 50 states in four days. Quotable: This hateful rhetoric is another deadly virus. It is time to remove it from its host. To heal we need accountability and truth. That begins by acknowledging the presidents dangerous lies and their deadly consequences. Removing Donald Trump is the beginning of restoring decency and in democracy. What happened last week will not be forgotten and what we do this week will long be remembered. Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Montgomery County Democrat serving as an impeachment manager, asking colleagues in the House on Wednesday to impeach the president. SAN DIEGO -- Visiting the car in which two notoriousDepression-era gangsters met their bloody end may not be a typicalholiday outing, but time is running out if you want to see Bonnieand Clydes death car during its brief spin through town. The bullet-riddled 1934 Ford V-8 is part of the new Gangsters,Glamour and Glory at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Theexhibit, which runs through Feb. 2, showcases some of the mostfamous vehicles and American celebrities of the 1930s, includingmementos from the Hindenburg zeppelin and a reproduction of a 1930sGee Bee R-1Super Sportster racing plane. There are also radiobroadcasts, Hollywood film clips and personal items belonging tohumorist Will Rogers (who died in a 1935 plane crash) and pilotAmelia Earhart (who disappeared during a trans-global plane flightin 1937). The Bonnie & Clyde Ford, as its known, is on loan fromthe Primm Valley Resort & Casino in Nevada. The infamous crimeduo of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow embarked on a bloody crimespree in 1932 that resulted in 32 murders and numerous kidnappings,burglaries and robberies. Advertisement On May 23, 1934, Parker and Barrow were killed by police in ahail of 167 bullets while driving the stolen Ford near Brush Creek,La. Afterward, the car was returned to its owners in Kansas, whosold it to a carnival exhibitor for $3,000. The San Diego Air & Space Museum, open from 10 a.m. to 4p.m. daily (closed Christmas) is on Pan American Plaza in SanDiegos Balboa Park. Admission is $15 for general admission and $12for seniors, students and retired military with ID. Children ages 3to 11 are $6. Call (619) 234-8291 oraerospacemuseum.org. Emer Cooke says a lengthy licensing process will not be required for adjusted vaccines. Photo: Naoise Culhane The HSE is to extend the gap between the first and second doses of the Pfizer BionTech vaccine to 28 days, instead of 21 days. It comes amid concerns that supplies of the vaccine from Pfizer will slow down for a number of weeks as it upgrades its plant in Belgium to increase its production to 2bn doses. The move to extend the gap between doses is aimed at stretching supplies of the vaccine and covering more people earlier. Pfizer confirmed to Independent.ie that Ireland may get less vaccines in late January and early February. Read More It said today it is working hard to deliver more doses than originally forecasted this year with a newly stated goal of two billion doses in 2021. To do this, Pfizer is scaling up manufacturing operations to increase dose availability and output. As part of the normal productivity improvements to increase capacity, we must make modifications to the process and facility that will require additional regulatory approvals. Although this will temporarily impact shipments in late January to early February, it will provide a significant increase in doses available for patients in late February and March. Consequently, there may be fluctuations in orders and shipping schedules at our Puurs facility in the immediate future to quickly enable the increased production volumes. The vaccine is authorised to be given in two doses 21 days apart. The first dose is believed to provide around 52pc protection but it still leaves a person at significant risk of getting ill if they contract the virus. The two dose vaccine is 95pc effective. The HSE is under pressure to step the roll out of the vaccine, particularly to the over-65s who are being badly hit by surge in spread in the third wave. Under new guidelines vaccinators have been told to inform people who get the first dose they will now get the second in 28 days. The vaccine is currently being given to frontline health staff and to people over 65 in long term care. More than 77,000 doses of the vaccine have been given so far. The HSE will have around 49,000 this week, following a decision by the European Medicines Agency to allow for six doses, instead of five to be taken from each vial. Emer Cooke, head of the European Medicines Agency which granted approval to the vaccine, said there is no evidence that the 12 week gap between first and second doses which is being operated by the UK, works. Speaking at a presentation organised by the Institute of International and European Affairs she said there is still a lot of work to be done on whether that will work or not. The clinical trials results for the Pfizer vaccine recommends a three week gap and it is 28 days for the Moderna vaccine. There is a bit of leeway but it is still not clear if this will work, she said. We can only go on the basis of the trials that have been done and the evidence in those trials. The HSE plans to concentrate more on nursing homes for the roll out of the vaccine next week with 47,000 more vaccinations spread across residents over 65 and frontline healthcare staff. However, some of this may be hampered by the large number of virus outbreaks in nursing homes. Ms Cooke also told how Pfizer and Moderna will not have to go back to the drawing board and start a full new approval process if their Covid-19 vaccines are impacted by one of the new more infectious strains of the virus. Pfizer BioNTech has said it could readjust vaccines to work against the new strains in about six weeks. There were fears this would mean having to undergo a lengthy licensing process again, delaying access to the public. However, Irish-born Ms Cooke said the regulatory agency is already talking to Pfizer and Moderna about how they would work in the context of the new strains. The hope is the EMA would be able to have a process where they would not have to go back for full approval. "We would be able to use a lot of what we have already, she said. Ms Cooke confirmed the EMA is hopeful of coming to a decision on the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine by the end of the month. Coronavirus Ireland: local case numbers revealed find the Covid incidence rate in your area When will I get the Covid vaccine? Some people will wait until September, says latest schedule Up to 23 people died this month after contracting virus in hospital outbreak The dates depend on everything going right and everyone working together to make it happen. Its challenging but we are hopeful. The EMA is also doing an active rolling review looking at clinical-trial results as they come through in the case of the Janssen vaccine and 45 other makers of vaccines who have contacted the body. She said people involved in clinical trials will be followed up for two years. There is also a need for treatments for patients who are sick with Covid-19. So far monoclonal antibodies, lab-made drugs to mimic natural antibodies to the virus, have not yet shown definitive efficiency, she said. The EMA will also look for potential new and unexpected side-effects in the wider population. Commenting on criticism that the EMA is too slow in authorising vaccines, she said the conditional marketing authorisation system it operates in relation to the vaccines is the most appropriate tool for a Europe-wide approach. It takes a bit longer but it does benefit from a very robust peer-review system and it means we have collective acceptance across the EU. She said although hundreds of experts have worked around the clock to perform this evaluation work in record time we constantly hear criticism about perceived delays in the EU in view of the emergency-use authorisations which were granted in the UK and the US". She said such emergency approvals are not available at the level of the EMA. But also, the European member states consider the conditional-marketing authorisation to be the most appropriate regulatory mechanism for use in the current pandemic emergency. I want to stress once again that we have applied the same robust standards as for any vaccine evaluation, she said. I left Ireland 28 years ago this month, and since then I have lived and worked in five European cities, for three European organisations and one global organisation and had many interesting, enriching and exciting roles. "Even so, I have to say that taking over the helm of the European Medicines Agency just two months ago on November 16 could not have happened at a more challenging or exciting time. It is possible that many of you had not heard about the European Medicines Agency until very recently and had little or no knowledge or awareness of medicines regulation. She added: It is fair to say that we were not set up to deal with crises, even if we do a lot of crisis management. But in the context of Covid-19, the regulatory network adapted and quickly made the response to the pandemic the priority. We also recognised early on that staying within the boundaries of our mandate was not enough to take on the many tasks needed to protect EU citizens during the pandemic. Deena Cortese finally agreed to meet with Angelina Pivarnick after a feud that kept them apart for 10 months on Thursday's episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. The 34-year-old mom acquiesced to a sharing a table with Angelina, also 34, at a dinner for DJ Pauly D's girlfriend. Deena said she would attend the meal for Nikki Hall, 26, if she and Angelina could be seated on 'opposite sides of the table.' Lengthy feud: Deena Cortese finally agreed to meet with Angelina Pivarnick after a feud that kept them apart for 10 months on Thursday's episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation That felt like a victory to the Jersey Shore guys, who had orchestrated a reunion between the two by getting them to both vacation at the same Las Vegas hotel. They'd spent months trying to broker peace between the girls, who'd formerly been close, but had fallen out after Angelina's November 2019 wedding. Asked to give a speech at that event, Deena, Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi, 33, and Jenni 'JWoww' Farley, 34, launched into a bawdy, off-color tribute that left Angelina steaming. The Las Vegas trip was supposed to bring Deena and Angelina back together, but they'd so far avoided one another. Wedding fallout: The 34-year-old mom acquiesced to a sharing a table with Angelina, also 34, at a dinner for DJ Pauly D's girlfriend Making matters worse, Deena quietly revealed to Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino, 38, that Jenni demanded she not make up with Angelina on the trip. To figure out what to do, the guys gathered in their suite for a 'Brotein' shake Mike concocted. They asked Deena's husband Chris Buckner, 31, if he would stop by and cut their hair, hoping that he could convince Deena to talk to Angelina. Brotein shake: Ronnie Ortiz-Magro got a kick out of the 'Brotein' shake concocted by Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino When Chris insisted it wouldn't work, they moved on to Plan B: Divide and conquer. They decided that half the guys would speak to Deena, and the other half to Angelina. Vinny Guadagnino, 33, and DJ Pauly D, 40, took Deena and Chris to dinner, pretending that they really wanted to celebrate the second anniversary of their 'bro-mittment' as best buds. Dinner mission: Vinny Guadagnino, 33, and DJ Pauly D, 40, took Deena and her husband Chris to dinner, pretending that they really wanted to celebrate the second anniversary of their 'bro-mittment' as best buds Mike, his wife Lauren, 36, and Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, 35, dined with Angelina, and had a fun yet salty discussion about explicit photos people sent them. It was all going well, with Vinny and Pauly initially 'talking about everything under the sun'gummy candies, nuclear proliferation, cucumber waterexcept the real issue. Finally, they had to address the elephant in the room. Separate dinner: Mike, his wife Lauren, 36, and Ronnie, 35, dined with Angelina, and had a fun yet salty discussion about explicit photos people sent them Nervous, Pauly opened his mouth to ask Deena about Angelina when a chattering noise came from the bushes, making Deena say, 'What the f*** was that?!' The answer: raccoons. A family of raccoons. 'Just about to drop the bomb on Deena and all of a sudden out comes some raccoons,' Pauly said in a confessional. 'Like, is this some kind of sick omen?' Sick omen: 'Just about to drop the bomb on Deena and all of a sudden out comes some raccoons,' Pauly said in a confessional. 'Like, is this some kind of sick omen?' Over at Mike and Ronnie's dinner table, Angelina was heard admitting that perhaps she shouldn't have gotten so upset over what happened at her wedding. To the cameras, she explained, 'It's been 10 months. I just want to let it go. I'm over it, and I don't want to do this anymore.' At his own table, Pauly was getting anxious about talking to Deena, so he tried a different tactic. Over it: To the cameras, Angelina explained, 'It's been 10 months. I just want to let it go. I'm over it, and I don't want to do this anymore' Very casually, he mentioned that he'd love to have Nikki come visit and meet everyone at the hotel, but he didn't want to do 'a bunch of little dinners.' 'I want everybody to come,' he said, looking ever-so-sweetly at Deena. 'Will you come?' 'Yeah,' Deena said after a long pause. 'I will. I want to meet her.' Dinner pact: 'Yeah,' Deena said after a long pause after Pauly asked her to meet his girlfriend over dinner. 'I will. I want to meet her' Pauly was jubilant, saying privately, 'Holy f***, she went for it! She took it hook, line and sinker.' Deena emphasized that she and Angelina would have to sit on opposite sides of the table. 'Jenni will be pi**ed,' she whispered to her husband as dinner ended. Firm rule: The reality star emphasized that she and Angelina would have to sit on opposite sides of the table The guys then met in the lobby to find out how their respective dinners went. At first, Pauly and Vinny convinced Mike and Ronnie that Deena had gotten upset and fled the meal, but moments later they confessed the truth: She was in. 'She said yes!' Pauly crowed, as they all hugged and danced around. Good one: At first, Pauly and Vinny convinced Mike and Ronnie that Deena had gotten upset and fled the meal, but moments later they confessed the truth: She was in The next morning, the guys needed to get Angelina on board, and vowed to underplay the evening's dinner with Nikki, only loosely mentioning that Deena would be there. Minutes in, Mike ruined their plan by highlighting the fact that Deena would attend. 'You're not supposed to say anything,' Ronnie chided him, shaking his head. Open book: Minutes in, Mike ruined their plan by highlighting the fact that Deena would attend Angelina said she'd be okay with seeing Deena at dinner, but secretly she wondered if she was ready for it. Ronnie was then put on 'Angelina duty,' and charged with keeping her out of trouble. Not long afterward, Angelina slipped away from him and went to the bar for drinks. Drink time: Ronnie was then put on 'Angelina duty,' and charged with keeping her out of trouble, but she was soon behind the bar Still flushed with success, Pauly and Vinny went for a mini-bike ride around their hotel. They tried to figure out where to seat everyone at dinner that evening, using 'trigonometry' to figure out a peaceable arrangement. Pauly had never introduced a girl to 'the family,' so it was all critically important to him. Family introduction: Pauly had never introduced a girl to 'the family,' so it was all critically important to him As he waited for Nikki in his hotel suite afterward, everyone noticed how happy he was. 'Somebody's wifey is coming to town!' the guys chanted, as Pauly beamed. But in a preview of next week's show, their plan seemed to have hit a snag. Deena was shown telling the boys it had all been too much, and she was flying home. Jersey Shore: Family Vacation will return next week on MTV. At the end of 2020 Israel conducted two weeks of anti-aircraft system tests in the eastern Mediterranean against targets simulating multiple missile and rocket threats. To handle this kind of multiple threat attack Israel ran successful tests demonstrating three different air-defense systems communicating with each other using a centralized target detection and fire control network to take down multiples of different types of targets. This new fire-control network enabled each air-defense system to successfully attack targets it was best capable of destroying. This test also showed that Iron Dome was capable of destroying an incoming cruise missile. Other incoming weapons included unguided rockets, a simulated ballistic missile and UAVs. The test was mainly about proving that a new integrated sensors and fire control system worked. The integrated system provided a single 3-D picture of the battlefield by combining data from the American Missile Defense Satellite early warning system plus the local radar systems used by Iron Dome, C-Dome (Iron Dome mounted on Israeli corvettes and offshore natural gas extraction platforms), Davids Sling (formerly Magic Wand), and Arrow, the Israel based ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) system. Such an integrated system was needed to protect Israel from a massive Iranian attack using rockets, explosives-laden UAVs and cruise missiles launched from Lebanon and Gaza as well as IRBMs (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles) launched from Iran and shorter-range ballistic missiles launched from Syria or (illegally) Iraq. The IRBM interception capabilities of Arrow had already been tested in 2017 and Davids Sling had been used against incoming missiles from Syria in 2018. Iron Dome has intercepted over 2,400 rockets, mortar shells and UAVs since 2011 and demonstrated its ability to deal with cruise missiles during the December tests. Detecting and taking down cruise missiles is a new capability for Iron Dome and C-Dome. This new capability was seen as essential for Iron Dome because these can come from any direction and used in large numbers in a single attack. Iron Dome is designed to deal with such mass attacks by rockets and using the new integrated command and control system, it was found that the target data could quickly and successfully be used from other radar systems. In early 2017 Israel successfully completed a final round of tests for its Davids Sling anti-aircraft/missile system and began deploying it in late 2017. At the same time the new Arrow 3 completed its final tests and was cleared for mass production as the version of Arrow that can intercept the longer-range Iranian IRBMs. Iron Dome has a unique feature in which the radar system computes where the incoming rocket will land. If the rocket will not hit an inhabited area, it will be ignored. Otherwise, one or two interceptor missiles will be fired. Davids Sling adopted some of that technology for its anti-missile mode. The Davids Sling Stunner missile can be used against larger rockets that will be aimed (by Syria, Hamas or Hezbollah) at large urban areas, and these will almost always get a Stunner fired at them. Davids Sling is expected to eventually replace the 17 Hawk anti-aircraft batteries as well and, eventually, the six Patriot batteries. Davids Sling is very similar to Patriot and one option is to offer Davids Sling components as upgrades for existing Patriot equipment. Stunner is already available as a Patriot upgrade because Stunner has a max range of 300 kilometers, which is longer than Patriot. Many of the Davids Sling technologies were developed jointly by American and Israeli firms with Patriot upgrades in mind. The Stunner missile's long range allows two Davids Sling batteries to cover all of Israel. A Davids Sling battalion would have three batteries each with six truck mounted launchers (each with four missiles), a radar vehicle and control vehicle. Arrow 3 was earlier tested in the Eastern Mediterranean against Israeli ballistic missile warheads launched from high-flying jets. In 2019 Arrow was also tested from the American PSCA (Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska) in Kodiak, Alaska against three different ballistic missile targets. Israeli Sparrow ballistic missile targets are often used for testing the ABM capabilities of Davids Sling, Patriot and Arrow. These targets are missiles carried to a high altitude by an F-16, F-15 or a large transport aircraft. When launched, the missiles fly higher and then plunge earthward at a speed and trajectory nearly identical to that of a ballistic missile warhead. This provides an accurate target for testing anti-missile systems. All these Sparrow systems are basically air-to-surface missiles equipped to carry electronics reporting all flight characteristics, as well as some explosives so that the missile can be quickly destroyed in the air if it has problems and heads for a populated area. Sparrow is cheaper than any alternatives. All three models of Sparrow are about eight meters (twenty-six feet) long and look like large missiles with a reentry type warhead that has the shape of an object designed to survive the heat from a high-speed plunge back to earth. That is done by using the rocket to accelerate the warhead as it heads down. To a radar that speed makes it look like a ballistic missile warhead reentering the atmosphere. These warheads come in at different speeds depending on the range of the missile. Longer range missiles have a higher re-entry speed and that higher speed makes the warhead harder to track and hit with an anti-missile missile. The first of the three different models of the Sparrow system appeared in the 1990s to help test the new Arrow anti-missile system. That 1.4-ton Black Sparrow simulated earlier models of the Russian SCUD short range (about three-hundred kilometers) ballistic missile. The 1.8-ton Blue Sparrow simulates later, longer range (up to a thousand kilometers) models of the SCUD type missiles. The 3.2-ton Silver Sparrow simulates an IRBM with a range of up to two-thousand kilometers, like the Iranian Shahab 3. Sometimes these target systems can cause problems all by themselves. In September 2013 two Sparrows were used over the Mediterranean for an Arrow test. A Russian electronic monitoring and radar tracking ship (spy ship) was off the Syrian coast to keep an eye on NATO activity in the area and detected the incoming Sparrows. The Russians reported the use of ballistic missiles and the Israelis quickly revealed that these were Sparrows, not ballistic missiles. Guangzhous Liwan district carried out nucleic acid tests throughout Wednesday night and Thursday in a bid to control the spread of Covid-19. The southern metropolis is under pressure to prevent imported infections, after a person was confirmed Friday to have contracted a strain of the coronavirus first found in India. The city reported three new cases, one local and two imported, on Wednesday May 27, 2021 05:09 PM The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. MONTREAL, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - BCE Inc. (TSX: BCE), (NYSE: BCE) will hold its fourth-quarter 2020 results conference call with the financial community on Thursday, February 4, 2021 at 8:00 am eastern. Participants will include Mirko Bibic, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Glen LeBlanc, Chief Financial Officer. Media are welcome to participate on a listen-only basis. To participate, please dial toll-free 1-800-806-5484 or 416-340-2217 and enter passcode 9050712#. A replay will be available until midnight on March 4, 2021 by dialing 1-800-408-3053 or 905-694-9451 and entering passcode 1001600#. A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available on BCE's website at BCE Q4-2020 conference call. About BCE BCE is Canada's largest communications company, providing advanced Bell broadband wireless, TV, Internet and business communications services alongside Canada's premier content creation and media assets from Bell Media. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca or BCE.ca. The Bell Let's Talk initiative promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns like Bell Let's Talk Day taking place this year on January 28 and significant Bell funding of community care and access, research and workplace leadership initiatives. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk. Media inquiries: Marie-Eve Francoeur 514-391-5263 [email protected] Investor inquiries: Thane Fotopoulos 514-870-4619 [email protected] SOURCE Bell Canada Related Links www.bell.ca P-Waver is based in Taiwan, an island located along the 'Ring of Fire' in the Western Pacific that experiences over 18,000 earthquakes annually. Started in 2010, Pei-Yang Lin and his team have used big data and AI technology to create an Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) model that, after successful on-site lab validation, has been installed and used by the government, institutions, and international SI Partners. P-Waver's services also cover structural safety monitoring systems, earthquake disaster prevention consulting, and smart security solutions delivered via IOT devices or control systems for buildings and homes. As a member of the Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) program, P-Waver is working toward preventing seismic hazards across a market area spanning two billion people and three billion businesses. A Niche Space Focused on Protecting Human Life In today's socio-economic system, facilities increasingly incorporate built-in technologies. When an earthquake strikes, healthcare, transportation, security, and energy industries are at high risk of damage and disruption. In industries like precision manufacturing, it is crucial to implement soft stops of technical operations in emergency situations to reduce losses and speed up the recovery process. High speed rail also benefits from EEW systems by facilitating early braking, which enhances comprehensive safety management capabilities. EEW technology is a crucial component of current societal infrastructures, reducing the potential impact of earthquakes on daily life and the economy. P-Waver constructed their EEW system based on earthquake data from Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau and AI technology, which includes over 250,000 earthquake models. With 1-3 seconds of P-wave detection, the subsequent earthquake can be estimated immediately. This warning provides an additional 5-15 seconds of early warning time for regions located 30-100km from the epicenter. In order to prevent false alarms, P-Waver installs multiple sensors to detect the initial wave. Data are processed using AI to detect its peak P-wave, and advanced trigger logic gives this EEW system a prediction accuracy as high as 98%. P-Waver Is the Solution for Smart City Seismic Hazard Control Over the past decade, P-Waver has provided earthquake early warning systems for thousands of schools, science parks, and semiconductor plants. They have provided their services to global tier-1 companies, including Taiwan High Speed Rail, TSMC, and AGC. Potential future customers include automation plants, power plant facilities, hospitals, reservoirs, and smart-building construction firms. P-Waver is also targeting future collaboration opportunities. One area of interest is to expand their innovative EEW technology into smart city developments, which motivated their participation in CES. Their ambition is to approach smart city developers in the United States such as Intel, Micron, Tesla, and Honeywell as well as link up with partners in another regions to be a part of their future smart city developments as a provider of disaster safety management system solutions. P-Waver is also seeking new investor partners interested in security solutions for smart cities, smart homes, and AI Driven SaaS business models. CES 2021 TTA - VR Pavilionhttps://pse.is/3bfz36 SOURCE P-Waver Islamabad, Jan 15(UNI) After coming under fire from the scrutiny committee of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) which has been auditing foreign funding of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, the PTI on Thursday said it was the only party in the country which had been managing its funds with complete transparency. Information Minister Shibli Faraz told Dawn that PTI was responsible for setting a new tradition of fundraising by its party members both within the country and from Pakistani expatriates, owing no obligation to anybody for investing in election campaigns, adding that All this was done transparently and all the details of the funds received by the party have been submitted to the ECP,. He insisted that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Peoples Party on the other hand had failed to submit details of their suspicious donations and it was time for them to submit all the documents asked for by the ECP without any delay. The ECPs scrutiny committee at its second meeting on Thursday again examined the PTI's record of two LLCs (limited liability companies) registered in the United States. The petitioners lawyer Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah, and Badar Iqbal Chaudhry, had objected to the PTI's record and demanded that the official record of the two companies registered on the instructions of PTI chairman Imran Khan be scrutinised by the ECP's scrutiny committee. The committee was asked to either accept or reject official evidence to bring some credibility into the scrutiny. The committee is expected to meet again on January 20 to deliberate on the authenticity issue and communicate its order before proceeding further. The apparent change in PTIs stance which had in the past been denying any foreign funding evoked a strong reaction from the opposition parties, with many of them raising questions using social media platforms. PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz took to Twitter, saying that bogus certificate holder of being truthful and honest has confessed his crime and now says that the agents appointed by him were responsible for any wrongdoing. PTI accepted illegal funding collected through 2 US companies registered after Imran Khans written instructions. Illegal funding Rules for Corrupt practices shall apply here, PPP Senator Sehar Kamran tweeted. UNI XC ACL0908 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 If you have an HDFC Bank credit card and you have been eyeing some Apple products waiting for some good deals to come around, you are very much in luck. Apple has announced that starting Thursday, January 21, there will be a cashback scheme that will be applicable for all orders that have the final checkout amount of Rs 44,900 or more on the Apple India Online Store. The cashback will be a flat Rs 5,000. At this time, the qualifying cards for this offer on the Apple India Online Store are all HDFC Bank credit cards and the cashback is also available on HDFC Credit Card EMI as well. The cashback offer will run through till January 28. This may just be a good time to order a new Apple iPhone that you always wanted, or maybe even a new MacBook Air with the M1 chip or even the cool new Apple AirPods Max wireless headphones. Apple says that the maximum cashback of Rs 5,000 will be applicable on a single order that totals up to Rs 44,900 or more. Multiple orders cannot be combined for the cashback. The cashback, once an order is successfully paid, will be credited to the users HDFC credit card account within a period of 7 days. You will also be able to take advantage of the Rs 5,000 cashback as well as the No Cost EMI option for any order that you place, as long as you pay with an HDFC Bank credit card. The cashback offer isnt available for Apple Store for Education pricing, however. The Apple India online store went Live in September last year, and all of Apples products are on sale on the store. This includes the entire iPhone line-up, the Mac computing devices, the iPad series, Apple Watch, Apple AirPods family, HomePod smart speaker and more. There are also category specific offers, including trade-in and exchange offers for the iPhones, localizations, the Education Store, Configure to Order your Mac computing devices, extended range of payments and EMI options, shopping assistance in English and Hindi and Apple Care+ services as well as no-contact delivery. India focus didnt just mean launching an online store. For Apple, the localizations went deeper. There is the Shopping Assistance option that allows customers to connect with Apple Specialists and communicate with them in English and Hindi. These specialists will be able to help with support and pre-purchase guidance. Support for more Indian languages is being added. Apple also has gifting options as well as the ability to engrave text or emojis on Apple AirPods, Apple iPad and the Apple Pencil. Engraving will be available in English as well as 7 Indian languages including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu for the Apple AirPods, and English for the Apple iPad and Apple Pencil. Last year also proved to be big for Apple on many fronts. That included Apples Make in India push. Mind you, Apple has been manufacturing the iPhone SE (first generation), iPhone 6s series, the iPhone 7 series and the iPhone XR, and also added the iPhone 11 to list earlier this year. It was reported that the iPhone 12 will also be manufactured in India beginning early 2021, at Wistrons facilities in Bengaluru. That could help Apple price the iPhone 12 phones more aggressively, something we saw with the iPhone XR and the iPhone 11 once the manufacturing in India started. Farmers, most of them from Punjab and Haryana, want the new agri farm laws scrapped. The protesting farmers will hold their ninth round of talks with the representatives of the Union government on January 15. This will be the first meeting between the two sides after the January 12 Supreme Court order putting a stay on the implementation of the three farm laws until further orders. The top court also set up a committee of experts that will talk to both sides and suggest changes where ever needed in the enactments as opposed by the farmers. The farmers have, however, refused to appear before the committee. While the government said it is hopeful of ending the impasse in todays meeting, farmers are adamant that nothing less than the repeal of the three farm laws will end their protest. Follow our LIVE BLOG on Farmers' Protest here We will attend the meeting with the government. But we do not want to speak with the SC committee. It is a ploy to divert attention from our main demand of repeal of the laws, Balbir Singh Rajewal, a member of the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha, a joint forum of protesting farmers unions said. The last round of talks between the two sides on January 8 hit a deadlock with the government refusing to repeal the laws. On January 12, the Supreme Court put on hold the implementation of the three farm laws and announced the setting up of a committee of agri- experts. Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar who is leading the governments side during negotiations was hopeful We are sensitive to all problems of the farmers, he said. Read | Farm bills have potential to represent significant step forward for agricultural reforms in India: IMF The government is expected to try and convince the farmers to appear before the committee. The meeting will take place at 12 noon at Vigyan Bhawan. The first meeting of the SC-appointed committee is scheduled to be held on January 19. The farmers have alleged that all the four members of the SC-appointed committee were pro-laws. Bhupinder Singh Mann, the national president of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), one of the four members, recused himself from the SC-appointed committee. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi, and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are on the panel, apart from Mann. The farmers have said that they will go ahead with the scheduled peaceful tractor march on Republic Day. Also read | By staying the implementation of the three farm laws, the SC has sent out the wrong message The two sides had arrived at some common ground in the sixth round of talks held on December 30 with the government agreeing on two of the four demands of farmers removing stubble burning penalty on farmers and withdrawing provisions in the draft Electricity Amendment Bill, 2020, which intend to change the mode of subsidy payment to farmers. Thousands of farmers, primarily from Punjab and Haryana, have been camping at several Delhi border points for 51 days, demanding the repeal of the laws, and a legal guarantee on minimum support prices (MSP) for their crops. CHICAGO, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This week, Nicor Gas asked the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) for a $293 million rate hike. In response, David Kolata, Executive Director of the Citizens Utility Board, issued the following statement: Nicor's massive rate-hike requestbelieved to be the largest proposed rate increase by a natural gas company in Illinois historyis a cold slap in the face for consumers struggling to pay their heating bills in the middle of an economic crisis brought on by a year-long pandemic. This represents Nicor's third attempt at a record-setting rate hike in the last four years, and it includes an excessive profit rate for shareholders of 10.35 percent. Enough is enough. CUB will join with other consumer advocates in mounting a legal challenge against this rate-hike request. Background: *On Thursday, Jan. 14, Nicor Gas requested a $293 million increase in delivery rates. That includes a 10.35 percent Return on Equity, or profit rate for shareholders. It represents an 8.37 percent increase in total bills for typical residential customers. The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) will rule on the request in about 11 months. *This is the third rate hike Nicor has requested in four years. The company initially asked for about $208 million in 2017 and about $230 million in 2018both believed to be record requests at the time. The company has received a total of more than $261 million in rate hikes since 2017. *This will impact delivery rates, which take up about a third to a half of gas bills. It's what Nicor charges customers to cover the costs of delivering gas to homesplus a profit. *Nicor is the state's largest natural gas utility, serving 2.2 million residential, public sector and business customers in more than 650 communities throughout northern Illinois. *Warning: Even customers who pay an alternative gas supplier still pay Nicor's delivery charges. So customers should beware of any sales representative who says they can avoid the rate hike by going with an unregulated supplier. All customers would pay these higher rates. CUB is Illinois' leading nonprofit utility watchdog. Created by the Illinois Legislature, CUB opened its doors in 1984 to represent the interests of residential and small-business utility customers. Since then, it has saved consumers more than $20 billion by helping block rate hikes, secure refunds, and fight for clean, low-cost energy. For more information, call CUB's Consumer Hotline, 1-800-669-5556, or visit its award-winning website, www.CitizensUtilityBoard.org. SOURCE Citizens Utility Board Related Links http://www.citizensutilityboard.org WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump will leave Washington next Wednesday morning, ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. That's according to a person familiar with the planning who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been made public. Trump had already announced that he would not be attending Biden's inauguration, a break with tradition. He has spent months lobbing baseless allegations of voter fraud in an attempt to delegitimize Biden's presidency. Vice President Mike Pence will attend in his place. Trump is expected to remain in Florida with a small group of aides. The third week of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign in Spain has seen a significant improvement in the rate of doses administered despite the chaos caused this weekend by the arrival of Storm Filomena in areas such as Madrid. According to the latest data from the central Health Ministry, the number of people given the vaccine on Wednesday, 94,548, was practically the same as those administered in the entire first week of the campaign (99,753), which officially began on December 27 and was considerably disrupted due to the New Year holidays. One of the factors that is speeding up the process is the fact that most regions have reduced the number of doses that they are keeping back for unforeseen circumstances That said, in order to reach the governments objective of 30 million people vaccinated by the summer, the rhythm still needs to increase. If the only vaccines used are those that require two doses, and vaccinations are administered during the weekend, to get to 30 million people by July 1, Spain will need to vaccinate a total of 1.3 million people a week, administering a total of 2.6 million doses. Given that the current rate is around 700,000 a week, the pace will need to be picked up by a multiple of four in order to reach the objective. Currently, Spain is using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which requires two doses. The next to arrive will be the Oxford/AstraZeneca inoculation, which also consists of two injections. The Janssen vaccine is a single dose. Spokespersons from the regional healthcare systems, which are in charge not just of handling the pandemic in their territories but also the vaccination process, say that the improvement in the vaccination rates is due to better organization, as well as the fact that the medical professionals administering the vaccines having gained confidence with a process that is slightly more complicated than the ones they are used to. Whats more, practically all of the regions have now begun to vaccinate healthcare workers, meaning that the vaccination teams do not have to travel to other areas in order to administer the doses, and the environment in which they are being given is better prepared for the cold storage of the vaccine. The priority is to increase the population that has been vaccinated in order to meet the deadlines and keep up the rhythm Florentino Perez Raya, president of the General Nursing Council Of particular note are the regions where the process began more slowly. While Madrid is still the second slowest, on Wednesday it administered 14,000 doses. This ranks it fourth in absolute terms, and it has so far administered 42% of the vaccines it has received. The most active territories are the North African city of Melilla, which has injected 91% of received shots, followed by Valencia with 85% and Asturias with 79%. Another of the factors that is speeding up the process is the fact that most regions have reduced the number of doses that they are keeping back for unforeseen circumstances. In the first week of the campaign, and due to fears that the supply would be interrupted, practically all of the countrys regions apart from Asturias, and the North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla administered fewer doses because they were keeping back the second injection for the same recipients. That dose is administered 21 days after the first. If that was the reason for these regions not having used all of the vaccines they have received, the percentage of use should be 50%. In the areas that opted for this strategy, Catalonia reports having used 57% and La Rioja 60%, but in Madrid and the Basque Country, the percentages are 42% and 41%, respectively, suggesting that other factors are causing the delays. The president of the General Nursing Council, Florentino Perez Raya, believes that the priority is to increase the population that has been vaccinated in order to meet the deadlines and keep up the rhythm. He adds that it is of key importance to administer 100% of the received vaccinations, and we are calling on those regions who have low percentages of administered vaccines to speed up and to get up to date as soon as possible, as this should be a national priority. However, he also warns that vaccination experts have expressed their concerns over delays to future supplies, and that the second doses might not arrive for some people who have already been vaccinated. In which case, it could be reasonable to keep back a small proportion. He adds that this decision should have a state-wide vision, with a guarantee from the Health Ministry that the second doses will arrive 21 days after the first. Meanwhile, the experts are divided on the impact that the administration of the second dose will have on the speed of the process. Those who were vaccinated on the first full day of the campaign, on December 28, are due to start receiving the shots from January 18. The number of people receiving inoculations is likely to grow from this date, but it is possible that there will be fewer new recipients, given that part of the efforts will be dedicated to administering the second shots to those who have already had the first. English version by Simon Hunter. Deputy Information Minister, Pius Enam Hadzide has urged the governing New Patriotic Party not to engage in blame games over their loss of Parliamentary seats. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) currently has 137 seats in Parliament in contrast to the party's 169 seats in 2012. There have been a lot of explanations with some critics blaming the NPP executives for the party's loss. Some people have argued that the party leaders were complacent, hiding behind the President's free Senior High School (SHS) policy and thinking it would do the magic for them to win seats in Parliament. Contributing to Peace FM's "Kokrokoo", the Deputy Information Minister advised the party to unite and leave their past behind them. He called on them to rather support President Akufo-Addo's vision to develop the nation. "We must know that we have a government and so we must unite. We should rally support behind President Nana Akufo-Addo and also strengthen our party," he said. 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 25-year-old white man who stabbed a Black college student to death during a chance encounter on the University of Marylands main campus in 2017 in what prosecutors said was a racially motivated hate crime was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison. The man, Sean C. Urbanski, was convicted in December 2019 by a jury in Prince Georges County, Md., of first-degree murder in the death of Richard W. Collins III. Mr. Collins, 23, was days away from graduating from nearby Bowie State University and had recently been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. He was preparing to move to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., for training in defending the country against chemical attacks. He was on a pinnacle of doing great things, Dawn Collins, Mr. Collinss mother, said at a news conference on Thursday after the sentencing. LAS VEGAS, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As Maier Gutierrez & Associates celebrates a decade in business as a boutique Las Vegas-based law firm in 2021, founding partners Jason Maier and Joseph Gutierrez relaunch their brand with a new marketing campaign designed to stand out within the local market. The law firm boasts a winning streak for its clients in multiple practice areas, including personal injury, business disputes, employment matters, and legal malpractice. Maier Gutierrez & Associates also holds a record-breaking $2.2 billion judgment, the largest in Nevada history. Maier Gutierrez & Associates "We founded Maier Gutierrez & Associates almost ten years ago after years of working in large, corporate law firms," stated Maier. "We brought with us the litigation expertise of a big law firm and coupled it with a tenacious commitment to fighting for our clients' interests, in and out of the courtroom." Gutierrez added, "We are very proud of what we have achieved on behalf of our clients. As we approach our 10-year anniversary, we wanted to highlight our work for our clients, proven results, and history of strong settlements through a compelling marketing campaign that strengthens our brand in the valley." The branding and digital marketing agency BrandSpa created the marketing campaign to relaunch the law firm's brand within the highly competitive Las Vegas legal market with the theme: "justice is not a game." "Maier Gutierrez & Associates is one of the most respected and reputable law firms in Las Vegas," said Felipe Parra, BrandSpa Executive Creative Director. "Our challenge was to clearly articulate their fervor for the law and their clients while establishing a strong narrative to elevate their brand and emphasize their record of success." "Justice is the most powerful expression of humanity," the television ad says. "Success is defined by a winning streak, not internet likes or shiny artifacts. People's lives are not a game. This is the difference between an empty promise and a powerful settlement The shortest battle happens when you are ready to win. The wise choices you make at your most vulnerable time, define how strong you're going to be the rest of your life." To view or download the new MGA ads created by BrandSpa, please visit https://bit.ly/3oCf72S. For more information on Maier Gutierrez & Associates, visit www.mgalaw.com or follow the law firm on Facebook, Instagram , or Twitter. About Maier Gutierrez & Associates Maier Gutierrez & Associates is a Las Vegas-based litigation law firm with a history of providing the highest quality legal services to a variety of individuals and corporations. Founded in 2011, Maier Gutierrez & Associates brings a rare mix of big firm experience and resources along with small firm personal attention to each client. The law firm has a proven record of success, including the largest judgment in Nevada history, as well as a highly respected reputation for tirelessly advocating on behalf of their clients to bring them the best results while providing a new level of personal service. Maier Gutierrez & Associates represents clients in virtually every area of civil litigation, including the areas of personal injury, business and employment law, product liability, and legal malpractice. www.mgalaw.com MEDIA CONTACT: Amy E. S. Maier, [email protected], 702-904-0296 Related Files MGA Brand Press Release Jan 2021.pdf Related Images maier-gutierrez-associates.jpg Maier Gutierrez & Associates Related Links Maier Gutierrez & Associates Related Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKXMVtzt2Pk SOURCE Maier Gutierrez & Associates KYODO NEWS - Jan 16, 2021 - 03:08 | World, All U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has officially tapped former senior State Department official Kurt Campbell for the post of White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, the incoming administration's website about the transition showed. The new position in the National Security Council will reportedly give the veteran diplomat, who takes a tough stance against China, a broad scope to manage the NSC directorates that cover various parts of Asia and China-related issues. Campbell was assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama, during which Biden served as vice president. He is also well-versed in Japan and known as an architect of the Asia-Pacific "pivot" or "rebalancing" strategy pursued by Obama, a phrase used to signal a focus on the region amid China's rise. An article written by Campbell and a China expert which was published in Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this week denounced Republican President Donald Trump for undermining U.S. alliances, such as with Japan and South Korea, through his transactional approach and called for working with allies to deter China's assertiveness. They said the United States should be flexible in building its partnerships, such as by pursuing "ad hoc" bodies to work on individual problems including trade and technology. On coalition-building focused on military deterrence, they touched on expanding the Quad, currently composed of Australia, India, Japan and the United States. According to the transition team website, Laura Rosenberger, also a former State Department official, will serve as senior director for China in the NSC. She was NSC director for China and Korea under the Obama administration. (Natural News) On Christmas Eve, President Donald Trump repeated his concerns over Big Tech censorship following his veto of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA) over Congress failure to remove liability protections for the social media companies as part of the bill. Twitter is going wild with their flags, trying hard to suppress even the truth. Just shows how dangerous they are, purposely stifling free speech. Very dangerous for our Country, Trump said in a Twitter post on Dec. 24. Does Congress know that this is how Communism starts? Social media has increased censorship of conservatives after the election The Trump administration has repeatedly underscored the risks of unbalanced policing of user content on social media platforms. It has claimed that the companies have engaged in conduct that has limited conservative viewpoints and stifled free speech. As part of this, the president and the Department of Justice have urged Congress to roll back social media companies legal protections under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Section 230 exempts online platforms from liability for content posted by their users though they can still be liable for content that violates intellectual property and anti-sex trafficking laws. The law also allows companies to block or screen content that they find obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable as long as they do it in good faith. But these protections were not intended to apply to services that act more like publishers than online platforms, said outgoing Attorney General William Barr in a speech last May. During the lead up to and after the November presidential election, Twitter ramped up its policing of posts by the president and other users over claims of voter fraud. On Nov. 12, the company said that it had applied labels, warnings and other restrictions to about 300,000 posts made from Oct. 27 to Nov. 11 for content that it claimed was disputed and potentially misleading. Included in these were a series of Tweets by Trump that argued that there was widespread voter fraud during the elections. These have been labeled with a warning that states, This claim about election fraud is disputed. More recently, the social media giant has been labeling relevant posts, saying that Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election, even though a number of legal challenges against the election results still exist. Congress moves to override Trumps veto Even as Trump vetoed the NDAA for failure to include Section 230 repeals, the House of Representatives voted on Monday, Dec. 28, to override the veto. The bill itself had initially passed both the House and the Senate with veto-proof majorities. But it had been unclear if the override attempt would be successful or if the veto would be sustained amid the presidents continued opposition to it. Following the override in the House, the bill will next head to the Senate for that chambers veto override attempt. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said on the night of Monday, Dec. 28, that he would delay the vote there unless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brings a vote on $2,000 stimulus checks to the floor. This move could delay a final vote on the Senates override to Friday. The $740 defense bill includes pay raises for soldiers, modernization programs for equipment as well as provisions to require more scrutiny before troops are withdrawn from Germany or Afghanistan. In addition, the law includes provisions that limit how much money Trump can move around for his border wall and would require the military to rename bases named after figures from the Confederacy. The presidents veto has set up a clash with Congress that is putting Republican lawmakers in a difficult spot, while also paving the way for override attempts in both houses on Capitol Hill. Follow Censorship.news for more on how Twitter and other social media companies limit free speech. Sources include: TheEpochTimes.com Edition.CNN.com The Seoul Central District Court on Thursday sentenced late Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon's right-hand man to three years and six months behind bars for raping Park's secretary in April last year. In deciding the case, the court also recognized that Park himself sexually assaulted the victim on several other occasions. The police and prosecution had refused to bring a case because Park is dead and cannot be prosecuted, but the victim brought a separate case against her alleged rapist which cast an unexpected light on Park's conduct. To prove the case, the victim argued that she had to have more than six months of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder as a direct result of the rape. She testified that the official, who handled protocol for Park, took her to a hotel room and raped her after she passed out drunk. The case turned on whether her PTSD was the result of Park's actions, as the official argued, rather than his own. This prompted the court to determine whether the allegations against Park were true even though there was resistance from the family and law enforcement to making the evidence public. But based on her counseling records and other testimony the court concluded that the PTSD was the result of both ordeals. "About a year-and-a-half after I began working for Park, he began sending me sexually explicit messages and photos of himself wearing only his underwear, saying 'I want to smell you' and 'send me photos of you,'" the victim told her therapist. She also quoted the mayor as telling her she had a "nice body" and that she needed to get to know a man before getting married. The court concluded that the victim "suffered considerable mental pain due to sexual harassment committed by the former mayor" for four years starting in July 2015. BOSTON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DeleteMe, a service of The Online Privacy Company, is offering all 535 members of congress and their families $1 DeleteMe service for 2021 (normally $129). The availability of our private personal info in an instant Google search from a mobile phone exposes too easily our homes and family members to harms which can stem from in-the-moment emotions and highly-charged situations. "Nobody in this climate especially in Congress wants their private personal information exposed from a simple Google search," said Rob Shavell, DeleteMe co-founder. "Our belief is every citizen has a right to privacy in the digital era and, in supporting Congress in this time of need, we also trust this will educate and help to catalyze much-needed privacy legislation in America." DeleteMe is an annual subscription privacy service that removes any individuals' personal info including home addresses, phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, relatives' names and more from dozens of top online data brokers who have profiles in 97% of Americans and whose links appear on Google searches for people's names. Congress members (or their families) can sign up at www.joindeleteme.com/congress DeleteMe is the leading privacy personal information removal service with over 25,000,000 opt-outs completed and with 40% of the Fortune 100 as business customers for their employees and executives. DeleteMe privacy protection plans include: 4 privacy reports per year showing exactly where personal information was found and where it was removed Dedicated Privacy Advisor for help and custom removal requests Monitoring and removal of all sources in case information is repopulated Additional data brokers added throughout the year in response to market changes Optional upgrades to Executive Plans for key public figures Join DeleteMe today at www.joindeleteme.com/congress . For anyone experiencing financial hardship, DeleteMe supplies free "do it yourself" guides covering all data brokers. About DeleteMe: https://joindeleteme.com/ DeleteMe is the leading online privacy personal information removal service. In business for over 10 years, DeleteMe's privacy advisors have successfully completed over 25 million opt-outs from data brokers, ensuring consumers and businesses' online privacy. About DeleteMe for Business: https://joindeleteme.com/business-privacy/ DeleteMe for Business services over 40% of Fortune 100 corporations, with special plans for protecting executives, employees, and their families from harassment, doxxing, identity theft, phishing, telemarketing, robocalls, and scams. CONTACT: Will Simonds, (425) 736-1528, [email protected] SOURCE DeleteMe Related Links https://joindeleteme.com/ WASHINGTON President-elect Joe Biden has big plans for his first 100 days in office, when hes vowed to roll back the Trump administrations immigration crackdown, push policies addressing climate change and potentially forgive student debt for thousands of Americans. Hes also said hell push a mask mandate to combat COVID-19 and wants Congress to pass another massive stimulus package. And in the longer term, Biden has talked about rewriting the tax code to raise taxes on the rich. Texas is almost certain to fight him every step of the way. The state is about to be back on the front lines battling against the federal government, a long tradition for its Republican leaders, from former Gov. Rick Perry to Gov. Greg Abbott who as the states attorney general famously said, I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home. Abbotts successor, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been just as committed to pushing back on federal laws and mandates championed by Democrats. Most recently he led a failed lawsuit seeking to overturn Bidens victory in four battleground states at the U.S. Supreme Court. Paxton did not respond to a request for comment. RELATED: AG Ken Paxton urged White House to revoke Harris County COVID relief funds over mail ballots As Biden takes office next week, many expect the state to pick up where it left off after suing the Obama administration dozens of times to stop initiatives such as the Clean Power Plan, scrap protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children and end the Affordable Care Act. The conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation which filed the Obamacare challenge that Paxton joined and is now before the Supreme Court is gearing up to start grinding out challenges to a slew of White House priorities regarding immigration, energy and taxes. On the eve of the election we were discussing internally, Well, what would happen if Biden won? One thing everyone pretty much agreed on is our litigation center would probably increase in size significantly, said Chuck DeVore, vice president of national initiatives at TPPF. Were kind of excited about it. Robert Henneke, general counsel at the TPPF, wouldnt say whether the groups legal staff has grown as expected, but did say they are bracing for battles ahead as he expects the Biden administration to pick up where the Obama administration left off. IN-DEPTH: Biden poised to decarbonize U.S. economy Texas will, too. Litigation challenging unconstitutional action from the Biden administration will be a central issue, Henneke said. Where the new administration seeks to go out of bounds of what powers have been delegated to it, or enacts policies and rules that arent supported by data and science, I expect that well be chief among those challenging those type of policies. Here is a preview of the looming legal battles. AFFORDABLE CARE ACT The state, along with TPPF, is suing to end the Affordable Care Act which Biden said he wants to strengthen in a case that the Supreme Court heard last year and could decide any day. A ruling in Texas favor, which appears unlikely, could nonetheless present a major roadblock in Bidens first months in office and an early test of his ability to navigate a Congress his party will control but where many Democrats want bolder health care options than Obamacare offers now. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Texas leads the nation in uninsured and nearly 1.3 million Texans signed up for Affordable Care Act health plans in November, a 15-percent jump over the previous year. DEFERRED ACTION FOR CHILDHOOD ARRIVALS Texas is also still challenging the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which the Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump from ending. Biden has said hell work to protect it. That case is before Andrew Hanen, a conservative federal district court judge in Houston who has said he believes DACA as enacted by Obama is unconstitutional. The Biden administration, meanwhile, is eyeing expanding the program. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris earlier this month said the administration is planning to push a sweeping immigration bill that, among other things, would give green cards to those protected by DACA. ASYLUM AND THE BORDER Immigration is almost certain to be a flashpoint in the early years of the Biden administration. Biden has said he wants to undo most of Trumps strict immigration policies, including his asylum policies, which require tens of thousands of migrants to await hearings in Mexico. But his advisers have warned Biden in recent weeks that might not happen on Day 1 as he promised, as they fear it could lead to another surge in migration at the border. The timeline is to do it so that we, in fact, make it better not worse, Biden said in December. Some Texans, including U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, are calling on Biden to quickly end construction of the border wall. Cuellar in December urged the incoming president to cancel all federal construction contracts and dismiss all condemnation suits. ENERGY Biden has hand-picked a team of progressives on the issue of climate change and will have control over both houses of Congress, giving him a shot at moving the nation away from fossil fuels to a degree that far exceeds the efforts of past presidents. Texas led 25 states in suing to stop Obamas Clean Power Plan, which sought to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions at existing power plants. And when the Trump administration scrapped that plan, the TPPF sued over its replacement, arguing the Environmental Protection Agency doesnt have the power to regulate the emissions. A large number of states and environmental groups sued to challenge the rule saying it did not do enough. We were the only conservative group to sue challenging the authority EPA had to do that type of regulation in the first place, Henneke said. That case is before the D.C. Circuit now, and a ruling for TPPF could complicate Bidens efforts. TAXES Biden says he wants to rewrite the tax code to undo the Trump tax cuts Congress passed in 2017 and raise taxes on corporations and the rich. Texas Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady of The Woodlands the top Republican on the House Ways & Means Committee that wrote the tax bill are likely to fight that effort in Congress. But DeVore said hes especially focused on one element of the tax code that Biden is likely to target and that may get overlooked in Texas, where there is no state income tax. The 2017 tax bill set a $10,000 cap on the federal deduction that can be claimed by those who pay state and local taxes. The move, DeVore says, gave Texas even more of an edge in wooing businesses from states like California and New York, whose leaders were used to writing off much more of the state income taxes. Removing the cap, DeVore argues, would be a blow to Texas economic development efforts. CIVIL RIGHTS If the Obama years are any guide to Bidens administration, the Department of Justice and other federal agencies, such as the Education Department, are likely to beef up their efforts to enforce civil rights laws under Biden which was a fertile area for lawsuits in Texas. The state sued to stop Obama-era rules requiring schools to allow transgender students use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. Texas also sued over requirements to grant work benefits to some same-sex couples, among other things. But a civil rights-focused federal government could also target Texas, especially as the state Legislature gears up to redraw congressional districts a process that virtually always ends up in court and prepares to further tighten voting restrictions. The Obama administrations Justice Department sued over Texas congressional maps and challenged the states voter ID laws in 2013. ben.wermund@chron.com Mike Madigan has served for a very long time. He is, I think, someone who ... is not going to disappear from the landscape, but I do believe it was time to turn the page and I think the House has spoken, Lightfoot said. I will work with Chris Welch, and I will look forward to getting to know him better and to really forging a strong relationship. Were not always going to agree on every issue, Im sure. But its very important for everything were trying to do in Chicago that we have someone who understands the importance of Chicago to the city, to the economy and really as an economic engine not only of Illinois but the Upper Midwest. InfoCepts, a global leader in business analytics solutions & services, and ThoughtSpot, the leader in search & AI-driven analytics, today announced a new strategic partnership. As part of this new partnership, InfoCepts will become the exclusive distributor of ThoughtSpots search and AI-driven analytics platform in Southeast Asia. Organizations in every industry are grappling with increased competition, a changing business environment, and evolving customer expectations. Effectively leveraging data has become a critical component to navigating these changes and delivering products and services that delight customers. The data visualization and analytics capabilities historically available to enterprises in Southeast Asia dont provide the intuitive interface, scale, or cloud experience required to capitalize on this data. By partnering with InfoCepts, ThoughtSpot will be able to expand its presence throughout the ASEAN region and bring search and AI-driven analytics to Southeast Asian businesses at a greater scale than ever before. Customers can take advantage of cutting-edge analytics technology from ThoughtSpot while relying on InfoCepts industry-leading data and analytics expertise and unique understanding of the challenges ASEAN enterprises face to truly unlock the value of their cloud data, unearth insights, and drive action. At InfoCepts, were dedicated to staying on the cutting edge of data and analytics to ensure our customers are capitalizing on the latest technologies and innovations. By partnering with ThoughtSpot, our customers will be able to tap into the power of their data through search and AI at an unprecedented scale, said Pat Finan, CRO, InfoCepts. The potential opportunity for organizations when it comes to their data is massive. This partnership will further enable us to help our customers turn this opportunity into value. In our work with global enterprises, its clear the need to equip employees at all levels with data-driven insights that guide decisions has never been greater. Our new relationship with InfoCepts is a major step forward in bringing search and AI-driven analytics to businesses in Southeast Asia so they can empower their teams with analytics like never before, said Toni Adams, SVP APJ and Global Partner & Alliances, ThoughtSpot. Challenging the status quo in technology is never simple, and especially in data, but with a trusted expert like InfoCepts by our side, Im confident well be able to help companies throughout ASEAN transform their use of data. For more information on the partnership: http://www.infocepts.com/thoughtspot About InfoCepts InfoCepts, a global leader in end-to-end data and analytics, which enables customers to become data-driven and stay modern. We bring people, processes, and technologies together the InfoCepts way to deliver predictable outcomes with guaranteed ROI. Working in partnership with you, we help businesses modernize data platforms, advance data-driven capabilities, support systems, and build augmented business applications and data products. Founded in 2004, InfoCepts is headquartered in Tysons Corner, VA, with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Every day more than 150,000 users use solutions powered by InfoCepts to make smarter decisions and businesses achieve better outcomes. For more information, please visit http://www.infocepts.com or follow @InfoCepts on Twitter. About ThoughtSpot ThoughtSpot is reinventing how companies make decisions by putting the power of their cloud data in the hands of every employee through search and AI-driven analytics. ThoughtSpot was built for the cloud era to seamlessly deliver insights instantly at a massive scale. With ThoughtSpot, anyone can use simple natural language to create new data-driven insights or surface those generated by others from across their entire enterprise. By leveraging AI, ThoughtSpot goes beyond answering known questions, detecting trends, anomalies, and patterns to suggest new questions users care about, but wouldnt have thought to ask themselves. Customers can take advantage of ThoughtSpot as a SaaS offering through ThoughtSpot Cloud, connect and query cloud data warehouses directly with Embrace, and stay up to date on their business with the ThoughtSpot Mobile app. Customers like Walmart, BT, Daimler, Medtronic, Hulu, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of the West, Siemens, and Nationwide Building Society rely on ThoughtSpot to empower employees at every level and transform their organizations. By bringing data to decisions everywhere, ThoughtSpot is building a more fact-driven world. Learn more at http://www.thoughtspot.com Panaji, Jan 15 : In the face of increasing protests by villagers against the proposed IIT-Goa campus at Melaulim village in North Goa, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Friday announced the relocation of the project elsewhere in the coastal state. Sawant, however, said that the new location had not been identified yet. "This government listens to the voice of the people. Therefore, our government has decided to shift the project from Sattari to another location in Goa. We will inform the IIT officials today," Sawant told the media at his official residence here. Melaulim is located in the Sattari sub-district. Sawant maintained that both he and Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, in whose Assembly constituency the proposed IIT campus was located, had no vested interests in promoting the project at Melaulim. Ever since an Indian Institute of Technology was allotted to Goa by the central government in 2014, it was functioning from a temporary campus shared by the Goa Engineering College in Farmagudi village in South Goa. The two sites previously identified by the state in Canacona and Sanguem sub- districts for the permanent IIT campus were dropped in the face of protests from area residents and after pressure from the opposition, which had alleged a land scam in shortlisting of sites for the institute. Sawant's announcement comes after the protests turned violent last week, following which cases were registered against more than 100 protestors. Several of them were booked under non-bailable Sections of law, including attempt to murder. Sawant denied allegations by villagers that police had committed atrocities on the protesters, specifically denying the contents of a viral video which showed an Inspector trampling upon protesting women. "No one was trampled upon. I have seen the video closely. The video was wrongly interpreted. In fact, a woman Constable was attacked with a sharp weapon. She had to be administered 21 stitches. Other policemen were injured too," the Chief Minister said. HAMILTON, Bermuda, January 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Seadrill New Finance Limited (OSE: SDRL) (OTCQX: SDRLF), a company incorporated in Bermuda in 2018 and issuer of the 12.0% senior secured notes due 2025 (the "Notes"), has determined not to make the semi-annual 4% cash interest payment due to the senior secured noteholders on 15 January 2021 in respect of their Notes issued pursuant to the terms of the notes indenture dated 2 July 2018. The payment-in-kind (PIK) interest payment is being made in the ordinary course. Discussions continue between Seadrill Limited and its creditors and/or their advisers to finalise negotiations on the head terms of a comprehensive restructuring of its balance sheet. Such a restructuring may involve the use of a court-supervised process. FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release includes forward looking statements. Such statements are generally not historical in nature, and specifically include statements about the Company's plans, strategies, business prospects, changes and trends in its business, the markets in which it operates and its restructuring efforts. These statements are made based upon management's current plans, expectations, assumptions and beliefs concerning future events impacting the Company and therefore involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release. Consequently, no forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. When considering these forward-looking statements, you should keep in mind the risks described from time to time in the Company's regulatory filings and periodical reporting. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for the Company to predict all of these factors. Further, the Company cannot assess the impact of each such factor on its business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to be materially different from those contained in any forward looking statement. This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. CONTACT: [email protected] 020 3745 4960 This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/seadrill-limited/r/seadrill-new-finance-limited---non-payment-of-cash-interest,c3268226 SOURCE Seadrill Limited Turkey-Greece: military dialogue at NATO resumes Ahead of return of exploratory talks after five years (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, JANUARY 15 - Military delegations from Greece and Turkey will resume technical talks next week at NATO general headquarters in Brussels, said security sources in Ankara. The talks are aimed at developing dialogue tools to avoid risks of incidents in the Eastern Mediterranean. The dialogue, which has been suspended since the start of October, is therefore expected to resume just days ahead of the resumption, after nearly five years, of "exploratory talks" between the two countries on disputes in the Mediterranean and other bilateral disputes. Those talks are scheduled to resume on January 25 in Istanbul.(ANSAmed). (ANSA). In an interview with Italian Televisions Canale 5, which aired on Sunday evening, 10 January, Pope Francis shared his views on several current issues and highlighted the importance of rediscovering unity, closeness to those who suffer, and fraternity in order to overcome the global crisis caused by the pandemic. He pointed out once again that we are never the same after a crisis: we either emerge better or worse. Although there are always great values in the world, he said, these should be translated into the historical context of the time. The Holy Father then listed a series of tragic situations including children who suffer from hunger, children who cannot attend school, the many wars raging throughout the world, describing un statistics on these matters as frightening. If we emerge from the crisis without seeing these things, he noted, then we would be emerging in defeat and things will be worse. Vaccination: an ethical action Responding to a question on vaccination against Covid-19, Pope Francis said he believes everyone should agree to be vaccinated from an ethical point of view. It is not an option; it is an ethical action, because you are playing with your health, you are playing with your life, but you are also playing with the lives of others. Now is the time to think about us, rather than our individual selves, he stressed, adding that the Vatican would shortly begin administering vaccines and that he was scheduled to receive one. It is the time for we in order to overcome the crisis Indifference kills us because it distances us, he said. The keyword to emerge from the crisis is closeness. Lack of unity and of closeness creates social tensions within States. At this time, a politician, a pastor, a Christian, a Catholic even a bishop, priest who does not have the capacity to say we instead of I is not rising up to the challenge. Although conflicts in life are necessary, he continued, at this time they must make room for unity of the country, the Church, society. Abortion is first a human issue then a religious one The Holy Father stressed that the crisis created by the pandemic has exacerbated the throwaway culture with regards to the weakest ones including the poor, migrants and the elderly and especially children who are victims of abortion. The problem of abortion is not a religious problem, it is a human problem, pre-religious, it is a problem of human ethics, he said. Is it right to erase a human life to resolve a problem, any problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem?. Capitol Hill, lessons from history: never violence Asked to comment on the tragic events that occurred at the US Capitol on Wednesday, 6 January, the Holy Father said he had been astonished considering the discipline of the people of the United States and the maturity of their democracy. However, he added, there is always something wrong when people take a path against the community, against democracy, against the common good. Francis condemned the violence and warned, we have to reflect and understand well in order not to repeat but rather to learn from history. Faith, a gift to be asked from the Lord Lastly, the Holy Father spoke about his personal experience of the restrictions resulting from the pandemic. He said he feels caged in, citing trips that were cancelled to prevent large gatherings, and expressing his hope that he will be able to visit Iraq. He added that these days he dedicates more time to prayer and speaking on the telephone. He then offered a reflection on faith. For me faith is a gift; neither you nor I nor anyone can have faith by their own strength: it is a gift that the Lord gives you. Referring to a passage from Deuteronomy, he said we should invoke the closeness of God. Pope Francis concluded the interview by expressing his hope that there will be no selfish attitudes in 2021, and that unity may prevail over conflict. Faced with a surge in coronavirus cases locally, the Andalusian regional government has had to act sooner than planned, with Junta president Juanma Moreno today announcing new, tougher measures to combat the spread of Covid-19 following a meeting of the Junta's committee of experts on the pandemic. New restrictions brought in by the Junta last Monday appear to have come too late to halt a dramatic surge in the local case rates of coronavirus. National case numbers shot up too this week. As a result, from 12.01 am on Sunday 17 January: - All bars, restaurants and shops will have to close at 6pm - The number of people allowed to meet in social gatherings, including in bars and restaurants, will be limited to four people - Travel between the eight provinces of Andalucia will not be permitted (without a justified reason) - Travel into and out of municipalities with a Covid-19 incidence rate of more than 500 per 100,000 people in the last 14 days will not be permitted (219 are currently affected) - Bars, restaurants and non-essential shops will not be allowed to open at all in municipalities with a Covid-19 incidence rate of more than 1,000 per 100,000 people in the last 14 days (91 are currently affected) - The nighttime curfew will remain the same (10pm to 6am) unless central government approves a change for it to begin at 8pm Experts to meet weekly The surge was being blamed locally this week on the more contagious British strain of Covid-19 and the aftershock of people meeting up more often until Three Kings Day on 6 January. Earlier on Friday, Juanma Moreno announced that from now on the committee of experts would be meeting on a weekly basis, though following developments daily. "We are facing another mutation of the virus with its British variant that is growing explosively, and this means that every day we have to be permanently adapting to the new circumstances," he said. Stay at home message The new restrictions announced today come as Andalucia, along with counterparts in other devolved governments across Spain, called on central government to allow them to confine people to their homes again. Currently the nationwide rules do not allow the regions to go this far. Moreno said the regional government is not considering right now asking for total confinement for Andalucia, which is still below the national average in incidence rate, but we never rule out anything. On Thursday, however, Moreno did call on people to stay home voluntarily and to stop converting their homes into mini restaurants for friends and extended family. Andalusian Health minister Jesus Aguirre also renewed calls this week for Spains Health minister, Salvador Illa, to bring the night curfew rule forward an hour to 9pm - another proposal that has so far been rejected by the national government. Last weeks changes not enough Last Friday (8 January), the Junta de Andalucia announced new measures, for the region in force for two weeks from Monday 11 January, although events have now overtaken this optimistic revision date. The new measures which started this week included the closure of shops and businesses at 8pm and bars and restaurants at 6pm. Cafeterias could stay open until 8pm as long as they dont serve alcohol after 6pm. Establishments were able to stay open for the collection of takeaways until 9.30pm and food could be delivered to homes until 11.30pm. The curfew had been brought forward to 10pm until 6am across the region. Travel out of the region was not allowed except for essential purposes but inter-provincial travel in Andalucia was still permitted this week. These measures will remain in force until midnight on Saturday night, when the new measures announced on Friday will come into effect. Pranab Mukherjee's doctor who treated him in 2007, says he suffered head injury in mishap US Presidential Debate 2020: Debate finds angry opening as Trump, Biden lash out at each other President Ram Nath Kovind donates Rs 5 lakh in his personal capacity for Ram Mandir India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Jan 15: President Ram Nath Kovind donated Rs 5 lakh in his personal capacity towards the construction of Ram Temple on Friday. The President's contribution came after the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra announced a contribution campaign for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. "He is the first citizen of the country so we went to him to initiate this drive. He donated a sum of Rs 5,01,000," VHP's Alok Kumar said. The massive contribution drive which began on Friday will continue till February 27. Rahul Gandhi leads Congress protest in support of agitating farmers According to reports, the iconic structure will be built keeping in mind the country's ancient construction techniques and will be built to sustain storms, earthquakes and other natural calamities. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Meanwhile, Sikkim Governor Ganga Prasad made a donation of Rs 1.01 lakh towards the construction of the temple. "A state-level representative committee of the trust officially met Governor Ganga Prasad at Raj Bhavan on Thursday in regard to Ram temple construction in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The Committee members told about the donation drive in Sikkim," Dr Manoj Sandhwar, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the Governor said in a statement. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 15:23 [IST] 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. Families are complicated. For members of the Alligatoridae family, which includes living caimans and alligators - this is especially true. They are closely related, but because of their similarity, their identification can even stump paleontologists. But after the recent discovery of a partial skull, the caimans of years past may provide some clarity into the complex, and incomplete, history of its relatives and their movements across time and space. Michelle Stocker, an assistant professor of vertebrate paleontology in Virginia Tech's Department of Geosciences in the College of Science; Chris Kirk, of the University of Texas at Austin; and Christopher Brochu, of the University of Iowa, have identified a 42-million-year-old partial skull that may have belonged to one of the last prehistoric caimans to roam the United States. "Any fossil that we find has unique information that it contributes to understanding the history of life," said Stocker, who is an affiliated faculty member of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and the Global Change Center. "From what we have, we are able to understand a little bit more about the evolutionary history of caimans and the alligatorid group, which includes alligators and caimans." Their findings were published in PeerJ, an open access peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences. The fossil was discovered in 2010 at Midwestern State University's Dalquest Desert Research Site, which includes extensive exposures of the Devil's Graveyard Formation, a geologic formation in the Trans-Pecos volcanic field of West Texas. The Devil's Graveyard Formation preserves fossils from the latter portion of the Eocene epoch, a period of time covering 15 million years of prehistory. In 2011, Stocker and the team returned to the site to collect a key bone that remained in the hard sandstone block that once encapsulated the caiman skull. "The Devil's Graveyard Formation provides a unique window into the evolution of North American vertebrates during the middle and late Eocene," said Kirk. "There are a host of extinct species that are only known from the Devil's Graveyard, including several primates, rodents, lizards, and now this new fossil caiman." What they discovered was a partial skull. At the time of the discovery, paleontologists were convinced that the skull came from a closer relative to alligators than to caimans. "When you are at the early diversification of groups, their features aren't as differentiable," said Stocker. "It was harder to tell if this is more closely related to caimans or to alligators because those two are really closely related already. And the differences between them are subtle, especially early in their evolutionary history." The skull's braincase was a key component in the identification of the fossil. The braincase encases and protects the brain from injury. Since no two species have the same braincase, finding one can provide some much needed information for paleontologists. After further investigation into this fossil's braincase, Stocker and the team were able to determine that this was, without a doubt, a caiman. The caiman was deemed to be 42 million years old by using a combination of investigative techniques, including radiometric dating, biochronology, and biostratigraphy, where paleontologists use the relative order of the fossilized animals to find out how old the rocks are. With the age of the fossil and its location in mind, paleontologists are able to add to an ever-growing story about a large biogeographic range contraction, or a climate-related extirpation, that occurred millions of years ago. Roughly 56 million years ago, the planet was experiencing temperatures so hot and methane levels so high that no polar ice caps could form. For large cool-blooded reptiles like alligators and caimans, it was their time to thrive and soak up the sun. In fact, the conditions were so favorable that these early reptiles roamed as far north as northern Canada. "The presence of a fossil caiman in the Devil's Graveyard, about 1,200 kilometers north of where caimans are found today, really says something about how different the climate of West Texas was in the middle Eocene", said Kirk. But one epoch later, in the Oligocene, the entire world was experiencing cooler temperatures, forcing many species that require warm and humid conditions into more restricted geographic ranges. Caiman populations, in particular, are now only found in South and Central America. Although, a small number of caimans have been found outside of this range and are thought to be invasive species. "This caiman seems out of place," said Brochu."Caimans today are a South American radiation, and data from modern forms, including DNA, would suggest a very simple single origin from a North American ancestor. This new form, along with some older North American fossil caimans, suggests a far more complex early history with multiple crossings of the seaway that separated North and South America until fairly recently." There is even more to know about caiman history. Since the specimen was an incomplete skull, and far from a complete skeleton, paleontologists still have some knowledge gaps to fill about their relationships. "If we can find another individual, we will get a better sense of its relationships, and it might be able to say something about what variation could be present in this taxon, or how they grow, or where else they might be found," said Stocker. "This is a one-and-done kind of fossil right now. Hopefully there are more out there." The fossil will be housed at the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the University of Texas at Austin where it will be preserved and maintained in perpetuity. There is more research to be done on other fossils that have been retrieved from Central and South American specimens, as well. Those fossils, in particular, are critical for understanding the early southern record of caiman history and clearing up the morphological and chronologic gaps that currently exist in the caiman fossil record. In the end, all that lies on the horizon is to do more fieldwork, collect more fossils, and conduct more study. Without museums, this identification couldn't have been possible. When paleontologists find new fossils, they must travel to museums, where they compare the new fossils with other specimens that have been collected. Stocker maintains that the preservation and maintenance that museums do is just one reason that they need to be supported. "Museums are important for science and for everybody who wants to understand our shared evolutionary history," said Stocker. "And collaboration is the way that science moves forward." ### BEIJING, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On January 16, 2021, the 11th "From Lausanne to Beijing" International Fiber Art Biennale opened online at https://lbfiberart.ad.tsinghua.edu.cn. The exhibition is jointly hosted by the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University and the China National Arts and Crafts Society. Over 300 works of fiber art by artists from five continents are featured in this Biennale. They will be available for online viewing to audiences across the globe through February 16. With the pandemic spreading across the globe, no time has ever been as full of instability as the present. Head Curator Lin Lecheng commented on this year's Biennale: "Fortune rewarded artists' passion, providing an opportunity to hold this exhibition in this challenging year and once again proving art's indomitable vitality." The "From Lausanne to Beijing" International Fiber Art Biennale embraced this year's difficulties and sought out new opportunities in this time of crisis. "Symbiosis and Coexistence" was chosen by the organizing committee as this Biennale's theme after rounds of intensive discussion. The virtual exhibition hall is the heart of the show, connecting fiber art with the current moment and social responsibility. This new technology has helped bring fiber artists worldwide together with audiences online. Since their creation in 2000, the "From Lausanne to Beijing" International Fiber Art Biennales have been continuing the spirit of modern tapestry kindled by the International Lausanne Tapestry Biennials. This year, the 11th Biennale continues to pursue the intrinsic nature of fiber while also exploring a new format: the virtual exhibition. Fiber art is a discipline with deep historical roots and unique powers of expression in tactility, qualities, and techniques. How do we accentuate the form's characteristics, juxtapose works by global artists, and give audiences a new experience in a virtual space? These were the challenges faced by this Biennale. For this exhibition, two departments from the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University the Department of Art and Crafts and the Department of Information Art & Design collaboratively created an online exhibition hall, aided by input from 3 institutions' online exhibition teams. The virtual format expanded the scope and space of the artwork, connecting audiences with fiber art and providing a rich artistic experience. The virtual exhibition hall revolutionized the relationship between fiber and space, making it possible to experience art from anywhere in the world. In addition, this Biennale's display capabilities and online interactivity were greatly enhanced by the new media technology team, who built a strong technological backbone for this innovative new format. With the bilateral interaction made possible by the "2.5D" virtual venue, audiences were provided with all-new perspectives and experiences. While viewing the pieces, audience members can choose between a conventional in-person experience (i.e. a linear progression through forewords and introductions, judges' works, award-winning works, and short-listed works) or a non-linear journey browsing and comparing by continent or artist. Additionally, newly introduced interactivity enables audiences to break free from the traditional viewing experience. From multi-level fiber spaces that can be entered with a swipe, to zoomable detail views of artwork, to videos of the production process, the virtual space offers all-new perspectives through which to enjoy fiber art. Both offline and online judging were involved for the first time in the Biennale's history. Over 1,000 submissions by artists from 56 countries were sent to the organizing committee. Judges, academic consultants, and curators from 13 countries evaluated the works with several criteria in mind: relevance to the current cultural moment; uniqueness of creative ideas; and diversity of technologies. One Gold Award, 4 Silver Awards, 11 Bronze Awards, and 79 Excellence Awards were presented in recognition of fiber artists who created outstanding works in this pandemic-stricken time. This year's Biennale widely features works that speak of artists' social responsibility in a time of disease. For the theme "Symbiosis and Coexistence", artists reflected on how to transform crisis into action. Korean-American artist Mi-Kyoung Lee's Gold Award-winning artwork Symbiosis explores the consistency and complexity of nature imagery. An artistic reconstruction made with bound, twisted zippers and cables, her work depicts both today's natural landscape and our symbiotic artificial landscape. As Curator Hong Xingyu remarked, "This exhibition conducts a dialogue with nature, with life, with our art, and with our future." According to special guest judge panelist Liu Jude, "art has the power to help humanity get through hard times." Cha Young Soon's work Silver Lining and Chinese artist Zhang Haidong's Tie Knots to Record are both meditations on the value of human life as recorded through specific places, cities, and portraits. The works featured in this Biennale weave a web of connections between art and the zeitgeist. Together, they form a unified whole that is the same air all of us breathe. Curator Ni Yuehong commented: "As the economy becomes more globalized, politics more multipolar, and culture more diverse, we reflect on how all of humanity faces the same issues and challenges. This International Fiber Art Biennale presents the values of artists coming together from across the world to create and realize a fiber arts exhibition." The "From Lausanne to Beijing" International Fiber Art Biennale is rapidly gaining global academic stature in fiber art: an art form intertwined with tradition, attuned to the present, and shaping the future. The virtual exhibition explores the symbiosis between fiber art and the zeitgeist. Artists are modernizing traditional materials and techniques, injecting new vitality into fiber art in a time of crisis. It is our fond hope that we can come together with even more artists worldwide at future in-person Biennales. The 11th "From Lausanne to Beijing" International Fiber Art Biennale online exhibition will be open through February 16. SOURCE Tsinghua University CHARLESTON, W.Va., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, West Virginia families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. West Virginia families, schools, and organizations are hosting 232 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the most exciting of these will be a virtual awards ceremony on Jan. 27 honoring students, teachers, and community innovators in West Virginia K-12 education hosted by the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In West Virginia, the Charleston Civic Center will light up in yellow for the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the West Virginia counties of Raleigh and Hancock and the city of Hamlin. "In a too-often polarized nation, National School Choice Week unites communities to celebrate great K-12 schools and expand learning options for kids," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "West Virginia students are unique, and they deserve unique school choices that match their values and needs." In West Virginia, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, forthcoming charter schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. West Virginia families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to West Virginia school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/west-virginia. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com The government on Friday asked protesting to form an informal group to prepare a concrete proposal about their objections and suggestions on the three farm laws for further discussion at their next meeting on January 19 to end the long-running protest at various Delhi borders, but unions stuck to their main demand of a complete repeal of the three Acts. As nearly five hours of talks between 41 unions and three central ministers did not reach a decisive stage in the ninth round of talks at Vigyan Bhawan here, the two sides decided to meet again the next Tuesday. Agriculture Minister told farmer leaders at the meeting that the government has been flexible in its approach and urged the same from them. Incidentally, the tenth round of talks has been scheduled for a day when a Supreme Court-appointed committee to resolve the impasse is also likely to hold its first meeting. A day before that, the apex court is likely to hear a petition against a tractor rally call given by the protesting for the Republic Day on January 26. After the meeting, Tomar told reporters that two separate deliberations can run parallelly as the farmer unions want to continue their talks with the government and the court-appointed panel has also been set up with an aim to resolve the crisis and a solution can emerge from anywhere. ALSO READ: UP Congress chief, workers 'detained' during protest against farm laws "Discussions happen at various platforms and a solution can emerge from anywhere... Our effort is to find a solution at the earliest through dialogue so that the farmers' protest ends. are sitting in cold weather amid the threat of Covid-19 and the government is concerned about that also and is therefore engaging with farmers with an open mind," he said. The minister said the government will also present its side before the SC-appointed panel whenever it is asked to do so. Farmer leader Joginder Singh Ugrahan said after the meeting that the unions urged the Centre to repeal the three laws, but the Centre was unwilling to do so. Ugrahan said the union leaders also raised the issue of NIA raids on transporters in Punjab who are supporting farmers' protests and were providing logistic support for the agitation. Shivkumar Kakka, president of Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Mahasangh, said the union leaders raised the issue of Income Tax raids on 'arhtiyas' (commission agents) in Punjab. ALSO READ: LIVE: Govt-farmer unions' meeting inconclusive; next talks on Jan 19 "Cases were also filed against 900 Haryana farmers under IPC section 307, while the NIA raided transporters and called them for interrogation. You are taking vindictive action against those who are helping us. This is not constitutional," he said. The farmer leader said that Tomar told them the government will look into it and see why it was happening. Farmers union leaders, who had their own langar food during the lunch break, said at the meeting they are committed to continuing holding direct talks to resolve the over-one-month-long deadlock over three agri laws, even as a committee has been formed by the Supreme Court to resolve the deadlock. In his opening remarks, Tomar urged farmer leaders to be flexible in their approach as has been done by the government. Besides Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash were part of the government side. ALSO READ: Rahul Gandhi leads Congress protest in support of agitating farmers "Both the government and farmer unions have reaffirmed their commitment to continue with the direct dialogue process," said All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee member Kavita Kuruganti, who was part of the meeting. "In his opening remarks, Tomar ji said you keep saying that the government is adamant and making it an issue of ego, even though we have accepted several demands. Don't you think you should be flexible and not stick to one single demand of repealing the laws," said Baljit Singh Bali of Punjab Kisan Morcha. Farmer leader Darshan Pal said there was a good discussion on all three laws. "There is a possibility of some resolution. We are positive," he added. Another leader Rakesh Tikait said: "Government has told us that solution should be found through dialogue and not a court. Everyone is of the same view. There is a possibility of some solution." Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. On January 8, the eighth round of meeting had remained inconclusive as the Centre ruled out repealing the three contentious laws claiming nationwide support for the reforms. However, farmer leaders had said that they were ready to fight till death and their 'ghar waapsi' would happen only after 'law waapsi'. In the sixth round held on December 30 last year, some common ground was reached on two demands -- decriminalisation of stubble-burning and continuation of power subsidies. ALSO READ: Supreme Court order on farm laws: None to praise and very few to love it Enacted in September 2020, the government has presented these laws as major farm reforms aimed at increasing farmers' income, but the protesting farmers have raised concerns that these legislations would weaken the (MSP) and "mandi" (wholesale market) systems and leave them at the mercy of big corporations. The government has maintained that these apprehensions are misplaced and has ruled out a repeal of the laws. The Supreme Court on January 11 had stayed the implementation of the three laws till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse. Agriculture Minister told farmer leaders at the meeting that the government has been flexible in its approach and urged the same from them. Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann, however, on Thursday recused himself from the committee. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's former director (South Asia) Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are the other three members on the panel. Tomar said the meeting with farmers unions was cordial and all three laws were discussed, while there was a detailed discussion on the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. "During the discussion, farmers expressed their views and our minister (Goyal) also shared the details and tried to address their concerns. But the discussion did not reach to a conclusion. After that, the government and union mutually decided to meet again on January 19 at 12 noon," he said. ALSO READ: Stores closed by farmer protests cost Reliance, Walmart millions in revenue The minister said he hopes that unions will take forward the talks based on today's discussion. "We have also suggested them to form an informal group of those who can talk properly about the laws, about expectations from the government and also about provisions of the laws that they feel are against farmers. If they discuss all these and come out with a draft of concrete proposals then the government is ready to discuss that with an open mind," he said. Tomar said the government has understood farmers' apprehensions in the course of several rounds of discussion so far and had expressed its willingness to address those apprehensions and a written proposal was also sent to unions. "But they didn't accept the proposal and therefore the discussions are happening... I hope that we will move forward towards finding a solution," he said. On protests held by Congress party across the country and allegations levelled by Rahul Gandhi against the government with regard to the farm laws, Tomar said, "The entire Congress party also laughs at and makes fun of Rahul Gandhi's statements and action." "I want to tell him through media that they had promised to undertake these reforms in their 2019 election manifesto. If he doesn't remember, he can read his manifesto again. If it is there in the manifesto, then Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi should come before the press and make it clear if they were lying then or are lying now," he said. Sophie Monk finally confirmed her engagement to her long-term partner Joshua Gross on Friday, following weeks of speculation. The Love Island host, 41, beamed with happiness as she made the sweet announcement on Instagram, showing off her dazzling ring as she gushed how much she 'adored' her new fiance. But it hasn't been the easiest journey to love for Sophie, who in the past has endured two failed engagements, a string of flings with well-known faces and even a disastrous stint on The Bachelorette. Finally found her happiness: Sophie Monk confirmed she is engaged to her partner Joshua Gross on January 15, 2021 - but it hasn't been the easiest road to love for the TV favourite Sophie's love life has been highly scrutinised since she rose to fame on Channel Seven's Popstars in 1999. And interest hit its peak in 2005, thanks to a rumoured fling with actor Jason Statham after he ended his seven-year relationship with English model Kelly Brook. The duo were believed to have casually dated for a year, and Sophie even admitted to spending the night with Jason during a crude game of 'Banged Or Haven't Banged' on KIIS FM's The Kyle And Jackie Show. Limelight: Sophie's love life was then thrust into the media in 2005, thanks to a rumoured fling with actor Jason Statham after he ended his seven-year relationship with model Kelly Brook After their romance fizzled out, Sophie found love with Good Charlotte Rocker Benji Madden - who she became engaged to a year into their romance. After they began dating in 2006, the duo were swiftly engaged after the musician popped the question in Australia on Christmas Eve a year later. But it sadly wasn't to last, and the duo called it quits in 2008. He is now happily married to Hollywood beauty Cameron Diaz, with the pair welcoming their first child together, baby Raddix, in 2020. Fiance: Sophie first got engaged to the boyfriend who followed Jason in 2006 - Good Charlotte rocker Benji Madden, who nowadays is happily married to Hollywood beauty Cameron Diaz Following the end of her engagement, Sophie's next serious boyfriend was plastic surgeon John Diaz, who she dated in 2010. But disaster struck for the duo's romance in the same year - after Sophie claimed she found John in bed with another woman. She told radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands at the time: 'I rock up in the morning with a coffee and presents, and he had a present there - a chick.' Short-lived romance: Following the end of her engagement, Sophie's next serious boyfriend was plastic surgeon John Diaz, who she dated in 2010 However, not but a few months later, Sophie met the man who would become her next fiance - in the form of American millionaire Jimmy Esebag, who was 20 years her senior. She announced her engagement on The Kyle and Jackie O Show in 2011, where she described him as 'the male version' of herself. But it was not meant to be, and the duo called it quits within months. Adding to her slew of celebrity conquests, Sophie later dated Avatar hunk Sam Worthington in 2013, openly admitting on the radio that they had 'banged'. New love: However, not but a few months later, Sophie met the man who would become her next fiance - in the form of American millionaire Jimmy Esebag, who was 20 years her senior But in the same year, Sam went on to date Lara Bingle - who he is now married to - with Sophie later admitting that she was 'really hurt' to see pictures of the two together at the time. After a string of unlucky romances, Sophie finally headed on The Bachelorette in 2017 as a last ditch attempt for happiness - where she briefly found love with her winner, Stu Laundy. Despite it appearing like the couple could go the distance, they announced their split just six months later. Star power: Adding to her slew of celebrity conquests, she later dated Avatar hunk Sam Worthington in 2013, openly admitting on the radio that they had 'banged' Sophie said at the time that she gave the relationship her 'best shot' but it didn't work because they were both 'very different people'. But it appears her long road to love was all worth it, as in 2018 she went on to begin dating her now fiance, Joshua Gross. The pair met by chance on a flight from Europe to Australia in August that year, and shared a kiss mid-air after enjoying 'three champagnes' in business class. Reality romance: After a string of unlucky romances, Sophie finally headed on The Bachelorette in 2017 - where she found love with her winner, Stu Laundy On January 15, 2021, Sophie announced the news fans had been wondering about for months - that he had finally proposed. 'Told you I'd tell you guys first. I'm engaged,' she gushed. 'I honestly can't thank you enough for all the love and support. I know I have the coolest people following me and you've always had my back and I feel so cared about. Happy as Larry! It appears her long road to romance was all worth it, as in 2018 she went on to begin dating her now fiance, Joshua Gross 'You're absolute bloody legends. I'm not very good at being mushy. I'm trying to say I absolutely adore you. @joshuargross and I are so happy.' She added: 'Josh designed a very personal ring with my favourite Aussie designer @luke_rose_jewellery and I LOVE IT.' Joshua also shared the same image on his own Instagram page, along with the caption: 'Luckiest guy in the world'. Jhansi, Jan 15 : A 35-year-old man in Uttar Pradesh's Jhansi district posted his dying declaration on a social media site and ended his life by consuming poison. The incident took place in Ranipur area of Mauranipur tehsil. The victim, Rajesh, posted a video saying that he was ending his life after being harassed by his in-laws. He claimed that his father-in-law, mother-in-law and sister in-law had been continuously harassing him for long which has caused depression and ultimately drove him to commit suicide. His relatives rushed him to the Jhansi Medical College from where he was referred to Gwalior. However, Rajesh succumbed during treatment on Thursday. A police spokesman said that the in-laws of the deceased were being interrogated and appropriate action would be taken against them. A gangster caught with three loaded handguns and drugs with an estimated street value of 1million has been jailed for 18 years. Police stopped Ali Serroukhs BMW during a surveillance operation in Brent. Officers from the Mets Specialist Crime Command searched the car and discovered six kilos of cocaine inside a concealed hide. Simultaneously, a raid was executed at an address linked to Serroukh, 25, in Keyes Road, Cricklewood on January 23, 2020. A further four kilos of cocaine, a large quantity of cannabis, cash, body armour, several zombie knives and drug-mixing equipment were recovered. Harrow Crown Court heard the combined total of cocaine seized had an estimated street value of 1m. During the search of a VW Tiguan parked outside the house, police seized a loaded handgun. Five days later, detectives returned to Keyes Road and removed a third vehicle, a BMW, linked to Serroukh, this time finding two further handguns. Ali Serroukhs haul of drugs and guns / Metropolitan Police Serroukh, of Tachbrook Street, Pimlico, was convicted of three counts of possession of a prohibited weapon, possession with intent to supply Class A drugs, possession with intent to supply Class B drugs and possession of criminal property, namely 5,000. He was sentenced on Thursday, January 14. Detective Inspector Jim Casey, from the Specialist Crime Command, said: Protecting the communities of London from serious violence remains a top priority for the Met. Removing these drugs, firearms and individual from the streets has undoubtedly saved lives and the Specialist Crime Command continues to be committed to seeking out those involved and bringing offenders to justice. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) US drugmaker Pfizer is aiming to provide developing countries like the Philippines doses of its COVID-19 vaccine at an affordable price. "I'm also very happy to announce that it is Pfizer's intention to make available its COVID-19 vaccine to low-income countries like the Philippines at a not-for-profit price during the pandemic," said Andreas Quercia, Pfizer country manager during the Senate Committee on the Whole's hearing on the national COVID-19 vaccination plan Friday. Pfizer also said it is in "advance discussions" with the Philippine government on a supply agreement for its COVID-19 vaccine, adding it plans to make doses available to the country as soon as possible. Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr., meanwhile, said there might already be a term sheet and supply agreement with the pharmaceutical firm within next week. The official also said Pfizer vaccine doses may reach the Philippines as early as the first quarter of 2021 through the help of the COVAX facility, of which the country is part of. The facility purchases vaccines to be distributed for free to developing countries, covering a maximum of 20% of their respective populations. Pfizer is the first to secure Emergency Use Authorization in the Philippines for a coronavirus vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration granted the approval Thursday, citing the vaccine's high efficacy rate. Pfizer earlier bagged EUAs across the globe, including from the United States and the United Kingdom. Agreements with Sinovac, other firms not a 'done deal' When asked whether agreements the country has entered into in advance for vaccine supply with firms like China-based Sinovac are already a "done deal," Galvez said that is not the case. "Ang sa atin pa lang po ngayon [For now,] we are [just] dealing with the term sheet. Posible rin [It could also be possible] we have to lock (the supply), so that they can already make production. So sa ngayon po, wala pa pong government funds tayong naibibigay," clarified the official. [Translation: As of now, we haven't given out government funds yet.] National policy against COVID-19 deputy chief implementer Vince Dizon also reiterated the country's vaccine expert panel has recommended seven vaccine brands for possible purchase, which includes Sinovac. However, none of this is final yet, as the government awaits the panel's final recommendation, along with an EUA from the FDA. Sinovac has also applied for emergency use authorization, the regulatory agency revealed earlier this week. The Victorian government is preparing a February 15 "V-Day" launch for the most potent COVID vaccine, with its newly formed local public health units to play a critical role in delivering the life-saving jab. The DHHS plan is for phase one of the roll-out to deliver 15,000 doses a week of the Pfizer vaccine, with hospital staff and residents, people working in aged care facilities, quarantine and border workers among those first in line for inoculation. Auslag Westling, a resident at a Swedish nursing home, gets the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine on January 7. Credit:Getty Images Phase two of the roll-out, slated to begin in mid-March, will administer the less effective but more readily available AstraZeneca to the broader population. Victorias provisional time frame and dose targets for the Pfizer vaccine, contained in an internal briefing to a major hospital group obtained by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, is not confirmed by the Federal government, which is yet to set a start date for COVID vaccinations. 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. STAMFORD At the helm of a wide circle of city officials, Sen. Chris Murphy listened as each explained how the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was going in Stamford. Murphys visit Thursday to Optimus Health Cares testing site on the UConn-Stamford campus had started with talk about the citys COVID-19 testing operations. But conversation pivoted quickly to vaccine planning as city officials prepare to confront a tide of inquiries expected in the coming days. The Lamont administration has announced that Phase 1B of its vaccination protocol would begin Monday. Residents 75 and older can, according to the states latest guidelines, start registering for the vaccine immediately. Its a big launch and we know the first couple of weeks are going to be real funky, said Mayor David Martin. Everyone is going to hear in the media that its available, but we dont have the infrastructure or the vaccine to meet expected demand. Initially, 1B will include frontline essential workers and those who live or work in congregate settings, in addition to residents 75 and older. In coming weeks, it will expand to include residents between the ages of 65 and 74 and those between 16 and 64 with underlying health conditions that make them more vulnerable to the coronavirus. The floodgates are going to open up, said Optimus Health Care CEO Ludwig Spinelli. Stamford began vaccinating residents 75 and older late last week to prevent unused doses from expiring. More formally, the city on Tuesday announced that it would start vaccinating those 75 and older immediately. We vaccinated 75-plus people if (and) when there was an excess dose due to canceled appointments, said Arthur Augustyn, a spokesman for the city. The city assigns vaccine appointments through a randomized system. Eligible residents can register for the COVID vaccine in at least three different ways: through the citys own system, through the Centers for Disease Controls Vaccine Administration Management System, or by calling the citys Senior Center directly (203-977-5151). Martin said Stamford was among the first communities in Connecticut to begin vaccinating older adults. Immediately after the city announced its operation, it received an influx of calls from residents, all interested in getting vaccinated as soon as possible. Augustyn said that, so far, more than 4,800 people have filled out the citys registration form. The city receives two new registrations every minute, and 60 percent of those registrations come from adults 75 or older. But that has presented a new problem for the city: insufficient supply. Ive got the people, Ive got the location, Ive got the staff, Martin said to Murphy. I dont have the vaccine. While Stamford Health can inoculate people with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, the Health Department lacks the freezers necessary to keep doses cold. Instead, Stamford uses the Moderna vaccine, which the city receives in smaller quantities. Of the doses it currently has, the department expects to run out by the end of the week. Director of Health Dr. Jennifer Calder estimates that the Health Department will have vaccinated 300 people over the age of 75 by the end of the week. Its discouraging to hear that we werent more ready, said Murphy. But again this is mostly a question of quantity, and thats a federal problem. Watertown, NY (13601) Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Press Release January 14, 2021 Treaty vs nuclear weapons to strengthen West PH Sea arbitral ruling - Tolentino MANILA - Senator Francis 'Tol' N. Tolentino today stressed that becoming a State Party to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will help strengthen the Philippines' territorial claim in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), as recognized and affirmed by the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration. During Thursday's hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by Senator Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III, Tolentino called on the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to devise a mode to diplomatically assert the Philippines' position in the WPS once the Senate concurs on the ratification of the TPNW and the country becomes a State Party. According to Tolentino, under the treaty, a State Party has an obligation to, among others, make a declaration whether there are any nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices in its territory or in any place under its jurisdiction or control that are owned, possessed, or controlled by another State. Such declaration must be submitted to the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) not later than 30 days after the treaty enters into force for a State Party. Tolentino said that if the Philippines becomes a State Party, it can inform the UN Secretary General that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the man made structures therein are capable to host nuclear armaments as military facilities. The lawmaker believes that the Philippines has much to gain from becoming a State Party to ensure a regime of peace and nuclear free region of amity and cooperation. Although the TNPW will not fully eliminate the threat or use of nuclear weapons, Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Igor Bailen noted that the treaty increases the stigma against nuclear weapons and puts international pressure on the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, including China, and other nuclear weapon countries to relinquish those armaments. The number of women who went through mother and baby homes in the North could be "significantly" higher than previously estimated. Judith Gillespie, chairwoman of the inter-departmental working group on mother and baby homes there, said the total will be more than 7,500, but stressed a recently completed research report should be seen first by the victims and survivors. Amnesty International said in addition to the numbers who went through mother and baby homes, thousands more experienced Magdalene Laundries and other women-specific institutions. I think we would all acknowledge this has taken longer than we had all hoped for Patrick Corrigan of Amnesty said he has no doubt the total figure that will emerge will be "significantly greater" than 7,500. A research report by university academics has been completed, and Ms Gillespie's group is set to make recommendations to Stormont ministers before the end of the month. "I think we would all acknowledge this has taken longer than we had all hoped for, but there were a lot of complexities in the research. "Accessing archive records was hugely sensitive given that they didn't have statutory powers so they had to persuade the institutions involved to allow access to highly sensitive personal records," Ms Gillespie told the BBC. "There were also issues around adoption legislation and then of course we had to go through the right to respond process to allow the institutions a right to see the portions of the report that apply to them and to comment on any factual inaccuracies or unfair criticisms. "That process is now complete, I am pleased to say, and the research is ready for publication with ministerial approval." Ms Gillespie said the paper which the Executive will receive will include a "full range" of options, including to publish the report and do nothing to a public inquiry. "The first option, to publish the report and do nothing, is obviously not a desired option by anyone ... but my determination as independent chair is that whatever option is selected by ministers, that victims and survivors should be at the centre of that, and driving the option going forward," she said. The group was set up in 2017 to look at mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries in Northern Ireland, after they fell outside of the terms of reference of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry. Ms Gillespie said it is important to acknowledge there were mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries in the north, a fact she said came as a shock to some. Amnesty say they have been pressing for a public inquiry into the matter since 2013. Meanwhile, actress Judi Dench has paid tribute to mother and baby homes survivor and campaigner Philomena Lee, describing her as a "remarkable person". Philomena Lee, who was forced to give up her son to Irish nuns, who sold him on to rich Americans. The Oscar-winner portrayed Ms Lee in the 2013 film Philomena, which documented her 50-year search for her forcibly adopted son, Anthony. In the wake of the newly published mother and baby homes report, Ms Dench told the BBC: "I was lucky enough before filming to meet Philomena. "I feel as if I know the very tip of the iceberg of all this. I can't imagine, to get an apology all this time later from the taoiseach. "I suppose it goes a little way to the heart-rending pain of all those mothers who never knew what happened to their children, and have spent their whole lives, not knowing. "In Philomena's case, she searched for Anthony and eventually found him after terrible years of pain and not knowing. "I just can't imagine." The actress said the State apology "goes some way to somehow putting things slightly at rest after such a long time". The film Philomena, in which Dench starred alongside Steve Coogan, shone a light on the long search for answers many survivors have had to endure. She said: "I hope it drew attention to what happened... and the plight of so many women. She said survivors had been calling for "some kind of recognition of the pain that they suffered for years and years and years. And still not knowing where their children went. Ms Lee, originally from Co Limerick, lived with her son Anthony in a mother and baby home until he was three years old, when he was adopted by a wealthy American couple and renamed Michael Hess. Earlier this week she told RTE: "I used to teach him little songs and things. Three and a half years and then just to be snatched away. "They told me, 'Your son is going to be adopted', just like that. When he was adopted, I cried the whole weekend. They took him away a week before Christmas. It's #HappyKaiDay today, but some K-Netz are unhappy after EXO Kai and his friends, VIXX Ravi and HOTSHOT Timoteo, gathered on his birthday amid COVID-19 safety protocols. On the midnight of Jan. 14, EXO's Kai hosted a live broadcast through his Instagram to celebrate his birthday together with his fans. However, his remarks on the coronavirus and quarantine rules became a hot topic online and earned flak from Korean netizens. VIXX Ravi and HOTSHOT Timoteo Join EXO Kai to Celebrate His Birthday + Criticism Rises According to Korean media outlet Money Today, EXO Kai communicated with his fans by hosting an Instagram live broadcast on Jan. 13. He started the broadcast alone, and he conveyed his regrets for not being able to spend his birthday with EXO-Ls (EXO fandom). Kai said, "It's my birthday tomorrow but I have work. I came here because I wanted to be with you in the midst of this." Also Read: Here are EXO Kai's Solo Debut Achievements That are Worth Noting Later on, Kai said he was enjoying his birthday with Ravi, Timoteo, and another friend, Kwonho. The live stream gave off bright energy, and the four even played games and interacted with their online viewers. During the broadcast, Kai brought up the topic of coronavirus and emphasized the rules, saying, "These days, there are health regulations. We should not have more than five people." He then continued by saying that there are only four people in their location. Though Kai initially wore a mask, he eventually took it off and carried out the broadcast when his friend Ravi and Timoteo appeared. The other two idols, who joined the live broadcast, also appeared without their masks on. Several celebrities sufferred and had to suspend their activities due to the spike of COVID-19 cases, which, in fact, also infected other idols. This was the reason why Korean online users criticized the EXO member. Some K-Netz were particularly disappointed as both Kai and Ravi joined the "Thanks to You Challenge" for medical frontliners last year. Internet users said, "Shouldn't we not have a private gathering?" and, "Gathering of more than five people is not allowed, but it doesn't mean that four can meet," and so on. Currently, quarantine authorities are urging people to refrain from gathering if more than five people. Yoon Taeho, head of the quarantine team at the Central Accident Investigation Headquarters, said on Dec. 24 last year: "We strongly recommend not to hold a private meeting with more than five people. This does not mean that the meeting is safe for up to four people, but that the risk of more than five people is very high." EXO Kai's Fans Make Generous Donation to Cancer Patients in Commemoration of His Birthday Meanwhile, EXO Kai is proving his good influence as his fan community donated 8.8 million KRW for pediatric cancer treatment to the "Korea White Blood Disease Children's Foundation" in commemoration of his birthday. All donations received will be used in the name of Kai to support the cost of treating children with cancer, according to the donor's will. The details of the application can be found on the website of the Korea White Blood Children's Foundation through the notice of "Economic Assistance Decision Patients." Read More: From BLACKPINK to EXO: Korean Media Names the Top K-Pop Stars Who are the Face of Luxury Brands For more K-Pop news and updates, keep your tabs open here at KpopStarz. KpopStarz owns this article. Written by Eunice Dawson Students planning to attend Lincoln Land Community Colleges Jacksonville or Beardstown locations can receive information about available scholarships through an online session this month. The Zoom session at 4 p.m. Jan. 27 will address available scholarships and there will be time for a question-and-answer session. Grieving: Alan and Jennifer Roberts with photographs of their daughter Claire outside Laganside Courts during the inquest into her death held last year One of Northern Ireland's top doctors - who has played a key role in the pandemic response - has mounted a High Court bid to stop an official probe into "serious criticisms" of his work. Professor Ian Young, the chief scientific adviser, is trying to prevent the General Medical Council (GMC) from investigating a series of allegations, including that he misled a coroner examining the death of a child at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children in 1996. Claire Roberts was nine when she died from hyponatraemia caused by fluid mismanagement. She was one of five children whose deaths were examined by a public inquiry which blasted the health service for its culture of secrecy and described her death as preventable. The inquiry report accused Prof Young, who carried out an independent review of her treatment for the Belfast Trust, of "misleading" the coroner at an inquest into her death in 2006. The inquiry chair also found that Prof Young "shifted from his initial independent role to one of protecting the hospitals and its doctors" and that he did not tell Claire's parents about failings in her treatment. During a virtual judicial review at the High Court in London, counsel for Prof Young, a member of the Sage government advisory body, described suggestions that he was involved in a cover up after Claire's death as "simply illogical". He also took the opportunity to apologise to Claire's parents, Alan and Jennifer, who were watching proceedings from their home in east Belfast. Robert Kellar QC said: "Prof Young is acutely conscious of the suffering of Mr and Mrs Roberts and their family arising from Claire's death and the subsequent events, including the lengthy public inquiry. Prof Young is deeply sorry for his actions, in so far as they have inadvertently contributed, or may have inadvertently contributed, to Mr and Mrs Roberts' distress or their suffering in any way." The judicial review is examining the legality of a GMC decision to investigate Prof Young following an earlier decision by the regulatory body that there was no case to answer. Expand Close Professor Ian Young / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Professor Ian Young The court was told the GMC began a probe following the publication of the Hyponatraemia Inquiry report, in which "serious criticisms were made of Prof Young's historic conduct alongside a number of other doctors". Mr Kellar QC continued: "In November 2018, the GMC communicated that the information comprised in the inquiry report had been considered by reference to the five-year rule but that the five-year rule would not be waived and the GMC will not be undertaking any further investigations and will be closing the inquiry with no further action." Under current legislation, the GMC does not routinely investigate allegations that are more than five-years-old unless it is in the public interest. The court was told an assistant registrar at the GMC deemed that it was not in the public interest to proceed with a case against Prof Young, referring to the historic nature of the allegations. However, the original decision was "reversed and substituted" by a different assistant registrar last year, who found that it was "in the public interest" for the allegations against Prof Young to proceed to an investigation. Mr Kellar argued the original decision that it was not in the public interest to waive the statutory time limit on investigations was "lawful and rational" and that the reversal of that decision was "inconsistent and unreasonable". However, Mr Justice Holgate raised concerns that the length of delay in concerns being brought to the GMC may play a part in its decision on whether or not to advance a case. Addressing Mr Kellar, he said: "I'm struggling a bit with that. It would be arguably wrong to look at the delay, per se, without looking at the context. The reason why action hasn't been taken before can be highly germane... one could easily imagine a situation, not this case, where there is a real problem for patients or their relations to work out whether there is a cause for concern, let alone complaint, because of the information they're being given. "If there is a candour issue in relation to that, that can be highly germane to the approach one takes to the length of delay and effectively what the first registrar was saying is that it was difficult for these matters to be properly appreciated until a very lengthy and detailed inquiry took place. "If that is what the first registrar is saying, is effectively recognising it took 11 to 13 years because it required investigation, why should the length of delay in isolation have any significance at all?" Peter Mant, for the GMC, said the body was not "making any findings" about Prof Young at this early stage in proceedings. Mr Justice Holgate said he will deliver judgment at a later date. Master: Rights Of Vijay's Latest Release Bought By Murad Khetani, Hindi Remake On Cards? Thalapathi Vijay's Master has been a hit down south. The actor had requested theatres to go with 100 percent occupancy after they were instructed to follow a 50 percent occupancy protocol due to the pandemic. The film saw crowds lineup in front of the theatres in different parts and has also managed to collect a great amount. Now, we are getting to hear that a Hindi remake of the same is on cards. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vijay Sethupathi (@actorvijaysethupathi) Yes, you read that right. A report in Pinkvilla suggests that Murad Khetani has bought the rights of the film. A source said, Around two weeks back, Murad along with the team of Endemol visited Chennai for a special screening of Master, after coordinating with the producers of Tamil original. They loved the film and decided to bankroll it in Hindi. This meeting led to paperwork and the producers now officially have the Hindi remake rights under their kitty. They have bagged the rights for a hefty sum. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Murad Khetani (@muradkhetani) The film brought together two big Tamil stars- Thalapathy Vijay and Vijay Sethupathi, and the Hindi version too might have two big stars coming together. The team is currently zeroing in on a director and the source added that it will go on floors in the latter half of the year! Isn't that exciting? New Delhi: Farmer union leaders will hold the 9th round of talks with the Centre on Friday (January 15, 2021) hoping for an early resolution of all concerning the farmers, who had been protesting against Centres three farm laws for nearly two months now. Krantikari Kisan Union chief Darshan Pal had on Thursday confirmed that they will take part in the scheduled meeting with the central government on Friday concerning their demands on new farm laws. He said they will decide on their next course of action on the government`s response. "We will go to tomorrow's meeting with the government. One committee member has already resigned which is a good thing," Pal said. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has said that the Centre is looking forward to positive discussions with the farmers. Tomar said the government is ready to hold discussions with farmer unions leaders with an open mind. Todays talks come a day after Bhartiya Kisan Union national president Bhupinder Singh Mann recused himself from the four-member committee appointed by the Supreme Court to resolve the deadlock between farmers and the Centre over the new agri-marketing laws. In this backdrop, Tomar said the talks between the government and the farmer union representatives will take place as scheduled on January 15 at the Vigyan Bhavan. The 4-member committee was asked to submit its report to the Supreme Court within two months of its first sitting, which is to take place within 10 days. Meanwhile, Bharatiya Kisan Union has sought support from the members of the committee appointed by the Supreme Court to resolve farm laws deadlock. A BKU leader said that the panel members should follow the suit of Bhupinder Singh Mann and not be on the "wrong side of history". Mann, the national president of Bharatiya Kisan Union, on Thursday expressed gratitude over his nomination into the four-member committee but recused himself saying he would give up any position to prevent farmers' interests from being compromised. "Mann's decision is a welcome move. The other three members of the panel, who have shown pro-new farm laws stance should also follow Mann's suit. This ongoing agitation for rollback of the three agri laws is history in the making, and we urge they should not be on the wrong side of history," Bharatiya Kisan Union (Lok Shakti) spokesperson Shailesh Kumar Giri said. Apart from Mann, Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati were appointed on the panel. So far, eight rounds of talks have been held between the protesting farmers and government over their demand for the repeal of new farm laws. The Supreme Court had on Tuesday stayed the implementation of three farms laws until further orders and formed a four-member committee. Farmers have been protesting on the different borders of the national capital since November 26 against the three newly enacted farm laws - Farmers` Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; the Farmers Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and farm Services Act 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. Live TV The UK has scrapped travel corridors due to the threat posed by new strains of Covid-19. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. All travellers arriving into Northern Ireland will now have to isolate for ten days after travel corridors were scrapped due to fears of new strains of Covid-19. The isolation period can be shortened if passengers receive a negative result from a coronavirus test taken at least five days after they enter the region. The new measures will apply to everyone travelling from nations outside the Common Travel Area (CTA) of the UK and Republic of Ireland. The UK-wide move was announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a Downing Street press conference on Friday. Its precisely because we have the hope of that vaccine and the risk of new strains coming from overseas that we must take additional steps now to stop those strains from entering the country," Mr Johnson said. The move will come into effect from 4am on Monday and will last until at least February 15. It was announced on Thursday that anyone travelling into Northern Ireland from outside the CTA would need a negative Covid-19 test within the past 72 hours. UK travel was also banned from South America and Portugal due to risks from a new strain of Covid-19 first identified in Brazil. There were 64 countries, islands and territories on Northern Ireland's travel corridor list, allowing visitors to travel to the region without having to self-isolate. The Department of Health has said that regulations and an amended list of exemptions is currently being developed and will be published over the weekend. Northern Ireland's Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride said that decisions around travel corridors were based on assessing the public health risk from SARS-COV-2 and not new strains. He explained that given the risk posed by new strains of the virus travel corridors could not continue in the same way. "It is not possible to predict with any certainty the risk that a particular country or region will be the originator of a variant of concern," Dr McBride said. This move is designed to provide time within which to reassess the position on international travel and develop a system better able to respond to the risk of new variants, this work will be done in collaboration with the Scottish Government and Welsh Government. The Executive is also working with the UK Government to "facilitate urgent conversations with the Irish Government to improve data sharing from Dublin, to minimise the risk of a back door emerging through the land border". At Thursday's Executive Covid-19 briefing First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill were critical of the Irish Government over their failure to share information from passenger locator forms. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... One can imagine some audience members walking out of the theater (or exercising the EXIT option on their home viewing devices) during the first half-hour or so of Pieces of a Woman not because of any weakness in the movie, but due to the intense, heart-stopping, draining and almost painfully realistic nature of a sequence in which three characters experience some of the highest emotional highs and lowest possible lows imaginable over the course of one evening. Its a childbirth sequence. One that ends with unspeakable, terrifying, gut-punching tragedy. Were just getting to know Martha and Sean (Vanessa Kirby and Shia LeBeouf, respectively), a young-ish Boston couple, when Martha goes into labor and Sean calls the midwife because theyve agreed this will be a home birth. (Sidebar: Boston doesnt really look much like Boston in this film, with good reason it was filmed in Montreal.) The midwife theyve been working with is busy helping deliver another baby, so she recommends a colleague: Molly Parkers Eva, who has years of experience in the field but is a stranger to Martha and Sean. As director Kornel Mundruczo films in a docudrama style that feels like one long (approximately 23 minutes) unbroken take, Eva is an initially calming presence as Martha experiences excruciating pain and Sean paces about like a caged animal. But as expertly played by Molly Parker, Eva begins to show flickers of concern in her eyes, the first indication there will be complications, and then further complications, until the decision is finally made to call 911, but the baby isnt going to wait, the baby is here, and all seems well and joyous and wonderful until it isnt. With a richly layered and resonant screenplay by Kata Weber, sure-handed direction from Mundruczo and a stunningly authentic performance by Vanessa Kirby (The Crown) sure to garner an Oscar nomination, Pieces of a Woman is a stark and unforgettable character study about love and loss, and what loss does to love, and how some tragedies are so devastating, so huge, the survivors will never be the same. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ The question is, will they find a way to continue and to allow themselves to one day feel happiness again? After that harrowing first act, we segue into a domestic story that adds context to the marriage between Martha and Sean, which wasnt on the most solid ground before they lost their baby and is now on the verge of ripping apart at the seams. The volatile and almost brutish Sean works on a construction site building a bridge (metaphor duly noted), and he clearly resents Marthas well-off family, in particular her mother, Elizabeth (the great Ellen Burstyn in a nomination-worthy supporting performance), who eventually tells Sean to his face that shes never liked him, and we can certainly see why. Martha builds a nearly impenetrable wall around herself, as she methodically goes about the business of making plans to donate the babys body to science, snaps at colleagues when she returns to work and gets into some heated exchanges with Sean and her mother. In the meantime, Sean starts sleeping with Marthas cousin Suzanne (Sarah Snook from Succession), an attorney who is guiding the family through the legal process as theyve decided to press charges against Eva the midwife for criminal negligence. This leads to a third shift in tone, as much of the final act of Pieces of a Woman is about the trial, which has attracted considerable media attention, with some painting Eva (and midwives in general) as unqualified to handle medical emergencies, and others wondering why Martha insisted on a home delivery even after it was clear complications were developing. Its a bit of a jarring segue, as the gritty, indie feel of the story gives way to a sensational, made-for-Hollywood trial, but we remain deeply invested in these characters, and we feel great sympathy for Martha and for Eva. (Sean, not so much. Hes a loutish guys who is forever patting himself on the back for taking strides to become a better person, when in fact hes still a lousy human being and probably will never really change.) The trial becomes a catharsis for Martha, which leads to an epilogue that some might find a little too tidy, too neatly summed up, but feels well-earned and fitting. Its a lovely and sunny grace note after a long, cold and bruising journey. PIECES OF A WOMAN 3.5 stars RATED: R (for sexual content, brief drug use, language and graphic nudity) WHEN: Now streaming WHERE: Netflix Tony Blair delivered a brutal verdict on Scottish Labour today saying ex-Tory leader Ruth Davidson has been the only effective opposition to the SNP for a decade. In a devastating attack, the former PM lashed out at the way Nicola Sturgeon had been given a free run to push for breaking up the UK. He warned that the independence issue was now 'centre stage' again due to Labour's slump north of the border - with just one MP now compared to dozens up to 2015. The swipe came after Scottish Labour was plunged into fresh turmoil with the resignation of its leader just months ahead of Holyrood elections. Corbyn ally Richard Leonard fell on his sword after months of tensions with Keir Starmer and other senior figures. Asked about devolution at a Chatham House event today, Mr Blair said: 'I think... what has put Scottish independence back centre-stage again are two things. In a devastating attack, Tony Blair lashed out at the way Nicola Sturgeon had been given a free run to push for breaking up the UK Mr Blair said ex-Tory leader Ruth Davidson (right) has been the only effective opposition to the SNP, led by Ms Sturgeon (left), for a decade Corbyn ally Richard Leonard fell on his sword after months of tensions with Keir Starmer (pictured) and other senior figures 'First of all the Labour Party lost its position in Scotland completely for, I think, reasons that were avoidable. 'And, really, the only effective opposition that has come to the SNP in the last decade was actually when Ruth Davidson was the Conservative Party leader in Scotland. 'And, the second thing was that Brexit put it back on the agenda again. The fact is it's given the nationalists a whole new lease of life.' The comments came a day after Scottish Labour began a search for its fifth leader in seven years after the sudden resignation of Richard Leonard from the post ahead of parliamentary elections in May. Mr Blair also called for public regulation of social media as he criticised decisions by Twitter and others to ban President Donald Trump from their platforms in the wake of the mob storming of the US Capitol building last week. Questioned by Tory former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt at the policy institute's virtual forum, Mr Blair insisted tech giants such as Twitter needed regulation. He said: 'I think you have got to treat these companies, to a degree, as public interest companies. 'And, no, it can't be right that the CEO of the company decides whether the president of the United States has a platform, or not. 'So, you are going to have to find some way of getting a system of regulation that is not simply driven by the views of the company. 'It is part of what is a big debate, which is: how do you regulate these large technology companies that have an influence politically of an outsize amount.' Scottish Labour began a search for its fifth leader in seven years after the sudden resignation of Mr Leonard (pictured) from the post ahead of parliamentary elections in May The ex-prime minister insisted the Leave or Remain EU argument was now over and should be replaced by a debate on change or decline for the UK. He said: 'I campaigned so long and so passionately against Brexit because I believed it to be a strategic error not just of policy but of destiny. 'I haven't changed my mind about its wisdom. But reality is reality. We have done it. We must live with it. We should make the best of it. 'It is no longer 'Leave or Remain' but 'change or decline'. 'The right response therefore, is to treat Brexit as a jolt, to act as a catalyst for change.' A recent study has uncovered the key behavioural patterns of the emu, one of Australia's most iconic animals. The bird is also something of an enigma. 'They are so widespread, but we really don't know much about them,' Western Sydney University PhD student Julia Ryeland said. 'How do you know how they're going to be affected by anthropogenic change when we don't even know basic things like lifespan?' Ms Ryeland and other researchers at Western Sydney University and the University of Tasmania are the authors of a new study that sheds light on the mysterious bird. The scientists investigated where emus are likely to live in Australia, as well as tracking where they have spent the past 6,000 years and what will happen in the next 50 years. Emus (pictured above) are one of Australia's most popular animals, and they also feature on the Coat of Arms Emus (pictured above) look to adapt to their surroundings, with climate a crucial factor They compiled emu spottings over the past few decades from the archives, matching the data with open source information about what conditions were like in those locations. They discovered that climate is the most influential factor over where emus live, and that the birds are less bothered by things like habitat and urbanisation. It turns out that emus like rainfall across most of the year, but are put off by heavy rainfall in summer. The researchers used modelling to look at where emu populations were likely to have been from the mid-holocene -- around 6,000 years ago -- to now, and then 50 years into the future. Change in climate over the millennia led the flightless birds to move away from the eastern shores of Australia -- where they were often sighted even as late as European settlement -- westward and northward. The emu is now found in healthy numbers across most of Australia, bar the uppermost parts of the Northern Territory, but in smaller numbers in the east. Only one endemic population is known to remain in NSW east of the Great Diving Range -- a population on the north coast which is listed as endangered. The climate there is on the fringes of what the birds relish. The suboptimal climate conditions might then leave the birds more vulnerable to feral predators and changes in land use, helping to explain their dwindling numbers, Ms Ryeland says. But emus are survivors, even if a location does not have the right conditions for them. 'They're generalists and they're large-bodied,' Ms Ryeland said. 'They can move really far distances quite quickly so they can recolonise different areas, and they feed off a really, really wide range of plants or invertebrates.' Western Sydney University PhD student Julia Ryeland (pictured above) was a key researcher in a recent study of emus in Australia The good news is that man-made climate change is not likely to threaten emus in the next few decades. 'It looks like they're probably going to remain in similar areas in 50 years' time,' Ms Ryeland says. 'At the moment, it looks like the impact of anthropogenic climate change is going to be relatively small.' But the modelling showed that eastern Australia is likely to remain suboptimal for emus over the coming decades. As one of only two emu researchers in the country, Ms Ryeland wants more funding to be put into understanding the endangered population in NSW. 'There's been no research done on this population at all,' she says. 'That makes it difficult to make really good management plans.' Ms Ryeland says the emu is a totem in a lot of Indigenous Australian cultures, and also appears on the Australian coat of arms. 'So it's a shame that we don't know more about them.' New Delhi: In the backdrop of the reports of a rethink on Nepal's Gorkha recruitment policy, Nepal's Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali on Friday said that so far there has not been any change in Kathmandu's position. In response to a question in Delhi, the Nepal FM said, "So far as the Gorkha recruitment in the Indian Army is concerned, it is a reality and one of the important components of our relationship." He added, "Yes there are academic discussions in societies, in vibrant democracies, there may be different opinions in that regard, but so far the government of Nepal has not changed its position on this issue or made any new decision in that regard." As part of India-UK-Nepal tripartite agreement of 1947, Gorkha Regiments serve in the British and Indian armies. In 2020, Nepal's Foreign Minister had called the agreement "redundant" which raised eyebrows in India. The Gorkha regiments in the Indian Army have been a much-celebrated element of the India-Nepal people to people relationship. In fact, India's Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat is from 5/11 Gurkha rifles. The bravery of Gorkhas has been legendary. Warcry of the regiments is 'Jai Maha Kali, Ayo ri Gorkhali' (Hail Goddess Kali, the Gorkhas are here!), well known on both sides of India-Nepal border. Cuyahoga Community College recently asked Northeast Ohio teens to weigh in on a question society often struggles to answer: What is racism, and what should we do about it? Nearly 200 students answered. The following essay by Wendy Wu of Solon High School was the first-place winner in the senior-junior group. At the age of 11, I should be the kid who stares blankly into a distant object with a silly yet innocent gaze while licking the sweet flavors off of the colors of the rainbow lollipop. Or I should be the kid who runs carelessly over the sandy playground and whip up some dirt into the warm breezes, creating a dusty atmosphere while sharing waves of laughter with other children. It was my dream to become one of those kids. But something stepped in my path. I will never forget the day I was judged. Not for merit. Not for an achievement. Not for an entry of artwork for a competition. It was my entry into her class that caused me to earn her contempt, maybe stemmed from the immutable fact of my yellowish pigmented skin or my almond-shaped eyes. Go back to China! she said. She stared at me with a pair of icy and cruel eyes, shattering the pride and confidence in myself. Correct, I am an American born Chinese, and China is where my cultural roots lie. But to say those words is not right. She shouldnt have crossed the line. There are four words in that sentence. In Mandarin, four is a homophone with death. Indeed, those four words caused wilting emotional strength in me. Racism is a bias against an individual by their physical appearance, cultural background, or ethnicity. The hatred from that sunny day in sixth grade permeated through the air, and I breathed bitter racism, like the taste of the smoky filth in polluted air. There are billions of people, all diverse and unique, on one Earth. And racism can happen anywhere and to anyone. Racism is the seed of the destruction of humanity that nourishes from daily discrimination of people of different races, from young to older people, from one pole of the Earth to another, growing and endangering unity among our shared identity as human beings. I believe the active consciousness to stop racism begins in ones community. For high school students like me, that should start from one student in a classroom to all. One should report discriminatory comments from classmates or teachers in the school and rude social media posts to the school officials, who should always prioritize societys justice, starting from the school system, where they ensure that every student is prevented from promoting racism. Schools should also implement frequent educational lessons that teach students about the importance of respecting other individuals, including pointing out direct and indirect racist languages and acts to call for awareness. Students should engage in deep reflections of societys race issues and be encouraged to step up and stop racism from spreading. Schools should encourage students to appreciate each others difference, no matter race or background. Then, the wounds created by racism will be healed trough the kindness of people who believe justice can prevail. The power of hope will spread to every corner of the world. The Stand for Racial Justice High School Essay Contest was sponsored by Tri-Cs Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center in partnership with cleveland.com, The Plain Dealer and Sun News. See all the winning essays here. Europe must be part of humanitys long-term exploration of the moon and Mars, a leading European Space Agency (ESA) official has said. David Parker, who is director of human and robotic exploration at the ESA, said that one of the agencys key goals is to ensure there is an European astronaut on the moon by the end of the decade. Speaking at the European Space Conference on Wednesday, he said: I hope that Europe has leaders ready to step up to this challenge ESA is ready to serve them and deliver. Because if we jump on this train, the legacy will then be to ensure that Europe will also be part of the historic journey when the first astronauts go to Mars. His comments come amid concerns that Europe is falling behind in the space race as countries like China, Japan and India ramp up their efforts to become space powers. Mr Parker said: We must be part of the long-term exploration of the moon and Mars, and therefore, the biggest decision in 2022 is going to be how to ensure the European astronauts are part of the next 20 years of lunar exploration. I believe it is our goal and it is my duty to ensure that the first European explorer is on the surface of the moon before this decade is out. Mr Parker, who served as chief executive of the UK Space agency from 2012 to 2016, said that Europe has started on a great track in its space missions. But he added that the ESA Ministerial Council, the political decision-making body setting the content and financial framework for ESAs space programmes, had a choice to make ahead of its upcoming meeting in 2022, which is either be satisfied with being number three, behind the US and China, or, to maintain an upward curve. He said: Weve got plenty of ideas, but the point is, we cant stand still because the rest of the world is not. We are now, thanks to the support of the (EU) member states, spending 650 million euros a year in exploration a one third increase, compared to five years ago. But Nasa is spending $200m (164m) a week. Chinas ambitions are clear we have seen it land a rover on the far side of the moon (and) recover samples from the near side. Then next month, it will start building its space station and make a first attempt to land on Mars. And they are building huge new rockets to support lunar exploration. Mr Parker said that a long-term political will is required for the ESA to achieve its ambitious goals for space exploration. He said: We need fuel in the tank, we need the investment to continue our growth and to deliver the opportunities because we have the capability to do it in Europe. Do we have the political will? Thats the key question for me. It was one of the first financial hardships to rear its head when the coronavirus pandemic ground the economy to a halt last March. Hundreds of thousands of residents, many employed in the service and retail industries, saw their work and their wages disappear almost overnight, rendering them unable to pay their rent. While many have avoided being thrown out of their apartments by eviction moratoriums, theyve been falling behind every month. And while landlords have gotten some protection by mortgage forbearance programs, the lost revenue from missed rent payments has put them in financial jeopardy. Now Louisiana residents who owe back rent will get a chance to tap into more than $300 million in federal aid money that is scheduled to become available in the coming weeks. The coronavirus relief package signed into law in late December also extends the moratorium on evictions through the end of January. Housing advocate say the states share of the $25 billion program $308 million, according to guidance from the U.S. Treasury department still falls well short of the need. But it represents the first respectable effort to put to dent a major crisis that is only getting worse. This relief was desperately needed, but its not nearly enough, he said Maxwell Ciardullo, director of policy and communications with the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center. The program will cover up to 12 months of back rent and three months of future rent payments, with an option for an additional three months if needed. According to Gov. John Bel Edwards office, the state's share of the money will be administered by the Louisiana Housing Corporation. Parishes with populations of at least 200,000 can apply for some of that funding and dole it out for rent payments themselves. Those parishes include Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany, East Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Caddo and Calcasieu. The state would administer any remaining funds to meet the need in smaller parishes. Ciardullo, whose organization has been tracking the program's development, said both renters or landlords can apply. Rental assistance programs often target one or the other and renters and landlords can be left in the lurch if their counterpart can't, or won't, deal with the paperwork. Landlords and renters are often pitted against each other, but they all need the same solution, he said. The new program is also going through the Treasury, not HUD, and will likely be much less constrained by bureaucratic red tape, Ciardullo said. It could be a few weeks before the program is put into place, but further guidance should come out in the meantime about how people can apply, he said. The Fair Housing Action Center estimated back in August that the state's rental assistance need at that point five months into the pandemic was roughly $500 million, and another five months have passed since then. According to estimates from the Baton Rouge-based Center for Planning Excellence this summer, roughly 140,000 Louisiana households spend more than a third of their income on rent and are in danger of losing their housing without the eviction moratorium. Locally, thats 29,372 families in New Orleans, 17,059 in Jefferson Parish and 4,173 in St. Tammany Parish. 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 Weve essentially been running on fumes, Ciardullo said. This is the first significant tranche of money that will help people pay rent. Hannah Adams, a staff attorney with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, which provides free legal aid for low-income residents, said people are being saddled with extraordinary amounts of debt as the eviction moratorium keeps them in housing they can't pay for month after month. "This is a debt situation like we've never seen," she said. The first federal aid package passed in April, called the CARES Act, freed up some money states could use at their discretion but had no direct aid for the rent-payment crisis. Gov. Edwards and Mayor Latoya Cantrell set up rental assistance programs over the summer that they acknowledged amounted to a drop in the bucket, but was the best anyone could do without federal aid. The city started a program with $3.8 million and received some donations in the month that followed with a goal of helping 4,000 families. The mayor's office did not return a request for details on how much has been disbursed. The states $24 million program, which also went through the Louisiana Housing Corporation using money from a handful of federal funding sources, had to be temporarily suspended in just days after it was swamped with 40,000 applications, four times as many as the program said it could assist. According to the Edwards administration, the program has allocated $13.1 million to 5,772 households, but only 736 of applicants have provided the necessary documentation for the money $1.8 million to be disbursed. The remaining 5,000 or so applicants are in the final stages of completing the process, the governors office said. The administration did not provide answers to follow-up questions about the figures. Ciardullo said housing advocates will continue to push for President-elect Joe Biden to extend and strengthen the moratorium, noting that even those who ultimately get rental assistance wont get it before the current moratorium ends. On Thursday, Biden released a $1.9 trillion aid proposal that would extend the eviction moratorium through September and put another $25 billion into rental assistance. Ciardullo said many who have gotten evicted or been squeezed out of housing during the pandemic have begun landed in their cars, on the streets, in shelters or doubling up with friends and family. In many cases, that creates an unsafe environment during the pandemic. Even those who have managed to keep a roof over their heads are far from fortunate. Were seeing more families who are staring down crushing levels of debt that will destroy lives for years after this pandemic is over, he said. 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. (Natural News) Two poll workers in Georgia who became whistleblowers after raising concerns regarding election irregularities were informed this week that their contracts were not going to be renewed despite the decades they have put into working for the state. Bridget Thorne and Susan Voyles spoke up about witnessing abnormal actions taken by other officials during the election in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta. (Related: Georgia recount: Biden accidentally given an extra 9,626 votes in DeKalb County.) Voyles, who has been working in elections for 20 years, said in her signed affidavit and subsequent testimony in front of the State Legislature that she found a batch filled with pristine ballots that were all marked exactly the same way. Ninety-eight percent of those ballots voted for Democratic nominee Joe Biden. She said that she had never in all her experience ever seen a whole host of ballots that were made in such a uniform, almost mechanical fashion. Thorne, who worked as a voting technician, claimed that ballots were not being handled properly at the State Farm Arena, which served as a vote tabulation center. When they came in from the warehouse, they were haphazardly treated by anybody who wanted to dump the ballots out of the scanner tabulators, she said. There werent two people present. People were just dumping them in suitcases and then leaving the suitcases on the floor. Dwight Bower, an election consultant for the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections informed Thorne and Voyles that, according to Georgia law, they have to be reappointed as poll managers for each election event. The department has the power to choose to appoint new poll managers. There are many factors (management skills, performance, actions, behavior, etc.) considered prior to making reappointments for each primary or election, wrote Brower. Unfortunately, a decision has been made to not reappoint you in a poll management or other poll position in Fulton County. During an interview with NTD TV, Voyles lamented the decision, saying that there is no doubt that it because she became a whistleblower. I see it as a direct consequence of my being honest. In that oath, we say that I will, to the best of my abilities, make sure there is no fraud, deceit it kind of goes on down like this. So I saw what I was doing was an extension of my job as a poll manager. In other words, I had seen fraud, I had seen deceit, I had seen the things that in our poll reading we were warned to stay away from and to report if we see them. I did, and in this case, at this point, the truth was not received well. Georgia Secretary of State condemns firing, demands whistleblowers be reinstated Brad Raffensperger, Georgias Secretary of State, has criticized the firing of Voyles and Thorne. I condemn in the strongest terms the decision by Fulton County election officials to fire two poll managers purely for raising concerns about the November elections, said Raffensperger on Friday, Dec. 18. Though we have found no credible evidence of widespread fraud, it is important that individuals can raise their voice when they believe they have seen wrongdoing, he added. Retribution against whistleblowers poses a threat to the continued strength and vibrancy of our democracy. Georgia officials like Raffensperger have insisted that the election was run smoothly despite the fact that multiple lawsuits have been filed alleging ballot tampering and voter and election fraud. In response to Raffenspergers statement and other previous criticisms of the way Fulton County handled their election, the countys Board of Commissioners Chairman Rob Pitts told reporters that he isnt certain why. We are the largest county in the state of Georgia. The largest of 159, said Pitts. I cannot speak to what the other 158 counties in Georgia are doing, but I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that within Fulton County, there was no hanky panky whatsoever with respect to the recent election. Zero. Sources include: TheEpochTimes.com FoxNews.com Highlights Xiaomi is tipped to launch a new foldable display phone. The new foldable phone has been leaked in live images. Xiaomi's is tipped to launch multiple foldable phones this year. The last two years have seen a number of new foldable phones launched in the market. Multiple phone makers have been working on foldable phones, with some even managing to launch commercially viable products. And it appears Xiaomi is also working hard to join the list, with the company reportedly in the final legs of launching a new foldable phone in the market. As per reports coming out of China, a new foldable device was spotted in the hands of a user inside a subway in China. The device looks quite similar to the one that was showcased by Xiaomi's VP a few years ago. However, this one appears to bring with itself a bigger display than the one we had seen before. The new device appears to be covered by a protective casing and by looks of it seems to be an engineering prototype of the final device. Interestingly, the leaked pictures show the phone running MIUI12 OS and also using a similar in-folding screen as we had seen on the Galaxy Z Fold. This makes sense as in the past we've heard rumours about Xiaomi's foldable phones using UTG (ultra-thin flexible glass) technology from Samsung. Apart from this, rhe images also show the phone could be quite bulky even when folded. But that's something we can not be sure of by just looking at the pictures. Earlier, trusted tipster Ross Young had claimed that Xiaomi will launch three new foldable devices next year. Young had also claimed that the next foldable phone to arrive in the market could be from Xiaomi. He had also said that the brand is expected to unveil foldable phones with designs such as out-folding, an in-folding, and a clamshell. Further, he had claimed that the out-folding foldable phone from Xiaomi will be like the Huawei Mate X and could feature a display of around 8 inches. Interestingly, it is not the first time we are hearing about a foldable phone from Xiaomi. In fact, earlier in the year we had read a report by XDA Developers talking about a foldable Xiaomi device codenamed "Cetus". The publication had found evidence for the device in the MIUI 12 beta. It had also claimed that the device will be equipped with a Snapdragon chipset and a 108-megapixel camera. For now, there isn't any other detail available about "Cetus". However, our belief is that the device will launch sometime this year and as such more details about it will start to emerge in the next few weeks. For now, however, we can only wait and watch and hope the information that eventually comes in is worth the wait. The same day the U.S. Congress voted to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time, the nations capital prepared to welcome thousands more National Guard troops to help keep the peace during next weeks transfer of power. I think you can expect to see somewhere upwards of beyond 20,000 members of the National Guard that will be here, Robert Contee, acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, told reporters Wednesday. Defense officials confirmed the increased authorization, which came just days after the National Guard said it was sending up to 15,000 troops to the city to help with security ahead of the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in Novembers election. Officials said 10,000 guardsmen part-time soldiers who can be deployed overseas but who are often called upon to help with emergencies in their home states are expected to be on duty in Washington by Friday. The rest will arrive soon afterward. More than 6,000 National Guard troops have been on duty in Washington and at the Capitol itself since pro-Trump extremists stormed the building last Wednesday. In a statement issued Monday, General Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said the Guard's role was to support security, logistics, liaison and communication missions." But since late Tuesday, National Guard forces working at the Capitol have also been carrying weapons. This was requested by federal authorities and authorized by the Secretary of the Army, the D.C. National Guard said in a statement. The public's safety is our top priority." Images of armed soldiers in fatigues guarding the Capitol while others lined the hallways spread on social media Wednesday, along with photos of recently installed fencing and metal barriers. Videos and photos also showed images of streets blocked off by military vehicles while workers put up even more fencing. In contrast, when Trump was inaugurated four years ago, only about 8,000 National Guard members were on hand to help with security. Trump statement In an attempt to calm tensions, the White House on Wednesday issued a statement from Trump, calling on those planning to protest in Washington to abide by the law. In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind, Trump said. That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. In a video released hours later, Trump called on Americans to overcome the passions of the moment. He also spoke to his supporters about the siege of the Capitol. Mob violence goes against everything I believe in and everything our movement stands for, Trump said. No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence he added. No true supporter of mine could ever disrespect law enforcement or our great American flag. Despite such pleas, government officials have been moving ahead with additional security precautions, closing down more streets around the Capitol, while restricting access to lawmakers, their staff members and security personnel. Other Washington landmarks are also off limits. The National Park Service announced earlier this week that the Washington Monument was closed to visitors until after the inauguration. It said other parts of the National Mall could also be closed in the coming days. Officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned this week that armed protesters might be headed to Washington early next week, with posts on social media suggesting they were ready to engage in some sort of uprising. The events of Jan. 6 serve as a stark reminder of the criticality of comprehensive security planning, the U.S. Secret Service, which is now leading planning efforts, said in a statement. As is always the case, security during a National Special Security Event (NSSE) is a layered network of operations, seen and unseen, that run in tandem with federal, state and local law enforcement, military, and public safety entities, it added. Tori Sneden contributed to this report. The UK has vaccinated the most people in Europe. (PA) Almost half of the over-80s in the North East and Yorkshire have been vaccinated against COVID-19, the latest figures show. The latest data from NHS England shows 49% of over-80s have received at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, putting the region 12% ahead of any other part of England. London and the East of England, some of the areas that have been the hardest hit during the current wave of COVID-19, are lagging behind the rest of the country. The capital has vaccinated 31% of its over-80s, while the East of England has given 30% of its over-80s jabs. London Mayor Sadiq Khan claimed the capital was not getting its fair share of vaccine doses. Read more: 'It was only five minutes': Police reveal footage of 'ridiculous' lockdown breaches This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. The Labour mayor said: I am hugely concerned that Londoners have received only a tenth of the vaccines that have been given across the country. The situation in London is critical with rates of the virus extremely high, which is why its so important that vulnerable Londoners are given access to the vaccine as soon as possible. He said he would hold talks with vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi to ensure that we urgently receive an amount of the vaccine that reflects our size, density and the level of need in our city. The NHS responded, insisting that London was getting its fair share of vaccine supply. Watch: COVID-19: Midlands hands out most COVID jabs as North East and Yorkshire leads total coverage - here's how England's regions compare Read more: Elderly people told to delay COVID vaccines because of snow A spokesman for the NHS in London said: The NHS coronavirus vaccination programme, the biggest in the health services history, has got off to a strong start with a quarter of a million Londoners receiving their first vaccination against Covid, giving significant protection to those most at risk from the virus. We have more than 100 vaccination sites up and running across London, including the NHS COVID-19 vaccination centre in the ExCeL London, and more are opening all the time. Story continues London is getting its fair share of vaccine supply for the priority groups we have to vaccinate by mid-February. The other areas of England have all vaccinated just over a third of their over-80s, the figures are: South West 37% North West 36% Midlands 35% South East 36% The estimates are based on population figures from the Office for National Statistics and data from the NHS. The latest figures show over 2,371,407 injections have been carried out in England, 374,103 of which were second jabs. Just over one million over-80s in the UK have now received at least their first jab of the COVID-19 vaccine, with slightly less under-80s also getting the injection. The Midlands has handed out the most jabs overall with 447,329 and the East of England providing the lowest at 236,023, slightly below London at 237,524. The government has committed to giving about 13 million people in the UK the vaccine by the end of February. The figure includes all of the most vulnerable people in the UK as well as all frontline health and care workers. Separate figures from NHS England show that nearly a quarter (23%) of all first doses of COVID-19 vaccine in England up to 7 January went to people aged 49 and under. Just over half (53%) went to people aged 80 and over. Some 12% went to people aged 50-59, 6% to those aged 60-69, and 6% to those aged 70-79. While the rollout of the vaccine brings hope for many, the government and leading scientists have warned the next few weeks will be the toughest of the pandemic. Read more: The chart which shows how well Brits are sticking to COVID rules This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. There were 1,564 deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive test on Wednesday, the highest figure reported in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic. Speaking on the day that the daily reported death toll reached a new high, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said were in a period of high death numbers which will not reduce quickly. The latest figures mean the grim milestone of more than 100,000 deaths involving coronavirus has now been passed in the UK, according to official data. Watch: Covid vaccinations start at boots branch in Halifax Nigel Farage has warned US Democrats their impeachment proceedings risk 'martyring' Donald Trump and fuelling the rise of an organised far-right party. The Brexiteer said trying to remove the President, who leaves office next week, would be a 'historic mistake' and only stoke further tensions in America. 'There's a real danger that someone far worse in the Democrats' eyes than President Trump will come along as a big political figure,' he said in a video posted to Twitter. 'A real danger that you see an organised far-right political party in the USA as they split off from the Republicans. 'And a real danger that a non-acceptance of legitimacy - a complete refusal to accept the way their president has been silenced and impeached - will lead to chaos and disorder continuing in America.' Nigel Farage said trying to remove the President (pictued) before he leaves office next week would be a 'historic mistake' and only stoke further tensions in America Trump this week became the first president in history to be impeached twice, this time for inciting an insurrection after his supporters stormed the Capitol in a raid that left five dead. Democrats are hoping their articles of impeachment will pass in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority vote is needed to secure a conviction and ban him from standing for the presidency again. Conviction at the Senate would require 17 Republicans to vote with the Democrats, making it unlikely. But Mr Farage, who is a friend of Trump and stumped for him during the election, said the impeachment process in itself would enrage his 'tens of millions of voters'. He said impeachment would give the President a 'sainthood' status among his base, who view politicians in Washington DC as 'their enemy'. 'They're people who have absolutely no trust in the mainstream media, their people whose distrust in social media is growing very quickly,' Mr Farage said. Trump this week became the first president in history to be impeached twice, this time for inciting an insurrection after his supporters stormed the Capitol in a raid that left five dead Mr Farage, who is a friend of Trump and stumped for him during the election, said the impeachment process in itself would enrage his 'tens of millions of voters' Trump's supporters are reeling from Twitter's ban of his account and an election defeat the president baselessly claims was 'stolen'. Mr Farage added: 'If you martyr Trump, if that's what the establishment does, not only does it, in the eyes of those tens of millions in to some form of sainthood, but they lead to a situation where to silence Trump, something else will come along to head up those tens of millions of people.' Mr Farage, who recently rebranded the Brexit Party as the Reform Party, believes that last week's Capitol invasion will not define Trump's presidency nor eclipse achievements, such as diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. Listen to article Pan-Igbo sociopolitical pressure group, the South East Revival Group (SERG) has hailed the election of the new Ohanaeze President General, Ambassador George Obiozor. The President and National Coordinator of the group, Chief Willy Ezugwu in a statement thanked all Igbo groups and individuals to for rallying round Amb. Obiozor and ensured the best contestant for the job emerged. The SERG therefore urged other contenders to support the new Ohanaeze leadership as only one person can emerge President of Ohanaeze at a time. While thank all Igbo delegates from all Igbo speaking communities in Nigeria, we advise the new President General to avoid being a for a few. It's time to carry all Igbo leader and all stakeholders along in the running of the Igbo socio-cultural organization. Ohanaeze should not only be a uniting body for Ndigbo worldwide but also the number one organization that must stand firmly to protect Igbo interests in Nigeria. We are very convinced that with the local and international pedigree of the new Ohanaeze leader, his tenure would end as the best ever, the SERG said. Microplastics have attracted worldwide regulatory scrutiny due to their pervasiveness and potential health threat, prompting their replacement and removal from consumer products including cosmetics and personal care. In relation, a new study, published in Environment International, has apparently for the first time identified the presence of microplastics in human placenta. While the implications on the health of the fetus remains unclear, microplastics can serve as carriers for other potentially toxic chemicals added during manufacturing that may leach into the environment. Examples include bisphenol A and phthalates, which have been reported to cause hormone disruption. Regarding the study, six human placentas, collected from consenting women with healthy pregnancies and births, were analyzed by Raman Microspectroscopy to evaluate the presence of microplastics. In total, 12 microplastic fragments from 5 m to 10 m in size were found in four placentas. All microplastics particles were characterized and found to be pigmented: three were identified as stained polypropylene, a plastic often used in food packaging, while the other nine could only be identified by their pigmentsused in man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers and cosmetics and personal care products (see the complete open access article for the specified pigments). According to the researchers, it is likely the microplastics entered the mothers' bodies by ingestion or through respiration. While the study focused strictly on the presence of the microplastics and not their effects, lead author Antonio Ragusa, director of obstetrics and gynecology at the San Giovanni Calibita Fatebenefratelli hospital in Rome, expressed concerns about these findings in an interview with The Science Wire; namely, the potential for microplastics to alter cellular-regulating pathways for immunity. More specifically, Ragusa noted that microplastics may accumulate and, "exert localized toxicity by inducing and/or enhancing immune responses and, hence, potentially reducing the defense mechanisms against pathogens and altering the utilization of energy stores." As previously reported, a number of cosmetic and personal care companies have already eliminated or announced plans to eliminate microplastics from their products, including: Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Beiersdorf, Colgate-Palmolive and L'Oreal. Others have also explored alternative materials to provide similar functions to microbeads and microplastics in formulas. See related: Replacing Microplastics; Natural Cellulose Offers Gentle and Biodegradable Exfoliation More recently, the European Chemicals Agency's (ECHA's) Committee for Socio-economic Analysis (SEAC) adopted a landmark restriction to ban microplastics in a measure that would reportedly, "prevent 500,000 tonnes of microplastics from ending up in the environment over the course of 20 years." In this editor's estimation, however, these findings on microplastics in human placenta will pressure the industry to make changes much sooner. Phoenix, Arizona--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - The Stock Day Podcast welcomed OPTEC International, Inc. (OTC Pink: OPTI) ("the Company"), a developer and manufacturer of electronic LED, Ultraviolet (UV) & UV-C safety products and related advanced technologies and PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) products. CEO of the Company, Roger Pawson, joined Stock Day host Everett Jolly. Jolly began the interview by asking about the Company's recent announcement regarding the acquisition of Z20, a proprietary app utilized for cleaning and disinfecting services. Pawson shared that a pilot program for the Z20 app will begin in March in Austin, Texas, before elaborating on the revenue potential of the new acquisition. "We do have some basic projections. The preliminary market research that we've conducted for that is astronomical," explained Pawson. "We don't really want to publish any numbers until we've completed the pilot program and have gotten a real feel for what those numbers will actually look like, but all indications show that it could be huge potential in light of the fact that the pandemic is reaching new highs now." Pawson then elaborated on the capabilities of the app, "Instead of ordering a vehicle, you're ordering a cleaning service," explained Pawson. "The providers are like Uber drivers; they are independent contractors or service companies," he continued. "It's a really state-of-the-art type concept that is needed now more than ever," said Pawson, adding that the services will be available on-demand 24/7. The conversation then turned to the Company's $2 billion contract. "It is actually a little over $2 billion when the entire contract is satisfied; the gross profit from that is in excess of $100 million to the company," shared Pawson. "Where are we at with the share float structure of the company?", asked Jolly. "There's no dilution in the company at all," said Pawson. "The authorized have never changed, the issued and outstanding have never changed, and I believe the float has remained constant for at least the last 60 days, but probably 90 days," he explained. "I just want to clarify, the Carebourn Capital stock is restricted stock, it's not in the float. It is restricted until close to the end of the year." "How do you plan on growing the company over the next two to three quarters?", asked Jolly. "The company is already in a significant growth mode as you can see from the increasing revenues, they are basically doubling quarterly," said Pawson. "We've just implemented a whole new campaign with the Harrington Group," he shared. "We will be announcing shortly some big box outlets that will be carrying the iWand and Hydroxyl units, and we should be able to announce those within this quarter." To close the interview, Pawson thanked his shareholders and investors for their continued support, and elaborated on the Company's potential as they continue to expand. "In that support from the shareholders and investors, it has helped us clear up all of the toxic debt from the past and the company is in profitable format now." To hear Roger Pawson's entire interview, follow the link to the podcast here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7773175-optec-international-inc-discusses-acquisition-of-z20-app-for-24-7-cleaning-and-disinfecting-ser. Investors Hangout is a proud sponsor of "Stock Day," and Stock Day Media encourages listeners to visit the company's message board at https://investorshangout.com/. About OPTEC International, Inc. With Locations in Carlsbad and Vista, California, OPTEC International is a developer and manufacturer of electronic LED, Ultraviolet (UV) & UV-C safety products and related advanced technologies and PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) products. The company's Safe-Scan product line is being launched at a time when HR directors and facilities managers are experiencing extreme concern with respect to keeping environments safe during the global pandemic crisis and the safe reopening of the U.S. economy. For more information, visit: www.optecintl.com. Z2O is a subsidiary of " iManage, Inc", now majority owned by OPTEC International Inc., a publicly traded company trading under the ticker symbol OPTI. For additional Information, please email: IR@z2o.com For OPTEC International, Inc. investor relations at: www.optecintl.com/investor. Safe Harbor Statement: Safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases such as Opti, OPTEC or its management "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "foresees," "forecasts," "estimates" or other words or phrases of similar import. Similarly, statements herein that describe the Company's business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions, or goals also are forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. OPTEC International Inc. OPTEC International, Inc. Investor Relations Contact: Andrew Barwicki 516-662-9461 Andrew@barwicki.com About The "Stock Day" Podcast Founded in 2013, Stock Day is the fastest growing media outlet for Nano-Cap and Micro-Cap companies. It educates investors while simultaneously working with penny stock and OTC companies, providing transparency and clarification of under-valued, under-sold Micro-Cap stocks of the market. Stock Day provides companies with customized solutions to their news distribution in both national and international media outlets. The Stock Day Podcast is the number one radio show of its kind in America. Stock Day recently launched its Video Interview Studio located in Phoenix, Arizona. SOURCE: Stock Day Media (602) 821-1102 To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72147 On the surface, most tariffs appear to have the imposing countrys best interest in mind, but when you think about the larger ecosystem of the wine industry, these tariffs are impacting all of our customers from the individual state by state wine distributors, to the restaurants and the retailers who are purchasing the wines, and finally to the end consumer, said Dan Petroski, founder of a small Napa wine brand, Massican Winery. If certain European wines are removed from the pipeline or are taxed at a level that causes a cash crunch on any facet of the sales chain, it inevitably will break. Ted Wynot, president and CEO of The Sorting Table, a wine import, marketing and distribution company based in Napa, said the tariffs have resulted in a huge expense for the company. We spent more on tariffs than we did on sampling our own wine, and thats traditionally one of the biggest expenses for a wine importer, he said, adding that they even had to terminate a position because of them. A Chinese MIT professor accused of anti-American activity after his link to the Chinese Communist Party was discovered. For years, Beijing has sanctioned I.T. theft from institutions only now, under the Trump administration, it is dealt with. A Chinese faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has fallen into the dragnet as the U.S. conducted searches for espionage in universities and colleges. The Chinese faculty sought to keep his activities under the radar, especially his deep ties to the Chinese Communist regime. He accepted U.S. grant money while in contact with Beijing, said the Justice Department on Jan. 14, reported the Epoch Times. Identified is Gang Chen, 56, charged with a criminal complaint because of falsified statements on his tax return. He was accused of wire fraud, not filing a foreign bank account report, said the DOJ on the case. Chen is already naturalized and a Chinese national, MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory, and director of the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center. From 2013, a total of 19 million in U.S. agency grants were received by him, indicated in the document. Beginning in 2012, the Chinese faculty head had several appointments with the CCP. Aiming to steal American I.T. is unavailable to China, so they resort to espionage and subterfuge using all means to acquire it. Chen might have direct contact with CCP officials and got extra financial rewards for his service. At times the Chinese MIT professor was on tap as an expert for the Chinese Communist Party when requested by the Chinese Consulate in New York. Records show that he was part of two talent programs that were part of Chinese auspices, said the DOJ. Also read: World Health Organization Slams Chinese Communist Party for Delaying Foreign Specialists into Wuhan Sources say that Chen has been active since 2013 and got $29 million of foreign funding (CCP money) and $19 million from the Southern University of Science and Technology as a large grant. China benefitted from it as well. Evidence like an email said the DOJ was from servers, Chen sent an email to an MIT account. The email's content was the CCP's scientific and economic development strategy, caught red-handed assisted the CCP communists. In the email, he outlined what he labeled as crucial to forward the Communist agenda, mention scientific innovation is the key. He added it should be done in this stage of history; next, is the economy connected to technology and even environmental sustainability factored in. Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said that it is not a problem to work with foreign nationals and entities. He added collaboration is not an issue if it is above board. Only when concealment and lying is part of the deal. Chen is accused as a recruiter who helped point out those who can help advance the CCP undercover tech harvesting. The CCP has made stealing technology from the U.S. and other countries part of its plan. Prosecutors turned the screws and indicated an intention by Chen to keep his Chinese Communist Party activities and affiliation hid till now. One evidence is a bank account in the People's Republic of China Related articles: Director of National Intelligence says that Beijing a Threat to US, Free World Since 1941 @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. When the Thomas Fire raged through Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in December 2017, Danielle Touma, at the time an earth science researcher at Stanford, was stunned by its severity. Burning for more than a month and scorching 440 square miles, the fire was then considered the worst in California's history. Six months later the Mendocino Complex Fire upended that record and took out 717 square miles over three months. Record-setting California wildfires have since been the norm, with five of the top 10 occurring in 2020 alone. The disturbing trend sparked some questions for Touma, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School for Environmental Science & Management. "Climate scientists knew that there was a climate signal in there but we really didn't understand the details of it," she said of the transition to a climate more ideal for wildfires. While research has long concluded that anthropogenic activity and its products -- including greenhouse gas emissions, biomass burning, industrial aerosols (a.k.a. air pollution) and land-use changes -- raise the risk of extreme fire weather, the specific roles and influences of these activities was still unclear. Until now. In the first study of its kind, Touma, with fellow Bren School researcher Samantha Stevenson and colleagues Flavio Lehner of Cornell University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and Sloan Coats from the University of Hawaii, have quantified competing anthropogenic influences on extreme fire weather risk in the recent past and into the near future. By disentangling the effects of those man-made factors the researchers were able to tease out the roles these activities have had in generating an increasingly fire-friendly climate around the world and the risk of extreme fire weather in decades to come. Their work appears in the journal Nature Communications. "By understanding the different pieces that go into these scenarios of future climate change, we can get a better sense of what the risks associated with each of those pieces might be, because we know there are going to be uncertainties in the future," Stevenson said. "And we know those risks are going to be expressed unequally in different places too, so we can be better prepared for which parts of the world might be more vulnerable." Warm, Dry and Windy "To get a wildfire to ignite and spread, you need suitable weather conditions -- you need warm, dry and windy conditions," Touma said. "And when these conditions are at their most extreme, they can cause really large, severe fires." Using state-of-the-art climate model simulations available from NCAR, the researchers analyzed the climate under various combinations of climate influences from 1920-2100, allowing them to isolate individual effects and their impacts on extreme fire weather risk. According to the study, heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions (which started to increase rapidly by mid-century) are the dominant contributor to temperature increases around the globe. By 2005, emissions raised the risk of extreme fire weather by 20% from preindustrial levels in western and eastern North America, the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and the Amazon. The researchers predict that by 2080, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to raise the risk of extreme wildfire by at least 50% in western North America, equatorial Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia, while doubling it in the Mediterranean, southern Africa, eastern North America and the Amazon. Meanwhile, biomass burning and land-use changes have more regional impacts that amplify greenhouse gas-driven warming, according to the study -- notably a 30% increase of extreme fire weather risk over the Amazon and western north America during the 20th century caused by biomass burning. Land use changes, the study found, also amplified the likelihood of extreme fire weather in western Australia and the Amazon. Protected by Pollution? The role of industrial aerosols has been more complex in the 20th century, actually reducing the risk of extreme fire weather by approximately 30% in the Amazon and Mediterranean, but amplifying it by at least 10% in southeast Asia and Western North America, the researchers found. "(Industrial aerosols) block some of the solar radiation from reaching the ground," Stevenson said. "So they tend to have a cooling effect on the climate. "And that's part of the reason why we wanted to do this study," she continued. "We knew something had been compensating in a sense for greenhouse gas warming, but not the details of how that compensation might continue in the future." The cooling effect may still be present in regions such as the Horn of Africa, Central America and the northeast Amazon, where aerosols have not been reduced to pre-industrial levels. Aerosols may still compete with greenhouse gas warming effects in the Mediterranean, western North America and parts of the Amazon, but the researchers expect this effect to dissipate over most of the globe by 2080, due to cleanup efforts and increased greenhouse gas-driven warming. Eastern North America and Europe are likely to see the warming and drying due to aerosol reduction first. Southeast Asia meanwhile, "where aerosols emissions are expected to continue," may see a weakening of the annual monsoon, drier conditions and an increase in extreme fire weather. risk. "Southeast Asia relies on the monsoon, but aerosols cause so much cooling on land that it actually can suppress a monsoon," Touma said. "It's not just whether you have aerosols or not, it's the way the regional climate interacts with aerosols." The researchers hope that the detailed perspective offered by their study opens the door to more nuanced explorations of the Earth's changing climate. "In the broader scope of things, it's important for climate policy, like if we want to know how global actions will affect the climate," Touma said. "And it's also important for understanding the potential impacts to people, such as with urban planning and fire management." ### North Dakota is looking at using legislation to prevent abortions from being carried out in the state, and consider it a felony to do such a procedure, reports say. Performing abortion is one of the pressing issues in North Dakota that lawmakers threw the weights behind the House bill 1313 that would treat getting an abortion in the state as if it's legally murdering an unborn child. House Bill 1313 was introduced by Representative Jeff Hoverson, also a pastor, who said that abortion is a longshot and he believes that it is a humanitarian issue to challenge abortion rights, Christian Post reported. "I think it's long past due that we've got to start listening to the babies. Any human that would have compassion would not want to see a baby die that way, but it's not because some religion taught me. It's everything from humanity to common sense. I think even an atheist could come to that." Hoverson said. It utilizes the non-clinical term "human dismemberment abortion." The procedure has an exception for when it is "to save the life of the pregnant woman," but is not applicable if it is for other reasons. "A person that intentionally or knowingly aids, abets, facilitates, solicits, or incites another person to commit an abortion is guilty of a class C felony," which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and/or a fine of $10,000, the bill reads. Doctors, if convicted to having done the procedure, could also lose their license to practice medicine. North Dakota passed this bill in 2013, including one that would have restricted abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be recognized, which can occur before a woman realizes she is pregnant. The U.S. High Court's 1973 decision authorized early termination up until a baby is viewed as reasonable, as a rule at 22 to 24 weeks. In addition to the 2013 "heartbeat bill," North Dakota lawmakers have strict anti-abortion legislation in which they approved a measure in 2019 that required doctors to tell women that they may reverse a drug-induced abortion if they wish to change their minds. Liz Brocker, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office said that the law is as yet a matter of the forthcoming case. On the contrary, Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the New York-based Guttmacher Institute said that there is no medical evidence to support the claim that the procedure can be reversed. The legislation tries to add early termination to the state's previous laws against killing an unborn kid, which in present status law excludes fetus removal when performed by an authorized specialist. "Lawmakers also passed a bill that bars doctors from using scissors, clamps, and forceps to remove fetuses from the womb during the second trimester of pregnancy. That law has not been challenged in the courts," Liz Brocker told the Brainerd Dispatch. Hoverson, who introduced HB 1313, also said anti-abortion advocates like himself are tired of waiting for the high court to act. "I don't trust the Supreme Court - they are holding us hostage," Hoverson told the Associated Press. "I want North Dakota to take this matter into our own hands." This is money thats coming directly out of Facebooks own pocket, Donato said. The violations here did not extract a penny from the pockets of the victims. But this is real money that Facebook is paying to compensate them for the tangible privacy harms that they suffered. " Related Egypt welcomes US decision to place Hasm and Lewaa Al-Thawra on terror list: Ministry US places Egyptian terrorist groups Hasm and Lewaa Al-Thawraa on terror list The US has increased sanctions against Harakat Sawad Misr terrorist group (HASM) by designating the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), a statement by the State Department read on Thursday. HASM was previously designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224 in January 2018 "for posing a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism." The US State Department also announced that it has named Yahya Al-Sayyid Ibrahim Musa and Alaa Ali Ali Mohammed Al-Samahi as Specially Designated Global Terrorists "for being the leaders of HASM." "These designations seek to deny HASM and its leadership the resources to plan and carry out terrorist attacks," the statement read. "...All of Hasms, Musas, and al-Samahis property and interests that are within the United States or that come within the United States or that come within the possession or control of US persons, are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them, the statement explained. As a designated FTO, it is a federal crime to knowingly provide, or attempt or conspire to provide, material support or resources to HASM, the statement concluded. Musa and Al-Samahi, who are reportedly in Turkey, are accused of being the masterminds and leaders of HASM. Musa was sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt by the Criminal Court in July 2017 for the assassination of Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat in 2015. HASM has claimed responsibility for several terrorist attacks in Egypt that have killed dozens of police and army personnel. The Egyptian court of urgent matters designated the group a terrorist organisation, banning its activity in the country in February 2017. The Egyptian government has linked HASM with the Muslim Brotherhood group, which was banned and designated a terrorist organisation in Egypt, late 2013. The US State Department also announced it had amended terrorist designations of a number of terrorist organizations above the 'ISIL Sinai' to include additional aliases in its designations. It designated the 'ISIL Sinai' as a terrorist organization in 2014. The ISIL Sinai or Islamic State in Sinai has claimed responsibility for most of the terrorist attacks in North Sinai since 2013 against security and army personnel as well as civilians. Short link: A Message From The Editor just-style gives you the widest apparel and textile market coverage. Paid just-style members have unlimited access to all our exclusive content - including 21 years of archives. I am so confident you will love complete access to our content that today I can offer you 30 days access for 1*. Its our best ever membership offer just for you. 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The two-time Birbhum MP said that some people were obstructing her from reaching out to the people. In a Facebook post, uploading by the Shatabdi Roy Fans' Club, she said, 'recently a lot of people are questioning my absence from party programmes. I want to tell them that I do want to reach out to the people. But some people do not want me to reach out to them. As a result, information regarding party programmes is not shared with me. I am deeply pained by this.... therefore, in this new year, I am trying to take a decision which will help me to be completely with the people.... If I take any decision, then I will announce it at 2 pm on Saturday," West Bengal elections 2021: BJP hurls phone tapping allegations against TMC Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Reacting to her post, TMC MP, Sougata Roy said that they would wait to see what her decision. We cannot say anything without knowing what she will decide, Roy also said. Paracetamol may be used to provide symptomatic relief from post vaccination adverse reactions. (PTI/file) New Delhi: Interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines is not permitted and pregnant and lactating women should not be administered the shots as they have not been part of any anti-coronavirus vaccine clinical trial so far, the health ministry said on Thursday. In a letter to all states and Union territories, the ministry highlighted that under the emergency use authorisation, coronavirus vaccination is indicated only for 18 years and above. If required, COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines should be separated by an interval of at least 14 days. "Interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines is not permitted. Second dose should also be of the same COVID-19 vaccine which was administered as the first dose," the letter written by Manohar Agnani, Additional Secretary, Union health ministry said. The ministry has listed precautions and contraindications for COVID-19 vaccination along with a comparative factsheet for both the vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin) which contains information on vaccine platform, physical specifications, dosage, cold-chain storage requirements, contraindications and minor AEFIs (adverse event following immunization). It said this information should be disseminated to programme managers across all levels and through them to cold-chain handlers and vaccinators for ready reference. Listing the contraindications, the health ministry cautioned against administration of the vaccine in persons with a history of anaphylactic or allergic reaction to a previous dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and in those with immediate or delayed onset anaphylaxis or allergic reaction to vaccines or injectable therapies, pharmaceutical products, food items, among others. According to the letter, in case of persons having active symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, coronavirus infected patients who have been given anti-SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma and acutely unwell and hospitalised patients due to any illness, the COVID-19 vaccination is to be deferred for four to eight weeks after recovery. "Pregnant and lactating women have not been a part of any COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial so far. Therefore, women who are pregnant or not sure of their pregnancy and lactating women should not receive COVID-19 vaccine at this time," the letter stated. The vaccine should be administered with caution in persons with a history of any bleeding or coagulation disorder (like clotting factor deficiency, coagulopathy or platelet disorder, it said. "Following conditions are not contraindicated for COVID-19 vaccines --persons with past history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and or RT-PCR positive illness, history of chronic diseases and morbidities and immuno-deficiency, HIV, patients on immune suppression due to any condition," the letter stated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch India's massive COVID-19 vaccination drive on January 16 via video conferencing, even as adequate doses of Bharat Biotech's 'Covaxin' and Serum Institute's 'Covishield' vaccines have been delivered across the country to all states and Union territories. The letter also mentions mild AEFIs following vaccination for both the vaccines. In case of Covishied, some mild AEFI may occur like injection site tenderness, injection site pain, headache, fatigue, myalgia, malaise, pyrexia, chills and arthralgia and nausea. Some mild AEFIs in case of Covaxin include injection site pain, headache, fatigue, fever, body ache, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, dizziness-giddiness, tremor, sweating, cold, cough and injection site swelling. Paracetamol may be used to provide symptomatic relief from post vaccination adverse reactions, the letter added. 'Bible in a Year' podcast takes No. 1 spot on Apple podcasts list in US Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) podcast has taken the top spot in Apples All Podcasts list, beating out news, commentary and other mainstream podcasts. The Bible study podcast, run by the Catholic group Ascension Presents, landed at No. 1 in the United States, becoming the most popular podcast for Apple users at the start of this year. Podcast host Friar Mike Schmitz, is a well-known Catholic priest who's in charge of the young adult ministry in the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota. Listeners of the 25-minute podcast can hear the minister read Scripture and then share his own theological and historical context of the teachings. The Bible in a Year podcast began in 2020 with three episodes but officially kicked off in 2021. Apple users have already explored the first few chapters of Genesis and as well as some passages in Psalms and chapters in Job and Proverbs. The faith-based podcast also beat out The New York Times' podcast "The Daily" which landed at No. 2, along with popular political commentator Ben Shapiro and "The Joe Rogan Experience." Another Bible-based podcast by D-Group(a discipleship group), landed at No. 33 on the same list of most popular podcasts. Titled "The Bible Recap" this listening experience primarily consists of summaries of Scripture rather than reading the Scripture text itself. This podcast is only six minutes in length. "So many of us are hungry for more than the news, for rest within a world fraught with division, National Review reporter Alexandra Desanctis said of the reason people are tuning in to the Bible podcast. People long for clarity beyond the sound bites, for a reality that is meaningful and soul-filling, for an answer to the ache we feel for peace and stability amidst suffering and turmoil." In 2020, searches on the popular YouVersion Bible app increased by 80%, to nearly 600 million. A report released by the app revealed that Isaiah 41:10 was the verse that was bookmarked, highlighted and shared the most. Dont be afraid, for I am with you. Dont be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand, the scripture reads. Some 43.6 billion Bible chapters were read and 7.5 billion audio chapters played, YouVersion said, revealing that it saw its highest levels of global Bible engagement in app history. The increase of Bible reading and faith-based podcast listening is linked to the uncertainty in the world. This has been a challenging year with many people facing devastating loss, loneliness, and fear, said YouVersion founder Bobby Gruenewald in a statement. While 2020 is a year so many say theyd like to forget, we see it as a year to remember how God used the Bible App to help so many people who are searching for answers. Through every hardship, people continue to seek God and turn to the Bible for strength, peace, and hope. The trial of a Cambodian labour union leader charged with inciting social unrest opened in Phnom Penh on Friday, part of a large-scale legal offensive by the government against its critics. Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, is standing trial for "incitement to commit felony" for comments concerning territory in border areas, a politically sensitive issue. If found guilty, he could face between six months and two years in prison. Rong Chhun was arrested in July after the government claimed he spread false information about Cambodia's border with Vietnam. He has been held in detention ever since. A week before his arrest, Rong Chhun gave an interview to U.S. government-supported Radio Free Asia in which he spoke about meeting farmers in eastern Cambodia who complained about their land being infringed upon by neighbouring Vietnam. His trial is part of a crackdown on opposition politicians and supporters carried out in the courts by Prime Minister Hun Sen's government. According to the human rights group Amnesty International, about 150 individuals affiliated with the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party are facing treason charges in mass trials, the first of which was held Thursday. Labour leaders such as Rong Chhun hold significant political influence in Cambodia because they represent the vast number of industrial workers in the textile industry, which is the country's major export earner. The major unions have historically aligned themselves with the political opposition to Hun Sen. The issue of Vietnam encroaching on Cambodian land is a highly sensitive one with domestic political significance in Cambodia because of widespread historical antagonism toward the country's larger neighbor to the east. Hun Sen's government maintains close relations with Vietnam, leading his political foes to accuse him of failing to protect Cambodian land. Several prominent opposition figures have been prosecuted on various charges in recent years for making such allegations. Sam Sokong, a lawyer for Rong Chhun, said his client has done nothing illegal in his interview with Radio Free Asia, and that he only had relayed the complaints of villagers along the border to the public at large. The Joint Boundary Commission of Cambodia and Vietnam rejected the allegations about any violation of Cambodian territory. Rong Chhun served on the national election committee of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party before it was dissolved by court order in November 2017, ahead of the 2018 general election. The party dissolution was generally seen as intended to ensure victory for Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party. Hun Sen has been in power for 36 years, and has often been accused of heading an authoritarian regime. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Yves here. Michael Olenicks post on the complicated and very much changed relationship between evangelicals and the Republican party builds on two earlier pieces: The Surprisingly Short Road from Abolitionism to Credit Bureaus and Oneida: The Victorian Free Love Commune that Changed the US. By Michael Olenick, a research fellow at INSEAD whose recent articles can be found at innowiki.org and Blue Ocean Thinking I normally research, write, and teach about business along with the occasional consulting gig. During my regular work, I came across a pattern that has ramifications for our modern world, the genesis of evangelical support for the Republican Party and how thats shifted over time. Most people know the more mundane part of the story: The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law in 1854 violating the Missouri Compromise and potentially expanding slavery into new territories. The law enraged abolitionists and also more economically-focused anti-slavery northerners leading to the formation of a new political party, the Republicans. In 1857, the Supreme Court released the Dred Scott decision effectively stripping all black Americans of rights in both the north and south. Outrage propelled Republican Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. During the transition period, southern states ceded and civil war erupted. The North won and abolished slavery though, in an effort towards reconciliation, allowed the South to continue treating African Americans not significantly different than before the war. Whats less discussed is the influence of evangelicals in the then new Republican party. Countless cynical articles suggest abolition was confined solely to economic issues, that northerners didnt want to compete with free labor. Maybe thats true for some people but my own research suggests a deeper reason: evangelicals at that time were what today we refer to as progressives with a moral imperative towards freedom and equality. They had a profound impact on Republicans, an outsized influence that remains to this day. This strong evangelical influence remains but the evangelicals profoundly changed and the Republican Party right along with them. Many of those mid-1800s evangelicals supported womens rights, believed in communal living, fair wages, and good working conditions. They were anti-racist abolitionists despite the economic blowback their public stance caused them. Its an understatement to say those early Republican evangelicals wouldnt be impressed with their modern counterparts. Lets back up. Founded upon a strict separation of church and state, to avoid the conflicts of Europe and the religious wars, early Americans kept religion largely to themselves. For the longest time, Christmas was a workday for both private businesses and government. They took the separation of church and state seriously. In the early to mid-1800s, the US underwent a type of spiritual revival. Young Protestant Americans searched for a spirituality that was new and different. This led to various new religious groups, many which formed in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York. Some were largely apolitical like the Mormons, Shakers, and Spiritualists, the latter that was led by two sisters who performed mass seances. The Temperance movement was almost entirely political, working to ban alcohol. But one movement stands out from the rest blending religion, morality, and politics, the Perfectionists of Oneida. The Perfectionists and another evangelical group, the Tappan Brothers of New York City, would go on to have ramifications on the Republican Party that reverberate to this day though their message has been largely coopted by crooks, cranks, and charlatans. Lewis & Arthur Tappan Lewis and Arthur Tappan ran an enormous silk trading operating in New York City. They were fervent, devout evangelical Christians. Lewis earned and lost a not-so-small fortune early in life then joined his brother Arthurs business. The brothers eventually came to express their religion largely through a hyper-focus on the abolition of slavery. They saw slavery as an affront to God, a monumental indecency they pledged to personally stamp out. The brothers printed and mailed pamphlets around the south, lobbied other northerners, and funded the Underground Railroad. Lewis also funded and supported the successful defense of the Amistad case, where a group of kidnapped Africans revolted and killed their would-be slavers. Their business was boycotted, their homes firebombed, and mobs of angry people followed them around threatening to kill them. Earlier, before abolition became a central focus, Lewis created a series of morality spies around New York City to report on brothels, gambling halls, and the like. Based on the reports Lewis worked with law enforcement to shutter the dens of iniquity. A financial crisis dealt Arthurs business a setback when many customers defaulted on credit hed extended. After that, Lewis repurposed his morality spies to creditworthiness reporters to better manage credit risk. He systematized and expanded his network into the first national credit bureau, Dun & Bradstreet. Tappans preCivil War reporting network were overwhelmingly abolitionists, tied together into what today might be called a conspiracy to overthrow the peculiar institution of slavery. Abraham Lincoln was one of Tappans reporters. The Perfectionists, Oneida, and the Townerites Led by John Humphrey Noyes, the Perfectionists were a religious utopian society. Hayes was a wealthy and well-off American aristocrat, educated at Dartmouth and Yale where he studied law and theology. Both his father and his wifes father were Congressmen. President Rutherford B. Hayes was his cousin. Like the Tappan brothers, Noyes could have lived a very comfortable life as an upper-class American if hed avoided politics. Cutting to the salacious part that grabs most peoples attention (admittedly, myself included), the Perfectionists were a nineteenth-century free love community. They openly practiced nonmonogamy during the Victorian era when adultery was a crime. New England intellectuals were unimpressed with Noyes complex marriage where every person was married to every person of the opposite sex and a mob forced them to flee from New Haven to upstate New York. They purchased a small farm and formed a commune, the Oneida Community. Starting out impoverished, Oneida quickly grew into an economic powerhouse manufacturing and selling everything from animal traps to silk and, eventually, tableware. (Digression: the latter business exists to this day despite the best efforts of several private equity firms, though thats a different issue.) Noyes was an anti-slavery abolitionist but also believed marriage to be a form of ownership, which wasnt entirely untrue as it related to early nineteenth-century women. In his theology, all forms of people ownership must be abolished. Along these lines, Oneida believed strongly in womens rights. Women and men held the same leadership roles, received the same education, and rotated through the same jobs. The group practiced a primitive but apparently effective form of birth control. Pregnancies were planned and children raised, after being weaned, by men and women in a childrens house. Men and women cooked, cleaned, smelted, supervised, and did everything else together without regard to sex. The only obvious major exception was higher education; smarter Oneida children were sent to Yale which only accepted men at the time so the smarter women were sent to art schools. Both women and men can and did suggest and reject advances to sleep together. Unlike women in traditional marriages at the time, women had the right to reject advances though historical records suggest both men and women enjoyed many partners. All men and women were expected to have sexual relations and did, wrote Noyes. Favoring any person over any other was termed selfish love and was severely frowned upon. Despite their communal ways, in which no member lived better or worse than any other, the group as a whole excelled at business and became incredibly wealthy, purchasing ever more land to expand their business empire. They were extremely selective about who could join the collective but hired many locals who were paid and treated far better than the norm at the time. Besides high salaries and excellent working conditions, Oneida provided privately-owned houses to workers on nearby farms. Oneida as a commune fell apart after an internal revolt. Community member James W. Towner was a self-taught lawyer and Civil War officer. He joined Oneida, along with a dozen others, from the Berlin Heights Free Love community in Ohio. Noyes was apprehensive about admitting Towner and the Berlin Heights group who he believed were more into the carnal pleasure part of free love rather than the idealistic side that rejected monogamy as a form of ownership. However, many letters, several visits, and a $14,000 fee eventually gained the group entry. Towner and his dissidents, by then a large group, left Oneida with their then sizable share of the wealth. In 1880, they settled in the Southern Californian town of Santa Ana and purchased an enormous amount of land. Soon after, Townerites convinced the southeastern corner of Los Angeles to secede into its own municipality, Orange County. Towner was appointed judge. Learning from the lessons back in New York, the relocated Oneidaites were more discreet though their reputation preceded them. It is difficult to figure this thing out whether it is another Oneida Community business or a Mormon outfit. At any rate it will be a good idea for parents to keep their eyes on their daughters and husbands on their weak wives, wrote the Santa Ana Weekly Standard on June 9, 1882. Oneida and Townerites influenced the California way of living ever since. Tied Together Tappan and the Oneidians were high-profile but many abolitionists preferred to remain below the waterline. After all, pro-slavers were often crude, uneducated, and violent people (some things never change). Privacy was so guarded that many of these ties werent clear until recently. For example, presumably to protect the privacy of the offspring, Oneidas records were largely closed until 2007. Most remain in dusty boxes undigitized, buried in an offsite repository at Syracuse University. However, it doesnt take the imagination of a Q conspiracy theorist to see the links between these groups. There is plenty of ancillary evidence that the Tappans and Oneida were working together and that their beliefs strongly influenced the early Republican Party. At a superficial level, Oneida was one of the core manufacturers of silk and Tappan of the leading silk wholesalers in New York. At a deeper level, there is historical record of the Tappans working with the Oneida Institute and Arthur Tappans daughter, Frances Antill Tappan, died at Oneida. Given that Oneida was a small out of the way village, itd be far-fetched to believe these connections are entirely coincidental. The Townerite connection to Orange County and that Countys strong Republican bent albeit with a California morality which didnt at all intersect with east coast protestant Republicans brings the Republican Party into better focus. Modern Day Many people argue the Republican Party began to rot with Nixons southern strategy. After passing the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Republicans realized they could reel-in lots of southern racists. This worked and the Republicans did indeed attract a whole lot of rot. But attributing the problems of the party solely to their affinity for wannabe Confederates understates the core problem and gives them a pass they dont deserve. Certainly, racism is a layer of their foundation but its not the only layer and its not the oldest one. Think about it: the Republican Party is home to a long line of miscreants who largely pre-date the Southern Strategy. Theres the corrupt Warren Harding, the incompetent Herbert Hoover, the obscene Joe McCarthy, the bloodthirsty Barry Goldwater, and the crook Richard Nixon who dreamed up the Southern Strategy. Later, we have the dishonest Ronald Reagan, the vengeful George W. Bush, and the vilest of all, Donald J. Trump. However, by the time they arrived there were already serious problems. Republican Ike Eisenhower was the exception, not the rule. This raises the question of how a political party that had its roots in forward-thinking progressive Christian movements could turn around so quickly. Lewis Tappan advocated encouraging interracial marriage on the theory that, eventually, the descendants would all be the same race eliminating racism. The Oneidians were strong Christians but their worship was confined to studying and acting out a strong morality based on equality; there were no sermons at Oneida and hypocrisy was called out and stamped out. Contrast those evangelicals with their modern-day counterparts. Jerry Falwell, Jr. liked to watch his wife have sex with their pool boy. To each their own Noyes wouldve shrugged his shoulders at this arrangement as long as everybody consented except Falwell was also head of Liberty University which prohibits premarital sex, much less extramarital. Then there are the countless homophobes like Ted Haggard caught enjoying meth with male hookers. I bought drugs and a massage from [his male escort], and he masturbated me at the end of it. Thats it, said Haggard. Uh ok, though it seems like a lot for a morality preacher who opposed gay marriage. Despite their wealth, Oneidians all lived and ate together spreading prosperity throughout their community, including to employees. Lewis Tappan also paid his employees well, eventually retiring and turning the business over to one of them. Contrast that with the greed of todays evangelicals. Preacher Joel Osteen lives in $10.5 million mansion, own a second $2.9 million home, and flies his private A319. Pastor Kenneth Copeland explains you cant talk to god while flying commercial. Apparently, Copelands mentor Oral Roberts was annoyed by requests for prayers while flying with ordinary folk. Moving On Im an American Jew living in France, a first-generation college student from a long line of butchers raised in Southern Indiana, a lifelong Democrat. My dad broke out of the butcher shop, went into business, and due to dyslexia slowing things down finally received rabbinical ordination in his 50s. All of which is to say, what I know from evangelical Christians I know from afar. There are certainly good and kind evangelicals. When I was 13 years-old, I biked with a bunch of other teens and one adult from Bloomington, Indiana almost to Mississippi where we met up with the rest of our hippie school on the way to New Orleans. Inspired by Kerouac, our bike trip included no motors, no preplanned route, no hotels, and minimal money. Mobile phones hadnt been invented yet. In this context, biking with a mixed-race, mixed-sex group through the rural south, I got to meet lots of interesting people. Some werent so kind; when we asked a farmer if we could sleep in his barn we ended up in the local jail, albeit in the lobby rather than a holding cell. But one group of evangelical Baptists took us in, fed us, and were genuinely concerned and cared for the group of ragtag teens. Granted, they also kept me awake most of the night trying to convert me to Christianity but it was out of genuine concern for my spiritual health. Still, more than a few evangelicals arguably the great majority have clearly lost their way. The hypocrisy is self-evident. They preach one thing then do another. When called out, they come up with ridiculous justifications or if their sins are egregious enough disappear into obscurity, their own message of forgiveness and redemption fading fast away from their former flock. The Republican Party they support is no different. Where once they picked up on the morality of Tappan and Noyes, embracing human dignity, freedom of thought and expression, free but fair business practices, and equal treatment now they lust for tax cuts (and corporate welfare for their own businesses) with fewer business regulations. The evangelical roots that worked to destroy slavery and put down racism now embraces building a real and metaphorical wall against poor immigrants. Where Oneida embraced God and science, todays Republican scientists include people like Rand Paul, an anti-vaxxer with an MD. Progressive Republican theologians like Noyes are replaced with holy roller hypocrites like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. One shining light is maybe, like a forest fire that eventually runs out of fuel, the Republican Party has run so far astray that maybe theyre ready for a reset. Maybe the evangelicals who have supported them will reassess their lives and find something better than flakes and frauds preaching the prosperity gospel or the charlatans of charismatic Christianity. Surely, there are people who realize that phonies permeated and debased their religion. It seems impossible to believe the same theology that fired up those nineteenth-century Christians also propels anybody to support the barbaric and arguably Satanic Donald Trump or any of his horrible kids or sycophants. During the impeachment debate, Republicans argued its time to move on. Guess what: theyre right. But that doesnt mean Trump or any of his henchmen and women get a free pass: just like the US shouldve thrown the book at the Confederacy after the Civil War the entire South shouldve had two Senators, total so too must their terrible behavior be addressed and severely punished. No, moving on isnt something that happens with us; its something that happens with them. Its time to move on from the path theyve collectively chosen. Time to find angels in their ranks while throwing out the cranks. Time to start over. As much as itd delight me personally to see an entirely neutered conservative party, the lack of political diversity wouldnt be especially healthy. For the sake of the US and for their own sake as people, the Republicans must reembrace their long distant past and grow into a new movement based on very old ideas. Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Eric Lis factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesnt plan to expand operations -- a reticence that could slow the pace of Chinas economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.Surging prices of raw materials means margins are compressed, explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co. Ltd., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity, he adds.The combination of higher input prices, uncertainty about export prospects and a weak recovery in domestic consumer demand meant Chinese manufacturing investment from January to April was 0.4% below the same period in 2019, according to official statistics (comparing to 2019 strips out the distortion of last years pandemic data).Due to the vast size of Chinas manufacturing sector, that poses a risk both to the nations growth -- which is currently predicted to reach 8.5% in 2021, according to a Bloomberg tally of economists estimates -- and to a global economy thats grappling with supply shortages and rising prices.Falling ProfitsWeaker-than-expected investment could have a sizable impact on GDP growth this year, said Citigroup Inc.s China economist, Li-gang Liu. Lower investment may dent imports of capital goods and equipment from developed economies like Japan and Germany, which in turn could drag their economic recovery and rebound as well, he added.AnHui HERO Electronic Sci & Tec Co. Ltd. is one of those companies feeling the squeeze. Based in the eastern province of Anhui, the company manufactures capacitors used to make electronic circuits, with sales mainly in the domestic market. Jing Yuan, the founder, says orders are up as much as 30% year-on-year, but profits are down 50% due to increasing materials costs that are not easily passed onto clients.The company is under huge cash pressure as it needs to pay half a month in advance of delivery in order to secure copper and other metals, which they previously paid for months after receiving, he said. The commodity issue has to be addressed by the government, he added.What Bloomberg Economics Says...Chinese industry is absorbing significant cost pressures from rising commodity prices -- damping the inflationary impact for the rest of the world. Will it last? Our analysis of gross margins suggests it could for a while longer: downstream industries -- where the cost crunch is most severe -- still have a small cushion.David Qu, China economistFor the full report, click here.Input shortages mean some manufacturers arent able to make use of their existing facilities, so expansion would be of little use. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. suspended production at one of its factories last month, due to a shortage of microchips.Modern Casting Ltd., which makes iron and steel products in Guangdong, issued a note to clients this month saying it would not be able to meet its current orders due to high raw material costs. A member of staff who answered the phone at the companys office confirmed the note, but declined to give further details.Growth TransitionOn top of the higher input costs, Chinese companies face a bumpy transition toward domestic consumer spending to sustain its post-pandemic recovery.Exports, Chinas strong-suit last year, may begin to slow as vaccine roll-outs cause consumers in wealthy countries to shift spending back to services. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Chinese consumer spending has yet to fully recover.Investment sentiment among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises is below levels seen even in 2018-9 when uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade war were a brake on expansion plans, according to a regular survey of more than 500 Chinese companies by Standard Chartered Plc.Demand is still mainly underpinned by exports, so domestic companies are aware that this is not sustainable, said Standard Chartereds China economist, Lan Shen.While some export-oriented sectors have been pushed to their limits, large amounts of slack remain for manufacturers targeting Chinese consumers due to subdued domestic demand.Retail sales growth was 4.3% in April on a two-year average basis, which strips out base effects from the pandemic, less than half pre-pandemic growth rates. Overall capacity use at Chinas manufacturers fell to 77.6% in the first quarter from 78.4% in the previous three months, with the automotive sector hit hardest by overcapacity following three years of declining sales volumes.Even for electric vehicles whose sales are surging, most companies have already built their capacity and will now focus on incremental upgrades. The majority of the investment has been done, said Jochen Siebert of JSC Automotive Consulting.China ordered state-owned companies to expand last year, with their investment growth of 5.3% in 2020 from the prior year easily outstripping the 1% increase in private investment. But for a sustainable pick-up in investment, the market, not the state, needs to feel confident.Carsten Holz, an expert on Chinese investment statistics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, estimates that privately-owned companies have accounted for 87% of manufacturing investment in 2015, the most recent year of available data. They are more sensitive to input costs.There is a pandemic plus insecurity about future trade given a new U.S. administration, neither of which is conducive to investment that relies on long-term growth prospects, Holz said.Mixed PoliciesTransport bottlenecks are also a challenge for export-oriented manufacturers. Gordon Gao, who exports gardening products from China, said that he has had to reject 80% of orders this year due to port delays. In one case, an order placed before mid-February could only be shipped three months later when a client finally secured a container.Beijing has tried to improve conditions for private companies by ordering a crackdown on speculation to curb commodity prices and easing access to bank loans.Yet the government continues to gradually withdraw fiscal and monetary stimulus measures introduced amid the pandemic last year. It set a relatively unambitious target of above 6% growth for this year, and the Communist Partys Politburo signaled last month it would prioritize reforms to control house prices and debt growth.The policy stance has definitely shifted away from supporting growth and back toward de-risking the financial sector, said Adam Wolfe, an economist at London-based Absolute Strategy Research. The risks for economic growth seem tilted to the downside, especially for capital-intensive, construction-linked sectors.For manufacturers such as Li, a longer period of domestic growth and control over input prices will be needed before capacity expansion is on the cards. While his company of 200 workers took on new permanent staff before the pandemic, for now hed rather pass the risks of investment on to others.I wouldnt do that now, I would rather hire some temporary workers and outsource the rest, he said.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. With less than a week left for his term to expire, US President Donald on Thursday expanded on his military accomplishments and said that the presence of American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were at its lowest and that he will "always be committed to stopping the endless wars." The outgoing President further said that the United States military troops in Afghanistan are at a 19-year low. Likewise, Iraq and Syria are also at the lowest point in many years, he added. The White House quoted Trump as saying, "It has been a great honour to rebuild our military and support our brave men and women in uniform. USD 2.5 trillion invested, including in beautiful new equipment--all made in the U.S.A." READ | Trump, Polish Counterpart Duda Discuss Sending US Troops To Poland From Germany Donald Trump impeached for the second time On January 13, the House impeached Trump for encouraging the supporters who violently stormed the US Capitol. According to the reports by AP, the house voted 232-197 to impeach Trump. Also, 10 Republicans joined the Democrats saying that he should be held accountable and warned of a "danger" if Congress should leave him unchecked ahead of Joe Bidens inauguration. READ | Snapchat Permanently Bans Donald Trump Over Spreading Misinformation And Inciting Violence Now that the House has voted to impeach the President, impeachment in a two-part process will be taking place. The House will introduce and pass the articles of impeachment, however, the Senate is where Trump will face a trial and a potential punishment. According to Article 1, Section 3 of the US Constitution, the Senate has the sole power to try all impeachments. When the President of the US is tried, the Chief Justice will preside and no p The Senate also has a set of rules that were first created around the impeachment of Andrew Johnson back in 1968 and then updated in 1986. Before the proceedings, the Senators will take an oath and there will be set time limits for arguments and rebuttals. All questions from Senators for the House and Trump attorneys must be submitted in writing and read by the Chief Justice. READ | Donald Trump Impeached For The Second Time, Here's What's Going To Happen Next Trumps impeachment trial While the date of when the trail will get started is still unclear, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has, however, indicated that he will not bring Senators back until the last day of Trumps term, i.e., January 19. On Wednesday he rejected Democrats call to bring the Senate back immediately to convince the outgoing President and said that the impeachment trial wont begin until the early days of Joe Bidens presidency. It is worth noting that as the trial will take some days or even weeks for the group of House lawmakers to make a case against Trump and his lawyers to answer, the trial cant practically happen until after Bidens inauguration. Therefore, the Senators will vote on impeaching a former President. There is a precedent for impeaching former official as well. While the main penalty for a guilty verdict in an impeachment trial is removal from office, Senators could vote to bar Trump from holding office in the future. The outgoing President has still not ruled out running for President in 2024. However, now, if found guilty, he could lose his six-figure pension and other post-presidential perks. READ | US Troops Continue To Withdraw From Afghanistan Despite Escalating Violence (With ANI inputs) 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. "We are honored to be opening an office in Hanover County. As our bank continues to grow, we remain committed to delivering high-quality customer service, contributing solutions that will enrich the local business climate, and answering the banking needs of the community in a neighborly manner," stated Mark Nelson, President & CEO of The First Bank & Trust Company. The full-service office comes as a next step following a successful loan production office operation and growing customer demand. The loan production office was previously located at 9671 Sliding Hill Road in Ashland, and provided commercial, agricultural, mortgage and consumer lending solutions. The new full-service office, located at 13221 Hanover Courthouse Road, will expand on its lending offerings to include personal and business deposit solutions and an array of technology products for businesses and individuals. The bank has a proud history of offering free checking and 24/7 banking tools to its customers. Checking accounts can be opened in person or online with a minimum opening deposit of $50 and no minimum monthly balance requirements. "We are very excited to open this new full service office in Hanover County and we are honored to be a part of the community. Our philosophy of relationship banking is a perfect fit for the area and we hope that many will come to experience why we are known as the bank that puts you first," stated John Bowers, Senior Regional Manager of the Shenandoah Valley market. The bank lobby is currently open by appointment only. Those that wish to schedule an appointment can do so by calling 804-550-5700. Branch visitors will also benefit from the convenience of a drive-through window and ATM. Branch operating hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM 5PM. The staff includes: Leo Satterwhite, VP and Commercial Loan Officer, James Sedlar, SVP and Commercial Loan Officer, Ed Kivior, VP and Commercial Loan Officer, Susan Upshaw, VP, Agriculture and Commercial Loan Officer, Randy Rodgers, Mortgage Banker, Susan Dixon, Loan Specialist and Notary, Patty Davis, Customer Service Specialist, and Cathy Perkins, Customer Service Specialist. About First Bank & Trust Company First Bank & Trust Company, one of the top community banks in the United States, is a diversified financial services firm with office locations in southwest Virginia, northeast Tennessee, and New River and Shenandoah Valleys. Financial objectives are addressed by offering free checking products for personal and business accounts, and assessing lending solutions managed by mortgage, agricultural and commercial lending divisions. Comprehensive financial solutions are available through trust and brokerage service representatives. For more information, visit www.firstbank.com or contact Kaitlyn Widner at [email protected] SOURCE First Bank & Trust Company Related Links https://www.FirstBank.com RADNOR, Pa., Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP reminds Restaurant Brands International Inc. (NYSE: QSR) (Restaurant Brands) investors that a securities fraud class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Restaurant Brands on behalf of those who purchased or otherwise acquired Restaurant Brands common stock between April 29, 2019, and October 28, 2019, inclusive (the Class Period). Reminder: Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Restaurant Brands common stock during the Class Period may, no later than February 19, 2021 , seek to be appointed as a lead plaintiff representative of the class. For additional information or to learn how to participate in this litigation please contact Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP (James Maro, Esq. (484-270-1413) or Adrienne Bell, Esq. (484-270-1435)); toll free at (844) 887-9500; via e-mail at info@ktmc.com; or click https://www.ktmc.com/restaurant-brands-international-inc-securities-class-action?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=restaurant_brands Restaurant Brands is a Canadian corporation and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the worlds largest restaurant chains with over 27,000 Tim Hortons, Burger King, and Popeyes restaurants in more than 100 countries and U.S. territories. On April 24, 2018, Restaurant Brands announced a new strategy designed to improve performance within its Tim Hortons brand. Specifically, the Winning Together Plan would focus on three key pillars: restaurant experience; product excellence; and brand communications. Then, on March 20, 2019, Restaurant Brands announced Tims Rewards a new loyalty program for Tim Hortons customers in Canada. Under the Tims Rewards program, customers would be eligible for a free hot brewed coffee, hot tea, or baked good after every seventh paid visit to a participating Tim Hortons restaurant. On April 10, 2019, Restaurant Brands announced that it was expanding the Tims Rewards program to include customers in the United States. The Class Period commences on April 29, 2019, when Restaurant Brands filed its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2019 with the SEC. Among other things, Restaurant Brands reported 0.5% system-wide year-over-year sales growth for Tim Hortons on system-wide sales of $1.547 billion. The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, the defendants repeatedly touted the implementation and execution of Restaurant Brands Winning Together Plan and Tims Rewards loyalty program. On the heels of Restaurant Brands touting the benefits of these initiatives, the company completed two stock offerings on or about August 12, 2019, and September 5, 2019, collectively resulting in proceeds of approximately $3 billion to insiders. However, on October 29, 2019, the truth about Restaurant Brands execution of its Winning Together Plan and Tims Rewards loyalty program was revealed when the company announced disappointing financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2019. Among other things, Restaurant Brands reported a 0.1% system-wide year-over-year sales decline for Tim Hortonsrepresenting a 1.4% same-store sales declineon system-wide sales of $1.774 billion. Following this news, the price of Restaurant Brands common stock declined $2.59 per share, or approximately 4%, from a close of $68.45 per share on October 25, 2019, to close at $64.86 per share on October 28, 2019. The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, the defendants misrepresented and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Restaurant Brands Winning Together Plan was failing to generate substantial, sustainable improvement within the Tim Hortons brand; (2) the Tims Rewards loyalty program was not generating sustainable revenue growth as increased customer traffic was not offsetting promotional discounting; and (3) as a result, the defendants statements about Restaurant Brands business, operations, and prospects lacked a reasonable basis. If you wish to discuss this securities fraud class action lawsuit or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests with respect to this litigation, please contact Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP (James Maro, Jr., Esq. or Adrienne Bell, Esq.) at (844) 887-9500 (toll free) or (610) 6677706, or via e-mail at info@ktmc.com . Restaurant Brands investors may, no later than February 19, 2021 , seek to be appointed as a lead plaintiff representative of the class through Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP, or other counsel, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of all class members in directing the litigation. In order to be appointed as a lead plaintiff, the Court must determine that the class members claim is typical of the claims of other class members, and that the class member will adequately represent the class. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP prosecutes class actions in state and federal courts throughout the country involving securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duties and other violations of state and federal law. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP is a driving force behind corporate governance reform, and has recovered billions of dollars on behalf of institutional and individual investors from the United States and around the world. The firm represents investors, consumers and whistleblowers (private citizens who report fraudulent practices against the government and share in the recovery of government dollars). For more information about Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP, please visit www.ktmc.com. CONTACT: Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP James Maro, Jr., Esq. Adrienne Bell, Esq. 280 King of Prussia Road Radnor, PA 19087 (844) 887-9500 (toll free) (610) 667-7706 info@ktmc.com Despite worldwide shipment slumps, China's foreign trade hit a record high in 2020. It's the world's only major economy to have registered positive growth in foreign trade in goods. How did China make it? And what does that mean for China's economy in 2021? The University of the West Indies Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles has joined the chorus of regional tributes to Jamaican businessman Gordon "Butch Stewart. Stewart, who owned Sandals International Resorts Limited and ATL Group of Companies, which included the Jamaica Observer Limited, passed away in Miami on Monday. Beckles paid tribute to Stewart in a statement Wednesday. "There is an indomitable spirit that resides in the bosom of Jamaica, and when liberated with focus, discipline, and purpose rises and takes the world along with its imagination and energy. Our Butch, like Bob (Marley) and (Usain) Bolt, represents this cultural spirit of the ages. "It is born to be brash, brave and brilliant, constituting a cascading commitment to nation-building and regional renaissance. Our Butch was the stewart of this spirit and gave to Jamaica, the Caribbean and the world a performance of sheer class with cool runnings a sandalization of awe and amazement. Beckles said all experienced his innovative entrepreneurship, the eruptive excellence of a son produced and nurtured by a soil rich in history and fertile for the future. "He integrated and domesticated his Caribbean like no entrepreneurial other, and demanded ownership everywhere the sandals sea swept upon our shores. "And so the indomitable spirit is called back to source, to rest, to wheel and to come again. From The University of the West Indies, we wish our brother and honorary alumnus well until next we meet. BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Suncoast College of Health is excited to announce that Lisa Anne Leote, Chief Executive Officer, will be receiving the prestigious Global Forum for Education and Learning (GFEL) "Top 100 Visionaries in Education" award. Lisa Anne Leote While in Haiti, Mrs. Leote taught her students while performing prenatal ultrasounds simultaneously. "Knowledge truly is powerful -- it can never be taken from you. As I've said many times, you can lose your life, your belongings, your hope, your pride, but you can never lose what you have learned. The power of education exceeds what we choose to recognize, and often times throughout the world, the limitation of education is placed to stunt this exact same reason," Mrs. Leote said. At the leadership helm of the College, she asserts her belief that access to quality education should be a basic human right both here in the United States and abroad. Mrs. Leote has spent many years creating educational curriculums for developing countries to implement as a means for sustainable living and organizational systems, in addition to her academic roles and impact in the United States. Mrs. Leote believes that while change is direly needed, the flaws in education across the globe should not exist in the present world we live in. She plans on continuing to use academics as the building block to elevate humanity, with Suncoast College of Health as the facilitation for the transformation that is needed in academia. Contact Information: Suncoast College of Health Attn: Media Team (941)727-2273 [email protected] SOURCE Suncoast College of Health The Department of Health has recorded a further 50 Covid-19 related deaths in the Republic of Ireland today. This comes as CMO Dr Tony Holohan has warned of new Covid-19 variants identified in travellers from Japan and Brazil, however, he said there is no evidence that these variants are in Ireland. He added: "Anyone who has travelled from Brazil in the last 14 days is advised to self-isolate for 14 days, from the date of arrival, and identify themselves, through a GP, for testing as soon as possible. It is essential that anyone arriving from Brazil self-isolate for 14 days from the date of arrival before entering/re-entering the workplace. Read More "We are particularly appealing to employers to enable their employees to protect each other by staying at home for the full 14 days. "Further risk assessment of the new variants is expected from the ECDC in the coming week. We must all continue to adhere to every element of the public health advice. This remains our best defence against Covid-19. Some 3,498 more coronavirus cases were also confirmed today. This brings the total number of cases in the state to 166,548 and the total number of Covid-19 related deaths to 2,536. Of the 50 deaths recorded today, all occurred in January 2021. The median age of those who died was 82 years, and the age range was 45-96 years. There were no newly reported deaths in healthcare workers or in a young person under the age of 30. Of the cases notified today: 1,576 are men / 1,906 are women 54pc are under 45 years of age The median age is 42 years old 1,182 are in Dublin, 421 in Cork, 258 in Limerick, 187 in Galway, 164 in Waterford, and the remaining 1,286 cases are spread across all other counties. As of 2pm today, 1,850 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 184 are in ICU. There have been 118 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours. This comes as local case numbers have been revealed, with Belmullet in Co Mayo having the highest incidence rate per 100,000 in the country. It has an incidence rate of 6031.7, which is almost double that of every other region. The national incidence rate is 1,497 - equating to one in 67 people in Ireland receiving a positive test result in the two weeks up to January 11. Monaghan continues to be the county with the highest incidence at 2,794, meaning one in 35 Monaghan people have been confirmed to have the virus in the last two weeks. In relation to vaccines, the HSE is to extend the gap between the first and second doses of the Pfizer BionTech vaccine to 28 days, instead of 21 days. It comes amid concerns that supplies of the vaccine from Pfizer will slow down for a number of weeks as it upgrades its plant in Belgium to increase its production to 2bn doses. The move to extend the gap between doses is aimed at stretching supplies of the vaccine and covering more people earlier. The first dose is believed to provide around 52pc protection but it still leaves a person at significant risk of getting ill if they contract the virus. The two-dose vaccine is 95pc effective. The HSE is under pressure to step the roll out of the vaccine, particularly to the over-65s who are being badly hit by surge in spread in the third wave. Under new guidelines vaccinators have been told to inform people who get the first dose they will now get the second in 28 days. This photo provided by the North Korean government shows missiles during a military parade marking the ruling party congress, at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) North Korea Reveals New Submarine-Launched Missiles at Parade North Koreas Kim Jong Un revealed his regimes submarine-launched ballistic missiles that are apparently under development and other military technology during a parade in Pyongyang, according to state-run media and photos. According to state-run KCNA, Kim appeared at a parade on Thursday evening along with what state media described as the worlds most powerful weapon, claiming theyre North Koreas submarine-launch ballistic missile (sic) that entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces. Kim did not address the crowd, but, according to state media, he waved to them. Instead, Kim Jong Gwan, the communist regimes defense minister, gave a speech. The minister said the military will always remain faithful only to the order and instructions of the Supreme Leader and successfully fulfil (sic) their duty and mission on behalf of the ruling Workers Party and the Kim dynasty. Footage on state-run television broadcasters showed four of the launchers, with black-and-white cones, in the center of Pyongyang. The weapons actual capabilities remain unclear, and its not known if the missiles have been tested in any capacity. No matter who is in power in the United States, the true nature and the true spirit of the anti-North Korea policy will never change, Kim said Saturday. The development of nuclear weapons will be pushed forward without interruption. In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves as Kim attended a military parade, marking the ruling party congress, at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) KCNA claimed the parade featured other missiles capable of thoroughly annihilating enemies in a pre-emptive way outside (our) territory. Its not exactly clear if it was referring to the countrys reported intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, said the U.S. should ramp up sanctions enforcement while continuing military drills with South Korea. Throughout its history, the Kim family regime has exploited dialogue with the U.S. and South Korea solely to gain economic and political benefits without ever providing anything in return, according to the report, as cited by the Wall Street Journal. The next administration, the report said, must not surrender to Kims demands. One expert said that the submarine-launched missiles are meant to send a message to the United States. North Korea doesnt need an SLBM. It is not for the South, its for the U.S. In that aspect, it sends a message aimed at pressuring the U.S. ahead of the incoming Biden administration, Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told Yonhap. But the North is not sending a message to the U.S. warning that it will take action. It is sending an unspoken message to force the incoming administration to prioritize North Korea in their policies and to withdraw hostile policy against the North, he added. 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 15.01.2021 / 10:25 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 15 January 2021 that a substantial holdings notification related to Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. had been received by the AFM. Date of transaction: 12 January 2021 Person obliged to notify: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., The Issuing institution: Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. Registration Chamber of Commerce 63570173 Place of residence: Amsterdam Distribution in numbers Type of share Number of shares Number of voting rights Capital interest Voting rights Manner of disposal Settle-ment Ordinary share 58 043 286.00 58 043 286.00 Potential Potential Indirect (Goldman Sachs International) Physical delivery Ordinary share 19 566 575.00 19 566 575.00 Potential Potential Indirectly (Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC) Physical delivery Ordinary share 4 506 724.00 4 506 724.00 Real Real Indirectly (Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC) Physical delivery Contract for difference 5 331 416.00 5 331 416.00 Potential Potential Indirect (Goldman Sachs International) In cash Swap 40 772 777.00 40 772 777.00 Potential Potential Indirect (Goldman Sachs International) In cash Distribution in percentages Type Total holding Directly real Directly potential Indirectly real Indirectly potential Capital interest 3.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.11% 2.90% Voting rights 3.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.11% 2.90% The above notification has been disclosed in the relevant register on the AFM website: https://www.afm.nl/en/professionals/registers/meldingenregisters/substantiele-deelnemingen/details?id=104950&KeyWords=steinhoff Stellenbosch, 15 January 2021 15.01.2021 The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de Samsungs new Galaxy S21 series is, collectively, the best flagship the company has ever produced but it doesnt come with a charging brick. Now, Samsung is reportedly looking to address the issue with a price cut. Specifically, thats a price cut on its 25W charger, set to drop from its usual $35 to just $19. The charging brick, as its branding suggests, charges at a maximum of 25W. It also supports rapid charging, just like the latest flagships, and offers up to 3A of power. And, it features Power Delivery (PD), which communicates with the plugged-in device to push the most efficient charging rate possible. So the charging brick should be able to match the needs of Samsungs newest flagships in the Galaxy S21 series. Or at least as well as an out-of-the-box brick. Why did Samsung remove the charging brick for the Galaxy S21 series? Now, Samsung has reportedly decided to remove the charger from the box for two reasons. Namely, to cut manufacturing costs and to cut back on e-waste. Advertisement In the first case, removing the charger is a move that makes a lot of sense. While the unit likely only costs Samsung a few dollars per box, at most, that number can add up. Especially since, in the third quarter of 2020 alone, Samsung managed to move 80.4 million phones based on information compiled by Statista. So the chargers could potentially have equated to millions of dollars for the company. The same holds true for e-waste. Smartphones have been around for quite some time, as have rapid charging capabilities. And secondary OEMs sell their own charging bricks with support for a wide range of charging rates. A few ounces of waste from all of that adds up to potentially millions of pounds of waste. Most users are already going to have multiple chargers already lying around or have easy access to pick up a new one. So the most obvious answer to those problems is to stop including one. Advertisement This deal isnt live just yet To pick up a new 25W charger directly from Samsung, buyers of the latest Galaxy S series handsets will just need to head over to the official site. The deal isnt live on the site as of this writing. But the 25 charging brick can be found there, in both black or white colors, and should in time for the arrival of any Galaxy S21 series devices that have been ordered. Or, conversely, there are plenty of other great charging solutions out there too for those who want a cheaper price than is currently offered. She's been keeping her fans back home in lockdown Britain updated on her trip to Dubai with sizzling daily updates posted on Instagram. And Eve Gale certainly made sure to flaunt her sensational physique as she spent another day in the sun on Thursday. The Love Island star, 21, left little to the imagination as she flaunted some serious underboob in a pastel pink cut-out swimming costume. Sensational: Eve Gale turned up the heat as she flaunted her sizzling curves in a racy cut-out swimsuit while posing up a storm in Dubai on Friday Eve showcased her curves in the Oh Polly Swim one-piece which skimmed over her hips and boasted a criss-cross detail over her taut midriff. She posed up a storm with one arm in the air and the other resting on the edge of the boat, with the Dubai cityscape behind her. The blonde beauty styled her long locks into a braid for the day on the water, resting her tresses over one shoulder to ensure all eyes remained on her ample assets. Eve completed her glamorous look with a full face of makeup, including a touch of pink lipstick and blusher to accentuate her features. Work it: The Love Island star, 21, also showcased her curves in a tiny light blue thong bikini on Wednesday It comes after Eve rocked another sexy swim look on Wednesday, donning a tiny blue thong bikini while enjoying a boat day. The reality star exuded confidence as she looked over one shoulder, ensuring all eyes were on her very peachy posterior. Not forgetting her accessories, Eve addeed a pair of black sunglasses to hold her long locks back from her face. Eve and her sister Jess are just two of many celebrities who have jetted to Dubai in recent weeks, joining many other Love Islanders including Joanna Chimonides, Hayley Hughes and Francesca Allen. Many stars have insisted their trips are for work purposes as the government currently asks UK residents living in high-risk areas to avoid unnecessary travel. However several Love Island stars have been forced to hit back at angry fans after they were criticised for jetting off on holiday during the global pandemic. Kym Marsh has also hit out at influencers travelling to Dubai amid the coronavirus restrictions in the UK and thinks the government should close the borders. The TV presenter, 44, admitted she was unimpressed by photos on social media of reality stars living it up in the UAE while Britain is in the midst of its third lockdown. Kym admitted in her OK! magazine column she thinks work trips should be put off for the time being. Sizzling: Eve is in Dubai with her twin sister Jess, who has also been sharing sizzling bikini snaps to Instagram during the visit She wrote: 'Lots of influencers seem to be going abroad. If you've got to travel for work then fair enough, but I personally would be putting off that trip and staying home. 'From what I can see from the pictures of people in Dubai, every man and his dog is there and it doesn't look particularly socially distanced!' From 4am on January 15, passengers arriving by boat, train or plane - including UK nationals - will have to take a test up to 72 hours before leaving the country. They will need to present proof of a negative test result - using a PCR test or on some occasions a LAMP or lateral flow test - to their carrier on boarding while the UK Border Force will conduct spot checks on arrivals. New arrivals who flout the rules will face a minimum 500 fine, while the operator who transported them will also be fined. Passengers will still have to quarantine for 10 days regardless of their test results, transport minister Robert Courts said in a statement. A U.S. airman based in Italy has died because of the coronavirus, family and friends say, which would mark the first active-duty death in the Air Force and the fourth such death among active-duty service members. Aviano Air Base is investigating what caused the death Tuesday of Tech. Sgt. Michael W. Morris, 36, an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter craftsman assigned to the 31st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa said in a statement. Morris, of Cass Lake, Minn., was not hospitalized when he died in Cordenons, a town near Aviano Air Base, service officials said Friday. "The Airmen of the 31st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Aviano are deeply saddened by this loss," squadron commander Maj. Christopher Clark said in the statement Thursday. "Mike was well known and highly respected in our community. He was a friend to many and we'll miss him dearly." The statement provided few details about the death. But in a Facebook post on Thursday, his mother-in-law said he was "taken away from us by the COVID-19 virus." "A sad day for our family," wrote Marilyn Miller. "Prayers to my daughter Amanda and their 3 children Matehya, Brayden, and Makenna. May we all have strength to overcome such an enormous loss. He was due to come home soon. We loved him very much. May God bless everyone." David Villier, who called Morris a friend, said it "happened to the wrong person." "I don't want to believe this," Villier said in a comment on Facebook, after sharing Miller's post. Villier was in disbelief that the virus claimed the life of someone in his own age group, he said in a later post, and cautioned his friends of the same age to "be careful please." Morris joined the Air Force in 2006, Aviano officials said. He was a Native American, records show, and his awards and decorations include four Air Force Commendation Medals, two Afghanistan Campaign Medals and one Iraq Campaign Medal. Morris joined the Air Force in 2006, Aviano officials said. The base did not immediately provide information about Morris' service history, deployments or military decorations, but Air Force photos from 2015 show he deployed at least once to Afghanistan, where he served as a rescue helicopter crew chief. At Aviano, Morris appears to have been with the 56th Helicopter Maintenance Unit. Some the many Air Force veterans who changed their Facebook profile photos to honor Morris posted images of the unit's crest along with green footprints and a black ribbon reading "That Others May Live," the symbol and motto of the service's pararescue community. Morris is the 16th service member to die from complications of the disease. All but three of the others were serving in the reserve or National Guard components. Earlier this month, Sgt. 1st Class Lisa Maria Soto, 38, died in a hospital near Fort Lee, Va., the Army said, becoming the third active-duty death related to the disease. Morris is the second active-duty coronavirus-related death in Europe. Army Staff Sgt. Setariki Korovakaturaga, 43, died in Germany last month while being rushed to a hospital. The first active-duty service member to die of complications from the disease was Chief Petty Officer Charles Thacker, 41, who died in Guam in April. Thacker was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which pulled into port in Guam for an extended stay after being stricken with an outbreak among its crew that infected more than 1,100 sailors. Six members of the Army Reserve, three members of the Army National Guard, two members of the Air National Guard and one Navy Reserve member have also died. Since the pandemic broke out early last year, over 122,000 service members have tested positive for the virus, Pentagon data shows. Nearly 1,000 were hospitalized and close to 80,000 had recovered as of Wednesday. There have been more than 22,000 cases among Air Force military personnel. Morris' death had not yet been recorded on the Defense Department's coronavirus website early Friday. "Our heartfelt sympathies are with the Airman's family, friends and co-workers," said Brig. Gen. Jason E. Bailey, 31st Fighter Wing commander. "Our priorities are honoring Mike's life and supporting those affected by this death." Stars and Stripes reporter Norman Llamas contributed to this report. Manufacturing, education and tourism workers should be next in line to receive the coronavirus vaccine after the elderly and healthcare workers, according to a proposal. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), which seeks to influence policy on behalf of its members, has presented a plan to government asking for workers in these sectors to get priority jabs ahead of ordinary people under 50. The plan, written by ACCI health and safety director Jennifer Low, has been 'well received' by Treasury and the federal Health Department, The Australian reported. It is not known whether vulnerable staff exposed to large numbers of people such as public transport workers or supermarket staff were included in the Chamber of Commerce (ACCI) plan, despite large numbers of workers returning to both the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs as restrictions ease. Business lobby group the Chamber of Commerce wants manufacturing workers prioritised as 'critical' to jump up the covid vaccine queue (stock image) WHEN WILL YOU GET JABBED? The Chamber of Commerce and Industry wants workers from its member industries in manufacturing, education and tourism to be classed as 'critical workers' so they get innoculated in Phase 2 of the vaccine rollout. This is the official rollout plan as of January 16: Phase 1a: to cover 678,000 of the most vulnerable and exposed people including quarantine and border workers, frontline health workers, aged care staff, disability workers and the elderly. 1.4 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, with the government hoping for approval by the end of January. Phase 1b: to cover 6.14 million Australians including anyone over 70 years old, other healthcare workers, those with an underlgying condition and high-risk workers like emergency services and meat processors. It will also include indigenous people aged over 55. Up to 14.8 million doses. Phase 2a: to cover 6.57 million people including Australians over 50, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are between 18-54, and critical high-risk workers. Up to 15.8 million doses Phase 2b: to cover 6.64 million people - the rest of the adult population, plus anyone who missed out. Up to 16 million doses. Phase 3: to cover 5.7 million children if recommended with up to 13.6 million doses set aside. Source: Australian Government website COVID-19 vaccine national roll-out strategy Advertisement The plan reportedly asks for the government to prioritise manufacturing, education and tourism as sectors with 'critical workers' so they are innoculated in Phase 2 of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's vaccine road map. For manufacturers, foreign supply chain risks mean if imported material is disrupted and production reduced, there would be a delay in getting goods to customers, the ACCI plan says. Australia's Austrade website says advanced manufacturing accounts for $100 billion worth of output and is a growing export sector. The coronavirus pandemic laid bare Australia's reliance on foreign imports and lack of self-sufficiency as it could not make or import vital medical supplies in the early months of the pandemic. 'Our key exporters (be they goods, education, professional services or tourism) are losing contacts and connections with their international buyers and are not able to compete with competitor countries that are able to visit face to face,' the ACCI plan says. 'This is particularly the case in China where person-to-person and business-to-business contacts are even more important, given the current government tensions,' the document says, as quoted in The Australian. Health workers throw out their used protective gear at the Howard Springs quarantine station in Darwin on Thursday. Frontline healthworkers will get the first jab Vials of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. Australia has the capacity to make this vaccine through CSL and it is likely to be the one given to most Australians Similarly Australia's education 'export' sector has been hit by the pandemic with business lobby groups keen to get the cash flowing again. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is reportedly preparing a proposal to National Cabinet to bring in more foreign students under a separate quota - even as numbers of returning Australians have been cut due to the spread of new more infectious strains. Foreign students bring in $12.5 billion in revenue for Victorian education institutions, The Australian reported. Australia's international borders were shut in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Lobbyists want education prioritised for vaccination, as Victorian Premier Dan Andrews prepares to ask National Cabinet to let foreign students jump the queue with an intake quota. Foreign students bring in $12.5 billion revenue to Victoria. Pictured: Melbourne University Earlier this month, the ACCI also lobbied both Federal and state governments to open up the borders to international arrivals based on 'risk'. 'We need the movement of people, services and goods to continue where it is safe to do so. Our economic recovery and the many businesses in trade and tourism rely on it,' ACCI's acting CEO Jenny Lambert said on January 8. 'This could include dedicating certain airports to take only lower risk arrivals and putting in place bespoke quarantine arrangements that are proportionate to that risk, such as we have done for seasonal workers from the Pacific.' Australia's tourism sector was also flagged by the ACCI plan. Although quarantine hotels have had a steady stream of government bookings, small tourism operators, airlines and leisure travel businesses have been crushed by the Covid travel bans. The first official phase of the Federal Government's vaccine rollout plan will give the Pfizer-BioNTech jab to 678,000 of the most vulnerable and exposed people including quarantine and border workers, frontline health workers, aged care staff, disability workers and the elderly. The Federal Government's official vaccine roll-out strategy in five stages Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said he hopes the Pfizer vaccine will be approved by the end of January, ABC News reports, with up to 1.4 million doses of vaccine available for the first phase, Phase 1a. The second phase, 1b, will cover 6.1 million Australians including anyone over 70 years old, other healthcare workers, those with an underlying condition and high-risk workers like emergency services and meat processors. It will also include indigenous people aged over 55. The third phase, 2a, covers 6.6 million people including Australians over 50, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are between 18-54, and critical high-risk workers. A factory worker checks production (stock image). Manufacturing along with tourism and education were flagged by business lobby group the Chamber of Commerce for priority Business lobby groups are seeking to get their members prioritised for the vaccine. Pictured: A man in Scotland getting the Oxford jab The fourth phase, 2b, covers 6.6 million people - the rest of the adult population, plus anyone from the previous phases that have been missed out. There are up to 16 million vaccine doses projected for this phase. The last phase, called Phase 3, will be for 5.7 million children if recommended with up to 13.6 million doses set aside. The rollout of the vaccine is set to become more urgent as highly infectious new strains take over the pandemic overseas and increasingly threaten to break out in Australia at a time when restrictions easing due to low case numbers. The Sydney Business Chamber has estimated the city's CBD will reach 40 per cent capacity next week, when restrictions are expected to ease and workers return. Similarly Melbourne's CBD is expected to see 50 per cent of office workers back at their desks from Monday. Employees applaud the 200,000th excavator manufactured in Doosan Infracore China Co.'s plant in Yantai, Oct. 30. Courtesy of Doosan Infracore By Nam Hyun-woo Doosan Group's efforts to sell its construction equipment unit Doosan Infracore and finish its restructuring program now hinge on Infracore's preferred bidder Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) Group, which holds the key to settling a Doosan-investor dispute over Infracore's Chinese body. The Supreme Court on Thursday reversed and remanded a Seoul High Court ruling which favored the investors of Doosan Infracore China Co. (DICC) in a suit in which they demanded Doosan Infracore pay for losses worth nearly 1 trillion won, incurred by their failed exit from DICC. DICC has been in a legal tussle with a number of investors such as Mirae Asset Private Equity, IMM PE and Hana Financial Investment PE. Those investors hold the right to force Doosan Infracore to join them and sell up to 80 percent of its stake in DICC, if DICC failed to launch its initial public offering (IPO) within three years of their investment in 2011. As the IPO failed, the investors exercised their right to sell their DICC stakes, but this was also botched. The investors filed the lawsuit claiming Doosan Infracore obstructed the sales by not sharing relevant data, and the company should purchase the DICC stakes from them. As the top court sides with Doosan Infracore, it was exempted from paying up to 1 trillion won, but this does not mean the disputes are settled because the investors still have a valid right to force Doosan to sell its DICC stake. If the investors exercise this right, DICC could be sold to a buyer other than HHI. Since sales from DICC accounted for nearly 20 percent of Infracore's total construction equipment sales in the first nine months of last year, an Infracore without DICC will be an unlikely match for HHI's bid to become one of the top 5 global players in the construction equipment market, industry officials said. To prevent this, either Doosan Group has to buy back the 20 percent stake in DICC from the investors or persuade HHI and the investors to let the new buyer to take care of this issue. The officials said the latter is more likely, because Doosan Group is now under a restructuring program to improve its financial status and selling DICC alone is also a time-consuming task for the investors too. "HHI wants to sign a sales and purchase agreement by the end of this month and close the Infracore deal within the first half of this year," one of the officials said. "Since Doosan Group is striving to save every cost to finish its restructuring program, chances are Doosan is more likely to persuade HHI to take this issue while purchasing Infracore and talk with the investors. This more realistic for investors too, because they have already experienced a failure in selling DICC by exercising their rights." HHI refused to elaborate over its deal, but an official at the group said it is in talks with Doosan over various terms and options for acquiring Infracore, and there will be no fundamental changes in its acquisition. Since last year, Doosan Group has been selling its units and assets as part of its restructuring plan to create a cash flow of 3 trillion won in return for a bailout from the state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB). Thus far, the group has secured approximately 2.2 trillion won and is expected to keep its promise when it sells Infracore to HHI at around 800 billion won to 1 trillion won. Denton, TX (76205) Today Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Tata Consumer Products (TCPL) is looking for ways to add more of its beverage offerings on a direct-to-consumer platform. Sushant Dash, President, packaged beverages (India, Bangladesh and the Middle East) at TCPL told Mint that the company might add more products and scale its online shopping platform Nutrikorner.com. "So, we are looking at that and evaluating the options in terms of how it works for the beverage part of it," said Dash. TCPL, formerly Tata Global Beverages, has products such as Tata Tea, Tetley, Eight O'Clock Coffee, Tata Coffee Grand and Himalayan Water in its beverage portfolio. Also read: Average no of items purchased on e-commerce platforms up 23% during COVID-19 lockdown: Nielsen India TCPL's product portfolio also includes Tata Salt, and the company sells spices and dals under the Sampann brand name. "Very clearly there is growth that is happening in terms of the digital world, people are getting more and more comfortable shopping online, we are clearly seeing that growth happening. Now, one needs to obviously examine and look at the viability and whether it makes sense for our brands to have a direct to consumer channel, it is work in progress," Dash told the publication. According to a report by Nielsen in September 2020, e-commerce sales comprise 3 percent of total sales in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector. However, there was a 23 percent spike in the average number of items purchased during the lockdown. Sports lie at the margins of our culture, different from how it is elsewhere in the world, and from how it used to be. This is one of the reasons why criminality among youth proceeds unchecked. There is no youth labour market, and the school system ruthlessly triages youth. Asia US Blacklists Major Chinese Oil Firm Over South China Sea Coercion A Vietnamese naval vessel, with a Chinese oil drilling rig visible in the background, patrols in the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands in 2014. The islands are claimed by China and Vietnam. / Kyodo If images of sleeping National Guard members wedged between statues and using marble stairs as pillows have tugged at your heartstrings, you're not alone. Two key lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee sent a letter to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy on Thursday, asking for the service to provide cots to the hundreds of Guard troops detailed to the U.S. Capitol Complex. House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Defense appropriations subcommittee senior member Betty McCollum, D-Minn., asked McCarthy in the letter for enough cots for all Guard members assigned to protect the Capitol. Read Next: National Guardsman Is 1st Current Service Member to Be Arrested After Capitol Riot The troops are pulling 12-hour security shifts, officials have said, and are permitted to rest or sleep when not on duty. They are not forced to sleep at the Capitol, however; they are able to procure hotel rooms under their Title 32 mobilization authority. Still, the visual of Guard members uncomfortably sprawled out on cold floors in the Capitol Visitor Center prompted legislators to take action. "After the horrific events of January 6th, the Congress is grateful to have National Guard troops assisting in the protection of the Capitol," the lawmakers wrote. "We were disappointed though to see in a variety of images in the media, that Guard personnel are having to take breaks or rest on the floors of the Capitol. Staff were on the call with Vice Chief of Staff, General [Joseph] Martin, and understand that not all Guard personnel currently have secured lodging, and that the Army is considering utilizing the convention center for lodging." Officials with McCarthy's office didnt immediately respond to a query about the letter. An official with the D.C. National Guard told Military.com on Thursday that there were now just under 7,000 Guard members in the district, and all had secured appropriate accommodations, most of them in hotels. "Additional options are being considered to accommodate the influx of additional troops for the inauguration," the official said. The letter does not identify the convention center it mentions, but a National Guard official confirmed that Washington, D.C.'s Walter E. Washington Convention Center is being considered for billeting. The center hosts the city's largest gatherings -- including the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting. Some 21,000 National Guard troops have been authorized to deploy to D.C. ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration from more than a dozen states and the District of Columbia. The presence is expected to remain in place for security through at least Jan. 24. The mass Guard deployments came in the wake of a Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol by a mob supporting President Donald Trump that disrupted congressional efforts to tally and approve electoral votes. Guard members, who were not requested for security ahead of the rally-turned-riot, took hours to receive deployment orders and arrive on Capitol Hill. "With the uncertainty for needed rest and recoup time in flux, and to ensure that the Guard members are fully able to execute their protection mission, we urge you to make available cots or other equipment to more easily facilitate their ability to rest while they are on Capitol grounds," the lawmakers wrote. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@miitary.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. Related: Guard Troops Photographed Napping in Capitol Were on Break, Army Official Says A Greek-inspired restaurant on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester said on Thursday it will close for at least two months amid the coronavirus pandemic. Meze Estiatorio announced on Facebook that due to COVID-19 guidelines for restaurants that restrict capacity to no more than 25% that it would be closed until at least March. The restaurant didnt provide a specific date t reopen. At the end of December, Gov. Charlie Baker implemented guidelines that tighten restrictions for most businesses. Beginning on Dec. 26, the state reduced capacity limits to 25% for most industries. Meze Estiatorio, formerly Meze Greek Tapas, expanded to a larger space on Shrewsbury Street in 2019. With more room, the 80-seat dining room also provided space for live music, which also carries strict restrictions under state guidelines. Related Content: Advertisement Coronavirus patient numbers may have already peaked in almost a seventh of hospitals in England, official figures suggest as an ICU doctor today warned care may have to be rationed if admissions continue to surge. Some 20 of 138 acute NHS trusts recorded a dip in beds occupied by Covid patients in the seven days to January 12, compared to the previous week. Of these, four had seen a dip for two consecutive weeks. Five trusts each in London and the South East - the first to be plunged into gruelling Tier 4 restrictions just before Christmas - saw Covid patient numbers fall. A further three were in the North East and Yorkshire, and two were in the Midlands, East of England and North West. One was in the South West. There were almost 35,000 Covid patients on hospital wards by January 9, according to figures from the Department of Health, almost twice the level during the darkest days of the first wave. It is not clear why the trusts were recording drops in Covid patients on their wards, although it could be an early sign of pressure on the NHS finally starting to ease. Professor Rupert Pearse, an intensive care doctor at Queen Mary University of London, warned today Covid-19 patient admissions will continue to rise for another seven to ten days despite falling infections - because of the two week delay between someone catching the virus and developing severe symptoms. He said doctors were already fearful of 'moral distress', when they know the right thing to do for a patient but are unable to do so as a result of 'institutional constraints' or the risk of a legal challenge. He added the concern would make the situation in intensive care 'worse for everyone'. Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital said today it would bring in medics from the army to care for patients on wards as it struggles against rising admissions alongside mounting numbers of staff off sick. Department of Health statistics appear to suggest daily hospitalisations of patients with Covid-19 have peaked in London and the South East, and are levelling off in the East of England. But they remain stubbornly high and there are far more Covid-19 patients on wards than during the first wave. Figures published by The Telegraph suggest nearly as many patients caught Covid-19 in England's hospitals in December and the beginning of January as over the past four months combined. They said more than 12,000 patients who were put on wards for non-Covid issues - such as a fall or heart problems - are thought to have caught the virus while in hospital. Between August and November 11,700 Covid-19 infections were registered that were thought to have occurred in hospital. It comes amid early signs the brutal lockdown may have finally turned the tide on the second wave, as studies suggest the number of Britons catching the virus every day has begun to fall. In a glimmer of hope the ZOE Covid-19 Symptom Study app says daily infections have fallen by 23 per cent over the last week. It estimates there were 54,000 daily infections in the seven days to January 10, below the almost 70,000 it suggested were taking place the week before. And scientists at Cambridge University have also suggested Covid-19's reproduction rate has fallen to 0.6, in a sure sign the outbreak may be shrinking in the UK. An R rate number below one means cases are dropping. But official estimates from the Government's top scientists today said the R rate was between 1.1 and 1.3 - meaning the second wave was still growing - but could be below one in the capital. Boris Johnson was urged to double his target for 14million vaccinations by mid-February today, to take advantage of the space created by restrictions. The UK is expected to have capacity for 3.8million jabs next week - meaning the existing goal of covering the four most vulnerable groups by February 15 should be met. Above are the number of Covid-19 patients that caught the virus on hospital wards by month. Their numbers have risen in line with rising infections reported in the community Above are all the hospitals out of 138 trusts where more than 50 per cent of all patients are suffering from Covid-19 WHICH HOSPITALS ARE SEEING FEWER COVID-19 PATIENTS? Below is a list of the hospitals recording fewer Covid-19 patients on their wards in the week up to January 12, the latest available, compared to the previous week. Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (-28%) East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust (-25%) Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (-17%) Milton Keynes Universiy Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (-15%) The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (-14%) Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (-10%) East Cheshire NHS Trust (-8%) Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust (-8%) The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (-7%) South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust (-6%) Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (-5%) North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust (-2%) Barts Health NHS Trust (-2%) University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (-2%) County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (-1%) Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (-1%) Medway NHS Foundation Trust (-1%) United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (-1%) Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust (-0.5%) Advertisement Of the trusts that saw a fall in the number of Covid-19 patients on their wards, six had figures revealing their numbers had dropped by more than ten per cent. NHS Trusts on the list included East Kent Hospitals, which had 367 Covid-19 patients by January 12, Barts Health Trust, which had 660, and South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust, which had 203. Of the trusts reporting drops in Covid-19 patients in the South East, four were in Kent - the epicentre of the second wave and where a more infectious mutant strain of the virus was first detected. Two of the trusts showing drops were in the top ten for the most Covid-19 patients on wards in the seven days to January 10. They were Barts Health and East Kent Hospitals. It is not clear why these hospitals are recording marked falls in the number of Covid-19 patients on their wards. It may be due to dropping hospitalisations, as fewer Britons in these areas succumb to the serious impacts of the disease. But it may also be because hospital bosses are moving Covid-19 patients between trusts, to free up space in some of the most over-stretched units, or due to deaths reducing the total numbers on wards. Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital said today it would bring in medics from the military to shore up staffing amid surging admissions of Covid-19 patients. Erika Denton, the hospital's medical director, said: 'We have some help coming from military colleagues, with 30 military personnel who are trained a bit like our healthcare assistants slightly different role. 'They will be coming in to support our clinical staff.' Speaking on BBC Radio Norfolk on Friday, she said the hospital currently has three times as many Covid-19 patients as at the height of the first wave. 'Weve got a lot of staff off sick with Covid-19 or self-isolating because somebody in their family has it and thats put us under even greater pressure,' she said, adding that current sickness levels were 13 per cent to 14 per cent. 'Thats obviously very significant for us,' she added. 'Its very difficult for us to staff the hospital when weve got lots of people off sick.' She added staff from Norfolk County Council were also being drafted in to help in non-clinical roles. Their intensive care unit normally has around 20 patients but currently has more than 30. Ms Denton added that overall the trust is treating more than 250 patients who contracted Covid-19 in the last 14 days, and a further 70 who have been on the wards for longer than 14 days. Department of Health statistics show daily Covid-19 hospitalisations may have begun to slow in the UK - but they are still far above the levels in the first wave. They appear to have peaked in London, where the average was at 864 Covid-19 patients a day on January 6 but had dropped to 835 by January 9, and the South East, where it has dropped from 662 to 642. In the East of England the rate of admissions growth also appears to have slowed after the average barely shifted from 483.7 Covid-19 patients a day on January 7 to 483.9 on January 9. Professor Pearse warned there were so many patients doctors were now having to choose which gets an ICU bed. 'Doctors are worried,' he said. 'The burden of decision making around ICU admission traditionally falls on senior doctors. Most of us are privately very worried about what will happen if we run out of resources.' He added: 'As well as (facing) moral distress, families may challenge our decisions. This alone is stressful but there is also fear of litigation, professional sanction and other impacts on our professional lives.' Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (pictured) said it has called in military medics to help on its wards amid rising levels of staff sickness. Its refurbished main entrance is pictured above NORFOLK HOSPITAL CALLS IN ARMY AMID RISING LEVELS OF STAFF SICKNESS An NHS hospital is bringing in military personnel trained in healthcare roles as it struggles with staff sickness amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Erika Denton, medical director of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, said: 'We have some help coming from military colleagues, with 30 military personnel who are trained a bit like our healthcare assistants slightly different role. 'They will be coming in to support our clinical staff.' Speaking on BBC Radio Norfolk on Friday, she said the hospital currently has three times as many Covid-19 patients as at the height of the first wave. 'Weve got a lot of staff off sick with Covid-19 or self-isolating because somebody in their family has it and thats put us under even greater pressure,' she said, adding that current sickness levels were 13 per cent to 14 per cent. 'Thats obviously very significant for us,' said Professor Denton. 'Its very difficult for us to staff the hospital when weve got lots of people off sick.' She said the hospitals intensive care unit normally cares for around 20 patients, but currently has more than 30 patients there. Prof Denton said the hospital is treating more than 250 patients who contracted Covid-19 in the last 14 days, and a further 70 who have been at the hospital for longer than 14 days. Advertisement There has been a rise in the number of nosocomial infections - those patients are thought to have acquired on wards - reported by hospitals over recent months. It has largely tracked surging case numbers in the community. An NHS England spokesman said: 'Over the course of this specific period, hospital infection rates tracked Covid cases in the community, in line with what the ONS has said which is that hospital infection rates rise with cases in the community. 'Every hospital is asked to rigorously follow regularly updated Public Health England guidance on infection prevention and control and actually the number of outbreaks in hospitals has fallen according to the most recently published PHE data.' In a glimmer of hope that the second wave may be beginning to run out of steam, England's coronavirus R rate has dropped this week to between 1.1 and 1.3 but remains higher than the dreaded figure of one, meaning the country's outbreak is still growing. Only London, which has been in lockdown since December 19, is showing signs that cases might be starting to come down, with the R potentially as low as 0.9. SAGE said all other regions are still waiting for the effects of the national lockdown to hit. The R rate dictates how many people each infected person passes the virus on to and it must remain lower than one for infections to come down. It adds to growing evidence that Britain's second major outbreak is on the way back down as an app monitoring the spread of coronavirus in the UK said cases fell by 23 per cent last week, and one of the country's top statisticians said the number of people dying is likely to peak in the next 10 days and then start to fall again. The ZOE Covid-19 Symptom Study app estimates there were 54,000 daily infections in the seven days to January 10, below the almost 70,000 the week before. Its estimates are based on weekly reports from a million users, who tell the app whether they are suffering from symptoms of the virus. And Sir David Spiegelhalter, a professor at the University of Cambridge, said he thinks the daily death count will hit a ceiling in seven to 10 days - likely at a higher level than in the first peak - and then start to fall. Public Health England also revealed weekly Covid cases have fallen in every age group except the over-80s and that infections dropped in dozens of boroughs. The figures differ from those announced by the Department of Health, which only account for confirmed cases, which officials say could be just 40 per cent of the total because they don't catch asymptomatic carries. Yesterday the department announced another 48,000 cases - down 7.5 per cent in a week. Nearly all residents at a nursing home in Chatum were vaccinated on Tuesday, while just 30 percent of the homes staff opted to get a vaccine. All of our residents have done exceptionally well. Theyve not had any problems, said Washington County Hospital and Nursing Home Administrator Teresa Grimes, of the roughly 73 residents and 31 staff that got the Pfizer vaccine at her home this week. Across Alabama, the effort to vaccinate a vulnerable population began late last month. As of this week, many nursing home residents have already received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, though exact figures are not available. CVS pharmacy had administered 7,013 vaccines as of Monday, about 80 percent of its scheduled vaccinations for the nursing home program. Vaccinations at 101 clinics statewide are scheduled for completion by the end of this week. As part of a federal partnership, CVS and Walgreens pharmacies are delivering the vaccines to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities across the country. The pharmacies have the ability to store the Pfizer vaccine at the necessary ultracold temperatures and transport it to nursing homes across the state. Walgreens has not released state-level data on its progress with the program, so it is not possible to track how many nursing home residents and workers are already vaccinated in Alabama. So far the CVS immunizations represent about a fifth of the people in the long-term care facility vaccination group. According to the Alabama Nursing Home Association, there are about 24,000 long-term care residents and 31,000 staff in Alabama. Were dealing with a vulnerable population that requires onsite and, in some cases, in-room visits at facilities with fewer than 100 residents on average. Despite these challenges, we remain on schedule, CVS said in a press release earlier this month. CVS will expand its vaccination efforts as more supply becomes available, it said. Grimess home in Washington County had a bad COVID-19 outbreak earlier this year that took the lives of 5 residents. Nationwide, nursing homes represent about 42 percent of deaths from COVID-19. While some of Grimess residents were hesitant to get the shot, most were ready. Theyre excited and feel like this is going to be the first step in getting back to some sense of normalcy, said Grimes. Our staff is not as bought in to it as our residents and healthcare providers. Shes been transparent with residents and their families throughout the pandemic, she said, which she thinks helped build trust when it came time to discussing the vaccine. Not only do we say that we believe in it, weve rolled up our sleeves and gotten it, she said of herself and the medical director at the home. They both got the vaccine through a hospital partnership. Immunizations at long-term care facilities in Alabama began December 28. Nationwide, there have been some delays with the program. Grimes said her facility asked to delay the first shots by one week so residents could consider consenting to the vaccine without feeling rushed. In another 21 days, Grimess residents and staff will receive a second dose. That represents an important step towards immunity, she said. We hope that, for us, we can sleep easier at night, said Grimes. Everybody is vaccinated, and theres some sense of security that were not all walking on pins and needles, eggshells, wondering if were going to expose somebody to it. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Faith, race, and politics were front and center in Georgias US Senate runoff. Raphael Warnock, the current pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.s home church, won a historic election, during which his sermons and social activism were called into question. White evangelicals were appalled by Warnocks pulpit rebukes of police brutality and militarism. Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted a snippet of a sermon and said, Warnocks radical, anti-American views are disqualifying and that he should withdraw from the race. Conversely, while many black Christians wouldnt defend his pro-choice platform (among other secular progressive stances), a lot of us certainly agreed with the assertion that the Bible has something to say about racial injustice. In his book Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley says the call for individual and societal transformation is the mainstream black ecclesial tradition. Consequently, the election highlighted the sociopolitical divide between white evangelicals and the black church. These two groups share the Great Commission but couldnt be further apart socially. The American church may never agree on partisan affiliation, but what must we agree on in regard to racial justice? The Bible doesnt make burrowing further into our ideological nests or putting our faith in politicians an option (John 13:3435). Biblically speaking, what should be our tone and actions when it comes to race and politics? In 2020, the pandemic forced Americans to distance ourselves physically. Our politics, identities, and worldviews forced us further apart too. We watch the same occurrences and walk away not only with different opinions, but with a different set of facts. And yet, through social media, weve bridged our divides just enough to antagonize one another. We make an extra effort to remind those who voted differently that theyre never right and theyre responsible for every wrong. As a new Pew Research Center study revealed, we see little common ground or common causeeven when faced by a deadly virus that does not discriminate. Not satisfied with giving up on each other, Americas ideological tribes are resolved to punish each other at every intersection. Winning isnt enough. We must rob every semblance of joy and worth. Even some Christians, abandoning the virtue of charity, choose to believe everything the other side does is meant to harm, deceive, or control them. Civil dialogue and political compromise are left to the naive. But in this time of great division and belligerence, the church must choose the opposite reaction. We must be peacemakers, especially when it comes to race and politics. But what exactly is peace, and how do we make it? Some assume peacemaking requires inactivity or silence in the face of disorder and injustice. But true peace is not passive quiet or the absence of action or the silence of indifference. Biblical peace is shalom, meaning completeness, well-being, and right relationship with God and each other. Silence or inaction amid grave partiality and inequality is not peace. When we mute the poor or rob the victim of voice, we deny peace. Gaslighting or shushing the suffering perverts the wholeness and fulfillment Christianity demands. If black people would just stop talking about Americas past and move on there would be peace. But that confuses peace with personal comfort. Others suggest that if black people would just stop talking about Americas past and move on there would be peace. But that confuses peace with personal comfort. There have always been those who found comfort amid injustice or whose comfort was built on injustice. The slaveholder who slept cozily on cotton sheets and tithed with his ill-gotten gains was in no rush to have his rest disturbed by the abolitionists prophetic witness. Peace defined by such a comfort is of no value in the economy of God. Article continues below Neither the warmonger nor the pious bystander is a peacemaker. Those too heavenly or high-minded to soil their ceremonial garb by touching common ground and advocating for their neighbors arent peacemakers. Moreover, those who exploit prayer as a copout to neglect the issues God has placed in their sphere of influence arent peacemakers either. Their silence condones a conflicted state of affairs and makes them keepers of a riotous status quo. Peacemakers will engage the conflicts necessary to achieve racial justice, but they wont be carried away by the moment. In the tensest times, theyll watch their words, acknowledge their opponents human dignity, and guard their hearts from tribalism. Theyll address todays bleak situation with tenacity and moral imagination, rather than cynicism. This means peacemakers will seek out approaches that transcend the inadequate options offered by ideological conservatives and progressives. They wont run from reality, but theyll attempt to reach higher ground rather than settling for the base terrain immediately available. If majority Christians sincerely want to be peacemakers, they need to reckon with Americas history, realize with humility how it continues to harm people of color, and reform. Due to historical misdeeds and resource inequities, the majority church bears a larger peacemaking burden here, but all of us are obligated. Peacemaking takes work to bring about the harmony a Christian understanding of peace entails (Eph. 4:3). Acknowledging Americas racial divide, recognizing its historical causes, detailing its present consequences, and demanding justice isnt divisive. Racism is divisive and responsible for a great number of our societys ills, but creating storylines where its the cause of every problem blinds us to other sins that afflict us. We should be cautious of talking about race in a way thats more aimed at inflicting pain than persuading. Sometimes speaking the truth about racial injustice with blunt rhetorical force is necessary to drive the point home. But in many cases, being artful, strategic, and shrewd is more productive. Seasoning piercing words with salt often takes more effort but opens the door to peacemaking. Christians cant be peacemakers in this polarized age by committing sins of omission. We must unify around the authority of Scripture, which compels us to make peace by dismantling iniquity and treating each other with dignity. We can be bold and passionate when we pursue justice, and we wont all express ourselves the same way. However, we cant be vengeful or resigned to permanently separating ourselves from other believers, no matter who they voted for. Unfortunately, not everyone will have the will or fortitude to endure the sacrifices that come with peacemaking. The unwillingthose more worried about race theories than actual racismcan no longer be allowed to hamper the process. Placating Christians who have no intention of earnestly addressing race or who are too prideful to be corrected is a dead end. Similarly, those who embrace secular theories on race without a solid biblical critique will also stunt peacemaking. In our pain, some of us have run from orthodoxy into the arms of secular prescriptions. Those voices cannot lead this journey toward renewal. Peacemakers must combine orthodoxy and orthopraxy, biblical conviction and social action. No other group is better situated to bring healing to this land than the church. There are Bible-believing Christians on both sides of the political spectrum, and outside of politics we have a lot in common. Were stuck with one another for good. We need each other. Its time to set our partisan hang-ups aside, make peace, and do justice. Justin E. Giboney is an attorney, political strategist, president of the AND Campaign, and coauthor of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaigns Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement. Former President Park should first make public apology Seoul's top court Thursday confirmed a 20-year prison term for former President Park Geun-hye, wrapping up years of trials. The verdict came three years and nine months after she was convicted of abuse of power, misappropriating funds from the National Intelligence Service and taking bribes from conglomerates. This means that, without a pardon, Park should spend 22 more years behind bars given a separate two-year prison term she received for illegally meddling in the nomination of candidates for the Saenuri Party ahead of the general election in 2016. Park was impeached in 2017. The Supreme Court ruling reignited the controversy over whether to grant special presidential pardons for Park and her predecessor Lee Myung-bak who is also serving a prison term. Rep. Lee Nak-yon, chairman of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), first triggered the dispute by suggesting the need for the pardons for the sake of restoring national unity. Yet President Moon Jae-in has remained silent on the issue so far. Speculation is growing that Moon will clarify his position on the issue during a New Year's press conference slated for next week. But it remains to be seen whether he will actually use his authority to grant the special pardons or not. Choi Jae-sung, senior presidential secretary for political affairs, indicated a pardon will hinge on public opinion, by saying, "The pardon should be determined in accordance with the people's judgment." According to a survey conducted by Realmeter on 500 adults across the nation last week 56.1 percent of the respondents believed the proposed pardons would not contribute to national reconciliation. It showed more than half of these respondents believed the two former presidents should publicly apologize to the nation before any pardon is granted. Moon earlier pledged during his presidential election campaign that he would not offer clemency for those convicted of corruption-related crimes like bribery and embezzlement. His statement came amid disputes that previous overuse of presidential pardons had undermined legal justice and the principle of equality before the law, even though they were conducted in the name of national unity. Despite the need for Park to extend an apology first as a precondition for the pardon, she has largely failed to show remorse. She has been denying the charges, pleading not guilty, describing her punishment as "political retaliation." She caught voters off guard ahead of the general election last year by releasing a letter from prison, in an apparent bid to meddle in the election. She needs to learn a lesson from the U.S. case where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that "No one is above the law, not even the president of the United States," while voting to impeach President Donald Trump. Given this, Park should seriously reflect on her past misdeeds and sincerely apologize to the people. Any hasty pardons will only aggravate national division. They told us we might have to hide under our seats and to get a gas mask, she said. Then they told us to get up and run to the other side of the gallery, the more Republican side. By the time we got there we heard a gunshot. Im assuming that was the shot where the woman was killed. Punjab MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu hoists black flag at his residence in support of protesting farmers Punjab reports first suspected case of bird flu, samples sent to Bhopal for confirmation India pti-Deepika S Chandigarh, Jan 15: Punjab on Friday reported its first suspected cases of bird flu with samples from two poultry farms in Mohali testing positive for avian influenza. The samples have now been sent to a Bhopal facility for confirmation. According to an official, the samples were collected from the poultry farms at Behra village in Mohali''s Dera Bassi and were tested at the Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Jalandhar. The samples have now been sent to the Bhopal''s National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases for confirmation, the official added. The Bhopal facility is the final authority for declaring bird flu. Meanwhile, Mohali Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan sought to allay fears over the supected cases. He said the administration is alert and regular sampling is being done to keep tabs on suspected cases of bird flu. Neighbouring Haryana has already declared bird flu and had announced to cull over 1.60 lakh birds of five poultry farms in Panchkula district. Earlier, Punjab had sounded an alert and pulled all stops to keep the state safe from the possible effect of an outbreak in its neighbouring states. Alexandra Levy Olsman and Zachary Isaac Frankel lived across Rittenhouse Square from each other at a young age and went to the same Montessori preschool in Philadelphia. But, when a mutual friend introduced them in October 2016, they had no memory of ever meeting. Mr. Frankel said the mutual friend, Lauren Jacobs, had reached out to him to say, I have this girl for you. That woman was Ms. Olsman, an associate specialist then in the antiquities department at Christies New York. Ms. Olsman was part of an art gallery panel discussion about collecting art, which Ms. Jacobs was attending. The event, in Philadelphia, was where Ms. Jacobs had the inspiration to match the two. After the talk, and over wine and cheese, she mentioned her idea to Ms. Olsman about meeting Mr. Frankel. Minutes later he called Ms. Jacobs, who handed the phone over to Ms. Olsman, and they chatted. The next week, while Ms. Olsman was in England at Christies London, he texted her about meeting in New York when she got back. The Catoosa County Health Department, an affiliate of the Georgia Department of Public Health, announced the suspension of its drive-through COVID-19 testing program so that resources can be committed to scheduling, preparing and providing COVID-19 vaccinations.Currently, Catoosa County residents aged 65 and over, medical providers and first responders can schedule vaccine appointments by calling 706-406-2000 and selecting menu option #2. Medical providers and first responders only can sign up online at www.nwgapublichealth.org Plans are to begin providing COVID-19 vaccines by appointment only on Tuesday at the Catoosa County Health Department, 145 Catoosa Circle in Ringgold. Vaccinations for other age groups and populations will be available as soon as vaccine supplies increase and as immunization eligibility requirements in Georgia are expanded.People wishing to receive free drive-through COVID-19 testing can visit the Georgia Department of Public Health/Walker County Health Department testing site at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church, 289 Dunwoody Road, Lafayette, on Fridays from 9 a.m.-noon and 12:30-4:30 p.m. Additionally, COVID-19 tests are available through a variety of private medical providers.In the near future Catoosa County will support additional public vaccination locations throughout the community in partnership with Catoosa County Public Schools and the Catoosa County Emergency Management Agency.More COVID-19 information is available at the Georgia Department of Public Healths website at https://dph.georgia.gov/covidtesting.For additional information and questions, contact John Pless, Catoosa County public information officer, at john.pless@catoosa.com or 423-779-4069. South Africa: BaPedi King Victor Thulare's funeral to be broadcast live on Sunday The funeral service of BaPedi King Victor Thulare III will be broadcast live on the SABC and other major broadcast channels on Sunday. Arrangements have also been made for the service to be streamed live on the governments online platforms. President Cyril Ramaphosa has honoured His Majesty with a Special Official Funeral Category 1. The King passed away on Wednesday, 6 January 2021, at the age of 40. He is the son of the late King Rhyne Thulare and was officially recognised by President Ramaphosa as King of the BaPedi in 2020. According to government, his funeral service will take place at Maebe Tjate III, Mohlaletse Village, Bapedi Kingdom, Sekhukhune District Municipality on Sunday, 17 January 2021 from 6am. Government wishes to advise anyone who would like to send a message of condolence to the Royal Family, BaPedi Kingdom and friends to utilise the e-condolence book available at condolences@gcis.gov.za. People can also tune in to the following government online platforms to watch the service live: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/GovernmentSA - Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/GovernmentZA - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/GovernmentZA These measures are also to assist those who may not be able to physically attend the funeral due to the current COVID-19 lockdown level 3 regulations which stipulate that gatherings for funerals may not exceed 50 people, the government said. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-01-15. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. New Delhi: A single judge bench of Justice Pratibha M. Singh of the Delhi High Court on Friday recused herself from hearing a petition against WhatsApp. Justice Singh directed that the petition filed by advocate Chaitanya Rohilla shall be listed before another single judge bench subject to the orders of the Chief Justice. The plea will now be listed before another bench and would come up for hearing on January 18. A PIL was on Thursday moved in the Delhi High Court alleging that WhatsApp is violating right to privacy and is a threat to national security. The petition listed on Thursday before an SC bench challenged WhatsApps recent Terms and Privacy updation and has sought injunction against the updated Privacy Policy by WhatsApp with immediate effect. WhatsApp has recently updated its new Terms and Privacy Policy emphasising that users will be required to agree to the same or else they may need delete their account post February 8. This has led to a lot of discontent among users, leading to fear that now their privacy might be compromised. WhatsApp, has now clarified more on its Privacy Policy, giving an elaborate account on what it means. "We recently updated our Privacy Policy and we have received many thoughtful questions. With some of the rumors going around, we want to answer some of the common questions we have received. We go to great lengths to build WhatsApp in a way that helps people communicate privately. We want to be clear that the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. Instead, this update includes changes related to messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data," WhatsApp in its updated FAQs wrote. As per the highlights of the FAQs, the following has been summed up: 1. WhatsApp cannot see your private messages or hear your calls and neither can Facebook. 2. WhatsApp does not keep logs of who everyone is messaging or calling. 3. WhatsApp cannot see your shared location and neither can Facebook. 4. WhatsApp does not share your contacts with Facebook. 5. WhatsApp groups remain private. 6. You can set your messages to disappear. 7. You can download your data. On January 11, concerned at private group chat links being available on Google Search, WhatsApp said that they have asked Google not to index such chats and advised users not to share group chat links on publicly accessible websites. Google had indexed invite links to private WhatsApp group chats, meaning anyone can join various private chat groups with a simple search. Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Naomi Watts knew all about the angry side of magpies from when she was swooped while horse riding through a forest near Canberra many years ago. "Obviously there was nesting going and a bunch of magpies just came down and bombed us," she says. "It was kind of terrifying." Naomi Watts and a magpie co-star in Penguin Bloom meet Sam Bloom on the set (aka Sam's house). Credit:Cameron Bloom Her boyfriend of the time knew they should swing their arms around as they rode to scare away the marauding birds and all ended well. But Watts was still unprepared for another run-in with a magpie making Australian film Penguin Bloom. Showing no regard for Watts as a two-time Oscar nominee with a flourishing Hollywood career, the magpie co-star shat on her head. "It was very early on possibly even the first day and I was still getting warmed up to this whole experience of birds crawling all over me," Watts says via Zoom from New York. "The bird was on my head and [the trickle] went all the way down my face and then oh my god it slipped warmly into my mouth. It was the most horrific experience." Watts moved on from that awkward moment to play Sam Bloom, a surfer, seasoned traveller and mother of three young sons from Sydney's northern beaches who was paralysed in a near-fatal fall on a family holiday in Thailand in 2013. After arriving back home after seven months in hospital, Bloom and her family were helped through the crisis by a wounded magpie chick. The bestselling book by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive. Credit:Louise Kennerley Advertisement Based on a bestselling book written by her photographer husband Cameron and Bradley Trevor Greive, the film focuses on Sam as she struggles to come to terms with her new life. In one harrowing scene, she knocks a jar of honey off a kitchen bench in a gesture that suggests both her pain and the fragility of life. As shown in her affecting performances as a grieving widow and mother in 21 Grams and as a doctor caught up in a tsunami in The Impossible, Watts is an actor who can dig deep to express raw emotion on screen. "I'm not afraid of the darkness," she says matter of factly. "I think it lives within all of us." So what is it that allows her to tap into these extreme emotions? "Darkness is part of all of us, whether you're up for embracing it or not," Watts says. "I feel, rather than hiding it, I want to embrace it because when I go [to watch a film], I feel less alone about my darkness when I see someone cracking themselves open on the screen. 'I'm not afraid of the darkness. I feel less alone about my darkness when I see someone cracking themselves open on the screen.' Actor Naomi Watts "I feel like I can relate and I feel like life is not so scary when I see other people who are willing to open up like that and are willing to go there. Advertisement "There's a real need for that level of storytelling, just as there is with the complete opposite: we all need to feel good and watch a funny, goofy comedy as well." Watts sees value in viewers imagining themselves going through Bloom's experience. English actor Andrew Lincoln plays photographer husband Cameron Bloom. "It teaches us something about survival by watching somebody else manage through it," she says. "It becomes a story of survival and hope. "Sam embraces to this day that her life took a very dark turn and she managed to get through it: 'It's still a continuing path ... but it's my path and I'm going to have to own it and muscle through it somehow' [she says]. That's impressive and brave." Watts decided to make the film after reading the book with her kids on a lazy Sunday morning and realising how the story made the family feel more connected. "We were laughing one minute then we were going 'oh no' and 'oh my god' - crying - and really feeling all of those feelings together," she says. "It struck me that this is something powerful. That's what should be gleaned from the experience of watching this film: the powerful bonding that a family creates through the ups and downs." Advertisement Kitchen aid from a magpie in Penguin Bloom. Credit:Joel Pratley Two decades on from her breakout role in Mulholland Drive (2001), Watts has powered on through her forties and early 50s, regularly taking control of her work as a producer and executive producer. While her highest-profile roles in the past decade have been in The Impossible (2012), Diana (2013) and Birdman (2014), she has also starred in the Divergent films (2015, 2016) and the television dramas Twin Peaks (2017) and Gypsy (2017). More recently, she played Gertrude in Ophelia (2018), a female take on Hamlet from Australian director Claire McCarthy, and journalist Gretchen Carlson in the mini-series The Loudest Voice (2019). Even during the worst of the pandemic in North America, she starred in and produced the thriller Lakewood with Australian director Phil Noyce in Canada. "New York got hit so intensely so early on that they figured out how to manage it," Watts says, although this was before another surge in virus numbers. "There were drastic numbers early on so everyone said, 'OK, we're wearing masks, we're doing this'. My kids are in school twice a week. It's nerve-wracking but we're adapting. This is the world we live in now." Watts feels the pandemic has made films like Penguin Bloom more relevant. A scene in Penguin Bloom. Credit:Joel Pratley "In any art form, I feel like we're just craving stories," she says. "We're lacking that physical connectivity. We're left with this longing so to wrap ourselves into other people's stories is what we need to do to escape our own or identify with our own. This is a story of hope and survival and it feels like we need those kinds of stories right now." Advertisement Loading So what was it like producing the film presumably having to worry about everything that happens daily on set like falling behind schedule, the timing of lunch breaks and the budget while leaving enough energy to act? "The producing hat for me was very much in the development stage: finding the right group of people and being unified with how we wanted to tell this story," Watts says. "Once we got on the set, obviously we hire really good people and make sure they're managing the time and the lunch and everything. "But you do start worrying about time when you're running out of light and things like that: 'Come on, let's get this and let's not lose the shot.' 'The birds are creating magic over there in the corner and we're missing it'. Stuff like that. You're 100 per cent committed at all times." To enhance the authenticity of the filmmaking, director Glendyn Ivin (The Cry, Safe Harbour) chose to shoot in the actual Bloom family's house at Newport. Costume designer Joanna Mae Park raided Sam Bloom's wardrobe and recreated key pieces for Watts to wear during filming. And Bloom let Watts read her journals, which revealed the depths of her pain after the accident. Naomi Watts with Sam Bloom in November 2018. Credit:Cameron Bloom "That was the most personal gesture," Watts says. "I've played real-life people enough to know that it's a big responsibility, especially if that person is still around. You want to make sure you honour their story. Advertisement 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 MadridDuring the trial for alleged slander and false accusations against the former director of the Spanish National Intelligence Centre (CNI), Felix Sanz Roldan, former police commissioner Jose Manuel Villarejo said he was aware of the "risk" of a terrorist attack, which "unfortunately happened", referring to August 17, 2017. Villarejo said this in his statement, after contextualizing his poor personal relationship with General Sanz Roldan, whom he accused of having leaked a photograph of him to the press in June 2017 while he was in a secret anti-terrorist operation in Melilla. A World War II Luftwaffe flag with a Nazi swastika will be auctioned in Queensland this weekend, but the Anti-Defamation Commission has labelled it a "disgrace" and an "emblem of pure inhumanity". The Gold Coast auction house selling the flag has hit back, saying it is a "major historical antiquity" and they are "not flying the flag, so to speak" of Nazi values by selling the piece. The 1945 Luftwaffe flag from the Dutch city of Groningen has attracted a lot of interest from potential buyers. Credit:Danielle Elizabeth Antique & Estate Auctioneers Danielle Elizabeth Antique & Estate Auctioneers managing director Dustin Sweeny said the seller was an Italian diplomat who was stationed in the Netherlands in the 1980s. The vendor, who now lives in Queensland, claims to have had the 1945 Luftwaffe compound flag in his possession for about 40 years and is selling it because he is downsizing his home. 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. Undocumented immigrants will have to wait until at least May to obtain their drivers licenses, five months after the law making residents without legal papers eligible for licenses was set to go into effect. The state Motor Vehicle Commission met Friday to address the rules and regulations for the new licenses, which were set to roll out on Jan. 1. The state announced it would be delayed in late December due to the coronavirus pandemic closing agencies for several months, and that training staff would require employees to stop their daily roles. MVC chief Sue Fulton said at the end of the 80-minute meeting that the target date for implementing the new program would be May 1. She emphasized the impact the pandemic had on the agency, which has regularly seen closures across the state due to staff being infected with coronavirus. Due to COVID-19 and the impact on our workforce it is very difficult to pull a large number of people off the line to do this type of detailed training,' she said. This training requires physical as well as visual inspections of documents. That means in-person, and social distancing is required. We will move as fast as we can without sacrificing the safety of our employees. Katy Sastre, outreach coordinator for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, said the May 1 target date is not good enough. To wait any further when peoples lives are at risk is unacceptable, Sastre said. Were happy to have a date, and were going to stay in this fight to make sure they meet this deadline. The MVC unanimously adopted regulations that advocates say will help undocumented immigrants more easily obtain the license, but the state agency still have to grant final approval for the rules and train staff on the new system and law. Another public comment period will be announced before final approval. The change is a big win for immigration advocacy groups that claimed the rule proposed in June requiring applicants to have a Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (which allow residents without legal status to file taxes) would turn away residents who would have to speak with the federal government. The MVC agreed that applicants without a Social Security number or ITIN can present a certified affidavit stating they are not eligible for those programs, which helps immigrants avoid dealing with federal officials. This change means all eligible New Jerseyans will be able to apply for drivers licenses without being forced to share their personal information with federal government agencies. It will make the MVCs services accessible to hundreds of thousands of eligible New Jerseyans, said Alejandra Sorto, campaign strategist with the New Jersey chapter of the ACLU. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage Of the 440,000 undocumented residents who would be eligible for the new licenses, about 140,000 file taxes using ITINs, which would have left 300,000 people to contact a federal agency. Supporters of the law also worried the regulation would mean onerous, time-consuming and expensive paperwork for fearful residents, deterring them from getting drivers licenses. The fact that now, the affidavit will be available to those people is really significant, Sastre added. The law, which Gov. Phil Murphy signed in Dec. 2019, made New Jersey the 14th state to provide drivers licenses to residents without legal status. But in the meantime, undocumented immigrants will continue to be at risk, whether that means driving without a license to get to work and potentially getting fined, or taking public transit amid a pandemic, said Kevin Escobar, a representative with Wind of the Spirit, a faith-based organization working with immigrants. A Dec. 2019 file photo outside the State House Annex as committees voted on the bill for licenses. The sign reads, "We need licenses. We are workers. Please."Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com Without a timetable for license implementation, New Jersey residents awaiting licenses are in limbo, he said. The January date has come and gone, leaving an information vacuum. ... The consequences are scams, fraud, and driving fees on an already vulnerable population during the pandemic. The scams that have popped up on Facebook and popular messaging apps like WhatsApp include bad actors offering ITINs in exchange for money, or helping residents get a license in another state that already allows undocumented immigrants to obtain licenses. Sastre encouraged the community to focus on information released by the state or Lets Drive NJ, a coalition of 80 organizations that work with vulnerable populations. Others echoed her concerns and called on the agency to start a public awareness campaign to fight misinformation. The new law wont only benefit undocumented immigrants it also makes obtaining licenses easier for senior citizens, formerly incarcerated residents, transgender people whose documents may not match their given gender identity, domestic violence survivors, homeless people, veterans and low-income residents who cannot afford to recover documents. It will allow for two forms of drivers licenses: one compliant with the Real ID Act, which, beginning next year, will permit the holder to board domestic flights and will identify citizenship status, and a standard drivers license, which will not indicate citizenship status. It would not apply to commercial drivers licenses. Karen Simbaina, a member of Make the Road New Jersey, an Elizabeth-based organization that works with the Latinx community, said the drivers licenses for the undocumented community were about respect. A first-year student at Fairleigh Dickinson University 30 minutes from her home, she needs to pay a $60 Uber ride to get to classes, she said at a virtual press conference hosted by the Alliance for Immigrant Justice following the MVC meeting. I was hoping to start the new year by visiting the MVC in Newark and getting my license alongside my family, she said, but unfortunately, it wasnt possible. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips The harvest festival Pongal was celebrated across Tamil Nadu and various parts of the nation with fervour. Tamil women cook special food to celebrate the harvest festival of Pongal at Dharavi, one of the world's largest slums, in Mumbai. (Image: AP) Certain snakes have evolved a unique genetic trick to avoid being eaten by venomous snakes, according to University of Queensland research. Associate Professor Bryan Fry from UQ's Toxin Evolution Lab said the technique worked in a manner similar to the way two sides of a magnet repel each other. "The target of snake venom neurotoxins is a strongly negatively charged nerve receptor," Dr Fry said. "This has caused neurotoxins to evolve with positively charged surfaces, thereby guiding them to the neurological target to produce paralysis. "But some snakes have evolved to replace a negatively charged amino acid on their receptor with a positively charged one, meaning the neurotoxin is repelled. "It's an inventive genetic mutation and it's been completely missed until now. "We've shown this trait has evolved at least 10 times in different species of snakes." The researchers found that the Burmese python - a slow-moving terrestrial species vulnerable to predation by cobras - is extremely neurotoxin resistant. "Similarly, the South African mole snake, another slow-moving snake vulnerable to cobras, is also extremely resistant," Dr Fry said. "But Asian pythons which live in trees as babies, and Australian pythons which do not live alongside neurotoxic snake-eating snake, do not have this resistance. "We've long known that some species - like the mongoose - are resistant to snake venom through a mutation that physically blocks neurotoxins by having a branch-like structure sticking out of the receptor, but this is the first time the magnet-like effect has been observed." "It has also evolved in venomous snakes to be resistant to their own neurotoxins on at least two occasions." The discovery was made after the establishment of UQ's new $2 million biomolecular interaction facility, the Australian Biomolecular Interaction Facility (ABIF). "There's some incredible technology at the ABIF allowing us to screen thousands of samples a day," Dr Fry said. "That facility means we can do the kinds of tests that would have just been science fiction before, they would have been completely impossible." ### The research has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.2703). The Australian Biomolecular Interaction Facility (ABIF) was funded through a $1 million Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant, with $1 million contributing funding from UQ, Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, James Cook University, and the University of Sunshine Coast. The Constitution says the chief justice is to preside at the impeachment trial of a president. But what about an ex-president? Like so much else about the Constitution, the answer is subject to interpretation. When President Donald Trump's trial begins after January 20, it's not clear whether Chief Justice John Roberts would make his way to the Senate chamber as he did last year for Trump's first trial. The choices are between Roberts, Kamala Harris, whose constitutional role as vice president is to preside over the Senate, and the longest-serving Democratic senator, president pro tempore Patrick Leahy. Trump was impeached Wednesday by the House on a single charge, incitement of insurrection, in lightning-quick proceedings just a week after after the siege. Ten Republicans joined all Democrats in the 232-197 vote to impeach. Under Senate procedure, the trial is to start soon after the House delivers the article of impeachment. The soonest the calendar has senators back in session is Tuesday and once the article is delivered, senators have to start consideration the next sitting day. Could the new vice president preside over Trump's trial? Kamala Harris' constitutional role as vice president is to be the presiding officer of the Senate, so some experts are suggesting she could. But it seems unlikely with Democrats who will hold the majority setting the trial rules Over to you? Nancy Pelosi has not yet said when she will transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate. Once she does it must begin considering it on the next full sitting day - which could be January 20 Been there before: John Roberts presided as Chief Justice over Donald Trump's first impeachment trial and seems most likely to preside again That means trial could begin as soon as an hour after Biden takes the oath of office next Wednesday, but some Democrats are pushing for a later trial to give him time to set up his administration and work on other priorities. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not said when she will take the crucial next step to transmit the impeachment article to the Senate. After Trump's first impeachment, in 2019, she withheld the articles for some time to set the stage for the Senate action. Biden has said the Senate should be able this time to split its work, starting the trial and working on his priorities, including swift confirmation of his Cabinet nominees. On Inauguration Day, the Senate typically confirms some of the new presidents Cabinet, particularly national security officials. Biden's choice of Avril Haines as director of national intelligence will have a hearing Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. 'We are working with Republicans to try to find a path forward,' said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer's office. Impeachment scholars, law professors and political scientists offer differing views on who will preside over it. It is up to the senators themselves to decide - during the impeachment they are both judges, setting the procedures for trial, and jurors. This time they will in effect be witnesses too, having been in the Senate when the MAGA mob stormed the Capitol. The choices appear to be Roberts, Harris, who by then will be vice president, or Leahy, who will be the Senate's president pro tempore once the Democrats gain control of the Senate. The issue is 'unsettled, completely without precedent, and unspecific in existing Senate rules and precedents,' Princeton University political scientist Keith Whittington wrote in an email. One reason that the Constitution specifies the chief justice to run the president's trial is that the person who otherwise presides over the Senate is the vice president - the very person who would assume the presidency if the chief executive is convicted. That's a bit unseemly. But if the stakes are changed and the sitting vice president no longer stands to get the top job, why not have Harris, who by then will have taken over for Mike Pence, preside? Whittington said he thinks that could happen, 'as with the impeachment of any officer other than the president.' But he said he 'can imagine that the Senate might go the other way and treat a former president the same as a sitting president.' University of Texas law professor Steven Vladeck said the chief justice is the better choice. The House on Wednesday impeached the president, not the former president, Vladeck wrote on Twitter. 'Indeed, if Trump resigned (or his term ended) mid-trial, it would be more than a little odd for the Chief Justice to give way to the Vice President. The question should be whether the impeached officer was President at the time of impeachment. Here, he was, so Roberts presides,' Vladeck wrote. Another factor in favor of Roberts is that 'a trial of a President (even a former President) is a momentous event and having the Chief Justice preside seems more congruent with, or more fitting of, the occasion,' Georgia State University law professor Neil Kinkopf wrote in an email. If it's not Roberts or Harris, who may wish to avoid the appearance of a conflict that presiding over Trump's trial might inflame, the next choice would be Leahy, the senior Democrat in the Senate, Norm Eisen said on CNN. Eisen was a legal adviser to Democrats during Trump's first impeachment. In his hands: Chuck Schumer will be majority leader when the rules for the Senate trial are determined On trial (again): Donald Trump is the first president to be impeached twice and the first whose trial will begin after he has left office Whoever presides will oversee a contentious trial - but they are not the judge; in impeachment law the Senators are both judges and jurors. They set the rules of the trial, can rule on any contentions over procedure and will then vote on Trump's fate. Trump is the only president to be twice impeached, and the first to be prosecuted as he leaves the White House, an ever-more-extraordinary end to the defeated president's tenure. In pursuing conviction, House impeachment managers said Thursday they will be making the case that Trumps incendiary rhetoric hours before the bloody attack on the Capitol was not isolated, but rather part of an escalating campaign to overturn the November election results. It culminated, they will argue, in the Republican president's rally cry to 'fight like hell' as Congress was tallying the Electoral College votes to confirm he'd lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Already National Guard troops flood the city and protect the Capitol amid warnings of more violence ahead of the inaugural. It's a far different picture, due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the threats of violence, from the traditional pomp and peaceful transfer of power. Whenever it starts, the impeachment trial will force a further reckoning for the Republican Party and the senators who largely stood by Trump throughout his presidency and allowed him to spread false attacks against the 2020 election. Last week's assault angered lawmakers, stunned the nation and flashed unsettling imagery around the globe, the most serious breach of the Capitol since the War of 1812, and the worst by home-grown intruders. 'The only path to any reunification of this broken and divided country is by shining a light on the truth,' said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., who will serve as an impeachment manager. 'That's what the trial in the Senate will be about,' she told The Associated Press on Thursday. No president has ever been convicted in the Senate, and it would take a two-thirds vote against Trump, an extremely high hurdle. Two new senators from Georgia, both Democrats, are to be sworn in, leaving the chamber divided 50-50. That will tip the majority to the Democrats once Kamala Harris takes office. The vice president is the tie breaker. But conviction of Trump is not out of the realm of possibility, especially as corporations and wealthy political donors distance themselves from his brand of politics and the Republicans who stood by his attempt to overturn the election. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Thursday, 'Such unlawful actions cannot go without consequence.' She said in a statement that the House responded 'appropriately' with impeachment and she will consider the trial arguments. At least four Republican senators have publicly expressed concerns about Trumps actions, but others have signaled their preference to move on. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., issued a statement saying he opposes impeachment against a president who has left office. Trump ally Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is building support for an alternative of launching a commission to investigate the siege. Ahead of opening arguments, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, another impeachment manager, suggested senators will be asked to focus on their own experiences the day of the attack. 'You dont have to tell anyone who was in the building twice what it was like to be terrorized,' Swalwell said. The riot delayed the tally of Electoral College votes that was the last step in finalizing Biden's victory as lawmakers fled for shelter and police, guns drawn, barricaded the doors to the House chamber. 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. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 3 mesi fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The new market intelligence report by Persistence Market Research (PMR) reveals that the global pyrogen testing market will reach US $ ~ 800 Mn by the end of 2019, and further exhibit a robust CAGR of 9% through the next decade. The increasing trend of outsourcing drug manufacturing to low-cost production regions by most pharmaceutical companies has been touted to remain a major influencer associated with the growth of pyrogen testing market landscape over the period of assessment, as it allows for low-cost skilled workforce and ease in tax relaxation. Get Sample Copy of Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4259 Company Profiles: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. Merck & Co., Inc. Associates of Cape Cod, Inc. Charles River Laboratories, Inc. GenScript Lonza Hyglos GmbH Wako Chemicals USA, Inc. Microcoat Biotechnologie GmbH Growing Number of Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies to Bring Traction to Pyrogen Testing As medical devices cross the barriers within the body leading to contamination, pyrogen testing could be used by healthcare professionals to detect the harmful substances present in those devices. In addition, growing healthcare awareness also leads to upsurge in the medicine demand, which increases establishment of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries. This in turn, propels the demand for pyrogen testing in these establishments worldwide. Moreover, increase in number of people diagnosed with various diseases results in the rising demand for various injectables, vaccines, tablets, and other medicines in turn, fueling the demand for safety measures such as pyrogen testing. According to the PMR analysis, in end user, pharmaceutical companies will dominate the demand side in the pyrogen testing market by the end of 2019 and will also continue to exploit the highest share in the forecast period. This is due to the growing number of pharmaceutical establishments in developed as well as developing countries, which increases the need for drug safety checks like pyrogen testing. Demand for limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) pyrogen testing is estimated to grow by the end of 2029, as end users demands for user-friendly pyrogen testing method that are cost-effective, and incur low equipment cost as well. Thus, the PMR study report estimates that LAL pyrogen testing method will harness around 60% of the global pyrogen testing market share during the forecast period. Get To Know Methodology of Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/4259 Favorable Government Initiatives to Augur Well for Pyrogen Testing Market Increasing spending by government bodies to develop effective drugs and medical devices is expected to drive the growth of the global pyrogen testing market in the forecast period. Pyrogen is a prominent cause that leads to shock or fatality among a large section of the patient population creating an economic burden on the country. Thus, increasing healthcare spending is expected to result in growing demand for pyrogen testing by various pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Also, government in various countries are focused on of infectious diseases to reduce associated healthcare costs, which in turn prevention is expected to result in high demand for healthcare facilities. In order to further complement this, government is focusing on pyrogen testing policies for contaminant-free medical devices and pharmaceuticals provided to the patient population, which will pave the way for the elevated requirement of pyrogen testing in the market. Access Full Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/4259 Hence, companies operating in the pyrogen testing market are expected to largely benefit from such developments. PMR's analysis also projects groundbreaking perspectives on the competitive business scenario of the pyrogen testing market along with highlights of participants' key business policies and approaches. For instance, many drug manufacturing units are investing in foreign nations, especially in emerging economies of Asia Pacific and Latin America, which hold great future opportunities for the pyrogen testing market. Various pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers are establishing their manufacturing base in India, China, and others in order to tap and cater to the unmet needs of the patient population in these regions, thus escalating the market for pyrogen testing. Never heard of 'Ratcatcher' for Glasgow (hew, tbh...) but I'm glad to see it's Anchorman for San Diego Which is Spanish for "Whale's Vagina", as we all well know! Reply Thread Link I haven't seen it in ages, but Ratcatcher is fantastic! Reply Parent Thread Link Big surprise for Casablanca, lol Reply Thread Link Days of Thunder for my city. Makes sense seeing as it's about NASCAR. Very boring, I'm sure. They chose that when Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is RIGHT THERE!! Reply Thread Link just clicked the link to see if there was City of God there and it was! so it is a good list in my book. There are obviously uplifting stories to be told about Rio, but its hard to tell them with Bolsonaro in power at the moment. Cant argue with that. I wish I could find good things to say about Rio at the moment. Reply Thread Link Miami - "Miami Blues" Hmm never heard of that movie and I feel like I'm not alone on that. Miami is a hotspot so other more popular movies could've been named. Philadelphia - "Blow Out" really? I would've thought Rocky lol! Edited at 2021-01-15 12:34 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link They actually acknowledged the Rocky absence, lol Its arguably De Palmas finest work, which makes it better than Rocky." Sorry. Reply Parent Thread Link lol some of these choices were wanting to go against the grain BUT if you say "define the city" then regardless of taste you gotta go with the most popular film cause that what defines in pop culture. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Same, never heard of it. I was assuming it would be Moonlight tbh. Doesn't have the longevity of some of the other films I could think of though. The Birdcage is older 90's Miami Beach for me though. But there's Ace Ventura, Bad Boys, Scarface, etc Reply Parent Thread Expand Link yeah for miami i was thinking the birdcage or bad boys would be great and rocky of course, reading the source i def feel like theyre trying to be as obscure as possible. then you get to casablanca Reply Parent Thread Link Orlando "The Florida Project" I had a feeling this would get picked lol. Reply Thread Link Chicago has so many good movies, but I have to admit Blues Brothers is a good pick, and the runner ups are good choices as well. I can tell a man made this list because I would have included Adventures in Babysitting as well for Chicago porn. The New York pick was right on the money; a good cross section of the people who live there on the hottest day of the year; it screams NYC not only to people watching but also to people who live there. No Frances Ha bullshit here. Reply Thread Link I fucking love the Blues Brothers. Reply Parent Thread Link The Blues Brothers is so excellent. All of the cameos. Reply Parent Thread Link loving the blues brothers love in this thread Reply Parent Thread Link For Durham NC - Bull Durham, which Ive still never seen lol Reply Thread Link Toronto - "Dead Ringers" The capital of Ontario has been one of the world capitals of filmmaking since the 1980s, serving as Hollywood studios budget-friendly substitute for several metropolises. But if you want Toronto shot properly as Toronto, youve got to go with a native. Its a city with a great deal of charm, but theres an icy impersonality to it as well, and thats where David Cronenberg comes in with the emotionally bent twin gynecologists of Dead Ringers." Honorable mention: Egoyans Exotica," Edgar Wrights Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," McKellars Last Night, Rozemas Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing," Polleys Take This Waltz and Dukes The Silent Partner." Montreal - "Jesus of Montreal" It feels like cheating to go with Denys Arcands celebrated (albeit awfully heavy handed) Christ allegory, but its still the film that springs to mind cinematically when you think of Montreal. The French-Canadian vibe of the city gives the film a slightly otherworldly vibe; its one of those towns where, as an outsider, you feel blissfully out of place. Honorable mention: Villeneuves Incendies/Polytechnique," Arcands The Barbarian Invasions/The Decline of the American Empire," Lauzons Leolo and Ozs The Score." Winnipeg My Winnipeg There are bigger, more significant cities in Canada than Winnipeg, but none of them has received a tribute as bafflingly beautiful as this docu-fantasia from filmmaker Guy Maddin. The film presents the Manitoba town as a frigid dreamland a place situated somewhere between reality and the subconscious. Aesthetically, its vintage Maddin, but its not as emotionally distant as most of his work. If ever a filmmaker has truly captured the soul of city, Maddin has done it here with his hometown. Honorable mention: "Phantom of the Paradise." Reply Thread Link I'd choose "good neighbour" for montreal because I feel like it captured canadian / montreal winter in a wonderful way bonus: it stars stevie from schitts creek Reply Parent Thread Link i really thought the montreal one would be leolo. Reply Parent Thread Link I feel bad having never heard of "Dead Ringers" for my own city. I immediately went Scott Pilgrim but that's probably an age/generation thing on my behalf Reply Parent Thread Link Scott Pilgrim or Last Night would have been my picks for Toronto. Reply Parent Thread Link Last Night would have been so much more fitting. Reply Parent Thread Link There aren't enough movies where Canada can just be Canada. Tired of all these Hollywood studios using Canada as a cheap stand-in for American towns and cities. Reply Parent Thread Link Im surprised I dont have strong feelings about these picks because I went through a Canadian film phase and Ive been to these three cities multiple times. Its funny Vancouver isnt included considering how much filming is done there. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link And nothing for Ottawa. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Thats interesting about Moscow, I always wondered what exactly the issue there was bc Ive never actually seen a show or movie shot there. They always go to the closest Eastern European country they can and just do what they can. Russia has some really beautiful architecture, I wanna go :( Reply Thread Link Imma burst a blood vessel if I see 8 Mile for Detroit. Lol Detroit probably aint on the list Edited at 2021-01-15 12:42 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link Never heard of Blue Collar but thanks for not being 8 Mile Reply Parent Thread Link What a wonderful post! Thanks op! Reply Thread Link aww, thanks bb I kinda knew a lot of us would like this topic Reply Parent Thread Link I havent seen Dead Ringers, so I can't comment on whether it's a good pick for Toronto but I also would have gone with The F Word (or What If), since that showed Toronto in such a beautiful way. Reply Thread Link ooh I will check out those films! I commented below that I haven't seen a lot of films set in Toronto. Reply Parent Thread Link Theyre the same film lol but they were released in different areas with either title. But yes, watch it! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I really like the f word- I was genuinely surprised by how good it was Reply Parent Thread Link rio de janeiro - city of god honolulu - the descendants casablanca these bother me. some of the others do too, but i haven't watched them so i won't comment. Reply Thread Link jw why does city of god bother you? agreed w/the other 2, especially casablanca, a movie that's abt casablanca only in name, perpetuates north african stereotypes, and afaik has no moroccan involvement whatsoever. truly yikes. Reply Parent Thread Link What an interesting topic! Since my home city of Manila isn't on here, this is the first film that came to mind: Reply Thread Link New Delhi: The Union Cabinet in 2016 had decided to merge the Railway Budget with the General Budget, thus ending the 92-year-old tradition of having a separate Railway Budget. A separate Railway Budget was started by the British in 1924. Even after the merger, the distinct entity and the functional autonomy of the Railways, as was envisioned, has been maintained. Following the merger of Union Budget with Railway budget, the Railways does not have to pay dividend to the central government though it would still get gross budgetary support from the exchequer. As far as the salary and pension bill of Railway employees is concerned, it remains the responsibility of the national transporter as there is no change in the existing practice. The merger of Rail and General Budgets does not impact the functional autonomy of the railways but help in enhancing capital expenditure. The decision to merge the Railway Budget with the General Budget has also been seen as a significant one, as in recent years political heavyweights, particularly regional satraps, have used this occasion to nurture their constituencies in a big way. Late BJP leader Arun Jaitley became the first Finance Minister in 2017, presenting the unified Budget for 2017-18. Another change that the Union Budget 2017-18 saw was that for the first time the date of presentation was advanced by nearly a month, besides co-opting the Railway Budget into it. The government was in favour of advancing the Budgetary exercise so that it could be completed before March 31 and expenditure on public-funded schemes could begin from April 1. Live TV #mute The Cabinet also decided to do away with the Plan/ Non-Plan expenditure classification in Budget 2017-18 and replace with 'capital and receipt'. Coronavirus cases: India records 15,590 new COVID-19 cases, 191 deaths in last 24 hours India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Jan 15: Union health ministry on Friday said that India's COVID-19 caseload rose to 1,05,27,683 with 15,590 people testing positive for the infection in a day. The country's death toll increased to 1,51,918 with 191 daily new fatalities. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 1,01,62,738 pushing the national COVID-19 recovery rate to 96.53 per cent. It is reportedly said that the COVID-19 active caseload remained below 3 lakh. There are 2,13,027 active cases of coronavirus infections in the country which comprises 2.02 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated. India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19. ISI sent me nudes, I leaked sensitive info confesses man arrested for espionage According to the ICMR, 18,49,62,401 samples have been tested up to January 14 with 7,30,096 samples being tested on Thursday. The 191 new fatalities include 70 from Maharashtra, 19 from Kerala, 17 from West Bengal, 14 from Uttar Pradesh, 10 each from Chhattisgarh and Punjab, eight from Madhya Pradesh, six from Haryana, and four each from Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. A total of 1,51,918 deaths have been reported so far in the country, including 50,291 from Maharashtra followed by 12,246 from Tamil Nadu, 12,155 from Karnataka, 10,722 from Delhi, 10,010 from West Bengal, 8,543 from Uttar Pradesh, 7,138 from Andhra Pradesh and 5,473 from Punjab. Explained: What is the Status of Avian Influenza in India Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News The health ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities. "Our figures are being reconciled with the Indian Council of Medical Research," the ministry said on its website and added that state-wise distribution of figures is subject to further verification and reconciliation. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 12:13 [IST] Harold Bornstein, Donald Trumps longtime physician, has died at the age of 73. The long-locked doc was one of a kinda writer of poetry, a beloved, lighthearted neighborhood doctor, a student of Italian literaturebut also an archetype, part of an ever-growing group of Americans who sacrificed their own credibility to appease the president, only to be discarded when his mood turned. Bornsteins 15 minutes of fame arrived in 2015, when he signed a doctors note extolling Donald Trumps superlative good health. On paper, this was a concession to the idea that an aspiring presidents fitness (like his tax returns and business dealings) is a matter of public interest, but in practice it made a mockery of that tradition. If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, the letter concluded. 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. This Ferris Buellerstyle ruse sounded like the work of Donald Trump, but Bornstein maintained he had written the note himself. This charade made Bornstein a national joke, which pained him. And that media attention in turn probably compelled what happened next, which was his gradual abandonment by Donald Trump. It was as if the presidents pleasure at his doctors loyalty had been superseded by disdain for his fealty. Bornstein expected a prime seat at the inauguration, but instead stood freezing behind a tree. He expected to be presidential physician, but never spoke to Trump again. After the administration began, he delivered a more honest appraisal of the presidents health in interviews with the New York Times. But this public service came too late to salvage Bornsteins reputation as a Trump toadyand hardened the presidents dismissal. Two days after the Times article was published, Trumps cronies showed up at Bornsteins practice to seize the presidents medical records. Bornstein told NBC they asked him to remove a framed portrait of him and Trump from the wall, and that the presidents assistant, Rhona Graff, told him, So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it, youre out. Advertisement Advertisement Bornstein retaliated by telling the world that the infamous doctors note had been dictated by Trump himselfbut by that point, the revelation paled in comparison to Trumps more recent words and deeds, and served mostly to cement the impression of a doctor who had helped Trump evade one more political norm. The story made me think of Ayad Akhtars recent book Homeland Elegies, a memoirish novel in which the narrators Pakistani-born doctor father is summoned to New York to investigate a heart condition of, yes, the real estate developer Donald Trump. He visits a few times and finally makes a negative diagnosis. Trump never calls again, but Akhtars father resumes his trips to the city, longing for the tawdry, gilt-and-gossamer penumbra that masqueraded as largess, and assuages his rejection by establishing a 15-year relationship (and having a secret child with) a Manhattan prostitute said to have known Trump. Advertisement Akhtar draws a parallel to his fathers subsequent enthrallment with Trump the presidential candidate, despite his promise to ban Muslims from the country: nascent, then ascendant, then euphoric, then disappointed, then betrayed and confused, and finally exhausted, a gamut of intensities whose order and range are proper to the ambit of all addiction. Advertisement The book is fiction, but the trajectory is real. How many times have we watched this cycle play out, as men (and they seem to be mostly men) are drawn not so much into the presidents orbit as straight at his unfathomable mass, burning brightly before smashing to pieces? Trump has swindled more collaborators than we can count: artisans who installed the drapes and chandeliers at his hotels and clubs, various blue- and white-collar contractors, taxpayers. I love to hold back and negotiate when people dont do good work, he told the Wall Street Journal in 2016. Advertisement But there is something especially stunning about the arc of the true believers, epitomized by the presidents longtime fixer Michael Cohen, who funneled hush money from his own coffers to Stormy Daniels to cover up her affair with the future president. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other crimes, and called Trump the man that caused me to choose the path of darkness. He was disbarred and served almost two years in prison. Trumps betrayals abound. There was the time Trump forced Chris Christie to eat meatloaf. The time he ended Jeff Sessions career. The time he humiliated Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for following his own federal governments coronavirus protocol. When he sent an angry mob after Mike Pence. The latest news is that Trump is withholding Rudy Giulianis legal fees. Theres enough schadenfreude in this administration to last us for years. The fall of these powerful sycophants is amusing, but it is also an augur of a bigger betrayal to come: that of the presidents supporters. He relishes their devotion and enjoys unleashing their energies on his enemies, but otherwise, he can barely conceal his disdain for them and the places they live. The moment they outlive their usefulness to him, he will make Bornsteins of them all. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan receives a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, a day after Turkish authorities gave the go-ahead for the emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by China's Sinovac Biotch Ltd., in Ankara, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021. AP Turkey began administering COVID-19 shots developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd to health workers on Thursday, as it vaccinated more than 285,000 people as part of a nationwide programme against the virus. Turkey has reported more than 2.3 million infections and 23,000 deaths since March and still reports around 10,000 new cases and 170 deaths each day after a month of weekend lockdowns and nightly curfews. President Tayyip Erdogan also received his first dose of the vaccine in Ankara on Thursday. He urged political leaders and lawmakers to endorse the inoculation process and called on Turks not to heed criticism of the vaccine. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca also urged citizens to get vaccinated as soon as their turn came, saying it was the "most important way" to beat the pandemic. At a research hospital in Istanbul, 30 clinics were set up to administer the vaccine. Health workers were given a first dose, with a second to be given 28 days later. Surgeon General Nurettin Yiyit said the hospital could vaccinate around 1,800 people a day and that its 3,500 staff, including nurses and janitors, could be vaccinated in two days. "We spent around 10 months in white overalls, supporting people as they struggle for life. Health workers know very well that this situation cannot be taken lightly and that the vaccine is needed," Yiyit said. As of 2032 GMT, Turkey had vaccinated 285,940 people, according to Health Ministry data. PAUL BUCKOWSKI/Albany Times Union Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is the only national holiday also designated as a day of national service, a perfect tribute to a man who transformed America and challenged the ancient evil of racism in his brief 39 years of life. Two beloved Capital Region nonprofits offer easy ways to do good for the community this Monday, Jan. 18, which is Martin Luther King Day. Food and boxes of new diapers will be collected from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Monday for Family Promise, which houses homeless families with children. The pandemic has increased the need for housing and food so greatly that Family Promise will be stocking free, unlocked pantry boxes in neighborhoods with the highest level of food insecurity. If you would like to help, donate anything that can survive freezing temperatures canned fruits and veggies, canned soup, protein bars, coffee, tea, cooking oil, etc. Diapers in size 5 or 6 are most urgently needed, too. Residents near a Family Promise pantry box can take what they need any time. Upcoming political events in the Bay Area. Events take place online unless otherwise noted: TUESDAY Insurrection: Former Barack Obama communications director Dan Pfeifer on the pro-Trump insurrection and how its changed the country. Hosted by Mannys. Noon. More information is here. Climate change: The future of climate change action and politics under the Joe Biden administration, with Michael Mann, director, Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and Leah Stokes, assistant professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. Noon. More information is here. Obama book club: Reading and discussion of former President Barack Obamas book A Promised Land, with Brian Bond, LGBT liaison to Obama. Hosted by Mannys. 5 p.m. More information is here. WEDNESDAY Inauguration watch party: A virtual watch party of President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration. Hosted by Mannys. 8:30 a.m. More information is here. Socially responsible corporations: Can corporations put social responsibility in front of profits? Panelists include filmmakers Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, whose works include The New Corporation; Elizabeth Davis, dean of the School of Economics and Business Administration at St. Mary's College; Kevin McGarry, St. Marys College assistant professor of accounting and director of the Elfenworks Center for Responsible Business; and Elizabeth Carney, chair of the Commonwealth Clubs Business and Leadership Forum. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 6 p.m. More information is here. THURSDAY Capitol siege: Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland and Alicia Garza of the Black Futures Lab on the double standard in the law enforcement reaction to the pro-Trump siege on the U.S. Capitol and Black Lives Matter protests. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 10 a.m. More information is here. Biometrics: Journalist Annie Jacobsen talks about her new book, First Platoon, on the governments use of biometric personal recognition technology. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here. Rep. Eric Swalwell: East Bay Democrat on the siege of the Capitol and impeachment of President Trump. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 6 p.m. More information is here. JAN. 26 History of racism: Tyler Stovall, history professor and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University, traces the relationship between freedom and race from the Age of Revolution to today. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here. Dolores Huerta and Luis Valdez: A conversation with United Farm Workers civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, and playwright, Luis Valdez, on the history, land and people of Santa Clara Valley and greater California. Hosted by the Peninsula Open Space Trust. 7 p.m. More information is here. JAN. 28 Series on Race: Fremont Democratic Rep. talks with Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, as part of Khannas livestream Series on Race. 3 p.m. More information is here. How to Make a Slave: Jerald Walker on his new book about being a Black man in America, How to Make a Slave and Other Essays. Hosted by KPFA-FM. 7 p.m. More information is here. FEB. 3 Jennifer Siebel Newsom: Californias first partner and filmmaker discusses the documentary The Great American Lie with student filmmakers whose work looks at social justice and gender equity issues. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here. FEB. 4 Black womens history: Historians Daina Ramey Berry of the University of Texas and Kali Nicole Gross of Rutgers University discuss their new book, A Black Womens History of the United States. Hosted by KPFA-FM. 7 p.m. More information is here. To list an event, please email Chronicle politics editor Trapper Byrne at tbyrne@sfchronicle.com Tonight, President-elect Joe Biden will unveil the much-needed 'American Rescue Plan.' Biden plans $1.9 trillion, which is greater than the second stimulus bill passed earlier this month, amounting to $900 billion. Biden unveils 'American Rescue Plan' containing ideas that will help the economy The 'American Rescue Plan' includes proposals that will help combat the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the economy. The plan has an initial focus on expansions of the virus testing capacity and the nation's vaccination program. Read also: More than 90,000 Americans would Die Due to COVID-19 in Next Three Weeks, CDC Forecast Shows According to GO Banking Rates via MSN, the unemployment rates rose with 965,000 claims this week, mostly since August. The unemployment crisis continues to reflect the effects of the pandemic in the economy. The 'American Rescue Plan' also has the anticipated direct payment of $1,400 per eligible person to supplement the $600 second stimulus payment Congress approved. The $600 sum was half the $1,2000 per person first stimulus payment, included in the CARES Act passed last spring. In a tweet earlier this week, Biden said the $600 stimulus check is not enough when people have to choose between putting food on the table or paying rent. CNN reported that Biden's plan expands the eligibility of dependents over the age of 17 as well as households with mixed immigration status. Besides, the program provides more aid to schools, local governments, and small businesses, particularly to those lower-income industries and communities that were hardest hit by the pandemic. The 'American Rescue Plan' aims to increase federal unemployment benefits to $400 weekly, extend unemployment payments and raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Read also: Delayed Stimulus Checks: What You Need To Know Biden's plan would also fund COVID-19 testing and vaccines In December, the leisure and hospitality sector experienced the pandemic's effects due to several lockdowns and restrictions, while the total nonfarm payroll employment was down by 140,000. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment declined by 498,00 with three-quarters of losses occurring in the food and beverage industry. The 'American Rescue Plan' that Biden will propose would provide $400 billion for COVID-19 testing and vaccines, the Washington Post projected. So far, the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out has been a failure. The lack of a clear distribution strategy in the country and the funds needed to execute that strategy left states searching for solutions. As of January 14, 2021, approximately 10.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were given, instead of the expected 20 million shots projected prior to the end of last year, as per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On December 14, 2020, the vaccinations in the U.S. started. The plan also proposes expanding the child tax credit up to $3,600 each year for every child under age six and $3,000 yearly for each child age 7-17, as per The Washington Post. Moreover, the American Rescue Plan would raise the Earned Income Tax Credit to $1,500 and be available to more taxpayers. Biden's plan would ease households' struggle with their rental bills amid being unemployed, as it would provide $25 billion assistance and would extend the eviction moratorium until September to apply for forbearance, CNN reported. Read also: Third Stimulus Check Plans Along with Impeachment Chaos. How Much Exactly Could It Bring You? @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. So were going to be prepared, Pritzker said during a Friday news conference. Thats why I want to make sure that we have got the National Guard out there. Weve got state police, local police, as well as federal coordination. I feel good about the plan that weve got, but again, no threats specific to Illinois or to the city of Chicago. EMILY ST. LAWRENCE, Chariho girls lacrosse, senior: St. Lawrence tied a school record for goals in a game with nine in a win over Smithfield. St. Lawrence scored 17 goals for the week and has 32 for the season. CARLY CONSTANTINE, Stonington softball, sophomore: Constantine singled home Shea OConnor with the winning run to hand Waterford, the states No. 2 ranked team at the time, its first loss of the season. For the week, Constantine was 5 for 15. GREG GORMAN, Westerly baseball, junior: Gorman, a junior, hit a massive home run in a win against Barrington. The homer went over the fence in center field and landed in a nearby road. Gorman was 3 for 3 with four RBIs in the game. He is hitting .571 with 10 RBIs for the season. BRADIN ANDERSON, Wheeler baseball, freshman: Anderson, a freshman, pitched a complete-game shutout to beat Grasso Tech. Anderson struck out three to earn the first win of his varsity career. Vote View Results Three people suffered gunshot wounds in Northeast Portland early Thursday, police said, in one of over half a dozen reports of gunfire in the city in a 12-hour period. Just before 1:40 a.m., officers responded to calls about gunshots near the intersection of Northeast 111th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard in the Parkrose neighborhood. The first officers on the scene found evidence of gunfire but learned that the victims had driven off before police arrived. Investigators said three victims, one woman and two men, showed up at a hospital with gunshot wounds a short time later. One of the victims had serious injuries, police said, while the two others had only minor injuries. Officials did say what any of their conditions were as of Thursday afternoon. Officials also did not release a description of any suspects, though they said the investigation was ongoing. The spate of violence that rippled through Portland in 2020, which claimed 55 lives, the most homicides in the city in 26 years, has shown no signs of abating. Between 2 p.m. Wednesday and 2 a.m. Thursday, officers were called to investigate six other reports of gunfire in the city. One was an apparent shootout on the 12000 block of Northeast Thompson Street where bullets struck a home containing two children and a bedroom in a separate residence where a couple was sleeping. Lakecia Unique Dean, 33, was arrested in one of the incidents, according to police. Officers responded to a report of gunshots in the 100 block of Southeast 146th Avenue and found a crime scene in a nearby apartment, police said. A person had been assaulted but wasnt hit by gunfire, according to police. Dean is being held in the Multnomah County Detention Center on suspicion of attempted murder, unlawful use of a weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm, jail records show. No other arrests were made, police said. Investigators asked anyone with information about any of the shootings to contact the Portland Police Bureau at 503-823-0400 or crimetips@portlandoregon.gov. -- Kale Williams; kwilliams@oregonian.com; 503-294-4048; @sfkale CNRP activists and their family members protested in front of the court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia Jan. 14, 2021. A court in Cambodias capital Phnom Penh opened the trials Thursday of 59 people accused of incitement and treason, the first mass trials of at least 136 defendants associated with the countrys main opposition party that was banned in 2017. Former lawmakers, members, or supporters of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) were tried for their alleged involvement in acting party president Sam Rainsys plan to return to Cambodia from self-imposed exile on Nov. 9, 2019 to lead nonviolent protests against the countrys ruler Hun Sen. The acting CNRP chief, who has lived in France since late 2015, was prevented from entering Cambodia through Thailand when he was refused permission to board a Thai Airways plane in Paris. If found guilty, the defendantswho include several currently in detentionface up to 12 years imprisonment and a fine of 4 million Cambodian riels (U.S. $ 990). Apart from the mass trial, former lawmakers, members, and senior leaders of the CNRP are also facing other separate trials related to the same return attempt in November 2019 with additional criminal charges such as inciting military personnel to disobedience and attack. On Thursday, only 11 of the defendants presented their cases, and the court questioned just two of them regarding how they were able to communicate with Sam Rainsy over social media. Defense lawyer Sam Sokong told RFAs Khmer Service that his clients learned of Sam Rainsys repatriation plans through reports from RFA, its sister network Voice of America (VOA), and Radio France Internationale (RFI). My clients do not have any relationships with the CNRP leaders, nor did they share information about them They used Facebook only to communicate with friends and family, Sam Sokong said. Authorities prevented at least one defendant from entering the court on time, causing that defendant to arrive late, according to Chak Sopheap, the director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), who monitored the trial. The defendants dont understand words like Sam Rainsys page or share, Chak Sopheap told RFA. She said that she was surprised to learn that the court made an issue out of the defendants freedom to use social media. Prum Chantha, the wife of one of the defendants, told RFA her husband was charged with treason and incitement of causing chaos to society. "Did he ever commit treason? Did he ever sell any government property like land, lakes, rivers, or mountains? He never did, all he did was just express his political opinion, that's all he did," she said. Observers told RFA the trials are politically motivated. They have called on Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sens government to drop all charges immediately. In a society that we call a democracy, I have the right to express my opinions, to express political opinions, but I am being persecuted, Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American human rights activist who was on trial Thursday told RFA. I am being prosecuted and persecuted, but I am not afraid of this regime. He, Mr. Hun Sen, is not the owner of my life. God is the owner of my life. And he will not intimidate me with these charges. I will face them. Because they're a sham. They're not real charges, she said. After Thursdays proceedings, the trail adjourned until Jan 28. Police arrested two activists who were monitoring the trial, one of whom they attacked and injured. Meanwhile Phnom Penh authorities deployed a force of about 70 officers to prevent about 100 CNRP activists from every Cambodian province from staging a rally in front of the court. They arrested four among the group: Mak Sam An, Prauv Chanthoeun, Chov Kien and Keo Sophon, from Tboung Khmum Province, on the countrys eastern border. Two of the four were charged with inciting social unrest, while the other two were arrested for gathering in front of the court without permission, San Sok Seiha of the Phnom Penh police told RFA. He said that the police have already sent them to the authorities in Tboung Khmum. The main issue is that the meeting must follow the law. They need permission and they need a request letter, San Sok Seiha said. They did not report their intentions to the authorities. So, we needed to deploy the in order to protect the hearing venue and to provide security and order to Phnom Penh, he said. Mak Sam An's wife, Poy Chanly, told RFA that authorities did not notify her of her husband's arrest. The 40-year-old woman called the arrest is injustice and an abuse against innocent people. She asserted that her husband had not committed any crime. Theres no problem, he is just a political activist," she said, adding that her family will now have financial problems because her husband is the bread winner. Meanwhile, a former CNRP politician who attended the trial told RFA he was attacked on his way home. Thun Chantha said he was ambushed by people he did not know who cornered him on two motorcycles and beat him with a stick on his head and legs before making their escape. I can barely walk because my knee is swollen. My whole body hurts, he said, adding that he is speechless over the attack because he only monitored the trial. Soeung Senkarona, a spokesman for the local ADHOC NGO, told RFA he believes Thursdays arrests were politically motivated threats meant to prevent people from showing their support for opposition officials in future trials. He said he believes that authorities may arrest more people who monitored Thursdays trial and urged authorities to respect human rights and law. Over the past year Cambodia has detained more than 70 affiliated with the CNRP, charging them with incitement, conspiracy and insulting leadership. CNRP Vice President Mu Sochua, a dual citizen of the United States who is named in the suit, told RFA that she plans to return to Cambodia Friday, departing from Lowell, Massachusetts to face the same mass trial. Cambodian authorities have refused to issue her a visa so she can enter the country on her U.S. passport as her Cambodian passport was cancelled last year. Nothing has changed. I already bought a ticket, she said. My return is not for me but for all Cambodia and it is a step toward justice. The government must be brave enough to restore the rule of law and provide fair trials to the accused. Mu Sochua called the effort to keep her out of Cambodian cowardly. The defendant must present at the court. This is showing it is purely political motivated case People should not blame Mu Sochua and Sam Rainsy for failing to return. People must follow up on the government. We cannot live in fear, she said. Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong. TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Gratomic Inc. (TSXV:GRAT)(FSE:CB82)(WKN:A143MR)(OTCQB:CBULF) is pleased to announce that the foundations of its product marketing and sales strategy have been officially defined. During the commissioning phase, due to begin in March 2021, the company will be testing production quality and quantity. In order to support this development, Gratomic has plans in place to upgrade its laboratory facilities at Aukam. This will enable us to properly characterize the initial production batches generated during the commissioning process, and feedback the information to our Process Control, in order to define parameters required to ensure repeatability and efficiency of the production. As a supplement to our main strategic focus on the battery industry and graphene applications (see press release from Dec 30th, 2020), Gratomic will pursue the development of graphite grades commonly used in applications such as graphitic foil, lubricants, crucibles, refractories, friction materials and ceramics, among others. This will allow the Company to diversify our portfolio and optimize the output of the processing plant. Filling the remainder of the Aukam Book in terms of offtake and purchase schedules. In the coming weeks, Gratomic will pursue the preparation of samples for 53 graphite end users around the world, in order to begin the testing and homologation procedures that precede the use of our product into the most technical applications. Gratomic's Product Marketing team has requested an additional 550 kg of graphite samples be shipped to Toronto for conversion to SG16 Battery Grade product specifications in addition to the initial shipment of 243Kg of graphite, which was previously dispatched (see press release from Oct 28,2020). Both samples are destined for distribution to Battery OEM Manufacturers. "This strategy, only possible thanks to the restless efforts of our team on site, will put Gratomic on a privileged position to make a solid transition to a commercially viable Company", says Armando Farhate, COO & Graphite Marketing and Sales Leader. "We have one of the best marketing teams in Graphite. Their strategy for filling the remainder of our processing capacity is brilliant and will elevate our credibility as a market leader in the vein graphite industry" said Arno Brand, Gratomic President & CEO. Gratomic wishes to emphasize that no Preliminary Economic Analysis ("PEA"), Preliminary Feasibility Study or Feasibility Study has been completed to support any level of production. In fact no mineral resources, let alone mineral reserves demonstrating economic viability and technical feasibility, have been delineated on the Aukam Property. The Company engaged Dr. Ian Flint, Ph.D., P. Eng. (BC), a Qualified Person as that term is defined under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") to complete a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on the Aukam Processing plant based upon a resource estimate to be prepared by another Qualified Person. The study, its recommendations, and their subsequent implementation, will provide conclusions and recommendation at a PEA level of comfort relating to the scale up of the existing processing plant to a commercial scale processing facility that will provide the desired concentrate grades and production rates. A preliminary economic assessment is preliminary in nature, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized. The Company is not in a position to demonstrate or disclose any capital and/or operating costs that may be associated with the processing plant, nor the Company's ability to fulfil its obligations to deliver the 1800 tonnes of graphite as required by the purchaser orders. Gratomic wishes to emphasize that the supply of graphite pursuant to any off-take or supply agreement referred to in this Press Release is conditional on Gratomic being able to bring the Aukam project into a production phase, and for any graphite being produced to meet certain technical and mineralization requirements. See "Risk Factors" below. Risk Factors No mineral resources, let alone mineral reserves demonstrating economic viability and technical feasibility, have been delineated on the Aukam Property. The Company is not in a position to demonstrate or disclose any capital and/or operating costs that may be associated with the processing plant. The Company advises that it has not based its production decision on even the existence of mineral resources let alone on a feasibility study of mineral reserves, demonstrating economic and technical viability, and, as a result, there may be an increased uncertainty of achieving any particular level of recovery of minerals or the cost of such recovery, including increased risks associated with developing a commercially mineable deposit. Historically, such projects have a much higher risk of economic and technical failure. There is no guarantee that production will begin as anticipated or at all or that anticipated production costs will be achieved. Failure to commence production would have a material adverse impact on the Company's ability to generate revenue and cash flow to fund operations. Failure to achieve the anticipated production costs would have a material adverse impact on the Company's cash flow and future profitability. About Gratomic Inc. Established in 2014, Gratomic is focused on the proposed production of low-cost mine to market carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, high purity vein graphite to be provided to the EV and Energy Storage supply chains. Gratomic is anticipating full operational capabilities in 2021. Gratomic is in the process of solidifying its plans for micronization and spheronization of its clean Aukam graphite. This significant milestone is a small, additional step in the Company's proposed eco-friendly processing cycle and is intended to allow it to meet ideal North American battery grade standards for use in Li-ion battery anodes. The Company plans to deliver mine-to-market traceability and guaranteed quality control. This will be accomplished by providing documented tracking on all graphite generated at its flagship Aukam Graphite Project. The tracking will begin at Aukam and will be verified at every stage during transport. Two off-take purchase agreements are currently held for lump-vein graphite sourced from Gratomic's Aukam Graphite Project in Namibia, Africa. Fulfillment of the contracts is anticipated to begin in Q1 of 2021. The agreements exist with TODAQ and Phu Sumika. TODAQ is an innovative deeptech company that can containerize assets, transactions & markets, and will partner with Gratomic on its mine-to-market commodity tracking and trading. Containerized assets are verifiably unique, keep an immutable record of who has owned them, have embedded smart logic, can be transferred P2P, and are interoperable with any system. Asset owners enjoy stronger ownership control, value retention when trading, and ability to prove authenticity in seconds. Phu Sumika is a large global graphite supplier to battery and lubrication companies. Gratomic Inc. is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol GRAT, on the OTCQB under the symbol CBULF and on the Frankfurt Exchange under the symbol CB82. For more information, visit the website or contact: Arno Brand abrand@gratomic.ca (416) 561-4095 Subscribe here to be added to our mailing list and receive news and updates directly to your inbox. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at www.sedar.com.) SOURCE: Gratomic Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624417/Gratomic-Defines-Product-Marketing-Strategy-as-Construction-Advances-at-Aukam-Graphite-Mine Melvin Brewing Shares 8 Companies That Value Higher Education Close (Photo : Melvin Brewing Shares 8 Companies That Value Higher Education) Colleges and universities are an important part of today's world. They can teach students and help them become effective employees in the current work environment. However, these establishments can always use some help, so we want to share eight businesses that support and value higher education. Melvin Brewing Melvin Brewing puts forth effort and offers a $1,000 scholarship to anyone that wants to seek higher education once they graduate from high school. They make it clear that they understand the importance of college. They want to help students by alleviating some of the finances they will face when they seek out higher education. When you consider tuition, books and housing, the price for college quickly adds up. Melvin Brewing realizes how difficult it can be to cover these costs, so they offer this scholarship to anyone currently enrolled in college. They recognize the potential these students have, so they want to do their part to help others through college. McDonald's McDonald's uses its HACERR program to give scholarships to Hispanic students that want to go to college. This program focuses on providing money, resources and other information to Hispanic students. While they do offer scholarships to help with financial aid, they also seek to expand the resources available to these students. For example, they make it really easy for you to check your eligibility and other requirements to join the program. You can also watch their live workshops to help you with school applications and the HACER Education Tour. This will help you prepare for college and future leadership positions. Burger King Some students may struggle to get scholarships without a 4.0 GPA, so Burger King offers help through its scholarship program. They allow people with a 2.5 GPA or higher to apply for their scholarships, giving more people the chance to receive financial aid. They also encourage applications from students that volunteer in their communities. Burger King has offered financial assistance to students since 2005, making them a long standing contributor to higher education. In 2019, they gave four million dollars in scholarships to almost 3,700 students. They focus on providing support through scholarships, so they really deliver in that regard. Coca-Cola Coca-Cola puts a heavy emphasis on supporting higher education by offering three scholarship programs. This includes Coca-Cola Scholars, the Community College Academic Team and the Leaders of Promise. Each one offers their own scholarships and support to students across the nation, including high school students entering college. Each of these programs encourage and focus on different types of students. For example, they offer scholarships to students for their academic achievements, creativity and leadership skills. They also offer information on financial aid, guides for college costs and even workshops and academies to help students earn scholarships. Dell The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation puts forth effort to give scholarships and academic support through Dell. Due to this foundation, Dell has successfully offered over 5,000 scholarships across the nation. They also have nearly 3,000 alumni through their scholarships and Dell scholarship receivers tend to graduate twice as fast as the average student. As Dell gives out scholarships, they will spotlight different winners. This gives those recipients the opportunity to share their stories and encourage others to seek out higher education. With this in mind, Dell effectively contributes to colleges by offering scholarships and motivating others to seek higher education. Dr. Pepper During 2020, Dr. Pepper received tons of applications for their scholarship program. Over 100,000 students applied for scholarships, which involved over 10,000 colleges and programs, showing how many people Dr. Pepper helped. On top of this, the program gave over two million dollars in tuition. To add to this, Dr. Pepper gets everyday people involved with the process. According to their website, people can donate to the fund by purchasing Dr. Pepper, so your basic purchase can help people get through college. By using this approach, Dr. Pepper makes itself stand out while showing how others can donate or contribute to the cause. Microsoft It comes as no surprise that a large computer company would offer scholarships. Microsoft focuses on the industry by offering scholarships to those involved in STEM programs or Computer Science majors. Microsoft wants to see growth in technology, so it makes sense that they would contribute and give back to the industry. Not only do they offer scholarships, but they also seek to employ people in the industry. This means someone could receive a scholarship, graduate from college and apply to Microsoft. This means these students can pay for school while Microsoft helps them to network for their future, which will set them up for success. Google Google may stand out as a popular, efficient and useful search engine, but they also contribute to higher education by offering scholarships. Just like with Microsoft, Google focuses on offering scholarships to students seeking degrees in Computer Science and similar industries. They also look for people that want to become leaders in the field. Google offers scholarships to people across the world and they even have an internship program. This means students can get some experience in the industry during college or once they graduate. Google also offers events and resources on higher education to help students succeed in the industry, making them a strong contender among companies that value higher education. Many companies from various industries show how much they value higher education by offering scholarships and encouraging others to go to college. There are plenty of businesses that offer scholarships, but we wanted to highlight these companies for their efforts. You can always look for your own ways to support and help those seeking higher education across the nation. See Now: Facebook will use AI to detect users with suicidal thoughts and prevent suicide 2017 University Herald, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Patna, Jan 15 : Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday inaugurated the six-laned road between R-block and Digha, built at a cost of Rs 379.75 crore. The 6.7-km stretch of road, boasting of state-of-the-art facilities, aims to ease massive traffic jams, providing much relief to commuters from north and south Bihar travelling to state capital Patna. The six-laned road has electronic signages and solar-powered automatic street lights, offering signal-free drive. Commuters of Digha, Rajiv Nagar, Indrapuri, Patliputra, Mahesh Nagar, Punaichak, Sri Krishnapuri and R-block can now move from one end to the other end of the road stretch in only seven minutes as against 40-45 minutes taken earlier. Vehicles carrying excess load can also ply on the six-laned road. Sanjay Kumar, CGM of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam Limited, said that the project was completed in 21 months. Image Source: IANS News "This six-laned stretch has cuts at five places on either side to provide access to residents living in adjoining localities. Besides, we will construct roads to JP Setu and towards Saran and further to Vaishali district as well as Ganga Pathway from Digha to Malsalami along the Ganga river," Kumar said. The elevated approach road between Digha and JP Setu is 1.3 km long and is expected to be completed by May 2021. The acquisition of 2.73 acres of land for the project has begun. In December last year, the Chief Minister had inaugurated the Digha-AIIMS elevated road, providing easier access to the institution to millions of people from Chhapra, Muzaffarpur, Vaishali and north-western districts of Bihar. -- Syndicated from IANS HELSINKI (dpa-AFX) - Finland's economic output declined in November, albeit at a softer pace, data from Statistics Finland showed on Friday. Output of the national economy fell a working-day adjusted 0.4 percent year-on-year in November, after a 1.8 percent decline in October, which was revised from a 1.9 percent fall. On a seasonally adjusted basis, output rose 0.6 percent monthly in November. Data showed that the primary production remained unchanged in November. Secondary and services production declined by about 2.0 percent and 1.0 percent from a year ago. Separate data from the statistical office showed that the industrial turnover decreased a working-day adjusted 1.6 percent in November, following a 4.5 percent decline in October. On a seasonally adjusted basis, industrial turnover gained 1.7 percent monthly in November. 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. Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. [January 15, 2021] Arizonans Prep for Virtual Celebration as Governor Ducey Proclaims Jan. 24-Jan. 30 "Arizona School Choice Week" PHOENIX, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the ninth consecutive year, an Arizona governor has officially recognized the last week of January as School Choice Week, a week to raise awareness about K-12 education options. Gov. Doug Ducey's proclamation of Arizona School Choice Week (Jan. 24-Jan. 30) recognizes the state's diverse learning options and how they enhance the vibrancy of Arizona communities. In signing the proclamation, Gov. Ducey joined more than a dozen other governors and hundreds of mayors, councilmembers, and other leaders nationwide who have proclaimed the Week so far. While National School Choice Week has been celebrated annually since 2011, this year's celebration will take place entirely through virtual or socially-distanced events, such as a drive-in movie screening of "Miss Virginia" for families in Mesa. Whether in cars, on social media, or at-home, more than 800 activities will shine a light on school choices and how finding a good fit can transform a child's life. More than 33,000 events havebeen independently planned for the week nationwide. "This Week encourages schools to celebrate their unique missions, and families to choose the best education fit for them, whether that's a traditional public school, public magnet school, public charter school, private school, online school, or homeschooling, said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are sincerely grateful to Gov. Ducey for his recognition, and to all those taking the time to celebrate during this challenging school year." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/arizona . View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arizonans-prep-for-virtual-celebration-as-governor-ducey-proclaims-jan-24-jan-30-arizona-school-choice-week-301209064.html SOURCE National School Choice Week [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Guangzhous Liwan district carried out nucleic acid tests throughout Wednesday night and Thursday in a bid to control the spread of Covid-19. The southern metropolis is under pressure to prevent imported infections, after a person was confirmed Friday to have contracted a strain of the coronavirus first found in India. The city reported three new cases, one local and two imported, on Wednesday May 27, 2021 05:09 PM Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 18:09:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close A man makes Arabian Oud at a workshop on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo, Jan. 12, 2021. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa) by Mahmoud Fouly CAIRO, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of workers in several adjacent workshops on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo were working on producing different parts of oud, an ancient Arabian lute-like music instrument, to be assembled together and polished for sale to musicians in Egypt and abroad. The workshops together form the largest oud making workshop in Egypt, which belongs to veteran oud maker Khaled Azooz, who refers to them as a complete factory exporting ouds to 12 Arab and Western countries. "I started with a small workshop about five years ago, then it gradually expanded until I have now 50 workers in my factory that I believe is the largest in Egypt and the region," Azooz told Xinhua at his nearby office in a separate building in El-Marg district northeastern Cairo, bordering Qalioubiya province. Azooz, who inherited oud making from his father and grandfather, said that other workshops in Egypt are smaller and they only import different parts of ouds and assemble them. "But my factory is the only one that makes the oud from A to Z, starting from importing the wood, designing the oud shapes, carrying out their wooden structures, assembling them, polishing the final products, and tailoring their bags too," the oud maker said, adding that he started learning the profession since he was a child. He plans to establish a large several-story oud making factory in the same neighborhood in the near future. The large workshop exports ouds to Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Jordan and Sudan, and to Western states including the United States, Canada, Germany and Sweden. "Saudi Arabia is the largest oud consumer in the world. It imports between 700 and 800 ouds monthly from Egyptian oud makers," Azooz pointed out, noting that his workshop produces from 600 to 700 instruments per month. The workshop is home to around 50 workers, including 10 Sudanese, who had different roles in oud making, such as graphic designing, carpentry, assembly, ornamentation and polishing. Azooz's 18-year-old son, a high school student, works with him in running the workshops. Some of the workers are his relatives too. "I treat all of them like brothers and sisters. We're all like family here," the owner said. At one of the workshops, 21-year-old Egyptian young man Ahmed Mohamed was using a metal scraper to clean the pear-shaped back of an oud while his Sudanese colleague Ibrahim Mohamed Abbas, 53, was cleaning the belly of another oud with a flat sander machine. "I have been working here for four years. I moved to carpentry to learn something new after I excelled polishing, because I love the profession and want to become an experienced oud maker," the young man told Xinhua. Meanwhile, Abbas said that he joined Azooz's workshops three months ago right after his arrival from Sudan, expressing happiness with the respectful treatment he receives from his Egyptian employer and colleagues. "I like the friendly work environment here very much. This workshop is an embodiment of friendship and brotherhood between the peoples of Egypt and Sudan," said the Sudanese man. Azooz imports different types of wood from Sudan and India and most of the strings from Germany and France. He is proud to be the official oud provider to the Arabic Oud House, an oud learning school founded in Cairo in 1998 by Iraqi musician Naseer Shamma in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. "What's new is that I began making small-sized ouds that will be available soon for the children of the Arabic Oud House starting from the age of 7," Azooz said. The Arabic Oud House now has branches in Iraq, UAE and Sudan, and will open branches soon in the United States, Germany and Spain, in cooperation with cultural institutions in these countries, according to Islam Taha, supervisor of the Arabic Oud House in Cairo. "Azooz is our official provider because he is the largest oud producer in the region and can provide us with the large number of instruments we need with the quality and specifications we desire," Taha said. "Azooz also imports fine wood for high-quality oud making and he also provides unique after-sale services and free maintenance," the Arabic Oud House supervisor told Xinhua. Enditem US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan YEREVAN, JANUARY 15, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin held a consultation today in a video-conference mode with the permanent members of the Security Council, the Kremlin press service reports. Putin informed the Security Council members about the results of the January 11 talks held with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Moscow over the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The Russian leader and the Security Council members also discussed relevant issues of the countrys domestic and foreign policy. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! Anthony Deordio, of North Adams, has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for numerous child pornography and exploitation charges. Moreno was out on his own recognizance after being hit with charges of insurance fraud and obstruction of justice stemming from an incident in early 2019, when prosecutors say Moreno falsely claimed to police and his insurance company that his 2016 Audi A6 had been stolen from his garage. For a second time, a surge in COVID-19 cases has pushed Texas hospitals beyond their base capacity, thwarted the states plan to reopen businesses and spurred a wave of deaths that health experts say was avoidable. Instead of effectively mitigating a virus that already has killed more than 30,000, Texas is enduring one of its darkest chapters of the COVID-19 pandemic as state officials scramble to vaccinate 29 million residents. Critics of Gov. Greg Abbotts October reopening guidelines say state leaders are repeating many of the same mistakes from last summers crisis by opting against tighter restrictions, fighting local officials efforts to close high-risk businesses and relaying mixed messages to the public. City and county leaders are sending conflicting signals of their own, urging residents to stay home and avoid crowds while doing little to enforce mask rules or capacity limits, citing a lack of manpower. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer And many of their constituents simply have tuned out the partisan bickering and given up on following health guidelines. Fatigued after 10 months, some members of the public largely have resumed their normal lives, gathering unmasked with others, ensuring the virus continues to spread. Those pushing for more action say Abbott could permit rules that stop short of a full-scale shutdown, such as limiting restaurants to takeout and delivery, that would preserve businesses while still doing more to contain the spread. I understand theres businesses, and we dont want the economy to be completely devastated, but I think we were aggressive on opening up things early, and we werent aggressive on pulling things back when things were starting to get serious, said Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy at Rice Universitys Baker Institute. Abbott said his health protocols are based on guidance from medical experts to ensure hospital systems never are overwhelmed. If COVID-19 patients occupy at least 15 percent of beds in a hospital region for seven consecutive days, elective surgeries must be postponed, bars must close and most other businesses must decrease occupancy from three-quarters to half of capacity. The burden for quelling this new surge, Abbott said, falls on local leaders who must ensure Texans follow these rules. They proved effective in slowing the spread over the summer and containing the virus, and in recent weeks in communities that experienced spikes, Abbotts press secretary, Renae Eze, said in a statement. They can continue to work, but only if enforced. Dr. Mark McClellan, a former FDA commissioner and one of the governors chief medical advisers, said while the state has made great strides encouraging mask-wearing and making testing available, Abbott should consider more aggressive action to bring the virus under control, including tighter restrictions on restaurants and bars. He predicted the pandemic will continue to worsen here in the coming weeks. Especially at this stage when so many parts of the state are surging not only beyond the thresholds, but approaching full ICUs and health care crisis levels, I think its time to think about some further restrictions, McClellan said. Abbott has given no indication that is a possibility. Last month, he said he would not impose any more shutdowns, calling instead for a focus on opening businesses. The governors health commissioner, Dr. John Hellerstedt, told Houston-area county judges Dec. 30 that the government had reached the limits of what it regulates and controls and licenses, according to a recording published by Quorum Report. Enforcement questioned Mayors and county judges in the states largest urban areas say they lack the law enforcement resources to parse whether a business is more than 75 percent full and accuse the governor of trying to pass on the blame for his failed strategy. They are frustrated further by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commissions decision to allow more than a third of the states bars to effectively reclassify as restaurants, allowing them to remain open even when hospitals become strained with coronavirus patients. It may be that some of your readers dont feel comfortable going to a bar, but theyre seeing this and saying, well heck, if the bars are open, surely I can have my extended family over for Sunday dinner, said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. How hard localities actually are trying to enforce Abbotts restrictions, however, remain an open question. Police in Harris County, the states most populous, have received 10,000 complaints since September for violations of Abbotts orders. The county fire marshal has issued four citations; its city of Houston counterpart did not respond to questions from the Chronicle. Not every local leader has pushed for tighter restrictions. In December, after Galveston Countys hospital region reached the rollback threshold, Republican County Judge Mark Henry said the sheriff had no resources to enforce bar closures, joining a bipartisan list of local officials who say they lack the manpower to ensure compliance. Instead, Henry called on Abbott to use the TABC to enforce his order. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer The state agency has allowed some 3,100 businesses to convert from bars to restaurants in order to continue operating during the pandemic, or 38 percent of the roughly 8,000 bars across Texas. In early November, TABC announced it had suspended the licenses of just eight bars and restaurants after conducting a sweep of more than 1,700 establishments across the state. East of Houston, Hardin County Judge Wayne McDaniel has asked the governor for an exemption to capacity rollbacks because he said public health data has not shown businesses to be a vector of transmission for the virus. I just dont see the justification for it. If I did, Id feel differently, McDaniel said. If I knew people were getting sick sitting down to eat, if I knew people were getting sick in these businesses, I would feel differently. Whatever the causes, Abbotts second attempt at reopening is in full retreat, with the number of COVID-19 patients in 18 of 22 hospital regions exceeding the threshold for rollbacks. December was the deadliest month of the pandemic in Texas with 6,170 fatalities, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis. Health experts expect the toll to worsen, as Texans who were infected over Christmas and New Years are only beginning to be admitted to hospitals. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths will increase in Houston and other regions before peaking sometime this month, modeling from the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphias PolicyLab projects. Im going to die, right? By the fall, Texas had made significant progress after a brutal summer as one of the hardest-hit states in the country. Abbotts decision in late June to close bars and mandate mask-wearing appeared to work. Virus hospitalizations in the Houston region plummeted 82 percent from their peak in July and the statewide daily death toll fell by half, to less than 100. However, the positivity rate never dropped below 6 percent, indicating the virus still was spreading. The governor said conditions were safe to reopen further and on Oct. 7 issued his latest reopening plan. Soon there were signs of trouble. The El Paso region triggered the rollbacks on Oct. 19, and Abbott dispatched nearly 500 medical personnel to assist; 10 days later, COVID-19 patients filled more than half of available hospital beds. County Judge Ricardo Samaniego tried to close non-essential businesses, as Abbott had done statewide in April, but Attorney General Ken Paxton successfully sued to block the plan. As case counts began falling, Abbott in a Nov. 11 television interview attributed the dip to local officials finally stepping up to enforce his rules. By then, the city morgue was so overwhelmed with COVID-19 deaths that staff hired inmates from the county jail to help move bodies. Meanwhile, other hospital regions began to trigger rollbacks. Amarillo and Lubbock in late October. Waco and Laredo in November. Abilene, Dallas, Longview, Lufkin, San Antonio, Galveston and Victoria in December. And by Jan. 11, Paris, Killeen, Houston, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley. Cuate Santos / Laredo Morning Times Abbott in September described the rollback trigger as a course correction for regions where COVID-19 admissions were straining capacity. However, only once since the fall has a hospital region been able to get back under 15 percent for seven consecutive days, the benchmark to resume reopening. In some cases, hospitalizations continued to tick up. Coronavirus patients filled 46 percent of hospital beds in the Laredo region on Monday, the highest rate in the state. Dr. Victor Trevino, the city of Laredo health authority, attributed much of the current surge to residents gathering unmasked over the holidays. He said a regions infection rate would be a better trigger for rollbacks, since hospitalizations are a lagging indicator of an outbreak. By the time a region hits the 15 percent threshold, health experts say, it is difficult to reverse course. Laredos situation now has reached the crisis point of last summer, Trevino said, recalling how he felt helpless when visiting intubated COVID patients. I would look at them, and the expression on their face was, Im going to die, right? Trevino said. I dont know if they read my mind, but I said, Yes, youre going to die. I wasnt speaking but they understood that. From the Rio Grande to the Red River, deaths are rising. And just as before, they disproportionately claim Texans of color, especially Latinos. At the Ortiz Mortuary on San Antonios West Side, the virus has caused business in January to double like it did in July. Caskets are back-ordered. Charlie Ortiz said one of the most difficult parts is discouraging families of COVID victims from having open-casket services, for fear of spreading the virus in close quarters. They can open it for a couple minutes and see them for one last time, he said. They had no closure. They couldnt be at the hospital... They had to see their loved one die in front of them on a TV screen. Conflicting messages Public health experts have said a successful pandemic response requires the public to voluntarily change its behavior. State and local leaders success in pursuading residents to do so has been limited at times by conflicting advice and actions. Abbott permitted Bexar and El Paso Counties to issue curfews for in-person dining for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Yet, he blasted Austin and Travis Countys plan for a nearly identical New Years curfew, arguing his reopening rules prevented cities from arbitrarily shutting down businesses. Paxton sued, and the state Supreme Court struck down the measure. The spat with a familiar foil the governor a week earlier had expressed support for a state takeover of the Austin Police Department discouraged other local officials from tightening restrictions. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who unsuccessfully lobbied Abbott during the summer surge for another stay-home order, said while a curfew is the final arrow in my quiver, she wants to avoid a public dispute with the governor. Danny Zaragoza, Staff Photographer / Laredo Morning Times If were saying one thing and the state is saying a different thing, it completely loses its impact, Hidalgo said. Thats what we saw in Austin. Abbotts insistence that restaurants and bars stay open for dining also came as local leaders urged residents to avoid gatherings of any kind. By Christmas, the Democratic mayors of Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas were urging residents to cancel gatherings with anyone outside their households, as were the CEOs of the Texas Medical Center. Even Republican Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who contracted the virus, urged residents to consider limiting their holiday contacts. The governor made no similar request. A consistent message from government leaders is critical during a public health crisis, said Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Simply telling people to make safe choices, she added, may not be enough. If its not safe to have an activity or to open a setting, then it shouldnt be open, Rivers said. On Tuesday, when state lawmakers returned to Austin for the opening day of the Texas Legislature, members were required to wear masks on the House floor but not in the Senate. At least half the lawmakers in the upper chamber declined to wear masks while seated at their desks. zach.despart@chron.com Taylor Goldenstein, Julia Wallace and Kaitlin Bain contributed reporting. Thank you for subscribing! By signing up to this free newsletter you agree to receive occasional emails from us informing you about our products and services. You can opt out of these emails at any time. India s trade deficit widened to a 25-month high in December as growth in merchandise imports outpaced exports, signalling a pickup in domestic demand after the pandemic devastated Asias third-largest economy. Imports expanded 7.56% last month, the first time in 10 months, while exports grew 0.14%leaving a trade deficit of $15.44 billion, according to data released by the commerce ministry on Friday. Chinas exports, in contrast, rose 18.1% in December, the fastest growth since February 2018, while imports grew 6.5%, leading to a record trade surplus of $78.17 billion. Major Indian exports that helped Indias outbound shipments turn the corner include gems and jewellery (6.75%), drugs and pharmaceuticals (17.5%), chemicals (10.8%), engineering goods (0.3%) and electronic goods (16.5%). A sharp contraction in readymade garments (-15%) and petroleum products (-35.4%) kept overall exports growth minimal. The rise in imports was led by gold (81.8%), vegetable oils (43.5%), chemicals (23.3%), artificial resins (32.3%), pearls (7.81%), iron and steel (12.7%), non-ferrous metal (28.1%), machinery (0.57%) and electronic goods (20.9%). Aditi Nayar, principal economist at ICRA Ltd, said she is hopeful exports will strengthen in the coming months as the covid-19 vaccine rollout gathers pace in Indias major trading partners. As the economic activity has normalized, the merchandise trade deficit has enlarged by $20 billion to $34 billion in Q3 FY21 from $14 billion in Q2 FY21. Accordingly, we expect the size of the current account surplus to shrink to under $2 billion in Q3 FY21, and the re-emergence of a small deficit cant be ruled out at this point," she added. Indias merchandise trade had been weakening even before the pandemic hit the economy and external demand. In 15 of the past 18 months starting June 2019, exports have been negative. Since March 2020, both exports and imports started declining in high double digits, even temporarily leading to a trade surplus in June for the first time in 18 years. Data compiled by the World Trade Organization (WTO) showed global merchandise trade declined by 21% in the June quarter. WTO now projects volume of world merchandise trade to decline 9.2% in 2020, followed by a 7.2% rise in 2021. In April, it had projected global merchandise trade to drop by 13% to 32% in 2020 because of covid. The Indian economy is officially projected to contract by a record 7.7% in FY21 for the first time in 41 years with the National Statistical Organisation, assuming 0.6% growth in the second half (October-March) of FY21. The Asian Development Bank has projected the Indian economy to contract at a slower pace of 8% against its earlier estimate of 9% in FY21 on the back of a faster recovery in Asias third-largest economy. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) Two more suspects have been arrested in a fatal shooting at a New Year's party in Sioux City. Carlos Morales and Anthony Bauer, both 18, were arrested Wednesday and are each being held on $500,000 bond. Morales' brother, 19-year-old Christopher Morales, of Sioux City, was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder and four other counts after the shooting. Court documents say the three forced someone into the house where the party was being held and then fired at least 27 shots into the house. Eighteen-year-old Mia Kritis was killed and three others were injured. Police say detectives are not seeking any other suspects. 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. BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China exported 224.2 billion masks between March and the end of December in 2020 to assist the international community in fighting COVID-19, official data showed Thursday. Among the exported masks, a total of 65 billion are for medical use, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). The country has exported 773 million medical protective suits and 2.92 billion pairs of surgical gloves during the same period to protect disease control personnel in the global fight against COVID-19. China also exported 1.08 billion nucleic acid testing kits to provide support for COVID-19 test work worldwide and 271,000 ventilators in 2020. "We have capitalized on our position as the first country to take the lead in work resumption and the largest supplier of anti-epidemic materials," said GAC spokesperson Li Kuiwen. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday greeted soldiers on Army Day and lauded the Indian Army, saying it is strong, brave and resolute. In a tweet, he said Indian soldiers have made the country proud as he wished them on behalf of the people. ??? ????? ?? ????? ??? ??-?? ??????? ??? ?? ???????? ??????? ?? ???? ??????? ?? ???? ???? ?? ??????? ????? ????? ???? ?????, ????? ?? ?????????? ??, ????? ????? ??? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? ????? ?????????? ?? ?? ?? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ???? Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 15, 2021 Army Day is celebrated to mark the first Indian general taking over the command of the Indian Army from a British officer in 1949. The camelina plant, a source of cooking oil for centuries, is on its way toward revolutionizing pest control in agriculture. Scientists at ISCA, Inc., a green agtech company based in Riverside, Calif., and their collaborators in Sweden have successfully "grown" insect sex pheromone precursors in genetically modified strains of camelina plants, creating a low-cost source of pheromones needed for sustainable pest control. The Swedish research team from the Lund University, Swedish Agricultural University, and SemioPlant, modified the genetic code of these plants to contain genes of insects and other organisms that guide the formation of the desired pheromones. The plants produce insect pheromone precursor compounds in their abundant seed oil. ISCA, a world leader in pheromone-based insect controls, has grown successive generations of the transgenic camelina plants and developed a prototype product with plant-derived pheromones to control the cotton bollworm moth (Helicoverpa armigera), a major world pest species that causes hundreds of millions of dollars annually in damage to cotton, corn, tomato, chickpea, and other crops. Results from an initial trial in Brazil showed that the ISCA formulation with plant-derived pheromones performed just as well as a formulation with pheromones made from standard chemical synthesis techniques. Both suppressed H. armigera populations in bean fields by preventing adult moths from mating. ISCA is also developing plant-derived pheromones controls for the fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda, another devastating moth species. The camelina plant innovation recently received a substantial financial investment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for further development and commercialization. The $650,000 grant from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) followed an earlier $100,000 grant for an initial phase of the project, called "Grow Your Own Pheromone." NIFA awarded the grants through its Small Business Research Innovation program. The grant to ISCA will support ongoing efforts to develop transgenic camelina strains that produce the sex pheromones of other moth pest species and corresponding sustainable pest control products. We are very excited with NIFA/USDA's investment in our company. Pheromone and other semiochemical controls are the future of crop protection, and ISCA's breakthrough biological pheromone synthesis will propel agriculture into a more lucrative and sustainable enterprise. Efficacious pheromone controls are badly needed, especially now that global agriculture faces increasing pest resistance that renders conventional insecticides less effective and increasing pressure from governments and consumers demanding ever safer and greener food production." Agenor Mafra-Neto, ISCA's CEO In Sweden, the transgenic plants were developed under the five-year Oil Crops for the Future research program funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. "We are very happy to see that collaboration with ISCA will bring this innovation to the market for the benefit of environmentally friendly pest control," said research leader and Lund University Biology Professor Christer Lofstedt. "In collaboration with ISCA, we hope to develop new lines to target several other important pests." Pheromones are among the next generation of insect controls because they protect crops by manipulating the behavior of problem insects, such as by preventing them from mating or by repelling them away from crops. Unlike conventional insecticides, pheromone controls affect only the targeted pest species - leaving bees and other wildlife unharmed. Additionally, pheromones do not leave harmful residues on food produce, cause little or no environmental pollution, and are far less prone to pest resistance. The costs of synthesizing pheromones, however, have limited their application. By having plants do most of the synthesis work, pheromone production costs will be slashed. Biosynthesis in plants also eliminates the need to use petroleum-based chemicals as feedstock and bypasses most of the complex organic chemistry steps that are now required in pheromone manufacturing. The camelina plant (Camelina sativa) is a cousin of broccoli and canola that has been cultivated as an annual crop for centuries as a source of healthy cooking oil. Putting the plant to work to create low-cost sources of insect pheromones is expected to give a big boost to earth-friendly mating disruption controls for several devastating moth species. In nature, the female moths release into the air a species-specific sex pheromone to call males for mating. Applications of the same pheromone in the field, however, create thousands of pheromone trails that lead to nowhere. This makes it nearly impossible for the males to find mates. The females are left to lay sterile eggs, which prevents the next generation of highly damaging caterpillars from hatching, protecting the crops. In a bid to bring India and the US closer, Air India has introduced the first-ever non-stop services between Hyderabad and Chicago. This comes close on the heels of the launch of the non-stop Bengaluru-San Francisco service. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states The flight AI 108 from Chicago to Hyderabad will operate on Wednesdays. The first flight left Chicago on time at 21:30 hrs (Local Time/LT) on 13 January and will arrive at Hyderabad at 00:40 hrs(LT) on 15 January. The return flight AI-107 from Hyderabad to Chicago, which operates once a week every Friday, will depart from Hyderabad at 12:50 hrs to arrive in Chicago at 1805 hrs(LT) on the same day. The flight will operate with a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft with a seating capacity of 238 seats including 8 First Class, 35 Business Class,195 Economy class configuration besides 4 Cockpit and 12 Cabin crew. The total flight time on this route will be approx 16 hours 45 minutes from Hyderabad to Chicago and approx 15 hours 40 minutes from Chicago to Hyderabad. Hyderabad being a gateway to South and Central India will connect Air Indias direct flight from Chicago with domestic connections to Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Bengaluru and Chennai. The Air India flight AI-175 from Bengaluru will operate with a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays departing from Bengaluru at 2.30 pm to arrive in San Francisco at 5 pm (local time) on the same day. Currently, Air India operates non-stop flights from Delhi to New York, Newark, Washington DC, San Francisco and Chicago, from Mumbai to Newark and New York and our very recent addition from Bengaluru to San Francisco. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. WASHINGTON, January 15, 2021 -- The American Institute of Physics and the National Society of Black Physicists congratulate physicist Thomas A. Searles as the winner of the inaugural Joseph A. Johnson III Award for Excellence. Named to honor the legacy of the renowned experimental physicist and founder of NSBP, the Joseph A. Johnson III Award will be given by AIP and NSBP annually to recognize an early career NSBP physicist who exemplifies Johnson's ingenuity as a scientist and passion for mentorship and service. In selecting Searles, the selection committee cited him "for his leadership in growing the participation levels of rising HBCU scholars in cutting-edge quantum research and for establishing a new experimental research program in asymmetric metamaterials at the juxtaposition of physics and materials science." "We are very excited to present the first Joseph A. Johnson Award to Thomas Searles," said AIP CEO Michael Moloney. "His passion for the physical sciences and hard work elevating young Black scholars reflects on Dr. Johnson's passion to help address underrepresentation in physics." "Professor Searles is a gifted and promising experimentalist and mentor. He is an inspirational member of NSBP and exemplifies the spirit of Dr. Joseph Johnson's legacy," said NSBP president Stephon Alexander. "NSBP is proud to partner with AIP in this well-deserved and prestigious award." Growing up in Albany, Georgia, Searles began cultivating an interest in physics in first grade, when he did a book report about Black astronauts. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Morehouse College, he went on to receive his doctorate from Rice University in applied physics. During this time, Searles took frequent research trips to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which neighbors the Center for Plasma Science and Technology at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, where Johnson was the director. "It was kind of like a beacon of 'This is what you're doing here. You could be this one day,'" he said. "It's not full circle, but it's cool that I'm the first person that gets this award." Searles, who is currently an associate professor in physics at Howard University, emphasizes the important role mentorship has played throughout his career, particularly through NSBP. "There's definitely a two-way street on mentoring, and there's things I learn from my students all the time," he said. "One person can make a huge, huge change, and hopefully, the people they affect can then keep it going." Seeing his students succeed is the biggest reward to Searles. A few of his most memorable experiences include finding out one of his students won an award for young Black astrophysicists and reconnecting with a particularly impressive former student, now a National Science Foundation fellow. He said he is continuously working on becoming the best mentor he can be, especially when it comes to encouraging young Black women to see themselves as physicists. "People identify with who they want to for various reasons. Just getting the word out that this is an option, if we can do that in the next 10 years, I know that will be an extreme change," said Searles. "I'm always making a point to try to help graduate students, undergrads, high school students, random 8-year-olds on the street with a physics T-shirt on. If I can help anybody to get engaged, I think that's what I'd like to do." From improving representation in the physical sciences to researching quantum computing, Searles is always looking for ways to address challenges that help make the world a better place. Inspiring his students to seek out opportunities is just one way to do that, and Searles is thankful for the recognition he has received. "It's a huge honor to be the inaugural Joseph A. Johnson Award winner. It's extremely special to me," said Searles. "People like Joseph Johnson were in spaces where they could never imagine the things that I'm able to do because of the things they were able to do." "I think it's a very interesting time to be a young Black physicist." Searles considers Johnson to be synonymous with FAMU's success in physics and hopes he can make a similar mark on Howard. The award money will help his research group publish their most recent paper. ### ABOUT THE JOSEPH A. JOHNSON III AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE Joseph A. Johnson III, of Florida A&M University, was a pioneering and renowned experimental physicist, mentor to many Black doctoral students and a founder of the National Society of Black Physicists. In honor of his iconic legacy, the American Institute of Physics and NSBP have partnered to recognize an NSBP physicist who exemplifies Johnson's ingenuity as a scientist and passion for mentorship and service. This honor comes with a $5,000 award along with an invitation to give physics department colloquia at partner universities. ABOUT NSBP Founded in 1977 at Morgan State University, the mission of the National Society of Black Physicists is to promote the professional well-being of African American physicists and physics students within the international scientific community and within society at large. The organization seeks to develop and support efforts to increase opportunities for African Americans in physics and to increase their numbers and visibility of their scientific work. It also seeks to develop activities and programs that highlight and enhance the benefits of the scientific contributions that African American physicists provide for the international community. The society seeks to raise the general knowledge and appreciation of physics in the African American community. ABOUT AIP [January 15, 2021] Securus Technologies Provides Over 35 Million Free Call Credits For Incarcerated Individuals During Pandemic DALLAS, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Securus Technologies today released its weekly update detailing the total number of free calls, video connections, JPay Stamps, news subscriptions and game downloads it has provided since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The offerings are part of an emergency program Securus deployed with its correctional partners on March 13, 2020, when the pandemic was declared a national emergency. It was developed to support re-entry efforts and help incarcerated individuals stay connected with loved ones during this challenging time. To date, those free offerings total: 35.4 million free call credits for incarcerated individuals and their families, resulting in 284.2 million free minutes of phone connections; 6.0 million free video connections to friends and families of incarcerated individuals; 20.5 million free JPay Stamps for electronic messaging; 218,829 free monthly subscriptions to Newsstand; 716,639 free game downloads; Total accommodations for 408 agencies and 757 sites across the United States . In addition to this ongoing assistance, Securus is offering compassion credits designed to accommodate incarcerated individuals who fall ill with COVID-19. Those credits, which are uploaded onto prepaid cards and distributed by correctional facilities, allow additional free access to Securu phone calls and video connections throughout an individual's medical care. The company is also making free calls available to public defenders at many locations. For those facilities enabled with Securus tablet technology, the company has introduced select free movie and game titles during the COVID-19 pandemic, which have been downloaded almost 2 million times. This expanded assistance is in addition to the no-cost resources, including educational offerings, free eBooks, podcasts and other self-help tools that are always available free of charge. "Aventiv is committed to making our products more accessible and affordable, especially as the continued spread of COVID-19 makes it challenging for loved ones to stay connected," said Dave Abel, President and CEO of Aventiv Technologies, parent company of Securus Technologies. "That's why we have offered over 35 million free call credits to help alleviate the financial impact of the virus thus far. It's critical that incarcerated individuals have the proper tools to connect with their friends and families, and we are proud of the important role our technology has played in maintaining connections during this challenging time." The program is an element of an ongoing transformation effort by Securus Technologies to improve access to its services and provide greater support for those impacted by incarceration. The company continues to work with its partners to garner feedback about the situation on the ground. All support from Securus will be in accordance with the latest public health guidelines to ensure that the support is tailored and responsive to the unique needs of the incarcerated community. ABOUT SECURUS TECHNOLOGIES Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Aventiv Technologies serves more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,100,000 incarcerated individuals across North America, Aventiv is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, incarcerated self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. For more information, please visit www.Aventiv.com. Aventiv is a portfolio company of Platinum Equity. Founded in 1995 by Tom Gores, Platinum Equity is a global investment firm with a portfolio of approximately 40 operating companies that serve customers around the world. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/securus-technologies-provides-over-35-million-free-call-credits-for-incarcerated-individuals-during-pandemic-301209425.html SOURCE Securus Technologies [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Irish President Michael D Higgins said the State and Catholic church must bear a heavy responsibility (PA) Irish President Michael D Higgins has said the State and Catholic church must bear a heavy responsibility for violating the rights of the survivors of homes for unmarried mothers and their children. In a statement, Mr Higgins said meeting the needs and addressing the concerns of survivors must be at the heart of the response to the mother and baby home report. He said the Commission of Investigations report shows how the violation of fundamental rights of citizens was condoned over an extended period of time. State and Church bear a heavy responsibility for this, he added. My thoughts must be, as they have been so often before, of the mothers and of the infants who died, of those children who survived and who continue to carry the trauma of their early lives, and beyond that the burden of being deprived of information about their birth parents. The report found the institutions for women who fell pregnant outside of wedlock produced high levels of infant mortality, misogyny and stigmatisation of some of societys most vulnerable. Many mother and baby homes were run by Catholic nuns. There is now a responsibility to move without delay to the next phase of this process and to respond adequately and generously to the needs and rightful concerns of the survivors and other victims Michael D Higgins The report outlined a number of recommendations, which the Government has said it will implement. Mr Higgins said the publication of the report is not a conclusion. (It is) an indication of the further work that is required to bring to light a fuller understanding of what occurred, and why, and the need to vindicate the rights of those women and children who resided in these homes, he added. This report now follows other reports on institutional abuse and the society that allowed it or offered a colluding silence. It took five years to complete, and there is now a responsibility to move without delay to the next phase of this process and to respond adequately and generously to the needs and rightful concerns of the survivors and other victims. He said the interaction of the institutions must be considered in a number of terms, including: How those institutions came to be; The assumptions on which they were based and operated; The responsibility not accepted by fathers; The exclusion of family members on the basis of perceived threats to the status of families; The abuse of spiritual and religious belief through what was disguised as a pastoral relationship, but reflected an authoritarian fundamentalism; The collusion of those in roles of responsibility in the local and central State who were given details, including the deaths of shocking numbers of infants, but who put the cloak of institutional secrecy over the rights of the most vulnerable of citizens. Expand Close Childrens socks at an unmarked mass grave at the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home run by the Bon Secures sister (Niall Carson/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Childrens socks at an unmarked mass grave at the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home run by the Bon Secures sister (Niall Carson/PA) It is the State that is charged with safeguarding the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens, and it is the State that must bear primary responsibility for failing to provide appropriate supports for these tens of thousands of young women and their children, Mr Higgins added. It is important, too, to recognise, and with what consequences, how a newly independent State was captured by a judgemental, authoritarian version of church/State relations that sought to be the sole and ultimate arbiter of morality. Among its findings, the report exposed appalling levels of death among the very youngest more than one in 10 children. Some of the institutions were owned and run by local health authorities the county homes Pelletstown, Tuam and Kilrush. Some of the homes were in very poor physical condition. Many of the women suffered emotional abuse and were often subject to denigration and derogatory remarks, the commission of investigations report said. Almost 9,000 children died, approximately 15% of all youngsters who were in the institutions, it found. Major causes of death included respiratory infections and gastroenteritis. Celebrity chef Pete Evans has hinted he might go into politics, joining former One Nation senator Rod Culleton's new venture, The Great Australian Party. The former My Kitchen Rules judge, controversial for his Covid-denying anti-vaxxer stance and support for conspiracy theories, posted the Great Australian Party (GAP) logo to his Instagram on Friday Morning. He coupled it with a famous quote from 18th century political philosopher Edmund Burke: 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing'. Controversial celebrity chef Pete Evans posted this message to his Instagram on Friday seemingly confirming to his 276,000 followers that he plans to run for the Senate Pete Evans earlier posted the logo of the GAP, a party founded in 2019 by former One Nation senator Rodney Culleton, and which wants to abolish personal income tax This was followed by a cryptic hint for his 276,000 followers of an announcement to come next week. On Friday evening, Evans shared a screenshot of a story on his future political aspirations from online newspaper The New Daily. It showed Evans superimposed on the federal Senate floor with the headline: 'What Pete Evans did next ... stand by for a leap into politics'. On the post, he wrote that 2020 had been a year of 'clear vision' and claimed many people had witnessed corruption from big tech, mainstream media and the medical industry. He wrote that 2021 would be the year to evolve as 'many solutions are emerging'. 'We all have our parts to play, and ways to help each other through this period in our own unique and special ways,' he wrote. Pete Evans has been booted off social media platforms for his controversial views but he may now team up with microparty GAP to run for the Senate The GAP was founded by former senator Rodney Culleton who resigned from One Nation days before the Federal Court held him bankrupt in December 2016. He then sat as an independent, but in February 2017 the High Court found the Western Australian had been ineligible to be elected due to a criminal charge for larceny in NSW, for which a guilty finding was later annulled. Referring to himself as a 'senator-in-exile', the colourful figure founded the GAP in 2019, with policies that include abolishing both the Family Court of Australia, the Reserve Bank and personal income tax. Mr Culleton intends to run for the Senate with the GAP in the next federal election along with several other candidates - which may include Evans. The micro party may be a political fit for the former chef who has been evicted from social media platforms for his controversial views. Rodney Culleton, pictured in 2017, was a One Nation senator for Western Australia until he was declared bankrupt and the High Court found he was ineligible to be elected due to a criminal charge for which he was found guilty in absentia. The conviction was later annulled Evans, 48, was booted off Facebook last month after posting misinformation about the pandemic. 'We don't allow anyone to share misinformation about COVID-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm or COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts,' a Facebook company spokesperson told 9News in December. 'We have clear policies against this type of content and we've removed Chef Pete Evans' Facebook Page for repeated violations of these policies.' Before having his page removed, Evans said he was quitting the platform and moving to social media site Parler - whose website is now down after corporate giant Amazon used its web division to cut Parler off the internet. Pete Evans posted a quote to Instagram by political philosopher Edmund Burke along with his hints about joining politics The conspiracy theorist has also been removed from Spotify. This month he shared a string of posts about U.S. President Donald Trump, after Trump supporters violently clashed with police in a futile attempt to stop Joe Biden's victory being certified on Capitol Hill. One such post was a screenshot of a podcast titled 'Patriots knew the playbook, taking back the country was never going to be easy, buckle up', alongside a photo of Trump giving a thumbs-up. Evans has rarely been out of the headlines over the past year, thanks to his habit of promoting conspiracy theories on social media. He was dropped by a string of companies and pulled from the line-up of Channel 10's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! in November for posting a neo-Nazi meme on Facebook. Daily Mail Australia has emailed Evans to seek right of reply. Press Release January 15, 2021 Sen. Lacson's Manifestation at the Senate Committee of the Whole Hearing More at: https://pinglacson.net/2021/01/15/walang-pulitika-sa-pagdinig-na-ito-second-senate-hearing-on-covid-vaccination/ At the outset, let me set the record straight. I will also go straight to the point. During last night's Zoom meeting to discuss vaccine updates on Test, Trace, Treat (T3), the country's vaccine czar, Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr., virtually accused the Senate or at least some senators who asked questions during last Monday's hearing, of quoting his own words, "demonizing" vaccine developers or "hurting" the ongoing negotiations of our government with vaccine manufacturers and suppliers, apparently referring to Sinovac. He specifically mentioned my name as allegedly politicizing the issue at hand mainly because of Sec. Duque, which I deny of course; as well as the names of Sens. Migz Zubiri and Kiko Pangilinan, in relation to the Sinovac vaccine, as if blaming the Senate for the brewing vaccine procurement controversies. For the record, we senators do not spend long hours seeking clarification from our resource persons like Sec. Galvez because it is incumbent upon us to exercise our mandate to demand transparency and accountability from our chief implementers on how they plan to use public funds. In this case, to recover from a health crisis that continues to threaten every aspect of human life. After all, I am certain that everyone in this hall and those attending online will agree that our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is not a single man's business. It is a matter of record that Congress wasted no time in passing legislative measures and appropriations to quickly respond and address the current health crisis. In fact, Mr. President, for the national government's vaccination program alone, which currently stands at P87.5B speaks volumes of the legislature's resolve and commitment to our nation's common cause. Mr. Chairman, let me assure Sec. Galvez: Walang pulitika sa pagdinig na ito. Katulad din ng sinagawa nating pagdinig kamakailan lamang sa pang-abusong ginawa sa pondo ng PhilHealth na sa kasalukuyan as we speak, ay may mga kasong criminal na hinaharap ang ilang indibidwal. We call it oversight, or check-and-balance, if you will, being exercised by a coequal branch of government. It is indeed unfortunate that the Senate is being dragged as scapegoat by projecting the narrative that this inquiry is being used as an avenue for political agenda. Tagatanong lang tayo, Mr. President. Ang mga resource persons ang nagbibigay ng mga datos na minsan ay magkakasalungat at magulo. During the last hearing, we raise the question of why we could not procure vaccines at a much lower cost, as in the case of AstraZeneca, which has been forthright in announcing that it will accord low-income countries such as ours at a no-profit basis, its vaccines costing only $2.50 per dose instead its commercial of $5. Secretary Galvez was quick to disagree, saying that there are two sets of prices: the commercial price and the COVAX price. In his words, "The COVAX price is very, very low. What we are negotiating is NOT the COVAX price." Hence, do we take it from him that we are doomed to pay for the higher price of vaccines? However, just two days later, when the steep prices of vaccines stirred public outcry, he cautioned the people not to believe those who say it, as these are market prices. In what appears to be a brazen contradiction of himself, he now claims that the government is negotiating with vaccine makers at the more affordable COVAX prices. Simple lang ang tanong, Mr. President. Nakamura po ba tayo o napapamahal pa? Our confusion brews from the procurement of Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech vaccine which price ranges from a low of US$13.60 to a high of US$29.75, or from P680 to P1,487.50 per dosage as reported by several reliable sources. The office of Senator Angara, for example, with data provided by the Department of Health, pegs the cost of Sinovac at P3,629.50 for two doses. Undeniably, data shows that Sinovac ranks as the second most expensive vaccine in the market. As if to pacify the public, Secretary Galvez stated in a television interview that the cost of the vaccine, when purchased through the COVAX facility will decrease by as much as 300%. If I still remember what my mathematics professor taught us many years ago, with a 300% decrease in price, we can demand a rebate equivalent to 200%. Kung ganyan pala ang diskwento Mr. President, bumili agad tayo ng P5T worth of vaccines at singilin natin ng P10T rebate para mabayaran natin ang pambansang utang natin na umabot na sa P10.13T as of November last year. Be that as it may Mr. President, it appears our initial locked-in agreement with Sinovac comprising 25 million doses will not be covered by the ludicrous 300% markdown as the COVAX facility only has this agreement for early rollout in February with Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine of a limited quantity. COVAX also has secured agreements for AstraZeneca and Moderna, and also signed agreements for Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi-GSK. There was no mention of Sinovac. To our dreadful surprise, it may be too late now to backpedal from our Sinovac deal since 50,000 doses are already set to be delivered on February 20. Notwithstanding the lack of Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of Sinovac in the Philippines, and even in China, its country of origin, Secretary Galvez is positive that we will have a roll-out of the vaccine next month and onwards. In his words, as if speaking on behalf of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), "Iyong EUA po ng Sinovac, baka ma-approve po before February 20. Maganda ang arrangement natin kasi may darating kada buwan." Ang pahayag ng FDA ay mas malinaw at makatotohanan. Director General Eric Domingo said in a recent interview, FDA will be more meticulous in evaluating Sinovac's vaccine as the Chinese company has not secured EUA from stringent regulatory agencies. Over the past few weeks, we all learned that talk is cheap and nothing more than verifiable data can speak of the truth. When public officials hide under the cloud of secrecy, confidentiality and motherhood statements, we cast a shadow of doubt over matters of national interest and lose sight of our health agenda amid this global pandemic. Lest we forget Mr. President, in the course of this public inquiry, what hangs in the balance is the life and welfare of every Filipino, no more no less. Thank you, Mr. President. President Donald Trump dealt the country another parting blow Wednesday by ordering the relocation of Space Command from Colorado Springs to H Sorry! This content is not available in your region The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - The U.S. government executed a drug trafficker Thursday for slaying seven people in a burst of violence in Virginias capital in 1992, with some witnesses in the death-chamber building applauding as the 52-year-old was pronounced dead. FILE - This Aug. 28, 2020, file photo shows the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind. Corey Johnson, A federal inmate scheduled to be executed less than a week before President Donald Trump leaves office was a gang member who was sentenced to death for killing seven people in Richmond, Virginia in 1992. Johnson is scheduled to be executed Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, at the federal prison in Terre Haute. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File) TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - The U.S. government executed a drug trafficker Thursday for slaying seven people in a burst of violence in Virginias capital in 1992, with some witnesses in the death-chamber building applauding as the 52-year-old was pronounced dead. Corey Johnson's execution went ahead after his lawyers scrambled to stop it on grounds that the lethal injection of pentobarbital would cause him excruciating pain due to lung damage from his coronavirus infection last month. At a protest of the execution of Corey Johnson, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, near the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., Charles Keith, of Canton, Ohio, holds a sign with all of the mugshots of the 10 men and one woman who have been executed by the federal government since July 14, 2020. (Joseph C. Garza/The Tribune-Star via AP) He was the 12th inmate executed at the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, since the Trump administration restarted federal executions following a 17-year hiatus. The last during the presidency of ardent death-penalty advocate Donald Trump was set for Friday. Johnson, who his lawyers said was severely mentally disabled, was pronounced dead at 11:34 p.m. When asked if he had any last words, Johnson appeared distracted, focusing on a room to his left designated for members of his family. Still glancing around, he responded, "No. Im OK." Seconds later, he said softly while gazing intently at same room, "Love you." After the execution, his lawyers released Johnson's last statement. In it, he said the pizza and strawberry shake he ate and drank before the execution "were wonderful" but he didnt get the jelly-filled doughnuts he wanted. He added: "This should be fixed." And he apologized. "I want to say that I am sorry for my crimes," he said. "I wanted to say that to the families who were victimized by my actions." He also said he wanted his victims' names to be remembered. As the lethal drug began flowing through IVs into his arms strapped to a cross-shaped gurney, Johnson lifted his wrist and waved to someone in the room for his family. A low murmur emanated from the room in which someone seemed to be praying and offering words of reassurance to Johnson. For two minutes, Johnson continued to try to speak. But suddenly, his eyelids drew down hard and his mouth fell agape. He moved only slightly after that. It took a little more than 20 minutes for him to die. Reporters could not see into the witness rooms reserved for his family and for relatives of his victims. But it was clear the clapping came from the latter as an official pronounced Johnson dead. Someone also could be heard whistling. Johnsons execution and Fridays scheduled execution of Dustin Higgs are the last before next weeks inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who opposes the federal death penalty and has signalled hell end its use. Both inmates contracted COVID-19 and won temporary stays of execution this week for that reason, only for higher courts to vacate those stays. Lawyers have previously argued the pentobarbital injections cause flash pulmonary edema, where fluid rapidly fills the lungs, sparking sensations akin to drowning. The new claim was that fluid would rush into the inmates COVID-damaged lungs immediately while they were still conscious. But during Thursday's execution, there weren't outward signs Johnson ever experienced pain though some medical experts say pentobarbital can have a paralyzing effect that masks pain inmates might be feeling as they die. Government experts dispute that. Johnson was implicated with playing a role in one of the worst bursts of gang violence Richmond had ever seen, with 11 people killed in a 45-day period. He and two other members of the Newtowne gang were sentenced to death under a federal law that targets large-scale drug traffickers. Johnsons lawyers described a traumatic childhood in which he was physically abused by his drug-addicted mother and her boyfriends, abandoned at age 13, then shuffled between residential and institutional facilities until he aged out of the foster care system. They cited numerous childhood IQ tests discovered after he was sentenced that place him in the mentally disabled category. They say he could only read and write at an elementary school level. In a statement, Johnsons lawyers, Donald Salzman and Ronald Tabak, said the government executed a person "with an intellectual disability, in stark violation of the Constitution and federal law" and vehemently denied he had the mental capacity to be a so-called drug kingpin. "We wish also to say that the fact Corey Johnson should never have been executed cannot diminish the pain and loss experienced by the families of the victims in this case," the statement said. "We wish them peace and healing." Government filings spelled Johnsons name "Cory," but his lawyers say he spells it "Corey." Richard Benedict, who was Johnsons special education teacher at a New York school for emotionally troubled kids, said Johnson was hyperactive, anxious and reading and writing at a second- or third-grade level when he was 16 and 17. Prosecutors, however, said Johnson had not shown that he was mentally disabled. "While rejecting that he has intellectual disabilities that preclude his death sentences, courts have repeatedly and correctly concluded that Johnsons seven murders were planned to advance his drug trafficking and were not impulsive acts by someone incapable of making calculated judgments, and are therefore eligible for the death penalty," prosecutors argued in court documents. C.T. Woody Jr., the lead homicide detective on the case, said that during his interrogations of Johnson, he denied any involvement in the killings and said police were trying to frame him because of lies people were telling about him. "It did not seem to me that he had any kind of mental problems at all except his viciousness and no respect for human life none whatsoever," Woody said. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Vick Jr., one of the prosecutors in the case, said the violence committed by Johnson and his fellow gang members was unmatched at the time. One of the gangs victims was stabbed 85 times and another was shot 16 times. Johnson was convicted of being the shooter in a triple slaying, and participating in four other capital murders, including shooting a rival drug dealer 15 times. Lavoie reported from Richmond, Va. Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington and News Researchers Rhonda Shafner and Jennifer Farrar contributed to this report. Sri Lanka reports first case of new Covid strain Colombo, Jan 13 (UNI) Sri Lanka on Wednesday confirmed the first case of new COVID-19 strain in the country. "A person, who had recently arrived from the United Kingdom by air confirmed to have been infected with the new COVID-19 variant which is rapidly spreading in the UK", a Health Ministry's official said. A new variant of SARS-CoV-2 was found in the UK, which according to experts, was said to be up to 70 per cent more transmissible. Several countries, including India, have suspended flights with the UK and launched screening of the UK returnees, to prevent the spread of the new mutant. One person was killed and at least four people were injured after a retaining wall fell on construction workers in a North Carolina city, officials said Wednesday. The City of Hendersonville said in a news release that the accident occurred around 9:30 a.m. at a site adjacent to the parking lot of a local business. According to the city, two people were taken by helicopter and one was taken by ambulance to nearby hospitals, while a fourth person was treated at the scene. The name of the victim hasnt been released as officials work to notify relatives. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics North Carolina Construction New Delhi: The ninth round of talks between the Centre and the farmer leaders remained inconclusive on Friday (January 15), as protesting farmer unions stuck to their demand for repeal of the three farm laws. The two sides, however, decided to meet again on January 19 at 12 pm to resolve the issue. After the end of the meeting that lasted for nearly five hours, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told reporters that he has urged the farmer unions to form an informal group among themselves to prepare concrete proposals to be discussed in the next meeting. Tomar said, "Today's talks with farmers unions were not decisive. We will hold talks again on 19th January. We are positive to reach a solution through talks. The government is concerned about the farmers protesting in cold conditions." Union Agriculture Minister said the government will present its side before the committee constituted by the Supreme Court when asked. On Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's allegations against the government with regard to the farm laws, Tomar said, "Rahul Gandhi's statements and actions are laughed at within his own party also." "The Congress manifesto in 2019 itself promised these reforms and therefore Sonia and Rahul Gandhi should tell us whether they were lying at that time or are lying right now," he added. The minister said, "We suggested they can form an informal group of people who can understand the laws better and prepare some concrete proposals, detailing what are farmers' expectations and what clauses are problematic for them, which the government can consider with an open mind." Tomar further said the government is hopeful of discussions reaching some decisive stage at the tenth round of talks on January 19. On the direct talks between the government and farmers continuing despite the Supreme Court appointing a panel, he said everyone is fully committed to the apex court and the government will also present its side before the committee panel when invited. "Unions want to continue the dialogue with the government and we have no problem with that. The SC-appointed panel will also work for the welfare of farmers," he said. Live TV The minister said solution can emerge from the government-farmers talks as well as from the SC-appointed panel's deliberations, adding "Our effort is to resolve the issue through dialogue and we want the protest to end at the earliest given the adverse weather conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic situation." Earlier in the day, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not respect farmers and wants to tire out those protesting against the Centre's new agri laws. He also said that the talks that are being held with the protesting farmer leaders are part of the government's delaying tactics. Farmers will not relent till the laws are repealed, said Rahul Gandhi at Jantar Mantar, where he along with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joined party MPs in their demonstration against the new farm laws. Rahul Gandhi added that "The three (farm) laws have been brought to finish the farmers. If we don't stop this now, it will continue to happen in other sectors too. Narendra Modi does not respect the farmers. The farmers will neither deter nor fear." A renovated luxury hotel near San Antonio International Airport aims to recapture the panache that was synonymous with its original name, La Mansion del Norte, more than four decades ago. Across from the North Star Mall, Estancia de Norte will replace a chain DoubleTree hotel. Its scheduled to open April 1. The pandemic might not be the ideal time to open a new luxury hotel, but the head of Presidian Hotels & Resorts which will manage the property said he is confident Estancia del Norte will be successful over the long term. Generally speaking, when you open a hotel, it takes about two years to get it to its optimal performance, CEO Charles Leddy said. Thats how long it could take San Antonios hospitality industry to recover from the COVID-19-induced downturn. Everyone is telling us that it is going to be 2023, Leddy said. On ExpressNews.com: Firm buys River Walk hotel and plans to renovate restaurant, bar He predicted people will be traveling more in the second half of 2021 as COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available. I believe if we do our job right and create a really unique experience at this hotel, then we are going to do just fine, he said. Leddy expects to charge an average nightly rate of $149 at Estancia del Norte less than half the normal price at other luxury hotels, such as the Hotel Emma by the Pearl and the Hotel Thompson San Antonio, expected to open in downtown in late January. In addition to competing on price, he said, Estancia del Norte will attract guests who dont want to stay downtown. The hotel will employ 150 workers. Presidian plans to fill some of the positions with former employees from the DoubleTree and laid-off workers from other local hotels the company operates. The original La Mansion del Norte opened in 1978. Local hotel developer Pat Kennedy positioned it as a sister hotel to La Mansion Del Rio, his hotel on the River Walk. The hotel now is part of the Omni chain. Kennedy sold La Mansion del Norte in 1988. The hotel lost its name and ultimately its elegance, becoming a cookie-cutter chain property under several different brands. It greeted visitors as the Sheraton Fiesta from 1995 to 2010 before becoming the DoubleTree San Antonio Airport Hotel. Hotels in the airport area posted an average occupancy rate of 43.5 percent in of December, a drop of almost 31 percent from a year earlier, according to STR, which tracks hotel occupancy and financial data. The airport hotels filled about half their rooms in August and September, their best months since the pandemic hit in March. Consultants say hotels needs occupancy rates of 60 to 70 percent to make a profit. Room occupancy was above 75 percent for airport hotels in August and September 2019, STR reports. On ExpressNews.com: Wary Traveler: Dearth of travel guides reflects travel industry slump Leddy is the majority investor in a development entity associated with Presidian. He said the partnership paid more than $15 million to buy the DoubleTree from a California investment group and poured $11 million into renovations. Most of the 263 rooms and 12 suites in the five-story hotel face an interior courtyard that features a promenade of palm trees. A Spanish-style titled lobby fountain is dry today but will be flowing when guest begin arriving in April. Local artist Sienna Dunis Ginn is creating a 21-by-6-foot tile mural for the lobby, highlighting the hotels history as well as scenes from San Antonio city life. Leddy partnered with local catering company Don Strange of Texas for the hotel restaurant. Don Strange of Texas CEO Brian Strange will open the companys first brick-and-mortar dining establishment there. The restaurant, Lazo With Don Strange, will seat 180. The hotel plans to use its courtyard and 7,000-square-foot ballroom along with the Strange companys reputation to attract weddings and other special events. There are a lot of people who have put off weddings and big events like that, and they are going to want to get back in and the hotel could be very well-positioned, said Paul Vaughn, senior vice president of San Antonio hotel consulting firm Source Strategies. Vaughn said the wedding business could pick up by fall as more people receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Special events and celebrations fill hotel rooms, said Tucker Johnson, instructional assistant professor at the University of Houstons Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. While managed by Presidian, Estancia del Norte is part of the Tapestry Collection by Hilton, the hotel companys boutique line. It will give the hotel wide exposure to potential guests because they are part of the Hilton reservation system, said Johnson, who teaches at the schools San Antonio campus. Leddy said the hotel will pay more than 10 percent of its revenue to be part of the Hilton chain, but its actually more economical than operating as an independent hotel. He said independent hotels usually pay commissions of 15 to 18 percent to outside travel agencies, such as Expedia and Travelocity, for bookings. He said about 70 percent of Hilton guests book directly through Hilton. Leddy, 44, said he had visited the hotel a number of times when it was a chain operation and always thought that he would love to restore its beauty. I am extremely excited to reintroduce this grand hotel to San Antonio, he said. randy.diamond@express-news.net Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. Pennsylvania schools can now start applying for a share of the $2.2 billion in federal stimulus funds being made available to public schools to assist them in navigating through the affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and help them and their students recover from its impacts. The money will be distributed in monthly allotments to school districts, charter schools and cyber charter schools using the same formula Congress uses to drive out Title I-A formula, which takes into account the number of low-income students. The state is choosing not to make any money available to non-public schools, according to information on the departments website. The estimated allocation for districts and charter schools can be found on its website. But some examples of what some midstate schools might receive are: Central Dauphin School District could receive $8.9 million; Cumberland Valley, $1.5 million; Harrisburg, $25.8 million; Mechanicsburg Area, $1.8 million; Derry Township, $2.2 million; Steelton-Highspire, $3.7 million; and West Shore, $4.5 million. Acting Education Secretary Noe Ortega said schools can use these non-recurring funds for a wide range of activities established in the federal law including initiatives for measuring and remediating learning loss, efforts to reopen schools, support for food programs, professional training, technology purchases, sanitation and cleaning supplies, and mental health supports, to name a few examples. Weve held true to the principle that schools and school leaders are best positioned to make decisions about the circumstances that schools face, Ortega said in a conference call with reporters on Friday. The federal relief is provided by the bipartisan Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Acts Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER II) Fund passed by Congress in December. The federal law requires schools to spend the money by Sept. 30, 2023 but can backdates costs to the March 13 onset of the national COVID-19 emergency. What should be considered good news, however, comes with a warning from statewide public education advocates who remember the fallout from the infusion of $1.3 billion over two years in federal stimulus dollars the state received during the Great Recession. Those federal dollars were used by the state to supplanted state support for public education during the last two years of former Gov. Ed Rendells administration. When it dried up, it left schools with fewer dollars flowing into their coffers from the state, forcing program cuts and employee layoffs. It took several years until that funding gap was closed. This time, Gov. Tom Wolf has chosen to direct all of the states allocation of ESSER II money to districts directly along with a reminder that it is non-recurring. We continue to emphasize that we want to make sure that schools invest these funds and use them in a way that makes sure that they can begin to provide students with learning opportunities including in-person, as they move forward, Ortega said. And then also invest them in ways that address some of the concerns that are emerging to make sure they can help students catch up in terms of things like learning loss and other disruptions that have occurred because of the pandemic. He said the department is working with school partners to figure out a way to assess the amount of learning loss that has occurred but that information is not yet available. The past 10 months have been unprecedented, he said. COVID-19 no doubt brought unparalleled change to our school community. It has created shifts in teaching and learning and presented us with some opportunities to begin to rethink the structures in the system that make up our higher education, our education system, not just in Pennsylvania but across the United States. Those shifts in the educational delivery, according to organizations representing school districts, have resulted in increased operational costs in 2020-21. Districts report the shift to online learning to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus brought with it a projected increase in their charter school tuition bills of $475 million this year, of which $350 million of that is due cyber charter school enrollment increases, the groups report. Then there are other mandated expenses and costs they incurred such as staffing to offer district-run online programs, offer smaller class sizes due to social distancing requirements, and sanitation protocols that must be followed. At the same time, districts future revenue picture looks bleak. The state, faced with its own budgetary challenges, flatlined the amount of state aid provided to districts this year. Additionally, due to concerns about the toll the pandemic had on the economy and taxpayers, more than half of districts didnt raise their local property taxes, according to a survey conducted by the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators and the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools. Earned income tax collections are down due to higher unemployment levels and districts also anticipate a reduction in property tax collections. A statement from the organizations says, Without more additional future state support to begin to cover the increase in school district mandated costs that have been percolating underneath all of the COVID-related expenditure increases, school districtsand taxpayersare worse off, Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy. This is an opinion column. A day before news broke of a major new military project in his district, Rep. Mo Brooks defended himself on an entirely different matter encouraging Trump supporters in Washington to start taking down names and kicking ass hours before many of those same stormed the capitol, attacking police officers and killing one, as the world watched. In a disjointed missive that stretched for 2,853 words, Brooks cited, among other things, his clean driving record (but for one stoplight he once ran), his abstinence from alcohol and tobacco products, and the fact that a rest stop in North Carolina is named after his grandfather. As one of Americas most effective conservative leaders, I defend my honor and reputation against scurrilous, George Orwellian, 1984, Socialist Democrats Politics of Personal Destruction, the same attack strategy used in 2012 against then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and nonstop against President Trump with false Russian Collusion charges and the 2019 sham impeachment effort, Brooks wrote, seemingly unaware that George Orwell was a socialist. Brooks is in trouble. His interaction with organizers of the January 6 rally-turned-riot is under scrutiny, and a resolution has been introduced that, if passed by Congress, would make him the first representative censured for insurrection since the Civil War. But Brooks antics have made him more than an embarrassment to Alabama. Hes become a liability, too. Alabama needs good representation in Washington, and Brooks isnt it. Less than a day after Brooks published his meandering manifesto, the U.S. Air Force announced it would relocate the U.S. Space Command to Huntsville, potentially bringing 1,600 military and civilian jobs to Alabama. State officials celebrated the news, including Gov. Kay Ivey who thanked those who helped in a tweet Wednesday morning. I extend a special thank you to @SenShelby, @SenDougJones & local leaders for advocating for @US_SpaceCom on behalf of AL, she said in a tweet. We appreciate their effort in telling our great story & highlighting the many attributes that make Redstone the best choice. @TommyBattle @RepMikeRogersAL. If you need help keeping score and decoding those Twitter handles, thats Sen. Richard Shelby, former Sen. Doug Jones, Rep. Mike Rogers and Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle thanks. Mo Brooks no thanks. Its not yet clear what the newly-announced U.S. Space Command will be when it grows up. A new presidential administration takes charge in a week, and the new commander-in-chief might have different ideas about a militarys interests outside the atmosphere. Take a good look, Alabama. This might be the last we see of this sort of thing for a while, and the biggest reason were still seeing it is that Sen. Richard Shelby acted like a senator while Brooks was busy being a space cadet. Depending on which spending streams you count, Alabama receives between $30 and $60 billion in federal dollars each year. Whether we like to admit it, Alabama is dependent on the federal government for its survival. If it werent for Richard Shelby, Huntsville might be a rocket museum and not much else. And he doesnt have a lot in the way of backup, nor does Alabama have much in the way of a deep bench. His junior colleague in the Senate, Tommy Tuberville voted to overturn the presidential election, as did Brooks, Rodgers, Robert Aderholt, Jerry Carl, Gary Palmer and Barry Moore. There will be a political price for those votes. As it stands, Alabamas only lifeline to the majority party in Congress now is Rep. Terri Sewell. But Alabama doesnt necessarily need more Democrats in Washington, just more grownups. Shelby is rumored to be retiring after this term, and then Alabama could find itself on an island. If you arent sad to see him go yet, you will be. Shelby already has buildings named after him throughout Alabama. Five universities have his name etched in stone somewhere on their campuses. But when they lay the bricks for Space Command in Huntsville, whats the harm in one more? And Mo Brooks? Maybe we can name a rest stop after him. Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group. You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram. More columns by Kyle Whitmire Mo Brooks knows hes lying. Just ask Mo Brooks. Mo Brooks didnt shout fire. He started it. Why is this taking so long? Failure and a big, big number The Biggest Phony Must I care if someone doesnt want the coronavirus vaccine? Alabama prisons stonewalled a data request. Heres what that data showed. Think we can live with COVID? Meet me at the Cracker Barrel, Kay Ivey. Mo Brooks thinks he knows better than everyone Wait-n-see is over. Do something, Kay Ivey. COVID was the perfect weapon Is America a democracy or a republic? Alabama is open for COVID Thanksgiving wont be canceled What Tommy Tuberville doesnt know Lets never do anything like this again Beware your new friends, Tommy Tuberville Sports lie at the margins of our culture, different from how it is elsewhere in the world, and from how it used to be. This is one of the reasons why criminality among youth proceeds unchecked. There is no youth labour market, and the school system ruthlessly triages youth. Kerry County Council is concerned about potential tourism, health and funding implications of two separate legal challenges to planning approval for a proposed 32km cycle and pedestrian greenway in south Kerry, the High Court has been told. Arising from those concerns, Esmonde Keane SC, for the council, applied today for the earliest possible hearing of the challenges over An Bord Pleanalas approval of November last. Despite objections from lawyers for the applicants in both actions, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys provisionally fixed March 9 for the hearing of both cases. The judge had earlier fixed a date in late June for the hearing but, after Mr Keanes intervention, he agreed to fix March 9. Due to pressures on the courts strategic infrastructure list, no other hearing dates were available up to the end of June, he said. A March hearing required moving at breakneck speed, he added, fixing the cases for further case management next week. The judge fixed the March provisional hearing after formally granting permission to a local farmer, James Clifford, and environmental activist Peter Sweetman to bring judicial review proceedings with a view to quashing the boards grant of permission to the council for the greenway development. The applicants, represented by James Devlin SC, with Margaret Heavey BL, instructed by solicitor Brian Harrington, also obtained a stay on works concerning the greenway subject to the respondent having liberty to apply at 72 hours notice to lift or vary that. The judge also granted leave to bring the second challenge, taken by a number of local landowners whose lands have been compulsorily acquired for the greenway. Permission to bring that second challenge was granted without prejudice to the councils entitlement to raise certain issues. Read More High Court to hear two challenges against proposed South Kerry Greenway Michael ODonnell BL, for the landowners, argued their action is complex and he was very concerned there would be insufficient time to have it ready for hearing by March 9. Given the Covid-19 emergency, he could not see how the council could be prejudiced by having the matter heard in June, he said. Mr Devlin, for Mr Clifford and Mr Sweetman, also expressed concern about the logistics of being ready for a March hearing and said he was at a loss to understand how the challenges could have health or funding implications, as Mr Keane had argued. Mr Devlin said the original proposal for the greenway was for a continuous 32km stretch but chunks had somewhat surprisingly been taken by the board out of that, resulting in a different project. That in turn lead to some of the grounds of his clients challenge, he said. While the council had said the cases were significant for it, the greenway was also significant for Mr Clifford, who lives locally, counsel said. While Mr Sweetman did not live in the area, his concern is about the significant environmental issues raised, counsel added. Both actions concern the proposed greenway between Glenbeigh and Caherciveen, to run mainly along the disused route of the Southern and Western Railway which operated from 1892 to 1960. It will include a 3m wide paved surface. In their case, Mr Clifford and Mr Sweetman claim the board's decision contravenes EU directives on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Habitats on grounds including it failed to ensure a system of strict protection for the Kerry slug and the Lesser Horseshoe bat in their natural range. The core claim against the State parties is of failure to transpose into Irish law an obligation to determine if a road should be made subject of an EIA. In their challenge, the local landowners raise issues about the process resulting in the confirmation of compulsory purchase orders for part of their lands. Both actions are against the Board and State with Kerry County Council as a notice party. 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. Nursing professionals in Malaga province are being overwhelmed, not only by dealing with the extra demands of the coronavirus crisis, but also by a historic shortage of workers, it is claimed. The president of the College of Nursing, Jose Miguel Carrasco, estimates a shortage of 1,500 workers in the province. But the nursing union (Satse) raises the figure to 4,000, claiming that Malaga is the second province with the worst ratio of nurses per thousand inhabitants. The union says that Malaga has only 3.29 compared to the Spanish average of 5.3 of the Spanish average. Only Granada, with 3.26, registers worse data than Malaga, far from the more than eight nurses for every thousand people in Navarra, the province with the highest coverage. Juan Jose Sanchez, the Malaga provincial secretary of Satse, warns "we are tired and overloaded. The president of the College of Nursing, Jose Miguel Carrasco, explains, Salaries are low and contracts are short and with high variability. That is, they call you at two o'clock so you can come to work at three. These conditions have caused our professionals to emigrate abroad and to other autonomous communities. Each region offers different contracts - Asturias is offering three-year contracts while Andalucia offers fifteen days," he claims. In the early Saturday execution of Higgs, officials inside the execution chamber were more diligent about their keeping masks on after a federal judge expressed concern that officials at Johnsons execution were lax about coronavirus precautions. When a marshal called from a death-chamber phone to ask if there were any impediments to proceeding with Higgs execution, he kept his mask on and shoved the receiver under it. An Emirates Airline flight from Dubai lands becoming the first commercial Airbus A380 jet to land in the United States at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Aug. 1, 2008. (Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images) Emirates Stops Flights to Australian East Coast Emirates airlines has indefinitely suspended flights to and from the east coast of Australia citing operational reasons. The international airline announced the decision on its website on Jan. 15. Its last journeys to and from Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane will operate between Jan. 16 and Jan. 20. Customers holding tickets with final destinations Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane will not be accepted for travel at their point of origin after the completion of the above flights, the company stated on its website. Emirates regrets any inconvenience caused. Affected customers should contact their travel agent or Emirates contact centre for rebooking options. Emirates did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The airlines announcement comes after the Queensland government reported on Jan. 10 that two Emirates aircrew tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. The aircrew tested positive in hotel quarantine along with two passengers from the United Arab Emirates. Two of cases travelled from the United Kingdom, but Queensland Health told The Epoch Times they did not have the UK variant. The federal government, with the support of state and territory leaders, recently reduced its repatriation of stranded Australians to 50 percent until Feb. 15 following rising numbers of positive CCP virus cases among returned travellers. New South Wales is now taking 1,500 arrivals a week instead of its usual 3,000. Emirates will still fly to Perth twice a week. NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the ninth year in a row, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Tennessee School Choice Week by the state's governor. Gov. Lee joined more than a dozen governors, as well as hundreds of county, city, and town leaders, who have officially recognized the Week. School Choice Week, which has gone virtual this year due to the pandemic, seeks to raise awareness about opportunity in K-12 education, encouraging families to celebrate and discuss their school options. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will join in the celebration. In Tennessee, parents, schools, and other organizers have planned more than 800 virtual or at-home activities for the Week, including a statewide social media contest and week of choice-themed Facebook Live events. These activities aim to spark conversations about the educational opportunities parents want for their children, and the importance of every child having access to an effective education. Across the nation, more than 33,000 virtual or socially-distanced celebrations will take place. "Parents need the freedom to choose the best educational option for their family more than ever, and it is exciting to see Tennesseeans expanding learning opportunities," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We wish Tennessee families the best in their National School Choice Week celebrations and thank Gov. Lee for his recognition of the Week." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information or to watch Gov. Lee's video message about the Week, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/tennessee . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com After developing an innovative new process to extract scandium from the by-products generated during the production of titanium dioxide, Rio Tinto Fer et Titane (RTFT) announced that it will become North Americas first producer of high-quality scandium oxide with a new plant under construction at RTFTs metallurgical complex in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec. With an investment of US$6 million and the participation of the Government of Quebec, RTFT will have an initial production capacity of three tonnes of scandium oxide per year, representing approximately 20% of the current global market. RTFT expects to begin commercial supply of scandium oxide in the second quarter of 2021. With its world-class aluminum business, Rio Tinto is also well positioned to produce aluminum-scandium alloysof interest, among other applications, in lightweighting for EVs. Both the high quality scandium oxide and aluminum-scandium master alloy will be commercialized under the business brand name Element North 21. Scandium-aluminum alloy benefits include: Higher strength Lower density Improved thermal properties (high resistance to heat) Lighter, more resistant products Greater flexibility Resistance to thermal shock Can be used for 3D printing Anti recrystallization effect Corrosion performance improvement Resistance to hot tearing The Government of Quebec is contributing approximately US$650,000 to the project through the Quebec Plan for the Development of Critical and Strategic Minerals. The new plant will have the ability to add further modules in line with market demand. RTFT developed an innovative process it has proven at pilot scale to extract high purity scandium oxide from the waste streams of titanium dioxide production, without the need for any additional mining at its ilmenite mine in Havre-Saint-Pierre, Quebec. RTFTs ilmenite mine in Havre-St-Pierre, QC, (HSP) where the ore is extracted before being shipped by boat to Sorel-Tracy, where it is processed to produce titanium dioxide. The waste stream from that process is now being used to produce scandium. Scandium oxide is used to improve the performance of solid oxide fuel cells, as well as in niche products such as lasers and lighting for stadiums or studios. It is also used to produce high-performance aluminum-scandium master alloys for the aerospace, defense and 3D printing industries. RTFT has operated in Quebec for 70 years and pioneered the process of removing iron from ilmenite. In the last decade, RTFT has focused on developing, marketing and fine-tuning the UGS process, which produces slag with a very high titanium dioxide content sold to pigment producers. A Somalian doctor who was reported to the General Medical Council because he was 'impossible to understand' has been banned from medicine for a year due to his poor English. Dr Abdullahi Abdi Yussuf, a former asylum seeker based in Manchester, claimed he had been getting patients and colleagues to understand him better by teaching himself Northern dialects like 'Scouse', 'Lanky' and 'Manc'. However, the 51-year-old repeatedly failed a series of English tests in listening, reading, writing and speaking. In 2015 and 2017 disciplinary panels found the father of nine guilty of misconduct but let him carry on working under supervision on condition he resit the exams under the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). He has not sat any tests since. Last month a review hearing was held for Yussuf about his progress but today it emerged the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service had suspended him from practise altogether after he sent an email in broken English and littered with spelling and grammatical errors pleading to be allowed to treat patients in the UK and insisting his English was acceptable. One extract from the email read: 'My firt (sic) hearing I brought the panal (sic) hearing witnesses of 4nurses and 3 police officers that all of them confirmed to the panal (sic) that there was no barrier language between me and my patients and they understood clearly and that they are happy how I care the patients.' Somalian doctor Abdullahi Abdi Yussuf, pictured, who was reported to the General Medical Council because he was 'impossible to understand' has been banned from medicine for a year due to his poor English Yussuf first arrived in England in 2003 after studying medicine in his native country but moved on to complete his qualifications at the La Sapienza University of Rome in Rome, Italy, in 2005. He then returned to Somalia and didn't fully settle in England until he moved with his family in 2009, before taking up locum junior doctor posts at hospitals in Manchester and Oldham. In around 2010 he took up the forensic medical examiner post with an agency outside of the NHS and was deployed to police stations to assess suspects in police custody across the North West of England. As part of his job Yussuf was required to report information back to the custody sergeant in each station and then to hospital consultants if further treatment was required. But in December 2013 when attempting to convey a patient's medical history over the phone for a mental health assessment, the listening consultant was so confused by what Yussuf was saying he asked to speak to the police sergeant. The consultant later field a report saying: 'His English is of a poor standard and it was impossible to understand the history over the telephone'. Yussuf took the IELTS test on October 25 2014 but he achieved scores of just five in reading and writing, 5.5 in listening and six in speaking - resulting in an overall score of 5.5 - two points below the 7.5 pass mark. In September 2016 he scored 6.0 on listening, 5.0 on reading, 6.0 on writing and 6.5 on speaking. In February 2017, he scored just 5.5 in listening, 5.5 in reading, 5.0 in writing and 7.0 in speaking. In his email to the MPTS sent last November Yussuf said he was currently living in his native Somalia where he was helping treat Covid-19 patients. His heavily misspelt note read: 'I have been working in different hospitals in Somalia to help the poor patients and saved the lives of many patiients affected corona virus (sic). 'As you know the GMC has imposed ristraction (sic) of my leicence (sic) to practice because of english language and not my clinical skills and my medical compitance (sic) and I could not work in UK due this stress (sic). 'I have been working in UK different hospitals since 2009 and I had no complain (sic) regarding my clinical skills and medical practise from my patients and there was no consultant who made compaling (sic) how I treated them. 'The only issues was a lady consultant that called to me while I was driving on raining (sic) day to get history a patient (sic) that I referred her (sic) and we could not hear well enough and then made complain (sic) that I was not speaking good english but she confirmed the mental health patient (sic) that Ibrefered (sic) my diagnosis was right and no clinical compitance (sic). Last month a review hearing was held for Yussuf, pictured, about his progress but today it emerged the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service had suspended him from practise altogether after he sent an email in broken English and littered with spelling and grammatical errors pleading to be allowed to treat patients in the UK and insisting his English was acceptable 'I have done more English courses and now I improved the leval (sic) of my english but when I do the test I feel stress. I can not attend this hearing as there is second wave of Covid 19 and UK there is total lock down and I am in Somalia. 'I request from the panal (sic) to take off this restriction on my GMC to work in UK, come and help my 9 children feeding and clothing. I hope that the panal (sic) will accept my kindly request and consider my case especial circumetance (sic)...' Ceri Widdett, lawyer for the General Medical Council told the Manchester hearing: 'Dr Yussuf's fitness to practise medicine remains impaired by reason of insufficient knowledge of the English language. 'He has provided no objective evidence of remediation and has not provided satisfactory IELTS test results, nor demonstrated he is at the required standard in any of the area of the IELTS test. 'There are no recent workplace reports or reports from a clinical supervisor or any feedback on his English in a clinical setting. There is no objective evidence Dr Yussuf has kept his knowledge up-to-date. 'He stated he felt stressed when taking the English language tests but there are other steps he could take to prove proficiency in English language. 'Dr Yussuf has clearly not fully addressed the concerns over the last seven years and there has also been a significant delay since he last practised in the UK and as such, there is a risk of further deterioration in his use of the English language as he has not been using it clinically on a daily basis.' Panel chairman Julia Oakford agreed for a further review to be held for Yussuf next year. But she told the hearing: 'The Tribunal was disappointed by the efforts Dr Yussuf has made in the time afforded to him since the last review of his case. It noted Dr Yussuf's comments in his email of 15 November 2020, 'I request from the panal to take off this restriction on my GMC to work in UK' (sic). 'He has provided no evidence to satisfy the Tribunal that he has remediated the concerns in regard to his knowledge or English or provided any information that his medical skills and knowledge are up-to-date. 'The Tribunal considered that his insight has not developed and, in fact, may have reduced. He does not appear to appreciate why the conditions were imposed on his registration in the first place.' Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain China has sent over 20,000 rural residents living in the epicentre of the country's latest virus outbreak to state-run quarantine facilities, as Beijing on Friday reported the worst nationwide figures since March. The country had largely brought the virus under control after strict measures including mass testing and travel restrictions. But recent weeks have seen numbers climbing, especially in the north, prompting a fresh wave of lockdowns and a race to build a massive new quarantine centre. On Friday 144 infections were reportedthe highest single-day tally since March last yearmostly in Hebei province where more than 22 million people are in lockdown. Over 20,000 residents from villages around Shijiazhuangabout 294 kilometres (180 miles) southwest of Beijinghave been sent to central quarantine starting from Wednesday, according to state broadcaster CCTV. It said they are being housed in hotels, with family members separated. "It's natural that they feel anxious and panic," Liu Jinpei, a psychologist involved, told CCTV, adding authorities had set up a mental health hotline. Officials are also rushing to build a massive "centralised medical observation centre" in the area, with over 3,000 makeshift beds. Pre-festival vaccine rush The recent surge in cases appears to be fuelled by so-called "silent infections"asymptomatic casesmostly in areas like this, rural and on the outskirts of cities. The state-run Global Times warned the high number of cases in these regions "sounds an alarm regarding loopholes in epidemic control" as many residents are elderly. Hundreds of millions of migrant workers are expected to return to their home villages for the Lunar New Year holiday next month, and China is rushing to vaccinate 50 million people in key groups before the festival. In contrast to many countries in Europe, China is not inoculating the elderly, starting instead with those in community roles like bus drivers and shop workers. AFP saw a group of construction workers in fluorescent jackets lining up to get shots at a makeshift centre in central Beijing on Friday. Xiao Zhifeng, deputy director of the local district's health commission, told AFP the site would finish vaccinating key groups before the Lunar New Year before moving onto the general population. China reported its first COVID-19 death in eight months on Thursday, as experts from the World Health Organization landed in Wuhanwhere the disease first emergedto investigate its origins. Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 AFP Tennessee Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty praised the choice of Huntsville, Ala., for the United States Space Command. Senator Blackburn said, The new Space Command Center in the Tennessee Valley is an important investment in both the future of our military and in the skilled workforce of the region. This base will bring over 1,600 new jobs in the area and more as the command grows. Senator Hagerty said, The new United States Space Command headquarters in the Tennessee Valley will be the primary entity for providing strategic direction to the U.S. military to deter space-based threats globally. Space Commands future headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama, will bring hundreds of new jobs to Tennesseans and further our states rich history of contributing to our national defense. The United States Space Command was established in August 2019. It is a unified combatant command of the Department of Defense and is responsible for military capabilities in space. Tesco issued an urgent safety warning today about its own-brand 'Finest' taleggio cheese. The supermarket chain said some 200g packs of the soft, creamy cheese, which is 'hand made in Italy using a traditional recipe' could be contaminated with listeria. The Government's Food Standards Agency said Tesco is recalling the suspect cheese from sale in its stores across Britain. Tesco issued an urgent safety warning today about its own-brand 'Finest' taleggio cheese A 200g pack normally sells for around 2.50. Although much less common than salmonella or E. coli, listeria is the most lethal. Most healthy immune systems can keep an infection at bay, but if the bug makes it into the bloodstream, it causes listeriosis and kills one in five victims worldwide. Details of the Tesco 'Finest' cheese being recalled Product name: Tesco Finest Taleggio Pack Size: 200g Batch Code: All Use by date: January 25, 2021 Advertisement In 2019, six patients at NHS hospitals died after eating sandwiches contaminated with listeria. Staffordshire-based firm Good Food Chain collapsed following the scandal. In 2017 there were 33 deaths linked to listeriosis in England and Wales. A US Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimate said listeria is the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness, or food poisoning, in the United States. The report said in the US, an estimated 1,600 people get sick from listeria each year, and about 260 die. The FSA said 'Tesco is recalling Tesco Finest Taleggio 200g because it contains Listeria monocytogenes. 'Symptoms caused by this organism can be similar to flu and include high temperature, muscle ache or pain, chills, feeling or being sick and diarrhoea. 'Some people are more vulnerable to listeria infections, including those over 65 years of age, pregnant women and their unborn babies, babies less than one month old and people with weakened immune systems.' 'Tesco is recalling the product. Product recall notices will be issued to explain to customers why the product is being recalled and tell them what to do if they have bought the product. 'Our advice to consumers - if you have bought the product do not eat it. 'Instead, return it to the store from where it was bought for a full refund.' Tesco said 'We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused.' The supermarket chain said some 200g packs of the soft, creamy cheese, which is 'hand made in Italy using a traditional recipe' could be contaminated with listeria 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. The mother of Nora Quoirin has said that the inquest into the teenager's death revealed "compelling evidence" to support the family's view she had been abducted. Meabh Quoirin told RTE that the family believed the inquest brought new information to light that strengthened the family's view she had not left their Malaysian resort of her own accord during a family holiday in 2019. Earlier this month a coroner found the 15-year-old's death had most likely been due to misadventure. Coroner Maimoonah Aid ruled out homicide, natural death and suicide and said Nora likely got lost after leaving her familys cottage on her own. Her family said they were "utterly disappointed" with the verdict. After the teenager, who was born with holoprosencephaly, a disorder which affects brain development, went missing on August 4 an extensive search was launched involving hundreds of rescuers, helicopters and sniffer dogs. Nora's body was discovered on August 13 beside a small stream about 1.6 miles from the resort. Mrs Quoirin, who is from Belfast, said the inquest revealed significant new information regarding her daughter's disappearance. "One of the most compelling things that we found out was that in a relatively small area, i.e. the plantation where Nora was eventually found, there was vast numbers of specialist personnel deployed to find Nora," she told RTE. "Not only that, on four different occasions trained personnel went to the plantation area and searched it and in fact some officers were even in the precise location Nora's body was recovered. "They had all reported that there were no signs of human life at any point. That for us is compelling evidence to say that she was not there by herself." Mrs Quoirin said she also believed evidence may have been compromised by the elements in the Malaysian jungle where Nora's body was found. "There was a lack of evidence around DNA and prints. Very interestingly throughout the process we realised that the strong evidence presented by the pathologist would have never been recovered as it would have been impossible to find because Nora's body was exposed to the elements," she said. "It was in heat but most especially it was lying in water and that would have compromised anyones ability to draw evidence like that," she said. Mrs Quoirin told RTE she believed there was sufficient evidence to suggest foul play was involved. She and her husband Sebastien had requested the coroner find an open verdict into Nora's death. Expand Close Nora Quorin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Nora Quorin "The verdict took over two hours to deliver so there was a great deal of detail to understand and digest but I think it was very clear from the early part of the proceedings that the coroner was not going to find favour in what we requested," Mrs Quoirin said. "When we went into the inquest, we had a lot of unanswered questions and while many of those questions cannot be answered we actually found out a great deal about what went on during those 10 days when Nora was missing. "In fact we felt it really strengthened our case, our belief, that Nora was abducted and we found some compelling evidence to support our view on that". Mrs Quoirin said her family did not believe Nora had left the chalet the family had been staying in through an open window as had been suggested. The family believe that Nora would have been unable to leave that way due to her disabilities and none of her fingerprints were found on the window, though other unidentifiable prints were. Mrs Quoirin said that for her family a number of the circumstances surrounding Nora's disappearance and death "simply don't add up". The family are seeking a revision of the coroner's verdict through the High Court in the Malaysian city of Seremban. "When we started this we wanted to find out what happened during the ten days in Malaysia but we also of course want justice for Nora and we will continue to fight for that." Mrs Quoirin said. "One must always have hope - hope in the system and hope that justice especially for those who are most vulnerable in society can be found. "We've always known that we can never find all the answers to all the questions. We're really pleased the inquest covered really vital responses to some of our key questions but mostly now we really look to the justice system to deliver a fair verdict and that's what we want next." Many legislative issues have languished in Albany over the past year, pushed to the side to deal with the immediate concerns of the coronavirus pandemic, and the fate of gig workers is one of them. But while some labor groups hope to see workers such as Uber drivers and Postmates delivery cyclists finally granted employment benefits like overtime or guaranteed paid sick leave this session, theres little agreement about the best way to do that. Now, the results of a heated and expensive fight over this same question in California last year could complicate the debate in New York. In November, California voters passed Proposition 22, a ballot measure that exempted app-based workers for companies such as Uber, Lyft and Doordash from a new law known as AB5 that would have reclassified those workers as employees rather than independent contractors. The result was a stunning rebuke of labors efforts to force those companies to treat their workers as employees made to pay for health care and other benefits and a decisive victory for gig companies, powered by their more than $200 million investment campaigning in support of the measure. The story was simple: California tried to reclassify gig workers as employees and failed. As Albany mulls various proposals to grant its own gig workers more benefits, labor experts said that story is a warning to some in the labor movement that similar efforts to reclassify gig workers as employees in New York will face an uphill battle. That sent a very strong signal to all advocates that the policy solution would have to be much more strategic, said Maria Figueroa, Director of Labor and Policy Research at the Worker Institute at Cornell Universitys School of Industrial and Labor Relations. I really doubt that the policy advocacy community will support an AB5-like deal in New York state, given what happened in California. But while some lawmakers craft alternative proposals and some labor leaders prepare to come to the negotiating table with gig companies which tend to favor portable benefits packages over reclassification others remain steadfast in their support of treating app-based drivers and on-demand task do-ers as employees. Its never been so clear how essential gig workers are especially during the pandemic but in the wake of Californias Prop 22, theres still little consensus on how New York should grant these workers more benefits. I think it would be almost foolish for the labor movement to compromise, when the political tide across the country is shifting, said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which represents drivers for apps such as Uber and Lyft. Desais organization is part of a coalition advocating for New York to adopt something similar to Californias now gutted AB5 law, which uses an employee classification known as the ABC test. Under the test, a worker is only classified as an independent contractor if they are (1) free from the control of their employer, (2) doing work outside the usual course of business of an employer and (3) engaged in an independently established business. Under this definition, app-based drivers and many others would be classified as employees. State Sen. Robert Jackson and Assembly Member Deborah Glick introduced a bill in 2019 that would apply this ABC test to independent contractors in New York. But Jackson suggested his focus is as much if not more on people such as nail salon workers, home health aides and other kinds of workers who make up a greater share of the so-called gig economy than the people often front-and-center in this debate: app-based gig workers like ride-hail drivers. I just want to make sure that people are treated as employees if they are employees, Jackson told City & State. Desai said that the ABC test is still the best way forward for New York, even though it didnt succeed in California. New York already has a handful of court rulings that require Uber, Lyft and Postmates workers to be treated as employees for the purposes of unemployment insurance. And legislation proposed by the New York City Council would treat these workers as employees for the purposes of paid sick leave another benefit independent contractors dont typically have access to. But others in the labor movement say theyre not set on the ABC test. Mario Cilento, president of the New York State AFL-CIO, said that he wants to see app-based workers receive all of the protections that employees are entitled to, including minimum wage, overtime, workers compensation, unemployment insurance, harassment protections and the right to organize. But he said the ABC test isnt the only way to get there. There are different ways to go about it, Cilento said. We are more than willing to talk and work with everyone, including the companies, to get to a conclusion here, he added, referring to the app-based companies. Some lawmakers and labor leaders deny that Californias rebuke of the ABC test has any bearing on what happens in New York. State Sen. Diane Savino, who has been working on gig worker legislation in Albany for a few years now, has said for a while that Californias approach of reclassifying gig workers as employees wasnt necessarily one that New York should follow. I was always critical of Californias approach. It was too wide of a net, which is why it was impossible to ever implement, she told City & State this week. It led to countless litigation and a never-ending number of exemptions. A coalition of tech companies, business organizations and other groups have lined up against the ABC test approach in New York as well. While most members of the New York for Coalition for Independent Work are unsurprising tech companies like Uber, Lyft and Instacart make the headlines some civil rights organizations also oppose reforms that would reclassify all gig workers. Rev. Kirsten John Foy, president of the Arc of Justice Foundation and a member of the coalition, said that gig work of all kinds has provided opportunities for people of color, who have historically been marginalized and discriminated against in the traditional employer-employee model. While we do need to recognize the impact that the pandemic has had on independent contractors, we should not bind and constrict them to the traditional benefits and the traditional framework of employment, Foy said. They should have expanded protection, but as small business owners, and not as employees. Others have raised concerns that reclassifying gig workers as employees would pose problems for undocumented workers. While Savino said she is working on new gig worker legislation that could be forthcoming in the next month, she was mum on what exactly it would contain. Companies like Uber and Lyft have proposed a portable benefits approach in the past, which involves companies paying into benefit funds that travel with workers from job to job. Its likely labor will also continue to push for collective bargaining rights, however. A statistic that hasnt adequately been captured yet is how gig workers at large feel about their classification status. The gig companies who fought against AB5 in California cite informal polling and independent studies sometimes funded by the companies themselves showing that the majority of gig workers wanted to remain independent contractors despite labors attempts to have them reclassified. Some gig workers, however, see reclassification as the best way to guarantee labor protections. Drivers have to be treated as employees, because we have no protections, said Doh Seydou Ouattara, a driver who has worked for Uber and Lyft. If New York were to pass legislation that reclassified gig workers as employees, its safe to say gig companies would put up a strong and well-funded fight. Though New Yorkers dont have the ability to start statewide ballot initiatives in the way that Californians do, the Coalition for Independent Work for New York will be a formidable force as Albany resumes the debate on gig worker reforms, which may be why some labor groups are open to compromise. After all, some of these tech companies have a long history of resisting and lobbying against New Yorks attempts to regulate their industries. The companies have resources, theyre organized, they collaborate, Figueroa said. The labor side doesnt have as many resources, its not organized, they dont come up with a unified agenda on this issue. Of course, with momentum growing behind the push to reform gig work in some way, its also clear to the companies that their current model of offering their workers little or no benefits wont stick around for long either. Theyll have to show up at the negotiating table too. I negotiate in the Legislature the same way I did when I was in the labor movement, Savino said. Youre either at the table or youre on the menu. So take your pick. The U.S. military is facing a real threat from domestic extremists, particularly those pushing white supremacist views who want to add service members -- and their tactical skills -- to their ranks, a senior defense official told reporters Thursday. The Pentagon is reviewing how best to crack down on extremist views in the ranks, with a report due back to the defense secretary in about 60 days, an official said. The U.S. has seen a resurgence of white-supremacist and extreme nationalist views in the last several years, and the problems are seeping into the military, too. "This is clearly of great concern to the department because as a volunteer force, as a slice of our society, all those issues that exist in society have the potential to exist within the military," a senior defense official said. Defense officials briefed reporters on some of the efforts underway to address the problems, but did so on the condition of anonymity. Read Next: National Guardsman Is 1st Current Service Member to Be Arrested After Capitol Riot Federal investigations into criminal behavior among troops and veterans are on the rise, one official said, including reports of extremism. Officials declined to provide specifics on the number of cases they're seeing compared to years past, but one cited about 200 notifications of current and former service members falling under examination for possible criminal or intelligence issues. The Defense Department is facing renewed questions about how it's dealing with troops' racist or extreme beliefs in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Several military veterans and service members were allegedly involved, including a corporal currently serving in the Virginia National Guard. Fourteen senators sent a letter Thursday to the DoD's acting inspector general, calling for action. "The issue of white supremacy and extremist ideology is not new, but the attack on the Capitol makes clear this alarming trend must be immediately addressed," the letter states. "Although the Pentagon has acknowledged this issue, it has failed to implement a comprehensive action plan to address it." The DoD inspector general's office announced the same day that it will begin evaluating the matter this month. "Our objective is to determine the extent to which the DoD and the Military Services have implemented policy and procedures that prohibit active advocacy and active participation related to supremacist, extremist, or criminal gang doctrine, ideology, or causes by active duty military personnel, as required by DoD Instruction 1325.06," the office's notice states. Several reports have detailed the ways in which far-right extremist groups are trying to recruit military members and veterans, including the Boogaloo Bois, a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing anti-government group. Kathleen Belew, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America," told Vice News in June that active-duty service members and veterans can "dramatically escalate the impact of fringe activism, pass on explosives expertise, urban warfare expertise." "This is not a problem we should take lightly," Belew told the news site. After the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Joint Chiefs sent a letter to the entire force, reminding troops to uphold the law and Constitution. Gary Reed, the director for defense intelligence and counterintelligence, law enforcement and security, stressed this week that extremism has no place in the ranks. All military personnel, he said, including members of the National Guard and Reserve, have undergone a background investigation and are subject to continuous evaluation. "Simply put, we will not tolerate extremism of any sort in DoD," Reed said. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Related: Congress Wants the Military to Report Extremism in the Ranks. Here's Why That Will Be Tough Midlands Kiwassee Kiwanis Club got the ball rolling, and donors in the community and around the country ran with it, helping three local school districts meet some unexpected technology expenses. Following the mid-Michigan dam failures last May that led to flooding that rendered about 250 Midland Public Schools Chromebook computers unusable, the Kiwassee Kiwanis Foundation initiated a fundraising drive that eventually generated $70,000 by late last year, enough money to replace all 250 damaged Chromebooks. On top of that, enough additional funds were raised that Kiwanis was able to give about $10,000 to Windover High School and about $5,000 to Meridian Public Schools to help those districts meet their own needs related to flood damage. We started this, but its the community that needs to take a bow, said Bruce Rayce, president of the Kiwassee Kiwanis Foundation. Rayce said Midland Public Schools Superintendent Michael Sharrow had explained in a speech to the Kiwanis Club last May the vital role of the Chromebooks in remote learning, which all schools in Michigan were doing from mid-March through the end of the school year. Only a week later, the dams failed and the Tittabawassee River flooded, and since the Chromebooks were not on school premises, the Chromebook insurance did not cover the damages to them. So, Kiwanis, whose mission is to improve the world one community and one child at a time, worked on a plan to provide help. We're a relatively small foundation. We didnt have $70,000, Rayce noted. But we thought, if we started a fund, could we get some other organizations and individuals to collaborate with us? The answer turned out to be a resounding yes. Rayce and fellow foundation members met with the Midland Area Community Foundation and established a fund to raise money to replace the Chromebooks. "We gave $10,000 to get the fund going. and we reached out to the Kiwanis district office and they threw in some money, and Kiwanis International threw in some money," Rayce said, adding Kiwanis members reached out to other groups, including Midland's other Kiwanis club, the two Rotary Clubs, and the Midland Business Alliance. But with so many other urgent needs in the community due to the flooding and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kiwanis members knew that raising $70,000 was a lot to ask. "We were scared, quite honestly," Rayce said. "We were worried about reaching $70,000 because we knew there were so many legitimate needs in the community." But those worries turned out to be unfounded. Donations poured in from a total of 130 individuals and groups such as the Towsley Foundation and the Gerstacker Foundation locally, and from 11 other states, including Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Florida and Colorado. One check came in from a group of graduates of Midland's Charles W. Howard Santa School. By November, the goal of $70,000 had been reached and the Midland Public Schools Chromebooks were able to be replaced. "(This is) very, very heartwarming," MPS Board of Education President Scott McFarland said at the board's Nov. 16 meeting. "Words are insufficient. You're impacting 250 kids, and that means the world to us as the board and to the administration of the district. My hat's off to you, and we are very, very grateful." From there, donations still continued to come in, which allowed the Kiwanis Foundation to also help Windover and Meridian. Checks were presented to those two school districts this week. "We said our first focus was the 250 Chromebooks," Rayce said. "But if we reached that goal and could raise more money, then we were certainly going to be considering Windover and Meridian. "I couldn't be more proud of the people of this good earth and how they've been able to help out," Rayce added. TAOISEACH Micheal Martin has acknowledged that the annual St Patrick's Day visit to the White House is in doubt due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr Martin said the prospects of the expected meeting with incoming President Joe Biden going ahead will be dictated by the situation with the virus at the time. In remarks to the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) Mr Martin also referred to what he called the "appalling " events in Washington last week where supporters of President Donald Trump stormed Capitol Hill. And he put the incident in the context of democracy being "under attack" in many places around the world. Mr Martin said that president-elect Biden has been a "stalwart friend" of Ireland he predicted that relations between the EU and United States will improve under his administration. Asked if he was confident he would be meeting Mr Biden in Washington for St Patrick's Day festivities he said: "obviously the course of the virus would dictate a lot of that." Mr Martin added: "When I invited President-elect Biden to Ireland he just said try and keep me out. "So it wont be any lack of enthusiasm. "But I think we'll be practical about it. Its early days yet. "Obviously Covid will have a significant impact on all bilateral relations, contacts and meetings in the coming while." The Taoiseach said: "I got a sense from my conversation with President-elect Joe Biden that he wanted to rapidly reset that relationship with Europe." One example of this is how Mr Biden said he wants the US to rejoin the Paris Accords on Climate Action on "day one". Mr Martin added: "He wants to rejoin the World Health Organisation, which was music to my ears in the sense that I believe in the importance of multilateral organisations like the WHO and others" He suggested there may be momentum on getting the nuclear deal with Iran back on track. Mr Martin said the EU and US won't agree on everything " but no serious progress on global challenges is possible without strong EU/US cooperation." The Taoiseach's speech to the IIEA was about the challenges facing Ireland in a changing world. He noted that Mr Biden and his vice-president Kamala Harris will take office next week and said "The eyes of the world are on this transition, more so than ever after recent events." Mr Martin said: "In Ireland, we feel a particular affinity, given that Joe Biden has been a stalwart friend of Ireland throughout his long and decorated history of public service. "In my conversation with him in the days after his victory it was clear that he is passionate about both his Irish heritage and the idea of Ireland as a constructive friend at a time of great challenge for his country and the world." He said Ms Harris's election is "a moment of tremendous significance and a positive milestone" adding: "In a world where all too often ideas of diversity and equality are being challenged, she will be a powerful new voice for progress." In spite of the appalling events of recent days and weeks, I have great confidence in the strength of US democracy, and its commitment to democratic norms and the rule of law. "The US has so often been a beacon to the world and for the idea that nations must always seek to challenge themselves and address their deepest flaws. "It is a testament to the strength and resilience of the USs democratic institutions that Congress resumed the process of certifying the Presidential election results, just hours after the dramatic events at the Capitol." The Health Ministry has released a series of frequently asked questions on various aspects COVID-19 vaccine ahead of the massive inoculation drive that is set to begin across the country on January 16. The Government has said that two doses of the vaccine, 28 days apart, need to be administered to an individual, to complete the Vaccination schedule. According to the FAQs, protective levels of antibodies are generally develop two weeks after receiving the second dose of the Coronavirus vaccine. While the vaccination is voluntary, the Health Ministry has advised citizens to receive the complete schedule of vaccine dosage to protect one-self against the fatal disease. Receiving the shots will also limit the transmission to close contacts including family members, friends, relatives, and co-workers. READ | CM Kejriwal Promises Free COVID Vaccine In Delhi If Centre Fails To Do So READ | COVID-19: Scientists Fear 'escape Mutant' Could Decrease Vaccine Efficacy Those infected with COVID-19 should defer vaccination for 14 days after symptoms are resolved as they may increase the risk of spreading the virus to others at the vaccination site. The Ministry said, the vaccine introduced in India will be as effective as those developed by other countries, as various phases of trials were undertaken to ensure its safety and efficacy. Eligible beneficiaries will be informed through their registered mobile numbers regarding the Health Facility where the vaccination will be provided and the scheduled time for the same. 1.65 crore doses distributed across India Ahead of the highly-anticipated COVID-19 vaccination drive from January 16, the full initial procurement amount of 1.65 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines has been allocated to all States/UTs on Wednesday. This amount has been decided in proportion with the Health Care Workers database, who are first in line to get inoculated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the world's biggest vaccination drive virtually on January 16. The first phase of vaccination will be free and the Centre will bear the cost of vaccines which will be injected to 3 crore frontline warriors. PM Modi will also be launching the CoWIN application on the same day. Around one crore beneficiaries are already registered in the app. "It is most important to identify and vaccinate those who are vulnerable - hence we have created the CoWIN app. The beneficiary will be registered as per the Aadhar card. CoWIN will generate a digital certificate after the first vaccine dose. This will help as a reminder for the 2nd dosage and help in knowing who has been vaccinated. The final certificate will be given after the 2nd dose," said the PM. READ | 'Covishield, Covaxin Safe With Negligible Side-effects': NITI Aayog Ahead Of Vaccine Drive READ | PM Modi To Virtually Launch Largest Vaccination Drive Along With CoWIN App On January 16 Principal Drives Bus to Take Students Back Home Safely Amid COVID-19 Staff Shortages A Kentucky school principal has added to her resume amid staff shortages owing to the pandemic. She has taken on the role of a bus driver to ensure her students get home from school safely. Janet Throgmorton of Fancy Farm Elementary in Graves County, western Kentucky, is acting principal to 184 preschool through sixth-grade students. Two of the schools bus drivers are battling COVID-19, reported Good Morning America (GMA). Principal Janet Throgmorton of Fancy Farm Elementary School in western Kentucky. (Courtesy of Janet Throgmorton) Throgmorton told GMA that her students found their Miss Janets new role very funny at first. The first couple of times I drove it was really comical because Im on the bus as the bell rings, as the kids are dismissed, Throgmorton said. The kids are like, Why are you driving the bus? Do you know how to drive the bus? Throgmorton replied in the affirmative: She got her commercial drivers license in 2018. She has even acted as a substitute bus driver for field trips during her 11-year career as a principal. Throgmorton driving the school bus. (Courtesy of Janet Throgmorton) As a driver, Throgmorton enforces hand sanitizing, mask wearing, and social distancing. Students temperatures are also taken before boarding the bus. The principal is not the only staff member to have broadened their remit amid the pandemic. Throgmorton and other school staffers have pitched in to serve food in the cafeteria, take out the trash, and pick up students in their own cars if they miss the bus. During the remote-learning phase of the 2020 school year, Throgmorton, herself a mom, even made house calls to iron out the creases. Throgmorton enlisted the help of local churches to make masks for the kids, and played anonymous matchmaker among families in need and families with plenty, to ensure that every returning student had sufficient supplies when the new semester began, reported NBC News. Throgmorton with her students (Courtesy of Janet Throgmorton) Despite the increased workload, Throgmorton believes that recent months have helped nurture a deeper connection to the student body. You help where you need to help because thats what you need to do, Throgmorton told GMA. Our goal for the entire school year is to have kids in these buildings, because we definitely believe thats where the best learning takes place. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com 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. St. Lawrence River Cape Vincent U.S. Coast Guard Kingston, Ontario Watertown Fisher Road Jefferson County Corporate Park Bob Clark Kingston Watertown 22620 Fisher Road Cape Vincent Fisher Road Old Rome State Road Watertown Kingston Coast Guard U.S. Navy Marines Kuwait Brazil Grenada Dominican Republic Watertown Mr. Clark Eric Webb David J. Zembiec Jefferson County Economic Development Corp. Empire State Development Mr. Clark Watertown Jefferson County Canada Mr. Zembiec St. Lawrence River Coast Guard Oahu, Hawaii Coast Guard Virginia Beach Mr. Clark Coast Guard's Lockheed Martin Navy Russia Turkey Mr. Clark WorkBoat Magazine's Los Angeles Port Police Mr. Clark WorkBoat magazine WorkBoat magazine Jacksonville, Fla. San Diego Mr. Clark Navy Iraq Navy Navy Navy's Mr. Clark the United States Canada Monty Smith Clayton Cape Vincent (TNS) Last summer, an unusual-looking boat turned heads when it was spotted driving along the, near, with what appeared to be no one driving it.No one was.The side of the orange-colored 22-foot cutter said it all: "UNMANNED VESSEL STAY CLEAR."The prototype unmanned vessel was built for theby MetalCraft Marine US, a-based company that moved last summer into aplant onin the"When you see that going along in the water, it's something to see," said, MetalCraft's contract manager who works out of the company'smanufacturing and design facility.The autonomous vessel is one of a variety of high-powered aluminum patrol, fire and work boats that are built right here inIn April of last year, the company purchased the 14,600-square-foot manufacturing plant atfor $800,000 from a real estate company that the Purcell family owns.Operating out of a smaller structure infor a few years, MetalCraft needed more space to grow, and thebuilding became available after EZ Stack moved toIt was a good fit because it had needed an overhead crane that ran across the top of the building and room for expansion, both inside and on the 2.3-acre parcel.Today, MetalCraft employs a workforce of 18 employees at thefacility and another 90 in three locations in. The company has contracts with theand with such countries asand theWhile it has acquired such crucial contracts, MetalCraft has a low-key presence in. The company even decided not to put up a sign on the building before moving into the facility."We already had enough business,"joked.Plant managerwill start work on Monday, an engineer was just brought in to do design work and the company is looking to hire eight to 10 riggers, specialized aluminum welders, electricians and others."It's a great company," said, executive director of the, who suggested MetalCraft take a look at the building in the corporate park for its new home.The JCEDC also helped the company obtain grants from theto acquire equipment that made production more efficient, he recalled.With 10% to 15% annual growth company-wide,saidcan expect to see more of the work being done in. MetalCraft is looking at a couple local companies to paint the boats here, resulting in not having to truck the boats intoto complete that work."That's good,"said upon hearing the news. "It's spin-off business."In the last year, MetalCraft has received some national exposure because of that autonomous vessel that glided through thethis summer.The company is leasing the prototype vessel to the, which used it to monitor a missile testing area about 40 miles off. Thecompleted its testing of the unmanned craft in November to determine if it could be used to enhance its many maritime missions with its 30 days of autonomy and a detection for tampering and intruders.Operated by GPS from acompany, the remote-controlled, diesel-driven vessel appropriately called "The Watcher" kept an eye on 20 square miles of seas for fishermen illegally entering the area, especially while missile testing was conducted."Totally bizarre,"said about its technology and capabilities of having a vessel without a driver.With a formal name of the MetalCraft Marine Unmanned Interceptor 7M, the vessel passed thetest with flying colors, proving it's capable to operate in rough seas and white waves continuously at a 24/7 clip for 30 days, he said.With technology continuing to improve, the market for autonomous vessels is growing, with harbor security, surveillance, national security and the military as their largest potential uses. For instance,has been tapped to study large unmanned vessels for the"There's lots of potential. It's going to be very big," he said. "Manless vessels make lots of sense."Whileandhave developed vessels with mounted cannons,predicts that they will instead be used more with missile launches.But the company is not receiving recognition only for The Watcher.Another one of its vessels, the Interceptor43/44, was named2020 Significant Workboat of the Year.The magazine is applauding the company for its design and craftsmanship for Interceptor43/44, a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear detection vessel that it produced for theThe $1.5 million boat is a high-performance, state-of-the-art patrol craft designed to carry out a range of tasks to support maritime security and border control. It also facilitates counter-terrorism and effective disaster relief.The vessel is equipped with sophisticated military-grade equipment and computer software that can detect chemicals within a 3.1-mile radius and the presence of nuclear particles through the steel sides of a ship.The Interceptor43/44, formerly called "Boat 42," is built for speed and stability, and can work safely in 13-foot to 17-foot waves. It has extra wide side decks with room to carry side arms, a portable 900-pound davit and seating for three officers with extra seating for a boarding party or mass rescue."For more than 30 years, we've developed a reputation as a leader in advanced technology, design and construction techniques and we are grateful for the recognition of innovation and excellence this award represents,"said.Every year, the editors ofcompile a list of the 10 most significant boats of the past year. From that top 10 list, industry peers and the readers ofvote for the Boat of the Year.In June, high-speed fireboats that the company built responded to a fire and then explosion of an auto hauler ship offThe port inalso is manned by five more of its fire boats."We're the Number One fire boat company in the world,"said.MetalCraft also provided thewith a boat that served inOne of its biggest contracts is with the. It delivered 30 boom boats that assist during oil spill responses. Theinitially wanted 40 more of the boats and now MetalCraft will produce a total of 94 by the spring of 2022. One will end up in all of thebases.credits the company's success inwith trade restrictions withgetting lifted in recent years and more liberal ways of doing business between the two countries.With a boat-building history dating back to 1676, the current version of the company began in 1987 when founderbought out Kingston Aluminum Yachts and changed its direction from yachts to a patrol and workboat market.While it continually grew throughout the 1990s, MetalCraft began operations inbefore relocating up the river toa few years later. Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Qantas boss Alan Joyce made a typical boast this week: that his airline was in a better position than any other in the world to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. If true, it's a case of being the best in a bad bunch. Just a day earlier, the peak body representing airlines globally warned that the industry remained in a "perilous" position. Forward bookings for February and March are still down 80 per cent, more airlines are set to collapse and passenger numbers are not set to recover to 2019 levels until 2023, the International Air Transport Association said. Qantas shut down its international operations and cut its domestic flying to just 5 per cent of normal levels when the crisis struck last year. Australia's almost unparalleled success in stopping the spread of coronavirus should have set the country's biggest airline up for a rapid return to the skies. But the mammoth task of repairing its finances is facing severe delays, as state governments continue to slam their borders shut at the first sign of any COVID-19 outbreak. Qantas is also rebuilding itself in a dramatically different landscape. Its main rival Virgin Australia has been revived from administration and reshaped as a leaner and meaner competitor with the backing of private equity giant Bain Capital, while country carrier Regional Express is trying to muscle in on the lucrative capital city market. Investors also appear to be realising that Qantas' recovery will take longer than previously expected. Its ASX-listed shares have fallen 15 per cent since late November. Advertisement Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has hit out at state governments for their "inconsistent" border policies that have upended his airline's recovery. Credit:Louise Kennerley The stock, trading at $4.80 on Friday, has recovered from $2.14 in March when COVID-19 put markets in a tailspin. Despite that boost, its shares remain down 30 per cent from a year ago compared to a decline of only 4.6 per cent across the benchmark ASX200 index. Joyce told a Reuters event on Wednesday that the Sydney northern beaches outbreak before Christmas, which prompted all other states to block travellers from Greater Sydney, set Qantas' recovery back by three months. The group had planned to be flying at 80 per cent of its pre-COVID domestic capacity in the first three months of this year, but Joyce said it will now only be flying at 60 per cent. Joyce also told the event he still hoped to hit 80 per cent in the June quarter this year but acknowledged the situation remained "volatile", and hit out at the states' "inconsistent" border policies. "We have to wait to see what happens with the borders were still waiting for Sydney to open up to states like Victoria and Queensland," he said. Sondal Bensan, an analyst at Pendal Group, Qantas' largest shareholder, says the airline's short-term fate is effectively out of its control. Advertisement It finds itself at the mercy of state governments deciding when to open and close borders, and its outlook hinges even more critically on how quickly Australia can roll out COVID-19 vaccines. "Theres still the opportunity to get the full domestic schedule back up before the vaccine is rolled out, but the risk of panic border closures will remain," Bensan says. "Vaccinating and getting herd immunity will be the key turning point". There's a human cost to the delayed recovery too. Around Qantas 13,500 staff remain stood down from work and receiving JobKeeper payments, which are set to expire in March. Qantas has announced 8,500 redundancies - almost a third of its workforce - since the pandemic hit, part of a cost cutting drive designed to save $15 billion over three years and lower its annual cost base by $1 billion after that. Qantas quickly raised $1.4 billion in fresh equity and $2.7 billion of new debt early in the pandemic to ensure it had sufficient liquidity to survive a long shut down of its operations. Loading After burning around $40 million a week during the depth of the crisis, Joyce reaffirmed his view that Qantas should stop bleeding cash in the first half of this year (excluding redundancy payments) provided borders are reopened. That will allow it to start paying down its $5.9 billion debt pile. Advertisement The group expects a $11 billion drop in revenue this year and is heading for another substantial statutory loss this year after ending 2020 $1.9 billion in the red. Despite this horror forecast, Joyce is optimistic Qantas can still break even this financial year on an underlying level (a measure which strips out one-off costs). Andrew Peros, the deputy head of equities research at Ausbil Investment Management, which owns about $14 million worth of Qantas shares, said the stop-start recovery was "not ideal". "However, Qantas has a high degree of flexibility in its scheduling and fleet to move aircraft around and partly mitigate the impact," he said. "The profit recovery and balance sheet repair story gets pushed out, but this is just a timing issue." While Qantas' finances are in the worst shape since 2015, Peros said its balance sheet risk has reduced materially since the vaccine roll-out was brought forward and it had more than enough cash to survive until herd immunity was achieved. There have been positive signs whenever borders have reopened, with Australians rushing to book tickets to visit friends and family after spending most of 2020 separated. Qantas was set to be flying at 70 per cent capacity at Christmas but that fell to 60 per cent after the Sydney cluster threw travel plans into disarray for tens of thousands of people in what could be a cautionary lesson for many. Advertisement You probably need a good two or three months of zero new cases for that confidence to come back into air travel. Aviation consultant Tony Webber Qantas' domestic business generates two-thirds of its profits, while its profitable frequent flyer business and freight arms have continued to deliver earnings throughout the crisis. Tourism will be the main driver of the recovery, Joyce said this week, with hopes many off the 11 million Australians who normally travel abroad every year will holiday at home. That means Qantas' budget arm Jetstar will be coming back to full capacity much faster than its full-service "red-tail" jets. And Joyce acknowledged for the first time that video conferencing, which has become ubiquitous during the pandemic, would take a bite out of travel demand from Qantas' lucrative business travellers. Tony Webber, an aviation consultant and former chief economist at Qantas, said the rush of bookings pre-Christmas may not continue because of the snap state border closures. More damaging than the loss of ticket revenue, Webber said this had destroyed the publics confidence in booking any travel in the future. There are around 70,000 Victorians stuck in NSW and trying to return home after the state enforced a hard border in response to the Sydney outbreak. "The second we get an outbreak the borders are closed and theres either a mad dash to get home, and if you cant get home youre stuck," Webber said. Advertisement BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese government spokesperson on Thursday voiced firm opposition to the latest official interaction between the United States and China's Taiwan region, calling it a challenge to the one-China principle. Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks in response to a query about the video call held Thursday between U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft and Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen. There is only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China, Zhu said, urging the U.S. side to adhere to the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques. Zhu also urged the Democratic Progressive Party authority in Taiwan to immediately stop any form of collusion with the United States. "Any act seeking 'Taiwan independence' by banking on the United States will only face grave consequences," Zhu said. 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. Ice-T has revealed Dr. Dre is now 'home, safe and looking good' after FaceTiming with the producer following his brain aneurysm. The entertainer, 62, whose full name is Tracy Lauren Marrow, sent an optimistic message on social media letting people know about his fellow rapper's road back to health, as the Dre Day artist, 55, has now left intensive care at Los Angeles's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. 'Update: Just FaceTimed with @dredre He just made it home. Safe and looking good,' the rapper tweeted on Friday. Meanwhile TMZ reported Friday that the Beats founder will also be receiving 24/7 medical care at home for the next few weeks just to make sure he is doing OK. Update: Ice-T reveals Dr. Dre is now HOME from hospital and 'safe and looking good' on Friday... after FaceTiming with the producer following his brain aneurysm The Law & Order: SVU actor has been giving fans updates on the music star this past week, and said earlier that he was 'doing good and hopefully he'll be home soon... But let's keep him in our prayers. For a full recovery.' The Newark, New Jersey native took to Twitter a day after TMZ reported that sources close to the rapper said that his doctors continue to probe what triggered the aneurysm. Insiders told the outlet that Dr. Dre's relatives have been told that a 'bad outcome' is not likely for the rapper in the medical incident. Details: Ice-T sent an optimistic message on social media letting people know about his fellow rapper's road back to health Last week, the Compton, California native put out a statement indicating he was on the upswing in the wake of the January 5 health emergency that occurred at his home in Pacific Palisades, California. 'Thanks to my family, friends and fans for their interest and well wishes,' he said. 'Im doing great and getting excellent care from my medical team.' 'I will be out of the hospital and back home soon. Shout out to all the great medical professionals at Cedars. One Love!!' The latest: Ice-T, 62, says that his friend Dr. Dre, 55, is making progress amid his recovery from a brain aneurysm Last week, the Compton, California native put out a statement indicating he was on the upswing in the wake of the January 5 health emergency that occurred at his home in Pacific Palisades, California The Newark, New Jersey native took to Twitter a day after TMZ reported that sources close to the rapper said that his doctors continue to probe what triggered the aneurysm Amid the fallout of the incident, the former N.W.A. member and his estranged wife Nicole, 51, have reached a temporary accord in their ongoing divorce proceedings, as People reported Monday that a California court ordered the ailing musical artist to pay her $2 million. 'Andre shall maintain the financial status quo,' court docs stated, 'including but not limited to the payment of all of Nicole's expenses consistent with her spending since [the] date of separation, which includes paying for all expenses relating to the Malibu residence and the residence in the Palisades.' Young filed for divorce from The Next Episode artist earlier this summer after 24 years of marriage, as they share two children - son Truice Young, 24, and daughter Truly Young, 20. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Oi prices fell sharply on Friday as fresh lockdowns across Europe and signs of new outbreaks in China revived worries about fuel demand. Benchmark Brent crude fell 1.8 percent to $55.38 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down 1.5 percent at $52.77. Germany, Europe's biggest economy, today passed two million coronavirus cases as countries tighten restrictions to curb the spread of new, more contagious strains of the disease. Portugal imposed a new nationwide lockdown while Britain requires negative tests for entry. Fresh curbs on populations were announced from Brazil to Lebanon. Amid fears of surging cases, Germany is considering a 'mega-lockdown'. France is introducing tougher restrictions for anyone entering the country from outside the EU. Elsewhere, China has put millions of people in lockdown in response to new outbreaks of Covid-19 in the north and northeast. Concerns over rising Sino-U.S. tensions also weighed on the commodity after the U.S. government blacklisted Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp and ten other companies over alleged military links. 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. New Delhi, Jan 14 (UNI) Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) president Bhupinder Singh Mann on Thursday recused himself from the four-member committee appointed by the Supreme Court to mediate with protesting farmers over the newly-enacted three agriculture reform laws. "In view of the prevailing sentiments and apprehensions amongst the farm unions and the public in general, I am ready to sacrifice my position offered or given to me so as not to compromise the interests of Punjab and farmers of the country," he said in a statement. Mr Mann, a former Rajya Sabha MP and also the Chairman of the All India Kisan Coordination Committee was one out of the four members among the expert panel constituted by the Apex Court. He was in a group of farmers that met Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Tomar in December, to express their support for the new laws. However, he was the only member in the SC committee who has not expressed broad support for the new laws. Mann supported the implementation of the laws, but with some amendments. Anil Ghanwat of Shetkari Sanghatana, Dr Pramod Kumar Joshi, a leading agri scientist and Ashok Gulati, an agricultural economist were the other three members. Maharashtra-based farmer body Shetkari Sanghatana has been backing the Centre in the entire protests while Joshi and Gulati had expressed their support in the contentious laws earlier. The committee was expected to facilitate talks between the Centre and farmers and submit its report within two months. UNI JW SB 1655 Dear Amy: My wife and I are in our mid-30s. We have been married for 10 years. Within the past year she has begun to hang out with an entirely new group of co-workers, who are in their 20s. I dont have a problem with that, but I do have a problem when these co-workers regularly bounce from one relationship to the next, and openly talk about cheating with whoever the newest doctor or resident is at the hospital where they all work. I also have a problem with my wife coming home drunk enough to pass out on the floor two or three days a week, every single week. She thinks Im being unreasonable and doesnt care to talk about any of this. I dont know how else to approach this. Can you help? Worried Spouse Dear Worried: You dont say where you live, but Im going to assume that (between the time you wrote this and its publication) your wifes bar-hopping has been interrupted by the pandemic. Your wife doesnt want to talk about this because, well, its human nature to avoid being confronted with your own risky behavior. And her behavior is very risky. Even without the additional factor raised by the pandemic, she is risking her health, her career, and her marriage. Drinking to unconsciousness is a very serious danger sign. Health care workers have extremely high paced and stressful jobs. A paper published by Mayo Clinic Proceedings noted that approximately 10 percent to 12 percent of physicians are estimated to have an addiction disorder (alcoholism would be one example). These days, many health care workers are undoubtedly feeling even more stress, and yet, their patients need and deserve to be treated by people who show up for work healthy: with adequate sleep, not hung over, and not jonesing for their next after-work drink. You should do everything possible to intervene and get your wife some desperately needed help. Dear Amy: My boyfriend of three years has made friends with a woman in Europe (online). They sing together on an app created to share music. Thats where they met. The songs sometimes feel intimate. It bothers me. To be fair, the songs are out there for others to join in, so its not as if it is entirely private. She has now become part of his daily life. They exchange Facebook messages so often that when he clicks on messages she is the first person who pops up, even before me. He says Im overreacting, and that my thoughts seem psycho since she lives in Europe and is married, and we are in California. My problem is with the constant daily interactions. Shes up at 4:30 or 5 a.m. local time in her home country, listening to his new recordings and commenting on them. Who does that? She gets up at the crack of dawn and the first thing she does is listen to my boyfriends recordings, commenting on how beautiful/lovely his voice is? (Which it is, by the way.) He says she admires his talents. I say its a bit more. Am I overreacting? He says they talk about art. I trust him, but I dont like their interactions and how all over him she is. Help. Am I being paranoid? Confused Dear Confused: Your boyfriend seems to have a super-fan. If he was performing live and the same woman came to his show, night after night excessively fangirling him you would both notice it, and, rather than calling you psycho, he would handle the fan-friendship by behaving in a way that encourages her enthusiasm but discourages an emotional involvement that is threatening to you. Fans are centrally important to a performer, but they belong in a category where the artist encourages their enthusiasm, while discouraging an exclusive or predatory sort of relationship that would interfere with their home lives, as well as the work. No, I dont think youre being paranoid. I think this fan-relationship bothers you because it has become very time consuming, seems to be growing, and because your boyfriend is encouraging it, while at the same time blaming you for following your instincts and honestly expressing your concern. Dear Amy: Hanging On had a longtime partner who had terrible hygiene and lazy household habits. You focused on their unhealthy relationship, but this person needs to see a doctor! Upset Dear Upset: Hanging On has a partner who seems to have an array of problems, which had been percolating for the entire length of their 30-year relationship. I agree that she needs help. (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.) Medical staff have been battling to cope with the carnage in Irish hospitals since Christmas because of the explosion in Covid-19 cases. One junior doctor said that nurses, medics and support staff in Cork University Hospital (CUH) were now out on their feet due to exhaustion in trying to cope with the combination of soaring case numbers and roster pressure from large numbers of personnel being off work. Another staff member at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) which has recorded the most Covid-19 cases of any Irish acute hospital warned that they felt overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the third virus wave. UHL had the highest number of confirmed cases (142) of any hospital in the country followed by CUH (139), Galway University Hospital (127), St Vincents Hospital Dublin (123) and Drogheda Hospital (110). Only three critical care beds were left available at UHL. Twelve seriously ill Covid-19 patients were being treated at the 28-bed critical care unit. A UL Hospitals spokesperson confirmed there were a total of 574 staff across UL Hospitals Group unavailable for work due to Covid-19. The majority of staff are based at UHL where there were 201 nurses and healthcare attendants unavailable for work. More than 4,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in Limerick over the past two weeks, including 165 new cases announced by Nphet. CUH is one of six acute hospitals in Ireland struggling to cope with more than 100 Covid-19 cases. A total of 1,686 patients are being treated in Irish hospitals for the virus. At one point, more than 140 CUH staff, including 100 nurses, were off work having either tested positive for the virus or having been a close contact of a positive case. A further 14 Irish hospitals have each got 50 or more cases of the virus. The CUH junior doctor who asked to be unnamed said staff were called to a meeting and briefed that they were now facing the peak crisis of the entire pandemic. Read More There are times you look around and you wonder how much more pressure the system can take. You can see the strain on the faces of doctors and nurses, she said. It has been very tough. It was tough last April and May when the first wave peaked but this has been something else altogether. Even medical rotations have effectively been suspended as doctors struggle to cope with the demands of soaring patient numbers. The commitment of doctors, nurses, hospital support staff and managers has been incredible, but you can see the toll it is taking on everyone, she said. I left a ward a few days ago and went into a store room to find a nurse crying. I still dont know if it was exhaustion, stress or worry about a loved one with Covid. Junior doctors have borne the brunt of the pandemic third wave by working longer hours, taking extra shifts to cover for sick colleagues and postponing leave. A few of my classmates opted to work as junior doctors in Australia and New Zealand and their work demands are like night-and-day compared to ours. When I chat to them on social media and explain what it has been like here since Christmas, they just cant believe it and some of them worked here throughout the first wave of the virus. The UHL staff member admitted the situation was challenging. The last two weeks it has gone ballistic with the number of Covid patients coming in. We are down staff and there are areas of the hospital full of Covid patients, said the source. We have doubled down on numbers; in corridors they are on top of one another. Its impossible to maintain social distancing in the ED, and staff are demoralised and overwhelmed, they added. Some 2,400 staff across the groups UHL, Ennis Hospital and University Limerick Maternity Hospital facilities have received the first of two vaccine doses. A similar number of the groups staff at Nenagh Hospital, St Johns Hospital, Croom Orthopaedic Hospital have not. Ultimately, the vaccine will be rolled out across all hospitals in UL Hospitals Group, a UL Hospitals spokesman said. Currently, we are prioritising staff in intensive care and high-dependency units, in our emergency care and Covid admission pathways, and on our Covid-positive wards, so that we can continue managing our emergency services. We are currently issuing as much vaccine as possible, based on availability of vaccine and clinical prioritisation. "All staff will be offered the vaccine regardless of employment status or grade. "This includes temporary staff, agency staff and contractors and students on clinical placements. "We look forward to rolling out the vaccine programme to the other sites in UL Hospitals Group. 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 President-elect Joe Biden referred to the Trump supporters who assaulted and ransacked the Capitol as domestic terrorists, but his incoming administration has yet to decide what new laws, if any, it needs to address domestic terrorism. The Biden-Harris campaign website states that a Biden administration will work for a domestic terrorism law that respects free speech and civil liberties, while making the same commitment to root out domestic terrorism as we have to stopping international terrorism. But free-speech and civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have strongly opposed the idea of domestic terrorism law out of concern that future administrations, or law enforcement, might abuse such a statute. Decades of experience have shown how law enforcement uses broad terrorism-related authorities to target and surveil Black and Brown people, including those engaged in protest, said Hugh Handeyside, a senior attorney for the ACLU. A new domestic terrorism statute, even if intended to protect communities of color, would inevitably be used to harm them. A person familiar with the Biden teams thinking denied that the pledge on the campaign website amounted to a promise to seek a specific new law. It was intended to be a commitment to explore how legislation can help on this issue, but it wasnt a commitment to a particular type of law, the person said. President-elect Joe Biden speaks during an event at The Queen theater on Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (Matt Slocum/AP) But four other people with direct knowledge of the incoming administrations behind-the-scenes discussions with the ACLU and other groups over the last few months said Bidens team has backed off their plans to pursue a potential statute. The real concern is that it wont withstand constitutional challenges because of the First Amendment, said another person working with the Biden team. Some from Bidens team who initially pushed for a new law now say other counterterrorism strategies may better accomplish the same goals but receive less pushback and face fewer civil liberties challenges. There are at least two types of possible domestic terrorism statutes. One would mirror the current definition for international terrorism and involve designating groups as domestic terrorist organizations, thus criminalizing association with them. Such an approach would run up against challenges based on the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and association. For that reason, this sort of statute is not under serious consideration, according to the person familiar with the Biden teams thinking. The designation idea, its not something getting a lot of focus right now its so fraught, the person said. Another option, advocated by Mary McCord, former acting assistant attorney general for national security with the Justice Department, is a statute that categorizes politically motivated violence as domestic terrorism, with potentially stiffer penalties than similar offenses that are not politically motivated, in much the same way as hate crime legislation encompasses violent crimes motivated by racial or other hatred. Essentially, you have to have an underlying crime but it would be punished as domestic terrorism if it was with this intent to intimidate or coerce a government or civilian population, she told Yahoo News. Dylann Roof was charged with multiple counts of federal hate crimes after killing nine people in a racist attack at a Charleston, S.C. church in 2015. (Chuck Burton/AP) Such a statute would fill a gap, according to McCord. None of our terrorism acts apply to mass shootings or vehicle rammings unless theyre tied to a foreign terrorist organization, she said. And yet mass shootings are the most common type of terrorist attack [in the United States] and car rammings are really kind of climbing up there as well. The Biden team has not decided against this sort of law but would prefer to wait until it can see how things look once they are in power, according to the person familiar with the teams thinking. There are worries that even a narrowly written law might be abused by a future administration. Attaching criminal sanctions specifically to acts of domestic terrorism is something that deserves the full visibility of being in government, seeing the threat, seeing the response, thinking through how it could be mishandled by some future administration, the person said, noting the inherent tension in trying to combat a largely white supremacist threat without creating legal tools that might be used in discriminatory ways against minority populations under future administrations Despite her support for a law that focuses on terrorist acts, McCord said she did not view the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6 as a major rallying cry for a domestic terrorism statute, because there are already very serious offenses on the books that accurately depict the crimes committed. The problem with prosecuting a terrorist murder in the same way as any other murder is that the word murder alone doesnt condemn it the way it needs to be condemned as terrorism, McCord said. But what happened last week was insurrection and [the offenses of] insurrection and seditious conspiracy do reflect that its an attempt to overthrow the government or to prevent the government from functioning the way it should function. Rioters trying to enter Capitol building clash with police on Jan. 6, 2021. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, struck a similar tone during a Tuesday pressconference. After commenting that he didnt like the tyranny of labels when asked whether some of the Jan. 6 crimes amounted to domestic terrorism, Sherwin said there were already plenty of federal charges to address all of this conduct, from felony murder related to the possession and use of destructive devices to seditious conspiracy. The Justice Department had formed a task force of senior prosecutors Monday whose only marching orders are to build sedition and conspiracy charges related to the most heinous acts that occurred in the Capitol, Sherwin said. Convictions on such significant charges come with prison terms of up to 20 years, he added. This was a point echoed by Jamil Jaffer, a former chief counsel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There are enough charges that I bet you if you ran consecutive sentences, some of these guys could be in jail for a really long time, he said. Jaffer cautioned against rushing to create a new domestic terrorism law. The answer isnt always to create a new crime, he said. Its not like anybody who did what they did at the Capitol would have been shamed out of doing it if they thought domestic terrorism was a crime. Like Handeyside, the ACLU lawyer, Jaffer said that any discussion over whether to create a domestic terrorism statute must be informed by U.S. history. The reason we are very cautious about domestic activities and what we call them and how we investigate them is because we want to avoid the abuses of the 1960s, where we investigated Joan Baez and Martin Luther King and the like, he said. We want to be cautious about that. We dont want to use these tools for purely political purposes. Singer Joan Baez (center) is advised her of her Constitutional rights by police just prior to her arrest in front of the Oakland Induction Center on Oct. 16, 1967. Baez and about 75 others were arrested as they attempted to block draftees from entering the center. More than 600 people took place in the demonstration. (Bettmann Archive via Getty Images) Bidens advisors are aware of and considering these arguments, according to the person familiar with the Biden teams thinking. Those concerns are being heard, the person said, adding that the president-elect is bringing some of the voices whove been critical to this whole conversation, such as Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, into senior positions in his Justice Department. As an alternative to drafting a new domestic terrorism law, the Biden team is discussing a proposal to deploy prosecutorial teams from the Justice Department to states to assist prosecutors in building cases, said lawyers involved in the conversation. Several states have their own domestic terrorism statutes and federal support could be given to leverage those laws, they said. Even if they decide to pursue a domestic terrorism statute in the long run, the Biden team that takes charge Jan. 20 knows it has to meet the immediate domestic terrorism challenge by using the laws and other resources at hand now. Its a Day One problem, said the person familiar with the Biden teams thinking, and the new administration is going to begin tackling it with Day One tools. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: 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. Union Home Minister will lay the foundation stone of campus of a newly-raised battalion of CRPF's Rapid Action Force (RAF) at Bhadravati in Shivamogga district of during his two-day visit to the state beginning Saturday. After laying the foundation stone of the campus on Saturday, the Home Minister will flag off Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) vehicles and will also inaugurate police quarters under the Police Gruha-2020 scheme. On Sunday, Shah will inaugurate ethanol project of Kedarnath Sugar and Agro Products Ltd followed by the inauguration of KLE Hospital's advanced simulation centre. He will also address a public rally at Belagavi. The newly-raised battalion of the Rapid Action Force has been allotted land for its campus at Bhadravati in Shivamogga district of Karnataka, said in a press release. Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa will also be present at the 'bhoomi poojan' ceremony at the campus. Rapid Action Force is a specialized Force of to maintain public order and handle riots and riot-like situations. The release said RAF is a neutral, professional force specialized in its task, which reaches the site of crisis in 'zero response time'. "RAF responds to the vulnerable sections of the society promptly and provides succour to the victims with the motto 'To serve humanity with sensitive policing'", it 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.) A 53-year-old woman who is wanted in Northern Ireland for the alleged theft of six designer handbags has been refused permission to seek bail. Catherine Gaffney, with an address at Carraroe Avenue, Grange, Dublin 13, is in custody in the Dochas Centre at Mountjoy Prison as a result of convictions at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and will be surrendered to the UK authorities on completion of her sentence. The Court of Appeal heard today that the Dochas Centre has decided Gaffney qualifies for temporary release as part of a programme to help prisoners reintegrate into the community. However, she was unable to take up temporary release due to the European Arrest Warrant and therefore applied to the High Court for bail. The High Court refused on the grounds that if Ms Gaffney is released from prison she should be surrendered to the UK authorities. Ms Gaffney appealed that decision to the Court of Appeal. Ronan Munro SC for Ms Gaffney argued today that the High Court still has jurisdiction to grant bail even when a person is being held in custody pending surrender under a European Arrest Warrant. Mr Justice John Edwards delivered the judgment of the three-judge court saying that section 27 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 is "explicit and unambiguous" in stating that a person in Ms Gaffney's situation, "shall not be remanded on bail or otherwise released from custody." Mr Justice Edwards, sitting with President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham and Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, dismissed the appeal. Gaffney is wanted in Northern Ireland in respect of three alleged theft offences, one attempted theft offence and one offence of obstructing a Constable in the execution of his duty. Counts one and two on the warrant state that Gaffney stole Mulberry handbags valued at 2,785 on July 7 and 8 2016, which belonged to Stephen Mewha, an employee of House of Fraser in Belfast. The items were not recovered. The third offence alleges that Gaffney stole a further three Mulberry handbags at the same store and valued at 3,000 on November 19, 2016. The warrant states that the respondent placed a blue handbag and two red handbags into her blue reusable shopping bag before she left the shop. The fourth offence on the warrant claims that Gaffney attempted to steal a seventh Mulberry handbag as well as a purse valued at 1,500 at the same store on December 10, 2016. The warrant states that staff detained Gaffney that day for theft believing her to be the same female responsible for previous thefts. A member of store security followed her after she placed the handbag and purse into her carrier bag and walked off toward the exit without offering payment. However, she lifted the handbag and purse out of the carrier bag and "dumped" them on a shelf when she realised that she was being followed. The respondent was detained by security staff and the police were called. The fifth alleged offence relates to Gaffney obstructing a Constable in the execution of his duty on December 10, 2016. By the time a decision was made to prosecute the respondent in January 2017, she had left the jurisdiction. 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. (HealthDay)An inhaled medication might make every day physical activity a bit easier for patients with serious scarring of the lungs, a new clinical trial finds. The study, published online Jan. 13 in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved patients with high blood pressure in the lungs caused by interstitial lung disease (ILD). ILD is a broad term for progressive scarring of the tissue surrounding the lungs' air sacs and blood vessels. It can have a range of causes, from smoking, to occupational exposure to toxins like asbestos, as well as autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes, no cause can be found. A potential, and serious, complication of that scarring is pulmonary hypertension, in which the vessels that supply blood to the lungs become hard and narrow. Once pulmonary hypertension arises, patients can become so short of breath they have difficulty walking, and often need to use more supplemental oxygen. The complication may also shorten their lives. Right now, no medication is approved specifically for pulmonary hypertension caused by ILD, said Dr. Steven Nathan, senior researcher on the new trial. He's director of the Advanced Lung Disease and Lung Transplant Program at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va. There are, however, drugs for another form of pulmonary hypertension, known as pulmonary arterial hypertension. Those medications are vasodilators, which means they help blood vessels in the lungs relax and widen. And Nathan's team found that one of theman inhaled medication called Tyvaso (treprostinil)improved exercise capacity in patients with ILD. Over 16 weeks, patients randomly assigned to use the drug were able to improve their performance on a six-minute treadmill walk. Beyond that, their lung disease remained more stable. About 23% showed a worsening, compared to 33% of patients randomly assigned to take a placebo (an inactive inhaled solution). The trial is the first to "unequivocally" show benefits of vasodilator medication for patients with pulmonary hypertension caused by ILD, according to Nathan. The study period was short, however, (16 weeks) and it's unclear what the long-term effects would be, including whether the therapy can help extend patients' lives. But current medications for pulmonary arterial hypertension have been approved on the basis of even shorter trials, Nathan pointed out. He said the new findings should be enough for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve Tyvaso for ILD patients. "It's enough evidence for me to prescribe it for my patients," Nathan added. (Doctors are allowed to prescribe FDA-approved medications for unapproved uses when they believe it's medically appropriate.) Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association, described the results as encouraging. "These patients are very impaired," he said, and an improvement on the six-minute walk test is important. In part, that's because walking is a key part of managing the lung disease. "We want patients to stay active," Rizzo said, "and walking is the best exercise for them." A broader goal, he said, is to improve patients' quality of life. In this trial, patients using Tyvaso did not rate their quality of life any higher than placebo patients did. But the study's primary goal was to assess exercise capacity, which is an initial step, Rizzo said. Larger, longer studies are needed to answer questions about quality of life and survival, he added. The trial, funded by Tyvaso maker United Therapeutics, involved 326 patients. Half were randomly assigned to use the inhaler drug every day for 16 weeks; the other half received an identical-looking placebo. During that time, patients on the drug improved their walking distance on treadmill tests, while placebo patients generally declined. On average, Tyvaso patients managed to go about 100-feet farther. The main side effects were cough and throat irritation from using the inhaler. If Tyvaso is approved for ILD patients, Nathan foresees it as being another tool doctors can prescribe, along with oxygen therapy and pulmonary rehabilitation (which involves supervised exercise). Even though doctors can prescribe the drug without an official approval, Rizzo said patients should be aware that their insurance plan might balk at covering it. And the drug is costly, topping $100,000 a year, according to CVS Health. Rizzo noted that many patients with serious, progressive lung disease may not know whether they have pulmonary hypertension. He suggested they ask their doctors whether they've been tested for it, and if they do have the condition, whether there are any additional therapies they should be getting. Explore further Inhaled treprostinil beneficial in pulmonary hypertension Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) joins fellow members of the Problem Solvers Caucus during a news conference in Washington on Dec. 3, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) State Republican Parties Criticize GOP Representatives Who Voted to Impeach Trump Republicans who joined Democrats in voting to impeach President Donald Trump this week faced harsh criticism from Republican parties in their states. While zero Republicans voted to impeach Trump last year, 10 crossed the aisle in the Jan. 13 vote. Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), Tom Rice (R-S.C.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) voted to impeach Trump. Cheney was the most high-profile vote. Shes the No. 3 Republican in the House, and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Wyoming Republican Party said its phone was ringing nonstop while its email inbox was filling up and its website was seeing a deluge of traffic. The consensus is clear that those who are reaching out to the Party vehemently disagree with Representative Cheneys decision and actions, the party said in a statement. Wyoming voted for Trump in 2020. He won 70 percent of the vote. Representative Cheney is in Washington, D.C. to represent Wyomings interest, not the interest of the beltway elites. President Trump did not incite anyone to riot. Read the transcript of what he said and watch the video, the Wyoming GOP said, listing two examples of comments it received from voters. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday rebuffed calls to remove Cheney from her leadership position and Cheneys spokesman sent an emailed statement of her saying, Im not going anywhere. This is a vote of conscience. Its one where there are different views in our conference. But our nation is facing an unprecedented, since the civil war, constitutional crisis. Thats what we need to be focused on. Thats where our efforts and attention need to be, she added. The Conservative Party of New York State said it is very disappointed with Katkos support of impeachment. We consider his action ill-informed. It will do nothing to end the national divide and will likely further aggravate it, it said in a tweet. Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) walks in the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 13, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images) Katko said on the House floor this week that the presidents role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is undeniable. Both on social media on Jan. 6 and in his speech that day, he deliberately promoted baseless theories, creating a combustible environment of misinformation and division, Katko said. South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said Rice shouldnt have voted for impeachment. Democrats have been looking for any excuse to get rid of President Trump ever since he set foot in the Oval Office, McKissick said in a statement. We completely disagree with this sham and to say Im severely disappointed in Congressman Tom Rice would be an understatement. Rice, who voted for both electoral vote objections on Jan. 6 and suggested on Monday he opposed impeaching Trump, announced Wednesday that he considered what happened an utter failure for Trump. Under the strict definition of the law, I dont know if the Presidents speech last Wednesday morning amounted to incitement of a riot, but any reasonable person could see the potential for violence, Rice said. The congressman also noted that Trump didnt immediately condemn the violence, though he later that day called for protesters to go home. The Republican parties of Ohio, Illinois, Washington state, California, and Michigan havent commented on the impeachment votes. All but the Ohio GOP didnt respond to requests for comment; the Ohio GOP couldnt be reached. The Michigan Republican Party shared a tweet from Meijer on Tuesday that was unrelated to the impeachment, while California GOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson tweeted Tuesday that we are excited to have Valadao back in Congress. HARTFORD, Conn., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Covr Financial Technologies (Covr) , Americo Financial Life and Annuity Insurance Company (Americo), and global reinsurer SCOR are today announcing the launch of LoanMatch Protector, a first-of-its-kind life insurance policy customized to a consumer's specific loan amortization schedule. This new collaboration brings LoanMatch Protector to customers of banks, credit unions, lenders, e-banks and direct lenders through Covr's industry-leading, white-labeled digital life insurance platform. Covr has made it easy for customers of their partner financial institutions to purchase coverage during or after their loan applications through seamless digital integration with the institution's technology. The creation of LoanMatch Protector has brought together three influential organizations in the U.S. life insurance industry, with Americo, an "A" (Excellent) rated insurance carrier by A.M Best, SCOR as one of the nation's largest reinsurance companies, and Covr Financial Technologies as the digital technology engine. The LoanMatch Protector solution addresses the need for affordable and easy-to-attain life insurance protection when individuals and businesses take out loans. The insurance amount closely matches the amount of the loan, saving customers 30% or more compared to level term life insurance solutions. The process can be completed in less than 15 minutes and eliminates the need for a time-consuming medical examination 88% of the time for coverage amounts up to $1 million. Covr's leading-edge, white-labeled digital consumer life insurance platform uses API functionality and predictive analytics to seamlessly integrate the LoanMatch Protector product into any distributor's model. Covr's platform offers a turnkey suite of life insurance offerings for financial institutions, including single session 'apply and buy' insurance, multi-carrier insurance solutions, needs analysis tools, educational content, and telephone-based sales support. "LoanMatch Protector is an example of market-leading innovation in the life insurance space. In a time of increased consumer demand for life insurance, Covr, Americo and SCOR have joined forces to develop a product that truly provides a highly desirable and personalized life insurance policy for consumers that is linked to their loan amount," said Mike Kalen, Covr CEO. "With a 100-year history of financial strength and innovation, Americo is thrilled to collaborate with Covr and SCOR to issue the LoanMatch Protector product. It fills a much-needed gap in the life insurance marketplace," said Phil Polkinghorn, President and CEO of Americo. "LoanMatch Protector brings together SCOR's track record of leading-edge innovation in the insurance industry, Americo's long-standing reputation in the life insurance space, and Covr's market-leading digital platform, to provide a best-in-class life insurance product that is truly unique in the market," said Richard De Sousa, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, SCOR. About Covr Financial Technologies Inc. Covr partners with financial brands to provide life insurance solutions to their customers in an efficient, easy way that streamlines the process of selling and buying policies. Covr offers a choice of trusted life insurance products from leading insurance carriers, an easy way to compare rates, and the ability to purchase policies within minutes. Through its white label solutions, Covr helps financial institutions deliver a great experience under an existing brand their customers already trust. Covr currently serves over 25,000 financial advisors and over 10 million customers across over 30 financial institutions. For more information, visit covrtech.com or follow us @covrtech and on LinkedIn. Covr's investors include eight leading venture capital firms: Nyca Partners, Commerce Ventures, Allianz Life Ventures, Connectivity Capital Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Aflac Ventures, Fairview Capital, and Connecticut Innovations. Covr's Advisory Board includes financial services leaders, including Chairman Brian Finn, former president of Credit Suisse First Boston; Joe Plumeri, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of First Data Corporation and former CEO of Citibank North America; Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest as well as senior executive roles at Bank of America, Citigroup and Smith Barney; Hans Morris, managing partner, Nyca Partners, chairman of Lending Club, formerly president of Visa; Brady Dougan, former CEO of Credit Suisse; Gregg Fleming of Rockefeller Capital and Bob Kerzner, formerly CEO of LIMRA. About Americo Life, Inc. Americo Life, Inc.'s family of insurance companies is committed to providing the Life Insurance, Annuity, and Medicare Supplement solutions consumers need to protect their families and future. Innovative thinking has helped Americo Life, Inc. build a strong financial foundation for its business. Americo Financial Life and Annuity Insurance Company (Americo) is the lead company with more than $27.9 billion of life insurance in force and over $7 billion in assets for year-end 2019. Americo has a financial strength rating of A with A.M. Best (Excellent, 3rd out of 15 rating categories). A.M. Best's rating is assigned after a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation of a company's balance sheet strength, operating performance, and business profile. A.M. Best uses a scale of 15 ratings, ranging from "A++" to "F." For more information, please visit www.americo.com. About SCOR, a Global Tier 1 Reinsurer SCOR, the world's fourth largest reinsurer, offers its clients a diversified and innovative range of solutions and services to control and manage risk. Applying the "The Art & Science of Risk", SCOR uses its industry-recognized expertise and cutting-edge financial solutions to serve its clients and contribute to the welfare and resilience of society. SCOR offers its clients an optimal level of security with its AA- rating from S&P and Fitch. The Group generated premiums of more than EUR 16 billion in 2019 and serves clients in more than 160 countries from its 38 offices worldwide. For more information, visit www.SCOR.com. SOURCE Covr Financial Technologies, Inc. Related Links http://www.covrtech.com China has honoured a virologist of a controversial Wuhan-based bio-lab, which was at the centre of Covid-19 storm, as a WHO team arrived at the Chinese city to probe the origins of the coronavirus. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology who has earned the moniker of 'Bat Woman' for her passionate research into bats and viruses was honoured as an "advanced worker of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)", the state-run Global Times reported, citing a WIV announcement on Friday. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Outgoing US President Donald Trump has alleged that the novel coronavirus emanated from WIV before it spread across the world and claimed millions of lives and shattered global economies. Ever since the virus outbreak came to light in Wuhan in December last, speculation has been rife on whether the viral strain originated from China's premier virology institute or from its nearby Huanan Seafood Market. Shi was honoured along with 20 advanced workers during the CAS 2021 annual work conference held in Beijing, said Liu Lijun, director of the National Commendation and Rewarding Office of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. She was praised as adhering to the scientific values of innovation, serving the country and benefiting people, and fought hard and never flinched in the face of difficulties and challenges, the report said. Shi came under the spotlight of local and global media after Trump's allegation. Trump had asked China to permit the US to conduct a probe, which Beijing ignored. Curiously, after her name appeared in the local and foreign media early last year, Shi conspicuously disappeared for months amid rumours that she had defected to a western country. But she suddenly resurfaced in official Chinese media and denied reports of her defection to the West and questioned Trumps allegation that the virus emerged from WIV. "Trump's claim jeopardises and affects our academic work and personal lives. He owes us an apology," she was quoted by official media. Significantly, Shi's "honour" by CAS coincides with the arrival of the 13-member World Health Organisation (WHO) team to Wuhan on Thursday to probe the origins of Covid-19. The WHO experts are currently put up in a hotel in Wuhan to serve 14-day quarantine. Their site visits in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December 2019, are expected to include the WIV and the wet market, where the deadly virus was suspected to have been transmitted from live animals like bats to humans. The market remained closed and sealed since early last year. The WHO team's visit has become a bone of contention as Beijing, which questions the widely-held view about the virus' origins in Wuhan, delayed granting permission to it. China says the virus has appeared in many places in the world and it only reported first. Meanwhile, China on Friday permitted one of the two WHO experts, earlier barred from travelling to Wuhan for testing Covid-19 positive, to join his colleagues in the Chinese city. A British and a Sudanese scientist from Qatar tested positive for Covid-19 in Singapore, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing here on Friday. As a show of support to WHO, China has agreed to conduct the required tests again, he said The results of the British expert showed negative but the Sudanese expert from Qatar still showed positive. So we have agreed for the British expert to travel to China," Zhao said. We will remain in contact with WHO on this relevant matter and jointly work towards greater cooperation on this origin tracing work," he said. The WHO team includes virus and other experts from the US, Australia, Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia, the Netherlands, Qatar and Vietnam. Meanwhile, Covid-19 cases continue to rise in China after it managed to contain the virus earlier. Chinas National Health Commission on Friday reported 144 new Covid-19 cases, of whom 135 were locally transmitted. Of the locally transmitted cases, 90 were reported in Hebei, 43 in Heilongjiang and one each in Guangxi and Shaanxi, the commission said. On Wednesday, China reported its first death due to coronavirus in eight months. Hebei province, bordering Beijing, continues to be the new hotbed for the spread of the virus. Several cities with millions of people in Hebei are under lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus. China has largely brought the virus under control through quick mass testing, stringent lockdowns and tight travel restrictions. China has so far reported 87,988 Covid-19 cases and 4,635 deaths due to the disease. According to Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker, over 93,227,340 people have been confirmed with the disease across the world and more than 1,996,620 people have died. 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. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 14) President Rodrigo Duterte said he is determined to leave Malacanang in 2022 even amid the possibility of a term extension due to the revival of charter change talks in Congress. "Maski ibigay mo sakin on a silver platter, maski ibigay mo sa akin libre another ten years sabihin ko sayo, p******na mo, iyo na lang yan, tapos na ako," Duterte said in a speech at the inauguration of the Skyway Stage 3 project in Quezon City. [Translation: Even if you give it (term extension) to me on a silver platter, even if you give me ten years for free, take it. I am done.] Earlier, Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III revealed that lawmakers met with Duterte in November to talk about changes to the Constitution. The President suggested amending the party-list system and some economic provisions, Sotto said. On Monday, before Congress resumed session, the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments convened and started deliberations on economic provisions of the 1987 charter. Their session, however, was hounded by concerns over whether or not they were already meeting as a constituent assembly or Con-Ass. A Con-Ass means members of the House of Representatives and the Senate together will decide on constitutional amendments, unlike the constitutional convention which requires nationwide elections to select delegates. Committee chairman Alfredo Garbin and vice chairman Lorenz Defensor had maintained the panel only limits itself to discussions on economic provisions, and will not tackle any possible political amendments, such as term extensions and the abolition of term limits among national and local government officials. MANAUS/BRASILIA: Brazils Air Force delivered emergency oxygen supplies on Friday to the jungle state of Amazonas devastated by a resurgent pandemic and the government scrambled to organize a nationwide vaccine effort while President Jair Bolsonaro said he should be at the beach." Doctors in the northern Brazilian state were using their own vehicles to transport patients, as locals sought to buy oxygen tanks on the black market, according to media reports. Desperate relatives, protesting outside hospitals in the state capital of Manaus, said patients had been taken off ventilators as oxygen ran out. Health authorities there said oxygen supplies had run out at some hospitals and intensive care wards were so full that scores of patients were being airlifted to other states. The Air Force flew cylinders with 9,300 kilograms of oxygen in from Sao Paulo state with another cargo expected on Friday. It said a flight carried nine patients from Manaus to Teresina in northeastern Brazil, and evacuations will continue with two planes taking patients to six cities. Officials had planned to airlift 61 premature babies in incubators out of Manaus, but the relocation ultimately was not needed because emergency oxygen supplies were procured. A government plan to start inoculating Brazilians against COVID-19 early next week was in disarray. Right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro said a plane standing by since Friday to pick up 2 million doses of an AstraZeneca vaccine from Indias Serum Institute would now depart in two or three days." Brazils Health Ministry requested immediate delivery of 6 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Chinas Sinovac and imported by Sao Paulo states Butantan biomedical center, saying it needed them for its planned launch of immunizations next week. I SHOULD BE AT THE BEACH" Health regulator Anvisa was set to decide on authorizing emergency use of Sinovacs Coronavac as well as the AstraZeneca vaccine on Sunday. Bolsonaro, who has denied the gravity of COVID-19 and has stated he will not be vaccinated, said in a television interview there was little he could do about the pandemic as a second wave of the new coronavirus tore through the country. I should be at the beach right now," he said on Band TV, adding that his health minister was doing an exceptional job." Critics of the president said the grim situation in Manaus was just the latest example of his poor handling of the worlds second highest COVID-19 death toll after the United States. Brazil is now dealing with a snowballing second wave and a new, potentially more contagious, coronavirus variant that originated in Amazonas and prompted Britain on Thursday to bar entry to Brazilians. Bolsonaro, a former army captain who has opposed lockdowns to halt the pandemics spread, said the government had already done what it could in Manaus. INDIA MUST DECIDE The hoped-for 2 million AstraZeneca doses from the Serum Institute now face delays while India decides whether to loosen export regulations as it begins its own inoculation drive this weekend, a source briefed on the matter said. India will be able to decide on exports of coronavirus vaccines within the next few weeks, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told Reuters this week. The policy of course is we will start the rollout in India. We have our own challenges," Jaishankar said. The worldwide coronavirus death toll surpassed 2 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally. In Amazonas, emergency services were pushed to a breaking point and Governor Nelson Lima announced a 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. statewide curfew to fight the spread of coronavirus. 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 Michigan law enforcement agencies are increasing security around the state Capitol to prevent possible violence at armed demonstrations planned before President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration next week. The Michigan National Guard, FBI, State Police and Lansing-area officials held a press briefing Friday to outline security measures in downtown Lansing ahead of protests on Sunday, Jan. 17. Michigan State Police Col. Joseph Gasper said online groups planning marches on state capitols in all 50 states raised concerns after a pro-Trump mob sieged the U.S. Capitol in violent riots last week. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer activated the Michigan National Guard to help protect facilities and key infrastructure in downtown Lansing. The Michigan State Police increased the number of uniformed troopers in and around the Capitol Monday and a six-foot fence is being erected around the building and Lansing City Hall. Fences are going up around Lansing City Hall in anticipation of armed protests at the Capitol. Michigan State Police is holding a press briefing this morning. pic.twitter.com/4hkRNW5cpI Malachi Barrett (@PolarBarrett) January 15, 2021 Gasper said the heightened presence of officers at the Capitol will remain in place until at least mid-February and is accompanied by other covert security measures police are keeping secret. Lansing Police Chief Daryl Green described the response as unprecedented preparedness. Police did not reveal details about specific groups involved in planning the Jan. 17 demonstration or their goals. Gasper said MSP has been organizing its response during the last 7-10 days but did not disclose the number of officers or their security assignments. Gasper said police did not want to provide an advantage to those who wish to cause disruption to government and our democracy. Its important that we keep some of the details of what were doing covert so that we do not lose the element of surprise, Gasper said. If you are going to come down to the Capitol and demonstrate peacefully, then we will provide that safe space for you. If you are coming to the Capitol to engage in some nefarious activity, then we are also very well prepared to address that. Businesses in downtown Lansing also boarded up street-facing windows Friday. Police indicated there will be several road closures in effect for downtown Lansing on Sunday. Lansing Mayor Andy Schor advised residents who live in the downtown area to avoid the Capitol on Sunday and Wednesday, Jan. 20. Green said the Lansing Police Department practices constitutional policing and firmly believes in the right to express the first and second amendment. We just ask that you do it safely and that you respect our city and respect our state Capitol, Green said. On a press call organized by the Voter Protection Program, former chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia Chuck Ramsey said extremist groups planning Jan. 17 demonstrations at state Capitols may change plans now that law enforcement is geared up to meet them. Ramsey said police shouldnt lower guard even after the inauguration on Jan. 20. The FBI opened numerous investigations in Michigan related to people involved in illegal activity at the Jan. 6 riots in Washington D.C. Tim Waters, special agent in charge of the Detroit field office, said the FBI will be at a heightened posture to share information with local partners. Our focus is on identifying violent agitators and extremists who use the guise of First Amendment protected activity to incite violence and wreak havoc, as we saw at the Capitol, Waters said. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to identify, investigate and disrupt these individuals in line with the FBI mission. That is, to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. Police are also asking Michigan residents to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. Waters said tips can be reported to 1-800-CALL-FBI. The FBI is using all tools at our disposal to identify those who took part in the violence at the Capitol, Waters said. Our intent is to work with the US Attorneys Office to hold those who participated in criminal activity accountable for their actions. Gasper said protection of people and property is the number one goal of law enforcement. He said MSP has experience responding to larger protests, citing dozens of demonstrations against COVID-19 restrictions throughout 2020 at the Capitol. READ MORE ON MLIVE: Whitmer activates Michigan National Guard ahead of protests at Capitol Extreme rhetoric thrives on alternative social media sites growing after Facebook, Twitter crackdown Michigan Republicans join House Democrats to impeach Trump for inciting Capitol riots Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Stamas, R-Midland, issued the following statement after state fiscal and economic leaders made their economic and state tax revenue projections during Fridays annual January Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference. After a year of unimaginable challenges, we must continue to be wise and guarded with state spending and ensure our fiscal plans are crafted with the future in mind. In Memoriam Greg Kaser It is with sadness that we bring news of the passing of Greg Kaser, who died on 12 January 2021, following a short illness after contracting COVID-19. He was 65. Greg was a senior project manager for World Nuclear Association with responsibility for supply chain and security issues. In his nearly 10 years with the Association he oversaw four editions of its World Nuclear Supply Chain report, as well as publications on export controls, counterfeit, fraudulent and suspect items, as well as new build lesson-learning. With the Security Working Group, he had recently issued a series of six briefings for members on key aspects of nuclear security. Greg also managed the Economics Working Group for six years. He was regularly invited to represent the nuclear industry at meetings with the International Atomic Energy Agency, European Commission and Vendor Inspection Cooperation Group of the Multinational Design Evaluation Programme. Greg was also a frequent lecturer at World Nuclear University events, where he could always be counted on stimulating audiences, and bringing the latest content on supply chain and security issues. Gregory Charles Kaser was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1955. He graduated with honours in Economics and Politics at King's College, Cambridge and later read Urban and Regional Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Greg started his career in 1977 at the UK Atomic Energy Authority as an economist, researching and modelling uranium supply issues. In 1988 he joined the European University Institute where he undertook a project on the regulation of nuclear power safety in the European Community and Hungary. In 1999 he joined the Coalfield Communities Campaign, where he spearheaded the efforts of a network of European mining regions to lobby for a dedicated programme of European Community aid for coal mining regions facing restructuring. This was a successful initiative that resulted in the RECHAR programme, which provided grants for the reconversion or development of depressed mining areas. Greg joined International Mining Consultants Ltd as a senior consultant in 1993 undertaking assignments on social policy and regional development, which assisted national governments, state and private enterprises and communities adjust to changing economic conditions and industrial restructuring. In 2001 Greg joined HTSPE Ltd, where he was responsible for business development, designing and delivering major projects of technical assistance and training on behalf of the UK government, the European Commission and the Asian Development Bank. He left in 2011 to join World Nuclear Association. Greg lived in Oxford with his wife Marina. They have a much-loved daughter, Sasha, who completed a Masters in management of climate change. Greg was an internationalist, committed to addressing inequalities in health and quality of life, as well as environmental problems. He firmly believed in the role of nuclear technology in improving the economic welfare of the world. He was also a gentleman, who always made time for his colleagues, whatever level of seniority they held. His kindness, generosity of spirit, breadth of knowledge and incisive intelligence will be sorely missed by his friends and colleagues at the Association and the global nuclear community. If you would like to us to share any thoughts or memories you have of Greg please send your comments to info@world-nuclear.org and we will add them down below. ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- I worked with Greg on a couple of initiatives at the IAEA. I always found him a thoughtful and engaging person. His premature passing is a terrible loss for those who knew him and the entire industry. My thoughts go out to his family and close friends in this difficult time. John Moore One thing that stands out for me about Greg was that he always greeted people with a smile. We would often have a chat in the kitchen whilst making our morning cup of tea. He was a genuinely lovely person and his cheerful presence will be missed around the office. My thoughts are with his family at this difficult time. Jennifer Corander Remembering his wonderful and gentle soul will forever remain in my hearts. May he rest in peace! Jikon Ryu Greg was a true professional and will be missed. RIP. Jerry Head I was shocked and saddened to hear that Greg, our knowledgeable, a highly respected colleague, passed away. My heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family. Sandor Nagy Kind, good natured, mature and experienced new staff, still with plenty of "go" about them, are a gift to any organisation. Greg will be a hard act to follow but will be an even bigger loss to his family and close friends, to whom I extend my sympathy. Steve Kidd The nuclear family is missing you dear colleague Greg. Rest in peace. Antonio Muller One of the persons, why I started a long path in Nuclear Supply Chain and specially in Nuclear/International Security. Jarno Karrell It was an honour for me to have worked closely with Greg while at WNA in 2011 / 2013. He was so kind and so dedicated to his work, and friends, and family. I cannot imagine the loss for his wife and daughter, and I wish to express my deepest sympathies to them and to WNA colleagues. Francois Perchet Greg was a world-class expert in research and analysis of nuclear power market and a fantastic lecturer. A great person and a real gentleman. My sincere condolences to his family and colleagues at WNA and WNU. Stefano Monti A real gentleman and a good friend. My condolences to his family. Amir Shahkarami I have nothing but lovely memories of Greg as my supervisor and guide at WNA, my thoughts go out to his family. Iitu Tiira Greg will be well remembered by his dear family, colleagues and friends. Alina Constantin In complete disbelief. Greg was the gentleman of World Nuclear Association. Greg, you will be dearly missed! Vivien Lotasz My sincere condolences to Gregs family and colleagues. Amira Zaouak Greg was a dear colleague, always ready to give an expert opinion on complex issues, adding important perspectives, in a precise and gentle manner. As a WNU lecturer, he was someone we could always count on, bringing updated content on both supply chain and security. A wonderful father, very proud of his daughter. Patricia Wieland We have lost a very kind, gentle and very supportive friend. I have met Greg at several international nuclear events where we are speakers including in Beijing, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong as we both presented on Nuclear Supply Chain. Greg being a Key Official responsible for the WNA's Nuclear Supply Chain Report and after attending several IAEA TM and Fellowships on Nuclear Supply Chain, I had introduced this in Malaysia to the construction, manufacturing and services industry. When I visited the UK and the WNA in 2016 and 2018 Greg kindly organize a brief meeting to share about the Nuclear Supply Chain updates. Later we would head off for lunch together, the former also with Patricia then Head of WNU and the latter with Greg. In view of the importance of Nuclear Supply Chain I had then proposed to Patricia to introduce the topic Opportunities in the Nuclear Supply Chain for the WNU Summer Institute. This was accepted and I was honoured to be invited to present this at its first course in Upsala. I still remember the nice restaurant Greg took me which had served some really wonderful cuisine. Will certainly miss him greatly. My deepest condolences to Greg's family and to his WNA team/mates. RIP Greg. Sheriffah Noor Khamseah Very sad, a very pleasant fellow.. RIP. Philippe Malouines R.I.P Greg. My condolences to the family! Johane Lemay What a loss; condolences to Greg Kasers family, friends and work colleagues. Had the pleasure of interacting with Greg, and I am shocked and saddened by his passing. Susan Brissette So sad. I met Greg many times in his London offices, such a knowledgeable professional and a gentleman too. Peter Booth Condolences to Greg's family. Christian Legrain So very sad to hear of Greg's passing, such dreadful news. My sincere condolences to his family. Rest in peace Greg. Lynn Williams Greg was a good colleague, a real gentleman and a friend. When he committed to contribute he always did. My sincere condolences to his family and colleagues. Greg will be deeply missed. Pekka Pyy I am so saddened with this news. Condolences to all his family members, friends and colleagues. Rest in peace Greg. Alice Cunha da Silva Rest in Peace and my condolences to the family! Seyedjalal Ghazanfari Rest in peace. Amir Golgoun This is really sad. Greg was a really kind, happy person and was lovely to speak to. Rest in peace. Shayne Halfpenny-Ray It is sad. Rest in peace, Greg. Jozef Sobolewski I am shocked and saddened to hear about this terrible news... Rest In Peace, dear Greg. You will be remembered fondly by so many of us in the nuclear community. Elina Teplinsky It was a pleasure to work with Greg and to know him. Very sad that his time was cut short. Rest in peace. Jeremy Gordon Such sad news, Greg was such a lovely, kind, smiley person and will be missed by many. Condolences to his family. Stephanie McKenna Such sad news. Rest in peace Greg. Fiona Reilly Rest in peace. Antonio Gonzalez Jimenez Working with Greg for the past 10 years has been a great honour. Greg was so knowledgeable and passionate about his work, but most of all was such a kind and gentle person. He cared about people and would always greet them with a big smile. I will sorely miss him. Rest in peace, Greg. Virginie Ryan-Taix I have had the pleasure of working with Greg for many years as part of his MDEP VICWG support. We have had the opportunity to work together in many worldwide locations and both I and the VICWG team will miss his company, expertise and contribution in keeping the industry safe. A true gentleman he will be greatly missed. We will share a happy memory and toast Greg when we next get the opportunity to meet as a team. Stuart Allen Greg was a widely recognized open-minded expert in his domain. Above all, he was a real gentleman, always smiling and willing to help and to assist you in any matter. My deepest sympathy to his family and colleagues and the nuclear community misses him so much. Thierry Zumbihl Such sad new. I remember fondly working, and relaxing, with Greg in Russia and Ukraine. Nothing too much trouble, always with thoughtful advice and a pleasure to be with. The sauna in the taiga forest near Kemerovo, -30C outside, is a memory I'll always have. Condolences to family, friends and colleagues. Nicolas Sinclair I had several opportunities to work with Greg over the last years, especially in the context of the IFNEC work on nuclear supply chains. Not only was he a highly competent professional, he was also a very friendly person. We will miss him tremendously. Sincere condolences to his family and colleagues. Henri Paillere My deepest condolences to Gregs family and to our colleagues at WNA. Greg was a kind person and a good friend, he will be missed by everyone that knew him. He left his mark on the nuclear field and his legacy will be remember at the international level. May his soul rest in peace. Belkys Sosa I was sorry to hear about the passing of your colleague Greg Kaser. He seems to have been a remarkable man who contributed a great deal to the industry. I'm sure his passing is a personal and professional loss to you. Hatem Khouaja I am so sad to hear about Greg's passing. I worked with Greg over the past few years and found him so inspirational. He was always the smiling, positive, person in the room. The photos on the website capture him beautifully. RIP Greg & thoughts with your family, friends and colleagues at this difficult time. Will Harrison-Cripps I had the privilege to work closely with Greg during the past 12 months. I found him to be all the things one could hope for in a colleague: intelligent, knowledgeable, responsive, demanding, and enthusiastic. Greg was a gentle and unaffected man, and he will be sorely missed. Rest in peace. Alec Mitchell Greg was such a hardworking, professional and gentile nuclear industry colleague that focused on solving real industry issues. My thoughts are with his family at this difficult time. Matheus Abbt A person that departs from this earth never truly leaves, for they are still alive in our hearts and minds, through us, they live on. Please accept my condolences, he will not be forgotten. Marcel LIPS The tributes from the nuclear sector show how much Greg was loved and respected. We should also recognise his achievements before he joined WNA. Greg was a friend and colleague from 1993 till 2001 at International Economic and Energy Consultants (a part of the IMC Ltd group), where his work focussed on assisting former Soviet Union countries with the transition to the market economy and in particular with ameliorating the severe social and economic consequences. His temperament and skills were ideally suited to this task. Most of his colleagues in IEEC (myself included) came from a robust mining industry background and Greg brought a welcome finesse to our community. Through his work he was lucky enough (as I was) to meet and marry a lovely Russian lady in Gregs case Marina and in mine Elena. We send our deepest sympathy to Marina and Sasha. John and Elena Bacharach I learnt with great sadness of the recent passing of Greg Kaser. My most sincere condolences to his WNA colleagues and family. Like many have already said, I will remember him as one who always had a smile on his face and whose presence in meetings would help raise the level of discussion. Michel Berthelemy My condolences to his family and colleagues. It was a pleasure to work with Greg at WNA WGs. Very tactful, with smile, but you were always sure that it is only your part of work may be conditional on anything. Ilya Sesyutchenkov One of nature's true gentlemen - a very sad loss indeed. Rest In Peace Greg. Phil Litherland I was very sad to hear of Gregs passing. I worked alongside Greg for six years at the WNA and greatly appreciated his knowledgable contributions. He was unfailingly helpful and pleasant in all his dealings and will be sorely missed. My condolences to Marina and Sasha. Ian Emsley I am very sad to learn of Gregs untimely passing. I had the good fortune to work with him at IMCs International Economic + Energy Consultants in the years following perestroika, where his experience with the Coalfield Communities Campaign was brought to bear on the huge problems facing the mining industries of the Former Soviet Union as they struggled to adapt to the new economic order. Greg was a great pleasure to work with, a man who got on well with everyone he met, and a top flight economist. Greg, you will be sorely missed. Robert Yates Greg was a very clever and nice individual that welcomed me on my first day in the office. He immediately trusted me and gave me my first piece of work for the report he was working on. In the conversations we had, Greg impressed me by being a very educated person, always listening to what others had to say. He was always willing to help and was also passionate about his work. My most sincere condolences. Alexandre de Ruvo Gregs loss will be felt by many in our global community. May the memories of his gentle personality and many contributions be celebrated by all. My deepest sympathy to his family, friends, and dear colleagues. Kirsty Gogan I feel very fortunate to have known Greg. He brought with him not only his expertise in economics, but knowledge of finance, foreign affairs, security and urban and regional development. He was a go-to person for helping understand some of the complex non-technical issues that arise in the nuclear sphere; and he was always ready to support his colleagues. Greg would never dodge a complex problem: he liked to confront it head-on using his intellect and capacity for hard work. He accomplished all this while remaining very kind and considerate to colleagues. We will miss him greatly. Serge Gorlin I have known Greg for many years and he always had time for everyone; listening to their views and opinions; sharing his thoughts and knowledge. A true gentleman and will be greatly missed. My condolences to his family. Robert M Rodger I had the chance to work with Greg on some occasions. Greg was a true professional dedicated to his job and you could feel how nice and gentle he was in all his interactions with his colleagues and all the WNA members. It is a great loss for all of us. All my sympathy goes to his family and colleagues. Henri Zaccai Incredibly sad to hear of Gregs untimely passing. Greg and I joined the WNA at almost the same time, so I cannot imagine the Association without his knowledgeable, enthusiastic and friendly presence. Despite his natural modesty, his impact on the nuclear sector and its people will be enduring. I am certain he will be missed by all who knew him, and my deepest sympathies are with his family. Jamie Townes So very sad - many condolences. A lovely man. Rest in peace. Tim Stone So saddened to hear that Greg passed away. My thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues. Saied Dardour Greg was a true gentleman, always smiling, hugely knowledgeable, always there when you needed help. It is cruel that he's been taken from his loved ones far too soon, and may he rest in peace. John Lindberg Although I first met Greg only in 2020, I could immediately sense kindness and warmth in the gentle smile on his face. He was the person who stood out for his intelligence, politeness and meekness. Gregs kind soul will forever remain in our memories. I offer my heartfelt condolences to Gregs family and friends. May he rest in grace and love now. Kristina Valen Greg will be fondly remembered for the wonderful contribution he made to the WNA and global industry. He was a person of immense intellect and understanding, which he always displayed with a lightness of touch and generosity of spirit. Hell be much missed. Chris White It was a pleasure to know Greg and an honour to work with him for the past 10 years. He was very knowledgeable and diligent, always positive and happy, greeted everyone with his big smile. In the mornings, we often met in the kitchen preparing tea and catching up about the journey from Oxford, politics, his family, especially his daughter Sasha. He will be greatly missed! RIP, Greg! Sincere condolences to his family. Brigita Mammetti Having joined the Association shortly after Greg it soon became clear what a dedicated, passionate and kind gentleman he was. I shall miss his submission of expense claims as you could clearly see that Greg was methodical in every task he had to fulfil. Rest in peace. Paul Kidman Greg was such a lovely man, always smiling and such a pleasure to work with. I always enjoyed talking to him at WNA events and meeting him and Marina on occasion at WNA Symposia. I listened to him speaking in an IAEA webinar on Supply Chain Management in early December, and as always found myself in awe at the breadth and depth of his knowledge, but also at his willingness to share his experience and his enthusiasm for the subject. I came away from that webinar thinking of issues I'd ask Greg about the next time we should meet. I'm sad I will now never get the chance. RIP Greg, and my sincere condolences to Marina and Sasha. Claire Maden Greg was, and will remain, a much-loved person. He was a warm-hearted generous soul, readily willing to share his considerable knowledge and go out of his way to be of help. I work out of India, and though I had known Greg for several years, and worked with him on Supply Chain, our personal & face to interactions had been few & far between. If I were to sum up all the time we spent together, it would add to a few dozen hours. But, what an impact those few hours have had on me! Voila un homme: Greg my friend. Rest in peace. Amen Shah Nawaz Ahmad The staff of the World Institute of Nuclear Security are very saddened by the passing of Greg Kaser. Greg was a valued and respected colleague in the nuclear industry and a highly valued partner for WINS in matters related to nuclear security. He made a great contribution to the global community of practitioners and was a dear friend with warm humor and kindness. Our sincerest condolences to Gregs family. Greg will be missed. Vale Greg. Rhonda Evans Greg was smart and devoted to the nuclear industry, but - very distinctively - he was also so kind and helpful. Did you ever see him without a smile on his face? As we initiated our "Incentives for Nuclear Security" project about five years ago, we found him to be always willing to provide guidance and answer questions. He even cited in one of WNA's own reports one of our efforts on standards development for the nuclear industry, so supportive was he of work in the nuclear security field. He will be missed but remembered well. Our condolences go to his family. Debra Decker and Kathryn Rauhut for the Stimson Center Share You may also be interested in By Liz Lee KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Most of AirAsia X Bhd's (AAX) lessors support a restructuring plan, and the Malaysian airline has received interest from potential investors for fundraising after reorganization, court documents filed this month show. In emails attached to the court filings, supportive lessors said they wanted to continue discussions with the budget airline and potential new investors, seeking more equitable terms and new commercial arrangements. The affidavits come after more than a dozen creditors filed to intervene with its proposed court-supervised ... A MAN who grabbed and frogmarched a teenager to a Garda station over kicks to his elderly fathers front door ended up being charged with assaulting the youth. Colin Miley (38) was visiting his father where he lived at supported accommodation for the elderly when the door was kicked and he ran out to confront a group of teens, grappling with one of them. He slipped and fell on top of the youth, who later made an assault complaint against him. Judge Bryan Smyth fined Miley 250 after he pleaded guilty. The judge said, however, he appreciated the context of what happened and that the assault was not gratuitous. Miley, a father-of-one of Bath Street, Irishtown, Dublin 4 was initially charged with the more serious offence of assault causing harm but this was withdrawn by the prosecution. Garda David Heraghty told Dublin District Court the accused was visiting his father in north Dublin on the afternoon of March 10, 2019. There had been a number of kicks to the door and when a kick came, Miley ran out and saw a group of young lads. He grabbed one of them, presuming him to have kicked the door and they slipped on the ground. The two fell on top of each other and Miley picked up the youth, held him by the shoulders and brought him to the local Garda station, 200 metres away. The accused went to the station counter and reported the incident, saying the teen had been kicking his fathers door. Some of the residents had complained about their doors being kicked at the time, the court heard. However, the victim and his father later returned and made an assault complaint against Miley. There was no victim impact statement in court as the teenager had declined to make one. When contacted, Miley had come back to the station and made a voluntary statement. He had been visiting his father at supported accommodation for the elderly, his solicitor Matthew de Courcy said. The accused had expressed remorse, apologised and at all times said he would plead guilty. There had been very large, loud bangs on the door and it was in this context that he reacted, Mr de Courcy said. Miley went out and saw a group of teenagers, grabbed the one he presumed had done this, they fell and he frogmarched him to the Garda station. The accused worked in construction at a city building site, but had lost his job before Christmas. He had previous convictions, but none were recent Kenya is among countries in Eastern Africa that are expected to receive some 39 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine from the African Union (AU). The AU has secured a deal to procure 270 million doses for all member states, with Kenya expected to receive 11 million vaccine doses. These will be an addition to the 24 million doses the Kenyan government has ordered from Gavi. The State plans to purchase 12 million from other source, bringing the total of expected doses for the country to 47 million. AU chairman, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Wednesday announced that from the provisional 270 million doses, at least 50 million will be available between April and June 2021. Pfizer, AstraZeneca (through an independent licensee, Serum Institute of India) and Johnson & Johnson will supply the doses. Pfizer will supply 50 million doses, Johnson & Johnson 120 million while AstraZeneca will be giving 100 million jabs. Deliveries are expected by end of March. Meanwhile, Kenyas Cabinet Secretary for Health Mutahi Kagwe says the first batch of vaccines is in transit and Kenyans might get the jabs as soon as this month. We are engaging institutions like GAVI, who gave us the date of February. But it is quite possible that with the private sector, we can get the vaccines earlier than the date GAVI has given us, Kagwe said. He said Kenya is considering several vaccine candidates besides AstraZeneca. We are not just looking at one vaccine. We are engaging on the Africa platform, with CDC Africa and having discussions on Moderna and even Chinas Sinopharm, Kagwe said. At the same time, the Health CS said the low number of cases recorded in the country recently is not an indication of flattening of the curve. We are yet to declare that the curve is flattened, we still have to assess the impact of the festivities and reopening of schools. Kenyans must maintain the containment measures, he said. 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. Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Eric Lis factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesnt plan to expand operations -- a reticence that could slow the pace of Chinas economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.Surging prices of raw materials means margins are compressed, explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co. Ltd., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity, he adds.The combination of higher input prices, uncertainty about export prospects and a weak recovery in domestic consumer demand meant Chinese manufacturing investment from January to April was 0.4% below the same period in 2019, according to official statistics (comparing to 2019 strips out the distortion of last years pandemic data).Due to the vast size of Chinas manufacturing sector, that poses a risk both to the nations growth -- which is currently predicted to reach 8.5% in 2021, according to a Bloomberg tally of economists estimates -- and to a global economy thats grappling with supply shortages and rising prices.Falling ProfitsWeaker-than-expected investment could have a sizable impact on GDP growth this year, said Citigroup Inc.s China economist, Li-gang Liu. Lower investment may dent imports of capital goods and equipment from developed economies like Japan and Germany, which in turn could drag their economic recovery and rebound as well, he added.AnHui HERO Electronic Sci & Tec Co. Ltd. is one of those companies feeling the squeeze. Based in the eastern province of Anhui, the company manufactures capacitors used to make electronic circuits, with sales mainly in the domestic market. Jing Yuan, the founder, says orders are up as much as 30% year-on-year, but profits are down 50% due to increasing materials costs that are not easily passed onto clients.The company is under huge cash pressure as it needs to pay half a month in advance of delivery in order to secure copper and other metals, which they previously paid for months after receiving, he said. The commodity issue has to be addressed by the government, he added.What Bloomberg Economics Says...Chinese industry is absorbing significant cost pressures from rising commodity prices -- damping the inflationary impact for the rest of the world. Will it last? Our analysis of gross margins suggests it could for a while longer: downstream industries -- where the cost crunch is most severe -- still have a small cushion.David Qu, China economistFor the full report, click here.Input shortages mean some manufacturers arent able to make use of their existing facilities, so expansion would be of little use. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. suspended production at one of its factories last month, due to a shortage of microchips.Modern Casting Ltd., which makes iron and steel products in Guangdong, issued a note to clients this month saying it would not be able to meet its current orders due to high raw material costs. A member of staff who answered the phone at the companys office confirmed the note, but declined to give further details.Growth TransitionOn top of the higher input costs, Chinese companies face a bumpy transition toward domestic consumer spending to sustain its post-pandemic recovery.Exports, Chinas strong-suit last year, may begin to slow as vaccine roll-outs cause consumers in wealthy countries to shift spending back to services. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Chinese consumer spending has yet to fully recover.Investment sentiment among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises is below levels seen even in 2018-9 when uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade war were a brake on expansion plans, according to a regular survey of more than 500 Chinese companies by Standard Chartered Plc.Demand is still mainly underpinned by exports, so domestic companies are aware that this is not sustainable, said Standard Chartereds China economist, Lan Shen.While some export-oriented sectors have been pushed to their limits, large amounts of slack remain for manufacturers targeting Chinese consumers due to subdued domestic demand.Retail sales growth was 4.3% in April on a two-year average basis, which strips out base effects from the pandemic, less than half pre-pandemic growth rates. Overall capacity use at Chinas manufacturers fell to 77.6% in the first quarter from 78.4% in the previous three months, with the automotive sector hit hardest by overcapacity following three years of declining sales volumes.Even for electric vehicles whose sales are surging, most companies have already built their capacity and will now focus on incremental upgrades. The majority of the investment has been done, said Jochen Siebert of JSC Automotive Consulting.China ordered state-owned companies to expand last year, with their investment growth of 5.3% in 2020 from the prior year easily outstripping the 1% increase in private investment. But for a sustainable pick-up in investment, the market, not the state, needs to feel confident.Carsten Holz, an expert on Chinese investment statistics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, estimates that privately-owned companies have accounted for 87% of manufacturing investment in 2015, the most recent year of available data. They are more sensitive to input costs.There is a pandemic plus insecurity about future trade given a new U.S. administration, neither of which is conducive to investment that relies on long-term growth prospects, Holz said.Mixed PoliciesTransport bottlenecks are also a challenge for export-oriented manufacturers. Gordon Gao, who exports gardening products from China, said that he has had to reject 80% of orders this year due to port delays. In one case, an order placed before mid-February could only be shipped three months later when a client finally secured a container.Beijing has tried to improve conditions for private companies by ordering a crackdown on speculation to curb commodity prices and easing access to bank loans.Yet the government continues to gradually withdraw fiscal and monetary stimulus measures introduced amid the pandemic last year. It set a relatively unambitious target of above 6% growth for this year, and the Communist Partys Politburo signaled last month it would prioritize reforms to control house prices and debt growth.The policy stance has definitely shifted away from supporting growth and back toward de-risking the financial sector, said Adam Wolfe, an economist at London-based Absolute Strategy Research. The risks for economic growth seem tilted to the downside, especially for capital-intensive, construction-linked sectors.For manufacturers such as Li, a longer period of domestic growth and control over input prices will be needed before capacity expansion is on the cards. While his company of 200 workers took on new permanent staff before the pandemic, for now hed rather pass the risks of investment on to others.I wouldnt do that now, I would rather hire some temporary workers and outsource the rest, he said.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 14) Health officials have only contacted less than 60% of the co-passengers of the Filipino who was detected with the more transmissible COVID-19 variant upon arrival in the Philippines. Health Department spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire on Thursday said some passengers cannot be reached while some outright rejected the calls of contact tracers. She said the Filipino patient was on the Emirates EK332 flight from Dubai to the Philippines with 159 other passengers. They have only contacted 92 people, with only 52 of them answering the calls. Of the 23 passengers seated near the patient and his girlfriend, only 15 people have been contacted. DOH Medical Specialist IV Dr. Alethea de Guzman said they have already reached out to the Quezon City government and Interior Department to personally visit the addresses of the passengers. "If we cannot contact them via their number, we can try to physically locate them," she said in a media briefing. She added that they are also trying to trace the patient's co-passengers during his flight from Manila to Dubai on December 27 via Emirates Flight No. EK 335. In an interview with CNN Philippines News Night, contact tracing czar and Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong noted the need for the co-passengers cooperation with authorities, saying there is a likelihood of viral transmission in the aircraft due to air circulation. Nagtataka nga sila bakit itong particular na case na to [Contact tracers are wondering why in this particular case], the close contacts are non-cooperative, Magalong said. Its probably because many of them are panicking, siguro [perhaps] they dont want to be contacted for the meantime becausetheir anxiety level is high, emotional sila [theyre emotional], they are irrational, theyre confused. The new variant from the UK is still being studied, but initial research showed that it spreads more quickly. There is still no evidence that it can lead to severe complications. Authorities also repeatedly pointed out the need for early identification of close contacts to prevent further spread of the virus. The 29-year-old male real estate agent is the country's first case of the more transmissible COVID-19 variant. He was negative for COVID-19 on December 25 before his flight to Dubai. He also tested negative upon arrival in the Gulf state. He tested positive in the swab test after he returned to the Philippines on January 7. His test result was reviewed by the Philippine Genome Center, where the presence of the B.1.1.2 variant was found. Federal Government Executes Corey Johnson, Virginia Killer of 7 Corey Johnson, the Virginia man who killed seven in a burst of violence in 1992, was executed by the federal government by lethal injection on Thursday. The 52-year-old convicted murderer and drug trafficker was pronounced dead at 11:34 p.m. ET at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was put to death by an injection of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, after the Supreme Court rejected a plea to allow him to recover from COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Johnson became the 12th inmate to be executed at the facility since the Trump administration in July pushed forward with its plans to resume federal executions after a 17-year pause. He was convicted in the killing of seven people in Virginia in 1992 as part of a drug-trafficking ring. In his final statement, Johnson apologized to the families of the victims, telling them he hoped they would find peace. He also thanked his legal team, prison staff, his minister, and the prisons chaplain. I would have said I was sorry before, but I didnt know how. I hope you will find peace, he said, in a statement released by his lawyers. To my family, I have always loved you, and your love has made me real. On the streets, I was looking for shortcuts, I had some good role models, I was side tracking, I was blind and stupid. I am not the same man that I was. In his final statement he named his victimsPeyton Johnson, Louis Johnson, Bobby Long, Dorothy Armstrong, Anthony Carter, Linwood Chiles, and Curtis Thornesaying that he wants these names to be remembered. The Supreme Court denied an effort late Thursday that claimed he was intellectually disabled, meaning that his execution would be unconstitutional. His legal team argued that the IQ score of 77 that was presented at his 1993 trial was incorrect, and his real IQ is even lower, within the range of 7075 threshold courts have used to determine intellectual disability. He is a person with intellectual disability who cannot constitutionally be executed, Donald Salzman, an attorney for Johnson, had argued Thursday morning. The government should withdraw Coreys execution date, or President Trump should grant him clemency. Another execution has been scheduled by the U.S. Department of Justice this weekthe execution of Dustin Higgs on Friday. Higgs is convicted in a separate murder. Reuters contributed to this report. Bennington, VT (05201) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. A contestant car is seen on the race track during an international autonomous car ice and snow driving challenge in Changchun City, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province, Jan. 14, 2021. The three-day event, which was designed to test the adaptability and durability of autonomous cars in ice and snow circumstances, concluded Thursday at the Lianhuashan Eco-tourism Resort in Changchun. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan) 2 1 [ Editor: WPY ] HAMDEN Quinnipiac University senior student Emily DiSalvo of Portland have been selected to participate in the prestigious Carnegie-Knight News21 Initiative. Jessica Simms, from Franklin, Mass., was also accepted, according to the university. The national News21 Initiative is part of an effort by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry, according to a press release. I am always looking for a chance to expand my skill set when it comes to journalism, DiSalvo said in a prepared statement. I really believe that investigative journalism is a necessity for democracy to function. Without it, things go uncovered, people are left unaccountable and stories are left untold. I think that working on this years News 21 project relating to poverty and the pandemic will open my eyes to investigative techniques, allow me to immerse myself in a story that is part of a truly historic moment, DiSalvo said. Arizona State Universitys Cronkite School serves as the national headquarters for the initiative, which includes top journalism students from across the country. Since 2008, the Cronkite School has been the recipient of nearly $10 million in grants from the two foundations to support the News21 program, the news release said. Being selected as a fellow for the Carnegie-Knight News21 program is not only a huge honor, but it also will be a life-changing experience, Simms, a senior, said in the statement. The initiative will allow me to step out of my comfort zone in the journalism industry through this hands-on investigative project. This program will teach me how to work on a team to produce a detailed investigative project. It will be a unique opportunity to learn about the different ways the pandemic has impacted poverty in the United States, which is the focus of the News21 project this year, Simms said. Students selected for the program work under the direction of leading news veterans, and participate in an intensive seminar in the spring semester, during which they research and hear from experts on a topic that will become the basis of a national investigation. DiSalvo and Simms are the first Quinnipiac students to be selected for the News21 Initiative. News21 is for top journalism students around the country, so the fact that two Quinnipiac journalism students were selected shows the quality of our program, said Chris Roush, dean of the School of Communications. I couldnt be happier for Emily and Jess. The students then move into paid summer fellowships, during which they work out of the Cronkite Schools digital media complex in downtown Phoenix for 10 weeks in the summer. The fellows travel the country and sometimes go abroad to report stories and produce content for publication or broadcast across a number of platforms. Past News21 national investigations have focused on food safety, transportation safety and voting rights. The student works gets wide national distribution through partnerships with The Washington Post, nbcnews.com and the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity. A 38-year-old Harpursville man has been arrested and accused of having sexual contact with a person younger than 15 years old, according to New York State Police. Jesse A. Nickerson was charged with second-degree criminal sex act, police said. Nickerson was arrested Tuesday at 12:10 p.m. after an investigation found he had sexual contact with a person younger than 15 years old. He was taken to booking and scheduled to be arraigned. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Chris Libonati via the Signal app for encrypted messaging at 585-290-0718, by phone at the same number, by email or on Twitter. Pentagon Names 9 New Chinese Companies With Ties to Chinese Military The U.S. Department of Defense on Jan. 14 added nine Chinese companies to a growing list of companies with ties to the Chinese military. Among the nine companies were cellphone maker Xiaomi, semiconductor equipment maker Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC), chip designer GOWIN Semiconductor, state-owned China National Aviation Holding, and aircraft manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), according to a press release from the Pentagon. The latest additions mean the United States has designated a total of 44 Chinese companies as those with links to the Chinese military, formally known as the Peoples Liberation Army. On Friday, Xiaomis shares tumbled 10.26 percent to close at HK$29.3 ($3.78) on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, AMECs shares took a small dip on Friday, dropping 3.14 percent on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to close at $175.36 yuan (about $27). Last year, 35 Chinese companies were listed, including telecom giant Huawei, semiconductor chipmaker SMIC, defense contractor AVIC, railcar-maker CRRC, and surveillance camera maker Hikvision. The designations were made under a requirement in section 1237(b) of the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense spending bill. All of these companies are now subjected to a new U.S. investment ban, requiring U.S. investors to divest their holdings of securities of the blacklisted companies by Nov. 11, 2021. U.S. trading of securities in these companies is also prohibited after the ban went into effect on Jan. 11. President Donald Trump signed an executive order (pdf) on Nov. 12 last year announcing the investment ban. He issued an amendment order on Jan. 13 strengthening the ban. The Department is determined to highlight and counter the Peoples Republic of Chinas (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, the Pentagon stated in the press release. That strategy supports the modernization goals of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities, the Pentagon added. The Trump administration has repeatedly warned about the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) efforts to leverage this strategy to acquire U.S. intellectual property. The strategy is now overseen by a Chinese government agency called the Central Commission for the Development of Military-Civil Fusion, established in 2017. The CCP is implementing this strategy, not just through its own research and development efforts, but also by acquiring and diverting the worlds cutting-edge technologiesincluding through theftin order to achieve military dominance, the U.S. State Department describes on its website. AMEC and Xiaomi have since each issued a statement denying their ties to the Chinese military. Reuters contributed to this report. Federal prosecutors in Harrisburg announced Friday they had found insufficient evidence of a crime in an election investigation that President Donald Trump and his allies had repeatedly touted as a sign of vote-rigging in Pennsylvania. The case, involving nine military ballots found discarded in a Luzerne County dumpster, was unusual from the start. Breaking with traditional Justice Department norms that prohibit discussing most ongoing investigations especially ones that could influence elections then-U.S. Attorney David J. Freed sent out a news release confirming the probe after Trump alluded to the matter on a Fox News Radio segment in September. The president then repeatedly cited it during his first debate against Joe Biden to bolster his baseless claims that widespread fraud would cost him the election. In a since deleted tweet, a Trump campaign spokesperson pointed to the case, claiming: Democrats are trying to steal the election. In his announcement Friday, Freeds successor, Acting U.S. Attorney Bruce D. Brandler, said no criminal charges will be filed. The matter is closed, he said in a statement. READ MORE: Fact-checking false claims about Pennsylvanias presidential election by Trump and his allies Officials in Luzerne County, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, had blamed the mistaken decision to throw out the nine ballots seven of which were cast for Trump, the other two of which remained sealed on an unidentified and poorly trained temporary employee who had been hired to help handle mail ballots. The votes were retrieved from the trash and counted. The Luzerne County District Attorneys Office referred the matter to federal prosecutors in an abundance of caution. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat and the states top elections official, described the matter as a mistake, but noted there was no suggestion of intentional wrongdoing, let alone widespread fraud. The employee at the center of the investigation was subsequently fired. HONOLULU, Hawaii There was a new addition to Waialae Country Club on the eve of the Sony Open in Hawaii a row of white out-of-bounds stakes between the 18th and 10th holes inside the property. PGA TOUR Officials took the eleventh-hour step and sent a text blast to all competitors at around 7 p.m. local time after seeing a bunch of players cutting the corner off the tee on the par-5 dogleg left 18th by hitting into the 10th fairway. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Featured Groups roundtable They were then able to just wedge the ball up and over some palm trees to set up relatively easy eagle looks due to the fact there are none of the usual grandstands during the COVID-19 spectator-free event. The funny story was I [was] playing my Pro-Am yesterday and Justin Leonard who is a really good buddy just happened to be on that green we were playing. He goes, "Hey, do you think about going down No. 10?", Billy Horschel said Thursday after an opening round 5-under 65 had him just three shots back of the morning wave lead. In years past that never even crossed my mind. I'm like, "No." Then he said, "Well a lot of guys are. They are having like flip wedges into the green." So, I was like, "Well, maybe I'll have to look at it when I get on the tee." But somewhere around 7 p.m. last night, we got a text saying that there was an internal OB now on No. 18, which is smart. I think the hole should be played the way it was designed and not take advantage of whatever you want to take advantage of. LAST Saturday, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his team made their usual weekly briefing on the status of the coronavirus in Trinidad and Tobago. Given the rise in cases, the addition of a state of emergency was added to the existing public health measures, setting a curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. -- The U.S. House voted to impeach President Donald Trump over "incitement of insurrection," making him the first president to be impeached twice. -- What's more striking than Trump's history-making second impeachment is that the divide his four-year term has brought to the country may last well beyond his departure. -- With Trump being impeached, all eyes have turned to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will decide when to hold the Senate trial that will determine the president's fate. WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- In a heavily fortified U.S. Capitol building, a majority of bipartisan members of the House voted in favor of impeaching President Donald Trump on Wednesday, accusing him of inciting an insurrection last week at the very building in which the lawmakers cast their votes. Following the 232-197 vote on the single article of impeachment, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. What distinguished the second impeachment from the first one, though, was that this time 10 Republicans cast the "yea" vote while none of the House GOP members crossed the party line last time. A man holding an "impeach" banner walks near the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., the United States, Jan. 13, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) TRUMP IMPEACHED AGAIN "The resolution (of impeachment) is adopted. Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced while gaveling the vote down. "I sadly and with a heart broken over what this means to our country, of a president who would incite insurrection, will sign the engrossment of the article of impeachment," Pelosi said after the vote, speaking behind a lectern which photos showed was removed last week by a rioter from its original place in the House chamber. Kicking off the debate over the article of impeachment earlier in the day, Pelosi said the president "incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion against our common country," citing the Capitol riot by Trump loyalists last week. "He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love," she added. Photo taken on Jan. 12, 2021 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) In a statement published on Wednesday, President-elect Joe Biden said the riot "carried out by political extremists and domestic terrorists, who were incited to this violence by President Trump" was "an armed insurrection against the United States of America." For those Republicans who opposed impeaching Trump, few of them defended the president. They argued instead that the Democrats were rushing to remove the president without due process and at a time when Trump will hand over the presidency to Biden in merely a week. They accused the Democrats of further dividing the country. "They're rushing to judgment in my opinion and bringing up impeachment after failing to follow any meaningful process whatsoever," said Tom Cole, ranking member of the House Rules Committee, during the debate. "No hearings have been held. No witnesses heard, no process or opportunity to respond was provided to the president." Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather near the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States on Jan. 6, 2021.(Xinhua/Liu Jie) House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy acknowledged that Trump "bears responsibility for (last) Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters," but stressed that "impeaching the president in such a short timeframe would be a mistake." He called for national unity, saying "we must seize this opportunity to heal and grow stronger." The impeachment resolution cited Trump's speech to supporters on Jan. 6 that was followed by some of the crowd breaching the Capitol building to interrupt Congress's certification of the 2020 election results as evidence of his "incitement of insurrection." On top of that, the president's repeated claims of voter fraud in the election, as well as his Jan. 2 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to press him to "find enough votes" to overturn the state's presidential election results, were also mentioned in the resolution as proof that Trump "gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government," that he "threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government." What's more striking than Trump's history-making second impeachment is that the divide his four-year term has brought to the country may last well beyond his departure. Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States on Jan. 6, 2021.(Xinhua/Liu Jie) Signs of this lasting effect have already been evident during the fallout of the Capitol riot. The president's diehard allies in Congress continued to press ahead with overturning the election results even after the rioters put them under siege, while the Democrats not only demanded his removal this time, but also sought to ensure that he is never capable of holding any public office in the future. "It's painful and frustrating for the country," Christopher Galdieri, assistant professor at Saint Anselm College, told Xinhua in comments on the impeachment. "I don't think impeaching Trump fixes that." SENATE TRIAL NOT EXPECTED SOON With Trump being impeached, all eyes have turned to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will decide when to hold the Senate trial that will determine the president's fate. McConnell, who on Wednesday tried to cool down the heat of previous media reports saying he was pleased with the impeachment and believed it was a good option to purge Trump from the Republican Party, issued a formal statement rejecting an early trial in the Senate, which is now in recess. "The House of Representatives has voted to impeach the President. The Senate process will now begin at our first regular meeting following receipt of the article from the House," read the statement. "Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week." U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (C) wearing a protective mask walks through the hallways in Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., the United States, Jan. 13, 2021.(Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua) On the part of the Democratic Party, Pelosi didn't respond directly to questions about her plan for transmitting the article of impeachment to the Senate, as some Democrats floated the idea of delaying the process until after 100 days into the Biden presidency so that some of the incoming president's cabinet nominees could be confirmed timely by the upper chamber. Biden also expressed the hope that "the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their Constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation," giving examples ranging from confirmations to key posts such as secretaries for homeland security, state, defense, treasury, and director of national intelligence, to getting our vaccine program on track. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who failed in his effort to request that McConnell reconvene the chamber early in accordance with legislation passed in 2004 giving majority and minority leaders emergency powers to do so, issued a statement insisting that there will be a trial, and that "if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again." Trump was impeached by the House in December 2019, with two articles of impeachment charging him with "abuse of power," and "obstruction of Congress" over his dealings with Ukraine. He was acquitted by the Senate, in which the number of senators supporting his conviction failed to reach the required two-thirds majority. GOP Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a longtime Trump foe, was the only one in his party who voted to convict the president then. This time around, although it remains unclear if as many as 17 GOP senators would back the impeachment article -- thus crossing the high bar of convicting and ousting the president -- at least some of them have signaled the willingness to consider the article, among them senators Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. McConnell kept open the possibility of him supporting the conviction, saying Wednesday he was undecided and still awaiting "legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate." National Guard soldiers secure the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States, on Jan. 13, 2021.(Xinhua/Liu Jie) As for banning Trump from running for president again, which came to the spotlight after the Democrats demanded it in the current impeachment resolution, analysts said achieving that goal could be time-consuming. Depriving Trump of the chance for future presidential campaigns is based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which disqualifies federal and state officeholders who "have engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding office again. Daniel Hemel, professor at the University of Chicago Law School, delved into the historical context of the 14th Amendment in a recent analytical piece carried by The Washington Post, weighing the pros and cons of each of a series of specific pathways toward forbidding Trump from seeking public service during the rest of his lifetime. "It is true that Congress potentially can use the amendment to bar Trump from future office, but the process will very likely take several steps and years," he wrote. Noting that enacting a new law would be a preferred option if the goal is to invoke the Section 3 penalties, Hemel said the legal action could not even get started unless and until Trump declares his next presidential bid. "So if Trump seeks the White House in the next election, the legal process might not even begin until 2023." LAist only exists with reader support. If you're in a position to give, your donation powers our reporters and keeps us independent. Our reporting is free for everyone, but its not free to make. 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. In case you missed it, the state of California is now allowing those 65 and older to get the COVID-19 vaccine. In Los Angeles County, health officials at first said they weren't ready to immunize people in that age group until February at the earliest...becuase there were simply not enough vacinne doses. That changed a week later. Caveat: there are still not enough vaccine doses. Meanwhile, Long Beach, as well as Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties are moving forward with the 65+ age group -- but not without hurdles. Of course, none of this is simple. It never is. We're dealing with many layers of bureaucracy in addition to under-resourced, burnt-out public health departments -- public agencies that are also tasked with managing the winter case surge. The rollout has so far been plagued by delays, changing orders, and confusion. To make matters more confusing, in California, public health is largely a county-level operation. Each county has its own vaccine distrubution plan, guided by the state (with relatively little help from the federal government). And some counties, like L.A., also include cities with their own publc health departments that can decide to veer from the plan, like Long Beach and Pasadena. Health officials like L.A.County's Barbara Ferrer, say they hope things will speed up, now that Biden is in office. The Biden administration says they are aiming to administer 100 million vaccine shots in the President's first 100 days. Next month, FEMA will set up 100 community vaccination centers as part of that effort - but we aren't yet sure how and when these changes will reach California. To get more clarity on all this, we reached out to each city and county for details. NOTE: This is an evolving story and will be updated as we get more information. LOS ANGELES COUNTY Updated Jan. 22 at 6 p.m. L.A. County first said it wouldn't immunize people in the 65+ age group until February at the earliest. That changed when county Board of Supervisors chair Hilda Solis signed an executive order to expand the pool of eligible vaccine candidates to that age group late on Monday, Jan. 18. Starting Tuesday Jan. 19, L.A. County residents 65 and older can book an appointment, with slots open as early as the following day. To sign up, eligible L.A. County residents should visit VaccinateLACounty.com or call 833-540-0473 between 8 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. County public health director Barbara Ferrer said the vaccine supply is still limited, so appointment slots will only open a few days in advance: "It will require patience, because we haven't received yet all of the doses that we'll need to vaccinate the priority groups. And we, too, are looking forward to a new administration and more transparency on how many doses will be available in the future." Almost immediately after the portal launched, however, it crashed from so many people trying to sign up. "Our COVID-19 vaccination hotline and website are fielding thousands of calls and users, and experiencing technical difficulties. We appreciate your patience as we work to fix these technical issues," the department tweeted. Those issues are still being resolved. On Jan 15., L.A. county converted Dodger Stadium from a mass testing site into a their lagest mass vaccination location. The site is operating Mondays through Saturdays from 8 am to 8 pm. Here's how it works: Patients will be directed to one of three areas within the parking lot, each with refrigeration units, clinicians and support staff. Cars will pull through in groups of 10, and health workers will use carts to move between vehicles, conducting pre-screening interviews and then administering the vaccine through car windows. People will then wait in their cars for 15 minutes in case they have an allergic reaction to the vaccine. Patients will get a card bearing the date they were vaccinated and the brand name of the vaccine they were given. They'll need to make follow-up appointments to get the second dose a few weeks later, but it doesn't need to be at the same site. You can read more about the Dodger Stadium site here. Another five mass vaccination sites opened Tuesday, Jan. 19, across L.A. County. The locations are: The Forum in Inglewood The Pomona Fairplex Cal State Northridge The L.A. County Office of Education in Downey Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia County officials say staff will be able to vaccinate 4,000 people a day at each location (and up to 12,000 a day at Dodger Stadium). There are also more than 75 smaller vaccination locations across the county. Eligible healthcare workers can make an appointment here. To qualify for the vaccine, they must have one of the following sets of verification documents: a health care worker badge with a photo a professional license and a photo ID a signed letter from an employer and a photo ID a payment stub from a health care provider with a name and a photo ID Even with all of thse vaccination sites in place, health officials estimate that at this rate, healthy adults won't receive their vaccinations until "well into" 2022. If the county doubled their pace now, adults would be eligilbe to receive vaccines in summer 2021. L.A. County has 10 million residents, roughly the same population as the entire state of Georgia. Some health care experts say public health officials need to think bigger. "We need probably 10 times or maybe 20 times Dodger Stadium," said Karin Michels, chair of epidemiology at UCLA. "Convention centers need to be transformed into vaccine sites. We need to be much more ambitious." In the meantime, however, Dr. Paul Simon from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said the county will be using several different channels to make sure citizens are aware when their turn comes: "Of course, we'll be working with the media to get the word out. But in addition, [we'll be] working with health care providers, who then will contact their patients who are in that age group. We'll work with various organizations like the AARP, and others. And we have a newsletter that anyone can sign up for on our website. So we'll use all of those channels to try to get the word out." Use the same website ( VaccinateLACounty.com ) to sign up for notifications. Just enter your email address in the box at the top of the screen, and you should start getting the newsletter on which groups are currently eligible to receive the vaccine. LONG BEACH Updated Jan. 22 at 6 p.m. Long Beach residents 65 and older weren given the green light to get the COVID-19 vaccine as early as Saturday, Jan. 16. The coastal city is way ahead of L.A. County in terms of distribution. After opening eligibility to seniors, Long Beach started vaccinating grocery store workers, restaurant workers and other essential workers. On January 25, appointments will open for staff at Long Beach Unified School District and Long Beach City College. As of Friday, Jan 22, the city is already half way through second doses for all their health care workers. Mayor Garcia says the city health department factors in anticipated doses each week, and makes sure to set some aside so there's enough for those second shots. City officials say appointments can be made here or by calling 562-570-INFO. Everyone with an appointment will need to bring a pay stub or employee ID to prove they're eligible. "If they do not have the proof that we are asking for, then we do ask that they move along," Kelly Colopy, the city's Director of Health and Human Services, told our newsroom, "and so we have turned away quite a few people who are coming from outside of the city, or who are in tiers that are not yet being served." The city is also implementing a system to prevent doses from going to waste -- so if someone doesn't show up, people further down the waiting list will be contacted to get the shot instead. Mayor Garcia said of his city's efforts: "I've been talking to all of the different mayors across the state, I talked to the governor's office, been communicating with the governor as well, directly. And right now, there is definitely a sense that we are getting something right in the city." Updated Jan. 22 at 6 p.m. Seniors in Pasadena (65+ residents) are currently eligible for vaccines, but capacity is extremely limited. Health officials ask that you not show up to a test site without an appointment. Vaccination sites do not accept walk-ups. For more information on vaccine administration and planning, visit cityofpasadena.net/public-health/covid-19-vaccine or call (626) 744-6000. Healthcare providers who are eligible and able to do so are encouraged to sign up to receive and administer the vaccine at ca.covidreadi.com. The city is still in the process of vaccinating health workers, nursing home residents/workers, and police/fire department members. (Pasadena is part of of L.A. County, but the city has their own public health department, meaning they have to handle vaccine distribution separately.) The recently asked Gov. Gavin Newsom for help to speed up their coronavirus vaccination process. Mayor Victor Gordo said at the current rate, it will take the city two years to vaccinate all its residents. The mayor wrote a letter to Newsom on Jan. 19 asking for assistance. "The systemic challenges presented by the current vaccine distribution create an obstacle the city alone cannot overcome," the letter says. Gordo asked specifically for the governor's help in setting up a state-supported mega vaccination site, like the ones at places like Dodger Stadium and Six Flags Magic Mountain in L.A. County. He suggested the Rose Bowl as an ideal location, given its size and "familiarity." The letter specifies that Pasadena has one mega site currently, at Victory Park, capable of delivering 100 doses per hour thanks to help from public health staff, other city departments, contracted services and volunteers. That site is only open two days a week, however, and has so far delivered 2,300 doses to recipients in Phase 1A. The city plans to open the site four days a week on Feb. 1, which would increase distribution to 2,800 doses per week. Once the city starts administering second doses, though, they'll have even less capacity to distribute first ones, the mayor writes. He says that's simply not enough. You can find more info about Pasadena's vaccine rollout, including tiers and phases here. RIVERSIDE COUNTY Updated Jan. 22 at 6 p.m. Riverside County began administering the COVID-19 vaccine to residents 65 and older Thursday, Jan. 14, in addition to frontline, essential workers in education, law enforcement and agriculture. Brooke Federico, a public information officer for Riverside County, says residents there will need to prove they're eligible for the vaccine with "proof of employment through a pay stub, a work ID or a work badge, or a proof of employment letter from your employer" if you're getting the vaccine because of your job. If you're 65 and older, you'll need an ID to validate your age and show that you live in Riverside County. Appointments are required. You can make them on the county health website, ruhealth.org. The website also has a list of pharmacies and urgent care centers that are providing the vaccine. Note, however, that the portal will soon change; The website crashed on the first day of sign ups. The county says they're working on an updated web link, which will connect users to the state's vacine registration portal. Health officials say residents should also check with their healthcare provider, if they have one, before signing up for the county vacination sites. The county is also working to add a notification feature to its website, to alert people when more appointments open up. ORANGE COUNTY Orange County decided to adopt the state's suggestion to expand vaccine distribution to the 65+ age group on Wednesday, Jan 13. As soon as officials made the announcement, more than 10,000 people scheduled appointments in less than two hours. All that traffic overloaded the Othena app and website, which handles the appointments. The chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, Andrew Do, acknowledged the issues and asked people to be patient: "We are working on the technical side to increase the bandwidth in order to get people in to at least let them know that we have them in the system. And then when appropriate, we can then send out notices for the people that qualify." He added that people who are eligible to get vaccinated should contact their healthcare provider first to see how they can get vaccinated through their health network, instead of through a publicly-run site. Currently, if you visit the county's Othena.com site, you have to answer "yes" or "no" to "Do you live or work in Orange County?" and "Are you 65 or older?". If you click yes to both, you get a message saying "You are eligible to be vaccinated" and then you register with your name, DOB, race/ethnicity, employer, email and phone number. Then you get this message: Screenshot from Othena.com, Jan 14. 2021 We've reached out to Orange County's health department for more information and have not yet heard back. SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY Officals announced Thursday, Jan. 14, that all San Bernardino County residents ages 65 and over are now eligible to receive the vaccine. "We ask the community for patience as we continue to receive doses from the state of California to serve our senior population and as we continue to vaccinate health care workers," Board of Supervisors Chairman Curt Hagman said in a statement. At the same time, county officials say vaccine doses are scarce right now. "The county will make every effort to lobby the State for the doses needed to quickly provide vaccinations for every senior in San Bernardino County who wants and needs protection," a spokesperson said. For now, they are taking appointments. County residents 65 and over can make appointments through sbcovid19.com/vaccine. Seniors can also sign up for email and text notifications to receive alerts about vaccination opportunities and other vaccination news through the "65+ Vaccine Notification Sign Up" link at sbcovid19.com/vaccine.Those who need assistance with appointments or signing up for notifications can call the COVID-19 hotline from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday at (909) 387-3911. VENTURA COUNTY Health officials in Ventura County hope to start vaccinating people 65 and older within the next two to three weeks. Right now, the county is still only administering vaccines to people in Phase 1A, which includes health care workers and residents and staff at long-term care facilities. Barry Zimmerman, who is the chief deputy director of the county's health care agency, says, like L.A., the county does not have enough doses from the state to move on to the next phase of distribution. "Our capacity to roll out and to vaccinate individuals is based on our ability to receive vaccines from the state," he said. "At this time we're averaging under 10,000 doses a week." Ventura County has requested more doses, but has not yet received them. People who live or work in Ventura County and who are in Phase 1A can register for an appointment online at VenturaCountyRecovers.org's vaccine portal. County officials say if you show up for a shot without proof that you're eligible for Phase 1-A (something like a pay stub or a work ID), you'll be turned away. READ MORE ABOUT LOCAL VACCINATION EFFORTS HERE: Monica Bushman, Megan Ngyugen, Fiona Ng, Jackier Fortier and Gina Pollack contributed to this story. San Francisco lost a total of 699 people to overdoses last year, a 59% rise from 2019, according to new data released Thursday by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. That number is more than three times the amount of people that died of COVID-19 in the city during the same period. It also represents 699 sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and loved ones felled by an epidemic that the city has been unable to control. It didnt have to happen, sighed Kristen Marshall, director of the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project, which manages the citys overdose response. The root of these overdose deaths in San Francisco is homelessness, poverty and racism that has been institutionalized throughout our systems of care. More than 40% of the deaths occurred in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods that have long been plagued by homelessness and drug dealing. A quarter of the people who died were Black, despite the fact that Black people make up less than 6% of San Franciscos population. On some days, five and even six fatal overdoses were recorded. Between January and August, the latest month for which such detailed figures were provided to The Chronicle, there were only 44 days where the medical examiner didnt record a fatal overdose. More than 70% of this years victims were found with the opioid fentanyl in their system. Its an incredibly powerful drug that can kill someone with just 2 milligrams, a fraction of the lethal dose for heroin. While experts attribute much of 2020s surge in overdoses to the increasing presence of fentanyl, they also blame the pandemic for disrupting services like drop-in centers and in-person support groups. Many, many more people would have likely died if their peers or first responders werent around to shove Narcan, a lifesaving overdose reversal drug, into their thighs or up their noses. Narcan was administered by people from outreach workers to drug users themselves at least 3,400 times between January and the beginning of December, according to the DOPE Project. That compares to 2,610 times in all of 2019. Meanwhile, San Francisco Police officers used Narcan 211 times in 2020, according to the department. That compares to 135 times in 2019. All this occurred even though police seized more than four times the amount of fentanyl than in 2019. It doesnt take a whole lot of fentanyl to kill, San Francisco Chief Bill Scott previously told The Chronicle. Had we not confiscated over (192.2 ounces) of fentanyl ... one has to think what that would have done in terms of having even more overdoses. Yet, the deaths continued to mount. Supervisor Matt Haney passed legislation last year that spurred the San Francisco medical examiner to release the number of fatal overdoses every month, as opposed to once a year. That put the increasing death toll on grim display: 563 by November, 636 by December, 699 by January. Haney hoped the increased data would spur extra urgency in addressing the epidemic. Instead, hes frustrated that more progress hasnt been made. City leaders are working on several reforms: More access to medication-assisted treatment drugs, like methadone and buprenorphine. Drop-in centers and safe consumption sites where people can be connected to care. More supportive housing. More Narcan. But many of those changes are still years away. This should have shocked the conscience of the entire city, Haney said of 2020s record-breaking number of overdose deaths. Every single leader in our city should be working on stopping this. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani The son of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has lost an appeal against his late fathers conviction. The bombing of Pan Am flight 103, travelling from London to New York on December 21 1988, killed 270 people in Britains largest terrorist atrocity. Former Libyan intelligence officer Megrahi was found guilty in 2001 of mass murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 27 years the only person convicted of the attack. A third appeal against his conviction was heard in November at the High Court in Edinburgh, Scotland, before a panel of five judges sitting as the Court of Appeal. Judges have now rejected both grounds of appeal, meaning his conviction stands. The family of Megrahi said they are heartbroken at the decision, and plan to appeal against it at the UK Supreme Court. Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds while terminally ill with cancer, and died in Libya in 2012. The latest appeal was lodged after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred the case to the UK High Court in March 2020, ruling a possible miscarriage of justice may have occurred. Judges then granted his son, Ali al-Megrahi, permission to proceed with the appeal in relation to the argument no reasonable jury could have returned the verdict the court did, and on the grounds of non-disclosure of documents by proseceutors. The written judgment rejecting the appeal, delivered by Scotlands most senior judge Justice Carloway, on Friday, states the contention that the trial court reached a verdict that no reasonable court could have reached is rejected. It adds: On the evidence at trial, a reasonable jury, properly directed, would have been entitled to return a guilty verdict. The Lockerbie bombing claimed 270 lives (PA) The contention that the Crown failed to disclose material which would have created a real prospect of a different verdict is rejected. Both grounds of appeal having been rejected, the appeal against conviction is refused. In a statement released through their lawyer Aamer Anwar after the ruling was published on Friday, the family said: Ali Al-Megrahi, the son of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, said his family were left heartbroken by the decision of the Scottish courts, he maintained his fathers innocence and is determined to fulfil the promise he made to clear his name and that of Libya. All the Megrahi family want for Scotland is peace and justice, but as Ali stated today their journey is not over, Libya has suffered enough, as has the family for the crime of Lockerbie, they remain determined to fight for justice. Aamer Anwar, lawyer for the Megrahi family, issued a statement on their behalf (Jane Barlow/PA) Megrahis original trial was held at a special Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. During the appeal hearing in November, advocate depute Ronald Clancy QC, for the UK government, said trial court judges were fully entitled to infer Megrahi was involved in the Lockerbie bombing. He said Megrahis use of a false passport to travel to Malta from where the plane carrying the bomb left just before the atrocity taken along with other evidence, combined to form a pattern that suggested his involvement. Claire Mitchell QC, representing the Megrahi family, said evidence in relation to identification was of poor quality and the dock identification, when shopkeeper Tony Gauci said Megrahi resembled the man who bought the clothing later found in a suitcase containing the bomb, was virtually of no value. Mr Clancy said that ignores the important point that the dock identification was simply the last of a series of consistent resemblance identifications going back to February 1991. Megrahis first appeal against his conviction was refused by the High Court in 2002 and was referred back five years later after an SCCRC review. Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001 (Crown Office/PA) He abandoned this second appeal in 2009, shortly before his release from prison on compassionate grounds. Meanwhile, the US Justice Department charged a third conspirator in connection with the bombing on the 32nd anniversary of the atrocity last month. The US alleges Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Marimi was the bombmaker and has charged him with terrorism-related crimes. A second suspect, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial with Megrahi but was acquitted. The judgment delivered by Justice Carloway states: This appeal is then concerned essentially only with two issues: (1) whether the verdict was unreasonable having regard to the quality of Mr Gaucis testimony; and (2) whether the disclosure of certain material would have created a real possibility of a different (ie an acquittal) verdict. In this context, the appeal is not directly concerned with an examination of evidence which might point to other persons or organisations being involved in the murder, except in so far as that involvement might exclude Mr Megrahi as a participant in the ingestion of the bomb on to an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt, from where it was transferred to the flight departing from London Heathrow. Scotlands proseceutor James Wolffe QC said the investigation into the atrocity continues and there remain suspects under active investigation. He said: The bombing of Pan Am 103 is, to this day, the deadliest terrorist attack on UK soil and the largest homicide case Scotlands prosecutors have ever encountered in terms of scale and of complexity. The evidence gathered by Scottish, US and international law enforcement agencies has again been tested in the Appeal Court, and the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi stands. This Hubble Space Telescope portrait reveals the gaseous remains of an exploded massive star that erupted approximately 1,700 years ago. The stellar corpse, a supernova remnant named 1E 0102.2-7219, met its demise in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Banovetz and D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University) Astronomers are winding back the clock on the expanding remains of a nearby, exploded star. By using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, they retraced the speedy shrapnel from the blast to calculate a more accurate estimate of the location and time of the stellar detonation. The victim is a star that exploded long ago in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. The doomed star left behind an expanding, gaseous corpse, a supernova remnant named 1E 0102.2-7219, which NASA's Einstein Observatory first discovered in X-rays. Like detectives, researchers sifted through archival images taken by Hubble, analyzing visible-light observations made 10 years apart. The research team, led by John Banovetz and Danny Milisavljevic of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, measured the velocities of 45 tadpole-shaped, oxygen-rich clumps of ejecta flung by the supernova blast. Ionized oxygen is an excellent tracer because it glows brightest in visible light. To calculate an accurate explosion age, the astronomers picked the 22 fastest moving ejecta clumps, or knots. The researchers determined that these targets were the least likely to have been slowed down by passage through interstellar material. They then traced the knots' motion backward until the ejecta coalesced at one point, identifying the explosion site. Once that was known, they could calculate how long it took the speedy knots to travel from the explosion center to their current location. According to their estimate, light from the blast arrived at Earth 1,700 years ago, during the decline of the Roman Empire. However, the supernova would only have been visible to inhabitants of Earth's southern hemisphere. Unfortunately, there are no known records of this titanic event. The researchers' results differ from previous observations of the supernova's blast site and age. Earlier studies, for example, arrived at explosion ages of 2,000 and 1,000 years ago. However, Banovetz and Milisavljevic say their analysis is more robust. "A prior study compared images taken years apart with two different cameras on Hubble, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)," Milisavljevic said. "But our study compares data taken with the same camera, the ACS, making the comparison much more robust; the knots were much easier to track using the same instrument. It's a testament to the longevity of Hubble that we could do such a clean comparison of images taken 10 years apart." The astronomers also took advantage of the sharp ACS images in selecting which ejecta clumps to analyze. In prior studies, researchers averaged the speed of all of the gaseous debris to calculate an explosion age. However, the ACS data revealed regions where the ejecta slowed down because it was slamming into denser material shed by the star before it exploded as a supernova. Researchers didn't include those knots in the sample. They needed the ejecta that best reflected their original velocities from the explosion, using them to determine an accurate age estimate of the supernova blast. Hubble also clocked the speed of a suspected neutron starthe crushed core of the doomed starthat was ejected from the blast. Based on their estimates, the neutron star must be moving at more than 2 million miles per hour from the center of the explosion to have arrived at its current position. The suspected neutron star was identified in observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, in combination with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. "That is pretty fast and at the extreme end of how fast we think a neutron star can be moving, even if it got a kick from the supernova explosion," Banovetz said. "More recent investigations call into question whether the object is actually the surviving neutron star of the supernova explosion. It is potentially just a compact clump of supernova ejecta that has been lit up, and our results generally support this conclusion." So the hunt may still be on for the neutron star. "Our study doesn't solve the mystery, but it gives an estimate of the velocity for the candidate neutron star," Banovetz said. Banovetz will present the team's findings Jan. 14 at the American Astronomical Society's winter meeting. Explore further Merger between two stars led to blue supergiant, iconic supernova Question Everything! Purpose and Intent of this website: Trump Impeached Amid Efforts to Silence Him Trump has been impeached again and this time the Republican-controlled Senate may convict to keep him from running in 2024, as Democrat-aligned big tech moves to shut him up, reports Joe Lauria. By Joe Lauria January 14, 2021 " Information Clearing House " - The vote on Wednesday to impeach Donald Trump a second time with just days to go in his term was meant to prevent him from running again in 2024, as the Constitution disqualifies an impeached official from seeking future office. The House voted 232-197 to impeach after Vice President Mike Pence rejected a Democratic ultimatum Tuesday of 24 hours to begin the process of removing Trump under the 25th Amendment. Trump will finish out his term as the Senate wont likely take up the case until after Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. Conviction is possible this time as Senate Republicans face a dilemma: vote to convict and alienate Trump voters, or remain loyal to Trump and alienate everyone else. If he is convicted, Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution says, Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. The 14th Amendment also disqualifies anyone to hold office who shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States. The articles of impeachment say: Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States. It goes on to say: President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. There, he reiterated false claims that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouragedand foreseeably resulted inlawless action at the Capitol, such as: if you dont fight like hell youre not going to have a country anymore. Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Sessions solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts. Did Trump Incite the Capitol Takeover? To convict Trump, the Senate trial, if it were not a completely political exercise, should have to determine if his words at the rally on Wednesday broke federal law, which states in 18 U.S. Code 373 Solicitation to commit a crime of violence: Whoever, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against property or against the person of another in violation of the laws of the United States, and under circumstances strongly corroborative of that intent, solicits, commands, induces, or otherwise endeavors to persuade such other person to engage in such conduct, shall be imprisoned About 30,000 Trump supporters filled the Ellipse between the back of the White House and the Washington Monument. According to the transcript of his remarks, Trump said: These people are not going to take it any longer. Theyre not going to take it any longer. All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats and stolen by the fake news media. We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesnt happen. You dont concede when theres theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and thats what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. Were gathered together in the heart of our nations Capitol for one very, very basic and simple reason, to save our democracy. were going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed, and were not going to stand for that. Youre stronger, youre smarter. Youve got more going than anybody, and they try and demean everybody having to do with us, and youre the real people. Unbelievable, what we have to go through, what we have to go through and you have to get your people to fight. If they dont fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that dont fight. You primary them. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, were going to walk down and Ill be there with you. Were going to walk down. Were going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. Were going walk down to the Capitol, and were going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. Were probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because youll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. The radical left knows exactly what theyre doing. Theyre ruthless and its time that somebody did something about it. And Mike Pence, I hope youre going to stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country. So were going to, were going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and were going to the Capitol and were going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones dont need any of our help, were going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. At times the crowd chanted, Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Are these words by Trump strongly corroborative of an intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony, an intent that solicits, commands, induces, or otherwise endeavors to persuade such other person to engage in such conduct?? Or were these just the fighting words of a politician, directed almost entirely at fellow Republicans? He said: I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. [Emphasis added.] When he said the Democrats were ruthless and its time that somebody did something about it he was referring to Pence and the Republicans sending the electoral college votes back to key states. That is the entire context of his more than one hour speech. When he said you have to get your people to fight, he meant Republican representatives who would have to be primaried. With no proof so far that Trump had prior knowledge of the plan to take over the Capitol, or evidence of direct instructions from him to do so, it would seem difficult to convict him in a court of law, but maybe not in a political trial in the Senate. Before Trump spoke, Donald Trump Jr., who acted like hes preparing to run for office, whipped up the crowd saying that Wednesday was the day to prove if you are a hero or a zero. But he was not referring to the supporters, but to Republicans in Congress who he was demanding vote against certifying election results from key swing states. Rudy Giuliani, likewise used a strange phrase, combat justice, but in the context of continuing to challenge the computer results of the election. Trumps people already filed 62 electoral fraud lawsuits across the country, and lost them all. Whether or not it would be sufficient evidence to convict him, it was troubling that Trump took several hours before he called on the rioters to leave the Capitol and afterward tweeted Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever! Was it a Coup, an Insurrection or Terrorism? More information about the events at the Capitol have emerged since my column last Thursday, in which I wrote: But by the time it was over we knew that: only five weapons were seized by police so most of the intruders were probably unarmed; the only shots fired were by police who killed an unarmed female protestor; video and photos showed the demonstrators taking pictures of chambers and art work like they were tourists; and the occupiers were peacefully led out of the Capitol six hours later. (Had they been anti-racism protestors one wonders how differently it would have ended.) All of that remained true from what was known 24 hours after the 4-hour takeover peacefully ended. But since then new information has emerged: A police officer was killed after protestors beat him with a fire extinguisher; fighting with police took place inside the Capitol not only at the breached police lines outside; computers, allegedly with sensitive defense information, were stolen; cars nearby were found carrying pipe bombs; at least one protestor inside the Capitol was photographed with plastic ties presumably to arrest lawmakers and a noose was constructed outside the steps of the capital. There are arrest warrants so far for about 150 suspects out of the thousands of protestors who stormed the Capitol. This would indicate that a relatively small group inside the crowd had planned the violent assault on the building. This has led to so far totally unfounded theories that it was a false flag operation to set Trump up for impeachment. Who this small band of men were, whether active or ex-servicemen, or off-duty policemen is being investigated, as were plans discussed in online fora. Once the police were overwhelmed and doors broken open, hundreds moremostly acting like touristsstreamed in, some walking single file inside velvet ropes. They too are subject to arrest for illegally entering a federal building. Did what happen constitute a coup or an insurrection, and are the protestors domestic terrorists, as Biden called them? Was the noose purely symbolic? Did they really think they could succeed in using it? One has to separate out those few who appeared ready to arrest members of Congress or use pipe bombs, from the vast majority of protestors who entered the Capitol. Smearing them all as extremists and even worse as terrorists is inflammatory. It is leading to a wholesale reaction that is further deepening the crisis. The actions certainly exposed an extreme rage against Congress. Just a handful of male protestors of military age it seems, some trained to climb up walls, were potentially planning to detain and perhaps punish members and Pence, whose name was chanted near the noose. Had these far-fetched plans succeeded would it have constituted a coup? A study of attempted and successful coups show that the usual targets are the presidential palace, radio and TV stations and the airport. The military or the police has to be on the coup-plotters side, or they will be crushed by the state. A coup detat means the overthrow of an existing government and its replacement with new rulers. Is that what was attempted here? The small number of protestors who may have dreamed of a coup had only the presidential palace on their side and nothing else. It was a deluded fantasy that they could have taken over the vast and powerful U.S. government, and not just the Capitol for a few hours. They had zero chance of forcing Congress or Pence to reject the electoral college results. Calling it a coup attempt is a huge stretch. Insurrection The U.S. law against insurrection is exceedingly broad. 18 U.S. Code 2383 Rebellion or insurrection reads: Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. What happened at the Capitol could qualify under the broadest phrase any rebellion. But the Cambridge Dictionary definition of insurrection would exclude what happened last week: an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence. It was an attempt to take control of the Capitol, not the country. Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection. Defining terrorism has been immensely controversial, with the UN General Assembly failing to agree on its meaning. A working definition is violent acts by non-state actors against civilian targets for political aims. The FBIs definition of domestic terrorism is broader: Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or Puerto Rico without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives. Under these broad terms the protestors who used violence to intimidate government could conceivably be indicted on a terrorism charge. Biden, the author of the Patriot Act, has promised new domestic terrorism laws. Is the Reaction Worse Than the Crime? The Congressional Republicans who challenged the electoral college results last Wednesday are guilty of one transgression: wasting Congress time. There was no way the electoral college votes would be overturned. However those Republicans were completely within their rights to challenge the results and spur debate and a vote in both chambers. To suggest that that Constitutional right constituted incitement or support for the riot is extraordinary overreach. Yet there have been Democratic calls for these Republicans to be unseated and even investigated for possible prosecution. During the impeachment debate on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler said the rioters accomplices in this House will be held to account. Numerous corporate donors have said they will no longer contribute to these Republicans campaigns. There is even wild speculation by some Democrats that some Republican members gave Capitol reconnaissance tours to the rioters the night before. The New York Times posted photos of all Republican members who challenged the electoral college votes as if they were on a wanted poster. Republican Congressman Jim Jordan in the impeachment debate pointed out that more Democrats in Congress objected to more states electoral college results in 2017s certification than had Republicans last Wednesday. A Democratic member responded that Hillary Clinton had conceded, unlike Trump, and that the objections were based on Russian interference in that election. He accused the Republicans, with a straight face, of engaging in conspiracy theories about a stolen 2020 election. Such Democratic hypocrisy was underscored on 60 Minutes Sunday, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump deranged, unhinged, and dangerous. But is he any more deranged, unhinged, and dangerous than Democrats who joined Republicans to vote in 2003 to invade and occupy a nation that posed no threat to the United States? How would one describe Pelosis response in 2019 when asked why she opposed impeaching George W. Bush for that invasion, a crime of aggression, the worst war crime according to the Nuremberg Tribunal? Because of that invasion Bush was still a far worse and more dangerous president than even Trump. Bias Democratic media has shown extraordinary bias throughout these events. The slanted New York Times coverage of the impeachment proceedings is shown by its reporting on this tweet. The protestor who says he was invited to the Capitol by the president was outside the building. Had he been inside it would be a valid argument. Linda Qiu, Fact Check Reporter Fact Check: Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, asked whether any rioters specifically said that the president incited them to act. This video appears to answer his question. Shutting Trump Up The move by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media companies to temporarily or permanently ban Trump is part of the effort to crush him and prevent a comebackto try to cut him off from his 70+ million voters. It may not be so easy to silence him, however, even if he winds up in jail for his alleged role in the takeover of the Capitol or for financial crimes. Major drug dealers have been able to continue running their operations from behind bars. He would become a martyr in prison. Indeed, the Biden Justice Department may think twice about indicting him. Barack Obama declined to prosecute George W. Bush or his administration for war crimes in Iraq or for ordering torture, infamously declaring the nation should look forward, not back. Prosecuting Trump could set a precedent of going after ex-presidents that Democrats might not want to set, whatever the evidence against Trump. An indictment from the Southern District of New York on financial crimes may be more likely. Trump may or may not have Fox News as an outlet for his post-presidency views. Some Fox hosts may invite him on, while others may not. The ratings would be hard to resist, though. Even Democrats would likely tune in to see what hes saying next. Trump was furious at Fox for the way it covered election night, particularly for calling Arizona for Biden before other networks. There was talk at the time that Trump would begin his own TV channel, most likely an online-only venture. With a ready audience of 70 million it shouldnt be hard to raise investment or attract apolitical advertisers. Trump could also create his own social media platform to directly communicate with his base. It could spur a mass exodus of Trump supporters from Twitter and divide social media into two camps like cable news has already done. Fox News started it in the 1990s with overt Republican propaganda. It killed CNN and MSNBC in ratings, leading them both to eventually become Democratic Fox channels, spewing Democratic Party propaganda. All the channels audiences have their beliefs constantly reinforced as the gulf between the parties and their voters perilously widens thanks in large measure to the cable networks and their lust for profits. Defeating Trumpism Several readers contended that the motive behind the march on the Capitol was only about the election and had nothing to do with how Congress has ignored the interests of ordinary Americans and instead serve their wealthy donors. But why do Trump supporters back Trump if not because they believe, wrongly I contend, that he is their champion who fights for their interests? It is a difficult argument to make about a president who cut taxes for the rich; largely failed to bring back promised off-shore manufacturing jobs; failed to bring home working class soldiers from forever wars; deregulated business at workers expense; saw income inequality widen under his watch; did not support a rise in the federal minimum wage and horribly mismanaged a pandemic that has taken a much larger toll on front-line workers than on stay-at-home professionals. The misery of American workers and the shrinking of the middle class began long before Trump, however, and both Democrats and Republicans are to blame. Bill Clinton moved his party firmly behind neoliberal economic policies, begun in full under Ronald Reagan, that have devastated workers. All presidents since, including Trump, have adhered to these policies. The justified anger of Americans has reached the boiling point. It was certainly a seminal moment in recent U.S. history to see people breaking windows to get into the peoples house. The Establishment has been spooked since the Democratic and Republican voter insurgencies of the 2016 election. Though Trump talked a good anti-Establishment game, he is firmly entrenched in it. Rising popularism on both left and right, though fighting for many of the same economic and even foreign policy goals, appear inevitably headed to a clash. The one solution to this metastasizing crisis is what Congress, and the incoming Biden administration, are refusing to do. Government must address the needs of the people who pay their salaries or they will face increasingly violent revolts. Such a radical shift in policy would mean risking the ire of their powerfully wealthy donors, however. The agenda is simple, bring the United States into line with most industrialized democracies: radically cut defense spending, provide national health insurance, invest in green infrastructure, raise minimum wages, forgive student debt, provide free state higher education, encourage re-unionization and provide monthly stipends during the pandemic. Trump supporters are vocal in their denunciation of socialism. But would they send back $2,000 a month checks? Would they reject heavily government-subsidized medical care? Would they turn down free university education? Do they return their Social Security checks now? Franklin Roosevelt was moved to forge the New Deal during a depression to stave off the specter of social revolution. These are the measures of a new New Deal that could truly unite the nation as Biden says he wants to do, and put an end to an exploding American crisis, one of the worst in its history. Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe - " Source " - Consortium News is Doing it's Winter Fund Drive, Please Contribute Post your comment below Registration is necessary to post comments. We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive language. Please be respectful of others. See also MOSCOW, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia's sovereign wealth fund) announces the approval of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Paraguay. The vaccine was registered under the emergency use authorization procedure without additional clinical trials in the country. Sputnik V had been registered under the same procedure earlier in Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Palestine and Venezuela. Supplies of the vaccine will be facilitated by RDIF's international partners in India, China, South Korea and other countries. Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said: "Registration of Sputnik V vaccine in Paraguay proves the increasing interest of Latin American countries in a safe and effective Russian vaccine against coronavirus. We expect that more countries in the region will also approve it soon and are ready to create new partnerships to pool efforts in the fight against the pandemic." Sputnik V has a number of key advantages: Efficacy of Sputnik V is over 90%, with full protection against severe cases of COVID-19. The Sputnik V vaccine is based on a proven and well-studied platform of human adenoviral vectors, which cause the common cold and have been around for thousands of years. Sputnik V uses two different vectors for the two shots in a course of vaccination, providing immunity with a longer duration than vaccines using the same delivery mechanism for both shots. The safety, efficacy and lack of negative long-term effects of adenoviral vaccines have been proven by more than 250 clinical studies over two decades. Over 1.5mn people have already been vaccinated with Sputnik V. The developers of the Sputnik V vaccine are working collaboratively with AstraZeneca on a joint clinical trial to improve the efficacy of AstraZeneca vaccine. The Sputnik V vaccine has been approved in Russia , Belarus , Serbia, Argentina , Bolivia , Algeria , Palestine and Venezuela ; the process to approve the vaccine in the EU has been initiated. There are no strong allergies caused by Sputnik V. The storage temperature of Sputnik V at +2+8 C means it can be stored in a conventional refrigerator without any need to invest in additional cold-chain infrastructure. The price of Sputnik V is less than $10 per shot, making it affordable around the world. Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is Russia's sovereign wealth fund established in 2011 to make equity co-investments, primarily in Russia, alongside reputable international financial and strategic investors. RDIF acts as a catalyst for direct investment in the Russian economy. RDIF's management company is based in Moscow. Currently, RDIF has experience of the successful joint implementation of more than 80 projects with foreign partners totaling more than RUB2 tn and covering 95% of the regions of the Russian Federation. RDIF portfolio companies employ more than 800,000 people and generate revenues which equate to more than 6% of Russia's GDP. RDIF has established joint strategic partnerships with leading international co-investors from more than 18 countries that total more than $40 bn. Further information can be found at www.rdif.ru Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1140939/Russian_Direct_Investment_Fund_Logo.jpg Related Links https://rdif.ru/ SOURCE The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Norwegian health chiefs have said that side effects of the Covid-19 jab may have caused the deaths of 23 elderly people. The country's medicines agency reported today that of these fatalities, 13 have been autopsied and showed signs of suffering side effects such as fever and nausea. All of these patients had recently received the jab and were nursing home residents over the age of 80. The Norwegian Medicines Agency stressed they were not alarmed by the deaths - they expected some - but is updating its advice to allow doctors to make a judgement whether to vaccinate their most frail patients. Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician, said 'common adverse reactions to mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients,' in the body's first report on vaccine side effects. The agency noted that clinical trials of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine 'did not include patients with unstable or acute illness - and included few participants over 85 years of age.' Norwegian health chiefs have said that side effects of the Covid-19 may have caused the deaths of 23 elderly people (file photo of the Pfizer vaccine) The agency added in a statement: 'We cannot rule out that adverse reactions to the vaccine occurring within the first days following vaccination (such as fever and nausea) may contribute to more serious course and fatal outcome in patients with severe underlying disease.' Steinar Madsen, medical director with the agency, said: 'We are not alarmed by this. It is quite clear that these vaccines have very little risk, with a small exception for the frailest patients.' He added: 'Doctors must now carefully consider who should be vaccinated. Those who are very frail and at the very end of life can be vaccinated after an individual assessment.' A total 29 people in Norway have had confirmed side effects shortly after getting the jab out of more than 30,000 people to have received their first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna coronavirus vaccine since the end of December. Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician, said 'common adverse reactions to mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have contributed to a fatal outcome' Earlier this week, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said that 'any side effects of the vaccine will be outweighed by a reduced risk of becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 for elderly, frail people.' It added that 'for very frail patients and terminally ill patients, a careful balance of benefit versus disadvantage of vaccination is recommended.' In its report, the Norwegian Medicines Agency said that 21 women and eight men had side effects. Beside those who died, the agency said nine had serious side effects without a fatal consequence and seven had less serious side effects. The nine patients had allergic reactions, strong discomfort and severe fever while the less serious side effects included severe pain at the injection site. Overall, Norway has seen 57,279 cases and reported 511 deaths during the pandemic. Across the world, officials expect deaths and other severe side effects to be reported after any mass vaccination campaign given the huge numbers of people involved. But determining whether or not the vaccine caused deaths can be very challenging and requires that all other potential causes be ruled out first. The United Kingdom and the United States have also reported a number of cases of side effects that had fatal consequences. The European Medicines Agency said Friday that it will receive and consider monthly safety reports from companies authorized to sell vaccines, starting in January with the Pfizer jab. Graphics by Bae So-young By Nam Hyun-woo Celltrion has revealed positive Phase 2 clinical trial results for its COVID-19 treatment Regkirona, also known as CT-P59, raising expectations that the firm will get conditional approval for its use here as early as this month. The treatment is anticipated to be a new addition to the arsenal of drugs that can be used to fight the coronavirus in and outside Korea, but experts and analysts said Regkirona and other COIVID-19 treatments will not likely be game changers as they will play a limited role in preventing patients with mild to moderate symptoms from progressing to severe stages of the disease. They stressed that reaching herd immunity, a level large enough so that the overall population is protected, requires vaccination, the most feasible way of seeing a turnaround in the pandemic, but Korea appears to have missed out in the timing to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines. Celltrion announced the Phase 2 trial results of Regkirona on Jan. 13. In the trial conducted on 327 patients in Korea, Romania, Spain and the United States, Regkirona reduced the number of patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms from progressing to the severe stage requiring hospitalization by 54 percent compared to a placebo, the company said. Celltrion added that Regkirona showed a significantly lower level of viral load seven days after injection, while it required 10 days for the placebo group to reach the same level. Analysts said this is comparable to other COVID-19 treatments which earned Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meaning the chances are high that Regkirona will get approval not only in Korea but also other countries. Despite the favorable outcome, investor sentiment moved adversely. A day after Celltrion announced the results, the company's share price dropped 7.6 percent from the previous day's trading to end at 352,000 won, despite the benchmark KOSPI remaining nearly flat. Mixed interpretations were raised over this, with some saying investors were profit taking, while others claimed it was an expression of disappointment in the treatment's limited role. "With the treatment, Celltrion showcased it was not a company limited to making biosimilar drugs, but that it could develop its own novel drugs," Hana Financial Investment analyst Sun Min-jeong said. COLUMBUS, Ohio, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Ohio families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Ohio families, schools, and organizations are hosting 1,609 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the state's notable events will be a K-8 school fair taking place virtually on Saturday, Jan. 30 and featuring schools from more than 18 Northwest Ohio counties. Ohio families statewide will also be participating in an "Ohio Loves School Choice" video contest, with winners announced during National School Choice Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Ohio, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland will light up in red from dusk to dawn all week from Jan. 24- 30. Plus, the Terminal Tower in Cleveland will light up in red and yellow on Jan. 24. A growing number of Ohio communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Ohio counties of Vinton and Warren, the cities of Kent, Lakemore, Fremont, Jefferson Township, Strongsville, and Groveport, and the townships of Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington. "The disruptions of this past year have underlined the continued need for all the types of schools Ohioans choose for their children," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's talk about how families and educators need school choice that works for them." In Ohio, there are a variety of educational options available to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Ohio offers state-run scholarship programs for students with autism spectrum disorders, students assigned to underperforming schools, and students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Ohio families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Ohio school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/ohio. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com At the Reuters Next conference on Wednesday, Brian Deese, the incoming director of Bidens National Economic Council, bluntly stated the class interests behind the ongoing drive to reopen schools. We need to get the schools open, Deese claimed, so that parents, and particularly women, who are being disproportionately hurt in this economy, can get back to work. Notwithstanding his feigned concern for the plight of working-class parents, Deese, a former investment banker for the Wall Street firm BlackRock, blurted out what has always been the chief concern of the corporate and financial oligarchy: getting children back to schools, no matter how dangerous, so their parents can resume producing corporate profits. Deese only reiterated the position of the incoming Biden administration, which has declared in its platform that opening schools is perhaps the single most important step to get parents back to work. Brian Deese (Source: BlackRock) Such efforts will only spur the pandemic to ever greater heights of death. Already in the US, there are now an average of more than 3,400 newly reported deaths each day, along with more than 250,000 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus. And schools are key drivers of the pandemic. A recent study in Montreal showed that, contrary to the official government position, children were in fact driving community spread. As many educators suspected, when schools reopened in the fall, children caught and passed on the virus to their peers, who in turn passed it along to their parents and other adults they interacted with. The objective right now should be to flatten the curve, said Simona Bignami, one of the authors of the research, to the Montreal Gazette. Yet opening schools will strongly limit, if not outright cancel, the benefits the other measures in effect could have. School reopenings have been the goal of both the Democrats and Republicans when schools and factories were first closed in March and April. Then, the lockdowns that took place were precipitated by the opposition of New York City teachers and wildcat strikes by autoworkers, meatpackers and other sections of workers. The school closures were forcibly and prematurely ended at the time by Trump and in-person instruction has been restarted by Democrats in major urban areas such as New York City and Chicago. For months and months, Democratic and Republican politicians and columnists in the New York Times and Washington Post have claimed that their only motivation for reopening schools in the midst of the pandemic was to help children, especially low-income students and students of color from falling behind, along with feigned concerns about mental health and child abuse. Similar arguments were made in the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries to conceal the class interests behind the homicidal herd immunity policy being pursued by capitalist politicians in every country. Now that Biden is slated to take office, those pretenses are increasingly being dropped. It is not insignificant that the true reasons were blurted out by Deese considering his background. Until his appointment he was the Global Head of Sustainable Investment at BlackRock, a company which controls $7 trillion in shares and other assets of major banks and corporations such as Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, Apple and Microsoft. Deese speaks both for the US political establishment and directly for the countrys financial oligarchy when he demands that schools open. Large corporations have been trying to get parents back to work to end the high levels of absenteeism seen during the past several months. A recent article in Bloomberg noted that more than 1.9 million people missed work in December from illness, nearly equal the number in April, the height of the first wave of the pandemic. Absenteeism rates have reached as high as 25 percent, which has both reduced revenue for companies as well as forced them to offer higher starting wages to entice those who arent working back to factory lines. According to the Federal Reserve Beige Book released Wednesday, the Chicago district of the US central bank reported elevated employee absenteeism among employees because of COVID-19 cases or exposures and child care challenges for workers. This is what is behind the drive by Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoots drive to restart in-person instruction in the nations third largest school district even as Cook County experiences 6,500 new infections each day and several schools already open have seen outbreaks. Last week, Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa related a recent meeting between the Latino Caucus of the City Council and the mayor, who admitted what her real priorities were. The Latino caucus met with Mayor Lori Lightfoot some weeks ago, maybe a few months ago. We said mayor, why do you want to do this? She said, one, Im hearing from employers that they want their employees back in the workplace, two, Im hearing from downtown businesses that they dont have any customers and three, because Im worried about the kids. If there was truly any concern about whether or not workers should have to choose between their livelihoods and their lives, resources would be made available to subsidize workers income, not force them back into disease-infected offices and factories. Last November, Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of Bidens COVID-19 task force, called for a nationwide shutdown of nonessential production, with full compensation for lost wages. After the markets plunged, Biden reiterated his opposition to lockdowns and Osterholm has been virtually silent since. While Deese claimed that reopening the schools would be part of a broader strategy to get the investments necessary to make a nationwide vaccination program work, he explicitly noted that such a program would be dependent on resources made available. The talk about opening safely even as infections and deaths continue to surge is only a means of giving the teachers unions a cover as they work with Biden and the Democrats to restart schools. As early as last April, Trump encouraged the most right-wing forces to oppose the most elemental restrictions on business operations, encouraging them to liberate states like Michigan from temporary lockdowns. The armed siege of the Michigan Capitol in Lansing and the plot to kidnap and assassinate Governor Gretchen Whitmer was the dress rehearsal for the January 6 fascist insurrection at the US Capitol. Instead of raising the alarm of the dangers of fascist dictatorship, Biden is doing everything he can to downplay the immense dangers while he calls for bipartisan unity with the Republican conspirators. The Democrats do not want to alert workers because they fear that opposition to the right-wing conspiracy will combine with resistance to the deadly back-to-school and back-to-work campaign, which the Democrats, as a party of Wall Street, are pushing just like the Republicans. But this is exactly what must happen: workers must organize rank-and-file committees, independent of the unions, to conduct a counteroffensive to the criminal policies of the ruling class, including a political general strike against the fascist danger and to demand the closure of schools and nonessential production until the pandemic is contained. The trillions spent on the corporate bailout must be redirected for a vast infusion of resources for online learning, compensation for those unable to work as a result of the pandemic and for a mass vaccination program to ensure the safety of everyone during the ongoing pandemic. Rating: Solid neighborhood option On my way to Albania, I wound up in Syria. Thats the way of the food truck game. You start out looking for one truck. Its gone. You drive until you find another. Thats how I found King of Shawarma and Kebab, a red trailer parked next to a Valero station on Wurzbach Road by the Medical Center. And thats how I met Khedro and Ahmed Banna, two brothers from Syria who started the truck four years ago with their father, Mohamad Banna. They left their native Syria after Mohamad Banna was shot in a helicopter attack at his restaurant there. After a few years sheltering in Turkey, the family came to the United States with the help of a United Nations representative. Now they work 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the window of their trailer, making a range of halal-certified Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food, from shawarma and gyros to hummus and kebabs. When theyre not working, Ahmed Bannas a senior at Marshall High School. Khedro Bannas studying to be a dentist. The work parts easy, Ahmed Banna said, a relief after everything his familys been through. He conveyed their sentiments in a text: We are very grateful for being here. We cant thank the Americans enough for giving us such an opportunity. Peace and God bless America. On ExpressNews.com: 52 Weeks of Food Trucks: Carnitas Don Raul on Broadway kicks off series with a Worth a Drive rating Best dish: Its no surprise that the best thing I ate at King of Shawarma is also the trailers best seller. Its a gyro wrap filled with thin slices of spit-roasted lamb, onion, parsley, lettuce, tomato and tzatziki sauce, all of it amplified by the red pepper puree called muhammara. Mike Sutter /Staff Its a great value at $5.99. Add crisp, hot crinkle-cut fries for $1.99. Other dishes: You cant be the King of Shawarma and Kabab without being good at both. The Bannas came through with a plate of beef shawarma cut in thin, juicy ribbons, with more herb than a Colorado duffel bag. For $11.99, the plate included a bed of yellow rice, hummus, pita and a Mediterranean salad of chopped cucumber and tomatoes. Kebabs were represented by a mixed plate with kebab sticks with ground beef and chicken, densely packed and lightly spiced ($10.99 with rice, salad, pita and hummus). Mike Sutter /Staff The trailers chicken shawarma wrap ($4.99) behaved as much like a burrito as a Mediterranean wrap, with chicken and garlic sauce swaddled tightly in a pita. It was the ugly duckling of the dinner parade but nonetheless satisfying. On ExpressNews.com: Naco Mexican Eatery food truck has some of San Antonios best chilaquiles, Keto-friendly cheese-crust tacos, so its Worth a Drive The broader story of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food is written in its side dishes, and the best here came straight from the Syrian pantry: a creamy spread of muhammara that spreads like hummus but tastes like a rich Sicilian marinara ($2.99). Mike Sutter /Staff A Greek salad was much more elegant than Id expect from an operation on wheels, with a full spread of feta, olives, cucumbers and tomatoes with olive oil and cool, crisp lettuce ($2.99). The included dolma delivered the familiar, satisfying comfort that comes from herbed rice deftly wrapped in grape leaves with olive oil. King of Shawarma and Kabab Location: 8719 Wurzbach Road, 210-719-1335, Facebook: King of Shawarma and Kabab Hours: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 11 a.m. to midnight Friday-Saturday Takeout/delivery: Takeout and third-party delivery available See More Collapse Ill have to come another time for falafel and baba ganoush. Because while big dreams and a strong work ethic define food-truck life, so does supply and demand. msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking (@FahadShabbir) CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2021) Moldova's new President Maia Sandu said on Friday that she intended to convene a meeting of the Supreme Security Council, an advisory body to the leader, next week. In late November, Sandu said that she would change the composition of the council right after taking office. The president stressed that first of all, the high profile cases like stealing billions of Dollars, airport concessions and illegal financing of political parties, would be discussed. "A meeting of the Supreme Security Council is most likely to be held next week, I will announce the changes in the composition of the council by the same time. I will have a reintegration advisor, but I have not yet made a final decision on the candidate for this position," Sandu said live on the RTR Moldova broadcaster. Moldova's Supreme Security Council consists of the chairman of parliament; the prime minister; the chairman of the parliamentary commission on national security, defense and public order; the ministers of finance, defense, internal affairs, and justice, among other officials. The president of Moldova, by decree, has the right to change the composition of the Supreme Security Council. The farmer unions and the government held the ninth round of talks today, which turned out to be inconclusive and the next date that has been decided to resume the discussion is January 19. The farmer unions and the government held the ninth round of talks today, which turned out to be inconclusive and the next date that has been decided to resume the discussion is January 19. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said, Todays talks with farmers unions were not decisive. We are positive to reach a solution through talks. The government is concerned about the farmers protesting in cold conditions. The three laws were discussed in detail today, as well as two new amendments in the three laws. There were no breakthroughs in todays talks but the Centre seems hopeful. Rakesh Tikait, BKU spokesperson said, Our demands of repealing of the three farm laws & MSP guarantee remain. We will not go to the Committee constituted by the Supreme Court. Well talk to Central Government only. The Supreme Court on January 11 heard a bunch of pleas regarding the laws and set up a four-member panel to help resolve the deadlock. BKU President, Bhupinder Singh Mann and chairman of All India Kisan Coordination Committee has recused himself from the court-appointed panel and by saying, I will always stand with my farmers and Punjab. The ongoing meeting discussing three agricultural laws between Union Govt and farmers did not come to a resolution before the lunch break. The MSP Guarantee act will be discussed after the break. https://t.co/J0AboHOBM4 ANI (@ANI) January 15, 2021 Also read: Kashmir issue raised in UK Parliament: Indian mission invites MPs for a dialogue Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar had said that the talks will be done with an open mind. He also added, The governments ninth round of negotiations with protesting farmer unions will take place as scheduled on Friday and the Centre is hopeful of positive discussions. The farmer unions have maintained that they were ready to attend the scheduled talks with the government, even as they have said they do not want to appear before the court-appointed panel and have also questioned its composition. Union Agriculture Minister, Narendra Singh Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister, Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce, Som Parkash, who is also an MP from Punjab, held talks with the representatives of around 40 farmer unions at the Vigyan Bhawan today. The deadlock has continued for a long time as the farmers agitation began on November 26. Since then, every meeting has been inconclusive, with unions steadfast in their demand for repeal of the laws. The government, on the other hand, has agreed to significant concessions, but is unwilling to repeal the laws. There has also been news of a fundraising drive abroad, which is being done in the name of farmers protest. This fundraising drive is taking place in countries like Italy, UK, Canada and Pakistan. Sources are saying that the SFG will try to incite the farmers and the aim of this drive is to disrupt the Republic Day parade and embarrass the government. Also read: Indias vaccine roll out: PM Modi to launch the worlds largest immunization drive tomorrow Please note The Sun Chronicle is providing this story and all of our local coronavirus coverage for free so that all readers have access to this important information about the pandemic. Please visit our dedicated coronavirus coverage page for more stories. If you'd like to support our mission, please subscribe. Watching him shepherd that and keep a level head and cool and calm demeanor during these times when people in this area were being laid off, plants were being shut down, and the pressure upon him to try to deliver the best he could against a Congress that was all about free trade ... I think weve seen hes been right, Davison said. D etectives have launched a CCTV appeal after a woman was raped in east London. The victim was spoken to by a man outside a supermarket on Tollgate Road, Beckton, just before midnight on December 6, according to police. He then followed her home and raped her, it is alleged. The Metropolitan Police have released a picture of a man they wish to speak to. He is aged between 30 and 40 and was wearing black trousers, a black jacket and a navy top. Detective Constable Joe Herron, investigating, said: I would like anyone who may recognise this man to please contact us." 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. Mumbai: Reacting to the poster controversy of her upcoming movie Madam Chief Minister, actor Richa Chadha on Friday said it was an unintentional oversight and it was regrettable. The films poster, which was released on January 5, was slammed by many on social media for apparently showing the Dalit community in a stereotypical way as Chadhas character is shown holding a broom in her hand. Some users had also taken umbrage over the use of the word untouchable in the poster. In a statement, Chadha said the film has been a learning experience for her. The first poster that was released faced severe criticism, rightly so. What to me (and my privileged eyes) was a mere prop used by my character in a scene, came across as a stereotypical portrayal of Dalits for many of our people, the actor said. Though she had no role in the designing of the films poster, Chadha said the makers have taken the criticism in their stride. They realised this inadvertent error and took this criticism in their stride. They responded immediately by retracting the objectionable poster and by releasing a new poster the very next day. It was a regrettable and a completely unintentional oversight, not a deliberate insinuation. We are sorry. Our heart is in the right place. Hopefully you will see that for yourself when you watch the film, the actor added. Chadha stressed that the team has honest intentions behind the movie and they all have contributed to it with love. Tara, one feisty oddball of a woman, fights patriarchy, caste oppression, brutal violence along with the usual betrayals of politics, to rise to the top and affect change. And she does so with incredible dignity and courage. I could relate to her righteous rage. She spoke to me. As the film nears release, I am becoming aware that I have to say goodbye to Tara. I am also aware that she will never entirely leave my side, the actor concluded. Madam Chief Minister, which is said to be loosely based on the life of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati, is written and directed by Subhash Kapoor of Jolly LLB fame. Produced by T-Series Films and Kangra Talkies, the film also features Manav Kaul and Saurabh Shukla. This is a fundamental fact of life: no one like to be sold. We dont need to be sold on buying food, water or heat. We must have it to live. 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. Life Upended. The coronavirus outbreak has had a devastating impact on our nation, and it has touched Staten Islanders in countless ways. In this series, reporter Tracey Porpora will share the stories of those who have been thrust into situations that were unimaginable just a few months ago -- those who have seen their life completely upended. This is the Thirty-first story of Life Upended. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Growing up under Soviet rule in Odessa, Ukraine, Vladimir Kiner, 64, wanted to be a rock star. While dreaming of gracing stages around the world like The Beatles, Kiner, at age 13, began learning the art of shoe repair from his grandfather -- and eventually finished two years at a special school to become a shoemaker. His rockstar dreams faded, but he soon found himself becoming passionate about a more tame career as a shoemaker -- and owning a shop in America. Kiner worked making shoes from scratch for a while, then switched to repairs because there was more business in that field. After he married his wife, Inna, Kiner studied four years in college to learn how to be a manager of a factory. But in late 1989, Kiner and his wife left it all behind, and headed to New York City, where he worked at a Manhattan repair shop for a year. He owned a shop in Brooklyn for seven years before taking over the Bement Shoe Hospital -- located in the heart of West Brighton -- in December 1997. And life was good for 23 years while neighborhood folks relied on Kiner, who settled in Oakwood Beach, for top-notch shoe, handbag and other repairs. However, when he had to shutter due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in March, he was forced to support his family via his life savings. While Kiner was able to obtain some unemployment -- not the full amount because he is a business owner -- he opted to open back up and forgo receiving government benefits in August. Because I am self-employed, unemployment was not a lot at all, Kiner said. But in my business, I must be open. If people see the gates closed, they will think I closed for good ...Im trying to do everything I can to stay open. This is the only source of income for my family. If I close, I dont know what I will do. Im going to be 65 years old in June. Id make Social Security, but honestly, its impossible to live on Social Security. With bills and property taxes, that wont be enough. I have to work, he added. REMOTE WORK HURTING BUSINESS He said business is beyond slow. With many people working from home during the pandemic, they arent putting wear and tear on their shoes -- and there appears to be less need for his services. The shoe repair business is a seasonal business. Usually, I am busy in the fall and spring. When school starts in September it picks up until January, then its quiet until Easter, said Kiner. He said he would be happy to just make enough money to support his family -- which, in addition to his wife, includes his adult sons, Daniel and Igor -- and pay his stores rent and bills. My two sons are helping us a little bit. ...I dont have a big savings, so this is very difficult, said Kiner. Business picked up very little in September, but its not enough to pay bills. He said that once the second wave of coronavirus came in November, the little business he had drummed up in the fall greatly decreased. A lot of my customers say, Im not working right now, or Im working from home, and Im not wearing shoes, said Kiner. However, he has had some patronage from the loyal cliental he has built up over the years. Ive had generations of customers come to me. Five years ago I was so busy, I asked my supply guy to send me help, he said. I was really busy. I was really tired, but happy because I could provide better for my family. But even before the pandemic shuttered the globe, Kiner said he saw a decrease in business over the last two years. Im not sure why it slowed down, but now with the situation with COVID, forget about it, he said. NEW SERVICES Right now Kiner is trying to gather up enough money to purchase a key-making machine to add this service to his business. I dont have the money for the machine right now, but I would like to buy one and be able to offer key making for my customers, he said. Many shoe repair stores also have key making, but I never did it because there was a store around the corner, but now they are out of business. In addition to supporting his family, Kiner said he wants to stay open for his loyal customers. I am so appreciative of the clients who do come and tell me, We need you stay open. I am so grateful you cant imagine. I did not have an easy life in the Soviet Union. To be able to be here and do what I do brings tears to my eyes, Kiner added. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** OTHER LIFE UPENDED STORIES: Life Upended: Im going through hell, says restaurant owner Life Upended: DJ with no income refers to a life in limbo during pandemic Life Upended: Devastating impact of coronavirus on Bin 5 owner and his wife Life Upended: As workers stay remote, Leos Deli owner faces loss of revenue Life Upended: Im broke...I just want to hold onto my restaurant, says Portobello Cafe owner Life Upended: Physical therapist trying to tough it out to stay open Life Upended: With Broadway shuttered, Staten Island performer turns to teaching Life Upended: $125K in debt, rock climbing gym owner fears closure Life Upended: New pizzeria owner, 22, struggling to hold on Life Upended: With no cases, lawyer starts cooking business amid pandemic Life Upended: Owner of tour guide business left with no income Life Upended: Dancing school owner forced to close after 35 years Life Upended: Personal stylist adapts as clothing no longer a priority Life Upended: Trainer trying to win $20K in fitness contest to stay afloat Life Upended: No opening date in sight for devastated owner of adult day care center Life Upended: In fight to survive, gym owner launches auto business Life Upended: With live concerts banned, musician struggles for survival Life Upended: With gyms still unable to open, dojo owner on brink of ruin Life Upended: Jewelry store owner trying not to give up Life Upended: 58-year-old forced to shutter new business, then mom gets coronavirus Life Upended: Comic shop owner is driven by memory of her late partner Life Upended: Left destitute, single mom focuses on helping others Life Upended: Despite ovarian cancer diagnosis amid coronavirus crisis, nail salon owner to open Monday Life Upended: A fight to keep beloved gift shop afloat Life Upended: With clients gone, single mom takes job shopping for senior citizens Life Upended: Laid off for the first time at age 62 Life Upended: I have 3,000 dresses and no buyers Life Upended: With her business closed, single mom fears losing everything Life Upended: I might have to retire with no money, says business owner, 77 FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK and TWITTER We feel like our voices werent being heard which is why we ran through that Capitol Building. To let them know this is our house, and we were united, black, brown, red, yellow, didnt matter white, everybody stood together, we ran through that building and let them know this is our house, this is our country, and thats our President, authorities quote him as saying in the video. And were not going to let them (expletive) with us, man, (expletive) with our liberty and our freedoms, were going to keep doing what we are doing. Installed and run properly with an energy-efficient home, heat pumps can offer great comfort and reduce heating costs. Credit: klikkipetra/Shutterstock Poorly constructed housing can seriously affect people's health and wellbeing. And with the UK having some of the oldest buildings in Europe, that's a lot of housing not fit for purpose. Almost 2.5 million families in the UK live in poor housing conditions and suffer from fuel poverty. This means they are unable to maintain a reasonable temperature in their homes due to low income. Most of the housing in the UK dates back to before the 1990s when energy efficiency design was not regulated. This not only has a huge impact on people's healththe NHS spends 1.4 billion each year treating people affected by poor housingbut it also affects our natural environment and biodiversity. According to the Climate Change Committee, which advises the UK government on climate change matters, around a quarter of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions come from the energy we use for heating, lighting or running appliances in our homes, public buildings or workplacesand energy used in our homes is the most significant source. Indeed, out of the existing 29 million homes in the UK, at the moment only eight million homes meet the highest energy standards. This is in part why the UK government has recently announced a new plan to make buildings greener and reach the net-zero target by 2050, which aims to eliminate all harmful emissions from the atmosphere. Heat pumps and new builds One solution proposed in the government's new plan is to install 600,000 heat pumps by 2028. Heat pumps are similar to air conditioning units but they transfer and circulate energy from a source of heatsuch as air, ground or waterthrough a compressor and into our homes. They can be a good way to improve energy efficiency for some homes, but they require significant investment (from the government or homeowner) and the installation process can be disruptive and time-consuming. And while 600,000 may sound like a decent amount, this figure actually falls short of previous suggestions made by the UK Energy Research Centre. Another proposal is to increase the energy efficiency standards for all new buildings by 2025. This is to ensure that the design is right from the start, rather than insulating walls and installing heat pumps later.Homes built to the Future Homes Standard will be "zero-carbon ready" and will have 7580% lower carbon dioxide emissions than those built to current standards. But while these plans might be step forward on the way to improving the UK's housing, the solutions don't go far enough. In fact, the government would do well to look further afield to how other countries have creatively "greened" up their housing. Eco-friendly tiny houses in NIjkerk, Netherlands. Credit: HildaWeges Photography/Shutterstock How it's done elsewhere In the Netherlands for example, the government is improving the energy efficiency of its existing buildings through a new technology called Energiesprong, initially funded by the government. The technology helps refurbish houses to high levels of energy efficiency in less than ten days using wall and window insulation, solar roofs and smart heating systems. The approach leads to fewer emissions, but also less waste, as most of the components are prefabricated, which also allows for quick assembly. Other examples are Austria and Italy, both of which have promoted the use of technology and sustainable solutions to pilot innovative house refurbishment at a city-level. In five years, two pilot citiesInnsburuck in Austria and Bolzano in Italysuccessfully reduced household energy by 40%-50% and emissions by 30%. All of these schemes involved system-wide change and close collaboration between housebuilders, utilities companies, houseowners and local government. This collaboration is important, indeed some of my own research with Bianca Olimpia Drotleff on shifting to a zero-waste economy emphasizes the key role governments play in supporting the uptake of innovative technologies for extending a building's lifeas well as encouraging the reuse of sustainable materials and reduction of construction waste. This is why the UK government needs to focus on developing strong collaborations and long-term schemes for housebuilders, rather than shorter ones that often discourage engagement. A system rethink According to a report from the House of Commons, greener and more energy-efficient buildings could see most people's energy bills slashed by 270 a year. It would also help to make the air we breathe cleaner. At the same time it would release undue pressure on the NHS and allow people to live more comfortably in their homes. Just as importantly, the retrofit work required to make our homes more energy efficient would create up to 50,000 jobs by 2030all of which is to be welcomed in the current climate. But if the government truly wants to "build back better" and reach the net-zero ambition, it must look at the problem from a system-wide perspective rather than passing the buck down to homeowners or housebuilders. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 75% of Americans say MLK day (Jan. 18) is an essential holiday for remembering the importance of U.S. civil rights, according to a recent survey by Reputation Leaders. Most see Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy as not just a great speech but also a continuing commitment to civil rights. Young African American woman A survey of 1,007 U.S. adults nationally found that 80% of Americans agree that civil rights are as important in 2021 as at any time in the last 30 years, evidenced by 3 in ten (29%) reporting they were personally and negatively affected by discrimination in 2020. Over half (53%) of those cited racial discrimination. Two-thirds of Americans surveyed said that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that America still needs to address education, job, and health access inequalities faced by minorities. More Americans thought that the workplace via HR was the right place to create and pursue racial justice than other options such as activism, politics, or the judicial system. For employers, their commitment to diversity will impact the talent they can attract and retain in 2021. 45% of workers say this commitment would significantly impact or even be non-negotiable in deciding to work for a new employer. Employees with a workplace culture that is empowering and accepting feel most proud to work for their employers. 85% of workers were proud to work for employers who had acted to address racism in their organization. 28% of workers did not think there was any racism in their organization. In 2021, half of American workers look to their employers to act on race and minority equality issues. Unfortunately, 45% of American workers do not expect their employer to make significant progress on diversity and inclusion issues in 2021. This affects how proud they are to be employed there. 79% of those who think their employer will make significant progress on diversity and inclusion are proud to be employed there compared with 53% who are proud of their workplace but expect no D&I action. Methodology Using the ThoughtBite framework, Reputation Leaders ran a U.S. national online study from January 6-8, 2021, to explore American opinions on racism and discrimination. Interviews were conducted among 1,007 U.S. adults aged 18 and over, matching the U.S. demographic profile by age, gender, and region. Full results are downloadable from https://www.reputationleaders.ltd/media/mlkday2021 For more information on DE&I, Purpose, and Reputation, contact [email protected] Reputation Leaders is a thought leadership and reputation consultancy that causes people to think differently about your brand. We specialize in thought leadership studies that help our clients lead on essential issues, build reputation, and earn media headlines. Related Images diversity-in-business.jpg Diversity_in_Business Young African American woman Related Links Full results SOURCE Reputation Leaders Ltd A large group of unmasked ultra-Orthodox Jewish people convened in front of a Brooklyn store to watch an angry raccoon that was stuck in the window grate in the apartment above. The crowd failed to adhere to social distancing guidelines as they watched the spectacle in front of 285 Lee Avenue in the South Williamsburg section of Brooklyn on Friday. Williamsburg News filmed the 90th Precinct of the New York Police Department arriving at the scene, not to disperse the crowds, but to get the mammal from the grate. People in a Brooklyn neighborhood gathered to watch the angry raccoon on Friday The crowd failed to adhere to social distancing guidelines as they watched the spectacle in front of 285 Lee Avenue in the South Williamsburg section of Brooklyn on Friday As the officers work to retrieve the raccoon, many in the community gathered to watch. Most could be seen not wearing masks and some even blocked traffic to get a good view. It is unknown what became of the raccoon after it was rescued. Officers did not appear to be concerned the crowds - or their lack of masks. Officers with the 90th Precinct arrived at the scene to retrieve the mammal but did not appear too concerned with the large crowd or its lack of masks Few in the crowd that gathered to watch the raccoon rescue wore masks New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Hasidic community in Brooklyn have gone back and forth in the days of the pandemic, with ultra-Orthodox Jews in the area all but rejecting most social-distancing guidelines. Prior to the election, the lockdown measures by Cuomo prompted some to stoke demonstrations against the measures - with some Ultra-Orthodox Jews claiming they were being targeted by the Democratic governor for their support of President Donald Trump. In October, a New York federal judge ruled that Cuomo's partial lockdown was lawful, dismissing a claim from Ultra-Orthodox Jewish organizations that it violated the free exercise of their religion. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 01:01:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GENEVA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Mukhisa Kituyi, secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), announced on Friday in a press release that he will step down from his post on Feb. 15. "His current mandate would normally end on Aug. 31 this year," Catherine Huissoud, UNCTAD's press officer, told Xinhua in a written interview. "It is his second mandate at the head of the UNCTAD." Kituyi, of Kenya, became UNCTAD's seventh secretary-general on Sept. 1, 2013. After serving an initial four-year term, he was reappointed in July 2017 for an additional term of four years. While no official explanation has been given on his early departure, reports said that Kituyi had declared interest in joining the 2022 race to succeed Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. Meanwhile, "a vacancy will be posted" at the beginning of February, and the selection process of Kituyi's successor will start afterward, explained Huissoud. "Once a candidate is selected, the secretary-general of the United Nations will propose his name to the General Assembly, which needs to confirm or reject the choice in a vote," said Huissoud. "The entry into office of the new appointed Secretary-General will be on Sept. 1, 2021." Enditem The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Agartala, Jan 15 : The Tripura police on Friday recovered the body of a trader 50 days after he was kidnapped at gunpoint by terrorists from the northern part of the state, officials said. Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Arindam Nath told IANS that the slain Litan Nath's body was recovered by the police from a forest in the Khedachara area in North Tripura district. Earlier the state police, Tripura State Rifles and central para-military forces had jointly launched a massive combing operation to rescue the trader and also detained four suspected National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) militants from the areas adjoining Mizoram and Bangladesh. Litan Nath's wife told the police that a few heavily armed militants had raided their house on November 27 and looted jewellery, cash and abducted her husband. The police said that the abductors had demanded Rs 1.5 lakh in ransom for the release of Nath, who has four young children. The NLFT extremists had earlier on December 23 released three persons after 17 days of captivity. Supervisor Subhash Bhowmik, 48, JCB driver Subal Debnath, 37, and worker Gana Mohan Tripura, 37, were kidnapped by the NLFT ultras from Malda Kumar Para in eastern Tripura's Dhalai district on December 7 while they were engaged in border fencing work along the international border. The NLFT militants had whisked away the three hostages to Bangladesh since the crime spot was just along the international border. The Government-owned National Building Construction Corporation was assigned the task to put up a barbed wire fence along the India-Bangladesh border to check crimes and infiltration. After several years of lull, of late terrorist activities have resurfaced in Tripura, which was until 2008-09 devastated by the decades old insurgency. A pioneering British electric vehicle battery business has moved quickly to secure a high end tech provider for its Northumberland factory. Britishvolt will partner with German giant Siemens as it looks to start construction this summer on a 3,000-job 'gigafactory' on the site of a former Blyth Power Station. Producing electric batteries in the UK is seen as crucial both to keeping major automotive companies in the country and to help meet the Government's goals on climate change. Battery boost: Britishvolt chief executive Orral Nadjari and how the gigafactory might look The Britishvolt plans would also be a massive boost to the North East economy. By 2028, the firm estimates it will produce a billion cells enough for 300,000 lithium-ion batteries installed in electric cars for the UK automotive industry per year. The site is set to not only be the fourth largest building in the UK but the 16th largest in the world and the second largest gigaplant in existence, gazumped only by Tesla's Nevada facility. The 2.6billion promised for the gigaplant is the largest industrial investment in the North East since Nissan's arrival in Sunderland in 1984, and is one of the largest-ever industrial investments in the UK. The firm has funding from 25 private Emirati and Scandinavian investors and has applied for a Government grant. The company is also considering a stock market float to raise further funds. Britishvolt chief executive Orral Nadjari said: 'We are delighted to enter into this collaboration. Working with Siemens and utilising its global expertise in Digital Twin and simulation technologies will play a pivotal role in Britishvolt achieving its tight deadlines to begin producing world-class batteries, at scale, by the end of 2023. 'Being able to simulate production of lithium-ion batteries and cell development speeds up a complicated process and allows us to bring crucial batteries to market quicker,' he added. 'Working with leading global partners such as Siemens helps us stay firmly on course in our mission to build the UK's first battery gigaplant.' These days, many health care workers are undoubtedly feeling even more stress, and yet, their patients need and deserve to be treated by people who show up for work healthy: with adequate sleep, not hung over, and not jonesing for their next after-work drink. You should do everything possible to intervene and get your wife some desperately needed help. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Brendan Lantry, the chairman of the Staten Island Republican Party, announced his resignation Thursday as he pursues a long-planned run for a seat on the New York City Civil Court. In the interim between now and a February election, Mary Reilly, one of the partys first vice-chairs and a former chair, will serve the party as acting chair. Brendan will go down as one of the great leaders in our partys history, she said. From putting solid conservative jurists on the bench to building our County Committee membership to successful fundraising and voter registration drives, Brendan leaves behind an incredible legacy and a strong foundation for the future. If elected, Lantry, a lifelong Staten Islander, will fill the seat vacated by Justice Lisa Grey after her election to the State Supreme Court in November. Hoping to follow up on the success Reilly described, Lantry has already amassed endorsements for his judicial run from local Republicans, including all of the partys elected officials, and a number of civil service unions, including all those representing members of the FDNY and NYPD. Justice in our courts is essential to a free, safe, and prosperous community, Lantry said. I am running for judge because I believe I have the experience and temperament necessary to ensure that all who enter the courtroom are treated fairly according to the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the State of New York. During Lantrys tenure as Staten Island Republican chair, the partys enrollment surpassed 100,000 Staten Islanders for the first time, Republicans tripled the number of their chosen judges elected to the bench, and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn) was elected to office. In November, Malliotakis defeated former Rep. Max Rose for Staten Islands lone congressional seat. When Rose defeated former Rep. Dan Donovan in the early days of Lantrys time as chair in 2018, it called the future of Staten Islands Republican Party into question. Shortly after Roses victory, an opinion piece submitted to the Advance/SILive.com suggested that the party had zero ability to mobilize our own ground forces because we have, over the last several years, systematically destroyed our own great party, making it a former shadow of itself. Lantry has said that he began planning to step down as chair before the November election, and that he was unable to comment on recent national and local events regarding the Republican Party, because of his judicial run. Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to disrupt Congressional certification of President-elect Joe Bidens November victory. Since then, footage surfaced of local Republican Borough President candidate, Leticia Remauro, using the phrase Heil Hitler during a December rally outside of Macs Public House. Despite Lantrys inability to comment, the local party he led for the last three years issued a statement condemning Remauro on Tuesday. We are shocked to learn of the grotesque, divisive, and hurtful words uttered by Leticia Remauro, the party said in its statement. This conduct has no place in our political discourse. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 19:05:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KUALA LUMPUR, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia's natural rubber production decreased 14.8 percent in November 2020 to 42,554 tonnes as compared to 49,943 tonnes in the previous month, official data showed Friday. Malaysian Statistics Department said in a statement, on a year-on-year basis, the production also fell 19.7 percent. Exports of Malaysia's natural rubber rose 3.7 percent month on month to 56,522 tonnes in November 2020. China remained the main destination for natural rubber exports, accounting for 57.8 percent of total exports in November 2020. This was followed by Germany (9.1 percent), Iran (5.1 percent), Finland (3.4 percent) and Turkey (3.4 percent). Meanwhile, rubber gloves were the main export item with an export value 4.4 billion ringgit (1.09 billion U.S. dollars) in October 2020, an increase of 0.9 percent to RM4.5 billion in November 2020. The United States, Germany and China were among the highest importers of rubber gloves, it said. The stocks of natural rubber also increased 0.5 percent month on month to 259,440 tons in November 2020. Enditem TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Toronto, Ontario, GlobeX Data Ltd. (OTCQB:SWISF)(CSE:SWIS) ("GlobeX" or the "Company"), the leader in Swiss hosted secure data management and secure communications, is pleased to announce that it has exercised its right to accelerate the expiry date of voting share purchase warrants (the "Warrants") issued to participants in the Company's private placement, which closed in May 2020 (the "Offering"). Participants have twenty days from the date of notice of the acceleration to exercise their Warrants. Each Warrant issued in conjunction with the Offerings entitled the holder to purchase one voting share in the capital of GlobeX Data Ltd. for a period of 12 months from May 20, 2020 (i.e. May 20, 2021) at an exercise price of C$0.13 per share, subject to adjustment in certain events. GlobeX Data Ltd. retained the right to require the acceleration of the expiry date of these Warrants if the Company's ten-trading-day volume-weighted-average-price ("VWAP") on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) met or exceeded C$0.15 ("Accelerated Expiry Date"). This was achieved during the trading period from December 30, 2020 through January 14, 2021. Management expects redemptions of the Warrants to result in the issuance of 851,053 additional voting shares and cash proceeds of C$110,636.89, however, there can be no assurance that any of the Warrants will be exercised prior to the Accelerated Expiry Date. Alain Ghiai, CEO of GlobeX Data said: "GlobeX continues to build its business and expand strategically in the USA and Canada in addition to starting sales in Latin America after the long COVID-19 pause. We are grateful for the continued support of our shareholders and expect to leverage these proceeds with our strong balance sheet to accelerate our growth while continuing to generate strong shareholder value." Warrant holders who wish to exercise their Warrants should contact their investment advisor or GlobeX Data directly and submit an exercise notice form to GlobeX's Investor and Corporate Relations Department at corporate@globexdatagroup.com. The Company will help any holder with any administrative proceedings. Any Warrants that have not been exercised by 5:00 p.m. (PST) at the end of 20 days' notice will automatically be cancelled. About GlobeX Data Ltd. GlobeX Data Ltd. is a Cybersecurity and Internet privacy provider of Swiss hosted solutions for secure data management and secure communications. The Company distributes a suite of secure cloud-based storage, disaster recovery, document management, encrypted e-mails, and secure communication tools. GlobeX Data Ltd. sells its products through its approved wholesalers and distributors, and telecommunications companies worldwide. GlobeX Data Ltd. serves consumers, businesses and governments worldwide. On behalf of Management GLOBEX DATA LTD. Alain Ghiai President and Chief Executive Officer +1.416.644.8690 corporate@globexdatagroup.com For more information please contact GlobeX Data at corporate@globexdatagroup.com or visit us at https://globexdatagroup.com. Forward Looking Information This news release contains certain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). All statements other than statements of present or historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "achieve", "could", "believe", "plan", "intend", "objective", "continuous", "ongoing", "estimate", "outlook", "expect", "project" and similar words, including negatives thereof, suggesting future outcomes or that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guarantees of future performance. GlobeX cautions that all forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond GlobeX's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the future of the Company's business; the success of marketing and sales efforts of the Company; the projections prepared in house and projections delivered by channel partners; the Company's ability to complete the necessary software updates; increases in sales as a result of investments software development technology; consumer interest in the Products; future sales plans and strategies; reliance on large channel partners and expectations of renewals to ongoing agreements with these partners; anticipated events and trends; the economy and other future conditions; and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in GlobeX's prospectus dated May 8, 2019 filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and available on www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, GlobeX undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. SOURCE: GlobeX Data Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624547/GlobeX-Data-Ltd-Announces-Acceleration-of-Warrants-Expiry-Date-Issued-in-Conjunction-with-May-20th-2020-Private-Placements 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. New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill again is directing the debate in Washington. Her decision in September 2019 to support impeaching Donald Trump the first time broke the reluctance of House Democratic leadership to move ahead with trying to remove the president from office. He was impeached that December. And she gained national attention this week with allegations that some members of Congress may have let people into the Capitol a day before it was breached by violent pro-Trump protesters, helping them conduct reconnaissance. If there is anyone currently serving in the House of Representatives who is aiding and abetting people who are attacking our Capitol and attacking our democracy, then they cant serve in Congress, Sherrill, D-11th Dist., told NJ Advance Media, on Thursday. What worries the former Navy pilot is that the Jan. 6 insurrection wont be the last word. We have people who were elected to office taking pictures with people who are flashing white power signs or saying theyre going to take guns onto the floor, she said. I dont think its over. Lawmakers have been warned that additional attacks were possible through Inauguration Day, when Joe Biden will become the next president on Wednesday, and have been told to take other safety precautions now that theyre back in their congressional districts. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. on Friday announced an outside review of Capitol security, and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Mo., and 106 lawmakers, including Sherrill, asked the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to look at the riot, including how prepared law enforcement was for the insurrection and whether rhetoric by elected officials contributed to the riot. Separately, Sherrill and other members have asked the House and Senate sergeants at arms and the Capitol Police to investigate whether other lawmakers led the visitors around a day before the Jan. 6 attack. She wont name any individuals, saying she wanted to wait for the results of the probe. If, in fact, it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection, if they aided and abetted the crime, there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress, in terms of prosecution for that, Pelosi said Friday at her weekly press conference. The Capitol Police on Friday said it was investigating the allegations. Sherrill said she saw groups walking around inside the building, and reported those concerns to the House sergeant at arms. It was odd, she said, because with the Capitol largely closed to the public due to the coronavirus, she usually can walk from her congressional office to the House chambers without seeing anyone else. If youre going to plan an attack, youre going to get reconnaissance, Sherrill said. To have them there roaming around was very, very odd, especially in light of what happened the very next day. She suggested that rioters who tried to barge into a private office of House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., knew in advance where it was. Clyburn seemed to agree, telling NBC News that while protesters were trying to break in, many members of the United States Congress right now who could not tell you where that office is and could not find that office if they wanted to. I heard reports of the planning that went into the attack, Sherrill said. It wasnt just a protest that turned into an attack on the Capitol. Five people died when the pro-Trump rioters overran the Capitol, broke windows, vandalized offices and forced the evacuation of members of Congress after the president told them at a rally to fight like hell and if you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore. Trump then was impeached on Wednesday for a second time over charges that he incited the protesters and threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government. Ten Republicans crossed party lines to support the resolution. The riot led to extensive security procedures at the Capitol, including stationing National Guard troops and erecting fencing around the grounds of what has been known as the peoples house. Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. When it comes to the best places for setting up an online business, the Kingdom of Bahrain does pretty well considering the global completion. It ranks 38 out of 99 countries, according to Best Accounting Software, a global firm that reviews and rates financial software to help organisations make more informed purchases. The island nation has shown promising potential in moving up the list thanks to a robust tech environment and supporting legal framework. E-commerce continues to grow year-on-year, with eMarketer forecasting global sales worth $6.542 trillion by 2023, accounting for 22 per cent of all retail sales (up from 14.1 per cent in 2019). This means 2021 could be the year to start your online business. Best Accounting Softwares researchers looked at 20 different categories across 99 countries. From GNI per capita and corporate tax rates to the number of social media, internet users, and co-worker spaces by each individual country, they analysed a plethora of key areas. The resulting data suggested the majority of countries most suited to starting an online business are located in Europe. Joined by the US, Canada, and Singapore, these countries provide an all-around great starting point for your next business venture but, the perks of these locations tend to be met with a higher corporate tax rate. Accordingly, Denmark turned out to be the best country in the world to set up an online business. Denmark enjoys a top score for secure internet servers (over 277,000 per 1 million people) and share of individuals with a finance account (99.92 per cent). It is also the cheapest of the top 10 to start a business (0.2 per cent based on the GNI percentage). Denmark also ranks second highest for how much of the population use the internet for online purchases/paying bills (88 per cent) and is positioned near the top for total number of internet users (98 per cent). The country did, however, have the second-lowest postal efficiency score in our top ten, has a very low number of co-work spaces (32), and received mid-range scores for mobile internet speeds (66.68 Mbps), social media user penetration (71 per cent), and corporate tax rates (22 per cent). Other top countries in order are Switzerland, the Netherlands, the US, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, Germany, Canada, Luxembourg. TOP PERFORMERS IN EACH CATEGORY In addition to top scorers, there are countries that outshine others within each category. Best for mobile internet speed: With average speeds of 129.61 Mbps, the UAE enjoys mobile internet thats over 4 per cent faster than second-place China. Best for fixed broadband: Singapore is the only country to exceed 200 Mbps for its fixed broadband speeds, enjoying average rates of 229.42 Mbps. This is almost 20 per cent faster than second-place Romania (188.85 Mbps). Best for fixed broadband subscriptions: Thanks to over 45 per cent of the population having a fixed broadband connection, France takes the top spot here. In fact, all of the countries with subscription figures over 40 per cent of the population are located in Europe. These include Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, and Malta. Best for internet users: Similar to social media users, the UAE and Kuwait come out on top along with Bahrain, with 99 per cent of their population using the internet. Best for social media users: With 99 per cent of the population using social media, the UAE clinches the top spot again but it is also joined by Kuwait in this category. As of January 2020, the UAE was recorded as having 9.73 million social media users and Kuwait 4.2 million. Best for secure internet servers: As the only country in our study to exceed 200,000 servers per one million people, Denmark is the clear winner here with over 277,000 per one million. An impressive statistic, especially considering the countrys small size. Best for online purchases/paying bills online: About 89 per cent of Norwegians use the internet for online purchases or paying bills, closely followed by 88 per cent in fellow Nordic countries, Denmark and Finland. Best for Low Corporate Tax Rates: With corporate tax rates of 0 per cent, the UAE and Bahrain offer clear benefits for many businesses. Its worth noting that Bahrain has no taxes on income, sales, capital gains, or estates with the exception of oil and gas trades. In the UAE, each jurisdiction is able to levy corporate taxes of up to 55 per cent on any business, but, in practice, it is mostly levied on foreign banks and petroleum companies. Best for GNI: Switzerland ranked the best for GNI per capita with a value of $85,500 in 2019, $3,000 more than second-place Norway and almost $85,000 more than bottom-placed Uganda. Best for Individuals with a finance account: Every country within the top 20 has over 90 per cent of its population using a financial account, but Denmark outdoes them all with a score of 99.92 per cent. Best for payment processing providers: A large number of countries scored full points for in this category, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the US. Best for economic freedom: Singapore enjoys great economic freedom and performs well in all of the categories covered here: property rights, judicial effectiveness, government integrity, tax burden, government spending, fiscal health, business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom, trade freedom, investment freedom, and financial freedom. Best for business start-up procedures: With just one procedure required to register your business in New Zealand and Georgia, these two countries offer a stress-free, speedy entry into the market. Best for days required to start a Business: Thanks to there being one only procedure necessary for business start-ups, its no surprise that New Zealand and Georgia are also the quickest places to establish a business. Here, you could be up and running in just one day. Best for cost of start-up business procedures: Based on the percentage of GNI it costs to start up a business, Ireland, the UK, and Slovenia are best at just 0.1 per cent. Unsurprisingly, with its lengthy procedures, Venezuela ranks worst in this category, costing 211.8 per cent of GNI. Best for time zones: The most popular time zone is UTC +1 and includes 44 countries worldwide (most of Europe and Central Africa), providing great multinational connections. Best for logistics performance: According to the World Banks Logistic Performance Index, Germany is the best in the world. It outperforms the average scores across all of the other high-income countries, boasting great infrastructure, timeliness, competence, international connections, ease of customs, and tracking and tracing. Best for postal efficiency: With full marks for postal efficiency, Switzerland comes out on top yet again. Measured on reliability, reach, relevance, and resilience, Switzerland has dominated the index since it began in 2017. Best for co-work spaces: As previously mentioned the US boasts a far greater number of co-work spaces than any other country. With over 2,400, the opportunity to find a suitable office space and to network with fellow entrepreneurs is vast. Best for digital skills: Many online businesses rely on key skills, from basic coding to general computer skills. According to World Bank data, Finland has the most digitally skilled workers, scoring 5.83 out of 7. Tradearabia News Service US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan SHOWS February 22, 2021 10.00 am 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. MMG Insurance Company has promoted Kayla OMalley Dill to vice president of Marketing and Business Development, effective January 4, 2021. Dill is based in Maine. Dill joined the Company in 2013 as senior marketing representative. Throughout her tenure with MMG, Dill also held the positions of territory manager and most recently of senior territory manager in the state of Maine. She previously worked for a national carrier holding positions in sales, casualty claims and learning and development. MMG Insurance Company, headquartered in Presque Isle, Maine, is a regional property and casualty insurance company with operations in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Source: MMG Insurance Company Topics Carriers In this July 9, 2018, file photo, an advertisement for Xiaomi is displayed at a subway station in Hong Kong. The U.S. government has blacklisted Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. and China's third-largest national oil company for alleged military links, heaping pressure on Beijing in President Donald Trump's last week in office. The Department of Defense added nine companies to its list of Chinese companies with military links, including Xiaomi and state-owned plane manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (Comac). (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File) The U.S. government has blacklisted Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. and China's third-largest national oil company for alleged military links, heaping pressure on Beijing in President Donald Trump's last week in office. The Department of Defense added nine companies to its list of Chinese firms with military links, including Xiaomi and state-owned plane manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (Comac). U.S. investors will have to divest their stakes in Chinese companies on the military list by November this year, according to an executive order signed by Trump last November. Xiaomi said in a statement that its products are for "civilian and commercial use" and said it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military. "The Company will take appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the Company and its stakeholders," the statement read, although Xiaomi did not elaborate on what those actions might be. Xiaomi Corp. overtook Apple Inc. as the world's No. 3 smartphone maker by sales in the third quarter of 2020, according to data by Gartner. Xiaomi's market share has grown as Huawei's sales have suffered after it was blacklisted by the U.S. and its smartphones were cut off from essential services from Google. Separately, the Commerce Department put China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) on the entity list, an economic blacklist that forbids U.S. firms from exporting or transferring technology with the companies named unless permission has been obtained from the U.S. government. The move comes after about 60 Chinese companies were added to the list in December, including drone maker DJI and semiconductor firm SMIC. CNOOC has been involved in offshore drilling in the disputed waters South China Sea, where Beijing has overlapping territorial claims with other countries including Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan, and Malaysia. "China's reckless and belligerent actions in the South China Sea and its aggressive push to acquire sensitive intellectual property and technology for its militarization efforts are a threat to U.S. national security and the security of the international community," U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. "CNOOC acts as a bully for the People's Liberation Army to intimidate China's neighbors, and the Chinese military continues to benefit from government civil-military fusion policies for malign purposes," Ross said. A CNOOC spokesperson said in a statement that it will "continue to monitor the progress," acknowledging that the company had been put on the entity list. Chinese state-owned company Skyrizon was also added to the economic blacklist, for its push to "acquire and indigenize foreign military technologies," Ross said. Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, founded by tycoon Wang Jing, drew U.S. criticism for an attempt to take over Ukraine's military aircraft engine maker Motor Sich in 2017. The concern was that advanced aerospace technology would end up being used for military purposes. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian criticized the move as suppressing Chinese companies, and said the Trump administration was "generalizing the concept of national security and abusing state power for no apparent reason." "China will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, and resolutely support Chinese enterprises in safeguarding their own rights and interests in accordance with the law," Zhao said at a daily briefing Friday. He said the U.S. actions violated principles of market competition and international economic and trade rules, and undermined the confidence of foreign enterprises investing in the U.S., all of which would eventually harm the interests of U.S. enterprises and investors. Explore further US blacklists Chinese companies including chip giant SMIC 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. The Japanese automaker will have the upgraded 2021 Ridgeline at U.S. dealerships starting February 2nd, with the new and rougher exterior design arriving in combination with the fully boxed truss-style floor frame and standard torque-vectoring i-VTM4 all-wheel drive.The adventurous looks now fully support its best-in-class AWD hauling capabilities, but the versatility does come at a higher cost than before. The base 2020 Ridgeline goes for an MSRP of $33,900, but the entry-level 2021 version, the Ridgeline Sport, is now $2,590 more expensive, starting from $36,490.Add the $1,175 destination charge, and customers will need to shell out at least $37,665. If we count the $1,175 fee on the rest of the trim setup, the Ridgeline immediately crosses the $40k threshold. As such, the Ridgeline RTL goes for $40,645, the RTL-E is $43,595, and one needs at least $45,095 to get the Black Edition parked on the driveway For the cash, Honda is offering the Ridgeline with a fully independent suspension and standard V6 power under the hood. The 280-hp 3.5-liter VTEC is supported by a standard nine-speed automatic transmission and the brands i-VTM4 torque-vectoring all-wheel drive system. The company also equips every Ridgeline with its proprietary Honda Sensing suite of safety and driver-assistance tech.For the 2021 model year, theres also a new HPD Package that was jointly developed alongside Honda Performance Development, adding a host of exclusive elements (new grille, bronze alloy wheels, HPD graphics, etc.). This is the most expensive (at $2,800) among all new packages, which include the Utility ($1,465), Function ($270), and Function+ ($1,315). The Government has established the remuneration for those who will vaccinate the Romanian population against COVID in the coming months. Thus, the doctors who will work overtime will receive 90 lei / hour, nurses - 45 lei / hour and registrars - 20 lei / hour, Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu said on Friday. "We have adopted an important emergency ordinance, an emergency ordinance that will go to the Legislative Council and will be published soon. In the emergency ordinance we set out an extremely important thing, namely the way in which those who will vaccinate the population of Romania in the coming months will be remunerated. So, those who will be in the vaccination centers and will not be seconded or delegated, so those who work practically overtime, and I would like to emphasize this, those who work overtime will be remunerated with an amount of 90 lei / hour in the case of doctors, 45 lei / hour in the case of nurses and 20 lei per hour in the case of registrars. Those are gross amounts, as it was established by this emergency ordinance," Vlad Voiculescu explained at Victoria Palace. Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Researchers from leading UK and US institutions have published an analysis outlining the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on ethnic minority groups, and the role of racism, in particular systemic racism, as a fundamental cause and driver of adverse health outcomes. Recommendations include the addition of ethnic minority groups to those defined as clinically extremely vulnerable to COVID-19, with guidelines devised to consider which patients may be at greatest risk. Published in the BMJ, the paper describes the evidence demonstrating poorer outcomes among ethnic minorities during the pandemic. The researchers, from institutions including St George's, University of London, Harvard University, University of Manchester and Imperial College London, discuss the impact of racism and discrimination as root causes of health inequalities and increases in mortality and morbidity. The researchers pose that structural racismpolicies and processes embedded in society, which disadvantage ethnic minoritieshas the most damaging effect on health out of all forms of racism. Data from the first wave of the pandemic showed that ethnic minorities are up to twice as likely to die from COVID-19, a pattern also reflected in higher diagnosis rates, hospitalisations and admission to intensive care units. The analysis explores the possible societal causes of these trends. One consideration is the impact of residential segregation, with Bangladeshi and Pakistani people more likely to live in deprived neighborhoods in the UK than white British people. Residential segregation, a form of structural racism which is on the increase in Europe, has previously been shown to have a negative impact on health in the US. The paper explains that living in poorer areas, combined with lower socioeconomic status, high risk occupations and higher burden of chronic diseases, leads to poorer health outcomes. The paper adds that cultural racism, stemming from stereotypes, has also been shown to have detrimental effects on health, as a result of unconscious biases. These biases, sometimes held by healthcare workers, can affect patient interactions with physicians, leading to poorer quality communication during consultations or treatment. Self-reported discrimination has also been associated with diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and breast cancer as well as poor mental health, poor health behaviors, and lower use of healthcare services and adherence to medical regimens. Exposure to discrimination over time, known as weathering, the paper explains, has been shown to lead to psychosocial, physical and chemical stressors that accelerate biological aging. This may be having a direct impact on health, exacerbating the effects of the current pandemic. With health inequalities worst among ethnic minority groups with higher rates of deprivation, the researchers recommend interventions to reduce the adverse impacts of COVID-19. Their recommendations include: Recognition of racism in its various forms as a major driver of ill health among ethnic minority groups, and a need for governments and public health bodies to provide leadership on tackling institutional racism with a clear vision and accountability. Funding, developing, and implementing programs for prevention and education on COVID-19 in partnership with ethnic minority communities. Including ethnic minority groups in the extremely vulnerable category for COVID-19. Building on institutional practices to develop comprehensive occupational risk assessment tools that can be used to reduce the risk of employees' exposure to COVID-19, which are legally binding. Where risk of exposure is high, supporting employees through flexible work environments such as non-public facing roles and redeploying them away from COVID-19 areas wherever possible. Accelerating health promotion and disease prevention programs for non-communicable diseases, including promoting healthy lifestyles and effective management of chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, which disproportionately affect ethnic minority groups and are associated with more severe COVID-19 disease. The researchers also describe the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers. Black and Asian staff represent 21% of the NHS workforce, but accounted for 63% of deaths among health and social care workers during the first wave of the pandemic. The paper suggests that strengthening and supporting programs that have increased ethnic minority participation in higher education and senior roles could help to reduce discrimination, preventing adverse outcomes in future. Dr. Mohammad Razai, first author on the paper, from St George's, University of London, said: "The pandemic cannot be considered in isolation. The impacts of racism and discrimination on health are well established and measures must be taken to address the root causes of these disparities. At the same time, we need to urgently protect ethnic groups most at risk of adverse outcomes from COVID-19. "Our paper shows the weight of evidence and historical trends demonstrating poorer outcomes for ethnic minority patients. The effects of racism, in particular systemic racism, are still not widely recognized and must be acknowledged by both healthcare professionals and policymakers so that more can be done to redress the balance and reduce these inequalities." Professor David R Williams, a co-author from Harvard University said: "COVID-19 has powerfully illustrated that racism is a societal pathogen that is spreading disease and death on a grand scale. This paper describes the multiple pathways by which racism adversely affects health, and calls for a renewed commitment to dismantling all of the structures of racism so that everyone can experience all of the opportunities promised by our society." Professor Aneez Esmail, a co-author from the University of Manchester, said: "Ten months into the pandemic we know that COVID-19 has exposed the terrible inequalities in society. We are not in this together as many politicians have tried to claim. Ethnic minorities, including ethnic minority healthcare staff, in the rich countries of Europe and North America have been disproportionately affected by the impact of COVID-19, whether it is because of increased death rates or the significant morbidity that patients suffer as a result of the infection. "We don't need more research to find out why. What we need is concerted action from governments and national health systems to deal with the impact of this disease on ethnic minority communities. We have already identified evidence-based interventions, which if implemented, could help in reducing these inequalities. The time to act is now." Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak More information: Mohammad S Razai et al. Mitigating ethnic disparities in covid-19 and beyond, BMJ (2021). Mohammad S Razai et al. Mitigating ethnic disparities in covid-19 and beyond,(2021). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.m4921 Hope Landrine et al. Residential Segregation and Racial Cancer Disparities: A Systematic Review, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (2016). DOI: 10.1007/s40615-016-0326-9 Journal information: British Medical Journal (BMJ) Canadas foreign policy efforts are fragmented, a jumble of trade and aid deals that fail to adequately consider that our security is deeply tied to the health of the rest of the world. The current pandemic has shone a spotlight on this weakness. Opinion Canadas foreign policy efforts are fragmented, a jumble of trade and aid deals that fail to adequately consider that our security is deeply tied to the health of the rest of the world. The current pandemic has shone a spotlight on this weakness. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has erased any doubts that health is a global phenomenon, and its become abundantly clear that Canada urgently needs a global health strategy. While the majority of the health community in Canada learned some lessons from SARS almost two decades ago, COVID-19 has also helped all Canadians realize that we can no longer afford to separate our own health from the worlds. We are only as strong as our weakest health link. Too often Canadas foreign policy engagement in health has focused on advancing global security minimizing security threats from pandemics or climate change that spill across borders or through development policy focused on helping to eliminate major infectious diseases such as HIV, antimicrobial resistance, malaria and tuberculosis. Maternal, newborn and child health have also been a flagship for development priorities for Canada. But we have neglected, at our peril, to address the systemic inequities causing these global health threats. Gender equality The current federal government has taken some meaningful steps toward promoting gender equality in Canada and globally. While important, these efforts dont sufficiently address other mounting global inequities and health needs. Canadas Official Development Assistance investments, as currently designed, are not properly set up to support these and other health challenges. Although health has been previously used by Canada and other countries as a political instrument to promote peace, security and prosperity, Canada can no longer afford to separate its own security agenda from its global fight against health, racial and other social inequities. These problems are going to be exacerbated in the coming decades by the existing climate crisis. The triple crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic and related health and economic fallouts, climate change and persistent inequities present major challenges for wealthy countries like Canada. They require countries to address domestic needs while also tackling development priorities in vulnerable regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa. Thats why we need a global health strategy for Canada thats integrated, mindful of health, racial and gender equity, and also serves Canadas security and global citizenship agendas. Canada needs to be innovative when it comes to research and policy. Linking domestic and global policy In addressing global health threats, the federal government must erase the artificial divisions between domestic and global policy. Canadian strategy must fundamentally strengthen the countrys political voice in the G7 and G20. We must commit public funds and expertise toward strengthening multilateral and bilateral partnerships with other governments and global institutions such as the World Health Organization. The federal government must also approach its commitment to global health with openness, seeking out a wide range of perspectives that will form the basis of the design and monitoring of a renewed global health strategy for Canada. Establishing global health strategies is nothing new. Back in 2007, the foreign affairs ministers of Brazil, France, Indonesia, Norway, Senegal, South Africa and Thailand signed the Oslo Ministerial Declaration on global health as a pressing foreign policy issue. Canada was absent. France, Norway, Switzerland and others have followed up by establishing specific strategies. The Dutch parliament just adopted a motion to develop one. Germanys recently launched global health strategy could be a model for Canada. It takes a whole-of-government approach to improve policy coherence rather than leaving it up to any one ministry to lead in a silo. Germany will invest more in the World Health Organization, among other multilateral organizations, and in health promotion and research that supports its strategy. Canada too must fully acknowledge that our security interests are directly linked to health equity across the globe and nowhere is this more evident than in the race we have witnessed to develop and now deploy a COVID-19 vaccine. Here, a coherent global health strategy would ensure that Canada lives up to its commitment to universal access to a vaccine in the face of rising vaccine nationalism. Showing global leadership The strategy needs to be aligned with 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda, which provides an integrated framework for member states, including Canada, to measure progress on actions taken across sectors to address health, social, economic, gender and environmental inequities. We need a strategy with a clear mandate, accountability and monitoring mechanisms, and one that is clearly communicated. We also need to solicit advice from our global partners. Choosing to bring outside perspectives to inform strategy development would make Canada unique while also deliberately engaging a wide range of Canadian stakeholders. A parliamentary committee on global health could also be established to guide the work across various federal departments. And we could follow France and Sweden in appointing a global health ambassador to lead government engagements. We already have precedents, including Canadas Ambassador for Climate Change and Canadas Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security roles that signal the countrys leadership and commitment to collaborate with the global community. Canada can use a global health strategy to engage proactively as a leader on the global stage. In 2015, a newly elected Justin Trudeau declared that Canada was "back." Theres no better way and better opportunity for Canada to prove it than now with a comprehensive global health strategy for the post-pandemic era. Erica Di Ruggiero is an associate professor and director of the Centre for Global Health and Garry Aslanyan is manager of partnerships and governance at the WHO Special Programme TDR and an adjunct professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca. New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing the New York City Police Department and its leadership over its "excessive, brutal and unlawful" handling of George Floyd protests, James said in a news release. James also wants to install an external monitor to oversee the department's policing tactics. The suit, filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court, comes after a monthslong investigation into the NYPD's actions during protests from May through December over the killing of Floyd while he was in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25. The investigation found that officers allegedly used "indiscriminate, unjustified, and repeated use of batons, pepper spray, bicycles and a crowd control tactic known as 'kettling' against peaceful protestors," the release said. "There is no question that the NYPD engaged in a pattern of excessive, brutal, and unlawful force against peaceful protesters," said James. "Over the past few months, the NYPD has repeatedly and blatantly violated the rights of New Yorkers, inflicting significant physical and psychological harm and leading to great distrust in law enforcement." The suit names the NYPD, the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan as failing to address a "longstanding pattern of abuse" by not properly training, supervising and disciplining officers to prevent and address misconduct, the release said. NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said Thursday that the department "welcomes reform" and but reiterated that "adding another layer of oversight does not speed up the process of reform." "Our reform does not start at the George Floyd protests," he told reporters. "We've been in a state of reform that goes back many years. The suit as filed doesn't seem to meet the standard for a federal monitor and it doesn't seem to illustrate a pattern and practice which is required under the law." In a statement to CNN, de Blasio said he met with James on Wednesday and the two share a common goal "to drive major police reforms." "I couldn't agree more that there are pressing reforms that must -- and will -- be made this year," de Blasio said, adding that those include major discipline reforms and recommendations from a city Department of Investigation report. "That work is critical and is happening right now. A court process and the added bureaucracy of a federal monitor will not speed up this work. There is no time to waste and we will continue to press forward." Patrick Lynch, president of New York City's Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement that what the city witnessed in June was "a failure of New York City's leadership." "They (city leadership) sent cops out to police unprecedented protests and violent riots with no plan, no strategy and no support," Lynch said. "They should be forced to answer for the resulting chaos, instead of pointing fingers at cops on the streets and ignoring the criminals who attacked us with bricks and firebombs." The union submitted testimony as part of James' investigation, including testimonials from injured officers. The complaint filed Thursday includes dozens of examples of what the attorney general called blatant use of excessive force and other misconduct by officers. James said that since May her office had received more than 1,300 complaints, conducted a three-day public hearing and collected more than 300 written statements. A hospital employee on the front lines of the fight against Covid-19 at a news conference announcing the suit Thursday described how he was allegedly attacked by NYPD officers on his way home from a shift. Rayne Valentine, who works at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, said he was walking to a subway station after his shift and saw at least six NYPD officers pursuing and then using physical force against another man during a protest. Valentine said he began to record what was happening on his cell phone. The hospital worker said an officer told him to get back and that he complied, but the officer still charged at him. The lawsuit alleges multiple NYPD officers hit and kicked Valentine for about 90 seconds, leaving him bloodied. Valentine said he had to return to the hospital where he works to receive seven staples to close the wound on his head. James said officers struck protesters with blunt instruments at least 50 times, unlawfully deployed pepper spray on at least 30 occasions and pushed or struck protesters at least 75 times. The attorney general described the case of a Brooklyn protester named Luke Hanna, who was struck in the back of the head with a baton in June. James said Hanna, who required ten staples to close a gash on his head, was not arrested or charged. Additionally, the complaint said officers arrested or detained hundreds of protesters, legal observers and medics without legal justification. The attorney general said 12 legal observers were detained for violating curfew during a June protest in Bronx even though legal observers and medics were exempted from the curfew order. The lawsuit accused the NYPD of kettling, or corralling protesters so that they could not disperse -- and then making mass arrests. James's office investigated complaints from incidents between May 28, 2020, and December 11, 2020, and found that officers conducted mass arrests without probable cause and "targeted and retaliated against First Amendment activity" frequently, the news release said. James' lawsuit joins others filed by groups such as Legal Aid and the ACLU, which in October filed a federal suit against de Blasio, the NYPD and its leadership on behalf of 11 plaintiffs who claim they were subjected to brutality by police while peacefully protesting. Last month, a report from the city Department of Investigation said the NYPD failed to anticipate the large number of protesters or violence during the demonstrations. That failure, combined with insufficient staffing and lack of training, led to poor judgment and excessive force. Someone at CNN was tasked with writing a thrilling story about a brave democratic congressman who did not shy away from confronting the Capitol intruders. How a swift impeachment was born under siege Rioters were still ransacking the halls of the US Capitol when two Democrats stuck in lockdown together in the House office buildings across the street started drafting the impeachment resolution that led to the unprecedented second impeachment of President Donald Trump almost exactly one week later. California Rep. Ted Lieu was forced to evacuate his office in the Cannon Office Building as insurrectionists converged on the Capitol. Grabbing a crowbar in his office, Lieu said he and his chief of staff called the top aide to Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline while wandering the halls and asked if they could hunker down in Cicilline's office in the Rayburn House Office Building. ... Shortly after the story was published someone (a fact checker?, Lieu?) most have notified CNN that a crowbar is an unlikely instrument to be found in a representative's office. The story was implausible and had to be changed. That done a correction was appended to it. The crowbar was replaced with a product placement, a "ProBar energy bar". That is only one example of the ghastly reporting about the Trump impeachment by the 'librul' media. They completely miss the point: Virtually none of the corporate media coverage even bothers to remark on the radicalism of what occurred today. "Snap" impeachment with a total of two hours of debate, charging as a "high crime" that the president engaged in political speech. The anti-Trump campaign, from Russiagate to Ukrainegate to this 'insurrection' nonsense, has likely done more damage to the U.S. than Trump managed to do during his four years in office. The hostility the Democrats have show will create a huge backlash. Do they really believe that can suppress 74 million Trump voters? As M.K. Bhadrakumar diagnoses: For the outside world Trump Impeachment 2.0 can only appear as a kangaroo trial. ... This ongoing project to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time in a little over a year is farcical. ... What happened in Washington, DC, on January 6 was by no means an insurrection. Of course, US citizens were behind the Capitol Building siege. But the parallel ends there. There was no way they could have usurped power in America last Wednesday. In fact, even the vandalism was entirely due to the ineptness of the security personnel deployed there. ... What is the guarantee that another Trump will not arise from outside the cabals that preside over politics in America and reaches out to the people directly? The fact of the matter is that Trumps support base still remains the envy of any American politician. Seventy million Americans voted for him last November. That massive support base will feel further disenfranchised or disempowered by what the cabals are perpetrating on the Capitol Hill. The real paradox is that the mob who besieged the Capitol building was largely drawn from the American middle classes the petite bourgeoisie or the transitional class, as Karl Marx described them ... ... Make no mistake, this class is here to stay in America and if the post-pandemic economic recovery does not go brilliantly well or is mismanaged, its ranks will swell further. That is going to be Bidens real challenge even if Pelosi were to dispatch Trump into political wilderness. The backlash from this Trump impeachment will be huge. It may come in rare events of real domestic terrorism. But it is more likely to swell up through smaller acts of civil disobedience. There is a lot that the petite bourgeoisie can sabotage. The CIA has published volumes of advice, meant for people in other countries, on how to do that. Feisal al-Istrabadi @FIstrabadi - 00:03 UTC 14 Jan 2021 Joy Reid just spoke on MSNBC of the necessity for de-Baathifying the Republican Party to rid it of Trumpian influences. An excellent precedent. It has worked just great in Iraq. The Democrats aren't stupid. They know that they are provoking more strife. They will use that to roll out authoritarian measure that will serve the powerful. It is a suppression strategy that has, at times, worked in other countries. But it does not lead to long term stability. Climate change doesn't spare the smallest In a normal year, biologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs spend about six months in Costa Rica, where they conduct research and pursue conservation efforts in Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG), a World Heritage Site in the northwest that encompasses, a network of parks and preserves they helped establish in the 1980s and that has grown to more than 400,000 acres, including marine, dry forest, cloud forest, and rain forest environments. In 2020 that is where the married couple was when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the world, and compelled them to extend their stay in the virus-free forest until the fall, when they felt safe enough to travel back to their other home in Philadelphia. "With modern laptops and internet, we could watch the world go by from the safety of the forest," says Janzen, a biology professor in the School of Arts & Sciences. The extra time in the forest gave them added time for reflection, some of the fruits of which appear in a piece published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, part of a special issue on global insect decline. Their contribution draws on data collected since the 1970s on insect abundance and diversity in the tropics, as well as on observations about climate change that go back even further. Although the ACG's protected status has effectively eliminated certain threats to biodiversity loss, such as fire, hunting, deforestation, and pesticide use, the creatures that dwell there are not exempt from what Janzen and Hallwachs call the "heterogenous blanket" of climate change effects. "What we have seen and lived since the mid-1970s, unambiguously, in our Costa Rican tropical wild world is that the biomass and species richness of insect individuals and species, and their interactions with everything, are decomposing," they write. To respond to this decline, the scientists have focused their efforts locally. Keeping track of the effects of climate change through consistent monitoring is essential, they say, but what even more critical is engaging the people who own the preserved land: all five million Costa Ricans, in this case. Janzen and Hallwachs are internationally known for their work on this front, having created a model in ACG that empowers and employs local people in conservation work and attempts to facilitate the movement of these processes throughout the national park system and abroad. In their article, the researchers describe a new approach to expand on these successes: BioAlfa, a nationwide program designed to enlist Costa Ricans themselves in hands-on learning and research about their nation's wild ecosystems. The initiative's name comes from the Spanish for bioliterate, "bioalfabetizado." "The tradition in tropical countries is that when you want to know something about the biology of your country, expeditions from the North come and do studies of one sort or another and then they take the information home with them," Janzen and Hallwachs say. "What we said is, 'Look, you're capable of doing this all yourselves. You can find all the bugs and the plants and the birds and everything in your own country and, in the process, learn about them.'" Measuring climate's toll Janzen and Hallwachs never intended to explicitly study climate change. But its effects have been impossible to ignore. They note that in the 1980s cloud cover was a constant presence over the aptly named cloud forests of ACG, shrouding peaks like Volcan Orosi and Volcan Cacao. Yet the cloud layer shrank by the 1990s and now,many days pass with no cloud cover whatsoever. The result is a drying of forest ecosystems to the detriment of insects and other wildlife that thrive in damp leaf litter and moist conditions, to say nothing of the drying waterways that used to adequately irrigate flatland crops and other development. The ACG now experiences far more days of temperatures that approach and exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit than it did in past decades. In addition, a prolonged dry season and greater irregularities in rainfall amount and timing compound the stresses on the biodiversity that lives there. Essentially all tropical organisms use weather cues to guide their lives, and when these change and fracture everyone takes a hit. Janzen and Hallwachs note that these climatic perturbations have extracted a price on insect biodiversity, a bellwether for impacts on the food web bottom to top. In their report, they compare photos from moth surveys--conducted at night by using a bright light to attract moths to a light-colored sheet, where they can be counted--that indicate a dramatic drop in both moth numbers and species diversity since the 1980s. Looking at a different types of insects, they say that, despite a constant search effort by ACG's on-the-ground staff of trained and experienced neighbor researchers, the overall number of caterpillars found during regular surveys has fallen in half since 2005, a clear sign of decline. Supporting this finding, when caterpillars are found, they are now less likely to be parasitized by another insect species. About a fifth of caterpillars were found parasitized in 1985; that has fallen to just 5% in recent years. While this may be a good thing for individual caterpillars, it's a worrying sign overall. Because parasites are hyperspecialized to associate with particular caterpillar species, Janzen says that this lack of parasitized caterpillars suggests that caterpillar numbers are so few that the parasites are unable to locate their desired species and maintain their populations. "When caterpillar density goes down, the parasites go extinct faster," Janzen says. "So now you've lost that carnivore. And you repeat that a thousand times, 10,000 times." Being 'kind to the survivors' Mitigating climate change can be an overwhelming task, and Janzen says that "little guys"--like the economically-small but biodiversity-big country of Costa Rica--are unlikely to make a big-picture impact, except by example. In his eyes, it's essential for small tropical nations to focus energy on creating the conditions that enable the survivors of climate change to maintain a foothold. And that is where BioAlfa comes in. While international conservation groups contribute money to preserve land in lush, biodiverse locales, such as ACG, the researchers argue that gaining buy-in from all levels of the owners of that preserved land, rather than outsiders who may never step foot in the country, is a necessary ingredient in tropical conservation. "Charismatic vertebrates, tourist snapshots, and marketable big tree trunks are not even 0.001% of tropical biodiversity," Janzen and Hallwachs write. "The millions to billions of species, and billions of wild interactions still viable, are largely invisible without bioliteracy." That's why underscoring bioliteracy is the foundation of BioAlfa. The Penn scientists' vision is that, just as elementary school children are taught to read, they should also be taught about the biodiversity around them, and not just in a classroom but by going on the land and learning by doing. And like reading, this knowledge becomes something one takes into whatever social sector becomes home. This enhanced bioliteracy would then feed back into conservation, they say. Not only might a greater understanding of ecosystems among Costa Ricans translate into greater appreciation but concrete results by using biodiversity information wherever they are. Specifically, Janzen and Hallwachs want to expand the practice of having local researchers carry out their DNA barcoding work, in which species are identified by sequencing stretches of their genetic material. While the Costa Rican government has committed to the idea of BioAlfa, fully fleshing it out over 10 years will take an estimated $100 million, a hefty sum that Janzen and Hallwachs hope can come from both international governmental and private sources. "Right now Costa Rica has the political permission for this project, but it also needs the financial permission," says Janzen. For their part, the couple continues to plug away at building their biodiversity inventory and studies in ACG, while sharing their successes at international meetings (for now virtually), hoping that other tropical nations will follow in their footsteps, protecting land to, in the words of their scientific paper, "be kind to the survivors" of climate change. As soon as they're vaccinated for the coronavirus, Janzen and Hallwachs plan to be back on the ground in Costa Rica, continuing to pursue that goal. ### Daniel Janzen is professor of biology and Thomas G. and Louise E. DiMaura Term Chair in the School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. Winnie Hallwachs is research biologist in the School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. This story has been published on: 2021-01-15. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. To Senator Bill Dodd, Superintendent Barbara Nemko, Superintendent Rosanna Mucetti: On Jan. 5, the Napa Valley Register Opinion page carried a commentary "Reclaim democratic purpose of California schools." It really piqued my interest, especially when I learned that "5 million of California's 6 million students attend school districts that do not directly address civic goals in their mission statements." The very next day we all witnessed terror in our nation's capital on the very day that the Electoral College results were being certified. We could not have imagined such a horrific scene if we hadn't seen and heard it with our own eyes and ears. I went back and reread this opinion piece by Joseph Kahne, Erica Hodgin, and John Rogers, and it became all the more important to me. They had written it for CalMatters, a "public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's Capitol works and why it matters." I urge you to read it if you haven't already. COLUMBIA, S.C., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gov. Henry McMaster's recent recognition of Jan. 24-Jan. 30 as South Carolina School Choice Week marks the eighth time in the past ten years that the state's governor has proclaimed the Week. Around the country, National School Choice Week raises awareness about opportunity in K-12 education, encouraging families to share information and learn more about school options. Gov. McMaster's proclamation joins those of hundreds of local, state, and national leaders who are shining a light on education this month. Due to the pandemic, South Carolina's more than 700 celebrations will take place virtually, including a virtual school fair highlighting schools across the state. The activities aim to spark conversations about the educational opportunities parents want for their children, and the way that educational variety enhances the vibrancy of communities. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will join in the more than 33,000 celebrations taking place across America. "School choice is not an abstract idea; it is a transformative reality for families," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are thrilled by the creative plans South Carolina families have made to celebrate safely this year, and for Gov. McMaster's official proclamation." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/south-carolina . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said she and President-elect Joe Biden are ready to 'multitask' as they'll come into office needing Congress to quickly pass more COVID-19 financial relief - and with the Senate picking up the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. 'We know we have to multitask there,' she told National Public Radio in an interview Thursday. 'We have to multitask, which means as with anyone, we have a lot of priorities and we need to see them through.' Harris might have an additional job on her plate on day No. 1, as some experts believe as president of the Senate she could chair Trump's impeachment trial, as opposed to Chief Justice John Roberts. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris told NPR she knows she and President-elect Joe Biden will have to 'multitask' as they'll come into office pushing for a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package - and she might have to preside over President Donald Trump's impeachment President Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate won't begin until after he leaves office on January 20. Some experts believe that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris could preside over it The Associated Press reported Thursday on an ongoing debate between impeachment scholars, law professors and political scientists over who chairs the impeachment trial of an ex-president. The Constitution calls for the chief justice to preside over a president's trial because otherwise the president's No. 2, the vice president - who is the president of the Senate - would be in charge. That person would inherit the White House if the president is removed - and so has a conflict of interest. Another person who might end of doing it is the Senate's incoming president pro tem, Sen. Patrick Leahy. Last week, the Democrats won both run-off elections in Georgia and will control the body once Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, as well as Harris, are sworn in. Harris, as vice president, will be the body's tie-breaker vote. Speaking to NPR, Harris talked about being in the Capitol Building during the riot. Trump was impeached for 'incitement of insurrection' after encourating supporters on January 6 to march on the Capitol. They broke in in a violent incident that killed five in the immediate aftermath. 'It was horrific. It was a day that wherein we witnessed an assault on America's democracy, a day when we witnessed the terror that a few can wreak on so many,' Harris recounted. 'And it was probably, you know, it will be in history recorded as one of the worst days in terms of an attack on the integrity of our democracy.' Since then, the Biden-Harris team have turned back to getting the government going. On Thursday, Biden announced a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package he wants to see through Congress, which Republicans are already indicating will be a heavy lift. 'Let me be very clear that the president-elect and I know this is not going to be easy, but we are putting everything we've got into this, and to deal with it as soon as possible, which is why we're prepared right now to, on day one, push through and get this package, so that it hits the ground and hits the streets and we get relief to the American people,' Harris said. Harris called the package the incoming administration's 'highest priority.' NPR's reporter then pointed to the impeachment trial - and also that the new administration will need nominees to get through Senate confirmation. Harris pointed to the word 'multitask.' 'There's a reason that word exists in the English language,' she said. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Instead of conducting random sampling, the specimen of all incoming travelers who will test positive for COVID-19 will undergo genome sequencing to detect the possible presence of new COVID-19 variants. Health Department spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire on Friday said this new directive is part of the government's plan to strengthen biosurveillance after the Philippines recorded its first case of a Filipino patient with the variant first found in United Kingdom. Incoming travelers will be swabbed for an RT-PCR test. The samples of those who will be positive for COVID-19 will be forwarded to the Philippine Genome Center. "We are now going to test all incoming travelers na nanggagaling sa lahat ng sulok ng mundo. Pagpasok nila dito they will be swabbed and lahat ng ng magpa-positive, we will now start to test para tayo ay nakakasigurado," Vergeire said in a media briefing. [Translation: We are now going to test all incoming travelers across the globe. Once they enter, they will be swabbed. Those with positive results, we will start sending them so we can be sure they don't have the new variant.] The government is only imposing travel restrictions on foreigners from 33 jurisdictions. Previously, travelers who test positive upon arrival from these areas were the only samples sent to PGC for genome sequencing. The Philippines detected its first case of the UK variant by chance after the patient's sample was randomly sent to PGC since he arrived from United Arab Emirates a country not included in the government's travel ban. DOH said all returning Filipinos will be allowed to enter the country, but will be subjected to complete the mandatory 14-day faciliy-based quarantine regardless of swab test result. A total travel ban and deployment ban are not an option for now, Vergeire said. PH's first UK variant case Authorities continue to reach contacts of the 29-year-old male real estate agent who was detected with the UK variant on Jan. 13. Vergeire said they have contacted 146 out of the 159 people on board the Emirates flight from Dubai to Manila. She added some are already quarantined in their homes or facilities, while 13 others are rejecting calls or not answering their phones. The DOH warned of sanctions for those who will not cooperate with authorities. All airline crew and passengers of the flight are advised to undergo strict isolation. Outside the Wire became the first full-length film with Ukrainian dubbing and subtitles released on Netflix platform. "A few more words about the movies. Outside the Wire became the first feature film with Ukrainian dubbing and subtitles released on Netflix. And even the events of the film take place in our country," Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko posted on Telegram. He added that the dubbing was done by the Postmodern Production studio. "At the end of last year, Postmodern and Tak Treba Production became official partners of the platform. Here are the first results," Tkachenko said. He added that he had previously discussed with Netflix the possible plans for entering the Ukrainian market. The minister expressed confidence that cooperation with Ukraine will increase, Netflix library in Ukrainian will grow, and new films will be shot in Ukraine. ol On January 11, as a result of a tragic accident Kurt Willy Oddekalv, the world renowned ecologist and activist, died. He was the founder and head of the Norwegian Environmental Protection Organisation (Norges Miljvern Forbund) and the environmental organization Green Warriors of Norway. On Monday evening, Kurt Oddekalv died while walking through ice on Lake Bahusvatnet near Bergen, Norway, local police said dryly in a press release. Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of Norway: It was a very sad message to receive. I want to send my condolences to the family. Kurten was a clear environmentalist who spoke out so everyone heard it, and I have had many discussions with him for over 30 years. His commitment was genuine, and he worked tirelessly for the causes and ideas he believed in. Oddekalv was controversial, but there is no doubt that the environmental movement has lost a clear voice. Sveinung Rotevatn, Minister of Climate and Environment: We have received sad news. Oddekalv has a lifelong environmental commitment. He is a non-traditional type who has caused a lot of controversy, but his commitment to nature is tireless. Timofey Surovtsev, head of the POMOR Center for Environmental Monitoring in the Barents Region: This is an absolutely irreplaceable loss! Loss for the entire global environmental movement! We met 3 years ago, and for me Kurt was a kind of Thor Heyerdahl - daring, uncompromising, often shocking, for 30 years he was a formidable and dangerous environmental warrior for the Norwegian government! In his determined struggle for the environment, Kurt steadily went to his goal and opened for us all the new unique qualities that we tried to learn from him. Kurt Willie Oddekalv, 63, was trained as a carpenter. He began his activist career at the Association for Nature Conservation, but was expelled from it due to internal disagreements. It was then, in 1993, that he founded his own organization, the Norwegian Environmental Protection Organisation. He was very inconvenient as a critic on the Norwegian environmental agenda. Norwegian businessmen threatened him with violence. He was feared and at the same time respected by Norwegian officials. The leader of the Environmental Protection Organisation, Kurt Oddekalv, spent millions of dollars to save the ecosystem of the northern seas. Kurt was a powerful fighter and warrior. He was a serious opponent of the Norwegian government, which, in his opinion, made a lot of decisions that harmed the country's ecology, says Timofey Surovtsev, head of the Pomor Center for Environmental Consulting and Monitoring. Lately he went on strike against wind energy facilities, which, in his opinion, caused enormous damage to the environment. He was outraged by the mines, which were allowed to dump waste into the fjords; a mass of heavy metals went into the water. Kurt was a controversial environmental activist and repeatedly performed tricks on the brink of the law: he defiantly blew up cars at the embassies of producing countries, sprayed milk mixtures on fish farms, picketed Norwegian mines, for which he had been arrested and fined several times. One of his main ecological battles involved lifting the German submarine from the bottom of the Norwegian sea, which was liquidated by the Allies in February 1945. As it turned out much later, the submarine was carrying a deadly cargo to Japan - tons of mercury, which now rest at a depth of 150 meters and pose a catastrophic threat to the entire marine North. Oddekalv insisted that the submarine, along with the dangerous cargo, must be lifted before it was too late. We keep pointing out to Russia that it has a lot of waste and emissions which must be removed. But the incidents with the waste ore and the mercury boat show what problems Norway has. Russia can say: we are your neighbors, deal with your garbage cans, said the Norwegian ecologist. Among the issues that brought fame to Kurt Oddekalv are the fight against pesticides in agriculture, the revolt against wind energy, opposition to Norwegian and international mining companies that dump toxic waste into the fjords, and raising awareness of the Norwegian aquaculture industry, saying that it grows poisoned salmon. He was an anti-salmon campaigner thus causing big businessmen big problems. He blamed the government for allowing the toxic waste of the Nussir Copper Mine to be dumped into the national reserve where wild salmon spawn, thereby poisoning its population with heavy metals. Norway is one of the few countries in the world where you can officially dump all industrial waste in the sea. In general, Oddekalv frankly interfered with very many, experts say. There is a number of corporations - for instance, the aquaculture business, which brings in about two to three billion euros. This is the second most profitable business after mining. Do you understand how much money is at stake? He fought these farms, and this infuriated the fish lobby. Anything could have happened , says Timofey Surovtsev. In recent years, they all clearly attempted to ruin him but did not succeed. He seemed impossible to break. But ... Why Kurt, who knew the area like no one else, decided to walk on thin ice, apparently, will remain a mystery. Victoria Quiri, Correspondent of the European Bureau, Rough&Polished, Strasbourg Images credit: facebook.com/kurt.w.oddekalv Vietnamese citizens returning from abroad (Photo: VNA) Hanoi The Foreign Ministry is coordinating with ministries, sectors, localities and relevant agencies to study and build plans to repatriate Vietnamese citizens who really need to return to the country, according to the ministrys spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang. Speaking at the ministrys regular press conference on January 14, Hang said many Vietnamese citizens abroad have registered to return to Vietnam from now to the Lunar New Year. The spokeswoman noted that however, due to the appearance of new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which spread very fast in some countries, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on January 5 issued a document instructing limiting flights bringing Vietnamese citizens abroad back to Vietnam. When really necessary, each flight must be considered and agreed by the ministries of Health, Foreign Affair, National Defence, Public Security and Transport, and then reported to the PM for decision. The repatriation of Vietnamese citizens from abroad must meet the principles in epidemic prevention and control as well as suit the quarantine capacity in the country, Hang said. She informed that relevant Vietnamese agencies have so far organized 299 flights bringing more than 80,000 Vietnamese citizens from 60 countries and territories back to Vietnam safely. The work has been conducted based on the pandemic situation in the world and in the country, and the domestic quarantine capacity. 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. SAN DIEGO, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Realty Income Corporation (Realty Income,NYSE: O), The Monthly Dividend Company, today announced that its Board of Directors has declared the 607th consecutive common stock monthly dividend. The dividend amount of $0.2345 per share, representing an annualized amount of $2.814 per share, is payable on February 16, 2021 to shareholders of record as of February 1, 2021. The ex-dividend date for February's dividend is January 29, 2021. About Realty Income Realty Income, The Monthly Dividend Company, is an S&P 500 company dedicated to providing stockholders with dependable monthly income. The company is structured as a REIT, and its monthly dividends are supported by the cash flow from over 6,500 real estate properties owned under long-term lease agreements with commercial tenants. To date, the company has declared 607 consecutive common stock monthly dividends throughout its 52-year operating history and increased the dividend 109 times since Realty Income's public listing in 1994 (NYSE: O). The company is a member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats index. Additional information about the company can be obtained from the corporate website at www.realtyincome.com. SOURCE Realty Income Corporation Related Links https://www.realtyincome.com/ The cold snap that arrived in Spain hot on the heels of Storm Filomena will last a lot longer than expected. On Friday, 23 provinces from eight regions were still subject to warnings for low temperatures, but only one, Guadalajara, remained on red alert, the highest on a scale of three. On Thursday afternoon, the AEMET state weather agency updated its forecasts and extended the duration of the unusually low temperatures to Wednesday of next week, meaning it will last 10 days and not four as initially predicted. The amount of snow on the ground is such that it is preventing the temperatures from rising as was expected, explained the AEMET spokesperson, Ruben del Campo. This 10-day period will become the longest cold snap seen in Spain in nearly 20 years. A digger removing ice from a street in Alcorcon, in the Madrid region. Eduardo Parra - Europa Press / Europa Press So far, the coldest temperature registered by Spains AEMET state meteorological agency was seen on Tuesday, when thermometers plummeted to -25.4C in Bello, in the province of Teruel (Aragon region). In the Madrid region, meanwhile, a new low was set in the satellite city of Getafe, where the thermometers fell to -12C on Wednesday night, according to AEMET. The previous record dates from 1945, when the temperature fell to -10.1C in the observatory at El Retiro park. Neighborhoods in Getafe such as Perales del Rio are seeing pipes burst due to the extreme cold, despite efforts of residents to protect them. Molina de Aragon, in the province of Guadalajara, registered some of the lowest temperatures in Spain this week. Oscar Gil - Europa Press / Europa Press In El Retiro park, meanwhile, the temperature fell to -7.4C, a low unseen since 1985. In more open spaces, such as Adolfo Suarez-Barajas Airport, meanwhile, lows of -13.2C were registered, and -13C in Cuatro Vientos. It is not easy to set new cold records in Spain, much less four back-to-back ones. Because of global warming, winters are increasingly mild and for every cold record set in Spain, there are 18 heat records, according to a recent AEMET report covering the last 10 years. AEMET has also warned that temperatures might fall even more on Friday and Saturday in inland areas of the northeast, due to the arrival of cold air from the north, which is due to clear on Saturday. The agency predicts that the weather event will finish on Wednesday thanks to the arrival of a front from the Atlantic. This front will travel over the peninsula from west to east bringing rain with it, while a flow of air from the southwest will also raise temperatures. English version by Simon Hunter. SAN CARLOS, Ariz., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The San Carlos Apache Tribe filed a federal lawsuit late Thursday seeking to stop the U.S. Forest Service from transferring sacred tribal land at Chich'il Bildagoteel, or Oak Flat, to two foreign multi-national mining companies planning to construct the Resolution Copper Mine. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court of Arizona one day before the Forest Service released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) earlier today. The publication of the FEIS triggers a 60-day window where 2,422 acres of Tonto National Forest, including 760 acres at Oak Flat, must be exchanged with land owned by Rio Tinto PLC and BHP Copper Inc. Oak Flat is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. The land exchange mandate was included in a rider attached to the FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act. The Resolution Copper Mine could not be built without the transfer of Oak Flat from public ownership where federal laws would prohibit its destruction into private ownership where these laws would not apply. "The Trump Administration rushed to publish a seriously-flawed FEIS just five days before President Trump leaves office," San Carlos Apache Tribal Chairman Terry Rambler said today. "This callous, immoral and illegal action is being done to enrich wealthy foreign mining interests while knowing that mining will destroy Oak Flat that for many generations has been the heart of Apache religious and cultural practices. We were left with no choice but to file this lawsuit to prevent the transfer of Oak Flat after release of the FEIS." The Forest Service informed the Tribe that legally required appraisals of the federal and private land to be exchanged were not completed nor subject to public review prior to the publication of the FEIS. "The Forest Service is grossly derelict in its duty to assure the American people that the appraisals are legitimate and reflect the actual value of the lands rather than just another one-sided government give-away of public land to benefit wealthy foreign mining conglomerates at the expense of the American people," Chairman Rambler said. "The land exchange must not go forward prior to publication of the appraisals and an opportunity for public review and comment." The lawsuit documents that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to conduct a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. The suit states that the Forest Service ignored significant and technically substantial new information consisting of at least a dozen new studies and reports totaling thousands of pages that are relevant to the environmental impact of Resolution's proposed massive mine tailings dump that threatens regional groundwater supplies. "A Supplemental DEIS must be prepared and made subject to full public review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)," Chairman Rambler said. "This is the only way to ensure full compliance with NEPA by the Tonto National Forest." The suit also states that the Forest Service violated the National Historic Preservation Act by failing to adequately consult with the Tribe about ancestral land with great historic, cultural, and religious importance to the Tribe and its members. Rio Tinto and BHP are the world's two largest transnational mining companies with operations based in Australia and Britain. The companies have a notorious record of destroying sacred indigenous sites around the world. Last year, Rio Tinto blew up the 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal Juukan Gorge site in Western Australia, leading to the resignation of its chief executive officer. BHP ignored Australian Aboriginal groups' concerns about the future of dozens of heritage sites when it obtained government approval last year to destroy them as part of a mine expansion project. "The United States must not provide rubber-stamp approvals for these companies to destroy sacred sites on our homeland in Arizona," Chairman Rambler said. [Editors' Note: The Court filing can be downloaded here. The Tribe's lawsuit is separate from a federal lawsuit filed earlier this week by the nonprofit Apache Stronghold.] # # # SOURCE San Carlos Apache Tribe Vast vegetable fields are unrolling in Xiushan neighborhood, Tonghai county, southwest China's Yunnan province, where various species of vegetables are thriving in palette-like grids divided by straight ridges. "Every household here grows vegetables," said Zhao Siwang, Party head of Xiushan's Dashu community. The village has sold its vegetables to Thailand, Vietnam, and even the Middle East, the Party head told People's Daily, with pride on his face. Tonghai county is a well-known production and distribution base of vegetables in Yunnan province. In recent years, by advancing supply-side structural reform of the agricultural sector, the county significantly optimized its vegetable varieties and improved vegetable quality with standardized production, which successfully helped it build a brand for its products. Being an inland county, Tonghai sells 36 percent of its vegetables to overseas markets. The per capita disposable income of rural residents in the county is expected to reach 19,615 yuan ($3,032) in 2020, up 6,980 yuan from 5 years ago, or increasing 9.2 percent annually on average. Quality is the reason for the village to win market shares overseas, according to Zhao. Dashu community started vegetable production in 1998. After 18 years of development, both Zhao and his fellow villagers felt they encountered a bottleneck. Therefore, the community decided to seek new methods to replace traditional ways of production, taking quality and efficiency as top priorities. Today, sticky traps and solar deinsectization lamps are seen everywhere in the planting areas of Dashu community. In addition, modern sprinkler irrigation systems are installed in the fields. "Infrastructure has been gradually improved in recent years. Green technologies are making our vegetables better, and that's our core competitiveness," said Zhao, pointing at the vegetables grown in neatly divided grids. According to him, the community has adopted unified standards and offered technical guidance on variety selection, application of organic fertilizers, and plant spacing. Cheng Xiuling, a vegetable farmer of Tonghai county, joined the county's Yuantai cooperative in 2019. The cooperative offers meteorological monitoring and weather forecast, as well as soil data monitoring services in its plantation. After joining the cooperative, Cheng for the first time used a smart water and fertilizer all-in-one machine, as well as a humiture system and a video surveillance system. "The cooperative offers unified technical standards and marketing strategies, which reduces our concerns," said Cheng. He Lai, chairman of the cooperative, told People's Daily that Tonghai county introduced an agricultural internet of things (IoT) last May, which has enabled the cooperative to make its vegetable production smarter and trace its products in a more comprehensive and precise manner. "In the future, consumers can watch the growth of vegetables on their mobile phones," he said. Gaoyuan farm produce company in Tonghai county has a workshop that processes turnip strips. These strips, after being packed, are exported to South Korea and Japan. As a flagship product of the company, these turnip strips generate export revenue of $8 million each year. "The price of turnips per kilogram is 0.6 yuan at most, but it surges fivefold after a dozen rounds of processing," said Yang Wei, general manager of the company. In July 2019, vegetables processed by the company were for the first time shipped to Shenzhen's seaports via railway before they arrived at their overseas destinations. From shipping products on trucks covered by quilts, to developing professional road and railway cold chain logistics, Tonghai will definitely embrace bigger achievements in the vegetable business, Yang said. This article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of WandaVision. Can we start with some basics? Didnt Vision die? He didtwice. Facing no other choice, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) used her powers to kill Vision (Paul Bettany) during Avengers: Infinity War in order to also destroy the Mind Stone embedded in Visions forehead before Thanos could get his purple hands on it. Then Thanos arrived and rewound events using a different Infinity Stone, the Time Stone. With Vision once again alive, Thanos ripped the Mind Stone out of him, and he fell to the ground, lifeless. Advertisement And he wasnt resurrected in Endgame with everyone else? No. Iron Man & co. hit the undo button on the Snapture but not the deaths that had happened before Thanos killed off half of the universes population. Advertisement Advertisement Sign up for the Slate Culture newsletter The best of movies, books, music, TV, and more. 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 are Wandas powers again? Could she be making this whole hallucination (?) happen? Shes weird, as another character put it in 2015s Avengers: Age of Ultron, where Wanda debuted. According to that movie, the powers Wanda got from experiments using the Mind Stone include neuroelectric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation, but we really dont know the full range of what she can do.* Reality manipulation certainly doesnt seem impossible! OK, were three questions in and youve mentioned three Infinity Stones. Could they have anything to do with whats happening? Advertisement Ugh, we hope notwe thought we were done with the MacGuffins from the first 22 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which were destroyed in the movies present-day timeline. But suddenly Vision is back, and so is the Mind Stone thats part of him. Any theories about the date from the first episode? Is that the date of the Snapture, as you called it, when Vision died? No idea! Aug. 23 was not the date of the Snap, according to the MCU Wiki, which suggests that it took place in spring 2018, when Infinity War was released. Something that did happen on Aug. 23? The D23 Expo where WandaVisions cast was announced. The expo itself is named after the year 1923, when Walt Disney founded the company. That said, its not always healthy to read too much into the number 23. Advertisement Advertisement Lets take a step back. Which classic sitcoms are they referencing? I got an I Love Lucy vibe. Elizabeth Olsens frazzled housewife in the first episode does owe a lot to Lucille Ball, but the biggest reference point seems to be The Dick Van Dyke Show, the first great workplace sitcom. The scene when Vision ushers his boss through the door of his house and into the living room looks like a direct homage to The Dick Van Dyke Shows opening credits, and the sight of a frazzled Wanda trying to cook dinner for her unexpected guests recalls the episode where Mary Tyler Moore rustles up dinner for her in-laws while shes high on pep pills. (Fred Melameds boss, meanwhile, looks like Richard Deacons put-upon Mel Cooley, but acts more like Carl Reiners imperious and little-seen boss.) The peppy plot summary of the first episodes theme tune owes a lot to The Patty Duke Show, and the Kafkaesque nature of Visions job at Computational Services, where no one can seem to explain exactly what it is they compute, is right out of Billy Wilders movie classic The Apartment. Advertisement Advertisement The first episodes scenes of Wanda using her powers to make dishes fly around the kitchen also has a strong whiff of the I married a witch classic Bewitched, which the series makes explicit with the animated opening credits of Episode 2. Do we have any idea who the person is whos watching them at the end of the first episode? The one clue is the symbol next to the monitorit looks like a logo for S.W.O.R.D., which is a secret governmental organization in Marvels comic books thats like S.H.I.E.L.D. but for threats from outer space. (Perhaps coincidentally, S.W.O.R.D. was created by Joss Whedon, the director of the first two Avengers movies, during his run in the mid-2000s writing Astonishing X-Men.) A good guess might be that the mission of this group has been redefined for the MCU, but we dont have much to go on yet. That said, you may have noticed that the same logo is on the helicopter Wanda finds in Episode 2, as well as on the outfit of the beekeeper who appears at the end of that same episode. Advertisement Advertisement Heres a nerdier question. Is there any significance to the way each episode ends with a wipe in the shape of a hexagon? This could be related to the honeycomb shape of the Universal Neural Teleportation Network system of space travel from the Guardians of the Galaxy moviesespecially since theres some evidence that, with Marvels Eternals set to come out later this year, the Marvel movies are headed to space. The honeycomb could also be related to the beekeeper from the end of Episode 2. Alternatively, the editor might just think it looks cool. What about the trippy look of the closing credits? Given that the closing credits sequence is made up entirely of red, green, and blue lights, its fair to say that it is meant to take us into the inner workings of 20th-century color TVs, which used a red, green, and blue (RGB) color system to produce their images. In other words, like the episodes themselves, the credits sequence appears to take us inside an old TV set. Advertisement What are the popular theories about what could be happening? The going theory seems to be that Wanda and Vision are trapped in some sort of reality-distortion fieldthough its unclear who has done the trapping, if one or both of them has something to do with it, and if anyone else in their town, particularly Agnes, is involved. But if Wandas powers can do anything, why not this? Advertisement Advertisement A related theory says that Wanda and Vision are on some kind of alternate Earth. The concept of the multiverse is set to appear in two upcoming MCU movies, including the MCUs third stand-alone Spider-Man movie and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with the directors of these three projects even trading notes to stay on the same page. Wanda is also in the Doctor Strange sequel. Anyway, it might be useful for you to remember the numbers 616 and 199999 (the designated universe numbersthis is a thingfor the core Marvel comics universe and the MCU, respectively). Advertisement Do the neighbors know something? I think the neighbors know something. Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) is a classic nosy neighbor, but a lot of fans have speculated that shes really Agatha Harkness, a witch from the Marvel comics who at one point tutored Wanda Maximoff in the use of magic. Spooky. And the friendly fellow newcomer played by Teyonah Parris haltingly introduces herself as Geraldinebut Disney has revealed that Parris is playing Monica Rambeau, the now-grown-up little girl who appeared in the MCUs Captain Marvel, which takes place in 1995. What we dont know is what Monica is doing in Wanda and Visions picturesque town. Advertisement What are we to make of the scenes in which Wanda and Vision break the fourth wall? Why does Wanda look directly at the camera when she tells Vision to help his choking boss? Why does Vision point his remote control at the camera at the end of the first episode? Its not clear yet, but it certainly contributes to the air of unreality suffusing the whole enterprise. The moments when the characters look straight at the viewer add to the feeling that Wanda and Vision are, in some way, trapped. Whos trapping them? Wanda herself? That mysterious viewer in S.W.O.R.D. HQ? Us, watching at home? Society, man?! Advertisement Could the comics help make sense of this? Sure could. When faced with personal tragedy and mental illness, the Wanda of the comic books used her powers to rewrite reality so that she, and members of her family, got whatever they wanted. The 2005 miniseries House of M climaxed with Wanda committing one of the more surprising and consequential acts to ever happen in a Marvel comic book, and though shes not exactly a villain, shes still a figure of great controversy within the Marvel canon. Advertisement Another, less weighty reference point would be Tom Kings 201516 run writing The Vision, in which the character creates a family of synthezoids (androids) and moves to suburban Arlington, Virginia. Its great. Advertisement What do these comics tell us? That the manicured, synthetic-feeling suburbs are a good setting for a story about a robot trying to discover his humanity. And that when shes facing incalculable loss, theres no telling what terrible things Wanda will do. What significance do the advertisements have? As literal disruptions to the narrative, the commercials seem like they play a key role in hinting at whats really going on here. The first is for a toaster manufactured by Stark IndustriesTony Stark being Visions literal manufacturer and toaster being Wandas affectionate nickname for her husband in Tom Kings comics. The toaster even looks a little bit like a robots face, with a blinking red lightthe only spot of color in the first episode apart from the final shotright where the Mind Stone fit into Visions forehead. But perhaps the most important piece of the ad is the slogan: Forget the past, this is your future. If WandaVision takes place after Wanda was forced to kill Vision, you can see why shed want to forget her past, and create, one way or another, a future in which they can still live together. Advertisement Advertisement The concept turns up again in Episode 2, with its advertisement for a Strucker watch, featuring the tag line, Hell make time for you. Whos Strucker again? Baron Wolfgang von Strucker was one of the secondary villains of Age of Ultron, a leader of S.H.I.E.L.D.s evil counterpart, Hydra. Look closely at the face of the watch, and youll see who its manufactured by: Hydra. Does this mean Im going to have to rewatch Age of Ultron? Im sorry, but it might. Could Vision and Wanda have a kid? Is that among Visions, uh, powers? In the comic books, Wanda used her reality-warping powers to make it possible for a human and a synthezoid to conceive. It gets really complicated from there. Advertisement Whos the voice trying to get through to Wanda? Is that Chris Evans? We dont know, but maybe! The Captain America actor was supposed to have hung up his shield after Endgame, but Deadline reported on Thursday that he was nearing a deal to reprise the role in the MCU in some form. Alternately, an actor who we know is a recurring character in the cast is Randall Park, who played Ant-Mans parole officer Jimmy Woo in Ant-Man and the Wasp and will reportedly play the FBI agent once again in WandaVision. Advertisement Advertisement Is that beekeeper a villain I should know of? The Beekeeper sounds like it could be the name of a supervillain. According to the credits, hes played by Zac Henry. However, Zac Henry is also the stunt rigging coordinator for WandaVision and a stunt man on a bunch of Marvel movies, so there might not be much we can read into that. Then again, there is a rather silly Marvel villain called Swarm, who is made of bees. Would swallowing gum really have that much of an effect on Vision? Almost certainly not. Indeed, Vision has previously endorsed gum, by appearing in a 1976 set of Marvel bubblegum cards. Hopefully this shocking continuity error will be explained in a future episode. Please purchase a subscription to continue reading. If you have a subscription, please Log In . Your current subscription does not provide access to this content. If you believe you've gotten this message in error, please Log In. 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. Ukraine to buy COVID-19 vaccine via UK firm Minister Crown Agents is also engaged in procuring vaccines for other countries, including Britain. Reporting by UNIAN If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Tom Holland leaves the heroics of his Spider-Man role behind him in the first official trailer for his upcoming crime film Cherry. The 24-year-old actor stars in the upcoming Apple TV+ film as a wounded veteran whose trauma leads him to rob banks. The movie reunites Holland with his Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo. Dark: Tom Holland, 24, stars in the first official trailer for Apple TV+'s new film Cherry, about an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD and opioid addiction who turns to robbing banks to fuel his habit The trailer opens as Holland's character Cherry slips a one-dollar bill to a bank teller after writing 'I HAVE A GUN' in red ink on it. ADVERTISEMENT He flips the bill over to show that it says 'This is a Robbery' on the opposite side. Click here to resize this module 'I'm 23 years old, and sometimes I wonder if life is wasted on me,' Holland ponders in voice over as an astonished-looking Cherry is handed a stack of bills by the frightened teller. Meanwhile, the bank's other clients go about their business as if nothing is wrong. Eye-catching: The trailer opens as Holland's character Cherry slips a one-dollar bill to a bank teller after writing 'I HAVE A GUN' in red ink on it Before times: The action goes back in time to Cherry's seemingly idyllic teenage years, and he's seen throwing a pile of fallen leaves into the air Dramatic: 'I take all the beautiful things to heart... 'til I about die from it,' he says. His first stirrings of young love are shown as he spies a dark-haired girl in the middle of a lecture hall Young love: Later, he stops to chat with Emily (Ciara Bravo) as she sits on a rope swing. 'Hey, I'm really happy you're here,' he tells her, adding that it's 'Because I like you' The action goes back in time to Cherry's seemingly idyllic teenage years, and he's seen throwing a pile of fallen leaves into the air. 'I take all the beautiful things to heart... 'til I about die from it,' he says. His first stirrings of young love are shown as he spies a dark-haired girl in the middle of a lecture hall. Later, he stops to chat with Emily (Ciara Bravo) as she sits on a rope swing. 'Hey, I'm really happy you're here,' he tells her, adding that it's 'Because I like you.' Changing course: But his youthful love is put to the test after he impulsively enlists in the army Bare minimum: 'My one true accomplishment was not dying,' Cherry says, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the camera Overwhelming: A montage of gun fire and explosions shows him fighting in a desert, which seems to push him to his breaking point All downhill from here: After he returns home, Cherry suffers from tinnitus, a constant buzzing tone in his ears, and he turns to opioids to deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder But his youthful love is put to the test after he impulsively enlists in the army. 'My one true accomplishment was not dying,' Cherry says, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the camera. A montage of gun fire and explosions shows him fighting in a desert, which seems to push him to his breaking point. After he returns home, Cherry suffers from overwhelming tinnitus, a constant buzzing tone in his ears, and he turns to opioids to deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder. 'I have this noise in my head,' he tells Emily while on the verge of tears as he compulsively scratches his scalp. Nothing to lose: Cherry describes his turn toward bank robbing, which he does to pay for his addiction, as a reaction to 'desperation' Risky business: 'I've been at this a while now, and it's no secret what my face looks like,' he says to the camera, illustrating his lack of concern for himself Cherry describes his turn toward bank robbing, which he does to pay for his addiction, as a reaction to 'desperation.' ADVERTISEMENT 'I've been at this a while now, and it's no secret what my face looks like,' he says to the camera, illustrating his lack of concern for himself. The trailer ends with a fast-paced montage of scenes of Cherry's armed bank robberies intercut with romantic footage of him and Emily. The film is adapted from Nico Walker's semi-autobiographical novel Cherry. The real-life author served in the Army in Iraq and later suffered from PTSD and became addicted to heroin. To fund his addiction, he robbed 10 banks in Cleveland, Ohio, from December 2010 to March 2011, before he was arrested in April of that year. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2012 to a prison sentence through late 2020, though he was released early in October 2019. True to life: The film is adapted from Nico Walker's semi-autobiographical novel Cherry. The real-life author served in the Army in Iraq and later suffered from PTSD and became addicted to heroin The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. January 15, 2021 Guardian Smears Syria's President With Implausible Link To Beirut's Port Blast On August 4 2020 2.750 tons of ammonium nitrate, stored in a warehouse of Beirut's harbour, exploded. The blast destroyed large parts of the city. The dangerous load had come on a defect ship which was impounded by the Lebanese authorities. It had been stored since 2013. Despite urgent warnings, the complicate Lebanese bureaucracy had never found a way to get rid of the dangerous load. Soon conspiracy theories sprang up about the 'real' ownership and purpose of the load and of who might have had an interest in igniting it. None made much sense. The original explanation of a bureaucratic tussle and pure neglect are still the most plausible cause. But that does not stop the British Guardian from trying to blame the Syrian government for the incident: Here is how the Guardian 'links' the Syrian government with the explosion: The company used to ship a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate to Beirut port, where it caused a devastating explosion last August, has been linked to three influential businessmen with ties to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a new investigation has found. ... An investigation by the Lebanese film-maker Firas Hatoum, which aired this week on local television network Al-Jadeed, drew links between Savaro and three figures who had been central to efforts to bolster Assad since the earliest months of the Syrian war. George Haswani, Mudalal Khuri and his brother Imad are joint Russian-Syrian citizens who have all been sanctioned by the United States for supporting the Syrian leaders war effort. Companies linked to Haswani and Imad Khuri shared a London address with Savaro, which bought the nitrate in 2013. The official destination of the cargo was Mozambique, but it was diverted to and unloaded in Beirut, where it was stored unsafely until the catastrophic blast. ... The Savaro address 10 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3BQ was also the registered address of Hesco Engineering and Construction, which was directed by Haswani, a go-to businessman for Assad who was also sanctioned by the US in 2015 for allegedly buying oil from the Islamic State (Isis) terror group on behalf of the Syrian government. According to documents supplied by Hatoum, another of Savaros London addresses is linked to a second company tied to Haswanis Hesco now defunct company, IK Petroleum, which was directed by Imad Khruri until 2016. The suspicious 'link' the Guardian describes is solely based on the common address of otherwise unconnected companies. But all the named companies are just letterbox entities. These get set up and dissolved by the dozens per day. The British government's registrar for such businesses is Companies House. It allows anyone to search for a company's name, address and ownership. A Companies House search for 10 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3BQ, the common address of the suspicious companies, currently results in 140,871 matches. And yes, they all have the same address. More that 140,000 active or dissolved companies have been registered at 10 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3BQ. To then claim that some of these companies are suspiciously 'linked' to each other because they share the same nominal letterbox is bonkers. It is like claiming that U.S. companies are 'linked' because they are, for tax reasons, registered in Delaware. Why Martin Chulov, the Guardian's Middle East correspondent and author of the piece, did not do the basic diligence of checking the records or chose not to tell his readers that such address sharing is extremely common and does not prove anything is beyond me. One might suspect that any chance to denounce the Syrian government over whatever nonsense has taken priority over journalistic diligence. In 2015 Chulov won the Orwell price for journalism. Orwellian that indeed is. Posted by b on January 15, 2021 at 12:17 UTC | Permalink Comments next page VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Naturally Splendid Enterprises Ltd. ("Naturally Splendid", "NSE" or "the Company") (FRANKFURT:50N) (TSXV:NSP) (OTC:NSPDF) is pleased to announce that the third container of NATERA Plant Based Foods is in transit from Australia. Naturally Splendid continues to expand distribution channels both regionally and nationally and this latest container provides the necessary inventory levels required to continue our push into foodservice and retail. The expanding NATERA Plant Based Food distribution network now includes Sysco Canada - BC Division, CANEX Foods, and Summit Specialty Foods. This diverse group of distributors provides access to hundreds of points of sales across Canada, servicing diverse demographics. Consumer demand for plant-based, meat alternatives continues to increase for many reasons including personal health. Consumers are also becoming increasingly aware of the reduced environmental impacts associated with producing plant nutrition, such as the reduction of greenhouse gases and significantly less water required when compared to animal farming and this is contributing to the growth in this category. Naturally Splendid CEO Mr. J. Craig Goodwin states, "As a society, we are more aware than ever of the consequences of what we eat and how that affects the environment. We are well-positioned to capitalize on this rapidly growing market with NATERA Plant Based Foods. Our wide selection of quality plant-based choices is perfectly suited for this growing market and we look forward to providing these delicious entrees through multiple distribution channels." NATERA Plant Based Food is online at www.naterafoods.com as well as many of these products beginning to reach retail shelves. About Naturally Splendid Enterprises Ltd. NSE operates a Safe Quality Food Level 2 certified food manufacturing facility just outside Vancouver, BC in Canada. We have established numerous healthy, functional foods under recognized brands such as Natera Sport, Natera Hemp Foods, CHII, Elevate Me and Woods Wild Bar. The Company has a myriad of new products and line extensions under development that are approaching launch. NSE has also developed proprietary technologies for the extraction of high demand, healthy omega 3 and 6 oils from hemp. NSE is the current "go-to" manufacturer for healthy, functional food products and ingredients focusing on plant-based ingredients. The Company provides contract manufacturing services for many global healthy food companies, private labelling a wide variety of nutritional food products destined for global healthy food markets. For more information e-mail info@naturallysplendid.com or call Investor Relations at 604-673-9573 On Behalf of the Board of Directors Mr. J. Craig Goodwin CEO, Director Contact Information Naturally Splendid Enterprises Ltd. (NSP - TSX Venture; NSPDF - OTCQB; 50N - Frankfurt) #108-19100 Airport Way Pitt Meadows, BC, V3Y 0E2 Office: (604) 465-0548 Fax: (604) 465-1128 E-mail: info@naturallysplendid.com Website: www.naturallysplendid.com Forward-Looking Statements Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. Naturally Splendid cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond Naturally Splendid's control including, Naturally Splendid's ability to compete with large food and beverage companies; sales of any potential products developed will be profitable; sales of shelled hemp seed will continue at existing rates or increase; the ability to complete the sales of all bulk hemp seed purchase orders; and the risk that any of the potential applications may not receive all required regulatory or legal approval. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Naturally Splendid undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. 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: Naturally Splendid Enterprises Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624464/Naturally-Splendid-Prepares-to-Receive-Third-Container-of-NATERA-Plant-Based-Foods remaining of Thank you for reading! This is your last free article before you will be asked to subscribe. Already have a paid subscription? Sign in 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. Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, has been revealed as the biggest private owner of farmland in the US, after buying up 242,000 acres in 18 states. The tech mogul, who is the fourth richest person in the world with a net worth of $121billion, according to Forbes, has quietly built up a massive agriculture portfolio. The 65-year-old's largest holdings include 69,071 acres in Louisiana, 47,927 acres in Arkansas, 25,750 acres in Arizona, 20,588 acres in Nebraska and 16,097 in Washington state. But even with his big new agricultural holdings, Gates still doesn't rank in the Top 100 of private landowners overall in the U.S. - when considering owners of land of all types, not just agricultural. The title for largest landholdings overall goes to US businessman John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media, who owns 2.2million acres. Bill and Melinda Gates, pictured at The Elysee Palace in 2017 where they received the award of Commander of the Legion of Honor, are now the biggest owners of farmland in the US, a new report revealed The tech billionaire has quietly bought up 242,000 acres of farmland in 18 states - and 268,984 of multi-use land in 19 states in total, making him the biggest agricultural landowner in the US, though far short of the biggest overall landowner in the country In 2018, a 'Louisiana investor', later revealed to be Gates, paid $171 million for a large swath of farmland in the Horse Heaven Hill, making it one of the largest real estate transactions in recent memory In 2014, Gates reportedly purchased more than 4,500 acres in Suwannee County, Florida, for nearly $28 million It is unclear why Gates, better known as a self-confessed computing 'nerd', has invested in farmland so heavily, and details of the land are scarce, as revealed in The Land Report. The acquisitions are held directly, as well as through Gates' personal investment entity, Cascade Investments. In 1994 Bill and Melinda Gates are said to have hired Michael Larson to help them diversify their property portfolio. A 2014 Wall Street Journal profile of Larson, Cascade's chief investment officer, hinted at the beginning of that portfolio, after the piece noted that the firm owns 'at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana and other states or an area seven times bigger than Manhattan.' In six years that number has more than doubled. In 2014, he reportedly purchased more than 4,500 acres in Suwannee County, Florida, for nearly $28 million. In 2018 Gates reportedly bought about 16,000 acres in his home state of Washington, including a 14,500-acre tract in the Horse Heaven Hills region that was purchased for nearly $171 million from an insurance company that had paid $75million for it in 2010. It was the highest priced land sale in the US that year. Bill Gates, whose house in the Medina area of Seattle is pictured, has built up a diverse property portfolio over the years. He also bought farmland in Washington state in 2018 The farmland was bought by the couple, pictured at Lincoln Center in New York in 2017, mostly through their investment company, Cascade Investments, and is not connected to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which also works to help support farming Dr. Alan Busacca, professor emeritus at Washington State University, told Land Report at the time that the fertile land in the area was used for growing 'apples, cherries, carrots, dryland and irrigated wheat, and row and field crops'. He added: 'In addition, the states oldest winery, Chateau Ste. Michelle, has two of its largest vineyards in that AVA: Canoe Ridge Vineyard and Columbia Crest Vineyard.' Cascade did not elaborate on the agricultural land purchases other than to say that the company is 'very supportive of sustainable farming.' Last year the couple bought an oceanfront home in Del Mar, near San Diego, California, for $43million The six-bedroom Del Mar home boasts a ten-person jacuzzi and a swimming pool overlooking the ocean Gates, pictured last June during a concert for COVID-19 relief, purchased the San Diego property just as the pandemic took hold in March In 2017, Gates reportedly bought a significant stake in 24,800 acres of land outside Phoenix, Arizona, which he planned to turn into a 'smart city' with 200,000 residents Top 5 US landowners 1. John Malone: 2.2 million acres John Malone is the largest private landowner in the United States. Malone made his fortune as a media tycoon, building the company Tele-Communications, Inc, or TCI, and acting as its CEO before selling it to AT&T for $50 billion in 1999. Malone's 2.2 million acres are largely located in Maine, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming and include profitable cattle ranches. 2. Ted Turner: 2.0 million acres CNN founder Ted Turner owns 2 million acres of land largely in New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Georgia. Much of Turner's land is used as grazing land for over 50,000 head of buffalo the largest private herd of bison in the world. 3. Emmerson family: 2.0 million acres The Emmerson family owns and operates Sierra Pacific Industries, a company that logs usable lumber after forest fires and sells it to lumber retailers. Through Sierra Pacific, the family owns some 2 million acres in California and Washington. 4. Reed family: Land area: 1.7 million acres For five generations, the Reed Family has owned and operated the logging company Green Diamond Resource Co. The family's 1.7 million acres of land are primarily spread across Washington, Oregon, and California. 5. Stan Kroenke: Land area: 1.4 million acres Real estate mogul and owner of the Los Angeles Rams, Stan Kroenke, owns 1.4 million acres of land in the United States, including a 124,000 acre ranch in Montana and additional land in Wyoming. Kroenke is married to Ann Walkton Kroenke, an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune. *According to figures compiled by The Land Report in 2019 Advertisement Gates hasn't just invested in farmland. In total he owns 268,984 acres of land of all types in 19 states, including a suburb up for development - as a so-called 'smart city' - outside Phoenix, Arizona. Since 2017 he reportedly holds a significant stake in 24,800 acres of land on the west side of Phoenix. The area off Interstate 10, called Belmont, has space for 80,000 homes as well as more than 4,000 acres for schools, offices, and stores; and 3,400 acres of open space. When fully developed the area could be home to 200,000 residents and be similar in size to the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, The Land Report said. Last year, Cascade Investment made a second major investment in Arizona by acquiring more than 2,800 acres known as Spurlock Ranch in Buckeye for $25 million, that could be built out to include 8,500 homes. The couple also snapped up an oceanfront home in San Diego County, California, last year, for a record making $43 million. The six-bed Del Mar home, which boasts a ten-person jacuzzi and swimming pool overlooking the ocean, was bought by the couple in late March as the international coronavirus pandemic began to take hold. Purchased from Madeleine Pickens, the former wife of Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, the property deal is one of the largest ever recorded in the area, The Wall Street Journal reported. Although the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not directly connected with Cascade or its investments, it also has a farmland initiative: Gates Ag One, established in the Greater St. Louis area, with a mission to help 'smallholder farmers adapt to climate change and make food production in low- and middle-income countries more productive, resilient, and sustainable.' In 2008, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $306 million in grants designed to boost the yields and incomes of millions of small farmers in Africa as well as 'other parts of the developing world so they can lift themselves and their families out of hunger and poverty.' Behind Gates in terms of investment in farmland are the cofounders of the Wonderful Company, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, with 190,000 acres. The Counselors of Real Estate is working with Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to analyze its real estate assets and offer a development plan for a portion of the 5,331-acre base. The U.S. Navy partnered with The Counselors of Real Estates public service initiative, the CRE Consulting Corps, to develop an actionable strategic plan for working with public and private partners, realign infrastructure and facility usage and delivery of services, and redevelop housing, recreation, and support facilities for Navy and Marine Corps personnel. To enable Naval Air Station Oceana management to focus on its core mission while enhancing uniform service members quality of life, the Navy approached The Counselors for its expertise in analyzing non-core activities, land and buildings, and to provide viable best-use options, said Michel Couillard, CRE, chair of The Counselors of Real Estate. The team provided market-driven counsel on how to most effectively leverage the installations real property assets for the long-term benefit of United States Navy and Marine Corps personnel and the community at large. The CRE Consulting Corps provided a framework for the U.S. Navy to examine redevelopment options, consider alternative leasehold structures, and work with key partners to explore and implement public-private partnerships. To assist Naval Air Station Oceana in advancing its Future Base Design prototype initiative, the Consulting Corps team toured the installation and its facilities, analyzed demographics and market data, studied maps, and interviewed more than 40 local stakeholders including elected and appointed officials, community residents, local developers, and potential tenants, said Jerry Turner, Jr., CRE, the groups team leader. We identified market sectors that could use land or facilities on the property, including those that could serve on-base needs as well as regional market demands through greater public access. As an adjunct to the assignment, U.S. Navy and Virginia Beach municipal officials were invited to San Antonio, Texas, for a first-hand tour of a successful military redevelopment projectconversion of the former Brooks Air Force Base into a modern 1,300-acre mixed-use community. In addition to Mr. Turner, of Houston, the CRE Consulting Corps team included: Kirk King, CRE, San Antonio; William Norton, CRE, Manchester, New Hampshire; Harry Skip Preble, CRE, Fredericksburg, Texas; and Reid Wilson, CRE, Houston. The CRE Consulting Corps helps communities, educational institutions, government entities, and non-profit organizations by providing objective analysis, adaptive reuse strategies, and realistic action plans to leverage and maximize performance of real estate assets. The Counselors of Real Estate is a highly selective, global organization of commercial property professionals, including principals of prominent real estate, financial, legal, and accounting firms, as well as economists, ranking leaders of Wall Street, and academia. Only 1,000 professionals worldwide hold the CRE (Counselor of Real Estate) credential. Members of the organization volunteer their time and expertise for Consulting Corps assignments, providing access to high levels of industry knowledge at well below market rates to address economic development, disaster response, affordable housing, and other public service issues. The team for Naval Air Station Oceana was selected for its objectivity and experience directly applicable to the project, which is one of more than 50 assignments completed by CRE Consulting Corps teams. U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday received Moroccos highest award for his work in advancing a normalization deal between Israel and Morocco, a senior administration official told Reuters. In a private Oval Office ceremony, Princess Lalla Joumala Alaoui, who is Moroccos ambassador to the United States, gave Trump the Order of Muhammad, an award given only to heads of state. It was a gift from Moroccos King Mohammed VI. White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz received other awards for their work on the Israel-Morocco deal, which was reached in December. The United States in the last five months helped broker deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. The agreements are aimed at normalizing relations and opening economic ties. The Kushner team had been working on reaching more agreements between Israel and the Arab world. But time has run out and no more are expected before Trumps departure. The European Commission on Monday warned against attempts to pressure the media after Slovenia's government suspended funding to national news agency STA following criticism from Prime Minister Janez Jansa Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Jan, 2021 ) :The European Commission on Monday warned against attempts to pressure the media after Slovenia's government suspended funding to national news agency STA following criticism from Prime Minister Janez Jansa. The government announced it was halting money for STA in December after saying the management failed to provide financial documents about the press agency's accounts. The move followed fierce criticism from conservative leader Jansa, who has slammed critical reporting over the coronavirus crisis since taking power in March. A Commission spokesman called for the press to be able to work freely and said public media "play a special role in the European Union". "We call on all member states to refrain from attempts on putting pressure on them," spokesman Christian Wigand said. "The decision related to funding of the agency needs to be scrutinised at national level, by relevant authorities, of course, and we will continue to monitor the situation closely." Slovenia's Information Office has supplied around two million Euros annually to the news agency, founded in 1990 when the country decided to leave the former Yugoslav federation. The parliament later in December adopted a package of Covid-19 emergency measures, including a provision calling for the resumption of payments to STA. But the government then referred the question to the EU authorities over claims it could breach the bloc's rules on state aid and competition. The Commission insisted Monday that the relative size of the funding meant it did not have to give the green light to the payments. Shortly after assuming office in March, Jansa used his Twitter account to attack media which questioned his handling of the coronavirus crisis, accusing them of spreading lies and serving the interests of the opposition. In October, Jansa tweeted that STA was a "national disgrace, an evident abuse of the name it carries" for having given more space to an interview with a musician that had criticised the government than to his meeting with his close ally, Hungary's Prime Minister Victor Orban. A majority of Americans say President Donald Trump bears at least partial responsibility for last week's attack on Capitol Hill and that they don't want him to run for office again. The new poll from Washington Post/ABC News shows a crisis for Trump's legacy in his final days in office with a large number of Americans disapproving of his actions as he prepares to exit the White House. Seven in 10 say Trump is partially responsible for the MAGA riot in the Capitol that left five dead and a trail of destruction throughout the building. Democrats impeached Trump a second time this week - this time on the charge he violated his oath of office by inciting the mob. And 56 per cent want Congress to prevent Trump from running for office again. If Trump is found guilty by the Senate, he would not be allowed to seek another term in federal office. New poll numbers show a crisis for President Trump in his final days of presidency Americans are strongly united in one area - their belief that the last Wednesday's attack on the Capitol was wrong; nine in 10 oppose it Americans are strongly united in one area - their belief that the last Wednesday's attack on the Capitol was wrong. Nine in 10 Americans oppose the attack, the poll found, while a mere eight per cent supported it. Meanwhile, 54 per cent say Trump should be criminally charged for his role in inciting the riot. Trump, at a rally the morning of the insurgency, urged his supporters to march on the Capitol. And 66 per cent said he has behaved irresponsibly in his statements since the election. He has falsely claimed he won and the presidency was stolen from him. Additionally, respondents gave Trump only a 38 per cent job approval rating with 60 per cent disapproving of his job performance. Trump leaves office on Wednesday facing a second impeachment trail - a historic first. The Senate will consider the impeachment charge against the president when senators return to Washington D.C. on January 19th. The trial is expected to consume the early days of Joe Biden's presidency. To impeach Trump, a two-thirds majority is needed to convict him, meaning at least 17 Republicans would have to find him guilty. Trump, meanwhile, will hold an unprecedented farewell event at Joint Base Andrews the morning of Biden's inauguration and then leave town before his successor takes the oath of office. Trump's farewell will take place at the base outside Washington where Air Force One is headquartered. No recent president has had his own sendoff ceremony at JBA. Officials are considering an elaborate event that would have the feel of a state visit, with a red carpet, color guard, military band and 21-gun salute all being discussed, the Associated Press reported. He then plans to fly to his Mar-a-Lago residence before Biden takes the oath of office at noon, which is when Biden will become the nation's 46th president. The timing makes it unlikely Trump and first lady Melania Trump will host Joe and Jill Biden for coffee - a tradition by the outgoing first couple for their replacements on the morning of inauguration. The Bidens will be staying across the street from the White House at Blair House, the official guest residence. Some White House advisers have urged Trump to host Biden for a White House meeting ahead of Inauguration Day, but there has been no sign Trump is willing to do that, an administration official told Reuters. But he is planning to issue more pardons before leaving and is considering the unprecedented option of pardoning himself. President Donald Trump will hold an unprecedented farewell event at Joint Base Andrews the morning of Joe Biden's inauguration Leaving while he is still president will also allow Trump to use the call sign 'Air Force One' for his flight to Palm Beach, Florida. If Trump left Washington after Biden takes the oath, he would have to ask Biden to let him use the custom-built plane with its distinctive blue and white paint. All outgoing presidents have to make such a request, which is usually granted. However, it would not have the call sign Air Force One as that can only be used when the current president is on board. Traditionally, an outgoing president attends his successor's swearing-in, then departs the ground of the U.S. Capitol in a military helicopter to fly to JBA where he takes a government plane to his final destination. For example, when Barack Obama departed D.C. after he left office, the plane used the call sign 'Special Mission 44' - the number referring to Obama's presidency. If the same pattern is followed, Trump's flight would be 'Special Mission 45.' But if Trump departs ahead of Biden's swearing-in, the plane would go by Air Force One. Trump announced last week he would not attend his successor's inauguration on January 20th, to which Biden replied: 'One of the few things he and I have ever agreed on. It's a good thing him not showing up.' Vice President Mike Pence will attend the event. A Huntsville Hospital clinic will start vaccinating Alabamians 75 and older on Monday by appointment only. Tracy Doughty, Senior VP of Operations, said As of yesterday, we had about 10,000 reservations, so the team is working through those now and setting up appointments as we speak. The clinic will be held at Jaycees Building in John Hunt Park. Reservations can be made online. Doughty advises that individuals should not come to reserve their spots. The sole purpose of employees there are to put vaccines in arms and you need an appointment to do that, Doughty said. Once registering, hospital staff will reach out to individuals to schedule an appointment. There is less supply than there is a demand for the vaccine. Will have 200 vaccines that first day, said Doughty. As days progress, the hospital is looking at doing 750 vaccines a day. Vaccination appointments will be from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Monday. From then on, the clinic will be vaccinating from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The hospital said they will continue vaccinating at the clinic in months to come, as long as the state continues to supply them with vaccines. Doughty said the vaccination process at the clinic should be seamless. Alabamians registered for the clinic will receive the Pfizer vaccine. MASON CITY, Iowa The president of MercyOne North Iowa Medical Center has written a public letter of thanks and hope for the future. The full letter is below: Every new year brings with it the promise of a fresh start, a new beginning. We have begun 2021 with hope and optimism for good health and a return to life as we knew it before COVID-19, as shown by our Lights of Hope which were on display through January 7. As health care workers, we see firsthand the pain caused by the pandemic. We hold the hands of patients when they were alone, and we witness the remarkable recovery of others. 2020 was one of the most difficult, yet one of the most rewarding years for us at MercyOne. Providing compassionate care is our lifes work our calling and we are motivated by an unwavering commitment to the health of those we serve. We recognize the tremendous responsibility and honor which comes with caring for anothers life. Last year, as we provided care for others, many in our community cared for us. In large and small ways, we felt your love and appreciation. From thank you cards to donated food, social media mentions and hand-lettered signs of recognition, you have shown us gratitude. Even as businesses and community members faced uncertainty in their own lives people came together to thank us. We are humbled and grateful for your kindness, support and spirit of giving. While there is optimism for the year ahead, there is much work to be done. We have begun vaccinations for our health care workers, but we will still be fighting COVID-19 for some time, which underscores the importance of continued safety measures like wearing masks and social distancing. We do not know what additional challenges await us in this new year. What we do know is we are not the same people, organization, or community we were twelve months ago. We have been changed. Our hope is the spirit of appreciation and generosity we saw in 2020 continues into the new year in deeper and more personal ways. We have proven we can accomplish much together. And, as we pray for 2021 to be a year of healing, we are thankful for the communities we serve. Rod Schlader President, MercyOne North Iowa Medical Center 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. Government must prioritise the return to school for all children to avoid the "immense damage" the prolonged closures had on young people last year, childrens advocates have warned. AsIAm, Barnardos, the Childrens Rights Alliance, DownSyndrome Ireland, Inclusion Ireland, the ISPCC, and the National Parents Council Primary have called for schools to be the first sector to be reopened. With one week of homeschooling down for thousands of students, parents, and their teachers across the country, education minister Norma Foley said schools should reopen on February 1, subject to public health advice. A spokesperson for the children's rights groups said: As the number of cases continues to decrease over the coming weeks, as predicted by public health experts, we call for the Government to make good on their promise to prioritise education as the first sector that will reopen. For vulnerable children and for the many other children with special educational needs who attend mainstream classes or post-primary schools, every day out of school is a concern to us. "We are urging Government to work with stakeholders to support these children to return to their school as soon as possible. Ireland is not the only country coming to terms with the new strain of the virus and balancing restrictions while a vaccine programme is rolled out, they added. "But no other country has closed schools for all students," the spokesperson said. Doing so rips the rug out from under the feet of so many children for whom school is a safe haven. "Public health representatives have repeatedly stated that schools are safe environments and the reality is, for some children school is, in fact, their support bubble their friends and their teachers." Some in-person schooling is planned to return on a phased basis from next Thursday for children in special schools and classes. Meanwhile, talks about this year's State exams are expected to intensify next week as the State Exams advisory group, made up of groups representing teachers, principals, students, parents, and school management bodies meets. The Irish Second-Level Students' Union is due to release the results of its student survey on what they would like to happen with the 2021 exams. The demand for a green and smart lifestyle has fueled the Vietnam residential solar energy market and subsequently, boost the evolving needs for smart solutions which are easier to install with advanced safety standards and long-term operability that aims for higher self-consumption. In the year 2020, Huawei has delivered a total capacity of 4.3 GW inverters in Vietnam. To further develop the market, Huawei FusionSolar launches a new range of products for a complete integrated system for Vietnamese homeowners including Smart Energy Controller SUN2000-2-5KTL-L1 and SUN2000-5-10KTL-M1, ESS (Energy Storage System) LUNA2000-5/10/15-S0 and Smart PV Optimizer SUN2000-450W-P. Speaking at the launch event, Mr. Alen Zhang, Sales Director of Huawei FusionSolar Vietnam said: "With 30 years of expertise in digital information technology, we've incorporated many latest ICT technologies for optimal power generation, in building the foundation for solar to become the main energy source. Vietnam is a country with high solar power potential and we look forward to contributing towards greater adoption of solar energy among Vietnamese families with Huawei FusionSolar solutions". When it comes to residential PV rooftop systems, residential installers are usually expected to provide homeowners with a robust, cost-effective, self-consumption system that remains highly efficient, flexible and easy to install, and comes with smart applications and reliable customer service. Huawei's new range of products has been developed to focus on delivering three main benefits: optimal electricity cost, active safety and better experience. Optimal Electricity Cost PV energy generated by solar panels meets the electricity demand of homes in the daytime, and the surplus energy generated is used to charge batteries, which then discharges to meet peak electricity consumption in the night time. In this way, residential PV systems could achieve high self-consumption levels and this is where Huawei's residential intelligent battery Smart String ESS LUNA2000-5/10/15-S0 could truly shine. Each battery pack has a built-in energy optimizer and supports independent charge and discharge management. Active Safety The AI-Powered Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter (AFCI) proactively mitigate fire risk with rapid shutdown technologies achieving zero voltage on the rooftop and zero arc risks for dual-layer protection. Huawei is the first in the industry to integrate the AI algorithm into AFCI, enabling three unique features: accurate arc fault detection via local neural network algorithm, speedy arc fault protection by inverter shutdown in 0.5s which is far below 2.5s which is stipulated in UL1699B, and pinpointing arc fault positioning, saving 80% onsite troubleshooting time and cost. The FusionSolar inverter portfolio consists of single-phase (Smart Energy Controller SUN2000-2-5KTL-L1) and three-phase (Smart Energy Controller SUN2000-5-10KTL-M1) products, both are compatible with Huawei's SUN2000-450W-P power optimizer. Better Experience And lastly, the Smart PV Management System, available in both web portal and mobile application, provides real-time energy flow and energy balance readings, and PV panel-level performance management. About Huawei Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have more than 194,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world. Our vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks; bring cloud and artificial intelligence to all four corners of the earth to provide superior computing power where you need it, when you need it; build digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, making it more personalized for people in all aspects of their life, whether they're at home, in the office, or on the go. About FusionSolar Huawei offers leading Smart PV solutions harnessing more than 30 years of expertise in digital information technology. By integrating AI and Cloud, Huawei further incorporates many latest ICT technologies with PV for optimal power generation, thus making the solar power plant to be Highly Efficient, Safe & Reliable with Smart O&M and Grid Supporting capabilities and builds the foundation for solar to become the main energy source. For solar energy users, Huawei launched advanced solution for C&I and residential customers based on the 'Optimal Electricity Cost and Active Safety' concept. By improving the utilization of solar power, Huawei has helped to power millions of residents and hundreds of industries globally. Huawei will continue to innovate and enable renewable energy to empower each individual, home, and organization. Related Links www.huawei.com/cn SOURCE Huawei Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. Case in point is proven! Sarcastically yet I am and stupid I am not. Therefore, when a stooge such as Navalny proclaims that he will come back to Russia! He is either running from his lack of usefulness to the west and or he is lying in the first place about everything that has happened to him within and about Russia? Yes he is a Western Stooge! Russia will arrest him as he has lots of criminal activities that he has endeared upon as he lived in Russia and for him to face the music, means the real perpetrator is after him Germany, yet Russian news: Alexey Navalny says he will fly to Moscow on Sunday! Yes, he is coming back home to Russia? ~~ I guess so they can finish the job of killing him ~~ Therefore: MOSCOW, January 14. /TASS/. Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has been declared wanted after he missed several criminal inspection registrations as a person under suspended sentence for the Yves Rocher case, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service told reporters. In light of the fact that the real place of residence of the convicted person has been unknown <> since September 24, initial inquiry measures were launched against Navalny A. on November 27, 2020. Convicted Navalny A. was placed on the wanted list on December 29 with an instruction to detain him when his whereabouts are identified, the statement reads. The agency underlined that it is guided by the principle of inevitability of punishment and equality for all Russian citizens and due to Navalnys repeated violations of laws the services Moscow office is obligated to take all measures to detain perpetrator Navalny until the courts decision to change the suspended conviction for a real one. You should ask, Why? Why would he come back to Russia? I thought they (Russia, Putin, Evil Demons, Bad Guys, Novichok and what-knots) tried multiple times to kill him? Now you should understand how stupid the Powers to be think we all are? Yes, Navalny will be arrested, just as he should be, for his crimes he has committed WtR UPDATE: The Minnesota State Patrol website says Highway 52 between Chatfield and Fountain has reopened to traffic as of 7:10 pm. Previous story below FILLMORE COUNTY, Minn. Highway 52 south of Chatfield has been closed while crews deal with a semi crash that has blocked both lanes of traffic. The Minnesota Department of Transportation says the crash happened a mile marker 29, north of Fountain. Vehicles from the north are being detoured east on Fillmore County Road 40 to Fillmore County Road 30 south to Fillmore County Road 11 east, which then connects with Hwy 52 in Fountain. The detour from the south is the opposite. The DOG says crews are working to remove the trucks cargo first before getting the vehicle turned back on its wheels and moving it off the highway. The crash happened around 3:45 pm and the highway is expected to be blocked for several hours. For more information, click here. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. OSLO A Norwegian court on Friday sentenced the partner of a former minister to 20 months in prison after she was found guilty of endangering the countrys democracy by making up threats and vandalizing her own house and car in an attempt to show that the couples privacy had been invaded by a theater production. The defendant, Laila Anita Bertheussen, is the partner of the former justice minister Tor Mikkel Wara, of the right-wing Progress Party. She was found guilty of sending anonymous threats to Mr. Wara and to another minister, of daubing their own house and car with the word racist and a swastika, and later of setting the car on fire all to prove her false assertion that the couple was under attack. Eirin Eikefjord, a political editor who has covered the case for the daily Bergens Tidende, said, It is an extraordinary case, some would say crazy, that has shaped conversations about what those who have power in Norway make of it. Ms. Bertheussens campaign began after a play in November 2018 at an Oslo theater. The play displayed footage of the house where she lived with Mr. Wara, along with images of the homes of other politicians whom the production accused of nurturing racist attitudes in Norway. The play, called Ways of Seeing, aimed to map the networks that are interested in making Norway a more racist society, according to a description on the theaters website. Theres been an onslaught of news this week from CES 2021 and Samsungs Galaxy Unpacked, and even though Google didnt have major news of its own to share, its presence was still felt. In addition to joining us on our virtual stage for a panel with Microsoft on accessibility in tech, Google was also mentioned in other launches this week. Android chief Hiroshi Lockheimer made an appearance at Unpacked today, for example while Sony and TCL unveiled their first Google TV sets. Lockheimer and VP for Google TV Shalini Govil-Pai joined us today to discuss the news this week as well as the future of Android and Google TV. Get the details in the video above. Kirbyjon Caldwell, Houston megachurch pastor and former spiritual adviser to two U.S. presidents, was sentenced on Wednesday to six years in federal prison for his role in a scheme that defrauded more than two dozen people out of millions of dollars through the sale of worthless Chinese bonds. But it may be another year until the 67-year-old, who has prostate cancer, enters the prison system because of the threats posed to his health by COVID-19. Caldwell was a spiritual adviser to presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He grew Windsor Village United Methodist Church from roughly 25 members in the 1980s to more than 16,000 today making it one of the countrys largest protestant congregations. NEWS IN YOUR INBOX: Sign up for breaking news email alerts from HoustonChronicle.com here In 2018, he and another man, Shreveport-based investment adviser Gregory A. Smith, were charged by federal authorities for using their status and access to encourage 29 people to invest about $3.5 million in historical Chinese bonds between April 2013 and August 2014. Smith pleaded guilty last summer and is currently in prison. Smith and Caldwell, a Houston native with a degree from the Wharton School of Business, told investors they could see returns as high as 15 times their initial investment, according to the indictment. However, the bonds from the former Republic of China only existed prior to the 1949 communist takeover there. The Securities and Exchange Commission considers them collectible memorabilia, but they are no longer recognized by Chinas government and have no investment value, according to court documents. Caldwell initially denied the allegations, but eventually pleaded guilty last year. At a Wednesday sentencing in Louisiana federal court, he apologized for causing undeserved financial harm, emotional distress, emotional pain. They trusted me with their money, and I abused that trust, Caldwell said in a roughly seven-minute statement. I misled them, I profited at their expense, and for that I am very sorry. As a result of my actions, good people lost hard-earned money. Retirement funds were used, mortgages and other important bills went unpaid, and things that the victims wanted to do for their families and friends just went undone. Before sentencing, Chief U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr. noted Caldwells history of community service and the more than $4 million he has since repaid to victims which Hicks said was a rarity in most fraud cases. SUBSCRIBE TODAY: Stay informed with accurate reporting you can trust on HoustonChronicle.com But Caldwells business acumen and stature in the community, Hicks continued, made the scheme particularly egregious. He is not average in any manner, way, shape or form, Hicks said, adding that Caldwell had a responsibility to confirm the value of the bonds before endorsing them. Either he failed to do it, he didnt want to do it or he turned his back on what was easily available to him to determine that these bonds were worthless. Caldwell used his share of profits to open a personal line of credit, according to court records. He has since been defrocked by the United Methodist Church, though it was revealed in court on Wednesday that he has continued to serve in a paid position at Windsor while his wife serves as lead pastor. In a lengthy statement, Windsor officials praised Caldwell, their "visionary leader," for his contributions to the church and broader community. The church also noted that Caldwell voluntarily paid restitution to his victims prior to sentencing, which the church said was "virtually unheard of and extremely rare in these kinds of cases." Hicks said he received numerous statements in support of Caldwell prior to the hearing, as well as a roughly one-hour video testimonial. TRY THE APP: Get alerts, breaking news and in-depth coverage on what's happening in Houston through our mobile app In a statement, Bishop Scott Jones, head of southeast Texas United Methodist group, said Caldwell confessed his crimes and offered a sincere expression of remorse for his actions and the harm they caused as well as taking extraordinary steps toward repairing the damage. Jones continued: The court heard about these efforts and many additional factors, including the significant accomplishments over decades as a pastor and community leader, when determining Mr. Caldwells appropriate punishment for the confessed crimes. U.S. prosecutors similarly noted Caldwells contributions in Houston, but said his legacy in Louisiana, home to most of the victims, will be far different. Here, he is the man who swindled widows out of their annuities and couples out of their retirements, one prosecutor said. Here, he is the man who extolled the virtues of these wonderful investment opportunities while taking the money for himself and others. Unanswered in the case, Judge Hicks continued, was the age old question of why this ever occurred. That remains unanswered, he said. It remains untouched as an issue. robert.downen@chron.com In addition to his accomplishments in the ring, McGregor is also famous in all four corners of the world for his love of expensive cars and even more expensive, custom or one-off timepieces . Somehow, during his ongoing trip to Abu Dhabi, hes been able to combine both with an extra helping of custom fashion.In just one Instagram post, McGregor is able to show off over $4 million worth of goods, including a brand new Rolls-Royce Dawn , a pair of Jacob & Co Tourbillon watches (without counting the timepiece he was already wearing), and a superb tailor suit. If youre ready to be dazzled, check out the photos in the gallery or the embed at the bottom of the page.With prices starting at well over $350,000, the Dawn is Rolls-Royces only convertible on offer right now. Based on the 1952 Silverdawn model, its powered by a 6.6-liter V12 engine that produces 563 hp and 575 pound-feet (778 Nm) of torque, taking it to 60 mph (96 kph) from a standstill in 4.9 seconds. This being McGregor were also talking about, he probably had some extra stuff added to his unit to make it more special.Speaking of special, no other timepiece is more so than the Jacob & Co Rasputin, a unique piece with a minute repetition with Jaquemart Swan animation and a hidden scene automaton depicting a man and a woman getting down and dirty. Seriously. The diamond weight on this thing is a whopping 40.28 carats, but it also has three baguette rubies and one heart-shaped ruby, housed in an 18k white gold case.The Rasputin alone costs $2.1 million.As for McGregors other watch, its just as fancy but comparatively cheaper. Its an Astronomia Tourbillon from the same jeweler to the stars, though a custom edition of the model released in 2015. It has over 420 diamonds on it, for a total of 16.8 carats, and costs $1 million.As for the tailor suit, youre probably blinded by all that ice to see it anyhow. Its baby blue and one size too small on the legs. Confirmed Livestream speakers include: Kevin O'Leary , "Mr. Wonderful" on SharkTank , "Mr. Wonderful" on SharkTank Mohamed A El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz Terry Duffy , Chairman and CEO of CME Group , Chairman and CEO of CME Group Dan Morehead , Founder & CEO at Pantera Capital , Founder & CEO at Pantera Capital Meltem Demirors , Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares , Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares Jeff Dorman , CFA, CIO & Partner at Arca , CFA, CIO & Partner at Arca Jason Karp , Founder of HumanCo , Founder of HumanCo Danny Moses featured in Michael Lewis' best-selling book "The Big Short" featured in best-selling book "The Big Short" Libby Cantrill , Head of Public Policy at PIMCO , Head of Public Policy at PIMCO Andrew Collins , Director of ESG at San Francisco ERS , Director of ESG at San Francisco ERS And many more! You can watch it all on Context's Livestream here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSc6v5OAur4v_ouZnWssfLQ Broadcast to Context 365's network of family offices, institutional allocators, industry colleagues, and finance influencers, attendees will be able to raise questions to participants in real-time. The series will be supported and broadcast across Context social channels - the #1 most engaged in the capital introduction community. They will also be available for playback within the Context 365 app. "Context continues re-imagining alternative investing by providing a comprehensive platform to connect investors, allocators, and industry leaders," said Eric Noll, Context's chief executive officer. "This year, we pushed the borders of our annual Miami summit to create a global livestream content series that raises the investment stakes to explore critical topics with industry leaders pushing the edges and disrupting convention." In the capital introduction space, Context is the first mover connecting qualified allocators with outstanding fund managers. Overall, investors have reported allocating approximately $46 billion in funds they met through Context during the last two years, with 87% of past surveyed attendees allocating to at least one fund. The firm is also known for pioneering "Hedge Fund Week" in Miami, Florida, typically held this time in January, and plans to return in 2022 with the largest and most intriguing event yet. For more information, complete agenda, and to register for the global livestream event, please visit live.context365.com. About Context 365 Context 365 is a community of family offices, venture capital and private equity firms, fund managers, institutional investors, and select industry colleagues and partners in alternative investments. The Context 365 app and matchmaking technology help investors find managers and deals that best fit their mandate and outlook. In the app, fund managers can request virtual meetings with qualified investors sourcing deal flow with a personal profile showcasing their fund strategy, performance, marketing materials, and industry experience. It's the first capital introduction app of its kind, powered by longevity in the industry that has helped create billions in historical allocations. For additional information: www.context365.com Follow us: LinkedIn: @Context-365 Facebook: @Context365 Twitter: @Context365 Instagram: @Context_365 SOURCE Context Summits LLC Related Links http://www.context365.com Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment About a month before the great December conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, NASA researchers announced a separate, unexpected discovery: evidence of light in deep space without an explainable source. After studying photographs taken by the New Horizons space probe, which is now 4 billion miles away but still beaming footage to Earth, NASA came across an unexplained glow. It was in areas particularly distant from the known sources of light, such as stars and galaxies, and from sources of reflected light, such as dust particles. In fact, one astronomer told NPR that the amount of unexplained light was about equal to the light coming from sources they could identify. The NPR article described the problem this creates for scientists: for 400 years, astronomers have been studying visible light and the sky in a serious way and yet somehow apparently missed half the light in the universe. The choice astronomers face is either to double-down on the known explanations for light or be open to new ones. Im no astronomer, of course, and I certainly wont pretend to know more than those whove dedicated their lives to studying the heavens. However, its worth mentioning that an additional explanation for light is found in Genesis. If the testimony of Scripture is, like science, considered an actual source of knowledge, rather than a book of religious metaphors and self-help, light was the first thing created by God, in order to form and fill an earth that was formless and empty. Maybe knowing that light preceded existing physical objects points to a different explanation for those especially empty corners of the sky that seem to mysteriously glow. A few years ago, journalist and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell told a story in his book Blink about how surprisingly accurate human intuitions can be. In the early 2000s, a decorated general who had fought in Vietnam was called to the Pentagon, along with other top military analysts, specialists, and software engineers, to help with a war simulation exercise. Worried about unstable conditions in the Middle East, a simulation was set up to play out strategy if, say, an unstable despot did something rash. For the simulation, Pentagon officials studied and made calculations and built algorithms to plan for every possible contingency. The Vietnam veteran general was, on the other hand, assigned as the enemy. He was privy to none of the sophisticated strategizing, fancy equipment, software, or teams of mathematicians. Instead, he used intuition and the wisdom earned on the ground in Vietnam. Rather than calling meetings every time conditions changed, the General made decisions quickly. According to Gladwell, he trusted his gut. He won the battle in two days, humiliating the Pentagon. Gladwells main point is that humans tend to overthink things. The amazing successes of our science and technologies have led us to idolize sophistication and, at times, complicate whats really simple. In Out of the Silent Planet, the first book of C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy, the main character is taken into space and is flabbergasted by what he sees. Space, Lewis describes, was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens the heavens which declared the glory. Many scientists and astronomers, of course, know and believe in the Creator. However, the better our technology and the more specialized our tools, the more we, as enlightened moderns, doubt older wisdom. Our algorithms and war game strategies and sophisticated techniques can, unintentionally become blinders that block the God-given intuition that comes from our created humanity. When light is discovered where there ought not be any, maybe weve stifled the most plausible explanation. Long ago, Someone said, Let there be light, and there was light. That Someone, then, told us all about it. Perhaps, it would be easier to see God in the heavens He made if we werent so convinced of our ability to explain everything by purely naturalistic causes or even, as some do, to dismiss all supernatural causes. Maybe our gut instinct to look upward when we encounter the unexplained is the right one. If the heavens indeed declare the glory of God, wed do well to listen. Originally posted at breakpoint.org Authorities allege Christine Priola, a former therapist for the Cleveland Schools, is the woman on the right in the chambers of the Senate during an illegal breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) FBI Arrests Former School Therapist Who Stood Next to VPs Chair in Capitol Breach Federal authorities on Thursday arrested and charged a former occupational therapist for Cleveland schools, allegedly seen in a viral photo showing her standing next to the vice presidents chair in the Senate during the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol. According to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (pdf), 49-year-old Christine Priola faces three federal charges: violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, unlawful parading while at the Capitol, and unlawfully entering and remaining on restricted grounds. The filing says the Cleveland Division of the FBI received an anonymous tip that Priola was the woman pictured in the photograph, taken by a Getty Images photographer, standing next to the vice presidents chair. Those photos and electronic images were circulated on numerous news media platforms, some of which showed an individual holding a sign reading, in part, The Children Cry Out for Justice, and pointing a smart cellular telephone device at an individual occupying the seat of the Vice President of the United States, states the complaint, which identifies the suspect as Priola. The female was also wearing a red winter coat and distinctive pants that appeared to have the name Trump and other words written on the leg, it said. On Saturday, authorities from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and Willoughby Police Department, executed a warrant at Priolas home, where they retrieved evidence, WKYC reports. The complaint against Priola indicates that authorities were able to use data from her cellphone to confirm her location at the Capitol at the time of the riot. Priola made a brief appearance in U.S. District Court in Cleveland before her case was transferred to the District of Columbia, according to Cleveland.com. The Department of Justice said in a statement that Priola has been released on bond with home detention and electronic home monitoring. Priola resigned following her alleged involvement in the Capitol breach, with WKYC reporting that her resignation letter, submitted to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) on Thursday, cited reasons for her resignation. These include her wish to switch career paths to focus on exposing human trafficking and pedophilia, including in our government and childrens services agencies, and that she does not support paying union dues that she claims are used to fund people and groups that support the killing of unborn children. The Epoch Times has been unable to reach Priola for comment. The CMSD, in a statement cited by WKYC, said, While CMSD deeply believes in the right of any individual to peacefully protest, as many did on the Capitol plaza on Wednesday afternoon, the District deeply condemns the actions of those involved in the riots inside the Capitol and on the Capitol grounds. The Justice Department said federal authorities have charged about 80 cases and arrested 34 individuals in connection with last weeks Capitol breach, which took place as a joint session of Congress was meeting to certify President-elect Joe Bidens electoral win. Iranian forces have held military exercises involving ballistic missiles amid heightened tensions over the country's nuclear program and a U.S. pressure campaign against Tehran. Iranian state television reported on January 15 that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) launched several surface-to-surface ballistic missiles against simulated enemy bases in the country's central desert as part of the exercises. It said that the drill included Zolfaghar and Dezful ballistic missiles, as well as bomb-carrying drones. Iran has a missile capability range of up to 2,000 kilometers, enough to reach its sworn enemy, Israel, and U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Iran has increased its military drills in recent weeks with tensions building during the final days of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Earlier this week, Iran's navy held two-day short-range missile exercises in the Gulf of Oman. Those followed an IRGC naval parade in the Persian Gulf. "The enemies should know that in the event of any violation and encroachment on the maritime borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, they will be targeted with cruise missiles from the coast and the sea," Rear Admiral Hamzeh-Ali Kaviani warned. Tensions between the United States and Iran have risen since 2018, when Trump withdrew Washington from an international nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, arguing that the 2015 accord did not go far enough. The U.S. administration also imposed crippling sanctions on Iran as part a "maximum pressure" campaign aimed at forcing Tehran to negotiate a new agreement that would also address the country's missile programs and its support for regional proxies. Iran, which claims its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, says that its missile program and regional policies are off the table. In response to the U.S. pullout and economic sanctions, Tehran has gradually breached parts of the nuclear pact -- under which Tehran committed to limit its nuclear activities in return for relief from sanctions -- saying it is no longer bound by it. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who will be inaugurated on January 20, has suggested that Washington may reenter the deal if Iran complies with its terms. But Iranian officials insist that the United States should first lift its sanctions. With reporting by AP, ISNA, and Press TV MBABANE The Mbabane Government Hospital Out-Patient Department (OPD) has been closed indefinitely. Confusion reigned supreme yesterday as patients and nurses did not know what to do as the only two rooms used for emergencies and consultations had accommodated patients who tested positive for COVID-19. What caused the misunderstanding was that the hospital continued to accept the patients who paid for services, but when they reached the OPD, they were told that it was closed. An outpatient department is the part a hospital designed for treatment of patients who may not require a bed or to be admitted overnight. This is not the first time the OPD closes following suspected COVID-19 cases. About a week ago patients were stranded as the department closed for almost two days. Stranded Nurses working at the OPD were stranded since Wednesday, after four suspected cases of COVID-19 were identified and isolated in the area reserved for outpatients. Following the surge in COVID-19 positive cases in the country, the hospital administration transformed the entire OPD to isolate patients who tested positive for the virus. There was only one-room reserved for emergencies and another for consultation of outpatients. These too have also been taken, which has resulted in the nurses having no place to attend to patients. In an interview with some of the patients, they expressed their disappointment in the hospital which is regarded as a referral and the biggest in the country. They complained of poor communication, stating that they were made to stand in the queue and pay for consultation, yet the hospital was aware of the service interruption. Most of the patients said they were hoping to see doctors for their various ailments which was why they had opted to visit the hospital. Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SWADNU) National Organising Secretary Mayibongwe Masangane, said it was unfortunate that at the end of the day, the patients suffered. Masangane said the challenge was that government was slow when it came to responding to critical issues. He said what was challenging the most was that the COVID-19 patients were accruing with other general patients who visited the hospital for other ailments. This, he said, was not good as people who visited the hospital were sick and had a compromised immune system. Masangane said mixing of the patients was risky as they were bound to get infected with the virus. This means all our hospitals will become COVID-19 superspreaders. He noted that the elderly people who came to refill their diabetes and blood pressure medication were the most vulnerable. Masangane said it was a daunting task for the health workers as well, adding that going forward, the clinics too should be ready to receive COVID-19 cases as well. As SWADNU, we sympathise with the members of the public who will not be receiving the services that they require, said the organising secretary. However, he noted that what compounded the challenges was the fact that the COVID-19 outbreak emerged in March last year when the country was not prepared. He said even after the cases dropped before the second wave started, the country relaxed instead of upping its game in terms of preparedness. With the current second wave, it also shows that the level of preparedness is at its lowest. Masangane noted that facilities which were admitting COVID-19 patients were only two in the country and had recently started as well in the private facilities and the regional hospitals. When reached for comment, the Director of Health Services, Dr. Vusi Magagula, said the hospital was still trying to identify an alternative place to accommodate the OPD wing. At the moment, he said they were still searching and hoped the issue would be resolved soon. Magagula said patients could use the nearest clinics and hospitals and try to reduce visiting hospitals unless they really needed to see a doctor. Since January 2017, Shutterstock has leveraged epa's daily output of around 2,200 images, providing its editorial customers, which include some of the largest media companies and publishing houses in the world, access to epa's comprehensive global coverage of news and events, as well as their robust archive of almost nine million images. "We are delighted to continue our exclusive partnership with epa after an initial four years of what has been a very successful collaboration," said Candice Murray, VP, Editorial at Shutterstock. "As one of the world's leading photo agencies delivering premium global news coverage and compelling video content, epa's remarkable collection is an asset to our platform, and resonates with Shutterstock customers globally." 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Headquartered in Germany, epa has regional editorial desks in Tokyo, Bangkok, Cairo, Frankfurt, Madrid and Washington, D.C. SOURCE Shutterstock, Inc. Related Links www.shutterstock.com Western Australia has decided to let Victorians back across the border following nine days of no local coronavirus spread - but with strict conditions. From 12.01am on Monday, Victorians can enter WA without needing a special exemption, but they will still have to isolate themselves for two weeks. They will also need to get a coronavirus test on Day 11 before leaving their self-quarantine. Domestic passengers arriving in Perth on Thursday. From 12.01am Monday, passengers will be allowed in from Victoria but only if they self-quarantine for 14 days and sign a declaration If they arrive at Perth Airport they will need to get a health screening and temperature test on arrival, and if needed, a covid test. Those driving over a land border will have to make a G2G Pass declaration stating they have no symptoms and where they have been in the past 14 days - and 'if they have knowingly mixed with someone from New South Wales or Queensland'. The decision was made at an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon, as Victoria has now been deemed a low-risk jurisdiction. Pictured: WA Premier Mark McGowan. On Friday he said Victorians who enter WA must sign a declaration to say 'if they have knowingly mixed with someone from NSW or Queensland' WA Premier Mark McGowan said on Facebook that anyone coming from Victoria who passes through a medium-risk jurisdiction in the previous 14 days cannot enter WA without an exemption. 'We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and once Victoria reaches 28 days of no community transmission we can then consider the next step under our controlled border,' he said on FaceBook on Friday. Victoria recorded two new cases of coronavirus on Friday but both were in returned travellers in hotel quarantine. It was the ninth consecutive day of no new local cases for Victoria, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday. The number of active cases in Victoria is now 28, made up of 12 local cases and 16 returned overseas travelers in hotel quarantine. Mr McGowan said travellers from 'very low risk' jurisdictions were allowed to go to WA without any quarantine - but this group only includes the Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania. A cleaner disinfects the escalators at Perth Airport on December 8. Western Australia is slowly opening its border to Victoria - but with strict rules Separately, South Australia will open its border to Greater Brisbane from midnight on Saturday - and may fully open to NSW including Sydney from January 25. South Australia's chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier said SA would wait 14 days from the last positive case going into quarantine before changing restrictions with NSW. SA recorded one new case on Friday in a returned traveller in hotel quarantine, for a total of 10 active cases in the state. More than 350,000 unemployed Texans have received the $300 in supplemental benefits recently approved by Congress, but thousands of others will have to wait. The surge in demand from newly laid off workers, high numbers of people already collecting benefits, and a flood of workers whose benefits expired last year, but were extended by the stimulus law are contributing to the delays, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. The commission said it started paying the federal benefits last Monday, distributing $110 million to some 367,000 workers in the first week. The commission, however, could not provide figures on how many unemployed workers are waiting or a timetable when it would get the new benefits to all eligible workers. Another round Four federally funded unemployment benefit programs were renewed with the signing of new stimulus package One program provides $300 a week in supplemental benefits. Some payments are delayed. The Texas Workforce Commssion will send an email in the next week or so updating when payments will arrive. Texans who received benefits under the CARES Act that passed in March are automatically enrolled. Do not reapply. See More Collapse In the meantime, workers report waiting as long as six hours on the phone to get information about their benefits and when they might arrive. Among those are Crystal Valdez, a waitress who lives in El Campo. She was laid off in March, and a week later, her husband lost his job at an oil and gas company. Valdezs benefits expired in November, and her husbands in December, she said. The couple applies for jobs on a weekly basis, she said, but its hard to find openings as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter the economy. They are far from alone. About 4 million people across the country were unemployed for more than 6 months in December, more than doubling from August, according to the Labor Department. The couple, who have four children, saved as much as they could from their benefits including the extra $600 in the first stimulus bill to provide some cushion if they were unable to find work before they ran out. (The $600 supplement expired in July.) But those savings are dwindling and paying the rent has become a greater challenge with each passing month. We just have to wait, Valdez said of the new round of benefits. I check just pretty much every day, all day. On HoustonChronicle.com: Initial CARES Act beneficiaries need not reapply Government-ordered shutdowns were put in place in the spring to the slow the spread of coronavirus, which drove record job losses. In response, the federal government stepped in with additional aid for the unemployed and passed the first CARES act in March. While the economy has recovered in recent months, millions of Americans particularly those who work in consumer-facing businesses such as bars, restaurants, hotels and retail remain out of work. The recent surge in COVID-19 cases also has spurred a new jump in layoffs. After trending down in recent months, first-time claims for unemployment have nearly doubled in Texas over the past two weeks to about 60,000. Congress approved additional federal funding for unemployment benefits as a part of the $900 billion stimulus package that became law in late December after months of stalled negotiations in Congress and a last-minute opposition by the president that further delayed the aid. The law extended benefits for those who had exhausted them during the pandemic and provided supplemental payments extra $300-a-week for an additional 11 weeks starting the week ending Jan. 2, said James Bernsen, a spokesman for the Texas Workforce Commission. Some of the delays in sending out benefits have been caused by bringing workers whose benefits had expired and who are typically purged from the payment system back in, requiring software to be rewritten. The commission expects almost all eligible workers back in the system sometime this month. The people purged from the system likely make up a small portion of those waiting on payments, Bernsen said. But even those in the system might have to wait for the additional benefits as the commission puts in place the new program. Bernsen said the workforce commission will send a communication in the next week or so with more information about when payments will be made. Usually when youre out of the system, we cant write you back in, Bernsen said, This is unprecedented. Every time (lawmakers) rewrite the legislation we have to reprogram the system. Catina Groves, of Garland, is another of the many Texans waiting for the new round of relief. She lost her job working at Family Dollar in March and has fallen about three months behind on her rent. She has received some help from family, but her search for work has become more complicated because she is two months pregnant. Her doctor says she should work from home if she does find a job because of unanswered questions about how the coronavirus virus affects pregnant women and their babies. But those jobs are even harder to come by, she says. In the meantime, she hopes her unemployment benefits will come through soon. Right now, all I can do is wait patiently and see what happens, Groves said. becca.carballo@chron.com 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. MIDDLETOWN The Middlesex United Way is pleased to invite you to join us virtually on Jan 28 to honor volunteers and community leaders, in addition to celebrating a year of many accomplishments, at our annual meeting. This years celebration will look different than those in years past. The pandemic has certainly reminded us of the importance of gratitude. This year, we want to share that with our partners, volunteers, and donors who made outstanding accomplishments in 2020 despite all the challenges. This years meeting will feature a 7:47 Virtual Gratitude Experience, facilitated by Chris Schembra, to celebrate and thank everyone for their continued work. We will reflect on the accomplishments this past year during the annual meeting, honor a longstanding Middlesex United Way volunteer, and nominate and elect new officers and directors. The Middlesex United Way is pleased to present the Community Service Award to Jean DAquila. This honors volunteer service to the agency, considering length and continuity of service. It is the highest and most prestigious honor for a United Way volunteer. DAquilas involvement with Middlesex United Way began in 2007 when she joined our board of directors, where she served on our nominating committee, as well as the major gifts committee. Since then, she has served in many capacities for Middlesex United Way, including the Womens Initiatives chairwoman. Her service does not stop there, as she is active outside the Middlesex United Way as well. She has held several leadership positions for professional and community organizations, including now, as a director and secretary for the Hebron Interfaith Human Services, chairwoman and director for Middlesex Health Services, and lector for the Church of the Holy Family. She is a founding member who serves on the steering committee for the Womens Wellness Fund Committee of Middlesex Health. Her service for Middlesex Health expands from director, governance committee member, Executive Compensation Committee, Audit Committee and Joint Conference Committee. Her past community service includes involvement with MARC Community Resources, Diocese of Norwich Outreach to Haiti, American Red Cross, Middlesex Central Connecticut, Northern Middlesex Habitat for Humanity, Literacy Volunteers of Greater Middletown, Greater Middletown Community Corporation, Southern New England Chapter of the American Bankers, Guild of Catholic Lawyers of the Diocese of Norwich, and St. Francis of Assisi Church, Middletown. Professionally, DAquila works as an attorney out of Middletown, concentrating in residential real estate, estate planning and probate, and municipal law. She holds a law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law and a bachelors degree from the University of Connecticut in Experimental Psychology and Inferential Statistics. When asked about her time with Middlesex United Way, DAquila explained, I am very honored to receive this recognition from an agency I so admire and trust to do the right things within our community. United Way staff and volunteers help form the fabric of a caring, supportive community and I am so grateful to be a small part of it. During the interactive gratitude experience facilitated by Chris Schembra, attendees will have the opportunity to interact with others and share their experiences remotely. Schembra is the founder and Chief Question Asker of 7:47, which helps organizations build lasting relationships through intimate experiences. In the past four years, 7:47, and its signature pasta sauce, have sparked more than 400,000 relationships worldwide. We are excited to bring Chriss enthusiasm and unique perspective and talents to Middlesex County. We cannot wait to kick off the year together with a day of connection, stories and gratitude! The annual meeting will be held Jan 28 from noon to 1:30 p.m. virtually. To attend, visit bit.ly/3qm1gxT or email Amanda Furlong at amanda.furlong@middlesexunitedway.org. Kevin Wilhelm is president and CEO of the Middlesex United Way in Middletown. FILE In this Jan. 13, 2021, file image made from video, a pigeon with a blue leg band stands on a rooftop in Melbourne, Australia. A U.S. bird organization said the leg band identifying the bird as a U.S. racing pigeon was counterfeit, which may save the bird from strict Australian biosecurity policies that would call for a U.S. pigeon to be killed. (Channel 9 via AP) A pigeon that Australia declared a biosecurity risk may get a reprieve after a US bird organisation declared its identifying leg band was fake. The band suggested the bird found in a Melbourne backyard on December 26 was a racing pigeon that had left the US state of Oregon, 8,000 miles away, two months earlier. On that basis, Australian authorities on Thursday said they considered the bird a disease risk and planned to kill it. But Deone Roberts, sport development manager for the Oklahoma-based American Racing Pigeon Union, said on Friday the band was fake. Somebody needs to look at that band and then understand that the bird is not from the US. They do not need to kill him Deone Roberts The band number belongs to a blue bar pigeon in the United States and that is not the bird pictured in Australia, she said. The bird band in Australia is counterfeit and not traceable, Ms Roberts said. It definitely has a home in Australia and not the U.S. Somebody needs to look at that band and then understand that the bird is not from the US. They do not need to kill him, she added. Pigeon racing has seen a resurgence in popularity, and some birds have become quite valuable. Acting Australian Prime Minister Michael McCormack said he did not know what the fate of the bird named Joe, after the US president-elect, would be. But there would be no mercy if the pigeon were from the United States. Expand Close The pigeon stands on a rooftop in Melbourne (Channel 9/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The pigeon stands on a rooftop in Melbourne (Channel 9/AP) If Joe has come in a way that has not met our strict biosecurity measures, then bad luck Joe, either fly home or face the consequences, Mr McCormack told reporters. But Martin Foley, health minister for Victoria state where Joe lives, called for the federal government to spare the bird. I would urge the Commonwealths quarantine officials to show a little bit of compassion, Foley said. Melbourne resident Kevin Celli-Bird, who found the emaciated bird in his backyard, was surprised by the development and pleased that the bird he had named Joe might not be destroyed. Yeah, Im happy about that, Mr Celli-Bird said, referring to news that Joe probably is not a biosecurity threat. Mr Celli-Bird had contacted the American Racing Pigeon Union to find the birds owner based on the number on the leg band. The bands have both a number and a symbol, but Mr Celli-Bird didnt remember the symbol and said he can no longer catch the bird since it has recovered from its initial weakness. Australian quarantine authorities are notoriously strict. In 2015, the government threatened to euthanise two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, after they were smuggled into the country by Hollywood star Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard. Faced with a 50-hour deadline to leave Australia, the dogs made it out in a chartered jet. S hutting the housing market will render the stamp duty holiday worthless, cause distress and push up prices, according to industry experts. Estate agents and lenders are also warning of the dire impact on the wider economy of suddenly halting transactions. Uncertainty is mounting with some scientists and politicians including Labour leader Keir Starmer calling for the Prime Minister to put house sales on hold. Within the last 48 hours the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has waded in, asking Boris Johnson to review essential retail, including estate agents. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has not ruled it out but Chancellor Rishi Sunak has robustly defended the decision for the property industry to remain open. Speaking to Homes & Property, Shaun Bailey, the conservative candidate for the Mayor of London, warned: The housing market is a hugely important part of Londons economy so any decision to close it should not be taken lightly. Will the stamp duty holiday be extended? The Chancellor introduced a tax break for all homes worth less than 500,000 in his emergency summer budget last July. Buyers will save 15,000 above the threshold and pay no stamp duty below it. But for those in the middle of buying a new home the sudden closures of the market could delay their completion until after the stamp duty holiday deadline of March 31, 2021, or even wipe out the sale entirely. Although we all understand the reasons behind such a move, closing the housing market once again will have serious consequences for many homebuyers, especially for those in a chain or desperate to move, says Andrew Montlake, managing director of Coreco Mortgage Brokers. When the housing market was closed last spring for eight weeks valuers could not do their jobs and transactions ground to a halt, he explains. Add into this the stamp duty deadline and you will have a whole host of people contracted to or needing to move by a certain date and unable to do so, he says. If the housing market has to close the Chancellor must consider moving the stamp duty deadline, says Tom Bill, head of residential research at Knight Frank. It will also have a knock-on effect on the economy stopping all industries associated with moving house, he adds. People must be allowed to move house Estate agents are deemed to be essential workers due to the very personal need to move house and the fact it is impossible to work from home. People are mid-transaction and making the biggest purchase of their lives. Coping with lockdown life is stressful enough without the added turmoil of a stalled or failed purchase or sale, says Becky Fatemi, founder of Rokstone Properties. Some are trying desperately to move out of unsuitable accommodation or, in the case of domestic violence, into a safer situation. For some people who are trying to move into rental accommodation closing the market could mean they have nowhere to go. "The industry must continue to be ultra-responsible and people must be allowed to move house. The potential closure of the housing market also renders millions of tenants and landlords vulnerable with no one allowed to perform essential checks or carry out vital maintenance. If safety checks are banned then this will invalidate household insurance for property owners and renters at great personal expense, adds Fatemi of Rokstone. Will house prices crash? Prices are unlikely to collapse, so says Knight Franks Tom Bill, as both supply and demand will stop in unison if the market closes. However, as seen in the full national lockdown last spring it will cause a swell of pent-up demand and a rush to buy when it re-opens, pushing up prices once again and cranking up the affordability crisis in cities like London. If the market closes it will cause turbulence in the short term, says buying agent Alex Goldstein. By forcing buyers to again consider their homes, lifestyles, work-life balance and schooling, we will see another surge in activity once restrictions ease. A top customs official said Thursday that Washington is not seeking a total ban on cotton products from northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) but sounding a warning to American firms to review their supply chains amid concerns of forced labor. On Wednesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) to detain all cotton products and tomatoes from the XUAR at the countrys ports of entry, saying that the agency had identified indicators of forced labor including debt bondage, restriction of movement, isolation, intimidation and threats, withholding of wages, and abusive living and working conditions. Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said that the WRO will apply to apparel, textiles, tomato seeds, canned tomatoes, and tomato sauce, as well as to products manufactured in other countries that use cotton and tomatoes from the XUAR. The U.S. imported U.S. $9 billion worth of cotton products and $10 million of tomatoes from China over the past year, according to the CBP. Most of Chinas cotton is from the XUAR. On Thursday, the CBPs Executive Assistant Commissioner for Trade Brenda Smith told RFAs Uyghur Service that the WRO should not be referred to as a ban, because we are not there yet. Yesterday's withhold release order announcement is really a message to U.S. importers and to our CBP officers at U.S. ports of entry that we believe there is a high risk of the use of forced labor in producing cotton products and tomato products, she said. It is not an outright ban, but is in fact a message to the trade community that we expect them to do their due diligence around shipments coming from that region and that we will detain and ask questions if a shipment that falls under those parameters arrives in the U.S. Smith noted that Wednesdays WRO follows similar ones this year on three hair-product and garment producers in the XUAR, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps since early 2017. Reports suggest that amid increasing international scrutiny, authorities in the XUAR have begun to send detainees to work at factories as part of an effort to label the camps vocational centers, although those held in the facilities regularly toil under forced or coerced labor conditions. Last month, a report by the Washington-based Center for Global Policy noted that the XUAR produces 85 percent of Chinas and 20 percent of the worlds cotton, potentially affecting all supply chains that involve Xinjiang cotton as a raw material. In February last year, an Australian think tank revealed a list of 82 global brands that sourced from factories in China that used workers from the region under conditions that strongly suggest forced labor. Our job is to collect evidence and to make a decision on each individual shipment that arrives in the United States, and that's how we will be enforcing, Smith told RFA. We have some very good evidence on the producers and the growers in Xinjiang, and we have been able to make connections between those growers located in China and the U.S. imports and we will continue to research those specific connections. Supply chain review Smith urged U.S. importers to verify all components of their supply chains. Our expectation is that the U.S. importing community will do their due diligence not just in the first tier of their supply chainthe final production and shipment to the U.S.but also down into and back all the way to where the raw material is produced, she said. But she acknowledged that doing so can be really challenging because there are many large corporations that have tens of thousands of suppliers. Still, Smith said that the government expects importers will exercise and meet the standard of reasonable care. They will make an effort to know their supply chains, ask these hard questions and collect the documentation that will show U.S. Customs and Border Protection, when we ask questions, exactly how their goods are produced in a way that is compliant with the U.S. law, including that covering the use of forced labor, she said. Xinjiang watchers hailed the new WRO in interviews with RFA on Thursday. It's very significantit could really change the entire arrangement of global supply chains for cotton and apparel and also, tomato products coming from China, said James Millward, professor of Intersocietal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and a regular commentator on the situation in the region. It's not the problem of the ban, its the problem of the Chinese Communist Party, having involved the entire economy of Xinjiang in its gulag, and its repressive regime, both through the extensive prison internment system and also through forced labor. Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group, applauded the move, saying it shows that the international community has come to recognize that business as usual with the Chinese Communist Party is no longer possible. Though, as long as the Chinese regime continues to subject hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs to forced labor and other severe human rights abuses, more steps are needed to put an end to these crimes, he added. CECC report Wednesdays WRO came a day ahead of the release of an annual report by the bipartisan and bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), which called on the U.S. to take better measures to hold China accountable for rights abuses and ensure that Americans are not complicit. Over the last year, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (Commission) found that the Chinese government and Communist Party have taken unprecedented steps to extend their repressive policies through censorship, intimidation, and the detention of people in China for exercising their fundamental human rights, said the report, which covered the period from July 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) where new evidence emerged that crimes against humanityand possibly genocideare occurring. The CECC called forced labor in the XUAR widespread and systematic within the regions internment camps and elsewhere, and part of a targeted campaign of repression against Turkic and Muslim minorities. Many U.S., international, and Chinese companies are increasingly at risk of complicity in the exploitation of forced labor involving Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, the report said. In a statement accompanying the release of the report, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon called for a roadmap to take a stand against Chinas rights violations in the XUAR. That must include making sure that products made by forced labor from persecuted Muslim minorities arent sold on American shelves, he said. In its list of recommendations, the CECC urged the executive branch to quickly implement the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 (UHRPA), which passed nearly unanimously through both houses of Congress at the end of May. The legislation highlights arbitrary incarceration, forced labor, and other abuses in the XUAR and provides for sanctions against the Chinese officials who enforce them. President Donald Trumps administration in July leveled sanctions against several top Chinese officials deemed responsible for rights violations in the region, including regional party secretary Chen Quanguo, under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. Through the act, the CECC called for a formal determination of whether atrocity crimes, including crimes against humanity and genocide, are occurring in the XUAR. It also called for the continuance of sanctions against Chinese officials in the region and for the request of a United Nations special rapporteur on the XUAR to address rights abuses in the region. The CECC urged the U.S. Congress to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was introduced in March last year and passed by the House of Representatives, but never brought to the floor by the Senate, and would block imports from the region unless proof can be shown that they are not linked to forced labor. Doing so would create a rebuttable presumption requiring companies to prove that goods imported from the XUAR are not made with forced labor, it said. Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU), said the CECC report offered more reasons why governments should abandon naive hopes for Chinese reform while Xi Jinping and the CCP are in power. As we continue to see that so many are choosing to support or spread propaganda narratives which whitewash the enormous crimes of the Chinese regime, we must all work harder than ever to ensure that voices such as these despicable ones do not overshadow those who are speaking the truth, she said. Determination on genocide On Wednesday, members of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging him to formally designate Chinas policies in the XUAR as a genocide, according to a copy of the letter obtained by RFA. Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Joe Wilson of South Carolina said that mounting evidence indicates the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) is committing genocide by forcing Uyghurs into camps and using them as slave labor. The CCP has engaged in a systematic and widespread campaign of violence, torture, detention, forced sterilization, and enslavement of the Uyghur Muslim people in [the XUAR], the lawmakers wrote. Its actions reflect an intent to destroy, whether in whole or in part, this population. Reported by RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. 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. Home > 2021 > Lame Duck A Peril | Chittarvu Raghu by Chittarvu Raghu The United States election process requires the Congress to validate the election of the President. Congress is a bicameral legislature, the Senate being the upper house and the House of Representatives the lower house. A raucous mob raided the capitol building displaying pro-Trump slogans and managed to enter the Senate chamber at the time when the election results were being certified. Obviously it shows that the intention was to prevent the congress from certifying election of Joe Biden. An impeachment motion was moved in the House of Representatives invoking 25th amendment of the constitution. Mr. Trump the lame duck President shall renounce the office within eight days. Still the move was made to protect the basic American constitutional principles. The American constitution comprises seven Articles. Article 1 vests all legislative powers in Congress. The constitution of United States was drafted at 1787 convention and a great compromise was offered to solve the dispute between the smaller and large states over-representation in the new federal government. It provided for equal representation from each state in the upper house that is the senate; each state two senators and proportional representation based on the states population in the lower house called House of Representatives. Article 2 vests the executive power in the office of the Presidency of the United States who is elected by an electoral college to serve a four-year term. The 22nd amendment in the year 1951 restricted a person from being elected as President more than twice. Article 3 speaks with regard to judicial power, Article 4 deals with relations between the states and the privileges of the states, Article 5 stipulates the procedure for amendment, Article 6 speaks with regard to the supremacy of the constitution and Article 7 stipulates as to when the constitution would become operational. The world was shocked witnessing the supporters of the lame-duck President storming into the US capitol building to defeat the certification process of election by the congress. Some have described it as a darkest day since 9/11. The capitol building in Washington is the meeting place of the United States Congress and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government. It demonstrates the failure of law enforcement agencies in assessing intelligence inputs. Capitol police required assistance from the other agencies to control the insurgence. Irrespective as to whether the storming capitol building is unplanned or a plot, it portrays lapses in the system. The elections are conducted in the month of November or early December and the power transition takes place on 20th January which is called as the date of commencement of proceedings. Earlier it was fourth March but the lame-duck period was reduced by fixing the date as 20th January. There is a possibility of lame-duck President exploiting the lame-duck period. There is a necessity to amend the constitution in the light of the present perilous episode. The House of Representatives invoked the impeachment process. Impeachment in the context of US constitution is equivalent to an indictment in criminal law. Its a statement of charges. Article 1 Sec.3 confers power upon the senate to try all impeachments presided by the Chief Justice. The only penalty possibly may be imposed is removal from office and disqualifying from holding any federal office in future. The 25th amendment to the constitution of United States set forth succession rules relating to vacancies and disabilities of the President and the Vice President. Four sections were incorporated. Section 1 stipulates that the Vice President shall become the President in case of the removal of President from office or of his death or resignation. The 2nd section relates to the power of the President to nominate a Vice President in case of a vacancy which shall thereafter be confirmed by a majority vote of both houses of congress. The 3rd section speaks with regard to the procedure in case of the President voluntarily declaring that he is unable to discharge duties and section four contemplates that whenever the Vice President and a majority of either principal officers of the executive department or any such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro-tempore of the senate (presiding officer) and the speaker of the house of representatives that the President is unable to discharge duties, the Vice President shall assume powers as acting president. A reading of section one and four shows that if a President is to be removed, a written declaration that the President is unable to discharge powers, has to be forwarded to the heads of senate and house of representatives by the Vice President or any other such body as Congress may by law provide and the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers. Thereafter when the President transmits to the said senate and the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, and the Vice President disputes the same within four days, the congress shall decide the issue, assembling within 48 hours for that purpose if not in session. If the congress within 21 days determines by two-thirds vote of both houses that the President is unable to discharge powers, the Vice President shall continue to discharge as acting President otherwise the President shall resume the powers. It shows that at the first instance if the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the senate and house of representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers, the Vice President automatically assume powers till the decision-making process is completed by the congress and the congress has to take a decision by two-thirds vote of both houses. There is only a marginal difference between republicans and democrats in the Congress. Unless the Vice President and the majority of the principal officers of the executive department i.e., secretaries initiate the process, a decision cannot be taken. Obviously all the secretaries are the Trump appointees and even though the Vice President Mr.Mike Pence differed with President Trump, he alone cannot set in the process. The entire episode reflects that the founding constitution principles and core democratic values which constitute the rock bed of the American democracy started to crumble. The entire world is shocked. A person holding a high constitutional post should strive to protect the constitution. A creature of the constitution cannot destroy the same. The President is always accountable to the laws, or else he cannot defend a nation. Abraham Lincoln said that the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the constitution. Hope the American democratic system re-asserts itself and be a role model to the whole world. (Author: Chittarvu Raghu, is Advocate, at High Courts of Andhra Pradesh & Telangana States Email: craghuadvocate[at]gmail.com) Stormont's leaders have criticised the Irish Government for failing to share information on travellers arriving on the island during the pandemic. First Minister Arlene Foster said repeated attempts by the Stormont Executive to access data on passenger locator forms filled out by people arriving in the Irish Republic had proved unsuccessful. Her comments came after the Executive agreed new restrictions on international travel into Northern Ireland that will require arriving passengers to produce a negative Covid-19 test undertaken within 72 hours of departure for the region. Decisions to introduce similar measures have already been taken in the Irish Republic as well as in England and Scotland. At Thursday's Executive meeting, ministers also heard that current lockdown measures appear to be working, with the virus reproduction number for cases in the community having fallen to between 0.7 and 0.9. The R number had been 1.8 when the current six-week lockdown was introduced after Christmas. Ministers were also told that 5pc of the population - more than 102,000 people - had now received a Covid-19 vaccine, making Northern Ireland one of the most advanced places in the world in terms of vaccine rollout. Mrs Foster said the administration was elevating the issue around data sharing with their counterparts in Dublin to try to secure progress. The First Minister said she and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill would be again raising it directly with Taoiseach Micheal Martin. Mrs Foster said the data gap was of particular concern at Christmas when a large number of people arrived into the Irish Republic, with many subsequently travelling north. "Unfortunately, this has been a long-running saga about travel locator forms," she said. "I do recall when we were at an NSMC (North South Ministerial Council meeting) in Dublin, I think it was July, the issue was raised at that meeting. I know for sure that the Minister of Health (Robin Swann) has been raising it on numerous occasions at meetings and indeed in correspondence with his counterpart in Dublin (Stephen Donnelly). "So it has been going on for far too long, and I think there was a general feeling of frustration around the whole of the Executive table that we need to get a solution to this and we need to do it now." She added: "The Attorney General (Paul Gallagher) in the Republic has appeared to confirm that there should be no legal impediment to sharing that information so ministers have asked us to elevate the matter and raise it again urgently with the Taoiseach." Ms O'Neill echoed Mrs Foster's frustration. "We've made the case on the travel locator forms on many occasions," she said. "I certainly raised it as recently as yesterday evening with the Taoiseach. "This has been raised at NSMC meetings, it has been raised repeatedly, so the issue needs to be resolved." Ms O'Neill noted that a request from the Stormont Executive last summer for the UK and Irish governments to convene a summit to discuss travel issues affecting the islands due to Covid-19 had been acted on. "It's a very common sense approach that I'm asking for which is the sharing of information, which is how can we collaboratively work together to ensure that we put people's interests first and we make sure that we protect lives and livelihoods," she said. "So that's why we are asking for the conversation again with both the Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister, because now is the time to have a clear two islands approach, because I think we're all at a critical juncture in terms of the virus spread. "So it's really, really important and vital that we get this conversation now." A spokesman for the Irish Government confirmed Mr Martin held a meeting with the First Minister and Deputy First Minister by video link on Wednesday night when the matter was discussed. He also said Mr Donnelly had written to Mr Swann on Wednesday and was awaiting a response. The spokesman added there had been "ongoing contact" between the chief medical officer in the Republic, Dr Tony Holohan, and his Northern Ireland counterpart, Dr Michael McBride, and that they are due to be in contact again on Friday. Credit: CC0 Public Domain Procedures to diagnose and treat heart disease fell by almost two-thirds in spring 2020 compared to 2019, a study suggested Friday, in the latest sign of the coronavirus pandemic's effect on broader healthcare systems. The survey from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found there was a 64 percent reduction in cardiology diagnostic procedures in March-April 2020 compared with the same period in the previous year, with "abrupt and significant" impact on services evident across all regions. Around 718,000 cardiac diagnostic procedures were not performed in the centres surveyed in those two months due to the effects of the first wave of the pandemic, the authors say. The survey looked at data on several procedures to evaluate heart health such as echocardiograms, angiographies and exercise stress tests. The IAEA says the slump in the number of procedures was "mostly due to avoidance of tests by patients out of fear of possible exposure to COVID-19 in a hospital setting, fewer appointment slots due to extended disinfection measures between patients, and avoidance of tests that involve aerosolization to minimize personnel exposure risks". It added that shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical staff were also reported in 22 percent of centres, adding to the difficulty of carrying out procedures. The study is based on responses from over 900 institutions in 108 countries. It showed that the procedures most impacted included lengthier ones and those where the risk of exposure to coronavirus infections could increase. Exercise stress tests, for example, where droplets of sweat and saliva are likely to be released in the air, were the most disrupted, dropping by 78 percent. In the four low-income countries, included the survey, the fall in procedures was even steeper, at 81 percent. Heart disease has been the world's leading cause of death for the last 20 years. In December the World Health Organization said that it was "killing more people than ever before", with nine million fatalities in 2019up by two million since 2000. "We don't want people with heart diseases to miss out on timely diagnosis and treatment or to develop serious life-threatening complications that could have been avoided," said co-author of the study Dr. Michelle Williams from the University of Edinburgh. Last year, the IAEA also warned about the adverse impact of the pandemic on nuclear medicine services for cancer care. Explore further COVID-19 pandemic indirectly disrupted heart disease care 2021 AFP Advertisement Washington DC is in lockdown with a Baghdad-style 'Green Zone' perimeter set up days out from Joe Biden's inauguration as more than 20,000 armed National Guard troops are mobilized, razor wire is installed on fences and road blocks are put in place amid 'major security threats' in the capital. As security intensifies in Washington, the Secret Service, who is in charge of all inauguration security, has released its restricted access plan, which includes what the agency is calling a 'Green Zone' in the heart of DC. The term 'Green Zone' was the same name given to the heavily-fortified area in Baghdad during the Iraq War. Most of downtown DC is now off-limits to traffic and has already drawn comparisons to Baghdad's high-security zone. In extraordinary scenes out of the capital, thousands of armed military members are patrolling the streets and anti-climb steel fences and road blocks continue to be installed in the wake of last week's deadly siege on the Capitol. The National Park Service said on Friday, at the request of the Secret Service, that it was immediately closing the National Mall and iconic landmarks in Washington through at least January 21 amid an unprecedented boost in security ahead of the inauguration. The Mall - which is normally packed with people every four years for presidential inaugurations - includes landmarks like the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and Washington Monument. As security intensifies in Washington, the Secret Service, who is in charge of all inauguration security, has released its restricted access plan, which includes what the agency is calling a 'Green Zone' in the heart of DC In extraordinary scenes out of the capital, razor has been installed on anti-climb fences surrounding federal buildings in DC Heavily armed members of the US National Guard guard the East Front of the US Capitol on Friday People take photos through the extensive security surrounding the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Friday The area around the White House has also been closed as has a key bridge over the Potomac River that connects Virginia to Washington, as well as East and West Potomac Parks including Hains Point, which are near the Mall. 'We cannot allow a recurrence of the chaos and illegal activity that the United States and the world witnessed last week,' Matthew Miller, the head of the Secret Service's Washington field office, said on Friday. It came as Biden's team postponed their Sunday inauguration rehearsal over security concerns. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told CNN that Biden's team had decided to delay the rehearsal by one day due to 'some of the online chatter talks about Sunday the 17th.' National Guard troops and thousands of other law enforcement officers have been brought in to help fortify DC to protect the capital from any potential violence. The number of National Guard troops coming to DC to assist with security has so far grown to about 21,000, Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told Vice President Mike Pence at a briefing. Officials have said the number could grow as law enforcement agencies review the ongoing threats. The Guardsman has now been authorized to use lethal force to protect the Capitol. Washington's Mayor Muriel Bowser suggested to reporters on Friday that, due to the storming of the Capitol by groups of 'white extremists', heightened security measures in the district could remain in effect until well after Inauguration Day. 'We are going to go back to a new normal,' Bowser said. 'We certainly have to think about a new posture in the city. So while we are focused on January the 20th, we are also focused on January the 21st and every day thereafter in the nation's capital.' Some security experts are now saying it is possible the fortress of extra fencing that has been built around the Capitol may be permanent, McClatchy reports. In a joint security operation, the FBI, National Guard, US Marshals Service, local law enforcement and other federal agencies will now fall under the command of the Secret Service for inauguration preparations. The increased security measures are being implemented days earlier than scheduled as a direct result of the Capitol siege and the planned plots subsequently uncovered by authorities. Security officials have warned that armed extremist Trump supporters, possibly carrying explosives, pose a threat to Washington, as well as state capitals over the US, in the coming week after the Capitol siege. 'We are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter,' FBI Director Chris Wray told Vice President Mike Pence in a televised briefing. Thousands of armed military members patrolled the streets of DC on Friday as a green zone perimeter was established National Guard troops and thousands of other law enforcement officers have been brought in to help fortify DC to protect the capital from any potential violence Thousands of armed military members are patrolling the streets and anti-climb steel fences and road blocks continue to be installed ahead of Biden's inauguration Concrete road block, anti-climb fences and boarded up businesses were found all across downtown DC as of Friday Concrete road blocks were being put in place across DC on Friday in preparation for the inauguration Security checkpoints were guarded on Friday across Washington DC A security fence is installed on Pennsylvania Ave, which is the site of the inaugural parade route 'We're concerned about the potential for violence at multiple protest rallies planned here in DC and state capitol buildings around the country in the days to come, that could bring armed individuals within close proximity to government buildings and officials.' In steps not seen since after the September 11, 2001 national alerts, an internal FBI bulletin warned that an armed group planned to 'storm' government offices in all 50 states to protest Biden. 'The FBI received information about an identified armed group intending to travel to Washington, DC on 16 January,' the bulletin added. The FBI has already told police departments around the country to stay alert for extremist activity and pass on any intelligence. The potential threat was underscored earlier this week with the discovery that one of those arrested for taking part in the Capitol attack had the kind of weapons and ammunition one might use for an assassination. For the upcoming week, Washington officials have urged people to stay home rather than celebrate the inauguration. Downtown hotels were closing their doors and Airbnb has canceled reservations in the days around the event. Airlines were also tightening security with Delta announcing that legally armed travelers formerly allowed to check their guns at security would not even be allowed to do that on flights to Washington. In several states, the National Guard were also called out to prepare extra security for January 16-20. Washington State, Michigan and others said they were concerned about possible far-right violence. Armed National Guard soldiers are pictured above patrolling a street near the White House on Friday National Guard troops man an alleyway between apartment building near the the US Capitol building on Friday The National Park Service said on Friday, at the request of the Secret Service, that it was immediately closing the National Mall and iconic landmarks in Washington through at least January 21. Pictured above is the Washington Monument Pennsylvania Ave, which connects the Capitol and the White House, was deserted on Friday with the Green Zone perimeter already set up Members of the National Guard check the identification of drivers wishing to enter a closed road at a security checkpoint near the White House on Friday Members of the National Guard assist traffic in downtown Washington on Friday Workers board the windows of an office building in Washington DC on Friday as authorities warned of the potential for violence Volunteers take the places of Joe Biden and wife Jill in an inauguration rehearsal at the Capitol on Friday To explain the attack on the Capitol, you cant just turn your focus to Donald Trump and his enablers. You must also look at the individuals and institutions that fanned fears of voter fraud to the point of hysteria among conservative voters, long before Trump. Put another way, the difference between a riot seeking to overturn an election and an effort to suppress opposing votes is one of legality, not intent. And it doesnt take many steps to get from one to the other. Conservative belief in pervasive Democratic Party voter fraud goes back decades and rests on racist and nativist tropes that date back to Reconstruction in the South and Tammany Hall in the North but the modern obsession with fraud dates back to the 2000 election. That year, Republicans blamed Democratic fraud for narrow defeats in New Mexico, which George W. Bush lost by just a few hundred votes, and Missouri, where the incumbent senator, John Ashcroft, lost his re-election battle to a dead man. Ashcrofts opponent, Mel Carnahan, was killed three weeks earlier in a plane crash, but his name was still on the ballot, with his wife running in his stead. Shocked Republicans blamed Ashcrofts defeat on fraud. At Ashcrofts election-night party, the states senior Republican senator, Kit Bond, said, Democrats in the city of St. Louis are trying to steal this election. In 2001, as the newly minted attorney general under President George W. Bush, Ashcroft announced a crackdown on voter fraud. America has failed too often to uphold the right of every citizens vote, once cast, to be counted fairly and equally, he said at a news conference that March: Votes have been bought, voters intimidated and ballot boxes stuffed. The polling process has been disrupted or not completed. Voters have been duped into signing absentee ballots believing they were applications for public relief. And the residents of cemeteries have infamously shown up at the polls on Election Day. The Republican National Committee supported this push, claiming to have evidence that thousands of voters had cast more than one ballot in the same election. At least one GOP member quoted Abraham Lincolns second inaugural address: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wounds ... The implication was that Lincoln would favor compromise with his adversaries in the interest of national unity. Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. LOS ANGELES Two-time Olympic gold medalist Klete Keller was arrested in Colorado on Thursday, a day after being charged in connection with the riot at the U.S. Capitol. The former swimmer from the University of Southern California is accused of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct in the Capitol building and impeding law enforcement. Keller didnt say much during his initial appearance in federal court in Denver on Thursday afternoon beyond answering basic questions from Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty. The judge ordered Keller released on a personal recognizance bond, meaning he doesnt have to put up cash or property, and restricted his travel to Colorado and Washington, D.C., when his physical presence is required for court hearings. Keller was identified through a video taken by a journalist during the chaos in the Capitol rotunda Jan. 6, standing out in the wild scene because of his distinctive U.S. Olympic team jacket and 6-foot-6 height. Additional open-source research revealed that media outlets such as SwimSwam, a news organization that covers competitive swimming and other related sports, identified this individual as possibly KLETE DERIK KELLER. Your affiant has confirmed this identification, the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington said. Keller, who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, won gold medals in the 800-meter freestyle relay at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and the Beijing Olympics in 2008. He also earned a silver relay medal and two individual bronze medals. He captured three individual NCAA titles for USC in 2001 and 2002 and later returned to Los Angeles to train with the Trojan Swim Club before the Beijing Olympics. USA Swimming denounced Kellers alleged participation in the riot in a statement distributed to the organizations members. It is very simple and very clear, the statement said. Mr. Kellers actions in no way represent the values or mission of USA Swimming. And while once a swimmer at the highest levels of our sport representing the country and democracy he so willfully attacked Mr. Keller has not been a member of this organization since 2008. ___ Nathan Fenno of the Los Angeles Times wrote this story. (c)2021 the Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Milkha Singh continues to be stable, shifted out of ICU; wife admitted with COVID pneumonia Registering with CoWIN is mandatory: Harsh Vardhan India oi-Briti Roy Barman New Delhi, Jan 15: The Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Thursday announced that CoWIN app's self-registration module will be released soon and it is mandatory to register with the app for the vaccination process. On Thursday, he took to Twitter to say, It is mandatory for beneficiaries to be registered on the CoWIN platform to receive Covid-19 vaccine. He also added, The QR code-based vaccination certificate will only be generated for Covid-19 vaccine beneficiaries who are registered on the CoWIN platform. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off India's Covid-19 vaccination drive at 10.30am on January 16 with 3,006 sites where the rollout will get under way virtually connected during the launch. Vardhan wrote the self-registration module of CowinApp has not been released yet. And added, be wary of any fraudulent apps with similar names that may exist on different platforms. The Co-WIN IT platform, the Government of India's app designed to enable citizens to self-register for the Covid-19 vaccination process will track the drive from back-end to beneficiaries is also likely to be activated with its use initially limited to central and state governments. The Co-WIN initially will be accessible to healthcare workers alone and will be open to usage for the general public within a month. Besides the COVID warriors, the app will effectively be used by central and state governments to implement the inoculation drive. The initial accessibility of the Co-WIN app has been limited to the healthcare staff to enable them to provide a database regarding their vaccination and receive information around it. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Meanwhile, the app has been fed information in bulk for about one crore health workers. Short for Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network, the CoWIN app is a repurposed from the e-VIN platform that will provide real-time information of vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries of the COVID-19 vaccine. The excavator robot (foreground) prepares to place a lunar sample in the hauler robot to transport to the processing plant (orange). We are thrilled to have passed the qualification round and are excited to be invited to the competition round. This is testament to the tremendous work ethic of each and every member of our team.-Michael Gennert, co-principal investigator; professor of robotics engineering at WPI A team of robotics students and faculty from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has passed the qualification round in the second phase of the NASA-sponsored Space Robotics Challenge (SRC) and is now officially invited to participate in the final competition round, NASA announced today. The WPI team is seeking to program virtual robots to locate and extract valuable resources from the Moon. This news follows WPIs strong showing four years ago in Phase I, in which the team also passed the qualification round after completing a number of tasks. The Phase II Challenge is to write simulation software to control robots to autonomously locate and extract on-site resources for a lunar exploration mission. We are thrilled to have passed the qualification round and are excited to be invited to the competition round, said Michael Gennert, co-principal investigator for the project and a professor of robotics engineering at WPI. This is testament to the tremendous work ethic of each and every member of our team. Carlo Pinciroli, assistant professor of robotics engineering, is also serving as a co-principal investigator, while Ashay Aswale, a PhD student in robotics engineering, is serving as the project manager for Team Capricorn, WPIs entry in the challenge. Aswale noted that about a dozen undergraduate and graduate students have made measurable contributions in the competition. Part of NASAs Centennial Challenges program, Space Robotics Challenges aim to develop the capabilities that robots will need to help astronauts on future space missions. According to NASA, there were 458 participants competing in 123 teams worldwide during the qualifying round submissions. Of that figure, 25 teamsincluding WPImade it to the final competition round. SRC Phase I focused on using robots to perform tasks around the theme of maintaining a human habitat on Mars, including adjusting a communications dish antenna, deploying a solar cell array, and detecting and repairing an air leak. The SRC Phase II theme is to use the Moons natural resources to support future space missions. This is an important step to enabling space exploration, including Mars, because mining and processing materials on the Moon avoids the cost of launching everything from Earth. The Phase II tasks are of great practical importance: locating resources on the Moon, including water ice and hydrocarbons, excavating them, and transporting them to a processing facility. Further complications include coordinating multiple robots and detecting and fixing robot failures. Based on Team Capricorns performance in the Qualification Round, it was one of only six teams that either completed the three tasks or met the threshold score. As a result, NASA awarded WPI $15,000, which is the maximum possible in this round. Although Gennert noted the team does not know how it fared compared to other teams, he said NASA has limited the competition round to the top 22 scoring teams. The team also received $15,000 in 2017 after passing the Phase I tests. At that time, WPI completed a perception task by having the robot accurately report the position of lights in a simulated environment, and a mobility task by programming the robot to walk three meters, press a button to open a door, and pass through the door without falling. During this next phase of the tournament, competition round awards will range from $185,000 for 1st place to $30,000 for 6th-10th places, Gennert said. The competition is expected to end in July. Gennert also offered some background on the Team Capricorn name. Capricorn, the goat, is a familiar constellation in the summer sky. The goat is also WPIs mascot, and we expect our team to shine brightly this summer, he said. For more information on the competition, visit the NASA Centennial Challenge page. About Worcester Polytechnic Institute WPI, the global leader in project-based learning, is a distinctive, top-tier technological university founded in 1865 on the principle that students learn most effectively by applying the theory learned in the classroom to the practice of solving real-world problems. Recognized by the National Academy of Engineering with the 2016 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, WPIs pioneering project-based curriculum engages undergraduates in solving important scientific, technological, and societal problems throughout their education and at more than 45 project centers around the world. WPI offers more than 50 bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs across 14 academic departments in science, engineering, technology, business, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts. Its faculty and students pursue groundbreaking research to meet ongoing challenges in health and biotechnology; robotics and the internet of things; advanced materials and manufacturing; cyber, data, and security systems; learning science; and more. http://www.wpi.edu Contact: Andy Baron, Associate Director of Public Relations Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, Massachusetts 508-831-5916; 978-235-3407 (cell), ajbaron@wpi.edu Close Many in the United Kingdom now wonder if, after getting their first dose of Pfizer, Oxford, or Moderna vaccine, if they can mix it with another dose from a different maker. In just over one month, the UK had given the three vaccine makers a go-signal to vaccinate millions of people across the nation. But the question, as indicated in the Science Focus, "What would happen if the second job comes from a different manufacturer than the first?" arises, if it is safe to mix COVID-19 vaccines. To prompt a robust immune protection from disease, all three vaccines should be delivered in two parts, and need to get the second shot a couple of weeks after his first one. According to the UK government, at that moment, it will guarantee people will get the same type of vaccine across both doses. Say one is getting the Oxford vaccine as his initial dose, his second will be an Oxford injection, as well and not Pfizer or Moderna. ALSO READ: COVID-19 Vaccine: Should People With an Autoimmune Disease Get a Shot? Possibility of Mixed Vaccines There is a very small possibility, though, that vaccines may be mixed in selected instances. As Public Health England's health of immunizations Dr. Mary Ramsay said, on "extremely rare" circumstances, the same vaccine is unavailable, or, if there is no record of which shot an individual initially received, a different jab may be given for his second dose. The health expert also said, every effort needs to be made to give patients the same vaccine, although where this is impossible, Dr. Ramsay said, it is better to administer a second dose of another vaccine than none at all. At present, scientists don't have any reason to think a mix of vaccine doses from different makers would cause any harm. To verify this, the UK's Vaccine Taskforce recently announced trials examining the COVID-19 vaccines' interchangeability. Mixing Vaccines Can Still Produce Strong Immune Response Even though no research has yet been published to validate it, it is quite possible that mixing vaccines can still produce a strong immune response, said University of Bristol virologist Dr. David Mattews. This is not to say the vaccines are the same, and the Oxford adenoviral vaccine works differently from the other two, Moderna and Pfizer mRNA jabs. Furthermore, while the Oxford vaccine stimulates some of the cells to duplicate genetic instructions, codes on the manner of creating COVID-19 'spikes,' the mRNA vaccines, rather than deliver such instructions directly to the cells. Matthews added, the "bottom line of it is that all the approved vaccines are designed" to make the cells in the body to duplicate the spikes, mimicking how the coronavirus works. They all trick the immune system into thinking it is infected with COVID-19, readying it for an actual occurrence. While their approaches differ, the result is the same, elaborated Matthews adding, from the perspective of a biologist, "there is no reason why you could not mix the two." But still, the virologist continued explaining that it is not prohibited by the laws of physics that "there might be some biology at play" that they do not know about it. READ NEXT: UK May Be the First Country to Authorize COVID-19 Vaccine Check out more news and information on COVID-19 and Vaccines on Science Times. Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. Fall Out Boy is slated to play on We the People, a pre-inauguration concert for President-elect Joe Biden, as his parents met working for the future president. After Biden beat Trump in November, Wentz posted a throwback shot of himself as a child being held by Biden next to his mother, Dale Lewis Wentz. 'My parents met working for Joe Biden in the Senate in the 70s,' he said. 'To me he is a beacon of empathy, compassion, and kindness.' The latest: Fall Out Boy is slated to play on We the People, a pre-inauguration concert for President-elect Joe Biden, as frontman Pete Wentz's parents met working for the future president Wentz and his bandmates endorsed Biden in his successful bid against Donald Trump, with a moving statement from the band's Instagram page October 27. 'This is the most important election of our lifetime, and standing on the sideline is not an option,' the band said. 'We endorse Joe Biden. So please, go vote. Lives depend on it.' Pete opened up about his association to the incoming commander-in-chief to the AP amid the 2008 election when Biden was former President Barack Obama's running mate. 'I would not be standing here actually in reality at all because my parents met working for Biden,' he told the AP in 2008. 'They met on the campaign, so they have this particular affection for Joe. He came to their wedding. If it werent for Joe Biden, I would not exist as a human being.' Throwback: After Biden beat Trump in November, Wentz posted a throwback shot of himself as a child being held by Biden next to his mother, Dale Lewis Wentz Fall Out Boy (L-R) Patrick Stump, Andy Hurley, Wentz and Joe Trohman were snapped in LA at the Grammys in 2019 At the time, Wentz also took to Tumblr to endorse Biden with his father Pete Wentz Sr. The rocker wrote, 'So I guess it's a big day for everyone - one way or another no matter what you are thinking. I don't really want to force my views on anyone. I'm just some guy in a band who doesn't spell that great much less have a degree in anything.' He said, according to The Washington Post, 'So I turned to my dad (has a couple degrees and spells much better, besides he's a hero to me). Blech enough of that Here's what he had to say.' His father wrote, 'I have spent the weekend and now working on the Obama campaign. Mom and I met in Washington when we were both legislative assistants to Senator Biden when he was in his first term. 'I had worked in his campaign and your mother had been in the Foreign Service. We started out as friends and the rest is history.' The January 18 virtual concert, which will be closed off publicly, will also include appearances from James Taylor, Carole King, will.i.am, with Keegan-Michael Key and Debra Messing co-hosting the proceedings, according to People. Lady Gaga will sing the The Star-Spangled Banner for the show. It's the Netflix sensation which has proven to be a huge hit with its opulent costumes and saucy sex scenes. And Drew Barrymore proved she's one of Bridgerton's biggest fans as she chatted to Phoebe Dynevor, who plays Daphne, and Rege-Jean Page, the Duke of Hastings, on her show on Friday. The actress, 45, was starstruck as she interviewed the lead actors and even admitted the 'steamy and brilliant' series inspired her to get back onto a dating app. Superfan! Drew Barrymore revealed she was inspired to 'get back on a dating app' while watching 'steamy' show Bridgerton during her show on Friday Towards the end of their interview, Drew and her pal turned co-host Ross Mathews gushed about just how much they loved the period drama. Ross thanked Phoebe and Rege-Jean for 'making a show that feels so modern... and for really turning our engines back on if you know what I mean.' The cheeky compliment prompted Drew to admit: 'It's true! I got back on a dating app during Bridgerton! 'I was like "Im not dead, Im not dead!" For me that was a big step.' Impressed! Stars of the Netflix hit Rege-Jean Page and Phoeve Dynevor laughed after Drew, who was dressed up in their honor, made her revelation Phoebe could not contain her surprise at the super-fan's big reveal declaring 'I love that', while Rege-Jean joked: 'I didn't know that that was the most we were going to turn on, but hit it!' Speaking about the show elsewhere in the interview, Drew described Bridgerton as the show which is 'steamy, brilliant, and rubbing everybodys motors'. Drew is mother to two daughters; Frankie, six and Olive, eight, with ex-husband Will Kopelman who she split with in 2016. Back in September, Drew revealed she has not been on a date since 2015 as she chatted to Jane Fonda. Chemistry: Bridgerton debuted on Christmas Day and has remained in the top spot on Netflix's most-watched list for the last two weeks, proving to be a mammoth success Drama: The series follows Daphne and Simon's relationship through a London season in 1813 as well as the lives of her seven siblings (pictured the eldest Bridgerton son Anthony with Simon) She told the actress: 'I'm not closed for business. But I have been exactly in that mentality for the past five years, thinking I just don't have the bandwidth, I don't know if I'm willing to open [up,] I just can't fit it in.' While elsewhere in her interview with the Bridgerton stars on Friday, Rege-Jean revealed how his family have been handing all the nudity in the show - cheekily joking that the peach emoji is sometimes used when he appears on screen. He said: 'My family are pretty well drilled at this point, weve got a family WhatsApp group and its got a little red flashing light emojis particularly around episode five the occasional peach emoji. 'But also the Brits are very well drilled for this in general, I have a cousin who missed those messages and made a bunch of tactical cups of tea.. you leave the room and put the kettle on. Netflix sensation: The show features dozens of raunchy moments as well as a controversial sex scene between Daphne and Simon - which some have branded 'male rape' 'Youre not disturbed you just have to make a very long cup of tea right now, but the problem with this show is she came back and was like, you guys were still going! How many cups of tea do I have to make?' It comes after Phoebe also revealed she had to skip watching some of the sex scenes during a family viewing. The actress, 25, said she had the remote control firmly clasped ready to fast-forward the intimate moments while watching the series with her mum, Sally, 57. Phoebe told The Daily Star: 'She is very proud and excited. I watched the show with the whole family, even the grandparents managed to watch it. 'I had to sit there and fast forward on high alert with the remote control. We managed it just about.' Embarrassed! Phoebe, 25, recently revealed she skipped Bridgerton's racy sex scenes while watching it with her Coronation Street mum Sally Phoebe's mum Sally is best known for her role as Sally Webster on Coronation Street, which she has played since 1986. She also revealed she took the same approach when watching Bridgerton with her grandparents while chatting to Drew, saying it was a 'very PG' version of the show. Bridgerton debuted on Christmas Day and has remained in the top spot on Netflix's most-watched list for the last two weeks, proving to be a mammoth success. And the show could likely go from overnight sensation to an eight-season run, according to the creator of the Netflix hit. Chris Van Dusen, the showrunner, said: 'This being a family of eight children and there being eight books, I would love to be able to focus and really tell stories and love stories for all the Bridgerton siblings. For each character, for sure. I would love that.' In a divided vote, the House of Representatives on Thursday approved Associate Supreme Court Justice Andrew J. McDonald for a second eight-year term on Connecticuts highest court. The 104-37 vote came after a half-hour debate in which opponents including conservative Republicans led by Rep. Craig Fishbein of Wallingford, charged that McDonald was an activist judge. A smaller faction of three Democrats apparently held lingering resentment over the high courts 2015 ruling that expanded the 2012 repeal of the death penalty to include those on Connecticuts death row. The nomination of McDonald, the longest-serving member of the high court, next heads to the state Senate. Justice McDonald is one of the rare people in the state of Connecticut who has admirable and distinguished service in all three branches of government, said Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee. McDonald, 54, a former state senator from Stamford and legal counsel under then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, received 15 votes from the 54-member Republican minority, following the criticism from Fishbein, who is ranking member of the legislative Judiciary Committee. Certainly theres been concerns about activism from the bench, said Fishbein, a lawyer. He noted that McDonald never served as a lower court judge, after being nominated directly from his Capitol legal office to the Supreme Court by Malloy. Ive heard a lot of good things. His colleagues report that hes great to work with. Ive read many of his decisions. Fishbein cited a dispute on bail reform within the state Rules Committee of the Superior Court, upon which McDonald serves as chairman, as tipping the balance in his opposition to the nomination. Fishbein recently submitted proposed legislation on the issue. Rep. Larry Butler, D-Waterbury, blamed McDonald for misleading lawmakers on the effect that the 2012 repeal of the death penalty would have on death row inmates. The 2012 legislative bill, drafted by the Judiciary Committee when McDonald was no longer in the Senate and headed Malloys legal office, indicated that it would not protect death row inmates, said Butler, a software designer. But the 2015 high court ruling said that the repeal would have to include people sentenced to the death penalty for constitutional reasons of equal rights. We should stand for a higher standard here, said Butler, a supporter of the death penalty, who cited the two men who participated in a home invasion and multiple murders in Cheshire in 2007. We need to send a message that we dont want judges legislating from the bench. But Rep. Bob Godfrey, D-Danbury, a lawyer and House member since 1989, said that the weakness in the 2012 legislation was its carving-out death row from the repeal. I knew then, being an attorney, that was never going to stand under the 14th Amendment, under equal justice before the law, under due process, that that exception wasnt going to stand, Godfrey said. Remember this body and the Senate abolished the death penalty, he said. Not the court. Us. I voted no, but I accept those kinds of results all the time. I think that Justice McDonald has done a superb job because hes really smart and hes compassionate and hes honest. Stafstrom then noted that McDonald did not author the ruling that allowed death row inmates to file appeals to avoid the death penalty. He added that the issue over bail reform, as cited by Fishbein, centered on a unanimous recommendation from the state Sentencing Commission to the Rules Committee, which unanimously approved the reform, and state judges also accepted it unanimously. To cherry pick one or two decisions that folks do not agree with, I do not think does justice to his body of work over the years, Stafstrom said. kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT India is set to roll out the world's biggest vaccination programme on Saturday with over 3 lakh healthcare workers to be inoculated on the first day of the much-anticipated drive, which the government said is "probably the beginning of the end of COVID-19". A total of 3,006 session sites across all states and union territories will be virtually connected during the launch at 10.30 am by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site. Jaipur's Sawai Man Singh (SMS) Medical College Principal Sudhir Bhandari will be the first person in Rajasthan to be given the shot, while a hospital security guard and an attender will be among the first to get the jab in Madhya Pradesh. Modi said the country on Saturday would enter a "decisive phase" in the fight against the pandemic. Tomorrow, 16th January, India begins the pan-India rollout of COVID-19 Vaccination drive. The launch will take place at 10:30 AM tomorrow morning. https://t.co/zopwtXPmZO Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 15, 2021 The Prime Minister's Office has said this will be the world's largest vaccination programme covering the entire length and breadth of the country and all preparations are in place to initiate it on the principles of "Jan Bhagidari". ALSO READ: All You Need to Know About Covid Vaccination Drive On the eve of the commencement of the drive, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan reviewed the preparations and visited the dedicated COVID control room set up at the Nirman Bhawan premises of the health ministry. The drive has been planned in a phased manner, identifying priority groups. Healthcare workers, both in government and private sectors including ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) workers, will receive the vaccine during this phase, the ministry said in a statement. Vardhan said India's exercise to vaccinate its population against COVID-19 shall be the largest immunisation drive of the world. He reiterated that both the indigenously manufactured vaccines -- Covishield by Serum Institute of India and COVAXIN of Bharat Biotech -- have proven safety and immunogenicity records and are the most important tools to contain the pandemic. An online digital platform Co-WIN, developed by the ministry, will be used to drive the vaccination programme. Adequate doses of both Covishield and Covaxin have already been delivered to all states and union territories. A dedicated 247 call centre 1075 has also been set up for addressing queries related to the pandemic, vaccine roll-out and the Co-WIN software. According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities. The cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government. ALSO READ: As Covid Vaccination Drive Kicks Off, Indias Past Experience in Mass Inoculation Can Be Handy In Delhi, the drive will kick off from the state-run LNJP Hospital with a simple ceremony in the presence of Chief Minister Kejriwal and Health Minister Satyendar Jain. A trio of a doctor, nurse and a sanitation worker will receive shots in the presence of Kejriwal, sources said. The 81 sites named in the national capital for administering the jabs include six central government facilities like AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, RML Hospital and Kalawati Saran Children Hospital and two ESI hospitals. Medical superintendents of government hospitals at Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar will be among the first to get the shots in Gujarat, where over 16,000 health workers will be vaccinated during the day, officials said. In Assam, an estimated 6,500 people of the 1.9 lakh health workers will be vaccinated on the first day. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will inaugurate the drive at Assam Medical College Hospital, Dibrugarh, and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. Former vice-chancellor of Srimanta Sankardeva University of Health Sciences Dr Umesh Chandra Sarma will be the first to receive the initial dose in the state. The other doctors to be vaccinated are Padma Shri awardee and surgeon Dr Ilias Ali, Sahitya Akademi awardee and former principal of Barpeta Medical College and Hospital Dr Dhrubajyoti Borah, GMCH principal Dr Achyut Baishya and its superintendent Dr Abhijeet Sharma. (With inputs from PTI) 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. SIU students will commemorate MLK Day with community service by Christi Mathis CARBONDALE, Ill. Southern Illinois University Carbondale is recognizing Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a Day of Service. Student volunteers will be going out into the community to help local organizations on Jan. 23. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the group sizes will be capped at nine students, and social distancing and other safety protocols will be followed. Diverse organizations will benefit Student volunteers will be giving of their time and energy to benefit the local community and residents in a number of ways: Working with Keep Carbondale Beautiful from 9 a.m. to noon, cleaning up Attucks Park, 800 N. Wall St. Assisting with cleaning and painting at the Eurma C. Hayes Center, 441 E. Willow St., 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 1-4:30 p.m. Helping to plant bulbs and paint a mural from 9 a.m. to noon at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Illinois, 250 N. Springer St. We are excited to connect students with service in honor of Dr. King, said Sarah Marbes, coordinator of the Center for Service-Learning and Volunteerism. The service day will look a little different this year in terms of size, schedule and safety precautions, but students can still make a big impact. My hope is that volunteering shows students how they can be a positive force in the community, as Dr. King was, and helps them form a deeper connection to the Carbondale area. Salukis give plentifully SIU students are very generous in community service, typically donating thousands of hours to a myriad of community organizations each year, according to Marbes. Learn more about the Saluki spirit and tradition of volunteerism by visiting cslv.siu.edu/. The government of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte collectively resigned on Friday over its mismanagement of childcare subsidies, national broadcaster NOS reported. Rutte was to inform King Willem-Alexander of the decision and hold a press conference later on Friday. The decision follows a parliamentary inquiry last month that found bureaucrats at the tax service, with government oversight, had driven thousands of families to financial ruin with wrongful accusations of fraud. The inquiry report said around 10,000 families had been wrongfully forced to repay tens of thousands of euros of subsidies, leading to unemployment, bankruptcies and divorces. It described such mismanagement over a decade as an unprecedented injustice". Todays bathrooms are expected to function as both an efficient, well-lighted place where you can prepare to meet the day and a restful retreat to in which you unwind come evening. In this room, once sacrosanct design rules about color, fixtures and more are being discarded and rethought faster than Netflix releases new movies. Take oil-rubbed bronze faucets and shower heads. No, really. Take them. For 15 years thats been San Antonios go-to color for bathroom fixtures, said Glenn McNamara, showroom manager for Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting Gallery. Its so overplayed but, finally, its going away. Instead, homeowners are mixing and matching fixture finishes and adding in more color to walls and floors, installing unique lighting fixtures beyond the vanity and going high-end on their bathing options. In addition to McNamara, we talked with Hector Castillo, general manager of San Antonio Kitchen and Bath and Monica Beyer, designer with New Generation Kitchen & Bath to find out about the latest trends in bathroom design. Mixing colors and finishes: Time was, you picked one style rustic, modern, retro, etc. and one finish brushed bronze, polished chrome, matte black, etc. and stuck with that throughout. No more. Homeowners today are more willing to mix and match, based on personal style. Give a room high visual energy by mixing rustic wood cabinets with a modern, polished quartz counter top, copper sink and a pop of color in the tile, or perhaps a black shower head and controls that tie into a moody black painted vanity with satin gold faucets. A more calming look could come from a less dramatic combo of chrome cabinet hardware with nickle faucets. On ExpressNews.com: 7 hot trends in home tile for walls and floors, from faux wood to retro hex tiles Free-standing soaking bathtubs: Once an expensive design item reserved for high-end homes, these dramatically stylish fixtures have a deeper tub than traditional bath/shower combos for a more luxurious soaking experience, and they are now available online for under $1,000. Paired with a separate shower stall, theyre the perfect place to unwind. A word of warning: retrofitting a bathroom with a soaking tub can be a complex job, because plumbing must be carefully aligned. Multiple shower heads: Dual shower heads, one to wash over you and a second, handheld device that you control, are increasingly popular for their convenience and efficiency not to mention for couples who enjoy showering together. Combining them with several pivoting body sprayers built in the walls will turn any bathroom shower into a true spalike experience. Prices range from well under $100 to up to $2,000 for a luxury multihead kit. A full package, complete with dual shower heads and three pivoting sprayers, can range from $1,000 to $2,500. On ExpressNews.com: Helotes home gets resortlike backyard with two levels of outdoor deck and patio Vivid colors: Powder rooms traditionally have been spaces where homeowners felt comfortable going wild with color and patter because of the small space. But main bathrooms continued to fall within a narrow color spectrum: white to pale pastels. Today, its not unusual to see vibrant blues, greens, even black used for a dramatic flourish. For those unwilling to commit to whole walls of color, just a pop of color, such as a patterned shower floor or a brightly painted cabinet, will modernize the room and add visual interest. Bathroom grout is also getting a color makeover, with hues ranging from light gray to black outlining floor and wall tiles, really making them stand out. As an added benefit, colored grout hides stains better, making it easier to maintain. More lighting options: Light fixtures are moving beyond the vanity, especially in larger bathrooms where having only one or two light sources is inadequate. Torchieres, or floor lamps, bath bars running above mirrors, task lights recessed into the ceiling, even small, decorative chandeliers can brighten up any bathroom while providing uniquely stylish looks. And treated to withstand humidity, lighting fixtures made with rattan, wood, steel and other natural materials bring a softer look and feel to the hard surfaces of any bathroom. rmarini@express-news.net | Twitter: @RichardMarini Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams plans to take a fresh look at the controversial case of a Marigny homeowner who shot a Black teen who was trespassing inside his gated yard in 2013, after it emerged this week that the boy died of his wounds last year. Former DA Leon Cannizzaro's office reviewed the case in December after it was informed that Marshall Coulter died on Feb. 27 from complications from the shooting and that the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office had ruled his death a homicide. But they found no reason to reopen the case. Coulter, who was 14 at the time of the incident, was shot by White homeowner Merritt Landry. Coulters death had not been previously made public until it was reported by WDSU-TV on Tuesday, the day after Williams, who was elected in December, replaced Cannizzaro as DA. Williams said at a press conference Thursday that he would absolutely review the case, but it would be premature to comment further because he hadnt received the case file. The July 26, 2013, shooting on Mandeville Street stirred strong emotions. Some compared Landry to George Zimmerman, whod been acquitted that month in the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, while others said Landry was protecting his wife and kids. Landry opened fire at a distance of what police estimated was 30 feet, striking Coulter in the head. The homeowner claimed he saw Coulter make a move as if the youth were reaching for something. But detectives said Landry wasnt in imminent danger and booked him on a count of attempted second-degree murder. The arrest generated a firestorm and prompted Landry supporters to raise money for his defense. +20 Neighbor describes Marshall Coulter's condition moments after shooting Marshall Coulter was unable to speak or move. Not knowing how badly the teenager's wounds were at first, two neighbors moved his body and plan 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 Prosecutors under former Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizaro presented Landrys case to a grand jury, which deadlocked on charges. Coulter was left in critical condition after the shooting, but his arrest the next year in connection with a residential burglary prompted Cannizzaro to rule out charges against Landry. The case appeared to be over. However, Coulters death at the age of 21, and the subsequent homicide ruling, prompted Cannizzaro's office to take a fresh look. In May, Coroner Dwight McKennas office concluded that Coulters death was a homicide resulting from bacterial meningoencephalitis with subdural empyema and complications of sinusitis and remote gunshot wound of the head. Ken Daley, a spokesman for the DAs Office, said that the Police Department informed prosecutors of Coulters death in the final months of 2020 and provided a full police report to the office on Dec. 14. Homicide screeners and then-First Assistant District Attorney Graymond Martin reviewed the case file and found no new evidence surrounding the 2013 shooting that warranted reopening the inquiry, Daley said. +6 No charges for Marigny homeowner Merritt Landry in shooting of Marshall Coulter Merritt Landry, the homeowner who shot an unarmed teenager in the head after finding the intruder on his Marigny property, no longer faces cri Landrys lawyer, Roger Jordan, said the coroners decision doesn't change the underlying facts. Whether it's classified as a homicide seven years later doesn't change the fact that it was a justifiable shooting, Jordan said. The El Paso County Sheriffs Office is looking for a vehicle in connection with a drive-by shooting that took place in Security-Widefield Jan. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that school districts that are offering full or partial in-person learning arent linked to the rise in coronavirus cases across the United States. According to the study, released Wednesday, as of Dec. 7, the CDC reported that nearly two-thirds (62%) of U.S. K-12 school districts offered some form of in-person learning but reports of outbreaks within these schools have been limited. And coronavirus cases in counties where K-12 schools offer in-person education was similar to those in counties offering only virtual education, the CDC found. Several U.S. school districts with routine surveillance of in-school cases report lower incidence among students than in the surrounding communities, and a recent study found no increase in COVID-19 hospitalization rates associated with in-person education, authors of the study stated. The agency said preventing coronavirus cases in schools depends on mitigation strategies and controlling transmission in communities. Schools provide a structured environment that can support adherence to mitigation strategies to help prevent and slow the spread of the coronavirus, the CDC said. When community transmission is high, cases in schools should be expected, and as with any group setting, schools can contribute to COVID-19 transmission, especially when mitigation measures, such as universal and proper masking, are not implemented or followed, the CDC warned. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** The study explained that there is lower incidence of COVID-19 among younger children, which suggests that the risk of transmission among children associated with reopening child-care centers and elementary schools might be lower than reopening high schools or higher education institutions. The CDC recommends that K-12 schools be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures have been made, and the first to reopen if its safe to do so. HOW NYC REOPENED SCHOOLS New York City education officials have pointed to public health experts who reported that even if younger children have an undiagnosed infection, they are less likely than older children or adults to cause outbreaks. Elementary schools, preschools and special education District 75 schools across the five boroughs were the first to reopen after they were shuttered in mid-November, after the coronavirus infection rate surpassed 3% citywide, the former threshold Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed for closing public schools. The schools reopened under increased safety measures, including required consent for weekly testing of 20% of the school population. Individual school buildings in the city will now only shutter if there are multiple confirmed cases. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said during a press briefing last month that health professionals feel strongly about keeping schools open, because its a worthy mission from the perspective of the health of the children who are being served in schools. Everything that happens in school, from, of course, the learning and the education itself to the services that are provided for both mental health as well as social services, schools should be thought of as instruments for promoting health in our communities, and so thats why we have taken those painstaking steps to make them as safe as possible, because they can promote health, Chokshi said. Its unclear when middle and high schools will reopen in the city, but some high schools are being used as vaccination hubs, including Port Richmond High School and Staten Island Technical High School, New Dorp. School Zone: A new Staten Island newsletter with the updates you need as our schools work to return to normal. Enter your email address here and hit "subscribe" to receive this weekly newsletter: FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. SACRAMENTO Gov. Gavin Newsom has called in the California National Guard to help secure the state Capitol amid concerns that protesters seeking to keep President Trump in office will create unrest. Newsom said up to 1,000 members of the Guard will be deployed to help protect the Capitol and other state infrastructure in the days before President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration Wednesday. Were treating this very seriously and deploying significant resources to protect public safety, critical infrastructure and First Amendment rights, Newsom said in a video statement. Let me be clear: There will be no tolerance for violence. The governor said he was ordering added security in light of last weeks insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when rioters supporting Trump overran police barricades and laid siege to the building, resulting in five deaths. Earlier this week, the FBI warned of plans for armed protests in Washington, D.C., and at all 50 state capitals in the days leading up to Bidens inauguration. Newsom said law enforcement started beefing up security earlier this week, and a 6-foot chain link fence was erected around the Capitol on Thursday. The building has largely been surrounded by barricades and sealed off from pedestrians since May. The governor said the Guard troops were an initial deployment to help the California Highway Patrol secure the complex. In addition, the state has activated its 24-hour emergency operations center to oversee the response to any protest. California will take every necessary measure to protect public safety and our democratic principles and to ensure those disgraceful actions are not repeated here, Newsom said. Its unclear if Trump supporters will gather in Sacramento. A rally that had been set for the Capitol on Sunday was called off after the California Highway Patrol denied a permit for it. The CHP cited the potential for civil unrest and said the organizers prediction of a 3,000-strong protest would exceed its pandemic cap of 200-person gatherings. Chris Bish, a Republican congressional candidate who had applied for the permit, said attendees wouldnt be safe if they were in the streets without police protection. Tensions remain high in Sacramento. Lawmakers in the state Senate were confronted Thursday by several protesters during a budget hearing, including one who ended an angry public comment by telling them,We didnt buy guns for nothing. Dustin Gardiner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner BOISE, Idaho, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Idaho families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Idaho families, schools, and organizations are hosting 219 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the most notable state events will be a virtual panel equipping parents with information about all school choices in Idaho on Wednesday, Jan. 27. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Idaho, the iconic US Bank Building in Boise will light up from sunset to sunrise during National School Choice Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week in their community, including the Idaho county of Kootenai and the cities of Heyburn and Meridian. "Every child is uniqueeven siblings are sometimes need different learning environments," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "When Idaho parents can choose from an array of learning options, they can pair their child with the school that matches their unique strengths and needs. This National School Choice Week, we challenge every family to take a look at the learning options available to them and to share information about what they find with friends and neighbors. " In Idaho, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. Idaho families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Idaho school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/idaho. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Local News, Community, Charity & Cause By Long Island Published: January 14 2021 Beauty and Wellness College Nail Skin & Hair Institute launches exclusive partnership with NYC Dept. Of Youth & Community Development Internship and Mentoring Beauty and Wellness College, Long Island Nail Skin & Hair Institute launches exclusive partnership with NYC Dept. Of Youth & Community Development Internship and Mentoring Program. This first ever mentor & internship program is designed to offer New York City high school students an opportunity to work directly with education leader and student advocate, Dana Persico. Persico firmly believes that Beauty and Wellness Education serves as a tremendous catalyst for growth, not only for young women but also for the communities they bring their education back to. This is what Long Island Nail Skin & Hair Institute Education is all about. he Institute has successfully propelled thousands of highly skilled graduates directly into the New York State Workforce for over 25 years. By offering hands-on internship and mentoring under the direct mentorship of of CEO & Executive Director Dana Persico, students will gain first-hand business mentoring and insight into the multi billion dollar Beauty, Wellness and Cosmetic Industry. Specific areas of concentration offered to the students enrolled in the Mentoring Program are; Marketing, Social Media Management and Website Development that will also be complemented by select in person on campus site visits. The Nail Skin & Hair Institute Mentoring & Internship Program offers students an average of 14 hours per week at a rate of $15 per hour. Enrolled students are responsible for meeting key point indicators established during weekly virtual meetings with Persico and The Institutes team members. The Beauty & Wellness Industry offers many single young women and mothers successful life long career opportunities that enhance the lives of those around them. Visit us on social media: Facebook LinkedIn Lansing Mayor Andy Schor said militia groups, the Proud Boys and anti-government extremists in the boogaloo movement are planning armed protests at Michigans Capitol on Sunday. The Michigan National Guard was activated Friday at Schors request and Michigan State Police implemented a series of heightened security measures in response to protests at state Capitols planned ahead of President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration. An FBI bulletin shared with local law enforcement warned militant anti-government groups were planning rallies on Jan. 17 in all 50 states, and the document included specific details about threats to Lansing. Schor, in a press call organized by the Voter Protection Project, advised Lansing residents to avoid the Capitol and surrounding downtown streets on Sunday and Wednesday, Jan. 20. Six-foot-tall fencing was installed around the Michigan Capitol and Lansing City Hall Friday. Downtown businesses boarded street-facing windows. Michigan State Police Col. Joseph Gasper said its unknown how many protesters could appear at the Capitol Sunday, but said police found armed marches were promoted online. Police increased security at the Capitol in response to violent riots in Washington D.C., where a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the presidential election. The Lansing mayor referenced media reports that the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia was planning to attend but asked its members Thursday to avoid the Jan. 17 protests after learning of the Proud Boys involvement. Even within some of the extreme groups, youve got some staying away because there are others that could be violent, so were tracking a lot of that, Schor said. The boogaloo movement is generally recognized as a loosely organized group of anti-government extremists preparing for, or seeking to incite, a second civil war. The Proud Boys identifies itself as an all-male Western chauvinist group and is known for engaging in violent street clashes with anti-fascist protesters. Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said no single group has been identified as organizers of the upcoming protests. Racine said there is a diverse set of people bound together by their hatred toward government and belief in conspiracy theories. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer authorized several hundred members of the Michigan National Guard to be deployed to Washington D.C. ahead of Bidens inauguration. Whitmer responded to a request for assistance from the National Guard Bureau. The FBI memo also identified efforts by members of the boogaloo movement to scout out security measures at the Minnesota state Capitol. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said anti-government extremist groups exist on a spectrum in terms of their motivations and willingness to commit violence. Some are more racist, some are less racist and have Black members but are right-wing extremists, Ellison said. There is a tapestry, and its important to understand the differences if were going to protect our government from overthrow. Ellison said extremist groups have tried to recruit members at protests against COVID-19 restrictions. Michigan also saw militia members who allegedly planned to kidnap Whitmer appear at COVID-19 protests last summer. Members of the Proud Boys were also present at protests against Bidens electoral victory and COVID-19 restrictions last year. The group clashed with counter-protesters during a march through downtown Kalamazoo in August 2020. Schor said Lansing has experience with armed protests, citing an April 2020 demonstration where demonstrators armed with rifles attempted to enter the floor of the legislative chambers. Schor said he was glad the Michigan Capitol Commission voted this week to ban the open carry of firearms inside the building. Any one mistake can lead to tragedy, Schor said. Were going to have preparations to make sure we are ready. I continue to remain hopeful that any protests will remain peaceful but we have to be prepared to meet their violence. The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia issued a statement on the groups MeWe page criticizing the Capitol Commissions decision to ban the open carry of firearms. SMVM Coordinator Lee Miracle called the move absolute political opportunism and grandstanding. Schor said hes a firm believer in the right to protest at the Capitol, but that does not give people the right to incite violence or vandalize Lansings downtown. Were going to ensure the safety and security of our downtown residents, as well as anybody within the downtown ahead of the inauguration, Schor said. READ MORE ON MLIVE: Michigan National Guard preparing for armed protest at Capitol Sunday Whitmer activates Michigan National Guard ahead of protests at Capitol Extreme rhetoric thrives on alternative social media sites growing after Facebook, Twitter crackdown A Portland, Maine man will serve an additional 33 months in federal prison for conspiring to assault another inmate at the United States Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart. Troy J. Blanchard, 31, and another inmate struck the victim several times on Feb. 28, 2019 in retaliation for the victim's previous cooperation with law enforcement. Neither the victim nor Blanchard's co-defendant was named in a press release from the Department of Justice. The Federal Bureau of Prisons and the FBI investigated the case. A total of 930 COVID-19 cases, split between 523 students and 407 staff members, have been reported at Massachusetts schools from Jan. 7 to 13, education officials said Thursday. Those cases do not include students who are learning remotely. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education each Thursday issues a COVID case report, detailing the number of students and staff members who reported a positive test for the coronavirus within seven days of being inside school buildings. This weeks report details 505 student cases and 355 staff cases at local school districts. There were six student cases and 10 staff cases at education collaboratives. And there were 12 student cases and 42 staff cases at approved special education schools. Milton had the most student cases among districts, with 20 positive tests. There were 15 student cases each in Dracut and at the Lawrence Family Development Charter (District). Plymouth and Winthrop both reported 14 student cases, according to the report. District staff cases were highest in New Bedford, with 24 positives. Fall River had 17 staffers test positive, while Boston and Chicopee had 10 each. In total, 127 districts reported one or more student cases and 135 districts reported one or more staff cases. At education collaboratives, there were two student cases at South Coast Educational Collaborative and one student case each at Bi-County Collaborative (BICO), Keystone Educational Collaborative, Northshore Education Consortium and Southeastern Mass. Educational Collaborative (SMEC). Staff cases at education collaboratives included three at South Coast Educational Collaborative, two at Southeastern Mass. Educational Collaborative (SMEC) and one each at Bi-County Collaborative (BICO), Northshore Education Consortium, Central Massachusetts SPED Collaborative, LABBB Collaborative and Valley Collaborative. Among approved special education schools, there were four cases at the Boston Higashi School, three at the May Center School for Brain Injury and Related Disorders Residential (Brockton), two at the RCS Learning Center School, and one each at Hopeful Journeys Educational Center School, The Darnell School for Educational and Behavioral Service, and May Center School for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (Randolph). Staff cases at approved education schools included four each at the May Center School for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (Randolph), Evergreen Center School, New England Center for Children School and League School. Last weeks report detailed two weeks of cases, from Dec. 24 to Jan. 6, which included winter break. In that time, there were 431 coronavirus cases among 178 students and 253 staff members. There are an estimated 450,000 students and 75,000 staff members currently in public school buildings during the pandemic, according to the department. Soon, weekly pool COVID testing is slated to begin at Massachusetts schools. Pooled tests cost at least 75% less than an individual test, and education officials hope the initiative will help encourage the return to classrooms for students. Related Content: China saw notable rebound in exports in 2020, led by sales of medical supplies China was the only major economy in the world to achieve positive goods trade growth in 2020, with its foreign trade beating expectations and registering a historic high, government officials said on Thursday. The country's foreign trade grew by 1.9 percent year-on-year to 32.16 trillion yuan ($4.97 trillion) in 2020, compared with 2.97 trillion yuan in 2010, while its exports increased 4 percent year-on-year and imports declined by 0.7 percent. Its trade surplus surged 27.4 percent to 3.7 trillion yuan, according to the latest foreign trade data released by the General Administration of Customs. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, China started to register positive growth in foreign trade in June last year and hit a record high in total foreign trade volume, exports of goods and the global market share of the country's total trade by the end of last year, Li Kuiwen, a spokesman for the administration, said at a news conference. According to the World Trade Organization, China's exports from January to October accounted for 14.2 percent of the international market and imports for 11.5 percent, both reaching historic highs. The country's total foreign trade comprises 12.8 percent of the overall global figure, also an all-time high. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the European Union, the United States, Japan and South Korea remained China's top five trading partners last year, while trade with economies related to the Belt and Road Initiative grew 1 percent year-on-year to 9.37 trillion yuan, the administration said. China saw a notable rebound in exports in 2020, led by strong sales of pandemic control supplies and items such as laptops, Li said, adding that as the country resumed production amid the containment of the pandemic, it managed to restore export orders while also stimulating domestic demand, leading to a rebound in imports. He said that China has been playing its role as the world's largest supplier of anti-epidemic materials by carrying out international cooperation against the contagion last year, exporting anti-epidemic goods to over 200 countries and regions. In the meantime, the administration reported that China's exports of products for use in the home, including tablet personal computers, pasta makers and other household appliances, rose 8.5 percent year-on-year to 2.51 trillion yuan, meeting consumers' needs across the globe as they stayed at home during the pandemic. With China continuing to push economic growth via the "dual-circulation" development paradigm, in which the domestic market is the mainstay and the domestic and foreign markets complement each other, promoting further reform and opening-up, and signing more free trade deals with various partners, Li said the country's foreign trade is expected to maintain high-quality growth in 2021. "China's trade growth was mainly pushed by its effective prevention and control of the pandemic last year," said Li Xingqian, director-general of the Ministry of Commerce's Department of Foreign Trade. "When many global manufacturers stalled, Chinese factories stood out," Li said, adding that this situation enabled global orders to return to China from the third quarter of 2020. The robust orders generated a strong rebound in both exports and foreign direct investment in the second half of 2020, notably making up for the decline in the first quarter when the pandemic severely hit the Chinese economy, said Gao Lingyun, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of World Economics and Politics. Zhengzhou Yutong Group Co Ltd, a commercial vehicle maker based in Zhengzhou, Henan province, clearly reflects that trend, having delivered a total of 41,756 buses to its clients globally in 2020. This year, the company is setting its sights on boosting its sales in both the ASEAN and EU markets. China's efforts in further opening up its market will help domestic manufacturers sell their products to other parts of the world with lower tariffs and fewer barriers, said Cao Zhongyan, Zhengzhou Yutong's vice-president, citing the country's recent moves, including signing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement with 14 nations in November and completing in-principle talks on an advanced investment treaty with the EU last month. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Maruti Suzuki India on Friday announced the launch of its online financing platform -- Smart Finance, for Maruti Suzuki ARENA customers across more than 30 cities. A company statement said that with the launch of Smart Finance, 24 out of 26 steps in the customer vehicle purchase journey have been digitised. "Smart Finance offers customers a 'ONE-STOP-SHOP' solution for the vehicle finance needs. The services include option to choose among wide range of finance products based on customer needs, selecting the best-suited loan product, completion of all finance related formalities and disbursal of loan, with just a few clicks," it said. Maruti Suzuki website will act as a facilitator between the customer and the financier providing real time status updates and in turn provide a hassle free and transparent financing solution. Going forward, different structured schemes such as balloon and step-up offers, among others can also be reviewed on one screen. For this, Maruti Suzuki has currently partnered with twelve financiers -- State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Mahindra Finance, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Bank of Baroda, Cholamandalam Finance, Kotak Mahindra Prime, Axis Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, Yes Bank and HDB Financial Services. Subsequently, the company will on-board other key financiers, it said. Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director (Marketing & Sales), Maruti Suzuki India said: "We are overwhelmed with the response to our Smart Finance platform from our NEXA customers. Now, we want to extend the ease of a car buying journey for our ARENA customers as well. The pandemic situation in the country has further increased the usage of digital platforms. With Smart Finance, we aim to reach out to a larger audience, assist them and make every stage of the loan process transparent." The Smart Finance service is now available for ARENA customers in over 30 cities including Delhi-NCR, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Indore, Kolkata, Cochin, Chandigarh and Guwahati. -- Syndicated from IANS (@ChaudhryMAli88) Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government is set to decide on Friday whether to resign over a child benefits scandal, threatening political turmoil as the country battles the coronavirus pandemic The Hague, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government is set to decide on Friday whether to resign over a child benefits scandal, threatening political turmoil as the country battles the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of parents were wrongly accused by Dutch authorities of fraudulently claiming child allowance, with many of them forced to pay back large amounts of money and ending up in financial ruin. Dutch public broadcaster NOS, quoting sources close to the government, said that it was now "inevitable" that liberal leader Rutte's four-party cabinet would resign when it discusses the issue at its regular meeting on Friday. But Rutte -- who has been in power since 2010 and is one of Europe's longest-serving leaders -- said late Thursday that he did not want to prejudge the cabinet's chances of surviving the scandal. "Tomorrow we will talk again about the substantive reaction to the report on the benefits, and then I suspect the political question will also be discussed," Rutte told reporters. A hard-hitting parliamentary investigation in December said civil servants cut off benefits to thousands of families wrongly accused of fraud between 2013 and 2019. The row comes just two months before elections are due on March 17, and could leave the Netherlands without a government in the midst of a surge in cases of a new Covid-19 variant that first emerged in Britain. Rutte has opposed the cabinet's resignation, saying the country needs leadership during the coronavirus pandemic. He has however said that if it resigned he could be authorised to lead a caretaker government to deal with coronavirus until elections -- in which polls say his Freedom and Democracy Party would likely come first. But other parties in the coalition are pressing for the government to resign, saying they need to take responsibility for a scandal that Dutch media said had affected some 26,000 people. They could also face a possible confidence vote in parliament next week. Pressure mounted on the government after opposition Labour party chief Lodewijk Asscher, who was social affairs minister in Rutte's previous government, resigned on Thursday over the scandal. Victims this week also lodged a legal complaint Tuesday against three serving ministers and two former ministers including Asscher. Many were required to pay back benefits totalling tens of thousands of Euros (Dollars). Tax officials were also revealed to have carried out "racial profiling" of 11,00 people based on their dual nationality, including some of those hit by the false benefit fraud accusations. The Dutch government announced at least 30,000 euros in compensation for each parent who was wrongly accused but it has not been enough to silence the growing clamour over the scandal. Rutte has led three coalition governments since 2010, most recently winning elections in 2017 despite strong opposition from far-right leader Geert Wilders. Polls say he is likely to win a fourth term in the next election, with public opinion still largely backing his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Deaths from COVID-19 in Britain have passed the 100,000 mark, according to analysis from government and statistical agencies, counting cases where the virus was noted on the death certificate. The grim milestone was reached with the 1,564 deaths recorded on Wednesdaythe highest daily death toll yet during the pandemicfor a total of 101,160. Yesterday another 1,248 deaths and 48,682 new infections were announced. Total infections are now well over 3.2 million in Britain. The Guardian reported, Almost one in every 660 people in the UK have died from Covid or Covid-related causes so far during the pandemicor about one-in-six of all deaths. The UK has one of the worst coronavirus mortality rates in the world, at 151 per 100,000 people. Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP] The Conservative government only counts fatalities within 28 days of a positive COVID test, but even by this criterion 86,015 lives have been lost. Public Health England confirmed that there have already been more deaths in the second wave of the pandemic than in the first. London and the South East of England have been devastated in recent weeks, with London Mayor Sadiq Khan revealing Thursday that more than 10,000 have succumbed to the deadly disease in the capital. The staggering loss of life was underscored Wednesday, with the Office for National Statistics confirming that 2020 saw the largest increase in excess deaths since the Second World War. Only the months from January to November 2020 were covered by the ONS data, but in that period 697,000 deaths were recordednearly 85,000 more than would be expected based on the average over the last five years. The numbers hospitalised by the virus have reached record levels. On Monday, 36,489 people were in hospital, up 5,872 on the same day last week, and 3,496 COVID-19 patients were in ventilation beds Tuesday. The hospital admission rate for COVID-19 rose significantly this week to 37.2 per 100,000, compared with 29.5 per 100,000 the previous week. Yesterday, Sky News reported from the childrens ward at St Marys hospital in London which had been cleared of children and was now full of COVID-19 victims with almost all on life support. Of the 13 beds, there were 12 patients under sedation and intubated. Interviewed by ITV News, UK Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned, Im afraid were in for a period of high death numbers thats gonna carry on for some weeks. Its not going to come down quickly, even if the measures that are in place now start to reduce the infection numbers. So were in for a pretty grim period Im afraid. According to a report in the Guardian, in a policy that threatens further death and suffering, thousands of hospital patients in England are to be discharged early to hotels or their own homes to free up beds for COVID-19 patients needing critical care. The newspaper cited a senior source in the NHS who said this would create extra emergency contingency capacity and prevent parts of the National Health Service (NHS) collapsing. This scandal was soon outstripped by an even greater threat to life posed by the decision of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to discharge COVID patients from hospitals into care homes without tests. The Guardian reported Thursday that guidance issued by the DHSC declares that COVID-positive patients in England who have been in isolation in hospital for 14 days are not considered to pose an infection risk and do not require retesting. If they are not showing new symptoms and are thought not to have had fresh exposure to the virus, they can be moved directly to care homes from hospital. This was the same murderous policy imposed by the Conservative government in the first wave of the crisis, which turned care homes into killing fields taking the lives of 18,562 people between March 2 and June 12 last year in England. The vast numbers hospitalised during the pandemic threaten an even greater public health catastrophe. NHS England records show a record almost 4.5 million people were waiting to start hospital treatment in England at the end of November 2020, the worst month for medical backlogs since records began. The number of people having to wait more than 52 weeks to start hospital treatment in England stood at 192,169 in November 2020, the highest number for any calendar month since May 2008 and more than a hundred times the 1,400 in that position a year before. Tens of thousands of NHS staff are off work, either ill with the virus or on self-isolation, worsening the crisis facing hospitals. NHS England found that over 5,000 patients waited longer than an hour to be handed over from ambulance teams to accident and emergency staff at hospitals in England in the week to January 10. A series of temporary morgues and makeshift burial sites are being constructed nationwide, including the largest, a mortuary at Breakspear crematorium in Hillingdon, north London, with a capacity for 672 bodies that can be expanded to take more if needed. Only a tiny fraction of the UK population has been vaccinated, with just 2.6 million people (4 percent) having received at least one of the two necessary doses by Tuesday. Vallance told ITV, we dont know for sure if the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines will work on the recently discovered Brazilian and South African mutations of COVID-19. There are no plans to vaccinate young people, with the Tories herd immunity agenda spelled out again by Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at Public Health England, on Wednesday. She told Parliaments Science and Technology Committee, We may need to accept, if the vaccine doesnt prevent transmission, that were going to protect the people who are really vulnerable and going to die and have serious disease, but we allow the disease to circulate in younger people where its not causing much harm. As far as the ruling elite are concerned, workers lives are expendable, with the overring goal of all policy that of keeping the capitalist economy afloat and profits rolling in for big business. This week saw millions of people responding with shock and anger as the appalling contents of the food parcels being delivered to the families of 1.7 million schoolchildren who receive free school meals. Despite previous U-turns, the government plans to end ongoing food support for the poorest children during school holidays. Yesterday, it emerged that the Department for Education (DfE) has informed headteachers at schools in England, Schools do not need to provide lunch parcels or vouchers during the February half-term. A Trades Union Congress survey of 50,000 women revealed that 71 percent of working mothers who asked to be admitted to the governments furlough scheme, citing childcare reasons due to the closure of schools in this wave of the pandemic, have been refused. This is a blatant flouting of the rules by employers, since the job retention schemeunder which the state pays 80 percent of workers wages up to a maximum of 2,500 a monthpermits employers to furlough parents not able to work due to a lack of childcare. The working class must respond to the public health catastrophe by asserting its independent interests to prevent further mass deaths. The response to the pandemic must be taken out of the hands of the criminal Conservative government and its accomplices in the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy. All non-essential workplaces must be closed, with living wages provided to all workers, and full compensation provided to small businesses. The Socialist Equality Party calls for the establishment of rank-and-file committees in every workplace and neighbourhood to fight for effective lockdowns with full income, educational and social support, genuinely safe conditions for key workers, and a functioning test-and trace systemto be funded by seizing the fortunes of the super-rich who have continued to pile up billions more in wealth during the pandemic. Rome: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has resisted calls to resign after a junior coalition party pulled out of his government, stripping him of a parliamentary majority in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, Conte signalled he wanted to take his fight for survival to parliament, with his main coalition partners backing plans to try to find so-called "responsible" members from among opposition ranks to prop up the administration. Italian PM Giuseppe Conte is mobbed by reporters as he walks near Palazzo Chigi, the government headquarters, in Rome. Credit:AP On Monday he will address the lower house on the crisis when a likely fiery debate will be followed by a vote of confidence that should provide an indication of whether he can battle on. If he survives that vote, an even tougher one will come the following day in the Senate, where cobbling together a majority looks more difficult. He's back making his first movie in more than five years. And David O. Russell is continuing to recruit major names to his top secret project that's currently filming in Southern California. On Thursday, Deadline.com reported that Robert De Niro, Mike Myers and Chris Rock have all come on board. Casting news: Robert De Niro, Mike Myers and Chris Rock have all come on board David O. Russell's new movie, Deadline.com reported on Thursday It will be the second time De Niro has worked with the director; he starred in Silver Linings Playbook with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. And the hiring spree didn't stop there; also joining the cast is Anya Taylor-Joy, fresh off her acclaimed performance in Netflix's The Queen's Gambit. Also newly signed up are Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Alessandro Nivola. Back in action: The top secret project is the first film in more than five years from Russell whose credits include Three Kings, American Hustle, The Fighter and Joy Reunited: De Niro previously worked with Russell on his 2021 film silver linings Playbook. De Niro is pictured with co-stars Jacki Weaver and Bradley Cooper In demand: Also joining the cast is Anya Taylor-Joy, fresh off her acclaimed performance in Netflix's The Queen's Gambit On board: Other cast additions just announced include Timothy Olyphant, left, and Michael Shannon, right The new bunch of talent joins previously announced stars John David Washington, Zoe Saldana and Christian Bale who were seen Monday filming on location in Saugus, outside of Los Angeles. The cast also includes Margot Robbie and Rami Malek. Russell is directing the film from his own screenplay and all that is known is that it's an original story. The filmmaker went through s prolific phase in the early 2000s, directing a string of high-profile releases including The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Joy. He first came to prominence with the 1996 comedy Flirting With Disaster which was followed by Three Kings in 1999 and I Heart Huckabees in 2004. He has been nominated for an Academy Award five times in the directing and screenwriting categories. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 3 mesi fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. San Francisco, 15 Jan 2021: The Report Integrated Workplace Management System Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Solution, By Service, By Deployment, By Enterprise Size, By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2027 The global integrated workplace management system market size is expected to reach USD 7.85 billion by 2027, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc. It is projected to register a CAGR of 12.8% from 2021 to 2027, Growing demand for solutions that help improve business performance, reduce working capital, reinforce company growth, improve customer service, and simplify workload is expected to drive the market. Additionally, enterprises across the globe are focusing on reducing operational costs and increasing the effectiveness of their decision-making processes which is anticipated to drive the demand for integrated workplace management systems (IWMSs) over the forecast period. Organizations across the globe are also investing in big data analytics to obtain valuable business insights for decision-making purposes. Big data analytics can help in data integration, data segmentation, and business intelligence. The growing adoption of cloud computing and big data analytics is opening numerous growth opportunities for vendors in the IWMS market. Emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) are likely to provide significant growth opportunities to the market. The adoption of IoT can significantly simplify business operations, as data can be automatically collected and can later be analyzed for maintenance purposes. The adoption of IoT within enterprises can also significantly minimize the pressure on workplace management tools and help organizations make better decisions. IWMS software is also used for tracking utility usage and expenditures as part of efforts to lower operating costs. Additionally, the improved flexibility of several IWMS solutions and their capability to adapt to the changing and growing needs of businesses are anticipated to drive market growth over the forecast period. Increasing market competition is encouraging established vendors to focus on partnerships and collaborations with start-ups, system integrators, and resellers to maintain a competitive market position for their products and brands. For instance, In April 2020, Accruent partnered with Mitie Group plc., a provider of facilities management and professional services in the U.K., to provide remote asset monitoring for Mitie Group plcs clients. Through the partnership, Mitie Group plc. will deploy Accruents vx Observe IoT remote monitoring platform to control and monitor assets encompassing multiple manufacturers. Access Research Report of Integrated Workplace Management System Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/integrated-workplace-management-system-market Integrated Workplace Management System Market Report Highlights In terms of solution, the real estate and lease management segment is anticipated to register significant growth over the forecast period owing to the growing need for upgrades and maintenance of existing solutions for better decision-making In terms of service, the managed services segment is expected to register significant growth from 2021 to 2027. This can be attributed to the growing dependence of enterprises on IT assets to improve their productivity In terms of deployment, the cloud segment is expected to register significant growth over the forecast period, thanks to the fact that cloud deployment enables users to access data from any location in a hassle-free way, eliminating the need to regularly and manually upgrade the solutions In terms of enterprise size, the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segment is expected to register significant growth from 2021 to 2027. Owing to advancements in SaaS tools, SMEs can use affordable software solutions and compete with larger companies with equal efficiencies. This is expected to drive the demand for IWMS in SMEs In terms of end use, the IT and telecom segment is expected to register considerable growth over the forecast period. This can be attributed to the growing demand from IT and telecom companies for reevaluating operational strategies and applying advanced technologies across business processes to hold a competitive position Asia Pacific regional market is anticipated to register a significant growth rate from 2021 to 2027. This can be credited to the rising adoption of various workplace management applications on the cloud in the region, including floorspace management, project management, asset management, and employee management for better decision-making List of Key Players of the Integrated Workplace Management System Market Accruent ARCHIBUS, Inc. FM:Systems FSI (FM Solutions) Limited International Business Machines Corporation MRI Software LLC Nemetschek Group (Spacewell) Planon SAP SE Trimble Inc. Access Press Release of Integrated Workplace Management System Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-integrated-workplace-management-system-market How the variant affects kids The new variant of the coronavirus, first identified in Britain, is expected to rapidly spread in the U.S. That has fueled fears that children, who have largely been spared the worst of the virus, may become just as susceptible and contagious as adults. The latest research out of Britain largely puts the worst fears to rest. Data from about 20,000 people infected with the new variant including nearly 3,000 children under age 10 showed that young children were about half as likely as adults to transmit the variant to others. Thats exactly what we had been seeing with the current variant thats circulating in the U.S., too, said our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli, who wrote about the research. Nothing has really changed on that front. That seems like good news. But the new variant is about 30 to 50 percent more contagious than the original, for children and adults alike. It is expected to become the dominant form of the coronavirus in the U.S. by March, which means more kids will get the virus, even if they are still proportionately less contagious and less prone to getting infected than adults. The variant is more contagious, but its more contagious across all age groups, Apoorva said. If kids were half as likely to be infected before, theyre also half as likely to be infected now. The pandemic, supercharged by the new variant, could force even elementary schools to close if community spread rises to unmanageable levels. But if schools act fast to shore up safety protocols mask wearing, physical distancing, ventilation and extensive testing they might buy themselves crucial time. Just like we had time in the summer to get ready for the fall for schools to open, we have a chance right now to get this right, Apoorva said. We know the variant is here, but its still at low levels. We have time now to prepare to make sure that schools are ready. There is a power cut in a large area of Derry. The electricity supply was cut to homes and businesses this morning in the Foyle Springs, St Eithne's, Ballymagoarty, Glen and Hazelbank areas. Local Sinn Fein councillor Mickey Cooper said he had been in contact with Northern Ireland Electricity. Cllr Cooper said he had been told that NIE were working to restore power to the homes and premises affected and hoped to have the electricity back on by 4pm if not sooner. An intensive care nurse has issued a plea amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis as she reveals NHS staff are 'struggling now more than ever'. Hayley Samantha, from London, took to Facebook to share the heartfelt message, in which the 26-year-old urged the public to take the restrictions seriously, alongside a series of photos. And the candid post, titled A Message From An ITU Nurse, has since been met by a wave of support from fellow social media users. Hayley Samantha, from London, took to Facebook to share the heartfelt message alongside a series of candid photos (above) Hayley wrote: 'I write this having just found out that my annual leave has been cancelled again. Something you may not hear in the media... we haven't had a break all year. 'When I see these stories about empty hospitals and people protesting, it makes me so angry. Yes maybe certain wards are empty - because the ward nurses have come to help in ITU/ theatres/ HDU or other covid wards. We are over capacity already, side rooms are doubling up, any empty space that can accommodate a ventilator is filled. 'We are exhausted, this is WORSE THAN MARCH, we are struggling now more than ever. 'We were running on adrenaline during the first wave, but now we know what we're dealing with and it's exhausting/terrifying. I'm hopeful and grateful for the vaccine, but we need you guys to play your part. 'We cannot fight this alone.' The intensive care nurse (right) issued the plea amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis as she reveals NHS staff are 'struggling now more than ever' The 26-year-old urged the public to take the restrictions seriously as she warned that they are not 'invincible' She continued: 'Firstly, I appreciate we're all in a different situation and all dealing with our own battles throughout this time and thank you to everyone who's played their part and supported us through this tough time. But to those who continue to break the rules, protest that this is a hoax etc... 'Please stop thinking you're invincible or that your situation makes you exempt from following the rules. It really doesn't. Don't we need a break? Don't we want to see our families too? Of course we do. But we're doing this because we have no other choice. 'We may be nurses but none of us signed up to fight a global pandemic or put ourselves/loved ones at risk. We do it because we care, and we will always put our patients first, hold their hand when their loved ones can't, and wear ourselves into the ground before we give up hope on any one of them. 'So please please, just follow the rules, keep your distance, wash your hands, wear a mask and if you end up lying in that bed, we'll be there for you too. 'P.S. check in on your nurse friends... we're only human too.' Hayley (pictured) added that people ought to check in on their nurse friends because they are 'only human too' The candid post, titled A Message From An ITU Nurse, has since been met by a wave of support from fellow social media users Other social media users flooded the post with praise as one wrote: 'You are all amazing, real life angels. Keep going, keep strong, we appreciate you all for the amazing job youre doing.' Another added: 'Well done to you and all your nursing colleagues . You are all doing amazing work. Thank you xxx.' And a third said: 'Well said Hayley. Thinking of you and all the ICU nurses who are working so so hard.' (Reuters) - Walmart Inc said on Friday its chief executive for e-commerce operations in the United States, Marc Lore, will step down at the end of the month. Under Lore's watch, the big-box retailer launched same-day delivery and store pick-up services, as well as an Amazon Prime rivaling membership program to take on the e-commerce giant in its own game. His exit comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has heated up the online shopping business, as customers turn to websites and apps to avoid the risks of visiting stores. Lore joined Walmart in 2016 when it bought ... During his stay in Japan, the WCO Secretary General, Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, met with Japans Prime Minister, Mr. Yoshihide Suga, on 14 January 2021. Prime Minister Suga expressed his strong endorsement of the WCOs role in enhancing the global Customs network, contributing to improvements in the business environment and protecting citizens from health and safety threats at borders. Dr. Mikuriya thanked Prime Minister Suga for his steadfast support for the global Customs community. Secretary General Mikuriya also took the opportunity to meet with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Mr. Taro Aso, and with the Chief Cabinet Secretary, Mr. Katsunobu Kato, to inform them about recent WCO activities aimed at safeguarding the supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic. As Louisville prepared to go into lockdown due to COVID-19 in March 2020, a darker event that would change the city forever was on the horizon. "We actually closed our office on March 13 and so I will always remember that, as far as when it relates to COVID, we at ACLU were, not going to be in the office until further notice,'" said Keturah Herron, ACLU policy strategist and juvenile justice liaison. Sadly, March 13 was the day Breonna Taylor died-- a time that the ACLU would be needed most. 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. Home > 2021 > Is This What Democracy Has Come To? | T J S George IMPRESSIONS Incredible things are happening in America. An incumbent President refusing to vacate office is unheard-of. Donald Trump is doing what no US President has done in the past, indeed, what no government head in a democracy has done. The result is not just the crumbling of American democracy; physical attacks are taking place by one group against another. Barack Obama put it right when he said that violence at the US Capitol Hill had brought shame to the US. To see the horror of what is happening in America (of all places, America, long considered a model of democracy), think of India in 2014. A general election took place in April-May that year. The Alliance led by the BJP won a sweeping victory, taking 336 seats although the BJP itself got only 31 percent of the votes. Other parties could have used that fact as an excuse to throw out the BJP. But no one protested when the BJP alliance formed the government. What happened in America was the opposite of what happened in India. Thousands of Trump supporters started rioting, interrupted a joint session of the American Congress that was underway and created general mayhem in Washington DC. Ex-President Obama said: History will rightly remember todays violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting President who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonour and shame for our nation. He didnt leave it at that. He hit the bulls eye by adding: Wed be kidding ourselves if we treated [ the violence ] as a total surprise. Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building with a clear intent: Disrupting the electoral count. The count has to be formally completed to formally declare the winner. The pro-Trump rioters were fully prepared for the assault they carried out. The whole city of Washington DC was in chaos, four men were killed in the violence and the Mayor was forced to impose a curfew. Biden was finally certified as the winner and his inauguration is due on January 20. Will the American Capital see more violence caused by a President rebelling against his voters? No American President in the past had acted so selfishly and in defiance of voters. Even George W. Bush, not exactly an enlightened leader, said it was a sickening and heart-breaking sight. This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic, not in our democratic republic. Another former President, Bill Clinton, was more downright. Keeping Trumps self-centred politics in mind, he said that the assault on the Capitol was fuelled by more than four years of poison politics. That reference to the Trump brand of leadership was capped with the accusation that this President was pitting Americans against one another. Hillary Clinton went so far as to call Trump and his associates domestic terrorists. Such was the unprecedented nature of the violence in America that expressions of shock came from all corners of the world. Indian public opinion was strong that subversion of the democratic process was not merely unlawful but also dangerous. Narendra Modi was finally forced to distance himself from the man he proudly called a friend during the euphoria of the Howdi Modi days. The bizarre Modi-Trump camaraderie grew more bizarre when Trumps America conferred. on Modi the American medal for meritorious service. The show of unusual recognition was sudden and its reasons unexplained. Of course, India is of value to the US as a buyer of American arms. But what was on show here was not India-US ties but Modi-Trump ties. It was a tactical mistake for India to be seen as a Trump client. The price for that Modi folly will have to be paid during the Biden years. It wont be easy. Modi being a natural embracer, it will be hard for him to accept the reality that everybody does not like being hugged. In Wuhan in 2019 Xi Jinping received him with a shake-hand. The big question is: Do shake-hands and hugs produce results in politics? Modis embraces are seen worldwide as part of his showmanship. They have won no friends for India. Not even in the immediate neighbourhood. India needs to grow beyond the idiosyncrasies of individuals in power. Greater is the need for the US to rise above the madness of a sitting President. PROVIDENCE, R.I., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Rhode Island families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Rhode Islanders are hosting 123 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's pause to recognize the impact a child's education has on their ability to achieve their dreams, attain a safe financial future, and give back to their community," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "With partnerships and positivity, Rhode Island can improve and expand learning options for all families." In Rhode Island, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Rhode Island families below a certain income level qualify for a state-run scholarship program. Rhode Island families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Rhode Island school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/rhode-island National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com 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. Wilmington, Delaware: US President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $US1.9 trillion ($2.4 trillion) coronavirus plan to turn the tide on the pandemic, speeding up the vaccine rollout and providing financial help to individuals, states and local governments and businesses struggling with the prolonged economic fallout. Called the American Rescue Plan, the legislative proposal would meet Biden's goal of administering 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration, while advancing his objective of reopening most schools by the spring. On a parallel track, it would deliver another round of aid to stabilise the economy while the public health effort seeks the upper hand on the pandemic. I know what I just described does not come cheaply, but we simply cant afford not to do what Im proposing," Biden said in a nationwide address on Friday (AEDT). "If we invest now boldly, smartly and with unwavering focus on American workers and families, we will strengthen our economy, reduce inequity and put our nations long-term finances on the most sustainable course. It includes $US1400 cheques for most Americans, which on top of $US600 provided in the most recent COVID-19 bill would bring the total to the $US2000 that Turmp had called for. The plan would also extend a temporary boost in unemployment benefits and a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through September. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Republican Sen. James Lankford apologized to his black constituents after joining onto an effort spearheaded by Sen. Ted Cruz to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, and told them he had a 'blind spot' about how it looked. Lankford did not vote to overturn the election results but only changed his mind after the MAGA mob stormed the Capitol. The Nebraska Republican penned a letter to his 'friends of North Tulsa,' saying that his actions caused 'a firestorm of suspicion among many of my friends, particularly in Black communities around the state. I was completely blindsided, but I also found a blind spot.' North Tulsa is majority minority and is also the site of one of the worst events of post-Civil War racial violence, the 1921 massacre in which white mobs massacred as many as 300 African Americans living in what was then know as 'Black Wall Street.' In his letter Lankford said he had not realized that attacking the integrity of election results from Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit, all majority minority, would be seen as an attack on black voters. 'What I did not realize was all of the national conversation about states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, was seen as casting doubt on the validity of votes coming out of predominantly Black communities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit,' Lankford wrote, in a letter obtained by the Tulsa World. Sen. James Lankford wrote a letter apologizing to his black constituents for initially joining on to a challenge of Electoral College votes In a letter, Lankford said, 'I should have recognized how what I said and what I did could be interpreted by many of you,' he said. 'I deeply regret my blindness to that perception, and for that I am sorry' Lankford was among a group of GOP senators who announced on January 2 that they would 'reject the electors from disputed states' unless a '10-day audit' of the election was completed. With Sen. Josh Hawley's initial announcement he would challenge results in at least Pennsylvania, Lankford became one of the so-called 'dirty dozen.' Lankford's move prompted calls from prominent black leaders in Tulsa to have the Republican removed from the 1921 Race Massacre Centennial Committee. 'North Tulsa' is where the city's historic Greenwood neighborhood is. The well-to-do black neighborhood was firebombed by white supremacists nearly 100 years ago, on May 31 and June 1 of 1921. Thirty-six people were killed. It's been recently been depicted in two HBO shows, 'Lovecraft Country' and 'The Watchmen.' Last summer the massacre became part of the national political narrative when President Donald Trump decided to restart his political rallies, amid the coronavirus pandemic, by hosting one in Tulsa on Juneteenth - the date slavery ended in the United States. The racist symbolism prompted an outcry after weeks of renewed Black Lives Matter protests over the death of George Floyd. Black Wall Street Times Publisher Nehemiah Frank told the Tulsa World that he told State Sen. Kevin Matthews, who represents Tulsa, to talk to the Republican senator to defuse the situation with the president. 'When Trump was on his way to Oklahoma for Juneteenth, I called Sen. Matthews and said, "Hey, you need to talk to Lankford." I didn't choose anybody else ... Lankford is willing to listen,' Frank said. Trump also listened and moved the Tulsa rally to June 20 instead. The president also stayed away from the Greenwood District. Matthews was one of the Nebraska officials who called out Lankford for his attempted election challenge. 'Let me tell you what racism feels like to black people,' Matthews told the Tulsa World. 'When you tell us the rules and why we can't be president before Obama or vice president, we have to jump through these hoops, and as we're jumping through the hoops you move the goalposts. And you keep moving them. And when we get to the goalposts, you want to check our ID and our credentials over and over and over.' In his apology letter, Lankford said he now understood this criticism. For two days starting on May 31 1921, an white mob estimated to be 10,000-strong destroyed Tulsa's Black Greenwood district, known as Black Wall Street, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 300 people and injuring 800 more 'After decades of fighting for voting rights, many Black friends in Oklahoma saw this as a direct attack on their right to vote, for their vote to matter, and even a belief that their votes made an election in our country illegitimate,' Lankford said. 'I can assure you,' he continued. 'my intent to give a voice to Oklahomans who had questions was never also an intent to diminish the voice of any Black American.' 'I should have recognized how what I said and what I did could be interpreted by many of you,' he said. 'I deeply regret my blindness to that perception, and for that I am sorry.' An insurrectionist MAGA mob interrupted lawmakers as they certified the Electoral College vote count, leaving Washington, D.C. reeling - and gaining a second impeachment for Trump, blamed for inciting the riot. When members of Congress resumed debate later on January 6, Lankford removed his support from the objections. THE 1921 TULSA RACE RIOT: AN ATTACK ON GREENWOOD After World War I, Tulsa was recognized for its affluent African-American community known as the Greenwood District. The community was often referred to as the 'Black Wall Street' because of its thriving businesses and residential area, but in June 1921, the community was nearly destroyed during the Tulsa Race Riot. The events leading up to the riot began on May 30, 1921, when a young black man named Dick Rowland was riding in the elevator with a woman named Sarah Page. The details of what followed vary from person to person and it's unclear what actually happened, but Rowland was arrested the next day by Tulsa police, with reports suggesting Rowland assaulted Page. During the Tulsa Riot, 35 city blocks were completely destroyed and more than 800 people were treated for injuries. Historians believe as many as 300 people may have died in the riot Subsequently, a report in the Tulsa Tribune dated May 31, 1921 was published that night with an accompanying editorial stating that a lynching was planned for that night. This started a confrontation between black and white armed men at the courthouse, with the white men demanding that Rowland be lynched while the black men tried to protect him. During a struggle between two men in the mobs over a gun, shots were fired and a white man was shot, causing the the African-American group to retreat to the Greenwood District. In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Greenwood was looted and burned by an estimated 10,000 white rioters, who flooded into the streets shooting residents. Planes also reportedly dropped incendiary bombs on the area. Many of the white mob had recently returned from World War I and trained in the use of firearms, are are said to have shot Black Americans on sight. Pictured: Part of Greenwood District burning during the Race Riots, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, June 1921. More than 1,400 homes and businesses were destroyed. The picture caption above says 'Burning of Church Where Ammunition was Stored-During Tulsa Race Riot-6-1-21' In addition, more than 1,400 homes and businesses were destroyed, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless. The riots lasted for two days, and Governor Robertson declared martial law, and National Guard troops were called in to Tulsa. During the riot, 35 city blocks were completely destroyed. Historians believe as many as 300 people may have died in the riot - mostly Black Americans -and more than 800 people were treated for injuries. Bodies were buried in mass graves while families of those who were killed in the riots were held in prison under martial law according to Scott Ellsworth, a University of Michigan historian, in December. The families of the deceased were never told whether their loved ones died in the massacre, or where they were buried, and no funerals were held. Until the 1990s, the massacre was rarely mentioned in history books, and in 2001, the Race Riot Commission was organized to review the details of the deadly riot. Source: Tulsa History.org Advertisement CHICAGO/NEW YORK: Many U.S. pharmacies, including those inside Kroger Co supermarkets and the drugstore chain of CVS Health Corp, say they will not be checking IDs before administering COVID-19 vaccines, leaving the door open to those who do not meet states guidelines to jump the line. While the United States has distributed more than 30 million vaccine doses, a little over 11 million had been administered as of Thursday, a lag that prompted U.S. health secretary Alex Azar to call on states to begin vaccinating the vulnerable older population and those with certain chronic health conditions to get more vaccines into arms. U.S. retailers face a choice of strictly enforcing state eligibility rules with on-site identity checks, or rely on an honor system that could allow people to ignore those guidelines but also get more people inoculated. State and local guidelines vary across the 40 public health jurisdictions we serve, but in most cases, identification will not be required to receive the vaccine," a Kroger spokeswoman said. The biggest U.S. grocery chain has so far administered about 7,800 COVID-19 vaccines to healthcare workers and nursing home staff and residents. Twenty-two states have moved toward using age as the main criteria for prioritizing inoculations, with four more set to follow next week. Others are adhering to strict guidelines meant to assure that scarce coronavirus vaccine supplies went first to healthcare workers, nursing home residents and first responders. Teachers and other essential workers" are supposed to be among those next in line as distribution widens, but who qualifies as an essential worker varies by state. We are not planning to ask for ID to receive a COVID-19 vaccination," a CVS Health spokesman said. These vaccinations will be appointment-only in our stores and patients will have already gone through an eligibility screening when they register for an appointment on our website, through our app or via a 1-800 number." However, the accuracy of information provided in eligibility screenings conducted by some companies is not automatically checked at the vaccination sites. Walgreens Boots Alliance said it would follow state and local guidance on how to verify eligibility. Hy-Vee, which operates grocery stores and pharmacies in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Wisconsin and other Midwestern states, said it has included its own warning on its website that ID may - or may not - be asked for prior to the shot being given. So far, we have had no problems," a spokeswoman said. Stop & Shop Supermarket, located in the northeastern United States, said it would check IDs or pay stubs if instructed to do so by individual states. Publix Super Markets, which operates in Florida and other southeastern states, said people would need to provide proof of insurance and/or their drivers license or social security card." GET THEM INTO THE ARMS" In Washington D.C., which relies on pharmacy chains Safeway and Giant Food to administer vaccines, it is unclear who verifies peoples healthcare worker status. A district website allowing healthcare workers to register for a vaccine tells them they will be verified via their work ID badge or an employer letter during the pharmacy appointment. But Giant Food in a statement said it was just checking the photo ID and insurance card of anyone who secured an appointment through the districts website. A spokeswoman for the DC health department said the vaccination team would raise the issue with Giant Food. Safeway parent Albertsons Companies Inc did not respond to requests for comment. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt Universitys medical school, attributed the lack of planning and diverging local guidance to chronic underfunding of the U.S. healthcare system, with the ongoing pandemic straining resources further. Schaffner said the solution was to increase vaccine availability and hire more vaccinators. The more vaccines you have, the less you have to worry about prioritization," Schaffner said. We know its not going to be perfect, but who cares, we need to get them into the arms." 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 When Prime Video dropped the teaser trailer of Saif Ali Khan's Tandav, people were left asking for more and wanted to see the political drama on their laptop screens. According to Prime Video, 'the series takes the viewers inside the closed, chaotic corridors of power and uncover the manipulations, charades as well as the dark secrets of people who will go to any lengths in pursuit of power. It seems like the web series hasn't been able to meet the expectations of people who are clearly not pleased by the content and are calling it pure propaganda. People are also complaining of the poor script and have also pointed out that the music has been taken from the movie Joker and edited for the show. They are people who have advised to invest their time in watching South Indian movies because they have a realistic approach. People have lost their cool as they feel that the makers are justifying what happened in the JNU. People are even planning to boycott the show altogether. #AmazonPrime par ek Web series aayi hai #Tandav...Pura Librandupan dikha diya hai, Mahadev se f*** bulva rahe hai JNU ke azaadi slogans justify kar rahe hai Dalito par atyachar hota hai Indira Gandhi aur Sanjay Gandhi ki maut ka majak bnate hai Aur na jane kya kya#TandavOnPrime Gaurav Nagar (@gauravnagar_) January 15, 2021 It's poorly written, poor editing and the music looks like an edit from Joker. Such cliches are what is being filled up on OTT. #Tandav J o h n Z a t z s k i (@johnzatzski) January 15, 2021 #Tandav No need to boycott tandav because they are already are making shi!ty anarchist stuff with the tadka of propagandists artist like ayub who was standing in against of CAA without even reading it once. Wanna watch real stuff, go with south indian movies. Sharad (@thekantapguy) January 15, 2021 These madrachod's fundamentalists jihadists and liberals make fun of our culture religion and deities through movies and web series! and hurt our religious faith. And the government remains silent, After all, why are these dogs not acted upon?#Tandav pic.twitter.com/sT8LkRVDrI Sameer (@iam_smirza) January 15, 2021 Far from being a political thriller, #Tandav is a PR exercise for the only university in India that gets maximum media coverage. Biased plot aside, faulty screenplay and horrible performances destroy it anyway. #TandavOnPrime Vanamali (@ONEMALI) January 15, 2021 This show is just propagating views which are dangerous to society.Ban it #Tandav #bantandav Nikhil Tyagi (@nickchamp26) January 15, 2021 One of the scenes has been going viral as people are bashing Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub for mocking Lord Shri Ram and Lord Shiva. People are upset with the fact that the makers always target the Hindu Gods thus playing with the sentiments of people. Reading some of the positive reviews of #Tandav . Can't find anything story related. Only people rejoicing in giving it back to 'bhakts' and how Hindu gods are mocked. Anti-modi hote hote anti-Hindu and anti-India hote ja rahe ho tum log. I hope the realisation happens soon. Shaani Nani (@shaaninani) January 15, 2021 Yes.. Fun on shiv ji, PM tanasha, jnu types police attack n police shown in bad light, farmers protest, azaadi naare, n M people targeted... This #Tandav is totally propoganda based#TandavOnPrime Crime Master Gogo (@vipul2777) January 15, 2021 Then, there's a section of people who are rooting for Tandav as it shows the realities of the era we are living in and are giving back to the 'bhakts' who are offended. #Tandav is a must watch for Left Winge Politics lovers and for those who hate BJP. JNU is portrayed as VNU .. same azaadi slogans are there.. Inquilab Zindabad slogans are there..the series starts with the slogan " kisaan ekta zindabad ".Watch it before it's too late. suchetan roy (@suchetanroy1) January 15, 2021 Watched first episode of #Tandav on @PrimeVideo. Very reminiscent of our times. Not surprised Bhakts already clamouring for a boycott. Waiting for the real thing in 2024. pic.twitter.com/GltR0T2Xd7 Rohit Kuttappan (@RohitKuttappan) January 15, 2021 #Tandav is a fantastic, mind blowing political series because some of the thing is very straight that some people can not resist Vikas prajapati (@VickyStark3000) January 15, 2021 Talking about the theme of the show, Creator, Director, and Producer Ali Abbas Zafar had earlier said, Through Tandav, we take audiences into the power-hungry world of politics. As you watch the show, youll realize that there is no right or wrong, there is no black or white; the world of power is about the world of greys. I believe that content must be backed by credible performances and I am fortunate to have such heavyweights in the show. Im excited that my debut as a creator-director in the digital domain is with Amazon Prime Video which will take this intriguing and gripping story of Tandav to millions across the world! Apart from Saif Ali Khan and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, the show stars Dimple Kapadia, Sunil Grover, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Dino Morea, Kumud Mishra, Gauahar Khan, Amyra Dastur, Kritika Kamra, Sarah Jane Dias, Sandhya Mridul, Annup Sonii, Hitten Ttejwani, Paresh Pahuja, and Shonali Nagrani among others. Do you agree with people's opinions? Let us know in the comments section below. Nepal on Friday approved the use of AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine manufactured in India against the novel coronavirus. "Conditional permission has been granted for emergency use authorization of Covishield vaccine against Covid-19 in Nepal," a statement by the country's Department of Drug Administration said. The country has reported 2,66,816 Covid-19 cases and 1,948 deaths since the outbreak of the disease. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states The announcement came on the day of the sixth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission when External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar held a talk with Nepal Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali in Delhi. "During the meet, Nepal congratulated India on the remarkable success in the production of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines in India and requested for early provision of vaccines to Nepal," said the Ministry of External Affairs. India's vaccine export plans According to reports, India plans to offer 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccine to its neighbours. It is drawing up a policy to supply vials to countries across the globe. An Indian state-run company will reportedly buy vaccines from the Serum Institute of India Ltd. and Bharat Biotech International Ltd. for supplying to Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Seychelles and Mauritius. Some of supplies may be free and treated as aid, a Bloomberg report said. The first batch of the vials will be shipped over the next two weeks, the report said. The government will then offer the vaccines to countries in Latin America, Africa and the former Soviet republics. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to tap Indias leadership in vaccine manufacturing by helping countries battling the pandemic and as a to rival China. The East Asian country is also supplying its home-grown inoculations around the world. Brazil, with more than eight million cases, has sought urgent supplies and so has South Africa. However, India on Thursday appeared to contradict reported comments by Brazils Deputy Health Minister Elcio Franco who said that his country was sending an aircraft to pick up two million doses of the Covishield vaccine. It is too early to give a specific response on the supplies to other countries as we are still assessing production schedules and delivery," Indias foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. TACKLING COVID Mount a national vaccination program, contain COVID-19, and safely reopen schools, including by setting up community vaccination sites nationwide, scaling up testing and tracing, eliminating supply shortage problems, investing in high-quality treatments, providing paid sick leave to contain spread of the virus, addressing health disparities, and making the necessary investments to meet the president-elect's goal of safely reopening a majority of K-8 schools in the first 100 days. Deliver immediate relief to working families bearing the brunt of this crisis by sending $1,400 per-person checks to households across America, providing direct housing and nutrition assistance, expanding access to safe and reliable childcare and affordable healthcare, increasing the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance, and giving families with kids and childless workers an emergency boost this year. Support communities that are struggling in the wake of COVID-19 by providing support for the hardest-hit small businesses, especially small businesses owned by entrepreneurs of color, and protecting the jobs of the first responders, transit workers, and other essential workers we depend on. In addition to addressing the public health and economic crises head on, the president-elect's plan will provide emergency funding to upgrade federal information technology infrastructure and address the recent breaches of federal government data systems. This is an urgent national security issue that cannot wait. President-elect Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is ambitious, but achievable, and will rescue the American economy and start beating the virus. Congress should act expeditiously to help working families, communities, and small businesses persevere through the pandemic. This legislative package is needed now to address the immediate crises. In the coming weeks, President-elect Biden will lay out his economic recovery plan to invest in America, create millions of additional good-paying jobs, combat the climate crisis, and build back better than before. VACCINES, TESTING AND PUBLIC HEALTH The pandemic is raging, with record high infection and death rates. A new strain of the virus that is even more contagious is appearing in communities across the country. Meanwhile, Americans are waiting to get their vaccines, even while doses are sitting on shelves. More than ten months into the pandemic, we still lack necessary testing capacity and are suffering from shortages of supplies like basic protective equipment for those on the front lines. Americans of color are being infected and are dying from COVID-19 at greater rates because of lasting systemic racism in our health care system. And, older Americans continue to suffer at disproportionate rates. We can't wait to slow the spread of this virus. And, we can't fight this pandemic in fits and starts. President-elect Biden is putting forward a comprehensive plan to deal with this crisis and launch a whole-of-government COVID-19 response plan that will change the course of the pandemic by ensuring we have necessary supplies and protective gear, increasing testing to mitigate spread, vaccinating the US population, safely reopening schools, and addressing COVID-19 health disparities. To support this plan, President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to provide the $160 billion in funding necessary to save American lives and execute on his plan to mount a national vaccination program, expand testing, mobilize a public health jobs program, and take other necessary steps to build capacity to fight the virus. He is also calling on Congress to ensure our schools have everything they need to safely reopen and to provide emergency paid leave so people can stay home when needed to help contain the spread of the virus. Altogether, this would put over $400 billion toward these critical measures for addressing COVID-19. President-elect Biden's rescue proposal will: Mount a national vaccination program. Current vaccination efforts are not sufficient to quickly and equitably vaccinate the vast majority of the U.S. population. We must ensure that those on the ground have what they need to get vaccinations into people's arms. The president-elect's proposal will invest $20 billion in a national vaccination program in partnership with states, localities, Tribes and territories. This will include launching community vaccination centers around the country and deploying mobile vaccination units to hard-to-reach areas. The Biden Administration will take action to ensure all people in the United States regardless of their immigration status can access the vaccine free-of-charge and without cost-sharing. To help states ensure that all Medicaid enrollees will be vaccinated, President-elect Biden will also work with Congress to expand the Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage (FMAP) to 100% for the administration of vaccines. Scale up testing to stop the spread of COVID, safely reopen schools, and protect at-risk populations. While we are working to vaccinate the population, we need to focus on what we know works. Testing is a critical strategy for controlling the spread of COVID-19, yet the U.S. is still not using it effectively. Despite innovations to improve testing, tests are still not widely available. The president-elect's plan invests $50 billion in a massive expansion of testing, providing funds for the purchase of rapid tests, investments to expand lab capacity, and support to help schools and local governments implement regular testing protocols. Expanded testing will ensure that schools can implement regular testing to support safe reopening; that vulnerable settings like prisons and long-term care facilities can regularly test their populations; and that any American can get a test for free when they need one. Mobilize a public health jobs program to support COVID-19 response. The president-elect's plan includes an historic investment in expanding the public health workforce. This proposal will fund 100,000 public health workers, nearly tripling the country's community health roles. These individuals will be hired to work in their local communities to perform vital tasks like vaccine outreach and contact tracing in the near term, and to transition into community health roles to build our long-term public health capacity that will help improve quality of care and reduce hospitalization for low-income and underserved communities. Address health disparities and COVID-19. While COVID-19 has devastated the entire country, it has hit some groups and communities of color much harder than others. President-elect Biden is committed to addressing the disparities evident in the pandemic at every step, from ensuring equitable distribution of vaccines and supplies to expanding health care services for underserved communities. His proposal includes funding to provide health services for underserved populations, including expanding Community Health Centers and investing in health services on tribal lands. These funds will support the expansion of COVID treatment and care, as well as our ability to provide vaccination to underserved populations. Protect vulnerable populations in congregate settings. Long-term care residents and workers account for almost 40% of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths. Further, African-American and Latina women, who have borne the brunt of the pandemic, are overrepresented among long-term care workers. The president-elect's proposal provides critical funding for states to deploy strike teams to long-term care facilities experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks which may impede vaccination of residents and workers and to conduct better infection control oversight. 1 in 5 state and federal prisoners in the U.S. has had COVID-19, and African Americans and Latinos are overrepresented among incarcerated individuals. The proposal also supports COVID-19 safety in federal, state, and local prisons, jails, and detention centers by providing funding for COVID-19 mitigation strategies, including supplies and physical distancing; safe re-entry for the formerly incarcerated; and the vaccination of both incarcerated people and staff. Identify and address emerging strains of COVID-19. The identification of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the United Kingdom and South Africa highlight a key vulnerability in our nation's COVID response: we simply do not have the kind of robust surveillance capabilities that we need to track outbreaks and mutations. Tracking the way the virus is changing and moving through the population is essential to understanding outbreaks, generating treatments and vaccines, and controlling the pandemic. The president-elect's proposal includes funding to dramatically increase our country's sequencing, surveillance, and outbreak analytics capacity at the levels demanded by the crisis. GET OUT THE GUARD AND DEAL WITH PPE SHORTAGES Provide emergency relief and purchase critical supplies and deploy National Guard. Persistent supply shortages from gloves and masks to glass vials and test reagents are inhibiting our ability to provide testing and vaccination and putting frontline workers at risk. The president-elect's plan will invest $30 billion into the Disaster Relief Fund to ensure sufficient supplies and protective gear, and to provide 100% federal reimbursement for critical emergency response resources to states, local governments, and Tribes, including deployment of the National Guard. The president-elect will call for an additional $10 billion investment in expanding domestic manufacturing for pandemic supplies. These funds will support President-elect Biden in fulfilling his commitment to fully use the Defense Production Act and to safeguard the country by producing more pandemic supplies in the U.S. Invest in treatments for COVID-19. Months into this pandemic, we still do not have reliable and accessible treatments. The federal government urgently needs to invest to support development, manufacturing, and purchase of therapies to ensure wide availability and affordability of effective treatments, as well as invest in studies of the long-term health impacts of COVID-19 and potential therapies to address them. Protect workers against COVID-19. Millions of Americans, many of whom are people of color, immigrants, and low-wage workers, continue to put their lives on the line to keep the country functioning through the pandemic. They should not have to lie awake at night wondering if they'll make it home from work safely the next day, or if they'll bring home the virus to their loved ones and communities. The president-elect is calling on Congress to authorize the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue a COVID-19 Protection Standard that covers a broad set of workers, so that workers not typically covered by OSHA, like many public workers on the frontlines, also receive protection from unsafe working conditions and retaliation. And, President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to provide additional funding for OSHA enforcement and grant funding, including for the Susan Harwood grant program, for organizations to help keep vulnerable workers healthy and safe from COVID-19. These steps will help keep more workers healthy, reopen more businesses safely, and beat the virus. Restore U.S. leadership globally and build better preparedness. Protecting the United States from COVID-19 requires a global response, and the pandemic is a grave reminder that biological threats can pose catastrophic consequences to the United States and the world. The president-elect's plan will provide support to the international health and humanitarian response; mitigate the pandemic's devastating impact on global health, food security, and gender-based violence; support international efforts to develop and distribute medical countermeasures for COVID-19; and build the capacity required to fight COVID-19, its variants, and emerging biological threats. HOW TO GET SCHOOLS OPEN Provide schools the resources they need to reopen safely. A critical plank of President-elect Biden's COVID-19 plan is to safely reopen schools as soon as possible so kids and educators can get back in class and parents can go back to work. This will require immediate, urgent action by Congress. The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for K-12 schools and institutions of higher education, and the students and parents they serve. School closures have disproportionately impacted the learning of Black and Hispanic students, as well as students with disabilities and English language learners. While the December down payment for schools and higher education institutions was a start, it is not sufficient to address the crisis. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to provide $170 billion supplemented by additional state and local relief resources for K-12 schools and institutions of higher education. These resources will help schools serve all students, no matter where they are learning, and help achieve President-elect Biden's goal to open the majority of K-8 schools within the first 100 days of his Administration. Provide $130 billion to help schools to safely reopen. Schools need flexible resources to safely reopen and operate and/or facilitate remote learning. The president-elect's plan will provide $130 billion to support schools in safely reopening. These funds can be used to reduce class sizes and modify spaces so students and teachers can socially distance; improve ventilation; hire more janitors and implement mitigation measures; provide personal protective equipment; ensure every school has access to a nurse; increase transportation capacity to facilitate social distancing on the bus; hire counselors to support students as they transition back to the classroom; close the digital divide that is exacerbating inequities during the pandemic; provide summer school or other support for students that will help make up lost learning time this year; create and expand community schools; and cover other costs needed to support safely reopening and support students. These funds will also include provisions to ensure states adequately fund education and protect students in low-income communities that have been hardest hit by COVID-19. Districts must ensure that funds are used to not only reopen schools, but also to meet students' academic, mental health and social, and emotional needs in response to COVID-19, (e.g. through extended learning time, tutoring, and counselors), wherever they are learning. Funding can be used to prevent cuts to state pre-K programs. A portion of funding will be reserved for a COVID-19 Educational Equity Challenge Grant, which will support state, local and tribal governments in partnering with teachers, parents, and other stakeholders to advance equity- and evidence-based policies to respond to COVID-related educational challenges and give all students the support they need to succeed. In addition to this funding, schools will be able to access FEMA Disaster Relief Fund resources to get reimbursed for certain COVID-19 related expenses and will receive support to implement regular testing protocols. Expand the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. The president-elect's plan will ensure colleges have critical resources to implement public health protocols, execute distance learning plans, and provide emergency grants to students in need. This $35 billion in funding will be directed to public institutions, including community colleges, as well as, public and private Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other Minority Serving Institutions. This funding will provide millions of students up to an additional $1,700 in financial assistance from their college. Hardest Hit Education Fund. Provide $5 billion in funds for governors to use to support educational programs and the learning needs of students significantly impacted by COVID-19, whether K-12, higher education, or early childhood education programs. PAID SICK LEAVE AND FAMILY LEAVE Provide emergency paid leave to 106 million more Americans to reduce the spread of the virus. No American should have to choose between putting food on the table and quarantining to prevent further spread of COVID-19. And yet, nearly 1 in 4 workers and close to half of low-income workers lack access to paid sick leave, disproportionately burdening Americans of color. Lack of paid leave is threatening the financial security of working families and increasing the risk of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Congress did the right thing last year when it created an emergency paid leave program through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. That action decreased daily infections by 400 cases per state per day in states that previously had no paid sick leave requirement. While the December down payment extended the Families First employer tax credits through March 2021, it did not renew the requirement that employers provide leave. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to: Put the requirement back in place and eliminate exemptions for employers with more than 500 and less than 50 employees. He will also make it clear that healthcare workers and first responders get these benefits, too. Closing these loopholes in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act will extend emergency paid leave to up to 106 million additional workers. Provide expanded paid sick and family and medical leave. The president-elect will provide over 14 weeks of paid sick and family and medical leave to help parents with additional caregiving responsibilities when a child or loved one's school or care center is closed; for people who have or are caring for people with COVID-19 symptoms, or who are quarantining due to exposure; and for people needing to take time to get the vaccine. Expand emergency paid leave to include federal workers. This measure will provide paid leave protections to approximately 2 million Americans who work for the federal government. Provide a maximum paid leave benefit of $1,400 per-week for eligible workers. This will provide full wage replacement to workers earning up to $73,000 annually, more than three-quarters of all workers. Reimburse employers with less than 500 employees for the cost of this leave. Extending the refundable tax credit will reimburse employers for 100 percent of the cost of this leave. Reimburse state and local government for the cost of this leave. Extend emergency paid leave measures until September 30, 2021. With so much uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, extending paid leave until the end of September will help to limit the spread of COVID-19 and provide economic security to millions of working families. $1,400 CHECKS TO TOP UP $600 Deliver Immediate, Direct Relief to Families Bearing the Brunt of the Crisis. As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, millions of Americans are hurting through no fault of their own. More than 10 million Americans are unemployed, and 4 million have been out of work for half a year or longer. The jobs crisis is particularly severe in communities of color, where 1 in 10 Black workers and 1 in 11 Latino workers are unemployed. Large numbers of families are struggling to pay rent or their mortgages and put food on the table. And, last month, it only got worse: we lost 140,000 jobs in December, including 20,000 public educators, and nearly 400,000 jobs at restaurants and bars. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to take urgent action to deliver immediate, direct relief to Americans bearing the brunt of this crisis. Altogether, this would devote about $1 trillion towards building a bridge to economic recovery for working families and, according to researchers at Columbia University, cut child poverty in half. President-elect Biden's plan will: Give working families a $1,400 per-person check to help pay their bills, bringing their total relief payment from this and the December down payment to $2,000. More than 1 in 3 households and half of Black and Latino households are struggling to pay for usual household expenses like rent and groceries during the pandemic. In this crisis, working families need more than the $600 per person that Congress passed last year. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to increase that direct financial assistance to $2,000. An additional $1,400 per person in direct checks will help hard-hit households cover expenses, spend money at local businesses in their communities, and stimulate the economy. President-elect Biden's plan will also expand eligibility to adult dependents who have been left out of previous rounds of relief and all mixed status households. And, his plan will ensure that the Treasury Department has the flexibility and resources it needs to deliver stimulus checks to the families that need them most, including the millions of families that still haven't received the $1,200 checks they are entitled to under the CARES Act. Extend and expand unemployment insurance benefits so American workers can pay their bills. Around 18 million Americans rely on the unemployment insurance program. Congress did the right thing by continuing expanded eligibility and extending the number of weeks unemployed workers can receive benefits. One study estimates that extending pandemic unemployment insurance programs through 2021 could create or save over five million jobs. But these benefits are set to expire in weeks even as the COVID-19 pandemic worsens. Millions of Americans are receiving benefits through unemployment insurance programs that will no longer serve new beneficiaries starting in mid-March. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to extend these and other programs, providing millions of hard-hit workers with the financial security and peace of mind they need and deserve. And, he believes Congress should provide a $400 per-week unemployment insurance supplement to help hard-hit workers cover household expenses. The president-elect is committed to providing these emergency supports to families for as long as the COVID-19 crisis continues and employment opportunities remain limited. The president-elect is proposing to extend these emergency unemployment insurance programs through September 2021, and will work with Congress on ways to automatically adjust the length and amount of relief depending on health and economic conditions so future legislative delay doesn't undermine the recovery and families' access to benefits they need. President-elect Biden's plan will: Extend financial assistance for workers who have exhausted their regular unemployment compensation benefits. Extending and increasing the additional weeks provided under the emergency unemployment insurance program will ensure that approximately 5 million Americans continue to receive assistance in the months ahead. Extend financial assistance for unemployed workers who do not typically qualify for unemployment compensation benefits. The president-elect believes Congress should extend unemployment support for self-employed workers, like ride-share drivers and many grocery delivery workers, who do not typically qualify for regular unemployment compensation. And, he supports increasing the number of weeks these workers can receive the benefit to provide long-term financial security to the program's approximately 8 million beneficiaries. Fully fund states' short-time compensation programs and additional weeks of benefits. Short-time compensation programs, also known as work sharing, help small businesses stay afloat and economically vulnerable workers make ends meet by enabling workers to stay on the job at reduced hours, while making up the difference in pay. These programs avoid layoffs and pave the way for rapid rehiring and an accelerated recovery. Help struggling households keep a roof over their heads. The economic fallout of COVID-19 has made it more difficult for working families, especially families of color, to cover their housing expenses. Across the country, 1 in 5 renters and 1 in 10 homeowners with a mortgage are behind on payments. Congress took an important step in the right direction by securing $25 billion in rental assistance and extending the federal eviction moratorium until January 31. However, American families already owe $25 billion in back rent, and the threat of widespread evictions will still exist at the end of January. Further, more than 10 million homeowners have fallen behind on mortgage payments. Failing to take additional action will lead to a wave of evictions and foreclosures in the coming months, overwhelming emergency shelter capacity and increasing the likelihood of COVID-19 infections. And Americans of color, who have on average a fraction of the wealth available to white families, face higher risks of eviction and housing loss without critical assistance. EVICTION AND FORECLOSURE BAN AND AID FOR SMALL LANDLORDS President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to take immediate action to forestall a coming wave of COVID-related evictions and foreclosures. Ensure that families hit hard by the economic crisis won't face eviction or foreclosure. The president-elect is calling on Congress to extend the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums and continue applications for forbearance on federally-guaranteed mortgages until September 30, 2021. These measures will prevent untold economic hardship for homeowners, while limiting the spread of COVID-19 in our communities. The president-elect is also calling on Congress to provide funds for legal assistance for households facing eviction or foreclosure. Help renters and small landlords make ends meet by providing an additional $30 billion in rental and critical energy and water assistance for hard-hit individuals and families. While the $25 billion allocated by Congress was an important down payment on the back rent accrued during this crisis, it is insufficient to meet the scale of the need. That's why President-elect Biden is proposing an additional $25 billion in rental assistance to provide much-needed rental relief, especially for low- and moderate-income households who have lost jobs or are out of the labor market. The president-elect is also proposing $5 billion to cover home energy and water costs and arrears through programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, for struggling renters. These funds will ensure that the hardest-hit renters and small landlords, including those in disadvantaged communities that have suffered disproportionately in terms of pollution and other environmental harms, aren't put in the position where they can't cover their own housing expenses. This program includes a competitive set-aside of funding for states to invest in clean energy and energy efficiency projects that reduce electricity bills for families in disadvantaged communities. Deliver $5 billion in emergency assistance to help secure housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. This funding will allow states and localities to help approximately 200,000 individuals and families obtain stable housing, while providing a downpayment on the president-elect's comprehensive approach to ending homelessness and making housing a right for all Americans. Specifically, these funds will provide flexibility for both congregate and non-congregate housing options, help jurisdictions purchase and convert hotels and motels into permanent housing, and give homeless services providers the resources they need to hire and retain staff, maintain outreach programs, and provide essential services. EXTEND FOOD STAMPS BOOST Address the growing hunger crisis in America. About 1 in 7 households nationwide, including more than 1 in 5 Black and Latino households and many Asian American and Pacific Islander households, are struggling to secure the food they need. While the December down payment provided $13 billion to strengthen and expand federal nutrition programs, it will not solve the hunger crisis in America. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to ensure all Americans, regardless of background, have access to healthy, affordable groceries. The president-elect's plan will: Extend the 15 percent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit increase. Maintaining the increase through the summer when childhood hunger spikes due to a lack of school meals is a critical backstop against rising food insecurity. This change will help keep hunger at bay for around 40 million Americans. The president-elect is calling for this to be extended through September 2021. He is also committed to providing this boost for as long as the COVID-19 crisis continues, and will work with Congress on ways to automatically adjust the length and amount of relief depending on health and economic conditions so future legislative delay doesn't undermine the recovery and families' access to benefits they need. Invest $3 billion to help women, infants and children get the food they need. This multi-year investment in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is needed to account for increased enrollment due to growing hunger and to increase outreach to ensure that low-income families have access to high-quality nutritious food and nutrition education. Partner with restaurants to feed American families and keep restaurant workers on the job at the same time. The FEMA Empowering Essential Deliveries (FEED) Act will leverage the resources and expertise of the restaurant industry to help get food to families who need it, and help get laid-off restaurant workers across the country back on the job. Support SNAP by temporarily cutting the state match. The president-elect is calling for a one time emergency infusion of administrative support for state anti-hunger and nutrition programs to ensure that benefits get to the kids and families that need it most. Provide U.S. Territories with $1 billion in additional nutrition assistance for their residents. Bolstering the Nutrition Assistance Program block grant will help thousands of working families in Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands put food on the table for the duration of the pandemic. $15 FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE AND END TO TIPPED MINIMUM WAGE Raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Throughout the pandemic, millions of American workers have put their lives on the line to keep their communities and country functioning, including the 40 percent of frontline workers who are people of color. As President-elect Biden has said, let's not just praise them, let's pay them. Hard working Americans deserve sufficient wages to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads, without having to keep multiple jobs. But millions of working families are struggling to get by. This is why the president-elect is calling on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and end the tipped minimum wage and sub-minimum wage for people with disabilities so that workers across the country can live a middle class life and provide opportunity for their families. Call on employers to meet their obligations to frontline essential workers and provide back hazard pay. Essential workers who are disproportionately Black, Latino, and Asian American and Pacific Islander have risked their lives to stock shelves, harvest crops, and care for the sick during this crisis. They have kept the country running even during the darkest days of the pandemic. A number of large employers, especially in the retail and grocery sectors, have seen bumper profitability in 2020 and yet done little or nothing at all to compensate their workers for the risks they took. The president-elect believes these employers have a duty to do right by their frontline essential workers and acknowledge their sacrifices with generous back hazard pay for the risks they took across 2020 and up to today. He and the vice president-elect will call on CEOs and other business leaders to take action to meet these obligations. Expand access to high-quality, affordable child care. We are facing an acute, immediate child care crisis in America, which is exacerbating our economic crisis. Due to increased costs and lower enrollment, a recent survey of child care providers showed that most child care providers expect that they will close within a few months without relief or are uncertain how long they can stay open. If left unaddressed, many child care providers will close some permanently and millions of children could go without necessary care, and millions of parents could be left to make devastating choices this winter between caring for their children and working to put food on the table. Early childcare providers are almost entirely women, among whom 40 percent are people of color, and so these closures could devastate engines of opportunity for minority- and women-owned businesses. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to take immediate actions to address this crisis by helping child care centers reopen and remain open safely, and by making that care affordable to families who need it. CHILDCARE SHAKE-UP In addition, too many families are unable to afford child care, while early educators earn wages so low that they can't support their own families. This challenge existed before COVID-19, and the pandemic has exacerbated it. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to ease the financial burden of care for families, expand financial support for child care providers so that this critical sector can stay afloat during the pandemic and beyond, and make critical investments to improve wages and benefits for the essential child care sector. President-elect Biden's plan will: Help hard-hit child care providers, including family child care homes, cover their costs and operate safely by creating a $25 billion emergency stabilization fund. This Emergency Stabilization Fund will help hard-hit child care providers that are in danger of closing and provide support to nearly half of all child care providers. It will also assist those that have had to shut down meet their financial obligations during the pandemic, so that they can reopen. It will help providers pay for rent, utilities, and payroll, as well as increased costs associated with the pandemic including personal protective equipment, ventilation supplies, smaller group sizes, and modifications to make the physical environment safer for children and workers. Expand child care assistance to help millions of families and help parents return to work. Millions of parents are risking their lives as essential workers, while at the same time struggling to obtain care for their children. Others have become 24/7 caregivers while simultaneously working remotely. Still more are unemployed, caring for their children full-time, and worrying about how they will make ends meet or afford child care when they do find a job. And, the limited access to child care during the pandemic has caused more women to leave the workforce. While the December down payment provides $10 billion in funding through the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, the president-elect's proposal expands this investment with an additional $15 billion in funding, including for those who experienced a job interruption during the COVID-19 pandemic and are struggling to afford child care. This additional assistance with child care costs will help the disproportionate number of women who left the labor force to take on caregiving duties reenter the workforce. And, this expanded investment will also help rebuild the supply of child care providers, and encourage states to take meaningful steps towards increasing the pay and benefits of child care workers. Increase tax credits to help cover the cost of childcare. To help address the childcare affordability crisis, President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to expand child care tax credits on an emergency basis for one year to help working families cover the cost of childcare. Families will get back as a tax credit as much as half of their spending on child care for children under age 13, so that they can receive a total of up to $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for two or more children. The tax credit will be refundable, meaning that families who don't owe a lot in taxes will still benefit. The full 50 percent reimbursement will be available to families making less than $125,000 a year. And, all families making between $125,000 and $400,000 will receive a partial credit so they receive benefits at least as generous as those they can receive today. Bolster financial security for families and essential workers in the midst of the pandemic. The lowest income families are particularly vulnerable in the midst of the pandemic, and President-elect Biden is calling for one year expansions of key supports for families on an emergency basis. The Child Tax Credit should be made fully refundable for the year. Currently, 27 million children live in families with household incomes low enough that they didn't qualify for the full value of the Child Tax Credit, and this measure would give these children and their families additional needed resources. The president-elect is also calling to increase the credit to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for a child under age 6) and make 17 year-olds qualifying children for the year. He is also calling for an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for the year to ensure that the lowest income workers get critical support including millions of essential workers. He is proposing to raise the maximum Earned Income Tax Credit for childless adults from roughly $530 to close to $1,500, raise the income limit for the credit from about $16,000 to about $21,000, and expand the age range that is eligible including by eliminating the age cap for older workers and expanding eligibility for younger workers so that they can claim the credit they deserve. Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for childless adults would give a needed boost to the earnings of several million workers, including cashiers, home health aides, delivery people, and other people working in essential occupations. The president-elect also is committed to making sure that Americans who see their earnings fall in 2021 due to the pandemic don't see the Earned Income Tax Credit reduced as a result. Lastly, the president-elect is calling for an additional $1 billion for states to cover the additional cash assistance that Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipients needed as a result of the pandemic crisis. The pandemic has led to increased TANF caseloads, generated higher costs for many TANF recipients from higher utility costs to the need for internet access for remote schooling and longer periods of joblessness given high unemployment. These funds will provide sorely needed relief. Preserving and expanding health coverage. Roughly two to three million people lost employer sponsored health insurance between March and September, and even families who have maintained coverage may struggle to pay premiums and afford care. Further, going into this crisis, 30 million people were without coverage, limiting their access to the health care system in the middle of a pandemic. To ensure access to health coverage, President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to subsidize continuation health coverage (COBRA) through the end of September. He is also asking Congress to expand and increase the value of the Premium Tax Credit to lower or eliminate health insurance premiums and ensure enrollees including those who never had coverage through their jobs will not pay more than 8.5 percent of their income for coverage. Together, these policies would reduce premiums for more than ten million people and reduce the ranks of the uninsured by millions more. Expanding access to behavioral health services. The pandemic has made access to mental health and substance use disorder services more essential than ever. The president-elect is calling on Congress to appropriate $4 billion to enable the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Health Resources and Services Administration to expand access to these vital services. Ensure adequate funding for veterans' health. COVID-19 has put enormous pressure on America's veterans and on the Veterans Health Administration that is charged with providing and facilitating top-notch care for them. The president-elect is committed to ensuring America delivers on its promise to the people who have served our country. To account for increased usage as many veterans have lost access to private health insurance, higher overall costs, and other pandemic-related impacts, the president-elect is immediately requesting an additional $20 billion to make sure that veterans' health care needs can be met through this crisis. Combat increased risk of gender-based violence. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated domestic violence and sexual assault, creating a 'shadow pandemic' for many women and girls who are largely confined to their home with their abuser and facing economic insecurity that makes escape more difficult. President Biden is calling for at least $800 million in supplemental funding for key federal programs that protect survivors. Provide Critical Support to Struggling Communities. COVID-19 and the resulting economic crisis has devastated communities across the country. Schools remain closed, with students struggling with remote learning and parents 1.6 million mothers this fall leaving the workforce. Small businesses, the backbones of their communities that employ nearly half of American workers, are unable to keep their doors open. And, some state and local essential workers are seeing their wages reduced or their jobs disappear. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to send a lifeline to small businesses; protect educators, public transit workers, and first responders from lay-offs; and keep critical services running at full strength. Altogether, his plan would provide approximately $440 billion in critical support to struggling communities. This is in addition to funds that President-elect Biden is requesting for safely reopening schools throughout the country. President-elect Biden's plan will: Provide small businesses with the funding they need to reopen and rebuild. Small businesses sustain half of the private sector jobs in America, and they have struggled in the wake of COVID-19. Black- and Brown-owned small businesses, and those in hard-hit industries like restaurants, hotels, and the arts, have suffered disproportionately. Nationally, small business revenue is down 32 percent, and at least 400,000 firms have permanently closed. To help hard-hit firms survive the pandemic and fully recover, President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to: Provide grants to more than 1 million of the hardest hit small businesses. This $15 billion in flexible, equitably distributed grants will help small businesses get back on their feet, put the current disaster behind them, and build back better. Leverage $35 billion in government funds into $175 billion in additional small business lending and investment. With a $35 billion investment in successful state, local, tribal, and non-profit small business financing programs, Congress can generate as much as $175 billion in low-interest loans and venture capital to help entrepreneurs including those in the clean energy sector innovate, create and maintain jobs, build wealth, and provide the essential goods and services that communities depend on. In addition, the president-elect wants to work with Congress to make sure that restaurants, bars, and other businesses that have suffered disproportionately have sufficient support to bridge to the recovery, including through the Community Credit Corporation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Provide support for first responders and other essential workers. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, first responders, frontline public health workers, and countless other essential workers have risked their lives to keep our communities safe and functioning. Educators have worked tirelessly to keep our children learning and growing, coming up with new ways to reach and engage their students, often while balancing caring for their own children. Without these front line workers, we will not be able to effectively respond to the pandemic, administer the vaccine, or safely reopen our schools. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to provide $350 billion in emergency funding for state, local, and territorial governments to ensure that they are in a position to keep front line public workers on the job and paid, while also effectively distributing the vaccine, scaling testing, reopening schools, and maintaining other vital services. The president-elect is also calling on Congress to allocate $3 billion of this funding to the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Grants from EDA provide resources directly to state and local government entities, tribal institutions, institutions of higher education, and non-profits to fund initiatives that support bottom's up economic development and enable good-paying jobs. This funding double the amount provided by the CARES Act will support communities nationwide with a broad range of financial needs as they respond to and recover from COVID-19. Protect the future of public transit. Safe and dependable public transit systems are critical for a robust and equitable economy recovery. The president-elect is calling for $20 billion in relief for the hardest hit public transit agencies. This relief will keep agencies from laying off transit workers and cutting the routes that essential workers rely on every day while making these transit systems more resilient and ensuring that communities of color maintain the access to opportunity that public transportation provides. Support Tribal governments' response to COVID-19. COVID-19 has exacted an especially high toll in Indian Country. People living on reservations are four times more likely to have COVID-19 and American Indian and Alaska Natives are nearly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than white Americans. While the December down payment had many beneficial provisions, it included little direct funding to help Tribal governments respond to COVID-19. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to give Tribes the resources they need to obtain sufficient personal protective equipment, increase access to clean water and electricity, and expand internet access so that children can learn remotely and more families can obtain basic health care through telemedicine. President-elect Biden's plan would invest $20 billion in Indian Country to support Tribal governments' response to the pandemic. These resources will help to reduce stark and persistent inequities in COVID-19 transmission, hospitalization, and death, while improving economic conditions and opportunity. Modernize federal information technology to protect against future cyber attacks. In addition to the COVID-19 crisis, we also face a crisis when it comes to the nation's cybersecurity. The recent cybersecurity breaches of federal government data systems underscore the importance and urgency of strengthening U.S. cybersecurity capabilities. President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to launch the most ambitious effort ever to modernize and secure federal IT and networks. To remediate the SolarWinds breach and boost U.S. defenses, including of the COVID-19 vaccine process, President-elect Biden is calling on Congress to: Expand and improve the Technology Modernization Fund. A $9 billion investment will help the U.S. launch major new IT and cybersecurity shared services at the Cyber Security and Information Security Agency (CISA) and the General Services Administration and complete modernization projects at federal agencies. In addition, the president-elect is calling on Congress to change the fund's reimbursement structure in order to fund more innovative and impactful projects. Surge cybersecurity technology and engineering expert hiring. Providing the Information Technology Oversight and Reform fund with $200 million will allow for the rapid hiring of hundreds of experts to support the federal Chief Information Security Officer and U.S. Digital Service. Build shared, secure services to drive transformational projects. Investing $300 million in no-year funding for Technology Transformation Services in the General Services Administration will drive secure IT projects forward without the need of reimbursement from agencies. Improving security monitoring and incident response activities. An additional $690M for CISA will bolster cybersecurity across federal civilian networks, and support the piloting of new shared security and cloud computing services. But for most Australians, interstate travel has been off-limits for much of the past year, unless the person gets a government exemption and pays for 14 days in hotel quarantine. Fines and the threat of jail time have become standard. And just when things started to ease, a small outbreak in Sydney last month led to another clampdown, which has kept families apart, created huge traffic jams and generally exasperated a country of 25 million people who really love to wander during the holidays and peak summer months. The hard borders began early in the pandemic with uniform closures all states shuttered to all others. More recently, after the virus was suppressed nationwide but started popping up again here and there, the restrictions have become a messy patchwork. Some state leaders seem to be trying to outdo each other with new rules, and harsh words tinged with bravado have been exchanged after missteps on the other side of state lines. Especially for people who live in major cities which states, when a few cases emerge, label hot spots with the speed and sanctimony of a fire-and-brimstone preacher its starting to look as if that lamb ad is not so far from reality. We were trying for comedic diversion, but the best comedy has its roots in truth, said Scott Nowell, co-founder and chief creative officer of the advertising firm The Monkeys, which produced the commercial. Right now people can just about believe that whats there could happen, which is just crazy. Not every Republican senator nearing retirement exhibited Mr. Romney or Mr. McCains bravery. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, an octogenarian former presidential candidate himself, voted not only against convicting Mr. Trump last February, but against even subpoenaing witnesses. Courage cannot be explained by a single variable. Politicians whose communities have suffered disproportionately from government tyranny may show disproportionate bravery in opposing it. Mr. Romney, like the Arizona Republican Jeff Flake whose opposition to Mr. Trump likely ended his senatorial career belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was once persecuted on American soil. In the fevered days after Sept. 11, the only member of Congress to oppose authorizing the war on terror was a Black woman, Barbara Lee. But during that era, too, ambition undermined political courage, and stature fortified it. John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman, Democratic senators who went on to run for president in 2004, voted for the Iraq war. By contrast, Mr. Kerrys Massachusetts colleague, Ted Kennedy, who had been elected to the Senate in 1962, voted against it. The most dogged opposition came from a man who had entered the Senate three years before that, Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Despite hailing from a state George W. Bush had won, and seeing his junior colleague support the war, the 84-year-old Mr. Byrd, a former majority leader, tried to prevent the Senate from voting during the heat of a midterm campaign. His effort failed by a vote of 95 to 1. If Americans want our constitutional system to withstand the next authoritarian attack, we should look for men and women like Senators Romney, Benton and Byrd, who worry more about how they will be judged by history than by their peers. George W. Bush was a terrible president but might have proved a useful post-presidential senator because he would have been less cowed than his colleagues by Mr. Trump. John Quincy Adams served in Congress for 17 years after leaving the White House. Given how vulnerable Americas governing institutions are, maybe Barack Obama could be convinced to do something similar. Like most people, Id prefer senators who do what I think is right. But Id take comfort if more at least did what they think is right. Thats more likely when youve reached a phase of life when the prospect of losing an election or being screamed at in an airport no longer seems so important. America needs more senators who can say as Daniel Webster did to his constituents in Massachusetts I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to save you, whatever be your attitude toward me. Nolan was an artist known for celebrating the human spirit, but the trial compelled him to explore mans lesser nature. Al Alvarez comes to lunch, he wrote on July 23, 1961. He is going to Poland. We talk about concentration camps. If we could paint the subject it would be a duty to do so. During the Eichmann trial The Observer had asked Alvarez to write on the camps and Nolan was invited to illustrate the article. He made up his mind two weeks later: Decide to go to Poland, he wrote in his diary. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Judges and Victims). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 For months before the visit, the camps haunted Nolan and he made notes on how he might paint them. Then, between November 27 and December 10, in the two weeks before Eichmanns judges passed sentence, he filled sheets of paper with the same face and features over and over again recording do 50 today on one day alone. Some were simple outlines, others fully formed, but every image had the same broad forehead, receding hair, thick rounded glasses, thin lips, and in most a collared shirt buttoned to the top. All mirrored photographs of the notorious prisoner. On December 12, 1961, Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Two days after that, Nolan deliberated, I am reluctant in a way to dig deeper into Europe but I do not see how the question of the camps can be forever shelved. Perhaps they will never be the material of art, he wrote. It is impossible to tell. How can a disease be painted? Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 The next day Eichmann was sentenced to death and it provided the release Nolan needed. He immediately switched from Eichmanns face to painting more than a hundred images of Auschwitz and concentration camp inmates, keeping them with the Eichmann portraits in a folder he titled Judges and Victims. There were three distinct groups, dated roughly six days apart. The first was characterised by prison stripes faces sliced by bars or vacant eyes above vertical stripes of the camp uniforms. The next group were wreathed in smoke, which suddenly cleared to expose harsh heads scratched from paint with screaming mouths. Finally, there were skeletal heads tortured and twisted. The evolution was clear and their titles unequivocal: Head of Prisoner Concentration Camp and Skeletal Head in a German Concentration Camp. Nine days passed in peace. Then suddenly more images poured out, a tortured stream of figures crucified on smoking crosses, skeletons overflowing wheelbarrows and bodies laid out in neat rows of death. Nineteen of the pictures were dated January 7, 1962, more than 90 were untitled, and one was reproduced by Londons Marlborough Graphics in 1967. Sidney signed and dated the artists proof, inscribing Auschwitz on the back. His iconography was obvious. More than a million human beings became smoke and ash in the Auschwitz ovens. Faith was death and wheelbarrows were for the living to carry the dead to roll call. With an economy of strokes Nolans pictures were as convincing as photographs. He found nothing to redeem the human race. Nolan travelled to Poland with Alvarez two weeks later. On January 29, 1962, he wrote, Go to Auschwitz. Alvarez recalled: Auschwitz is a difficult experience to handle, even as a tourist. You grab hold of whatever you can to keep your mental balance. He went on to describe what Nolan saw: Mountains of human hair, suitcases, spectacles, shaving brushes, artificial limbs. Great mounds of old shoes reach up like rubble after an air raid, all of it covered in dust and human ash, left as though the owners would momentarily return. In his autobiography, Alvarez remembered that Nolan was upset less by the obvious horrors the crematoria, the mountains of shorn hair, discarded spectacles, suitcases and artificial limbs than by the orderliness of the camps layout. He explained: The interiors of the barracks were dreadful the tiers of bunks in which the prisoners slept, six men to a bunk, like battery hens waiting to be slaughtered but the neat grids in which the buildings were arranged troubled him even more. Turning to Alvarez, Nolan had quietly evoked the disdain his friend and mentor Kenneth Clark had for abstract art and its lack of humanity: It looks like a bloody Mondrian, he said. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 Overwhelmed, Nolan refused to illustrate The Observer article. It was an emotional experience for which he had been completely unprepared and the visit triggered an unexpected and lasting retreat from any direct Auschwitz imagery. Unwilling, or even psychologically unable, to translate the experience into paint, he would avoid speaking of it for more than 20 years. Thirty years later he still remembered the disruption it caused to his long-established habit of mixing music and painting, as he wrote in his diary: I could not listen to music for months after going to Auschwitz. Alvarez added to Nolans emotional turmoil in 1962 by sending a draft of his article. Dear Sid, he wrote, heres a draft much scribbled on. I hope you can make it out. I feel very dissatisfied with it. So do, please, be as ruthless as you can with it. I cant waste this opportunity to get the thing said straight. In his article, Alvarez suggested that in modern times all humanity had the capability to be inhuman. If they [the camps] were simply the playgrounds for sadists who, in another society would have been locked away, then they were an aberration best forgotten, for they prove that our sickest fantasies can be acted out. The Eichmann affair has shown us that they were not. Nolan scrawled on his copy: High civilisation can perish; and when the civilisation is a world one, we cannot afford it ... Art has always been a geiger counter for civilisation. Long committed to literature and religion as symbolic languages, Nolan expressed Auschwitz using one to disguise the other. Six weeks after returning he painted an elephant, using the symbol of freedom conjured in Romain Garys book The Roots of Heaven. Garys lead character, Morel, survived Nazi concentration camps by thinking of elephants. I would close my eyes and think of elephants at liberty, running freely across Africa, hundreds and hundreds of magnificent animals that nothing can resist no cement wall, no barbed wire, nothing ... Thats liberty I tell you! In camps designed to destroy the human spirit we came to look at the SS men with smiles, he said, as we thought how from one moment to the next, this magnificent charge would pass over them. Sidney loved elephants, Nolans widow, Lady Mary Nolan, confirmed in a 2001 interview with curator and researcher Jane Clark. He really did love elephants ... Elephants represented a lot to him. In Garys book elephants had represented the old human rights, the rights of man, and on March 6, 1962, Nolans first major painting after his visit to Auschwitz was an elephant straight from Garys opening chapter describing those noble giants, pressed back more and more towards the marshes and condemned by man to disappear from the earth. It was imagery that allowed Nolan to put symbolic flesh on Auschwitz bones. Youve got to belong to a civilisation thats doomed and express paradise but if you have too much of the Nazis you cant expect to do very well, he said in an interview with British art critic Peter Fuller many years later. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 From September 1962, Nolan chased visions of paradise during a three-month trip through Africa. But a deep well of grief ran through the resulting work. There were faces and figures of disenfranchised tribes and races, subjugated by colonial empires. He posed apes as Ecce Homo Christian iconography representing the abasement of human beings in war and floated gorillas in earthen tombs, lamenting, He is a better kind of man. He doesnt make war ... so we kill him off. In 1965, Nolan briefly placed apes and saints on smoking crosses while helmeted Nazis marched beneath or leered at women. Then two years later he revealed to Gavin Souter of the Sydney Morning Herald: When I went to Auschwitz I was struck by the enormity of the scandal of the position of women, and then linked Auschwitz to Dantes Inferno, a nine-panelled painting of female figures stacked like firewood in the streets, telling Hal Missingham, then director of the Art Gallery of NSW, as I painted they levitated ... whirling around in the sky and looked more like ... lost souls. Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, Nolan continued to stare into the pit. Am I moving towards Austwitz [sic] painting at last? he wrote in 1985. I hope not. He deplored human suffering, his friend of 40 years, George Ivan Smith, recalled at Nolans 1993 memorial service. He had raged against human tragedy, Smith said, a painter driven by deep respect for life and by deep grief when [he] sensed that life was being crushed in that eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness. Loading The impact of the Holocaust on Sidney Nolan has remained invisible. But soon after visiting Auschwitz he said, What an artist really wants is to say something which one day out of contemporary context will mean something important. In a world still troubled by genocide, racial disenfranchisement and nationalism, Nolans Holocaust images reflect something he and Alvarez often discussed the arts didnt just reflect society, they were a kind of early warning system. This year, the 60th anniversary of Eichmanns trial, we are well-positioned to exhume and examine Nolans warning. To look back towards the crematoria and barbed wire, and through his exploration of our lesser nature, acknowledge and honour the ghosts pleading to be remembered. This is an adapted extract from Andrew Turleys upcoming book, Nolans Africa. Kim Yo Jong is no longer in the Workers Partys Politburo, but she still lobs insults at Seoul through state media. North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns sister Kim Yo Jong has been assigned a new title and removed from the countrys highest decision-making body, but after she called out South Korea in an insult-laden tirade this week, experts said her relative power remains intact in the dynastic regime. State media reported a series of promotions, demotions and reassignments that happened over the weekend during a rare congress of the ruling Korean Workers Party, and Kim was left out of the partys Politburo and assigned a lower rank. She went from First Vice Department Director of to simply Vice Department Director of the Central Committee of the Party. International media immediately picked up on the change, and observers began to speculate whether the woman once considered by South Korean intelligence to be North Koreas second in command had fallen from grace. The demotion may have been over a series of harsh verbal attacks on Seoul and North Koreans who fled to the South that she had made over the summer, Lee Inbae, director for the South Korea-based Institute for Cooperative Security told RFAs Korean Service in a previous report. But two days after the apparent demotion, she returned to form, issuing yet another provocative statement in state media, calling the South Korean government a truly weird group and the idiot and top the world's list in misbehavior, after the Souths military monitored a military parade during the congress. International media reports said the most recent colorful outburst cast a veil of uncertainty on what her reassignment signified. Ken Gause of the Virginia-based CNA think tank said the outburst is evidence that Kim Yo Jong will remain a powerful force in her brothers inner circle. Well, I think the fact that she made the statement shows there has been no demotion in her position. You cannot judge the Kim family by their formal portfolios. So, the fact that she's on the Politburo, not on the Politburo, doesn't really matter, Gause told RFA. I don't think she's being punished for anything like that This really kind of shows the world that no, she's still a major player, he said. Media Spotlight Kim Yo Jong first became an officially recognized public figure by state media in March 2014 when she was introduced as a senior official of the Central Committee. In November of that year, she became First Vice Department Director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. In 2017 she became an alternate member of the Politburo, the second woman ever to hold a position on the policy-making body, after her aunt Kim Kyong Hui. In 2018 she appeared to be acting as her brothers special envoy, travelling to South Korea for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Pictures of her seated near U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during the opening ceremony of the Olympics were prominently featured in international media. In this Feb. 9, 2018 file photo, Kim Yo Jong, top right, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, sits alongside North Korea's nominal head of state Kim Yong Nam, and behind U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as she watches the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. AP She then accompanied her brother as part of his entourage during the U.S.-North Korea Summits in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019. At the end of 2019 she was appointed First Vice Department Director of the Central Committee of the Party and issued her first public statement in March 2020, saying the South Korean presidential office had an imbecile way of thinking for denouncing a North Korean weapons test. When her brothers prolonged absence in April caused speculation that he might be seriously ill, many predicted that she would assume leadership of the country in the event of his death. Under her leadership inter-Korean relations ruptured in June when North Korea cut off all communication with the South and destroyed a Seoul-funded joint Korean liaison office inside the North in response to South Korean civic groups launching propaganda leaflets by balloon into North Korean territory. Prior to the buildings destruction, Kim Yo Jong hinted in a statement that Pyongyang would retaliate for such an act of evil intention, and called the leaflet launchers, many of whom are North Korean escapees who resettled in South Korea, human scum short of wild animals, and mongrel dogs. In another June statement, she characterized a speech by South Korean President Moon Jae-in commemorating two decades of inter-Korean relations as a string of shameless and impudent words full of incoherence. But after July statements from Kim Yo Jong all but disappeared from state media, until she returned with quip aimed at South Koreas foreign minister in December that was relatively mild by her standards. Yet ahead of the party congress in January, South Koreas National Intelligence Service predicted she would be promoted to a higher rank given that she had such a prominent role in North Korean affairs over the previous year. It is possible that her removal from the Politburo is the result of a structural or organizational change, Seoul-based NK News reported, citing an expert who said none in the new Politburo held the rank of first vice director or vice director. The NK News report also noted that the congress reintroduced the secretariat, a high-profile party organ that existed during the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il era. This time around, the secretariat did not include anyone in charge of inter-Korean or foreign affairs, the report said. Additionally, the apparent demotion could be in preparation for a possible promotion as new appointments are scheduled for a Jan. 17 meeting of the Supreme Peoples Assembly. Gause said Kim Yo Jongs power flows from the fact that she is within the Kim family and that Kim Jong Un has decided to use her as a way of voicing his views out to the world. Additional reporting by Heejung Yang and Seung Wook Hong for RFA's Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. MARSEILLE, France, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Interxion: A Digital Realty Company (NYSE: DLR) and leading European provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral colocation data centre solutions, has signed an agreement with PCCW GLOBAL to locate the Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) subsea cable system's termination and interconnection equipment in Interxion's MRS2 data centre in Marseille, France. The collaboration will enable low-latency access to over 160 connectivity providers along with multiple content, cloud, gaming and video streaming platforms. The high-speed, 15,000km PEACE subsea cable system will offer high capacity, low-latency routes connecting China, Europe and Africa. In addition to France, the cable will land in Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Djibouti, Kenya, Pakistan and other countries and regions with onward terrestrial connectivity to China. The PEACE cable will be the fifthteenth subsea cable system to land in Marseille, further enhancing the value of Network Hubs deployed on PlatformDIGITAL, Digital Realty's global infrastructure solution, in the region as enterprises seek greater resiliency and performance for interconnecting global workflows. The collaboration represents a strategic expansion of both PlatformDIGITAL and Console Connect, PCCW Global's Software Defined Interconnection platform. Both platforms enable new and existing customers to deploy and manage hybrid IT services quickly and efficiently. Console Connect is available to Interxion customers at MRS1, MRS2 and MRS3, providing them with instant access to a global ecosystem of cloud, SaaS, UcaaS, IX and IoT partners, as well as extended coverage to more than 400 data centers in 47 countries worldwide. Interxion customers in Marseille can also access Console Connect's new Internet On-Demand service, which offers high-performance internet access on-demand across PCCW Global's leading Tier 1 IP network. Interxion's Marseille campus is one of the world's leading digital hubs for intercontinental data traffic with a thriving community of numerous connectivity providers, digital media and cloud segments along with local and global enterprises, providing customers a strong foundation to execute their digital transformation strategies and scale globally. "Interxion's fluid interconnection environment in Marseille enables the PEACE subsea cable to efficiently service the needs of the vibrant community of interest on the campus, while extending the system's reach to additional markets such as Frankfurt and Paris," says Sameh Sobhy, Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at PCCW Global. "Selecting the right data centre in Europe for the PEACE subsea cable to interconnect with is a critical component to ensure the project's commercial success. We know that with Interxion we have made the right strategic decision," says Sun Xiaohua, Chief Operating Officer of the PEACE Cable International Network Co. Ltd. The PEACE system will provide the most direct and high-capacity route from Asia to Europe. These features, combined with exceptionally low latency, are vitally important for a wide array of commercial and consumer applications. Moreover, PEACE deploys a state-of-the-art "system within a system" configuration that gives each party the required flexibility to design its own subsystem with reconfigurable bandwidth for different points over the lifetime of the cable. "This collaboration with PEACE and PCCW Global not only solidifies Marseille's future as an intercontinental hub with access to state-of-the-art communication services, but also affords Interxion's global customer base entry into new markets and the ability to connect their often geographically dispersed infrastructure in close proximity to the connected community via PlatformDIGITAL," says Mike Hollands, Senior Director, Market Development at Interxion. "The PEACE cable is well placed to meet the burgeoning exchange of data and video traffic between Europe, Africa and Asia, enabling enterprises to extend their global workflows and efficiently execute their digital transformation strategies." About Interxion: A Digital Realty Company Interxion: A Digital Realty Company, is a leading provider of carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre solutions across EMEA. With more than 700 connectivity providers in over 100 data centres across 13 European countries, Interxion provides communities of connectivity, cloud and content hubs. As part of Digital Realty, customers now have access to 49 metros across six continents. For more information, please visit www.interxion.com. About Digital Realty Digital Realty supports the world's leading enterprises and service providers by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL, the company's global data center platform, provides customers a trusted foundation and proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture PDx solution methodology for scaling digital business and efficiently managing data gravity challenges. Digital Realty's global data center footprint gives customers access to the connected communities that matter to them with more than 280 facilities in 49 metros across 24 countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 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. With a network footprint reaching over 3,000 cities in 160+ countries across 5 continents, 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 pccwglobal.com. About PEACE Cable International Network CO., LTD PEACE Cable International Network CO., LTD, founded in 2018 and registered in Hong Kong. PEACE aims to be leading international submarine cable system operator. PEACE submarine cable system, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, provides an open, flexible and carrier-neutral services for its customers. PEACE is targeted for completion in 2021. When complete, the high-speed PEACE cable system will offer the shortest routes from China to Europe and Africa, interconnecting three of the world's most populous continents whilst at the same time dramatically reducing latency, delivering a superior connectivity experience which will be ideal for a vast array of commercial and consumer applications. To learn more about PEACE Cable System, please visit peacecable.com. Media Inquiries Marc Musgrove Digital Realty (415) 508-2812 [email protected] Alex Pehlivan Interxion: A Digital Realty Company +44 7740 248867 [email protected] Ivan Ho PCCW Group +852 2883 8747 [email protected] Investor Relations John J. Stewart / Jim Huseby Digital Realty (415) 738-6500 [email protected] Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements related to the PEACE subsea cable, our Marseille campus, the European and French metros, PlatformDIGITAL and the global exchange of data. For a list and description of risks and uncertainties, see the reports and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE Digital Realty SCHENECTADY Leesa Perazzo has resigned from City Council, setting up the first of two vacancies on the panel this month. Perazzo tendered a formal a letter of resignation on Thursday afternoon following the sale of her Bellevue home, marking the end of what she said was a bittersweet process. Stepping away from my council job is still a really difficult thing for me, Perazzo said. I dont know how its going to feel to not be a public servant. Perazzo was first elected in 2011 and was the top vote-getter after winning a third term in 2019. The departure of Perazzo and city Councilman Ed Kosiur, who will retire Jan. 23, sets up fierce behind-the-scenes jostling for successors. Among the candidates who have expressed interest are Carl Williams and Brendan Savage, the son of former Schenectady County Legislature chairwoman Susan Savage. Mayor Gary McCarthy on Thursday tentatively threw his support behind Haileab Samuel, CEO of Schenectady-based tech company [s]Cube Inc. I havent formally said that yet, but thats whats going to happen, probably sometime next week, McCarthy said. Samuel, who also serves on the board of directors of the Schenectady Municipal Housing Authority, didnt immediately return a phone call seeking comment Thursday. City Democratic Chairman Tom Bellick said the committee wont start interviewing candidates until early February. Bellick reiterated that filling the vacancies is solely within the purview of City Council, who can either tap replacements for the unexpired terms, or keep the seats unfilled until Novembers general election. If the vacancies are filled, the candidates would then have to run again, setting up what has the potential for a sprawling race for five of the seven seats, all of which are held by Democrats. Council members Karen Zalewski-Wildzunas, Marion Porterfield and City Council President John Mootooveren are up for re-election. Lawmakers have been largely mum on who theyll support, but Perazzo and Porterfield are supporting Williams, a Schenectady NAACP member and vice chairman of Schenectady's Civilian Police Review Board. Kosiur has said he will back Savage and Williams. Both Porterfield and Perazzo have said the city Democratic Committee has been sluggish in supporting diverse candidates, and have said anyone tapped to fill the vacancies must be a person of color. Two of six remaining council members are diverse. Im personally asking that my seat be filled by a person of color who is qualified, and there are a number of them that are," Perazzo said. Mootooveren said he's in the process of setting up a meeting with council members to discuss potential candidates and a timeline for when the slot will be filled. "I'd hate to put a timeline on it," Mootooveren said, adding he hoped lawmakers would meet next week. Perazzo said the mayor shouldnt be publicly backing or presenting potential candidates. Independent minds are important, Perazzo said. The council is the checks and balances for the mayor. COLUMBIA Jaime Harrison will be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee after falling short in his campaign against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham last year, with President-elect Joe Biden picking him to lead the party. The long-expected development could prove to be a boon for South Carolina Democrats, who have sought to get more national attention and resources for years and will now have one of their own helming the party apparatus. In a statement announcing his pick of Harrison as well as several other party posts, Biden said they "represent the very best of the Democratic Party." "We need to elect Democrats across our country and up and down the ballot," Biden said. "To do that is going to take tireless leadership, committed to strengthening Democratic infrastructure across our states. These leaders are battle-tested and ready for this immense task. I know they will get the job done." In a series of tweets, Harrison said he was "humbled and excited" that Biden had chosen him. "Together, well organize everywhere, invest in state parties, expand the map, and elect Democrats who will be champions for the working people of this country," Harrison said. " A former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, Harrison shattered fundraising records and garnered national attention for his race against Graham, R-S.C., though the incumbent ended up defeating him by 10 percentage points. Harrison was the immediate frontrunner for the DNC job, aided by his experience as a state party chairman, prolific fundraising ability and close relationship with House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, who holds substantial influence with Biden after helping lift him to his Democratic primary victory last year. Clyburn praised the selection Thursday. "I've known Jaime Harrison for years I know his heart, his passion for our party, his unmatched work ethic and I commend President-elect Biden on an excellent choice," Clyburn said. Graham also took notice of the pick, issuing words of congratulations. "This is a big honor and Im confident he will do a good job representing the Democratic cause," Graham said. "Jaime will be a formidable opponent." Graham said he always likes it "when South Carolinians are recognized for their talents and accept leadership positions." "Good luck," Graham said to Harrison, "but not too much luck!" In the months since his failed bid, Harrison launched a new political fundraising group called the "Dirt Road PAC" to support Democratic candidates in other races around the South. The group achieved its first success earlier this month with Democratic victories in two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, which gave Democrats the Senate majority. He made no secret of his interest in the job, pointing to his diversity of experiences in Democratic politics working for Clyburn on Capitol Hill, leading a state party and running as a statewide candidate that have allowed him to build an expansive network within the party. Current S.C. Democratic Party chairman Trav Robertson said his predecessor's rise in the national party would be "exciting for South Carolina." "Jaime brings a breath of fresh air because he understands what state parties go through, especially state parties in a state that might not be as purple or blue as other states, and that's welcome news across the country," Robertson said. Before running for Senate, Harrison ran for the DNC job once before in 2017 but dropped out before committee members began voting and endorsed the eventual winner, Tom Perez. He went on to become an associate chairman under Perez for the past four years. The news of Harrison's upcoming ascension to DNC chair was first reported Thursday by the New York Times, and also reported by Politico and The Washington Post. Over almost two decades of work in South Carolina politics, Harrison has been at the forefront of efforts to expand the political battleground to include more southern states, including his own. During his Senate campaign, Harrison often touted his humble upbringing in Orangeburg. He rose from poverty there to attend Yale and Georgetown Law School before going on to work in state and national politics. Harrison would be the first South Carolinian to lead the DNC since the late Don Fowler, another former S.C. Democratic Party chairman who took the reins of the national party for two years in the 1990s during former President Bill Clinton's administration. Robertson lamented that Fowler would not be there to see his longtime friend follow in his footsteps. "It's bittersweet," Robertson said. "His wisdom and counsel is something that would have been greatly valued." Formed in 2010, Wild Up gained crucial visibility during a residency at the Hammer Museum in 2012, and has been expanding a close-knit family of composers and performers ever since. Darkness Sounding, organized by Rountree, premiered a year ago with an all-night drone concert, a collective song circle and more. Here is a closer look at four of this editions presentations. (Events may be affected by changing coronavirus restrictions; updates will be available at darknesssounding.wildup.org.) Two hearts are better than one When Rountree asked the composer Chris Kallmyer what he might want to do for the festival, the answer, after months of virtual performances, was: something real. What would it be like to have people host your music in their own space, to let people come into your bubble? Kallmyer recalled thinking. He has long been interested in bells, and has constructed chimes which he loves because theyre not the hippest medium for previous projects, including works shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. For his Darkness Sounding piece, which takes its title from a Bruce Springsteen lyric, Kallmyer came up with the idea of forming two sets of chimes: the pipes hand cut, the wood left over from renovations he made to his bungalow over the past year. Each set will travel to four different homes during the four-week festival. (Potential hosts can apply on Wild Ups website starting on Monday by describing the sounds they hear in their outdoor spaces.) JACKSON, Miss., Jan. 15, 2021 PRNewswire/ -- For the ninth straight year, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Mississippi School Choice Week by the state's governor. This year, Gov. Tate Reeves' timely proclamation recognizes that every Mississippi student deserves an effective education, and it is important that parents explore and identify the best school option for their child. More than a dozen other governors, as well as hundreds of county, city, and town leaders, have officially recognized Jan. 24-30 as School Choice Week. Nationally, more than 33,000 events have been planned for the annual public awareness effort, which has transformed into an entirely virtual extravaganza this year due to COVID-19. Mississippi parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 497 virtual activitiesincluding a statewide "Coffee and Conversation" with school choice leaders over Facebook Liveto celebrate choice and spark conversations about the diverse and innovative learning opportunities that help children succeed. The Week will be celebrated by schools of every type: traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool. "Across Mississippi and across the nation, families are speaking up for educational opportunity," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are thrilled by Mississippi's participation in the national celebration and hope many families discover a great school fit this year." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/mississippi . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com A female prison officer who sent sexually explicit text messages and photographs of herself to two teenage inmates has been jailed for 18 months. Jordan Trainor, 25, even printed off some of the X-rated selfies on the office computer at the Wetherby Young Offenders Institution and handed them to a 17 year old convict. The married mother of one allowed one of the teens to touch her bum and smuggled in phones, and possibly drugs and weapons to the two boys, a court heard. Jordan Trainor, 25, pictured, was jailed for 18 months after she sent explicit messages to two inmates at Wetherby Young Offenders' Institution including naked selfies Trainor, of Normanton, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, who is now 17 weeks pregnant with her second child, broke down in tears as she was jailed at Leeds Crown Court after pleading guilt to misconduct in a public office. Sentencing Judge Simon Phillips QC told her: 'As a former prison officer, serving any sentence is a challenging and difficult proposal with the reception you will get from other inmates. 'You abused you position of significant trust and responsibility.' Trainor found both 17 year old inmates had illicit mobile phones in Wetherby, but reported neither to the authorities. The judge said: 'You used the fact that he had a phone to send him sexualised text messages and images and you printed out copies of those sexualised photographs at your work and handed them to him. 'You engaged in flirtatious behaviour with these inmates, which you enjoyed. 'You accept that you liked the contact you were having with these two young inmates.' The court heard Trainor had previously worked at Feltham Young Offenders Institute, London, until she moved to Yorkshire with her husband and their young daughter when he changed jobs. She started work at Wetherby in June, 2018, where she came into contact with the two youths, who cannot be identified because of their age. Prosecutor Jonathan Sharp told the court that in Autumn 2019 she developed a 'flirtatious relationship' with the first boy after she discovers he had a mobile phone. 'She took sexual photographs of herself and sent them to his phone and in a particularly bold move she printed out the photos at work and handed them to him,' said Mr Sharp. She also smuggled three 'phone shaped packages' into Wetherby for the first boy. Trainor then developed an inappropriate relationship with the second boy after learning he had three mobile phones in his cell. 'She began sending him sexual text messages and sexual photographs and she let him touch her sexually on three occasions,' he said. Trainor would swap shifts with colleagues to be with the second inmate and by December 'gossip was rife' between staff and inmates about what was going on. On December 23, 2019 Trainor sent the text 'Cannot wait to see you today. Miss your face x' The message was Intercepted and Trainor was stopped at the prison gates as she arrived for work. Soon after she was sent home in disgrace that morning she sent the text 'I'll not see you again, I've been suspended.' Mitigating Miss Jade Edwards said Trainor has a three year old daughter and is expecting her second child in June. She said Trainor had been in an unhappy marriage and her husband has given her little attention. Trainor felt rejected by fellow officers at Wetherby because of her London accent and they referred to her as 'Drainor' rather than Trainor, said Miss Edwards. Trainor was drinking 12 cans of Stella each day. 'The two inmates were her only friends and they paid her interest and she welcomed it,' said Miss Edwards. She said Trainor, who is no longer with her husband and has a new partner - the father of her unborn child - is now 'disgusted in herself'. Regulatory News: Lysogene (Paris:LYS) (FR0013233475 LYS ), a Phase 3 gene therapy platform company targeting central nervous system (CNS) diseases, today presents the half-year report on the liquidity contract signed by Lysogene with Kepler Cheuvreux. Under the liquidity contract concluded by LYSOGENE with the Kepler Cheuvreux brokerage firm, as of 31 December 2020, the following assets were held in the liquidity contract: Number of shares: 50,386 - Cash balance: 91,098.95 - Number of executions on buy side on the second half: 303 - Number of executions on sell side on the second half: 278 - Traded volume on buy side on the second half: 96,720 shares for 217,955.50 - Traded volume on sell side on the second half: 90,522 shares for 215,280.25 As a reminder, as of 30 June 2020, the following assets were held in the liquidity contract: Number of shares: 44,188 - Cash balance: 93,969.80 As a reminder, at the time of the implementation of the liquidity contract, the following assets were held in the liquidity contract: Number of shares: 34,030 - Cash balance: 78,185.94 Buy Side Sell Side Number of executions Number of shares Traded volume in EUR Number of executions Number of shares Traded volume in EUR Total 303 96,720 217,955.50 278 90,522 215,280.25 01/07/2020 4 1,000 2,730.00 9 2,828 8,116.36 02/07/2020 1 172 490.20 03/07/2020 8 473 1,281.83 06/07/2020 8 1,060 2,840.80 1 1 2.73 07/07/2020 9 1,500 3,900.00 08/07/2020 1 1 2.59 3 1,001 2,622.62 09/07/2020 11 4,000 9,920.00 10/07/2020 1 500 1,200.00 1 500 1,225.00 13/07/2020 2 500 1,200.00 14/07/2020 1 1 2.45 1 1 2.45 15/07/2020 1 1 2.50 16/07/2020 1 500 1,200.00 17/07/2020 1 500 1,200.00 2 500 1,225.00 20/07/2020 1 500 1,275.00 6 2,733 7,133.13 21/07/2020 8 1,766 4,927.14 22/07/2020 10 2,501 6,652.66 1 1 2.74 23/07/2020 5 1,500 3,885.00 2 528 1,372.80 24/07/2020 9 2,501 6,127.45 1 1 2.57 27/07/2020 2 500 1,225.00 2 500 1,250.00 28/07/2020 7 1,000 2,470.00 1 500 1,275.00 29/07/2020 2 500 1,220.00 30/07/2020 3 1,000 2,400.00 31/07/2020 1 500 1,200.00 3 1,000 2,430.00 03/08/2020 2 500 1,195.00 04/08/2020 2 500 1,200.00 05/08/2020 2 1,000 2,480.00 06/08/2020 2 1,000 2,430.00 07/08/2020 1 500 1,200.00 11/08/2020 4 500 1,225.00 12/08/2020 2 500 1,200.00 13/08/2020 5 1,500 3,690.00 14/08/2020 1 1 2.41 1 1 2.41 17/08/2020 2 500 1,220.00 18/08/2020 2 500 1,200.00 5 1,972 5,166.64 19/08/2020 1 500 1,250.00 24/08/2020 1 500 1,220.00 27/08/2020 1 1 2.46 1 1 2.46 28/08/2020 3 500 1,200.00 31/08/2020 14 6,668 14,802.96 01/09/2020 5 1,500 3,375.00 02/09/2020 1 500 1,090.00 1 500 1,130.00 03/09/2020 1 500 1,100.00 3 500 1,125.00 04/09/2020 2 1,000 2,280.00 07/09/2020 1 500 1,175.00 08/09/2020 8 3,500 7,735.00 1 1,000 2,350.00 09/09/2020 2 501 1,077.15 3 501 1,102.20 10/09/2020 1 44 99.00 11/09/2020 1 1 2.20 2 457 1,028.25 15/09/2020 1 1 2.23 2 501 1,127.25 16/09/2020 2 501 1,102.20 15 4,874 11,502.64 17/09/2020 3 1,500 3,450.00 1 1,000 2,400.00 18/09/2020 1 133 305.90 1 500 1,175.00 21/09/2020 3 1,367 3,103.09 1 195 448.50 22/09/2020 2 500 1,100.00 23/09/2020 1 1 2.22 1 1 2.22 24/09/2020 2 501 1,102.20 1 1 2.22 25/09/2020 3 1,500 3,150.00 1 275 591.25 28/09/2020 2 1,000 2,110.00 3 225 483.75 29/09/2020 3 1,234 2,554.38 1 500 1,090.00 30/09/2020 3 767 1,572.35 1 1 2.11 01/10/2020 1 500 1,070.00 02/10/2020 2 500 1,050.00 5 1,500 3,300.00 05/10/2020 4 1,001 2,132.13 6 1,001 2,172.17 06/10/2020 1 1 2.16 1 1 2.16 07/10/2020 5 2,305 5,393.70 08/10/2020 2 1,000 2,280.00 11 4,127 10,069.88 09/10/2020 2 500 1,225.00 6 3,000 7,770.00 12/10/2020 3 1,050 2,698.50 4 500 1,350.00 13/10/2020 10 2,250 5,625.00 1 500 1,300.00 14/10/2020 1 200 500.00 15/10/2020 22 11,000 22,000.00 7 2,000 4,160.00 16/10/2020 3 500 1,050.00 19/10/2020 1 500 1,025.00 20/10/2020 3 500 1,010.00 21/10/2020 2 1,000 2,090.00 22/10/2020 5 2,000 3,960.00 23/10/2020 8 3,000 5,760.00 1 500 1,010.00 27/10/2020 2 1,000 1,830.00 28/10/2020 3 1,500 2,595.00 1 500 875.00 29/10/2020 5 1,001 1,681.68 2 501 851.70 30/10/2020 8 1,500 2,715.00 02/11/2020 3 501 901.80 3 507 963.30 03/11/2020 1 1 1.88 5 2,495 5,039.90 04/11/2020 1 500 1,000.00 7 3,500 7,245.00 05/11/2020 2 1,000 2,030.00 3 1,000 2,130.00 09/11/2020 4 1,000 1,980.00 10/11/2020 3 500 1,000.00 11/11/2020 1 1 1.96 4 1,501 3,077.05 12/11/2020 2 498 1,020.90 11 7,500 16,425.00 13/11/2020 6 2,500 5,825.00 16/11/2020 6 3,500 7,805.00 17/11/2020 2 500 1,125.00 18/11/2020 3 500 1,150.00 19/11/2020 3 1,000 2,230.00 23/11/2020 2 500 1,095.00 24/11/2020 1 1 2.17 2 501 1,102.20 26/11/2020 5 1,000 2,230.00 30/11/2020 2 1,000 2,220.00 01/12/2020 1 500 1,100.00 1 500 1,140.00 02/12/2020 1 77 173.25 03/12/2020 1 500 1,075.00 2 423 951.75 07/12/2020 1 500 1,100.00 08/12/2020 4 1,082 2,293.84 1 500 1,075.00 10/12/2020 4 1,000 2,130.00 11/12/2020 1 418 856.90 14/12/2020 2 1,000 2,130.00 15/12/2020 3 500 1,025.00 1 500 1,050.00 16/12/2020 1 500 1,000.00 1 1 2.05 17/12/2020 2 501 1,027.05 3 1,000 2,070.00 18/12/2020 1 500 1,070.00 21/12/2020 2 1,000 2,030.00 22/12/2020 4 1,000 2,080.00 23/12/2020 3 1,500 3,300.00 24/12/2020 1 500 1,075.00 28/12/2020 23 8,000 22,800.00 29/12/2020 6 2,000 5,160.00 2 1,000 2,880.00 30/12/2020 6 2,500 6,950.00 3 1,000 2,980.00 31/12/2020 4 1,500 4,005.00 8 1,000 2,800.00 About Lysogene Lysogene is a gene therapy Company focused on the treatment of orphan diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). The Company has built a unique capability to enable a safe and effective delivery of gene therapies to the CNS to treat lysosomal diseases and other genetic disorders of the CNS. A phase 2/3 clinical trial in MPS IIIA in partnership with Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. is ongoing and a phase 1/3 clinical trial in GM1 gangliosidosis is in preparation. In accordance with the agreements signed between Lysogene and Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc., Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. will hold exclusive commercial rights to LYS-SAF302 in the United States and markets outside Europe; and Lysogene will maintain commercial exclusivity of LYS-SAF302 in Europe. Lysogene is also collaborating with an academic partner to define the strategy of development for the treatment of Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disease related to autism. www.lysogene.com. Forward Looking Statement This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements, especially on the Company's progress of its phase 2-3 clinical trial and cash runway. Although the Company believes its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, all statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release about future events are subject to (i) change without notice, (ii) factors beyond the Company's control, (iii) clinical trial results, (iv) increased manufacturing costs and (v) potential claims on its products. These statements may include, without limitation, any statements preceded by, followed by or including words such as "target," "believe," "expect," "aim," "intend," "may," "anticipate," "estimate," "plan," "objective", "project," "will," "can have," "likely," "should," "would," "could" and other words and terms of similar meaning or the negative thereof. Forward-looking statements are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties beyond the Company's control that could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the expected results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. A further list and description of these risks, uncertainties and other risks can be found in the Company's regulatory filings with the French Autorite des Marches Financiers, including in the 2019 universal registration document, registered with the French Markets Authorities on April 30, 2020, under number D.20-0427, and future filings and reports by the Company. Furthermore, these forward-looking statements are only as of the date of this press release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. If the Company updates one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that it will or will not make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. This press release has been prepared in both French and English. In the event of any differences between the two texts, the French language version shall supersede. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005460/en/ Contacts: Stephane Durant des Aulnois Chief Financial Officer stephane.durant-des-aulnois@lysogene.com + 33 1 41 43 03 99 WASHINGTON - As the word spread via email alerts and social media that a violent mob had breached the U.S. Capitol last week, workers in offices throughout the complex locked and barricaded their doors, turned out the lights, stayed low to the ground, silenced their phones and sat quietly in the dark hoping the danger would not come to them. For many of the Hill's younger staff members, the decision to take those actions wasn't instinct, it was training. An entire generation of Americans who grew up during an epoch of horrific school shootings have learned since kindergarten what to do when an outside threat enters the building. In a small conference room in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., eight of her staff members hunkered down undetected for two-and-a-half hours as the invaders occupied and trashed the offices of the third most powerful person in the country. "You could hear the mob going through her office, breaking down the door, yelling 'Where are you, Nancy?' " said Henry Connelly, Pelosi's head of communications. "There was a lot of screaming." As the rioters took pictures and defaced the speaker's offices, Pelosi's staffers remained quiet inside the locked and barricaded conference room and tried to stay calm. One of them, a 23-year-old from Northern Virginia, thought back to training she had received growing up. "In the Fairfax County Public School system, we had a lockdown drill every year where we were taught to turn off the lights, block all the windows, not open the door for any reason and to stay away from the windows. Last time I did that drill was senior year in high school, so it wasn't too long ago," the staffer, who asked not to be identified, said in a statement. "Also, as a Virginia Tech student, we were all trained during orientation for an active shooter/lockdown situation. Once we were settled in the dark, what was running through my mind was to be ready to run and fight. Thank goodness that didn't have to happen." Previous training for live shooters in a school kicked into gear when the attempted insurrection started, said Sarah Iddrissu, chief of staff for new Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. Bowman is the founder of Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a public middle school in Eastchester, Bronx, and served as principal for a decade before winning his House seat in November. Iddrissu was part of the founding team of the school and taught literacy there before joining Bowman on Capitol Hill. "We've done many drills before as educators and immediately knew what to do," Iddrissu said. "In that moment, the congressman went into full principal mode and started to survey the situation and make sure everyone was okay." They used what she called "educator language": "shelter in place" and "active shooter drill." Tabitha Raskin, 23, a Philadelphia teacher, was at the Capitol that day to support her father, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former constitutional law professor who has been named an impeachment manager for the Senate trial of President Trump. The Raskin family had just suffered a tragedy on New Year's Eve - the loss of Raskin's son, Tommy, 25, to suicide. READ MORE: National Guard backup was denied by House and Senate security officials, Capitol Police chief says Tabitha Raskin said she and her brother-in-law were in a Capitol office with a window facing the Mall with a view of the Washington Monument. They saw a crowd starting to move toward the Capitol, she said, and soon she could see some of them climbing on the scaffolding. "We were at the point of thinking, 'How did they get so close?' " she said. They then went to the House floor to see her father, and not long after a security detail escorted her to a Capitol office where she was locked in with her brother-in-law and Jamie Raskin's chief of staff, Julie Tagen. "That's really when my mind went to the drills we had in school: Hide under a desk. Hide in corners. Turn lights off and turn off any noise. Don't speak," she said. "We had a camera streaming from the House floor running, but we turned off everything. I hid under the desk with my brother-in-law," she said, with Tagen hiding near them. "We didn't make a sound." She was "freaked out," she said, especially when rioters tried to open the door of the office but left when they realized it was locked. Tagen had picked up a fire pick in the event that they did get through the door, she said. "In my mind I was wondering, 'How are these people still out there? What is going on?' Your mind goes to the worst place, and you think, 'Where is law enforcement?' Law enforcement is gone. You are fending for yourself," she said. "Finally, after about half an hour, we heard, 'Police. Open up.' We were nervous it wouldn't be the police. We thought they should have a key and open it up. But it was the police, and they took us to the place where the members were sheltering." The violent attack on the Capitol and the fear it engendered surfaced memories of the 2018 shooting of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., for Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., whose district includes the high school. In a television interview with a Florida news channel that he posted on his Twitter account, Deutch said he had been contacted by constituents who were reminded of the trauma they felt following the shooting. "As someone who has been through the crisis of trauma associated with a mass shooting, I hope we learn from this, not just what happened that led to this breach on our democracy, but I hope it reminds us that we need to do more to address the mental health aspects of things like this when they happen and to redouble our efforts to prevent the kinds of things like that horrible shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in February of 2018. This sort of trauma is real." READ MORE: State capitals are preparing for unrest after far-right threats, and residents are dreading it: I feel like Ive been held hostage Some staffers have taken to social media in recent days to express the fear they felt during the takeover and its lingering effects. On Monday, Natalie Johnson, communications director for Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., tweeted, "The more time that passes since Wednesday's siege, the worse my anxiety gets. It's hard to describe the sheer fear of being locked in an office hearing nothing but incessant sirens, not knowing where the rioters were headed next & if that was to us." While there are shelter-in-place drills and training that take place periodically for Hill staffers, another reason they know how to respond is their experience dealing with constituents who are victims of mass shootings and attacks, said Nicole Tisdale, who was an intern and staffer on the Hill and served on the House Homeland Security Committee from 2009 to 2019. "Unfortunately, as a staffer, you hear firsthand the stories of what worked to prevent more casualties and what constituents wished they had done in those moments of an attack," Tisdale said. "Talking with those victims and the survivors as they become policy advocates in the aftermath of an attack created a strange muscle memory for congressional staffers." Tisdale said that staffers absorb response tactics by listening to testimony and reading incident reports and letters from constituents about attacks and shootings. "It acts as a sort of training they didn't even know they had and hoped to never need," she said. A 28-year-old House aide from New York said that as a voice came over the loudspeaker telling staffers to shelter in place, his first thought was, "How am I going to protect myself and everyone else in here and my member? And also to keep calm." The aide, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said he was immediately taken back to the school-shooter drills he took part in during high school. But there was a difference. As you get older, you realize how real these things are. Its one thing to watch a mass shooting on television. Its heartbreaking but it doesnt hit you until youre in a situation similar to it when your life is literally in danger, the aide said. It really wasnt until after when you start watching videos and looking at all the articles and you think, Wow, I was there. I was actually a target. " The Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Thursday announced that CoWIN app's self-registration module will be released soon and it is mandatory to register with the app for the vaccination process. On Thursday, he took to Twitter to say, It is mandatory for beneficiaries to be registered on the CoWIN platform to receive Covid-19 vaccine. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states He also added, The QR code-based vaccination certificate will only be generated for Covid-19 vaccine beneficiaries who are registered on the CoWIN platform. In another tweet, the health minister, however, announced that the self-registration process is yet to start so citizens should remain wary of fraudulent apps. He wrote the self-registration module of CowinApp has not been released yet. And added, be wary of any fraudulent apps with similar names that may exist on different platforms. Short for Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network, the CoWIN app is a repurposed from the e-VIN platform that will provide real-time information of vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries of the COVID-19 vaccine. Among the various features, the CoWIN app includes automated session allocation. One of the authentication methods would be to use of Aadhaar to prevent malpractice, , the health ministry said in a press briefing last week. The health minister's message comes a day before India starts the vaccination drive. PM to launch vaccination drive Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch world's largest COVID-19 vaccination drive on 16 January, a statement from Prime Minister's Office said on Thursday. "Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will launch the pan India rollout of COVID-19 vaccination drive on 16th January, 2021 at 10:30 AM via video conferencing," the statement said. Over 3,000 session sites across the country, will be virtually connected during the launch, the statement mentioned. "A total of 3006 session sites across all States and UTs will be virtually connected during the launch. Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on the inaugural day," PMO said. Nearly 3 crore healthcare and frontline workers will receive the jab during the first phase of COVID-19 inoculation drive. The list includes health workers, both from government and private institutions, along with sanitation workers, other frontline workers, defence forces, police and other paramilitary forces. The vaccination programme will use Co-WIN, an online digital platform that will facilitate real time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries for COVID-19 vaccine. The platform has been developed by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The Co-WIN will assist programme managers across all levels while conducting vaccination sessions. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 02:16:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DUBLIN, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Ireland exported a total of 9.748 billion euros (about 11.8 billion U.S. dollars) worth of goods to China in the first 11 months of 2020, up by 20.21 percent compared with the same period of 2019, according to data released by the country's Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Friday. Meanwhile, its total goods imports from China were valued at 5.463 billion euros, up 13.59 percent year-on-year. The trade surplus that Ireland enjoyed over China during the January-November period of 2020 was close to 4.3 billion euros, an increase of nearly one billion euros when compared with the corresponding period of the previous year. The CSO figures also showed that China was the largest trade partner of Ireland in Asia and the fifth largest trade partner of the country in the world in the first 11 months of 2020. Currently the United States is the largest market for the Irish goods exports while Britain is the largest source of the goods imported by Ireland. In the first 11 months of 2020, Ireland exported over 46 billion euros worth of goods to the United States, accounting for nearly 31 percent of the country's total exports, while its goods imports from Britain were valued at about 17.9 billion euros, accounting for over 23 percent of the total imports. During the period, Ireland exported a total of 149.051 billion euros worth of goods while its total goods imports were valued at 76.918 billion euros, up 5.8 percent and down 6.6 percent respectively when compared with the same period of 2019. (1 euro = 1.21 U.S. dollars) Enditem At the same time, he says he would hold own ground on certain personnel issues. Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Dmytro Razumkov, has described as "normal" his relations with President Volodymyr Zelensky. In an interview with Focus, Razumkov has confirmed he is a member of Zelensky's team. At the same time, he stressed that he has his own stance on certain personnel issues, which is why he opposed the endorsement of Serhiy Shkarlet for Education Minister and Yuriy Vitrenko for Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Energy. Read alsoRada snubs Vitrenko's nomination for energy ministerCommenting about the vote on Shkarlet's nomination, Razumkov recalled: "Then it was not only I who abstained. His candidacy saw no support at the Rada's profile committee, and I quite often focus on the position of committees. Plus there was plenty of debate around the issue [Accusations were voiced of plagiarism in Shkarlet's research work]. That is why I abstained. " At the same time, Razumkov clarified he had not discussed the issue with the president. The Parliament chairman also recalled that he did not vote for Yuriy Vitrenko's appointment for the post of energy chief as he considers it wrong to get a $4 million bonus from a state-owned company Naftogaz, where Vitrenko worked, at a time so difficult for the entire country. "When you do business, you are free to make as much and as much as law allows. But if you work for the government, then, to put it mildly, it is not entirely politically correct from moral and ethical standpoints to demand this money from the country amid a pandemic," he said. Read alsoRada appoints Shkarlet as Education MinisterRazumkov also said that if another vote takes place in January on Vitrenko's nomination, he will not change his opinion on the matter. He added that he had not talked with the president, who endorsed Vitrenko's nomination, either. "As a people's deputy, I have the right to support or not support this candidacy. When our ideals and principles were being laid out in 2018, the Vitrenko issue was definitely not on that list," Razumkov said. Reporting by UNIAN Controversial Korean sect leader acquitted of obstructing COVID-19 mitigation efforts Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A controversial South Korean religious leader whose church was at the center of a coronavirus outbreak earlier this year has been acquitted of obstructing government efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. However, he was sentenced on charges of embezzling church funds. Eighty-nine-year-old Lee Man-hee, who heads the secretive sect Shincheonji Church of Jesus and is a self-proclaimed messiah, was arrested last August and charged with holding unapproved religious gatherings and withholding the number of attendees at the gatherings from the government. Lee was also accused by authorities of embezzling the equivalent of over $5.1 million from the church, a charge he denies but was convicted of in a local court just south of Seoul, according to South Koreas Yonhap News Agency. The news agency notes that the leader was accused of embezzling the funds to build a training center for members and to travel overseas for speaking engagements. Trouble for Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which many consider being cult-like, began in March when authorities filed a legal complaint against Lee and other leaders for holding worship gatherings deemed to be a violation of the Infectious Disease and Control Act. According to reports, thousands of members of the churchs branch in Daegu later tested positive for the virus. The church denied claims that it withheld information from the government and even stated that a list of over 200,000 church members was provided to authorities. In a statement published Thursday, the sects general assembly headquarters said that it welcomed the courts ruling finding Lee innocent of the Infection Disease Control and Prevention Act charge. However, the church criticized the courts ruling on the embezzlement charge. [W]e find the courts decision that acknowledged criminality in other charges, including embezzlement, deeply regrettable and disappointing, the statement reads. For the charges that have not been ruled innocent, we plan to actively prove his innocence through the appeals process, and stand trial before a court of law once again. The church also vowed to continue in our effort to end the COVID-19 pandemic, and diligently serve as light and salt of the world. Lastly, we apologize to the citizens of this nation for causing worries and concerns regarding this matter, the statement concluded. Prosecutors initially sought a five-year prison sentence for Lee and a fine of about $2,700. But he was found partially guilty and sentenced to three years in prison, a sentence that is suspended for four years. Lee, who has denied the allegations, was released on bail in November. The health authorities' request to Shincheonji for a list of church members' names and its facilities cannot be regarded as an epidemiological survey," Judge Kim Mi-kyung of the Suwon District Court was quoted as saying by the South Korean media outlet. "We cannot punish someone on charges of obstructing antivirus efforts for leaving out certain data, when [the request] had more to do with data collection than an actual epidemiological survey. The church has complained that its members have been attacked and faced persecution as it has been widely accused of being a coronavirus hotspot and trying to thwart the mitigation of COVID-19. Last February, health authorities reported that the churchs followers were linked to more than two-thirds of all confirmed coronavirus cases in South Korea. Last March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned about how society and government responses to the pandemic have hampered religious freedom. The congressionally mandated commission responsible for advising Congress and the State Department cited South Korea as a vivid example of how public health emergencies can increase the risk to marginalized religious groups. In a report, USCIRF stated that Shincheonji Church faced considerable criticism and even harassment from the South Korean government and society. The independent, bipartisan body warned that the sect was also facing increasing pressure from Protestant groups in the country. Although some government measures appeared to be driven by legitimate public health concerns, others appeared to exaggerate the churchs role in the outbreak, USCIRF stressed at the time. The government of Seoul locked down Shincheonji churches in the capital, and some mainline Protestant groups have accused the church of deliberately spreading the disease. 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. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Advertisement An unlucky egret got blasted with rhino urine after standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The unfortunate egret, which weighs less than one pound, was downwind of a massive 2,500-pound black rhino in Kenya when it relieved itself, spraying pee all over the snowy white bird. Despite the nasty surprise, the egret continued to follow the male rhino, seemingly unfazed by its drenching. The amusing moment was captured by photographer Nagaraj Tilakraj, 40, from Nairobi, who witnessed the bird's surprise shower during a visit with family to the Nairobi National Park. Rhinos, which pee backwards due to a curved penis, can shoot urine over 16-feet away from them and sometimes do so to impress potential mates. Though they may seem an unlikely pair, rhinos and egrets share a special connection, with the huge horned beasts often allowing the small birds to sit on their backs. Egrets eat ticks and other insects that would otherwise be pests to rhinos, which cannot easily clean themselves. The birds also reportedly warn near-sighted rhinos when a predator is approaching. Marmorstein: You might soon be living in a million dollar home unfortunately OPEC stated in its monthly update for January 2021 that world oil demand growth in 2020 was revised marginally higher from last months report and is now estimated to have declined by 9.8 mb/d year-on-year (y-o-y) to average 90.0 mb/d in 2020. OECD America, led by the US, was revised lower particularly in 2H20 amid a sluggish recovery in transportation fuels. In the non-OECD region, oil demand growth was revised higher in 2020, mainly reflecting better-than-expected demand in China and India. For 2021, global oil demand is forecast to increase by 5.9 mb/d y-o-y to average 95.9 mb/d. The growth forecast was kept unchanged compared to last months assessment. In the OECD region, oil consumption is estimated to increase by 2.6 mb/d y-o-y but will still lag pre-pandemic levels. OECD Americas is estimated to increase the most amid a rebound in transportation fuels. In the non-OECD region, oil demand is estimated to increase by 3.3 mb/d y-o-y, driven by China followed by India and Other Asia, and supported by a rebound in economic activities. Non-OPEC liquids production in 2020 is estimated to average 62.7 mb/d, representing a contraction of 2.5 mb/d, y-o-y. This is broadly unchanged from the previous report, despite several upward and downward revisions in the production of various countries in 4Q20. The contraction in 2020 is driven mainly by Russia, the US, Canada and the UK, while production in Norway, Brazil, China, and Guyana is expected to increase. The forecast for non-OPEC supply in 2021 also remains unchanged, with growth expected at 0.8 mb/d. The upward revision in US supply offset the downward revision in the supply forecast for Russia. Market conditions have improved for US shale as oil prices have moved into a range where output is likely to recover at a higher-than-expected rate in 2H21. Powered by Commodity Insights Authorities identified two men in their early 20s who are accused of leading Massachusetts State Police on a car chase before crashing their Mercedes into a pole in Brockton early Friday, all while carrying an armored vest, guns and ammunition. Shortly after 2 a.m., Trooper Thomas Shruhan saw a Mercedes-Benz on Route 28 in Milton that was suspected to have sped away from the area of gunfire in Bostons Mattapan neighborhood on Jan. 2, according to a statement from state police. Shruhan followed the blue 2018 sedan, which was the subject of a be on the lookout bulletin, as it exited onto Route 24 southbound. There, Troopers Joseph Connor and Aaron Richardson helped him try to pull over the Mercedes, the statement said. The car is accused of then accelerating in an attempt to evade the three troopers, abruptly exiting Route 24 via Exit 18 onto the eastbound lanes of Route 27, according to the statement. At that point, state police called off the chase but followed in the direction of the suspects, who were seen continuing at a fast speed down Route 27 toward Brockton, authorities said. Still traveling at a high rate of speed, the driver of the Mercedes approached the intersection of Route 27 and West Avenue, lost control of the car and slammed into the pole, according to officials. Brockton and state police responded to the crash scene, where the two suspects in the Mercedes were taken into custody. Law enforcement noted they also notified Boston Police Department. In the car, state police said, authorities discovered a loaded polymer 9mm handgun with no serial number, a loaded Kahr Arms 9mm handgun, two Kahr magazines, a 33-round large capacity magazine, 48 rounds of 9mm ammunition and a ballistic armor vest carrier. The suspects, identified as 21-year-old Jhovanni Jackson and 22-year-old Aquan A. Hudson, have been charged with illegally possessing firearms, carrying loaded guns, possessing a large capacity feeding device and unlawfully carrying ammunition, according to authorities. Jackson, a Bronx, New York resident and the suspected driver of the Mercedes, was also charged with multiple motor vehicle offenses, use of body armor in a felony, resisting arrest and refusing to identify himself to police, officials said. He remains hospitalized at this time at Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton. His injuries are not believed to be life-threatening, state police noted. Hudson, a Brockton, Massachusetts resident and the alleged passenger in the Mercedes, was found to have two outstanding warrants for his arrest and was charged accordingly, according to law enforcement. He has been booked at a state police barracks and is expected to be arraigned Friday in Brockton District Court, authorities said. Related Content: Two suspects wanted for shots fired in Boston lead Massachusetts State Police on chase to Brockton before crashing into pole, authorities say Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 15:46:42|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations (UN) on Thursday expressed firm opposition to the words and deeds of the U.S. permanent representative to the UN regarding Taiwan. "On Jan. 14, the permanent mission of the United States to the United Nations released on its official website a video of remarks to students in Taiwan by the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft, in which Craft claimed that the United States, in UN venues, supports a role for Taiwan on the global stage. China is firmly opposed to Craft's wrong words and deeds," a spokesperson of China's Permanent Mission to the UN said. "As is known to all, the United Nations is an intergovernmental international organization composed of sovereign countries. Resolution 2758 adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971 reaffirms the one-China principle, which is a norm of international relations recognized by the international community," the spokesperson said. The spokesperson also underscored the fact that the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. Taiwan, as a province of China, is ineligible for UN membership. Craft's wrong words and deeds have seriously violated the one-China principle and the political commitment the United States has made to China on the Taiwan question, and grossly trampled on the UN Charter and the norm of international relations, the spokesperson added. "The video appears to be recorded in the General Assembly Hall. However, as verified by the United Nations, no meeting was held in the General Assembly Hall on Jan. 14, and the UN Secretariat gave no approval to any country to hold any event in the hall on the day. Clearly, the video was made as Craft sneaked into the hall and posed for the camera, abusing her right as the U.S. permanent representative to the UN. Such a sneaky trick serves nothing except to make oneself a mockery and a laughing stock," the spokesperson said. "We want to tell certain U.S. politicians that China is rock solid in upholding its sovereignty and security interests, and those politicians will pay a heavy price for their wrong actions," the spokesperson added. Enditem WASHINGTON: The United States announced sanctions on Friday against six Hong Kong or Chinese officials it blamed for implementing a new security law in Hong Kong, following the mass arrests of pro-democracy activists this month. Hong Kong police arrested 53 people on Jan. 5 in dawn raids on democracy activists in the biggest crackdown since China last year imposed a security law which opponents say is aimed at quashing dissent in the former British colony. The six people targeted for new sanctions include Frederic Choi, director of the national security division of the Hong Kong police, and Sun Qingye, a deputy to Zheng Yanxiong, who was appointed in July to head a new national security office in Hong Kong. Also named were pro-Beijing legislator Tam Yiu-chung and You Quan of Chinas United Front Work Department. U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo warned last week of fresh sanctions in response to the arrests of pro-democracy activists. That warning came a day after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed Congress in a bid to overturn his November election defeat, prompting Chinas state media to accuse U.S. politicians of double standards." Fridays action comes less than a week before Trump leaves office to be succeeded by Democrat Joe Biden. It was the latest in a series of last minute steps taken by Pompeo on foreign policy, several targeting China in what analysts see as a bid driven by Pompeo to lock in a tough approach to Beijing. Trump has pursued hard-line policies toward China on issues ranging from trade to espionage and the coronavirus. Relations plummeted to their worst level in decades when he ramped up rhetoric in his unsuccessful November re-election campaign. His administration has already imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for their actions involving the pro-democracy movement and other alleged rights abuses, and last July declared an end to the territorys privileged economic status under U.S. law. The Trump administration took another swipe at China and its biggest companies on Thursday, imposing sanctions on officials and companies for alleged misdeeds in the South China Sea and imposing an investment ban on nine more firms. Last Saturday, Pompeo said he was lifting restrictions on contacts between U.S. officials and counterparts in Taiwan, a move that greatly angered Beijing, which considers the island a renegade province. 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 Tom Holland leaves the heroics of his Spider-Man role behind him in the first official trailer for his upcoming crime film Cherry. The 24-year-old actor stars in the upcoming Apple TV+ film as a wounded veteran whose trauma leads him to rob banks. The movie reunites Holland with his Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo. Dark: Tom Holland, 24, stars in the first official trailer for Apple TV+'s new film Cherry, about an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD and opioid addiction who turns to robbing banks to fuel his habit The trailer opens as Holland's character Cherry slips a one-dollar bill to a bank teller after writing 'I HAVE A GUN' in red ink on it. He flips the bill over to show that it says 'This is a Robbery' on the opposite side. 'I'm 23 years old, and sometimes I wonder if life is wasted on me,' Holland ponders in voice over as an astonished-looking Cherry is handed a stack of bills by the frightened teller. Meanwhile, the bank's other clients go about their business as if nothing is wrong. Eye-catching: The trailer opens as Holland's character Cherry slips a one-dollar bill to a bank teller after writing 'I HAVE A GUN' in red ink on it Before times: The action goes back in time to Cherry's seemingly idyllic teenage years, and he's seen throwing a pile of fallen leaves into the air Dramatic: 'I take all the beautiful things to heart... 'til I about die from it,' he says. His first stirrings of young love are shown as he spies a dark-haired girl in the middle of a lecture hall Young love: Later, he stops to chat with Emily (Ciara Bravo) as she sits on a rope swing. 'Hey, I'm really happy you're here,' he tells her, adding that it's 'Because I like you' The action goes back in time to Cherry's seemingly idyllic teenage years, and he's seen throwing a pile of fallen leaves into the air. 'I take all the beautiful things to heart... 'til I about die from it,' he says. His first stirrings of young love are shown as he spies a dark-haired girl in the middle of a lecture hall. Later, he stops to chat with Emily (Ciara Bravo) as she sits on a rope swing. 'Hey, I'm really happy you're here,' he tells her, adding that it's 'Because I like you.' Changing course: But his youthful love is put to the test after he impulsively enlists in the army Bare minimum: 'My one true accomplishment was not dying,' Cherry says, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the camera Overwhelming: A montage of gun fire and explosions shows him fighting in a desert, which seems to push him to his breaking point All downhill from here: After he returns home, Cherry suffers from tinnitus, a constant buzzing tone in his ears, and he turns to opioids to deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder But his youthful love is put to the test after he impulsively enlists in the army. 'My one true accomplishment was not dying,' Cherry says, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the camera. A montage of gun fire and explosions shows him fighting in a desert, which seems to push him to his breaking point. After he returns home, Cherry suffers from overwhelming tinnitus, a constant buzzing tone in his ears, and he turns to opioids to deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder. 'I have this noise in my head,' he tells Emily while on the verge of tears as he compulsively scratches his scalp. Nothing to lose: Cherry describes his turn toward bank robbing, which he does to pay for his addiction, as a reaction to 'desperation' Risky business: 'I've been at this a while now, and it's no secret what my face looks like,' he says to the camera, illustrating his lack of concern for himself Cherry describes his turn toward bank robbing, which he does to pay for his addiction, as a reaction to 'desperation.' 'I've been at this a while now, and it's no secret what my face looks like,' he says to the camera, illustrating his lack of concern for himself. The trailer ends with a fast-paced montage of scenes of Cherry's armed bank robberies intercut with romantic footage of him and Emily. The film is adapted from Nico Walker's semi-autobiographical novel Cherry. The real-life author served in the Army in Iraq and later suffered from PTSD and became addicted to heroin. To fund his addiction, he robbed 10 banks in Cleveland, Ohio, from December 2010 to March 2011, before he was arrested in April of that year. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2012 to a prison sentence through late 2020, though he was released early in October 2019. True to life: The film is adapted from Nico Walker's semi-autobiographical novel Cherry. The real-life author served in the Army in Iraq and later suffered from PTSD and became addicted to heroin 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. Copyright 1995 - . 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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. CHICAGO, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arete Wealth an independent Broker-Dealer (BD), Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), and Insurance firm headquartered in Chicago will acquire Center Street Securities in Q1 2021. Center Street Securities is a Nashville-based securities broker-dealer with $1.04B in assets under management. Founded in 1990 as Elliott Financial Services, current CEO Jack (JR) Thacker purchased the firm in 2007, renamed it Center Street Securities, and grew the firm to 100 financial advisors by 2009. Heading into 2021 following the formal acquisition, Arete Wealth will have $5.5B of assets under management and 265 registered representatives nationwide, a 75% increase in reps. The deal will grow Arete Wealth's revenue by 40%. Arete Wealth Founder & CEO Joshua D. Rogers shared his excitement for the partnership, saying "Center Street is the perfect complement to Arete Wealth for many reasons. Among them, we both share a strong belief in endowment-style investing for our high-net worth clients. Arete Wealth specializes in bespoke alternative investments and adding Center Street's strength in this area to our industry-leading position makes us the premier choice for alternative investment prowess." Following the acquisition, the combined companies anticipate distributing approximately a quarter billion dollars in alternative investments in 2021 based on previous years' performance. Thacker joins Rogers in his enthusiasm, saying Arete Wealth's dedication to excellence made it the right move. "When I became familiar with Josh Rogers and his vision for Arete, I knew he was the right person to take Center Street, our advisors, and our investors to the next level," Thacker said. "Joining Arete Wealth ensures Center Street continues to deliver top-notch support to our advisors and clients while leveraging Arete's deep due diligence in alternative investments, a seasoned regulatory compliance team, and advanced advising technology solutions." The companies will strategically combine their entities throughout 2021. After an appropriate period of integration, both firms will present under the Arete Wealth, Inc. brand. About Arete Wealth Arete Wealth is a full-service Broker-Dealer (BD), Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) and Insurance firm. The firm has smartly guided advisors and high-net-worth investors through alternative investment access, investment banking, private equity programs and other traditional financial planning since 2007. Annually, the firm ranks as one of the country's top independent Broker-Dealers across multiple industry surveys*. Headquartered in Chicago, Arete Wealth investments and services are offered through100 offices and 265 registered advisors nationwide. Find out more at www.aretewealth.com. *Based on revenue growth as noted in InvestmentNews, Financial Planning, Financial Advisor & WealthManagement.com, 2019 2020. Arete Wealth Advisors LLC and Arete Insurance Agency LLC are affiliates of Arete Wealth Management, LLC. Advisory services offered through Arete Wealth Advisors, an SEC registered investment advisor. Securities offered through Arete Wealth Management, LLC, member FINRA, SIPC and NFA. Arete Wealth l Nate Moster, Chief Marketing Officer l 312.940.3684 l [email protected] SOURCE Arete Wealth Related Links http://www.aretewealth.com/ Donna Eddy helps her son Phoenix with school work at their home in Sydney, Australia on April 9, 2020. (Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) Homeschooling Numbers Continue to Rise in Australia Homeschooling is now on the rise after COVID-19 gave many parents and students a taste in 2020 of what it was like to learn from home. Some parents struggled to help their kids learn at home during last years coronavirus lockdowns but others found it so beneficial they decided to continue. The number of students taking lessons at home was already on the rise before COVID-19, but 2020 saw a further increase, education expert Rebecca English said. She attributes the shift, at least in part, to the experience children had learning from home during the pandemic lockdowns. Some parents hated the home learning with a passion but, believe it or not, some really loved it, the Queensland University of Technology lecturer said. The numbers were already going up, but parents experiences during lockdown suggest they may be more disaffected with schools. Some realised their children learned better at home. Some parents of children with a special education need found their kids to be more engaged academically, less stressed socially and happier. Phoenix Crawford does school work on a laptop while his mum Donna Eddy replies to client emails in Sydney on April 9, 2020, Australia. (Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) One family told English they decided to home school their daughter, with high-functioning autism and dyslexia, after the lockdown because her anxiety lessened at home, she thrived and made gains in literacy. That student is one of at least 22,000 who are homeschooled across Australia. The actual figures may be as much double that because research has found many families choose not to register. Home Education Association president Karen Chegwidden said the number of calls to their homeschooling national helpline almost tripled between March and May last year. Some parents chose to homeschool because of uncertainty with the rolling school closures, she said. One family found the transition from kindergarten to staying home difficult for their child at first, but had got to the other side, enjoying being together and an active part of their childs education. They also didnt want to send their child back when there was a possibility the school would close again, Chegwidden said. Some parents had previously considered homeschooling, but lockdown gave them a push. Associate Professor Elspeth McInnes said a significant 23 percent of parents she surveyed found their children did better learning online during the lockdown than they had done in a classroom. Some had learning difficulties and responded well to learning online. Others had struggled at school for reasons like bullying, difficult relationships with teachers, or finding the social world anxiety-producing, the University of South Australia lecturer said. This said to me we need to continue to see home or remote learning as one of the options we have available for children, she added. Professor McInness says the lockdown has made learning online more accessiblealthough it is dependent on students having resources and support. The digital divide is a huge thing, she added. Donna Eddy helps her son Phoenix with school work at their home in Sydney, Australia on April 9, 2020. (Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) Learning from home during the lockdowns revealed the difference between those with and without technology, social and emotional support, and necessary skills like reading ability. English said some parents became frustrated during lockdowns about the lack of clarity around school work to be completed, the relevance of tasks and their relationship to wider learning goals. Others were confused about the difference in the length of the school dayfor some about six hoursand the time they were expected to supervise children learningin some cases, just 45 minutes a day. Others realised their children learned better at home, away from the distractions of schools, she added. English hopes schools and governments will learn from the lockdown education experience by offering greater flexibility. Parents I spoke with said theyd be keen on a third way between full-time school and full-time home education, she said. Some part-time school would be super (and) maybe building greater flexibility into the system would serve parents and childrens needs better. By Cheryl Goodenough Vaccines are rolling out, slowly but surely, across the world. Does that mean its time to think about traveling yet? The tourism industry would like to say yes. According to the most recent data from the World Travel and Tourism Council, published in early November, the restrictions on travel caused by the coronavirus pandemic were projected to take $4.7 trillion out of global gross domestic product in 2020 alone. But medical professionals still urge cautiona message that will remain imperative, even after individuals have been vaccinated against Covid-19. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Among their warnings: Vaccines are not 100% effective; it takes weeks to build up immunity (after the second shot), little is known about the ability to transmit Covid-19, even after immunization; and herd immunity will be a long way off. Their consensus is that risks will remain, but freedom of movement can safely increaseallowing for at least certain types of tripsamong individuals with protection against the virus. Yes, you will still need to wear a mask. Heres what else youll need to know about travel safety in the months ahead, whether youve already gotten your shot or are looking for normalcy somewhere on the horizon. What We Know, and What We Dont The Covid-19 vaccines approved to date, both in the U.S. and Europe, have proven to be exceptionally safe, effective, and the strongest tool yet in combatting the pandemic. Still, there are known unknowns, particularly when it comes to possible virus transmission after vaccination. This question boils down to one point: Clinical trials for the currently-approved vaccines, including those from Pfizer and Moderna, did not include regular PCR testing of the study participants. Without any data about their ability to carry the virus, theres enough conclusive evidence only to suggest that vaccines result in 95% effective protection from symptomatic infection, says Dr. Kristin Englund, infectious diseases specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. For the most part, if youre vaccinated against [a disease]say chicken pox or measlesyou should not be able to transmit that virus to someone else," explains Englund, adding that theres no known reason to believe that Covid-19 or its related vaccines should behave differently. I anticipate thats what well see [with Covid-19 vaccines as well], but we have to wait until studies prove it before we can lower our guard substantially." There are other important unknowns, too. To see a vaccine that is 95% effectivethose are remarkable numbers, much better than we ever anticipated," says Englund. But we dont have the ability right now to know who will have a good response [to the vaccine] and who will be one of the 5%." How to Think About Herd Immunity Another unknown, to a lesser extent, is what it will take to achieve herd immunity. The general consensus is that it will take somewhere between 70% to 80% [of the population being immune] to eliminate widespread riskmaybe more," says Dr. Scott Weisenberg, who serves as both director of the infectious disease fellowship program at NYU and as medical director of the universitys travel medicine program. Were many months away from that, assuming that the vaccine actually does remove transmission and that people get it." In a best-case scenario where everything goes right, Weisenberg believes herd immunity can be achieved in the U.S. sometime this summerpending the approval of easier-to-distribute vaccines such as the one by AstraZeneca, which could speed up rollout. Thats highly unlikely, though. Acceptance of the vaccine is a big, key question," he adds. To his point, the World Health Organization called vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to public health in 2019, even before Covid-19 became part of the picture. But herd immunity can be sliced and diced in many ways. You can talk about herd immunity within a state, within a smaller community, or even within a family," Englund adds. So if everyone in a room is vaccinated but one, you should be able to offer more protection to that person." Thats a notable consideration for family gatherings whose younger members may take longer to qualify for the vaccine than older or more at-risk members. (The currently approved vaccines have not yet been tested or approved for children by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which may stymie air travel among multigenerational groups well into 2021.) Deciding where to go on your next vacationand who to travel withmay have more to do with antibodies than such normal considerations as weather and price. Definitely look at the current infection rate in that area and absolutely, the vaccination uptake in that populationthose are two very important things," says Englund. Dont be surprised if it feels like a counterintuitive exercise, adds Weisenberg. For instance, in New York City, where 25% of the population is believed to have already contracted Covid-19, herd immunity may require a proportionately smaller number of vaccinations to achieve if the previously infected people retain equivalent antibodies. The risk [of picking up or spreading the virus] might actually be relatively low," says Weisenberg about visiting Manhattan, given the strictness of lockdown measures, the historic acceptance of vaccines in urban areas compared to rural ones, and the high rates of Covid-19 testing among the local populationdespite the incredible population density. Go to Kenya, where you may have a perfectly socially distant safari, he adds, and you may have to pass through places such as Nairobi, where testing is low, and its hard to get an accurate picture of real-time risk. The Evolving Definition of Safe Travel" Expect the definition of safe travel to shift week by week, especially while parts of the world bat down the surge of cases connected to holiday travel and new variants of the virus. You have to factor in the issues of going someplace and bringing the virus back to an area where that is consequential," says Weisenberg. He hopes the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will eventually have tiered alerts for destinations, depending on local risk, in the vein of the agencys measles alerts, but says: Its just too widespread right now to isolate that way." A good idea might be to look up hospital (and specifically ICU-bed) availability figures before committing to a vacation anywhere, to ensure the local system is not already overwhelmed. Weisenberg also believes that the increasing accuracy of rapid Covid-19 antigen tests will help ensure safety as mobility picks up; its noteworthy that the new U.S. requirements for entry include negative test results, even for those who have already been vaccinated. Im going to be getting on a plane; Ill be honest with you," says Englund. Ill wear a mask, Ill make sure we have seats where were not seated next to someone else, with appropriate space in between, using all of the hand sanitizer. Well get an Airbnb and spend quality time on a beach," she goes on, and if we visit local sites, well pretend we hadnt been vaccinatedapproaching things with the same precautions as we would have pre-vaccine. I dont think theres anything wrong with that." 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!! The General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu says it is naive on the part of the members of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to say that the current 8th Parliament is hung due to both sides having the same 137 Parliamentarians. Whoever said that we have a hung parliament does not know the law. If anyone says that we dont have a majority and a minority in parliament, the person does not know what he is talking about, he chided. Speaking on Okay FMs 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, the NPP Chief Scribe said that the odd number of 275-member parliament creates a clear distinction of majority caucus and minority caucus as stated in the Standing Orders of Parliament even though the Constitution knows there are more than two parties in the country. The constitution knows that we dont have only two parties but that is how the Standing Orders of Parliament is, to have a majority caucus and a minority caucus, and so the other party or the independent candidate does not have a seat in parliament and so they decide to either join the majority caucus or the minority caucus, he explained. He reiterated that the candidate from the third party or the independent candidate in Parliament will have to join one side of the caucus in the House to form a majority caucus as both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) are even in number. If the other party or independent candidate joins the majority caucus, it means that they are part of the majority and if they decide to join the minority caucus then they are part of the minority in parliament. Right now with the 137 numbers for both sides, if the independent candidate by Friday decides to join the NPP, then the NPP will be the majority in parliament; there is nothing like hung parliament," he explained. . . Parliament is not hung and whoever says that does not know what he is saying, he stressed. Fomena MP Officially Writes To Speaker To "Associate" With NPP Side In Parliament The independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Fomena, Andrew Asiamah Amoako has officially written to Speaker Alban Bagbin "to associate with the NPP". In a letter dated January 13, 2021, and addressed to the Speaker he said, I Andrew Asiamah Amoako, an Independent Member for Fomena constituency and now the 2nd Deputy Speaker for the same Parliament do hereby declare that, I shall for the purposes of transacting business in the house associate with the NPP in the Eighth Parliament. For the avoidance of doubt, I do hereby affirm that I shall cooperate and collaborate with the NPP Caucus in the Eighth Parliament, he concluded. Fomena MP's Declaration Does Not Make NPP Majority The leader of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) caucus in parliament, Mr Haruna Iddrisu says his side has no difficulty sitting on the left side of the Speaker in the Chamber. "Let me assure the Ghanaian people that the NDC 137 MPs have no difficulty sitting to the left of the Speaker so long as our numerical strength is respected and respected in the composition of committees and in the determination of leadership of committees, whilst we continue to pursue legitimate legal and constitutional processes to procure what we deserve as a majority party, someone will say, what is on the left or what is on the right, we have no difficulty at all," Mr Iddrisu said at a press briefing in Parliament on Thursday, January 14, 2021. He also stated that despite the fact that the Fomena MP Andrew Asiamah Amoako, who is an independent MP has officially written to do business with the NPP caucus in Parliament, it does not make the NPP side the majority in Parliament. Advisedly and wisely, he is not seeking to join a political party and therefore nobody should do an easy mathematics of a 137 plus one. I will cooperate, or I will collaborate does not mean I am joining, or I am crossing over because it has its own constitutional implications which probably will require that a by-election be conducted if he was to join a political party, Mr Iddrisu indicated. Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video 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. 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. 1. Yes. The public must have assurances that ethical standards are met by everyone. 2. Yes. As long as an independent board hears the grievances, its a worthwhile idea. 3. No. The concept is too broad. It should be limited to the citys elected officials. 4. No. There are plenty of stipulations in place already. An ordinance is a waste of time. 5. Unsure. Its hard to say without seeing how it would be structured and applied. Vote View Results MADISON, Wis. -- The demand for COVID-19 vaccines continues to outpace supply, forcing public health officials to decide who should be first in line for a shot, even among those in the same pool of eligible vaccine recipients. To assist these efforts, researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Health have developed a tool that incorporates a person's age and socioeconomic status to prioritize vaccine distribution among people who otherwise share similar risks due to their jobs. The tool helps identify those who are at greater risk of severe complications or death from COVID-19. UW Health has implemented the prioritization algorithm to equitably provide limited doses to frontline health care workers. Other organizations can also access the freely available tool to guide their own vaccine distribution plans. While the UW-Madison tool was designed with the first phase of eligible recipients in mind, it could be used as vaccine distribution expands to larger populations. As the eligible population increases, the gap between initial supply and demand could grow, making such prioritization tools even more helpful. "Knowing we're going to have limited vaccine for some time, we wanted to develop an algorithm to equitably distribute vaccinations within these risk groups," says Grace Flood, the director of clinical analytics and reporting in the Office of Population Health at UW Health, who helped lead development of the tool along with the Health Innovation Program within SMPH. In addition to age, the algorithm uses the Social Vulnerability Index to measure a person's susceptibility to severe COVID-19 based on where they live. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed the SVI metric to help emergency responders identify which neighborhoods and towns will require the most support following natural disasters or public health emergencies. The SVI incorporates 15 measures in four categories: socioeconomic status, housing composition and disability, minority status and language, and housing and transportation. Race and ethnicity have been closely correlated with higher COVID-19-related hospitalizations and mortality. Flood and her team incorporated the SVI in accordance with a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that recommended using the index to fairly distribute vaccines. Because Wisconsin publishes data about COVID-19 deaths at the census-tract level, "we were able to determine the relationship for risk of mortality between age and SVI," says Flood. This relationship allowed the researchers to verify that age and SVI combined provide an accurate estimate of an individual's risk. Since age and SVI are readily available pieces of information about an individual and each contributes to COVID-19 risk, an algorithm that incorporates both elements may serve as one of the best ways to distribute vaccines until supply catches up to demand, says Flood. The researchers have published their algorithm in the Annals of Family Medicine COVID-19 collection and made it available for download on the project's website. ### --Eric Hamilton, (608) 263-1986, eshamilton@wisc.edu The Greene King has vowed to rename its pubs called The Black Boy over fears the name has 'racist' connotations - sparking outrage among locals. Two pubs in Suffolk and another in Berkshire all called The Black Boy are set to get new names in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the pub chain has revealed. The Blacks Head in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, is also in the firing line - despite locals insisting the name comes from a bottle of ginger beer. The Black Boy in Shinfield, Berkshire - which dates back to the 16th century - has various theories about where its name came from, including soot-covered coal miners and a nickname given to King Charles II. Bury St Edmunds' pub with the same name dates back to 1683 and historians believe its current signage also references the former King - who was restored as the monarch in 1660 following the period of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth. The Greene King has vowed to rename its pubs called The Black Boy (one in Bury St Edmunds, pictured) over fears the name has 'racist' connotations - sparking outrage among locals Two pubs in Suffolk (The Black Boy in Shinfield, pictured) and another in Berkshire all called The Black Boy are set to get new names in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the pub chain has revealed The 17th century monarch is said to have been nicknamed 'Black Boy' by his mother, Henrietta Maria of France, due to his dark hair and complexion. The Black Boy in Sudbury also dates back to the 1500s. Across England and Wales, there are at least 25 different pubs called The Black Boy, or similar. But the name has come under fire from anti-racism campaigners amid protests by the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK. Pub regulars have been left outraged at the proposed name changes. Kieran Fishwick said people calling for the change to the pub's name in Bury St Edmunds should 'stop getting angry over something that happened over 100 years ago'. The Black Boy in Sudbury also dates back to the 1500s. Across England and Wales, there are at least 25 different pubs called The Black Boy, or similar The Blacks Head (pictured) in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, is also under the firing line - despite locals insisting the name comes from a bottle of ginger beer The possible royal origins of 'The Black Boy' pub name Across England and Wales there are at least 25 different pubs called 'The Black Boy', or similar. Though the name is thought to have a number of origins, including the soot darkened faces of chimney sweeps, it is often thought to be a reference to King Charles II. King Charles II The monarch, who ruled England, Scotland and Ireland from 1660 until his death, aged 54, in 1665, was nicknamed 'Black Boy' by his mother, Henrietta Maria of France, due to his dark hair and complexion. He was restored as the monarch in 1660 after his father Charles I was executed and the traditional monarchy system removed in 1649 in place of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth following the English Civil War. Charles II's nickname was taken up by those who supported his attempts to restore the monarchy, who labelled themselves 'The Black Boys', and it is believed a number of pubs changed their name to The Black Boy as a show of allegiance. Other suggestions for the name's origins including the misspelling of a nautical navigation marker, a 'buoy'. Advertisement He added: 'Martin Luther King knew he couldn't change his family's past but he knew he could secure a future for the future children of the world. 'We need to be focusing on more important racial problems in society, not the name of a pub.' Local historian Martyn Taylor said The Black Boy in Bury St Edmunds was first established in 1683 and its signage has changed many times throughout history. He told Suffolk News that while it was once a 'non-PC sign of natives surrounding a large pot with its obvious connotation' - it now depicts King Charles II. He said: 'Slavery is an abhorrent thing but we can't change history.' Meanwhile in Shinfield, furious locals took to Facebook to vent their frustration. Anita Matthews said: 'For goodness sake, it's been The Black Boy for years and has always been known as that. 'This world has gone PC mad. What's an alternative "The Neutral Person"? Doesn't exactly flow off the tongue!' Daniel Risby added: 'World has gone mad. I'm fairly sure it's name comes from a race horse or something like that. 'Absolutely no need to rename it. It's nothing to do with race.' Phil Beckett also suggested its origins come from a race horse, writing: 'It's named after a racehorse with a black coat, for goodness sake! It's a mad world.' Manu Dhaumya added: 'It doesn't offend anyone. No one cares what it's called. I just want to have a nice cold pint and a medium rare steak And that's it.' Greene King came under fire last year for its own links to slavery - with owners pledging to make donations to 'benefit the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community'. The pub chain was founded in 1799 by Benjamin Greene - who was one of 47,000 people who benefited from a policy of compensating slave owners when Britain abolished slavery in 1833. He received the equivalent of 500,000 in today's money after giving up his claim to three West Indies plantations. Meanwhile in Shinfield, furious locals took to Facebook to vent their frustration at the pub name change Greene King's chief executive Nick Mackenzie said the company would update its website - which does not mention its historical ties to slavery - and apologised for the company's role in the evil and inhumane practice. Managers of The Black Boy pubs who face name changes have agreed that the move is the right one. Benjamin Greene: The 19th Century brewer who held 231 slaves Greene King traces its links to slavery to its founder, Benjamin Greene, who records show held at least 231 on Caribbean islands. Born in 1780 in Northamptonshire, Greene moved to Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk, where in 1806 he founded what would become the UK's largest brewery. He inherited plantations in the West Indies from Sir Patrick Blake, 2nd Baronet, upon his death. In 1828, he bought the Bury and Suffolk Herald, at a time when the campaign to abolish slavery was being debated. In his role as a newspaper proprietor, Greene used the pages of the broadsheet to ferociously oppose abolition. According to his Oxford biography, he campaigned with 'enormous vigour into representing the interests of the West Indian slave proprietors at a critical juncture of their affairs.' His opposition to abolition saw him become a figure of controversy in Suffolk, and in 1837 he moved to London where he founded Benjamin Greene & Son - West Indian ship merchants - with his son in Russell Square. Despite Greene's protestations, MPs passed the Slavery Abolition Bill in 1833, on the condition that slave-owners were compensated for freeing their slaves. Records archived by UCL show Greene claimed the modern equivalent of 500,000 for 231 slaves in the West Indies. The claim forms show Greene received: January 23, 1836 - 2,672 for 156 slaves on St Kitts February 27, 1836 - 1,262 for 69 slaves on St Kitts February 29, 1836 - 98 for six slaves on Monsterrat Advertisement Mark Eames, who runs The Black Boy in Bury St Edmunds, said: 'Now is the right time to make this change and I look forward to the new name continuing to reflect the heritage and history of this pub which has been a part of Bury St Edmunds for hundreds of years.' Katie Martin, of the Black Boy in Sudbury, said: 'I'm happy to work alongside Greene King to proactively eradicate racism. 'I'm keen to work with the people of Sudbury to choose a new name for this great pub and hotel that does not attract the same concern and questions as the current name. 'As a society, we need to work together to be fully inclusive in all aspects of life and business and I feel a change of name would help make sure everyone feels included and welcome when they visit my historical pub and hotel.' Greene King is to hold an online public vote so communities can pick a new name for the pubs from a list of suggestions. The decision to change the name follows consultation with stakeholders and researching the pubs' histories. Nick Mackenzie, Greene King CEO, said while the origins of the name 'is obscure, there is a perception that it is linked with racism'. He acknowledged the move 'will attract a range of views'. Greene King said that while the pub name The Black Boy exists throughout the country, 'there is not a consensus on its origins and many of those consulted felt the name to be offensive and discriminatory'. Mr Mackenzie said: 'It is important to acknowledge our history but just as important to work proactively to eradicate racism in our society today. 'We have looked at pub deeds, consulted with colleagues and while the origins of this pub name is obscure what is clear is that there is a perception that it is linked with racism today and we want to make this positive change for the better. 'We know this is a decision that will attract a range of views and we're conscious of the history and heritage of pub names. 'We've thought long and hard and feel this is the right thing to do as it is incredibly important to us that our pubs are warm and welcoming places for everyone as we continue on our journey to become a truly anti-racist organisation. 'We're keen to involve local people in this project and look forward to working with them to choose a new and inclusive name for these pubs so they remain at the heart of communities.' Yesterday, while debating the Democrats impeachment resolution, Congressman Louie Gohmert pointed out that Nancy Pelosi had (unlike President Trump) condoned rioting and civil disorder: Heres a quote: I just dont even know why there arent morewhy there arent uprisings all over the country and maybe there will be,' Gohmert began. Or, Sadly, the domestic enemies of our voting system and honoring our Constitution are right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their allies in Congress. We were called enemies of the state. Those were all quotes from our speaker. Of course, many other instances of prominent Democrats encouraging violence could be cited as well. But journalists failed to get the point, attributing Pelosis quote to Gohmert: Holy s. Is [Gohmert] encouraging MORE uprisings??!? Did I hear that right?????????? CNN analyst Asha Rangappa exclaimed. You did. His testimony should be used to immediately expel him, Law & Crime columnist Elura Nanos replied. Louie Gohmert on the House floor: I just dont even know why there arent more arent uprisings all over the country, and maybe there will be,' Vox politics editor Laura McGann tweeted before later acknowledging it was a callback to Pelosi. Washington Posts Aaron Blake and Politicos Blake Hounshell similarly tweeted the quote and attributed it to Gohmert. Both later deleted their tweets and acknowledged their errors. Whatever you think of Twitter, it does have one virtue: it has exposed the carelessness and low intelligence of American journalists. Gohmert couldnt have been clearer, and yet these dim bulbs didnt get the point. More importantly, though: these journalists thought the quote was shocking when they attributed it to Gohmert. One wanted to expel Gohmert from the House. So, does that mean that she now wants Nancy Pelosi expelled? And do the other journalists quoted above now think that Pelosis quote was reprehensible? Will they jump to condemn Pelosi, as they did Gohmert? Or are statements tolerant of rioting, or even encouraging rioting, perfectly fine when they are made by Democrats? Sir Joe Appointed as Minister with Responsibility for Financial Stability In keeping with the statements contained in his New Years Message, the Chief Minister, the Hon Fabian Picardo QC MP, has advised His Excellency the Governor to add responsibility for financial stability to the Ministerial portfolio of the Hon Sir Joe Bossano MP KCMG. The Chief Minister said: I stated in my New Years Message that I would be asking the Governor to appoint Sir Joe as Minister with responsibility for financial stability. I have now done so. I look forward to working with Sir Joe, my Cabinet colleagues and the Financial Secretary, Albert Mena, in casting a post-pandemic and post-Brexit Budget for our nation for coming years that will be designed to ensure our long term financial stability and the regeneration and sustainability of the excellent public services that the Government provides for the community. Our next Budget, which will be in early summer, will provide an excellent opportunity for the Parliament to debate the measures we will propose for this basis in our Estimates for the Financial Year 2021 to 2022. The Hon Sir Joe Bossano, KCMG, MP, said: I am working already on the measures the Chief Minister and I will propose to the Cabinet in order to put our post COVID and post Brexit Budgets on a firm footing. It will be a very challenging time financially for our community as the last year has destroyed government revenues around the world, even in the oil producing states. Every nation on the planet is facing a serious challenge and we are no better and no worse than all others. We have a responsibility to put our public finances back on a firm footing quicker than others though, and we have already held an Extraordinary Cabinet Meeting this week, which the Chief Minister called and Chaired at my request, in order to ensure that we waste no time at all in getting our finances back on track from the extraordinary costs of the past twelve months. Extract from the relevant part of the Chief Ministers New Year Message 2021. 'The first part of this year will also require the negotiation of the UK/EU Treaty on Gibraltar. It will also be the time to cast a new Budget as we emerge from this 24 month financial year at the end of March. We have been able to withstand and finance the cost of the pandemic. The sovereign guarantee of 500m from the UK will make it easier to finance aspects of it also. But we must be more careful and diligent than ever in how we cast future spending. I have therefore asked Sir Joe Bossano to take on additional Ministerial responsibility for financial stability. This will mean that Joe will be working with me on the long term stability of the public finances and helping with the casting of future Budgets. In a post COVID, post BREXIT world, this is the only way we will be able to assure the political security of Gibraltar and its economic and financial stability. I therefore expect everyone will support us in this endeavour. Our manifesto was written to be delivered despite Brexit, but not despite COVID. So it is important that we confirm that we will do what we can and what we need to do from that manifesto. But I want to be clear with you now that we will not do all the things that we set out to do. It will just not be possible in this post COVID financial world. The economic and financial stability of Gibraltar MUST come first. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. A citywide investigation after last weeks violent siege of the U.S. Capitol building has included more than 100 NYPD detectives working alongside the FBI to thwart any future acts of domestic terrorism, explained Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, who addressed the media Thursday. [This doesnt] compare with any past threats, Miller said. We have never had Americans fighting Americans on the streets of the nations capital, or anything like that, probably since the Civil War. There so far have been three local men arrested in investigations that stem from the riot in Washington, including a former Staten Islander with a criminal history whos accused in part of possessing a stockpile of ammunition while inciting violence on the social media site Parler on the day of the riot. I think theres a great deal of determination here that however long it takes, however many leads there are, that theyre all going to be followed up, Miller said. In what the deputy commissioner described as precautionary measures moving forward, security will be heightened at City Hall on the week of Jan. 17. That being said, there have not to this point been any specific terroristic threats to New York City. Additionally, the city is sending 200 officers from precincts and units across the five boroughs to help in securing the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration from potential terroristic acts. The NYPD also is collaborating with state police amid threats of overthrowing state capitol buildings across the U.S. Eduard Florea, 40, of Queens, was arrested Tuesday as part of an ongoing joint investigations into the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol building. TRACKING DOWN THREATS Speaking on the effort to track down individuals or groups plotting violence against the public, Miller credited the work carried out every day by a new investigative unit formed in 2019 R.E.M.E (Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremism Squad). [The unit] spends its every waking day looking at these groups, these individuals who are domestic violent extremists, Miller said. They have a great depth in this area now. Since Jan. 6, Miller said hes heard from domestic terrorism experts with opposing views on the impact the Capitol siege has had on extremist groups. Theres some who theorize the incident emboldened those groups, as a significant milestone in breaching the government building, while others say the ongoing arrests and nationwide investigation have hampered future plots. FIELDING TIPS ABOUT COPS Miller said the Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating any information the FBI receives about NYPD officers who might be tied in some way to criminal acts carried out in Washington. So far, authorities have cited one off-duty officer eyed by authorities. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said in an interview Monday with NY1 that officials didnt know if the claims were true, but that anybody who had committed a crime certainly would have a very short shelf life with the NYPD. The FBI meanwhile has received about 55,000 tips since Jan. 6 about people who might have been involved in the insurrection, authorities said. Despite unprecedented challenges, relentless NYPD cops continue to go in harms way on behalf of every New Yorker. Join me on this #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay in saying thank you to our men and women in blue for their service, sacrifice, compassion, and courage. pic.twitter.com/6aiXmccuVW Chief Terence Monahan (@NYPDChiefofDept) January 9, 2021 SOCIAL MEDIA FALL OUT Since Jan. 6, the social media site Parler shut down after after several vendors ceased providing support. Miller said that while shutting down certain online platforms could prevent a challenge in tracking violent plots, he believes the local and federal investigators working in New York City are up to the task. I think we know where to go and where to look, he said. WHAT ABOUT BLM PROTESTS? Some Republican lawmakers in Washington and political pundits have accused the city of showing more effort in arresting people tied to the Jan. 6 insurrection, than in the days and weeks surrounding criminal acts carried out during some Black Lives Matter protests. Miller denounced those claims Thursday, saying the department made hundreds of arrests tied to those riots in the city. We made hundreds and hundreds of arrests over those days, Miller said. If theyd like a list of those numbers wed be happy to provide them. They may have missed that. Because so many of us could use some words of optimism right now, here are mine: Joe Biden will make a difference. Things will be better. And sooner than you may think. I am sure of this. I am sure of this the way that I am sure that kindness matters, that violence causes pain, that American democracy will prevail, regardless of the hurdles that it must repeatedly surmount. I am sure of this the way that I am sure an object in motion remains in motion, until something interferes to still it. Biden will be that stilling force. Advertisement More than Donald Trump, more than the hate of white supremacy, more than the lies of the far-right media, what drove the attacks on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was a series of romanticized, false, and dangerous archetypes of justice and of manhoodarchetypes Trump not only identifies with himself but has used persistently over the past five years to slowly indoctrinate and radicalize his base. Warriors, he called them, the thousands who thronged to hear him at rallies across the country, much as radical jihadi recruiters praise their acolytes as martyrs. He made clear, from the time he announced his first campaign, his preference for muscled men, men who fought with fists and not with merely words, for what has been described as an aggressive and pugilistic brand of hypermasculinity, forand this is importantmen who kept their women in line. It matters that Trumps ex-wife stated under oath that he had beaten and raped her at least once. It matters that he has been credibly accused of multiple counts of rape. It matters that he boasted, on tape, of committing sexual assault. These acts, as much as they were dismissed and minimized, sent a clear signal about who the president is. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement What also matters, what also is at play: Trumps pathological narcissism, a trait he shares with dictators, autocrats, and terrorist leaders throughout history. It is a trait that makes his particular brand of hypermasculinity especially toxic. He and those like him (or who identify with him) view themselves as superior to the rest; and as superior beings, they cannot be seen to lose to the othersthose, that is, of a different race, gender, sexuality, political party, or faith. Whats more, because pathological narcissists are, by nature, incapable of empathy, they pose a particularly destructive, heinous threat. They do not care about the people they harm as they detonate their rage. The narcissistic he-man slams and swaggers his way through the world, demanding, threatening, taking pride in his destruction, oblivious to conscience or consequences. Advertisement That is not the kind of man Joe Biden is. Despite the cool Ray-Bans and the classic red Corvette, Joe Biden is no chest-baring, gun-slinging vaunter. His crowning achievement is not owning a competition of women in bikinis performing before a panel of leering judgesbut essentially its opposite: co-authorship of 1994s Violence Against Women Act, the first legislation to make violence and sexual mistreatment of women a crime. Advertisement In the years since Donald Trump took office, as public violence and white supremacy have intensified, so, too, have violent misogynist groups (incels, for instance). Domestic violence rates soared by 42 percent in the first years of Trumps presidency. Research has shown that cultures and communities where women are more oppressed, where violence and intimidation of women is high, are more militaristic, more unstable, and more likely to engage in warfare. In the words of what has come to be known as the Hillary Doctrine after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Advertisement Womens equality is not just a moral issue, its not just a humanitarian issue, it is not just a fairness issue; it is a security issue. It is a prosperity issue and it is a peace issue. Give women equal rights, and entire nations are more stable and secure. Deny women equal rights, and the instability of nations is almost certain. The subjugation of women is, therefore, a threat to the common security of our world and to the national security of our country. The violence and unrest, the hatred and division that have bloodied this country since Donald Trump took office in January 2017, are an inevitable consequence of this man and the infectiousness of his beliefs, which he spread in roars across stadiums and in capital letters on social media. It spread person to person, mouth to mouth, hovering in the air, invisible and deadly. Advertisement Advertisement To be clear, like all extremists, the thugs who swarmed the Capitol on Jan. 6, and the barbarians with their Tiki torches on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, have their own agency. No one forced them there. But it was Trump who incited them, who urged on their aggressive hypermasculinity to fight for the honor of their leader, their peoplejust as jihadist leaders like Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki have done. Which is why, as Joe Biden prepares to take the reins of this deeply damaged, divided country, he will have to put this kind of extremism and radicalization at the top of his agenda, just as American lawmakers did in the aftermath of 9/11. Advertisement And there is real work to be done. Massive changes must be made in homeland security, in the way we approach domestic terrorism. To begin to recover from Trumpism, we also need to change the ways we educate our children, rethink our handling of social media, and above all, work to improve the rates of literacy across the nation, perhaps particularly around our understanding of the news. And thats just for starters. Nonetheless, I carry a deep belief that Joe Biden, this champion of womens rights, with Americas first female vice president at his side, is just the man we need for this moment. Biden, after all, is someone whose empathy is legend. That empathy is sure to infuse Americas breath the way Trumps violence did before. It will change the tone we use with one another. It becomes the stilling force. This is not to say that I believe this will be enough on its own to turn the tide. But if Trumps narcissistic rage and calls for violence could incite the events of Jan. 6, Bidens empathy, his justice, his humanity, can lead us out again. HONOLULU, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Hawaii families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Hawaii families, schools, and organizations are hosting 79 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among these will be a series of virtual "Hawaii Education Exploration" activities, including a live board game session over Zoom and an online teacher appreciation day. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including Honolulu. "When families choose from different quality educational offerings in Hawaii, they select the learning environment that best matches their values and heritage," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This Week is an opportunity to show gratitude for great schools in Hawaii and work toward more personalized learning options for all families." In Hawaii, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling. Hawaii families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Hawaii school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/hawaii. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Hyderabad, Jan 15 : Pharma major Dr Reddy's Laboratories Ltd on Friday announced that it has received approval from the Drugs Control General of India (DCGI) to conduct Phase 3 clinical trial for the Sputnik V vaccine in India. The Phase 3 study of Sputnik V will be conducted on 1500 subjects as part of the randomised, double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled study in India, the Hyderabad-based company said in a statement. Earlier, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) reviewed the safety data from the Phase 2 clinical trial of the vaccine and recommended the Phase 3 recruitment. In its report, the DSMB concluded that no safety concerns were identified and the study met the primary endpoints of safety. G.V. Prasad, Co-chairman and Managing Director, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, termed this as an "important milestone in the progress of this pivotal clinical trial of the vaccine". "We expect to commence the Phase 3 study within this month and will continue to fast-track our efforts to bringing in a safe and efficacious vaccine for the Indian population," he said. In September 2020, Dr Reddy's partnered with Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to conduct the clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine and for its distribution rights in India. Sputnik V, developed by the Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, was registered by the Ministry of Health of Russia last August and became the world's first registered vaccine against Covid-19 based on the established human adenoviral vector platform. The vaccine's efficacy is confirmed at 91.4 per cent based on data analysis of the final control point of clinical trials in Russia. Currently, the vaccine's clinical trials are underway in the UAE, Egypt, Venezuela and Belarus while it has been registered in Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Bolivia and Serbia for inoculation. Islamabad, Jan 15 : Malaysian authorities on Friday seized a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane at the Kuala Lumpur Airport over the non-payment of aircraft lease dues, a media report said. The PIA plane was seized on the orders of a local Malaysian court, the Geo News report said citing sources as saying. PIA had leased two aircraft, including the seized Boeing-777, from a Vietnamese company in 2015. The plane was seized after passengers had already boarded the aircraft. The aircraft's 18-member staff also become stranded in Kuala Lumpur due to the seizure, and will now quarantine for 14 days as per protocols, the sources said. In a Twitter post, the Pakistani flag carrier said: "The passengers are being looked after and alternate arrangements for their travel have been finalised." Moscow, Jan 15 : Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the US is doing all it can to hamper any chance for dialogue between Iran and the Persian Gulf countries. "It would be in our interest for Iran and the Arab states of the Gulf to establish a normal dialogue with each other, reach confidence-building agreements, establish transparency in military affairs, and generally develop cooperation," Xinhua news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry citing Lavrov as saying on Thursday. "Unfortunately, our US colleagues so far, at least the current administration, has done everything to prevent this dialogue from taking place," he added. The Minister further noted that Russia's proposal on the collective security concept for the Persian Gulf area is also aimed at fostering dialogue between Iran and the Gulf states, and it is essential that no actions are taken to undermine these efforts. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Chinese buyers bullish despite challenges THAILAND: Despite a new wave of COVID-19 cases in Thailand, Chinese buyers are prepared to purchase Thai properties in the second half of 2021, driven by the expectation of a distribution of vaccines and the reopening of inbound tourism. propertyChineseCoronavirusCOVID-19tourism By Bangkok Post Friday 15 January 2021, 03:40PM Graphics: Bangkok Post. Kashif Ansari, co-founder and chief executive of Kuala Lumpur-based real estate marketing firm Juwai IQI Group, said Thailand remained the top destination in terms of interest among Chinese property buyers. We dont think the recent wave [of COVID-19 infections] will delay the reopening of the economy or recovery of foreign real estate investment, he said. Whats probably more important is when Thais and foreign nationals who wish to travel here can be vaccinated. The sooner vaccinations are obtained, the quicker life can go back to normal. Juwai IQI forecast the Thai economy would begin reopening to large-scale international travel in the second half of 2021 if the vaccination regime is not delayed, said Mr Ansari. The Thai property market will rebound spectacularly when mass tourism resumes. Travel will bring tourists back, which will support economic growth and employment, helping boost local buyer demand, he said. It will also bring greater numbers of offshore buyers who are eager to make up for lost time. Last year, the top five countries where Chinese property buyers made the most enquiries were Thailand, followed by the US, Australia, Canada, and Japan. In 2019, Thailand also led the way, followed by Australia, Japan, the US and Canada, respectively. While enquiries in Thailand were down substantially from the extremely high levels they reached in 2019, it held the leading position for Chinese property buyers considering purchasing property overseas. Chinese and other foreign buyers consider Thailand to be an affordable destination with a high-quality lifestyle. They believe the EEC and high-speed rail will help contribute to strong economic growth and real-estate price growth in the 2020s, Mr Ansari said. He said international buyers, and particularly Chinese buyers, wanted to resume purchasing Thai properties as the Thai government had taken some critical steps to support the property market. Offering long-term residency visas in exchange for property investment [of at least B10 million] was a smart step," he said. Three luxury condo projects had already signed up with Thailand Privilege Card (the operator of Thailand Elite Card), with about 200 sales expected. That would result in some B2 billion in investment into the country. He said if 30 additional developers that expressed interest also signed up and sold a proportionate number of units under the plan, it would increase investment significantly. With 33 developers signed up, the group estimated a total of 2,200 sales under the program and a total investment of at least B22bn. Other ideas have been proposed by the Finance Ministry and industry groups. The government should offer residency for a shorter period for investment in lower-priced units of as low as US$100,000 (B3mn), he said. He suggested the government raise a quota on foreign condo ownership in buildings in selected areas from 49% to as high as 70% and extend a leasehold period for low-rise houses from 30 years to a longer period. Visit of Armenian Foreign Minister to Azerbaijan without Baku's permission could cost Armenia dearly, said in a statement made by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. The statement once again emphasizes that illegal visits of Armenian statesmen to the territory of Azerbaijan are unacceptable. "If the Armenian Foreign Minister visits Azerbaijan again without the permission of official Baku, it may cost the Armenian side dearly. Regarding the groundless statement of the Armenian Foreign Minister about the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, we would like to remind the Armenian officials that President Ilham Aliyev has sent the status issue to the dustbin of history," the statement said. Note to readers: What are the next Zomatos and Flipkarts of India? What if they are growing in the hinterland, out of earshot and away from eyeballs? India does have such startups but they struggle for attention or are not thrilled with the limelight. Small-Town Startups is a series of articles that shines a light on enterprises focussed on customers based in Indias tier-2 cities, townships and other non-metro centres. To enter into the space, the first and foremost thing required for you is to be a dreamer, believes 23-year-old Awais Ahmed who is all set to send Indias first private commercial earth-imaging satellite into the space. Born and brought up in a small town of Chikmagalur district in Karnataka, Ahmeds family wanted him to be good in studies and pursue a decent job. But much like thousands of youngsters these days, Ahmed wanted to do more in his life. While pursuing his engineering BITS Pilani, he chose to become an entrepreneur and that too in a segment which has not many takers as of now space. While his parents supported him in this endeavor their apprehension was well visible on their faces, according to Ahmed. Two years down the line, his venture Pixxel Space, is ready with Indias first earth-imaging satellites. The launch is scheduled to happen in February in partnership with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The satellite is expected to offer a dataset with global coverage every 24 hours that will allow organisations to monitor as well as predict global occurrences in real-time. In a candid conversation, Ahmed talks with Moneycontrol about how this whole idea came into existence, the challenges of building a space start-up in India and the investors sentiment towards this segment. Q. Why did you choose space as a sector? I think all of us have always been fascinated with the stars and the universe. Like every other kid I used to read a lot about these things. I had my telescope and encyclopedia. But there were a couple of experiences while being at BITS Pilani that enabled Pixxel. The first one was when I became a part of the student satellite team while in the first year of college. This was a team that was working with ISRO. At that point in time, ISRO had a student satellite program, where they would help universities build very small amateur satellites that they would launch for free. So, that gave me first-hand knowledge of how actually you build hardware for space, because building hardware for earth and building it for space, requires an entirely different mindset. The second experience was when I was one of the founding team members in engineering lead at Hyperloop India. SpaceX had this competition. They built a one-mile long vacuum tube right beside their headquarters. They proposed a challenge to teams around the world to build a vehicle that would travel at really fast speed and whoever did the fastest would win. Out of 2,500 global teams that applied from the likes of MIT, Harvard and others, 24 were selected. Hyperloop India, the team I helped found as leading the engineering, became the only Indian finalist to be selected. So, we built the vehicle in Bangalore. We took it to SpaceX HQ in Los Angeles. We presented it to Elon Musk and the team. But then while we were there, they took us on a tour of the SpaceX factory. So, seeing the rockets, engines being built touching the rockets that have gone to space and come back was the moment for me . I was like this is a place for me to be in. So, after coming back from there, I read up as much as I could about space and decided that well start with analysis of satellite imaging. While doing this is when I realized that theres probably an opportunity to do a much better type of imaging. It was then that I brought in my co-founder Kshitij and thats how it began. Q. You have said that you come from a very modest background. How supportive were your parents when you told them about your plans to launch a space startup? My father runs a small pharmacy and my mom is a homemaker but I had everything in terms of education while growing up. When I joined BITS, like any other set of parents they were like, study hard, get a good job, in a good company and then you dont have to worry about anything else. But this is something that came up where I saw an opportunity. I told them this is something I wanted to do and they were quite supportive. But in the hindsight, I think they were worried internally but never let it reflect. Q. You call your satellite Anand. Is it going to enter the space to demonstrate technology? Yes, Anand is a tech demo satellite. We needed to build something very basic. And thats how we build the camera that could go up there, work on its own autonomously and beam down the data. Thats essentially all it needs to do. Even if it beams down just one image and then dies off, we would have completed the mission, because we need to prove that this satellite that we have built can beam down good quality data from the space. So, manufacturing of that began in July 2019 and by Jan 2020, we had completed it. After that, we have been predominantly testing. 4-5 months were taken away due to COVID and lockdown because we needed to work physically. And just over the last month, we have the satellite undergoing rigorous testing and were almost done now with the launch coming up next month. Q. What exactly will the satellite do? See what we are building is a constellation of satellites that have cameras on them. That will take pictures of the earth. What we are expecting is that once those pictures are beamed down to our data centers, we will have algorithms and the models that can take this data and convert it into useful output for a lot of system organizations. Just taking a few examples, it can be used to understand climate change, forestry, urban monitoring etc. For an agri company or fertilizer company, it will be able to look at the soil and identify which nutrients are lacking, what fertilizers to use etc. The plan is to have 30 satellites in the constellation that will provide global coverage every 25 hours. When we started out we realised that in most cases, existing satellite imagery wasnt really good enough to even see certain problems. That is where our tagline of Seeing the Unseen was drawn. The second tech demonstrator will go up by December. It will be a better version of the first one with the lessons that we learn. Q. So when youre saying commercial what sort of customers are lining up for this? We have customers already lined up who want to check out the data and have signed contracts. I cant take names but the customers are in agriculture, oil and gas and urban monitoring spaces. And these are not only Indian but also companies from the US and the Middle East. Q. What has been the investor interest in your start-up and this whole sector in India so far? What amount of investor queries do you get? It has changed in the last one year or so. In the late 2018 it was very tough to talk to venture capital funds and raise funding. Most of them still saw it (our startup) as a student project that we were looking at given that we were still studying in the final year. But what helped at that point was when we tapped into the BITS Alumni network, where a lot of angels came in besides one institutional investor. But very recently when we had another set of conversations in late 2019, for our next round a lot more investors were interested. Q. What changed? Success stories started to come out. SpaceX was doing significantly good. And a lot of companies got registered in the spacing domain in India. They saw that internationally this is a space where a lot of investment was going in, and in India they started building the thesis. There were quite a few venture capital firms that were willing to take a bet and these were mostly early stage small funds, micro VC funds and seed stage funds. Internationally also we could see a lot of exits happening and funding going into space, which also spurred up last year the intent of building thesis at least, even if theyre not investing. And that number has been consistently increasing after we announced our seed round in August 2020, many more of them reached out as well to start building their thesis. Large funds would still prefer doing that (investing) in software or full tech start-ups and not take a risk in space. So, compared to the world, India was still sort of quite lagging in the investment sector. Q. How much money have you raised and what amount is required for the expansion? We have raised about Rs 40-42 crore. We would require Rs 280-350 crore more to deploy the entire constellation. But theres essentially two ways from here. We have enough money today to do 3 to 4 launches. We are doing two this year. We have enough money to do 3 to 4. And we can use the revenue generated from this data, from these satellites to slowly build a few more satellites and keep on adding. So thats one way that we wouldnt need to raise much more and we can continue to build at our pace. The second pathway is we go and raise $10-20-30 million to start putting in multiple satellites at time we should need more revenue. So to answer your question in two ways, I can either choose not to raise a lot and then keep on building on what we have. Or if we were to complete a venture capital funding, I would say $30-50 million is what we would need in total for 30 satellites. Q. And the timeframe would be? We plan to complete the 30 satellite launches by the middle of 2023. Q. Which would mean that you would need to start working on your fundraising plans as we speak? Actually after the first launch. I mean having data from space would be critical. So, three-four months after the launch, by April-May is when we would look at raising the next round of funding. Q. You are currently working with ISRO on this project, but earlier you were in talks to partner with a Russian agency. How did that change? So, we have built a satellite and at the end we need someone like an Uber to take us from the ground to the space right. There are multiple launch providers who do that. ISRO in one, the Russian Space Agency is other, SpaceX is another ... So, we took a look at who was providing it at what costs and when they were launching because the timing needed to be right. And at the point when we decided to get into the contract with the Russians, the reforms in India for the space were not announced. So we just went with the Russian Space Agency but after the reforms were announced last year, we worked closely with the Department of Space and ISRO to see if we would also prefer to launch it from India. Logistically, it makes sense, right? We are manufacturing here, why we would ship it all the way to another country, when we can just launch it from here. And cost wise also its quite competitive. We would get the support of scientists that have been here. So we talked together and said, how can we make sure that this shifts. The Russian launch also got delayed quite a bit. They were initially supposed to launch in July or August 2020. It got shifted to December because of COVID and then to March. Whereas the ISRO launch is going up in February. Q. Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tweeted in response to one of your Tweets acknowledging the importance of space startups in India... How did you feel after that acknowledgement? I think the government has taken a conscious decision that they need to focus on space as a priority sector. Theres no private company that has launched its own satellite here as compared to places such as the US. So that is where it all started from and measures announced to revitalize the economy. They announced that space will be open to private space and ISRO will have to make sure that it builds equal footing and all that. After that the Department of Space and ISRO got to working. How the Tweet sort of came to me was ISRO reached out to us and said that the Prime Minister wanted to have a chat with a few select start-ups from the country in December. There were a few large companies besides startups such as ours, Agnikul and Skyroot. We all presented what we were doing and what the plans are and how it would benefit India and then at the end, he spoke to all of us saying that, see this is a very important sector in terms of private growth. How the IT industry has sort of grown and known to be world class now. They would want space to also be the same especially given how well the ISRO has done and utilise that expertise. Which obviously means a whole lot to people that are working in this space, because until early last year, there were no reforms, there were no way for a private company to launch rockets or satellites and things like that. But now that has changed, so coming directly from the top, from the Prime Minister, meant quite a lot. Q. What are the challenges of setting up a space start-up in India? I think the biggest challenge till date was regulatory uncertainty. We could build a satellite here on ground. Yeah, for sure. I mean, just like building a computable operating space with a camera, and solar panels and batteries. But at launch, it required certain licenses. You need to register your frequencies with the International Telecommunication Union. You need to register your satellite as a space object with the United Nations and overloads and things, which is what a country would help with anywhere else. That is something we didnt have until very recently. So that has been the biggest challenge, but now thats sort of taken care of. Even though its still a draft, it needs to convert an Act. The other challenge is the access to capital. This segment requires either a significant grant funding from the government or access to a VC Fund because this is a very capital intensive business. Q. Whats your vision with these satellites? Its to help make the world a better place. How do we do that? Say for example, in agriculture, we help it make it more efficient by identifying when to use fertilizers, or we help tackle air pollution and water pollution and monitor where it is happening, or helping identify where deforestation is happening and things like that. Rome, Jan 15 : Italy has extended its state of emergency imposed to contain the Covid-19 pandemic until April 30, the government said in a statement. This came one day after Italy's Covid-19 death toll has exceeded the 80,000 mark. The country first declared a national state of emergency due to the pandemic on January 31, 2020, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday. The existing Covid-19 containment measures are also extended to April 30, including a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and a three-tiered color-coded system that was introduced last year, with varying restrictions according to the rate of transmission of the virus. The government also introduced a fourth level -- white -- with very few Covid-19 restrictions, which will correspond to regions with under 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants. No Italian regions are in the white zone yet. As of the latest order signed by Health Minister Roberto Speranza, most of Italy is now a yellow zone, while five regions are orange. The government also said that a travel ban between Italy's 20 regions will remain in place until February 15. The latest data from the health ministry showed that Italy reported 15,774 new infections and 507 deaths on Wednesday, bring the country's current active infections to 564,774 and the total number of deaths to 80,326. As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in Italy and some other countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines. As of Wednesday night, Italy has vaccinated a total of 885,814 people, according to the health ministry. Meanwhile, 236 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Tuesday. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Advertisement Eleven Britons have been infected with a Brazilian coronavirus variant which is feared could make vaccines less effective, it emerged today as Number 10 was accused of 'putting lives at risk' by being too slow to close the borders. The COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) revealed the variant, known as P.2, had been picked up 11 times through routine testing in Britain. The first positive sample was taken on November 14 at a Lighthouse Laboratory in Glasgow, MailOnline understands. Laboratories in Cheshire, Milton Keynes and Cambridge have also spotted the variant, it is believed. Some confusion has emerged over the exact number of people to have been infected with it in the UK - COG-UK today claimed it had found 11 by today, January 15, but Public Health England said it had only recorded eight by January 14. At least two nurses in Brazil have been infected with P.2 despite catching and beating Covid in the spring, which has raised fears the new variant can slip past vaccines and undo natural immunity. The variant is also thought to be more infectious than regular Covid after being linked to an explosion of cases this winter in Brazil. Sir Patrick Vallance said today even if a new variant is able to get around the current iteration of vaccines, it was going to be 'really quite easy' to tweak them to target the new versions. Offering hope that the variant wouldn't render the jabs completely useless, he said they should provide protection against the variants but the 'question is to what degree'. Scientists have said the Brazilian stain in the UK is not the same as the variant detected in four travellers who flew from the Brazilian city of Manaus to Japan last week. That variant, known as P.1, led to the banning of travellers from South America and Portugal from entering the UK from today. Both Brazilian variants share a mutation on their spike proteins, known as E484K, which is thought to play a role in making them more transmissible. Professor Wendy Barclay, a virologist behind a new Government-led research team studying Covid mutations, admitted both variants 'might impact the way that antibodies work'. However, COG-UK said P.1 has two other problematic mutations K417T and N501Y which P.2 does not have, making it more infectious and more likely to slip past the immune system than the version found in Britain. The group said P.2 is 'not at present considered sufficient to designate it as a "variant of concern".' It came as Labour today criticised the Government for having 'no proper strategy in place' for tackling the pandemic. Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said No10's 'incompetence is putting lives at risk'. He added: 'It is terrible news that evidence of the highly infectious Covid variant from Brazil has been found in the UK. This is yet another example of the Conservatives being far too slow to protect our borders against Covid, closing the door after the horse has bolted.' Sir Patrick Vallance (left) said today even if a new variant is able to get around the current iteration of vaccines, it was going to be 'really quite easy' to tweak them to target the new versions. Professor Wendy Barclay (right), from Imperial College London, revealed there were two different types of Brazilian variants, and that only one had been spotted in Britain A Brazilian coronavirus variant that is feared could reinfect survivors is already in the UK and has been here for 'some time', a leading scientist confirmed today (stock image) Ministers only imposed the South America travel ban this morning, prompting fury from MPs who questioned why the decision came days after scientists first raised the alarm about the variant that had been spotted in Japan. It comes despite Public Health England claiming as recently as yesterday it had not spotted any cases of a Brazilian strain. Earlier this morning, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps also said he was 'not aware' of any cases. Boris Johnson's official spokesperson said today ministers had acted as 'quickly as possible' and that experts at PHE's Porton Down laboratory were assessing the variant and 'should have the results very shortly'. They insisted that the current evidence does not suggest the strain is deadlier or affects vaccines. Sir Patrick Vallance stoked fears this week when he said SAGE doesn't know if the jabs will beat the variant but other top advisers believe it won't render the vaccine useless but may make it slightly less effective. It comes after a Chinese vaccine being trialled in Brazil yielded a surprisingly low effectiveness rate at just 50 per cent on Wednesday. But scientists today shot down speculation it could be the new variants making the jab less potent, pointing out that the study took place over summer when the new variants were not widespread. MailOnline understands Brazilian strain entered the UK in November and may have been spotted in 11 British people already. It was believed to have been picked up by routine testing, which sees random samples sent to the Government's Lighthouse labs to be analysed by genomic sequencers tracking the evolution of coronavirus. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE BRAZIL VARIANTS? The only similarities between the two Brazil variants is that they share crucial a mutation on their spike protein known as E484K. E484K may be associated with an ability to evade parts of the immune system called antibodies. Researchers suspect this is the case because strains with this mutation have been shown to reinfect people who caught and beat older versions of Covid. WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE VARIANTS? Variant 1 Name: P.1 Date: Discovered in Tokyo, Japan, in four travellers arriving from Manaus, Brazil, on January 2. Is it in the UK? No. Public health officials and scientists randomly sample around 1 in 10 coronavirus cases in the UK and they have not yet reported any cases of B.1.1.248, but this doesn't rule it out completely. What other mutations does it have? P.1 has 17 mutations, but E484K are two others are seen to be problematic. The N501Y mutation makes the spike protein better at binding to receptors in people's bodies and therefore makes the virus more infectious. Exactly how much more infectious it is remains to be seen, but scientists estimate the similar-looking variant in the UK is around 56 per cent more transmissible than its predecessor. Even if the virus doesn't appear to be more dangerous, its ability to spread faster and cause more infections will inevitably lead to a higher death rate. Another key mutation in the variant, named K417T, has the potential to 'possibly escape some antibodies', according to COG-UK. This mutation is less well-studied and the ramifications of this are still being researched. Variant 2 Name: P.2 Date: Unclear. It's thought to have emerged in or near Rio de Janeiro State. Is it in the UK? Yes, COG-UK revealed it had been spotted in 11 genomes in Britain. MailOnline understands it was first picked up on November 14 at a Government lab in Glasgow. Laboratories in Cheshire, Milton Keynes and Cambridge have also spotted the variant. What other mutations does it have?COG-UK says that, other than E484K, P.2 'does not contain a constellation of mutations of interest' and 'does not contain the other important mutations carried by lineage P.1'. The group says at the moment it is not deemed a 'variant of concern', even though it has been linked to two cases of reinfection. Advertisement However, it can weeks or even months for the swabs to be processed in laboratories, put through the sequencing process and added to the national database, which may be why the UK was slow to announce its emergence. For example, the Kent strain of the virus which triggered Britain's winter wave was tracked back to a patient in Kent in September. But it was only actually detected and announced in December. Boris Johnson's official spokesperson told MailOnline: 'Current evidence does not suggest that the strain causes any higher mortality rate or that it affects the vaccines or treatments. 'As we have done throughout the pandemic PHE have worked hard to identify cases of new variant. Obviously they are doing that with this one.' Sir Patrick Vallance also sought to calm fears about the new variant at tonight's Downing Street press conference. He said vaccines could be tweaked quickly and easily to target new variants. The chief scientific adviser said: 'It is possible that the variants will get round vaccines to some extent in the future and some of them that are out there in the world now may well have more of an effect to bypass some of the existing immune system that has come up in response to a vaccine or previous infection. 'I think it is likely that the vaccine we have now is going to protect against the UK variant and is going to provide protection I suspect against the other variants as well. The question is to what degree.' Up until today, it was thought there was only one Brazilian variant. Both variants fall under the B.1.1.28 lineage of SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes Covid. They both evolved separately, with P.1 emerging in Manaus, the capital city of Amazonas, and P.2 emerging in Rio de Janeiro State in the North East. Both evolved to carry a mutation on the crucial spike protein. The genetic mutation, called E484K, changes the shape of the spike protein on the outside of the virus in a way that might make it less recognisable to an immune system trained to spot versions of the virus that don't have the mutation, scientists say. E484K is thought to change the virus in a way which makes it more difficult for antibodies to bind to it and prevent it entering the body. Antibodies are a part of the immune system that can cripple viruses or attach to them and flag them up as targets for other killer white blood cells. In this case, the part of the spike protein that gets changed is called the 'receptor binding domain', or the RBD, which the virus uses to latch onto the body. P.1 was first detected by the Japanese during routine tests of arriving passengers in Tokyo. It was discovered in four Brazilians who landed at Haneda airport on January 2, all of whom had recently come from Manaus or other parts of Amazonas, which has a landmass six times the size of the UK. That variant is believed to have evolved in the Manaus population as a way to get around 'herd immunity' in the city, according to Professor Barclay. Studies have suggested that around 70 per cent of people in Manaus, situated in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, caught Covid-19 during the first wave of the virus in spring. This may have put evolutionary pressure on the regular Covid strain to adapt to be able to slip past natural immunity to the original version, Professor Barclay said. It may explain why, despite the majority of the 2million people of Manaus having natural immunity, the city is suffering an explosive second wave of the disease. There have been reports of dead bodies having to be dumped in freezer trucks and patients being flown to different states due to a chronic shortage of oxygen and hospital beds. Researchers say Manaus is particularly vulnerable to Covid because it has high levels of social deprivation, with workers living in crowded, multi-generational housing. It is also a free-trade zone and one of Brazil's largest exporter cities, with frequent traffic from Europe and Asia. Because the virus naturally mutates as it jumps between people, Manaus provided the perfect breeding ground for the virus to evolve. Not much is known about P.2, but it is thought to be behind the surge in cases nationally in the South American nation. Brazil results show Chinese vaccine 50% effective - amid fears Brazilian strain could make jabs less potent A coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese company Sinovac has been found to be 50.4 per cent effective in Brazilian clinical trials. The results - published on Wednesday - shows the jab is significantly less effective than previous studies had suggested. And it means the vaccine only scrapes past the 50 per cent mark needed to seal regulatory approval. Scientists said the new Brazilian variants ravaging the South American country were not the blame for the 50 per cent figure because the the 'timings don't work'. Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline: 'The trial would have started before the variant was widespread. It is also a very different vaccine to others so it might well just not be so good. 'Antibody pressure could have caused the mutant but the same type of mutants, that are better at transmitting, have occurred elsewhere too so I am not sure it is the only answer. 'A single residue change would not be enough to totally evade an antibody response normally. But it could be part of the reason for its rise.' The Chinese vaccine is one of two that the Brazilian government has pre-ordered. It works by using dead Covid particles to expose the body to the virus without risk of falling ill. Last month, Turkish researchers trialling the Sinovac vaccine said they found it to be 91.25 per cent effective, while Indonesia, said it was 65.3 per cent effective. Both were interim results from late-stage trials. It's difficult to compare the effectiveness of vaccines trialled in different countries because the criteria used in studies varies wildly, as does the number of volunteers enrolled. Advertisement Professor Barclay suggested this mutation occurred in an area of Rio with high prevalence which allowed it to transmit freely between people and rapidly evolve. Britain has banned all travel from South America, Portugal, Panama and Cape Verde in a bid to stop the variants from wreaking havoc in the UK. Officials here are already trying to bring the super-infectious Kent variant under control. No-one who has been in any of the listed countries in the previous 10 days will be granted entry. The measures are even wider than had been expected - although British and Irish nationals will not be subject to the total block, and must merely isolate for 10 days. Reacting to news of the Brazil variant in the UK, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, said: 'It is terrible news that evidence of the highly infectious Covid variant from Brazil has been found in the UK. 'This is yet another example of the Conservatives being far too slow to protect our borders against Covid, closing the door after the horse has bolted. 'The utter chaos around airport testing, travel restrictions and quarantine is the fault of the Government. They have no proper strategy in place and this incompetence is putting lives at risk.' Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government's chief scientific adviser, assured the public yesterday that there was no evidence any of the variants led to more severe disease or could get around the immune system. He told ITV's Peston show: 'There's no evidence at all with any of these variants that it makes the disease itself more severe. 'So the changes that we're seeing with the variants are largely around increased transmission. '[There's] no evidence yet for the UK version that it makes a difference in terms of how the immune system recognises it, and if you've been exposed to the old variant or you've had a vaccine, it looks like that's gonna work just as well with this new variant for the UK one. 'The South African one and Brazilian one, we don't know for sure. There's a bit more of a risk that this might make a change to the way the immune system recognises it but we don't know. Those experiments are underway.' Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline that even if the mutation did affect the immune system it wasn't likely to scupper existing vaccines completely. He said: 'We know where the mutations are. I think it's fair to say we don't have a good picture on how easily it spreads or how quickly it spreads. 'Some of the changes, not all, are in the spike protein. The only one we have good data on in terms of the ability to spread is the Kent strain. 'The changes to the spike mean that they could make it more difficult for antibodies to bind to. If there is an effect, and it's a big if, I would assume it would reduce their [vaccines] efficacy not abolish it, it wouldn't render it useless but it might not be effective.' Fears grow over Brazilian Covid variant found in UK as two nurses gets re-infected with mutation months later and suffer WORSE symptoms Two Brazilian nurses who fought off coronavirus and got reinfected with one of the country's new variants has sparked fears the mutation could hamper immunity. Both were confirmed to be reinfected with P.2, the variant that was announced in the UK today. The first woman, an unnamed 45-year-old fell ill with the new variant in October five months after she recovered from Covid caused by an older strain, and her symptoms were worse the second time. Researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a science institute in Rio de Janeiro, warned that mutations on the new variant could increase the risk of reinfection. They wrote that 'viral evolutions may favour reinfections', claiming recently spotted variants 'have raised concern on their potential impact in infectivity and immune escape'. The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation paper which hasn't been peer-reviewed by fellow scientists last week reported the case of a woman in Salvador, Brazil, who got Covid a second time amid an outbreak of the new variant. She had been diagnosed with coronavirus for the first time on May 26, 2020, when she had diarrhoea, muscle aches and general weakness. She took an asthma steroid called prednisone and recovered within three weeks without any long-lasting problems, the researchers said. But in October, she became ill again with similar symptoms diarrhoea, headache, coughing and a sore throat and again tested positive for coronavirus. Her symptoms got even worse than they had been the first time around and she developed breathing difficulties, shortness of breath, muscle pains and insomnia. When the researchers compared her positive test samples from the two episodes they found that the latter one had mutations now known to be a key component of the Brazilian variant. The second case was a 37-year-old health worker in the Northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte who tested positive twice, 116 days apart. Researchers have ruled out the possibility of her initial infection lying dormant in her body because genomic sequencing shows she was ill with two different strains of Covid. The woman first tested positive for a strain of Covid from B.1.1.33 lineage, one of the original versions of Covid to become widespread in the country, on June 17 last year. She presented mild symptoms such as a headache, runny nose, diarrhea, and muscle pain, according to the case report by the Oswaldo Cruz Institute. Four months later, on October 11, the patient presented with more severe headaches, loss of smell and taste, and fatigue. Genomic sequencing showed the woman had become reinfected with a B.1.1.28 virus containing the mutation E484K, which is feared to be resistant to immune responses to older versions of Covid. Advertisement Brazil 'collapses' under Covid as new variant sees epidemic surge: Relatives are forced to supply oxygen for patients, doctors decide who gets to breathe and Amazon's largest city turns into a 'suffocation chamber' At one hospital in Manaus, a despairing relative carried an oxygen tank for his own mother-in-law just to help her breathe for another two hours - with one expert describing the city as a 'suffocation chamber'. Infections have soared to record levels in Brazil with the new variant feared to be the dominant strain in the state of Amazonas and described by one expert as 'very probably' more contagious than the previous type. The variant has already been detected as far afield as Japan and spooked UK ministers into shutting down travel from the whole of South America, after another new strain was blamed for a dramatic surge in cases in Britain. In Manaus, whose mass graves became a symbol of the first wave of the pandemic in Brazil, cemeteries are again burying record number of patients as the new strain causes a total 'collapse' of the healthcare system. The virus was so rife during the first wave that one study suggested more than 70 per cent of Manaus's population had been infected - raising fears that the new strain has evaded any immunity acquired from earlier infections. In the latest outbreak, hundreds of patients are being airlifted to other states while some non-Covid sufferers are being evicted from their beds to make way for those in greater need. Doctors and relatives have described 'nightmare' scenes of medical workers breaking down in tears. And with nearly 500 people still waiting for beds in Manaus, some elderly virus sufferers are being left to die at home. Heartbreaking: Relatives of patients being treated at the 28 de Agosto hospital in Manaus share a tearful hug as the healthcare system in the Amazon's largest city faces 'collapse' and a dire shortage of oxygen Emergency: Healthcare workers transport a 77-year-old patient on a stretcher at a Manaus hospital after he came down with coronavirus symptoms, as a new strain which is feared to be more contagious spreads across the Amazon Overwhelmed: Gravediggers wearing green and yellow hazmat suits bury a foil-wrapped coffin at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, with mourning relatives having to queue to bury their dead A municipal healthcare worker covers the body of an 84-year-old Brazilian who died at home during the deadly outbreak An oxygen cylinder is wheeled into the Getulio Vargas hospital amid drastic shortages of the substance needed to treat coronavirus patients suffering breathing problems Cases in Brazil are at their highest level ever, with more than 360,000 in the last week alone, while the daily death rate is hovering around 1,000 for the first time since the first wave peaked in the Southern Hemisphere winter As the oxygen crisis mounts, Brazil's health minister Eduardo Pazuello said a plane full of medical supplies would arrive on Friday, followed by four others, but it was not clear whether this would be enough to fill the gap. The city has 'run out of oxygen and some health centers have become a type of suffocation chamber,' said Jessem Orellana from the Fiocruz-Amazonia scientific investigation institute. The oxygen provider in Manaus, White Martins, said it was considering diverting some of its supply from neighbouring Venezuela - while military personnel delivered 400 oxygen cylinders to Amazonas in five days. At the Hospital Universitario Getulio Vargas, health workers took empty cylinders to the oxygen provider in the hope there would be some to retrieve. Patients waited anxiously in the hospital as oxygen arrived in time to save some, but too late for others. In echoes of the worst days of the crisis in Europe, doctors were having to decide which patients to treat. 'Yes, there is a collapse in the health care system in Manaus,' the health minister said. 'The line for beds is growing by a lot - we have 480 people waiting now. 'We are starting to remove patients with less serious [conditions] to reduce the impact.' Harrowing accounts were emerging of patients who died with no oxygen, with one grieving relative telling Globo: 'You have no idea what it was like... the shouting, people were dying. Even health professionals, everyone was crying.' 'The oxygen stopped, the patients were dying on the stretchers and the nurses did not know what to do,' another relative said. The new variant, described by the WHO as 'worrying', is feared to be more contagious and to have spread throughout Brazil and possibly further - with Britain shutting down travel from South America on Thursday. In a move that prompted consternation in Portugal, transport secretary Grant Shapps said travel from the EU nation would also be halted because of its links with Brazil, although there are exemptions for truck drivers. Cases in Brazil are at their highest level ever, with more than 360,000 in the last week alone, while the daily death rate is hovering around 1,000 for the first time since the first wave peaked in the Southern Hemisphere winter. At least one cemetery in Manaus, a city of 2.2million people, had mourners queuing up to enter and bury their dead, with Brazilian artists and football teams joining the cry for help. According to official figures, Manaus on Wednesday saw a fourth straight day of record burials - 198, with 87 of them deaths from Covid-19. A woman is comforted outside a Manaus hospital as armed personnel keep order during a disastrous outbreak in the city Medical workers wearing white hazmat suits examine the body of 53-year-old Shirlene Morais Costa, who died after suffering coroanvirus symptoms at home in Manaus A tiny stretcher brings in a baby suspected of having Covid-19 at the HRAN hospital in the federal capital Brasilia on Thursday Vitor Cabral comforts his wife Raissa Floriana after her father was hospitalised with Covid-19 at the 28 de Agosto hospital Hospitals in Manaus admitted few new Covid-19 patients on Thursday, suggesting many will suffer from the disease at home, and some will likely die. Park of the Tribes, a community of more than 2,500 indigenous people on the outskirts of Manaus, went more than two months without any resident showing Covid-19 symptoms. In the past week, 29 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, said Vanda Ortega, a volunteer nurse in the community. Two went to urgent care units, but no one yet has required hospitalization. 'We're really very worried,' said Ortega, who belongs to the Witoto ethnicity. 'It's chaos here in Manaus. There isn't oxygen for anyone.' The crisis has prompted the government in Amazonas to transport 235 patients who depend on oxygen to five other states and the federal capital Brasilia. 'I want to thank those governors who are giving us their hand in a human gesture,' Amazonas governor Wilson Lima said at a news conference on Thursday. 'All of the world looks at us when there is a problem [with] the Earth's lungs,' he said, using a poetic term for the Amazon. 'Now we are asking for help. Our people need this oxygen.' Governors and mayors throughout the country offered help amid a flood of social media videos in which distraught relatives of Covid-19 patients in Manaus begged for people to buy them oxygen. A woman cries during a protest outside the 28 Agosto hospital in Manaus, where authorities are planning to transport scores of patients to other states and the federal capital Brasilia Cemetery workers carry the remains of 89-year-old Abilio Ribeiro, who died of the coronavirus, into a grave in Manaus Military police officers patrol the streets in Manaus after a 7pm curfew was imposed to tackle the crisis in the Amazonian city Amazonas authorities have even appealed to the United States to send a military transport plane to Manaus with oxygen cylinders, a Brazilian congressman said. But there are growing demands Brazil's federal government to do more, with president Jair Bolsonaro under pressure to act after long downplaying the dangers of Covid-19. Federal prosecutors in Manaus have asked a local judge to pressure Bolsonaro's administration to step up its support, saying that an air force plane for oxygen transportation 'needs repair, which brought a halt to the emergency influx'. Local authorities recently called on the federal government to reinforce Manaus' stock of oxygen, while the air force said it was deploying two planes to transport patients. During the first wave of the crisis, Manaus consumed a maximum 30,000 cubic metres of oxygen per day, but now the need has more than doubled to nearly 70,000 cubic metres, according to White Martins. 'Due to the strong impact of the Covid -19 pandemic, the consumption of oxygen in the city increased exponentially over the last few days in comparison with a volume that was already extremely high,' White Martins said. 'Demand is much higher than anything predictable and... continues to grow significantly.' The company added that Manaus' remote location presents challenging logistics, requiring additional stocks to be transported by boat and by plane. Governor Lima - once seen as an ally of Bolsonaro - has also decreed more health restrictions, including the suspension of public transport and a curfew between 7pm and 6am. Lima said the state was 'in the most critical moment of the pandemic' as he announced the 10-day curfew beginning on Friday, saying that 'we are in a war operation'. 'Here there aren't any empty beds left, any oxygen tanks, nothing - all we have left is faith,' Manaus resident Luiza Castro said. A struggling patient is transported by medical workers at the Getulio Vargas hospital in Manaus where health workers have been taking empty cylinders to a local oxygen provider in the hope there would be some available A man breaks down outside the 28 de Agosto hospital as Manaus faces a shortage of bed space and oxygen supplies A man walks on an empty street in Manaus after the governor of Amazonas imposed the curfew to curb the infection rate Bolsonaro, a right-wing former army captain often compared to Donald Trump, has raged against lockdowns and described the virus as a 'little flu', laughing off the dangers even when he himself was infected with the disease. He has also flouted social distancing by appearing at rallies of his supporters, and touted the unproven anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19. Felipe Naveca, an expert studying coronavirus mutations in Amazonas, said the new strain was 'very probably' more contagious than the original virus, just like new variants found in Britain and South Africa. The worsening situation in Manaus was not due only to one variant, he added, warning that authorities were expecting a rise in virus cases due to end-of-year parties. 'We need urgent support from the population to reduce the transmission and slow down the virus's evolution,' Naveca said. Experts worry new mutations could eventually show resistance to the vaccines developed to combat the original strain. However, 'right now there's no evidence that this line prejudices the vaccine's response,' Naveca said, and Brazil aims to start its vaccination campaign sometime this month. There is concern, though, the new variant could already have spread throughout Brazil, and it has been detected as far afield as Japan. Brazil has had 8.3million confirmed infections and 207,000 deaths in total. The number of fatalities is second only to the United States. 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. If youre one of the 4.7 million New Jersey residents who will become eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, it wont be as simple as calling your primary care doctor, officials warn. Primary care and family physicians have faced difficulties getting doses of the vaccines, leaving hospitals the largest distributors still, Dr. Sean Cook, a family physician and board member of the New Jersey Association of Family Physicians, told NJ Advance Media. Cook, who practices at Green Brook Family Medicine in Green Brook, said doctors offices that want to give the shot are facing hurdles acquiring the correct vaccine fridges and the vaccine itself. We ordered another vaccine refrigerator, which (the supplier) cant even tell us when were getting it because they cant make them fast enough, Cook said. The Pfizer vaccine requires ultra cold storage that is difficult for many doctors offices to set up, while the Moderna vaccine can rely on more traditional refrigerators. Both vaccines require two shots several weeks apart. Some larger physician groups were able to complete requirements including vaccine storage needs (cold chain), Nancy Kearney, the director of communications for the state Department of Health, said in an email. Tapping family doctors as vaccine distributors could help speed up the process, Cook said. New Jersey is hoping to vaccinate 70%, or 4.7 million people, by the spring. So far, 264,000 doses have been given. Were familiar with the regulations for purchasing, for shipping, for storage, for administration, for reporting-- that daily practice for family physicians, theres honestly really nothing new about this, Cook said. And having established relationships with patients can help ease any concerns people might have about the vaccine, which has been met with skepticism from some for its unprecedented roll-out timeframe, he said. Cook said his practice partners with several county departments of health and corporate clients to do annual flu shot clinics, so they have experience in large-scale vaccination efforts. But severely limited supplies have made COVID-19 vaccine partnerships impossible so far, he said. At this point, even the people we have relationships, they dont have vaccines either yet, Cook said. There are currently over 100 locations offering the vaccine in New Jersey, including county departments of health, grocery store pharmacies, and mega sites set up by the state. As more vaccine becomes available, we certainly want to get it into more primary care offices, Kearney said. In addition to healthcare workers and first responders, smokers, those older than 65, and 1 million people with chronic illnesses will be eligible for the vaccine beginning on Thursday. I dont think departments of health and hospitals by themselves are going to be able to get enough vaccinations out, Cook said. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription. Katie Kausch may be reached at kkausch@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 21:29:58|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. - - - - DHAKA -- Bangladesh reported 762 new COVID-19 cases and 13 new deaths on Friday, making the tally at 526,485 and the death toll at 7,862, the Directorate General of Health Services said. The official data showed that 13,678 samples were tested in the last 24 hours across Bangladesh. - - - - MANILA -- Foreign nationals travelling from or transiting through the United Arab Emirates and Hungary will be barred from entering the Philippines starting Jan. 17, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Friday. The newly announced restriction is in the Southeast Asian country's further efforts to curb the spread of the new and more contagious coronavirus variants. - - - - TEHRAN -- Iran's health ministry reported 6,485 daily COVID-19 cases on Friday, raising the total nationwide infections to 1,318,295. The pandemic has so far claimed 56,621 lives in Iran, up by 83 in the past 24 hours, said Sima Sadat Lari, the spokeswoman for Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, during her daily briefing. - - - - BEIJING -- An international expert team of the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in China and started quarantine at a hotel in Wuhan on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Friday. The 13-member team will conduct joint scientific research with Chinese scientists on the origin-tracing of the novel coronavirus, Zhao told a press briefing. - - - - KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia reported 3,211 new COVID-19 infections, the health ministry said on Friday, bringing the national total to 151,066. Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that five of the new cases are imported and 3,206 are local transmissions. Eight more deaths have been reported, pushing the death toll to 586. - - - - SOFIA -- The Bulgarian Health Ministry on Friday morning reported a daily record high of 6,728 COVID-19 recoveries in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 150,370. The previous daily record of 4,290 recoveries was reported on Dec. 12. Meanwhile, the number of confirmed infections has reached 210,951, an increase of 535 over the past 24 hours, and the COVID-19 death toll rose by 47 to 8,396, the ministry said. Enditem The national capital is all set for the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccination exercise on Saturday at 81 centres with healthcare workers who have been in the forefront of the fight against the pandemic to be given the shots first. The inoculation drive will be kicked off from the state-run LNJP Hospital with a simple ceremony in the presence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain. The 81 sites include six central government facilities AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, RML Hospital, Kalawati Saran Children Hospital and two ESI hospitals. The rest 75 centres, spanning all 11 districts of Delhi, include Delhi government-run facilities such as LNJP Hospital, GTB Hospital, Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, DDU Hospital, BSA Hospital, Delhi State Cancer Institute, ILBS Hospital, and private facilities such as Max Hospital, Fortis Hospital, Apollo Hospital and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. A senior official on Thursday had said Oxford COVID-19 vaccine Covishield will be administered at 75 centres while Bharat Biotech-made Covaxin doses will be given at the remaining six facilities. However, he did not clarify which of these hospitals will be the six centres where the vaccine made by Bharat Biotech will be used. Kejriwal has said the Delhi government is fully prepared for the vaccination roll-out starting January 16, with over 8,000 healthcare workers to be given the shots every scheduled day in the national capital. The city government has received in total 2.74 lakh doses of the vaccine so far from the Centre, which would be sufficient to cater to 1.2 lakh healthcare workers, he said. "Every person will receive two doses, and the Centre has given 10 per cent extra in stock, in case of any mishappening, like damage of vials. There are a total of 2.4 lakh healthcare workers in Delhi who have registered for vaccination, and more doses are expected to arrive soon," he said. The vaccine will be administered on four days of the week Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It will not be given on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays when other regular vaccination work will be carried out. Each day 100 persons will be administered the vaccine at a site, he said and hoped the people of Delhi and the rest of the country will finally get rid of the virus after facing hardships for past several months. Delhi has recorded over 6.31 lakh COVID-19 cases and 10,722 coronavirus deaths till Thursday, out of which6,17,930 patients have recovered, been discharged or migrated. The city government has announced that the vaccine will be provided to people in Delhi for free-of-cost. The immunisation exercise is voluntary. Various hospitals, both government-run and private facilities, are also geared up for the roll-out. From Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in North Delhi to Apollo Hospital in south Delhi, hospital authorities said they were all set for the exercise, with two dry-run already done in the past several days. "Vaccination will commence after the nationwide inauguration of COVID-19 vaccination programme by the prime minister, and it will include 100 healthcare workers, including a mix of doctors, nurses and paramedical staff," saidDr D S Rana, Chairman (Board of Management), SGRH. The first batch of Oxford Covishield vaccine containing 2.64 lakh doses had reached the Delhi's central storage facility at Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital on Tuesday. Also, 20,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin made by Bharat Biotech had arrived at the RGSSH on Wednesday, officials said on Thursday, adding that the vaccine had been sent to various centres, but did not specify on the quantum of doses transported there. India's drugs regulator has approved Oxford COVID-19 vaccine Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute, and indigenously developed Covaxin of Bharat Biotech for restricted emergency use in the country. Dr Suneela Garg, public health expert and professor of excellence at Maulana Azad Medical College here, said the roll-out system will work akin to an electoral exercise. "Those who have registered themselves, will get an SMS message, ahead of the actual day of vaccination, telling about the location of the centre and the date of vaccination," she said. "At every site, one officer will check details and match it with those shown on CoWIN app for people,following which the necessary documents will be checked and then they will be taken one by one for vaccination," she said. There will be a nodal officer at each vaccination centre, which will have a waiting room, a vaccination room and an observation room, and social distancing norms will be in place. COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network or CoWIN app and its ecosystem will be used to manage and scale up the massive vaccination drive. Everything will be fed to the database in real-time. Also, the person after being vaccinated will be kept under observation for any AEFI (adverse events following immunisation), Garg said. The Delhi government is fully prepared to receive, store and administer COVID-19 vaccine to 51 lakh priority category persons in the city in the first phase of vaccination, Kejriwal had earlier said. These include healthcare workers, who will be first to receive, followed by frontline workers, people aged above 50 and those below 50 years but with co-morbidities, he added. Students in St. Tammany Parish Schools will be allowed to wear masks with the slogan "Black Lives Matter" after the American Civil Liberties Union protested in the case of two students who had been told the masks were not allowed. The students, 13-year-old Suriah White, who attends William Pitcher Junior High School, and her 9-year old sibling Aidan, who attends Pine View Middle, were told by school officials on Dec. 9 that their masks violated the St. Tammany Parish public school system's uniform policy, which prohibits any clothing that "represent a collective or individual protest." The children's mother, Ebony Wright, contacted the ACLU, which sent a letter to St. Tammany Parish schools Superintendent Frank Jabbia questioning the prohibition. In response to that letter, the ACLU said in a news release Friday, the children had been granted an exemption, meaning they would be allowed to wear the masks without punishment. Late Friday, the school system issued a statement saying that after consulting with attorneys, all students would be allowed to wear the slogan. "It was determined that 'Black Lives Matter' is considered a movement and not an active protest," Jabbia said. "We are committed to the safety and education of our students and what better place to learn about constitutional rights, including First Amendment rights to speech, than in schools?" 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 The old policy violated the students' rights to free speech, according to Bruce Hamilton, ACLU of Louisiana senior staff attorney. "Students do not lose their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse doors," Hamilton said. "As their mother pointed out to administration officials, the students are not engaging in active protest by wearing Black Lives Matter masks but even if they were, school officials cannot constitutionally prohibit nonviolent protest." Ebony Wright told WWL-TV in December that her children had worn the mask several times before and it had never been a problem. But when they arrived at their schools on Dec. 9, they were asked to take the masks off in favor of disposable ones supplied by the school. In comments included in an ACLU news release Friday, Wright said the incident still weighed on the children. "My children are still very emotional and they feel like this has been too much," she said. "The exemption itself only proves that there is racism going on. ... We had to go through so many meetings just to have this approved." LAist only exists with reader support. If you're in a position to give, your donation powers our reporters and keeps us independent. 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. Disneyland may still be "the Happiest Place on Earth," but the park created some sad fans Thursday when they announced the end of their annual pass program. The park has been shut down since March thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. This announcment means the most hardcore Disney fans -- those with passes letting them go all-year long (outside of blackout dates) -- no longer have a post-COVID treat to look forward to. That hope now joins Captain EO and the Country Bear Jamboree in Theme Park Heaven. Why end the passes? Park officials blame the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, as well as limitations around the reopening of their California theme parks, according to a statement from Disneyland Resort President Ken Potrock. Disneyland has pushed hard to reopen, putting pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom in a dispute that led to former Disney CEO Bob Iger quitting the governor's COVID-19 economic recovery task force. The state has refused to allow Disneyland to reopen until COVID-19 spread is significantly reduced. If you hold a pass that has been on hold since the beginning of the pandemic, Disney says you will be sent a refund. Details on the plans for current passholders are available here. My Disneyland AP has been something that has been carrying me through. The thought that I'd be able to go once it opened. It was my light at the end of the tunnel. Honestly it's the only reasonable move by #Disneyland but I don't have to like it. Sarah D. (@berry_buzz) January 14, 2021 The announcement left fans on social media -- particularly annual passholders -- distraught. If they were in a Disney cartoon, either steam would be coming out of their ears or water would be squirting out as distinct teardrops in every direction, possibly creating a puddle around them. It seems like Disney may have anticipated the reaction, given that they've turned off replies to the tweet including the announcement. It's also potentially a countermeasure for the reality that a lot of people are going to want to go to Disneyland when it reopens. So until that appetite is satisfied, accommodating annual passholders -- especially locals who come to the park on a regular basis and are less likely to buy as much Disney merch as possible than visitors from farther away -- may not be Disney's top priority. Disney World, with the greater capacity of its East Coast parks, has not announced a similar move. DISNEY ANNUAL PASSES' FUTURE RETURN? However, there is a hint of the future: the park is developing some sort of new membership offerings, which Disney says "will utilize consumer insights to deliver choice, flexibility and value for our biggest fans." It sounds an awful lot like the Flex Passport the company launched in 2019, which let passholders reserve specific days. Of course, that's not the same as the ability to just go at a whim, if an annual passholder just felt like spending an evening or random unexpected free day at the parks. In recent years, Disney has been looking at ways to bring in more dollars from parkgoers, with different prices for tickets on different days, based on demand. Pushing their biggest fans to schedule time at the parks could be another way for them to continue to dynamically adjust to crowds, something the California parks have struggled to do. They don't want to have to turn people away at the gate, as they've had to do on occasion in the past. Whatever the new version of their membership program holds, it won't be the same as the traditional annual pass program, which the company described as "sunsetting." And the new passes aren't expected to be available until Disneyland is back to operating at full capacity, so don't expect answers on that even when the park is able to reopen during the pandemic with limited capacity. "I know that sunsetting the Annual Passport program will be disappointing to many of our Passholders who are just as anxious as we are to reopen our gates and welcome Guests back when the time is right," Disneyland Resort's president said in a letter to passholders. It might be cold comfort, but Disney passholders who were members as of March 14 will still get something. Well, if they buy something. They'll still be able to receive discounts on food, beverages, and merch until the new membership offerings are announced. While Disneyland seems unlikely to be reopening to the public anytime soon, the park isn't empty -- it's been turned into the first mass vaccination site in Orange County, with eligible residents already lining up to get their shots. With all those lines, it's almost like Disneyland really is open again. President-elect Joe Biden tore into the group of Republican lawmakers who refused to wear masks as the Capitol was being mobbed last week. 'It was shocking to see members of Congress, while the Capitol was under siege by a deadly mob of thugs, refusing to wear a mask while they were in a secure location,' Biden said Friday in Wilmington. 'What the hell is the matter with them?' the incoming president asked. 'Time to grow up.' 'The result?' Biden continued. 'At least four members of Congress today, including a cancer survivor, now have COVID-19 who were in those rooms.' 'For God's sake,' Biden added. He also scoffed at President Donald Trump turning mask-wearing into a politicized issue. 'What a stupid, stupid thing for it to happen,' Biden commented. And he applauded the efforts of his home state congresswoman, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who was seen in footage from that day trying to hand out masks to a group that included 'QAnon' Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Taylor Green was among the mask-refusing Republicans who are being blamed for the COVID infections of Democratic reps Bonnie Watson Coleman - a 75-year-old cancer survivor - Adriano Espaillat, Pramila Jayapal and Brian Schneider. Appalled: Joe Biden slammed Republicans who refused to wear masks while House members were sheltering in a safe room as the MAGA mob ran rampant House lawmakers who were whisked to safety when a violent mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol were filmed bickering over masks as they hunkered down in a safe room Video from inside the room, obtained by Punchbowl News, showed several Republican lawmakers not wearing masks - including Reps Andy Biggs (Arizona), Michael Cloud (Texas), Taylor Greene (Georgia), Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma) and Scott Perry (Pennsylvania). Rochester, who was walking around handing out masks, repeatedly asked those in the maskless group to take one, but they brushed her aside. 'Im not trying to get political, in fact, I just want to get along but I appreciate you,' Mullin was heard to say. Democrats have implemented $1,000 a day fines on lawmakers who refuse to wear masks while in the Capitol complex. Espaillat on Thursday said he had tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the fourth member of Congress to announce they had contracted the coronavirus following a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last week. 'I am following guidance from my physician and quarantining at home after having tested positive for COVID-19,' he wrote on Twitter. The 66-year-old New York City Democrat said he received a second dose of coronavirus vaccine last week but noted that vaccinations take time to become effective. 'I have continued to be tested regularly, wear my mask and follow the recommended guidelines,' Espaillat wrote on Twitter. 'I will continue my duties representing New York's 13th congressional district remotely until I have received clearance from my doctor.' Rep. Pramila Jayapal has become the second Democratic congresswoman to test positive for COVID-19 after being forced to shelter in a secure room with maskless Republicans during last Wednesday's siege of the Capitol Adriano Espaillat on Thursday said he had tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the fourth member of Congress to announce they had contracted the coronavirus following a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last week. Schnenider said Tuesday: 'Last Wednesday, after narrowly escaping a violent mob incited by the President of the United States to attack the Capitol and its occupants, I was forced to spend several hours in a secure but confined location with dozens of other Members of Congress. 'Several Republican lawmakers in the room adamantly refused to wear a mask... even when politely asked by their colleagues,' he continued, pointing to a video posted online by Punchbowl News showing that. He said he was in isolation and worried about exposing his wife to the disease. 'Today, I am now in strict isolation, worried that I have risked my wife's health and angry at the selfishness and arrogance of the anti-maskers who put their own contempt and disregard for decency ahead of the health and safety of their colleagues and our staff,' Schneider said. Jayapal announced late Monday night that she too had tested positive for COVID after sheltering in a small, poorly ventilated room with more than 100 lawmakers last week. She also blamed Republicans for her infection. 'I just received a positive COVID-19 test result after being locked down in a secured room at the Capitol where several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one,' the 55-year-old posted. After her announcement, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-line Trump supporter who has expressed support for QAnon theories, took a shot back at Democrats. 'I hope you fully recover from #COVID19 without any complications!,' she said in a retweet of Jayapal's announcement. 'Before you point fingers at me or anyone else, you need to talk directly to @SpeakerPelosi about exposing ALL of us to covid when she called back POSITIVE covid House members last week for votes for Speaker!' She was referring to a vote in the House last week attended by some Democrats who had previously positive for COVID. Those lawmakers said they had consulted with the medical staff before attending the vote series. Jayapal says she is convinced more positive test results will follow, claiming that being forced to huddle in the room will turn out to be 'a superspreader event'. On Monday afternoon, Coleman was the first to announce her positive diagnosis. REJECTED ENERGY - The Real Culprit Behind Climate Change and How To Stop It +VIDEO Energy prices and oil demand could drop to levels not seen since the late 1960s By Thomas Quinn Founder of E-Fuel Corporation On September 4, 1882, Thomas Edison flipped the switch on the worlds first power grid system at the Pearl Street Station in the Financial District of Manhattan that was fired by coal with stacks spewing out hot air pollution. During this same period John D. Rockefeller began producing kerosene and gasoline fuels, followed by Henry Fords first automobile production plant, and the Wright Brothers kickstarting the aviation industry. Most scientists would agree this era likely triggered our current major Climate Change condition. In the past twelve-years, the U.S. and international investors and government-sponsored grants reportedly have spent $3.5 trillion on renewable type energy technologies to reverse Climate Change to no avail. The Climate Change panic has also caused energy poverty to rise placing the world at further risk to quickly find and implement the right solution. With my latest startup, E-Fuel Corporation, we aggressively pursued to identify the real Climate Change problem and implement the correct solution. During our research we came across an eye-opening Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and U.S. Department of Energys Energy Consumption Rate Chart (shown below) that contained a disturbing category titled "Rejected Energy." The chart astonished us in two ways. First, the level in 2019 was listed as 67.5%, which is the subtotal percentage amount taken from the total 100.2 Quadrillion consumed but unused U.S. energy that was rejected along with carbon and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Second, the annual Rejected Energy rate has been increasing by 0.3% for the past 12 years which is substantially worse than other reported Climate Change science data. (Rejected Energy is defined as "Energy that is dissipated without providing energy services, i.e., electrical transmission line losses and the less-than-100% efficiency of gasoline-powered internal combustion engines.) To put this in simple terms, if you placed three gallons of fuel into your vehicle, only one gallon provides mechanical energy to rotate the wheels and the remaining two gallons are rejected through the radiator, tailpipe, and engine friction heat into the atmosphere. Even electric vehicles Reject Energy constantly during battery charge and discharge cycles which accelerates as the battery ages. Before someone says we should just quit using fuel, I would then tell them that is not possible because every commercial manufactured product on earth either directly or indirectly requires fuel, especially renewables, during the production process, and that is not going to change. Tragically, Rejected Energy is the largest untapped energy source on the planet that society has ignored. This egregious 138-year failure has damaged the planets biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment which must be stopped! THE SOLUTION: E-Fuel has been able to solve the 138-year-old problem by creating a small reactor containing both fuel and power production processes in one system so that the rejected energy can be repurposed. In simple terms, now 3 gallons are used when running at full efficiency to produce both fuel and electrical power, which reduces past fuel consumption and emissions by two-thirds. E-Fuel believes this technology solution is the most aggressive and likely the only viable choice to reverse Climate Change along with energy poverty. Consumers and commercial businesses could benefit from a substantial reduction in energy prices not seen since the late 1960s along with rapid decline in oil demand and abiotic strip mining of renewable energy materials. Now that E-Fuel has provided the correct solution the bigger question becomes how we implement the paradigm-shift to begin cooling the planet. The answer is straightforward, capital and lots of it, over time in the order of $5 billion to begin phasing out central oil refineries, abiotic renewables, and power grid substations. Remember the world spent $3.5 trillion during the past twelve-years that increased Global Warming emissions by 0.3% per year which Einstein would have defined as insanity. It is time for world citizens to demand industries and governments change direction to reset the course towards repurposing Rejected Energy to correctly Stop Climate Change. We should expect the $5 trillion energy industry will put up a tremendous resistance on maintaining the status quo but that should not define our destiny. E-Fuels first Proprietary reactors will focus on producing lower cost and lower carbon for power, ethanol, hydrogen, and kerosene jet fuel. Reactor size and energy capacities can adapt to serving a wide range of off-grid customers, such as individual homes, commercial buildings, data centers, microgrid distributed communities, fueling and charging stations, aerospace and aviation fuels, marine and ground freight transportation industry, agricultural processing centers, fulfillment distribution centers, and large manufacturing facilities. To fund the production operations for E-Fuel Rejected Energy Reactor (RER), E-Fuel is investigating Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPAC), international environment-friendly partnerships and GoFundMe to help finance production activities to quickly begin cooling the planet. Please visit our website at www.efuel100.com to learn more about supporting STOP CLIMATE CHANGE ENDS. How to read an LLNL energy flow chart (Sankey diagram) - 2015 video Sign our online petition HERE backing local pharmacists to lead the charge for our communities #bestshot Pharmacies are best placed to give the oxford/astra zeneca vaccines as they are the primary point of contact for the public in healthcare, according to local pharmacist, Seanie Stakelum. Mr Stakelum added his support for the Longford Leader's #BestShot campaign, which was launched this week, calling on the government to allow pharmacies to administer the Covid-19 vaccine to members of the community. "Most pharmacists are effectively trained in giving vaccines and have been for a number of years with regard to flu vaccine," Mr Stakelum explained. Read also: Sign our Longford Leader #BestShot petition calling for pharmacy rollout of Covid-19 vaccine "It is a no-brainer really and I would be urging the Health Minister to show some intelligence and use the tools available to him and deliver this vaccine to the population in as quick a time as possible. Thus ensuring a return to normal life as quickly as possible. "This will involve sourcing enough vaccines and vaccinating the population in as quick a time as possible. Thus reducing the prevalence of the disease in the population. While the costs of this has to be considered a return to normal life must be the end goal. "I think people need educating on the vaccine also as there is a growing anti-vaccination philosophy out there that tends to spread misinformation. "While the oxford-astrazeneca is as effective as the flu vaccine is (which is only about 70%), there is still much debate about the dosing regime, two shots 4 -12 weeks apart. It is our best option at the moment to reduce the prevalence of the disease in our country." Read also: Longford Chamber President rows in behind #BestShot vaccine drive Pentagon Chief: US Troops in Iraq, Afghanistan Reduced to 2,500 The United States has reached the Trump administrations goal to reduce American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 2,500 each, according to Pentagon chief Chris Miller on Friday. The drawdown of U.S. force levels in Iraq is reflective of the increased capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces, Miller said in a statement on the Department of Defenses website about the drawdown in Iraq. We have long anticipated that the force level required to support Iraqs fight against ISIS would decrease as Iraqs capability to manage the threat from ISIS improves. Our ability to reduce force levels is evidence of real progress. Miller also announced the 2,500 troop level reduction in Afghanistan, saying it brings the United States closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war. He said the U.S. remains in position to ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to harbor those who seek to bring harm to the United States of America. Trump announced the troop drawdown last year, though the House and Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last month in a near-unanimous vote, which would keep more troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas like Germany. This force reduction is consistent with Operation Inherent Resolves (OIR) transition from major combat operations and does not equate to a change in U.S. policy, Miller added Friday, noting that coalition forces are in Iraq to ensure the defeat of the ISIS terrorist group. We will continue to have a counterterrorism platform in Iraq to support partner forces with airpower and intelligence, said Millers statement. Most operations in Iraq were already being conducted by our Iraqi partners, enabled by U.S. and Coalition forces. We can continue to provide this support to our Iraqi partners at the reduced U.S. force level. A day prior, the White House released a statement from Trump that touted his military policies over the past four yearsnamely in Afghanistan, where American soldiers have been stationed for nearly 20 years. Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller stands at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on Nov. 13, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan are at a 19-year low, said Trump in a statement on Thursday. The president, since he declared his run for the presidency in 2015, has said he wants to withdraw troops from the Middle East. Before that, Trump was a critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq under former President George W. Bush. Likewise, the president continued, Iraq and Syria are also at the lowest point in many years. I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars. Trump added: It has been a great honor to rebuild our military and support our brave men and women in uniform. $2.5 trillion invested, including in beautiful new equipmentall made in the U.S.A., Trump said in a statement. It appears, however, that some of Trumps policies were thwarted by his administration officials. Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, the U.S. envoy to Syria, admitted in November of last year that White House officials hid the numbers of troops that the United States had in Syria from the president, suggesting that it was done to keep troops in the country. We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there, Jeffrey said in an interview, noting that the true number of troops in Syria was a lot more than the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave in Syria last year. The Associated Press contributed to this report. After its efforts to form a union at one of three Canada Goose plants in Winnipeg was denied in late 2019, the Workers United union continues to organize and has just launched a public campaign for union recognition highlighting what it says are deteriorating workplace conditions. After its efforts to form a union at one of three Canada Goose plants in Winnipeg was denied in late 2019, the Workers United union continues to organize and has just launched a public campaign for union recognition highlighting what it says are deteriorating workplace conditions. Although the companys ownership is publicly traded, the union is focusing its ire on Bain Capital. The U.S. private equity firm acquired about 70 per cent of Canada Goose in 2013. The company went public in 2017. In a statement, the union asks, "Is Bains Canada Goose becoming a sweatshop on Canadian soil?" The union contends that the largely immigrant workforce in Winnipeg is being mistreated and taken advantage of. A statement from Workers United said, "Workers at one (Winnipeg) plant report that a climate of fear has descended." The union contends that the companys relative openness to unionization changed after the Bain investment. Workers United represents about 1,200 workers at two Canada Goose plants in Toronto where Barry Fowlie, longtime head of Workers United Canadian Council, said the union has relatively good relationships with the company. "We think a change appeared to happen just shortly after they expanded into Winnipeg," he said. "They had a significant change in the structure of the organization when Bain Capital came in." Not surprisingly, the company takes issue with the unions characterization, saying it has gone out of its way to hire and train a diverse workforce in Canada and in particular in Winnipeg that now represents more than 20 per cent of the Canadian cut-and-sew industry. "Canada Goose and its management team recognize and respect the right of all workers in Canada to organize in accordance with local law," said a company statement provided to the Free Press on Thursday. "Since 2017, and prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of unionized employees at Canada Goose has increased by more than 175 per cent. Were proud of our employees and we are proud to be made in Canada." The company employs about 1,200 workers in Winnipeg in three locations. The unions organization efforts in Winnipeg in 2019 targeted just one of the plants. The company argued that because of the integration of the three plants, unionization at just one would be disruptive. In a ruling in December 2019, the Manitoba Labour Board agreed with the company. In that same labour board hearing, there were also charges of unfair labour practices, which the labour board agreed was the case. The company fired a manager as a result. The labour board heard both the matter of the appropriateness of the bargaining unit and the unfair labour practices allegations at the same time. Raymond MacIsaac, acting registrar of the Manitoba Labour Board, said the 62-page ruling "was not a simple matter. There were a lot of moving parts." Fowlie said from the unions point of view it lost on a technical ruling. "It was a temporary setback as far as we are concerned and we will continue on and do what we are going to do," he said. As for this new public awareness campaign launched by the union, the company said, "it was the decision of the Manitoba Labour Board who rejected the application for a union, finding the requirements were not met. As a business, Canada Goose and its management respect and recognize the right of all Canadians to organize." This past summer, the Free Press reported that workers were upset after out-of-order bathrooms were closed, forcing workers to use outdoor portable toilets they say were cleaned only every four days. Some workers said they were forced to use their lunch breaks to leave the plant to find public washrooms to use. Union officials say there is an uncommon level of fear among employees and that many feel intimidated and poorly treated by supervisors. They believe the situation is that much more objectionable because of the fact the company is a maker of luxury products and it markets itself as community-minded, receiving plenty of accolades from politicians. Fowlie said, "If workers werent interested in forming a union we would not be there. We are there because they are reaching out." He also said that attitude of fear that exists in the Winnipeg workplaces is in stark contrast to conditions that exist in the Toronto plants. "They seem to be a different creature in Winnipeg," he said. martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca 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 River Sind (Indus) gushes through mountains next to Srinagar Leh highway bordering China, on June 19, 2020 in Gagangir, India. As many as 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a "violent face-off" with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley along the Himalayas on June 15, 2020. (Yawar Nazir/Getty Images) Free Flow of Water at Issue in IndiaChina Skirmish, Expert Says India honors its soldiers killed in fight with People's Liberation Army last year on its 73rd Army Day NEW DELHIThe IndiaChina border standoff that intensified with a bloody skirmish in June of last year was actually a Chinese pilot project to test a global expansion strategy based on the stoppage of trans-border rivers, an Indian defense analyst says. [China] blocked the water of the Galwan river, and there was a massive build-up, I suspect, in response to the massive infrastructure build-up that started in 2019 [by India], Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a senior research fellow with the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, told The Epoch Times over the phone. On its 73rd Army Day, India honored on Jan. 15 its 20 soldiers killed in the June 15, 2020, bloody clash in the Galwan valley, which Iyer-Mitra said occurred in response to the stopping of the Galwan river 100 meters on the Chinese side of the disputed border. He said Indias action saved the interests of the wider world. We made it very, very clear that stopping water is a cause for war. Well kill, and well be killed, to prevent the stoppage of water, he said. The Chinese are going to use this as a precedent to start blocking all the waters of all the rivers that originate in Tibet. The Galwan valley has more geopolitical value than any intrinsic agricultural or mineral value, he said, and India confronted Chinese aggression to give a strong message that theres no way the regime will be allowed to get away with its plans. The point is if they take one inch, what is to prevent them from taking a whole foot. If they built a dam here, whats to prevent them from damming all the other rivers. So the value of Galwan is geopolitical, Iyer-Mitra said. The Tibetan plateau is a major water supplier to the world, and all 10 of the major river systems of Asiaincluding the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, Irrawady, Salween, and Mekongoriginate in the Tibetan plateau. They together constitute a lifeline for more than 2 billion people, according to the New Delhi-based Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. If we accept the principle that the Galwan river can be blocked, then they will block the Brahmaputra, they will ultimately block the Irrawady, Iyer-Mitra said. They will block all the Southeast Asian rivers, and the Southeast Asian rivers are much more dependent on the Himalayas than we are. Indias response saved the whole of Southeast Asia as well as Bangladesh, he said. Its purely geopoliticalthe strategic control of water, he said. If India allowed it in Galwan, they could then start doing it everywhere. A satellite image of the point where the Galwan River meets the Suyok River. According to retired Lt. Gen. Rakesh Sharma, who The Epoch Times interviewed immediately after the conflict that resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. The conflict occurred 1-2 miles from the intersection. (Google maps) Indias Infrastructure Building Indian Army Chief Gen. M.M. Naravane, in his speech at the 73rd Army Day on Jan. 15, said that when China tried to change the status quo on borders last year in Galwan, India gave it a befitting reply. We are committed to finding the resolution of our disputes through discussions and political efforts, but no one should commit the mistake of testing our patience, Naravane said. While China has built a lot of infrastructure on its border with India in Ladakh, its objecting to Indias buildup of infrastructure on its side, Iyer-Mitra said. The Chinese are saying we will keep our entire existing infrastructure. You dont build any new infrastructure, and well also not build any new infrastructure, he said. They want to freeze the advantage we have. Two to three years ago, India absolutely had no infrastructure there, and the current government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is trying to correct that, Iyer-Mitra said. Indias infrastructure construction started literally within a month of this government taking oath for the second time in 2019. India is saying we can prolong the negotiations just so that we can finish building our infrastructure, he said. When the bloody Galwan incident happened, India had just finished building a 65-yard-long bridge on the Galwan River, and Indias impetus to improve its infrastructure on the border was the primary reason behind the Chinese aggression. The bridge was meant to consolidate Indias footprint in the region and threatened Beijings agenda. The bridge was also important for the movement of the Indian infantry in the sensitive region and for protecting a 158-mile road that linked Indias access to remote military posts in the Karakoram Pass. Three weeks after the Galwan incident, Indias defense minister, Rajnath Singh, held a meeting with officials from the countrys Border Roads Organization to access infrastructure development in the border regions. A man walks past a poster depicting portraits of Indian soldiers killed in a hand-to-hand fight with their Chinese counterparts on June 15, in a market area in New Delhi on Aug. 31, 2020. (Jewel Samad/ AFP via Getty Images) Fight for Water Iyer-Mitra said what happened in Galwan cant be called a war, but it was a fight for water. Two days after the conflict, the flow of water resumed. He said the Indian experts arent clear on what kind of structure the Chinese built to block the river; he called it a rudimentary dam and said the water was stopped just to intimidate the Indian establishment. The point is what we have seen is, before the dam, the water flow is the same as, after the dam. This means there is absolutely no [ongoing] attempt at blocking it. There is also no diversionary channels or outlets to take water away, Iyer-Mitra said. He said that he extensively traveled around Tibet and studied suspected river diversions or stoppage but didnt find any evidence. What we saw in Galwan, when our troops were killed, was the first evidence of some kind of water stoppage that we had seen. In every other dam that I saw personally on the ground in Tibet, as well, as Ive seen from the satellite. Ive seen a lot more from satellite because there were places we could not go [like] sensitive military areas, which they would not allow us to go and that was at the height of Doklam, he said. Another standoff between India and China occurred in June 2017 in the high-altitude Doklam plateau, a tri-junction between India, China, and Bhutan. China was aggressively attempting to extend a road on the plateau, and India acted to stop it on Bhutans behalf. Iyer-Mitra, who said small incidents like the fight for water in Galwan can sometimes have disproportionate effects, compared it with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria that provided the spark for World War I In this case, you know, it was the stopping of a much bigger Chinese block by small action, which nobody will thank India for, nobody will. But it doesnt matter, he said. That is a huge service we have done not just to India, but to Bangladesh and all the Southeast Asian countries, because itll make China think long and hard about blocking any more rivers ever again, he said. State enterprise administrators, members of the Chinese Communist Party, military officials and large companies such as CNOOC and Xiaomi targeted. Those who contribute to China's "coercive" actions in the South China Sea also on the list. Xi asks US multinationals to favour commercial relations between the two countries. Beijing (AsiaNews) - US President Donald Trump yesterday authorized new sanctions against a series of public officials and Chinese companies: one of the latest blows against Beijing before handing over his role as "commander in chief" to Democrat Joe Biden on January 20. In the latest wave of restrictions, Trump is targeting administrators of Chinese state-owned enterprises, members of the Chinese Communist Party and senior officers of the Armed Forces. Washington holds them responsible for coercion against countries contesting Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea. For the same reason, the oil giant Cnooc is also on the blacklist. Telephony giant Xiaomi and eight other Chinese companies have also been affected: the US administration accuses them of being linked to the People's Liberation Army. Under a Trump executive order, which went into effect on January 11, US investors will have to divest from sanctioned Chinese companies. Since 2018 Trump has launched a campaign to boycott Chinese tech companies, part of a wider geopolitical conflict with the Asian giant; the most affected are those involved in the development of the 5G internet network (Huawei), artificial intelligence and microchips. One year ago, in an attempt, a year ago the two sides signed a preliminary agreement (the so-called "phase one") with which China committed to buying around 184 billion euros in goods and services from the United States by the end of 2021. The target was not achieved; Beijing justified itself by arguing that this is due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Pending Biden's inauguration, and a possible easing of US pressure, Chinese President Xi Jinping is trying to "build bridges" with large US companies, always on the look out to increase their activities in China. Xinhua yesterday released a letter from Xi to Howard Schultz, former president of the Starbucks coffee chain. In the missive, the Chinese leader says that Beijing will continue to open up its market to foreign companies. He adds that Starbucks can play an active role in promoting bilateral relations and business cooperation between the two countries. For the moment, Biden does not intend to lift duties imposed by Trump on Chinese exports. In the US Congress there is a cross-cutting agreement between Democrats and Republicans to maintain a firm trade policy against China. The Chinese government is accused of systematically breaking the rules of the World Trade Organization, stealing technological secrets and subsidizing its own companies (public and private). A loyal golden retriever has been roaming the streets of a Chinese province with a signboard in his mouth to look for his best friend allegedly stolen by a suspected dog thief. Two-year-old Mao Mao has been in low spirits and lost more than 10 pounds in weight since his favourite playmate, Dou Dou, was snatched in late December, according to Mao Mao's owner. The dog owner told MailOnline that Mao Mao couldn't stop tearing while walking around with the 'missing dog' note. Mao Mao's owner, Shao Xinsheng, told MailOnline that Mao Mao couldn't stop tearing while walking around with a 'missing dog' note to look for his favourite playmate Dou Dou in the Chinese province of Henan. Dou Dou had allegedly been stolen by a suspected dog snatcher Mao Mao lives in the county of Changyuan in central China's Henan Province with his owner, Shao Xinsheng. Mr Shao keeps another one-year-old golden retriever, called Er Pao. Mao Mao and Er Pao grew up playing with Dou Dou, a pet belonging to one of Mr Shao's friends. Mr Shao said Mao Mao and Dou Dou were particularly close, adding Dou Dou was 'extremely clever'. On December 23, Dou Dou was taken away by a stranger while being chained to a tricycle outside a hospital, Mr Shao said. The one-year-old male dog had been left there by his owner who was going to the hospital for a medical appointment. Dou Dou (right, seen before going missing) was believed to have been abducted by a stranger (left) while being chained to a tricycle outside a hospital in Henan Province on December 23 A picture supplied by Mr Shao shows Dou Dou's owner crying inconsolably after losing her pet. Mr Shao made a 'missing dog' notice and is helping Dou Dou's owner look for the missing dog Security footage of the incident supplied by Mr Shao shows a golden retriever on the lead being guided to cross a road by a person on a tuk tuk. Since then, Mr Shao, Mao Mao and Er Pao have been helping Dou Dou's owner search for the missing pet across Henan Province. He said that they had visited a major slaughterhouse in the county of Hua in addition to various dog meat markets, including a popular one in the county of Fengqiu. Wherever they went, Mao Mao would carry a placard reading 'Dou Dou, please come home' while walking or sitting on the street to get the locals' attention. Mao Mao and Er Pao, Mr Shao's other pet, grew up playing with Dou Dou (left, the three pictured together). Mao Mao was particular fond of Dou Dou and is helping to find him (right) To spread the word further, Mr Shao has filmed Mao Mao's endeavour throughout the process and shared the clips through his account on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. One of those videos, which has gone viral, shows Mao Mao sitting at the back of a pick-up truck holding the sign in a busy market. Another trending clip shows the dog walking among a group of bystanders, apparently with tears in his eyes. Mr Shao believed it was a sign that Mao Mao missed Dou Dou. 'Mao Mao and Er Pao used to be full of energy. They played with Dou Dou all day, nearly every day. But now they are in low spirits and don't even want to play,' Mr Shao said. Even though the owner claimed that Mao Mao had been devastated by the loss of his friend and crying, dogs don't express their emotions like humans. Their tears are usually caused by health reasons, especially an eye infection. He condemned the suspected dog snatcher and urged the individual to return Dou Dou. I condemn the thief and urge them not to do immoral things like this in the future,' the man said Mr Shao said he, Mao Mao and Er Pao would continue visiting dog meat traders in a bid to find Dou Dou. He condemned the suspected dog snatcher and urged the individual to return Dou Dou. He said he would pay anyone who could provide leads to the whereabouts of Dou Dou. 'We raise our furry kids from puppies and have a strong bond with them. They are an inseparable part of us. I condemn the thief and urge them not to do immoral things like this in the future,' the man said. Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. 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NEW YORK and HONG KONG, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MANA Products, a leading partner for innovative ideation, development, and manufacturing of prestige branded beauty products, Meiyume, a one-stop shop partner providing product and retail solutions for the beauty industry, and RPG, an award-winning global design and manufacturing firm recognized for building all aspects of the retail and branded experience, announce the establishment of The Vertical Beauty Alliance, a revolutionary industry alliance which creates a supply chain nucleus for the development, manufacturing and merchandising of beauty products on a global scale. The Vertical Beauty Alliance allows beauty brands to leverage the collective experience, expertise, and resources of MANA Products, Meiyume, and RPG - industry leaders in beauty product ideation, innovation, formulation, manufacturing, packaging and in-store experience. This new association brings their customers unparalleled innovation, reliable speed to market, and a global footprint for creativity, formulation, and manufacturing of their brand essentials. The combined R&D innovation labs and manufacturing strength of all parties allows The Vertical Beauty Alliance to provide clients with quality mixing, filling and supply solutions in Europe, Asia, and America to ensure supply chain resilience as well as access to an extensive library of innovative formulas and finishes, including clean and vegan formulas. Furthermore, The Vertical Beauty Alliance will collectively identify and harness the white space in retail categories, markets, and environments to elevate the power of brands and compel consumers to shop and purchase. From forecasting trends to providing in-store solutions, including displays, fixtures, retail environments, and data analytics, this alliance will re-imagine turnkey product development and customer experience where digital meets brick & mortar. With The Vertical Beauty Alliance, customers will have access to: Expertise in Formulation & Production of All 4 Categories of Beauty Color Cosmetics, Skincare, Haircare & Fragrance A Global Footprint with 6 Manufacturing Facilities Located on 3 Continents 9 Research & Development Laboratories 2 Formula Libraries with Over 10,000 Formulas Award-Winning Retail and Brand Experiential Design & Manufacturing Services for Successful Global Retail Activation Across All Channels. "The world is changing rapidly, and our industry needs to keep pace. The formation of The Vertical Beauty Alliance will simplify everything and give new, emerging, and existing beauty brands access to the global resources of three industry powerhouses - for formulation, design, packaging, production, manufacturing and display, and create a seamless pathway from ideation to on-shelf, across the entire supply chain," said Bob Jaegly, CEO of MANA Products. "Today's environment is an opportunity to find new ways to meet the demands of the consumer for today and tomorrow. I'm proud to join forces with MANA and RPG to expand their reach by leveraging our award-winning manufacturing facilities. By complementing their US footprint with our Asian and European capabilities, we can demonstrate our shared commitment to creating seamless beauty solutions for our customers around the world," said Gerard Raymond, President of Meiyume. "RPG is excited to support THE VERTICAL Beauty Alliance with best-in-class design and manufacturing. This partnership will allow us to create a cohesive customer experience from product to retail activation. Together, our disciplines will be aligned and synergized, poising us to successfully compete in all markets. The hybridization of our business models and disciplines makes us stronger and better to provide holistic services to both heritage and developing brands," said Bruce E. Teitelbaum, CEO of RPG. MANA MANA is one of the world's leading partners for innovative ideation, development, and manufacturing of prestige branded beauty products. With four research and development laboratories and two production and manufacturing facilities, MANA brings together the passion, process, and people to define and lead the future of beauty. For over 45 years, MANA has developed groundbreaking color cosmetic, skin care and hair care formulas for some of the world's most renowned beauty brands and globally recognized makeup artists. Based in New York City since 1975, MANA was acquired by Traub Capital in September 2020. Traub has a celebrated legacy in prestige beauty and has brought their unrivaled experience, operational expertise, resources, and global network to MANA. Visit www.manaproducts.com. MEIYUME Meiyume is a one-stop shop partner of product solutions for fragrance, skincare, and color cosmetics, and digital retail solutions such as interactive POS displays with data capture and insights for world-class brands, retailers and direct marketers. Operating award-winning manufacturing facilities in the United Kingdom, United States, China, Indonesia, and Thailand, Meiyume delivers mixing, filling and supply chain excellence around the world. Meiyume believes in sharing knowledge and ideas to deliver transformative solutions for their customers around the world. Visit www.meiyume.com. RPG Founded in 1991, RPG designs, engineers, and manufactures brands, products, packaging, displays, and retail environments across multiple categories, for both mass and prestige distribution. With headquarters in Manhattan and global manufacturing facilities, RPG maintains an unwavering commitment to quality and innovation. Visit www.rpg57.com. SOURCE The Vertical Beauty Alliance President-elect Joe Biden is unveiling a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan Thursday to turn the tide on the pandemic, speeding up the vaccine rollout and providing financial help to individuals, states and local governments and businesses struggling with the prolonged economic fallout. AFP Called the American Rescue Plan, the legislative proposal would meet Biden's goal of administering 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration while advancing his objective of reopening most schools by the spring. Kamala Harris May Preside Over Trump Impeachment Trial Even as the President is facing impeachment, the news is that vice-president-elect Kamala Harris may preside over the Trump trial. AFP President Trump's impeachment trial could begin on Inauguration Day, just as Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office in an extraordinary end to the defeated president's tenure in the White House. Panel Member BS Mann Recuses Himself On The Eve Of Government-Union Talks Farmer leader Bhupinder Singh Mann, one of the four members on the committee appointed by the Supreme Court to talk with farmers on the three new central farm laws, has stepped down, the BKU said on Thursday. AFP The Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) tweeted a letter by Mann and said: "Bhupinder Singh Mann, a former MP and BKU national President and All India Kisan Cordination Committee Chairman, has recused himself from the 4-member committee constituted by the Supreme Court." Brazil Sends Special Flights To India To Bring 2 Million Covid-19 Vaccines Brazil on Thursday (local time) said that it has begun preparations to bring two million doses of coronavirus vaccine from India. AFP In a statement, Brazil's health ministry said: "The Brazilian government informs that preparations to bring the two million doses of the vaccine against Covid-19 from India are already underway." Delhi Govt Survey Shows 80% Homes Dont Have Computers For Online Classes Two lakh children remain out of school, including 64,813 due to financial constraints. bccl As many as 42.59% households in the city spend less than Rs 10,000 per month, nearly 80% do not own computers, and 29% do not have access to tap water within households. These are among the findings of a Delhi government survey, the biggest of its kind, covering 1.02 crore people, conducted between November 2018 and November 2019. Snapdeal, Palika Bazar Figure In US Notorious Markets List Snapdeal, one of India's largest e-commerce platforms, along with four Indian shopping complexes, two of them in New Delhi alone, have figured in the latest 2020 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy issued by the Office of the US Trade Representative. Reuters The four Indian markets that have found mention in the list are Heera Panna in Mumbai, Kidderpore in Kolkata and Palika Bazaar and Tank Road in Delhi. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Even as the coronavirus pandemic halted most of the mail, express and passenger trains from operating across the country, the Indian Railways kept on providing fuel to the Khadi artisans by placing a purchase order worth Rs 49 crore with the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), officials said on Friday. A KVIC official privy to the development told IANS, "Khadi activities received a major push during 2020 that largely remained affected due to the Covid-19 lockdown." He said the railways placed a huge purchase order of Rs 48.90 crore. While the railways purchased Khadi goods worth Rs 8.48 crore in December 2020 alone, it substantially created employment and income for Khadi artisans during the testing times of Covid-19, the KVIC official added. The official said the purchase orders from Indian Railways directly benefitted artisans registered with 82 Khadi institutions across the country that are engaged in production of materials such as sheeting cloth, towels, bedsheets, flag banners, sponge clothes, Dosuti Cotton Khadi, bunting clothes etc. "During the period from May 2020 to December 2020 (till January 21), the Indian Railways procured Khadi material worth Rs 48.90 crore which kept Khadi activities going during the pandemic," the KVIC official added. He said that railways purchased goods worth Rs 19.80 crore during May and June 2020 when the economy had taken a severe hit due to the nationwide lockdown. Similarly the railways procured Khadi goods worth Rs 7.42 crore in July and August 2020 while it purchased Khadi products worth Rs 13.01 crore during October and November 2020, the official added. Meanwhile, KVIC Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena thanked Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal for supporting Khadi artisans by giving large orders to KVIC. "During the pandemic, KVIC faced the biggest challenge of sustaining employment and livelihood of the artisans. While KVIC engaged its artisans in making Khadi masks during the pandemic, it simultaneously received bulk orders from the railways that kept Khadi's spinning wheel on the move," Saxena said. "This meant additional employment and income for the artisans which helped them overcome the financial distress and support the country's economy," he added. The KVIC official said that apart from supporting Khadi through direct purchases, the railways have also implemented policy decisions to strengthen Khadi artisans. "In one such move, railways have designated 400 railway stations where only earthenware is used for selling food and beverages to passengers and thus a major boost to the potters trained by the KVIC under Kumhar Sashaktikaran Yojana," he added. The official said the Railway ministry is in the process of notifying another 100 railway stations as "plastic-free stations". (Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in) We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form LONDON (dpa-AFX) - British American Tobacco plc (BATS.L, BTI) said that the UK's Serious Fraud Office has closed its investigation of suspicions of corruption in the conduct of business by the company, its subsidiaries and associated persons, which was announced on 1 August 2017. The company said that the SFO is taking no further action in respect of the matter. BAT remains committed to the highest standards in the conduct of its business. Separately, the SFO confirmed that it has concluded its investigation into British American Tobacco, its subsidiaries and associated persons, following extensive investigation and a comprehensive review of the available evidence. The evidence in the case did not meet the evidential test for prosecution as defined in the Code for Crown Prosecutors. 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. Sorry! This content is not available in your region As a giant of Australian art, Sidney Nolans work and life have long occupied historians and gossip mongers. But until now, little was known about an event that had a devastating and lasting impact. It took an amateur sleuth from Sydney to piece together the story of Nolans 1962 visit to Auschwitz. Andrew Turley was a former soldier running his own advertising agency when he and his partner, Rachael Ash, stumbled into a Sydney auction house in 2012. Turley knew little about Australian art but among the works being offered for sale was a 1963 Nolan work called Gorilla, featuring a traumatised creature set against an African mountainscape. Andrew Turley and Rachael Ash with works by Sidney Nolan, including Gorilla, far left. Credit:Louie Douvis "It struck us immediately," Turley recalls. "Because we had travelled to Africa, we felt something behind the paint that really connected with us." What happened next "scared me shitless", Turley says now. The couple decided that Nolans Gorilla had to be theirs. "All the money went into that painting," he says. "It was utter madness." New Delhi: Over 50-day-long farmers' agitation on Delhi's Singhu border again came out with some posters that raised questions over the entry of some elements taking advantage of the ongoing movement. Zee News on Friday (January 15) found the posters of terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale on some vehicles in one part of the protest ground. The occurance of posters of the man who demanded Khalistan is certainly not a good sign for a movement being fought against new farm laws citing the interests of farmers. At the same time, the 9th round of talks between three Union Ministers and representatives of 41 farmer unions remain inconclusive after nearly five hours of talks at Delhi's Vigyan Bhawan, with the government asking farmers to form an informal group to prepare a concrete proposal about their objections and suggestions on the three farm laws for further discussion. The next round of talks will be held on January 19 to end the long-running protest, but farmer unions are still adamant on their main demand for a complete repeal of the three Acts. Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told farmer leaders at the meeting that the government has been flexible in its approach and urged the same from them. For the past 51 days, farmers, their families, young children, and elderly people have been staging their protest under the open sky in the freezing cold, while their so-called supporters are inside their warm homes. Surprisingly, the coronavirus guidelines to protest people against the deadly pandemic are being flouted here in a brazen way. The protesters here are also not ready to obey laws made by Parliament, Supreme Court, and other Government norms. After the 9th round of talks, farmer leaders said that they want the repeal of the new agricultural laws, the reason, they would attend the next round of talks with the government, but will not appear before the Supreme Court-appointed committee to resolve the issue. On the contrary, the government is ready to submit its stand before the committee. While those who have objections to the new laws are refusing to obey either the Parliament or the Supreme Court. In such a situation, it is difficult to predict what shape this movement will take in the coming days. This attitude of farmers raises many questions for their supporters. For example, why are they seeking freedom from the laws that would actually give them the freedom to fix prices and choose markets? Why are those, who fought for saving the environment and demanded a ban on the burning of stubble, are standing with these protesters? Amid talks when lunch break took place, farmers union leaders again took their own langar food, while the union ministers were seen mingling with the representatives of the farmer unions. After the meeting, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told reporters that two separate deliberations can run parallelly as the farmer unions want to continue their talks with the government and the court-appointed panel has also been set up with an aim to resolve the crisis. Tomar said, "Discussions happen at various platforms and a solution can emerge from anywhere. Our effort is to find a solution at the earliest through dialogue so that the farmers' protest ends. Farmers are sitting in cold weather amid the threat of COVID-19 and the government is concerned about that also and is therefore engaging with farmers with an open mind." Earlier in the day, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi once again came to the fore and flayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He extended his support to the agitating farmers, alleging that the Prime Minister along with only five people are running everything from the airport to the judiciary, and they want to eliminate the farmers. Responding to allegations leveled by Rahul Gandhi against the government with regard to the farm laws, Tomar said, "The entire Congress party also laughs at and makes fun of Rahul Gandhi's statements and action." Tomar said, "I want to tell him through media that they had promised to undertake these reforms in their 2019 election manifesto. If he doesn't remember, he can read his manifesto again. If it is there in the manifesto, then Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi should come before the press and make it clear if they were lying then or are lying now." Apart from this, Zee News will again show you some new evidence of Khalistan's entry into the Kisan movement. You will be surprised to know that Khalistan supporters appear to have hijacked this movement. The posters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale have been pasted on the Singhu border, where farmers have been agitating for the last 51 days. Not only this but the pro-Khalistan organization, Sikhs For Justice, on Friday has threatened the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, releasing an audio message on social media. The shocking statement threatening the Chief Justice of India Sharad Arvind Bobde, and said, "Do Not Stop Punjab Farmers Kesari Tractor Rally On January 26. "You have sided with those who had committed genocide of Sikhs and now you are siding with (Narendra) Modi government who is responsible for genocide of Punjab Farmers. This is not 1990s; Its 2021 and SFJ Will hold all justices accountable under the international laws, it added. World Insurance Associates LLC (WIA), acquired Bush Insurance Agents & Brokers of Cambridge Springs, Penn., on December 31, 2020. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Established in 1918, Bush Insurance is a provider of loss and risk management products. WIA is headquartered in Tinton Falls, N.J., and is a full-service insurance brokerage providing asset and lifestyle protection with risk management, insurance and benefit consulting services for individuals and businesses. Since its founding in 2012, WIA has completed 91 acquisitions and serves its customers from 94 offices in 18 states and Washington, D.C. Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla provided legal counsel to WIA. Shafer Law Firm provided legal counsel to Bush, and Scali Group advised Bush on the transaction. No other advisors, diligence firms or legal counsel were disclosed. Source: World Insurance Associates LLC Topics Mergers Agencies Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal predicts that gas prices will decrease for the spring-summer period. "This is an exchange, it's hard to predict. My estimates are that the price will go down in spring and summer. This is a traditional estimate that has been formed on the world's stock exchanges over the years," he said on the air of the "Snidanok (Breakfast) with 1 + 1" program on Friday morning, answering the question of what the price of gas will be after the end of the heating season and enhanced quarantine measures. In addition, according to the government's press service, Shmyhal noted that the Cabinet will develop an annual gas product, when the gas price for consumers will be fixed annually. "The state company Naftogaz and other gas suppliers will calculate the price of their annual products and offer the Ukrainians a fixed price," he said. According to the prime minister, in the fall of last year, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have already signed annual contracts for the supply of gas at a price of UAH 4.70 per cubic meter. He added that this principle is valid in most European countries, and people can choose a fixed price for a year or a month. In addition, as Shmyhal said, the government, together with the relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada, worked on the legislative regulation of the issue of the gas distribution tariff, since it is established by local supply companies and approved by the NEURC. "We want the distribution tariff to be fair for all people. For this, there are well-developed mechanisms and legislators in the parliament are ready to support such an initiative," the head of government emphasized. Abu Dhabi Ports, part of ADQ, one of the regions largest holding companies, has signed an agreement with Transportr Ltd to manage its inland container depot (ICD) in Musaffah, provide handling facilities within the ICD and deliver fully inclusive transportation solutions for containers between the ICD and Khalifa Port. The agreement will not only improve connectivity between Transportrs depot located within Ittihad Paper Mill and Khalifa Port, but will also aid in reducing costs for transport of containers, while simultaneously improving the efficiency of the supply chain. Transportr had already secured the movement of over 15,000 TEUS for 2021 from several prominent industrialists located in ICAD 1, 2 and 3, and is expected to increase the handling to over 20,000 TEUs over the course of next year. Saif Al Mazrouei, Head of Ports Cluster at Abu Dhabi Ports, said: We are proud to have been selected by Transportr to handle the transportation of their goods between Khalifa Port and their inland container depot in Mussafah. Leveraging our expertise in delivering top of the line logistics services, as well as our long-standing experience as a facilitator of trade within the emirate of Abu Dhabi, we will aid Transportr in reducing costs and streamlining their operations. Connectivity for the entire Musaffah trade will also be improved through reduced waiting times, increased availability and integration with shipping lines. Alaa Hawari, General Manager of Transportr, said: Were tremendously excited to work closely with Abu Dhabi Ports, the region's primary facilitator of industrial logistics. The ICD establishment at the heart of Mussafah will be instrumental as we target significant strengthening of our digital freight marketplace operations and infrastructure, in addition, to collectively address the challenge of empty miles within the industry. Transportrs unique ICD logistics model along with its efficient digital freight network will provide customers with access to a new fully integrated logistics model for servicing diverse range of cargo. Under the new contract, Abu Dhabi Ports will bring forth its full logistic capabilities to oversee inward and outward container handling at Khalifa Port, delivery of orders, processing customs documentation and procedures, container terminal handling, truck loading and unloading, as well as container inspections. At the same time, the company will provide ICD-related container handling services as part of the contract offering shipping lines, local importers, and or exporters the ability to collect and offload containers within the ICD. In addition to assisting Transportr, one of the fastest-growing digital freight platform in the UAE, in achieving greater economies of scale through reduced transportation costs thanks to the utilisation of mixed-sized containers to and from its Mussafah-based ICD the operation is expected to improve supply between the companies under the groups umbrella via an ongoing shuttle service.TradeArabia News Service Kamala's Way: An American Life By Dan Morain Simon & Schuster. 257 pp. $28 - - - In "Kamala's Way," Dan Morain takes readers back to an arresting moment from June 2019. At a MoveOn forum, as California's junior U.S. senator and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris settled in for an interview, a man barreled onto the stage, yanking the microphone from her hands. The moderator, Karine Jean Pierre, rushed to place herself between Harris and the assailant, who towered over them, his intentions unknown. Moments after the intruder was led away with the help of Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff, the candidate called for a new mic and went back to fielding questions. The election season was full of jaw-dropping moments that eclipsed this confrontation. But Morain returns to it and offers a telling snapshot of Harris. He portrays her as a confident, seasoned public figure, whose success rests upon the intimate loyalties of others and whose candidacy could not avoid being symbolic. Witnessing those harrowing seconds, some flashed back to the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., while others saw the ubiquitous threat of 21st-century gun violence. Americans had no precedent for a scene in which harm might come to a woman of color - the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants - while she campaigned for the highest office in the land. For readers eager to understand how Harris became someone who could hold her own on a national stage, Morain charts her route. His premise is that there was nothing predictable about the journey of a daughter of immigrants, a Howard University alum and a Hastings College of Law graduate from local prosecutor to vice president-elect. He stresses that it does no justice to Harris's story to label her a "female Obama." Morain gives readers the public Harris on her own terms: a leader who rose to power in the crowded terrain of California politics.Though Berkeley was her girlhood home, Harris was not a politician who came up from the grass roots. Instead, beginning with her career as a prosecutor in Alameda County, home to Oakland, Harris committed herself to public service, working in the trenches of the justice system for those she termed the "voiceless and vulnerable." It is a perspective that continues to frame her work to this day. But principles alone did not take Harris beyond the seedy courthouses of the East Bay. Her rise from local prosecutor to district attorney of San Francisco,attorney general of California, U.S. senator and finally vice president took three decades. Building relationships, Morain explains, was key. Early on, Harris was an intimate of her state's unrivaled Black power broker, lawmaker Willie Brown, who showed her California's political underbelly and its ropes. Along the way he boosted Harris's statewide visibility. Harris's sister, Maya, who headed the ACLU of Northern California, and her husband, Tony West, associate attorney general under President Barack Obama, have served as her steadfast confidants and strategists. In 2007, Harris was a surrogate for Obama during his presidential run, and her star was rising. She jockeyed with Gavin Newsom as the two ascended in California politics; Newsom won the governorship, and Harris moved from attorney general to the Senate. She parlayed her roots in the Democratic stronghold of the Bay Area into alliances with East Coast figures such as Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) and the late Delaware attorney general Beau Biden. While some observers, including those on San Francisco's society pages, have focused on Harris's style, Morain, a former longtime reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee, keeps the spotlight on her achievements. After becoming California's attorney general in 2011, Harris earned a voice on issues that had national resonance: the death penalty, marriage equality, gun control, the mortgage crisis, for-profit colleges, reproductive rights and human trafficking. Here, Morain is admiring of Harris and forgives her for the policy compromises that still attract criticism. In 2008, as San Francisco's district attorney, Harris aimed to curb truancy with a stick: prosecuting parents whose children failed to attend school. Though she had built her public career as a death penalty opponent, in 2014 Attorney General Harris fended off a constitutional challenge to California's death penalty. Morain explains that Kamala's way meant she balanced her principles against her political ambitions. She assessed matters through the lens of the larger public issue. In the case of prosecuting parents for their children's truancy, she sought to enforce a child's right to an education. On the death penalty, she sided with the need for a balance of powers that ensures that courts settle constitutional questions. But her approach still riles detractors who brand Harris a public official too steeped in a law-and-order model of justice. Morain relies on insights he gathered in his time covering California politics, bolstered by interviews with Harris's colleagues through the years, giving the book the feel of an insider's tale. But without access to the vice president-elect or her family, Morain cannot get to the inner Kamala Harris. Curiously, "Kamala's Way" provides little on how racism and sexism shaped Harris's path. In his effort to explain her character, Morain comes very close to trading in old, pernicious stereotypes about Black women, though perhaps unwittingly so. In his telling, Harris sometimes comes across as a Jezebel who callously exploited intimacies, even one with a married public figure; a Mammy who, though she had no children, readily mothered others; an angry Black woman wielding a sharp tongue and sharper wit; or an ambitiously talented professional who knew that to get ahead she had "to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have," as Olivia Pope's father told her in the television show "Scandal." While chronicling Harris's climb, "Kamala's Way" also has one eye trained on the present. It is, after all, a book that seeks to explain how Harris and America both got to this historic moment: the election of the first woman, first African American and first Asian American as vice president. It is likely that Harris's most intimate revelations will remain with her, at least until she pens her own memoir after leaving office. In the meantime, this story about how she ran the gantlet of American politics will leave readers admiring Harris for how she has not only survived but thrived. - - - Jones is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and Insisted on Equality for All." 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. By Thomas Peter and John Geddie WUHAN, China/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of COVID-19 are to begin virtual meetings with their Chinese hosts from a hotel in China's Wuhan, where the pandemic first emerged, on Friday. Their arrival at the city in central China on Thursday was disrupted by the absence of two members who failed coronavirus antibody tests in Singapore. One of the missing members has since passed a test and their travel to China is being arranged, according to China's foreign ministry. "Team now undergoing the mandatory 14 days quarantine & being treated very well by our hosts. Work begins today, day 1, in teleconf. mtgs w/ China team," tweeted team member Peter Daszak, a zoologist. The driveway and parking lot of the boutique hotel where the team are staying was cordoned off with tape on Friday and security personnel stood guard at the entrance. The team's arrival in Wuhan came as China is on alert over a resurgence of COVID-19 infections in its northeast. The United States, which has accused China of hiding the extent of its initial outbreak a year ago, has called for a "transparent" WHO-led investigation and criticised the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts have done the first phase of research. Dominic Dwyer, an Australian virologist on the team, said he and the other scientists were trying to keep the politics surrounding the trip aside. "There's always politics with this sort of scenario but one of the things that COVID-19 has shown us is if you have good science, you then inform the politics," he said. "You want to fill the scientific vacuum with the answers so that people can make more informed and, therefore, presumably more sensible decisions." Dwyer said the itinerary for the rest of the trip was still to be sorted out but he hoped to visit research institutes, hospitals and the market where the first human cases of the disease were detected in late 2019. Story continues "Getting an understanding of how they (markets) work physically by seeing them is helpful because one's trying to work out how viruses might have come into the market from outside...and spread within the market, or parts of the market, and then spread to the community," he said. The team are not allowed to mingle while in quarantine, so will be holding all meetings virtually. "It's in the room for two weeks," said Dwyer. "The rooms are a good size and they've given everyone exercise equipment and meals are delivered," adding he had some weights, a skipping rope and a yoga mat. One of the two missing members of the team, a UK national, will be allowed to travel to China after re-testing negative in an antibody test, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a news briefing in Beijing on Friday. The other member, who is Sudanese, is still testing positive for antibodies, he said. "We will remain in contact with the WHO on these matters," said Zhao. The team of 15 had all tested negative for the disease prior to leaving their home countries, and underwent further testing while in transit in Singapore. (Additional reporting by Cate Cadell in Beijing; writing by Gabriel Crossley; editing by Philippa Fletcher) Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment As things are ending very badly for Donald Trumps presidency and some of his close associates are abandoning him, the question for Christian conservatives is this: Did we sell our souls by voting for Trump? Did we make a deal with the devil that was bound to end in failure and disgrace? Someone asked me on Twitter shortly after the storming of the Capitol, If you knew how things would end, would you have voted for Trump? That, of course, is an intriguing question. But it is, ultimately, unfair and unhelpful. If you knew you would be involved in a fatal car crash on your way to work, would you have gone to work that day? If you knew that, after 20 years of marriage, your spouse would leave you for another lover, would you have gotten married? If you knew that your first child would die of cancer at the age of four, would you have had children at all? We can only make decisions based on what we presently know. This includes being able to make projections and predictions as well, but we cannot do that perfectly. When it came to voting for Trump, many of us knew we were walking on treacherous ground. He could do a lot of good, and he could do a lot of bad. Would the former outweigh the latter? Or in the end, would he do more harm than good? And what of our witness and our integrity? What would be the lasting effects of our association with Trump? Perhaps we would see some policy advances, but at what cost? Those were the questions many of us wrestled with, and thats one reason I opposed Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, as did many of you. We thought there were much better choices. (As for those who chose Trump over the other Republican candidates, thats another discussion entirely.) But when it came to Trump vs. Hillary (or, more recently, Trump vs. Biden), we felt conscience-bound to vote against the left. We knew there were inherent dangers in our vote, given the type of person Trump was. But he got our vote nonetheless. The alternatives were simply too scary to consider. And right now, as we watch the Purge taking place, with the potential banning of conservative voices and platforms by Big Tech, we remember one reason we voted for a political outsider and fighter like Trump. Take him out of the picture now, and we face some very precarious times. On the flip side, had Trump responded differently to his loss to Biden (be it by fraud or not) and not undermined the Republican party in Georgia, we would likely be looking at a GOP majority of 52-48 in the Senate, thereby holding back the radicality of the left. So, on the one hand, Trump won some short-term victories and also appointed many lifetime judges. He did much good on the national and international scene. On the other hand, we are now left with a real, national mess, with the balance of power shifting dramatically left, and with the country as a whole vulgarized in many ways by the Trump presidency. But what of our Christian witness? Did we sell our souls by voting for Trump? To this moment, I believe we can justify why we voted for him in the general elections and do so without shame, especially given the choices. (For the record, though, I have always respected those who could not vote for either candidate out of conscience before God. I differ strongly with those who voted Democrat rather than vote for Trump.) Like some of you, as a Trump voter, I often expressed my concerns about the president, sounding many warnings along the way. (See, for example, this article from June 30, 2017 titled, Dont Sell Your Soul Defending the Words of President Trump.) Like some of you, I cringed over many of his tweets and saw the real danger of his reckless words (after all, this was the most powerful man on the planet demeaning and degrading others in the sight of tens of millions). Like some of you, I saw real truth in the damning criticisms that were brought against Trump, all while recognizing how he was unfairly savaged by the leftwing media. Yet, to repeat, when it came to voting for him or Hillary or Biden, the choice was clear for us. We had absolutely nothing in common with the white supremacists and other fanatics who stormed the Capitol last week. We were not xenophobes or racists or misogynists. But we were staunchly opposed to where the radical left might take us, hence our vote for a very flawed man. Many of us also hoped that some of the godly leaders who surrounded him would be able to help him make some deep, fundamental changes as they spoke into his life with clarity and truth. And so we cast our vote. Did we sell our souls in doing so? Did we compromise our values in the process? For many of us, the answer is no, and we dont need to go on an apology tour for our vote. Even if some of our friends were more prescient than we were, seeing that things would end badly, we acted with sincerity before God and man. And if in the years ahead, our worst fears are realized and our country lurches even further to the far left, we will remember why we voted as we did. That being said, many of us did sell our souls and compromise our values. There is no doubt about it whatsoever. We diminished the importance of a leaders character and integrity. We became apologists for the presidents sins and shortcomings. We mirrored his worst characteristics. We justified the unjustifiable. We put our trust in a man to fight our political and cultural battles. We became better known as the Trump people than as the Jesus people. The list goes on and on. To the extent that applies to any of us, we need to do some serious, private soul-searching along with some honest, public repenting, not in reaction to the attacks from the left but out of reverence before God. Either way, however, we voted, the reputation of Jesus has been trashed before the nation. What can all of us do to see His name lifted up again? Todays businesses are caught between the rock of maintaining collaboration and productivity, and the hard place of moving from a static to a hybrid office. In the midst of an ongoing global pandemic, these organisations need to formulate a strategy for the future, where the new normal is likely to be the established normal. It was these quandaries that inspired Xerox to initiate the Make NOW Work programme. The scheme empowers organisations everywhere to challenge old norms and work differently, to not only survive but thrive harnessing data, automating workflows, personalising at scale, and creating flexible workforces. To understand the state of play, Xerox interviewed business stakeholders in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, and France. Their perspectives are published in Xeroxs Future of Work in a Pandemic Era whitepaper. While different industries are returning to work at different paces, nearly half of those polled are in the process of doing so. Some 56% of respondents are expanding their technology budgets and more than a third (34%) are planning to accelerate digital transformation. One of the most common digital transformation goals, and one of the three pillars of Xeroxs Make NOW Work programme, is automated workflow, which can be applied to some of the most time-honoured professions. Since the reign of Queen Victoria, the UKs Land Registry has accrued oceans of data as it recorded more than a century and a half of property transfers across England and Wales. Today, the organisation oversees some 25 million titles. And it receives anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 more hardcopy applications, drawings, photographs, and ID documents each day. Unshakeable accuracy When turning its attention to digital transformation, HM Land Registry was determined to become a world leader in speed and simplicity. Xeroxs Production Workflow Management platform allowed the registry to digitise new applications and extract data from text and images. The solution had to deliver unshakeable accuracy, given the legal and financial importance of the information held. But the registry is working with Xerox on a pilot programme that will integrate AI and machine-learning into the workflow, to allow accuracy to improve over time, under human supervision. The efficiencies of automated workflow allow business continuity between remote workforces and isolated property-owners. As in all digital transformation, trust is at a premium, but never more so than when it involves our health. In an age where the operational efficiency of healthcare units is critical, a Xerox scanning solution helped Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust to improve resource usage and make more space available for patients and staff. Having already digitised patient notes at the point of care, the trust needed to do the same with older patient histories that were still held as paper records. Four onsite libraries and an offsite archive needed to be converted, to eliminate the need for physical storage space and to slicken access to data. The trust also hoped to deliver a year-on-year reduction in the cost of records management. Award-winning The project allowed the organisation to reclaim some 547 square metres of floor space. This area is growing steadily, and the trust is now planning a new 23-bed ward to take advantage of it. Additionally, it has slashed manhours requirements by 50% and projects a GBP 500,000 budget reduction in record-keeping over five years. These results were pivotal in earning Xerox the Best Innovation Project of the Year accolade at the Health Tech Digital Awards 2020. Xerox also worked with Imperial College NHS Trust on implementing our Hybrid Mail Service, a platform aimed at making printing and mailing affordable and easy. With hybrid mail, you compose, manage, and print corporate correspondence with a significantly lower drain on budgets and staff welcome boons in an economic downturn in which there is increasing pressure to do more with less. Instead of manual processing, including collection and franking, the trust electronically transmits jobs to one of Xeroxs four Service Delivery Centres across the UK. And the system includes the option to validate delivery against a Royal Mail database to ensure timely arrival at the proper destination. In manual workflow, speed and accuracy too often need to be traded off against one another. One of the reasons automation is so attractive is that it eliminates that trade-off. Italian aerospace company Leonardo S.p.A. was looking for ways to improve both speed and accuracy when shipping spare parts. Often, the companys customers would need the parts to resolve the issue of a grounded aircraft; and each part requires certifications, log cards, test reports, invoices, and a slew of other documents before it can leave the warehouse. Document management became a bottleneck in the firms efforts to serve its customers. The paperless office Xerox empowered the manufacturer to digitise documents in an instant by scanning them, attaching metadata, and storing them in a searchable document-management system. The process of document creation, which used to take up to 15 days, now takes around one minute. And search time has been reduced by an estimated 80%. Automated workflow and paperless offices go hand in hand and will be of escalating importance in the new global digital economy. Xerox recently helped a global claims-management company to implement a paperless ecosystem, not only eliminating its internal usage, but barring its entry from outside sources in the form of mail. Many of the usual business drivers were there physical-file access that took several business days; cumbersome document retrieval and shipping processes; and spiralling document-management costs. This organisation realised what many are discovering in the new normal. Customer satisfaction can never be up to par in such an oozing workflow. Xerox delivered a solution that digitised paper documents and stored them in an easily searchable format. To solve the external arrival of paper, the claims management company now redirects its post through a PO box and on to the Xerox Digital Hub. Here, some 1,000 documents are digitised, indexed and uploaded to the firms content management system each day. Say goodbye to paper and hello to the digital mailroom. Automated workflow is one excellent way to Make NOW Work for you. Productivity will surge, costs will plummet, employees will be freed up to do other, more innovative things. And customers will notice. If you wonder what the difference is between those who will survive the days ahead of us and those who will thrive, you have just read about it here. Despite having reporters of their own in attendance at the January 6 Trump rally in DC, The Daily Caller actively sought out and doxxed reporters from competing conservative news outlets in an attempt to cancel them. (Natural News) (Article by Lauren Witzke republished from NationalFile.com) I attended the rally on assignment with National File, to interview my fellow Trump supporters about their feelings toward their United States Senators who they felt were actively betraying them, and practice my rights under the protections of the First Amendment-Freedom of Press. On January 7th, the Daily Callers Michael Ginsberg proactively searched for my personal page on Parler to see that I had posted a photo from the rally at Capitol Hill. Ginsberg, (being the lazy, mediocre journalist that he is) failed to reach out for comment, and then proceeded to write a hit piece on me titled Failed Candidate attended Capitol Riot. Nobody from Daily Caller, including Ginsberg, attempted to contact me before this hit piece was published. If they had, they would have learned that I was only near the Capitol, and never inside the building. They also would have learned that I was attending the protest as a member of the media, working for National File. Instantly, my personal social media pages were filled with hateful calls for my arrest from the radical left, as well as death threats calling for me to be Taken out like that terrorist, Ashli Babbitt. Since Daily Callers lead reporter, Jorge Ventura, was also there covering the DC Capitol Hill rally, I cant help but think the Daily Caller specifically targeted and doxxed me because they didnt like my personal opinions posted on my personal social media accounts about the rally. It seems The Daily Caller feels as if any Right-Wing media outlet who embraces Trump and his supporters must be cancelled. Mr. Ginsberg and the Daily Caller are working in tune with Big Tech tyrants in an attempt to crush all other conservative media outlets who may have ever supported President Trump. When National File reached out to the Daily Caller to ask if their reporters entered the Capitol Building and if they would be running profile pieces on every Trump supporter in attendance, Daily Caller did not respond with comment. When I was finally able to confront the Daily Caller for their blatant attack on National Files reporters and engaging in cancel culture, I was met with threats of being slandered as an antisemite by the Daily Callers Editor in Chief, Geoffrey Ingersoll. When National File called and emailed Ingersoll repeatedly to offer the opportunity to comment on this story, we did not receive a response. Im not sure if doxing, slander, and actively engaging in the cancelling of other conservative outlets is explicitly listed in the Daily Callers Mission Statement, but after what I experienced, its safe to say that the Daily Caller feels empowered under a Joe Biden administration enough to make it their mission. The Daily Caller is no longer the organization of Tucker Carlson, in fact, its now run by a man named Neil Patel. The Daily Caller should remove Tucker Carlsons face from their profile and stop deceiving their subscribers into thinking that they are his mouthpiece, since I am 1000% sure Tucker Carlson would find their cancelling, doxing, and unprovoked attacks against conservative media reporters appalling. Read more at: NationalFile.com and CancelCultureNews.com JACKSON, Miss. (WTVA) -- The Adjuntant General for the Mississippi National Guard released more information about the deployment of troops to Washington, DC. Major General Janson Durr Boyles says 100 members of the 114th Military Police Company will begin leaving today to support the Inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden next week. He says those being deployed returned from a year-long deployment in Kuwait this fall and have many members who are law enforcement officers in Mississippi. Major General Boyles says the Mississippi National Guard is no stranger to assisting with inaugural events. He expects the troops to serve in logistic, security and traffic support roles while in Washington. He also says the Guard will be ready if asked to assist with the possibility of protest at the state capitol this weekend. The Mississippi National Guard currently has over 20,000 men and women serving in uniform. He says over 1,000 of them are currently serving the state at coronavirus vaccine and testing sites. 400 members of the 155th Armored Bridge Combat Team were sent to Washington earlier this year when protest marches took place over George Floyd's death while in police custody. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Hyundai Motor Group signed an investment contract with the government of Guangdong Province to establish an offshore fuel cell system production facility in Guangzhou, China. The investment advances the Groups global hydrogen leadership and supports its push into Chinas rapidly developing hydrogen industry. Construction is scheduled to begin next month and will be completed by the second half of 2022. The plant will be the Groups first fuel cell production base outside of Korea, with the initial capacity to produce 6,500 units of fuel cell systems per year. The Group will gradually increase the capacity in line with market demand. At the new plant, the Group will manufacture the same proven fuel cell systems that are used for Hyundai Motors NEXO fuel cell electric SUV. Moreover, the Group will work with Chinese companies to participate in the Guangdong governments hydrogen-related pilot project and initiatives, which will help Hyundai secure a competitive advantage in Chinas hydrogen industry. Global companies from Japan, Germany, the UK and other countries have also been working with the Chinese partners to develop technology related to fuel cell vehicles and to advance the local hydrogen industry. In October 2020, the China Society of Automotive Engineers released a technology roadmap, under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The roadmap reflects Chinas ambition to foster a hydrogen economy; the country aims to have 1 million FCEVs on its roads by 2035, with an emphasis on commercial vehicles. In December 2018, Hyundai Motor Group announced its own long-term roadmap, Fuel Cell Vision 2030, to reaffirm its commitment to accelerate the development of a hydrogen society by leveraging its global leadership in fuel cell technologies. As part of this plan, the Group aims to produce 700,000 fuel cells annually to meet demand from various industry sectors. The Group has decades of experience in fuel cell system development, having introduced the worlds first mass-produced fuel cell electric vehicle, the ix35, in 2013, followed by the second-generation NEXO, in 2018. The Group also successfully delivered the first seven units of its XCIENT Fuel Cell trucks, the worlds first mass-produced fuel cell electric heavy-duty truck, to customers in Switzerland in late 2020. As part of the Groups effort to foster zero-emission society, Hyundai recently launched HTWO, a new brand to represent its world-leading hydrogen fuel cell system. It has also strengthened its research and development capabilities and partnerships across a multitude of industries to lead development of the hydrogen economy. Kimberley Garner looked incredible in sizzling throwback snaps from a getaway to Barbados. The former Made In Chelsea star, 29, who recently spent the festive season in the Caribbean hotspot, wowed in the stunning photoshoot from 2018. Kimberley displayed her washboard abs in a tiny gold bikini with a dangling pendant charm on the top, which highlighted her ample assets. Wow: Kimberley Garner looked incredible in sizzling throwback snaps from a getaway to Barbados The designer teamed the skimpy item of swimwear with a pair of tiny low-rise bottoms which further showcased her toned frame. Kimberley styled her blonde locks into a loose tousled hairdo and added a slick of radiant make-up to enhance her stunning features. The reality star knew how to work her best angles as she posed up a storm and used the idyllic beach scenery as her backdrop in the throwback photoshoot. Barbados is a favourite holiday location of Kimberley's, with the star recently spending Christmas in the Caribbean hotspot where she was seen packing on the PDA with a mystery man. Stunning: The former Made In Chelsea star, 29, who recently spent the festive season in the Caribbean hotspot, wowed in the stunning photoshoot from 2018 Incredible: Kimberley displayed her washboard abs in a tiny gold bikini with a dangling pendant charm on the top, which highlighted her ample assets The swimwear designer has since jetted off to Miami, Florida, where she owns a property in the sun-drenched location. Only recently, Kimberley revealed that she has been turning down all invitations to socialise on a big scale while in Miami amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She took to Instagram to share snaps of herself looking tanned and taut in a pink crop top and grey shorts as she discussed her plans to stay safe while spending time across the pond. She wrote: 'I am here, but I am very very strict still. I see people in Tulum and all over going to parties and it doesnt feel right to me. Ab fab! The designer teamed the skimpy item of swimwear with a pair of tiny low-rise bottoms which further showcased her toned frame 'I havent been out to any parties and turned down invites from friends as feel its just not right to be in a crowd - its not ok at the moment. 'Im really lucky to be in the sun and outdoors, and am valuing that totally, but not going to live normally as its not a normal world at the moment. 'I really think and feel for everyone home at the moment, it really sucks, please be brave, please be kind to each other. 'I did lots of little routines when I was in lockdown and that helped keep me happy. Simple things like Praying, walking, working out, cooking and calling people who I like :).' [sic] Concluding her post, she advised her followers: '[B]e there for someone who might need you (even dancing round to loud music at home looking very silly but gosh it helped keep a smile) I hope your ok x.' [sic] While Britain has been plunged into a third lockdown preventing people from travelling unless for work a large number of 'rule-bending' celebrities and influencers have jetted off to sunny destinations all the same. When we look at whats happened in the U.K. and think about this new variant, and we see all the case numbers going up, we have to remember it in the context of schools being open with virtually no modification at all, Jenkins said. I would like to see a real-life example of that kind of country or state or location, which has managed to control things in schools. Kelly Dodd vocalized her dangerous skepticism about the effectiveness of wearing masks, despite clear, scientific evidence they can help prevent the spread of COVID-19. In a sneak peek from the upcoming Real Housewives of Orange County reunion, the 45-year-old reality star complained about having to adhere to coronavirus safety protocols, which have been designed to protect lives. 'I hate wearing a mask,' the mother-of-one told host Andy Cohen, who battled the virus in March. 'I think everybodys on that with me. I will wear them because I have to, but does your pants protect you from a fart? Like is it helping?' Problematic: Kelly Dodd expressed her dangerous skepticism about face masks again, despite clear evidence they can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 She continued: 'Are the masks helping? I dont know.' Her problematic statement questioning masks conflicts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's research, which finds call masks a 'simple barrier to help prevent your respiratory droplets from reaching others.' Immediately, her costars Braunwyn Windham-Burke, Shannon Beador and Gina Kirschenheiter looked appalled by her troubling anti-mask confession. 'Kelly, I know Braunwyn did an interview when she said that you were not taking COVID seriously and there were a lot of people who expressed that on social media,' Cohen asked. 'Whats your reaction to that?' 'I hate wearing a mask,' the mother-of-one told host Andy Cohen, who battled the virus in March Defensive: When the 52-year-old Bravo host questioned how many trips she took during the first six weeks of lockdown, the wife of Rick Leventhal admitted she traveled frequently to New York to take care of 'business' Dodd replied: 'I said some things that I regret. I feel bad for anybody whos lost loved ones. I think its horrific. I think its horrible. Did I take it seriously? Yeah, but I also was frustrated.' When the 52-year-old Bravo host questioned how many trips she took during the first six weeks of lockdown, the wife of Rick Leventhal admitted she traveled frequently to New York to take care of 'business.' Over New Years Kelly and husband were spotted vacationing in Aspen. Last month, she expressed regret months after she was at the center of controversy for making insensitive comments about the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in April, Dodd called the outbreak 'God's way of thinning the herd' in since-deleted Instagram Stories. During an interview on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, she said admitted to be remorseful over her 'insensitive' words. She said: 'It was a stupid thing for me to say. It was insensitive and I apologize if I hurt or offended anybody cause that wasnt really my intention. I got freaked out about it and, in hindsight, it was the stupidest thing Ive ever said' Taking a stand: In November, Cohen went on to ask her if she believes people should be wearing masks especially after her mom contracted COVID-19 and was in the ICU 'It was a stupid thing for me to say,' she admitted. 'I apologize if I hurt or offended anybody cause that wasnt really my intention. I got freaked out about it and, in hindsight, it was the stupidest thing Ive ever said.' She issued an apology at the time, but then weeks later in May, she bragged that she and her family weren't wearing masks when they went to a restaurant while also claiming that 'no one is dying' in Orange County. Cohen went on to ask her if she believes people should be wearing masks, especially after her mom contracted COVID-19 and was in the ICU last month. Dodd said: 'Well at first I was misinformed. You guys have to realize this was, like back in January when this happened. I was misinformed.' Yikes: Back in April, Dodd called the outbreak 'God's way of thinning the herd' in since deleted Instagram Stories 'I didnt realize not wearing a mask I hate it. Im claustrophobic. I cant stand wearing a mask and now I understand the science behind it and Im ready, willing and able to wear a mask and I know that its important,' she said. Her interview came amid reports that the US has reported its highest ever daily COVID-19 death toll with 117 Americans dying every hour in the past day last month- as an analysis of CDC data shows total fatalities could be as high as 386,000 as of January 14. Back when she sparked controversy in April, the reality star was responding to critics who asked why she was flying from New York to LA at such a time after she posted photos from the empty airport and plane. 'God's way': The Bravo star was responding to critics who questioned why she got a flight from New York to LA during the pandemic 'If it's dangerous why are the airlines still flying? You think I want to fly? I had to get back, how is that elitist?' Kelly snapped back. In a separate comment the TV star then claimed the people who have fallen victim to COVID-19 'would have died this year they were compromised,' 'Do you know how many people died from the H1N1, the swine flu or SARS?' she wrote. 'It's 25% get your facts straight you only hearing numbers not the reality! It's God's way of thinning the herd!' Viral on Reddit: Kelly had a response for many of her followers who were angered at her comments and actions She finished the comment with some 'common sense' ways vulnerable people can protect themselves. 'If you are vulnerable or compromised, stay inside. If you don't protect others by wearing masks and gloves keep your distance and don't go out if you are ill,' she ranted. 'Its common sense!' Realizing how controversial her words were, Kelly later apologized In a selfie video, claiming her words were taken the wrong way. 'I want to give a public apology. When I wrote this is 'God's way of thinning the herd,' that's not what I meant,' she said. 'I want to give a public apology. When I wrote this is Gods way of thinning the herd, thats not what I meant,' Kelly said in her apology video later in the day 'What I meant was, do these pandemics happen because it's Gods way? I'm not God, I'm not insensitive. I feel bad for all the families who have lost loved ones.' she tried to explain Backtracking: 'I want to apologize to anybody who got offended. Im sorry.' 'What I meant was, do these pandemics happen because it's Gods way? I'm not God, I'm not insensitive. I feel bad for all the families who have lost loved ones. And I do think we should all stay home and protect everybody. That's not what I meant, and I want to apologize to anybody who got offended. Im sorry.' At the time, the Bravo star had shared a video of her at the doctor's office while getting tested for coronavirus. Kelly winced as the doctor pushed a swab high up into her nasal cavity. 'Getting my covid test!! That hurt' she captioned the clip as she pulled faces at the camera. Painful: On Monday the RHOC was filmed having the coronavirus test done despite having no symptoms Ouch: Kelly winced as the doctor pushed a swab high up into her nasal cavity Precaution: Kelly decided to get the test after flying back from New York to her home in Orange County, California The move angered her Kelly's fans who questioned how she could get tested without exhibiting any symptoms of the disease - and many people who are very sick are still having trouble getting tested. One Instagram user asked: 'How did you get tested? People who have symptoms can't get a test [crying emoji].' 'You can get tested if you know people!' Kelly responded. Yves here. Bidens nominees have skewed towards the awful, particularly on the foreign policy front. But his plan to install Victoria Fuck the EU Nuland at State is a standout. For those of you new to this site and not familiar with Nulands sorry history, this post gives an overview of her role in fomenting the coup in Ukraine and in putting relations with Russia on a Cold War footing. The authors encourage readers to call their Senators and urge them to vote against her nomination. And before you get unduly excited by Biden nominating Gary Gensler to the SEC, I would much rather have seem Gensler at Treasury. Gensler demonstrated at the CFTC that hes effective and dedicated to combatting abuses by Big Finance. However, his best shot at making the SEC feared and respected again is to appoint a tough head of enforcement, so keep an eye out for that pick. The problem that Gensler will have at the SEC is that it is the only Federal financial services industry regulator that is subject to Congressional appropriations, rather that living off its fees and fines (the SEC collects far more than Congress allows it). And Democrats, like Joe Lieberman, then the Senator from Hedgistan, have been if anything more aggressive than Republicans in threatening the SEC and in keeping it budget-starved. I had said to Lambert that if Biden wanted to be Machiavellian, the way to pretend to reward Elizabeth Warren while actually sandbagging her would be to make her SEC chair. Lets hope that isnt his logic for appointing Gensler. By Medea Benjamin. cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. @medeabenjamin; Nicolas J. S. Davies, an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. @NicolasJSDavies; and Marcy Winograd of Progressive Democrats of America served as a 2020 Democratic delegate for Bernie Sanders,and is Coordinator of CODEPINK CONGRESS. @MarcyWinograd Photo Credit: thetruthseeker.co.uk Nuland and Pyatt planning regime change in Kiev Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her because the U.S. corporate medias foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Bidens pick for Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia. Nor do they know that from 2003-2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq, Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration. You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying Fuck the EU during a 2014 phone call with the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt plotted to replace the elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European Union for grooming former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko instead of U.S. puppet and NATO booklicker Artseniy Yatseniuk to replace Russia-friendly Yanukovych. The Fuck the EU call went viral, as an embarrassed State Department, never denying the calls authenticity, blamed the Russians for tapping the phone, much as the NSA has tapped the phones of European allies. Despite outrage from German Chancellor Angela Markel, no one fired Nuland, but her potty mouth upstaged the more serious story: the U.S. plot to overthrow Ukraines elected government and Americas responsibility for a civil war that has killed at least 13,000 people and left Ukraine the poorest country in Europe. In the process, Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan, the co-founder of The Project for a New American Century, and their neocon cronies succeeded in sending U.S.-Russian relations into a dangerous downward spiral from which they have yet to recover. Nuland accomplished this from a relatively junior position as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. How much more trouble could she stir up as the #3 official at Bidens State Department? Well find out soon enough, if the Senate confirms her nomination. Joe Biden should have learned from Obamas mistakes that appointments like this matter. In his first term, Obama allowed his hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and military and CIA leaders held over from the Bush administration to ensure that endless war trumped his message of hope and change. Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, ended up presiding over indefinite detentions without charges or trials at Guantanamo Bay; an escalation of drone strikes that killed innocent civilians; a deepening of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan; a self-reinforcing cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism; and disastrous new wars in Libya and Syria. With Clinton out and new personnel in top spots in his second term, Obama beganto take charge of his own foreign policy. He started working directly with Russias President Putin to resolve crises in Syria and other hotspots. Putin helped avert an escalation of the war in Syria in September 2013 by negotiating the removal and destruction of Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles, and helped Obama negotiate an interim agreement with Iran that led to the JCPOA nuclear deal. But the neocons were apoplectic that they failed to convince Obama to order a massive bombing campaign and escalate his covert, proxy warin Syria and at the receding prospect of a war with Iran. Fearing their control of U.S. foreign policy was slipping, the neocons launched a campaignto brand Obama as weak on foreign policy and remind him of their power. With editorial helpfrom Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan penned a 2014 New Republicarticle entitled Superpowers Dont Get To Retire, proclaiming that there is no democratic superpower waiting in the wings to save the world if this democratic superpower falters. Kagan called for an even more aggressive foreign policy to exorcise American fears of a multipolar world it can no longer dominate. Obama invited Kagan to a private lunch at the White House, and the neocons muscle-flexing pressured him to scale back his diplomacy with Russia, even as he quietly pushed ahead on Iran. The neocons coup de graceagainst Obamas better angels was Nulands 2014 coupin debt-ridden Ukraine, a valuable imperial possession for its wealth of natural gas and a strategic candidate for NATO membership right on Russias border. When Ukraines Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych spurned a U.S.-backed trade agreement with the European Union in favor of a $15 billion bailout from Russia, the State Department threw a tantrum. Hell hath no fury like a superpower scorned. The EU trade agreement was to open Ukraines economy to imports from the EU, but without a reciprocal opening of EU markets to Ukraine, it was a lopsided deal Yanukovich could not accept. The deal was approved by the post-coup government, and has only added to Ukraines economic woes. The muscle for Nulands$5 billion coup was Oleh Tyahnyboks neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and the shadowy new Right Sector militia. During her leaked phone call, Nuland referred to Tyahnybok as one of the big three opposition leaders on the outside who could help the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Yatsenyuk on the inside. This is the same Tyanhnybok who once delivered a speech applauding Ukrainians for fighting Jews and other scum during World War II. After protests in Kievs Euromaidan square turned into battles with police in February 2014, Yanukovych and the Western-backed opposition signed an agreement brokered by France, Germany and Poland to form a national unity government and hold new elections by the end of the year. But that was not good enough for the neo-Nazis and extreme right-wing forces the U.S. had helped to unleash. A violent mob led by the Right Sector militia marched on and invaded the parliament building, a scene no longer difficult for Americans to imagine. Yanukovych and his members of parliament fled for their lives. Facing the loss of its most vital strategic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, Russia accepted the overwhelming result (a 97% majority, with an 83% turnout) of areferendumin which Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, which it had been a part of from 1783 to 1954. The majority Russian-speaking provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine, triggering a bloody civil war between U.S.- and Russian-backed forces that still rages in 2021. U.S.-Russian relations have never recovered, even as U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals still pose the greatest single threatto our existence. Whatever Americans believe about the civil war in Ukraine and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, we must not allow the neocons and the military-industrial complex they serve to deter Biden from conducting vital diplomacy with Russia to steer us off our suicidal path toward nuclear war. Nuland and the neocons, however, remain committed to an ever-more debilitating and dangerous Cold War with Russia and China to justify a militarist foreign policy and record Pentagon budgets. In a July 2020 Foreign Affairsarticle entitled Pinning Down Putin, Nuland absurdly claimedthat Russia presents a greater threat to the liberal world than the U.S.S.R. posed during the old Cold War. Nulands narrativerests on an utterly mythical, ahistorical narrative of Russian aggression and U.S. good intentions. She pretends that Russias military budget, which is one-tenth of Americas, is evidence of Russian confrontation and militarization and calls onthe U.S. and its allies to counter Russia by maintaining robust defense budgets, continuing to modernize U.S. and allied nuclear weapons systems, and deploying new conventional missiles and missile defenses to protect against Russias new weapons systems Nuland also wants to confront Russia with an aggressive NATO. Since her days as U.S. Ambassador to NATO during President George W. Bushs second term, she has been a supporter of NATOs expansion all the way up to Russias border. She calls forpermanent bases along NATOs eastern border. We have pored over a map of Europe, but we cant find a country called NATO with any borders at all. Nuland sees Russias commitment to defending itself after successive 20th century Western invasions as an intolerable obstacle to NATOs expansionist ambitions. Nulands militaristic worldview represents exactly the folly the U.S. has been pursuing since the 1990s under the influence of the neocons and liberal interventionists, which has resulted in a systematic underinvestment in the American people while escalating tensions with Russia, China, Iran and other countries. As Obama learned too late, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time can, with a shove in the wrong direction, unleash years of intractable violence, chaos and international discord. Victoria Nuland would be a ticking time-bomb in Bidens State Department, waiting to sabotage his better angels much as she undermined Obamas second-term diplomacy. So lets do Biden and the world a favor. Join World Beyond War, CODEPINK and dozens of other organizations opposing neocon Nulands confirmation as a threat to peace and diplomacy. Call 202-224-3121 and tell your Senator to oppose Nulands installation at the State Department. New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Friday (January 15) that Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not respect farmers and wants to tire out those protesting against the Centre's new agri laws. He also said that the talks that are being held with the protesting farmer leaders are part of the government's delaying tactics. Farmers will not relent till the laws are repealed, said Rahul Gandhi at Jantar Mantar, where he along with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra joined party MPs in their demonstration against the new farm laws. Rahul Gandhi said, "The three (farm) laws have been brought to finish the farmers. If we don't stop this now, it will continue to happen in other sectors too. Narendra Modi does not respect the farmers. The farmers will neither deter nor fear." On being asked about the resignation of one of the four experts nominated by the Supreme Court for talks with farmers, Rahul said, "Maya shabd suna hai aapne? Maya hai maya, poora ka poora, media -created maya hai aur yeh maya tutne wali hai. Jis din yeh maya tutti us din phir dekhna kya hota hai." Live TV The former Congress president's remarks come on a day when the government is meeting protesting farmer unions for the ninth time to break the over-a-month-long deadlock on the three new agri laws. He said the talks that are being held with the protesting farmer leaders are part of the government's delaying tactics. "The talks are being held only to delay. PM Modi thinks he has the power and will tire the farmers out, but he is mistaken," Rahul Gandhi told reporters, adding "Narendra Modi does not have basic respect for farmers. He does not even care if over 100 farmers die. He thinks he has the power and the protesting farmers will tire out after some days, but they will not relent." "They (the government) do not know the strength of farmers, they will not relent. PM Modi does not understand this. Had he understood this, the government would have taken back the laws today itself," Rahul said. Asked about objections being raised over the proposed tractor rally by protesting farmers on Republic Day, he said, "If farmers want to come out and take out a tractor parade on Republic Day, what is the harm in it." "The prime minister misunderstands, he thinks this country is run by four to five industrialists, who control him," Rahul Gandhi said, adding that the country is run by farmers, labourers and the youth. He said if anyone "attacks" farmers, it is an attack on the country. The country's farmers have maintained the country's independence by ensuring food security and the day food security is lost, the country will lose its independence, Rahul Gandhi said. "This is a financial issue, not a political issue. PM Modi wants to hand over everything that farmers have to his corporate friends," the Congress leader alleged. Rahul Gandhi also raised strong objections to protesting farmers being dubbed as "Khalistanis", and added that thousands of farmers have come out to protest against the farm laws and "you should not have dubbed them as 'Khalistanis'". Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi since November 28 against the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. At the Jantar Mantra, Congress MPs Ravneet Singh Bittu, Jasbir Singh Gill and some other legislators from Punjab have been staging the protest for over a month. (With Agency Inputs) 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. In Chicago, there were more than 1,500 people sleeping in the street, including in encampments, at the time of the latest yearly count of the homeless population. City statistics dont show how many of those who live on the street are Latino immigrants without legal status. Although some in the area said that the number of Latino homeless in Pilsen has decreased in recent years, Sigcho-Lopez said the overall issue of homelessness has worsened because of the pandemic, which has disproportionately hit Black and Latino communities. SACRAMENTO, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, California families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. California families, schools, and organizations are hosting 2,104 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. For example, parents and education experts around the state will participate in a Zoom call hosted by the California Policy Center and Celebration Education on Saturday, Jan. 30 to share details about what school choices are available to parents in the state. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of California communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the county of Santa Cruz and the cities of Montague, Highland, and Citrus Heights. "This National School Choice Week, let's pause to recognize the impact a child's education has on their ability to achieve their dreams, attain a fulfilling career, and give back to their community," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Across California, different schools help different students succeedall great schools are worth celebrating and supporting." In California, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with some open enrollment, charter schools, online schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, and private schools. California families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to California school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/california. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com U.S. shows absurd logic in discriminating between violent demonstrations in other countries and its own territory A violent demonstration was staged in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 local time, when some protesters broke into the U.S. Capitol and forcibly stopped a joint session of the U.S. Congress. During the incident, four protesters died. On the other day, a U.S. Capitol Police officer lost his life due to injuries caused amid the violence at the Capitol. File photo taken on Jan. 6, 2021 shows supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gathering in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) While taking powerful measures to suppress such protests at home, the U.S. has no problem with violent demonstrations happening in other countries and regions. In total disregarded of the chaos and social unrest, disturbance in and destruction of normal social order, threats and harm to personal and property safety, as well as attacks on and damage to public transportation, government buildings and facilities and the safety of officials caused by violent protests, the U.S. described rioters savage acts of violence and vandalism in Chinas Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as a beautiful sight to behold. Some human rights officials and experts with international organizations and certain Western media outlets have simply adhered to a politically correct approach to demonstrations, especially when they happen in developing countries including China. It looks like they believe civil groups are always right and their attacks on the government are always justified. It seems to them that human rights could be used as a tool and weapon to attack and criticize the government of other countries at any time, an extreme view in violation of legal logic and the rule of law. Human rights are not supposed to be a slogan or a simple political label, as they have legal connotations and boundaries of rights, obligations and responsibilities. Human rights, the rule of law, and development are important criteria for assessing the process of social development. Respecting and protecting human rights are the essential pursuit of the rule of law, as well as the intrinsic goal of development. The evolution of human rights couldn't be separated from the actual conditions of a country or the support and guarantee of the rule of law. The long-lasting and large-scale social turmoil brought about by the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong was targeted at the political system and government of Hong Kong, directly spoiled the political, social and economic order in the region, and threatened the national unity and security of China. The violent protesters assaulted Hong Kong residents and tourists from the Chinese mainland, obstructed the police in enforcing the law and in saving individuals under attack and shops that were either smashed, burned or robbed, directly attacked the police and snatched their equipment, including guns, besieged government departments, blocked traffic, examined and attacked passing vehicles, occupied universities for a long time and even stormed the Legislative Council Complex in Hong Kong. No law-based society can tolerate such act of directly, grossly and severely violating the law. The Hong Kong government and police department bore a great deal of pressure, and maintained great patience and exercised considerable restraint when faced with groundless accusations from the U.S. and some other Western countries as well as certain human rights officials and experts with international organizations amid the violent protests. The U.S., which advocates unilateralism and long-arm jurisdiction, even passed a bill to impose sanctions against Chinese officials over Hong Kong, seriously interfering in the internal affairs of China, undermining the sovereignty of China, and harming the legal rights and interests of Chinese institutions, enterprises and citizens. Although the recent violent demonstration in Washington, D.C. didn't last long, it provoked intense response from different circles in the U.S. Many American politicians have made remarks to criticize the illegality and intolerability of the incident. Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary in the Trump administration, condemned the violence in strong terms in a statement and stressed that those that broke the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called the incident an unspeakable assault on our nation and our people. Ironically, she was the same person that described the violent demonstrations in Hong Kong a beautiful sight to behold. The American government has arrested a large number of protesters and intends to press charges against them. In response to such a violent demonstration at home, it has taken a firm stand, acted promptly and decisively and inflicted harsh punishment, nothing like what they felt about similar incidents in other countries. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire, as a Chinese saying goes. The wisdom and values behind the saying are echoed by the Golden Rule in philosophy, a principle found in most cultures that one should treat others as he or she wants to be treated. The U.S. has obviously adopted double standard on discriminating between violent demonstrations in America and other countries, and shown entirely different attitudes towards similar incidents in different countries and regions. In the information age, countries are faced with new governance opportunities and challenges. They should continue improving and ensuring human rights under the spirits and framework of the rule of law. Countries should treat all members of the international community out of a sense of responsibility and respect the right of people from different countries to independently choose their own development path. International law has specified the doctrine of estoppel, which precludes a country from asserting something contrary to what is implied by a previous action or statement of that country or by a previous pertinent judicial determination and requires it to adopt the same legal logic for the same legal issue. A person will never build himself in the society without credibility; it is the same with a country. Legal logic matters, especially to issues concerning democracy and human rights. Officials from the U.S. and some other Western countries, as well as people who are used to looking at developing countries with prejudice need to pay attention to legal logic, respect the rule of law, and keep consistent in applying rules. (The author Liu Huawen is the executive director of the Center for Human Rights Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as deputy director of the Institute of International Law under the CASS.) Your browser does not support the video tag. A massive US-backed Israeli airstrike in Syria and a flurry of anti-Iranian measures introduced by the US State Department over the past week have fed growing concerns that the Trump administration may still launch a war against Iran during the week leading up to the scheduled inauguration of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. Israeli warplanes struck multiple targets between the city of Deir Ezzor and the town Bukamal near a major border crossing with Iraq on Tuesday. It was the fourth round of Israeli airstrikes against Syria in the last two weeks, but by far the largest. Rubble of a house that according to the was attacked by an Israeli airstrike, in the Damascus suburbs of Hajira, in April 2020.(Photo: SANA via AP) Reports from the region indicate that this was the most punishing attack carried out by the Israelis since Tel Aviv began air strikes in conjunction with the CIA-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria that began nearly a decade ago. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Tuesdays raids killed 57 people, including Syrian government soldiers and members of Iranian-backed militias, while wounding another 37. While Israel routinely refuses to confirm or deny responsibility for these attacks, Tuesdays airstrikes were also different in that a senior US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that Israel had carried out the raid based on intelligence provided by Washington. Moreover, according to the AP report, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had discussed the planned airstrikes while dining Monday night with Yossi Cohen, chief of Israels spy agency Mossad, at the posh Georgetown restaurant, Cafe Milano. Also apparently under discussion between the two was the speech to be delivered by Pompeo at the National Press Club on Tuesday in which he claimed that Al Qaeda, Washingtons ostensible Enemy Number One over the course of the more than two-decade-old war on terror, is today headquartered in and supported by Tehran. I would say Iran is indeed the new Afghanistanas the key geographic hub for Al Qaedabut its actually worse, Pompeo said. Unlike in Afghanistan, when Al Qaeda was hiding in the mountains, Al Qaeda today is operating under the hard shell of the Iranian regimes protection. Pompeo offered no evidence whatsoever to support this claim, which is absurd on its face. Al Qaeda, a movement that got its start in the CIA-orchestrated war against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan in the 1980s, bases itself on a Salafist-jihadist ideology that regards Shia Muslims, which account for 95 percent of Irans population, as heretics. It and its offshoots are responsible for multiple attacks on Shia mosques and civilian populations as well as an assault on Irans parliament building in 2017 that killed 12 people. It is Washington which backed Al Qaeda-linked forces in the US-NATO campaign to overthrow the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi, and then armed and funded Al Qaedas affiliate in Syria in a bloody war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which in turn received military support from Iran. The attempt by Pompeo, who insisted following the US election that there would be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration, to link Al Qaeda with Iran is not merely slanderous propaganda bluster. The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 on the pretext of pursuing Al Qaeda, and then launched its war against Iraq in 2003, based on the lie that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give non-existent weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda, a virulent enemy of the Iraqi government. The fabrication of a similar Tehran-Al Qaeda axis is a calculated effort to build a pseudo-legal justification for employing the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) yet once again as a legal fig leaf for another and even more catastrophic war of aggression in the Middle East, without having to seek a new authorization from the US Congress. Both the US and Israel have staged relentless provocations and a steadily escalating military buildup against Iran. This includes the US drone missile assassination of senior Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani little more than a year ago at Baghdads international airport and the Mossad assassination of the countrys top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November. Massive military firepower has been deployed in the Persian Gulf. In addition to the USS Nimitz carrier strike force, which was abruptly recalled to the region last month after being ordered back to its US port, the Pentagon has sent the nuclear-powered submarine USS Georgia into the Gulf, armed with 154 Tomahawk Cruise missiles, capable of destroying targets across Iran. Like the Nimitz, it is accompanied by warships that are also equipped with such missiles. The Pentagon has conducted four overflights of the Persian Gulf in barely a month by pairs of B-52 heavy bombers capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional weapons against Iranian targets. For its part, Israel has sent a Dolphin class attack submarine equipped with both land attack and anti-ship missiles into the region. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pressed Trump, who has strongly supported Israels campaign, to put pressure on Tehrans nuclear program, to deliver a final military blow to the program before turning Iran policy over to President-elect Joe Biden. Israel is pressing for action, ostensibly to preempt any return by the incoming Biden administration to the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, which the Trump administration unilaterally abrogated in 2018, imposing a maximum pressure sanctions regime against Iran tantamount to a state of war. The Trump administration has carried out a series of actions aimed at impeding any such rapprochement, including the criminal designation this week of the Houthi rebels in Yemen as terrorists on the grounds of their allegedly enjoying Iranian support. The measure threatens to cut off aid to the 70 percent of the Yemeni population living in areas controlled by the Houthis, condemning millions to starvation. Biden has given a conditional pledge to rejoin the 2015 agreement, while indicating that his administration would seek new concessions from Iran on its conventional missiles as well as its influence in the Middle East, issues that Tehran has insisted are not open to negotiation. With Biden vowing to pursue a policy of bipartisan unity, it is highly unlikely that he will make overturning the anti-Iranian sanctions regime, supported by the Republicans as well as right-wing Democrats, a priority. Both Trump, who in the wake of the fascist siege of the US Capitol continues to claim to have won the presidential election, and Netanyahu, who has been indicted on corruption charges and faces an uncertain election in March, as well as mass protests demanding his resignation, have political motives for provoking a war with Iran. In Trumps case, he floated the idea of bombing Irans main nuclear facility of Natanz shortly after the US election, a war crime that could have claimed the lives of thousands and sickened many more. While top aides talked him out of the idea, the threat of war remains on a hair trigger. The danger of the US president launching a war to overturn the results of the presidential election was underscored by a letter last Friday to Congressional Democrats from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She reported that she had spoken to Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on what could be done to prevent an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike. The war danger will not pass with a successful inauguration of Biden. His administration is bringing back into power all of the foreign policy establishment responsible for the US-orchestrated wars for regime change in Libya and Syria, as well as the pivot to Asia in preparation for military confrontation with China. If anything, a Biden administration can be expected to escalate US militarism in the Middle East and across the globe. With the fascistic cabal installed by Trump in the White House and the Pentagon threatening a military conflagration in the Persian Gulf, the sole concern expressed by Bidens transition team is that there be a seamless handoff of Washingtons war machine. Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine on Friday claimed victory in presidential elections, rejecting as a "complete sham" early results that gave President Yoweri Museveni a wide lead. Wine told AFP he felt under threat as soldiers surrounded his home on Friday evening following his accusations of fraud to the press. Museveni, 76, is seeking a sixth term after almost four decades in power, and the former popstar Wine has emerged as his main rival in a youthful country where most have known only one president. The internet remained down for a third day as vote counting continued from Thursday's poll, with provisional results from 64 percent of polling stations giving Museveni a lead of 62 percent while Wine trailed with 30 percent. As the results came in, Wine said in an interview at his home that soldiers had jumped the perimeter fence of his compound and beaten his security guard before taking up position around his house. "They jumped over my fence. They came inside my compound. They are here right now. I don't know why they're here. But I'm imagining they are here to harm me. I feel threatened," said the 38-year-old, who described the invasion as unprecedented and "a siege". He said he confronted the soldiers, who briefly cocked a gun at him and journalists, and refused to respond or leave. The army's deputy spokesman Deo Akiiki said the soldiers were there to provide security and had stopped three people who tried to "access the house". Provisional results showed Wine's newly formed National Unity Party was on track to become the main opposition in parliament. - 'We defeated the dictator' - Earlier Wine had reeled of a list of election regularities during a press conference in his garden, such as ballot box stuffing, and his party's polling agents being beaten and chased away in parts of northern and western Uganda. "I am very confident that we defeated the dictator by far. I call upon all Ugandans to reject the blackmail. We have certainly won the election and we've won it by far," Wine told journalists. Story continues "Whatever is being declared is a complete sham, we reject it and we dissociate ourselves with it." Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, promised to provide video evidence once the internet was restored. Election commission chairman Justice Simon Mugenyi Byabakama said he did "not appreciate the assertion that these results we are reading out are rigged". "The onus is on candidate Kyagulanyi to show how votes are rigged." Full results are expected by Saturday afternoon. Museveni faced a total of 10 candidates, but it is the popularity of the former popstar Wine, who grew up in a slum and is nicknamed the "ghetto president", that has rattled the former rebel leader. The poll followed one of the most violent campaigns in years, with harassment and arrests of the opposition, attacks on the media and scores of deaths. Police spokesman Fred Enanga said there had been "no major cases of violence reported". A senior foreign diplomat told AFP there had been sporadic incidents of violence and many irregularities, but no sign of mass manipulation. - Observers denied - The US, EU, UN and global rights and democracy groups have raised concerns about the integrity and transparency of the election. The United States, a major aid donor to Uganda, cancelled a diplomatic observer mission after too many of its staff were denied permission to monitor the election, and aside from an African Union mission there was no major international group watching over the vote. Museveni has ruled Uganda without pause since seizing control in 1986, when he helped to end years of tyranny under Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Once hailed for his commitment to good governance, the former rebel leader has crushed any opposition and tweaked the constitution to allow himself to run again and again. And for many in the country, where the median age is 16, Museveni's glory days are no longer relevant or sufficient. But Museveni, one of Africa's longest serving leaders, has never lost an election and observers expect this time around will be no different. His opponents -- most visibly Wine, who spent much of the campaign in a bulletproof vest and combat helmet -- were arrested, blocked from rallying and dispersed with tear gas throughout the campaign. Two days of protests in November led to the deaths of 54 people. np-fb/tgb City names new police chief Blair Myhand starts at Hendersonville police chief on Feb. 15. Hendersonville City Manager John Connet announced his selection for Hendersonvilles Chief of Police Friday morning. Blair Myhand, police chief for the city of Clayton, will be the citys next chief. He starts Feb. 15 at a salary of $107,000. A police officer for 26 years, Myhand started with the Metro Washington, DC, and moved to Apex. In May 2017, he became police chief of Clayton. Myhand had been placed on non-disciplinary leave from the Clayton police department in what he described as shift in the political wind. Connet acknowledged that political differences sometimes do arise in the relationship between elected officials and high ranking administrators. We work for elected officials and it is their community," Connet said. "There will be times that city managers or police chiefs may make elected officials unhappy. He said the leave Myhand faced did not concern the city when they looked into itthat it came down to philosophic differences. Clayton a few years ago hired a manager and police chief that they wanted to be very professional and raise the standards. Over time, things changed and the council felt like they needed to go in a different direction, which is perfectly within their right. Myhand stood for the professionalism he brought to every place he has been, the accountability and standards. He has very high standards for his law enforcement, Connet said. Blair came to the top quickly. We knew that this was going to be a difficult recruitment period, Connet said, I would say one of the toughest jobs and responsibilities in our country right now is being the chief of police. We are a divided nation. We have a third of the population that believes in strict law and order, we have a third of the population that believes in defunding the police, and a third that is somewhere in the middle. We need to continue to work to improve law enforcement and help law enforcement evolve. Myhand satisfied the criteria the city was looking for, Connet said. We ultimately want to make sure we hold our officers accountable. ... He realizes law enforcement has to evolve He understands he has to work for the community. "If you were to ask me why I'm on leave, honestly I can't tell you because the town has not been forthcoming," he said on Jan. 5 when he appeared along with the other finalist to introduce himself and answer questions from the media and the public. "The winds have shifted there and we're not blowing in the same direction. ... This is a much bigger picture going on and I would encourage people to step back and get a bigger picture of what's going on." Hendersonville had not had a white police chief, aside from interim chiefs, since 1987. Myhand said his experience, including his service in majority black Washinton, D.C., had prepared him well to interact in a positive way with the African American community. The other finalist for the Hendersonville Chief of Police was Gerald Childress, an officer and former deputy chief of the Mooresville police department. 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. That is because, right now, there is something far more important going on in Indigenous affairs. Some say that Morrison's change was a way of preparing the ground for this greater shift. Others saw it as an unworthy distraction. Loading That is because of a significant shift in Indigenous politics, one many non-Indigenous people have missed. Almost four years ago, after a long period of discussion with Indigenous people across the country, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was read aloud. Lucid, plain, and powerful, it is one of the most beautifully written documents in our nation's history. If you have not read it and too many Australians have not I recommend taking two minutes to do so. With an economy of words to rival the Gettysburg Address, it makes the case that at the heart of the material problems facing Indigenous people lies "the torment of our powerlessness". To remedy this, they must be given a Voice, and that Voice must be entrenched within the constitution. Noel Pearson signs the canvas for the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen This was a decisive shift away from a focus on symbolism. Curiously, there is some convergence here with the political right, who have for years argued that symbolism is pointless without concrete changes. The Uluru Statement said, in effect, here is a concrete change: a guarantee, embedded in this country's most powerful legal document, that our voice will be heard. To all those who say, let's fix the real problems, the authors of the Uluru Statement say: our lack of power is at the root of the real problems. Many Australians, having very vaguely followed this process over many years, hear "constitutional recognition" and think of some poetic reference to our ancient history in the preamble. The constitutional recognition that is being asked for now is very different. Loading Last Saturday, options for the design of the Indigenous Voice were released. The government had had the options since October, but chose to release them the day after Morrison farewelled the press he would soon depart for holidays. The minister, Ken Wyatt, didn't hold a press conference. The two Indigenous leaders of the options design process gave interviews, and it might be argued this was appropriate. Still, a chance was missed to make clear this was a priority for the government. Perhaps that's because it's not. For a while there has been some confusion about what, exactly, the government intends to do. At the start of his prime ministership, Morrison rejected the idea of enshrining the Voice in the Constitution. Later, the government's election policy seemed to reverse this position. In early 2020, Morrison kept his options open, saying that a constitutional Voice was still a possibility. But the Minister, Ken Wyatt, has made clear he wants only to legislate the Voice, not put it in the Constitution, and the Prime Minister's Office has confirmed that is the government's position. Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen This is now the crucial divide in the debate. Some in the Indigenous community believe that putting in place a Voice through legislation is a useful first step; a way of reassuring conservative MPs and voters before a referendum is held. Others believe that legislation will effectively end the hopes of constitutional change. The air will go out of the discussion, momentum will die. There is also the danger that any small controversy will be blown up by a racist press and derail a true Voice forever. Loading For these opponents of merely legislating, the models put forward last weekend were worrying. There were concerns that this was a voice to government, not Parliament that any advice from the Voice would be mediated through the minister, much as it is now. And did any of the proposals ensure that MPs would have to listen? (This is part of the problem with legislation it can always be overridden by other legislation.) In other words, there was a sense that the proposals really would not change very much; that all they did was formalise the current bureaucratic arrangements. Which makes sense, if your aim is to pacify those who might be worried about a Voice. If you are being forced, in the words of Indigenous lawyer and academic Gemma McKinnon, to "audition" for your place at the table, then of course the result will be a structure that does not change that much. But the whole point of the Voice, as articulated in the Uluru Statement, was to change things. This is now the crucial divide in the debate. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Of course, these are only proposals. There will be a period of consultation, and they may shift. Rat droppings were found all over the kitchen of a popular Brisbane fish and chip shop, among seven food safety breaches that resulted in a $22,000 fine. Council inspectors were shocked when they found rodent faeces next to a measuring spoon and butter and on a tea towel at Salty's Grill & Cafe, Ferny Grove, in March 2019. The rat poo was also found in a storage box with takeaway cups and in other kitchen areas, The Courier-Mail reported. Salty's Grill & Cafe in Ferny Grove, northwest Brisbane, had rat droppings all over the kitchen The inspectors also found Salty's was not storing its food properly and had general 'uncleanliness'. The fish and chip shop in the city's northwest had set baits and a trap, which indicated they knew about the rats but had not hired professional pest control services to get rid of them. Their food license was immediately suspended but lifted again after three days when the business took quick action to fix the situation. A follow-up inspection in May found no more evidence of pests. The shop and its owner Joshika Sinha faced Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday where they each pleaded guilty to a string of food safety code breaches. The Chip Advisor chip ratings Facebook page gave the restaurant five out of five in 2016 for its chips (pictured). In March 2019, council inspectors shut it down for uncleanliness Brisbane City Council prosecutor Jac Thong told the court that the amount of rat droppings showed a clear rodent infestation. He said that increased the risk of the food being contaminated. 'Rodents have the potential to carry harmful bacteria which can be transmitted to humans when a rodent or faeces make contact with food items and food contact surfaces including those single use cups potentially,' he said. Salty's Grill & Cafe, in Ferny Grove, pleaded guilty to seven counts of failing to comply with the Food Standards Code. Joshika Sinha, as 'executive officer' pleaded guilty to seven counts of failing to ensure the corporation complied with the Act. It is the first conviction for both the business and its owner - however no convictions were recorded. Instead, Salty's was fined $22,000 and Sinha was fined $1000. In the lead-up to the offences in March 2019, Sinha had been relying on a supervisor to manage the business, her lawyer Grant Young told the court. The Brisbane Magistrates Court fined the restaurant and its owner but recorded no conviction She has since hired a consultancy business to inspect and train the staff, which has been running at a loss now due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Young told the court that Sinha had learnt her lesson and has now shown a commitment to compliance. The restaurant gets more rodent issues as it is near a creek and a train station, he said. It was not the first adverse finding for the restaurant. Salty's had previously earned a zero-star rating in Brisbane City council's Eat Safe scheme after an inspection in 2017 found major non-compliances. The finding is likely to come as a shock to many who like its chips. The Chip Advisor rating community on Facebook gave the restaurant five out of five back in 2016, noting the beer-battered irish fingers, and giving bonus points for free sauce refills, home made aoli and the all-day $5 coffee and toastie deal. Not everyone has left good reviews, however, with Trip Advisor hosting a one-out-of-five star stinker more recently in 2018 calling their chips 'half cooked soggy mush'. On Thursday, Google announced that its acquisition of Fitbit is finally complete in a press release on its website. The announcement was made by Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President of Devices and Services for Google. In the release, Osterloh emphasizes that the acquisition of the wearables company has always been about the devices, not data in an effort to clarify Googles intentions with the purchase of Fitbit. Google looks forward to utilizing the talents of the Fitbit team to eventually develop its own wearable devices, much like how Googles acquisition of Nest enabled the company to refine its ecosystem of smart home products. Fitbit Sense with Google Assistant Google has made commitments promising that Fitbit users fitness and health data will not be used for the purpose of targeting ads, and those commitments have been brought up in the release. In addition, Google reminds that Fitbit users will continue to have the choice of keeping fitness data on a Fitbit account whether they want to share it to third parties (like Google Fit) or not. Google intends to keep its Android APIs open for any developers that want to keep making fitness trackers working with Android as to keep competition in the wearable space alive. Despite Googles announcement on Friday, the US Department of Justice has offered the following statement to some outlets regarding the very same acquisition, which is apparently still undergoing some Antitrust Division investigations. The Antitrust Divisions investigation of Googles acquisition of Fitbit remains ongoing. Although the Division has not reached a final decision about whether to pursue an enforcement action, the Division continues to investigate whether Googles acquisition of Fitbit may harm competition and consumers in the United States. The Division remains committed to conducting this review as thoroughly, efficiently, and expeditiously as possible. Google, however, states that it was comfortable moving forward with the announcement despite the DOJs lack of a formed decision. It cited that a period of investigation is far past a provisional period without an objection. This is Googles statement as per Android Authority: We complied with the DOJs extensive review for the past 14 months, and the agreed upon waiting period expired without their objection. We continue to be in touch with them and were committed to answering any additional questions. We are confident this deal will increase competition in the highly crowded wearables market, and weve made commitments that we plan to implement globally. The ball is in the DOJs court as its Antitrust Division says it is still investigating the acquisition. Should there be any other areas of concern, Google and Fitbit seem willing to comply, but it also appears that the acquisition is still not as complete as Google and Fitbit say it is. Sources: 1 2 3 Burma More Than 30 Thai Police Accused of Trafficking Myanmar Migrants Thai officers arrest 18 illegal migrants in Sangkhla Buri district of Kanchanaburi in July last year. / Piyarat Chongcharoen / Bangkok Post Dozens of Thai police face criminal prosecution and disciplinary action after being implicated in human trafficking on the Thai-Myanmar border. At least 33 officials were involved, said Thailands deputy national police chief, Police General Damrongsak Kittiprapas, who added that the accused officers range from non-commissioned and commissioned officers to the deputy commander level, according to The Bangkok Post. The paper said the officials are accused of smuggling migrant workers across the border to Kanchanaburis Sangkhla Buri district, which lies at one end of the Three Pagoda Pass, opposite Myanmars Karen State. Thai police will next week issue arrest warrants for eight other Thai civilians who are part of the smuggling gang, which sneaked migrants into Thailand and sent them to work in Samut Sakhon, the epicenter of the recent COVID-19 outbreak, Pol Gen. Damrongsak said Thai officials have stepped up measures to prevent illegal border crossings in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in Samut Sakhon, central Thailand, where thousands of Myanmar migrant workers live and work. Samut Sakhon is home to a large number of factories that employ migrant workers, most of them from Myanmar. The wholesale seafood market at the epicenter of the latest outbreak, which began in December, also employs a large community of Myanmar migrants. Some 300,000 to 400,000 Myanmar people work in seafood markets and processing plants in Thailand. Thailand initially won praise for implementing one of the worlds most successful coronavirus containment strategies. However, alarm bells have sounded recently, with the discovery of a number of COVID-19 cases linked to Myanmar and Thai migrant workers from both countries who slip back and forth undetected. Thai and Myanmar workers illegally cross the porous border and some have found lucrative jobs and business opportunities during the lockdown. After the initial outbreak in Thailand last year, a large number of Myanmar migrant workers returned home via official checkpoints, but many have headed back to Thailand illegally. Human traffickers charge 8,000-10,000 Thai baht (about 355,000 to 445,000 Myanmar kyats) to transport one person from border towns to the interior of Thailand. Some undocumented people, including Rohingya entering Myanmar from Bangladesh, also sneak into Thailand, from where they are smuggled to Malaysia. They pay a handsome amount of money to both Myanmar and Thai human traffickers to reach the country. Recently, 19 Rohingya migrants were arrested in Bangkok for illegal entry to Thailand, seven of whom were found to be COVID-19-positive. A Thai woman accused of housing them was detained. You may also like these stories: Thailand to Step Up COVID-19 Testing of Myanmar Migrant Workers Myanmars Migrants Face Discrimination Amid Surging COVID-19 in Thailand How Are Myanmar Migrants in Thailand Faring in the Face of COVID-19? 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. The Manitoba government has left the Metis out of its COVID-19 vaccine task force and plans no vaccination clinics targeted to them. The Manitoba government has left the Metis out of its COVID-19 vaccine task force and plans no vaccination clinics targeted to them. Thats despite Premier Brian Pallister having said hes committed to including Metis people in the vaccine rollout, guided by reconciliation. Emails obtained by the Free Press show provincial officials have asked the Manitoba Metis Federation to help combat vaccine hesitancy, and to possibly help Metis people travel to vaccination super sites in cities. Yet there is still no invitation to any group that decides the order of precedence for vaccines, despite First Nations being appointed to that task force on Dec. 18 and receiving doses a week ago. "Were not invited; were not part of the distribution of vaccines," federation president David Chartrand said Thursday as he accused the province of "using us as tokens." First Nations generally fall under federal jurisdiction, and Ottawa gave Manitoba an expedited quota of vaccine doses for reserves. Meanwhile, Metis people generally live in municipalities administered by the province. Late last year, the province invited the federation to join a committee planning how to convince particular groups to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The committee met on Jan. 8, during which the federation expressed dismay that it had been asked to help convince Metis to get doses, without helping to ensure they are prioritized. The next day, Manitobas top bureaucrat for Indigenous issues invited the federation to a similar "communications working group to support communities to access the vaccination sites." The official clarified "my email below was not an invite to set up vaccination clinics," but instead finding ways to help Metis reach vaccination super sites in Winnipeg, Brandon and Thompson. Pallister told reporters in Brandon on Thursday that he feels those invitations mean the Metis are at the table. "The voices of Metis people are being heard through the process," the premier said. That rings hollow to Chartrand, who says towns that have large Metis populations have medical needs similar to reserves, and should be part of the initial rollout. He feels the Pallister government is punishing the federation over a protracted dispute over a Hydro payout and "playing political games at a time when lives are at risk." The premiers office shot back Thursday that Chartrands comments are "inaccurate and inflammatory." "It is important to note that decisions regarding vaccine prioritization are not political decisions and are not made by the premier or any minister they are made by public health leaders," wrote Blake Robert, a spokesman for Pallister. Chartrand said he understands that the Trudeau government is willing to step in if Manitoba doesnt give the Metis a sufficient voice in the vaccine planning. MP Dan Vandal, who represents Manitoba in the federal cabinet and is Metis, would not speak to the prospect of intervening. "An efficient and effective rollout requires co-planning and is dependent on full collaboration," Vandal instead wrote, adding that he is in touch with the province and the federation "to include Metis representation in the primary vaccine planning and distribution process." Since the pandemic stared, Chartrand has been in conflict with the province over a data-sharing pact similar to ones with First Nations and Inuit officials. First Nations and Metis people have shorter life expectancy than the average Manitoban, and a higher rate of illnesses that tend to make COVID-19 deadly. dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca 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. THE current debate about the Covid 19 vaccination programme is a timely reminder of how vaccines have benefitted livestock production over the years. The start of the year is always a good time to start some of the vaccination programs. The Lepo vaccine for the suckler cows and Covexin 10 for the ewes are the first two we administer on our farm. Vaccines are available for many livestock diseases and are particularly important for diseases that have complex, limited or poor treatment options available. One of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine, both human and animal, vaccines have been successfully developed against viral, bacterial, protozal, and multicellular pathogens. Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a herd is vaccinated, providing a measure of protection for individuals that have not developed immunity. We always think of them for use in cattle and sheep production, but they are even more widely used in the pig and poultry industry. And domestic and farm pets like the common cat and dog should be vaccinated for different diseases if cared for properly. Costs It always gets under my skin when I talk to a certain type of farmer who, after a conversation about the cost and the time taken to administer theses vaccines, will inform you that they are a waste of money. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it is very clear that modern agriculture would not be viable without vaccines. My opinion is that money spent on sick animals, including the medical cost not to mind the cost of disposal, far outweighs the cost of the vaccines. I think it is an excellent tool in our toolboxes and the industry needs increase investment on developing new vaccines as there is more talk about antimicrobial resistance in modern agriculture. We use five major vaccine programmes on our farm. Once I start using a vaccine for a specific problem, I stay using it even if it seems the problem has disappeared. It is usually just hiding around the corner waiting to raise its head again once you stop vaccination. The two we have been using for years are Covexin 10 for the breeding ewes and lambs, and Tribovax 10 for the store cattle. The third is the Lepo for the suckler cows to cover for leptospirosis. This was a problem that occurred about 10 years ago. When using AI, we noticed several repeats at six and nine weeks and a few cows aborted at seven months. Blood tests indicated they were carriers of Leptospirosis. The last two vaccines we started to use were IBR live and Bovipast for our weanlings before they were weaned last autumn. I was very impressed with the results. Weanling virus I used these vaccines for two years. Firstly, the previous year the weanlings suffered with a virus after been weaned and this caused a lot of costly disruption. Vaccination was also an option I picked on the BEEP II scheme. This shows that when a farm scheme is targeted at a problem in the industry it can be beneficial for both animal welfare and the wider industry. The biggest problem I see with livestock vaccination is farmers failing to administer the booster shot at the correct time or dosage recommended by the manufacturer. This might explain why some farmers are unhappy with vaccination results. And if we had vaccines for bovine TB and Cryptosporidum, they would represent a major breakthrough for the industry. With all the money that has been invested in TB eradication programmes, one would have to ask if more money should be invested in developing a vaccine against the disease. Grand National winner turned racehorse trainer Richard Guest has been turfed out of his home in the former grounds of a country manor after a judge found he had turned the property into 'a mess'. Mr Guest, who won the 2001 Grand National on Red Marauder, has been locked in a court fight with wealthy Yorkshire landowner Oliver Kent over his home and business, based at Ingmanthorpe Racing Stables, near Wetherby. It sits on land parcelled off from the grounds of 1.5million country pile, The Manor, Ingmanthorpe Grange Farm. When Mr Kent and his wife bought the land in 2015 with plans to build a house on it Mr Guest was already living there in a static caravan. He had worked as a racehorse trainer for the owners of the manor Eric and Lorraine Lumley. Mr Kent struck an 'amicable' deal with Mr Guest that he could carry on training racehorses from the stables until his new landlord had finished building a home on the land for the couple to move into. But Mr Kent, a 'keen equestrian' himself whose wife also trains horses, went on to sue Mr Guest in the Leeds County Court, claiming his tenant breached his lease by failing to properly repair and maintain the property and allowing it to become a 'mess'. Grand National winner turned racehorse trainer Richard Guest has been turfed out of his home in the former grounds of a country manor after a judge found he had turned the property into 'a mess' When Mr Guest's lease ended in April 2018 Mr Kent told him to 'vacate the property', but the ex-jockey flatly refused. He then launched a court bid of his own seeking the right to move into the couple's newly built house. Last February a county court judge ruled against Mr Guest, who promptly appealed to the High Court. Now High Court judge Mr Justice Snowden has rejected his appeal ruling that Mr Kent has the right to turf the former National Hunt champ off his land. Mr Guest, who has himself trained more than 400 race winners, won the Champion Hurdle as well as the infamous 2001 'monsoon' Grand National in which the course was so drenched that only two riders crossed the winning line without mishap. The 55-year-old, who rode the legendary Shergar as an apprentice teenage jockey, caused a stir earlier this year when he announced his intention to get back in the saddle and apply for his licence to ride races once more. When Mr Kent and his wife moved in, Mr Guest was granted a one-year lease on the land for an annual rent of 24,000. Has been locked in a court fight with wealthy Yorkshire landowner Oliver Kent over his home and business, based at Ingmanthorpe Racing Stables (pictured), near Wetherby This was later renewed until April 2018, when his landlord sent him a letter 'requiring him to vacate the property'. That letter prompted the court clash between the two men, with the former jockey defending the claim brought against him. He counter claimed for a declaration that 'if he was entitled to a new business tenancy he was also entitled to occupy the new house that the Kents had built on the property'. In the county court ruling last February Judge Benjamin Nolan QC rejected Mr Guest's counterclaim for a new lease and allowed Mr Kent's case. He also found that Mr Guest gave 'opportunistic and dishonest evidence about the circumstances in which he had been granted the lease, and as to the intentions of the parties concerning the house to be built on the property'. He went on to decide that the property had become a 'mess' under Mr Guest's tenancy and 'accepted Mr Kent's evidence that the condition of the property in terms of maintenance and repair had greatly deteriorated'. Mr Guest won the 2001 Grand National on Red Marauder (the pair pictured in the race) in torrential conditions which saw only four riders out of 40 finish Mr Guest's business sits on land parcelled off from the grounds of 1.5million country pile, The Manor, Ingmanthorpe Grange Farm The county court judge declared that 'In common parlance it looks a mess' despite Mr Guest's lease requiring to keep the property 'clean and tidy'. Mr Guest had been running an artificial turf business from the land and 'made a practice of burning trade and domestic waste on the Property and had wilfully ignored warnings from the local council about doing so' the judge said. Mr Justice Snowden in the High Court acknowledged the trial judge had failed to pinpoint the specific dates on which 'the various items of untidiness or disrepair had occurred'. But this clearly occurred during the period of Mr Guest's lease, he said, and added: 'In my view that conclusion was adequately supported by the evidence to which I have referred and the lack of any objective or credible evidence to the contrary.' The trial judge's finding that Mr Guest was not entitled to a new lease was 'plainly the right decision', said Mr Justice Snowden, dismissing his appeal. January 14, 2021 The word privacy means different things to many people. But one thing we all have in common is that we hate unnecessary exposure to undeserving elements. We all wish to share what we want and with who we want. That is why both independent and organization privacy advocates such as PrivacySavvy and EFF exist. Unfortunately, technological advancements have made it impossible to stay private, especially on the internet. Presently, millions of cameras, devices, and sensors generate data about every human being daily. Also, many people unknowingly provide their data through the actions they take on the internet. So, its hard to remain private even when we crave it. In this article, we'll trace how privacy concerns increased due to technological advancements. How did Internet Privacy become a serious concern? The Internet brought a lot of changes to our existence. It changed the way we learn, think, work, defines values, and also the way we work. As the internet gradually evolved, many values like privacy changed. Initially, people could share only the information they wanted to share with whom they choose. There were no issues about it, but gradually, the internet made it almost mandatory to share more than we want to share. For instance, online shopping has made it compulsory that you must disclose your credit card information to buy goods. As a result of the changes in how we share and receive information, privacy is almost impossible. Now, people are easily compromised through the information they share online. With that, it has become very easy for cybercriminals to perpetrate identity theft successfully. The question is, did we contribute unknowingly to these privacy issues, or was it solely because of the changes that the internet brought? Tracing the gradual descent of digital privacy Lets see how the internet gradually stripped us of our digital privacy, starting from 20 years ago. Digital privacy from 2000 to 2004 The early years of the internet were more secure because the activities that could be performed online were limited. Also, the number of people using the internet hasnt risen to the billions of today. Then, the focus was more on information storage and transferred rather than digital privacy. Internet users didnt have to worry about cyberattacks because those issues were rare. Also, Google processed data collectively and not individually like what we have now. Then entered Facebook (News - Alert) , a social platform for interaction and sharing of all kinds of information. With the advent of the social media platform, many people threw caution to the wind and started exposing themselves unknowingly. The exploitation of users' data from 2005 to 2011 After the advent of Facebook, there was a spike in the use of the Internet because many people worldwide realized they could connect globally through social media platforms. With the increase in usage, more and more data became available for tech companies like Google (News - Alert) . In 2005, hackers successfully stole 1.4 million records, including credit card details and 96,000 checks. With so much data available, Google realized that they could use them for advertising, even at the individual levels. Therefore, the company decided to utilize the opportunity and bought two other related companies, YouTube and DoubleClick (News - Alert) , in 2006 and 2007, respectively. From there, there was a spike in banner and desktop advertising. The same year in 2007, the first iPhone was launched and introduced the mobile revolution. With this innovation, it became easier for people to use the internet and tech companies to track their online activities. The emergence of digital security concerns from 2012 to 2017 The hack of 2005 was just the beginning because between 2012 and 2017, up to 130 data breaches were recorded. There were at least 4.5 billion records stolen within a space of five years. From these data breaches, the concern for digital privacy started to increase. It became clear to many people that their online activities help both tech companies and hackers get their personally identifiable information or PII. They also understood that the data they share could be used in many ways, including malicious activities against them. Many other cases of data breaches also helped to confirm what people feared about their data. For instance, Facebook targeted many of its users in 2006 to test a new feature, "News Feed," which led to global outrage. Other notable breaches occurred in 2015 and 2017. In 2015, Anthem Inc. lost 37.5 million medical records from its servers. In 2017, many internet users lost $16 billion as a result of identity theft. There were more data breaches during these years, and it increased people's awareness of Internet privacy. Many people started clamoring for digital privacy tools to protect their data online. And in 2016, up to 86% of the people who use the internet claimed to have succeeded. The birth of online privacy concerns - 2018 to 2020 The year 2018 was crucial in shaping Internet privacy to what we see today, a virtual human right. From the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, people worldwide discovered how tech companies could use their data without their consent. When the European Union enacted the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), people realized that even the law could protect users data. Also, in many countries, there are security laws aimed at protecting internet users from exploitation. Unfortunately, these laws are not adequate, and even the GDPR isn't enough to convince internet users of their safety. Even with all the security laws, many people are still victims of cyberattacks. There has been a lot of identity theft and credit card fraud worldwide, with America leading the pack. However, internet users are more or less contributing to the success of these cybercrimes. Even with their desires to stay private online, many people are still upholding outdated practices that compromise their privacy. For instance, many people still use one password across multiple accounts. Other people grant harmful permissions to tech companies and fraudsters because they ignore privacy policies. All these and other practices compromise our digital privacy. How technology redefined privacy Privacy in the usual sense means limiting the information others can get about you. It meant that no one should evade your space unless you let them. That was the mindset in the early years of the internet. Even though things are changing, privacy still means the same things on the internet. The challenges we face online are not understanding that privacy is important and how to protect our digital lives. Due to the use of technological innovations, well be facing more difficulties in protecting our data. As we buy things online and subscribe to services with our credit cards, its becoming more difficult to hide our data. It seems that we don't have control anymore over the information we share. This is why it has become difficult to define what privacy means on the internet. Even when you don't want tracking cookies, you'll end up permitting them to track you, or else, the website you visit won't work well. Also, you may try hard to protect your privacy, but your friends and family's activities over the internet will end up exposing you. It's tough to be specific about the meaning of Privacy on the internet in such a chaotic environment. Final words If you want to remain private online, its left for you to be careful of the data you share. While you can't avoid certain situations, you can at least choose the places you visit. Also, the government and tech companies should assist in protecting people's digital lives. The truth is that many people have lost millions due to data breaches. Many homes and businesses have crumbled as a result of cyberattacks. While technology is making it harder every day to stay anonymous on the internet, there're lots of security measures you can adopt for your safety. On its own part, the government should create and uphold privacy standards and principles to keep internet users safer. Outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Buenos Aires LONDON (Reuters) - People who have had COVID-19 are highly likely to have immunity to it for at least five months, but there is evidence that those with antibodies may still be able to carry and spread the virus, a study of British healthcare workers has found. Preliminary findings by scientists at Public Health England (PHE) showed that reinfections in people who have COVID-19 antibodies from a past infection are rare - with only 44 cases found among 6,614 previously infected people in the study. But experts cautioned that the findings mean people who contracted the disease in the first wave of the pandemic in the early months of 2020 may now be vulnerable to catching it again. They also warned that people with so-called natural immunity - acquired through having had the infection - may still be able carry the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in their nose and throat and could unwittingly pass it on. We now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total and we do not yet know how long protection lasts," said Susan Hopkins, senior medical adviser at PHE and co-leader of the study, whose findings were published on Thursday. This means even if you believe you already had the disease and are protected, you can be reassured it is highly unlikely you will develop severe infections. But there is still a risk you could acquire an infection and transmit (it) to others." MAJOR IMPLICATIONS Experts not directly involved in the research, which is known as the SIREN study, urged people to note its key findings. "These data reinforce the message that, for the time being, everyone is a potential source of infection for others and should behave accordingly," said Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology and infectious disease at Edinburgh University. Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at Reading University, said the study "has major implications for how we can get out of the current crisis". "This means that the vast majority of the population will either need to have natural immunity or have been immunised for us to fully lift restrictions on our lives, unless we are prepared to see many more people being infected and dying from COVID-19," he said. PHE said in a statement that the study had not been able to explore antibody or other immune responses to the COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out in Britain. Vaccine effects would be studied as part of SIREN later this year, it said. The SIREN study involves tens of thousands of healthcare workers in Britain who have been tested regularly since June for new COVID-19 infections as well as for the presence of antibodies. Between June 18 and Nov. 24, scientists found 44 potential reinfections - two "probable" and 42 "possible" - among 6,614 participants who had tested positive for antibodies. This represents an 83% rate of protection from reinfection, they said. The researchers said they would continue to follow the participants to see if this natural immunity might last longer than five months in some. But they said early evidence from the next stage of the study suggested some people with immunity could still carry high levels of virus. Herrs didnt start the fire. But theyve now added to it. The Pennsylvania-based snack company has debuted two brand-new goodies as part of its fire line: the Herrs Fire Ridged Potato Chips and the Herrs Fire Cheese Curls. According to the Herrs official product description page, Both Herrs Fire Ridged Potato Chips and Herrs Fire Cheese Curls immediately provide the burning sensation expected from spicy foods, but in a unique, flavorful heat experience. The fiery sensation is balanced by savory and sweet notes that are essential in supplying the most delicious heat adventure in a spicy, salty snack. And Herrs didnt just randomly pull these flavors out of a hat, either. Apparently, the creation of Herrs line of fiery products was at the behest of the people. Consumers continue to demand a range of hot and spicy snacks, and our new Herrs Fire potato chips and cheese curls definitely deliver more heat than weve previously offered, stated Bob Clark, Herrs Vice President of Marketing. They each exhibit the kind of memorable flavor that Herrs is known for, so that he flavor complements the heat level to provide a fully satisfying, spicy snack experience. Not only do they sound delicious, but we assume its far cheaper to get warm by eating a bag of spicy potato chips than it is paying a gas bill. You can find the Herrs Fire Ridged Potato Chips or the Herrs Fire Cheese Curls anywhere snacks are sold. You can even buy them online at the brands website. Pricing for either flavor is as follows: Herrs Fire Ridged Potato Chips 1 oz.$0.50 2.75 oz.$1,89 9 oz.$4.29 Herrs Fire Cheese Curls TORONTO, Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MediPharm Labs Corp. (TSX: LABS) (OTCQX: MEDIF) (FSE:MLZ) (MediPharm Labs or the Company) a global leader in specialized, research-driven pharmaceutical-quality cannabis extraction, distillation and derivative products, today announced the appointment of Warren Everitt to its Board of Directors (the Board), effective immediately. Mr. Everitt joined MediPharm Labs in 2017 to establish the Companys presence in the Australian market. As the founding CEO of Australia Pacific, he oversaw all aspects of the build out, start-up and commercialization of the GMP-certified extraction operation in Wonthaggi, Australia including licensing, factory design, finance, sales and marketing. Under his ongoing leadership, MediPharm Labs Australia has developed an impressive customer portfolio in the Asia Pacific and European medical and wellness cannabis markets. In reviewing the stewardship needs of a business that is rapidly expanding in the most promising cannabis markets worldwide, the Board concluded that Warrens unique expertise, diverse perspectives and two decades of proven international experience would be highly accretive to MediPharm Labs corporate governance, said Pat McCutcheon, Chairman, MediPharm Labs. From start up to commercialization and now to operationalization of MediPharm Labs Australia as a dominant producer, Warren has achieved what few executives in our nascent industry have and has done so cost effectively and with a keen eye to talent development. For these reasons, we are delighted to welcome Warren to the Board. Before joining MediPharm Labs first as Managing Director, Australia, and subsequently being appointed CEO Australia Pacific, Mr. Everitt served in progressively more responsible leadership roles at MarketOne International, a global consulting firm specializing in marketing and lead generation. Over eight years, he founded MarketOnes Asia Pacific operations in Melbourne, Singapore, Bangalore and Tokyo that serve some of the worlds leading brands. Earlier in his 20-year career he served as a consultant in the UK, Europe, Singapore and Canada and founded a leadership and performance coaching consultancy. He is a graduate of Swinburne University of Technology (Bachelor of Computer Science) and Chisholm Institute in Melbourne. An Australian citizen, he currently resides in Melbourne. As pharmaceutical and manufacturing experts with two fully GMP certified platforms and a portfolio of enabling licences, MediPharm Labs is positioned for a new wave of growth as we open the door to sophisticated new pharma accounts and new medical and wellness-focused cannabis companies in emerging international jurisdictions, said Mr. Everitt. Through this Board appointment, I look forward to serving with experienced, invested Directors who are setting the tone for disciplined execution that benefits all stakeholders. With Mr. Everitts appointment, MediPharm Labs Board of Directors will consist of eight members, five of whom are independent. The independent members include recognized experts in the pharmaceutical, pharmacy, consumer packaged goods, clinical research, finance and capital markets industries. About MediPharm Labs Corp. Founded in 2015, MediPharm Labs specializes in the production of purified, pharmaceutical-quality cannabis oil and concentrates and advanced derivative products utilizing a Good Manufacturing Practices certified facility with ISO standard-built clean rooms. MediPharm Labs has invested in an expert, research-driven team, state-of-the-art technology, downstream purification methodologies and purpose-built facilities with five primary extraction lines for delivery of pure, trusted and precision-dosed cannabis products for its customers. Through its wholesale and white label platforms, MediPharm Labs formulates, develops (including through sensory testing), processes, packages and distributes cannabis extracts and advanced cannabinoid-based products to domestic and international markets. As a global leader, MediPharm Labs has completed commercial exports to Australia and has fully commercialized its wholly-owned Australian extraction facility. MediPharm Labs Australia was established in 2017. For further information, please contact: Laura Lepore, VP, Investor Relations Telephone: 705-719-7425 ext 1525 Email: investors@medipharmlabs.com Website: www.medipharmlabs.com CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as expects, or does not expect, is expected, anticipates or does not anticipate, plans, budget, scheduled, forecasts, estimates, believes or intends or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results may or could, would, might or will be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, statements regarding: rapid expansion in the most promising cannabis markets worldwide; a new wave of growth; sophisticated new pharma accounts; new medical and wellness-focused cannabis companies in emerging international jurisdiction; and disciplined execution that benefits all stakeholders. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; the inability of MediPharm Labs to obtain adequate financing; the delay or failure to receive regulatory approvals; and other factors discussed in MediPharm Labs filings, available on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. Except as required by law, MediPharm Labs assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change. This week a decree was announced in Algeria, promising number portability which should be a reality two to three years after it was first included in the provisions to a new law. Part of the reason for this move, according to a report by Agence Ecofin, is that government wants to do something more effective to take on poor-quality telecommunications services. It seems that there have been many financial sanctions against various operators over the years, but they have had little effect on the poor quality of services in Algeria. Number portability, the Ministry of Telecoms hopes, will add to the pressure on operators by making it easier for unhappy customers to change provider. The introduction of this provision into law should mean that, by the end of 2021, Algerians will be able to change operator without also changing their SIM card and phone number. The draft decree relating to the introduction of mobile number portability in Algeria is now being finalised, according to the Minister of Post and Telecommunications, Brahim Boumzar. A first version has gone to the regulator, the Post and Electronic Communications Regulatory Authority (ARPCE). It will then be sent to the General Secretariat of the Government. Algerians have been waiting for the promised portability of mobile numbers for a long time. The original indication that it was to become policy appeared in the provisions (chapter 1, section 2) of a law on post and electronic communications promulgated in May 2018. LINCOLN, Neb., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Nebraska families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Nebraskans are hosting 171 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the most impactful of these will be a statewide "Why I Love My School" video contest open to all K-12 students. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Nebraska, the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge will light up in red and yellow from dusk to 8 a.m. on Jan. 24 A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including Nebraska's Cass County. "Nebraska offers some education options, but this past year has shown that families need more flexible choices that reflect their values and health needs," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "The Week provides an upbeat, hopeful time to talk about K-12 education and how we can better serve Nebraska kids." In Nebraska, there are a limited number of educational options available including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, magnet schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Nebraska families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Nebraska school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/nebraska National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com 01/15/2021 Photo (c) Kilito Chan - Getty Images The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has levied a $9,918,000 fine against robocaller Scott Rhodes for illegally using caller ID spoofing with the intent to cause harm. Rhodes intent was pretty egregious, too. The robocalls crossed every line possible, including racist attacks on political candidates, an apparent attempt to sway the jury in a domestic terrorism case in Charlottesville, Virginia, the use of threatening language toward a local journalist in Sandpoint, Idaho, and xenophobic and racist messages sent to residents in Brooklyn, Iowa, about the arrest of an illegal alien for the murder of a local college student. Profiting from robocalling campaigns The Commission also claimed that Rhodes used the robocalls to promote his own brand, The Road to Power -- which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called a white supremacist and anti-Semitic broadcasting outlet. According to the FCCs order, Rhodes efforts paid off, pushing website visits and videos watched to ten times their normal levels during his robo campaign. That level of website traffic coupled with the messages Rhodes was disseminating was concerning to the FCC because it allowed him to monetize that traffic in the future and used it to increase social influence. Although Rhodes claims that he did not target media outlets, he did not contest that he received increased visibility and notoriety from his robocalling campaigns, the Commission said. In his response to the FCCs allegations, Rhodes pulled out every possible argument he could find. He claimed that the FCC couldnt prove the calls really came from him and argued that the spoofing of unassigned and non-working numbers was an expression of political speech. He even went as far as saying that the calls and their content were protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Neighbor spoofing strikes again Rhodes employed a well-loved robo technique called neighbor spoofing, which allowed him to manipulate caller ID information so that the calls people received appeared to be local numbers. The FCC isnt a fan of neighbor spoofing. It has fought against the ploy with the Truth in Caller ID Act and has been pushing the telephone industry to adopt a robust caller ID authentication system that catches those schemes before they show up on a persons phone. In fact, the agency detests the technique so much that it previously fined another robocaller $120 million and proposed a $220 million fine against a Texas company for trying the same stunt. The law is clear: spoofed caller ID robocalls used with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or cheat recipients is unlawful. And the American people are sick and tired of it. In this instance, not only were the calls unlawful, but the caller took them to new levels of egregiousness, said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. With todays fine, we once again make clear our commitment to aggressively go after those who are unlawfully bombarding the American people with spoofed robocalls. India will launch its most ambitious and the worlds largest Covid-19 vaccination drive on Saturday. Inoculating the countrys vast and distributed population is a big challenge but Indias past experience in mass vaccination will come in handy here. The current Covid-19 vaccination drive also leans heavily on processes, manpower, database and experience of the Universal Immunisation Programme that vaccinated over 27 million pregnant women and 25 million infants every year. Much before modern vaccine interventions were developed in the West and brought to India by the British, this important and cost-effective public health intervention tool was well known to Indians. Ancient literary evidence suggests smallpox inoculation was practised in India and a few other countries as early as 1000 AD, writes Dr Chandrakant Lahariya, a leading health system expert, in an article published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research. The vintage technique known as variolation involved injecting a healthy person with an infective agent extracted from a patient or a variolated person. This led to mild illness but saved the person from serious infection in the future. However, the procedure was risky as there were chances of infection spreading and even death. In 1798, English physician Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine. Within four years, this vaccine landed in Bombay via Baghdad. On June 14, 1802, three-year old Anna Dusthall became the first Indian to receive this vaccine in Bombay. To overcome the logistical problem, a vaccine human chain was developed starting with Dusthall, and it soon reached other parts of the country. Around Indias Independence, tuberculosis had started raising its ugly head. After careful consideration, the government was pressed to launch independent Indias first BCG vaccination drive in 1948, although on a limited scale and under strict supervision. The same year on May 1, a BCG vaccine laboratory was set up at King Institute at Guindy in Madras. The next year, the BCG vaccination drive was extended to almost all schools across India and in 1962, BCG vaccination became a part of the National Tuberculosis Control Programme, acquiring sort of universal coverage. Though small pox vaccination in the country had British roots but in 1967-68, the government changed the vaccination strategy, focussing more on surveillance and rapid containment drives. In between, a more superior bifurcated needle vaccination technique was introduced, which required less vaccine material for each dose, and inoculation was relaxing than previous methods. Besides, in 1971, higher quality freeze-dried vaccine replaced liquid vaccine vials. These new methods led to significant uptick in small pox vaccination coverage while restricting the disease to few pockets of the country, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. On April 23, 1977, India was declared free of deadly small pox. Small pox eradication, while an important milestone in disease prevention, also gave Indias public health system a confidence of overcoming odds besides providing trained manpower and vaccination infrastructure. Buoyed by its success, the Janata government in 1978 launched National Immunization programme as Expanded Programme of Immunization. The main objective of this ambitious programme was to reduce morbidity and mortality from diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis and childhood tuberculosis. In 1985, the programme was modified as Universal Immunization Programme with a target of covering all districts of the country by 1989-90. It was one of largest health programmes in the world and included vaccines of BCG, OPV, DPT, tetanus and measles. In 1986, India's immunization programme received a major boost after it was given the status of one of the five National Technology Missions, the other being drinking water, literacy, oil seed production, and telecommunication. However, the story of Indias success in vaccination couldnt be completed without mentioning its polio immunization programme. Following World Health Assembly resolution in 1988, India launched its massive Pulse Polio immunisation programme in 1995. The aim was 100% immunization coverage for age group of 0-5 with oral polio vaccine through improved social mobilization. In 1999, the vaccination drive was moved from booth activity to door to door coverage. The dogged pursuit soon bore fruit. The last polio case in the country, according to the Health Ministry, was reported from Howrah district in January 2011. The World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2012 removed India from the list of active polio endemic countries. Despite this success, India hasnt let its guard down. About 172 million children are immunized against polio during each National Immunization Day each year. Indias current immunization programmes remain robust and organic, with new vaccines added from time to time and as per the needs. In 2014, the NDA government launched its flagship vaccination programme the Mission Indradhanush (MI). The aim is to protect children and pregnant women against seven vaccine-preventable diseases. While some of the redundant vaccines have been replaced, few others like vaccine for Hepatitis B, Japanese encephalitis, meningitis have made it to the list. The vaccination team visited five local nursing/care homes in Kilkenny this week, where relieved residents and staff were ready to receive the jab. The programme began at Tinnypark Nursing Home last Thursday, where Director of Nursing Anne Walpole welcomed the vaccinator team, and was among those to receive vaccine. Also among the first to receive the vaccine are hospital staff, GPs and practice staff, ambulance paramedics, public health nurses and others involved in healthcare. Today (Friday), vaccinators visited Strathmore Lodge in Callan, while yesterday and Wednesday they were in St Columba's Hospital in Thomastown, and on Tuesday, the team was in OGorman House in Ballyragget. The vaccination programme here had been originally due to start at Mount Carmel Supported Care Home, but was brought forward to Tinnypar the previous week. However, staff and residents at Mount Carmel still got their jabs as promised on Monday. Manager at Mount Carmel Fergus Keane said there was a lot of positivity and a real sense of the beginning of the end of the pandemic. It was fantastic it went really smoothly and there were no issues, he said. Everyone was looking forward to it, and we had a 100% takeup among staff and people living in Mount Carmel. In each of the locations, once all residents and staff have received the jab, the vaccinators can use the remainder in the vials to vaccinate healthcare professionals in the area, so no vaccine goes to waste. SIGN OUR VACCINE PETITION HERE At St Lukes Hospital on Thursday afternoon, staff nurse Bernadette San Juan became the first person in the hospital to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Bernadette, who works in the hospitals Covid ward, described herself as honoured and relieved. Weve been hit particularly hard by Covid here in St Lukes. This vaccine will hopefully be the light we need to guide us through the next few months, she said. Vaccinations continued by appointment through the weekend and are continuing apace this week. As with everyone who receives the vaccine, Bernadette was given a HSE information leaflet, along with more detailed manufacturers patient information leaflet, before getting the vaccine. Afterwards, each person vaccinated was given a vaccine record card, showing the name and batch of the vaccine they have received. hey will each return for their second dose, to be fully protected, in three weeks. Anne Slattery, general manager of St Lukes Hospital, said the first day was a poignant one for all involved. Were remembering all those who werent lucky enough to see today. We release how lucky we are to be vaccinated, she said. The vaccine will now be rolled out to all healthcare staff and vulnerable patients in St Lukes General Hospital over the coming weeks. A second Covid-19 vaccine, from Moderna, has also been approved for use in EU states and is due in Ireland this week. A third, the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab, is expected to be approved by the European medicines regulator in the coming weeks. Assuming this is the case, the Minister for Health has said that up to 700,000 people in the State should be vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of March. Meanwhile, a local TD has said that home-help workers and other caregivers who provide critical support to older and vulnerable people living in their own homes and communities need to be vaccinated as a priority to protect themselves and others. Fine Gael TD John Paul Phelan said the ability to be vaccinated locally and speedily is a great reassurance to frontline providers. It would also be reassuring, however, if the HSE could include home-help workers and other caregivers as a priority group for vaccinations, he said. Home-help workers provide essential care and support for vulnerable, older people in their homes with older people often being visited by several different people each day. Many of these caring professionals are also visiting several older and vulnerable people as part of their daily work. It was the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when people in Philadelphia's Center City first noticed that pizzas were dropping from Ben Berman's second-story apartment window. Berman was lowering 16 handmade pies on a long string, one by one, to his friends waiting below on the street after he canceled a group pizza party because of the coronavirus pandemic. "I had 40 feet of string I'd ordered from Amazon, so I made a little pulley, bagged them up and gave them to everyone that way," he said. "I came up with the idea because I didn't think it was a good idea to eat 16 pizzas all by myself." Berman, an MBA student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, soon decided he might be onto something. The pandemic had become more dire by the summer, and he was wondering how he could help people in need and boost the spirits of his neighbors, many of whom were also staying in their apartments. "I was talking to my girlfriend, and she suggested that pizza was the way to do it," said Berman, 28. "So I decided to make free cheese pizzas and lower them out my window to anyone who wanted one, with a suggestion that they make a donation to charities that help people who are hungry or homeless." "I thought, 'If I can make people smile by dropping pizzas down to them from my apartment, why not?' " he added. There was also a second reason for his desire to provide comfort food to strangers. Berman's grandmother had died of covid-19 in April. "I thought this would be a good way to honor her and give people hope," he said. Berman gave his crusade a name - Good Pizza PHL - and started an Instagram page to share photos of his pies, thinking that he might raise a few hundred dollars for his two favorite charities: Philabundance and Project HOME. By the first week of January, he had raised more than $32,000. Some of that success was because of celebrity blogger Dave Portnoy, who has a huge following and posted a positive Barstool Pizza review in November about Berman's pizzas. Berman quickly got more than 17,000 new Instagram followers. "Donations started coming in from everywhere and so did the requests for pizza," said Berman, who uses his own funds for ingredients and boxes. He soon realized that he would have to fine-tune his pizza drops. He now makes a giant batch of pizza dough and a big pan of sauce once a week, then holds a lottery online to select 20 winners to pick up pizzas below his one-bedroom apartment window every Sunday. He bakes the pizzas in his apartment oven using two steel baking plates. Gabrielle Manoff is among those who have taken home one of Berman's 12-inch, fresh-from-the-oven cheese pies. "What (Ben) is doing with Good Pizza is incredibly inspiring - he somehow finds the time and the heart to make pizza for the sole purpose of giving back to the community and making people smile," said Manoff, 26, a Wharton student who has donated to Berman's cause multiple times. "I believe strongly in the mission-driven aspect of Good Pizza," she added. "But now, so many people want Ben's pizza, I can no longer get any." Students from the University of Pennsylvania are among Berman's most loyal free pizza customers. Nirali Sampat, an MBA student like Berman, felt fortunate to get in on one of his early pizza drops in March. "During such an uncertain and isolating time, it meant a lot that Ben was going out of his way to give back and bring joy to others," said Sampat, 28. "He puts so much care into each pie, and his pizza is truly one of the best pizzas I have ever had." Berman, who estimates that he has given away more than 500 pizzas, said spending hours in the kitchen has always come naturally. While growing up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, he said, he often helped his mom and two younger brothers prepare family favorites such as beef brisket and chicken Parmesan. "Cooking became a language of love," said Berman. "I've never felt comfortable in a bar, but I've always loved sharing time around the table with my family." After he left for college, Berman continued to return to Maine each summer and started a food truck business with a friend. "We had two trucks called Mainely Burgers, and another truck called Mainely Treats," he said. "We'd make and sell burgers, fries and shakes all summer long." Berman has since sold his interest in the food trucks, but he's hoping to continue cranking up his oven to bake pizzas (two at a time) in the months and years to come. "It brings people joy to watch a pizza coming down from the second story, just for them," he said. "This is something positive that I can do from my own apartment." Relations with Tajikistan and Kazakhstan stretching back millennia documented. Two books telling the history of China-Tajikistan and China-Kazakhstan friendship, respectively, were released recently, aiming to boost mutual understanding and further exchanges among the public, the publishers say. "Different from history books often compiled in a single country, the books were edited by think tanks from different countries, expecting to increase accuracy and receive recognition from all sides," said Wang Fusheng, president of the Gansu Academy of Social Sciences, publisher of the books, at the launch ceremony in Lanzhou, Gansu province, on Jan 5. Exchanges between China and the two countries date back about 2,000 years, when merchants and camel caravans traveled along the Silk Road, he says. The friendship was extended when China established diplomatic relations with the two countries in 1992 and is further promoted by the Belt and Road Initiative, with fruitful cooperation reached in the sectors of transportation, energy and agriculture, he adds. The book about China-Kazakhstan history chronicled key events, figures and stories between Chinese and Kazak people, dating back from the early Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) to modern times. One chapter tells the story of the ancient Kingdom of Kangju, a powerful country in Central Asia, which is believed to have a close link to the historical origin of Kazak people. The kingdom had frequent exchanges with the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), according to written scripts on bamboo slips unearthed in Dunhuang of Gansu province. The book, as quoted from the slips, tells stories about Kangju envoys bringing camels to a Han emperor as gifts and a Kangju king marrying off his daughter to the king of the North Huns. It also tells how huxuan dance from Kangju was popular in the court of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), in which women, in long dresses and colorful ribbons, stood with toes crossed and whirled to the beat of drums. "The art is similar to a Kazak dance now," the book says. In another chapter, the book mentions prestigious Chinese musician Xian Xinghai (1905-1945), who once lived in Kazakhstan. In late 1940, Xian was sent to Moscow to join the production of a documentary. But the work was suspended due to World War II. After failing to return to China through Mongolia, Xian arrived in Kazakhstan's Alma-Ata in 1942, planning to return to China through the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, near Alma-Ata. The effort was in vain too. Xian, a member of the Communist Party of China, used a fake name, Wang Shun, to avoid investigation by the Kuomintang, which regarded Xian as an illegal person. The Kuomintang had an embassy in Alma-Ata at the time, the book says. While living in Alma-Ata, Xian met with local musicians, studied Kazak music and composed songs based on folk stories. He also joined rural concerts and played violin at villages. In 1944, he went to Kostanay of Kazakhstan as conductor of the local Philharmonic Orchestra. Xian died of severe pneumonia in Moscow in October 1945. In 1998, the nameplate of former residence of Xian in Alma-Ata was unveiled when the presidents of Kazakhstan and China attended the ceremony. The street where the residence is located was then named Street of Xian Xinghai. The book about China and Tajikistan first introduces the Samanid dynasty in the 9th to 10th century, an important period in Tajik history, and its exchanges with the Tang Dynasty. Though records about the history between Samanids and the Tang Dynasty were rare, relics of Chinese silk, porcelain and paper were discovered in the region. Chinese craft skills, such as manufacturing pigments, silk-making and bronze work, were introduced to Central Asia; and the two built connections through marriage, according to the book. It also says Samanids had a significant influence on Chinese ethic groups in the northwestern regions to accept Islam. Following parts of the book focus on bilateral cooperation in modern times such as trade, energy, telecommunications, science, culture and tourism. Muhammad Egamzod, counselor of the embassy of Tajikistan in China, said at the book launch that people from the two countries established multisector exchanges during the ancient Silk Road period. And exploring the undiscovered chapters of the history will help enhance the friendly relations and benefit future cooperation. Pronkina Olga from Russia, professor at the Gansu University of Political Science and Law in Lanzhou, says the book reveals less-known stories about Sino-Tajik relations, and how the governments worked together to build a close and reliable partnership. The two books are part of a series of books about the history of friendly relations between China and countries along the Silk Road, published by the Gansu Academy of Social Sciences. Wang from the academy says multilingual version of the books, including those in Russian and English, will be published. The academy is also working with think tanks from Uzbekistan and Belarus to publish history books in the future. Re: Remove Trump from office? Donald Trump should be removed from office by the Senate and he should be prosecuted criminally and civilly in order to show the American public that in the Unites Sates Of America no man is above the law. To not take these above noted actions would show people that any future President can do almost anything without fear of any accountability. Larry Orr, Penticton He is a good man man of integrity and morals and will be reflected in for another four years. Truth and justice. Win. Don & Better Brown I am extremely disappointed to see Castanet would even post the results of a survey on such a historic, delicate, important event without waiting to get at least 1 person with a different opinion! There are approximately 100 million Americans and 100s of millions around the world, including Canada, who do not share the opinion of the few you interviewed and are extremely concerned with what is taking place not only in the U.S.A. but globally. To think that Castanet posted this survey because you might share the views of those you interviewed and may wish to possibly influence the opinion of others by using your media platform is deeply troubling to me. If that should be your intent then I have lost a lot of respect for the way Castanet does their reporting. Phil Peter We strongly think that Donald Trump needs to be removed from office and convicted. Growing up in Germany a daughter of parents who immensely suffered during WWII, the events of last week shook me to the bones. Trump needs to be removed and convicted that he cannot run for any public office again in his life. He is a very dishonest and dangerous man, for the entire world, not just for the US. He encourages the rise of Neo-Nazis in many countries. Thank you for doing this, asking us Canadians about this very unsettling situation south of the border. Renata & Doane Gregory, Osoyoos A run of low community COVID-19 case numbers in the eastern states has buoyed hopes Western Australia will start reducing travel restrictions with the rest of the country. There is currently a 'hard border' up with New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, which are all considered 'medium risk' states for transmission of the disease. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian is calling on a border re-think while Mark McGowan stands pat on restricted travel from eastern states. Credit:Nine WA Premier Mark McGowan said all three states having no new community cases recorded on Friday was great news. "We'll have an emergency committee meeting this afternoon and we'll discuss the matter there," he said. Following the Parler ban on Google and Apple app stores, Amazon also announced it will be suspending the app from its web hosting service, rendering the "free speech" app offline. Amazon Responds to Lawsuit With Screenshots After Parler has gone off the web, CEO John Matze and the company proceeded to sue the tech company alleging that the suspension was "motivated by political animus" as well as to help minimize the competition in the microblogging industry. As the allegations reached the Seattle federal court on Monday, January 11, 2021, the internet giant responded with a series of screenshots reportedly taken from the app when it was still up and running. According to ABC News, the screenshots were filled with hateful comments, including racial slurs as well as threats of violence. Based on the report, those kinds of content were rampant in the app. An Amazon Web Services spokesperson further said that there is "no merit to these claims," pertaining to the allegations of Parler, instead, the suspension of the app was due to the violation of the terms of services of AWS that the app committed due to poor content moderation. Read More: TikTok Enhances Privacy Settings for Young Users by Adding Certain Restrictions by Default Violation of Terms of Service "AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we respect Parler's right to determine for itself what content it will allow," the spokesperson said. "However, it is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service." Furthermore, the spokesperson said that they have reached out to Parler pertaining to the violent content allegedly rampant on their site for a number of weeks. However, they saw a significant increase in said contents instead, which then led to the suspension. Parler had been banned from AWS as well as on Google and Apple after the riot in the Capitol last week, due to its alleged role in the riot. Will Parler Come Back? After the suspension, especially with the ban from Amazon, Parler CEO John Matze is now fearing the worst for the app, saying that it may never come back. In an interview with Reuters, Matze was asked when the app would return, to which the CEO replied, "It could be never. We don't know yet." The company has apparently reached out to other cloud-computing services to hopefully host the app and bring it back online, but according to Matze, several vendors have all backed out "at the last second," leaving Parler to fend for itself, as per Business Insider. Furthermore, the CEO claimed that their relationship with Amazon seemed to deteriorate overnight and without much warning, which led them to file a lawsuit. Matze has also revealed in the interview that Amazon has previously invited Parler to help connect them with investors, but the company apparently ended the program and was not able to secure any funding for the app. When speaking about the subject of content moderation--which was the issue that led to the suspension of Parler--the CEO believed they had done a good job but they were trying to be proactive. Related Article: WhatsApp Clarifies Privacy Policy Change, Publishes What It Can and Can't Do After Update This article is owned by Tech Times Written by: Nhx Tingson 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. During what authorities alleged was a Christmas-time thieving spree, a Boston woman is accused of impersonating both a police officer and a Salvation Army worker to steal from peoples homes before speeding off in a Mercedes Benz. The ongoing investigation, which stretches from Brockton to Boston, has Carla Gomes Darosa behind bars over claims she impersonated an officer and stole personal items from several locations in late December, officials said. Detectives have already pinned 16 charges on the Boston woman so far, according to a statement from the Brockton Police Department. Authorities are working to see if there are more victims. The suspected thieving spree started shortly before Christmas when a Bunker Avenue resident noticed his wallet was missing. Surveillance video, the department claimed, showed Darosa looking through mailboxes on the street in the early hours of Dec. 23. Later the same day, the 40-year-old woman is accused of falsely telling residents on Montello Street she was a police officer and searching the home, according to the department. She never supplied identification but stole a wallet from inside that address, police said. Darosa, authorities said, continued her crime spree to a home on East Ashland Street, where she claimed she was with the Salvation Army and needed to assess if the family was eligible for holiday gifts. The department claimed the Boston woman left with a purse and sped off in a black Mercedes Benz. Investigators believe the suspect drove the same car to many of her alleged crime scenes. One of the residents at the East Ashland Street home said the suspect was wearing military-style clothing and had tattoos on her neck, according to police. Along with the suspected thieving spree on Dec. 23, police are also charging Darosa in connection with other thefts in Brockton that date back to October, authorities said. Police said they sought and obtained a search warrant for Darosas Boston apartment and seized evidence that links her to past crimes. She was expected to make an appearance in court Thursday and be charged with breaking and entering at nighttime, impersonating a police officer, five counts of theft from a building, four counts of identify fraud/theft, two counts of credit card fraud and multiple other offenses, according to officials. Those who think they may have been a victim of Darosas alleged thievery have been urged to call Brockton police detectives at (508) 941-0234. The cattle festival is in vogue in the Chittoor district for the past 150 years. (PTI) TIRUPATI: Despite a ban, Chittoor district witnessed the traditional bull-taming sport, a mild version of Tamil Nadus Jallikattu, with thousands of people including politicos urging the bull-tamers on in many villages this time too, on Friday. The ban enforced by local administrations and the police earlier this month in Chittoor and Tirupati urban district limits was on done the ground that both the bulls and tamers faced risk to their lives. The organisers with their social and political support made sure the cattle festival styled as Pasuvula Panduga or Goppa Mylaru Panduga was conducted unhindered. The cattle festival is in vogue in the Chittoor district for the past 150 years. The sport involves chasing of bulls and cows, making them run amok through a narrow passage. Enthusiasts lining up on both sides compete with each other and run after the cattle to snatch trophies tied to their horns. The organisers argue that this fete is not aimed at hurting the cattle but only to revere them and give them a chance to play around. Irrespective of age, people from all walks of life run after the animals and several of them sustain injuries. This year, the sport was held on a par with the Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu, with main shows in several villages in Chittoor district, like Chandragiri, Ramachandrapuram, Kuppam, Ramakuppam, Rangampeta and Palamaner. Under political pressure, the police stood back as mere spectators. The event was organised also at Kotha Sanambatla in Chandragiri mandal, Anuppalle in Ramachandrapuram mandal and Rangampeta. This time too, several people were injured. YSRC MLA RK Roja took part in the bull-taming sport at Pullaiahgaripalli village. The police said they booked cases against some of the organisers. We received information from locals about the conduction of Jallikattu and from the hospitals about the injured participants. We are booking cases against the organisers. Stringent action would be initiated against them, Ramakrishna, SI, Chandragiri, told Deccan Chronicle. LONDON (Reuters) - The British government said on Friday it had no plans to lower standards on workers' rights, rejecting a Financial Times report that a shake-up of EU labour regulations as part of a post-Brexit overhaul was in the works. The FT reported https://www.ft.com/content/55588f86-a4f8-4cf3-aecb-38723b787569 on Thursday that the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy was proposing changes focused on ending the 48-hour working week, rules around rest breaks, and not including overtime pay when calculating some holiday pay entitlements, citing people familiar with the plans. The measures were being prepared with Downing Street's approval but have not yet been agreed by ministers or put to the cabinet, the FT said. In response, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the government wanted to build up workers' rights. "We want to protect and enhance workers' rights going forward, not row back on them," Kwarteng said in a tweet. A government spokeswoman added: "We have absolutely no intention of lowering the standards of workers' rights." "The UK has one of the best workers' rights records in the world, and it is well known that the UK goes further than the EU in many areas. Leaving the EU allows us to continue to be a standard setter and protect and enhance UK workers' rights." Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he wants to use Britain's exit from the European Union and the end of what many in the ruling Conservative Party believe to be the bloc's restrictive rules to benefit business growth. The government is having discussions with businesses in a wide-range of sectors to try to gauge how to use what it calls its new freedoms from the EU to boost growth. But many opposition lawmakers and trade unions fear the government will use its new freedom from EU rules and regulations to diminish rights rather than build on them. Ed Miliband, the business policy chief for the opposition Labour Party, said the government's priorities were "out of step with the needs of workers and their families". "These proposals are not about cutting red tape for businesses but ripping up vital rights for workers," Miliband said in a statement. (Reporting by Derek Francis in Bengaluru and Elizabeth Piper in London; Editing by Angus MacSwan) Patna, Jan 15 : Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar lost his cool on Friday after he was asked questions about the rising crime graph in Bihar. While inaugurating the 6.7 km long elevated road between R-block and Digha in Patna, Kumar was asked about the rise in criminal activities in the state, espacially the recent murder of Indigo airlines state head Rupesh Singh, a case which is yet to be cracked. An agitated Kumar said that investigation into the case is currently underway and the miscreants will be put behind the bars very soon. "Every incident of crime has some reasons. In case of Rupesh Singh's murder, the police are working on the case. The miscreants will be put behind the bars soon. We will take the strongest action against them and also conduct speedy trial in this case to provide justice to the victim's family," Kumar said. When asked about the rising crime graph in Bihar, Kumar said: "Before accusing the government, you should look at the tenure of the Lalu Prasad-Rabri Devi regime that ruled Bihar for 15 years." "According to the NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) data, Bihar is placed 23rd in the country," he said. The mediapersons also complained about DGP S.K. Singhal, SSP Upendra Sharma and other senior officers for not replying to their queries. In reply, Kumar called the DGP over phone and directed him to give proper replies to the quarries of the reporters. Kumar did not look pleased with the performance of the police, espacially in case of the Indigo state head's murder. Singh was gunned down by unidentified assailants outside his residential complex while he was returning from the airport on Tuesday night. Kumar is facing the heat ever since his alliance partner BJP raised questions over law and order situation in Bihar, along with the opposition parties including the RJD, Congress and the Left. (Natural News) Oregon physician Dr. Steve LaTulippe is facing the harrowing consequences of exercising his First Amendment rights after the Oregon Medical Board suspends his medical license after he attended a campaign rally in support of President Donald Trump. The board voted to suspend LaTulippes license in early December due to the boards concern for the safety and welfare of licensees current and future patients amid the COVID-19 pandemic. LaTulippe, a staunch critic of the governments pandemic response, discourages the use of face masks. But LaTulippe said during an interview with PJ Media that the board had been aware of his alternative safety protocols since July. Yet it had only shut down his practice after a video of him delivering a speech during a Stop the Steal rally on Nov. 7 went viral. I was not only censored, but I had my livelihood taken away from me because of attending a Trump rally, LaTulippe said. Doctor observes mask-free safety precautions LaTulippe, a family physician in Dallas specializing in opioid-free pain management, has been practicing family medicine in his small-town clinic for over 20 years. He had, according to LaTulippe, a spotless record with the Oregon Medical Board until the suspension. In his speech, LaTulippe said that he wanted to debunk COVID mania and described the response to the pandemic as insanity. He said that he never shuttered his practice and he and his staff do not wear a mask in his clinic. Take off the mask of shame, it is designed to control you and shut you down, LaTulippe said. LaTulippe stated in his interview that he practiced his usual flu and cold season protocols and had no problem with infectivity. He said: None of my staff or I became sick. None of my patients became sick. Though LaTulippes clinic does not observe the usual precautions such as wearing a mask, it has its own way of preventing the spread of the virus. For instance, he would have his staff schedule patients with COVID-19 symptoms for the end of the day to avoid infecting other patients. The staff also thoroughly disinfect the clinic at the end of every day. With these measures, according to LaTulippe, not a case of COVID-19 transmission has been traced to his clinic. I have a perfect record as far as preventing the spread and co-infections in my office with viruses in general, LaTulippe said. False accusations and unfair trial beleaguer doctor LaTulippes attorney, Mariah Gondeiro, questioned the process by which the board arrived at its decision and said that LaTulippe was not given due process to defend his case in front of the board. The panel launched an investigation into LaTulippe and found that he advised a patient in July not to get tested for the coronavirus, wear a mask or self-isolate. But this is false and the board knew that LaTulippe runs a different safety protocol in his clinic, according to Gondeiro. I think this is political, Gondeiro said, noting that the panel had been holding the false accusation since July but withheld resorting to any action until the rally. So if this was really an emergency, they could have filed something five months ago. It was after he attended the Trump rally that they retaliated against him, Gondeiro stated. (Related: Big Tech COVID-19 censorship is endangering the population.) The panel also denied LaTulippe with the opportunity to challenge the allegations as it deemed that his actions were posing an imminent threat to the community, according to Gondeiro. They say that he is posing an imminent, irreparable harm to the community, but the real harm is to him and his clients, said Gondeiro. LaTulippe has around 3,000 patients and is the only pain and addiction specialist in his community, she noted. LaTulippe and Gondeiro plan to take the case to federal court and seek a temporary restraining order on the boards decision. For more about unfair attempts to stifle pro-Trump support, visit Trump.news. Sources include: APNews.com PJMedia.com SacBee.com The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form China's Hisense finally unveils TriChroma Laser TV! The giant Chinese manufacturer confirmed that it will launch TriChroma Laser TV's full range this year of 2021. #Hisense introduced the worlds first full-color Laser TV that adopts social features L9F during the first online #CES2021, marking the start of a new era in TriChroma Laser technology and the Ecosystem of Screens, with an aim of reconnecting people, nature and society. pic.twitter.com/2SgcOXYBMp Hisense (@HisenseGlobal) January 13, 2021 Also Read: Zotac Unveils Magnus One Mini PC with Intel Core i7-10700 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 Series Graphics Hisense claimed that the new ultra-short-throw laser display projectors come with a limited edition model. This feature allows the new projector to display a 100-inch image onto the matching screen. However, this is not the first time that Hisense developed such a technology. The company launched its first 100-inch Laster TV in 2014 and announced its first model at CES 2015. Dr. Xianrong Liu, the chief scientist at Hisense Laser TV, said that Laser TVs moved from a niche market to the mass market for the last five years. The said technology has also gone from 2K to 4K resolution, stepping from one-color light source to three-color light source. Laser TV's importance Laser TV projectors have greatly evolved for the past few years. It has grown from displaying 75 inches to throwing 300 inches. On the other hand, Hisense's new technology is essentially ultra-short-throw laser projectors. #Hisense introduced the worlds first full-color Laser TV that adopts social features L9F during the first online #CES2021, marking the start of a new era in TriChroma Laser technology and the Ecosystem of Screens, with an aim of reconnecting people, nature and society. pic.twitter.com/2SgcOXYBMp Hisense (@HisenseGlobal) January 13, 2021 The Chinese giant company stated that its new product will have a new RGB laser light source architecture, with separate lasers for each color light source, which is described as a high-class DLP solution. According to New Atlas' latest report, the feature offers double-area micromirrors for a 20% increase in brightness at the pixel level. This leads to brighter projected images. China's Hisense also claimed that it has improved the projector's color performance by 128%, compared to its predecessor. Hisense's other specs Glitched confirmed the Chinese company's new product has a ULED Mini-LED TV with HDMI 2.1. Reports stated that China's Hisense is also working on new ULED Mini-LED TVs. These displays are massive advantages over OLED screens since they have deeper contrast levels and higher brightness. The company also claimed that they are also more energy-efficient compared to the current OLED TVs. The new Mini-LED technology is considered as the future displays this year of 2021. Speculations suggested that innovation will be used on notebooks, smartphones, and televisions for the following years. Hisense confirmed that the new ULED Mini-LED TVs will have 65-inch and 75-inch models that features 4K resolution and a 75-inch version for the 8K resolution. If you want to know more details, just click here. For more news updates about Hisense's upcoming projectors and displays, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes. Related Article: Razer Blade 15 & Blade Pro 17 Get Updates at CES 2021: Price, Specs, Features, and MORE This article is owned by TechTimes. Written by: Giuliano de Leon. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. GOOSE CREEK For decades, City Council here was almost exclusively male. It started with Michael Heitzler, who served 10 terms as the citys mayor from 1978 to 2018. Mark Phillips (1986-2018), John McCants (1992-2016) and Kimo Esarey (1998-2018) were fixtures on the council for decades. While Marguerite Brown for whom Goose Creeks municipal center was named served on council for 39 years until her death in 2014, it was still a place where men dominated the proceedings. As recently as 2014, there was just one woman on the council, Debra Green-Fletcher. All that changed in December when Hannah Cox and Melissa Enos won council seats and joined Gayla McSwain and Green-Fletcher, making the seven-member council one of the few female-dominated government bodies in the state. There are four women and three men currently serving on council. This is something that the city needed, said Mayor Pro Tem Jerry Tekac, who served on council from 2008 to 2016 and was reelected in 2018. We needed more diversity and thats what we got in the last election. Hannah and Melissa have been great additions. Weve needed more women on council; its been long overdue. The changes in the makeup of City Council from what it was six years ago to what it is today reflect the transformation of the city itself. Since its incorporation 60 years ago, this Berkeley County city has been synonymous with the military and hometown values. It was a place where former military personnel would retire. The perception of what the old council used to be was probably fair, said Mayor Greg Habib, who served on council beginning in 2016 and became mayor in 2018. Im not going to say it was true, but it was fair from an outsiders perspective. They were great public servants, they cared, but the city has grown, and we needed new eyes on the problems we are facing. As major manufacturing companies such as Boeing and Volvo opened plants in the Lowcountry, the citys population exploded. Since 2010, Goose Creek has been one of the fastest-growing cities in South Carolina, adding more than 10,000 new residents over a 10-year span. The population is expected to break the 50,000 barrier by 2024. While the military makes up about 20 percent of the overall population, and longtime established residents still have a strong influence within the city, Goose Creek has become younger, more affluent, and more diverse. Goose Creek is quickly becoming a top destination among younger residents looking for affordable housing. The city has a median age of 32. Its median income is $65,884 and has 31 percent non-White population, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The city has been able to keep its tightknit community feel in place, despite seeing its population transform over the past decade. In October, Money Magazine named Goose Creek the best place to live in South Carolina. Cox, 39, Enos, 42, and Corey McClary, an African-American who was elected to council in 2018, make the body more representative of the citys population. Its not just skin color that makes the council more diverse, said McClary, 47, who grew up in West Ashley and graduated from The Citadel. Its about having different backgrounds, difference life experiences. Thats what makes us more diverse, and diversity makes us stronger. Residents have taken notice of the evolving council. Valinda Miller, an African American who owns Turning Page Bookshop on St. James Ave., said she feels the diversity on the council gives her a stronger voice with the government. When you see someone that looks like you on the council, it makes you feel like you are being heard, Miller said. Cox, Enos and McClary all have teenage children going to school in the community. All three, along with McSwain, have served in the military. Ive lived here for 20 years, but I wasnt raised here, so I guess Im considered a transplant, said Cox, who, along with Enos, served in the Navy. Im a mother, I was in the military, so I feel like can connect with the residents that have lived longer. But I still feel like a hybrid. I can bring a lot of different perspectives to the council. Although the council has met just a couple of times since Cox and Enos were sworn in, McClary has already noticed a difference in the way business is being conducted. I think women have a tendency to listen better and be more compassionate, McClary said. Im trying to follow their lead. When Cox was stationed at the Navy base in late-1990s, she would have never believed the council would have a majority of women on it. Not in a million years, but it shows how much the city has changed, Cox said. While some might be surprised by the transformation of the city and council, Habib isnt one of them. There are more women and more minorities getting involved in government and I welcome that, Habib said. Other perspectives are good, they are necessary to govern and you need it to get to the truth. Nirmala Sitharaman In over 65 years no Finance Minister has had to present a Union Budget in the backdrop of absolute decline in nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In fact, its been more than 40 years since a Finance Minister has had to present a Union Budget when real GDP declined. The above backdrop makes the task of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman challenging. Other than government spending, agriculture and electricity that are estimated to increase by 5.8 percent, 3.4 percent and 2.7 percent in real terms in FY2021, all other sectors are going to see a contraction. Consumption is estimated to fall by 9.5 percent and investment by an even steeper 14.5 percent. Government revenues are estimated to fall by 7 percent in FY2021. But spending is estimated to increase by 13 percent as part of counter cyclical policy implying Indias fiscal deficit will increase to 7.2 percent of GDP in FY2021 (highest in 28 years). States too will report a fiscal deficit in excess of 4 percent of GDP implying a consolidated gross borrowing of Rs 21 lakh-crore (11 percent of GDP). The green shoots seen in the last few months give us hope that economy will rebound in a meaningful way in FY2022. Our own estimates suggest that real and nominal growth will increase to 10.5 percent and 14 percent in FY2022. Tax revenues are likely to see a strong rebound next year. Even non-tax revenues from disinvestment, strategic sale and 5G auctions should be buoyant. This should help India revert back to the path of fiscal consolidation. The above backdrop implies that Centres tax revenue is likely to increase by 18.5 percent in FY2022. Corporate and income tax collections will rise the most. Non-tax revenues will increase at an even higher rate led by disinvestment. This will enable the government to increase its nominal spending by 10 percent, while bringing fiscal deficit in the range of 5-5.5 percent. Apart from fiscal consolidation, what are the key priorities in the next year? For this a little historical context is relevant. Even before the pandemic struck, Indias growth had been slowing down from a high of 8.3 percent in FY2017 to 6.1 percent in FY2019 and 4.2 percent in FY2020. Notably, investments have been on a downtrend. Investments that were at more than 37 percent of GDP in FY2011 are now at less than 30 percent of GDP. Thus, the utmost important objective of the Union Budget would be to revive investments. Health spending for vaccination will be an immediate priority as is boosting Indias competitiveness, health, education, digital and logistics infrastructure. While economic rebound will take care of growth in FY2022, the larger focus has to be on improving the investment climate. A lot of work has already gone by way of reduction in corporate tax rate, starting production linked incentive for 13 sectors and improving Ease of Doing Business (Indias current ranking is 63 versus 142 in 2014). However, a relatively simpler taxation regime, dedicated export zones (clusters) and better quality infrastructure is the need of the hour. Last year, the government did announce a Rs 1 trillion fund for agriculture infrastructure for connecting farmers with consumers. A similar or even larger fund for infrastructure investments is required to improve Indias competitiveness by way of logistics infrastructure to South East Asian standards. This will make an impact by reducing cost of transportation as well as turnaround time and spur manufacturing investments. The same can be financed through monetisation or asset sales. Asset sales will not only generate funds for infrastructure investments, but will also be a tailwind for ushering in private sector corporate capex as was the case during early 2000s. In order to improve investments in agriculture, the government can look at a credit guarantee scheme for incremental investments. This will boost productivity in the long-run. Raising investment to GDP ratio would inevitably require higher savings. Thus fiscal consolidation is a necessary requirement to free up savings for investments. Higher infra investment by government will crowd-in private sector investments. So would asset sales. A vibrant banking system will channelise savings into investments, which can be done by implementing remaining recommendations of the PJ Nayak Committee. Budget 2021 is a golden opportunity to achieve Indias rightful place in global economy. What is fast becoming the worlds hottest offshore oil play, the Guyana-Suriname Basin, has entered the headlines once again. Hot on the heels of ExxonMobil and its partner Malaysian state-controlled oil company Petronas announcing a significant oil discovery in Block 52 offshore Suriname, Apache revealed its fourth consecutive discovery in the basin. Apache and partner French integrated energy major Total announced today they have discovered crude oil at the Keskesi East-1 Block 58 offshore Suriname, confirming the presence of petroleum in the eastern portion of the 1.44 million-acre block. Source: Total. According to Apache the crude oil at the Cretaceous-aged Campanian and Santonian intervals had an API gravity of 27 to 28 degrees and 35 to 37 degrees respectively. That corresponds to the quality of the three earlier discoveries made in Block 58 during 2020. Apache transferred operatorship of Block 58 to Total at the start of January 2021. Related: The Oil Industry Is In Dire Need Of Investment Apache and Total have enjoyed considerable exploration success in Block 58 offshore Suriname and there are signs of further oil discoveries ahead. Block 58 borders Exxons prolific Stabroek Block in neighboring offshore Guyana where the international oil supermajor made 18 discoveries since 2015 and estimates that there are recoverable oil resources in excess of 8 billion barrels. Source: Apache Investor Relations. The frequency of medium and light grade oil discoveries in the block indicates it has tremendous potential which could see Apache and Total enjoy the considerable success experienced by Exxon, Hess, and CNOOC in the Stabroek block. In 2000, the United States Geological Survey determined that the Guyana-Suriname Basin held mean undiscovered oil resources of 15 billion barrels along with 42 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The scale and volume of Exxons discoveries in the Stabroek Block saw the USGS announce in late-2019 that it intended to reassess the Guyana-Suriname Basin. There is every likelihood, according to the U.S. government body, that its estimates would increase because of the world-class oil discoveries made by Exxon in the Stabroek Block since May 2015. That review has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic but further underscores the considerable petroleum potential of the Guyana-Suriname Basin and the exploration upside which exists for Apache and Total. Related: Saudi Arabia Starts New Bull Run In Middle East Oil In September 2020, Apache named Suriname as a clear priority, even if West Texas Intermediate falls below $30 per barrel. Apache and partner Total plan to extend their exploration program into the north of Block 58 during 2021. By changing operatorship to Total, it is possible to tap into the French supermajors considerable deepwater drilling expertise further boosting the potential of additional oil discoveries in Block 58. Exxons success in the Stabroek block coupled with a low breakeven price of $35 per barrel produced, which is expected to fall lower, is attracting the attention of offshore drillers to the Guyana-Suriname Basin. It was estimated by industry consultancy Rystad that offshore Guyana will attract at least $10 billion of investment between the start of 2020 and the end of 2022. The attractiveness of offshore Guyana is underscored by a low breakeven price of $35 per barrel for phase one of Exxons Liza oilfield. That price is expected to fall, dropping to $25 a barrel for Liza phase two, and even lower as further infrastructure, efficiencies, and improved drilling technology are established. The shared geological structure with offshore Suriname indicates that as projects are developed, they will have similar breakeven prices. In November late-2020, Rystad announced that Suriname was among the worlds leading locations for oil discoveries that year with 1.39 billion barrels of oil equivalent found by the end of October 2020. Apache and Totals three Block 58 oil discoveries were estimated to have net recoverable oil resources of 700 million barrels of oil equivalent. When those developments are considered along with Apache and Totals success in Block 58 it is likely that offshore drillers will ramp-up investment in offshore Suriname. The former Dutch colony possesses considerable petroleum potential. Suriname is well-placed to replicate the burgeoning boom underway in neighboring Guyana, which will give that countrys economy a substantial boost. This is recognized by President Chan Santokhis administration with the national oil company and industry regulator Staatsolie launching the 2020/2021 shallow offshore bid round in November last year. That sees eight shallow-water offshore blocks comprised a total of over 13,524 square kilometers, located to the south of Block 58, on offer with bids due by 30 April 2021. By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip A plant for producing liquid oxygen to help the serious cases suffering from breathing problems due to the coronavirus reached the Gaza Strip Jan. 10, through the Rafah land crossing. The oxygen production plant, the largest in Gaza, comes as part of an Emirati medical convoy offered to the Ministry of Health in the besieged enclave. The convoy reached Gaza thanks to the efforts of the Democratic Reformist Current headed by dismissed Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan who is based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dahlan is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas main political rival. The convoys arrival in the Gaza Strip coincides with Abbas imminent announcement of presidential decrees to set the date for the Palestinian general elections. The aid seems to be part of Dahlans efforts to boost his popularity in the elections. The UAE convoy comprised large medical assistance to cope with the coronavirus crisis, including 30 ventilators, 2,000 PCR test kits, 12,000 lab coats and 10 oxygen cylinders. Ghazi Hamad, Hamas leader and undersecretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs, welcomed the convoy at the Rafah border crossing, in the presence of several leaders from the Democratic Reformist Current. In a press conference held upon welcoming the convoy, Hamad thanked the UAE for its medical assistance to help the health authorities confront the coronavirus outbreak in the Gaza Strip, which is one of the worlds most populated areas with more than 2 million people living in an area of 365 square kilometers (141 square miles). He also thanked the Democratic Reformist Current for its contribution to the arrival of aid to the Gaza Strip. The Ministry of Health in Gaza had warned on Nov. 25, 2020, that liquid oxygen was running out at the European Hospital in southern Gaza. According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Health published Jan. 12, deaths in Gaza from the coronavirus reached 453, and 211 cases required medical care at a hospital with 112 patients needing oxygen to help them breathe. The UAE convoy is the second to Gaza in a month; the Gulf state had already sent a medical aid shipment on Dec. 17, 2020. Ashraf Gomaa, a Democratic Reformist Current leader, told Al-Monitor, The recent UAE convoy was sent in response to the Ministry of Healths appeal for help amid the shortage of liquid oxygen. The convoy will help the health situation in the Gaza Strip amid the daily rise in the number of coronavirus cases. Gomaa said that so far, the UAE has donated to Gaza 130 ventilators, when only 100 ventilators were available in the Gaza Strip. He noted that Dahlan is engaging in talks with UAE officials to provide the coronavirus vaccines and offer them as free aid to the Gaza Strip soon. On May 21, 2020, the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to accept the UAEs coronavirus-focused medical aid sent to the West Bank through Israel, due to the UAEs attempts at the time to normalize relations with Israel. On Aug. 13, this normalization was officially declared. Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy head of Fatah, told Al-Monitor, Any aid sent to the Palestinians through normalization with Israel and without coordination with the PA is considered dubious and is rejected. He noted that the UAE is exploiting the coronavirus outbreak in the Palestinian territories to achieve political goals, mainly to appease the Palestinian anger over the UAEs normalization agreement with Israel and to polish Dahlans image in the eyes of the Palestinians. Aloul said, Dahlans candidacy in the Palestinian elections is totally refused since a Palestinian court charged him with crimes related to corruption and stealing peoples money, and he is a fugitive [taking refuge] in the UAE. Member of Hamas political bureau Mousa Abu Marzouk told Al-Monitor, We welcome any humanitarian aid that reaches us through any state, and we will not refuse any assistance for political reasons. He was surprised that the PA did not accept the medical aid due to normalization between the UAE and Israel. He added, The PA carries out security coordination with Israel that is occupying the Palestinian territories, then it refuses to welcome aid from the UAE for normalizing ties with Israel. This is a strange contradiction. Abu Marzouk argued that the increase in UAE aid to the Palestinians comes as the Palestinian elections are drawing near. He said, I think that Dahlan strongly wants to run in the Palestinian elections, and we do not mind his candidacy. People will determine Dahlans popularity and political influence in the future through the elections." Talal Okal, a journalist at the Palestinian Al-Ayyam newspaper, told Al-Monitor that the UAEs recent aid convoy and the imminent general elections are connected. The UAE wants to strengthen Dahlans popularity in Palestinian circles to nominate him to replace Abbas who has failed to make a breakthrough in the peace process, he said. He noted that Dahlan, who is backed by the UAE, enjoys approval of the United States and other Arab countries such as Egypt. Ahmad Awad, a professor of political science at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, told Al-Monitor, Dahlan will make every effort to run in the upcoming elections since this is his only hope to return to the Palestinian political arena. He added, But Dahlan is not very popular among the Palestinians, especially in the West Bank. He is wanted by the Palestinian judiciary. I think his return will not be easy." Burgers, fries, cookies and other menu items at the worlds largest fast food chain will no longer come with a side of forever chemicals after McDonalds phases out toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances called PFAS from its food packaging over the next several years. This week, the restaurant giant announced that it would stop using food wrapping treated with PFAS chemicals, a move that follows pressure from advocacy groups whove targeted McDonalds and other fast chains over the past year, hoping to convince them to ditch the chemicals out of concern theyre getting into humans and accumulating in landfills. Those groups notched a win this week, although they urged the company to move faster to eliminate the chemical group use. Theres hope that McDonalds move away from PFAS will have a domino effect on other fast food chains. McDonalds said it previously stopped using the long-chain compounds PFOS and PFOA in 2008, and were proud to take another step in our product stewardship journey with our commitment to remove all added fluorinated compounds from our guest packaging materials globally by 2025. The company has more than 38,000 locations worldwide. Advocates in Michigan celebrated the news, which follows the adoption of new state rules last year that severely limit the allowable levels of some PFAS in drinking water. Reducing the amount of PFAS in single-use items like food packaging can drop the amount of such chemicals in landfills, where the robust compounds concentrate in leachate thats treated by wastewater plants which arent usually able to remove PFAS from their discharge. The result is toxic compounds that dont readily break down in nature or peoples bodies migrating from discarded consumables to surface water and drinking water supplies. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to thyroid disease, high cholesterol, damaged immune system response and other health problems in humans. Related: PFAS exposure may reduce COVID vaccine potency The commitment from the largest fast food-chain in the world, McDonalds, will help drive PFAS out of food packaging elsewhere, too, said Mara Herman, a health policy specialist at the Ann Arbor-based Ecology Center. It furthers the larger mission we are actively pursuing of eliminating non-essential uses of PFAS. We have to get PFAS out of products to get these harmful pollutants out of our drinking water. Concern over PFAS chemicals in drinking water rose to prominence in Michigan several years ago upon discovery of sky-high levels of groundwater pollution near Rockford, where footwear giant Wolverine World Wide dumped the chemicals into unlined landfills years ago. Subsequent statewide drinking water testing found at least trace levels of the compounds in water supplies serving about 1.9 million people. Municipal wastewater has emerged as a significant source of PFAS contamination entering the environment, as well as the application of wastewater biosolids on cropland. Both pathways have been under study by Michigan regulators for several years and the state has reported some success in reducing the chemical load exiting wastewater plants. Statewide, there are 152 locations under investigation where the chemicals exceed new state thresholds in groundwater developed at the direction of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan launched an epidemiological health study last fall in Kalamazoo and Kent counties, where people exposed to high PFAS levels in drinking water through the former municipal supply in Parchment and Cooper Township, and contaminated groundwater in the Rockford and Belmont area, will have blood samples analyzed over the next several years. The state is also launching an assessment of PFAS exposure in Oscoda, where contamination from the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base has spread through water and wildlife. Nationally, movement toward federal rules to regulate PFAS in drinking water failed to gain traction under the Trump administration and safety standards vary among states that have developed their own. Issue advocates are hopeful the incoming Joe Biden administration will move quickly to develop new regulations this year. Related stories: Toxicologist: What parents should know about PFAS At Michigan schools, urgent PFAS response no guarantee Why Michigan & Ohio COVID trendlines have diverged Slotkin on PFAS bill: It couldnt get past the senators Democrats ready to move on PFAS under Biden PFAS activist says blood testing probably saved her life Michigan veterans face uphill battle proving toxic exposure Timeline: The Wolverine, 3M Scotchgard disaster Biden Taps Former Senate Candidate Jaime Harrison for DNC Chair President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday announced hes choosing former Senate candidate Jaime Harrison to be the next Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair. Harrison, 44, failed to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in the 2020 election. He chaired the South Carolina Democratic Party for four years starting in 2013. Hes currently an associate chairman for the DNC. Harrison in a statement said he was humbled and excited to be picked by Biden. Together, well organize everywhere, invest in state parties, expand the map, and elect Democrats who will be champions for the working people of this country, he said. Graham congratulated Harrison, writing in a tweet that Im confident he will do a good job representing the Democratic cause. Current DNC Chair Tom Perez said Harrison would do an incredible job building on the progress weve made and strengthening our party. Biden also picked several vice chairs, including Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The DNC will vote for its officers next week. Voting closes on Jan. 21 at noon. Members can choose officers who werent picked by Biden. President-elect Joe Biden speaks in Wilmington, Del., on Jan. 14, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) This group of individuals represent the very best of the Democratic Party, Biden said in a statement. Their stories and long histories of activism and work reflects [sic] our partys values and the diversity that make us so strong. As our country faces multiple crises from systemic racism to the COVID-19 pandemic, working families in America need and deserve real leadership. We need to elect Democrats across our country and up and down the ballot. To do that is going to take tireless leadership, committed to strengthening Democratic infrastructure across our states. These leaders are battle-tested and ready for this immense task. I know they will get the job done. Incoming White House deputy chief of staff Jen OMalley Dillon, who chaired Bidens campaign, called the slate battle-tested and brilliant. These leaders know what we need to do to ensure the party is strong, inclusive, and continues to expand our coalition of support across the statesbecause thats how well continue winning races and electing leaders at every level who will build America back better, she added. Ronna McDaniel was reelected as the Republican National Committee chair last week. If Harrison wins the vote, hell take over a party that won the White House and the Senate but suffered over a dozen losses in House races, cutting into the partys majority. Republicans are already looking towards the 2022 midterms, expressing confidence theyll flip both congressional chambers before taking back the presidency two years later. Over the next two years, the Democrats are going to try to do a whole bunch of things that the public doesnt want. They dont want packing the Supreme Court. They dont want higher taxes and more regulation. They dont want the police defunded. I think the Democrats now have the ability to go do some things, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the newly elected National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, told Fox News. I think its going to help define them and I think its going to help us have a big win in 2022. Elana Hertel has joined Central Reform Congregation as executive assistant to the rabbinic team. She graduated from Missouri State University with a bachelors degree in business and event management, holds a Certified Special Events Professional (CSEP) from the International Live Event Association (ILEA) and sits on the board of the ILEA St. Louis Chapter as immediate past president. A St. Louis native, she grew up at Congregation Shaare Emeth. Rabbi Susan Talve of Central Reform Congregation was chosen as one of the Forwards 50 notable Jewish people of 2020. She was cited for being a confronter of hate for standing up to Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who made national headlines when they waved guns at Black Lives Matters protesters near their Central West End home in June. CRC is located next door to the McCloskeys home. When the couple were slated to speak at the Republican National Convention, Talve told the Forwards national editor, Rob Eshman, They are bullies. Its so upsetting that they have a national audience. Its upsetting we make heroes out of people who hate. Jessica Z. Brown Billhymer has received the St. Louis Press Clubs highest honor, the Catfish Award, which is awarded to a member who has made exceptional contributions to the field of communications and to the club. Brown Billhymer is founder and president of Gateway Media Literacy Partners and an adjunct professor at the School of Communications at Webster University. She recently completed a series of interviews with local professional communicators during the pandemic and has long worked to support journalism literacy and scholarships. Jordan Palmer has joined the St. Louis Jewish Light as director of digital communications. Palmer spent the past 20 years at KSDK-TV (Channel 5) in various capacities, including director of digital operations, executive producer of local programming and special projects producer. Palmer and his family belong to Central Reform Congregation. ADVERTISEMENT Dr. Julia Partin, a podiatrist, has started a new position with Washington University Orthopedics. She is a foot and ankle surgeon with 18 years of experience treating pediatric and adult patients. Previously, Partin operated a successful St. Louis-based private practice for 15 years. Her practice locations include the Center for Advanced Medicine and the Center for Advanced Medicine, South County. Partin and her family are members of Shaare Emeth. Martha K. Sneider has joined the Gellman Team as a real estate agent selling residential homes. She and her family belong to Temple Emanuel. Congregation Temple Israel has announced the latest board members of its executive committee: Sarah Falkoff, vice president/education; Julie Follman, secretary; Amy Knoblock-Hahn, assistant secretary; and Jeff Brown, member at large. Incoming trustees/new to the board of trustees, serving a three-year term are: Jenny Abeles, Benjamin Kozower, Brian Newman, Diane Fadem Packman and Rachel Protzel. Rob Epstein will be serving a two-year term. In other Temple Israel news, Rabbi Michael Alper was selected for the JOIN (Jewish Organizing Institute & Network) for Justice Clergy Fellowship 2021-22 Cohort. The fellowship offers clergy the opportunity to explore community organizing and expose select congregants or members to it so they can assess if it can further their communitys mission. Steve Gorin, partner in Thompson Coburn LLPs St. Louis office, has been elected to the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils (NAEPC) Estate Planning Hall of Fame. Gorin is also a recipient of the Accredited Estate Planner (Distinguished) designation for 2020. He is one of only seven estate planning professionals to receive this prestigious award in 2020. Gorin belongs to Shaare Emeth. Larry Levy, a 20-year agent with the real estate firm Janet McAfee Inc., has been elected to the St. Louis Realtors board of directors for the 2021-2024 term. Levy has served the St. Louis Realtors as a prior board member and has chaired the grievance and professional standards committee. He will also hold a seat on the Missouri Association of Realtors. Ed Protzel recently released his fourth historical novel, Something in Madness, which takes readers to 1865 Mississippi when newly freed Blacks struggled in a South still run by unregenerate Confederates. The book, published by TouchPoint Press, is available in print and eBook editions from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other sellers. Newsmakers is a compilation of local Jews newsworthy professional and academic accomplishments. Submit your news to [email protected] Call 314-743-3669 for more information. Published the first edition of each month. ISI sent me nudes, I leaked sensitive info confesses man arrested for espionage India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: They shared naked pictures with me after which I shared information on the movement of the Indian Army in the border areas, a resident of Rajasthan arrested on espionage charges told his interrogators. Satyanarayan Paliwal, 42, a resident of Lathi in Jaisalmer said that he misused his social media account to share sensitive information with the ISI. He also said that he was in touch with them for a long time. Rehman a.k.a Dr Brave developed Laser Guided Anti-Tank Missile application for ISIS Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Paliwal was arrested last week under the Official Secrets Act after he was found spying for the ISI. The Rajasthan Police said that he was booked and arrested by the CID (Special Branch) for espionage. The police said that Paliwal had confessed to passing on sensitive information about the military. He was brought to Jaipur and interrogated by the Army and State Intelligence. Its an open question whether Donald Trump will go down as the worst president in American history (James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson remain formidable contenders), but theres no question that Mike Pompeo, his most fervid lapdog, is the worst secretary of state. Through his two years and nine months as the nations top diplomat, Pompeo has said or done nothing thats enhanced our security, our values, or evenright or wronghis administrations own policies. Advertisement His tenure is ending with crushing humiliationa snub from our European allies, who are fed up with the trashing he and Trump had dealt them these past four years. On Jan. 4, Pompeo announced that he would travel to Europe and meet with leaders of the European Union. Two days later, in the wake of the Trump-incited riots on Capitol Hill, EU officials said they wouldnt meet with himtiny Luxembourgs foreign minister publicly denounced Trump as a criminal and political pyromaniac, for good measureso Pompeo canceled his last chance of a taxpayer-funded trip overseas. 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. It has been a long season of humiliations for Pompeo. In August, he pressured the U.N. Security Council to pass a ban on conventional arms sales to Iran. Only one of the councils members, the Dominican Republic, joined the U.S. in supporting the ban; Russia and China opposed it; the othersall U.S. alliesabstained. Advertisement The episode typified, in extreme form, two of Pompeos most distinct traitsan obsession with fomenting regime change in Iran and an utter incompetence at making that or any other goal happen. Like Trump, Pompeo ceaselessly inveighed against the Iran nuclear deal; it is no coincidence that Trump pulled out of the deal and reimposed sanctions against the Islamic Republic on May 8, 2018, just 12 days after Pompeo was sworn in as secretary. (His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, had advised Trump to stay in the deal.) Pompeo claimed, with swaggering confidence, that the sanctions would compel Tehran back to negotiate a better nuclear dealor possibly force a collapse of the regime. Fast forward to today: Irans economy is a wreck, but the regime survives, its hard-line factions are stronger than before, and its reactors are closer than ever to churning out an atomic bomb. (President-elect Joe Biden wants to restart the nuclear deal, but Irans technological progress and the stiffening of its politics will make this harder to accomplish.) Advertisement Advertisement This week, perhaps realizing that his maximum pressure campaign had been a total failure, Pompeo changed course and claimed, in a speech at the National Press Club, that Iran is the new home base of al-Qaidathe terrorist movements operational headquartersand declared, The time is now for America and all free nations to crush the Iran-al-Qaida axis. U.S. intelligence officials say there is no evidence whatever for this claim. Pompeos other big bugaboo has been China, and he has called for regime change in Beijing as welldespite the clear preposterousness of the goal. The Chinese Communist Party is a mischievous force in the world, but Pompeo is simply wrong in claiming that it is totally separate from the Chinese people or that its a regime imbued with a Marxist-Leninist coreor that the challenge of resisting the CCP threat is in some ways much more difficult than resisting the Soviet Unions Communist empire during the Cold War. In fact, though it enslaves minorities and imprisons democratic activists, much, perhaps most, of the Chinese population supports the CCP, which lifted over 850 million people out of poverty in astonishingly fast time. In any case, there is nothing Marxist-Leninist about President Xi Jinpings philosophy, which seeks expansion through mercantilist techniques, not ideological conformity. And while its important to contain Chinas military aggression in the South China Sea (something the U.S. military has been doing for some time), its a huge stretch to compare its scope or ambition to that of the Soviet Union, which once enjoyed a truly global presence. Pompeo misunderstands the nature of Chinas challengeand, as a result, comes up with half-baked notions of how to deal with it. Advertisement Advertisement His overheated rhetoric has further isolated the United States from the rest of the worlda shame since real challenges, including China and Iran, require a concerted response along with allies. As an example of his insensitivity to allies concerns, Pompeo made his distorted case against the CCP in a speech to the Czech Parliament in August. The speech contained just one sentence about Russia and nothing about ongoing threats to Ukraine, the recent rigged election in Belarus, the rise of illiberalism in Hungary and Poland, or the dangers of a splintered European Union. He even, at one point, suggested the possibility of a Russia-West alliance against Chinathis to an audience, in the heart of Europe, whose members viscerally recall the 1968 Soviet coup that left their country occupied by five Red Army divisions and a harsh Moscow-installed dictatorship for the subsequent 22 years. Advertisement Then there are Pompeos wincing lies. He has claimed that he and Trump have made NATO stronger than beforewhen, in fact, trans-Atlantic ties have rarely been more strained, owing to Trumps constant dissing of alliances in general and of the EU in particular. Last Sunday, Pompeo praised Trumps withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, tweeting, Our previous President unilaterally disarmed under the INF Treaty. We said enough and left the one-sided deal that made America defenseless. In fact, it was President Ronald Reagan who signed that treaty with thenSoviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and it required far deeper nuclear-arms cuts from Moscow than from Washington. Advertisement Pompeo has also been a blatantly corrupt secretary of state. By taping a speech in Jerusalem to be aired at the 2020 Republican National Convention, he violated not only the Hatch Act but also a policy that hed earlier promulgated, forbidding department employees from so much as attending political conventions. He used security officials to run errands for himself, his wife, and his wifes mother. He had Trump fire the inspector general who was investigating this misuse of government resources. He threw lavish dinner parties inside the State Department, inviting donors who might contribute to some future political campaign. He turned the Voice of America, which in recent decades had turned itself into a fairly objective global news service, into a propaganda organ for Trump. He demoralized the foreign service even more thoroughly than Tillerson had done (a feat that few imagined possible), leaving a record number of vacancies, and hanging ambassadors out to dry when they provoked Trumps ire (cf. Marie Yovanovitch). Advertisement Two more examples of his failings. First, he did nothing to veer Trump away from a North Korea policy that was, at once, comically naive (we fell in love, Trump once said of his relationship with Kim Jong-un, the worlds most brutal dictator), hopelessly undiplomatic (demanding total disarmament from Pyongyang instead of step-by-step measures), and alarming to our Asian allies (for instance, giving in to Kims demands that we suspend joint military exercises with South Korea). Second, he loudly touted a policy to push Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from powera notion premised in part on rashly underestimating Maduros control over the militaryand did nothing to support the countrys democratic factions when the plan fell apart. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Pompeo shimmied his way into power by gearing his every twist and utterance to the pleasuring of the boss, beginning when he was CIA director (where he often omitted or distorted intelligence that went against Trumps gut feelings) and intensifying when he advanced to Foggy Bottom. He was a dishonest broker, disinclined to speak truth to power, out of fear that he might lose power in the course of doing so. To cap it all off, in his final days, Pompeo issued ordersoverturning existing policy, after no discussionlifting restrictions on official contact with Taiwan, designating Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, and declaring the Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization. These moves will have no long-term effect; the presumptive incoming secretary, Anthony Blinken, can reverse these dictums, though it will be awkward to do so. Its an act of sheer mischief, like a teenager pelting the new neighbors front door with rotten eggs on Halloween. Advertisement Is Pompeo the worst secretary of state ever? In modern times, John Foster Dulles might be a rival for the crown, but, thankfully, President Dwight Eisenhower didnt pay attention to Dulles most dreadful advice. The stiffly fanatical Dulles pushed for the rollback of Soviet communism, but Eisenhower, despite paying some lip service to the notion, stuck in practice to his predecessor Harry Trumans policy of containment. Dulles also offered his French counterpart two tactical nuclear weapons to stave off the Viet Congs siege at Dien Bien Phu; Eisenhower had no interest in going there. Advertisement There may also have been miscreants in the 19th century, but the job back then was treated mainly as a holding place for a presidents friends or donors. Whatever some secretary might have done, it had slighter consequences: The job had less power in the government; the nation had less power in the world. Advertisement So Mike Pompeo wins the crown of thorns. Next week, he will fly back to Kansas, where he was once a congressman and where he hopes to run for Senate, having left the diplomatic corps in a hollow rut (which could take a decade to rebuild), the nation less secure, and our network of allianceswhich has sustained our security and influence for many decadesfrazzled at its core. Pompeo may find, as many of Trumps aides are discovering in their fruitless Biden-era job hunts, that his iron loyalty to the twice-impeached president will dimnot, as he once hoped, brightenhis prospects for higher office. The Kansas City Star editorialized about Pompeo this week, America will be better when he leaves office. Kansas will be better if he decides to stay away from his adopted home state forever. Paris, TX (75460) Today Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. SSW winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected.. Tonight Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. SSW winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected. So a step the Holy See takes to rework its hugely patriarchal system and make it more inclusive would be making history, and will have a catalytic and cascading effect. (Photo:AFP) The Catholic Church could be one of the most conservative of organisations that are long functional and whose decisions touch the lives of millions of people. So a step the Holy See takes to rework its hugely patriarchal system and make it more inclusive would be making history, and will have a catalytic and cascading effect. The latest decision of Pope Francis to formally recognise the role of women in the celebration of mass is one such. As per a revised clause in the Canon law, now lay persons, instead of the former lay men, can perform the ministries of lector and acolyte in Catholic services. In his decree, called Spiritus Domini, the Pope said women were making a precious contribution to the Church and the effort was to rediscover the co-responsibility of all of the baptised in the Church. The Pope, however, has once again refused to give women the permission to become priests. The announcement in itself has nothing revolutionary: the Pope has only given his formal assent to a practice prevalent in the Church in many parts of the world. But by doing so, he has ensured two things. One, the changes that visit the Church, even though incremental, are irreversible. Two, the conservatives did not rise up in revolt and undermine every single change he has ushered into the 2,000-year-old institution by letting priesthood remain a male domain. The Catholic Church stood its ground when several others, including the Anglican Church, liberalised itself in the matters of faith and rituals, giving women more roles. That Jesus Christ took only his 12 male disciples and no woman, not even his mother, to the Last Supper, which offers the basis of the Eucharist, is an argument the conservatives have offered while resisting granting priesthood to women. The Pope seems to be trusting the dictum, slow and steady wins the race. Pin Share 93 Shares This post contains affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make purchases using the links at no extra cost to you. See disclaimer Samsung Galaxy S21 Will Soon Land In South Africa But A key Item will Be Missing It doesnt look like smartphone giants, Samsung Mobile, is letting up on disturbing the smartphone world with new products. Its been announced that Samsung will be releasing a new smartphone in South Africa at the end of January 2021. So if you are in South Africa, here is what you need to know about Samsungs latest smartphone and when to look out for them. After all, theres no point buying an outdated product when theres a new one in the market. Samsung introduced its much-anticipated Galaxy S21 range of smartphones into the market on January, 14. In response to this announcement, smartphone lovers across the world are all looking out to see when it will be available for purchase in their location. Well, if you are in South Africa, weve got good news for you. A bit on the Samsung Galaxy S21 The Galaxy S21 is an improvement on the S20. If youve used the S20, then you should be expecting a whole lot more when you switch to S21. Weve got a full blog post on the Galaxy s21 5G with all its specifications. For users in South Africa, the S21 will be made available on the 29th of January so be on the lookout. This smartphone comes with the fastest chip ever made for the Galaxy range of smartphones. This means that the Galaxy s21 set of phones will give you a much faster experience when compared to what you got from its predecessors. The Galaxy s21 Ultra also comes with an incredible 16GB RAM. Most affordable PCs in the market still come with just 4 gigabytes of RAM size. So this smartphone offers you an experience thats 4 times better than what you would get with a regular PC. This new set of Samsung devices also comes with 3 outstanding rare cameras. If you used the previous range of Galaxy smartphones you may have noticed the cameras were covered with glass. The new Galaxy s21 rare cameras are covered with metal. This offers more protection for your phone cameras. And the primary camera is an extraordinary 108MP camera. Thats just out of this world for a smartphone camera. Recommended: PS 5 Price in Nigeria A lot of smartphone companies, like they always do, are going to come with devices that claim to have these specs. But the truth is: their specs are far from what they advertise. And its not just about overloading a smartphone with specs without having the intelligence to blend them properly in the right proportion. Youll always have companies who want to catch up with Samsung but when you get to use these devices, you find that they are nothing compared to a real Samsung galaxy in terms of user experience and durability. Samsungs hit us again but if you are in South Africa, you are going to have to wait till the end of January to get this masterpiece. It may even take longer for other locations. While you wait, you can do a preorder on the Samsung website. Why preorder this device? Most people do this for devices because preorders come with discounts. If you are lucky, you can order this device at a much lower price and may even get to cut down on shipping fees. Thats a good thing and makes the item much cheaper compared to the pricing when its shipped all the way down to your local store. How much is the Samsung Galaxy s21 range of Smartphones in South Africa? Popular news sources like MSN have confirmed the prices for the Galaxy s21 smartphones. Heres what the pricing list looks like: Samsung Galaxy S21 R17,999 Samsung Galaxy s21+ R21,499 Samsung Galaxy s21 Ultra R29,999 Will the Galaxy S21 smartphone come with Headphones and Chargers? The Samsung Galaxy S21 will be shipping without a headphone and a charging brick. Its not news that waste from tech industries have had huge damaging effects on our environment. Right now there are many people who have spare headsets and are looking to sell them out. Its a good idea to ship smartphones without headphones and a charger. This will cut down the production and shipping of surplus smartphone accessories. Mother earth needs some breathing space. Samsung is well known for making durable products and it goes without saying that most of their customers still have the chargers and headphones they purchases a year or two years ago. And for customers who do not have a headset or charger, you can always order it alongside your new Galaxy s21 device. You could even buy them at the local Samsung service center or any smartphone shop that offers Samsung Galaxy accessories. Barn destroyed by Wednesday morning fire Fire destroyed a barn about five miles southeast of Watertown Wednesday, according to a report from Watertown Fire Rescue. The NSW government is preparing to roll out the coronavirus vaccination program from February 15 and is considering utilising the Services NSW app as a vaccine passport to encourage uptake. NSW Health said they have been advised by the federal government that the coronavirus vaccination program may commence by February 15. Victoria is working to the same timeline, according to a briefing to a major hospital group seen by this masthead. The Pfizer vaccine is due to be administered to priority populations before phase two of the rollout, using the AstraZeneca vaccine, begins in mid-March. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the government was examining "positive ways" to encourage vaccine uptake. Credit:Cole Bennetts A spokesman for federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said "no date has been set" for a national rollout, repeating that the timeline would be subject to TGA approval. Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week said the vaccine rollout would start by mid to late February. Update: Xiaomi has responded to the recent Investor's ban with a statement that has now been added to the story. Before leaving office, President Trump has placed Xiaomi under a new blacklist according to a report by Reuters. Xiaomi along with nine other companies have been placed on an investment blacklist by Trump and is alleged to be part of the "Communist Chinese military. American investors are being told to refrain from investing in the company for the time being. Reuters Its unclear as to why Xiaomi has been put into a blacklist however the U.S. Government is making America Investors to divest their holding and have until November 11th to do so. Its not known how this will affect Xiaomi however major companies like Qualcomm have invested in the company. The Department is determined to highlight and counter the Peoples Republic of Chinas (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernization goals of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities, the US Department of Defense statement reads about including Xiaomi in the blacklist. Reuters The move comes after President Trumps back and forth clampdown on Chinese companies who have been suspected of working with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Huawei was the first victim and was placed on its entity list which prevents U.S. based companies from doing business with the Chinese smartphone giant. Having said that, Xiaomi has not been put on the entity list as of now which means suppliers based in the U.S. can still do business with the Chinese company for now. However, this move does put Xiaomi in a dire position and could see Xiaomi see its business further targeted in the future. President-elect Bidens administration could overturn the decision however when it comes to national security concerns, most presidents tend not to bend the other way Reuters Xiaomi was blacked under Section 1237 of the National Defense Authorization Act. The executive order by President Trump mentions China's national security strategy where it forces companies to support and cooperate with the military. The order also claims that China exploits US investors by allowing companies like Xiaomi to get funds from American investors and exploits them. Not much was added on how Chinese companies exploit American investors however it seems this order is here to stay for a while. We can only know more about Xiaomis fate after the presidential transition takes place in about a weeks time and whether President-elect Biden might overturn Trumps executive order or not. Xiaomi has now responded to President Trump's executive order saying "The Company has been in compliance with law and operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses. The Company reiterates that it provides products and services for civilian and commercial use. The Company confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a Communist Chinese Military Company defined under the NDAA. The Company will take appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the Company and its shareholders. The Company is reviewing the potential consequences of this to develop a fuller understanding of its impact on the Group. The Company will make further announcements as and when appropriate said a Xiaomi spokesperson to MensXP. Source: Reuters 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. An Australian mother has been left shocked after finding a huge flying insect bigger than her hand in her house. Posting to the 'Mothers Who Clean' Facebook group on Friday, the woman asked others if they had any idea what the creature could be. 'Not totally cleaning related but does anyone know what this is? Do I need to clean anywhere in the house to prevent more?' the woman wrote. An Australian woman was shocked to find this huge creature in her house (pictured) and asked for advice on how to prevent more Many people commenting on the post were also shocked and said the should move house 'I am so freaked out right now,' one person said commenting on the picture. 'Run away and look for another place to live,' another said. 'My worst nightmare,' added a third. After some people suggested the insect could be a cicada others were convinced the picture shows a bogong moth. Some people said the insect was a bogong moth (pictured) which are native to Australia The species is native to Australia with the moths being light brown in colour and having an average wingspan of 5cm and an average body length of 3.5cm. They are known for their seasonal migration in large numbers, like monarch butterflies in the United States, being found generally west of the Great Dividing Range but travelling to the Australian Alps in the spring. Their normal migration is up to 965km but they have been found in Tasmania and New Zealand after having been swept off course by strong winds. Scientists have recently expressed concern over the bogong moth's declining numbers in the alpine areas - dropping from 4billion to just hundreds over the last two springs. The moths use the earth's magnetic field and moonlight cues to navigate with scientists suggesting light pollution from urban centres could be causing the moths to not travel to their usual destination. The moths are a food source for the alpine region's pygmy possums so there low numbers in the area could have a wider ecological effect. They recommend households in southern Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria turn off their lights at night to prevent drawing the moths off-course. GRAND RAPIDS, MI A man who solicited girls for nude photos apologized and asked for leniency before he was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. Dustyn Olmstead, 31, of Eaton County, earlier pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a minor and distribution of child pornography. He convinced a 13-year-old Allegan County girl to send nude photos of herself online and sought nude photos of a 14-year-old Ottawa County girl, federal prosecutors said. Olmstead was sentenced Wednesday, Jan. 13, by U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou in Lansing. The investigation began in February when an Allegan County school district found inappropriate text messages on a students school-owned laptop computer. Police found evidence of Olsmsteads contacts with the girls. He sent video of a 9-year-girl being sexually assaulted in an effort to desensitize the teens, prosecutors said. In a hand-written letter to the judge, Olmstead who faced at least 15 years in prison, and up to 30 pleaded for leniency. He feared he would never see his mother again if he was given the maximum penalty. I am here to say I am really sorry for the crime I have committed and I know it was wrong. I feel really bad. This has been a really difficult year for me. I went through a divorce (and) got back into drugs when the crime was committed. He worried about getting killed, beaten up or sexually abused in prison. He said he would complete any rehabilitation program. If I get the mandatory minimum of 15 years Ill prove to you and society and the United States government that I can be rehabilitated and can stay out of trouble and never commit a crime again, Olmstead wrote. The plea agreement said Olsmstead used text messages to contact multiple minors, including the girls in Allegan and Ottawa counties. He distributed some of the images of the girl who sent nude photos to him, court records said. He first contacted her when she was 12, Allegan County sheriffs Deputy Michael Brown, who investigated with the FBI, wrote in court records. The girls grandmother, who saw inappropriate conversations between the girl and Olmstead, confronted him but he continued to contact the girl, police said. One of the girls told police that Olmstead would ask her for dirty pictures which she later clarified as nudes, or pictures with her clothes off, Brown wrote. Investigators used an IP address to find Olmstead and tie him to the crimes, police said. Once his prison term ends, Olmstead will spend 10 years on supervised release and have to register as a sex offender. He also was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution under the Justice for Victims Trafficking Act. Read more: Man, 31, targeted young teens for nude photos on internet Grand Rapids man found guilty of providing fatal dose of fentanyl to retired judges daughter Wife of former Kalamazoo pastor accused in sex scandal now faces charges herself Bengaluru: As expected, the much awaited reshuffle of BS Yediyurappa's cabinet has failed to douse the "dissidence" flames in the BJP and has instead added fuel to fire. After the chief minister filled up seven vacancies by inducting new ministers on Wednesday, a civil war appears to have broken out in the ruling BJP in Karnataka. Defectors the Congress and JD(S), and senior MLAs originally from the BJP, who have not made it to the cabinet, are openly breathing fire and threatening to burn the entire house down. Senior BJP MLA and former Union Minister BR Patil Yatnal has alleged that Yediyurappa has made three legislators ministers after they threatened him with a CD. Speaking to the media in Bijapur, he said, "There is an obscene CD featuring the chief minister. It was recorded by his own grand nephew at his house. These people are blackmailing him with that CD. The same people who have now become ministers had come to me two months ago with the same CD, asking me to join them to unseat Yediyurappa. The chief minister and his son BY Vijayendra are destroying the BJP for personal gains. I will continue my fight". Also read: Karnataka Cabinet Expansion: Yediyurappa Asks Leaders to Take Up Grievances with BJP High Command He also charged the chief minister with succumbing to pressure from opposition Congress MLAs. "Some senior Congress MLAs also have this CD. They are threatening the CM with that. That's why they are getting so much government grants for their respective constituencies. Whereas, we the BJP MLAs are not getting anything. Soon, all these will be in public domain" he said. BJP MLC H Vishwanath, who defected from the JD(S) and helped make Yediyurrappa the chief minister in July 2019, has made similar allegations saying the chief minister is scared of a CD featuring him in it. Attacking Yediyurrappa for making turncoat MLC CP Yogishwar a minister, Vishwanath said that he had paid money to Vijayendra to get a cabinet berth. "Vijayendra is running the government. Yogishwar has paid him a huge amount of money. Yogishwar is a fraud, a crook and a 420. What explains the necessity to make him a minister, other than blackmailing or money?" he asked. Vishwanath said that the CD would be released soon. He also requested Prime Minister Narendera Modi to end Yediyurappas dynastic rule in Karnataka. Besides these two, over a dozen senior BJP MLAs have also openly expressed displeasure over not being inducted into the Cabinet. Sunil Kumar, Abhay Patil, Siddu Savadi, MP Renukacharya, Appachchu Ranjan, SA Ramadas, Aravind Bellad and a few others are sulking and claim that party discipline is preventing them from going to public with their complaints against the Chief Minister. Reacting to the charges, Yediyurappa said that those who are upset can complain to BJP high command in New Delhi. Speaking to the media he said "I have my limitations. There are just 34 Cabinet berths and we have 120 MLAs. Not possible to make everyone a minister. If anyone has a complaint against me, they can go to high command in New Delhi. Making such baseless, serious allegations against me in public is not good". The main opposition Congress has demanded a judicial probe into the allegations by a sitting judge of the Karnataka High Court. The KPCC president DK Shivakumar said that the allegations were serious in nature and there should be an impartial inquiry into it. "If anyone has blackmailed the CM with a CD, he should file a case against them. It is a dangerous thing. Can't ignore", he said. Meanwhile, the state BJP is divided into three factions. One loyal to Yediyurappa, the other opposed to him and the third one neutral, concerned about its political fortunes. The "seedy" developments will surely affect the functioning of the 18-month-old Yediyurappa government in Karnataka in the days to come. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... The final auction of public land to the oil and gas industry in New Mexico was held Thursday, the final sale of leases to land used for fossil fuel production under the administration of President Donald Trump. Trump lost his bid for reelection in November, and former-Vice President Joe Biden was to be sworn in on Jan. 20. Biden vowed during his campaign to halt new leasing of federal land for oil and gas activities, which could mean an end to the Bureau of Land Managements quarterly sales. More: Permian Basin oil and gas companies continue to merge, as market recovers from COVID-19 ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Scheduled for Jan. 14, the BLMs latest sale sought to lease 37 parcels of federally-owned public land in New Mexico, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma about 6,848 acres, per BLM records. In New Mexico, the BLM planned to offer 720 acres in Eddy County on six parcels and about 5,220 in Lea County on 26 parcels, while offering 500 acres in Wise County, Texas and 320 acres in Decatur County, Kansas. About 5,900 acres in New Mexico were sold on the 32 parcels, bringing in about $3.9 million. In Oklahoma, 88 acres were offered on three parcels in Coal, Kingfisher and Major counties. In total, the BLM reported the sale made about $4.1 million, with the highest bid per acre going to PBEX, LLC at $15,101 per acre for an 80-acre tract in Lea County. That same parcel also had the highest total bid per parcel at about $1.2 million. The BLMs policy is to promote oil and gas development if it meets the guidelines and regulations set forth by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and other subsequent laws and policies passed by the U.S. Congress, read a statement from the BLM. The sales are also in keeping with the America First Energy Plan, which is an all-of-the-above plan that includes oil and gas, coal, strategic minerals, and renewable sources such as wind, geothermal, and solar, all of which can be developed on public lands. More: Budget, oil and gas major priorities for SENM state lawmakers Democrats seek to reform leasing policy Under the incoming Biden administration such auctions could come to an end, amid long-standing criticism of Trumps efforts to establish the U.S. as leader i Bidens Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice as described on his website said the administration would ban new oil and gas permitting on public lands and water while also adding stronger emissions controls and increasing royalties on existing oil and gas activities to account for climate impacts. A recent study from the Wyoming Energy Authority publicized by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association reported such actions could deplete New Mexicos gross domestic product (GDP) by $207.7 billion in the next 20 years, costing 36,217 jobs between 2021 and 2024 and $12.5 billion in oil and gas investments in the state. More: Oil and gas market collapse plagued southeast New Mexicos economy in late 2020 Any proposal restricting oil and gas development on federal lands would devastate New Mexico and result in the elimination of thousands of jobs, massive cuts in support for public education, and a greater reliance on foreign energy imports, said the Associations Executive Director Ryan Flynn. Our state depends on oil and gas to fund schools, put teachers in classrooms and help our young children learn. The recent downturn in the fossil fuel market, drew concerns that public land was being sold to the industry at lower rates, meaning taxpayers did not get their fair share of the revenue. More: Hearings begin on New Mexicos proposed oil and gas methane venting and flaring rules Last year U.S. Senators from oil-producing states New Mexico, Montana, Nevada and Colorado announced a series of bills intended to ensure oil and gas leases were sold for more lucrative rates, end the sale of lands with low potential for production and expand public input and update bonding procedures. Former U.S. Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) who introduced a bill in February 2020 to update what he called the U.S. antiquated public lands royalty system increasing rates that remained the same since 1920 when the Mineral Leasing Act was first passed. After one hundred years of the Mineral Leasing Act, it is high time for real reform that gives state and federal taxpayers their fair share of royalties that fund important education, infrastructure, public health and environmental needs in communities across the country and particularly in the West, Udall said in a statement upon the bills introduction. Public lands and their natural resources belong to the American people, and its only fair to ask those who profit from them to return a fair share to taxpayers. More: New Mexico State Land Office recovers $2.3 million in audit of oil and gas royalties Reforms seek to update leasing rates, oversight in Biden administration New Mexico environmental groups sided with efforts to reform federal land leasing, aiming to hold Biden to account for promising made on the campaign. James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children said the Jan. 14 sale continued the pattern of selling public land to industry without ensuring the people of New Mexico get an adequate return. He said he hoped the Biden administration could reverse course. More: COG Operating lawsuit dismissed against men electrocuted at Eddy County oil and gas site This lease sale is being conducted under an antiquated system, which prioritizes the bottom line of oil and gas companies instead of New Mexico taxpayers, which shortchanges New Mexicans by undervaluing oil and natural gas assets, Jimenez said. The Biden Administration has the opportunity to work with Congress to reform this antiquated system so that our communities and public lands are protected. More: WPX Energy settles with Carlsbad family for oil and gas wastewater spill in January 2020 Jess Deubel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation said the Trump administrations focus on increase fossil fuel activities not only added risks to the environment but also subjected the country and oil-producing states to the volatile boom-and-bust nature of the industry. The Trump administrations deeply flawed energy dominance agenda has done little to safeguard New Mexicos economy while letting oil and gas CEOs abuse the outdated federal leasing system at a cost to everyone else, Deubel said. I hope President-elect Biden takes this chance to work with Congress to institute common sense reforms as soon as possible. David Jenkins, president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship said the sale was the Trump administrations final fire sale to an industry he said the former president and his cabinet supported above the needs of the environment and people of America. We are all far poorer today after the Trump administrations latestand lastfire sale of this nations public lands and mineral wealth to special interests, Jenkins said. This lease sale was a final parting gift to oil and gas speculators from a regime that has, for the past four years, catered to their every whimfleecing American taxpayers, and states like New Mexico, in the process. Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter. This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: New Mexico holds final sale of federal land to oil and gas under Trump administration ___ (c)2021 the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.) Visit the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.) at www.currentargus.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. (Photo : Screenshot From Pxhere Official Website) Toyota Fined $180 Million for Failing to Comply with US Clean Air Act for a Decade Toyota has recently agreed to pay a whopping $180 million in order to settle certain claims regarding the company's failure to comply along with the US Clean Air Act for about a decade. This particular settlement was announced by the official US Department of Justice or DoJ this Thursday. Toyota breaches Clean Air Act According to an article by ZDNet, the complaint was actually an official civil lawsuit that was filed by the government of the United States and has currently been laid to rest since Toyota has paid the fine. The DoJ states that Toyota had conducted certain systematic, longstanding violations of the official Clean Air Act when it came to emission-related defect reporting requirements. This would require the manufacturers to report the potential defects as well as the affected vehicle components that were designed in order to control the emissions. Over in the United States, the official Clean Air Act stipulates certain permissible levels of pollution just like nitrogen oxide or NOx that is produced by the vehicles being sold within the country according to the official government description. Automakers are now required to notify the EPA or Environmental Protection Agency when over 25 or more vehicles or even engines within a given year have said to have a defect that is related to emissions standards. EDIR requirements Manufacturers are required to file an EDIR or Emissions Defect Information Report as well as updating the agency regarding the progress in fixing the presented problems. The DoJ notes that Toyota has failed to do this. According to the official prosecutor statement, the mandatory reporting requirements are very important to the overall Clean Air Act's main purpose of being able to protect both human health as well as the environment from certain harmful air pollutants. They also encourage the manufacturers to both investigate and voluntarily address these particular defects that could result in the excess emissions of certain harmful air pollutants. Read Also: NASA Scientist Admits Giving US Intellectual Property to China, Will Face Up to 5 Years in Prison Delays up to eight years The official complaint that was filed over in the Manhattan federal court alleges that starting roughly 2005 to 2015, Toyota had failed to comply with the reporting requirements and delayed at least 78 different EDIRs. It was noted that some of the delays were up to eight years overdue. These were alongside reports that were related to fixes for certain emissions-based issues in the vehicles. Prosecutors estimate that the reports were actually linked to maybe millions of vehicles all with the potential to actually exhibit emission-related defects. The official civil penalty is currently the largest issued as of the moment when it comes to meeting the EPA reporting standards but is still subject to a period of time for certain public comment as well as the final court approval. According to the Acting US Attorney Audrey Straus, Toyota now shuts its eyes to the particular noncompliance, failing to provide the proper training, attention, as well as the oversight to its official Clean Air Act reporting certain obligations. Related Article: Lawyer Mocks North Dakota Censorship Bill that Could Sue Facebook and Twitter Amid Oddities This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Urian Buenconsejo 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. MEDFORD, Ore. Rogue Credit Union recently presented Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center with a check for $170,000 and some additional gifts to benefit the hospial's pediatric unit. The donation is the largest that Rogue Credit Union has ever raised for the Asante Foundation, the credit union said in a statement. The check was accompanied by an electric ride-on car full of children's toys. Through our Credit Unions for Kids outreach, Rogue is proud to continue its support of Asantes Childrens Miracle Network programs, providing the best care for children in our community, said Rogue Credit Union President & CEO, Gene Pelham. This would not have been possible without the generosity of our members. Unlike most years, the presentation was closed to the public due to COVID-19 precautions. The funds were raised throughout 2020 from Rogue Credit Union employees and members through a variety of fundraisers. A $10,000 "Miracle Match" was included in the total thanks to Co-Op Financial Services. "Rogue Credit Union is proud to support the regions only Childrens Miracle Network Hospital, Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center," RCU said. For the 14th day in a row, San Antonio health officials reported more than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19, a sign of the continuing rampant spread of the virus throughout the community. The 1,829 cases added Thursday tipped Bexar Countys total since the pandemic began to 140,614. Half those cases about 70,000 have been reported within the last two months. Yet the number of cases confirmed by positive test results represents a fraction of the number of people currently infected across the county. Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger, San Antonios coronavirus czar, said Thursday that health officials estimate that there are nearly 18,000 active infections this week alone. You need to assume everyone around you has the virus and act accordingly, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said, urging residents to avoid crowded situations. As the spread of infections has surged across San Antonio, so too has the number of residents dying of the disease. Nirenberg said Thursday that COVID-19 killed 19 more people, whose deaths occurred within the last two weeks. All were over age 70, with the exception of one man in his 50s who died at home. The vast majority were residents of assisted living facilities or nursing homes. Bridger said health officials havent identified outbreaks in specific nursing homes and assisted living facilities instead, cases and deaths have risen in general, mirroring the community as a whole. But residents and the medical providers who care for them could soon see relief. The federal government contracted with private pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate long-term care facility residents and staff members. Bridger said the process to administer both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine is almost complete. They are finishing up the second doses over the next week to 10 days, Bridger said. So that should help. Thursdays double-digit death count came a day after the city reported 25 new deaths a near record. Since the pandemic began, only one other day has been more deadly: Aug. 12, when the record of 26 was set. The countys total death toll stands at 1,704. COVID-19 patients also continued to flood area hospitals, with 158 people admitted in the last 24 hours. On Thursday, hospitals were caring for 1,407 COVID-19 patients, a slight dip from 1,411 the day before. Of those, 382 people were critically ill and needed intensive care, down slightly from 393 on Wednesday. The number of patients needing ventilators to breathe also inched down, to 231 from 237. The mayor cautioned San Antonians against letting their guard down because of the plateau of cases in the last few days. (Hospitals are) at high stress right now, and the numbers have not shown much mercy, Nirenberg said. While weve had a few days that have leveled off a little bit, thats certainly not a trend. Staff writer Liz Hardaway contributed to this report. marina.riker@express-news.net Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer approved the deployment of several hundred Michigan National Guard members to Washington, D.C. ahead of President-elect Joseph Bidens inauguration on Jan. 20. National Guard members from several states are being sent to provide additional security, medical support and traffic control around the U.S. Capitol, National Mall and the White House. The National Guard Bureau asked states for support as officials brace for additional protests after a violent mob broke into the Capitol last week. Ensuring a peaceful transition of presidential power is essential to our democracy, and Im proud that these outstanding Michiganders will be lending their professionalism, training, and seasoned experience to ensure the safety and well-being of our fellow Americans in Washington, D.C., Whitmer said in a statement. There are 7,000 National Guard members on the ground in the District of Columbia as of Thursday, according to a National Guard Bureau news release. Whitmer also activated the Michigan National Guard in response to demonstrations being planned at the state Capitol in Lansing. Maj. Gen. Paul Rogers said members of the National Guard were put on active duty to protect people, facilities and key infrastructure in Lansing, but did not identify how many personnel will be deployed. I assure you that our response is significant and in direct relation to the requests of our partners, Rogers said. The Michigan National Guard is also continuing its aid to the states COVID-19 response efforts. There are 500 guardsmen supporting food banks, as well as local health care organizations with medical personnel for COVID-19 testing and vaccination teams. Rogers said hes confident that the activation of personnel to Lansing and D.C. will not impact the National Guards COVID-19 response. There are 11,000 members of the Michigan National Guard in total. I want to assure the public today that we have sufficient resources to support all of the missions, Rogers said. READ MORE ON MLIVE: Lansing mayor says Proud Boys, boogaloo groups planning armed protests at Michigan Capitol Michigan National Guard preparing for armed protest at Capitol Sunday Extreme rhetoric thrives on alternative social media sites growing after Facebook, Twitter crackdown Patrick Kielty has said the early release from prison of loyalist paramilitaries who murdered his father over 30 years ago was "a price worth paying" for the possibility of peace. The comedian and TV presenter made his comments to former Irish president Mary McAleese in her new RTE series, All Walks of Life, due to be broadcast tonight. Kielty's father Jack (45) was shot dead by the UVF in 1988 in his Dundrum workplace. Hooded gunmen burst into the offices of the building contractor and leading GAA official on January 25 and shot him several times at close range. Kielty, who lives in London with his wife Cat Deeley and two young sons Milo and James, was only 16 when he buried his father. Walking alongside Mrs McAleese in Tollymore Forest Park, Co Down, Kielty (49) recalls how he managed to find humour amid the Troubles despite his father's sectarian murder. He said: "It was an assassination I suppose. I've never really used that word before but when someone just comes in and someone else is helpless, that's what it was." Reflecting on how he heard the fateful news, he added: "I was in school and was sent to the headmaster's office and told: 'Sit down, we've bad news, he's been shot'. 'Is he dead?'. 'Yes' and then everything else goes into slow motion but (thinking) 'he can't really be dead'. It's also that thing of you normally go home and you see somebody dead but of course you don't because there's an autopsy and all of those things, "There's that 24 hours of 'it's not really happening is it?'" The IRA offered revenge for his father's murder which was rejected by the family. Asked if he had ever been recruited by paramilitaries to avenge his father, Kielty replied: "There was an approach to a relation in the graveyard on the morning he was buried but never directly (at me). "When you've come through something like that the last thing you want is for anybody else to go through it, let alone you visit it upon anybody else. That was never even a thought," he added. Three men were convicted over the killing and each sentenced to life imprisonment. "A lot of people talk about how they want to have justice and I can really understand that if someone is caught and charged and goes to jail maybe they think that's going to help," Kielty said. "It didn't really help us. I think one of the things which really helped was when you know your dad is an innocent man and the fact that my dad had Protestant work colleagues and friends. "We had a lot of people not just from our side of the community calling at the house. That I think gives you a lot more comfort than weirdly the notion of someone being caught." The three men were later freed from prison after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which Kielty voted for despite knowing it would lead to their release. "That didn't bother me because we were on the absolute corner of moving this place on," he added. "When people say how do you feel about your father being killed, the one thing is I hope nobody has to go through it ever again. "So if you've got something that gives this place a chance to turn the page for the first time in history and be part of a generation that actually doesn't continue that cycle of violence and if that means that the people who killed your dad are going to get out of jail, that's a price worth paying." All Walks of Life airs on Friday night at 8.30pm on RTE One Residents whove been inhaling unhealthy diesel fumes from diesel trucks could get some relief from a pilot state program approved Friday to help businesses replace them with electrics. The pilot program, targeted toward businesses in the greater Newark and Camden areas, pays up to 100% of the cost of a replacement electric vehicle and was approved by the state Economic Development Authority. The zero-emission truck voucher program is the first to be funded through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) that Gov. Phil Murphy reinstated in 2018. The $15.75 million zero emissions incentive pilot program, nicknamed NJ ZIP would help small business replace medium-duty trucks with electric vehicles to reduce air pollution through vouchers. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, said Catherine McCabe, state Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, who is retiring. Im so pleased to see it directed to communities affected by air pollution. The pilot program is expected to launch next year and fund purchase of between 100 to 300 medium duty vehicles, from a pick-up to a box truck, said Victoria Carey, EDA senior project manager. The first-come, first-served program would provide participating businesses with vouchers that can be redeemed when the electric truck is registered. The Newark and Camden areas were chosen because residents have been overburdened by the health effects of air pollution, Carey said. Replacement electric vehicles must be spend all or the majority of their time operating in the vicinity of those cities, she said. Diesel trucks are about ten times dirtier than gasoline cars, due to the high levels of toxic pollutants they emit. It is crucial we prioritize electrifying dirty diesel trucks, especially in environmental justice communities, said Hayley Berliner, Environment New Jersey Clean Energy Associate. The program is a great step forward to reduce air pollution, make our residents healthier, and reduce our impact on the climate. Some people told the EDA during its phone meeting that the program should have been available to more communities, including an Atlantic City businessman who said he was disappointed more places werent included. It shows the mistake of state government to say all of South Jersey is Camden and all of North Jersey is Newark, he said. Id ask the reservation of Camden and Newark be lifted. While environmentalists thanked the EDA for the program, they also asked that it be expanded. We encourage the EDA to work with DEP and Board of Public Utilities to have more charging infrastructure to increase the adoption of electric vehicles, said Eric Miller, Natural Resources Defense Council state policy director. The NJ ZIP pilot is an incredible first step, we look to rolling it out more in geography and vehicle type. Depending on the success of the pilot program ZIP could be expanded, said Tim Sullivan EDA CEO. We have significant ambitions to expand the pilot program as much as we can, including Atlantic City, he said. We hope it will work well and to roll it out statewide as soon as we can. While the pilot program is very small, it could jumpstart the market for electric trucks in the state, and encourage businesses to participate even if they dont apply for a voucher, Berliner said. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey committed to replace one third of its light duty fleet, which is underway and replaced 36 airport buses with electrics. Once the pilot is over, we would love to see this program expand to include heavy-duty trucks as well as medium-duty, and expand its geographic borders, Berliner said The program is the first funded through RGGI pronounced reggie a regional cap-and-trade agreement among 10 Northeastern states, from Maine to Maryland that New Jersey rejoined in 2020. Through the arrangement, power plant operators in each state bid for emissions credits on a quarterly basis; the credits are essentially allowances to release carbon into the atmosphere. Proceeds from those auctions are then split between the participating states to fund local clean energy and climate change mitigation projects. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. At his press conference on July 8, Joe Biden offered a rather bizarre interpretation of history, in which he likened Ted Cruz and his challenge to some electoral votes to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the Big Lie. Biden illustrated his point by referring to the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 in which, he said, 250 or 2,500 people were killed. And yet Joseph Goebbels inflated the number to 25,000, even 250,000, thus perpetrating The Big Lie. Biden added, like Goebbels and the Great Lie. You keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie. As an historian I am flummoxed at Bidens illustration of Dresden as a Big Lie. In fact, the best estimate is that 28,000 people died in the bombing of Dresden. In a bizarre way, however, Joe Biden has accurately linked the Allied bombing campaign of Germany to the Big Lie of Nazi propaganda. Except the Nazi Big Lie was not about Dresden. Rather it was about the British and American bombing of Hamburg in 1943. From July 24 through August 2, 1943, the Allied air forces, mainly the RAF, unleashed a series of massive bomber raids against Hamburg involving as many as 700+ planes at a time. Hamburg, one of Germanys greatest industrial centers, was struck in a way no previous city had been. The raids were especially devastating, inflicting an estimated 34,000 to 38,000 dead. The raid of 27 July 1943 alone, in which atmospheric conditions created a firestorm, killed more than 18,000 Hamburg residents. The Allied attack on Hamburg destroyed or damaged more than 60% of the housing in the city and wrecked more than half the factories, a serious blow to German industrial production. The Hamburg raids came as a gigantic shock to the Nazi leadership and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels admitted to his diary that Germany was losing the war. The Big Lie about Hamburg was the official position of the Nazi government put through the German news media: Hamburg had been bombed but casualties were not heavy, damage was not severe, and the city was carrying on. Indeed, it sounded plausible at first. Up to summer 1943, Germany was coping well with RAF bombing raids. The German civil defense system was well-organized and able to quickly repair infrastructure, put damaged factories back into operation, and efficiently feed and rehouse civilians made homeless. But in Hamburg the German government and military were simply overwhelmed. More than half the citys inhabitants lost their housing and possessions, and the streets were choked with the dead. A million civilians were immediately evacuated from Hamburg, broken into groups and dispatched from suburban train stations to towns all across Germany so that no single area would be overwhelmed by the mass of refugees who needed food and housing. Thousands of concentration camp prisoners (unable to communicate the horrors they saw) were brought into Hamburg to collect and bury the tens of thousands of dead in mass graves and to clear streets of rubble. The destruction was so severe that Hamburg never recovered during the war. The shell-shocked survivors of the Hamburg bombing were warned by the Gestapo not to speak of what they had experiencedor else. Every effort was made by the Nazis to insist that Hamburg was still a functioning city. In 1943 Germans who listened to the news from British radio (which provided accurate accounts of the scale of casualties and damage of the Hamburg raids) could be arrested and even executed. Hamburg survivors who told their new neighbors about the devastation they witnessed invited arrest by the Gestapo. Every effort was made to keep the truth of Hamburg from the German public. Yet survivors still talked. One cannot go through such a horrific experience and keep silent. A million witnesses saw the inability of the Reich government to prevent a major city from becoming a literal Hell. The stories all rang true, and the common people of Germany believed the survivors. Only diehard Nazis believed the official German government line after Hamburg and increasing numbers of Germans turned to listening to forbidden British radio rather than the state propaganda. German civilian morale plummeted when people realized that if the Allies could totally devastate one of Germanys greatest cities in a few days, then the war was truly lost. The big lie failed. Still, the Gestapo made sure that Germans carried on the war effort to the end. Its interesting to watch the Democrats constantly making historical analogies to Naziism because, at every attempt, they display their astounding ignorance of history. From the historical context, a Big Lie is a demand by political leaders that the public believe something highly improbable. This belief is repeated by a government-controlled media and its public acceptance is coerced by government agencies and a co-opted judicial system. Ted Cruz and a handful of minority senators and congressmen publicly contesting corrupt and illegal actions of state and local governments does not fit the historical definition of the Big Lie. For Bidens charge to work we must accept, as an article of faith, that election fraud is virtually nonexistent, that one-party Democrat machine cities in the swing states are devoted to serving the public, and that the humble and devoted leaders and civil servants of these cities would never, ever break the law for political and personal gain. The Big Lie of 2020 is that it was a clean and honest election. Like the Big Lie of Hamburg raids, the Big Lie will fail. Like Hamburg in 1943, there are simply too many witnesses. There are the videos of election observers being blocked in several cities and videos in Atlanta of observers sent away, and in their absence election workers piling ballots into the counting machines. There is sworn testimony from hundreds of election workers detailing illegal actions. There is hard documentary evidence of the dead voting by mail, or of (supposedly) living voters receiving and returning their ballots by the postal service within a day. There are thousands of Georgia voters who illegally provided post office box numbers as their place of residence. There is the analysis of highly respected IT experts and statisticians who have spotted statistically implausible vote spikes, unusual local turnout, and voting patterns not seen in previous elections. The evidence presented at state legislative hearings (I watched some on One America News) is thorough, well-documented and plausible. Joe Biden is beginning his presidency with one of the biggest lies in the history of American politics. On top of the honest election lie, he will have to maintain lies about his familys Chinese and Ukrainian business connections, as well as his involvement in illegal deep state surveillance of political opponents. With so many lies, well have an interesting time seeing the Democrats defending Biden over the next four years. Still, the historical pattern is consistent. Even the most coercive states cannot maintain the Big Lie. Photo credit: YouTube screengrab James S. Corum PhD is a military historian, author and co-author of 14 books, and is a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 21:21:33|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close LUSAKA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The reopening of schools in Zambia has been delayed by two weeks due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, the country's presidency said on Friday. Schools were initially expected to open on January 18 but will now be opened on February 1. In a statement, Zambian President Edgar Lungu said the delay was meant to allow school authorities to prepare adequately in terms of putting in place preventive measures against the pandemic. He said the country has seen a spike in cases that could put learners at risk if schools reopened without putting in place effective preventive measures. Earlier, six teacher unions expressed concern about the preparedness of the Ministry of General Education ahead of the reopening of schools. The teacher unions said in a statement that the ministry could have carried out a survey before declaring that all schools should open on January 18. Enditem Zak Kirkup in Mount Lawley with a voter and a pug. Credit:WAtoday Mr McGowan had loved to tout Mr Palmer as public enemy number one and demonise the Liberals by association after the billionaire claimed his preferences and attack ads on federal Labor helped Scott Morrison to his 2019 election win. Mr Kirkup also distanced himself from Colin Barnett's failed bid to sell Western Power by reiterating former Opposition Leader Liza Harvey's November promise that the entity would not be privatised. Asset sell-offs are not on the cards this time around for the opposition but Labor will get creative and paint the Liberal energy proposal to enable private competition with Synergy as the thin edge of the wedge towards total privitisation. WA learns Mark McGowan's weakness After facing off with New South Wales and continuing to see off COVID-19 community outbreaks through his conservative border stance, the public got a glimpse of what makes the premier really sweat. Heat and humidity. Mr McGowan's milk run trip from Kununurra to Karratha on Tuesday and Wednesday was sweltering with most days above or touching 40 degrees. This is really something. Hold on, I never sweat, oh jeez. Okay. Yep. Mark McGowan on the Broome heat The Premier told reporters in Broome he never sweats but had to mop his brow a few times outside Sun Pictures to get through a 20 minute press conference, with high humidity suffocating the town as locals wait for a big drop of rain. WA Premier Mark McGowan talks to Karratha locals at the Grand Central Tavern in Nickol. Credit:Facebook North West residents were still generally happy to see Mr McGowan, who has attained celebrity status in WA, out and about and perspiring in their part of the world. And they had $368.3 million reasons to be pleased, with key infrastructure projects promised over the next few years and a pledge to put a cap on plane tickets for regional residents. There have been several inquiries at a state and federal level into airline prices with evidence of regional West Australians being slogged more than $1000 at times for a one-way flight to or from Perth. The cost of expensive flights can be crippling and is one of the biggest downsides of living in the bush at times when residents have medical or family emergencies. Punters at the Grand Central Tavern in Karratha were pretty stoked to rub elbows with Mr McGowan following the flights announcement, who visited every table for selfies and grabbed a taco salad for lunch. 14,220,656 The number of taco salads you can buy for $368.3 million A cynical regional voter might scratch their head as to why the government is committing to subsidising their airfares when Labor had positioned itself against a mass underwriting of flights in the past. At $19.8 million set aside for the new program over three years, or $6.6 million annually, the figure seems like a relatively low sum considering how much of the nation's wealth comes out of the rich resources in the regions. As a comparison, Labor has spent around $7 million a year on incentivising logistics companies to put more freight on rail rather than the roads in and out of Fremantle Port. Nationals Leader Mia Davies was quick this week to point out disparities between country and metropolitan life. "The Nationals WA have been pushing for action from this Labor Government on regional airfare affordability for years," she said. "If Labor can afford a multibillion-dollar project like Metronet to expand public transport in Perth, similar efforts should be made to reduce the cost of regional airfares, which many depend on as an essential part of the states transport network." Why the regional blitz so early? More and more voters have been turning to early polling in recent years and major parties want to get their main messages out there in time to have any influence. For Labor, they are hoping to capitalise on the goodwill for a popular government and grab more control in the parliament's upper house. Loading The upper house's structure favours the Liberal and National alliance but has historically meant Labor requires a lot of cross-bench support to pass its legislative agenda. With 35 seats, sans speaker, a government requires 18 votes to pass any laws. Labor had 14 seats in the first McGowan term but only 13 votes with one of its members, Kate Doust, taking on the president role. This has meant Labor has often relied on the Greens and at least one cross-bench vote in the past four years. Now here's why the regions matter when it comes to the government as a whole. Labor runs 36 candidates across the six upper house districts each made up of six representatives and is a good chance to pick up extra seats in the Mining and Pastoral and South West regions in March after narrowly missing out on sweeping the electorates in 2017. Mining and Pastoral covers the Kimberley, Pilbara, and Goldfields, with the latter getting a visit from Mr McGowan and his bag of election promises on Friday. Labor's Mining and Pastoral number three candidate Peter Foster, a local government councillor in Tom Price, was narrowly pipped on preferences at the last election. He said he was hopeful all three Labor candidates would get over the line this year for his district. "People who say they dont normally vote Labor, are saying theyll vote for Mark because they feel safe," Mr Foster said. A steady stream of community projects and the progressing sealing of the Manuwarra Red Dog Highway, a key dirt road between Tom Price and Karratha, has added to a positive outlook for the party according to Mr Foster. "I think thats what people care about most. They want to see money in the regions," he said. The promises you might have missed this week There were a lot. Thankfully WAtoday has put them all into a promise tracker that will be updated throughout the course of the election. To summarise the past week, Labor promised $394,315,000 while the Liberals offered up about a third of that amount with $129,575,000. Mr Kirkup has been dusting off several of Ms Harvey's election promises she made before stepping down, but has basically gotten through his re-announcement period and started getting into the rest of the party's policy box. Liberal candidate for Fremantle Miquela Riley, Opposition Leader Zak Kirkup and Deputy Leader Libby Mettam handling rock lobsters at the Fremantle fishing harbour. Credit:Facebook On Thursday he grabbed the crayfish by the antenna and revealed a $38 million fisheries package. The promises included $10 million to find new markets for WA seafood and a bid to double the crayfish industry's size over the next decade. The latter might be a bit hard to deliver, considering China pays the most and until recently bought 90 per cent of the state's rock lobster stock prior to its live cray ban. A discovery of two new countries with the appetite and spending capacity of the not-so-Sleeping Dragon would probably be the second biggest find of the 2020s after the vaccine for COVID-19. (Natural News) A poll observer and whistleblower in Georgia informed the State Senate that 93 percent of the military votes she counted went for Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Debbie Fisher, a poll observer from Cobb County the third most populated county in the state and a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area as part of a voter review panel during the general election, revealed to a Georgia Senate subcommittee that there were major discrepancies during the election and the subsequent hand recount. She also stated that other election workers attempted to cover up these irregularities. She further divulged that military ballots often came in in a uniform fashion. They were unfolded and overwhelmingly voted in favor of Biden. She noted that this is highly irregular, given that members of the military in Georgia strongly lean Republican. Even for Cobb County, which leans Democrat, it is unlikely for any liberal candidate to receive more than 60 percent of the military vote. (Related: Georgia senators declare that vote fraud in their state was part of a coordinated, illegal scheme to rig the election.) Election officials denied military ballots were suspect On Nov. 16, Fisher worked as a poll observer during the states hand recount. During that day she reviewed 298 military ballots, 93 percent of which voted for the Democrats. She believes that this is outright impossible, especially in that part of Cobb County which typically leans Republican based on her experience as a poll worker in previous elections. The Biden campaign has long considered the counties that make up the Atlanta metropolitan area mainly Gwinnett, Fulton, DeKalb and Cobb Counties as crucial in order to achieve a victory in Georgia. Of those ballots, as I walked through them piece by piece I noticed something disturbing, testified Fisher, who said that the ballots were inordinately perfect in how they had been filled out. They were all perfectly filled out, she said. About 90 percent of them had no paper folds. Fisher considers this to be very irregular, and indicative of the possible use of a kind of machine that filled out ballots. I was told that in Cobb County, the military is required to [mail in their ballots], Fisher said to the lawmakers present during her testimony. This detail is important because the poll worker testified that it should be impossible for mail-in ballots to not have any kinds of paper folds, which are likely to happen when ballots are placed into their envelopes and have to be transported to ballot counting centers. Fisher recalled that she challenged the irregularities with the military ballots with election officials. She asked that the military ballots be thrown out. Unfortunately for her, the on-site election official refused her challenges and argued that the ballots were actually legitimate. She noted that election officials put up other roadblocks whenever she would try to bring up other irregularities. People talk about obstruction, they talk about rudeness, they talk about whatever, but I can honestly tell you there was obstruction, she added during her testimony. The senators grilled Fisher on her knowledge of the recount. When they asked if she was aware that 99.99 percent of the ballots supposedly passed signature inspection, she parried by saying that the ballot inspectors were given a lot of authority. One of their powers was being able to approve ballots without any need for oversight from higher authorities. Furthermore, Republican poll watchers were barred from observing ballot inspections and making sure that the ballots were accurate. Many election security experts have long speculated that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is involved in the statewide voter fraud scheme and the subsequent cover up of election irregularities. Fisher has called on state senators to conduct further inquiries into how the military ballots were sent, collected and counted. Raffensperger and other election officials have denied the existence of any irregularities, even during the recount. The secretary of state even said that Cobb Countys signature matching hand count audit found no fraudulent absentee ballots. The absentee ballot envelopes for the audit were pulled from 30 randomly selected boxes of the accepted ABM ballots and one box identified as accepted Electronic Ballot Delivery ABM ballots,' announced the Cobb County Elections Department in a news release. Each of these boxes that held the ballots were previously secured in boxes by the Cobb County Elections Department and were selected by a random number generator. Learn more about the ongoing investigations and lawsuits into election fraud and other irregularities in states like Georgia by reading the latest articles at Rigged.news. Sources include: NOQReport.com TheEpochTimes.com Naravane, however, added that India is committed to resolve the eight-month-long military standoff with China through talks. He was speaking at the Army Day parade in New Delhi New Delhi: In a tough message to China amid the Ladakh standoff, Army Chief Gen MM Naravane on Friday said no one should make any mistake of testing India's patience even as he asserted that a befitting response was given to the "conspiracy" of unilaterally changing the status quo along the northern frontier. Naravane also said that India is committed to resolve the over eight-month-long military standoff with China through talks. In his address at the Army Day parade in Delhi Cantonment, Naravane said the deaths of the "Galwan heroes" in eastern Ladakh in June last year will not go waste and that the Indian Army will not allow any harm to the country's sovereignty and security. "We are committed to resolve disputes through talks and political efforts but no one should make any mistake of testing our patience," he said in the presence of the country's top military brass including Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh and IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria. Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a bitter standoff in eastern Ladakh since 5 May as multiple rounds of military and diplomatic talks have not yet produced any breakthrough. Referring to the situation along the Line of Control (LoC), Naravane said Pakistan continues to shelter terrorists and 300 to 400 of them are waiting in training camps on the Pakistani side of the LoC to infiltrate into India. On the situation in eastern Ladakh, Naravane said despite the severe cold weather, the morale of the Indian soldiers isi "higher" than the region's mountain peaks "which they are protecting effectively and with promptness". "The last year was very challenging for the Army. You are aware of the tension with China along the northern border. A befitting reply was given to the conspiracy of unilaterally changing the status quo on the border," he said. "I want to assure the country that the sacrifice of the Galwan heroes will not go waste. Indian Army will not allow any harm to the country's sovereignty and security." Twenty Indian Army personnel lost their lives in a fierce hand-to-hand combat on 15 June 2020 in the Galwan Valley, an incident that marked the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades. China is yet to disclose the number of its soldiers killed and injured in the clash though it officially admitted to have suffered casualties. According to an American intelligence report, the number of casualties on the Chinese side was 35. Naravane also noted that eight rounds of military talks were held between India and China to bring the situation under control. "Our efforts will continue to find a solution to the current situation on the basis of mutual and equal security," he said. About cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan, he said there has been 44 percent increase in ceasefire violations that reflects the neighbouring country's sinister design. "Strong response is being given to the enemy on the other border. Pakistan continues to provide safe haven to terrorists. In the training camps, across the LOC around 300-400 terrorists are ready to infiltrate," he said. "There was an increase of 44 percent in the ceasefire violations last year which is proof of Pakistan's sinister plans. There were also attempts to smuggle weapons using drones," he added. "There were efforts to smuggle in weapons (into India) from across the border using drones and tunnels," he said. The Chief of the Army Staff said India's active operations and strong counter infiltration grid not only inflicted heavy losses on the enemy but they contained infiltration attempts as well. Naravane said the Army killed over 200 terrorists in counter-terror operations and on the LoC last year, adding these measures have provided people of Jammu and Kashmir relief from terrorism. On the security situation in the North East, he said major success was achieved in anti-militancy operations conducted by the Army in cooperation with the Myanmarese Army. Naravane said around 600 militants had surrendered last year in the North East due to proactive operations by the armed forces. Myanmar is one of India's strategic neighbours and shares a 1,640-km-long border with a number of northeastern states including militancy-hit Nagaland and Manipur. There has been increasing cooperation between Indian and Myanmarese armies in the last few years in guarding the border. Some militant groups from the North-East region are taking shelter in Myanmar. A court in eastern France has convicted a Deliveroo driver of anti-Semitic discrimination for refusing to transport orders of kosher food. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Thursday that the Algerian courier would be deported after he completes his prison sentence. The conviction in the city of Strasbourg came two days after a regional Jewish institution, the Israelite Consistory of the Bas-Rhin region, said two kosher restaurants had reported that drivers working for Deliveroo refused to handle their food because they didn't want to deliver to Jews. A court in eastern France has convicted a delivery driver of anti-Semitic discrimination for refusing to take orders for kosher food. The man, who was in France illegally, will be deported after serving his sentence [Stock image] The group and restaurants filed a legal complaint, the consistory said Tuesday, denouncing what it called 'openly anti-Semitic discrimination.' Only one deliverer was ultimately involved in the court action. The interior minister tweeted that the Algerian man, who was in France illegally, had been convicted and handed a four-month prison sentence. 'I decided to expel from the national territory the food 'deliverer'...who said he did not want to handle deliveries to Jewish clients,' Darmanin wrote. The Strasbourg prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into 'discrimination based on ethnic origin in the framework of providing a service,' according to a prosecutor's aide. Deliveroo spokesman Damien Steffan told local broadcaster France Bleu on Tuesday that the company thinks 'anti-Semitic acts, like all racist or discriminatory acts of all kinds, are unacceptable.' Deliveroo has around 14,000 drivers in France and has seen business grow considerably during the coronavirus pandemic. The case drew the national government's attention amid long-running efforts to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. France's minister for citizenship issues, Marlene Schiappa, met on Tuesday with the management of Deliveroo France. Cast: Ram Pothineni, Nivetha Pethuraj and Malavika Sharma Director: Kishore Tirumala Rating: 2.5/5 Red, the official remake of the 2019-Tamil super hit Thadam, had got a huge pre-release buzz for actor Ram Pothineni playing a dual role in it. Sadly, however, while Red tries to stay true to the original, it goes for long stretches unable to recreate the thrilling moments and technical brilliance that made Thadam the smart flick it was. In the story, lookalikes Siddharth, a construction company owner, and Aditya, a smart thief and card-game addict (both played by Ram Pothineni), have contrasting personalities. While Siddharth has a love interest in Mahima (Malvika Sharma), Aditya gets into a transformation mode upon meeting Gayatri (Amritha Aiyer), a mobile-phone salesgirl. However, both Siddharth and Adityas worlds converge when they become prime suspects in a police case. The rest of the film revolves around the mystery unfolding through a series of investigations. However, despite the genre, Red is laced with few thrills and loads of drags. The movie opens on a bland note, with much of its screenplay dedicated to establishing the dichotomy of the lookalikes. The setup and the characters look interesting at the outset, but the scenes lack in spontaneity and the first half of the film seems to test the patience of its audiences keen for plot twists. The pre-interval bang, however, sets in some much-needed reprieve, adding momentum to the story and finally bringing to it a semblance of a thriller. So too, the second half of the movie owns the proverbial meat of the story, with a couple of twists thankfully slipping in. But just as the second half of the film salvages the otherwise slow-fest, the audience is once again compelled to wade through force-fitted comic stretches that do nothing but ruin the build-up of the plot. The logical loopholes in the story do get you thinking for a while, but you soon wonder if its really worth the time of day. Youre tempted to tell the cops what they must do only to realise youre a mere viewer. While the final payoff doesnt seem satisfying, one might even consider the film as having lived up to the genre it claims to belong to because our hero was successful in his mission. Director Kishore Tirumala ticks all the buttons when it comes to giving Ram a new look in Red. And credit where its due, the actor effortlessly switches between the suave Siddharth and a rough-on-the-edges-but-sharp Aditya. Sadly, the screenplay is a let-down. Malvika Sharma and Amrita Aiyer look like caricatures in the film. While Malvika manages to be noticeable in the film, Amrita looks lost, seeming like she first needed to find the reason for her vague existence in the film. Nivetha Pethuraj, who plays an honest cop called Yamini, shines in parts but fizzles out in the end, joining the pile of deadbeat caricature-like supporting cast. All in all, this was certainly not the fare the filmmakers imagined they could paint the town Red with, erpun intended, of course. UPDATE: This story has been updated to include comments made during the bill signing ceremony. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker held a small bill signing ceremony Friday afternoon for Lauras Law, a proposal that aims to improve hospital signage, lighting and other way-finding elements to help people with medical crises reach emergency rooms. The governor held the ceremonial signing at 1:30 p.m. at the Great Hall in the Massachusetts State House, alongside Peter DeMarco, the widower of Laura Levis who advocated for the law. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Sen. Pat Jehlen joined the signing. One of the biggest things you learn, you learn it over and over and over again, is the incredible resiliency, power and strength that regular people have to turn tragedy to opportunity to improve the lives of those that come after them, the Republican governor said Friday afternoon. Ceremonial signings are a rare sight these days on Beacon Hill as the State House remains closed to the public to reduce spread of COVID-19. The governor has not said when the State House is expected to reopen. With thousands of new COVID-19 cases reported each day, the state buildings reopening seems unlikely to happen soon. DeMarco said said he hopes Lauras laws is the first of several way-finding reforms in the United States. It took nearly two years to get here. I wasnt sure wed even reach this day, but in the end, Lauras law passed unanimously, DeMarco said. In the end, everyone saw how good and pure a bill this is. Lawmakers enacted Lauras law, S.2931, in the early hours of Jan. 6 as lawmakers stretched the two-year legislative session past midnight. Levis was experiencing asthma symptoms the morning of Sept. 16, 2016 when she searched for the emergency room at Somerville Hospital. DeMarco detailed her final moments in Losing Laura for the Boston Globe Magazine, writing that a lack of a clear emergency room sign and bright lighting around the official emergency room entrance prevented her from getting help in time. Levis dialed 911 but went into cardiac arrest by the time she was found. She died days later at age 34. Laura Levis, a former Boston Globe reporter, went on to write and edit the Harvard Magazine and Harvard Gazette before her death. She loved hiking and weightlifting.Courtesy of Peter DeMarco The proposal creates a working group that would make recommendations on improving hospital signage, lighting and other improvements. The working group would have six months after the law takes effect to submit recommendations. The state Department of Public Health would have a year from when the law takes effect to create regulations, based on those recommendations. The law isnt expected to take effect immediately. The clock doesnt start until the emergency declaration for COVID-19 ends. I think its perfectly possible for us and them to work together to make sure we can start the process of developing what i would describe as the rules of the road with respect to this, Baker said of his administration and the health care industry, and I also anticipate that well have willing collaborators who want to help us get this done as quickly as we can. Im not worried about that. Related content: Advertisement A retired New York couple in their 70s flew to Florida, where they have a second home, for four days to receive the COVID vaccine amid growing concerns about tourists flying into the state for the shot - but Gov. Ron DeSantis denies there's an influx of medical tourists. Phil and Roberta Rice, both in their early 70s, wanted to get the vaccine as soon as possible because they both have underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable to severe complications from COVID-19. The former schoolteachers live in Delmar, New York most of the year but have a second home in Naples, Florida where they spend the winters. This winter they stayed put due to the pandemic. In a desperate bid to get the vaccine as soon as possible they flew to Florida because the state was one of the first to prioritize inoculating people 65 and up. They received the first shot of the Moderna vaccine on January 7, a week before New York changed its eligibility criteria to include people 65 and up on Tuesday. According to prior guidelines, those under the age of 75 werent slated to get the shot for months. 'We were up in the air. So when we saw that it looked more likely that wed be able to get it in Florida much sooner, maybe even months sooner, decided to go for it,' Phil said to the Times Union. Despite reports about tourists and day-trippers traveling to Florida just for the vaccine, Gov. DeSantis says they're just 'snowbirds' returning to their second homes in the state, who could infect others if they aren't vaccinated. Retired New York couple Phil and Roberta Rice, both in their early 70s, flew to their second home in Florida to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on January 7 because the state was allowing people 65 and up to get the shot. They returned to New York four days later. The couple shared this Facebook post posing with their vaccination stickers after getting their first dose Florida was one of the first states to allow people aged 65 and up to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. New York only adjusted vaccine eligibility to include people 65 and older on Tuesday. In a bid to get inoculated as soon as possible they flew to Florida for a few days to get first access to get the vaccine. Phil pictured left and his wife Roberta right The retired schoolteacher couple wanted to get the vaccine as soon as possible because they both have underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable to severe complications from COVID-19. They usually spend winters in Florida but didn't this year due to the pandemic. 'I wish I could somehow make everyone have vaccine right away. I do feel bad that other people havent been as lucky as we have in that sense,' Phil said However, travel for the vaccine has led to criticism over unfair and inconsistent vaccine rollout policies, where the rich can travel across state lines and cut ahead of the line. 'I think it's totally fine if they wanted to' be vaccinated, the Republican governor said at a recent news conference. 'It's not like they're just vacationing for two weeks... They have relationships with doctors. They get medical care in Florida... So that's a little bit different than somebody that's just doing tourism,' he explained. While still in their New York home the Rices reserved vaccination appointments in Lee County, Florida, near their second home, and after several attempts they snagged two of the approximately 5,000 vaccine doses Lee County planned to distribute the first week of January. The couple then flew to Florida that week and received one shot each of the Moderna vaccine on January 7 and flew back to New York on Monday. They said they intend to drive back down for their second dose and spend the rest of the winter at their home there. Since the start of the pandemic Florida has recorded more than 1.5million COVID-19 cases and 23,613 resident deaths and 368 non-resident deaths, as of Thursday state data. Phil, a director at the Theater Barn in New Lebanon, says he understands that controversy about the vaccine rollout and how people can cut the line by traveling to other states with looser vaccine restrictions. 'I wish I could somehow make everyone have vaccine right away. I do feel bad that other people havent been as lucky as we have in that sense,' he said. The Rice's journey across state lines is also an example of how a lack of federal guidelines surrounding the vaccine rollout could lead to social inequity, as people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds can afford to travel to different parts of the country for the shot ahead of those who can't. About 4 percent of the 650,000 people who have been inoculated in Florida list an out-of-state residence, health department records released this week show. About 2 percent of both the 1.5 million people who have been diagnosed in Florida with COVID-19 and the nearly 24,000 who have died there of the disease have been nonresidents. Since the start of the pandemic Florida has recorded more than 1.5million COVID-19 cases and 23,613 resident deaths and 368 non-resident deaths, as of Thursday state data. A resident gets her vaccinations card after receiving a Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at The Palace, an independent living community for seniors, at Coral Gables in Miami, Florida on Tuesday A resident at The Palace, an independent living community for seniors, at Coral Gables in Miami, Florida, pictured receiving the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine on Tuesday The Florida Department of Health has no residency requirement for people to receive the vaccine in the state. A view of residents at The Palace, an independent living community for seniors, at Coral Gables in Miami, Florida, pictured waiting for a follow-up check after receiving the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava visits a COVID-19 vaccination site setup at Tropical Park on Wednesday in Miami This graph by the Florida Health Department shows the growth of new cases of COVID among state residents a day, showing how it has slightly declined in January This graph shows Florida's resident deaths, showing how it has slumped since December Phil admitted he has 'some misgivings' about people with no connections to Florida flying in to get the shot. He explains that he and his wife have had a home in Florida for years and wouldve been there at this time of the year anyways were it not for the pandemic. 'I think more than anything else its peace of mind. The vaccine will make it much less likely that we will become ill and hopefully we may be able to spend a little more time with our family. But I dont think its going to mean we stop wearing masks and social distancing. I think well continue to do those things until more people have gotten the vaccine,' he said. The Florida Department of Health has no residency requirement for people to receive the vaccine in the state. As long as one meets the states eligibility criteria which at the moment includes long-term care facility residents and staff, people 65 and older, and health care personnel - they can get the shot. 'The vaccine is available to residents, non-residents and part-time residents who meet the authorization criteria,' the state's health department said. Concerns about tourists and day-trippers swooping into Florida just for the vaccine are mounting, but Gov. Ron DeSantis has brushed the criticism aside. DeSantis said the nonresidents who are getting shots are almost entirely 'snowbirds' returning to their second homes, who could infect others if they aren't vaccinated. A view of residents of The Palace, a community for seniors, in Miami, Florida waiting to receive the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine on Tuesday above James Hughes receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from a healthcare worker at a recently opened drive-thru site on Wednesday in The Villages, Florida A Hillsborough County Fire Rescue team member speaks to a person in a car as people line up at a coronavirus vaccination site at the Strawberry Festival Fairgrounds in Plant City, Florida on January 13 Barbara Johnson smiles while receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a drive-through vaccination site at the Strawberry Festival Fairgrounds in Plant City, Florida on Wednesday Not all Florida officials are happy about people flying in for the vaccine. Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat who is contemplating a run against DeSantis next year, said her office has received multiple complaints from Floridians who are angry that nonresidents are getting shots and who allege that some are not 65 or older. That is on top of complaints that vaccination appointments are gobbled up as soon as they are posted while phone and online registration systems keep crashing. 'This is a major issue. We are seeing lines all across the state of Florida. ... I've talked to seniors who've waited hours upon hours,' Fried said. Vaccine eligibility varies widely by state. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week that states should follow Floridas model and concentrate vaccination efforts on those 65 and older, but governors and health officials have crafted their own rules. As a result, senior citizens, teachers, police, firefighters, grocery store workers and prison inmates all hold different places in line depending on where they live. DeSantis said Tuesday that there have been calls to vaccine registration hotlines from foreigners and residents of other states who want to travel to Florida only long enough to get the shots, but they are turned away. And Argentine television personality Yanina Latorre said in an online video that her 80-year-old mother got vaccinated in Miami-Dade County during their annual trip to South Florida. She praised Florida officials for allowing outsiders to get shots. She noted that there is no vaccine available in Argentina. 'I came to a country where the vaccine is legal for all people that are older than 65 years, and I got my mother vaccinated,' Latorre said. 'I didn't do anything illegal.' One of the major challenges before the govt is to ensure that the farmers call off their proposed tractor march to Delhi on Republic Day The next round of talks has been scheduled on Tuesday, January 19, the day when the Supreme Court-appointed committee was due to start its consultations with stakeholders to end the impasse. (Photo:PTI) New Delhi: The ninth round of talks on Friday between the Central government and the protesting farmers unions over the three agricultural reform laws again failed to break the deadlock as the two sides were unable to reach common ground on the issues of repeal of the laws and the Minimum Support Price (MSP) Act. The next round of talks has been scheduled on Tuesday, January 19, the day when the Supreme Court-appointed committee was due to start its consultations with stakeholders to end the impasse. Fridays was the first meeting after the court stayed the implementation of the farm laws till further orders and announced formation of a four-member panel to hear the grievances of the farmers and the governments views. Just two days after the committee was named by the court, Bhupinder Singh Mann, president of BKU (Mann) and chairman of All India Kisan Coordination Committee, recused himself from the panel, saying: I will always stand with my farmers and Punjab. One of the major challenges before the government is to ensure that the farmers call off their proposed tractor march to Delhi on Republic Day. On Monday, the Supreme Court will have to decide on a petition by the Centre, moved through the Delhi police, to stop the protesters from holding any rally that could disrupt the Republic Day parade. While the Centre insists the laws introduced in September will unshackle farmers from having to sell their produce only at regulated wholesale markets, the protesting farmers say the bills are meant to benefit private buyers. After meeting 41 representatives of farmers unions, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar said: Todays talks with the farmers unions were inconclusive. We will hold talks again on January 19. We are positive (about) reaching a solution through talks. During the negotiations, he urged the union leaders to be flexible in their approach. Besides Mr Tomar, Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Som Parkash, who is an MP from Punjab, were also present at the meeting which lasted for around five hours. Mr Tomar said the government was concerned about the health of the farmers who have been camping on Delhis outskirts for almost two months. The farmers round-the-clock sit-ins in cold weather have also led to some deaths among them. Mr Tomar said he has no problem with the fact that the unions want to continue their talks only with the government, but also said the court-appointed panel will also continue its work. On the Congress protest led by Rahul Gandhi in support of the agitating farmers, he said: Congress leaders laugh at the statements and actions of Rahul Gandhi, (they) mock him. I would like to tell him that in their 2019 election manifesto, the Congress had promised that they will bring this reform. If he does not remember, he should read the manifesto again. Bharatiya Kisan Union spokesman Rakesh Tikait, who has been at the forefront of the agitation for over seven weeks at Delhis borders, said: Our demands of repealing of the three farm laws & MSP guarantee remain. We will not go to the committee constituted by the Supreme Court. Well talk to the Central government only. All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee member Kavita Kuruganti said: Both the government and the farmers unions have reaffirmed their commitment to continue with the direct dialogue process. Farmers leader Joginder Singh Ugrahan said the unions have urged the government to repeal the three laws, but the Centre was unwilling to do so. We decided to meet again on January 19 at 12 noon. He said the union leaders also raised the issue of the NIA raids on transporters in Punjab who are supporting the farmers protests and providing logistics support for the agitation. Dan Hansel, of Houtzdale, has built on his years of deer hunting experience and the years of experience his father, Terry Hansel, passed onto him as he was learning the sport, in the digital direction dictated by his profession. The result is the TrophyTracks app, which allows deer hunters to keep track of all their observations, field notes, photos, harvests and weather information for the locations where they hunt. Ive been a whitetail hunter for years, with years of experiences, explained the assistant IT director at Penn State. But I have 25 deer stand locations and Id wake up in the morning and try to decide, Where should I hunt today? In archery season last fall, he hunted 23 hours at his most promising spot in Clearfield County. Experiences like that in previous years, including 2017, when he bagged a 10-point buck, led him that year to ask himself, Why cant I build this into an app? The app, available on Goggle Play and the Apple App Store, is a way for the hunter to record memories in his personal journal, predict the best days to hunt, and hopefully be in the right place at the right time. The basic, free membership allows the hunter to enter an unlimited number of reports but limits the number of photos he can save to 20. Those photos can include uploads from trail cameras. The paid pro version allows for more photos, but the photos are not the point of TrophyTracks. Hansel said that the advanced statistics function is the heart of the app. For example, based on previous reports from 2 different deer stand locations, TrophyTracks gives the hunter the statistic to decide which stand offers the best chance for success under current conditions. The hunter can enter those reports live while in the field or later at home. Hansel explained, Its your personal log, like hunting journals that some sportsmen maintain, but more immediate, easier to enter information and amplified with automatic map details. Like other popular hunting apps, including Onyx and Huntwise, TrophyTracks has a mapping function and that function will be enhanced in future versions to allow functions like Waze-type live-tracking on the hunters location as he moves through the hunt, but its more than mapping. He said, Its more than just about the map, its about your observations. The hunters own reports, compiled within the app, provide him with insights into which locations are giving the best results to start patterning the deer to find the right spot at the right time. Future enhancements will allow the app to offer predictive analytics, combining the hunters statistics with current conditions. In addition, although the app allows the hunter to input data, including game species other than deer encountered, Hansel plans to make it adaptable to those other species. In its first partial-year of availability, since mid-September, TrophyTracks has attracted more than 650 users. Word of mouth has been strong, but the coronavirus pandemic has hindered the roll-out by limiting Hansels planned informational visits to gun shops, deer processors and similar spots and canceling outdoor shows. For more information, visit the TrophyTracks website. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Three Rajasthan-based companies (discoms) Jaipur, Jodhpur and Ajmer will raise Rs 500 crore each through bonds. Rating agency has assigned provisional BBB rating to the bonds with stable outlook as the state government would provide unconditional and irrevocable guarantee on the securities. The rating factors in the companies status as a wholly owned power sector entity of the state government. Another positive is the cost-plus tariff framework, which allows the discoms to recover the uncontrollable cost variation on a quarterly basis. said the tariff hike approved by the Electricity Regulatory Commission in February last year is expected to improve the cash flows of these discoms, while lowering the revenue gap. (Alliance News) - Brussels backs the idea of a certificate identifying people vaccinated against the coronavirus, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Friday, although she held back on whether it could offer privileges to holders. "It is a medical must to have a certificate that you have been vaccinated," von der Leyen told reporters ahead of a visit to Portuguese capital Lisbon, offering her support to a proposal from Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. But she added that "whether that gives a priority or access to certain goods, this is a political and legal decision that has to be discussed on the European level". The World Health Organization in December trialled plans for digital vaccination certificates as countries began rolling out shots to their populations. But beyond keeping track of who has been inoculated, WHO experts "do not recommend immunity passports" that would supposedly assure bearers were protected against Covid-19 after vaccination or surviving infection, the UN body's senior emergency officer for Europe Catherine Smallwood said at the time. Tech-savvy Estonia last year began testing an app that could serve as a kind of digital "immunity passport", allowing users with antibodies to show employers and others their supposedly reduced risk of spreading the coronavirus. Greek PM Mitsotakis on Tuesday urged the EU to create a "standardised" vaccination certificate to boost the tourism industry after it crumpled under the blow of the pandemic. "Persons who have been vaccinated should be free to travel," Mitsotakis wrote to von der Leyen, adding that the question was "urgent". source: AFP Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Strides Pharma Science announced that its step-down wholly owned subsidiary, Strides Pharma Global, Singapore, has received approval for Emtricitabine and Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Tablets, 200 mg/300 mg from the United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA). The product is bioequivalent and therapeutically equivalent to the Reference Listed Drug (RLD), Truvada Tablets, 200 mg/300 mg, of Gilead Sciences. According to IQVIA MAT November 2020 data, the US market for Emtricitabine and Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Tablets, 200 mg/300 mg is approximately US$ 2.4 Bn. The product will be manufactured at the company's facility at Bengaluru and will be marketed by Strides Pharma Inc. in the US market. The company has 127 cumulative ANDA filings with USFDA of which 95 ANDAs have been approved and 32 are pending approval. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Elon Musk's Tesla foraying into the Indian market is perhaps one of the most jubilant moments for auto enthusiasts. While the company's plans for the Indian market are at a nascent stage, Tesla's entry into the Indian market is seen as a big push for the electric vehicle segment. Meanwhile, as that brews, Tata Motors stocks ended up rallying amid rumours of a joint venture with Musk's firm. On Friday, Twitter handle of Tata Motors Electric Mobility, that is not verified but is followed by Tata Motors, put out a tweet: "Aajkal tere mere pyaar ke charche hain akhbaar mein, Sab ko malum hai aur sabko khabar ho gayi!". It tagged Tesla and Elon Musk in the tweet and used the hashtags WelcomeTesla and TeslaInIndia. However, the tweet was deleted by the company a couple of hours later. This tweet came after Tata Motors categorically denied any association with Tesla and said that it is yet to finalise a partner for its passenger vehicle business. "Tata Motors has not taken any decision regarding a strategic partner for its PV (passenger vehicle) business and categorically denies any and all rumours suggesting the same," said the company in a statement. Tata Motors Electric Mobility also retweeted the tweet around the same time it deleted its tweet to Tesla. Earlier this week, reports of Tesla's firm in Bengaluru emerged. Ahead of its launch in India, Tesla set up a firm with three directors and paid up capital of Rs 1 lakh in Bengaluru. The company is also scouting for land possibly for a manufacturing and R&D set up and is reportedly in talks with multiple states including Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Soon after there were speculations of Tesla's joint venture with Tata Motors. Following such reports, Tata Motors stock rose 31% in one week. Tata Motors share price hit a new 52-week high of Rs 264.6, rising 7.93% on BSE today. Also read: Tesla incorporates firm in Bengaluru with 3 directors, scouts for land Also read: Tesla in Saki Naka traffic? Netizens in tizzy after Elon Musk's company makes way into India Monday Tracking Your Financing and Measuring Performance: Webinar hosted by SCORE. 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: www.houston.score.org. Tuesday The Ion & Innovation District: Webinar on Midtowns Accelerator Hub hosted by SCORE. 10 a.m.-noon. Registration: www.houston.score.org. Courthouse 101: Online class hosted by Fort Bend County Law Library. 10-11 a.m. Free. Registration: fortbend.lib.tx.us or call 281-341-3718. The Art of Marketing Yourself to Companies: Free online class hosted by JS101. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops. Wednesday PPP Forgiveness Application: Virtual event hosted by the UH Bauer College SBDC. 9:30-10:30 a.m. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu Advanced Contracts: Virtual event hosted by the UH Bauer College SBDC. 2-3 p.m. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu. Video Interviewing, Presenting Your Best Self: Free online class hosted by JS101. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops. Productivity in the Job Search: Free online class hosted by JS101. 1:30-3:30 p.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops. Thursday PPP Loan Forgiveness: Virtual event hosted by the UH Bauer College SBDC. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu. Doing Business with the City of Houston: Virtual event hosted by the UH Bauer College SBDC. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu. Networking on LinkedIn: Free online class hosted by JS101. 10 a.m.-noon Registration: JS101.org/workshops. Creating a Career Plan: Free online class hosted by JS101. 2-4 p.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops. Friday PPP Loan Forgiveness: Virtual event hosted by the UH Bauer College SBDC. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu. The Energy Component: Free online job search class hosted by JS101. 10-11:30 a.m. Registration: JS101.org/workshops. Saturday Understand the Numbers that Promote Your Business Success: Webinar hosted by SCORE. 9:30 a.m.-noon. Registration: www.houston.score.org. Building Income Through Real Estate: Webinar hosted by SCORE. 1-3 p.m. Part two: Single-family homes. Registration: www.houston.score.org. February Chase Small Business Series: Chase Bank is partnering with Rice Universitys Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies to help clients who are struggling or just starting out with a series of free, online short courses. For details, visit https://glasscock.rice.edu/ChaseSmallBusiness. katherine.feser@chron.com twitter.com/kfeser Twitter on Thursday blocked the official account of Russia's covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V for a short duration, leading to much chatter on the microblogging platform. The account, which was restored shortly after, posted that the suspension was the result of a "possible security breach from Virginia, USA," saying that the threat was later over. The Twitter account was blocked for at least an hour and a notice read that the platform had seen "some unusual activity" on the page and hence was restricting it from posting. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), sovereign wealth fund who also financed the development of the Sputnik vaccine, earlier tweeted that the account had been restricted. Sputnik V vaccine account has been restricted by Twitter. Please follow @sputnikvaccine account and ask Twitter to restore access so that Sputnik V can continue sharing info on fighting covid, saving lives and restoring economies. RDIF (@rdif_press) January 14, 2021 Even though the account was restored soon enough, netizens reacted to the news of the restriction. While some decided there was a bigger conspiracy behind it, a few others cracked jokes over the fact that Twitter found a breach from the US in it. My word ... what an upside-down world we live in?! Why yes WHY would someone want to log in on the Sputnik account? There can be many reasons but I always say: "Follow the money". Hanlie Ignatiev (@HanlieI) January 15, 2021 Some even likened the situation to the Whatsapp Facebook data security issue and joked that the vaccine handle should make a new account on Telegram app. I think you should create a channel in Telegram. (@rKgX1GRVmRh0em7) January 15, 2021 Someone even made a direct insinuation to Langley in Virginia where the CIA is headquartered. Was it Langley, Virginia, USA? Minister van Agitatie (@MinvanAgitatie) January 14, 2021 Why do I think this is staged? I am become Death,Destroyer of Worlds (@mtmbrsl) January 14, 2021 There were some discussions on the better vaccine available, whether it was Moderna, Sputnik or the Pfizer. Id risk getting the Sputnik V jab than the Pfizer and Moderna ones. But Im in the US. LeonBluff (@LeonRio12) January 15, 2021 Russia will submit a formal application to the European Union next month for approval of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, the head of Russias sovereign wealth fund said on Thursday. Sputnik V would be produced in seven countries. The regulators in nine countries are expected to approve the vaccine for domestic use this month. It has already been approved in Argentina, Belarus, Serbia and elsewhere. Russia, which has the worlds fourth-highest number of COVID-19 cases, plans to begin mass vaccinations next week. West Bengal elections 2021: BJP hurls phone tapping allegations against TMC India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Kolkata, Jan 15: The BJP's Kolkata zone observer Sovan Chatterjee on Thursday alleged that his mobile phone was being tapped by the Trinamool Congress government. Chatterjee also claimed that the BJP could have won 23-24 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal, had the Trinamool Congress, his former party, not used muscle power. The saffron party bagged 18 seats in that election. Dhananjay Munde rape case: BJP leader files complaint against woman "I had suddenly noticed that the phone was kept under surveillance. It was being done to help one person or the administration in general," the former Kolkata mayor told a press conference. He, however, did not say who that "one person" is. That number is being used as his WhatsApp contact only, the former minister said. He said that there are 51 assembly constituencies under the BJP's Kolkata zone, of which he was made the observer in December, and the party has to ensure that voters reach their polling booths during the assembly election due in April-May. "In the last Lok Sabha polls, we have got 18 seats. It could have been 23 or 24 easily had the TMC not used muscle power," he claimed. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News He also announced a series of programmes, including an initiative called ''Samadhan'' for solving problems of people, which will be conducted in the Kolkata zone. NC school board considers displaying Ten Commandments near school entrances Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A North Carolina school board is exploring the possibility of putting Ten Commandments displays near the entrances at each of its school buildings, a possibility that has upset a secular legal group. The Cleveland County School Board first discussed the idea at its Dec. 14 board meeting, drawing support and criticism in the last week from opposing national First Amendment legal groups. During the December meeting, board member Ron Humphries "made a motion to prepare, or have prepared, a policy requiring the display of the Ten Commandments ... in a prominent place at or near the main entrance of all of our campuses." In a statement to The Christian Post Thursday, Cleveland County School Board Chair Robert Queen said that the question surrounding the display of the Ten Commandments has been referred to our policy committee for study per the boards vote in December. There is no deadline for the committee to report back to the board about the matter, Queen added. Right now, we are more focused on educating our students during a pandemic, he explained. Supporters of the measure, including Humphries, contend that displays of the Ten Commandments on school grounds are permitted by North Carolina law, as long as they are accompanied by other historical displays. Another board member, Dena Green, expressed concern that posting the Ten Commandments at the schools would lead to "a lot of backlash" as well as "attorneys and legal fees." In response to that concern, Humphries contended that the school district "can't be sued for following the law of the state of North Carolina." On Jan. 7, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based legal group that advocates for a strict separation of church and state, sent a letter to Cleveland County School District attorney Colin Shive. In the letter, FFRF threatened legal action against the school district if the push to erect the Ten Commandments displays at its schools was not scrapped. The organization pushed back on Humphries' argument that the district cant be sued for following state law. "The District can be sued for violating the Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment] even if it is following North Carolina law, wrote FFRF Staff Attorney Christopher Line. It would be a flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause for the Board to require all of its schools to display the Ten Commandments." Furthermore, Line argued that no court has upheld the display of the Ten Commandments at a public school even in cases when the Ten Commandments were included with other historical displays. "Although the Supreme Court allowed a long-standing Ten Commandments monument on government property in one unique context, the Court made clear that such displays are unconstitutional, Line asserted. The First Liberty Institute, which describes itself as "the nation's largest law firm dedicated exclusively to defending and restoring religious liberty for all Americans," sent its own letter to the school district on Wednesday explaining why the Ten Commandments displays would not violate the Constitution. The legal nonprofit argued that if the school board rejects the Ten Commandments displays because of their religious content, the board could be engaging in overt hostility toward religion that the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed unnecessary and Constitutionally infirm. In a statement to CP, First Liberty Special Counsel for Litigation and Communications Jeremy Dys contended that "North Carolina law recognizes that The Ten Commandments, like the Magna Carta and Mayflower Compact, have much to instruct students about the development of the rule of law in this country." "The law, state Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, ensure that their display is perfectly legal and constitutional, Dys said. The Cleveland school board should ignore the plea of secular activists who would rather cancel this part of our history just because it contains religious language at exactly the moment we need to understand the rule of law the most." Dys cited the 2019 Supreme Court decision in American Legion v. American Humanist Association as proof that Ten Commandments displays on school property would not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. "Rather than give credence to a heckler's veto that questions the presence of 'religiously expressive monuments, symbols, and practices' displayed in public, the U.S. Supreme Court explained that such long-standing and historic displays bear a strong presumption of constitutionality, Dys stated. He added that the court found that religious displays "can become embedded features of a community's landscape and identity" which "a community can come to value ... without necessarily embracing their religious roots. Dys also pushed back on the idea that the court's findings in American Legion only apply to existing displays. "No less protection is offered by the Constitution for new displays that are in keeping with the history and tradition of our country. It is well-settled that simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not violate the Establishment Clause, he added. "The schools within the Board's purview are well-equipped to the challenge of educating their audience. Rather than dismiss these historic documents from public view, canceling them due only to their religious content, the Board should remain committed to the principles of religious pluralism and freedom made possible by the very documents now under consideration." FFRF, which often pressures school districts and government entities to end any perceived endorsement of religion, argues that any person who sees the Ten Commandments display will think that the religious document is being endorsed by the school. Line argued in his letter that the districts promotion of the Bible and religion over non-religion impermissibly turns any non-Christian or non-believing student, parent or staff member into an outsider." "Schoolchildren already feel significant pressure to conform to their peers, Line stressed. They must not be subjected to similar pressure from their school, especially on religious questions." FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said in a statement that public school districts have no business injecting religion into their schools or interfering with the rights of conscience of students and their parents. "Students in our public schools are free to have any god they like, as many gods as they like or none at all! In America, we live under the First Amendment, not the First Commandment, she asserted. Bukidnon (CNN Philippines, January 15) Authorities are investigating the killing of another lawyer who was gunned down by two motorcycle-riding assailants in Malaybalay City, Bukidnon Thursday morning. Police identified the victim as Winston Intong, a 53-year-old private lawyer. He was buying vegetables at Abello St., Barangay 6, just a few meters away from his home when the crime happened. CCTV footage showed the suspects taking a quick stop at a small roadside store and shooting Intong at close range. He was rushed to the nearest hospital where he was declared dead on arrival. A stray bullet also hit vegetable vendor Romeo Baliguig, Jr., 19, who has already received medical attention, police said. The Integrated Bar of the Philippines condoled with the Intong family and reiterated its call for "justice and security for Filipino lawyers." According to the IBP, more than 50 lawyers and members of the judiciary have been killed under the Duterte administration. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. Ever wondered how any smartphone you use today is susceptible to some cyber security flaw or the other, irrespective of how many security updates that are pushed to it? While a large part of it has to do with the extensive amount of resources that cyber criminals and law enforcement bodies put into finding these exploits, a new research by cryptographers at Johns Hopkins University has shed light on exactly why these exploits prevail, and how these vulnerabilities include both Android and iOS devices. The research also sheds light on how many law enforcement agencies use highly sophisticated tactics to bypass such flaws, in turn breaking the encryption of a particular device. The research was based on finding out how Android and iOS encrypts smartphones in order to protect the data on the phones. The key focus, as it so happens, was on finding out exactly how security vulnerabilities are exploited by anyone to break into a locked smartphone and extract data out of it. To understand this, they have broken down encryption on both Android and iOS smartphones into two parts Complete Protection, and After First Unlock (AFU). Its important to note that both Android and iOS phones offer both the steps, but varying degrees. As they reveal, Complete Protection essentially refers to the state of your phone right after you reboot it, or start it up after some time. At this stage, prior to you unlocking your phone for the very first time, all the data on your phone is in a stage of full encryption. This is why you may often see that if you receive a phone call from a saved contact prior to the initial unlock, you will only see their number pop up on the screen and not the name because your phones RAM (or instant memory) will not have the access to your contacts at this stage. For both Android and iOS phones, this step remains the same. The difference kicks in after this. On Android phones, right after the first unlock, even when you lock your phone using your face, fingerprint, a PIN or a pattern, the device will forever be in the AFU phase. In AFU, a large chunk of your data is pulled from the encrypted memory of your phone and stored in the non-encrypted instant memory, so that it is easy for you to access some of the data right from your lock screen without needing to unlock your phone repeatedly. This memory can be exploited by privilege escalation cyber attacks, by using flaws that are either super deep in the system, or not known yet (therefore being zero-day vulnerabilities). It is this that most law enforcement agencies use, in order to tap into data even in a locked smartphone. In iOS, the situation is slightly better. As the researchers state, iOS devices employ something called hierarchical encryption, which stores some data in AFU but still protects some of the most sensitive information in encrypted storage, even after the first unlock. In an interview with Wired, an Apple spokesperson stated that this is a choice that the company has made by design, to find the optimal balance between the convenience of finding all info readily on lock screen, and the security of protecting everything behind safe encryption. However, the researchers note that Apples iOS still has room for improvement in terms of what all can they keep behind complete encryption, in turn reducing the chances of law enforcements using the AFU operational process as a backdoor of sorts. The researchers also state that while both Apple and Google patch numerous such privilege escalation security flaws every month, iOS has a better shot at being more secure thanks to the single umbrella of Apple that it is controlled under. For Android, there are far too many OEMs, each of which have their own telecom approval and testing phase before rolling out an update while matching it to their own customisation kernel. In other words, Androids fragmented ecosystem of devices, despite improving majorly in the recent past in terms of frequency of updates, still has a long way to go in order to catch up with Apple. Apple has also reasoned that one of the reasons why they afford the convenience of storing information in cached memory rather than encrypted storage is because the hacking tools that the Johns Hopkins researchers have spoken about require highly sophisticated surveillance and tracking tools, which in turn require a significant amount of resources to develop. In comparison, unless there is any specific motive at hand that would prove to be proportionately beneficial, no attacker would find creating such tools to be a financially beneficial process. Google, however, did not offer a response yet to how they approach the data encryption on devices. 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. A plan to build a centre breeding 10,000 monkeys a year for medical research will mean the industrial-scale farming of non-human primates, animal-protectionists are warning. An animal-research company wants to build a multi-million-dollar hub in Texas that is expected to become Americas largest monkey-breeding base. Numbers could even be scaled up in the future to 30,000 a year, bosses say. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Posted Friday, January 15, 2021 7:01 am Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler's vote Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump continues to ripple through Republican circles in Clark County, with some voters calling on local party leaders to formally renounce the congresswoman. Joel Mattila, the new chair of the Clark County Republicans, said his "phone has been melting down the last couple of days," since Herrera Beutler announced her intentions on Tuesday. "And I can tell you that from old-time party regulars people that traditionally and typically support Congresswoman Herrera Beutler all the way down to your average ordinary everyday Republican voter, I can report to you that there is a lot of anger in the ranks because of her impeachment vote," Mattila said. Herrera Beutler was one of 10 Republicans to cross party lines and vote to impeach Trump for inciting a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 that killed five people. "I'm not afraid of losing my job, but I am afraid that my country will fail," Herrera Beutler said in an address on the House floor before casting her vote. "My vote to impeach our sitting president is not a fear-based decision. I am not choosing a side, I'm choosing truth." Mattila, who was elected less than two weeks ago on a pledge to reunite the pro-Trump and more traditional wings of the party, said he doesn't believe that Herrera Beutler's vote will drive a wedge between those two factions. The party is united in their frustration. "I don't think the congresswoman did herself any favors with the party faithful," Mattila said. Late Thursday evening, the Clark County Republicans released a formal statement thanking Trump for his time in office and denouncing "a riot culture" on "the far Left." A draft version of that statement didn't condemn the congresswoman outright, though it criticized her for her decision on the House floor. "(Herrera Beutler's vote) directly violates our values of standing for truth and justice, and instead panders to fear-based narratives that do not represent the Clark County Republican Party, nor the constituents who elected her. This shameful behavior will only further divide our country. President Trump's actual words clearly did not incite violence," the draft document stated. The county GOP's statement, while disapproving, didn't go full scorched-earth; that distinction belonged to the Clark County Republican Women's group, who said Wednesday evening that Herrera Beutler "will never receive our votes or support again." The group also swore to back a more conservative challenger in the next election. Could Herrera Beutler who's held on to her seat for six terms, despite a district that inches closer to the middle with each passing year face a serious Republican challenger in the 2022 primary? According to Mark Stephan, an associate professor of political science at Washington State University Vancouver, Republicans seeking to unseat Herrera Beutler in Washington's 3rd Congressional District would need to execute an extremely specific scenario. Washington's top-two primary system means that the two candidates with the most votes move on to the general, regardless of party. Herrera Beutler has the incumbency advantage, and would likely pull ahead in a crowded field of Republican challengers. Once she gets to the general election, Stephan pointed out, she'll be in a strong position regardless of whether the opposing candidate is a Democrat or a Republican; if it's a Democrat, she's already won that race six times. If it's a more conservative Republican, her impeachment vote will have broadened her appeal among Democrats and moderates across the district. There's a lot that can happen in the next two years, Stephan cautioned. But if the congresswoman lost votes within the Republican party for her support of impeachment, he said, it's likely she gained even more. "I actually think she will have helped herself," Stephan said. "Had she not voted for impeachment at this moment, this would have been galvanizing for Democrats in this district." One scenario that could put the congresswoman's seat at risk: if county Republican leaders unite behind a single conservative challenger, and the field of Democrats remains small enough to avoid vote-splitting, it's possible that Herrera Beutler's decision on impeachment will come back to haunt her and bump her out of the top two in the 2022 primary. That's a scenario that David Gellatly, head of the partisan activist group Activate Republicans Clark County, thinks will likely unfold. "I think that's inevitable at this point. This was probably the one single vote that Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler could make that basically would almost eliminate her chances of making her way through the primary," Gellatly said. "People want somebody else immediately to start stepping up." He declined to speculate on the record on who he believes might take that mantle. "There's a pool of names that are very likely," Gellatly said. ___ (c)2021 The Columbian (Vancouver, Wash.) Visit The Columbian (Vancouver, Wash.) at www.columbian.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Nostalgia is also essential to the allure. In both its flavors and on its labels, Orono Brewing in Orono, Maine, pays homage to Hostess Fruit Pies, a cherished treat, with its pastry sour ales. Abe Furth, a founder and the head of sales and marketing, said that as a boy in rural Maine, he would get a Hostess Fruit Pie for doing chores. The beers offer an emotional connection to where customers grew up. Challenges Beat ResolutionsEvery Day of the Week Set yourself a task with a clear completion, however small, and start your streak As a young comedian, Jerry Seinfeld hung a big calendar on his wall. He began writing jokes every day. After he wrote, he put a big red X over that day. According to Seinfeld: After a few days youll have a chain Your only job is to not break the chain. Seinfeld didnt resolve to become a great comedian. He challenged himself to write every day. See the difference? Its not just semantics. Challenges are action oriented, whereas resolutions are outcome oriented. With a resolution, you think about who you want to become. With a challenge, you become that person through the consistent action you take. If you challenge yourself to write, or paint, or work out every day, you need to write, paint, or work out. The action is clear, specific, and deadline driven. On the other hand, if you resolve to become a better writer, theres less urgency to get moving. What does better even mean? Resolutions can also be limitingwere poor judges of our potential. Why set an arbitrary aspirational outcome for yourself when you cant possibly know how much farther your daily action can take you? Dont Fixate on Outcomes Consider the example of John Grisham. Approaching the age of 30, Grisham was busy with his legal career, working 60 to 70 hours a week at a law firm in Mississippi. Grisham wanted to write a novel but couldnt afford to stop practicing law to pursue his dream. He created a challenge for himself. Every day, Grisham would wake up at 5 a.m. sharp and hustle to his office. He would be at his desk, coffee, pen, and legal pad in hand, by 5:30 a.m. He challenged himself to write at least one page per day. Sometimes he wrote more. Three years later, by sticking to his rigorous daily writing routine, Grisham finished writing and editing his first novel, A Time to Kill. Twenty-eight publishers rejected A Time to Kill. Eventually, a small publisher agreed to print 5,000 copies. While A Time to Kill was a bit of a dud when it launched, Grisham kept writing, and his second book, The Firm, achieved massive success. He has since gone on to sell more than 300 million books. Focus on a Better Future Self The real benefit of challenges is that they lead to sustainable behavior change. If you write for 30 days straight, it will become habitual. The action will become ingrained. Youll start seeing benefits from your work, and youll want to engage in more of the behavior that created the results. The thing that stops people from becoming a better version of themselves is themselves. We harbor limiting beliefs about what were capable of. According to Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert, most people assume that their current self is their forever self. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished, he says. The best way to overcome this limiting belief is to envision a better version of youand start taking action to become your chosen future self. What do you want to achieve? What actions will lead to the result? Research shows that more than 80 percent of people abandon their New Years resolutions by the second week of February. Buck the odds. Take action every day. Dont break the chain. Jay Harrington is an author, lawyer-turned-entrepreneur, and runs a northern Michigan-inspired lifestyle brand called Life and Whim. He lives with his wife and three young girls in a small town and writes about living a purposeful, outdoor-oriented life. Samsung's latest flagship, the Galaxy S21 series announced just a few hours ago, will be available for pre-booking in India starting January 15. While the device will go on sale in the country on January 29, consumers who choose to pre-book the phone will start getting their Galaxy S21 device starting January 25. Those who pre-book the phone will also get Galaxy SmartTag free and Samsung E-Shop voucher of up to Rs 10,000. Samsung says, as a special offer, all pre-booked consumers can get Galaxy Watch Active 2 or a combo of Galaxy Buds+ and Travel Adapter with a device of their choice. In addition, buyers can avail HDFC Bank cashback of up to Rs 10,000 or have an option to avail upgrade Bonus of up to Rs 5,000. Sporting similar design, language Samsung Galaxy S21 features a 6.2-inch screen and S21+ a 6.7-inch. Running Android 11 with One UI 3.1, the models are powered by 2.4GHz octa-core Samsung Exynos 2100 processor, and will be available in two variants - 8GB RAM with 128GB ROM and 8GB RAM with 256GB ROM. The triple camera setup at the rear includes 12MP wide-angle lens, 12 MP ultra-wide-angle and a 64MP telephoto, and can capture 8K videos at 24fps. Samsung has added a 4000mAh battery on the S21 and a 4800mAh on S21+ and both models support 25W wired and wireless charging. However, Samsung has given the charging adaptor a miss and the phone is accompanied by a USB-C to USB-C cable and a SIM ejection tool in the box. Samsung S21 Ultra, on the other hand, is the most premium of the series, featuring a quad-camera setup and support for the new S-Pen. Housing a 6.8-inch QHD+ AMOLED screen with adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, the S21 Ultra is powered by Exynos 2100 chipset paired with 12GB RAM with 256GB storage and 16GB RAM with 512GB storage. Camera setup at the rear includes 108MP wide-angle camera, 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera and two 10 MP telephoto sensors, laser autofocus, 100X space zoom and 4K 60fps video capture support. Supporting 25W wired and wireless charging, the Ultra packs in a 5,000 mAh battery. The Galaxy S21 8GB RAM with 128GB storage is priced at Rs 69,999 and the 8GB RAM with 256GB storage at Rs 73,999. The Galaxy S21+ will retail for Rs 81,999 for 8GB RAM with 128GB storage and Rs 85,999 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. The most premium of them all - S21 Ultra will retail for Rs 1,05,999 for 12GB RAM with 256GB storage and Rs 1,16,999 for 16GB RAM with 512GB storage. He welcomed his first child - a daughter named Wednesday - with his girlfriend Georgia Groome in May last year. And Rupert Grint has now admitted that the arrival of little girl made him consider leaving the acting industry in favour of another career. The actor, 31, shot to stardom aged 11 playing Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and has been a household name ever since. Fatherly bond: Rupert Grint has now admitted that the arrival of little girl made him consider leaving the acting industry in favour of another career However the global star admitted he has never felt 'comfortable' with being famous and considered turning his hand to another trade. He said: 'I've always toyed with the idea of walking away from acting and becoming a dad has increased those feelings. Don't get me wrong, I love working on [the horror series] Servant and feel extremely comfortable in a TV environment. 'But Potter happened at such a young age and I found it hard to deal with the fame side of things. If I ever do see Dan [Radcliffe] or Emma [Watson], fame is the one thing we never talk about. Child star: The actor, 31, shot to stardom aged 11 playing Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and has been a household name ever since New job? However the global star admitted he has never felt 'comfortable' with being famous and considered turning his hand to another trade 'There's no way I would compare us to the Beatles, but they always said it was impossible to describe what it was like being a Beatle unless you were there. Maybe us three experienced a tiny bit of that.' But Rupert insisted he will always be eternally grateful to the Potter fans and would never reject their approaches. He added: 'I'm eternally grateful to the Potter fans and never refuse a selfie, but I do sometimes miss my anonymity. At least lockdown allowed me to wear a mask. I did think of having one done with Dan's face on it.' He said: 'I've always toyed with the idea of walking away from acting and becoming a dad has increased those feelings. Don't get me wrong, I love working on [the horror series] Servant and feel extremely comfortable in a TV environment' (pictured with Georgia in 2019) If he did quit acting, the British star would like to take up a hands-on trade. He told the Sunday Times magazine: 'It would be nice to go off and do something completely different, like building or carpentry. Before lockdown I was always hanging around in B&Q, buying more tools. 'And I've just started my own miniature pottery production line. If Wednesday's napping I throw some clay on my wheel and make tiny jugs and bowls.' Earlier this month Rupert spoke of the love he has for his little girl with Comicbook.com, he said: 'It was something I never really had much of an idea of, that kind of love. It's a very different love. 'It's very strange. It definitely has kind of changed my perspective on things but also in a helpful way.' In November, Rupert broke Instagram when he joined the social media platform and posted a photo of himself cradling his then six-month-old daughter with the back of her head facing the camera. He racked up more than one million likes in just four hours. There are early signs of hope, Irelands chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said (Brian Lawless/PA) There are early signs of hope in the struggle to contain the pandemic, Irelands chief medical officer said. The relentless rise in the daily number of coronavirus cases and the positivity rate of testing has slackened. An additional 63 deaths with Covid-19 were recorded on Wednesday. Another 3,569 cases were confirmed, the Department of Health said. Dr Tony Holohan said: We are seeing some early signs of progress with daily case numbers and positivity rates. We can take some hope in them, but we have a long, long way to go. In the coming weeks ahead, we will need to draw upon our reserves of resilience from springtime as we can expect to see hospitalisations, admissions to ICU and mortality related to Covid-19 increase day on day. Ireland is aiming to vaccinate 700,000 people by the end of March, the Health Minister said. A quick update on our vaccination plan. By the end of March, we aim to have vaccinated 700,000 people, including nursing home residents and staff, as well as frontline healthcare workers and people aged 70+. Stephen Donnelly (@DonnellyStephen) January 11, 2021 Stephen Donnelly said that another 1.5 million people will be vaccinated in the second quarter of the year, and more than that figure in quarter three. The projected figure is based on orders of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and an estimated allocation from AstraZeneca, which is yet to be approved by the EU. If the projection proves accurate, it would see 2.2 million people vaccinated by the end of June. Minister Donnelly told the Dail: Were planning on receiving enough vaccines to be able to vaccinate 700,000 people by the end of March. Critically this would vaccinate the top three groups on the prioritisation list. Thats those in long-term residential care, staff and residents, frontline healthcare workers and our population of people over 70 years of age. Were further planning to be able to vaccinate more than 1.5 million people in quarter two and more than that again in quarter three. At these levels, people most at risk of Covid-19 will be fully vaccinated by the summer. The UK variant, which is far more contagious than anything we have dealt with so far, now accounts for in excess of half of all new cases Health Minister Stephen Donnelly Minster Donnelly said the numbers given were highly provisional and to be treated as a forecast, as they are dependent on further vaccines being approved and delivered on time. The announcement came as the Minister revealed that the highly transmissible UK variant of Covid-19 now accounts for over half of new cases in Ireland. He told the Dail: Id like to reiterate just how serious the situation is right now. The UK variant, which is far more contagious than anything we have dealt with so far, now accounts for in excess of half of all new cases. The way we support our healthcare workers, the way we keep each other safe right now is to follow the public health guidelines and to stay at home. The widespread transmission of coronavirus in the community is continuing to put health services under severe pressure. Health workers who were close contacts of coronavirus cases are being called back to work before they finish isolating for 14 days, it has emerged. HSE chief operations officer Anne OConnor confirmed that asymptomatic close contacts are being brought back to work as a last resort. #COVID19 cases in Ireland are still very high. It is important that we act like we have the virus by staying at home in order to prevent further spread. For families, for friends and for the frontline #StayHome #StaySafe https://t.co/7GZdJOwl2e pic.twitter.com/E3PDsi5cIr HSE Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) (@hpscireland) January 13, 2021 The health system is under sustained pressure with the number of people in intensive care now higher than it was during the peak of the first wave. Ms OConnor said health officials made the decision because of the shortage of healthcare workers. She said staff who were close contacts are being tested before they return to work and are being closely monitored. The head of the HSE, Paul Reid, tweeted: Our hospitals are treating 1,750 people with Covid-19 and 158 critically ill in ICU. This is a level beyond comprehension. But to assure everyone, our healthcare teams are taking emergency actions to sustain this within a level of control. We appreciate your support. The number of patients with coronavirus in intensive care jumped to 160 after the figures were updated following Mr Reids tweet on Wednesday morning. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan Bhopal, Jan 15 : A security guard posted at JP Hospital here said on Friday that he is 'excited' to be the first person to get a shot of coronavirus vaccine when the drive kicks off on Sunday in the Madhya Pradesh capital. Asserting that the vaccine is "completely safe", Hari Singh said he had volunteered for the jab to help spread awareness among the people and allay their fears. The world's largest inoculation drive would start on Saturday in India, for which initial consignment of the vaccine has already reached Madhya Pradesh. Reviewing preparations for the drive, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that efforts were on to ensure that a 'safai karamchari' is the first to get the vaccine shot on January. "It will be an honour to the services of such sanitation workers who have done good work during the coronavirus crisis," he added. Hari is also happy that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with him when he launches the countrywide drive on Saturday. Hari said that apart from performing his assigned duties, he was also advising patients and their attendants at the hospital to use face masks and maintain social distance norms. Listen to article *Seeks his arrest; Prominent civil rights advocacy group: HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA ( HURIWA) has accused the senior special assistant on media to President Muhammedu Buhari, Mr Garba Shehu of purportedly issuing a statement that is a direct incitement to violence against the person of the Catholic Bishop is Sokoto Diocese Right Reverend Dr. Mathew Hassan Kukah. In a media statement by the National coordinator , Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA wonders why neither the department of state services ( DSS) or the Nigeria Police force has arrested Garba Shehu and the lead signatory of the direct threat on the life of Bishop Kukah, one professor Isa Muhammedu Maishenu of the Muslim Solidarity Forum Sokoto. The Rights group said the decision to pamper individuals inciting violence such as the duo is the reason Nigeria is overwhelmingly violent and the lives of citizens are wasted even as the perpetrators of violence and their sponsors are left to walk free. The Rights group said the Country may not survive for too long should heads of security forces be picking and choosing who to arrest or not no matter their levels of lawlessness and threats to public peace. The group said the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese of the Roman Catholic church has done nothing wrong other than to exercise his fundamental human rights by criticising failings of government just as the Rights Advocacy group said it was inconceivable that a Presidential Spokesman can descend to the arena of religious extremism by ascribing wrong meanings and interpretation to statement made by the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese. Why is the Spokesperson of the Nigerian President directly asserting that the constructive criticism of some bad policies of the Federal government as made in the exercise of his fundamental Human Rights by Bishop Kukah, amounts to an insult against a respected Islamic religion, Is Garba Shehu implying that President Muhammedu Buhari is the chief Imam of Nigeria or is he above criticism? The irrational, insensitive, senseless and pathetic statement in the media credited to Garba Shehu amounts to a call on religious fundamentalists to attack the person of Bishop Bukah and this is definitely a clear incitement to violence which should attract the attention of security services unless these security services have also been transformed into Islamic religious security forces. We call on the relevant heads of the security forces to immediately arrest, investigate and prosecute Garba Shehu and one professor Maishanu inter-religious conflicts in Nigeria. HURIWA recalled that Garba Shehu had stated that: Father Kukah has greatly offended many with his controversial remarks against the government and the person of the President, with some even accusing him of voicing anti-Islamic rhetoric.On matters such as these, responsible leadership in any society must exercise restraint. Knee-jerk reactions will not only cause the fraying of enduring relationships, but also the evisceration of peaceful communities such as Sokoto, the headquarters of the Muslim community as beacon of pluralism and tolerance. The Sultanate has historically had good relations with followers of all faiths. That is why Father Kukah was received on his arrival in Sokoto with friendship and tolerance. HURIWA said the counter statement made by Garba Shehu pretending to be a warning to the Sokoto based Moslim Forum which earlier in a statement asked Kukah to leave Sokoto, are one and the same just as the Rights group said the entire World would hold President Muhammadu Buhari responsible should any physical harm come to the respected religious Icon- Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto Diocese. New Delhi: India is all set to roll out the world's biggest vaccination drive against Covid-19 from Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the first phase of the nation-wide inoculation drive early morning during which only healthcare workers, both in government and private sectors including ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) workers, will get the first life-saving shot. This round of vaccination program will be held all over the country, at a total of 3,006 sites which will be connected virtually throughout the exercise. Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated on Saturday at each of the session sites. Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday reviewed the preparedness and visited the dedicated Covid-19 control room at the ministry premises. The Union minister also reviewed the Beneficiary Registration Page for all non-prioritised groups on CoWIN. He suggested pre-populating the software with beneficiaries by seeding it with the electoral database, in addition to other documents that are authorised for registration. The minister also reviewed the working of the Communications Control Room which has been closely monitoring the disinformation campaigns and rumour mongering in relation to administering the Covid-19 vaccines. The Union minister reiterated that both the indigenously manufactured vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, have proven safety and immunogenicity records and are the most important tools to contain the pandemic. The health ministry has also issued guidelines to states giving directions on how to deal with certain situations. The vaccines have to be administered to people above 18 years of age. It cannot be given to pregnant and lactating women and to persons with a history of allergic reactions to a previous dose of Covid-19 vaccine. Interchangeability of vaccines is not allowed, hence the second dose of the vaccine should be of the same company of which the first dose has been given. The vaccine has to be deferred among people with active symptoms of Covid-19, those who have been given convalescent plasma or are acutely unwell or hospitalised due to any illness. In the last 24 hours, 15,590 fresh cases of COVID have been detected and 191 deaths were recorded. Getty Images En espanol | The ads are seductive. For the millions of Americans who are skipping eye doctor visits because of the pandemic, remote telehealth eye exams seem to be the perfect solution: a way to renew or update eyeglass or contact lens prescriptions from the comfort of home, or have a potential eye condition assessed. The pandemic has accelerated the use of telemedicine, which has increased by as much as 700 percent, according to some estimates. This trend has been fueled by greater patient acceptance of the efficacy of video visits, the relaxing of regulatory restrictions on its use, increased payments to health care providers for remote visits and the ongoing need for social distancing. And it can allow people with mobility or health issues to safely get the care they need. But in many cases, such as emergencies or to diagnose serious eye conditions or even something as seemingly simply as renewing your eyeglass prescription telemedicine is no substitute for in-person exams. In a few situations, however, remote exams can be useful: 1. Initial assessments of symptoms Some patients have been receiving care through videoconferences or even phone calls with their health care providers for assessments of symptoms. If you wake up one morning with eyes that are flaming red, swollen eyelids or floaters in your line of vision, which can be a sign of a detached retina, for instance, a video call can quickly evaluate whether an eye problem is a genuine emergency, can wait until you can see an eye doctor in person or can be treated with a prescription for antibiotic eye drops (as is the case with eye infections like conjunctivitis, or pink eye"). A good rule of thumb: Ask yourself, is the problem happening in the front or the back of the eye? Any symptoms you can see in the mirror are a good candidate for a telehealth visit, says William Reynolds, O.D., an optometrist in Richmond, Kentucky, and president of the American Optometric Association (AOA). We can get a good view of the front of the eye if you have a stye, an abrasion or conjunctivitis, he explains. But anything that occurs in the back of the eye cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma has to be analyzed in person. There is no technology that allows us to look inside the eye at the level we need to really follow those conditions." 2. Routine follow-up appointments You may not always need to visit your doctor in person for follow-up visits to track more serious conditions, like glaucoma or macular degeneration. Because we can get high magnification with photo images and video we're able to look into the eye a bit better and make a much more confident assessment, says Sophia Saleem, M.D., an ophthalmologist at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Health. But while these tools are helpful for screening and for triage, they are not FDA-approved to be diagnostic. Remote follow-up appointments can also be useful for people with diabetes who need to be closely monitored for diabetic retinopathy, a condition that can lead to blindness if left untreated. Why you shouldn't get your eyeglass prescription checked remotely It's almost impossible for a remote vision test to provide an accurate glasses or contacts prescription, experts say, because so many intangibles come into play to ensure you get the right corrective lenses. Even when you get an in-person refractory assessment with a certified technician, the prescriptions are only about 5 percent accurate, according to Reynolds of the AOA, because many factors must be considered before making a final judgment. Only an in-person evaluation can pick up possible problems with depth perception or undiagnosed eye diseases that may impact vision, or determine whether patients are able to tolerate a significant change in their glasses prescription. (CNN) - Pfizer said shipments from its vaccine facility in Puurs, Belgium, will be temporarily reduced as it scales up to produce two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2021. The company said that in order to increase capacity to reach two billion, changes are needed to the process and facility, and additional regulatory approvals will be required. There will be fluctuations in orders and shipping scheduled from Pfizers facility in Puurs, Belgium, in late January and early February. The facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which supplies the United States, will not be impacted. "As part of the normal productivity improvements to increase capacity, we must make modifications to the process and facility that will require additional regulatory approvals. Although this will temporarily impact shipments in late January to early February, it will provide a significant increase in doses available for patients in late February and March," the company said in a statement released Friday. On Tuesday Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said he was confident the company would be able to produce two billion doses in 2021, but noted the manufacturing challenges. "You know, it's almost equally difficult to scale up manufacturing at that level so fast as it was to develop the vaccine and both teams can to rise to the occasion," Bourla said. The company also said previously that because each vial can yield six doses rather than the expected five, it provides an additional 20% capacity. This story was first published on CNN.com, "Pfizer will temporarily reduce COVID-19 vaccine shipments as manufacturing scales up" Bennington, VT (05201) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. By Lee Gyu-lee Director Lee Isaac Chung's award-winning film "Minari" is set to open in local theaters in March. Pancinema, the distributor of the film, confirmed its release Friday and also introduced the movie's first Korean-language poster. "Minari" portrays the life of a South Korean immigrant family Jacob (Steven Yeun), his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri), mother (Youn Yuh-jung), and children trying to start anew in the United States. The family moves to a remote farm in Arkansas, hoping to pursue their own American dream through farming. But as they try to settle into their new environment, they encounter different struggles in their lives. Chung's semi-autobiographical film, based on his own upbringing, has received significant acclaim since its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January last year. Since then, it scored a total of 31 international awards, including best original screenplay at the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards, and 74 nominations. Actress Youn Yuh-jung, who played the grandmother of the family, won 11 best supporting actress awards from different U.S. film critics associations, including the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards and the North Carolina Film Critics. The film is also considered to be a strong contender for the Golden Globes and the Oscars. However, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association the organizer of the Golden Globes accepted the film in the foreign language film category last month, making it ineligible to compete for best picture. This has stirred a backlash from the U.S. film industry, as the movie involved an American director and was produced and distributed by U.S. companies. Australians have just had a reminder that they are in a global queue for the best vaccines to shield them from COVID-19, and there is no easy way to jump to the front. The countrys Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly, admitted on Wednesday that the federal government could not get all the agreements it wanted with companies that could send more vaccines our way. The fight against the pandemic has entered a critical stage as countries around the world roll out vaccination campaigns. Credit:AP There is no deal with Moderna, for instance, even though its vaccine is one of the most promising right now. A contract takes two parties to sign, said Kelly. In other words, the company would not commit. Nor is there a deal with Johnson & Johnson, which is trialling a single-dose vaccine with 45,000 people. We were unable to reach agreement, said Kelly. Why not? That is confidential. The Black Vault has released a massive trove of classified information on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) collected by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) over the years. According to a CNET report, The Black Vault is an online archive of declassified government documents that the public can access. The Black Vault is operated by author John Greenwald Jr. who posted more than 2,700 pages of UFO-related documents declassified by the CIA since the 80s last week. It was the result of Greenewald's many Freedom of Information Act requests. Greenewald said The Black Vault spent years fighting for these pieces of information, and "many were released in the late 90s." "However, over time, the CIA made a CD-ROM collection of UFO documents, which encompassed the original records, along with the ones that took years to fight for," Greenewald said in a Masslive report. After Greenewald's request was granted, the CIA made thousands of documents on UFOs available to Greenwald via a CD-ROM. The CIA said that this collection of documents is its entire collection of information on UFOs. However, Greenewald noted that there is no way to verify whether the CIA's statement is true or not. He said that The Black Vault would continue to research to see if additional CIA documents can still be uncovered. Greenewald told Vice's Motherboard that the CIA has made it incredibly difficult to use the records in a reasonable manner. He added that the CIA offered a very outdated format and offered text file outputs that are mostly unusable. Read also: Another Monolith Mysteriously Appears in Romania According to Greenewald, there have already been thousands of downloads made within the first 24 hours. UFO Sightings The U.S. Department of Defense released three declassified videos of "unexplained aerial phenomena" in April last year. According to a BBC report, the Pentagon released the videos to clear up any public misconceptions on whether the circulating footage was real or not. The Guardian reported that the department determined that after a thorough review, the authorized release of the videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems. The Pentagon added the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as "unidentified." The videos started circulating in the public domain after unauthorized release in 2007 and 2017. The three footage showed what the pilots saw during training flights in 2004 and 2015. UFO Videos According to a New York Times report, the 2004 video showed an incident that occurred 100 miles out into the Pacific Ocean. Two Navy fighter pilots then saw a round object hovering above the water and quickly flew away. Cmdr. David Fravor, one of the pilots, said that it accelerated like nothing he has ever seen. On the other hand, the 2015 two videos showed objects moving quickly through the sky, with one of them seem to spin in the air. According to a The Conversation report, this was the first time the Pentagon has publicly tackled UFO footage's authenticity. Controversy surrounding footages of UFOs have persisted throughout the years. In 2016, during the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, she said that if she were to be elected president, she would release files on potential UFO sightings. Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, had displayed an interest in the subject. Last December, President Donald Trump signed the coronavirus bill that included a requirement for the national intelligence director to submit a report on "unidentified aerial phenomena." This report must be submitted to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees within 180 days. Read more: Monolith Mystery 'Solved' by Stunt Artists Claiming They're Behind Mysterious Structures Civil rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on Jan. 15, 1929. Monday, Jan. 18, 2021, is Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday to celebrate and honor the work of King who was assassinated in 1968 as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn. When he was born, King was named Michael just as his father was. His father, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., changed his name to Martin in honor of the German Protestant religious leader Martin Luther, according to biography.com. Michael Jr. later also changed his named. King attended Booker T. Washington High School where he skipped two grades. He started studies at Morehouse College in 1944 at the age of 15. While he initially resisted following his fathers footsteps, by the time he was a college senior he had changed his mind. According to biography.com, King graduated from Morehouse in 1948 with a degree in sociology. He graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1951 from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa. He studied for his doctorate at Boston University where he met his future wife, Coretta Scott. The couple married and had four children. King became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., in 1954 then finished his Ph.D. in 1955. That same year, King became the face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott after Black woman Rose Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to some white men. King helped to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to promote civil rights reform. King is perhaps best known for the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28 in 1963 when he delivered the iconic I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. In 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism. The ceremony took place in December in Oslo, Norway. King was 35 at the time and the youngest man to ever receive the prize. On April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tenn., with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to support a sanitation workers strike. He was shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel talking with Jesse Jackson and a musician, Ben Branch. He was rushed to a hospital but was dead just a little more than hour after being shot. King, 39, was killed by a single shot to the face fired by James Earl Ray from a rooming house across the street. Outrage over his killing resulted in rioting, looting and arson in more than 100 cities in the United States Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Newark, N.J., Baltimore, Chicago. According to a newspaper report, 4,000 National Guard troops were ordered into Memphis by Gov. Buford Ellington immediately after the shooting and a curfew was imposed on the city. Kings funeral was held April 9 in Atlanta, his hometown, at Ebenezer Baptist Church. A second service followed at Morehouse College. After the shooting, Ray hid for a month in Toronto, Ontario, and acquired a Canadian passport under the false name of Ramon George Sneyd. He was captured on June 8, 1968, at Londons Heathrow Airport. On March 10, 1969, Ray pleaded guilty to killing King. Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison but later recanted his confession and tried to get a new trial. He escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tenn., on June 10, 1977, with seven other inmates. They were recaptured three days later. A year was added to Rays sentence. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70. READ MORE WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - U.S. Covid hospitalizations again started showing a downward trend, prompting Covid Tracking Project to say that it seems to be the first signs of hospitalizations slowing down at national level. A total of 128,947 patients are admitted in U.S. hospitals with coronavirus, as per the latest data published by the U.S. collaborative volunteer-run effort to track the pandemic. Out of this, 23,891 patients are being treated in ICU. This is lower than when US COVID hospitalizations hit the record level of 132,476 on January 6. On the basis of analysis of the Health and Human Services data, it reported that hospitals across the South, especially in Alabama, are under serious pressure. The United States is still reporting more than 200,000 cases and 3,000 deaths per day. These are the highest levels of the pandemic. But at the same time, some good news is that the percentage of people testing positive to coronavirus infection continues to decrease and the 7 day average of new cases has decreased on each of the last 3 days. The national average Covid test positivity rate has fallen to 11.92 percent. With 3928 additional fatalities reporting in the last 24 hours, the total U.S. death toll from the deadly disease rose to 388692, as per the latest data from the Johns Hopkins. During the same period, 235842 new cases were reported across the country, taking the total number of patients infected with the disease to 23313101. Arizona currently has the worst per-capita new case numbers in the world, according to COVID Tracking Project. COVID-19 deaths are 25 percent higher than that recorded in any other week since the pandemic began. Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said that on Thursday, 1,429,500 additional COVID vaccines were distributed to the American people, bringing the total number of vaccine doses administered in the country to 29,922,800. Only 3.5 percent of the U.S. population have received the first dose of anti-COVID vaccine a month after the vaccine distribution began. Defense Logistics Agency Distribution began shipping Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Defense Department employees outside the continental U.S. as part of the Operation Warp Speed mission. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that a mass vaccination site, having the capacity to vaccinate 12,000 people each day, will open at the Dodger Stadium in the city on Friday. This will be the biggest vaccination site in the country, he told reporters. In the wake of reports of a new coronavirus variant in Brazil, the British government banned travelers from a number of Latin American countries and Portugal. As the coronavirus returned to China, the number of new daily infections are on the rise, with the country's National Health Commission reporting 144 new cases for Thursday. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de The mother of Belfast teenager Noah Donohoe, 14, who was found dead in a storm drain in the north of the city, has called for a thorough investigation into his death (PSNI/PA) The mother of Noah Donohoe has hit out at the publication of a new book published about her son's disappearance and death. Fiona Donohoe said it had nothing to do with her family, their campaign and she did not endorse it. Her son Noah (14), a pupil at St Malachy's College, went missing in south Belfast on June 21 last year. His body was found in a storm drain in the north of the city six days later following a massive search operation. A post-mortem examination established he died as a result of drowning and a coroner's hearing was later told there was no evidence that he was attacked or that anyone else was involved. Fiona Donohoe has called for a full investigation into her son's disappearance and death. An independently-published book entitled 'The Noah Donohoe Scandal' has been released. Ms Donohoe said she was "sorry" to learn of its publication. "This has nothing to do with us as a family and Noah's campaign for answers," she said. "We are in no way endorsing anything in this book. We as a family were trying to stop it being published as the author has no insight into our case for Noah." The DUP branded the publication "insulting and hurtful". "Hundreds of people joined the search of young Noah and where everyone's heartfelt sympathy remains with his grieving mother and family," a spokesman said. "We note that Fiona Donohoe has made clear that her family 'are in no way endorsing anything in this book' and that they 'were trying to stop it being published'. It is shameful that those associated with this book have published it against the stated wished of the Donohoe family. It serves no good purpose. "We call on the community to remain united in support of Noah's family and reiterate our appeal for any relevant information to be brought forward to assist the police investigation." In response, the book's author, Donal Lavery, said it was based on information in the public domain and on facts. He added that he informed the family of his intention to write a book and has received legal correspondence from the Donohoe family asking it be removed from sale. "The substance of the book should be the focus and not the author. If there are any serious inaccuracies I would invite people to clarify them, but throughout I have provided information that is easily accessible online to the reader and which anyone could obtain if they look for it," he added. "I wish Miss Donohoe well in her legal endeavours in obtaining justice for Noah and have reserved any judgement and avoided speculation, as those are the correct remit of the Coroner - which I respect." Key new archaeological findings in southwestern Beijing have unveiled the city's early days as the national capital, dating back some 900 years. The first evidence of outer city wall ruins of Zhongdu (meaning "the central capital") of the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) was unearthed during two years of archaeological research, the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage said on Wednesday. Five sections of the earthen wall's ruins were discovered in Beijing's Fengtai district, said Ding Lina of the Beijing Archaeological Research Institute, who is also lead archaeologist in charge of the project. The wall was originally on the western and southern side of the Jin Dynasty capital. "The findings help us figure out the basic layout structure of Zhongdu's city walls," Ding said. The Jin Dynasty was founded by the Jurchen people and once ruled over a vast territory in today's North China. In 1127, its powerful army seized Kaifeng, a city in present-day Henan province and then capital of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The Jin army took two Song emperors as prisoners, marking the end of Northern Song period (960-1127). Members of the Song royal family moved to Lin'antoday's Hangzhou, Zhejiang provinceand a lengthy military standoff began between the Jin and Southern Song (1127-1279) dynasties. In 1153, the Jin Dynasty made Zhongdu its capital, and the city grew to be a prosperous metropolis. The city then became the capital of a national dynasty for the first time. Nevertheless, Ding said, remaining historical evidence regarding Zhongdu has been scarce. "We don't have much to refer to," she said. "For example, we didn't know how the wall was built, so this archaeological excavation provided crucial evidence." An area of over 2,900 square meters of Zhongdu's city wall ruins was unearthed in 2019 and 2020, and a section of the western wall, which is 24 meters wide at its thickest, is the best preserved of the five. It is near the Lize Financial Business District. Lize was also the historical name of a Zhongdu city gate, as historical records show. The city wall was found to have been built mainly with rammed earth, though some outward protrusions were also covered in brick to enhance the fortifications, Ding said. Though the unearthed part covers only a corner of the ancient city, details tell the story of its impressive construction. A 66-meter-wide moat, 17 meters from the western wall, also was excavated, as were several roads in the city by the wall. Other important relics that were discovered include broken porcelain pieces, which were fired in the Ding and Jun kilns, the top-tier ceramic factories of the time. Still, Ding, the archaeologist, said that follow-up architectural studies are needed to estimate the height of the walls and their appearance. Some findings may help fill voids in historical records, and some have verified accounts in written documents. Historical records show that Zhongdu was expanded from an existing city from the Tang (618-907) and Liao (916-1125) dynasties. The discovery of ancient tombs from the two dynasties beneath the Jin Dynasty city wall ruins matched those records. "In ancient China, graveyards were located outside the city," Ding said. "As Zhongdu expanded, these places were included in the urban area." With the army of Mongol ruler Genghis Khan posing a threat to the north, the capital of the Jin Dynasty was moved from Zhongdu to Kaifeng in 1214. Zhongdu fell victim to war and was destroyed the next year. Nevertheless, when Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan founded the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), he chose what is present-day Beijing as the capital by constructing a new city known as Dadu. Since the Yuan Dynasty, Beijing has continued to be China's national capital with the exception of relatively short periods of decades. "Consequently, the Zhongdu site is a milestone for our studies of Beijing's history as the capital," said Zhang Zhonghua, deputy director of the Beijing Archaeological Research Institute. Zhang added it also has a key role in comparative studies of Chinese capital cities. The Jurchen rulers of the Jin Dynasty made efforts to learn from the highly developed Song culture, so the design of Zhongdu mimicked Kaifeng. But given that the Song capital city was frequently flooded by the Yellow River and would be difficult to excavate, Zhongdu's ruins offer an alternative for research related to the ancient Song city in Henan province, Zhang said. According to Fu Ran, an official in charge of cultural heritage protection with the Fengtai district government, a park featuring the ruins of Zhongdu's city walls is also planned to better protect the site and display archaeological discoveries for the public to see. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday unveiled the country's first indigenously developed Driverless Metro Car at the BEML manufacturing facility here. The Minister, who visited the facility, said he was proud of the good work the team of engineers and technicians are doing at BEML. "They are the real warriors of 'Atmanirbhar Bharat', taking India ahead," he tweeted. Akshay Kumar was one of the first superstars to get back to work as soon as the lockdown was lifted. The actor who remains unstoppable was ready to kickstart work with a new film and started shooting for Bell Bottom in London and completed the film in 35 days. Today a leading daily gives some update on the release date of this film. Akshay Kumars spy thriller was set to release in April 2021. However according to reports on an online portal the makers are now planning to shift their release date from April to June 2021. This decision is taken because Akshay starrer Sooryavanshi which is helmed by Rohit Shetty will probably release in March. So the makers of Bell Bottom think that to release another Akshay Kumar flick within a month that too in these critical times wont be a smart move. The makers have decided to now delay the film by two months and bring it in June. The primary reason for the delay has got to do with the fact that Akshay Kumars Sooryavanshi is looking to release in the one-month window of March 15 to April 15. It would be stupid to bring two Akshay Kumar films in a span of 30 days on the big screen, particularly in between this pandemic, said a source to the portal. Sooryavanshi has been pending for a release for a long time and was supposed to release last year in March. But due to the lockdown, the film's theatrical release was put on hold. Meanwhile, Akshay Kumars Bell Bottom is a period thriller and also stars Vaani Kapoor, Huma Qureshi and Lara Dutta. Advertisement Indonesia was battered by a 6.2-magnitude earthquake today which killed at least 34 people and injured more than 600 others amid fears that the aftershocks would cause a tsunami. Victims were trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings in the city of Mamuju, with rescuers searching for more than a dozen patients and staff in the wreckage of a destroyed hospital. The tremor on Sulawesi island triggered panic among terrified residents as forecasters warned that the aftershocks 'could be as strong, or stronger, than this morning's quake'. 'There is potential for a tsunami from subsequent aftershocks... Don't wait for a tsunami first because they can happen very quickly,' said Dwikorita Karnawati, chief of Indonesia's meteorological agency. Search and rescue: Emergency workers go hunting in the wreckage following the 6.2-magnitude earthquake that hit Indonesia today, killing at least 34 people and sparking fears that aftershocks would cause a tsunami Rescuers from Indonesia's national disaster agency look for survivors trapped in a destroyed building in the city of Mamuju A regional governor's office was among the buildings ruined by the earthquake which was followed by dozens of aftershocks Rescuers gather as a collapsed building in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, after this morning's quake Workers from Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency look for quake survivors in Mamuju Diggers are used to search among the rubble at the Mitra Manakarra hospital following the quake in the early hours of Friday Rescuers wearing a bright orange uniform from Indonesia's disaster agency dig through rubble following today's earthquake Location of the earthquake's epicenter in Sulawesi, Indonesia The epicentre of the quake which struck at around 1.30am on Friday was 22 miles south of Mamuju and it had a relatively shallow depth of 11 miles, the United States Geological Survey said. 'The latest information we have is that 26 people are dead... in Mamuju city,' said Ali Rahman, head of the local disaster mitigation agency, adding 'that number could grow'. 'Many of the dead are buried under rubble,' he said. Separately, the national disaster agency said at least eight people had died in an area south of Mamuju, a city of some 110,000 in West Sulawesi province, bringing the total death toll to 34. The earthquake came after a 5.9-magnitude tremor and at least 26 aftershocks the previous day, in a string of disasters which caused three landslides and damaged bridges to regional hubs such as the city of Makassar. The tremors also damaged more than 60 homes, two hotels and the provincial governor's office. Electricity in the area is also out. Regional government spokesman Safaruddin Sanusi said authorities desperately needed to restore communication networks, mend damaged bridges and deliver tents, foods and medical supplies. Videos have showed residents fleeing to higher ground on motorcycles, and a child trapped under the rubble as people tried to remove debris with their bare hands. Rescuers peer into the darkness underneath a collapsed building in the city of Mamuju during Friday's recovery efforts Two rescuers wearing motorcycle helmets lead a group of people carrying what appeared to be a body bag on the island The roof of a car caved in and the vehicle was left surrounded by rubble following the Friday morning quake in Indonesia Rescuers wearing masks join in the recovery operation, seemingly trying to free a wheeled vehicle from under the debris A group of people watch as two rescuers stand on top of the rubble following the earthquake which destroyed 60 homes Rescuers were searching for more than a dozen patients and staff trapped beneath the rubble of the levelled Mamuju hospital. 'The hospital is flattened - it collapsed,' said Arianto from the rescue agency in Mamuju city, who goes by one name. 'There are patients and hospital employees trapped under the rubble and we're now trying to reach them,' he added, without giving a specific figure. Rescuers were also trying to reach a family of eight trapped under the rubble of their destroyed home, he added. Thousands had fled their homes to seek safety when the quake hit just after 1am local time on Friday. It was felt for about seven seconds. Straddling the so-called Pacific 'Ring of Fire', Indonesia, a nation of high tectonic activity, is regularly hit by earthquakes. In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi left more than 4,300 people dead or missing. On December 26, 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered the Boxing Day tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including around 170,000 in Indonesia. A traffic jam on a road out of Mamuju on Friday as residents attempted to flee the city following the disastrous earthquake Many buildings in the city of Mamuju were destroyed in the quake, leaving desperate survivors searching the rubble for missing people Member search and rescue agency wearing masks and helmets search in the rubble of a building on Sulawesi island today Rescuers break up the rubble with hammers as they search for survivors at the Mitra Manakarra hospital following the quake A few years back my wife and I flew to Georgia where she was keynoting a panel discussion on feminism at Kennesaw State University. We were picked up at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta by the conference organizers, who naturally engaged Janice in conversation about the devastation wrought by feminism in the culture at large and academia in particular. At one point I intervened to suggest that feminism was merely a subsidiary issue, as was the case with every other culture-wrecking movement and socially destabilizing factor confronting the Western world: identity politics, neo-Marxism, political correctness, radical environmentalism, climate change, social justice, outcome egalitarianism, information censorship, trans-national authoritarianism, abortion on demand, anti-meritocracy, chain immigration, white supremacy -- the list goes on. Our hosts were initially taken aback, suspecting that I may merely have been playing devils advocate, but soon understood the argument I was making. Feminism was no doubt a critical issue, a socially destructive and culturally malignant phenomenon, but only one of many indices of something of far greater import: the approaching disintegration of Western civilization. Oswald Spenglers The Decline of The West, published 1918-1922, laid out the trajectory of the enfeeblement and decay that awaited us, developing a theme that went as far back as the Greek historian Polybius, but that, in the wake of a war that wiped out a generation, seemed less a theme than an historically imminent reality. The greatest poet of the modern age, William Butler Yeats, felt it in his bones, working out a visionary schematism in his prose volume A Vision and reflecting on the inevitable in his timeless poem The Second Coming, written one year after the end of the Great War: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? Robert Borks must-read Slouching Towards Gomorrah hammers out Yeatss vision in lurid contemporary detail, pointing toward a syndrome of collectivist attitudes dominating the culture, the debilitation of the family structure, and a left-liberal moral consensus diluting the text of the U.S. Constitution. In his master volume On the Eve of the Millennium: The Future of Democracy in an Age of Unreason, published in 1995, Irish historian Conor Cruise OBrien was not sanguine about the prospects for Western civilization in the coming years. Civilizations have term dates and ours is fast approaching, OBrien felt. He quotes French historian Jules Michelets History of France, who speaks there of this vast concert of naive and barbarous voices with its strange accents [and] fantastic and bizarre harmony, signaling the end of a customary world. The dissolution is abetted by common lassitude, self-indulgence and studied ignorance, by those, OBrien writes, who are indifferent to politics, religion, virtually anything. We watch history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation, almost, we might say, as if we do not believe that history can happen here. Arnold Toynbee in his twelve-volume A Study of History, among my prize collections, articulated a theory of recurrence -- owing in part to The New Science of the 18th Century Italian political philosopher Giambattista Vico -- in which he saw patterns or cycles of growth and decay common to all civilizations, of which he isolated more than twenty-six exemplars. Though maintaining a guarded optimism that correlation is not infallibly causation and that Western Civilization might survive an otherwise inevitable debacle, he posited that once psychological devastation had gone too far, recovery would be impossible. Perhaps it was from reading Toynbee that OBrien speculated about the onset of apathy and indifference leading to civilizational collapse. He believed we were already there. Though I disagree emphatically with anti-Trumper Jonah Goldberg on many issues, his Suicide of the West remains a valuable book, confirming OBriens thesis. Goldberg writes that the corruption of the Miracle of Western Civilizationcan only succeed when we willfully and ungratefully turn our backs on the principles that brought us out of the muck of human history in the first place. The trouble is that for more than a generation now, the best principles of the West have been under assault. Intellectuals are recasting the virtues of our system as vices. Goldberg borrows his title from James Burnhams magisterial 1964 Suicide of the West, in which Burnham writes of a morphological pattern, an unmistakable trend or curve. Over the past two generations Western civilization has been in a period of very rapid decline, recession or ebb within the world power structure. What we call liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide, permitting Western Civilization to be reconciled to its dissolution. Although he holds out hope for a transition to a higher order above the parochial divisions of the past, which seems touchingly romantic, his analysis of the liberal virus has rarely been bettered. I think back to the drive between Atlanta and Kennesaw. What was it I was trying to say? Certainly not that the struggle against the corrosions of feminism should be abandoned. Or that we should ignore the menace posed by the new Olympians who, as Kenneth Minogue writes, wish to acquire power in the service of transforming the order of human life. (Today we would call it the Great Reset.) Rather, I believed, and still believe, that every manifestation, every symptom of the sickness of our time, the self-destructive corruption, the lies and hypocrisies and weakness of spirit, the coordinated attack on the institutions and traditions that have sustained Judeo-Christian civilization, the digital surveillance project of billionaire Globaliers -- these must be resisted and fought, for there is no other choice but feckless and dishonorable surrender. But at the same time, we need to be realistic. We are not doomsayers to acknowledge that civilizations fall of necessity, disappear or are subsumed into new syncretic entities, and that ours is no different. The conclusion is foregone, but not yet. In Michael Walshs terms from his new book Last Stands, manly virtue fights to the foreordained end. The issue is this: We cannot deter, but we can defer. What we are really doing, whether we know it or not, is buying time. Western civilization and its constituent nations are too far gone to be retrofitted; our internal enemies have seen to that. As Bork writes, a soft and hedonistic culturefaces a continuing assault from within. The prospect is grim. Apathy, indifference, psychological devastation, envy and self-hatred are the norms of our present moment. America, the guarantor and bellwether of the Wests survival, has been hollowed out by its Olympian classes, the political, juridical, informational and fiscal elites -- this was Founding Father and second president John Adams deepest fear. In his important 2018 study John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville parses Adams conclusion that republican governments had always been threatened by elite domination and that America would be no different. In the course of time, cowards and parasites -- let us call it the Iscariot function -- will prevail over Great Men and Women. Nation-saviors like Churchill and Thatcher will be cast aside, heroes like Trump will be betrayed by friends and colleagues and openly cheated of re-election. The historical template is Themistocles, the philosophical, Socrates, and the literary, Shakespeares Coriolanus. They cannot forestall the vector of decline and will be derided and punished for having tried to do so. As Adams wrote in an April 22, 1776 letter to James Warren, But I fear, that in every assembly, Members will obtain an Influence, by Noise not sense. By Meanness, not Greatness. By Ignorance not Learning. By contracted Hearts not large souls. I fear too, that it will be impossible to convince and perswade People to establish wise Regulations. And thus do nations and ultimately the civilizations of which they form part subside and vanish as a result of inward rot, the great baulks of timber that hold them up gnawed and crumbling in a myriad of different places. History, so to speak, can happen here. It has been happening for some considerable time, culminating in the most recent of a long sequence of hammer blows: the fraudulent election of Joe Biden thanks to widespread electoral malfeasance, the advent of rigorous and pervasive censorship protocols, and the ongoing purge of constitutional freedoms. Indeed, it is happening throughout the Western world. Nonetheless, for those of us who still care and recognize the precious muniment we have been given, let the coup de grace happen later instead of sooner. The fight continues on myriad fronts. Meanwhile Janice gave her talk, and maybe feminism took a bit of a hit. David Solways most recent book Notes from a Derelict Culture was delisted by Amazon. It is currently available at Barnes & Noble. 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. Tim and Eliska Fetzko of Tunkhannock are seeing the world in a unique way. The couple have made it their goal to bike around the world and recently finished a 3,000-mile bicycle tour across the United States in only 60 days. The reason we want to bike is because we think that its the best possible way to see the whole world, Eliska Fetzko said. We also found out that by biking we dont stick out like tourists, which we dont want to do. The Fetzkos met in 2011 while working summer jobs at Glacier National Park in Montana. Eliska was a college student from Slovakia, and the two hit it off immediately. They got married in October 2014 and moved to Slovakia to live with her parents in Europe. In August 2019, Tim Fetzko made the suggestion to start a bike trip across Europe, starting in Slovakia and heading toward Central Europe. After two weeks, we were having an awesome experience, we were able to see everything in ways that we might not have been able to, so we decided to continue our bike ride to Istanbul, said Eliska Fetzkos. When the Fetzkos reached Turkey, they had to return to Slovakia because of the shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. When the restrictions were relaxed in Europe in the summer 2020, they started back up again. In August we decided to start again going through the Alps toward Spain, and then into Morocco to see Africa, Tim Fetzko said. We made it out of the Alps toward France when everything started to lock down again. So, we changed our plans and came back to the United States, because we knew that it would be easier to travel inside the U.S. In October, the Fetzkos flew to Los Angeles and began their cross-country ride. Their journey took them through the streets of Los Angeles, across the Mojave Desert, through snowstorms in the Rockies, across the Heartland, up into the Ozark and Appalachian mountain ranges, and finally through the coastal flatlands of the Delmarva Peninsula. Going across the whole country can be a grueling ride, Tim Fetzko said. How fast we moved depended on the weather conditions and what way the wind was blowing. Going cross country, those conditions change very quickly. The Fetzkos spent most of their nights camping, and home-cooked the majority of their meals, spending about $25 a day for the two of them. We enjoy camping, Eliska said. We always say that the less money you travel with, the more adventurous you are. If you bring a lot of money, you know you can do things like stay in a hotel. That takes the fun out of the whole trip. The Fetzkos finished their journey in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Dec. 12. They have since returned to Tunkhannock, but their biking journey isnt finished. Were going to take a little break to process the (activities of the) last two years of our life and see our families, Tim said. Africa and Asia are our next two goals when everything is safe. The Fetzkos have documented their trips for everyone to see on Instagram @bikesmecrazy. 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 British home audio manufacturer KEF launches its new "Uni-Core Technology," delivering a revolutionary take on speaker and subwoofer design, on Jan. 14. The latest innovative release from the audio device maker promises to create a high-level performance while reducing the cabinet volume of their speakers or subwoofers, redefining size versus performance. Driven by its ambition to incorporate aesthetics in a piece of audio equipment perfect for any living room, KEF is not only committed to maintaining its presence but to further excel in its delivery of accurate and deep bass. In a statement, KEF recognizes the initial challenge in the balance between aesthetics and performance. Read Also: 6 Best Laptops for Music and Audio KEF's Uni-Core Technology "To deliver deep and loud bass from a compact product is a big engineering challenge," shared Dr. Jack Oclee-Brown, KEF's Head of Research & Development. "The Uni-core is a breakthrough technology for KEF because it allows us to pack two drivers into a tighter space without compromising their performance." The new KEF Uni-Core Technology employs two dual force-canceling drivers that are arranged in a concentric fashion, with overlapping voice coils driven by a single motor. This results in stunning bass performance in a significantly smaller package. Uni-Core audio voice-coils are of different sizes and are basically fitted in the same physical space inside their proprietary driver assembly. Compared to other subwoofers using conventional driver technology, upcoming KEF audio equipment promises an extremely compact physical cabinet - allowing for more space efficiency and display possibilities. Furthermore, the saved space in the new tech creates far more excursion for drivers compared to an equivalent-sized, force-canceling design, contributing to more output and depth from less volume. The patent-pending technology can deliver a powerful and deep bass response while reducing space restrictions that usually limit premium subwoofer performance. KEF: 60 Years of Audio Innovation Originally founded in Tovil, Maidstone, Kent in 1961 by electrical engineer Raymond Cooke, KEF first got its name from Kent Engineering and Foundry, where the audio manufacturer shared the location. From the 1960s, KEF was responsible for the manufacture of monitor loudspeakers - designed by the British Broadcasting Corporation - before being renamed in the 1970s as KEF Electronics Limited. Aside from speakers, KEF is largely known as an OEM supplier of loudspeakers, baffles, and audio drivers. The company later supplies for most of the largest British brands like Celef, Monitor Audio, Rogers, and IMF. Outside the United Kingdom, KEF clients have included Italian speaker manufacturer Sonus Faber and American manufacturer Wilson Audio. By the 90s, however, it was acquired by GP Acoustics, which is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based multinational conglomerate Gold Peak Growth. Despite the acquisition, most of its crucial processes such as product development, research, and flagship products remain on the original Kent site. Related Article: New Technology Uses Laser To Send Secret Audio Message To People's Ear: Here Are Its Potential Uses As an audio technology leader, among its signature techs include the KEF Uni-Q tech in 1988. It was a patented tech that uses coincident midrange and tweeter drivers that preserves integrity and dispersion across its drivers. Another is the LS50 series, an all-in-one speaker system. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Da Vinci of Debt celebrates the return of the Natural Light College Debt Relief program which launched in 2018. Each year, the program provides $1 million to help people who are weighed down by the burden of debt. Now entering year four of its ten-year, $10 million commitment, Natty discloses the "highly-classified" plan behind its $100 diploma rentals in 2020 as it unveils the stunning exhibit. "The art world is filled with absurd price tags that most people find impossible to justify," said Daniel Blake, Vice President of Value Brands at Anheuser-Busch. "That's what made it the perfect medium for this campaign. It's a very fitting analogy for the outrageous cost of attending a typical four-year college. Through Da Vinci of Debt, we hope to inspire action around the college debt crisis and drive more fans to enter for a chance to have the Natty College Debt Relief Program pay down their student loans." Only in the art world can a single banana sell for $120,000 and an artist's used bedsheets go for $150,000. While other artworks like these are valued arbitrarily, the value of Da Vinci of Debt is derived from the average total cost** of a four-year college education. The result is a piece of art valued at $470 million dollars, besting the most expensive piece of art ever sold at public auction - Salvator Mundi, a 600-year-old Da Vinci painting that sold for $450 million in 2017. The design of the artwork is a mesmerizing collection of real diplomas, suspended in mid-air as if a gale of wind had just scattered all 2,600 of them throughout the cavernous, 6,000 square foot space at Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall. The design is meant to illustrate both the scale of the crippling debt crisis while also alluding to the chaotic impact college debt creates for those who are burdened by it. Each diploma was carefully molded in place and brilliantly suspended using an intricate network of cables. With U.S. college debt snowballing to a new record high in 2021: $1.7 trillion* in total debt, and the average graduate paying over $180,000** by the time their diploma is in hand, Natural Light is calling on the deep-pockets of the fine art world to view its exhibit and are open to entertaining bidders on the historic artwork. "If it means giving more people the opportunity to enjoy the college experience without the debt that follows, we're all ears," said Blake. "Natty is dedicated to doing everything we can to provide real solutions to college debt, and if there is a serious bidder, you know where to find us@naturallightbeer." The installation is in residence for a limited time in New York at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal from January 14-16, 2021. A full gallery of the installation will be viewable virtually at https://www.naturallight.com/davinci-of-debt. In addition to the installation at Grand Central Terminal, Natural Light has partnered with Snap Inc. to replicate the Da Vinci of Debt in Augmented Reality (AR) making it accessible to anyone 21+ via Snapchat. Using the Natural Light AR Lens, Snapchatters are able to view and explore the exhibit virtually by placing it wherever they are and tapping sections of the installation to learn more about the college debt crisis in America and the Natural Light College Debt Relief program. In 2021, Natty is back with another $1 million in debt relief. Fans can tell Natty what inspired them to go to college for a chance to have Natty pay down their debt. Natty Light will be accepting entries using #NattyStories and #Contest from Jan 11 through March 21, 2021. Full contest rules and regulations can be found at https://www.naturallight.com/natty-stories-2021. To learn more, follow @naturallight on Twitter and Facebook, @naturallightbeer on Instagram. * Source: Federal Reserve g.19 report ** Source: Student Loan Hero NATTY COLLEGE DEBT No Purchase Necessary. Open to US residents who are twenty-one (21) years of age or older at the time of entry and who have enrolled in an accredited college or university in the United States within fifteen (15) years prior to the time of entry. Begins 1/11/21 and ends 3/21/21. See Official Rules at naturallight.com/natty-stories-2021 for prizes and details. Message and data rates apply. Void where prohibited. ENJOY RESPONSIBLY 2021 Anheuser-Busch, Natural Light Beer, St. Louis, MO ABOUT NATURAL LIGHT Natural Light was introduced in 1977 as Anheuser-Busch's first reduced-calorie light beer. Currently the sixth best-selling beer in America, Natural Light is brewed with a blend of premium hops and a combination of select grains producing a clean flavor, light body and satisfying refreshment. ABOUT ANHEUSER-BUSCH For more than 165 years, Anheuser-Busch has carried on a legacy of brewing great-tasting, high-quality beers that have satisfied beer drinkers for generations. Today, we own and operate 23 breweries, 14 distributorships and 23 agricultural and packaging facilities, and have more than 18,000 colleagues across the United States. We are home to several of America's most recognizable beer brands, including Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob ULTRA and Stella Artois, as well as a number of regional brands that provide beer drinkers with a choice of the best-tasting craft beers in the industry. From responsible drinking programs and emergency drinking water donations to industry-leading sustainability efforts, we are guided by our unwavering commitment to supporting the communities we call home. For more information, visit www.anheuser-busch.com or follow Anheuser-Busch on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook and Instagram . SOURCE Natural Light Related Links http://www.naturallight.com (Natural News) It should be patently obvious by now that the swamp creatures that inhabit the deep state and the bowels of government not only want to punish Donald Trump for daring to win an election and keep his promise to clear them out, they want to ruin him, his family and his businesses for good. Thats what the second impeachment is about. Its what trying to convict him as he is set to walk out of the White House is about (so he cant ever run for a second term). Thats what deplatforming him from all social media (despite taking losses of billions of dollars in valuation) is about. Its what ending long-standing business relations is about. Donald Trump never told his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol Building. Reread his speech or listen to it online; he even used the word peacefully when describing how he wanted supporters to behave when the arrived at the Capitol. But this is all being done to get rid of the biggest threat to the existence of the deep state and their ability to maintain control of their fiefdoms and power centers and to prevent our rightful president from fully exposing what actually happened during the November election. The few loyal constitutionalists remaining on Trumps skeleton staff are doing their best to show their allegiance not to him but to all of us and the founding document that is supposed to guide our elected officials and the bureaucracy that they built. One of them is Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. In a memo titled, Views on Intelligence Community Election Security Analysis, Ratcliffe made it clear that China, not Russia (Russia! Russia! Russia!, the deep state yelled) was far more heavily involved in disrupting our election but the #NeverTrump faction within the intelligence community has hid their involvement in order to get rid of a commander-in-chief they have never liked. From my unique vantage point as the individual who consumes all of the U.S. governments most sensitive intelligence on the Peoples Republic of China, I do not believe the majority view expressed by the Intelligence Community (IC) analysts fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese governments efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections, Ratcliffe wrote. The majority view expressed in this ICA [Intelligence Community Assessment] with regard to Chinas actions to influence the election fall short of the mark for several specific reasons, he added, noting that IC guidelines require assessments to be free of political bias, though in Ratcliffes view, the China portion of the election analysis wasnt. (Related: Pompeo issues sanctions against communist China, Venezuelan election corporation.) China analysts were hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administrations policies, saying in effect, I dont want our intelligence used to support those policies, the IC Ombudsman found. This behavior would constitute a violation of Analytic Standard B: Independence of Political Considerations. This politicization of intelligence has been happening since Donald Trump beat the deep states favorite (and corrupt) candidate, Hillary Clinton. How do you thinking mainstream newspapers got a hold of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynns phone conversation with a Russian diplomat? That stuff isnt public record. And how about the whistleblower complaint regarding the bogus claim of a Trump quid pro quo from the Ukrainian president, which led to the presidents first bogus impeachment? Trump even tried to head off the fake narrative by releasing a transcript of his phone call but that didnt matter because impeachment had been spoken of openly since before he took office. As for the Chinese, if we have U.S. intelligence community analysts going easy on the ChiCom regime, then that can only mean Beijing has found many inroads into our most sensitive intelligence agencies. World War III cant be far off. See more reporting like this at DeepState.news. Sources include: WashingtonPost.com BusinessInsider.com NaturalNews.com 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. 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. Mumbai, Jan 15 : The Enforcement Directorate on Friday questioned Nationalist Congress Party leader Eknath Khadse for nearly 7 hours in connection with a Pune MIDC land deal case, official sources said here on Friday. Khadse, 68, who recently recovered from Covid-19, arrived at the ED office in south Mumbai around 11 a.m., nearly three weeks after he was first summoned in the alleged land-grab case, and stepped out at nearly 6 p.m. "I have fully cooperated with the ED today and will continue to do so even in future. I have replied to all their questions and provided all evidences required in the matter and shall do so when required further," Khadse said in a brief media interaction after emerging from the ED office. Last month, a team of ED had gone to Pune to scrutinise evidences and gather documents pertaining to the alleged irregularities in the deal, which forced Khadse to quit as minister in the erstwhile BJP-led government in 2016. Subsequently, the ED recorded the statement of whistle-blower activist Anjali Damania in the matter in which she had moved the court. Damania had also submitted documents and other evidences concerning the land deal which the State Anti-Corruption Bureau had probed, given a clean chit to Khadse and closed the case. On his part, Khadse - who quit the BJP to join the NCP last October - has claimed innocence and said the entire transaction was absolutely transparent without any kind of irregularities. More People Would Get $1,400 Stimulus Checks Under Biden Plan A COVID-19 stimulus plan proposed by President-elect Joe Biden includes $1,400 direct stimulus checks, which would supplement the $600 stimulus payments that were passed in Congress last year. Its not hard to see that we are in the middle of a once-in-several generations economic crisis, with a once-in-several generations public health crisis. A crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight, Biden said in a statement. We have to act, and we have to act now, Biden said. We cannot afford inaction. The direct payments are part of a broader $2 trillion package to address the ongoing CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus lockdowns and restrictions. Meanwhile, Bidens proposal expands the eligibility of the $1,400 checks. One key group includes adults who can be claimed as dependents on others tax returns, including college students and elderly people who are being cared for by their children. The CARES Act, passed in March 2020, did not provide stimulus payments to dependent children who are aged 17 and older. It provided $500 for each qualifying child as well as $1,200 per adult, while Decembers stimulus provided $600 payments to adults and children. The plan (pdf) also calls for expanding the eligibility to all mixed-status households, which means families where one person is an American citizen or green card holder, while others lack legal immigration status. President-elect Bidens plan will also expand eligibility to adult dependents who have been left out of previous rounds of relief and all mixed-status households. And, his plan will ensure that the Treasury Department has the flexibility and resources it needs to deliver stimulus checks to the families that need them most, including the millions of families that still havent received the $1,200 checks they are entitled to under the CARES Act, the plan states. The proposition sparked backlash from some left-wing politicians, who claimed that Biden should provide $2,000 stimulus payments on top of the $600 payments that have already been doled out. Among them is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who told The Washington Post that she believes Biden needs to provide more. The congresswoman stipulated that $2,000 means $2,000. $2,000 does not mean $1,400. Bidens plan is likely to face pushback from GOP lawmakers who previously said the price tag for the stimulus payments was too high. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he is skeptical of the stimulus payments. I am on board by helping people that need help, people that really cant make it, people who dont have a job, they cant put food on their tableI am in total support of helping them, he said on CNN. Sending checks to people that basically already have a check and arent going to be able to spend that or are not going to spend it, usually are putting it in their savings account right now, thats not who we are. We have done an awful lot of thatits time now to target where the money goes. 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. FRANKFORT, Ky., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Kentucky families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Kentucky families, schools, and organizations are hosting 576 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the most notable of these will be a Netflix viewing party of the school choice-themed movie "Miss Virginia" on Jan. 24, followed by an exclusive Q&A session with Virginia Walden Ford, whose life inspired the film. Video testimonials from Kentucky families about their school choice stories will also be shared throughout the Week on social media. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Kentucky, the iconic Big Four Bridge at Waterfront Park will light up in yellow from sunset to 1 a.m. on Jan. 22-24. A growing number of Kentucky communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the cities of Earlington, Eminence, and Southgate. "After a year of pandemic and politics, Kentuckians are uniting to celebrate an unchanging truth: all children deserve an inspiring, challenging education," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "The Week is a time to celebrate learning and share knowledge about all K-12 options, so that parents are more equipped this year to choose a school that matches their child's needs." In Kentucky, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, public magnet schools, private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. Though the state legislature passed a law allowing for the creation of charter schools in recent years, no bill related to their funding has been passed, so no such schools are currently in operation. Kentucky families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Kentucky school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/kentucky National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com As Madhya Pradesh gears up to carry out the Covid-19 vaccination drive from Saturday, Haridev, a security guard posted at JP Hospital in Bhopal, will be the first person in the state to receive the shot and will also get a chance to speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I am happy to get the first shot and this happiness will double once I speak to the PM, Haridev said. The native of Roshanpura said he is prepared to take the vaccine jab and affirmed that he will continue to discharge his duty afterwards. Sources say sanitation workers in Bhopal werent too keen to take the first shot. A noted physician is reportedly also on the list of those getting the vaccine but the administration hasnt released his name. For health staffers, the first phase of Covid-19 immunisation will be undertaken in Madhya Pradesh at 10.30am, announced state health minister Dr Prabhuram Choudhary in a media symposium on Friday. The first phase will cover 4.16 lakh health workers, then frontline workers and people above 50 years of age and those with comorbidities will be included in the exercise, the minister said. He clarified that presently minors and pregnant women wont be included in the vaccination drive. Those with cough, cold and fever will have to wait four weeks before they are immunised, said state medical education minister Vishwas Sarang. Arrangements have been made to meet any eventuality during the exercise, he added. Of the 4.16 lakh vaccines to be administered here in the first phase, 3.16 lakh will be for government sector health workers. The vaccines will be taken out on a 'first expired, first out' basis, added Sarang. The ministers urged the public to refrain from spreading rumours about the vaccines. "People are raising questions on whether politicians and officers will be vaccinated in the first phase, so I wish to clarify that initial phases will only cover frontline workers and high-risk groups. Commoners, politicians and officers will be vaccinated later," Sarang said. He also emphasised that the second dose will be administered to beneficiaries 28 days after the first one; so a vaccination cycle will need 42 days to complete and in this period, the person concerned is required to practice all necessary precautions. The health officials said that the drive could take 6-7 months to complete in the state. Union health minister Harsh Vardhan also addressed the event through videoconferencing and extended greetings to the health staff on the eve of the massive immunisation drive. The state has received over five lakh doses of vaccine and the Bhopal division has received 94,000 of these. Registered beneficiaries will be informed about the vaccination schedule in an SMS by Friday evening, officials said. The PSNI are investigating after two elderly people were terrorised by a masked gang in their home on Wednesday night. The frightening incident happened in the Grand Parade area of east Belfast at around 7.00pm. Five masked men forced their way into the home of the elderly occupants, who are in their 80s, and told them to remain in their living room. The men then searched the house before leaving. While it is understood nothing was taken during the incident, the police said it was very distressing for the victims. A PSNI spokesperson said: Enquiries are continuing and we are appealing to anyone who witnessed anything suspicious in the area to contact police on 101, quoting reference number 1494 of 13/01/21. Expand Close PACEMAKER BELFAST 14/01/2021 Grand Parade east Belfast. Detectives are appealing for information following the report of a burglary at the home of older people in the Grand Parade area of east Belfast / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp PACEMAKER BELFAST 14/01/2021 Grand Parade east Belfast. Detectives are appealing for information following the report of a burglary at the home of older people in the Grand Parade area of east Belfast Read More Meanwhile, elsewhere in Belfast, there were two attempted burglaries in the Donegal Pass on Wednesday night. Just before 6:45pm the police received a report that a hooded man with dark gloves was spotted acting suspiciously outside a house in the area. He appeared to be trying the door handle of the property before making off after he was spotted. Another report was made at around 8:10pm of a similar incident. The police reiterated the importance of home security and asked the public to keep an eye out for neighbours. A spokesperson said: Please make security part of your daily routine. Close and lock all doors and windows, even if you are only popping out for a few minutes. Leave a light on if it will be dark before you get home. And consider security lights. To a burglar, a dark house is an empty house. "Please also keep a look out for any elderly or vulnerable neighbours. If you see or hear anything that seems suspicious call 101 and in the event of an emergency call 999. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Core One Labs Inc. (CSE:COOL)(OTC PINK:CLABF)(Frankfurt:LD62) (WKN: A2P8K3) (the "Company" or "Core One") is pleased to announce that further to its October 30, 2020 press release, the Company has completed the sale of certain of its non-core assets and subsidiaries in California for CAD$3,000,000 plus the assumption of approximately USD$4,000,000 in related liabilities. The completion of this sale allows the Company to focus its core business on the continued development of psychedelic alternative medicines and experiential therapies, and its CannaStripTM delivery technology. The Company's goal is to use its proprietary technologies to advance natural-based medicines for the treatment of mental health illnesses and addiction. Core One's team of leading scientists, specializing in protein expression and biosynthetic fermentation, have developed a patentable method of producing psilocybin that will afford the Company the ability to manufacture consistent high-quality GMP API psilocybin at scale, and provide pharmaceutical companies, API manufacturers and medical research organizations conducting clinical trials, access to product at a significantly lower cost than other psilocybin-producing companies. In consideration for the acquisition of the Assets (as defined below), the purchaser will complete a series of cash payments to the Company totaling CAD$3,000,000 and will assume responsibility for all outstanding liabilities and obligations of Reveur Holdings Inc., Core, CSPA, LDS Agrotech Inc., LDS Scientific Inc., Agrotech LLC and LDS Development Corp., including all continuing employment obligations and certain additional liabilities of the Company associated with these assets. The total value of the assumed liabilities is approximately USD$4,000,000. The assets being sold are composed of the following: all of the issued and outstanding share capital of Reveur Holdings Inc. ("Reveur"), a California corporation, including its principal assets which are all of the issued and outstanding share capital of Core Isogenics Inc. ("Core"), a California corporation, and CSPA Group, Inc. ("CSPA"), a California corporation; all of the issued and outstanding share capital of LDS Agrotech Inc. (" AgroCo "), a Nevada corporation, held by Core One which represents 75% of the outstanding share capital of AgroCo; "), a Nevada corporation, held by Core One which represents 75% of the outstanding share capital of AgroCo; all of the issued and outstanding share capital of LDS Scientific Inc. ("SciCo"), a Nevada corporation, held by Core One which represents 75% of the outstanding share capital of SciCo; the membership interest in Agrotech LLC ("AgroLLC"), a California limited liability company, held by Core One which represents a fifty percent 50% membership interest in AgroLLC; all of the issued and outstanding share capital of LDS Development Corporation ("DevCo"), a California corporation, except for all tangible and intangible assets of DevCo related to the manufacturing and distribution of "CannaStrips" including all associated intellectual property and manufacturing equipment (the "Excluded Assets"); and all tangible and intangible assets currently being held by and utilized by Reveur, Core, CSPA and DevCo, including, without limitation, all existing contracts, leases, client files, client billing records, vendor records, furniture, fixtures, equipment, employee files, employee time records, and other information customary for the cultivation, manufacturing and distribution of cannabis and cannabis related products, but excluding the Excluded Assets. (collectively, the "Assets") "The completion of this sale eliminates monthly expenses related to the operation in Adelanto, California and provides the Company with increased working capital. This increased working capital will allow us to focus resources on the development of psychedelics as alternative medicines, which we believe will have a significant and positive impact on the future of those suffering from mental illness and addictions." stated Joel Shacker CEO of the Company. In connection with the completion of the Asset sale, the Company has issued 350,000 common shares to two arms-length third-parties who assisted with facilitating such sale. These shares will be subject to a hold period of four months and one day. Also in connection with the divestment of the Adelanto assets, the Company announces the resignation of Mr. Casey Fenwick as President of Core One. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Fenwick for his service, and much success in his future endeavours. The Company further announces that it intends to settle $74,000.00 in outstanding indebtedness to an arms-length party through the issuance of 88,095 common shares at a price of $0.84 per share. The shares issued under the debt settlement will be subject to a hold period of four months and one day from the date of issuance. Finally, the Company announces that it intends to grant up to 6,720,000 incentive stock options (the "Options") to certain directors, officers, employees and consultants of the Company. The Options are exercisable at a price of $1.05 for a period of three years from the date of grant. The Company's Stock Option Plan governs these incentive options, as well as the terms and conditions of their exercise, which is in accordance with policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange. About Core One Labs Inc. Core One Labs Inc. is a research and technology company focused in life sciences and on bringing psychedelic medicines to market through novel delivery systems and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. The Company has developed a patent pending thin film oral strip (the "technology") which dissolves instantly when placed in the mouth and delivers organic molecules in precise quantities to the bloodstream, maintaining excellent bioavailability. With this technology, the Company intends to further develop its IP technology to focus on delivering psychedelic molecules with an initial focus on psilocybin. Core One also holds an interest in walk-in medical clinics which maintain a database of over 200,000 patients combined. Through research and development in these clinics, including the integration of its intellectual property related to psychedelic treatments and novel drug therapies, the Company intends to work towards regulatory approval for research that advances psychedelic-derived treatments for mental health disorders. Core One Labs Inc. Joel Shacker Chief Executive Officer FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: info@core1labs.com 1-866-347-5058 Cautionary Disclaimer Statement: The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. In addition, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Although Congress has prohibited the US Justice Department from spending federal funds to interfere with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws, this prohibition must be renewed each year to remain in effect. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. In addition, psilocybin is currently a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Canada) and it is a criminal offence to possess substances under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Canada) without a prescription. Health Canada has not approved psilocybin as a drug for any indication. Core One Labs Inc. does not have any direct or indirect involvement with illegal selling, production, or distribution of psychedelic substances in jurisdictions in which it operates. While Core One Labs Inc. believes psychedelic substances can be used to treat certain medical conditions, it does not advocate for the legalization of psychedelics substances for recreational use. Core One Labs Inc. does not deal with psychedelic substances, except within laboratory and clinical trial settings conducted within approved regulatory frameworks. SOURCE: Core One Labs Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624568/Core-One-Labs-Completes-Sale-of-Non-Core-Assets U.S. military commanders in Alaska have ordered alcohol sales to cease after 10 p.m. on two bases in an effort to control drinking-related mental health issues such as suicide. As of Friday, "alcohol may not be purchased between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. on the installation," according to a post Thursday on the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or JBER, Facebook page. "Several scientific studies reviewed by the National Institutes of Health have concluded that restricting the hours when alcohol may be sold is an effective strategy for reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related harms," according to the post. Read Next: Lawmakers Push to Award Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol Police Hero, Army Vet Fort Wainwright issued the same order, Air Force Maj. Michael Hertzog II, a JBER spokesman, told Military.com. "The decision to limit the time alcohol is sold on the installation was made using information from science-based studies that show decreasing the hours of sale, by [two] or more hours for businesses that sell alcohol, may be an effective strategy for preventing alcohol-related harms (including suicide)," he said in a statement. "This decision was made after considerable debate, through counsel and with contributions from mission partners and leadership across JBER. Caring for people remains the number [one] priority of JBER leadership." The Army has wrestled with morale issues unique to Alaska. A military behavioral health team conducted a review in 2019 that looked at 11 suicides at Wainwright between January 2014 and March 2019 but failed to pinpoint definitive reasons behind them. During a January 2020 trip to Wainwright, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy acknowledged low morale among some soldiers based in Alaska and announced several improvements planned for housing and barracks to enhance "quality-of-life issues" at the base. The base put in a new transportation system to deal with the challenges of shuttling soldiers around the installation, especially during the winter months. Gym hours were changed to remain open 24 hours a day to give troops more flexibility. The post also installed wireless internet in dining facilities and brought in higher-quality food options for soldiers. -- Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this story. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Related: Improvements Coming to Alaska Army Base as Troops Face Morale Challenges An 11-year-old boy has had both his legs sliced off after falling under a goods train during an attempted 'train surfing' stunt in Russia. Arkady Aksenov fell onto the track while riding on the moving freight carriages, before being run over by the carriages which tore off his entire left leg and also severed his right leg lower down. He laid in -5C temperatures for nearly an hour before the driver of another train, Bulat Zhakeev, disobeyed rules to stop his train, give first aid to Arkady and summon emergency services. The boy's mother Maria Petrova claims that two other boys who were with him, aged 12 and 14, ran away and 'left him for dead' after allegedly urging him to try the stunt to 'become famous' in a YouTube video. Arkady Aksenov, pictured left before the accident, had both his legs sliced off in a horrific accident publicised by his mother Maria Petrova (right) to draw attention to the dangerous 'train surfing' stunt he had been attempting Arkady Aksenov fell onto the track while riding on the moving freight carriages, leading to a collision which tore off his entire left leg and also severed his right leg lower down Petrova, a yoga teacher, wrote a furious social media post addressed to the two boys who she claims bullied her son into the risky adventure. 'They left him wounded, bleeding. They didn't panic, but quietly left, through the bushes,' she claimed. 'They didn't try to run towards people so that they could have been seen by the accident place. 'They were certain that there were no CCTV cameras on the railway, which is true, and that Arkady would die and not say a word. 'You little idiots! If you were to call help, you would have been heroes. Yes, people would have said that it was a pity you started it all, but they would have said well done to you not to have left your friend in that horrible hour. 'You won't be punished for what you've done. By law, you won't be punished because you are children and you are not subject to the law. 'Your parents won't be punished either, because there is no clause in the Criminal Code which sends you to jail for being a b***ard and for raising a b***ard.' The older boy is an 'experienced' train surfer with his own YouTube Channel, it is claimed. The mother has watched 58-minute footage of the boy - a keen martial arts fighter before the tragedy - lying by the track in minus 5C cold until the passing train driver stopped 'to save my son's life'. The 11-year-old survived thanks to the driver of a passing train, Bulat Zhakeev, who disobeyed rules to stop his train, give first aid and summon emergency services (pictured at the scene) The furious woman also attacked the parents of the boys, saying: 'You didn't even call me.' She told them: 'Live with it. 'I wish that every night a bloodied boy without legs comes to your nightmares, stretching his arms towards you, and begging you to help. 'His nails are broken off, his fingers are dirty because he was fighting the force of the train, holding himself on so that the train didn't pull him under completely.' The driver said he had noticed a 'large dark spot' at the side of the track, and initially thought it was snow before realising it was a person. He thought at first it was a homeless man who had sought to cross the tracks. But he said: 'When I got closer, I realised it was a boy lying with his face down in the pool of his blood. 'He said "Help. I'm cold". What I saw as dark soil was his blood. To say I was shocked is to say nothing. This story needs to be heard as wide as possible. 'Children simply don't realise that a train even when it moves at slow speed creates a force that can pull them underneath.' Arkady Aksenov with his mother Maria Petrova, who wrote a furious social media post attacking the boys who allegedly pressured Arkady into attempting the stunt The mother made the case public after watching her son on a ventilator for two weeks. 'It is a miracle he survived for so long,' she said. 'I still cannot believe he remained sane after what happened to him. 'I didn't even know about train surfing before this happened. The more I read about it now the more I feel mortified.' Detectives working on his case liken the illegal activity to sickening 'so-called death groups' trying to push teens to suicide, she said. 'I am going to fight this,' she vowed. It's beyond me why nothing is done to stop this. 'Rails all around Russia are literally soaking in children's blood, and no-one is trying to stop it.' Doctors say he remains in a critical condition in hospital. State transport investigators say they are probing the case, and a criminal case has been launched on violation of traffic safety rules. US Federal prosecutors have said that rioters who seized the Capitol last week had an intention of "capturing and assassinating elected officials." In a new court filing which includes a memo seeking to keep Jacob Anthony Chansley who rallied people inside the Capitol using a bullhorn in detention, it was gathered that he left a note for Vice President Mike Pence warning that its only a matter of time, justice is coming. The filing added; Strong evidence, including Chansleys own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government." The disclosure which was made by the Justice Department lawyers in Arizona, as security agencies continue digging deep to uncover what happened. Prosecutors and federal agents have begun bringing more serious charges tied to violence at the Capitol, including against a retired firefighter, Robert Sanford, that he hurled a fire extinguisher at the head of one police officer and another, Peter Stager, accused of beating a different officer with a pole bearing an American flag. In Chansleys case, prosecutors said the charges involve active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States government, and warned that the insurrection is still in progress as law enforcement prepares for more demonstrations in Washington and state capitals. Asides alleging that Chansley suffered from drug abuse, mental illness and poses a serious flight risk, the prosecutors further stated that he "has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality. He is due in federal court in Arizona on Friday January 15, for a detention hearing. In a separate case, prosecutors in Texas court alleged that a retired Air Force reservist who carried plastic zip tie-like restraints on the Senate floor may have intended to restrain lawmakers. The justice department has brought more than 80 criminal cases in connection with the violent riots at the US Capitol last week, in which Trumps supporters stormed the building, ransacked offices, and in some cases attacked police. 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 Starting Monday, essential workers and people 75 years and older can start rolling up their sleeves to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Huntsville Hospital has had about 10,000 people sign up to get the vaccine since Friday when we learned we're entering Phase 1-B. On Monday, about 300 people that are frontline workers and 75 years and older will be getting the COVID-19 vaccine in the Jaycee Community Building at John Hunt Park. Huntsville Hospital's Vice President of Operations, Tracy Doughty, said it's been a team effort getting things ready for next week. Our staff is working extra shifts, theyre working overtime, we have managers taking patients," said Doughty. "So, it's been an effort by our staff members, our physicians, respiratory therapy, radiologist staff, to pick up extra shifts." Doughty said members of the community are stepping up to get John Hunt Park ready for Monday. Weve had volunteer physicians and retired nurses and others volunteers to help us. So, weve had no problem standing up John Hunt Park and being able to give out the vaccine. Its a testament to our employees and the community who want to get past this thing called COVID-19. The hospital is easing into distributing the vaccine by starting off with administering 300 vaccines each day. They plan to increase it to 700 each day once they get their routine running smoothly. If weve got a vaccine, we want to give it to somebody," said Doughty. Huntsville Hospital plans to open drive-thru vaccine locations once they have enough vaccines. Doughty said it's their goal to give as many people the vaccine as they can. Were going to do our part and vaccinate as many people as we can. That means we might have the Jaycee building at John Hunt Park operational for months, and as we have vaccines, well spin up our travel plans and get some drive-thru clinics to different parts of the community. Huntsville Hospital will continue to only make appointments for those in the Phase 1-A and 1-B until the Alabama Department of Public Health updates its distribution plans. Head of Operations at the Forestry Commission, Charles Owusu has lauded the oppostion National Democratic Congress (NDC) for resorting to the Supreme Court to address their election grievances. Charles Owusu was happy that the NDC and their Presidential candidate, John Dramani Mahama have heeded the calls to act lawfully instead of inciting their supporters to hit the streets in protest against the election verdict. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was declared President-elect by the Electoral Commission (EC) Chairperson, Jean Mensa following the 2020 Presidential elections on Monday, December 7. But the opposition party has challenged the victory of the President stressing the election results are flawed and fictional. However, the President was sworn in on Thursday, January 7, 2021 but the NDC says they will not recognize him as Head of State, hence challenging his legitimacy in court. The first hearing of the case was held on Thursday, January 14, 2021 where the party sought to amend a mistake in their petition. The court granted them the motion to amend their petition with regard to a relief that the party wants a second election to be held between their Presidential candidate, John Mahama and the EC Chairperson instead of saying with the President, Nana Akufo-Addo. Commenting on the issue on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', Charles Owusu said; "I'm happy and I commend them for resorting to the court." He was also optimistic the Supreme Court will deliver a fair judgment on the case. "I am sure the Supreme Court will give a fair verdict," he stressed. 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 00:31 | Cusco (Cusco region), Jan. 15. Regional Hospital COVID-19 Area Chief Enrique Arana reported that six ICU beds are occupied by critical patients at said health care institution, as well as three out of the four beds at Antonio Lorena Hospital Wilbert Pozo, head of the medical staff at Antonio Lorena Hospital, affirmed that the health facility will run out of beds if one more patient is admitted, even if referred by the Regional Hospital. "It will be overrun if two additional COVID-19 patients come in one hour," he commented. The number of people with symptoms of COVID-19 who go to the Regional Hospital has increased as well; for example, five or six of every seven people are hospitalized. As of Thursday, the COVID-19 Unit of 23 beds had 20 patients, while 40 out of the 100 available beds at the temporary hospital had been occupied. "Beds for moderate, intermediate, and mild patients are still available, but we are experiencing difficulties in ICU," Arana said on Thursday. The chief of the COVID-19 Area reported that the hospital has some equipment, such as ventilators, but lacks fully equipped beds (with monitors and aspirators), ICU physicians, ICU-trained nurses, that is, the whole team, a situation that he expects will be solved in the coming hours. (END) PHS/MAO/RMB/MVB Cusco's health authorities have warned that Intensive Care Units (ICUs) at the two principal hospitals of the Andean city are full due to a spike in hospitalizations of critical COVID-19 patients.Published: 1/15/2021 The Pentagon building is seen in Washington in a file photograph. (AFP via Getty Images) Israel Moved to CENTCOM in Boost to Arab-Israeli-US Efforts Against Iran: Pentagon Pentagon officials said Friday that Israel has been shifted to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility, delivering a major boost to allied efforts to counter the regional threat posed by Iran. The Department of Defense (DOD) said in a Jan. 15 statement that Israel has been moved from the U.S European Command (EUCOM) area of responsibilitywhere the Jewish State was previously placed amid acrimony from Americas Arab alliesand into the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility. The move paves the way for Israel, the United States, and Arab partners to conduct joint exercises and more effectively plan for Iran-specific threats. I think moving Israel to CENTCOM makes sense from a U.S. policy perspective in that many Israeli issues are tied to the other countries in CENTCOMs [area of responsibility], retired Army Maj. Gen. Mike Jones, former CENTCOM chief of staff, told Military Times. The shift was made possible thanks to an easing of tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, in large part thanks to the Trump administrations efforts to broker diplomatic normalization deals, known as the Abraham Accords. The recent Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain both reflect and augur a growing strategic alignment between Israel and key American partners in the Middle East, driven primarily by the worsening Iranian nuclear and regional threats, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a pro-Israel think tank based in Washington, said in a statement. Iran tensions remain high, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying on Tuesday that the al-Qaeda terrorist group has a new headquarters there. Al-Qaeda has a new home base, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pompeo said in a speech at the National Press Club. As a result, bin Ladens wicked creation is poised to gain strength and capabilities. We ignore this Iran, Al Qaeda Nexus at our own peril. We need to acknowledge it, we must confront it. Indeed, we must defeat it, he said, adding that this axis poses a grave threat to the security of nations and to the American homeland itself. In a November report (pdf), JINSA urged Israel be moved to CENTCOM, arguing that it could smooth the way for the Pentagon to utilize Israel more for regional operations, most directly by updating the U.S. stockpile in Israel with precision guided munitions and other weapons that could be used by U.S. forces in the region. It also could enable Israel, U.S. forces in the Middle East and Arab partners to begin or deepen regional cooperation on missile defense, exercises, strategic planning, intelligence sharing and other critical military activities, JINSA said in a statement. The move would bolster Israels ability to defend U.S. and Arab partners interests by continuing to be the tip of spear against Iran and its proxies, the report argued. While it is unclear whether the incoming Biden administration will uphold the move, Dennis Ross, a former U.S. peace negotiator, told The Wall Street Journal that the shift was overdue and is unlikely to draw objections. I dont think the Biden people will have a problem with it, and I think the Israelis will welcome it as a reflection of the new realities in the region, Ross told the outlet. A deputy commander of the Quds Force of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) denied that any deaths had resulted from a string of airstrikes believed to have been carried out by Israel in Syria earlier this week. The attacks left no human casualties, Ahmad Karimkhani told Irans state Fars News Agency on Thursday. Despite their fake propaganda, the Zionists do not dare to attack the Iranian and resistance groups centers and positions in Syria, he added. Suspected Israeli airstrikes hit multiple locations in and around the cities of Deir ez-Zor, Mayadeen and Abu Kamal in eastern Syria in territory occupied by IRGC-backed forces supporting Syrias President Bashar al-Assad. Reports of deaths varied. Omar Abu Layla, who runs an activist network in Deir Ez-Zor, told reporters that no more than 40 had been killed. The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 57 had been killed, including more than a dozen Syrian army personnel. Most killed were from Iran-backed Shiite militias, the observatory reported. A commander of the IRGC-backed Afghan Fatemiyoun in Syria denied Thursday that any of his militias members had been affected, but said Syrian army personnel were killed in the strikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday that the strikes caused the Fatemiyoun to redeploy personnel in the three Euphrates River valley cities to avoid potential follow-up strikes. The strikes targeted warehouses used to store Iranian weapons systems in Syria, a US intelligence official told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The official also said the sites stored materials needed for Irans nuclear development, though it was unclear what. The United States has sought to strangle Irans financial ability to support proxy militias abroad in conflict zones in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and has clamped down on Irans ability to obtain certain metals that could be used to manufacture ballistic missiles. UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio Domestic violence: Tullamore Road At 11:45 a.m. Jan. 5, officers went to a home after dispatchers received a 911 hang-up call from the address. Police arrived to find a man and woman arguing. The man, on seeing police, ran. The woman, 26, suffered minor facial injuries as a result of tussling with the man, the father of her children. While looking for the man, police learned that he was wanted on a Cleveland Heights police warrant for aggravated murder. University Heights police were joined by Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights police in searching for the suspect. The man was eventually found under a back porch of a Cleveland Heights home. The suspect, 26, of University Heights, was arrested without further incident and turned over to Cleveland Heights police. In addition to aggravated murder, the man faces a domestic-violence charge for the University Heights incident. The woman also sought a temporary protection order against the man. Disorderly conduct: Westwood Road At 1:50 p.m. Jan. 4, a woman called police to her home because her two adult grandsons were fighting. While investigating the matter, one of the combatants, a University Heights man, 22, was verbally abusive and threatened officers with harm. The man was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, menacing and disturbing the peace. Identity theft: Silsby Road At 9:45 a.m. Jan. 7, a woman reported that someone had used her personal information to file for unemployment benefits in her name. She also reported that in November 2020, someone opened a fraudulent bank account in her name. Theft: Cedar Road At 9:10 p.m. Jan. 8, police were dispatched to Family Dollar, 13470 Cedar Road, where a theft had occurred earlier in the evening. A male suspect wearing a Cleveland Heights High School Tigers black hooded sweatshirt and a female suspect selected comforters and soap before exiting, without paying, out of the back stockroom door. Police are investigating. Traffic offenses: Cedar Road At 9:35 p.m. Jan. 10, police stopped a Jeep Cherokee because of its loud exhaust system. A check of the drivers registration showed that he was wanted on warrants and that he had a suspended license. Police issued the University Heights man, 26, citations for loud exhaust, driving without a license and driving with a suspended license. The mans Jeep was impounded. Improper discharge of a firearm: Milton Road At 12:35 a.m. Jan. 6, police received reports of possible gunshots being fired in the area of Milton and Baintree roads. Officers arrived to find no suspects, victims or damage. Evidence was collected. The matter is under investigation. Read more from the Sun Press. The coronavirus pandemic has also upended the NRA, which last year laid off dozens of employees. The group canceled its national convention and scuttled fundraising. The NRAs bankruptcy filing listed between $100 million and $500 million in assets and between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities. Still, the NRA claimed in announcing the move that the organization was in its strongest financial condition in years. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Germany will soon hold political consultations in Berlin, Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vasyl Bodnar has said. "Together with German Ambassador Anka Feldhusen, we discussed prospects for bilateral activities for 2021. I will soon come to Berlin to hold political consultations at the Foreign Ministry level," Bodnar posted on Twitter. He noted that special attention was paid to sensitive historical issues, including the joint commemoration of the anniversary of Babyn Yar. ish Texans wishing to weigh in on bills being considered by the Legislature will have to appear in person, per new rules passed by both chambers this week. Advocacy groups had pushed for lawmakers to allow testimony to be taken virtually to accommodate those with concerns about exposure to the coronavirus involved with traveling to Austin and being in a room full of people, especially those with heightened COVID-19 risk. The rules approved Thursday in the House will allow videoconference testimony only for those invited by a committee chair. In the Senate, it will be allowed only during regional redistricting hearings. If you want somebody invited, go to the chair of the committee, said state Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, who co-authored the rules. It doesnt strike you at all. House committee chairs are required to make a reasonable effort to invite witnesses representing different viewpoints but have no obligation to accept requests from committee members for certain witnesses to be called. New this year, as a way to increase opportunities for public feedback for those with health concerns, House committees will be required to accept electronically submitted written comments. RELATED: Texas Senate Republicans keep ability to block bills out of Dems reach Erin Zwiener, a Hays County Democrat, raised concerns Thursday about accessibility for the public and lamented the removal of an amendment that would have required committee chairs to accept requests to invite witnesses if a member received support from about a third of the committee. The rules approved Thursday do not compel the chair to accept such requests. Im sorry we dont have stronger access. We should. Its 2021, and were in the middle of a pandemic. We have the technology, and we have the need, Zwiener said in a tweet. This is a loss. However, there are still options. Every committee chair will have the ability to invite virtual testimony. We need to make sure they do so fairly. Leaders of advocacy groups that frequently testify before House and Senate committees also expressed their disappointment with the rules. Anyone who wants to testify virtually during a pandemic should be allowed to do so, said Texas State Teachers Association spokesman Clay Robison. People with something to say about pending litigation should not have to risk their health to do so. The House and Senate will generally require masks, but they diverged over whether to require testing. House members, staff and the public will be required to wear a mask in the chamber and committee hearing rooms but may remove them when speaking at a microphone. Members can also take off their masks when protected by barriers installed by the Committee on House Administration and socially distanced. In the Senate, members have to wear masks except for when theyre alone at their desks or seated at the dais. The Senate will require members and visitors to receive a negative COVID-19 test to enter the chamber or a committee hearing room each day, while House members and visitors will not. Cayla Harris contributed to this report. taylor.goldenstein@chron.com Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday reviewed preparations for the launch of the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive scheduled to begin on January 16 and visited the dedicated COVID control room set up at the Nirman Bhawan premises of the health ministry. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off the first phase of the pan India roll-out of COVID-19 vaccination drive at 10:30 AM via video conferencing. This vaccination program will cover the entire length and breadth of the country, with a total of 3006 session sites across all states and union territories which will be connected virtually throughout the exercise. Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated Saturday at each of the session sites, the health ministry said. The vaccination drive has been planned in a phased manner, identifying priority groups. Healthcare workers, both in government and private sectors including ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) workers, will receive the vaccine during this phase, the ministry said in a statement. Vardhan said India's exercise to vaccinate its population against COVID-19 shall be the largest immunisation drive of the world. He reiterated that both the indigenously manufactured vaccines, Covishield by Serum Institute of India and COVAXIN of Bharat Biotech, have proven safety and immunogenicity records and are the most important tools to contain the pandemic, the statement said. During his visit to the COVID control room,Vardhan minutely scrutinised each aspect of the working of Co-WIN, an online digital platform developed by the health ministry which will be used to drive the vaccination programme. It will facilitate real time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and individualised tracking of beneficiaries for COVID-19 vaccine. This digital platform will assist programme managers across national, state, and district levels while conducting vaccination sessions. It will help them track beneficiary coverage, beneficiary dropouts, sessions planned v/s sessions held and vaccine utilisation, the ministry stated. The platform enables national and state administrators to view and sort data of beneficiaries as per their gender, age and co-morbidity. They can also view the metadata of vaccinations and adverse event following immunization (AEFI) reported from constituent districts across states and union territories, the ministry said. District administrators can additionally create session sites at any location by entering the pin-code, followed by specifying the locality or villages and subsequently assigning a vaccinator. Vardhan suggested that the software modifications and lessons learnt while using the highly advanced Co-WIN platform be incorporated into India's universal immunisation program, the statement stated. He also reviewed the beneficiary registration page for all non-prioritised groups on CoWIN. He suggested pre-populating the software with beneficiaries by seeding it with electoral database, in addition to other documents that are authorised for registration. "The dedicated COVID Control Room has been involved in the massive exercise of monitoring district wise COVID-19 data from across the country as well as in depth analysis of the data to interpret and evaluate the status of the pandemic. "For the last several months, through this dedicated control room, the government has been closely monitoring parameters such as case fatality rates, infection rates, death rates and other parameters based on which containment strategies have been continuously evolved," the ministry said. The control room has also been helping to track and record best strategies being adopted by different countries as a part of their response system and translating them into key learnings for India. The Union minister also reviewed the working of the 'communications control room' which has been closely monitoring the disinformation campaigns and rumour mongering in relation to administering of COVID-19 vaccines. He advised the administrative machinery to go all out to counter the misinformation campaign being spread by vested interests. The full initial procurement of 1.65 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines Covishield and Covaxin- has been allocated to all states and union territories in proportion to their healthcare workers database. States and union territories have been advised to utilise a maximum of 10 days in a fortnight for the COVID-19 vaccination. They have also been advised to organise vaccination sessions taking into account 10 per cent reserve/wastage doses and an average of 100 vaccinations per session per day. Therefore, any undue haste on the parts of the states to organise unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day is not advised, the ministry had said on Wednesday. The states and union territories have also been advised to increase the number of vaccination session sites that would be operational every day in a progressive manner as the vaccination process stabilises and moves forward. According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities. Cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government. Vardhan will be visiting the new OPD wing of AIIMS between 10-10:30 AM on Saturday to join the AIIMS doctors and potential vaccine beneficiaries to participate in and witness the launch of the vaccination. He is also scheduled to visit a few more sites in the capital subsequently. . 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. Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Brazil's Amazonas state could soon see surging COVID-19 case numbers surpass the "catastrophic" wave it suffered near the start of the pandemic last April, the WHO warned on Friday. The World Health Organization voiced alarm at the situation in the northern state and its capital Manaus, where authorities are scrambling to slow the spread of the virus as cases soar and hospitals run out of beds and oxygen. "The situation in Amazonas and particularly in Manaus has deteriorated significantly over the last couple of weeks," WHO emergency director Michael Ryan told a virtual media briefing from WHO's headquarters in Geneva. "Clearly, if this continues, we are going to see a wave that is greater than what was a catastrophic wave in April and May in Amazonas and particularly in Manaus," he said, adding that that would be "a tragedy in itself". In Manaus, hospital intensive care units have been at 100 percent capacity for the past two weeks, and more than 400 people with COVID-19 are waiting for a hospital bed to be freed up, he said. At the same time, there is a shortage of oxygen and of gloves and other basic protective gear for medical workers. "This is a system under extreme pressure," Ryan said, warning that another problem was that large numbers of not only medical staff but also lab technicians were becoming infected in their communities. 'Negative spiral' "This is a situation where your whole system begins to implode," he said. He explained that this was "because your hospital system, your public health system, your laboratory system, those people are part of the community themselves, and they begin to become infected and you go into a negative spiral." Brazil has recorded more than 205,000 deaths from COVID-19, second only to the United States. The national average is 98 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, but in Amazonas the figure is 142 per 100,000, surpassed only by Rio de Janeiro (158) and Brasilia (145). Ryan said Amazonas was not the only place feeling the pressure. "We have seen a rapid, rapid, exponential increase in cases in a number of cases in the Americas," he said. Fear has been growing that a new strain of the virus found in Brazil could be more contagious, just like new strains found in Britain and South Africa. But Ryan stressed it was certainly not the main culprit behind the surge in cases, but it was rather linked to "the breaking down of basic behaviours, connected in part with more mixing over the Christmas holidays. "It is not new variants driving this transmission. New variants may have an impact down the line ... (but) it is too easy to just lay the blame on the variant," he said. "We have to be able to accept our share, individually and as communities, as governments, our share of the responsibility in this virus getting out of control," he said. He acknowledged that the new variants of the virus complicated the fight against the pandemic. "The virus has been energised by the ability to evolve...," he warned. "We have got to get more efficient at fighting the virus." Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 AFP We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form KALAMAZOO, MI -- The wife of a former Kalamazoo pastor already charged with sex crimes is now being charged herself. Kalamazoo County prosecutors on Thursday, Jan. 14 filed eight felony warrants against 27-year-old Jazmonique Lakendra Strickland. Her husband, Stricjavvar Strick Strickland, was charged with 11 felony counts in August. Police have accused him of paying teens to have sex with his wife as he watched, along with other crimes. Prosecutors said they have been in contact with Jazmonique Stricklands attorney and she is expected to turn herself in early next week, although an arraignment date was not immediately known. Related: Kalamazoo pastor paid teenage boys to have sex with his wife, police say According to court records for her husbands case, two males who were students at Phoenix High School during the 2017-2018 school year told a detective they were paid $100 each on separate occasions to have sex with Jazmonique Strickland. The pastor also paid one of the boys money to send him nude photos, the detective alleged. Stricjavvar Strickland is a former pastor at Second Baptist Church in Kalamazoo. He also previously served as the NAACP Kalamazoo Chapter president from 2016-2018 His wife was a secretary at Phoenix High School at one point. Court records show that Jazmonique Srickland is charged with two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a student, one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a person between 13 and 15 years old, two counts of child sexually abusive activity, and three counts of human trafficking of a minor for commercial sexual activity. The alleged crimes occurred between August 2015 and August 2018, records show. Stricjavvar Strickland waived his right to a preliminary exam on Nov. 4 and was bound over to Kalamazoo County Circuit Court. His initial trial date is set for April 26. More from MLive Bond set at $500K for former Kalamazoo pastor charged with 11 felony child sex crimes See who has been charged in the Flint water criminal cases Watch as former Gov. Rick Snyder gets arraigned on charges related to Flint water crisis North Korea displays new submarine-launched ballistic missiles during a military parade in Pyongyang, Thursday. / AP-Yonhap By Kang Seung-woo North Korea used a Thursday evening military parade marking its latest party congress as a fully calibrated warning to the incoming Joe Biden administration in an attempt to keep its focus on its nuclear program and extract concessions from the United States, according to diplomatic experts. On the occasion of the eighth congress of the ruling Workers' Party that ended on Tuesday, the Kim Jong-un regime staged a military parade in Pyongyang, highlighted by the unveiling of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) that was labeled as the Pukguksong-5, possibly an upgraded version of the Pukguksong-4 that was showcased at another parade in October to mark the party's 75th founding anniversary. Park Won-gon, a professor of international politics at Handong Global University, said the North "exquisitely" took advantage of the military parade against the U.S. Delray Beach buyers focus on the Florida cities of Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, and West Palm Beach. The network announces the top cash offer to Florida residents to sell their house quickly for cash. DELRAY BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Cash Buyers Network is pleased to announce that the We Buy Houses for Cash firm provides the top cash offer to Florida property owners. Houses are not only bought at the leading prices, but the transactions are concluded quickly. The company focuses on the cities of Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, and West Palm Beach. Property owners can sell their homes fast and free of hassles in an as-is condition. There are no realtors, no fees, no repairs, and no contingencies to affect the benefits available to property owners. When property owners say, "I want to sell my house fast," the CBN is the best place to schedule a consultation. The company has the processes and capital to put more cash in the seller's pocket in a reliable way. The Cash Buyers company takes on the burden of the sales process by offering a free home evaluation and local moving services. Cash Buyers Network has helped thousands of homeowners in South Florida who want to sell their houses quickly and be assured of a fair price. CBN techniques include paying cash for the property, without the net proceeds to the seller being reduced by thousands of dollars spent to the realtor, paying closing costs, and having the inconvenience of potential buyers parading through open houses. Repairs, staging, and inspections are another area where selling through a real estate agent or broker can become costly. All of those costs don't reduce the transaction price offered by Cash Buyers. CBN's additional benefits include a 100 percent personalized offer, an instant no-obligation cash offer, and a fast closing in a few weeks or less. The property is purchased for cash in the as-is condition. There is no need to spend money and time on cleaning or repairs. The buyers offer solutions to property owners facing challenging situations of all types. About the Company: Cash Buyers Network purchases houses of all types throughout Florida. The firm pays cash and closes quickly. Further details are available at https://housefastcashfl.com/ # Media Contact Cash Buyers Network 1300 NW 17th Ave Suite 155, Delray Beach, FL 33445, United States (561) 523-6982 ericj@cashbuyersnetworkfl.com https://g.page/ugly-home-buyers'share SOURCE: Cash Buyers Network View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624444/Cash-Buyers-Network-Says-They-Provide-The-Highest-Purchase-Offer-When-We-Buy-Houses-For-Cash The environmental activist Greta Thunberg will appear on a postal stamp that will be issued on January 14 in her native Sweden, in recognition of her work to preserve the countrys unique nature for future generations. In the stamp, the 18-year-old is seen standing on a rocky clifftop wearing her trademark yellow raincoat, with swifts flying around her. The latest five-stamp series is part of the theme Valuable Nature and they cost 12 kronor ($1.40) each. They are illustrated by Swedish artist Henning Trollback. According to AP, Swedens postal company Postnord in a statement said, The motives on the stamps should reflect our time, where the environmental issue has been relevant and present for many years, not least through Greta Thunbergs strong voice. READ: Greta Thunberg Trolls Climate Change Deniers On 18th Birthday With A Snarky Message (Image: @Nickfromupnorth/Twitter) In a separate statement, Kristina Olofsdotter, managing director for stamps at the postal company, said, Appearing on a stamp means that a person is doing something extraordinary. Along with Thunberg, the series also features some of the 16 environmental quality goals recently drawn up by the Swedish government. Other stamps in the set, which are intended for domestic letters, feature high mountains and their flora, a forest, an agricultural landscape and a uniquely biodiverse bog. This year's European stamps also include a picture of the endangered green spotted toad. READ: Paris Agreement's Five Years Were The 'hottest': Greta Thunberg Calls Out World Leaders Thunbergs climate activism Meanwhile, Thunberg earned global acclamation at 15 after launching her "school strike" on the steps of Swedens parliament, promoting climate action as the world combats an ongoing environmental disaster. She even criticised world leaders at the UN General Assembly in 2019 and she has clashed with US President Donald Trump, who told her to "work on her anger management problem". However, upon Trumps unsuccessful election campaign result, Thunberg used the same criticism against him and said, "Donald must work on his anger management problem". Even though Thunbergs climate activism has now amassed a global following, she still maintains that she is not a leader by any means. In a bid to spread awareness, the climate activist has been urging world leaders to take steps and "face climate change". Greta Thunberg has been urging leaders to build a new system and tear apart the old energy deals in order to secure a change in beating climate change. The Swedish activist has demanded to halt all investment in fossil fuel exploration and extraction. She even asked leaders to establish annual binding carbon budgets based on the current best available science. (With inputs from AP) READ: Russian Pranksters Call Justin Trudeau Posing As Greta Thunberg, Fire Questions On NATO READ: 'Chill Donald': Greta Thunberg Trolls Trump's Post-election Meltdown With His Own Words A retired firefighter got the book from a federal judge and no bail too. He is accused of throwing a fire extinguisher at capitol police in the chaos. The disturbance at the Capitol on January 6 has colored Trump supporters in a bad light. Many of them are now sought after by the police. One of these is a former firefighter who risked his life to save people from burning blazes. He is accused of throwing a fire extinguisher at U.S. Capitol Police officers in Washington. Prosecutors say that he was an alleged member of a white supremacist group in court last Thursday, reported Mcall. The suspect Robert Sanford is a former fireman and retired already used be part of the Chester Fire Department until March last year. He is tried in a federal court in Allentown for charges involving assaulting police officers and joining protestors on Capitol hill outside. Charges against him are civil disorder and illegal entrance to the Capitol building. He is now in the Lehigh County Jail. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Janani Iyengar, who countered the lawyer who represented Sanford said he is not a member of any extremist group. Iyengar said that the firemen should not be released. Authorities searched the residence of the defendant in Delaware County last Thursday. A shirt worn by the Proud Boys was found in the search. He argued that the retired firefighter should be held pending his transfer to Washington and the federal judge's decision. Assistant U.S. Attorney Janani Iyengar refuted a claim by Robert Sanford's lawyer that his client was not a member of any extremist groups. During a search of Sanford's Boothwyn, Delaware County, home Thursday, agents found a T-shirt worn by members of the white supremacist group the Proud Boys. Also read: Make America Great Again: Pro Trump Protesters Flooded 17 Statehouses in Peaceful Demonstrations Attorney Enrique Latoison said in court that Sanford went with other protestors on a free bus trip to the capitol protest rally. He was there to support President Donald Trump, as with all his peaceful supporters. Latoison made it clear that his client was not there to commit violent acts as the media presents Trump supporters. The lawyer added that Sanford was separate from those groups, not part of them. He is alleged to go around the back to seek entry to the Capitol and never went inside. Sanford said the U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry S. Perkin could not place a condition on the defendant's release. He cited that public safety is an issue and his court appearance. The ex-fireman who served public safety is a suspect. Judge Perkins added the defendant is not charged with a simple bus trip to the capital. He was accused of breaching the nation's Capitol. On that day, a video of him says he is a danger to the community and democracy. Court records say that the FBI is looking for a man who was shown hurling a fire extinguisher at police officers. The chaos was on full show online as Trump supporters were on Capitol grounds. Images from video stills show a man with a beard and "CFD" as embroidery on it. Sanford willingly met FBI agents at 5:45 a.m. Thursday in Delaware County with identification. The retired firefighter is at Lehigh County Jail for the moment. The federal judge ruled no bail; for now, the Trump supporter is only one of many accused of violence. Related article: Iowa Trump Supporter Arrested and Misframed because of Youtube Video on January 6 @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. on Friday reported its first suspected cases of with samples from two poultry farms in Mohali testing positive for avian influenza. The samples have now been sent to a facility for confirmation. According to an official, the samples were collected from the poultry farms at Behra village in Mohali's Dera Bassi and were tested at the Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Jalandhar. The samples have now been sent to the Bhopal's Institute of High Security Animal Diseases for confirmation, the official added. The facility is the final authority for declaring Meanwhile, Mohali Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan sought to allay fears over the supected cases. He said the administration is alert and regular sampling is being done to keep tabs on suspected cases of Neighbouring Haryana has already declared bird flu and had announced to cull over 1.60 lakh birds of five poultry farms in Panchkula district. Earlier, had sounded an alert and pulled all stops to keep the state safe from the possible effect of an outbreak in its neighbouring states. (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.) In their quest of announcing their presence in the Ghanaian business and online marketing space, Ololo Express; a digital shopping and retail center has officially signed afrobeat afropop artiste, Camidoh, as the firm's brand ambassador. In this deal, the GB Recz signed artiste will use his presence in the creative space to represent the marketing entity in a positive light, and by doing so, help increase brand awareness and sales on a consistent basis. Visit Ololo Express here: https://ololoexpress.com/ Signed on Monday, January 11, 2020 at the GB Interactive LLC, head office in Accra, the For My Lover hitmaker will also embody the corporate identity in appearance, demeanour, values and ethics, and thus far, will use his ability together with his management and shopping-retail company to map out promotional strategies that will strengthen the customer-product-service relationship and influence a large audience to buy and consume more. With his Knowledge and appreciation of marketing, Online presence, Passion, and a sense of Professionalism in his endeavour, Camidoh, has proven to be the best influencer for the job. Within the last half a decade, he has earned an impressive critical acclamation to his name as hes been able to front numerous non-governmental organizations delivering nothing but success. Offering the best and secured online store with prompt express delivery to their customers, Ololo Express is typical Ghanaian marketing and online shopping center that provide amazing shopping experience with a pliable payment options and guarantee an awesome service to all their Shoppers. They deal in quality products from world renowned manufacturers, ranging from food items, household goods, electrical home appliances and variety of items at the most affordable prices. They also serve as brokers, who pick up products from your preferred shops in Ghana and deliver to your exact and preferred location. As part of their mandate, they make online shopping simple and secured. The 24 hours online shopping centre is located at East Legon, Adjirigano, Accra, you call them on 054 874 4234. 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 January 15, 2021 " Information Clearing House " - Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her because the U.S. corporate medias foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Bidens pick for Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia. Nor do they know that from 2003-2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq, Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration. You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying Fuck the EU during a 2014 phone call with the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt plotted to replace the elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European Union for grooming former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko instead of U.S. puppet and NATO booklicker Artseniy Yatseniuk to replace Russia-friendly Yanukovych. The Fuck the EU call went viral, as an embarrassed State Department, never denying the calls authenticity, blamed the Russians for tapping the phone, much as the NSA has tapped the phones of European allies. Despite outrage from German Chancellor Angela Markel, no one fired Nuland, but her potty mouth upstaged the more serious story: the U.S. plot to overthrow Ukraines elected government and Americas responsibility for a civil war that has killed at least 13,000 people and left Ukraine the poorest country in Europe. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter In the process, Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan, the co-founder of The Project for a New American Century, and their neocon cronies succeeded in sending U.S.-Russian relations into a dangerous downward spiral from which they have yet to recover. Nuland accomplished this from a relatively junior position as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. How much more trouble could she stir up as the # 3 official at Bidens State Department? Well find out soon enough, if the Senate confirms her nomination. Joe Biden should have learned from Obamas mistakes that appointments like this matter. In his first term, Obama allowed his hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and military and CIA leaders held over from the Bush administration to ensure that endless war trumped his message of hope and change. Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, ended up presiding over indefinite detentions without charges or trials at Guantanamo Bay; an escalation of drone strikes that killed innocent civilians; a deepening of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan; a self-reinforcing cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism; and disastrous new wars in Libya and Syria. With Clinton out and new personnel in top spots in his second term, Obama began to take charge of his own foreign policy. He started working directly with Russias President Putin to resolve crises in Syria and other hotspots. Putin helped avert an escalation of the war in Syria in September 2013 by negotiating the removal and destruction of Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles, and helped Obama negotiate an interim agreement with Iran that led to the JCPOA nuclear deal. But the neocons were apoplectic that they failed to convince Obama to order a massive bombing campaign and escalate his covert, proxy war in Syria and at the receding prospect of a war with Iran. Fearing their control of U.S. foreign policy was slipping, the neocons launched a campaign to brand Obama as weak on foreign policy and remind him of their power. With editorial help from Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan penned a 2014 New Republic article entitled Superpowers Dont Get To Retire, proclaiming that there is no democratic superpower waiting in the wings to save the world if this democratic superpower falters. Kagan called for an even more aggressive foreign policy to exorcise American fears of a multipolar world it can no longer dominate. Obama invited Kagan to a private lunch at the White House, and the neocons muscle-flexing pressured him to scale back his diplomacy with Russia, even as he quietly pushed ahead on Iran. The neocons coup de grace against Obamas better angels was Nulands 2014 coup in debt-ridden Ukraine, a strategic candidate for NATO membership right on Russias border. When Ukraines Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych spurned a U.S.-backed trade agreement with the European Union in favor of a $15 billion bailout from Russia, the State Department threw a tantrum. Hell hath no fury like a superpower scorned. The EU trade agreement was to open Ukraines economy to imports from the EU, but without a reciprocal opening of EU markets to Ukraine, it was a lopsided deal Yanukovich could not accept. The deal was approved by the post-coup government, and has only added to Ukraines economic woes. The muscle for Nulands $5 billion coup was Oleh Tyahnyboks neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and the shadowy new Right Sector militia. During her leaked phone call, Nuland referred to Tyahnybok as one of the big three opposition leaders on the outside who could help the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Yatsenyuk on the inside. This is the same Tyanhnybok who once delivered a speech applauding Ukrainians for fighting Jews and other scum during World War II. After protests in Kievs Euromaidan square turned into battles with police in February 2014, Yanukovych and the Western-backed opposition signed an agreement brokered by France, Germany and Poland to form a national unity government and hold new elections by the end of the year. But that was not good enough for the neo-Nazis and extreme right-wing forces the U.S. had helped to unleash. A violent mob led by the Right Sector militia marched on and invaded the parliament building, a scene no longer difficult for Americans to imagine. Yanukovych and his members of parliament fled for their lives. Facing the loss of its most vital strategic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, Russia accepted the overwhelming result (a 97% majority, with an 83% turnout) of a referendum in which Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, which it had been a part of from 1783 to 1954. The majority Russian-speaking provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine, triggering a bloody civil war between U.S.- and Russian-backed forces that still rages in 2021. U.S.-Russian relations have never recovered, even as U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals still pose the greatest single threat to our existence. Whatever Americans believe about the civil war in Ukraine and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, we must not allow the neocons and the military-industrial complex they serve to deter Biden from conducting vital diplomacy with Russia to steer us off our suicidal path toward nuclear war. Nuland and the neocons, however, remain committed to an ever-more debilitating and dangerous Cold War with Russia and China to justify a militarist foreign policy and record Pentagon budgets. In a July 2020 Foreign Affairs article entitled Pinning Down Putin, Nuland absurdly claimed that Russia presents a greater threat to the liberal world than the U.S.S.R. posed during the old Cold War. Nulands narrative rests on an utterly mythical, ahistorical narrative of Russian aggression and U.S. good intentions. She pretends that Russias military budget, which is one-tenth of Americas, is evidence of Russian confrontation and militarization and calls on the U.S. and its allies to counter Russia by maintaining robust defense budgets, continuing to modernize U.S. and allied nuclear weapons systems, and deploying new conventional missiles and missile defenses to protect against Russias new weapons systems Nuland also wants to confront Russia with an aggressive NATO. Since her days as U.S. Ambassador to NATO during President George W. Bush's second term, she has been a supporter of NATOs expansion all the way up to Russias border. She calls for permanent bases along NATOs eastern border. We have pored over a map of Europe, but we cant find a country called NATO with any borders at all. Nuland sees Russias commitment to defending itself after successive 20th century Western invasions as an intolerable obstacle to NATOs expansionist ambitions. Nulands militaristic worldview represents exactly the folly the U.S. has been pursuing since the 1990s under the influence of the neocons and liberal interventionists, which has resulted in a systematic underinvestment in the American people while escalating tensions with Russia, China, Iran and other countries. As Obama learned too late, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time can, with a shove in the wrong direction, unleash years of intractable violence, chaos and international discord. Victoria Nuland would be a ticking time-bomb in Bidens State Department, waiting to sabotage his better angels much as she undermined Obamas second-term diplomacy. So lets do Biden and the world a favor. Join World Beyond War, CODEPINK and dozens of other organizations opposing neocon Nulands confirmation as a threat to peace and diplomacy. Call 202-224-3121 and tell your Senator to oppose Nulands installation at the State Department. "They are partly self-funding because they've been caught out without insurance if they have fallen pregnant unexpectedly, and the other thing is people are more concerned due to coronavirus about their health and security so they are deciding to invest more into their health and feel more comfortable giving birth in a private hospital." Melbourne obstetrician Dr Saul Cohen said he had also observed a slight increase in private bookings, but said in his experience, some public maternity services had seen a slight decrease in demand. He speculated it was because some people had lost their jobs or were more anxious about their financial security. "I've had one women say that she decided to have a baby because she couldn't go to Europe," he said. "I think it's about people's ability to weather the storm." Adelaide Shaw is due to give birth to her first child in two weeks. Credit: Simon Schluter St Vincent's Private Hospital said it had not observed a significant increase in births or bookings following the Melbourne lockdowns. A spokeswoman said there had only been a slight increase in bookings for March and April 2021 this year. Adelaide Shaw is expecting her first child, a baby girl, in two weeks. She was not insured for pregnancy and chose to give birth in the public system. "The Royal Women's is known for being one of the best public hospitals in Victoria, so I didn't see the point in paying out-of-pocket costs," she said. After being diagnosed with poly-cystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder causing enlarged ovaries with small cysts on the outer edges, Ms Shaw was advised by her doctor to start a family as soon she could. The 29-year-old Toorak woman, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, said during the pandemic she has felt less stressed, slept more and ate better: a combination she suspects helped her quickly fall pregnant. "It might seem a bit strange to get pregnant during a global pandemic, but there were a few factors that played a role," Ms Shaw, who is booked into the Royal Women's Hospital, said. Loading "Financially we were in a position to do so because we were fortunate enough that the industries we both worked in were not affected and working from home meant we were together more." Another perk was being able to hide her morning sickness for 12 weeks and not feel pressure to tell people she was pregnant until she was ready. Australia's fertility rate plummeted to its lowest level in more than a century even before the coronavirus pandemic, as couples across the country gave up on the idea to have more children. Late last year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed the fertility rate the average number of children had by a woman dropped to 1.66 in 2019, a decrease of 3 per cent from the previous year. And while births may be booming in the private healthcare sector, Melbourne's public hospitals reveal a different story. Births at Northern Hospital in Epping in the 2019-20 financial year hovered at about 289 births per month, but have plummeted by about 10 per cent so far this year, with an average of 261 births booked in per month for next six months. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video At Western Health, which services the city's rapidly growing western suburbs, including Sunshine, Footscray and St Albans, births are also on the decline. There are 526 births booked in for February this year, compared to 554 births last year, while in March there are 593 births booked in compared to 644 in 2020. University of Melbourne professor of demography Peter McDonald said the birth rate usually falls nationally during economic recessions. He said it was important to note there was always a far higher proportion of births in public hospitals. Loading "This means the fall in the public hospitals will be much bigger than the rise in private hospitals," he said. "It's a question of delaying births. Primarily, people in periods of economic uncertainty tend to not take actions as important as having a birth they tend to wait to see how things pan out." "It's the people towards the bottom 50 per cent that are affected much more than the top 50 per cent," he said. "With any kind of economic downturn like that it always affects the lower socioeconomic communities." For Mercy Health, which has maternity services at its hospitals in Heidelberg and Werribee, it is business as usual. Loading "The birthing suites at Mercy Health's two campuses during 2020 Mercy Hospital for Women and Werribee Mercy Hospital have been extremely busy and on par with recent years," a spokesman said. Monash Health, which operates maternity services in Clayton, Dandenong and Casey, however, has bucked the trend with a 6 per cent increase in birth bookings for March and a 10 per cent increase for March to June. Director of the women's and newborn program at Monash Health, Associate Professor Ryan Hodges, attributed this swell in birth bookings to expected population growth. Siegfried Fischbacher, an illusionist known for working with exotic cats as one half of Siegfried & Roy, has died from pancreatic cancer, according to his publicist Dave Kirvin. He was 81. Fischbacher's longtime professional partner and friend, Roy Horn, died in May from complications caused by Covid-19 at the age of 75. The pair rose from war-torn Germany to become stars of stage, film and television by combining their spectacular illusions with rare animals. For Fischbacher, it all began with a child's curiosity. Born in Rosenheim, Germany, on June 13, 1939, he was drawn as an 8-year-old to a magic book he saw in a shop. "My eye caught something in the window; it was a book on magic," he said in his bio on the their site. "I knew I had to have it. I can't explain, even now, why that was. All that stood in the way was five marks -- for me a fortune, a fortune for any little boy in Germany in 1947." As he walked away, he said, he found five marks on the sidewalk and immediately returned to purchase the book. He met Horn in 1957 aboard the TS Bremen cruise ship, where Siegfried was working as a steward and entertainer. He enlisted Horn, the captain's bellboy, to assist during his nightly magic show. According to a press release about Fischbacher, Roy asked a question after the show which would change their lives. "Siegfried, disappearing rabbits is ordinary, but can you make a cheetah disappear?" Horn said. After a pause to consider, Fischbacher replied, "In magic, anything is possible." Unbeknown to him -- and the ship's captain -- Horn had smuggled his pet cheetah aboard the cruise to join the act. What followed was a five-decade partnership. "We did what we did out of love, not for success or money," Fischbacher once said. "We had a deep respect for each other. We literally raised each other: I created Roy and Roy created Siegfried." They began in Las Vegas in 1967 as a featured act in notable Las Vegas revues "Follies Bergere," "Hallelujah Hollywood" and "Lido de Paris" before becoming headliners in "Beyond Belief" at the New Frontier in 1981. In 1990, the duo became a Las Vegas "destination" when their precedent-setting, 14-year run at The Mirage began. The $30 million production -- an unheard of amount at the time -- regularly sold out the then-largest theater in Las Vegas history. Their revue ended in 2003 after Horn's spine was severed in an incident on stage with a white tiger named Mantecore. Fischbacher paid tribute to his longtime friend and collaborator after his death. "Roy was a fighter his whole life including during these final days," he said in a statement. "I give my heartfelt appreciation to the team of doctors, nurses and staff at Mountain View Hospital who worked heroically against this insidious virus that ultimately took Roy's life." Funeral services will be private with plans for a public memorial for Fischbacher to be held in the future. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. 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. As an emergency physician, Dr. Eugenia South was in the first group of people to receive a covid vaccine. She received her second dose last week even before President-elect Joe Biden. Yet South said she's in no rush to throw away her face mask. "I honestly don't think I'll ever go without a mask at work again," said South, faculty director of the Urban Health Lab at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "I don't think I'll ever feel safe doing that." And although covid vaccines are highly effective, South plans to continue wearing her mask outside the hospital as well. Health experts say there are good reasons to follow her example. "Masks and social distancing will need to continue into the foreseeable future until we have some level of herd immunity," said Dr. Preeti Malani, chief health officer at the University of Michigan. "Masks and distancing are here to stay." Malani and other health experts explained five reasons Americans should hold on to their masks: 1. No vaccine is 100% effective. Large clinical trials found that two doses of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines prevented 95% of illnesses caused by the coronavirus. While those results are impressive, 1 in 20 people are left unprotected, said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Malani notes that vaccines were tested in controlled clinical trials at top medical centers, under optimal conditions. In the real world, vaccines are usually slightly less effective. Scientists use specific terms to describe the phenomenon. They refer to the protection offered by vaccines in clinical trials as "efficacy," while the actual immunity seen in a vaccinated population is "effectiveness." The effectiveness of covid vaccines could be affected by the way they're handled, Malani said. The genetic material used in mRNA vaccines made with messenger RNA from the coronavirus is so fragile that it has to be carefully stored and transported. Any variation from the CDC's strict guidance could influence how well vaccines work, Malani said. 2. Vaccines don't provide immediate protection. No vaccine is effective right away, Malani said. It takes about two weeks for the immune system to make the antibodies that block viral infections. Covid vaccines will take a little longer than other inoculations, such as the flu shot, because both the Moderna and Pfizer products require two doses. The Pfizer shots are given three weeks apart; the Moderna shots, four weeks apart. In other words, full protection won't arrive until five or six weeks after the first shot. So, a person vaccinated on New Year's Day won't be fully protected until Valentine's Day. 3. Covid vaccines may not prevent you from spreading the virus. Vaccines can provide two levels of protection. The measles vaccine prevents viruses from causing infection, so vaccinated people don't spread the infection or develop symptoms. Most other vaccines including flu shots prevent people from becoming sick but not from becoming infected or passing the virus to others, said Dr. Paul Offit, who advises the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration on covid vaccines. While covid vaccines clearly prevent illness, researchers need more time to figure out whether they prevent transmission, too, said Phoenix-based epidemiologist Saskia Popescu, an assistant professor in the biodefense program at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. "We don't yet know if the vaccine protects against infection, or only against illness," said Frieden, now CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global public health initiative. "In other words, a vaccinated person might still be able to spread the virus, even if they don't feel sick." Until researchers can answer that question, Frieden said, wearing masks is the safest way for vaccinated people to protect those around them. 4. Masks protect people with compromised immune systems. People with cancer are at particular risk from covid. Studies show they're more likely than others to become infected and die from the virus, but may not be protected by vaccines, said Dr. Gary Lyman, a professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Cancer patients are vulnerable in multiple ways. People with lung cancer are less able to fight off pneumonia, while those undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatment have weakened immune systems. Leukemia and lymphoma attack immune cells directly, which makes it harder for patients to fight off the virus. Doctors don't know much about how people with cancer will respond to vaccines, because they were excluded from randomized trials, Lyman said. Only a handful of study participants were diagnosed with cancer after enrolling. Among those people, covid vaccines protected only 76%. Although the vaccines appear safe, "prior studies with other vaccines raise concerns that immunosuppressed patients, including cancer patients, may not mount as great an immune response as healthy patients," Lyman said. "For now, we should assume that patients with cancer may not experience the 95% efficacy." Some people aren't able to be vaccinated. While most people with allergies can receive covid vaccines safely, the CDC advises those who have had severe allergic reactions to vaccine ingredients, including polyethylene glycol, to avoid vaccination. The agency also warns people who have had dangerous allergic reactions to a first vaccine dose to skip the second. Lyman encourages people to continue wearing masks to protect those with cancer and others who won't be fully protected. 5. Masks protect against any strain of the coronavirus, in spite of genetic mutations. Global health leaders are extremely concerned about new genetic variants of the coronavirus, which appear to be at least 50% more contagious than the original. So far, studies suggest vaccines will still work against these new strains. One thing is clear: Public health measures such as avoiding crowds, physical distancing and masks reduce the risk of contracting all strains of the coronavirus, as well as other respiratory diseases, Frieden said. For example, the number of flu cases worldwide has been dramatically lower since countries began asking citizens to stay home and wear masks. "Masks will remain effective," Malani said. "But careful and consistent use will be essential." The best hope for ending the pandemic isn't to choose between masks, physical distancing and vaccines, Offit said, but to combine them. "The three approaches work best as a team," he said. A Montgomery County Democratic lawmaker has joined the list of the members of Pennsylvanias General Assembly who have tested positive for COVID-19 and is the second member of his caucus to do so this week. House Democratic Appropriations Committee Matt Bradford announced his test results on Twitter on Thursday. I am feeling well. I believe I contracted the virus from a family member who became symptomatic and was tested on Tuesday, Bradford wrote. Thread: Tonight, I learned that I have tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, I am feeling well. I believe I contracted the virus from a family member who became symptomatic and was tested on Tuesday. (1/3) Rep. Matt Bradford (@RepBradford) January 15, 2021 As a caucus leader, Bradford was at the Capitol this week as the House re-organized for the 2021-22 legislative session. He said he informed staff and the chambers human resources office on Tuesday that he would not be returning to Harrisburg and was tested on Wednesday. House Democratic spokesman Bill Patton said two individuals met the definition of having been in close contact with him and have been advised of the quarantine guidelines and encouraged to reach out to a medical provider to see if testing is recommended. Bradfords announcement about his diagnosis comes a day before state Rep. Patty Kim, D-Harrisburg, announced she too tested positive. Kim posted on Twitter on Friday, Im feeling fine with just mild symptoms. I will be quarantining at home with my family. I have tested positive for COVID-19. Im feeling fine with just mild symptoms. I will be quarantining at home with my family. My staff and I have been working remotely and will continue do that. Thank you and stay safe! Rep. Patty Kim (@RepPattyKim) January 15, 2021 Kim told PennLive she was last at the Capitol on Monday to get sworn in and then left. After feeling rundown, she was tested Monday evening and got the results back on Friday morning. Ten months into the pandemic, more than a dozen lawmakers including at least one from each of the four legislative caucuses have tested positive for the virus. The first was Rep. Andrew Lewis, R-Dauphin County, who self-disclosed in May he had tested positive 14 days after his exposure. That delay prompted the House to alter its notification policies and put in place other COVID-19 mitigation measures that some Republican members still chose to ignore. Others who have tested positive include House Republican Reps. Paul Schemel of Franklin County; Jim Gregory of Blair County, Doyle Heffley of Carbon County, Barry Jozwiak of Berks County, Rosemary Brown of Monroe County and the late Mike Reese of Westmoreland County, who died Jan. 2 from a ruptured brain aneurysm; House Democratic Whip Jordan Harris of Philadelphia and Rep. Summer Lee, D-Allegheny County; Republican Sens. Doug Mastriano of Franklin County and Judy Ward of Blair County; and Senate Democratic Whip Anthony Williams of Philadelphia. * This post was updated to include House Democratic spokesman Bill Pattons comments and to add Rep. Summer Lee to the list of lawmakers who have tested positive. Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy. If you pass Scrantons Courthouse Square on Adams Avenue, then merge onto Washington Avenue, youll eventually enter Green Ridge, a neighborhood seemingly preserved in 1950s-era America. Its a Norman Rockwell kind of scene, Sarah Piccini, assistant director of the Lackawanna Historical Society, told me. Stately residences line North Washington Avenue, where Scranton Loves Joe signs adorn lawns and an ornamental donkey clearly a tribute to the Democratic Party commands the front porch of a home. There isnt any doubt about this sections politics, where President-elect Joe Biden spent his early youth. Where Biden grew up in Green Ridge, Irish-Catholic Democrat was one conjoined word, said Austin Burke, former president of Scrantons Chamber of Commerce. Even today, that tribal allegiance remains intact especially with a native son about to ascend to the White House. Biden will become president amid nightmarish conditions, including a pandemic, economic devastation, rising urban crime, and cultural upheaval. Matters only worsened when a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, not long after President Donald Trumps divisive rally. The nations chaotic state is the ultimate test for Biden, who, for decades, has presented himself as a loyal Democrat but also a unifying, centrist figure. READ MORE: Scranton residents react after native son Joe Biden wins presidency Bidens persona is doubtless shaped by his Scranton roots, which he proudly referenced even before 2020. Its important to understand how Biden is a product of the Electric City, where politics remains something of a local industry. Biden has been shaped for years as a creature of Washington, but before that he was a creature of Scranton, said Christopher Borick, a native of nearby Throop and director of Muhlenberg Colleges Institute of Public Opinion. Though Biden lived in Scranton only until age 10, the citys past is encoded in his DNA. Tim Hinton, a Scranton attorney and distant relative, noted that the president-elect has deep, widespread roots [among] very prominent people who did a lot to shape Scranton. Indeed, Bidens great-grandfather Edward Blewitt, an Irish-Catholic Democrat, was a state senator (1907-10) and helped found what became the local Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. When Blewitt died in 1926, the Scranton Republican recognized the Green Ridge residents decades in politics. Blewitt made friends easily and had the faculty of keeping them. This also applied to the opposing political party. Although a Democrat, the paper noted, Blewitt became a warm personal friend of Boies Penrose, the powerful Philadelphia Republican. Scrantons Irish-Catholic Democratic culture only intensified after Blewitts death. The Irish always controlled the city, noted Michael DeMichele, a retired University of Scranton historian. Biden was born into this world in 1942. At that point, the Irish dominated Green Ridge, where Bidens family lived with his maternal grandparents in a three-story home. Even then, Green Ridge was a dramatic contrast from Scrantons West Side or Minooka, working-class Irish strongholds. Green Ridge was always seen as the way up, said Borick. And as an Irish Catholic, being a lawyer or a politician was a vocation and path forward. Sen. Bob Casey, along with his late father, former Gov. Bob Casey Sr., followed that path. By St. Patricks Day, 1973, Biden was Americas youngest U.S. senator when he spoke at the Friendly Sons annual dinner. Among the attendees was Eugene Peters, Scrantons Republican mayor from 1970 to 1978, who vividly recalled Bidens remarks. I said he could be president someday, said Peters. Now, almost 48 years later, Biden will fulfill that role. Today, in northeastern Pennsylvania, Democrats no longer wield the influence they enjoyed during Bidens youth. In fact, though Scranton remains Democratic, the region became more competitive during the Trump era. In 2016, Donald Trump lost Lackawanna by about 3,500 votes to Hillary Clinton, whose father was from Scranton. In 2020, Biden won Lackawanna by nearly 10,000 votes. If you had told me years ago that Biden was running for president, I would think hed get 80% of the vote in Lackawanna, noted Borick. Republicans continue to make voter-registration gains. According to Lance Stange, Lackawannas GOP chairman, by Election Day, the countys Republican Party grew by 11% since 2016, while Democrats had decreased by about 6%. Republicans have gained ground in approximately 75% of Lackawanna Countys municipalities, including Scranton, said Stange. The Democrats are really only growing in the wealthiest areas of Lackawanna County. READ MORE: Joe Bidens hometown celebrates: Weve got a president from Scranton, Pennsylvania! For now, Green Ridge remains frozen in time. Last Friday afternoon, a trio of children ascended a hill off Washington Avenue to Hanks Hoagies, a luncheonette where a cutout figure of Biden greets customers. A few blocks away, a St. Bernard rested on a porch as people walked by. The neighborhood was calm, even idyllic, and a parallel universe compared with the national state of affairs. It remains to be seen how Biden a native of this culture can serve as a calming force during this dark time, which is partly fueled by extremist forces in both political parties. I feel very confident about Biden, said Peters. I tried to serve all the people thats my philosophy in government and I believe Biden will have a similar approach. Charles F. McElwee is managing editor of the Commonwealth Foundation. He is the 2020-21 John Farley Memorial Fellow, part of The Fund for American Studies Robert Novak Journalism Program. He edits RealClears Public Affairs page on Pennsylvania. @CFMcElwee. A version of this piece first appeared in RealClearPolitics. As COVID-19 vaccinations roll out in Massachusetts, the superintendent of the Worcester Public Schools said she wants all employees inoculated before students and staff return to classrooms for remote learning. The availability of vaccines, as coronavirus cases remain high across the state, was a major factor in the Worcester School Committees decision last week to delay the start of hybrid learning at the recommendation of Superintendent Maureen Binienda. Students with the highest level of needs were slated to go back to classrooms on Jan. 25. A new hybrid start date for those students has not yet been determined. K-12 employees are included in Phase 2 of the states vaccine plan, which plans for immunizations in February and March. How Worcester educators will be vaccinated has not been decided yet. About 5,000 people are employed with the Worcester Public Schools. I know that well be able to do it, its just a matter of waiting our turn and then implementing it, Binienda said. When the Jan. 25 date was still in play to start hybrid learning for students with high needs, the district started looking at March 8 as a return date for other students. Binienda said the district is still holding to that date, though that could be the start of hybrid learning for students with high needs, which would likely push back a return to classrooms for other students by several weeks. Were not ready to make that decision yet, Binienda said. Our date will be a combination of where is the virus and whats the story about getting our staff the two shots so they would be that 95% protected. While the schools wait for vaccines to be available, Binienda said the district is also weighing whether to take part in a program to offer weekly pool COVID testing. Gov. Charlie Baker and education officials last week announced the program, part of an effort to get more kids back into classrooms. Pooled testing costs about 75% less than individual tests, officials said, and tests a batch of nasal swabs at once. If a pooled test result is negative, then all individuals with swabs in the batch are presumed to be negative for COVID and can remain in school. But, if a pooled test turns up positive, all individuals in the batch must quarantine until they are retested individually through Abbott BinaxNOW rapid tests. While the state is prioritizing schools with in-person learning for the pool testing, remote districts can still apply. Districts interested in participating were asked by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to complete a survey by close of business Friday. For Binienda, theres a concern about the ability to implement a weekly testing program as well as funding. Costs of a 6-week early launch of the program are being covered by DESE, but officials said after the launch districts can use federal stimulus funding to continue the program. Binienda said she didnt see the program as a way to bring students back without vaccinations. While she described the program as another tool in the toolbox, she is worried about how the district could implement weekly testing. Worcester has 44 schools with only one or two school nurses in each building. When students are back in buildings, those nurses also have to watch the medical waiting rooms schools are required to have for students with symptoms during the pandemic. My concern is the logistics of it and who would be doing that on a consistent basis, Binienda said. Binienda said the district did participate in webinars about the program. So far in Massachusetts, 239,174 doses of vaccines have gone out, including 32,984 people who have reached full vaccination with a second shot. Related Content: Carnivore conservation can be improved by recognizing the divergences between scientific and Indigenous and Local Knowledge Divergences between scientific and Indigenous and Local Knowledge can provide a better understanding of why local pastoralists may be willing, or not, to participate in conservation initiatives for carnivores, a study from University of Helsinki suggests. Carnivore conservation has historically been based primarily on scientific knowledge using a wide range of sampling methods, such as camera trapping and track surveys. However, the estimates of these common ecological sampling methods can be quite uncertain and can depend on accessibility and geology, which is the case of many remote areas, such as Sibiloi National Park in Northern Kenya. For this reason, the inclusion of local communities that share land with carnivore species has been encouraged to enhance conservation. "I remember at the beginning of the project, many local pastoralists told me that they see cheetahs running at full speed. However, despite their accurate descriptions, I was very sceptical about it, as I did not have any image from my camera traps. A year later, I got a photograph of a cheetah holding a grant gazelle. On that day, I recognized that local pastoralists were correct all along. I acknowledged the importance of complementing scientific knowledge with Indigenous and Local Knowledge of local pastoralists that share their day-by-day lives next to those carnivores," describes Miquel Torrents-Tico, a PhD student from the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki, and the lead author of the study. Indigenous and Local Knowledge is held by the local community and handed down through generations of continuous interactions with their environment. Traditionally, there has been a tendency to compare Indigenous and Local Knowledge with scientific knowledge looking especially for convergences to enhance wildlife management. However, there are also divergences between scientific and Indigenous and Local Knowledge that have been less studied because they can indicate stakeholders' conflicts and can create challenges in effectively implementing conservation actions. "The idea of this study was to complement information derived from camera trapping, track surveys and semi-structured interviews of local pastoralists acknowledging the divergences and explaining the unknown status of carnivores of the remote area of Sibiloi," explains Miquel Torrents-Tico. Biodiversity loss of carnivores in Sibiloi is dramatic Although in the past, Sibiloi National Park in Northern Kenya, had a rich mammalian fauna, nowadays, large animals have decreased sharply. Surprisingly, researchers know very little of this process of biodiversity loss due to Sibiloi' isolated location, and it is not clear which species remain and how threatened they are. "Many local Daasanach remember with joy the time when as children they used to see lions, leopards and cheetahs in Sibiloi," says Torrents-Tico. "However, our study shows a new reality of Sibiloi with some carnivore species already gone, such as lions, and many others present in very low numbers, such as cheetahs and striped hyaenas." In view of these results, the authors call for an urgent need for conservation actions before Sibiloi reaches a dramatic point of no return, where all carnivores will be extinct from the area. The potential of complementation: Inclusive conservation with space for divergences This study highlights that carnivores abundances obtained by complementing scientific and Indigenous and Local Knowledge can diverge, which can provide a wider picture of human-carnivores relationships and conservation contexts. For instance, carnivore species that have a high impact on local pastoralists' livelihoods and safety can be perceived as being more abundant by local pastoralists, even if the abundances obtained from ecological scientific methods are low. "Divergences between scientific and Indigenous and Local Knowledge due to high perceptions of risk and damage should be considered in order to take into account local pastoralists views, and in this way, make conservation more inclusive," emphasizes Torrents-Tico. ### 'Traditionalist Catholics' destroy homes of 5 Mexican evangelical families Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Two families from Mexicos Tzotzil tribe destroyed the houses of five evangelical Christians on Sunday in the Mitziton community of southern Mexico, near the city of San Cristobal de las Casas. Esdras Alonso Gonzalez, the director of the Christian ministry Alas de Aguila, alerted news sources to the attacks. He said to El Universal that before the attack started, the local community jailed two Christians, Alejandro Jimenez Jimenez and Miguel Jimenez Heredia. One year ago, local Catholics prevented evangelical Christians from building a church in the area and forced them to leave. When they returned a year later, local people attacked them in another attempt to make them leave. In many places in Mexico, Catholicism is mixed with local Aztec polytheism. People sacrifice chickens, dogs, alcohol and soda to Jesus and Catholic saints, which they see as different faces of Mayan gods. People who observe this religion are called traditionalist Catholics (not to be confused with Roman Catholics). Unlike Christianity, traditionalist Catholicism relies on giving gifts to the gods in exchange for health, good fortune and protection from evil. Many Tzotzil people practice traditionalist Catholicism. Behind the collection of saints and virgins in the San Juan Bautista church are Ah Puch, Chaac, Ixchel, Kukulkan, and the whole pantheon of ancient Mayan gods. They have adapted to their new names and now celebrate new festivities, but their true essences remain, wrote travel site Matador Network about a Tzotzil traditionalist Catholic church. The persecution evangelical Christians face among the Tzotzil is religious persecution, said Alonso Gonzalez. Traditionalist Catholics attack Christians because Christians wont celebrate Catholic holidays or attend traditionalist Catholic feasts. After the destruction of their homes, the five evangelical Christian families must wait on the decision of local authorities who will determine when or if they will be allowed to return, he said. The families affected include 30 people. Christians among the Tzotzil people have faced persecution before, said Alonso Gonzalez. In 2014, Mexican indigenous activists destroyed 10 houses belonging to Christians because they chopped down trees without the permission of the community assembly. In 2016, Catholic traditionalists destroyed the homes of 350 Christians. Persecution of Christians in Mexico has risen due to drug cartel violence, persecution by traditionalist Catholics and violent discrimination by anti-Christian left-wing groups, persecution watchdog Open Doors USA reported. Currently, Mexico is 37th on its list of countries that most persecute Christians. Open Doors USA President and CEO David Curry told The Christian Post that the amount of persecution in Mexico has risen in the past year, mainly due to organized crime killing Christians. Last year, Mexico was number 52 [on Open Doors USA's World Watch List.] Its jumped up a bunch, he said. "That would most certainly be around the issues of violence and drug cartels. Traditionalist Catholics often persecute Mexican Christians, too, he said. In this way, they resemble many small, rural groups of people practicing ancient folk religions around the world. Open Doors calls this kind of persecution clan violence. These rural indigenous groups see Christian churches as an outside force. They can harass and bother churches and believers who might be in the community, Curry said. Its within these four states in Mexico; Chiapas, Hidalgo, Guerero, Oaxaca. Its very localized. In regions controlled by small clans that practice local religions, native people often get angry when Christians start sharing the Gospel and telling people about Jesus, he said. They dont like to see churches grow. To help Christians in these areas, believers around the world can pray and share the news about their problems so local governments will feel pressured to help, he said. Pray for the leaders who are there. Pray for safety for people. The response that most people have hearing Mexico is on the world persecution list is how can that be? Curry said. From the most basic level, we need to pray and share these stories so that people know theyre not alone and so that the pressure builds to protect these people. SUV EV For the time being, because the global version of the sedan is also getting ready for retirement (along with a host of European vans such as the S-Max and Galaxy). In its place, the company is preparing to reveal a different vehicle, rumored to be called Evos.It will be a crossover of some sorts, although by the looks of the spy shots and leaks, it can also be described as a cross between a station wagon and anSeveral digital artists have already attempted to give us a possible rendition of the upcoming Mondeo/Fusion Evos, and the latest coming from Spanish magazine motor.es has evolved the looks based on the latest intel to give us a fresh take on the upcoming Evos compared to the one shared a few weeks ago by Russias Kolesa This time around, its probably a lot closer to the truth, though some details could still change before the official reveal, which is allegedly taking place later this year for a dealership arrival as a 2022 model year. Of course, seeing the Evos from all angles both in a Chinese leak and recent spy shots is always helpful.As such, we can judge the new digital interpretation as mostly taking cues from the newly minted 2021 North American Utility of the Year, the Mustang Mach-E . The Evos is going to be larger, of course, just to make sure it doesnt snatch any of theaudience.Still, the sleek coupe-SUV influences are there, even though Ford is probably targeting the Mondeo/Fusion Evos more towards a family audience that a station wagon or a van would have otherwise snatched had times been different.Right now, crossovers especially sleek-looking ones are all the rage, and Ford is eager to oblige. Worth mentioning are the large grille and slim headlights, akin to the ones promoted by the leak, while the glasshouse is getting restrictive towards the rear to create a sensation of sportiness.No images of the rear or the interior have been shared, but anyone can make an educated guess based on the recently captured spy shots we have also included in the gallery. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. This was one quick trip over the bridge to Bayonne that a Port Richmond felon probably wishes he had skipped. Walter Harris, 34, of New Street, was arrested Wednesday night after cops found over 1.5 pounds of pot in his car, said Bayonne police. Harris was busted during a car stop around 8:45 p.m. near Goldsborough Drive and Chosin Few Way, police said. Inside his vehicle officers recovered 690 grams of marijuana and marijuana edibles, or slightly more than 1.5 pounds of the contraband, said police. Harris was arrested on charges of marijuana possession, marijuana possession with the intent to distribute and marijuana possession with the intent to distribute within 500 feet of public housing. Hes also accused of possessing narcotic paraphernalia and possessing narcotic paraphernalia with the intent to distribute. From the paperwork I have received so far, this appears to be a pretext stop, one initiated by the police for the sole purpose of performing an illegal search and seizure, said defense lawyer Mario F. Gallucci. Harris is no stranger to the law. He has served three prison stints in New York state, show online records of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Initially, in 2005, he was sentenced to up to three years behind bars for drug- and weapon-possession convictions. Following, in 2008, he served 30 months for drug possession. Most recently, in 2015, he was sentenced to three to six years behind bars after pleading guilty to attempted conspiracy and possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. In allocuting to attempted conspiracy, Harris admitted he shot and wounded a co-defendant also arrested in a major 2013 takedown of a drug- and gun-trafficking ring. Authorities said the group moved cocaine from Mexico to Staten Island. HONG KONG, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government Thursday requested the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) to establish at its meeting on Jan. 25 a panel in accordance with the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism to consider the dispute with respect to the violation of WTO rules by the United States' new requirement on origin marking for Hong Kong products. The Permanent Representative of the HKSAR to the WTO Thursday filed the relevant document to the WTO Secretariat. The Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development of the HKSAR government Edward Yau also wrote to the U.S. Trade Representative to inform the United States that the HKSAR has taken further action against the United States under the WTO mechanism. Yau said, "The U.S. unilateral and irresponsible attempt to weaken Hong Kong's status as a separate customs territory, which is conferred by the HKSAR Basic Law, is highly inappropriate. Such a move also confuses the market and undermines the rules-based multilateral trading system. Hong Kong's special status is a basic principle under 'one country, two systems', and the HKSAR government will do its utmost to safeguard it." "The HKSAR government requested on Oct. 30, 2020, consultations with the United States under the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism. However, the U.S. response is disappointing. It is necessary for us to take further action against the United States in accordance with the mechanism to defend Hong Kong's interests." According to the WTO Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes, if the two parties fail to resolve the dispute within 60 days from the launching of consultations, the complaining party may request the DSB to establish a panel to consider the dispute and provide rulings. The 60-day consultation period ended on Jan. 4. However, the United States has not made any substantive response to the request of the HKSAR government, and the new requirement took effect on Nov. 10, 2020. Hong Kong decided to request the DSB to establish a panel to consider the dispute, according to the HKSAR government. According to the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism, after the complaining party has made a request, a panel shall be established at the latest at the DSB meeting following the meeting at which the request first appears as an item on the DSB's agenda. In other words, if a panel is not established at the DSB meeting on Jan. 25 at the request of the HKSAR government, the DSB should establish a panel at its next meeting (tentatively scheduled on Feb. 22) at the latest. Yau reiterated that pursuant to the HKSAR Basic Law, the HKSAR is a separate customs territory and may, using the name "Hong Kong, China", participate in international organizations such as the WTO and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation as a separate member, and develop mutually beneficial economic and trade relations with economies around the world. The special status of Hong Kong has been widely recognized and respected by the international community, and Hong Kong's economic and trade status is on par with that of other WTO members. The "Made in Hong Kong" marking on Hong Kong products has been accepted internationally for many years. This not only conforms to Hong Kong's status as a separate customs territory and complies with WTO rules, but also provides consumers with clear and accurate information on product origin, Yau said. On Aug. 11, 2020, the United States required the origin of Hong Kong products exported to the United States should be labeled "Made in China." Currently, the origin of Hong Kong export products is marked as "Hong Kong" as Hong Kong is a separate member of the WTO and enjoys the special status as a separate customs territory under "one country, two systems." 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. Tamil Nadu 11th state to implement 'One Nation One Ration Card' reform India pti-Deepika S New Delhi, Jan 15: As many as 11 states have implemented the ''One Nation One Ration Card'' reform so far, following which the central government has allowed them to raise an additional Rs 30,709 crore, an official statement said. Tamil Nadu has become the 11th state in the country to successfully undertake the Public Distribution System (PDS) reforms stipulated by the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, it said. Thus, the state has become eligible to mobilise additional financial resources of Rs 4,813 crore through open market borrowings and permission for the same was issued by the Department of Expenditure, it added. Other states which have successfully completed the reforms are Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh is the biggest beneficiary with an additional borrowing window of Rs 4,851 crore, followed by Karnataka Rs 4,509 crore and Gujarat Rs 4,352 crore. The Department of Food and Public Distribution in the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution is the nodal department to certify that a state has met the conditions stipulated for this reform, the finance ministry statement said. In view of the resource requirement to meet the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the government had in May enhanced the borrowing limit of the states by 2 per cent of their gross state domestic product (GSDP). This has enabled the states to mobilise additional financial resources to fight the pandemic and maintain the standards of service delivery to the public. However, to ensure long-term debt sustainability and prevent any adverse impact on future, a part of the additional borrowing was linked to the states carrying out reforms in the sectors critical for service delivery to the citizens. One of the sectors identified for reforms was the Public Distribution System, it said, adding, out of the additional borrowing limit of 2 per cent of GSDP, 0.25 per cent is linked to implementation of the ''One Nation One Ration Card'' system. This was aimed to ensure that the beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and other welfare schemes, especially the migrant workers and their families, get ration from any Fair Price Shop (FPS) across the country. Other aims of the intended reform were to better target beneficiaries, elimination of bogus/duplicate/ ineligible ration cards and thus enhance welfare and reduce leakage, it said. For this, the reform conditions stipulated Aadhaar seeding of all ration cards, biometric authentication of beneficiaries and automation of all the Fair Price Shops in the state. So far, 11 states have implemented the One Nation One Ration Card system, eight states have undertaken ease of doing business reforms, and four states have done local body reforms. Total additional borrowing permission issued so far to the states who have done the aforesaid reforms stands at Rs 61,339 crore, it said. Mumbai, Jan 15 : Amitabh Bachchan on Friday revealed that people often advise him to put a lock on his mouth! Big B's revelation came while he was interacting with a fan on Twitter. Bachchan reacted to a tweet by a fan who wrote: "If the world had run on faith, there would be no lock on anyone's door." Reacting to his tweet, Big B wrote in Hindi: "Brother I have seen such days in Allahabad. We would never lock our house. Also our main gate would always remain open, I have never seen it being shut. Yes, but that is no longer possible. These days people advise me to put a lock even on my mouth!!" Talking about changing times, Bachchan mentioned in his blog post: "In today's world the hand written has become obsolete.. writing utensils are rare and the personal collect is smirked and laughed at." On the work front, Bachchan finished shooting for season 12 of the popular television quiz show "Kaun Banega Crorepati" or KBC this week. Big B has a busy year ahead. He is currently shooting for the Ajay Devgn directorial film "MayDay". The 78-year-old actor also has upcoming films like Emraan Hashmi starrer Chehre, Nagraj Manjule's "Jhund", Ayan Mukerji's "Brahmastra", and a yet untitled film co-starring Prabhas and Deepika Padukone. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Emer Cooke says a lengthy licensing process will not be required for adjusted vaccines. Photo: Naoise Culhane The HSE is to extend the gap between the first and second doses of the Pfizer BionTech vaccine to 28 days, instead of 21 days. It comes amid concerns that supplies of the vaccine from Pfizer will slow down for a number of weeks as it upgrades its plant in Belgium to increase its production to 2bn doses. The move to extend the gap between doses is aimed at stretching supplies of the vaccine and covering more people earlier. Pfizer confirmed to Independent.ie that Ireland may get less vaccines in late January and early February. Read More It said today it is working hard to deliver more doses than originally forecasted this year with a newly stated goal of two billion doses in 2021. To do this, Pfizer is scaling up manufacturing operations to increase dose availability and output. As part of the normal productivity improvements to increase capacity, we must make modifications to the process and facility that will require additional regulatory approvals. Although this will temporarily impact shipments in late January to early February, it will provide a significant increase in doses available for patients in late February and March. Consequently, there may be fluctuations in orders and shipping schedules at our Puurs facility in the immediate future to quickly enable the increased production volumes. The vaccine is authorised to be given in two doses 21 days apart. The first dose is believed to provide around 52pc protection but it still leaves a person at significant risk of getting ill if they contract the virus. The two dose vaccine is 95pc effective. The HSE is under pressure to step the roll out of the vaccine, particularly to the over-65s who are being badly hit by surge in spread in the third wave. Under new guidelines vaccinators have been told to inform people who get the first dose they will now get the second in 28 days. The vaccine is currently being given to frontline health staff and to people over 65 in long term care. More than 77,000 doses of the vaccine have been given so far. The HSE will have around 49,000 this week, following a decision by the European Medicines Agency to allow for six doses, instead of five to be taken from each vial. Emer Cooke, head of the European Medicines Agency which granted approval to the vaccine, said there is no evidence that the 12 week gap between first and second doses which is being operated by the UK, works. Speaking at a presentation organised by the Institute of International and European Affairs she said there is still a lot of work to be done on whether that will work or not. The clinical trials results for the Pfizer vaccine recommends a three week gap and it is 28 days for the Moderna vaccine. There is a bit of leeway but it is still not clear if this will work, she said. We can only go on the basis of the trials that have been done and the evidence in those trials. The HSE plans to concentrate more on nursing homes for the roll out of the vaccine next week with 47,000 more vaccinations spread across residents over 65 and frontline healthcare staff. However, some of this may be hampered by the large number of virus outbreaks in nursing homes. Ms Cooke also told how Pfizer and Moderna will not have to go back to the drawing board and start a full new approval process if their Covid-19 vaccines are impacted by one of the new more infectious strains of the virus. Pfizer BioNTech has said it could readjust vaccines to work against the new strains in about six weeks. There were fears this would mean having to undergo a lengthy licensing process again, delaying access to the public. However, Irish-born Ms Cooke said the regulatory agency is already talking to Pfizer and Moderna about how they would work in the context of the new strains. The hope is the EMA would be able to have a process where they would not have to go back for full approval. "We would be able to use a lot of what we have already, she said. Ms Cooke confirmed the EMA is hopeful of coming to a decision on the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine by the end of the month. Coronavirus Ireland: local case numbers revealed find the Covid incidence rate in your area When will I get the Covid vaccine? Some people will wait until September, says latest schedule Up to 23 people died this month after contracting virus in hospital outbreak The dates depend on everything going right and everyone working together to make it happen. Its challenging but we are hopeful. The EMA is also doing an active rolling review looking at clinical-trial results as they come through in the case of the Janssen vaccine and 45 other makers of vaccines who have contacted the body. She said people involved in clinical trials will be followed up for two years. There is also a need for treatments for patients who are sick with Covid-19. So far monoclonal antibodies, lab-made drugs to mimic natural antibodies to the virus, have not yet shown definitive efficiency, she said. The EMA will also look for potential new and unexpected side-effects in the wider population. Commenting on criticism that the EMA is too slow in authorising vaccines, she said the conditional marketing authorisation system it operates in relation to the vaccines is the most appropriate tool for a Europe-wide approach. It takes a bit longer but it does benefit from a very robust peer-review system and it means we have collective acceptance across the EU. She said although hundreds of experts have worked around the clock to perform this evaluation work in record time we constantly hear criticism about perceived delays in the EU in view of the emergency-use authorisations which were granted in the UK and the US". She said such emergency approvals are not available at the level of the EMA. But also, the European member states consider the conditional-marketing authorisation to be the most appropriate regulatory mechanism for use in the current pandemic emergency. I want to stress once again that we have applied the same robust standards as for any vaccine evaluation, she said. I left Ireland 28 years ago this month, and since then I have lived and worked in five European cities, for three European organisations and one global organisation and had many interesting, enriching and exciting roles. "Even so, I have to say that taking over the helm of the European Medicines Agency just two months ago on November 16 could not have happened at a more challenging or exciting time. It is possible that many of you had not heard about the European Medicines Agency until very recently and had little or no knowledge or awareness of medicines regulation. She added: It is fair to say that we were not set up to deal with crises, even if we do a lot of crisis management. But in the context of Covid-19, the regulatory network adapted and quickly made the response to the pandemic the priority. We also recognised early on that staying within the boundaries of our mandate was not enough to take on the many tasks needed to protect EU citizens during the pandemic. ATLANTA The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but four states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates that have alarmed health experts and frustrated residents. In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, less than 2% of the population had received its first dose of a vaccine at the start of the week, according to data from the states and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As in other parts of the country, states in the South face a number of challenges: limited vaccine supplies, health care workers who refuse to get inoculated and bureaucratic systems that are not equipped to schedule the huge number of appointments being sought. But other states have still managed at their best to get the vaccines into the arms of more than 5% of their populations. In Louisiana, the vaccination effort has kicked into high gear, with more than 170,000 people receiving at least one shot. After sitting in the bottom 10 at the start of the effort last month, Louisiana now ranks 17th among states and the District of Columbia, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Louisiana coronavirus vaccine effort picks up for elderly, but high demand brings challenges After a slow start, Louisianas decision to make vaccines available to people aged 70 and older has kicked the mass COVID-19 vaccination effor Though its not clear why the some of Deep South is falling behind, public health researchers note that it has typically lagged in funding public health and addressing disparities in care for its big rural population. "When you combine a large percentage of rural residents who tend to be the hard-to-reach populations and have lower numbers of providers with trying to build a vaccine infrastructure on the fly, thats just a recipe for a not-so-great response, said Sarah McCool, a professor in public health at Georgia State University. In Georgia, the states rural health system has been decimated in recent years, with nine hospital closures since 2008, including two last year. Local health departments have become the primary vaccine providers in some locations, as officials work to add sites where doses can be administered. If were the only game in town, this process is going to take a long time, Lawton Davis, director of a large public health district that includes Savannah, said at a news conference on Monday. The district had to stop taking appointments in the face of an onslaught of requests after Georgia opened up the vaccine to people over 65. Other health districts in the state saw their websites crash. Alabama and Mississippi have also been hit hard by rural hospital closures. Seven hospitals have shut down in Alabama since 2009 and six in Mississippi since 2005, according to researchers at the University of North Carolinas Sheps Center. Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi ranked in the bottom five of U.S. states in their access to health care, according to a 2020 report from a not-for-profit foundation connected to insurance giant UnitedHealth. But overall, experts say it's too early in the vaccine rollout to draw conclusions about the region's shortcomings, and they can't easily be attributed to a particular factor or trend. Were sort of building this plane as were flying, and there are going to be missteps along the way, said Amber Schmidtke, a microbiologist who has been following vaccine dissemination in the South. Louisiana nearly doubles places where people 70+ can get coronavirus vaccine: See list Louisiana added more than 100 pharmacies and other providers administering vaccines to elderly patients across the state on Monday, as officia Officials in the individual states have cited a number of challenges, but have also acknowledged shortcomings. We have too many vaccines distributed that are not in arms yet, said Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who noted that some hospitals in the state are not using their vaccine doses. He said that practice has to stop. 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 Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp cited a similar challenge and warned providers holding on to vaccines that the state would take their unused doses even if that required firing up his pickup truck and doing it himself. But in South Carolina, hospital officials say it is the state that has moved too slowly to expand access to the vaccinations, leaving them with unused doses. The state recently did offer the vaccine to those 70 and older. Mississippi's Reeves said one of the biggest weaknesses in the states vaccination system is the federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens to administer vaccinations in long-term care facilities. The pharmacy chains have been slow in hiring enough people to do the work in Mississippi, the governor said. CVS Health said in a statement that it has the appropriate resources to finish the job" at long-term care facilities. Walgreens did not respond to an email. During an online forum hosted by Jackson State University in Mississippi on Thursday, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who is Black, noted the reluctance of many African Americans to be vaccinated. He cited a general mistrust of medical systems stemming back to a now-defunct government study that started in the 1930s and left Black men untreated for syphilis for decades. So far, only 15% of COVID-19 vaccinations in Mississippi have gone to Black people, who make up about 38% of the population, state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during the forum. +3 Louisiana coronavirus: 3,126 more confirmed cases, 49 deaths reported; data includes backlog The Louisiana Department of Health reported 3,126 more confirmed coronavirus cases and 49 more confirmed deaths in its noon update Thursday. Officials in all four states also said some health care workers among the first groups eligible for a vaccine are choosing not to get inoculated. And some stressed that states were dealing with limited supplies and high demand and implored people to be patient. Yes, the phone lines will be busy. Yes, the websites will certainly crash, Kemp said Tuesday. There are simply vastly more Georgians that want the vaccine than can get it today. Mississippi officials said the state's website and telephone hotline were overwhelmed after the governor announced Tuesday that vaccinations were available to people 65 or older or people who have underlying medical conditions. Liz Cleveland, a 67-year-old retired state employee who lives in Jackson, waited hours on the website using her cellphone, computer and tablet only to encounter unknown errors. Its like gambling. You may hit or you may bust, Cleveland said. About 2 a.m. Wednesday, she was finally able to book appointments for herself and her husband next week in Hattiesburg, which is 90 miles (145 kilometers) away. Mississippi officials said Thursday that they will open an additional drive-thru site for vaccinations soon in the state's largest county. Alabama officials also have been inundated with requests for appointments since announcing the state will begin vaccinations for people over 75 next week. A state hotline received more than a million calls the first day it was open. Celia OKelley of Tuscaloosa said she couldnt get through to anyone to get an appointment for her 95-year-old mother. I am scared because Tuscaloosa is a hot spot, she said. By SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press. The Advocate writer Sam Karlin also contributed to this report. Associated Press writers Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; and Michelle Liu in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who joined Mr. Hawley in objecting to the results, has also faced a backlash, including the resignation of his communications director this week. But while Mr. Cruz lodged his objection to the results in Arizona at the beginning of the proceedings, Mr. Hawley has drawn particular ire for objecting to the Pennsylvania results hours later, after the attack on the Capitol had taken place. Josh Hawley is convinced that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and deny Joe Biden the presidency even after helping fuel the U.S. Capitol riots will make him president in 2024, the new super PAC said in a statement. Hes betting that the same far-right, nationalist mobs that supported Donald Trump will put him in the White House to continue Trumps work. JOSH PAC will run a permanent campaign to stop him now. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hawley responded: We expect Claire McCaskill and her team will be as effective with this campaign as they were with the last. They wasted more than $60 million in 2018 and lost after Missourians rejected Claire McCaskills failed liberal policies. The super PAC, news of which was first reported by Politico, is part of a long tradition of efforts to fund election challenges in response to a specific vote or action by a lawmaker. These efforts are not always successful, even when they involve large amounts of money. For instance, a crowd-funded campaign in 2018 raised $3.7 million for whichever Democrat would be nominated to challenge Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, in response to her support for confirming Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The candidate ended up being Sara Gideon, who gave Ms. Collins her most serious challenge in years but who ultimately lost by more than eight percentage points. Los Angeles, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Spike Lee voiced hope for the "next wave" of Black filmmakers -- but warned his own trail-blazing career was far from done -- as he was honored by Hollywood at a virtual ceremony Thursday. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Lee accepted the prestigious American Cinematheque Award online rather than at the usual star-studded Beverly Hills gala. The prolific 63-year-old director, who has entertained and provoked audiences with frank depictions of Black America for decades, promised he has "got some more joints to make," referring to his films. "If you love what you're doing, you can delay Father Time," he told ceremony host Jodie Foster. The livestreamed event saw Lee heaped with praise by the likes of Foster, Angela Bassett, Rosie Perez and "Black Panther" director Ryan Coogler, who dubbed him a "trailblazer." The award was remotely presented by the cast of Lee's recent movie "Da 5 Bloods," in which elderly Black soldiers return to Vietnam decades after the war. Lee, who continues to teach film at his alma mater New York University, deflected praise onto younger Black filmmakers including Coogler. "When I see the next wave come up and keep this thing going, it makes me happy," said Lee. "The happiest people for the success of 'Black Panther' (were) you, Disney, and I was... third," he told Coogler. Both men reflected on "Black Panther" star Chadwick Boseman, who appeared in "Da 5 Bloods" before succumbing to cancer in August. Very few actors could play the "revered" and "almost mythical" role of soldier Stormin' Norman, said Lee. "I love him and I miss him... even though he was only with us for a limited amount of time, he gave us so, so much," added Coogler. The American Cinematheque Award is a "mid-career achievement award," with previous honorees including Al Pacino, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg. Before accepting, Lee noted that many of his films "did not connect with the audience right away" but had been re-evaluated in recent years. Lee received an honorary Oscar in late 2015, and won his first competitive Oscar four years later with best adapted screenplay for "BlacKkKlansman."Last year, he was named the first person of black African descent to preside at the Cannes film festival. "Let's keep it going!" Lee concluded as he accepted his honor. Created by Ferdinand Ferry Porsche, the son of the companys founder, the 356 was the first production car to use the Porsche badge. It took to the road for the first time in 1948 and was produced across four generations in 76,313 units until 1965.One of them found its way back to Porsche years ago for a complete restoration process. It is part of only 394 Pre-A Cabriolets built in 1953, making it extremely rare. Still, what makes it even more special is its unique aluminum body that is shrouded in mystery.Built by Karosseriewerke Reutter, its a strange finding since only a few early 356 coupes were fitted with handcrafted aluminum bodies. When production moved to Germany in 1950, all cars left the assembly line with steel bodies, including the cabriolets.Aluminum bodies have been traditionally used to make cars particularly race cars - lighter and more agile, but to use one on an open-top 356 made no apparent sense.The Porsche staff was so intrigued by this car that they commenced a full investigation to answer one simple question: Why? They intensively researched the archives of Porsche and Reutter but werent able to find an answer.They did manage to uncover that the car was delivered to the well-known Porsche dealer in Frankfurt in July 1952, but little is known about its early history.It surfaced again in the UK back in the 70s, when it was offered in Gloucester for a price of 1,000. Historic and unique Porsche Cabriolet Type 356, read the ad. Aluminium body specially built to single order by Reutter, Zuffenhausen, March 1953, unmarked white paintwork, new grey interior trimming, new red upholstery, and new black hood, all to original standards.The reasons behind its creation still remain a matter of speculation, though. In the original story first published in the Porsche Klassik 16 magazine back in 2019, experts theorized that a member of the Association of Mechanical Engineers (VdM), founded in Cologne in 1892, ordered the car in this configuration, perhaps wanting to investigate whether small-scale aluminum production might be worthwhile. However, this cannot be backed up by solid evidence.The car eventually made its way back to Germany, where its current owner purchased it on condition that he would one day restore it and not use it as a speculative investment.Fortunately, he kept his promise, and in 2013, the unique 356 was handed over to a team headed by famous engineer Rolf Sprenger, the creator of the Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur department, which brings historical models back to life. Restoring it was a colossal task, mainly because the car was daily driven but also because its one-off body presents many distinctive challenges.After an initial stock-take, it was clear that this unique vehicle had to be completely dismantled, recalls Sprenger, and although the car was complete, we naturally had to overhaul every part and check that it was working properly.It took the team six years of painstaking work to bring this unique piece of Porsche heritage back to mint condition, and as the photos can attest, it was well worth it. It gets to live on and tell its fascinating story to future generations, and we hope that its origins can be eventually uncovered. Jeff Chiu/Associated Press Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is back in the news, and given her alleged history of fraudulent behavior, the latest development in her trial doesn't come as much of a surprise. The Register reported that on Monday prosecutors submitted a filing alleging Holmes destroyed evidence shortly after it had been subpoenaed. The evidence in question was a database called the Laboratory Information System (LIS), which contained three years worth of accuracy and failure rate. Despite the company's claims of developing fool-proof technology to standardize blood tests, prosecutors have said the failure rate was actually 51.3 percent, making the tests nearly completely worthless. Michigan ranked No. 27 in the nation in COVID-19 vaccines administered per 100,000 residents as of Friday, Jan. 15, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By the federal governments count, the 10th-most populous state had 3,647 shots administered per 100,000 residents, before Friday. While Michigan leaders have acknowledged the vaccine rollout got off to a slow start -- due in-part to the December coronavirus surge -- they say the ranking isnt a complete and accurate picture of how the state stacks up with others when it comes to leading in the fight against COVID-19. First, state officials note that data reporting by the CDC lags behind state health department reporting. Secondly, the CDC totals combine the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, despite the fact that the latter bypasses the state and goes right to national pharmacies to be administered to the states long-term care facility residents and staff. That is out of Michigans hands, although it is counted; its counted in our allotment, and its frankly, unfortunately, counted against us when you look at what we do have control over, said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The Pfizer vaccine is what we move out as soon as it gets here. Thats whats going to health systems and thats whats going to public health departments. If you actually were looking at an assessment of what we have been able to do in terms of that Pfizer vaccine, I think our ranking would be even higher. But weve made great strides in this front. Regardless of CDC vaccination ranking, the governor said federal leaders are leaning on Michigan and, at times, even following its lead. Last week, Whitmer announced an expansion of the eligible resident pool to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Individuals 65 and older could begin getting in line as of Monday, Jan. 11. A day later, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced a new CDC recommendation for states to include senior citizens among the groups eligible to begin vaccination. Azar also announced Tuesday that the Trump administration would shift its policy and begin releasing the reserve doses of vaccine that were set aside during each weekly allotment to be shipped three-to-four weeks later and used as second doses. That decision followed a letter sent to Azar from Whitmer and eight other state governors asking to tap into the reserves. The reason that the Trump administration is listening to us and doing what we asked them to do, and the fact that the incoming Biden administration is talking to Michigan so frequently, tells me that people are seeing that we are moving fast, and that we are a state that needs to be consulted because were getting a lot of things right, Whitmer said. Whitmer, who has been critical of the federal government for pitting states against each other when it came to securing personal protective equipment early in the pandemic, has also requested permission from the Trump administration for Michigan to buy its own vaccines directly from Pfizer, which is located in Portage, Michigan. Im not suggesting every state start a bidding war but what I am suggesting is the United States isnt locking in those doses, she said. Give us the ability to buy what is sitting in a freezer in Portage, Michigan, so we can get shots in arms. Whitmer hasnt received a response to her request to directly purchase 100,000 doses from the Michigan developer. Asked about Michigans place in the CDC vaccination rankings, Trish Foster, the states chief operations officer, said the most important thing is that we were seventh-worst and now were not and we expect to continue to get better. Michigan has administered 167,255 doses over the last seven days, or 23,894 per day. Thats up from 72,856 the previous seven days, or 10,408 per day. Foster said all vaccines sent to Michigan as of Wednesday evening had either been put into arms, or were scheduled to be administered to an eligible resident in the coming days. The deliberate actions we took over a week ago have put us in this position and well continue to take deliberation actions in order to get more vaccines in arms, she said. Seventy percent of Michiganders, thats our goal and were staying focused on it. For more information on how to sign up for a COVID-19 vaccine, visit Michigan.gov/coronavirus, here. To find a testing site near you, check out the states online test finder, here, send an email to COVID19@michigan.gov, or call 888-535-6136 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. Read more on MLive: Michigan still expects to vaccinate 70% of adults in 2021, despite early hurdles Newest vaccine timeline pushes lower priority groups further into 2021 4% of Michigan adults vaccinated so far; see numbers in your county Coronavirus deaths during Michigans current surge now exceed death toll in spring Front-runners for Tibet's next exile leader Penpa Tsering (left) and Aukatsang Kelsang Dorjee (right) are shown in undated photos. Two candidates have now emerged as finalists in a first round of voting by Tibetans living outside their China-ruled homeland for leader, or Sikyong, of Tibets Dharamsala, India-based exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration, RFA has learned. Thousands of Tibetans around the world took part in the preliminary round of voting on Jan. 3, with counting of the votes beginning on Jan. 5 and expected to end by Jan. 12. A second round of voting on April 11 will decide the winner along with members of the 17th parliament in exile. Preliminary vote counts confirmed by RFA show former speaker of Tibets exile parliament Penpa Tsering in first place with 23,687 votes, followed by Aukatsang Kelsang Dorjee, former representative of Tibets exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, with 13,754 votes. Gyari Dolma, former CTA home minister and the first woman to run for the office of Sikyong, came third in the race with 13,126 votes, and Drongchung Ngodup, representative of the Dalai Lama in the Indian capital New Delhi, came fourth with votes totaling 9,742. Results of the preliminary round of voting will be officially announced on Feb. 8 by the CTA Election Commission, which says that the two candidates with the highest number of votes will move on to the second round on April 11, with final results announced on May 14. Formed in 1959, the Central Tibetan Administration has executive, judiciary, and legislative branches, with candidates for the office of Sikyong, or president, elected since 2011 by popular vote. Lobsang Sangay, a Harvard-trained scholar of law, has now served two consecutive five-year terms as Sikyong and will leave that post when his present term expires in May 2021. The Tibetan diaspora is estimated to include about 150,000 people living in 40 countries, mainly India, Nepal. North America, and in Europe. Among these, 82,818 registered to vote in the 2011 election, of whom 48,482 voted, and 90,877 registered for the election in 2016, of whom 59,853 turned out to vote. A formerly independent nation Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force nearly 70 years ago, following which the Dalai Lama and thousands of his followers fled into exile in in India and other countries around the world. Divisions persist in the Tibetan exile community over how best to advance the rights and freedoms of Tibetans living in China, with some calling for a restoration of the independence lost when Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950. The CTA and Tibets spiritual leader the Dalai Lama have instead adopted a policy approach called the Middle Way, which accepts Tibets present status as a part of China but urges greater cultural and religious freedoms, including strengthened language rights, for Tibetans living under Beijings rule. Nine rounds of talks on greater autonomy in Tibetan areas of China were held between high-level Chinese officials and envoys of the Dalai Lama beginning in 2002, but stalled in 2010 and were never resumed. US, Dalai Lama share concerns The Dalai Lama and the U.S. State Departments Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Robert Destro in a virtual meeting on Jan. 13 discussed the benefits of the Middle Way Approach and the importance of environmental issues on the Tibetan Plateau, a State Department spokesperson told RFA on Thursday. They also discussed the need to preserve Tibetan knowledge, including Tibetans unique linguistic, cultural, and religious traditions, the State Department said, adding that the United States shares international concern over increasing human rights abuses in Tibet. These include "coercive labor practices, and the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) declared intention to Sinicize Tibetan Buddhism and to interfere in the succession of spiritual leaders, the State Department said. The United States is particularly concerned the CCP may attempt to appoint its own Dalai Lama." Tibetan Buddhists wherever they reside should be allowed to select, educate, and venerate the future Dalai Lama and other religious leaders without PRC officials' interference," the State Department said. Reported by Tashi Wangchuk for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Probe into $19 mln bribery case against convicted ex-police colonel Zakharchenko completed Vladimir Burnov, RAPSI 12:49 15/01/2021 MOSCOW, January 15 (RAPSI) Investigators have completed probe into a 1.4 billion-ruble (over $19 million) bribery case against convicted ex-police colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, the Investigative Committees press service reports. Other defendants in the case are Valery Markelov, Vasily Kritinin and Victor Belevtsov. Depending on their alleged role in the crime they are charged with receiving a bribe, mediation in bribery and bribegiving. Three other personal allegedly involved are on the international wanted list. According to the investigation, between 2007 and 2016, Zakharchenko systematically received bribes from an organized group controlling several companies not involved in real business activities but managed funds deposited on their bank accounts by conducting illegal bank transactions for their purpose. In total, Zakharchenko received over 1.4 billion rubles in bribes, investigators claim. In June 2019, Zakharchenko was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison and a 117 million-ruble (about $1.7 million) fine after he had been found guilty of corruption charges and obstruction of justice. The former policeman still does not admit guilt. However, the court acquitted him of an $800,000 bribery count. The court held that these charges against the defendant were not proven. Investigators claimed that in 2014 Zakharchenko and his accomplice initiated audit of restaurant business. The check was completed when Zakharchenko received $800,000 from a businessman, they insisted. Ex-Russian anti-corruption official was arrested on September 8, 2016. During searches at his sisters apartment law enforcement officers found around 9 billion rubles ($123 million at the current exchange rate). He denied any relation to the seized funds. 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. Syracuse, N.Y. On Wednesday afternoon, dozens of residents of the Vineyards of Miller Place retirement community scored the equivalent of gold: Appointments for Covid-19 vaccines at nearby Stony Brook University. Using a link provided by the town of Port Jefferson, resident Sharon Tiskowitz said, at least 50 people in the complex signed up to get vaccinated, taking one huge step toward resuming normal life. They quickly got emails confirming their appointments, each complete with a bar code and appointment time, under the letterhead of the New York state Department of Health. We were euphoric because we finally did it after days of trying to get on the website, said Tiskowitz, who made appointments for herself and her husband in mid-March. On Thursday afternoon, they got another email: Their appointments were canceled because the website link they used wasnt supposed to be public yet. Get back in line, the state said. This is horrendous, Tiskowitz said. We have printed confirmations with a seal on them from the state health department. We cant believe that this would happen. Thousands of people from Long Island to Upstate New York lost their coveted appointments Thursday after clicking in good faith on what the state is calling an inactive link. Jackie Cole, a first-grade teacher on Long Island, made an appointment Monday for the Jones Beach site, an hour drive from home. A day or two later, a colleague sent a link that let her sign up at Stony Brook, which is much closer to home. That left her with two appointments. I did the right thing and canceled the Jones Beach appointment so somebody else isnt without the vaccine, Cole said. Then the state canceled her Stony Brook vaccine. I am beside myself, said Cole, who hasnt been able to reschedule another appointment. I have underlying health issues, and now I feel scammed and thrown out with the trash. A cryptic news release sent Thursday evening from the state information technology office not the health department said that a link to six not-yet-opened vaccination sites had been leaked. Appointments made using that link were voided, the release said. You made a vaccination appointment for a state-run location through an inactive link that was shared without authorization, the letter said. (B)ecause the site is not currently taking reservations, your appointment and confirmation have been voided. People who had their appointment papers in hand were furious. I think its egregious that they canceled all the appointments, said Heather Gordon, who was finally able to schedule a shot Feb. 7 at Stony Brook for her 71-year-old father, who has multiple medical conditions. I got a bar code. I printed out a registration ticket for him and it seemed completely legitimate. The states news release said the leaked link allowed people to sign up at sites in Binghamton, Buffalo, Plattsburgh, Potsdam, Stony Brook and Utica. With the state receiving just 300,000 doses of vaccine a week for the 7 million New Yorkers now eligible, securing a vaccine appointment has become the Holy Grail for many New Yorkers. Theyve been frustrated by clunky websites, jammed phone lines and a confusing cascade of eligibility requirements. Nick Palczak, a high school teacher in Oneida County, said he tried for days to get an appointment after teachers became eligible for the shot this week. Ive been going to our county website and clicking on links to hospitals, looking for times, he said. Every time I clicked on a link there was nothing there. On Thursday morning, a friend emailed a link to get an appointment at the Utica Memorial Auditorium. Palczak hopped on the state health department website and soon had an appointment for Jan 21. When I filled it out, it was as real as real could be, he said. A few hours later, the second email arrived: Appointment canceled. Go back to start. Its frustrating, he said. I want to be responsible, and theyre encouraging us (to get vaccinated) to get back to school and get things going. People who signed up for appointments shouldnt have to pay for the states mistakes, said Bob Pacific, of Frankfort, in Herkimer County. Pacific, who had made appointments for himself and his wife, said he wrote to his congressman for the first time in his life. If it wasnt a valid link, then somebody was goofing off, Pacific said. I think they need to make good on it and contact us for new appointments. The state canceled the appointments to be fair to New Yorkers who didnt have the unauthorized link, said Melissa DeRosa, Cuomos top aide. The news release from the information services office does not say who leaked the sign-up link, where it appeared on social media or how many people had made appointments. It said that the matter has been referred to the state Inspector Generals office, which investigates conduct of state employees and agencies. On Wednesday, the House voted to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time, on a charge of incitement of insurrection, by a bipartisan 232-to-197 vote. Once the article is received by the Senate, the Senate must act upon it. Sen. Mitch McConnell, in one of his final acts as majority leader, said after the impeachment vote that the chamber would not return until after Joe Bidens inauguration, which means that impeachment will likely be the Senates first order of business under the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Slate convened some of its political reporters to discuss what to expect when the Senate reconvenes. Advertisement Jim Newell: Welcome, friends, to this episode of So Uhhhh Whats the Senate Gonna Do? Whenever we traipse across the hallway from the House to the Senate, we enter a dense procedural thicket. One of the first questions popping up among some Republicans is whether its constitutional to try a president after hes left office. Sen. Tom Cotton says no, and even some Republicans open to convicting Trump, like Sen. Pat Toomey, have questions. Dahlia, you possess total knowledge of the law. Is it constitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a president whos left office? And what authority can give the final answer on this? Advertisement Advertisement Dahlia Lithwick: Its one of several constitutional questions floating around the ether that seem to be answerable largely with a shruggie emoji. Michael Luttig, a distinguished conservative jurist and thinker, published this piece saying it cannot be done. But Steve Vladeck, a distinguished academic and court watcher, responded today with this piece saying it emphatically CAN be done. Advertisement Tom Scocca: It seemed like there were a lot of people very confidently saying it was definitely possible to impeach an ex-president, even going back before the coup attempt. And then suddenly in the last few days theres been a wave of equally confident declarations that it cant be done. Both sides strike a tone of complete assurance that these have always been the known facts about our constitutional system. 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. Lithwick: Vladeck cites the case of Secretary of War William Belknap, whose name you will hear a lot in the days to come. In 1876, Belknap tried to resign just before the House voted on his impeachment. The House impeached him anyway, and the Senate ultimately voted to acquit him but first concluded that it had the power to try former officers, so thats the precedent folks will point to. Advertisement Advertisement Newell: The Senate will presumably decide that its constitutional and hold a trial, while Tom Cotton will claim this first-of-many procedural off-ramps to avoid deciding the question on the merits of Trumps conduct. Will Saletan: If ex-presidents cant be impeached, what measures does the Constitution permitother than prosecutionto prevent a demonstrably unfit president from regaining the office? Lithwick: So, Will, that question leads us to the wonderful world of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which has been floated in recent days as the mechanism that could be used to bar Trump from holding federal office in the future for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol, according to experts who weighed in here and here. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised this option in a letter to House members. The Section 3 route would need only a simple majority vote of both houses, compared to the two-thirds vote needed to convict Trump in a Senate impeachment. Advertisement I guess my own sense is that this is almost entirely a political issue and the Senate will decide it entirely politically. Which brings us to What Does Mitch Want and How Does He Want It? Seventeen Republicans are not going to pull a Liz Cheney, joining Democrats in voting to convict, right? Advertisement Newell: I think it is unlikely that the Senate will get 67 votes to convict. I do think theres a chance, though, and the key factor in that is Mitch McConnell. If McConnell does vote to convict, as hes reportedly been entertaining the possibility of, its because hes made the choice that its in the GOPs best interest to make a move against Trump now. If he makes that decision, enough could follow because they trust his political instincts. Advertisement I just remain skeptical that, after a trial run by Chuck Schumer, more process complaints and easy off-ramps emerging, and another few weeks of pressure building up in conservative media, it would be tenable for McConnell to convict. Lithwick: Does the fact that only 10 Republicans emerged yesterday in the House after promises of 20 make you feel that even more strongly, Jim? Newell: Ive been watching House Republicans for a while, and I think getting 10 of them is a miracle. But Senate Republicans and House Republicans arent the same species. A majority of House Republicans voted to reject Biden electors even after the president sent a mob to attack them; all but seven Senate Republicans voted against rejecting electors. We probably start at three to five Senate Republicans voting to convict. Advertisement Advertisement Scocca: Do you think McConnell steered the whole thing in this direction on purpose, or was he bluffing about having the votes to finish off Trump outright now and this is the fallback plan? Making a move to take down Trump without successfully taking down Trump does not seem like a feat of strategic genius. Saletan: Right. Jim, do you think McConnell is looking at Liz Cheney as a failed attempt to kill the king (since few other Republicans joined her, and now theres a push to topple her) and is rethinking his talk of considering a vote to convict? Newell: I dont think Cheney was acting out of regicide or thinking she could bring along a critical mass of Republicans. She had had her problems with Trump already, and far-right members of her conference were already skeptical of her. There may be some disturbing Cheneyist reasoning here that Im missing, but it does seem like a pretty pure vote of conscience. Advertisement I think if McConnell decides to kill the king, it will be because hes secured 17 Republican votes to do so. That will seem harder to do as time goes on. Keep in mind, though, that theres a lot more we could learn about the Jan. 6 attack in the coming weeks. Advertisement Advertisement Lithwick: Is the calculus for Mitch what is the least I can possibly do to protect my vulnerable members wallets while also not upsetting the Trump enthusiasts? If thats it, his plan will be to either run out the clock or just directly say, We would have loved to convict, but we cannot since Tom Cotton says its too late, right? Saletan: I like Jims theory about McConnellthat if he decides to kill the king, its because he has the 17 votes. So now, instead of asking who McConnell could bring along, we can just watch him as an index of what the secret number is. Advertisement Scocca: All of this really highlights how everyone is faking their way through a thoroughly busted and nonfunctional constitutional order. This is why I was disappointed (to my own surprise) when McConnell yanked away the small chance that they could make the soft coup official and allow Mike Pence to formally become the 46th president by impeaching Trump in his last full week in office. I feel like this era really needed to inscribe the awkwardness of a five-day presidency in the history books, just as a final demonstration of how broken things have been. I never thought I would yearn for a Mike Pence presidency in any form, but having his slab-faced portrait hanging up around the rim of future classrooms on equal footing with Lincoln and Madison and Garfield and Millard Fillmore would be exactly what this country needs and deserves. Advertisement Saletan: Part of me hates the 25th Amendment idea because it feels like a soft coup. The other part of me thinks: To handpick your own jury and then get voted out by them, you have to be quite the asshole. Lithwick: What I hoped for was some kind of swift and decisive anythingeven censureto signal that what had happened couldnt just be waited out or brazened through. Yesterdays impeachment hearing proved at least to me that the Jim Jordan wing has hardened and will only harden more on the proposition that brazening through has no cost. Newell: Im just trying to think of where well be in early February. Democrats will be writing a reconciliation bill that Republicans will be fully on-message trashing as corrupt. It will be so easy for them to ask why were having an impeachment trial about a guy whos not even in office anymore instead of focusing on COVID or jobs or filling out the administration or what have you. And in that kind of environment, it makes it more difficult with each passing day to get Senate Republicans to join up with Democrats to make Trump the first president impeached and convicted. Keep in mind too that some of the most-likely-to-convict RepublicansGrassley, Portman, Blunt, Lankfordwill be in-cycle and facing potential primaries. Advertisement Advertisement So what is Mitch McConnell up to with these little teases about how he might want to convict? Not even Senate Republicans know, frankly. I think hes mostly mad about Trump costing them Georgia. Lithwick: Its just signaling, right? Hes showing Marriott Hotels that he is insert Susan Collins voice appalled and wishes he could do something, but theres nothing to be done. He hoped it would get Trump to resign, I imagine. Saletan: What other leverage does McConnell have over Trump? Is that what hes after? I mean, Trump just threatened Thune, knocked McConnell out of control of the Senate (by costing him the Georgia seats), and is threatening to come back and take down Brian Kemp and others. If youre McConnell, arent you looking for something you can threaten Trump with? Advertisement Newell: The leverage would be preventing Trump from ever holding federal office again. But Trump also knows he can make life hell for those who vote against him. Lithwick: So the only leverage Mitch has is the stuff he refuses to do, but still threatens to do? Newell: I dont think hes made up his mind about what to do. Saletan: Trumps campaign and his presidency have been five years of Republican cowardice. And it doesnt look like his departure from the White House will end that. Lithwick: We live under the long shadow of vengeful Trump for years to come. President Donald Trump holds a copy of his book "Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again" before a signing in 2015. (Getty Images / Spencer Platt) More than 250 authors, editors, agents, professors and others in the American literary community signed an open letter this week opposing any publisher that signs book deals with President Donald Trump or members of his administration. Former DC Comics president Paul Levitz, journalist Sarah Weinman and "Little Fires Everywhere" author Celeste Ng are among signatories to the letter, written by novelist Barry Lyga and titled "No Book Deals for Traitors." "We all love book publishing, but we have to be honest our country is where it is in part because publishing has chased the money and notoriety of some pretty sketchy people, and has granted those same people both the imprimatur of respectability and a lot of money through sweetheart book deals," the letter read. "We affirm that participation in the administration of Donald Trump must be considered a uniquely mitigating criterion for publishing houses when considering book deals. "Consequently, we believe: No participant in an administration that caged children, performed involuntary surgeries on captive women, and scoffed at science as millions were infected with a deadly virus should be enriched by the almost rote largesse of a big book deal. And no one who incited, suborned, instigated, or otherwise supported the January 6, 2021 coup attempt should have their philosophies remunerated and disseminated through our beloved publishing houses." The letter went on to invoke "Son of Sam" laws, which prevents convicted criminals from profiting from book deals, and concluded: "We are tired of the industry we love enriching the monsters among us, and we will do whatever is in our power to stop it." Asked to specify what actions the signatories might take in the event of an objectionable book deal, Lyga, author of "I Hunt Killers," told The Times in an email, "Each person will act to the dictates of their conscience and to the extent they are able to effect change." He cited the example of walkouts among Hachette employees that resulted in its cancellation last March of Woody Allen's memoir. "We are committing to doing what we individually can when and if the time comes," he added. Story continues Last week, a mob of mostly white pro-Trump supporters incited by the president's baseless claims of a fraudulent election stormed the U.S. Capitol, leaving five people dead. A day later, Simon & Schuster canceled its plans to publish a book by Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. On Wednesday, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. By way of introducing the letter, Lyga pointed out that members of an outgoing administration traditionally lean on hefty book deals with substantial advances. "No one should be enriched for their contribution to evil." This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. America Talks: Join us and #ListenFirst in a virtual conversation with another American In court documents filed last month, Madison County made clear it will fight the $25,000 fine imposed by the state of Alabama for removing a Confederate monument from courthouse grounds. Responding to a lawsuit brought by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, Madison County said the 2017 monument protection law is unconstitutionally vague and the fine outlined in the law is unconstitutionally excessive. Madison County, which removed its monument from downtown Huntsville on Oct. 23, has joined the city of Birmingham in opposing paying the fine. A judge last year ordered Birmingham to pay the fine after it constructed a plywood barrier in 2017 around the base of a Confederate monument in Linn Park. The Madison County monument has been relocated nearby to a Confederate cemetery within historic Maple Hill Cemetery, which is owned by the city of Huntsville. In the answer to Marshalls lawsuit, Madison County listed 12 defenses of its actions ranging from the Madison County Commissions effort to receive a waiver to remove the monument to points of law, such as the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The response was filed by Huntsville attorneys George Royer and David Canupp along with Jeff Rich, the in-house attorney for Madison County. The AGs office had no comment on Madison Countys response to the lawsuit. Central to the legal standoff is interpreting the commissions request to the Committee on Alabama Monument Protection to receive a waiver to remove the monument. The law states that if that committee does not respond to a request within 90 days, the waiver is considered to be granted. Madison County removed the monument more than 100 days after filing its application. The rejection the commission received did not come from the waiver committee. It came from the Alabama Department of History & Archives. Marshalls lawsuit notes that the waiver committee, as outlined in the law, is permitted to only consider applications for historical structures that have been in place no more than 40 years. The Confederate monument in Huntsville was first erected in 1905. Commission chair Dale Strong has previously made the argument about the 90 days passing and not receiving a response from the waiver committee. We did what was legal, Strong told AL.com last month. We took over (3 months) to seek this. We didnt go to the Department of Agriculture. We went to the Alabama Historical Monuments Commission and requested a waiver. They never took it up. How can we get a decision based on if they never take it up? Another defense in Madison Countys response is that it was entitled to a construction waiver as outlined in the monument protection law. Strong has previously said that the monument stood less than 10 feet from the courthouse footprint and that the commission has plans to expand the courthouse, which would require the removal of the monument. No court hearings have been scheduled in the case, which is being heard by Madison County Circuit Judge Karen Hall. The Department of Justice has opened 275 case files and 98 people have been charged over the MAGA mob riot last week. Thousands more remain free after leaving DC to return to their home states after the riot. It came as prosecutors in Arizona filed charging documents against one of the mob - QAnon Shaman Jake Angeli - in which they claimed some of the rioters had plans to capture and assassinate some members of congress. Some of the crowd were photographed with zip ties inside. But on Friday, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. said on Friday there is no 'direct evidence' to suggest that rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol had formed 'kill capture teams.' The comments by Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin appeared to be an effort to walk back claims federal prosecutors in Arizona had made in a court filing late on Thursday, in which they alleged there was evidence that rioters intended 'to capture and assassinate elected officials.' Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin. He has opened 275 cases but only 98 have been charged Republican senator Ben Sasse raged over Sherwin's remarks, saying there was 'clear evidence' the mob wanted to harm Congress. 'Rage-peddlers are going to try to whitewash the attack on the Capitol, saying that a few bad apples got out of control. 'That's wrong. Every American needs to understand what the Department of Justice just made public: Investigators have strong evidence to suggest that some of the rioters who stormed the US Capitol planned to kidnap and possibly assassinate the Vice President. 'These men weren't drunks who got rowdy - they were terrorists attacking this country's constitutionally-mandated transfer of power. 'They failed, but they came dangerously close to starting a bloody constitutional crisis. 'They must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The FBI is investigating widespread calls for violence across the country and every American has an obligation to lower the temperature,' he said. Sherwin said that his office is leading the prosecution effort, but as local offices help to run down suspects in their districts, there may have been a 'disconnect' on the evidence obtained so far in the cases. Late on Thursday, federal prosecutors had made sweeping claims about the ongoing investigation in a filing as they asked a judge to detain Jacob Chansley, an Arizona man and QAnon conspiracy theorist photographed wearing horns as he stood at the desk of Vice President Mike Pence in the chamber of the U.S. Senate. In the filing, they said Chansley left a note for Pence warning that 'its only a matter of time, justice is coming.' Retired Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr was arrested last Sunday in Texas after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs Federal prosecutors in Arizona on Thursday sought the detention of 'QAnon Shaman' Jacob Chansley (above). They allege that the intent of the rioters during the siege was to capture and assassinate elected officials A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona told Reuters the office plans to file an amended memo today, ahead of Chansley's appearance in federal court for his detention hearing. At a press briefing on Friday, Sherwin said his office has brought 98 criminal prosecutions to date and has opened investigations into more than 275 people in connection with the Capitol riots, in which Trumps supporters stormed the building, ransacked offices and in some cases, attacked police. Steven D'Antuono, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBIs Washington Field Office, urged suspects at the briefing to turn themselves in freely. The FBI is investigating 37 people over the death of Capitol cop Brian Sicknick 'To those of you who took part in the violence, here's something you should know: Every FBI field office in the country is looking for you,' he said. 'As a matter of fact, even your friends and family are tipping us off.' The New York Times reports that the bureau is pursuing 37 people over Sicknick's death but no one has been arrested yet. None of them have been identified. Sicknick, 42, was trying to fight the crowd off when he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. No footage of that attack has yet emerged but other videos from the riot show the mob using fire extinguishers as weapons, tossing them towards cops and spraying them in their faces. Sicknick returned to his field office afterwards, where he collapsed. He was taken to the hospital and he later died. 'Strong evidence, including Chansleys own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,' the memo said. The suspended Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump appears on a laptop screen on Jan. 8, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Welcome to Americas Managed Democracy Commentary The populist disruptor, an unapologetic rough diamond, won a surprise victory with massive working-class support. In power, he battled overwhelming odds to keep his campaign promises, such as an anti-war foreign policy, fighting corruption, and challenging media bias. His political enemies within both the partisan opposition and his own government were legion. The bipartisan political classs resistance metastasized as it allied itself with powerful media and corporate actors to coordinate and choreograph his removal from office. Desperate to preserve its dominant position, the political class sought to foil the new leaders efforts at every turn. Unable to dent his popularity on policy grounds, it falsely claimed the new leader governed under Russian influence. The preceding doesnt summarize recent American political life. Its a precis of the 1988 British TV series, A Very British Coup, adapted from Chris Mullins novel. Harry Perkins was the fictional socialist prime minister whose battles with right-wing British elites eerily foreshadowedand appear to be the playbookfor the contemporary center-left American political classs years-long mugging of the nations outgoing president. A Managed Democracy The past four years vividly demonstrate the American republic is rapidly regressing from an imperfect, self-governing liberal democracy to a mere managed democracy. Americas political class long derided Russia as the poster child for managed democracy and its attendant ills. Now Americas become what she has long criticized another for being. Liberal democracy requires a particular political cultureincluding an appreciation of inviolable liberties, especially freedom of speech, assembly, and petitionclearly in rapid retreat across U.S. institutions, from government, media, and technology, to the courts, multinational corporations, and public education. A managed democracy allows the ruling class to control politics while providing the semblance of liberal democracy. Elections are carefully orchestrated, which ensures outcomes are superficially democratic. To wit, social media oligarchs now fund the very instruments of the new election infrastructure that remove the guardrails protecting the systems integrity. In Russia and the United States, the state acts as the political and regulatory patron of corporate actors. The state befriends them, advances their commercial interests, and leverages rent-seeking and crony capitalisms aberrant incentives to ensure corporates facilitate the states agenda. Other key elements of managed democracy include the political classs symbiosis with legacy and social media outlets. Hence the revolving door of lobbyists and policy advisers between Big Government, Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Business. This results from the synoptic globalist worldview among establishment politicians (Democrat and Republican), multinational corporations, and journalists, as well as the Damoclesian regulatory sword dangling above the heads of the Big Tech oligarchs. Practitioners of managed democracy copy the Russians, but view the Chinese model as ideal: complete political control, cheap (effectively slave) labor generating export-led wealth for the ruling class, digital platform censorship, and propaganda distribution via social media. Central to managed democracy is the Kafkaesque administrative state, that is, day-to-day governance by unelected, tenured establishment-minded bureaucrats, who translate legislation into regulatory fiat and enforcement. Americas nascent managed democracy, dependent upon the administrative state, has a penchant for massive overreach. Contemporaneous examples abound of the political classs vulgar exercise of power. Weaponization of Government Through its inappropriate and vindictive use, impeachment has been weaponized as a political tool to punish a departing president. The perverted process will culminate in an arguably unconstitutional Senate trial of a private citizen no longer holding public office. This abuse of the Constitution seeks to prevent a former president from again seeking the presidency, such is the political classs enduring fear of effective populist leadership. Here, Americas political class takes additional inspiration from Moscow. The Kremlin often chooses acceptable candidates (in part, by toxifying unacceptable candidates) from tame opposition parties to contest elections. Executing this Machiavellian play, the political class counts on Republicans to send a defanged and declawed candidate to certain defeat in 2024. Alarmingly, on Jan. 8, the speaker of the House of Representatives asked the nations military leader to withhold the nuclear codes from the president and to stop him from initiating military action. Isnt this the very definition of an attempted bloodless coup detat? The American people are clearly at the arbitrary mercy of their rulers. Going forward, the danger is two kinds of criminality: the right and the wrong kind. The right kind literally topples the nations heritage, burns and loots cities, and is bankrolled by billionaires and Big Business. Cheered on by the political class, its perversely heralded as advancing social justice. The wrong kind is potentially any act, deed, or word the political class deems detrimental to its interests. So Americans can look forward to the weaponization of the federal government to target political opponents and threaten livelihoods via employment terminations, investigations, audits, closed bank accounts, and no-fly lists. Throughout this political cleansing, pressure is applied to advertisers, donors, book publishers, radio stations, and cable TV providers to boycott, ban, or censor businesses, politicians, authors, hosts, and networks deemed guilty of supporting either the outgoing president or his public positions. One Truth Given Big Techs monopoly over digital speech, collusion to control the flow of information will be central to managed democracy. In practice, this requires gatekeeping, crude censorship, and algorithmic manipulation on Silicon Valleys part. American-style managed democracy is inherently statist and features an orgy of political correctness and intellectual conformity. The dramatic decline in diversity of thought reflects a new political theocracy where only one Truth is permitted. The impending war on domestic terror will not be a war on, for example, violent white supremacists targeting blacks and Jews; instead, it will be a war on law-abiding citizens who hold political views deemed incorrect by the nations unofficial Ministry of Truth. Systematic lawfare will be unleashed against transgressors of illiberal new speech codes, because dissent from The Truth, as parroted by the political class, is inherently heretical behavior. Institutional actors must act in concert to repress, even cancel, such heresy. Social media companies will continue to defer to the genocidal Chinese regime, affording freedom of speech to a communist dictators propaganda accounts. But the outgoing, democratically elected U.S. president is censored and banned, although its clearly in the public interest to read his tweets. Equally revelatory is Big Techs disingenuous purge of thousands of individual conservative voices whose social media accounts have been suspended, blocked, or banned. The Declaration of Independence argues that the consent of the governed is a prerequisite for government legitimacy. Todays woke political class views popular consent as an anachronistic notion. It knows that truly democratic elections are a risky business because the self-anointed angels dont always win. Just ask the European Union. At the conclusion of A Very British Coup, Perkinss mother asks him: Letting the people decide. Do you think itll ever catch on? Sadly, it may not, with 2020 the new template for managing American democracy. Patrick Basham is founding director of the Democracy Institute, a Washington- and London-based, politically independent research organization. Hes written extensively about American elections and democratization in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Senate President Tito Sotto said Friday he is not convinced that the government needs charter change at the moment amid renewed talks on constitutional amendments. Right now, I am not convinced that we need a charter change, Sotto said in an interview with CNN Philippines The Source. When you say kasi charter change, you have to change the constitution. Youre changing the constitution, not just charter amendments. Perhaps we need cha cha character change. Thats what the country needs, he added. The House Committee on Constitutional Amendments started Wednesday deliberations on the Resolution of Both Houses 2, which is seen to lift the restrictive economic provisions in the Constitution. The measure filed by Speaker Lord Allan Velasco includes the phrase "unless otherwise provided by the law" to certain provisions on national patrimony and economy, education, science and technology, arts, culture and sports, and general provisions of the charter. READ: Lawmakers, experts split over economic Cha-cha in House debate Sotto, for his part, said it may be easier to discuss the inclusion of the phrase through a regular legislation in Congress. When we take it up like a regular law, a regular bill, mas madaling pag-usapan (it would be easier to tackle this), the lawmaker said. There is no room for apprehensions on term limits or extension of terms, or other issues that might not be acceptable to the people. Overstepping powers Sotto again questioned the House panels move to sit as a constitutional assembly while discussing the matter, stressing that this can only be conducted once Congress formally resumes session next week. The Senate President also said that panel chair AKO-Bicol party-list Rep. Alfredo Garbin, through the move, had overstepped his power. Its clear that hes overstepping his power. Thats not possible a committee cannot declare itself as a constitutional assembly, thats not possible, Sotto argued. In an earlier interview with CNN Philippines, Garbin insisted there was no need for the Senate and the House to jointly convene for the debates on the amendments, saying the upper chamber can hold deliberations the same way as with an ordinary legislation. Meanwhile, Sotto said he may call for an all-senators caucus on the matter, but noted that the House should act on it first. If they do approve it in plenary and they have declared themselves into a constituent assembly properly, then we will discuss the matter as a whole, as the Senate, he said. NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC ("TAG"), a leading investment bank in the Financial and Business Services sectors, today announced that Jim Mack has joined the firm as Managing Director. Jim's employment with TAG will commence immediately. Jim has more than 20 years of senior management experience, most recently as the CFO of Trion, a large Detroit based Professional Employment Organization ("PEO"). Jim's prior experience in the PEO and staffing space included positions as a President, VP of Operations and CFO with multiple PEOs and staffing companies including two public PEO companies and a large international public staffing company. His experience is balanced by his time spent in operational and leadership roles within entrepreneurial oriented PEOs. "Jim joins TAG at an exciting time as TAG establishes itself as a leading M&A advisor to PEOs," said Steven Nigro, Managing Partner of TAG. "Jim's extensive operating experience combined with his transactional experience in the PEO space will help us develop strategic alliances and enhance our offerings to the industry. In addition to mergers and acquisitions, Jim will expand our consulting practice by offering PEO focused due diligence, valuation, and other business advisory services. As the industry evolves through the past year, we think M&A activity will accelerate and Jim, TAG and TAG Consulting are uniquely positioned to ride that wave." "I am very excited to be joining the TAG team," said Jim Mack. "I believe TAG has demonstrated that its insurance expertise is transferrable to the PEO industry and essential to closing PEO transactions. The TAG professionals are a talented team and I look forward to working with them." Jim graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a major in Accounting. He was an inaugural member of the NAPEO Accounting Practices Committee which developed the financial ratios now included in the annual NAPEO Financial Ratio Survey. He was a board member of the GoLightly School Academy in Detroit and a member of the American Heart Association, Walk Detroit Leadership Team. About TAG Financial Institutions Group and TAG Consulting Services TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC is a specialized investment bank with a focus and passion in providing investment banking services to middle market companies in the financial and business services sectors. TAG is dedicated to meeting the needs of dynamic, mid-sized businesses by providing attentive service, creative ideas, skilled execution and extraordinary value creation. TAG Consulting Services, LLC is the consulting affiliate of TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC and provides due diligence, valuation, operations and business advisory services to the Insurance and Business Services Industries. This Press Release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer, invitation, solicitation, or recommendation to buy, sell, subscribe for, or issue any securities. While the information provided herein is believed to be accurate and reliable, TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC and Ashland Securities, LLC make no representations or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of such information. All information contained herein is preliminary, limited and subject to completion, correction or amendment. It should not be construed as investment, legal, or tax advice and may not be reproduced or distributed to any person. Certain Principals of TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC are registered representatives of Ashland Securities, LLC Member FINRA, SIPC. TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC and Ashland Securities, LLC are separate and unaffiliated entities. Securities and Investment Banking Services are offered through Ashland Securities, LLC. CONTACT: Steven Nigro, 212-993-7431, [email protected] SOURCE TAG Financial Institutions Group Related Links https://www.tagfingroup.com/ LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Gabriel Resources Ltd. ("Gabriel" or the "Company") (TSXV:GBU) announces that it has granted an aggregate of 421,176 incentive stock options under the Company's stock option plan (the "Option Plan") and 298,237 deferred share units under the Company's deferred share unit plan (the "DSU Plan") to certain directors of the Company during Q3 and Q4 2020 as non-cash directors' fees for service during those quarters (the "Director Grant"). All incentive stock options issued under the Director Grant are exercisable for a period of ten years at $0.22 per share and vest immediately from the date of grant. Additionally, incentive stock option awards granted annually to Directors elected to the Board at the AGM have also been issued. Accordingly, a further 435,000 incentive stock options have been so granted (the "Annual Grant"). All incentive stock options issued under the Annual Grant are exercisable for a period of ten years at $0.22 per share and vest as to 50% on the date of grant and 50% on the first anniversary of the date of grant. The Director Grant and Annual Grant were determined by the Board in 2020 but deferred pending re-financing of the Company and publication of transcripts relating to the second hearing of the ICSID arbitration. Accordingly, following the announcement of a non-brokered private placement in December 2020 and the transcripts being published by ICSID on January 11, 2021, the Director Grant and Annual Grant have now been effected. The Option Plan allows for the issuance of up to 10% of the issued and outstanding share capital of the Company in the form of incentive stock options. As of the date hereof, a total of 31,964,713 common shares of the Company are allocated for issuance in respect of outstanding incentive stock options granted under the Option Plan, representing approximately 5.1% of the issued and outstanding share capital. 3,739,468 common shares of the Company are currently allocated for issuance in respect of outstanding deferred share units granted under the DSU Plan. 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. SOURCE: Gabriel Resources Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624524/Gabriel-Resources-Ltd-Incentive-Scheme-Issuance According to information published by the Iranian press agency Tasnim on January 13, 2021, the Iranian Navy has received a new Zereh (Armor) missile-launching ship (P235) on the first day of a naval drill, dubbed Eqtedar (Power). According to information published by the Iranian press agency Tasnim on January 13, 2021, the Iranian Navy has received a new Zereh (Armor) missile-launching ship (P235) on the first day of a naval drill, dubbed Eqtedar (Power). Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link New Iranian-navy Zereh F235 missile-launching ship. (Picture source Tasnim Press agency) According to the Navy Recognition editorial team analysis of pictures released on the Internet, the new Zereh (Armor) is a Sina-class or Kaman-class fast attack craft which is an upgrade of the Combattante II missile boats from France. Iran bought 12 Combattante II fast attack craft from France that were delivered between 1974 and 1981. According to Iranian military sources, the ship is named Kaman-class. The ship is powered by four MTU MD 16V 538 TB90 engines developing 12,000 hp. She can reach a top speed of 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) and has a cruising range of 570 nautical miles (1,060 km; 660 mi) at 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) or 1,600 nautical miles (3,000 km; 1,800 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph). The original version of the Kaman-class was equipped with sensors and processing systems from French company Thomson-CSF but the new version of the Iranian Navy seems to be upgraded with local-made combat electronic systems and improved fire control radar. The main armament of the new Zereh (Armor) (F235) missile-launching ship includes one 76mm OTO-Melara automatic cannon located at the front deck and one Bofors 40 mm/70 automatic cannon mounted at the rear deck. The ship is also fitted with four container launchers able to fire the Noor, a license-produced copy of the Chinese C-802 anti-ship missile, which is the export upgraded version of the Chinese-made YJ-8 anti-ship missile. The Noor missile is powered by Toloue-4, an Iranian version of the French Microturbo TRI 60 engine. It is fitted with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead and has a range from 30 to 170 km. Advertisement Sudden: Armie Hammer and estranged wife Elizabeth Chambers have dramatically dropped the price of their $5.8million Hancock Park home; Armie and Elizabeth pictured in 2018 Armie Hammer and estranged wife Elizabeth Chambers have dramatically dropped the price of their $5.8million Hancock Park home, which was listed in September. The former couple reportedly lowered the asking price of the 6,275-square-foot residence by a whopping $800,000, according to the New York Post on Thursday. The colossal reduction comes just days after direct messages depicting fantasies of rape and cannibalism, allegedly sent by Hammer to an unidentified woman, were leaked on social media. The disturbing exchanges were leaked publicly by an anonymous, now-private account, House of Effie, on Sunday, which prompted Hammer to trend on Twitter. The graphic Instagram DMs that Hammer allegedly penned included talk of rape fantasies, BDSM and cannibalism, with one message explicitly stating: 'I am 100% a cannibal. I want to eat you.' In another one of the many eyebrow raising messages, Armie allegedly said he 'wanted to cut off' his girlfriend's toe and 'keep it in his pocket.' On Wednesday, The Call Me By Your Name actor, 34, broke his silence on the matter in a statement to DailyMail.com. 'I'm not responding to these b******* claims but in light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for 4 months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic,' said Hammer to DailyMail.com. He added: 'Lionsgate is supporting me in this and I'm grateful to them for that.' Armie was referring to his upcoming rom-com film Shotgun Wedding, where he was set to star opposite Jennifer Lopez. Slashed: The former couple reportedly lowered the asking price of the 6,275-square-foot residence by a whopping $800,000, according to the New York Post on Thursday Calming quarters: The living room is inviting with wood floors and quaint French windows that hark back to another era and the fireplace adds another cozy touch Old world with a modern touch: There are beams on the ceilings that are painted white with black accents as well Plenty of light to read: A family room that is surrounded by French windows looks like a great place for adults to catch up Dinner time in style: There is a roomy wood-paneled dining room that can seat 10 people at least Let's cook! The kitchen looks recently remodeled with white cabinets, dark gray quartz counters, French windows, an island with a sink and faucet, and wood floors DailyMail.com also obtained concerning videos on Wednesday showing Hammer looking 'out of it', cracking open a beer while driving and licking white powder off his friend's hand. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. star is seen in two separate clips, declaring 's**t's getting weird' after polishing off a white substance from a friend's hand and in another saying 'sending love, boys' after taking a swig from his beer can while behind the wheel. Hammer's estranged wife is said to be distraught over the leaked messages, which date back to 2016 and some are as recent as February 2020, a time period where Hammer was still married. Plenty of space for good dreams: One of the bedrooms has high ceilings, an ornate chandelier and pinks walls Another old-fashioned touch: The bathtub is lined with beautiful tiles in black and dark green A close friend exclusively told DailyMail.com: 'Armie had a whole other side to him that she wasn't aware of. Whether it was always there and he kept it hidden, or something happened that changed him completely, she doesn't know.' Elizabeth and Armie announced their 10-year marriage was over in July, as a source close to Chambers admitted she was aware of his infidelities, including being romantically involved with Lily James as DailyMail.com revealed last year, which led to their split. When she filed for divorce in July, Elizabeth asked to be awarded primary physical custody of their children and to have joint legal custody with Hammer, according to court documents obtained by People. Plenty of room for a Hollywood soiree: The backyard has room for a living room area as well as a dining room table Swim season: A large swimming pool with an adjacent hot tub is surrounded by flagstone and has a view of the back windows It looks like paradise: The pool had large boulders with mini water falls that emptied out to the blue-bottom pool Since then, Chambers has been raising the couple's daughter and son in the Cayman Islands, while Armie remains in Palm Springs, California. Hammer's alleged extreme kinks are a 'complete shock' to Elizabeth, with the friend adding: 'Armie appears to be a monster.' 'A lot of these women have reached out to Elizabeth and although she didn't want to admit it to herself at first, she knows now they are speaking the truth. Controversy: The colossal reduction comes just days after direct messages depicting fantasies of rape and cannibalism, allegedly sent by Hammer to an unidentified woman, were leaked on social media; Armie pictured in November 'Armie had a whole other side to him that she wasn't aware of. Whether it was always there and he kept it hidden, or something happened that changed him completely, she doesn't know.' The insider claims that one of the women who contacted Chambers about her experience with Hammer was left so traumatized that she entered an 'intense rehab and therapy program because of his emotional and maybe physical abuse.' The source added: 'He preyed upon her when she was coming out of a relationship. He made her feel very uncomfortable, the things he wanted to do made her very scared.' Leaked: The disturbing exchanges were leaked publicly by an anonymous, now-private account, House of Effie, on Sunday, which prompted Hammer to trend on Twitter FantasiesL The graphic Instagram DMs that Hammer allegedly penned included talk of rape fantasies, BDSM and cannibalism, with one message explicitly stating: 'I am 100% a cannibal. I want to eat you' Interesting: In another one of the many eyebrow raising messages, Armie allegedly said he 'wanted to cut off' his girlfriend's toe and 'keep it in his pocket' With the recent price drop on the home she once shared with her ex husband, Elizabeth will hopefully be able to distance herself as much as possible from the defamed star. The estranged couple, who share daughter Harper Grace, six, and son Ford Armand, four, lived in their luxe Hancock Park home from 2018 until their split over the summer. They originally bought the home in 2018 for $4.7M. Concerning: DailyMail.com also obtained concerning videos on Wednesday showing Hammer looking 'out of it', cracking open a beer while driving and licking white powder off his friend's hand It's an English Tudor-style mansion that was built in the 1920s when show business was in its early days in Southern California and Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks Sr were major stars. The home has an impressive facade as it is three stories high and has many Tudor touches such as a red brick exterior and lead glass windows with pitched roofs. The 6,275 square foot property has seven bedrooms and six bathrooms, and clearly has been nicely remodeled by the exes who lightened up the walls and made the home look overall more polished. Posted Thursday, January 14, 2021 10:11 am Noon, Jan. 14 Update: From the Thurston County Sheriff's Office K9 Unit: "Arlo has come out of his first surgery where it was discovered that the bullet is lodged near Arlos spine. A second surgery at Oregon state university has coordinated with a neurosurgeon. The Lacey fire Department has graciously agreed to provide a medical transport for Arlo down to OSU. Thank you Lacey Fire department! Please keep Arlo in your thoughts and prayers." A Thurston County Sheriffs Office K9 and an armed suspect were shot Wednesday night near the Thurston-Lewis county line during a vehicle pursuit, which started in Tumwater and came to an end at milepost 88 on Interstate 5 at Grand Mound. Both the suspect, a 25-year-old male, and the K9 have survivable injuries, according to information released Thursday from the sheriffs office. The Mason County Sheriffs Office is expected to lead an investigation into the officer-involved shooting. The K9 that was shot is a 3-year-old German Shepherd named Arlo. The law dog first hit the streets with deputies in 2019 and is the units youngest K9. A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to cover Arlos surgery. Outfitting, training and the health care of Thurston Countys K9 units are covered almost entirely by community donations and are not not paid for by county tax dollars. The campaign so far had raised $13,410 of its $25,000 goal by Thursday morning, with contributions coming from roughly 250 individuals. Funds contributed are expected to go to the Thurston County Deputy Sheriffs Foundation. That campaign can be found here. The pursuit reportedly started around 8 p.m. near Cleveland Avenue and Hartman Court Southeast in Tumwater, according to Thurston County. Deputies attempted to make contact with a vehicle that was driving reckless when the driver fled. According to the Washington State Patrol, Thurston County deputies requested assistance with a vehicle that entered I-5 shortly after that time. The pursuit led to Interstate 5, with law enforcement shutting down lanes shortly after the incident. The subsequent contact with the driver resulted in an officer involved shooting, during which the 25-year-old male driver and TCSO -9 were struck by gunfire, a news release from the Thurston County Sheriffs Office read. Arlo sustained a bullet to a shoulder and right-rear leg, and was expected to go into surgery Thursday morning. Arlo had a pretty rough night in that he was in quite a bit of pain, Thurston County Sheriffs Office K-9 Unit wrote in an update. They had him maxed on all his pain meds so there wasnt much more they could do to make him more comfortable. The armed suspect was transported to a nearby hospital in serious condition. The Thurston County Sheriffs Office has not said whether Arlo was struck by gunfire from law enforcement officers or the suspect. The two parliamentary opposition parties, Prosperous Armenia (BHK) and Bright Armenia (LHK), called for such an inquiry in June as they accused the government of mishandling the coronavirus crisis. Senior lawmakers representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinians My Step bloc initially opposed the move, defending the authorities response to the pandemic. But they reluctantly agreed afterwards to the creation of an ad hoc parliamentary commission tasked with assessing the effectiveness of government efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. Arkadi Khachatrian, a senior LHK parliamentarian, announced late on Thursday that parliament speaker Ararat Mirzoyan has formally approved the commissions composition and thus paved the way for the start of its activities. The date and time of the first meeting of the investigative commission will be announced in the coming days, Khachatrian wrote on Facebook. Although the commission will be headed by Khachatrian, eight of its twelve members have been appointed by My Step. Khachatrian expressed hope that its findings will be objective and comprehensive and will answer all questions preoccupying the public. Armenia has been hit hard by the pandemic, with nearly 164,000 coronavirus cases officially confirmed in the country of about 3 million so far. The real number of cases is believed to be much higher. The Armenian Ministry of Health reported on Friday that 11 more people have died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 2,974. The figure does not include the deaths of 726 other Armenians infected with the virus. According to the ministry, they were primarily caused by other diseases. The authorities largely stopped fining people and businesses to enforce their anti-epidemic rules following the September 27 outbreak of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The daily number of new COVID-19 infections reported by them grew rapidly as a result. But it has fallen significantly since mid-November. Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.. Tonight Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. New Delhi: A large fire tore through a crowded Rohingya camp in the Cox's Bazar area of Bangladesh on Thursday, destroying hundreds of ramshackle shelters and forcing thousands of displaced Muslim refugees to flee in the northern winter chill. The blaze claimed no lives but left hundreds of people without homes, according to aid workers and officials. It struck at a time when officials in Bangladesh look for long-term solutions for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have crossed its border from Myanmar in recent years. The fire erupted at around 1am in the Nayapara refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh. Fire service officials there said that the fire was brought under control within two hours and that they had opened an investigation to determine the cause. A fire races through the sprawling Rohingya Nayapara Camp in Cox's Bazar district in Bangladesh on Thursday. Credit:AP About 550 shelters were lost, as well as shops and other facilities, said the Inter Sector Coordination Group, a humanitarian organisation that works with the refugees who have gathered in Cox's Bazar. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan Earnings season has kicked off for the technology sector and as always, Taiwan Semiconductors TSM numbers offer insight into other players. The company reported solid revenue and earnings, which grew a respective 22.0% and 32.9% over last year. Management attributed the strength to its leading edge 5 nm process (now 20% of total wafer revenue) that was driven by 5G smartphone launches and high performance computing (HPC) applications. Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang also said, Moving into first-quarter 2021, we expect our business to be supported by HPC-related demand, recovery in the automotive segment, and a milder smartphone seasonality than in recent years. What also captured headlines was the 2021 capex budget of $25-28 billion. This is a 54% jump from the $17.2 billion it spent last year. The company claims its N5 (5nm) process offers up to 15% more performance (at the same power) then the existing N7 (7nm) process. So naturally, all the HPC players are trying to leverage it. We had heard that Intel was in talks with TSM and Samsung over the outsourcing of its chip production, but TSMs capex guide seems to confirm that Intel will be doing this in a big way while it cleans house. It also looks like it will be one of the first to adopt processes at lower geometries. AMD is also getting ready to trial run its 5nm Zen 4 this year. So if it gets into volume production by year-end, it too could be driving the capex at TSM. Intel really needs to save what market share it can from AMD, which is charging into the server/HPC market at its expense. And the rivalry between them is playing out nicely for TSM. TSMCs other major customers include NVIDIA, which uses it for both its CPUs and GPUs and is big enough to make a difference. At CES this year, it launched the more affordable GeForce RTX 3060 CPU for desktops. It has also booked capacity for 5nm graphics cards at TSMC. NVIDIA is also in still competition with AMD in the GPU business, so this is another rivalry that TSM is feeding. Story continues Then theres Huawei and Apple that are looking to grow their 5G smartphone businesses as well as Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors NXPI that also sell into autos (a market that TSM expects will pick up this year). Since Apple and Huawei actually sell the end product, a strong business outlook for them is also a positive indicator for their suppliers, such as Skyworks Solutions, Cirus Logic and Jabil. So TSMs results, guidance and management commentary look good for all these players. And of course, there are the equipment makers ASML Holding ASML, Applied Materials AMAT and Lam Research LRCX that will be the prime beneficiaries of capacity expansion at one of their leading customers. So it should be a good year for all three. Semiconductor stocks worth picking up today include Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) ranked Micron Technology MU, Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) ranked Power Integrations POWI, ASML Holding, Taiwan Semiconductor, Cree CREE, NXPI, Maxim Integrated Products MXIM to name just a few. The whole segment is hot hot hot. Zacks Names Single Best Pick to Double From thousands of stocks, 5 Zacks experts each have chosen their favorite to skyrocket +100% or more in months to come. From those 5, Director of Research Sheraz Mian hand-picks one to have the most explosive upside of all. You know this company from its past glory days, but few would expect that its poised for a monster turnaround. Fresh from a successful repositioning and flush with A-list celeb endorsements, it could rival or surpass other recent Zacks Stocks Set to Double like Boston Beer Company which shot up +143.0% in a little more than 9 months and Nvidia which boomed +175.9% in one year. Free: See Our Top Stock and 4 Runners Up >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Micron Technology, Inc. (MU) : Free Stock Analysis Report ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) : Free Stock Analysis Report Lam Research Corporation (LRCX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (MXIM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Applied Materials, Inc. (AMAT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Cree, Inc. (CREE) : Free Stock Analysis Report Power Integrations, Inc. (POWI) : Free Stock Analysis Report NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXPI) : Free Stock Analysis Report Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSM) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Triple Point Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Co PLC - closed-ended investment company investing in portfolio of energy efficiency assets in UK - Agrees headline terms for first investment into energy efficient heat distribution assets. Expects to deploy about GBP20 million of IPO proceeds. The firm intends to provide senior debt finance to be secured against the assets, rather than acquiring the associated equity interests. "The company considers this to be an attractive investment proposition which, on completion, will generate a return within the target range while providing a greater level of security," company says. It adds: "The current wider pipeline includes many of those prospective investments identified at IPO, and a number of high quality investment opportunities are now progressing towards an advanced stage, including a large energy generation and heat distribution project, a portfolio of social housing energy efficiency retrofit assets, and a portfolio of industrial energy efficiency assets." Current stock price: 106.40 pence Year-to-date change: up 0.9% By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. At least 7,000 members of an ethnic Karen force of border guards backed by the Myanmar military resigned on Thursday to protest the ouster of their top leaders under pressure amid controversy over business dealings by the group, sources in the country say. The mass resignation followed the removal of senior officers Major Saw Chit Thu, Major Mout Thon, and Major Tin Win, who were forced to resign last week after being summoned by the Myanmar military for discussions, one officer of the Border Guard Force told RFA on Friday. This action badly demoralized all of our troops, because these leaders looked after their economic well-being, and without them our soldiers families may now face hardships, the BGF officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Therefore, we all decided to resign to show our disappointment, he said. Myanmar military officers met on Friday with BGF commanders to ask them to reconsider their units resignations, said BGF discipline and security officer Major Naing Maung Zaw, also speaking on Friday to RFA. They came to talk to us today and told us to reconsider, he said, adding there was evident goodwill on the part of some of the Myanmar officers with whom they spoke. It seems that they would like to avoid unnecessary problems. So depending on what is discussed today, we will speak with our troops about what may be best for our region and our state. They might need to come back again for further negotiations, he said. Kayin state lies in southeastern Myanmar and has a long border with Thailand. Concerns over business Founded in August 2010 and tasked with guarding areas along the border with Thailand in southern Myanmar, Kayin states Border Guard Force has been repeatedly warned by its Myanmar military backers not to engage in business activities, many of them reportedly illegal, Myanmar sources say. The military finally intervened when news reports emerged about public concerns over the U.S. $15 billion Shwe Kokko city project in Kayin states Thai border town of Myawaddy, including the alleged involvement of Chinese criminals, Myanmars Irrawaddy news service reported on Friday. Backed by Chinese investors accused of operating illegal casino activities in Cambodia and the Philippines, the project has been the subject of criticism for more than a year due to a lack of transparency, land confiscations, confusion over the scale of construction, and the growing influx of Chinese money, Irrawaddy said. Speaking to reporters on Jan. 8, spokesperson for the Presidents Office Zaw Htay said that Myanmar has suspended the Shwe Kokko project because it was growing beyond its permitted scope. Supervision of the project will now be moved from the BGF to government administrators, he said. Not a long-term solution Problems now existing between the BGF and Myanmars military can easily be solved by talks, said Min Zaw Oo of the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security. These problems mainly revolve around the Chinese-invested businesses in the Shwe Kokko city project, and with regard to this, the government has encouraged the military to handle the problems, given that the BGF is under their command, he said. But the military may not put too much pressure on the BGF because they have been working together for so long, he said. "I think they can resolve these problems through negotiations, agreed political analyst Aung Thu Nyein. But this wont be a long-term solution. These BGF forces have vested business interests though they are still an armed group, Aung Thu Nyein said, adding that similar ethnic armies have been put under military command as border guards in Kayah and Shan states while negotiations on regional autonomy continue with Myanmars central government. Keeping these militias under military control is only a short-term solution until peace deals can be reached and these armed groups can be disbanded, he said. Unless this happens, these problems will arise again from time to time, he said. Reported by Saw Nyunt Thaung, Kyaw Lwin Oo, and Aung Thein Kha for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Richard Finney. The nation needs a reckoning for the dark deal the GOP has made with President Donald Trump in edging us so dangerously close to fascism. by Sonali Kolhatkar When Donald Trump ran for the Republican Partys presidential nomination in 2016, many top Republicans shunned him. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) confidently explained how Trump was not going to change the platform of the Republican Party, the views of the Republican Party were much more likely to change him. He even admitted, its pretty obvious he doesnt know a lot about the issues. McConnell alluded to Trumps racism in vague terms, saying, I object to a whole series of things that hes saidvehemently object to them. I think all of that needs to stop these attacks on various ethnic groups in the country. But as soon as Trump won the Electoral College and was declared the winner of the 2016 race, McConnell set to work to ensure he could make full use of the newly elected president regardless of Trumps continued spouting off of dangerous lies and hateful claims. The Senate majority leader was happy to see the seating of ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and most recently Amy Coney Barrett. He went on an unprecedented spree to remake the federal judiciary into one that is dominated by white conservative men, young enough to reshape legal decisions for a generation. He pushed through a massive tax reform bill that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, allowing almost no room for debate over it. He ensured the Senate turned into a legislative graveyard, refusing to even consider hundreds of bills passed by the House of Representatives, thereby ensuring that most policy changes during the past four years were shaped by the presidents executive action. Three years into Trumps term, McConnell still had not had enough, relishing the power that his position in the Senate gave him to enact his conservative agenda. When the House impeached Trump in late 2019 over a clear case of corruption and abuse of power, McConnell led the 2020 Senate acquittal of Donald Trump. It matters little whether McConnell admits Trump is unfit for office a mere handful of days before the presidents term ends. He used Trump for four years, subjecting the nation to a mad, would-be-dictator, unhinged and unrepentant in his relentless abuses. Senator McConnell owes the nation an explanation. Was it worth it? Although he is the highest-ranking elected official to enable Trump, McConnell is hardly alone among his Republican colleagues to have engaged in a deal with the devil. The transformation of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) from Trump critic to sycophant is even more dramatic. In 2016 Cruz criticized Trump more than any of his fellow lawmakers, calling Trump a narcissist at a level I dont think this countrys ever seen and accurately saying Trump is a pathological liar. He adeptly explained, he doesnt know the difference between truth and lies in a pattern that is straight out of a psychology textbook, he accuses everyone of lying. It was a stunning piece of foresight into the next four years of Trumpism. Cruz went further, saying, Whatever lie hes telling, at that minute he believes it the man is utterly amoral Donald is a bully bullies dont come from strength; they come from weakness. Similar words were uttered often during the past four yearsby Democrats, liberals, progressives, and the tiny handful of Trumps Republican critics. But once Trump held office, like McConnell, Senator Cruz saw fit to make use of the amoral president to suit his agenda, transforming himself into one of Trumps most ardent Senate loyalists. Seemingly forgetting his scathing and accurate critiques of Trump, Cruz became a MAGA-cheerleader, saying, President Trump is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt the status quo That scares the heck out of those who have controlled Washington for decades, but for millions of Americans, their confusion is great fun to watch. In return for his allegiance, Trump campaigned for Cruz in Texas during a tenuous Senate reelection battle, and Cruz returned the favor by defending him vehemently during Trumps first Senate impeachment trial. Most recently, Cruz led the push to object to the 2020 election results. He repeatedly echoed Trumps demand to stop the steal, a slogan that became a rallying cry at the Capitol riot in Washington, D.C., on January 6 that left at least five people dead. Now Cruz faces accusations alongside Trump of fomenting an attempted coup and encouraging the violent rioters. His aides are abandoning him, and the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security has recommended that he be placed on the FBIs no-fly list. Like McConnell, Cruz owes the nation an explanation for his backing of a destructive demagogue who has left the nation and its democratic institutions battered and reeling. Has it all been worth it for the Texas senator? Over the past two decades, Republicans have developed a well-deserved reputation for fighting by any means necessary in order to advance their agenda. They have abandoned norms, traditions and ethical standards. They have successfully retained power by rigging the rules governing elections and laid the groundwork of baseless assertions of voter fraud that Trump then built upon to claim he won the 2020 race. They have led a cultural shift convincing many Americans that popular progressive policies are the dangerous ideas of the radical left, and spawned media outlets that deliver lies and propaganda to an unsuspecting base of voters. After the Capitol riot, an unnamed senior Trump official appeared shell-shocked, saying to a reporter, This is confirmation of so much that everyone has said for years nowthings that a lot of us thought were hyperbolic. Wed say, Trumps not a fascist, or Hes not a wannabe dictator. Now, its like, Well, what do you even say in response to that now? But this late-breaking realization that many Republicans are expressing publicly or feeling privately is not enough to absolve the dirty deal that they made with Trump to further their agenda. The GOP and Trump deserve one another and have maintained a symbiotic relationship that has devastated the nation. Whether leading GOP figures like McConnell try to distance themselves from Trump at this late-breaking hour, or like Cruz, remain loyal to him until the very end, is irrelevant. The party has lost credibility and is lying in a bed of its own making. They have edged us far too close to the abyss of Hitlerism, and like political parties in other nations that have flirted with or enabled fascism, Republicans need to answer for what they have done. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. A proposed Commission on Housing could provide legal advice to Government on demands for a right to housing being enshrined in law but will not discourage or de-prioritise private home ownership. The expert body to examine housing was mooted in the Programme for Government, but has yet to be set up. However, Housing Minister Darragh OBrien has already dampened hopes that it could lead to public housing for everyone. "If the Commission can assist in bringing about some political consensus well then, yes, great, he said on Thursday, but I think weve got to be more honest with ourselves in the political debate as to whats achievable, too; whats legal, whats constitutional. "Were not just going to be able to turn a tap on that provides public housing for everyone. Mr OBrien said the Commissions job would be to take the long-term view on matters like tenure the rights that accrue to renters or property owners as Irelands population grows. It cant be a group that makes recommendations with no reality to implementing those suggestions, he told a webinar organised by the Dublin Economics Workshop. I want advice that I can act on. There is no right to public housing in the Irish constitution, but Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett introduced a private members bill on the issue in July last year. The Programme for Government has promised a referendum on housing. I believe in public housing and in delivering good public housing, Mr OBrien said. The Government will trial a cost rental scheme this year, with plans to build 350 houses for working households that cant cover their rent but dont qualify for benefits. The Government has also pledged to provide 50,000 social homes in 2021 and publish a new housing plan by the end of the year. The minister said the aim of the Commission was not to discourage home ownership. "Home ownership is not something that should fall down the list, Mr OBrien said. "We have a whole generation of people that see the whole dream of home ownership slipping away from them. He said the potential benefits of establishing an advisory commission are agreed and he is "currently scoping the most appropriate type of structure for the Commission and fleshing out the issues that it will be tasked with examining. The Government will trial a cost rental scheme this year, with plans to build 350 houses for working households that cant cover their rent but dont qualify for benefits. The Economic and Social Research Institute said recently that just 20,000 homes are expected to be completed this year, well below the 30,000 needed to keep up with Ireland's population increase. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 19:14:41|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Xi Jinping on Friday sent a message to Thongloun Sisoulith, congratulating him on election as the general secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Central Committee. Xi said he is glad to hear that Thongloun was elected as the general secretary of the LPRP Central Committee, and would like to extend warm congratulations to Thongloun and through him to the new LPRP central leadership on behalf of the CPC Central Committee and in his own name. Xi noted that since the 10th LPRP Congress, Laos, under the strong leadership of the LPRP Central Committee headed by Bounnhang Vorachith, has made important progress in the cause of socialist construction and enjoyed political and social stability, sustained economic development and continuous improvement of people's well-being. Under the new circumstances, the successful convention of the 11th LPRP Congress, which has made a series of arrangements for the development of the causes of the party and the country, bears great significance, Xi added. He expressed his confidence that under the leadership of the new LPRP Central Committee headed by Thongloun, the party will surely lead the Lao people to unite as one and strive for greater achievements in Laos' socialist cause. China and Laos are friendly socialist neighbors connected by mountains and rivers, Xi said, adding that bilateral relations have continuously deepened and developed thanks to the careful cultivation and strong promotion of successive generations of leaders of the two parties and countries, continuously creating benefits for both countries and their people. Pointing out that the world has entered a period of turbulence and transformation, Xi said he is ready to work with Thongloun to strengthen the political guidance of the relations both between the two parties and between the two countries. He also suggested that the two sides make concerted efforts to carry forward their traditional friendship, deepen exchanges and cooperation, promote their socialist causes, and push forward the building of the China-Laos community with a shared future, so as to make positive contributions to safeguarding regional peace, stability, prosperity and development. Xi wished Thongloun greater achievements in the new leadership post. Enditem A new national research project to study the effects of emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2 will be launched with 2.5 million of funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The 'G2P-UK' National Virology Consortium* will study how mutations in the virus affect key outcomes such as how transmissible it is, the severity of COVID-19 it causes, and the effectiveness of vaccines and treatments. The Consortium will bring together leading virologists from 10 research institutions**. They will work alongside the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, which plays a world-leading role in virus genome sequencing, and Public Health England to boost the UK's capacity to study newly identified virus variants and rapidly inform government policy. The consortium is led by Professor Wendy Barclay, from Imperial College London, who said: "The UK has been fantastic in sequencing viral genomes and identifying new variants - now we have to better understand which mutations affect the virus in a way that might affect our control strategies. We are already working to determine the effects of the recent virus variants identified in the UK and South Africa and what that means for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and vaccine effectiveness. "Now the virus has circulated in humans for more than one year and is prevalent all around the world, we're in a phase where the virus is constantly throwing up new variants and we need to gear up to assess the risk they pose, and to understand the mechanisms by which they act." Science Minister Amanda Solloway said: "The UK has a world class genomics capability, and it is thanks to the work of our leading medical scientists and researchers that our scientists have been able to identify new variants of coronavirus at speed. "This crucial new research project will help us to understand not only the extent to which these new variants spread and their risks, but also how resistant they are to vaccines and treatments, so that we can tailor our response to help defeat this virus once and for all." Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, Chief Executive, UK Research and Innovation, which funded the study, said: "One of the real strengths of the UK's scientific response to the pandemic has been the way that researchers from all over the country have pooled their expertise to deliver big results, fast. This new national consortium will study the effects of emerging variants on transmission, disease severity, and vaccine effectiveness - building on the work of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, which has been so effective in identifying new variants. "This is critical research which will feed into government decision-making on a daily basis." Mutations in the virus's genome occur naturally and some of these will be inconsequential, while others will change how it functions. As new virus variants arise, the consortium will flag the riskiest variants, such as those associated with fast spreading virus clusters, to study. They will also create standardised versions of the virus with and without each mutation, so they can study the effects of each change individually. Other teams in the consortium will then study how these new variants alter the virus proteins, particularly the key spike protein on the surface. This is important because changes to the spike protein can affect transmissibility and could potentially alter the effectiveness of vaccines and antibodies that target the protein. The researchers will then use cell cultures and animal models to study if the virus mutations alter the immune response, virus transmissibility, the severity of the disease it causes, or the effectiveness of vaccines and treatments. The researchers will study how readily the virus variants transmit by direct contact or airborne routes in animal models. They will also study the impact on disease severity, such as lung damage and breathing impairment, which correlate with symptoms typical of human COVID-19. Additionally, they will determine whether mutations in the spike protein enable the virus to escape the immune response generated by either the vaccine or immune memory from earlier infection. Professor Bryan Charleston, co-lead from BBSRC-sponsored The Pirbright Institute, said: "We need to understand quickly whether new variants spread faster, cause more severe disease, escape immunity or infect other animals more readily." Professor Massimo Palmarini, co-lead from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, said: "Understanding the unique properties of a single SARS-CoV-2 variant requires experiments that can last several weeks. Hence, it is absolutely essential to carry out studies on SARS-CoV-2 variants as a coordinated effort at the UK level." Professor Michael Malim, co-lead from King's College London, said: "It's really important for the strengths and breadth of UK virology to come together and develop an evidence-base to explain the biological impacts of viral variants, such as possible resistance to vaccine induced immunity, and inform how we should respond and plan for the future." By setting up a streamlined, coordinated and openly communicated programme, that operates across the UK to study the latest virus mutations simultaneously in several labs with complimentary experimental methods, the researchers aim to produce faster, reliable results to feed into public health policy and clinical practice. ### *The consortium has been named 'G2P-UK', standing for 'genotype to phenotype'. They will study how changes in the virus genes (the 'genotype') alters the 'phenotype'. The term 'phenotype' describes the observable characteristics of an organism. **The scientists are based at ten research institutions: Imperial College London, The Pirbright Institute, King's College London, University of Glasgow, University of Bristol, University of Liverpool, UCL, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and the Francis Crick Institute. 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. Canadian immigration: 15,000 newcomers arrived in November 2020 Canada's 2020 immigrant intake will be the lowest since 1999. Kareem El-Assal Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Canada welcomed around 15,000 new immigrants in a month for the third time in a row, according to the Canadian government. The latest Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data shows that the country welcomed 15,300 new permanent residents in November 2020, roughly the same level as in October and September. While this figure is an improvement from previous months, immigration to Canada remains low due to the pandemic. In a given month, Canada usually welcomes around 25,000-35,000 new immigrants. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen this figure fall significantly since Canada imposed travel restrictions in March 2020. Discover your Canadian Immigration Options In the first 11 months of 2020, Canada welcomed 174,000 immigrants. On the balance of probabilities, Canadas intake for all of 2020 will be below 200,000 new immigrants which would be the first time this has happened since 1999. By way of comparison, Canada welcomed over 341,000 new immigrants in 2019. To date, June 2020 has proven to be the strongest month for Canadian immigration during the pandemic with the arrival of just over 19,000 new permanent residents. Canada remains committed to high levels of immigration despite the pandemic. In late October, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced an ambitious plan that will see Canada target the highest levels of newcomers in its history. Under the 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan, Canada will aim to welcome over 400,000 new immigrants per year, with some 60 per cent arriving through economic class pathways such as Express Entry. Express Entry is the main way Canada welcomes skilled workers. Last week, Canada held two Express Entry draws. It is expected to hold its third draw of the year next week. In addition, Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) draws are occurring with the likes of British Columbia and Saskatchewan already holding draws in 2021. Canadas COVID-19 cases have increased significantly during a recent second wave, resulting in new public health measures being imposed across the country such as curfews. Canada has already begun the largest vaccination campaign in its history and aims to vaccinate all those who want COVID-19 inoculation by September 2021. In the meantime, Canada continues to issue new immigration invitations to skilled worker candidates, and is also processing applications under the family class, and temporary resident streams such as for work permit holders and international students. A number of travel exemptions continue to exist and IRCC is frequently announcing new policies to help newcomers during the pandemic. For example, it announced last week it will provide work permit extensions to some of those in Canada who have been affected by the pandemic. Discover your Canadian Immigration Options CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options. Bennington, VT (05201) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. English French A public limited company (societe anonyme) with a share capital of 1,533,798,045.00 Registered office: 1, cours Ferdinand de Lesseps 92500 Rueil-Malmaison Registration number 552 037 806 RCS Nanterre www.vinci.com Shareholders relations department: actionnaires@vinci.com ____________________________________ Issue of new VINCI shares, reserved for group employees in France in the context of its savings plan The combined general meeting of shareholders held on 18 June 2020, through its 12th resolution, delegated to the Board of directors its power to make increases in the capital reserved for employees for a period of 26 months expiring on 17 August 2022. The meeting of shareholders defined in this context the manner in which the issue price of the new shares is determined. During its meeting held on 22 October 2020, VINCI Board of directors fixed terms and conditions of a capital increase reserved for group employees in France, this transaction being in keeping with the powers received from the general meeting of shareholders. The maximum number of shares that could be issued and the total amount of the issue will depend on the level of employees subscriptions for the units to be issued by the Castor Relais 2021/1 mutual fund which will be determined at the end of the subscription period which will be opened from 1 January up to 30 April 2021. The issue price of the new shares is equal to 95 % of the average opening prices of the VINCI shares quoted on the regulated market of Euronext Paris SA on the 20 trading days preceding 22 Octobrer 2020, namely 69.66 per new share to be issued. The total number of new shares to be issued cannot exceed the limit prescribed by the general meeting of shareholders held on 18 June 2020 through its 12h resolution. The total number of shares that could be issued pursuant thereto and pursuant to the 13th resolution of the general meeting of shareholders held on 18 June 2020 to promote share ownership in favour of employees living in some foreign countries cannot exceed 1.5% of the number of shares comprising the authorised share capital at the time when the Board makes its decision. The Castor Relais 2021/1 mutual fund will subscribe for the new VINCI shares to be issued1 at the end of May 2021. Authorization for trading these new shares on the regulated market of Euronext Paris will be required immediately after their issuing. These ordinary shares will be accompanied by no restriction and will bear current dividend rights as from 1st January 2021. Rueil-Malmaison, 30 December 2020 * * * * Employees will subscribe for this issue, which is reserved for them, through a temporary mutual fund initially and momentarily invested in monetary securities known as Castor Relais 2021/1 and classified as a euro monetary mutual fund. This mutual fund received the approval of the AMF on 2 November 2020, under no. FCE 2020 0094. It will collect the employees cash payments intended to subscribe for the units that it issues. At the end of the 4-month subscription period opened to the employees, this temporary mutual fund will subscribe for the VINCI shares issued according to the total amount of the payments that it collects and will then be absorbed by the Castor mutual fund on 2 June 2021. The AMF approved such a merger in advance on 9 November 2020 (under no. 128445). The Castor mutual fund is an employee savings and employee shareholder UCITS invested in VINCI shares. It is one of the principal instruments used for the implementation of the VINCI groups company savings plan in France. 1 Up to the total amount of employees payments raised by contributions paid by group companies that are members of its savings plan in France. Attachment Germany's Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) on Friday said construction on the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline can restart immediately. A statement from the agency gave approval for an anchor-position vessel to operate in German waters, reversing a decision that work could only begin again in May. However, local media said the restart could still be delayed by legal action from environmental groups as the remaining stretch of the pipeline runs through the edge of a conservation area for birds. BSH has limited construction work to a maximum of 30 days per construction phase, each of which must be followed by a 14-day break, DW reported. Construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, which is reported to be more than 90% complete, was suspended last year after the United States imposed sanctions, a decision criticized by both Germany and the European Union. Washington said the pipeline would threaten the EU's security by increasing the bloc's dependence on Russia, while Berlin has insisted it will create a direct and secure energy supply. Work on the Danish island of Bornholm, where two Swiss laying vessels were operating, stopped as a result of the threat of penalties. The Russian-led company behind the project later insisted it would continue the project alone, and on Friday, its Fortuna pipe-laying vessel arrived in the Baltic Sea off Rostock. Danish authorities said Friday they were due to carry out preparatory work and tests with the help of the ship. Earlier this month, U.S. lawmakers agreed to extend sanctions on Nord Stream 2, just as Moscow vowed to restart construction. The Gazprom-led consortium behind Nord Stream 2 says 2,300 km of the double pipeline are now complete. A further 150 km must be finished, most of which are in Danish waters. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 22:45:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TASHKENT, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has highlighted the role of the country's largest jewelry factory in creating jobs during his recent visit to the plant, the president's press service said Friday. Gold Moon Tashkent, the newly commissioned factory with an annual production capacity of six tons and worth 21 million U.S. dollars, uses modern equipment from Italy, Germany and Turkey, and currently provides jobs for more than 200 jewelers. "Our goal is to train young people in modern (jewelry) technologies and design, provide jobs for at least 10,000 young men and women in the industry, and bring the national brand of Uzbekistan to the world market," Mirziyoyev was quoted as saying. Uzbekistan is among the largest gold and silver producers of the world, yet its jewelry industry has been weak. To revive the country's jewelry production, Mirziyoyev has created favorable conditions for foreign investment, and provided all-round support for domestic manufacturers. Enditem Barn destroyed by Wednesday morning fire Fire destroyed a barn about five miles southeast of Watertown Wednesday, according to a report from Watertown Fire Rescue. 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. Ram Gopal Varma's desi take on the Hollywood classic The Godfather with his Amitabh Bachchan starrer Sarkar franchise, is known for the veteran actor's iconic character Subhash Nagre aka Sarkar. While the first film in the franchise released in 2005, Varma helmed Sarkar 2 in 2008 and Sarkar 3 in 2017. Meanwhile, all those who have been eagerly waiting since then to watch Big B reprise his role of the godfather in Sarkar 4, might be disappointed with Ram Gopal Varma's latest revelation. Recently, while speaking with ETimes, the Rangeela director said that he has plans to team up with Senior Bachchan for a project, but Sarkar 4 is not one of them. Speaking about why he has no plans of making Sarkar 4 as of now, the filmmaker told the leading daily, "Sarkar 4 is not on top of my mind for sure, because it will be a case of overstretching a character and story. Even if you look at the three-film series of Godfather (1972, 1974 and 1990), no one let Francis Ford Coppola make part four. I'm sure they did it with good reason. The more you stretch something, the more impact it loses." On being asked about collaborating with Amitabh Bachchan, Ram Gopal Varma said, "I'd rather do something new, and explore a genre with Mr Bachchan that I haven't done before. I don't want to go back to him to do Sarkar for the fourth time. In fact, I had something in mind, but COVID-19 threw my plans off-gear. Once I complete my current lot of films, I will go back to what I have in mind for him." Speaking about Amitabh Bachchan, the veteran superstar has some exciting projects lined up which includes Ranbir Kapoor-Alia Bhatt's Brahmastra, Nag Ashwin's yet-to-be-titled film with Prabhas and Deepika Padukone, Ajay Devgn's directorial venture Mayday and Nagraj Manjule's Jhund. ALSO READ: 14 Years Of Guru: Amitabh Bachchan Calls The Film 'Fantastic'; Says Son Abhishek Was 'Marvellous' ALSO READ: Amitabh Bachchan Teases KBC 12 Contestant Who Will Get Married Soon, Asks If She Secretly Talks Over The Phone Dee Diaz, Dr. Of Digital Strategy & Distribution, Reach Records [A2IM Featured Exec] In this edition of A2IMs Featured Executive, we hear from Dee Diaz, the Director of Digital Strategy & Distribution at the boutique label Reach Records. Guest post from A2IM as part of their ongoing Executive of the Week series. Welcome to A2IMs Featured Executive feature. We will highlight executives making moves and supporting the growth of the independent community. Do you or someone you know fit the bill? Submit an executive here. Please meet this weeks featured executive, Dee Diaz, Director of Digital Strategy & Distribution at Reach Records. Dee Diaz is the Director of Digital Strategy & Distribution at Reach Records. Her time at the independent boutique label began in August 2017, after spending three years working as a creative and digital strategy coordinator. In her first year at Reach, Dee contributed to the distribution and marketing of over six LPs, including Lecraes All Things Work Together of which two singles are now RIAA Certified Gold & Platinum records. In 2018, Dee helped transition Reach Records to being a fully in-house distributed independent label. In addition to distribution, Dee manages direct relationships between DSPs and all nine Reach Records artists, pitches for editorial features and playlist placements, oversees digital advertising spend, and manages artist and label email marketing strategies. As the labels connection point between the artists and DSPs, Dees priority is to build relationships with curators and advocate for artists and their releases. Dee secured the labels first New Music Friday billboard from Spotify in Times Square early on in her tenure, and has gone on to secure placements on some of the largest playlists out there, as well as further out of home advertising sponsored by Amazon and Spotify. In 2020, Dee led the charge on the labels first Latin project, Sin Verguenza. She shaped branding, PR, advertising and more to tell the story of the Latin Christian community. So much so, that Reach featured her as the labels spokesperson on the heart behind the project in the documentary Tamo Aqui (We Been Here). This past year, Reach decided to move Lecraes album from a Columbia Records release to a 100% independent release. Dee spearheaded all digital initiatives for Restoration and was so successful in promoting the project, that Spotify featured her on its blog. The single Sunday Morning from Restoration went on to receive a 2021 Grammy nomination. About A2IM: A2IM is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit trade organization headquartered in New York City that exists to support and strengthen the independent recorded music sector. Membership currently includes a broad coalition of more than 700 Independently-owned American music labels. A2IM represents these independently owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) interests in the marketplace, in the media, on Capitol Hill, and as part of the global music community. In doing so, it supports a key segment of Americas creative class that represents Americas diverse musical cultural heritage. Billboard Magazine identified the Independent music label sector as 37.32 percent of the music industrys U.S. recorded music sales market in 2016 based on copyright ownership, making Independent labels collectively the largest music industry sector. Learn more about A2IM. To join, contact us at membership@a2im.org. Share on: 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 US President-elect on Thursday said aid to small businesses, extended unemployment support and food assistance are some of the key elements of the American rescue plan to provide assistance to the economy that has been bearing the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Direct cash payments. Extended unemployment (support). Rent relief. Food assistance. Aid to small businesses. Keeping essential frontline workers on the job. Those are the key elements of my American Rescue Plan," Biden wrote in a tweet. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris also backed Biden by quoting him in a tweet, that read: "'We will finish the job of getting a total of USD 2,000 in cash relief to people who need it the most. The USD 600 already appropriated is simply not enough.' --Your next president, @JoeBiden." Harris in her previous tweet said there was 'no one' better prepared than Biden to lead the US as the country continues to grapple with the pandemic. "There is no one better prepared than @JoeBiden to steer our nation through these times and restore truth, honor, and decency to the Oval Office," she wrote. Biden on Thursday (local time) announced a USD 1.9 trillion plan to revive the country's economy and combat the "We have no time to waste when it comes to getting this virus under control and building our economy back better," the incoming president said. The Biden plan will ask Congress to approve up to USD 400 billion to combat the novel so that it can establish community vaccination sites across the United States and boost testing and tracing, Sputnik quoted from a release issued by Biden's transition team. (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.) Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang made his first appearance as a New York City mayoral candidate on Thursday, proposing a basic income program for the citys poorest. We will launch the largest basic income program in the history of the country, Yang stated. We will lift hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers out of extreme poverty, putting cash relief directly into the hands of the families who desperately need help right now. Yangs plan, a modified version of his national UBI proposal, would involve providing roughly 500,000 New Yorkers who are living in extreme poverty with an average of $2,000 per year. Unlike a national plan, however, the local plan would need to be part of a balanced budget. New York City Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang speaks at a press conference on January 14, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) At the local level, where budgets are constrained, you cant run budget deficits, the question is, what does Yang plan to cut? Dean Baker, chief economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Yahoo Money. If New York City wants to spend a couple of billion dollars a year on the universal basic income, it has to cut other spending or raise taxes on the rich. All New Yorkers would be eligible for the payments regardless of immigration status or whether theyve been incarcerated. The direct relief would be supplementary to other benefits people receive so SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, and housing assistance recipients would have no interruption to these benefits, according to Yangs campaign website. There will of course be expenses associated with getting the money out which given those numbers doesn't seem like he's included them, Baker noted. This isnt going to be an easy task, you can just say we got the 500,000 lowest income people and send them a check. Yahoo Money sister site Cashay has a weekly newsletter. Our federal government sent $1,200 to tens of millions of Americans With the distribution of two rounds of direct payments in the last nine months and the potential of a third one coming in 2021, direct payments to Americans have become a popular bipartisan option. Two years ago, no one would have thought that Congress would ever directly send tens of millions of Americans around the country money with no strings attached, Yang said at the event. But last year our federal government sent $1,200 to tens of millions of Americans and helped stabilize families and the economy. President Donald Trump, who has been a proponent of stimulus checks throughout the pandemic, held the latest $900 billion stimulus deal for three days demanding an increase of the amount of the stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000. President-elect Biden has also supported the payments promising that money would go out the door immediately. Baker noted that the support for direct payments is still high among lawmakers from both sides of the aisle because the economy continues to recover from a historic pandemic and resulting recession. These are extraordinary times, you could justify extraordinary measures, he said. There was very much an attitude We don't care about the budget deficit which in this context was certainly appropriate but we're not always going to be in that context. Denitsa is a writer for Yahoo Finance and Cashay, a new personal finance website. Follow her on Twitter @denitsa_tsekova. Read more: Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit. MEXICO CITY - The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 2 million Friday, crossing the threshold amid a vaccine rollout so immense but so uneven that in some countries there is real hope of vanquishing the outbreak, while in other, less-developed parts of the world, it seems a far-off dream. FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, cemetery workers carry the remains of 89-year-old Abilio Ribeiro, who died of the coronavirus, to bury at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil. The global death toll from COIVID-19 has topped 2 million. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File) MEXICO CITY - The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 2 million Friday, crossing the threshold amid a vaccine rollout so immense but so uneven that in some countries there is real hope of vanquishing the outbreak, while in other, less-developed parts of the world, it seems a far-off dream. The numbing figure was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The number of dead, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It is roughly equivalent to the Cleveland metropolitan area or the entire state of Nebraska. "Theres been a terrible amount of death," said Dr. Ashish Jha, a pandemic expert and dean of Brown Universitys School of Public Health. At the same time, he said, "our scientific community has also done extraordinary work." In wealthy countries including the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already been given some measure of protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed with revolutionary speed and quickly authorized for use. But elsewhere, immunization drives have barely gotten off the ground. Many experts are predicting another year of loss and hardship in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world's deaths. "As a country, as a society, as citizens we havent understood," lamented Israel Gomez, a Mexico City paramedic who spent months shuttling COVID-19 patients around by ambulance, desperately looking for vacant hospital beds. "We have not understood that this is not a game, that this really exists." Mexico, a country of 130 million people, has received just 500,000 doses of vaccine and has put barely half of those into the arms of health care workers. Thats in sharp contrast to the situation for its wealthier northern neighbour. Despite early delays, hundreds of thousands of people are rolling up their sleeves every day in the United States, where the virus has killed about 390,000, by far the highest toll of any country. All told, over 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the world, according to the University of Oxford. While vaccination drives in rich countries have been hamstrung by long lines, inadequate budgets and a patchwork of state and local approaches, the obstacles are far greater in poorer nations, which can have weak health systems, crumbling transportation networks, entrenched corruption and a lack of reliable electricity to keep vaccines cold enough. FILE - In this Jan. 14, 2021, health workers carry COVID-19 vaccine during vaccination at a hospital in Bali, Indonesia. The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million.(AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati, File) Also, the majority of the worlds COVID-19 vaccine doses have already been snapped up by wealthy countries. COVAX, a U.N.-backed project to supply shots to developing parts of the world, has found itself short of vaccine, money and logistical help. As a result, the World Health Organizations chief scientist warned it is highly unlikely that herd immunity which would require at least 70% of the globe to be vaccinated will be achieved this year. As the disaster has demonstrated, it is not enough to snuff out the virus in a few places. "Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in a few countries, its not going to protect people across the world," Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said this week. Health experts fear, too, that if shots are not distributed widely and fast enough, it could give the virus time to mutate and defeat the vaccine "my nightmare scenario," as Jha put it. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the 2 million milestone "has been made worse by the absence of a global co-ordinated effort." He added: "Science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed." Meanwhile, in Wuhan, where the scourge was discovered in late 2019, a global team of researchers led by WHO arrived Thursday on a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the virus, which is believed to have spread to humans from wild animals. The Chinese city of 11 million people is bustling again, with few signs it was once the epicenter of the catastrophe, locked down for 76 days, with over 3,800 dead. "We are not fearful or worried as we were in the past," said Qin Qiong, a noodle shop owner. "We now live a normal life. I take the subway every day to come to work in the shop. ... Except for our customers, who have to wear masks, everything else is the same." It took eight months to hit 1 million dead but less than four months after that to reach the next million. While the death toll is based on figures supplied by government agencies around the world, the real number of lives lost to is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of inadequate testing and the many fatalities inaccurately attributed to other causes, especially early in the outbreak. "What was never on the horizon is that so many of the deaths would be in the richest countries in the world," said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases expert at Britains University of Exeter. "That the worlds richest countries would mismanage so badly is just shocking." In rich and poor countries alike, the crisis has devastated economies, thrown multitudes out of work and plunged many into poverty. In Europe, where more than a quarter of the world's deaths have taken place, strict lockdowns and curfews have been reimposed to beat back a resurgence of the virus, and a new variant that is believed to be more contagious is circulating in Britain and other countries, as well as the U.S. Even in some of the wealthiest countries, the vaccination drives have been slower than expected. France, with the second-largest economy in Europe and more than 69,000 known virus deaths, will need years, not months, to vaccinate its 53 million adults unless it sharply speeds up its rollout, hampered by shortages, red tape and considerable suspicion of the vaccines. Still, in places like Poissy, a blue-collar town west of Paris, the first shots of the Pfizer formula were met with relief and a sense that there is light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. "We have been living inside for nearly a year. Its not a life," said Maurice Lachkar, a retired 78-year-old acupuncturist who was put on the priority list for vaccination because of his diabetes and his age. "If I catch the virus I am done." Maurice and his wife, Nicole, who also got vaccinated, said they might even allow themselves hugs with their two children and four grandchildren, whom they have seen from a socially safe distance only once or twice since the pandemic hit. "It is going to be liberating," he said. Throughout the developing world, the images are strikingly similar: rows and rows of graves being dug, hospitals pushed to the limit and medical workers dying for lack of protective gear. In Peru, which has the highest COVID-19 fatality rate in Latin America, hundreds of health care workers went on strike this week to demand better pay and working conditions in a country where 230 doctors have died of the disease. In Brazil, authorities in the Amazon rainforest's biggest city planned to transfer hundreds of patients out because of a dwindling supply of oxygen tanks that has resulted in some people dying at home. In Honduras, anesthesiologist Dr. Cesar Umana is treating 25 patients in their homes by phone because hospitals lack the capacity and equipment. "This is complete chaos," he said. Cheng reported from Toronto, Leicester from Poissy, France, and Goodman from Miami. Associated Press writers Victoria Milko in Jakarta, Indonesia, and David Biller in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report, along with AP video journalist Sam McNeil in Wuhan, China. Ready for the Moon Orion is NASA's new human-rated exploration-class spaceship that will take astronauts into deep space including the Moon and Mars. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for NASA and built the crew module, crew module adaptor and launch abort system. The European Space Agency provides the European Service Module for Orion. The Artemis I mission will be the first launch of the Orion spacecraft aboard NASA's Space Launch System rocket. Over the course of three weeks, the uncrewed Orion capsule will fly out and orbit the Moon and return to Earth. This test mission will validate the spacecraft, rocket and ground systems for future crewed missions. "Orion is a unique and impressive spacecraft and the team did an outstanding job to get us to this day," said Mike Hawes, Orion vice president and program manager for Lockheed Martin. "The launch and flight of Artemis I will be an impressive sight, but more importantly it will confirm Orion is ready to safely carry humans to the Moon and back home. This tremendous advancement opens the door to a new era of deep space exploration that will ultimately benefit us back here on Earth." Orion is being transferred from the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy, where it was assembled, to multiple Kennedy facilities where EGS will load propellants and other consumables such as ammonia, helium and nitrogen, and integrate the launch abort system and protective ogive fairing. After this is completed, it will be taken to the Vertical Assembly Facility to be lifted onto the SLS rocket and prepared for roll to the launch pad. Crewed Missions Underway The launch later this year will be the beginning of many Artemis missions to the Moon. The next mission, Artemis II, will be the first with a crew onboard and will go out to orbit the Moon and return. That Orion crew module and service module adapter are well under assembly at Kennedy and will see its first power-on of its integrated computers this summer. Artemis III will see the first woman and the next man to walk on the Moon. Orion will carry them out to orbit the Moon where they will ultimately land on the surface using a lunar landing system. That spacecraft is already under construction as major structural elements of the crew module pressure vessel are arriving at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility. As part of an Orion production and operations contract, NASA ordered three Orion spacecraft from Lockheed Martin for Artemis missions III-V with plans to order three additional Orion spacecraft for Artemis missions VI-VIII and options for up to 12 missions. More information about Orion: Lockheed Martin Orion page: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/orion NASA Orion page: https://www.nasa.gov/orion About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 110,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. For additional information, visit our website: www.lockheedmartin.com. Please follow @LMNews on Twitter for the latest announcements and news across the corporation. SOURCE Lockheed Martin Related Links http://www.lockheedmartin.com Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell who advised Bush, Obama sentenced to 6 years for fraud Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Prominent Houston Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell, who served as a spiritual adviser to former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, was sentenced to six years in prison Wednesday, just under a year after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a multimillion-dollar investment scheme. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a release that in addition to serving six years in prison, Caldwell, who formerly led the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas, will also serve one additional year of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $3,588,500, as well as a fine of $125,000. The defendants in this case abused the trust that the victims had placed in them, Acting United States Attorney Van Hook said. This defendant used his status as the pastor of a megachurch to help convince the many victim investors that they were making a legitimate investment but instead he took their hard-earned money from them and used it for his own personal gain. This office will continue to investigate and prosecute those who scheme and prey upon the elderly and others. The lay leadership of Windsor Village said in a statement shared on Facebook shortly after the sentencing that the man who led their church for nearly 38 years was a victim in the case as well. First, I believe Kirbyjon Caldwell was also a victim in this case. His victimization started when he chose the wrong business partners. He acknowledges this fact and he has accepted full responsibility. This business deal involving investment in Chinese Heritage Bonds resulted in financial harm to a group of investors, victims in the legal case. Mr. Caldwell has apologized and asked forgiveness from the people harmed in this matter. Those include the victims in the Shreveport legal case, his family and the Windsor Village Church family, Floyd LeBlanc of the churchs personnel committee, said. Caldwell, 67, who was indicted in 2018 for defrauding investors including elderly members of Windsor Village United Methodist Church of more than $1 million, previously maintained his innocence as his co-defendant, Gregory Alan Smith, pleaded guilty to wire fraud. Caldwell and Smith, who is an investment adviser based in Shreveport, Louisiana, were both charged with 13 counts, including conspiracy to commit money laundering when they raised around $3.5 million in Historical Chinese bonds from 29 investors between 2013 to 2014. The pastor, who obtained a masters degree from the Wharton School of Business and previously worked in the financial industry was the one who pitched the Chinese bonds to investors through Smith, according to the DOJ. Potential investors were told that they would be obtaining a partial ownership interest in the bonds and that they would receive exponential returns on their investments in a short period of time. Caldwell and Smith neglected to tell these individuals the historical Chinese bonds, issued by the former Republic of China prior to losing power to the communist government in 1949, held no value. The bonds were considered by the Securities and Exchange Commission to be mere collectables with no value outside of the memorabilia market. After hearing the pitch, investors signed up and were provided with a participation agreement indicating that if the sale of the bonds failed to occur within a certain number of days, the invested funds would be returned within a specific time. They were instructed to wire funds to various bank accounts held by or controlled by Caldwell. Approximately $3.5 million was invested in the scheme in 2013 and 2014. Smith, Caldwell, and others later divided up the funds with Caldwell personally receiving approximately $900,000, the DOJ said. Caldwell used a portion of the funds to pay down debt including personal loans, mortgages, and credit cards to maintain his lifestyle while investors were told their funds were used to purchase bonds and pay for expenses incurred from selling or redeeming the bonds. LeBlanc insisted on Wednesday that Caldwell was a victim. Kirbyjon Caldwell and his wife were the first investors in the Chinese bonds, and thus the first victims. As a person seeking to operate in integrity, Mr. Caldwell executed contracts with the other investors, victims in the legal case and he committed to give them their money back if they asked to exit the deal. He had in fact refunded more than $1 million to investors or victims who requested a refund before the indictment in the legal case in 2018. And before the sentencing hearing earlier today Mr. Caldwell had repaid every dollar invested to every victim investor, LeBlanc said. While it was a year not so much in the air, there were no days in 2020 without an Air New Zealand flight taking to the skies. Air NZ is taking a moment to reflect on some of the numbers from a most extraordinary 2020. During New Zealands alert level 4 lockdown, 67 of the airlines aircraft were grounded. By the end of 2020, the 15 strong Boeing 777 fleet had been sent to long term storage facilities in Auckland, Roswell, New Mexico and Victorville, California. The Air NZ Contact Centre recorded its busiest day on March 15. This followed the government announcement on March 15 that everyone entering New Zealand, except from the Pacific, would be required to self-isolate for 14 days. On top of email and chat options, calls from customers topped 75,000 compared to 9,900 calls received on the busiest day in 2019. A written statement by Air NZ says as borders around the world began to close, staff worked hard to keep flights going to bring almost 60,000 Kiwis home that had started a return international journey before New Zealands alert level 4 lock down began. COVID-19 travel restrictions meant many passengers became stranded and Air NZ assisted governments around the world to repatriate them home. The airline operated 29 special flights to bring Kiwis home from Wuhan, Mumbai and Delhi (all destinations a first for the airline) as well as to help get foreign nationals to Germany, the Netherlands, Korea, Samoa and Tonga. With borders closed and international passenger demand being almost non-existent, it comes as no surprise that the number of international flights dropped from over 30,000 in 2019 to under 10,000 in 2020. Despite a strong domestic recovery, the passengers carried by the airline overall dropped from 17.6 million in 2019 to 8.4 million in 2020. While international passenger flights were significantly scaled back, Air NZs Cargo team stepped up to help our export community maintain international trade links, operating 3,306 flights carrying cargo with the support of the Governments International Air Freight Capacity (IAFC) Scheme. More than 10 million items of PPE were brought into the country by Air NZ 2020 to help New Zealand stamp out COVID-19. While New Zealanders were reminded to wash their hands, the airlines cleaning teams were hard at work - with over 45,000 litres of cleaning disinfectant being used on its aircraft in 2020. With international travel off the cards, Kiwis keen to explore their own backyard and reconnect with loved ones snapped up over three million seats for under $100. During the course of 2020 Air NZ donated more than one million items to 33 organisations and charities around the country. This included 190,000 Cookie Time cookies, almost 9,500 bedding items, around 9,600 inflight goods (amenity kits, crockery and kids inflight packs) and close to 800,000 dry goods (muesli, crackers and fudge). Despite lockdowns, the airline still helped to transport 508 precious threatened wildlife and 60 conservation dogs across Aotearoa, as well as establish an additional 5000 hectares of sustained pest control areas on New Zealands Great Walks through its partnership with the Department of Conservation, bringing the total area controlled to 43,247 hectares. Air NZ chief executive officer Greg Foran says even though it was a year like no other for the airline industry, he is still incredibly proud of the team. "What Air New Zealanders managed to achieve in such a dynamic environment and up against so many challenges is just phenomenal. "Returning to usual levels of air travel will be complex, but we are working closely with government agencies on preparations for safe travel. "In the meantime, we are using this time to ensure the Air New Zealand that emerges from COVID-19 is stronger than ever before and will continue to enrich the country, connecting New Zealanders with each other and New Zealand with the world." A family man who was caught with over 2m worth of cocaine and heroin has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years. Raymond Kelly (52), of Tor Na Ri Terrace, Clondalkin, Dublin, was caught moving the drugs when gardai stopped the car he was driving at Parkwest Road, Ballyfermot on the evening of September 27, 2019. The stop and search followed an earlier interception of a car in the Ballyfermot area when gardai found approximately 20 kilos of heroin and cocaine. Gardai arrested Kelly and carried out a search of a garage in the Kylemore Industrial Estate where Kelly was living at the time. During this search gardai found cannabis resin with an estimated street value of approximately 10,000. The court heard that the combined estimated street value of the drugs was approximately 2.1million. Dara Hayes BL, prosecuting, said that Kelly subsequently pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the drugs for sale or supply. Micheal Bowman SC, defending, told the court that Kelly had built up a high level of personal debt and was under enormous financial pressure at the time. The court heard he was promised a small amount of money if he took part in the drugs operation and he only did so because of a sense of vulnerability and overwhelming helplessness. Mr Bowman said his client was not a criminal mastermind but was used as an essential cog in the drugs trade by the true owners of the drugs, who were insulated from prosecution because of Kelly's fear. He said Kelly had worked his entire life and had made a positive contribution to society. He said his involvement in this crime was uncharacteristic. He will be forever marked and remembered as the person who went to prison at a time his family needed him the most, Mr Bowman said. Judge Karen O'Connor said she had to mark the seriousness of the offence. She said the main aggravating factor was the quantity of drugs involved. She imposed the sentence to date from yesterday. The court heard that the operation was carried out by gardai attached to the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and was based on confidential information. AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the sixth consecutive year, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Texas School Choice Week by the state's governor. Gov. Abbott joins more than a dozen other governors, as well as hundreds of county, city, and town leaders, who have officially recognized Jan. 24-Jan 30 as School Choice Week. Nationally, more than 33,000 activities have been planned for this year's annual celebration, which is taking place entirely virtually. The Week raises awareness about opportunity in K-12 education and the importance of parents exploring and identifying the best school fit for their child. In Texas, community members have planned 2,827 virtual activities to celebrate education and spark conversations about the diverse learning environments that help children succeed. These activities will take the shape of social media contests, at-home activities, large virtual school fairs in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, and more. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will join in the celebration. "The goal of this week is to celebrate children, families, and teachersand raise awareness about how school choice positively impacts each of them," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are thrilled by how many Texas families are celebrating their schools and choosing to be actively involved in their child's education, and we're grateful to Gov. Abbott for officially recognizing School Choice Week." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information or to watch Gov. Abbott's video message about the Week, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/texas . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Genus Catherine Henry, COO Genus Genus What accessory or piece of jewelry cant you leave the house without and why? Quite ephemeral, I never leave without perfume. What moment in your career has had the greatest impact on you? The Mechanical Exception prize that rewarded our GNS1.2 WG model at last Novembers GPHG ceremony. It is wonderful to be able to highlight and sell something with which one is so closely and proudly engaged. Which cause do you view as most important? I try to help and take action as much as possible at my level, for example, by involving GENUS in promoting responsible global standards for the industry. Who is the person who has influenced you the most and why? Figures who bring a disruptive touch, and when it comes to women I would say Coco Chanel and more personally some of my former CEOs who have become my mentors, particularly one lady. What advice would you give to women who want to work in this industry? Hard work always pays off. Trust yourself. Dont panic when you make mistakes; if you dont know something, find the information you need; and surround yourself with people who have the skills you may lack. TAG Heuer Catherine Eberle-Devaux, Heritage Director TAG Heuer TAG Heuer What accessory or piece of jewelry cant you leave the house without and why? My big glasses. They naturally correct my eyesight, but big frames are kind of my signature. What moment in your career has had the greatest impact on you? Probably my first meeting with Jack Heuer. I was very impressed and greatly moved by his energy, strength and love of life. Which cause do you view as most important? The cause of women, our struggles large and small. Who is the person who has influenced you the most and why? In the course of my career I would single out Valerie Servageon, a true leader and a charismatic, inspirational woman who made me want to follow in her footsteps and undertake great things. What advice would you give to women who want to work in this industry? Learn, never stop learning, and trust your instincts. Dubai Watch Week Hind Seddiqi, General Director Dubai Watch Week Dubai Watch Week What accessory or piece of jewelry cant you leave the house without and why? I have two things that I cant leave the house without a watch and a pair of earrings. What moment in your career has had the greatest impact on you? I have been working for almost 15 years now and there are a few moments that I consider to be almost career defining. One such moment was the establishment of Dubai Watch Week which is a home-grown event pioneered by my family and our internal teams. Which cause do you view as most important? There are so many, but if I had to choose one, it would be the importance of empowering my team and teamwork. Everything is much more rewarding and smoother with a group of people who share your passion. Who is the person who has influenced you the most and why? My father: he has always been a big influence on how we carry ourselves, how we interact with others and how to manage & pre-empt situations. What advice would you give to women who want to work in this industry? I believe we are vital to this industry; it may be male dominated, but I feel that women bring an exceptional perspective within the industry. This is especially true when it comes to storytelling and driving emotions, especially since a lot of people view the industry as otherwise too rigid. Christie's Aline Sylla-Walbaum, Global Managing Director Luxury Christie's What accessory or piece of jewelry cant you leave the house without and why? My Art Deco engagement ring and my watch, which was a birthday present that Christies Private Sales sourced for my 45th birthday. What moment in your career has had the greatest impact on you? Im proud to see our Christies Luxury Week concept is now an important calendar highlight for our collectors. Which cause do you view as most important? From the Jewellery department, we were delighted to present the Diamonds that Care: A Charity Auction of jewels designed by Anna Hu to support the families of healthcare workers who lost their lives while fighting tirelessly against the pandemic. Who is the person who has influenced you the most and why? Im the most grateful to those who helped me see things from a different angle: my father in terms of my ethnicity, my mother about my ambition, my siblings with regards to tolerance, and my children when it comes to love and patience. What advice would you give to women who want to work in this industry? Follow your instinct and not the so-called perfect career plan. Seize every opportunity, from a role that can foster your growth, to a potential chance to work abroad. COVID19 vaccine Distribution View Photo Sonora, CA Those 75 and older have been placed on the fast track for getting a coronavirus vaccine shot. To support the countys efforts to get the vaccine distributed, Adventist Health Sonora is aiding in launching Phase 1B COVID-19 vaccinations with mass vaccination clinics planned for those individuals. We are eager to see the community vaccinated as quickly as possible and ease the strain that COVID-19 has put on our families, businesses and healthcare team, commented Michelle Fuentes, Adventist Health Sonora President. To meet the demand of around 6,000 individuals aged 75 and over in the county, the hospital has been working on procuring a supply of COVID-19 vaccines, which will be provided at no cost to county residents who meet the current vaccine distribution phase criteria. Mass vaccination clinics are expected to be launched late next week at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds on Stockton Street in Sonora. As soon as the clinics can be set up, staffed and supplied, individuals will be asked to verify their age and residing county while scheduling an appointment for their vaccination. When all is ready to go Adventist Health Sonora says it will notify the public through local media, like Clarke Broadcasting. Fuentes gave this update on its vaccine distribution, I am really proud of our team for mobilizing quickly and vaccinating individuals eligible for Phase 1A vaccinations. In just over three weeks, teams from employee health, infection prevention, pharmacy, nursing, and other support departments have developed processes for reporting first and second doses to the vaccine registry, as required by the CDC, and given over 1,150 shots to healthcare workers. I am also pleased that we are ahead of schedule for vaccinating our long-term care residents at the Sierra Care Center, Units 6 and 7. The hospital details that it has also begun partnering with local emergency services agencies for individuals to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, as indicated in Phase 1B. Hospital officials add that once all county residents eligible for Phase 1B vaccinations have received their shots and as the supply of vaccine increases, clinics will then be available for Phase 1C. As reported here yesterday, Gov. Gavin Newsom modified the states coronavirus vaccine distribution to make residents 65 and older and those with preexisting conditions eligible to get a shot of the scarce coronavirus vaccines due to their risk level of hospitalizations and death. However, each county has control in regards to the order in which vaccines are given. Interim Tuolumne County Health Officer Dr. Eric Sergienko tells Clarke Broadcasting the county will start with those 75 and older, once those vaccines have been distributed, they will move to those 65 and older depending on the vaccine supplies. Dr. Sergienko will be the guest on Mother Lode Views this weekend focusing on the coronavirus and how Tuolumne Public Health is dealing with the pandemic. Mother Lode Views airs Saturday and Sunday morning at 9:30 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML. Mother Lode Views can also be heard Sunday morning at 10 oclock on 93.5 KKBN and at 9 a.m. on STAR 92.7. Click here to view the vaccine distribution phases. 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. SPRINGFIELD A federal judge has canceled trials here for the next three months, citing increasing cases of the coronavirus and its UK variant, which has been creeping closer to the area. U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni, who has presided over two criminal trials dictated by strict public health protocols, is the first in the state to halt in-person proceedings. His order suspends trial activity and in-person hearings at the federal courthouse in Springfield until March 29. Judges in Worcester and Boston have yet to follow suit, according to the United States Courts website. Other federal courts in New England are enforcing limitations including New Hampshire, which has suspended all civil trials; Maine, which has established a Covid Advisory Committee; and Connecticut, which is strictly limiting visitors to its federal courthouses. Mastroianni issued his order Wednesday, nixing two criminal trials that have been on and off the roster for weeks or months. This action is necessitated by the current increase in COVID-19 case numbers after the holiday season and the significant strain on healthcare systems, his order reads. The Governor of Massachusetts and health care specialists have recognized the presence of the more easily spread United Kingdom variant in Massachusetts. This variant has been verified in cases in New Haven, Connecticut and Saratoga Springs, New York, both of which are geographically close to the Western Massachusetts area in terms of transmissibility. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report warning that the coronavirus variant called B.1.1.7 could become the predominant strain in the U.S. by March, though only 76 cases have been identified in 10 states so far. Federal courts were ahead of state courts in terms of creaking the door back open for trials. Mastroianni presided over his first mid-pandemic trial Oct. 5, after eight months of strictly telephonic and video hearings. Meanwhile, state courts began conducting a limited number of six-person jury trials this week. During an interview this week, Mastroianni said he was enthusiastically getting his trial docket back on track for months, stacking the courts schedule to move cases along with a particular focus on defendants held behind bars. I was all in, absolutely, but the numbers are different now than they were prior to Thanksgiving, Mastroianni said. For me the changing point at this time although weve spent a lot of time developing safety protocols adding to that balancing act is the new variant. Its getting closer and closer to Western Massachusetts. LIVE Updates: Coronavirus pandemic | File image: A health worker performs a trial run of COVID-19 vaccine delivery system in Guwahati on January 8, 2021. (Image: AP Photo/Anupam Nath) A top American Congressman has applauded India for its plans to supply COVID-19 vaccines to its neighbours and partners around the world. "Great to see our ally India purchasing and supplying millions of doses of COVID vaccines, manufactured in India, to its neighbours and partner nations around the world," Congressman Brad Sherman said in a tweet. "India is one of the world''s largest manufacturers of inoculations. In a time of great need for the entire international community, India is stepping up to help the world overcome this pandemic," Sherman said. India plans to purchase millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses and supply them to Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Seychelles and Mauritius. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Once confined to scholarly circles, the debate over whether a president can pardon himself has gained urgency in the wake of last week's violent storming of the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters. The riots led to Trump's historic second impeachment this week and sparked Democratic calls for a federal investigation into Trump's role in inciting the violence. That in turn has renewed the question of whether Trump may use the power of presidential pardon on himself in order to escape future prosecution. It is something that Trump has broached in the past. In 2018, facing a special counsel investigation into his 2016 campaign's ties to Russia, Trump said he had an "absolute right" to pardon himself. But as far-fetched as it may sound, a self-pardon may not necessarily be in Trump's best interest, and advisers have reportedly tried to talk him out of it. Self-clemency can be viewed as an admission of guilt, they've said. What is more, it may backfire by prompting an otherwise reluctant Department of Justice under incoming President Joe Biden to challenge the pardon and bring charges against Trump, according to legal experts. Here is a primer on the debate over whether Trump can pardon himself before he leaves office. Can the president pardon himself? The U.S. Constitution itself is mum on the matter. Article II of the charter gives the president the power to "grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." That broadly-worded text has left it open to interpretation. "No president has ever tried a self-pardon, so we don't have any precedent," said Jeffrey Crouch, a law professor at the American University and author of a book on presidential pardon power. "President Nixon thought about doing it but ultimately opted not to." Those who believe a president can self-pardon argue that there is nothing to the contrary in the Constitution. The American leader, they say, has the power to pardon federal crimes, and if he himself commits a federal crime, then he should be able to pardon himself for that offense. But those who take the opposite view and they're in the majority contend that the very act of "granting a pardon" implies a bilateral move involving two people. "The use of the word pardon normally connotes one person is pardoning another. That is the way it's been understood historically," said Steve Mulroy, a law professor at the University of Memphis. What is more, Mulroy said, self-pardoning is at odds with a long-standing American legal principle, rooted in English law, that one cannot be a judge in one's own case. "So for that reason, while the pardon power is very broad and the Supreme Court has never definitively ruled, most constitutional scholars would say that you can't pardon yourself," Mulroy said. In 1974, the Justice Department considered the question. The answer it came up with was no. Self-pardoning would run counter to the "the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case," the department's Office of Legal Counsel wrote in a memo. The memo remains Justice Department policy. What would a self-pardon look like? Of course, that doesn't mean the president may not try to pardon himself. If he opted for self-clemency, he'd likely issue himself a "full and unconditional pardon," according to legal experts. Typically, when a president pardons someone, the clemency document specifies the charges he's pardoning them for, as was the case with Trump's recent pardons of several former associates. In his own case, though, Trump would likely opt for a blanket pardon, modeled on the pardon of former President Richard Nixon, for all crimes against the United States, said Caroline Mala Corbin, a professor of law at the University of Miami. What are the implications of a presidential self-pardon? Never tried before, a self-pardon by Trump could set a potentially dangerous precedent for future presidential conduct, according to some legal experts. "Presidential self-pardons would be a terrible precedent and allow presidents to commit the most atrocious federal crimes and simply pardon themselves," Corbin said. Those who think a president can pardon himself disagree, however, saying that there are other checks on presidential power such as impeachment by Congress. Plus, a pardon doesn't protect a president from state prosecution. Can a self-pardon be legally challenged? While presidential pardons are permanent and can't be undone, a self-pardon by Trump could end up facing legal challenges in the future. Biden has made clear he does not favor having the Justice Department investigate his predecessor. But if Trump were to pardon himself, that could prompt the Justice Department to bring charges against him if only to test the constitutionality of self-clemency. The issue could go all the way before the Supreme Court, which has never weighed in on the question, experts say. "It could easily be argued that this was an issue of constitutional law that had to be settled by the courts and not politically motivated," Corbin said. The threat of DOJ action in response to a self-pardon could in turn dissuade Trump from considering pardoning himself in the first place, she added. Can Trump resign and have Vice President Mike Pence pardon him? This remains a possibility even though Trump has made no indication that he plans to resign before his term ends on January 20. There is a precedent for a president receiving a pardon from his successor. In 1974, after Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, his vice president and successor, Gerald Ford, issued him a blanket pardon for all crimes against the United States. While Ford insisted he did it in the national interest, to critics, the clemency always looked like a "self-pardon" by Nixon. Columbia-Greene Media has recently teamed up with the US Postal Service to provide same-day delivery of your local newspaper with your mail. Our expanded daily delivery of your local news reaches into the following areas: New York State Attorney General Letitia James speaks at a news conference in New York, N.Y., on Sept. 25, 2020. (Kathy Willens/AP Photo) New York AG Sues NYPD, NYC Over Alleged Excessive Force Against Floyd Protesters New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the New York City police department and city officials over their treatment of protesters during the riots and demonstrations following George Floyds death. James alleged in a complaint in a federal court that officers from the NYPD had used excessive force and other tactics to control protesters and crowds during the protests against police brutality mid-last year. The protests and riots under the Black Lives Matter movement erupted following the death of Floyd, an African American man who died while in Minneapolis police custody. His death sparked outrage across the nation and renewed debates over police reform and systemic racism in U.S. institutions. Many U.S. officials at the time denied the existence of systemic racism but have acknowledged that there was room for improving the relationship between law enforcement and the African American community. Jamess office said that since May 30, 2020, it had received over 1,300 complaints and pieces of evidence of police misconduct when violent clashes broke out between the NYPD and protesters. Among the allegations was the repeated use of batons, pepper spray, bicycles, and a crowd-control tactic known as kettling against protesters. Police officers have also been accused of indiscriminately arresting legal observers, medics, and other workers performing essential services without probable cause and in violation of executive orders from Mayor Bill de Blasio. A police officer shouts at Associated Press videojournalist Robert Bumsted, in New York City on June 2, 2020. (Wong Maye-E/AP Photo) New York Police Officers work a scene on Church Avenue, in the Brooklyn borough of New York on June 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II) The lawsuit (pdf) is seeking injunctive relief by asking the court to set aside NYPD policies and practices that could amount to excessive force and false arrests and limit free speech and press reporting. James is also asking the court to order the NYPD to take affirmative steps to make systemic reforms to the NYPD and prevent unlawful conduct by officers in the future. There is no question that the NYPD engaged in a pattern of excessive, brutal, and unlawful force against peaceful protesters, James in a statement. Over the past few months, the NYPD has repeatedly and blatantly violated the rights of New Yorkers, inflicting significant physical and psychological harm and leading to great distrust in law enforcement. Police try to contain protesters during a rally at the Barclays Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York, N.Y., on May 29, 2020. (Frank Franklin II/AP Photo) A vandalized New York Police Department vehicle is seen after a protest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis Police custody, in New York City, N.Y., on May 30, 2020. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters) The NYPD responded to the lawsuit in a statement to The Epoch Times saying that it welcomes reform and has embraced the recent suggestions by both the citys Department of Investigation and citys Law Department. As the Mayor has said, adding another layer does not speed up the process of continued reform, which we have embraced and led the way on, a department spokesperson said. The lawsuit was filed against the citys police department, the City of New York, de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, and NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan. While many protests were peaceful last summer, some cities saw rioters engage in violent acts, looting, and rioting, leading to the widespread destruction of public and private property, as well as injuries, and deaths. New York City saw police property set on fire and destroyed during the riots. Hundreds of individuals were federally charged over the protests that lasted for months. A separate but related movement known as Defund the Police was born out of the Floyd protests. It calls for the reallocation of funds away from police departments to other social programs. The movement claims that police departments are systemically racist and that police funding can be better used to help African American communities. One of the prominent groups who pushed the movement to defund police is Black Lives Matter, whose leaders claim to be trained Marxists. Nearly $1 billion was shifted from the NYPD budget following the protest. A top American Congressman has applauded for its plans to supply COVID-19 vaccines to its neighbours and partners around the world. "Great to see our ally purchasing and supplying millions of doses of COVID vaccines, manufactured in India, to its neighbours and partner nations around the world," Congressman Brad Sherman said in a tweet. " is one of the world's largest manufacturers of inoculations. In a time of great need for the entire international community, India is stepping up to help the world overcome this pandemic," Sherman said. India plans to purchase millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses and supply them to Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Seychelles and Mauritius. (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.) 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. Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Eric Lis factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesnt plan to expand operations -- a reticence that could slow the pace of Chinas economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.Surging prices of raw materials means margins are compressed, explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co. Ltd., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity, he adds.The combination of higher input prices, uncertainty about export prospects and a weak recovery in domestic consumer demand meant Chinese manufacturing investment from January to April was 0.4% below the same period in 2019, according to official statistics (comparing to 2019 strips out the distortion of last years pandemic data).Due to the vast size of Chinas manufacturing sector, that poses a risk both to the nations growth -- which is currently predicted to reach 8.5% in 2021, according to a Bloomberg tally of economists estimates -- and to a global economy thats grappling with supply shortages and rising prices.Falling ProfitsWeaker-than-expected investment could have a sizable impact on GDP growth this year, said Citigroup Inc.s China economist, Li-gang Liu. Lower investment may dent imports of capital goods and equipment from developed economies like Japan and Germany, which in turn could drag their economic recovery and rebound as well, he added.AnHui HERO Electronic Sci & Tec Co. Ltd. is one of those companies feeling the squeeze. Based in the eastern province of Anhui, the company manufactures capacitors used to make electronic circuits, with sales mainly in the domestic market. Jing Yuan, the founder, says orders are up as much as 30% year-on-year, but profits are down 50% due to increasing materials costs that are not easily passed onto clients.The company is under huge cash pressure as it needs to pay half a month in advance of delivery in order to secure copper and other metals, which they previously paid for months after receiving, he said. The commodity issue has to be addressed by the government, he added.What Bloomberg Economics Says...Chinese industry is absorbing significant cost pressures from rising commodity prices -- damping the inflationary impact for the rest of the world. Will it last? Our analysis of gross margins suggests it could for a while longer: downstream industries -- where the cost crunch is most severe -- still have a small cushion.David Qu, China economistFor the full report, click here.Input shortages mean some manufacturers arent able to make use of their existing facilities, so expansion would be of little use. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. suspended production at one of its factories last month, due to a shortage of microchips.Modern Casting Ltd., which makes iron and steel products in Guangdong, issued a note to clients this month saying it would not be able to meet its current orders due to high raw material costs. A member of staff who answered the phone at the companys office confirmed the note, but declined to give further details.Growth TransitionOn top of the higher input costs, Chinese companies face a bumpy transition toward domestic consumer spending to sustain its post-pandemic recovery.Exports, Chinas strong-suit last year, may begin to slow as vaccine roll-outs cause consumers in wealthy countries to shift spending back to services. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Chinese consumer spending has yet to fully recover.Investment sentiment among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises is below levels seen even in 2018-9 when uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade war were a brake on expansion plans, according to a regular survey of more than 500 Chinese companies by Standard Chartered Plc.Demand is still mainly underpinned by exports, so domestic companies are aware that this is not sustainable, said Standard Chartereds China economist, Lan Shen.While some export-oriented sectors have been pushed to their limits, large amounts of slack remain for manufacturers targeting Chinese consumers due to subdued domestic demand.Retail sales growth was 4.3% in April on a two-year average basis, which strips out base effects from the pandemic, less than half pre-pandemic growth rates. Overall capacity use at Chinas manufacturers fell to 77.6% in the first quarter from 78.4% in the previous three months, with the automotive sector hit hardest by overcapacity following three years of declining sales volumes.Even for electric vehicles whose sales are surging, most companies have already built their capacity and will now focus on incremental upgrades. The majority of the investment has been done, said Jochen Siebert of JSC Automotive Consulting.China ordered state-owned companies to expand last year, with their investment growth of 5.3% in 2020 from the prior year easily outstripping the 1% increase in private investment. But for a sustainable pick-up in investment, the market, not the state, needs to feel confident.Carsten Holz, an expert on Chinese investment statistics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, estimates that privately-owned companies have accounted for 87% of manufacturing investment in 2015, the most recent year of available data. They are more sensitive to input costs.There is a pandemic plus insecurity about future trade given a new U.S. administration, neither of which is conducive to investment that relies on long-term growth prospects, Holz said.Mixed PoliciesTransport bottlenecks are also a challenge for export-oriented manufacturers. Gordon Gao, who exports gardening products from China, said that he has had to reject 80% of orders this year due to port delays. In one case, an order placed before mid-February could only be shipped three months later when a client finally secured a container.Beijing has tried to improve conditions for private companies by ordering a crackdown on speculation to curb commodity prices and easing access to bank loans.Yet the government continues to gradually withdraw fiscal and monetary stimulus measures introduced amid the pandemic last year. It set a relatively unambitious target of above 6% growth for this year, and the Communist Partys Politburo signaled last month it would prioritize reforms to control house prices and debt growth.The policy stance has definitely shifted away from supporting growth and back toward de-risking the financial sector, said Adam Wolfe, an economist at London-based Absolute Strategy Research. The risks for economic growth seem tilted to the downside, especially for capital-intensive, construction-linked sectors.For manufacturers such as Li, a longer period of domestic growth and control over input prices will be needed before capacity expansion is on the cards. While his company of 200 workers took on new permanent staff before the pandemic, for now hed rather pass the risks of investment on to others.I wouldnt do that now, I would rather hire some temporary workers and outsource the rest, he said.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. A police reform bill that passed 60-50 Wednesday during the Illinois Legislatures last day of a lame-duck session has some law enforcement officers feeling like theyre the ones being handcuffed. I hope people realize that were doing the best job for our city but lawmakers are handcuffing us, Beardstown Police Chief Martin Coad said. It leaves the public in limbo. Illinois House Bill 3653 now is on its way to Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office to be signed into law. While it initially included language that would have done away with law enforcement officers qualified immunity from job-related lawsuits, the Black Caucus leadership had it stripped from the bill. Proposed stricter use-of-force guidelines also were cut from the final bill. Still, law enforcement officers are unhappy with the bills no-cash bail stipulation and a requirement that all police will have to wear body cameras by 2025. Those cameras are to be paid for by the officers department. If you do the crime, you should have to pay to get out, Coad said, adding that he understands the need for reform but feels the stipulation is going to free criminals to go out and commit more crime. Theyre just going to go right back out and do it again. Jacksonville Police Chief Adam Mefford, who has yet to see the bill in its entirety, recognizes there are some reasons to have a no-cash bail policy. The details have not yet been released, he said, adding that there are some crimes that people really dont need to sit in jail for and wait for a trial such as minor traffic violations. Feeling that the legislators made a sweeping change, Mefford would prefer there be more of a categorized no-bail system. For example, domestic violence, homicide cases or driving under the influence arrests should have to wait for a trail. Some of the crimes are against victims and people need to cool off, Mefford said. Were making the victims feel unsafe. Also under the bill, all law enforcement departments in the state will be required by 2025 to have officers wear body cameras and departments would have to fund both the cameras, the ongoing training and storage for the footage created by them. That will give us some time to budget it all in, Coad said of the timeline. But there are no grants out there for this type of thing. With 11 full-time officers and three part-time officers in Beardstown, Coads timeline to budget for the body cameras is not his top concern. Storage of the footage is especially since what that will require hasnt been specified. The storage portion of it is going to be the killer, he said, adding that some counties, like Sangamon County, pay around $100,000 a year for video storage. Mefford and his department have already been working toward equipping his team with body cameras and the move doesnt impact him, and his budget, too badly. Were a bit ahead of the process with this, he said. His concerns, however, are for agencies with smaller budgets and the fact that the possibility of having funding taken away if some agencies have not been able to equipment their department with body cameras by the deadline. It doesnt feel right being punished for not having the funding, Mefford said. Cass County States Attorney Craig Miller also believes the no-cash bail stipulation will make his job harder, he said. I know it will make our jobs difficult, Miller said. Miller said he still needs to learn more about the 700-plus page bill, but he doesnt agree with how the bill was passed. There should have been more time for everyone to read and analyze what was on the table, he said. Pritzker said he was pleased with the bills approval. This criminal justice package carries with it the opportunity to shape our state into a lesson in true justice for the nation by abolishing cash bail, modernizing sentencing laws, instituting a certification and decertification system for police officers statewide, requiring body cameras, reforming crowd control response, and amplifying law enforcement training standards. Echoing Miller, Mefford wished that lawmakers would open the communications with those who have boots on the ground. We as law enforcement officers are willing to work with lawmakers, Mefford said. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. A Ministerial Conference on the Morocco-proposed Autonomy Initiative, held virtually on Friday, at the invitation of Morocco and the United States, expressed strong support for this initiative as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the Sahara regional dispute. The representatives of forty countries, including 27 ministers, who took part in the conference committed to continue their advocacy for a solution, using Moroccos autonomy plan as the sole framework for resolving the Sahara dispute. The Conference was co-chaired by Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita and US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker. According to a Chairs summary made public at the end of the Conference, participants welcomed the development endeavors launched in the region including in the framework of Moroccos New Development Model for the Southern Provinces. In his address before the conference, Bourita actually shed light on the new development model for the southern provinces as a concrete step that paves the way for the autonomy status of the Sahara in addition to the democratic and orderly election of representatives of the Sahara territory. At the geopolitical level, the autonomy proposal is conducive for economic and security cooperation in the Maghreb as well as African stability and prosperity, Bourita said, adding that Morocco remains committed to the political process and backs the endeavor of the UN Secretary General to appoint a new Personal Envoy. Meanwhile, he said other parties continue to hinder these efforts and continue to violate the 1991 ceasefire agreement. Most participants recalled the Proclamation of the United States of America of December 10, 2020, entitled Recognizing the Sovereignty of the Kingdom of Morocco over Western Sahara, which reaffirmed support for Moroccos autonomy proposal as serious, credible, and realistic and as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute. Schenker said in his opening remarks that the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara makes clear our view that Moroccos autonomy proposal is the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the conflict. He called on the international community to back the autonomy plan as the only credible and realistic basis for negotiations. After nearly three decades of the status quo failing to produce a breakthrough, let us seize this moment to reinvigorate negotiations within the framework of Moroccos autonomy plan, he said. The participants in the conference also underlined that the US Presidential Proclamation provides guidance for efforts to advance the UN-exclusive political process aiming at reaching a lasting political solution, with the autonomy initiative as the only realistic basis for such a solution. This Proclamation will strengthen the international consensus in support of the UN-exclusive political process. Speaking at the same event, foreign ministers of the UAE, Bahrain, Gambia, Guinea, Zambia, Haiti, Guinee, Togo, Guatemala, Antigua and Barbuda expressed backing to Moroccos territorial integrity and to the autonomy plan as the only political solution to the Sahara issue that would contribute to regional peace and stability. Other countries that attended the conference in support of the autonomy plan as the sole political solution are Comors, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Malawi, Liberia, Sao Tome and Principe, Benin, Saint Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Jamaica, Maldives, Salvador, Senegal, Saudi Arabia, Cote dIvoire, Djibouti, Eswatini, DRC, Jordan, Oman, France, Egypt, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Kuwait, Yemen and Burkina Faso. The Conference also highlighted the decision of twenty United Nations Member States to open Consulates in the Moroccan cities of Laayoune and Dakhla, considering that such steps will promote economic and business opportunities for the region, strengthen the vocation of the Sahara region as an economic hub for the entire continent and advance progress towards reaching a long-awaited final political solution to this dispute, which has been going on for several decades. 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. The Importance of Hand Hygiene in a Food Processing Environment Our goal is to promote and educate the industry on best food safety practices. Food safety professionals continually look for new and better ways to help control the risk of cross-contamination in their facilities. 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Best Sanitizers offers products and solutions, such as their Alpet branded line of hand soaps, hand sanitizers, and surface sanitizers to help food processors reduce pathogens on hands and surfaces in their facilities. The complete educational article, The Importance of Hand Hygiene in a Food Processing Environment is available for free download. Our goal is to promote and educate the industry on best food safety practices, states April Zeman-Lowe, Best Sanitizers Sales Director Food and Beverage Division. We want to provide food industry professionals with the tools and equipment they need to reduce cross-contamination in their facility. For more information on all of Best Sanitizers products and educational articles, please visit: http://www.bestsanitizers.com. About Best Sanitizers, Inc: Since 1995, Best Sanitizers, Inc. has been providing the Food Processing, Janitorial Sanitation and Healthcare industries with the highest quality hand soaps, hand sanitizers, surface sanitizers and dispensing options available. In addition, Best Sanitizers offers cleaning and sanitizing equipment including boot scrubbers, footwear sanitizing units, doorway foamers, drain foaming accessories, and proportioning and dispensing equipment. Youll find our products helping processors large and small reduce the risk of pathogens throughout the US. Best Sanitizers was the first company to achieve an E3 rating for an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and the first to achieve a D2 rating for an alcohol/quat-based surface sanitizer for food contact surfaces. Best Sanitizers continues to explore new and innovative ways to deliver hand hygiene and surface sanitation solutions to the United States and Canada. Updates on school projects in Naas, Maynooth, Clane Prosperous, Kilcock and Enfield have been given by the Minister for Education in the Dail recently. The two second level schools at the Moyglare Road campus in Maynooth, have been completed and are ready for occupation, the Dail has been told. While there are certain outstanding additional works to take place on site, the new school buildings were practically completed in December and are ready for occupation, Kildare North TD, Bernard Durkan was told. Regarding Maynooth Post Primary School and Maynooth Community College the Minister said a building projects to deliver 1,000 pupils places and 2-classroom SEN (special education needs) bases of both of these schools was practically completed in December 2020 and are ready for occupation. However, there are outstanding additional works to take place to complete a shared PE Hall facility. Gaelscoil Ruairi opened in September 2019 and is currently accommodated in interim accommodation. The proposed new 8-classroom school building plus 2-classroom SEN is at planning permission stage. A request for further information was received on 18/12/2020. Until such time as planning permission has been secured, it is not possible to provide a timeline for progression of the project to tender and construction stages. Construction started at Maynooth Boys School in December 2020 for a new 24 classroom school and a 2 classroom SEN Base. The construction project is progressing satisfactorily on site and the contract duration is 18 months. Maynooth Educate Together project is currently on site and due for completion in Quarter 2, 2021. Phase 1 was handed over in 2019, the project when complete will provide for a 16 classroom school plus SEN classes, said the Minister. Three major building projects are included as part of the schools capital programme Celbridge. It is proposed to accommodate the three schools, St Raphael's Special School, Scoil Naomh Padraig and Celbridge Community School (RN 91614B) on a campus development in order to cater for the permanent needs of the schools. The Department is presently at a very advanced stage in the process of acquiring a suitable site, located at Donaghcumper. As part of the Departments appraisal, traffic management analysis is being examined and my officials are continuing to actively engage regularly with both Kildare County Council and the Landowner on all aspects of the future operation of the proposed site. Regarding St Farnans in Prosperous, the Minister said a project to increase the capacity at the school from 500 to 1,000 pupils has been devolved for delivery to Kildare & Wicklow Educational Training Board (KWETB). I understand that the design team is preparing the Stage 1 report (preliminary design) and it is nearing completion. In Clane, where recently local councillors said the schools were full and unable to accept students from outside the town, the Minister said major building included work at Hewetson National School. This project has been devolved to the school management authority for delivery. As the project is at an early stage of the delivery process, it is not possible at this time to give a date for its completion. This project will provide for accommodation for a 6-classroom school and one SEN Base when completed. She said in St Patrick Boys National School the Detailed Design Stage has been approved and the project will now progress to the next stage of architectural planning. The project when complete will provide for 24-classrooms plus 2-classroom SEN base. The Minister said that in addition the following Additional School Accommodation project has been approved for Scoil Mhuire Community School in Clane. This is to provide the replacement of five mainstream 38.5m prefab, two science labs and shared prep area, WC for assisted users and one class SEN (special education needs) base. The project also includes the provision of interim accommodation for a SEN class for 2021/22. The project is at the design stage. Building work on St Josephs Boys School, Kilcock it is progressing satisfactorily with a contract duration of approximately 20 months. Work began on site in March 2020 it is progressing satisfactorily with a contract duration of approximately 20 months. A new school, Enfield Community College, was established in Enfield in September 20 and this new school in in the Kilcock School Planning Area. This school is to cater for 1,000 pupils and will include for a 4-classroom SEN Base and has opened in interim accommodation. The project to provide a permanent building is currently at stage 2b of architectural planning process which is detailed design. The following school building projects are being progressed in Naas Co. Kildare to meet expected demand in the area. In Naas the project at Mercy Convent is to provide a new 32-classroom school building. This project is in the process of a re tender for a contractor to complete this new building. At St Corban's National School, the project to provide an extension to cater for a 16 Classroom School with 2 SEN base classes is currently at Stage 1 of Architectural Planning. A proposed new primary school which was due to open in September 2021 has been deferred to open at a later date. At Naas Girls School a project has been devolved to the National Development Finance Agency (NDFA) for delivery as part of a programme of school building projects to provide a new 1,000 pupil school with 1 SEN Base class. As the project is at an early stage in the delivery process, it is not possible at this time to give a date for its completion. A project to provide a new 1,000 pupil school, Naas Community College, has been devolved for delivery to Kildare & Wicklow Educational Training Board (KWETB). Work began on site in November 2019. In addition at Holy Child National School and Additional School Accommodation project to provide two mainstream and 2 SEN classrooms has also been approved. The project is the design stage. A stage 1 report has not yet been received by the Department. (Natural News) A report has found that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided election officials with over $500 million to help his effort to violate election laws. Many other big tech corporations have been found trying to lobby the Democratic Party to get their employees government jobs. The report was published by The Amistad Project of the conservative law firm the Thomas More Society. The report alleges that Zuckerberg used the money he provided to election officials to influence the election in favor of the Democratic Partys nominee, former vice president Joe Biden. What appears to have happened here is that dollars sourced from Zuckerberg have been used to fund a public function that is to be performed under the auspices of public election officials with taxpayer funding, said lawyer and cybersecurity expert Scott Watnik. But when it comes to election infrastructure, each state is required to treat people equally under the law the 14th Amendment applies. Its no secret at this point that the funds were not disbursed in an even-handed way in terms of election infrastructure. Far from that, the funds were distributed to favor select, left-leaning demographic areas over others, including in swing states. The report further states that a large bulk of Zuckerbergs money went to a little-known progressive nonprofit, Center for Tech and Civic Life. While it is technically listed as a nonpartisan organization, the nonprofit has provided funding for ballot collection sites in jurisdictions dominated by Democratic voters and considered state election integrity laws as obstacles and nuisances to be ignored or circumvented, wrote the authors of the report. The report then goes on to talk about how a well-funded network of nonprofits and foundations like the Center for Tech and Civic Life used the events of the previous year such as the global Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as a justification to funnel millions of dollars in violation of the Help America Vote Act to counties and municipalities in battleground states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. These organizations purportedly did this in the name of safe elections. The large and illegitimate infusion of private funding allowed these Democratic-leaning districts to spend roughly $47 per voter, compared to the $4 to $7 normally spent per voter in traditionally Republican jurisdictions. Amistad Project director Phil Kline said that action must be taken now to prevent the further privatization of future elections. The American public deserves transparent and fair elections, he said, not lawless elections directed by powerful private interests. Zuckerberg paid for the election judges; he purchased the drop boxes contrary to state law; he ordered the consolidation of the counting facilities; Zuckerberg paid the local officials who boarded up the windows to the counting room; Zuckerberg money purchased the machines, Dominion and otherwise; and Zuckerberg money was contributed to secretaries of state, like Michigans Jocelyn Benson, who has fought transparency in this election. Listen to the Situation Update, a special breaking news episode of the Health Ranger Report, a podcast by Mike Adams the Health Ranger. In this episode, the Health Ranger talks about how the election theater is being used as a cover for the global extermination agenda. Multiple Big Tech companies join influencing Biden Zuckerberg illegally funneling money into the elections is only the tip of the iceberg. Multiple Big tech alumni have already been tapped to join either Bidens transition team or his administration. Christian Tom was announced as a digital director for Bidens Presidential Inaugural Committee on Dec. 28. He had previously worked for big tech companies like Twitter, Google and YouTube in senior revenue roles. Facebook has also had several former high-level employees enter Bidens team. Former Facebook director Jessica Hertz has signed on as a general counsel for the Democratic transition team. Former program manager Austin Lin has been signed on to the agency review team of the Executive Office of the President. Former board of directors members Jeffrey Zients and Erskine Bowles have also joined Bidens team. Zients has been tapped to be Bidens coronavirus czar, while Bowles is serving as an advisor for the transition team. Two Amazon officials have been hired in the agency review teams for the Department of State and the Office of Management and Budget. Many more big tech executives have joined the transition team. Anonymous sources have informed Reuters that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and other big tech corporations are lobbying the Biden team to get some of their employees hired in senior government positions. In fact, Google CEO and billionaire Eric Schmidt has been attempting to pressure the Biden team to get some of his recommendations appointed to the Department of the Defense. Google is reportedly attempting to pursue military contracts and defense work. (Related: Pentagon cutting support for CIA counterterrorism operations, which are really black hat execution and kidnapping ops.) Bowen Xiao of alternative news outlet The Epoch Times speculates that the attempts to infiltrate a possible future Biden administration are a way to influence the Democrats to cease the antitrust probes currently being conducted by President Donald Trumps Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission against big tech corporations like Google and Facebook. Learn more about how big tech corporations like Facebook, Twitter and Google are using their enormous wealth and power to influence the government at TechGiants.news. Sources include: TheEpochTimes.com Newsmax.com LifeSiteNews.com Reuters.com Photo: The Canadian Press FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a briefing about the upcoming presidential inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, at FEMA headquarters, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool) The FBI is tracking an extensive amount of concerning online chatter, including calls for armed protests leading up to next week's presidential inauguration, Director Chris Wray said Thursday. Wray, in his first public appearance since the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, said in a security briefing for Vice-President Mike Pence that the FBI remains concerned about the potential for violence at protests and rallies in Washington and in state capitols around the country. Those events could bring armed individuals near government buildings and elected officials, Wray warned, while also noting, One of the real challenges in this space is trying to distinguish whats aspirational versus whats intentional." Wray said the FBI was receiving a significant amount of information that it was pushing out to other law enforcement agencies ahead of the inauguration. Information-sharing is critical before any significant public event like the inauguration, but the issue is receiving particular scrutiny because of signs law enforcement was unprepared for the violent, deadly surge at the Capitol by loyalists of President Donald Trump. Federal officials have warned local law enforcement agencies that the riot at the Capitol is likely to inspire others with violent intentions. We're looking at individuals who may have an eye towards repeating that same kind of violence that we saw last week, Wray said, adding that since January 6, the FBI has identified over 200 suspects. We know who you are. If you're out there, an FBI agent is coming to find you," he added. More than 100 people have been arrested so far, Wray said, and there are countless other investigations. States nationwide have already been stepping up security in preparation for possible armed protests and violence this weekend, particularly at statehouses amid legislative sessions and inaugural ceremonies. Officials are reassessing their security plans for high-risk targets and police in major cities are preparing to be put on tactical alert if necessary. An FBI bulletin earlier this week warned of potential armed protests in all 50 states. To monitor threats, share intelligence and decide how to allocate resources, the FBI during the inauguration will operate a round-the-clock command post at headquarters and at each of its 56 field offices, Wray said. Our posture is aggressive, and it's going to stay that way through the inauguration, he said. Separately, Pence returned to the Capitol on Thursday for the first time since the attempted insurrection forced security to whisk him to a secure location after rioters interrupted his work overseeing the congressional count of Electoral College votes. The vice-president visited with guard troops keeping watch outside the Capitol, telling them hes familiar with the National Guard because he used to be a governor. Thank you for stepping forward for your country, Pence said. He told the troops they would be get to witness the transfer of power and thanked them for their service. Its been my great honour to serve as your vice-president, Pence added, before ending with another round of thanks and wishing the troops a safe inauguration and a swearing-in of a new president and vice-president. In response, the guardsmen yelled, Hooah. Asking people to join the farmers' "satyagraha" against the Modi government, Congress leader on Friday spoke out in support of the ongoing protests and against rising in the country. The Congress is observing the day as Kisan Adhikar Divas and will take out protest marches in all state capitals. Participating in the "SpeakUpForKisanAdhikar" campaign of his party, Gandhi said on Twitter, "The country's farmers are holding a satyagraha against the arrogant Modi Government to win their rights." "The entire country today is raising its voice against the atrocities being committed on farmers and the rise in price a of petrol and diesel. You should also join this campaign and be a part of this satyagraha," he added in his Twitter post in Hindi. The party has backed the farmers' agitation and demanded a repeal of the Centre's three new farm laws. The "SpeakUpForKisanAdhikar" campaign was launched on a day the government and farmers are set to hold their ninth round of talks in a bid to end the deadlock. (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.) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) The Philippine government has moved to temporarily ban foreign travelers from the United Arab Emirates and Hungary starting Sunday due to the threat of the new COVID-19 variant, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said on Friday. In an advisory, Roque said the travel ban will be from 12:01 a.m. of January 17 to January 31. Travelers from these countries who will arrive before Sunday are allowed to enter the Philippines, but they have to complete the 14-day facility-based quarantine even if their RT-PCR test results are negative. Filipino citizens coming from these two countries can still enter the Philippines even after January 17, but the government noted they have to undergo an absolute facility-based 14-day quarantine period regardless of their swab test result. "All unaccompanied minor Filipino citizens coming from countries/jurisdictions where travel restrictions are in place on account of the new variants of COVID-19, shall not be allowed boarding by the airlines until January 31, 2021, except minors returning through the repatriation program of the national government," the statement read, noting they would be turned over to the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. Two days ago, the Department of Health said the first case of the new COVID-19 variant in the Philippines was detected from a Filipino who returned home from the UAE. The UAE already reported cases of the new COVID-19 variant in December, but it is only now that the Philippines has decided to close its borders from the said state. This variant is believed to be more contagious and is linked to the recent spike of infections in the UK. Existing ban covering over 30 countries has been extended until January 31, the government earlier announced. Nepal crisis will not come in the way of bi-lateral ties with India: Sources No Beijing, only Delhi says former Nepal PM on ties with India Nepals foreign minister to co-chair JCM with Jaishankar today India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, the foreign minister of Nepal will meet with External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar today. This is the first face-to-face meeting of the two ministers since the border row between India and Nepal. Gyawali will co-chair the India-Nepal Joint Commission meeting along with Jaishankar. Anurag Srivastava, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson said, "the Joint Commission is an important mechanism that provides the opportunity of reviewing at a high level the entire gamut of our bilateral partnership and providing political guidance to further enhance the special and unique ties that we enjoy. We look forward to constructive discussions on the numerous sectors that encompass our bilateral agenda." Nepal-India relations will reach new height says K P Oli The talks are being held a month and half after the high-level diplomatic visit to Nepal in November, when Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla called on Nepal's Prime Minister, K P Sharma Oli and Gyawali. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News When asked if the border row would be discussed, Srivastava said that India's position on the same is clear. Let me say that the JCM and boundary talks are separate mechanisms, the MEA spokesperson also said. Advertisement Shoppers have complained of empty shelves in UK supermarkets with alcohol and staples including broccoli, tomatoes and cheese all missing as new Brexit rules hampered lorry drivers bringing in food from the EU and left truckers stranded at Dover for three days or more. Cauliflower packs, citrus fruit, aubergines, courgettes, mushrooms, strawberries, raspberries, melons and blueberries as well as products like French wine, Champagne, Cognac and brie and Italian olive oil and mozzarella are showing as unavailable at major supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and online giant Ocado. Frozen food is also low at some stores including cod and prawns from Iceland and Norway while British exports to the continent including fresh fish are left to rot on Scottish docks because of delays at ports. Shoppers described their frustration at not being able to buy the fresh fruit and vegetables they wanted in a Sainsbury's store in Melton, Leicestershire today - with a Sainsbury's spokesperson telling Leicestershire Live the store had suffered delivery delays due to 'an operational issue at one of our depots'. In an attempt to reassure UK shoppers, Sainsbury's told MailOnline: 'We have good availability and encourage customers to shop as normal. Stores have regular deliveries to replenish shelves.' The problem at food production plants of staff going sick or needing to shield or self-isolate is an issue for the entire food industry, particularly chicken and red meat processors, while a ban on flights from South Africa and South America is also believed to hitting the supply of good such as wine, fruit and vegetables. Ministers are preparing to allow supermarket lorries to skip queues at the Channel ports as fears of disruption to food supply chains into the UK intensify while there are also delays of clothes, beer and chocolate from Germany. Experts have warned that supplies are being squeezed by post-Brexit red tape at ports including France demanding that truckers have Covid tests which can take 72 hours to give a result before being let into Europe disturbing the flow of containers through Dover and Folkestone. Polish lorry driver Adrian Klapczynski, who is attempting to transport steel to his home country, said: 'I've been here for three days. I need paperwork so I can go to Dover. People in the office keep telling me to come back the next day. This is a big problem. I have to leave here.' In a further blow to Boris Johnson over the UK's trade borders, a senior Northern Ireland politician warned that Brexit rules that have left supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland empty of fresh food risk undermining the Good Friday Agreement. And the flow of good over the Irish Sea to mainland Britain of meat, milk and fresh food is also disrupted. And it is no easier for British businesses trying to export their goods to Europe with Scottish seafood firms are just 'days from collapse' and forced to leave fish rotting on the docks because of border chaos since leaving the EU, industry leaders have warned. The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations has said Boris Johnson surrendered to a 'neo-colonial relationship' with the EU on fish under the Brexit agreement that came into force on January 1 with products like langoustine taking five days to arrive on the continent rather than the usual 24 hours. Britain's ports were already under huge pressure before January 1 after Covid-19 shattered the system for shipping goods around the world causing a shortage of containers and supply chain problems from covid-hit China, Vietnam and Japan hitting Christmas presents and electronics, including the PS5 and Apple headphones. The container shortage was exacerbated by a lack of staff across the global supply chain - including sailors, hauliers and warehouse workers - due to people falling ill or having to quarantine because of coronavirus. This led to shipping firms falling behind when it came to retrieving empty containers from European ports and taking them back to factories in Asia. The chaos at the ports came as: Boris Johnson was urged to double his target for 14million vaccinations by mid-February today amid signs brutal lockdowns have finally started to curb the coronavirus outbreak; A Brazilian coronavirus variant that experts fear could make vaccines less effective may have first emerged in Britain in November, it emerged today as No10 was accused of 'putting lives at risk' by being too slow to close the borders; Cambridge University researchers believe the R rate - the average number of people each infected person passes the disease onto - may have dipped to as low as 0.6 in London and the South East. The figure must be below one for an outbreak to shrink. Another 48,682 infections were recorded yesterday, down 7.5 per cent on the same day last week, but deaths in the past 24 hours rose by 1,248 - a 7.4 per cent climb from last week's 1,162; Pictured: some Fruit and Vegetables were running low at a Tesco in South London Depleted shelves at a Marks & Spencer supermarket in Dublin's city centre as Brexit border chaos ensues Some frozen food was running low at an Asda in South London as choice is reduced for shoppers because of post-Brexit chaos at the ports Champagne, frozen fish and some juices were also in short supply in Asda and Aldi in South London today Fresh vegetables were in short supply at the Sainsbury's in Dursley, Gloucestershire, this afternoon in a familiar scene across the country French spirits like Cognac and Grand Marnier are missing as well as German pilsner in UK supermarkets today Fresh food such as aubergine, chanterelle mushrooms, baby plum tomatoes, broccoli and courgettes are in short supply at UK supermarkets, MailOnline can reveal Truckers queuing to get the paperwork sorted at the Ashford truck stop in Kent as red tape begins to bite Dozens of lorries queue at junction 10a of the M20 as they wait to get the documentation to leave Britain with drivers claiming they have been waiting for days for clearance Lorries queue for a customs facility in Ashford, Kent, as Channel traffic builds up following a quiet start to the year and the end of the transition period PM accused of surrendering to 'neo-colonial relationship' with EU over Brexit fish deal The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations has said Boris Johnson surrendered to a 'neo-colonial relationship' with the EU on fish under the Brexit agreement that came into force on January 1. A third of fishing boats in Scotland are currently tied up at harbours and crewmen are forced to stay on land without pay. The industry is estimated to be losing 1million a day. A lack of buyers has seen many species of Scottish seafood plummet in price by around 50 per cent this week. Fishermen have been unable to export their produce on time following the UK's departure from the European Union due to delays with the new customs procedures. A letter in The Times said: 'It is not that, in the end, you were forced to concede in the face of an intransigent and powerful opponent that has caused such fury across our industry, it is that you have tried to present the agreement as a major success when it is patently clear that it is not.' Advertisement Hauliers struggling to get the correct paperwork to return to the EU are being forced to wait for days at a Kent lorry park. Queues of more than a mile have built up on the approach to Ashford International truck stop this week. Steve Cock, a director at The Custom House, a firm which provides lorry drivers with the documents they need to move goods in and out of the UK, said the disruption has been exacerbated by Border Force officials occupying the truck stop. This is preventing drivers using his company's services from taking advantage of its 600 parking spaces. 'It's not doing (Border Force) any good being here,' Mr Cock said. 'The whole process is slowed down. 'Because they refuse to let us use the truck stop to park our vehicles, that's causing all sorts of problems because drivers will park anywhere they please. 'They're inhibiting a commercial enterprise that is there to help them.' He added: 'The French were ready for this, the Dutch were ready for this. It's an embarrassment that we never were.' Grant Shapps told Sky News he was 'working well' with French ministers and it was the biggest testing scheme for lorry drivers in the world. Asked about the PCR issue, he said: 'What the French PM actually said was that border workers would be excluded hauliers are included in that.' 'For the time being no, it's lateral flow testing, and the French and us work very closely together on that to make sure everybody is tested. He added: 'We are finding very low levels of coronavirus, something like 0.3 which is much lower than the national average here or in France. 'Long distance drivers, they live in their lorries by and large, they sleep in their cabs, it is quite a solitary arrangement and it means they are not very likely to be carrying the coronavirus around.' Polish haulier Hubert Kempara, 30, expressed his relief after France said truckers would be exempt from the new PCR test ruling coming into force on Monday. He arrived at the Motis freight clearance stop in Dover at around 10am and hopes to have crossed the Channel with his cargo of British fish set for Poland by the afternoon. Mr Kempara said: 'It is such a good thing that this new test rule does not apply to us. 'The new rules are hard enough for lorry drivers to follow so this would have made things even more difficult. 'I really don't know how they could have expected us to wait around for 72 hours for the result. It would have been like Christmas all over again.' He applied for his export documents at the nearby office within five minutes before waiting to get the all clear. Mr Kempara added: 'I have had no problems so far. It has been okay. Fingers crossed. 'If I have a problem, I call my boss and they sort it out. 'But we have been well prepared for this a long time ago. 'I know others have not been so lucky with Brexit.' Scottish seafood firms are just 'days from collapse' unless emergency cash is paid out to compensate for the Brexit border chaos, industry leaders have warned. Desperate bosses said they face imminent closure as they urged Boris Johnson to deliver on his pledge to finally support the struggling sector. A third of fishing boats in Scotland are currently tied up at harbours and crewmen are forced to stay on land without pay. The industry is estimated to be losing 1million a day. A lack of buyers has seen many species of Scottish seafood plummet in price by around 50 per cent this week. Fishermen have been unable to export their produce on time following the UK's departure from the European Union due to delays with the new customs procedures. Jamie McMillan, managing director of Lochfyne Langoustines, has threatened to dump tons of rotting seafood at Downing Street next week if the problems are not resolved. He said: 'We can't continue to let this happen for another week because we will be out of business.' There are also gaps in the world foods sections as flights carrying products are also disrupted because of the virus Empty food shelves in Tesco, Belfast, as supermarkets suffer disruption to food supplies after the end of the Brexit transition period Depleted shelves of tomatoes and fresh fruit at Asda in Leeds today as many products go missing because of ports chaos Lorries queue in at the border control of the Port of Dover today as red tape causes more delays and problems with both imports and exports into the UK Lorries queue for a customs facility in Ashford, Kent, as Channel traffic builds up following a quiet start to the year and the end of the transition period A truck approaches the entrance to the Port of Dover as police officers prepare to check documents as the flow of goods from Europe slows Workers unload sacs of scallops at Oban in Scotland where seafood exporters say products are being left to rot This glotech graphic show the main imports from Europe into the UK, with beef from Ireland, wine from France and vegetables the biggest ticket items entering the country each year. There are concerns the flow of goods The key issues causing delays at British ports Problems at ports are being caused by a series of problems occurring at once which are not all unique to the UK. COVID - shipping container shortage The system for shipping goods around the world stopped working properly when economies shut down and reopened at different times as they dealt with Covid. This led to shipping firms falling behind when it came to retrieving empty containers from European ports and taking them back to factories in Asia. The container shortage is being exacerbated by a lack of staff across the global supply chain - including sailors, hauliers and warehouse workers - due to people falling ill or having to quarantine. The problems caused by Covid have been compounded by a surge in demand caused by: BREXIT - customs and stockpiling France is demanding lorry drivers heading into the EU are required to provide a negative Covid-19 test within 72-hours of travelling. They also need to have paperwork filled out in advance. Companies have been stockpiling goods out of fear of having to pay tariffs, or because they are concerned that new customs procedures after Brexit will delay imports. Advertisement Supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables were also down across the supermarkets, particularly the berries and soft fruit from Europe. At Tesco in Ipswich Road, Norwich, there were no strawberries left. Staff said they had supplies at the beginning of the week, but not for the last few days. Strawberries and raspberries were also missing at the Sainsbury's in Castle Vale retail park, Birmingham, which was also struggling with supplies of cauliflower and cabbage. They had none at all on Tuesday and none again on Fridat. A nearly bare shelf of bottled water greeted customers just after 1pm at Waitrose in Wilmslow, Cheshire. There were shortages of the supermarket's own brand as well as Evian water and Highland's Water. One woman shopper, joked: 'There must be a lot of thirsty people round here.' There were also shortages of marmite, grapes and French and Belgian beer. But a shop worker denied there were shortages with a masked silver-haired man, who was stacking wine, saying: 'Oh no, we just have brought the stocks out yet'. Empty spaces were also evident in the fruit and vegetable sections in a big Asda in Trafford Park, Gtr Manchester right by the Trafford Centre. There were gaps in boxes of grapefruit and watermelons. Fresh orange juice was also low. And olive oil was also in short supply. Speaking outside the store, father-of-one Mike Kerr, 38, of nearby Davyhulme, said: 'There seems to be less of everything. 'Mind you there are no massive gaps or anything. It's strange as the shop wasn't busy at all. 'Perhaps they haven't had deliveries. I bought some beer and there seemed to be less than there nearly is. 'Maybe people are drinking more or they can't get it.' Poppadoms were also running low in Tesco in Wythenshawe, Manchester and there were a few empty shelves in the milk sale. There were also a few bare spaces in the milk aisle in Sainsbury's in Cheadle, Gtr Manchester. And there was also just one box of frozen cooked mussels in Aldi in Sharston, Manchester. It came after shipping firm DFDS announced a further delay in exports of Scottish consignments of seafood to the EU. It halted shipments last week after delays in getting new paperwork for the EU border posts in France. Some loads which would normally take 24 hours to reach France from Glasgow are taking three to five days to get there, reducing the freshness and value of the food. Last week food industry experts and the Cabinet minister with responsibility for Brexit, Michael Gove, warned that problems at the ports are likely to escalate from today as the number of trucks going through Dover and the Channel Tunnel rises to normal levels after a New Year lull as the French step up enforcement of post-Brexit paperwork. Freight expert John Shirley said: 'The chaos has begun. Organising even the simplest load to Europe has become an almost impossible task due to the mountain of red tape brought in on January 1.' The Road Haulage Association said there are already logjams and this situation will escalate when border controls with France are stepped up from today. The group estimates that of the 2,000 outbound lorries a day through Dover and the Channel Tunnel last week, one in five were turned back. It said problems will surge as these numbers increase to the normal 6,000 a day. Its managing director for policy, Rod McKenzie, said: 'Drivers are being turned back for a variety of reasons, including not having a valid Covid test. At the same time, they are being told the paperwork has not been done satisfactorily'. Mr Gove admitted: 'In the weeks ahead, we expect there will be significant additional disruption.' Commercial director at fresh produce wholesaler Nature's Choice, Vernon Mascarenhas, said: 'We will begin to see gaps on shelves from this Wednesday. The only way to resolve it is for the Government to sort out the paperwork issue. 'This should have been at the top of the Government's agenda, but it did not even cross their radar.' A lorry driver waits in his cab while his paperwork is processed at a customs facility in Ashford, Kent Lorry drivers manoeuvre their trucks as they park before speaking to customs but traffic between the EU and Britain remains down PCR vs lateral flow Covid tests: Chaos as UK and France clash over type of testing used for truckers The French government is demanding that any travellers from the UK, including truckers, take PCR tests before arriving in the country, which can take up to three days to return a result. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PCR TEST AND A LATERAL FLOW? A PCR test can cost upwards of 180 per person, with the swab needing to be processed in a lab. The UK, on the other hand, favours faster tests which are not lab based and give a result within 15 minutes. These rapid coronavirus tests, known as lateral flow tests, are ones that can be done on the spot using portable equipment. They are faster and cheaper than lab-based PCR tests, which the government uses to diagnose people, but are less accurate. LATERAL FLOW TESTS ARE RAPID - BUT CAN SACRIFICE ACCURACY In a lateral flow test a swab is used to get a sample from the person's nose or throat and it is then processed in a small machine that tries to detect the coronavirus by mixing the sample with something the virus would react with. If there is a reaction in the mixture it suggests that the person is carrying coronavirus. If not, they get a negative result. This process can be completed in as little as 15 minutes. You take your own swab though a professional on site processes it through the machine. Results from trials have varied wildly and show the tests perform better when the swabs are done by trained medics and worse when people do them themselves. PCR TESTS CAN TAKE SEVERAL DAYS TO GET RESULTS - BUT ARE MORE ACCURATE These lateral flow tests differ from the gold standard PCR test - known scientifically as polymerase chain reaction testing. PCR tests also use a swab but this is then processed using high-tech laboratory equipment to analyse the genetic sequence of the sample to see if any of it matches the genes of coronavirus. This is a much more long-winded and expensive process, involving multiple types of trained staff, and the analysis process can take hours, with the whole process from swab to someone receiving their result taking days. It is significantly more accurate, however. In ideal conditions the tests are almost 100 per cent accurate at spotting the virus, although this may be more like 70 per cent in the real world. SO, WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF LATERAL FLOW TESTING? Extreme accuracy may be a drawback for PCR now that so many people have been infected, however, with the tests able to detect shreds of the virus in people who recovered weeks ago and are no longer infectious, which may lead them to have to self-isolate unnecessarily. Lateral flow tests are more likely to miss people who are carrying the virus but, experts say, do have value as a way of weeding out people carrying large amounts of the virus and therefore most likely to be spreading the disease. Advertisement Last month the French government banned HGV drivers from crossing the English Channel in a desperate bid to prevent the spread of 'mutant' coronavirus detected in London and the South and East of England. The unprecedented ban left thousands of lorry drivers stranded in Kent during the Christmas period and led to clashes with police at the border. This was only resolved when the UK gave drivers lateral flow tests which take 20 minutes to produce a positive or negative result. But now the French government is worried about the accuracy of the tests and has called on the UK to introduce a fully saliva-based PCR test for the truckers, according to the Times. Ministers, who are already drawing up plans to allow supermarket lorries to bypass queues at the Channel ports amid fears of food shortages in the UK, are concerned that the demand will result in gridlock at the border again. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) said that drivers already queue for up to eight hours in the Waterbrook Park estate while waiting for approval for border paperwork. The park is being used for customs checks until March, when the massive 1,700-capacity Kent lorry park will then take over operations. A spokesperson said: 'Trucks are sat there for hours at a time and not able to pass go. It's no surprise to us. The systems they're using are untested. 'They've had no time whatsoever to get used to a raft of new processes. It's a perfect storm of the worrying delays that were going to happen. The worry is that the capacity and volumes are below usual and it's quieter than usual.' It is thought that massive queues are being caused by a lack of staff to process paperwork at the site, with traffic at Dover having increased in the past week and now running at two-thirds of the normal rate for the time of year. Meanwhile, Brexit disruption has lead to deserted 'ghost ferries' leaving for France, with boats on the Dover to Calais route which should be filled with HGVs and drivers eerily quiet - while many trucks are being held up at factories, warehouses and truck stops across the UK, rather than heading to Europe. Certain vehicles will be given access to open lanes on the M20 in Kent during delays at the Port of Dover and the Eurotunnel terminal in order to cross the Channel, refill and return as quickly as possible. The consultation document issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says these are 'emergency measures only to be used in extremis and for the shortest time possible'. The scheme would be triggered once congestion on the approach roads to Dover reaches eight hours, and deliveries to UK supermarkets fall below 75 per cent of the schedule for two consecutive days. It came as truckers queued for up to eight hours for their border paperwork to be signed off at a beleaguered Brexit lorry park in Kent. Photos show drivers left waiting in the rain in a giant queue at the Waterbrook Park estate off the M20 in Ashford, which is being used for customs checks until the end of February. In the documents, Defra said 'the potential for further disruption remains high' due to the pandemic and new border processes and procedures resulting from the end of the Brexit transition period. It went on: 'The combination of these unprecedented factors is likely to contribute to delays at the border which could, in turn, prevent the speedy return of empty goods vehicles to the EU where they can collect more food. 'Such delays are likely to have a direct impact on the UK's food supply.' DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson urged the Government to intervene to resolve the issues that have hindered the flow of food products from Great Britain to Northern Ireland since the end of the transition period. Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer and Tesco have all faced supply issues after the new customs paperwork came in following the transition period ending on January 1. Fresh fruit, vegetables and chilled meat are among the products most affected as many food suppliers face delays on getting goods into the country. Defra is also proposing to fast track Gibraltar-bound groceries, as it relies on the UK for about half of its food supply. Photos show drivers left waiting in the rain in a giant queue at the Waterbrook Park estate off the M20 in Ashford in Kent, which is being used for customs checks until the end of February Police officers manage freight lorries queueing for the Ashford International Truckstop in Ashford, Kent The site is at near capacity as Channel traffic builds up following a quiet start to the year and the end of the transition period with the European Union on December 31 The Prime Minister said 'teething problems' were to blame for a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in Ulster in the past weeks - branding the situation as 'absurd'. Truckers are queuing for hours for paperwork checks and even being delayed for using the wrong colour ink as Brexit disruption leads to deserted 'ghost ferries' leaving for France 'Ghost ferries' across the Channel as red tape delays truckers Truckers are queuing for hours for paperwork checks and even being delayed for using the wrong colour ink as Brexit disruption leads to deserted 'ghost ferries' leaving for France. Boats on the crucial Dover to Calais route that should be filled with HGVs and drivers are eerily quiet. Many trucks are being held up at factories, warehouses and truck stops across the UK, rather than heading to Europe. Delays are mainly down to hauliers having difficulty getting the correct paperwork in place to cross the Channel, as well as hold-ups in drivers getting Covid-19 tests. Separately, there has been a sharp fall in orders for British products and produce, such as shellfish, fish and pork. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) estimates that truck levels are down by 40 per cent. The RHA said drivers were left waiting for hours to get their paperwork checked at a truck stop in Ashford, Kent. Some are being held back because authorisation stamps are in the wrong place or for using the wrong colour of ink. John Shirley, a Dover-based freight handling expert, took pictures of an empty ferry on a sailing from Calais to Dover on Wednesday. 'It was eerily quiet, a ghost ferry. There were only a fraction of the trucks and drivers that would be expected,' he said. 'Lots of companies and hauliers are just not making shipments, probably because of concerns about paperwork and negotiating customs.' Advertisement It comes as Food and Drink Federation chief executive Ian Wright expressed concern about the potential for delays at the Channel ports as the numbers of lorries making the crossing picked up over the coming months. 'It will get worse. Currently volumes across the short straits are at about 2,000 lorries. They should be around 10,000. So the opportunity for the scale of concerns to rise is huge,' he said. British Retail Consortium director Andrew Opie also issued a warning over disruption to goods crossing the Channel, saying 'it will get worse before it gets better'. He said he is on watch for any impact this week and onwards, with British businesses 'still not 100% prepared' for the changes as the French step up customs checks. Rod McKenzie, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association (RHA), said the delays In Kent were 'shocking' as the industry body branded the situation a 'perfect storm'. Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy said: 'We have seen some limited disruption into the Republic of Ireland and into the North of Ireland but we're working very closely with Government on both sides of the Irish Sea to smooth the flow of products.' HMRC said the average wait time is 65 minutes in Ashford but that drivers are warned to expect delays and are encouraged to pre-book a space online. After the lengthy wait to have their documents approved, frustrated truckers then need to be tested for coronavirus before they are allowed to proceed over the Channel. The delayed, 1,700-capacity Sevington Lorry Park will take over the task from Waterbrook in March, as fears continue to grow over long delays as a result of the UK's exit from the EU, with business chiefs admitting things will 'get worse before they get better'. Under Brexit rules which came into force on January 1, hauliers headed to the EU need to obtain a Kent Access Permit and complete the correct paperwork for their cargo, or else they could be fined. It comes after chaotic scenes over Christmas saw thousands of lorries trapped in Kent when France closed its border with Britain due to the discovery of a new fast-spreading Covid variant in the UK. PM warned Good Friday Agreement is 'at risk' from Brexit trade rules that have left supermarket shelves EMPTY of fruit and vegetables Boris Johnson was warned that Brexit trade rules that have left supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland empty of fresh food risk undermining the Good Friday Agreement. DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson urged the Government to intervene to resolve the issues that have hindered the flow of food products from Great Britain to Northern Ireland since the end of the transition period. Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer and Tesco have all faced supply issues after the new customs paperwork came in following the transition period ending on January 1. Fresh fruit, vegetables and chilled meat are among the products most affected as many food suppliers face delays on getting goods into the country. The Prime Minister said 'teething problems' were to blame for a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in Ulster in the past weeks - branding the situation as 'absurd'. But Unionist Sir Jeffrey warned that the 1998 Anglo-Irish deal which ended three decades of bitter violence risks being breached as a result of disruption to post-Brexit Irish Sea trade. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'The protocol (which governs the new arrangements) is damaging the Northern Ireland economy and if it damages the Northern Ireland economy it actually undermines the Good Friday agreement. 'And furthermore, that agreement makes clear that Northern Ireland will remain an integral part of the United Kingdom unless the people of Northern Ireland vote otherwise. 'Therefore this breaches a fundamental element of the Good Friday agreement by increasingly separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain in trading terms - our biggest trading partner, our biggest trading market, and that simply doesn't help anyone in Northern Ireland.' Advertisement Posting a photo on Twitter yesterday, Mr McKenzie of the RHA wrote: 'Ashford truck stop today with drivers queuing for up to eight hours to get their border paperwork cleared then having to get COVID test afterwards for France.' A spokesperson for the association said: 'Trucks are sat there for hours at a time and not able to pass go. It's no surprise to us. The systems they're using are untested. 'Everything has been last minute. They've had no time whatsoever to get used to a raft of new processes. It's a perfect storm of the worrying delays that were going to happen. 'The worry is that the capacity and volumes are below usual and it's quieter than usual. We're really, really concerned about what happens when volumes are returned to normal.' It is thought that the queues are being caused by a lack of staff to process paperwork checks at the site. A HMRC spokesperson said: 'HMRC has set up five inland border facilities across the country for hauliers to use. Drivers are encouraged to pre-book their space at an inland border facility by using our online service, which will allow them to see how busy each site is in advance so that they can avoid delays. 'With a majority of drivers using Ashford Waterbrook, this has led to longer waiting times and we have advised drivers to expect delays. 'Current site data has shown that the average wait time is 65 minutes. However, any driver concerned about the wait time may choose to visit an alternative location.' Traffic at Dover has increased in the last week and is now running at two thirds of the normal rate for the time of the year, according to the Port of Dover. Yesterday a three and a half mile queue of lorries had built up on the M20 due to Operation Brock, according to motorists. The transport management system, which was originally devised to cope with the possible fallout of a no-deal Brexit, queues lorries in the left hand lane of the M20 - allowing other vehicles to continue flowing smoothly. In the Kent village of Sevington, a 'glut' of lorries were reported to be clogging up roads in the area. The sleepy parish, home to just over 300 people, is surrounded by the Waterbrook Park site and the partially operational giant post-Brexit Sevington Lorry Park, where Covid-19 testing is taking place. According to figures from Sevington South councillor, Paul Bartlett, 690 lorries had passed through the Waterbrook site in the 24 hours up to 9pm last night. A further 1,190 people had used the Sevington Covid testing site. Cllr Bartlett said: 'There's a lack of communication between various agencies and a lack of communication when traffic is moved between the two sites unfortunately. 'It's important to make sure that there's not a glut of them at the same time.' Diggers were at the Dover White Cliffs site in Guston on Monday to start work on a post-Brexit customs check point Work is underway on another customs checkpoint, with space for up to 1,700 lorries, in Sevington, Ashford Kent will have five customs check facilities up and running by July, which will monitor traffic using the Eurotunnel and the Port of Dover Diggers get to work on another lorry park as they carve up farmland above White Cliffs of Dover Work has begun on yet another Kent lorry park as diggers carved up farmland above the White Cliffs of Dover for a new post-Brexit customs facility. Once complete, the site in Guston, near Dover, will open as a customs checkpoint facility, with the ability to hold 1,200 lorries, should there be delays at the ports similar to those seen last month. Work is well underway at a similar facility in Sevington, Ashford, which will be able to hold up to 2,000 trucks. The sites in Guston and Sevington are set to be used for post-Brexit customs checks to prevent delays at nearby ports - with three other sites in Kent are set to also be up and running by July. But villagers are up in arms over at Guston, referred to as the Dover White Cliffs site, amid fears it will replace Manston Airport as the main holding bay for lorries in the event of cross-Channel delays. Advertisement He added that the queues around the village yesterday began at 6.30pm and lasted two hours. Earlier this week, work began on yet another Kent lorry park as diggers carved up farmland above the White Cliffs of Dover for a new post-Brexit customs facility. Once complete, the site in Guston, near Dover, will open as a customs checkpoint facility, with the ability to hold 1,200 lorries, should there be delays at the ports similar to those seen last month. The sites in Guston and Sevington are set to be used for post-Brexit customs checks to prevent delays at nearby ports - with three other sites in Kent set to also be up and running by July. But villagers are up in arms over at Guston, referred to as the Dover White Cliffs site, amid fears it will replace Manston Airport as the main holding bay for lorries in the event of cross-Channel delays. Once up and running, the 70-acre Dover White Cliffs site will carry out checks for the Port of Dover, while Sevington will monitor Eurotunnel checks. Work on the Kent coast comes after thousands of lorries trapped were trapped in the county last month when France closed its border to Britain. Lorry drivers were forced to park up at Manston Airport, where there is provision for 4,000 HGVs, as well as Ashford International Lorry Park, which has space for 200, while the M20 was also used as a holding bay under Operation Stack. Meanwhile, Kent Police has revealed it has issued more than 407 fines to HGV drivers who failed to obtain a valid Kent Access Permit before entering the county. A further 152 HGV drivers have breached traffic regulation orders, including attempting to bypass Operation Brock. Assistant Chief Constable Claire Nix of Kent Police said: 'Whilst the majority of HGV drivers travelling to Europe via the Port of Dover or Eurotunnel are entering the county with a valid Kent Access Permit in place, there are still too many who we are having to stop, fine and turn back to their point of origin. 'If this trend continues then it could potentially lead to traffic disruption here in Kent, where the volume of freight is expected to increase significantly over the next few weeks.' Truckers clash with police at Manston Airport in Kent last month, where thousands of lorries were parked up as France closed its border with Britain Lawyer who handled detainees' case loses licence Lu said after the ruling on Friday that handling a number of sensitive cases had "marked my destiny". File photo: RTHK A human rights lawyer who handled the case of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists detained on the mainland had his licence revoked on Friday, a move he said was triggered by the sensitivity of the case for Beijing. Lu Siwei together with another rights lawyer Ren Quanniu was appointed by families of two of the "Hong Kong 12", a group intercepted last August trying to flee the SAR by speedboat for Taiwan. The attempted escape came after the central government imposed a sweeping national security law on the financial hub; and some on the boat already faced prosecution in Hong Kong for activities linked to 2019's huge and often violent pro-democracy protests. Mainland authorities did not recognise the two lawyers appointed by the families, and Lu was denied access to the defendants. But just days after 10 of the group received jail sentences in late December, both lawyers received notices from mainland authorities saying their licences were to be revoked. Lu said after the ruling on Friday that handling a number of sensitive cases had "marked my destiny". The lawyer was accused of publishing "inappropriate remarks on the internet (and) seriously damaging the lawyer industry's image", according to the Sichuan justice department. Lu said before the hearing that he believed the notice was "just a cover" and that the Hong Kong case was likely a decisive factor behind the revocation. More than a dozen mainland rights lawyers have had their licences cancelled or revoked in recent years in what activists have said is an effective silencing by authorities. The other lawyer Ren said last week he also rejected the charges against him, which accuse him of "causing a negative impact on society." Ren also represented Wuhan citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was jailed for four years in late December. His hearing is next week. (AFP) The goal here should be to reduce unwanted calls and texts, not expand the ability of marketers and politicians alike to harvest and sell users information, then use it to flood our cellphones. The Republican Attorneys General Association is facing increasing criticism for a January 6 robocall that urged supporters to participate in a march to the Capitol building which has since been characterized as an insurrection. In the wake of that riot, Facebook snatched away President Trumps megaphone. Consumer attorney Sergei Lemberg (https://www.lemberglaw.com) reminds politicians and the public that politicians, marketers, and Facebooks ability to robocall and robotext consumers without consent is at stake in the Supreme Courts upcoming Duguid v. Facebook decision. Lemberg called out Facebook for hypocrisy. Facebooks about-face is disingenuous, given that the company has worked hand-in-glove with President Trumps Department of Justice to gut the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. In Duguid v. Facebook (Docket 19-511, U.S. Supreme Court.), argued on behalf of Lembergs client before the U.S. Supreme Court on December 8, 2020, the U.S. Justice Department backed the social media platform in arguing that 1991s Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) doesnt prohibit unwanted robotexts and robocalls generated by auto-dialers. Lemberg notes that the implications of the Duguid case shouldnt be lost in the wake of troubling post-election events. Facebook, together with the U.S. Attorney General, is asking the High Court to gut the TCPA, he said. If the Supreme Court agrees, political campaigns and marketers alike will be able to robocall and robotext consumers, with or without their consent. Given that Americans received an estimated 3 billion election-related robocalls and texts during the 2020 cycle, Lemberg sees the potential for a tsunami of unwanted texts and calls, some with questionable intentions. While Lemberg welcomes the Courts upcoming decision, he declares, The goal here should be to reduce unwanted calls and texts, not expand the ability of marketers and politicians alike to harvest and sell users information, then use it to flood our cellphones. (This press release references Facebook Inc. v. Duguid (Docket 19-511, U.S. Supreme Court.) About Lemberg Law The attorneys at Lemberg Law represent consumers in individual and class action cases involving the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and lemon law, among others. For more information, contact: Sergei Lemberg, Esq. Lemberg Law http://www.LembergLaw.com The View 2020 a milestone year for Black Lives Matter movement. Whats ahead for 2021? In June, a contingent from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB took part in a "White Coats 4 Black Lives" march from the medical school to Niagara Square. Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki DAVID J. HILL The wave of that change has been seen all across the country, bringing people from all races together to demand symbolic and, more importantly, structural changes supporting the value of Black lives. Kelly Patterson, associate professor School of Social Work Rayshard Brooks. George Floyd. Daniel Prude. Breonna Taylor. These are the now-familiar names of just a few of the many Black people killed by police in 2020. It was a year that magnified many flaws in America, perhaps none more so than the nations mistreatment of people of color. With each killing, protestors flooded the streets in a unifying demand for change. 2020 was a difficult year in the nations long and complex history of race relations. But it was also a milestone year for the Black Lives Matter movement. Why? Because Black Lives Matter has become solidified in the American psyche, says Kelly Patterson, associate professor in the School of Social Work who studies the intersection of poverty and inequality, as well as race and class. Blackness matters, and always has. But now there is a heightened awareness of differential outcomes and disparate impacts based solely on the color of ones skin. That was evident, too, last week when a mob of President Donald Trumps supporters stormed the hub of democracy in the U.S., Patterson says. Even as we watched in horror the insurrection on the American Capitol, almost in unison across news outlets people were asking: What if those mobs had been Black? Floyd killing propelled a fervency to make change The May killing of Floyd by police in Minneapolis was clearly the turning point in 2020, Patterson says. There was an awakening, mostly by white folks, to a reality that Blacks have been enduring for centuries: Our lives mean less, and are taken for nothing, she says. The Black Lives Matter movement itself is over 7 years old and has accomplished much in that time period, but George Floyds murder was a critical catalyst that shifted public opinion in favor of the movement. It propelled a fervency to make change, says Patterson. The wave of that change has been seen all across the country, bringing people from all races together to demand symbolic and, more importantly, structural changes supporting the value of Black lives. I feel that was a spiritual sacrifice that propelled us all to think deeper about ourselves and to think about the changes we need in the world, says Michael Mwenso, a UB visiting professor of the arts and leader of Mwenso & the Shakes, an internationally acclaimed troupe of musical artists. That moment really changed the whole world. To see that execution happen made whats going on in the world more real. While the movement has been based largely in the U.S., it has had global impact, says Mwenso, who was born in Sierra Leone and raised in London. You saw it in places all over the world, where people were reacting to a sort of trauma that I think weve been attuned to but never healed from, he says. 2020 was the year for it to be exposed and for Black people to be able to express themselves and have the space to say, We know theres been a lot of changes but we know theres still a lot of BS going on. Mwenso has been teaching a program through the UB Arts Collaboratory, in collaboration with Bronwyn Keenan, titled Protest, Hope and Resilience through Black Arts. Its a personally curated curriculum of history and music that explores how people of color have been agents of positive change and inclusion. These are the types of programs and conversations that will help push the Black Lives Matter movement forward, he says. Moving forward in 2021 It was required of any sensible government to understand the sentiments of farmers agitating against the Centre's new laws, but it didn't happen and so there will be consequences of the same, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said on Friday. Speaking to reporters here, Pawar also said it will be "strange" if governors of states take part in a mass contact campaign for collecting funds for Ram temple construction in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya. Pawar said he "does not take seriously" the issue of renaming cities like Aurangabad or Osmanabad, but added there was no discord in Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) constituents Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress on it. Farmers have been protesting near Delhi border seeking withdrawal of the Centre's three new farm laws. "The farmers are protesting in such cold. Protesters have occupied a 5 kilometre stretch. They are firm on their demands. It was required of any sensible government to understand the sentiments of the farmers. But it didn't happen, so there will be consequences of the same," Pawar said. On a query on the mass contact programme for seeking funds for Ram temple construction, Pawar said it is the right of any organisation to seek funds. "But I have heard, I don't know how far it is true, that governors of states are also taking part in it. If that news is true, then it is strange," Pawar said, without naming anyone. The former Union minister said a governor holds a key post and belongs to the state and all its people. "It would be a sign of being sensible for them (governors) to keep away from such issues on which people held opposite views," he added. On the issue of renaming Aurangabad and Osmanabad cities, Pawar said he does not look at it seriously. "There is no discord among us. You call it Aurangabad, Dharashiv or call it by any other name. I don't look at this issue seriously. Hence, I have not commented on this," he added. The Shiv Sena has been pitching for renaming Aurangabad and Osmanabad as Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv respectively. The Congress had earlier expressed its opposition to renaming Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar. . Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Friday fired a barrage of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and launched new bomb-carrying drones in a military drill held in the countrys central desert of Iran, state media reported. A combined attack was carried out on a hypothetical enemy base and the destruction of all predetermined targets using a new generation of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and drones, Irans semi-official Tasnim news agency said. The aircraft used in the drill strongly resembled the so-called Delta drones used in a 2019 attack on two major Saudi oil facilities, according to The Associated Press. Tehran denied any involvement in the attack, and Yemens Iran-aligned Houthi rebels took credit. The show of force, which was attended by IRGC Commander-in-Chief Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami and IRGC aerospace Commander Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, comes days after Iran announced plans to resume patrols in the Red Sea and tested short-range naval missiles as part of a two-day drill in the Gulf of Oman. Tensions between Tehran and Washington are running high in the waning days of Donald Trumps presidency as Iran marks the one year anniversary of the US drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. The Trump administration has ramped up its economic pressure campaign on Iran, imposing sanctions on the countrys metals, banking and oil sectors. On Wednesday, the United States branded the chief of staff of Iraqs Popular Mobilization Units a designated global terrorist, accusing Abu Fadak of working with Irans elite Quds Force. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced he would be designating the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, and days later, he accused Iran of providing safe harbor and logistical support to al-Qaeda. The punishing moves by the Trump administration could complicate President-elect Joe Bidens pledge to revive diplomacy with Iran. If Iran returns to strict compliance under the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, Biden says he will reenter the multilateral pact as a starting point for follow-on negotiations to tighten and lengthen Irans nuclear constraints and address its missile program. But Iran has raised the stakes, announcing earlier this month that it had resumed 20% uranium enrichment at its underground Fordow facility near the city of Qom. In another major breach of the nuclear agreement, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations said this week that Iran had begun to produce uranium metal, a fuel used in nuclear reactors. 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 The U.S. government has just declassified one of its most sensitive national security documentsits 2018 strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific, which was formally classified SECRET and not for release to foreign nationals. The full text, minus a few small redactions, was made public late on 12 January (U.S. east coast time), having originally been cleared for publication on 5 January, prior to the turmoil in Washington. The release of this document will be rightly overshadowed in the news cycle by the aftermath of the disgraceful domestic attack on the U.S. Capitol, but for observers interested in the future security of the world beyond American shores, it will be of long-term interest and warrant close reading. Long before historians can debate the Trump administrations legacy in this vital region, this highly unusual step of fast-forward declassificationthe text was not due for public release until 2043brings an authoritative clarity to the public record. The slightly reassuring news is that beneath President Donald Trumps unpredictability, conceit and unilateralism, the policy professionals were striving to advance a more serious and coherent agenda. There was a plan after all, however incomplete and insufficiently resourced its implementation. The framework and its covering cabinet memorandum are dated February 2018, a time when the contours of strategic rivalry in the Indo-Pacific were rapidly taking shape. Although the text would have involved negotiation among agencies, these are technically White House/National Security Council (NSC) documents. Lead authorship can be attributed to the then national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, and, in particular, to the then NSC director for Asia and later deputy national security advisor, Matt Pottinger, who was among officials to abruptly resign last week after the mob assault on the U.S. legislature. In a covering note explaining his advice to declassify the framework, outgoing National Security Advisor Robert OBrien emphasises that the strategy has been all about seeking to ensure that our allies and partners can preserve and protect their sovereignty. This confirms that U.S. strategic policy in the Indo-Pacific was in substantial part informed and driven by allies and partners, especially Japan, Australia and India. Indeed, one of the strategys plainest successes was fulfilling the objective to create a quadrilateral security framework with India, Japan, Australia, and the United States as the principal hubs. The American framework bears the fingerprints not only of Washingtons December 2017 National security strategy but Tokyos 2016 free and open Indo-Pacific policy and Canberras 2017 initiatives, notably the Turnbull governments foreign policy white paper and its early action against Chinese interference and espionage. OBrien properly notes this emerging convergence, and the common ground among the Indo-Pacific policies of the U.S., Australia, India, Japan, ASEAN, some key European partners and, increasingly, South Korea, New Zealand and Taiwan. This emerging consensus gives the lie to the Chinese claim that the Indo-Pacific is some American or Australian invention that will dissipate like ocean foam. Without saying so, the declassified strategy appears to acknowledge that an effective American regional policy is as much about following as leading. This means steady support for allies and partners, rather than the pursuit of some shaky all-round U.S. primacy. It also turns out that American officials public line about respecting international law, regional multilateralism (such as ASEAN-centric diplomatic institutions) and the sovereign equality of states was not just rhetoric: it was what they were telling themselves as well. Geopolitical observers worldwide, from diplomats to intelligence analysts, politicians to businesspeople, journalists to scholars, will find much else to unpack and interpret. Theres plenty to report and debate in almost every line of the 10-page document. Contrary to concerns that the Trump administration was veering to a one-dimensional, military-led external policy, there was a clear recognition of the need for holistic engagement to bolster allies and counter China, across the full spectrum from information operations to advanced technology research and infrastructure investment. Whether America has the capacity, coordination and will to follow through on such a total strategy is another question. The strength of the plan is also its weakness. It was an effort to exhaustively map out analytical assumptions, preferred end-states, objectives and actions, leaving it open to the criticism that it is excessively ambitious yet leaves things out. The document is light, for instance, on anticipating the challenge of Chinese influence in the South Pacific, an indication that Canberras activism there is an Australian initiative, not a play to please America. A critical reading reveals some glaring gaps between intent and reality. For example, we see an aspiration to improve relations between Japan and South Korea to put pressure on North Korea, but no sense of how this would be done. Sometimes the bar was set so high that failure was almost assured. There are aspects where Americas privately stated ambitionsfor sustained primacy, for North Korean nuclear disarmament, for international consensus against Chinas harmful economic practiceswere at odds with the art of the possible. In hindsight, this bold vision for U.S. foreign policy failed to take account of the depth of domestic division and dysfunction hampering Americas ability to advance its interests abroad. At the same time, although it did not anticipate so staggering a shock as Covid-19, the frameworks warnings of Chinas affronting assertiveness and the expansive authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping have proven prescient. Theyve been borne out by events, from the geopolitics of the pandemic and wolf warrior diplomacy to the crushing of Hong Kong, intimidation of Taiwan, violent clashes with India and coercion against Australia. Of course, the decision to release this historic document now will raise speculation as to the motive for it. At one level, its a refreshing and rather radical act of transparency, aimed partly at reassuring allies and partners that, whatever its travails, America plans to double down on the Indo-Pacific. There was likely much internal debate ahead of the decision to go public, but it was probably judged that any risk to Americas interests from showing its hand, such as the frank admission of an imperative to strengthen India as a counterbalance to China, would be outweighed by the benefits and the example of openness. Whatever else can be said, this reduces the excuse for miscalculation, and makes more glaring by contrast the gap between what Beijing says and what it does. There are blunt statements of the intent of defending the first island chain nations, including Taiwan, denying China sustained air and sea dominance inside the first island chain, and continuing to dominate all domains outside the first island chain. That said, this is not a strategy for full-blown containment extending right across the economic realm, and it does not seem to anticipate the pace or extent of decoupling since pursued both by Beijing and Washington. The language is often defensive: not to sunder the U.S.China economic relationship, but rather to prevent Chinas industrial policies and unfair trading practices from distorting global markets and harming U.S. competitiveness. Theres still acknowledgement of the need to cooperate with China when beneficial to U.S. interests, although this is so vague that it will make sense for President-elect Joe Bidens administration to find some early specifics for cautious experiments in partnership. Sceptical observers may well say that publishing the strategy now, amid a troubled transition, is an obvious play for policy continuity. This is in light of concerns that a Biden administration may not yet be committed to challenging Chinas bid for dominanceor indeed to the idea of the Indo-Pacific, at least in its free and open variant, as a rallying cry for regional solidarity against coercive Chinese power. But its surely no bad thing to salvage the few achievements of an otherwise grim era in American foreign policy, while laying down some markers for the incoming administration. Indeed, if the intent all along was to amplify American effectiveness by respecting and uniting allies, then a rounded 2020s evolution of the 2018 Indo-Pacific strategy will stand a significantly better chance of success under Biden than it would have under a second Trump term. And the document articulates the fundamentals of what in Congress has become a bipartisan position on contesting Chinas geopolitical powerplays, supporting allies and partners, and protecting American interests across domains ranging from military and technology to geoeconomics and information and influence. The declassified framework will have enduring value as the beginning of a whole-of-government blueprint for handling strategic rivalry with China. If the U.S. is serious about that long-term contest, it will not be able to choose between getting its house in order domestically and projecting power in the Indo-Pacific. It will need to do both at once. As I have argued in my book explaining the Indo-Pacific concept, America cannot effectively compete with China if it allows Beijing hegemony over this vast region, the economic and strategic centre of gravity in a connected world. Thank you for subscribing! By signing up to this free newsletter you agree to receive occasional emails from us informing you about our products and services. You can opt out of these emails at any time. BISMARCK, N.D., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the fourth year in a row, the last week of January has been officially recognized as North Dakota School Choice Week. This year, Gov. Doug Burgum's proclamation recognizes that all North Dakota students deserve access to a high-quality education, and educational variety enhances the vibrancy of North Dakota communities. Around the nation, more than a dozen other governors have proclaimed School Choice Week in their states, and hundreds of city, county, and town leaders have proclaimed the Week in their jurisdictions. Parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 42 safe activities in North Dakota, ranging from virtual activities to families discussing education at home and listing reasons they are grateful for their choices. All activities aim to raise awareness of school choices and spark conversations about the diverse and innovative learning opportunities that help children succeed. More than 33,000 virtual or socially distanced activities have been independently planned for School Choice Week nationwide. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will participate. "This year and every year, children's lives are changed by the educational opportunities they have and the educational opportunities they lack access to," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "School Choice Week gives families a time to talk about K-12 education, shine a positive light on great schools and educators, and explore learning options for the upcoming year." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/north-dakota. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today Cloudy with a few showers. High 59F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low near 35F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. New Delhi: Nepal Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, who is in Delhi, on Friday said that Kathmandu believes in good relations with both New Delhi and Beijing and is keen to use its geography as an opportunity. In response to a question during his only public meet during a three-day visit, Gyawali said, "Nepal has always maintained good relations with our both neighbours (India and China). We never compare our relationship with our friends." He explained "being located between the two largest markets of the global speaks a volume...It provides us to be benefited by the fastest economic growth of our neighbouring countries..that is why we are strengthening our relations with neighbouring countries but we never compare our relations." China has increased its foray in Nepal, even as the country has had much-celebrated ties with India based on "roti beti ka rishta" (family ties). Beijing, under the KP Sharma Oli govt and the erstwhile united Nepal communist party saw a lot of high-level exchanges including a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, India's focus, even amid the new Nepal map row was continued people to people exchange. The Motihari-Amlekhganj petroleum products pipeline is the first cross country pipeline in south Asia, with both sides keen on the expansion of the pipeline to Chitwan. A new pipeline on the eastern side connecting Siliguri to Jhapa in Nepal is being discussed. On the connectivity front, the focus is on the possible Raxaul-Kathmandu broad gauge railway line. Lauding India, the FM said, "India has demonstrated how democracy and development could be successfully pursued together so as to promote overall progress and prosperity of the people." Indian PM Modi has travelled many times to Nepal and had a number of engagements with Nepal PM KP Sharma Oli. Last year on India's Independence Day both PMs had spoken to each other. Live TV 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. TRENTON, N.J., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, New Jersey families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. New Jersey families, schools, and organizations are hosting 886 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the most exciting of these will be a statewide "I Love My School" contest in which New Jersey teachers and students can share why they love their school with others for a chance to win prizes. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the New Jersey cities of Union, Bloomingdale, Chatham, Hamburg, Clark, Millville, Hackettstown, Kingwood, and Trenton. "New Jersey has education options for families, but this past year has shown that families need more flexible choices that work for them," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week is a time to set aside politics and talk about real education partnerships, affordable ways that parents and teachers can work together to inspire learning." In New Jersey, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online schools, private schools, and homeschooling. New Jersey families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to New Jersey school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/new-jersey. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Dr. Marjorie Bessel, chief clinical officer for the Banner Health hospitals in Arizona, warned on Wednesday that unless elected leaders and residents did more to stop the spread of the virus, five large health systems risked becoming overwhelmed with patients. More than two-thirds of the states intensive care units were full as of Monday, and the hospitals were preparing for a surge of 25 to 50 percent. We hope we do not get there, Dr. Bessel said, adding, Were asking you were imploring you today to help us avoid that. She urged officials to adopt a statewide mask mandate and to ban indoor restaurant dining. Certain cities and counties, such as Maricopa and Pima, have full mask mandates, but Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, has resisted calls for a statewide order. Nationwide, the numbers largely remained grim on Wednesday, though in the Northern Plains, cases this week were at about a quarter of their peak in mid-November, when the region was among the hardest hit in the country. There were at least 3,900 virus deaths in the United States reported on Wednesday, a day after the country hit a daily record of more than 4,400. Earlier in the pandemic, cities bore the brunt of the virus. But now, although metropolitan areas are still suffering, rural communities are, too. Data compiled by The Times shows that deaths have spiked in less populous places, among them Butler County, Kan.; Sevier County, Tenn., and Etowah County, Ala. DETROIT Tesla Inc. is balking at recalling about 159,000 vehicles with potentially defective touch screens, so U.S. safety regulators are moving to force the company to take action. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Wednesday sent a letter to Tesla saying it has tentatively determined that the screens are defective and pose a safety risk because they can cause backup cameras to go dark and defrosters to malfunction. The agency wouldnt comment beyond the letter, which is a rare step toward a public hearing and eventual legal action. Experts say the letter means that Tesla has resisted doing a recall that NHTSA feels is necessary. Its obvious to me that Tesla told NHTSA to go pound sand, so what theyre about to get, theyve earned it, said Frank Borris, a former head of the agencys Office of Defects Investigation who now runs a safety consulting business. Messages were left Wednesday seeking comment from Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California. Last June, the agency opened an investigation into complaints that the giant touch screens would go dark in certain 2012 through 2018 Model S cars and 2016 through 2018 Model X Tesla vehicles. It upgraded the probe to an engineering analysis in November. The letter says the agency has determined that the screens are defective because their computer processors have a finite number of program-and-erase cycles. NHTSA says the screens would fail in five to six years, which isnt sufficient for safety-critical features. The lack of a functioning windshield defogging and defrosting system may decrease the drivers visibility in inclement weather, increasing the risk of a crash, the letter said. In data submitted by Tesla, the agency found more than 12,000 customer complaints, field reports, warranty claims and other claims related to the screens, the letter said. NHTSA also determined that the failure rate for the screens is higher than the rate for vehicles involved in prior recalls for similar problems. Tesla tried to fix the problem with several over-the-air software updates, but NHTSA said it tentatively believes the fixes are insufficient. I think its planned obsolescence, which requires physical replacement of a part which Tesla tried to gloss over by sending a software update, said Jason Levine, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety. The screen failures also can cause the loss of audible chimes and alerts that are part of Teslas Autopilot driver-assist system. The letter says that if Tesla formally decides not to do a recall, it has to provide NHTSA with an explanation. The agency can schedule a public meeting on matter and could turn it over to the Justice Department for legal action, Borris said. Borris, who reviewed the letter, called it very thorough and said NHTSA has a strong case should Tesla decide to challenge the agency in court. About the photo: In this Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020, file photo, attendees wearing masks to protect from the coronavirus look at cars at the Tesla booth during the Auto China 2020 show in Beijing. Tesla Inc. is balking at recalling about 159,000 vehicles with potentially defective touch screens, so U.S. safety regulators are moving to force the company to take action, in news announced Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File) Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. New Braunfels, TX (78130) Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 74F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 74F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. PHOENIX, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Arizona families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Arizonians are hosting 806 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the biggest activities in Arizona will be two drive-in movie screenings on Jan. 29-30, featuring "Mary Poppins Returns" and "Miss Virginia." The latter movie stars Uzo Aduba and tells the true story of a single mother who helped bring school scholarships to low-income children. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. Governor Doug Ducey issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24 -30 as Arizona School Choice Week. In addition, a growing number of Arizona cities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week in their community, including the cities of Avondale, Casa Grande, Prescott, and Maricopa. "Pandemic or no pandemic, every parent wants their child to be happy and prepared for the future, and a personalized education is the best route toward that," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Arizona has a remarkable array of options when it comes to K-12 schools. Arizona families are well acquainted with the importance of taking an active role in choosing the right school for your child and School Choice Week is the best opportunity for them to start their search for the 2021-2022 school year." In Arizona, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment laws, charter schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, private schools, and online schools. Arizona also offers a variety of statewide private school choice programs. Arizona families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Arizona school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/arizona. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Sunrise newsreader Natalie Barr has been filling in for host Samantha Armytage for the past few weeks. And now, viewers of the show have called Natalie to permanently replace Sam as co-host alongside David 'Kochie' Koch. 'Love Matt [Doran] and Nat. Work well as a team!! No awkwardness like Sam and any other co host and Kochie at times,' one person wrote. 'These are the people you want to run the show!' Sunrise viewers have called for Natalie Barr to permanently REPLACE Samantha Armytage 'Nat and Monique [Wright] are the new team, these are the people you want to run the show,' another person said. One person said:'Good to see Sam on the out[side], very bossy and loves taking over Matt with her suggestions!!' While some viewers called for Natalie to replace Sam, others are yearning for Sam's return to Channel Seven's breakfast program. 'When will Sam and Kochie be back ??? Not the same without them,' one person said. Another person commented: 'Can't wait for Samantha to be back...' Replacement: Sunrise newsreader Natalie (left) has been filling in for host Samantha (right) for the past few weeks Sam is still on leave from Sunrise after tying the knot with millionaire Richard Lavender. The pair married at his home around midday on New Year's Eve , and then moved to a luncheon at the Centennial Vineyards Restaurant in Bowral. It's said to have been an intimate ceremony with a 'small number of guests' due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with Richard's daughters Sasha and Grace and Sam's beloved dog Banjo believed to be in attendance. Comments: 'Love Matt [Doran] and Nat. Work well as a team!! No awkwardness like Sam and any other co host and Kochie at times,' one person wrote Break: Sam is still on leave from Sunrise after tying the knot with millionaire Richard Lavender. Pictured with co-host David Koch Of the event, a source told Daily Mail Australia: 'Champagne was flowing, and at one point they had several (five) waiters attending to their every needs. 'However, they didn't get any VIP treatment and while they were away from other guests, they were amount sitting among locals and tourists.' Sam and Richard, who have been reportedly dating since last April, confirmed their romance in November last year. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-14 22:19:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close This file photo shows people dance to celebrate the launch of the Nairobi-Naivasha Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) cargo service in Nairobi, Kenya, on Dec. 17, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Yan) Chinese-built infrastructure is expected to fuel East Africa's economic growth in 2021, an analyst said. NAIROBI, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese-built infrastructure is expected to fuel East Africa's economic growth in 2021, an analyst said on Wednesday. Judd Murigi, Head of Research, ICEA LION Asset Management, told Xinhua in Nairobi that the bulk of the East African nations experienced an economic contraction in 2020 due to containment measures put in place to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. "The trade and transport sectors are expected to benefit from the improved infrastructure sponsored by the Chinese and lead the economic recovery of the East African region in 2021," Murigi said during ICEA LION Asset Management 2021 Q1 investor briefing and launch of its money market fund online portal to the retail market. This photo taken on Sept. 5, 2020, shows the Lebu station of Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde) "East African nations have resilience due to the diversified nature of their economy as well as non-reliance on exports of commodities," he noted. The analysts noted that East Africa's mega infrastructure projects which have mostly been funded and constructed by the Chinese have in turn facilitated private sector growth. "As the entire East African region graduates into middle-income status, they will require world-class infrastructure to ensure it can produce competitive products needed by global consumers," he added. Murigi said that Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway(SGR) has had a positive impact on the country's economy by facilitating the flow of imports and exports. (Natural News) During debate on the impeachment article in the House on Wednesday, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) said the lenient response to BLM and Antifa rioters over the course of several months last year may have contributed to last weeks riot at the U.S. Capitol. (Article by Bronson Stocking republished from TownHall.com) The California conservative wore a face mask that read, THIS MASK IS AS USELESS AS MY GOVERNOR as he blamed leniency given to BLM-Antifa rioters for likely contributing to last weeks storming of the Capitol. McClintock pointed out that President Trump specifically told supporters before the riot to protest peacefully and, according to the congressman, the vast majority of them did. But every movement has a lunatic fringe, McClintock continued. Suppressing free speech is not the answer. Holding rioters accountable for their actions is the answer, and we are. And if we had prosecuted BLM and Antifa rioters across the country with the same determination these last six months, this incident may not have happened at all. The congressman also cautioned Democrats to think twice before establishing another new norm. If we impeached every politician who gave a fiery speech to a crowd of partisans, this Capitol would be deserted, McClintock warned. The lawmaker has a point. Democrats werent interested in strongly prosecuting BLM-Antifa rioters last year. Democrats helped bail out rioters. Other Democrats like Rep. Maxine Waters said violence makes America better and Rep. Ayanna Pressley called for continued unrest in the streets. McClintock asked his Democratic colleagues to show some magnanimity following their recent wins, saying only in a banana republic do the victors practice vengeance. President Trump was impeached for a second time on Wednesday and Democrats are expected to soon transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said the Senate wont take up the impeachment article until sometime after Joe Bidens inauguration. Read more at: TownHall.com Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 17:48:33|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WINDHOEK, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China remained Namibia's largest export market in November 2020, accounting for 41.3 percent of the the southwestern African country's total exports, according to data released by the country's statistics agency on Friday. Neighboring South Africa maintained its position as the number one source of imports (42.4 percent), Statistician-General Alex Shimuafeni said in a statement. Namibia mainly exports minerals such as non-ferrous metals, metalliferous ores and metal scrap, non-metallic minerals, and non-monetary gold. "Fish remained the only non-mineral products among the top five list of exports," Shimuafeni said. "The import basket comprised mainly of non-ferrous metals, metalliferous ores and metal scrap, vehicles, electrical machinery and; iron and steel." In November 2020, re-exports fell 20.5 percent month-on-month and b.8 percent year-on-year, he said. "Non-ferrous metals took the largest share of re-exports, constituting a share of 55.4 percent of total re-exports mainly to China, Belgium and Germany," Shimuafeni said. "The non-ferrous metals which were re-exported were mostly sourced from Zambia and DRC." The DRC refers to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Enditem Albany, N.Y. The state canceled Covid vaccine appointments for thousands of New Yorkers on Thursday to keep the system for scheduling shots fair, said Melissa DeRosa, an aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The problem began when a registration link for Covid shots at state-run mass vaccination sites in Binghamton, Buffalo, Plattsburgh, Potsdam, Stony Brook and Utica ended up online before it was supposed to. Thousands of New Yorkers began using the link to make appointments and received official confirmations from the state Health Department. READ MORE: They finally scored Covid vaccine appointments. Then NY state said oops Hours later, they all began receiving another email from the Health Department telling them the link they used was inactive and not authorized to be shared. Their appointments were canceled. The state canceled the appointments to be fair to New Yorkers who didnt have the unauthorized link, DeRosa said today during a press conference in Albany. About 7 million people in New York are currently eligible to get Covid vaccines and the state receives just 250,000 doses a week from the federal government. We understand the frustration if somebody got the link not knowing there was devious intent behind how it got out, DeRosa said. However, as the governor said, theres 7 million people vying for 250,000 shots and the system to sign up has to be fair. We felt that it was important that we reset those appointments and when they went online this morning to the public, everyone had the same fair shot at getting those appointments. The Inspector General is investigating how the link got online early. The current theory is it was either hacked or leaked, DeRosa said. The cancellations affected 20,000 people who made appointments at Stony Brook alone. Fraud will be a bigger problem as the vaccine campaign moves forward, Cuomo said. He said he expects some doses to be stolen and end up for sale on black markets. Youre going to see hacking, theft, fraud, he said. Its almost predictable, as ugly and unfortunate as it is. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources They finally scored Covid vaccine appointments. Then NY state said oops NY orange zone restaurants can reopen, but will they (and when)? Onondaga County vaccine update: New details on whos eligible, when to sign up Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598 Rahmatullah Nikzad, a reporter, photographer and chief of the Ghazni Journalists Union, was assassinated in the first district of Ghazni province by unknown assailants on December 21. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Afghanistan affiliate the Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) condemn the heinous assassination and call for swift action to locate and bring the perpetrators to justice. Nikzad, a respected Afghan journalist who has worked for Al Jazeera and Associated Press, was shot three times in the chest with a silencer pistol as he left home to visit a local mosque in the evening of December 21. The gunmen are yet to be identified. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Nikzad, who was aged in his mid-40s, was a Ghazni resident and began working as a journalist in 2003. He was associated with several international news outlets and worked on a freelance basis with Al Jazeera Media Network and Associated Press. In a statement on Twitter, Al Jazeera strongly condemned the attack and attempts to silence journalists in the country and stated it was shocked at the news of the killing of our cameraman Rahmatullah Nikzad, a former colleague who worked with our team in Afghanistan. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban, distanced the insurgent group from the assassination, stating that Nikzad was a committed journalist and had maintained good relations. We consider this killing a loss for the country, he said. Nikzad was arrested several times during his career, by both the Afghan and United States governments as well as the Taliban. The journalist had reportedly received threats from various sources, mainly due to his connection with international media outlets and the Ghazni Journalists Union. The Ghazni based journalist is the third media worker to be killed in Afghanistan this month. On December 10, female reporter Malala Maiwand, and her driver Mohammad Tahir, were shot and killed when assailants opened fire on their car as they left to travel to work in Jalalabad, in Nangarhar Province. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack. On November 12, Radio Free Europe correspondent Elias Daei was killed in a targeted magnetic mine explosion in Lashkar Gah. The AIJA said: AIJA strongly condemns the killing and call it a crime against humanity. AIJA shares empathy with his family and urges the Security forces to investigate the killing and bring the perpetrators to justice. The IFJ General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger, said: Afghanistan has descended again in terms of journalist safety in 2020 with at least eight media workers killed to date, up from six in 2019. The IFJ again implores that the Afghan government must increase its efforts to ensure the safety of journalists in this volatile space. Too often journalists are the target, often between internal conflicts and the quest for power. Journalists lives must be respected and defended. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan [January 15, 2021] GlobalData 5G RAN Innovation and Leadership Insight LONDON, Jan. 15, 2021 /CNW/ -- Innovation is the basis for the long-term development and evolution of the mobile communications industry. In the 5G era, mobile communications networks carry more missions and meet diversified requirements for network capabilities, operation efficiency improvement, and business success. 5G continuous innovation becomes particularly important. According to the GlobalData's recent competitiveness evaluation report on mainstream vendors, Huawei 5G RAN ranks No.1 in all dimensions, demonstrating the competitive advantages of products and solutions. In addition, Huawei announced latest 5G network development concept and launched innovative products and solutions. Huawei 5G RAN Leadership GlobalData, a leading market data and analytics company, has rated Huawei's 5G RAN portfolio to be a Leader in the market. In competitive analyses of five major RAN vendors, GlobalData evaluated 5G base station portfolios according to four key areas important to mobile operators: baseband unit (BBU) capacity, radio unit portfolio breadth, ease of installation and technological evolution. GlobalData found Huawei to be a Leader in all four categories and a Leader overall among its peers(the mainstream vendors). Huawei reports the highest BBU cell capacity for both sub-6 GHz and millimeter-wave spectrum of any major RAN vendor. It also offers more radio units and more Massive MIMO options than other vendors and supports a wide array of 5G spectrum bands. To make deployment easier, Huawei has multiple novel solutions, including its Super BladeSite and Bracelet Kit offerings. And to help operators evolve their networks technologically, Huawei has been proactive in commercializing spectrum-sharing capabilities such as its CloudAIR solution, which allows various access technologies (2G/3G/4G/5G) to use the same spectrum, and its SuperBAND solution, which allows these technologies to share network resource blocks. This portfolio is well-suited to meet the diverse needs of the world's mobile operators, and Huawei continues to expand its portfolio to address current and future challenges that operators face on the journey to achieving the 1 + N network. The 1 + N Network: An Intelligent, Versatile Network The 5G era holds enormous potential for mobile operators to grow profitability by expanding into new services and tapping new revenue sources. But the network and business transformation required to capture these opportunities introduces new levels of complexity in network deployment and management and service delivery. There are ways for operators to tackle this complexity with networks that are as diverse and sophisticated as the new world of services the market demands. To help operators capture new opportunities despite the challenges of network complexity, Huawei employs what it calls a "1 + N" concept, vowing to "build one foundational network for high-bandwidth ubiquitous connectivity 'N' capabilities deployed on demand." 1 + N is the concept of a single, unified network addressing an expandable variety of network needs and services. This concept maximizing the revenue generated by a single infrastructure investment is key to how 5G can help operators become more profitable. New innovations added to Huawei's 5G RAN portfolio help operators achieve the 1 + N network, including the Blade Pro solution, the Adaptive High Resolution algorithm, the Mobile Broadband Automation Engine and more. Operators' Network Challenges As operators evolve for the 5G era, they will increase the capacity of their public networks using a range of new spectrum bands. However, making use of these spectrum bands while continuing to support legacy networks poses many challenges, including: Fragmented spectrum assets can breed inefficiency can breed inefficiency Diversified channels and sectors can increase network management complexity can increase network management complexity Differences in frequency-band life cycles can impact operators' ability to use certain radio access technologies in certain spectra can impact operators' ability to use certain radio access technologies in certain spectra Limited Antenna Space brings deployment challenges Huawei has developed new offerings within its RANportfolio to tackle all of these challenges and more. The Blade Pro Solution To help simplify networks and address these challenges, Huawei has long committed to a Single RAN strategy of using a single network to deliver multiple technologies. Its newest RAN offerings, part of Huawei's 1 + N vision, continue to help in these areas. Huawei's Blade Pro offering is designed to help simplify deployment and ease installation and network management, reducing operators' costs. The Blade Pro Ultra-Wideband Remote Radio Unit (RRU) is a pole-mountable 4G/5G RU that supports three low or medium Frequency-Division Duplex (FDD) bands simultaneously: it will support 700, 800 and 900 MHz as well as 1.8, 2.1 and 2.6 GHz, allowing operators to build a single foundational network for ubiquitous connectivity using mid-band spectrum. By supporting three frequency bands in a single 25-kilogram unit, the Blade Pro eliminates the need for two boxes, reducing the load on poles, easing the burden on installers and making deployment faster, smoother and less expensive. The Blade Pro also helps operators address the three challenges cited above. Tri-band support helps reduce the complexity of fragmented spectrum by pulling multiple bands into a single network management point. A software-defined antenna allows operators to change the number of receivers or sectors via software rather than hardware, overcoming the challenges of channel and sector diversity in operator networks. In addition, where operators need to make changes based on which technologies LTE or 5G NR are delivered over which spectrum bands, a software-defined antenna helps to make those changes easier as well. The BladeAAU Pro Solution In addition to the Blade Pro, Huawei has also introduced the BladeAAU Pro solution, a Massive MIMO product with 32T32R and 64T64R antenna array options that supports sub-3 GHz bands. Huawei designed the BladeAAU Pro to ensure high-quality experiences for 5G users while simplifying deployment for operators, minimizing deployment costs and addressing the challenges of antenna space limitations. 5G Software Innovation: Adaptive High Resolution (AHR) Algorithm Huawei further enhances the network capabilities with another offering: the Adaptive High Resolution (AHR) algorithm, which significantly improves the capacity and user experience of Massive MIMO cells in scenarios with high user density and a strong potential for signal interference. However, the above new solutions are not the only way Huawei's portfolio is evolving to fulfill the vision of 1 + N networks. 1 + N O&M One of the most significant challenges operators will face in adopting 1 + N networks is in performing the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) that can address complex, multi-functional networks while limiting the burdens of that complexity on operators' human personnel. In order to achieve both ends, 1 + N networks must embrace new levels of automation. To achieve this task, Huawei envisions what it calls the Autonomous Driving Network, drawing an analogy between self-driving automobiles and the intelligent networks of the future. Huawei's vision for Autonomous Driving Network includes five levels of automation: Tool assistance Partial autonomy Conditional autonomy High autonomy Full autonomy Today Huawei's solutions represent a level of autonomy approaching the third level, "conditional autonomy;" they are projected to gradually evolve over time to include all five levels by 2030. But Huawei's Autonomous Driving Network is already addressing multiple O&M challenges in the 1 + N network. O&M Challenges Some specific hurdles for O&M operations in 1 + N networks include: Managing multiple radio access technologies (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) simultaneously Effectively delivering new services tailored for business customers Balancing user experience quality with network energy consumption Optimizing network conditions such as latency, bandwidth, uplink and downlink To address these challenges, Huawei's Mobile Broadband Automation Engine (MAE) solution helps operators manage networks comprehensively and intelligently using artificial intelligence (AI). Multi-RAT, Multi-Band Most networks transition over time from one radio access technology (RAT) to the next, forcing operators to manage more than one network at the same time, such as 4G and 5G. This duality increases the complexity of the network and the costs associated with network maintenance. These multi-RAT networks are even more complex because they include multiple frequency bands within those RATs. In addition, government regulators in some countries limit the transmission power of base stations to the extent that operators are forced to allocate power to various frequency bands in ways that are inefficient and can limit coverage. Huawei's MAE helps make multi-band, multi-RAT networks more efficient by coordinating RATs under a unified management scope and automating optimization of the combined network. For example, MAE analyzes network traffic behavior using measurement reports from user equipment and automatically shifts traffic from one band to another based on the optimal performance and energy efficiency parameters. The solution also coordinates power allocation among multiple frequency bands, allowing operators to avoid inefficiency and coverage limitations due to regulatory power restrictions. Even more complex than multi-RAT, multi-band networks are the diverse set of requirements stemming from advanced business services. 5G to Businesses For operators to capture opportunities in offering new services to business clients beyond connectivity, their networks will need to support a variety of capabilities on a case-by-case basis. For example, automated and remotely-operated vehicles that are enabled by wireless networks require low latency to avoid error and collision. Video surveillance use cases, on the other hand, require high-bandwidth uplink connections. Meanwhile, equipment sensors on industrial or agriculture sites might not need high bandwidth or low latency but require high reliability and enough energy efficiency to preserve battery life. Huawei's "5GtoB" suite helps operators address the diversity of business needs in multiple ways at the planning, deploying and management stages. First, Huawei's intelligent planning tools help operators anticipate not only network construction requirements but radio resource slicing considerations, using artificial intelligence analysis of network traffic models, user device types and other large data sets. The solution takes service-level agreements into the planning process in order to ensure networks will have the slicing capabilities to support service performance needs. It also translates network construction requirements, removing barriers in the process. The 5GtoB suite also speeds and simplifies business service provisioning on demand by automatically establishing network characteristics such as cells, features and network resources, allowing operators to launch campus network services in hours rather than days. These automatic processes also allow operators to make changes quickly if needed, with less need for manual intervention. They also make O&M more proactive, using AI to not only monitor but predict performance changes from both the network and device side, forecasting network problems as much as 15 days in advance and presenting visualizations of network performance at the network, slice and enterprise-customer levels. Finally, the 5GtoB suite optimizes the network in order to deliver a range of different service characteristics to each slice of the network ensuring that low latency, high-bandwidth uplink and high-reliability connections are all supported according to their respective needs while coordinated by the 1 + N network to make the most efficient use of network resources. The intelligent network uses AI capabilities to maximize energy efficiency without sacrificing the required quality of experience for each service. Conclusion Huawei recognizes that networks and their operations will need to evolve in order to capture the wealth of diverse opportunities that lie ahead. They will need to evolve in terms of planning, provisioning, installation, management and optimization. The complexity of these combined tasks will require networks to adopt new levels of intelligence and automation. This transformation won't happen overnight but will evolve in stages. And the early stages in that evolution are already happening today within Huawei's RAN portfolio. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/globaldata-5g-ran-innovation-and-leadership-insight-301208073.html SOURCE GlobalData [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Union Minister of State for Defence Shripad Naik, who was injured in a road mishap earlier this week, is on the path to recovery and may be shifted out of the CCU after some days, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said on Friday. Since the Minister was on recovery path, doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi may not examine Naik again, Sawant told reporters at the Goa Medical College, where Naik has been admitted since January 11. "He may be shifted out of the coronary care unit after some days. His health is improving day by day," the Chief Minister said. "AIIMS doctors will not be required to fly in again to examine him. Doctors at the Goa Medical College are coordinating with them," Sawant said. Earlier in the morning, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu visited the hospital and met Naik to ask after his health. "Naidu spoke to Naik and wished him speedy recovery," Sawant said. Meanwhile, Medical College Dean Dr Shivanand Bandekar said that although Naik's health parameters are normal, his discharge date has not been decided yet. Naik's wife Vijaya and Personal Secretary Deepak Ghume died of injuries after their car met with an accident in Yellapur in Karnataka on Monday night. Naik's driver and Personal Security Officer are recuperating at the Goa hospital. Twitter Says Chinese Regime Tweets Denying Forced Labor in Xinjiang Dont Violate Rules A Twitter spokesperson told Fox News on Jan. 14 that recent tweets by Chinas communist regime denying the existence of forced labor in Xinjiang Province and accusing the United States of making up lies about the documented human rights violations there dont break the social media platforms rules. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying posted a series of tweets on Jan. 14, claiming that forced labor is the biggest lie of the century aimed to restrict and suppress the relevant Chinese authorities and companies and contain Chinas development. But according to widespread investigative reporting, Chinas communist authorities have ramped up their suppression of ethnic Uyghur minorities in the Xinjiang region. This includes mass internment of around 1 million people, compulsory reeducation programs, highly intrusive human and digital surveillance, religious suppression, enforced sterilization of women, and forced labor. An extensive investigation by The Associated Press, which included interviews with some 30 former detainees, found that Chinas communist officials subjected hundreds of thousands of Uyghur women to pregnancy checks and forced them to undergo sterilization procedures and abortions. The Chinese regime has rejected the accusations, claiming that the camps are vocational training centers and that the associated programs are meant to curb religious extremism and prevent terrorism. One of Chunyings tweets also accused the United States of making up lies and taking egregious actions that violate international trade rules and damage the interests of companies and consumers all over the world including those in the U.S. A propaganda video with cheerful music accompanied Chunyings tweets, featuring smiling workers at factories in Xinjiang, speaking about how a lot of our living habits have been changed and improved. The video is characteristic of the type of propaganda materials produced by the Chinese regime in seeking to whitewash its repressive actions in Xinjiang. The BBC reported on such misinformation efforts after being granted stage-managed access to several internment camps in 2019. We were being taken into places that appeared to have been carefully spruced upwith satellite images revealing that much of the security infrastructure had recently been removed, BBC reporter John Sudworth wrote. He described detainees, with smiles fixed in place, speaking of volunteering to have their thoughts transformed and performing choreographed music and dance routines meant to impress on journalists that inmates previously infected by extremism were being reborn thanks to their internment. A Twitter spokesperson told Fox News that Chinas foreign ministry tweets didnt violate the companys rules. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Twitter recently removed a post by the Chinese Embassy in Washington claiming that Uyghur women have been de-radicalized, emancipated from extremism, and were no longer baby-making machines. The post linked to an article by state mouthpiece China Daily, denying allegations of forced sterilization in Xinjiang. Twitter said the post violated the Twitter rules but didnt provide details. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized the Chinese Embassy tweet that claimed Uyghur women were emancipated. Uyghur women are not emancipated by forced abortions and sterilizations, Pompeo wrote in his tweet. Twitters conduct in restricting content on its platform has been in the spotlight for years, including concerns about what some argue is a double standard. Recently, Twitter shut down the account of President Donald Trump in the wake of the Capitol breach last week, sparking allegations of suppression of free speech and exacerbating partisan divides. The company alleged that Trump had incited violence. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in a tweet on Jan. 13, acknowledged that the companys decision to remove Trump was divisive and set a dangerous precedent. Having to take these actions fragment [sic] the public conversation. They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning. And sets a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation, Dorsey wrote on Twitter. I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban [Trump] from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning wed take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct? I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all. Twitters move to ban Trump was met with criticism from world leaders, including the president of France and the chancellor of Germany. Aide to late Chief Executive Officer for the Forestry Commission, Charles Owusu has strongly dismissed claims that he is involved in illegal mining, also known as Galamsey despite directives from President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that the operation must stop. He was emphatic in a statement copied to Peacefmonline.com that I have never engaged in any galamsey activity neither will I ever be part of such illegality. A report by Multimedia claimed Charles Owusu embroiled in illegal mining activities ongoing in the Taabosere enclave in the Western Region. Multimedias Erastus Asare Donkor claimed Charles Owusu was heard asking the task force in charge of clamping down on illegal mining to leave the concession said to belong to a company called, Kingsperp. But Charles Owusu denied the allegation saying the company he "vouched for as having the license to mine gold in the Ashanti region was factual and there is copious documentation to prove that." The Head of Monitoring at the Forestry Commission further insisted he has rather been at the frontline fighting against galamsey, hence; he will not go contrary to what the president has been fighting in years. I have personally led a team of soldiers to the same area to arrest and seize equipment of persons engaged in galamsey at the same location. The Bekwai police station and Forestry Commission in Bekwai will bear me out. My records are there for all to see, he noted in his statement. Read the below full statement My Hands Are Clean And My Work Speaks For Itself I am a young man who has dedicated more than a decade of my life speaking to the ills of our society and how we can all help correct it. My intention is to help develop this country. This is the mindset I took to Public service. Pure unadulterated public service for God and country. I served my boss; not my relation Sir John, the Forestry Commission, and Ghana to the admiration of many whom I had the opportunity to meet during these periods. I am proud to have served my country. First of all, I deny all the allegations levelled against me by the joy news publication on Jan 9, 2021. I have never engaged in any galamsey activity neither will I ever be part of such illegality. I was head of Monitoring at the Forestry Commission between 2017 to 2020. And I have spent most of my time chasing illegal miners from the site and stopping illegal filling of trees in the forest in all the 4 years that I have been there. I can say without equivocation that nobody in the life of the Forestry Commission, has stopped and apprehended illegal operators from our forests as i have done throughout my stay. I have personally led a team of soldiers to the same area to arrest and seize equipment of persons engaged in galamsey at the same location. The Bekwai police station and Forestry Commission in Bekwai will bear me out. My records are there for all to see. The company (Kingsperp) I vouched for as having the license to mine gold in the Ashanti region was factual and there is copious documentation to prove that. It's very unfortunate that Joynews will do a story to blatantly accuse me of supporting an illegal mining operation without hearing my side of the story. I hope its an oversight. But if this is a deliberate attempt to tarnish my hard-earned reputation, I can assure them that, no single evidence of my involvement in galamsey can be found anywhere in my 4 years work with the forestry commission. I worked selflessly for God and country; and my records are clean and available for the public to scrutinize. This country belongs to all of us and we must do everything within our power to protect it. We shouldn't allow internal partisan machinations and personal hatred to cause us to destroy each other. My hands are clean and my work at the Commission speaks for itself. I challenge anyone within the Forestry and mining industry to bring one evidence that links me to any galamsey operation or activity. Prosperity and Providence will judge us all. I rest my case. Charles Owusu Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video In an RTL interview on Friday, the Mayor of Luxembourg City Lydie Polfer discussed easing restrictions, security concerns at the train station and other social issues. Covid-19 restrictions were eased this week in Luxembourg while neighbouring countries introduced a new set of tighter rules. Polfer could not say what the local municipality can expect in the coming weeks. She reiterated that Luxembourg City is well prepared to swiftly adapt to changes. Should it be necessary, the mayor said, the local council could also enact new rules. She expects, however, that once terraces can reopen some restrictions that apply to restaurants and cafes will be lifted. Polfer further said that it was a painful decision to close most business in the city, which virtually turned it into a ghost town. In order to support local business, the mayor said that local authorities will waive certain taxes and rents. She has also appealed to private property owners, in particular those who do not have to pay back mortgages or other loans, to follow suit where possible. There is no legal basis to force them to forgo money that is owed to them but Polfer nevertheless appeals to their common sense and solidarity. She is pleased to know that several property owners have shown solidarity with struggling businesses. However, she also says that others have not. Sense of (in)security at the train station When asked about the general feeling of insecurity at the citys train station and its surrounding areas, Polfer emphasised that the city started employing private security personnel since December. The mayor is pleased with the current progress. She cited the example of one business woman who was escorted to the bank by security personnel to pay in money from her cash register. Polfer did not report any problems. She also confirmed that as long as the police is unable to intervene in certain areas, especially concerning squatters in house entrances, the city will have no choice but to continue employing the services of private security firms. Polfer was also asked about a statement of a DP councillor, according to which some social structures need to be de-centralised in the city, specifically regarding addiction centres. The mayor replied that the city will not offer more social support. She cited the example of the drug addiction centre Abrigado. Most people who frequent it are not registered residents of Luxembourg City. Hence why Polfer is asking the government, other council and authorities from abroad to step up. When the addiction centre Contact Esch opened, it visibly relieved such services in Luxembourg City. Polfer is calling for another such facility to be built in the north of the country. With regards to homeless people, Polfer emphasised that no one needs to sleep on the streets. The city is currently acquiring another building in Bonnevoie to expand its accommodation capacity for rough sleepers. The 129 guests evacuated from a Brisbane CBD hotel at the centre of a coronavirus cluster have tested negative, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has revealed. "That was our high-risk group that we were looking at," she said. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk provides an update. Credit:Jono Searle/Getty Images "The 147 people who left since 30 December, the ones that were in Queensland, have all been tested and have tested negative. Once again, good news. "Of the 226 staff, all have been contacted and some of them have been tested. We are still working through that. Every year, an estimated eight million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans, threatening the lives of fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Now, a new study suggests that the key to clearing our oceans of plastic may lie in seagrass. Seagrass forms so-called 'Neptune balls' - oval orbs made from the base of leaves that have been shredded and intertwine into a ball. These Neptune balls collect plastic as they form, before carrying the rubbish to shore. The new study estimates that Neptune balls sieve over 867 million pieces of plastic from the oceans every year. The team hopes the findings will encourage environmental agencies to take urgent action to ensure conservation of seagrass meadows. A new study suggests that the key to clearing our oceans of plastic may lie with seagrass HOW MUCH PLASTIC IS CAPTURED BY NEPTUNE BALLS? The study between 2018 and 2019 was carried out around Mallorca where there are extensive meadows and high levels of plastic near the shore. There was plastic debris among 50 percent of the 42 samples and intertwined in 17 percent of 198 fibres, known as Neptune balls. Up to 613 and 1,470 items per kilogram were in loose leaves and Neptune balls, respectively. They come from everyday household products including packaging, bottle caps and tableware. Combining the data with estimates of seagrass production in the Mediterranean suggested meadows capture up to 867 million pieces a year in Neptune balls alone. Advertisement An analysis of loose leaves from four Spanish beaches found plastic pellets, cosmetic microbeads and polyester fibres from clothes entangled in half of them. They get mistaken for food by creatures that live in the water - with some ending up on our dinner plates. Study lead author Professor Anna Sanchez-Vidal, of the University of Barcelona in Spain, said: 'Seagrass meadows may help counteract marine plastic pollution.' Global losses of the plant - due to development, pollution and invasive species - are estimated at seven per cent a year since 1990. The study between 2018 and 2019 was carried out around Mallorca where there are extensive meadows and high levels of plastic near the shore. There was plastic debris among 50 percent of the 42 samples and intertwined in 17 percent of 198 fibres, known as Neptune balls. Up to 613 and 1,470 items per kilogram were in loose leaves and Neptune balls, respectively. They come from everyday household products including packaging, bottle caps and tableware. Combining the data with estimates of seagrass production in the Mediterranean suggested meadows capture up to 867 million pieces a year in Neptune balls alone. Seagrass forms 'Neptune balls' that trap, extract and carry hundreds of millions of plastic particles to shore every year Prof Sanchez-Vidal said: 'There is strong evidence the seafloor constitutes a final sink for plastics from land sources. 'There is also evidence that part of the plastics lying on the shallow seafloor are washed up back to the shoreline. 'However, little is known on the natural trapping processes leading to such landwards return. 'Our findings show seagrass meadows promote plastic debris trapping and aggregation with natural fibres, which are then ejected and escape the coastal ocean. The findings offer hope of protecting some of the world's most popular tourism spots. Keeping coasts pristine is critical to many economies 'Seagrasses, one of the key ecosystems on Earth in terms of provision of goods and services, also counteract marine plastic pollution. 'In view of our findings, the regression of seagrass meadows in some marine regions acquires a new dimension each year.' The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, follows research showing seagrasses are good for beaches. They were found to hold sand and sediment in place around the Caribbean Sea and Mexico. It offers hope of protecting some of the world's most popular tourism spots. Keeping coasts pristine is critical to many economies. Prof Sanchez-Vidal said: 'Seagrass meadows are widespread in shallow coastal waters. 'They provide important ecosystem services and benefits, such as water quality improvement, CO2 absorption, climate change mitigation, sediment production for seafloor and beach stabilisation, coastal protection, nursery and refuge areas for many species and support in fisheries production.' Seagrass areas in the Mediterranean Sea have decreased by 13 to 50 per cent since 1960. Prof Sanchez-Vidal added: 'What is clear is the deterioration of seagrass meadows may compromise the services they provide, so it is crucial to undertake specific actions to mitigate threats causing regression and ensure conservation.' City Editor Tom Roeder is the Gazette's City Editor. In Colorado Springs since 2003, Tom has covered the military at home and overseas and has cover statehouses in Denver and Olympia, Wash. His main job, though, is being dad to two great kids. Scientists have discovered a signal that causes roots to stop growing in hard soils which can be switched off to allow them to punch through, a finding which may have 'huge implications' for agriculture. The discovery could help plants grow in even the most damaged soils, according to scientists from the University of Nottingham and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. They found how the plant signal ethylene causes roots to stop growing in hard soils, but after this signal is disabled, roots are able to push through compacted soil. Hard, or compacted, soils represent a major challenge facing modern agriculture that can reduce crop yields over 50% by reducing root growth, causing significant losses annually. Europe has over 33-million-hectares of soil prone to compaction which represents the highest in the world, according to the researchers. Soil compaction triggers a reduction in root penetration and uptake of water and nutrients. Despite its clear importance for global food security, the mechanism underpinning root compaction responses has been unclear until now. Professor Malcolm Bennett from the University of Nottingham said: Understanding how roots penetrate hard soils has huge implications for agriculture, as this knowledge will be crucial for breeding crops more resilient to soil compaction. "Our teams identification that the plant signal ethylene controls root responses to hard soil opens up new opportunities to select novel compaction resistant crops. The research utilised X-ray Computed Tomography scanners to visualise in situ how plant roots responded to compacted soil. Professor Sacha Mooney from the University of Nottingham explained: Prior to this research we assumed that the hardness of the soil prevented roots growing deeper. "By using our imaging approach, we were able to see that roots continued growing in very hard soils when the ethylene signal was switched off. "The potential for new crops that can now go deeper in soils and capture previously unavailable resources is really exciting. The research has been published in Science. TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - Indiana State Senator Jon Ford, of Terre Haute, hopes to reduce the number of teen suicides in Indiana. He just introduced legislation. The bill would require all Hoosier schools to put the National Suicide Hotline number and the Human Trafficking number on student ID cards. This would apply to students in grades six through 12. Ford said this would be a low-cost way to get the hotline number in the hands of teens who need it. The number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 800-273-TALK and the Human Trafficking Hotline is 888-373-7888. The bill still has to pass the full Senate before going to the house. COHOES Living in the past is not something commercial real estate executives can afford to do. As the coronavirus pandemic rages in upstate New York amid hopes that much of the population will be able to get vaccinated against COVID-19 within a few months, the commercial real estate market is going through a reckoning. Who would have imagined a year ago that Crossgates Mall would be suing well-known tenants like the Gap and Lord & Taylor over unpaid rent? Or that landlords would be still barred by Gov. Andrew Cuomo from evicting their commercial tenants? What we have learned is that in the age of the novel coronavirus, anything is possible. And when it comes to commercial real estate, the idea of opening up the sector to new possibilities is what is moving the industry these days. Sweeping changes drive opportunity Just ask Todd Curley. Curley, a partner with The Prime Cos. in Cohoes, says the pandemic didn't crush his industry. Rather, he said, it just accelerated the sweeping changes that had already been underway for a while because of the technological advancement that has swept up all segments of society. The key to the survival of commercial real estate firms has been the diversification by successful firms into a wide variety of sectors, such as not only retail and restaurants but also office and industrial space, he explained, since the dynamics of the market have shifted during the public health crisis. The most drastic change has been in the retail sector since non-essential stores and malls were almost immediately closed by the state when the pandemic reached the state early in 2020. Although malls and other non-essential businesses like department stores and others are now open, much of the damage has already been done as people flocked to Amazon, Walmart and other online retailers for their daily and holiday shopping. Observers believe they likely won't be returning to the mall. "The pandemic forced consumers to adopt online shopping more quickly than planned," Curley said. But that isn't a bad thing, especially for those in the real estate industry who were looking ahead at the trends. Curley says the realities of the pandemic were like a fast-forward button on society, which has had a conflicting relationship with traditional consumerism for a while now even with the technological onslaught that has promised food, travel experiences and shopping on-demand from the touch of your phone. "As with any economic disruption, there are winners and losers," Curley said. "While the coronavirus outbreak halted the hospitality industry with widespread hotel and restaurant cancellations, it spurred demand for industrial space primarily to support distribution and storage." And also drive-thru restaurants. That's why Prime Cos. made sure that its new 3.36 acre multi-use project on Van Schaick Island in Cohoes called Delaware will have one on site. The development will feature nearly 100 units of mixed-income housing and commercial space that will include a yet-to-be-determined drive-thru tenant such as a coffee shop or restaurant. The residential portion, which is under construction, will be finished this summer, and marketing for tenants of the separate commercial and retail building will begin soon. "Some retailers - especially drive-thrus - remained strong" during the pandemic, Curley said. Office space market in flux While residential commercial real estate has remained stronger than most sectors, the commercial office space market is in flux because so many employers are requiring their employees to work from home, and those who are working in offices need to spaced further away from their colleagues in less densely populated settings. Curley and others say that has been the greatest change to happen to their business. "The sudden shift to work-from-home from some sectors has created new expectations about flexibility," Curley said. "This has the biggest impact on the office sector as some companies will choose to downsize their office space and allow associates to work remotely, while other businesses that want to remain in the traditional office set up will potentially need to expand their space needs to give individuals larger working areas (for social distancing)." The expectations of employees is key to this shift in the commercial office space market says Seth Rosenblum, CEO of the Rosenblum Cos. in Guilderland. Rosenblum said companies just can't bring their workers back to the same old workplace. There are going to have to be major safety measures put into place to encourage social distancing, and workers may expect to work from home for a majority of the time. People aren't going to want to return to the old days. Yet, Rosenblum stressed, company offices are where training takes place and culture is maintained and created. So offices need to focus on those needs going forward, even after the majority of the population has been vaccinated and people feel safe going back to the workplace. "The office is no longer where people have to be," Rosenblum said. "It's (going to be) where they want to be." What does this mean? It means that companies will need less space, but they will also need flexible space they can increase or decrease when needed based on who is in the office. Rosenblum says that when the pandemic hit, people thought that would be the end of co-working spaces. But Rosenblum believes that co-working space, especially those geared toward companies seeking flexibility, will be popular to help firms transition from the pandemic lockdowns. But this concept is based on the idea that people will expect to keep working from home as much as they can or want. In many cases, productivity has increased as employees can better balance work and home life. "They (both companies and employees) have seen the upside of being able to work from anywhere," Rosenblum said. Diversification means survival The key to survival for many has been diversification into many different commercial real estate sectors. CBRE in Dallas, which has local offices and is the world's largest commercial real estate and investment firm, said its revenues dropped nearly 5% during the third quarter of 2020, although profits dropped nearly 10%, as the firm had tried hard to diversify in previous years. Our third quarter performance highlights the progress CBRE has made in building a more resilient business since the last downturn occurred more than a decade ago, Bob Sulentic CEO of CBRE said in a statement back in late October. The resilient aspects of our business, coupled with our moves to quickly align expenses with reduced market demand, are helping us weather the sharp, Covid-driven fall in property leasing and sales. Those commercial real estate firms involved in logistics and package deliveries have been the biggest winners during the pandemic. "Right now the best is commercial rental for distribution companies such as Amazon and FedEx," said Wesley Shernow of Copper Club Management, an Albany real estate firm. "Commercial markets can be very stable during the pandemic, even more so than residential but that depends on who you're renting to." That means when you have a company like Amazon or another package delivery or online retailer that is doing well as a tenant, you are in luck. "For example, if you rent to Amazon, you know rent will be coming in on time," Shernow said. "The company is thriving." Despite all the bad news nationally regarding unemployment and COVID-19 infections and deaths, many in the Capital Region business community are hopeful for the commercial real estate market. Todd Shimkus, president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, just did a "reopening" ribbon cutting for Bow TieCinema in Saratoga Springs in December after it had been closed for months during the initial pandemic closures. "I think our local economy and our local businesses have thus far demonstrated a ton of resilience," Shimkus said. "We did nearly 50 ribbon cuttings during (the) pandemic. This shows people are still taking risks and investing in our local economy in Saratoga County. The federal stimulus will help. Getting more people vaccinated will help. We will have some commercial space available as we come out of the pandemic, but Im confident that will be temporary. When I see an open space here, I see an opportunity. I suspect that Im not alone." A container truck pulls through the Pacific international container terminal at the Tianjin Port of north China's Tianjin Municipality, Jan. 11, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhao Zishuo) China emerged from the global economic and trade challenges in 2020 as the world's only major economy to have registered positive growth in foreign trade in goods: spokesperson by Xinhua writers Zheng Xin and You Zhixin BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China's total goods imports and exports expanded 1.9 percent year on year to 32.16 trillion yuan (about 5 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2020, hitting a record high despite a worldwide slump in shipments, official data showed Thursday. Exports rose 4 percent, while imports went down 0.7 percent, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). In December alone, exports surged by 10.9 percent year on year in yuan terms. China emerged from the global economic and trade challenges in 2020 as the world's only major economy to have registered positive growth in foreign trade in goods, GAC spokesperson Li Kuiwen told a news conference. During the first 10 months of last year, the country's foreign trade and exports accounted for 12.8 percent and 14.2 percent of the world's total, respectively, both reaching historic highs, Li said, citing data from the World Trade Organization and available national statistics. "China's exports are gaining global market share for two reasons," said Alicia Garcia Herrero, the chief economist for the Asia-Pacific zone of the French investment bank Natixis. "First, it has successfully contained the spread of the virus and reopened its manufacturing capacity, while most other major economies are still grappling with production problems." Staff members load the commodities onto a cargo airplane at the Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Aug. 13, 2020. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi) "Second, the sectoral specialization seems to have played a very resilient role despite the overall uncertain global environment," she said, adding that China saw a pronounced recovery in major commodities, including the textile sector which is supported by the demand for medical equipment such as face masks. POSITIVE INFLUENCER "China's foreign trade has achieved a rapid return to stability and continued to improve, displaying strong resilience and comprehensive competitiveness," the GAC spokesman said, noting that China's foreign trade has achieved positive growth for seven consecutive months as of June 2020. In the first five months of 2020, foreign trade in goods dropped by 4.9 percent year on year to 11.54 trillion yuan, matching the decrease from the January-April period. The rebound in trade mirrored the Chinese economy's V-shaped recovery. GDP expanded 4.9 percent year on year in the third quarter of 2020, up from a 3.2-percent rise in the second quarter and a 6.8-percent plunge in the first quarter. The Chinese economy would grow at a rate of 2 percent in 2020, the World Bank Group said in its latest Global Economic Prospects. The reading is low given China's stellar record, but will still make the country the only major economy to emerge with positive growth. "China's recovery maintained the global supply chain. The resilience of China not only benefited itself, but also benefited the global economy," J.P. Morgan's Chief China Economist Zhu Haibin told Xinhua. "Despite the pandemic and the shutdown of international travel, China is still increasing its focus on further openness," Zhu said. China has made notable achievements in promoting multilateral trade in 2020, including the signing of the landmark Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that launched the world's largest free trade bloc, and the conclusion of negotiations for the China-EU investment treaty. "These institutional factors are very important, because China will be able to radiate its positive influence on international trade and investment more effectively than before," said Chris Leung, chief China economist of Singapore-based DBS Bank. GAINING CURRENCY Meanwhile, a stronger renminbi, China's currency, has raised concerns over China's export competitiveness. Hong Kong-based Hang Seng Bank expects the renminbi to strengthen markedly this year. Reasons include the market's exceptionally optimistic expectations for China's growth in 2021 and a weaker dollar. Still, the bank expects China's exports to accelerate this year. "The global reliance on China's industrial supply chain has greatly increased rather than weakened. Global companies will continue to diversify their production lines to reduce the risk of overreliance on China, but this will have a limited impact on trade," said Wang Dan, chief economist of Hang Seng Bank China. Photo taken on April 16, 2020 shows face masks on the production line at a workshop in a medical equipment company in Anshan, northeast China's Liaoning Province. (Xinhua/Yao Jianfeng) Shedding light on China's trade growth momentum, Leung said trade growth in Chinese exports was initially driven by demand for pandemic-related products such as face masks and computing equipment for home working. "Yet the recovery has since broadened out, with other shipments now up year on year too." The recovery in non-pandemic-related demand will also help, Leung said. "For instance, retail sales have gone from strength to strength lately in the United States. China's exports of furniture and household appliances have been particularly strong." The customs administration expects China to maintain positive trade growth this year, as the world economy is expected to recover and the world's second-largest economy is projected to return to steady growth. [ Editor: WPY ] The Resolution Copper project has entered the next phase of public consultation in the ongoing permitting process, led by the US Forest Service, with the release of its independent Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Decisions on whether to invest fully in developing the project, a proposed underground mine located in Arizona and one of the world's most significant undeveloped copper deposits, remain subject to further permitting processes and a feasibility study that will be conducted over several years. Resolution Copper is committed to continuing its engagement with Native American Tribes and working to seek consent before any decision on the development of the project, consistent with the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) Statement on Indigenous Peoples and Mining. Resolution Copper started the permitting process in 2013, with the US Forest Service leading a comprehensive, independent review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), over seven years, and multiple Administrations. Extensive consultation with 11 Native American Tribes and local communities has guided significant changes to the project design and measures including: The permanent protection of the culturally significant natural feature of Apache Leap A Tribal Monitor program focused on cultural heritage protection A partnership to protect and conserve culturally significant Emory Oak groves across Arizona. Economic and community development agreements that can deliver significant long-term benefits for the Superior community. Rio Tinto chief executive Copper Diamonds Arnaud Soirat said, "Rio Tinto is committed to ongoing engagement with Native American Tribes over the coming years to seek consent, before any potential decision by the partners to invest in developing this project. "Consultation with Native American Tribes and local communities has led to significant changes to the project and shaped an extensive package of initiatives we expect to invest in across the mine's life, including cultural heritage, education, economic development, environmental mitigation and recreation projects. This is a starting point from which we are committed to continue building constructive relationships through ongoing dialogue with Native American Tribes. "The Resolution Copper project will create high-quality jobs and significant economic growth in Arizona, supplying up to one quarter of the United States' copper demand and supporting the country's low-carbon future." The Final EIS is now subject to 45 days of further public review and comment before the US Forest Service issues a final record of decision. After the US Forest Service process, further permitting will be progressed with other authorities and a detailed feasibility study completed over several years to inform investment considerations on the project. When an investment decision is made, Resolution Copper is expected to take around 10 years building infrastructure to prepare for the commencement of mining. Notes to editors Resolution Copper Mining is a limited liability company owned 55 per cent by Rio Tinto and 45 per cent by BHP. Funding is proportional between the project partners. The project partners have spent over $2 billion (Rio Tinto share $1.1 billion) to date to develop and permit the Resolution Copper project, including reclamation of the historic Magma Copper Mine site, sinking a second shaft to mining depth, rehabilitating an existing shaft, extensive drilling and ore body testing, and the permitting and public engagement process. The publication of the Final EIS triggers a land exchange approved by Congress under the Obama Administration in 2015 that will see Resolution transfer 5,459 acres of high value conservation lands around Arizona to the Federal Government, in return taking ownership of 2,422 acres. The US Forest Service's full process schedule and other detailed information on the NEPA process is available at www.resolutionmineeis.us/documents/authors/usfs. The ICMM Statement on Indigenous Peoples and Mining sets out its vision for relationships with Indigenous Peoples that are based on mutual respect, meaningful engagement, trust and mutual benefit, with Free, Prior and Informed Consent for mining projects based on good faith negotiation. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005449/en/ Contacts: media.enquiries@riotinto.com riotinto.com Media Relations, United Kingdom Illtud Harri M +44 7920 503 600 David Outhwaite T +44 20 7781 1623 M +44 7787 597 493 Media Relations, Americas Matthew Klar T +1 514 608 4429 Media Relations, Asia Grant Donald T +65 6679 9290 M +65 9722 6028 Media Relations, Australia Jonathan Rose T +61 3 9283 3088 M +61 447 028 913 Matt Chambers T +61 3 9283 3087 M +61 433 525 739 Investor Relations, United Kingdom Menno Sanderse T: +44 20 7781 1517 M: +44 7825 195 178 David Ovington T +44 20 7781 2051 M +44 7920 010 978 Clare Peever M: +44 7788 967 87 Investor Relations, Australia Natalie Worley T +61 3 9283 3063 M +61 409 210 462 Amar Jambaa T +61 3 9283 3627 M +61 4 7286 5948 Rio Tinto plc 6 St James's Square London SW1Y 4AD United Kingdom T +44 20 7781 2000 Registered in England No. 719885 Rio Tinto Limited Level 7, 360 Collins Street Melbourne 3000 Australia T +61 3 9283 3333 Registered in Australia ABN 96 004 458 404 Category: Resolution 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. An Australian scientist on the ground in Wuhan as part of a global investigation into the origin of the coronavirus pandemic says the outbreak started there, but whether or not the virus itself started in China is a difficult question and key to the investigation. Professor Dominic Dwyer, a microbiologist and infectious diseases expert with NSW Health Pathology, is the only Australian among a 13-strong team in the Chinese city working on the investigation for the World Health Organisation. Professor Dominic Dwyer said he's not interested in the political side of the investigation and just wants to understand the science. Credit:Peter Braig Speaking from his hotel room where he is spending 14 days quarantining, Professor Dwyer said "the outbreak certainly started in China, whether the virus started in China is difficult to tell. We know there are very closely related virus in bats in China, also other countries in South-East Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Japan even". He along with 12 other scientists from the UK, the US, Germany, Japan, Russia, the Netherlands, Qatar and Vietnam were initially blocked from entering the country but touched down in Wuhan on Thursday night. EDWARDSVILLE Madison County is expected to pay about $460,000 in several controversial contracts signed by outgoing Madison County Recorder Amy Meyer last year. The boards Finance and Governmental Operations Committee on Thursday and will be considered by the full board at Wednesdays County Board meeting. The contracts, with Fidlar Technologies based in Davenport, Iowa, were signed Oct. 2, 2020, by Meyer. The contracts are for the digitalization of documents in the office. We had a big brouhaha about it in the fall, the way those contracts were signed, Finance Committee member Jamie Goggin, R-Edwardsville, said during Thursday. He added the work was completed and the county was now in a position to approve payment. Id just like some sort of understanding that were not going to be in this situation again, where someone is off signing contracts, he said. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Finance Committee Chairman Chris Guy, R-Maryville, said he was disappointed with how the issue played out. Madison County Clerk Debra Ming Mendoza, whose office absorbed the recorders office following a county referendum eliminating the position, said she will always let the county board know about any contracts under consideration. The original contracts were not brought to either the Tax Cycle or Finance committees, and the funds for the contracts have not been budgeted. Madison County Board Chairman Kurt Prenzler had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain copies of the contracts, which were given to him just prior to the October county board meeting. Although a number of Republicans questioned whether Meyer had the authority to sign the contracts, it was determined that elected countywide officials do have the power to sign contracts, but not obligate money for payment. Failure to pay would have left the county open to legal action by Fidlar Technologies. Also on Thursday, the Finance Committee approved an emergency appropriation from the recorders office automation fund to pay for the contracts. The American flag is flown at half-staff at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 21, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images) Over 80 Percent of US Respondents Say They Are Proud to Be an American: Survey A new Axios-Ipsos poll (pdf) found that 81 percent of the people who responded to the survey said that they are proud to be an American. At the same time, the poll found that 79 percent of respondents believe that America is falling apart. The survey, conducted on a representative sample of over 1,000 adults between Jan. 11-13, found that 32 percent strongly agree while 47 percent somewhat agree that the country is fracturing. The poll also sought to gauge the level of concern about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak, with 86 percent of Americans indicating they are concerned, including 34 percent who said they are extremely concerned. The vast majority of respondents said they practice public health measures in light of the pandemic, with 75 percent saying they wear facial coverings at all times, while another 16 percent indicate they wear face masks some of the time. The proportion of people saying they social distance was similar, with 92 percent indicating they maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from other people some or all of the time. One of the questions asked in the survey was whether, when jobs are scarce, employers should prioritize hiring people of this country over immigrants? with 63 percent of respondents saying they agree. When respondents were asked how they voted in the presidential election, Donald Trump was listed twice with 34 and 15 percent (49 percent), and Joe Biden at 44 percent. Amid Californias chaotic vaccine rollout, rumors started swirling Monday that Bay Area vaccination centers had extra doses that needed to be used quickly, so anyone not just health care workers could get vaccinated in Alameda or Santa Clara counties with a specific registration link. Some essential workers, including those in the restaurant industry, sent each other the same links, believing their time had come early. To make a vaccine appointment normally, individuals would have to sign an attestation under penalty of perjury that they meet the criteria, such as being a medical worker. After signing, theyd be directed to book an appointment on Calvax.org, a state website. The links going around this week allowed people to skip the attestation. More than 100 people showed up over a few days this week to vaccination sites in Santa Clara County despite not qualifying for a vaccine, according to county counsel James Williams. Those who didnt qualify were turned away. Many more people went to sites in Alameda County, arriving to see big signs posted saying doses were reserved for health workers. Public health officials said they dont know the origin of the links that allowed people to dodge screening questions. They urged anyone who signed up for an appointment through the links to cancel so the time slot can go to a health worker. Sandy Morse, who was turned away from her appointment Tuesday, said she felt bad about taking a slot that should have gone to someone else. It was challenging for her and her husband, Bob, to get them at all: They kept hitting refresh on the website and saw no availability. Eventually, her daughter-in-law snagged two slots for the Morses, who are both over 75. They double-masked, drove from Redwood City to Castro Valley and got in line, before a worker told them the Calvax website should have noted that only health workers should register, Sandy said. In that moment, Bob said he felt like he understood why Californias vaccine rollout is moving so slowly compared with other states and he wanted to know how this mix-up was allowed to happen. The method of administering the vaccines is so disjointed and so out of whack with reality and also a deep, dark secret, he said. While Santa Clara County executive Jeffrey Smith does not believe the Calvax system has been hacked, he said during Tuesdays supervisors meeting that someone got access to Calvax inappropriately. On Wednesday, a new line appeared at the top of the Calvax registration page stating vaccines are only available for those in the states Phase 1A, which only includes health care workers and long-term care residents. (Some counties are vaccinating the elderly in the general population but through separate websites.) Its unclear exactly how many people have registered for vaccinations this way. A spokesperson with the California Department of Public Health said the state doesnt track the eligibility of people who sign up for vaccine appointments. The Morses feared the vaccines they signed up to take got thrown out, but Neetu Balram of the Alameda County Public Health Department said no vaccines are wasted. The same issue unfolded in Marin County, only officials caught wind of it early. Public health officer Dr. Matt Willis said just a few ineligible people likely arrived for vaccines before officials sent out a mass email Sunday to those holding appointments, asking them to cancel if they were not a health care worker. There would have been many more because we had about 1,000 people cancel appointments within a few hours, he said. Janet Levy, general manager at Oakland restaurant Hopscotch, was surprised when she got an email from her boss Monday saying food workers could get vaccines. But she didnt argue she clicked the link and took the first available slot for noon Tuesday. Upon arrival, she was disheartened to see a sign outside, saying health care providers only. Im an essential worker, and my exposure is quite high to a lot of people, she said. Im still working with the public and many people who refuse to wear masks. To Levy, the error shows how the state needs more support for adequately distributing vaccines. Others might not be so forgiving. Jenny Schwarz, co-owner of Hopscotch as well as Nidos Backyard in Oakland, said the link went viral among Bay Area restaurant workers. Weve gone from working in fine dining to working in fast food. Its slow and its sad and its depressing, she said. I havent been able to give (my staff) good news for so long, so when I gave them this, they were so excited. Having to cancel their appointments is demoralizing, Schwarz said. Shes concerned restaurant workers who were already skeptical about the vaccine will now be even less inclined to sign up when the time comes. Thinking they can sign up and then feeling like its fraudulent, itll make them trust less next time, she said. The inconvenience for people is unfortunate, said Dr. George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert with UCSF, but hes not surprised there are still kinks in the rollout. Hopefully by this time next week, this will all be resolved, he said. Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker MUMBAI: Maharashtra Gram Panchayats polls will be conducted in 34 districts of the state under the watchful eyes of the election commission on Friday. Polling will take place between 7.30 AM and 5.30 PM. The State Election Commission had announced the dates for the polls in December last year. The model election code of conduct came into force immediately after the announcement. There are 27,920 Gram Panchayats in Maharashtra and the polls will cover 34 districts, barring Mumbai city and Mumbai suburban. There 20,000-odd seats in the state where members have been elected unopposed, an election commission official said. Apart from this, 14 villages have boycotted the Gram Panchayat elections to press for their demand to be a part of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. With 14 villages boycotting the elections, five Gram Panchayats in the district will not go to polls on Friday, the official said. The State Election Commission had on Wednesday said that those suffering from coronavirus infection or people who are quarantined can cast their vote half an hour before the polling ends. The body temperature of voters who are not suffering from COVID-19, but are living in containment zones will be checked twice, it was stated. Voters whose body temperature is higher than the prescribed limit will be given tokens, and they can cast vote half an hour before the polling ends, the Commission had said. All the polling centres and material/equipment have been sanitised in view of the elections, the Commission said. The Commission also announced on Wednesday that the poll process has been cancelled for Umrane and Khondamali Gram Panchayats in Nashik and Nandurbar districts respectively after it received evidence of public auctioning of the posts of sarpanch and members of the local governing bodies. The Gram Panchayat polls will be held in the wake of the MVA's victory in the Legislative Council elections for the graduates' and teachers' constituencies that took place last year. The MVA had won four out of six seats, while two others were bagged by an Independent candidate and the BJP. According to political observers, the Gram Panchayat election is being seen as a barometer to gauge the public mood in rural areas as well as the strength of the parties. However, the Gram Panchayat politics is not always in sync with that at the state level, they feel. The district-wise tally of Gram Panchayats going to polls are as follows: Thane (158), Palghar (3), Raigad (88), Ratnagiri (479), Sindhudurg (70), Nashik (620), Dhule (218), Jalgaon (783), Ahmednagar (767), Nandurbar (86), Pune (748), Solapur (658), Satara (879), Sangli (152), Kolhapur (433), Aurangabad (618), Beed (129), Nanded (1,015), Osmanabad (428), Parbhani (566), Jalna (475), Latur (408), Hingoli (495), Amravati (553), Akola (225), Yavatmal (980), Washim (152), Buldhana (527), Nagpur (130), Wardha (50), Chandrapur (629), Bhandara (148), Gondia (189) and Gadchiroli (362). Counting of votes will take place on January 18. Live TV JACKSON, Miss., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Michigan families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Mississippians are hosting 497 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among these will be a Facebook Live "Coffee & Conversation" with education experts on Jan. 26 and a social media campaign with families sharing their school choice stories throughout the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. Governor Tate Reeves issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Mississippi School Choice Week. In addition, a growing number of communities are issuing proclamations recognizing the Week, including the county of Benton and the city of Pascagoula. "National School Choice Week unites educators, leaders, and families in pursuit of a common goal: educating and inspiring children," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "In the midst of a challenging school year, let's remember to keep working toward a future with more effective and affordable learning choices for all families." In Mississippi, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with open enrollment in some districts, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Mississippi offers several state-run scholarship programs for students with special needs. Mississippi families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Mississippi school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/mississippi. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com 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. Gov. Kate Brown laid into the federal government Friday, blaming its empty promises to increase COVID-19 vaccine shipments as the reason she is postponing the date older Oregonians will be eligible to get vaccinated by two to five weeks. Instead of opening vaccinations to all residents ages 65 and older starting Jan. 23, as she announced days earlier, Brown said shed now allow Oregonians ages 80 and older to start vaccinations Feb. 8, followed by ages 75-plus on Feb. 15, 70-plus on Feb. 22 and 65-plus on March 1. At the same time, Brown said she would move forward with her plans to prioritize the states day care, preschool and K-12 school employees -- allowing them to receive vaccinations starting as early as this week, with most eligible beginning Jan. 25. The governors announcement Friday came after a wild 24 hours in which state officials learned a Tuesday pledge from the federal government wouldnt result in up to 225,000 more vaccine doses for Oregon. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had promised to release the federal governments entire supply of vaccine doses, rather than holding second shots in reserve, and he also called for states to open vaccinations to residents who are 65 and older or have underlying health conditions. Azar had made no recommendations about vaccinating teachers or other school employees -- Brown did that Tuesday on her own initiative. By Thursday evening and into Friday morning, however, many states learned the additional stockpile wasnt coming because it doesnt exist -- the federal government had already shipped out its second doses. Brown was among several governors across the country who expressed outrage over the ensuing confusion. I am shocked and appalled that the federal government would set an expectation with the American people -- on which they knew they could not deliver -- with such grave consequences, Brown said during a news conference Friday after blasting the feds on Twitter for deception on a national scale. Azar, responding to Browns comments during an interview on NBC News, suggested Brown failed to listen to information his agency provided and was out to score political points: Every piece of data about this is completely transparent. At the news conference Friday, Brown received pointed questions asking why she is prioritizing teachers and other school employees before older Oregonians, who are most at risk of dying from COVID-19. Since the pandemic began, 91% of people whove died in Oregon have been age 60 or older. That age group makes up 25% of the population. The statistics grow grimmer for the oldest Oregonians, with people 80 and older accounting for 53% of deaths but comprising only 4% of the population. State officials at times struggled to articulate their decision, with Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen at one point incorrectly saying the age group accounted for only 30% of deaths. Allen later apologized and said he mixed up his numbers. Brown responded that many of the seniors at highest risk of dying -- those living in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities -- have already been offered a vaccination. Statistics suggest a two-week delay rolling out the vaccine to older Oregonians could add up to at least 140 more deaths at the current rate. The numbers could be higher given the expected longer waits for those between the ages of 65 to 79. Pressed on her decision in light of those figures, Brown said seniors are an important priority. We have worked very hard to protect and care for our seniors, Brown said. Im absolutely committed to getting this population vaccinated as quickly as we can. Facing a limited supply of vaccines and difficult choices, Brown said she is gravely concerned about the education of children, who are struggling academically and emotionally through online learning because the vast majority of classrooms in Oregon have remained closed since March. She said the youngest elementary students especially need to get back to in-person learning and vaccinating school staff is a necessary step. Children younger than 16 arent allowed to be inoculated anywhere in the U.S. because vaccines havent been proven safe yet in their age group. I know of families where 12 and 13 year olds are committed, committing, attempting suicide, Brown said. I talked with the CEO and president of Salem Health on my vaccination tour this week. She is hearing of many 11 and 12 year olds attempting suicide. The Oregonian/OregonLive asked Salem Health representative for more details about the conversation the governor had with the CEO but did not immediately hear back. The Oregon Health Authority did not report an increase in suicides among the general population in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same time in 2019, according to an OPB report last month. Many Oregon parents and educators alike are highly concerned that students are lagging farther behind in school than their counterparts in areas of the country whove kept in-person classes in session. Research shows remote-learning students falling months behind in reading and math. The gap is more pronounced among low-income, Black and Latino children. The governor said Oregon is home to about 100,000 childcare, preschool and K-12 educators, and that itll take only about two weeks to vaccinate all of them before moving onto seniors. In contrast, U.S. Census figures show there are about 767,000 Oregonians age 65 and older. The state estimates it will take about 12 weeks to vaccinate the entire group of seniors who live independently and have not yet been vaccinated. At least a dozen states already started vaccinating their elderly residents or had announced they were just about to start before confusion over Azars statements. Only two of the 12 -- Hawaii and Michigan -- are vaccinating both teachers and seniors. In a videotaped address posted to social media, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said his state has vaccinated more than 500,000 people aged 65 and older, far more, he said, than any other. Depending on the source, Florida ranks first or second among 50 U.S. states for the highest proportion of residents 65 or older. Oregon ranks 12th. Im not going to rest until every senior that wants a shot, gets a shot, said DeSantis, whose state has not yet opened vaccinations up to teachers. ... To our seniors -- we will continue to put you first. Florida is leading the way in vaccinating seniors, becoming the first state in the nation to vaccinate more than 500,000 individuals age 65+. We will continue to build on this progress and put Floridas #SeniorsFirst. Watch my update from this week below pic.twitter.com/LoFjMmcu84 Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) January 15, 2021 Despite the delayed schedule Brown outlined Friday -- pushing vaccination eligibility past Jan. 23 for seniors and school employees -- the revised timelines are nonetheless ahead of initial expectations that Oregon might not begin expanding eligibility until sometime in mid- to late February. Officials said theyll be able to expand eligibility beyond health care workers, long-term care residents and others based on doses they have now and doses scheduled to be delivered in the weeks ahead. And Brown said shell demand answers from the Trump administration, whose empty promises are literally playing with peoples lives. Starting next week, Allen, the Oregon Health Authority director, said Oregonians will be able to talk to someone in a call center who can answer questions about their eligibility and where they can go to get immunized. Next Wednesday, the Portland areas largest hospital systems -- Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University, Providence Health & Services and Kaiser Permanente -- plan to begin jointly operating a mass vaccination center for eligible residents at the Oregon Convention Center. Its goal is to begin inoculating 5,000 people per a day. That wont include ages 65 and older for the first few weeks. Portland resident Raymond Becich, 76, was devastated to learn Brown is delaying vaccinations for seniors. He described Fridays news conference as a blame game. I just cant believe I am seeing seniors in other states getting vaccinated and we are out in the cold here in Oregon, he said. Becich, who has hypertension and diabetes, said he worries the state may postpone its timeline for seniors again. This is very important for me, he said. Its a matter of life or death. -- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee Reporters Andrew Theen and Brad Schmidt contributed to this report. 3 1 of 3 Google Maps Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 3 NEW HAVEN A 27-year-old man was shot in the head while sitting in his parked car on Winthrop Avenue Thursday night, according to New Haven police. The incident occurred around 8:23 p.m. on Winthrop Avenue between the streets intersections with Parmelee and Judson avenues, Capt. Anthony Duff said in an email. Officers responded to 911 calls reporting gunfire, finding evidence of shots in the roadway. Since the attack, the lone bill of impeachment, supported by 14 Illinois congressmen (including Schneider and the countys other main member of Congress, Democrat Lauren Underwood) has been sent to the Senate for trial. But that wont be adjudged until after our new president, Democrat Biden, is slated to take office. Biden, whose inauguration takes place at noon on Jan. 20, said he hopes senators will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation. That didnt work so well the last time Congress took up Trumps impeachment proceedings. Texas State Technical College Texas State Technical College in Rosenberg kicked off its spring 2021 semester on Monday, Jan. 11, welcoming students back to the campus while maintaining COVID-19 restrictions. According to a news release, a limited number of students, staff and faculty returned to the campus while following the colleges coronavirus safety guidelines. 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. On Sundays, Bishop Bruce Davis preached love. Through his Pentecostal ministry, he organized youth parades and gave computers, bicycles and food to families in need. During the week, Bruce practiced what he preached, caring for prisoners at a Georgia hospital. On March 27 he began coughing, and on April 1 he was hospitalized. He'd tested positive for covid-19. The virus swept through his household, infecting his wife and daughter and hospitalizing their disabled son. Ten days after landing in the hospital, Bruce died. But when Gwendolyn Davis received her husbands death certificate, she was taken aback. The causes of death? Sepsis and renal failure. No mention of covid-19. He wouldn't have had kidney failure if he didn't have covid, Gwendolyn said. After Bruce died, his wife applied to two pandemic relief programs seeking help with $1,500 in missed payments on a truck and an electricity bill. But, she said, she was denied because his death certificate didnt mention covid-19. I think it's wrong, Gwendolyn said. It's almost like we didn't count. The count has profound implications for families and the country. Omitting covid-19 on death certificates threatens to undercount the toll of the pandemic nationwide. For Davis' family and others, it can pile financial hardship onto emotional despair, as death benefits and other covid-19 relief programs are withheld. Interviews with families across the U.S. shed light on reasons covid deaths are being undercounted and the consequences loved ones have endured. When covid patients die, the "immediate" cause of death is always something else, such as respiratory failure or cardiac arrest. Residents, doctors, medical examiners and coroners make the call on whether covid was an underlying factor, or "contributory cause." If so, the diagnosis should be included on the death certificate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even beyond the pandemic, there is wide variation in how certifiers describe causes of death: "Theres just no such thing as an objective measure of cause of death," said Lee Anne Flagg, a statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. Partly because of a lack of training in how to fill them out, the quality of the death certificates is not good," said Dr. James Gill, vice president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. And in cases in which people had other chronic conditions, it can be difficult to determine whether covid was a contributing cause of death, he said. That was especially true early on, when reliable testing was not widely available. Since early in the pandemic, the CDC has encouraged certifiers who suspect covid as a cause of death to list it on the death certificate as probable or likely." Still, some clinicians are reluctant to certify a death as a covid death without a test in hand," Gill said. Its not clear how Bruce Davis case slipped under the radar. His death was certified by William Ken Garland, deputy coroner in Baldwin County. Reached by phone, Garland said the causes of death were provided by Dr. Joseph Coppiano, a medical resident who pronounced Davis dead at Augusta University Medical Center, about 90 miles away. No autopsy was done. I did certify the record, but that's about all I did, Garland said. Hospital spokesperson Danielle Harris declined to comment on the case, citing patient privacy. She said the hospital follows Georgia Department of Public Health guidelines. In the absence of certainty, the CDC has encouraged coroners to document the virus. "We're not worried that we're overcounting the number of [covid-19] deaths," Farida Ahmad, epidemiologist and mortality surveillance team leader at NCHS, said in April. Missed cases are one reason that experts agree covid deaths are being undercounted nationwide. As evidence for that, they point to the vast number of excess deaths additional deaths compared to what would be expected based on prior-year numbers and demographic trends. Over the past year, the U.S. had endured up to 431,792 excess deaths as of Jan. 6, with 68% directly attributed to covid, according to the CDC. These excess deaths tend to track pretty closely with covid cases, trailing by a couple of weeks, said Daniel Weinberger, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health who has published on this topic. This strongly suggests that a large proportion of these uncounted deaths are due to covid but not recorded as such. We may never know how many covid deaths went uncounted: Postmortem tests can detect the virus, but its unlikely that this type of testing will be performed at a [sufficient] scale, Weinberger said. Early in the pandemic, especially in the Northeast, many of those who were treated clinically for covid and then died were not tested for the virus so they never made it into the statistics. Testing troubles affect lawsuits, hospital bills Inaccurate death certificates can make it harder to pursue a lawsuit or win a workers' compensation case when a loved one dies after contracting covid on the job. Gwendolyn Davis did win workers' compensation death benefits from Bruces employer, a state psychiatric facility in Milledgeville, by providing medical records. But problems with covid testing can complicate the process. Bruces supervisor at work, Mark DeLong, also died after contracting covid, but it did not appear on his death certificate with the other causes: cardiopulmonary arrest, respiratory failure and diabetes. The omission on DeLongs certificate seemed to stem from a delay in test results: His covid-positive results didnt arrive until three days after he died, according to his widow, Jan DeLong. She has asked the local coroner to correct the record. In New Jersey, attorney Paul da Costa represents 75 family members who lost loved ones at veterans homes in Menlo Park and Paramus in April and May. He said he knows of at least five patients whose death certificates did not list covid-19 despite evidence suggesting it killed them. The root problem, he said, was a complete dearth of testing. Patients were transferred to hospitals, or dying in the veterans facilities, without ever being tested, he said. The gap between excess deaths and confirmed covid deaths has narrowed over time as testing has increased, Weinberger said. Early testing inaccuracy may also have led to undercounting, which creates a different burden: hospital bills. Without a diagnosis, families can be on the hook for thousands of dollars in charges that otherwise would have been covered under the CARES Act. Correcting the record In some cases, families have sought to have death certificates changed to reflect covid. Dorothy Payton, 95, who lived in the ManorCare nursing home in Denver, first showed covid symptoms April 5. Five days later, Payton known as "Nana Dee" tested positive for it. And on April 13, her husband, Edward Benjamin, received a call that she had died. The death certificate offered a litany of causes: vascular dementia, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, gait instability, difficulty swallowing and "failure to thrive." But not covid-19. So it "seemed logical to fight for listing her cause of death under her cause of death," Benjamin said. After a few calls, her husband was able to get the certificate amended. ManorCare could not be reached for comment. For Benjamin, it wasn't about public health statistics or financial considerations. It simply offers a sense of closure. "I want her life and death remembered the way it was, and I'm glad we set the record straight," he said. "It's the first step towards moving on." This story is part of "Lost on the Frontline," an ongoing project from The Guardian and Kaiser Health News that aims to document the lives of health care workers in the U.S. who die from COVID-19, and to investigate why so many are victims of the disease. If you have a colleague or loved one we should include, please share their story. Hong Kong: Govt strongly opposes US report The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government today strongly objects to the US Congressional-Executive Commission on Chinas newly released 2020 annual report which is biased, politically motivated and not reflecting the truth. In a statement, the Hong Kong SAR Government said safeguarding national security through legislation is in line with international practice. Contrary to the erroneous allegations that the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong SAR undermines the "one country, two systems" framework, the country has the right to legislate for this matter under one country, two systems". Every country has laws and duty to safeguard its national security and sovereignty. The international community should not adopt a double standard. The allegation that the offences under the National Security Law are vaguely defined is simply untrue. The National Security Law clearly stipulates four types of offences endangering national security and the penalties. Law-abiding people, including Hong Kong residents and overseas tourists/investors, will not unwittingly violate the law. At the same time, the National Security Law contains specific provisions upholding Hong Kong peoples rights and freedoms under the Basic Law as well as the relevant provisions of international covenants on human rights as applied to Hong Kong. It also provides for the presumption of innocence, the prohibition of double jeopardy, and the right to defend oneself and other rights in judicial proceedings that a criminal suspect, defendant and other parties in judicial proceedings are entitled to under the law. The National Security Law does not conflict with Article 23 of the Basic Law. The Hong Kong SAR is still required to complete the national security legislation stipulated in the Basic Law at an early date. Since the National Security Laws implementation, street violence has subsided and stability has been restored. The legitimate rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people have been upheld and criminals are brought to justice through the citys independent judiciary. A stable environment is vitally important to the prosperity of Hong Kong and the business activities of both local and overseas enterprises here. In respect of the Hong Kong Polices enforcement actions, the statement said Police have a statutory duty to maintain public safety and public order. Law enforcement actions taken by Police were based on evidence and strictly according to the laws in force, and regardless of the suspects political background or stance. The freedom of the press in Hong Kong is guaranteed under the Basic Law. While media practitioners need to cover news, Police have a statutory duty to adopt measures to maintain public order and safeguard public safety. On condition of not affecting police operations, Police have all along been assisting in media reporting, so that both sides can perform their respective functions on the basis of mutual understanding and respect. The Hong Kong SAR Government said taking people who have contravened the law to justice is the duty of every government, and where the offence concerns national security, the interests of the country and every citizen are at stake. This national obligation should be fully respected in the international arena, it added. This story has been published on: 2021-01-15. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Charges brought against opposition figure Sobol in case over illegal entry into dwelling facebook 17:17 15/01/2021 MOSCOW, January 15 (RAPSI) Opposition figure Lyubov Sobol has been charged as part of a criminal case over forcible violation of inviolability of dwelling, attorney Vladimir Voronin has told RAPSI. Investigators allege that on December 21 a group of persons, among them Lyubov Sobol, repeatedly attempted to entry into an apartment, where an old woman resided, of a house situated in the Eastern District of Moscow. Those involved illegally used uniforms of Russias consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor. After two attempts to enter the house had failed, Sobol deceived a delivery man saying she was a abandoned wife with a baby, could enter the building and as the old woman opened the door of her apartment Sobol pushed her back, entered the apartment, took a video of the premises on her phone, and left the place, according to the Investigative Committee. The legislation sets the punishment for such a crime as imprisonment for up to 2 years. President Xi Jinping has encouraged the United States company Starbucks to play a positive role in promoting China-US economic and trade cooperation and bilateral ties. Xi made the remark in a reply letter to Howard Schultz, Starbucks Corp chairman emeritus. The letter, dated Jan 6, was made public on Thursday. Xi said in his reply letter that under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the 1.4 billion Chinese people have made long-term and arduous efforts to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and pursue socialist modernization. The new journey embarked upon by China of fully building a modern socialist country will provide broader space for enterprises from across the world, including Starbucks and other US companies, to develop in China, Xi said. The president expressed hope that the world's largest coffeehouse chain and Schultz himself will make efforts to promote China-US economic and trade cooperation as well as bilateral relations. In his letter to Xi earlier, Schultz congratulated China on the upcoming completion of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects under Xi's leadership, and expressed his respect for the Chinese people and Chinese culture. The exchange of letters between Xi and Schultz came as China-US relations have encountered unprecedented difficulties in recent years. China has attributed the deterioration of bilateral ties to the serious misconceptions of US policymakers about China. Some US politicians tried to decouple with China and tried every means to suppress Chinese companies like Huawei and harm normal people-to-people exchanges as well as economic and trade cooperation between Chinese and US companies. Beijing has insisted that it wants to develop a relationship with the US based on coordination, cooperation and stability in the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. Speaking to Chinese media earlier this month, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China-US relations have come to a new crossroads and a new window of hope is opening. "We hope that the next US administration will return to a sensible approach, resume dialogue with China, restore normalcy to the bilateral relations and restart cooperation." Despite the worsening of their ties, trade between China and the US rose last year, amounting to more than $586 billion, up 8.3 percent year-on-year, according to the General Administration of Customs. Prosecutors believe the MAGA mob rioters who stormed the US Capitol last week planned to 'assassinate elected officials' - as it's alleged that a retired Air Force officer carried plastic zip-tie handcuffs because he intended 'to take hostages'. Claims that some rioters intended to assassinate elected officials have now been made by federal prosecutors in Texas and Arizona as those charged in the siege continue to face court over their involvement. Retired Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr, 53, faced court in Texas on Thursday after he was arrested after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs. Brock, a father-of-three who lives in Dallas, was released to home confinement after being charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. During his hearing, prosecutors said the zip ties were proof Brock - who appeared in court with his hands and feet shackled - had planned to take hostages during the siege. 'He means to take hostages. He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government,' Assistant US Attorney Jay Weimer said of Brock. Separately, federal prosecutors in Arizona alleged that the intent of the rioters during the siege was to capture and assassinate elected officials. In a court filing on Thursday, those prosecutors argued that 'QAnon Shaman' Jacob Chansley should be detained pending trial after he was charged over his involvement in the riots. Retired Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr was arrested last Sunday in Texas after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs Brock was released from jail on Thursday (pictured above) pending his trial but was ordered to surrender his firearms and is only allowed to have limited internet access The prosecutor in Brock's case had also argued that he should be detained given his military background, saying 'his prior experience and training make him all the more dangerous'. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey L Cureton said he would release Brock to home confinement. Cureton ordered Brock to surrender any firearms and said he could have only limited internet access as conditions of that release. 'I need to put you on a very short rope,' Cureton said. 'These are strange times for our country and the concerns raised by the government do not fall on deaf ears.' During the hearing, prosecutors read out social media posts from Brock, including one posted on the day of the Capitol riot that said: 'Patriots on the Capitol. Patriots storming. Men with guns need to shoot their way in.' Weimer noted that Brock had once been fired for making threatening and racist comments. He read a termination letter from the former employer that said he had talked in the workplace about killing people of a 'particular religion and or race'. Prosecutors also read social media posts in which Brock referred to a coming civil war and the election being stolen from President Donald Trump. Weimer said Brock's posts also referenced the far-right and anti-government Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, a loose anti-government network thats part of the militia movement. The Oath Keepers claim to count thousands of current and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members. An FBI agent who testified said there was no evidence beyond the social media posts that Brock was involved with either of those groups. Federal prosecutors in Arizona on Thursday sought the detention of 'QAnon Shaman' Jacob Chansley (above). They allege that the intent of the rioters during the siege was to capture and assassinate elected officials Brock was photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs During his hearing on Thursday, prosecutors said the zip ties were proof Brock had planned to take hostages during the siege. He is pictured above as the MAGA mob stormed the Capitol Brock's attorney, Brook Antonio II, noted that Brock has only been charged with misdemeanors. Antonio said there was no direct evidence of Brock breaking doors or windows to get into the Capitol or doing anything violent once he was inside. 'It's all talk. Its all speculation and conjecture,' said Antonio, who noted Brock's long service in the military, including being reactivated after September 11 and his four tours in Afghanistan. Weimer said Brock will likely face additional charges. Meanwhile, prosecutors filed court documents on Thursday evening seeking the detention of Chansley, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was pictured during the riot dressed as a horned shaman. 'Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,' prosecutors said. They said the 33-year-old left a note for Pence at the dais in the Senate Chamber where the second-in-command had been standing just minutes before, which read: 'it's only a matter of time, justice is coming.' Chansley, who is due to appear in court on Friday on his charges, is a regular drug user and likely has mental health problems, prosecutors say. Prosecutors filed court documents on Thursday evening seeking the detention of Chansley, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was pictured during the riot dressed as a horned shaman Prosecutors said the 33-year-old left a note for Pence at the dais in the Senate Chamber where the second-in-command had been standing just minutes before, which read: 'it's only a matter of time, justice is coming.' 'Chansley has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality,' the filing read. Prosecutors requested he be detained as he 'poses serious risks of flight and danger to the community.' More than 100 people have been arrested in the Capitol riot, with charges ranging from curfew violations to serious federal felonies related to theft and weapons possession. The FBI has been investigating whether some of the rioters had planned to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage. Before his arrest, Brock told The New Yorker that he found the zip-tie cuffs on the floor and that he had planned to give them to a police officer. 'I wish I had not picked those up,' he said. There was no evidence presented that Brock had a firearm on the day of the Capitol riot. Antonio asked an FBI agent who was testifying whether it was possible Brock had just picked up the cuffs and the agent acknowledged that was a possibility. Brock, a Texas-based Air Force Academy graduate and combat veteran, is shown with wife Katya Wallery Brock and their children Brock was released from jail on Thursday pending his trial. He is pictured above with his wife Katya Brock served in the Air Force for more than two decades and now works for an aviation company. Following his arrest, unnamed family members have claimed said that Brock had become increasingly radical and influenced by white supremacy in recent years. Bill Leake, who served alongside Brock in the Air Force for 10 years, told the New Yorker he had fallen out of touch with him because he had 'gotten extreme'. He said Brock, who was nicknamed Torch in the force, became obsessed with Trump and with following 'the alternative-news-source world'. 'Torch got all in on Trump. He went all in on the alternative-news-source world,' said Leake. 'He actually believes liberals and Democrats are a threat to the country. You can see how the logical conclusion to that is, 'We've gotta take over'.' Two family members said Brock called himself a patriot, had started making racist comments and that they believe he was influenced by white supremacy. '[He started saying] weird rage talk, basically, saying he's willing to get in trouble to defend what he thinks is right, which is Trump being the President, I guess,' one of the family members said. They added that he developed a 'weird sense of power' from his military career and that he 'doesn't understand the fallout and the people he's hurting'. LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the sixth straight year, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Arkansas School Choice Week by the state's governor. This year, Gov. Asa Hutchinson's proclamation for the Week recognizes that every child in Arkansas deserves access to an effective education, and it is important for parents to explore and identify the best learning option for their child. More than a dozen other governors so far, as well as hundreds of county, city, and town leaders, have officially recognized Jan. 24-30 as School Choice Week. Nationally, more than 33,000 virtual celebrations have been planned for the Week, which seeks to raise awareness about choice in K-12 education. From social media contests to at-home celebrations, Arkansas parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 462 activities to celebrate school choices and spark conversations about the diverse and innovative learning opportunities that help children succeed. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will be participating in the Week. "Celebrating school choice means celebrating children, families, and teachersand the way that educational opportunities positively impact each of them," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "During this challenging school year, we're grateful to Gov. Hutchinson for supporting Arkansas families in celebrating educational opportunity." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information or to watch Gov. Hutchinson's video message about the Week, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/arkansas . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Regulatory News: Under the liquidity contract entrusted by Median Technologies (Paris:ALMDT) (FR0011049824 ALMDT FP) to Louis Capital Markets|Midcap Partners, the following resources were listed in the liquidity account as of 12/31/2020: 35,698 shares 79,709.31 in cash During the second half of 2020, it has been traded a total of: BUY 180,188 Shares EUR 1,271,243.68 540 transactions SELL 177,008 Shares EUR 1,276,566.46 461 transactions It is recalled that at the time of the half-yearly statement of 06/30/2020, the following resources were included in the liquidity account: 32,518 shares 77,124.37 in cash It is recalled that when the new liquidity contract was put in place on 05/04/2020, the following resources were made available: 4,404 shares 173,829.64 in cash The daily transaction table is provided in the appendix to this press release. In addition, please note that in connection with the acquisition of Louis Capital Markets|Midcap Partners by the TPICAP Plc group, the liquidity agreement previously held by Louis Capital Markets UK, LLP was automatically transferred on 12/31/2020 to TP ICAP (EUROPE), the French entity of the TPICAP group, authorised and regulated by the Autorite de Controle Prudentiel et de Resolution (ACPR) and the Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF). About Median Technologies:Median Technologies provides innovative imaging solutions and services to advance healthcare for everyone. We leverage the power of Imaging Phenomics to provide insights into novel therapies and treatment strategies. Our unique solutions for medical image analysis and management in oncology trials and iBiopsy for imaging phenotyping, together with our global team of experts, are advancing the development of new drugs and diagnostic tools to monitor disease and assess response to therapy. Median Technologies supports biopharmaceutical sponsors and healthcare professionals around the world to quickly and precisely bring new treatments to patients in need. This is how we are helping to create a healthier world. Founded in 2002, based in Sophia-Antipolis, France, with a subsidiary in the US and another one in Shanghai, Median has received the label "Innovative company" by the BPI and is listed on the Euronext Growth market. FR0011049824- ticker: ALMDT. Median is eligible for the French SME equity savings plan scheme (PEA-PME), listed on the Enternext PEA-PME 150 index and has been awarded the Euronext European Rising Tech label. For more information: www.mediantechnologies.com Appendix Achats Vente ALMDT FP Nombre de Transactions Nombre de titres Capitaux en EUR Nombre de Transactions Nombre de titres Capitaux en EUR Total 540 180,188 1,271,243.68 461 177,008 1,276,566.46 20200701 6 2,081 12,012.58 9 5,771 35,735.38 20200702 1 1 6.76 9 4,961 33,901.16 20200703 9 4,261 28,967.14 1 1 7.14 20200706 1 1 7.20 7 3,751 27,007.20 20200707 4 1,811 12,125.48 2 144 993.58 20200708 5 2,131 14,118.50 2 454 3,114.28 20200709 1 1 7.18 11 6,401 46,521.98 20200710 2 521 3,761.86 9 3,701 28,205.46 20200713 5 2,390 17,267.56 1 1 7.26 20200714 6 3,671 25,576.72 1 1 7.12 20200715 1 1 6.92 4 2,001 14,181.32 20200716 9 4,911 32,726.84 2 2 14.08 20200717 9 4,171 25,687.38 1 1 6.38 20200720 5 1,429 8,509.10 8 5,159 33,349.34 20200721 1 1 6.32 4 2,281 14,556.72 20200722 6 3,069 18,665.68 1 1 6.32 20200723 1 1 6.14 2 871 5,347.94 20200724 2 571 3,460.38 2 261 1,623.38 20200727 3 1,261 7,610.10 1 1 6.10 20200728 9 3,956 23,047.00 1 1 6.00 20200729 5 1,811 10,241.10 1 1 5.70 20200730 2 180 1,008.00 2 2 11.32 20200731 2 321 1,810.56 8 5,529 32,719.52 20200803 3 1,161 6,858.62 2 921 5,562.82 20200804 4 1,401 8,189.58 1 1 5.98 20200805 4 1,571 8,956.76 2 3 17.48 20200806 2 441 2,513.70 1 1 5.70 20200807 1 1 5.78 3 589 3,467.50 20200810 1 1 5.86 2 311 1,828.66 20200811 2 281 1,635.46 2 311 1,847.26 20200812 1 1 5.90 8 4,962 31,265.38 20200813 1 1 6.46 7 3,751 25,237.06 20200814 7 2,891 18,997.58 1 1 6.78 20200817 4 1,591 10,075.58 1 1 6.38 20200818 8 3,461 20,816.22 2 11 69.82 20200819 4 1,021 6,356.38 1 1 6.38 20200820 2 461 2,895.08 1 1 6.28 20200821 1 1 6.28 3 745 4,759.96 20200824 1 1 6.40 5 3,121 20,307.40 20200825 1 104 655.20 1 800 5,168.00 20200826 4 1,211 7,635.78 1 1 6.38 20200827 1 1 6.24 1 1 6.24 20200828 1 1 6.40 3 1,001 6,445.40 20200831 1 1 6.40 5 2,741 18,109.00 20200901 2 671 4,307.96 2 122 802.74 20200902 1 1 6.50 6 3,731 25,367.90 20200903 7 3,271 22,296.52 8 3,951 29,087.72 20200904 9 5,271 33,455.20 6 2,611 18,003.80 20200907 1 1 6.78 6 2,901 19,852.18 20200908 1 1 7.12 7 2,811 20,095.92 20200909 1 1 7.24 9 3,681 27,214.64 20200910 5 2,980 22,555.40 2 181 1,419.02 20200911 2 318 2,397.78 4 1,271 9,884.80 20200914 1 1 7.98 8 2,981 24,198.98 20200915 1 1 8.46 6 1,701 14,642.26 20200916 5 2,491 20,850.82 4 871 7,625.02 20200917 5 2,401 19,809.34 4 746 6,422.94 20200918 2 118 996.06 2 441 3,810.18 20200921 8 4,541 37,759.32 2 181 1,589.12 20200922 2 561 4,521.68 5 1,663 13,898.00 20200923 2 731 6,008.96 5 1,801 15,361.16 20200924 8 5,030 40,439.60 0 0 0.00 20200925 11 5,471 39,957.40 1 1 7.80 20200928 5 1,421 10,192.22 4 2,381 17,918.22 20200929 5 1,961 13,820.10 4 1,641 12,088.10 20200930 4 1,161 8,446.68 8 3,901 30,330.68 20201001 5 1,396 11,181.70 1 1 8.20 20201002 6 1,961 15,388.42 1 1 8.02 20201005 10 3,361 25,971.90 1 1 7.92 20201006 1 1 7.52 3 961 7,369.52 20201007 2 371 2,864.12 2 291 2,292.92 20201008 4 1,001 7,815.78 3 931 7,568.98 20201009 5 1,511 12,000.84 11 7,101 61,532.84 20201012 2 481 4,261.70 2 241 2,183.30 20201013 6 1,951 16,892.80 8 3,014 27,294.70 20201014 7 2,307 18,869.72 3 305 2,625.68 20201015 9 3,591 27,743.66 1 1 7.86 20201016 2 411 3,255.26 3 921 7,517.26 20201019 1 1 8.26 3 901 7,516.66 20201020 2 441 3,616.38 6 2,734 23,801.60 20201021 8 2,901 24,194.56 1 1 8.56 20201022 6 1,751 13,916.40 1 1 8.20 20201023 4 1,061 8,391.04 1 1 8.04 20201026 9 2,661 19,638.56 1 1 7.76 20201027 9 2,341 15,600.00 4 1,761 13,011.40 20201028 15 3,667 23,666.20 1 1 6.74 20201029 2 261 1,513.80 6 3,522 21,735.74 20201030 2 216 1,438.00 15 10,299 69,270.36 20201102 4 1,671 11,083.84 4 792 5,575.68 20201103 3 1,281 8,183.46 5 1,771 11,946.86 20201104 2 109 712.86 3 781 5,286.54 20201105 1 1 6.86 6 2,621 18,647.46 20201106 6 2,433 17,054.68 3 681 5,018.20 20201109 6 2,611 17,216.00 3 249 1,719.80 20201110 4 1,411 8,748.20 4 1,351 8,759.00 20201111 1 1 6.54 2 251 1,656.54 20201112 1 1 6.58 3 801 5,373.58 20201113 1 1 6.60 5 1,721 11,884.40 20201116 3 1,144 7,863.58 3 731 5,210.86 20201117 5 2,141 14,468.80 1 1 7.00 20201118 5 1,797 12,145.16 1 1 6.88 20201119 1 1 6.86 7 3,801 27,222.06 20201120 1 1 7.42 9 4,541 35,422.42 20201123 4 1,901 14,690.84 2 191 1,516.44 20201124 4 1,781 13,657.08 2 11 86.68 20201125 1 1 8.20 9 4,291 35,205.40 20201126 1 1 7.76 9 3,341 27,179.56 20201127 2 771 6,353.30 2 151 1,283.50 20201130 5 2,571 20,833.10 1 1 8.30 20201201 4 1,961 15,389.92 2 181 1,458.72 20201202 1 1 8.12 1 1 8.12 20201203 2 651 5,234.20 1 1 8.20 20201204 4 1,751 13,882.50 1 1 8.10 20201207 8 3,305 24,656.38 2 221 1,745.90 20201208 6 3,071 21,959.86 2 102 760.92 20201209 6 2,021 14,337.56 3 556 4,100.26 20201210 3 1,031 7,080.40 5 3,031 21,590.60 20201211 8 1,244 8,429.04 1 1 7.12 20201214 1 1 6.78 9 5,301 37,303.18 20201215 5 2,501 17,871.56 1 1 7.36 20201216 1 1 7.20 3 1,341 9,748.80 20201217 1 1 7.30 3 1,561 11,456.10 20201218 6 3,353 23,856.34 2 751 5,572.26 20201221 24 2,831 18,913.50 1 1 6.74 20201222 5 929 6,215.10 9 1,410 9,715.72 20201223 10 1,917 12,917.74 1 1 6.78 20201224 4 445 2,972.66 3 731 4,999.94 20201225 0 0 0.00 0 0 0.00 20201228 1 1 6.92 1 1 6.92 20201229 5 2,067 14,169.52 0 0 0.00 20201230 17 2,580 17,277.32 1 1 6.84 20201231 3 691 4,602.14 2 601 4,146.74 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005300/en/ Contacts: Median Technologies Emmanuelle Leygues Head of Corporate Communications +33 6 10 93 58 88 emmanuelle.leygues@mediantechnologies.com Press ALIZE RP Caroline Carmagnol +33 6 64 18 99 59 median@alizerp.com Investors ACTIFIN Ghislaine Gasparetto +33 1 56 88 11 11 ggasparetto@actifin.fr New Delhi, Jan 15 : The ninth round of talks between the government and the agitating farmers ended inconclusively on Friday. The next round of meeting has been scheduled for January 19. The meeting of the farmer leaders with the government, which started at 12 noon on Friday and went on for around five hours, over the three contentious farm laws and the demand for minimum support price (MSP) ended in a stalemate. Speaking to the media after the meeting, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) spokesperson Rakesh Tikait said, "Our demand will remain the same and we will not go to the committee formed by the Supreme Court, but continue to hold talks with the government. We still demand that the government should repeal the three farm laws besides ensuring MSP." Tikait also said that the anti-farm law protests will stretch for long. "The opposition will raise this issue in the Parliament, while we will raise the issue in our protests outside the Parliament," Tikait said. He also said that the government is not accepting the demands of the farmers. This was the first meeting between the two sides after the Supreme Court order on January 12, which stayed the implementation of the three farm laws and also formed a four-member committee to look into the farmers' issues. However, on Thursday, farmer leader Bhupinder Singh Mann, one of the four members on the committee, had recused himself from the panel constituted by the top court. Earlier, eight rounds of talks were held between the farmers and the government, but they all turned out to be inconclusive. Thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh have been agitating against the three farm laws on the borders of Delhi since November 26. Their main demand is that the government must repeal the three farm laws enacted in September last year. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text A VIOLENT thug has been jailed for savagely beating an Irish grandad to death and pouring paint over him at the request of his vengeful girlfriend. David Carney and Tracey Fielding were arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of Raymond Cullen was found at his home address in Bold Street, Fleetwood on October 10, 2019. Mr Cullen, who was known locally as Irish Ray, was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, having suffered a violent assault, including significant head injuries and bruising to his arms, legs and body. Ray (55) was born and raised in Ireland but had lived in the UK for many years and was a popular figure in the Lancashire area. This week, the court heard how David Carney called round to Ray Cullens home in the early hours and launched a violent and unprovoked attack - before dumping a can of paint on him as he lay dying from severe head injuries. Following Cullen's death, police focused attention on Fielding, 47, who had ended a tempestuous and corrosive relationship with Mr Cullen the year before. At least four witnesses told police she would regularly offer people up to 20,000 to attack or kill her ex. One said: From the moment I met Tracey I have known her asking people to kill Ray. Detectives said they launched a murder investigation and following enquiries were approached by a witness who said they had spoken with Fielding at The Bug Pub in Fleetwood. Expand Close Ray Cullen was brutally murdered / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ray Cullen was brutally murdered The witness claimed Fielding, said her boyfriend, Carney, had left Ray for dead and she was going to be arrested for conspiracy and be sent to prison. Following this, police discovered previous incidents involving Fielding and Mr Cullen which had taken place during their relationship. A review of CCTV footage found that around 1.50am on October 8, 2019, Carney, who was wearing a Superdry jacket and distinctive Timberland footwear, had approached Mr Cullens address. He re-appeared around 1.55am walking away from the area and an audio recording from the CCTV revealed the onset of the violent and unprovoked attack upon Mr Cullen. Following the attack, Carney poured paint all over Mr Cullen's body. Police searched Carneys address, where the jacket and Timberland boots were recovered, with the boots proven to match the paint footprints at the scene in Bold Street. Tests also found traces of Mr Cullens blood on the boots. A day later, Carney had a text conversation where he referred to having "got rid" of Mr Cullen saying he "wont be causing any more problems ever." Further text messages were exchanged between Fielding and a relative confirming Carney had turned up at her address covered in blood and had killed Mr Cullen. Carney and Fielding were both charged with murder, with Carney pleading guilty, and after consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, Fielding admitting manslaughter. The pair were sentenced at Preston Crown Court on Wednesday. Fielding admitted telling Carney to assault Mr Cullen by asking him to go round and give Ray a slap. She said she did not intend Mr Cullen should suffer serious bodily harm. Carney, 38, of Argosy Avenue, Blackpool, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years and seven months at Preston Crown Court after pleading guilty to the murder of Mr Cullen. Fielding, 47, of Victoria Street, Fleetwood, admitted manslaughter and was handed a nine year and nine month term. Sentencing at Preston Crown Court, Judge Robert Altham said: Mr Cullen was a vulnerable man both in condition and circumstances. He suffered cirrhosis of the liver and was described by his daughter as frail and weak. He was roused from his sleep in the middle of the night and pitilessly attacked and stamped on in his own home, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. The act of pouring paint over Mr Cullen is an aggravating feature and demonstrates the hateful frame of mind of Carney. Fieldings part of this terrible incident was to set it in motion. Without her it wouldnt have happened. Pakistan announced on Friday that all secondary and higher secondary level schools in the country will reopen from January 18. Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood said this at a media briefing after a high-level meeting of education ministers from provinces and education experts. We have decided to reopen schools and colleges for students from class 9-12 in the first phase. Primary and elementary schools and institutions of higher education will reopen from February 1, he said. He said initially it was decided to reopen primary and elementary schools from January 25, but the decision was delayed for a week and the ministers would meet again next week to review the situation before opening the schools. The minister also announced that no student would be promoted without examination this year unlike the promotions granted last year. The announcement came as 2,417 new cases of coronavirus were reported across the country after tests of 49,359 people during the last 24 hours. According to latest statistics by the Ministry of National Health Services, 45 people died due to Covid-19 during this period, taking the total death toll to 10,863. The number of positive cases has surged to 514,338. All educational institutions were closed on November 25 last year due to a surge in the number of coronavirus cases during the second wave of the pandemic. Initially, it was decided to reopen them on January 11 but the decision was delayed for a week. Earlier, all educational institutions remained shut from March 16 to September 15 last year due to the pandemic. New Delhi, Jan 15 : President Ram Nath Kovind has given the first donation for the construction of the grand Ram temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. He donated Rs 5,00,100 to a joint delegation of office bearers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Ram Mandir Trust at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday. With this donation by President Kovind, the fund collection drive for the Ram temple started across the country. The campaign will run till February 27. "We went to President Ram Nath Kovind for the launch of the Ram Mandir Fund Donation Drive. He donated Rs 5,00,100 under the Shri Ram Mandir Fund Donation Drive which kicked-off across the country from Friday. His Excellency Ram Nath Kovind along with his family donated in their individual capacity to the donation drive and conveyed their warm greetings for the nationwide fund campaign," VHP President Alok Kumar said after receiving the donation from the President. Vinod Bansal, the VHP national spokesperson, told IANS that a massive public outreach campaign would be launched to cover 13 crore families across 5.25 lakh villages in the country for the construction of the grand Ram temple at Ayodhya. As many as 65 crore people from 13 crore families would be directly linked with the Ram Mandir fund donation drive. The delegation to meet President Kovind comprised the treasurer of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, Govind Dev Giri Maharaj, VHP President Alok Kumar, Ram Mandir Construction Committee Chairman Nripendra Mishra and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's Delhi state Head Kulbhushan Ahuja. Global insurance broker Hub International Limited has acquired the assets of Commercial Insurance Brokers Inc., based in El Paso, Texas. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Commercial Insurance Brokers is a locally owned, independent insurance agency that provides commercial and personal insurance solutions. Ken Foster, president of Commercial Insurance Brokers, and vice presidents Maggie Foster, Richie Grodin and Martha Ramirez, will join Hub Texas and report to Don Margo, president of Hub Texas in El Paso. Source: Hub International Limited Topics Mergers Agencies Texas Commercial Lines Business Insurance Speaking at a video meeting of foreign ministers of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova in the format of the "Trio of EU Associated Partners", Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated that Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are the European Union's most ambitious eastern partners. The meeting participants, in particular, pointed out the unity of the three EU associated countries in the vision of the strategic future of the Eastern Partnership and the existence of many areas of common interest in the context of the European integration of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine informs. "It is important that our three countries speak to the European Union with one voice which is much stronger than every single voice. The Eastern Partnership should be a tool that contributes to the fulfilment of European aspirations of our countries, the associated trio of EUs most ambitious eastern partners," Dmytro Kuleba stressed. The foreign ministers reaffirmed their commitment to work together to develop an in-depth dialogue initiative in the EU+ Associated Partners format based on the principle of differentiation, in particular in the areas of deep and comprehensive free trade areas and sectoral rapprochement with the EU. The ministers agreed that integration into the European Single Market and the prospect of spreading the "four European freedoms" to the concerned and prepared partner countries should become ambitious strategic goals within the framework of the Eastern Partnership. The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova underscored the importance of developing a security dimension of cooperation within the Eastern Partnership, given the existing threats and challenges to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the eastern partners. The Eastern Partnership is an EU initiative that continues the eastern direction of the European Neighborhood Policy, which was launched in 2009. It includes Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus. The decision to hold the Sixth Summit of the EU's Eastern Partnership initiative in 2021 was made following a video conference of Eastern Partnership leaders in June 2020. ol New Dellhi, Jan 15 : Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane said on Friday that Chinese aggression is a "conspiracy to change status quo" and stressed that the sacrifices of those killed in Galwan won't go to waste. Speaking at an event marking Army Day here, General Naravane referring to the Chinese standoff in Ladakh also said: "Nobody can test our patience." "Regarding conspiracy to unilaterally change status quo on borders, a befitting reply was given. I want to assure the country that sacrifice of bravehearts of Galwan would not go waste," he said about the ongoing tension with China on northern borders. He also said that no can change sovereignty of territorial integrity of the country. "Our forces morale is very high and we are ready for any eventuality," the Army chief added. He also mentioned that eight rounds of talks between top military commanders have taken place and that India is looking for a resolution through dialogue. The India and China standoff has now entered its ninth month as both sides continue with heavy deployment of troops, artillery guns, tanks and armoured vehicles in close proximity. Tensions started with skirmishes in Pangong Lake in May 2020 when troops came to blows on more than one occasion leaving many injured on both sides. On June 15, 2020, in an ugly clash in another area called the Galwan Valley, 20 Indian soldiers died, while the Chinese never made their casualty public. The deadlock in Ladakh continues as there has been no progress in finding a solution despite eight rounds of Corps Commander level talks, the highest level of military dialogue. Recognising the valour of those killed in action the Army Chief said: "We will always remember those who have sacrificed their lives. We want to tell their families we will always stand by them." Referring to Pakistan-sponsored terror, he said 300-400 terrorists are ready in launchpads across the Line of Control (LoC) to infiltrate. He also said there has been a 40 per cent increase in ceasefire violations by Pakistan at the LoC. In anti-terror operations, security forces have killed more than 200 terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text The officers of Central Goods and Service Tax (CGST) Commissionerate, Delhi (East) have detected a case of issue of fake bills of Rs 79.5 crore to wrongfully avail Input Tax Credit (ITC) and arrested a Chartered Accountant (CA), according to an official statement issued on Friday. The syndicate was being operated by Nitin Jain, a CA who floated three firms M/s Anshika Metals, M/s N J Trading Co and M/s A J Enterprises using the identity of his family members, with the intent of passing of inadmissible ITC, it said. Jain through these firms has passed on fake ITC to the tune of Rs 14.30 crore, said the statement issued by the Commissionerate. All the e-way bills generated to transport the goods were also found fictitious, it said. Jain, who was absconding since December 16, 2020, appeared before the investigating officers on January 13, and in his statement accepted that he has floated three fictitious firms using identity of his father Naresh Chand Jain and his wife Diksha Jain for the purpose of availing and passing of fake ITC, the statement claimed. Significantly, in 2 earlier cases of fake billing detected by the Delhi East Commissionerate in which Sachin Mittal and Dinesh Jain were found involved in issue of bogus invoices and had passed fake ITC of Rs 12 crore and Rs 13.98 crore respectively through their firms had in their statements also revealed the name of Nitin Jain, CA and stated that he had arranged/provided them fake bills/invoices of different firms on commission basis, it said. Jain was arrested and produced before the duty magistrate, wherein he has been remanded in judicial custody of 14 days, said the statement. The consolidated amount of detection under fake invoices for the current year is Rs 3,684.46 crore and the total number of arrests for the zone is 18, it said. In light of FBI warnings of armed marches at state capitals in the coming days leading up to President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration on Wednesday, law enforcement agencies are bracing to protect the Pennsylvania Capitol complex in Harrisburg should an uprising occur. Some 450 members of the Pennsylvania National Guard have been placed on active duty status to assist local, state and federal law enforcement. State police have put troopers from throughout the Capital Region on an elevated alert status and are fully prepared to bring all resources to bear to keep the Capitol safe, said Lt. Col. Scott Price, deputy commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. That includes its aviation units to offer aerial surveillance, the bomb squad to inspect any suspicious packages or objects and mounted units for crowd control. The Capitol Police has its Special Response Team that specializes in crisis response patrolling the Capitol grounds in full gear already. Barriers are erected around the Capitol. On top of all that, Harrisburg City Police Commissioner Thomas Carter said its department stands ready to protect the citys assets. While there are no specific threats to the Capitol or the Capitol Complex, we are taking actions just out of the abundance of caution should any situation arise, said Joe Jacob, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Capitol Police in a Zoom call with reporters. No permits have been issued to any group for protests on the Capitol grounds. But he said the one threat that law enforcement has followed closely is one that has been circulating on flyers over social media about an armed march in support of the President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol at noon Sunday. The flyers refer to if you cant go to Washington, go to your state capitols, Jacob said. Thats what were following the most closely and preparing for. Last weeks violent attack on the U.S. Capitol offered a glimpse of a level of chaos and destruction and unrest never seen before as pro-Trump extremists and other radicalized groups interrupted Congress counting of electoral votes to finalize Bidens victory, Jacob said. That has forced the Capitol Police, along with its law enforcement partners, to prepare to take action to avoid a similar unprecedented attack on the historic buildings that are the heart of Pennsylvanias state government and the surrounding city. Gov. Tom Wolf has ordered the employees under his jurisdiction who physically report to work in the Capitol Complex to stay home on Tuesday, when three statewide row officers will be sworn in, and Wednesday, when Biden is inaugurated. The Capitol has been closed since early December to visitors due to COVID-19 mitigation measures, which Jacob said makes the response in planning for events on those days more manageable. Carter said there are plans to close some streets around the Capitol but didnt want to disclose which ones although it was said that Commonwealth Avenue, which runs behind the Capitol, would be blocked off. He said the department has received many calls from citizens worried about their safety. I want to guarantee right now that myself, my law enforcement agency, along with my other law enforcement partners, were going to do everything that we possibly can do to make sure that all citizens of the City of Harrisburg are safe, Carter said. I hope it is a drill for us working together. Anybody that wants to protest is welcome to come into the City of Harrisburg to protest peacefully. Carter said he understands people having grievances and want to protest. But he said, Im personally asking that anybody that does decide to come into the City of Harrisburg onto the Capitol property, just to do so and to demonstrate peacefully and then leave. Price urged citizens to assist law enforcement by reporting anything that seems suspicious, doesnt feel right, or appears to suggest nefarious activity to tips@pa.gov or using the See Something, Say Something app. Crimes or emergencies can be reported by calling 911. The crackdown on social media accounts has made information-gathering about any planned protests more challenging, Price said. He added, though, its not insurmountable for us. We do have other conduits that I wouldnt want to discuss but to glean information. The law enforcement officials said they are used to dealing with activists who come to a rally armed, noting the Capitol has hosted several Second Amendments Rights rallies where people carry guns. Jacob said under state law, they are permitted to do so and so far, they have never caused a problem. What we saw in Washington, if that could have a difference on any groups showing up [with] a different intent, we are well prepared to respond to that, he said. Carter said if attendees do come armed, he hopes they respect what were out here doing and what we stand for. We are prepared to take on any situation if it would occur but we dont want that to happen. The bottom line, Jacob said, Were hoping that it doesnt come to that but at no time will violence or vandalism or burglary to the building, anything like that, it just cant be tolerated and it wont be tolerated here. Trump issued a statement saying he is opposed to the violence on the same day members of Congress impeached him for the role he played in fomenting last weeks insurrection as the U.S. Capitol. The president said, In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind. Trump added: That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers. The state Capitol has been the scene of several large gatherings of Trump supporters over the past few months, including one on Nov. 7, the day it was announced Biden won Pennsylvania in the presidential race. Some of the attendees at that rally intended to mobilize Republicans to fight back against the election results to keep Trump in office said they traveled hours to show up. One of the men who came armed to that event, Dylan Stevens, a leader of a group called Angry Viking Patriots, said he drove from his home in Houston, Texas, to provide security for that rally. Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy. More from PennLive How Pennsylvania is getting the state Capitol prepared amid threats of attacks Police agencies working together to strengthen protection of Pa. Capitol 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. Lawmakers from both parties are demanding investigations into how a mob of President Donald Trump's supporters managed to overwhelm security at the U.S. Capitol, including whether they got any assistance from inside the building. A new, fortified perimeter has been erected around the Capitol grounds in anticipation of the potential for more violence during the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20. While physical security has been heightened, members of Congress are still waiting for answers about what went wrong. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican and a former FBI agent, said allegations that rioters had help inside the Capitol will be subject to a nationwide investigation by the bureau. "This is going to be a very broad, wide-ranging investigation, and it should be, because what happened last week was a major catastrophe," Fitzpatrick said. "Part of their job is to make sure everyone who participated is held accountable and to make sure it never happens again." The crowd was in Washington for a rally promoted by Trump, who has made baseless claims about voter fraud and refused to recognize Biden as the winner of November's election. The president told his supporters on Jan. 6 to "fight like hell" and urged them to march on the Capitol, where violence quickly escalated. The mob broke through doors and ransacked some offices. A protester was killed by law enforcement and a police officer died after being injured in the riot. At least three other people died of medical emergencies. Several Democrats are questioning the actions of some of their Republican colleagues and the Capitol Police force because the mob moved quickly through multiple stairways and hallways to find their way to the House and Senate chambers and various offices. "Members of the group that attacked the Capitol seemed to have an unusually detailed knowledge of the layout of the Capitol Complex," a group of more than 30 Democrats wrote in a letter asking the Capitol Police and acting sergeants at arms to investigate "suspicious behavior and access given to visitors" the day before the attack, despite limits placed on visitors because of the pandemic. One of those Democrats, New Jersey Representative Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot, has alleged without providing public evidence, that tour groups organized by member offices were doing "reconnaissance" on Jan. 5. The letter asked for Jan. 5 visitor logs and whether there was a way to ensure that "one staffer did not bring more than their allotted 'official visitors' through multiple entrances." Sherrill said her chief of staff reported the tour groups to the sergeant at arms on Jan. 5. Requests for visit with lawmakers or constituent tours of the Capitol were often accommodated before visitation policies were tightened due to the coronavirus. One Republican aide said several GOP offices were contacted by constituents and others who wanted to see the election overturned and were planning to attend the Jan. 6 rally. Some of these people asked to meet with lawmakers and wanted them join the protest, the aide said. Republicans on the House Administration Committee introduced legislation this week to establish a commission, similar to the one after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, to investigate what they called a "domestic terrorist attack." The commission would consist of five Republicans and five Democrats. There is a high level of concern among Democrats that some members of the Capitol Police and certain GOP lawmakers and staff may have helped coordinate parts of the attack, according to a Democratic aide. Many staff members say they longer feel safe coming into the Capitol, the aide said. Representative Jamaal Bowman, a newly sworn-in Democrat from New York, also introduced legislation calling for an investigation of the role of Capitol Police and any connections with white supremacists. There were officers who "seemed to be aiding and abetting insurrectionists as they attacked the Capitol," he said in video posted on his Twitter. "We need to look at if there's be an infiltration of Capitol Police." Separately, a spokesperson for Representative Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat, said panic buttons throughout her office were removed prior to the attack. The staff previously used the devices and were unaware they had been removed. The spokesperson said an investigation has been launched into the matter. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on January 15, 2021 2021/01/15 CCTV: State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi just wrapped up his visit to Brunei, the third stop of his trip to South East Asia. Could you give us more details? Zhao Lijian: During his visit, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, held talks with Haji Erywan, Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Haji Mohd Amin Liew, Minister at the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister of Finance and Economy, and they jointly met the press. They also co-chaired the second meeting of the China-Brunei intergovernmental joint steering committee. State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang also met with ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi. The two sides announced the launch of a working group on energy cooperation under the framework of the steering committee and will stay in communication on the establishment of a working group on maritime cooperation as soon as possible to advance cooperation in these fields. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the diplomatic ties between China and Brunei and the China-ASEAN dialogue relations, when Brunei is taking over as the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). On this occasion, China is willing to work with Brunei to dovetail China's Long-Range Objectives Through the Year of 2035 with Brunei's national vision Wawasan 2035, with focus on the two main themes of epidemic response and development, plan cooperation at bilateral and multilateral levels, take BRI cooperation as a drive, improve and upgradecooperation in various sectors and bring more benefits to peoples in the two countries and the region. China supports Brunei in taking over as the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), stands ready to work with Brunei to elevate the China-ASEAN relations, put into effect the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership at an early date, build a China-ASEAN community of cyber security, improve public health cooperation and forge blue economy partnership. Hubei TV: According to reports, two WHO experts didn't board the plane to China because they had positive anti-body tests, not positive COVID tests. Can you clarify what the policy is for allowing foreigners into the country? Is it based on anti-body test or nucleic acid test? Do you have anything to say about this? Zhao Lijian: Many of you were very interested in this question yesterday. After consultation between the two sides, the Chinese side agreed on the visit by WHO experts to China on January 14 for scientific cooperation in origin-tracing with Chinese scientists. Yesterday at noon, 13 members of the team of international experts arrived in Wuhan and checked in a quarantine hotel. China's pre-departure tests requirements were formulated in light of the current global COVID-19 situation by drawing on the practice of other countries. The aim is to facilitate orderly international travel while ensuring safety. It's not only to preserve the hard-won outcomes of epidemic control at home, but also to minimize the risk of cross infection en route and protect people's health and safety. In November last year, China released the Notice on Airline Boarding Requirements for Certificates of Negative Nucleic Acid and Anti-Body Blood Tests Results, which is available on the websites of Chinese embassies overseas. China will strictly abide by relevant quarantine regulations and requirements and provide support and convenience for WHO experts who have come to China for international cooperation in origin-tracing. As we've learned from relevant authorities, of the 15-member WHO mission, two experts tested positive for IgM anti-body while transiting in Singapore. According to quarantine regulations and requirements, all Chinese and foreign passengers who are to fly from Singapore to China are required to take nucleic acid and IgM anti-body tests within two days of departure and then apply for a green health code with the "HS" mark or a green health declaration form. Out of support for WHO's work, China agreed to a second round of testing for the experts. One expert tested negative, and we have agreed to his visit to China. But the other still tested positive. Going forward, we will continue to maintain communication with WHO regarding relevant matters and make joint efforts for the origin-tracing cooperation. Bloomberg: The Trump administration blacklisting Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi for its military links. In addition, there are other companies like CNOOC and Comac, plus some others. What is your comment on the blacklisting of these companies? Zhao Lijian: The Trump administration has been stretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to crack down on Chinese companies. China is firmly opposed to that. What the U.S. side has done goes against the trend of history, violates the principles of market competition and international economic and trade rules it touted, disrupts normal China-U.S. trade and investment cooperation, dented the confidence of foreign companies in investing in the United States, and at the end of the day harms the interests of U.S. companies and investors. This is another example of some people in the United States hurting the interests of others and themselves. The U.S. practice of civil-military fusion dates back to a time before WWI and the U.S. government has been the major driving force for this process. In recent years, it has been pursuing all-dimensional integration in various sectors at an even faster pace. Many American multinational companies are the result of military-civil fusion themselves, with business operations and products covering both ends. The above-mentioned measures taken by the Trump administration have once again tells the world what is unilateralism, double standards and bullying. China will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and support them in defending their own rights and interests in accordance with law. Xinhua News Agency: According to data released by the General Administration of Customs yesterday, China's total import and export exceeded 32 trillion yuan in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 1.9 percent. This makes China the only major economy in the world to register positive growth in trade in goods. Do you have any comment? Zhao Lijian: In 2020, as the world economy and global trade reel under the impact of COVID-19, China's foreign trade rapidly bounced back and sustained positive momentum, showing strong resilience and comprehensive competitiveness. Since June 2020, import and export has been growing for seven months in a row, making China the only major economy in the world to register positive growth in trade in goods. Based on data from WTO and various countries, for the first ten months of 2020, China's import and export accounts for 12.8 percent of the entire global market, with import taking up 14.2 percent and export 11.5 percent, all record highs. These figures show that by first bringing the epidemic under control and resuming work and production, China not only boosted international trade growth, but also helped other countries in their fight against COVID-19, safeguarded the stability of global supply chains and facilitated world economic recovery. China's opening-up will not stop. We will continue to comprehensively elevate opening-up levels and foster a new dual-cycle development pattern with the domestic cycle as the mainstay and the domestic and international cycles reinforcing each other. By doing this, we will provide immense market and development opportunities to other countries and promote world economic recovery and growth. We also stand ready to work with other countries to resume normal economic and trade cooperation at an early date. Kyodo News Agency: First, lately State Councilor Wang Yi has talked about vaccine aid for and cooperation with other countries during his visits. What are the advantages of Chinese vaccines compared with U.S. or U.K. products in terms of production, storage and shipment? Second, recently Human Rights Watch released a report mentioning particularly a few Chinese citizens who reported on the epidemic in Wuhan during the early stages. I wonder if you could offer some information? Zhao Lijian: To answer your first question, as far as I know, some Chinese vaccines don't require ultra-low temperature for storage and shipment. Chinese vaccines also have good efficacy and safety data. Therefore I understand for the vast majority of countries, especially developing countries, Chinese vaccines hold a stronger appeal in this regard. You may also ask competent authorities or relevant companies for more specifics. Vaccines are mankind's most powerful weapon to vanquish the pandemic. The Chinese government attaches high importance to COVID-19 vaccine R&D. Relevant government departments, vaccine companies, research institutes and medical facilities are directed to put people and life first, take safety as the top principle and strengthen quality control. Coordinate efforts have been made to advance vaccine R&D and medical support for vaccination. The 14 Chinese vaccines in clinical trial, including five in stage-III trial, all have proven safety through earlier animal tests, stage I, II and III trials. There are also studies whose results have been published by well-known journals and recognized by WHO and other countries. We have pledged that COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment in China, when available, will be made a global public good that helps to ensure vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries. The State Council inter-agency task force has held many press conferences on inoculation of priority groups, giving detailed information. You may refer to them if you're interested. On your second question, the so-called human rights group you mentioned is full of ideological bias. Its remarks are not worth refuting. I have nothing on the individual cases you mentioned. China Daily: The US-China Business Council (USCBC) recently released a report pointing out that the US has benefited from trade with China. In 2019, exports to China supported 1.2 million jobs in the US. The trade war with China, rather than benefiting the economy, has reduced US economic growth and employment, resulting in an estimated peak loss of 245,000 jobs. The report calls on policy-makers to scale back tariffs to increase economic growth and stimulate employment growth. I wonder if China has any comment? Zhao Lijian: I have taken note of this report. It shows most clearly that essentially, China-US economic and trade ties are mutually-beneficial. The Trump administration cannot expect to solve its own problems by waging a trade war on China, which will only hurt others and itself. We hope it will listen to the rational voice at home, meet China halfway and foster a favorable atmosphere for the sound development of bilateral economic and trade cooperation so as to advance the two peoples' welfare. China Review News: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a Strategic Action Plan on January 13 announcing that it will take activities in four key areas, namely, Border Security and Immigration, Trade and Economic Security, Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure, and Maritime Security, to counter the threat posed by China. Do you have any comment? Zhao Lijian: The document is just another disgraceful mishmash of lies cooked up by the current U.S. administration that tries to hype up the so-called "China threat". It is another typical action plan based on lies that fully exposed the anti-China forces' unhinged state of mind possessed with fear and anxiety. I would like to reiterate that China is firmly committed to a path of peaceful development and an opening-up strategy of win-win cooperation. China is a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development and a defender of international order. Some in the United States have been smearing China non-stop, but I wonder who is it that has been flagrantly interfering in other countries' domestic affairs? Who has been abusing national security and state power to suppress foreign companies? Who has been conducting massive and indiscriminate tapping, surveillance and cyber attacks on other countries including even its allies? Who is the true empire of hacking and theft of secrets? Who has been frequently sending military vessels and aircraft to the South China Sea to flex muscles and provoke trouble? The international community has a fair judgement. We urge the U.S. side to stop fabricating and peddling fake news, stop creating and spreading political viruses and lies, and stop taking actions that harm China's interests. China will continue to take legitimate and necessary reactions to the erroneous U.S. behavior to resolutely safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests. Reuters: According to multiple reports today, China is considering accepting some Australian coal shipments that were previously stranded or delayed. Reports say the shipments are those that arrived before a ban on Australian coal went into effect. Does the foreign ministry have a comment? Zhao Lijian: I'm not aware of the situation. The Chinese side has repeatedly stated its position on Australian coal export. In accordance with relevant laws and regulations, Chinese customs have strengthened quality, safety and environmental inspections of imported coal to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and ensure environmental safety. They are in line with China's laws and regulations and international practices, and also responsible steps to safeguard the interests of domestic industries and consumers. PTI: Is it possible for the Chinese side to release the names and nationalities of the entire WHO team for the media here? because it has not been released so far. Second, you spoke about China's vaccine policy for foreign countries, especially the developing countries, for public good. So China is providing the vaccines free to its citizens. What is exactly the kind policy you are going to adopt for vaccine supplies to the developing countries? Will it be provided free of cost, or at concessionary rates? Zhao Lijian: On your first question, I would refer you to WHO or the Chinese competent authority. On your second question, the Chinese side has announced on multiple occasions that COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment in China, when available, will be made a global public good, and developing countries will be our priority in this process. We honor our word. Reuters: The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan commission in the US, said new evidence has emerged in the past year that crimes against humanity had occurred in Xinjiang and possibly genocide.What is the ministry's comment? Zhao Lijian: I have talked about the true situation in Xinjiang and refuted Xinjiang-related rumors all these days. This so-called commission, which never fails to observe China through a distorted perspective, has long been engaging in groundless accusations against China, and that I regard as beneath refutation. South China Morning Post: U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo released a statement on the South China Sea, announcing more actions including visa restrictions on executives of state-owned enterprises and military officials with links to land reclamation in the South China Sea. Does the Chinese side have a response? Second, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor named Chen Gang was arrested on Thursday and faces criminal charges for hiding work he did for the Chinese government while receiving U.S. government funding for his nanotechnology research. What's your response? Zhao Lijian: On your first question, the U.S. practice violates international law and basic norms of international relations, grossly interferes in China's domestic affairs and is nothing but hegemony. I won't waste my breath rebuking this U.S. secretary of state who is the biggest spreader of disinformation on a Friday. On your second question, I'm not aware of the situation. I will reiterate that the Chinese government requires that talent exchange and cooperation must be conducted on the basis of laws, integrity and professional ethics. Our policies and measures are no different from the common practice of other countries. U.S. authorities, when handling relevant cases, should act professionally and be fair instead of pursuing political manipulation. They must stop stigmatizing China's programs to bring in talents and stop undermining normal exchange and cooperation in scientific and cultural sectors between the two sides. Prasar Bhrati: I remember during one of the previous press conferences, it was said that the vaccines will be given as a aid. Will it be different from what the COVAX is having? Because as I understand, the countries that are part of the COVAX will also share the vaccines at an concessionary rate or as an aid. So I am trying to understand about China's policy. Will it be different from what the COVAX will be following? Zhao Lijian: China has stated its position repeatedly. China has joined COVAX. The Chinese government supports Chinese vaccine R&D companies in participating in COVAX and providing vaccines for developing countries through this channel, and we have been assisting their effort. Global Times: The newly declassified U.S. government document on Indo-Pacific mentioned things like preventing China from establishing spheres of influence and dissolving U.S. alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, enabling countries to be less economically dependent on China, replacing the Belt and Road Initiative, and that India would act as a counterbalance to China with like-minded countries against China's practice of undermining others' sovereignty. This document has drawn wide attentions. What's China's comment on this? Zhao Lijian: I stated China's solemn position and pointed out the severe mistakes in this U.S. document when I responded to the same matter the other day. The claims you mentioned are very absurd. They only expose the Trump administration's attempts to use its Indo-Pacific strategy to smear and contain China and undermine regional peace and stability. When developing relations with neighboring countries, China is committed to friendship, mutual respect, equal-footed treatment, and the building of a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind. We never seek any spheres of influence or form cliques like the United States. Certain U.S. politicians' accusations on China mirror their own narrow-minded actions. The U.S. pursuit of Cold War mentality and confrontation between blocs are bound to be rejected as they run counter to the trend of the times and the common aspiration of regional countries. China has been upholding openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation. We work with neighboring countries for regional common development. Asia is a driver of global economic growth. The Asian countries' good performance in fighting the virus and recovering the economy is attributable to mutual support and close cooperation among regional countries. Following the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, the Belt and Road Initiative is a very popular public good among regional countries. The signing of RCEP also demonstrates the strong will of regional countries in deepening cooperation. Some U.S. politicians' attempts to deliberately "build walls", "decouple", and "cut off chains" in the region will never succeed as it is against the law of economics and people's overwhelming aspiration. China will continue to pursue peaceful development and work with regional countries to resolve differences, safeguard peace and stability and promote common security through friendly consultation. The Trump administration is the culprit that undermines regional countries' sovereignty, security, and regional peace and stability by sowing discords, inventing and exacerbating problems, as well as stirring up troubles out of nothing but its selfish agenda. We believe Asian countries in the region will make the right choices to avoid being bewildered by certain U.S. politicians or acting as their pawn. As countries in the Asia-Pacific, China and the United States share broad common interests in the region and common responsibility to contribute to regional stability and prosperity. We hope the United States will return to reason, reject the outdated mindsets, view China's development in an objective manner, earnestly respect regional countries' interests and aspirations, and play a constructive role in the peaceful development of the region. The attorney for a former sailor who was arrested after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 says his client is a gentle man who now regrets listening to the president's "patent invitation" to enter the building that day. Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley, a 33-year-old Arizona man who also goes by Jake Angeli, should be pardoned by President Donald Trump, said Albert Watkins, a Missouri-based attorney representing Chansley. "He regrets he believed in the words and patent invitation of the president and simply wanted to make sure the president was accorded the opportunity to do the honorable thing by pardoning him and other peaceful protesters who took the president for his word," Watkins said. Read Next: Extremist Groups Are Actively Trying to Recruit Military Members, Defense Officials Say Trump spoke to his supporters before the mob broke into the federal building, telling them, "Were going to walk down to the Capitol and were going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and were probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. "Because youll never take back our country with weakness," the president said. "You have to show strength and you have to be strong." Chansley, who was drummed out of the Navy in 2007 after refusing to take the anthrax vaccine, was not violent or destructive on Jan. 6, Watkins added. "He immediately surrendered himself to authorities when he learned of their interest," the attorney said. "He is being proactively cooperative with the Feds." Chansley was photographed inside the Capitol carrying a spear and wearing a fur headdress with horns and face paint. The self-professed "QAnon Shaman" has been seen wearing the same items at past events supporting Trump. The QAnon conspiracy theory claims that Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles are running a child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Trump. Watkins says the spear Chansley brought into the Capitol was part of his shaman regalia. He also carried a bullhorn, the attorney added, "to have his voice heard." "He had no arms. He did not shroud his identity in secrecy. He had no bulletproof vest. No zip ties. No nefarious agenda," Watkins said. "He is a gentle man, committed to his faith, zero criminal history, and was supportive of the calls by the president for his help." Chansley served as a Navy supply clerk seaman apprentice from 2005 to 2007. He was assigned to the now-decommissioned supercarrier Kitty Hawk in 2006. Navy officials declined to provide further details about his career, including what kind of discharge he received from the military, citing privacy concerns. Watkins said Chansley refused to take the anthrax vaccine for faith-based reasons. He did not provide additional details about those beliefs. Federal prosecutors also say Chansley wrote a note to Vice President Mike Pence while in the Senate Chamber on Jan. 6, according to court documents, that said, "It's only a matter of time, justice is coming." -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Related: National Guardsman Is 1st Current Service Member to Be Arrested After Capitol Riot Headline hint that newspaper stories are crafted to fit the agenda of power players and not the community. Check-it . . . Kansas City will look for outside legal counsel to investigate and root out discrimination in its fire department, the City Council decided on Thursday. Council members voted unanimously, with no debate, in favor of legislation directing the city's legal department to find independent lawyers to review the way the Kansas City Fire Department implements the city's anti-discrimination rules and offer recommendations to mitigate the city's risk. Photo: VPD Charges have been approved against two Vancouver men following an armed standoff in a Downtown Eastside building in early January. Vancouver Police Department officers responded to an apartment building near Princess Avenue and Powell Street about 7 p.m. on Jan. 2, after a witness saw a man with a rifle. During a prolonged standoff, one suspect came out of a suite and was injured by police. He was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. On Friday, Matthew Venn, 32, was charged with two counts of uttering threats, two counts of assault with a weapon and one count of use of an imitation firearm while committing an offence. Martin Partel, 31, was charged with one count of uttering threats, one count of assault with a weapon, one count of possessing a weapon for dangerous purpose and one count of use of imitation firearm while committing an offence. Venn and Partel have been released from custody and are due back in court in February. The Independent Investigations Office of BC has started its own investigation. Key players in the tunnel lighting market are leveraging the demand for sustainable and energy efficient offerings to mitigate environmental concerns. DUBAI, UAE / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / The tunnel lighting market is projected to rise at a healthy 5% CAGR through the end of the assessment period in 2030. Continuing efforts by governments towards public transport infrastructure is a key factor driving demand in the market. Disruptions in the supplies of raw material and restrictions on the construction sector on the other hand, have limited growth opportunities. Growth prospects of the industry are likely to be positive owing to the growing role of lighting in road safety and efficiency in mobility. "Improvements in tunnel lighting products including adaptive lighting fixtures for different environments and time are projected to boost demand for tunnel lighting offerings, supported by benefits of not only costs, but safety as well," says the Fact.MR analyst. Request a sample of the report to gain in-depth market insights at https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=5381 Tunnel Lighting Market - Key Takeaways Linear configurations of tunnel lighting will contribute significantly to revenue share, owing to relatively better light penetration in confined spaces. LED based tunnel lighting systems will reflect a relatively higher rate of growth, for higher energy efficiency standards. Europe and North America are leading regional markets for tunnel lighting owing to the major government investments being made towards public transport infrastructure projects. Tunnel Lighting Market- Driving Factors The need for mass transit systems and associated infrastructure to keep up with traffic is the primary factor driving the demand for tunnel lighting. Policies by governments towards emission reductions is expected to positively influence developments in terms of new, energy efficient lighting systems. Tunnel Lighting Market- Key Restraints Prohibitive costs associated with the purchase and initial installation costs for tunnel lighting is a key obstacle to adoption rates. Environmental concerns over conventional lighting including incandescent and fluorescent offerings holds back growth in the industry. COVID-19 Impact on Tunnel lighting Market The Covid-19 pandemic has had an adverse impact on the global tunnel lighting market. Strong restrictions on the construction sector in early 2020, and disruptions to supply chains for raw materials and components during the crisis has limited market growth. Further, the pandemic has resulted in a shortage of manpower for construction projects, which as delayed lighting deployment projects substantially. The market is likely to recover steadily towards 2021, with pending deliveries helping in ramping up demand. Competitive Landscape Tunnel lighting market players are operating in a competitive sector and are focused on product research and development efforts, to improve their portfolios. Also, market players are pushing for large scale contracts with public bodies for long-term revenue. For instance, in December 2020, Larsen & Toubro has secured a contract for its Power T&D segment for mechanical and electrical systems for tunnels in the Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla rail link project, including lighting systems. Similalrly, Kenall Manufacturing has received a new contract for LED lighting fixtures for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which is expected to save around half a million annually in terms of costs and energy. Further, Aldridge Electric has gained a contract for a US$ 6.3 million project to upgrade the lighting systems of the Santa Monica McClure Tunnel. Some of the leading players in the tunnel lighting market include Acuity Brands Lighting Inc., Aeon Lighting Technology Inc., Cree Inc., Generic Electric Co., Kenall Manufacturing, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Zumtobel Group AG, NINGBO GOLDEN CLASSIC LIGHTING CO., LTD., Schreder, and Thorlux Lighting. About the Report This study offers readers a comprehensive market forecast of the tunnel lighting market. Global, regional and country-level analysis of the top industry trends impacting the tunnel lighting market is covered in this FACT.MR study. The report offers insights on the tunnel lighting market on the basis of type (LED lighting, electrodeless lighting, incandescent lighting, fluorescent lighting, and others), shape (linear, round, square, rectangular, and others), installation (surface mounted, hanging, recessed/sidewall, and mounted), and application (roadway tunnels, railway tunnels, mining tunnels, public work tunnels, and others), across five regions (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and MEA). Request access to the full report: https://www.factmr.com/checkout/5381/S Explore FACT.MR's Comprehensive Coverage of Industrial Goods Landscape Emergency Warning Lights Market- Get the latest insights on the global emergency warning lights market through FACT.MR's report covering analysis for projection period (2020-2030). Light Tower Market- FACT.MR's study on the global light tower market covers trends, tech innovations, players, and strategies for 2020-2030. LED Light Bar Market- Obtain analysis on the global LED light bar market through FACT.MR's latest report covering competitive analysis, regions, and segment analysis for 2020-2030. About Fact.MR Fact.MR is a leading provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries.Fact.MR is headquartered in Dublin, and has offices in Dubai. Fact.MR's latestmarket research reports industry analysis help businesses navigate challenges and take critical decisions with confidence and clarity amidst breakneck competition. Contact: Unit No: AU-01-H Gold Tower (AU), Plot No: JLT-PH1-I3A, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates MARKET ACCESS DMCC Initiative SOURCE: FactMR View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624463/Tunnel-Lighting-Market-to-Witness-Increased-Demand-for-LED-Offerings-for-Low-Cost-Projects-Says-FactMR Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 22:43:52|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on Friday released the top 12 achievements of 2020. -- FIGHTING COVID-19 Innovative achievements have been made in genome sequencing, information sharing, molecular mechanism study, quick detection, and vaccine development during the battle against COVID-19. -- LUNAR EXPLORATION China's Chang'e-5 probe was launched on Nov. 24 and retrieved about 1,731 grams of samples from the moon on Dec. 17. The Chang'e-4 probe, still working on the far side of the moon, has made a series of scientific discoveries. -- MANNED DEEP-DIVING Fendouzhe, China's deep-sea manned submersible, successfully reached the Mariana Trench, going to a depth of 10,909 meters and setting a new record for China's manned deep-diving. -- BDS-3 China declared the official commissioning of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) on July 31, marking the formal launch of the newly- completed BDS-3 system for global users. CAS researchers participated in the development and construction of all aspects of the BDS-3 system. -- SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO THIRD POLE CAS researchers launched the second scientific expedition to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to assess the changes due to climate change and human activities in the past decades. The results have supported the construction of China's ecological civilization. -- FAST STARTS FORMAL OPERATIONS China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) started formal operations on Jan. 11, 2020 after a three-year trial. FAST, as the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, will gradually open to astronomers around the world. -- QUANTUM COMMUNICATION, COMPUTING The "Micius" quantum satellite was used to achieve the first international entanglement-based quantum key distribution at the 1,000-km level. A quantum computing prototype "Jiuzhang" was built, via which up to 76 photons were detected. The achievement marks China's first milestone on the path to full-scale quantum computing. -- MYSTERY OF LOCUST SWARMS Scientists have identified a chemical compound -- 4-vinylanisole -- released by locusts that causes them to form a swarm, offering a new possible way to prevent these insects from devouring crops vital to human survival, as they have done for thousands of years. -- ANCIENT DNA Genome-wide data from 26 ancient individuals from northern and southern East Asia dating back 9,500 to 300 years indicate human population shifts and admixture in northern and southern China. -- MAGNETIC FIELD IN UNIVERSE Using China's Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), scientists discovered the strongest magnetic field ever observed in the universe, on the surface of a neutron star named GRO J1008-57. BIG EARTH DATA REPORT The 2020 Report on Big Earth Data in Support of the Sustainable Development Goals, drafted by CAS, showcases China's use of innovation-driven technologies to implement the 2030 Agenda, and in particular, the prospect of utilizing Big Earth Data for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of SDGs. -- LOCALIZED SPIN-ORBIT POLARON Scientists first studied localized excitations from single vacancies of a type of magnetic Weyl semimetal, using ultra-low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy with spin-polarized tip and low temperature atomic force microscopy. Enditem JUNEAU, Ala., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Alaska families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight K-12 education options during School Choice Week 2021. Alaska families, schools, and organizations are hosting 66 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Alaska, the JL Tower in Anchorage will light up in red and yellow from 4 p.m. to 9 a.m. all week from Jan. 24-30. "Alaska is a beautiful state, and its students deserve an excellent education," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "During a challenging school year, School Choice Week is a reminder to show gratitude to Alaska's schools and educators, and to speak up for the learning opportunities families still need." In Alaska, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling. Alaska families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Alaska school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/alaska. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com CHICAGO, January 14, 2021 /Press Release/ -- Nearly every state that has legalized recreational marijuana has had issues meeting high demand and there has been an increase in medical cannabis patients. Some dispensaries running out or running low in the first days / weeks of sales leaving many disappointed customers. In some states both medical and recreational customers can purchase their cannabis for delivery or in the dispensary. However, medical 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. A doomsday fanatic crashed a stolen ute into an adult shop where he took sex toys and lingerie to prepare a bunker for the end of the world amid the coronavirus pandemic. Shane Anthony Horne drove into the front doors of the Playhouse Adult Store in Labrador, Queensland, on April 5 2020. The 35-year-old, who was arrested following the break-in at the adult store, had been on a drug-affected 12-month rampage, NCA NewsWire reported. He had a deep paranoia that the world was ending and had also stolen hundreds of dollars worth of groceries and tools. Former crane operator Shane Anthony Horne (pictured) has pleaded guilty to more than 40 counts of stealing, entering premises, fraud and unlicensed driving Horne rammed a ute into the front doors of the Playhouse Adult Store in Labrador, Queensland and stole sex toys and lingerie for his end of the world 'bunker' The former crane operator was finally arrested by a police dog squad in bushland at Robina. Horne fronted the Southport Magistrates Court on Friday and pleaded guilty to more than 40 charges of entering premises, fraud, stealing and unlicensed driving. Horne's defence lawyer Michael Gatenby told the court his client believed the world was ending after watching media coverage on the Covid-19 pandemic. 'He says he saw people on the news in body bags, he became very afraid,' Mr Gatenby said. Mr Gatenby said his client's fears were exacerbated by drug use and mental health problems. He also has paranoia following a kidnapping in January 2019. Horne faced the Southport Magistrates Court (pictured), where his crimes were described as 'horrific' by Magistrate Pam Dowse Magistrate Pam Dowse labelled Horne's crimes as 'horrific' and claimed he was a threat to the community. 'It's horrific, horrible behaviour nobody is safe from him.' Prosecutor Don Reid said Horne broke into a business in Nerang with a forklift in March 2020, stealing more than $12,000 worth of tools. During the former crane driver's crime spree, he also stole hundreds of dollars worth of products from Woolworths and Bunnings. Horne's offending went from April 2019 to 2020 during which he was in possession of multiple stolen vehicles - despite not holding a valid drivers license. Magistrate Dowse expressed her outrage at Horne's offences and sentenced him to three years in jail with 321 days spent in custody. He is eligible for parole next month. 'Hearing those facts I'm outraged, I don't know whether three years is enough,' Magistrate Dowse told the court. Toronto Police: We Dont Have Power to Enter Homes, Stop People Under Stay-at-Home Order The Toronto Police Service (TPS) announced Thursday that the new Ontario stay-at-home order does not provide them the power to enter homes, stop drivers, or ask people to explain why they are outside. Under the stay-at-home order, Ontarians are to remain in their homes except for essential reasons including going for groceries, medical, pharmacy, exercise or for work that cannot be done remotely, but it does not provide sweeping power to the police. No element of any order provides the police with either the power to enter dwellings nor the authority to stop a vehicle for the singular purpose of checking compliance with the Stay-At-Home order, the TPS said in a statement. In addition, individuals are not compelled to explain why they are out of their residence, nor is being outside prima facie evidence of a failure to comply with the stay at home order. Workers are also not required to have proof from their employer that they are travelling to or from their workplace Instead, the police will enforce the order on restaurants and businesses that do not comply with the provinces closure orders and/or customer limits, as well as responding to complaint calls of more than five people gathering outdoors, which the TPS says their officers have the authority to disperse and ticket those involved. Fines for individuals is set at $750 under the offence category and is described as failure to comply with an order made during a declared emergency. The TPSs announcement comes a day after the provincial government officially enacted the stay-at-home order which went into effect on Jan. 14 at 12.01 a.m., under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act (EMCPA), announced by Premier Doug Ford Wednesday. The EMCPA grants Ford the authority to declare that an emergency exists in Ontario should he consider it so, which in this case is the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which emerged from China in 2019 before spreading globally. Despite the limitations to how police can enforce the order, TPS deputy chief Myron Demkiw said that their officers can exercise discretion in every situation, and where there is evidence of non-compliance, officers will be ticketing and issuing summonses for individuals and businesses. Moreover, the police added that when their officers have reasonable and probable grounds to suspect someone has violated one of the orders under the EMCPA and Reopening Ontario Acta legislation that gives the Ontario government the power to continue implementing emergency orders related to COVID-19 even after the provincial declaration of emergency has endedthey may ask the person to identify themselves in order to issue a ticket or summons. If the person refuses to identify themselves for this purpose, they can be arrested and charged with obstructing a police officer, TPS said. In regards to skating rinks and toboggan hills, the TPS said it would continue to work with the city and the citys public health agency to determine how the regulations for large gatherings should be applied. Chicago Police suspended 17 cops captured on surveillance video lounging inside a burglarized campaign office of a Democrat congressman as people citywide vandalized and stole from businesses. The cops are first shown entering the campaign office of Congressman Bobby Rush around 1am on June 1. Several officers are seen making popcorn and napping in the office at differing times amid the widespread civil unrest last year. Union contract rules allow the cops to appeal their suspensions, the Chicago Tribune reported. Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara told the Chicago Sun-Times that the suspensions of 17 officers and supervisors ranged from one day to 20 days. The union has filed grievances challenging all of the suspensions, he said. Chicago police were caught on surveillance video lounging inside the campaign office of Congressman Bobby Rush Cops were seen making popcorn and sleeping inside the office while riots were going on outside Congressman Rush said the officers involved had 'unmitigated gall' to be taking a break there while Mayor Lori Lightfood slammed the incident as 'a personal embarrasment' An 18th officer was not suspended but receive a reprimand, according to the Chicago Tribune. The department did not confirm the suspensions but in a news release said that the Bureau of Internal Affairs has concluded its investigation and that the members of the department involved 'have been notified of the results of the investigation.' The video was recorded as Chicago police and other departments nationwide were scrambling to quell widespread vandalism, theft and arson in the wake of George Floyds death after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the Black mans neck for several minutes. Police and protesters are pictured clashing on June 6 as the country reeled from the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd Police officers were shown lounging in the office and on their phones An additional 18th officer received a reprimand but was not suspended The group had arrived to answer a call of a break-in at the office but stayed to lounge at different times Bush said at a news conference announcing the bizarre incident that cops had 'a non-caring attitude.' 'They even had the unmitigated gall to go and make coffee for themselves and to pop popcorn, my popcorn, in my microwave while looters were tearing apart businesses within their sight and within their reach,' he said. 'They took such a lackadaisical attitude, a non-caring attitude in my own personal space while looting was occurring all around them. They didn't care.' Mayor Lori Lightfoot said 'we should all be disgusted' after seeing the alarming footage. 'We should all feel hurt and betrayed in this moment of all moments,' she said. Police Superintendent David Brown asked incredulously during a press briefing at the time: 'Sleep during a riot? What do you do on a regular shift when theres no riots?' Shortly after the video became public, Brown vowed to suspend those involved. As he did after the video was made public, Catanzara this week said looting at the strip mall where Rush's office was located was over by the time officers arrived. He said the officers secured the area before they went inside. 'They had already secured the whole property...' he said. 'They came around the front. There was nothing going on. That was done. Period. Are they supposed to stand at attention in the mall?' [January 15, 2021] OIB Group Inks Deal with MTT Shipping for Sale of Industrial Space in Arym Pulau Indah KLANG, Malaysia, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Demand for industrial spaces and facilities are high, with the logistic industry facing pressure to meet consumer demands. However, with a dwindling supply in strategically located areas around the Klang Valley, prices for industrial lots have become unsustainable. Property developer Oriental Interest Berhad (OIB) Group launched Arym Pulau Indah, aiming to bridge this gap, and drive economic growth in Selangor. OIB will welcome MTT Shipping Sdn Bhd to its maiden industrial project. MTT Shipping and related companies will be purchasing six industrial lots, totaling approximately 24.5 acres, for over RM70 million. This partnership will be the first among many, as Arym Pulau Indah still has a lot to offer with its 196-acre plot of land comprising 41 industrial units, a small commercial component, and a total GDV of approximately RM400 million. Phase 1 of the development is estimated to be completed in Q1 of 2022. With its strategic location near the country's primary port, Arym Pulau Indah proves to be a tactical space for MTT Shipping, which provides comprehensive shipping services between Peninsular and East Malaysia, including regional ports within SEA such as Singapore, Thailand and Brunei. With its strategic location and suitable land size, Arym Pulau Indah meets MTT Shipping's requirements for development of an integrated freight facility, which will include an empty container depot, vehicle terminal, and staging facility. OIB Group incorporated a design that allows them to customise individual lots for different contexts, a feature that will benefit many organisations, including MTT Shipping in their bid to develop a Depot equipped with high technology, and a platform that connects relevant stakeholders. This platform will improve efficiency, visibility, and service improvements to shipping lines and hauliers. In areas such as Shah Alam, Klang Meru, Telok Gong and Bukit Raja, there is a market gap and lack of available and smaller sized industrial units. On top of offering an array of unit types, including light industrial lots, medium industrial lots and heavy industrial lots, Arym is located in a highly-strategic location and is projected to grow to become one of the leading industrial hubs in Selangor. SOURCE Oriental Interest Berhad [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Commander Resources Ltd. (TSXV: CMD) ("Commander") is pleased to provide results from a sampling program on the Sabin zinc-copper-silver-gold volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) project (the "Sabin Property") located in northwest Ontario, Canada, some ten kilometres north of the community of Savant Lake. Work was conducted in the fall of 2020 and focused on first pass prospecting of conductor targets identified from a recent VTEM survey completed in late 2018. The project is primarily centred on extensive VMS- style alteration and mineralization however work during this program identified a bulk tonnage-style gold target within the Patterson Lake Stock where sampling returned gold values up to 1.4 g/t from grab samples. Highlights: Continued follow-up sampling of airborne conductors identified in recent VTEM Plus survey New gold zone sampled at Quarry Showing within the Paterson Lake Stock (high sample 1.4 g/t gold) High gold and zinc values returned from newly sampled Hadley showing. (high sample 4.25 g/t gold, 10.4% zinc) The Sabin property is in the Sturgeon Lake greenstone belt which is host to significant polymetallic VMS deposits and past-producing mines some 60 km to the south. This work program, completed in fall 2020, was an ongoing follow-up of the recently completed VTEM Plus airborne electromagnetic and magnetic survey which identified a significant number of high priority conductors throughout the property. The Sabin property is underlain by intermediate and minor felsic volcanic units that exhibit widespread alteration comprised of garnet, staurolite, sillimanite and sericite metamorphic mineralogy typical of metamorphosed VMS environments. The Quarry Showing is a new occurrence not previously sampled by Commander and opens the potential for intrusion-hosted orogenic gold mineralization within the large Patterson Lake Stock. (Figure 1) Quarry Showing The Quarry showing was a documented gold occurrence with limited historical work comprising surface sampling and 2 short, small-diameter (winkie) prospecting holes. Exposure is limited to the bottom of a gravel pit and only about 10-15 m of strike is exposed and a minimum width of 25-35 m. The target is coincident with a single VTEM conductor within a broader area of low resistivity. The showing, hosted within a granodiorite, comprises sheeted intensely altered (quartz-sericite-pyrite-iron carbonate) shear zones with extension quartz veins emanating from the shears. Five grab samples of the exposure were collected and returned gold values from 36 ppb to 1410 ppb with anomalous zinc and silver. Compilation of historical sampling indicates a larger footprint of some 300 metres although similar resistivity features elsewhere indicate potential for additional zones. Historical sampling, unverified by Commander, includes a short hole grading 0.50 g/t gold over 10 m and local grab samples up to 4.1 g/t gold. (Figure 1) Hadley Showing Several samples were collected from the Hadley showing, a historical Zn-Cu-Ag-Pb occurrence discovered and owned by a prospector from 1971 up until recently when Commander acquired it through staking. Located in an outcrop beside Hwy 599, it is a 1 m wide breccia zone of angular galena-sphalerite-chalcopyrite bearing chert and massive sphalerite-galena clasts within an intensely silicified chlorite-actinolite matrix. It is 5 metres along strike in outcrop before descending below cover and is within a package of intensely altered metavolcanic rocks indicative of a VMS exhalite horizon. Samples collected by Commander in 2020 returned up to 4.3 g/t Au, 10.4% Zn, 4.7% Pb, and 53.5 g/t Ag and from a massive sulphide clast. Robert Cameron, President and CEO of Commander comments, "Our follow-up sampling of VTEM targets at Sabin continue to highlight the high precious metal endowment of the extensive VMS mineralization. Furthermore, the gold zone at the Quarry Showing is significant and opens a large area for exploration that has not been previously explored. Prospecting of the large Patterson lake Stock within areas of low resistivity will be a prime focus of 2021 work." Future work planned for 2021 at Sabin will include an expanded prospecting and sampling program, in particular as a follow-up to the new Quarry showing. A program of induced polarization (IP) surveying will also be initiated over the Quarry zone as well as select areas elsewhere including the Kash, Golsil and Marchington zones. As a prospect generator the Company will also seek exploration partnerships to help advance our projects to discovery. Commander (formerly Major General) acquired the property through a purchase agreement with UMEX in 1990 and holds a 100% interest in the property except for two small internal claim parcels that are subject to a participating interest with Glencore Canada Corporation (formerly Noranda) who currently hold 41.5% and 33.3%. UMEX retains a 2.5% NSR over the core of the property that would be reduced to 1% following $225,000 of royalty payments. QA/QC Grab rock samples are selective by nature and may not represent the true grade or style of mineralization. Samples were collected in the field by Stephen Wetherup P. Geo. Analytical work was completed by Activation Laboratories in Dryden, Ontario. Gold was analyzed by fire assay fusion of a 30-gram aliquot and other elements by ICP-MS from a 4-acid digestion. Robert Cameron, P. Geo. is a qualified person within the context of National Instrument 43-101 and has read and takes responsibility for the technical aspects of this release. Figure 1: Sabin property Geology and Samples To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4050/72168_1cf0a69f54b3f874_002full.jpg About Commander Resources: Commander Resources is a Canadian focused exploration company that has leveraged its success in exploration through partnerships and sale of properties, while retaining equity and royalty interests. Commander has a portfolio of base and precious metal projects across Canada. Commander also retains royalties from properties that have been partnered, optioned or sold. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Robert Cameron, P. Geo. President and CEO For further information, please call: Robert Cameron, President and CEO Toll Free: 1-800-667-7866 info@commanderresources.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 include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward-looking. 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 market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable laws. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72168 A passenger wearing a Union Flag face mask waits to board one of the few flights departing at Gatwick Airport in London on Nov. 27, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images) Wales Mandates Pre-Flight COVID-19 Tests for International Arrivals Wales has joined England and Scotland in demanding inbound travelers test negative for the CCP virus before boarding their trains, planes, and boats. These new measures will help ensure we prevent new strains of the virus developing internationally from being imported into Wales, Health Minister Vaughan Gething said in a statement on Jan. 15. We are already asking passengers returning from high-risk countries to self-isolate for 10 days and these requirements remain in place. The new measures will start from Monday, and require proof of a negative test, taken within three days before departure, for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as novel coronavirus. The measures do not apply to passengers from the rest of the UK, or from the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. The government of Wales said it would help protect against new strains of the virus, such as those seen in Brazil, Denmark, and South Africa. The emergence of a potential new strain in Brazil prompted the UK government on Thursday to announce a ban on travel from all countries in South America, and from Portugal. The ban, which came into force on Friday, doesnt apply to British or Irish Nationals or people with UK residency rights. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier this week that he was very concerned about the Brazilian variant of the virus. Unlike the variant currently thought to be pushing a surge of the pandemic in the UK, there is not yet any evidence of faster transmission in the Brazilian variant. However, scientists are worried that it appears to be similar to the variant that emerged in South Africa, which scientists are concerned about. The Brazilian variant has three key mutations in the Spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) that largely mirror some of the mutations we are worried about it in the South African variant, hence the concern, Ravi Gupta, professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. The SARS-CoV-2 RBD is one of the main targets for our immune defences and also the region targeted by vaccines, and changes within this region are therefore worrisome. Vaccines are still likely to be effective as a control measure if coverage rates are high and transmission is limited as far as possible. The UK government on Thursday issued full public guidance on pre-departure testing, including which types of test are acceptable. Such tests include PCR and LAMP tests, which detect key chemical markers, and antigen tests from lateral flow devices. Specifically, the tests are required to have 97% specificity, [and] 80% sensitivity at viral loads above 100,000 copies/ml. Transport operators will also be fined if they are found to have transported passengers who have not followed the rules. Its currently unclear whether Wales will follow exactly the same guidance. New Delhi: A Delhi Court has directed the Jail Superintendent of Uttar Pradesh and issued a production warrant for the appearance of Aam Aadmi Party MLA Somnath Bharti on January 18 before it in a matter related to the alleged assaulting case of security staff at Delhi`s All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 2016. Somnath Bharti is currently stated to be in judicial custody in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The AAP MLA was arrested in Uttar Pradesh on Monday under section 505/153 IPC for his alleged objectionable remarks on hospitals and the Uttar Pradesh government. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Ravindra Kumar Pandey on January 14 issued a production warrant for the appearance of accused Somnath Bharti through DCP concerned. The court issued a production warrant in the matter after Advocate Mohd Irshad, who represented Somnath Bharti, has moved an exemption application in the matter informing that he is currently running in Judicial Custody in an Uttar Pradesh jail. "The production warrant be sent and served by DCP concerned to the Jail Superintendent concerned where accused is currently running in the custody through Special Messenger considering the fact that next date of hearing is January 18, 2.15 pm and the matter is at the stage of consideration/judgement. Jail Superintendent concerned is directed to produce the accused Somnath Bharti without any fail on next date of hearing," Court said. The special court is now at the stage of passing judgement in a case registered against him and other accused under sections of rioting, damaging public property and obstructing a public servant from discharging his duty. The case was registered on the complaint of the chief security officer of AIIMS on September 9, 2016 following which a case was Bharti was also arrested from his office in south Delhi`s Green Park. The Complainant accused Bharti and others of trying to encroach on government land and disrupting peace in the hospital. The officer said the MLA and about 300 of his supporters beat up security personnel who had asked them to leave the hospital premises. Live TV Khartoum, Sudan (PANA) - The US Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security has removed restrictions on the export of American products to Sudan that were imposed under its designation of Sudan as State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) Imagine awakening from a five-year coma on Jan. 6 and the first thing you see on TV is a yelling mob stampeding past barricades and police to break into the U.S. Capitol. The mob runs amok through the hallways, chases and attacks police one of whom, you hear, has been killed breaks windows, barrels through doors, smears human waste on walls, and ransacks and loots offices while looking for members of Congress and the vice president, who some are chanting should be hung. Having just awakened with no idea of whats going on Who is Mike Pence? Who is AOC? you wonder is your initial reaction revulsion and fear that an angry mob has taken over and desecrated the Peoples House, or do you wait to see who these people are and whether their politics align with yours before you decide whether to condemn or justify their actions? Shouldnt revulsion and fear, independent of political allegiance, be the natural reaction of any human being? Look at all the videos of the mob storming the Capitol, including those shot by the insurrectionists. Look, especially, at the one where the mob is fighting with Metropolitan Police officers in a doorway, dragging one down the steps. Chants of USA! USA! erupt, and one man can be heard yelling, Get that mother(expletive) out of there! Drag him! as the officer is punched, kicked and hit with objects, including poles bearing American flags. Imagine being a Black man in the 1890s, 1920s, 1930s pick a decade sitting in a jail cell, accused of a crime for which youve not been convicted and/or one for which youve been falsely accused. Imagine sitting or, by now, standing in that cell and hearing and seeing that crowd coming for you. Imagine youre Henry Smith in Paris, Texas, in 1893 or Jesse Washington in Waco in 1916 and thousands have gathered to maim and burn you. Or imagine youre a Mexican American like Antonio Rodriguez, seized from a jail cell in Rocksprings in 1910 before being doused with oil and set afire. Or that youre Elias Villarreal Zarate, taken from jail in Weslaco in 1922 to be hung. Lynchings were often advertised in newspapers. Thousands of people, including parents bringing children, would travel with picnic baskets to enjoy the spectacle of a human being usually a Black man dying a horrible death. Often, body parts would be distributed as souvenirs and commemorative postcards printed. Look at any of the hundreds of lynching photographs that exist, and take in the smiles and demented joy on the faces in the crowd, including children, as they pose with human remains. You dont need to go back decades to imagine the terror felt by people afraid theyd die at the hands of a mob. Less than two weeks ago, men and women in the U.S. Capitol hid for their lives as a mob of their fellow citizens, fueled by a lie that a presidential election had been stolen, looked for them. After all the images weve seen and all weve heard of the mob, including the beating of policemen, is there doubt what they would have done had they gotten their hands on lawmakers, including the vice president, for the man for whom they insurrected? The United States is no stranger to mob violence, particularly when inflamed by election results brought about by African Americans participation. Consider the Opelousas Massacre of 1868, the Colfax Massacre of 1873 and the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898. We are not a nation unfamiliar with political violence. On Monday, we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., who was a victim of political violence. But it cannot be appreciated enough how narrowly, on Jan. 6, members of Congress avoided being assassinated, some lynched in public, to the glee of a mob. And it cannot be overstated, leading up to and beyond Inauguration Day, the threat we face from domestic extremists. Those extremists must be condemned and stopped, and those who encourage and justify them renounced. Comparing King to the Founding Fathers, his biographer, Taylor Branch, has written: Nonviolence is an orphan among democratic ideas. It has neatly vanished from public discourse even though the most basic element of free government the vote has no other meaning. Every ballot is a piece of nonviolence, signifying hard-won consent to raise politics above firepower and bloody conquest. This week, in honoring King and the nonviolence of voting, as well as the Founding Fathers and the peaceful transition of power, we stand together and against those seeking bloody conquest. We must. cary.clack@express-news.net Passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from January 21, enabling access to essential services such as health. Following confirmation of the Cook Islands COVID free status, and the implementation of strict health and border protocols we are now in the position to resume quarantine-free travel for passengers from the Cook Islands into New Zealand, says Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown says Cook Islanders look forward to quarantine-free entry to New Zealand to enable access to essential services, in the lead up to resuming free movement of people in both directions. "I welcome the support of and joint effort with the New Zealand Government to institute this safe travel corridor which will enable essential health, education, economic and social connections for the first time in many months for our people." Both countries continue to take a very careful approach to managing our borders and preventing the spread of COVID remains our paramount concern. As such strict protocols will be in place including pre-departure health requirements and separation from other travellers at Auckland International Airport, says Ardern. New Zealand and the Cook Islands are united in our commitment to protect our communities from COVID-19. Todays announcement does not change the criteria for entry into the Cook Islands which is limited to Cook Islanders and current holders of Cook Islands work and residence permits who meet Cook Islands health entry requirements. These arrangements do not apply to New Zealanders wishing to travel to the Cook Islands. We said we would take a phased approach to resuming two-way travel and will do so only once all safety protocols can be met, says Ardern. Officials of both governments are committed to working towards ensuring all safety protocols and response capabilities are in place for the resumption of two-way quarantine free travel between the two countries within the first quarter of 2021. Spike Lee was honoured by American Cinematheque for his significant contribution to filmmaking (American Cinematheque/PA) Spike Lee said he had more joints to make as he was honoured for his glittering Hollywood career. Lee, a prolific director whose movies include Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X, BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods, received the American Cinematheque award for his significant contribution to filmmaking. A star-studded list of his collaborators paid tribute during a virtual ceremony, with Jodie Foster, actor Delroy Lindo and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler all sharing their memories of working with Lee. Expand Close Jodie Foster and Spike Lee / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Jodie Foster and Spike Lee After accepting the honour, Oscar-winner Lee said: Lets keep it going. He dedicated the award to everyone he had worked with, both in-front and behind the camera, after sitting through a retrospective of his career with Foster, who he directed in 2006 heist movie Inside Man. Lee, 63, said he has no plans of slowing down. He said: So, heres the thing, if you love what you are doing, you can delay Father Time. Especially if youre not an athlete. So I have got some more joints to make. Asked about his legacy, Lee pointed to his formidable body of work. He said: Its very important but from the very beginning I wanted to build a body of work, because I noticed that the great artists that I loved had a body of work. It was not just a one and done thing. Expand Close Black Panther director Ryan Coogler thanked Spike Lee for his impact on the film industry (American Cinematheque/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Black Panther director Ryan Coogler thanked Spike Lee for his impact on the film industry (American Cinematheque/PA) Over the years they kept working on their craft. So for me, that was the model. Lee is synonymous with his hometown of Brooklyn, where many of his films are set. He made his directorial debut with Shes Gotta Have it in 1986 and three years later came what many consider his magnum opus and one of the greatest films ever made Do The Right Thing. Set on a sweltering summer day, it explores racial tensions in a Brooklyn neighbourhood. Lees films, known for his inimitable style, often explore race relations in the US. Expand Close 5 Bloods Cast (American Cinematheque/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp 5 Bloods Cast (American Cinematheque/PA) He directed 1992s Malcom X, with Denzel Washington playing the civil rights leader. Lee revealed on the set of the film he would jokingly ask Washington if he had brought his passport, just in case we had to slip out of the country under the cover of darkness, such was the potentially incendiary nature of the movie. His most recent film is Da 5 Bloods, a Vietnam War drama which also explores Trumpism. It starred the late Chadwick Boseman as an heroic soldier killed in battle. Boseman died in August at the age of 43 following a four-year battle with colon cancer. Lee said it took an actor of Bosemans talent to play a character of mythic status in Da 5 Bloods. American Cinematheque board chair Rick Nicita said: Our virtual presentation of the AC award to Spike Lee is a celebration of his extraordinary body of work and an incredible look at the importance of his legacy to his generation and the ones that are following as told by his friends and collaborators over four decades. The American Cinematheque is a non-profit organisation dedicated to the public presentation of the moving image in all its forms. Previous recipients of its annual award include Washington, Bradley Cooper, George Clooney, Charlize Theron, Julia Roberts and Al Pacino. New Delhi, Jan 15 : In a shocking incident, a 13-year-old boy was forced to undergo a sex change operation and then gang-raped for months in Delhi's Geeta Colony area, officials said on Friday. Two persons have since been arrested in the case. Police said that the teenager was also forced into begging. The teenager's ordeal began when he met the accused three years ago at a dance event in Laxmi Nagar. The accused befriended the boy and took him to Mandawali on the pretext of teaching him dance, where the accused and his accomplices forced the minor to live. After some time, the accused started giving him alcoholic drinks and forced him to undergo the sex change surgery. "The accused are involved in flesh trade and wore women's attire to lure customers. They also beat up and robbed their clients," the victim, who escaped their clutches, said. After the case was brouht to the notice of Delhi Women's Commission, its member Sarika Chaudhary lodged an FIR against the accused. Police is hunting for others involved in the crime. DWC Chairperson Swati Maliwal said: "This case is very serious and shocking. At the age of 13, a child was foced to undero sex change operation and gang-raped and forced into prostitution. It seems like a huge racket. Fortunately, the victim along with another person escaped and saved their lives. The police should arrest all the accused as soon as possible and ensure them exemplary punishment." As many as 23 patients have died this month after picking up Covid-19 in a hospital outbreak, it emerged last night. It follows revelations by the HSE that in some unnamed hospitals, which have suffered major outbreaks of the virus, half the patients with Covid-19 caught it after admission with another illness. The pattern of deaths in recent months indicates one-third of fatalities may be due to outbreaks in hospitals and the others are linked to nursing homes and community settings. The stark findings come as 28 more deaths were reported yesterday, bringing the fatality toll from the disease to 208 this month. The youngest person who died was just 25 and the oldest 98 years old. Deputy chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn last night warned there will be difficult days ahead as more people succumb to the virus in significant numbers. However, there are now growing fears that a return to the workplace in high numbers will jeopardise the slowing down of the spread of the virus seen in recent days. Prof Philip Nolan, who tracks the virus, told the Department of Health briefing that the daily number of new infections was 3,955 and we are seeing the beginning of a reduction in case numbers, dropping quite sharply over the last couple of days as people reduce contacts to an average of 2.3. It is essential we keep this up for long periods of time but Google location data for January 10 showed the level of attendance at workplaces was at 50pc, much higher than in the first lockdown. The concern is that over the next week people will be asked back in the workplace or they will drift back. That is going to present a real risk to the suppression of the virus. He appealed to employers to facilitate people to do their job at home and he asked people to abide by public health advice to work from home. If that does not happen and people dont keep the reduction in their social contacts to the levels they have been doing in the next week to 10 days then the decline in case numbers will not be maintained and the expected recovery in our hospital system we expect to see in the next few weeks will not happen. Read More Asked about the reopening of schools from February, Dr Glynn said while they were very safe environments in themselves, the issue was the higher level of mobility they generated and it would be necessary to see how the virus was spreading in the coming days before making any recommendations on education or other sectors. Struggling hospitals, which are overrun with Covid-19 patients as admissions rose to 1,789 yesterday with 169 very ill in intensive care, are unlikely to see a peak for another seven days and they will be under intense pressure for weeks because of the length of time it takes to treat the disease. Liam Woods who oversees hospitals in the HSE said there were 321 intensive care beds open yesterday with a capacity to increase the number to 350. Prof Nolan said even if things go well there could be 600-800 Covid-19 patients in hospital at the end of the month with 100 to 120 in intensive care. Around 23 people a day are now dying from Covid-19 related illness, having increased sharply, and there is a particular worry that while the incidence of the virus is falling in other age groups it is plateauing among the over- 65s. Over-65s make up 13pc of the population but they accounted for 16pc of cases. The R number, indicating how fast the virus is spreading, is now around 1 or 1.3. Dr Glynn said nobody was immune to the disease and one in three people in intensive care is under the age of 65. The UK variant of the disease, which is more infectious, now makes up around half the cases and continues to gain ground. Dr Cillian De Gascun of the National Virus Reference Laboratory said : It is not unusual for viruses to mutate over time. We have identified multiple different SARS-CoV-2 lineages in Ireland since the start of the pandemic, and two of the three recently emerged variants of concern from the UK and South Africa, he said. However, the expectation is that more variants will emerge across the world in the coming months. Some may increase the risk of infection, sticking longer and better to surfaces but this does not mean that our continued adherence to the public health advice is in anyway less effective. AstraZeneca-Oxfords COVID-19 vaccine dubbed and manufactured in India as Covishield has been approved in Nepal on January 15, reported news agency ANI citing Nepal government. Recently, India had approved the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, AZD1222, dubbed in India as Covishield and manufactured at Serum Institute of India (SII), Pune. Now, the vaccine produced in India has also been approved by Nepal Prime Minister KP Olis government against the novel coronavirus. AstraZeneca had signed an agreement with SII for the production of at least 1 billion doses of its experimental vaccine. Covishield has already shown the efficacy of 90 per cent and 62 per cent in two different dosing regimes. The AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine should not be administered to those who have a pre-existing severe allergic reaction during the first dose or have an identified allergy to any of the vaccines ingredients. The SII, in its document also catalogued the ingredients of the vaccine - L-Histidine, L- Histidine hydrochloride monohydrate, Magnesium chloride hexahydrate, Polysorbate 80, Ethanol, Sucrose, Sodium chloride and Disodium edetate dihydrate (EDTA). Read - Brazil Plane Coming To Take '2Mn' Covishield Doses From India Even As MEA Says 'too Early' Read - COVID Vaccination In Delhi: 75 Sites For Covishield, 6 For Covaxin, Say Officials Covishield safe with negligible side-effects As states began receiving the first shipment of vaccines before the mass vaccination drive in India starts on January 16, NITI Aayog Member Dr VK Paul while addressing a press conference on January 12 that both COVID-19 vaccines approved in India, Covishield and Covaxin are safe with negligible side-effects. The NITI Aayog Member further stated that the two approved Coronavirus vaccines "are safest of the vaccines". He also thanked the Indian Medical Association (IMA) for accepting and supporting the two vaccines being manufactured in the country. Covaxin is Indias indigenous COVID-19 developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) - National Institute of Virology (NIV). NITI Aayog Member Dr VK Paul said, "Both the vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin) have been authorized for emergency use and there should be no doubt about their safety. They have been tested on thousands of people and side-effects are negligible. There is no risk of any significance," Dr Paul said at a press conference." Read - Haryana Receives Its First Consignment Of Covishield Read - Puducherry Gets 17,500 Doses Of Covishield, Govt Ready For Rollout On Jan 16 According to recent data, the average rental yield across the UK is currently 4.8%, falling to 3.9% in England and 3.7% in Wales, while Scotland (5.6%) and Northern Ireland (5.2%) are currently home to above-average yields. But where comes out top? Lettings management platform, Howsy, has revealed that on a regional level, the North East is the most profitable market at 4.8%, with Yorkshire and the Humber, the North West and London also home to an average yield of 4% or more. Scotland accounts for 14 of the top 20 areas with the highest average yields, with Glasgow (7.4%), Inverclyde (7%) and Midlothian (6.9%) amongst the best. Belfast is the only area of Northern Ireland to rank in the top 20 with yields currently averaging 6.1%. Burnley (6%), Hyndburn (5.8%), Blackpool (5.7%), Newcastle (5.6%) and County Durham (5.5%) complete the top 20 as the best buy-to-let areas in England at present. At the other end of the table, Powys, Monmouthshire and Kensington and Chelsea all rank with the lowest average rental yields in the UK, currently at just 2.7%. Calum Brannan, Founder and CEO of Howsy, commented: An already tough buy-to-let sector has been complicated further by the ongoing threat of Covid, as some tenants continue to struggle financially and demand in city centres dwindles due to a growing culture of working from home. "The ongoing saga of the eviction ban and where and how it applies may also deter investment in the short term as many landlords continue to see little to no rental income and are largely unable to reclaim their investments. "The silver lining is there are still a wealth of areas where demand remains high, as well as plenty of pockets where yields continue to sit way above average. For those thinking of investing in the buy-to-let sector this year, finding the right balance between the two is the best bet at maximising the profit seen on your investment. Dr Harold N Bornstein, the physician who once declared that Donald Trump would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency" died January 8. He was 73. Bornstein's death was announced Thursday in a paid notice in The New York Times. The cause and location of his death were not disclosed. A poet and gastroenterologist, Bornstein treated Trump for decades, once telling an interviewer, I like Donald Trump because I think he likes me." Also Read | Covid far from over in some states The unconventional Bornstein, known for his shoulder-length hair, drew media attention in late December 2015 when he released a letter saying that Trump, a devout fan of fast food who by his own proclamation does not vigorously exercise, would unequivocally" be the healthiest president in history. He further deemed the celebrity businessman's condition astonishingly excellent." Bornstein later revealed that Trump himself had dictated the glowing assessment, calling it black humor" and admitting he had written it in five minutes while a limo sent by the then-candidate waited outside his office. I just made it up as I went along," he told CNN in 2018. It's like the movie 'Fargo': It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction." The revelation came after what Bornstein decried as a 2017 raid" of his medical office in which three men, including the president's longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller, showed up to collect the president's medical records days after Bornstein told The New York Times that Trump took a hair growth medication. The visit left him feeling raped, frightened and sad," Bornstein told NBC, adding he hadn't been given a form authorizing him to release Trump's records. Harold Nelson Bornstein was born in New York in 1947 to Maida and Dr. Jacob Bornstein. Harold Bornstein went into practice with his father, who treated Trump until 1980 from his office on East 78th Street. He also served for more than four decades on the staff of Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The only thing I wanted to do in my life is practice with my father, which I managed to do for 35 years," the younger Bornstein once told CNN. The death notice described Bornstein as a force of nature who brought joy to his family." He often spent nights under a lamp reading and annotating Italian language literature." He's survived by his wife, Melissa, and five children, according to the notice. Dr Bornstein devoted his life to the practice of medicine, which he regarded as a sacred privilege," the death notice says. His devotion to his patients was unparalleled and he continued a traditional style of personal medicine, making house calls and holding the hands of those in need until the end." 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. Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now!! Topics Pakistan does support to Kashmir cause but remaining in a purely diplomatic, ethical, humane and moral domain. by Ali Sukhanver The blame keeps on shifting from Pakistan to Turkey and sometimes from the ISIS to the Al Qaida; India is yet not confirmed about whom to put the blame on with reference to the support to the Kashmiri freedom fighters. Under the guidance of the R&AW, various Indian and western media groups keep on shifting the targets to be blamed of. Recently, in the first week of the last December, the Greek City Times published a report with reference to the Furat News Agency (FNA) that Turkey is preparing to send Syrian fighters to the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu &Kashmir (IIOJK). The purpose of sending these fighters is to fight against India in the Kashmir territory; says the paper. According to the details, Abu Emsha, the head of the Turkish-backed Suleiman Shah Brigades informed his members a few days back that Ankara wanted to reinforce Kashmir. The report says that Suleiman Shah Brigades is a terrorist organization and a part of the so-called Syrian National Army. It is also mentioned in the report that Turkey had been previously sending Syrian mercenaries to Libya and Azerbaijan too. The prejudiced approach of the Greek City Times could be very well estimated by its comments that Turkish state stands by Pakistan on the Kashmir issue against India. Like Qatar, Pakistan supports the Turkish states invasion attacks in Northeast Syria. The report also says that Abu Emsha has stated that those who will go from his group will be registered in a list and they will receive $2000 in funding. The Firat News Agency (FNA) also reported the same thing about this ongoing activity of the Suleiman Shah Brigades regarding sending fighters to Kashmir. The news agency says that it relied on information obtained from Abu Emsha, the head of Suleiman Shah Brigade which allegedly works under Syrian National Army. The FNA had earlier reported that Turks want to relocate some units to Kashmir where each fighter will get 20000 US$. FNA is a News Agency, located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The agency is affiliated with Kurds and PKK. The agencys journalists are banned in Turkey and its web sites cannot be accessed from Turkish soil. In this whole story, starting from the Greek City Times and ending at the FNA report, where comes Pakistan from? Blaming Pakistan of providing military support to the Kashmiri freedom fighters is nothing new; it is an age-old misconception against Pakistan. The storm of blames and allegations against Pakistan reaches its climax whenever the issue of adding or subtracting Pakistans name in the grey list of FATF is under discussion. The recent report is also a part of the same sequence. If Turkey is allegedly planning to do something for the Kashmiris and if Abu Emsha has asked the commanders of other militia groups to list the names of those who want to go to Kashmir, what has Pakistan to do with it? Kashmir Freedom Struggle is not a new phenomenon; it is spanned over seven decades with a lot of resolutions passed by UN. Moreover the freedom struggle of Kashmiris is not the only struggle of its type; from Palestine to Various ethnic groups in Europe, there are countless separatist or freedom movements for seeking greater autonomy or independence. In the European Union (EU), several of these groups are members of the European Free Alliance (EFA). In some cases, the groups seek to unify into a different state. In the same way, the Kashmiris are also struggling since long for their independent identity. Their struggle is against Indias illegal occupation over their territory and their struggle is totally homegrown and reflects the sentiments of the masses. Blaming Pakistan for what it has never done would prove a futile practice and soon the brains behind this childish philosophy would realize that such blame-theories are not the solution to the problem. The freedom movement in Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir would end only when the Kashmiris get their right to decide their fate themselves. They neither are the puppets nor are they animals; they are human beings leading their lives under decades old suppression. Their struggle for independence and their efforts to get the basic human rights is quite natural. Pakistan or any other country might have been blamed for making things troublesome in Kashmir if the people living there were very much contented and satisfied with the things around them. Pakistan does support to Kashmir cause but remaining in a purely diplomatic, ethical, humane and moral domain. Instead of doing futile efforts of establishing linkage between Pakistan and Turkey on Kashmir issue and then connecting these links with Al-Qaida and ISIS is nothing but a fools errand. India wont have to involve herself in all such nefarious, undiplomatic, unethical and immoral activities if the Kashmir issue were settled sagely and wisely by letting the Kashmiris live their life according to their own desire. The unrest in Kashmir would never come to an end unless the Kashmiris are treated like living human beings. They must be given the right to decide their own future with the help of their own votes. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: 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Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan 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. New Delhi, Jan 15 : After facing initial scrutiny over user data privacy, wearable maker Fitbit has finally become part of Google which bought it for $2.1 billion in November 2019. Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park said that the trust of Fitbit users will continue to be paramount, and they will maintain strong data privacy and security protections. The European Commission in August last year opened an in-depth investigation to assess the proposed acquisition of Fitbit by Google under the EU Merger Regulation. The regulator was concerned that the proposed transaction would further entrench Google's market position in the online advertising markets by increasing the already vast amount of data that Google could use for personalisation of the ads it serves and displays. Park said in a statement on Thursday that Fitbit will give you control of your data and will stay transparent about what it collects and why. "Google will continue to protect Fitbit users' privacy and has made a series of binding commitments with global regulators, confirming that Fitbit users' health and wellness data won't be used for Google ads and this data will be kept separate from other Google ad data," Park clarified. Google also affirmed it will continue to allow Fitbit users to choose to connect to third party services, saying the Fitbit deal has always been about devices, not data. "We've been clear since the beginning that we will protect Fitbit users' privacy. We worked with global regulators on an approach which safeguards consumers' privacy expectations," said Rick Osterloh Senior Vice President, Devices & Services at Google. "We'll also maintain access to Android APIs that enable devices like fitness trackers and smart watches to interoperate with Android smartphones, and we'll continue to allow Fitbit users to choose to connect to third-party services so you'll still be able to sync your favourite health and fitness apps to your Fitbit account," he elaborated. Fitbit has sold more than 120 million devices in over 100 countries. It has built a vibrant community of more than 29 million active users. A storm damaged house is seen in the Townsvile suburb of Gulliver in Townsville, Australia on March 21, 2012 . (Leigh Turner/Getty Images) 86,000 Homes in Northern Australia Uninsured as Premiums Skyrocket Northern Australians are dropping insurance as sky-high premiums cripple community life, according to a report by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC). The final report from the ACCCs three-year Northern Australia Insurance Inquiry shows that 20 percent of homes (around 86,000 properties) in northern Australia are uninsured, almost double the rate in other parts of the country. The non-insurance rate is highest in north-Western Australia, followed by the Northern Territory and northern Queensland. Within five years from 2011 to 2016, an extra 30,000 properties in north Queensland have abstained from building insurance, while around 4,000 in north-Western Australia have done the same. Houses sit in Townsvilles floodwaters on February 4, 2019. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images) Unaffordable insurance costs are forcing people to avoid insuring their homes the report pointed out. We have heard first-hand how many residents of northern Australia are struggling to find suitable and affordable insurance in this market, and the considerable impact this is having on them and their communities, ACCC Deputy Chair Delia Rickard said. The inquiry found home and contents insurance costs in northern Australia came in at $2,500, twice as much as the rest of the country. Meanwhile, average premiums have sky-rocketed over the past 10 years. Home insurance costs soared by 178 percent in northern Australia between 2007-2008 and 2018-2019, more than three times higher than the rest of the nation. The price hikes are leaving more households financially vulnerable to natural disasters, including cyclones and floods, which are driving much the cost of premiums upwards, ACCC noted. Cyclone risk compared to average premiums for combined home and contents insurance in Australia, 2018-2019. On the left is the cyclone risk areas in Australia, with red representing the highest risk zones and on the right is the average insurance premium prices. (Source ACCC) We know that there are real reasons for more expensive insurance premiums in northern Australia, Rickard said, The risk of extreme weather is higher, and it can be costly for insurers to service these regions. However, different insurers can quote vastly different premiums for the same property. While many consumers could save by switching, it is harder than it should be for consumers to shop around. Disaster Zones A Cost Magnet According to the report, premiums can be over $4,700 for the top 10 percent of policies in areas with high cyclone risk levels, and can reach up to $1,240 for flood areas depending on the insurer. In 2019, major flooding hit the Townsville region in north Queensland, damaging more than 3,000 properties. According to the report, 33 percent of residents surveyed chose not to claim their insurance mainly because the excess was too high. The estimated number of homeowners without insurance in Townsville has also risen sharply from 9 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2016. A fallen tree is seen laying across a street after Cyclone Yasis passing on February 3, 2011 in Townsville, Australia. (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images) Recommendations on Addressing Cost Blowouts The ACCC made 38 recommendations to improve the northern Australian insurance market, including using direct subsidies to relieve consumers financial pressures rather than government reinsurance pools. The watchdog also suggested abolishing stamp duty, saying they are an inefficient form of taxation. In 2018-2019, northern Australians paid nearly $80 million in stamp duty on their insurance, adding between 9 and 10 percent to premiums. The report advocated for more short-term help for customers struggling to pay their premiums, such as deferring payments, reducing or waiving surcharges for monthly payments, or offering payment plans. It is crucial that we help households hold onto their insurance, because becoming uninsured can result in much greater financial hardship in the future if homes or possessions are impacted by a severe event, Rickard said. Other suggestions include improving the transparency in disclosing instalment surcharge costs, investing in risk mitigation and building a national website to compare home insurance. A resident uses a kayak to paddle past goalposts, partially submerged under floodwaters caused by Cyclone Debbie, to rescue a stranded cow on his property in North MacLean, Brisbane on April 1, 2017. (Photo by PATRICK HAMILTON/AFP via Getty Images) However, some of ACCCs recommendations have been slammed by the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) as flawed ideas that were unviable and too expensive, according to an ICAs media release. ICA CEO Rob Whelan said the industry is disappointed over ACCCs emphasis on mutual and direct subsidies, options that have been tried and failed in other countries. Insurance in Northern Australia should not be subsidised by the rest of the nation; this would be unfair and unsustainable, he said. Whelan also opposed a national price comparison website for home insurance, saying it will not provide useful information as the level of risks varied in different parts of the country. He said a comparison website, run by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), already does the job for northern Australia. Although Whelan supported ACCCs consultation to abolish stamp duty and invest in mitigation, he noted that little progress has been made by the government. The insurance industry would have preferred the ACCC offer practical recommendations that address the key drivers of pricing and availability of insurance in northern Australia the high risk and impact of natural disasters (in particular cyclones and floods), high costs of materials and trades, inadequate building controls, and poor-quality building stock, he added. remaining of Thank you for reading! This is your last free article before you will be asked to subscribe. Already have a paid subscription? Sign in We are excited about this new location, which becomes ARCH Medical Solutions Escondido, and the capable team that will be joining AMS. ARCH Global Precision (ARCH) has acquired LISI Medical Jeropa, Inc. (LISI Jeropa) located in Escondido, California. A subsidiary of LISI Medical, the Jeropa plant is a leading contract manufacturer of high-precision medical implants, instruments, and other devices serving a variety of segments in the orthopaedic, dental, and cardiovascular markets. The newly acquired plant and operations will join ARCH Medical Solutions (AMS), bolstering ARCH as a diversified supplier noted for growth and scale within the medical device market. The acquired facility features an impressive breadth of core competencies and provides a strategic location supporting contract manufacturing demands across the United States and beyond. These advanced competencies are highly complementary to the existing manufacturing capabilities at ARCH Medical Solutions locations across the country. LISI Medical Jeropa broadens the portfolio of products and end markets served by ARCH Medical Solutions, said Paul Barck, President of ARCH Medical Solutions. We are excited about this new location, which becomes ARCH Medical Solutions Escondido, and the capable team that will be joining AMS. The added capabilities in micro-machining, tight-tolerance instrument assemblies, and operations that span prototype to production scale dovetail nicely with our growing customer base and medical device contract manufacturing service offerings. About ARCH ARCH, a Jordan Company platform company based in metro Detroit, manufactures high-quality cutting tools, medical instruments and implants, and precision-machined components for a range of critical applications. ARCH has dozens of facilities strategically located across the country serving the medical, aerospace, defense, energy, semiconductor, surgical robotics, and progressive industrial markets. The teams at ARCH are metalworking professionals with industry-leading tight-tolerance manufacturing expertise. ARCH provides innovative and practical solutions to the complex manufacturing challenges of its customers. LIVONIA, MICH. - To commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy, Madonna University will host a virtual celebration Monday, Jan. 18, from 5:30-7:00 p.m., via Facebook live at www.facebook.com/MadonnaUniversity. Just 10 people will be in Kresge Hall, where there will be a vocal performance of Emelie Sandes Read All About It by Madonna student Sonnara Stubbs, an announcement of the student winners of the MLK essay and photo contests, and an engaging presentation by learning disability trailblazer Pete Pullen, head of Eton Academy, in Birmingham, Mich.. Eton is a high school committed to the education of students who learn differently. Teachers at Eton tailor learning to each students needs, while building essential skills and confidence that will foster lifelong success. Pullens address, The Power of Neurodiversity, will connect the Universitys Mission theme of Reclaiming the Vision, with Martin Luther Kings message of a more equitable world, and the exploration of neurodiversity or how we learn differently. Pullen explained his goal for the presentation when he said, My hope is that those who participate in the Facebook live event walk away feeling moved by Dr. Kings omnipresent spirit, empowered with a deeper understanding of how we learn differently, and more committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. All are welcome to join the Facebook live MLK Celebration that kicks off a week of community service and other events honoring Dr. Kings legacy. Visit www.facebook.com/MadonnaUniversity to watch live, or to view the recorded event later. ### The last chapter in the most controversial US presidential elections in living memory unfolded on 7 January when thousands of outgoing US president Donald Trumps supporters stormed Capitol Hill in Washington, the seat of the US government comprising the Senate, House of Representatives and Supreme Court buildings. The scene was dramatic and marked the most shocking in a series of events that have characterised the 2020 US presidential elections. It is the first time in over a century that the US has been so divided over the results of an election that some have been encouraged to resort to force. Earlier in the day on 7 January Trump spoke to a rally of his supporters in Washington, urging them to march on Congress in protest against the ratification of the results of elections that had resulted in the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. Trump said nothing in his speech about storming the Capitol building or attacking the convened representatives of the nation. However, the rowdy mob decided that the speech was a signal from the president to take matters into their own hands and proceeded to storm the building. Video footage shows that the mob was allowed into the building by law-enforcement forces before it stormed into the halls of the Capitol, smashing windows and brawling with police officers who found themselves overwhelmed. The tragic events ended in five people being killed, among them a police officer. Fourteen people were injured and about 53 arrested. Many of the rioters were not traditional Republican Party voters, but were from far-right groups such as QAnon, who propagate weird conspiracy theories. This groups shaman Jake Angeli led the charge inside the halls of the Capitol building wearing animal horns and a fur hat, which added to the bizarre scene at the centre of American politics. The tragic deaths of US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt and police officer Brian Sicknick were not widely covered by the US media, unlike in the case of the tragic death of African-American George Floyd in May 2020. Babbits death was widely ignored, along with injuries to other pro-Trump supporters, with these being treated by most outlets as mere statistics. The riots have angered Democratic Party politicians to the extent that the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, has called for another motion of impeachment against Trump because of his responsibility for the crisis, according to her claims. While Republican figures have condemned the storming of Capitol Hill as a blatant assault on democracy, Democratic Party leaders are trying to use it as a way of landing a knockout blow on Trump two weeks before he steps down from office as a way of preventing any future nomination. But the Democratic Party leaders sanctimonious attitude towards this unprecedented crisis is unwarranted, especially as they have looked the other way and even endorsed in certain cases the rioting, vandalism and violence committed by the so-called anti-fascist group Antifa and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) group since last Mays death of Floyd. Seven months of riots, vandalism and violence by Antifa and BLM across the US never really riled the media and politicians in the way the seven-hour crisis on Capitol Hill did. The media coverage by the likes of the US TV channel CNN and other liberal media outlets was abysmal to say the least throughout the presidential election campaign. Aside from the fact that it was biased in favour of Biden, it also itself created havoc and fished for sensationalist news. CNN sounded like an American version of the Qatari Islamist propaganda news network AlJazeera. CNNs coverage of events leading up to the riots on Capitol Hill never felt professional. The network raced to rally members of the Democratic Party, who were given extensive airtime to belittle the president and his supporters. It has been one of the causes of the unprecedented rift currently seen within American society. Its anchors have over-dramatised events, including Christopher Cuomo and Don Lemon, both of whom could be nominated for Primetime Emmy awards for acting rather than for professional news coverage. Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, which for a decade have claimed to be platforms for freedom of speech, also decided to jump on the bandwagon in their bid to control what can be said by account holders on their services. Twitter and Facebook went as far as to permanently suspend accounts in a show of power by social media moguls such as Twitters founder Jack Dorsey and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. These two men decided to block the US presidents social media accounts indefinitely, tossing aside the need to preserve freedom of expression. Both acted as national security experts, claiming that their move served national security interests. The Apple Corporation and Google have also decided to take the social media application Parler off their online shops. It had recently been used by Trump and his supporters as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. The last US presidential elections were a blatant display of the fact that political money now controls politics in the US in a manner unseen in decades. Over$14 billion was spent on the presidential and congressional elections, with Bidens campaign spending almost double the Trump campaign. Even so, the involvement of corporations such as Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple in controlling the news and even deciding for voters what is best for them to see is unmatched. It is a move that has made a sham out of the US elections. Throughout his presidential term in office, Trumps rhetoric may have sometimes been coarse and blunt, but he often said what his predecessors and other American politicians have not dared to say. His term was free of new US military interventions abroad, and he managed to bring many US troops back home. He was not a smooth-talking politician with great skills in oratory, such as former president Barack Obama, but he attempted at least to avoid sending tens of thousands of young American soldiers to their doom in foreign lands to spill the blood of tens of thousands of foreigners over oil or other geopolitical gains. Trumps rapprochement with North Korea and his attempts at reaching a peace deal in the Middle East would likely have seen any other president receive a Nobel Peace Prize. His predecessor Barack Obama received the award just by showing up at the Oval Office, and he hardly managed to honour it with peaceful deeds. Trump was not recognised for his peace efforts or the historic peace deals between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020. Regardless of the naysayers about such steps who have contributed nothing to the decades-long peace process Trumps were the first concrete steps to be made towards peace in the Middle East since the 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. These efforts merit the Nobel Peace Prize. However, given the current political atmosphere and the shoddy choices made by the Nobel committee in recent years, this is unlikely to happen. The assault on Capitol Hill is unlikely to be the end of the troubles in the US, and it could simply be the beginning of what could be a dark chapter in American politics, fuelled by irresponsible media coverage and personal political feuds. Biden will have an uphill battle in stabilising the United States and calming the growing fears of Americans. The Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis were large enough tasks, but the 70 million people who voted for Trump in the last elections, and believe they have been mistreated and duped, may be an even bigger challenge for the new president. *The writer is a political analyst and author of Egypts Arab Spring and the Winding Road to Democracy. *A version of this article appears in print in the 14 January, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly. Short link: Surat Municipal Corporation has partnered with ABB India to further roll out next generation technology and support its vision of delivering continuous water supply across the city of Surat with the 24/7 Water Supply Scheme. These latest investments follow the success of the phase one digitalization upgrade of the entire water system which took place in 2018. Surat faces significant water demand from industrial sectors, with clusters of textile units consuming more than 450 million liters per day. Accordingly, the city is addressing the critical issue of optimum water usage across domestic, commercial, and industrial consumption. A digitally powered system boosted by safe and secure electrical distribution equipment from ABB India enables SMC to sustainably optimize the distribution of a critical natural resource like water across the city. A stable power supply also prevents water waste by identifying leaks through effective monitoring, while also supporting the supply of clean and uninterrupted water to one million residents across 38 sq km area. ABB's electrification equipment such as air circuit breakers (ACB), moulded case circuit breakers (MCCB), miniature circuit breakers (MCBs), contactors, manual motor starters (MMS), overload relays (OLR), and pilot devices help reduce system downtime by providing steady and reliable power for the water management system to function efficiently. In order to boost the existing and conventional infrastructure, ABB has also provided the municipal corporation with facilities like a Water Distribution Station, Elevated Storage Reservoir, Rising main line and distribution network line along with a remotely installed SCADA system to provide a comprehensive view of all the data assets. ABB has partnered with SMC on this project with support from Shrirang Sales Corporation, one of the leading industrial groups in Gujarat. The collaboration of ABB's global technology solutions coupled with Shrirang Sales Corporation's local expertise, has played a critical role in making this project a reality. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) (TNS) The recent cyberattack at the Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority inflicted damage that lasted months and threatened to cause a public health crisis, the agency said.Officials from Jersey City and the autonomous utilities agency have said little about the Sept. 30 ransomware attack, which MUA documents said blocked access to vital water and sewer information.But the MUA spent nearly half a million dollars to address the attack, and the agencys computer systems were still not fully functional even three months after the cyberincursion, an MUA resolution passed last month shows.At a Dec. 17 meeting, the MUA Board of Commissioners voted to approve a new $391,000 emergency contract with cybersecurity firm Digital Team Six for technical restoration services, according to a resolution obtained through an Open Public Records request. The new contract was necessary to avert a public health crisis, the resolution said.Despite repeated efforts problems continued to be encountered with restoring all of the JCMUAs Internet technology network to full operation, the resolution states, adding that it has become increasingly apparent that advanced technical assistance will be required.But the extent of the potential public health crisis is unclear. JCMUA Executive Director Jose Cunha could not be reached for comment and MUA Board of Commissioners Chair Maureen Hulings declined to comment. Digital Team Six staff did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The contract comes on the heels of an $18,675 contract with a different information technology firm, as well as a $25,000 contract with Pennsylvania law firm Mullen Coughlin to investigate the incident putting known expenditures related to the incident at $434,675. MUA officials expected at least $25,000 of that to be covered by insurance.Its also unclear exactly what the hacker or hackers wanted to target. However, the attack caused the agency to lose access to vital information and documentation related to the provision of water and sewerage services to the citizens of the City of Jersey City, an October resolution reads.In ransomware attacks, hackers block access to computer systems data and demand a ransom for its release. Its unclear whether or not the MUA paid a ransom, and whether any data is still being blocked.The Dec. 17 resolution also revealed the occurrence of another, previously unknown cyberattack on a different city agency: the Jersey City Office of Emergency Management. That city agency suffered a similar ransomware incident, the resolution reads, adding that OEM officials were those who recommended hiring Digital Team Six.A city spokeswoman did not respond to emailed questions about the incidents. But Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop has made a point of highlighting Jersey Citys cyberdefenses.As a city, we not only made a significant financial commitment to build the most sophisticated cyber defenses to protect our residents, but were also the only municipal police department on the eastern seaboard with police officers assigned to the FBI Cyber Security Task Force, Fulop wrote in a Sept. 17 NorthJersey.com op-ed.A city spokeswoman subsequently noted the MUAs computer system is separate from the citys system. New Delhi: India has expressed its "deep concern" at the targeted assassination of Afghan journalists and civil society members, calling it "contrary to the spirit of the peace process". In response to a question at the weekly presser by the spokesperson of Ministry of External Affairs Anurag Srivastava said, "The targeted killing of journalists and civil society members, aimed at suppressing the freedom of expression and informed discussion on critical issues related to peace and governance, is of deep concern." As many as five journalists have been killed in Afghanistan so far, the latest being Bismillah Aimaq in the central province of Ghor. Other journalists who have been killed are Rahmatullah Nekzad, Malala Maiwand, Yama Siawash and Aliyas Dayee. Calling an "immediate stop" to these killings, MEA said, "people of Afghanistan long for a peaceful future". During the response, India reiterated the call for an "immediate and comprehensive ceasefire" that "will lay the ground for a meaningful peace process to establish a peaceful, prosperous and progressive Afghanistan." India has been calling for an "afghan led afghan owned afghan controlled" peace process, even as it has been providing support to the country in terms of capacity building, infrastructure projects. Last year, India was present at both the US-Taliban agreement and the start of the Taliban-Afghan govt talks. Live TV Nour Qutyan used her $600 federal stimulus check to pay her share of the rent she splits with two roommates in South Philadelphia: $588. The $12 left over feels like a slap in the face for a low-income person like me, said Qutyan, 28, who is surviving on just a few hours of work a month as a bartender in Brewerytown. At the same time, Im lucky to have gotten the money. Something is better than nothing. As it claims lives, the pandemic also continues to wreck the economy, laying low Americans in or near poverty. For them, even $600 stimulus checks, released this month, make a difference. But when a person lives in a constant state of need, its often difficult to decide which hole to fill, or which fire to put out. A great year I really couldnt budget the money or save it, said Robin Bechtel, 54, who calls herself a very low income woman in Honey Brook, Chester County. Unable to work at her job as a fast-food cook because she contracted the coronavirus as shes been battling breast cancer, Bechtel, the mother of three, used her $600 for food and propane. Her heat had been cut off for two weeks, and she often relies on the Honey Brook Food Pantry for help. I dont waste money, she said. Ive learned over the years that you pay for food, heat, and your car, because you need it to get to work in Chester County. Bechtels car, she said, recently broke down. She added, So far, its been a great year. Overall, people in poverty are likely using their checks to simply sustain their families, said sociologist Judith Levine, director of the Public Policy Lab at Temple University: Rent, food, medicine those are the top things people are forced to spend that money on. In Philadelphia, many low-income people work in restaurants, particularly hard-hit during the pandemic. Its absolutely devastating, said Sam Jones, director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Restaurant Opportunity Center, a national nonprofit that advocates for restaurant workers. Theyre behind on rent and utility payments, they need food and have medical issues, he said. The $600 is woefully inadequate. Its too soon for scholars to have studied how those in poverty have used their $600 stimulus checks. But in a study of the way Americans spent their first round of pandemic-related stimulus checks in April many of those around $1,200 each scholars from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Virginia showed that people spent a great deal of their allotment on food, helping to stave off hunger. A June study by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that 87.6% of adults in households with incomes of $25,000 or less said theyd use their stimulus payments to meet immediate expenses. On the other hand, adults in households with incomes between $75,000 and $99,999 were more likely to use their stimulus payments to pay off debt or to add to savings. Poverty stereotypes For decades, many low-income Americans have been denigrated as do-nothings willing to sponge off the federal government, unable to responsibly handle whatever charity they get. People have stereotypes about those in poverty, said Laura Napolitano, a sociologist of the American family at Rutgers University-Camden. And, anecdotally, youll hear about a few people who spend money in the wrong way. Napolitano and other scholars point to the many times Republican governors and the Trump administration have tried to impose work requirements on Medicaid benefits, which studies show leads to lower enrollment but no change in employment, as Vox reported. The administration has also pushed four times to limit food stamp benefits and to impose more stringent work requirements even as the economy collapses, which experts say would lead to 700,000 people losing their benefits. But, Napolitano stressed, research shows that, generally, people arent frivolous. To understand how quite a few low-income Americans handle influxes of federal money successfully, one need only look at the Earned Income Tax Credit program, she added. The EITC is a refundable tax credit available to low-income families who have income from work. According to research presented by the Economic Policy Institute, the program dramatically reduces child poverty, encourages single mothers to participate in the formal economy, and has important positive effects on a range of health, educational, and child developmental outcomes. The average EITC amount received per tax-filer was $2,476 during the 2019 tax year, federal figures show. For low-income workers, thats something like a lottery win, according to Kathryn Edin, Princeton University scholar and a leading poverty researcher. Yet rather than spend wildly, EITC recipients Edin has studied showed they learned to build up emergency savings with the conferred dollars. For people in poverty, no solution is perfect. And not everyone including middle-class Americans are capable of using money thats given to them in the right way, scholars say. Lisa, a 33-year-old college-educated West Philadelphia woman who grew up middle class but now is low-income, asked that her last name not be used because shes sending out resumes for work. She said, I absolutely know people who are misusing the $600 checks. Theyre taking extraneous trips they dont need, buying novelty items, or unnecessary pleasures like clothes. Still, Lisa said, most friends are being responsible. As for herself, she said, Its incredibly hard to hold back on buying. I need a humidifier and a convection oven. But I put 75% of the stimulus check toward rent and my phone bill. Theres about $100 left over for savings. Because Im mostly out of work, I have to prioritize survival. The International Monetary Fund continues discussions with the Ukrainian authorities as part of a virtual review of the Stand-By Arrangement, not revealing the date when Ukraine may receive the second tranche. The virtual IMF mission began its work, its discussions with the Ukrainian authorities in December. We had a short break over the holiday period, and we did resume those discussions, those meetings virtually with the Ukrainian authorities just this week on January 11th, IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said at a briefing on January 14, when asked how long the IMF will work with Ukraine in the current mission. He noted that four reviews are scheduled within the arrangement. So the first review of the [current] standby arrangement is ongoing, the IMF spokesman noted. He reminded that the IMF has a US $5 billion standby arrangement with Ukraine to support the authorities response to COVID19 and to help preserve important economic gains and advance a set of critical reforms that are needed to position Ukraine for recovery and growth. As reported, on June 9, the IMF Executive Board approved a new 18-month Stand-By Arrangement for Ukraine with total funding of $5 billion. On June 12, Ukraine received the first tranche of $2.1 billion. Ukraine will receive the remainder if it fulfills the terms of the arrangement. In November, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the current level of cooperation and the implementation of the IMF arrangement. In December, the IMF mission began a virtual review of the SBA. ol Fired Philadelphia police inspector Joseph Bologna Jr., who was arrested last summer for beating a Temple University student with a baton at George Floyd protests, was cleared of criminal charges Friday after a judge tossed out his case at a preliminary hearing. Municipal Court Judge Henry Lewandowski III ruled that the District Attorneys Office had not presented enough evidence to establish that Bolognas use of his baton against Evan Gorski captured on video amounted to a crime. Bolognas attorneys were quick to cast the decision as a great victory. And leaders in the police union which had fervently backed Bologna since his arrest also cheered the ruling, saying Bologna had been unfairly villainized over the incident and its fallout. Cops have been getting dirt kicked in their face for the last eight months for doing their job, said John McNesby, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5. This is just one step in vindicating not only Joe, but the entire Police Department. District Attorney Larry Krasner, who has the option to refile the charges against Bologna, said his office plans to do so very soon. Philadelphians require equal treatment under the law, and that means police accountability has to be real, he said. Bolognas case, initially filed in June, became a near-immediate flashpoint in the discussion over police reform that peaked last year during demonstrations over Floyds killing by Minneapolis police. Police first arrested Gorski, a Temple engineering student, and held him in custody for more than 40 hours on allegations that he had assaulted a police officer during protests on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. But Krasners office dropped those charges and moved to charge Bologna instead after a video quickly spread across social media showing him striking Gorski as a group of officers confronted a crowd. Krasner said in a statement at the time that he had reviewed parts of the case himself, including the video, and he characterized his decision to pursue charges against Bologna including aggravated assault as an example of his commitment to evenhanded justice. Gorskis attorney said at the time that he had been treated for injuries that required 10 staples to his head. But the case drew fierce opposition from many within the Police Department, who said Bologna, 54, was a dedicated officer doing a dangerous job in a tense situation, and that he had struck Gorski in the shoulder with his baton, not the head, as Krasner has stated and The Inquirer reported. Policing isnt pretty, McNesby said at the time. We had a riot situation going on. The morning Bologna surrendered to face charges, more than 100 officers gathered outside of union headquarters to show their support, and the union later sold T-shirts emblazoned with Bologna Strong. Bolognas attorneys, Brian McMonagle and Fortunato Perri Jr., echoed that sentiment Friday outside the Stout Center for Criminal Justice blasting prosecutors for filing what they contend was a weak case that had not been properly investigated, and saying it had resulted in destruction of [Bolognas] life and his career. He was a frontline worker trying to protect this community, this city, that he was born in, and everybody who lives here, McMonagle said. And all he did that day was do his job. During the preliminary hearing, the lawyers said, they called to the witness stand Sgt. Kenneth Gill, a use-of-force expert from the Police Departments training unit. McMonagle said he testified that Bolognas use of his baton was completely lawful and reasonable, and that the use of force in this case was absolutely justified. Perri said Gorski also testified, and admitted under oath that he had intervened when police were attempting to make an arrest. Attempts to reach Gorski after the hearing were unsuccessful. His attorney, Jonathan Feinberg, declined to comment on the hearings outcome. McMonagle said video of the incident was played in court, and it was slowed, and it showed conclusively that Gorski was never struck in the head by the baton. Krasners office maintains that Bologna hit Gorski in the head. After the hearing, Bologna hugged family members and friends and left the courthouse without commenting. McMonagle said he was just too emotional to speak. McMonagle said he was not sure whether Bologna, a 31-year veteran of the Police Department, might seek to get his job back. McNesby criticized Krasners office, the news media, and The Inquirer, saying they had literally ruined this guys life. He said Bologna likely needed time to discuss the situation with his family before making a decision on whether to try to return to the force. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Police in the northern Vietnamese province of Lang Son have rescued two baby boys from being trafficked to China. Colonel Nguyen Dinh Khai, a senior official from the provincial Department of Public Security, confirmed on Thursday that officers had initiated legal proceedings against Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diep, 34, and Tran Thi Dal, 32, for human trafficking. Diep and Dal, who hail from the Mekong Delta provinces of Kien Giang and Bac Lieu, respectively, will be held in custody for four months in order to assist an investigation, Col. Khai explained. The two women were transporting two infant boys, each about one year old, in Trang Dinh District, Lang Son on January 10 when a team of officers stopped them for suspicious activity and escorted them to the police station. At the station, the women admitted to having been hired by a Chinese man to bring the two boys to Pingxiang City in China. They were promised US$2,000 per baby following the transaction. Diep and Dal had previously received the boys at the Vietnam-Cambodia border, before purchasing fake birth certificates for them via Vietnamese chat app Zalo. They brought the babies to Hanoi and headed to northern Cao Bang Province. The women were expecting to meet a man who promised to help them for VND40 million ($1,730). As he did not show up, Diep and Dal took a taxi to Dong Dang District, Lang Son, where they were detected by police officers. The two boys have been taken to the provinces social protection center for further care. In accordance with Vietnams Penal Code, human trafficking is punishable with five years to lifetime imprisonment, depending on the severity of the violation. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! DUBLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Inoculants - Global Market Outlook (2019-2027)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. According to this report, the Global Inoculants market accounted for $723.67 million in 2019 and is expected to reach $1,431.41 million by 2027 growing at a CAGR of 8.9% during the forecast period. Increase in feed grain and compound feed prices, shift in the trend toward the adoption of organic and environment-friendly farming practices and environmental concerns related to the usage of fertilizers and pesticides are propelling market growth. However, shelf life of agricultural inoculants and limited awareness regarding both agricultural and silage inoculants are hampering market growth. Inoculants are a blend of microorganisms that improve the fertility and health of the soil. It is also known as microbial inoculants that help in improving host plant nutritional status and reduce the need for fertilizer inputs. Inoculants contain beneficial microbes, including bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and algae that promote plant growth and help to suppress pests or diseases. Based on the microbes, the fungal segment is anticipated to hold considerable market share during the forecast period due to the rise in organic farming practices at a global level. Fungal inoculants help plants to absorb phosphorus and other nutrients for use. By geography, South America is going to have lucrative growth during the forecast period. South America is one of the largest regions that has adequate organic agricultural land area, due to which the demand for agricultural inoculants remains high in this region. Some of the key players profiled in the Inoculants Market include BASF SE, Advanced Biological Marketing Inc, Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, Bayer AG, BIOMIN Holding GmbH, BrettYoung, Cargill Incorporated, Corteva, Novozymes A/S, Precision Laboratories LLC, Provita Supplements GmbH, Queensland Agricultural Seeds Pty, Verdesian Life Sciences and XiteBio Technologies Inc. Crop Types Covered: Cereals & Grains Forage Fruits & Vegetables Oilseeds & Pulses Other Crop Types Types Covered: Agricultural Inoculants Silage Inoculants Microbes Covered: Bacterial Fungal Other Microbes Regions Covered: North America US Canada Mexico Europe Germany UK Italy France Spain Rest of Europe Asia Pacific Japan China India Australia New Zealand South Korea Rest of Asia Pacific South America Argentina Brazil Chile Rest of South America Middle East & Africa & Saudi Arabia UAE Qatar South Africa Rest of Middle East & Africa What the report offers: Market share assessments for the regional and country-level segments Strategic recommendations for the new entrants Covers Market data for the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2024 and 2027 Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations) Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancements Key Topics Covered: 1 Executive Summary 2 Preface 2.1 Abstract 2.2 Stake Holders 2.3 Research Scope 2.4 Research Methodology 2.4.1 Data Mining 2.4.2 Data Analysis 2.4.3 Data Validation 2.4.4 Research Approach 2.5 Research Sources 2.5.1 Primary Research Sources 2.5.2 Secondary Research Sources 2.5.3 Assumptions 3 Market Trend Analysis 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Drivers 3.3 Restraints 3.4 Opportunities 3.5 Threats 3.6 Emerging Markets 3.7 Impact of Covid-19 4 Porters Five Force Analysis 4.1 Bargaining power of suppliers 4.2 Bargaining power of buyers 4.3 Threat of substitutes 4.4 Threat of new entrants 4.5 Competitive rivalry 5 Global Inoculants Market, By Crop Type 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Cereals & Grains 5.3 Forage 5.4 Fruits & Vegetables 5.5 Oilseeds & Pulses 5.6 Other Crop Types 5.6.1 Fiber Crops 5.6.2 Plantation Crops 5.6.3 Turf & Ornamentals 6 Global Inoculants Market, By Type 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Agricultural Inoculants 6.2.1 Biocontrol Agents 6.2.2 Plant-Growth-Promoting Microorganisms 6.2.3 Plant-Resistant Stimulants 6.3 Silage Inoculants 6.3.1 Heterofermentative 6.3.2 Homofermentative 7 Global Inoculants Market, By Microbes 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Bacterial 7.2.1 Mode of Action 7.2.1.1 Modulating Phytohormone Levels 7.2.1.2 Nitrogen Fixation 7.2.1.3 Phosphate Solubilization 7.2.1.4 Sequestering Iron 7.2.2 Types of Bacterial Sources 7.2.2.1 Azotobacter 7.2.2.2 Enterococcus 7.2.2.3 Lactobacillus 7.2.2.4 Pediococcus 7.2.2.5 Phosphobacteria 7.2.2.6 Rhizobacteria 7.2.2.7 Other Types of Bacterial Sources 7.2.2.7.1 Pseudomonas Putida 7.2.2.7.2 Bacillus 7.2.2.7.3 Azospirillum 7.3 Fungal 7.3.1 Types of Fungal Sources 7.3.1.1 Trichoderma spp 7.3.1.2 Mycorrhiza 7.3.1.3 Other Fungal 7.3.1.3.1 Aspergillus 7.3.1.3.2 Paecelomyces Lilacinus 7.3.1.3.3 Penicillium spp 7.4 Other Microbes 7.4.1 Algal 7.4.2 Protozoan 7.4.3 Viral 8 Global Inoculants Market, By Geography 8.1 Introduction 8.2 North America 8.2.1 US 8.2.2 Canada 8.2.3 Mexico 8.3 Europe 8.3.1 Germany 8.3.2 UK 8.3.3 Italy 8.3.4 France 8.3.5 Spain 8.3.6 Rest of Europe 8.4 Asia Pacific 8.4.1 Japan 8.4.2 China 8.4.3 India 8.4.4 Australia 8.4.5 New Zealand 8.4.6 South Korea 8.4.7 Rest of Asia Pacific 8.5 South America 8.5.1 Argentina 8.5.2 Brazil 8.5.3 Chile 8.5.4 Rest of South America 8.6 Middle East & Africa 8.6.1 Saudi Arabia 8.6.2 UAE 8.6.3 Qatar 8.6.4 South Africa 8.6.5 Rest of Middle East & Africa 9 Key Developments 9.1 Agreements, Partnerships, Collaborations and Joint Ventures 9.2 Acquisitions & Mergers 9.3 New Product Launch 9.4 Expansions 9.5 Other Key Strategies 10 Company Profiling 10.1 BASF SE 10.2 Advanced Biological Marketing Inc 10.3 Archer-Daniels-Midland Company 10.4 Bayer AG 10.5 BIOMIN Holding GmbH 10.6 BrettYoung 10.7 Cargill Incorporated 10.8 Corteva 10.9 Novozymes A/S 10.10 Precision Laboratories LLC 10.11 Provita Supplements GmbH 10.12 Queensland Agricultural Seeds Pty 10.13 Verdesian Life Sciences 10.14 XiteBio Technologies Inc For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/e12k1i 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 Prime Minister on Friday spoke to Union minister Shripad Naik, who is recuperating at the Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) near here after getting injured in a road accident. Naiks office stated that Modi called up the BJP leader minutes before Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu met the Union minister at the hospital. During a short telephonic conversation, the PM asked Naik to take care of his health, Naiks Officer on Special Duty (OSD) Suraj Naik told PTI. Naidu met Naik (68), a Lok Sabha MP from Goa, at around 10.20 am. Naik was admitted to the government-run GMCH on Monday night after he was seriously injured in the road accident in adjoining Karnataka. His wife and a close aide died in the car accident. The GMCH on Thursday evening had said the health condition of Naik has been improving. A team of the New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has been monitoring the treatment being given to Naik. (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.) (AP) President Trump's inner circle is in disarray as he fights with his closest aides and advisors on his way out the door. According to reports, the president has instructed aides not to pay Rudy Giuliani his $20,000-a-day fee for his attempts to overturn the election and Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner is also said to be struggling to keep the President under control. Meanwhile, the President has lost a close aide in Hope Hicks who has now left the White House in a planned departure. Mr Giuliani began representing Mr Trump for free in the middle of the Mueller investigation in April 2018, The New York Times reported. As the impeachment process picked up following the deadly riot at the Capitol, Mr Trump was upset that no one was defending him. The president is pretty wound up, a senior administration official told the Washington Post, No one is out there. The presidents senior adviser Jason Miller played down the rift on Twitter but didnt get into the issue about Giulianis payment. "Just spoke with President Trump, and he told me that @RudyGiuliani is a great guy and a Patriot who devoted his services to the country! We all love America's Mayor!" he wrote. Meanwhile, the President is also said to have clashed with his son-in-law and other senior advisor Jared Kushner. He has reportedly been forced to stop the president from joining fringe social media platforms after being banned from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, among others. Trump impeachment news - live: President claims true MAGA supporters arent violent as he faces Senate trial And one of Mr Trump's longtime advisers and loyalists, Hope Hicks, had her last day at the White House on Tuesday, CNN reported. It was a previously planned departure, but Ms Hicks had not spent much time at the White House leading up to it after she felt she was losing her influence as she was pushing back on Mr Trump's baseless claims of a fraudulent election. Story continues Numerous members of the administration have resigned since the riot, leaving Mr Trump largely with loyalists and yesmen. Some of the more high-profile resignations include acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Education Secretary Betsy Devos, and Special Envoy to Northern Ireland and former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Some of those who have left the White House include Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger, the acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Tyler Goodspeed, the First Ladys Chief of Staff and former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, and Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, according to a tally by The New York Times. Some of the only people that Mr Trump talks to now, are his adult sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr, Business Insider reported. Read More Trump reportedly mired in self-pity amid impeachment and ally rifts Every place Trump has been banned from so far Giuliani claims combat comments were referencing Game of Thrones Charles Kushner says Trumps behaviour beyond our control, reports Ivanka Trump deletes tweet calling pro-Trump rioters patriots .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Albuquerque City Councilor Lan Sena on Thursday issued a public statement accusing a former state lawmaker of abusing his position of power by making unwanted sexual advances when she was his campaign staffer in 2019. Former state representative Abbas Akhil must be held accountable for his actions, Sena said in the open letter she released to reporters through an attorney, noting that the State Ethics Commission did not consider her complaint since the incident had occurred before it had jurisdiction. But Akhils attorney on Thursday called the allegations false, and said he would present a defense at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Akhil is no longer in the Legislature, having recently wrapped his first, and only, term in the House of Representatives. A Democrat who represented part of Southeast Albuquerque, Akhil announced in October 2019 that he would not seek reelection. Sena joined the City Council last March when Mayor Tim Keller appointed her to an open seat. According to Senas statement, the incident happened May 16, 2019, when she was Akhils campaign treasurer. Her release also included a statement signed by Akhil seemingly corroborating her version of events. Akhils attorney Ahmad Assed said the signature was the product of coercion, duress and manipulation, but did not elaborate. According to Senas statement about the incident: Sena went for a meeting at Akhils home the campaign headquarters and he hugged her at the door, also brushing her hair from her face and saying he did not want to lose her. She felt he might kiss her, but was uncertain and considered that maybe it was just an awkward hug, so she stayed. After Akhil showed Sena some work hed done to his home, he hugged her again, then kissed my forehead and asked if I wanted to sit. I sat on the couch and Rep. Akhil sat close enough to where our legs were touching, sitting side by side. Rep. Akhil proceeded to place his hand on my left side and kissed my right cheek. She rose and said she needed to leave. Akhil said she should stay, but she refused. He asked if hed made her uncomfortable. I replied that I was actually indeed uncomfortable. Rep. Akhil stated that he really liked me. He apologized multiple times and I walked to the kitchen to get my bags. Rep. Akhil made the statement of really liking me multiple times. Sena said she carried on a random conversation to try to get out the door and, as she approached her car, he said for me not to disappear. Her signed statement is dated the following day. The one with Akhils signature is dated July 15, 2019. In it, Akhil agreed not to retaliate against Sena and to have a chaperone present when the two of them were in the same room. He also agreed to take steps to never commit sexual harassment and will take classes and training to fully understand the implications and consequences of committing sexual harassment. However, Sena said in Thursdays open letter that she did not feel he had been held accountable. Her attempt to conduct a community-driven restorative justice process fizzled after Akhil hired a lawyer, she said, and people she thought were allies minimized her experience or made excuses for him. The attorney who sent Senas letter did not respond to emailed Journal questions Thursday evening. Assed, Akhils attorney, told the Journal via email: We are currently looking into all aspects of this matter, with a focus on trying to better understand the motives, timeliness, and strategy behind the decision to publicly bring forward these false allegations. Journal staff writer Matthew Reisen contributed to this report. You are here: China Workers make face masks at a workshop in a medical equipment company in Anshan, northeast China's Liaoning Province, April 16, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua] China exported 224.2 billion masks between March and the end of December in 2020 to assist the international community in fighting COVID-19, official data showed Thursday. Among the exported masks, a total of 65 billion are for medical use, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). The country has exported 773 million medical protective suits and 2.92 billion pairs of surgical gloves during the same period to protect disease control personnel in the global fight against COVID-19. China also exported 1.08 billion nucleic acid testing kits to provide support for COVID-19 test work worldwide and 271,000 ventilators in 2020. "We have capitalized on our position as the first country to take the lead in work resumption and the largest supplier of anti-epidemic materials," said GAC spokesperson Li Kuiwen. SEOUL, South Korea Kim Tschang-Yeul, who devoted a half century to creating luminous paintings of water drops that are informed by the trauma of war and Eastern philosophy, died here on Jan. 5. He was 91. Gallery Hyundai, which has shown his work since the 1970s, confirmed the death. Rendered with meticulous care, Mr. Kims drops can seem to sit miraculously atop his raw canvases or be in the midst of gliding down them, leaving a trail of moisture. They glimmer with light and cast shadows, and while vividly present, they are always on the verge of evanescing. They made Mr. Kim one of the most celebrated Korean artists of his time. Versed in Zen Buddhism and Taoism, he wrote in a statement for a 1988 exhibition that his aim in his tranquil paintings was to dissolve everything into drops of water and return it transparently into nothingness. When we have turned anger, unease, and fear into emptiness," he wrote, we can experience peace and harmony. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (File image: Reuters) The UK-India Business Council (UKIBC) has urged the Government of India to bring parity in the corporate tax rates between foreign and domestic companies in its recommendations for Union Budget 2021. Currently, the corporate tax rates for Foreign Companies are 43.68 percent and for Domestic Companies is 25.17 percent . Globally, the general practice is to have a tax rate parity across all kinds of companies within the same industry. Examples are all BRIC countries except India and a majority of OECD countries (UK, Japan, etc.) as well as important financial centers like Hong Kong & Singapore where the tax structures for domestic and overseas companies are identical, said Jayant Krishna, Group CEO, UKIBC in a statement. While abolishing DDT is a positive step, it is recommended that the corporate tax rates for branches of foreign companies be reduced to bring them at par with domestic companies, he added. In its recommendations for Union Budget 2021 submitted to the Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, UKIBC has also urged the government to enhance Defence Sector Allocations to >2.5 percent of GDP and raise FDI from 74 percent to 100 percent through the Automatic Route. It has also urged the government to raise its spend on Education and Skill Development from 3 percent to 4.5 percent of GDP to enable effective implementation of New Education Policy. It has also urged the government to Enhance spending on Public Healthcare from 1.3 percent to 3 percent of GDP, UKIBC id in a statement. Saved by the Bell star Dustin Diamond has cancer Saved by the Bell star Dustin Diamond, best known as Screech, has been diagnosed with cancer after being hospitalized in Florida. At this time we can confirm that Dustin does have cancer, a statement on his Facebook page said. We ask everyone to respect Dustins privacy during this difficult time... All positivity and prayers are appreciated. ET reports the 44-year-old actor has stage 4 cancer and has started chemotherapy. Diamond played Screech on Saved by the Bell from 1989 to 2000, but was not a part of the recent reboot on Peacock. Chris Evans returning as Captain America? Is Chris Evans returning to play Captain America in a new Marvel Cinematic Universe project? Deadline reported the actor was in talks to return as Steve Rogers in a more limited role, similar to how Robert Downey Jr. did after Iron Man 3. But Evans appeared to address the rumors on social media Thursday with a shrug emoji: News to me, he tweeted. Evans last appeared in Avengers: Endgame, passing on Caps shield to Anthony Mackies Sam Wilson, who next appears in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. News to me Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) January 14, 2021 Some of the gif responses are priceless good work, everyone Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) January 14, 2021 MORE BUZZ: No, Tom Cruise did not bring scary Covid robots to MI7 set ( SF Ariana Grande recruits Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion for remix ( RS Joanne Rogers, widow of Mister Rogers, dies at 92 ( ET First look at new Looney Tunes Cartoons ( SF Emma Thompson joins Matilda movie musical ( E! Willie Nelson gets Covid-19 vaccine ( RS Punk pioneer Sylvain Sylvain of New York Dolls dies at 69 ( DM Cherry trailer: Tom Holland stars in new Russo Brothers film ( SF Cardi B lands starring role in new movie Assisted Living ( ET Mortal Kombat: First look at R-rated reboot ( EW KISS Paul Stanley covers Ooh Child with new project Soul Station ( RS Kevin Smith teases Clerks 3 after completing script ( SF Buzz is a daily roundup of entertainment news about movies, TV, music and celebrities. A man allegedly impersonated a celebrity to befriend and blackmail 245 teenage girls into sending him nude selfies and videos. The 25-year-old from Parkwood, south east of Perth, is facing 247 charges including child sexual abuse and extortion. Police will allege he began talking to the girls in Australia and overseas and gained their trust while pretending to be a celebrity. Police will allege he befriended the girls in Australia and overseas while pretending to be a celebrity (stock) The Western Australia joint anti-child exploitation team began investigating the man after a tip off from US' Homeland Security investigators about an Australian allegedly targeting girls online. Police allegedly found more than 2,000 images, most sexually explicit, of girls on an electronic device during a search on his home. Further investigations allegedly found screenshots of the chats the man allegedly had with his victims. He first appeared in court on October 23 accused of 113 crimes against 112 victims. A 13-year-old girl from the US told police that she thought the person she was speaking to was 15. The man allegedly targetted 245 teenage girls and blackmailed them to send nude selfies and videos (stock) She claimed he started asking sexually explicit questions before sending her edited screenshots of the chat to show that she was interested in his sexual fantasies. The man then allegedly threatened to send the chat to her family and friend if she did not do what he requested. He allegedly forced her to take off her clothes and engage in sexual acts, while he and others watched her online. Police will allege the same man used similar deceit to blackmail other girls in various countries into providing him with sexually explicit images or videos. They have not ruled out charging the man with more sex crimes. The man is due to appear in Perth Magistrate's Court via video link on Friday. A British man has died in a house fire at a village in southern Spain. Firefighters found the 65-year-old's body after putting out the blaze at the property in Comares, an hour's drive north-east of Malaga. The man has been named in local media as Brian Mcsorley and Mayor Manuel Robles described him as 'much-loved' in the local community. Tributes have been posted to Mr Mcsorley on social media following news of his death. Police have launched a routine investigation but say there is nothing at this stage that points to any suspicious circumstances. A British man has died in a house fire at a village in southern Spain. He has been named in local media as Brian Mcsorley (right) Mr Mcsorley was living in a wooden house he had built on land he purchased several years ago. He is thought to have been asleep when the blaze started, at around 9pm on Wednesday, at the property in an area known as Chiquin by a footbridge over a river called Rio de las Cuevas. A spokesman for a regional government-run emergency services co-ordinator confirmed: 'A man has died after a blaze in a wooden house in the municipality of Comares. 'Firefighters, Civil Guard and local police were among the emergency services mobilised after the alarm was raised. 'Fire crews found the body of a 65-year-old man inside the property. 'The house was burnt to the ground and the flames led to the roof collapsing.' Police sources confirmed the dead man was British and a routine investigation was underway into the incident. Firefighters found the 65-year-old's body after putting out the blaze at the property in Comares, an hour's drive north-east of Malaga Bay Area county officials expressed major frustration this week at how the state has allocated precious vaccines, saying they arent receiving enough doses and the supply is unpredictable. Officials say the chaotic system makes it hard to plan how many doses can be administered on a given day, and how much staff is needed to do so. Many counties also say they have the capacity to administer many more doses, if only they could obtain them from the state. As local hospitals grapple with a record surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths, California has fallen behind almost every other state in its pace of vaccinations. Lawmakers and medical professionals are calling on the California Department of Public Health to provide more transparency on its distribution plan or, at least, a little more predictability for how many doses counties will get each week. It is difficult to plan, said a San Francisco Department of Public Health spokeswoman. It is like you are having a wedding for 200 people and the caterer says you might get food for 25 people or might get food for 500 people. It is very challenging. The amount of vaccine that counties get every week also varies widely. San Francisco received 3,900 doses in the first week of January and then 11,825 the following week. Next week, the county was told it will receive 4,275 doses a huge drop with no reason given. While the bulk of Californias doses are being given to large health care providers, like Kaiser and Sutter Health, county health departments are also responsible for vaccinating tens of thousands of frontline workers and those without insurance. Darrel Ng, a California Department of Public Health spokesman, said counties will begin seeing larger quantities of the vaccine and more predictability in the supply as manufacturing ramps up. Californias supply is controlled by the federal government. Still, county officials say the lack of predictability has put them at a major disadvantage. You dont know how many volunteers you need, how many chairs to put out or if its worth it (to set up a site) if you dont know when the vaccine is going to come, and how many youre going to get, said Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF. Their hands are tied. San Francisco has received 33,975 doses so far, and 12,330 shots have been given to people as of Thursday. According to the county, the health department anticipates that all of the available doses will be used in the next week and is requesting another large volume order from the state. However, the county said it is still hindered by inconsistent distribution and operational challenges. That includes: Some doses being allocated to facilities that are still scaling up their operations, and uncertainty over what brand of vaccine they will be getting Pfizer or Moderna. The brand matters because people need two doses of the same vaccine, several weeks apart. Much of the available supply is also being set aside for second doses. In Santa Clara County, County Executive Dr. Jeff Smith said the Public Health Department asked for 100,000 doses Sunday, but was told Tuesday it would receive only 6,000. Meanwhile, Marin experienced the opposite problem this week: 6,000 more doses than officials were expecting. Matt Willis, the county public health officer, said the extra doses were exactly the problem we want, but it was challenging to suddenly scale up the distribution plan. The Marin County Board of Supervisors sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday, saying the county has the infrastructure ready and available for a much more robust public health COVID-19 vaccine program. But the problem is the limited supply the county has been allotted. Dennis Rodoni, president of the Board of Supervisors, noted that nearly 30% of Marins population is over the age of 60. He urged the governor to prioritize counties with high risk populations, as well as readiness to deliver vaccinations in much greater volume. Every state in the country is dealing with a nationally limited vaccine supply, and constantly shifting regulations from the Trump administration. But California has been particularly slow in getting shots into peoples arms: of the approximately 3.5 million doses the state has received, 975,293 had been given as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That amounts to about 28% of shots used putting California far behind the majority of the states. Nearly 50 state lawmakers sent a letter to Newsom on Wednesday, demanding a reliable forecast and weekly updates for how much vaccine each county is going to get over the next month. We are all aware of the limited number of vaccines that have been made available to the states, the letter said. But we believe that we need to plan for a more effective and efficient roll out of these vaccines so we can further improve the public health of Californians and start rebuilding our state. The state health department is working on speeding up the vaccine distribution. In the meantime, the agency told The Chronicle on Wednesday that it doesnt plan to change the current process for sending vaccines to localities and hospitals. The state is expected to launch a website and call center next week so people have a better sense of when they are eligible for a vaccine. Newsom also loosened the state guidelines Wednesday to allow those 65 and older to receive the vaccine. But those moves wont address the criticism from county officials. Some counties are unclear about how and when the newly eligible population will be able to get their shots. The San Mateo County Health Department said Thursday that it doesnt have enough doses of the vaccine to move into the next phase and vaccinate those over 65, and will instead continue focusing on vaccinating health care workers. The state distributes doses to each county based on guidance from the federal government. The bulk of Californias supply has gone to regional health care systems, like Kaiser and Sutter. That system has also frustrated local politicians, who say they have been left in the dark about how many vaccines are available to their residents through private providers. Lawmakers in Santa Clara and San Francisco have called on the large health care systems to regularly disclose how many doses they have been given by the state. Meanwhile, as California struggles to ramp up its the vaccine distribution, more than 450 Californians are dying every day from COVID-19. This is awful, said Gandhi, the UCSF infection disease specialist. The irony is that you can only get out of this with vaccines. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Catherine Ho contributed to this report. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani On Wednesday, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzis Italy Alive (IV) party resigned from Prime Minister Giuseppe Contes government. Yesterday, emergency talks took place at the Senate, where Contes Five-Star Movement (M5S)-Democratic Party (PD) coalition may no longer have enough votes to survive a parliamentary challenge after IVs departure. Conte will speak to the Senate Tuesday morning to avert the fall of his government and new elections. The Italian government faces collapse amid mounting working class anger at the ruling elites murderous herd immunity policy on COVID-19, and as political shock waves spread worldwide from the fascist storming of the US Capitol in Washington on January 6. Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi Italy was initially the European country worst hit by the virus, but wildcat strikes in Italian auto, steel and engineering forced Conte to adopt a lockdown that slashed the contagion. Since then, the European Union (EU) adopted a herd immunity policy of forcing workers back to work and youth back to school that has since led to an explosive regrowth in the virus. In an attempt to let off steam last month, Italys trade union federations held a brief, symbolic one-day national strike. On Wednesday, in his resignation speech, Renzi claimed his party was leaving the government to try to improve Italys response to the pandemic. He said: Its much more difficult to leave a government post than to cling to the status quo. We are experiencing a great political crisis, we are discussing the dangers associated with the pandemic. Faced with this crisis, the sense of responsibility is to solve problems, not hide them. Renzis maneuver led to bitter criticisms yesterday from his erstwhile allies in the M5S and PD and calls from the neo-fascist Lega and Brothers of Italy (Fratelli dItalia) parties for new elections. The Lega and Fratelli currently stand to win such elections, were they to be held, in an electoral alliance with Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia party. The Lega would have 23 percent of the vote, ahead of the PD, and the Fratelli 16 percent, ahead of the M5S, and Forza Italia 6 percent. From the M5S, the leading party in Contes coalition, Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio called Renzis manoeuvre an irresponsible gesture and appealed to European industrialists to work for the redemption of Italy. The M5Ss founder, comedian Beppe Grillo, also expressed his support for Contea law professor who is not a member of any party, but whom the M5S has repeatedly named for high office. Leaders of the PD, Renzis former party, also denounced his partys manoeuvre. PD Vice-Secretary Andrea Orlando said: There are 500 deaths per day and an uncontrolled economic crisis, but Italy Alive has taken upon itself to provoke a crisis that has thrown the country into uncertainty and confusion. Former PD Prime Minister Romano Prodi complacently claimed, nearly a year since the COVID-19 pandemic began, that he was beginning to be concerned by the situation: This is the first day I have been really worried. This is impossible, given the problems we have: the Recovery Fund [EU bailout fund], refugees in Bosnia and Libya, and the preparation of the G20 summit. This is not a simple resignation. It is the country that is resigning. Lega leader Matteo Salvini and Fratelli leader Georgia Meloni responded to Renzis resignation by demanding that Italy hold new elections, even though this would accelerate the ongoing upsurge of COVID-19 infections. Meloni said, They are all inventing [reasons] why, yet again, they want to avoid presenting themselves before the Italian people in free elections. It is a lie that we cannot hold a vote. Hold elections immediately! Salvini tweeted: We warned the country that this government would fight over everything and soon go home. Is there still a government? He added that the political establishment should trust the Italian people, giving them back their word. What is occurring is a vicious faction fight inside the Italian ruling class, in which each faction presents itself to the workers under false pretences. In reality, Renzi is not opposed to EU herd immunity policy, which has claimed over 80,000 lives in Italy and 600,000 across Europe, any more than the Italian neo-fascists are dedicated to reflecting the will of the people. Rather, bitter divisions are erupting over how to impose continued herd immunity and austerity policies amid an accelerating political breakdown in all the major NATO countries. On December 17, Renzi published an open letter in the Corriere della Sera laying out his criticisms of Contes government. He primarily raised differences on how to spend the 209 billion allocated to Italy in the EUs 750 billion corporate bailout fund adopted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and criticisms of the Conte governments geostrategic orientation. Renzi began by emphasizing his pessimistic view of the political crisis provoked by the EUs murderous handling of the pandemic. Implying that official rhetoric falsely blaming workers for the explosive growth of the virus no longer had any credibility, Renzi wrote: Those 200 billion are our last chance. As [former European Central Bank head] Mario Draghi astutely notes, The problem is worse than it looks, and the authorities must act urgently. The situation is serious, prime minister. We have the most COVID deaths in Europe. It is useless to keep up the Everything is going great rhetoric. We should not guilt-trip citizens who have followed with discipline the governments instructions, but rather reflect on what has not worked well Calling to spend EU grants on hand-outs to green jobs and high-tech industries such as artificial intelligence, robotics and Internet of Things connected devices, he said Italian health spending should come from a further allocation of 36 billion from the European Stability Mechanism. The Conte government has so far refused this, however, as it would allow the EU to deploy troika (EU-ECB-IMF) financial monitors to Italy to take over the state budget, as occurred in Greece after the 2008 economic crash. Renzi also demanded a greater say on foreign policy, where the Conte government has cultivated ties with Moscow and signed a memorandum of understanding to participate in Chinas global Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects. He wrote: Let us decide together Italys place in the new world of Bidens America and the new Europe. And how we position ourselves on the great challenges of the [US-UAE] Abraham Peace Deal and the Asian century. We go to Africa to create development and cooperation, not with the rhetoric of your first governments security decrees. And we play a certain role in the Mediterranean, where in recent years our presence has become less palpable, and the impact of Russia and Turkey stronger. Renzi himself has little support, IV only has 3 percent of the vote, and it remains unclear what he hopes to accomplish. Some editorialists have speculated that he may simply seek to drive a harder bargain and obtain more influence in a new government agreement with Conte, although M5S officials said last night Renzi is no longer an interlocutor they would speak with. There is also the possibility that his manoeuvre could end up in new elections and the coming to power of the neo-fascists. In the aftermath of the January 6 coup in Washington, there is increasing political activity in far-right circles across Europe. Spains fascist Vox partywhich is still hailing Trump and applauding Spanish fascist army officers who are calling for a coup and the mass murder of 26 million people in Spainis meeting today in Barcelona with Meloni, of Fratelli dItalia, and US Republican Party anti-tax operative Grover Norquist. What is evident, however, is that none of these reactionary forces speak for growing opposition to herd immunity policies, unsustainable levels of social inequality, and war that exists in the Italian and international working class. The way forward is the construction of a socialist and internationalist movement in the working class and the preparation of political general strikes internationally against herd immunity policies and the threat of authoritarian rule. CLEVELAND, Ohio Christine Priola, a former occupational therapist for the Cleveland schools, was arrested Thursday morning and accused of taking part in last weeks attack on the U.S. Capitol. Priola, 49, made a brief appearance in U.S. District Court in Cleveland before Magistrate Judge Jonathan Greenberg, who transferred her case to the District of Columbia. Thats where federal prosecutors have charged about two dozen others. Priola, of Willoughby, is accused of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building; violent entry; and unlawful activities on Capitol grounds. She was released on a recognizance bond, with her travel restricted to northern Ohio and Washington for court hearings. Public defenders represented her at Thursdays hearing. Authorities said she was among scores of rioters in Washington who broke through barricades and stormed the Capitol while Congress was in session to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election. The protesters initially attended a rally outside the Capitol, where President Trump spoke. Many described the storming of the building as an insurrection to support the Trumps attempts to stay in power. Four rioters and a Capitol Hill police officer died in the melee. Priola became a suspect after a photographer for Getty Images took a picture in the chamber of the U.S. Senate amid protesters reveling and trespassing. The photograph showed a woman, at the front of the chamber, carrying a sign that said, The Children Cry Out For Justice. Several people on social media identified the woman as Priola. In an affidavit filed Thursday, David Kasulones, a deputy U.S. Marshal, said said the FBI received an anonymous tip Friday, Jan. 8, that also named Priola as the woman in the photo. Authorities compared the photos taken of the woman in the Senate chambers with other photos of the Willoughby woman. Late Friday night, authorities searched Priolas home. They seized a laptop, two desktop computers and several thumb drives, according to Kasulones affidavit. Agents also recovered clothing, the sign that she held and other materials consistent with the photographs of Priola taken Jan. 6, Kasulones wrote. Investigators also were able to track her movements last week through her cellphone. At one point during the attack, she was standing just northeast of the Capitol building, according to the deputy marshals affidavit. The day after the rally, Priola submitted her resignation from the school district in a conspiracy-laden letter to officials. In it, she said that she refused to take a coronavirus vaccine to return to classes and did not agree with union dues which help fund people and groups that support the killing of unborn children. She also said she will be switching paths to expose the global evil of human trafficking and pedophilia, including in our government agencies and childrens services agencies. Priola graduated from Eastlake North High School and earned a bachelors degree in biology at Capital University before attending the University of Indianapolis for her graduate degree, according to her personnel file. She began working as an occupational therapist with Cleveland Schools in August 2000. She has a grown daughter. I have known for many years that I wanted to work with children and assist in their development, Priola wrote to school officials. I understand that development in the critical years of childhood help form the foundation for healthy, safe and respectful lives. In performance reviews, supervisors praised her work, dependability and graciousness in helping students with special needs. Christine is a hard-working professional, a supervisor wrote in the early 2000s. She is a team-player who does not complain. [Priola] gets along well with students, parents and teachers. Shes a pleasure to work with. She worked for the district for about a dozen years before taking a year off. She returned in 2014. She was on leave when she attended the rally in Washington, D.C. A spokeswoman for Cleveland Schools said the district does not comment on personnel issues, particularly when they are part of an on-going investigation. The district, however, released a statement that said it deeply condemns the actions of those involved in the riots inside the Capitol and on the Capitol grounds. The right of peaceful protest, as protected by the First Amendment, is a foundation of our democracy. The forcible takeover and willful destruction of our government is not. While Priolas personnel file offers a glowing narrative of her work, court records provide a different view. She changed her last name from Snyder to Priola in 2015, six years after she divorced. I no longer want to have this name, she said in a document filed in Lake County Probate Court. She changed her name to Priola, the maiden name of her grandmother. She later remarried in May 2018. She filed for divorce seven months later, records show. Demonstrators carry a "remove Trump" banner during a protest in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, before US legislators voted for the second impeachment. Credit:Bloomberg The 'yes' case for impeachment, by Tim Stanley Impeachment and conviction have the twin benefits of signalling that Trump's behaviour was unacceptable and, potentially, barring him from future office. For a Republican Party desperate to move on, this is very attractive. The counter argument is that it will martyr him. Well, in the eyes of his supporters, he already is a martyr they think the 2020 election was stolen and he's going to be "persecuted" even more in the courts. Trump will be as much a problem for the GOP out of office as in it: he will intervene as often as he can, threatening to stand again in 2024, offering a running commentary on Republican strategy. His rhetoric has already cost the GOP control of the Senate it was probably Trump's baseless challenge to the 2020 result that led to the defeat of the party in two senatorial contests in Georgia. Given this, and the way he's abused the party for several years, I struggle to see why senior Republicans should stand by him now. Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. 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. The National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine appealed to manufacturers and suppliers of television receivers, media players, as well as smartphones and other modern devices that allow the use of special programs for receiving and viewing media information using the Internet, with an urgent request to refuse as soon as possible from the supply of such equipment from the territory of Russia. As noted in a message on the regulator's website on Thursday, the National Council also asked manufacturers and suppliers of the above-mentioned equipment to refuse from importing into Ukraine equipment manufactured for sale and use in Russia. The regulator asked for it in connection with the approval by the government of the aggressor state on December 31, 2020 of the list of programs that must be pre-installed on certain types of equipment. In particular, the National Council is afraid that apps for viewing a number of TV channels and services, which are prohibited for distribution on the territory of Ukraine, will be installed on TV sets with the Smart TV function and their analogues. In addition, mobile apps from companies subject to sanctions on the territory of Ukraine will be installed on smartphones and other portable devices manufactured in Russia, or manufactured for sale and use on its territory. "We also appeal to retail chains and private entrepreneurs with a request to stop the practice of installing programs that allow a person to view prohibited channels or use prohibited services when selling electronic devices to the end consumer," the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting said in a statement. The regulator also appealed to the Cabinet of Ministers and the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) with a request to make efforts to prevent the supply of such equipment to Ukraine. "Otherwise, it will lead to the creation of additional risks for public peace, increase the information influence of the aggressor state, and give a new impetus to the development of piracy in Ukraine," the regulator said. New Delhi: 7th Pay Commission latest news: With the advent of new age technology, you will find that information is floating on all online platforms. However it is very important to know and differentiate between correct and incorrect information. Lately, a viral post is doing rounds on social media platforms stating that the Modi government has made it compulsory for its permanent employees to take at least 20 days of earned leave every year, instead of hoarding them up for encashment. The above news, it seems that is a false news. Revealing the truth behind the news, PIB has tweeted, It is being claimed that the government has made it compulsory for its permanent employees to take at least 20 days of earned leave every year, instead of hoarding them up for encashment. #PIBFactCheck: The claim is #Fake. No such announcement has been made by the central govt. It is being claimed that the government has made it compulsory for its permanent employees to take at least 20 days of earned leave every year, instead of hoarding them up for encashment.#PIBFactCheck: The claim is #Fake. No such announcement has been made by the central govt. pic.twitter.com/3DEpkdYuaW PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) January 13, 2021 How to get messages fact-checked? Live TV #mute If you get any such suspicious message, you can always know its authenticity and check if the news is for real or it is a fake news. For that, you need to send the message to https://factcheck.pib.gov.in. Alternatively you can send a WhatsApp message to +918799711259 for fact check. You can also send your message to pibfactcheck@gmail.com. The fact check information is also available on https://pib.gov.in. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar speaks after a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington on June 26, 2020. (Joshua Roberts/Getty Images) Alex Azar on CCP Coverup of Pandemic: We Learned About the Virus From Taiwan Health Secretary Alex Azar on Thursday reminded Americans of how Beijing, about a year ago, had held back the truth about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak, allowing it to turn into a global crisis. Azar, during a speech at conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, said the early U.S. response to the CCP virus was particularly difficult because the virus emerged in China, which, given the nature of the communist regime, severely limited outside access to information about it. Lets consider when and how the United States became aware of the virus, the nations health chief said. We learned about an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan, China on December 30, not through that countrys official channels, as required under the International Health Regulations, but through media monitoring that we do, as well as through a notification from Taiwans Economic and Cultural Office here in the United States. Thats right: One of the very first ways the U.S. government was notified of a novel virus in mainland China was by people from Taiwan, he continued, pointing to the fact Beijing would not publicly admit the first death caused by the CCP virus had occurred until Jan. 11, nearly two weeks after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began developing situation reports on the outbreak. The World Health Organization (WHO) at that time was still repeating Beijings now-debunked claim that there was no human-to-human transmission of the CCP virus, Azar said. It didnt take long for American health officials to suspect they couldnt trust the reports out of China, Azar recalled, noting that the Chinese regimes explanation for the outbreak did not make sense. Our CDC director, Dr. Bob Redfield, was told by his Chinese counterpart, Dr. Gao [Fu] of the China CDC, that the story was that the virus had originated from animals in the now-infamous Wuhan market, said Azar. Yet in the first week of January, there were several clusters of cases within families, which were very unlikely to have come from close encounters with animals, suggesting human-to-human transmission. Azar moved on to list more occasions when Beijing and the WHO obfuscated an international effort to understand and contain the CCP virus before its global spread. For example, it wasnt until Feb. 16, when the global infection case reached nearly 70,000, that a team of foreign experts was allowed to take a field trip in China. By this time, Chinese intransigence meant that the window of opportunity had passed, Azar said. Outbreaks of the virus had been seeded around the world. We had been denied the chance to learn about the virus by the country where it originated. In another example, Azar revealed that despite repeated pushing for the Chinese authorities to send viral isolates from Chinese patients since last January, his department, at this point, has yet to receive one. Obtaining accurate case or death numbers related to the CCP virus in China since the initial outbreak has been all but impossible, while the numbers that have been put out by the regime are considered by experts to be highly suspect. Xi Jinping, the CCPs general secretary, declared last September in a grand ceremony that the pandemic was successfully eradicated across the country, while the virus continued to ravage the rest of the world, claiming it was proof of the supremacy of so-called socialism with Chinese characteristics. Two weeks into 2021, however, China is experiencing a series of major outbreaks in its northern heartland. Shijiazhuang, which lies about 160 miles southwest of Beijing, has been placed under strict lockdown along with its 11 million residents after new clusters of infections emerged there. China has spent the better part of this year shamelessly promoting an Orwellian version of events, designed to persuade the world that its authoritarian form of government is best suited to respond to a public health crisis, Azar said. The facts are, however, that if a novel virus like this had emerged in a democratic nation, a global outbreak might never have occurred. Samsung unveils the new S Pen Pro is one of the most exciting products that the smartphone manufacturer revealed this year. Aside from the latest S Pen Pro, the company also confirmed that it will soon launch another version. On the other hand, the new Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G is said to support the upcoming styluses. The new device's owners could also use other old S Pen versions. This means that even Note's stylus could be paired with the new smartphone. According to GSM Arena's latest report, the first new S Pen is larger in all dimensions. This new feature leads to more comfortable use for the owners. However, since it is bigger compared to its predecessors, the new digital pen is only attached to the side of the smartphone's cases instead of fitting it inside. S Pen Pro's specs Since the first model of the new styluses is larger, this means that it will no longer feature the previous Bluetooth functionality. Although this is the case, Samsung's Wacom technology still allows the latest Galaxy S21 Ultra to detect the stylus when users press the button. Also Read: Samsung Galaxy S21, S21 Plus, S21 Ultra: Ambitious Features With Stunning Display, One UI 3, and More Doing this will trigger certain shortcuts and actions. On the other hand, the Pro version will be bigger in size compared to the new S Pen base model. Although it has a huge size, the S Pen Pro still offers Bluetooth features. You can use the new model as a remote shutter key or for controlling the music player. It is expected that Samsung's new S Pen Pro will be released in the market this year. However, the exact date and price were not yet revealed. The new S Pen Pro is not exclusive to the latest Galaxy S21 Ultra. This means that it can also be used in other Samsung smartphones. The new S Pen versions to come to other devices According to TechRadar's latest report, the new S Pen styluses will also work on other Samsung Galaxy smartphones. "We've made the bold decision to expand the S Pen experience to Galaxy S21 Ultra, and plan to expand the S Pen experience across additional device categories in the future," said the company via TechRadar. Although this is the case, Samsung didn't provide any details regarding the smartphone models that will support the new styluses. For more news updates about Samsung's new devices and other products, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes. Related Article: Samsung Galaxy S21 Preorder: Bonus, Price, Release Date, Verizon, and MORE! This article is owned by TechTimes. Written by: Giuliano de Leon. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. JOURNALIST: - Sir, in context of a limited land fund, the challenges to improve infrastructure and reduce traffic jams around ports seem to be too many. So how do you think Ho Chi Minh City will be able to develop the logistics industry as expected? Dr. NHAN CAM TRI: - The demand for logistics services is definitely increasing in Ho Chi Minh City. The City is the largest economic center of the country, the main hub for import and export activities, for goods distribution of the whole southern region, and the ASEAN region in the future. However, the expected growth of the logistics industry depends on good planning capability in this sector. When we look at Singapore as an example, we see that Singapore has a very small covered area, much smaller than Ho Chi Minh City, very narrow roads, and buildings very close to each other, however they take full advantage of every inch of land and use it very effectively. Singapore is currently one country with the best logistics services in the world. - Sir, one of the main logistics centers of Ho Chi Minh City is Cat Lai port, but the new project will establish logistics center in seven other locations. Do you think this will be feasible? - Cat Lai port is not actually considered a logistics center in its full sense of the word. Logistics centers are areas where activities relate to the transport and distribution of goods of many domestic and foreign enterprises, under state management of customs, taxes, specialized inspection centers, integrated services for the supply chain, covering of inbound and outbound logistics, and flow of raw material and product delivery to end consumer. The work involves purchasing, storage, transportation, forwarding, customs clearance, empty container consolidation and various other value-related services such as packaging, labeling, processing, assembling, and retrieval, which integrate with many means and modes of transport such as roads, railways, waterways and aviation. The location of the logistics centers must be near source of goods such as factories, near an airport or seaport to save time and cost, and avoid causing traffic congestion. In terms of area, logistics centers must be large enough for the integration of all the above services. Most logistics centers in the world usually have an area of about 400 hectares or more. When considering the full range of required criteria, there is currently no location in Ho Chi Minh City that can satisfactorily cover these needs. So we have to accept relative solutions and improve on them gradually. The selection of existing ICDs such as ICD Long Binh, Cat Lai port, and Hiep Phuoc port are good solutions because we take advantage of available infrastructure. I think if the Ho Chi Minh City government is determined to build logistics centers, these areas will be the most feasible and economical options. - Sir, there is an opinion that in the future Ho Chi Minh City will no longer be the center for import and export for the country but become a center for services and commerce. So should we invest nearly one hundred trillion dong in the development of logistics centers and is spending this huge amount reasonable? - Even though Ho Chi Minh City will no longer be an import-export hub in the future, and is now moving to becoming more of a commercial service center, it is still advisable to build logistics centers, because there is a need for transshipment and distribution points for the busiest economic center in the country. The project to develop logistics centers in Ho Chi Minh City has set the growth rate of logistics service revenue from Ho Chi Minh City enterprises at 15% by 2025, and 20% by 2030. The contribution to GRDP by 2025 is expected to reach 10%, and 12% by 2030, thereby reducing average logistics cost in the country by 10% to 15% by 2025. However, I think, it will be very difficult for Ho Chi Minh City to escape the position of being a leading import-export center of the country because there are many industrial parks and export processing zones located in the City limits, with hundreds of thousands of enterprises. These businesses will not find it easy to relocate to other localities in a short time, so the demand for logistics centers remains. As for capital, it is difficult to evaluate whether to invest or not. According to the project, the total capital demand for the development of the logistics industry in the period 2020 until 2030 in Ho Chi Minh City is about VND 95,800 bn. An evaluation committee must be set up to accurately assess his amount and clarify into specific categories. Investing in infrastructure for a standard logistics center needs a large amount of capital. - Sir, the project mentions promotion of vocational training in logistics. In your opinion, what is an effective solution to improving human resources? - It is true that human resource for logistics centers is currently in short supply, because the number of universities specializing in logistics are still very few in number. Currently, enterprises involved in the logistics industry are recruiting personnel from fields like foreign trade, import-export, and international businesses. These industries are closest to the logistics industry. In my opinion, the solution to resolve the human resource problem in logistics is for all logistics companies to be more enthusiastic about coordinating training with universities to help fill the gap and shortfall. Seaports and airports need to work with universities to train more university students. Logistics and seaport associations should have many policies to support universities in providing related training. Schools also need to open more training courses in logistics to meet the future demand in this field. - Thank you very much. Thanh Lam (interviewer) Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Eric Lis factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesnt plan to expand operations -- a reticence that could slow the pace of Chinas economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.Surging prices of raw materials means margins are compressed, explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co. Ltd., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity, he adds.The combination of higher input prices, uncertainty about export prospects and a weak recovery in domestic consumer demand meant Chinese manufacturing investment from January to April was 0.4% below the same period in 2019, according to official statistics (comparing to 2019 strips out the distortion of last years pandemic data).Due to the vast size of Chinas manufacturing sector, that poses a risk both to the nations growth -- which is currently predicted to reach 8.5% in 2021, according to a Bloomberg tally of economists estimates -- and to a global economy thats grappling with supply shortages and rising prices.Falling ProfitsWeaker-than-expected investment could have a sizable impact on GDP growth this year, said Citigroup Inc.s China economist, Li-gang Liu. Lower investment may dent imports of capital goods and equipment from developed economies like Japan and Germany, which in turn could drag their economic recovery and rebound as well, he added.AnHui HERO Electronic Sci & Tec Co. Ltd. is one of those companies feeling the squeeze. Based in the eastern province of Anhui, the company manufactures capacitors used to make electronic circuits, with sales mainly in the domestic market. Jing Yuan, the founder, says orders are up as much as 30% year-on-year, but profits are down 50% due to increasing materials costs that are not easily passed onto clients.The company is under huge cash pressure as it needs to pay half a month in advance of delivery in order to secure copper and other metals, which they previously paid for months after receiving, he said. The commodity issue has to be addressed by the government, he added.What Bloomberg Economics Says...Chinese industry is absorbing significant cost pressures from rising commodity prices -- damping the inflationary impact for the rest of the world. Will it last? Our analysis of gross margins suggests it could for a while longer: downstream industries -- where the cost crunch is most severe -- still have a small cushion.David Qu, China economistFor the full report, click here.Input shortages mean some manufacturers arent able to make use of their existing facilities, so expansion would be of little use. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. suspended production at one of its factories last month, due to a shortage of microchips.Modern Casting Ltd., which makes iron and steel products in Guangdong, issued a note to clients this month saying it would not be able to meet its current orders due to high raw material costs. A member of staff who answered the phone at the companys office confirmed the note, but declined to give further details.Growth TransitionOn top of the higher input costs, Chinese companies face a bumpy transition toward domestic consumer spending to sustain its post-pandemic recovery.Exports, Chinas strong-suit last year, may begin to slow as vaccine roll-outs cause consumers in wealthy countries to shift spending back to services. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Chinese consumer spending has yet to fully recover.Investment sentiment among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises is below levels seen even in 2018-9 when uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade war were a brake on expansion plans, according to a regular survey of more than 500 Chinese companies by Standard Chartered Plc.Demand is still mainly underpinned by exports, so domestic companies are aware that this is not sustainable, said Standard Chartereds China economist, Lan Shen.While some export-oriented sectors have been pushed to their limits, large amounts of slack remain for manufacturers targeting Chinese consumers due to subdued domestic demand.Retail sales growth was 4.3% in April on a two-year average basis, which strips out base effects from the pandemic, less than half pre-pandemic growth rates. Overall capacity use at Chinas manufacturers fell to 77.6% in the first quarter from 78.4% in the previous three months, with the automotive sector hit hardest by overcapacity following three years of declining sales volumes.Even for electric vehicles whose sales are surging, most companies have already built their capacity and will now focus on incremental upgrades. The majority of the investment has been done, said Jochen Siebert of JSC Automotive Consulting.China ordered state-owned companies to expand last year, with their investment growth of 5.3% in 2020 from the prior year easily outstripping the 1% increase in private investment. But for a sustainable pick-up in investment, the market, not the state, needs to feel confident.Carsten Holz, an expert on Chinese investment statistics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, estimates that privately-owned companies have accounted for 87% of manufacturing investment in 2015, the most recent year of available data. They are more sensitive to input costs.There is a pandemic plus insecurity about future trade given a new U.S. administration, neither of which is conducive to investment that relies on long-term growth prospects, Holz said.Mixed PoliciesTransport bottlenecks are also a challenge for export-oriented manufacturers. Gordon Gao, who exports gardening products from China, said that he has had to reject 80% of orders this year due to port delays. In one case, an order placed before mid-February could only be shipped three months later when a client finally secured a container.Beijing has tried to improve conditions for private companies by ordering a crackdown on speculation to curb commodity prices and easing access to bank loans.Yet the government continues to gradually withdraw fiscal and monetary stimulus measures introduced amid the pandemic last year. It set a relatively unambitious target of above 6% growth for this year, and the Communist Partys Politburo signaled last month it would prioritize reforms to control house prices and debt growth.The policy stance has definitely shifted away from supporting growth and back toward de-risking the financial sector, said Adam Wolfe, an economist at London-based Absolute Strategy Research. The risks for economic growth seem tilted to the downside, especially for capital-intensive, construction-linked sectors.For manufacturers such as Li, a longer period of domestic growth and control over input prices will be needed before capacity expansion is on the cards. While his company of 200 workers took on new permanent staff before the pandemic, for now hed rather pass the risks of investment on to others.I wouldnt do that now, I would rather hire some temporary workers and outsource the rest, he said.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. 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. Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That Itll Weigh Down the Economy for Years The King of Debt promised to reduce the national debt then his tax cuts made it surge. Add in the pandemic, and he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president. One of President Donald Trumps lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that hes inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt. The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trumps time in office. Thats nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt other than mortgages, combined, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It amounts to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country. The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war. The National Debt Increased Under Trump Despite His Promise to Reduce It Daily total national debt from 2009 to present. had become dire even before the pandemic . That happened even though the economy was booming and unemployment was at historically low levels. By the Trump administrations Economists agree that we needed massive deficit spending during the COVID-19 crisis to ward off an economic cataclysm, but federal finances under Trump. That happened even though the economy was booming and unemployment was at historically low levels. By the Trump administrations own description , the pre-pandemic national debt level was already a crisis and a grave threat. The combination of Trumps 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into COVID-19-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error. Continue Reading Our national debt has reached immense levels relative to our economy, nearly as high as it was at the end of World War II. But unlike 75 years ago, the massive financial overhang from Medicare and Social Security will make it dramatically more difficult to dig ourselves out of the debt ditch. This story was co-published with The Washington Post. Highlights The India price of the Galaxy S21 series phones starts from Rs 69,999. All three S21 phones in India are powered by Samsung Exynos 2100 processors. They all come without charger and the earphones, and consumers will have to buy them separately. Last night Samsung launched the Galaxy S21 series phones. There are three phones: Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+ and the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Unlike the previous years where you could say that all phones of the Galaxy S series except the likes of the S20 FE that were launched later were through, blue-blooded flagship phones. But this time, Samsung is changing strategy. It seems that the company believes there is not enough scope for true-premium phones, and definitely not for three. So, the S21 Ultra is the all-out premium phone, and the S21 and S21+ make some compromises. Interestingly, these compromises seem to be balanced with reduced price in the global market. The S21 phones are up to $200 less in price compared to the introductory prices of the S20 series. But not in India. In India, the S21 phones cost more than the S20 did at its launch, even though they come with components that are a clear downgrade compared to the previous flagship Galaxy S series phones. More on that some other time. In this piece, let us quickly summarise the S21, S21+ and the S21 Ultra for you. 1- The Galaxy S21 Ultra is the flagship phone of the series. It comes with a QHD display measuring 6.8-inches and has a 108-megapixel rear camera. In total it has 4 rear cameras, and one selfie camera with 40-megapixel image sensor. By all accounts, of the three S21 series phones the S21 Ultra is the top dog. It also weighs a hefty 227 grams and comes with 256GB storage. 2- The S21 and the S21+ are more generic phones in their approach compared to the S21 Ultra. They feature the same rear camera system that we saw in last year's Galaxy S20, complete with the 12-megapixel main camera. On the front, there is the 10-megapixel selfie camera. The S21 is also the lightest of the bunch with weight of 169 grams. It has a more cut-down FullHD+ display measuring 6.2 inches. The S21+ too has a FullHD+ display measuring 6.7 inches, and it weighs 200 grams. In fact, display on the S21 and the S21+ is a bit of a puzzle because it is inferior to the display Samsung put in the S20 and the S20+ last year. 3- The India prices of the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+ and the Galaxy S21 Ultra are: Galaxy S21 Series price in India Galaxy S21 (8+128GB): Rs 69,999 (Phantom Violet, White, Pink, Grey) Galaxy S21 (8+256GB): Rs 73,999 (Phantom Violet, White, Grey) Galaxy S21+ (8+128GB): Rs 81,999 (Phantom Violet, Sliver, Black) Galaxy S21+ (8+256GB): Rs 85,999 (Phantom Violet, Sliver, Black) Galaxy S21 Ultra (12+256GB): Rs 105,999 (Phantom Black, Sliver) Galaxy S21 Ultra (16+512GB): Rs 116,999 (Phantom Black) 4- It is important to note that and this is what Samsung says for environmental reasons the company is longer bundling a charger and earphones with the Galaxy S21 series phones. Not even the S21 Ultra, which has a price of over Rs 1 lakh will come with a charger. Now, it is important to note that Apple had also earlier removed charger from its iPhone 12 series phones. But Apple had done that, Samsung had mocked Apple. Now, Samsung too has followed Apple in removing charger and earphones. 5- All three Galaxy S21 phones in India are powered by Samsung's own Exynos 2100 processor. In global market the phones use Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, although this time the difference in Exynos and Snapdragon is going to be marginal because both are using same almost off-the-shelf cores from ARM. Only that Exynos 2100 runs these cores at a slightly higher speed, which may account for better numbers in benchmarks and marginally less battery. 6- It is important to note that unlike the S21 Ultra and S21+ which have glass backs, the S21 uses a polycarbonate fancy for plastic back. This is a sort of trend we are seeing with Samsung phones. Last year the "premium" S20 FE and Galaxy Note 20 came with plastic backs. This year it is the Galaxy S21. 7- Although globally the Galaxy S21 series has debuted at lower prices compared to previous S20, in India, the price is higher. Last year the Galaxy S20 was launched at a price of Rs 66,999. The S21 this year comes in at Rs 69,999. Similarly, the S20+ debut price was Rs 73,999 and S20 Ultra came in at Rs 92,999. This time the S21+ starts at Rs 81999 and the S21 Ultra price is Rs 105,999. 8- The Galaxy S21 series comes with OneUI 3.1, which is Samsung's custom user interface built on top of Android 11. It's slick UI though people who like more pure Android UI, something that users get in Google Pixel phones, may find the customisation heavy-handed. 9- The S21 series phones use water and dust-proof design. All three use same design, although the material choice of the S21 that plastic cover means that this design looks best in the S21+ and the S21 Ultra. 10- The Galaxy S21 series is available for pre-orders in India. People who pre-order it will start getting the phones from January 25 while those who want to buy it in open sale will be able to do it from January 21. Clay, N.Y. State police say a man made the 3 1/2-hour trip from Springfield, Massachusetts, to the Syracuse area to confront his ex-girlfriend about her new boyfriend. But police say that when the couple rejected his attempts, the man armed himself with a steak knife and broke into their apartment through a first-floor window, forcing the couple to barricade behind a bedroom door. State police were called to the residence at the Kimbrook Manor apartment complex on Theodolite Drive in the town of Clay around 9:15 p.m. Thursday, where they took 35-year-old Jasan Bonilla into custody. Bonilla, of Springfield, was charged with first-degree burglary, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, second-degree menacing and endangering the welfare of a child. Bonilla was arraigned in centralized arraignment court and is currently being held in the Onondaga County Justice Center on $100,000 bail. Contact Jacob Pucci at jpucci@syracuse.com or find him on Twitter at @JacobPucci. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan ORLAND, Calif. - On Wednesday nearly 50 people received one of two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at an Orland assisted living facility. One by one - people at Orland WestHaven rolled up their sleeves and took the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The first ones allowed to take the shot? Residents, prospective residents and key service providers over the age of 65. It is a new on-site pharmacy clinic with CVS Pharmacy and Walgreens with a priority given to the people just mentioned. People had to complete a "vaccine administration record" before handing it over to the clinic workers. For many, this is just the first step for society to go back to normal. "I'm very excited about it because we have been home and we're outgoing people. we will be able to go out and maybe do more things," said Margaret Edmondson, one of the recipients of the vaccine. Beyond residents and staff, Glenn County Public Health gave WestHaven the greenlight for ministry partners and family members to also receive the vaccine. The clinic continues on January 22, February 3, and February 12. In addition to the vaccines - checks were handed out to at least 34 employees for all their hard work during the pandemic. Some of them were dressed up as superheroes - that's because the money comes from the "Heroes Fund" at least $15,000 was donated from the community. Click here to learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine in your area. The Kremlin said Putin briefed members of his Security Council on the results of the January 11 talks held two months after he brokered a ceasefire agreement that stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Pressing issues of the Russian states internal and foreign policies were also discussed, it added in a short statement. The statement gave no other details of Putins video conference with Russias Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, defense, foreign and interior ministers, other top security officials and the speakers of both houses of the Russian parliament. Putin, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced after their trilateral meeting that their governments will set up a joint working group that will deal with practical modalities of restoring transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Russian leader said that will benefit both the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples and the region as a whole. Pashinian and Aliyev failed to reach agreement on the release of more than a hundred Armenian prisoners of war and civilians remaining in Azerbaijani captivity. Yerevan says that Bakus reluctance to free them runs counter to the truce accord brokered by Putin and calls into question the planned reopening of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border for commerce. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov discussed the issue in a phone call on Friday. Lavrov spoke with Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian by phone on Wednesday. Ivanka Trump was seen smiling and giving a thumbs up while leaving the White House on Thursday, the day after her father was impeached for a historic second time. The White House senior adviser's days in the White House are coming to an end, but she appeared to be in good spirits while leaving the West Wing in a figure-hugging red dress with a back slit. Ivanka, 39, paired the bright cherry-colored frock with shiny black patent leather stilettos and her square, cushion-cut diamond engagement ring, a bold look for the unseasonably warm winter day. Feeling good? Ivanka was seen smiling and giving a thumbs up while leaving the West Wing of the White House on Thursday Bold choice: The White House senior adviser had on a cherry-red dress and black black patent leather stilettos The former businesswoman has mostly steered clear of ostentatious jewelry since she started working as a White House senior adviser, and she rarely wears the 5.22-carat jewel that is rumored to be worth over $500,000. But she almost always has on a red string bracelet on her left wrist, which was also visible on Thursday. Though she hasn't spoken about its purpose, it does bear a resemblance to the type of red string that Kabbalah practitioners wear to ward off the 'evil eye.' Her straight blonde hair looked as though it had recently been cut and colored and was worn down around her shoulders. She was also sporting smokey eye-makeup and a pink lip, a go-to look for her. Ivanka was photographed standing next to the open door of a Secret Service SUV while giving a tight, toothless smile and a thumbs up to someone at the White House. Her husband, fellow White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, also had a smile on his face when he left their Washington. D.C. home on Thursday morning. Bling ring: Ivanka was also wearing her square, cushion-cut diamond engagement ring, which is rumored to be worth over $500,000 Steering clear of the public: Ivanka was spotted standing next to a Secret Service SUV after keeping a relatively low profile Salon trip? Ivanka's straight blonde hair looked as though it had recently been cut and colored Ivanka has kept out of the spotlight following last week's fatal insurrection a the U.S. Capitol, which has lead to five deaths more than 70 people arrested. Trump was impeached Wednesday by the House on a single charge, incitement of insurrection, in lightning-quick proceedings just a week after the siege. Ten Republicans joined all Democrats in the 232-203 vote to impeach. The president's historic second impeachment could go to trial as soon as Inauguration Day, with U.S. senators serving not only as jurors but as shaken personal witnesses and victims of the deadly siege of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Trump is the only president to be twice impeached, and the first to be prosecuted as he leaves the White House, an ever-more-extraordinary end to the defeated president's tenure. The trial could begin shortly after President-elect Joe Biden takes the oath of office next Wednesday, but some Democrats are pushing for a later trial to give him time to set up his administration and work on other priorities. Happy? Ivanka's husband, fellow White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, also had a smile on his face when he left their Washington. D.C. home on Thursday morning Making history: On Wedneday, President Donald Trump was impeached by the House on a single charge, incitement of insurrection Look: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pictured displaying the signed article of impeachment against President Trump in an engrossment ceremony before transmission to the Senate No date has been set, but already National Guard troops flood the city and protect the Capitol amid warnings of more violence ahead of the inaugural. It's a far different picture, due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the threats of violence, from the traditional pomp and peaceful transfer of power. Whenever it starts, the impeachment trial will force a further reckoning for the Republican Party and the senators who largely stood by Trump throughout his presidency and allowed him to spread false attacks against the 2020 election. No president has ever been convicted in the Senate, and it would take a two-thirds vote against Trump, an extremely high hurdle. Two new senators from Georgia, both Democrats, are to be sworn in, leaving the chamber divided 50-50. That will tip the majority to the Democrats once Kamala Harris takes office. The vice president is the tie breaker. But conviction of Trump is not out of the realm of possibility, especially as corporations and wealthy political donors distance themselves from his brand of politics and the Republicans who stood by his attempt to overturn the election. Not only was Ivanka likely reeling from her father's second impeachment on Thursday, but she was also confronted with a new report from The Washington Post that revealed she and her husband Jared do not let Secret Service agents guarding their Washington D.C. residence use any of their 6.5 bathrooms. Say what? Ivanka and Jared won't let Secret Service agents assigned to their detail use any of the 6.5 bathrooms in their Washington, D.C. home, according to a new report What? The U.S. Secret Service was forced to rent out a $3,000 per-month basement studio apartment from the couple's neighbor (pictured) so agents could have a place to use the toilet Location: The property the agency rented is down the street from where Jared and Ivanka rent their home for $15,000 per month in the elite Kalorama neighborhood in D.C. Instead, the agency was forced to rent out a $3,000 per-month basement studio nearby solely for bathroom use. Starting in September 2017 through the present day, the United State Secret Service has spent more than $100,000 in taxpayer dollars on the rental property from a neighbor of the Kushner's in Washington's elite Kalorama neighborhood. Neighbors and law enforcement officials told The Post that the Secret Service spent months searching for a reliable place to use the bathroom while agents were assigned to Kushner and Trump's detail. Before deciding to rent out a nearby apartment, agents used a porta-potty and sometimes would visit the homes of neighbors, like former President Barack Obama, or the not-so-nearby residence of Vice President Mike Pence, to use the bathroom. They sometimes would use local businesses to relieve themselves, as well. 'It's the first time I ever heard of a Secret Service detail having to go to these extremes to find a bathroom,' one law enforcement official familiar with the situation said. White House Spokesperson Judd Deere said the couple did restrict agents from using their bathrooms, claiming the Secret Service decided not to allow the protective detail inside. A law enforcement official familiar with the situation pushed back against this account, insisting the family requested agents stay out of the house. Same plan? Ivanka and Jared are believed to be moving to Miami, Florida, with their three children, Joseph, Theodore, and Arabella (left to right) Speculation: Ivanka and Jared reportedly purchased a $31 million plot of land on Miami's 'Billionaire Bunker' Speculation has been swirling that Ivanka will run for the U.S. Senate in Florida in 2022 after it was revealed that she and her husband Jared Kushner reportedly bought a $31 million plot of land on Miami's 'Billionaire Bunker.' The land is nestled in Indian Creek, a highly exclusive neighborhood that touts beautiful waterfront homes and tons of privacy. The island, found off the coast of Miami, got the nickname 'Billionaire Bunker' because of the high-profile residents that have settled onto the island, including model Adriana Lima and billionaire businessman Carl Icahn of New York City. Many believe that Ivanka and Jared will no longer be welcome in the same elite social circles they once ran in before her father became president with her close friend Georgina Bloomberg admitting that it would be 'difficult' for the couple to return to Manhattan life. 'I think right now itll be a bit difficult for them coming back, because obviously this is something that is still very fresh and stoking everybodys fire,' she told the Daily Beast in November. Georgina hopes that in the future people 'will hopefully welcome them back' however, many reports have suggested that Ivanka and Jared may well be 'shunned' by the high-powered New Yorkers they once called friends. BBC Documentary On Jiah Khan's Death Receives Flak For Including Sooraj Pancholi & His Father; See Reactions From Netizens Bollywood actress Jiah Khans death remains a mystery even after 8 years of her demise. Her alleged suicide and the investigation that followed has now become a part of BBC Two documentary A Death In Bollywood which was aired in three parts in the U.K. The documentary which sheds light on the whole investigation that ruled Jiahs death as suicide and also includes interviews from her mother Rabiya Khan who believes the actress was murdered. Jiahs Sooraj Pancholi who was named in her suicide note and later faced charges of abetment also makes an appearance in the second episode of the documentary series and defends himself. I am not the person who has driven her to what she's done. It was not me, there's a bigger picture, says Sooraj in the documentary. Not just him, Soorajs father also makes a case for his son saying, Sooraj was charged for abetment to suicide. He got a bail and if you carefully read it, the order is almost like acquittal. I am just telling the court, please find out who the murderer is and acquit us from this abetment to suicide, because according to her (Rabia Khan) it is not suicide at all. Well, the inclusion of the Pancholis' in the documentary has led to a backlash by the viewers after the serious charges that Sooraj is yet to be acquitted of. Some viewers took to social media to express their disapproval and painted him to be the villain of the story. I feel sorry for #JiahKhans family as theyve lost something that can never be replaced, but I also feel sorry for #SoorajPancholi. Hes also a victim In this tragedy. Lets not forget he was so young himself and just starting out in life and his career. Sad #DeathInBollywood AZAD (@AazMedia) January 12, 2021 Watching #DeathInBollywood@BBCTwo@MumbaiPolice are incompetent, useless, & did not investigate #JiahKhans sad demise properly #Corruption.#SoorajPancholi@Sooraj9pancholi & his father Aditya will ALWAYS & FOREVER have a dark cloud over their heads. Wheres Jiahs track suit? Esi Nedo (@EOkenesi) January 13, 2021 Watching part 2 of #DeathinBollywood. Struggling to believe what #SoorajPancholi is saying. He is an ACTOR. It seems @Sooraj9pancholi was/is a womaniser & MAY have used coercive control & emotional abuse (perhaps even physical) to keep her down & destroy her confidence Esi Nedo (@EOkenesi) January 13, 2021 I was fully prepared to sit back and watch #SoorajPancholi being dragged for Jiahs death but after watching #DeathInBollywood I dont think he had much to do with it ... Sam (@TheJadedQueen) January 12, 2021 Rabiya Khan, Jiahs mother, maintains that Sooraj is to be blamed for the death of the actress. He, however, maintains that he only dated Jiah for five months before she died and she confided in him about her depression. There was however a section of the audience that sympathized with the actor for everything that he had to go through after his girlfriend's death. Jiah Khan was found dead in her Mumbai based apartment in 2013. The case which was probed by the CBI for 8 years was shut with the conclusion that Jiah committed suicide. The investigating agency however did not drop charges of abetment against Sooraj under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code which he is being tried under. MILFORD, CT The Milford Health Department (MHD) is currently partnering with the state Department of Public Health to provide COVID-19 vaccine as it is available, officials said on Thursday. Connecticut will begin vaccinating individuals in Phase 1b on Monday, Jan. 18. In order to ensure that the most vulnerable populations within phase 1b are prioritized, the state has directed the Milford Health Department to begin the phase by prioritizing the vaccine for persons over the age of 75, local officials said. All eligible residents are required to make an appointment in order to receive the vaccine. As we approach Phase 1b, speak with your healthcare provider about their recommendations for receiving the vaccine. Starting Thursday, individuals over the age of 75 can make appointments in the following ways: Your Healthcare Provider Will Contact You if they are participating in the Connecticuts Vaccine Program. Please do not call your health care provider directly for COVID Vaccine appointments, as not all providers are administering vaccine. A list of participating providers is available at ct.gov/covidvaccine. Online: You can schedule an appointment through the Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS) online by filling out the form located at ct.gov/covidvaccine. After you fill out this form, you will receive an email asking you to register in VAMS and you will then be able to make an appointment based on availability. For instructions on how to use VAMS, please visit the Milford Health Department website. Telephone: If you do not have internet access, you can call Connecticuts COVID Vaccine Appointment Assistance Line at 877-918-2224 Mondays through Fridays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The mayor's office said: "The City of Milfords goal is to administer vaccine as quickly as possible. However, we can only do so based on availability of vaccine. The supply of vaccine at this time does not meet the demand on a national level, so it will take time to be able to vaccinate everyone. We thank you for your commitment to keeping Milford safe and we ask for your patience as we all work together to bring an end to this pandemic. " This article originally appeared on the Milford Patch ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Pentagon has reduced the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 2,500, according to a statement Friday, completing a previously announced rapid drawdown despite a congressional prohibition of the move and rising levels of violence in the country. "This drawdown brings U.S. forces in the country to their lowest levels since 2001," said Acting defense secretary Christopher Miller in the statement. Miller also said "the United States is closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war and welcoming in an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process to achieve a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire." But violence is increasing in many parts of Afghanistan, and peace talks in Qatar have made little progress since they were launched in September. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers opposed the drawdown to 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and forbid the Pentagon from using money in this year's or last year's budget to carry out the reduction. Congress included a provision on the matter in the National Defense Authorization Act passed earlier this month. The provision stated that the Trump administration could only access the funds by either submitting an assessment of what effect the reduction in forces would have on the ongoing counterterrorism mission, or by submitting a waiver with a written explanation that the move is important to U.S. national security interests. The Pentagon statement Friday did not mention an assessment or waiver that would allow the reduction to be carried out despite the congressional prohibition. But a Pentagon spokesman said President Donald Trump decided to issue a waiver. "The President has determined that waiving the limitations of this section with respect to a reduction in the total number of U.S. armed forces deployed to Afghanistan is important to the national security interests of the United States," Army Maj. Rob Lodewick said in a statement Friday. Trump signed the wavier Thursday night, but congressional leadership is not expected to receive it until next week, according to a Defense official and a congressional aide who both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss procedural specifics with the media. Opposition to the drawdown centered on concerns over counterterrorism and the U.S.-Taliban deal reached last year. Some lawmakers said it was unclear if 2,500 troops would be enough to carry out effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. Others said the troop cuts could violate the deal with the Taliban, which stated U.S. troop reductions would be conditions-based. The central condition of the deal was a call for the Taliban to break ties with international terrorist groups including al-Qaida and the Islamic State. Afghan and United Nations officials have reported that the Taliban maintain ties to al-Qaida. The special U.S. envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the Taliban still has "work to do before they satisfy their commitments." Al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Taliban's refusal to hand over the group's leader spurred the launch of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In the Pentagon statement Friday, Miller said a force of 2,500 U.S. troops is sufficient to prevent similar attacks in the future. "Commanders have what they need to keep America, our people and our interests safe," Miller said. The U.S. mission there will continue to "ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to harbor those who seek to bring harm to the United States of America." The U.S.-Taliban deal calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces by May, but it is unclear how the incoming Biden administration will handle further troop withdrawals. Biden has said repeatedly he plans to keep a relatively small number of U.S. troops - "several thousand" - in Afghanistan for counterterrorism purposes. 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. Locally owned restaurants are voicing their weariness of the continued shutdown that has affected business. On Wednesday, the latest epidemic order from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which allows restaurants to only offer takeout and outside seating, was extended to Sunday, Jan. 31. Theres no substitute for in-person dining After going nearly two months of no indoor dining, Dave Dittenber, CEO of Downtown Restaurant Investments, is feeling frustrated. DRI runs four restaurants across Midland and Bay City, and it manages Pizza Sams and Whine in Midland. According to Dittenber, 65-70% of DRIs restaurant employees are on furlough and Whine, American Kitchen and Tavern 101 are closed while a skeleton crew works to fill takeout orders. Molasses Smokehouse in Midland and Old City Hall in Bay City have outdoor seating available, but it only makes up a small fraction of the establishments regular business. The community has been great in their support, but its not enough to operate a restaurant on, Dittenber said. Dittenber, who is also on the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Associations board of directors, has spoken to other restaurant owners across the state. He explained there is a mutual sense among restaurants that the metrics required to allow in-person dining have continued to shift over the past weeks. Dittenber watched the governors update on Wednesday and was concerned how little specificity the governor provided in regard to the positivity, case and hospitalization numbers that need to be met for in-person dining to resume. We just would like to see what this plan is. That is one of the biggest uncertainties, Dittenber said. The suspension of in-person dining, not to mention the dam failures and subsequent flooding in May, has taken a toll on Will Gum, owner of Alexs Railside Restaurant. After the restaurants building in Sanford was destroyed by floodwaters, the establishment moved into the former Ruby Tuesdays location in the Midland Mall in September. Gum explained how his staff was following cleaning and social distancing protocols before Michigan's epidemic order went into effect on Nov. 18, and the restaurant will do so again if they reopen. Now the Alexs Railside is conducting only 15% of its normal business through takeout orders, and Gum is investing his own money to keep things going. (Takeout business) basically helps pay the rent and utilities, but barely, Gum said. The restaurant industry has been devastated by the ruling coming from Lansing. Gum believes the time has come to move forward. Prior to Gov. Gretchen Whitmers update on Wednesday, he was hopeful that restaurants would be allowed to operate at 50% capacity; anything less will be ineffective. Gum applied for a second round of the paycheck protection program this week. If worse comes to worse, he expects the restaurant will only be able to operate for a maximum of 60 days. However, when restaurants are allowed to open even with limited indoor seating, he is concerned about the time it will take to bring back staff and order more food. Every single restaurant will be putting orders into suppliers, so theyll be overwhelmed. Its a chain reaction, Gum said. The past few months have also been a struggle for Zoey Barisha, co-owner of Laskos Restaurant. She hopes the state will allow restaurants to open even just to 20% capacity. I was ready yesterday for restaurants to reopen, Barisha stated on Tuesday. Even if we did one family in each corner, everyone would feel more comfortable. I would feel more comfortable. Before the pandemic, Barisha employed 13-14 workers; now they are all furloughed while its just Barisha and a few family members handling takeout orders. Laskos Restaurant is open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., just long enough to provide breakfast and lunch. Another issue the eatery faces is that most of its regular clients were senior citizens who came in for breakfast; without outdoor seating, customer intake has dropped significantly. Its hard to do eggs to-go. You put them in the box and theyre cold by the time you get back to your car, Barisha said. In a Dec. 15 press release, the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association reported in a survey that 33% of Michigan restaurants are unlikely to remain in business in the next six months and 48% of restaurants in the state say they are considering temporarily closing their establishments until the pandemic is over. Whine and Luckys Steakhouses Midland location, as well as Tavern 101 and American Kitchen in Bay City, have already temporarily closed. Legislators believe restaurants capable of reopening safely State Sen. Jim Stamas, R-Midland, believes it is time for restaurants to reopen indoor seating. He explained there is no correlation shown between common dining areas being open and the influx of COVID-19 cases. He observed restaurants were practicing proper cleaning techniques, providing reduced seating and training staff members adequately before the shutdown in November. They never should have been closed. Opening would be a positive step forward, Stamas said. I ask the governor to use actual science to help families get through these times instead of political science. State Rep. Roger Hauck, R-Union Township, has heard the frustrations of area restaurant owners. He is baffled why the state has restricted in-person dining while people congregate in homes and in stores. He explained that Whitmer has not shown any specific data or sources stating that restaurants are hotspots for COVID-19 transmission. I think were getting to the point when a lot of these restaurants wont be in business anymore, Hauck said. The best way the governor can help restaurants in Michigan is by opening them up. Thats the bottom line here. State Rep. Annette Glenn, R-Midland, also voiced her support of restaurants reopening, stating there is no reason to wait until February. Michigan is one of only three states that remains closed to indoor dining, and we have been the only state without a clear plan and metrics to provide some certainty about when they can reopen, Glenn said. More than 2,000 Michigan restaurants have closed already during this pandemic and thousands more are on the brink of closure because of the governors policies. It is pushing more and more families to the financial breaking point. Michigan already has closed restaurants for more days statewide than any other state in the nation and by percentage, job loss in our hospitality industry is twice the national average, Glenn added. Whitmer explains continued closure On Wednesday, Gov. Whitmer announced that if restaurants open on Feb. 1, there would be additional safety measures in place such as mask requirements, capacity limits and a curfew. When asked about the continued shutdown of in-person dining options despite the decline of COVID-19 case numbers, positivity rates and hospitalizations, Whitmer said multiple studies have shown the virus spreads in areas where multiple households mix and individuals remove their masks. She also cited a recent uptick in positivity rates and tests and expected hospitalization rates to increase in the coming weeks. Whitmer explained that continuing to promote mitigation measures would help keep restaurants and their patrons safe as they look ahead to possibly opening in February. We want the industry to be successful. I know that people are frustrated and that its been difficult. Ive talked with my fellow governors on both sides of the aisle; they are dealing with similar things in states all across the country. Its just the nature of this virus, Whitmer stated. Weve given a path and we want people to be successful along this path. Were calling on everyone to double down on what we need to do to keep these numbers down and to help restaurants by supporting them but also working with us so that as they open, so that they are safe, and we dont have to take steps backwards. Whitmer also expressed concerns about the new variants of the COVID-19 virus, which tend to spread faster. For the next two weeks, the state and MDHHS will continue to watch the case numbers and work with the restaurant industry toward a safe re-opening for indoor dining. Its important we get this right. We want to ensure that consumers, customers and workforce alike knows that when the reengagement happens, they are going to be safe. That is crucial. Consumer confidence is a very important part of our economic resurgence, Whitmer said. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-14 17:53:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Workers make face masks at a workshop in a medical equipment company in Anshan, northeast China's Liaoning Province, April 16, 2020. (Xinhua/Yao Jianfeng) BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China exported 224.2 billion masks between March and the end of December in 2020 to assist the international community in fighting COVID-19, official data showed Thursday. Among the exported masks, a total of 65 billion are for medical use, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). The country has exported 773 million medical protective suits and 2.92 billion pairs of surgical gloves during the same period to protect disease control personnel in the global fight against COVID-19. China also exported 1.08 billion nucleic acid testing kits to provide support for COVID-19 test work worldwide and 271,000 ventilators in 2020. "We have capitalized on our position as the first country to take the lead in work resumption and the largest supplier of anti-epidemic materials," said GAC spokesperson Li Kuiwen. The ninth round of talks between the Centre and the protesting farmers over the new farm laws held on Friday, January 15, at the Vigyan Bhavan concluded with no developments and the next meeting will be held on January 19. The government and the farmers could not reach a resolution before the lunch break. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said ahead of the meeting, "The government welcomes the Supreme Court order regarding farmers' agitation. The government will put forth its views before the committee (appointed by the court). We are trying to resolve the issue through dialogue." As the talks started, the Centre reached out to farmers by giving them the option to form a panel with it if they are unhappy with the Supreme Court-appointed committee. The top court suspended the three newly-enacted farm laws and formed a four-member committee to help end the deadlock persisting between the agitating farmers and the Centre. Leaders of the 40 farmers' unions negotiating with the government have said they want continued direct communication with the Centre, "not through brokers." They maintain that they will not appear before the panel, adding that the appointed members were already in favour of farm laws. The meeting witnessed no change in the government's stance over the repeal of farm laws. Three central ministers, including Narendra Singh Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash, were present at Vigyan Bhawan to hold talks with the farmers' union. The farmers have been camping at the Delhi borders for several weeks and are demanding a repeal of farm laws and a legal guarantee to the minimum support price for crops. Also read: Rahul Gandhi leads Congress' Delhi protest in support of farmers Also read: Scientists develop novel vaccine platform that may help prevent future coronavirus pandemics US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its 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Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan An Idaho internet provider has announced it has blocked access to Twitter and Facebook due to censorship 'concerns' after both social media sites banned President Donald Trump. YourT1Wifi, which services North Idaho and parts of Washington, informed its customers of the decision this week after reportedly receiving multiple complaints from subscribers. In an email sent out on Monday, owner Bret Fink said the company had been 'fielding calls' over the last few days from customers calling for the websites to be blocked from the network. Screenshots of the email were shared on Twitter by customer Krista Yep, who slammed the move as 'alarming' and 'insane.' 'It has come to our attention that Twitter and Facebook are engaged in censorship of our customers and information,' the email began. YourT1Wifi, which covers North Idaho and parts of Washington, informed customers Monday it was blocking access to Twitter and Facebook amid censorship concerns Customer Krista Yep shared screenshots of the email on Twitter, describing the move as 'insane' 'We have the past couple of days been fielding calls from customers voicing the concern that they do not want these sites allowed to be displayed on their internet feed to them and that they do not want their children to go to these sites.' The company explained that while subscribers are able to make these changes themselves, some lack 'technical knowledge' and it would be 'very tiresome' for them to service everyone individually. 'There are too many people that have called for us to do one at a time so we will be blocking these 2 and any other website that may also be censoring whether it be through their algorithm they use for their site or any other means,' it added. The company did not specify how many customers had complained and confirmed the block would go into effect Wednesday. It came after Twitter and Facebook last week announced they were permanently banning Trump from their platforms after he was accused of inciting violence at the US Capitol. YourT1Wifi did not explicitly reference the actions against the president, but stated - ironically - that it did not support companies' decision to censor information from its users. YourT1Wifi owner Bret Fink told Yep the move was not a policy change but a choice for all customers YourT1Wifi is based in Priest River, Idaho and has been providing internet service since 1996, according to its website The service provider covers Newport, Oldtown, Priest River, Blanchard, Priest lake, Laclede, Sandpoint, Bonners Ferry, Couer D' Alene, as well parts of Washington, including Spokane 'Our company does not believe a website or social networking site has the authority to censor what you see and post and hide information from you, stop you from seeing what your friends and family are posting,' the email continued. 'This is why with the amount of concerns, we have made this decision to block these two websites from being accessed from our network.' Those who still wished to have access to the websites would have to inform the provider to be added to the 'allowed list', otherwise, the block would go into effect automatically, the company said. The company did not explicitly reference the actions against Trump, but stated, ironically, that it did not support companies that censored information from its users Yep told local news station KGW8 that she was 'shocked' her internet service provider had decided to make such a sweeping change. 'If it's not illegal, it's highly unethical,' she added. YourT1Wifi owner Bret Fink told Yep in an email response that the block was not a policy change but a 'choice' for all customers, adding that he could have 'worded' the announcement 'better'. Yep, however, said the 'alarming' decision has led her to cancel her subscription. The company had claimed in its email that the decision to block Twitter and Facebook was not political, 'just a moral high ground of fair and decent communication.' The Twitter account of Donald Trump on Friday night after it was permanently suspended It also added: 'We also don't condone what Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and Apple are doing either to Parler by trying to strong arm them into submission. Actually looks like they are trying to exterminate the competition is what it looks like.' YourT1Wifi is based in Priest River, in Bonner County, Idaho and has been servicing customers since 1996, according to its website. DailyMail.com has contacted YourT1Wifi for comment. The service provider's blocking of the websites has also raised questions of potential internet law violations. Idaho does not have any net neutrality laws however, the company could be accused of censorship in Washington, where manipulating internet access is illegal. A spokesperson told the news station that Washington's attorney general's Consumer Protection Division was 'taking a look at the matter.' Indian Army Chief General Naravane sends powerful message on 73rd Army Day India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Jan 15: On January 15, India marks the 73rd Army Day to commemorate the first Indian army chief who took over the post on 15 January 1949 from the British, and COAS General MM Naravane extended warm wishes to the troops and their families but also gave a powerful message to India's adversaries. Making veiled references to China and Pakistan, General Naravane said, "While remaining committed to resolving disputes through dialogue and diplomacy, the Indian Army has been swift and decisive in its response to counter any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo on the Line of Actual Control. Relentless operations against state-sponsored terrorism have reinforced moral and operational ascendancy along the Line of Control." The Army Chief said the forces are taking rapid steps to acquire new capabilities and a large number of projects to acquire better technologies are underway. First batch of COVID-19 vaccine reaches Mizoram Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News "The Indian Army enjoys a distinctive space in the hearts and minds of our citizens. I am sanguine that we shall continue to uphold our core values and ethos and live up to the trust reposed in us by the nation. The Indian Army is and will always remain strong and capable," General Naravane added. President Ram Nath Kovind also extended his wishes on the momentous day and said "India will remain forever grateful to courageous" soldiers. "On Army Day, greetings to the valiant men and women of the Indian Army. We remember the bravehearts who made the supreme sacrifice in service to the nation. India will remain forever grateful to courageous and committed soldiers, veterans and their families. Jai Hind," President Kovind said. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 10:11 [IST] The International Space Station (ISS) is a 925,300-pound laboratory constructed of titanium, Kevlar and high-grade steel, but could the massive ship survive an impact of a single Cheeto Puff orbiting Earth? The question was raised by a seven-year-old, which has sent Reddit into a debate that attracted aerospace engineers and a scientist who says they helped design the ISS. One self-identified aerospace engineer says that even at impact velocities of some 33,000 miles per hour, the Cheeto Puff would vaporize into a cloud of plasma and may leave a dent or 'a bit of an orange stain.' However, another Redditor who claims to have been part of the ISS design team notes the potential damage depends on where the puff hits the ISS at such speeds the tiny snack could knock out a few solar arrays. Scroll down for video One self-identified aerospace engineer says that even at impact velocities of some 33,000 miles per hour, the Cheeto Puff would vaporize into a cloud of plasma and may leave a dent or 'a bit of an orange stain' Astronauts aboard the ISS do worry about being hit by objects like space junk. Last September, the massive ship was forced to make an emergency maneuver to avoid hitting a piece of a 2018 Japanese rocket. NASA said 25 such events had occurred between 1999 and 2018 but so far in 2020 there have already been three. However, it is safe to assume the ISS crew is not on the lookout for orbiting Cheetos, but a seven-year-old was and asked their parent for an answer. However, another Redditor who claims to be part of the ISS design team notes the potential damage depends on where the puff hits the ISS at such speeds the tiny snack could knock out a few solar arrays aboard 'Would an orbiting Cheeto Puff destroy the International Space Station if the two of them directly collided? My 7yo daughter asked me, and I had no clue. I said probably,' reads the original Reddit post. The thread has gained more than 238 comments since Thursday, but some of the most interesting come from users claiming to be experts in the field. A user, who goes by Letter_13 and self-identifies as an aerospace engineer, gave a lengthy and scientific explanation to why they believe the Cheeto is no match for the ISS. 'The brittleness means that as the leading edge of the puff impacts a surface at those speeds, it immediately begins to fragment/vaporizethe puff has very low cohesion so it doesn't want to really remain together in a single shape, and only a little energy is needed to make it break apart,' reads Letter_13,'s post. 'As it breaks, some kinetic energy is imparted into what it's hitting, but a very large quantity of that kinetic energy is redirected to the sides, or at an angle (if it impacts in a non perpendicular way).' The user also notes that space would ultimately weaken the puff and any destructive powers it may have had due to the idea that oil tends to boil off in a vacuum and vaporizes on its own. 'The cheeto puff would lose its (high) oil content, which in turn would significantly reduce the mass, in turn reducing the inertia (and at the same time decrease its density and increase its brittleness),' they added. However, Redditor 'danielravennest' says they worked on the ISS design and the little snack could cause damage depending on where it hits. They note the Cheeto could knock out a few solar cells upon impact if it struck the plastic backing of the solar arrays, which have been ripped apart in the past by other objects. 'At the typical impact velocities in orbit, objects are moving faster than the speed of sound and carry more kinetic energy than it takes to turn them into plasma,' danielravennest wrote. 'Critical areas of the ISS are protected by 'Meteor/Debris Shields' (Whipple Shields). These are sheet metal spaced away from the module hull, air tanks, etc. So on impact, the object and the part of the shield they hit are both turned to plasma, and sprays out in a cone. So the module hull isn't damaged unless it were a large object.' The Taliban has ordered its leaders to only take one wife because big weddings are too expensive and sparking resentment among fighters. Afghan chief Haibatullah Akhundzada made the command after rumours spread along the front lines that the top brass were living lavishly and spending thousands on their new wives in Qatar and Pakistan. 'We instruct officials of the Islamic Emirate, in accordance with Islamic Sharia, to avoid second, third, and fourth marriage if there is no need,' the mullah decreed. Afghan custom demands that weddings are extravagant and grooms will stump up 'bride prices' ranging from 20,000 to 70,000 to the wife's family. Two Afghan burqa-clad women walk along a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 6, 2010 (file photo) These wives are often housed separately meaning that the polygamy enjoyed by most of the Taliban's commanding officers can become exorbitant very quickly. The current chief has two wives, while the outfit's representative in Doha, Abdul Ghani Baradar, has a harem of three. Rumours that their superiors were leading the high life in Doha has fuelled resentment among fighters toughing it out on the battlefields and led to damaging rumours of corruption. The bad press comes at a crucial juncture as Taliban officers in the Qatari city are attending peace talks with the Afghan government and intermediaries from the United States. Many of the chiefs are now based in Doha having recently been sprung from Guantanamo Bay, in accordance with the peace negotiations. Almost all of those men have now taken new wives, handing over wads of cash to their new in-laws. Afghan Taliban militants and villagers attend a gathering as they celebrate the peace deal and their victory in the Afghan conflict on US in Afghanistan, in Alingar district of Laghman Province on March 2, 2020 When the BBC asked the Taliban which of their commanders had multiple wives, they replied bluntly: 'Which one hasn't?' Their chief's order said: 'Families of several officials of the Islamic Emirate do not have a lot of money. Therefore, more marriages could affect their prestige, trustworthiness, and personality.' Akhundzada warned his officers to 'protect yourself against accusation and disgrace,' adding that 'transparency' and 'gaining trust' were essential in the fight. He said that by foregoing multiple marriages the organisation could avoid 'accusations of bribery, misappropriation, or embezzlement.' The decree does not prohibit people from having more than one wife, but it demands less profligate spending. Indeed, the Taliban chief endorses taking another wife for men who do not have children, have no male heir, who are marrying a widow, or who have the family wealth to do so. 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. Election 2020 Myanmar Military Condemns Speakers Refusal to Probe Election Fraud Claims Military appointees arrive at Parliament in 2015. / Reuters YANGON Myanmars military has questioned whether the rejection of its call for a special parliamentary session before the newly elected assembly convenes is constitutional. A total of 203 lawmakers, including 160 unelected military appointees, 36 Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) lawmakers, four Arakan National Party members, two independents and one National United Democratic Party member on Monday submitted a proposal calling Speaker T Khun Myat to convene a special session to resolve electoral fraud claims before the new parliament sits on Feb. 1. T Khun Myat rejected the proposal on Tuesday, saying the military and USDP attempt to take electoral fraud claims to Parliament is not relevant. He said election disputes are not resolved in Parliament as the Constitution grants the Union Election Commission (UEC) the final decision. He added that alleged malpractices filed with the election sub-commissions will be resolved by the UEC and the procedures are still taking place. A statement released on Thursday night by the military-run Tatmadaw True News Information Team said the call for a special session was constitutional. In reference to the former juntas national convention to draft the Constitution, it said parliamentarians have the right to call the House Speaker to convene a special session and the Speaker has the constitutional duty to convene a session if a quarter of lawmakers make the request. U Thein Than Oo, a renowned lawyer on the elected 11-member Bar Council, said the Speakers rejection follows Article 80 and 81 of the Constitution which defines which issues shall be resolved by regular or special parliamentary sessions. After suffering a heavy defeat in the November general election, the military proxy USDP claimed the election was marred by mass fraud. After the USDP cried foul over the election, a military probe alleged voter-list irregularities, saying errors could have resulted in millions of fraudulent votes. Their attempt to take electoral fraud claims to the Parliament came as the latest push to challenge the National League for Democracys (NLD) landslide victory. NLD spokesman Dr. Myo Nyunt told The Irrawaddy on Friday the party has nothing left to say about the election complaints. We strictly followed the law and we will continue to do so, he said. Regarding growing political tensions between the military and the NLD over the election, he said: If the laws are respected and the will of the public is put first, we hope we will be united at the end of the current controversy. You may also like these stories: Speaker Rejects Myanmar Military, Proxy Partys Call for Special Parliament Session Calls For Myanmar Govt to Scrap Terrorist Label for Arakan Army Claiming Electoral Fraud, Myanmar Military and Proxy Party Calls Special Parliament Session A Trump supporter who had encouraged violence against Democrats in his last social media posts before his death at the Capitol riots, was once a fan of President Obama and even attended his inauguration. Kevin Greeson, of Athens, Alabama died amid the chaos last Wednesday when an angry mob of MAGA fans stormed the US Capitol. In a statement confirming his death, his family revealed the 55-year-old father had a 'history of high blood pressure, and in the midst of the excitement, suffered a heart attack.' Social media photos reveal Greeson was a fervent Trump supporter and had shown his support for the president by adding a MAGA filter to his Facebook profile picture. Other photos showed him posing proudly with two AR-15 rifles. Kevin Greeson, 55, of Athens, Alabama, was among the five who died in the Capitol riots. His family said he was prone to high blood pressure and suffered a heart attack 'in the midst of excitement' Social media showed Greeson was a fervent supporter of the president and had also shared photos posing proudly with two AR-15 rifles (left) He had also shared posts on right-wing social media network Parler, where he made threatening comments against Democrats. In one of his final posts in December he wrote: 'Let's take this f**king country BACK! Load your guns and take to the streets!' 'Let's give them a war... Democrats don't have guns... we do.. bring your stick, I'm bringing my guns.' He shared similar menacing posts in the weeks after Trump lost the presidential election, including one that read: 'I see nothing wrong with taking it back with guns!' And on Twitter, Greeson once tweeted that hydroxychloroquine was a known cure for COVID-19 - a claim repeatedly promoted by the president despite it not having been proven. But before he was a Trump loyalist, Greeson was actually a longtime registered Democrat and had supported former President Barack Obama, AL.com reported on Friday. In 2009, he even traveled to Washington, D.C., where he would years later meet his fate, to watch Obama be sworn in for his first term. Greeson's family said he was peaceful and intended no violence. His final posts on right-wing social media site Parler showed he encouraged violence against Democrats He also supported progressive movements in Alabama and at one point helped lead the Local 88T of the United Food & Commercial Workers union. 'He was a vice president at the union, and he was an Obama supporter,' Greeson's family attorney Mark McDaniel told the publication. 'He got interested in Trump because he felt he was more business-minded, and as the economy kept getting better, he kept getting more interested in Trump.' Through McDaniel, Greeson's wife Kristi revealed her husband had watched mainstream news stations such as CNN for 'most of his adult life' but made the switch to Fox News after he was won over by Trump. Over time, Greeson's views became more radical and it became clear on social media that he had completely crossed over to the far-right side of the political spectrum. Social media posts showed he had supported the Proud Boys movement and once said Obama - who he once admired - should be 'put to death,' according to AL.com. After the presidential election was called in November, he also turned against Fox News, accusing it of 'jumping ship' and turned his attention to NewsMax. Greeson had been a longtime Democrat and Obama fan and even traveled to Washington D.C. for his inauguration in 2009, before he was won over by Trump years later, his family's attorney revealed An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while Trump supporters gather in front of the Capitol on January 6 'I'm done with Facebook and Fox News!' Greeson wrote in one Parler post. 'We can't get anything true from the news media,' he said in another. 'NewsMax is the only channel I'm trusting at this point.' He also expressed his support for Trump's claims that the election had been stolen and called on Congress to overturn the results. 'Stand the f*** up! Our President is being took (sic) out of office in [a] coup and you motherf***ers do nothing!! It might take a few years but Trump and the American people will take you f***s out of your office,' he said on Parler. Despite his seemingly threatening comments on social media, his family has said Greeson was not violent and claimed he only attended the rally last week to show his support for the president and live the experience. 'I think that he looked at social media as something where he was just talking to friends,' McDaniel said. 'Nothing in this man's life would lead anyone to believe that he was headed up there to do anything bad or anything sinister.' 'Our family is devastated. We are thankful for all of the thoughts and prayers and appreciate privacy at this time as we grieve,' the family said in their statement. His son also shared a Facebook post paying tribute to his father. 'My dad had a heart attack yesterday and sadly passed away. We all loved him so much,' he wrote. 'He was such a great man we all miss you so much. Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers.' Just over a week ago, we were all presented with an unprecedented picture of insurrection against our national government. Stirred up to a boiling point, a mindless mob of self-declared patriots attacked the Houses of Congress with the intention of intimidating its members into invalidating Joseph Bidens and Kamala Harris election. Apparently lacking real direction or leadership, they rampaged through the Congress invading offices, smashing windows and riffling Congresspersons papers, seemingly at random. One person was shot and killed on the spot, several more were injured or suffered medical emergencies during the riot; some of them, including at least one Capital police officer, died. More than 50 law enforcement officers were hurt. Now the question has been raised whether participants in such mob action can be fired from the jobs that they hold at home; in our case, in Connecticut, as a result of their employers distaste for their participation in the Washington riot. The answer is not simple or without doubt, but I say yes. They can be and they should be fired from their jobs. Those who would argue otherwise look for succor to a Connecticut statute that protects employee free speech and expression from adverse workplace consequences. I contend that participants in the Capitol invasion stand well outside of the scope of such statutory protection. Violent attempts to overthrow or, in this case, directly impact the operations of government do not constitute protected speech under the federal or Connecticut constitutions. They are not covered by any state statute. Indeed, no violent action that threatens to cause either serious bodily injury or property damage is protected speech, nor is actual speech that is intended to cause violent action on the part of the listeners. When reviewing this situation, however, one must remember that the rioting does not diminish the protected rights of those who attended the pre-riot protest meeting, but did not participate in the attack on the Capitol. Gathering and listening to the president and others, no matter what was said, is protected activity and employment discipline would be inappropriate in their cases. If an employer desires to take action against an employee who it believes was involved in the riot, the first and most important point is to make absolutely certain that the subject employee was a rioter. Simple word of mouth from other employees is just not enough. The employer should have clear proof of the employees activity. Something like a photo would be best. In fact, evidence not including a photograph of the employee should be viewed with a jaundiced eye. Heres an example. A company in Maryland, shortly after the riot, announced that an employee had been terminated after he was photographed wearing his company ID badge inside the breached Capitol building. The further away from photographic proof of participation in the violence an employer goes, the greater the likelihood of making a mistake. Such a mistake can have very harsh adverse legal consequences for the employer. Violence has no place in the politics of our democracy. Workplace law does not protect those who engage in it. No employer must or should tolerate the continued presence of such barbarians as those who attacked our Capitol within its workforce. Fire em. (CNN) A court in Paris will hear a landmark case accusing the French government of taking inadequate action to combat climate change. The case is part of a lawsuit launched two years ago and the hearing will start Thursday, a judicial source confirmed to CNN. "Great day for #climate justice," tweeted Greenpeace France, one of the plaintiffs in the case. The lawsuit was launched by four NGOs, including Greenpeace France and Oxfam France, following an online petition that gathered 2.3 million signatures -- the largest in French history, according to the organizers. Climate activists took to the streets near the Paris administrative tribunal Thursday morning. Images provided by the NGOs showed a giant banner which read: "We are 2.3 million." The signatories hope the court will "compel the State to take all necessary measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) target set by the Paris Agreement, says the online petition. The Paris Agreement, a pact signed into effect in 2016 by almost all the world's countries, seeks to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Currently, the world is set to warm by 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.86 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) -- a non-profit analysis group which tracks government climate action. This will bring more extreme storms, heatwaves, greater sea level rise, and, for many parts of the world, worse droughts and rainfall extremes. French campaigners also want recognition of "the State's climate inaction, that is to say the non-compliance by France of its commitments." "Greenhouse gas emissions under this government's five-year term dropped at a pace that was twice as slow as the trajectories foreseen under the law," the NGOs said in a joint statement. In a legal memo seen by the NGOs and Le Monde newspaper in June last year, the French Environment Ministry denied that it failed to comply with its legal obligations to fight climate change and asked for the case to be dismissed. One of the arguments invoked by the government is that it cannot be held "solely responsible" for climate change in France, according to quotes of the memo published by Le Monde. "France makes up around 1% of the world's population and emits around 1% of the planet's greenhouse gases each year," it said. "A substantial part of this pollution comes from industrial and agricultural activities," but also from "individual choices and decisions which it is not always possible to influence," the memo continued. CNN has contacted the Environment Ministry for comment. A verdict in the case is expected within 15 days, the NGOs said in their statement. Legal action on climate change has become a global phenomenon, according to a report published July 2019. By that date, lawsuits had been launched against governments and corporate interests in 28 countries, according to a report from the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Researchers found that, while the US was the global leader in terms of climate change litigation, the prevalence of such lawsuits had spread worldwide. This story was first published on CNN.com, "France taken to court over 'climate inaction' in landmark case." WASHINGTON: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped nine of her most trusted allies in the House to argue the case for President Donald Trumps impeachment. The Democrats, all of whom are lawyers and many of whom have deep experience investigating the president, face the arduous task of convincing skeptical Senate Republicans to convict Trump. A single article of impeachment for incitement of insurrection was approved by the House on Wednesday, one week after a violent mob of Trump supporters invaded the Capitol. At the time, lawmakers were counting the votes that cemented Trumps election defeat. As members of the House who were in the Capitol when it was attacked several hiding under seats as rioters beat on the doors of the chamber the Democrats are also witnesses to what they charge is a crime. So are the Senate jurors. This is a case where the jurors were also victims, and so whether it was those who voted in the House last night or those in the Senate who will have to weigh in on this, you dont have to tell anyone who was in the building twice what it was like to be terrorized, said California Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the managers. It is unclear when the trial will start. Pelosi hasnt yet said when she will send the article of impeachment to the Senate. It could be as soon as next week, on President-elect Joe Bidens first day in office. The managers plan to argue at trial that Trump incited the riot, delaying the congressional certification of the electoral vote count by inciting an angry mob to harm members of Congress. Some of the rioters were recorded saying they wanted to find Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the count. Others had zip ties that could be used as handcuffs hanging on their clothes. The American people witnessed that, said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., one of the managers. That amounts to high crimes and misdemeanors. None of the impeachment managers argued the case in Trumps first impeachment trial last year, when the Senate acquitted the president on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice. The House impeached Trump in 2019 after he pressured Ukraines president to investigate Bidens family while withholding military aid to the country. Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, another manager, says the nine prosecutors plan to present a serious case and finish the job that the House started. A look at Pelosis prosecution team in Trumps historic second impeachment: REP. JAMIE RASKIN, MARYLAND Pelosi appointed Raskin, a former constitutional law professor and prominent member of the House Judiciary Committee, as lead manager. In a week of dramatic events and stories, Raskins stands out the day before the Capitol riots, Raskin buried his 25-year-old son, Tommy, after he killed himself on New Years Eve. You would be hard pressed to find a more beloved figure in the Congress than Raskin, says House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who was the lead manager during Trumps first trial. He worked closely with Raskin on that impeachment investigation. I know that part of what gives him strength to take on this burden that he now carries is knowing that this is something that would be enormously meaningful to his son. REP. DIANA DEGETTE, COLORADO DeGette, who is serving her 13th term, is a former civil rights attorney and one of Pelosis go-to allies. The speaker picked her to preside over the House during the first impeachment vote in 2019. DeGette said Pelosi trusted her to do it because she is able to to control the passions on the floor. She says she was surprised when Pelosi called to offer her the prosecutorial position but quickly accepted. The monstrosity of this offense is not lost on anybody, she says. REP. DAVID CICILLINE, RHODE ISLAND Cicilline, the former mayor of Providence and public defender, is in his sixth term in Congress and is a senior member of the Judiciary panel. He was heavily involved in Trumps first impeachment and was one of three original authors of the article that the House approved on Wednesday. He and California Rep. Ted Lieu began writing the article together, in hiding, as the rioters were still ransacking the Capitol. He tweeted out a draft the next morning, writing that I have prepared to remove the President from office following yesterdays attack on the U.S. Capitol. REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO, TEXAS Castro is a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs panels, where he has been an outspoken critic of Trumps handling of Russia. He was a litigator in private practice before he was elected to the Texas legislature and came to Congress, where he is in his fifth term. Castros twin brother, Julian Castro, is the former mayor of San Antonio and served as former President Barack Obamas secretary of housing and urban development. Julian Castro ran in the Democratic primary for president last year. REP. ERIC SWALWELL, CALIFORNIA Swalwell also serves on the Intelligence and Judiciary panels and was deeply involved in congressional probes of Trumps Russian ties. A former prosecutor, he briefly ran for president last year. The case that I think resonates the most with the American people and hopefully the Senate is that our American president incited our fellow citizens to attack our Capitol on a day where we were counting electoral votes, and that this was not a spontaneous call to action by the president at the rally, Swalwell said. REP. TED LIEU, CALIFORNIA Lieu, who authored the article of impeachment with Cicilline and Raskin, is also on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs panels. The Los Angeles-area lawmaker is a former active duty officer in the U.S. Air Force and military prosecutor, which he says will help prepare him for arguing the Senate trial. REP. STACEY PLASKETT, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS Because she represents a U.S. territory, not a state, Plaskett does not have voting rights and was not able to cast a vote for impeachment. But she will bring her experience as a former district attorney in New York and senior counsel at the Justice Department. Donald J. Trump has been and continues to be a clear and present danger to our republic, to our Constitution, and to the people of this nation, she said in a statement. I will do my duty and defend our blessed country. REP. JOE NEGUSE, COLORADO Neguse, in his second term, is a rising star in the Democratic caucus who was elected to Pelosis leadership team his freshman year in Congress. A former litigator, he sits on the House Judiciary Committee and consulted with Raskin, Cicilline and Lieu as they drafted the article the day of the attack. At 36, he will be the youngest impeachment manager in history, according to his office. This armed mob did not storm the Capitol on any given day, they did so during the most solemn of proceedings that the United States Congress is engaged in, Neguse said Thursday. Clearly the attack was done to stop us from finishing our work. REP. MADELEINE DEAN, PENNSYLVANIA Like Neguse, Dean was first elected when Democrats recaptured the House in 2018. She is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and is a former lawyer and member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. She says she hopes the prosecutors can convince the Senate and the American people to mark this moment" with a conviction. I think I bring to it just the simple fact that Im a citizen, that Im a mom and Im a grandma," Dean said. And I want my children, my grandchildren, to remember what we did here. 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 Romantic, stylish, and exquisitely renovated, an airy New Orleans townhouse that's nearly 200 years old racked up the most clicks this week on realtor.com. The three-story home with an abundance of old-school charm was built in 1831 and located just a couple of blocks from Bourbon Street. It's also the oldest home currently available in the Big Easy. The grande dame on the outskirts of the city's famous French Quarter neighborhood has retained some of its original charms, including plaster medallions and hardwood floors. A full renovation in 2013 added an elevator as well as a fancy, modernized kitchen. Other homes you clicked on also straddled the line between rustic and refined. They include the modern cabin Phish bassist Mike Gordon is selling. The property in the gorgeous Vermont woods comes with a recording studio. You were also intrigued by a couple of classic homes from the 1800s, a wood-paneled 1980s time capsule in Ohio, and the Vermont home with its own jail. For a full look at this week's 10 most popular properties available for sale, simply scroll on down. Price: $929,900 Why it's here: This renovated family home sits in Oak Hill on three-quarters of an acre and is just around the corner from the train station for a quick commute. The five-bedroom home has a new kitchen with custom cabinetry, a partially-finished basement, and a grand two-story sunlit foyer to welcome guests. There's also an over-sized deck out back, mud room off the garage, and separate pantry store room. Middletown, NJ realtor.com Price: $179,000 Why it's here: Sitting less than 3 miles from Appalachian Ski Mountain and downtown Blowing Rock, this charming A-frame cottage is in an ideal location. The structure was initially divided into two tiny apartments, but now it's ready to serve as a single-family getaway. The 728-square-foot structure has two bedrooms and a sleeping loft that's accessed by a drop-down ladder. Blowing Rock, NC realtor.com Price: $152,500 Why it's here: This grand five-bedroom home near the Ohio River was built in 1855 for the owner of the local Norton and Belfont Iron Works. Today it still features many of its extraordinary original details, including fretwork molding, yellow poplar floors, and a grand front entrance with 11-foot front doors. The three-floor home has a laundry and bathrooms on each level, a swooping staircase, and transom windows. The third-floor tower offers breathtaking views of the surrounding area. Ironton, OH realtor.com Price: $895,000 Why it's here: Phish bassist Mike Gordon is selling his contemporary three-bedroom cabin on 12 wooded acres. Built in 1990, the cabin comes with a full music studio. Other highlights of the home include reclaimed cypress walls, stained-glass windows, exercise room, workshop, and rec room with built-in storage. Essex, VT realtor.com Price: $925,000 Why it's here: This modern estate in western New York overlooks the city and sits on the 15th green of the Bartlett Country Club. Built in 1993, the 4,999-square-foot home features a grand mahogany staircase with brass railings, custom double-sided fireplace in the master suite, and radiant in-floor heat. Orlean, NY realtor.com Price: $149,000 Why it's here: Last week's winner slides four spots. This unassuming Vermont home complete with its own jail continues to lock up plenty of clicks. Guildhall, VT realtor.com Price: $890,000 Why it's here: Known as the Cartright house, this historic landmark was built in 1883. It boasts 20-foot columns, a wraparound porch and balcony, nine fireplaces, and two parlors. Featuring custom woodwork and moldings throughout, the six-bedroom Victorian has been updated with a new kitchen, master suite, and light fixtures. Outside the acre-plus lot includes a pool, covered deck, and gazebo. Terrell, TX realtor.com Price: $600,000 Why it's here: Built in 1981, this four-bedroom ranch is filled with fantastic '80s-era details, including a dance floor in the basement. You'll see an abundance of wood throughout the residence, particularly the kitchen. The home overlooks the park woods and includes an indoor pool, dumb waiter, two wet bars, a 60-foot balcony, and circular tiled shower. Hamilton, OH realtor.com Price: $315,000 Why it's here: Storybook lovers, rejoice! Gilbert Johnson was the architect behind this charming English Tudor from 1926. Located in the city's historic Brown's Hills district with views of the Rock River, the five-bedroom home features a grand foyer, updated kitchen, and lower-level rec room with kitchenette. Rockford, IL Price: $2,200,000 Why it's here: Restored in 2013, this 1830s Creole townhouse is stunning and stylish. The exterior gives off plenty of vintage vibes, and the residence still features original plaster medallions, moldings, fireplaces, and wood floors. The three-story, three-bedroom main home comes with an elevator. Out back, there's a spacious courtyard as well as a detached two-bedroom unit. New Orleans, LA realtor.com The post Crazy for Creole Style: New Orleans Townhouse From 1831 Is the Week's Most Popular Home appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. 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. Steel and user industries in India are in for more price shocks as iron ore rose to a near 10-year-high on January 14, with Chinese customs data showing record imports by Beijing. They can expect some relief after the first quarter of 2021, with prices expected to drop in the second quarter and even below $100 a tonne in the following quarters. Iron ore prices increased to 10-year-high in December before retreating on reports of China wanting to reduce its steel output. Mining.com, quoting Fastmarkets MB, reported that the benchmark 62% Fe fines imported into Northern China (cost and freight Qingdao) changed hands at $172.36 a tonne, up 1.3 percent from January 13. According to the Trading Economics website, iron ore prices for delivery into the Chinese port of Tianjin ruled at $170, while ore with 62 percent ferrous content quoted at $169.8 a tonne. Iron ore prices have gained 7.25 percent to nearly nine percent for various grades since the beginning of 2021. This follows an 80 percent increase in ore prices last year. Current prices were last seen in September 2011. Also read: There is a cartel in cement and steel industries, says Union Minister Nitin Gadkari Record ore imports by China Prices began to ascend again after data showed that China, which accounts for about 70 percent of global imports, bought 1.17 billion tonnes of ore in 2020, a record after it bought 1.07 billion tonnes three years ago. Before the data came out, iron ore prices had begun to soften after December peaks as China's industry and information technology ministry said the steel industry must reduce its crude steel output in 2021 as part of low-carbon initiatives under the country's 14th five-year economic plan. Despite the coronavirus pandemic affecting steel production across the globe, China continued to show a positive trend in 2020. Till November, it had produced a record 963 million tonnes of steel. Chinese production up 5.5 percent According to the World Steel Organization, steel production in the 64 countries declined 1.3 percent during January-November last year, while Chinas output increased 5.5 percent. A major reason for the surge in iron ore prices is Chinas record steel output and shortage in supplies as some of the countries are still reeling under the impact of COVID-19. Most of Chinas iron ore supplies are sourced from Australia. The Australian government expects the Chinese demand to remain strong, though exports to Beijing are expected to slide 0.5 percent this season (August 2020-July 2021). Australias commodity research unit ABARE has predicted iron ore prices to ease to $80 a tonne by the end of 2021 and further to $75 in 2022. ABAREs projections are supported by a survey done by S&P Global Ratings, which expects prices to moderate during 2021 and 2022. During the current quarter, the rating agency expects prices to remain high as Chinese steel production continues to be strong. Freight charges may ease, helping to cool iron ore Iron ore prices are likely to ease also because shipping costs are expected to decline as bulk carriers are having problems in finding more coal exporters. This has resulted in more ships being available to ferry iron ore, especially from Australia to China. According to Shanghai Shipping Exchange, the iron ore freight index dropped by 53.26 points on January 15 from a week ago to 998.44. High ore prices unviable for steel firms The high prices are seen as unsustainable since steel firms margins could be affected. This will be more so when China discontinues its fiscal stimulus measures, which will reflect on demand for steel products. The steel industry in China has already begun complaining of the near-record high prices and sought action from its government. On the other hand, inventories of iron ores at the port have grown to over 100 million tonnes. Investing Australia said that Chinese steel producers might try to cut production if ore rules at current levels, though it expects the demand to remain high. It expects the prices to come under pressure since demand in other regions such as Europe and South Asia might be hit due to the spike and Chinese appetite might be nearing an end. The Indian scenario The iron ore price scenario should witness two developments in India. One, Indian miners will be looking to cash in on the current opportunity. China accounted for about 80 percent of iron ore exports from India and they might look to cash in on it but the spike in prices has left the domestic industry complaining. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has been vocal in criticising the surge in steel prices since it affects infrastructure projects, which have been accorded priority by the Centre. The steel producers are blaming the spike on high ore prices. With iron ore prices rising to near decade-highs, the steel industry will be forced to increase its prices further and thus leading to further hue and cry being raised by the user industries. The Centre government might try to regulate iron ore exports to ensure that the domestic industry does not unduly get affected. WASHINGTON - Top officials within the Trump administration are warning Mexico it is in violation of their new free trade agreement in favoring state-owned energy companies over American firms that have invested tens of billions of dollar since the nation opened up its energy sector to foreign investment six years ago. In a letter earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said reports the Mexican government was blocking permits for foreign owned firms and writing regulations to favor Pemex and other state-owned companies were, "deeply troubling." "While we respect Mexico's sovereign right to determine its own energy policies, we are obligated to insist that Mexico lives up to its (United States, Mexico Canada Agreement) obligations, in defense of our national interests," the letter reads. RELATED: In Mexico, US energy firms face a 'slow rolling expropriation' The move represented the most forceful intervention to date by the Trump administration in what U.S. observers describe as a devolving situation since the election of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador two years ago. Last month former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza said Obrador was engaging in a "slow rolling expropriation done through Mexicos regulatory bodies, and thats making it increasingly difficult to do business in the country." Since former Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto ended a near century long policy that kept foreign companies out of Mexico oil fields, close to $100 billion is estimated to have been invested in Mexico's energy sector by foreign firms, including Texas companies such as the refiners Phillips 66 and Valero. The trade group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers said last month that U.S.-branded gasoline stations in Mexico are being cited for minor or nonexistent infractions and fuel from U.S. refineries is being held up at the border. In July, the Mexican government ordered Talos Energy to work with Pemex in developing a massive oil field in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Houston firm had discovered three years earlier after winning what had appeared exclusive drilling rights at a government auction. So far Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, has shown no sign of backing down, telling reporters in October that he was willing to roll back the 2014 energy reforms in order to protect Mexican jobs and keep domestic energy prices low. We need to rescue Pemex (and other state energy companies), he said, according to the Mexican newspaper Reforma. If that is not possible under the current legal framework, I will send, if necessary, an initiative to reform the Constitution. She is set to join Monty Diamond and Yumi Styles on KIIS FM's 3pm Pick-Up, in the coming weeks. But it appears that radio host Kate Langbroek is already back in the studio after undergoing an 'intense' hotel quarantine following her return from a two-year stint in Italy. On Thursday, the 55-year-old made a guest appearance the network's morning show Jase & PJ and the drive show Will & Woody. Return to work: Kate Langbroek is back in the studio after undergoing 'intense' hotel quarantine following her return from a two-year stint in Italy Posting to Instagram, Kate shared a story from the network that read: 'Kate is in the studio'. Alongside the caption was a short clip that featured the media personality putting on her headphones. She dressed casually for the recording in denim overalls with a floral shirt and she swept her long brunette locks off her face with a pink bandanna. She's back: On Thursday, the 55-year-old made a guest appearance the Network's morning show Jase & PJ and the drive show Will & Woody Last month, Kate was in a mandatory hotel quarantine with her husband and their four children in Melbourne after returning from a two-year stint in one of the worst countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy. But on Christmas Eve, Kate revealed the group were finally free from lockdown - as she captioned a beaming picture of the family with: 'When negative is a positive...' She added the caption: 'six do quarantine' and 'Christmas, here we come.' Hotel Q: Last month, Kate was in a mandatory hotel quarantine with her husband and their four children in Melbourne after returning from a two-year stint in one of the worst countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy Kate and her husband of 17 years, Peter Lewis, returned to Australia at the start of the month after relocating to Bologna, Italy, with their four children - Lewis, Sunday, Artie and Jan - in January 2019. When the gang were halfway through their quarantine in the middle of December, Kate spoke out about her experience during an interview with The Project. 'It's really, very intense to have six people together in a very small space with not even a window that you can open,' she candidly said. 'The only consolation is you can yell at the kids as loud as you want. No one will come!' Kate joked. 'You can do whatever you want. No one is breaching the security of that front door. They'll just leave you to it,' she added. SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Utah families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Utah families, schools, and organizations are hosting 244 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of these activities will be the launch of a video series highlighting Utah charter school students, teachers, parents, and staff across the state. \ Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Utah cities of Orem and Price City. "National School Choice Week unites educators, leaders, and families in pursuit of a common goal: educating and inspiring children for the future," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "During this challenging year, let's show our gratitude for great Utah schools and educators, and talk about how we can better serve Utah families." In Utah, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Utah students with special needs may qualify for a state-run scholarship program for private schools. Utah families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Utah school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/utah. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Deer in Road Leads to Rollover Crash; Driver Hurt By West Kentucky Star Staff CALDWELL COUNTY - A deer is to blame for a rollover crash in Caldwell County that sent the driver to the hospital.The accident happened around 6:00 am Friday in the 2000 block of Farmersville Road.The Caldwell County Sheriff's Office said 33-year-old Brittany Williams of Princeton was driving south when a deer entered the roadway. Deputies said Williams swerved and applied the brakes, but due to slippery road conditions, her SUV left the road, struck a culvert and overturned.Williams was transported by ambulance to Caldwell County Hospital for treatment of her injuries. Vice President Mike Pence misunderstood the need to ratify the electoral votes requested of him by President Donald Trump last Jan. 6, according to constitutional lawyer and former Chapman University School of Law professor John Eastman. LifeSite reported that Eastman pointed out Pence misrepresented what Trump was asking him to do during the certification of electoral votes in the Capitol last week. On Pence being asked to unilaterally decide the results of the election, Eastman commented, "That's not what he was being asked; that's not what we asked him this morning, and that's not what the president asked him this morning." "I think he's exaggerating what the request was," Eastman told WND. Eastman referred to Pence acknowledging at the start of the Jan. 6 joint Congress the instances of electoral fraud but did not make a motion to have the votes sent back to their respective states as was previously advised him by the Trump legal Team. "After an election with significant allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of this election," Pence said in the letter he read as his speech during the said Congress joint session. "The American people choose the American President, and have every right under law to demand free and fair elections and a full investigation of electoral misconduct," he continued, "As presiding officer, I will do my duty to ensure that these concerns receive a fair and open hearing in the Congress of the United States." "Objections will be heard, evidence will be presented, and the elected representatives of the American people will make their decision," he cleared. Eastman explained, as per Life Site, that this "means we have several slates of electors that were illegally given." "And what [Pence] had been asked to do is recognize that they had been illegally given and send it back to the state legislatures and allow them--and they're the proper constitutional authority in this instance--to allow them to assess the situation in their own states and decide whether they can ratify the existing slate of electors or whether they were fraudulently given and should be altered," Eastman elaborated. However, during the same speech, Pence decided, "My considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not." According to Forbes, Eastman actually tried persuade Pence of the latter's "power to delay Congress' certification" of former Vice President Joe Biden's "win" prior to Jan. 6 but to no avail. Forbes revealed that Eastman recently left Chapman University after members of the faculty demanded the administration to fire him for joining the Save America Rally with Trump's private legal counsel Rudy Giuliani on stage. Through a statement, Eastman said the faculty who petitioned him "have created such a hostile environment" that he "no longer wish to be a member of the Chapman faculty" and opted to retire from his position "effective immediately." WASHINGTON: The U.S. military has met its goal of reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to about 2,500 by Friday, a drawdown that appears to violate a last-minute congressional prohibition. Today, the United States is closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war and welcoming in an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process to achieve a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, the acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, said in a written statement, adding that 2,500 troops is enough to continue countering extremist groups in Afghanistan and training Afghan government forces. Continued fulfillment of these two complementary missions seeks to ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to harbor those who seek to bring harm to the United States of America, Miller said. President Donald Trump, who ordered the reduction in November, said Thursday that troop levels in Afghanistan had reached a 19-year low, although he did not mention a troop number. Last February his administration struck a deal with the Taliban to reduce American troop levels in phases and to go to zero by May 2021. It is unclear how the incoming Biden administration will proceed. President-elect Joe Biden, who has advocated keeping a small counterterrorism force in Afghanistan as a way to ensure that extremist groups like al-Qaida are unable to launch attacks on the United States, faces a number of questions on Afghanistan. One is how and whether to proceed with further troop cuts. Trump in his brief statement alluded to his longstanding desire to get out of Afghanistan entirely. I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars, he said, referring to U.S. wars that have dragged on in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq for much of the period since 2003. Although senior military officials had cautioned against speedy troop reductions in Afghanistan, Miller announced on Nov. 17 that he was implementing Trumps order. As a result, military commanders scrambled to pull more than 1,500 troops out of the country in the last few weeks. At Trumps order, commanders also cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 2,500 from about 3,000 in the same period. The Afghanistan decision was seen by some as unnecessarily complicating the decision-making of the incoming administration. Trump at the time had refused to acknowledge that he had lost the election and would be ceding to Biden on Jan. 20. Some in Congress, including fellow Republicans, opposed Trumps decision. Under the National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress two weeks ago, the Pentagon was explicitly forbidden to use money from this years or last years budget on reducing the number of troops below 4,000 or below the number that was in the country the day the bill was finalized, which was Jan. 1. Trump vetoed the measure, but both the House and Senate voted to override his veto. In his statement Friday, Miller made no mention of this statutory prohibition. He said the Pentagon is planning for additional troop reductions to zero by May, adding that any such future drawdowns remain conditions based. The Pentagon has not yet fully explained how it squares its continued drawdown with the legal prohibition. In response to questions about this, the Pentagon issued a written statement saying, DoD will adhere to all statutory provisions of the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act, to include those in Section 1215 that impact the ongoing drawdown in Afghanistan. It said it has been working with the National Security Council on the most efficient means to ensure consistency amidst an anterior drawdown already occurring across Afghanistan, and in a manner that continues to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel. The defense legislation provides two conditions under which the Pentagon could get around the prohibition a presidential waiver or a report to Congress assessing the effect of a further drawdown on the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan and the risk to U.S. troops there. As of Thursday the Pentagon had met neither of those conditions. The prohibition on completing the drawdown put the Pentagon in a bind, coming weeks after it had begun the drawdown, which involved a large logistical effort to remove equipment as well as troops. Because of less-than-transparent military procedures for counting troops in Afghanistan, it is possible that the 2,500 figure may be fudged. The main reason for concern about a too-quick troop withdrawal is what the Pentagon sees as continued high levels of Taliban violence against the Afghan government. Some U.S. officials have questioned the wisdom of fully withdrawing, in accordance with the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban, if violence remains high. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was aimed at overthrowing the Taliban regime, running al-Qaida out of the country and laying the groundwork for a global war on terrorism. It turned into something more ambitious but less well-defined and became far more costly in blood and treasure. During Bidens time as vice president, the U.S. pushed U.S. troop totals in Afghanistan to 100,000 in a failed bid to compel the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. When Trump took office four years ago there were about 8,500 troops in the country, and he raised it to about 13,000 that summer. Last month, when he met with Afghan officials in Kabul and with Taliban representatives in Qatar, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he emphasized to both sides that in order to give fledgling peace talks a chance, they must rapidly reduce levels of violence. Everything else hinges on that, Milley told reporters. During Milleys visit, Army Gen. Scott Miller, the top commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, told reporters that the Taliban had stepped up attacks on Afghan forces, particularly in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and against roadways and other infrastructure. 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 report entitled Rising star: Vietnam's role in Asia's shifting supply chains, focused on examining Vietnams labour market, investment attraction policy, and trade relationships. Accordingly, low-skilled manufacturing wages rise will be kept at a moderate pace relative to Vietnams regional competitors. However, specialised labour in manufacturing and services professions will remain scarce. In the field of investment, high-tech manufacturers will continue to enjoy incentives for many years to come. In addition, Vietnam has joined many trade agreements and maintained good relations with trading partners, helping to reduce transaction costs for local businesses. EIU Senior Analyst John Marrett said tax and foreign direct investment policies as well as measures to control foreign trade and exchange are the main strengths of the Vietnamese business climate compared to other countries in the region. These are underpinned by the countrys domestic political stability, which is higher than that of most other Southeast Asian countries with similar economic development level, he added. The EIU is a global leading resource for economic and business research, forecasting and analysis. WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Initial jobless claims in the United States soared to 965,000 last week, indicating severe disruption to the labor market recovery by COVID-19 spikes, the Labor Department reported Thursday. In the week ending Jan. 9, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits jumped by 181,000 from the previous week's downwardly revised level of 784,000, according to a report released by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). "The start of the year usually sees a surge in filings (unadjusted claims reached 1.15 million) and the timing of holidays makes seasonal adjustment particularly hard this time of year, but that cannot fully explain away the rise," Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities, wrote in an analysis. "The worsening state of the pandemic is bearing down on the labor market," House said. The latest BLS report also showed that the number of people continuing to collect regular state unemployment benefits in the week ending Jan. 2 increased by 199,000 to 5.27 million. Meanwhile, the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs -- state and federal combined -- for the week ending Dec. 26 decreased by 744,511, but remained elevated at 18.4 million, as the country struggles to grapple with the fallout of the surging COVID-19 infections. "Ten months into the pandemic, job instability remains tremendous," House said. "New filings relative to the number of jobs in the economy remains higher than at the peak of the Great Recession." With the jobs recovery "stalling," the extra 300 dollars in weekly benefits provided by the recently approved 900-billion-dollar COVID-19 relief bill "could not come soon enough" for many families, she noted. As COVID-19 shutdowns rippled through the workforce last spring, initial jobless claims spiked by 3 million to reach a record 3.3 million in the week ending March 21, 2020, and then doubled to reach a record 6.87 million in the week ending March 28. After that, the figures have been largely declining -- though still at historically high levels -- but the trend was reversed several times amid a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, signaling a stalled recovery in the labor market. In the week ending Aug. 8, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped by 228,000 to 963,000, the first time it has dipped below 1 million since mid-March. Yet just in the following week, the figure rose back above the 1 million mark to reach 1.1. million. In the week ending Oct. 17, the figure fell below 800,000 for the first time since late March, and has been largely declining in following weeks, but the trend was reversed in the weeks ending Nov. 14 and Nov. 21, and then in the weeks ending Dec. 5 and Dec. 12 amid recent COVID-19 spikes. According to the monthly employment report released by the Labor Department last week, U.S. employers slashed 140,000 jobs in December, marking the first monthly decline in employment since April 2020. The unemployment rate, which has been trending down over the past seven months, remained unchanged at 6.7 percent in December, the report showed. "If we adjust the 6.7 percent headline unemployment rate for the decline in (labor) participation since February and the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate of misclassification, the unemployment rate would be 10 percent, similar to the peak following the Global Financial Crisis," Federal Reserve board governor Lael Brainard said at a virtual event Wednesday. Amid widespread COVID-19 shutdowns in March and April last year, 22 million Americans lost their jobs. The latest employment report showed that the number of unemployed in December remained unchanged at 10.7 million. Brainard noted that the damage from COVID-19 is concentrated among "already challenged groups." For example, Federal Reserve staff analysis indicates that unemployment is likely above 20 percent for workers in the bottom wage quartile, while it has fallen below 5 percent for the top wage quartile. Labor force participation for prime-age workers has declined, particularly for parents of school-aged children, where the declines have been greater for women than for men, and greater for Black and Hispanic mothers than for White mothers, said the Fed official. According to the Fed's latest Beige Book, a majority of Federal Reserve districts reported that employment rose, although the pace was "slow," and the recovery remained "incomplete." A growing number of districts reported a drop in employment levels relative to the previous reporting period, according to the report, which contains economic reports from 12 Federal Reserve districts, each monitored by a regional Federal Reserve Bank. "Although the prospect of COVID-19 vaccines has bolstered business optimism for 2021 growth, this has been tempered by concern over the recent virus resurgence and the implications for near-term business conditions," the report said. Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release SubCategory Select Sub-Category Two masks may be better than one for preventing the spread of COVID-19, some scientists say. President-elect Joe Biden was ahead of the curve, wearing two masks on the campaign trail - a habit for which President Donald Trump mocked him. But Biden was on to something. Wearing a thicker fabric mask over a surgical one may act like a double-filter and improve the fit of face coverings, University of California, San Francisco, scientists advised in recent commentary. Double-masking may block more than 90 percent of infectious particles, the researchers found. It comes as public health officials warn that vaccines - which are being rolled out painfully slowly in the US - won't mean we can take off our masks, because they don't necessarily prevent people from spreading the virus. President-elect Joe Biden often wore two masks on the campaign trail and was mo 'Americans will not need to be wearing masks forever,' Dr Monica Gandhi, study co-author told the New York Times. But for the coming months, they'll stay essential. A cloth or surgical mask on its own blocks about 70 percent of infectious particles we exhale. That's not nearly as effective as an N95, which is named for its ability to contain 95 percent of these tiny droplets. When coronavirus first emerged at the end of 2019, officials in the US and even at the World Health Organization initially said anything less than an N95 mask wouldn't do enough to be worth wearing, since the virus was not yet widespread. And they begged that N95s be reserved for health care workers who would have to be in contact with COVID-19 patients. But since their tune changed, masks have become the constant of public health messaging and daily life. For the most part, masks have not gotten any better, but with more than 23 million cases of COVI-19 in the US and more than 90 million worldwide, something is certainly better than nothing. Wearing a cloth mask over a surgical one (bottom right) can block more than 90% of infectious particles, research suggests In their review of studies on mask efficacy, the UCSF ranked some face coverings as 'basic,' and others as giving 'maximal protection.' A mask with two layers of tightly woven fabric is basic, but its strength lies in fitting the face better, so infectious particles are less likely to travel around the sides, either out or in. Surgical masks provide better filtration, but they fit the face loosely, hampering their coverage. Wearing a cloth mask over a surgical one can give the best of both worlds. Or, you can purchase a tightly woven fabric mask that features a filter, for an all-in-one solution. There is, however, too much of a good thing. Two masks may be better than one, but three can be suffocating. Researchers warn that too many layers may make it too hard to breathe for the face coverings to be worth it. But a pair approaches the level of particle blockage offered by an N95. The Young Journalists' Club (YJC) website announced on Thursday, January 14 that Iranian security forces have arrested the international deputy head of Sarava Holding, Emad Edward Sharqi, while he was set to leave Iran. The YJC published a picture of Sharqi being detained at an airport. According to the report, a court had previously sentenced Sharqi to ten years in prison for "espionage and military intelligence gathering." He was released on bail and "intended to flee Iran" before the appeals court, the YJC reported. This is the first time that the name of one of the managers of Sarava Holding and charges against him have been published in the local media. Sharqi had previously been responsible for dealing with foreign partners and investors of Sarava Holding, reports say. Sarava Holding's former managing director, Saeed Rahmani, previously resigned in September 2019 and left Iran. The reasons for Rahmani's departure were never announced, and some startup activists attributed it to unspecified "internal pressures." In its report, the Young Journalists Club has referred to Mr. Rahmani's emigration as an "escape." "Espionage" is a charge under which Iranian intelligence agents have repeatedly detained dissidents, critics, and even individuals who have refused to cooperate with their activities. The YJC is an offshoot of Iran's monopolized radio and TV network but run by managers close to the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). The DUP's Ian Paisley has launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, accusing him of being in danger of showing he is a "buffoon" stating Northern Ireland has "given blood to the union". He was commenting on post-Brexit supply issues that have been reportedly affecting goods travelling from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. It comes amid fears that the UK's relationship with the incoming Biden administration could be damaged if Boris Johnson triggers Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol due to the issues. The Prime Minister has said he would not hesitate to invoke the safeguarding measure if he believed the problems with the protocol were disproportionate, however he said there had been "teething problems". Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots said on Thursday he had been told that if the three-month grace period for supermarkets to adapt to the new rules is not extended then they won't be able to supply hospitals and schools with food in a few months time. Read More "That is a major crisis and I have raised this with [Cabinet Office Minister] Michael Gove, seriously are we going to have a situation where our hospitals and schools are not able to feed the children at school, that [hospitals] are not able to feed their patients?" he told the BBC. Officials said they have not experienced any major disruption to food supplies to schools and hospitals. Read More Speaking to the BBC's Newsnight programme on Thursday night, Ian Paisley took aim at Boris Johnson's claim earlier this week that any issues are merely "teething problems". "The Prime Minister is in real danger of proving to people he is actually a buffoon," he said. "If he doesn't recognise that comments about there are really just 'teething problems' going on here and that this doesn't really matter - he really isn't in touch, he doesn't have he finger on the pulse of what's happening. "The Prime Minister has a responsibility to get us out of this. I like the guy, I've worked with the guy, but I want Northern Ireland to enjoy every benefit it's entitled to. We've given blood for the union, in terms of our soldiers, and what do we get back? A slap in the face with a wet kipper." It follows the North Antrim MP's appearance in the Commons earlier this week during week he rounded on Tory MPs on the benches opposite for not taking into account the impact of the Northern Ireland protocol on the region. "What did we do? What did we do to members on those benches over there to be screwed over by this protocol?" he said. "Ask your hearts, every single one, what did we do? Because what has happened to this protocol it is ruined trade in Northern Ireland and it is an insult to our intelligence to say it is a teething problem. Tell that to my constituents." "This grace period needs to be extended by at least 12 months. The issue has led to calls from the DUP to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, which allows the EU or the UK to unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures if its application leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist or to diversion of trade. The protocol has been supported by the EU and the incoming Biden administration in the US as it is seen as a way of protecting the Good Friday Agreement and preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland. This has led to fears that, if the PM invokes Article 16, it would damage relations with Joe Biden's future government.. Conservative MP Simon Hoare said: "[Triggering the article] would do huge damage to the Good Friday Agreement... and damage the relationship between our country and the US." Regulatory News: SEGRO plc (BOURSE:SGRO) ("SEGRO" or the "Group") today updates the market on its continued strong rent collection for the full year to 31 December 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. For the year ending 31 December 2020, to date we have collected 98 per cent of all rents. In respect of UK rents payable in advance relating to the first quarter of 2021, as at 14 January, we had received 88 per cent of the 63 million of rent due. This represents a higher collection level than at the equivalent time in each of the three previous quarters. We expect the substantial balance of outstanding rents to be paid by the end of the quarter with the majority now due to be paid monthly. Rental collection update1 (as at 14 January 2021) FY 2020 Q1 20212 UK CE Group UK Paid 97 98 983 88 Deferrals (including payment plans) 2 0 1 8 Outstanding 1 2 1 4 Total 100 100 100 100 Total rent billed m 245 172 417 63 1 Based on exchange rate of 1.12:1 2 Rents in our Continental European portfolio are typically paid monthly so we are still early in the collection cycle 3 The Q2-Q4 2020 collection rate for the Group is currently 97%, excluding Q1 2020 (when rent collection was not affected by Covid-19). CONTACT DETAILS FOR INVESTOR ANALYST AND MEDIA ENQUIRIES: SEGRO Soumen Das (Chief Financial Officer) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7451 9110 Claire Mogford (Head of Investor Relations) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7451 9048 Lizzie Humphreys (External Communications Manager) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7451 9129 FTI Consulting Richard Sunderland Claire Turvey Eve Kirmatzis Tel: +44 (0) 20 3727 1000 Notes to editors: ABOUT SEGRO SEGRO is a UK Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), listed on the London Stock Exchange and Euronext Paris, and is a leading owner, manager and developer of modern warehouses and industrial property. It owns or manages 8.1 million square metres of space (88 million square feet) valued at 13.3 billion serving customers from a wide range of industry sectors. Its properties are located in and around major cities and at key transportation hubs in the UK and in seven other European countries. For over 100 years SEGRO has been creating the space that enables extraordinary things to happen. From modern big box warehouses, used primarily for regional, national and international distribution hubs, to urban warehousing located close to major population centres and business districts, it provides high-quality assets that allow its customers to thrive. See www.SEGRO.com for further information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114005931/en/ Contacts: SEGRO plc OKLAHOMA CITY, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Oklahoma families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Oklahoma families, schools, and organizations are hosting 407 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the biggest state activities will be a week-long virtual parent power summit bringing families live broadcasts with K-12 education information and resources. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. Additionally, Governor Kevin Stitt has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Oklahoma School Choice Week. "National School Choice Week encourages local leaders, families, and educators to talk about how to improve access to learning options for all Oklahoma families," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Pandemic or no pandemic, every family deserves to be able to choose an education that reflects their unique strengths, values, and needs." In Oklahoma, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Oklahoma students in certain underperforming schools or who meet certain income guidelines can qualify for state-run scholarship programs. Oklahoma families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Oklahoma school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/oklahoma. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com 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. Police are hunting for a man who was captured on video casually walking down a New York City sidewalk with an assault rifle. The man was spotted with the black assault rifle in the Bronx on Thursday afternoon. Surveillance video showed him walking down Webster Avenue at about 3.30pm with the rifle in his left hand. The rifle the man was carrying had a high capacity magazine, according to police. The man was spotted with the black assault rifle in the Bronx on Thursday afternoon. Surveillance video showed him walking down Webster Avenue at about 3.30pm with the rifle in his left hand The NYPD said the man sparked 'fear and alarm' among those who witnessed him walking alone the sidewalk. The man was last seen walking towards East Gun Hill Road/ There were no reported injuries as a result of the incident, police said. Police described the ordeal as 'reckless endangerment'. The NYPD said the man sparked 'fear and alarm' among those who witnessed him walking alone the sidewalk They are asking for the public's assistance in identifying the gun-toting suspect. The suspect is described as an adult male with a medium complexion and build. Police said he is approximately 6 feet tall and he was last seen wearing a red hooded jacket, red sneakers and blue jeans. Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). Former Mandera Central MP Abdikadir Hussein Mohamed has hinted at a possible run for governor of Nairobi. The former chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitution (PSC) believes he is qualified to lead the capital city and bring change for Nairobi residents. It is true I am under enormous pressure, and I am giving it serious consideration. You and I no doubt agree that Nairobi deserves better than what we have, and what we have had. We will spend 80 percent of our lives here and will most likely die here, so why not, Mohamed said. The senior counsel and former constitutional and legal affairs adviser in the Office of the President said Nairobi is too important to be left to thuggish elements. All in all, the city residents, rich or poor, are paying the price for failing to get it right in leadership. When its well settled, and I am in the race, I will speak to Nairobians and I am sure they will listen, he said. This is not about me its about you and all of us. I believe I am qualified, and I would like all other qualified city residents to express interest. Nairobi will not be transformed by angels from the skies. Its us. I really hope that I do not have to run, he added. Mohamed, 50, joins a growing list of Nairobi governor hopefuls who include Bishop Margaret Wanjiru of United Democratic Alliance (UDA), Building Bridges Initiative co-chair Dennis Waweru, businesswoman Agnes Kagure, political commentator Eric Mokua, Kanus Betty Adera, and lawyer Miguna Miguna. Amid the American flags and Trump 2020 posters at the U.S. Capitol during last weeks insurrection were far more sinister symbols: A man walking the halls of Congress carrying a Confederate flag. Banners proclaiming white supremacy and anti-government extremism. A makeshift noose and gallows ominously erected outside. In many ways this hate-filled display was the culmination of many others over the past few years, including the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that gathered extremist factions from across the country under a single banner. These displays of white supremacy are not new, said Lecia Brooks, chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now its just reached a fever pitch. Extremist groups, including the pro-Trump, far-right, anti-government Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, a loose anti-government network thats part of the militia movement, were among those descending on the halls of power on Jan. 6. The hateful imagery included an anti-Semitic Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt created years ago by white supremacists, who sold them on the now-defunct website Aryanwear, said Aryeh Tuchman, associate director for the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism. Also among the rioters were members of Groyper Army, a loose network of white nationalists, the white supremacist New Jersey European Heritage Association, and the far-right extremist Proud Boys, along with other known white supremacists, Tuchman said. While not all the anti-government groups were explicitly white supremacist, Tuchman said many support white supremacist beliefs. Anyone who flies a Confederate flag, even if they claim its about heritage and not hate, we need to understand that it is a symbol of white supremacy, Tuchman said. Brooks said it also was important to note the demographics of the riotous crowd, which was overwhelmingly white. Within that context, even more traditional symbols of American patriotism, like the American flag, or political preference, like Trump 2020 signs, served to give the symbols of hate a pass. You can wrap yourself in the American flag and call yourself a patriot and say youre acting on behalf of the country, that youre serving to protect the country. But what America were you standing up for? she asked. One that continues to support and advance white supremacy? Or one that welcomes and embraces a multiracial, inclusive democracy? Thats the difference. The proliferation of white supremacist symbolism has a long history, with two clear peaks in the civil rights efforts following Reconstruction and during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Brooks said. Now, as the U.S. reckons with systemic racism following the police killing of George Floyd, Confederate symbols have been displayed more prominently, including at smaller-scale white supremacist rallies and by counterprotesters carrying Confederate flags at Black Lives Matter gatherings across the country, she said. This is a response, and its not a new response, Brooks said. Every time there is progress in asserting civil rights, theres a backlash. Confederate iconography is a means to reassert white supremacy when it is thought to be threatened. Confederate flags and white supremacist symbols also were present at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that turned deadly after a car mowed into counterprotesters. The rally, which left one counterprotester dead, brought several neo-Nazi, white supremacist and related groups together, much like the Capitol insurrection, Brooks said. This merging of groups you see in Charlottesville and that you saw at the Capitol last week doesnt usually happen, she said. But theyre desperate. They are convinced that theyre this grave minority that is being threatened and needs to stick together and rally under the moniker of hatred. Karen Cox, a historian of the American South and Confederate symbols, said the phenomenon echoes the so-called Lost Cause mythology, the pseudo-historical ideology that the cause of the Confederacy during the Civil War was just and heroic an assertion that lives on in the hearts of many who tote the Confederate flag today. For many extremists, including those present at the Capitol insurrection, President Donald Trumps election loss has become a new Lost Cause of sorts, she said. This is their new Lost Cause and a continuation of the original Lost Cause, she said. Theyve lost, but they hold onto that (Confederate) flag to show that they still feel justified. Same thing here. We lost this election, but our cause was just. And as long as they still hold onto this Lost Cause, these symbols arent going away. We are 150 years after the Civil War and people are still waving that flag, Cox added. This has been here for so long, its going to take a long time to go away if it can. Towns in western Victoria have been rocked by a 3.5 magnitude earthquake on Friday morning. The quake was felt near Glenorchy around 8am on Friday and in surrounding towns including Ararat and Stawell. The earthquake wasn't large enough to cause any serious damage but more than 200 people reported that they felt the shudder to Geoscience Australia A 3.5 magnitude earthquake hit Glenorchy and surrounding suburbs around 8am on Friday One person said they felt their entire house shake for up to ten seconds while another said their son saw 'things moving on the walls'. Several other Victorians said the bang was so loud that they thought it was a mine blast from the nearby goldmine. 'Thought a truck had driven into the front of my house!' someone said. 'Was scary as I didn't know what to do, so grabbed my one-week-old daughter and held her for dear life,' another said. One resident said she thought her house was about to blow up. 'I felt the whole house shake like there was a big explosion,' Ararat resident Grace told 3AW. 'It was like something blew up just outside the window.' It's believed the quake was felt up to 100km away in Ballarat. Syracuse, N.Y. -- A 58-year-old Syracuse man has been sentenced after admitting to assaulting a mail carrier, according to federal prosecutors. Daniel J. Trammell, 58, will serve 2 1/2 years in prison, officials from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of New York said in a Thursday news release. Trammell admitted he caused two cuts to the mail carriers neck, prosecutors said. He was previously accused of shouting at employees and threatening to shoot his former mail carrier, according to prosecutors. Trammell tried to choke the mail carrier, federal officials said. After his term in federal prison, Trammell will undergo three years of supervised release. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Chris Libonati via the Signal app for encrypted messaging at 585-290-0718, by phone at the same number, by email or on Twitter. (Photo : These 5 Product Design Trends Will Be Big in 2021 ) Keep an eye out for these things in the upcoming year. 2020 turned everything upside down - we saw companies slashing budgets, product managers pivoting their strategies, employees working with lower mental health, and more. Next year, we all aim to do better. Despite the crisis, there are some positive changes. 2020 was about accessibility and inclusivity, with a growing trend for realness and diversity. Below I've come up with a list of design trends- many of these trends are not new but grew into something bigger, and I expect them to develop further in 2021. Remote research and management (i.e. remote everything) One of the most exciting things in my job is to get the chance to interview customers and conduct fieldwork in real life. It's impossible to implement product design to solve customers' problems when you don't know your users' habits, lifestyle, environment, interests, and emotions. This year designers had to switch entirely to virtual survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Zoom panel interviews. Design should transmit a company's vision, and we need more people to share their concerns and opinions to infuse them into the culture. For as long as I can remember, I've been promoting agile collaboration where the team of developers is involved in the process. This year, we've been challenged to do everything at a distance - to collaborate through monitors and to communicate in various time zones without knowing any circumstances behind a video chat (Did they just calm down their restless kids? Is that dog begging for a walk? What are they really wearing?). We've appreciated regular milestone reviews with the team - the only way to show how work is evolving and to make sure other members understand it. Tools like Miro, Slack, and Figma have become crucial. That said, it's still tricky to navigate what other teams are doing when you never have a random chat near a coffee machine or have lunch together in the office. Accessible and Inclusive web design In 2020, designers massively implemented accessibility features based on the WCAG's standards. Interfaces now use plain, simple language and short sentences plus images, drawings, and icons in addition to text. Next year, designers are going to look for accessibility flaws on their websites to improve them. For example, Facebook designers recently found out that CamelCase hashtags (#blacklivesmatter vs. CamelCase #BlackLivesMatter) are crucial because hashtags in all uppercase and all lowercase are difficult for people with cognitive and learning disabilities to understand. If I wanted to point out one major trend this year, I would say it's the impact of accessibility and diversity on design. According to an Inside Design survey, 62.3% of designers had a team conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion at work-and 26.4% said it was the first time they had it. All visual pictures and emojis now should represent the diversity of people's abilities or disabilities and their race, gender, and culture. It's become a mission to integrate inclusive design and accessibility into a company's culture to influence the whole design practice and product development systems. Even more important is that the trend went far beyond web design and into the products. For example, Airbnb created a section on accessibility features for hosts to answer questions about hosting people with disabilities. AI and big data Machine learning has been used to create targeted campaigns that increase sales for a long time. In e-commerce, marketers collect and analyze large amounts of data to provide online customers with an experience similar to what they would have in store. From customer preferences to the price of competing products, companies collect and seek to use increasing amounts of data. At Scentbird, we show recommendations based on the perfumes users viewed, liked, or ordered before. Our feature Scent Profile asks questions to figure out what perfumes fit best for each customer. It is only a matter of time until customers won't need to interact with an interface at all.They will simply receive personalized offers based on clicks through banners and other interactions. Companies will know when someone runs out of toilet paper and can deliver it right away. Chatbots and GPT-3 GPT3, a neural network-powered language model that takes a load of text and then guesses what the next word is a huge leap for AI development. For a little while this year, designers thought they had been replaced by a Figma plugin - one that utilized AI to auto-generate screens based on a text entry from the user. It also means websites can be created from scratch - after you teach the GPT-3 engine to figure out what you want, it can create a typical website in seconds. The New York Times editors enjoy playing with GPT-3 too. They recently asked the robot to write a love piece for their Modern Love section. If you can evaluate the words and use them for training and tuning the AI, it can create future text predictions on the unlabeled data. You repeat the process until predictions start to converge. "Like all romances, some turned out better than others,"- their human editor Cade Metz summed up the writing. Another trend based on neural networks is a variety of chatbots. They help users navigate sites to choose products, and in the case of Scentbird, they also significantly reduce the load on support. This year, chatbots have completely hit the mainstream. H&M, for example, uses bots to help visitors on their website find what they're looking for. They also make suggestions to the customer on what they might want to try based on their preferences. The beauty store, Sephora, lets visitors try lipsticks and eyeshadows on a photo of themselves that they share with the bot. The bot's AI technology identifies the user's facial features and uses augmented reality to apply these makeup tests. As they replace humans, these chatbots have already saved companies millions of dollars in salaries and immensely improved the customer experience. Mobile-first and touch gestures Ninety percent of our traffic at Scentbird comes from mobile. The trend of mobile-first has continued, and now we mostly consume content through our phones. Animation in mobile design has had a rebirth thanks to gestures that give users more control over their device actions. Ten years ago, there were only a few basic movements. Now, iOS and Android designers have a wide range of mobile gestures to play with. Users' fingers perform the majority (tap, swipe, drag, slide, etc.), but it can also involve hand movements (shaking, tilting, moving, and rotating the device). This adds to voice interaction and even further - gadgets outside of mobile. For example, this year, we implemented a tracking order feature through Alexa. Gestures free up screen space that would otherwise host clickable buttons. They are intuitive, so once users learn how to use them, they become an important part of their mobile user experience. Content is written by Anna Voshkarina, Digital Product Designer at Scentbird 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A fresh tranche of documents relating to the 'Russiagate' investigation are to be declassified on Friday, a Senate source told Fox News. The source said the documents will number hundreds of pages, and will include interviews, transcripts and depositions. It was unclear who would be involved. The Senate on Friday will reportedly receive hundreds of pages of 'Russiagate' documents The documents pertain to an investigation into whether Putin's Russia worked to help elect Donald Trump, and why the Trump campaign was investigated for its Russia contacts George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russians, and was pardoned by Trump just before Christmas, tweeted: 'Breaking: the President will have all declassified Obamagate files released to the American public as early as tomorrow.' 'Russiagate', or 'Obamagate' as Papadopoulos called it, refers to the idea that Obama-era officials concocted allegations that Donald Trump was being aided by Russia in a bid to stop him being elected president. It also encompasses the Mueller inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the actions of individuals in Donald Trump's orbit. Thirty four people were charged as a result of the inquiry, which concluded in 2019. The phrase also includes an inquiry led, at Trump's request, by John Durham, attorney general for Connecticut. Durham was tasked in May 2019 with investigating the origins of the Mueller inquiry, and looking at whether the Trump campaign was spied on. Sean Langille, a producer at Fox News, tweeted the news of the impending release. In December 2020 Bill Barr, the departing attorney general, promoted Durham to Special Counsel, meaning his investigation could continue after the Trump administration ended. John Durham has since May 2019 been investigating whether any Obama-era officials overstepped the mark in investigating individuals linked to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign Documents relating to the investigation are sporadically released: in September, and October, tranches were made public. Trump tweeted on October 6: 'I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!' His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, then argued Trump's tweet was not about allowing the nation to see the documents; rather, it was about Attorney General William Barr's being able to release them. 'The president indicated to me that his statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and do not require the declassification or release of any particular documents,' Meadows said in a sworn court statement, in response to a court case brought be media organizations pushing for the total release of all documents. Much of what has been made public so far has been heavily redacted. Lindsey is the North Augusta reporter at the Aiken Standard and North Augusta Star. She graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2017, and grew up in Hodges, SC. 7 p.m.: A messenger arrives downstairs with fabric swatches for a wedding gown. Im getting married next summer at Temple Emanu-El, whose congregation I just joined. Its one of the oldest Reform Jewish congregations in North America. The architecture of the synagogue is dramatic, as is the interior of the Metropolitan Club, where were holding the reception. As am I, or so Ive been told. The dress, therefore, has to be, as well. (I would describe it as both elegant and severe.) Fortunately, the designer is Zac Posen, whose family Ive known a long time. Tuesday 7:30 a.m.: Aaron Goldstein, my fiance, and I try to take a walk together every morning, since we often dont see each other for the rest of the day. Aaron works at a hedge fund, and to ensure we dont exchange nonpublic information, he works from the office while I work from home. Today we stop for coffee at Black Star Bakery before heading to the East River Promenade. 10 a.m.: While starting off at a new job, one of my first items is reviewing the firms crisis management plan, which fortunately is already in great shape. At my old job, we would develop playbooks for companies to have on the shelf in case of a data breach, a #MeToo incident, diversity and inclusion issues, or anything else. Companies that dont do this are, frankly, delusional. One of the beautiful things about the 21st century is that the public holds corporate America accountable. No matter how great your company is, humans make mistakes, and all you can do is be ready, stand on the right side of history and take action immediately. 4 p.m.: A FaceTime check-in with the moving company helping me and Aaron move to a new apartment downtown, which requires a little extra delicacy. When I graduated from college, I started organizing get-togethers that would bring young people together with artists, so they could start collecting away from the intimidating atmosphere of galleries and auction houses. I also started collecting myself, often because of a personal connection with an artist or a seller. My collection is a mixture of nonbinary artists such as Toyen and Leonor Fini, artists of color such as Robert Carter, or artwork featuring Black subjects, including a portrait of Josephine Baker that I bought in Paris when I was 15. 6:30 p.m.: A board meeting with the Harbor Science and Arts Charter School, one of the oldest charter schools in New York. Anthony Drexel Duke, the founder of Boys & Girls Harbor, was someone Id known since I was a girl myself and my father was the schools board chair. Im there to provide a millennial perspective, a role Ive gotten used to. 8 p.m.: Aaron walks through the door, and I try to give him at least an hour of undivided attention. However, my email is blowing up, and although Ive been home all day, Aaron ends up cooking (please dont judge) a killer filet au poivre from Ottomanelli Brothers, our neighborhood butcher. Wednesday 5:30 a.m.: At my work-from-home standing desk, which my brother gave me for Christmas, I wake up and fire off 15 emails composed in my head last night while tossing and turning. When I was in my 20s I didnt seem to need sleep, but thats not true anymore. Fortunately, lately I have excess energy compared with when I was consulting, when I would often have to drag myself to the computer in the morning. When youre consulting, you rarely get to see the magic after issuing recommendations, whereas being in-house means being present for the life cycle of a project. 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. KAKINADA: It was a free-for-all for organisers of traditional cockfights and gambling games playing cards, the Gundata-cutting cards game in two Godavari districts during the three-day Sankranti festival. The police warning that these traditional activities would not be allowed in view of court directives went unheeded. In the run-up to Sankranti, the police created a stir and filed bound-over cases against many; ploughing the fields where cockfights are organised, and in general creating an atmosphere of fear. This did not help. Cockfights were organised in remote villages in the two Godavari districts and crores of rupees changed hands. To make things more exciting, record dances were also held in some places. Initially, many organisers were skeptical of the events this time due to the Covid-19 scare and the vigorous police campaign against these. But, the first day of the Sankranti season, on Bhogi Day, some big organisers of cockfights initiated the action in places like Kesanakurrupalem in East Godavari as also Undi and Mahadevapatnam in West Godavari district. This emboldened others too. In general, the police used to start raids on the cockfight grounds on the third day of Sankranti, on Kanuma. On this Friday, the Kanuma Day, the cockfights were organised on a scale larger than on the Sankranti day. Even small teams also held the cockfight wherever they got a vacant space. In some areas, women also participated in the sport. The state government had decided not to allow cockfights this year. But, in the aftermath of destruction of Hindu idols in some temples, the ruling YSRC felt such a curb will have a negative impact. The Opposition Telugu Desam was waiting in the wings to take advantage of any resentment against the Jagan-led government and the ruling party. Hence, the government thought it wise to not enforce a curb. Compared to last year, the amount spent on betting this time appeared to be less because of the Covid-19 virus, the economic downturn and the existing transportation problem. Software professionals, cine celebrities and others have not arrived in large numbers. There were arrivals also from Telangana state and Bengaluru. Before rioters ransacked the U.S. Capitol, FBI agents flagged an online discussion board filled with plans for Southern supporters to meet in South Carolina and convoy to Washington, D.C., and warned that the conversations could lead to violence. The FBI report warned that supporters of President Donald Trump were sharing maps of the Capitol building complex and that some were urging the others to be ready for war, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the document. Some reportedly made plans to drive to Washington in groups from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and South Carolina. The full FBI document has not been made public, but the caravans reported in the Posts account of the Jan. 5 memo appear to match flyers posted to the pro-Trump website TheDonald.win, according to a review of the site by The Post and Courier. The caravans were dubbed the "MAGA_CAVALRY, a reference to the presidents Make America Great Again slogan. According to posts about the caravan, the Southern route was to converge at a mall parking lot in Columbia the day before Congress counted the votes of the Electoral College. Then they would head north. Organizers called the route Rebel. The plan appears to have materialized. The day before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a Columbia police officer noticed a group that seemed to be holding a rally in the parking lot of Dutch Square Center, a shopping mall west of downtown near where Interstates 20 and 26 meet. The officer mentioned the group to a supervisor but didnt notice anything amiss, said Columbia police spokeswoman Jennifer Timmons. Moments later, shortly before 9:30 a.m., someone reported the group was shouting obscenities. By the time an officer arrived, the group had cleared out. On the message board, supporters mostly talked about the trips logistics and how they had been banned from a chat service. But some openly referenced violence. Bring pitchforks, tar and feathers, one wrote. Bats make really good flag poles, another responded. Gonna go Babe Ruth on some commie zombies, said another. Five people, including a police officer, would later die after a protest gave way to a siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6, damaging a sacred seat of the nations government. The attack led to Trumps impeachment Wednesday, making him the only U.S. president to be impeached twice. Its not clear that members of the caravans were directly associated with the violence that unfolded last week, and federal authorities had not charged anyone from South Carolina with a crime associated with the riot as of Thursday afternoon. Some people who attended the rally left before the rioting started or did not participate. It's also unclear why South Carolina was chosen as a gathering point and how many of the state's residents participated in the convoy. The FBI also appears to have cited a separate thread from the same website calling for violence in Washington against Congress and left-wing activists. According to the Post, the memo said: An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating Be ready to fight. ... Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.' A nearly identical message was posted on multiple threads on TheDonald.win website before Jan. 6, The Post and Courier found. The site initially began as a group on Reddit but was later banned for hate speech. The FBI memo warned that the intelligence was unvetted, and acting on it could infringe on protected First Amendment speech, according to The Washington Post. Even so, Steven DAntuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBIs Washington Field Office, said his office shared the information contained in the report to other federal and state law enforcement agencies soon after receiving it. But in South Carolina, the State Law Enforcement Division South Carolinas top investigative agency was not made aware of the FBIs report, according to spokesman Tommy Crosby. Representatives from the FBI field offices in Columbia and Norfolk, Va., where the report originated, declined to discuss the document and referred questions to the FBIs headquarters. A spokesperson there also declined to comment on it. Instead, in a statement, the FBI said it is focused on identifying, investigating, and disrupting individuals that are inciting violence and engaging in criminal activity and that it was gathering information to identify any potential threats and are sharing that information with our partners. The statement added: Our focus is not on peaceful protesters, but on those threatening their safety and the safety of other citizens with violence and destruction of property. In a news conference this week, DAntuono said the FBI had disrupted the travel of some people who intended to cause violence in the Washington area. We have to separate the aspirational from the intentional and determine which of the individuals saying despicable things on the internet are just practicing keyboard bravado or they actually have the intent to do harm, he said. Glenn Smith contributed to this report. MSPT Season 12 Continues w/ Grand Falls Main Event ($200K GTD) Jan. 22-24 January 15, 2021 Chad Holloway At the beginning of the month, the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) kicked off its 12th season with a massive event at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Next weekend, the tour will return to the midwest for its second tournament of the year. From January 22-24, the tour will close out the year with a $1,100 buy-in, $200,000 guaranteed Main Event at Grand Falls Casino in Larchwood, Iowa, which is actually situated just across the border from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A series of $250 satellites will feed into the Main Event, which will feature two starting flights. Day 1a will take place at 3 p.m. on Friday, January 22 with Day 1b taking place at the same time on Saturday, January 23. The surviving players from both flights will then return for Day 2 at 11 a.m. on Sunday, January 24 to play down to a winner. The tournament comes on the heels of Augusts record-breaking MSPT Main Event at Grand Falls. That $1,100 buy-in tournament was the first mid-major poker tournament in the United States in nearly six months, and the 518 entrants not only surpassed the venues previous best field of 238 runners in 2015 but also became the largest major ($1,000+ buy-in) in Iowa history. In the end, 47-year-old Mark Collins, a systems administrator from the St. Louis area, came out on top to win a $107,706 top prize and his second MSPT title. He previously won the MSPT Season 9 Canterbury Park for $102,076. PokerNews will be offering live updates at the upcoming MSPT Grand Falls. Click here for more details including hotel rates. MSPT Grand Falls Schedule Date Time Event Starting Stack inc. add-on Location Saturday, 1/16 Noon $250 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event 15,000 Poker Room Sunday, 1/17 4 p.m. $250 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event 15,000 Poker Room Wednesday, 1/20 6 p.m. $250 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event 15,000 Poker Room Thursday, 1/21 Noon $250 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event 15,000 Poker Room Thursday, 1/21 6 p.m. $250 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event 15,000 Poker Room Friday, 1/22 10:00 AM $250 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event 15,000 Event Center Friday, 1/22 3:00 PM $1,100 Main Event Day 1A (2-Day Trophy Event) 25,000 Event Center Saturday, 1/23 10:00 AM $250 Satellite - 1/5 advance to $200K GTD Main Event 15,000 Event Center Saturday, 1/23 3:00 PM $1,100 Main Event Day 1B (2-Day Trophy Event) 25,000 Event Center Sunday, 1/24 11:00 AM $1,100 Main Event Day 2 Restart (2-Day Trophy Event) N/A Event Center 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. Photo: Glacier Media Vancouver Police have a suspect and are recommending charges following an incident Sunday. That morning a 73-year-old man with a cane was standing reading a menu outside a shelter near the intersection of Helmcken and Seymour streets. While he was reading, another man shoved the senior to the ground. Staff at the shelter saw the incident and called police. The fall was hard and left the senior with injuries on his hand, though police can't release how severe they were. Police were able to find the suspect nearby, a 43-year-old man known to police. As he had a history of violence back-up was called and the man was taken into custody. Police also found he was carrying a credit card that didn't belong to him. "Charges were recommended for assault, resisting arrest, and possession of credit card data. The suspect also had two outstanding arrest warrants," says the VPD. Const. Tania Visintin notes that while the suspect may be charged with resisting arrest, there were no injuries during the arrest. David P. Pekoske, the T.S.A. administrator, said in a statement on Friday that the agency was vetting hundreds of names before the event on Jan. 20. Commercial airlines have tracked an increase in passengers checking in firearms on their way to airports in the Washington area, according to a separate bulletin from the Justice Department. Two of the prominent airports close to Washington are actually in Virginia, which has more relaxed firearms laws. Our intelligence and vetting professionals are working diligently around the clock to ensure those who may pose a threat to our aviation sector undergo enhanced screening or are prevented from boarding an aircraft, Mr. Pekoske said, adding that several airlines had announced in recent days that they would not allow passengers to check in guns. Federal agencies have also begun to identify those captured on video at the Capitol with weapons or engaging in violence and put them on a no-fly list aimed at preventing suspected terrorists from boarding flights, according to an administration official. It was unclear how many suspects had been restricted from flying. Multiple Democrats in Congress demanded the move after the rampage at the Capitol. Federal law enforcement officials have said they continue to be alarmed by an increase in chatter from groups like the boogaloo, a far-right group that aims to start a second civil war, and other racist extremists threatening to target the nations capital to protest Mr. Bidens decisive victory in the popular vote and Electoral College. Since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, intelligence officials have seen Chinese, Iranian and Russian efforts to fan the violent messaging, according to a joint threat assessment dated Thursday. The escalation is consistent with previous attempts to take advantage of divisive Republican talk, such as Russias drive to amplify disinformation spread by President Trump during the campaign about the security of mail-in voting. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- WeRide, a Guangzhou-based autonomous driving startup, announced on Jan. 14 it has completed a $310 million Series B funding round, which is led by Yutong Group, a Zhengzhou-based commercial vehicle manufacturer. The investors of this funding round also include CMC Capital Group, CDB Equipment Manufacturing Fund, Hengjian Emerging Industries Fund, Zhuhai Huajin Capital, Tryin Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Sinovation Ventures and Kinzon Capital. Mini Robobus co-developed by WeRide and Yutong Group; photo credit: WeRide The announcement came after the company closed its Series B1 financing in late December 2020, which raised $200 million from Yutong Group, the largest-ever investment in autonomous driving made by a Chinese automaker. In the meantime, WeRide announced the beginning of its Series C financing round. Founded in Dec. 2017, WeRide engages in developing Level 4 autonomous driving technologies. It is now the only autonomous driving company to gain strategic investment from leading automakers of both commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles (the RenaultNissanMitsubishi Alliance). Leveraging its strategic partnership with major OEMs and mobility service providers, WeRide became the first autonomous driving company in China to roll out a publicly accessible Robotaxi service. In July 2020, it was granted Chinas first driverless (without safety operators) testing permit. In 2021, more brilliant investors and partners will join our autonomous driving business and bring us strategic industrial and urban resources. We will step up our efforts to improve the stability and safety of autonomous driving technologies and make the operation of autonomous cars more compliant with laws and regulations, so as to offer industry and citizens independent and controllable self-driving technologies and products, said Han Xu, founder and CEO of WeRide. 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. Just 10 Republicans voted not to defend the indefensible. Donald Trump has become the first and only President to be impeached twice, but most of his enabling party refused to make him pay for inciting violent insurrection. The few GOP House members who did vote to impeach braved personal abuse and attacks from colleagues, and they risk losing top party posts and stirring primary campaigns the next time they seek reelection. The House debate before Wednesday's vote was a festival of hypocrisy, false moral equivalence and open lying as Trump's supporters denied reality in his defense. Some who had spent months pretending that Joe Biden hadn't won a free and fair election accused Democrats of fracturing national unity. Others warned that impeachment could spark violence, effectively validating the intimidation tactics of last week's mob. Several Republicans allowed that Trump was at fault but argued the impeachment was too rushed on principle; more painted the process as the act of left-wing Trump-haters desperate to "cancel" him in a fit of political corrrectness. Now Trump's fate is in the hands of the Senate and more directly in those of another longtime enabler, Mitch McConnell. The Republican majority leader has finally broken with Trump by signaling he might vote to convict in an eventual Senate trial. If he does, other Republicans might join him to construct the two-thirds majority needed to convict. By then, Trump would be an ex-president -- but he could be barred from running for office ever again. It's a long shot. But Wednesday's unique second impeachment vote already ensures that for as long as the American republic survives, Trump's name will be accompanied by a historic stain. 'Clueless what any of this means internationally or historically' While the impeachment vote was going on, one senior Trump adviser told CNN's Jim Acosta that the outgoing President had yet to grasp the magnitude of the damage being done to his standing in American history and the nation's place on the world stage. The President is "clueless what any of this means internationally or historically," the adviser said. But he does worry about the potential effect on his business and "long-term brand." Mission accomplished Nice work, Mr. Putin. According to a US intelligence community report, Russia's chief goal in interfering in the 2016 election in support of Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton was to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process." Four years on, there have been two impeachments and an insurrection against the US legislature. Millions believe Trump's lies that he was illegally ejected from power, and doubt Biden's legitimacy. Conspiracy theorists have seats in Congress. There are serious questions about whether one of the country's great political parties is now anti-democratic. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in a federal system that grants vast power to the states. And America's self-appointed role as an exceptional nation and beacon of democracy is in the gutter. Most of the disorienting events of the last few years can be blamed directly on Trump and his particular skill at tearing at the social, racial and political divides that are just below the nation's surface. So the ex-KGB man in the Kremlin hardly deserves all the credit. But Russia, China and other autocratic nations are gaining much from Washington's agony. They're already using it to promote their own closed and totalitarian societies as models of comparative order and efficiency -- and to beat back brave local voices calling for democracy and human rights. In an effective declaration of victory for Russia's espionage offensive against the US more than four years ago, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, slid home the knife. "Following the events that unfolded after the presidential elections, it is meaningless to refer to America as the example of democracy," he said. "We are on the verge of reevaluating the standards that are being promoted by the United States of America, that is exporting its vision of democracy and political systems around the world. Those in our country who love to cite their example as leading will also have to reconsider their views." 'You have seen what rioting is in Washington' On the eve of Uganda's elections, longtime President Yoweri Museveni told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that he had every right to a sixth term -- and that protesters supporting rival candidate Bobi Wine were equivalent to the anti-democratic rioters seen in Washington last week. L&T Infotech | The company to expand its multi-year, global alliance with IBM to help businesses transform their operations through open hybrid cloud adoption. The equity markets continued its upward journey in December with benchmark indices hitting fresh record highs driven by consistent Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) inflow. Among emerging markets, Indian equities received the highest inflow (over Rs 1.6 lakh crore) from foreign investors in 2020. However, mutual funds continued to book profits as they were net sellers for the sixth consecutive month in December. Equity and equity-oriented schemes witnessed net outflow at Rs 10,147 crore in December, taking the total cumulative outflow Rs 33,057 crore in second half of CY 2020. "Investors in mutual funds have been using this market rally as an opportunity to book profits and therefore the industry has witnessed absolute redemptions of Rs 36,000 crore (Rs 26,000 crore for November 2020). Adjusted for inflows the net negative sales is about Rs 10,000 crore," Akhil Chaturvedi, Associate Director & Head of Sales at Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company said. "Re-allocation of large part of these redemptions would be in direct equities where the experience of investors have been good in recent past. This along with the demand for IPOs and real estate would also have sucked up the liquidity," he added. Mutual funds completely exited 21 stocks in the month of December including seven gold exchange traded funds (ETFs). These include Axis Gold ETF, Birla Sun Life Gold ETF - Growth, HDFC Gold Exchange Traded Fund, Kotak Gold Exchange Traded Fund, SBI Gold Exchange Traded Scheme - Growth and UTI Mutual Fund - UTI Gold Exchange Traded Fund were the seven ETFs. Interesting, November saw fresh buying from MFs in six of the aforementioned seven ETFs - Axis Gold ETF, Birla Sun Life Gold ETF, HDFC Gold ETF, Kotak Gold ETF, SBI Gold ETF and UTI Gold ETF. Among stocks, MFs completely exited ADF Foods, Balaji Telefilms, Bodal Chemicals, Infibeam Avenues, Jindal Drilling & Industries, Kirloskar Industries, Mahindra EPC Irrigation, PC Jeweller and Parag Milk Foods, said Dolat Capital. Meanwhile, mutual funds made a fresh entry into eight stocks during December. These include Antony Waste Handling Cell, Borosil Renewables, Burger King India, Fineotex Chemical, Mrs Bectors Foods Specialities, Responsive Industries, Tanla Platforms and Xelpmoc Design. Antony Waste Handling Cell, Burger King India, Fineotex Chemical and Mrs Bectors Foods Specialities had launched their IPOs in December last year. In December, all the equity & equity-oriented mutual funds except dividend yield funds and sectoral funds witnessed outflows. Largecap funds witnessed the highest redemption at Rs 3,876 crore followed by multicap funds at Rs 3,540 crore. "Multicap have continued seeing net outflows in the past couple of months owing to change in SEBI guidelines for the category. The newly added category of Flexi Cap will help in easing the outflows as investors will have a beer understanding of the category now," said Narnolia Financial Services. But the contribution through Systematic Investment Plans has risen sharply in December last year at Rs 8,418 crore, compared to Rs 7,302 crore inflow in the previous month. In the Nifty50 space, highest buying by mutual funds was seen in Axis Bank, Bajaj Finserv, Eicher Motors, Grasim Industries, IndusInd Bank, Sun Pharma, TCS and Tech Mahindra, said Dolat Capital. On the other hand, highest-selling by MFs was seen in Adani Ports, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, BPCL, Cipla, Coal India, GAIL, HDFC Bank, HDFC Life and Titan Company, the brokerage added. The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on Moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. ROME, JAN 15 - Almost all of Italy is set to be an 'orange zone' under the terms of a new government decree that revises the parameters used for Italy's tiered system of restrictions based on each region's risk of COVID-19 contagion. Lombardy, the region hit hardest by the first wave of the coronavirus, and Sicily are expected to be classed as red zones as of Sunday. Under the tiered system, in high-risk red zones all restaurants and bars are closed, except for takeaways and home deliveries, and all non-essential shops are closed too. In medium-high risk orange zones, shops can do business but restaurants and bars must stay closed. In moderate risk yellow zones, shops are open and so are bars and restaurants until 6pm. The category each region is classed in depends on the data from the health ministry's weekly monitoring report on the coronavirus, usually released on Friday. The new decree maintains a nationwide curfew from 10pm until 5am. It also keeps a ban on travel between regions, except for work or health reasons and other situations of absolute need, that was imposed before the Christmas holidays. The ban will run until February 15. (ANSA). The province is seeking proposals from community-based organizations seeking to support victims of crime particularly Indigenous women, girls and LGBTTQ+ people as part of a new funding package. The province is seeking proposals from community-based organizations seeking to support victims of crime particularly Indigenous women, girls and LGBTTQ+ people as part of a new funding package. In a news release Thursday, Manitoba Justice Minister Cameron Friesen announced $5.6 million to be dedicated to projects addressing "diverse needs." "The needs of victims are diverse and far-reaching, and agencies working on the front lines delivering services are in an advantageous position to develop programming to support these individuals," said Friesen. "This call for proposals will put funding and support in the hands of those who need it most." To be approved for funding, projects must either come from Indigenous-led agencies working to address violence against Indigenous women, girls and LGBTTQ+ people, or from community-based organizations supporting victims of crime, including proposals for new work with victims of gender-based violence or in response to National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls recommendations. "I think that on the surface I like what I see, in respect of it seems to be very tailored or acknowledged MMIWG and the need to look at the calls to action and put those measures in place for victims, particularly MMIWG families, so Im pleased about that," Opposition NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine said in an interview Thursday. Still, Fontaine said shes concerned the funding will be a "one-time pot of dollars," instead of an ongoing commitment. She has been working with some MMIWG families for more than two decades. "When youre working with victims of crime, you cant start some type of programming and then just abruptly end it," Fontaine said. "The advocacy and the need is ongoing." The funding is drawn from reallocated surplus from the Victims Assistance Fund, the province said. It remains unclear whether the funds will continue being allocated in future years. Applications are due Feb. 1 and Feb. 15. The province is hoping the new projects will provide victims access to community-based supports that are culturally-based and trauma-informed, including counselling and healing, legal information, crisis services, peer support and advocacy. New projects are intended to integrate with the provinces recently developed Framework to Address Gender-based Violence released in December 2020. Fontaine noted the criteria seems "broad and general." She expressed concern projects that could provide "transformative" support may be overlooked if the selection committee is not comprised of people in the Indigenous community or the communities affected by the ongoing violence against Indigenous women and girls. julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @jsrutgers Authorities have roundly rejected reports two travellers with the UK strain of coronavirus breached hotel quarantine in Brisbane, saying the man was taken to hospital for treatment and his daughter went with him because he did not speak English well. A News Corp report on Thursday evening suggested the pair had been taken without proper PPE to hospital from hotel quarantine at the Hotel Grand Chancellor on January 11, with suggestions the woman then returned in a taxi or rideshare instead of an ambulance. A line of ambulances wait to carry people from the Hotel Grand Chancellor to the site of their extended hotel quarantine stay after concerns about a cluster of the UK COVID-19 strain on the seventh floor. Credit:Matt Dennien Queensland Health released a statement following the report rejecting several key elements, and Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll gave further details on Friday morning. "I can tell you, from extensive independent inquiries, the daughter was wearing full PPE [personal protective equipment] at all times, Ms Carroll said. Rupert Murdoch's son James has condemned American media outlets for unleashing "profound damage" on the United States and being complicit in the events that led to the pro-Trump insurgency in Washington earlier this month. The junior Murdoch, who left his father's News Corporation last year citing disagreements over editorial content, said the storming of the Capitol was "proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very, very much so". In more united times: Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch in California in 2014. Credit:Invision "Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years," he told London's Financial Times newspaper. "I hope that those people who didn't think it was that dangerous now understand, and that they stop." He did not directly mention News Corporation or Fox News, the company's vociferous cable news channel now run by brother Lachlan Murdoch as chief executive and executive chairman. Lucknow, Jan 15 : UPCC president Ajay Kumar Lallu and several Congress workers were detained on Friday as they attempted to march towards Raj Bhawan to observe 'Kisan Adhikar Diwas'. Lallu and his supporters were detained near his house. The Congress had announced that it would observe Kisan Adhikar Diwas on Friday and gherao the Raj Bhawan in protest against the farm laws. Scuffles between Congress workers and the police were reported from other places as well as party workers attempted to reach Raj Bhawan. Talking to reporters, the UPCC chief said that the Yogi Adityanath government was infringing on their democratic rights to hold a peaceful protest. "The Congress will continue its fight against this kind of oppression," he said. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Three House members are sponsoring legislation recommending the Congressional Gold Medal for U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who fought against an angry mob and eventually lured it upstairs and away from the unprotected Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. "When Officer Eugene Goodman was the only thing standing between Members of Congress & the mob, he selflessly redirected their fury on himself so they could escape," Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., one of the co-sponsors of the bill, said Thursday on Twitter. "I urge he be honored w/ the Congressional Gold Medal," the highest award that can be bestowed by the House and Senate, said Mace, who sponsored the bill with Reps. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., and Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. Read Next: Former Sailor-Turned-'QAnon Shaman' Wants Pardon from Trump After Capitol Siege "I shudder to think what might have happened had it not been for Officer Goodman's fast thinking and commitment to his duty and his country," Crist said in a statement. Cleaver added, "In moments of crisis, there are always individuals who rise to the occasion and put themselves in harm's way in defense of others. On January 6, 2021, one of those individuals was Officer Eugene Goodman." Video of the incident taken by Igor Bobic, a HuffPost reporter, showed Goodman, an Army veteran of Iraq, alternately swiping at rioters with his baton while luring them up the stairs to the third floor. He then appeared to beckon them away from where they could get easy entry to the Senate chamber, getting them to follow him to another section of the corridor where they could be confronted by other officers. The Washington Post cited a close friend of Goodman's, who asked not to be identified, as noting his cool demeanor under pressure. "I've always said, if bullets start ripping through, I'm finding Goodman," the friend said. "He's been in hostile firefights, so he knows how to keep his head." The Army's XVII Airborne Corps had a similar opinion, stating that Goodman "is rightfully being hailed as a hero after single-handedly holding back rioters from entering the Senate chambers last week." "An Iraq combat vet and member of this Corps, Eugene was a hero long before last Wednesday. We celebrate his valor," the XVIII Corps said in a statement. Goodman left the Army in 2006 after serving four years as an infantryman, Lt. Col. Gabriel Ramirez, an Army spokesman, told Military.com's Gina Harkins. He deployed to Iraq with 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), from 2005 to 2006,"Ramirez said. His awards include the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal and Army Good Conduct Medal. Previous recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal include Winston Churchill, Gen. Colin Powell, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Nelson Mandela, Bob Dole, the Dalai Lama and Merrill's Marauders 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional). -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Related: Capitol Police Officer Who Led Mob Away from Senate Chambers Is an Army Iraq War Vet International travelers to Cancun can utilize faster, less expensive antigen tests to meet new U.S. travel requirements Riviera Maya, Q.R. UPDATED: Since publication, the CDC has changed their wording to now read that a second test 3 to 5 days after arriving in the United States and the 7 to 10-day post travel stay-at-home quarantine period is now a health recommendation and not mandatory. The update was made by the CDC on January 21. Original Article: While not much can be done to help travelers with their mandatory quarantine after vacation, a form of faster (and less expensive) Covid testing can. Governor Carlos Joaquin Gonzalez says that since the United States will accept antigen tests, not only PCR tests, tourists can utilize them while vacationing in the state. The problem we face with the PCR tests is that each one costs about $150, the result takes 24 to 72 hours, the laboratories to perform them here are scarce, and there is not enough for the tourists we receive, explained Joaquin. In the case of antigen tests, we are talking about a cost of 150 pesos and the results are obtained practically immediately. His concern was addressed after the U.S. joined other countries, requiring a negative Covid-19 test before boarding a plane and reentering the country. He says antigen tests, which will be accepted, are just as efficient as PCR but with advantages in cost and speed to obtain the result. Antigen tests cost less and yield results in about 15 minutes We are already in contact with laboratories to facilitate its application among tourists, he said during an interview with Radio Formula. He also said that the beginning stages of the vaccine program against Covid-19 is the first step toward a new normal. Carlos Joaquin stated that, unlike Mexico City where the number of infections soared, in the case of Quintana Roo, figures remains low, and although not alarming, there has been a slow increase in infections. According to the CDC, the FDA has authorized laboratory-based antigen tests, which can be used at the point of care. Most of the currently authorized tests return results in approximately 15 minutes. On January 12, the CDC announced that all travelers into the United States will be required to provide a negative Covid-19 test before and after arrival along with a mandatory 7-day isolation period. The CDC says the new travel measures will be put into force January 26. Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. New claims for state unemployment benefits sharply increased last week as the resurgent pandemic continued to batter the economy. A total of 1.15 million workers filed initial claims for state unemployment benefits during the first full week of the new year, the Labor Department said. Another 284,000 claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, an emergency federal program for freelancers, part-time workers and others normally ineligible for state jobless benefits. Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 965,000. It was the first week since July in which the unadjusted number of new state claims exceeded one million. Before the pandemic, weekly filings typically totaled around 200,000. Economists had been bracing for a fresh wave of claims as the virus battered the service industry. The government reported last week that the economy shed 140,000 jobs in December, the first drop in employment since last spring, with restaurants, bars and hotels recording steep losses. Pope Francis, Benedict XVI get COVID-19 vaccine Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI have both received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a spokesperson for the Vatican. The vaccination program at Vatican City began on Wednesday, with the current head of the Roman Catholic Church and his predecessor getting the shot. I can confirm that as part of the vaccination program of the Vatican City State, as of today, the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine has been administered to Pope Francis and to the Pope Emeritus, stated Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, as reported by Vatican News. In comments made earlier this week, Francis had explained that he planned to take the vaccine, stating that it was an ethical action, because you are gambling with your health, you are gambling with your life, but you are also gambling with the lives of others, reported Vatican News. After a vaccine was developed for the coronavirus, some pro-life groups and others expressed concern over how aborted fetal cells were used in its development. The AstraZeneca vaccine was developed partly through growing a modified virus in cells taken from embryonic kidney tissue derived from an abortion performed decades ago; while aborted tissue was not part of the vaccine, it was used for testing it. The Moderna vaccine was developed via the HEK-293T cell line, which were indirect descendants of aborted fetal cells derived from a baby aborted in the Netherlands in the 1970s. These facts led some pro-life organizations, like Georgia Right to Life, to denounce the vaccine and urge their supporters to refrain from taking it. "The production and testing of vaccines using the remains of aborted human beings, regardless of manner of conception, is morally wrong and must be opposed. GRTL strongly urges the rejection of such vaccines," the group stated. For its part, the Vatican had issued a statement last month explaining that it was morally acceptable for Catholics to take the vaccine, despite some concern over its origins. A statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved by Pope Francis said that all vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certain knowledge that the use of such vaccines does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells used in production of the vaccines derive. It is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process, stated the CDF. Some Christian ethicists have also made the case for taking the vaccine, arguing that the vaccines were not the cause of any new abortions. An individual is not formally cooperating with a moral evil when using a vaccine developed thanks to an abortion, Matthew Arbo, C. Ben Mitchell and Andrew T. Walker stated. "The cell lines involved in developing and confirming the viability of COVID-19 vaccines were used as a result of previous abortions." Xiaomi, also known as Apple of China, has been blacklisted by the Trump administration in the United States. Along with Xiaomi, eight other companies have also been banned. With Huawei out of the States, the Trump administration has set its eyes on the second-biggest Chinese giant in the USA. Xiaomi, along with eight other companies, was added to the list of companies having ties with the Chinese military. US government passed an order back in November 2020 that bars American securities and investment companies from investing in companies linked with the Chinese military. Other firms targeted under the ban include Luokong Technology Corp, Gowin Semiconductor Corp, Global Tone Communication Technology Co., and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. Following the ban, US investors are barred from putting in the capital in the banned companies, and will also have to pull out the existing money from the company. Its only a week until Joe Biden takes over the White House, and some experts believe the move to be overturned. Xiaomi currently sells only accessories, including Smart TV stick, air purifiers, and security cameras in the States. The company was earlier tipped to enter the smartphone market in the United States way back in 2015, but were still wondering if well see that day. With the ban in place, it looks like the day is still far. Its not the first time the US government putting a ban on Chinese companies. It has, as we all know, put Huawei under a ban for some time, and even DJI was blacklisted a while back. On 31st December 2020, Apple also removed over 85,000 apps and games from the App Store in China. The move wasnt political, though, it was due to app developers and publishers not complying with the regulations of the Chinese government. We Want to Hear From You What are your thoughts on the Trump administration blacklisting Xiaomi? Do you think the move is justified? Or do think theres something else going on behind the scenes? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below! White House opens AI Initiative Office On Jan. 12, the White Houses Office of Science and Technology Policy launched the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office. This new OSTP office is charged with overseeing and implementing a national AI strategy and serving as the central hub for federal AI research and policymaking across government, the private sector, academia, nonprofits and state governments. The office is also responsible for conducting regular public outreach, such as conferences and educational events, maintaining a website featuring the initiatives activities and promoting access to and early adoption of the technologies, innovations, lessons learned, and expertise derived from Initiative activities to federal agencies, industries and startups, according to the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020, which called for the creation of the office. Lynne Parker, assistant director of artificial intelligence at OSTP, will serve as the offices founding director. The National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office will be integral to the Federal governments AI efforts for many years to come, serving as a central hub for national AI research and policy for the entire U.S. innovation ecosystem, U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios said in a statement provided to the media. The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by white police officers last year sparked protests and examinations of racial injustice and inequities across the country. Individuals and businesses responded by vowing to better support communities of color. Experts on the topic of diversity in the insurance industry say there hasnt been enough done to attract or retain talent from the Black community as insurance continues to be a predominantly white workforce and discussed how to bridge the gap in an Insurance Journal webinar this summer, How the Insurance industry Can Be An Active Ally to the Black Community. In a wide ranging and frank discussion, panelists Mernice Oliver of Mernice Oliver International and founder of the National Association for Advancement of Women in Insurance (NAAWI); Nina Boone, North American leader for Diversity & Inclusion at Korn Ferry and the former U.S. Chair of Aons Diversity & Inclusion Board; and American Familys Tyler Whipple, former director of Diversity & Inclusion for the company and now chief of staff, said the insurance industry has done itself a disservice by not bringing in more people of color or elevating those already in its ranks. They hope the current attention on this issue will be a tipping point for the industry. This is not going to blow over this time and it shouldnt blow over. This is a war on talent there is such talent out there, said Boone. The number of people that are retiring in the next four years, the industry wont be able to stand up if they dont look at all of the talent that is available to them. Boone left Aon in 2019 after eight years to lead business development for Korn Ferrys diversity and inclusion and board practices, specifically working with underrepresented talent. She said clients are recognizing they have work to do on this issue. Were having more conversations than ever and this is why because they are now accountable to their employee base, their customer base and their investor base the world has changed, she said. Labor Data But getting to this point hasnt been easy for people of color in the industry, panelists said, and there is still a long way to go based on 2016 insurance workforce data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed African Americans made up just 11.9% of the industry. Standard & Poors reported that number had increased slightly to 12.4% in 2019. A 2018 study from the Independent Insurance Agents found only 2% of established agencies have at least one African American principal. About 4% of independent agencies have an African American principal or senior manager, compared with 88% of those with white agency leadership. A 2018 report by Marsh that included participation from members of the National African American Insurance Association said 70% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that there are greater obstacles for African Americans in the insurance industry compared with other minorities. Respondents said the key barriers to entry into the insurance business were lack of exposure, lack of networks, lack of experience, racial bias, lack of educational preparation and gender bias. They said race was also a factor in hiring, promotions, new assignments and if Black insurance professionals were included in events, key meetings, or opportunities with customers. In recalling her own experiences as a Black insurance professional, former agent Oliver, who now runs an insurance agency consultancy business and NAAWI, both of which are focused on developing women of color in the industry, said early on in her career she had to embrace being comfortable with being uncomfortable. There were often times, quite honestly, that yes, I felt isolated and perhaps excluded from advancement opportunities and decision-making scenarios, said Oliver. Honestly, as a black leader in the insurance industry, I do believe it was harder for me to advance as opposed to my white counterparts. Friends and Family Boone said one of the biggest reasons the industry has struggled with diversity boils down to friends and family. When you just bring the people that you know in, when you dont open it up, when you dont actively look for those candidates, then youre never going to move anyone forward, she said. As long as you continue with the friends and family network, insurance will never look any different. While at Aon, Boone worked with a team to diversify the companys internship program and recalled the biggest hurdle was employees and clients expecting their children to be part of it. She said she was taken aback when she went to do a presentation to the interns and walked into a room of 42 young white men, leading her to wonder if employees had any daughters. How is it that any industry, and the insurance industry were talking about today, only wants to interview and look at a small corner of the population when it comes to talent that needs to be brought in for innovation into an industry that is incredibly old school and needs revamping, she said. Aon created an inclusive process that involved actively seeking out diverse candidates and forming a diverse interview team. We all agreed on how we were going to work that process and chose the best talent, she said. Business Results Whipple has worked at American Family Insurance Co. for 17 years, and during this time, he rose from an underwriting manager to director of Diversity & Inclusion to vice president of Inclusive Excellence and now serves as chief of staff. Whipple said he recognized several years ago that although the company was focused on diversity and inclusion, he didnt see a lot of people like myself in senior roles or in the product development space. Whipple says there is a tie between diversity, equity, and inclusion, not just to social good, but also for great business results. Over the years, Whipple has worked with company leadership to accelerate its diversity and inclusion efforts. Now, American Family is recognized as a leader in this space, with the opening of the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact in 2018 and the signing of the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion Pledge as part of its commitment to bringing societal and corporate change, among other initiatives. Both Whipple and American Family CEO Jack Salzwedel have been outspoken on the need for big companies to address systemic racism, support minority communities and hire diverse talent. The company has made increasing the diversity of its workforce part of its strategic goals and continuously works to foster an inclusive culture. Now were focused on not just the internal workings of the organization but how do we breed whats going on externally in society with whats going in our organization and how do we do good on both sides, Whipple said. American Family leadership also recognizes that fostering talent in an organization and bringing it into product development and its leadership team helps the company expand its customer base and grow, Whipple added. He said other companies are starting to understand how a lack of diversity impacts the top line/bottom line. I do believe that as an industry, were starting to see this similarly to how consumer product organizations see this, where youve got to have a connection with your current and future customer, and current customers are likely on the decline, he said. I think theres a recognition there. My question is how quickly will we as an industry accelerate the pace of change in order to get ahead of the curve? Industry Barriers There are companies in the insurance industry spending money and time to develop people of color, Boone said, particularly women, but they dont follow through on advancing them in the organization or putting them into leadership roles. Its an abusive relationship where were being developed and were being promised things and it never materializes because what happens is someone who is less qualified, has never had any development or anything ends up soaring right ahead, she said. Boone said these undervalued employees then leave for other organizations or, in the case of Black women, become entrepreneurs and start their own businesses. Black women are the number one entrepreneur group in the country. This is not a coincidence. This is because they cannot get anywhere in their current organization and these are women who it takes them three times as long to raise capital and yet they do it; theyre more likely to never succeed and yet they do. Isnt that someone you want on your leadership team? she said. That development and advancement needs to happen, and we need to be really real about that. In Olivers case, she left the insurance agency workforce in 2011 because of the limited opportunities available to her. She realized she would have to build her own roadmap because she did not believe and was pretty much told she would not be afforded the same opportunities as her white peers. Her experience led her to found NAAWI because there were no insurance organizations helping minority women reach leadership positions. While many companies talk about the need for diversity and inclusion, and state they are committed to doing more, Oliver said its ultimately not happening. I really believe its because its uncomfortable and its inconvenient. It takes time and focus to really be serious about helping women of color, LGBTQ, [the] marginalized smaller groups of people, to help them advance. It just requires resources and time, which I believe quite frankly, companies just dont want to do it, she said. The industry has also struggled, Whipple said, in branding itself and attracting young people of color who he said are trendsetters in a lot of ways. And it isnt great at doing outreach to communities of color, he said, noting the huge financial literacy gap between them and white communities. I think as an industry, we do a really good job of writing checks to communities and letting communities determine where those checks should go, Whipple said. But if I look at the areas where we can make an impact in the community that also translates into how we grow our industry, Im not sure weve closed that delta very well as an industry. I dont think were doing as much as we can, although candidly, were doing more than we were a decade ago. American Family has taken an equity approach at not just how it hires and attracts talent, Whipple said, but also how it develops, prices and sells its products. That includes understanding how larger systemic social issues like credit ratings or past criminal history can impact communities of color and what they pay for insurance. We try to look at this holistically in terms of how we source talent, how we underwrite customers, how we price customers, from an equity lens, he said. Oliver said agents like herself have worked to educate communities of color about insurance, but there has been an overall failure at the company level to show up for these marginalized groups, other than with financial donations. Having more people of color as part of the agency sales force would absolutely make a difference in addressing the education gap in black communities, who are now sorely underrepresented, she said. Where from Here? The insurance industrys support of communities of color must go beyond making financial contributions, Boone said. That is wonderful and I do not want to diminish that at all, but let me tell you open your door to advancing us so that all of a sudden we can live in communities where our children are safe. We can live in communities where schools are terrific. We can live in communities where we dont pay as much for our insurance, she said. As long as you dont live those values inside your organization that you purport to believe in so heavily with your finances outside the organization, well never see the progress that we really want to see. She challenged companies to examine their purported values and commitment to diversity and inclusion, and then actually find out from the people of color in the organization if they are measuring up. And if youre not, make a commitment to measure up, because I think everyones made those statements, everyone has great values and missions, she said. If youre not truly living that then make those changes and that commitment to. Whipple acknowledged it can be tough for white company leaders to ask people of color in their organization what they need, but emphasized people of color walk into rooms full of white people every day and say, What do you need? He said it requires people to summon a little courage and get the conversation started and make sure this conversation doesnt end. When you step into things like systemic racism and white privilege, thats a level of risk but I think folks have to accept that risk in order to really make change start somewhere, he said. Everybody thinks you have to have it perfect to start just start. Its a target rich environment. You can find a number of places to get involved but you just got to start. Change can only happen when industry leaders begin the dialogue, Oliver said, gain foundational knowledge of systems of oppression, and acknowledge the inequalities inside of our organizational structures. Yes, it is uncomfortable, she said, but we have to just get started somewhere and have those difficult conversations, allow ourselves to be inconvenienced but include those of us who have experienced it every day. If you are truly serious about change, then I think its necessary that we do it now rather than later, she said. The time has come for the industry to step up, Boone said, and the good news is many appear to be committed to doing the hard work. This is truly about execution now. There are no more excuses. No ones going to look away and your talent and your organization will suffer if you really dont start executing on opening up opportunities, educating and training and developing and then continuing that career path post-development and give people opportunities, Boone said. My hope is that in 10 years, the industry even up at the top looks tremendously different than it does today. Watch the Webinar: How the Insurance Industry Can Be an Active Ally to the Black Community Topics Market Diversity Ida B. Wells-Barnett was accomplished and well-known. She was a superb writer and lecturer. And she had a great impact, historically speaking. Those are some of the words students, parents and alumni wrote in support of the likely new namesake for Southwest Portlands Woodrow Wilson High School. The committee tasked with proposing the name said in a letter to families that Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero greenlit their pick, one of five trailblazing Black women the panel had chosen as finalists. The panel will present its choice Jan. 26 to the school board, which must approve the choice for it to take effect. Read the renaming commissions full letter HERE Students and alumni have long pushed for Portland Public Schools to rename the building. Those calls grew louder over the summer as the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis spurred protests against systemic racism and police brutality for more than 100 consecutive days in Portland and across the country. As a journalist more than 100 years ago, Wells-Barnett did pioneering work to expose the false justifications many white officials put forth for the lynchings of Black men in her day. She is best known by her maiden name and byline, Ida B. Wells. In July, Wilson High Principal Filip Hristic announced the building would be given a new namesake. The 28th President of the United States was long criticized by the school community for his support of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation of federal offices. In addition to her work as an investigative journalist, Wells-Barnett was also co-founder of the NAACP. Despite racism in the womens suffrage movement, she worked to get all women including Black women the right to vote. The summer of activism also prompted families in Northeast Portland to call for the renaming of James Madison High. Much of the building is under construction and it will open with a new namesake in the fall of 2021. --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. 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. 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. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close A former beauty pageant winner from Guinea has taken a Swiss skin-care product company to court for allegedly ruined her once healthy complexion and ruining her modelling career. 25-year-old Mariama Diallo, who previously won Miss Guinea, Miss West Africa and participated in the Miss World pageant, had a successful modelling career until three years ago, when trying a new skincare product left her face full of blemishes and scars. She has been struggling to find work since 2018, as the healing process has been very slow and no company would hire her. Diallo has now taken the manufacturer of the product she claims ruined her career to court. Photo: Anastasiia Ostapovych/Unsplash Nobody would hire me with that face, Mariama recently told The New York Post. It was depressing. I couldnt go out during the day I didnt want anybody looking at me. I didnt even tell my mom because I didnt want her to see me like that. I distanced myself from everyone. Diallos nightmare began in January 2018, when, after moving to Manhattan, she lost access to her usual French skincare product line. She instead turned to Makari De Suisse, a Swiss brand she assumed had reliable products. Only the new skincare products caused severe acne on her face, which prompted her to contact the company. Mariama claims that she was sent a product meant to correct the issues, which only made things a lot worse, leaving her face covered in scars and blemishes. Mariama Diallo, who used to model for big brands like Nike and Calvin Klein, claims she was left unable, with her agent telling her to clear up her skin before applying for new contracts. Only she has been struggling to do that for three years now, and she still has a long way to go. Now the model and her lawyer are asking Makari De Suisse to pay damages for shortening her lucrative modelling career and causing serious financial losses. Somebody at the top of her game could make millions of dollars. She should have been able to make a lot of money these past several years, the 25-year-olds lawyer, Yoram Nachimovsky, told The Post. Diallo has lost business as a result of the injuries caused to her by the defendants products and as well as potential profit; and her career as a top model has been shortened and she has been unable to apply for jobs as a result of the damages to her face, Nachimovsky argued in the court papers. Mariama is now working with a dermatologist to correct the damage to her complexion, but medication has only partially helped. She now plans to try chemical peel, to speed up the process, but that can get very expensive. She now wants Makari De Suisse to pay for the trouble thy have caused her, but also to raise awareness to their products, so others dont go through the same ordeal she has. I want to bring awareness to their products, if they can do this to other people, they may need to revise their products, she said. Mumbai, Jan 15 : Senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)leader Eknath Khadse went to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning in a Pune MIDC land deal case, official sources said here on Friday. Khadse, who has just recovered from Covid-19, arrived at the ED office in south Mumbai, nearly three weeks after he was first summoned in the alleged land-grab case. Last month, a team of ED had gone to Pune to scrutinize evidences and gather documents pertaining to the alleged irregularities in the deal, which forced Khadse to quit as minister in the erstwhile BJP-led government in 2016. Subsequently, the ED recorded the statement of the whistle-blower activist Anjali Damania in the matter in which she had moved the court. Damania had also submitted documents and other evidences concerning the land deal which the State Anti Corruption Bureau had probed, given a clean chit to Khadse and later closed the case. On his part, Khadse, 68 - who quit the BJP to join the NCP last October - has claimed innocence and said the entire transaction was absolutely transparent, and without any kind of irregularities. A man has been arrested at his home in Sydney's north and charged with indecent exposure, bestiality and the possession of child abuse material as part of a federal police investigation into an online paedophile network. The Australian Federal Police removed one animal from harm when they attended the house of Ohrin Banas in Lane Cove on Thursday. They also seized a mobile phone that allegedly contained child-sex abuse material. Australian Federal Police have arrested Ohrin Banas, of Lane Cove, on child-sex and bestiality charges. Credit:Australian Federal Police The charges are the latest to be laid in the federal police's investigation into an online network of alleged child-sex offenders, first detected early last year. The operation has used evidence from the arrest of a Central Coast man last February to track down others who have allegedly taken part in producing and sharing child abuse material on social media. Two million dead. It is more people than call the state of Nebraska home and about equal to the population of Slovenia. It is roughly as many people who are estimated to have died in the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. And it is more than the total number killed in the decades of Soviet and U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan combined. The global death toll from the coronavirus soared past the two million mark on Friday, just over a year after the virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. In addition, there have been almost 500,000 unexpected deaths globally over the past year, a review of mortality data in 35 countries shows providing a clearer, if still incomplete, picture of the toll of the crisis. Far more people died in most of these countries than in previous years, The New York Times found. And the carnage is spreading faster now than at any other time in the pandemic. It took more than nine months for the world to pass one million deaths in late September, a moment that the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, called mind-numbing and an agonizing milestone. In just a little over three months, the virus has claimed another one million lives. Yallingup surfing great Taj Burrow has bought a rural block in the stunning South West for $1 million. The 4.5 hectare getaway inland from the Yallingup coastline is a short drive from Dunsborough and the many surf spots in the region. Former pro surfer Taj Burrow has bought a 4.5 hectare rural getaway in Yallingup. Credit:JHY Realty Burrow got a hold of the picturesque property through Jhye Realty,. It has a small dam and a large shed that has been converted into accommodation. The shed has an open-plan living area, wood fireplace and a water tank. FARMINGTON, Mich., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kevin Hirzel, Managing Member of Hirzel Law, PLC, released "Hirzel's Handbook: How to operate a Michigan Condo or HOA" to serve as an educational resource for board members and property managers. Kevin Hirzel focuses his practice on condominium law, HOA law, litigation, and real estate law. Mr. Hirzel is a fellow in the College of Community Associations Lawyers ("CCAL"), a prestigious designation given to less than 175 attorneys in the country. He also serves as a Trustee on the Community Association Institute's national board, a member of the CCAL Board of Governors and is the Co-Chairman of the State Bar of Michigan's Real Property Law Section Committee for Condominiums, PUDs & Cooperatives "Education is key to successfully operating a community association," said Hirzel. "Unfortunately, many volunteer directors that sit on community association boards do not receive any formal training for their positions." Accordingly, the eBook will provide volunteer board members and property managers with the tips and best practices they need to successfully operate a community association. Hirzel's Handbook will help community associations better understand the following: Basic principles of association operations Handling the transition from developer to owner control How to effectively enforce the governing documents Strategies for collecting delinquent assessments Identifying "red flags" that require the governing documents to be amended "Hirzel Law, PLC is excited to be releasing its first eBook on Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing," said Hirzel. "Hirzel Law, PLC wants to assist condominium and homeowners associations through Michigan, by giving board members the information needed to successfully operate their associations." Hirzel's Handbook is available today, and you can purchase your copy for $9.99 by visiting Kindle Direct Publishing or by visiting hirzellaw.com. Hirzel Law, PLC is an award-winning law firm with offices in Farmington and Traverse City, Michigan that represents condominium associations, homeowners associations, and summer resorts. The firm also represents individual and corporate clients in various condominium, HOA, and real estate matters. Elizabeth Kebler (248) 478-1800 [email protected] SOURCE Hirzel Law Related Links www.hirzellaw.com At the same time, during Coomes five years as an executive in Napa, the Queens then-parent company, St. Joseph Health, merged with Providence Health & Services, becoming part of a much bigger organization. Coomes noted that under his watch the hospital achieved many designations and accreditations, was ranked in the Top 250 hospitals in America two years in a row, received A ratings and made significant improvement across all aspects of clinical quality, patient care, and operational excellence, Coomes said in an email. The Queen also opened an urgent care center, located in the River Park Shopping Center. I am so proud of everything we have accomplished (and) I will leave you knowing that the Queen is a better place thanks to the incredible work we have done. Via the Queens foundation and donors, we have invested millions of dollars in new programs and technologies for the community, he said. The Queen will always occupy a special place in my heart. You can reach reporter Jennifer Huffman at 256-2218 or jhuffman@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. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Despite announcing earlier that the government secured 25 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from China's Sinovac, Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. and other officials clarified the deal is not yet final and they can still opt out, since the vaccine has yet to receive regulatory approval. When asked whether agreements with firms like Sinovac are already a "done deal", Galvez said that is not the case. "Ang sa atin pa lang po ngayon [For now,] we are [just] dealing with the term sheet. Posible rin [It could also be possible] we have to lock (the supply), so that they can already make production. So sa ngayon po, wala pa pong government funds tayong naibibigay," clarified the official during Friday's hearing of the Senate Committee of the Whole. [Translation: As of now, we haven't given out government funds yet.] Finance Undersecretary Mark Joven explained the term sheet states that Sinovac will sell doses to the country in tranches, but that does not already mean the government committed to buy them. "Because of the term sheet, Sinovac has a commitment to sell and deliver to us 50,000 doses before the end of February at a price certain but we don't have an obligation to buy from them until they meet certain conditions among which is the execution of a term sheet and... getting the proper regulatory approvals," said Joven. COVID-19 deputy chief implementer Vince Dizon also said the purchase of Sinovac's vaccine would still depend on the expert panel's recommendation. "Hindi pa po final ito [This is not yet final]," he said. Sinovac already applied for Emergency Use Authorization in the Philippines, but FDA Director General Eric Domingo said the agency has yet to begin evaluating the application since the company has not yet submitted its phase 3 clinical trial results. Although Sinovac already has EUA from China and Argentina, the FDA would still have to carefully check its vaccines since they have not been approved by a "stringent regulatory agency," Domingo stressed. Senators reminded Galvez and other officials to be careful in making pronouncements and urged them to address "communication problems" since vaccine confidence is also at stake. "Last hearing, 25 million doses of Sinovac ang sinabi na locked in and secure. Ngayon 50,000 na lang at naiklaro kanina na hindi pa tayo obligado na bilhin at kunin 'yun unless pumasa sa mga standards," said Senator Joel Villanueva. [Translation: Last hearing it was said 25 million doses of Sinovac have been locked in and secured. Now it's at 50,000 and it was clarified that we are not yet obligated to buy them unless they pass the standards.] Senators also raised that the Sinovac vaccine only has a 50% efficacy rate, much lower compared to brands like Pfizer and AstraZeneca. They also cited reports it should only be used on severe COVID-19 infections. "You should exert every effort to earn the confidence of our people in so far as the vaccine is concerned," said Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon. "And given all that we have heard...the insistence or preference for Sinovac cannot be denied." While the FDA said it has yet to see the final report on the effects of Sinovac's vaccine, Galvez denied favoring the Chinese firm. "Rest assured that the procurement of the vaccine is not based on any political interest or financial interest," he maintained. CNN Philippines' Producer Pilar Manuel contributed to this report. CANTON, MI A Michigan man is facing charges a month after the accidental shooting death of his 8-year-old son. Nicholas Bennett, 33, is charged with involuntary murder related the Dec. 15 incident that resulted in the death of his son. The shooting occurred at a home on the 41000 block of Old Michigan Avenue in Canton. It is believed that Bennett was working on his rifle when it discharged and the bullet hit his son who was in the room. Emergency responders were immediately called to the scene and the child was transported to a local hospital where he died of his wounds. Bennett is expected to be arraigned today, Jan. 15, in the 35th District Court of Wayne County. His probable cause conference is set for Jan. 29. A preliminary examination is set for Feb. 5. READ MORE: 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. (@FahadShabbir) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2021) EU member states should coordinate the movement of citizens amid the pandemic, for example, by letting people cross internal borders with a negative PCR test rather than the earlier proposed vaccination passports, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday. Earlier in the day, a European Commission spokesperson said that von der Leyen backed the initiative to introduce common EU vaccination passports that would facilitate cross-border movement of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. "First of all, plain and simply, it is absolutely necessary if you have been vaccinated to have a certificate this is a medical necessity, therefore, this is the right way to go forward. Of course, it has to be mutually recognized this is a WHO requirement, so in that we are very clear," von der Leyen said at a joint press conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, whose country is taking up the bloc's presidency this year. The commission chief reiterated what was said by the spokesperson earlier in the day, namely, that legal and political aspects, including movement rights, need to be discussed at the European level in order for member-states to work out common rules. "But I think it is also indeed important always to find the right balance. For example, you can always combine either a certificate or a negative COVID-19 test if you did not have access to a vaccination so far. So there are possibilities to find a fair and equal balance to those who have the certificate of vaccination and those who didn't have access so far," von der Leyen said. Introducing a standardized EU COVID-19 vaccination certificate was a proposal put forward by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in a letter to von der Leyen this past Tuesday. Mitsotakis argued this could be a good way to help economic recovery and relaunch entire industries that got halted because of the pandemic. EU leaders are expected to discuss the proposal at a summit on January 21. Editors Note: This story has been updated with comments from a county commissioner and a state senator. Federal authorities said they have reasonable cause to believe the Cumberland County Jail, where seven inmates died by suicide over three years, failed to take measures to prevent inmate suicides and provide adequate mental health care, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday. The South Jersey facility, has been under scrutiny for years because of multiple suicides from 2015 to 2018. NJ Advance Media reported in October 2018 that federal authorities were investigating the correctional facility and how they cared for inmates with mental health issues. The justice department alleges that the jail violated the U.S. Constitution, as inmates faced a heightened risk of suicide due to the jails failure to provide medication-assisted treatment to inmates experiencing unmedicated opiate withdrawal. Our investigation revealed that Cumberland County fails to provide adequate mental health care to inmates at risk of self-harm and suicide, said John B. Daukas, the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights at the department. The jail failed to provide treatment with medication, a medically approved practice that uses certain opiates to treat people in withdrawal, to at least six individuals who died by suicide, according to the report. Not doing so likely contributed to the death of several inmates, the report says. Conrad Benedetto, an attorney who has filed six federal civil rights lawsuits against the jail on behalf of families of those who committed suicide, said the announcement came a little too late, but it confirmed what he long had said occurred at the jail. They were treated and discarded in that jail like they didnt deserve to live anymore, he said of the inmates. Treatment had improved in recent years, County Commissioner Joseph Derella said in a statement. While any suicide is a tragedy too many, the number of inmate suicides since 2018 has been reduced to one, he said. The jail had also received a grant to provide more medication treatment, he said. The jails warden did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State Sen. Mike Testa, R-Cumberland, also slammed county leadership. We have seen one embarrassment after another with the county jail, Testa said in a statement. The prisoners and guards were not kept safe from COVID, local residents have not been protected, and now this. It is yet another example of disregard for human life, he added. The investigation gives some details about the deaths. One woman, a 25-year-old who told the medical staff during her intake that she consumed 20 to 30 bags of heroin a day, was not given the medical treatment she was taking to treat her addiction, investigators said. She died by suicide two days after arriving at the jail. A 21-year-old woman who was taken in at the jail in February 2017 reported to jail staff she used heroin daily and told them she was suffering from severe psychological distress, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness and paranoia 30 minutes after arriving the jail. The staff did not provide medication-assisted treatment, according to the report. She was found dead the next day. The investigation found that the jails mental health system did not not provide adequate treatment because of inadequate staffing, inadequate staff coordination, and inadequate programs that place prisoners at risk of serious harmincluding deteriorating mental health and, at worst, suicide. The DOJ found that it was not uncommon for inmates with serious mental health needs to wait months for follow-up visits at the jail. There is no meaningful therapy or psychoeducation, the investigation said. In fact, inmates told investigators they do not report suicidal thoughts due to the harsh conditions on suicide watch at the jail. If you want to commit suicide, youre not going to tell anyone about it, one inmate told investigators. Theyll torture you. Its a punishment its not helpful. They treat you like an animal. Its not help. Its torture. The investigation says suicidal inmates at Cumberland County Jail are essentially stripped naked and kept in a tiny cell with nothing besides a rubber sleeping mat. They dont even have access to toilet paper and must request it from a correctional officer, who tears the paper off the roll and hands it to the inmate, the investigation says. The inmates are left in the cell without any meaningful access to treatment other than a brief assessment by a mental health professional that does not even occur daily, the DOJ found. As a result, suicidal prisoners who do not receive any psychosocial treatment languish in their bare cells until they simply stop saying that they are suicidal, the investigation said. Three officers were criminally charged in 2017 for falsifying and tampering with public records in two suicides at the jail. Other inmates who were suffering mental health emergencies were put in restraints, often too long without proper assessments, the report found. Investigators said it alerted the jail Thursday with a written notice supporting the allegations and a long list of remedial measures necessary, including ensuring that all initial screenings are performed by staff who are trained to identify medical and mental health needs, that treatment is immediately provided to prisoners who are suicidal or psychotic and timely access to mental health professionals. The opioid epidemic continues to afflict communities across the country, acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig said in a statement. By providing medication-assisted treatment to inmates experiencing opiate withdrawal, officials at jails and prisons can take significant steps to both combat that epidemic and protect the constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals. Protesters hold their signs up to the windows at the Cumberland County administration building in September to show their support for members of PBA Local 231 Cumberland County Corrections during a rally to protest the planned closure of the county jail and the layoff of officers.Al Amrhein | For NJ Advance Media The investigation comes amid a months-long court battle to prevent to the county from closing the jail. Jail officers and public defenders argue that transferring inmates to other counties would make it harder for lawyers to see clients and would threaten officers jobs. A judge blocked the county from moving inmates last year. Another hearing is scheduled Friday, and the trial may begin next month, said Deputy Public Defender Fletcher Duddy. The pandemic has also battered the facility. The jail has refused to expand testing despite rising coronavirus cases, said Victor Bermudez, the local PBA president. There is a five-alarm fire growing at the Cumberland County jail with no viable means of rescue, said Stuart Alterman, a PBA lawyer. Jail officials regularly failed to provide proper protective gear or sanitation, he said. Former Cumberland County Freeholder Jack Surrency called on the warden in December to resign. The result of his failed leadership is well documented in the headlines of our local papers, Surrency said in a statement. Warden Richard Smith will resign this week to take another job, the county previously announced. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Joe Atmonavage may be reached at jatmonavage@njadvancemedia.com. Blake Nelson can be reached at bnelson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCunninghamN. Have a tip? Tell us: nj.com/tips. Once Kamala Harris was elected US vice-president in November, I was worried the attacks on her power and position that we witnessed during the campaign would only increase. I expected as much from Trumpists and violent white supremacists. But it was Vogues insidious diminishing of Harris for its February print cover that knocked me over. The photo has been a topic of heated discussion for days. Shot by Tyler Mitchell, the first and still only black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover since his beautiful 2018 portrait of Beyonce, the incoming vice-president is pictured in her famous converse Chuck Taylor sneakers. She wears her street clothes, a dark espresso blazer and black ankle-length pants, and stands before a backdrop of pink and green drapes the colours of her sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. On her face is the expression of someone not quite ready for the camera. Notably, an alternate, online cover, widely shared, has Harris in a pale-blue Michael Kors Collection suit, against a lighter gold backdrop. She is folding her arms and smiling. She looks pretty. Its a much better photograph; it comes as no surprise that her team reportedly preferred it. But in the world of fashion, print cover choices matter. And in a world where strong black women are often maligned as intimidating and unfeminine, the image Vogue chose reduced Harris just as she is taking her rightful place at the heights of American power. Its frankly shocking that this is the direction the magazine went. Considering that Vogue, and the fashion industry as a whole, came under fire in 2020 for lacking diversity, one would think that major publications would go above and beyond to get Harris and her historic ascension right. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour spoke to journalist Kara Swisher and explained that all of us felt very, very strongly that the less formal portrait of the Vice-President-elect really reflected the moment we were living in and that a much less formal picture, something that was very, very accessible, and approachable, and real, really reflected the hallmark of the Biden-Harris campaign. I wonder if she watched the same campaign I did. The key to the Biden-Harris victory was not approachability; it was the powerful antidote they offered to the incompetence and the racism of the Trump administration specifically their vow to fight the twin scourges of racist division and Covid-19. We didnt need to see a diminished, approachable Harris wearing her Chuck Taylors. How about a competent, commanding Harris wielding her vice-presidential power? Or something with the breathtaking emotional appeal of the suffragist-inspired white pantsuit that Harris wore to celebrate victory in Delaware on November 7? This was not Vogues only recent misstep with photographing black women the recent badly lit, unflattering cover photos of Simone Biles come to mind but its not like taking a good photo of black women in politics is some impossible task. Vogue itself has shot amazing cover photos of Michelle Obama, and Ethan James Greens 2019 black-and-white portrait of Stacey Abrams for the magazine was stunning. Abrams was dressed in a dark-coloured power suit and heels. Unsmiling, she looks every bit the modern political general that she is. Black accomplishment in white patriarchal power systems is always fraught. Writ large, its Donald Trump winning the presidency after Barack Obama. But in incessant, exhausting smaller acts such as magazine photos, we are reminded of a truth about America: Black progress is often followed by backlash and the diminishment of our power and victories. Thats why this punch, intended as such or not, hurt so much. It was harm caused by thoughtlessness, a lack of care and attention to the power and significance of Harriss rise and what it means to so many women like her. Moderna CEO: World will have to live with COVID-19 forever Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment As new, more infectious variants of COVID-19 continue to pop up in the U.S. and other parts of the world, Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, which is the maker of one of two coronavirus vaccines approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration, believes the virus could be around forever. Speaking during a panel discussion at the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, Bancel said he agrees with emerging data suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 is not going away. We are going to live with this virus, we think, forever, he said, according to a CNBC report. Kristian Andersen, an infectious diseases expert at Scripps Research Institute, told Stat News in a report Thursday that new and more infectious variants of the virus that have erupted in places like South Africa, the U.S. and the United Kingdom is cause for concern. Im very, very concerned that weve now gone from a virus that we could control to a virus that we really cant, unless we do something very dramatic, Andersen said. Experts say the containment of these new variants would require an expansion of testing and genomic sequencing, contact tracing, social distancing, mask wearing and other efforts to limit the spread of the virus that has already claimed more than 380,000 lives in the U.S. At least two new variants of the coronavirus have sparked concern around the globe due to data showing them to be more contagious. The 501Y.V2 or B.1.351 variant was first identified in South Africa and has since spread to a dozen other countries. The coronavirus variant known as B.1.1.7, first seen in the U.K., is now in more than 30 other countries. Even if B.1.1.7 (or some other more transmissible variant) isnt any more likely to cause severe disease or death, we may see a larger volume of deaths in its presence simply because there will likely be more infections than there would be without it, Maia Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Boston Childrens Hospital, told Stat News. Experts, like Brooks Miner, an evolutionary ecologist at Ithaca College, are just hoping that enhanced mitigation efforts to limit the spread of the virus or target the mutations could buy the U.S. some time to expand its vaccine campaigns. Were basically in this race because if we reach herd immunity before B.1.1.7 becomes responsible for a majority of cases, then B.1.1.7 might never become responsible for a majority of cases, Miner said. Last month, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicted the U.S. could achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 by "the end of the second quarter 2021." By the time we get to the fall, we can start approaching some degree of relief where the level of infection will be so low in society we can start essentially approaching some form of normality," he said. Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organizations chief scientist, noted in a recent report, however, that global herd immunity is highly unlikely this year and it is critical that countries and their populations maintain strict social distancing along with other control measures for the foreseeable future. Even as vaccines start protecting the most vulnerable, were not going to achieve any levels of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021, Swaminathan said in a Moderna Healthcare report. Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in a few countries, its not going to protect people across the world. A 39-year-old man was killed Thursday night after he was hit by a truck in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana State Police said Friday. The crash happened around 10 p.m. on La. Hwy 3235 just north of West 133rd Street, authorities said. Brett Adams of Galliano was walking in the middle of the road in a poorly lit area, police said, when he was hit by a Chevrolet Silverado. Adams died at the scene. The driver of the truck was not injured and showed no signs of intoxication, police said. Toxicology samples were taken from Adams and the driver and were submitted for analysis, police said in a press release. The crash remains under investigation. In the statement, troopers urged pedestrians to maintain a heightened level of awareness while walking near the road. Precautions include wearing reflective materials, avoiding distractions and walking a safe distance from travel lanes while facing oncoming traffic. Pedestrians must also assume that approaching motorists cannot see them, especially at night, police said. Iranian government submits 'violence against women' bill to parliament 01/15/21 Source: Tehran Times TEHRAN - The Iranian government has submitted a long-awaited bill for the protection of women against violence to the parliament. The bill titled, Protection, Dignity, and Security of Women against Violence, had been under review since September 2019. It criminalizes any act or behavior that causes "physical or mental harm" to women "as a vulnerable gender". In line with principles and goals of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Constitution and in order to protect the dignity and security of women against kinds of violent behaviors, the bill has been submitted to the parliament, IRNA quoted Vice President for Parliamentary Affairs, Hossein-Ali Amiri, as saying on Thursday. It recommends a fund for safeguarding women's rights with provisions for providing medical expenses of the victims of violence, and imparting skill development training to them, he explained. Special support for women Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar said in October 2020 that the government has taken major steps for the advancement of women and families in Iran. "Through an inter-sectoral process, we developed national indicators for gender equity, which laid the ground for the first result based Plan for Women and Family Advancement in 31 provinces and we recently launched the dashboard for monitoring indicators on gender equity and family prosperity." Meanwhile, the national budget bill for the next [Iranian calendar] year (March 2021-March 2022) has been prepared in a way to support and pay special attention to women, especially female heads of households, rural women, and artisans. Ebtekar noted that the budget for women's and family affairs has increased by 33 percent, reaching up to 320 billion rials (nearly $7.6 million), with remarks suggesting special support for women. She went on to highlight that the family is the cornerstone of human development, through the National Family Dialogue scheme. "We have taken an initiative to empower civil society in dialogue skills to enable family and social cohesiveness. The International Center for Family Dialogue has been recently launched in Tehran." Chrishell Stause hasn't had the best of luck with her love life playing out in the public eye over the past year. But the Selling Sunset star has started the new year with a new chapter of her life, amid her recent whirlwind romance. Her recent relationship with Dancing with the Stars costar Keo Motsepe has 'blossomed pretty quickly,' after making their romance Instagram official last month and spending Christmas together with her family. Whirlwind romance: Chrishell Stause's recent relationship with Dancing with the Stars costar Keo Motsepe has 'blossomed pretty quickly,' after making their romance Instagram official last month Closing that door: It comes as her divorce with Justin Hartley, 43, was finalized in confidential mediation back in July, as they currently await a judge to sign off (pictured in June, 2019) The 39-year-old 'clearly has strong feelings' for Motsepe, 31, as a source told Us Weekly: 'Their relationship has grown a lot further than where it was a few months ago... Keo worships the ground she walks on he is so wrapped around her finger!' It comes after he revealed earlier this month that his mother died: 'Keo's hanging in there. He's getting a lot of support from friends, and of course, Chrishell. They're pretty much inseparable and spend a lot of time together.' Stause has reportedly been his 'rock,' after she lost both of her own parents to the same kind of lung cancer since 2019. The insider added: 'She's always leaned on him for support with her divorce and now he's leaning on her for support. Strong feelings: The 39-year-old 'clearly has strong feelings' for Motsepe, 31, as a source told Us Weekly: 'Their relationship has grown a lot further than where it was a few months ago... Keo worships the ground she walks on he is so wrapped around her finger!' Big step: They recently spent Christmas together with her family Supportive boyfriend: The insider said of their whirlwind romance: 'She's always leaned on him for support with her divorce and now he's leaning on her for support' (pictured with Hartley in September, 2019) 'She was able to relate to his recent loss because she lost both of her parents to cancer, so she completely sympathizes with what Keo's going through. She's totally there for him 100 percent They really do have a great relationship.' It comes as her divorce with Justin Hartley, 43, was finalized, according to Us Weekly. Hartley surprised Stause in November of 2019, when he 'blindsided' her after filing for divorce, which played out on season three of her Netflix reality series Selling Sunset. He recently made his relationship with Moroccan actress Sofia Pernas, 31, Instagram official, after they were first romantically linked back in May. Stause previously confirmed her relationship with Motsepe last month, posting a photo to her Instagram Story of the South African dancer kissing her on the cheek. Instagram official: Stause previously confirmed her relationship with Motsepe last month, posting a photo to her Instagram Story of the South African dancer kissing her on the cheek Rumor mill: The couple met on season 29 of DWTS, during which rumors sparked of an affair with her partner Gleb Savchenko, 37 (pictured in November, 2020) The couple met on season 29 of DWTS, during which rumors sparked of an affair with her partner Gleb Savchenko, 37, who's since been undergoing a public divorce of his own with wife of 14 years Elena Samodanova, 36, who accused him of 'ongoing infidelity.' Both Stause and Savchenko have denied rumors of their affair, but they vacationed together last month in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with Motsepe and Savchenko's girlfriend Cassie Scerbo, 30. She had to shoot down further rumors of the nature of their relationship, taking to Instagram with a photo of her and her new beau by the pool, writing: 'If you love love, feel free to leave your beautiful positivity below. 'If you are insane & tied up in ridiculous conspiracy theories that were never, and have never had any truth to them, by all means let your crazy flag fly! Ha! Entertaining either way XO' PUNE, India India on Friday was preparing to launch one of the most ambitious and complex nationwide campaigns in its history: the rollout of coronavirus vaccines to 1.3 billion people, an undertaking that will stretch from the perilous reaches of the Himalayas to the dense jungles of the countrys southern tip. The toughest part might be persuading doubters like Shankar Patil to roll up their sleeves. Mr. Patil, a 27-year-old state police academy applicant, lives in Pune, the city central to Indias vaccine rollout, which is set to begin on Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is staking his pride on Indias ability to manufacture enough inexpensive shots to inoculate his country as well as much of the developing world. India aims to do nothing less than protect humanity, Mr. Modi said at an online address to the Indian diaspora recently. Stretched out on an exercise mat along a row of pink Mexican lilacs at the top of Parvati, a hillock popular with early-morning joggers, Mr. Patil has questions. He and two friends, also aspiring police officers joining him to exercise, are skeptical about the countrys vaccine approval process, which has been criticized by health experts for a lack of disclosure. We believe in the government, but nobody should play with our health, said Mr. Patil. If the vaccines are truly safe, they should make the data public. The three finalists for East Baton Rouge Parish school superintendent all spent time as turnaround principals charged with improving the operation and academic performance of low-performing schools. Whoever lands the top job will be tasked with turning around some 32 schools, more than a third of all the schools in the states second largest traditional school district. +2 Interim Superintendent Smith collapses; interview for top Baton Rouge schools job being rescheduled Adam Smith, interim superintendent of the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, fainted as he was speaking live at a town hall Friday afterno The three finalists are Sito Narcisse of Washington, D.C.; Marla Smith of Kansas City; and Adam Smith of Baton Rouge. Sheppard interviewed Wednesday and Narcisse interviewed Thursday, answering questions for four hours each. Smith, who is the interim superintendent in the school system, started his interview Friday afternoon, but about 30 minutes in, he complained of ringing in his ears and abruptly collapsed. He was taken by EMS to the hospital for examination, but returned home that night and is expected to return to work Monday. Smith will get a chance to finish his interview, but it's not clear when. Smiths unexpected collapse complicates the East Baton Rouge Parish School Boards plan to select a new superintendent Thursday night. School Board President Mike Gaudet said he expects to know soon whether the board can stick with that timeline. Waiting for Adam to see his doctor Monday morning, Gaudet said Sunday. We will make a decision after that. Narcisse, Sheppard and Smith all fielded questions at interviews this past week on a variety of subjects. Narcisse, who is chief of secondary schools in Washington, D.C. public schools, home to 52,000 students, emphasized his range of experience in multiple large school districts, saying hes worked at all all all levels of this job. I come here not with theoretical approaches. I come with actual practice, said Narcisse, who is 45. Sheppard, deputy superintendent in Kansas City Public Schools, highlighted her own broad array of experience, most of it in schools in the Houston area, where she grew up, and said shes always been a hands-on leader. There is nothing I was going to ask them to do that I wasnt willing to do myself, Sheppard said. Smith said his approach to education is informed by his upbringing in south side of Chicago, a troubled son of a teenage mother who was raised in his early years by his grandparents in a crowded household. He said he didnt enjoy school until his junior year and he had a history teacher, named Mr. Jackson, who loved his subject and cared whether Smith succeeded or not. Its informed his view on education ever since. My strength is building leadership, hiring well and looking for what I sought as a student in school: passionate, competent adults, Smith said. +4 East Baton Rouge seeks a public school leader again; Who's in for interviews this week? The search for a new East Baton Rouge Parish schools superintendent reaches a crucial stage this week as the School Board interviews three fin This is the second search in a year to find a leader for the school system, home to more than 40,000 students. The new search was prompted by the unexpected resignation of Leslie Brown in October due to an unspecified medical condition that she said made her unable to continue in the job. Brown replaced Warren Drake, who retired in July after five years at the helm. Smith was promoted to interim superintendent in October after Brown's departure. While school letter grades and related accountability measures were waived last year and may be waived again this year because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the issue will likely return to the top tier of local education issues once the pandemic has eased. Whoever is hired will be asked to draw immediately on formative experiences in school turnaround. Narcisses first principalship was in Boston, where he spent three years seeking to turn around English High School. After that, Narcisse moved onto high administrative jobs mostly in two Maryland school districts, in Nashville and then finally in his current job, where hes been tasked with improving multiple low-performing schools. Narcisse noted high teacher turnover in many of Baton Rouges lowest performing schools. He said once theres victory in the classroom and improved quality, teachers are more likely to stay. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up People love good environments, Narcisse said. The more they love the environment, the more they want to engage in their school. Sheppard was a turnaround principal at two schools in Houston, Fleming Middle and Yates High. Sheppard said she tried to put people in jobs they were trained for and felt comfortable doing. First thing I did was to have people who wanted to be here, people who had a sense of efficacy, Sheppard said. Sheppard has spent three-plus years as the No. 2-person in Kansas City schools, home to more than 14,000 students. She said one way she tries to improve schools is to motivate students more than punish them by, for instance, expanding art programs. Sometimes our answer is not in being more punitive, Sheppard said. Sometimes its giving kids something to do, something to be more engaged in. Smith is the only local finalist. A 24-year veteran of the school system, Smith has risen through the ranks and is well-liked. He spent six years in the classroom before moving to administration. He served as principal of Park Forest Middle School from 2005 to 2008 where he was named principal of the year, before moving to Central Office where he's worked ever since. Smith has been called upon repeatedly to stabilize schools in turmoil, including serving temporarily as principal of Glen Oaks and Scotlandville high schools. He said hes passed over chances to work at schools with better reputations. My passion was working with at-risk students, he said. In the schools hes worked with, improving the school culture has always been his first order of business. You have to change the experience of the people in the organization before you can turn around the culture of the organization, said Smith. Each candidate are touting past successes. Narcisse, who is the son of Haitian immigrants, notes that during his three years as chief of schools in Nashville increased the number of reward: schools that showed improved performance on Tennessee academic standards from 15 to 37. Sheppard highlighted that Fleming Middle was a failing school that later became Recognized school by the state of Texas. Smith noted that during his three-year tenure, Park Forest Middle improved its school performance score during the three-year period by 6.9 points. Narcisse was the only candidate who was put on the defensive about his record at English High School in Boston. His tenure there was the subject of a critical Boston Globe story, which noted three-quarters of the teachers who were at the school when Narcisse started in 2009 were gone by the time he left in 2012. Narcisse, who came to Boston to take the job, said on Thursday that he was tasked with implementing a school turnaround strategy that relied heavily on changing school staff. He said that it was not the best approach in retrospect. "The lesson I learned is its not always the best strategy to go into a school and get rid of everyone, Narcisse said. Narcisse said hes learned over time to work harder to keep staff on board with his changes and not make changes too fast that they are not accepted. Sito Narcisse at 45 (years old) is not Sito Narcisse of 25, he said. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is nominated as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, according to a press release from President-elect Joe Bidens transition team. The team announced a number of nominations for incoming DNC officers, led by Chair Jaime Harrison, formerly the leader of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a current DNC officer. Whitmer, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela Jr. of Texas are nominated to serve as vice chairs, while Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is nominated to serve as vice chair of civic engagement and voter protection. Jason Rae is nominated as secretary, Virginia McGregor as treasurer and Chris Korge as national finance chair. Previous vice chairs have maintained other full-time positions and focused on particular areas of strategy for the DNC. This group of individuals represent the very best of the Democratic Party, said President-elect Joe Biden in a press release. Their stories and long histories of activism and work reflects our partys values and the diversity that make us so strong. As our country faces multiple crises from systemic racism to the COVID-19 pandemic, working families in America need and deserve real leadership. We need to elect Democrats across our country and up and down the ballot. To do that is going to take tireless leadership, committed to strengthening Democratic infrastructure across our states. These leaders are battle-tested and ready for this immense task. I know they will get the job done. The DNC will vote for its officers on Jan. 21. The term runs from 2021-2025. Whitmer has risen in national popularity over the past year, speaking at the Democratic National Convention over the summer and delivering the Democratic response to President Donald Trumps 2020 State of the Union address. Related: Gretchen Whitmer is a national figure now. What you need to know about The woman in Michigan She has picked up national roles along the way, serving as co-chair for Bidens presidential campaign and later being named to the Presidential Inaugural Committee. Read more on MLive: Gretchen Whitmer is a national figure now. What you need to know about The woman in Michigan Whitmer leads launch of Biden campaign group targeting Michigans women voters Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer endorses Biden, joining campaign as a national co-chair Biden picks Whitmer to help plan inauguration ceremony with campaign advisers In Gujarat, BJP govt showers sops to woo voters as EC delays in declaring poll dates Colleges in Karnataka reopen today for all students: Check SOPs, guidelines India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P Bengaluru, Jan 15: Colleges in Karnataka reopen today. The state government has allowed the reopening of colleges for all students of undergraduate, postgraduate, engineering and diploma courses from Janaury 15. However, attendance would continue to be voluntary. It is also said that university examinations for all years would be conducted offline from this year. In December, the Karnataka government had allowed reopening of colleges and university for only the final year students. The medical colleges were also given the nod to reopen. Will try to bring good budget concerning farmers for Karnataka: BS Yediyurappa After successful completion of first phase of college reopening, the campuses would now reopen for all students. Seperate SOPs for reopening of colleges and hostels have been shared by the state government. Along with the colleges, the state government said that it would reopen the student's hostels and ensure bus service to the students. The state government has issued guidelines or SOPs that will be followed by the colleges before and after reopening. Karnataka Colleges reopen: Check SOPs a. Students, teachers, and other college staff will have to wear masks. Wearing masks is compulsory. b. Before reopening the colleges, all the classrooms, laboratories, staff rooms, and other work areas will be sanitized by the college authorities. c. The body temperature of all students and others will be checked at the gate and anyone having symptoms of cold, cough will have to leave the school immediately, whenever detected. d. Everyone inside the college premises will have to wash their hands regularly and use hand sanitizers at regular intervals. e. Social distancing norms should be followed in the college between students and teachers and all others. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister CN Ashwath Narayan informed that separate standard operating procedures, SOPs are being prepared for libraries, canteens, hostels, sports, cultural and academic activities. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 9:36 [IST] 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. Thinking about causing trouble when the crew on an airliner asks you to follow the rules? Federal officials say you better reconsider that tarmac temper tantrum. Federal Aviation Administration officials announced new, stricter rules when a passengers actions potentially endanger other passengers and crew. FAA Administrator Steve Dickson ordered a stricter legal enforcement policy against unruly airline passengers late Wednesday in the wake of what he called recent, troubling incidents. Flying is the safest mode of transportation and I signed this order to keep it that way, Dickson said in a statement. Starting now, the FAA will not issue warnings and will pursue legal enforcement action against any passenger who assaults, threatens, intimidates, or interferes with airline crew members. Penalties carry fines up to $35,000 and possible prison time. The policy will be in effect through March 30, 2021, officials said. We appreciate the FAAs attention and swift action on this important issue to further ensure the safety of our crews and passengers, said Robert Einhorn, a United Airlines spokesman. Dickson cited a disturbing increase in incidents where airline passengers have disrupted flights with threatening or violent behavior. The incidents have stemmed from both from passengers refusals to wear masks and from recent violence at the U.S. Capitol, he said. We welcome the FAAs order to implement a more stringent policy regarding unruly passenger behavior, said Nicholas E. Calio, Airlines For America President and CEO. We cannot have any form of dangerous behavior that threatens the safety of passengers and crew members. FAA officials have brought more than 1,300 enforcement actions against unruly passengers during the past 10 years. The most recent include two separate incidents last year where the FAA proposed civil penalties against passengers who assaulted or interfered with a flight crew member who asked them to wear a mask. The FAA proposed a $15,000 civil penalty against a passenger on an Allegiant Air flight in August from Clearwater, Florida, to Mascoutah, Illinois. The passenger repeatedly screamed obscenities at and hit a flight attendant, and grabbed the phone from the flight attendant, while he was speaking with the captain about the passengers behavior over a face-covering dispute, the FAA said. The airliners captain diverted the flight. On Jan. 9, 2020, six Port Authority police officers at Newark Liberty airport were injured as they arrested a passenger who was accused of assaulting a flight attendant after he charged toward the cockpit on a United Airlines flight from Washington D.C. One officer suffered four broken ribs. Another flight to Newark airport had to divert and make an unscheduled landing in Colorado after passengers became disruptive and didnt follow the order of crew members after a man on the plane had a sneezing and coughing attack due to allergies on March 9. Police removed the disruptive passengers in Denver. Airline officials said the order is intended for the unruly or disruptive passengers. It is not a draconian measure to be taken against a person who forgot a mask or had one slip off during a flight. Those passengers would get a gentle reminder and offer of a free mask, if needed, officials said. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. To the editor: Trump's legacy will now be that of a president who incited a violent attack on our nations Capitol. As a result, there were multiple injuries and loss of life because he refused to abide by the Constitution and ensure a peaceful transfer of power after legitimately losing an election. As expected, some members of the GOP in Congress are now condemning Trump for his clear act of sedition, including our Rep. John Moolenaar. However, many among them are indirectly complicit in the events of Jan. 6 because they believed up until this point, they could control and restrain Trump's authoritarian impulses if it allowed them to implement their conservative political agenda. They mistakenly gambled that the policy benefits of tax cuts for wealthy sponsors, stacking the courts with conservative judges, rolling back environmental regulations, and attempting to repeal Obamacare were worth the serious risk that Trump posed to the democratic principles of American government. It is clear now that this was a delusion on their part. Trump certainly enabled the rioters, but many in Congress enabled Trump for the four years leading up to recent events, and most notably, with their support of his false "stolen election" narrative. They should not be absolved of guilt by simply condemning Trump's carnage on our democracy after the fact. Future elections certainly offer voters one option to hold them accountable. CRAIG SILVIS Midland The remaining defendant charged in the deaths of 36 people in Oaklands Ghost Ship warehouse fire is expected to accept a plea deal that will keep him from prison and prevent him from undergoing a second trial, a victims family member said. Derick Almena, the master tenant of the Fruitvale neighborhood warehouse, is expected to plead guilty to 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter on Jan. 22. In return, he will be sentenced to nine years in custody and three years of post-custody supervision. A spokeswoman for the Alameda County District Attorneys Office declined to comment on the plea deal, citing a gag order issued by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Trina Thompson. The district attorneys office shared the details of Almenas plea deal with victims families during a Zoom call Wednesday morning, said Colleen Dolan, whose daughter, Chelsea Faith Dolan, died in the blaze. I just feel heavy-hearted, Dolan said Thursday. I feel saddened and depressed. I expected more. I expected another trial. Almena could have done so little to have prevented this tragedy, but he chose to do nothing and then he tries to profess his innocence when we know the true innocent were the 36 young people who died, she said. Based on time served and good behavior, Almena could serve less than two more years of the sentence. Its likely he will be able to finish his sentence at home under house arrest because of the COVID pandemic. Last May, Almena was released to his home in Lake County from Santa Rita Jail after posting a $150,000 bail. He had been in jail since his arrest in June 2017. The plea deal comes after prosecutors worried they were not likely to get a conviction in a second trial, said Mary Alexander, a San Francisco attorney who represents families of 13 people killed in the fire. It is simply not justice, Alexander said. This is a man who was on the ground, built out this place, knew that it didnt have the fire protections that it should have and knew that it was not permitted to have events there, and he needs to be held accountable for it. Almena, 50, and co-defendant Max Harris faced up to 39 years in prison if convicted of all charges stemming from inferno that occurred on Dec. 2, 2016, during an electronic music party in the warehouse. Almena and Harris were each charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter for every person who died in the blaze. Defense attorneys argued that police, fire personnel and other city officials visited the warehouse multiple times before the deadly fire, but never formally flagged the location as being hazardous. Prosecutors argued that Almena invited dozens of people to live illegally in a space zoned only for storage. Almena had made adjustments to the warehouse and failed to install sprinklers, illuminated exit signs and smoke alarms. The space was crammed with motor homes, antiques and artwork. In September 2019, Harris was found not guilty. However, the jury deadlocked on the charges against Almena 10 of the 12 jurors agreed he was guilty of negligence in turning the warehouse into a deadly firetrap. Another trial was expected to begin Feb. 4. In July, the Oakland City Council agreed to pay $32.7 million to settle lawsuits filed on behalf of 32 of the 36 people who died. The settlement directed $23.5 million to families of relatives who died in the blaze and $9.2 million going to Sam Maxwell, a survivor who the city says suffers from severe, lifelong injuries. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani U.S. President Donald Trump recently spoke out regarding the attacks on free speech, particularly what's happening in social media. In the statement, which actually included his remarks denouncing all forms of violence, particularly what happened on Jan. 6 in the Capitol in D.C., the President called on people to rise above the hate and come together to work for the nation. "I also want to say a few words about the unprecedented assault on free speech we have seen in recent days. These are tense and difficult times. The efforts to censor, cancel and blacklist our fellow citizens are wrong and they are dangerous. What is needed now is to listen to one another, not silenced one another," he said. "All of us can choose, by our actions, to rise above the rancor and find common ground and shared purpose. We must focus on advancing the interests of the whole nation: delivering the miracle vaccines, defeating the pandemic, rebuilding the economy, protecting our national security and upholding the rule of law." The President ended his speech with an appeal to still keep the spirit of unity for the common good. "Today, I am calling all Americans to overcome the passion of the moment and join together as one American people. Let us choose to move forward, united for the good of our families, our communities, and our country." "Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America." Internet cancel culture For vague reasons but worded as preventing "risk of further incitement of violence," social media giants like Twitter and Facebook booted out President Donald Trump from their platforms, reports One America News Network. "Big mistake and they should not be doing it," says President Donald Trump over the joint efforts of big tech companies to censor contents, suspend thousands of accounts, and even crippling their competitors. These are all signs of clamping down free speech. Furthermore, the President said that what they have done is leading others to do the same which causes a lot of problems and more danger. " I think that the Big Tech is doing a horrible thing for our country and to our country, and I believe it is going to be a catastrophic mistake for them. They are dividing and divisive and they are showing something that I have been predicting for a long time. I have been predicting it for a long time but people did not get it," he told The Sun. Nonetheless, the 45th U.S. President reminded that without careful evaluation, the Big Tech Corporations' recent actions would result in more catastrophic consequences. "There is always a countermove when they do that. I have never seen such anger as I see right now, and that is a terrible thing." President Trump asserted that despite getting the heat on all sides, he and his administration are still getting the support they needed. "We have tremendous support..probably like nobody has ever seen before." When asked about his role and accountability in what happened at the Capitol riot on January 6, President Trump pointed out how his speech was put up on virtual and print media and how his words were scrutinized especially the last part to justify his detractors' claim that he instigated the chaos. The President noted that there were other high profile politicians whose speeches during some of the horrible riots in Portland, Seattle, and other places that were really problematic. "But they have analyzed my speech and my words.. my final paragraph, my final sentence.." the President complained, especially the part where they lead people to believe that what he said was inappropriate. President Trump maintained that in all these conflicts, he will not advocate violence and says that it must always be avoided at all cost. Other High-Profile Personalities Who are Anti-Censorship On January 8, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley aired her disappointment on Twitter after the network disabled President Trump's account. She said, "Silencing people, not to mention the President of the US, is what happens in China not our country. #Unbelievable" Donald Trump Jr. also called out Twitter for not recognizing the U.S. President's right to free speech. He further said that America seems to be reverting back to the time of George Orwell in 1984. "We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few. This is absolute insanity!" says the young Trump on January 9. Besides not having access to social media, the President's "Trump Campaign" can no longer send emails to their supporters as their service provider, Campaign Monitor also suspended the head of state's account, reports the Financial Times. Those who work under the President's campaign and other pro-Trump supporters were also prevented access to their social media accounts, reports Christianity Daily. You can listen to the full speech of President Donald Trump here. (HealthDay)Now that federal guidelines have expanded COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to include people over 65 and those of all ages with underlying health conditions, drug stores say they are ready, willing and able to start giving the shots. There's just one slight glitch: supply. But with two vaccines already available and others moving toward emergency use authorization, experts say supply will likely soon catch up with demand. As of Jan. 14, the Federal Retail Pharmacy Partnership Program has tapped two pharmacy chains per state to offer free COVID-19 vaccines. Pharmacies will be notified if they can take part in this initial rollout. Spearheaded by Operation Warp Speed, the government's vaccine development program, this plan will ultimately allow more than 40,000 pharmacies across the nation to inject 100 million vaccines in a month's time. Already signed on as partners are CVS, Walgreens, Duane Reade, Costco, Walmart, Rite Aid, Publix and more. Fully 250 million people in the United States are now eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, and pharmacies can help speed the slower-than-expected vaccine distribution process, said Kathleen Jaeger, senior vice president of pharmacy care and patient advocacy at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS), an Alexandria, Virginia-based trade group representing chain pharmacies. "With 40,000 drug stores and one vaccinator per store, it would be very easy to deliver 100 million vaccine doses in one month," said Jaeger during an NACDS news briefing on Wednesday. "Many people live within five miles of a local pharmacy, so it will be easier to give out the vaccines," she said. "We stand ready, and our capacity is tremendous." Exactly how pharmacies will dole out COVID-19 vaccines is not fully understood yet. They may use an appointment system to avoid long lines and crowding, she said. The government asked 19 pharmacy partners to help develop a more precise game plan. There has been some concern about allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines, and pharmacists can handle this as they have experience in giving flu and H1N1 shots, she said. "We always observe a patient for 15 minutes after a vaccine," she noted. If a person has a history of life-threatening allergic reactions, they should get their vaccines under strict medical supervision, she added. "Pharmacists can also dispel misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine," she said. The new pharmacy initiative is on top of other federal programs that allow pharmacists to dole out vaccines, including the Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program. As part of this program, Walgreens and CVS and Managed Health Care Associates, Inc., offer on-site COVID-19 shots to residents of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. And a federal "transfer program" makes it possible for unused vaccines to be transferred from hospitals to pharmacies to arms, Jaeger explained. "These vaccines are just sitting on shelves in freezers and refrigerators and need to be moved," she said. "Transfer to community pharmacies that stand ready makes a lot of sense." More than 29 million vaccine doses have been distributed so far in the United States, and over 10 million people have received their first dose. Hospitals will be releasing more doses now that they are confident that second doses will be available. The two vaccines currently in use require two doses. "National guidelines are needed as we move forward to make sure that no dose goes unused," Jaeger added. Explore further The simple reason West Virginia leads the nation in vaccinating nursing home residents Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Two suspects who were wanted for shots fired in Boston are accused of leading Massachusetts State Police troopers on a chase to Brockton early Friday before crashing into a pole, authorities said. A trooper from the agencys Milton barracks located a vehicle around 2 a.m. that had been sought by Boston police following a call about shots fired, according to a statement from state police. Two other troopers responded to help out, and the three state police patrols attempted to stop the car in the southbound lanes of Route 24 south of Harrison Boulevard near Exit 19, the statement said. The cars driver is accused of refusing to stop. A pursuit was then authorized, and the suspects vehicle took Exit 18 to Route 27, driving south to Brockton, according to the statement. At that time, the chase was called off, but state police cruisers were able to see the suspects car continue at a high rate of speed down Route 27 toward Brockton, authorities said. When approaching the intersection of Route 27 and West Avenue, the driver of the vehicle lost control and crashed into a pole, according to officials. Brockton and state police responded to the crash scene, and both individuals in the car were taken into custody. The Boston Police Department was also notified, law enforcement said. Two guns were discovered in the vehicle as well, authorities noted. The two suspects were taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening. The individuals are being guarded by state police pending release, at which point they will be booked on various charges, officials said. Members of the Jersey City NAACP are calling for the removal of their branch president just days before he runs unopposed for re-election. Dozens of members recently filed a complaint with the NAACPs national headquarters seeking the expulsion, suspension or removal of current Jersey City branch president Rev. Nathaniel Legay, who is on the ballot in the organizations election Saturday. The document, which was signed by 37 branch members, alleges Legay is no longer eligible to be a member of the local chapter because he hasnt lived or worked in Jersey City since 2019. The article 10 expulsion complaint also accuses Legay of violating election procedures, leading to the disqualification of rival candidates. Legay, president of the Jersey City NAACP since 2017, denied all allegations made against him. He said he is not involved in the organizations election process, which is handled by a committee. The document asserts Legay lives in Hillside and was replaced as pastor at Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church in Jersey City in 2019. He told The Jersey Journal that he still lives and works in the city, but declined to say where, calling it a civil rights issue. He added it was the national organization that deemed certain members ineligible to run for leadership positions in Jersey City. The NAACPs headquarters did not respond to an email seeking comment. When it comes to elections the supervisory committee at the elections site will verify (personal) information, Legay said. So, you want me to tell you where I live? And you want me to tell you where I work? Will that suffice for them? But the complaint includes numerous documents showing Legay apparently lives in Hillside with his wife. In a police report filed in July when the office of the Jersey City branch was burglarized, Legay used a Hillside address when reporting the crime to the police. So they are investigating my background and my life story without my approval who are they to investigate my life? Legay said. I am eligible to run for president of the Jersey City branch that is all I can tell you, Legay added when asked again if he lived in the city. The documents signees include Chris Gadsden, Neil Brunson, Mario Moody, and Board of Education Trustees Lorenzo Richardson and Joan Terrell-Paige. The complaint also called into question Legays opposition to a city project converting the Bethune Center parking lot into a park and paving over a nearby pocket park. The complaint alleges Legay threatened to sue the city without first gaining pre-written authorization of the national organizations president and CEO, breaking NAACP bylaws. This fiasco was another black eye on the Jersey City NAACP Branch caused by weak reactive leadership that is devoid of strategy, the document states. EDWARDSVILLE Local first responders have formed a committee to look at radio operability issues, according to Madison County Emergency Management Director Tony Falconio. At the Madison County Boards Public Safety Committee meeting on Monday, Falconio noted issues range from different communications systems to multiple 911 call centers. Were just in the very preliminary talks, he said later. Theres always room for improvement. Falconio said they have to develop a new Tactical Interoperability Communications Plan, or TIC-P. The last plan was set up in 2015 and needs to be updated. Were not to the point of having a solution or asking for money, but we have formed a committee and are looking at options, he said. Similar issues came up in the fall of 2019 when the Emergency Telephone System Board began discussing similar concerns. Almost two dozen fire chiefs attended a meeting asking for the agency to set up a system of digital repeating towers to improve radio communication. In addition to concerns about different systems, there are also concerns about gaps in radio coverage caused by a variety of issues, ranging from consolidation of 911 call centers to topography. Falconio also said EMA was revising its Emergency Operations Plan. The plan, required by federal law and regulated by the state, must be updated every two years. It was due in January but Falconio said the Illinois Emergency Management Agency extended the deadline to March because of the ongoing COVID-19 emergency. He noted they have learned a lot about pandemic planning, and much of that would be incorporated into the plan. Thats the case of every disaster, Falconio added. Were always revising our plans. Pandemic is always on the mind, especially in public health. Editor's note: CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking news. The daily column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events. The United States government thrives with an enemy to unite its people and distract them from domestic issues such as glaring racial and economic disparity, unsafe streets, an unaffordable and failing health care system and a falling standard of living. That enemy for decades was Russia, shifted to Islam for a couple of decades, and is now becoming China. Is China really a threat to the people of the United States and their way of life? For decades China was a partner and a competitor until the Trump administration brewed a mixture of racism, lies and misdirection into a toxic potion of fear and hatred. Trump first blamed China for stealing American jobs, even though offshoring is a result of U.S. policy decisions. Factions of the Trump administration have accused China of deliberately causing the spread of a deadly pandemic, even as they ignored warnings from Beijing and the WHO and made far more serious public health mistakes than any other country. Now Trump's administration, in its final days, has released a report that it hopes will seal the perception of China as "the most consequential challenge to the interests of the United States." This is a final hammer blow in efforts to decouple the economies of the two nations, and cast China as the sinister villain in a Cold War action movie. The document "United States Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific" provides "overarching strategic guidance" to "prevent Chinese acquisition of military and strategic capabilities" and "counter Chinese predatory economic practices that freeze out foreign competition, undermine U.S. economic competitiveness, and abet the Chinese Communist Party's aspiration to dominate the 21st century economy." The problem with this document is it does not jive with reality. Alternative facts are not surprising from the Trump administration, but China's neighbors and the rest of the world knows better. Throughout history, China has defended its borders but avoided foreign military adventures. It seeks stability, harmony and trade. Chinese want to work hard and have a prosperous, stable life. China does not have a record of foreign military adventures, whether you go back decades or centuries. This is reflected in the China of today. People are growing wealthier by the decade. This year, China's long battle against poverty succeeded, completely eliminating absolute poverty throughout the country. Chinese people are far more satisfied with their government than Americans. Have Chinese made trade-offs that go against U.S. values to achieve these goals? Of course. Wild rumors, conspiracy theories and disinformation are regulated. Firearms are tightly controlled. Administration is focused on hitting long term performance goals that help the public rather than wild swings in policy to ensure another term in power. Do these trade-offs mean Chinese people are a "threat," they are not "free" or their government is somehow "illegitimate"? To the United States, yes. The Chinese government talks about a common destiny of mankind, and the need for people from all nations to work together to solve these common problems. The U.S. has twisted this, with Trump National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien saying on Tuesday, "Beijing is increasingly pressuring Indo-Pacific nations to subordinate their freedom and sovereignty to a 'common destiny' envisioned by the Chinese Communist Party." People around the world know and can compare the U.S. and Chinese record on issues like addressing climate change, cooperating internationally on battling COVID-19, and cooperating with developing nations. China's rise is based on the hard work and diligence of its people. It is beyond the U.S. imagination that another country could economically or technologically best them, so they blame it on cheating. China is finishing a long transformation from a state of constant war among feudalistic warlords a century ago to a modern state where everyone shares a moderate level of prosperity. The U.S. imagines it can use high tech weapons, technology embargoes, and trade barriers to prevent China's rise. This is a fantasy. Within decades, China's economy will dwarf America's, and China's technological know-how will surpass the United States. Mankind faces many pressing challenges. The most productive approach would be for the U.S. to seek a positive relationship with China that seeks common ground and mutual benefit. Demonizing the Chinese government and dehumanizing Chinese people may help win an electoral advantage in the short term, but will only hurt Americans in the long run. The U.S. faces real problems, including political violence, deadly online disinformation, a health crisis, and racial and economic disparities. The country could benefit learning from China. But before it can hope to do that, it must drop its Orwellian insistence on having a constant enemy and try to see the Chinese as real people conducting their own bold and admirable experiment on how best to organize their society to live in harmony and prosperity. The Chinese people have their own proud history and values, and have chosen a different road than Americans, but the two sides need not be enemies. SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) A man who killed his one-time girlfriend in a Sioux City hotel room before setting it on fire has been sentenced to 75 years in prison. The Sioux City Journal reports that 31-year-old Jordan Henry was sentenced Friday in Woodbury County District Court to 50 years for second-degree murder and 25-years for arson. The sentences are to be served one after the other. Henry was convicted of the counts in November for the January 2019 strangulation of 40-year-old Elizabeth Bockholt, of Hinton. Firefighters found her unresponsive Jan. 24, 2019, in a Wingate Hotel room, and she was pronounced dead later at a hospital. Argentina's government passed a new law legalizing abortion on Thursday, a victory achieved with the support of a women's movement that hopes it will gradually spread throughout Latin America. President Alberto Fernandez led the ceremony in which he signed the decree enacting the Interruption of Pregnancy Act, which he pledged to promote during the campaign that brought him to power in December 2019. Lawmakers approved the law at the end of last month. Government approval Thursday and the signing ceremony were the final steps to bring the measure into force. It allows a woman to terminate her pregnancy for any reason within the first 14 weeks. After that, it will be legal only in exceptional cases such as rape or if there's a risk to the mother's health. With this law, Argentina becomes the largest country in Latin America in legalise abortion. Cuba, Uruguay and Guyana have passed similar laws. Fernandez also signed the decree promulgating the so-called Thousand Days Law, which establishes aid for health care of pregnant women during pregnancy and for children up to three years of age. (Image Credit: AP) (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Reminder self isolation is not a request but a requirement as Welsh Government explore new methods to release people early from 10 day period This article is old - Published: Friday, Jan 15th, 2021 Lateral flow tests could be used to release people early from the 10 day mandatory self isolation periods, and use of hotels could be looked at to help those living in densely populated or higher risk environments to isolate more safely. This week saw the release of the latest University College London social study (results PDF) that looks at compliance across the UK on a range of coronavirus measures, and various findings based off demographics and other information. The study looks at other questions, including if people get a test once they have symptoms. The study found 33% said that they had requested a test every time they developed symptoms, but 10% said they had only requested a test on some occasions but not others, and 57% said they had never requested a test even though they had experienced symptoms. 75% of adults aged 60+ said they had never requested a test despite experiencing symptoms on one or more occasions. The top image shows the findings for the study asking people how long they have been isolating if they either developed symptoms of COVID-19 or were told that they had come into contact with someone else who had developed symptoms. For people who had experienced either event more than once, the study asked people to report the shortest amount of time they had isolated for. The current rules are that individuals should isolate for 10 days in either circumstance, down from 14 days. Only 62% of people are isolating for the recommended number of days (10 or more) when they develop symptoms of Covid-19. 39% are isolating for much longer (21 days or more), which could be due to experiencing ongoing symptoms of the virus. However, 13% are not isolating at all when they develop symptoms, 16% are only isolating for 1-5 days, and 9% are only isolating for 6-9 days. People in higher income households are also showing a slightly higher level of self-isolating for the recommended length of time (63% vs 61%) and are much less likely not to isolate at all (9% vs 18%). People in higher income households are also showing a higher level of self-isolating for the recommended length of time (83% vs 76%) and are much less likely not to isolate at all (8% vs 15%). Currently Wales has a self-isolation support scheme, meaning people could get a payment of 500 to help with loss of earnings if they have been told to self-isolate and cannot work from home. Yesterday we asked the First Minister Mark Drakeford if he was concerned about the stats, and pointed to policies elsewhere such as other countries having priority food deliveries or effectively commandeered hotels to allow those in crowded or multi generational households to self isolate, and enquired what other policies are being looked at for Wales to help boost self isolation. The First Minister told us, My first reaction to the figures is that they do demonstrate that the vast bulk of people are trying to do the right thing. It is a difficult ask of people to stay in during those circumstances for the 10 days. As you can see from those figures, most people do their best to try and stick with it. What more can we do? Well, when we reduced the self isolation period from 14 to 10 days, we didnt reduce the 500 payment that we offer people to try to help them through any financial difficulties. That was a conscious decision. Now, you could have said, youre reducing from 14 to 10, you should reduce the sum of money accordingly, but weve decided to make it more generous by covering fewer days. We do want to do a bit more on the enforcement side as well, as this is not just a request, this is a requirement of the scheme, given the sort of figures that we are seeing in North Wales of the spread of the virus. We are looking at ways of using lateral flow test, serial testing, to see if towards the end of the isolation period it might be possible to release people who, over a number of days, repeatedly demonstrate that they are testing negative. So there are some more possibilities emerging there. I looked at what has happened in New York for example where people are offered, on a voluntary basis, the opportunity to go to a hotel for self isolation. I think we will want to explore that particularly for those communities where people live at greater density. There are some parts of Wales where housing is pretty small, and people live very close by to one another. There are some communities who are more likely to have three generation households, and others, and if there is evidence that offering people an opportunity to self isolate in different ways makes a difference I think we will definitely look to explore that further. Xiaomi introduced the successor of the MIUI 12 last month, called MIUI 12.5. While it looks like a minor update, the company actually had redone the whole package from within to lower power and memory consumption of the core apps. The company promised more than a dozen smartphones will be eligible for the first closed beta, and now it has officially posted the full list of eligible devices. Here it is: The update will first arrive on devices sold in China, the ones without Google Services. Once the company is ready, it will also deliver the MIUI 12.5 beta for global units, and well let you know when that happens. Source (in Chinese) (Image: Unsplash) The Bay Area struck a hard bargain with its tech workers. Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didnt like you. If you lived in San Francisco, you might have commuted an hour south to your job at Apple or Google or Facebook. Or if your office was in the city, maybe it was in a neighborhood with too much street crime, open drug use and $5 coffees. But it was worth it. Living in the epicenter of a boom that was changing the world was what mattered. The city gave its workers a choice of interesting jobs and a chance at the brass ring. That is, until the pandemic. Remote work offered a chance at residing for a few months in towns where life felt easier. Tech workers and their bosses realized they might not need all the perks and after-work schmooze events. But maybe they needed elbow room and a yard for the new puppy. A place to put the Peloton. A top public school. They fled. They fled to tropical beach towns. They fled to more affordable places like Georgia. They fled to states without income taxes like Texas and Florida. Thats where the story of the Bay Areas latest tech era is ending for a growing crowd of tech workers and their companies. They have suddenly movable jobs and money in the bank money that will go plenty further somewhere else. But where? The No. 1 pick for people leaving San Francisco is Austin, Texas, with other winners including Seattle, New York and Chicago, according to moveBuddha, a site that compiles data on moving. Some cities have set up recruiting programs to lure them to new homes. Miamis mayor has been inviting tech people to move there in his Twitter posts. I talked to more than two dozen tech executives and workers who have left San Francisco for other parts of the country over the past year, like a young entrepreneur who moved home to Georgia and another who has created a community in Puerto Rico. Here are some of their stories. Ah, the normal life I miss San Francisco. I miss the life I had there, said John Gardner, 35, the founder and CEO of Kickoff, a remote personal training startup, who packed his things into storage and left in a camper van to wander America. But right now its just like: What else can God and the world and government come up with to make the place less livable? A couple of months later, Gardner wrote: Greetings from sunny Miami Beach! This is about the 40th place Ive set up a temporary headquarters for Kickoff. Remote personal training happens to coincide well with remote life, but he said his startups growth this past year was also due to his leaving the tech bubble and immersing himself in more normal communities, a few days at a time. The biggest tech companies arent going anywhere, and tech stocks are still soaring. Apples flying-saucer-shaped campus is not going to zoom away. Google is still absorbing ever more office space in San Jose and San Francisco. New founders are still coming to town. But the migration from the Bay Area appears real. Residential rents in San Francisco are down 27% from a year ago, and the office vacancy rate has spiked to 16.7%, a number not seen in a decade. Though prices had dropped only slightly, Zillow reported more homes for sale in San Francisco than a year ago. For more than a month last year, 90% of the searches involving San Francisco on moveBuddha were for people moving out. Twitter, Yelp, Airbnb and Dropbox have tried to sublease some of their San Francisco office space. Pinterest, which has one of the most iconic offices in town, paid $90 million to break a lease for a site where it planned to expand. And companies like Twitter and Facebook have announced work from home forever plans. Moving into a $1.3 million house that we saw only on video for 20 minutes and said yes, wrote Mike Rothermel, a designer at Cisco who moved from the Bay Area to Boulder, Colorado, with his wife last summer. Its a mansion compared to SF for the same money. Wait, no income tax? Were selling our house and moving out of SF. Where should we go and why? Justin Kan, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Twitch, asked on Twitter in August. Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of software company Palantir, which moved from Silicon Valley to Denver, wrote back: Come to Austin with us. Growing tech ecosystem and Texas is the best place to make a stand together for a free society. Also: no state income taxes. Austin, population 1 million and the Texas city most would say is closest in spirit to the Bay Area, has long had a healthy tech industry. Computer giant Dell is based nearby. The University of Texas is one of the top public colleges in the country. And the music scene is eclectic and creative. Now the local tech industry is rapidly expanding. Apple is opening a $1 billion, 133-acre campus. Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook have all either expanded their footprints in Austin or have plans to. Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and one of the two richest men in the world, said he had moved to Texas. Startup investor money is arriving, too: The investors at 8VC and Breyer Capital opened Austin offices last year. Some of the favorite gurus of tech workers are already there, like Tim Ferriss, life-hacker, who left for Austin in 2017, and Ryan Holiday, whose writing about stoicism is influential among the startup set. Sahin Boydas, the founder of a remote-work startup who had lived in San Francisco and its suburbs over the last decade, saw all of that. He looked at his wife and two young children, working and learning from home while crammed into a Cupertino rental that had seen better days. Much of the late summer, the air was full of smoke from wildfires. For days, electricity would go in and out at his house. You start to feel stupid, said Boydas, who is 37. I can understand the 1% rich people, the very top investors and entrepreneurs, they can be happy there. So he and his family moved to Austin. For the same price as their three-bedroom apartment in Cupertino, they have a five-bedroom home on an acre of land. For the first time, Boydas has outdoor space. He just acquired two rabbits for his children. Sure, its (very) hot, but hes ready for it. Were going to get a cat and a dog, he said. We could never do that before. And its not just the cost of rent that is lower the water bill is lower; the trash bill is lower; the cost of a family dinner at a restaurant has fallen significantly. Boydas said he hadnt even known about the taxes. I run payroll for myself, and when I saw zero, I called the accountant like theres an error theres no tax line here, he said. And they were like, Yeah theres no tax. Nevermind the mosquitoes Ok guys hear me out, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami, tweeted Delian Asparouhov, a principal at Founders Fund, which invests in startups. The mayor of Miami wrote back last month: How can I help? Now there is a very vocal Miami faction, led by a few venture capital influencers, trying to tweet the citys startup world into existence. The San Francisco exodus means the talent and money of newly remote tech workers are up for grabs. And its not just the mayor of Miami trying to lure them in. Topeka, Kansas, started Choose Topeka, which will reimburse new workers $10,000 for the first year of rent or $15,000 if they buy a home. Tulsa, Oklahoma, will pay you $10,000 to move there. The nation of Estonia has a new residency program just for digital nomads. A program in Savannah, Georgia, will reimburse remote workers $2,000 for the move there, and the city has created various social activities to introduce the newcomers to one another and to locals. We try to make the transition easy, said Jennifer Bonnett, vice president of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Savannah Economic Development Authority, whose program started in June. Keyan Karimi, 29 and a startup investor, took Savannahs invitation to move there (though he didnt ask for the reimbursement). Seeing the inequality of billionaires in San Franciscos wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood and the homeless camps down the hill ground on him. So Karimi went home to his parents house in Atlanta to ride out some of the pandemic. Then he detected something strange. The city he thought was boring had gotten pretty interesting. Or maybe he had just never noticed before. I had no idea how much was going on here. I was sort of myopic, he said, pausing and correcting himself: No, I was arrogant. Karimi started looking at Zillow and studying the Southern cities he had ignored. He likes old houses and wants to fix one up. Savannah has a lot of those. So just a few months after leaving his $4,000-a-month one-bedroom in San Francisco, hes working with the local business development group to put together a maritime innovation center in Savannah to invest in and guide shipping and logistics startups. He bought one of those old houses. Savannah has one of the largest ports in the country. No one knows that, Karimi said. I figure we can do something with that. The only downside is mosquitoes, he said. I get eaten alive. There are 33,000 members in the Facebook group Leaving California and 51,000 in its sister group, Life After California. People post pictures of moving trucks and links to Zillow listings in new cities. The founder of both groups, Terry Gilliam, is planning to take members on a house-hunting road trip through eastern Tennessee this spring with stops in popular post-San Francisco destinations. One tour will be Chattanooga, Knoxville and Johnson City. When people decide to leave San Francisco, they usually dont know where they want to go, they just want to go, Gilliam said. Gilliam, who met his wife when they worked at a Bay Area Chilis restaurant, said she wouldnt let the family move yet. And so the Pied Piper of the California-bashing Facebook community is still in Fremont, on the eastern end of Silicon Valley. The gang's all...here now People always get pissed at me when they hear birds in my Zoom, said Ed Zaydelman, a longtime leader in San Franciscos Burning Man community (and former New York City club promoter), who is forming an entrepreneur community in Costa Rica. And I say, Come join. If San Francisco of the 2010s proved anything, its the power of proximity. Entrepreneurs could find a dozen startup pitch competitions every week within walking distance. If they left a big tech company, there were startups eager to hire, and if a startup failed, there was always another. They could live jammed into a rambling Victorian with fellow nerds who thanks to the popularity of polyamory were having a lot of sex. More money was made faster in the Bay Area by fewer people than at any other time in American history. No one leaving the city is arguing that a culture of innovation is going to spring up over Zoom. So some are trying to recreate it. They are getting into property development, building luxury tiny-home compounds and taking over big, funky houses in old resort towns. All these people want to do is this live-on-the-land stuff, but its not as easy as people think, Zaydelman said. Nikil Viswanathan, who co-founded blockchain startup Alchemy, recently fled San Francisco. He said that there was no reason anymore for him or his colleagues to be there, and that he had always wanted to live on the beach. So now he does, in San Diego. But the expats still find one another. Not long ago, he stumbled on a cluster at a party. I knew it was an SF crew because when I walked in because they had the full dual monitor with the ergonomic keyboard on a standing desk, Viswanathan said, adding that conversation revolved around the lower cost of living. One of the SF guys was like: I just had a burrito for $6. It was amazing. The last burrito he had in San Francisco cost $15. By Nellie Bowles c.2021 The New York Times Company The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Republic of Colombia (" Colombia ") previously announced a tender offer (the " Tender Offer ") to purchase its outstanding 4.375% Global Bonds due 2021 (the " 2021 Bonds "), 4.000% Global Bonds due 2024 (the " 2024 Bonds "), 4.500% Global Bonds due 2026 (the " 2026 Bonds "), and 3.875% Global Bonds due 2027 (the " 2027 Bonds ", and collectively with the 2021 Bonds, the 2024 Bonds and the 2026 Bonds, the " Old Bonds ") on the terms and subject to the conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase, dated January 12, 2021 (the " Offer to Purchase "). Yesterday, January 13, 2021, Colombia instructed J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, as the billing and delivering bank for the Tender Offer, to accept, subject to proration and other terms and conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase, valid Reinvestment Tenders and Simple Tenders of the Old Bonds in an aggregate principal amount of U.S. $ 1,228,468,000. All capitalized terms used but not defined in this communication have the respective meanings specified in the Offer to Purchase. The Maximum Purchase Amount and the aggregate principal amount of Reinvestment Tenders and Simple Tenders of the Old Bonds and the aggregate principal amount of Reinvestment Tenders and Simple Tenders of each series that have been accepted are shown in the table below. Appropriate adjustments will be made so that purchases are made in the minimum denominations set forth in the Offer to Purchase. No Tenders of the 2026 Bonds were accepted, and no Simple Tenders of the 2027 Bonds were accepted. No proration of Tenders has occurred. Old Bonds ISIN Maximum Purchase Amount Aggregate Principal Amount of Reinvestment Tenders Aggregate Principal Amount of Reinvestment Tenders Accepted Aggregate Principal Amount of Simple Tenders Aggregate Principal Amount of Simple Tenders Accepted 4.375% Global Bonds due 2021 US195325BN40 U.S. $ 191,422,000 U.S. $ 8,591,000 U.S. $ 8,591,000 U.S. $ 182,831,000 U.S. $ 182,831,000 4.000% Global Bonds due 2024 US195325BQ70 U.S. $ 533,738,000 U.S. $ 188,762,000 U.S. $ 188,762,000 U.S. $ 344,976,000 U.S. $ 344,976,000 3.875% Global Bonds due 2027 US195325DL65 U.S. $ 503,308,000 U.S. $ 503,308,000 U.S. $ 503,308,000 U.S. $ 97,158,000 U.S. $ 0 The settlement of the Tender Offer is scheduled to occur on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 (the " Tender Offer Settlement Date "), subject to change without notice. Failure to deliver Old Bonds on time may result, in Colombia's sole discretion, in any of the following: (i) the cancellation of a holder's tender and the holder becoming liable for any damages resulting from that failure, and/or (ii) the delivery of a buy-in notice for the purchase of such Old Bonds, executed in accordance with customary brokerage practices for corporate fixed income securities, and/or (iii) in the case of Reinvestment Tenders, the cancellation of a holder's tender and the holder remaining obligated to purchase its allocation of 2031 Bonds in respect of its related Indication of Interest. Colombia reserves the right, in its sole discretion, not to accept any or all Tender Orders and to terminate the Tender Offer for any reason. The Offer to Purchase may be downloaded from the Information Agent's website at www.dfking.com/colombia or obtained from the Information Agent, D.F. King & Co., Inc., at 1-877-896-3199 or from any of the Dealer Managers. The Dealer Managers for the Tender Offer are: Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Attention: Liability Management Group Eleven Madison Avenue New York, NY 10010 Collect: 1-212-538-2147 Toll-Free: 1-800-820-1653 Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. Attention: Liability Management Group 60 Wall Street New York, NY 10005 Collect: 1-212-250-2955 Toll-Free: 1-866-627-0391 J.P. Morgan Securities LLC Attention: Latin America Debt Capital Markets 383 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10179 Collect: 1-212-834-7279 Toll-Free: 1-866-846-2874 The Billing and Delivering Bank for this Tender Offer was: J.P. Morgan Securities LLC. Questions regarding the Tender Offer may be directed to the Dealer Managers at the above contact. Colombia has filed a registration statement (including the prospectus) and the preliminary prospectus supplement with the SEC for the New Bonds Offering. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement and other documents Colombia has filed with the SEC for more complete information about Colombia and such New Bonds Offering. You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at http://www.sec.gov. Alternatively, the Joint Book-Running Managers, the Dealer Managers or the Information Agent, as the case may be, will arrange to send you the prospectus supplement and the prospectus if you request it by calling any one of them at the numbers specified above. Important Notice The distribution of materials relating to the New Bonds Offering and the Tender Offer and the transactions contemplated by the New Bonds Offering and the Tender Offer may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. Each of the New Bonds Offering and the Tender Offer is void in all jurisdictions where it is prohibited. If materials relating to the New Bonds Offering or the Tender Offer come into a holder's possession, the holder is required by Colombia to inform itself of and to observe all of these restrictions. The materials relating to the New Bonds Offering or the Tender Offer, including this communication, do not constitute, and may not be used in connection with, an offer or solicitation in any place where offers or solicitations are not permitted by law. If a jurisdiction requires that the New Bonds Offering or the Tender Offer be made by a licensed broker or dealer and a Dealer Manager or any affiliate of a Dealer Manager is a licensed broker or dealer in that jurisdiction, the New Bonds Offering or the Tender Offer, as the case may be, shall be deemed to be made by the Dealer Manager or such affiliate on behalf of Colombia in that jurisdiction. Owners who may lawfully participate in the Tender Offer in accordance with the terms thereof are referred to as "holders." This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities nor will there be any sale of the New Bonds or the Tender Offer in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction. The offering of the New Bonds and the Tender Offer will be made only by means of the preliminary prospectus and the accompanying prospectus supplement and prospectus and in Canada, under applicable exemptions from any prospectus or registration requirements. The New Bonds may be sold and the Tender Offer is made in Canada only to purchasers purchasing, or deemed to be purchasing, as principal that are accredited investors, as defined in National Instrument 45-106 Prospectus Exemptions or subsection 73.3(1) of the Securities Act (Ontario), and are permitted clients, as defined in National Instrument 31-103 Registration Requirements, Exemptions and Ongoing Registrant Obligations, and who are not individuals. Any resale of the New Bonds must be made in accordance with an exemption from, or in a transaction not subject to, the prospectus requirements of applicable Canadian securities laws. The New Bonds and the Old Bonds will not be registered under Chilean Law No. 18,045, as amended, with the Comision para el Mercado Financiero de Chile (Financial Market Commission of Chile or "CMF") and, accordingly, the New Bonds and the Old Bonds cannot and will not be offered or sold to persons in Chile except in circumstances which have not resulted and will not result in a public offering under Chilean law, and in compliance with Norma de Caracter General (Rule) No. 336, dated June 27, 2012, issued by the CMF. The New Bonds may not be offered, sold or negotiated in Colombia, except in compliance with Part 4 of Decree 2555 of 2010. The Offer to Purchase and the New Bonds Offering do not constitute and may not be used for, or in connection with, a public offering as defined under Colombian law. The New Bonds are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the European Economic Area ("EEA"). For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of the following: (a) a retail client as defined in point (11) of Article 4(1) of Directive 2014/65/EU (as amended, "MiFID II"); or (b) a customer within the meaning of Directive 2016/97/EC (the "Insurance Distribution Directive"), where that customer would not qualify as a professional client as defined in point (10) of Article 4(1) of MiFID II. Consequently, no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 (as amended, the "PRIIPs Regulation") for offering or selling the New Bonds or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the EEA has been prepared and therefore offering or selling the New Bonds or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the EEA may be unlawful under the PRIIPs Regulation. The Old Bonds and New Bonds may not be offered or sold and will not be offered or sold in Hong Kong by means of any document other than (a) in circumstances which do not constitute an offer to the public within the meaning of the Companies (Winding Up and Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance (Cap. 32, Laws of Hong Kong) (the "CWUMPO"), or (b) to "professional investors" as defined in the Securities and Futures Ordinance (Cap. 571, Laws of Hong Kong) (the "SFO") and any rules made thereunder, or (c) in other circumstances which do not result in the document being a "prospectus" as defined in the CWUMPO. No advertisement, invitation or document relating to the Old Bonds or New Bonds has been or will be issued, or has been or will be in the possession of any person for the purpose of issue (in each case whether in Hong Kong or elsewhere), which is directed at, or the contents of which are likely to be accessed or read by, the public in Hong Kong (except if permitted to do so under the securities laws of Hong Kong) other than with respect to the Old Bonds or New Bonds which are or are intended to be disposed of only to persons outside Hong Kong or only to "professional investors" as defined in the SFO and any rules made thereunder. The Old Bonds and the New Bonds, and the Offer to Purchase and the New Bonds Offering prospectus supplement, and any other documents or materials related to such offers have not and will not be registered with the Italian Securities Exchange Commission (Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa or "CONSOB") pursuant to applicable Italian laws and regulations. The Offer to Purchase and the New Bond Offering are being carried out pursuant to the exemptions provided for, with respect to the Offer to Purchase, in Article 101 bis, paragraph 3 bis of Legislative Decree No. 58 of 24 February 1998, as amended (the "Consolidated Financial Act") and Article 35 bis, paragraph 4, of CONSOB Regulation No. 11971 of 14 May 1999, as amended; and, with respect to the New Bonds Offering, in article 1, paragraph 4, letter c), of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129. Holders or beneficial owners of the Old Bonds that are resident and/or located in Italy can tender the Old Bonds for purchase, and the New Bonds Offerings can be offered, sold and delivered, through authorized persons (such as investment firms, banks or financial intermediaries permitted to conduct such activities in Italy in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, the Consolidated Financial Act, the CONSOB Regulation No. 20307 of 15 February 2018, as amended, and Legislative Decree No. 385 of September 1, 1993, as amended) and in compliance with any other applicable laws and regulations or with any requirements imposed by CONSOB or any other Italian authority. Each intermediary must comply with the applicable laws and regulations concerning information duties vis a vis its clients in connection with the bonds or the relevant offering. The New Bonds have not been and will not be registered under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act of Japan (Act No. 25 of 1948, as amended, the "Financial Instruments and Exchange Act") and each manager has represented and agreed that it has not offered or sold, and will not offer or sell any New Bonds, directly or indirectly, in Japan or to, or for the benefit of, any resident of Japan (as defined under Article 6, Paragraph 1, Item 5 of the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act of Japan (Act No. 228 of 1949, as amended)), or to others for re-offering or resale, directly or indirectly, in Japan or to, or for the benefit of, a resident of Japan, except pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of, and otherwise in compliance with, the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and any other applicable laws, regulations and ministerial guidelines of Japan. Neither the Offer to Purchase, nor any other documents or materials relating to the Offer to Purchase have been approved by or will be submitted for the approval of, the Mexican National Banking and Securities Commission (Comision Nacional Bancaria y de Valores; the "CNBV") and, the New Bonds have not been and will not be registered with the Mexican National Securities Registry (Registro Nacional de Valores) maintained by the CNBV, and therefore the Old Bonds and New Bonds have not and may not be offered or sold publicly in Mexico. However, investors that qualify as institutional or qualified investors pursuant to the private placement exemption set forth in article 8 of the Mexican Securities Market Law (Ley del Mercado de Valores), may be contacted in connection with, and may participate in the Offer to Purchase, and can be offered with or purchase New Bonds. The participation in the Offer to Purchase or the acquisition of New Bonds will be made under such investor's own responsibility. The Tender Offer is not intended for any person who is not qualified as an institutional investor, in accordance with provisions set forth in Resolution SMV No. 021-2013-SMV-01 issued by Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores (Superintendency of Capital Markets) of Peru, and as subsequently amended. No legal, financial, tax or any other kind of advice is hereby being provided. The New Bond Offering prospectus supplement, and the Offer to Purchase have not been and will not be registered as a prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The Offer to Purchase does not constitute an offering of securities in Singapore pursuant to the Securities and Futures Act, Chapter 289 of Singapore (the "SFA"). The New Bonds will not be offered or sold or cause that such New Bonds to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase and will not offer or sell such New Bonds or cause such New Bonds to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase, and has not circulated or distributed, nor will it circulate or distribute, this prospectus supplement or any other document or material in connection with the offer or sale, or invitation for subscription or purchase, of such New Bonds, whether directly or indirectly, to persons in Singapore other than (i) to an institutional investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA) under Section 274 of the SFA, (ii) to a relevant person (as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA) pursuant to Section 275(1), or any person pursuant to Section 275(1A), and in accordance with the conditions specified in Section 275, of the SFA, and (where applicable) Regulation 3 of the Securities and Futures (Classes of Investors) Regulations 2018 of Singapore or (iii) otherwise pursuant to, and in accordance with the conditions of, any other applicable provision of the SFA. Where the New Bonds are subscribed or purchased in reliance on an exemption under Sections 274 or 275 of the SFA, the New Bonds shall not be sold within the period of six months from the date of the initial acquisition of the bonds, except to any of the following persons: an institutional investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA); a relevant person (as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA); or any person pursuant to an offer referred to in Section 275(1A) of the SFA, unless expressly specified otherwise in Section 276(7) of the SFA or Regulation 37A of the Securities and Futures (Offers of Investments) (Securities and Securities-based Derivatives Contracts) Regulations 2018 of Singapore. Where the New Bonds are subscribed or purchased under Section 275 of the SFA by a relevant person which is: a corporation (which is not an accredited investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA)) the sole business of which is to hold investments and the entire share capital of which is owned by one or more individuals, each of whom is an accredited investor; or a trust (where the trustee is not an accredited investor) whose sole purpose is to hold investments and each beneficiary of the trust is an individual who is an accredited investor, securities or securities-based derivatives contracts (each term as defined in Section 2(1) of the SFA) of that corporation or the beneficiaries' rights and interest (howsoever described) in that trust shall not be transferred within six months after that corporation or that trust has acquired the New Bonds pursuant to an offer made under Section 275 of the SFA except: o to an institutional investor or to a relevant person as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA, or (in the case of such corporation) where the transfer arises from an offer referred to in 276(3)(i)(B) of the SFA or (in the case of such trust) where the transfer arises from an offer referred to in Section 276(4)(i)(B) of the SFA; o where no consideration is or will be given for the transfer; o where the transfer is by operation of law; o as specified in Section 276(7) of the SFA; or o as specified in Regulation 37A of the Securities and Futures (Offers of Investments) (Securities and Securities-based Derivatives Contracts) Regulations 2018 of Singapore. The prospectus supplement is not intended to constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase or invest in the New Bonds described therein in Switzerland, except as permitted by law. The New Bonds may not be publicly offered, directly or indirectly, in Switzerland within the meaning of the Swiss Financial Services Act (FinSA") and will not be admitted to any trading venue (exchange or multilateral trading facility) in Switzerland. Neither the prospectus supplement nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the New Bonds constitutes a prospectus as such term is understood pursuant to the FinSA, and neither the prospectus supplement nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the New Bonds may be publicly distributed or otherwise made publicly available in Switzerland. Neither the communication of Offer to Purchase nor any other offer material relating to the Offer to Purchase has been approved by an authorized person for the purposes of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (the "FSMA"). The Offer to Purchase and the New Bond Offering prospectus supplement are only being distributed to and are only directed at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom; (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the FSMA (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (as so amended, the "Order"); (iii) high net worth entities falling within Articles 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order; or (iv) persons to whom an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity (within the meaning of section 21 of the FSMA) in connection with the issue or sale of any securities may otherwise lawfully be communicated or caused to be communicated (all such other persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). Any investment or investment activity to which the Offer to Purchase 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 the Offer to Purchase or any of its contents. The New Bonds will only be available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire the bonds will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this prospectus supplement or any of its contents. The New Bonds are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the United Kingdom ("UK"). For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client, as defined in point (8) of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) No 2017/565 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("EUWA"); or (ii) a customer within the meaning of the provisions of the FSMA and any rules or regulations made under the FSMA to implement Directive (EU) 2016/97, where that customer would not qualify as a professional client, as defined in point (8) of Article 2(1) of Regulation (EU) No 600/2014 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the EUWA. Consequently no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the EUWA (the "UK PRIIPs Regulation") for offering or selling the New Bonds or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the UK has been prepared and therefore offering or selling the New Bonds or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the UK may be unlawful under the UK PRIIPs Regulation. Contact information: D.F. King & Co., Inc. 48 Wall Street, 22nd Floor New York, New York 10005 Toll Free: 1-877-896-3199 Email: [email protected] Website: www.dfking.com/colombia ANY DISCLAIMERS OR OTHER NOTICES THAT MAY APPEAR AFTER THIS MESSAGE ARE NOT APPLICABLE TO THIS COMMUNICATION AND SHOULD BE DISREGARDED. SUCH DISCLAIMERS OR OTHER NOTICES WERE AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED AS A RESULT OF THIS COMMUNICATION BEING SENT VIA BLOOMBERG OR ANOTHER EMAIL SYSTEM. SOURCE The Republic of Colombia As they drove around, Gonzalez started pointing out cars that he thought were being driven by members of rival gangs, prosecutors said. As the black Infiniti that Gonzalez and his friends were in drove past Sanchezs white car on Sawyer just south of Belmont Avenue, Gonzalez hopped into the open window of the front passenger side of the Infiniti and shot at the white car, hitting Sanchez twice, prosecutors said. A relevant bill drafted by the Ministry of Justice calls for the selection of up to 21 such judges for Armenian courts of first instance. Three other new judges specializing in arrests or corruption-related offenses would be appointed to the Court of Appeals. The increase in the number of judges would shorten criminal and judicial proceedings, Justice Minister Rustam Badasian said during a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Badasian said it would also result in more objective court rulings on arrest warrants demanded by investigators. In recent months Armenian judges have refused to allow law-enforcement bodies to arrest dozens of opposition leaders and members as well as other anti-government activists. Virtually all of those individuals are prosecuted in connection with angry protests sparked by the Pashinian administrations handling of the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinian charged last month that Armenias judicial system has become part of a pseudo-elite which is trying to topple him after the disastrous war. Badasian likewise accused judges of routinely acting in a non-objective manner. Ruben Vartazarian, the chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council overseeing the Armenian judiciary, rejected the criticism. Some critics of the Armenian government have already expressed concern over its plans to install magistrates tasked with allowing or blocking pre-trial arrests. They claim that the government wants to make sure that courts stop hampering politically motivated investigations ordered by it. Pashinian insisted on Thursday that the bill is part of his administrations stated efforts to make the judiciary more independent and effective. He said that the new judges would undergo thorough integrity checks during the selection and appointment process. One of the state's biggest urban renewal projects has reached another milestone with the release of public space plans around Subiaco Oval. Subi East's 'The Oval' spaces will have six components, including the Six Seasons Bidi trail, developed and design-led by members of the Noongar community, where visitors can learn about Noongar knowledge, culture and history, and a heritage plaza at the retained oval's entry gates, celebrating the historical home of WA football. The planned heritage plaza. Credit:Development WA. Woody Meadow, a research landscape project by Murdoch University and University of Melbourne with input from the Noongar community, will have native landscaping for adults and children to explore, while the perimeter of the oval, honouring the 1938 oval boundary and incorporating representation of the Sandover Medal Walk, will be circled by a permanent running track. A community park for sports and games, with barbecue and picnic spaces, a nature play area, youth plaza, toilets and temporary change rooms, and a green link featuring the Aleppo Pines from Gallipoli, connecting to Bob Hawke College and Mueller Park, will also be included. Farmers' Protest: 9th round of govt-farmer talks concludes, next meet on Jan 19 India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Jan 15: The ninth round of talks between farmer unions and three union ministers on Friday ended with stalemate over new agricultural laws. The two sides will meet again on January 19. Farmers union and three central ministers on Friday committed to continue holding direct talks to resolve the over-one-month-long deadlock over three agri laws, with Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar urging farmer leaders to be flexible in their approach as has been done by the government. Rahul Gandhi leads Congress protest in support of agitating farmers Speaking to the media, Congress leader Bhupinder Hooda said that they would force the BJP-led central government to repeal the farm laws. The Congress is observing the day as Kisan Adhikar Diwas in support of the rights of farmers who have been protesting against the Centre's three farm laws. The party is also protesting against hike in fuel prices. Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. How the pro-Khalistan Sikhs For Justice is influencing the farmers protest On Tuesday, the Supreme Court had stayed the implementation of three farm laws till further orders. It had also announced the formation of a committee to hear the grievances of the farmers and the opinion of the government. Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann, Shetkari Sanghatana Maharashtra president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati were appointed on the panel. However, Mann, on Thursday recused himself from the four-member committee. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News It can be seen that the Supreme Court-appointed panel on farm laws is likely to hold its first meeting on January 19. Farmers unions-SC appointed panel to meet on January 19 The protesting farmer leaders, meanwhile, said they will attend the ninth round of talks with the government amid indication that it may be last such meeting with the Centre, but added that they don't have much hope as they will not settle for anything less than the repeal of the contentious farm laws. Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) Joginder Singh Ugrahan said, "We are going to hold talks with the government on Friday. We don't have much hope from the Friday meeting as the government will cite the SC-appointed panel. The government doesn't have good intention to resolve our issues." Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse... now's the time to toll the bells, wear black and really prepare for trouble. For Merlina, the 14-year-old Queen raven of the Tower of London is missing, presumed dead and, according to myth and legend, the presence of these birds is vital to the survival of the kingdom. She flew off one night shortly before Christmas for her evening constitutional and, to the shock and dismay of Christopher Skaife, Yeoman Warder Ravenmaster at the Tower of London, she never came back. 'She just disappeared! We've been looking and looking. I'm always looking. It's been weeks now,' he says in a choked voice. Because while Chris loves all his ravens with a passion that drives his wife Jasmine 'insane', Merlina was always a bit different. Merlina, the 14-year-old Queen raven of the Tower of London is missing, presumed dead and, according to myth and legend, the presence of these birds is vital to the survival of the kingdom. Pictured: Ravenmaster Chris Skaife at The Tower of London Wild, free-spirited and cheeky forever stealing tourists' sandwiches and Pringles she was also unusually loving for a raven. 'We had a special relationship. I was her human buddy. She always knew where I was and kept her eye on me,' he says. They also communicated constantly. 'We used a special clicking noise like a knock-knocking sound,' he says. 'So she'd chat with me and allow me to stroke her beak. 'She was quite affectionate. I'd never use the term 'favourite', but, well... I do have a tattoo of her on my calf.' If confirmed, Merlina's death would bring the number of ravens at the Tower to seven. As legend has it, any fewer than six and, well, everything will turn to dust. Charles II is thought to have been the first to insist that the ravens of the Tower be protected after he was warned the crown and the Tower itself would fall if they left. And this is a prospect which has already whipped social media users into a frenzy. 'OMG we are all doomed!!!!!' tweeted one. She flew off one night shortly before Christmas for her evening constitutional and, to the shock and dismay of Mr Skaife, Yeoman Warder Ravenmaster at the Tower of London, she never came back. Pictured: Merlina Wild, free-spirited and cheeky forever stealing tourists' sandwiches and Pringles Merlina (seen with Mr Skaife) was also unusually loving for a raven Another said: 'After 2020 what can go worse in 2021... and it starts with ravens leaving the Tower of London.' A third wrote: 'Now, I'm not superstitious in the slightest. But we don't need this adding to 2021.' Chris, meanwhile who became a Yeoman Warder in 2006 and has held the highly coveted post of Ravenmaster since 2011 is far more worried about his beloved Merlina than the threat to the kingdom. 'We do have seven ravens here at the Tower of London, six by royal decree. And, of course, I still have a spare one, so we're OK, at the moment,' he says, adding: 'And we also have an active breeding programme. But it is desperately sad.' While Chris admits to shedding 'quite a few tears', back at the Tower, all but one of Merlina's seven glossy black pals appear unperturbed. Indeed, for six of them, it's just business as usual perching, roosting, flitting from the Tower battlements to their smart, purpose-built house. And, of course, gobbling through their daily ration of 6oz of fresh meat, hard-boiled eggs, biscuits soaked in blood, the occasional rabbit and, in non-Covid times, however many sausage rolls, sandwiches and crisps they can steal from visitors. Merlina, the 14-year-old 'free-spirited' raven who arrived at the Tower as a chick in 2007, has not been seen at her home at the 11th Century castle for several weeks and is feared dead But not so for one young buck called Jubilee, aged nine, who had fallen for Merlina shortly before her disappearance, bonded firmly and now looks down in the dumps. 'Ravens have strong personalities and strong emotions anger, happiness and, in Jubilee's case, deep sadness,' says Chris. They are also fantastically clever, with a cognitive ability thought to rival that of chimps and donkeys. All of which means they are curious, naughty, excellent mimics (of crows, blackbirds and even humans squawking 'good morning' to visitors) and get bored easily. During last year's lockdown and missing all their usual attention, some started dive-bombing members of staff, which was intimidating given they grow up to 2 ft high, with a wingspan of up to 4 ft, and are equipped with a vicious beak and powerful talons. Merlina was, of course, the cleverest of the lot, with an avid following on social media. 'She was a highly intelligent raven. One of the very smartest,' says Chris. Her party tricks included lying upside down with her legs in the air, 'pretending to be dead until visitors started crying 'A raven's dead! A raven's dead!' in alarm'. Despite the brutal hours of a Ravenmaster he's up at 5.30am every day and the burden of responsibility the role imposes ('it is my job to ensure that they stay at the Tower'), Chris buzzes when he talks of his beloved charges. 'I've been building up to this all my career,' he says. 'It's an honour and a privilege.' He had previously served 24 years in the infantry as a member of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment during which he was posted to Germany, Kosovo and Northern Ireland. The Tower of London was built on the demand of William the Conqueror after he defeated Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 Like all yeoman warders better known as Beefeaters he had to have a minimum of 22 years exemplary service to even qualify for an interview at the Tower. He and Merlina joined the same year. He, as assistant to the then Ravenmaster and she as a young wild bird from South Wales. Ever since, he has spent every waking hour with her and the other birds and misses them desperately when he's on holiday. During his tenure at the top, he has made important changes: smart new overnight enclosures, a breeding programme which produced chicks in 2019 and in 2020 and, most importantly, a new 'minimum wing-trim policy'. Traditionally, the birds had their wings trimmed quite severely to reduce the distance they could fly. However, Chris wanted the birds in his care to feel wilder, freer and even to fly off. 'I wanted them to stay at the Tower because they chose to, not because they were prisoners,' he says. 'That's my proudest achievement.' This is not, of course, the first time disaster has struck for the Tower's ravens. During World War II, just three Mabel, Grip and Pauline survived the bombing. But Pauline was killed soon afterwards and the other two died mysteriously, causing Winston Churchill to hurriedly order the flock back to full size. In 2013, two Tower ravens were killed by a red fox that managed to infiltrate the grounds, and since Chris Skaife took over, one raven called Munin escaped, but was captured by a member of the public and swiftly returned. Who knows? Perhaps Merlina will surprise us yet. Maybe she just fancied a change of scene somewhere a bit sunnier, perhaps? 'I'm the eternal optimist, so I'm hoping she's just gone off on holiday somewhere,' says Chris. But I think we both know she's more likely to have made her way to that great perch in the sky. After all, she'd never leave Chris for so long, unless she had to. Mumbai, Jan 15 : A mini-general election at the grassroots level was completed without major incidents in 14,234 Gram Panchayats across 34 of Maharashtra's 36 districts (except Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban districts), officials said on Friday. Though the voting percentages were still being tabulated, Maharashtra State Election Commission officials said the response was "overwhelming", especially from women and youth, though district-level tentative figures ranged from 50-60 per cent turnout. The results of the elections - in which local issues intertwined with state concerns dominated - will be declared on Monday. This is the first major grassroots electoral challenge before the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray since it assumed office 15 months ago. Candidates from all the major national parties, state parties, regional parties and local parties besides independents were in the fray for the crucial elections, the outcome of which is considered a litmus test for the MVA government's popularity and performance. In many villages, the voters turned out enthusiastically in groups to the voting booths to elect a total of 124,810 members of their respective Gram Panchayats. Several prominent state politicians from various political parties specially travelled down to their native villages to exercise their franchise in the local polls. Barring minor skirmishes or group clashes among workers of rival political parties in some villages, the elections passed off peacefully amid tight security and maintaining full Covid-19 protocols. All voters wearing face-masks were guided to queue outside polling stations maintaining adequate physical distance, their temperatures were checked before they were allowed inside the polling booth, MSEC CEO U.P.S. Madan said. Those with fluctuations in their body temperatures were again measured after some time and if their readings were not normal, tokens were handed over asking them to return after the voting hour for a special 30-minute voting window, Madan added. The elections for many of the Gram Panchayats were due at various points in 2020, but were postponed in view of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown in the state. Of the 14,234 Gram Panchayats, Nanded had the highest - 1,015 villages going to polls, and the lowest figure was three in Wardha. The other district-wise figures included: Wardha 50, Sindhudurg 70, Nandurbar 87, Raigad 88, Beed 129, Nagpur 130, Bhandara 148, Sangli 152, Thane 158, Washim 163, Gondiya 189, Dhule 218, Akola 225, Gadchiroli 362, Latur 408, Osmanabad 428, Kolhapur 433, Jalna 475, Ratnagiri 479, Hingoli 495, Buldhana 527, Amravati 553, Parbhani 566, Aurangabad 618, Nashik 621, Chandrapur 629, Solapur 658, Pune 748, Ahmednagar 767, Jalgaon 783, Satara 879, and Yavatmal 980. It will be September before the Covid-19 vaccine has been rolled out to the entire population according to the latest schedule. Deputy Ossian Smyth, the Minister of State for Public Procurement has published an updated vaccination rollout schedule. He said that the HSE has committed to administer every dose of the vaccine at the speed that they receive them. Mr Smyth said on social media: Many people are wondering, when will I be able to get vaccinated? Everyone who wants to will receive their vaccination by September. Many people are wondering, when will I be able to get vaccinated? Everyone who wants to will receive their vaccination by September. This chart tells you when you are due to be vaccinated. 1/n pic.twitter.com/YtiXYux2zy Ossian Smyth TD (@smytho) January 14, 2021 Read More However he cautioned, The vaccine supply schedule is a best guess because it depends on variables like when new vaccines are approved and on how fast they can be manufactured. "Procurement and IT are vital to the success of the vaccination programme. In addition to procuring the vaccines themselves, we need millions of surgical steel needles and syringes to administer up to 10m vaccine doses. "The rest of the world is trying to procure the same equipment. The Chief Procurement Officer and the Chief Information Officer report to me and have confirmed that Ireland has secured enough supplies to administer 10m vaccine does. This week, vaccination is being rolled out in 180 long-term residential care facilities and 35 hospitals. Mass vaccination centres will also be needed, he said. Under the schedule, 700,000 people will receive doses between January and March, and this group will include long term care residents over 65 and staff; frontline healthcare workers and everyone aged 70 plus. A total of 1.4 million doses are earmarked for this phase. The next phase of the rollout will occur between April and June, when 1.8 million people will be vaccinated. Some 3.7 million doses will be earmarked for this. Education workers are included in this second phase. The final phase of the programme, involving 1.9 million people and 3.8m doses, will move into the thee month period of July, August and September. Leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) and Leader of the Opposition Dr. Godwin Friday is of the view that the government is failing to manage the COVID-19 crisis, and failing to keep the people informed about the state of the pandemic in SVG. Dr. Friday, speaking at a NDPs press conference last Wednesday, said that there was too much political calculation in what is said and done by public officials for public consumption. "The professionals in the Ministry of Health must be guided by the science and experience, not by politics! It must always be what makes the people safe and feel safe, not what makes the government look good or sound good, said Dr. Friday. As far as the Opposition Leader was concerned, there was a trust gap between government and the people as far as the management of the COVID crisis goes. He described this as being "dangerous and can cost lives. The message must be conveyed clearly and consistently that we are not yet out of the crisis and we cannot yet return to normal, Dr. Friday encouraged. The opposition leader on Wednesday stated that the economy cannot function properly if people are getting infected and others fear becoming infected. "There will be reduced public confidence in going about their business and the economy will suffer. So, the only way to protect the economy is to bring the spread of the virus under control and show our people that the government is managing the problem, he advised. However, Dr. Friday continued, "The evidence of the last two weeks show that the government is failing to do that and is doing so at a time when the situation is graver more grave and more urgent than ever. Friday is calling on the government to put strict measures in place including securing the ports of entry to ensure all persons are properly checked and handled appropriately; enforce quarantine measures strictly, through effective monitoring and follow up; conduct random testing, or test of person who want to be tested, so that testing is more widespread. "The goal, he noted, "must be to test as many people as possible, on a continuous basis. Other measures proposed by the opposition leader include: mandatory masks in public spaces, public building and public transport; facilitate importation of masks; promote work rotation, especially in the public sector (this will reduce use of minivans). He also noted that as a priority, the upcoming Budget must provide for financial support to persons economically affected. "There must be a significant package of relief assistance for people hurting from the pandemic, declared Friday. A release dated January 13, 2021 from the Ministry of Health, informed that there were a total of 340 cases of COVID-19 recorded here. Of this total, 123 were said to be imported cases, 6 described as imported related and 211 cases under investigation. Though there was no official confirmation, the 211 cases under investigation were, in the court of public opinion, locally transmitted cases. The release as referenced disclosed that there were 242 active cases of the disease. There have been no deaths attributed to COVID-19 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The figures show that the number of COVISD-19 cases here have increased appreciably since late December, with the majority seemingly because of local transmission. A number of government departments, the Police Force and private entities have reported cases among their staff. Democrats are wrestling with when to start the Senate impeachment trial for President Trump, with some pressing for the party to move immediately as others call for a delay to gather more evidence and clear the calendar for confirming cabinet nominees and passing Covid-19 aid. The trial is set to overlap with the beginning of Joe Bidens term as president, complicating the already-busy agenda that Democrats plan to tackle in coming weeks, though the exact timing will depend on when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) formally sends over the article of impeachment. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states A person familiar with Democratic leadership discussions in Congress said that, barring further provocations from Mr. Trump, the party might hold on to the article for some time, allowing more evidence to accumulate and giving Mr. Biden full access to the Senate schedule early in his term. Before last years trial, Mrs. Pelosi held on to the two articles of impeachment for several weeks. But others have said Democrats should move forward with the process soon, arguing that the Senate could handle both the impeachment trial and other matters simultaneously. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senates No. 2 Democrat, said on NBC News on Thursday that he didnt know when the Senate would start the trial. A spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said, We are working with Republicans to try to find a path forward," Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.), a close ally of Mr. Biden, said on CNN that he didnt have a clear picture on the timing of a trial. He said that Democrats are weighing the merits of moving ahead with a vote quickly, based on the record so far, or taking time to hold a deeper investigation. That tension is part of the things that are being discussed between my colleagues now," he said. The Senate wont return to Washington until Jan. 19, the day before Mr. Bidens inauguration, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) rebuffed a Democratic push to reconvene immediately and begin the trial in the wake of the impeachment of Mr. Trump on Wednesday. While Mr. McConnell has signaled that he is open to convicting Mr. Trump for his statements before last weeks attack on the Capitol, he said the trial wouldnt conclude until after Mr. Bidens term starts. Even if the Senate process were to begin this week and move promptly, no final verdict would be reached until after President Trump had left office," Mr. McConnell said Wednesday. An impeachment trial for the outgoing president at the beginning of Mr. Bidens term would create a logistical challenge for Democrats, who are to take control of the Senate and seek to confirm Mr. Bidens nominees quickly and pass another coronavirus relief bill. Last years trial in the first impeachment of Mr. Trump took several weeks, requiring senators to sit at their desks on the chambers floor, often until late into the night. I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation," Mr. Biden said Wednesday. A planned confirmation hearing Friday before the Senate Intelligence Committee for Mr. Bidens nominee as director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, was postponed Thursday evening. Despite the unusual circumstances on Capitol Hill, the committee is working in good faith to move this nominee as fast as possible and ensure the committees members have an opportunity to question the nominee in both open and closed settings," acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and vice chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), said in a statement. The senators didnt say when the hearing would be rescheduled. Mr. Biden on Thursday rolled out a proposal for a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package, focused on money for vaccine distribution, unemployment insurance, direct payments to Americans, and state and local governments. Congress passed a roughly $900 billion package in December. Democrats are set to take over the majority later in January once two Georgia senators are seated and Kamala Harris becomes vice president and can cast a tiebreaking vote. If Mrs. Pelosi does send the article over before Jan. 19, the trial could begin as soon as Jan. 20, the day of Mr. Bidens inauguration, without unanimous consent among senators to delay the process. Mrs. Pelosi called Mr. Trump a clear and present danger" in urging for impeachment this week. Once the trial does begin, Democrats say they will want to move faster than last years process, arguing that public-record evidence of Mr. Trumps behavior will allow for quick proceedings. Once they hold a majority in the chamber, Democrats will have the votes to control the process, as Republicans did last year. I dont expect it to take weeks in order to move through this," said Sen. Tina Smith (D., Minn.). The first impeachment of Mr. Trump focused on his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden and his son, and the second impeachment revolves around Mr. Trumps statements encouraging a mob that stormed the Capitol seeking to overturn Mr. Bidens victory in the 2020 election. An impeachment trial of Mr. Trump at the beginning of Mr. Bidens term will be the latest chapter in an extraordinary political rivalry between the two men. At a time of reckoning among Republicans about Mr. Trumps role in last weeks attack, it isnt clear how many GOP senators would join Democrats in the politically perilous vote. Opinion polls released since the Capitol riot show Mr. Trumps approval rating hitting new lows for his presidency, but he maintains broad support among Republican voters. Along with Mr. McConnell, several others have signaled that they could be open to the possibility of voting to convict, including Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) in a statement Thursday praised the Houses impeachment effort as she said she was still deciding whether she would vote to convict Mr. Trump. Such unlawful actions cannot go without consequence and the House has responded swiftly, and I believe, appropriately, with impeachment," Ms. Murkowski said. If Mr. Trump is already out of office, conviction could open the door to the Senate barring him from ever holding office again. Mr. Trump has considered running for president again in 2024. Ten Republicans joined Democrats to vote to impeach Mr. Trump in the House. Mr. Schumer said he plans to hold a vote on barring Mr. Trump from office as part of the trial. Some Republicans have called the process rushed and have started raising questions about whether Congress can impeach an official who is out of office, previewing a possible line of argument during the eventual trial. We have an impeachment in 24 hours without a witness without a lawyer, without a real hearing," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a close ally of Mr. Trump, said on Fox News. Now, whats the trial going to look like?" There is no precedent for a president being impeached or convicted after leaving office. Both the House and Senate did proceed once with impeachment and trial for a resigned cabinet official, President Ulysses S. Grants War Secretary William Belknap in 1876. He was acquitted. 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. [January 15, 2021] Health at the Forefront of Technology Announced at CES 2021 MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This week's CES 2021 highlighted how major consumer electronics brands are committed to designing products for human health. Recent events have changed the new normal, to include distance learning and work-from-home, thus adding greater amounts of screen time to daily life. During CES 2021, world leading brands, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer and LG Display, announced the inclusion of Eyesafe in their consumer products, signaling a major shift towards consumer electronics designed for human health. CES 2021 highlights of products designed for human health include: The CES 2021 Eyesafe Exhibition comes in the wake of significant data from across the globe, indicating rising levels of screen time by consumers. Consumer behavior has shifted, perhaps permanently, to a society where people live, work and play online. In turn, Eyesafe, along with its partners in consumer electronics and healthcare, are focused on providing research, education and solutions to mitigate the potential health impacts of high-energy blue light. Together, these companies are helping define the future of electronics and vision health. About Eyesafe Eyesafe is the worldwide supplier of Eyesafe Technology, Eyesafe Display, and Eyesafe Standards, a suite of pioneering products and services that are shaping the consumer electronics industry's understanding of device usage, screen time, and the impacts of blue light-emitting devices. Eyesafe Technology and the associated intellectual property portfolio was developed by a world-class team of eye doctors, engineers, and scientists with decades of experience in electronics, display materials, and light management. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Eyesafe works to develop technologies and standards in conjunction with leaders in health care. Please visit Eyesafe.com for more information. 1 *Based on HP's internal analysis of displays marketed to consumers as of Jan 2021. Display's plastic enclosure made with 85% post-consumer recycled plastic content consists of 5% ocean bound plastic materials by weight. Eyesafe certified website (https://eyesafe.com). View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/health-at-the-forefront-of-technology-announced-at-ces-2021-301209275.html SOURCE Eyesafe Russia said on Friday that it will withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities after the US exit from the pact, compounding the challenges faced by the incoming administration of president-elect Joe Biden. Russias Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the US withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty last year significantly upended the balance of interests of signatory states, adding that Moscows proposals to keep the treaty alive after the US exit have been cold-shouldered by Washingtons allies. The ministry said that Russia is now launching the relevant procedures to withdraw from the pact "due to the lack of progress in removing the obstacles for the treaty's functioning in the new conditions. The Russian parliament, which ratified the treaty in 2001, will now have to vote to leave it. The treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West by allowing the accords more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each others territories to collect information about military forces and activities. More than 1,500 flights have been conducted under the treaty, aimed at fostering transparency about military activity and helping monitor arms control and other agreements. US President Donald Trump pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty, arguing that Russian violations made it untenable for the United States to remain a party. The US completed its withdrawal from the pact in November. Russia denied breaching the treaty, which came into force in 2002. The European Union has urged the US to reconsider and called on Russia to stay in the pact and lift flight restrictions, notably over its westernmost Kaliningrad region, which lies between NATO allies Lithuania and Poland. Russia has argued that the limits on flights over Kaliningrad, which hosts sizable military forces, are permissible under the treatys terms, noting that the US has imposed more sweeping restrictions on observation flights over Alaska. As a condition for staying in the pact after the US pullout, Moscow unsuccessfully sought guarantees from NATO allies that they wouldn't transfer the data collected during their observation flights over Russia to the US Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said in televised remarks Friday that Russia could review its decision to withdraw if the US decides to return to the pact, but acknowledged that the prospect looks utopian. Moscow has warned that the US withdrawal will erode global security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, particularly amid Russia-West tensions after the Russian annexation of Ukraines Crimea in 2014. The demise of the Open Skies Treaty follows the US and Russian withdrawal in 2019 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The INF Treaty, which was signed in 1987 by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, banned land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,410 miles), weapons seen as particularly destabilizing because of the shorter time they take to reach targets compared with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The only US-Russian arms control pact still standing is the New START treaty that expires in three weeks. Moscow and Washington have discussed the possibility of its extension, but have so far failed to overcome their differences. Biden has spoken for the preservation of the New START treaty and Russia has said it's open for its quick and unconditional extension. But negotiating the deal before the pact expires on Feb. 5 appears extremely challenging. New START was signed in 2010 by US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance. Arms control advocates have warned that its expiration would remove any checks on US and Russian nuclear forces, striking a blow to global stability. A man was hospitalized Friday morning after he was shot inside a west Birmingham home. Birmingham police responded shortly before 10:30 a.m. to a residence in the 3300 block of Ishkooda-Wenonah Road on a report of someone assaulted. Sgt. Rod Mauldin said when West Precinct officers arrived, they encountered the suspect at the front door. At that point, the situation escalated, and the officer put out an emergency call for all available backup. The suspect was quickly brought under control, and no officers were injured. Once inside the residence, officers found a male victim who had been both assaulted and shot. He was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. The suspect is in custody. His name has not been released pending formal charges. A woman faces a 500 fine for organising a protest outside a Cardiff police station after the a man died hours after he was released from custody. The unnamed woman is accused of breaching Welsh Government coronavirus regulations by organising demonstrations outside Cardiff Bay Police Station following the death of Mohamud Mohammed Hassan. The 24-year-old was arrested on the evening of Friday 8 January after reports of a disturbance at his home but was released the following morning without charge. Mohamud Mohammed Hassan was arrested on the evening of Friday 8 January after reports of a disturbance at his home but was released the following morning without charge. He died later the same day Mr Hassan was found dead at the same property later that evening, with his family claiming he had been assaulted while in custody, but police say there are no indications of excessive force used by their officers. On Friday, South Wales Police said one woman has been reported for summons by organising the protests on Tuesday and Wednesday, in which around 200 people attended on both occasions demanding video footage of Mr Hassan's arrest and time in custody be made public. The woman has the option of paying a 500 fixed penalty notice or requesting a court hearing. Protesters gather outside Cardiff Bay Police Station on Thursday 14 during a third day of protest against the death of Mohamud Mohammed Hassan Two further protests outside the police station occurred on Thursday and Friday, and police say further enquires are ongoing with regard to all demonstrations. A police spokesperson said: 'Welsh Government regulations are in place to protect the community from the spread of Covid-19 and this action was taken in an effort to protect the public's health during this global pandemic. 'Enquiries into the protests are continuing and further action against other individuals for breaching Covid-19 regulations and, or other criminal offences, is anticipated.' Earlier on Friday, the force's chief constable Jeremy Vaughan described Mr Hassan's death as a 'tragedy' and that an independent investigation was ongoing but urged would-be protesters to keep to Covid-19 guidelines. The unnamed woman is accused of breaching Welsh Government coronavirus regulations by organising demonstrations outside Cardiff Bay Police Station (pictured) 'I know people want to make their voices heard; the prevalence of racial discrimination and disadvantage across all parts of our society is such an important issue that voices should be heard,' he said. 'In ordinary times policing will do all it can to facilitate people lawfully exercising that right to be heard. 'These are no ordinary times. A global health pandemic is affecting all of us and the virus is spreading, leading to unimaginable pressures on the National Health Service, and I would urge people to follow the regulations and guidelines to help protect the NHS and save lives. More than 200 people marched from the city centre to the police station around a mile away to demand 'justice' following the death of 24-year-old man Police described his death as 'sudden and unexplained' and say there were no indications of misconduct issues or excessive force used by their officers, but his family dispute this 'I need my police officers to be working hard to protect the public, to respond to incidents of domestic violence and abuse, to respond to sexual violence, knife crime and all other forms of violence and hatred.' CCTV and body-worn video involving Mr Hassan has been handed to the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) who are investigating officers' contact with him. The force have said the material cannot be publicly released until the conclusion of the IOPC investigation. The IOPC's director for Wales, Catrin Evans, said the investigation will look at the level of force used by officers, but that early indications following post-mortem examination showed no physical trauma to explain his death. His aunt, Zainab Hassan, said she saw Mr Hassan following his release on Saturday with 'lots of wounds on his body and lots of bruises'. 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. The Scranton School District has released the contracts for its business manager and human resources director. Board President Katie Gilmartin said she thought the contracts had been posted on the district website prior to the boards 7-2 votes Thursday night. The absence raised transparency questions Friday, with the public not privy to contract details before the votes. The raises corrected "historical errors" in the salaries, officials said. Business Manager Patrick Laffeys salary will increase from $100,000 to $125,000 per year. Human Resources Director John Castrovinci will earn $116,150, up from $98,000. Both will receive 2.5% annual raises, pending satisfactory evaluations. Directors Sean McAndrew and Tara Yanni, while noting they appreciated the work of the employees, said on Thursday they could not approve raises while teachers work in their fourth year without a contract. As California struggles to get potentially lifesaving vaccines into as many arms as possible, concern is mounting that the rapid spread of multiple, highly contagious variants of the coronavirus around the world could lead to another, perhaps deadlier surge. So far there is no evidence that any of the more contagious variants are spreading widely in the United States, though at least one a variant that took off in the United Kingdom has been identified in a few dozen cases across the country, including in California. But at some point soon the new U.K. variant or another mutation of the virus, including one that might evade or partially evade coronavirus vaccines could get a foothold and lead to a new spike in cases, even as California battles a surge that has caused 5,700 deaths statewide in just the first 14 days of the year. Were really in a race now, and this only increases our urgency to mass vaccinate the population before additional variants evolve and emerge, Dr. Charles Chiu, director of viral diagnostics at UCSF, said during a virtual presentation on Thursday. Its critical therefore to vaccinate wide swaths of the population as quickly as possible, and certainly much faster than the state has been, experts say. Chius presentation, part of a UCSF roundtable discussion, came amid growing concern about the discovery of several new variants many months into the pandemic. In addition to the U.K. variant, which has become the dominant virus type there, other troubling mutations have been found in South Africa and Brazil. The United Kingdom on Thursday banned flights from Latin America to prevent the Brazilian variant from entering the country. The U.K. already banned flights from South Africa to keep that variant at bay as much as possible. The South African variant is especially concerning, Chiu said, because lab studies suggest it could at least partially evade the current coronavirus vaccines being deployed in the United States. A UCSF lab that does genome sequencing for the state is awaiting results on hundreds of samples from recent cases, but so far has not found any of the U.K., South Africa or Brazilian variants in the Bay Area. Nonetheless, experts expect some of the variants will be here soon, if they are not already. Only a small sample of virus cases are sequenced, so the type of virus is not known for most infections. The warnings issued by Chiu and other scientists come as Californias vaccine campaign continues its chaotic and confusing rollout. California has one of the worst records for administering vaccines in the U.S. less than a third of all doses delivered in the state actually had gone into peoples arms as of Wednesday. The state on Wednesday expanded the categories of people eligible to receive vaccines right away to include anyone age 65 and older. But many counties and providers were not prepared to start administering all of those doses, leaving patients flustered and frustrated at the mixed messages. Bay Area counties are distributing vaccines differently, with some relying mostly on large hospital systems to notify their patients and others setting up mass vaccination sites for the public or contracting with Safeway and Rite Aid to vaccinate residents. The inconsistencies in the nine-county region reflect the states rocky vaccine rollout in the absence of a clear and uniform plan. Though vaccines will likely be available at pharmacies and grocery stores in the future, right now counties are in very different places. Some counties are estimating theyll vaccinate most people by summer Marin is eyeing June, Santa Clara is shooting for August while others say it may not be until fall. San Francisco officials said theyre relying mostly on large providers, such as Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, for distribution. The city will cover the remaining 5% of patients who are uninsured or in its health network and started vaccinating patients 65 and older in that system across 14 clinics on Wednesday, officials said. People 65 and older in Contra Costa County can now sign up to receive the coronavirus vaccine, Contra Costa Health Services said. Vaccines are still being administered to those in the first priority group, namely health providers, and appointment dates may be weeks away for some people. Those in a higher-risk group, especially people who are 75 or older, might receive an earlier vaccine appointment. Santa Clara County, which has been one of the most impacted by the pandemic, said it hopes to vaccinate 85% of its population by Aug. 1. The county reached a somber milestone Thursday, surpassing 1,000 COVID-19-related deaths, officials announced. County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody called it a devastating and tragic milestone for the community. The harsh reality is that COVID-19 continues to be extremely widespread in our county and throughout the state, she said in a statement Thursday. Even though weve all been sacrificing for almost a year to fight this virus, prevent infections, and return to our normal lives, we must remain vigilant or we will see more deaths and extreme challenges for our hospitals and healthcare systems. Intensive care units were stretched nearly to the limit in Santa Clara County, and 47% of the occupied beds were for COVID-19 patients, the county said. The California Hospital Association and medical ethics experts said Thursday that although hospitals have not yet triggered crisis care plans that would ration medical care, overwhelming COVID-19 patient loads make them very concerned that some hospitals are near that point especially in Southern California. Hospitals are stretching every opportunity they have, every resource they have, every inch of space they have, to be able to address the demand of the need for COVID-19 treatment, said Carmela Coyle, the hospital associations president and CEO, during a news briefing Thursday. The circumstance in the southern part of the state is quite dire. The challenging part is literally this weekend and over the next two weeks we are on the cusp of what we think may be yet another peak of the surge. Los Angeles County scientists estimate that 1 in 3 county residents have been infected with the coronavirus, an astonishing sign of how rapidly the virus is spreading in the hard-hit region, according to the Los Angeles Times. The figure, based on scientific modeling, translates to more than 3 million of the countys 10 million residents, including nearly 13,000 who have died. Bay Area hospital capacity is in relatively better shape than the extreme pressure reported in Southern California, Coyle said. In San Francisco County, about 9% of hospital patients are there because of COVID-19, data from the California Hospital Association shows, compared with 45% of patients in Riverside County, 42% in San Bernardino and 56% in Imperial County. In a heartening sign, Californias seven-day positivity rate the percentage of positive results from coronavirus tests dropped to 12.6%, down from 14.3%. But the crisis is far from over, Coyle said. We have a long way to go and many, many people yet will be hospitalized as a result of this infection spread. Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tatiana.sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez Nous contacter Maurice Info c/o Jean Claude Le Roy8A Flat des RosieresOliviers StreetPetit VergerPointe aux Sables 11121Tel: 57 11 75 23Email : jessy@maurice-info.mu Joe Biden never stops casting President Trump and his supporters as Nazi sympathizers. After years of falsely accusing Trump of praising Nazis who showed up in Charlottesville, he re-emphasized the point by running a campaign ad featuring Nazi imagery. Now he's at it again, falsely blaming Trump for inciting extremist violence and accusing Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley of behaving like Nazis. Biden condemned the Capitol invaders as "a bunch of thugs, insurrectionists, antisemites" (plenty of evidence supports this claim) but alleged they "had the active encouragement of a sitting president of the United States" a smear of Trump, who urged the huge gathering of demonstrators to "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." Ironically, this is the same Biden whose 2020 Democratic Convention featured Patrisse Cullors, a violence-inciting Marxist co-founder of Black Lives Matter, after BLM's riots claimed 26 lives, injured more than 2,000 police officers, and destroyed the livelihoods of countless others in a nationwide rampage of arson and looting. Cullors spent five years building BLM into the violent medieval mob it is today. In 2015, she visited the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. "This is an apartheid state," she told Ebony magazine, which reported everything she said as fact. "We can't deny that and if we do deny it, we are a part of the Zionist violence." Also in her delegation were Marc Lamont Hill, who in 2018 accused Jews of poisoning water; Farrakhan-supporter Carmen Perez; and five members of the terrorist-supporting Dream Defenders, including Phillip Agnew, who in 2020 was appointed a senior adviser to the Bernie Sanders campaign. Cullors's BLM has rallied behind Rasmea Odeh, convicted murderer of two Hebrew University students, and Rashida Tlaib sent out a tweet congratulating them for it. (After President Obama told Tlaib he's proud of her, and House speaker Pelosi supported her against her opposition in the 2020 primary, who can deny that the pro-terror congresswoman now embodies the Democratic mainstream?) It was a busy 2015 for Cullors. Shortly after her January visit to the Palestinian territories to witness "ethnic cleansing" up close, she visited First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. She praised the riots in Baltimore an "uprising," a "Black Spring" liberation movement reminiscent of the Arab Spring. In July, she addressed Netroots Nation the largest, most influential gathering of Democratic activists where she led chants of "burn everything down" and "rise the f--- up." In August, Cullors signed a statement accusing Israel of "colonialism," "apartheid," and "ethnic cleansing" and urging African-Americans to boycott the Jewish state. All of the above turned out to be excellent career moves. Fortune magazine included her and her two BLM co-founders on their list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" for 2016. At the invitation of the Democratic National Convention, Patrisse Cullors addressed the Platform Committee on July 27, 2020. (The topic, oddly enough: how the U.S. can be made a safer place for minority communities.) Her inclusion was fully predictable, considering that earlier that month, Biden addressed the Million Muslim Votes Summit, where his fellow speakers included Linda Sarsour, Rep. Ilhan Omar, CAIR's Hamas-supporting founder and executive director Nihad Awad, and Muslim Public Affairs Council founder Salam Al-Marayati. In a revealing contrast, Biden had boycotted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to a joint session of Congress in 2015. Imagine the uproar had the Republicans given a platform to a violence-inciting, terror-endorsing right-wing bigot at their 2020 convention. The second impeachment of Trump and the effort to turn his supporters into pariahs might have begun the following day. Our challenge now is to bypass the media filter and expose the double standard in its many manifestations. Image: Steve Eason. A four-week trial at Cambridge Crown Court heard that Teddie, pictured, had suffered injuries consistent with being 'gripped hard', 'shaken vigorously', and 'having his head struck against a hard surface' A 'violent man' has been found guilty of murdering his girlfriend's 12-week-old son after the baby was found with a 'catalogue' of injuries, including a fractured skull and a bleed to the brain. Kane Mitchell, 31, inflicted violence on poor baby Teddie, who died in hospital on November 11, 2019, after ten days on a life support machine. A four-week trial at Cambridge Crown Court heard that Teddie had suffered injuries consistent with being 'gripped hard', 'shaken vigorously', and 'having his head struck against a hard surface'. Mitchell, who lived with Teddie's mother Lucci Smith in St Neots, Cambs., was yesterday found guilty of murder, after a jury ruled he had inflicted the fatal injuries. Smith, 29, was also found guilty by the jury of neglect - but was acquitted on charges of causing or allowing death and serious injury. Cambridge Crown Court heard Mitchell and Smith had been in a relationship for about eight months and had lived together with baby Teddie. At 3pm on November 1, 2019, the ambulance service was called to Pattison Court, St Neots, where Teddie was found to be unresponsive and in cardiac arrest. Smith had left Teddie in the care of Mitchell that day while she did the morning school run. When she returned, she noticed the tot seemed lethargic and wouldn't take his bottle. She later contacted a GP after Teddie's condition deteriorated. They advised her to call 999 but she waited about half an hour before calling them. Kane Mitchell, who lived with Teddie's mother Lucci Smith in St Neots, Cambs., was yesterday found guilty of murder, after a jury ruled he had inflicted the fatal injuries Teddie was rushed to the Special Care Baby Unit at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon, where doctors discovered he had a fractured skull and a significant bleed on the brain. Officers and medical staff were concerned about how Teddie received his injuries and Mitchell and Smith were both arrested at the hospital. Teddie was later transferred to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge for a specialist neurology assessment and placed in intensive care on life support, where doctors concluded he would not recover. Medical staff kept Teddie stable on a life support machine, however, after ten days, a decision was made to withdraw the life support and Teddie passed away shortly after. A post mortem revealed he died as a result of his fractured skull and lack of oxygen to the brain. During the trial, the jury were read statements from neighbours who said they had heard arguments coming from the address on a regular basis and that the household had been unsettled since Mitchell moved in. During police interview, Mitchell said he believed he was Teddie's biological father. However, DNA results following the death revealed he was not. He could not explain how Teddie came to suffer his fatal injuries. During police interview, Smith claimed she and Mitchell were in a loving relationship and they rarely argued. Lucci Smith, 29, was also found guilty by the jury of neglect - but was acquitted on charges of causing or allowing death and serious injury She also couldn't explain how Teddie came to have his fatal injuries. The jury deliberated for two days following the four-week trial before reaching a verdict. Mitchell and Smith will be sentenced on February 5 at Cambridge Crown Court. Detective Inspector Lucy Thomson, from the Beds Cambs and Herts Major Crime Unit, said: 'This is a tragic and terrible case in which an 11-week-old baby lost his life at the hands of a person who should have been there to protect him. 'Our investigation found that Teddie had suffered multiple injuries during his short life which neither Mitchell or Smith could account for. 'The verdict won't bring Teddie back, but it does bring some justice for what he endured.' Akshaya Tritiya 2021: Check the auspicious date and timings here to buy gold in your city Customs officials seize gold worth Rs 1.09 crore at Mangaluru International Airport India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P Mangaluru, Jan 15: Customs officials at Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) on Thursday seized 2.15 kg of gold worth Rs 1.09 crore from two people who arrived on a flight from Sharjah. Based on intelligence and profiling of passengers, Customs personnel intercepted Faizal Thotty Melparamba (37) and Mohammad Shuhaib Mugu (31), both natives of Kasaragod in Kerala, a Customs release said. The two had arrived from Sharjah by Air India flight IX 1384 on Thursday. India dealt with COVID-19, its economic consequences decisively: IMF chief When the officials checked the passengers, they found the gold, concealed in paste form in underwear. Over 2.154 kg of gold of 24K purity worth Rs 1.09 crore was recovered and seized. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Customs Commissioner Imamuddin Ahmed and Joint Commissioner Joannes George congratulated the officers of the airport customs team led by deputy commissioner Praveen Kandi and officers K Shrikanth, Subhendu Ranjan Behera, Naveen Kumar and others for their vigilant action in preventing the smuggling activity, a Customs release said. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 14:51 [IST] Nitish was speaking at an event, when journalists interjected, referring to the murder of an employee of a private airline outside his residence in Patna on Tuesday Patna: A heated exchange was witnessed on Friday between Bihar chief Minister Nitish Kumar and journalists when they nettled him over a high-profile murder case that rocked the state capital earlier this week. Kumar was talking to reporters after inaugurating the first phase of 'Atal Path', a Rs 379.57 crore-worth elevated multiple lane road project in Patna. As the chief minister began to speak about the improvement in infrastructure since he assumed power a decade and a half ago, he was interrupted by journalists who insisted that the law and order situation has deteriorated, citing the example of a young official of a private airlines being gunned down outside his residence in the city Tuesday evening. "Please do not mix up the issues of development and crime," Kumar requested and then snapped when reporters persisted, and said, "Your projection will demoralise the state police which is doing its job. I had myself summoned the DGP and gave necessary directions". Responding to their contention that the police was not able to prevent crime, he retorted, "Does a murderer seek permission before he commits the offence? Do you have any necessary inputs to share? If so, please go ahead". "Bihar has one of the lowest crime rates across the country. Please have a look at other states before painting a grim picture. And do you remember how bad things were when for a decade and a half the state was ruled by pati-patni (supposedly referring to Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi)," a visibly irritated chief minister said. Some of the senior journalists said they were willing to share their inputs with the police but felt hamstrung as the DGP did not pick up the phone and the person receiving calls simply noted down details of the caller with the promise that the officer will call back which never happened. The chief minister then telephoned the DGP SK Singhal himself and directed him to spruce up the mechanism for communication with journalists. A hastily issued order from the state police chief ensued, enlisting mobile and landline numbers which media persons could dial to contact him. After the episode, the chief minister left for Rajgir, a tourist spot. He dedicated to the public 'Venu Van', a sprawling ancient park, said to be in existence since the time of the Buddha, which has been given a facelift by the department of environment, forestry and climate change. He also dedicated to the public 'Ghora Katora Park', yet another tourist spot in the central Bihar town, the original seat of power of the ancient kingdom of Magadh which was later shifted to Pataliputra, which is now known as Patna. Washington, Jan 15 : A man who had his face painted blue and red and donned a fur hat with horns while storming the US Capitol building in Washington D.C. on January 6, has asked outgoing President Donald Trump to pardon him. Images of Jacob Anthony Chansley, also known as "QAnon Shaman", went viral on the internet as the violent riots took place which were staged by supporters of Trump following a speech he made earlier that day outside the Capitol calling for "patriots" to take a stand against the 2020 election results. Chansley surrendered to authorities on January 9. He faces numerous charges, including knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, The Hill news website reported. Making a plea for a pardon, Chansley's lawyer Albert Watkins told a local news outlet on Thursday that "words and invitation of a President are supposed to mean something". Adding that Chansley was not involved in the January 6 violence, Watkins said: "Given the peaceful and compliant fashion in which Chansley comported himself, it would be appropriate and honourable for the President to pardon Chansley and other like-minded, peaceful individuals who accepted the President's invitation with honourable intentions." Shortly after the riots, Chansley told NBC News that there was nothing wrong in his actions, adding "the fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win". His reference was to the lawmakers inside the building who had to take shelter. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text According to a recent Kaspersky survey, people who work in companies with fewer than 50 employees, on average, need less employer support when working remotely, compared to staff in larger businesses. Emotional or psychological support is an exception. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many companies, but small businesses have suffered more than others. According to numerous research findings, in some countries, up to 90% of small companies have experienced a negative impact from the pandemic, such as drops in production, sales and revenues, and even complete closures. In companies with a dozen or fewer people, the way employees get through these challenges can very much impact the state of the entire business. Therefore, it is important for leaders to monitor how employees feel and supervise the consequences that this can have on their business. Kasperskys latest survey revealed that the largest gap in support expectations is seen in social aid and additional benefits, such as covering internet or phone bills. 41% of small company employees would like more support with this, in comparison to 47% among those working in medium-sized businesses. The same pattern is true for required technology support, like helping to provide the right equipment and IT tools (35% compared to 41%). This may be due to the fact that it is more common for people in small organizations to arrange their own working environment, use personal devices for work and take care of access to work services. Emotional or psychological support is needed to almost the same extent for all businesses: 23% across small organizations and 25% across bigger ones. The impact of COVID-19 has not only affected peoples work and daily lives but has also caused anxiety for their own health and that of their loved ones, as well as overall optimism for the future. So, mental health support may be significant for any employee. Chart 1: What form of support employees would like to have more of from their employers People who have experience working in small businesses may feel more self-sufficient in the new working reality and this has helped their organization to concentrate all of their resources on survival. However, to maintain employee productivity and morale, it is still important to make sure that staff have all that they need for work. When it comes to their technology set up, employees need help to use IT securely even if working on personal laptops and managing access to all web services alone, comments Ivan Salikhov, Product Manager, SMB Products at Kaspersky. To facilitate remote working conditions for employees, Kaspersky recommends the following actions: The Woke Movement is Leninism 4.0: Political Commentator Dr. James Lindsay Dr. James Lindsay, an American-born author and political commentator, called the woke ideology and movement embraced by Black Lives Matter organizations and other left-wing activists Leninism 4.0. Now we have the attempt to apply Leninism to the American context, using corporations as part of the toolset, for example. And so we call this movement the woke movement. We talked about woke capital with all the corporations the woke movement is Leninism 4.0, Lindsay told Jan Jekielek, host of The Epoch Times American Thoughts Leaders program on Jan. 13. Lindsay explained that the first 3 versions or flavors of Leninism through Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, each tried to fix the problems from the previous version. The woke movement that has evolved today focuses on the issues of social and racial justice and has become a catchword used by Black Lives Matter activists on the streets. Lindsay described the movement as the idea is that you have some enlightened party of people who are probably part of what Marx would have identified as the bourgeoisie, who understand the problem of the proletariat better than the proletariat does and is going to shepherd them through the revolution that they need to have thats for the greater good or in their best interest. For people on the left, being woke means siding with social justice advocates focused on contemporary political concerns, but for people on the right, it is often interpreted as an aspect of political correctness or cancel culture. Lindsay said hes been studying woke culture and its historical and philosophical antecedents for a number of years. At present, whats happening in the United States [is] we have repressive tolerance at the end of a narrative, which is a significant difference [of] 4.0 versus 1.0. So we should point that out, at least for the moment, that the way that they are, you know, Lenin went around and killed dissidents, they are instead canceling dissidents here, he said. But he noted that there are some encouraging positive developments. Weve had attorneys general already file antitrust suits against these big tech companies. Weve seen people pushing back in big legal ways that might have a significant impact to scare these big tech companies into rethinking the way that theyre operating, Lindsay added. The Jan. 6 Incident Lindsay said the people who broke into the Capitol building on Jan. 6 might have had the intention of some kind of insurrection, but that video footage showed that they were wandering around being interviewed by journalists and didnt have a plan of action. He doesnt think President Donald Trump incited violence there and that the narrative that he did doesnt add up. He warned against the consensus view built up on what happened at the Capitol and a pseudo-reality that misleads people. Why is everything so fractured? Why is everything so polarized? We actually live in a world, at the moment, where we have two consensus views, Lindsay said. Lindsay also called out hypocrisy from the left as they try to get sharp prison sentences threatened on these people [who broke into the Capitol] and make them unemployable, even calling on Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to be removed from their offices. You see Cori Bush calling for them to be removed and then we compare that to what we saw with Kamala Harris saying: heres the link to bail people out of jail for the riots in June. We see AOC saying repeatedly that the riots are necessary, he said. Lindsay offered advice to people who may feel confused about the current rapidly-changing narratives surrounding politics: take a bit of a step back from the news. Try to regain your perspective. Try to regain your calm and then start asking questions. Be more skeptical. Start to perceive that maybe the thing youre being shown is something that people want you to see rather than something that is, he said. Lindsay, author of six books on subjects ranging from religion, the philosophy of science, and postmodern theory, said hes not a Trump fan or right-wing, but strives to uphold liberty. This article was corrected to explicitly state that the woke ideology and movement is embraced by Black Lives Matter organizations, not the totality of individuals who accept or advocate for the truism that black lives matter. This was ambiguous in a previous version of the piece. How's this for support for President Trump from an unlikely, unexpected quarter? Left-wing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reportedly vowed to take on tech companies on Thursday in response to the bans that President Donald Trump has faced on social media. I can tell you that at the first G20 meeting we have, I am going to make a proposal on this issue, Lopez Obrador said. Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but this cannot be used as a pretext to suspend freedom of expression. How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed? Lopez Obrador asked. Lopez Obradors Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that Mexico has already started the work of getting other nations involved in the effort, including officials in France, Germany, the European Union, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, The Associated Press reported. AMLO, as he is known, not only effectively defended President Trump, who was humiliated by these little social media toads, who shut down his Internet access in cartel-like unison, he also was implicitly rebuking the left for tolerating this assault on free expression, given that the social media giants are run by oligarchs with monopolies. That makes the censorship calls from Michelle Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look pretty disgusting. The pair of them, and all the leftists calling for internet censorship now look like corporate pawns singing for their supper. Which isn't a good look for anyone on the left. This isn't the first time AMLO, a socialist, has come to the defense of Trump. Back in November, he looked at what was going on in the states with its election fiasco and obviously recognized that movie. He, too, had had an election stolen before. That he's so principled about it really makes a lot of us here, skeptical in the past, now think it really happened. He also helped Trump with illegal-border-crossing issues, enabling Trump to craft a stay-in-Mexico asylum policy with the U.S., which served to ensure that only the most likely asylum cases applied. That put a stop to the border surges that had been going on at the time, surges that primarily benefitted Mexico's drug cartels, which profited from the illegal immigrant trade. All of which is mighty ironic. Two previous so-called conservative presidents of Mexico, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, constantly fought with the U.S. about the question of exporting illegal aliens. Now a full-blown socialist comes along, and he sees the world just as the average American voter sees it -- and has the guts to point out, too. AMLO's pretty goood, given his helpfulness to President Trump but here's another thing: AMLO is a skilled political actor and would hardly do this if it cut into his poll numbers. He knows that all of this standing up for Trump benefits him, too, politically, which speaks well for the average Mexican voter. ANLO's all right. We hope to hear more from him. Image credit: public domain image, via Wikimedia Commons 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. Red Cross Continues Its Call for Blood Donations The American Red Cross is urging healthy donors to give blood as it grapples with a supply shortage exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Theres always a shortage of blood, but [the pandemic] just heightened what we need now, Cornell Foster, a mobile operator for the American Red Cross, told The Epoch Times. The hospitals still need to run, and they still need blood, so its always going to be a shortage. Foster was speaking during a Jan. 14 blood drive at the Costa Mesa Senior Center, where donators arrived for their scheduled appointments and received a temperature check, in compliance with COVID safety protocols, prior to entering the main room. Before giving blood, donors were assessed for eligibility and received a brief physical exam. While blood is not necessarily given out more during COVID-19, the shortage arose due to the nature of the pandemic, which encouraged people to remain home as much as possible. With many people staying inside, there has been a decrease in donations to organizations such as the American Red Cross. Tracy Olsen, a registered nurse with the Red Cross, told The Epoch Times that they are working hard to get donations of blood, which will directly go to hospital patients. Olsen said that near the beginning of the pandemic, she was pleasantly surprised with people still coming to donate blood, which she speculated was likely to do with freer schedules or those wanting to help their community. We had a nice amount of people coming [to donate] at the beginning, [now] were starting to see more what were used to, where we are having more people not showing up and things like that, Olsen said. So, with that were really pushing to get as many people to come in as we can. The Red Cross is holding blood drives nearly every day. At the Jan. 14 drive, the organization hoped for at least 50 donations, and recommended those looking to donate allot themselves about an hour of time from start to finish, especially if its their first time. Those interesting in giving blood can make an appointment online. The Red Cross is also looking for donations from people who have recovered from COVID-19, noting that plasma in the blood of those who had the virus may contain antibodies that can be a possible treatment for current COVID-19 patients. Covid outbreaks in care homes have more than trebled in a month meaning infection levels are now similar to the peak of the first wave amid growing fears residents are not being given the vaccine fast enough. Date from Public Health England (PHE) reveals that in the week to January 14, there were 977 outbreaks of respiratory conditions in care homes with 739 confirmed as Covid. This is the second highest weekly total since records began in April. By comparison, in the week ending December 17, there were just 305 outbreaks with 227 confirmed as Covid. Back in mid-April last year, there were 1,239 outbreaks in a week with 651 confirmed as Covid. As UK vaccinations hit 3million yesterday, Boris Johnson's Government has pledged that every care home resident will be vaccinated by the end of the month. But the Daily Telegraph has claimed that there is a problem with the rollout with 100 residents getting a jab in the same time 1,000 people are vaccinated in the community. Adam Briggs, senior fellow at The Health Foundation, told the newspaper: 'The rise in reported care home incidents is deeply concerning. Care homes cannot be neglected again.' Care home resident Joan Potts, aged 102, speaks to Dr. Jane Allen before receiving her first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Wimbledon Beaumont Care Home, run by Barchester, in south west London A further 48,682 cases were reported today, bringing the country's overall pandemic total to 3,292,014 - up 1,157 on yesterday but crucially down 3,936 from last Thursday's data Deaths in the past 24 hours rose by 1,248 - a 7.4 per cent climb from last week's 1,162 - bringing the UK's grim fatality toll to 86,015 Are GPs holding up care homes blitz? Covid outbreaks in care homes are rising amid fears that GPs are reluctant to vaccinate residents in settings with positive cases. There were 977 suspected outbreaks in care homes reported in the seven days to January 10 up from 749 the week before, Public Health England data shows. The surging cases show officials are in a race to vaccinate the most vulnerable or risk a repeat of the thousands of deaths in the first wave. NHS England has urged GPs to administer jabs to care home residents by the end of next week at the latest. Payments have been upped to 30 for vaccines delivered in care homes by the end of this week, and 20 for each jab next week. But relatives of some residents have complained that GPs are avoiding care homes with cases. Joanna Henwood, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, said her 96-year-old father is still waiting to receive the jab in his Devon care home following an outbreak on January 4. She said staff told her that GPs would administer jabs only once the outbreak had cleared. NHS guidelines state that GPs are still expected to visit homes where there are cases. Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said doctors are working hard to ensure care homes receive their jabs. Advertisement This week, we revealed almost 13 of the 28 care home providers we spoke to were currently battling coronavirus cases in their homes. On top of that, homes are once again under pressure to accept covid-positive patients directly from hospitals. This was blamed for the high rate of Covid infections in homes during the last peak. Last night, Mike Padgham, chairman of the Independent Care Group, condemned the latest figures. Mr Padgham, whose four care homes have also been forced to accept patients from hospitals, told The Daily Telegraph: Its shocking to see these figures. Its great that weve got vaccines but theyve come too slowly. NHS England announced yesterday that all care home residents are expected to be vaccinated by the end of this week, or by January 24 at the latest. Covid outbreaks in care homes are rising amid fears that GPs are reluctant to vaccinate residents in settings with positive cases. There were 977 suspected outbreaks in care homes reported in the seven days to January 10 up from 749 the week before, Public Health England data shows. The surging cases show officials are in a race to vaccinate the most vulnerable or risk a repeat of the thousands of deaths in the first wave. NHS England has urged GPs to administer jabs to care home residents by the end of next week at the latest. Payments have been upped to 30 for vaccines delivered in care homes by the end of this week, and 20 for each jab next week. But relatives of some residents have complained that GPs are avoiding care homes with cases. Joanna Henwood, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, said her 96-year-old father is still waiting to receive the jab in his Devon care home following an outbreak on January 4. She said staff told her that GPs would administer jabs only once the outbreak had cleared. NHS guidelines state that GPs are still expected to visit homes where there are cases. Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said doctors are working hard to ensure care homes receive their jabs. One in ten residents in Scotland are not being vaccinated when the jab is taken to care homes, a health board has revealed. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde yesterday said all its care home residents have been offered the vaccine and 6,019 residents have received it. But it also said just under 10 per cent of residents were unable to get the vaccine due to issues such as ill health. Another health board, NHS Fife, said it had taken the jab to all its care homes and around 5,000 staff and residents received the first dose. But it is estimated that hundreds more did not receive it. Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance Co. Ltd has launched Indias first standard term insurance plan called Saral Jeevan Bima, which is aimed at first-time buyers and those who may not have easy access to existing term plans. A term plan pays out the sum assured in case of the insureds death. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) in October had mandated all life insurers to launch the Saral Jeevan Bima plans from 1 January 2021, with simple features and standard terms and conditions to ensure that every individual, irrespective of their socioeconomic background gets access to financial protection. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states The products launches got delayed as the regulator and the insurers were in discussions over the flexibility in terms of the maximum sum assured and the pricing. We look at what this new plan offers, who should buy this plan and whether costlier pricing of the Saral Jeevan Bima will defeat the products purpose of deepening the insurance penetration in the country. Edelweiss Tokios Saral Jeevan Bima plan offers sum assured in the range of the 5 lakh to 25 lakh, which can be selected in the multiples of 50,000. Individuals can choose the policy and the premium paying terms starting from five years till 40 years. View Full Image Price Chart People who are not eligible to buy regular term products due to the unavailability of regular income proof and required educational qualification can now easily invest in a term life insurance," said Santosh Agarwal, chief business officer, life insurance, Policybazaar.com, an online marketplace for insurance. In terms of pricing, a sum assured of 25 lakh under this Saral Jeevan Bima plan with a policy term of 30 years for a 30-year-old non-smoking male individual will come at a premium of 727 per month (including taxes). However, compared with this, the companys existing term insurance plan called Zindagi+ costs around 390 per month for similar premium paying and policy terms. According to the companys spokesperson, the pricing of any product is a reflection of the expected mortality experience of its target market. We expect the demand to be pretty robust. As it is a newer customer category, product pricing and underwriting will evolve over time with availability of more data," the spokesperson said. Explaining the reason behind higher pricing of Saral Jeevan Bima plans, Mahavir Chopra, founder, Beshak.org, a research platform for insurance users, said: Insurers use demography, income category, place of residence, occupation and education level of the buyers to create term insurance products. The problem with the Saral Jeevan Bima is that there are no filters allowed, meaning that the premium will be high as the risk is high." According to Chopra, someone who lives in the city, earns reasonably well and has an occupation, which is not hazardous, may not find this product relevant as regular term products will be cheaper. Edelweiss Tokio also expects this product to be bought by segments where the mortality experience is likely to be higher. Experts says the Saral Jeevan Bima may also work as an entry-level term insurance plan. The current term plans available usually offers a minimum sum assured of 25 lakh and a policy term starting at 10 years. Today, sum assured of 5 lakh isnt available in the market. Some parts of the costs for distribution, policy issuance and medical underwriting are fixed. So, enabling an 5 lakh product will be more expensive proportionately than an 25 lakh product. However, from 5 lakh sum assured point of view, these plans may not be expensive as there is no alternative available in this category," said Abhishek Bondia, managing director and principal officer, SecureNow.in, an insurance broker. Edelweiss Tokios Saral Jeevan Bima plan will cost 145 per month for a sum assured of 5 lakh and a policy term of five years. With this product, the people who earlier did not have access to term insurance will be able to easily compare and get financial security for their family. The Saral Jeevan Bima solves for access more than standardization," said Chopra. An individual with good educational qualification and job would find the regular term plans better due to their lower costs, but the Saral Jeevan Bima may work for first-time buyers who belongs to the lower-income segment and are looking for lower sum assured. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. A huge fire burned through an area of Bangladeshs Rohingya refugee camp in the early hours of Thursday. The fired destroyed about 550 shelters, the poor homes of an estimated 3,500 refugees from Myanmar. Another 150 refugee shops also burned to the ground. Bangladeshi officials said there were no deaths or injuries. A Rohingya refugee in the affected area gave photographs and video recordings of the disaster to Reuters news agency. The images show families -- including children -- digging through the smoking ruins of their neighborhood, searching for anything that might still be of value. The Rohingya refugee camp is situated near the Bangladeshi coastal city of Coxs Bazar. In 2017 it became the largest refugee camp in the world, after at least 750,000 members of the Rohingya minority fled Myanmar. They were escaping vicious government attacks on Rohingya people and villages. The fire happened in the E-Block area of the Nayapara camp. E block is completely burned down, said refugee Mohammed Arakani. There is nothing left. Everyone is crying, he continued. They lost all their belongings. They lost everything ... The UNHCR said it is providing shelter, clothing, hot meals, and medical care for the refugees in the affected area. Experts and officials are investigating the disaster. Many aid organizations have established offices in Bangladesh to help the Rohingya refugees. The group Save the Children is among them. Onno van Manen directs its operations in Bangladesh. She called the fire another devastating blow for the Rohingya people, noting the years of intense hardship they have faced already. Mohammed Shamsud Douza is a top Bangladeshi official for refugee issues. He said the fire department spent two hours putting out the fire. He said the fire grew when gas containers inside the homes began to explode. In recent weeks, the Bangladeshi government has moved several thousand Rohingya refugees to a low-lying island in the Bay of Bengal. It is far from the mainland. Human rights groups have protested the move saying the island is unsafe during storms. They also argue that Bangladesh is forcing the refugees to resettle there. Bangladeshi officials deny the accusation. Im Anna Matteo. The Reuters news agency reported this story. Anna Matteo adapted the content for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story vicious adj. very violent and cruel photograph n. a picture made by a camera devastating adj. causing great damage or harm hardship n. something that causes pain, suffering, or loss The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. In viral videos seen by 300,000+, youth target Charmin toilet paper brand over concerns about caribou habitat, boreal forest destruction, and Indigenous sovereignty CINCINNATI, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As Procter & Gamble executives took center stage at CES 2021 this week to tout their sustainability initiatives, youth activists upset over the company's greenwashing have been overwhelming social media platforms TikTok and Instagram to air their grievances in dozens of viral videos and posts seen by more than 300,000 people. The influencers are calling out the Charmin toilet paper brand and raising concerns about declining caribou habitat, boreal forest destruction, and Indigenous sovereignty in Canada, where the company sources some of its fiber. "Procter & Gamble is the parent company of Charmin, and they mislead consumers with reassuring claims about planting trees. What they don't tell you is that they're actually cutting down massive swaths of the boreal forest, which destroys the habitat of endangered species like woodland caribou," said TikTok's @trison_b . This public callout comes three months after shareholders defied the company and voted in favor of a proposal for P&G to assess how it can do better on forest sourcing and impacts a clear indication that the world's largest consumer goods company is not doing enough to deal with the financial threats of deforestation and forest degradation in its supply chains. Procter & Gamble has not released plans for how it will respond to the proposal. "Companies like P&G sit and label themselves environmentally conscious and get praised for it like they're not literally making toilet paper out of trees taken off of Indigenous land," said TikTok's @_reem.k_ . Nearly a dozen youth activists and youth organizations joined environmental organization Stand.earth in posting videos using the hashtag #GreenOut22 and #WipeRightCharmin. "Procter & Gamble is destroying the boreal forest to make your Charmin toilet paper unsustainably and using greenwashing methods," said TikTok's @jaysoune , a Canadian resident. "This is her now, isn't she gorgeous?" he asks sarcastically while standing in front of a photo of a clearcut. See all the videos and posts: SOURCE Stand.earth Related Links https://www.stand.earth Berger said when he read the findings of the first probe, "it was pretty clear to me we needed to do a follow-on... South Korean mobile carriers are seeking to boost their growing user base on the latest network with the launch of Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S21 smartphones. The Galaxy S21 series started taking preorders Friday from and the country's three major carriers -- SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus-- with an official release slated for January 29. Samsung's new flagship, which supports 5G, comes in three variants -- the 6.2-inch S21, the 6.7-inch S21+ and the 6.8-inch S21 Ultra -- and competes with Apple Inc.'s iPhone 12 models, the US company's first smartphones to support Local carriers are banking on the rivalry to spur the country's migration to the latest generation network that has recently picked up after the launch of Apple's latest smartphones in October last year, reports Yonhap news agency. South Korea's users nearly reached 11 million in November, compared to around 9 million in September, according to government data. The majority of local mobile users are still on the 4G network -- 53 million as of November -- accounting for 75 per cent of the country's total 70 million mobile subscriptions. To attract more 5G users, top mobile carrier SK Telecom released cheaper 5G data plans ahead of the launch of the Galaxy S21, following in the footsteps of rivals. Samsung's new flagship models are expected to increase the country's 5G users, with Daishin Securities analyst Park Kang-ho estimating up to 32 million in global sales for the Galaxy S21 series this year, up 23 per cent from last year's sales of Galaxy S20 models. The South Korean tech giant is aggressively pushing the new flagships, with the smallest S21 model going on sale with a price tag of 999,900 won ($910) here, making it the cheapest flagship 5G smartphone from --IANS wh/sdr/ (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.) Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.. Tonight Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. Bahraini claims he was approached by Qatar for spying Bahraini claims he was approached by Qatar for spying TDT | Manana The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com The Anti-Cyber Crime Department at the Ministry of Interior has opened an investigation into a video clip alleging Qatar of interfering in Bahrains internal affairs. The viral clip featuring Makki Ali Kwaid, a Bahraini citizen native of Sitra alleges that Qatari security tried to recruit him. The incident, according to him, occurred after Qatari security arrested him and confiscated his boat. He claims that Qatar released him from captivity in exchange for information on Bahraini security services in the Sitra region. Ali Kwaid also claims that he received a monthly salary of 10 thousand Qatari riyals. Anti-Cyber Crime Department officials after noticing the clip summoned Makki Ali Kwaid to hear his account of the incident, which if proved is a dangerous interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan Listen to article It is most disconcerting when a handful of mischievous, reckless dangerous and hopelessly misguided religious zealots and ethnic bigots that ought to know better like the Sokoto-based Muslim Solidarity Forum issue threats and give quit notices and ultimatums to leading members of the Christian community like Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah. This is disappointing and unacceptable and, if not handled properly, has the potential of leading to a major religious conflagration and crisis. I say this because Kukah is deeply loved by millions from all over the country and the Christian community rever and adore him. The Muslim Solidarity Forum are seeking to undermine the great work that the Sultan of Sokoto has achieved in creating peace in the Caliphate between Christians and Muslims over the last few years. I oppose those Muslims that issue such quit notices and threats against Christians and their fellow Nigerians just as I am against any Christian or Christian group that issue quit notices and threats or give ultimatums to members of the Muslim community. We must all learn to get on with one another and avoid any inflammatory language or unnecessary confrontations. I say this because Nigeria belongs to us all. No-one has the right to tell another to leave his territory simply because he delivered a sermon which sought to highlight the failings, dangers and evil of the Buhari government. As a matter of fact no-one has the right to ask his fellow Nigerian to leave his territory for ANY reason. Bishop Kukah made a lot of sense in his homily and he spoke for millions. For anyone to now describe it as an attack or insult on Islam is dishonest, disingenuous and deceitful. For them to go a step further and threaten him and say he must apologise or leave Sokoto is not only highly provocative but also extreemly reckless and dangerous. And the truth is that those that have threatened him are playing with fire. Let me be clear, nothing must happen to Kukah because if it does the consequences will be grave, horrendous, calamitous, catastrophic, devastating and unimaginable and the entire country would not only be set on fire but would also explode into a thousand pieces. No-one wants that and no-one prays for it but if Kukah is harmed or killed Nigeria will not survive it and she will be left in ashes. I do not wish or hope for such a terrible thing to happen and I pray it does not but that is the sad and bitter truth. We must endeavour to ensure that such an apocalyptic scenario never unfolds in our nation by always preaching peace, restraint and understanding and always insisting on non-violence and mutual respect. The truth is that Christians are fed up with being treated like the whipping boy and second class citizens in their own country and we demand to be accorded the same respect that we offer and accord to the Muslims. That is the only way to guarantee peace because no one faith has the monopoly of violence. When you keep pushing a man to the wall and spitting in his face, one day he will stand up, call your bluff, say "enough is enough", damn the consequences and defend himself. We must all calm down before it is too late. We must seek to ease the tension and take a deep breath before the whole matter degenerates any further. We must all choose the path of peace, love and mutual understanding. We must not allow the extremist on either side of the religious, ethnic and political divide to push us any further apart. We must make it clear to our Muslim brothers that an attack on Buhari is not an attack on Islam and neither does Buhari represent Islam. He represents only himself and his sinking, incompetent, wicked and evil Government. I call on the reverred and respected leader of the Muslim community in Nigeria, His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto, a man for whom I have the deepest affection and whom I hold in very high esteem, to call those that are issuing these threats against Kukah to order and to counsel them to desist from doing so. I call on him to continue to provide the voice of wisdom, love, restraint, mutual understanding and peace that he has provided over the last few years and that we so desperately need today. Most important of all I call on Bishop Kukah to remain courageous and strong and not allow himself to be intimidated and I call on the Christian community in Nigeria to maintain the peace and to reach out to our Muslim brothers with love and understanding. The most important thing for us to do in Nigeria today is to ensure that we do not let ethnicity and religion divide us any further. Mutual respect is important and we must build bridges of understanding, trust and love between Christians and Muslims and between northerners, Middle Belters and southerners. Buhari has burnt many of those bridges over the last five years and divided us badly but we must not allow him to go any further and end up pushing us into a second civil war. Two weeks ago in a widely published essay titled "Who Is Squeezing Bakare's Balls" I analysed the Buhari administration with the following words and described them in the following terms. I wrote, "Quite apart from being a conglomeration and alliance of ill-bred touts and ill-mannered idiots, it is also a Government that can best be described as an unadulterated aberration and a cancerous affliction. It is a cruel, inept, bumbling, abrasive, vicious, obnoxious, chaotic, toxic, sociopathic and paranoid Government which is undergirded by ineptitude and incompetence, which has divided and destroyed our country and which Bola Ahmed Tinubu and a handful of others (many of whom have since recanted, apologised and repented) helped to bring to power. Quite apart from being anti-the Nigerian people, it is also the most anti-Christian Government that our country has ever known. It is a Government that has nothing but contempt for Christians and that does not shy away from displaying it. It is a Government that has impoverished it's people, terrorised them, humiliated them, tormented them, insulted them and turned them into second class citizens, grovelling slaves, beggardly field-hands and pitiful serfs. It is a Government with a hideous and hateful ethnic and religious agenda which seeks to disempower, discredit and destroy all but its own. It is a Government that has pampered terrorists and rewarded them with massive ransom payments and it is a Government of desolation and destruction that thrives on wickedness and injustice. It is a Government that has turned a blind eye to the activities of the herdsmen and bandits and that has fought Boko Haram and ISWA with kid gloves. It is a Government of hate, double standards and deceit that has murdered its own citizens and that seeks to intimidate and silence contrary and dissenting voices. It is a Government that has cowered the civil society groups, members of the opposition and the entire political class into silence because it is so vindictive, brutal, barbaric, relentless and ruthless. It is a Government that has turned its back on humanity, that despises the Living God and that has nothing but contempt for His counsel and His purpose. It is a Government of calamity and sorrows that loves darkness and that hates light. It is Government of hardship and oppression and one that has ushered in more corruption, more recession, more suffering, more injustice, more calamities and more plagues than ALL the previous Governments in our entire history put together. It is a Government that has done more damage, poured more venom and unleashed more vitriol and scorn on the elders of the South West in Afenifere, the elders of the South East in Ohaeneze, the elders of the Middle Belt in the Middle Belt Forum and the elders of the South South in PANDEM, than ANY other. It is a Government that has demonised the various self-determination groups like IPOB, MASSOB, OPC, IYC, MEND and others in our country and has sought to intimidate and destroy them more than any other. It is a Government that hates and despises anything or anyone that is wholesome, honorable, pristine, erudite, learned and clean more than any other. It is a Government that has shamelessly indulged in such a high degree of nepotism, religious bigotry and ethnic chauvinism and that has so "northernised" the country that even level-headed, rational, reasonable, respected and responsible voices like that of the courageous, insightful and irrepressible Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Sokoto, has had cause to assert that had Buhari been from the South there would have been a military coup d'etat by now. Permit me to share the Bishop's exact words. In a Christmas day sermon titled 'A Nation In Search Of Vindication' he said, Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and got away with it. There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war. The President may have concluded that Christians will do nothing and will live with these actions! Pastor Adesina was right to call us wailers. On the sad situation in Nigeria, the United Nations has wailed. The Pope has wailed. Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Pastors have wailed. Emirs have wailed. Politicians have wailed. The Sultan has wailed. The north that the President sought to privilege has become a cauldron of pain and a valley of dry bones". Kukah hit the nail on the head. It is no wonder that the Southern Nigeria and Middle Belt Forum have risen up in his defence and publicly commended him for his insight and courage. I am also glad that the Catholic Church and the northern wing of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has backed him too. It is a Government that has consistently ignored the admonitions and warnings and closed its ears to the counsel of moderate voices in the core Muslim North led by His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto and the likes of forward-thinking, bridge-building and progressive northern leaders like Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara state, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto state, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state and many others who do not share the supremacist mindset or hegemonist disposition of President Muhammadu Buhari. Finally it is a Government that has been rejected by God and that will ultimately face His judgement". I stand by every word that I have written and permit me to add the following. The sheer depravity and high level of psychosis, paranoia, delusion, insanity, delusion and deceit of the Buhari administration is best reflected by the asinine response that Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information, offered to Bishop Kukah in which he accused the cleric of wanting to destabilise the country. Since then some reckless and misguided Government-sponsored groups have called for the arrest and detention of Kukah. They have also insulted and condemned him and threatened his life. Be warned that if Kukah is harmed, injured, maimed or killed Nigeria will not survive the mayhem that will befall her. If any of the above happens to him the Biblical 'east wind of destruction' will be unleashed on this country and no-one will be able to stop it. I pray that the Government and its surrogates maintain the peace and that they do not do anything to provoke a reaction that they will not be in a position to contain. The anger and frustration in the land today is unprecedented and the people are looking for the slightest reason to take to the streets. Few would survive it if they did. The blood of Kukah must NOT be spilled, he must NOT be killed, he must NOT be kidnapped and he must NOT be arrested or detained otherwise the consequences will be unfathomable and unimaginable. A word is enough for the wise. Permit me to end this contribution with the following. On January 13th I tweeted, "Bishop Hassan Kukah did not attack Islam and has nothing to apologise about. He has always sought for religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence between Christians and Muslims. Those that demand that he "must apologise" or "leave Sokoto" must mind their utterances and keep the peace. If anyone can provide me with a video of Kukah calling for violence against Muslims or inciting people against Islam I will give him one million naira". My offer still stands. (Newser) President Trump has said he won't attend Joe Biden's inauguration, though he hasn't revealed where he will be instead. Now multiple reports say Trump plans to fly to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida before Biden is sworn in. Bloomberg says the president will fly out sometime in the morning, and CNN and Fox News confirm. CNN reports that Trump will depart on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, adding that the Bidens will likely be able to see the departure, or at least hear it, from the nearby Blair House. They'll be staying there the night before the inauguration at the invitation of the State Department. CNN also reports that Trump is hoping to organize a crowd of supporters to see him off as president for the final time. story continues below As for his longer-term plans, Bloomberg reports that Trump is planning not just to visit Mar-a-Lago but to live there full time. That idea already is generating controversy. As the South Florida Sun Sentinel explains, neighbors say Trump can't make it his permanent residence because he converted it from a private residence to a private club in the 1990s. Trump is expected to bring a few White House aides with him to Florida, including personal assistant Nick Luna and wife Cassidy, who is a deputy assistant to the president. Fox, meanwhile, notes that Trump will be the fourth president to skip his successor's inauguration, joining John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Johnson. (Read more President Trump stories.) The African Union says the continent is set to receive about 270 million doses of coronavirus vaccine and wants to see them distributed equitably. For just over two months, a team at the 55-member organization of African states has worked to ensure the continent gets its fair share of the coveted COVID-19 vaccines. Late Wednesday, the team announced they had done it. The 270 million doses are just under a fifth of the 1.5 billion that officials think they will need to vaccinate around 70% of the continent. That is the rough threshold to achieve herd immunity. President (Cyril) Ramaphosa said that from the onset of this pandemic, our focus as a continent has been on collaboration and collective effort, said Tyrone Seale, spokesman for the South African president and former AU chairman. We have held steadfastly to the principle that no country should be left behind. With this in mind, we have not only campaigned vigorously for changes through all the available international forums, but we have taken the additional step to independently secure vaccines using our own limited resources as member states." Seale did not say exactly when the first doses will become available. He said that about 50 million will arrive between April and June, which is considered a critical period. The rest of the 270 million doses will be available later this year, he said. The India-manufactured vaccines will come from Pfizer and AstraZeneca. In a separate announcement last week, officials in South Africa, the continents COVID-19 hot spot, announced they would receive 1 million Indian-manufactured vaccine doses by the end of January, and another half million in February. The nation hopes to vaccinate 40 million people about 67% of the population by years end. South Africa has seen just under 1.3 million confirmed cases since the virus arrived in March. The second wave of the virus, featuring a new variant that appears to be more contagious, began in December. Low-income countries do not have the same access to the market as nations like South Africa, which is a member of the G-20 economic group of nations. So, the AU made its own plan. Seale said the AU, working with Afreximbank, will guarantee a total of $2 billion in vaccine orders from member states. He said there is also close collaboration between the AU and the World Bank to ensure that member states can access an additional $5 billion either to buy vaccines or pay for delivery of vaccines committed on their behalf by the bank. Seale said he hopes donors will step in and ensure vaccines are provided and paid for, to ease the debt burden on AU member states. 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. New Delhi, Jan 15 : The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has initiated 'Diplomacy Unplugged, a dialogue series in collaboration with FICCI and embassies of partnering nations to promote interactions between foreign embassies and Indian business leaders. Under the series, MEA and FICCI will virtually interact with Diplomats and High Commissioners to better understand challenges the Indian industry faces in investing abroad and also address problems that foreign companies might face in India. MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava tweeted: "Secretary (ER) gave the keynote address during the launch of 'Diplomacy Unplugged' series today. This is an initiative by FICCI for interactions between Heads of Missions in New Delhi and select group of Indian business leaders." Speaking at the first of the series on Wednesday, Rahul Chhabra, Secretary (Economic Relations), MEA, said the ministry has been working on development partnerships with various countries and is continuing its "human-centric globalisation and welfare program" with partnering countries. "We have been trying to finalise migration and mobility agreements. This pandemic threw up the issue of global shortage of trained manpower in various sectors that the MEA has taken note of. "We have also started getting the states involved in our outreach in terms of promoting exports and incoming foreign business delegation," he added. The MEA has enhanced the trade promotion budget along with promoting study in India in various countries. "The MEA has been providing funding for trade fairs and exhibitions and for a number of targeted initiatives to Indian missions across regions," Chhabra said, adding that India has committed lines of credit of $6.5 billion, $700 million of grants and over 50,000 scholarships to African students. Italian ambassador to India, Vincenzo de Luca, highlighted that despite the coronavirus pandemic, the two nations are entering a new phase of relations after the successful virtual bilateral summit between the two Prime Ministers on November 5, 2020. He added: "We were able to finalise a number of agreements not only on government to government, but also with the private sector. This only goes on to show how the two countries want to transform their partnership to ideally benefit from their economic, innovations and technological complementarity. The two countries also share a global agenda." The Italian ambassador said that a new five-year plan of action has been decided to deepen cooperation in the domain of culture, innovation and technology with the Indian government. Despite the pandemic, bilateral trade has increased by 22 per cent. Referring to a world halted by the coronavirus, FICCI President, Uday Shankar said: "The role of economic diplomacy assumes ever-increasing importance in the current scenario." Highlighting economic and diplomatic opportunities between India and Italy, he added that Italy has taken over the presidency of the G20 this year while India will do so in 2023, providing both nations to enhance their relationship. (This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / CIBT Education Group Inc. (TSX:MBA, OTCQX:MBAIF) ("CIBT") reports the director election voting results from its annual general meeting held today. All of the director nominees, as listed in the management information circular dated November 30, 2020, were elected. Proxy voting as to each of the director nominees was as follows: Votes in Favour Votes Withheld Morris Chen 99.92% 0.08% Toby Chu 99.88% 0.12% Tony David 99.92% 0.08% Derek Feng 99.92% 0.08% May Hsu 99.92% 0.08% Troy Rice 99.92% 0.08% Shane Weir 99.95% 0.05% Please see the report of voting results filed today under CIBT's profile on SEDAR for the results of the other matters voted on by shareholders at the meeting. About CIBT Education Group: CIBT Education Group Inc. is one of the largest education and student housing investment companies in Canada, focused on the domestic and the global education market since 1994. CIBT owns business and language colleges, student-centric rental apartments, recruitment centres and corporate offices at 46 locations in Canada and abroad. Its education subsidiaries include Sprott Shaw College (established in 1903), Sprott Shaw Language College, Vancouver International College Career Campus and CIBT School of Business. CIBT offers over 150 educational programs in healthcare, business management, e-commerce, hotel management, and language training through these schools. In 2020, CIBT serviced over 11,000 students through its various subsidiaries. CIBT owns Global Education City Holdings Inc. ("Global Holdings"), an investment holding and development company focused on education-related real estate such as student-centric rental apartments, hotel and education super-centres. Under the GEC brand, Global Holdings provides accommodation service to 72 schools in Metro Vancouver, serving 1,500 students from 77 countries. The total portfolio and development budget under the GEC brand exceeds $1.5 billion. CIBT also owns Global Education Alliance ("GEA") and Irix Design Group ("Irix Design"). GEA recruits international students for many elite kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities in North America. Irix Design is a leading design and advertising company based in Vancouver, Canada. Visit us online and watch our corporate video at www.cibt.net. For more information, contact: Toby Chu Chairman, President & CEO CIBT Education Group, Inc. Investor Relations Contact: 1-604-871-9909 extension 318 or | Email: info@cibt.net SOURCE: CIBT Education Group Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624554/CIBT-Education-Group-Inc-Reports-Director-Election-Results Adaptability is key for Connecticuts service industry. This is especially true for the states 110-plus breweries, which have found themselves caught in a tough spot somewhere between restaurant and bar under Connecticuts COVID-19 rules, according to Phil Pappas, executive director of the Connecticut Brewers Guild. New state guidelines released last month require breweries to serve food on their premises if they wish to remain open. The rules have placed a larger financial burden on breweries in a time when every penny counts, Pappas wrote last month in a letter urging the governor to reconsider. Before the pandemic, breweries were never legally required to offer food prepared on premise, but we have adapted and altered our businesses entirely so that we can remain open to the public, he wrote. For those that do remain open as many featured on the states tourist-facing Connecticut Beer Trail have operating in a pandemic has meant flexibility of space, strict seating rules, and partnerships with food trucks and caterers to keep the kegs tapped. We could easily choose to be frustrated by the regulation and COVID overall and believe me we have been but being forced in a box, the most creative ideas emerge and action is required, said Hog River Brewing Companys co-owner, Joy Braddock. Operators say they remain hopeful these adaptations, as well as a host of new releases and to-go offerings, will be enough for the businesses to stay afloat until restrictions are eased. Heres a look at where to sip some locally brewed suds and some of their newest offerings: Newtowns Reverie Brewing, like several other area taprooms, uses QR code menus, assigned seating and single-use cups to keep things COVID-safe. Its newest release, Pug, is a soft-bodied New England IPA with pineapple, citrus and pine flavors, the brewery reports. Tours are canceled at Danburys Charter Oak Brewing, but the taproom remains open when food trucks are on site (check Facebook for availability) and for curbside pickup. Also partnering with food trucks and local restaurants is Monroes Veracious Brewing Company. The taproom is open Wednesdays through Saturdays with limited indoor and outdoor seating. The company also delivers to Monroe, Trumbull, Easton and Newtown. In Hartford, Hog River Brewing has built an online store and started curbside, touchless pickup for orders, which comes in handy for new releases, Braddock said. Two new beers coming this month are Dreamcloud IPA and Smoke Stack Barleywine with Maple & Bacon. Thimble Island Brewing Company in Branford used last springs mandatory closure to begin renovations, manager Kelley Gargano said. Its indoor taproom and event space reopened this fall, but tours are on hold. Also in Branford, the waterfront Stony Creek Brewery has partnered with Guilfords Naples Pizza for food on site. The brewery released a special Wash Your Hands lager in April as a lighthearted reminder to stay hygienic during the pandemic. The taproom at Aspetuck Brew Lab in Bridgeport is open, and the company recently released Undivided, an open source IPA to help the Connecticut Brewers Guild recover from the COVID-19 shutdown. At least 14 breweries in the state are making their own version of the beer to be released from now through March. Virtual offerings Tasting rooms that arent open at the moment have still come up with creative ways to keep their fans hop-py. Many offer regional or statewide delivery as well as curbside pickups, or have taken their tastes online. Being in the midst of such an isolating time, we thought this was one of the best ways we could all see each others faces, have a beer together and provide a real sense of connection with what our brewers are doing, Nod Hill Brewerys founding partner David Kaye said of the virtual tasting he held Jan. 13 on Zoom. The Ridgefield brewerys taproom has been closed since March, but virtual events like this allow beer makers to connect informally with consumers as the company continues to produce new brews. Coming releases include a smoked lager, English-style dark mild ale and an oak-aged biere de garde, Kaye said. Other breweries are finding similar success in online events. On Jan. 20, Stratfords Two Roads Brewing is offering a virtual guided tasting with master brewer Phil Markowski of the companys ninth bottle release of Igors Dream. The Russian imperial stout is aged in rye whiskey barrels and pays homage to helicopter pioneer Igor Sikorsky. Owners of Wallingfords Front Porch Brewery are hosting a virtual beverage tasting and presentation in partnership with the Wallingford Public Library from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 26. The brewerys patio and tasting room remain open Thursdays through Saturdays. awinchester@bcnnew.com 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. Barnes & Noble has named Emily Meehan publisher and chief creative officer of its book publishing division, Sterling Publishing. Meehan succeeds Thersea Thompson. Meehan joins Sterling with a background in childrens and branded publishing, most recently as v-p, publisher of the Disney Book Group. She will oversee of all Sterlings publishing operations in what B&N says is a relaunch of the publisher. We are delighted that Emily is to lead Sterling Publishing and excited at the potential of the business, B&N CEO James Daunt said in a statement. Meehan will be based in Sterlings New York office, and will report to Daunt. At Disney, Meehan led creative and global commercial strategy for the trade publishing imprints Hyperion and National Geographic, as well as branded trade title strategy for brands such as ESPN, Marvel, and Lucas, B&N said. Prior to that role she was responsible for the Disney Hyperion list of authors, including Mo Willems, as well as the launch of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint. Meehan has also held senior editing roles at Disney and Simon & Schuster. Im thrilled to embark on what I know will be a rewarding and exciting new chapter not only for me, but for Sterling and Barnes & Noble, Meehan said in a statement. There is a lot of opportunity to publishing in bigger, forward-thinking ways with a keen eye for the best quality in editorial, design, and production. The district director for newly elected Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., was in the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 after the building was invaded but did not join those who pushed their way inside, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post. Good's district director, Sandy Adams, went with her husband, Melvin Adams, the chair of Virginia's 5th District GOP Committee, "to join with many, many thousands of wonderful red-blooded American patriots in Washington DC," Melvin Adams wrote in the Jan. 7 email. His description of the events was sent to undisclosed recipients from his 5th District chair email account. Melvin Adams confirmed the contents of the email in an interview, saying he and Sandy Adams stood at the police line but did not breach it or go onto the balcony. "We tried talking some people down who were trying to push back and open the barriers," Adams said. "Eventually, people were agitated, and pretty soon there was no sense of rationality anymore with some." He added: "We didn't go up there. We had no business being part of that." Good, a loyal ally of President Donald Trump who amplified his baseless claims of election fraud, tapped Sandy Adams as his district director as he took office last week. Speaking on behalf of his wife, Melvin Adams referred questions about her presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to Good's office. Good did not address questions from The Post about why Sandy Adams remained on the grounds during the riot. Instead, in a statement, he denounced the violence that unfolded during the hours-long siege, which included the fatal injuring of a Capitol Police officer and the death of a woman shot by police after she breached the complex. Three others died of apparent medical emergencies. Dozens of officers were injured. Adams was the only staff member there, Good's office said. "I unequivocally condemn the violence that took place at our Capitol last week," Good said in a statement said."The rule of law must be upheld in order to preserve our constitutional rights, including the First Amendment right of every American to peaceably assemble on their own time at a rally or a protest." Tyler Miller, who lives in Virginia's 5th Congressional District, said he filed a complaint with the FBI about Melvin Adams's presence at the rally after speaking to him on the phone shortly after the attack on the Capitol. Miller said he called Adams because he could not get through to Good's office and wanted to complain that Good's rhetoric about a stolen election had contributed to the riot. Miller said he asked Adams what the party was going to do about the attack, and he said Adams asked how Miller knew what was going on at the Capitol if he was not present. Miller noted it was all over the news. "He said, 'I was there. I saw everything that happened,' " Miller said Thursday, recounting the conversation. "Then he laid into 'fake news' and tried to blame antifa" - a suggestion Adams again made on Thursday and for which the FBI has said there is no evidence. Miller said he contacted the FBI out of concern that Adams may have joined the riot. The email Melvin Adams sent Jan. 7 said he and his wife at one point were in proximity to Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was fatally shot, as she was carried on a stretcher to an ambulance parked near the perimeter of the complex. "I did witness the use of flash bombs and tear gas at the entrances in efforts to control the crowd," Adams wrote. "But the tragic nature of events inside came home full force when a young lady who had been shot was being taken to the ambulance, passing so close to us that we could have literally reached out and touched her." Asked why they stayed after police lost control of the crowd, Adams said, "We were there to support law enforcement and stuff. We didn't stay there a long time. When things were really out of control, it was time for us to move on." Earlier, they watched Trump's speech on the Ellipse, where he exhorted his supporters to go the Capitol and "fight" against Congress's certification of his election defeat. Adams said they headed to the Longworth House Office Building, where his wife picked up some materials for work. Then they walked to the Capitol lawn. Adams said he did not think Trump incited the mob but that people became aggressive after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., condemned efforts to overturn the election results, calling it a "poisonous path," and after Vice President Mike Pence would not go along with Trump's exhortations to invalidate electoral votes. A portion of the crowd chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!" As party chair in Virginia's 5th Congressional District, Adams has been a strong supporter of Good, including during his bitter primary campaign to defeat then-Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican, last summer. Good has tightly tethered his platform to Trump's "America First" agenda.He objected to electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania in votes after the Capitol had been secured. On the House floor during Wednesday's impeachment debate, Good described the effort to punish Trump as a "political action intended to tarnish the legacy of a highly successful president" and "the culmination of a four-year effort to overturn the will of the people and the results of the 2016 election." Polling for to over 14,000 gram panchayats in 34 of the total 36 districts in began on a peaceful note on Friday morning, an official said. The polls, being held with COVID-19 protocols in place, will cover 34 districts barring Mumbai city and Mumbai suburban districts. There are 27,920 gram panchayats in Voting began at 7:30 am and will continue till 5:30 pm except in four tehsils in Gadchiroli, a Naxal-hit district, and Gondia district. In these four tehsils, the voting will end at 3 pm. State Election Commissioner UPS Madan on Thursday said that there are 20,000-odd seats where members have already been elected unopposed. At least 14 Thane district villages have boycotted the to press for their demand to be a part of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. With 14 villages boycotting the elections, five gram panchayats in the district will not go to polls on Friday, the official said. The State Election Commission (SEC) had on Wednesday announced cancellation of poll process in Umrane and Khondamali gram panchayats, in Nashik and Nandurbar districts respectively, after it received evidence of public auctioning of the posts of sarpanch and members of the local governing bodies. The SEC has allowed those suffering from coronavirus infection or those who are in quarantine to cast their vote half-an-hour before the polling ends. All the polling centres and material/equipment were sanitised in view of the pandemic, the commission said. The gram panchayats are considered the third tier of governance. for them are not held on party lines, using party symbols. Candidates are allotted election symbols from a list of free symbols. The polls are being held more than a month after the ruling MVAs victory in the graduates' and teachers' constituencies in the Legislative Council elections that took place late last year. The MVA, which consists of the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, had won four out of six seats on offer, while two others were bagged by an Independent and the opposition BJP. The districts and the district-wise number of gram panchayats where polling is being held are as follows: Thane (158), Palghar (3), Raigad (88), Ratnagiri (479), Sindhudurg (70), Nashik (620), Dhule (218), Jalgaon (783), Ahmednagar (767), Nandurbar (86), Pune (748), Solapur (658), Satara (879), Sangli (152), Kolhapur (433), Aurangabad (618), Beed (129), Nanded (1,015), Osmanabad (428), Parbhani (566), Jalna (475), Latur (408), Hingoli (495), Amravati (553), Akola (225), Yavatmal (980), Washim (152), Buldhana (527), Nagpur (130), Wardha (50), Chandrapur (629), Bhandara (148), Gondia (189) and Gadchiroli (362). Counting of votes will be held on January 18. (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.) President-elect Joe Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan that would include a third round of stimulus checks, more unemployment benefits, and a raise in the national minimum wage. Biden unveiled his proposal Thursday that would send $1,400 in direct payments to Americans. Combined with the $600 stimulus checks approved last month, it would create $2,000 in direct payments -- matching the amount pushed by President Donald Trump and Democrats. We will finish the job of getting a total of $2,000 in cash relief to people who need it the most, Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. The $600 already appropriated is simply not enough if you still have to choose between paying rent and putting food on the table. Even for those who have kept their jobs, these checks are really important. CNET reports the third round of checks would include $500 or $600 for dependents, and this round would also include eligible adult dependents. The first two rounds were limited to children under age 17, so parents with college-age students can expect more money. Overall, families could get even more money: A married couple with two children could get up to $3,800 or $4,000, depending on the amounts finalized. They could get even more if they have adult dependents that previously did not get money. According to CNBC, some lawmakers, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have proposed even more money: $2,000 per person instead of $1,400 to add to the $600 previously allocated. $2,000 means $2,000, she told The Washington Post. $2,000 does not mean $1,400. When will the third stimulus checks happen? Biden takes office on Jan. 20 and is reportedly aiming to get more aid approved in his administrations first 100 days. Democrats have a majority in the House and in the Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as a tie-breaker for the 50-50 split, so Bidens efforts may have fewer obstacles; Chuck Schumer, expected to be the new Senate Majority Leader, has already vowed to make a third stimulus check happen. The first round of stimulus checks, whichgave qualifying American adults a one-time direct payment of $1,200 plus $500 for each child under the age of 17, was part of Congress $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed in March. A second round of stimulus checks worth $1,200 was approved in the HEROES Act in May, but legislation stalled for months and the new package cuts those direct payments in half. Bidens new proposal also includes $400 in weekly unemployment benefits; $70 billion towards vaccination centers and Covid-19 testing; $130 billion to help schools reopen safely; $15 billion in small business grants; $350 billion in emergency funding for state, local and territorial governments; raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour (from the current rate of $7.25 an hour); reinstating paid sick leave; expanding the child care tax credit; and $15 billion to help states subsidize child care for low-income families along with a $25 billion fund to help child care centers in danger of closing. Im convinced were ready to get this done, Biden said Thursday. The very health of our nation is at stake. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Following the pullback seen in the latter part of the previous session, treasuries rebounded during trading on Friday. Bond prices saw some volatility early in the session but ended the day firmly in positive territory. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, fell by 3.2 basis points to 1.097 percent. The rebound by treasuries came following the release of disappointing retail sales data, with a report from the Commerce Department showing a continued decline in U.S. retail sales in the month of December. The Commerce Department said retail sales fell by 0.7 percent in December after tumbling by a revised 1.4 percent in November. Economists had expected retail sales to come in unchanged compared to the 1.1 percent slump originally reported for the previous month. Excluding sales by motor vehicle and parts dealers, retail sales plunged by 1.4 percent in December after sliding by 1.3 percent in November. Ex-auto sales were expected to edge down by 0.1 percent compared to the 0.9 percent decrease originally reported for the previous month. 'The further slump in retail sales in December confirms that the continued surge in coronavirus infections is now weighing heavily on the economy,' said Andrew Hunter, Senior U.S. Economist at Capital Economics. 'Despite the building optimism over fiscal stimulus, the next few months are still likely to be difficult.' The University of Michigan also released a report showing U.S. consumer sentiment has edged down by slightly more than expected in the month of January. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve released a separate report showing U.S. industrial production jumped by much more than expected in the month of December. The Fed said industrial production surged up by 1.6 percent in December after climbing by an upwardly revised 0.5 percent in November. Economists had expected production to rise by 0.4 percent, matching the increase originally reported for the previous month. 'The December production data underline that while new restrictions are holding back parts of the service sector again, the recovery in manufacturing continues largely unaffected,' said Michael Pearce, Senior U.S. Economist at Capital Economics. Following the long weekend, next week's trading may be impacted by reaction to reports on homebuilder confidence, housing starts, and existing home sales. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Concertina razor wire tops the 8-foot 'non-scalable' fence that surrounds the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, on Jan. 14, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Committee to Protect Journalists Advises Inauguration Reporters to Not Wear Press Lanyards The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-profit that promotes press freedom and journalists rights, issued a safety advisory for covering the Jan. 20 inauguration, included in which was a recommendation for journalists to not wear lanyards around their necks. It is recommended that journalists avoid wearing lanyards around their neck for safety reasons, the advisory reads. It proceeded to refer to a video of Associated Press photographer John Minchillo being attacked in Washington on Jan. 6. The video shows Minchillo being pushed around and hit by some protesters. Some had mistaken him for being part of Antifa because he was dressed in black with a gas mask on. Antifa adherents commonly use this black bloc tactic to hide their identities. The crowd let him go after he showed them his press pass, which was on a lanyard around his neck. Be aware that straps that release when pulled could lead to media credentials being stolen. Consider a velcro pouch on your bicep instead, the CPJ advisory reads. The CPJ also advises, Wear clothing that helps you blend in, that doesnt look too tactical or military, and that allows you to move swiftly. Try and avoid loose clothing, political slogans, media branding, military colors/patterns, colors associated with certain groups (e.g. black is associated with anti-fascist [antifa] groups), and flammable materials (e.g. nylon). Take the minimum amount of equipment necessary with you, noting that recording equipment was attacked and damaged on January 6 by violent protesters in Washington, D.C., the non-profit also recommended. President Donald Trump on Monday approved the District of Columbias emergency declaration after Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser requested it, saying that further violence is likely during the Inaugural period. She also wrote that based on intelligence assessments her administration has received, we must prepare for large groups of trained and armed extremists to come to Washington, DC. More than 20,000 National Guard troops will be deployed on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day. Read More Timeline of Events in DC on Jan. 6 Violence took place at and near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including in a breach of the Capitol building by various groups that interrupted lawmakers who were gathered to count and certify the electoral votes for the now-President-elect Joe Biden. One woman, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, died that day after being shot by a Capitol police officer inside the building. It is unclear who instigated the breach of the building. A video of the event shows a known left-wing activist encouraging and convincing Capitol police to let trespassers through at several points. Separately, the civil unrest on Capitol grounds left at least four more people deadthree due to medical conditions, and a U.S. Capitol Police officer was confirmed dead by the department on Jan. 7, due to injuries sustained while on duty responding to the breach. The violence on Capitol grounds occurred amid otherwise peaceful protests that were taking place in surrounding areas calling for election integrity. Trump on Wednesday issued a public message calling on Americans to promote peace, amid reports of planned demonstrations to take place in the coming days. I am asking everyone who has ever believed in our agenda to be thinking of ways to ease tensions, calm tempers, and help to promote peace in our country, Trump said. There has been reporting that additional demonstrations are being planned in the coming days, both here in Washington and across the country. I have been briefed by the U.S. Secret Service on the potential threats. Every American deserves to have their voices heard in a respectful and peaceful way. That is your First Amendment right. But I must emphasize that there must be no violence, no law-breaking, and no vandalism of any kind. Murder-Suicide Probed in Vic Home Deaths Murder-suicide is among several lines of inquiry being followed by police after a mother and her three children were found dead in a Melbourne home. A 42-year-old woman, her two daughters, aged seven and five, and her three-year-old son, were found dead inside their Tullamarine home about 12.20pm on January 14. Multiple media outlets have identified the victims as Katie Perinovic and her children Claire, Anna and Matthew. A 48-year-old man, believed to be the womans husband and childrens father, Tomislav Perinovic called emergency services to report the deaths. He provided an initial version of events after police arrived at the Burgess Street property and was expected to be formally interviewed by homicide detectives on Thursday night. Acting Deputy Commissioner Robert Hill acknowledged the man was a person of interest but warned against people jumping to conclusions. We should not draw any conclusions at this point in time as to his culpability. If one was to do so, that would be grossly unfair, Hill said. We have a long way to go before we can actually understand and appreciate what occurred. He said as far as police were aware, there was no history of violence associated with the family. Hill said a potential murder-suicide situation is being considered as part of the investigation. There are a number of possibilities, he said. And thats one that could possibly be relevant to this event. Hill refused to divulge the nature of the injuries suffered by the mother and her children. The loss of life is tragic in any circumstances, he said. But when it involves children, it makes it even more heart-wrenching. Acting Assistant Commissioner Mark Galliott said the situation was difficult to comprehend. This will have long-lasting effects on the police that attended, on extended family, the community, the neighbourhood, the emergency services and everybody else involved, he said. No one else is being sought over the deaths and there is no risk to the community. Neighbours of the family were shaken by the tragedy. I used to see the children, they used to play in the cubby house at the back. Its really sad. one told reporters, Another said They were beautiful, a lovely family. This is going to be felt for a very, very long time not just the adults but the kids. The kids are really going to feel this. Neighbour Marie Groves told the ABC the family attended her daughters birthday party last year. Its so close to home, these are people whove spent time in my home, my kids love their kids, Groves said. How am I going to tell my kids? She said Ms Perinovic was a physiotherapist who had only recently returned to work after taking time off to care for Matthew. According to the Herald Sun Ms Perinovic left the clinic unexpectedly three months ago. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) Lifeline 13 11 14 Callum Godde in Melbourne On January 15, Nepals Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali met External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. Gyawali is on a three-day visit to India from January 14 to 16. During his trip, he is expected to discuss COVID-19 related cooperation while also reviewing last years border row between the two nations when Nepal published a new political map that showed the three Indian territories - Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipulekh - as Nepal. Gyawali is to co-chair the sixth India-Nepal Joint Commission meeting. He is being accompanied by Foreign Secretary Bharat Raj Poudyal and Secretary at the Ministry of Health and Population Laxmi Aryal. The joint commission is the highest mechanism between the two countries to discuss bilateral relations. Nepal Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali meets External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar at Hyderabad House in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/IEJuFQ6Xrp ANI (@ANI) January 15, 2021 After Nepal PM KP Sharma Oil had triggered a border row last year, India had termed it a unilateral act and said such artificial enlargement of territorial claims will not be accepted by the nation. India had said that Nepals action violated an understanding reached between the two countries to resolve the boundary issues through talks. The bilateral exchanges and the bitter dispute over boundary issues were reset in the later part of 2020 with a series of visits. READ: Nepal Approves Use Of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 Vaccine Covishield Produced In India READ: Nepal FM Arrives In India On 3-day Visit, To Hold Talks With EAM Jaishankar On Friday Foreign Secretarys visit to Nepal Back in November, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said that he had very productive and useful talks with his Nepali counterpart Bharat Raj Paudyal. After meeting Paudyal during his two-day visit to Nepal, the first one since Shringla assumed the office, he said that both sides discussed the range of issues for bilateral cooperation. Foreign Secretary said that 'the way a large number of issues of bilateral cooperation that we went through, it shows the multifaceted and comprehensive nature of our cooperation. Shringla also informed that both sides have agreed on several measures to enhance the areas of cooperation and added the progress was good by leaders of both neighbouring nations. He had said that both India and Nepal have very strong ties and their endeavour would further enhance the relationship. (With inputs from ANI) READ: Nepal PM Oli Dissolved Parliament On India's Orders, Met R&AW Chief: Prachanda's New Twist READ: Embattled & Cornered, Nepal PM KP Oli Sending Foreign Min To 'reclaim' Indian Territories STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. The boroughs two private hospitals have administered 100% of their vaccine allocation in the first three weeks of distribution, the state said on Friday. Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH) and Richmond University Medical Center (RUMC) both used up their total allocations which, according to state guidelines, were to be used for hospital staff. Gov. Andrew Cuomo praised 26 hospitals statewide in a best performance list for using all of its supply. However, Bay Street Health Center in St. George was among 10 hospitals and health centers mentioned by Cuomo for low performance. According to the state, the center has only administered 19% of its vaccine allocation in the first three weeks. A message left at the health center was not immediately returned. Cuomo continued to discuss vaccinations statewide, saying that vaccination performance is uneven by region. New York City, the lowest of all the state regions, used 60% of its vaccines, excluding those in the federal program which administers vaccines to seniors in nursing homes. Cuomo said 96% of nursing home vaccinations are done. The governor continued to praise Staten Island during his Friday press briefing for its lowering COVID-19 positivity rate. Staten Island is relatively down and thats good news, Cuomo said alongside a graphic that showed the boroughs 6.55% rate for a seven-day average. Brooklyn is at 6.24%, Queens at 6.90%, the Bronx at 7.68% and Manhattan, the lowest, at 3.80%, he said. I think the community is understanding that their actions have consequences and its good to see that reduction in positivity, he continued. He was very critical of Staten Island when it had the highest positivity rate in the city, which, at the time, was over 5%. For those of you not familiar with New York City, Staten Island is more of a residential community, more single-family homes than many of the other boroughs, et cetera, Cuomo said. This is just pure peoples behavior and peoples attitude and the communitys attitude. A lot of political statements are made in Staten Island fine. Now reconcile that with the infection rate and the number of deaths, he said at the time. FOLLOW KRISTIN F. DALTON ON TWITTER. Irish freight transporters are seeking a six-month adjustment period on post-Brexit trade rules to help counteract the "huge disruption" facing hauliers as Brexit stockpiles dry up. In a letter to Taoiseach Micheal Martin, the Freight Transport Association Ireland (FTAI) warned that Irelands vulnerability can not be overstated in this new trading landscape, with rising unemployment, disappearing supply chains and increased prices for consumers likely if the current situation continues as is. Are you a Haulier or Truck driver that moves goods to, through or from GB? Use the Customs RoRo Service to: 1.Create a PBN 2.Look Up your Customs Channel 3.Self-Check In with Customs Click: https://t.co/dlB3r47RGu pic.twitter.com/Vzkd64BScd Revenue (@RevenueIE) January 14, 2021 The association, which represents a broad range of shipping, haulage and passenger transport companies, said statements from Customs and Revenue Commissioners appear to confirm that the implementation of the new procedures is progressing satisfactorily, however, the reality is that current volumes are low. There is a growing backlog of goods of all hues, from mechanical parts (car parts) to electrical household goods, furniture, clothing, food supplies sitting in depots because there are not enough agents to process the declarations correctly, the letter states. Aidan Flynn, General Manager of Freight Transport Association Ireland. In addition, there are issues with the systems and there are problems with providing enough support and guidance on the new requirements to industry to make this work. The net result will be that companies operating on very tight margins will cease trading creating unemployment, supply lines will disappear, and the consumer will be left with less supply and increased prices." The letter, signed by FTAI general manager Aidan Flynn, also warns that there is not enough ferry service supply on direct routes to continental Europe, with hauliers that had made prior bookings on direct services being "bounced" due to overbooking. This is despite the expansion of services to Cherbourg and the addition of a new route to Dunkirk from Rosslare. The FTAI warned that the difficulties currently being experienced are against a backdrop of huge stockpiling pre-Brexit and the real challenge is yet to come. Read More Additional direct freight link from Cork to EU will bypass border checks The landbridge through the UK carried approximately 80% by volume of traffic to the EU, according to the FTAI, and that is effectively out of bounds for almost all exporters now due to potential delays at the Channel ports. Approximately six out of every 10 trucks returning to this island bring loads to the UK as the balance of traffic with Europe is such that for every ten loads we export, we import only four. Over a period of time therefore, capacity for transporting our exports will shrink, each roundtrip already takes longer, and there will be less capacity available." This will have knock-on effects for agriculture, pharmaceutical and other industries where speed of delivery is critical, the FTAI warned, adding that the reality is there is new cost in the system that will be passed on to the customer. Bank of Ireland group chief economist, Loretta O'Sullivan warned consumers can expect prices of Irish goods to go up in the coming months. Earlier this week, Bank of Ireland group chief economist, Loretta O'Sullivan warned that Brexit "red tape" and delays at ports will drive up prices of Irish goods in the coming months. She said doing business with Britain had become more complex and companies will take on extra costs. Over the past several years, there has been a transition in military theory that has reshaped the armed forces of the world. Conventional wisdom has moved away from large armies supported by artillery and air power to small, mobile, specialized units designed to get close to the enemy, execute their mission with minimal collateral damage and safely return home. The movie scenes of battalions of marching soldiers like those of WW1 and WW2 are things of the past. Now, we have surgical strike forces using drones who can skillfully take our one enemy combatant and leave everything else undisturbed. Small, fast, able to adapt quickly to the changing theatre of battle -- this is the future of warfare. That is until the robots take over This emphasis on small, fast, and quickly adapting units has not only changed our military, its changed every aspect of our corporate and institutional life. Banks, long known for their imposing downtown edifices touting their success, have now moved their branches into grocery stores. Large department stores have now placed mini-stores in local neighborhoods. Grocery stores have done the same thing. Of course, shopping online has put retailers right next to the consumer. More and more, organizations, businesses and even nonprofits have developed processes and procedures to put their work and resources as close as possible to those people who are being reached by their organization. Decisions are being pushed further down the line to those men and women who are responsible for implementing those decisions. Were beginning to realize one size doesnt fit everyone. Consumers are wanting to personalize their choices. Everyone wants to choose their favorite color and be able to adapt the product to meet a particular criteria. Want a new car? Dont go to a showroom. Go online. Pick the color, the interior, engine size and other upgrades with the checking of a box. The car will be delivered to you in a few weeks (give or take). Believe it or not, this has always been the genius of the local church. From the beginning, churches were located in homes and local meeting halls in the neighborhoods they served. Christians knew their neighborhoods. They knew their neighbors. They knew the stories that had shaped the communities. They knew the opportunities and challenges down every street and on every block. Because of this, each church was able to tailor their ministries to meet the needs of their communities and neighborhoods. If someone was hungry, the church knew them and could respond. If a child was falling behind in school, the church could hold tutoring sessions. Not every church had to have each of these ministries and each church was free to do what was best for them and their communities. No one size church fit every neighborhood. Each congregation was a local dispensary of grace. The form that grace took was up to each church and neighborhood. Each congregation was a local dispensary of grace. The form that grace took was up to each church and neighborhood. The current pandemic has shut down a lot of ways we did church. We cant travel, so we cant go to national meetings. We cant go to conferences, travel on mission trips or even meet in large groups for Bible studies. In some areas of the country, churches havent been able to meet in person at all. While there is a long list of things we cant do in this time of COVID, there is an equally long list of things we can do. We can still pray for our neighbors. We can find out whats going on in our communities and neighborhoods and design ways to share grace with our friends and neighbors. After all, were the ones closest to the needs. Were the ones closest to people who need our ministry and help. The pandemic is pushing us back from international and national concerns to more local issues and opportunities. The failings of national politics over the last few weeks have only exacerbated this feeling. Most of us feel like we cant change anything about whats going at the national level, but maybe we can make a difference in the local school, or local homeless shelter or food bank. Weve learned a lot during this time of pandemic and a lot of what we learned wasnt learning at all. It was remembering. We remembered having dinner at home with the family could be pretty nice. We remembered playing board games with those closest to us was still a lot of fun. We remembered that a lot of stuff we were doing, buying, watching, checking or listening to, was simply a waste of time. We wont go back to the way things were before and that may not be a bad thing. And churches are remembering they are located where they are for a reason. They are the forward operating bases of the Kingdom of God on their streets and in their neighborhoods. No one knows the community like they do. No one knows the stories or the people who live there like the local church should. The good news of the gospel isnt that we can get to God, but that God, in Christ Jesus, has come to us. Christ is the Incarnation of God and local churches are the living and local reminders that God has come near -- to our streets and our neighborhoods. If our nation finds healing, it wont be because better laws were passed in Washington, but because neighbor loved neighbor, friend helped friend. The church is the nearest point of grace for meeting these challenges and problems. No one knows the neighborhood like we do. No one knows how to love these people like we do. We have been put where we are for a reason -- to be a forward operating base of the Kingdom of God, a local dispensary of grace. Too bad its taken a pandemic to remind us this was Gods plan all along. London: Thousands of Australians stranded overseas have been hit by even more uncertainty after the national cabinet's decision to slash international arrival caps forced a major airline to suspend all flights to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. There are fears other carriers might also wind back Australian routes because the small number of citizens permitted to return each week has made commercial flights financially unviable. Emirates has announced that it is suspending flights to Australia until further notice. Emirates announced late on Friday night that all flights to and from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane would be suspended until further notice "due to operational reasons". The United Arab Emirates carrier was conducting daily flights between Dubai and Sydney and Melbourne and five flights a week to Brisbane, meaning the decision will wipe out 19 flights per week for Australians in Europe and the Middle East who have been waiting months to get home. Today Mainly clear. Low 42F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Tonight Mainly clear. Low 42F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Tomorrow A mix of clouds and sun early, then becoming cloudy later in the day. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 76F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. A Meridian man who boasted online about storming the U.S. Capitol alongside a mob has been released from jail. Josiah Benjamin Colt, 34, was allowed out of jail ahead of his trial as long as he abides by requirements including location monitoring, not possessing any guns or other weapons, and staying at least 1,000 feet away from both the Idaho Statehouse and the James A. McClure Federal Building, a judge ruled Wednesday. Colt is charged federally with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. After his release Wednesday, Colt spoke with KTVB about the siege on the Capitol and apologized for his part in it. "I didn't hurt anybody, didn't take anything, didn't break anything," he said. "My intention was just to go there to have my voice heard. I do love America. Like I said, I apologize. I do not condone the violence that happened there. It is tragic, it breaks my heart about what that turned into. "I went there because I love America and my intention was just to have my voice heard along with a lot of other people," he added. "For me I just wanted my voice heard about having fair elections, and yeah, it turned into something that really tragic and that I did not want to happen at all." Colt turned himself in to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force at the Ada County Jail on Tuesday. FBI Special Agent Matthew J. Gano wrote in an affidavit that photos of Colt taken inside the Capitol Building and his own statements on social media prove he participated in the attempted insurrection, which was aimed at stopping lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. "Based on information I have reviewed, I estimate that between 2:00 p.m., and no later than 4:00 p.m., the defendant, Josiah Colt, entered the United States Capitol without authorization to do so. He was photographed hanging off a balcony and landing on the floor of the Senate chambers (Exhibit A,)" Gano wrote. "In a video posted to Facebook and circulated widely on other social media platforms, the defendant claims he was the first person to sit in the House Speakers chair and calls House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a traitor. The defendant appears to be mistaken as he was also photographed in the seat reserved for the vice president, and not Speaker Pelosi (Exhibit B)." In a video he uploaded shortly after the Capitol riot, Colt defended his actions, saying that he did not injure anyone when he broke in. Five people total died in the siege, including a Capitol Police officer. "I didn't hurt anybody in there, yeah I did sit in Nancy Pelosi's seat," Colt said. "She shouldn't be there, she doesn't represent the American people." The FBI agent noted that Colt also admitted to participating in the riot in a statement given to CBS News, in which he says he got "caught up in the moment" and was sorry for what he had done. Both federal charges are misdemeanors: knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds carries up to a year imprisonment, while violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds is punishable by six months. Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for D.C., said Tuesday that all options are on the table for charging those who stormed the Capitol, adding that investigators are still combing through a massive amount of evidence with the goal of filing additional charges which could range from trespassing to murder. Unlike other agencies, the federal system is not required to release mugshots for those in its custody. Colt is represented by Boise lawyer Chuck Peterson, who has defended clients including Randy Weaver from the Ruby Ridge standoff and terrorism suspect Fazliddin Kurbanov, an Uzbek national who plotted attacks at U.S. military bases and Boise's Ann Morrison Park. At his 11:15 a.m. hearing on Wednesday, Colt agreed to waive his preliminary hearing in the case, a proceeding aimed at establishing whether or not there is enough probable cause for a case to go forward. Prosecutor Heather Patricco told the judge that "the government is not seeking detention" for Colt ahead of his trial as long as he agrees to follow a long list of pretrial conditions. The conditions include that Colt must appear in court for his hearings and surrender if convicted of the charges, undergo pretrial supervision and location monitoring, abide by a curfew, not possess a firearm, "destructive device," or another weapon, not consume alcohol or go to bars, and have no contact with any victims or witnesses in the case. He is also required to surrender his passport, not travel outside of Idaho or Washington D.C without permission, stay 1,000 feet away from the federal building in Boise and Idaho Capitol Building, and comply with self-isolation and social distancing rules in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic. Colt is due back in court Jan. 19. PARADISE, Calif. - Action News Now continues to provide the latest updates on recovery and rebuilding in the Town of Paradise. Below this article is a full preview of the Town's goals for 2021. Upcoming Deadlines Private Program "cut by" deadline. By this date, property owners who have contracted with a tree contractor. Deadline: Feb. 1, 2021 Statistics Update 1,436 Building Permit Applications Received 1,281 Building Permits issued 578 Homes Rebuilt (certificate of occupancy issued) 291 Multi-Family Permit Applications Received 279 Multi-Family Permits Issued 72 Multi-Family Permits Rebuilt (certificate of occupancy issued) Other Updates Paradise Business Spotlight: Every week the Town will spotlight a business in Paradise to encourage shopping locally and supporting economic recovery in Paradise and maybe uncover a business you havent heard of before! This week the town is focusing on Meehos Mexican Restaurant Ready to serve you breakfast, lunch, or dinner, Meehos Mexican Restaurant cooks up authentic flavor on the Ridge. Visit their website at their famous 2 Lb. grande burrito. Located at 6808 Skyway, Paradise, Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (530) 762-2591. Every week the Town will spotlight a business in Paradise to encourage shopping locally andsupporting economic recovery in Paradise and maybe uncover a business you havent heard of before! This week the town is focusing on Meehos Mexican Restaurant Ready to serve you breakfast, lunch, or dinner, Meehos Mexican Restaurant cooks up authentic flavor on the Ridge. Visit their website at MeehosMexicanRestaurant.com to view their menu, includingtheir famous 2 Lb. grande burrito. Located at 6808 Skyway, Paradise, Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (530) 762-2591. Three new Donut shops coming to Paradise: Soon Paradise residents will have three delicious choices when searching for that perfect morning pastry. Mad Natters Donuts is working on plans to open in James Square on Clark Rd. The Holiday Market Shopping Center will be the new home of G & C Donut Shop, and Dolly Os Donuts is submitting plans to rebuild in their original location. Thinking of opening a business in Paradise? The Town of Paradise offers Business Development meetings for prospective business owners to go over the process of opening a business in Paradise. Call Colette Curtis at (530) 872-6291 x112 or email her at ccurtis@townofparadise.com to schedule an appointment. Home Builders Resource Virtual Connection: An opportunity to connect rebuilders with the trades and resources needed to build in the Paradise community is once again taking place, with a virtual change. Companies will become accessible through a 2-minute video shared with community members who attend. A formal launch will be coming soon. The Town of Paradise Tree Advocates can provide personal assistance through this process, if you are enrolled in the Private Program, the Government Program, or dont know where to start. Tree Advocates can be reached at trees@townofparadise.com or by calling 530.872.6291 x 162 or 163. Town Hall and the Building Resiliency Center Open by Appointment: Due to the change to the purple Tier in Butte County, Town Hall and the BRC are open by appointment only. Please call (530) 872-6291 for existing appointments or to schedule a new appointment. Below are the extensions for assistance: Business and Housing x126 or x130 Code Enforcement x110 Finance Department x121 Tree Advocates x162 or x163 Building Resiliency Center x411 General Information x101 Are you a new property owner in Paradise? Congratulations on purchasing a property in the Town of Paradise! If you are building, the town wants to make sure you are informed on lot upkeep during the process. Please contact the Town of Paradise if you have any questions regarding weed or tree removal on your property. If you wish to have your hazardous trees removed in the Government Hazard Tree Removal Program, please call the Tree ROE Center at 530.552.3030. Have questions regarding your rebuild? Rebuild Advocates are here to help: If you need help navigating the rebuild process, the Town of Paradise has Rebuild Advocates available to assist. They can help with the following: Navigating insurance, FEMA or SBA, understanding additional financing options, selecting a contractor, submitting plants, or any part of the rebuild process. They are available at the Building Resiliency Center by appointment only. Please call 530.872.6291 x429 x430 to make an in-person (depending on COVID status) or phone appointment today. Home Builders Resource Virtual Connection: An opportunity to connect rebuilders with the trades and resources needed to build in the Paradise community is once again taking place, with a virtual change. Companies will become accessible through a 2-minute video shared with community members who attend. A formal launch will be coming soon. Grants Available to Small Businesses - deadline extended: Grants are available up to $25,000 for eligible small businesses affected by COVID-19. Funds are available through the Small Business Association and the COVID-19 Relief Grant Program. Applications are due by Wednesday, January 13. Learn more at https://careliefgrant.com/. PREVIEW OF 2021 As the community embarks on our third year of recovery after the Camp Fire, the Town of Paradise is excited to share some project milestones they anticipate in 2021. Removing Hazardous Trees Removing barriers to rebuilding: The Government Tree Program is currently removing about 200-250 hazardous trees per day. The town expects this program to be completed in the first quarter of 2021. The Town of Paradise has applied for additional Federal funding to remove the remaining hazardous trees on private property that were not eligible for the government program. If we receive the funding, the Town will start removing those additional trees later this year. Reseeding Program Plan Recreating beauty on the Ridge: The next step after removing hazardous trees damaged by the Camp Fire is to re-plant and re-seed the community. The Town received a grant for this purpose and will be welcoming proposals in early 2021 from contractors to evaluate and establish the next steps for reseeding after tree removal and educating the community on vegetation opportunities. Once a contractor has been established, we anticipate community input and education opportunities throughout 2021. Upon completion of the plan, the Town will seek funding to implement a re-seeding program in 2022-2024. Sewer Economic recovery and opportunity: With the Councils approval of the Regional Sewer Connection to the City of Chico late last year, the Town has begun the Environmental Review Process for the Sewer Project. The project would install a sewer in the primarily commercial areas of Skyway, Pearson and Clark. The Environmental process is expected to take about 18 months, then we will move on to design and construction in about 3-5 years. A sewer for the primarily commercial areas of Paradise is important for the recovery of our businesses and economy. For more information on this important project, visit www.paradisesewer.com. Early Warning System Safety for residents in an emergency: The safety of the town's residents continues to be a top priority. With the Early Warning System plan completed and approved last fall, the Town is submitting a grant application for construction funding. Pending approval, construction is estimated to begin in 2021. Broadband Services Increased access for businesses and residents: The town says it anticipates our Broadband Feasibility Study to be completed and presented in early 2021. This will answer questions about the possibilities we have for a broadband community and what implementation would look like. In the coming years, the town says it will have a focus on establishing implementation opportunities. Roads Prioritizing road improvements: In 2021 The Town will be working on its Transportation Master Plan, funded by the Economic Development Administration (EDA) last year. This study will conduct a holistic analysis of the Paradise transportation network and will outline critical gaps in infrastructure, conflicts, pinch points and other barriers to potential future evacuation events. Using this information, the study will identify priorities and a plan for town-wide safety and circulation improvements. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 3 mesi fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Global research & consulting firm recognizes Centrics market leading, customer-centered approach and commitment to innovation CAMPBELL, Calif., January 14, 2021 Based on its analysis of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions for the fashion, retail and consumer goods industries, Frost & Sullivan presents Centric Software with the 2021 Best Practices Customer Value Leadership Award. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home decor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals. With over 1,200 analysts, growth consultants and visionaries in 45 global offices on six continents, Frost & Sullivans experts continuously identify and evaluate multiple industries, technologies and regions. The Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award recognizes people and organizations that have accomplished an innovative or disruptive breakthrough and stand at the forefront of their industries. The Customer Value Leadership Award is presented to the company that offers products or services that customers find superior for their overall price, performance and quality. Maksym Beznosiuk, Best Practices Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan, says, As the world continues to generate uncertainty, Centrics record of customer service excellence, industry expertise and flexibility gives customers confidence that products will go from design to launch with greater speed, efficiency and profitability. Centrics commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction has propelled its global growth. In the past two years, Centric has increased its customer base by over 50%. Centric was well-positioned to help companies shifting to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, rapidly launching Quick Start PLM packages and 100% remote deployments. Over 70 companies have purchased Centric PLMTM since the pandemic began, ranging from smaller emerging brands such as Australias PE Nation, to the French mega-retailer Monoprix, to large fashion brands such as Brazils C&A and Germanys s.Oliver. Even with large numbers of users, Centric PLM implementations can be completed quickly. For example, s.Oliver recently remotely deployed 750 users in 4 months. At the heart of Centrics success is its agility, allowing customers to embrace a digital workflow and a remote work model while paying close attention to the unique needs of every client, Beznosiuk explains. Frost & Sullivans report pays particular attention to Centrics flexibility, innovation and customer service, noting that Centric PLM brings benefits to brands, retailers and manufacturers of all sizes across a wide variety of industries, from food to fashion. Centric proudly boasts a customer satisfaction rate of over 95%. Additionally, 35% of Centrics customers have switched from another PLM solution. Frost & Sullivan identifies specific highlights of Centrics solutions, including Centric PLMs unparalleled efficiency in product development and sourcing, sophisticated merchandise planning capabilities, groundbreaking 3D integration, innovative product quality inspection features and transformation of internal buying processes with virtual showrooms. We would like to thank Frost & Sullivan for awarding Centric Software the Customer Value Leadership Award, says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. This award is a recognition of our entire teams vision and dedication to innovation. We are proud to be a market-led company that works in tandem with our customers to solve their most pressing challenges, and we believe this award reflects the experience of our customers. Read the full report from Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan (www.frost.com) Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation, and leadership. The companys Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEOs Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages more than 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the investment community from 45 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit https://www.frost.com. Centric Software (www.centricsoftware.com) From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a Digital Transformation Platform for the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor and consumer goods including cosmetics, beauty, food and beverage. Centrics flagship Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform, Centric 8, delivers enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, quality and collection management functionality tailored for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric SMB provides innovative PLM technology and key industry learnings for emerging brands. Centric Visual Innovation Platform (VIP) offers a new fully visual and digital experience for collaboration and decision-making and includes the Centric Buying Board to transform internal buying sessions and maximize retail value and the Centric Concept Board for driving creativity and evolving product concepts. All Centric innovations shorten time to market, boost product innovation and reduce costs. Centric Software is majority-owned by Dassault Systemes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the world leader in 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and PLM solutions. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition, including being named by Red Herring to its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015 and 2016. Centric also received various excellence awards from Frost & Sullivan in 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2021. Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software Inc. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Media Contacts: Centric Software Americas: Jennifer Forsythe, jforsythe@centricsoftware.com EMEA Kristen Salaun-Batby, ksalaun-batby@centricsoftware.com APAC: Lily Dong, lily.dong@centricsoftware.com TUNIS - The Tunisian branch of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) launched a campaign titled "Ila mata?" (How long?) on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the revolution. The initiative, aimed at raising awareness among Tunisian citizens and leaders of the importance of breaking the cycle of impunity, kicked off with a video featuring Hatem Karoui and Fatma Sfar; the creation of three murals near the former prison of the "regime", the infamous "9 Avril"; and a public call to Tunisian NGOs to create projects to fight institutional violence at a local level. "Ten years have passed since the regime of Ben Ali was overthrown, with revolutionary forces calling for the eradication of torture and impunity that have long plagued the country," said OMCT in a statement. "In contrast with other countries in the region, in which revolutionary aspirations have been violently repressed, Tunisia succeeded in giving impetus to its democratic transition, through free elections, free speech, a new constitution and the initiation of a transitional justice process, demonstrating a clear desire to break with the past, with torture and other iniquitous practices," it said. "Despite all these advances, institutional violence persists and so does impunity hampering the still fragile rule of law. Tunisia today witnesses a series of legislative initiatives and political declarations that reflect the rise of reactionary forces, with little interest in promoting and respecting fundamental rights and freedoms, including justice for victims of serious human rights violations. Also the pursuit of transitional justice is constantly facing obstacles, or simply put into question. There have been multiple attempts in the national assembly to abandon justice for victims of the former regimes by introducing pseudo-total reconciliation. This can indeed be considered as a betrayal of the spirit of the revolution and gives rise to serious anxiety to returning to the old practices of the old regime". "Ordinary justice is also confronted with its share of obstacles, between procedural slowness, lack of means of will on behalf of judges and prosecutors, obstructions posed by executive forces, reprisals against victims and an inherently inadequate legal arsenal. While there is undoubtedly a significant increase in legal proceedings, no conviction for torture has been pronounced so far," OMCT said. "Shaken by decades of authoritarian regime, the Tunisian people had to make many sacrifices to instate the rule of law. Planting the seeds ten years ago, the Tunisian people today deserve to see its democracy flourish," it said. Scientists say they believe they have discovered the mechanism behind what causes irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). In a new study, researchers discovered that stomach infections such as food poisoning that trigger cells that release a compound called histamine. Histamine, in turn, can lead to an 'allergy' that causes digestive intolerance and increases abdominal pain. The team, from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Belgium, says the findings suggest that treating IBS patients with common allergy medications called antihistamines may be able to relieve their symptoms. A new study from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Belgium, found that IBS can be triggered like an 'allergy,' releasing a compound called histamine that causes abdominal pain (file image) IBS is an intestinal disorder that causes abdominal pain, bloating, cramping, and diarrhea or constipation. It affects between 10 and 15 percent of the US adult population, but only around five to seven percent have been diagnosed, according to the American College of Gastroenterology. Treatments currently consist of managing symptoms such as avoiding any trigger foods, drinking plenty of fluids, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep. 'Very often these patients are not taken seriously by physicians, and the lack of an allergic response is used as an argument that this is all in the mind, and that they don't have a problem with their gut physiology,' said lead author Professor Guy Boeckxstaens, a gastroenterologist at KU Leuven. 'With these new insights, we provide further evidence that we are dealing with a real disease.' Previous research conducted by the team revealed that certain foods activate a type of cell called a mast cell that releases histamine, a compound that regulates physiological function in the gut. Because many people report IBS after suffering a gastrointestinal infection, for the study, published in the journal Nature, researchers infected mice with a stomach virus and then split them into two groups. One group was fed ovalbumin, a protein found in egg white that provokes an immune response, and the other group was not. After the bug cleared, the ovalbumin group was fed the protein a second time. Results showed that the mice has their mast cells activated, which increased histamine release and led to digestive intolerance and increased abdominal pain, almost as if they had an allergy. After examining the mice to determine what connected the ingestion of ovalbumin to activation of the mast cells, they discovered it only occurred in the part of the intestines that had been infected by the stomach virus. 'At one end of the spectrum, the immune response to a food antigen is very local, as in IBS,' said Professor Boeckxstaens. 'At the other end of the spectrum is food allergy, comprising a generalized condition of severe mast cell activation, with an impact on breathing, blood pressure, and so on.' Next, they tested to see if the immune response would be localized in 12 IBS patients and 12 health volunteers. When foods associated with IBS, such as gluten, wheat and soy, were injected into the intestinal walls of the IBS patients, they had the same reactions as the mice did. The team plans to test a larger amount of patients in a clinical trial and says the findings could result in IBS patients being treated with allergy medications known as antihistamines. 'Knowing the mechanism that leads to mast cell activation is crucial, and will lead to novel therapies for these patients,' Professor Boeckxstaens said. 'Mast cells release many more compounds and mediators than just histamine, so if you can block the activation of these cells, I believe you will have a much more efficient therapy.' From the perspective of Eurasian connectivity, the Nakhchivan corridor could become part of both north-south and east-west transport corridors that get through the South Caucasus, writes Orkhan Baghirov, a leading advisor at the Center of Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center) in Baku in the article The Nakhchivan corridor will boost connectivity in the Caucasus. On 9 November the Presidents of the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia signed the declaration for the cessation of military operations in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. By liberating its occupied territories, Azerbaijan changed the geopolitical map of this region, eliminated the security concerns that existed for about three decades and created new opportunities for further cooperation. Along with political advantages, the victory of Azerbaijan in the war created substantial economic advantages for itself and regional countries. According to the 9th clause of the trilateral declaration, all economic and transport links in the region will be restored and The Republic of Armenia guarantees the safety of transport links between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in order to organize an unhindered movement of citizens, vehicles and goods in both directions. Thereby, Armenia agrees to the establishment of the Nakhchivan Corridor in the Megri region. The new corridor will release the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, the landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan, from the economic blockade. Currently, overland and air connections of Nakhchivan with other regions of Azerbaijan are available either from Iran in the south or through Turkey in the west. Therefore, a direct link with Nakhchivan will shorten the travel time and will decrease transportations costs by creating new economic development opportunities for Nakhchivan and Azerbaijan. It will also eliminate the past security concerns regarding Nakhchivan. The Nakhchivan Corridor will create new economic opportunities for the regional countries as well. Using this corridor, Turkey will directly access Azerbaijan without using the land routes of Georgia and Iran. Compared to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which connects Azerbaijan to Turkey through Georgia, the road within the new corridor will be about 340 km shorter. As this corridor will shorten the transportation distance and will decrease the transportation costs, the bilateral trade between Azerbaijan and Turkey will increase. It will also positively affect the tourism relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey as it will create a more comfortable land route for the movement of tourists. In a broader sense, the corridor promises to give Ankara another route to access the Caspian Sea and the Turkic world in Central Asia. It is also worth mentioning that Turkey has announced plans to build a new railway link from Turkey to Nakhchivan, which would expand cargo and passenger transportation in the region and boost the capacity of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad. The total investment amount will be $200-270 million and a 230 kilometers long line will start from Kars-Igdr and continue to Nakhchivan. From there, the line will be connected to the railway line that continues to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other regions of Azerbaijan through the Nakhchivan corridor. Thus, Turkey will achieve a great advantage in terms of logistics. The connection of the Kars-Nakhchivan railway to the Nakhchivan corridor also will boost economic relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey. The creation of the Nakhchivan corridor is also advantageous for Russia as it creates an alternative land route to the regional countries. The southern part of Russias railway network is connected to Azerbaijan railways, and using this connection, Russian trains could easily reach the Nakhchivan corridor and then be directed to the lines that extend to Armenia, Turkey and Iran. For Russia, this road could also serve as an alternative pathway to the markets of the Middle East. Besides, taking into account that in recent years the trade turnover between Russia and Turkey has been considerably growing and due to political discontents, Russia was not able to use land routes of Georgia for getting a direct link to Armenia, the Nakhchivan corridor would create great economic advantages for Russia. Armenia could also significantly benefit from the Nakhchivan corridor if it chooses to return to peaceful policies and cooperation. By using this corridor, Armenia could end its economic isolation, join the regional transport projects and, more importantly, to get a land link to the market of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which was one of the main economic obstacles for Armenia in recent years. The absence of land roads between Russia and Armenia was also negatively affecting bilateral trade relations between them. Thus, the Nakhchivan corridor could become an effective project for the development of economic relations of Armenia with EEU, including Russia. By using this corridor, Armenia also could obtain a rail connection with Iran. The planned construction of a railroad between Armenia and Iran through the Megri region has been postponed because of the high costs. Now the new corridor gives a great chance for Armenia to eliminate the problems related to the transportation of cargos to Iran. From the perspective of Eurasian connectivity, the Nakhchivan corridor could become part of both North-South and East-West transport corridors that gets through the South Caucasus. Establishing the Nakhchivan corridor in parallel to BTK Azerbaijan will add a new artery to the Middle Corridor, the mainland corridor that connects Asia with Europe and will strengthen its position as a regional transportation hub in the region. Therefore, along with regional countries, the planned corridor should be in the interests of European, Central Asian countries and China as it creates a new alternative for the transportation of cargos both in eastern and western directions. All the mentioned advantages show that the Nakhchivan corridor could become one of the main elements of the new order in South Caucasus-Pax Caucasia. The release of all economic blockades in the region and the establishment of the new corridor will create favorable conditions for regional development and cooperation. Although the new corridor, to some extent, could decrease the importance and profitableness of some traditional routes, the geopolitical benefits of the establishment of peace and elimination of economic blockades in the region are far greater than the damages that those traditional routes could face. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 14:31:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- From promising to make its vaccines a global public good to joining the COVAX facility backed by the World Health Organization, China has been active in promoting global vaccine cooperation advocated by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi has engaged in intensive "cloud diplomacy," including attending or chairing virtual meetings and having phone calls with foreign leaders and heads of international organizations, to make China's contributions to the research, development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The following are some highlights of his remarks. During his phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in November 2020, Xi said China stands ready to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with Germany on COVID-19 vaccines and push for the vaccines to be fairly distributed as a global public good, especially for the benefit of developing countries. Speaking at the 12th BRICS summit in November that also gathered leaders from Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil, Xi said China has designated its own national vaccine R&D center and will work with other BRICS countries both online and offline to advance collective vaccine research and trials, set up plants, authorize the production and recognize each other's standards. At the general debate of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, Xi said at the moment, several COVID-19 vaccines developed by China are in Phase III clinical trials. When their development is completed and they are available for use, the vaccines will be provided to other developing countries on a priority basis. During the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity against COVID-19 in June, Xi said, "We pledge that once the development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccine is completed in China, African countries will be among the first to benefit." When addressing the opening of the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly in May, Xi said COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment in China, when available, will be made a global public good, which will be China's contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries. Enditem tech2 News Staff The US government has blacklisted Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi and Chinas third-largest national oil company for alleged military links, heaping pressure on Beijing in President Donald Trumps last week in office. The Department of Defense added nine companies to its list of Chinese companies with military links, including Xiaomi and state-owned plane manufacturer Commercial Aircraft of China (Comac). US investors will have to divest their stakes in Chinese companies on the military list by November this year, according to an executive order signed by Trump in November. According to a statement by a Xiaomi spokesperson, "The Company has been in compliance with law and operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses. The Company reiterates that it provides products and services for civilian and commercial use. The Company confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a Communist Chinese Military Company defined under the NDAA. The Company will take appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the Company and its shareholders. The Company is reviewing the potential consequences of this to develop a fuller." Xiaomi overtook Apple as the worlds No. 3 smartphone maker by sales in the third quarter of 2020, according to data by Gartner. Xiaomis market share has grown as Huaweis sales have suffered after it was blacklisted by the US and its smartphones were cut off from essential services from Google. Separately, the Commerce Department put China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) on the entity list, an economic blacklist that forbids US firms from exporting or transferring technology with the companies named unless permission has been obtained from the US government. The move comes after about 60 Chinese companies were added to the list in December, including drone maker DJI and semiconductor firm SMIC. CNOOC has been involved in offshore drilling in the disputed waters South China Sea, where Beijing has overlapping territorial claims with other countries including Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan, and Malaysia. Chinas reckless and belligerent actions in the South China Sea and its aggressive push to acquire sensitive intellectual property and technology for its militarization efforts are a threat to US national security and the security of the international community, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. CNOOC acts as a bully for the Peoples Liberation Army to intimidate Chinas neighbors, and the Chinese military continues to benefit from government civil-military fusion policies for malign purposes, Ross said. CNOOC did not immediately comment. Chinese state-owned company Skyrizon was also added to the economic blacklist, for its push to acquire and indigenise foreign military technologies, Ross said. Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, founded by tycoon Wang Jing, drew US criticism for an attempt to take over Ukraines military aircraft engine maker Motor Sich in 2017. The concern was that advanced aerospace technology would end up being used for military purposes. (With inputs from The Associated Press) Credit: University of Tokyo A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions across Japan has found that inhibiting kidney-type glutaminase-dependent glutaminolysis in mice can lead to elimination of senescent cells. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes using RNA interference to look for enzymes that are required for senescent cell survival and subsequently inducing them to die. Christopher Pan and Jason Locasale, with the Duke University School of Medicine, have published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining research into glutamine and the role it played in the work done by the team in this new effort. Cells are described as senescent when they lose the ability to divide. Prior research has found that cells can reach senescence due to exposure to stress, which can include mitochondrial, replicative or oxidative stress. In all cases, the cells live and continue to function, but can no longer divide. Prior research has found evidence suggesting that senescent cells play a role in the development of some aging-related diseases such as arteriosclerosis and muscle degeneration. For that reason, scientists have been looking for ways to eliminate them. In this new effort, the researchers have found a way to rid test mice of senescent cells by removing a pathway necessary for their continued survival. The work involved a screening effort using RNA interference to look for enzymes that senescent cells need to survive. This led them to look closer at glutamine metabolism, specifically glutaminase 1. Testing showed it to be critical to survival for senescent cells. The team then inhibited the glutaminase 1 pathway in test mice. After allowing time for the changes to take effect, the researchers found that inhibiting the pathway led to the deaths of senescent cells. In the longer term, they found that it also reduced age-related organ problems and also health issues related to obesity. The researchers suggest that inhibiting a similar enzyme in humans could likely promote senescent cell death as well, and by extension, reduce age-related disease. Explore further The world's first successful identification and characterization of in vivo senescent cells More information: Yoshikazu Johmura et al. Senolysis by glutaminolysis inhibition ameliorates various age-associated disorders, Science (2021). Yoshikazu Johmura et al. Senolysis by glutaminolysis inhibition ameliorates various age-associated disorders,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abb5916 Christopher Pan et al. Targeting metabolism to influence aging, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abf6368 Press release Journal information: Science 2021 Science X Network De Secondigne Argentina Baubeau de Secondigne was born in Bahia Blanca, Argentina to an Argentine mother and a father of French origin who was an aviator in the Navy. A member of an art-loving family, her sensitivity pushed her from a very young age to draw and she followed in the footsteps of her ancestor, Procesa Sarmiento, an early Argentinean woman painter. When she was 16 years old, Marcela joined the Manuel Belgrano School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and graduated four years later. Her surname became her pseudonym. Her passion for drawing, and the pleasure she derives from it, guide her work as a painter. The artist vacillates freely between abstraction and figuration. Her ultimate goal is summed up in one word: colour. Like her idol, Matisse (French artist of the nineteenth - twentieth century), she seeks to make colour a full-fledged object, the paintings centre of attention. She begins her creation with a preparatory draft in pencil or charcoal, then adds splashes of colour here and there with big brushes or spatulas, before putting the canvas on the floor and letting go by projecting the colour on the canvas, whether in acrylic, oil, pigment or ink. She then constantly corrects, clears and improves the work. Her originality is based in the plurality of her creative process. One day inspired by the state of the society that concerns her, she paints, for example, the fate of prostitutes. The next day, she will choose to paint imaginary landscapes, circus scenes or animals, often horses, which the artist honours with her masterful drawing, accurately transcribing their movements. Nonetheless, her paintings have a common point: they often place the child as a symbol of what their parents (humanity) should do, namely, be respectful, attentive or know how to remain quiet. All of her works are a testimony to the delicate balance of life in which symbols or the recycled materials she uses awaken our civic and environmental awareness. In perpetual motion, Baubeau de Secondignes canvases are like the world, ""a dance in which the man and the elements will never stop spinning."" Editor, I am writing in response to the article appearing Jan. 7 regarding former U.S. Rep. Lou Barlettas reaction to the siege of the U.S. Capitol. I am pleased that Barletta was in his words very disappointed by what occurred and equally pleased he voiced his support of the American right to peaceful protest. Good for him. However, let me point out that what transpired was not a protest nor were any of the participants protesters exercising their civil rights to peaceful demonstration. Barletta was, and is, totally unaware of what transpired within the halls of the nations Capitol or he is willfully ignorant of the distinct difference between legal protest and illegal armed insurrection. Such ignorance does not surprise me given his seeming excusing of the criminal actions of the perpetrators as somehow understandable because the mob was fueled by an election they feel was stolen. Subscribing to conspiracy theories or lacking the critical thinking skills that provide a mechanism for separating fact from fiction can never be allowed to serve as justification for violence. Finally, I want to go on the record as saying that Barlettas words of concern and disappointment ring hollow given his well established and recorded public support for the deranged and dangerous fraud that now pollutes the Oval Office. The actions the world witnessed last Wednesday are the logical culmination of four years of Trump lies and delusions. Barletta by his efforts aided and abetted this pathetic little despot and as a consequence indirectly helped bring the events of Jan. 6 to fruition. In closing, I am confident Trump and his cronies will pay for their crimes. While Barletta does not need to fear the same fate, he will have to confront his own conscience. Gerard D. Hoefling, Ph.D. Newark, Del. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 18:02:13|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) has issued a guideline urging courts to improve judicial services to help speed up the development of the Hainan free trade port. The guideline, posted online Friday, makes institutional arrangements for improving the free trade port's judicial organizational system, optimizing the case jurisdiction system, and improving the system for foreign-related civil and commercial case trial and the alternative dispute resolution mechanism for commercial cases. It demands stepping up the construction of the intellectual property court of the Hainan free trade port and the foreign-related civil and commercial tribunal of Hainan. The guideline also calls for strengthening the construction of tourism tribunals, innovating the trial mode and establishing a centralized and express trial mechanism for foreign-related tourism disputes. Enditem Cybersecurity Biden floats $9B boost to TMF as part of funding surge President-elect Joe Biden today released his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that includes $9 billion for a fund used to improve the federal government's IT and cybersecurity. Most of the massive surge in funding is to accelerate the nationwide vaccine campaign and to provide aid to Americans who have been economically harmed during the pandemic, with expanded cash grants, food and child care aid, housing assistance and more. On the technology front, the proposed funding for the Technology Modernization Fund would "help the U.S. launch major new IT and cybersecurity shared services at the Cyber Security and Information Security Agency (CISA) and the General Services Administration and complete modernization projects at federal agencies," according to a summary of the proposal released by the Biden transition team. The investment would be a massive boost for TMF, which was appropriated $25 million in the fiscal year 2021 spending bills. TMF was established under the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act of 2017, and was initially funded with $100 million, and has received annual updates in the $25 million range since then, but has been held in check by some appropriators who are concerned about the payback provisions and accountability mechanisms. Biden's plan would also provide $200 million for the federal CIO office at the Office of Management and Budget to support "rapid hiring" in the information security officer and the U.S. Digital Service operations. The plan provides $300 million for the Technology Transformation Services at GSA to spearhead IT projects for agencies "without the need of reimbursement," according to the summary. CISA would receive $690 million to boost cybersecurity across federal networks and pilot "new shared security and cloud computing services," the summary says. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a co-sponsor of the MGT Act, greeted the tech spending boost. "I am delighted the incoming Biden administration recognizes the Technology Modernization Fund can be a tool to drive IT modernization in the federal government, and I am eager to work with them to ensure the TMF is successful," Connolly said in an emailed statement. Liam Dewar, who admitted conspiring with a murder victim to smuggle three kilos of cocaine over the border. A Belfast man has admitted conspiring with a murder victim to import 180,000 of cocaine. Liam Dewar was due to go on trial at Craigavon Crown Court next week but defence counsel Peter Coiley asked for two of the three charges to be put to the 26-year-old again on Friday. Appearing from the offices of Trevor Smyth & Co. Dewar entered guilty pleas to conspiring with murder victim Warren Crossan to import cocaine and to possession of the Class A drug with intent to supply on 8 November 2019. A further offence of simple possession of cocaine was left on the books. None of the facts were opened but previous courts had heard how Dewar, formerly from Rodney Parade in Belfast, was arrested when police stopped a van he was driving on the A1 near to Hillsborough. An initial search found nothing and the van was locked into Creightons Garage for the weekend while Dewar was freed on police bail. PSNI officers did not find the drugs hidden inside and were about to hand the van back when a gang tried unsuccessfully to remove it from the garage leading suspicious detectives to have another look. The new search uncovered three kilos of cocaine worth 180,000 under the floor behind the drivers seat in the Citroen Berlingo van. Dewers phone was also seized and triaged by police, it showed numerous text exchanges between him and Warren Crossan along with a photograph of 15,000 in cash. During interview, Dewer claimed he had traveled to Dublin to hand over money for the payment of damages to a vehicle but he denied having any knowledge of the drugs. He further claimed that he had taken the picture of the cash as he had never seen that amount of money before before giving it to an unknown man in the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. Crossan (28) was arrested and charged in relation to the seizure and had been on bail when he was gunned down close to his home on Rodney Parade in west Belfast on 25 June. To date, no one has been charged with his murder. Judge Patrick Lynch QC said given the pleas clearly a pre-sentence report will be necessary, freeing Dewar on bail, he ordered a probation report and adjourned passing sentence until 19 February. INDIAN BIOSERVICES INDUSTRY HITS RS 29,000 CR WITH 12% GROWTH IN 2019-20 Indian BioServices industry comprising over 1000 players in the field of clinical research, contract research, contract development and manufacturing has seen significant growth in the recent past and witnessed a 12 per cent growth in 2019-20 by reaching Rs 29,120 crore as against 19 per cent growth recorded in 2018-19. Contract research, development and manufacturing are contributing the most in BioServices industry with less than 10 per cent coming from clinical research organisations. For Feedback, please email us at : communications@mmactiv.com -- By Wang yang, Tian Guosong and He Wutao I used to be an Internet addict, obsessed with online games like the Honor of Kings, and that made my parents and teachers not know what to do with me. The experience in the military changed my life. During the two years service in the PLA Hong Kong Garrison, I finally realized the life I want to live. The experience in the military is a great honor for my life. On December 22, 2020, Sun Yuzhong, as a representative of decommissioned college soldier, shared his story at the Hubei University of Technology, as part of the campus recruitment campaign in Chinas Hubei province, which was live-streamed to 129 colleges and universities across the province. Honor is the theme of the campaign. Its an honor to join the military is a slogan known to everyone, but also a vague concept for many college students, said a leader of the Hubei Provincial Military Command. Out of such considerations, the organizers decided to answer the question what kind of youth is worthy of true glory from the perspective of college soldiers. Kong Lingxiang, a soldier assigned to a pontoon-bridge brigade under the PLA Central Theater Command, illustrated his understanding of honor with two regretless choices. In 2017, when Kong graduated from a prestigious university with two degrees in management and law and passed the civil servant exam, he decided to join the military and became the oldest recruit in his unit. Then, when his term as a compulsory serviceman was about to end, Kong could have chosen to leave and become a permanent resident in Beijing. However, he decided to stay in the military. Many people didnt understand his choice. At the campaign event, Kong Lingxiang explained, The greatest honor in life isnt a decent job or a comfortable life. It is the maximization of life values, and, for me, the military is the best place to realize that. Also standing on the stage were Li Ruohan from the Hubei University of Technology and Chen Yi from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. They shared their understanding of honor with their personal experience. The stories of these college soldiers inspired the audience. Zhang Yu, a fresh graduate at the Hubei University of Technology, said that after hearing their stories, Im more determined to temper myself in the military. The first campus recruitment campaign for 2021 in Hubei province has made honor a hotly discussed topic among young people. It is learned that nearly 10,000 college students have participated in the physical examination for recruitment in the province so far. A teenage girl pulled from a public swimming pool at Maitland in NSW's Hunter region has died despite frantic efforts to revive her. Emergency services were called to an aquatic centre on Les Darcy Drive, Maitland, about 3.30pm on Friday on reports a girl was in trouble in the water. Police said the 13-year old, yet to be formally identified, was pulled from the water and lifeguards commenced CPR. A teenage girl pulled from a public swimming pool at Maitland in NSW's Hunter region has died despite frantic efforts to revive her (Maitland Aquatic Centre pictured) Police said the 13-year old, yet to be formally identified, was pulled from the water and lifeguards commenced CPR NSW Ambulance paramedics arrived and continued CPR before rushing her to John Hunter Hospital but she was pronounced dead at 8.30pm. Police are investigating and will prepare a report for the coroner. Photo: LAPD In February 2013, the disappearance of a 21-year-old Vancouver resident while on holiday in Los Angeles had people around the globe riveted, and now the bizarre case is the focus of a new Netflix series. The streaming platform is set to release "Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel," on Feb. 10, according to Variety. "The four-episode season comes from executive producer and director Joe Berlinger, who sets out to deconstruct what really happened to college student and tourist [Elisa] Lam, who stayed at the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles in February 2013," adds Variety. Lam, a University of British Columbia student, had been travelling in California when she went missing on Jan. 31 that's when her worried family back in B.C. had last heard from her. The search for Lam stretched on for several days into February, when mid-month the Los Angeles Police Department released surveillance video of Lam behaving bizarrely inside the downtown L.A. hotel's elevator. That video showed Lam entering the elevator, pressing several floor buttons, and then flattening herself against the wall as though she were hiding from someone. But the elevator doesn't move, and Lam is seen edging out of the doors and possibly gesturing to someone in the hallway. Next Lam is seen re-entering the elevator, pressing buttons, but, when the elevator doesn't respond, she exits. Lam was last seen in the lobby of the hotel. On February 19, police were called to the Cecil to engage in a "confined space rescue" from a water tank on the building's rooftop. The rescue mission, however, shifted into one of recovery there was what appeared to be the body of a young Asian woman in the tank. The body was ultimately identified as Lam's. Back home, flowers and notes of condolence piled up outside the doors of the family's restaurant in North Burnaby. No drugs were found in Lam's body, and the death was ruled accidental. But what led up to Lam's body being found inside the water tank remains a mystery. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. On Wednesday, the Kenosha County District Attorneys office filed a motion to modify the bond conditions for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old fascist vigilante who shot dead two anti-police violence protesters and wounded another in the Wisconsin city on August 25. The motion was submitted along with photos of Rittenhouse posing with members of the fascist Proud Boys organization and flashing a white power hand gesture just 90 minutes after he pleaded not guilty to multiple felony and misdemeanor charges in a remote court hearing on January 5. Kyle Rittenhouse (Photo: Kenosha County Sherriffs office) According to the Kenosha DAs filing, Rittenhouse along with his mother Wendy Rittenhouse and several other adults, arrived at Pudgys Pub, a bar located at 7800 Washington Avenue in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. Local enforcement was notified of the defendants presence at the bar and surveillance video and still footage of the visit was later retrieved and reviewed, the motion says. The brief goes on, Within a few minutes of entering the bar, the defendant was loudly serenaded by 5 of the adult males in his group with the song Proud of Your Boy, which is an obscure song written for the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. The violent white supremacist group called the Proud Boys was named after this song, which is sung by its members as an anthem and for self-identification. Rittenhousewho was wearing a t-shirt that read Free as F*ckposed for photos with two men in the group and the defendant and the other adult males flashed the OK sign, which has been co-opted as a sign of white power by known white supremacist groups. Rittenhouse and his mother remained at the bar for 90 minutes with the unnamed individuals and was served and consumed a total of 3 beers. The Kenosha DAs motion requests that Rittenhouses bond conditions be modified, requiring the defendant to be prohibited from possessing or consuming alcohol, to be prohibited from being present in any establishment where alcohol is served, to be prohibited from making any public display of any white power or white supremacy signs, symbols or hand gestures and that the defendant shall have no contact with any known militia members or known members of any violent white power/white supremacist groups or organizations, including but not limited to the group identified as the Proud Boys. The motion concludes with a warning that Rittenhouses continued association with members of a group that prides itself on violence, and the use of their symbols, raises the significant possibility of future harm, and this association may serve to intimidate potential witnesses, who may be unwilling to testify in this case because they may fear that the defendants associates with harm them or their families. On August 25in the midst of nightly protests in Kenosha following the police shooting of 29-year-old African American man and father of six, Jacob Blake, two days earlierRittenhouse traveled to Wisconsin from his home in Antioch, Illinois. Rittenhouse volunteered, based on a Facebook appeal for a Call to Arms by a group of armed vigilantes known as the Kenosha Militia, to guard a car dealership. Seventeen years old at the time and armed with a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style assault rifle, Rittenhouse fired his weapon multiple times during a series of confrontations with protesters that evening. The shootings resulted in the death of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, of Kenosha, and Anthony Huber, 26, of Silver Lakeboth of whom were unarmedand the serious injury of Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, of West Allis. A subsequent autopsy of Rosenbaum showed that he had been struck five times, a gunshot wound to the right groin which fractured his pelvis, a gunshot wound to the back which perforated his right lung and liver, a gunshot wound to the left hand, a superficial gunshot wound to his lateral left thigh, and a graze gunshot wound to the right side of his forehead. Following the shootings, Rittenhouse was permitted by police to leave Kenosha and travel back to his hometown in Illinois, where he then turned himself in to the Antioch police. The Kenosha County Court issued a criminal complaint on August 27, charging Rittenhouse with five felonies, including first degree reckless homicide, first degree intentional homicide, first degree recklessly endangering safety, attempted first degree intentional homicide and one misdemeanor for possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18. On December 29, prosecutors added an additional charge of violating curfew on the night of the shootings. Rittenhouse had been held in the Lake County juvenile detention center until he was extradited on October 30 by the State of Illinois to Wisconsin to face the charges in Kenosha County. He was released from the Kenosha County jail on November 20 on $2 million bondraised by lawyer Lin Wood, a QAnon conspiracy theory fascist and attorney for President Trump, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a wealthy Trump backerpending his arraignment and trial. Over the past four months, Rittenhouse has been adopted as the poster child of the extreme right and held up as an example of self-defense, the basis of the legal strategy of his defense team. The coup attempt at the US Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6 certainly played a role in the moves by the Kenosha District Attorney to tighten the bond conditions on Rittenhouse. The January 13 motion includes a lengthy section on the nature of the Proud Boys organization as well as the politics behind the OK hand gesture. The Proud Boys is a national, male-only organization operating in the United States and Canada that has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, the brief explains. The group was founded in 2016 by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes and has advocated violence as a really effective way to solve problems and we dont start fights but we will finish them. Members of the Proud Boys have been connected with the breach of the US Capitol and at least one of their leaders has been arrested and charged in connection with the event. The brief states that the Proud Boys organization has branches and chapters throughout North America and membership in the organization requires a four step, gang-like initiation process. The steps include taking a loyalty oath that states, Im a proud Western chauvinist, I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world, getting a Proud Boys tattoo and committing an act of violence for the cause. The OK hand gesture has been co-opted by white supremacists as their symbol of white supremacy/white power. In 2017, users of the message board 4chan began a hoax called Operation O-KKK to see if they could trick the public into believing the gesture was a symbol of white power. However, by 2019, the gesture was being used widely by Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and other white nationalistsin public to signal their presence and to spot potential sympathizers and recruits. There is no firm indication as to when a COVID-19 vaccine would be made available here. Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said that he is not optimistic about the coronavirus vaccine arriving here by the time it is estimated to do so. Last week, at a press briefing, Dr. Simon Keizer-Beache, Chief Medical Officer, had pointed to an effort to have the vaccine here within the first quarter of the year. But even with the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) making a down payment for 20 percent of the vaccines required and anticipating that they would be coming by the end of March, Dr. Gonsalves said that he had his doubts about is arrival. "That may come a little later, he said. The Prime Minister explained that this country was among five countries within CARICOM that were members of the Advance Marketing Commitment (AMC) group within the COVAX group. COVAX is the mechanism launched in April 2020 by the World Health Organization and which brought together governments, global health organizations, manufacturers and other stakeholders, with the aim of accelerating the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. However, even with some funding by the World Bank and other governments, COVAX has yet to reach the amount of funding needed to fulfil its commitment. Against this background, PM Gonslaves warned about a situation developing wherein the richer countries would procure more than is required for their respective populations, with little or no regard for the needs developing nations. Heads of Governments within CARICOM have been in contact with each other and have been discussing the issue with CARPHA. These discussion are ongoing. Testing In addition to referencing the issue of the COVID-19 vaccine, Gonsalves also addressed the most recent requirement by countries such as Canada and the UK. Those countries now require persons entering, including returning nationals, to have a PCR test. This was already putting pressure on the testing capacity here, Dr. Gonsalves admitted. He made no mention of the rapid increase in cases among what authorities describe as persons with no travel history, as contributing to this pressure. "The delay in our own testing facilities has created a challenge for some persons who want to go home, Gonsalves affirmed, adding that the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Cuthbert Knights, had indicated that his ministry was in discussions with a private lab towards get it to assist with the coronavirus test. New Delhi/San Francisco, Jan 15 : After the US government blacklisted Chinese conglomerate Xiaomi as a "Communist Chinese military company", the company on Friday said it is reviewing the potential consequences to develop a fuller understanding of its impact on the Group. Xiaomi's stock nosedived more than 10 per cent in early Friday trading after the news broke. In a fresh list, the US Department of Defense targeted Xiaomi, which means that the company is also vulnerable to the outgoing President Donald Trump's executive order that can ban the US firms from investing in such companies. The move may also force US companies and other investors to divest in Xiaomi this year. A Xiaomi spokesperson said in a statement shared with IANS that the company has been in compliance with law and operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses. "The company confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a 'Communist Chinese Military Company' defined under the NDAA. The company will take appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the Company and its shareholders," the spokesperson said. According to Counterpoint Research, Xiaomi was the third largest smartphone maker globally in the third quarter of 2020, and India is its biggest market. The Department of Defense said in a statement late Thursday: "The Department is determined to highlight and counter the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernisation goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programmes that appear to be civilian entities." The Department released its initial list of companies to Congress in June 2020 and has now included Xiaomi. Most of the other companies on the list are more industrially oriented, specialising in aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, chemicals, telecommunications, construction, and other forms of infrastructure. In July 2020, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated Chinese telecom companies, Huawei and ZTE, as national security risks to America's communications networks. "Both companies have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China's military apparatus, and both companies are broadly subject to Chinese law obligating them to cooperate with the country's intelligence services. "The Bureau also took into account the findings and actions of Congress, the Executive Branch, the intelligence community, our allies, and communications service providers in other countries," the FCC said. Stacker compiled a list of 25 jobs in the White House by consulting official White House and government websites, news reports and interviews, historical accounts, and academic sources. Louisiana bar owners fighting coronavirus-related closures of their businesses lost an appeal at a federal appeals court. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 13 upheld rulings from two lower court judges who last year refused to block the closure order for groups of bars that filed suit in the New Orleans and Lafayette areas. A three-judge 5th Circuit panel rejected the argument that Gov. John Bel Edwards closure order is unfair because it allows bars with food permits to remain open. The opinion said there is a plausible basis for the states premise that businesses that are driven more by alcohol sales than food sales are more likely to spread the virus. Edwards said he was pleased with the decision. In a news release, his office said it was the ninth time a court has ruled in favor of his orders aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19. None of the decisions I have made for the past 10 months have been easy, especially when it comes to limiting businesses, and I am pleased that another court has upheld what I have always said: that these orders are completely constitutional, legal and necessary to protect public health, the Democratic governor said in a news release. More than 2,000 people in the state are hospitalized with COVID-19. The disease has been confirmed as a cause of more than 7,500 Louisiana deaths and is suspected in another 440 deaths. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics COVID-19 Louisiana Restaurant In between all the bad news comes a chink of light: a sequel to Sex and the City, called And Just Like That..., has been announced. Those of us who knew Candace Bushnell the real Carrie Bradshaw when she was penning the original SATC columns for the New York Observer are curious to see how life panned out for Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte. As for Samantha... well, unlike many, I really don't mind about Kim Cattrall bowing out. I always thought she was made up for effect. I remember the first time I met Candace. It was a sultry summer Friday night on Fisher's Island, New York. My new British boyfriend (soon to be fiance) had taken me to meet three friends (two of whom were British bankers) who had rented a large weekend beach house. The first voice I heard was Morgan Entrekin's, an American publisher and close friend of Candace's, whose Southern twang was discernible three floors up. "The female characters in the show 'Sex and the City' have often come under attack for being trivial, but their real-life counterparts were trailblazers." Out on the wooden porch, an Old Fashioned in her hand, was Candace. She was tiny and very pretty. I remember being intimidated by the floaty, Fifties-style cocktail dress she wore (famously with nothing underneath). The kooky-glam style of "Carrie" was what Sarah Jessica-Parker became famous for. To my eyes then, it was so cool and grown-up. In the late '80s, New York had a kind of social fluidity that is lost today. Europeans mixed with Americans; artists with bankers; no one cared what your politics or profession were as long as you were interesting and interested in having a good time. A small group of scientists carried machetes through the Amazon Rainforest. They cut through dense plant life as the mid-morning temperature rose above 38 Celsius. The group of men and women cut into trees. They dug into the soil and painted words across tree parts. Its destructive, but we only do it for a few trees, said Carlos Roberto Sanquetta. He is a forestry engineering professor at the Federal University of Parana in Brazil. Sanquetta led the weeklong research trip in November. The team of scientists included a botanist, agronomist, biologist and other forestry engineers. They took several samples of plants, both living and dead. The Brazilian researchers are studying how much carbon different parts of the worlds largest rainforest can store. Such storage can help remove carbon, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the earths atmosphere. The scientists are working in a part of the forest about 90 kilometers from Porto Velho in Rondonia state. We need to understand what is the role that forests play, said Sanquetta, a member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel is the worlds top group of climate science experts. Sanquetta said it is important to know how much carbon the Amazons trees take in when unharmed and how much they can release when destroyed. In the rainforest, it is hard work, in hot, wet conditions filled with insects. And it involves use of several tools for cutting, digging and measuring. Raoni Rajao specializes in environmental management at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He is not involved with Sanquettas team but said, These are hardworking people [willing to] get their hands dirty. Holistic methods The Brazilian team is just one group among hundreds of researchers seeking to measure carbon in the Amazon rainforest. The massive forest covers more than six million square kilometers in nine countries. Some research seeks only to measure carbon in trees, but Sanquetta says his teams effort is all-inclusive. It measures carbon in soil, underbrush and dying plant matter. In addition, his team is studying carbon in reforested areas. This can offer information needed to push for reforestation efforts. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is the most widespread of the greenhouse gases. Trees take it in from the atmosphere and store it as carbon. But the process also works the other way. When trees are cut down or burned, the wood releases CO2 back into the atmosphere. In Brazil, parts of the Amazon are often cut to make room for agriculture and grassland for cows. Deforestation in the Amazon has sped up under President Jair Bolsonaro. Since he took office in 2019, at least 825 million tons of CO2 have been released from deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. That is more than is released by all U.S. passenger cars in a year. The office of Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao leads the governments Amazon rainforest policy. In a statement, the office said the rise in deforestation happened before the current leadership. It also said the government has been working hard to end destructive mining and lumber trafficking. Measuring carefully Central to dealing with the climate threat is the need to improve carbon measuring methods for more exact readings. Everyone wants this information, said Alexis Bastos, project leader of the nonprofit group Rioterra Study Center. The Brazilian organization provides financial support and several scientists to Sanquettas team, which began its current line of research in 2016. What they know so far Early findings show that planting a mix of Amazon species leads to better carbon storage than letting the area regrow naturally. But the findings also suggest that nothing is better than leaving forests untouched. One hectare of untouched Rondonia forest holds an average 176 tons of carbon, based on Sanquettas examination of Brazilian Science Ministry numbers. By comparison, a replanted hectare of forest after 10 years holds about 44 tons, and soy farms hold an average of only two tons. After the work, the samples were taken back to the laboratory. There, the team dried and weighed them, before burning them. This lets them measure how much carbon is contained. The team measured samples from 20 pieces of land in November. The final goal is 100 pieces of land by later in 2021. The work could tell us how quickly the planet could be healed, Rajao said. Im Alice Bryant. Reuters news agency reported this story. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Bryan Lynn was the editor. ____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story machete n. a large, heavy knife that is used for cutting plants and as a weapon sample n. a small amount of something that gives you information about the thing it was taken from role n. a part that someone or something has in a particular activity or situation management n. the act or process of deciding how to use something panel n. a group of people with special knowledge, skill, or experience who give advice or make decisions underbrush n. plants, bushes, and small trees growing under larger trees in a forest lumber n. wooden boards or logs that have been sawed and cut for use species n. a group of related animals or plants that is smaller than a genus The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. 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. People across the world are generally likely to say yes to getting a COVID-19 vaccine , but would be more distrustful of shots made in China or Russia than those developed in Germany or the United States, an international poll showed on Friday. The survey, conducted by the polling company YouGov and shared exclusively with Reuters, found Britons and Danes were the most willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available to them, while the French and Poles were more likely to be hesitant. The poll was based on questions put to almost 19,000 people. It also found that willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine has been improving in many countries in recent weeks, just as shots developed by companies in the United States, Russia, China, Germany and Britain were starting to be delivered and administered in countries across Europe, North America and Asia. In Britain, 73% of people said they would get vaccinated, while in Denmark the number was 70%. In the United States, however, just less than half of those surveyed said they would be willing to have a COVID-19 vaccine, a figure that has remained broadly stable since July. More than a third of people surveyed in Poland and almost half in France - 37% and 48% respectively - said they would say no to a COVID-19 shot if offered it. WAIT AND SEE Confidence among populations about vaccines will be a key factor in governments' efforts to curb the rate of infections in the year-long SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 92 million people worldwide and killed at least 1.98 million. A study published by vaccine confidence researchers in November found that conspiracy theories and misinformation fuels mistrust and could push COVID-19 shot uptake rates below levels needed to protect communities against the disease. Friday's YouGov poll found that, while sizeable minorities in many countries said they would not take the COVID-19 vaccine now, most gave their reason as preferring to wait and see if the vaccines were safe, and few were driven by entrenched "anti-vaxxer" views. In France, for example, the proportion of the population saying they'd refuse the vaccine because they were "opposed to vaccines in general" was highest at 9%, but still far lower than the percentage who would reject a COVID-19 vaccine specifically. With COVID-19 vaccine production and delivery beginning to ramp up, the YouGov poll also surveyed attitudes to compulsory COVID-19 vaccination - a policy under discussion by some governments to try and get as many people as possible immunised. Such a move was most popular in India at 77%, Indonesia at 71% and Mexico at 65%. Britons were split, with 40% supportive and 42% opposed, Americans tended to oppose the idea, at 46% compared with only 29% who would back mandatory vaccinations. 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. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Pentagon has reduced the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 2,500, according to a statement Friday, completing a previously announced rapid drawdown despite a Congressional prohibition of the move and rising levels of violence in the country. "This drawdown brings U.S. forces in the country to their lowest levels since 2001," said Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller in the statement. Miller also said "the United States is closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war and welcoming in an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process to achieve a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire." But violence is increasing in many parts of Afghanistan, and peace talks in Qatar have made little progress since they were launched in September. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers opposed the drawdown to 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, and forbid the Pentagon from using money in this year's or last year's budget to carry out the reduction. Congress included a provision on the matter in the National Defense Authorization Act passed earlier this month. The provision stated the Trump administration could only access the funds by either submitting an assessment of what effect the reduction in forces would have on the ongoing counterterrorism mission, or by submitting a waiver with a written explanation that the move is important to U.S. national security interests. The Pentagon statement Friday did not mention an assessment or waiver that would allow the reduction to be carried out despite the Congressional prohibition. But a Pentagon spokesman said President Donald Trump decided to issue a waiver. "The President has determined that waiving the limitations of this section with respect to a reduction in the total number of U.S. armed forces deployed to Afghanistan is important to the national security interests of the United States," Army Maj. Rob Lodewick said in a statement Friday. President Trump signed the wavier Thursday night, but Congressional leadership is not expected to receive it until next week, according to a defense official and a Congressional aide who both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss procedural specifics with the press. Opposition to the drawdown centered on concerns over counterterrorism and the U.S.-Taliban deal reached last year. Some lawmakers said it was unclear if 2,500 troops would be enough to carryout effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. Others said the troop cuts could violate the deal with the Taliban, which stated U.S. troop reductions would be conditions based. The central condition of the deal was a call for the Taliban to break ties with international terrorist groups including al-Qaida and the Islamic State. Afghan and United Nations officials have reported that the Taliban maintain ties to al-Qaida. The special U.S. envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the Taliban still has "work to do before they satisfy their commitments." Al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Taliban's refusal to hand over the group's leader spurred the launch of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In the Pentagon statement Friday, Miller said a force of 2,500 U.S. troops is sufficient to prevent similar attacks in the future. "Commanders have what they need to keep America, our people and our interests safe," Miller said. The U.S. mission there will continue to "ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to harbor those who seek to bring harm to the United States of America." The U.S.-Taliban deal calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces by May, but it is unclear how the incoming Biden administration will handle further troop withdrawals. Biden has said repeatedly he plans to keep a relatively small number of U.S. troops - "several thousand" - in Afghanistan for counterterrorism purposes. Indian mission in London invited United Kingdom MPs to get authentic information on India related issues as minorities, Kashmir raised in Parliament. The Indian mission in London issued these statements after UK MPs in the House of Commons debated the alleged persecution of religious minorities in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Asking the UK parliamentarian to discuss India-related issues based on authentic information, the Indian High Commission in London on Thursday sent out an invite to the Members of Parliament of UK to consult with High Commission anytime over India-related issues of interest to them in order to have up-to-date, authentic and factual information about India. The Indian High Commission further asked the UK Parliamentarian in a statement to consider issues that may be of concern to them or their constituents. The Indian mission in London issued these statements after UK MPs in the House of Commons debated the alleged persecution of religious minorities in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Mission further said that it has made available fact sheets and briefs to enable them to disregard any misinformation or incomplete or false portrayal of the ground realities. Also read: Ahead of Chinese new year, China witnesses surge in Covid-19 cases: Will history repeat itself? Also read: Huaweis Meng Wanzhou lavish lifestyle under scanner: Hearing underway in Canadian court Addressing the freshly held district-level elections in Jammu and Kashmir that witnessed an impressive turnout of men and women alikeover 50%. The High Commission said, This is a strong endorsement of the GOI initiatives by the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who are now participants and direct beneficiaries in the vibrant democratic mainstream of India. Also read: Nepal FM on 3-day India visit: Prachanda accuses India of directing its constitutional crisis IT was known as the graveyard for police vehicles. But it has been about two years since the Vehicle Management Corporation of T&T (VMCOTT) has actually serviced a police vehicle. Natasha Prince, the State companys chief executive since 2018, told Express Business last week that the TTPS just stopped sending their vehicles to service and no reason was given. It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Police have confirmed they believe a fire at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association building was started deliberately. PSNI Chief Inspector Gavin Kirkpatrick said police are also treating the incident as a hate crime. He appealed for anyone with information to come forward and said police had begun an investigation into the fire and were working alongside colleagues in the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS). First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill condemned last nights attack. They said: First and foremost our thoughts are with all those across the community who use the centre. The Belfast Multi-Cultural Association is a vital hub for minority communities in the city, and this mindless destruction will have a huge impact on many peoples lives. This was a despicable attack. It not only caused significant damage to what is a well-used community facility, but it also endangered the lives of the firefighters who had to make sure no one was inside the building and battle to extinguish the blaze. We and our Executive colleagues are committed to doing everything we can to eradicate racism and hate crime. It is vital that everyone in our society makes a stand against such hatred and intolerance, and we would appeal to anyone with information about who may have been responsible for this abhorrent attack to contact the PSNI. Located in the south of the city, the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said it was heartbroken and shocked after a devastating fire broke out at its Belfast building. The organisation said it believed the incident was deliberate. It said it had been on the receiving end of "hostility and Islamophobia for years". A spokesperson for the NIFRS said it responded to a well-developed fire at a building on Donegall Pass around 8.30pm on Thursday. The building, a former Presbyterian Church is occupied by the Belfast Multi Cultural Association and was formerly the home of the now closed Water Margin Chinese restaurant. The building was badly damaged but no one was in the building at the time. Expand Close The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Seven pumping appliances and three specialist appliances were deployed to the scene to deal with the incident. Around 50 personnel were at the scene, breathing apparatus, jets and high reach appliances were used to deal with the fire and bring it under control. Appliance and crew members were reduced but were still at the scene as of 11pm to maintain safety. Frank Belfast's Lord Mayor Frank McCoubrey, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, offered his support to all those affected. I was shocked and saddened to hear news of the fire; while it is a blessing that no one was injured, this is a devastating blow for the volunteers who have been using this base to serve their community and others, and provide much-needed support to some of the most vulnerable in our society, he said. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and it is important that the investigation is completed; but it is sad to hear members of the Association speak this morning of ongoing hostility and tensions. As First Citizen, I want to offer them my support. There is no place in society for hate. Belfast is a diverse city and we are much richer for it. Throughout the ongoing pandemic, I have been heartened by the overwhelming sense of community spirit right across our city and I am certain that the people of south Belfast and beyond will unite in their support of Belfast Multi-Cultural Association, and support them as they work to restore the vital services they provide to the local community. A spokesman for the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said he was told early indications suggested the incident was deliberate. He said the building had been subjected to hate attacks in the past. "It is heartbreaking when the whole building is nearly gone. What we are doing here is to help the community," he told the BBC. "If it is deliberate, it is a really shameful act." In a Facebook post, the organisation added: "We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. Expand Close It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press "We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. "Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all." Sinn Fein MLA Deirdre Hargey said she was shocked to learn of the fire and thanked the fire service for its efforts. The cause of the fire had not yet been determined but this will come as a major blow to the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association and to all those who use its services," she said. Im deeply concerned that people at the centre have been the target of hate crime in recent months. There is an onus therefore on the emergency services to investigate if this devastating fire was started deliberately. Im sure the community in south Belfast will rally round and support them in the time ahead to continue their work. The NIFRS spokesperson added that an investigation would be carried out once the fire was totally extinguished and safe for fire crews to enter. Fire at BMCA Peace be upon you all, Unfortunately tonight we have some awful news, after being at the receiving end of a lot of hostility and Islamophobia for quite some time: tonight BMCA is ablaze. We dont have any details about how this has happened, we will share them as soon as we know. Fortunately none of our volunteers were injured. We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all. BMCA team https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/fire-service-called-tackle-blaze-19629400 Posted by Belfast Multi-Cultural Association on Thursday, January 14, 2021 Senior Product Manager, Customer Experience - Ad Platforms Austin , Texas , United States Software and Services Summary Posted: Jan 15, 2021 Weekly Hours: 40 Role Number: 200216127 Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, excellent ideas have a way of becoming extraordinary products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. We believe that if you bring passion and dedication to your job, there's no telling what you could accomplish. Apple Ad Platforms is reinventing how Marketers and Advertisers plan, execute, operate, and measure Marketing Campaigns in a privacy first world. As a Senior PM, you will build consumer experiences by rapidly prototyping dynamic ad creatives, while respecting user-privacy preferences - all to deliver delight and happiness. Given the outstanding nature of building products at the intersection of business and consumer, this product lead is ideally someone who brings strong consumer product experience, along with business market understanding to drive multi-year strategy and execution. It also requires driving strategic alignment with product, engineering and cross-functional teams. The position requires a passion for 0 to 1 innovation, and strong execution chops to expand growth and adoption. Key Qualifications 8+ years experience in product management and technical architecture of web applications and/or media products 8+ years crafting mobile and web product experiences/examples through mobile wire frames and mock ups - concept through launch. Have successfully developed and launched advertising related products for audiences in the hundreds of millions Experience leading design, feature breakdown and projects/products from inception to shipped software Passionate problem solver who is able to craft and build the best solutions Significant experience in running product experiments and leveraging product analytics Do you see the big picture and have an eye for detail? Possessing the ability to showcase your ability to think strategically and execute tactically Communication is key! Description Orchestrating initiatives that will transform the way advertising experiences work at Apple. Developing short and mid term vision for advertising products and services through partnership, working alongside stakeholders and engineers to identify critical paths and prioritizing requirements for execution. This role involves developing new product business cases, market and competitive analysis, product requirements documentation, and high-level release and go-to-market plans. If you're excited by the idea of making a real impact, changing how the world looks at digital marketing and advertising, and joining a team where we pride ourselves in being one of the most diverse & inclusive companies in the world. We may just have your dream job! Education & Experience BS, MS in Computer Science or Engineering There usually is some type of indication of larger rallies but smaller, last-minute events are harder to determine. Evans said outside groups can also latch on to local protests. Evans said organizers can host a peaceful protest, but some who attend may have other intentions and by live-streaming their location attract other like-minded people for a rally divergent of what the original organizers had planned. CHESTER COUNTY, PA The Chester County Medical Society has issued a statement to healthcare providers and the community, providing clarifications and asking people to please get vaccinated. The Chester County Medical Society is an organization that advocates for physicians and patients, working at a community level in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Medical Society. The medical society also publishes a quarterly magazine called Chester County Medicine. Chester County Medical Society Executive Director David McKeighan provided a statement regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. "The Board of Directors of the Chester County Medical Society encourages all physicians and healthcare providers to share the following statement with their patients, and the community at large: The COVID-19 pandemics impact on our community has been profound, emotionally, medically, and socioeconomically. The evidence suggests that widespread administration of the currently available vaccines will dramatically curtail this on-going medical scourge, one of the worst in human history. However, the vaccines can only help our larger community if the majority of that community, 70 percent or more, receives the vaccine. Currently, vaccinations are being administered to healthcare providers, but in the coming weeks, these will be available to the general population. In an effort to allay fears regarding receiving the vaccine, please consider the following points: 1. There are presently two mRNA vaccines with 90 to 95 percent efficacy in preventing clinical COVID-19 currently available through an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the FDA in the United States. 2. The only absolute contraindication to COVID-19 vaccination is a history of an immediate allergic reaction to either the COVID-19 vaccine or any of their components. 3. Severe adverse reactions are uncommon, but vaccine providers will be prepared for this rare event. 4. Both vaccines are administered intramuscularly in a 2-dose series and have been proven to have a 90 to 95% efficacy in preventing disease. Story continues 5. In addition, 3 other vaccines are also completing the final phase of clinical testing in the United States. 6. Please note, NONE of these vaccines is a live attenuated virus-based vaccine. These vaccines CANNOT give ANY patients COVID-19 infection. 7. Mild side effects after the second dose of these vaccines may occur in up to 15 percent of cases and include muscle aches, headaches, chills, and even low-grade fever, but these symptoms are not long-term. 8. The two currently available vaccines have been shown to prevent symptomatic disease but it is not yet known if they will prevent asymptomatic disease or person-to-person transmission. Mask-wearing and social distancing will be required until our larger community acquires immunity and the virus is suppressed, so we encouraged everyone to do their part in turning the tide in this crisis. When possible, PLEASE GET VACCINATED!" The Chester County Health Department's information page on COVID-19 and vaccinations can be found here. This article originally appeared on the West Chester Patch By Emma Farge GENEVA (Reuters) - Fiji, the favourite of Western nations, won the presidency of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday, beating Bahrain and Uzbekistan in a secret ballot that resolved a tense deadlock over the selection. The vote was called after an impasse that meant the Council, the only intergovernmental global body to promote and protect human rights worldwide, began meetings this week leaderless for the first time in its 15-year history. The presidency rotates geographically with each region typically making a selection by consensus but members of the Asia Pacific group could not agree, forcing the first-ever secret ballot in the Council. Fiji's Nazahat Shameen Khan, a British-educated former High Court judge, won with 29 votes versus 14 for Bahrain and 4 for Uzbekistan, Vice-President Ali Ibn Abi Talib Abdelrahman Mahmoud told a nearly-empty U.N. chamber where delegates voted one-by-one due to COVID-19 measures. The deadlock over the presidency came at the start of a year that is widely expected to see the United States rejoin after quitting the forum in 2018, and with a review of the Council's activities expected to begin. Observers and diplomats saw Fiji's rivals as being backed by Russia, China and Saudi Arabia although a Chinese diplomat said he would be happy for any of the three candidates to win. Officials from Russia and Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment. Multiple meetings to resolve the deadlock were unsuccessful amid strong lobbying ahead of the vote, diplomats said. The 47-member Council does not make legally binding decisions but it can authorise probes into alleged rights violations by mandating international fact-finding missions. Marc Limon of the Universal Rights Group think-tank, welcomed Khan's selection. "It is important for the Council to have a country like Fiji that has a positive record on human rights and a good story to tell," he said, alluding to the collapse of the former U.N. rights body after Muammar Gaddafi's Libya led it. Story continues A diplomat said he expected the intensity of debates to increase this year, given that Russia and China return to the Council after periods off it. "I expect a lot of heated debates and the potential for acrimony," he said, saying China's actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang could be flashpoints. (Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Frances Kerry) Detectives are hunting for a man after a five-year-old boy was taken in front of his mother at a park in an attempted child abduction in broad daylight. The child was approached by a man in Northolt, West London, who picked him up and ran off before being confronted by the boy's mother. The boy was then put down and was unharmed during the incident at the Northala Fields open space on Thursday last week at about 2.30pm. Scotland Yard said officers want to speak to this man following the attempted child abduction Scotland Yard officers have now appealed for witnesses and insisted they are 'doing everything we can to find out who is responsible'. The suspect was described by police as having a pale complexion, of slim but muscular build and possibly with a moustache. He was also wearing blue or green hooded top with a small white logo across the front, and blue jeans with rips on the front and black trainers. Detective Constable Ashleigh Nelson from West Area Command Area Criminal Investigation Department said: 'Incidents of this nature are very rare. 'But I understand the concern it may have caused in the local community. I want to reassure people we are doing everything we can to find out who is responsible. The incident happened at Northala Fields in Northolt, West London, last week (file image) 'I would appeal to anyone who has mobile phone or dashcam footage of the suspect, which may assist with identifying him, to get in contact as soon as possible.' Northala Fields is a 68-acre open space which was opened in 2008 after four years of site work, and was built using waste from the original Wembley Stadium. It features four conical earth mounds along the A40 edge of the site and a viewpoint of the surrounding area on top of the tallest mound which is 72ft (22m) high. Ealing Council bought the site in 1997 to turn it into a park, with it having previously been used as playing fields by the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Anyone with information should call police on 101 or tweet @MetCC quoting CRIS 2500522/21, or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 Authorities in Meo Vac District under Vietnam's northern province of Ha Giang have banned tourists from approaching and taking photos at a local cliff after a tourist fell from it last week. The ban was confirmed by Ly Van Dong, chairman of the Pai Lung Commune Peoples Committee in Meo Vac, during an inerview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday. Dong cited the precariousness of the location, as well as an increased slip risk from recent foggy weather, as reasons for the ban, which is expected to last until a specific solution is in place. We are waiting for directions from the administration of Meo Vac District on ensuring safety for tourists walking the highly challenging path to the cliff, Dong said. The locale had never seen any fall from the cliff before last week, but local authorities had set up two warning signs on the way up as precautionary measures since 2019, he revealed. The 'death cliff' in Pai Lung Commune, Meo Vac District, Ha Giang Province is fenced off after a fall accident last week. Photo: H. Giang / Tuoi Tre The victim, 29-year-old Mai Thuy H. from Son La Province, is still being treated at a local hospital for multiple injuries, including a pelvis crack and several lesions on one of his legs. Recalling the situation, H. said he was on a road trip to see frost in Cao Bang Province, and decided to drop by Ha Giang to take photos at the 'death cliff' on the way home. I went to the furthest end of the cliff to take pictures, but the cold weather numbed my limbs," H. recollected. "As I look far beyond, I felt stunned, then tripped and fell off the cliff. I came round after falling down about 25 meters and managed to cling to a small tree branch. Subsequently, his companion reached local authorities and residents, who helped rescue and bring H. to the hospital as he lost consciousness again from excessive blood loss. After surviving the accident, H. hopes other tourists will prioritize their own safety while traveling. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! TikTok is about to outlast President Trump. Now, the company could become an early test of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s stance toward Chinese tech companies. Mr. Trump demanded last year that TikToks Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the viral video app. He said TikTok raised urgent national security concerns, on the grounds that the Chinese government could get access to users data. The dispute disrupted the apps stratospheric rise. ByteDance and the Trump administration are still talking, people familiar with the matter said. But it looks increasingly likely that the fate of the app will not be decided by Mr. Trump, who announced his demands with great fanfare over the summer, backed away from a deal he approved a month later, and then turned his attention elsewhere. Instead, TikToks future will fall into the hands of Mr. Biden, who has said little about the company or the broader, bipartisan concerns about the growing influence of Chinese technology companies. Options, the leading provider of cloud-enabled managed services to the global capital markets, has today announced former NYSE Euronext executive, Kieran Northime as VP of Software Development. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005283/en/ Options Appoints Former NYSE Euronext Executive as VP of Software Development (Photo: Business Wire) Kieran joins Options with three decades of experience across infrastructure, market data and software development, following roles with Wombat Financial Software, Lehman Brothers, Misys (now Finastra), and at NYSE Euronext, where he was VP of Technology, Exchange Solutions. Prior to Options, Kieran most recently founded bespoke systems solution company, Black Eye Technology. He has experience working with a wide range of companies including top tier financial institutions, software consultancy firms, leading software and hardware vendors as well as start-ups, having worked globally across the US, France, Switzerland, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, the UK and Ireland. His appointment is the latest in a series of key hires globally following a significant investment from Boston-based Abry Partners in 2020, and follows the announcement made by Options earlier this month to purchase Fixnetix from DXC Technology. Options' President and CEO, Danny Moore, commented: "Options has experienced a period of accelerated growth on our platform over the past number of years. It is imperative that as we enter 2021, we continue this momentum by investing in high-quality people to assist in our next phase of progression. Kieran has a wealth of experience from NYSE Euronext and Wombat Financial Software where we personally worked together so I have seen first-hand what an asset he will be for Options and our clients, and we're delighted to welcome him to the team." Speaking about his recent appointment, Kieran added: "This is an exciting time to work at Options. They are growing exponentially, and I am very excited to be part of the team building great software products and automation tools to enable us to better serve our clients with increased speed and efficiency. I have worked in financial markets technology for three decades and am acutely aware of the benefits of automation for Options clients. The tools we are creating will allow us to further the amazing company growth". About Options (www.options-it.com): Options Technology are the No. 1 provider of IT infrastructure to global Capital Markets firms, supporting their operations and ecosystems. Founded in 1993, the firm began life as a hedge fund technology services provider. Today, the company provides high-performance managed trading infrastructure and cloud-enabled managed services to over 200 firms globally, providing an agile, scalable platform in an Investment Bank grade Cybersecurity wrapper. Options clients include the leading global investment banks, hedge funds, funds of funds, proprietary trading firms, market makers, broker/dealers, private equity houses and exchanges. With offices in 8 key cities; New York, Toronto, Chicago, London, Belfast, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand, Options are well placed to service their customers both on site and remotely. In 2019, Options secured a significant growth investment from Abry Partners, a Boston-based sector focused private equity firm. This investment has enabled Options to considerably accelerate its growth strategy to invest further in its technology platform and expand its reach in key financial centres globally. Options was named among the UK's leading growth companies in the 2019, 2018 and 2017 Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 league table. For more on Options, please visit www.options-it.com, follow us on Twitter at @Options_IT and visit our LinkedIn page. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005283/en/ Contacts: Options Press Contact: Page McLaughlin Email: page.mclaughlin@options-it.com Colin Richard Young, documents say, wrote a letter apologizing to his mother. I know your [sic] disappointed about all the vandalism and st around where you work downtown, Young wrote, according to court documents that accuse him of burglary, theft and riot during a May 2020, protest in downtown Portland that devolved into looting and arson. The letter, officials say, was one of three, including one to Louis Vuitton and one to police. Not one minute has passed that I havent felt guilty for my actions, he reportedly wrote in the Louis Vuitton letter. And to police: I know what I have done is wrong and it will have consequences. Young, now 22, pleaded not guilty on Thursday. He was one of dozens of demonstrators arrested in the demonstration, which was held in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Louis Vuitton store at the Pioneer Place mall was among the businesses that were burglarized in the protest, which was declared a riot. The stores manager estimated that demonstrators caused over $500,000 in damage to the store and stole items collectively worth over $300,000, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in late June. Earlier that month, a Portland police detective learned a woman had received stolen Louis Vuitton purses from Young, her boyfriend, the affidavit said. The detective called the woman, and she agreed to return the two purses she had, according to the affidavit. She did so, claiming people came running out of the downtown store and gave the purses to her, the court record says. The detective told her he needed to speak with Young, and Young called him the next day. Young came to the Portland Police Bureaus downtown precinct and spontaneously told the detective his girlfriend didnt have anything to do with acquiring the purses, the affidavit says. He had three Louis Vuitton belts to return, according to the court documents. In an interview referenced in the affidavit, Young admitted to entering the Pioneer Place mall but denied going into the Louis Vuitton store. He said he found the items on the ground and grabbed them. He also said he went into a jewelry store afterward. Young wrote the three apology letters while with the detective in June. -- Jim Ryan jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 Turkey makes no progress finding kidnappers of Christian couple after 1 year Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The Turkish government has made no progress in finding the kidnappers and killers of a Christian man and his wife after a full year, International Christian Concern reported. On January 11, 2020, likely Kurdish militants kidnapped elderly Turkish Christians Hurmuz Diril and Simuni Diril from the village of Mehr. On March 20, Simunis son found her dead and dismembered in a river. Hurmuzs fate remains unknown, and the government has not found the killers. The pairs son, Father Adday Ramzi Diril serves as a Catholic priest. He ministers to thousands of Iraqi refugees who live in Turkey. The familys lawyer has asked the Turkish government for an investigation of procedural failures in the case, a release of all documents relevant to the case, a serious investigation into what happened to Hurmuz and a government commitment to find the guilty parties. Immediately after the couples kidnapping, Turkish authorities conducted a search and rescue mission, International Christian Concerns Middle East regional manager, Claire Evans, told The Christian Post. After it failed, they seem to have stopped pursuing the case. Witnesses told the Turkish government that the couple had been kidnapped by three members of the PKK, a Kurdish militant group designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. Turkey and the PKK have long been in conflict. The government never gave the Diril family autopsy results from Simunis body, telling them she died by drowning. Authorities did not attempt a second search for the couple, said Evans. The autopsy report makes it seem like it was just water damage, but theres more detail that can be shared, she said. We saw how she was found. It looks like it was a lot more than water. She was found dismembered, and theres no answers to that. Thats a horrible way to find your mother. Why cant the autopsy report answer that basic question? It is likely the governments refusal to act or explain comes from political motives and the PKK has a history of kidnapping hostages to advance political goals against the government in Turkey, she noted. Turkey might have known who captured the couple and where they were, but refused to act in order to avoid embarrassment. In this area, when the PKK and Turkish conflict broke out, it was very common for Christians to be kidnapped during that conflict, Evans said. Theres a history of kidnapping them. Theres not necessarily a history of ransoming them. It could be the Turkish government knows something theyre not saying. Often, it can be in the best interest of Turkeys government for terrorist groups to remain uncaught, she contended. When citizens fear outside threats, leaders can justify stronger authoritarian control. The government is very much trying to control narratives, she said. The Turkish government has long viewed the issue of the PKK as a way to keep itself in power. Theres this history in Turkey of not completing investigations. By keeping it in a state of uncertainty, they can justify their decisions. Muslim Turks persecute Christians more now than they did in the recent past, said Evans. Turkey has a long history of Christian persecution, and its government still refuses to admit that the Ottoman Turks committed genocide of Christian Armenians in 1915. Turkey is 99% Muslim, according to its own statistics. Although its constitution provides for freedom of religion, the government uses regulations that demand the registration of religious groups to make it more difficult to practice non-Islamic faiths. Popular hatred toward Christians and Jews in the country often leads to discrimination, stigmatization and attacks. In July 2020, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned the Hagia Sophia, an ancient Christian cathedral, from a museum into a mosque, undoing its transformation in 1934 from a mosque to a cathedral. Evans believes that the Turkish governments refusal to find the kidnappers of a Christian couple signals that it doesnt care what happens to Christians. Turkey is not like other countries where you have a huge bombing targeting a church. Its much more subtle. Every day when you go to work, people call you a rat or a dog because youre an Armenian Christian, she said. Its definitely getting worse. 15 January 2021 Type Event Proceeding Once a Day Milking Conference 2021 took place virtually on Thursday, 14 January. The theme of this years online conference centred on the latest research about the impact of once a day milking on milk production and how to manage this effect. Speakers at this conference included: Emer Kennedy, Teagasc Moorepark; dairy farmer MJ Delaney and Nick Sneddon, Fonterra. Once a Day Milking is currently only practised on around 200 Irish dairy farms. But the interest in the practice of once a day milking continues to grow. Its considered as a viable alternative in situations where labour is in short supply, where the farm layout results in long walks to and from the parlour for cows, or where reducing the number of daily milking's is attractive from a lifestyle perspective. The big challenges farmers face when considering the option of once a day milking are the risk of increased somatic cell count and reduced milk yield. This however is counterbalanced by improved cow fertility and farmer lifestyle. Emer Kennedy, Teagasc Moorepark reviewed the performance of the first two years of the Moorepark OAD milking experiment. She presented the latest research about the impact of OAD on milk production and the steps that can be taken to manage this effect. Farming on the Laois/Kilkenny border, dairy farmer MJ Delaney discussed the impact on farm performance and lifestyle following the changeover to OAD with his 110-strong Friesian herd. Nick Sneddon who works with Fonterra, New Zealands largest milk processor reviewed the milk production and reproductive performance of New Zealand dairy herds that are being milked either once or twice a day. Cow type, particularly udder conformation and capacity are of particular relevance to OAD herds. Dr Sneddon shared the results of his research into the importance of conformation when breeding cows suitable for once a day milking. OAD conference 2021 Emer Kennedy (PDF) OAD conference 2021 Nick Sneddon (PDF) OAD Conference M J Delaney (PDF) View webinar recording here: [January 15, 2021] DAVCOR Creations Launches Kickstarter Campaign for Remote Controlled Rotating Platform Round-About360 BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DAVCOR Creations, LLC recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to raise funds for the development of its patent-pending rotating platform, the Round-About360 . This revolutionary, multi-purpose device is a remote-controlled turntable designed to support objects weighing up to 200 pounds. It also features an extension cord that plugs into a recessed electrical outlet on the top surface to provide a convenient source of power for the item on display. The Round-About360 is ideal for showcasing and illuminating Christmas trees, while preventing entanglement of the light strands during rotation. Equipped with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the device can run up to eight hours on a full charge. Additionally, its outer edge is beautifully enhanced with LEDs that gradually transition from one color to the next. Kickstarter pledges range from $10 to $375, and the rewards offered throughout the various tiers include a Round-About360 unit, a 26-inch top platform attachment, and a 3-year manufacturer's warranty. DAVCOR Creations is also currently having a holiday special offering up to 30 percent off on certain Kickstarter tiers from now until January 23rd. The Round-About360 is estimated to release in November 2021 with shipping available anywhere in the world. "In 2017, when my wife spent days decorating our Christmas tree from front to back, there was no way for us to see all the ornaments that were on it. So, I set ot to find a rotating platform. Unfortunately, all the products that were available were either not large enough to support a Christmas tree or didn't have a way to provide electricity for the Christmas tree lights. This is when the Round-About360 was born," said David Correa, founder of DAVCOR Creations. "The Round-About360 can hold up to 200 pounds, has a 20-inch diameter with the option to attach a 26-inch platform on top, comes with AC power and is entirely remote controlled perfect for anyone who wants to see all the ornaments on their beautifully decorated Christmas trees. Furthermore, with so many features, the Round-About360 is also ideal for other applications and uses." In addition to Christmas trees, the Round-About360 can be used as a solution for: Dinner gatherings to display food centerpieces and dessert or appetizer tier stands Weddings to present bride and groom cakes Photoshoots for product shots Landscape time lapse videos for 360-degree views Trophy cabinets to showcase trophies, awards and medals Jewelry shops to flaunt various types of jewelry Bakeries to display fresh pastries, breads and other baked goods Antique shops to showcase vintage items Art galleries to exhibit sculpted pieces of artwork Toy shops to display dolls, dollhouses and other toys For additional details surrounding the development and launch of the Round-About360, please visit www.kickstarter.com/projects/round-about360/round-about360-a-remote-controlled-rotating-platform. About DAVCOR Creations, LLC Based in Boca Raton, Florida, DAVCOR Creations is the developer and manufacturer of the patent-pending remote controlled rotating platform, the Round-About360. The Round-About360 is currently in phase three of development with a projected release in November 2021. For more information, please visit Round-About360.com . Media Contact David Correa 288706@email4pr.com (561) 699-9966 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/davcor-creations-launches-kickstarter-campaign-for-remote-controlled-rotating-platform-round-about360-301209184.html SOURCE DAVCOR Creations [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] H-E-B beat out Apple and Facebook on a new list of top workplaces. On Tuesday, Glassdoor announced the winners of its annual Employees Choice Awards, honoring the Best Places to Work in 2021. The awards are based on anonymous feedback by employees about their work environment and employer. H-E-B came in at No. 10 on the 100 Best Places to Work list, for companies with 1,000 or more employees. The San Antonio-based grocer rose seven spots from its place on last year's ranking. JOBS HARD TO FIND: Unemployment claims surge in Texas "COVID-19 is in the drivers seat and every employer has been impacted. This years winning employers have proven, according to employees, that even during extraordinary times, theyll rise to the challenge to support their people," said Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor chief executive officer, in a statement. Early in the pandemic, H-E-B temporarily bumped the pay of hourly employees by $2 an hour as they worked to keep shelves stocked. In October, the company gave employees a $500 bonus for their contributions. Bain & Company, a Boston-based management consulting firm, earned the top spot on Glassdoor's ranking, followed by tech company NVIDIA and restaurant chain In-N-Out. H-E-B ranked ahead of Facebook (No. 11) and Apple (No. 31), as well as competitors Trader Joe's (No. 35) and Wegmans Food Markets (No. 36). One anonymous H-E-B employee review raves about an "awesome manager" and "great pay with regular raises," but warns that the store gets busy and customers "aren't always the nicest." Houston's MD Anderson Center Center also made the list, coming in at No. 90. New Delhi: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray gave a stern warning to ally BJP on Tuesday while claiming that his party would take a "big step" if the loan waiver for farmers announced by the Maharashtra government is not implemented by July 2017. Terming the announcement of a complete loan waiver as a victory of farmers' unity, he said, "Our demand is very clear. We want their loans to be written off completely," he said. Speaking to reporters at Mumbai, after meeting farmers from across the state, including Puntamba village, Uddhav said, "I would like to thank the farmers. We have heard of a green revolution but the farmers of Maharashtra have shown thatthose who can bring about a green revolution can also cause arevolution." "I don't believe in the word 'karz mafi' it should becalled as 'karz mukti'. 'Mafi' is given to those who have committed a crime. Farmers have not committed any crime but have brought about a revolution," the Sena chief said. ALSO READ: BJP ally Shiv Sena criticises Chouhan for his indefinite fast Uddhav said, "I congratulate the Maharashtra government. This is a moment to be celebrated, but most importantly, fast implementation of the announcement is necessary." "Loan waiver has been announced now. We will be patient enough to wait now and give the government time until July to implement its announcement. If they do not do so, a big step will be taken next month," he said. Patient enough to wait&give them(govt) time to implement(loan waiver) till July. If they unable to do it, big step can be taken: U Thackeray pic.twitter.com/kStmpl2tp3 ANI (@ANI_news) June 14, 2017 Meanwhile, a farmer who was present at the event saidthey met the Sena president to thank him for his support to their stir. "His support forced the government to give us a loan waiver. We give full credit to Uddhav ji and the Shiv Sena," he said. READ: Maharashtra will witness political earthquake next month, says Raut Earlier in the day, the Shiv Sena had said the loan waiver decision was due to its constant "throttling" of the Maharashtra government and the party has opted to remain in power to shake the chair of "lazy" persons. Farmers in Maharashtra, who had been on a war path from June 1 to press for their various demands, had on June 11 called off their stir after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced loan waiver for them. With PTI inputs For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. 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. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer authorized the Michigan National Guard to respond to anticipated armed protests at the state Capitol this weekend. A spokesperson for the governor said the Michigan State Police is leading security efforts in coordination with the Michigan National Guard and other law enforcement agencies. Lansings mayor previously asked Whitmer to activate the National Guard after the FBI issued a bulletin warning of possible protests being planned by extremist groups in all 50 state Capitols ahead of President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration on Jan. 20. The Michigan State Police heightened its security presence at the Captiol this week. Crews installed fencing around downtown Lansing early Friday morning, including around City Hall and the state Capitol, which will be closed on Sunday during the protests. The FBI memo warns groups may attempt to storm government buildings ahead of Bidens inauguration. Whitmers spokesperson said the governor has full confidence in the ability of state police to safeguard the Capitol Complex and greater downtown area. MSP is holding a press briefing at 10 a.m. to provide an update on security preparations. Officials from the FBI Detroit Division, Michigan National Guard, Lansing Police Department, Lansing Fire Department and Ingham County Sheriffs Office are scheduled to attend. Its unclear which groups are expected to attend protests on Sunday. The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia was originally planning to attend, according to the Lasing City Pulse, but the militia is reportedly asking its members to avoid Lansing after it learned the Proud Boys plan to cause maximum chaos. The Michigan Proud Boys chapter describes itself as a pro-Western fraternal organization for men. The group held a demonstration in Kalamazoo in August 2019 that was marked by violent clashes with counter-protesters. The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia did not respond to a request for comment. Researchers who study far-right and anti-government groups expressed concern that violent riots at the U.S. Capitol last week will precede more civil unrest. A Capitol Police officer was killed after being assaulted by the pro-Trump mob, and a woman was shot and killed by police. Javed Ali, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, said the attack on the Capitol could be defined as an act of domestic terrorism. Ali drew comparisons between the riots and an incident in spring 2019 where armed protesters entered Michigans Capitol. Im actually amazed there was no violence there, but the potential was so high, he said. 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Beaches Resorts is part of family-owned Sandals Resorts International (SRI), which includes Luxury Included Sandals Resorts, and is the Caribbean's leading all-inclusive resort company. For more information about the Beaches Resorts difference, visit www.beaches.com . SOURCE Sandals Resorts International Historians and the history-minded began having persistent Reconstruction flashbacks even before last week, as Democrats discussed how far to take the many possible future investigations and prosecutions of Donald Trump. With the Capitol riots and related events of Jan. 6, those flashbacks got more vivid. Its obvious, in hindsight, that something (anything! many things!) should have been done after the Civil War to stop the homegrown authoritarian regime known as Jim Crow from developing. Would stronger punishments for the figureheads of secession have worked? Advertisement I asked Cynthia Nicoletti, a historian at the University of Virginia who wrote a book about why the North failed to bring the leader of the Confederates to trial (Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis), to explain how Southerners who led the rebellion managed to escape punishment and to speculate as to whether that move might have made a difference. Advertisement Advertisement Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Rebecca Onion: What did Northerners think, as the war was coming to an end, should be done with Southerners who fought for the Confederacy? Cynthia Nicoletti: After the war, Northerners were talking about things like, Lets hang Jeff Davis from the sour apple tree. There was this rumor that Davis was arrested wearing womens clothingthat by all accounts was not actually true, and he was very angry about it!and that led to people saying, Lets take him, put him in womens clothing, parade him through the streets, and charge people to see him humiliated. Advertisement But the American justice system doesnt work like thatand so one of the things that really interested me is how difficult getting the right outcome was. One of the things thats really important here is that the government was all gung-ho to put Davis on trial for treason at the end of the war. There was a fervor to try himlike, If we dont, what were suggesting is that waging this war, on this huge scale, and killing all these people for this terrible cause will go unpunished. We are not a nation if we are not capable of trying the head traitor for treason. They could have tried all the Confederates for treason, but they thought, Lets have Davis be the first test case, and after hes tried and convicted, there will be lots of prosecutions to follow. Advertisement Advertisement But it quickly became apparent that they could get the wrong outcome in the trial, and they worry that if the Davis trial is supposed to be a proxy for the idea that the Confederate war effort was illegalthat states were not allowed to secede from the Unionwhat happens if they get the wrong outcome? If they get a jury that refuses to convict Davis, what does that say about the legality of the war effort? What if they get a judge, or even a Supreme Court justice, who says something like Secession was legitimate? There was also a real debate within Northern society about punishing these people, versus showing them mercy. Whats interesting is how quickly this really intense sentimentwe should hang all of the Confederates, and make all of them payVengeance!really fades. Public opinion did really change quite dramatically. Reading newspapers and peoples letters, you see Northerners very fired up about punishing Confederates through 1865, and when you get to 1866, it starts to dissipate. Advertisement The question really is, how would you punish Confederates? If youre going to punish them through the legal system, and in a way that really comports with the letter of law and all of the protections the United States Constitution affords to all criminal defendants, it makes it hard to try them and make sure you get a conviction. I think public opinion is in some sense related to this, because it becomes clear that exactly what the outcome is going to look like is not going to be fully satisfying to Northerners. Advertisement I was looking at William Blairs book (With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era), and there is a lot of interesting stuff in there about former abolitionists who supported clemency for Davisincluding people like Gerrit Smith, one of the group that secretly funded John Brown. Some believed that capital punishment was wrong; some thought it was smarter to strip Confederates of their power in other ways. But you write that Frederick Douglass also said, in 1866, that Davis would probably go unpunished, and that this would be all right. How does that argument evolve? Advertisement The real problem was Northerners have to rebuild a society in which Southerners are a part. To what extent are they going to be outcast forever? There was also the problem of violence emerging again. I think today this sounds ridiculous to us, but at the time, the prospect of another civil war got talked about a lot. They think, as soon as Southerners get some arms together, they might rebel again. The founding of the Ku Klux Klan in late 1865, and the violence in Southern cities in 1866 [see: Norfolk, Virginia; New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee], looked like it might be the sign of something even more serious. Advertisement In hindsight, its easy to track momentum in one direction or another, but if youre living through it, its hard to see. And on the flip side, there was also this sense of, Were all Americans, and we have the legacy of the Revolution, and how do we knit this thing back together? I think today this sentiment seems very foreign to us. Advertisement I always look at this like, Why didnt they stamp all this out right after the war? Right, thats the way we think of it now. That might have made Jim Crow harder to instantiate. Why didnt we show no mercy? And that is a very hard question for them, as well. Theyre thinkingto what extent are they going to crush all of Southern society? If you can get over the pain of doing that and having a generation of the Southern economy totally decimated, would we have come out different and maybe better on the other end? But theyd be paying the price in the immediate short term. That price was immediately palpable to them, in a way thats not palpable to us. Theyre thinking, How do we put this back together without an endless series of wars? And theyre honestly quite worn out. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Theres also a big class question here, which iswhite elite Southerners were already trying to re-form their old friendships with white elite Northerners. Its sort of amazing, the degree to which some elite white Southerners get back in the good graces of those Northern friends. And the Southern elite would often say things [about the violence] like, Well, you know, we cant keep the masses in check. And related to that class point, theres also a dynamic happening here, which is that Northerners are wonderinghow much of a revolution is this going to be? How far do we want to go? The radicals wanted to go quite far, and wrote these new Constitutional amendments that are quite radical for the timeactually, not even just for the time! Theyre still radical now. They were guaranteeing racial equality for the very first time, and thats part of American law now. Advertisement And people are thinking, How much farther are we going to push that? Are we going to totally upend Southern society, do things like land redistribution, break up plantations, give land to not just Black people but poor white people? These ideas get debated, but Americansand I mean Northerners as well as Southernersare fundamentally conservative with a small c. I dont think they could really imagine totally reimagining the world, starting from scratch. Advertisement I spent a lot of time looking at the attorney general of the United States [Henry Stanbery], whose job it was to bring prosecutions against Confederates, who was supposed to order the various U.S. attorneys to bring prosecutions. And they think about going with military tribunals, and other kinds of ways where they could make sure the jury doesnt have any former Confederates on it, but Stanbery was very against this. And behind his belief that they shouldnt do this was this sense of, We have to bring the country back to normal; weve been in a state of chaos, where weve suspended lots of rules that normally apply, but our constitutional system has to go back to normal. Advertisement You wrote that the way Lincolns assassins were tried, by military tribunal, in May and June 1865, made some people uncomfortable with the prospect of more of the same. Yes, that was really cursory, really quick, and some things that happened gave some people pause. Mary Surratt, one of the conspirators, was the first woman to be executed by the federal government. Its interesting because, if they had followed through with the impulse to punish right at the same time, when public opinion was high on punishment above all else, and fewer people cared about niceties, I think more Confederates might have been tried and punished. But people were sort of horrified at some of the aspects of those tribunals, and as time went on, people start really parsing all the rules around punishment, and that gave time for public opinion to moderate and for those voices that were crying for reconciliation and forgiveness to gain a lot more force. Advertisement Advertisement I mean, its striking that by the time Johnson pardons Davis, on Christmas of 1868, even the Radical Republican newspapers, like the Chicago Tribuneone of the most radical in the United Statesthought that dropping the matter was the best idea. Any lone voices in the wilderness? Im hard-pressed to think of anymaybe Charles Sumner. Even Thaddeus Stevens [the Radical Republican representative from Pennsylvania who favored confiscation and redistribution of land to freedpeople] had offered to represent Davis, as his lawyer. Those are the crosscurrents of alliance that happened, and a real push to get this ugliness behind us. That shocked me to read. Let me get it straight: Stevens thought if he could argue that Davis was not subject to United States law, and had not been treasonous, that would mean the Confederacy was a conquered nation. Then, Reconstruction could proceed with the United States acting as an occupier of the Southern states, which would allow for a stricter Reconstruction. This was a strange bedfellows situation. Advertisement Yes, thats about it. I would say, ultimately, the push to punish Confederates is not the primary impulse, right? Even for somebody like Stevens, who wants a pretty harsh program of Reconstruction. He did, but he also thoughtand I think this is pretty widespreadthat it seemed unfair to make the punishment fall on one person, or a couple of emblematic people. Advertisement And Davis lawyer was quite good at presenting the plight of Jefferson Davis, the man. He was quite sick, they chained him up in prison for a bit, it looked like he was going to die, and that made the rounds in the newspapersOh, this poor person, theyre torturing him. Interestingly, that image also did wonders for Davis reputation among Southerners; he was very disliked during the war, because he was blamed for all the problems of the Confederacy. But its not just with Southerners that this tactic worked. Other people start saying, Youre going to visit all of the anger of the whole country, for the 700,000 deaths, on one guy? Advertisement Id like to ask about Andrew Johnson, who ended up pardoning Davis on Christmas of 1868. One impulse in the potted history of this time is to say, Johnson betrayed Reconstruction, betrayed the North, betrayed freedpeople. What do you think? In studying just the issue of treason, I have a bit more sympathy for Johnson than I think many historians who look more broadly at him do, because he was really caught in a bind. Theres an apocryphal story that Lincoln said, before he died, as Davis was escaping and fleeing South, that Lincoln hoped Davis might get away to Mexico. That this was the best option, because then they wouldnt have to deal with the problem of trying him. I think Johnson, in reflecting on that idea, eventually comes to the realization that Lincoln was right. Davis trial just becomes this huge political liability for him. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement At first, Johnson was very strong on the idea of trying Confederates for treason; he was the one Southerner who refused to leave Congress when his state seceded, and he was a populist, working class, had taken it on the chin from these elite slaveholders his whole life. So at first, he was gung-ho on the idea. Then when his Cabinet started meeting and his attorney general raised these concerns, Johnson had time to repent this impulse at great length. It became a political weapon in the hands of his enemies. There was an unsuccessful initial attempt to impeach him [in 1867] that investigated the question as to why he didnt try Davis, suggesting he was failing to do so because he was sympathetic to Confederates. But everyone involved in the trial testified before the House and said no, there were very good reasons why not. I think the blame thats to be laid at Johnsons door is less about the Davis pardon, and more the fact that he gave amnesty, en masse, to basically everybody, in May 1865. Except for the higher-ups14 groups of people, including those who had held Confederate offices or who had more than $20,000 in propertywho had to apply for individual pardons by applying personally. But then, over the course of 1865, he granted almost all of those. He might have issued conditional pardonsthings like, you get a pardon if you transfer some of your land to the people you enslavedbut he didnt. Subscribe to Slate Plus to listen to Rebecca Onion and Jamelle Bouies Reconstruction podcast. HONG KONG, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Hong Kong police Thursday confirmed that its national security department arrested 11 people across Hong kong on suspicion of assisting offenders. According to local media, the arrested include eight males and three females, aged between 18 and 72. They were suspected of helping 12 Hong Kong residents who had been arrested earlier over absconding. On Aug. 23, 2020, marine police from Guangdong province seized a vessel suspected of illegally crossing the border in the waters under the jurisdiction of the mainland. The 12 Hong Kong residents aboard were arrested on suspicion of illegally crossing the border. On Dec. 30, 2020, Yantian District People's Court in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, sentenced 10 of them who were adults at the time of committing the crime to prison terms of seven months to three years. A notice of the case issued by the People's Procuratorate of Yantian District showed that it had decided not to prosecute the two juveniles who pleaded guilty and accepted the punishment for illegally crossing the border. The Gulf of Mexico holds huge untapped offshore oil deposits that could help power the U.S. for decades. The energy super basin's longevity, whose giant offshore fields have reliably supplied consumers with oil and gas since the 1960s, is the result of a remarkable geologic past - a story that began 200 million years ago among the fragments of Pangea, when a narrow, shallow seaway grew into an ocean basin, while around it mountains rose then eroded away. The processes that shaped the basin also deposited and preserved vast reserves of oil and gas, of which only a fraction has been extracted. Much of the remaining oil lies buried beneath ancient salt layers, just recently illuminated by modern seismic imaging. That's the assessment of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, who reviewed decades of geological research and current production figures in an effort to understand the secret behind the basin's success. Because of its geological history, the Gulf of Mexico remains one of the richest petroleum basins in the world. Despite 60 years of continuous exploration and development, the basin's ability to continue delivering new hydrocarbon reserves means it will remain a significant energy and economic resource for Texas and the nation for years to come, said lead author John Snedden, a senior research scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). "When we looked at the geologic elements that power a super basin - its reservoirs, source rocks, seals and traps - it turns out that in the Gulf of Mexico, many of those are pretty unique," he said. The research was featured in a December 2020 special volume of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin focused on the world's super basins: a small number of prolific basins that supply the bulk of the world's oil and gas. According to the paper, the geologic elements that have made the Gulf of Mexico such a formidable petroleum resource include a steady supply of fine- and coarse-grained sediments, and salt: thick layers of it buried in the Earth, marking a time long ago when much of the ancient sea in the basin evaporated. Geologically, salt is important because it can radically alter how petroleum basins evolve. Compared to other sedimentary rocks, it migrates easily through the Earth, creating space for oil and gas to collect. It helps moderate heat and keeps hydrocarbon sources viable longer and deeper. And it is a tightly packed mineral that seals oil and gas in large columns, setting up giant fields. "The Gulf of Mexico has a thick salt canopy that blankets large portions of the basin and prevented us for many years from actually seeing what lies beneath," Snedden said. "What has kept things progressing is industry's improved ability to see below the salt." According to the paper, the bulk of the northern offshore basin's potential remains in giant, deepwater oil fields beneath the salt blanket. Although reaching them is expensive and enormously challenging, Snedden believes they represent the best future for fossil fuel energy. That's because the offshore -- where many of the giant fields are located -- offers industry a way of supplying the world's energy with fewer wells, which means less energy expended per barrel of oil produced. Snedden said there is still much to learn about hydrocarbons beneath the Gulf of Mexico, how they got there and how they can be safely accessed. This is especially true in the southern Gulf of Mexico, which was closed to international exploration until 2014. One of the few publicly available datasets was a series of UTIG seismic surveys conducted in the 1970s. Now, a wealth of prospects is emerging from new seismic imaging of the southern basin's deepwater region. "When you look at recent U.S. oil and gas lease sales, Mexico's five-year plan, and the relatively small carbon footprint of the offshore oil and gas industry, I think it's clear that offshore drilling has an important future in the Gulf of Mexico," Snedden said. ### Snedden's research was conducted within UTIG for the Gulf Basin Depositional Synthesis project (which he directs). The project has been continuously funded by an industry consortium since 1995. UTIG is a unit of the Jackson School of Geosciences. DULUTH A Lake Superior port is reporting a record-setting year when it comes to wind cargo. The Port of Duluth-Superior received 525,000 freight tons of wind cargoes in 2020, easily eclipsing 2019s mark of 306,000 freight tons. The port welcomed 30 oceangoing ships with wind cargoes in 2020, sailing from eight countries: Brazil, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, Spain and Turkey. The shipments included the longest blades (242 feet) and towers (100 feet) ever handled in Duluth. Collectively, the components will assemble 154 wind turbines across Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. It was a record-setting season for wind energy cargoes in Duluth, said Deb DeLuca, executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. In fact, it was our second consecutive record-setting season for that particular type of cargo. The fact that we were able to handle this record-setting volume of wind cargo this year didnt happen by accident. Its a testament to years of hard work. As the Great Lakes westernmost port, the Port of Duluth-Superior has historically been a key port for shipping companies looking to efficiently move cargo directly to Americas Heartland. The port is situated along the worlds longest freshwater sandbar, comprised of Minnesota Points seven-mile span and the three-mile Wisconsin Point. Being North Americas furthest-inland seaport really lends well to Duluth being the Midwest hub for wind cargo arrivals, DeLuca said. The fact that cargo can sail so far inland some 2,038 nautical miles from the Atlantic Ocean to Duluth is very advantageous for shippers. The Port of Duluth began receiving wind cargo in 2006. Recent improvements at the port include an $18 million rehabilitation and modernization of a dilapidated dock, a project that added 26 acres of modern outdoor storage space with road and on-dock rail access, as well as two new Seaway-depth berths and a roll-on/roll-off dock. In 2017, the Port Authority added a 300-ton lift mobile crane to complement the terminals existing Duluth-built 90-ton twin gantry cranes and fleet of heavy-lift vehicles. Photo: CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images Angie Jakusz, who braced the unrelenting wilderness to compete on Survivor: Palau in 2004, has died at the age of 40. TMZ reports that Jakusz had been battling a rare form of cancer for several years, and had settled into a life as an artist and bartender in New Orleans in the aftermath of her Palau season. She was last affiliated with the franchise in 2010, when she appeared at a ten-year anniversary party. Despite only lasting a few episodes before her elimination, Jakusz, who earned the nickname No Fun Angie, was a fan-favorite contestant as a member of the Ulong tribe. She also made Survivor history, TMZ notes, by becoming the first contestant to lose a revote in a tribal council. Angie was an incredibly passionate person with an extraordinary lust for life, her obituary reads. Whether she was sewing, painting, drawing, doing nail art or makeup, costuming, reading, snorkeling, scuba-diving, traveling, or just raising hell, she did it lovingly and with laser precision. "We are a tier one supplier. We are not going to go away. People have to be held accountable in business," Andrews says. Goldsmith is well aware of Andrews' disapproval, telling PS he intended to "reach out" to his former supplier. "People think we have phoenixed the business, but that's not the case. We have not done anything illegal. We have new owners. They are investing in the business because they are confident in it being a success," Goldsmith told PS. Refurbishment works were under way at the new Boathouse site in Rose Bay this week. Credit:Andrew Hornery "The business fell over when the banks went cold midway through a multimillion-dollar refurbishment of The Patonga Hotel at a time when we were heading into winter and our trade naturally slows down. It was a perfect storm ... a real shitfight. I felt we had no choice but to keep going. Looking back, I should have stopped when the banks said 'no'. Ironically, Patonga is now our best performing venue." On Thursday, Goldsmith described himself to PS as the "unofficial CEO" of the Boathouse empire, which was bought in July 2019 for an undisclosed sum by a syndicate which includes his father-in-law, former Liberal federal trade minister Andrew Robb, along with northern beaches property developers the Isaac brothers and the Sorensen family, described simply as investors from the Southern Highlands. The liquidation sale effectively wiped the debts of the string of companies which had owned the Boathouse venues, while former directors and owners Goldsmith and his interior designer wife Pip continue to run the businesses under new ownership. The new owners formed the Palm Group, which took over the leases of the premises, the goodwill, and the responsibility to pay wages, along with eventually paying more than $1 million owed in staff superannuation. The Goldsmiths, who have two children aged six and three, started the Boathouse empire in 2008 with just $30,000 when they took over their first site at Palm Beach. It quickly became one of the most successful and fashionable destinations on the northern beaches. Today, the Boathouse brand stretches across eight venues across the northern beaches, including the historic Barrenjoey House, and Patonga on the Central Coast, employing 500 people. The ninth Boathouse venue in Rose Bay will employ about 50 staff. Its two levels offer the same beach-themed, signature relaxed and stylish destination the couple has become famous for. Rose Bay pier landlord and Sydney sailing identity Dennis O'Neil is also contributing towards the cost of the extensive refit at the site, where The Boathouse has signed a five-year lease. PS remembers well watching Goldsmith blush just a few years ago as he tried to explain how a couple in their early 30s had managed to create such an enviable empire. Pip Goldsmith's parents were the original financial backers when they started the first Boathouse at Palm Beach. A former barista, Goldsmith studied landscape design and worked as a furniture restorer and now admits he knew nothing of the intricacies of big business and property deals when they started out, but he was filled with confidence as their fledgling business went from strength to strength over a decade. The couple sold their $4 million Palm Beach home to fund the Barrenjoey House expansion, and today are renting in the exclusive beachside enclave. In 2019 Robb, a director of The Palm Group, told the Murdoch press his daughter and her husband had paid a heavy price for a hiccup in their ambitious expansion. They overreached and there are consequences for that, even if the rest of the business is in good shape, Robb said. Its very difficult, its unfortunate, but its just business. Long road to recovery for Kerri-Anne It's a good thing Kerri-Anne Kennerley took out her own insurance policy before her ill-fated turn as a singing trapeze artist in the Sydney production of Pippin. No match for an axe, or a paparazzo: Kerri-Anne Kennerley on Tuesday night in Double Bay. Credit:Wendell Teodoro Kennerley underwent extensive surgery on Thursday at St Vincent's Hospital, which involved having a metal plate and 10 screws inserted on her collarbone, which may have to remain for the rest of her life. KAK is resigned to the prospect of a long recovery involving extensive physiotherapy over coming months after breaking her collarbone when she fell three metres on to the stage at the Lyric last month. While her medical costs are covered, her confidence remains bruised, especially after her appearance on the Daily Mail website on Tuesday night, when she was photographed unawares outside her door. "What arseholes," KAK who has weaned herself off painkillers despite the excruciating agony grimaced as her phone lit up with the unflattering images just as she was sitting down to celebrate public relations industry website The Social Diary's 16th birthday. But she hasn't lost her sense of humour. Reminded of a famous quote she gave years back when asked about her longevity in showbiz, to which she replied: "You couldn't kill me with an axe!", KAK revealed to PS her doctors warned her she may have a scar following surgery. "Apparently I don't have enough fat on my clavicle ... I suggested they could take some off my bum to make up for it!" she chortled. Rocky times at Rockpool? Celebrity chef and father of the bride Neil Perry was beaming at his first-born Josephine's wedding last weekend, but PS hears it is another marriage involving Perry a corporate one which might not be quite so happy at the moment. Neil Perry (left) and Rockpool Dining Group chief executive Thomas Pash. Credit:Wolter Peeters A noticeable absence at last weekend's wedding, held at Rockpool Bar and Grill, was Rockpool Group CEO Tom Pash, though friends of Perry insist their relationship is purely business, while others suggest things have been getting rocky between the men for some time. Perry wouldn't be drawn on what the future holds for his Rockpool hospitality conglomerate, in which he remains a shareholder after formally announcing last year he was retiring from his role of culinary director and ambassador after 40 years in the kitchen. "Look, I'm 64, but you're right, the business will always be in my blood. I am looking around at new ventures. I don't think my days in kitchens are quite over yet," Perry told PS. In 2016, Perry sold the Rockpool Group, which then encompassed 47 venues, to the Urban Purveyor Group for $60 million. The merger formed the Quadrant Private Equity. Rockpool Dining Group now encompasses more than 80 restaurants, a diverse portfolio that includes Japanese restaurants Sake, the Munich Brauhaus, and Burger Project. Penguin Bloom's harbourside splash Organisers are anxiously watching COVID-19 numbers in the lead-up to next Tuesday's world premiere of new Australian film Penguin Bloom at the Open Air Cinema on Sydney Harbour. Cameron and Sam Bloom. Credit:Tim Bauer The new movie tells the story of how a magpie helped a young mother and her family through a harrowing ordeal after an accident while on holiday in Thailand left her paralysed. Quarantine restrictions have already botched plans for the film's big name stars, namely Naomi Watts and Jacki Weaver, to attend but an easing of the northern beaches lockdown means it is looking likely the film's subjects, locals Sam and Cameron Bloom, along with their three boys, will be able to be there. Naomi Watts with Sam Bloom in November 2018. Credit:Cameron Bloom Also due on the red carpet are producers Bruna Papandrea, Jodi Matterson, Steve Hutensky and Emma Cooper, along with writer Harry Cripps. PS also hears the Blooms have already seen the Glendyn Ivin-directed film and have given it a hearty thumbs up. Pot thickens at Lucio's While the upcoming auction of his art collection and the famed artists who dined at Lucio Galletto's iconic Paddington dining institution have been getting all the attention, it should not be forgotten that the eatery was also a favourite haunt of Sydney's literati. Lucio Galletto at his Paddington restaurant. Credit:Louie Douvis Bookish types inform PS that publishing powerhouse Fiona Inglis of Curtis Brown had been a long-time regular, as was author Tom Keneally. Keneally dined with Garry Shead at Lucio's when he was commissioned to design the cover of Keneally's novel Bettany's Book. Charmed: The late novelist Colleen McCullough. Credit:Danielle Smith Lucio's was also the late Colleen McCullough's go-to place when she came to town from Norfolk Island. When she was less mobile in her later years, Galletto went out of his way to accommodate McCullough with easy access and charm, something of a feat given her well-documented bad moods. Blanchett v Kidman Cate Blanchett's Sydney friends have been bemused by reports that make it sound as though she is building her very own Tate Modern in the grounds of her English country manor Highwell House, a remote estate near the town of Crowborough in East Sussex, England. Work of art: Cate Blanchett in Venice last year. Credit:Getty "I've seen the plans, it's pretty modest," one told PS, while another added: "She has a great art collection but she keeps it in her home, not out in the shed!" However, given her English idyll is also home to a colony of rare bats, her plans for a "wellness" centre, which went before local authorities, have drawn considerable attention in the British press this week, especially after the council gave her the green light on the proviso the bats are left alone. Denton, TX (76205) Today Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch. In fact, the bonds, which had been issued by the former Republic of China before Mao Zedongs Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, were virtually worthless, prosecutors said. The current Chinese government does not recognize the bonds, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission considers them collectibles with no value outside the memorabilia market, prosecutors said. But investors were not told of the true nature of the bonds, nor were they told that no previous investor had ever obtained the promised returns, prosecutors said. Many of the clients were elderly and retired, and those who did not have money readily available were encouraged to cash out other investments so that they could participate in the scheme, prosecutors said. The victims were provided with a participation agreement indicating that if the sale of the bonds failed to occur within a certain number of days, the invested funds would be returned, prosecutors said. Investors were instructed to wire money to various bank accounts held or controlled by Mr. Caldwell. In total, in 2013 and 2014, about $3.5 million was invested in the bond deals, prosecutors said. Mr. Caldwell received about $900,000, prosecutors said, and used some of the money to pay down debts, including personal loans, mortgages and credit cards, prosecutors said. When investors began questioning why they hadnt received the promised returns, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Smith offered excuses, defended the legitimacy of the deals and promised the investors that they would receive their returns, prosecutors said. Darjeeling: The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) led shutdown in the Darjeeling hills entered day three on Wednesday with rallies being taken out to demand a separate Gorkhaland state and police patrolling troubled areas to quell any violence. Most shops in and around Chowkbazar and Mall Road in the hill town were closed. Police was on high alert with patrolling under way in several areas. No untoward incident was reported till afternoon. The GJM, along with other hill parties, took out rallies in several areas of the hills demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland. The GJM-sponsored indefinite shutdown of government and Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) offices in Darjeeling hills began on June 12. We had come to Darjeeling to enjoy and relax but due to the situation here have to leave at the earliest:Tourist #DarjeelingUnrest pic.twitter.com/GKUGWZUptx ANI (@ANI_news) June 14, 2017 A GJM procession had marched to several government offices in Chowkbazar area yesterday to stop people from reporting for work. GJM supporters had turned violent and pelted stones at the police when they were stopped on Tuesday. Their call for a separate state of Gorkhaland gained momentum after six other hill parties extended their support to GJM and unanimously passed a resolution demanding a separate state yesterday. The Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), an ally of the ruling Trinamool Congress, has also backed the demand for a separate state. Police pickets and barricades were placed in front of the government and GTA offices and various entry exit points of the hills while Rapid Action Force (RAF) and a sizeable number of women police personnel were deployed. Also Read | Darjeeling: Army deployed after violence by GJM supporters The Centre yesterday despatched 600 paramilitary personnel to assist the West Bengal government in restoring normalcy in the violence-hit area. It has also sought a detailed report on the situation in the hill district from the state government. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package proposal to lift the U.S. economy as well as its people, badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The relief proposal includes $1 trillion in direct relief to households, $415 billion to fight the pandemic and $440bn for small businesses and worst-affected communities. In addition to the $600 in direct payments previously announced in a relief bill, stimulus payment checks worth $1,400 would be issued to each individual. Unemployment insurance was increased by $100 to $400 a week, and would be extended to September, along with a moratorium on evictions and home repossessions.. The incoming government will allocate $50 billion to expand COVID testing and $130 billion to support schools reopen by the spring. 100,000 public health workers will be hired for contact tracing. In an address to the nation Thursday night on the American Rescue Plan and Build Back Better Recovery Plan in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden urged Congress to hike the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. 'The very health of our nation is at stake...A crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight and there's no time to waste,' Biden said. He pointed out that since this pandemic began, the wealth of the top 1 percent has grown by roughly $1.5 trillion since the end of last year - four times the amount for the entire bottom 50 percent. Some 18 million Americans are still relying on unemployment insurance. Nearly 400,000 small businesses have permanently closed their doors, and an equal number of Americans lost their lives due to the deadly disease. 'There will be stumbles, but I will always be honest with you about both the progress we're making and what setbacks we meet.' Biden said. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Protesters call for the release of Rong Chhun on the first day of his trial for incitement in Phnom Penh, Jan. 15, 2021. A court in Cambodia on Friday held a trial for prominent union leader Rong Chhun on charges of incitement, drawing criticism from his lawyer who said the judges line of questioning assumed the defendants guilt. Scores of Cambodian civil society groups have condemned the arrest of the president of the Cambodian Confederation of Trade Unions, demanding that the government release him and drop charges he faces over his criticism of the countrys handling of a border dispute with Vietnam. Rong Chhun, who is also a member of the Cambodian Watchdog Council, was jailed at Prey Sar Prison on Aug. 1, a day after his arrest for claiming the government has allowed Vietnam to encroach on farmland along their shared border. He faces two years in prison if convicted. Defense lawyer Sam Sokong told RFAs Khmer Service after the proceedings that questions put to Rong Chhun by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday sought to place the burden of guilt on his client, rather than determine whether the charges against him are valid. He maintained that Rong Chhuns statements about the border were made as a citizen exercising his right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by national and international law. Sam Sokong said the judge questioned his client about the creation of the Cambodia Watchdog Council, his border inspection activities, and his issuance of a statement on the border dispute, as well as an interview he gave to RFA in July 2020. Rong Chhun told the judge that the Cambodia Watchdog Council was established legally in 2002 and has never faced problems with the authorities. He said his visit to the border was a fulfillment of social work and conducted as a Cambodian citizen. His statement on the border dispute was based on information he gathered from local residents and was within his rights to make, he added. [Rong Chhuns] main goal [in visiting the border] was to ask citizens about land disputes, Sam Sokong said. Rong Chhun issued a statement that does not reflect his personal views, but rather those of the people. In addition to Rong Chhuns trial, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court heard cases on charges of incitement against Ton Nimol, an activist with the banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP); Sar Kanika, the president of the Cambodian Informal Laborers Association (CILA); and Suong Sophorn, head of the little-known Khmer Win Party. All four cases were adjourned until Feb. 3. Soeng Senkaruna, a spokesman for the Cambodian rights group ADHOC, echoed Sam Sokongs concerns about the judges questioning of Rong Chhun during his hearing. Most of the questions posed by the judges were burdensome on Rong Chhun, he said. I think there should have been more questions to extenuate rather than attenuate. Message to the public Fridays hearing was also observed by civil society officials; diplomats from Japan, Australia, Germany, the U.S., and the European Union; and a representative from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia. During the proceedings, authorities prevented detainees' relatives, as well as members of civil society groups and the media, from gathering near the court compound. Rong Chhuns nephew, Rong Vichea, told RFA that he last visited his uncle on Thursday. He said Rong Chhun remains in good physical and mental health, adding that his uncle told him to convey a message to the public not to be dispirited by mounting persecution and prosecutions by the authorities against voices of dissent. My uncle remains courageous, resolute and strong. He maintains his position that he did nothing illegal, as charged by the court, Rong Vichea said. Most importantly, in a democratic society, when we as citizens see democratic space shrinking and society deteriorating, if we do not unite together to think about our rights and freedom, our livelihoods and the loss of our interests, our present society and the future generation will suffer further harm. Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. Turkish authorities stopped the investigations regarding the kidnapping of two elderly Christians for an unknown reason, reports say. Recent reports reveal that Turkish authorities stalled the investigation on the case of the two elderly Christians abducted at the Turkish village of Mehr. The family remains clueless about the reason why there was no progress on the investigation, one year after the couple was kidnapped. On Jan. 11, Hurmuz and Simuni Diril, two elderly Assyrian-Chaldean Christians, disappeared from the Turkish village of Mehr, located near the Iraqi border. The couple was believed to be kidnapped by abductors allegedly affiliated with the PKK, a Kurdish militant group, according to International Christian Concern (ICC). Father Remzi (Adday) Diril discovered what happened to his parents and sought the assistance of the authorities. Turkish police conducted search and rescue operations to find the couple believed to be abducted by a group that the U.S. department categorized as a terrorist organization. The authorities ordered the search operation to stop due to the challenging winter weather conditions. However, the police officers did not continue the search even after the winter. In March 2020, Simoni's mutilated body was found floating in a nearby river. Authorities conducted an autopsy yet months passed and they are still unable to issue a report on the results. Sources say that important pieces of the test were still missing and that the information on Simuni's death remained incomplete thus the procedural system did not advance. The family also did not hear any update on the investigation about Hurmuz, they remained clueless if she was still alive or not, ICC reported. The Diril family now seeks clarity on the case of the abducted couple and the details on the progress of the investigation as well as the update on the search and rescue operation for Hurmuz. They demanded an opening investigation looking into the possibilities of the negligence of the authorities handling the investigation. They would also like to look at the possibilities of any procedural failures regarding Simuni's autopsy report. The bereaved family demands for the forensic report as well as the report gathered in the criminal investigation to be completed. They are also requesting that all the documents relevant to Simuni's death be released to them. Furthermore, the Dirils seek a serious commitment from the authorities in finding out the people responsible for the abduction and the death. They are asking for a serious investigation to find out what really happened to Hurmuz. From 1989 to 1994, residents evacuated the village of Mehr due to a conflict between the PKK militant group, which the U.S. designated as a terrorist group, and the Turkish army. The conflict put the lives of the community at stake. Ten years ago, in spite of the ongoing risk, the Dirils returned to the village to rebuild. Various religious groups joined the family in their call for a thorough investigation about the couple's fate. "There has been much trauma inflicted on the children of Hurmuz and Simoni," said Juliana Taimoorazy, founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council. "We are requesting the Turkish authorities to treat this case with urgency and care and provide the grieving Diril family with much-deserved answers," Taimoorazy added. The Middle Easts only sultanate has moved a step further into closer conformity with its neighbors' political systems by designating its first crown prince, the rulers oldest son. Bloomberg columnist Bobby Ghosh had previously said that Oman had strangest system of royal succession conceived in modern times the previous sultan, Qaboos bin Said Al Said, had named a cousin as his successor in a sealed envelope opened after Qaboos' death a year ago. Qaboos had no children or brothers. Now, Dhi Yazan Bin Haitham, the oldest son of Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, is the crown prince. Calls for political changes, more transparency, economic reforms and ending the impunity of corrupt officials were the main demands of Omanis who took to the streets in 2011 in a rare wave of demonstrations during which security forces killed two stone-throwing protesters. Hours after the violence, Qaboos acted swiftly to prevent further protests and announced the creation of 50,000 government jobs, raised pay for national workers, and, for those eligible, increased pensions and retirement benefits. Activists now characterize these measures as temporary fixes that failed to address the crux of the sturctural issues underlying Oman's economic difficulties. This was not an economic reform. The aim was to have less trouble with young people, taking them from the street to a job that does not cause troubles, Omani journalist and researcher Rafiah Al Talei told Al-Monitor. Our leadership was not serious about solving the real problems, said a former protester who was ordered during his detention by Omans security agency Internal Security Service to stop questioning state policies. The activist, who asked not to be identified, said Omanis live in denial, blinded by their profound respect for Qaboos, who revolutionized the lives of Omanis throughout his half-century-long reign. He overthrew his father in 1970 in a bloodless coup d'etat and dedicated the rest of his life to modernizing what once resembled a medieval state. Constitutional monarchy A few weeks after the death of the widely respected autocrat, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed longstanding weaknesses in the Omani economy, wiping out global oil demand that was expected to account for half of the government revenues in 2020. Haitham announced a series of economic reforms to cope with record fiscal deficits and government debt. It includes slimming down the Omani administration, restructuring state-owned entities, implementing a repeatedly delayed 5% value-added tax and removing electricity and water subsidies for big consumers. Next year, Oman plans to introduce an income tax on high earners, a measure once unimaginable in a region known for offering income-tax-free salaries. Those who protested in 2011 salute Haithams commitment to carry out long-delayed economic reforms, but wish the ruler would go a step further. We want the separation of powers, said Mohammed Al Fazari, an Omani activist exiled in the UK. The sultan holds most executive, legislative and judicial powers, political parties are banned and broad laws restrict the rights to freedom of assembly and association. Fazari said he cannot see anything that could force the ruler to self-limit his power, unless he really believes that would be best for Oman and has an intention to do so. Some Omani intellectuals say they thought Haitham might proclaim a parliamentary monarchy as the new political form of the country to honor his father. The latter served as a prime minister from 1970 to 1971 and favoured a constitutional monarchy. In August, Haitham gave up the foreign, defense and financial affairs portfolios, signaling the end of an extreme concentration of powers that characterized the Qaboos era. These changes are a clear example of the states commitment to work to develop the political system, a diplomatic source at the Omani Embassy in Washington told Al-Monitor. However, the Majlis al-Shura, the countrys elected consultative council established in 1991 by Qaboos, lacks legislative power and acts more like a consultant to the sultan than a real parliament, said human rights activist Ismail Al Muqbali. Oman was set up to be ruled by a one-man show, he told Al-Monitor. Talei said the 49% participation rate in the 2019 Majlis al-Shura elections indicates people have no hope that the only body representing the public at the national level could change something substantial in their lives. They cancel you culturally The COVID-19 economic crisis is drawing the features of the future of Oman, in the words of Talei, yet, citizens have little say about their future as they remain largely excluded from decision-making processes. Muqbali calls for a public debate so that savings generated by austerity measures are not be spent on luxury things or buying new weapons. Activists interviewed by Al-Monitor noted improvements in freedom of speech since the 2011 protests and the emergence of social networks, offering a unique space for Omani citizens to question the performance of high-ranking officials, including Cabinet ministers. In Washington, the Omani Embassy said freedom of opinion and expression within the capacity of the law is guaranteed by Article 29 of the Basic Law of the State. However, the security apparatus is accused by human rights organizations of using harassment and short-term detentions to intimidate peaceful government critics. The Internal Security Services cannot prevent people from using social media, but they use pro-government propaganda bots to cast doubt on you. They cancel you culturally, so whenever you speak up, nobody will believe you anymore, Fazari said. As Oman enters a new era of its history, activists call on Haitham to distinguish himself from his predecessor by supporting a politically active society driven by the value of critical thinking that is required to diversify the local economy away from oil. Prominent Omani academic Abdullah Baabood said in a tweet that gradual changes in the nature of the rentier state and the social welfare system necessitate a serious change in the social contract to avoid a new episode of the protests that shook the sultanate in 2011. Dublin-listed PetroNeft Resources has increased its interest in an exploration licence in Russia. PetroNeft, which is focused on the Tomsk Oblast region in Russia, is the 50pc owner and operator of Licences 61 and 67 in the area. The company has signed Heads of Terms with Belgrave Naftogas to acquire an additional 40pc interest in Licence 67 for $2.9m (2.4m), bringing PetroNefts ownership to 90pc. The company will pay for the additional 40pc of the licence through the issuance of 80,000,000 PetroNeft ordinary shares to Belgrave Naftogas this represents 8.7pc of PetroNeft for a value of $1.2m. The cash consideration of $1.7m will be financed through a three-year loan from Belgrave Naftogas to PetroNeft. Belgrave Naftogas will have the right to nominate a director onto the PetroNeft board. Belgrave Naftogas is to be carried by PetroNeft for their 10pc share of the joint venture costs up to repayment of the loan, after which Belgrave Naftogas will fund their share of these costs. David Sturt, CEO of PetroNeft Resources, said: "This potential acquisition is consistent with the board and management's previously announced commitment of enhancing shareholder value through boosting production, reserves and revenue. As early as next month the asset is expected to transform from being an exploration to a producing asset. This agreement will add significant impetus to our plans to develop the Licence. PetroNeft acquired Licence 67 during a state auction in 2009. The following year, Arawak Energy Russia (now Belgrave Naftogas) exercised its right to acquire a 50pc non-operated interest from PetroNeft. PetroNeft reported a loss of $2.7m for the six months to June 30 last year, an increase on the loss of $2m in the same period last year. The company reported revenue of $1m for the period. The officer escorted us through the Capitol, and as he talked about the building, his love for his job and his country was evident. As we went down one corridor, there was a small piece of paper on the floor, and he picked it up and put it in the trash. He would not allow anything to defile these sacred halls. Government should take measures to protect private enterprises in key economic sectors to enhance their international competitiveness. In recent years, the Party, Government, and Hanoi city have had breakthrough policies to reform administrative procedures, improve the business environment, and solve difficulties for businesses, especially in the private sector. However, for the private sector to become the pillar in the country's development, there is a to-do list. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc with Hanoi young entrepreneurs in a meeting in Hanoi/ Photo: Thong Nhat Pillar of growth The development of the private sector in recent years has shown that the governments Resolution No. 10 / NQ-TW has gradually come to life, promoting faster and more sustainable socio-economic development, significantly contributing to the state budget. In particular, it has encouraged a potential component of the countrys economy, mobilized social capital, increased internal resources, paved the way for major private participation in the development of the national economy and proved to be one of the pillars of the nations growth. For example, tourism is a general economic sector with the participation and association of many private enterprises, a rapid growth sector at the rate of over 10% per year. This is the core force to achieve the development of the tourism industry by 2025 with an expected total revenue of $45 billion, contributing 10% of the country's GDP. Vietnam's private economic sector currently has nearly 800,000 enterprises creating about 12 million jobs, contributing 43% of GDP (compared with the State economic sector with nearly 30% of GDP and the FDI sector about 18% of GDP). Particularly, in the service industry, the private sector contributes to over 85% of GDP. Among them, the Hanois private sector has developed in both quantity and quality, contributing an estimated 22 % of the GRDP in 2020, an increase of more than 1.2 % compared to 2015, attracting about 83% of the total workforce. In fact, the private sector of the capital includes small and medium enterprises that have contributed nearly 40% of the GRDP and 50% of the labor force, and 15% of the budget revenue; largely contributing to the socioeconomic development of the city. In order to maintain and develop this achievement, the government must pay attention to creating all favorable conditions for the private sector development. Improving capacity and competitiveness Hanois private sector has developed in both quantity and quality, contributing an estimated 22% of the GRDP in 2020/ Photo: Chien Cong In fact, there is a lack of proper assessment as well as attention in policies and solutions for small and medium enterprises in the city in particular, and in Vietnam in general. Therefore, it is very important to have policies to support the development of business and trade associations toward completing the organizational model, expanding the scale, number of members, and diversifying products and services. At the same time, it is necessary to renovate and modernize methods and improve operational efficiency in accordance with current legal regulations, commitments and practices in international integration in the coming time, both inside and outside the capital. In particular, the policies should aim at increasing the role, powers and responsibilities of associations in supporting businesses, especially in coordination with the government, the authorities of the capital and other localities in researching and implementing a number of programs to support businesses in creating new products; applying new technology and international standard in business management and administration so as to create a strong driving force to promote the innovation, development and modernization of the business community. Based on such foundation, the competitiveness of enterprises in the international integration process could be improved and so that enterprises could actively seize opportunities, especially from the CPTPP and EVFTA. At the same time, it is necessary to solve difficulties and challenges in the process of international integration and expand cooperation with other potential capitals and cities. Additionally, it is necessary to promote the export of goods and services and attract foreign investment and international funding as well as strengthen communication and marketing to promote the capital among international friends and uphold the spirit of "Hanoi for the whole country and the whole country for Hanoi" in all fields. Seven core issues Car production at the factory of VinFast Car/ Photo: Pham Hung In its role as the coordinator, the Hanoi Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (Hanoisme) should firstl encourage businesses to invest in areas that are beneficial to the society. Hanoism should map out policies and solve shortcomings in the legal framework for a concerted guidance for the industrial and agricultural development and trade promotion. The Association should follow up, update and forecast scenarios of the domestic market as well as export, helping businesses to devise appropriate production goals, especially those businesses in agro-industry. Hanoisme should help new businesses in delineating their strategic goals and long-term vision, encouraging them to manufacture goods with a high value-added applying advanced technology, and expand export markets. The Association should contribute to administrative reform to create more conveniences for businesses. The administrative procedures should be decentralized, handing more powers to departments, specialized sectors and districts. It is also necessary to strengthen the inspection and supervision of enterprises' proposals and the results of public service performance. In particular, in the context of world economic fluctuation today, it is necessary to build and develop key economic sectors of the country, focusing on two bases: forming a regional financial center and industrial production hub so as to lure the investment capital flows shifted from China due to the trade tension between this country and the US. To do so, it is necessary to ensure fair competition among economic sectors, not only giving priority to foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises but also private ones. At the same time, private enterprises with experience and abundant resources should be awarded large projects, helping the government to curb public debt and take advantage of private capital and FDI. In certain cases, the Government should take measures to protect private enterprises in key economic sectors to enhance their international competitiveness. Over the past decade, especially in the past five years, Vietnam's economy has been known in the world through the names of private corporations such as VinGroup, Sun Group, T&T Group, Thaco, Vietjet, TH True Milk, Masan, Among others. Moreover, VinFast Car, Golden Bridge, Van Don Airport, Vietjet Air, Bamboo Airway are typical representative of Vietnamese business community in recent years. "In order for private enterprises to develop, institutional reforms need to focus on the reform of the ownership and the restriction of the land ownership which represent a hindrance to large-scale production. It is necessary to adjust the land law to give more favourable conditions to agricultural production and f land consolidation. Besides, state-owned enterprises which account over 30% GDP and still hold monopoly in many sectors, which prevents the development of private enterprises from contributing more to the GDP. said Former Minister of Trade Truong Dinh Tuyen. Hanoitimes Mac Quoc Anh (Vice President and General Secretary of Hanoi Association of Small and Medium Enterprises) Party congress to highlight critical role of private sector Vietnams development outlook is set to be formulated over the next few weeks when the 13th National Party Congress takes place in Hanoi, There is a dawning fact that is brought home to us nightly now on our television screens. The virus, that dreadful thing, is in fact out of control. I say this not to cause alarm or vexation. I say this with sincerity and truthfulness. When Ireland exited out of a strict lockdown in December we had one of the lowest levels of Covid-19 in Europe. We were doing a good job and perhaps in some strange way, we felt like we had earned a decent Christmas. We had come through the worst and then with the news of several vaccines on the way there was a collective sigh of relief. Nphet warned that an increase in socialising over the Christmas break could lead to much higher levels of the virus. The Taoiseach said that we would try and stay in the position of low case numbers and that the Government would not be slow to act. We were told that we could have Christmas in a meaningful way. Read More And so we opened up again, we travelled, we shopped, we visited people but within days it was becoming clear that something was going wrong. The infection rates were not staying in the lower figures and soon experts were warning that we limit our social contacts again. By the time Christmas day rolled around a new picture was emerging and it wasnt good. Even before the Government announcement of a new lockdown people were already isolating again, returning to the ramparts and the security of our own homes to beat the virus. For my wife and I and those we know, there was a sense that we were going back to the bunkers once again and the question was asked by many: What really had changed from March last year. What impact had we really made against this invisible enemy? Sadly, the situation did not improve and in the week leading up to January 10 Ireland had the highest infection rate in the world. The research figures linked to Oxford University were stark. Speaking earlier this week, Dr Tony Holohan said that there was an unsustainable high level of infection in the country. The hospitals are now under severe pressure and the situation was described as carnage to this newspaper on Wednesday. At the time of writing this column, there were 1838 patients being treated in Irish hospitals for the virus and more than 170 in intensive care. The numbers, and there have been so many in the last two weeks, read like statistics and yet they are not statistics they are mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Each one a grave situation, each one a potential tragedy. There are more than 2450 families without a loved one due to Covid at this moment. Who knows how many more it will be by next week. Added to this, our frontline healthcare workers are at the pin of their collar. Overworked, stressed and in some cases out of action with the virus itself, they are our modern heroes and without them, we would be lost. I think of my own cousin who is a nurse in one of the busy hospitals in the country and how not only is she helping battle the virus, but is also helping take care of the sick who are in hospital for non-Covid related illnesses. I think of her and worry that she may contract the virus after only recently graduating from university. So where did it all go so wrong? Where did the problems arise? Dr Mike Ryan of the World Health Organisation said the increase in cases was not due to the variant of the virus from the UK but to increased social mixing. In thinking about this I was reminded of my old home of Australia this week, which has taken a very different approach to the virus. The country shut its borders very early on in the pandemic and banned nearly all inward travel. Citizens and permanent residents could return but many others were simply barred. Flights to Australia were reduced and in order to ensure safety, those arriving were quarantined properly. A mandatory hotel quarantine was brought in. For two weeks passengers were holed up in a hotel room while they were observed and tested for the virus and charged $3000 dollars per person. A price tag that has kept many away. So strict were Australias rules that inter-state travel was banned between many states for some time, in particular in the state of Victoria, which was the epicentre of the Australian outbreak of the virus. Read More Its a harsh system but the figures dont lie. There have been 909 deaths out of a population of nearly 25 million. It is a success story and friends and family in Australia are living near-normal lives as a result of tough rules imposed early. Perhaps its a fruitless exercise now but maybe, just maybe, we should have thought about a similar exercise in closing our borders. Yes, we are in Europe and it is a trickier proposition, but international travel has been available both inward and outward throughout this time and we do not have an enforced mandatory quarantine stay in a hotel or other such space like Australia. If people wanted to come here they would need to do the time, as it were, in a hotel and we would know for sure that quarantine was properly being policed. It was only this week that new measures were brought in that passengers arriving into Ireland must provide a negative test. The case numbers are starting to go down from the dizzying heights of a few days ago but perhaps in this, the third battle against the virus, we need to get serious about all our measures. All about Colonel Gill who served in the Army, Navy and Indian Air Force India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: Colonel Prithpal Singh Gill has seen it all. The World War II, India-Pakistan war of 1965, the retired Colonel who saw it all, turned 100 on December 11, 2020. More importantly he is the only surviving officer to have served the Army, Navy and Indian Air Force. Today on Army Day, he was awarded the Silver Salver on behalf of the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat. He joined the Royal Indian Air Force as a pilot without his family's consent in 1942. Following this he joined the Navy where he served on a mine sweeping ship, INS Teer, which was an escort for cargo ships during the World War 2. He then left the Navy after completing the Longe Range Gunnery Course. None should make the mistake of testing our patience: Army Chief Colonel Gill join the Indian Army soon after Independence and sought a placement in the 1Sikh in which many members of his family including his father had served. Due to his gunnery experience, he was allowed the Regiment of Artillery and was posted with the Gwalior Mountain Battery equipped with 5.4-inch guns. He was the commanding officer of the Regiment during the 1965 Indo-Pak war and fought in the Sialkot sector. On promotion to the rank of Colonel, he went on to command an Assam Rifle Sector in Manipur. He retired in 1970. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News "Congratulate Col Prithipal Singh Gill, who turns 100 today. He bears the unique distinction of having served in all three armed forces. Sir, Wish you many more years of good health and may you continue to always inspire all of us," Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh had said in a tweet. UK Population May Have Seen Largest Fall Since World War II, Study Suggests The total population of Britain could have fallen by more than 1.3 million during the CCP virus pandemic, mostly as a result of an exodus of non-UK born people, new research suggests. This would be the largest fall in the UK resident population since World War II, according to researchers from the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), a UK government-funded think tank that focuses on economic measurement. More Accurate Estimate The studys figures are in stark contrast to those of the Office for National Statistics, which estimated a population rise of about 350,000 for the same period, but doesnt take into account changes in population growth forecasts caused by the pandemic, the authors say. Given both what we know about the impacts of the pandemic and what the raw survey data actually say, we would argue that [our estimates] are clearly more plausible than the published statistics, the authors wrote. This is also borne out in their estimates of employees. While the Labour Force Survey estimated a rise of about 200,000 employees over the year, the new studys estimate more closely matches figures from HMRC, the study estimating a 750,000 fall and HMRC stating a 650,000 fall in registered employees. This is a huge change, and would profoundly alter our perception of recent labour market developments, the authors wrote. Pandemic Migration The estimated fall is likely a combination of almost no growth in the UK-born population and the return of large numbers of migrants to their home countries during the pandemic, the authors said. Migrants, especially those from Europe, are disproportionately more likely to be employed in hospitality and other service sectors that require face-to-face contact. These workers are more likely to have been furloughed or lost their jobs, as these sectors have been hit particularly hard during the pandemic caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. Many foreign students who would otherwise be studying at British universities may have decided not to come to the UK or return to their UK campuses, because many universities have moved to online teaching. A large sign to thank people for coming to Londons West End and to stay safe by observing social distancing to help stop the spread of the CCP virus in London, on Oct. 29, 2020. (Alastair Grant/AP Photo) But the most prominent reason, the researchers said, is that the UK, along with Spain and Italy, has done relatively badly in terms of both health and the economy during the first wave of the pandemic, compared with the rest of Europe. For many migrants, especially those from eastern, central, and southeastern Europe and especially those who have arrived recently or have family back home, the choice would have been to stay here, with no job, less or no money, and pay for relatively expensive rented accommodationor return home to family, with lower costs and most likely less risk of catching COVID. Not a hard choice, the researchers wrote. Much of the burden of job losses during the pandemic has fallen on non-UK workers and has manifested itself in return migration, rather than unemployment. This partly explains why, despite the serious damage the CCP virus has caused to the economy, unemployment has not yet soared to the levels some predicted, they said. London Loss The most striking impact of this trend is in London, where the resident population may have reduced by nearly 700,000 based on estimates using data from the Labour Force Survey, the research found. The authors of the study, Michael OConnor and Jonathan Portes, think the trend could be temporary if migrants return to London after the pandemic. But they recognise that its possible for Londons sustained population growth driven by international migration to be reversed, with profound medium- to long-term implications for the capital. The Mobile County Health Department confirmed Thursday and again on Friday that it gave out doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to people who were not eligible to receive one. The doses were administered during a soft opening earlier this week of a mass vaccination clinic scheduled for Saturday at the Alabama Cruise Terminal in downtown Mobile. And health officials will be making sure only those eligible will receive a vaccine at that clinic. They were taking advantage of the situation, said Mark Bryant, spokesman with the Mobile County Health Department. It was supposed to be by invitation only the other day. Dr. Rendi Murphree, director of the Mobile County Health Departments Bureau of Disease Surveillance and Environmental Studies, said during a Facebook news update Thursday that we have not been perfect with the soft rollout of the vaccine administration. Its unclear how many people who were not eligible to get a vaccine, got one during the soft opening events. The Health Department will hold another Facebook update at 2:30 p.m. today. People who were not truthful of age, mislead our screeners to say they had special permission from the doctors office or Health Department, said Murphree, in describing the people who attained a vaccine this week but who were not eligible for one. We are working to refine these processes to ensure the vaccines we are giving is in the current Phase 1A, and that is to all first responders and to people 75 and older. The mass vaccination clinic on Saturday will be for people ages 75 and over starting at 8:30 a.m. and running until 1:30 p.m. From 1:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., first responders will be able to get a shot. Bryant said that the Health Department will make sure people wont even be allowed in to the clinic on Saturday at the cruise terminal, and Murphree said that Health Department is recommending that people eligible to receive the vaccine, who are ages 75 and up, limit the number of people who are with them when they arrive to the terminal. We are expecting long waits, she said. If you are in the age groups (eligible for a vaccine) try not to bring a lot of people with you who are not eligible for vaccinations. We are trying to keep the numbers low so we can promote social distancing. Bryant said the soft opening events were needed to make sure the department was prepared to handle the distribution of 1,000 of the Moderna vaccines on Saturday. She said 500 of the vaccines will be given out on a first-come, first-serve basis to people over age 75. He said that people will need to bring the proper identification with them before they can receive a shot. He also denounced allegations raised in a TV news report that the vaccine was given out to anyone who was showing up to a secret clinic. He said that Mobile County Health Officer Dr. Bernard Eicholds wife has yet to get a vaccine, and that if we gave out one to everyone we wanted, she would have gotten the vaccine. Shes waiting like everyone else for their turn. The cruise terminal clinic represents the first mass vaccination effort in coastal Alabama since vaccines became available before the Christmas holiday. It comes after news reports have surfaced illustrating how dismal Alabamas inoculation rate has been during the initial rollout. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina has less than 2% of its populations with the first dose of the vaccine, according to data from the states and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, the Mobile city and USA Health officials began a drive-thru vaccination clinic at the Mobile Civic Center. But the clinic is administering follow-up appointments for people who are receiving their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, which his the only vaccine that site is handling right now. Its unclear when appointment-only vaccinations will begin. People showing up for a vaccine on Saturday do not have to be a Mobile County resident. But health officials are hopeful they can focus more on county residents in the coming weeks. A Baldwin County vaccination clinic will be available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on January 19, 21, 26 and 28, at the Daphne Civic Center. The county, in conjunction with the Alabama Department of Public Health, will allow onsite parking and registration for residents ages 75 and up, first responders and healthcare workers. Officials have said they plan to vaccinate at least 60 people an hour, two days a week, for the next two weeks. Experts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed to continue cooperation with the Ukrainian Finance Ministry in the field of developing the fiscal risk management system, the ministry's press service has reported. According to the report, the IMF's technical mission for fiscal risk management and guarantee management worked at the Finance Ministry from November 30 to December 15, 2020. The mission's main task was to assess the results of the ministry's work in these areas and to hold meetings with key stakeholders. During the mission's work, meetings were held with representatives of the Ministry for Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture, the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry, the National Bank of Ukraine, the State Property Fund and other agencies to discuss the impact of fiscal risks on the state budget in relevant areas. Meetings were also held with representatives of seven state-owned companies, including Naftogaz, Ukrzaliznytsia, Energoatom, and Ukrenergo. The topics of these meetings were the results of companies' activities in the current year, problems and risks that may affect state budget figures, timely measures to minimize such risks, as well as prospects for the development of state-owned companies. Following the meetings, the IMF mission's experts noted the significant progress made by the Finance Ministry in developing the fiscal risk management system in Ukraine and expressed their readiness to provide further technical support to the ministry, in particular on preparing information on fiscal risks for budget documentation, stress testing the activity of business entities, assessing fiscal risks in the provision of state guarantees and preparing recommendations for minimizing fiscal risks. Following the final meeting of the mission's representatives with Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko, which took place on January 14, 2021, an agreement was reached to continue close cooperation in the field of fiscal risk management in Ukraine. op Bay Area county officials expressed major frustration this week at how the state has allocated precious vaccines, saying they arent receiving enough doses and the supply is unpredictable. Officials say the chaotic system makes it hard to plan how many doses can be administered on a given day, and how much staff is needed to do so. Many counties also say they have the capacity to administer many more doses, if only they could obtain them from the state. As local hospitals grapple with a record surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths, California has fallen behind almost every other state in its pace of vaccinations. Lawmakers and medical professionals are calling on the California Department of Public Health to provide more transparency on its distribution plan or, at least, a little more predictability for how many doses counties will get each week. It is difficult to plan, said a San Francisco Department of Public Health spokeswoman. It is like you are having a wedding for 200 people and the caterer says you might get food for 25 people or might get food for 500 people. It is very challenging. The amount of vaccine that counties get every week also varies widely. San Francisco received 3,900 doses in the first week of January and then 11,825 the following week. Next week, the county was told it will receive 4,275 doses a huge drop with no reason given. While the bulk of Californias doses are being given to large health care providers, like Kaiser and Sutter Health, county health departments are also responsible for vaccinating tens of thousands of frontline workers and those without insurance. Darrel Ng, a California Department of Public Health spokesman, said counties will begin seeing larger quantities of the vaccine and more predictability in the supply as manufacturing ramps up. Californias supply is controlled by the federal government. Still, county officials say the lack of predictability has put them at a major disadvantage. You dont know how many volunteers you need, how many chairs to put out or if its worth it (to set up a site) if you dont know when the vaccine is going to come, and how many youre going to get, said Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF. Their hands are tied. San Francisco has received 33,975 doses so far, and 12,330 shots have been given to people as of Thursday. According to the county, the health department anticipates that all of the available doses will be used in the next week and is requesting another large volume order from the state. However, the county said it is still hindered by inconsistent distribution and operational challenges. That includes: Some doses being allocated to facilities that are still scaling up their operations, and uncertainty over what brand of vaccine they will be getting Pfizer or Moderna. The brand matters because people need two doses of the same vaccine, several weeks apart. Much of the available supply is also being set aside for second doses. In Santa Clara County, County Executive Dr. Jeff Smith said the Public Health Department asked for 100,000 doses Sunday, but was told Tuesday it would receive only 6,000. Meanwhile, Marin experienced the opposite problem this week: 6,000 more doses than officials were expecting. Matt Willis, the county public health officer, said the extra doses were exactly the problem we want, but it was challenging to suddenly scale up the distribution plan. The Marin County Board of Supervisors sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday, saying the county has the infrastructure ready and available for a much more robust public health COVID-19 vaccine program. But the problem is the limited supply the county has been allotted. Dennis Rodoni, president of the Board of Supervisors, noted that nearly 30% of Marins population is over the age of 60. He urged the governor to prioritize counties with high risk populations, as well as readiness to deliver vaccinations in much greater volume. Every state in the country is dealing with a nationally limited vaccine supply, and constantly shifting regulations from the Trump administration. But California has been particularly slow in getting shots into peoples arms: of the approximately 3.5 million doses the state has received, 975,293 had been given as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That amounts to about 28% of shots used putting California far behind the majority of the states. Nearly 50 state lawmakers sent a letter to Newsom on Wednesday, demanding a reliable forecast and weekly updates for how much vaccine each county is going to get over the next month. We are all aware of the limited number of vaccines that have been made available to the states, the letter said. But we believe that we need to plan for a more effective and efficient roll out of these vaccines so we can further improve the public health of Californians and start rebuilding our state. The state health department is working on speeding up the vaccine distribution. In the meantime, the agency told The Chronicle on Wednesday that it doesnt plan to change the current process for sending vaccines to localities and hospitals. The state is expected to launch a website and call center next week so people have a better sense of when they are eligible for a vaccine. Newsom also loosened the state guidelines Wednesday to allow those 65 and older to receive the vaccine. But those moves wont address the criticism from county officials. Some counties are unclear about how and when the newly eligible population will be able to get their shots. The San Mateo County Health Department said Thursday that it doesnt have enough doses of the vaccine to move into the next phase and vaccinate those over 65, and will instead continue focusing on vaccinating health care workers. The state distributes doses to each county based on guidance from the federal government. The bulk of Californias supply has gone to regional health care systems, like Kaiser and Sutter. That system has also frustrated local politicians, who say they have been left in the dark about how many vaccines are available to their residents through private providers. Lawmakers in Santa Clara and San Francisco have called on the large health care systems to regularly disclose how many doses they have been given by the state. Meanwhile, as California struggles to ramp up its the vaccine distribution, more than 450 Californians are dying every day from COVID-19. This is awful, said Gandhi, the UCSF infection disease specialist. The irony is that you can only get out of this with vaccines. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Catherine Ho contributed to this report. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices. Ex-construction official faces sentencing in spaceport bribery case in February RAPSI 10:53 15/01/2021 MOSCOW, January 15 (RAPSI) Prosecutors have demanded a 13.5-year prison sentence for ex-deputy chief of the Federal Agency for Special Construction (Spetsstroy) Alexander Mordovets charged with bribery and abuse of office during the construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome, RAPSI has been told in the press service of Moscows Babushkinsky District Court. Additionally, they asked the court to impose a heavy fine (over 96 million rubles ($1.3 million) - editorial comment) and prohibit him from holding certain public posts for 7 years. His sentencing is scheduled for February 4. According to the investigation, Mordovets has received more than 32 million rubles from one of the construction companies. However, the construction organization has failed to work out prepaid expenses and was declared bankrupt that caused damage worth over 120 million rubles (about $2 million) to the state. The construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome, due to become Russia's main launch site, began in 2012. The first launch vehicle operation was carried out on April 28, 2016. Dozens of cases over embezzlement during the space centers construction have been launched in several Russian regions. Svein Andersen, 67 years-old resident of 'Ellingsrud home' and first in Norway to receive the vaccine is given the Pfizer-Biontech Covid-19 corona virus vaccine by Nurse Maria Golding in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 27, 2020. (Fredrik Hagen/NTB/AFP via Getty Images) 23 Die in Norway After Receiving Pfizer CCP Virus Vaccine Norway has changed its COVID-19 vaccination guide to state that very frail people should no longer receive the jab, citing 13 post-vaccine deaths in the country from side effects that appear to be linked to Pfizer and partner BioNTechs mRNA vaccine. If you are very frail, you should probably not be vaccinated, Steinar Madsen at the Norwegian Medicines Agency told reporters Thursday. The change in guidance from the government agency and the National Institute of Public Health comes after it linked the deaths in the elderly and frail individuals to side effects of the vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. The country has so far reported a total of 23 post-vaccine deaths out of roughly 25,000 shots. After examining 13 of the deaths, the agency said side effects from the mRNA vaccines may have led to deaths. Those who died were old and frail, according to initial reports, with all aged 80 and above. The reports might indicate that common side effects from mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have led to deaths in some frail patients, said Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician at the agency. The remaining deaths are yet to be assessed. Madsen emphasized that many thousands of elderly and frail people have been vaccinated without a fatal outcome. Vaccinations against the CCP virus with Pfizer and BioNTechs vaccine began on Dec. 27 in the country. Oslo nursing home residents were among the first to be vaccinated. Norway, which is part of the European single market but is not a member of the European Union, said in August it would get access to the vaccines that the EU obtains via deals negotiated with pharmaceuticals companies. Pfizers vaccine is reported to have an efficacy rate of 95 percent and no serious safety concerns. In November 2020, reports of side effects emerged from a Pfizer vaccine trial of more than 43,500 volunteers. Some noted injection site pain and aches comparable to the flu jab, while one test subject likened it to a severe hangover. Stanley Wang, an Australian man who lives in Los Angeles, told Australias ABC News that the side effects were like experiencing a hangover. Side effects are equivalent to a severe hangover where you get headaches and dont feel so well from it, and that lasts on average two days, but some people have reported up to five days, he told the outlet. Glenn Deshields, a 44-year-old volunteer from Austin, Texas, told Fox News in an interview that after taking the first shot, he experienced a lot of injection site pain and that the side-effects were a little more severe than I thought. He said he felt unwell for maybe three to four days, adding that the symptoms following the second injection were much more muted. Patricia Stinchfield of Childrens Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota said during a Nov. 23 meeting with the American Medical Association, told the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that these side effects are immune responses. So if you feel something after vaccination, you should expect to feel that. And when you do, its normal that you have some arm soreness or some fatigue or some body aches or even some fever, she said, according to WebMD. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Pfizer, which produces the vaccine with BioNTech, didnt immediately respond to requests for comment by The Epoch Times. Tom Ozimek and Reuters contributed to this report. Prince Charles has recently launched a recovery plan to help correct the "broken green promises." The Prince of Wales unveiled "Terra Carta," a pioneering multi-national agreement between some of the world's biggest companies to prioritize sustainability amid the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The 72-year-old urged business leaders to support his Earth Charter while bringing prosperity into "harmony with nature, people and planet" for the next hundred years. Speaking at the One Planet Summit in Paris, the future King appealed, "I am making an urgent appeal to leaders, from all sectors and from around the world, to give their support to this Terra Carta, to bring prosperity into harmony with nature, people and planet over the coming decade." In Hot Water But with Prince Charles' beautiful cause and solution, fans of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle accused him of copying the couple because they have already called to tackle climate change. A furious Twitter user called the heir to the throne "sad and pathetic," saying, "Copying from Harry and Meghan again they are out of date boring dull and pathetic, and they copy because they have no originality." Another person said, "Sounds a lot like what Harry has been saying but was called woke for." Some believe that Queen Elizabeth II and the rest of the British royal family are "not relevant" and wants the same popularity the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have. They even criticized Prince Charles' initiative being widely welcomed while criticizing Prince Harry's eco-tourism initiative Travalyst. "Harry is woke, and that's a bad thing. He was skewered for Travalyst. Oh, but let's talk about climate change." Prince Charles' Project According to reports, the royal heir's project has been inspired by the Magna Carta, which outlines fundamental rights and liberations. The Earth Charter was created to give "fundamental rights and values to Nature." The dad-of-two believes that it will finally end the unfulfilled promises on the environment while giving the children of tomorrow the kind of "future they deserve." Prince Charles believes that private businesses will be able to do it. In the last year, he had already spent speaking with world leaders from different industries, the government, technology, and philanthropy to "convene a coalition of the willing" and have promised to become sustainable and bring it to heart. Companies that have signed up for the cause include AstraZeneca, Schroders, HSCB, Bank of America, and Heathrow Airport. READ MORE: KUWTK Season Finale: KarJenner Clan Gives Away Luxurious Parting Gifts to Crew See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles TL;DR: The situation with the RTX 3000 graphics cards is dire. Not only are we dealing with their general lack of availability, but there's also the recent tax on Chinese imports pushing prices up. Into this mix is the skyrocketing value of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, creating mode demand. But Nvidia is contemplating a plan that could address the latter issue: Ampere-based cryptomining cards. Fears that RTX 3000 shortages are set to become even worse arrived a few weeks ago when Bitcoin hit $40,000. Compounding the problems is the 25 percent tax on graphics cards imported from Chinamobos and GPUs had been granted exemption from import taxes in September, but that expired without renewal at the end of last year. The situation has led to EVGA, Zotac, and Asus raising their card prices. While gamers appreciate the RTX 3000 line's ability to offer excellent performance at a lower price, it also makes them appealing to those building mining rigs. It's a situation we've seen before: back in 2017, soaring crypto values saw graphics card prices go through the roof as demand far outweighed supply. However, Nvidia could have a plan up its sleeve. Speaking at the 19th Annual J.P. Morgan Tech/Auto Forum Conference (via SeekingAlpha), Colette Kress, the company's chief financial officer, said: "If crypto demand begins or if we see a meaningful amount, we can also use that opportunity to restart the CMP product line to address ongoing mining demand." CMP is a reference to Nvidia's mining-specific GPUs that lack display outputs, which are unnecessary for mining. Introducing them could help get more RTX 3000 products to gamers, but Nvidia says it needs to see evidence of demand from miners first. "We don't have visibility on how much of the GeForce RTX 30-series end demand comes from mining," said Kress. "So, we don't believe it's a big part of our business today. Gaming demand is very strong, and we think that's larger than our current supply." We've already seen one crypto rig (above) featuring a massive 78 RTX 3080 cards (via Techarp). Assuming the owner paid $1,199 for each one, the rig would have cost $93,522, but will have paid for itself in around 9 - 10 months. AMD expects more of its cards to arrive on the company's website this quarter for their MSRP. Nvidia, meanwhile, warns that supply will be "lean" until April. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has given the go-ahead to the union recognition vote at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham. Workers are expected to vote February 8 on whether to certify the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which is affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, as their official bargaining agent. Working conditions at BHM1, like Amazon warehouses around the world, are exploitative and dangerous. Sara Marie Thrasher, who worked as a stower in the facility before getting fired, told The American Prospect, They work you to death. Its crowded. Sometimes you cant even find a station. We would get reprimanded if our stowing time was above 20 seconds or higher, with rates needing to be done in 8 seconds per item. Another worker Bryon added, It was almost set up like a sweatshop. Workers urgently require organization and leadership to fight for their rights against the transnational retail giant. But they cannot advance their struggle against Amazon by voting in the RWDSU or any other trade union. Far from representing workers, the unions function as bureaucratic tools of corporate management, suppressing democratic discussion among workers and their strivings to improve working conditions and living standards, and protecting the profit interests of the employers. Because of this, the International Amazon Workers Voice (IAWV) calls on BHM1 workers to cast a no vote in the upcoming certification election. Instead, workers should form a rank-and-file committee, democratically controlled by workers themselves, to fight against speedup, poverty wages and management abuse. BHM1 workers should link up with Amazon workers to build similar committees throughout the US and internationally, and to unite with workers across all industries and services to fight the dictatorship that billionaires like Amazons Jeff Bezos impose in their workplaces and over society as whole. Do the RWDSU and UFCW protect workers? As of December 18, over 50,000 meatpacking workers contracted COVID-19 and 262 have died, according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network. A December report by the US Department of Agriculture found that meatpacking counties had COVID-19 infections 10 times the rate of other rural counties. The RWDSU and the UFCW, which have a heavy presence in the meatpacking industry, bear a direct responsibility for these catastrophic conditions. Again and again, they have intervened on behalf of the companies to keep production running amid mass infections and deaths. Last July, UFCW Local 7 intervened to shut down a wildcat strike at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado. At the Tyson pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa, where management took bets on how many workers would become infected, the UFCW even collaborated with those same managers to work out bonus pay for perfect attendance. Over 1,000 workers became infected at this one facility and 5 have died. I feel like [union dues are] a waste of money, one worker told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. the things that they should do, its like they dont want to do. Officials from UFCW 431 ignored dozens of inquiries by the papers reporters. Sheila, a meatpacking worker at a Tyson facility in Tennessee, described to the World Socialist Web Site how the RWDSU functioned, not as a democratic organization of workers, but a bureaucratic tool of management. Theres a Safety Committee inside the plant made up of a group of employees, she said, these union reps were not chosen by rank-and-file workers but by the floor supervisors. One from each department, she said. Asked if they enforced safety, Sheila replied, Not really because they dont see or really care about it. Jessie, another Tyson worker, added that management, with the help of the union, enforces a system of intimidation where workers are afraid to speak out: Everyone is afraid to speak up because they will lose their jobs. Its not right. Over the last forty years, the UFCW has collaborated with the companies in enforcing a drastic decline in the standard of living of meatpacking workers, once the most heavily unionized sections of the workforce whose wages were comparable to workers in auto and steel production. During the 1980s, the UFCW betrayed a series of strikes by Hormel, Morrell, Iowa Beef Processing, Oscar Mayer and other meatpacking workers, which resulted in drastic wage cuts. When workers resisted, as during the 198586 Hormel strike, the UFCW removed the elected leadership, put the local under trusteeship and helped the meatpacking bosses smash the strike. As a result, meatpacking wages, which had been 17 percent higher than average manufacturing wages in 1980, fell to 24 percent lower than manufacturing wages by 2002. The transformation of the unions is not simply the result of the cowardice and corruption of union leaders, although there is plenty of that to go around. It is a result of the pro-capitalist and nationalist character of the unions in the US and around the world. The unions were incapable of a progressive response to globalization and the ability of transnational corporations to shift production anywhere in the world in search of cheaper labor. Instead, the unions collaborated with the corporations to lower wages in the US even as they blamed workers in other countries for the endless givebacks they handed to big business. The experiences of unionized Amazon workers in other countries demonstrates this. The trade unions Verdi and UNI global have launched several strikes in German Amazon warehouses since the outbreak of the pandemic, but the strikes have all been isolated from other sections of workers, and each time ended with the workers defeated and returning to work under similar conditions. Similar outcomes took place with Amazon workers organized by trade unions in France, Spain, Italy and Poland. Amazon workers must form their own rank-and-file committees Teachers, autoworkers and other sections of workers are setting up their own rank-and-file committees around the country, in rebellion against the unions, to fight for the shutdown of schools and nonessential industries and to demand full compensation for all workers until the pandemic is contained and it is safe to return to work and school. Amazon workers at the BW12 plant in Baltimore formed a rank and file committee in December. A member of the committee explained why other Amazon workers should get involved: All Amazonians should have a strong voice to be the agents of change in order to maintain a safe working environment as well as fair labor practices. All Amazonians should fight to build a rank-and-file committee in their facilities. Amazon workers at BHM1 should follow in their footsteps and build their own committee. Starting with what workers need, and not what Jeff Bezos and Amazon claim they can afford, they should organize Amazon workers around a common set of demands. We propose that these demands include: Workers oversight of safety and quotas Regular COVID-19 testing Complete transparency about infections and deaths Abolition of Time off task monitoring An end to poverty wages These rank-and-file committees must combine the fight for day-to-day interests of workers with the fight to mobilize the entire working class in the US and around the world against the capitalist system, which has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives during the pandemic to bolster the wealth of the super-rich. The worlds billionaires have increased their wealth by over $1 trillion over the course of the pandemic. Jeff Bezos net worth rose by 63 percent even as more than 20,000 Amazon workers have been infected. The ill-gotten wealth of Bezos and the other pandemic profiteers must be expropriated to pay for a massive public health program, including a vast increase in production and distribution of vaccines and the shutdown of nonessential production, with wages fully guaranteed. Amazon and other logistics giants must be transformed into public utilities owned collectively and democratically controlled by the working class. Rank-and-file committees must also serve as the means for mobilizing the working class against the threat of dictatorship, including the preparation for a political general strike. The looting of society by the rich is incompatible with democracy and provided the political and social context behind Trumps attempted fascist coup in Washington on January 6. But the Democrats, who support the same herd immunity as Trump, are doing nothing to oppose it, responding instead by calling for bipartisan unity with the very same Republicans who conspired with Trump to overthrow the government. This shows that it is working class, not any faction within the ruling elite, which is the central political force to defeat the right-wing conspirators, including raising the demand for a full congressional investigation into Trumps plot. For help forming a rank-and-file committee, contact us through the World Socialist Web Site International Amazon Workers Voice. If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations, Joe Biden promised in a policy essay just weeks before winning the presidential elections. While Biden recognizes the threat of Irans nuclear program, his teams animosity toward Secretary of State Mike Pompeos maximum pressure strategy risks snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Partisan naysayers who call maximum pressure misguided and ineffective are wrong. Pompeos demands amount to an end to Iranian terrorism, hostage-taking, illicit nuclear work, ballistic missile breakout, and destabilizations of neighbors. To suggest such demands are unrealistic is to normalize rogue behavior. The idea behind pressure is sound. Twice, pressure has reversed Iranian policies. In 1981, Ayatollah Khomeini released U.S. hostages to relieve Irans isolation. Then, in 1988, Khomeini agreed to a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War. He likened that truce to drinking from a chalice of poison, but recognized regime survival required no less. That Tehran has ratcheted up nuclear work under Trump is true, but that does not mean pressure has failed. Not all strategies neatly conform to the American political calendar. Iranian leaders burned through currency resources in the hope they could outlast Trump. In October, the International Monetary Funds estimates of Irans available reserves were at $8.8 billion, a 90% decline from six months before. Irans hard currency hemorrhage is evident throughout the region. In December, I visited Nabitiyeh in the heart of Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon. After Iranian paymasters had slashed Hezbollah salaries, they learned that perhaps only 10% of the groups members joined for ideology; the rest simply had wanted the cash. The slaughter in Syria Hezbollah admits to losing 4,000 fighters and Irans inability to respond in kind to the assassination of its military and nuclear chiefs have tarnished its image further. Iran gambled everything to survive Trump. Partisans may despise Trump, but Biden could use the legacy of Trumps pressure to his advantage without abandoning desire for diplomacy. The Obama administration erred by offering Iran $12 billion simply to come to the table. If Tehrans reserves are nearing zero, Biden might simply slowball diplomacy. Indeed, letting Irans hard currency reserves burn out may be the only way he can succeed. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the Revolutionary Guards Air Force, marked the first anniversary Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimanis death by drawing a redline around Irans missile program. Among the biggest faults of the 2015 nuclear deal was the failure of Western countries to understand that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls up to 40% of Irans economy. Rather than benefit ordinary Iranians, the regime channeled new investment disproportionately into hardline coffers. To offer Iran relief upfront would allow the Guards to insulate itself rather than incentivize cooperation. If regime survival is at stake, Khamenei might divert cash from Hajizadehs and Hezbollahs slush funds into provisions for Iranians. Biden could, however, put a progressive spin on his Iran policy. There is no reason why Democrats should support organized labor everywhere except inside Iran. The George W. Bush administration missed its Lech Walesa moment when, in 2005, Iranian labor activists staged wildcat strikes to demand back wages and protest poor working conditions. Every dollar the Revolutionary Guard-owned companies are forced to pay workers is money unavailable to fund nuclear enrichment or build missiles. Rather than simply give the regime cash transfers, money could be better spent on strike funds and in integrating independent Iranian trade unions into international confederations. Biden might also rally progressives and European Greens to empower Iranian environmentalists. Anyone who has ever visited Tehran witnesses what poor stewards the regime is of the environment. The 18,000-foot Mount Damavand lies less than 50 miles from Tehran, but is visible only a few times each year because of Tehrans thick smog. Rather than empower its environmentalists, the regime imprisons them. Simply put, the regime is both suspicious of any organization that transcends class and politics and fears crossing the Revolutionary Guards, which own the worst polluting companies. The Islamic Republic played the waiting game to survive Trump. Biden could return the favor to strip Iran of its nuclear ambitions. He might talk but without artificial urgency. And while his chief supporters might want to blunt sanctions, Biden might channel aid to the Iranian most oppressed by the regime rather than those who run it. To succeed, diplomacy should be both smart and bipartisan. Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. MUSKEGON, MI Though the COVID-19 vaccine remains in short supply, West Michigan health agencies are encouraging senior citizens to sign up for vaccination appointments and clinics. Health departments in Muskegon and Ottawa counties have online registration forms where citizens age 65 and older can express interest in receiving a vaccine. Those who fill out the form will be contacted when a vaccination appointment is available for them. The forms, as well as those for other West Michigan communities, can be found online at https://vaccinatewestmi.com/register. Vaccinations have been limited due to a lack of vaccine, but thats expected to get better and better as time goes on, Dr. Jerry Evans, chief of staff at Mercy Health, said during a press conference Friday, Jan. 15. Related: 4% of Michigan adults vaccinated so far; see numbers in your county Those now eligible for the vaccine are those ages 65 and older, essential frontline workers, teachers, childcare workers and those in congregate living facilities. The Muskegon County Health Department and Mercy Health are using the same registration form. The direct link to the form is https://lfforms.healthwest.net/Forms/muskegonvaccinereq. Those who dont have Internet access or who need help filling out the form can call the health department at (231) 724-8856. As of Thursday, Jan. 14, nearly 14,400 seniors age 65 and older had filled out the Muskegon County vaccine interest form. Public Health Muskegon County Director Kathy Moore said priority is being given to residents over age 75. We ask for your patience, we thank you for your patience we definitely will follow up with those individuals on that registry, Moore said. The direct link to Ottawa Countys form is https://ottawacounty.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9NX1bJKKwiiIMMl. The department is advising that appointments likely will not be available for several weeks. Those who cant fill out the form, can call 211 for help. Health officials warned of a fraudulent vaccine registration form that asks for a Social Security number and payment method. That form should not be used, they said. Also on MLive: COVID deaths rise in Muskegon County as health department continues vaccine wait Newest vaccine timeline pushes lower priority groups further into 2021 Michigan small businesses hurt by COVID-19 orders eligible for $20,000 Three months after Nancy Spector stepped down as artistic director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum amid charges of racism, the museum named Naomi Beckwith, who is Black, to the position of deputy director and chief curator. If you look out over the cultural landscape particularly in the U.S. she is quite obviously one of the outstanding leaders of today with a huge potential as well, said Richard Armstrong, the museums director. Shes very adept at issues of identity and, particularly, multidisciplinary art. We have to think about the Guggenheims growth over the next few years, so it needs to be a person with enormous capacity. Ms. Beckwith, 44, who since 2018 has served as senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, will oversee collections, exhibitions, publications, curatorial programs and archives in her new position, which starts in June. She will also provide strategic direction, the museum said. In an interview, Ms. Beckwith said her work will include bringing greater diversity to museum collections and exhibitions. (Newser) Police and the FBI are continuing to track down suspects involved in last week's Capitol riotincluding a man seen on video beating a police officer with an American flag. Peter Stager, 41, was arrested at his attorney's office Thursday night, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports. He has been charged in federal court with one count of obstructing a police officer from his duties during a civil disorder, and more charges are likely to be added. Investigators say Stager was part of a mob that grabbed a Washington, DC, officer who was protecting a Capitol entrance, dragged him down stairs, and beat him with objects including the flagpole, reports the Wall Street Journal. story continues below A man identified as Stager was seen on video taken outside the Capitol saying, "Everybody in there is a treasonous traitor. Death is the only remedy for what's in that building." Others arrested Thursday include a Delaware man who was seen carrying a Confederate flag outside the Senate chamber and a retired Pennsylvania firefighter accused of throwing a fire extinguisher that hit three police officers in the head outside the Capitol. Robert Sanford, 55, was arrested after the FBI received a tip from one of his friends, according to charging documents. Sanford faces charges including assaulting a police officer and unlawfully entering the Capitol, the AP reports. Authorities say the fire extinguisher Sanford threw isn't the one that fatally injured Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. (Read more Capitol attack stories.) As President Donald Trump faces impeachment for the second time over inciting the Capitol Hill violence, there are talks doing the rounds of vice-president-elect Kamala Harris presiding over his trial. Following the presidents impeachment in the US House of Representatives, his indictment will be sent to the US Senate, which has the power to hold a trial and subsequently convict the Republican leader. According to a report by The Times of India, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said he will allow the impeachment procedure to be tried by the US Senate only after the departure of Donald Trump from his office on January 20. He further stated that he would be facilitating Kamala Harris who by virtue of the powers vested in her in the capacity of a vice-president would be presiding over a Senate deadlocked at 50-50. Also read: Who is Mitch McConnell, The Veteran Senate Leader Who Could Decide Trumps Fate? Some analysts are of the opinion that though precedent calls for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court to preside over the trial, the vice-president, as the constitutionally designated President of the Senate, could also be in the chair. In any case, Kamala Harris will have a tie-breaking vote in a chamber locked at 50-50. Back in 2020, when the US was preparing for Presidential elections and Donald Trump was the sole Republican Party candidate for a second White House run, had taunted Kamala Harris for dropping out of the Democratic nomination race. Taking to Twitter, he had made a snarky comment saying "We'll miss you!". Kamala Harris had then shot back at him saying, "Dont worry, Mr. President. Ill see you at your trial." Also read: 'Tried to Live by Example She Set': Kamala Harris Writes about Mother's Values, Her Influence As per reports, the trial by current Chief Justice John Roberts, even though distrusted by Trump could be in his interest than the prospect of placing his fate in the hands of Kamala Harris and surrogate turned ally Republican leader Mitch McConnell. To convict Trump, 17 of the 50 Republicans in the new Senate would have to join the 50 Democrats to meet the necessary two-thirds threshold. But some analysts have pointed out that outcome depends on those present and voting. As things stand, at least five Republican Senators are expected to vote to convict Trump if the matter comes to the Senate. Although some Congressmen are said to have expressed fear for their lives in going against Trump in the house. The steel sector in Northern Ireland is confused and uncertain after it emerged a surprise 25% tariff will be imposed on imports not from Great Britain. At least one trader was charged the 25% on product that had been cleared in the Republic of Ireland, while others have imported steel here without realising they face the extra cost, according to a leading market analyst. Manufacturers and traders in Northern Ireland had no idea this extra charge imposed by HMRC would be added to their costs until informed by analysts and advisers last Friday. Under the Brexit trade deal, traders and manufacturers in GB are protected for at least six months by a quota safeguard, meaning that the 25% tariff does not immediately apply. But negotiators did not include NI in the quota arrangement, according to market watchers. Analysts Argus flagged up the extra charge after a briefing by UK customs and HMRC. Traders were informed in a conference call with government agencies. "The duty has been imposed without warning," Argus said in a briefing paper. "Following Brexit, the UK has its own quarterly steel safeguard for January-June 2021, mirroring the European system," the company said. "The quota started on 1 January, after the end of the Brexit transition period. Northern Ireland is not included in the quota, but all steel - unless it originates in the UK - will still incur 25% safeguard duties." Seamus Murchan, co-owner of Lambeg-based KME Steelworks, said his firm attempted to secure as much product as possible ahead of the end of the transition period, because of the uncertainty. "But when we went to our main suppliers, reliable and of quality, we found the supply was limited," said Mr Murchan, whose company sources from suppliers elsewhere in the UK so will be affected by the 25% tariff. "It has been no better since the start of the year and still waiting on some." Mr Murchan said the firm, which designs and manufactures steel moulds for the construction and agriculture sector among other products, said customers are aware of the global price issues, but the company has tried to hold off increases as long as possible. He warned that there will be price hikes in the near future. The safeguard refers to protecting European steel from US imports, in place for several years. "At least one trader has already been charged 25% duty for material that cleared into the Republic of Ireland, while others have been sending steel into Northern Ireland without realising they would have to make such a payment," the analysts reported. This highlights "the uncertainty and confusion" surrounding steel sold into Northern Ireland that does not originate in Great Britain. A BANNED driver put a Spar receipt on his windscreen and tried to pass it off as an insurance disc, a court heard. Gardai stopped father-of-three Derek Mason (41) at a checkpoint and found the receipt, with a month and year written on it, displayed where his insurance should have been. Judge Bryan Smyth sentenced him to four months in prison. The accused, with an address at Rutland Cottages, Dublin 1, admitted having no insurance or licence and using a false insurance disc. The prosecuting garda told Dublin District Court he was conducting a checkpoint at Buckingham Street Lower last February 4 when he saw a car driven by the accused approaching. A receipt from Spar on Talbot Street was in the window instead of an insurance disc, with 10/20 written on it. The accuseds previous convictions include several for motoring offences. Mason worked part-time in his sons garage as a valet, his barrister Donal Pattison said. He was a disqualified driver, and on the day he had been let down by a friend and was on his way back from a school run when he was stopped by gardai. He admitted he had taken a stupid risk. That is one thing, but putting a Spar receipt on the window where an insurance disc would usually be placed? the judge said. Mr Pattison said he had no other explanation. Sentencing the accused, the judge fixed recognisances in the event of an appeal. Mason pleaded not guilty to unlawful possession of a saw blade as a weapon in the same incident. The judge dismissed that charge. The garda said the implement was found in the back seat of the car, and Mr Patt-ison said it was rounded off on one end. If you poked yourself with the other end you could do damage, the garda said. Mason had got the car two days previously and was unaware the item was there, Mr Pattison said. The accused said he had never seen the blade before, and the judge said he would give him the benefit of the doubt. 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. 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. KALAMAZOO, MI Kalamazoo County is moving into a new phase of COVID-19 vaccinations, as hospital locations begin to offer doses to adults ages 65 and older. Heres the latest Kalamazoo County information about vaccination clinics, testing and more: On Saturday, Jan. 16, Bronson Healthcare facilities in Battle Creek, Portage, Mattawan and South Haven will start administering both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine to patients who are age 65 and older, according to a press release. Those locations are: Bronson Fieldstone Center, 165 N. Washington Ave., Battle Creek Bronson Vaccine Clinic, 6901 Portage Road, Portage Bronson Vaccine Clinic, 52375 N. Main St., Mattawan Bronson Wellness Center, 950 S. Bailey Ave., South Haven Patient sign-ups for people 65 and older began Thursday, Jan. 14. Patients 65 and older can click here to sign up though Bronsons MyChart system. There is no phone number to call, Bronson said. After announcing appointments for people 65 and older, Bronson posted on its website: At this time, all COVID-19 vaccine appointments for adults 65 and older have been filled, and we are unable to accept new appointment requests. More appointment times will be offered each week as supply arrives, the hospital said, directing people to frequently check the hospitals vaccination page for updates. Walk-ins are unable to be accepted at this time, the hospital said. Related: What you need to know about COVID-19 vaccination program in Michigan The Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services Department is still working to complete vaccinations of healthcare workers and others in Phase 1A. Until that first phase is completed, county health officials do not expect to release additional information about the timeline for the next group. Waitlist forms are now available on the county website for those in Phase 1B, which includes frontline essential workers and people 65 and older. A total of 12,501 total vaccine doses were given out in Kalamazoo County as of Jan. 14, according to state data. Need a test? Call the COVID-19 Hotline at 888-535-6136 and press 1, or use the states test locator. As of Jan. 14, Kalamazoo County has recorded 11,900 confirmed coronavirus cases and 274 deaths. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Service's latest preliminary COVID-19 vaccination timeline, published Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021. (Courtesy image | MDHHS) Read more: Watch as former Gov. Rick Snyder gets arraigned on charges related to Flint water crisis Kalamazoo man responsible for selling fatal dose of fentanyl will serve 25-35 years in prison Commissioners want accountability for city manager who secretly fired police chief Something important almost got lost in the fireworks of the Galaxy S21 unveiling Samsung is launching two new S Pens, including a Pro model. The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G supports both, in fact, you can use any current or old S Pen (so if you have an old Note laying around, you can use its stylus). The new S Pen is lager in all dimensions, making it more comfortable. This is made possible since the stylus doesnt have to fit inside a thin phone, instead it is attached to the side of select cases. We should point out that this is a passive stylus (as in theres no battery inside), so the Bluetooth functionality from recent Galaxy Notes is missing. However, thanks to the Wacom technology, the S21 Ultra can detect when you press the button to trigger certain actions and shortcuts (as long as the S Pen is near the display). Then theres the S Pen Pro. This one is even larger, but does offer the Bluetooth features, e.g. using the stylus as a remote shutter key or controlling the music player. The Pro will be available later this year, its price was not revealed. As for the basic S Pen for Galaxy S21 Ultra, that is $40 by itself or you can get a $70 case that comes bundled with the stylus. Or, again, you can use an old S Pen you have. The S Pen Pro is not exclusive to the S21 Ultra, by the way, it will work on existing S Pen-capable devices as soon as they are updated to One UI 3.1. The list includes the Galaxy Note10 and Note20 as well as tablets like the Galaxy Tab S6 and S7. Perhaps an even bigger deal is that Samsung is opening up the S Pen to third-party companies that sell Wacom-based styluses. Its not quite clear if these will work from day 1 or if a software update is necessary. Heres a quick look at some supported models: Compatible styluses: Hi-Uni Digital Mitsubishi Pencil Staedtler Noris digital LAMY AL-star black EMR Check out our announcement coverage wrap-up for more on the Galaxy S21 series and other products that Samsung unveiled yesterday. Adventus Mining Announces Board Adjustments and Increased Insider Ownership Posted by Publisher Internet Adventus Mining Corporation (?Adventus? or the ?Company) (TSX-V: ADZN, OTCQX: ADVZF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR9WfzsvVe0&t=14s ) announces adjustments to its board of directors to better comply with corporate governance guidelines and to reflect internal business changes to some of our strategic shareholders. Mark Wellings, one of Adventus? original independent directors, will take over the role of Chairman of Adventus, with Brian Dalton, Adventus?s founding Chairman and current President and CEO of Altius Minerals Corporation (?Altius?) announcing his intention to not stand for re-election at the Company?s upcoming AGM being planned for June 2021. Brian expects to continue in his role as a non-independent director of Adventus until that time and subsequently has agreed to remain available as needed as an advisor to the Company.?? Brian Dalton commented, ?I am very proud to have played a role in the founding and development of the Company over these past several years but due to increasing time commitments related to other parts of Altius?s business, I believe it is in the best governance level interest of Adventus that I now step back into a less intensive role. This decision has been made easier by my complete confidence in Mark, Christian and the full board and management teams to execute on strategies and to represent the interests of all shareholders, including Altius, in a most able fashion going forward.? I will continue to remain available in an advisory capacity once my current board term expires and can further convey that Altius intends to continue to be an enthusiastic and supportive major shareholder of Adventus as its impressive business development record continues to build.? The Company also announces that Roberto Salas will replace Roberto Dunn as Consorcio Nobis nominee to the Adventus board subject to TSX-V approval. Mr. Salas recently succeeded Roberto Dunn as the CEO of Nobis. Roberto is an Ecuadorian-born economist, and former CEO and board member of several multinational corporations in Chile and Brazil. He is currently the Vice Chairman and CEO of Consorcio Nobis, editorial provider to Ecuador\-\-s El Comercio and AmericaEconomia.com, and a professor of management at the Catholic University of Guayaquil-Ecuador. Roberto has an MBA from Esade-Adolfo Ibanez Business School, and he studied management programs at Wharton and Kellogg Business Schools.\ The Company?s also notes that insiders of the Corporation have acquired more than 1.25 million shares of Adventus over the past month and that incoming director Mr. Salas has in particular acquired 782,500 shares of Adventus for his personal account.? Mark Wellings commented, ?The Board and I would like to thank Brian for his foresight, passion and expertise in founding Adventus several years ago and his stewardship as Chairman throughout the last few years. Brian was instrumental in championing our current management team and exceptional asset base in Ecuador. Furthermore, the Board and I would also like to thank Roberto Dunn for his unwavering service and support over the last 20 months, including his public markets outreach and Ecuadorian insight.? About Adventus Adventus Mining Corporation is a unique copper-gold exploration and development company, focused primarily on Ecuador. Its strategic shareholders include Altius Minerals Corporation, Greenstone Resources LP, Wheaton Precious Metals Corp., and the Nobis Group of Ecuador. Adventus is leading the exploration and engineering advancement of the Curipamba copper-gold project in Ecuador as part of an earn-in agreement to obtain a 75% ownership interest. In addition, Adventus is engaged in a country-wide exploration alliance with its partners in Ecuador, which has incorporated the Pijili and Santiago copper-gold projects to date. Adventus also controls an exploration project portfolio in Ireland with South32 as funding partner as well as an investment portfolio of equities in several junior exploration companies. Adventus is based in Toronto, Canada, and is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol ADZN and trades on the OTCQX under the symbol ADVZF.? ? ? ?? 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. This press release contains ?forward -looking information? within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. 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 ?believes?, ?anticipates?, ?expects?, ?is expected?, ?scheduled?, ?estimates?, ?pending?, ?intends?, ?plans?, ?forecasts?, ?targets?, or ?hopes?, or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results ?may?, ?could?, ?would?, ?will?, ?should? ?might?, ?will be taken?, or ?occur? and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information herein includes, but is not limited to, statements that address activities, events, or developments that Adventus expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future. Although Adventus have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events, or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Adventus undertake to update any forward-looking information except in accordance with applicable securities laws. For further information from Adventus, please contact Christian Kargl-Simard, President and Chief Executive Officer, at 1-416-230-3440 or christian@adventusmining.com. Please also visit the Adventus website at www.adventusmining.com and the company?s LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/adventus-mining-corporation. Police examine the scene after a deadly bomb explosion outside a Roman Catholic church in Jolo, the capital of Sulu province in southern Philippines, Jan. 27, 2019. A young Indonesian who was arrested in the southern Philippines on suspicion of preparing for a suicide bombing mission claimed that her now-dead parents had compelled her to join the Islamic State group, the regions top military commander told BenarNews. Rezky Fantasya Rullie (alias Cici and Nini Isarani) who is believed to be in her teens or early twenties was allowed to meet with Indonesian Consul-General Dicky Fabrian on Wednesday, said Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan, the chief of the militarys Western Mindanao Command who attended the meeting. The meeting was private, in the confinement areas where Cici is being held, Vinluan said Friday. The suspect detailed her forced joining into the militant group. Rullies Indonesian parents both blew themselves up in a twin-bombing at a church on Jolo Island in the southern Philippines two years ago, according to Philippine authorities. Rullie herself was allegedly being groomed to become a suicide bomber, officials here said. Last October, Philippine troops arrested Rullie with two Filipinas suspected of plotting suicide attacks and who were married to members of the Abu Sayyaf Group, a pro-Islamic State (IS) group based in the Philippine south. Vinluan said Fabrian wanted to meet with Rullie to make sure if she is really an Indonesian by seeing her in person. The meeting took place at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group detention facility in southern Zamboanga city, where she is being held. Cici narrated that, at first, she was not aware and then there was this forced marriage to one of the suicide bombers, Vinluan told BenarNews. He was referring to Andi Baso, a suspected Indonesian suicide bomber in training who is believed to have been slain by Philippine government troops in August 2020. However, his body has not been recovered. Vinluan said the Indonesian diplomat was also accompanied by Indonesian police and military officials, but they were not permitted to talk to the suspect. The discussion between Fabrian and Rullie delved into her personal life how she came here, and how many times she went to the mountains, Vinluan said. Her parents Rullie Rian Zeke and Ulfah Handayani Saleh killed themselves in a twin-bomb attack at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Jolo town during a Sunday Mass service in January 2019. The bombing killed 23 people in all. Vinluan said the young militant was brought to Jolo by her parents, and that two of her siblings, a 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, remained somewhere in a mountainous area on Jolo Island. The military had earlier said that Rullie was in her teens or early twenties. Rullie and Baso were believed to have been under the wing of Mundi Sawadjaan, a bomb-maker who masterminded another attack that killed 15 people near the same church last August, officials said. Mundi is the nephew of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, the IS commander in the Philippines and a senior Abu Sayyaf leader. The elder Sawadjaan is said to have been slain in a clash in Jolo, but his body has not been recovered and the military has also not confirmed such reports. Vinluan said the Indonesian consul-general told him that Jakarta had committed to deploy more assets to safeguard the porous common frontier between the neighboring countries in the fight against terrorism. Under a trilateral agreement, the Philippines and next-door neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia have been conducting joint patrols to secure their shared sea borders from militants and piracy. Freed policemen ordered re-arrested Meanwhile, a regional trial court in Jolo has ordered the re-arrest of nine police officers for their alleged involvement in killing four Army intelligence specialists who were hunting down suspected IS militants on the island last year. The police officers, who were dismissed from the service on Jan. 1, were released from custody on a technicality on Tuesday because authorities could no longer hold them after the regional trial court had failed to issue arrest warrants for them. We urge the respondent police personnel to surrender else the AFP, the PNP and other agencies of government will vigorously search, find, and deliver them to court without delay to face trial for multiple murder, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Edgard Arevalo said in a statement, referring to the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police. In late June, the four soldiers had been traveling in a vehicle, which the Jolo police force flagged down. Based on an initial investigation, the soldiers had clearly identified themselves but were still allegedly gunned down by the cops. Attack in Lanao del Norte Elsewhere in the volatile southern Philippines, military forces were searching for unknown perpetrators who killed a civilian and three Army soldiers in an attack in Lanao del Norte province, the Western Mindanao Command said Friday in a news release posted on Facebook. We are still establishing the circumstances and we do not have any other information at the moment, Brig. Gen. Facundo Palafox, commander of the 2nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade, said in a statement. The fourth victim is a civilian and is yet to be identified while the names of the slain soldiers are withheld pending notification to their next of kin, he said. Jeoffrey Maitem and Mark Navales, and Froilan Gallardo and Richel V. Umel, contributed to this report from Cotabato City and Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. JACKSON, Miss. (WTVA) -- Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves has extended his coronavirus mandate issued last month. The governor issued the order this afternoon just a couple of hours before it was scheduled to expire. The new date is February 3 at 5 p.m. Reeves removed five counties for a mask mandate in the order, but added two additional counties. All counties in the WTVA viewing area remain under the order to wear a mask while in public. Retrictions saying no more than 10 people indoors and no more than 50 people outdoors remain in effect. He is also requiring masks to be worn inside all public schools and businesses. The order still limits crowds at indoor sporting events for grades K-12 to no more than four spectators per student or 250 ticketed spectators, whichever is less. Sorry! This content is not available in your region The Ukrainian Internet Association asks the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) not to consider the issue of Datagroup's concentration of 100% of the Volia Group of Companies under a simplified procedure, since such actions may lead to a new entity gaining the opportunity to control the inter-operator telecom market. "We fully share the position of Lanet Network LLC and other members of the association that, as a result of concentration, a new business entity will be able to control the inter-operator telecom market [...] This, in our opinion, will inevitably lead to an increase in the cost of telecommunications services, both for legal entities and individuals, and will also give an opportunity to the entity again to dictate the conditions of activity in the telecom markets for other participants," according to the association's public appeal to the AMCU. According to the Ukrainian Internet Association, consideration of the issue of Datagroup's concentration of 100% Volia under a simplified procedure will lead to a superficial, biased and incomplete study of the state of the Internet access markets and access to TV packages, since the interests of all market participants whose activities will be affected will not be taken into account due to concentration. The association asks the head of the AMCU to involve other market participants in the case of concentration, in particular those whose interests may be affected by the consequences of such concentration (including Lanet), as well as the association itself, as an entity uniting a large number of participants of telecom market of Ukraine. As reported, the Datagroup national operator of fixed communications and digital services has reached an agreement to acquire 100% of the national provider of telecommunications and content services of Volia group of companies (formerly Volia Kabel). Datagroup has reached the agreement on the acquisition of 100% of the Volia group of companies in Ukraine with the full support of the EEGF II Horizon Capital Fund. Insurers, policyholders and industry observers have issued comments on the UK Supreme Courts ruling that insurers should pay small businesses for many business interruption claims from the COVID-19 lockdowns. The UK Supreme Court dismissed appeals by six insurers Hiscox, RSA, QBE, Argenta, Arch and MS Amline determining that many thousands of policyholders will now have their claims for coronavirus-related business interruption losses paid. The insurers had argued that business interruption policies contained pandemic exclusions and should not be covered. No further appeals will be allowed. The full judgment is available on the Supreme Court website. Here are some of the initial reactions to the Supreme Court ruling: Hiscox Hiscox estimated its 2020 COVID-19-related business interruption claims had risen by $48 million as a result of the ruling, reaching a total for the year of approximately 136 million (US$186 million). For this year, business interruption claims to the end of March 2021 are estimated at $20 million, a Hiscox representative said. The insurer welcomed the clarity provided by the final judgment, saying it has begun to pay the claims. Hiscox noted that fewer than one-third of Hiscoxs 34,000 UK business Interruption policies are affected by the decision. Moodys Investors Service Todays judgment in the FCAs business interruption insurance test case is credit negative for UK insurers and reinsurers as the Supreme Court has found in favor of policyholders, said Dominic Simpson, a vice president at Moodys Investors Service in London, in a statement, noting that the financial impact of the judgment on individual insurers should be manageable, net of reinsurance. However, precedents have been set which could widen the circumstances in which policyholders make future claims. More positively for insurers, most SME business interruption policies are designed primarily to protect property damage interruption, and do not cover pandemic-related claims, and the clarity provided by the judgment will help end damaging disputes with clients, he added. Fitch Ratings Fitch Ratings said the ratings of UK non-life insurers are likely to be unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling. The ruling largely went in favor of policyholders but the ultimate claims costs should still be within Fitchs rating sensitivities for the insurers affected, said Fitch, noting that updated claims estimates published by insurers in response to the ruling suggest modest increases to previous estimates. For example, Fitch said, Hiscox will add US$48 million of reserves (net of reinsurance) to the US$130 million it had in place at the end of the third quarter of 2020 for BI claims. Its total BI reserves, net of reinsurance, will now equate to 7% of its total end-1H20 equity of US$2.4 billion. The Association of British Insurers The insurance industry expects to pay out over 1.8 billion [$2.5 billion] in COVID-19 related claims across a range of products, including business interruption policies. Customers who have made claims that are affected by the test case will be contacted by their insurer to discuss what the judgment means for their claim, said Huw Evans, director general of the Association of British Insurers (ABI). All valid claims will be settled as soon as possible and in many cases the process of settling claims has begun. Some payments have already been made where valid business interruption claims have not been impacted by the test case ruling, he added. We recognize this has been a particularly difficult time for many small businesses and naturally regret the COVID-19 restrictions have led to disputes with some customers. We will continue to work together as an industry to ensure customers have the clarity they need when it comes to what they can expect from their business insurance policies. Airmic The Supreme Courts landmark ruling today on the FCAs business interruption (BI) insurance case for COVID-19 claims is one of the most important legal issues of the last decade. Affected policyholders will welcome the ruling to unanimously dismiss insurers appeals and to substantially allow all four of the FCAs appeals in favour of policyholders, said John Ludlow, CEO of Airmic, the UK risk management association.. To provide some scale to the significance of this mornings Supreme Court ruling, the FCA has estimated that some 370,000 policyholders would be affected by todays Supreme Court decision, paving the way for up to 1.2 billion [$1.6 billion] in BI claims payments, across 700 policy types, from 60 insurers, commented Julia Graham, Airmics deputy CEO and technical director. Hiscox Action Group The judgment should be a massive boost to all businesses reeling from a third lockdown who can now demand their claims are paid, said Richard Leedham, a partner at law firm Mishcon de Reya who represents the Hiscox Action Group. Leedham was quoted in an article published by Reuters. The hope and expectation of our clients is that the claim adjustment process starts immediately and that insurers will not continue to cause further distress by further unnecessary delay, he added in the article. Reed Smith, UK Law Firm It can be said, without fear of hyperbole, that in principle at least this really is a catastrophic outcome for insurers. The finding on causation will have very significant consequences for business interruption policies and many other types of policy. If it werent for remote working, we would likely have heard the collective groan of insurers as the Supreme Court issued its verdict, commented Mark Pring, partner at Reed Smith, a UK law firm. Lord Hamblen, handing down the Judgment for the Supreme Court this morning, reminded us that potentially up to 370,000 policyholders would be affected by this Judgment. The key headline is that the appeals of the FCA and Hiscox Action Group were substantially allowed and the Insurers appeals were largely dismissed, Pring added. The FCA has certainly made life easier by throwing its weight behind relevant policyholders, ensuring that they dont have to conduct individual battles with insurers, but it is still incumbent on businesses to demonstrate the losses suffered were caused (broadly, and subject to policy language) by the pandemic. This is no easy task, even if the FCA and Supreme Court have sought to make the burden of proof easier, he said. Prior to Judgment today, insurers had been warned not to damage the reputation of the sector by continuing to challenge claims that are backed by some evidence of financial loss in reliance on complex technicalities. The message to insurers is now very clear, return to your offices and, where some evidence of a loss can be provided, prepare to pay out. London & International Insurance Brokers Association (LIIBA) That this decision delivers final clarity on the issue of business interruption is to be welcomed. The FCA is to be congratulated on the speed with which the test case process has allowed us to reach this point. But clients deserve this transparency at the point of purchase not after a legal battle, emphasized Christopher Croft, CEO of the London & International Insurance Brokers Association (LIIBA). The industrys reputation has been damaged by the debate over exactly what is or is not insured, and we need to think hard about how we redress that and introduce absolute clarity into the product our customers buy. Everyone in the insurance value chain needs to be committed to ensuring that customers understand exactly what it is they are getting, in language they recognise and presented in a way which makes sense to them, Croft continued. Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) Todays judgement is a big victory. It cements the high courts decision to grant businesses left on the brink the insurance pay-outs they are rightfully owed. For many, it has been a long and difficult road to get to this stage so this will bring clarity and hope to the thousands of firms which have been left in financial limbo for almost a year, said Mike Cherry, National Chair of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). While this is good news, and while the law has to follow procedure, its disappointing that so many small businesses have had to wait to get the money they desperately need under policies they believed were there to protect them, policies they bought in good faith, he said, explaining that businesses deserve to be protected in a timely way but have been failed by their insurers. Providers must now pay out quickly, and consider the steps they can take to progress these claims in a swift and seamless manner. Any paperwork required of claimants shouldnt be onerous or time consuming, he continued. Small businesses contribute trillions to the economy. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was right to argue that disease or denial of access clauses within interruption policies should trigger pay-outs in the event of coronavirus-linked disruption. We are hugely grateful for its work in this space. Related articles: Topics Claims Business Interruption Lori Van Buren/Albany Times Union ALBANY The Albany City School District says it will send students home with academic materials again Friday in case civil unrest related to next week's presidential inauguration triggers the sudden need for distance learning. "The district is taking this step to assure that students are safe at home in the event of unrest in Albany related to the presidential inauguration next Wednesday, Jan. 20, in Washington, D.C.," the district said in a statement on its website. The rioters that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 were just 100 feet from the officer where Vice President Mike Pence and his family were hiding, according to a report. It took 14 minutes to evacuate Pence from the Senate Chamber after the MAGA mob first broke into the building, according to law enforcement officials and video footage obtained by The Washington Post. Secret Service agents eventually managed to convince the VP to leave and rushed him and his family into an office before they were taken to a second secure location. Less than 60 seconds after Pence was taken to his hideaway, a violent crowd followed a Capitol officer up a flight of stairs - just 33 yards from the office but away from the chamber where many lawmakers still remained. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 came very close to running into Vice President Mike Pence, who was evacuated 14 minutes after the mob first tried to break in. Pictured: Pence presides over a joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 Electoral College results, January 6 After a mob stormed the capital, Pence, his wife and one of his daughters were hiding in a secret office. Pictured: Pence, his wife Karen, and their two daughters Audrey (left) and Charlotte (second from right) wave as they depart Japan from the US naval air facility in Atsugi Pence and his family were taken into hiding one minute before the violent group chased a Capitol police officer, Eugene Goodman, who was leading them away from the Senate, up the stairs. Pictured: Goodman speaks to an angry mob inside the U.S. Capitol, January 6 The landing was just 100 feet from the office Pence was hiding in, and Secret Service agents decided he needed to be taken to a second secure location. Because the leader of the pack, Doug Jensen - seen wearing a black QAnon shirt - was focused on Goodman, he did not notice the hallway leading to the Senate chambers (left and right) According to The Post, at 1.59pm, outgoing Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund received the first reports that the rioters were attempting to break into the Capitol by smashing doors and windows. It was just 14 minutes later, at 2.13pm, that Pence was ushered off the Senate floor and quickly escorted to an office hideaway. Just one minute after Secret Service whisked Pence out of the Senate chamber, at 2.14pm, the pro-Trump mob met Officer Eugene Goodman on a second-floor landing. Officer Goodman heroically led the mob in the wrong direction. The landing was less than 100 feet from the hideaway Pence, his wife and his daughter had hustled into, three anonymous sources told The Post. That means if the rioters had reached the landing just seconds beforehand, they would have seen the Vice President being evacuated. This is especially pertinent because many of the mob were angry that Pence refused to cave to President Trump's demands and overturn the election results. One group of rioters chanted: 'Hang Mike Pence!' while one man left a note on Pence's desk that read: 'It's only a matter of time, justice is coming.' The man, Jacob Chansley of Arizona, also known as the 'QAnon Shaman', was arrested and charged with two felonies and accused Pence of being a child-trafficker while in custody, The Post reported. Prior to the incident, Officer Goodman, had been guarding an entrance to the Senate when the mob breached the Capitol. Goodman went down a corridor to confront the rioters, and was met by a group of President Trump's supporters. As Jensen chases Goodman, he and the mob are met by a group of police in a back corridor outside the Senate. Jensen was later arrested and faces federal charges. Pictured: Trump protesters gesture to police outside the hallway One group of rioters chanted: 'Hang Mike Pence!' as they stormed the Capitol. Pictured: Smoke from pepper-spray ball exploded and used against pro-Trump protesters during storm of the Capital building, January 6 In a recently new clip, unearthed by ProPublica, the mob and Goodman are in a confrontation with one person shouting: 'Where they countin' the votes?!' As it became clear Goodman was outnumbered, he ran up a set of stairs away from the Senate floor, leading the mob with him. Because the leader of the pack, Doug Jensen - seen wearing a black QAnon shirt - was focused on Goodman, he did not notice the hallway leading to the Senate chambers. As Jensen chases Goodman, he and the mob are met by a group of police in a back corridor outside the Senate. Jensen was later arrested and faces federal charges including assault; resisting or impeding an officer; knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; disrupting the orderly conduct of government business. Jacob Chansley of Arizona (in horns), also known as the 'QAnon Shaman', was arrested and charged with two felonies after leaving a note on Pence's desk that read: 'It's only a matter of time, justice is coming' Lawmakers have presented a bipartisan bill recommending the officer, Eugene Goodman, receive the Congressional Gold Medal for his 'bravery' After being in the office, Pence was told by his agents that they recommended he be evacuated from the Capitol. Both times he declined, until the third time in which Secret Service agents said they have to leave right then and there. After Capitol Police determined that the building was secure, Pence returned the Senate Chamber at 8pm, reported The Post. Meanwhile, a group of lawmakers have introduced a bill to award Goodman with the Congressional Gold Medal. US Representatives Nancy Mace, Emanuel Cleaver, II, and Charlie Crist announced the bipartisan bill to honor Goodman for 'his bravery and quick thinking' during last week's insurrection at the Capitol. QAnon Shaman told cops Mike Pence 'is a child-trafficking traitor' and he was glad he left a note for the VP saying 'it's only a matter of time, justice is coming' By Rachel Sharp for DailyMail.com and Chris Jewers for MailOnline and Reuters The man dubbed the 'QAnon Shaman' told the FBI Mike Pence 'is a child-trafficking traitor' and said he was glad he sat in his Senate chair where he left the Vice President a threatening note, according to federal prosecutors. A filing submitted by Justice Department lawyers late Thursday says Jacob Chansley, the 33-year-old Arizona QAnon supporter, admitted to federal authorities in an interview the day after the Capitol riot that he was the man in the image occupying Pence's seat while decked out in horns and fur. He told them he was 'glad' he sat in Pence's chair on the Senate dais 'because Vice President Pence is a child-trafficking traitor,' the documents state. Prosecutors say Chansley also admitted he left a note warning Pence 'it's only a matter of time - justice is coming' - but claimed the note was not meant to be threatening. Chansley had also been planning to return to Washington DC for Joe Biden's inauguration and carry out a similar act to the January 6 insurrection before he was arrested Saturday, according to federal prosecutors. US prosecutors believe supporters of President Donald Trump - including Jacob Chansley (pictured) - planned to 'capture and assassinate elected officials' at the Capitol building Jacob Anthony Chansley is pictures as he occupied the Senate dais at the US Capitol last week Federal prosecutors say Chansley, who also goes by the name Jake Angeli, planned to capture and assassinate elected officials during the violent siege that left five - including a Capitol cop - dead. Chansley, who was kicked out of the Navy 15 years ago, had called for identifying and then 'hanging' 'traitors' in a November 2020 tweet included as evidence in the court filing. Once inside the Capitol, he allegedly shouted to fellow rioters through his bullhorn that they were there to take out several congressmen. The detention memo, written by Justice Department lawyers in Arizona, goes into greater detail about the FBI's investigation into Chansley, who surrendered himself to the FBI in Phoenix on Saturday for his role in the violent riot. Chansley was charged with knowingly entering a restricted building without lawful authority and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds. On Thursday evening, Chansley's lawyer said his client wants Donald Trump to pardon him because he felt he was 'answering the call of our President.' 'He meant to kidnap....perhaps execute': Retired Lt. Col charged over Capitol MAGA siege wanted to take hostages, say prosecutors By Emily Crane for DailyMail.com Prosecutors believe the MAGA mob rioters who stormed the US Capitol last week planned to 'assassinate elected officials' - as it's alleged that a retired Air Force officer carried plastic zip-tie handcuffs because he intended 'to take hostages'. Claims that some rioters intended to assassinate elected officials have now been made by federal prosecutors in Texas and Arizona as those charged in the siege continue to face court over their involvement. Retired Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr, 53, faced court in Texas on Thursday after he was arrested after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs. Brock, a father-of-three who lives in Dallas, was released to home confinement after being charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Retired Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr was arrested last Sunday in Texas after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs Brock was photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs During his hearing, prosecutors said the zip ties were proof Brock - who appeared in court with his hands and feet shackled - had planned to take hostages during the siege. 'He means to take hostages. He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government,' Assistant US Attorney Jay Weimer said of Brock. Separately, federal prosecutors in Arizona alleged that the intent of the rioters during the siege was to capture and assassinate elected officials. In a court filing on Thursday, those prosecutors argued that 'QAnon Shaman' Jacob Chansley should be detained pending trial after he was charged over his involvement in the riots. The prosecutor in Brock's case had also argued that he should be detained given his military background, saying 'his prior experience and training make him all the more dangerous'. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey L Cureton said he would release Brock to home confinement. Cureton ordered Brock to surrender any firearms and said he could have only limited internet access as conditions of that release. 'I need to put you on a very short rope,' Cureton said. 'These are strange times for our country and the concerns raised by the government do not fall on deaf ears.' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chokes up as she calls Capitol riot an 'assault on our Democracy' By Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor for DailyMail.com House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised the possibility Friday of criminal prosecutions of Republican lawmakers if they are found to have provided Capitol tours to people who took part in the Capitol riots. Speaking to reporters a week after a MAGA mob ransacked the Capitol and days after the House voted to impeach President Trump, the Speaker responded to claims by multiple lawmakers who have raised alarms about the tours on the eve of the riots. 'If in fact it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection if they aided and abetted the crimes there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecution for that,' Pelosi said. Pelosi also choked up as she spoke about a 'punk' who wore a hoodie to the riot with the words Camp Auschwitz. 'To see this punk with that shirt on and his anti-Semitism that he has bragged about, to be part of a white supremacist raid on this Capitol requires us to have an after-action review,' she said. While she said there would be a multi-pronged investigation of what went wrong, she also put the matter in terms of 'trust' after she ordered the installation of a magnetometer outside the House chamber amid fears of further violence. 'In order to serve here with each other, we must trust that people have respect for their oath of office. Respect for this institution. We must trust each other,' Pelosi said. If lawmakers are found to be 'accomplices' in the riots, 'there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecution for that,' said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Advertisement 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. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As the massive effort to distribute COVID-19 vaccines continues, state leaders face formidable hurdles -- including public hesitance to receive the vaccine. In an ethnically diverse and politically divided state like Arizona, public education campaigns must overcome widespread mistrust of government with fine-tuned messages delivered by the right messengers. A recent study by Gallup for the Center for the Future of Arizona finds that Arizonans are likely to find messages about the proven safety and efficacy of the vaccine to be important or very important. They are also most likely to trust medical professionals (77%) and scientists or researchers (72%) for public health information. By contrast, Arizonans are least likely to trust social media, a common source of misinformation about the pandemic. Arizonans' Trust of Sources of Public Health Information, by Political Affiliation To what extent do you trust the following sources of public health information? - Percent 5 or 4 (very or somewhat trusting) All Arizonans Republicans Democrats Independents % % % % Medical professionals 77 66 89 80 Scientists or researchers 73 53 88 79 Family members or friends 35 35 37 33 President Trump 29 68 2 20 My local mayor 26 24 32 22 The governor of Arizona 22 40 9 19 Religious leaders 19 26 18 15 Traditional media 19 8 38 12 Internet 13 9 17 13 Social media 4 3 7 4 Center for the Future of Arizona/Gallup, Aug 28-Oct 26, 2020 These results come from a representative survey of 3,586 Arizona adults conducted from Aug. 28-Oct. 26, 2020, which included oversamples of Black and Native American residents to ensure sufficient sample sizes of those subgroups for analysis. The full survey measuring Arizonans' views across a broad range of coronavirus issues is scheduled for release in April 2021. However, this information about vaccines is being provided now because of its current relevance to public adoption of recently approved vaccines. Importantly, the survey was completed prior to the November announcements that vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are highly effective, or approval of those vaccines by the FDA. There is some evidence these events may have raised vaccine acceptance rates at the national level. Arizonans' willingness to trust various sources of health information may also have been affected by these events, with prior studies suggesting major events can lead to modest changes in Americans' willingness to trust authorities. Though there were significant differences in Arizonans' views about sources by political affiliation, at least two-thirds of each partisan group agreed that they trust medical professionals (by selecting 5 or 4 on a five-point agreement scale) -- including 66% of Republicans, 89% of Democrats and 80% of independents. Unsurprisingly, Republicans were far more likely than Democrats or independents to say they trust President Trump (68% vs. 2% and 20%, respectively) and Governor Doug Ducey (40% vs. 9%) -- both Republicans. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say they trusted traditional media for public health information, but no more than 7% in any partisan group trusted social media. In some cases, recruiting members of local communities for vaccine messaging may be particularly important in building trust. In Arizona, leveraging social networks to convey information may be particularly effective among Black and Native American residents, given their higher-than-average likelihood to say they trust friends and family members for public health information. Trust among Latino Arizonans, who represent 32% of the state's population, is similar to that of White and Asian Arizonans and similar to Arizonans overall. To what extent do you trust the following sources of public health information? Friends and family members Vaccine Hesitancy Common in Arizona, as in the U.S. Overall In line with the Southwestern trends, Arizona's average coronavirus case tally had been climbing since early October, and the state was one of 15 to post record average case counts in early December. Vaccine distribution promises to lower the state's case counts dramatically in the coming months. However, though vaccine acceptance rates may have risen in line with national figures in more recent months, the August-October CFA/Gallup survey found widespread hesitancy among Arizona residents. Overall, 40% of Arizonans said that when a vaccine becomes available, they would choose to get it, while 23% said they would not, and 37% said they were unsure. Similar to political and racial patterns among the U.S. population, Republicans, as well as Black and Latino adults, were among the least likely Arizona residents to say they would get the vaccine when it became available. In a series of follow-up questions, Arizonans were asked about key factors in their decision on whether or not to be vaccinated. The safety and effectiveness of the vaccine was most commonly seen as important or very important, with 82% rating it a 5 or 4 on the five-point agreement scale. Just over half (55%) rated their doctor's recommendation as important -- though this figure rises among older Arizonans (to 63% among those age 55 and older), who are more likely to see medical providers on a regular basis. Convenience in getting the vaccine was least commonly cited as a consideration; nonetheless, almost half of Arizonans (45%) said it was a very or somewhat important factor. Considering the logistical challenges in distributing vaccines with precise temperature requirements and two-dose administration in areas with weaker infrastructure, such as Native American tribal lands, convenience may be a substantial barrier for those who have been among the hardest hit by the virus. Lower-income Arizonans were particularly likely to say convenience was an important factor, including a majority (55%) of those with household incomes under $36,000. How important will the following be to you when considering a COVID-19 vaccination? Trust in Health Officials, Scientists Much Lower Among Vaccine Skeptics in Arizona Arizonans who said they would be vaccinated are much more likely than those unwilling to be vaccinated to trust medical professionals (88% vs. 54%, respectively) or scientists (86% vs. 47%) for public health information. However, trust among those who said they were unsure about being vaccinated aligned more closely with those willing to get it, with about eight in 10 (79%) placing faith in medical professionals. Arizonans unwilling to be vaccinated are generally equally or less likely than the pro-vaccination group to place trust in most of the ten sources featured in the survey, with two exceptions: Nearly half of Arizonans unwilling to be vaccinated (48%) are very or somewhat trusting of the president for public health information, compared with 29% of all Arizonans. Those unwilling to be vaccinated are also more likely than Arizonans overall to trust religious leaders for public health information, at 26% vs. 19%, respectively. Arizonans' Trust in Sources of Public Health Information, by Their Views on COVID-19 Vaccination Percent 5 or 4 (very or somewhat trusting) All Arizonans Plan to be vaccinated Do not plan to be vaccinated Unsure about vaccination % % % % Medical professionals 77 88 54 79 Scientists or researchers 72 86 47 73 Family members or friends 35 36 36 35 The president 28 24 48 21 My local mayor 26 35 16 23 The governor of Arizona 23 23 25 21 Religious leaders 20 18 26 18 Traditional media 19 27 8 17 Internet 14 16 10 13 Social media 5 5 6 4 Center for the Future of Arizona/Gallup, Aug 28-Oct 26, 2020 Bottom Line As in other states, Arizona public health officials must understand the factors influencing residents' decision to be vaccinated amid widespread reluctance. Arizonans are clearly most concerned about the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine, criteria that national tracking studies have also consistently highlighted as essential to all Americans. The challenge for Arizona's public health professionals is assuaging fears among those most likely to be skeptical of government-supported efforts to produce and distribute the vaccine. The good news is that public relations efforts can use the most credible sources of information, messengers that include medical professionals and scientists, along with specific messages about vaccines' proof of safety and effectiveness to raise the percentage of Arizonans who are vaccinated. Public relations efforts would benefit from further study to identify specific messages and messengers -- including celebrities and other public figures -- that may be most effective at building trust among Arizonans. One consideration for public health professionals wishing to increase acceptance of the vaccine is the importance placed on convenience by low-income Arizonans. This could be especially important in rural communities where the medical infrastructure is not well developed. Further, particularly among the state's Black and Native American communities, encouraging ordinary citizens who have confidence in vaccination to spread the word among friends and family could be helpful. View complete question responses and trends (PDF download). The Center for the Future of Arizona is a nonprofit organization that brings Arizonans together to create a stronger and brighter future for the state. The Gallup Arizona Project identifies the shared priorities of Arizonans and is a catalyst for regional and statewide action. Led by the Center for the Future of Arizona, the project includes a robust decennial survey in partnership with Gallup to identify the views of Arizonans on what policies and actions will have the greatest impact on Arizona's future. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 04:14:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) receives a dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Ankara, Turkey, on Jan. 14, 2021. Erdogan on Thursday received his first dose of vaccine as Turkey has started mass vaccination against COVID-19. (Xinhua) ANKARA, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday received his first dose of vaccine as the country has started mass vaccination against COVID-19. After receiving the jab at a hospital in capital Ankara, Erdogan called on all political party leaders and lawmakers to urge people for endorsing the vaccine. "I believe it will be vital especially if all political leaders and MPs encourage (jabs of) the COVID-19 vaccine and strengthen the campaign." More than 300,000 people have been vaccinated so far in Turkey, Erdogan said, adding that COVID-19 vaccination is not mandatory in the country. Turkish televisions on Thursday released footage of healthcare workers receiving their first doses as the country aims to inoculate nearly one million medical personnel first. The vaccination program will move on to the elderly, the disabled, and then to those aged 65 and above, according to the plan. The vaccine will be applied with two doses, 28 days apart. Those who recovered from the infection will not be vaccinated in four to six months following their recovery. Three million doses of the vaccine developed by China's Sinovac company arrived in Turkey on Dec. 30, 2020. On Wednesday, the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency approved the emergency use of the vaccine. Shortly after, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca received the jab along with Turkey's advisory science council members. Turkey reported on Thursday 8,962 new COVID-19 cases, including 958 symptomatic patients, as the total number of positive cases in the country reached 2,364,801, according to its health ministry. The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 170 to 23,495, while the total recoveries climbed to 2,236,938 after 9,011 more patients recovered in the last 24 hours. Turkey reported its first COVID-19 case on March 11, 2020. Enditem Frontline workers in a busy operating theatre have raised concerns over the recent enforcement of a HSE policy which asks staff to disable the Covid-19 tracking app while treating patients. Over the past 10 days, three theatre staff at University Hospital Galway were notified through the app they are close contacts of a positive Covid-19 case. Their colleagues have now been informed by management they should turn off the app while at work to avoid close contact alerts. This applies only to healthcare staff who use full PPE. However, a staff member told the Irish Independent that theatre patients would never be a close contact as they never have their phones. The only close contact the app would detect would be among staff, the staff member said. And what if one of us is alerted in the morning that we are a close contact of someone outside the hospital and we dont see it for hours? Read More If one of us is a close contact, then we should immediately leave work and isolate. It is impossible to avoid close contact with other staff when you take off your PPE. Theatre staff wear full PPE in the operating suites but not in the very crowded coffee room. Its hard to understand the reasoning behind this particularly now we have colleagues isolating. A spokesperson for university health care group Saolta confirmed the advice regarding disabling the app was issued centrally by the HSE last September. The recommendation from Public Health is that GPs and other healthcare workers involved in patient care should turn off the contact tracing feature in the app when they begin patient care, and importantly remember to switch it back on when you finish work at shift or session end, the spokesperson said. This guidance only applies to staff who wear PPE when providing care to patients. Saolta did not reply when asked when this policy was reissued to theatre staff in UHG. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 3 mesi fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. US, 15 january 2021 Low sexual performance can hurt self-esteem, confidence and cause stress. Everything from how man peruses his relationships to how he carries himself in public is affected by this problem. The male enhancement pills are not new; they have been used by people for a very long time. It is the name used for a range of herbal products marketed to improve sexual performance in different ways. They are not like the real medicine available in the pharmacy shops. They are sold in some shops and online platforms as natural home remedies for improving sexual performance in different ways. The ingredients used in male enhancement pills are generally herbal and a blend of different herbal supplements mixed. 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The most popular products are VigRX Plus, ProSolution Plus, Extenze, TestRX, Semenax, VigRX Nitric Oxide, and GenF20. VigRX Plus comes on the number one product on the list which is taken two times a day and might be linked with important benefits for men. For more details about men's sexual performance, individuals can click here and visit the website. The other effective product on the list, ProSolution Plus can work best for premature ejaculation. It comes in a pack of thirty capsules. The Extenze is also quite a popular supplement for men which is helpful in increasing nitric oxide levels. TestRX is also capable of boosting overall testosterone levels. The Semenax product uses ingredients like Swedish pollen flower, Zinc oxide, and L- Lysine. These best male enhancers can enhance prostate health in men. VigRX nitric oxide is very helpful in increasing nitric oxide levels. Individuals can find male enhancement supplements on the official website of the manufacturers. All these products are selected on the basis of trustworthiness, ingredient quality, Manufacturing processes, return policies, and scientific research. Individuals who want more details about reviews of male enhancement pills can click here and visit the website. Website : https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/best-male-enhancement-pills-2021-sexual-health-supplements/Content?oid=34768092 Amid the fight for the rights of the LGBTQ community in various countries, the Hungary government received flak for its order banning adoption by same-sex couples. After the decision was condemned by rights groups last month, Celina Jaitly was the latest to express her displeasure. The actor called it a regressive step. READ: Hungary Bans Adoption By Same-sex Couples, Rights Groups Call It 'dark Day For Humanity' Celina Jaitly on Hungary banning adoption for same-sex couples Celina Jaitley has been based in Austria with her family after her marriage to Peter Haag. The No Entry star, tweeted that being a resident of the European Union, that she did not expect a strong member of EU to take such a decision. Hungary bans same-sex couples from adopting children As a resident of the EU I never thought I would see such a strong member of the European Union take such a regressive step. Celina Jaitly#hungary #lgbtqia #LGBTRightsAreHumanRightshttps://t.co/kIZ3UUU9T8 Celina Jaitly (@CelinaJaitly) January 14, 2021 Hungarys decision invites criticism Hungary passed a new law that effectively banned adoption for same-sex couples, keeping it in line with the definition of a family as per the conservative Christian principles. The law emphasised on the definition of a family as marriage and the parent-child relationship, and adding that the mother is a woman and the father is a man. The law was passed by Hungarys right-wing ruling party Fidesz and its hardline leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in the Parliament on December 15. READ: Top Court Rules Hungary Flouted EU Law By Detaining Migrants Same-sex marriage had been banned by the Hungary government in 2012, but a leeway was made for civil unions. However, with the new law outlining that only married couples can adopt, same-sex couples faced a big setback. Unmarried couples can still apply to adopt children, but that can be done only through a formal process involving Hungarys minister of family affairs Katalin Novak. David Vig, director of rights group Amnesty Hungary had termed the decision as a dark day for human rights. Luca Dudits, a spokesperson for LGBT rights group Hatter Society, stated that Hungary governments was a breach of international human rights norms. He added that the law could lead to shortage of adoptive parents, resulting in more children eventually being adopted abroad, away from their language and cultural identity. Celina Jaitly on the professional front Celina Jaitly, who is a former Miss Asia Pacific, has featured in hits like No Entry, Golmaal Returns, among others. One of her last ventures was the short film Seasons Greetings. (With inputs from AP) READ: Celina Jaitly Reminisces School Memories Of Taking Oath As 'sports Captain'; Shares Pic READ: Celina Jaitly Shares Glimpse Of Christmas Fun With Twins Plus One; Fans React 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. ROME: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Friday issued a new decree extending curbs to keep lid on COVID-19 infections after the health ministry warned that the epidemic was getting worse. Recorded daily cases have settled at 15,000-20,000 compared with a peak of around 40,000 in mid-November, but pressure on hospitals remains high. Between 400 and 600 people die with the virus each day and the government fears that number will grow. In the past week there has been a generalised worsening of the epidemic, we are back to an expansionary phase," Health Minister Roberto Speranza told parliament on Wednesday. The new decree extends until March 5 a nightly curfew between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. and confirms the zoning system designed in November to calibrate the curbs between Italys 20 regions according to infection levels. Gyms and swimming pools will remain closed across Italy and in-person take-away services will not be allowed after 6 p.m. The decree also extends to Feb. 15 a ban on movement between regions, with people allowed to travel only for reasons of work, health or other emergencies. Ski resorts will not be allowed to reopen until Feb. 15. However, offering some hope to lockdown-weary Italians, the government said most curbs can be lifted in individual regions when their infection rates are sufficiently low. Italy, the first western country hit by the virus, has reported almost 81,000 coronavirus-related deaths since its outbreak came to light in February, the sixth highest tally in the world. It has seen 2.33 million confirmed cases. While the health emergency rages, the government was this week thrown into a political crisis triggered by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who pulled his small Italia Viva party out of the coalition, depriving it of a majority in parliament. 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 integrated medicine approach in treating Coronavirus patients not only shortened their stay in hospital but also helped the infected recover faster, revealed a study by Siddha doctors initiated when the pandemic was at the peak in Tamil Nadu. The overall median length of stay was 12 days for those who were administered zinc, vitamin c tablets, as advised by the state government and Kabasura Kudineer, a Siddha polyherbal formulation, which was advised by the union Ayush ministry, claims a survival analysis study. The study was to assess the length of stay of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patients under Integrated Medicine Zinc, Vitamin C and Kabasura Kudineer, carried out by the team of government Siddha doctors at the Government Medical College and ESI Hospital Coimbatore. According to Dr Sathya Rajeswaran, Director in-charge, Siddha Central Research Institute, Chennai, the data was collected from confirmed COVID-19 cases admitted in GMC & ESI Hospital Coimbatore. "In our study, no death was reported," he said. The study was carried out on patients admitted from April 26, 2020. Their discharges were taken for analysis upto May 5, 2020. The outcome of the study was published in the European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine, recently. Out of 251 COVID positive cases, included in the study, 151 had close contact with positive cases, 94 had travel history through containment zones like Delhi, and one person had a travel history to Kashmir and only the remaining 5 were free from travel history. The duration of hospital stay varied from 1-36 days. Nearly 5.2 percent of the patients were above 60 years, 75.3 percent were aged 20-60 years, and the remaining 19.5 percent were 0-20 group. All the 251 positive cases were admitted to the hospital and of them 141 were male, 83 were female, 12 boys, and 15 were girls, a senior Siddha doctor at the Central Council for Research in Siddha, Chennai, told PTI. Fever and cough were the main symptoms of the patients while some displayed respiratory distress and others were asymptomatic. All positive cases who turned negative and were discharged from hospital were considered for study, Dr Sathya Rajeswaran added. Zhiji Motor, a high-end smart electric-vehicle company in China, has debuted two smart new-energy vehicle (NEV) models in Shanghai. One model, an electric sedan, will be open for pre-order in April and delivered to customers in 2022, while the other model, an electric SUV, is expected to hit the market in 2022. Zhiji was jointly launched by leading Chinese automaker SAIC Motor, Zhangjiang High-tech Park in Shanghai's Pudong New Area and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group in November last year, with an expected investment of 10 billion yuan (1.53 billion U.S. dollars). On Wednesday, the company also announced that it would provide its customers with an autonomous-driving service in selective commercial centers in first-tier cities like Shanghai at the end of 2021, subject to regulatory approval and availability of high-precision maps. In these commercial centers, a Zhiji car driver can have the car move to a parking spot by itself or have it move to a designated location via an app on the phone. The service is expected to be available in more commercial centers in other Chinese cities in 2022, according to Zhiji. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to 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Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan PFAS investigation in Pellston completes second round of samples Officials discovered polyfluoroalkyls in Pellston residential water sources in late 2019. The airport is believed to be the source of the substances. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 12:44:28|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday highlighted a growing economic divide between those few people "at the very top" and the rest of America, calling on further relief to provide financial assistance to those who need it the most. "Just as we are in the midst of a dark winter of this pandemic as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths spike at record levels, there is real pain overwhelming the real economy," Biden said in a speech to the nation Thursday night from Wilmington, Delaware. However, "you won't see this pain if your score card is how things are going on Wall Street," the president-elect noted. "You will see it very clearly if you examine what the twin crises of the pandemic and the sinking economy have laid bare: the growing divide between those few people at the very top who are doing quite well in this economy -- and the rest of America," Biden said. "Just since this pandemic began, the wealth of the top 1 percent has grown by roughly 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars since the end of last year -- four times the amount for the entire bottom 50 percent," Biden said. Noting that some 18 million Americans are still relying on unemployment insurance, and some 400,000 small businesses have permanently closed their doors, the president-elect said "a crisis of deep human suffering" is in plain sight. Calling the recently approved 900-billion-dollar bipartisan relief package "an important first step," he said "we need more action, more bipartisanship, and we need to move fast." Biden on Thursday unveiled a 1.9-trillion-dollar COVID-19 relief bill, which includes another round of direct payments to individuals, aid for state and local governments, increased unemployment benefits, as well as more funding for testing and vaccine distribution. The president-elect also called on Congress to raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars per hour, up from the current 7.25 dollars per hour, a policy agenda that was already put in the Democratic Party's platform in 2016. Several states, such as California and New York, have already passed laws to boost minimum wage to 15 dollars, but federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2009. Enditem Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) The Food and Drug Administration said COVID-19 vaccines may be authorized for commercial use at the end of the year. Vaccine candidates undergoing clinical trials are currently on Phase 3, FDA Director-General Eric Domingo said during the second day of hearing of the Senate Committee of the Whole on the country's vaccination plan. "Yung full completion of Phase 3 trials, mga one to two years. At sa ngayon, medyo matatapos na po yung first year," Domingo said. "Ang pinakamaaga po siguro, end of 2021 or mga hanggang middle of 2022," he said when asked when commercial authorization for COVID-19 vaccines may be granted. [Translation: The full completion of Phase 3 trials takes around 1-2 years. And for now, the first year is almost done. Perhaps the earliest would be end of 2021 or until the middle of 2022.] Several vaccines have applied for emergency use authorization in the Philippines, with American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer the only brand to have been granted so far. RELATED: Pfizer assures affordable vaccines for PH The EUA application of British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca, whom local governments and corporations have signed tripartite agreements with, remains pending at the FDA along with Russia-made Sputnik V. https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2021/1/14/philippines-secures-17-million-covid-19-vaccine-doses-astrazena.html Sinovac has likewise applied for an EUA in the Philippines. The Chinese drug manufacturer is set to provide the country 25 million doses of its CoronaVac vaccine, with the first 50,000 doses available as early as February. With vaccine doses slated to arrive in the Philippines starting next month, the government will soon be tapping volunteers, mostly from the health sector, for inoculation efforts. However, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said no funding has been allocated for compensating these volunteers to date. "Sa ngayon po (as of now), because we are encouraging yung volunteerism and bayanihan spirit, sa ngayon powe have not allocated for the volunteers, only maybe donations for food at tsaka po yung (and also) maybe subsidy po sa food and transportation," he explained. However, Galvez assured they will look into the possibility of augmenting their services and extending honorarium to volunteers if there's available budget. Guwahati: After witnessing massive water logging across Guwahati due to incessant rains on Tuesday, Kamrup Metropolitan district authority in Assam has set up five relief camps for the affected people. I have asked to set up five relief camps immediately at various locations in Guwahati. We have already started distributing relief materials to people at these identified places, Kamrup Metropolitan Deputy Commissioner M Angamuthu told PTI. The authority has identified Rajgarh, Dhirenpara, Bhaskar Nagar, Noonmati and Nepali Basti areas for setting up of the relief camps. We have started distributing food items, drinking water and medicines to affected people. We will continue to provide all support till water recedes and people go back to their homes, Angamuthu said. The Deputy Commissioner said landslides have occurred at three places - Kamakhya, Zoo Road and Chandmari- in Guwahati, which constitutes most of the Kamrup Metropolitan district. There is no casualty till now due to rains, he said. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has asked the administration to remain ready for any emergency. Chief Minister Sonowal asked both district administration and Guwahati Development department to be ready with relief materials and reach out to the affected people in case of any urgency, an official release said. In view of incessant rains lashing Guwahati since this morning, massive water logging and floods has thrown life out of gear. Hundreds of houses went under water, the impact of which was severe due to water flowing down from the nearby hills. Knee-deep water flooded all major roads of the city and created havoc in traffic management. Commuters were stranded for hours due to waterlogging. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. An "undisclosed quantity" of a high-altitude variant of SWITCH unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will soon be in the possession of the Indian Army after it signed a contract with ideaForge at a cost of approximately $20 million. According to the drone startup, founded by IIT Bombay alumni, the fixed-wing UAV, capable of vertical takeoff and landing, can be deployed at high altitude and harsh environments for day-and-night surveillance. It is man-portable and has the highest time on target compared to any other UAV in its class. Also Read | Digital bank account sparks off a disruption "ideaForge has been awarded this contract after it emerged as the only vendor that qualified the operational requirements in an evaluation done in real-world conditions, for a fast-track procurement," the Mumbai-based company said. The drone will be delivered to the army during the course of a year. ideaForge CEO Ankit Mehta stated that SWITCH UAV is the culmination of insights and knowledge the company has gained over years of experience in helping the Indian forces operationalise UAVs in their ranks. "The trials saw about a dozen national and global players compete to meet the operational requirements. SWITCH UAV is the only product that cleared the Indian Army's stringent product trials and surpassed expectations," he noted. With the deal, a strategic shift in the procurement process of the Indian defence services has emerged. The Indian Army is on its way to attain an aggressive modernization drive. It has also cemented ideaForges position as Indias largest manufacturer of drones for defence, homeland security and industrial applications. The company has a diverse set of clientele, including Indian Armed Forces, central armed police forces and state police forces. It also has a list of industrial customers in areas such as geospatial surveying, oil and gas, and mining. After the news of the deal broke, the alma mater of the company's founders IIT Bombay congratulated them on their feat. "Congratulations to SINE and our hearty congratulations to Ankit, Rahul and Ashish. It is worth mentioning that they were bestowed with the Young Alumni Achiever award last year," IIT-Bombay posted on its official Facebook page. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Indias fastest-growing Gujarati news channel, ABP Asmita celebrates 5 years of successful operations today. Through 24x7 local news coverage, viewer-driven content, and on-ground initiatives, ABP Asmita has acquired a premier position in the fiercely-competitive market of Gujarat. In fact, it has reached a whopping 35 Mn Viewers in the Gujarat market. (Source BARC, TG- 2+, Mkt- Gujarat/DD/DN, Jan-Sep20, Cume Reach) Over the period of 5 years, the channel has created a strong resonance amongst the Gujarati viewers. Its innovative formats and viewer-driven content have been instrumental to the channels success and growth. Known for its hard-core news content, ABP Asmita has been a leading channel in the region, especially when it comes to providing the best election programming. It was the first channel to introduce a conclave in the Gujarati news-genre during the Gujarat Assembly elections 2017. ABP Asmitas memorable conclave, Asmita Maha Samvaad is a well-established programme that creates a platform for the incumbent government & the opposition, to shed light on the key issues of the state and address the concerns of the public. One of the most impassioned initiatives of the channel is Asmita Sanman Puraskar, an award show which recognises the excellence & mettlesome spirit of several Gujaratis who have made significant strides in their respective fields. Further, ABP Asmita has created history with path-breaking shows like Satya Na Prayogo a first of its kind interview show based on Mahatma Gandhis autobiography, Satya Na Prayogo takes a deep dive into stories, experiences, and journey of several renowned personalities of Gujarat. Taking things up a notch, ABP Asmita also has an extension of this show every year in the form of Satyna Na Prayogo Conclave. This conclave is conducted on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. It hosts famous personalities of Gujarat, who talk about his teachings and how his lessons have helped them throughout their life. Apart from innovative content offerings, the channel is known all over the state for its commitment towards responsible, impactful, and action-oriented journalism. Shows like Maru Shehar Mari Vaat/Maru Gaam Mari Vaat/ Maro Ward Mari Vaat are reflection of the Gujarati culture and its people. With a unique Choupal format, ABP Asmita coalesces prompt updates and incisive reportage with a fair & balanced approach to news. Whats more is that, ABP Asmita has time and again created positive societal impact through its social awareness campaigns may it be advocating water conservation, road safety or a role in combating COVID-19, the channel left no stone unturned in promoting healthy habits and ethical practices amongst its viewers. Speaking on this milestone, Mr. Avinash Pandey, CEO, ABP Network said, It is moment of pride for us, as we mark the 5-year milestone in the growth story of ABP Asmita. Over the years, against all odds, we have provided our viewers with innovative content and memorable shows. For us, our viewers remain at the core of every milestone we achieve. They have supported us and trusted us with every piece of content. And as we embark on a fresh chapter, we plan to add more depth in our programming portfolio through various thoughtful and people-driven initiatives. We hope our viewers will continue to repose their faith in us. A FATHER-of-two pulled a tissue dispenser from a garda station wall when he became "very irate" after being thrown out of his city centre hostel and arrested, a court heard. James Murphy (38) had "reacted poorly" to a fellow resident refusing to stop taking drugs when he caused a public order disturbance. Judge Bryan Smyth said he would strike the charges out if Murphy paid for the 50 damage and made a 200 charity donation. Murphy, of College Manor, Drumcondra, pleaded guilty to threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour, failing to follow garda directions and criminal damage. Dublin District Court heard gardai went to Amiens Street last November 19 after the accused had been ejected from a premises because he was threatening and abusive to staff. Read More He refused to leave, made a lunge and was pepper-sprayed before being arrested. At Store Street garda station, the accused became "very irate" and pulled a tissue dispenser from the wall. He was eventually subdued. Murphy, who worked with a transport company, separated from his wife and went into homeless accommodation, his solicitor Matthew de Courcy said. Someone else had been taking drugs in the hostel, and when the accused asked this person to stop they would not and Murphy "reacted very poorly." "He's a good man who has taken a step in the wrong direction," Mr de Courcy told the court. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have been living separate lives amid reports they are on the brink of divorcing. And now it's claimed that the couple 'had no option' but to live apart in recent months because things got so 'downright toxic'. Kim and Kanye, who have been married for six years and have four children together, were recently hit by reports that a divorce is imminent after their marriage was plunged into crisis last year. Had to live apart: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's relationship 'turned toxic' in recent months, a new reports claims and the duo had 'nasty blowups' 'Kim and Kanye had no option but to live apart in the end because the communication between them had gotten so downright toxic,' a source told Us Weekly. 'They went into the latter part of 2020 with the very best of intentions and wanted to find a way to get along when they spent time together. But it reached the point where the bickering turned to nasty blowups and confrontations, and since neither of them wanted the kids exposed to that type of hostility, they [stayed] apart.' Kanye has been staying at his $14 million ranch in Wyoming while Kim has been staying with the kids in Calabasas, California. The source added that Kanye would come back to Calabasas regularly up until early December to spend time would the kids while 'trying to play nice with Kim'. 'It reached the point where the bickering turned to nasty blowups and confrontations, and since neither of them wanted the kids exposed to that type of hostility, they [stayed] apart.' an insider told Us Weekly The insider explained that the duo would be cordial around each other for the sake of the kids but their interactions were very 'matter-of-fact' about what to do for dinner, their therapy sessions and discussing homeschooling the kids. Then last month they had a 'big fight', the publication claims. 'Kanye blew up at Kim and she was really upset,' the source said. 'Things between them dont seem to have healed since that.' It comes after a separate report on Thursday which claimed there is no bad blood between the duo. 'They are very cordial' with one another, a source told E! News. 'He's focusing on his world and she is focusing on her world,' the insider said, adding that 'Kim wants to feel at peace going into this new chapter of her life and is focused on herself and her children.' Trying to be nice: An insider explained that the duo would be cordial around each other for the sake of the kids but their interactions were very 'matter-of-fact' about what to do for dinner, their therapy sessions and discussing homeschooling the kids Then last month they had a 'big fight', the publication claims. 'Kanye blew up at Kim and she was really upset,' the source said. 'Things between them dont seem to have healed since that.' Kim and Kanye, who tied the knot in 2014, share four children; daughters North, seven, and Chicago, two, and sons Saint, five, and Psalm, one. '[Kim] wants to feel strong mentally and physically,' the source continued, referencing to the KUWTK star's rigorous 6AM workout regimen. They also noted that Kardashian has kept herself 'very busy' by immersing herself in her work, such as her popular shapewear brand SKIMS and her thriving makeup line KKW Beauty. 'She has been very busy with her business, which has been a blessing. She's really focusing on the kids and their happiness as well.' Kim also has the support of her sisters Kourtney, 41, and Khloe, 36, who have 'already volunteered' to help the reality star tackle single motherhood. 'All of the sisters are aware of the situation and are very supportive. They all love Kanye like a brother but agree it's best they part ways,' a source told the outlet. E! News previously shared Kanye's side of the coin, alleging that the 43-year-old hitmaker 'loves his extended family' and that he and the Kardashian-Jenner clan are 'super close.' But a source close to the situation painted a more distant picture to People as they claimed 'Kim and Kanye's marriage is beyond repair' and that 'Kim is over Kanye's chaos.' Living apart: Kanye has been staying at his $14 million ranch in Wyoming while Kim has been staying with the kids in Calabasas, California 'At this point she just wants to focus on the kids and her own life,' said the insider, adding that Kim's goal is to 'create the best life for the kids.' 'She and Kanye are just not on the same page when it comes to their future as a family. 'And Kim is okay with it. She will do everything she can for the kids to have a great relationship with Kanye - she just doesn't want to be married to him,' they concluded. The couple had a tumultuous 2020 that included the rap star's failed run for the United States presidency, which appeared to draw a wedge between him and Kim. Sister squad: Kim has the support of her sisters Kourtney, 41, and Khloe, 36, who have 'already volunteered' to help the reality star tackle single motherhood; Kim, North, Penelope, and Kourtney pictured in March During one campaign rally Kanye tearfully revealed that Kim considered aborting their firstborn daughter North - a disclosure that left Kim 'furious,' per a People source. Kanye also embarked on a series of Twitter tirades, accusing Kim of having tried to get him committed and insinuating that she was unfaithful. Amid the public meltdowns Kim made a statement referring to her husband's bipolar disorder and pointing out 'that the family is powerless unless the member is a minor.' In August the couple traveled to the Caribbean with their four children in what was widely reported as a make-or-break trip to save the marriage. Over it: A source close to the situation painted a distant picture to People as they claimed 'Kim and Kanye's marriage is beyond repair' and that 'Kim is over Kanye's chaos'; Kim and Kanye pictured in 2019 Beginning of the end? The couple had a tumultuous 2020 that included the rap star's failed run for the United States presidency, which appeared to draw a wedge between him and Kim; Kanye pictured in 2020 Although the couple put up a unified front on social media following the Caribbean summit a source told Page Six earlier this month that 'they are done.' The insider alleged Kim has enlisted the services of Laura Wasser, the lawyer who also represented Angelina Jolie when she first left Brad Pitt in 2016. Laura also previously represented Kim in her divorce from her second husband Kris Humphries whom she was infamously married to for just 72 days. Making arrangements: Kim has reportedly enlisted the services of Laura Wasser, the lawyer who also represented Angelina Jolie when she first left Brad Pitt in 2016; Kim pictured earlier this week Worried: 'The children are very important to Kim. She is worried about what a permanent split will be like for all of them concerning their well being,' explained a source to People by Thanh Thuy The new coronavirus pandemic has not stopped a trade marked by abuse, violence and exploitation, largely towards China. 90% of the victims are women or girls, even very young; of these, 80% belong to ethnic minorities. Caritas and parishes build awareness campaigns and offer aid to the victims. Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) - The new coronavirus pandemic that has imposed closures and restrictions across much of the world has failed to stop the flourishing human trafficking in Vietnam, which affects defenceless women and children. A trade favoured by the 4 thousand km of borders with Laos, Cambodia and China that cross 25 provinces and wind through paths, forest areas and trade routes well known and beaten by unscrupulous mercenaries. In recent years young people or women, especially among ethnic minorities in rural and mountainous areas, have been trafficked, in most cases lured across the border with the prospect of "temporary work" that turns into "forced labour" or exploitation. There are also cases of sexual abuse or trafficking aimed at feeding the prostitution market. According to data released by the Supreme Court of Vietnam, at least 63 provinces are affected by cases of human trafficking. Between 2013 and 2017, over 3 thousand victims crossed the borders, 90% of them in the direction of China. 90% of these are women or girls, even very young, of which 80% come from ethnic minorities. The Covid-19 pandemic has widened disparities and spread poverty, worsening the situation of this trafficking. The Catholic Church is personally committed to combating the phenomenon of exploitation. There are many dioceses that have promoted activities, awareness campaigns, charity initiatives in favour of the victims and the needy, making use of the collaboration of Caritas experts and volunteers. The parish of Tan Khai, in the diocese of Phu Cuong has promoted a program dedicated to the victims of trafficking with the Christian charity of Binh Long, through the initiative entitled "Prevent sexual abuse and fight the trade in people in the parish". A current and well known phenomenon, for a frontier reality (with Cambodia) and in which 13 different ethnic minorities such as the Stieng, Khmer, Tay, Thai, Nung live. Promoting the program are the priests Fr. Matthew Pham Tran Thanh, vicar of Tan Khai and Fr. Joseph Hoang inh Khai. The latter, at the end of a mass celebrated in recent days, spoke of the many ways "of seduction" that traffickers use to lure victims into their shirts. In particular, poor women, adolescents living in difficult circumstances and looking for some work to earn the money they need to survive. Father Khai regularly provides guidelines and advice to the children and young people of the parish, to understand how and where to look for serious information about job offers and avoid ending up in the network of exploiters. To those who go abroad, he also provides addresses of embassies, organizations and humanitarian bodies to which they can turn in case of help or need, as well as asking for telephone contacts of two people for information or updates in case of problems. Caritas in Phu Cuong diocese also organizes training and awareness courses against the trafficking of human lives. Colleagues from the diocese of Ha Tinh confirm: It is not possible to tell the consequences of the sufferings of the victims. They are forced into sexual slavery or forced labour. They have no salary, they are starved, beaten, abused, or their organs are harvested for the black market. In short, they are not treated as human beings. Workers in Ireland are to have the right to request remote working from their employer under plans for new legislation published by the government. The legislation is set to be introduced in September, 2021 in a strategy published by the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar. Titled: Making Remote Work: National Remote Work Strategy, the strategy aims to strengthen the rights and responsibilities of workers and employers for remote working and provide the infrastructure to do so. As well, a legally admissible code of practice on the right to disconnect will be introduced in relation to emails, phone calls and switch-off time. Culture shift Tanaiste Leo Varadkar said he wants remote working to be part of a whole new world of work after the Covid-19 pandemic as 2020 has shown how viable the option can be. However, Mr Varadkar thinks a culture shift will be required and said employment rights need to be updated for the plans to work properly. Working from home has become the norm for many in 2020. We want remote, blended and flexible working arrangements a much bigger part of life after Covid. Weve seen that there can be huge benefits more flexibility, less commuting, more time for family and friends. Its better for the transport emissions, and for quality of life, but it has to be done right, said Mr Varadkar. Employment rights need to be updated, we need to give guidance, and in many cases, we need to provide actual physical working space. It also requires a cultural shift in favour of facilitating it as an option. This Plan shows how we will bring all those parts together. I think it will make a real difference to peoples working lives, he said. Blended working Plans to accelerate the rollout of the National Broadband Plan are under proposal while the government is to promote blended working to allow people more flexibility on how they work. The strategy commits to investing in remote work hubs and ensure they are in suitable locations for childcare and commuters. A review of remote working for tax and expenditure for the next Budget will also be carried out and the plan commits for 20% of workers in the public sector to be able to work from home. Many people will want to continue on to do at least some remote working after the pandemic, and its really important that we protect the rights and entitlements of those workers so that they can still switch off from work. Read More Revenue website experiencing 'issues' as people log on to check tax bills That is why we have included the right to disconnect piece. We want to put in place the structures which ensure we take advantage of the benefits of remote working and protect against the downsides, said Mr Varadkar. Actions laid out by the strategy are set out for the next year and will be monitored by an implementation group. A survey by Eurofound published last year in October showed Ireland had one of the highest rates of remote working in Europe. 83% of workers surveyed by the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) wanted remote working to continue in some form after the pandemic. The Government's plan to request to work from home has been welcomed by unions. Irelands largest public service union, Forsa has welcomed the move but has also called for engagement on the detailed roll-out of the proposals. The Government strategy includes pledges introduce a legally admissible code of practice on the right to disconnect and a review of the treatment of remote working for tax purposes. "Forsa very much welcomes the pledge to establish legal rights to disconnect and to request remote working, which would bring Ireland closer to European best practice," Forsas Head of Communications Bernard Harbor said. "But there needs to be engagement with trade unions and other stakeholders on the detail of these and other proposals to ensure that fair access to remote working and proper protections for all staff regardless of where they work, he said. Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, speaks at the closing of a study session at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee attended by provincial and ministerial-level officials, Jan. 14, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ye) BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official Wang Huning on Thursday called for efforts to ensure a positive start to the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and outstanding accomplishments to celebrate the CPC's centenary. Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks while addressing the closing of a study session at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee (the National Academy of Governance). Eminent provincial and ministerial officials were in attendance. Throughout the study session, which started on Monday, the participants studied and improved their understanding of the new development stage, the new development philosophy, and the new development paradigm. Ten of the participants made speeches at the closing ceremony to share what they had gained through the session. Wang stressed the need to improve political judgment, understanding, and execution of the effective implementation of the Party leadership's decisions and plans. He also urged the attendees to accurately learn about goals in the new development stage to deliver in the affairs of the Party and the country, act on the new development philosophy to address unbalanced and inadequate development, and step up the establishment of the new development paradigm. More efforts should be made to guard against the practice of "formalities for formalities' sake" and bureaucratism, Wang said. ATLANTA, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Georgia families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Georgia families, schools, and organizations are hosting 1,334 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the state's notable events will be a school choice parent virtual panel on Wednesday, Jan. 27. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Georgia, the King and Queen Building in Atlanta will light up in yellow and red from sunset to sunrise all week Jan. 24-30. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Georgia county of Liberty and the cities of Lithonia, Loganville, and Hephzibah. "Georgia community members are increasingly speaking up for families needing more choices and flexible learning opportunities," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's celebrate how great educators and schools of all types inspire kids to learn, grow, and give back to their community." In Georgia, there are a variety of educational options available to attend including; traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling. All public school students in Georgia are eligible for an education expense tax credit and students with special needs may be available for a state-run scholarship program. Georgia families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Georgia school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/georgia. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com ANN ARBOR, MI -- Literati Bookstore is hosting virtual events with Bill Gates and author Simon Winchester. The popular downtown Ann Arbor bookstore is welcoming Winchester at 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 25 for a discussion on his book Land: how the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. Rick Fahle of PBS Books will join Winchester. Tickets start at $31 and include a hardcover copy of the book, which can be shipped or picked up from Literati, and a signed bookplate. Access to the virtual event will be included with the ticket. Purchase tickets here. Winchesters book dives into how we acquire and fight over land, and how to share it, according to the event page. Literati is closed for in-store transactions but offers curbside pickup. In the last 10 months, the store has welcomed more than 250 authors, congressional leaders, scientists, comedians and more virtually, according to a news release. On Thursday, Feb. 25, Literati will join Seminary Co-op Bookstores for the Chicago Humanities Festival as they host Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates presenting his latest book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, according to a news release. Actors Dax Shepard and Monica Padman will join Gates for a conversation on solutions to save the planet by reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions. Tickets start at $31 and include a hardcover copy of the book and access to the virtual event. Purchase tickets here. Literati has virtual events running all month. Browse through their events online. Ann Arbor SPARK to distribute $4.7M in small business grants Washtenaw County Road Commission to host weekly chat about street projects Former Detroit police officer opens cannabis shop in Ann Arbor An Algerian man who pleaded guilty to attempting to murder his wife by beating her with a kettlebell after becoming resentful of her independence has claimed that he was misled by his legal team and that gardai fabricated evidence at his sentence hearing. At the Court of Appeal today, Lounes Ouachek (50) of St Dominic's Terrace, Tallaght, Dublin 24 asked for permission to bring an appeal against conviction in circumstances where the statutory period to lodge an appeal has passed. The court refused his application having heard arguments from Ms Cathleen Nocter SC for the Director of Public Prosecutions that Ouachek had not engaged with the facts of the case and that there was "no basis identified upon which the court might engage in considering extending the time." Ouachek pleaded guilty in 2014 to the attempted murder of Ruta Ouachek at his home address on August 23, 2012. He had struck his wife repeatedly on the head with a kettlebell and left her bleeding and seriously injured with fractures to her skull and facial bones. After trying to murder her he pulled the blinds, locked the door and took a flight from Dublin Airport to Tunisia via Paris without alerting anyone to his wife's condition. He was subsequently arrested in Germany on foot of a European Arrest Warrant. Mr Justice Paul Carney sentenced Ouachek to 15 years imprisonment with the final three suspended on July 21 2014. The Court of Appeal, following hearings in 2015, reduced the sentence by one year. Representing himself today (FRI) and sometimes using a translator, Mr Ouachek said he had submitted papers to the court that showed that the evidence against him was "all fabricated". He said that when he pleaded guilty he didn't understand English and had no interpreter in court. He said his legal team misled him and, referring to Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, he said: "You have to start anew or release me as soon as possible." He said he is "suffering every day" as all of the prisoners on his landing have tested positive for coronavirus and he asked to be released so he could find a "good barrister" to take up his case. He said there was evidence of perjury by An Garda Siochana and his wife and suggested that forged papers were used to show that he had separated from his wife. He further insisted that he had never received a barring order that was presented as evidence and said that he never split with his wife. President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham, sitting with Mr Justice John Edwards and Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, said there was no basis to extend the time and refused to hear the appeal. At the sentence appeal hearing in 2015 Mr Justice John Edwards outlined the evidence in the case. He said Ouachek had met his wife, a Lithuanian national, in Germany in 2000. They got married a year later and moved to Ireland in 2005. Following the birth of their daughter in 2007, Ms Ouachek entered full time education and Mr Ouachek a devout muslim, the court heard - developed a resentment of his wife's new-found independence and the little time she was spending at home. Matters escalated in 2012, Mr Justice Edwards said. Ouachek took his daughter to Algeria but was subsequently persuaded to return by his wife. In May 2012, they entered into a legal separation agreement. In August of that year, he returned from Algeria and engaged in stalking his wife, demanding the return of various items and endeavouring to ascertain the whereabouts of his daughter by calling into several creche centres in Tallaght, Mr Justice Edwards said. Despite obtaining interim barring orders against him, he said Ouachek called to his wife's home on August 23 and neighbours observed them arguing. Among the items Ouachek was demanding to be returned to him was a kettle-bell. According to Ms Ouachek's account, she handed it to him while he was still outside the house but her next memory was lying on the kitchen floor with Ouachek straddling her, striking her with the kettle-bell. She managed to make her way into the bathroom where she locked herself in and was found later by gardai covered in blood and seriously injured. Ms Ouachek had fractures to her skull and facial bones and was later transferred to Beaumont Hospital. ORANGE - Elementary schools will reopen Tuesday after being closed an extra two weeks following holiday break because of an increased number of positive COVID-19 cases in children, according to Health Director Dr. Amir Mohammad. We will continue to monitor as always, and I think at this point, since the cases among school age children have declined we can safely resume our in-person learning, Mohammad said in an email Friday. Most of these cases became positive before the end of the year (Christmas break) and during the first week in January so children were already at home. In order to detect any newer cases we extended the 2nd week of learning as virtual, Mohammad wrote. It could not be determined how many children in total have tested positive for the virus, but Selectwoman Margaret Novicki, a member of the Emergency Management Subcommittee on COVID, reported to the Board of Selectman this week there have been 16 cases between Jan. 1 and 6, including six in children under the age of 10. She also reported the town saw 532 COVID-19 cases in 2020, including 13 deaths, but that the vaccine is on the way as the Health Department expects sometime this month to begin receiving at least 300 doses per week. Mohammad noted Friday, we are also in a process of vaccinating our school teachers and staff members. Mohammad said the town has been closely monitoring all the positive cases among schoolchildren since opening schools in August and, the cases had been on the lower side until after the (Christmas) holiday break. In a letter to parents Thursday, Superintendent of Schools Vince Scarpetti announced that full, in-person learning would resume Tuesday. We know decisions regarding remote and in-person learning have impacted families in many ways, so we are grateful for your patience, flexibility and understanding, Scarpetti wrote. He told parents in the letter that decisions regarding school have been made in collaboration with Mohammad and based on Orange School District data. While inconvenient at times, all our decisions are ultimately made with the intention of maintaining the safety and well-being of our staff, students and community, Scarpetti wrote. In a letter to parents Jan. 8, Scarpetti had notified parents the remote learning model would be extended on a weekly basis, as there had been a significant increase in the number of positive COVID-19 cases among the school-age children in our town. Scarpetti said in the earlier letter that the Health Department was not then recommending in-person learning and that based on the guidance and recommendations from the health director, the week of Jan. 11 would be remote learning. He also said they would closely monitor the new strain of the virus that has been identified in Connecticut. We believe that children learn best when they are in school, Scarpetti wrote in the earlier letter. The goal is to provide our children's education in as safe a learning environment as possible and for that we need your ongoing cooperation during these tough times. He reminded families to follow mitigating strategies, including: Avoid hosting and/or attending large gatherings. Practice social distancing when outside the home. Use a face mask/covering when outside the home. Frequently wash your childs mask. Encourage frequent washing of hands and personal hygiene. Keep a child home if they are not feeling well and seek medical care as necessary. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) The Philippine government on Friday extended the travel restrictions imposed on foreign nationals coming from areas confirmed to have cases of the new COVID-19 variants. The travel ban that was supposed to end on Friday will stay until Jan. 31, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said. The list includes 33 countries and territory. It was not expanded to include the United Arab Emirates. Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Thursday recommended to include the Gulf state in the list after a Filipino returning from UAE was detected with the COVID-19 variant first found in United Kingdom. RELATED: New UK COVID-19 variant detected in PH Roque said the possibility of including the UAE to the list will be up to President Rodrigo Duterte. "The President will be the one to declare that, if ever. The list is for extension of restrictions," he said. The Philippines on Wednesday confirmed the presence of the B.1.1.7 variant from United Kingdom that is regarded to be more transmissible in the country. The 29-year-old patient found infected with the variant returned to the country on Jan. 7 after a trip to Dubai in the UAE. Following reports of the emergence of COVID-19 variants in several areas globally, the Philippines suspended all flights from the UK beginning December 24. The ban on foreign travelers now covers 33 jurisdictions after they confirmed the presence of new COVID-19 variants in their areas, namely: United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Portugal, India, Finland, Norway, Jordan, Brazil, Austria, China, Pakistan, Jamaica, Luxembourg, and Oman. Filipinos coming from these places are allowed to enter the country, but they are required to complete the facility-based 14-day quarantine. The samples of incoming travelers who will test positive in an RT-PCR test will be submitted to the Philippine Genome Center to detect the possible presence of new variants. CALGARY, Alberta, Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (CJ:TSX) Cardinal Energy Ltd. ("Cardinal" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that its Board of Directors has approved an operating and capital budget for 2021 that will focus on debt reduction, maintaining production levels and abandonment and reclamation expenditures. Highlights of 2021 Budget Generates adjusted funds flow of $70 to $75 million; Approximately $40 to $45 million or 55% to 60% of adjusted funds flow will be utilized for debt repayment; Forecasting a 20% reduction in net bank debt by year-end; Executing a conservative capital program of $25 to $30 million focused on reactivations, continued upgrades to our pipeline and facility infrastructure, and increasing CO2 injection at the Midale enhanced oil recovery project; Maintaining average production levels between 17,500 and 18,000 boe/d; and Investment of $5 million for asset retirement obligations ("ARO") complementing the government subsidy grants. Cardinal's 2021 conservative budget takes advantage of our low corporate decline rate and focuses on optimizing our long life asset base. The budget includes reactivating and optimizing shut-in production, proactively upgrading our pipeline and facility infrastructure and increasing our CO 2 injection program for our enhanced oil recovery project at Midale, Saskatchewan. 2021 Budget Cardinal's 2021 budget is expected to produce adjusted funds flow of approximately $70 to $75 million and assumes an average royalty rate of 15%, a West Texas Intermediate ("WTI") oil price of US$52/bbl, US/CAD exchange rate of 0.78 and a $2.52/mcf AECO natural gas price. During 2021, Cardinal's operating expenses are forecasted to average approximately $18.00/boe however expensed well reactivations will add approximately $2.00/boe of operating costs in 2021 as the Company plans to increase the workover and well reactivation program that was suspended in 2020 due to low oil prices. The Company has a significant inventory of low cost workover candidates that will provide increased production to largely offset natural declines in 2021. The 2021 budget does not contemplate drilling any new wells resulting in a 3% decline in average annual production. We will revisit a potential drilling program in the second half of 2021 depending on commodity price levels. Cardinal maintains a deep, diverse inventory of unbooked potential development drilling opportunities spread across our asset base. With continued strengthening in oil prices and the meeting of our debt reduction priorities, we expect development drilling activities to resume. The 2021 budget results in adjusted funds flow net of capital expenditures and ARO expenditures of approximately $40 to $45 million which is earmarked for debt repayment. 2021 Budget Summary Average production (boe/d) 17,500 to 18,000 Adjusted funds flow ($ mm) $70 to $75 Year-end net bank debt ($ mm) $157 - $162 Total capital expenditures ($ mm) $25 - $30 Operating costs ($/boe) $20.00 - $20.75 Transportation costs ($/boe) $0.30 - $0.40 G&A ($/boe) $2.05 - $2.25 US$ WTI ($/bbl) $52.00 US/CAD Exchange Rate 0.78 US$ WTI-WCS Basis Differential ($/bbl) ($13.50) US$ WTI-MSW Basis Differential ($/bbl) ($5.50) AECO ($/mcf) $2.52 ARO Cardinal has allocated approximately $5 million of its 2021 budget for ARO expenditures which will complement the $18.4 million of government subsidies received to date from the Alberta Site Rehabilitation Program and the Saskatchewan Accelerated Site Rehabilitation Program through our service provider applications. The Company expects to receive the benefit of additional funding in subsequent government subsidies through these programs. In 2020, Cardinal executed on approximately 45% of the available funding with environmental, site decommissioning and well abandonments (119 gross operated wells abandoned) as well as a significant amount of work was completed on downhole abandonments and facility reclamations. Budget Sensitivities Input Effect on adjusted funds flow ($ mm) US $1/bbl change in WTI $3.8 US $1/bbl MSW basis $1.5 US $1/bbl WCS basis $2.9 Fx $0.01 $1.1 Summary Cardinal will continue to prudently manage our balance sheet and asset base. As commodity prices have recovered materially since the lows experienced in 2020, the Company is in a position to accelerate debt reduction. Due to the low decline and deep inventory of reactivations across our asset base, in 2021, Cardinal will maintain production levels deploying limited capital. After taking into account the budgeted capital and ARO expenditures, our 2021 budget is expected to generate approximately $40 to $45 million (55% to 60% of adjusted funds flow) which will be utilized to reduce debt. Cardinal plans to exit the year with a healthy balance sheet targeting a 2.2x net bank debt to adjusted funds flow ratio. During 2021, we plan to continue with our ARO and environmental spending through a $5 million Cardinal funded program which will complement the government subsidy programs to reduce our future liabilities and inactive well count. Our conservative budget gives us the flexibility to pay down additional debt, increase our capital program or increase our ARO expenditures should commodity prices continue to increase, or reduce capital spending in the second half of 2021 if commodity prices deteriorate. Cardinal's annual 2020 reserve results will be released on February 25, 2021 with the 2020 financial and operating results to be released on March 16, 2021. Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to Cardinal's plans and other aspects of Cardinal's anticipated future operations, management focus, objectives, strategies, financial, operating and production results. Forward-looking information typically uses words such as "anticipate", "believe", "project", "expect", "goal", "plan", "intend", "may", "would", "could" or "will" or similar words suggesting future outcomes, events or performance. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date thereof and are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Specifically, this press release contains forward-looking statements relating to our capital expenditure plans including the 2021 budget, focus and the allocation thereof and results therefrom, future operating, transportation and G&A costs and expenses, future debt repayment, year-end net bank debt, future average production volumes, adjusted funds flow, adjusted funds flow net of capital expenditures and ARO, capital required to maintain production, abandonment and reclamation obligations and plans, availability of government subsidy programs, commodity prices, exchange rates and differentials, corporate decline rate, drilling inventory, opportunities and future drilling plans. Cardinal's asset base and future prospects for development and growth therefrom, budget flexibility and plans if commodity prices continue to improve and the timing for release of future reserves and financial information. Forward-looking statements regarding Cardinal are based on certain key expectations and assumptions of Cardinal concerning anticipated financial performance, business prospects, strategies, regulatory developments, including continued availability of government subsidy programs, the impact (and the duration thereof) that the COVID-10 pandemic will have on (i) the demand for crude oil, NGLs and natural gas; (ii) our supply chain including our ability to obtain the equipment and services we require; and (iii) our ability to produce, transport and/or sell our crude oil, NGLs and natural gas, current and future commodity prices, differentials and exchange rates, applicable royalty rates, tax laws, future well production rates and reserve volumes, future operating, transportation and G&A costs and expenses the performance of existing and future wells, the success of our exploration and development activities, the sufficiency and timing of budgeted capital expenditures in carrying out planned activities, the availability and cost of labor and services, the impact of increasing competition, conditions in general economic and financial markets, availability of drilling and related equipment, effects of regulation by governmental agencies, the renewal of our credit facility and our ability to obtain financing on acceptable terms which are subject to change based on commodity prices, market conditions, drilling success and potential timing delays. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond Cardinal's control. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of general economic conditions; volatility in market prices for crude oil and natural gas; industry conditions; currency fluctuations; imprecision of reserve estimates; liabilities inherent in crude oil and natural gas operations; environmental risks; incorrect assessments of the value of acquisitions and our exploration and development programs; competition from other producers; the lack of availability of qualified personnel, drilling rigs or other services; changes in income tax laws or changes in royalty rates and incentive programs and subsidies available to the oil and gas industry; hazards such as fire, explosion, blowouts, and spills, each of which could result in substantial damage to wells, production facilities, other property and the environment or in personal injury; and ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources. Management has included the forward-looking statements above and a summary of assumptions and risks related to forward-looking statements provided in this press release in order to provide readers with a more complete perspective on Cardinal's future operations and such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Cardinal's actual results, performance or achievement could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements and, accordingly, no assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits that Cardinal will derive there from. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing lists of factors are not exhaustive. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and Cardinal disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws. This press release contains future-oriented financial information and financial outlook information (collectively, "FOFI") about our prospective results of operations, year-end net bank debt, adjusted funds flow, adjusted funds flow net of capital expenditures and ARO and components thereof, all of which are subject to the same assumptions, risk factors, limitations, and qualifications as set forth in the above paragraphs. FOFI contained in this press release were made as of the date hereof and is provided for the purpose of describing our anticipated future business operations. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any FOFI contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required pursuant to applicable law. Readers are cautioned that the FOFI contained in this press release should not be used for purposes other than for which it is disclosed herein. Drilling Locations Cardinal maintains a deep inventory of unbooked potential development drilling opportunities. There is no certainty that we will drill all drilling locations and if drilled there is no certainty that such locations will result in additional oil and gas production. The drilling locations on which we actually drill wells will ultimately depend upon the availability of capital, regulatory approvals, seasonal restrictions, oil and natural gas prices, costs, actual drilling results, additional reservoir information that is obtained and other factors. While certain of the unbooked drilling locations have been de-risked by drilling existing wells in relative close proximity to such unbooked drilling locations, other unbooked drilling locations are farther away from existing wells where management has less information about the characteristics of the reservoir and therefore these is more uncertainty whether wells will be drilled in such locations and if drilled there is more uncertainty that such wells will result in additional oil and gas reserves, resources or production. Supplemental Information Regarding Product Types This press release includes references to budgeted 2021. The Company discloses crude oil production based on the pricing index that the oil is priced off of. The following table is intended to provide the product type composition as defined by National Instrument 51-101 Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities. Light/Medium Crude Oil Heavy Oil NGL Conventional Natural Gas Total (boe/d) 2021 56% 27% 4% 13% 17,500-18,000 Advisory Regarding Oil and Gas Information Where applicable, oil equivalent amounts have been calculated using a conversion rate of six thousand cubic feet of natural gas to one barrel of oil. Boes may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A boe conversion ratio of six thousand cubic feet of natural gas to one barrel of oil is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. Utilizing a conversion ratio at 6 Mcf: 1 Bbl may be misleading as an indication of value. Non-GAAP Measures This press release contains the terms "adjusted funds flow", "net bank debt" and "net bank debt to adjusted funds flow" which do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS" or, alternatively, "GAAP") and therefore may not be comparable with the calculation of similar measures by other companies. Cardinal uses adjusted funds flow and net bank debt to adjusted funds flow ratio to analyze operating performance and assess leverage and feels these benchmarks are a key measure of profitability and overall sustainability for the Company. Net bank debt is used by management to analyze the financial position, liquidity and leverage of Cardinal. Adjusted funds flow is not intended to represent operating profits nor should it be viewed as an alternative to cash flow provided by operating activities, net earnings or other measures of performance calculated in accordance with GAAP. "Adjusted funds flow" is calculated as cash flow from operating activities adjusted for changes in non-cash working capital and decommissioning expenditures. "Net bank debt" is calculated as bank debt plus current liabilities less current assets (adjusted for the fair value of financial instruments, the current portion of lease liabilities, the current portion of the decommissioning obligation and the current portion of the liability component of convertible debentures). "Net bank debt to adjusted funds flow" ratio is calculated as net bank debt divided by the trailing 12 months adjusted funds flow. About Cardinal Energy Ltd. One of Cardinal's goals is to continually improve our Environmental, Safety and Governance mandate and operate our assets in a responsible and environmentally sensitive manner. As part of this mandate, Cardinal injects and conserves more carbon than it directly emits making us one of the few Canadian energy companies to have a negative carbon footprint. Cardinal is a Canadian oil focused company with operations focused on low decline light, medium and heavy quality oil in Western Canada. For further information: M. Scott Ratushny, CEO or Shawn Van Spankeren, CFO or Laurence Broos, VP Finance Email: info@cardinalenergy.ca Phone: (403) 234-8681 Website: www.cardinalenergy.ca Address: 600, 400 3rd Avenue SW, Calgary, AB T2P 4H2 America Talks: Join us and #ListenFirst in a virtual conversation with another American NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Atlantic Sapphire ASA (Oslo Brs: ASA;OTCQX: AASZF), a company pioneering sustainable Bluehouse (landraised) salmon farming in Miami, Florida, USA, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Atlantic Sapphire ASA begins trading on OTCQX under the symbol "AASZF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com. Trading on the OTCQX Market offers companies efficient, cost-effective access to the U.S. capital markets. For companies listed on a qualified international exchange, streamlined market standards enable them to utilize their home market reporting to make their information available in the U.S. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws. "Congratulations to Atlantic Sapphire ASA on qualifying for the OTCQX Best Market," said Joe Coveney, Vice President of Corporate Services at OTC Markets Group. "We are pleased to support innovative and entrepreneurial international companies seeking to strengthen transparency and to provide better access to disclosure and trading for U.S. investors. Cross-trading on OTCQX in the U.S. will enable Atlantic Sapphire ASA, which is listed on the Oslo Brs, to diversify its investor base and to expand its global engagement even further." Johan E. Andreassen, Chairman of Atlantic Sapphire ASA, said, "since the first U.S. harvest in September 2020, our Bluehouse Salmon has expanded its retail footprint to more than 1,000 locations, with more and more stores coming online as we continue to ramp-up production towards our 2031 target of 220,000t of harvest (about 1 Billion salmon meals each year). Atlantic Sapphire's groundbreaking, cutting-edge technology and aquaculture yield a healthy product that helps eliminates environmental concerns associated with conventional salmon farming. Bluehouse Salmon has a delicious mild flavor, is raised without antibiotics or pesticides, in a water source free of micro plastics. As the world's largest land-based salmon farming company with primary operation in the U.S., we're thrilled to be quoted on a U.S. market and to further diversify our investor base as we expand operations." Arctic Securities LLC acted as the company's OTCQX sponsor. About Atlantic Sapphire ASA Atlantic Sapphire is pioneering Bluehouse (landraised) salmon farming, locally, and transforming protein production, globally. Atlantic Sapphire has been operating its innovation center in Denmark since 2011 with a strong focus on R&D and innovation to equip the company with technology and procedures that enables the company to commercially scale up production in end markets close to the consumer. In the US, the company has since 2010 worked to identify and permit the ideal location for Bluehouse farming in Miami, Florida. The company has completed its phase 1 build out which is projected to harvest approximately 10,000 tons of salmon annually and performed its first commercial harvest in the US in September 2020. The company has also secured the key US water permits to produce up to 90,000 tons onsite, and has a targeted harvest volume in 2031 of 220,000 tons. About OTC Markets Group Inc. OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN, we connect a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for investors. To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com. OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN are SEC regulated ATSs, operated by OTC Link LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed Media Contact: OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, [email protected] SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc. Related Links http://www.otcmarkets.com SPRINGFIELD Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday activated 250 members of the Illinois National Guard for state buildings in Springfield in response to warnings issued this week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding threats to state capital cities in the days leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Henry Haupt, a spokesperson for the Illinois Secretary of State, said no permits were requested or issued for potential demonstrations, but Capitol Police, along with other law enforcement agencies, are fully aware of possible marches on state capitols. A staff member for state Sen. Rachelle Crowe, D-Edwardsville, said the senator felt safe in the capital. State Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, R-Jacksonville, said there is a difference between those who simply protest and the ones who attacked the U.S. Capital. I personally believe a few crazy people stormed the capital and did the wrong thing, he said, adding they should be made an example of. Anybody who thinks they are going to take the government by storming the capital is absolutely crazy. He noted that most people attending those rallies are peaceful and have the right to do so. Davidsmeyer said law enforcement in Springfield should be prepared, but he was concerned some of the security measures were an overreaction. Boarding up the windows of the Capitol is really a waste of money, he said. I dont believe people are going to be attacking the capital. He did have some concerns about the trend of people protesting at elected officials homes or targeting their family members for harassment. My wife contacted me and asked if we should get security cameras, he said. I think this craziness will die down. I dont think well need it. Our country needs to find a way to come back together, Davidsmeyer said, adding there needs to be less left and right. The Illinois State Police (ISP), Secretary of State Police and Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) are working in tandem with local and federal counterparts. At the request of the U.S. Department of Defense, Pritzker also activated 100 more members of the Illinois National Guard in support of the 59th Presidential Inauguration in Washington D.C. They will join about 200 Guard members previously activated by Pritzker. Following the violent siege at our nations capitol and reports from federal law enforcement on threats to state capitals, I am bringing all resources to bear to protect our residents and our democratic process, said Pritzker. We will continue to be fully transparent with the public on any new information and the steps we are taking to respond. On Monday, the FBI issued an intelligence bulletin pointing to the potential for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington, D.C. leading up to Wednesdays inauguration. As with recent previous deployments, the Illinois State Police will work side by side with the Illinois National Guard and our local partners to execute our mission of protecting the democratic process, said ISP Director Brendan F. Kelly. State officials said the National Guard will not interfere with peaceful protestors exercising their 1st Amendment rights. The soldiers will aide local authorities in enforcing street closures and designated perimeters. Capitol News Illinois and The Center Square contributed to this story. Dear Editor: After reading articles in the recent edition of Heritage and past issues, as well as national press coverage of the Uprooting Prejudice exhibit at HMREC, I couldnt help but realize that many of the people commenting and criticizing HMREC for hosting the exhibit, were not aware that from the very beginning of its existence, the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center supported programming on two tracks in order to fulfill its mission. On one track, they successfully brought Holocaust education to the local schools, trained teachers and made the general public aware o... Kildare's Maher family have blown away the critics with their debut single written by renowned song writer Brendan Graham. Accompanied by daughters Ruby (11), Robyn (17) and Stacy (18), dad Dave is thrilled the song went straight to number two in the Irish itunes charts when it was launched on January 8. "Lullaby for the World is a beautiful song by Brendan Graham, who wrote You raise me up, and it is a song about climate change. It's a positive anthem for the future," said the Newbridge man. "The response has been amazing. We are thrilled. My daughter Ruby, who recently featured on the UK version of The Voice, does the main vocal. She was picked to be on will.i.am's team. The song has already reached 40,000 hits. "A major social influencer, Ryan, who is a big star on Tick Tok, is also trying to get millions of kids to put their 'save the world face' on with make up to our song, and if it catches on it will be massive as we are already at number two." This is the family's first song together although Dave is no stranger to the music business. The new album was recorded during lockdown. Having appeared last year on TG4's Realta agus Gaolta, the talent show hunting for Ireland's most talented family, the Mahers rendition of Olly Murr's Dance with Me impressed the audience. However they just missed out on being declared the winners. Back 41 years ago, Dave and his own family appeared on the well known UK talent show Opportunity Knocks, winning top prize. Lullaby for the World is available on iTunes and Amazon. Check out the song below Representative Image Pfizer-BioNTech said on Friday deliveries of its leading coronavirus vaccine to Europe will be delayed in the weeks ahead, hampering the rollout as global deaths from the pandemic close in on two million. News of the vaccine setback came as World Health Organization experts were working on advice to fight new strains of the disease feared to be more contagious. The soaring number of fatalities -- 1,994,833 -- is matched by the spread of infections, with Europe recording 30,003,905 cases, nearly a third of the worldwide total, according to an AFP tally based on official statistics. The announcement that Pfizer-BioNTech shots would be delayed for up to a month during work to boost capacity at the US company's plant in Puurs, Belgium was met with dismay by many EU members. Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states called the vaccine holdup "unacceptable" -- although Berlin and Brussels said Pfizer had vowed to deliver the full quantities of doses promised for the first quarter before the end of March. 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 France had said earlier Friday that its pharma giant Sanofi could manufacture vaccines on behalf of other developers, including Pfizer-BioNTech, while awaiting approval of its own shot -- not expected before the end of the year. With cases still mounting and vaccination drives still in their infancy, many countries are doubling down on virus restrictions. Portugal entered a fresh lockdown Friday while Britain began requiring negative tests for entry, and new curbs on populations were announced from Italy to Brazil and Lebanon. Looking to bring forward crisis talks with regional leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for a "significant" tightening of curbs to slow the country's infection rate after cases hit two million, participants at a meeting of her centre-right CDU party told AFP. At the Meissen crematorium in Germany's Saxony state, coffins were stacked up to three high, or even stored in hallways, awaiting cremation. Manager Joerg Schaldach, 57, said anyone still denying the severity of the pandemic should take a look at the bodies piling up. "This is heavy work, so why don't the Covid-19 deniers come and do it," he said. "We have a disastrous situation here." 'Worrying' Britain on Thursday said it would ban all arrivals from South American countries from Friday, over fears of importing a new coronavirus strain. "I've taken the urgent decision... following evidence of a new variant in Brazil," said Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. The new strain, known as E484K, has raised alarm among researchers over its possible impact on immunity. Brazil's northern Amazonas state announced a curfew from seven pm to six am as the health system is pushed to breaking point in the state capital Manaus. Global health experts were expected on Friday to issue recommendations to stem the spread of this variant and other new strains, which the WHO called "worrying". "When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease we now call Covid-19 had been reported to the WHO," director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Thursday's emergency meeting in Geneva, which had been brought forward two weeks. Elsewhere scientists have warned that anti-parasite drug ivermectin, promoted in Facebook posts and by some Latin American leaders like Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, should not be taken to treat coronavirus before more research is completed. The European Medicines Agency also said hackers had leaked online documents stolen from the watchdog, some of them altered to sow doubt about vaccines among the public. $1.9 trillion stimulus plan European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen backed a Greek call for an EU-wide digital vaccination certificate, which Athens hopes could relieve the bloc's battered travel and tourism industry. There were signs of the strain from cross-Channel train operator Eurostar, said to be in "a very critical" state by an executive at top shareholder SNCF as it runs just one London-Paris connection per day. Around the world, scientists see large-scale vaccination as the way out of the crisis -- but 95 percent of doses so far administered have been limited to just 10 countries, according to the WHO. Progress on administering vaccines has often been slow. India's mammoth immunisation programme will begin on Saturday. In the United States around 10 million people have received a first shot. In Africa, Senegal said it would launch vaccinations by the end of March and Nigeria announced it would have 10 million vaccine doses by the end of the same month. Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with 200 million people, has officially reported 104,000 Covid-19 cases, of which 1,382 have been fatal. But the figures are believed to fall short of the real toll. US policymakers are focused on addressing the economic damage from the pandemic, with President-elect Joe Biden unveiling a proposal for a $1.9 trillion relief package aimed at revitalising the world's largest economy. He aims to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, help struggling state and local governments, safely reopen schools, boost the vaccination campaign and raise the size of stimulus cheques. "In this moment of crisis... we cannot afford inaction," Biden said. German authorities have granted permission for the construction of the Nord Stream 2 undersea gas pipeline from Russia to continue despite U.S. sanctions threats and opposition from environmental groups. The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agencys (BSH) decision on January 15 can still be appealed. Environmental Action Germany (DUH), which campaigns to protect the environment, said it would challenge the decision in court, arguing the mega fossil fuel project threatens the climate and some of Europes most important migratory bird habitat on Germanys Baltic Sea coast. The U.S. government and some EU members want to prevent the pipeline from being completed, saying it will strengthen Russias energy hold on Europe and undercut Ukraines role as a transit country for Russian gas. The pipeline, designed to double capacity of the existing undersea Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, has been a point of contention between Berlin and Washington. German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass said January 15 that he hopes to have high-level talks with the incoming Biden administration about possible new U.S. sanctions against the project. The threat of U.S. sanctions forced a Switzerland-based pipe-laying company to suspend construction on Nord Stream 2 in December 2019 shortly before its completion. Nord Stream 2, led by Russian gas giant Gazprom, had to bring in a different type of ship, which is moved or held in place by other vessels, requiring a new permit. The Russian ship, called Fortuna, finished a 2.6-kilometer section of each of the gas pipeline's branches within Germanys exclusive economic zone in December 2020 but the permit expired at the end of the year. The new approval allows for work to continue in Germany's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) until May. Fortuna left the German port city of Wismar on January 14 and moved in the direction of the construction zone, Germanys NDR public broadcaster reported. Separately, Danish authorities had said work near the island of Bornholm would begin from January 15 with the Fortuna's participation. However, a Nord Stream 2 spokesperson told German business daily Handelsblatt that the ship is not anticipated to begin laying pipes until the end of January or beginning of February. According to Gazprom, 94 percent of the pipeline has been completed. That leaves around 150 kilometers left -- or 75 kilometers on each parallel line -- of which 120 kilometers are in Danish waters and 30 kilometers in German waters. With reporting by AP, dpa, NDR, and Handelsblatt Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Therma Bright Inc. (TSXV: THRM) ("Therma" or the "Company"), a progressive medical device technology company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ian Levine to the advisory board to assist with future scaling for the manufacture of CoviSafe. Mr. Levine will build the overall operations for the Therma Bright team to secure efficient and smooth delivery of CoviSafe to our global customers. Mr. Levine's experience in global manufacturing and distribution of regulated healthcare products will be instrumental in the final development of CoviSafe and the establishment of Therma Bright's manufacturing, logistics and distribution platforms for CoviSafe. Mr. Levine has over 22 years' experience as an entrepreneur in the healthcare and manufacturing industries. He has held roles as a senior executive reporting to board of directors and has taken numerous board member roles. Mr. Levine has experience building start-ups turning them into robust companies including one that became a successful $200M+ international company with over 280 employees across North America. Mr. Levine's skill set will be essential for the long-term growth of Therma Bright which includes organizational development; human resource management; research and development; product design; continuous product quality improvement; quality management and regulatory compliance; sales and marketing strategy; global sourcing; cultural diversification; operational excellence; and market positioning. Mr. Levine is fluently bilingual in both official languages (English and French) and is an inventor of multiple global patents for medical devices. Mr. Levine holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Anatomical Sciences and a Master's in Business Administration, both from McGill University. Rob Fia, CEO & President commented: "Therma Bright is pleased to add Ian Levine to our advisory team. Ian's experience in product design and development, scaling up manufacturing, quality management and distribution and marketing represents a significant addition to the Therma Bright team. Therma Bright is moving rapidly through R&D with CoviSafe as we prepare the path for regulatory submissions to the FDA, Health Canada, and to obtain the CE mark for Europe. Ian will work with manufacturers for CoviSafe with a focus on scaling commercial production for worldwide distribution once regulatory approval is achieved." The Company also announces that pursuant to the Company's 10% rolling stock option plan and in compliance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, it has granted incentive stock options to an officer of the Company to purchase up to 200,000 common shares of the Company. These options are exercisable for a period of 5 years at a price of $0.35 per share. Therma Bright also announces that it has negotiated debt settlements with arm's length and non-arm's length creditors. Pursuant to the debt settlement agreements, and subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange, the Company has agreed to settle aggregate outstanding debt of $260,000 in consideration for which it will issue an aggregate of 866,664 common shares at a deemed price of $0.30 per share. Certain Insiders of the Company participated in the debt settlements (Joe Heng, Tim Peterson and Spencer Sungbum Huh, each a director of the Company, agreed to settle $20,000 debt owed to each of them for 66,666 shares each; and Victor Hugo, the Company's CFO, agreed to settle $10,000 debt for 33,333 shares). Participation by Insiders in the debt settlements is considered a "related party transaction" pursuant to MI 61-101. The Company is exempt from the requirements to obtain a formal valuation and minority shareholder approval in connection with the Insiders' participation in the debt settlements in reliance of sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(a) of MI 61-101, respectively, on the basis that participation in the debt settlements by the Insiders did not exceed 25% of the fair market value of the Company's market capitalization. All shares issued in relation to these debt settlements are subject to a hold period expiring four months + one day after the date the shares are issued, in accordance with applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange. Therma Bright is not making any express or implied claims that its product, CoviSafe, has the ability to eliminate or cure COVID-19 or the SARS-CoV-2 virus. About Therma Bright Inc. Therma Bright is a progressive medical device technology company focused on providing consumers and medical professionals with quality medical devices that address their medical and healthcare needs. The Company's initial breakthrough proprietary technology delivers effective, non-invasive and pain-free skincare. Therma Bright received a Class II medical device status from the FDA for its platform technology that is indicated for the relief of the pain, itch, and inflammation of a variety of insect bites or stings. The Company received clearance for the above claims from the US FDA in 1997. Therma Bright Inc. trades on the (TSXV: THRM) (OTC PINK: THRBF) (FSE: JNX). For more information visit: www.thermabright.com and www.coldsores.com For further information, please contact: Therma Bright Inc. Rob Fia, CEO rfia@thermabright.com Follow us on Twitter FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking" statements. These statements relate to future events such as development and commercialization of a rapid COVID-19 viral assay and related instrumentation, manufacturing PPE and hand sanitizers and applying for government grants to support the Company's future performance. as described in the news release. All such statements involve substantial known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results to vary from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, they should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and they will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions on the date of this news release, the Company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities regulations. 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. This press release is not an offer of the securities for sale in the United States. The securities 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 exemption from registration. 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. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72138 The dueling approaches illustrate the competing pressures at play: getting as many doses out as quickly as possible but also ensuring that people at most risk are at the front of the line. California has set up mass vaccination sites from the state fairgrounds in Sacramento to the Toy Story parking lot at Disneyland, where cars have been lined up since Wednesday. But those who show up without appointments are being turned away. State Senator Tom Umberg, whose district includes the still-closed theme park in Orange County, said confused constituents many of them older residents have been jamming his phone lines. People are heartened that it looks like vaccines will be more available, but there are clearly some glitches, he said. And some places that made the vaccine available to older people this week were quickly overwhelmed. In Mississippi, which opened eligibility to people 65 and older on Tuesday, the state health department said its scheduling website and drive-through vaccination sites were not designed to handle the monumental surge of people suddenly trying to get vaccinated. Every last dose in the state has already been tied to an appointment. In New York City, a million residents who are over 65 became eligible to be vaccinated this week, but the reality of actually getting the shots has proved to be frustrating, with buggy websites, multiple sign-up systems and a lack of outreach. In Georgia, which has one of the slowest rates of vaccine distribution in the country, with 23 percent of its first doses administered, public health departments have been inundated with residents trying to book appointments. The state began immunizing people 65 and older on Monday, and already some districts have had to stop booking appointments because every available dose has been accounted for. We totally understand the publics frustration, said Mr. Boss, the spokesman for the Northwest Health District in Georgia, which has stopped booking appointments. Were taking a lot of heat, understandably so. We regret that we dont have enough for everyone who wants it right now. RTHK: Investigators recover data from Indonesia jet crash Indonesian investigators said on Friday that they have successfully recovered data from a crashed passenger jet's flight recorder, days after the plane with 62 people aboard slammed into the sea. "(It's) all in good condition and we're now examining the data," National Transportation Safety Committee head Soerjanto Tjahjono said in a statement. The recorder, which holds information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, could supply critical clues as to why the aircraft plunged about 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) in less than a minute before crashing into waters off Jakarta last Saturday. A rescue party near the capital's coast has worked for days to salvage human remains and wreckage from the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500, as well as two flight recorders. More than 3,000 people are taking part in the recovery effort, assisted by dozens of boats and helicopters. Divers on Tuesday hauled the data recorder to the surface, with the hunt now focused on finding a cockpit voice recorder on the wreckage-littered seabed. The 26-year-old plane crashed just four minutes after setting off from Jakarta, bound for Pontianak city on Borneo island, a 90-minute flight away. Authorities said the crew did not declare an emergency or report technical problems with the plane before its dive, and that it was probably intact when it hit the water citing a relatively small area where the wreckage was scattered. The crash probe was likely to take months, but a preliminary report was expected in 30 days. Indonesia's fast-growing aviation sector has long been plagued by safety concerns, and its airlines were once banned from US and European airspace. In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet crashed near Jakarta. That accident and another in Ethiopia led to the grounding of the 737 MAX worldwide over a faulty anti-stall system. The 737 that went down last Saturday was first produced decades ago and was not a MAX variant. (AFP) This story has been published on: 2021-01-15. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. COLLINSVILLE University of Illinois Extension will host its 2021 Fruit & Vegetable Virtual Conference on Wednesday, Feb. 10. This school is the Southwestern Illinois Tree Fruit School normally held in Hardin combined with the Southern Illinois Fruit & Vegetable School normally held in Mt. Vernon. There will be tree fruit, small fruit and vegetable sessions. Each session will conclude with a question and answer period with the presenters. There is no cost to attend the virtual conference. For more details call 618-344-4230. Be ready to provide an e-mail address with your registration. You will receive the Zoom meeting connection information with your registration. Extension also is offering a 2021 spray production guide with registrations. The guide will be mailed to your home. The Vegetable Production Guide is $25 and the Fruit Production Guide is $20. Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. The Statue of Peace, representing victims of wartime sex slavery by the Japanese Empire, is set up in front of the former site of the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul, Jan. 8, the day the Seoul Central District Court ordered the Japanese government to compensate 12 surviving South Korean victims by paying 100 million won ($91,000) to each of them. Yonhap New envoy to Tokyo says President still determined to meet with Suga for frank discussions By Jung Da-min After a Korean local court's recent ruling which ordered the Japanese government to compensate 12 surviving South Korean victims of wartime sex slavery by paying 100 million won ($91,000) to each, concerns have been raised that the ruling has left little room for the governments of the two countries in terms of what they could do to improve the worsening relations. The conflict between the countries came to a head a few years ago with the South Korean Supreme Court's October 2018 ruling which ordered Japanese companies to compensate surviving South Korean victims of wartime forced labor, and has been intensified with the Seoul Central District Court's Jan. 8 ruling on compensation for sex slavery victims. Experts say the time has come for the two governments to take their next steps based on the changed situation following the rulings. Yang Ki-ho, a professor at Sungkonghoe University, said the essential issue of the legal conflicts was whether Japan's sovereign immunity could shield it from lawsuits in South Korea. But the Korean courts said the cases could not be subject to sovereign immunity, as Japan's crimes were against humanity and happened during its illegal occupation of the Korean Peninsula. "There had been controversies surrounding the court rulings, which held the Japanese firms and the Japanese government responsible, as they were the first such cases. But the October 2018 ruling on the compensation for wartime forced laborers and another in January this year on the compensation for sex slavery victims showed the South Korean judiciary branch's consistent stance on the matter over the past years," Yang said. "The governments of South Korea and Japan had made much efforts to solve the issue such as providing compensation to victims in monetary terms, and forming the now-disbanded Reconciliation and Healing Foundation to provide compensation to sex slavery victims for example. But such efforts were made before the judiciary branch's conclusion on the matters had been made, and now the two governments face a limit for such past efforts and are urged to come up with new measures." Yang said as the Korean government has expressed its stance that it respects the judgments of the courts, it is now urged to take its next steps by implementing measures domestically while seeking consensus and support from the Japanese government for such measures. "For the matter of forced labor, some victims are seeking monetary compensation and the government could find ways to deal with them while cooperating with the Japanese side. For the demands of victims of sex slavery, there are some things the government could do, such as establishing a museum dedicated to activities to promote women's rights and education and exchange programs for future generation of the two countries." Yang said. "In the meantime, the Japanese government would need to support such activities by the South Korean government and make an official apology again to the surviving victims because an apology by the Japanese government is what the victims have been seeking and is at the center of the matter." New Korean Ambassador to Japan Kang Chang-il speaks during an online press conference, Sunday. Yonhap The ALYI Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycle is built on a BMW R71 clone frame. The Retro ReVolt has been designed for ALYI by MODUS. The exclusive first 200 Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycles will come with a plate bearing the MODUS signature and the number of the bike. Go to the following link to get on the pre-order wait list: https://www.revoltmotorbikes.com/preorder-1 Your place on the list will be emailed to you within one week. Within the next thirty days, those on the pre-order list will be required to make a $500 initial payment. When the Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycle goes into production, a $6,000 deposit will be required. When the Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycle is ready to ship, a final payment of $6,000 will be required. To learn more about the Retro Revolt Electric Motorcycle built on a clone BMW R71 frame, visit www.revoltmotorbikes.com. For more information and to stay up to date on ALYI's overall latest developments, please visit www.alternetsystemsinc.com. Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1421505/ALYI_ReVolt_Electric_Motorcycle.jpg Alternet Systems, Inc. Contact: Randell Torno [email protected] +1-800-713-0297 SOURCE Alternet Systems, Inc. Related Links https://www.alternetsystemsinc.com Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a Pyongyang parade State media said Kim Jong Un took centre stage after the Eighth Workers' Party congress came to an end Kim vowed to vowed to bolster his nuclear and missile programme to send Joe Biden a message of strength North Korea's economy has tanked due to sanctions and natural disasters which have destroyed crops Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang, state media reported Friday, in a show of strength days before Joe Biden's inauguration as US president. State media said Kim Jong Un took centre stage after the five-yearly congress of the ruling Workers' Party, at which the North Korean leader decried the US as his country's 'foremost principal enemy'. ADVERTISEMENT The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released photos of Kim wearing a black fur hat and leather trench coat, smiling widely and gesturing from a podium as thousands of troops and civilian spectators filled Kim Il Sung Square, named after his grandfather and North Korea's founder. The agency said spectators roared as troops rolled out the country's most advanced strategic weapons, including submarine-launched ballistic missiles it described as the 'world's mightiest.' Photos released by state media showed the parade ending with what appeared to be a new solid-fuel short-range ballistic missile - which are more mobile and more quickly deployed than liquid-fuelled versions. The images revealed that the SLBM was labelled Pukguksong-5, potentially marking an upgrade over the Pukguksong-4 that was unveiled at a larger military parade in October. 'The world's most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missile, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces,' the KCNA news agency said. Thursday's event did not showcase North Korea's largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are believed to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead to anywhere in the US. During the eight-day Workers' Party congress, Kim vowed to bolster his nuclear and missile programme in a bid to send the incoming Biden administration a message of strength in a bid to extract concessions. Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang, state media reported Friday, in a show of strength days before Joe Biden's inauguration as US president Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 to celebrate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency General view of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 to celebrate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 to celebrate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Residents welcome the participants of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Residents welcome the participants of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Military equipment is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party General view of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Military equipment is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Military equipments is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party The North Korean leader also revealed plans to salvage the economy amid US-led sanctions over his nuclear ambitions, pandemic-related border closures and natural disasters that wiped out crops. ADVERTISEMENT The economic setbacks have left Kim nothing to show for his ambitious diplomacy with President Donald Trump, which derailed over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and the North's denuclearisation steps, and pushed Kim to what is clearly the toughest moment of his nine-year rule. Kim's comments are likely intended to pressure Biden, who has previously called the North Korean leader a 'thug' and accused Trump of chasing spectacle rather than meaningful curbs on the North's nuclear capabilities. Click here to resize this module The North Korean leader has not ruled out talks, but he said the fate of bilateral relations would depend on whether Washington DC abandons its hostile policy toward Pyongyang. Kim and Trump had a tumultuous relationship, engaging in mutual insults and threats of war before an extraordinary bromance featuring headline-grabbing summits and declarations of love. But little substantive progress was made, with the process deadlocked after a February 2019 summit in Hanoi broke down over sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return. The US is expected to return to more orthodox diplomatic approaches under Biden, such as insisting on extensive progress at working-level talks before any leaders' summit can be considered. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is pictured on a screen during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency A general view of a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Residents welcome the participants of a military parade to safe guard the Eighth Congress of the Workers' Party North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party General view of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang A North Korea flag is flown during ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Troops march during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Troops march during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Military equipment is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Pyongyang has poured vast resources into its weapons programmes, which have made rapid progress under Kim and which it says it needs to defend itself against a possible US invasion. 'The majestic elite units and invincible iron-clad ranks of the Republic which will proudly pass Kim Il Sung Square represent our absolute power,' North Korean defence minister Kim Jong Gwan said in a speech ahead of the Thursday evening parade, KCNA reported. ADVERTISEMENT The display also included infantry troops, artillery, tanks, and a flypast with aircraft forming the number '8' to commemorate the congress, it said. But the North is carefully calibrating its messaging and neither the KCNA description nor the images included any intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), suggesting that the parade was on a smaller scale than the North's previous such display in October. At that time, it showed off a huge new ICBM on an 11-axle vehicle that analysts said was the largest road-mobile, liquid-fuelled missile in the world. At the congress, Kim said the North had completed plans for a nuclear-powered submarine - something that would change the strategic balance if it was built and went into service. On Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un and a member of the ruling party's Central Committee, criticised South Korea's military for saying it had detected signs of a parade in Pyongyang on Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT North Korean officials have been meeting in Pyongyang for the first party congress since 2016. 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. India is all set to commence the "world's largest vaccination drive", starting from tomorrow. Nearly 3 crore healthcare and frontline workers will be inoculated during the initial phase of COVID-19 vaccination drive . To monitor the inoculation drive and track the listed beneficiaries for vaccination on a real-time basis, the central government has developed Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network or Co-WIN application. COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network has been developed for planning, implementation, monitoring, & evaluation of COVID-19 vaccination in India, health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said. Co-WIN will facilitate real time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature during the COVID-19 vaccination drive, Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Thursday. "There are five modules in Co-WIN app - administrator module, registration module, vaccination module, beneficiary acknowledgment module and report module," health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said earlier. Users can register themselves on the app for vaccination. However, the Co-WIN app is not available on either Google Play Store and Apples App Store. It will be used as a back-end software during COVID-19 vaccination drive, starting from Saturday. "The self-registration module of Co-WIN App has not been released yet. Be wary of any fraudulent apps with similar names that may exist on different platforms," Vardhan said. The ministry of health and family welfare has warned citizens against downloading fake CoWIN apps that are doing the rounds on app stores. The governments Co-WIN app is still under development. "There are several apps that are named Co-WIN on mobile app stores and also several websites claiming to have an APK for the Co-WIN app. However, none of these apps are official apps for COVID-19 immunization," the ministry of health noted in a tweet. Co-WIN app for self-registration will be available soon and will be duly announced by the government, the health ministry said. India has set up a 24x7 call centre 1075 for all inoculation related queries. "A dedicated 24x7 call centre 1075 has also been established for addressing the queries related to COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine rollout and the Co-WIN software," Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. The drug regulator granted the emergency use approval for two indigenous vaccines Covishield by Serum Institute of India and Covaxin by Bharat Biotech. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. A few weeks before Christmas, University of North Georgia (UNG) student Kimberly Burns received an early present. She and seven other UNG students were awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. The program enables students who are eligible for the Pell grant to study or intern abroad for at least three weeks and gain skills critical to national security and economic competitiveness. "This will be my first time to travel abroad and my first plane ride," said Burns, a senior pursuing a degree in East Asian Studies with a concentration in Chinese. "I'm excited and looking forward to a rewarding experience." The 24-year-old from Boston, Georgia, plans to immerse herself in the Taiwanese culture and Mandarin Chinese language for nearly two months during summer 2021. Joining her for their own unique experiences in six other countries are seven others from UNG. Simmons, a 20-year-old from Snellville, Georgia, is looking forward to her experience in China for two reasons. First, last spring she was selected as an alternate for the Critical Language Scholarship before the programs were suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, she hopes to return to the country of her birth. "I've always wanted to study abroad and improve my Chinese language skills," Simmons said. "But I've wanted to go to the place I was born since I was adopted from China." Dr. Kathryn Quinto, fellowships adviser for the nationally competitive scholarships office at UNG, explained that the Gilman scholarship provides students like Burns and Simmons the opportunity to learn about another culture and language through an immersive experience. "This helps broaden their perspective and strengthens their intercultural communication skills," she said. "It also helps them to be more competitive for graduate school and in their future careers." Sisters Haley and Hannah Menees of Cumming, Georgia, said their trip to Peru will help them improve their Spanish-speaking skills, which is a priority for the aspiring doctors. "I want to become an OB/GYN doctor, specializing in gynecologic oncology," said Haley, an 18-year-old freshman. "This trip will increase my linguistic proficiency and understanding of the underlying logic and values that affect the medical outcomes of the second-largest ethnicity in the United States, the Hispanic populations." The sisters said they selected Peru for their study abroad experience to live with a host family. "We want to meet with the locals and have that enriching cultural experience," said Hannah, a 20-year-old sophomore. Quinto also credits the Center for Global Engagement (CGE) for promoting the study abroad programs in the new virtual environment and helping students find their ideal situation. "CGE has been amazing in their outreach and support for students," Quinto said. "We collaborate with colleagues in CGE to advise students during each step of the application process." Students interested in learning more about nationally competitive scholarships, including Gilman, should contact ncs@ung.edu for more information. Students interested in learning about study abroad opportunities through various programs may visit UNG's Center for Global Engagement. 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. Farmers Fridge, best known for selling jars of fresh salads out of vending machines, is now hawking its healthy fare through an unlikely partner: doughnut titan Dunkin. Chicago-based Farmers Fridge this week launched a pilot with three local Dunkin restaurants, which for the next three months will carry a selection of its salads, grain bowls and desserts on their menus. The partnership is Farmers Fridges first with a fast-casual restaurant and furthers its mission to make fresh, healthy food as accessible as a candy bar, said founder and CEO Luke Saunders. He hopes for a wider rollout. If we can figure out how to put this in every Dunkin we would absolutely do that, Saunders said. Partnerships with other restaurants are in the works, to be announced within the next 18 months, he said. Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin, owned by Inspire Brands, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Dunkin, which in 2018 it dropped Donuts from its branding and focused attention on its coffee, has been expanding its menu and recently introduced healthier options. A breakfast sandwich made with meatless Beyond Sausage rolled out nationwide in late 2019, and this month the chain added a limited-time Southwest Veggie Power Breakfast sandwich with a plant-based patty. Still, lunch salads are a different ballgame. Alongside frosted vanilla creme donuts and chocolate-dipped french crullers, the pilot adds Farmers Fridges Greek salad, pesto pasta bowl and pineapple coconut chia pudding, among the seven new items. Saunders said Dunkins interest in the partnership reflects the trend of people wanting healthier options and the logistical challenges of selling fresh food. Farmers Fridge, which has been growing fast since it was founded in 2013, now has the distribution system, name recognition and economies of scale to offer a low enough price to make it an appealing supplier, Saunders said. Its not that these chains dont want to offer them (salads and other fresh meals), its that the supply chain has made it hard in the past, Saunders said. Seven years in, we are able to provide a solution to solve a problem. Farmers Fridge made a name for itself with its refrigerated smart vending machines, often located on university campuses, in airports and in office buildings to give people a quick on-the-go lunch option. The company, which in 2019 moved production to a 50,000-square-foot facility near Midway Airport in Chicago, now has nearly 400 vending machines in six states, and has sold 3.7 million meals. Plans to sell more through retailers were accelerated during the pandemic as offices emptied and regular walk-by traffic at its vending machines was greatly reduced, Saunders said. It also launched a home delivery program that stretches into the suburbs and started selling wholesale to hospitals. Farmers Fridge was connected to Dunkin by Cleveland Avenue, the Chicago-based venture capital fund led by former McDonalds CEO Don Thompson, which is an investor in Farmers Fridge as well as Beyond Meat, Saunders said. -- Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz of the Chicago Tribune wrote this story. 2021 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. The 2021 Honda CR-V Hybrid combines everything the traditional version has to offer with cutting-edge hybrid technology. Learn more about this new vehicle today. The 2021 Honda class of vehicles has largely fully arrived at the Meridian Honda showroom. While each vehicle in the dealerships inventory has something to offer potential buyers, the team of Meridian Honda product experts is extra excited to profile some of the automakers crossover SUVs. A couple of models that the team would like to draw your attention to include the 2021 Honda CR-V Hybrid and 2021 Honda HR-V. The latest CR-V Hybrid is still on its way to Meridian Honda, but it is in customers best interest to know what they will see when it does go on sale. Potential buyers looking for something a little smaller, like the 2021 HR-V can learn its strengths by seeing how it stacks up against a top competitor. Fuel efficiency* is always a top concern for Honda crossover SUV buyers. That is exactly why the Honda CR-V Hybrid was developed. Entering its second model year, the 2021 version of the CR-V Hybrid is available in three trim grades, Hybrid EX, Hybrid EX-L and Hybrid Touring. Each of these models will use the same base powertrain, a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter, inline four-cylinder engine attached to the Honda hybrid system. The 2021 Honda CR-V Hybrid will make up to 212 net horsepower when the gasoline and electric parts of the vehicles powertrain are working together. It will feature the same passenger and cargo dimensions that appeared in the inaugural model that came out last year. The 2021 Honda HR-V is small but very capable and it is available in four trim grades, LX, Sport, EX and EX-L. When it is compared to one of its likely rivals, the subcompact crossover SUV is able to offer very competitive performance scores and legroom dimensions for all passengers. However, where the 2021 HR-V really shines is in cargo volume. When the interior of the 2021 Honda HR-V LX is properly configured, it will make up to 58.8 cubic-feet of cargo volume available. The other platform in this comparison will only make up to 42.7 cubic-feet of cargo volume available to its owners. 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 start the pre-ordering process for the 2021 Honda CR-V Hybrid or 2021 Honda HR-V today by calling, 601-693-4651. *40 city/35 highway/38 combined mpg rating for hybrid trims. Based on 2021 EPA mileage ratings. Use for comparison purposes only. Your mileage will vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle, driving conditions, battery-pack age/condition (hybrid trims) and other factors. Richwood, TX (77531) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 75F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 75F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. It was all hands on deck to clear the exceptional amounts of snow that fell on Madrid and other towns and cities late last week. Forecasters said it was the worst snowfall since the early 1970s in the capital region. With vehicles blocking roads, damage to trees and accumulated snow turning to ice as temperatures plummeted to the lowest in 60 years, even politicians joined in the neighbourhood clear-ups. Coming in the midst of a surge in Covid-19 cases, hospitals, many with blocked entrances, were put under extra pressure. By early this week, some 2,000 people had sought medical help in Madrid after slipping on snow and ice. Although Madrid was slowly getting back to normal by the end of the week, on Thursday the capital's mayor, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, joined many other mayors in the region in calling on the government to declare his city a Disaster Zone in order to increase the level of support available and speed up compensation claims. As well as blocking roads, the snowfall closed Madrid's Barajas airport for a few days until last Monday and the huge Mercamadrid wholesale market until Tuesday, disrupting fresh produce supplies in the city. Schools were also closed this week across the worst-hit areas of inland Spain and some were expected to remain shut next week as damage was assessed. Madrid estimated on Thursday that 850 tonnes of the 9,000 tonnes of rubbish that has built up on the city's streets had been cleared. The freezing temperature that hit much of the country after the snowfalls has prevented melting. Early on Tuesday morning, the thermometer in the tiny village of Bello, in Teruel province, got as low as -25.4 C, the lowest in a Spanish town or village since 1963. Some main rural roads across the country stayed shut. In Andalucia, five were still closed on Thursday in higher parts of Almeria, Cadiz and Granada provinces. "Karen is an excellent attorney. Her enthusiasm for building strong professional relationships is infectious and in line with the Katten mission to ensure our clients realize their business goals," said Katten Chairman Roger P. Furey. "We look forward to Karen's oversight in Charlotte, and we thank Dan for his many years of excellence as a Katten lawyer and leader." Recognized as a leading attorney by North Carolina Lawyers Weekly and the Charlotte Business Journal, Nelson joined Katten in 2012, having become partner at another large law firm. With emphasis on the origination and restructuring of debt secured by real estate assets, she advises on a range of commercial real estate finance matters, representing some of the country's largest commercial and investment banks, funds, insurance companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Nelson advises about real estate assets of all types, including office, retail, hotel, multifamily, homebuilder, condominium and industrial properties. She frequently leads teams of other Katten partners and associates on complex deals and annually closes hundreds of millions of real estate finance loans. At the same time, Nelson serves as mentor to other attorneys, many of them women, within Katten and in the real estate industry. She stresses the importance of fostering relationships with coworkers and clients and becoming thoroughly familiar with their business goals, something she has done very well as evidenced by her longtime clients, many of whom credit partnership with her as a reason for their success. "Karen has an extraordinary ability to connect with people and work with them successfully. Her energy is seemingly limitless," Huffenus said. "I know she will be an effective managing partner of our office. She is roundly respected by Katten team members here and elsewhere and throughout the local real estate community and the industry nationally." Under Huffenus's leadership the Charlotte office doubled in size, growing from 25 lawyers to more than 50. He helped put the real estate finance practice on a path to local and national prominence as it has been consistently recognized as top-of-class in North Carolina and across the country. Among other achievements, Huffenus also oversaw expansion of the Charlotte office practices beyond real estate to include commercial litigation, corporate, intellectual property, structured finance and securitization, and private wealth. A member of the North Carolina Bar and the Mecklenburg Bar, Nelson is a LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP), a title she earned after training through the Green Building Certification Institute. She is a member of Charlotte's Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW), which promotes business, provides educational opportunities, and shares information among women leaders in the local real estate industry. Nelson has tutored homeless children, raised funds for children's literacy, and provided pro bono services for Charlotte families involved with Habitat for Humanity. Additionally, she leads the Charlotte arm of Katten's Women's Leadership Forum (WLF), where she works with other women at the firm to develop mentoring, networking and marketing to increase internal and external visibility for women firmwide. Katten is a full-service law firm with nearly 700 attorneys in locations across the United States and in London and Shanghai. Clients seeking sophisticated, high-value legal services turn to Katten for counsel locally, nationally and internationally. The firm's core areas of practice include commercial finance, corporate, financial markets and funds, insolvency and restructuring, intellectual property, litigation, real estate, structured finance and securitization, transactional tax planning, and trusts and estates. Katten represents public and private companies in numerous industries, as well as a number of government and nonprofit organizations and individuals. For more information, visit katten.com. SOURCE Katten For a second time, a surge in COVID-19 cases has pushed Texas hospitals beyond their base capacity, thwarted the states plan to reopen businesses and spurred a wave of deaths that health experts say was avoidable. Instead of effectively mitigating a virus that already has killed more than 30,000, Texas is enduring one of its darkest chapters of the COVID-19 pandemic as state officials scramble to vaccinate 29 million residents. Critics of Gov. Greg Abbotts October reopening guidelines say state leaders are repeating many of the same mistakes from last summers crisis by opting against tighter restrictions, fighting local officials efforts to close high-risk businesses and relaying mixed messages to the public. City and county leaders are sending conflicting signals of their own, urging residents to stay home and avoid crowds while doing little to enforce mask rules or capacity limits, citing a lack of manpower. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer And many of their constituents simply have tuned out the partisan bickering and given up on following health guidelines. Fatigued after 10 months, some members of the public largely have resumed their normal lives, gathering unmasked with others, ensuring the virus continues to spread. Those pushing for more action say Abbott could permit rules that stop short of a full-scale shutdown, such as limiting restaurants to takeout and delivery, that would preserve businesses while still doing more to contain the spread. I understand theres businesses, and we dont want the economy to be completely devastated, but I think we were aggressive on opening up things early, and we werent aggressive on pulling things back when things were starting to get serious, said Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy at Rice Universitys Baker Institute. Abbott said his health protocols are based on guidance from medical experts to ensure hospital systems never are overwhelmed. If COVID-19 patients occupy at least 15 percent of beds in a hospital region for seven consecutive days, elective surgeries must be postponed, bars must close and most other businesses must decrease occupancy from three-quarters to half of capacity. The burden for quelling this new surge, Abbott said, falls on local leaders who must ensure Texans follow these rules. They proved effective in slowing the spread over the summer and containing the virus, and in recent weeks in communities that experienced spikes, Abbotts press secretary, Renae Eze, said in a statement. They can continue to work, but only if enforced. Dr. Mark McClellan, a former FDA commissioner and one of the governors chief medical advisers, said while the state has made great strides encouraging mask-wearing and making testing available, Abbott should consider more aggressive action to bring the virus under control, including tighter restrictions on restaurants and bars. He predicted the pandemic will continue to worsen here in the coming weeks. Especially at this stage when so many parts of the state are surging not only beyond the thresholds, but approaching full ICUs and health care crisis levels, I think its time to think about some further restrictions, McClellan said. Abbott has given no indication that is a possibility. Last month, he said he would not impose any more shutdowns, calling instead for a focus on opening businesses. The governors health commissioner, Dr. John Hellerstedt, told Houston-area county judges Dec. 30 that the government had reached the limits of what it regulates and controls and licenses, according to a recording published by Quorum Report. Enforcement questioned Mayors and county judges in the states largest urban areas say they lack the law enforcement resources to parse whether a business is more than 75 percent full and accuse the governor of trying to pass on the blame for his failed strategy. They are frustrated further by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commissions decision to allow more than a third of the states bars to effectively reclassify as restaurants, allowing them to remain open even when hospitals become strained with coronavirus patients. It may be that some of your readers dont feel comfortable going to a bar, but theyre seeing this and saying, well heck, if the bars are open, surely I can have my extended family over for Sunday dinner, said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. How hard localities actually are trying to enforce Abbotts restrictions, however, remain an open question. Police in Harris County, the states most populous, have received 10,000 complaints since September for violations of Abbotts orders. The county fire marshal has issued four citations; its city of Houston counterpart did not respond to questions from the Chronicle. Not every local leader has pushed for tighter restrictions. In December, after Galveston Countys hospital region reached the rollback threshold, Republican County Judge Mark Henry said the sheriff had no resources to enforce bar closures, joining a bipartisan list of local officials who say they lack the manpower to ensure compliance. Instead, Henry called on Abbott to use the TABC to enforce his order. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer The state agency has allowed some 3,100 businesses to convert from bars to restaurants in order to continue operating during the pandemic, or 38 percent of the roughly 8,000 bars across Texas. In early November, TABC announced it had suspended the licenses of just eight bars and restaurants after conducting a sweep of more than 1,700 establishments across the state. East of Houston, Hardin County Judge Wayne McDaniel has asked the governor for an exemption to capacity rollbacks because he said public health data has not shown businesses to be a vector of transmission for the virus. I just dont see the justification for it. If I did, Id feel differently, McDaniel said. If I knew people were getting sick sitting down to eat, if I knew people were getting sick in these businesses, I would feel differently. Whatever the causes, Abbotts second attempt at reopening is in full retreat, with the number of COVID-19 patients in 18 of 22 hospital regions exceeding the threshold for rollbacks. December was the deadliest month of the pandemic in Texas with 6,170 fatalities, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis. Health experts expect the toll to worsen, as Texans who were infected over Christmas and New Years are only beginning to be admitted to hospitals. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths will increase in Houston and other regions before peaking sometime this month, modeling from the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphias PolicyLab projects. Im going to die, right? By the fall, Texas had made significant progress after a brutal summer as one of the hardest-hit states in the country. Abbotts decision in late June to close bars and mandate mask-wearing appeared to work. Virus hospitalizations in the Houston region plummeted 82 percent from their peak in July and the statewide daily death toll fell by half, to less than 100. However, the positivity rate never dropped below 6 percent, indicating the virus still was spreading. The governor said conditions were safe to reopen further and on Oct. 7 issued his latest reopening plan. Soon there were signs of trouble. The El Paso region triggered the rollbacks on Oct. 19, and Abbott dispatched nearly 500 medical personnel to assist; 10 days later, COVID-19 patients filled more than half of available hospital beds. County Judge Ricardo Samaniego tried to close non-essential businesses, as Abbott had done statewide in April, but Attorney General Ken Paxton successfully sued to block the plan. As case counts began falling, Abbott in a Nov. 11 television interview attributed the dip to local officials finally stepping up to enforce his rules. By then, the city morgue was so overwhelmed with COVID-19 deaths that staff hired inmates from the county jail to help move bodies. Meanwhile, other hospital regions began to trigger rollbacks. Amarillo and Lubbock in late October. Waco and Laredo in November. Abilene, Dallas, Longview, Lufkin, San Antonio, Galveston and Victoria in December. And by Jan. 11, Paris, Killeen, Houston, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley. Cuate Santos / Laredo Morning Times Abbott in September described the rollback trigger as a course correction for regions where COVID-19 admissions were straining capacity. However, only once since the fall has a hospital region been able to get back under 15 percent for seven consecutive days, the benchmark to resume reopening. In some cases, hospitalizations continued to tick up. Coronavirus patients filled 46 percent of hospital beds in the Laredo region on Monday, the highest rate in the state. Dr. Victor Trevino, the city of Laredo health authority, attributed much of the current surge to residents gathering unmasked over the holidays. He said a regions infection rate would be a better trigger for rollbacks, since hospitalizations are a lagging indicator of an outbreak. By the time a region hits the 15 percent threshold, health experts say, it is difficult to reverse course. Laredos situation now has reached the crisis point of last summer, Trevino said, recalling how he felt helpless when visiting intubated COVID patients. I would look at them, and the expression on their face was, Im going to die, right? Trevino said. I dont know if they read my mind, but I said, Yes, youre going to die. I wasnt speaking but they understood that. From the Rio Grande to the Red River, deaths are rising. And just as before, they disproportionately claim Texans of color, especially Latinos. At the Ortiz Mortuary on San Antonios West Side, the virus has caused business in January to double like it did in July. Caskets are back-ordered. Charlie Ortiz said one of the most difficult parts is discouraging families of COVID victims from having open-casket services, for fear of spreading the virus in close quarters. They can open it for a couple minutes and see them for one last time, he said. They had no closure. They couldnt be at the hospital... They had to see their loved one die in front of them on a TV screen. Conflicting messages Public health experts have said a successful pandemic response requires the public to voluntarily change its behavior. State and local leaders success in pursuading residents to do so has been limited at times by conflicting advice and actions. Abbott permitted Bexar and El Paso Counties to issue curfews for in-person dining for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Yet, he blasted Austin and Travis Countys plan for a nearly identical New Years curfew, arguing his reopening rules prevented cities from arbitrarily shutting down businesses. Paxton sued, and the state Supreme Court struck down the measure. The spat with a familiar foil the governor a week earlier had expressed support for a state takeover of the Austin Police Department discouraged other local officials from tightening restrictions. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who unsuccessfully lobbied Abbott during the summer surge for another stay-home order, said while a curfew is the final arrow in my quiver, she wants to avoid a public dispute with the governor. Danny Zaragoza, Staff Photographer / Laredo Morning Times If were saying one thing and the state is saying a different thing, it completely loses its impact, Hidalgo said. Thats what we saw in Austin. Abbotts insistence that restaurants and bars stay open for dining also came as local leaders urged residents to avoid gatherings of any kind. By Christmas, the Democratic mayors of Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas were urging residents to cancel gatherings with anyone outside their households, as were the CEOs of the Texas Medical Center. Even Republican Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who contracted the virus, urged residents to consider limiting their holiday contacts. The governor made no similar request. A consistent message from government leaders is critical during a public health crisis, said Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Simply telling people to make safe choices, she added, may not be enough. If its not safe to have an activity or to open a setting, then it shouldnt be open, Rivers said. On Tuesday, when state lawmakers returned to Austin for the opening day of the Texas Legislature, members were required to wear masks on the House floor but not in the Senate. At least half the lawmakers in the upper chamber declined to wear masks while seated at their desks. zach.despart@chron.com Taylor Goldenstein, Julia Wallace and Kaitlin Bain contributed reporting. Three central ministers and farmers unions on Friday committed to continue holding direct talks to resolve the over-one-month-long deadlock over three agri laws, with Agriculture Minister urging farmer leaders to be flexible in their approach as has been done by the government. The ninth round of talks between protesting farmer unions and three central ministers got underway here on Friday afternoon and discussions were held on all the three laws before the lunch break. Besides Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash are holding the talks with the representatives of around 40 farmer unions at the Vigyan Bhawan here. "Both the government and farmer unions have reaffirmed their commitment to continue with the direct dialogue process," All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee member Kavita Kuruganti, who is part of the meeting, said. The Supreme Court on January 11 had stayed the implementation of the three laws till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse. READ MORE: Supreme Court order on farm laws: None to praise and very few to love it "In his opening remarks, Tomar ji said you keep saying that the government is adamant and making it an issue of ego, even though we have accepted several demands. Don't you think you should be flexible and not stick to one single demand of repealing the laws," said Baljit Singh Bali of Punjab Kisan Morcha. Farmer leader Darshan Pal said there was good discussion on all three laws. "There is possibility of some resolution. We are positive," he added. Another leader Rakesh Tikait said: "Government has told us that solution should be found through dialogue and not court. Everyone is of the same views. There is possibility of some solution." Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann had on Thursday recused himself from the committee appointed by the apex court. READ MORE: BKU leader Mann recuses himself from SC panel, says won't let down farmers Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are the other three members on the panel. On January 8, the eighth round of meeting remained inconclusive as the Centre ruled out repealing the three contentious laws claiming nationwide support for the reforms. However, farmer leaders had said that they were ready to fight till death and their 'ghar waapsi' would happen only after 'law waapsi'. In the sixth round held on December 30 last year, some common ground was reached on two demands -- decriminalisation of stubble-burning and continuation of power subsidies. Enacted in September 2020, the government has presented these laws as major farm reforms aimed at increasing farmers' income, but the protesting farmers have raised concerns that these legislations would weaken the minimum support price (MSP) and "mandi" (wholesale market) systems and leave them at the mercy of big corporations. The government has maintained that these apprehensions are misplaced and has ruled out a repeal of the laws. Jacob Fracker, an off-duty police officer charged in connection with the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol, is also member of the Virginia National Guard, making him the first known person currently in the military to be arrested over last week's events. An official confirmed Fracker's military status on Thursday, a week after President Donald Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, forcing lawmakers to flee the inner chambers of the building. Fracker, 29, and fellow Rocky Mount police officer Thomas Robertson were charged after they were photographed inside the Capitol 'making an obscene statement in front of a statue of (Revolutionary hero) John Stark,' the Department of Justice said on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Virginia National Guard said Fracker is a corporal in the State's Guard and serves as an infantryman. Jacob Fracker (left) is seen in the Capitol on January 6 with fellow Rocky Mount police officer Thomas Robertson. Fracker was revealed on Thursday to be in the National Guard Fracker is seen in uniform from his days as a U.S. Marine. He is currently a police officer in Rocky Mount, Virginia and a corporal in the Virginia National Guard 'The Virginia National Guard will conduct an investigation into the matter, and we will be able to release more information when that is complete,' it said in a statement. Fracker was not on duty with other members of the Virginia National Guard helping protect President-elect Joe Biden's January 20 inauguration, the Guard added. The disclosure, first reported by Military.com, comes the same day a senior official said there had been an increase in extremism in the United States military over the past year. Five people including a police officer died as a result of the attack on the Capitol. The assault marks a critical moment for extremists who have seized on false claims, spread by Trump, that the U.S. election system is fraudulent and rigged. 'I think there is an increase (in extremism) based on the societal increases,' the senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told reporters. The official added there was also an increase because of more reporting in the military, and said the military was tracking down leads. Fracker and Robertson were charged Wednesday with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Rocky Mount police Sergeant Thomas Robertson took photos on the National Mall as Trump's supporters marched toward the Capitol ahead of the riot They had already been placed on leave after going to the deadly riot and posing in front of a statue of John Stark, a general during the American Revolution. In a screenshot of a Facebook post that was circulating on social media, Robertson allegedly wrote, 'CNN and the Left are just mad because we actually attacked the government who is the problem and not some random small business. 'The right IN ONE DAY took the f***ing U.S. Capitol. Keep poking us.' Sgt Robertson had told The Roanoke Times that he and officer Fracker, who were both off-duty, did nothing illegal in Washington on January 6, when a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed into the Capitol after Trump repeated bogus claims of election fraud at a rally near the White House. The Army veteran is said to have posted he was 'f***ing PROUD' of the selfie. Fracker in a now deleted post is said to have written: 'Lol to anyone who's possibly concerned about the picture of me going around... Sorry I hate freedom? Sorry I fought hard for it and lost friends for it? 'Not like I did anything illegal, WAY too much to lose to go there but, ya'll do what you feel you need to lol. 'I can protest for what I believe in and still support your protest fro [sic] what you believe in. Just saying..after all, I fought for the right to do it' Five people were killed, including a Capitol Police officer and a Trump supporter. Fracker in a now deleted post is said to have written: 'Lol to anyone who's possibly concerned about the picture of me going around... Sorry I hate freedom?' Army vet Robertson posted he was 'f***ing PROUD' of the selfie Robertson said he does not support the violence that happened inside the Capitol. 'Absolutely not,' he said. 'For it to go like that is absolutely ridiculous.' Robertson said he and Fracker went into the building at about 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. 'We were escorted in by the Capitol Police, shown around and told, "As long as you stay here, youre fine."' They stayed in cordoned areas, he said. Robertson said he and Fracker were not aware at the time that the rally had turned violent. 'The Capitol building is as big as our town,' he said. 'Where I was at there was no violence. There was no fighting with police officers. The door was wide open and police officers were actually handing bottles of water out to people that came in.' He told ABC13: 'There was absolutely no indication that we were anything but welcome to check out certain places. We did not participate in any violence or property damage.' On Sunday, the Rocky Mount Police Department said it notified federal authorities that two of its off-duty officers were present at an 'event' in Washington on January 6. 'The Town of Rocky Mount fully supports all lawful expressions of freedom of speech and assembly by its employees but does not condone the unlawful acts that occurred that day,' a town statement said. They said Wednesday: 'Two Rocky Mount Police Department officers were charged by federal authorities with misdemeanors stemming from their presence at an event in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. 'The Town's review of this matter is ongoing and the officers remain on administrative leave.' CLEVELAND, Ohio The administration of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson announced Thursday that all non-emergency, city government buildings and facilities in the downtown, including City Hall, will be closed starting Friday and extending through Jan. 20. The closings include the Willard Garage, which is attached to City Hall. Also, Cleveland Public Auditorium and the citys neighborhood resource and recreation centers will be closed starting Monday and extending through Jan. 20. The city does not specifically state why the closures are being ordered, but it hints at the reason. The Cleveland Division of Police is working with partnering law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels to ensure the publics safety, states a news release from the city. The Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center and the Real Time Crime Center continue to monitor activity across Ohio and throughout the United States. State and local officials are on high alert after the FBI warned of armed protests in all 50 states and Washington D.C. leading up to Joe Bidens inauguration on Jan. 20 as president of the United States. Columbus police are preparing for armed protests at the Statehouse on Sunday. A mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6 while Congress was certifying the electoral votes making Biden the next president. The deadly attack led to President Trump being impeached. During the Cleveland closings, essential and non-essential city employees will be required to work from home if they can reasonably do so, according to the release. First responders and those with jobs deemed critical will still be required to report to work. The city asks the public to report suspicious activity by calling 911 for emergencies and 216-621-1234 for non-emergencies. In his opening speech, Liu Wei, Vice President of Lingang Group said: "In the era of the digital economy, digital technology and FinTech will support China's digital economy. Lingang Group understands that many micro, small and medium-sized technological enterprises in the Caohejing Hi-Tech Park are facing difficulties such as obtaining financing and the high cost of financing. Innovative financial technology can bring new ideas and new solutions to corporate financing problems. Lingang Group, with its solid industrial base and concentrated innovation resources will provide multi-resources for the development of financial technology." In the keynote speeches that followed, Professor Ricarda Bouncken, Chief Professor of Strategic Organizational Management at the University of Bayreuth, Germany; Zhu Yi, Head of Innovation and Fintech Solution for Corporate bank, Deutsche Bank; Du Jianmin, Director of Global Strategic Services at KPMG Consulting; Zhang Guofeng, Deputy Director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Change Management of Shanghai University of International Business and Economics and Secretary General of Shanghai Opensource Information Technology Association; shared their views regarding the topic, Digital Identity in Digital Transformation, How FinTech Serves Enterprises, FinTech Trends and Applications in the Asset Management Industry, and on the Concept of Public Infrastructure for Digital Finance, revealing the positive impact of the integration of technology and finance on the development of the industry. In the afternoon, the final pitch began. After the preliminary and semi-final rounds, nine participating enterprises of MagicTrade Tech, Onchain Tech, NINGTON, Korange, HEXINFO, AlphaInsight, Meridian, FANHAN INFO, and JINGZHI Netword Technology successfully entered the final stage. All the winners were decided through pitches and on-the-spot questions from judges. After the competition, the round table discussion on the theme: "how FinTech empowers the digital transformation of the industry" was organized. The conference was hosted by Zhang Peng. The participating guests included Yu Leimin, Partner of KWM and Fintech Expert, Wang Yonggang Zheng Wenhao, Lingang Blockchain Research Institute Vice-Principal, Liu Bin. Speakers shared their views on the new opportunities and new path of FinTech development. The exciting award ceremony concluded the events of the day. Zhu Yi awarded prizes to the winners of University Projects. Zhou Liping, Deputy Director of Xuhui District Finance Office; Liu Bin; and Huang Jing, Assistant General Manager of Shanghai Lingang Economic Development Group Assets Management Co., Ltd, respectively awarded prizes to the winner, JINGZHI Netword Technology, the second prize Onchain Tech, FANHAN INFO, and HEXINFO, and third prize MagicTrade Tech, NINGTON, Korange, AlphaInsight, and Meridian. Zhang Guozhong, Deputy Director of Shanghai Technology Incubation Center, and Lai Haofeng, General Manager of Caohejing Incubation Center, presented the 2020 Caohejing Incubation Enterprise Graduating Certification to the enterprises and saluted their efforts in fostering the development of FinTech. SOURCE Caohejing Hi-Tech Park As federal law enforcement officers sift through evidence tied to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, they have tried to determine what compelled rioters to force their way into the building. Namely, did any of them plan to kill or capture lawmakers or their staffers? Officials said they nay have found clues to that question from one of the mob's most distinctive figures: Jacob Anthony Chansley, the shirtless, tattooed man often referred to as "QAnon Shaman," who stood out in a headdress made of coyote skin and buffalo horns. In a court filing late Thursday, federal prosecutors in Phoenix wrote that "strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government." On Friday, however, Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Allison walked back the claim of an assassination plot, saying that while it "may very well be appropriate at a trial," raising it at this stage could "mislead the court." The 18-page memo, which asked a judge to keep Chansley detained before his trial, said the 33-year-old Arizona man left an ominous note for Vice President Mike Pence at his desk in the Senate chamber: "It's only a matter of time, justice is coming." Chansley - who goes by Jake Angeli - was arrested and charged last week in connection to his role in the riot. Defense attorney Gerald Williams said in court Friday that his client "was there merely acting as a protester," and that there was no evidence he engaged in violence. But Magistrate Judge Deborah Fine ordered him held until trial, citing evidence that he incited the mob inside the Capitol and ignored pleas from police to desist. "This is not a protest. This is a riot, this is an insurrection," she said. "Mr. Chansley's idea of protesting is committing the unlawful acts that we're discussing here," which she described as "frightening not only to people at the Capitol but people across the United States of America." Acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin downplayed the idea of a specific conspiracy or plan to kidnap or kill lawmakers. "We don't have any direct evidence of kill capture teams," Sherwin said at a Friday news briefing. In an earlier a statement to The Washington Post, St. Louis attorney Albert Watkins said he had been retained as Chansley's lawyer and called for President Donald Trump to pardon him. Watkins claimed that Chansley acted in a "peaceful and compliant fashion" toward law enforcement and was cooperating with their investigation. Besides, he argued, the Arizona man only went to the Capitol because he was following Trump's invitation. "He took seriously the countless messages of President Trump. He believed in President Trump," Watkins said. "Like tens of millions of other Americans, Chansley felt - for the first time in his life - as though his voice was being heard." Law enforcement officials have cautioned that there may be a variety of motives among those who stormed the Capitol. An FBI investigation is seeking to determine whether some intended to do more than disrupt the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory, The Post reported last week. One man, for instance, was arrested and accused of carrying a pistol on the Capitol grounds. Others wore tactical gear or brought zip ties, which can be used as handcuffs, officials said. And another was arrested after his truck was spotted nearby, allegedly with 11 molotov cocktails inside. Chansley, who called the FBI himself to acknowledge that he was in the riot, told investigators that "he came as a part of a group effort, with other 'patriots' from Arizona, at the request of the President that all 'patriots' come to D.C. on January 6, 2021." A fixture at far-right events in Arizona for the past two years, he has often professed his support for Trump and QAnon, the baseless online conspiracy theory. His body is heavily tattooed with insignia adopted by white nationalists. Speaking to The Post last week, he said he was not afraid of arrest. "I trust in God and I know that I didn't do anything wrong," he said. "And even if I was arrested, wasn't Gandhi arrested a lot? Wasn't Martin Luther King Jr. arrested a lot? Wasn't Jesus arrested? I put my trust in God, not the government." Since his arrest last week, Chansley again made headlines after his mother, Martha Chansley, said he had been starving himself in jail because he "gets very sick if he doesn't eat organic food." The local office for the U.S. Marshals Service told KNXV that it would comply with a judge's order to provide all-organic meals in line with his shaman diet. Watkins has successfully sought pardons for other high-profile clients, including Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who waved guns at protesters marching by their house last summer. Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson has twice said he will pardon the two if they are convicted on gun charges. While it is unclear if Chansley can be tried and convicted before Trump leaves office on Jan. 20, it could still be possible for the president to pardon him beforehand - though, as the Department of Justice points out, such a move would be "highly unusual." Trump has pardoned both Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, and Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County sheriff, before they were sentenced. In recent weeks, the lame-duck president has issued a rapid flurry of pardons to allies, friends and fellow Republicans, including full pardons to some who pleaded guilty to lying to federal law enforcement during the Russia investigation. Watkins also called on Trump to pardon "other like-minded, peaceful individuals who accepted the president's invitation with honorable intentions." While prosecutors have pointed out that Chansley brought a spear with him inside the Capitol, Watkins noted that his client also brought a megaphone, "so his voice could be heard." "My client had heard the oft-repeated words of President Trump," Watkins said. "The words and invitation of a president are supposed to mean something." Pamela Anderson wants an 11th hour face-to-face meeting with President Donald Trump in a last ditch bid to grab a presidential pardon for friend and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The former Baywatch star, 53, knows that come January 20 - Joe Biden's inauguration and Trump's exit - the chances of securing Assange's freedom on espionage charges could slip away. The Australian faces 18 criminal charges tied to the of hundreds of thousands of secret government papers handed over by already convicted ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. If found guilty he could spend up to 175 years behind bars. Assange is currently in a London prison after being ejected from his hideout of almost seven years, the Ecuadorian embassy. 'I want him to be free,' Anderson said in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com. Pamela Anderson wants an 11th hour face-to-face meeting with President Donald Trump in a last ditch bid to grab a presidential pardon for friend and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange The former Baywatch star knows that come January 20 - Joe Biden's inauguration and Trump's exit - the chances of securing Assange's freedom on espionage charges could slip away. She said: 'I have met Mr Trump a few times on the Playboy circuit - I was invited to his birthday. He has always got a kick out of me - he told me once he was ''proud of me and to go get em''. Well thats what Im trying to do Mr. President' 'To walk outside in the sun with his little boys and his partner and to be able to act spontaneously. 'Can you imagine that in a decade he hasnt been able to have a single spontaneous act. Like go for a coffee. Or a walk. Or to a movie. He has not had any normality.' Anderson says she was 'delighted' when a British judge blocked her friend's extradition to the US earlier this month on the grounds he was at risk of taking his own life - a decision the US is appealing. But she points to the irony of his extradition being blocked due to his mental state - a mental state, she says, deeply affected by ten years of detainment and under the threat of extradition. The model has aggressively lobbied President Trump to pardon Assange, even though Trumps Justice Department brought the charges. He has exposed war criminals and war crimes. That he is being prosecuted for that courage and honesty is nothing if not unjust. Last month she tweeted two photos of herself dressed in a tiny string bikini holding Assange posters and tagged Trumps official presidential handle '@POTUS please #pardonjulianassange.' 'No one should have to go to prison for what he has done,' she explains. 'And yes I do want to meet with Mr Trump in person to ask for a pardon. 'I have met Mr Trump a few times on the Playboy circuit - I was invited to his birthday. 'He has always got a kick out of me - he told me once he was ''proud of me and to go get em''. Well thats what Im trying to do Mr. President. 'Im appealing to him to pardon Julian and he still has a chance to do the right thing.' Anderson, also an AIDS and animal rights activist, added: 'I hate injustice and I applauded courage. I have always hated it and its why I advocate for animals because they are so often the brunt of injustice but they have no voice. 'Julian however has a voice. A strong voice and he has used it fearlessly and constantly to call out the perpetrators of injustice. 'He has exposed war criminals and war crimes. That he is being prosecuted for that courage and honesty is nothing if not unjust.' The Australian faces 18 criminal charges tied to the hundreds of thousands of secret government papers handed over by already convicted ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning Manning was released from prison on March 12, 2020 Anderson believes the issue surrounding Assange strikes at the heart of the First Amendment and his prosecution is a politically motivated retaliation for his role as a whistleblower. Speaking from her estate in Malibu, California, Anderson said: 'I think the only thing he did wrong was believe in the rule of law. 'When he published his documents it was in the hope that the law would prevail and get justice for all the victims of the atrocities committed that he exposed. Instead of going after the criminals the powers went after him.' Anderson says she first became aware of Assange ten years ago when he posted footage to YouTube of a 2007 US military Apache helicopter airstrike in Iraq that killed a dozen civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and injured two children. 'It is horrific to watch and then to think that this is a daily and unnecessary war-time occurrence,' she said. The pair eventually met in 2014 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, after being introduced by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. After their first meeting they would speak regularly on the phone and the visits became regular. Rumors quickly swirled that they were romantically involved. But if the rumors are untrue Anderson has done little to quash them. 'He is an attractive man and I loved visiting him,' she said wistfully. 'And we would speak on the phone a lot. He is extremely charming... we did click immediately. He is very warm and kind. And engaging. And he is full of knowledge. 'I flirt with everyone. But I am especially attracted to bright minds. 'But it was a strange environment. The security company that was spying on his lawyers also photographed my phone and spied on our meetings.' Anderson said she would take him exotic food when she visited, unusual fruits and vegan dishes. Anderson says she first became aware of Assange ten years ago when he posted footage to YouTube of a 2007 US military Apache helicopter airstrike in Iraq that killed a dozen civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and injured two children Last month she tweeted two photos of herself dressed in a tiny string bikini holding Assange posters and tagged Trumps official presidential handle '@POTUS please #pardonjulianassange' And they would share conversations about current affairs, pop culture and personal memories. 'He is widely versed in basically everything. And he is funny,' she says. When asked if Assange had a crush on her, she responded, 'I hope so,' but teased: 'We are both public figures and even public figures need some things to remain private.' Anderson estimates she made 10-15 visits to see Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy and insists he was the consummate gentleman. 'He would make the coffee rather than ask someone else to do it,' she said. 'We were in the embassy meeting room and we spoke about how to change the world. 'He is a fascinating man and he sees things in a way that others dont. 'He is diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and I am sure that is relevant to how he can really get to the crux of a matter and see things as they really are rather than as they are portrayed. 'He is all about knowledge. And knowledge is power. But not for the already powerful. His publications have given power to the people on the street and to victims of power. He is an attractive man and I loved visiting him,' she said wistfully. And we would speak on the phone a lot. He is extremely charming... we did click immediately. He is very warm and kind. And engaging. And he is full of knowledge. 'Power to understand the world they live in and to make decisions based on fact about the world they want to live in. 'He cares about people. He cares so much about their rights. And he will act whenever he sees he can help. Even if its to his own personal detriment.' Anderson last saw Assange in 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak, when she visited the maximum-security HM Prison Belmarsh in southeast London. 'He hadnt been there long,' she recalls. 'He was on a general wing at the time and I was in shock. I seem to remember I was just trying to find out what we could do. 'Shortly after that he was moved into isolation and cut off from everyone. Kept in a cell for 23 hours a day. It was terrible. 'He isnt in those conditions any more. But he should not be in jail, let alone a high security prison. He has just won his case and he should at least be allowed out on bail while the US deals with their appeal.' Anderson says she does speak to Assange's family while he's in prison. 'Im in touch with his mother and father. His brother too and his partner Stella. I have met them all except his brother,' she said. And she's furious at how the UK government has treated her friend. Anderson last saw Assange in 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak, when she visited the maximum-security HM Prison Belmarsh in southeast London. 'He hadnt been there long,' she recalls. 'He was on a general wing at the time and I was in shock. I seem to remember I was just trying to find out what we could do' For now the star fears something bad could happen to her friend while in prison 'The UK government refused to allow him to get treatment in a hospital for his frozen shoulder,' she claims. 'The UK government has ignored the UN who has been saying for years that he should be a free man. 'The UK broke international law after international law and didnt care. The US government has gone after him because he exposed the uncomfortable truths about the way they conduct themselves in war and in diplomacy. 'But the UK government should do better. Julian has been psychologically tortured and he is physically unwell too.' She added: 'Boris Johnson has said the UK protects journalists, so I'd like him to protect Julian, as he should.' Even if Assange isnt extradited to the US, legal experts believe he could still be prosecuted by Britain under its Official Secrets Act. Anderson denies being obsessed with Assange's case, just 'deeply concerned', but admits his imprisonment 'weighs heavy' on her mind. For now the star fears something bad could happen to her friend while in prison. 'There is only so much that any individual can take, no matter how strong they are,' she explains. 'The UN expert on torture and independent medical experts say that Julian has been psychologically tortured for years. 'He has been brutalized in a way that no man should. Julian needs to be treated with the dignity that all human beings deserve. He also needs to be free so he can heal. He is not safe until he is free.' And yet, this doesnt necessarily work as straightforward as its supposed to, especially in underground parking, so its obvious such an approach has its own shortcomings.Well, South Korean phone giant Samsung thinks it can solve this problem with a new augmented reality viewfinder that helps us find our cars in crowded parking lots using nothing else than a mobile phone. A Samsung, of course, though you shouldnt be too surprised if the same feature soon lands on other Android devices as well.The whole thing is powered by UWB, the same technology Samsung has turned to in order to transform the Galaxy S21 (and later any Android device) into a car key The user would only have to unlock the phone, start the camera, and scan the surroundings, with the device then showing the location of the car using augmented reality and providing instructions on how to reach it, along with the distance to it - pretty much like a navigation app supposed to help you find the car much easier.But given its based on UWB, the new system would require UWB-powered phones and cars, so not everybody would be able to use it. Or at least, not at first, with a Samsung slideshow presented during the January 14 Unpacked event indicating the feature would be supported on the Galaxy S21 Plus, Galaxy S21 Ultra, and Note 20 Ultra. Interestingly, the base Galaxy S21 may not come with this feature.Samsung hasnt shared too many specifics as to when this new feature is supposed to go live, but more information will probably be provided after the Galaxy S21 starts shipping on January 29. This undated photo provided by the Grapevine Texas Police Department shows, Larry Rendall Brock Jr. During the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, Brock was photographed on the Senate floor wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying zip-tie handcuffs. The retired Air Force officer was arrested in Texas and charged Sunday, Jan. 10 in federal court in the District of Columbia. (GrapevineTexas Police Department via AP) FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) A retired Air Force officer who was part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week carried plastic zip-tie handcuffs because he intended to take hostages, a prosecutor said in a Texas court on Thursday. He means to take hostages. He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Weimer said of retired Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. without providing specifics. The prosecutor had argued that Brock should be detained, but Magistrate Judge Jeffrey L. Cureton said he would release Brock to home confinement. Cureton ordered Brock to surrender any firearms and said he could have only limited internet access as conditions of that release. I need to put you on a very short rope," Cureton said. These are strange times for our country and the concerns raised by the government do not fall on deaf ears. Brock appeared in court in a light green jumpsuit, a mask and with shackles at his hands and feet. Weimer did not detail a specific plan by Brock but noted his prior experience and training make him all the more dangerous. He also read in court social media posts from Brock, including one posted on the day of the Capitol riot that said: Patriots on the Capitol. Patriots storming. Men with guns need to shoot their way in. Brock was arrested Sunday in Texas after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs. The 53-year-old is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Brock's attorney, Brook Antonio II, noted that Brock has only been charged with misdemeanors. Antonio said there was no direct evidence of Brock breaking doors or windows to get into the Capitol, or doing anything violent once he was inside. Its all talk. Its all speculation and conjecture, said Antonio, who noted Brocks long service in the military, including being reactivated after Sept. 11 and his four tours in Afghanistan. Weimer said Brock will likely face additional charges. More than 100 people have been arrested in the Capitol riot, with charges ranging from curfew violations to serious federal felonies related to theft and weapons possession. The FBI has been investigating whether some of the rioters had planned to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage. Before his arrest, Brock told The New Yorker magazine that he found the zip-tie cuffs on the floor and that he had planned to give them to a police officer. I wish I had not picked those up, he said. There was no evidence presented that Brock had a firearm on the day of the Capitol riot. Antonio asked an FBI agent who was testifying whether it was possible Brock had just picked up the cuffs, and the agent acknowledged that was a possibility. Weimer read a termination letter from Brocks former employer that said he had talked in the workplace about killing people of a particular religion and or race. Weimer also read social media posts in which Brock referred to a coming civil war and the election being stolen from President Donald Trump. Weimer said Brocks posts also referenced the far-right and anti-government Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, a loose anti-government network thats part of the militia movement. The Oath Keepers claim to count thousands of current and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members. The FBI agent though testified there was no evidence beyond the social media posts that Brock was involved with either of those groups. Judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly dismissed cases challenging the election results, and Attorney General William Barr has said there was no sign of widespread fraud. Press Release 15 January 2021 Hong Kong - An overwhelming majority of global travel writers (94%) plan to resume travel this year for first-hand reporting, a strong indication of the pent-up demand for travel with recognition about safety with the availability of coronavirus vaccines, according to a Finn Partners Global Travel Practice survey released today. The survey of about 400 travel writers and content producers in North America, Asia, and Europe was conducted in December. Advertisements Attitudes about travel are shifting as vaccines are distributed and a new U.S. president prepares to take office. The majority of travel writers surveyed said they will promote travel and tourism before the pandemic is over as travel entities demonstrate responsible safety practices. They also believe President-Elect Joe Biden and his administration will make international travel to and from the U.S. more accessible to everyone. More than a third of the respondents (37%) will start traveling only after getting vaccinated. While travel writers have considerable professional interests at stake with the recovery of the industry, their optimism is largely reflected in the public at large. A new public opinion poll from Yahoo Finance and The Harris Poll last month found half of survey respondents plan to travel out of state within six months of their vaccines. Cathy Feliciano-Chon, Founder & Managing Director, CatchOn, A FINN Partners Company with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai commented, "This is the second survey that our Global Travel Practice has conducted during this most unforgettable year. As we enter 2021 with renewed hope and an even greater desire to travel, this survey provides valuable insights to inform our recovery efforts." Travel Priorities for 2021 The FINN poll also asked travel writers about their preferences, inspirations and opportunities for future travel and how it will impact their work. With travel wanderlust at an all time high, over 60% of those surveyed would like to visit places they have not been before, domestically and internationally. Thirty-seven percent would like to revisit their favorite destinations. More than half of respondents will rely only on their first hand experiences when reporting making a swift return to travel even more important. Other survey findings included media's belief that keeping travel top of mind and promoting it even during the pandemic is important. Hot Content Topics for 2021 The FINN survey asked writers to rank topics based on their travel writing outlook this year Topics were varied, however the majority (67%) think domestic stories and headlines on destinations closer to home will be their top focus. Ranked in order of topic preferences: Close to home travel 67% Underrated destinations 54% Responsible travel 47% Health and wellness 42% Travel safety 37% Travel innovation 36% Non-travel 16% And according to respondents, the hot topics post-COVID when borders reopen and travel resumes will be about: Brands driving positive changes in travel (sustainability, all-accessible design, community benefit, etc.) 32% Deals and safety protocols 32% Pandemic influenced airports, airlines and hotels of the future 10% Bucket List Destinations Around the World Travel writers were asked to name destinations they have not visited before and would consider bucket list. Japan tops the list followed by South America and Iceland. Perhaps those who had cancelled travel plans to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo hope to make good on their trip to The Land of the Rising Sun this year. Gov. Phil Murphy will visit another of the states six coronavirus mega vaccine sites on Friday morning and then hold another press conference this afternoon to provide additional updates on the states efforts to control the virus. Murphy will be at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center in Edison at 10 a.m. as another mega-site is launched. Hell be joined by state Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli, U.S. Rep Frank Pallone, D-6th Dist., Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, Middlesex County Board of Commissioners Director Ronald Rios and State Police Superintendent Colonel Pat Callahan. Murphys tour of the site will be streamed live on the governors YouTube.com channel. At 1 p.m., Murphy, Persichilli, Callahan and Dr. Edward Lifshitz, the states communicable disease service medical director will be at the Trenton War Memorial for their regular Friday press conference. It can also be watched on Murphys YouTube.com channel. Vaccination mega-sites at Rockaway Townsquare and Rowan College of South Jersey in Sewell are already running. The mega-site at the Moorestown Mall also opened on Friday. The other planned mega-sites are at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford and the Atlantic City Convention Center. In all there were 128 vaccination sites in the state as of Thursday with plans for more than 250. At least 300,213 in New Jersey have been vaccinated as of 4:30 p.m. Thursday according to the states COVID-19 dashboard. Of those, 264,556 are the first of the two required doses. The number of patients in the states 71 hospitals with the coronavirus or a case under investigation dropped to 3,543 from 3,639, in the previous 24-hour period. Hospitalizations are down more than 5% in the past 10 days and are at their lowest since Jan. 2. Murphy on Thursday disclosed another 5,967 COVID-19 cases and 94 additional deaths. Officials said about 14.2% of the 20,717 tests administered in New Jersey on Sunday came back positive, the most recent day for which results are available. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JGoldmanNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 16:24:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close COLOMBO, Jan.15 (Xinhua) -- The Cabinet of Sri Lanka has approved a standard operating procedure (SOP) for expediting automobile manufacturing in the Asian country, state media reported here Friday. The Proposed Standard Operating Procedure inclusive of Local Value Addition Matrix presented by Industry Minister Wimal Weerawansa was approved for implementation by the cabinet on Thursday. Weerawansa was quoted in state-owned Daily News as saying that vehicle importers would be willing to invest in local assembly and manufacture of automobiles under the new SOP. Weerawansa said that a combination of import restriction and a sound SOP would help develop the automobile industry in Sri Lanka. Enditem From 11.59pm tonight, travellers from the United States and United Kingdom will be required to produce a negative test result for COVID-19 upon landing in New Zealand. Travellers will be required to provide evidence of their pre-departure test result as they go through Customs, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson. "This measure is in addition to travellers arriving from the United States and the United Kingdom requiring a COVID-19 test on day 0/1 and needing to stay in their rooms until a test result is available, i.e. testing within 24 hours of arriving into managed isolation. "Pre-departure testing will soon be expanded to include all countries excluding Australia, Antarctica and some Pacific Island nations. "These additional requirements have been put in place to further strengthen our border, to protect New Zealand from COVID-19 and new emerging variants." More detailed information for travellers can be found on the United Against COVID-19 website. New COVID cases at the border There are 18 new cases of COVID-19 to report in managed isolation in New Zealand since Wednesday. Two of these cases are classified as historical and deemed not infectious, says the MOH. There are no new cases in the community. Of the new border cases: New border case details Arrival date From Via Positive test day/reason Managed isolation/quarantine location 26 Dec South Africa United Arab Emirates Around day 18/contact of a case Auckland Note: The above case is within a travel bubble of a previously confirmed case reported on 31 Dec. The above case has been in the Auckland quarantine facility since the contact case was detected. 31 Dec UK United Arab Emirates Around day 12/routine testing Auckland 31 Dec United States Around day 12/routine testing Christchurch Note: The above case has been classified as historical as this person returned a weak positive result and a separate serology test result indicates they have previously been unwell with COVID-19. 3 Jan Bahrain United Arab Emirates Around day 12/routine testing Auckland 6 Jan Russia Singapore Around day 6/contact of a case Christchurch Russia Singapore Around day 6/contact of a case Christchurch Note: The above two cases are part of the group of international mariners. In total, 19 positive COVID-19 cases have been identified in this group: nine are deemed historical and ten are active cases. 7 Jan United States Around day 3/routine testing Auckland Note: The above case has been classified as historical as this person has returned a weak positive test and a separate serology test result indicates they have previously been unwell with COVID-19. 7 Jan United Kingdom United Arab Emirates Around day 6/routine testing Auckland 9 Jan United Arab Emirates Around day 3/routine testing Auckland 9 Jan Italy United Arab Emirates Around day 3/routine testing Auckland 9 Jan India United Arab Emirates Around day 3/routine testing Auckland 9 Jan South Africa United Arab Emirates Around day 3/routine testing Auckland 10 Jan India United Arab Emirates Around day 3/routine testing Auckland 10 Jan Malaysia Singapore Around day 3/routine testing Auckland Singapore Around day 3/routine testing Auckland Singapore Around day 3/routine testing Auckland Singapore Around day 3/routine testing Auckland Note: The above four cases belong to same family bubble 11 Jan United States Around day 0/routine testing Christchurch Four cases have now recovered, bringing the total number of active cases in New Zealand to 76. Our total number of confirmed cases is 1890. The total number of tests processed by laboratories to date is 1,457,076. "Over the summer break the Ministry of Health continues to encourage people with any COVID-19 symptoms to get assessed for testing by contacting their doctor or calling Healthline. "Healthline is free and available 24/7. Medical professionals are best placed to assess whether a test is needed." NZ COVID Tracer NZ COVID Tracer now has 2,443,320 registered users. Poster scans have reached 152,965,461 and users have now created more than 6,179,816 manual diary entries. How critical is this moment for Americans? Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment I cannot help but think that a large majority of American citizens are very, very concerned about the current state of our union. The increasing hostility and political protests that have roiled our society for the past few years seem to be reaching a crescendo in the events that have unfolded in the aftermath of an extremely acrimonious election cycle in which there seemed to be little common ground. Many people have blamed President Trump for this increasing level of incivility, but he was more a symptom and a product of the dissatisfaction and unrest of many citizens, rather than its progenitor. Throughout the summer and fall of 2020, numerous people were quoting the late, great Martin Luther King Jr., who had sought in 1967 to explain the phenomenon of riots without condoning them, observing that A riot is the language of the unheard. The left was quick to seize upon this explanation as a reason for the violent protests that wracked many of our cities in the summer and early fall of 2020. Mr. Trump, the first president to be elected without any prior political service, or alternatively just having won a war (generals Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower), was obviously a political phenomenon produced by a significant segment of the American population between the two coasts who felt unheard in their frustrations in being victimized by globalization and the consequent disappearance of their livelihoods. How else do you explain a Donald Trump? Like most political observers, I would have said what Trump did in going straight to the White House in his first political campaign could not have been done until he did it. Unprecedented reaction to his victory in 2016, with significant segments of our media and political culture never accepting the legitimacy of his victory, stating He will never be my president, and calling for his impeachment within hours of his taking the oath of office. It helped raise the temperature and rancor of political discussions at an alarming rate. Now we find ourselves in the position where many Americans feel disenfranchised by President-elect Bidens victory, and the censoring of political speech by the High Tech Cartel (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.). Once again, I would not have believed such a denial of the First Amendments guarantees of freedom of speech until it occurred. Evidently, these vastly powerful entities have been so consumed by their hostility to President Trump they do not see what they are doing. How else to you explain Twitter condemning precisely the same behavior in a foreign country (Uganda), stating, We strongly condemn internet shut downs they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of #openinternet. They further observed that access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter is never more important than during domestic processes, particularly elections. I could not agree more. Its true in Uganda, and its true in the USA, too. And now, weve been treated to the spectacle of the U.S. House impeaching the president less than a week before he leaves office, with the earliest the Senate could take up the case being 1:00pm on January 20, 2021 when Mr. Trump will have already been replaced by then President Biden. This makes a mockery of the intended constitutional purpose of impeachment, which is to remove a sitting president, and reminds me of nothing quite so much as the British royalists who returned to power in 1660 disinterring Oliver Cromwells corpse from Westminster Abbey, where he had been buried in 1658, so they could hang his corpse in chains and then decapitate him. Cromwells head was displayed on a poll outside Westminster Hall until 1685. It is well past time for all Americans of good will of all political persuasions to listen to our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, who in his first inaugural address in 1861 closed with this eloquent plea for Americans to turn aside from secession and looming civil war: I am loathe to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The multiple chords of memory stretching from battle-field and patriot grave, every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, and by the better angels of our nature. Tragically, too many of our ancestors chose not to heed Lincolns urgent plea, and the entire nation reaped the whirlwind of a bloody civil war that ripped the country asunder and cost approximately 750,000 war dead (J. David Hacker) North and South and multitudes of widows and orphans in their wake. Let us all hope and pray that we heed the warnings and listen to the better angels of our nature this time. In closing, I want to reference a powerful novel, Word of Honor, written by Nelson DeMille and published in 1980. Word of Honor is the semiautobiographical novel of a man who served as an infantry platoon lieutenant in the Battle of Hue in 1968 in a similar time of national division and recrimination in our country. Anyone who lived through that year remembers it well. Although the preacher parts of me are offended by some of the passages, it is a riveting read. The lieutenant is on trial in 1980 for his platoon having purportedly committed war crimes in Vietnam. When he recounts to his attorney what actually happened, his attorney replies, What else? Steal chickens, too? The lieutenant replied, As a matter of fact, they were not bad. Not in the beginning. But you can only log so many miles on a man and imprint so many obscenities on his brain before he begins to malfunction. I am fearful that too many of us are heedlessly imprinting the equivalent of obscenities on our fellow citizens and on our society which is a living, breathing thing and it is beginning to malfunction. It is the duty of every American to do everything we can to stop it before it imperils our country. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 09:14:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Highways are seen with less traffic near Toronto Pearson International Airport in Missisauga, Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 14, 2021. Ontario's stay-at-home order went into effect on Thursday, requiring residents to stay home except for essential outings. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua) Fire Destroys Home on Oaks Road By Bill Hughes PADUCAH - A fire Wednesday night destroyed a Reidland home but nobody was hurt.According to Reidland-Farley Fire Chief Rick Archer, firefighters responded at 9:12 pm to the home in the 300 block of Oaks Road. Hendron Fire Department also responded with mutual aid.The home, which was unoccupied at the time, was a total loss.Archer said he believes the cause of the fire was electrical in nature.Archer said his agency was on the scene for about two hours, and a post on the Hendron Fire Department's Facebook page says they were there for about an hour.No firefighters were injured while battling the blaze. This is the hilarious moment a group of groomsmen failed spectacularly at achieving the perfect wedding snap. Footage show nine groomsmen running towards the groom Josh Williams, 29, outside the Knotting Hill Place wedding venue in Little Elm, Texas. The group were trying to take a candid mid-action snap, but the marble flooring proved to be slippery, causing two groomsmen to fall. Footage show nine groomsmen running towards the groom Josh Williams, 29, as they try to take a candid mid-action snap, but two fell on the slippery marble flooring They ran towards their friend, who was standing with his back to them, to take the pictures to celebrate his big day. The groom beams with pride as his group of friends cheer while they make their way across the marble flooring to get the perfect shot. But groomsman Nathan Williams, 29, loses his footing on the slippery floor and falls on his back. He narrowly avoids knocking the groom down as he lands on the ground, hitting his head when he does. The group ran towards their friend, who was standing with his back to them, to take the pictures, before groomsman Nathan Williams, 29, falls and hits his head Another of the nine men, Tanner Anglin, 29, also slips and his legs fly from under him as he lands on his back, but lies down laughing at the embarrassing gaff. The footage was captured at the wedding of dental student Josh and his new wife Rebekah, in December 2020. It ends with one groomsman still lying down as the others crowd him to make sure he isn't hurt. The footage was captured at the wedding of dental student Josh Williams and his new wife Rebekah, pictured, in December 2020 Tanner said: 'We were trying to get a great action shot of all of the guys surprising Josh but it didn't exactly go to plan,' 'Looking back, it probably wasn't the wisest idea to be running on a slippery floor in polished smart shoes. 'I think the floor must've recently been cleaned because it was like an ice rink in the patch behind Josh.' He added that the fall was 'embarrassing but also immediately hilarious'. He said: I don't take myself too seriously and it didn't hurt too much so I was happy to laugh it off. 'There was some concern for Nathan though as he hit his head pretty hard but luckily he was okay. He felt it for sure, but he'll live.' Angola, IN (46703) Today Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.. Tonight Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. The Trump administration in its waning days took another swipe at China and its biggest firms on Thursday, imposing sanctions on officials and companies for alleged misdeeds in the South China Sea and imposing an investment ban on nine more firms. The moves will further increase tensions with China, Washington's strategic rival in Asia, days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Wednesday. The Biden transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Executives of state-owned enterprises, officials of the Chinese Communist Party and military, along with oil giant CNOOC will face new restrictions for allegedly using coercion against states with rival South China Sea claims. Senior US officials told reporters on a call Thursday the new CNOOC restrictions will not apply to crude, refined fuels and liquid natural gas and do not apply to existing joint ventures with CNOOC that do not operate in the South China Sea. Nine Chinese firms were added to the Pentagon's list of companies with alleged ties to the Chinese military, including planemaker Comac and phone maker Xiaomi Corp. Those companies will be subject to a new US investment ban which forces American investors to divest holdings of the blacklisted firms by Nov. 11, 2021. In its response, the Chinese embassy referred to Jan. 7 Foreign Ministry comments accusing Washington of "pinning political and ideological labels on economic and trade issues and exploiting its state power to crack down on foreign companies, under the pretext of national security." The United States has long opposed China's extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea, a potentially resource-rich area that is also a strategic trade route. Washington accuses Beijing of intimidating states such as Vietnam and the Philippines that have competing claims there. China accuses Washington of trying to destabilize the region by sending warships and planes to the South China Sea. "The United States stands with Southeast Asian claimant states seeking to defend their sovereign rights and interests, consistent with international law," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in announcing the sanctions. Pompeo said Washington was imposing visa restrictions on executives of Chinese state-owned enterprises and officials of the Chinese Communist Party and navy. He said the sanctions were directed against those "responsible for, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarization of disputed outposts in the South China Sea, or use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources." The restrictions could also apply to immediate family members, he said. The Commerce Department accused CNOOC of harassing and threatening offshore oil and gas exploration and extraction in the South China Sea, "with the goal of driving up the political risk for interested foreign partners, including Vietnam." President Donald Trump's administration has kept up pressure in its final days, targeting what Washington sees as Beijing's bid to use corporations as a means to harness civilian technologies for military purposes. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said CNOOC acted as "a bully for the People's Liberation Army to intimidate China's neighbors" and the Chinese military "continues to benefit from government civil-military fusion policies for malign purposes." Ross's department added CNOOC to an "Entity List" that requires firms to be granted a special license before they can receive exports of high-tech items from US suppliers. Chinese aviation firm Skyrizon was added to a Military End-User (MEU) List over its ability to develop military products including aircraft engines, restricting its access to US exports. Aside from Comac and Xiaomi, the Pentagon added Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc, Luokung Technology Corp, Beijing Zhongguancun Development Investment Center, GOWIN Semiconductor Corp, Grand China Air Co Ltd, Global Tone Communication Technology Co Ltd and China National Aviation Holding Co Ltd to the list. Representatives of the Chinese firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On Wednesday the Trump administration scrapped plans to blacklist Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, four people familiar with the matter said. Also read: China 2020 exports rise despite COVID-19 pandemic; surplus surges to $535 billion [January 15, 2021] CES 2021 P-Waver Combines Big Data and AI to Build Earthquake Early Warning System for Taiwan Government and High Tech Industry TAIPEI, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leveraging its well-established database, AI technical knowledge, and a proven track record encompassing thousands of successful projects, P-Waver is ready to showcase Taiwanese technology innovation and launch its international expansion as part of the 100 startup delegation to CES 2021 in the Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA). P-Waver is based in Taiwan, an island located along the 'Ring of Fire' in the Western Pacific that experiences over 18,000 earthquakes annually. Started in 2010, Pei-Yang Lin and his team have used big data and AI technology to create an Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) model that, after successful on-site lab validation, has been installed and used by the government, institutions, and international SI Partners. P-Waver's services also cover structural safety monitoring systems, earthquake disaster prevention consulting, and smart security solutios delivered via IOT devices or control systems for buildings and homes. As a member of the Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) program, P-Waver is working toward preventing seismic hazards across a market area spanning two billion people and three billion businesses. A Niche Space Focused on Protecting Human Life In today's socio-economic system, facilities increasingly incorporate built-in technologies. When an earthquake strikes, healthcare, transportation, security, and energy industries are at high risk of damage and disruption. In industries like precision manufacturing, it is crucial to implement soft stops of technical operations in emergency situations to reduce losses and speed up the recovery process. High speed rail also benefits from EEW systems by facilitating early braking, which enhances comprehensive safety management capabilities. EEW technology is a crucial component of current societal infrastructures, reducing the potential impact of earthquakes on daily life and the economy. P-Waver constructed their EEW system based on earthquake data from Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau and AI technology, which includes over 250,000 earthquake models. With 1-3 seconds of P-wave detection, the subsequent earthquake can be estimated immediately. This warning provides an additional 5-15 seconds of early warning time for regions located 30-100km from the epicenter. In order to prevent false alarms, P-Waver installs multiple sensors to detect the initial wave. Data are processed using AI to detect its peak P-wave, and advanced trigger logic gives this EEW system a prediction accuracy as high as 98%. P-Waver Is the Solution for Smart City Seismic Hazard Control Over the past decade, P-Waver has provided earthquake early warning systems for thousands of schools, science parks, and semiconductor plants. They have provided their services to global tier-1 companies, including Taiwan High Speed Rail, TSMC, and AGC. Potential future customers include automation plants, power plant facilities, hospitals, reservoirs, and smart-building construction firms. P-Waver is also targeting future collaboration opportunities. One area of interest is to expand their innovative EEW technology into smart city developments, which motivated their participation in CES. Their ambition is to approach smart city developers in the United States such as Intel, Micron, Tesla, and Honeywell as well as link up with partners in another regions to be a part of their future smart city developments as a provider of disaster safety management system solutions. P-Waver is also seeking new investor partners interested in security solutions for smart cities, smart homes, and AI Driven SaaS business models. CES 2021 TTA - VR Pavilion:https://pse.is/3bfz36 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ces-2021-p-waver-combines-big-data-and-ai-to-build-earthquake-early-warning-system-for-taiwan-government-and-high-tech-industry-301209116.html SOURCE P-Waver [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] 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. . The European Union on Friday added recently appointed Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad to its sanctions blacklist targeting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad The move takes the number of officials and allies of the Syrian leader under EU asset freezes and travel bans to 289, with 70 entities also facing punitive measures. Brussels began slapping sanctions on the Syrian authorities in 2011 over the brutal repression of anti-government protests. The war that has torn apart the country has now killed more than 387,000 people and displaced millions. Mekdad replaced Assad stalwart Walid Muallem after the veteran top diplomat died in November. Mekdad, started a career at the Syrian foreign ministry in 1994, and had served as deputy foreign minister since 2006. Search Keywords: Short link: M ore than 3 million people in England were vaccinated against coronavirus in just over a month, new figures show. A total of 3,189,674 Covid-19 jabs were administered in the country between December 8 and January 14, according to provisional NHS England data released on Friday. This includes first and second doses. It marks a rise of 279,647 on Thursdays figures, meaning almost 280,000 people were inoculated against the disease in 24 hours. Of the latest total, 2,769,164 were first doses of the vaccine a rise of 274,793 on Thursdays count, while 420,510 were second doses an increase of 4,854. The figures come as the Government prepares to rapidly scale up its mass-vaccination programme administering as many as half a million jabs from next week, according to reports. Ministers are confident that the UK will have enough doses to hit Boris Johnsons target of inoculating the 15 million most vulnerable Britons by February 15. A senior Whitehall source told The Times that the pace of the scale-up could mean that all 32 million over-50s receive their first vaccine dose by mid to late March. Boris Johnson: Top four priority groups will receive Covid vaccine by February 15th The postitive developments come after the Government was sharply criticised over the distribution of vaccines across the country. A total of 447,329 doses were administered in the Midlands between December 8 and January 10, with 387,647 people receiving at least one injection. But London had delivered just 237,524 doses, sparking huge concern from mayor Sadiq Khan. The NHS England figures for the month indicated that about half of people aged 80 and over in north-east England and Yorkshire had received their first dose. By contrast just three in 10 people aged 80 and over in eastern England had received their first jab, with a similar proportion in London. Coronavirus: The first patient in the UK to receive covid-19 vaccine 1 /11 Coronavirus: The first patient in the UK to receive covid-19 vaccine Margaret Keenan, 90, is applauded by staff as she returns to her ward after becoming the first person in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine PA Margaret Keenan, 90, is applauded by staff as she returns to her ward after becoming the first person in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine PA Margaret Keenan, 90, is applauded by staff as she returns to her ward after becoming the first person in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine PA Co Margaret Keenan, 90, is applauded by staff as she returns to her ward after becoming the first person in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine PA Margaret Keenan, 90, returns to her ward after becoming the first person in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine PA Margaret Keenan, 90, is the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry, PA Margaret Keenan, 90, speaks to the media after becoming the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry PA Margaret Keenan, 90, walks with nurse May Parsons (left) after becoming the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry PA Nurse May Parsons prepares Margaret Keenan, 90, to be the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine PA Margaret Keenan, 90, walks with nurse May Parsons (left) after becoming the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry PA Margaret Keenan, 90, speaks to the media after becoming the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry PA Downing Street defended the operation, with the Prime Ministers official spokesman telling reporters: Weve rolled out the vaccination programme across the country and weve ensured that every area receives a fair share of the vaccinations and we will continue to do that. You will continue to see the vaccination programme accelerate through this month and throughout February and the PMs been clear that we will ensure there is a vaccine centre close to everybody by the end of the month. The North East and Yorkshire was just behind the Midlands in terms of doses administered, with 433,045. Mr Khan responded to the discrepencies by saying: I am hugely concerned that Londoners have received only a 10th of the vaccines that have been given across the country. The situation in London is critical with rates of the virus extremely high, which is why its so important that vulnerable Londoners are given access to the vaccine as soon as possible. He later said he had had a constructive meeting with vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi. High street pharmacies start vaccines as UK records worst day of Covid deaths A spokesman for the NHS in London said: We have more than 100 vaccination sites up and running across London, including the NHS Covid-19 vaccination centre in the ExCeL London, and more are opening all the time. London is getting its fair share of vaccine supply for the priority groups we have to vaccinate by mid-February. Mr Johnson has previously acknowledged that while parts of the country were doing incredibly well in vaccinating people it was less good in other areas. Up to January 10, 1,036,605 people aged 80 or over had received a first dose, as had 960,699 under-80s. Separate figures from NHS England show nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of first doses in England up to January 7 went to people aged 49 and under. Just over half (53 per cent) went to people aged 80 and over. Some 12 per cent went to people aged 50-59, six per cent to those aged 60-69, and six per cent to those aged 70-79. Snow warning in place for Lazio region on 15 January. Rome has issued a snow warning for the Lazio region from the early hours of Friday 15 January. The city's civil protection authority say the risk of snow tomorrow morning will remain for "six-12 hours." The warning comes the day after the city issued guidelines to help residents cope in the event of snow and icy conditions. It last snowed in Rome in February 2018, leading to two days of school closures, and before that it snowed in February 2012. For details of the snow warning see city website. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the one who called for an insurrection, not President Trump. While Trump specifically called for a "peaceful" protest against election fraud, Pelosi as Speaker has twice specifically called for an "uprising". The latter, not the former is a call for insurrection. Immediately after the George Floyd death, Pelosi held a press conference in which she said, "I do not know why there are not uprisings all over the country. Perhaps there will be". That was a call for insurrection, and soon after Pelosi's call for "uprisings all over the country" those uprisings started and did billions of dollars in damage while killing over 40 people. She should be held responsible for her outrageous incitement to riot. Earlier, Pelosi had called for "uprisings" against Trump administration policies to defend the border against illegal alien incursion. Fortunately, on that occasion, no one took Pelosi up on her incitement to riot. Maybe the Congress ought to be voting to remove Pelosi from the Speaker's chair. The left wants one set of rules for themselves and a far different set for everyone else. A state committee responsible for recommending the order of coronavirus vaccinations issued its first list Thursday, suggesting the state should prioritize people of color, refugees, adults under 65 with chronic health conditions, frontline workers, people living in multi-generational homes and those living in low-income senior housing. The recommendations, which will be revisited next week once the state has a chance to analyze them, came after a rushed two-hour meeting that left many members questions unanswered. The committee did little to whittle down groups under consideration, with a working list that could exceed over 1 million people if the group doesnt make reductions. With additions and edits up until the last minute, the process reflected not only the states urgent need for guidance but also the complex task facing the committee. It is facing a slew of challenges, including insufficient time to answer everybodys questions and concerns, a steep learning curve, no actual power and shifting state promises. Were running up against time, one advisory member, Marin Arreola, said during the Thursday meeting, responding to another members concern about the practicality of issuing recommendations during a vaccine shortage. I dont want to wait another week. The Oregon Health Authority decided months ago that as part of its effort to fight systemic racism and oppression it would ask for help from a diverse 27-member group, comprised of people in a position to better understand the needs, concerns and fears of those Oregonians disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Those include Pacific Islanders, Latinos and African Americans, whose infection rates have exceeded those among whites many times over. It also includes people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and the Slavic community. COVID-19 figures in Oregon as of Jan. 14, 2021. The groups goals are lofty, part of the states long-term plan to reshape health care to better serve populations marginalized over generations. Health disparities are believed to have contributed to people of colors significantly higher coronavirus infection rates. We know that structural racism impacts the lives of BIPOC people holistically, member Aileen Duldulao said. Its also insurance, whos covered by health insurance, who has access to health care, who has the patient provider relationship, who experiences racism in that relationship. Gov. Kate Brown and state officials have gradually chipped away at the scope of the committees capacity ever since it was formed. First, Brown declared that Oregons educators should be next in line after health care workers and senior care residents and staff. Then, the state decided to vaccinate prisoners to stave off a lawsuit. Finally, Brown said this week that Oregon will follow the federal governments recommendation that all people 65 and older be eligible for vaccinations. That means that nearly one third of Oregonians could be vaccinated before the committees recommendations make an impact, assuming the state follows them. What exactly is this group being asked to prioritize? one committee member asked the state. Its unclear when the state will get through the approximately 500,000 people eligible now and the 850,000 or so additional people who will be eligible starting Jan. 23. As of Thursday, nearly 120,100 Oregonians have received one shot, and 13,000 have received two. Oregon hopes to soon consistently vaccinate 12,000 people per day. But even at that rate, it would be mid-April before the states priority groups are immunized. The uncertainty was on full display Thursday, when a committee member representing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities asked the state to promise it would follow through with the committees recommendations. I just want to make sure that we have, moving forward, a commitment from the Oregon Health Authority that when this Vaccine Advisory Committee acts and says who is in the next phases, that you will implement this, with partners, in a way that makes that real, said Leslie Sutton, executive director of the Oregon Council on Developmental Disabilities. Because otherwise, we are providing empty hope to people that need it most. Rachael Banks, director of the health authoritys public health division, responded instead to Suttons concern that people with disabilities have already had tremendous difficulty getting access to coronavirus vaccines, acknowledging certain problems and committing to keep working on improving access. Bankss boss, health authority Director Patrick Allen, has said his agency will follow the committees recommendations short of saying that we should do something illegal. But a health authority spokesman said Thursday the agency cant guarantee what Brown ultimately decides to do. OHA certainly wants to follow (Vaccine Advisory Committee) recommendations, Jonathan Modie said. But we cannot speak for the Governors Office in whether it will accept the recommendations. The full list of populations to be prioritized for vaccinations that the committee agreed to send the health authority for analysis included: African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Latinx, Indigenous, Native Americans living in cities and within tribes, Pacific Islanders, refugees, people 16 to 64 years old with chronic health conditions, people eligible for vaccines who are in jail or prison, frontline workers who werent already eligible, people in multi-generational homes and people under 65 living in low-income senior housing or other congregate care settings. The committee will meet again Tuesday to get more information from the health authority, then will meet Thursday to hear the results of the agencys analysis of the recommendations. -- Fedor Zarkhin fzarkhin@oregonian.com; 503-294-7674; @fedorzarkhin KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. Police are investigating the deaths of a husband and wife in Klamath Falls this week, the result of an apparent murder-suicide. Klamath Falls Police responded on Wednesday to reports of a possible suicide at 101 Lincoln Street. A family member reported going to the house to check on a husband and wife there, finding them both dead. At the home, officers confirmed that two people were dead, with the interior of the home betraying signs of a fight. Detectives quickly took over the investigation. Detectives asked for assistance from the Oregon State Police Crime Lab, and teams from the state agency arrived early Thursday morning to aid in the investigation. OSP also sent a reconstructionist to examine the crime scene. According to KFPD, detectives found the body of 41-year-old Sonia Stanley in the hallway of the home with a fatal gunshot wound. The body of her husband, 53-year-old Richard Bellm, was found in the bedroom with a fatal gunshot wound that investigators believe was self-inflicted. "Over the course of the investigation, detectives learned Richard Bellm and Sonia Stanley had been married for approximately 18 years," KFPD said. "Detectives also learned the couple had a history of domestic violence, and alcohol is believed to be involved." The case remains under investigation, and anyone with information about the case is asked to call Detective LaBeads Yahwhee at 541-883-5336 or call the anonymous tip line at 541-883-5334. Couriers take initiative for Spring Festival stay to support anti-pandemic By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-01-15 10:20 The anti-pandemic suggestion that people should avoid going to their hometowns en masse and potential gatherings during the upcoming Spring Festival has been well responded to. Many delivery people in Shanghai have canceled their plan to return to their hometowns for the week-long holiday. Jin Xiayuan is a deliveryman working for STO Express. Even before the government announcement, he had decided not to return to his hometown for this years Spring Festival in consideration of the possible severe pandemic situation. I dont want to trouble others, said Mr. Jin, who thought that mandatory quarantine may be conducted after arriving at home and work resumption may also be influenced due to possible quarantine when back. Since many people choose to remain in Shanghai, the logistics demand must be higher than the past Spring Festivals. So if I remain here, I can make my own contributions, said Jin. Guo Haoqiang, a native of Hebei province who heads a Cainiao parcel pick-up and posting station in Shanghai, has also decided to remain. Since Hebei has become a COVID-19 hotspot, several days ago, Guo donated a batch of anti-pandemic materials including 10,000 medical masks and a dozen boxes of hand sanitizer to his home province. For other similar parcels being donated to Hebei, Guo has also waived the delivery charge. Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. Some 3,000 people left Honduras on foot Friday in the latest migrant caravan hoping to find a welcome, and a better life, in the US under President-elect Joe Biden. Seeking to escape poverty, unemployment, gang and drug violence and the aftermath of two devastating hurricanes, the migrants plan to walk thousands of kilometers through Central America. But they will have to overcome a rash of travel restrictions in Guatemala and Mexico long before they even make it to the American border. The quest is likely to end in heartbreak for many, with American authorities already having warned off the group that includes people of all ages and some entire families. "I want to work for my house and a car, to work and live a dignified life with my family," said Melvin Fernandez, a taxi driver from the Caribbean port city of La Ceiba in Honduras, who set off on the long journey with his wife and three children, aged 10, 15 and 22. Most of the group set off shortly after 4:00 am (1000 GMT) from the transport terminal of San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest city, headed for Agua Caliente on the Guatemalan border some 260 km (162 miles) away. The migrants walked along side roads wearing backpacks, some holding the Honduras flag, many with small children in their arms, and most with facemasks to protect against the coronavirus. The migrants say they hope to catch lifts from passing motorists or truckers or, failing that, walk the entire way. To enter Guatemala, the first country on their route, however, the migrants will have to show travel documents and a negative coronavirus test -- requirements that not all of them meet. - 'Broken heart' - "We are leaving with a broken heart, because in my case, I leave my family, my husband and my three children behind," 36-year-old Jessenia Ramirez told AFP. "We are going in search of a better future, a job so we can send a few cents back home. We are trusting in God to open our path, Biden is supposed to give work opportunities to those who are there (on American soil)." Story continues The travelers are hopeful that Biden, who takes over the US presidency on Wednesday, will be more flexible than his predecessor Donald Trump. Biden has promised "a fair and humane immigration system" and pledged aid to tackle the root causes of poverty and violence that drive Central Americans to the United States. But Mark Morgan, acting Commissioner of the US Customs and Border Protection, warned the group last week not to "waste your time and money." The US commitment to the "rule of law and public health" is not affected by the change in administration, he said in a statement. More than a dozen caravans, some with thousands of migrants, have set off from Honduras since October 2018. But all have run up against thousands of US border guards and soldiers under Trump, who has characterized immigrants from Mexico as "rapists" who were "bringing drugs" and other criminal activity to the United States. - Hoping beyond hope - Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras have an agreement with the United States to stop north-bound migratory flows from the south of the continent. Honduras has mobilized 7,000 police officers to supervise the latest caravan on its journey to the Guatemalan border. Guatemala declared seven departments in a state of "alert," giving security forces the authority to "forcibly dissolve" any type of public groupings. On Friday, officials said they had already returned about 100 Hondurans who began the trip from San Pedro Sula on Thursday and entered Guatemala illegally, without Covid tests. Another 600-odd migrants who arrived at the border were prevented from entering, Guatemalan police reported. Hundreds of police and soldiers manned three border crossings to stop the caravan. Many wore gas masks and carried shields and truncheons. On the Honduran side, in the town of El Florido, there were signs of desperation. "We will not move until they let us cross. We will stage a hunger strike," said Dania Hinestrosa, 23, waiting with her young daughter. "We have no work or food. That is why I am traveling to the United States," she said. Mexican authorities said late Thursday that 500 immigration officers were being deployed to the Guatemalan border in anticipation of the caravan's arrival. But the migrants are keeping the end goal in sight. Among them, 28-year-old Eduardo Lanza said he dreamed of living in a country where people of different sexual orientations can live with dignity, "respect... and a job opportunity." Norma Pineda, 51, said last year's hurricanes left her "on the street." "We are leaving because here is no work, no state support, we need food, clothes..." she told AFP. nl/mav/mlr/ft/dw/acb With a lot of urging, I write to shed some light on the focus of the recent deluge of articles, letters, social media posts and phone calls regarding the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida. Ive received enough calls and emails asking me to address the issues at the heart of the deluge that here I am diving into turbulent waters. Why? I am a longtime volunteer, board member and immediate past president of our Holocaust Center. I am also the daughter of the Centers founder, Tess Wise. These two roles enable me to comment from a uniquely informed perspective on... A civil rights battle over the profane SnapChat posts of a disgruntled Pennsylvania high school cheerleader has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In agreeing to hear an appeal by Mahoney Area School District, the justices will take up the issue of whether school officials have the right to discipline students for off-campus, after-school comments or if such speech is completely protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Mahanoy district officials asked the nations highest court to address the case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled in June that they had violated the cheerleaders free speech rights by suspending her from the team because of her SnapChat comments. The teen, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, posted those comments after failing to make the varsity squad. Her SnapChat message stated, (Expletive) school, (expletive) softball, (expletive) cheer, (expletive) everything. The circuit judges found district officials had no right to discipline the girl over opinions she expressed online to her friends while out of school and on her own time. Their ruling backed an earlier decision by U.S. Middle District Senior Judge A. Richard Caputo. As arms of the state, public schools have an interest in teaching civility by example, persuasion, and encouragement, but they may not leverage the coercive power with which they have been entrusted to do so, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause wrote in the circuit courts opinion. Otherwise, we give school administrators the power to quash student expression deemed crude or offensivewhich far too easily metastasizes into the power to censor valuable speech and legitimate criticism. In seeking Supreme Court review, the school district asked the justices to address whether a 1969 high court decision which holds that public school officials may regulate speech that would materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school, applies to student speech that occurs off campus. The districts attorneys insisted in their petition that schools ability to maintain order within the schoolhouse gates should not disappear just because the disruption originates off campus. The school districts stance is supported by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and the Pennsylvania Principals Association. The cheerleader and her parents, meanwhile, are framing the issue before the justices whether the district violated her free speech rights when it punished a student for her colorful expression of frustration, made in an ephemeral Snapchat on her personal social media, on a weekend, off campus, containing no threat or harassment or mention of her school, and that did not cause or threaten any disruption of her school. To rule otherwise would set a suffocating precedent, the girls lawyers claim in a brief filed with the Supreme Court. Permitting school officials to regulate student expression that occurs on a weekend, off-campus, with no specific connection to the school would severely diminish students free-speech rights in the world at large, they wrote. The achool districts argument would apply with equal force had (she) simply voiced her frustration to a group of friends while hanging out on the weekend and had one of the friends then reported it to the school. Surely such speech could not be punished. LANE COUNTY, Ore. -- Two mass vaccination clinics are happening in Lane County this weekend. However, they are invititation-only so Lane County Public Health will not be releasing where they are being held. These clinics are specifically for people in groups two and three of phase 1A, which includes those who work with the unhoused, those with disabilities and in congregate settings. Lane County Public Health is focusing on those two groups while hospitals, EMS and Walgreens hone in on groups one and four. This is really Lane County Public Health's first effort at getting groups two and three immunized. With Nova Health and McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center both donating doses for them to use, the goal is to administer nearly 1,500 doses this weekend. Jason Davis said there are thousands of people in groups two and three so it will take more than just this weekend to get those who are eligible vaccinated. However, these two clinics are a start. Nova Health donated 500 doses to Lane County Public Health to use during the clinics this weekend. Nova Health Vice President of Operations Stephanie Rhoades said once Nova Health received 1200 doses and was able to vaccinate most of their employees and some members of the 1A community, they knew they had leftovers to spare. "We had two options. One option was to start signing up 1A individuals in the community and they would come to our clinic locations and we would track them and monitor them and they would walk into our clinics for the vaccine. The second option was for us to give it to Lane County Public Health and let them make sure the community was taken care of. So, we decided as a group that that would be the best option," Rhoades said. McKenzie-Willamette donated 975 doses to this weekend's clinics. To date, they have received 4,500 doses from the Oregon Health Authority and after vaccinating staff who wanted to be, they knew they could afford to give out the rest. KEZI asked the marketing director Jana Waterman how they were able to get such large amounts of the vaccine compared to Lane County Public Health, which was assigned 100 doses this week. "I don't know why because they originally requested that we give them a number for our staff and medical staff and we did a survey to our staff and medical staff of who would want the vaccination and then we gave that number to OHA so I don't know why we continue to receive vaccinations," Waterman said. However, she is thrilled that they are able to help vaccinate more people in the community. McKenzie-Willamette has already given out more than 1,000 first doses to their staff and 532 second doses. Plus, they have 1,700 first and second doses scheduled out to the rest of their staff and those in the 1A group from medical clinics around the area. Nova Health and McKenzie-Willamette said they will continue to donate the extra doses they receive. Lane County Public Health will continue putting these clinics together as supplies allow. DEARBORN, Mich., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FordDirect, a joint venture between Ford Motor Company and its franchise Dealers, announced today that Matt VanDyke has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer, effective Feb. 1, 2021. Mr. VanDyke, who for more than 12 years has led and transformed Ford and Lincoln brand positioning in roles around the world, now takes charge of an innovative team responsible for delivering best-in-class marketing and advertising solutions to Ford and Lincoln Dealers throughout the United States. "We are thrilled to have Matt VanDyke lead the FordDirect team," said Mike Pallotta, president of Pallotta Ford Lincoln in Wooster, Ohio and chairman of the FordDirect Board of Managers. "His passion for the digital auto retailing business is clear. His experience around the world shepherding the Ford and Lincoln brands, along with his knowledge of FordDirect following two terms as a board member, will serve him well as CEO. Our Board is confident Matt will continue the positive momentum FordDirect has made in its digital transformation. Our mission is to help Ford and Lincoln Dealers sell and service more cars and trucks. Matt is the best person to lead this team in continuing that work." VanDyke, 48, was most recently Director of Marketing for Ford Motor Company. Beginning in 2018, VanDyke led integrated communications, digital consumer experience, brand alliances, revenue management, and retail go-to market strategies. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Marketing for Ford of Europe, where he oversaw the Fiesta and Focus vehicle launches and led the piloting of various digital and retail consumer experiences, the rollout of new Ford websites, and the development and introduction of e-commerce solutions. He also served on the FordDirect Board for over five years. "I know the power of the Ford and Lincoln brands, and it is no secret that our Ford and Lincoln Dealers across the country are crucial in connecting those brands with interested consumers," VanDyke said. "It is an honor to work with the FordDirect team to continue building our dealer relationships with the outstanding digital connections we can provide. I am excited to get to work to drive FordDirect forward." VanDyke joined Ford Motor Company in 2008 as Director, U.S. Marketing Communications & Global Fixed Marketing, where he led Ford and Lincoln advertising. In 2012, he and his team began the Lincoln transformation, rebranding to The Lincoln Motor Company and developing a new product and experience strategy for the brand. VanDyke's focus was revitalizing Lincoln in North America and launching the brand in China. In 2016, he became Director for Global Lincoln, leading the marketing, sales and service team for the luxury brand. VanDyke serves on the Board of the Association of National Advertisers and holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Miami University. Gingell Promoted to Chief Operating Officer The FordDirect Board has also announced the promotion of Mike Gingell to Chief Operating Officer. Gingell joined FordDirect as Senior Vice President, Product, Marketing and Dealer Engagement in 2019. His promotion is effective Feb. 1, 2021. Gingell has been responsible for delivering products that help Ford and Lincoln Dealers maximize their digital resources by increasing new vehicle and service sales. He has also overseen the FordDirect dealer engagement team and FordDirect's internal and external marketing and communications strategies. Prior to joining FordDirect in 2019, Gingell spent over 20 years in the automotive information industry and has led teams that have focused on delivering data and technology solutions for automotive OEMs, automotive retailers, the automotive aftermarket, the commercial truck industry, and the finance and insurance markets. About FordDirect FordDirect, headquartered in Dearborn, Mich., connects the worlds of data, analytics and technology to provide best-in-class digital marketing and advertising solutions exclusively for Ford and Lincoln dealers. FordDirect is a joint venture between Ford Motor Company and its franchised dealers with a mission of helping Ford and Lincoln dealerships sell more cars and trucks. MEDIA CONTACT Jill Whitehead Vice President, Marketing and Dealer Engagement [email protected] Mobile: (248) 228-5075 SOURCE FordDirect Related Links https://www.forddirect.com Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off the first phase of the pan India rollout of COVID-19 vaccination drive on Saturday (January 16) at 10.30 am via video conferencing. The coronavirus vaccination program will cover the entire length and breadth of the country, with a total of 3006 session sites across all States and UTs which will be connected virtually throughout the exercise. READ | 'COVID-19 vaccines' interchangeability not permitted, pregnant and lactating women shouldn't be administered shot' Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated on Friday at each of the session sites. The COVID-19 vaccination drive has been planned in a phased manner, identifying priority groups. Health Care workers, both in government and private sectors including ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) workers, will receive the vaccine during this phase. READ | Delhi gears up for COVID-19 vaccination roll-out on January 16; check details of centres Union Minister of Health Harsh Vardhan on Friday reviewed preparations for the launch of the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive scheduled to begin on Saturday. The Union Minister visited the dedicated COVID Control Room which has been set up at the Nirman Bhawan premises of the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. Vardhan said Indias exercise to vaccinate its population against COVID-19 will be the largest immunization drive of the world. The Union Minister reiterated that both the indigenously manufactured vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, have proven safety and immunogenicity records and are the most important tools to contain the pandemic. During his visit to the COVID Control Room, Vardhan minutely scrutinised each aspect of the working of CoWIN, an online digital platform developed by Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which will be used to drive the COVID-19 vaccination programme in the country. It will facilitate real-time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries for COVID-19 vaccine. This digital platform will assist programme managers across National, State, and District levels while conducting vaccination sessions. It will help them track beneficiary coverage, beneficiary dropouts, sessions planned v/s sessions held and vaccine utilization The platform enables national & state administrators to view & sort data of beneficiaries as per their gender, age & co-morbidity. They can also view the metadata of vaccinations and Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) reported from constituent districts across States & UTs. District administrators can additionally create session sites at any location by entering the pin-code, followed by specifying the locality or villages and subsequently assigning a vaccinator. Vardhan suggested that the software modifications and lessons learnt while using the highly advanced CoWIN platform be incorporated into Indias Universal Immunization Program. The Union Minister also reviewed the Beneficiary Registration Page for all non-prioritized groups on CoWIN. He suggested pre-populating the software with beneficiaries by seeding it with the electoral database, in addition to other documents that are authorized for registration. The dedicated COVID Control Room has been involved in the massive exercise of monitoring district wise COVID19 data from across the country as well as in-depth analysis of the data to interpret & evaluate the status of the pandemic. For the last several months, through this dedicated control room, the government has been closely monitoring parameters such as case fatality rates, infection rates, death rates & other parameters based on which containment strategies have been continuously evolved. The Control Room has also been helping to track & record best strategies being adopted by different countries as a part of their response system and translating them into key learnings for India. The Union Minister also reviewed the working of the Communications Control Room which has been closely monitoring the disinformation campaigns and rumour-mongering in relation to administering of COVID19 vaccines. He advised the administrative machinery to go all out to counter the misinformation campaign being spread by vested interests. ADVERTISEMENT The Oyo State Police Command has confirmed the killing of a 21-year-old man, Tosin Thomas, by an officer of the Oyo State Security Network Agency, codenamed Amotekun. PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported how Mr Thomas was killed by an operative named Afolabi Kazeem, on Wednesday evening at Total Filling Station, Mokola, in Ibadan, Oyo State capital. An eyewitness, who did not want his name mentioned for security reasons, said the Amotekun guys drove into the filling station and saw some youth. Although the place was rowdy, the youths were peaceful until we heard a gunshot. Before we could say Jack, Thomas was already on the floor and he died immediately. The commandant of Amotekun in Oyo State, Olayanju Olayinka, also confirmed the incident to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday. Mr Olayinka, however, said the operative, who shot the deceased, has been dismissed and handed over to police. Speaking on the incident, the Police Public Relations Officer (PRO) in Oyo State, Olugbenga Fadeyi, said in a statement that the victim was killed while on his way to his house. He was going home on 13/01/2021 at about 10:30 p.m. and was hit by bullets from a gun fired by Amotekun operatives. He was rushed to University College Hospital for immediate medical attention and thereafter was confirmed dead by medical personnel. An investigation has commenced into the matter and further development shall unfold, the police statement read. The recent killing by Amotekun, PREMIUM TIMES understands, made the total number of persons allegedly killed by Amotekun operatives in Oyo State to 11 in three weeks. Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Tells Administration Officials to Be Proud of Accomplishments President Donald Trumps deputy chief of staff said in a message late Thursday that administration officials should be proud of what theyve accomplished over the past four years. I encourage all Trump Administration Officials to hold your heads up high, and be proud of what you have accomplished together, over the past four years, for the American People, Dan Scavino, the deputy chief of staff, wrote on Facebook. While cancel culture kicks into high gear, and blacklisting of our names for future employment is underway, stay strong, and we will all prevail! he added. A number of officials have resigned in recent days because of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach and the House of Representatives impeached Trump on Wednesday for incitement of insurrection, alleging his words led to the breach. Ten Republicans joined Democrats in impeaching Trump, claiming what happened was too much. The President of the United States helped organize and incite a mob that attacked the United States Congress, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio) said in a statement. A timeline showed Trump wasnt finished speaking in Washington when people at the Capitol, about two miles away, began clashing with law enforcement and moving past barriers before later breaching the building. Scavino made no mention of the situation that unfolded at the Capitol. He said that a Republican senator messaged him a congratulatory message. A great Republican Senator messaged me tonightI wanted to share, because it holds true for each and everyone of you in the Trump Administration, and at agencies across the entire federal government: I appreciate your service over four long, tough years. Hold your head high for what you accomplished during a very consequential time,' Scavino wrote, less than a week before President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office. Agreed, so true! Each and everyone of you have made a significant differenceand history along the way! he added. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded a similar theme earlier this week. History will reflect on the good work that this president, and our administration, has done, he said, pointing to Trumps crackdown on the Chinese Communist Party, the unprecedented peace accords the president helped bring about in the Middle East, and the heightened challenge to Iran. Trump backers say the president will continue to dominate the Republican Party, setting the agenda and leading the charge to take back the House and Senate in 2022 and possibly run for president again two years later. Critics say the party is set to move on, noting Trump lost the election and has lost the support of some Republican legislators and voters. Trump touted his accomplishments during the speech last week. We created the greatest economy in history. We rebuilt our military. We get you the biggest tax cuts in history. We got you the biggest regulation cuts. Theres no President, whether its four years, eight years, or in one case more, got anywhere near the regulation cuts. We created Space Force. Look at what we did. Our military has been totally rebuilt, he said. Trump also noted he signed the Right to Try Act into law, which enables terminal patients to seek investigational treatments. Weve done things like nobodys ever thought possible, he said. And thats part of the reason that many people dont like us, because weve done too much, but weve done it quickly. Correction: A previous version of this article inaccurately listed the state Rep. Gonzalez represents. The Epoch Times regrets the error. The scenes of fanatic rightist mobs desecrating the U.S. Capitol building was a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer appropriately compared Jan. 6, 2021 to President Franklin D. Roosevelts description of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 as a date which will live in infamy. Roosevelt was responding to a direct and dire attack on our democracy. By contrast, President Donald Trumps inflammatory remarks led directly to the crazed insurrectionist mob attack on the Capitol, the iconic temple of our democracy. In secular terms the desecration of the Capitol was a violent attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president-elect and Kamala Harris as vice president-elect. After the orgy of violence was finally subdued hours too late - both houses of Congress returned to their vandalized chambers to complete their sacred work. Vice President Mike Pence earned comparison to heroes in JFKs Profiles in Courage for having the backbone to stand up to Trumps attempt to bully him into violating the constitutional limits of his office. Trumps speech to his throng of supporters urged them to fight back to block the certification while his rabid attorney, Rudy Giuliani, exhorted them to engage in a trial by combat. How sad it is that the former mayor of New York who showed leadership in the aftermath of 9/11 has become a bloviating buffoon who has lost over 60 attempts to overturn the election results. Trump has no one to blame for his downfall but himself. He has stabbed many of his closest allies in the back, including Pence and former Attorney General William Barr, who blunted the release of the Mueller Report. ADVERTISEMENT Trump had to have been warned that a fired-up group of rally attendees intended to take violent action to block the certification of the election. Now Trump facesat this writingseveral possible paths at the end his term: removal from office under terms of 25th Amendment (unlikely); a censure from Congress or impeachment. At the very least, Trump should be censured for incitement to insurrection. Again Trump brought his downfall on himself and now will be the first president since 1869 to boycott his successors inauguration. The president, who has a morbid dread of being a loser, will leave office as the biggest loser of them all. Robert A. Cohn is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the St. Louis Jewish Light. Supporters and opponents of a proposed natural gas pipeline into Northampton County remain deeply divided over the project, first proposed six and a half years ago. That divide, fueled at times on both sides by the coronavirus pandemic, was clear during a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection public hearing Wednesday night. It focused on the first of two phases for the PennEast Pipeline proposal. Those opposed, including private citizens and environmental group representatives, outnumbered supporters by a ratio of about 3-to-1, according to comments during the hearing conducted over the internet and telephone. Public comment is still being accepted into next Wednesday, and the DEP says verbal comments at the hearing and written statements will carry equal weight in their decision-making process. At issue is whether the DEP should grant Chapter 102 (erosion and sediment control) and Chapter 105 (water obstruction and encroachment) permits that PennEast needs for Phase 1. The consortium of natural gas companies behind the project are also looking for federal approval to break the project into two phases, due to regulatory and legal battles on the lines New Jersey portion. Phase 1 would run from the Marcellus Shale natural gas production region of Pennsylvanias Luzerne County into Bethlehem Township, Northampton County. Phase 2 would then continue through Bucks County and across the Delaware River into Hunterdon County to the lines terminus in Mercer County. The pandemic surfaced during the hearing on the part of opponents who argued the virtual hearing was insufficient to hear the views of everyone with a stake in the project. Supporters of the project spoke of the role natural gas can play in supporting a recovering economy, through Pennsylvania-produced natural gas that is inexpensive and can be used for heating, power and manufacturing. We all, whether we acknowledge it or not, rely upon and utilize natural gas and natural gas products each and every day, whether it is powering our electric grid, heating our homes, fueling our manufacturers, providing the myriad of consumer goods and electronics we use daily or serving as the feedstock of critical health care products and vaccines that will hopefully see us out of this pandemic; the ability to produce and transport domestic energy resources is in our nations interest, said Patrick Henderson, director of regulatory affairs for Marcellus Shale Coalition. Several supporters referenced the proposed pipelines ability to move 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily from hydraulic fracturing sites to local markets. PennEast has maintained its pipeline is for exclusively domestic use, not export. It is projected it will support 9,290 direct and indirect jobs, including 2,500 during construction, and inject $1 billion into the economy. Christina Coleman, from the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, called affordable energy the bedrock of our economy and especially critical to a recovering one. We view infrastructure buildout such as this project as core to recovering from this pandemic, said Kevin Sunday, director of government affairs for Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry. We know that the increased use of gas along with other abundant energy resources in the state has helped dramatically lower the operating costs of manufacturers, as well as the gas and electric bills of families all across the state who are saving more than $1,000 per year. On the other side, speakers like Jack Byerly from the Clean Air Council, brought up Sunocos Mariner East 2 pipeline. That project last August led to a spill of more than 8,000 gallons of drilling fluid into wetlands and a tributary of Marsh Creek Lake in Chester County, The Associated Press reported. The construction of PennEasts Phase 1 could severely damage some of Pennsylvanias most pristine streams and wetlands as well as some of the regions most beloved recreation destinations, Byerly said. Linda Christman, president of Save Carbon County, said the 68 miles of Phase 1 would cut through 96 water bodies and 130 wetlands, with horizontal directional drilling being used for just two of the crossings as opposed to the more damaging open-cut method. Surely some of these could have been avoided entirely, but the project owners always choose the cheapest route and the cheapest methods, Christman accused. Asked to respond to concerns raised Wednesday night, PennEast spokeswoman Patricia Kornick on Thursday stated: PennEast appreciates the time that all of the people and organizations took to offer comments on the Chapter 102 & 105 permit applications being reviewed for the PennEast Pipeline Project. We are very confident that the applications meet the strict guidelines and standards set by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and hopeful both will be approved after the review of all information submitted. Building on safety concerns, Sharon Furlong from Bucks Environmental Action stated that of some 8,000 pipeline accidents nationally from 1986 to 2013, four out of five were discovered by local residents instead of their owners. David Butterworth, business agent for Pipeliners Local 798, countered fears by stating PennEast will rely on highly skilled union labor for construction and employ a special coating in the line to prevent corrosion, in addition to using X-rays to check each weld prior to placing the line in service and conducting hydrostatic pressure testing well beyond the lines maximum allowable operating pressure. A gas control center will continuously monitor the flow to spot any problems, in addition to automated safety features, he said. Local 798 and every other leading union organization supports the project, he said. Dan Kunkle, a retired Liberty High School science teacher representing the board of directors of Lehigh Gap Nature Center outside Slatington, argued that Phase 1 is not the same project that PennEast has been pushing to build since August 2014. Breaking the pipeline construction into phases makes this a completely different project that you need a new application with completely different justification and demonstration of public need that are required for public approval, he said. Other concerns raised included nonnative, invasive plants taking over the pipelines right of way once its built and impacts on riparian buffers along waterways. In Northampton County alone, this projects pipeline right of way crosses the forested, riparian buffers of 12 water courses, commented state Sen. Katie Muth, D-Montgomery/Chester/Berks. Delaware Riverkeeper Maya K. van Rossum, speaking on behalf of the nonprofit Delaware Riverkeeper Network, took issue with of entire public-comment meeting being held online for such a major project. This is a project that will destroy peoples lives, inflict irreversible harm on all aspects of our environment, put the health and safety of people at serious risk, take property rights and depress property values and sacrifice future generations to an irreversible climate crisis, she said. Phase 1 of the 36-inch-diameter line would extend 68 miles from Dallas Township through Carbon and Monroe counties to interconnections on property the company already owns along Church Road south of Route 22 and west of Route 33. There, the pipeline would tie into the Columbia Gas Transmission line and under-construction Adelphia Gateway LLC line. PennEast plans to put the line into service by November, and hopes to resolve its challenges in New Jersey for a 2023 in-service date of the entire 120-mile route. PennEast offers detailed maps of its proposed route at penneastpipeline.com. Written comments on the DEP permits will be accepted at RA-EPPENNEAST@pa.gov until the close of business on Jan. 20. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. DUBLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "The Furniture Industry in Europe" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The first part of this study goes in-depth into the role of Europe in the world furniture context and provides historical series for furniture production, consumption and trade, the main factors affecting the competitiveness of European producers (labour cost, availability of raw materials and components, investments in technology and machinery, research and development, innovations and policy issues), imports penetration, export orientation, description of the main furniture manufacturing countries. European furniture market potentials and development insights: insights concerning the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the global and European furniture sector, future perspectives for the furniture sector in Europe, furniture market forecasts up to 2021. Furniture manufacturing system and trends in furniture production by sub-segment (upholstered furniture, kitchen furniture, office furniture, other furniture). Top furniture manufacturers in Europe: the competitive system analysis includes figures for the leading 100 European furniture companies (company name, country, website, activity, furniture specialization, total turnover and number of employees, share of furniture on total sales) ranked by their turnover. Around 1300 short profiles of furniture manufacturers are also provided, with information on their activity, product portfolio, turnover range, employees range, email address and website. COUNTRY ANALYSIS: 30 COUNTRY REPORTS. For each considered country (Austria, Belgium-Lux, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom): Outline of the market and macroeconomic trends Production, consumption, imports and exports of furniture for the time series 2014-2019 Trading partners Manufacturing system Consumption by region (when available) Short profiles of leading furniture manufacturers. Key Topics Covered: THE EUROPEAN FURNITURE SECTOR Future perspectives for the European furniture sector Furniture consumption forecasts to 2021 The role of Europe in the global furniture context in the global furniture context Europe and the rest of the world. Furniture production, consumption, exports, imports and the rest of the world. Furniture production, consumption, exports, imports The integration process within Europe International furniture trade Traditional and growing manufacturing countries within Europe and the integration of productive systems and the integration of productive systems Furniture production in Europe , 2014-2019. By area and by country. , 2014-2019. By area and by country. A brief description of the main furniture manufacturing countries Factors affecting competitiveness of European furniture producers Labour cost and skilled labour availability Availability of raw materials and components. The value chain Investments in technology and machinery Research and Design Policy issues The competitive system Top 100 major European furniture manufacturers: company name, country, website, activity, furniture specialisation, total turnover and number of employees, share of furniture on total sales The European furniture market development Furniture consumption in Europe , 2014-2019. By area and by country. , 2014-2019. By area and by country. Market sources: national production, European market integration and import flows Trade balance The growing degree of market openness Import penetration Export orientation Trends in furniture sub-segments and specialization Trends in furniture production by segment (upholstered furniture, kitchen furniture, office furniture, other furniture) COUNTRY ANALYSIS: Outline of the market, macroeconomic trends, production, consumption, imports and exports of furniture for the time series 2014-2019, trading partners, manufacturing productive system and consumption by region. Companies Mentioned Actona ADOVA Ahrend Aramis Invest B&B Belfield Furnishings Bo Concept BRW Black Red White Calligaris Colombini COM40 Comforty Cotta Collection DFS Furniture Ekornes Flokk SBS Fournier Friul Intagli Howden Joinery Hacker Kuchen Huls IKEA Meubles Demeyere Molteni Natuzzi Nobia Nobilia Nolte Nowy Styl Paged Poltrona Frau Roche Bobois SALM SBA Furniture Segmuller Senab Tvilum Vitra International Welle Holding For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xwshfw 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 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. Advertisement Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang, state media reported Friday, in a show of strength days before Joe Biden's inauguration as US president. State media said Kim Jong Un took centre stage after the five-yearly congress of the ruling Workers' Party, at which the North Korean leader decried the US as his country's 'foremost principal enemy'. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released photos of Kim wearing a black fur hat and leather trench coat, smiling widely and gesturing from a podium as thousands of troops and civilian spectators filled Kim Il Sung Square, named after his grandfather and North Korea's founder. The agency said spectators roared as troops rolled out the country's most advanced strategic weapons, including submarine-launched ballistic missiles it described as the 'world's mightiest.' Photos released by state media showed the parade ending with what appeared to be a new solid-fuel short-range ballistic missile - which are more mobile and more quickly deployed than liquid-fuelled versions. The images revealed that the SLBM was labelled Pukguksong-5, potentially marking an upgrade over the Pukguksong-4 that was unveiled at a larger military parade in October. 'The world's most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missile, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces,' the KCNA news agency said. Thursday's event did not showcase North Korea's largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are believed to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead to anywhere in the US. During the eight-day Workers' Party congress, Kim vowed to bolster his nuclear and missile programme in a bid to send the incoming Biden administration a message of strength in a bid to extract concessions. Nuclear-armed North Korea unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang, state media reported Friday, in a show of strength days before Joe Biden's inauguration as US president Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 to celebrate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency General view of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 to celebrate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 to celebrate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Residents welcome the participants of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Residents welcome the participants of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Military equipment is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party General view of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Military equipment is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Military equipments is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party The North Korean leader also revealed plans to salvage the economy amid US-led sanctions over his nuclear ambitions, pandemic-related border closures and natural disasters that wiped out crops. The economic setbacks have left Kim nothing to show for his ambitious diplomacy with President Donald Trump, which derailed over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and the North's denuclearisation steps, and pushed Kim to what is clearly the toughest moment of his nine-year rule. Kim's comments are likely intended to pressure Biden, who has previously called the North Korean leader a 'thug' and accused Trump of chasing spectacle rather than meaningful curbs on the North's nuclear capabilities. The North Korean leader has not ruled out talks, but he said the fate of bilateral relations would depend on whether Washington DC abandons its hostile policy toward Pyongyang. Kim and Trump had a tumultuous relationship, engaging in mutual insults and threats of war before an extraordinary bromance featuring headline-grabbing summits and declarations of love. But little substantive progress was made, with the process deadlocked after a February 2019 summit in Hanoi broke down over sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return. The US is expected to return to more orthodox diplomatic approaches under Biden, such as insisting on extensive progress at working-level talks before any leaders' summit can be considered. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is pictured on a screen during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency A general view of a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Fireworks explode above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Residents welcome the participants of a military parade to safe guard the Eighth Congress of the Workers' Party North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party General view of a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang A North Korea flag is flown during ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Troops march during a military parade to safe guard the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang Troops march during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Troops march during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Military equipment is seen during a military parade to commemorate the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party Pyongyang has poured vast resources into its weapons programmes, which have made rapid progress under Kim and which it says it needs to defend itself against a possible US invasion. 'The majestic elite units and invincible iron-clad ranks of the Republic which will proudly pass Kim Il Sung Square represent our absolute power,' North Korean defence minister Kim Jong Gwan said in a speech ahead of the Thursday evening parade, KCNA reported. The display also included infantry troops, artillery, tanks, and a flypast with aircraft forming the number '8' to commemorate the congress, it said. But the North is carefully calibrating its messaging and neither the KCNA description nor the images included any intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), suggesting that the parade was on a smaller scale than the North's previous such display in October. At that time, it showed off a huge new ICBM on an 11-axle vehicle that analysts said was the largest road-mobile, liquid-fuelled missile in the world. At the congress, Kim said the North had completed plans for a nuclear-powered submarine - something that would change the strategic balance if it was built and went into service. On Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un and a member of the ruling party's Central Committee, criticised South Korea's military for saying it had detected signs of a parade in Pyongyang on Sunday. North Korean officials have been meeting in Pyongyang for the first party congress since 2016. Queenslands peak doctors' body is on board with a proposal to shift hotel quarantine from the busy CBD to regional Queensland, but only if certain standards are met. Under the plan being considered by the state government, anyone required to enter quarantine would do so in regional areas, where there is less chance of a breach. Homeground Villages in Gladstone is usually used for workforce accommodation, but Queensland is considering using places like this for COVID quarantine. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk floated the idea this week after a breach in hotel quarantine saw a cleaner at Brisbane's Hotel Grand Chancellor pick up the virulent UK strain of COVID-19, sparking a hard three-day lockdown and a watchful wait to see if the virus had spread further. The Australian Medical Association Queensland said it was broadly supportive of the idea, but stressed that any change to the hotel quarantine system needed to be fully assessed. SANTA FE, N.M., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, New Mexico families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. New Mexicans are hosting 196 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. "National School Choice Week encourages local leaders, families, and educators to talk about how to improve access to learning options for all New Mexico families," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Pandemic or no pandemic, every family deserves to be able to choose an education that reflects their unique strengths, values, and needs." In New Mexico, there are a variety of educational options that are available including: traditional public schools with open enrollment on a case-by-case basis, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. New Mexico families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to New Mexico school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, www.visitschoolchoiceweek.com/new-mexico. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com A family in Kitui will this weekend hold a joint funeral ceremony for twin brothers who died on the same day. The identical twins Onensmus Susa Mati and Gabriel Mutie Mati, aged 63 years, died five hours apart after spending the day together. Onesmus daughter Kalau Susa said her father had been admitted to Kitui Referral Hospital with kidney complications and was set to undergo dialysis. The following day, Gabriel visited Onesmus, with the brothers spending the day together. Ms Kalau said the duo shared a meal together and had lengthy discussions. Our uncle left for home at around 5 pm and promised to call my father in the evening. They never spoke because my fathers condition grew worse that evening, Kalau Susa told Nation. Gabriels wife Florence Mutie said when her husband arrived home from the visit, he suddenly fell ill and developed breathing problems. At around 3 am Gabriel complained of chest pains; he died in the morning as the family was preparing to take him to a hospital. As this was happening, Onesmuss health deteriorated and he was out on life support as doctors prepared to transfer him to Nairobi Womens Hospital. At the time, Onesmus had not been informed about his brothers death. Despite being critically ill, my father kept mentioning his brothers name and telling him he is on the way. It is like he knew his twin brother was already dead, Kalau said. Onesmus left Kitui town for Nairobi in an ambulance at 10 am accompanied by nurses and two of his daughter. Unfortunately, he died 20km into the journey, roughly five hours after his twin brother had passed. In honour of their strong bond, the family will host a joint funeral service on Saturday, January 16. Series of activities have been lined up to celebrate and commemorate former President Jerry John Rawlings ahead of his interment on Wednesday, January 27, this year. The activities, which will start from Friday, January 22, in the Anlo State, are made up of celebratory and traditional events. A caretaker Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, said traditional activities would end on Saturday, January 23 to pave way for the national activities to commence on Sunday, January 24. Addressing the press in the Accra last Wednesday in the company of family representatives,he said the remains of former President Rawlings would be entombed at the Military Cemetery at the Burma Camp in Accra. He said the choice for the military cemetery was because it was now the designated place for the interment of former Heads of State of the country. The national event, he said, would start with a Catholic Requiem Mass at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Accra, followed by a vigil at the Air Force Base at 6p.m. On Monday, January 25, he said, the remains of the late President Rawlings would be laid in state at the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC). Filing past protocol According to Mr Oppong Nkrumah, the filing past of the remains of Mr Rawlings would then kick off, starting from the heads of security agencies, leaders of political parties and the general public. On Tuesday, January 26, he said the filing past would resume at 9 a.m. led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, former heads of state, as well as heads of constitutional bodies. At 10 a.m., he said parliamentarians, led by the Speaker, Mr Alban Bagbin and former Speakers would also file past. At noon, Mr Oppong Nkrumah said, the Chief Justice, Justices of the Supreme Court and former Chief Justices would also file past the body, while Members of the Council of State, as well as former ministers of state would also file past at 1 p.m. Members of the Diplomatic Corps will file past at 2 p.m. The traditional and customary rites and celebrations, he said, would be held at the foyer of the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC), while the body was still in state. Burial On Wednesday, January 27, the caretaker minister said, the burial service for former President Rawlings would be held at the Black Star Square in Accra with full military honours and ,therefore, would be led by the Ghana Armed Forces. The body would later be buried at the Military Cemetery at Burma Camp in the La Dadekotopon Municipality in the Greater Accra Region. Background Former President Rawlings died at the age of 73 at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) in Accra on Thursday,November 12, 2020. committees should reflect the nature and character of the 8th Parliament. The practice of making one side of the House chair all select committees is no longer tenable in current dispensation. Given the current numbers, there must be strict sharing of the leadership of the select committees by the two sides of the House. Out of the 16 select committees, the NDC should chair eight, while the NPP chairs eight, the NDC caucus Leader said. Majority in Parliament Mr iddrisu also noted that there was nothing like Majority and Minority in the current parliament, as both parties boast 137 seats each. He said although the independent MP had officially written to the House that he would align with the NPP, that did not make the NPP the majority, since the independent MP had only indicated that he would align and collaborate with the NPP, not join it. Article 97, Clause (1)(h) of the 1992 Constitution provides: A member of parliament shall vacate his seat in Parliament if he was elected a Member of Parliament as an independent candidate and joins a political party. So the question is, by that declaration, has the Member for Fomena joined the NPP? Mr Iddrisu asked. NPP caucus The Leader of the NPP caucus, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, at a counter presser to respond to the NDC caucus, said the Speaker would, barring any last- minute change of mind by Mr Andrews Asiamah Amoako, tomorrow declare the NPP caucus the majority in the House. He said Mr Amoako had officially written to the leadership of the House indicating that he intended to align and do business with the NPP caucus. For Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, that would mean that the NPP would control the House with that additional one independent seat. He said the matter of which side constituted a Majority should not be the subject of litigation any longer, now that the independent MP had officially written to the House about his intentions. He has made a declaration and I am only hoping that between today and tomorrow, he doesnt change his mind and make a U-turn. If he doesnt and stands by his own declaration and the Speaker makes that open affirmation and declaration in plenary, then the decision would have been made and it will determine where the pendulum will swing. As far as I am concerned, that should settle the matter, and if it does and settles where the majority will sit, to me that will be the end of the matter. The NDC is saying that it will insist that the declaration of the independent MP that he will do business with the NPP caucus does not make the NPP the majority. By what stretch of imagination is the NDC saying this? Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu asked. Majority not dependent on a party The Leader of the NPP caucus also noted that assuming a Majority caucus was not dependent on just one party. In the recent election, assuming the NPP had garnered 120 seats and NDC 130 seats; the NDC would control majority of seats in parliament but the two together would make just 250 seats. But to the extent that neither did cross the magical number of 137, it could not be described as the majority caucus. The 25 remaining that would have been made up of independent MPs and members of other minority parties, if they elected to do business with the NDC, would have formed the Majority caucus, he explained. Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said the decision of Mr Amoako to do business with the NPP, therefore, made the NPP caucus the Majority caucus. We will overcome The Suame Legislator was hopeful that the House would soon overcome the obstacle of which party constituted the Majority caucus. That is the initial step of consultations and consensus building, but the fact that adding one to the 137 of the NPP will put them in the Majority and thereby qualify it to be called the Majority party comes without any equivocation, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said. 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 India , one of the worlds largest manufacturers of inoculations, plans to offer 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccine to its neighbors as it draws up a policy to supply vials to countries across the globe, people with knowledge of the matter said. An Indian state-run company will buy vaccines from the Serum Institute of India Ltd. and Bharat Biotech International Ltd. for supplying to Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Seychelles and Mauritius, the people said, asking not to be identified as the plan is still under discussion. Some of supplies may be free and treated as aid, they added. The first batch of the vials will be shipped over the next two weeks, the people said. The government will then offer the vaccines to countries in Latin America, Africa and the former Soviet republics. A spokesperson for Bharat Biotech couldnt immediately comment while a spokesman at Serum declined to comment. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to tap Indias leadership in vaccine manufacturing by helping countries battling the pandemic and raise the South Asian nations profile to rival China, which is also supplying its home-grown inoculations around the world. Brazil, with more than 8 million cases, has sought urgent supplies and so has South Africa. It is too early to give a specific response on the supplies to other countries as we are still assessing production schedules and delivery," Indias foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said at a weekly briefing on Thursday. Overseas Supplies HLL Lifecare Ltd, a state-run healthcare manufacturing company, which is procuring the vaccine vials from Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech for the governments vaccination program starting from Jan. 16, may be roped in for overseas supplies. The company supplied Hydroxychloroquine tablets to over 120 nations last year. Brazil is sending an aircraft to India after Modi agreed to expedite vaccine shipments, according to the nations Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello. Serum will supply 2 million vaccines to the South American nation. Serums Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla in an interview this month said he expected overseas supplies to only start around March, adding that the government will enable overseas sales after first meeting Indias initial requirements. The Serum Institute is manufacturing a coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc while Bharat Biotechs is an indigenous one. 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. Barcelona14-F is already 30-M. The Government and the Catalan parties have agreed on Friday to postpone the elections in the Parliament that had to be held on Sunday 14th February and to place them on Sunday 30th May. The argument they have given is that the current evolution of the pandemic is not favorable and the most advisable thing to do is to postpone the appointment with the polls. The postponement generates a wide consensus with one exception: the PSC is opposed to it. The Socialists see this manoeuvre as an attempt to push back the electoral horizon in Catalonia with the sole aim of lessening the momentum they had generated by changing their candidate, Miquel Iceta, for the minister Salvador Illa at the last minute. The PSC is upset, but has not clarified whether they will challenge the change of date in court. The Supreme Court's judgment on the farmers' agitation, is an interim order that, like Wordsworth's Lucy, has none to praise, and very few to love it. The government side thinks that judges have overstepped the traditional doctrine of separation of powers, by interdicting legislation without a final ruling on constitutionality. The agitating farmers accept the stay on implementation of the farm acts, but have rejected the grievance committee offered, as they suspect it to be partisan in composition. To add to the negation, even a member of the committee, has now recused from its membership. The court's order on the farm agitation, is seen as bargaining to shelve implementation of acts of parliament, at the cost of requiring the farmers to not persist in agitation, but to air their grievances, before a committee, committed to supporting the farm reform bills. The government has thus been given a face-saving exit-route, without officially abrogating parliamentary legislation in the face of determined street protests. Farmers however apprehend that halting their juggernaut of protests, might render it unable to move again, if the committee's recommendations leave them unsatisfied as well. The process of selection of members of the grievance committee, has been opaque and devoid of participation by the main unions which have propelled the agitation. It is doubtful that the court was fully apprised of the publicly expressed opinions of the committee members, in favour of the The only member who had expressed some apprehensions over the bills, has now quit the committee, making it look even more lop-sided. The order illustrates Professor Marc Gallanter's axiom, that the Indian judiciary's idea of justice is that when two people fight in court over a hundred rupee currency note, the judge tears it up into two and gives each person a half. When both sides are equally dissatisfied, impartial justice is achieved. The court appears to have forgotten, its own caution in the Shaheen Bagh case, where the judgment warned No doubt, it is the responsibility of the respondent authorities to take suitable action, but then such suitable action should produce results. In what manner the administration should act is their responsibility and they should not hide behind the court orders or seek support therefrom for carrying out their administrative functions. The courts adjudicate the legality of the actions and are not meant to give shoulder to the administration to fire their guns from." To be fair to the court, this is not the first time that it has exercised its "problem solving jurisdiction", in the interests of defusing an explosive situation. In the early 1990s, the court's stay of implementation of the Mandal Commission report, put a halt to a spate of self-immolations that marked student protests. Three years later, the court upheld the implementation of the report with some riders, but the country remained at peace. Another recent example is the judgment on the Ayodhya temple and mosque site, which however imperfectly has brought a certain quietus. There often is in the judicial system a certain desire to maintain public order, even at the cost of sacrificing a tenet or two, of the law. However this jurisdiction is best exercised, only at the end of a long non-legal confrontation that has exhausted both parties. Matrimonial lawyers have a saying that divorces are made in heaven. They recognise that unless either party has an urgent need to move elsewhere, or unless both parties are exhausted, a disengagement is not possible. It does appear currently that neither the farmers, not the government has yet reached the point of exhaustion. The farmers have dug in for a long siege, and have announced that they have come in with six months of provisions in hand. The government is sitting on a huge parliamentary majority and is loath to be seen as bowing to street protests. At such a time, even an impartial and correct solution, hastily offered will be looked at suspiciously. For many, the argument now is that the is neither infallible, not final. Its judgment calls are sometimes based not on principle but on expedience. The court is again likely to revisit the matter, on an application to prevent the agitators from showcasing a tractor parade on republic day, as an alternative to the official parade. It is therefore wrong to presume that the last word has been spoken. The court may well use the hearing to clarify that its orders are only interim in nature and capable of revision. The court may very well be willing, to reconstitute the grievance committee if so petitioned by the farmers. The court might even lift its stay on the implementation of the act, if the agitating farmers intransigence, provokes it to so do. Nothing is as yet cast in stone and both sides may do well, to dial down on the rhetoric. The agitation and governmental response are being fought in several fields and the legal arena, is but one theatre of the war. One cannot presume that the battle is over. Navjot Singh Sidhu once famously said, "Wickets are like wives, you never know which way they will turn." The principle may apply to interim orders as well, particularly when they are not met with universal acclaim. The author practises in the Supreme Court Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal. They do not reflect the view/s of Business Standard. 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. Poland is drawing up plans to stop the likes of Facebook and Twitter from choosing which content to censor in the wake of Donald Trump's ban from both websites. The shutdown of Trump's accounts after he incited a mob to invade the US Capitol has caused consternation even among his critics in Europe, with numerous EU politicians warning that it gives excessive power to US tech giants. In Poland, the draft legislation would mean that social media sites could only delete content or shut down accounts if they are found to have violated Polish law. The new law would also create a five-member 'freedom of speech council' tasked with reviewing complaints by social media users who say their accounts were unfairly blocked or censored. Donald Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook last week but even his critics in Europe voiced concern about the excessive power of US social media firms Draft legislation in Poland would stop sites like Twitter from blocking accounts unless they are found to have violated Polish law The new legal framework would require 'global players' to respect Polish law, justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro told reporters in Warsaw today. He added that 'today social media decide for themselves what content will be censored.' 'The law will provide tools guaranteeing the basic freedoms and liberties of Polish citizens on the internet,' he said. The move comes days after Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki said he wants EU rules to defend free speech online and warned against "political correctness" by tech giants. Failure to comply with the new rules would carry fines for social media platforms ranging up to 50million zloty (9.8million). Under the new law, Poland's parliament would appoint the members of the 'free speech' council for six-year terms and politicians would not be eligible. The council would consider appeals from users who were blocked or had content removed, who would also be able to complain directly to Facebook or Twitter. The social media sites would be required to respond within 24 hours, and restore access to the content if the complaint is upheld. Decisions by the council will be subject to appeal in a Polish court. The closure of Trump's social media accounts came after he incited a mob to invade the US Capitol to stop his election defeat being certified by Congress Trump's Twitter account was permanently suspended last Friday after he caused the riot at the Capitol and continued to claim falsely that the election was stolen. His Facebook account has been suspended 'indefinitely' and at least until the inauguration of Joe Biden next week, Mark Zuckerberg announced last week. US internet giants have often been accused of holding too much power over social media, and many EU governments have battled them over regulation. Germany's Angela Merkel was among those to voice concern about the shutdown of Trump's Twitter account, with her spokesman saying she viewed it as 'problematic'. 'The fundamental right to freedom of opinion is a fundamental right of elementary importance,' her spokesman said. 'This fundamental right can be interfered with, but through the law and within the framework defined by the legislature, not according to the decision of the management of social media platforms.' France's finance minister Bruno Le Maire also voiced doubts about Trump's ban, telling French radio that it should not be for the 'digital oligarchy' to regulate itself. And Josep Borrell, the EU's top diplomat, said that 'we need to be able to better regulate the contents of social networks'. 'It is not possible for this regulation to be carried out mainly according to rules and procedures set by private actors,' he said. The U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has joined hands with the U.N. Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) to launch the Women Enterprise Recovery Fund supporting female entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and Vietnam. / Courtesy of ESCAP By Yi Whan-woo The U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has teamed up with the U.N. Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) to launch a fund supporting female entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and Vietnam. Serving as the U.N.'s regional hub for inclusive and sustainable development, ESCAP said in a press release last week that the Women Enterprise Recovery Fund aims to "promote upscaling digital solutions for enhancing growth and resilience of the women-led enterprises." The fund will be open to all applicants anywhere in the world, but on condition that the project's implementation and solution target female entrepreneurs in one or more of the six countries. Successful applicants will receive up to $50,000, along with technical assistance provided through the networks of ESCAP, UNCDF and three supporters of the fund. The three supporters are the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO), the Government of Canada and global payments technology company Visa. "Through this fund, we will support innovative business solutions that address the constraints faced by women enterprises in South and Southeast Asia," UNCDF Deputy Executive Secretary Xavier Michon said. Michon especially expressed hope that the fund will be helpful in the COVID-19 era, noting the target companies "have suffered disproportionately" from the pandemic. ESCAP Deputy Executive Secretary Kaveh Zahedi voiced similar hopes, saying the fund "will bring to market innovative financial and business solutions for women entrepreneurs who have been impacted by the pandemic." FMO Capacity Development Manager Andrew Shaw said the Dutch development bank is "exceptionally pleased to partner with UNCDF and ESCAP." "We believe collaboration with private-sector innovators in the design and implementation of digital solutions is fundamental to help women enterprises that have been economically impacted by COVID-19," Shaw said. He also hoped the fund will energize micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Asia by "showcasing viable digital solutions and sustainable business models to respond to the needs of formal and informal women-led enterprises." ESCAP and Washington, D.C.-headquartered Small Enterprise Assistance Funds (SEAF) set up a similar fund to support female entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. The Women's Economic Empowerment Fund under SEAF is also supported by the Government of Canada and PBU, a Danish pension fund for early childhood teachers and youth educators. The fund focuses on developing women-centered strategies through investments, particularly in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. It also focuses on business sectors in which women comprise a large portion of the labor force, cater to the needs of women and girls, and demonstrate a strong commitment to gender equality and wider diversity. "We are proud to support the development of gender lens investing in Asia, and enable women-owned and -run businesses to innovate, compete and grow," Zahedi said. Gender lens investing refers to investments seeking financial returns, while also considering the benefits to women. "We have learned that meeting the needs of women entrepreneurs requires us to innovate and go beyond the usual lending modalities toward promoting mentorship, business development support services and access to growth capital and that is exactly what our partnership with SEAF offers." SEAF Senior Managing Director Jennifer Buckley called the SEAF a "milestone" and is heartened by such support. ESCAP works on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is reinforced by promoting regional cooperation and integration to advance responses to common vulnerabilities, connectivity, financial cooperation and market integration. Germany on Friday passed two million coronavirus cases as a World Health Organization emergency committee readied to issue advice on stemming the spread of new, more contagious strains of the disease. The surge in Europe's biggest economy comes as the global death toll from the pandemic approaches two million and many countries double down on virus restrictions, with vaccination drives still in their infancy. Portugal entered a fresh lockdown Friday while Britain began requiring negative tests for entry, and fresh curbs on populations were announced from Brazil to Lebanon. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday pushed for a "significant" tightening of curbs to slow the infection rate as the European Union's most populous country added more than 22,000 new cases. The chancellor said she wanted to bring forward crisis talks with regional leaders to the coming week, participants at a meeting of her centre-right CDU party told AFP. They quoted her as saying the virus could only be stopped with "significant additional measures" and that people urgently needed to reduce social contact. At the Meissen crematorium in the state of Saxony, coffins were stacked up to three high, or even stored in hallways, awaiting cremation. The eastern region has been one of Germany's worst-hit areas in recent weeks. Manager Joerg Schaldach, 57, said anyone still denying the severity of the pandemic should come and take a look at the bodies piling up. "This is heavy work, so why don't the Covid-19 deniers come and do it," he said. "We have a disastrous situation here." - 'Worrying' -Germany has fared better than many of its European neighbours in the pandemic, with France, Italy, Spain and Britain all recording more infections despite smaller populations. Britain on Thursday said it would ban all arrivals from South American countries from Friday, over fears of importing a new coronavirus strain. "I've taken the urgent decision... following evidence of a new variant in Brazil," Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Twitter. The new strain, known as E484K, has raised alarm among researchers over its possible impact on immunity. Partly over fears of new variants, France said it would impose a daily nationwide curfew at 6 pm starting Saturday and remaining in force for at least two weeks. Most of France had already been under an 8 pm curfew, with some areas, especially in the hard-hit east, already under the stricter 6 pm limit. Brazil's northern Amazonas state also announced a curfew from 7 pm to 6 am as the health system is pushed to breaking point in the state capital Manaus. Global health experts were expected on Friday to issue recommendations to stem the spread of this variant and other new strains, which the WHO called "worrying". The WHO's emergency committee normally gathers every three months but its meeting was brought forward by two weeks. "When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease we now call Covid-19 had been reported to the WHO," director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks to the emergency meeting Thursday. - Stimulus plan -Scientists say large-scale vaccination is the only way out of the crisis but 95 percent of the doses so far administered have been limited to just 10 countries, the WHO's European branch said. Progress on administering vaccines has often been slow. India's mammoth immunisation programme will only begin on Saturday. In the United States around 10 million people have received a first shot. American policymakers were on Thursday focused on addressing the economic damage from the pandemic, with President-elect Joe Biden unveiling a proposal for a $1.9 trillion relief package aimed at revitalising the world's largest economy. Biden aims to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, help struggling state and local governments, safely reopen schools, boost the vaccination campaign and raise the size of stimulus cheques Congress approved last month. "In this moment of crisis... we cannot afford inaction," Biden said. 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. The new generation of wireless technology known as 5G is exciting industry leaders who believe the rapid advancements toward faster internet speeds will spur innovation in every sector of the U.S economy. On Monday night, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg spoke for nearly an hour about 5G during his keynote address at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, which is being held virtually this year. 5G was also featured in more than a dozen breakout sessions throughout the week as industry leaders discussed its impact on businesses, government, and consumers. But researchers caution that the promises of life-changing applications will take years and that lawmakers in Washington might not be ready to lead the way. "The big bet right now is to try to get all the infrastructure in place so that the next revolutionary app and service ecosystem can spring forward in the United States before it does somewhere else," said Stan Adams, deputy general counsel and open internet counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Attendees and workers chat beneath a 5G logo at the Quectel booth at CES 2020 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 8, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. / Credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images Installing new cell towers or upgrading existing ones with hundreds of thousands of pizza-box-size antennas on every block, and making available more radio frequencies for those towers to connect to, are critical for the technology's growth, experts say. 5G frequencies are available in the low-band, mid-band, and high-band spectrums. In the past few years, the Federal Communications Commission has opened up 5 gigahertz of spectrum for 5G use. There's an ongoing auction to open up an additional 280 megahertz of space in the mid-band spectrum, which has so far raised a record $80 billion, a senior FCC official told CBS News. The official said opening up new spectrum space has been challenging because much of the space is already in use. Industry leaders agree that the full benefits of 5G will be unlocked with more high-band, millimeter wavelength frequencies becoming available. The high-band category provides the most bandwidth and fastest speeds, but the signal doesn't travel far and can't penetrate walls. Story continues That means having "a tower on every corner of every block and maybe on every floor of every building," according to Adams. As a result, companies deploying the infrastructure often get locked into regulatory battles with cities and towns. "The issue from the industry side is the new towers they're rolling out for 5G are not the 300 foot tall metal structures," Adams said, adding, "they're not the same kind of thing that most of the permitting and review rules had in mind when they were developed." Local governments want to "preserve their ability to review and collect fees on new deployments in their towns," while the companies "want to roll out 5G in a timely fashion and cost effective way," Adams explained. The FCC said it has adopted reforms to help speed up the deployment of 5G. In 2018, the commission prevented localities from charging more than it costs them to process and manage applications. More recently, the FCC said state or local officials must approve any request for modification of existing towers that doesn't substantially change the dimensions of existing structures within 60 days. Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and Director of the Center for Technology Innovation, told CBS News that a "centralized" committee to help with policy while engaging all the stakeholders will reduce regulatory battles and improve rollout efficiency. Head of Samsung Next Global, Senior Vice President Emily Becher speaks during a Samsung press event for CES 2020 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 6, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. / Credit: David Becker / Getty Images "We need to sit back and figure out how to take all the Post-It notes and put them all into a complete plan so we can move forward cohesively around it," Turner Lee said. She added that "it is imperative" for the incoming Biden administration to think about "a 5G taskforce that would bring all these pieces together." But some, like technology consultant and CEO of the Palmer Group Shelly Palmer, say lawmakers in Washington aren't tech savvy enough to usher in a new era of advancement. "We've got lawmakers and legislation that are years behind the technology," Palmer said. "While it's always been that way, we've never had technology accelerating at a pace like this." The coronavirus pandemic has increased the need for connectivity as Americans work and study from home. Beyond a fast internet connection, experts say 5G will support advances in telemedicine, autonomous vehicles, virtual reality, and much more. Palmer said "the really cool stuff" like mixed reality, which is the combination of physical and digital objects co-existing and interacting in real time and other applications that will rely on the fast speed and low latency of 5G, is going to take a few years. In 2010, when 4G wireless technology hit the market, it took two to three years before life-changing applications like ride-sharing and video conferencing became commonplace . Adams said 5G will also bring about the ability to deploy "literally millions of tiny little sensors" on all kinds of infrastructure and goods that will lead to "a lot more data collection across networks." Additionally, cell towers on every block means more precise geolocation of individual cell phones. "As you magnify and amplify your data collection mechanisms, privacy suffers. We've seen that over and over again," Adams said. Once the home of a bustling business scene, its main street is still wide enough for traffic and existing structures and vacant lots can be easily readied for demolition or renovation. Love knows each building along Aetna Street, every storefront and most back stories behind those structures. Many of them are empty shells of what they used to be, similar to Aetna Manor, founded in 1881 as a company town for the Aetna Powder Company, a munitions manufacturer. San Francisco, Jan 15 : After Huawei and ZTE, the US government has now taken on the Chinese conglomerate Xiaomi, blacklisting it as a "Communist Chinese military company". In a fresh list, the US Department of Defense has targeted Xiaomi, which means that the company is also vulnerable to the outgoing President Donald Trump's executive order that bans the US firms from investing in such companies. The move may force US companies and other investors to divest in Xiaomi this year. "The Department is determined to highlight and counter the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernisation goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programmes that appear to be civilian entities," the Department said in a statement late Thursday. The Department released its initial list of companies to Congress in June 2020 and has now included Xiaomi. Xiaomi is yet to react to the US move. Most of the other companies on the list are more industrially oriented, specialising in aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, chemicals, telecommunications, construction, and other forms of infrastructure. In July 2020, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated Chinese telecom companies, Huawei and ZTE, as national security risks to America's communications networks. "Both companies have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China's military apparatus, and both companies are broadly subject to Chinese law obligating them to cooperate with the country's intelligence services. "The Bureau also took into account the findings and actions of Congress, the Executive Branch, the intelligence community, our allies, and communications service providers in other countries," the FCC said. Bay of Plenty If you love working out doors and in a small team then we have the role for you. We are needing someone who has either maintenance... View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz Rupert Murdoch's son James has condemned American media outlets for unleashing "profound damage" on the United States and being complicit in the events that led to the pro-Trump insurgency in Washington earlier this month. The junior Murdoch, who left his father's News Corporation last year citing disagreements over editorial content, said the storming of the Capitol was "proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very, very much so". In more united times: Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch in California in 2014. Credit:Invision "Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years," he told London's Financial Times newspaper. "I hope that those people who didn't think it was that dangerous now understand, and that they stop." He did not directly mention News Corporation or Fox News, the company's vociferous cable news channel now run by brother Lachlan Murdoch as chief executive and executive chairman. 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. Actors Zoe Ventoura and Daniel MacPherson announced their split last month after five years of marriage. But this week, the now-separated couple were spotted together for the first time since the shock news. The pair took their one-year-old son, Austin Xavier, for a stroll in Sydney on Wednesday. Friendly exes! Zoe Ventoura and Daniel MacPherson were spotted out together this week for the first time since announcing their shock split. The former couple stepped out for a stroll with their son Austin The former Home and Away actress, 40, kept it casual in a grey muscle tank top with a pair of denim shorts, sunglasses and a cross body bag. She carried her son's apple in one hand and his adorable dinosaur backpack. The Packed To The Rafters star was joined by her ex Daniel MacPherson, 40, and the two appeared to be enjoying a light conversation together during the walk. The actor dressed for the warm weather in a black shirt and palm tree printed shorts. Keeping it casual: The former Home and Away actress, 40, kept it casual in a grey muscle tank top with a pair of denim shorts, sunglasses and a cross body bag On the go: She carried her son's apple in one hand and his adorable dinosaur backpack Chatting away: The pair appeared to be enjoying a light conversation together during the walk Laid back look: He dressed for the warm weather in a black shirt and palm tree printed shorts. The former City Homicide star wore his cap backwards and teamed the look with sunglasses and flip-flops Dad's boy: He carried little Austin who looked adorable in his light blue T-shirt with grey trousers and green baby Vans sneakers The former City Homicide star, who is currently sporting a rugged beard, wore his cap backwards and teamed the look with sunglasses and flip-flops. He carried little Austin, who was dressed in a light blue T-shirt with grey trousers and green baby Vans sneakers. Joining the family was Zoe's mother, choreographer Ruth Osborne. Out together: Joining the family was Zoe's mother, choreographer Ruth Osborne In front of the pack: The brunette beauty lead the group as they made their way out of the sun and into a shaded area Zoe led the group as they made their way out of the sun and into a shaded area. Daniel handed over Austin to Zoe and she was seen doting on her baby as he likely fetched his car. The former couple's outing together comes after they announced their shock split after just five years of marriage in December. Follow the leader: Ruth, Daniel and Austin followed behind Zoe Mama's boy: Daniel handed Austin over to Zoe and she was seen doting on her baby as he likely fetched his car They shared almost identically worded posts to Instagram, revealing they had mutually decided to separate. Alongside a photo of the pair with their backs turned to the camera at sunset, Daniel wrote: 'With the greatest respect for each other, Zoe and I have separated.' 'Together, we will continue wholeheartedly to raise our beautiful boy Austin. He is, and will forever be, our greatest priority. Over: The former couple's outing together comes after they announced their shock split after just five years of marriage in December Split: The couple shared almost identically worded posts to Instagram, revealing they had mutually decided to separate. The wrote that they will continue raising their son Austin together, saying: 'He is, and will forever be, our greatest priority' 'We ask for your respect and will be making no further comment.' Zoe posted the same photo and caption to Instagram, changing only the first line to read, 'With the greatest respect for each other, Dan and I have separated.' The pair first met on the set of the Channel Seven series Wild Boys back in 2011 and became engaged in 2014. They tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in Noosa, Queensland, in 2015 in front of close friends and family. Zoe and Daniel welcomed Austin Xavier in December 2019. How the pro-Khalistan Sikhs For Justice is influencing the farmers protest India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: In the backdrop of the Attorney General of India, K K Venugopal telling the Supreme Court that the Khalistanis have infiltrated the farmer protests, the Sikhs For Justice (SJF) has announced a reward for anyone hoisting the Khalistanis flag on Red Fort on Republic Day. Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, chief of the pro-Khalistan, SJF said, 26 January is coming and on the Red Fort there is an Indian Flag. Remove the Tricolour on January 26 and replace it with a Khalistan flag. The SJF will reward such a person with USD 2.5 lakh, he said in a video message. The rise of the Khalistanis gives room for a separatist mindset like we saw in Kashmir Pannu also tried to liken the farmer protests to the Sikh riots. While instigating the Sikhs to pick up weapons and fight, the SJF chief also promised to give foreign citizenship to the protesters. The law is with you and if the Indian government points a finger at you then you and your families will be brought to foreign countries under the laws of the United Nations, Pannu the head of the terrorist organisation also said. The SJF has been instigating the Sikhs for long to back the Khalistan movement. In October the National Investigation Agency conducted searches in six locations in Punjab after a Khalistan flag was hoisted by the SJF cadres on the eve of Independence Day. They cut the rope of the rope of Indian Flag hoisted near the main gate. They also dragged the Indian National Flag with the rope, the NIA said. In another case, the NIA said that Investigation in the case has revealed that Sikhs for Justice, a secessionist outfit floated in the garb of 'Human Rights advocacy group' with its offices in various foreign countries like the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia is a frontal organisation of Khalistan terrorist outfits operating from foreign soils including Pakistan. SFJ has been attempting to undermine the security of the Indian State by instigating Sikh personnel in the Indian army to rise up in mutiny against India. SFJ is also trying to radicalise youth of Kashmir and openly extending support for secession of Kashmir from India. Pro Khalistan SJF instigating Sikhs in Army, youth to rise in mutiny against India: NIA Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Based on the dossiers provided by NIA and other agencies, the chief patrons of SFJ namely Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Paramjit Singh have already been designated as 'Terrorist' under UA(P)Act. The minister, who attended the meeting with the CEOs of 13 major Dutch companies, said the EVFTA is expected to open up big opportunities for businesses of the two countries and now is a suitable time for the two sides to deepen their cooperation. She noted that the two countries have worked closely together in various fields, particularly industry, clean energy, renewable energy, circular economy and emissions reduction towards sustainable development. Minister Tran Tuan Anh welcomed the Dutch government and businesses interest in collaboration with Vietnam in trade, industry and energy. He took the occasion to explain issues of interests of each participating Dutch business and clarify contents related to the enforcement of the EVFTA including taxation, intellectual property, trade in services and Government procurement. He also made clear what Vietnam can do to help Dutch investors implement a strategy to turn Vietnam into a production and consumption hub in the ASEAN. The minister emphasised that Vietnam has been, and is still a reliable destination for Dutch investors, urging the business communities of the two countries to work harder to seek new business and investment opportunities and optimise the benefits brought about by the EVFTA. Speaking on behalf of the participating Dutch businesses, Ingrid Thijssen, chair of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers, said Vietnam is a strategic market in Asia for Dutch businesses, which are willing to invest more in the country. Concluding the meeting, the two ministers affirmed that they will create favourable conditions for the two countries businesses to make full use of opportunities brought about by the EVFTA. Statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Trade show the Netherlands is the biggest export market in the EU for Vietnamese goods, and also the biggest EU investor in Vietnam. Bilateral trade has been growing at an average 11.78% a year in the past five years. In 2020, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnams exports to the Netherlands in the January-November period still rose 0.22% year-on-year to US$6.26 billion. Its imports from the European country in the period decreased by 4.13% to US$582.4 million. As of the end of November 2020, total Dutch investment in Vietnam reached US$10.4 billion in 375 projects. An 1800s building in a Massachusetts town went up in flames Thursday evening, marking the third significant blaze firefighters in the community responded to this week, authorities said. The three-alarm blaze in Middleborough started shortly before 6 p.m., spread across two buildings on Wareham Street and was eventually extinguished nearly three hours after it began, according to a statement from the towns fire department. This was the third significant fire the Middleborough Fire Department has responded to in two days, Middleborough Fire Chief Lance Benjamino said in the statement. Thankfully, no injuries have resulted, and weve been able to call on several departments in the area to support our firefighting efforts. Firefighters received several 911 calls around 5:55 p.m. about the blaze at the three-story, multi-family home at 9 Wareham St., according to the statement. The fire eventually spread to the two-and-a-half-story, mixed-use building next door at 7 Wareham St., the department noted in its statement. Roughly four minutes after firefighters arrive, the second alarm for the blaze was struck, and after another six minutes, the third alarm was sounded, authorities said. Due to the age of the building, which was built in the 1800s, the aggressive blaze quickly spread to all three floors of 9 Wareham St. and into the second and third floors of 7 Wareham St., jumping across the 10- to 15-foot gap between the two buildings via the vinyl siding, according to officials. After attacking the flames at both buildings for close to three hours, firefighters were able to first extinguish the blaze at 7 Wareham St. They completely knocked down the fire at 9 Wareham St. around 8:50 p.m., the department said. Everyone inside the house at 9 Wareham St. was able to safely exit the home before first responders arrived. Two families were displaced. No injuries were reported, according to authorities. Both buildings were significantly damaged, and 9 Wareham St. was left uninhabitable, officials said. Firefighters from Carver, Bridgewater, Wareham, East Bridgewater, Plympton, and Halifax all helped put out the blaze, according the Middleborough Fire Department. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. 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. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 01:33:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- A passenger plane chartered by the Mongolian government to repatriate its nationals from South Korea amid the COVID-19 pandemic arrived on Friday, according to Mongolia's State Emergency Commission (SEC). The chartered flight from Seoul to Ulan Bator landed at the Buyant-Ukhaa International Airport on Friday evening, with 164 passengers onboard, the SEC said in a statement. The repatriated people include pregnant women, the elderly, children, sick people, and those with financial and other problems, the commission said, adding that they will be isolated at designated facilities for 14 days. Following the suspension of international commercial flights in the COVID-19 pandemic, Mongolia has repatriated around 28,000 nationals via chartered flights, trains and buses from different parts of the world, according to the commission. As of Friday, Mongolia reported 1,491 COVID-19 cases with two deaths and 909 recoveries. Enditem A new variant of the coronavirus, first identified in Britain, is expected to rapidly spread in the United States. That has fueled fears that children, who have largely been spared the worst of the virus, may become just as susceptible and contagious as adults. The latest research puts the worst fears to rest. A large study by health officials in Britain found that young children are only about half as likely as adults to transmit the variant to others. Thats exactly what we had been seeing with this current variant thats circulating in the U.S., too, said our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli, who wrote about the science. Nothing has really changed on that front. That seems like good news. But the new variant is about 30 to 50 percent more contagious than the original, for children and adults alike. It is expected to become the dominant form of the coronavirus in the United States by March, which means more kids will get the virus, even if they are still proportionately less contagious and less prone to getting infected than adults. Instant messaging app WhatsApp recently announced the updating of its privacy policy terms from February 8, 2021. After this date users will have no choice but to accept these terms to use the app. This has led to a backlash with many users migrating to alternate platforms. A survey by LocalCircles finds that WhatsApp is likely to see 15% users in India move away, while 36% will reduce usage drastically. To clear its stand, the Facebook owned messaging app has released a clarification explaining that the policy update doesn't compromise privacy of messages with friends and family. It also says that the update includes changes related to business accounts on WhatsApp which too are optional for users. Experts feel the statements made by WhatsApp are misleading. Tripti Jain, a lawyer, researcher at Internet Democracy Project says, "This clarification/FAQ by WhatsApp aims to re-instill trust in people that they have lost because of the new privacy policy, however, it has proven to be counterproductive. In fact, what should be noticed is that the clarification briefs only about things WhatsApp cannot do. It fails to delineate what WhatsApp can do with personal data of individuals and how it does." Also read: Tech giants should stop treating India like third-world country: Paytm's Vijay Shekhar BusinessToday.In spoke to experts to deconstruct why they doubt WhatsApp's claims. Here are some examples: CLAIM - "Whatsapp cannot see your private messages or hear your calls and neither can Facebook." "Technically the statement may be correct but it's cleverly worded," says Aniruddh Nigam, Research Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Nigam explains that their privacy policy still states that all the data under the "Information we collect" section may be shared with other Facebook companies, which includes other kinds of metadata like frequency and duration of activity, group names, battery level, location identifiers (which might technically be different from 'shared location') and the numerous other information listed therein. A lot more details have been added here from before, he says. (See image above from WhatsApp privacy policy) Nigam says, "While it is not reading actual messages per se but in its privacy policy WhatsApp has now confirmed that it collects a lot of metadata which is fairly invasive and would allow WhatsApp and the Facebook ecosystem apps to make precise inference about one's activities: such as it collects information about the time and frequency of interactions on WhatsApp. It's collecting the group names when you're a part of some groups." The reason is Facebook's business model. "Facebook has only one business model surveillance fueled Ad-sales, although this change in the policy keeps end to end encryption sacrosanct, that is, nobody can still read the content of the messages on WhatsApp including Facebook but from now on in the name of interoperability far more metadata will be shared between Facebook and WhatsApp," says technology lawyer Mishi Choudhary, legal director at SFLC New York (Software Freedom Law Centre). In the third quarter 2020, Facebook's revenue was $21.47 billion, almost all of which came from ads, and there are none in WhatsApp. "The rationale is that Facebook group wants to serve more targeted ads to people on Facebook, Instagram by knowing more about their usage habits on WhatsApp and enable payments in WhatsApp for items that were clicked through Instagram ads.," she says. She adds that this has been forced by Apple's labeling policy for all apps in App store. "Facebook was recently forced by Apple to provide a privacy "nutritional label" on its iOS app which told us about 100 different pieces of data that may be collected, many of which are directly linked to user profiles, including health and fitness data, "sensitive info" and search histories." Also read:WhatsApp's new privacy policy "very confusing", says Signal co-founder Brian Acton CLAIM - WhatsApp does not share your contacts with Facebook Nigam says while it may not share 'contacts' of a person, WhatsApp will be sharing a lot more information with other Facebook companies (includes Facebook and Instagram). "While WhatsApp has been sharing data with Facebook earlier, now the exact scope of the data being shared has been confirmed, he says. (See image above from Privacy Policy) "The likely result of that is Facebook and Instagram will be able to use data about how people use WhatsApp to target ads/ services to them and made inferences about their behaviour. And, in some sense, what this is doing is integrating WhatsApp even deeper within the Facebook and Instagram ecosystem," says Nigam. "It is important to understand that Facebook as a company is built around the business model of advertising, specifically of targeting ads and has clearly declared its intention to control the entire journey of a customer and the brand: the customer sees the ad on Facebook and Instagram and pays on WhatsApp. Its new payment gateway WhatsApp Pay will strengthen its position in retail and commerce, on both the advertising front and also the payment front. Earlier, WhatsApp's Chief Operating Officer Matt Idema himself had said that, "Instagram and Facebook are the storefront. WhatsApp is the cash register." It is also interesting to note WhatsApp has a different policy for European and non-European users where EU citizens are better protected than their Indian counterparts. "A comparison of these two policies has revealed that for non-European regions, this data might be used for the Facebook Companies' own purposes, most likely to improve its targeting of ads, which is specifically prohibited in the European policy," says Nigam. The lack of data protection bill in India contributes to this as well, claims Nigam. "If we did have strong data protection regulations, there are aspects of this move that might have been moderated or mitigated. The new privacy policy is sort of exploiting that regulatory arbitrage," says Nigam. In 2017, European Union antitrust regulators had fined Facebook 110 million euros for misleading the regulators regarding information about acquisition and data sharing with WhatsApp. CLAIM - WhatsApp cannot see your shared location and neither can Facebook Tripti Jain of Internet Democracy Project says, "When you share your location with someone on WhatsApp, it is sent as an encrypted message and hence is not shared. In that sense, this claim may be correct, however WhatsApp collects your location data at various instances; when the location service is turned on the phone, WhatsApp is taking your IP address and your location. For certain services it is also using your location even when the location feature is turned off. This part is missing from their explanation." CLAIM - You can download your data Tripti Jain says, "When I download my WhatsApp data, all I can see is what data does WhatsApp have about me but it is not enough. A user should also know what WhatsApp has been doing with my data, whether that they have shared it with other apps or not, but the current feature fails to provide that." Also read: Want to switch from WhatsApp? Here are other chat app options She explains, "By offering users to download what data WhatsApp has about users, WhatsApp aims to make users believe that they have user rights and autonomy over their data that has been shared with WhatsApp. However, if one reads the fine print, all that users can download and see is what data is with WhatsApp, this is incomplete information." To enable user autonomy and control, a user should be able to learn what data does WhatsApp has, has it been shared further, if yes with whom, and for what purpose, how long will that data be stored among other things. "Unless, this ability is provided, this feature that allows users to download their data is nothing but merely an illusive practice in the name of privacy," she says. Choudhary of SFLC New York says it seems WhatsApp and Facebook are leveraging their dominant position and imposing a fairly serious bargain on its users without giving them a choice. "When WhatsApp launched a major update to its privacy policy in August 2016, it started sharing user information and metadata with Facebook. At that time, the messaging service offered its billion existing users 30 days to opt out of at least some of the sharing, if you chose to opt out at the time. Now with the change in policy there is no option to opt-out, a choice that was available in earlier versions." So, is the brouhaha over moving to alternative apps like Signal legitimate? "Absolutely! Anyone who cares even a little bit about their privacy should abandon all Facebook products," she says. Also read: WhatsApp's loss is Telegram's gain; app sees 25 million new users in 3 days [January 15, 2021] Druva Receives Cyber Catalyst Designation for Outstanding Product Security and Ability to Combat Ransomware Druva Inc., the leader in Cloud Data Protection and Management, today announced Druva inSync has been recognized as a Cyber Catalyst? designated solution. Created by Marsh, the unique program brings together leading cyber insurers* to evaluate cybersecurity solutions and award the Cyber Catalyst designation to those they believe can have a meaningful impact on cyber risk. Druva inSync was recognized for its ability to help deter and combat ransomware attacks on endpoint devices and leading cloud applications, including Microsoft (News - Alert) 365, Salesforce and Google Workspace. Data's value continues to rise as businesses increasingly leverage it to create unique customer experiences, identify business opportunities, and differentiate from competitors. Given data's growing importance to drive these efforts, IT leaders require solutions that can not only manage expanding data footprints, but scale instantly with changing needs, offer access on demand, and protect against potential cybersecurity threats, including ransomware. In fact, 79 percent of IT leaders in the US and UK see data management and protection as a competitive business advantage according to the 2020 Value of Data Survey. Druva offers the industry's most comprehensive cloud-native data protection platform, designed to radically simplify data management and transform backup data into an asset by making it more open and accessible. Built with robust encryption technology, long-term retention capabilities, data loss prevention features, and behavioral insights to mitigate unauthorized access, Druva is uniquely positioned to help today's digital organizations increase visibility across environments while helping prevent, remediate, and recover from malicious attacks. "The astounding rise in cyber attacks, coupled with increasing regulatory penalties and fines, has created heightened awareness ofthe importance of compliance, privacy and security," said Jung-Kyu McCann, General Counsel, Druva. "Key stakeholders, regulators and the general public expect companies to implement robust security protocols that protect consumer and personal data. As businesses navigate this challenging landscape and the rising number of threats and attacks, we've built a solution with proven architecture and trusted security that not only helps unify data management processes, but lowers overall corporate risk." "The Cyber Catalyst designation signals that leading insurers believe Druva can help reduce cyber risk, and strongly merits consideration by organizations who seek solutions that yield meaningful improvements in cyber risk outcomes," said Tom Reagan, US & Canada Cyber Practice Leader, Marsh. "The latest Cyber Catalyst solutions target the five most significant cyber risks identified by cyber insurers and, together with the 2019 designees, comprise a roster of more than 30 cybersecurity products insurers believe can be highly effective against cyber threats." Delivered as-a-service, Druva inSync simplifies backup, recovery, compliance, and device management to reduce the cost and complexity of end-user data protection. Offering air-gapped and immutable data, backup data stored in Druva Cloud Platform is isolated from the customer's infrastructure, preventing ransomware or malware from encrypting the clean backup copies. In their review of Druva inSync, Cyber Catalyst participating insurers rated it highest on the criteria of cyber risk reduction, flexibility, and efficiency. Participating insurers noted: "This product offers both a competitive recovery point objective and recovery time objective. Features - such as source duplication, analysis of data backup for automatic search of sensitive documents and cloud native for AWS instances - offer administrators compelling options." "Simplifies an area that, given the prevalence of ransomware, still seems to mystify organizations: backups." "A very comprehensive and easy to use backup facilities with the added benefits of data audit and control functionality. Good integrations with other security products to expand security controls as seamlessly as possible." Additional Information Learn more about the 2020 and 2019 Cyber Catalyst designated solutions Read more about Druva's 2020 Value of Data survey, and its insights from 700 IT leaders across the US and UK See how Druva's ransomware recovery capabilities can help lower your data risk in our latest blog post *Participating insurers are Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS); AXA XL, a division of AXA; AXIS; Beazley; CFC; Munich Re; Sompo International; and Zurich North America. About Druva Druva delivers Data Protection and Management for the cloud era. Druva Cloud Platform is built on AWS and offered as-a-Service; customers drive down costs by up to 50 percent by freeing themselves from the burden of unnecessary hardware, capacity planning, and software management. Druva is trusted worldwide by over 4,000 companies at the forefront of embracing the cloud. Druva is a privately held company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and is funded by Sequoia Capital (News - Alert) , Viking Global Investors, Tenaya Capital, Riverwood Capital and Nexus Partners. Visit Druva and follow us @druvainc. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005083/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) The Philippine government has moved to temporarily ban foreign travelers from the United Arab Emirates and Hungary starting Sunday due to the threat of the new COVID-19 variant, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said on Friday. In an advisory, Roque said the travel ban will be from 12:01 a.m. of January 17 to January 31. Travelers from these countries who will arrive before Sunday are allowed to enter the Philippines, but they have to complete the 14-day facility-based quarantine even if their RT-PCR test results are negative. Filipino citizens coming from these two countries can still enter the Philippines even after January 17, but the government noted they have to undergo an absolute facility-based 14-day quarantine period regardless of their swab test result. "All unaccompanied minor Filipino citizens coming from countries/jurisdictions where travel restrictions are in place on account of the new variants of COVID-19, shall not be allowed boarding by the airlines until January 31, 2021, except minors returning through the repatriation program of the national government," the statement read, noting they would be turned over to the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. Two days ago, the Department of Health said the first case of the new COVID-19 variant in the Philippines was detected from a Filipino who returned home from the UAE. The UAE already reported cases of the new COVID-19 variant in December, but it is only now that the Philippines has decided to close its borders from the said state. This variant is believed to be more contagious and is linked to the recent spike of infections in the UK. Existing ban covering over 30 countries has been extended until January 31, the government earlier announced. Increased Russian presence is also the reason why NATO has increased the readiness of forces, Stoltenberg said. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the Alliance is closely monitoring Russia's efforts to boost military presence in Africa, Middle East, Crimea, and other parts of the globe. "On the question about increased Russian presence in Libya, and in Africa in general, of course this is something we follow and monitor very closely at NATO, it's part of a pattern of increased Russian presence, not only Libya, but in other parts of Africa and in the Middle East, in Syria and in the Black Sea region in Crimea, and also in the Baltic region and also in the High North," Stoltenberg said at a joint press point with President of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Ghazouani on January 14. The reality is, Stoltenberg added, that NATO has seen "increased military build-up by Russia, from the High North all the way to the Baltic region, Black Sea Middle East and North Africa." "And this is something which is of great concern," the NATO chief said. "We are following the Russian military build-up, very closely," Stoltenberg underlined. "And this is also the reason why NATO has increased the readiness of forces, why we have invested more in new capabilities and why we are adapting NATO in response also to a more assertive Russia, which is investing heavy in new military equipment and also increasing its military presence along our borders." NATO and Ukraine Reporting by UNIAN New York, NY, Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Facts and Factors have published a new research report titled North America and Europe Visual Search Market By Offering (Image Search and Search Recommendation) and By Vertical (Consumer Goods, Retail, Automotive, Healthcare, and Others): Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 20182027. According to the research study, North America and Europe Visual Search Market was estimated at USD 4,875 million in 2018 and is expected to reach USD 21,107 million by 2027. North America and Europe Visual Search Market are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% from 2019 to 2027. Visual search is the common task of searching for a product mostly in a cluttered visual environment on the internet. The item that the observer is searching for is called a target, whereas the non-target items are tagged as distractors. Visual search utilizes image/s, instead of text, as queries. It identifies objects within the image and then searches for images that are related to the target object/s. For example, based on a tables image, one can use a visual search to shop for a table that is similar/identical to the table in the image. Thus, for performing a visual search accurately, search engines need highly sophisticated processes in comparison to traditional image search. Get revised Free Sample Report of Visual Search Market @ https://www.fnfresearch.com/sample/north-america-and-europe-visual-search-market-by-149 (The free sample of this report is readily available on request). Our Free Sample Report Includes: 2020 Updated Report Introduction, Overview, and In-depth industry analysis 190+ Pages Research Report (Inclusion of Updated Research) Provide Chapter-wise guidance on Request 2020 Updated Regional Analysis with Graphical Representation of Size, Share & Trends Includes Updated List of table & figures Updated Report Includes Top Market Players with their Business Strategy, Sales Volume, and Revenue Analysis Facts and Factors research methodology (Note: The sample of this report is updated with COVID-19 impact analysis before delivery) Key Offerings: Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 20202026 Market Dynamics Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities Market Segmentation A detailed analysis by product, by types, end-user, applications, segments, and geography Competitive Landscape Top key vendors and other prominent vendors Inquire more about this report before purchase @ https://www.fnfresearch.com/inquiry/north-america-and-europe-visual-search-market-by-149 (You may enquire a report quote OR available discount offers to our sales team before purchase.) Several advantages in the e-commerce market majorly driving the North America and Europe visual search market The primary growth driver of the North America and Europe visual search market is the several advantages that visual search offers in the e-commerce domain. Only about 30% of an e-commerce seller online catalog is discovered by its customers, where some products are displayed several times with similar searches. The rest of the catalog remains undiscovered owing to the lack of specific recommendations and searches. Thus, visual search opens up the whole catalog to be discovered by the customers. Additionally, visual search is also an excellent cross-selling tool along with reducing basket abandonment and saving users from the annoying process of vague product searches. Top Market Players Key players operating in North America and Europe visual search market are Turing Analytics, Amazon.com, Snap Inc., Slyce Acquisition, Blippar Clarifai, ViSenze, Shopagon, Pinterest, Goxip.com, Veritone, Syte.ai, TinEye, Cortexica Vision Systems, Wide Eyes Technologies, Microsoft, and Alphabet, among others. To know an additional revised 2020 list of market players, request a sample report: https://www.fnfresearch.com/sample/north-america-and-europe-visual-search-market-by-149 The image search segment is projected to dominate the offering segment In 2018, the image search segment held more than 61% of the share in North America and Europe visual search market. It is also estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.57% over the forecast period. This segments growth is propelled by an image searchs ability to make it easy for the users to obtain information about a product, which they are unaware of. The consumer goods sector is likely to lead the vertical segment in the future The consumer goods segment will be the fastest-growing in the future in North America and Europe visual search market. It will register a CAGR of 18.1%, owing to the escalating preference for online shopping by the consumers and consistent developments in the technological domain. In 2018, this segment accounted for a 41.8% share of the North America and Europe visual search market. Directly Purchase a copy of the report with TOC @ https://www.fnfresearch.com/buynow/su/north-america-and-europe-visual-search-market-by-149 The rising use of machine learning in visual search is the major growth driver of North America and Europe visual search market in the years ahead. Deep machine learning draws its inspiration from the way biological neural networks in the human brain obtain information from the various senses of the body. Deep machine learning has various applications, particularly when it comes to analyzing, understanding, and discovering new patterns and new knowledge that is hidden in huge data volumes and needs to be segregated systematically. Undeniably, in the age of big data and the flourishing internet of things, deep machine learning is the key technology that enables businesses to extract value from their huge volumes of data, overcome the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution, and support business success. Browse the full North America and Europe Visual Search Market by Offering (Image Search and Search Recommendation) and By Vertical (Consumer Goods, Retail, Automotive, Healthcare, and Others): Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 20182027" report at https://www.fnfresearch.com/north-america-and-europe-visual-search-market-by-149 Europe to record the highest CAGR over the estimated timeline Europe is the fastest-growing North America and Europe visual search market and will register a CAGR of 17.6% in the future. This can be attributed to the increasing innovations witnessed related to AR and VR and their growing integration in search engine tools. Additionally, the rising acceptance of the latest tools and escalating awareness regarding advanced visual search options are also supporting the European market. Request Customized Copy of Report @ https://www.fnfresearch.com/customization/north-america-and-europe-visual-search-market-by-149 (We customize your report according to your research need. Ask our sales team for report customization.) This report segments North America and Europe visual search market into: North America and Europe Visual Search Market: By Offering Image Search Search Recommendation North America and Europe Visual Search Market: By Vertical Consumer Goods Retail Automotive Healthcare Others Related Reports: Mobile Payment Technology Market: https://www.fnfresearch.com/mobile-payment-technology-market Tactical Data Link Market: https://www.fnfresearch.com/tactical-data-link-market-by-platform-air-based-1249 Online On-demand Home Service Market: https://www.fnfresearch.com/online-on-demand-home-service-market-by-type-1218 Corporate Assessment Services Market: https://www.fnfresearch.com/corporate-assessment-services-market-by-type-psychometric-tests-1148 Website Builder Software Market: https://www.fnfresearch.com/website-builder-software-market-by-software-type-offline-1083 Industry 4.0 Market: https://www.fnfresearch.com/global-industry-40-market-by-technology-artificial-intelligence-963 About Facts & Factors (FnF Research): Facts & Factors is a leading market research organization offering industry expertise and scrupulous consulting services to clients for their business development. The reports and services offered by Facts and Factors are used by prestigious academic institutions, start-ups, and companies globally to measure and understand the changing international and regional business backgrounds. Our clients/customers conviction on our solutions and services has pushed us in delivering always the best. Our advanced research solutions have helped them in appropriate decision-making and guidance for strategies to expand their business. Follow Us LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fnfresearch Follow Us Twitter: https://twitter.com/fnfresearch Contact Us: Facts & Factors USA: +1-347-989-3985 Email: sales@fnfresearch.com Web: https://www.fnfresearch.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 14) The Philippines has approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, the first one to be granted emergency use authorization in the country. The Food and Drug Administration granted the application of American pharmaceutical giant on Thursday, Director General Eric Domingo confirmed. An EUA issuance from the regulators is required for the vaccines to be legally rolled out in the country. The interim data from the ongoing phase 3 trial shows that the vaccine has an efficacy of 95% in the study population and at least 92% among all racial groups, Domingo said in a briefing. He added that the adverse events were transient and mostly mild to moderate similar to common vaccine reactions, and no specific safety concerns were identified. However, monitoring is still required after immunization for other possible side effects, he noted. Pfizer has already secured EUA approval from United States and United Kingdom among other countries and emergency use listing from the World Health Organization after its phase 3 clinical trial showed that it was 95% effective in preventing infections after a person received two shots. Under the terms of the EUA, the vaccine can only be administered by vaccination providers to individuals 16 years old and above. Also, Pfizer shall only supply the vaccine to emergency response stakeholders including the Department of Health, the National Task Force Against COVID-19, or other authorized designees like public and private hospitals, local government units, and the private sector. The country has not yet formally secured doses of Pfizer's shots, but vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the Philippines may receive more or less 40 million doses from the US biopharmaceutical company this year as they continue to finalize negotiations. Pfizer doses could also arrive this quarter if the Philippines' application for an early rollout under the World Health Organization's COVAX facility is granted. Unlike other brands, Pfizer's vaccine needs to be stored in ultra-cold minus-70 degrees Celsius freezers, which are not yet widely available nationwide. Adhering to the temperature requirements during storage and distribution is crucial to ensure the efficacy of the vaccines. Domingo said under the authorization, Pfizer shall provide the required cold chain requirements for storage, transport, and handling until vaccines are delivered to inoculation sites, unless a different agreement with the DOH or the task force is formulated. He also said that government authorities will determine areas that will receive the Pfizer vaccine to ensure proper storage and cold chain management Galvez earlier said distribution of Pfizer vaccines may be limited to Metro Manila, Cebu City, and Davao City for now as these urbanized areas can meet the storage requirements. The national government is also in talks with private firms to establish cold storage rooms and walk-in freezers. The EUA application of AstraZeneca and Sputnik V made by Russia's Gamaleya Research Institute are pending at the FDA. Domingo told CNN Philippines on Thursday the agency may decide on AstraZeneca's application before the end of January. He pointed out that the British-Swedish drugmaker has already secured EUA from a stringent regulatory authority from the UK, which would "help (the FDA) evaluate a little faster." The government aims to vaccinate 50 million to 70 million Filipinos this year. 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. Professor McMillan said Brisbane had passed the five-day "danger period", the time in which most infected people start to show symptoms. The last time a known infectious case of the virus was out in the Queensland community was January 7. "I think we have probably avoided an outbreak, but it just points to the fact that we need to be constantly vigilant," Professor McMillan said. Asked why she thought Brisbane avoided a Melbourne-style lockdown, Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said: "Because people have responded very quickly and because we found the first case. "That is the most important thing. "Every single time, if we can find the first case, we can get on top of it really quickly and we can manage it. If you wait until the 40th case, it is really hard to get on top of it." Melbourne's second wave was sparked when private security guards and hotel quarantine workers contracted the disease and spread it throughout the community in May and June. The Rydges on Swanston, the Melbourne hotel that was the source of 90 per cent of Victoria's second wave of infections. Credit:Getty Images An inquiry into the outbreak found there were "pervasive issues identified with delays in deep cleans and in quarantining exposed staff" within the Victorian hotels. "The delay to isolate the staff earlier resulted in a lost opportunity to curb the further spread of this virus from the exposed workforce into the community," retired judge Jennifer Coate found. Queensland Health authorities clamped down on the latest positive case much faster and more aggressively. The 22-year-old Hotel Grand Chancellor cleaner whose positive test prompted Brisbane's three-day lockdown was swabbed as part of a new testing regime requiring quarantine workers to be tested on a rolling seven-day cycle. Brisbane's Hotel Grand Chancellor, where the 22-year-old cleaner who prompted Brisbane's three-day lockdown worked. Credit:Attila Csaszar The regime has since been ramped up to a daily saliva test and a weekly deep nasal swab. Dr Young believes the three-day lockdown was "critical" to containing the Hotel Grand Chancellor cluster. "Because then, if any of those 406 close contacts [of the cleaner] are positive, we can say 'well, for those three days they were not out and about spreading it'," she said. "Just imagine if it was this variant that started the pandemic, [managing] it would be much harder." Dr Young, Australia's most experienced CHO, has taken extreme caution with the new mutant strain of COVID-19. The United Kingdom reported 1500 deaths within 24 hours on Wednesday, the first time the death toll had been that high since March 2020. "So we know what can happen if we don't contain this," said Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath. "We all have a responsibility to make sure particularly this new more infectious variant the UK variant isn't spread out into the community and across the country, because we have seen what that means elsewhere." Keely Fitzpatrick, a Brisbane lawyer who has lived in the UK for the past five years, gave birth to her first child during the lockdown in London. Keely Fitzpatrick gave birth to her first child, Sophie, in December amid London's lockdown. The new mother has not been able to introduce Sophie, her daughter born on December 21, to any friends or family in the UK, let alone Australia. "London is in complete lockdown, along with all of England, with heavy restrictions in the rest of the UK," Ms Fitzpatrick said. "No pubs, restaurants, gyms, schools are open. You cannot even go to baby classes or to the community centre, as you typically would, for example, to weigh your baby. "The midwife and health visitors come to your home in full PPE. "Two of the ladies from my pre-natal class got COVID at the hospital where I gave birth." Ms Fitzpatrick said the mood in London was a mix of fear about the new strain and frustration over months of stay-at-home orders. "We have been in and out of lockdown since March, and it looks like that will continue for a while yet," she said. Six-year-old Vivianna Serna arrived at a weekday Bible study class looking her best: favorite red dress with black polka dots, white ballet slippers, two pigtails and butterfly hairclips. She remembers her high spirits quickly fell when another girl refused to hold her hand during a prayer circle. When she asked why, the girl said I was dirty, Vivianna recalled. Four years later, the fourth-grader cited that hurtful memory as an example of the ignorance still ever-present among children and adults alike, making it a cornerstone of her winning speech at Fridays 25th-annual Martin Luther King Jr. Oratory Competition. Dr. King reminded me: We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear, Vivianna preached to the judges. So, I say to you, do not let the troubles of this world cause you to stumble, but press on. Vivianna, a student at Houston ISDs Crespo Elementary School, emerged victorious from the group of 12 district students at the marquee event, which features fourth- and fifth-graders delivering speeches centered on the civil rights champions teachings. Her triumph marked back-to-back wins for Crespo Elementary, home to about 700 students on the citys southeast side. For the 25th anniversary, organizers from the law firm Foley & Lardner, which hosts and sponsors the event, hoped to mark the occasion with a nostalgic, energetic gathering at the usual downtown Houston site, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of Christ. The historic sanctuary typically fills with charismatic students, nervous parents and boisterous fans, creating an electric atmosphere in the 155-year-old church. This year, however, the novel coronavirus pandemic forced organizers to audible, moving the event into a small auditorium at Houston ISDs headquarters. About 20 people were allowed into the room at one time, with the contestants rotated in for their speeches. The seven judges, who usually sit front-and-center, watched via live stream. You dont get all the excitement and buzz and energy in the room from the audience, said Foley & Lardner Chief Administrative Officer Claude Treece, who emceed the event. But at the same time, the kids did a really great job of preparing their speeches and studying about Dr. King and saying things that were very inspiring. The change in scenery did little to quell the students nerves, though all delivered speeches with precision and force. Shortly before Foster Elementary School fourth-grader Pahytton Williams took the stage, her teacher, Leesa Giles, urged her to repeat positive things about herself in front of a bathroom mirror. The confidence boost helped carry Pahytton to a second-place finish. It was a little scary because it was my first time doing a speech about Martin Luther King, or anything like that, Pahytton said. My granny, she told me that even if I placed or not, I could still do my best and she was still going to be proud of me. Vivianna said a pre-speech prayer and pointers from last years winner, Crespo Elementary School fifth-grader Brandon Curbow, inspired her confidence. With the victory, Vivianna fulfilled a six-year goal of following in the footsteps of her older sister, Isabel, who took third place at the competition in 2015. I wanted to do that, too, the way she was doing it, Vivianna said. I knew it was going to be me up there. While students often invoke current events in their speeches, the social justice movements of 2020 were particularly top-of-mind for the competitors. As several recalled the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the Black Lives Matter marches, and the election of the nations first female, Black and Asian-American vice president, they contemplated Kings lasting impact on the world more than 50 years after his assassination. Jakiyah Bickham, a fourth-grader at Pleasantville Elementary School, urged the nation to conduct C.P.R.: engage in compassion, eradicate poverty and eliminate racism. Racism, much like poverty, creates division and cant be ignored, said Jakiyah, who placed third. If we hope to see an end to racism, we must unite as one nation, under God, indivisible. jacob.carpenter@chron.com Bahrain rejects claims of isolating prisoner, says he refuses to contact family Bahrain rejects claims of isolating prisoner, says he refuses to contact family TDT | Manana The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Bahrain authorities yesterday refuted claims made by Qatari Channel Al Jazeera, news sites and social media regarding the status of inmate Jassem Muhammad Abbas as incorrect. Jassim Muhammad Abbas, a 40-year-old, is serving life imprisonment in several terrorism cases, said the General Directorate of Reformation and Rehabilitation. The authority confirmed that Abbas is not in solitary confinement, but coronavirus related precautionary measures necessitated stopping visits. Inmates are allowed to talk with their family via video calls three times per week. However, the Abbas has refused to contact his family members or relatives after 7 July 2020. The General Administration for Reform and Rehabilitation also confirmed the condition of Abbas as healthy. He is allowed all rights as the rest of the inmates. The Administration also invited the National Institution for Human Rights to visit the inmate and assess his condition, for the sake of transparency. The authority also assured that it is carrying out its humanitarian and legal duties with full transparency and integrity. The authority also called on all to obtain information from the official sources and reject malicious rumours. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Elena Panova of Bulgaria as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Egypt, the UN Information Center in Cairo said on its official website. Panova has over 22 years of development and management experience; including all aspects of program management; cross-areas collaboration and resource mobilization, with specific experience in government and private sector financing. At the United Nations, she most recently served as Resident Coordinator in Turkmenistan after holding several leadership positions at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), including responsibilities on a regional level, when she was a senior program coordinator overseeing the coordination of all regional UNDP and inter-agency programs at the UNDP Regional Hub in Istanbul. At UNDP, she also served as Deputy Country Director of UNDP Ukraine; supported the establishment of a private sector Global Compact network; managed a flagship employment creation and micro-financing project at UNDP Bulgaria and worked as a private sector engagement specialist at the UNDP Headquarters in New York. Prior to joining the United Nations in 1999, Panova was an Executive Director of a local non-governmental organization, delivering business support services to micro, small and female entrepreneurs in Bulgaria. She holds a masters degree in international law and foreign trade from the University for National and World Economy in her country as well as a masters degree in microelectronics from the Technical Chemical University, also in Bulgaria. Short link: SALEM, Ore. Oregon's plan to begin vaccinating seniors, teachers, and childcare workers later this month likely will not materialize after news that a promised increase in shipments from the federal government are not coming, according to Governor Kate Brown's office. Brown announced the expansion of Oregon's vaccination efforts earlier this week, after the Trump administration said that it would release its full reserve of vaccine doses to the states. But Brown says that state officials recently learned the stockpile was "a deception on a national scale." RELATED: Trump administration expected to change course on vaccine distribution "Last night, I received disturbing news, confirmed to me directly by General Perna of Operation Warp Speed: States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses," Brown said in a statement on Friday morning. "I am demanding answers from the Trump Administration. I am shocked and appalled that they have set an expectation on which they could not deliver, with such grave consequences," she continued. "This is a deception on a national scale. Oregons seniors, teachers, and all of us were depending on the promise of Oregons share of the federal reserve of vaccines being released to us." Federal Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced on Tuesday that his agency was making available "the full reserve doses" it had so that states could step up administration of vaccines. "This next phase reflects the urgency of the situation we face: Every vaccine dose that is sitting in a warehouse rather than going into an arm could mean one more life lost or one more hospital bed occupied," Azar said. "Because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve, with second doses being supplied by doses coming off of manufacturing lines with quality control," he later remarked. In his statement, Azar criticized state governments for restricting vaccines to people in Phase 1a healthcare workers, first responders, and the residents and staff of certain long-term care facilities instead of making the currently limited supply of doses available to other groups. "We are telling states today that they should open vaccinations to all of their most vulnerable people," Azar said. "That is the most effective way to save lives now, and some states' heavy-handed micromanagement of this process has stood in the way of vaccines' reaching a broader swath of the vulnerable population more quickly." On Thursday, Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen penned a letter to Secretary Azar after learning that the stockpiled doses were not scheduled to be delivered excoriating the HHS chief for leading state officials to believe that they could open up vaccinations to seniors and other categories without a corresponding increase in doses. "Those plans were made on the basis of reliance on your statement about 'releasing the entire supply' you have in reserve," Allen wrote. "If this information is accurate, we will be unable to begin vaccinating our vulnerable seniors on January 23rd as planned." Earlier this week, Governor Brown had announced a press conference to be held on Friday to address the planned expansion of vaccinations. That briefing is now set for 2 p.m. This is a developing story and will be updated with more details as they emerge. 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. Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size On Sunday, Brogan Renshaw's lifelong habit of reading the news hit a wall. Since Renshaw, 32, was a boy, his dad would unfurl the newspaper and the day would begin. "I follow The Sydney Morning Herald. I Google it all the time. My general search is just 'SMH'," Renshaw says. ''That day the site did not come up. I thought maybe its just me." It was not. Google had quietly started to hide local news from Renshaw's search as part of an "experiment" aimed at showing how much the media depends on traffic from the company. Whatever one thinks of Google, it was a demonstration of the power of the technology giants that run much of the internet. The past fortnight has been full of other examples. Twitter, YouTube (itself owned by Google), Facebook and its photo app Instagram all banned or suspended US President Donald Trump after the violent storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Online fury and disinformation, like the QAnon conspiracy theory signified on the rioter's jumper, was given physical form when rioters stormed the US Capitol. Credit:AP Shopify, which is behind many of the world's online store fronts, and Stripe, which processes payments, cut off Trump-related accounts. So did Campaign Monitor, a service his campaign used to send email blasts. Advertisement In a dramatic move underscoring their control of speech on apps they do not even own, Amazon, Google and Apple took Parler, a free-speech social network favoured by Trump supporters, off their app stores and the internet. "We're toast," Parler's policy boss Amy Peikoff said when the bans were threatened. Loading Google's decision to stifle Australian media on its platform was triggered by a different motivation to the other platforms, which acted to stop the incitement of violence and hate speech. The search giant is at odds with the government and industry over a news bargaining code, currently before the Senate, that would force it to pay for the news content it displays in a manner it thinks unfair. By contrast, two weeks ago Trump had riled up an insurrectionist mob and directed them to the Capitol building, which they stormed as lawmakers were certifying election results, while Parler hosted graphic threats to murder Black and Jewish people along with police officers. Many cheered the technology giants' actions. Others did not. Among them were some who have their political futures yoked to Trump either here or in America. Divided front: What they said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO We [kept Trump online] because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government. Amazon in a letter to Parler We cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack "I dont believe in that sort of censorship. Theres been a lot of people whove said and done a lot of things on Twitter previously that havent received that sort of condemnation or, indeed, censorship. Liberal backbencher Dave Sharma It is the right decision on the facts'', but he was uncomfortable with the precedent of big tech making decisions about whose speech, which remarks, are censored and suppressed. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg Freedom of speech is fundamental to our society. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese Its about time that people werent given a platform to spread hatred, to spread lies, which has had consequences for [other] people. But there is a third group: people who dislike or even loathe Trump and may even support his ban, but find it worrying the way tech barons atop trillion-dollar companies can act as unappealable global censors. Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny called it an "unacceptable act of censorship" that would give the green light to regimes globally to do the same and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "problematic". Advertisement These debates have upended traditional political divides. There are small "l" liberal warriors whose insistence on free speech has crashed into their insistence on free markets, overturning the classic argument that private companies can choose the terms on which they take customers. Much of Donald Trump's presidency has been conducted by tweet. Credit:AP NSW Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg is clear. "I'm a markets guy," he says. But he is unhappy with the platforms' power to silence and is pushing for a mandatory code to regulate what content remains online and what is taken down if the companies don't agree to self-regulate first. "The reality is they are the railroads of the 21st century. As you know the US imposed the breakup of the railroads," Bragg pauses. "There are a lot of parallels here." Deeming the platforms publishers is not a position the government has moved to adopt. Labor, a party generally much happier with regulation, has taken the opposite approach to Bragg. Advertisement "Im a bit old fashioned, I believe in free enterprise," said the party's health spokesman, Chris Bowen. "I believe that Twitter is a free enterprise and should be able to ban whoever is inciting hate speech as they wish." More than 50 MPs from all parties have joined a parliamentary group dedicated to making social media safe. If there is one thing that unites the industry's critics on both sides, it is a call for consistency and a view that free speech standards chosen by the people through their governments should determine what remains online. "There needs to be consistency to the way in which these tech companies moderate content, with transparent rules and guidelines for everyone," Technology Minister Karen Andrews said this week. Loading "It concerns me that an outcry by prominent people or certain groups on social media may dictate their decision-making when there is incredibly vile, hateful and dangerous content that frequently goes unchecked." Examples are plentiful. Some are relatively constrained. A conspiracy theorist who falsely claimed Australian politicians were paedophiles remained on Facebook until Victorian Nationals MP Anne Webster successfully sued. The poster has now shifted to YouTube. Some are not. In perhaps the worst case, Facebook failed to stop its platform being used by the Myanmar military to incite genocide against the Rohingya in the late 2010s. Advertisement It has since admitted to initial failures, banned some top military figures in Myanmar and said it was proactively taking down misinformation in the country. Others in the sector admit the status quo has not worked well, even if Trump's ban was the right result. Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey defended kicking the President off the service that has defined much of his presidency on Thursday, Australian time, because of an imminent risk of violence but said it marked larger problems. "I feel a ban is a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation," Dorsey said. "Having to take these actions fragment the public conversation," he said. "They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning." Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has admitted the tech platforms' moderation policies have struggled. Credit:Bloomberg The idea that if people did not like Twitter they could simply go elsewhere had also been thrown into question, Dorsey said: "Parler was gone, although it could return, and other platforms had also banned Trump." But the agreement that the technology giants' power, inconsistency and opacity is a problem is not a consensus on a solution. Advertisement Calling Metis an interest group, as Premier Brian Pallister did Wednesday after touring the Brandon vaccination site, does not sit well with Manitoba Metis Federation David Chartrand. Advertisement Advertise With Us Calling Metis an "interest group," as Premier Brian Pallister did Wednesday after touring the Brandon vaccination site, does not sit well with Manitoba Metis Federation David Chartrand. "Its insulting," said Chartrand. When The Brandon Sun asked Pallister to explain the lack of a COVID-19 data sharing agreement with the federation, including the lack of a partnership to ensure Metis are prioritized for vaccines as First Nations have been, he was quick to bristle. But instead of answering the question, the premier spoke about Indigenous people generally, First Nations and reconciliation. "Well, Metis representatives have been at the table and have been part of this. But, of course, Metis people live integrated, for the most part, with the rest of us in the province, as opposed to a lot of the Northern Indigenous communities that do not. And, so, the considerations are not identical, as you would recognize," he said, when pressed. When pressed again, he said, "There are significant efforts being made to work with our interest groups in our province, in particular with the Indigenous and Metis people to make sure that were doing whats culturally appropriate, what works well for their population, whats acceptable, agreeable, sensitive to their needs. That work is ongoing." But Chartrand objects to Pallisters statements. He said the only committee the federation a self-governing political representative for Manitoba Metis has been asked to sit on is about how best to communicate about vaccines, which has nothing to do with the roll-out. To begin with, Chartrand explained, in some villages, the clear majority will be First Nation and Metis, with very few non-Indigenous people living in them. Chartrand offers Camperville, on the western shore of Lake Winnipegosis, St. Laurent, established as Fond du Lac in 1824 by Metis, and St. Eustache as examples of predominantly Metis villages. "Those are Metis villages. The vast majority (of people) are Metis. These are historical Metis villages which existed even before Canada existed, before the Province of Manitoba," Chartrand said. "Excuse me, but I can tell you where every Metis person lives. I can tell you their chronic illnesses. I can tell you their education level. I can tell you what universities theyre going to. I can tell you what colleges theyre going to." Further, Chartrand said Pallister has a responsibility to establish a distinct process with Metis, and that hes making excuses not to engage with Metis as a rights-holding Indigenous population. NDP leader Wab Kinew weighed in, after Pallisters appearance in Brandon. "Unfortunately, Mr. Pallister has politicized his relationship with the Metis people in Manitoba. And I think, in this instance, its getting in the way of public health," he said. He said due to the strong work of First Nations health leaders, the benefits of data sharing and strategizing can be seen, and that the Metis community being able to participate in the same kind of arrangement would probably benefit all Manitobans. "If there is one group in society that whether its a cultural group, a geographic region, a socio-economic group that gets left behind, and that becomes the opening by which the virus can spread, then that affects all of us," Kinew said. "Then we all have to live with the virus or the public health restrictions that are attempting to combat it." He thinks the Metis are raising an important issue and Pallister would do well to dramatically improve his working relationship with them. Jerry Daniels, the Grand Chief of the Southern Chiefs Organization (SCO), concurs. "SCO supports our Metis relatives in their efforts to have allotments of COVID-19 vaccines that they can distribute to their own people," stated Daniels by email. "COVID-19 has impacted the Metis population in Manitoba and there needs to be accountability for this. There also needs to be a facts-based approach to vaccine distribution, to ensure they receive a fair amount of vaccines and can keep their most vulnerable people safe. So far, the province has been unwilling to collaborate with the Metis Nation." Meanwhile, in a follow-up email from a Pallister spokesperson, Chartrands previous statements on this matter were denigrated. "Contrary to the inaccurate and inflammatory comments made by the president of the Manitoba Metis Federation, the Government of Manitoba appreciates the willingness of the MMF to assist in Manitobas COVID-19 response," stated the spokesperson later Wednesday afternoon. "We have invited them to work with us, in partnership, to discuss how Metis communities can be supported to enhance their ability to access Manitobas three COVID-19 vaccination super sites. We have yet to receive a response to this invitation, but remain optimistic about the prospect of working together on this pivotal aspect of the vaccination strategy." But thats not what Chartrand wants. He wants an allocation of vaccine, and he would partner with pharmacies to deliver them to vulnerable Metis, likely much the same way the science has dictated priority groups so far. "Wed pay them (pharmacies) to give the vaccines. Wed put up the resources to make sure its there. We know where our people live, we know their ages, we know their locations, we know the communities. We can quickly put an action team together and a plan overnight," Chartrand said. When asked about a possible "plan B" if the Province of Manitoba continues to exclude the federation from meaningful participation in the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out in the province, to ensure the most vulnerable Metis are adequately protected, Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) stated the federal government places great importance on including Indigenous voices in the priority-setting for early vaccination. "ISC is working collaboratively with all provinces and territories to encourage inclusion of Indigenous perspectives to ensure an integrated and coordinated approach to support the administration and planning process of the COVID-19 vaccine for Indigenous peoples," stated a spokesperson by email. "The logistics of a COVID-19 vaccine roll-out require coordination amongst partners and provinces and territories; an efficient and effective roll-out requires co-planning and is dependent on full collaboration." 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. Illinois' two senators have called on President-elect Joe Biden to make the site of a 1908 race riot in Springfield a national monument. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, both Democrats, wrote to Biden Thursday asking for the designation, citing the riots historic significance, especially its role in inspiring the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Illinois National Guard soldiers on duty among burned out residences. (Sangamon Valley Collection / Lincoln Library) In 1908, from Aug. 14 to 16, a mob of about 5,000 white people stormed Black neighborhoods to find and lynch two Black men, one charged with murdering a white man and the other with raping a white woman. When the mob learned the men had been secretly transferred to a jail in another city, it began canvassing Black neighborhoods to destroy businesses and homes. Authorities had to call on the states National Guard to quell the riot. At least seven black residents were killed, by most accounts, as well as several white people. The riot in the state's capital shocked the nation. Six months later, in February 1909, the NAACP was founded, partly in response to the Springfield riot as well as other acts of racial violence across the country. It is now the nation's largest and most influential civil rights organization. Burned out residences of the Badlands neighborhood after the race riot. (Sangamon Valley Collection / Lincoln Library) Artifacts of the time and the foundations of destroyed homes remain on the site. Community members reached an agreement in 2018 to excavate any remains and designate the site a memorial. Duckworth and Durbin said establishing it as a national monument, which the U.S. National Park Service would manage, would represent long overdue progress in cementing Black history as part of the countrys history. The request comes just over a week after the deadly mob in the U.S. Capitol. Tree where Scott Burton was lynched. (Sangamon Valley Collection / Lincoln Library) "I am excited about seeing the 1908 Race Riot Site As A National Monument become a reality, Teresa Haley, NAACP Illinois state president, said in a statement in 2019. This is a part the Black history that needs to be preserved and shared with everyone. If Biden honors the request via proclamation, the monument would be the 30th in the African American Civil Rights Network, a group of monuments and memorials Congress formed to recognize the civil rights movement and the fight against discrimination and segregation. The two senators first championed the memorial in 2019 when they introduced the Springfield Race Riot National Monument Act. Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Two men accused of "viciously" beating another man while on camera at a Northeast Side gentleman's club were arrested Thursday, San Antonio police said. Zachary Taylor Wiatrek, 23, and Aurelio Elizondo Jr., 27, were charged in connection with the Jan. 7 attack on 26-year-old Cosmo Rodriguez, according to an arrest affidavit. A third suspect was named in the affidavit but has not been charged. Rodriguez told police he went to the Capisce Gentleman's Club, located at 4211 Sun Gate Drive, with Wiatrek and Elizondo and was waiting outside for a ride when he was confronted by the third suspect, who dragged him back into the club, stripped him of his clothes and then convinced his friends to assault him up outside the club, the affidavit said. According to the affidavit, footage shows the third suspect smiling at the camera before punching Rodriguez in the head, causing the later to fall and hit his head on the pavement. Wiatrek and Elizondo were then seen allegedly chasing Rodriguez around the parking lot before punching and kicking him in the head and back, the affidavit said. The footage of the incident was eventually shared on the San Antonio Police Department's Facebook page. Rodriguez was taken to the local hospital with a skull fracture and bleeding from the brain but survived. Wiatrek faces charges of aggravated robbery, aggravated assault with substantial bodily harm, possession of a controlled substance up to 4 grams, possession of marijuana up to 5 pounds and possession of a controlled substance less than 28 grams. His bail was set a $110,000. Elizondo faces charges of aggravated assault with a substantial bodily harm and possession of a controlled substance less than 1 gram. His bail is $50,000. Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for ExpressNews.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway The Karnataka Police has seized Bitcoin worth Rs 9 crore from a 25-year-old hacker, Bengaluru Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sandeep Patil said on Friday, January 15. The hacker, identified as Srikrishna alias Shreeki, was arrested on November 18 last year for allegedly breaking into the government websites as well as online gaming portals. Also Read: Centre may impose 18% GST on bitcoin trading "During the investigation, it has been found that hacker Srikrishna hacked three Bitcoin exchanges and 10 poker sites. Bitcoin worth Rs 9 crore have been seized in this matter," Patil told ANI. He added that the accused lived in the Netherlands from 2014 to 2017. Srikrishna was arrested for hacking into four websites and exploiting three malwares. Also Read: Shocking! This man can't spend his $245 million Bitcoin riches due to forgotten password He, according to the report, is known to hack online poker games in order to win money and Bitcoin online. Srikrishna, reportedly, admitted hacking the e-procurement website of the Karnataka government in 2019 as well. (Natural News) Just days after banning President Donald Trump from the platform for repeatedly tweeting about the fraudulent 2020 election, Twitter engaged in the very same behavior by tweeting messages of protest against internet censorship ahead of the upcoming elections in Uganda. The official Twitter Public Policy account complained in a series of tweets that internet service providers are supposedly being ordered to block social media and messaging apps in order to thwart the outcome of Ugandas upcoming election. We strongly condemn internet shutdowns, Twitter whined, adding that they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the #OpenInternet. At first glance, it almost seems like some kind of joke in light of the fact that Twitter violated the basic human rights of Americas president by censoring his account for no other reason that simple disagreement with the facts he was presenting to the world. But it gets better. In an effort to stop internet service provider censorship in Uganda, Twitter has decided to censor a number of accounts targeting the election in Uganda. In other words. Twitters solution to the problem of censorship is to engage in more censorship. If we can attribute any of this activity to state-back actors, we will disclose to our archive of information operations, the Jack Dorsey-led company added, seemingly non-ironically. Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections, the company added. Remember when Twitter censored damning information about Hunter Biden before the Nov. 3 election? As our astute readers will recall, Twitter actively interfered in the 2020 election, doing the very same things it is now condemning in Uganda, by censoring all of the damning information that came out about Joe Bidens son, Hunter. The entire HunterGate scandal, as it is now called, was completely blacklisted from Twitter in the days leading up to Nov. 3, which prevented users trying to become better informed about the scandal from learning the truth. Meanwhile, Twitter allowed the Rudy Giuliani Borat prank to trend as real news, even though it had already been exposed as a Hollywood gag with no actual substance. Twitter blatantly interfered in an election, in other words, and contributed to a false outcome. And Twitter is now condemning overseas that which it did here on our own soil, as if nobody will notice and hold the company accountable. Months ago, Twitter blocked the spread of news regarding Hunter Bidens leak saying that they wanted to prevent interference in the election, even if the information were relevant enough to change someones mind, wrote one Twitter user about the hypocrisy. I dont criticize a government trying to prevent such things, this same user added, referring to efforts by Ugandan ISPs to block Twitter and other social media platforms from interfering with Ugandas election. Truthfully, this is the right thing to do, and probably should have been done here in the U.S. as well to prevent far-left tech companies like Twitter from paving the way for a fake Biden presidency. Are there no mirrors at Twitter? asked The Blazes social media editor, Jessica ODonnell. It isnt that they dont have mirrors, its that they dont have reflections, responded another, both of them powerfully illustrating the denseness and lack of self-awareness that clearly plagues the corporate culture at Twitter. Pizza Hut gets all the Dominos closed in the U.S., then complains that China outlaws pizza, wrote yet another, using a brilliant analogy to illustrate the utter stupidity of those who run Twitter. More of the latest news about Big Tech censorship can be found at Censorship.news. Sources for this article include: Twitter.com NaturalNews.com HumanEvents.com The meteoric rise of Bitcoin has been hard to ignore. The crypto-currency has made some early adopters into millionaires, but its recent spike leaves questions for those who haven't yet ventured in. Some people including a handful of renowned asset managers are increasingly banking on bitcoin, while others are warning it's a bubble set to burst. So who is correct? The answer is far from clear. But before barrelling blindly into the next bitcoin get rich-quick scheme, it's worth learning a little about the digital currency and why it's on the tip of the City's tongue. Bitcoin has made some early adopters into millionaires, but its recent spike leaves questions for those who haven't yet ventured in Bitcoin is essentially a piece of software. It allows users to trade digital 'coins' whose worth is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for them. The idea behind it was that users would be able to create a 'peer-to-peer electronic cash system'. This would be free of middlemen such as banks it is no coincidence bitcoin sprung up in the depths of the financial crisis, when confidence in big banks was at its lowest. In what is often considered to be a wry nod to the health of the mainstream banking system, bitcoin's creator embedded a headline from The Times newspaper into the first block of bitcoin transactions ever recorded. Published on January 3, 2009, it read: 'Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.' Anyone wanting to make purchases, while ruling out the need for fat-cat bankers and historic City institutions, could do so using bitcoin. And anyone who wanted to partake in the digital equivalent of stuffing their money under the mattress could buy bitcoin and hold it in an online 'wallet'. Some people including a handful of renowned asset managers are increasingly banking on bitcoin, while others are warning it's a bubble set to burst Lucky people who did that last March, when bitcoin was in its most recent trough, would be laughing now. If they had bought 1,000 worth, and sold it last week when bitcoin hit a high of $41,999, they would have made more than 7,000 profit. But what has caused this bonanza, and having crashed towards $30,000 early this week, why is bitcoin now heading back up to $40,000? Part of the rush last year was created by firms such as Paypal accepting the currency. Some investors took this as a sign of legitimacy and, expecting a rise in demand, decided to buy. Q&A: THE INS AND OUTS OF BITCOIN WHAT IS BITCOIN? You'll often hear it described as a cryptocurrency, which isn't very enlightening. In simple terms, it is virtual money, with no physical notes or coins. It was invented by someone claiming to be called Satoshi Nakamoto and to be Japanese, but his or her real identity is unknown. In its early days it was often used for illicit activity but bitcoin has become attractive to ordinary investors. HOW DOES IT WORK? Bitcoins are stored in a digital wallet on smartphones or computers. Transactions are recorded on Blockchain, the giant online ledger behind the currency. You can in theory use bitcoin to pay for goods and services, though they are not accepted everywhere. Or you can buy it in the hope of a profit. WHERE CAN YOU BUY IT? Anyone with access to a computer or smartphone can buy bitcoin through an exchange. You will have to pay trading fees on top of the cost of the bitcoin itself. WHAT IS IT WORTH? Bitcoin is not backed by any tangible asset or underlying commodity such as gold, so it has no intrinsic value. It is 'worth' what people are prepared to pay and that has been extremely volatile. Last March, one bitcoin was worth round $5,000. After a spectacular rally around Christmas, it surpassed $41,000 in the first week of January. It is at $38,000. SHOULD I BUY? It depends on whether you believe bitcoin will rise in value. It's a huge risk. City watchdog the FCA recently reminded savers that they should be prepared to lose all the money they put into bitcoin, so only invest cash you can afford to lose. If things do go wrong, dealings in bitcoin are largely outside the regulators' safety nets. Another reason for bitcoin's sudden popularity is more complex. The supply of traditional currencies, such as the pound, is theoretically unlimited the Bank of England can always ask the money printers to create more bank notes, if it sees fit, or create a similar effect through its bond-buying programme. Last year was a case in point. The Bank of England pumped hundreds of billions of pounds into the economy as it shuddered to a halt during the pandemic. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is limited. There are a finite number which can ever be created so as long as people want to keep using them, their value will theoretically keep rising. Anatoly Crachilov, chief executive of technology-focused asset manager Nickel Digital, thinks wild swings such as the one-day 20 per cent fall earlier this week are to be expected because it is still 'new technology'. But he added: 'Only professional investors with a long-term view on the underlying technology should have exposure to this asset class.' This echoes a warning from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) this week, which told investors buying bitcoin that they should be prepared to lose all their money. Financial crime lawyer Bambos Tsiattalou from Stokoe Partnership Solicitors is also sceptical. 'Bitcoin and crypto-currencies alike are destined to fail,' he said. 'The problem with all cryptocurrencies is that they actually have no real intrinsic value they are actually worthless.' European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde this week blasted bitcoin for allowing 'funny business' like money laundering, and called for global regulation. The FCA seems to be taking smaller steps, focusing on how bitcoin investments are advertised to unsuspecting savers. But Tsiattalou is dubious about whether increased regulation will help. He said: 'The only thing that more stringent regulation will do is make the current speculative demand for crypto-currencies wane, which will ultimately lead to all cryptocurrencies reaching their true monetary value of zero, making it one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in recorded history.' .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... WASHINGTON The U.S. military has met its goal of reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to about 2,500 by Friday, a drawdown that may have violated a last-minute congressional prohibition. The reduction could complicate matters for the incoming Biden administration, which must determine how to handle a Trump administration commitment to the Taliban to remove all U.S. military, intelligence and contractor personnel from Afghanistan by May as a move to spur peace negotiations. Those talks are in an early stage. Senior U.S. commanders are skeptical of the Talibans stated commitment to peace, although they have said they can accomplish their mission in Afghanistan with 2,500 troops. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Christopher Miller, in his final days as the acting secretary of defense, announced on Friday the 2,500 troop level, saying it brings the United States closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war. He said the U.S. remains in position to ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to harbor those who seek to bring harm to the United States of America. President Donald Trump, who ordered the reduction in November, when there were about 4,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, aid Thursday that troop levels in Afghanistan had reached a 19-year low, although he did not mention a troop number. Last February his administration struck a deal with the Taliban to reduce American troop levels in phases and to go to zero by May 2021. It is unclear how the incoming Biden administration will proceed. President-elect Joe Biden, who has advocated keeping a small counterterrorism force in Afghanistan as a way to ensure that extremist groups like al-Qaida are unable to launch attacks on the United States, faces a number of questions on Afghanistan. One is how and whether to proceed with fledgling peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.. Trump in his brief statement alluded to his longstanding desire to get out of Afghanistan entirely. I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars, he said, referring to U.S. wars that have dragged on in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq for much of the period since 2003. Although senior military officials had cautioned against speedy troop reductions in Afghanistan, Miller announced on Nov. 17 that he was implementing Trumps order. As a result, military commanders scrambled to pull more than 1,500 troops out of the country in the last few weeks. At Trumps order, commanders also cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 2,500 from about 3,000 in the same period. Miller confirmed Friday that the Iraq drawdown had been completed. The Afghanistan decision was seen by some as unnecessarily complicating the decision-making of the incoming administration. Trump at the time had refused to acknowledge that he had lost the election and would be ceding to Biden on Jan. 20. Some in Congress, including fellow Republicans, opposed Trumps decision. Under the National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress two weeks ago, the Pentagon was explicitly forbidden to use money from this years or last years budget on reducing the number of troops below 4,000 or below the number that was in the country the day the bill was finalized, which was Jan. 1. Trump vetoed the measure, but both the House and Senate voted to override his veto. The defense legislation provided two conditions under which the Pentagon could get around the prohibition a presidential waiver or a report to Congress assessing the effect of a further drawdown on the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan and the risk to U.S. troops there. As of Thursday the Pentagon had met neither of those conditions. In his statement Friday, Miller made no mention of this statutory prohibition. However, a spokesman, Maj. Robert Lodewick, said Trump signed a waiver of the legislative prohibition, stipulating that the drawdown was important to U.S. national security interests. Earlier in the week, Trump had not yet signed the waiver, meaning it came after the drawdown had been completed. Miller said Friday the Pentagon is planning for additional troop reductions to zero by May, adding that any such future drawdowns remain conditions based. The legislative prohibition on completing the drawdown put the Pentagon in a bind, coming weeks after it had begun the drawdown. Convention dictates that reducing troop levels, associated equipment and adjusting associated force protection requirements across a country-wide combat zone is not something that can be paused overnight without increasing risk to the force and core mission goals, Lodewick said. The main reason for concern about a too-quick troop withdrawal is what the Pentagon sees as continued high levels of Taliban violence against the Afghan government. Some U.S. officials have questioned the wisdom of fully withdrawing, in accordance with the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban, if violence remains high. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was aimed at overthrowing the Taliban regime, running al-Qaida out of the country and laying the groundwork for a global war on terrorism. It turned into something more ambitious but less well-defined and became far more costly in blood and treasure. During Bidens time as vice president, the U.S. pushed U.S. troop totals in Afghanistan to 100,000 in a failed bid to compel the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. When Trump took office four years ago there were about 8,500 troops in the country, and he raised it to about 13,000 that summer. GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY, MI A former jail administrator who pleaded guilty last month to several charges stemming from alleged sexual relationships with inmates has been sentenced to 16 months to 10 years in prison. Former Grand Traverse County Jail administrator Todd Ritter, 48, of Lake Ann, was sentenced Friday, Jan. 15. He will serve concurrent sentences for three crimes: embezzlement by a public official over $50, 16 months to 10 years; misconduct in office, 16 months to five years; and willful neglect of duty, 90 days, according to a news release from the Michigan Attorney Generals Office. He was also ordered to pay restitution of about $11,300. Felony charges of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and larceny in a building were dismissed when Ritter took a plea deal in December. He was arrested and charged in August. The case began in April 2019 when the Grand Traverse County Sheriffs Office put Ritter on administrative leave after reports of his unprofessional conduct began to surface. Ritter was accused of having sexual relationships with female inmates housed at the jail he oversaw. In one instance, it is alleged that Ritter used his position to retain a female inmate at the Grand Traverse County Jail after she completed her sentence and was supposed to be transferred to the Kalkaska County Jail. At the same time, Grand Traverse County inmates were being boarded at taxpayer cost at other jails due to overcrowding. RELATED: Former Michigan jail administrator pleads guilty to embezzlement, misconduct RELATED: Former Grand Traverse County jail administrator charged with embezzlement, criminal sexual conduct Michigan State Police led the investigation into the allegations following an internal review by outside legal consultants hired by the sheriffs office. In April 2020, the Michigan Attorney Generals Office agreed to review the case after a petition was submitted by the Grand Traverse County prosecutor, who wanted to avoid any actual or perceived conflict of interest, MLive previously reported. READ MORE: Congressman Meijer talks armed guards, body armor in wake of U.S Capitol attack Father charged with involuntary murder in shooting death of 8-year-old son Police officer shoots suspect attempting to run him over with stolen car Man suspected of illegally climbing Mackinac Bridge arrested, charged for Ohio stunt WOODBURY Community Theatre at Woodbury recently announced that the Farley Fund, a private family foundation, has granted CTAW an unrestricted gift of $5,000, as a way of supporting the theater and honoring the invaluable contributions it has made to the Woodbury arts community. Dr. Farley said, I have been committed to supporting the arts and art education my whole life, both personally and professionally. This year, the Farley Fund, on my behalf, granted CTAW an unrestricted gift of $5,000, as a way of supporting the theater and honoring the invaluable contributions it has made to the Woodbury arts community. Kathryn T. Farley, Ph.D. obtained a doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, writing a dissertation that investigated the use of digital media tools in performing arts curriculums. At Northwestern, she taught undergraduate courses exploring contemporary drama and the integration of technology into live theatre. Prior to moving to Middlebury, CT with her husband, Dr. Richard Lipton in September, Kathryn served as lecturer in digital arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Though she was disappointed to have her Off-Broadway debut as the lead in the play, Auntie Mame cancelled because of the Covid- 19 virus, Kathryn is thrilled to be a new member of the CTAW community. She looks forward to participating in the theatres exciting array of creative projects and activities. CTAWs mission is to foster an environment that promotes Theatre Arts within the greater Woodbury community. CTAW is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit run entirely by volunteers. Do Not Flush guidance issued WINSTED As residents are using disinfecting wipes and paper towels to clean their homes during this COVID-19 outbreak, the Department of Public Works are urging residents to keep one thing in mind: Dont flush them down the toilet. The DPW would like to remind people that these products are only flushable in the sense that they go down the toilet. Beyond that, these types of products have been known to wreak havoc with the rest of the sewer system. Problems have included the clogging of pipes, pumps, screens, filters and may even cause sewer back-ups into homes, according to a statement. Wipes and paper towels do not break down like toilet paper does in water. They are stronger, and many wipes include plastics and materials like nylon. That means bad news for sewer systems. With the use of these products, please throw them into the trash. They should be treated as if they are garbage and disposed of in a sealed receptacle. Freezer bags or plastic bags from the supermarket can serve as a method to contain these waste products. Burlington residents get free admission to carousel BURLINGTON In 2011, a group of committed community leaders in Burlington came together to create an endowment fund to support charitable projects and programs that will enhance the quality of life for the citizens of Burlington, Connecticut. Since 2011, Burlington Community Fund has awarded more than $25,000 in grants. The Carousel Museum and Museum of Fire History was awarded a grant to allow free general admission to visitors that live in the town of Burlington through Dec. 31, 2021. Residents should be prepared to show and ID or proof or residence. General admission includes guided tours at noon and 2:00 PM during public hours and one carousel ride per person. Additional carousel rides are $1 each or $3 for an unlimited ride bracelet. Presently masks are required for all visitors over the age of 2. Masks are required for admission. Reservations are not required. For information, go to https://www.thecarouselmuseum.org/ White Memorial presents Animals in Medicine and Magic LITCHFIELD Animals in Medicine and Magic in Ancient Egypt with Dr. Sofia Aziz, (How the evolution of animal cults and deities was influenced by the emergence of rudimentary Biomedical Science and Pharmacology in Ancient Egypt), will be presented on Zoom by the White Memorail Conservation Center at 2 p.m. Jan. 16. Veterinary medicine in ancient Egypt probably formed side by side with human medicine. Domesticating animals created a symbiotic relationship in which humans and animals became codependent. Evidence suggests that the rudiments of biomedical science were gleaned from observing animal dissections through ritual sacrificing. Animal deities emerged which were invoked to assist in the well being of humans. Some of the vast pharmacopeia and medical remedies of the ancient Egyptians could have been developed by observing animals self medicate in the wild. Sofia Aziz is a Biomedical Egyptologist and Published Writer. Her areas of expertise are: Medicine and Magic in ancient Egypt, Mummification processes both anthropogenic and natural, and health and disease of ancient populations. She has appeared in a number of documentaries including Egypts Unexplained Files on the Science Channel in the US and the History Channel in the UK. Admission is free to members, $10 for guests. Pre-registration and pre-payment are required. Call 860-567-0857 or register online: www.whitememorialcc.org A link to the program will be emailed to you the day before. President Ramnath Kovind on Friday donated Rs 5,01,000 as a contribution towards the construction of in Uttar Pradesh's A Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) delegation including its International Working President Alok Kumar, RSS leader Kulbhushan Ahuja, the treasurer of Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Trust Govind Dev Giri and temple construction committee head Nripendra Mishra called on the President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan this morning. "This is VHP's campaign initiated to seek a contribution towards the construction of in cutting across languages, castes, communities and classes," informed a senior VHP member. Talking about the donation received by VHP from President Kovind, Alok Kumar told ANI, "He is the first citizen of the country. So we went to him to initiate this drive and he met us with his family and donated a sum of Rs 5,01,000 and gave his good wishes for the success of the mission." Talking about the further action plan on the collection of funds for the construction of the temple he said, "In this time we will go to 13,000 families. The initial estimate was Rs 11 crore, now it is Rs 13 crore, which means 65,000 families spread over 5,25,000 villages. So, this is the most comprehensive campaign for the temple and we will unify the country." Talking to ANI about the availability of contributing to the temple online he responded, "Certainly, that is on the website and even this entire money, most of it is going to be received through cheques. All the money that is collected will be deposited in a bank within 48 hours of the collection. Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan also donated Rs 1 lakh as a contribution to the construction of the in According to the trust, the temple will be built by adhering to the country's ancient and traditional construction techniques. It will also be built in a manner to sustain earthquakes, storms, and other natural calamities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Ayodhya on August 5 to attend the 'Bhoomi pujan' at the Ram Janmbhoomi site. (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.) Teachers, educational assistants and other school staffers will be able to jump COVID-19 testing lines to receive same-day results starting Monday, when high schoolers resume in-class learning after a month at home. Teachers, educational assistants and other school staffers will be able to jump COVID-19 testing lines to receive same-day results starting Monday, when high schoolers resume in-class learning after a month at home. However, the province has yet to confirm where in line teachers are on the immunization priority list. On Thursday, Manitoba unveiled plans for its first Fast Pass testing centre, where eligible educators can get tested to receive results within hours. School staff, including custodians, bus drivers and workers in school-based early learning and child care facilities, will be able to schedule an appointment at 1066 Nairn Ave., in Winnipeg, as early as Jan. 18. Eligible clients must have valid employment identification and be symptomatic, identified as a close contact as a result of an exposure at school, or have a symptomatic household member. The pilot project is expected to start by testing 20 to 40 school staff daily with Songbird Hyris bCUBE equipment. Negative results will still need to be confirmed at the provincial lab, but early positive results will require educators to start self-isolating right away. Officials aim to expand the pilot to 80 tests daily at the end of January, and later, double that. "It is certainly our hope that this will work to alleviate absences, to a certain degree... and also, to address that anxiety that occurs when a teacher is told theres a possible exposure," said James Bedford, president of the Manitoba Teachers Society. CP Manitoba unveiled plans for its first Fast Pass testing centre, where eligible educators can get tested for COVID-19 and receive results within hours. The pilot project is expected to start by testing 20 to 40 school staff daily and expand to more than 150 daily tests. Negative results will still need to be confirmed at the provincial lab, but early positive results will require educators to start self-isolating right away. Results from rapid tests typically require a confirmation test at Cadham Provincial Laboratory. (Adrian Wyld / Canadian Press files) Following the announcement, Bedford said Thursday the union that represents 16,000 public school teachers will be watching closely to ensure testing capacity meets demand. The inaugural site will initially only be open to staff who work directly with students in Winnipeg, Seven Oaks, River East Transcona, Seine River and Hanover school divisions. Those districts were chosen by Manitoba Health, Education Minister Cliff Cullen said. Staff from other divisions will be able to access the site in February. The pilot will start off slow, Cullen said, adding the plan is to expand to additional locations. Winkler and Brandon could be home to future sites. Cullen also confirmed Thursday the province is not making any adjustments to how schools operate when high schoolers resume in-class instruction Monday. Students are expected to return to routines similar to those in place pre-winter break, while the 28 Hanover-area schools that were in code red in the fall are now in code orange. "Teachers are excited to see kids face-to-face again," said Emery Plett, principal of Steinbach Christian School, which will welcome back grades 7-12 students, who havent studied in school since late November. Politicians and public health officials alike have repeatedly said pandemic protocols in schools are working, and the novel coronavirus hasnt been spreading significantly within such facilities. "It is certainly our hope that this will work to alleviate absences, to a certain degree... and also, to address that anxiety that occurs when a teacher is told theres a possible exposure." James Bedford, president of the Manitoba Teachers Society Acting deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal said Thursday officials have "lots of evidence" theres a much lower risk of contracting COVID-19 in a school than in the general population. He told reporters the provinces vaccine task force will decide how teachers are prioritized. The Canadian Teachers Federation is pushing for teachers to be next in line for vaccinations right behind health-care workers and vulnerable groups. President Shelley Morse is critical of government messaging that schools are safe, given there isnt mandatory masking for all ages, many classes cannot accommodate two metres of distancing, and ventilation in old buildings can be poor. Ontario has announced a plan to include teachers in the second phase of its vaccine roll-out; Morse, who is based in Nova Scotia, said she hopes other provinces follow suit. "Because of our environment and because of the amount of people teachers and education workers come into contact with every day, we do need to be on a priority list," she said. MTS also indicated Thursday it wants to see a provincial plan that prioritizes teachers immunization. Since 2021 began, there have been 74 cases among Manitoba students and 11 cases involving school staff, according to the latest public health data. with files from Katie May and Danielle Da Silva maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca The reduction is due to a reorganisation at Pfizer in connection with an upgrade of production capacity. Pfizer, the supplier of the COVID-19 vaccine, has announced reduced vaccine deliveries starting next week and for some time ahead. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) has prepared for this eventuality with an emergency stockpile and can therefore deliver as planned to municipalities and health services, as reported on its website. "For Norway, this means that in week 3 we will receive 7,800 fewer doses than Pfizer had previously reported," says Geir Bukholm, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Read alsoOver 20 people vaccinated with Pfizer vaccine die in Norway media"We were notified just before 10 a.m. today. We were predicted to receive 43,875 vaccine doses from Pfizer in week 3. Now it looks like we will receive 36,075 doses. We have not yet sent out what we have kept in readiness for such cases and are now able to compensate for this reduction in deliveries with the emergency stockpile we have in Norway. Our current stockpile will be able to compensate for a reduction in the planned deliveries for a few weeks ahead, should the need arise," says Bukholm. The reduction is due to a reorganisation at Pfizer in connection with an upgrade of production capacity. Once this upgrade is completed, they will be able to increase their production of the vaccine from the current 1.3 billion doses per year, to 2 billion doses per year. The temporary reduction in supplies will affect all European countries. It is not yet clear how long it will take before Pfizer is up to maximum production capacity again. In turn, six European Union governments asked the executive EU Commission in a letter on Friday to pressure Pfizer-BioNTech, "to ensure stability and transparency of timely deliveries" of vaccines against COVID-19, as reported by Reuters. The letter, signed by the health ministers of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, said Pfizer/BionTech had told them that agreed vaccine deliveries in the coming weeks would be substantially reduced. "This situation is unacceptable," said the letter, which was seen by Reuters. "Not only does it impact the planned vaccination schedules, it also decreases the credibility of the vaccination process." More news reports Reporting by UNIAN Another Alabama man has been identified as one of the protesters who breached the U.S. Capitol one week ago. Federal court documents made public Thursday said 44-year-old Joshua Matthew Black of Leeds was among the crowd that forced its way into the building while the joint session of Congress was underway to certify the vote count of the Electoral College in the 2020 presidential election. Several of the protesters then made their way into the Senate chambers, video of which was captured on multiple cell phones. One of those men, according to a federal criminal complaint, was Black. He is charged with entering a restricted building or grounds; violent entry and disorderly conduct. Joshua Black has been arrested and made an initial appearance in the Northern District of Alabama in connection with the events at our Nations Capitol last week, said U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona. This case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia and investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office. My office is assisting with the arrest and court proceedings held in our district. I want to take this time to thank the prosecutors in my office, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia, the FBI, both here and in DC, and other law enforcement agencies who assisted in the arrest of Mr. Black, Escalona added. Black was seen on video and in photos wearing a red hat, camouflage jacket and yellow gloves and appeared to be bleeding from the left cheek. Two days later, the complaint says, someone using the username LetUs Talk posted two videos to YouTube. Like Black in the videos shot in the Senate chambers, the man had blood on the left side of his face and said in the YouTube video he had been shot with a projectile. In that video, federal prosecutors say, Black discussed entering the Capitol and being on the Senate floor. Once we found out Pence turned on us and they had stolen the election, like officially, the crowd went crazy,' Black said on the video. I mean, it became a mob. We crossed the gate. He later said, We just wanted to get inside the building. I wanted to get inside the building so I could plead the blood of Jesus over it. That was my goal. The federal affidavit said Black also confessed to possessing a dangerous weapon. I actually had a knife on me, but they neverI had too much clothes on, it was freezing out there, you know, so I never, I wasnt planning on pulling it. I just carry a knife because I do. I work outside and you need knives, you know. I just, youre not allowed to carry guns in D.C. and I dont like being defenseless. Black said on the video that once he saw the door to the U.S. Senate, I just felt like the spirit of God wanted me to go in the Senate room, you know. So I was about to break the glass and I thought, no, this is our house, we dont act like that. I was tempted to, Im not gonna lie. Cause Im pretty upset. You know? They stole my country. Joshua Matthew Black, of Leeds, was identified being in the crowd of protesters that breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Federal Court Documents) He said once inside, he praised the name of Jesus on the Senate floor, adding that was Gods goal. On Jan. 7, the FBI received an anonymous call from a man admitting he was among the crowd that broke into the Capitol. The telephone number, according to the FBI, was associated with Black. Later last week, when the FBI released photos in hopes of getting the intruders identified, a tipster called the FBI National Threat Operation Center to report Black was among the rioters sought. The caller said they knew Black 15 years ago when they lived in Alabama. On Jan. 8, the court records state, Black voluntarily met with an FBI agent in Moody. He stated to the agent that he had recorded the YouTube video about his experience entering the Capitol and the Senate chamber. Leeds and Moody police confirmed they assisted the FBI with the ongoing investigation. Black was questioned by officers and federal agents at the Moody Police Department headquarters. Alabama police said theyd had no prior dealings with Black. Court records dont indicate any prior arrests locally. He is being held in a west Alabama jail. Black is at least the third Alabama man identified as among the crowd that breached the U.S. Capitol. Lonnie Coffman, 70, was arrested by federal authorities just hours after the Jan. 6 breach and riot at the U.S. Capitol. The 70-year-old north Alabama man has since been indicted on 17 charges following the seizure of nearly a dozen Molotov cocktail explosive devices from his pickup truck, as well as a number of guns, ammo and concerning handwritten notes. The feds have asked that he be held without bond because of his concerning history and characteristics that raise a grave risk that he would endanger the community should he be released from custody. Among the handwritten notes was a letter in which he named U.S. Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, who labeled a Muslim, and also named a judge with words bad guy beside the judges name. Another note read, We The People Are the Rightful Masters of Both The Congress and The courts, Not To Overthrow The Constitution But to Overthrow The Men Who Pervert The Constitution, and attributed the words to Abraham Lincoln. Coffmans truck was parked just a few blocks from the Capitol. Authorities noted he had apparently been living in the truck in the D.C. area for a week prior to the breach. Surveillance footage showed he parked the truck near the Republican National Club, a few blocks from the Democratic National Committee Headquarters, both targeted for reports of explosive devices, about 9:20 a.m. that Wednesday. Investigators spotted a gun in Coffmans truck and later carried out a search of the vehicle. He was detained later in the day when he returned to his vehicle. Other items found in Coffmans truck and used as exhibits as to why he should remain in federal custody pending trial include a loaded 9 mm handgun, a loaded rifle, several large-capacity ammunition feeding devices loaded with more than 10 rounds of rifle ammunition, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a crossbow with bolts, several machetes, camouflage smoke devices, a stun gun, and the 11 mason jars filled with flammable liquid, which authorities said was the equivalent to homemade napalm. There was also a lighter and rags. Two of the guns were in Coffmans pockets. There is clear and convincing evidence that (Coffman) would pose a danger to the community if released and that there are no release conditions or combination of conditions that would ensure the safety of the community,' according to federal prosecutors. The defendant brought these weapons to the immediate vicinity of the U.S. Capitol Building and traveled the area with two firearms on his person,' records state. The amount of weapons suggest an intent to provide them to others as no one person could reasonably use so many at once. The nature and seriousness of the danger that (Coffman) would pose if released cannot be overstated,' the federal prosecutor wrote. Coffman remains held in D.C. State prosecutors included these photos of William Watson, who they said participated in Wednesday's riots at the U.S. Capitol. Another Alabama man had his six-figure bond revoked in a state drug case after Lee County prosecutors said he participated in Wednesdays riots at the U.S. Capitol. William Watson, 23, of Auburn had been out on $103,000 bond in a drug trafficking case from July, but violated the terms of his bond banning him from leaving Alabama after he was spotted inside the U.S. Capitol during last weeks riots in which four people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, died. In a motion filed earlier this week to revoke Watsons bond, which was approved by a Lee County judge, prosecutors said Watson was shown on video footage inside the Capitol standing next to a man with [a] horned hat -- presumably Jake Angeli, who is also known as QAnon Shaman and was arrested on federal charges stemming from the riots. Watson, prosecutors said, has distinctive tattoos on his hands, which are visible in the images from the Capital [sic.] Additionally, the defendant made a social media post including a photo of his participation and comments regarding one of his tattoos. The motion was referring to a Snapchat post allegedly made by Watson denying claims on social media that he was in Antifa because of the tattoos. Watson said his tattoos were inspired by a video game and that he was not a member of Antifa. The fake news wont win against the thousands of patriots who recorded [Wednesday,] Watson wrote. A businessman has been accused of illegally landing a 2million private plane at Prince William's former RAF base because he wanted 'to go to the beach' during lockdown. The keen amateur pilot - named as Richard Charles Priestley Wood of London, according to the Civil Aviation Authority - allegedly flew nearly 300 miles from Surrey to the fighter pilot training base at RAF Valley in Wales. He set off alone from Fairoaks Airfield in London to Anglesey in the Swiss-made 12-seater with the plan of a Bank Holiday day out at the beach last May. The base - where Prince William was stationed as an RAF Sea King pilot - was closed for runway repairs as he flew over. A businessman - named as Richard Charles Priestley Wood of London, according to the Civil Aviation Authority - has been accused of illegally landing a 2m private plane at Prince William's former RAF base because he wanted 'to go to the beach' during lockdown. (Above, the plane after it landed at the base last May) The keen amateur pilot allegedly flew nearly 300 miles from Surrey to the fighter pilot training base at RAF Valley (pictured) in Anglesey, Wales. He was arrested by military police after he touched down without receiving permission to land A Civil Aviation Authority investigation revealed that the pilot apparently tried to contact air traffic control but claimed he could not reach anyone. He was arrested by military police after he touched down without receiving permission to land. When told he was breaching anti-Covid lockdown rules against travel, he allegedly told officers 'it was OK as he had it two months ago'. He allegedly told officers he thought it would be 'OK to land at the airfield as he had read on Wikipedia that it handled civilian traffic'. RAF Valley's fire crew saw the aircraft - and, assuming it was in distress, attended the scene as an emergency. It was 'quickly determined' that the aircraft was not an emergency and the Military Provost Guard Service attended the scene to find out what happened. The pilot told them he had flown from London to 'go to the beach'. A report on the Ministry of Defence's air safety management system into the incident last year said the Pilatus PC12 N412MD landed on Runway 19 at the RAF base. The Duke of Cambridge spent three years at the base in Anglesey, North Wales, between 2009 and 2013, where he worked as a search and rescue helicopter pilot. (Above, Prince William at the base in 2011) The aircraft was searched by the RAF Police who found nothing suspicious and the pilot, who was the only person onboard the aircraft, was informed that he did not have authority to leave the base until it reopened the following day. But he said he was 'departing regardless and the RAF chose not to block the aircraft in allowing it to depart at 2:15pm. Mr Wood is accused of breaching air safety rules when he 'flew within an aerodrome traffic zone without having obtained information to enable a safe flight' on May 25, 2020, the Daily Post reported. He allegedly flew into the base 'without having obtained information from the air/ground communication service to enable the flight to be conducted safely within the aerodrome traffic zone'. He is set to appear at Caernarfon Magistrates Court on January 20 in the prosecution by the CAA. Speaking at the time Superintendent Richie Green of North Wales police said: 'We were contacted by colleagues from RAF Valley at 1.04 pm on Monday 25th May, reporting that a light aircraft had made an unauthorised landing at the airbase. The pilot was dealt with by Military Police. The pilot set off alone from Fairoaks Airfield in London to Anglesey in the Swiss-made 12-seater with the plan of a Bank Holiday day out at the beach. He is set to appear at Caernarfon Magistrates Court on January 20 in the prosecution by the CAA 'Whilst the incident is primarily being investigated by the RAF and Civil Aviation Authority, North Wales Police are currently considering potential breaches of the Covid legislation in Wales.' Security is tight at the base which is home to the No 4 Flying Training School which trains fighter pilots and crew for maritime operations. The Duke of Cambridge spent three years at the base in Anglesey, North Wales, between 2009 and 2013, where he worked as a search and rescue helicopter pilot. He completed his last shift at the base in September 2013, almost two months after wife Kate Middleton gave birth to son Prince George. MailOnline has contacted the Civil Aviation Authority for comment. CLEVELAND, Ohio Ohio Democrats officially selected Liz Walters, a Summit County councilwoman, to lead the party into the next election, looking to climb out of a rut lasting four election cycles that has rapidly seen their influence dwindle. Walters, the first woman elected chair, emerged as the front-runner this week to replace former Chairman David Pepper, who resigned in December after heading the party since 2015. She had received public endorsements from Sen. Sherrod Brown, labor union figures and young Democratic coalitions. Six candidates originally signed up to succeed Pepper, with the field dwindling over the last month to two: Walters and Columbus-based consultant Antoinette Wilson. Before the vote, Wilson dropped out and called for party unity and everyone to support Walters. I know with our work together were going to have a very bright future with this party that we love, Walters said. Were going to be in an exciting time to evolve this party to something new, something that is responsive to the needs of our activists and our voters and our candidates and make it sustainable for the long run so we can elect Democrats statewide from precinct committee all the way to the federal level. Walters, who was executive director of the party in 2014, will be tasked with navigating the party out of its lowest point in decades. The Democratic brand is incredibly low among voters, and Republicans control all three branches of state government as well as a majority of the congressional delegation. With the lone exception of Brown, Democrats have mostly been non-competitive in elections since 2012, when Democratic President Barack Obama and Brown both carried the state. Since then, Brown is the only Democrat to win a statewide partisan race, securing re-election in 2018. That drought for Democrats in what was once the nations preeminent swing state includes a pair of 8-percentage point victories for Republican President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Trumps latest victory snapped Ohios record streak of correctly choosing the winner of the presidency, unbroken since 1960 when Ohioans backed Republican Richard Nixon over Democrat John F. Kennedy. I know that all of you put a lot of hard work into the future of the party and Im here to do that with you, Walters said. Ill put my heart and soul into building this organization. Ill seek buy-in from you before decisions are made. And Ill listen more, talk less and work hard. Andre J. Washington, president of the Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute, a group of Black trade unionists, was elected to serve as vice-chair. 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. Washtenaw's Election Audit It wasn't the federal review some wanted. But it did show how hard it is to commit fraud.. by Trilby MacDonald and John Hilton Published in January, 2021 Hours before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying his defeat, President Trump claimed that he had actually won in a "landslide." Even after the riot, seven senators and 138 representatives voted to reject the electoral votes of Pennsylvania. Rep. Tim Walberg, who represents much of Washtenaw County, had said he would do so because "Poll challengers have raised valid concerns about election integrity across our Nation that brings into question the results of the 2020 election and puts faith in future elections in jeopardy." Have valid concerns been raised? The president and his supporters certainly think so: a December Fox News poll found that 77 percent of Trump voters believed that he had actually won re-election. Joining many of his GOP colleagues, Walberg called for the "Emergency Electoral Commission to perform an emergency audit of the election results in the 10 days before the inauguration." But there's no such thing as a federal "audit" of election results--elections are conducted by local governments with oversight by the states. That's why Trump and his supporters had to file sixty-two different legal challenges to the results. None produced any evidence to support the presidents' claim that he'd won a "sacred landslide victory." But they did highlight the intricate checks and balances built into the electoral process--the latest of which was a "risk-limiting audit" that Washtenaw County conducted and livestreamed on January 14. --- That audit was purely technical, a procedural review designed to reduce the possibility for errors in future elections. For the purposes of validating November's outcome, the review that mattered was the canvass and certification process, which took place within days of the election. Each county's bipartisan Board of Canvassers is charged with verifying that votes were properly cast and counted. They do this by reviewing the pollbooks, which document the ballots issued, cast, rejected and spoiled in each a voting precinct. The pollbooks include the name of every voter ...continued below... who was issued a ballot at the polls and those from whom an absent voter ballot was received, along with the serial number of the ballot that was issued to the voter.Canvassers review the statements of votes, which document the final vote totals obtained in a voting precinct or an absent voter counting board precinct. They open ballot containers to ensure that all ballots were removed and check for mathematical errors by election inspectors. If they suspect violations of election law, they notify law enforcement agencies.Once they are satisfied that the vote was accurately counted, they certify the election results, releasing the official vote totals, the names of the candidates elected, and the outcome of any questions on the ballot. Washtenaw County's canvassers certified the local results unanimously--and even congratulated city and township clerks on their "excellent job in managing all the elements of the November 2020 general election ... despite political passions running high and a pandemic."In the case of presidential elections, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers receives canvass records from each county before certifying the final vote tallies they have reported. Despite pressure from the president and his allies to reject the county totals, the state board approved the counties' canvasses by a vote of 3-0.---The post-election procedural audits come much later. January's risk-limiting audit was designed to confirm the accuracy of election results, using statistical methods to detect any anomalies. Ballots were randomly selected for audit using a mathematical formula and hand-tallied--a total of more than 18,000 ballots statewide.Risk limiting audits confirm the accuracy of ballot tabulation machines by comparing the results from the hand count of the randomly selected paper ballots to the results from the machines. Michigan's statewide audit is expected to confirm within a statistical level of certainty the results of the statewide presidential contest."Risk limiting audits are a new thing," says Ed Golembiewski, Washtenaw County Director of Elections. "Here in Washtenaw we participated in an early pilot in 2019 and then there was a pilot statewide audit after the March presidential election primary. We were undertaking this risk limiting audit regardless of independent calls for election audits."For maximum transparency and understanding, the Washtenaw County Clerk's office admitted both in-person and online observers to the audit at WISD's Teaching & Learning Center. When asked the day after the riot how it compared to the review called for by Walberg and his colleagues, Golembiewski emailed, "Unfortunately I do not know what Representative Walberg or others intended when they called for an Emergency Electoral Commission to perform an emergency audit of the election results. There has been no such commission in existence since 1876 and, should one have been created, its authority and the implications for county clerks offices in Michigan is not clear to me. Regardless, the matter seems settled given that Congress formally affirmed the votes of the Electoral College this morning without forming the commission." [Originally published in January, 2021.] Listen to article Matthew Kukah, bishop of Sokoto Catholic diocese, on Thursday expressed regrets that Nigeria did not learn any lesson from the civil war 51 years after it ended. The Bishop said there is still a lot of anxiety, frustration in the Nigeria, even as the country is yet to heal from the civil war. "51 years after the war, we are still hearing the kind of agitations that ordinary with good governance, honestly, devotion, dedication, commitment, the right leadership, we should have left all these anxieties behind us unfortunately they are still with us. "We have met a lot of people who fought the war who are full of regrets. We have not been able to forgive ourselves as a people. The wounds of the civil war have not been able to heal" he said. Kukah said this at the second edition of Never Again Conference with the theme, '51 Years After After the Civil War' held virtually and organised by Nzuko Umunna, a pan-Igbo socio-cultural organisation. The Bishop further noted that citizens of Nigeria and her leaders are not happy. "We are failing in almost every area, in education, lack of infrastructure, debt traps, inability to create new opportunities for industrialization and this massive cloud of insecurity threatening the whole nation" According to Kukah. "Part of our problem is not articulating the issues, we really don't have the mental toughness and discipline to follow through some of these diagnosed problems." Tanko Yakasai, on his part, said despite the level of post-war progress, several burning political issues remain to hunt our political landscape, such as: continuous call for a review of the 1999 Constitution and the need to restructure Nigeria; and Insecurity in different parts of the country arising from militants invasion and terrorist activities. Others according to him are: The current secessionist Movement for the state of Biafra under the umbrella of IPOB over 50 years after the Civil War; was over and the mistrust among major sub-regional groups which remain a threat to democratic processes in the country. Yamashita said Nigeria still need to learn lessons from the civil war 51 years ago, and address squarely the fractional tendencies in the country today. Unity, peace, trade, justice, democracy and development must be made to work for Nigeria to keep it one and stronger. "We should tackle the issue by deliberately skewing our next development plan to contain integration strategy as one of major features of the Plan" he said. In his remarks, Pat Utomi, chairman of the conference planning committee, said the initiative started as an advocacy in trying to bring a better understanding of the civil war and its aftermath to the Nigerian people. According to him, this is being pursued in a way that it will become a source of energy for bringing a new nation. We know that if people learn enough from errors of yesterday, they can, in fact, make more progress than they are currently making, he said. One of the biggest challenges of nation-building is the kind of trust deficits that exist which make policy implementation very challenging. A better understanding of the civil war will make it become a ladder that people can climb to higher levels of growth. All of Jaeger's 63 stores will close down and its 233 staff will be made redundant despite the brand's acquisition by Marks & Spencer, administrators for the fashion retailer said. On Monday, M&S sealed a deal to buy the Jaeger's brand and stock for an undisclosed amount understood to be around 5million, but not its stores and concessions. Jaeger collapsed in November along alongside sister firm Peacocks, both part of Dubai-based entrepreneur Philip Day's group EWM. Administrators at FRP Advisory said today that all of Jaeger's stores and concessions will now close down permanently. Soon to disappear from the High Street: All of Jaeger's 63 stores will close down permanently Only six head office staff and seven warehouse staff have been retained to assist them, but the remaining 22 head office staff and 211 store staff have been made redundant. Tony Wright, joint administrator of Jaeger Retail Limited and partner at FRP, said: 'The transaction with M&S provides a future for this well-known brand and, in competition with a number of bids, has provided the best outcome for creditors. 'Unfortunately, we will now progress with the permanent closure of the remaining store portfolio and work with the affected staff to access redundancy payment and support.' Jaeger was founded in 1884 the same year as M&S on the principles of Dr Gustav Jaeger, but it collapsed in November. Mr Day's EWM Group had also already called in administrators for its Edinburgh Woollen Mill and Ponden Home business earlier in November. M&S's move to buy up Jaeger brand and stock fits in with its new strategy of selling third-party brands which it announced in May last year. Since then, it stared selling other brands online, including Nobody's Child and Ghost. WASHINGTON Toyota Motor Corp settled a lengthy Justice Department civil probe into its delayed filing of emissions-related defect reports for $180 million, the government said on Thursday. Reuters first reported the expected settlement, which resolves the violations of the Clean Air Act. Toyota first disclosed in 2016 it was under investigation for the delayed reports to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Justice Department had not previously confirmed the investigation until Thursdays announcement by the U.S. Attorneys Office in Manhattan that the government had filed a civil lawsuit against the Japanese automaker. It simultaneously announced the settlement, which includes a consent decree that requires semi-annual compliance reports. Toyota will record $180 million in after-tax charges against earnings in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021, for costs relating to the agreement. The government said the settlement resolved Toyotas systematic, longstanding violations of Clean Air Act emission-related defect reporting requirements, which require manufacturers to report potential defects and recalls affecting vehicle components designed to control emissions. Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in New York said: Toyota shut its eyes to the noncompliance, failing to provide proper training, attention, and oversight to its Clean Air Act reporting obligations. She added that Toyotas actions undermined EPAs self-disclosure system and likely led to delayed or avoided emission-related recalls, resulting in financial benefit to Toyota and excess emissions of air pollutants. Toyota said in a statement the company nearly five years ago identified and self-reported a process gap that resulted in a delay in the filing of certain non-public EPA reports for emissions-related defects in vehicles. The automaker added that while this reporting delay resulted in a negligible emissions impact, if any, we recognize that some of our reporting protocols fell short of our own high standards, and we are pleased to have resolved this matter. Over a 10-year period ending in 2015, Toyota routinely filed emission defect reports to EPA materially late and, in many cases, failed to file such reports at all until a self-disclosure of non-compliance in 2015, the Justice Department said in a court filing. The government initially sought a substantially higher civil penalty from Toyota, sources briefed on the matter said. The $180 million fine is the largest civil penalty for violation of EPAs emission-reporting requirements. Toyota failed to report mandatory information about potential defects in their cars to the EPA, keeping the agency in the dark and evading oversight. EPA considers this failure to be a serious violation of the Clean Air Act, said EPA Assistant Administrator Susan Bodine. In recent years, the Justice Department has brought penalties in a number of auto emissions investigations, but unlike others including Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, the Toyota case has no allegations of emissions cheating. Rishi Sunak today warned things will 'get harder before they get better' as figures showed the UK is on track for another recession, with GDP tumbling by 2.6 per cent amid the second Covid lockdown in November. Restrictions in force in all four UK nations sparked another slump in activity after six months of improvement following the emergence of the disease. The impact was far more limited than many analysts feared as firms managed to find ways of working around the curbs. But it means the economy was still 8.5 per cent smaller in November than in February. Business groups warned that any December rally will have been smothered by the harsh 'tier' controls in England, and a double-dip recession now looks 'inevitable' with the new even tougher draconian to tackle mutant Covid. Mr Sunak said it was 'clear things will get harder before they get better and today's figures highlight the scale of the challenge we face'. However, he said the vaccine drive offered hope for recovery, and the Treasury was ready to support people hit by the crisis. 'With this support, and the resilience and enterprise of the British people, we will get through this,' he said. ONS Director for Economic Statistics Darren Morgan said: 'The economy took a hit from restrictions put in place to contain the pandemic during November, with pubs and hairdressers seeing the biggest impact. GDP tumbled by 2.6 per cent in November as the second coronavirus lockdown hammered the economy, official figures showed today. In this chart, 100 represents the size of the economy in 2018 'However, many businesses adjusted to the new working conditions during the pandemic, such as widespread use of click and collect as well as the move online. Manufacturing and construction generally continued to operate, while schools also stayed open, meaning the impact on the economy was significantly smaller in November than during the first lockdown. 'Car manufacturing, bolstered by demand from abroad, housebuilding and infrastructure grew and are now all above their pre-pandemic levels.' Despite the more resilient than expected numbers - particularly in construction and manufacturing - economists warned of a looming double-dip recession, after historic downturn last year. EY's Howard Archer said: 'With lockdowns across the UK back in place and set to last until at least mid-February... the economy will have a challenging start to 2021 and will experience clear contraction in the first quarter. 'The forecast is for a first quarter decline in GDP in the region of 3.0-4.0 per cent quarter-on-quarter. This would result in a double dip recession.' British Chambers of Commerce head of economics Suren Thiru said the latest figures 'highlight the continued damage being done to the UK economy'. 'The decline in output in November was largely driven by the drag on activity from the second lockdown, with consumer-focused services firms, who are most exposed to lockdown restrictions, enduring a particularly difficult month,' he said. 'With any post-lockdown rally in output in December constrained by the tougher tiered restrictions, including the introduction of tier 4 measures, the UK economy is likely to have contracted in the final quarter of 2020. 'A third lockdown means that a double-dip recession in the first quarter of this year may be inevitable, particularly if the current post-Brexit disruption persists through the quarter. Rishi Sunak is facing a tough task to manage the economy with his Budget due in March Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said: 'The UK has already had the worst recession of any major economy and now we're in danger of a devastating double dip. 'Instead of securing our economy, the Chancellor is winding down economic support and hitting families with a triple hammer blow of pay freezes, a cut to universal credit and a hike in council tax.' The Javits Center in New York City began COVID-19 vaccinations on January 13, 2021. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Procuring a coronavirus shot may be easy or difficult, depending on where you live. A handful of states have managed speedy vaccine rollouts by attempting to deliver as many doses as possible or anticipating distribution challenges. Other states have struggled with technical glitches or lack of demand among healthcare workers. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Around 260 million Americans are eligible to receive coronavirus vaccines, but procuring a shot may be easy or difficult, depending on where they live. US federal officials recommended Tuesday to expand vaccinations to all Americans ages 65 and older. Many states haven't finished vaccinating their first priority groups, which mainly include healthcare workers and nursing home residents. Some states have also prioritized vaccinations for frontline essential workers or individuals with health problems that raise their risk of severe disease. Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's coronavirus vaccine initiative, recently advised states to vaccinate these priority groups in tandem in situations where vaccine supply exceeds demand or doses might expire. Warp Speed officials have also pushed states to begin deploying vaccines at pharmacies, community health centers, and mass vaccination sites. That's a daunting challenge for many states with understaffed or underfunded health departments - though an $8.7 billion coronavirus relief package will soon assist states with vaccine distribution issues. States have also struggled to oversee mass vaccinations while simultaneously dealing with an unprecedented surge of coronavirus cases that has overwhelmed hospitals. Here are the states where it's easiest and most difficult to get a shot, based on the number of doses administered per capita. West Virginia leads the country in vaccinations per capita. As of Monday, none of the state's doses were sitting on shelves. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice. Chris Jackson, File/AP Photo West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice told CNBC on Monday that 100% of the state's vaccine supply was either in people's arms or had been tagged for a specific individual who would receive the shot in the coming days. Story continues The state has also vaccinated all of its nursing home residents and staff, as well as those in assisted living, Justice said. That's because West Virginia didn't rely on a federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens to start vaccinating these individuals on December 21. Instead, it partnered with local pharmacies and deployed its National Guard to get nursing home vaccinations underway about five days earlier. The state is also offering 14 vaccination clinics this week for individuals 70 and older. The first of these clinics opened on January 7. As of Wednesday, West Virginia had administered more than 6,600 doses for every 100,000 people, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. South Dakota has administered 6,100 doses for every 100,000 people. Technicians sort doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine. Win McNamee/Getty Images Around 4.5% of the state's population had been vaccinated as of Wednesday. So far, South Dakota has prioritized vaccinations for healthcare workers, nursing home residents, law enforcement, and correctional officers, but the state plans to extend vaccines to residents over 80 starting January 18. From there, it will open up doses to people 65 and older. Health officials have attributed the state's successful rollout to strong partnerships with local stakeholders, including three major health systems: Avera, Monument, and Sanford. "We sat down with the other healthcare systems and the state of South Dakota and mapped out county by county which system is vaccinating which county," Dr. Mike Wilde, chief medical officer at Sanford, told The Mercury News. Alaska was quick to vaccinate elderly residents after a shortage of demand among healthcare workers. Plastic surgeon Daniel Suver receives the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine on December 16, 2020 at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News via AP, Pool Alaska opened up vaccination clinics for healthcare workers at the end of December only to find that there were appointments left over after a few days. The state took it as a sign to move on to its next priority group: people age 65 and older. "We just said, 'OK, let's keep moving forward,'" Dr. Anne Zink, the state's chief medical officer, told Alaska Public Media. Starting January 6, Alaska began allowing people 65 and older to sign up for appointments online. Many of the state's vaccine providers have registered with PrepMod, a website that connects residents to local vaccination sites. Appointments for elderly residents in Alaska have been ongoing since Monday. The state has administered 5,800 doses for every 100,000 residents so far. North Dakota's vaccine rollout benefited from early planning. Dr. Avish Nagpal, an infectious disease specialist, receives the first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine given in North Dakota on December 14, 2020. Dave Kolpack/AP Photo The state has administered more than 5,600 doses for every 100,000 people, even after receiving fewer doses than health officials had anticipated. In addition to shipping doses to hospitals, North Dakota also delivered them to healthcare providers straight away. "We are able to break down COVID-19 vaccine shipments into smaller quantities to get vaccines to rural areas of the state, where many healthcare providers are located," the state's health department told Becker's Hospital Review. The department added that "healthcare providers were trained regarding the COVID-19 vaccines before they were authorized for use in the United States, which allowed for vaccines to be administered immediately." Like West Virginia, North Dakota also didn't rely on the federal government's partnership with CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate nursing home residents. Nearly 60% of the state's long-term care facilities didn't participate in the program, meaning they received their shots either directly from the state warehouse or through independent pharmacies and public-health agencies. Warp Speed officials have also heralded the speedy rollout in Connecticut. Dr. Ramkumar Sankaran receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Hartford, Connecticut on December 21, 2020. Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images Connecticut has administered around 4,800 doses for every 100,000 residents so far. The state finished administering the first round of shots to its 213 nursing homes and long-term-care facilities on January 8. Local health officials say there are multiple reasons for Connecticut's successful rollout. One is seamless communication between hospitals and Gov. Ned Lamont's office, which engage in weekly calls. Hospitals have also helped one another by sharing doses if a facility falls short of demand, or finding healthcare workers to vaccinate if extra doses are available. Josh Geballe, Connecticut's chief operating officer, told the Hartford Courant that the state is attempting to strike a balance between "micromanagement and the wild west." That means expanding vaccinations to first responders or residents ages 75 or older if there's a surplus of shots at the end of the day. Many of the state's vaccine providers keep a waitlist of these individuals so they can call upon them quickly to get vaccinated. Starting Monday, Connecticut will begin vaccinating individuals 75 and older as part of its routine schedule. A state phone line will help coordinate appointments, but large healthcare systems are also being asked to reach out to residents and schedule appointments on their own. Alabama's vaccine rollout, on the other hand, has fallen short. Fewer than 1,900 doses for every 100,000 residents have been given out so far. A pharmacist prepares the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Jessica Hill/AP Photo Alabama's public health officer, Dr. Scott Harris, told local news channel WRBL that the state's vaccine supply was actually smaller than had been reported by the federal government. "We absolutely acknowledge that we need to be doing this faster. Although, I take issue with the numbers being reported," he said on Wednesday. "Alabama supposedly has allocation of 300-and-something-thousand doses. We have actually only received about 270,000 doses in our state." The state also has a large rural population around 45% of residents live in rural areas, making it difficult to find centralized locations to deliver shots. "Administering a vaccine in rural Alabama is not about pulling up to a Walmart parking lot," John McGuinness, former state surgeon for the Alabama National Guard, told The Washington Post. "This amounts to a military campaign, moving from town to town and gathering demographics, relying on local leaders and being comprehensive in that way." Georgia has also struggled to put shots into arms. Emergency room nurse David Wilson receives the COVID-19 vaccine as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, right, looks on outside the Chatham County Health Department on December 15, 2020 in Savannah, Georgia. Sean Rayford/Getty Images The state has administered less than a quarter of the doses it has received so far. For every 100,000 residents, only 2,200 doses have been given out. Like Alabama, Georgia has run into issues with vaccinating residents in rural areas. Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, told local news channel 11Alive that some residents were wary of taking the vaccine. Staffing shortages at local hospitals may have further slowed the vaccination process. Georgia also ran into technical issues when it opened up appointments to people 65 and older on Monday. An online registration form for two counties, Cobb and Douglas, crashed. Phone lines jammed. And several district health departments were eventually forced to stop taking appointment requests. South Carolina hospitals have encountered a lack of demand among healthcare workers. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster shows a listing of hospitals in the state that have received the COVID-19 vaccine on January 5, 2021. Jeffrey Collins/AP Photo At the start of its vaccine rollout, South Carolina stipulated that 70% of eligible healthcare workers and nursing home residents needed to be vaccinated before moving on to the next priority groups. But by early January, local hospitals said not all healthcare workers were taking advantage of the available doses, and some vaccines appointments remained empty. On January 5, Gov. Henry McMaster told healthcare workers they had 10 days to get a shot or "move to the back of the line." South Carolina has administered fewer than 2,300 doses for every 100,000 residents, according to the CDC, but some hospital officials say that data could be behind. Patrick Cawley, vice president for health affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina, told The State that the federal government's reporting system was slowing down his center's ability to record vaccinations in real time. Indeed, for many states, the number of reported vaccinations typically lags 24 to 72 hours behind those that have actually been administered. Idaho planned for more doses than it received in December. A nurse prepares a syringe of the COVID-19 vaccine. Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool Out of every 100,000 Idaho residents, fewer than 2,400 doses have been given out. At that rate, it could take three years to vaccinate all of the state's 1.8 million residents. With the pace of vaccinations starting to ramp up, state health officials estimate they can immunize about more than half of Idaho's population by the end of 2021. But Idaho officials were thrown for a curve in December, when the state received far fewer doses than it had anticipated. Idaho's vaccine supply for the week of December 21 was cut by 44%. Gov. Brad Little urged residents at the time to "be patient with the distribution." Technical glitches slowed down vaccination appointments in Arizona. Emily Alexander, 37, shows her COVID-19 vaccination card shortly after getting the vaccine in the parking lot of the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on January 11, 2021. Terry Tang/AP Photo Arizona ran into issues with scheduling appointments for healthcare workers at the start of its vaccine rollout. In Maricopa, the state's most populous county, the health department website directed residents to vaccination sites well outside their immediate area. The system also had trouble downloading insurance information or following up with individuals about their second doses. County representatives told local radio station KJZZ that the error "slowed down the entire vaccine operation and put us days behind" in delivering shots. Though the state has expanded its rollout to more priority groups, Arizona has administered fewer than 2,400 doses for every 100,000 residents. On Monday, residents said they were having trouble making appointments through the Arizona Department of Health Services website, likely due to heavy online traffic. The state's healthcare system is also overburdened by a tsunami of coronavirus patients, meaning there aren't enough staffers to administer shots. By the end of December, NBC News reported, four out of five doses were sitting on shelves, waiting for someone to administer them. Read the original article on Business Insider MONTGOMERY, Ala., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Alabama families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Alabama families, schools, and organizations are hosting 672 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the most exciting of these will be a statewide school choice-themed photo contest in which schools, teachers, and classrooms have a chance to showcase their creativity and win Amazon gift cards. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational opportunity. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Alabama, the Retirement Systems of Alabama Tower in Montgomery will light up in red and yellow from dusk to 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 25. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the county of Dallas and cities of Cullman, Rainbow City, Athens, Huntsville, Carrollton, and Elberta. "School choice allows families to rise above challenging circumstances and find learning environments that inspire and work for them," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's celebrate great schools across Alabama, and increase our efforts to bring all families access to affordable, quality learning options." In Alabama, there are a variety of educational options, from traditional public schools to charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, homeschooling, and online schools. While Alabama does not offer open enrollment in traditional public schools, students below a certain income level or transferring from underperforming schools are eligible for state-run scholarship programs. Alabamans will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Alabama school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/alabama National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com 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. 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. FLINT, MI Prosecutors who unveiled criminal charges against former Michigan governor Rick Snyder and others involved in the Flint drinking water crisis were quick to deflect questions about the evidence that underpins their high-profile case. The reason for that, say outside legal experts, is that state law dictates a great deal of secrecy around the proceedings of a grand jury a prosecutorial method that is fairly common at the federal level but is rarely used for state cases in Michigan. This is not a traditional process by any stretch of the word in Michigan at the state level, said Anthony Flores, a former prosecutor in Ingham and Mecosta counties who teaches criminal law at Western Michigan Universitys Cooley Law School. Its really used as an investigative tool. There are two types of grand juries. One resembles a more traditional trial jury, in which a panel of citizens is assembled in secret to review evidence and determine whether criminal charges are warranted. The other involves one person, usually a judge, who makes that determination. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who along with Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud, unveiled the charges against Synder and nine others on Thursday, Jan. 14, said the indictments came out of a one-man grand jury in the form of David Newblatt, a Genesee County family division judge elected to the 7th Circuit Court in 2005. Newblatt was appointed by chief judge Duncan Beagle last year on a petition by the Flint prosecution team, which was dissolved by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and reformed with Hammoud and Worthy at the helm. Under former special prosecutor Todd Flood, fifteen city and state officials were charged with crimes related to the water crisis and seven of those cases were resolved with plea agreements. Hammoud and Worthy dismissed charges against the remaining eight defendants in 2019 and rebooted the prosecution with a pledge to dig deeper into the evidence. The do-over extended the prosecutions to an extent that some Flint residents essentially gave up hope of ever seeing justice and accountability for the colossal failures that resulted in poisoning of the citys municipal drinking water with lead, a potent neurotoxin, in 2014. To me, nothing has really been done in the way of holding people accountable, said LeeAnne Walters on Tuesday in reaction to the news that Snyder would be charged. Walters, a mother of four, played a key role in revealing the crisis. The DEQ is off the hook. Yes, Snyder is ultimately responsible because he was governor, but the experts in positions to handle these things got away pretty much scot-free. It didnt have to be as bad as it was, Walters said. However, word began to circulate last spring that a grand jury was potentially evaluating water case evidence in Genesee County. That process, secretive by nature, culminated in charges against Snyder and former advisors and leaders at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Related: 9 charged in rebooted Flint water prosecution The most serious charges are filed against former DHHS director Nick Lyon and former DHHS chief medical officer Eden Wells, who are each facing nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, a charge punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Jarrod Agen, a former communication director for Snyder, and Richard Baird, a former senior advisor, are each facing felony perjury charges also punishable by up to 15 years. Two former Flint emergency financial managers, Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose, are facing five-year felony misconduct charges. Howard Croft, a former Flint public works director, is facing misdemeanor neglect of duty charges. Nancy Peeler, who presently directs an early childhood program at DHHS under the administration of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is facing felony misconduct and misdemeanor neglect of duty charges. Snyder, 62, who served two terms as the governor, from 2011 until 2019, is charged with two counts of willful neglect of duty, misdemeanors punishable by up to one year in prison. Defense attorneys are calling the charges a travesty, among other things, and allege the prosecution is politically-motivated. Todays actions merely perpetrate an outrageous political persecution, said Brian Lennon, Snyders attorney. On Thursday, Worthy called the Flint prosecution one of the largest criminal investigations currently underway in the world and defended the secretive process. Worthy and Hammoud addressed the grand jury process several times Thursday, saying the required secrecy around it prohibits them from disclosing their evidence. At one point, they cited that secretive process to deflect a question about why certain people at the Genesee County Health Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency werent also charged alongside former state officials. We cant provide any evidence at all, Worthy said at one point. Thats why weve read the statute a couple of times so that people will understand. Michigan is not generally a grand jury state. Worthy said investigators reviewed literally millions and millions of documents, several hundred electronic devices and executed dozens of search warrants throughout the investigation. A panel of infectious disease experts were also brought in to study the deaths attributed to Legionnaires Disease and individually review each case. However, Worthy said state law prohibits disclosure of grand jury evidence and testimony. She said a formal announcement of charges could not be held until after Snyder and his fellow defendants were arraigned on Thursday. Likely in response to attorneys for Snyder and other defendants who complained this week that they were essentially blindsided by the new charges, Worthy said revealing that information before defendants were arraigned would have been against the law. Any suggestion that the attorney generals office inappropriately withheld information is disingenuous and inconsistent with the law, she said. Flores said the reason grand juries are so secretive is twofold. One reason is to protect the investigation and the second is to protect the investigation targets reputation from being tarnished should the grand jurors decide not to order charges. While rare in Michigan, Flores thinks a grand jury makes sense for the Flint prosecution because it would enable the introduction of evidence or testimony from witnesses who may otherwise be reluctant to cooperate with the traditional process. A witness or expert testifying before a grand jury may feel more comfortable speaking their mind concerning because they know they are protected on some level, Flores said. The downside is that such secrecy often looks bad. And theres a longstanding joking criticism of grand juries that suggests you could indict a ham sandwich using one because the prosecutor completely controls the process, Flores said. The lack of transparency makes everybody question what happened in the process, he said. Immediately, people are like what is this process and is it valid? In choosing a grand jury approach, Worthy cited the broad range of investigative tools it allows, saying it was the most expeditious and efficient way to use public dollars on the prosecution. She said other reasons would become clear as this unfolds. Hammoud defended the approach, saying the people of Flint deserved that we treat this investigation as the most important investigation in the world and thats how we proceeded. The federal government uses it all the time, Hammoud added. So, this is not some uncommon process that its used in a criminal justice system. Because the grand jury process does not involve the traditional next step in the justice system, the preliminary examination, the cases now move directly to discovery and trial. Flores said evidence will inevitably come to light through that process. Prosecutors are required to turn over evidence to defense attorneys so they can prepare for trial. All of this will come out in due time, he said. Related stories: Watch former Gov. Snyder be arraigned on charges Flint water prosecutors focus on Legionnaires deaths This indictment is a travesty, says defense attorney Snyder pleads not guilty on Flint water charges Flint residents hopeful new charges bring justice Aerial views of the Ames Research Center, NASA Research Park, and Moffett Airfield in California. Dominic Hart/NASA The US Department of Justice alleges a chief scientist at NASA was illegally a member of a Chinese government recruitment program. Meyya Meyyappan, 66, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to lying to federal investigators about his ties to foreign universities and a Chinese government recruitment initiative. Meyyappan was a member of the Thousand Talents Program, a Chinese government group that works to recruit international experts in scientific research and innovation. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. A chief scientist at NASA pleaded guilty on Wednesday to lying to the FBI and investigators about his ties to a Chinese government recruitment program and several Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese universities. Meyya Meyyappan, 66, has been employed by NASA since 1996. In 2006, he rose to the rank of chief scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. According to the Department of Justice, Meyyappan failed to notify the US about his outside employment between 2009 and 2020 and later lied to federal investigators during questioning. "Meyya Meyyappan held a trusted position at NASA with access to valuable intellectual property," Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement. "In violation of the terms of his employment and relevant laws and regulations, Meyyappan failed to disclose participation in a Chinese government recruitment program, and subsequently lied about it to NASA investigators, FBI agents, and our Office. Now, having admitted his crime, Meyyappan awaits sentencing." In 2016, Meyyappan applied to the Thousand Talents Program, a Chinese government initiative to recruit people with access to foreign intelligence and intellectual property. According to court records, Meyyappan was accepted into the program and later traveled to China and recommended others into joining the program. Additionally, Meyyappan was employed between 2009 and 2020 as a visiting professor at three separate universities in China, South Korea, and Japan. During this time, he traveled to the countries on numerous occasions where he gave lectures, received compensation, and wrote research papers. Story continues This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. According to prosecutors, NASA required approval for any outside employment activities, including travel and compensation. It was also mandatory by federal regulation to annually report any outside employment and compensation to the US Office of Government Ethics. Meyyappan failed to disclose his involvement with the Thousand Talents Program or any ties to Chinese or South Korean universities in any of his required reports, according to the DOJ. When interviewed, prosecutors allege that Meyyappan lied to investigators and denied any involvement with the Thousand Talents Program and the Chinese university. "Members of U.S. government agencies are strictly prohibited from maintaining undisclosed affiliations with foreign entities, especially those that are actively seeking our intellectual property and technological advances," FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement. "Meyyappan violated this sacred rule, and then lied to FBI agents about it. Actions like those carried about by Meyyappan can have security implications, and his charges should serve as a warning to others thinking about engaging in the same type of activity." According to a release from the DOJ, Meyyappan's charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 or "twice the gross gain or loss from the offense." His sentencing is scheduled for June 16. Read the original article on Business Insider Two men in their twenties were arrested yesterday in relation to a robbery that occurred earlier this week in Tipperary. Gardai have since charged one of them. He appeared before the Nenagh District Court this morning at 10.30am. The other man was released and a file will be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions. On Sunday, January 10, a robbery took place at a shop on Main Street, Borrisoleigh. Just before 5pm, two men - one of which was carrying what is believed to be a knife - entered the shop. Read More They threatened a staff member and demanded they hand over cash from the till. The two men then left the shop with some money, and drove away in a car that was parked outside. Gardai in Templemore and Thurles carried out an investigation, and then arrested the two men. They were being detained at Templemore and Nenagh Garda Stations under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act of 1984. HUNTINGTON, WV Police in West Virginia are investigating after a Michigan man was found dead inside a home in Huntington, police said. The Huntington Police Department said the investigation was being treated as a homicide, according to the Associated Press. The body of David Thompson II, 23, of Detroit, was found Thursday at a Huntington home, police said. Police were called to the house shortly after 1:30 a.m., the city said in a news release. No further information was provided. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - EVOLUTION GLOBAL FRONTIER VENTURES CORP. (CSE: EGFV) (the "Company" or "EGFV" ). Director Change - The Company is pleased to appoint Mr. Nelson Lau to the board of directors. Mr. Lau is a seasoned financial professional and has acted as a financial advisor for over 25 years. He has been active in the business of financial investments, personal and group insurance services. Mr. Lau has be awarded honors for many years from the Million Dollar Round Table organization, an association of financial professionals. Mr. Lau will serve as an independent director on the board, replacing Mr. Richard Palone Jr. whom has resigned from all positions from the company to pursue other opportunities. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Palone for his contributions and wishes him well in his future endeavours. New Advisory Board Members - The Company is also pleased to announce that it has formed an Advisory Board to assist the company in its growth and development. Initially it will consist of the following five members: Kristian Whitehead, P.Geo., is formerly VP Exploration for Eureka Resources Corporation, former Senior Project Managing Geologist for Hunter Dickinson Inc. & Taseko Mines and Senior Project Geologist for Kootenay Silver Inc. Kristian has over 18 years of professional geological experience where he has managed and implemented numerous strategic exploration and production projects based globally with multi-million dollar operational budgets. In addition, Mr. Whitehead is the President, Founder & Sole owner of Infiniti Drilling Corporation which has and continues to provide the geological industry with remote global diamond drilling, exploration, mining and project management support since 2005. Mr. Brendan Purdy is a practicing securities lawyer focused on the resource, life sciences, and technology sectors. In his private practice, he has developed extensive experience with respect to public companies, capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and other transactions fundamental to the Canadian junior equity markets. Prior to receiving his J.D. from the University of Ottawa, Mr. Purdy completed a Bachelor of Management and Organizational Studies degree from the University of Western Ontario, majoring in finance and administration. Mr. Purdy was previously CEO of Enforcer Gold Corp. and High Hampton Holdings Corp., and has served as director of several private and public companies. Mr. Ron Ozols has been involved in the media industry for over 35 years, first with Southam Inc. from 1979 to 1996, Hollinger Corporation from 1996 to 2003, and Canwest News Services from 2003 to 2010. and eventually with the Postmedia Group. In addition Mr. Ozols has been involved in financing and serving on the boards of both private and public reporting companies. Mr. VR (Rongjie) Lin has served in senior management and officer positions over the past 28 years and has served as departmental manager of a finance company in Asia. In addition, he has served as a Director of an asset management corporation. Mr. Richard W. Ma has served in founding an internet technology company specializing in advertising strategy and marketing. He has also served as a Regional Director in marketing and business development in a company focused on working with institutional clients and investors in the Asia Pacific region. Evolution Global Frontier Ventures Corp. Contact: Ron Miles CEO Email egfventures@gmail.com Telephone: (604) 725-2255 About EGFV Evolution Global Frontier Ventures Corp (formerly known as Ascension Exploration Inc.) - is a mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of gold properties. The Company is based in Vancouver, B.C. and holds an option over the Pichogen Property located in the center of Walls Township in Ontario. Disclaimers This news release contains forward-looking statements based on assumptions and judgments of management regarding future events or results. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update such statements. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators which is posted on www.sedar.com. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. No regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The Company does not undertake to update this news release unless required by applicable law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72149 A House Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump said he is buying body armour, hiring armed security and altering his routine following reports that death threats prevented more Republicans from voting with the Democrats. Michigan's Peter Meijer, who was one of 10 GOP representatives to turn against Mr Trump, told MSNBC he was taking "appropriate measures" to ensure the safety of his family. "It's sad that we have to get to that point but our expectation is that someone may try to kill us," he said. When asked by host Hallie Jackson directly if he was purchasing a bulletproof vest, altering his route and surrounding himself with armed security, the newly-minted Congressman said: "I am". "We're obviously trying to keep a very low profile," he said. Thats something were all kind of working together because obviously, we saw what happened on January 6, and the fact that there are 20,000 National Guardsmen in DC right now, there is a feeling that there is not control here and we dont know whats going to happen next, he added. We werent expecting for the Capitol to get overrun for the first time in 200 years, and so in this unprecedented environment with this unprecedented fear of divisiveness and hatred, we have to account for every scenario." Mr Meijer is the first of the 10 House Republicans to publicly speak on the threats of violence. He was joined in his vote to impeach Mr Trump by Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, John Katko, of New York, Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, Anthony Gonzalez, of Ohio, Tom Rice, of South Carolina, David Valadao, of California, Fred Upton, of Michigan, and Jamie Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, both from Washington. None have yet made public statements about threats of violence, but privately it has been reported that several GOP representatives suggested more would have voted in favour to impeach the president if not for fear of reprisals. Before the vote, Politico reported that several members wanted to impeach the president but death threats made them fearful "casting that vote could get them or their families murdered". The Hill also confirmed anonymously that at least three GOP representatives in Congress received death threats from both Republican and Democrat party members since the vote the challenge the Electoral College results. While some argued the threats could influence the vote, others said the bipartisan nature of the threats meant they wouldn't influence the outcome. No. Most people are getting them from both sides. And Id like to think they have the courage to do what they think is right regardless. I know I will, one lawmaker told The Hill. It came after Democrat Congressman Jason Crow said on MSNBC his Republican colleagues were "paralysed with fear" for their lives if they voted to impeach. "Welcome to the club, that's leadership, our country is in a very challenging time, many of us have felt that way for a long time because we've stood up for our democracy and we expect them to do the same," he told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said being fearful of death threats were a sign of their "privilege" if this was their first time. "Sorry if this lacks empathy, but its a privilege if this is their first time. They can do one vote," she said in a tweet. "If any GOP need advice on how to deal with it, they can call me," she added. Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. (JNS) In early 1979, I was sent to Iran to report on the rebellion then underway. I was woefully ignorant of Iranian history, politics and theology. But older, more experienced colleagues in the journalistic, diplomatic and intelligence communities also misunderstood what would become known as the Islamic Revolution. So, it was with both curiosity and pleasure that Ive been reading The Last Shah: America, Iran and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty, an enlightening new history by Ray Takeyh, the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relat... Military experts call hypersonic warheads the next big thing in intercontinental warfare. They see the emerging arms, which can deliver nuclear or conventional munitions, as zipping along at up to five miles a second while zigzagging through the atmosphere to outwit early-warning satellites and some interceptors. The superfast weapons, experts say, lend themselves to surprise attacks. President Trump has bragged about his super-dupers, even referring to the planned weapon as hydrosonic, a brand of electric toothbrush. Last year, his budget asked the Pentagon to spend $3.2 billion on hypersonic arms research, up $600 million from the previous years request. And as President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes command of the nations military, he will have to consider whether to sustain the defense work undertaken in the Trump years. Now, independent experts have studied the technical performance of the planned weapon and concluded that its advertised features are more illusory than real. Their analysis is to be published this week in Science & Global Security. In an interview, David Wright, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of the new analysis, called the superweapon a mirage. (Photo: Pexels) Russia. The largest country on Earth. Spanning more than of the world's inhabited landmass, from Europe's Baltic Sea across Asia to the Pacific Ocean, it is home to 29 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and historic cities like Moscow and St Petersburg. It is no wonder that Russia is one of the world's most popular tourist destinations. The great news for international travelers is that visiting the world's largest country is about to become a lot easier thanks to the upcoming unified eVisa for Russia. What Is an eVisa and What Does It Mean for Traveling to Russia? Electronic visas, or eVisas, have been revolutionizing international travel in recent years. Many countries now have online systems that allow foreign visitors to get their visa or travel authorization through the internet, without the hassle of going to an embassy. Russia is one of these countries. The idea is that you simply fill in an online visa application form, pay the processing fee remotely with a credit or debit card, and receive the visa by email. This streamlined process makes international travel easier than ever before. However, eVisas aren't necessarily available to everyone. Countries that offer online visas or travel authorizations usually have a list of eligible nationalities who can use the service. If you aren't a citizen of one of the lucky countries, you will most likely have to get your visa the old-fashioned way: by applying in-person at an embassy or consulate. Russia's Different eVisas Russia has already introduced 3 separate eVisas for specific regions: St Petersburg/Leningrad Oblast, Kaliningrad Oblast, and the Far East. If you come from an eligible country and want to visit one of these regions, all you need to do is fill out the relevant form online and you're all set. However, these 3 eVisas have one drawback: you can only visit the region of Russia corresponding to your visa and cannot explore other parts of the country. For example, the St Petersburg/Leningrad eVisa grants entry to the city of St Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad Oblast, but if you try to cross the regional border into another oblast, you will be stopped. In 2021, this is all set to change with the arrival of the new unified Russian eVisa. The Unified eVisa for Russia With the introduction of a new unified eVisa for Russia, the entire country will be at your fingertips. Whether you're planning a trip to Kaliningrad or Siberia, you'll be able to get permission to enter the country through a simple online process. The launch of this all-access pass to the world's largest nation is scheduled for 2021, but the government has not given a definite date, stating that it will depend on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Where to Visit in Russia with an eVisa Russia is a vast and beautiful country with many fascinating and exciting possible destinations. Although the current eVisas only permit holders to visit St Petersburg/Leningrad Oblast, Kaliningrad Oblast, and the Russian Far East, the upcoming all-encompassing eVisa for Russia will grant access to all parts of the country. Moscow is one of the most important cities in the world and has been the Russian capital for much of its history. If you are interested in art, culture, history or impressive architecture, look no further. Moscow is home to iconic landmarks such as the majestic St Basil's Cathedral, the Red Square, the Kremlin, and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. You can visit a plethora of renowned museums and art galleries, explore the historic streets, and eat at some of Russia's finest restaurants. St Petersburg is another incredible city - and one that can currently be visited with its own eVisa. The historic center of the "cultural capital of Russia" is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the city is also home to Europe's tallest building: the Lakhta Center. If you're looking for a wilder experience away from the cities, you might want to brave the snowy Golden Mountains of Altai in southern Siberia. From icy crags to clear, alpine lakes, this beautiful wilderness is home to rare creatures such as the elusive snow leopard. Then there's Lake Baikal - the oldest and deepest freshwater lake on Earth. In summer, it is a great place to go kayaking or take a boat trip to some of the islands, while in winter, you can ski across the frozen surface or explore the icy Tazheran Steppes caves. These are far from the only options. The new Russian eVisa opens up the whole country to international visitors and in the world's biggest sovereign state, the unique travel experiences are endless. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. T.J. Hadley While innovation in process and technology are key drivers in our industry and hallmarks of the Blackstone Discovery brand experience, it is our people that truly set us apart. TJ Hadley is no exception." Blackstone Discovery is pleased to welcome industry veteran TJ Hadley to its team of highly experienced, client-focused eDiscovery project managers. While innovation in process and technology are key drivers in our industry and hallmarks of the Blackstone Discovery customer experience, it is our people that truly set us apart. TJ is no exception, stated John Kelly, Blackstone CEO, we are delighted that she has joined our team. With extensive experience managing complex, large-scale legal matters including pharmaceutical, financial services, and discovery litigation matters, TJ excels at consulting relevant stakeholders and securing buy-in to ensure that goals are met while meeting challenges timelines. She creates custom workflows tailored to each project with a focus on efficiency and adherence to discovery protocol. TJ holds a Juris Doctor from Emory University School of the Law, is admitted to practice law in South Carolina, and holds certifications in both Relativity and Brainspace. About Blackstone Discovery Blackstone Discovery is the dedicated legal technology and consulting provider to leading Fortune 500 companies and AM Law 100 firms. Born in Silicon Valley and expanding globally from its Palo Alto headquarters, Blackstone has spearheaded the quest for digital truth and its translation into legal rights in litigation, investigations, and data governance. Integrating best-in-breed technology and automation with artificial intelligence and a diverse team of legal technology experts, Blackstone delivers optimal, efficient, and cost-effective results for its clients. Longmeadows Historical Society recently acquired a journal from the 1820s, a gift that keeps on giving. An eBay search app on society president Al McKees computer triggered a notification: Antique 1822 ... FRIENDSHIP BOOK, Handwritten Journal ... New England. Al has a search out all the time on eBay for anything related to Longmeadow, explained society vice president Melissa Cybulski. But usually nothing much comes up. In this case, the name Emeline Colton, the journals owner, and Longmeadow were mentioned in the description, and from what they could see online, some names related to the towns history were visible. Betsy McKee, Als wife, and a fellow member of the Historical Society, described what happened next. A flurry of emails went back and forth among the members of the Collections Committee, she said. But we agreed that because of the (relatively) high price of the journal $165 it needed a strong connection to Longmeadow for us to buy it. Though they had heard of Emeline Colton, they knew of her only vaguely. So they began researching her online. It turns out, Emeline was the granddaughter of a well-known businessman in Longmeadow. Known as Marchant (merchant) Samuel Colton, who owned a stately home in town that was later destroyed. The front door of that house is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and one of its interior rooms is in the Smithsonian. Their search also discovered other connections to the core of Longmeadows history. Emelines brother-in-law was a businessman named Eleazer Williams Storrs. His prominence comes from being related to both the first and second ministers of Longmeadows First Church. Eleazers mother was the granddaughter of the first minister in Longmeadow, Stephen Williams, also important in local lore for being the Boy Captive of Longmeadow. He was taken by Abenaki Indians in 1704 and marched to Canada, where he was held for two years before being rescued and returned home. And it was Eleazers father who was the second minister in town, the Rev. Richard Salters Storrs. That name is still well-known locally because the Historical Society is headquartered in Storrs House and the library is named Storrs Library. The Collections Committees research turned up all this information in one day. The next day, they bought Emelines journal. A photo of Emeline Colton Wright whose journal popped up on eBay and was found to have significant references to the people and places of colonial Longmeadow. It was recently acquired by the Historical Society. More discoveries were to come once they had the journal in their possession. Like a high school yearbook being handed around the senior class, the journal passed through many hands. But unlike todays yearbooks, it was filled with passages from poems, hymns, or the Bible. One particular Longmeadow name jumped out for Betsy McKee, Edwin Newell, the son of a prominent local stone carver. Edwins poetic entry in the journal was about the true art of life (which is) to fill up our hours/ with works for the good of mankind. Sadly, this noble work was never to be for Edwin. Just four years after penning that entry, he was dead at the age of 24. He is buried in Longmeadow Cemetery under a headstone carved by his own father, featuring a weeping willow. His grave sits in a portion of the cemetery just across the street from where the McKees currently live in the house once occupied by the Newell family. Emeline eventually married the Rev. Luther Wright of Easthampton, the first headmaster of Williston Seminary, now the Williston/Northampton School. They had a daughter, Ellen, who never married. At the end of her life, Emelines daughter Ellen served as a companion for her older cousin, Sarah Storrs. They lived in the current Storrs House on the Green in Longmeadow. Since Sarah predeceased her companion, Ellen was the last person to live in the house. In her will, Sarah Storrs bequeathed the house, a large plot of adjoining land, and a sum of money to build the library in town. These are just a few of the local connections uncovered by Emelines small journal. Such discoveries are priceless, and the Historical Society is grateful to its many donors who make such acquisitions possible. Ralph Gardner Jr. is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and The New Yorker. He can be reached at ralph@ralphgardner.com . The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of The Berkshire Eagle. As President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration unfolds in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, supporters in his hometown of Scranton have a lot planned to mark the occasion. The public is invited to a series of online events leading up to the historic, momentous day, said Sam Maloney, a city resident involved with the Scranton Inaugural Celebration. How often is a president born in Scranton? Maloney asked. Marywood University students designed and built a replica of the inaugural podium that will be on display until Thursday at the Lackawanna County Childrens Library in Scranton. The podium is accessible from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. except for Sunday and Monday when the library is closed. Children have already been taking photos with it, said Scranton Public Library CEO Scott Thomas. We are proud to be able to participate, Thomas said. Politics dont enter into this at all. It couldve been a Republican President from the city of Scranton. Its something for us as a community to take pride in. Visitors stopping by the library can also leave donations of nonperishable food, hats and gloves for Friends of the Poor. Both Scranton and Oakland, California the birthplace of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will raise a flag Tuesday that was created through a collaboration with artists in both cities. Local artist Ryan Hnat teamed up with Favianna Rodriguez in Oakland for the project. The flag depicts two hands coming together for a handshake with the United States in the background. The left side says Oakland; the right, Scranton. The flag represents this period in time where theres a lot of division and hopefully reunites people across the country, reminding them that were all together in this, Hnat said. At 2 p.m., Tuesday, a prerecorded panel from Marywood University, From Scranton to the White House: Scranton Inaugurates Joe Biden, will feature Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and his wife Gisele Fetterman, Sen. Bob Casey and his wife Terese Casey, Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, Democratic National Committee Deputy National Finance Chairwoman Virginia Doherty McGregor, Scranton Human Resources Director Amber Viola with Pennsylvania Vets for Biden and Marywood Student Government Association President Alexis Palys. Then, at 5:30 p.m., city landmarks will be illuminated as church bells ring to remember the lives lost from COVID-19. Residents are encouraged to participate at home. Also Tuesday, Cathaoirleach Seamus Weir, of Scrantons sister city, Ballina, Ireland, will virtually attend a Scranton City Council meeting. On Wednesday, Cognetti will virtually join Ballinas municipal council meeting. People can livestream the inauguration at bideninaugural.org and post on social media using #ScrantonInauguralCelebration and #Inauguration2021. The Scranton Inaugural Celebration Facebook page will have its own content on Inauguration Day. Check the page for updates and more information. Brew Practitioners has announced it will be packing up from Florence and relocating to Agawam. The Western Mass. brewery announced the news Thursday in a post on social media. Dear BP Faithful, the brewery wrote. We are moving to Agawam! For those of you who have been following us, you know the reasons for our move and we need not expand on the frustrations that we have had with the city of Northampton. We are sad to leave Florence but feel we had no choice if we wanted to stay in business. It has been 10 months since we have been allowed to do business. Moving to Agawam allows us to do what we do best: brew beer and put it into pint glasses for you to enjoy. The brewery has operated in the Florence section of Northampton for six years, but has recently been closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. In July, the brewery received a cease and desist order from the Massachusetts Department of Labor accusing the business of operating in violation of Massachusetts COVID-19 orders. In a previous interview with MassLive, majority owner Tanzania Cannon-Eckerle expressed concern that her business was being held to higher restrictions by local health authorities than are outlined in the Massachusetts reopening plans. Brew Practitioners expects to be open in their new Agawam location sometime in spring of 2021. Related Content: The Sun lights up the Texas and Louisiana coast. According to researchers at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, the unique geology of the Gulf of Mexico has helped contribute to its success as an oil and gas producing 'super basin'. Credit: NASA The Gulf of Mexico holds huge untapped offshore oil deposits that could help power the U.S. for decades. The energy super basin's longevity, whose giant offshore fields have reliably supplied consumers with oil and gas since the 1960s, is the result of a remarkable geologic pasta story that began 200 million years ago among the fragments of Pangea, when a narrow, shallow seaway grew into an ocean basin, while around it mountains rose then eroded away. The processes that shaped the basin also deposited and preserved vast reserves of oil and gas, of which only a fraction has been extracted. Much of the remaining oil lies buried beneath ancient salt layers, just recently illuminated by modern seismic imaging. That's the assessment of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, who reviewed decades of geological research and current production figures in an effort to understand the secret behind the basin's success. Because of its geological history, the Gulf of Mexico remains one of the richest petroleum basins in the world. Despite 60 years of continuous exploration and development, the basin's ability to continue delivering new hydrocarbon reserves means it will remain a significant energy and economic resource for Texas and the nation for years to come, said lead author John Snedden, a senior research scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). "When we looked at the geologic elements that power a super basinits reservoirs, source rocks, seals and trapsit turns out that in the Gulf of Mexico, many of those are pretty unique," he said. The research was featured in a December 2020 special volume of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin focused on the world's super basins: a small number of prolific basins that supply the bulk of the world's oil and gas. A map of the Gulf of Mexico region colored to show minute changes in gravity caused by different rock typesareas of strongest gravity are in purple, and weakest in blue. Knowing where rock types are clustered can tell geologists about the structure and evolution of the Earth. The map was compiled using published, publicly available data by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, whose research has helped trace the geology behind the success of the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas reserves. Credit: Ian Norton/University of Texas Institute for Geophysics According to the paper, the geologic elements that have made the Gulf of Mexico such a formidable petroleum resource include a steady supply of fine- and coarse-grained sediments, and salt: thick layers of it buried in the Earth, marking a time long ago when much of the ancient sea in the basin evaporated. Geologically, salt is important because it can radically alter how petroleum basins evolve. Compared to other sedimentary rocks, it migrates easily through the Earth, creating space for oil and gas to collect. It helps moderate heat and keeps hydrocarbon sources viable longer and deeper. And it is a tightly packed mineral that seals oil and gas in large columns, setting up giant fields. "The Gulf of Mexico has a thick salt canopy that blankets large portions of the basin and prevented us for many years from actually seeing what lies beneath," Snedden said. "What has kept things progressing is industry's improved ability to see below the salt." According to the paper, the bulk of the northern offshore basin's potential remains in giant, deepwater oil fields beneath the salt blanket. Although reaching them is expensive and enormously challenging, Snedden believes they represent the best future for fossil fuel energy. That's because the offshorewhere many of the giant fields are locatedoffers industry a way of supplying the world's energy with fewer wells, which means less energy expended per barrel of oil produced. Snedden said there is still much to learn about hydrocarbons beneath the Gulf of Mexico, how they got there and how they can be safely accessed. This is especially true in the southern Gulf of Mexico, which was closed to international exploration until 2014. One of the few publicly available datasets was a series of UTIG seismic surveys conducted in the 1970s. Now, a wealth of prospects is emerging from new seismic imaging of the southern basin's deepwater region. "When you look at recent U.S. oil and gas lease sales, Mexico's five-year plan, and the relatively small carbon footprint of the offshore oil and gas industry, I think it's clear that offshore drilling has an important future in the Gulf of Mexico," Snedden said. Explore further USGS identifies largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever More information: John W. Snedden et al, The northern Gulf of Mexico offshore super basin: Reservoirs, source rocks, seals, traps, and successes, AAPG Bulletin (2020). John W. Snedden et al, The northern Gulf of Mexico offshore super basin: Reservoirs, source rocks, seals, traps, and successes,(2020). DOI: 10.1306/09092020054 Travis James McLeod (pictured) from Fremantle, Perth was arrested in Bali in November last year after police allegedly found him with 0.86g of methamphetamine An Australian man locked up in a Bali jail he calls 'Hell's hallway' claims he was just investigating the medical uses of a local drug and doesn't deserve to be charged with meth possession. Travis James McLeod from Fremantle, Perth was arrested in November after police allegedly found him with 0.86g of meth. The 43-year-old was also found with locally grown stimulant called kratom, which comes from a Southeast Asian tree and can have similar effects to opioids. McLeod however was not charged with possession of a local drug known as kratom as the laws are not yet enforced in Indonesia. He was on Thursday transferred to a drug rehabilitation centre where he is awaiting trial after his case was handed over to prosecutors. He was charged with drug possession and could be jailed for up to 12 years, as well as charge of using drugs. McLeod described the prison he has spent the past three months locked up in as 'Hell's hallway' that was 'like a microwave oven'. McLeod, 43, (centre) faces 12 years behind bars for allegedly having meth inside his Bali villa McLeod insists he did nothing wrong because he was just investigating the benefits of kratom which he's described as the 'world's most magical medicinal plant'. 'I am a kratom advocate and I have been using myself as a guinea pig,' he said. Documenting his research, McLeod claimed he visited the the local Dayak tribes in Borneo who claim kratom helps them live longer. One person even lived to 120 years, he claimed. McLeod also issued a warning to fellow Australians hoping to travel to Bali when the coronavirus pandemic is over. 'Don't trust anybody, nobody... if somebody offers you drugs, it won't be drugs or they will be the police,' he said. 'If somebody goes to get you drugs and they get caught they will tell the police and... that's what happened to me, my good friend brought police back to my house.' Sorry! This content is not available in your region Rome, NY - The Rome City School District Board of Education met for the first time in a month Thursday night as they anticipate to resume hybrid learning on Monday, January 25th. The Board discussed the option to delay the reopening to give more time for teachers to get vaccinated and district-wide testing before everyone returns. A possibility of pushing the return date to February 22 after Winter break was mentioned. Superintendent Peter Blake says he wants to reopen on a date that they can be confident that they will not have a stop-and-start process again like the fall semester. Blake adds that while it is a positive sign that vaccinations are being administered, it does not change how the district can operate under the State Government, State Department of Health and State Education Department. Folks that think that the vaccine is going to solve our problems and allow us to have kids back in school five days a week the way that it was once upon a day, that is incorrect, said Blake. The vaccine does not take away social distancing requirements. The vaccine does not take away quarantine and contract tracing requirements. I would caution people to proceed lightly with getting your hopes up for one school it's going to look normal. I fully believe that next school year the entire school year will also be a hybrid school year and that we should plan for that. Nurses are being trained this week on how to administer rapid coronavirus tests. It plans to be rolled out simultaneously with the volunteer-testing form that must be filled out by parents, teachers. He says that form will be sent out over the next week. 20% of students and staff combined that are reporting in person must be tested. I feel confident the Lake County Clerks office will address this error in a timely and fair manner, Coleman said. I apologize to my supporters who went to the polls to vote today. It was because of a clerical error beyond our control. We did everything by the book to get on the ballot. Three examples of Nazi name-calling in the past week illustrate something peculiar about those insults. In the first example, the swarming of the U.S. Capitol was compared to the burning of the Reichstag -- the complete destruction by arson of the German Parliament four weeks after Hitlers election which was used as a pretext to abolish freedom of speech, detain opposition politicians, and consolidate Nazi legislative power. Second, Biden compared Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to Nazi minister of propaganda Goebbels -- the person in control of German media and responsible for organizing the burning of books. Third, Arnold Schwarzenegger compared the trespass of the Capitol to Kristallnacht -- a Nazi government-organized mass arrest of Jews and destruction of Jewish-owned property. What is odd is that each of these comparisons is being applied to the wrong people. First, the destruction in the U.S. Capitol was minimal (although the trespass and breaking of windows was shocking, it did not destroy the Capitol). That trespass is being used as a pretext by big tech to silence Trump and followers, and by Congress to try to exclude the opposition (those legislators who objected to election certification). Second, Cruz and Hawley are in no way in control of U.S. media, which is slanted against them. Today, the only people banning books and closing down social media accounts are opponents of Cruz and Hawley. Third, the only mass arrest in the past days has been of those who trespassed in the Capitol. The Trump presidency saw a striking rise in Nazi name-calling by his opposition, despite these comparisons being as misplaced as the three above. Why so little concern about how applicable the insult is? Nazi insults tap into popular knowledge; everyone knows what happened, at least so far as fiction conveys the facts, and that what happened was horrible. In contrast, if someone tried to insult you by calling you Pol Pot, you would be less likely to understand the insult, because there are far fewer books and movies and thus no popular familiarity with the Cambodian genocide. Another reason for the popularity of Nazi name-calling is that it is a clear and easily understood moral barometer. Everyone knows which side was Good and which was Evil. The Nazis have become the archetype of evil. In Nazi name-calling, no one is really calling someone else a Nazi; its a dead movement with a leader dead for seventy-five years, its ideas archaic and Germanic. Instead, the insults are really meant to accuse someone of traits such as racism and totalitarianism. But these are not exclusive to Nazis. One sees them in Stalins and Maos mass murders and famines, in the Armenian, Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. These insults are often misplaced and purely symbolic because what lies behind them is a very specific fear -- the fear that all human beings are innately capable of evil. After the Nazis were defeated, popular questions to ask were, would you have been a Nazi, or, more generally, are human beings innately violent? The Milgram study of students inflicting electric shocks on others made popular the idea that anyone could be a Nazi, despite this experiment being discredited for having excluded those students who refused to take part. It seemed to confirm the idea that anyone, anywhere in the world, would have done what many Germans did during that time. A strange idea, given that it was Germany-specific economic, historic, and cultural circumstances which led to the rise of the Nazi party. Nonetheless, many people today have a deep mistrust of their fellow human beings, partly due to the belief that Nazism could happen anywhere at any time. Without this fear of their fellow human beings, people would not fear the return of Nazism. This fear is exaggerated and the result of a single-minded focus. It sees people as needing to be controlled and protected from themselves. The fear is exaggerated because we live in a time when people are less violent to each other than at other times in history. (See Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined) It is exaggerated because the United States was established with explicit recognition of human imperfections and their capacity for wrongdoing. The Founders set up methods expressly directed at keeping these imperfections under control, not through government force, but by exploiting the imperfect, very argumentative human character as a natural control. The many checks and balances were a method to manage human imperfection, in the same way that the scientific method compensates for human fallibility. These institutions and ideas include the checks and balances of tripartite government and federalism, the check of a democratic vote on the rulers, the check that free speech provides in not allowing bad actions to hide from dissent, the tolerance of this dissent, even if one strongly disagrees with it, and the rule of law which restrains rulers from arbitrary use of the power they wield. These and other institutions are the reality, not the political conditions in Germany ninety years ago. Adhering to these ideas and institutions and so maintaining the protections from misuse of power which have been so visibly effective in this country for over 250 years is what will preserve democracy, not name-calling used to justify the use of power to control something that is irrationally feared. Image: Cogiati The mutant strain of the Covid-19 virus that has emerged from the depths of the Amazon rainforest in north-west Brazil and may already be in Britain is alarming many scientists. They fear that the new variant, named B.1.1.248 or P.1, may have the potential to evade the vaccines developed in record-breaking time to tackle a pandemic that has killed two million people and counting. While the UKs chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, played down fears earlier this week, he has admitted we dont know for sure that the Brazilian strain wont render vaccines less effective. Others worry, perhaps with more cause, that the new strain can reinfect and even kill people who have already survived infection with a previous strain of Covid. Doctors believe this may have already happened to some unlucky inhabitants of Manaus, a sprawling city and river port of more than two million people in the heart of the Amazon. Cemetery workers carry body of Covid victim 89-year-old Abilio Ribeiro into a grave in Manaus Last spring, the population there was hit early and hit hard by Covid-19, and harrowing pictures of mass graves shocked the world. According to the Covid-19 Data Repository at Johns Hopkins University, the state of Amazonas of which Manaus is the capital has reported just under 6,000 deaths from the virus to date. While the city is a fraction of the size of London, its infection rate during the first wave was running at four times higher 2,445 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 615 in the capital. The Brazilian health authorities had since dared to hope that, with more than two-thirds of Manaus population thought to have been infected, the threshold for herd immunity had been reached and the pandemic would not return. Now it seems Covid is threatening the jungle city again and the new strain (or strains it was claimed yesterday that two Brazilian variants have been identified by British scientists) is being blamed for a surge in cases and deaths. Gravediggers wearing hazmat suits bury a foil-wrapped coffin at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, with mourning relatives having to queue to bury their dead A state of emergency has been declared with hospitals said to be overflowing, with a record 1,524 people admitted last Saturday alone and the local public health system perhaps not directly comparable to that of the UK and major European nations in terms of funding, facilities, infra-structure and staffing said to be at breaking point. Emergency care units have reportedly run out of oxygen the demand has risen three-fold -meaning patients are having to be manually-ventilated, which has led to an urgent appeal for non-medical volunteers to help out. A single human being is only capable of performing manual ventilation for about 20 minutes, so if you want to save one life without oxygen you are going to need at least three or four people per patient, one desperate healthcare worker was reported as saying. Luckier patients are being transferred to hospitals across Brazil, which has the highest death rate from Covid after the US, while refrigerated containers were last week brought to hospitals to store bodies. The new variant carries the same spike-protein mutation dubbed N501Y as the recently reported Kent and South African strains. This is believed to allow the virus to bind more easily to human cells and so makes it more infectious. The Brazilian mutation was first identified on January 2 by Japanese doctors treating infected travellers returning from Manaus. Pictured: Travellers arriving at Heathrow Airport today But what really worries virologists is the suspicion that the new variant also has a so-called escape mutation, dubbed E484K, which protects it from attack by protective antibodies initiated by vaccines or after infection with the virus. E484K is yet another indicator of how quickly the novel coronavirus that first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 is evolving. Around the globe, well in excess of 20,000 mutations have emerged so far. While the majority of mutations will have no impact on viral infectivity or lethality, there is no escaping the fact that any mutation has the potential to chip away at the efficacy of vaccines and our natural immune defences. It seems that the Brazilian mutation was first identified on January 2 by Japanese doctors treating infected travellers who had returned from Manaus. This week, Boris Johnson faced tough questions about why the Government waited so long to close the border to visitors from Brazil. It was only on Thursday that ministers were bounced by growing public outrage into signing off a total ban on flights from swathes of South America and Portugal in a desperate bid to keep the new super-strain out of Britain. Has the ban come too late? Yesterday, the leading British virologist Professor Wendy Barclay said that so far only one of two Brazilian Covid-19 variants has been detected in the UK and it is not the highly contagious and potentially immune-resistant one found in Japan. Its a glimmer of good news, but hardly reassuring. As Public Health England said earlier, although it hasnt picked up any cases of the dangerous variant yet, it cant rule out it being in Britain already. The fact that this less-perilous Brazilian strain is here demonstrates how easily Brazilian variants can make the journey. Whats more, the most infectious strains quickly become dominant as we saw when the Kent variant shot across the UK in the past couple of months. Until last year, infectious coronaviruses had been considered stable entities, mutating only slowly. Once again, Covid-19 has ripped up the rulebook. As it continues to race across the world in waves, it is mutating faster than governments can ban flights. It is a desperate race against time. Can we vaccinate and re-vaccinate faster than the virus can mutate? This week, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told the House of Commons that a new jab could be manufactured in just over a month to deal with the Brazilian strain. For all our sakes, we must hope he is right. Queensland Confirms No Breach of Hotel Quarantine A woman and her father did not breach hotel quarantine in Brisbane authorities have confirmed, despite a report by The Courier Mail suggesting they may have taken a taxi or rideshare to the hospital. The Queensland government on Friday squashed the report (which has been updated) confirming that all protocols were followed when the woman and her father were transported in an ambulance, wearing full PPE. The suggestion the person caught a ride-share back to the hotel is untrue. Full and proper COVID-19 PPE protocols were followed while these guests were in the hospital, a Queensland Health statement read. After returning from Lebanon on New Years Day, the father and daughter had been quarantining at the Hotel Grand Chancellor. Queensland has been on high alert following a confirmed case of the highly transmissible UK strain of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19. We have over 3000 people in hotel quarantine, and a number of them are frail and do have other health conditions, Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young told reporters on Friday. So its not unexpected that people leave the hotels to access health care. Thats been going on for a long time, of course, it has. People in hotel quarantine who need to access health care are always required to leave in an ambulance and wear PPE. They are treated as if they are positive, and when they arrive at hospitals, are managed in negative pressure rooms, Young said. The man, who doesnt speak English well, was accompanied by his daughter to assist with communication. Meanwhile, the state reported three new casestwo acquired overseas and are in hotel quarantine, and one is a historical case in Cairns in the far north of the state. A man in his 40s returned from the Congo in September last year and initially tested negative. However, recent testing as a requirement by his employers revealed that he was positive but asymptomatic. We know you can shed for up to 9 months after youre positive, Young said, adding that this might explain why the virus was being detected in sewage in North Cairnswhere the man lives. Further tests will be done to confirm. Queensland police are continuing their investigations into what occurred at the Hotel Grand Chancellor. The police commissioner asked for patience, saying, Its a lengthy process, and we will make sure obviously that we will interrogate every aspect of what has occurred in that hotel. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said that she would take her proposal to utilise some Queensland mining camps as quarantine facilities to National Cabinet next Friday. New South Wales has already knocked down the idea. Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli warned that setting up quarantine facilities in the outback was merely shifting a problem rather than dealing with issues with the system. He said instead the investigation needs to find how the outbreak occurred in a Brisbane hotel so the system can be fixed. It doesnt matter if people are being held in a hotel room in Brisbane or a mining camp in Moranbah, its the same problem, Mr Crisafulli said. The system must be watertight. Right now it isnt working, and that worries me. 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. (JTA) As Gershon Distenfeld sees it, life and poker have their similarities notably a certain amount of uncertainty. There is a little bit of luck involved sometimes a lot of luck, an Orthodox Jewish businessman from Bergenfield, New Jersey, told the morning show Bloomberg Surveillance last week, as reported by the Forward. But in the end, skill does win out. Distenfeld, 43, is hoping any combination of luck and skill will land him the champions bracelet at the World Series of Pokers final table, which started Dec. 28 in Las Vegas. He sits in sixth... Georgia Love has left her role at Channel Ten under 'mysterious circumstances', a new report claimed on Friday. The former Bachelorette star, 31, is said to have departed the network, for which she was a freelance reporter, late last year, according to The Daily Telegraph. An alleged source told the paper: 'Nothing was really said about it one day a memo just went around saying that "Georgia no longer works here"'. Moved on? Georgia Love (pictured) has left her role at Channel Ten under 'mysterious circumstances', a new report claimed on Friday. The former Bachelorette star, 31, is said to have departed the network, for which she was a freelance reporter, late last year The paper goes on to claim that Georgia's exit is believed to be part of the brutal Covid-19 cost cutbacks at the network last year, which saw least 25 jobs slashed. Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Channel Ten and Georgia Love for comment. Georgia landed what she described as her dream job with the channel in 2017, as a reporter at Ten Eyewitness News Melbourne. An alleged source told the paper: 'Nothing was really said about it one day a memo just went around saying that 'Georgia no longer works here''. Pictured covering Derby Day in October She wrote on Instagram at the time: 'Eight years ago I did two weeks' work placement at Channel 10 News and absolutely fell in love with the workings of a metro newsroom. 'I knew I never wanted to do anything else with my life. Today, I worked my first day in that very newsroom.' In June 2018, the former reality star announced she would be presenting the weather for Ten Eyewitness News. Cuts: The paper goes on to claim that Georgia's exit is believed to be part of the brutal Covid-19 cost cutbacks at the network last year, which saw least 25 jobs slashed. Pictured in July She last posted a job-related Instagram image in October, in which she was depicted covering Derby Day. Georgia also donned a mask for a Channel Ten news report in July, while pointing out that Covid had made her work more difficult. In addition to her job at Ten, Georgia is also a budding Instagram influencer, regularly promoting products on her social media. Dreams: Georgia landed what she described as her dream job with the channel in 2017, as a reporter at Ten Eyewitness News Melbourne. In June 2018, the former reality star announced she would be presenting the weather for Ten Eyewitness News She also co-owns a business with her fiance Lee Elliott, 39 - a pyjama line called Georgia Elliott. In happier news, Georgia has announced that she and Lee plan to marry sometime this year. Georgia and her plumber beau, who met on The Bachelorette back in 2016, will marry in Tasmania after scrapping their plans for an Italian destination wedding. 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. The captains team of Lizzie Harris, Rosie Archard and Becky Wilson set the team a target NEWBURY Womens Rugby Club have embarked on a new challenge to raise vital funds for the Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust. They initially set themselves a challenge of travelling on foot from Newbury to Paris, and back again, a total of 684 miles. But that changed because of the progress made and now the plan is to still cover the miles from Paris and back, but also to go to-and-from each city that hosts Six Nations matches Rome, London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Dublin a total of 4,172 miles. With national lockdown travel restrictions in place, each club member has been doing this around the area they live. The womens captaincy team of Lizzie Harris (captain), Rosie Archard and Becky Wilson (vice-captains) set the whole team the challenge. Miss Harris said: "Due to Covid regulations we obviously cannot train at the moment and a big part of being a Blues family is the camaraderie and working hard together. "Putting together a team challenge for the whole of January means we can bring the team together even though we are apart and still be competitive whilst doing so." The club wanted to support the Berkshire NHS because of the support it has given to not only the rugby club, but also the whole country. "We have numerous players on the team who work for the NHS, and so many of us have been grateful to receive treatment and services that the NHS provides us with. "Over the past year it has shown that talking about mental health and checking up on those around you is so important, and we want to raise money and more awareness to battle the stigma of mental health, and that it is okay not to be okay and to reach out for help." The NHS funds important mental health schemes such as talking therapies and during a difficult 12 months for a lot of people with the coronavirus pandemic, the rugby club are doing their bit. "We wanted to encourage everyone to get outside and stay active, even more so because of the current climate due to another national lockdown, Miss Harris added. "We have had so much positive feed back from the women and from everyone getting involved. "We are tracking how were doing on social media daily, with the women taking part uploading pictures and their mileage done each time they complete a little bit more." If anyone would like to make any donations to their just giving page, the link is Newbury Women RFC is fundraising for Berkshire Health Charitable Fund (justgiving.com) A Marshall County reserve deputy is the center of debate after he attended the protest last week in Washington D.C. The reserve deputy left once things got out of hand and did not enter the Capitol building. The reserve deputy was at the protest leading up to the deadly riot in the Capitol last week. The reserve deputy holds an unpaid and volunteer position. Social media is buzzing with debates on the situation. Some argue that it's the reserve deputy's First Amendment right, and some argue that he shouldn't have been there as someone who upholds the law. A sheriff's office representative says the reserve deputy did go and see the president speak, but once things got out of hand, he left, never entering the Capitol building. That's why they say it is their opinion that the reserve deputy was expressing his First Amendment right to civilly protest. They added that they don't believe the situation reflects in any way on the Marshall County Sheriff's Office. We are confident the new campus will be redeveloped to an even greater and better use in the years ahead. Indeed, we believe that the parcel can be designed to yield a much larger property tax base for the village with significantly more workers, Serpico said in a statement. Melrose Park is home to many commercial and industrial companies, and we look forward to welcoming even more of them to our community. The funeral has taken place of a Presbyterian Minister in Co Down who died after a battle with cancer. Rev Adrian Adger, minister of Clough and Seaforde Presbyterian Churches, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 57. A family notice said he would be lovingly remembered by his wife Karen, brother Neil and the wider Anderson family. A service of Thanksgiving on Friday afternoon was conducted by Rev Brian Smyth of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Ahoghill. The family home was kept strictly private due to coronavirus restrictions with mourners able to watch the service remotely. Having first met Rev Adger almost 30 years ago in Belfast Bible College, Rev Smyth later worked with him for a number of years at the Belfast City Mission as well as conducting his wedding ceremony in 2013. He said that rather than his best friend losing a cancer battle, as one headline had said, his strong faith meant he would have believed it was not the end of his story. With the coming of death, Adrian is now enjoying a new freedom. Adrian is free from all that cancer threw at him, he said. He added: Yes for family and friends it is a huge blow to have lost Adrian. Those who have loved him most will miss him most and we know that he was dearly loved. Oh I know you will miss him and I know many hearts are broken and crushed but I trust you will be comforted when you realise that Adrian has gained freedom and I dont believe any of you would wish him back to continue with his suffering. He described his friend as a mighty big fella who was always committed to sharing his faith with others and said it was hard to understand why he had to suffer. Speaking to the Newtownabbey Times, DUP councillor Paul Hamill said: Im very saddened to hear of his passing. I know Adrian from serving alongside him on the Belfast City Mission. He was in Ballyduff and I was in Rathcoole. He was always very gracious and encouraging, an example of a fine Christian gentleman. His battle with cancer was inspiring, because he was so open about his journey and used it as an opportunity to share his faith and talk about God and the Gospel. He had a genuine heart for people and even served for a time in Africa. We remember his wife Karen and his family circle at this time." * Username This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely! Virgis Lithuania Virgis was born and raised in a small town in Lithuania under the communist regime. In this context of poverty and hypocrisy, Virgis realized from an early age the importance of having real moral and spiritual values. Intelligence, culture and belief constitute a defence against the regime for his mother who sent him to art school when he was 12 years old. This was his first experience with art. There he discovered the culture and the arts of the free countries of the West: his vocation as an artist was born. Naturally he turned to study art at the University, and after graduation he became an art teacher at a secondary school. The Gorbachev regime somewhat freed society and Virgis could finally indulge in its creation. In the 90s, he began offering his work in various local exhibitions. At the time, the artwork of Marc Chagall was the inspiration of a great majority of his work. The meeting with two French artists, Anne de Beaufort and Michele Volsy, was a milestone in his artistic life, and Virgis instinctively changed the nature of his work and devoted himself to abstract painting. He uses oil paint on canvas to express emotions and feelings: fear, grief, joy or worry. For Virgis, these feelings are as abstract as real as life. Today, artists like Stanley F. Kline, Robert Motherwell, Pierre Soulages and Dubuffet are references for Virgis. He is a professor of painting and graphic art in an art school in Lithuania. Virgis finds inspiration in his environment and what it conveys. His painting is sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter. Through his abstract work he speaks of the uncertainty of life. The difficult context in which his vocation as an artist was born determines all his work and gives it its strength and depth. New Delhi: After Huawei and ZTE, the US government has now taken on the Chinese conglomerate Xiaomi, blacklisting it as a "Communist Chinese military company". In a fresh list, the US Department of Defense has targeted Xiaomi, which means that the company is also vulnerable to the outgoing President Donald Trump's executive order that bans the US firms from investing in such companies. The move may force US companies and other investors to divest in Xiaomi this year. "The Department is determined to highlight and counter the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernisation goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programmes that appear to be civilian entities," the Department said in a statement late Thursday. The Department released its initial list of companies to Congress in June 2020 and has now included Xiaomi. Xiaomi is yet to react to the US move. Most of the other companies on the list are more industrially oriented, specialising in aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, chemicals, telecommunications, construction, and other forms of infrastructure. In July 2020, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated Chinese telecom companies, Huawei and ZTE, as national security risks to America's communications networks. "Both companies have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China's military apparatus, and both companies are broadly subject to Chinese law obligating them to cooperate with the country's intelligence services. "The Bureau also took into account the findings and actions of Congress, the Executive Branch, the intelligence community, our allies, and communications service providers in other countries," the FCC said. Photo: UBC The director of the University of British Columbia's School of Population and Public Health (SPPH) is stepping down after facing criticism for eschewing COVID-19 recommendations and travelling abroad over the holiday break. In a statement issued Friday, Jan. 15, Dr. Peter Berman said he has submitted his resignation, based on his "assessment that the conditions of distress and division currently prevailing at SPPH make it impossible for me to continue to provide effective leadership to grow and develop our school, our community and our profession in my role as SPPH Director." Earlier this month, Berman apologized after it was discovered that he travelled to Hawaii on vacation over the holidays, despite ongoing COVID-19 restrictions strongly discouraging Canadians from embarking on any non-essential international travel. "I recognize now that I should not have travelled, and that many of you have made sacrifices over these past several weeks that I too should have made," he stated in a letter posted to the school's website at the time. After news of the director's vacation came to light, 19 faculty members from the UBC department signed a letter expressing their disappointment over Berman's decisions to travel during the pandemic. "A public health leader should know better," the letter read. "This decision to travel harms our School's ability to contribute leadership in calling for our communities to sustain daily sacrificed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 for the public good." The professors continued on to express their further dismay at not only Berman's initial response, but that of UBC. "It is important to be clear that travel for non-essential purposes and otherwise not following the guidance of our Provincial Health Officer is deeply irresponsible," they wrote. In his Jan. 15 statement, Berman reiterated that he "deeply regret[s] any actions of mine that may have caused this situation." He continued, "I am grateful to the many of you who have shared messages of support to me directly or to others in our community and Faculty. I also respect the many different views expressed by those in our wider community. I have read and heard much about the suffering our community has experienced due to the terrible pandemic of COVID-19 and the concerns of many that we stay the course to defeat this dreadful disease." CLEARWATER, Fla., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PostcardMania, a 292-employee company based in Clearwater, FL, has been honored with a Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award , ranking 13th out of 50 in the nationwide small and medium company category, recognizing the Best Places to Work in 2021. The Employees' Choice Award is based solely on the input of employees, who elect to provide anonymous feedback by completing a company review about their job, work environment and employer on Glassdoor , the worldwide leader on insights about jobs and companies. PostcardMania staff outside PostcardMania's Clearwater, FL headquarters. PostcardMania named the #13 Best Place to Work in the U.S. by Glassdoor's 2021 Employees' Choice Award, which recognized 50 small and medium sized companies nationwide. "COVID-19 is in the driver's seat and every employer has been impacted. This year's winning employers have proven that even during extraordinary times, they'll rise to the challenge," said Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor chief executive officer. "A mission-driven culture, transparent leadership and career opportunities are always hallmarks of Best Places to Work winners. This year, we also see exceptional employers who have prioritized the health, safety and well-being of their employees. My congratulations go to all of this year's outstanding Employees' Choice Award winners." The annual rankings are determined on Glassdoor , where current and former employees voluntarily and anonymously share insights and opinions about their work environments by sharing a company review. When sharing a company review on Glassdoor, employees are asked to rate their satisfaction with the company overall, and key workplace factors like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, senior management and work/life balance. In addition, employees are asked to describe the best reasons to work at their companies as well as any downsides. This marks PostcardMania's first time breaking into the rankings with a score of 4.8 out of 5. Founder and CEO Joy Gendusa commented, "This is a huge honor and a true validation of the amazing team we have here at PostcardMania. I am truly blessed I get to share this exciting ride with such an amazing group of incredibly hard-working and talented individuals." Gendusa continued, "Our vetting process to be hired is intensive. Not only do you have to be exceptional to work here, but you have to care about the work. Our purpose is helping small business owners grow their businesses with effective, proven marketing. If you're just here for a paycheck and a J-O-B, this isn't a good fit. Our HR team has done an excellent job of finding candidates who have a personal connection with our company purpose." Glassdoor's Best Places to Work were determined using company reviews shared by U.S.-based employees between October 22, 2019 and October 19, 2020. To be considered for the U.S. small and medium company category, a company must have had fewer than 1,000 employees and have received at least 30 ratings across each of the eight workplace attributes from U.S.-based employees during the period of eligibility. The final list is compiled using Glassdoor's proprietary algorithm, led by its Economic Research Team , and takes into account quantity, quality and consistency of reviews. Complete awards methodology can be found here: https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/index.htm For the complete list of the Glassdoor Best Places to Work winners in 2021, please visit: https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/Best-Small-and-Medium-Companies-to-Work-For-LST_KQ0,43.htm For additional information or to schedule an interview with Joy Gendusa, contact Jessica Lalau at 888-338-6409 or email [email protected]. About PostcardMania: PostcardMania is one of the nation's most effective marketing companies specializing in lead generation for small to large-sized businesses. They have been featured on the Inc. 500 and 5,000 lists as well as Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, Inc. Magazine and more. PostcardMania offers fully integrated marketing campaigns that bring online and offline channels together seamlessly. Visit www.postcardmania.com for more information about direct mail. SOURCE PostcardMania A Mexican woman who sued the administrators of an immigration detention center in Houston, alleging that she was raped on the premises, dismissed the charges after confessing that she lied with the hope of obtaining a visa designed for victims of certain crimes. The woman, named Jane Doe in court documents, filed a lawsuit in 2020 against CoreCivic Inc., the company contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run the Houston Processing Center, where she claimed the rape took place the night before she was deported two years earlier. Based on the false allegations, she sought monetary relief for bogus injuries she claimed she suffered that CoreCivic and other defendants in the case failed to prevent. The woman said in the lawsuit, Jane Doe vs. CoreCivic, before the U.S. Southern District of Texas that she was sexually assaulted and impregnated in the Houston facility, where she was detained for two months. The lawsuit was widely publicized by Jane Doe lawyers when it was filed last May. The plaintiff said she was raped around midnight on the eve of her scheduled deportation June 1, 2018, in a dark room in the facility where guards placed her with two other female detainees. However, a transcript of a phone interview with a Harris County Sheriffs Office investigator and an ICE special agent shows the plaintiff confessing that she lied in order to get a visa to stay in the U.S. In the interview, the agents informed the plaintiff that they found and interrogated the other two women, who said they were not raped and did not witness any sexual assault. The accuser, insisting that she was raped, then admitted it did not happen at the CoreCivic facility, as stated in the lawsuit. She told the investigators the rape happened in Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican side of the border with Texas, just after sh was deported. It indeed happened, but not there in the cells. It was here in Mexico, Jane Doe told the investigators. She said she doesnt know who her childs father is because she was raped by three strangers. The plaintiff told the agents that she wanted to apply for a visa for victims after her deportation to come back legally to the U.S. She said some women in Nuevo Laredo recommended that she say shed been raped to qualify. As the confession emptied the lawsuit of any merit against CoreCivic and its employees, Jane Does lawyers voluntarily dismissed the case. The court closed it in November. The lead attorney in the case did not answer requests for comments. Ms. Does false allegations have caused and continue to cause CoreCivic significant harm, Steven Owen, vice president of communications for the company, said in an email. However, Jane Doe has unequivocally recanted and withdrawn her allegations against CoreCivic. Jane Doe lived in Texas for 10 years, two of those while serving a prison sentence after being convicted of injury to a child causing bodily injury in Wood County in East Texas. She was residing illegally in the country, and ICE placed a detainer on her to be removed after the completion of her sentence when she was transferred to the Houston Processing Center. olivia.tallet@chron.com Twitter.com/oliviaptallet A health worker receives a dose of COVID-19 vaccine from China in Istanbul, Turkey, Jan. 14, 2021. Turkey launched Thursday the mass vaccination program against COVID-19 with the vaccines developed by China's Sinovac company. According to the Turkish Health Ministry, the first doses will be given to over 1 million health workers across the country, followed by adults living in nursing homes. (Photo by Osman Orsal/Xinhua) ISTANBUL, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Turkey launched Thursday the mass vaccination program against COVID-19 with the vaccines developed by China's Sinovac company. According to the Turkish Health Ministry, the first doses will be given to over 1 million health workers across the country, followed by adults living in nursing homes. The vaccination of healthcare workers in the country's biggest city Istanbul with a population of 16.5 million is expected to be completed within two days, according to Nurettin Yiyit, the chief doctor of the Feriha Oz Emergency Hospital. The hospital, which was built in 2020 to treat specifically COVID-19 patients, allocated 30 vaccination rooms to conduct the program in the quickest way possible. "We can do the injections to up to 1,800 people per day," Yiyit told Xinhua when the vaccination started simultaneously in all the rooms. "This figure could go up if needed," he noted, adding that the hospital received 1,000 appointments for the first day. Hale Erisir, who has been working as an anesthetist at the hospital, came to the vaccination center early in the morning to get her jab done after taking her appointment through an online system. Erisir has been fighting actively at the forefront against the coronavirus since the pandemic erupted in the country in mid-March 2020. "I have always believed in the positive effects of vaccines, and I am sure that this program has the strength to end the pandemic," Erisir told Xinhua, noting that she expects everyone to get vaccinated. The entire process is administered in all 81 provinces through an online system and a mobile application, which can also track the long-term side effects of the vaccine. On Wednesday, the health ministry granted the emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Sinovac after completing the necessary safety tests. Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and the members of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board have gotten their vaccines during a live broadcast after granting the authorization. "This vaccination drive is needed to return to our normal, old way of life," Koca said, urging people to get vaccinated. He earlier announced that the Sinovac's vaccines were 91.25 percent effective in trials in the country. Turkey received the first shipment of 3 million doses of vaccines from China at the end of December, as part of a deal for a total of 50 million, and expects to get the rest in the upcoming period. Despite being the nightmare for teachers everywhere, online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has gone on to become one of the most popular websites the world over. Started back in January 2001, Wikipedia has turned 20 now and has become the 13th most popular website in the world. The name Wikipedia comes from Wiki, a Hawaiian word that means quick and encyclopedia. Wikipedia is overseen by a non-profit organisation called Wikimedia Foundation. Using collaborative software called Wiki, anyone can edit articles or, for that matter write their own, on Wikipedia. This caused quite a bit of debate about inaccuracies within the website. The website was started by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, originally working on a website called Nupedia. Nupedia, however, had articles written by experts. In its first year alone, Wikipedia hosted close to 20,000 articles in 18 different languages. These included French, German, Dutch, Hebrew, Chinese and Polish, among others. Today, the website hosts more than 55 million articles in more than 300 different languages. With more than 2,80,000 volunteers, Wikipedia is edited more than 350 times per minute and read more than 8,000 times a second. Wikipedia is visited about 22 billion times by users each each month. This is up from 18 billion just in 2016. In January, 2020, an editor from China created a page called China pneumonia outbreak which later changed to COVID-19 once the virus became known. To date, hundreds of editors have contributed to the article on every aspect about the virus. Despite the disinformation about the virus, Wikipedias policy on medical information tries to keep up the quality of the article. Even today, despite the monetary incentive in most big tech companies like Facebook and Google, Wikipedias non-profit status speaks of an idealistic time in the internet. One where volunteer-work and free information were at the forefront of efforts. Wikipedia continues to be volunteer driven and while there are still notions that not everything on the website is accurate, Wikipedias guidelines and policies ensure that articles are as accurate as they can be. Wikipedia, today, is used by a number of people ranging from students, to businessmen, to politicians to even journalists who visit the website to get a briefing about any topic. There are 13 Wikimedia projects, 179 Wikimedia movement affiliates and dozens of global campaigns. (JNS) The traditional New Years Eve party at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, took place without U.S. President Donald Trump. Faithful to his typical DArtagnan style, Trump abandoned his friends and returned to Washington, D.C. a day earlier than expected. No one knows why, but rumors have been spreading about grandiose moves and controversial gestures he intends to make before Biden takes the reigns. The chatter among members of the international village centers on a possible war with Iran. Today, Jan. 3, is the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Islamic Revo... Turkey, Pakistan, and Azerbaijan have agreed to formulate a joint strategy to stem the rising wave of hatred against Muslims in the world and curb terrorism, including its state-sponsored form, with Baku inviting both allies to help rebuild the Nagorno-Karabakh region, TRT World writes in the article Azerbaijan invites Pakistan, Turkey to rebuild Karabakh. The agreement on Wednesday was reached at the second trilateral meeting between the three countries, attended by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, and his Pakistani and Azerbaijani counterparts, Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Jeyhun Bayramov, according to a statement from the Pakistani Foreign Ministry. Azerbaijan's Bayramov hailed the support of Turkey and Pakistan in solving the Karabakh conflict and invited Pakistani and Turkish firms to help rebuild the Karabakh region recently liberated from the Armenian occupation. "They raised their voices in the international arena to restore justice and we highly appreciate this principled position by Turkey and Pakistan," he said. Bayramov said the three nations shared very strong bonds, the most important of which was a common vision and a "solid foundation for growing cooperation." Convergence over Karabakh, Kashmir, Cyprus The three sides discussed a variety of issues, including trilateral cooperation in the areas of peace and security, trade and investment, science and technology, education, and cultural cooperation. Expressing concern over "grave" human rights violations in the disputed India-administered Kashmir, and rising anti-Muslim sentiment, they agreed to launch joint efforts to defend Islamic values. The three foreign ministers, the statement said, also discussed the ongoing Afghan peace process, which aims to bring an end to a 19-year conflict in the war-torn country. Throwing their weight behind the fragile process, the meeting hailed Pakistan's role to facilitate the talks. The meeting, it added, decided to work out plans to cope with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Pakistan's Qureshi thanked his counterparts for attending the meeting, noting that the top diplomats decided to intensify and deepen the trilateral cooperation. He thanked Ankara for its consistent support to Islamabad on the Kashmir dispute. Reiterating Islamabad's support to Turkey on the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, he said they demand the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue in line with the UN Security Council resolutions. Turkey wants 'dynamism' Later, addressing a joint press conference, Cavusoglu said Ankara wants to bring "dynamism" in its economic relations with Islamabad by increasing the bilateral trade volume. The current trade volume between the two countries, he said, is a mere $800 million, which does not reflect the true potential of bilateral trade. "We talked about the importance of developing infrastructure especially in the field of transportation and energy," he said. He recalled that the first summit was held in Azerbaijan's capital Baku in 2017, adding that the third edition will be held in Turkey. "Today we have decided to hold meetings in this format more frequently. So we don't have to wait three to four years," he added. Referring to trade and business agreements signed during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's last visit to Islamabad in February last year, Cavusoglu said the deals would help increase the bilateral trade and investment volume in the days to come. Defence deals The two sides, he noted, have increased defence and security cooperation in terms of military hardware. In July 2018, Pakistan Navy signed a contract for the acquisition of four MILGEM-class ships from Turkeys state-run defense firm ASFAT. In October 2019, Turkeys President Erdogan had cut the first metal plate of the first MILGEM Ada class corvette during a ceremony in Istanbul. Ankara has bought 52 Mashahk training aircraft from Pakistan. Currently, Cavusoglu said, some 100 Turkish companies are operating in Pakistan in different sectors, including health, education, construction, tourism, and services. Ankara intends to extend its trade and investment with Islamabad, he maintained. Lockheed Martins Orion spacecraft is one tangible step closer to taking people back to the Moon. The aerospace giant has completed assembly and testing of the Orion ship, and has transferred it to NASA ahead of the Artemis I test mission later in 2021. At this point, its just a matter of final prep work that includes loading propellants, integrating the launch abort system, and mounting the ship atop the SLS rocket. Artemis I is an uncrewed mission. Orion will orbit the Moon to help verify both its own systems as well as those of the SLS and ground teams ahead of Artemis II, the first mission with astronauts aboard. Its not until Artemis III that people will return to the lunar surface. While this is an important moment, it comes as questions are surfacing about the Artemis programs future. The latest budget from Congress already falls short of the funding needed for a 2024 Moon landing, and the incoming Biden administration isnt likely to prioritize Artemis when the pandemic response and economic recovery will take center stage. Artemis I is likely to move forward just dont be surprised if Orion doesnt get much use for a while after that. Hindu devotees offer prayers while taking a holy dip in the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers to take a ritualistic bath during Makar Sankranti festival in Prayagraj. (Image: AP) SpiceJet expects to resume Boeing 737 Max aircraft operations by March 2021, nearly two years after the worldwide grounding following two crashes that killed 346 people, sources told CNBC-TV18. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will conduct independent checks and will review processes before the operation resumes in India. The checks will be conducted after MAX receives a nod from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, sources said. The Boeing crisis began with a 2018 crash of the jet in Indonesia, followed by another in March 2019 in Ethiopia, which killed a total of 346 people and saw the aircraft taken out of service across the globe. Boeing will pay more than $2.5 billion in fines and compensation after reaching a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over two plane crashes. The settlement, which allows Boeing to avoid prosecution, includes a fine of $243.6 million, compensation to airlines of $1.77 billion and a $500 million crash-victim fund over fraud conspiracy charges related to the plane's flawed design. Brazil was the first country to allow it to return to service, starting with a domestic flight in December by Brazilian budget carrier Gol. In November 2020, the American Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also allowed the Boeing Max to fly again. The European Union Aviation Safet, too, has allowed Max to fly, subject to conditions. Meanwhile, Canadian airline WestJet also recently said that it plans to return its passenger fleet of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to the skies in January. "Our first MAX will be ready to return safely to service as of January 21," company president Ed Sims said in a statement. The return to service, however, is conditional on regulators reopening Canadian airspace to the jetliner, a decision expected this month after Boeing addressed technical issues and improved pilot training on the MAX. Airfare wars are back as Indian skies get busy. Recently, full-service carrier Vistara kicked off its sixth birthday celebrations with a sale. After air services resumed in late May following weeks of coronavirus-induced lockdown, the Indian aviation industry has not seen the kind of sales it is used to before the outbreak. Airlines now have to adhere to floor and ceiling prices on fares. Budget airline SpiceJet in August was the first to offer discounted tickets after the resumption of services but had to pull the sale back after a rap from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The airline was offering a free ticket for every ticket purchased, which was termed a violation of the fare-cap guidelines. Vistara, jointly owned by the Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, was smarter. The sale periodJanuary 8-9 coincided with its anniversary but tickets were for travel beyond the fare-cap period. But the fare-cap period was extended to March 31 and the airline quickly readjusted the dates. No sooner had the sale began than low-cost carriers jumped in. SpiceJet, AirAsia India and IndiGo announced copycat sales. Bad old days After months of hibernation, the Indian aviation industry was back to its old wayscut-throat competition, undercutting each other and selling below cost. Indeed sale is a mechanism to shore up bookings, fill up seats and get additional cash flow in times of need. A good sale is the one that juggles all three well and not just the flow of cash. IndiGo and AirAsia India are offering fares starting at Rs 877 while SpiceJets offer is Rs 899. The travel period for discounted tickets for all three airlines is from April 1 to September 30. The lowest fares are for short routes like Guwahati- Imphal or Agartala-Imphal. The floor price set by DGCA starts at Rs 2,000. While the sale window is perfectly legal, it highlights what could have happened had the government not set a price range. What does this mean? When flights resumed in the last week of May 2020, airlines were asked to sell 40 percent of the seats below a fare which would be the median of their lowest and highest slabs. While the fare restrictions have been extended to March 31, the median fare mandate has been brought down to 20 percent seats. Note that airlines have fixed the period of booking discounted tickets from April 1 when the fare restrictions would lift. Now, airlines have to sell 20 percent of the seats below the midpoint of the fare range and the remaining can be priced higher. Even if they are below the ceiling price, the fare would be higher than the median fare. This is based on assumption that the market starts performing better. If the fare cap was not extended, airlines would have gone back to normal, where a flash sale by one is a signal to others to match the offer. Coronavirus cases have been falling and India will on January 16 kick off the worlds biggest vaccination drive against COVID-19, a move expected to help businesses and the economy but the fact is aviation has hit turbulence in January. After consistent growth in passenger numbers from September, January has seen traffic grow only 3 percent month on month. Has the fare cap helped? Except IndiGo, most airlines were sitting on a debt pile when the country went into a lockdown in late March 2020. It meant that there was always going to be a shortage of cash for everyone. Without a government bailout, the much-maligned system of fare bands helped. Without self-discipline and the fire sales that have come to define the Indian aviation industry, the sector was staring at a disaster, one that could have led to the grounding of one or two airlines. While the government is criticised for meddling with carriers and free-market pricing, an airline going down would have invited more criticism and challenges on multiple fronts. Two airlines shutting down in two successive years is the last thing a government needs. While aviation may not be a big employer, it does create ripples when something goes wrong in the sector. Airlines have a tough time ahead. Earlier the fight was to get more first-time passengers, the challenge now is to get flyers back in the airplanes and that will not be easyno matter what various airline surveys say. Actor Armie Hammer and estranged wife Elizabeth Chambers have now dramatically dropped down the price of their 5.8 million dollar Hancock Park residence, as per a report presented by the New York Post. The former couple has made the colossal reduction of their 6,275 square feet residence by a whopping $800,000. The lowering in the price just comes days after the alleged screenshot of Armie Hammers Instagram DM were leaked on social media. Armie and Elizabeths Hanck Part home went on for sale back in the month of September following the couples separation. Elizabeth reportedly filed for divorce in July after 10 years of marriage. While filing for divorce, Chambers also filed for the sole custody of their two children. As per a report presented by the New York Post, Chambers called it quits post discovering passionate texts on Hammers mobile device. ALSO READ| Armie Hammer's Infamous Article Trends On Twitter Amidst Alleged Text Controversy Earlier this week, alleged screenshots of Armies Instagram DM took social media by storm. The messages included Armie calling himself a 100% cannibal. In another supposed DM, Armie writes he wants to cut off a womans toe to keep this pocket. These direct messages included accounts of cannibalism, rape, sexually explicit content and BDSM. ALSO READ| Armie Hammer Breaks Silence On 'vicious' Claims; Speaks On Exit From 'Shotgun Wedding' After the controversy set social media ablaze, Armie Hammer denied all the vicious claims, as reported by Daily Mail. The star also took the decision of dropping out of his upcoming movie venture, Shotgun Wedding alongside Jennifer Lopez. In the statement released, Armie said, "I'm not responding to these b******* claims but in light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for 4 months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic". Hammer also added, "Lionsgate is supporting me in this and I'm grateful to them for that". Multiple victims of Armie Hammer came out saying he used his fame to manipulate em to have sex, calling em "kitties" and drink their BLOOD, now WHAT IN HANNIBAL LECTER??? pic.twitter.com/LWxgZdXC4t tevin (@tevinauguste) January 10, 2021 ALSO READ| Armie Hammer Trends On Twitter After Screenshots Of His Alleged Instagram DMs Go Viral Amidst the scandal, writer Anna Peeles tweet added fuel to the fire. She wrote, Re: Armie: I once mentioned him during an interview with a much-loved actor. The actor asked me to turn off my recorder so he could talk about how @annehelens Buzzfeed feature got AH exactly right, on the micro-blogging site. ALSO READ| Nick Jonas Changes His Instagram Profile Picture; Armie Hammer Says, 'I'd Swipe' Disclaimer: These messages and official statements have been sourced from various sources. Republicworld does not confirm the authenticity of these messages. 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 first Latin America-based companies including Cone Mills and Central America Spinning Works have joined the US Cotton Trust Protocol, marking another step towards a transparent textile supply chain for brands working to source more sustainably grown cotton. The Trust Protocol opened for membership in October last year, and provides brands and retailers with verified data on the sustainability practices used on US cotton farms. The latest members are: Colhilados, Fabricato, Gama Textil, Global Textiles, Grupo Industrial Miro, Grupo Vivatex, Hilanderia de Algodon Peruano, Honduras Spinning Mills, Industrias Cannon de Colombia, Industrias Merlet, Industria Textil del Pacifico, Junior de Mexico (OGGI Jeans), Manufacturas Kaltex, MT Textiles, OA, Playeras Mark, Premium Knits, Quality Knits, Ropa Siete Leguas, SJ Jersey Ecuatoriano, Tavex, Textufil, Textiles Marie Lou, Textil del Valle, WT Sourcing and Zagis. The initiative provides "verified, reliable data about cotton growers' responsible growing practices in six key areas water use, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, soil carbon, soil loss and land use efficiency and shows how sustainability is constantly improving through the entire supply chain," explains Dr Gary Adams, president of the US Cotton Trust Protocol. Mills and manufacturers who become members have access to the Trust Protocol credit system to validate consumption of cotton and associated credits. The combination of a unique credit accounting system and the Permanent Bale Identification (PBI) system enables brands to have transparency throughout the supply chain to finished product. In December, the Trust Protocol also announced the membership of Gap Inc as part of the retailer's integrated sustainability strategy and to help achieve its commitment to use only 100% sustainably-sourced cotton by 2025. December also saw the first 10 US mills to join the Trust Protocol: Buhler Quality Yarns, Cap Yarns, CCW, Contempora Fabrics, Cotswold Industries Inc, Frontier Yarns, Hamrick Mills, Inman Mills, Parkdale Inc and Swisstex Direct. The Trust Protocol has been invited to join Cotton 2040 (a multi-stakeholder initiative to significantly increase the use of sustainable cotton internationally) and its CottonUp guide, and is also on the Textile Exchange's list of 36 preferred fibres and materials that more than 170 participating brands and retailers can select from as part of Textile Exchange's Material Change Index programme. just-style recently spoke with Dr Gary Adams about how the initiative is ramping up to help brands and retailers better track the environmental impact of the cotton entering their supply chains: Setting a standard for more sustainably grown cotton. PORTLAND A fire in a garage on Earle Street that left a local man seriously injured remains under investigation, fire officials said Friday. The man, who was not immediately identified, suffered serious burns in the fire, according to Fire Chief Robert Shea. The victim was flown by a medical evacuation helicopter to the burn unit at Bridgeport Hospital following the 1:30 p.m. fire Thursday, Shea said. When fire units arrived on scene, they found the detached garage at the back of the property heavily involved in flames. A vehicle was inside the garage. The flames did not spread to any other structures. A male victim who had serious burns was transported by Lifestar to Bridgeport Hospital burn center, Shea said. No other injuries have been reported. Fire Marshal Raymond Sajdak said the victim underwent surgery Thursday night. Portland firefighters were joined by Middletown firefighters in quickly bringing the fire under control, Shea said. Sajdak said the garage is a total loss. Glastonbury firefighters provided coverage during the incident and secured the landing zone for the helicopter, Shea said. The cause of the fire remains under investigation by both Portland the States Fire Marshals office, the chief said. Sajdak said the investigation is ongoing until investigators are able to interview the injured person. Customers Chip In to Send Favorite Tim Hortons Worker Back to College: He Makes Your Day When a drive-thru employee with an infectious positive persona was forced to drop out of college, customers rallied to his aid, raising enough funds to send him back to school to finish his degree. Vishnu Gopansothilingan, an employee at Tim Hortons at Sobeys plaza, in Ontario, Canada, was blown away by his beloved customers generosity. Vishnu Gopansothilingan, a Tim Hortons employee. (Courtesy of Nicolle Kopping-Pavars) He makes your day, Tim Hortons drive-thru customer Matthew Shulman told CBC Radio-Canada. This guy, he fist-bumps you, he gives you weather reports. Everybody in the community thinks theyre special and he only does it with them, but it turns out hes doing it with everybody. Shulman started a GoFundMe campaign after learning that Gopansothilingan had dropped out of his IT program at York University due to financial hardship. Vishnu Gopansothilingan at the Tim Hortons drive-thru in Vaughan, Ontario. (Courtesy of Matthew Shulman) Describing the cheerful employee as a ray of sunshine during uncertain times, Shulman implored the Vaughan community to do something life changing. Many of us are much more fortunate financially then [sic] he is, Shulman wrote. I am asking that anyone [whose] lives he has impacted in a positive way, like mine and my childrens we do something to give back to someone who gives to us daily. To date, Shulmans fund has raised $29,000 from 722 donors, almost three times its original goal. Vishnu Gopansothilingan thanking Tim Hortons customers for supporting him on Dec. 24, 2020. (Courtesy of Nicolle Kopping-Pavars) On Dec. 24, 2020, Shulman presented Gopansothilingan with the money outside Tim Hortons. The humble employee brought donuts for everyone, later telling CBC, Its amazing how people appreciate the small things that I doI love people. This is who I am, giving back and making people smile. Another of Gopansothilingans champions, barrister and solicitor Nicolle Kopping-Pavars, shared footage of the check presentation on her personal Facebook page, captioned, Im more inspired and humbled than ever before. Speaking to The Epoch Times via email, Kopping-Pavars, who began the Vishnu Chronicles on her Facebook page last yearas she was so inspired by all the small conversation they hadelaborated. Life has changed it took [Gopansothilingan] a while to adjust to this newfound fame. He is such a humble guy and still cant believe that this all happened. The returning college student would like to use the money to give back to the community, helping kids and families learn how to be independent and sustainable, Kopping-Pavars revealed. Once a bodybuilder and fitness trainer, Gopansothilingan also has ambitions to use his skills to help keep kids off the streets and learn how to live independent, clean lives. For him its about creating hope and opportunities, she added. He truly is a phenomenal human being with a heart of gold. Watch the video: (Courtesy of Nicolle Kopping-Pavars) We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com. FAIRFIELD (dpa-AFX) - General Electric Co. filed a lawsuit against Siemens Energy AG, accusing the German power distribution company of stealing trade secrets for gas turbines. Siemens Energy allegedly used the information to get at least nine contracts to supply gas turbines to public utilities, and also covered up improper business gains. Following the news, shares of Siemens Energy, which was spun off from German major Siemens SE recently, were losing around 6 percent in German trading on Friday. In a lawsuit filed on Thursday in a U.S. district court in Virginia, GE accused the German company's U.S. unit, Siemens Energy Inc., of theft of GE intellectual property tracing back to May 2019. An account manager at Siemens Energy is said to have received secret information during a confidential bidding process to provide gas turbine equipment and servicing to Virginia power utility Dominion Energy Inc. The information was shared with dozens of colleagues, some of whom used the secrets to alter a bid for lucrative contracts. According to GE, the alleged stolen trade secrets resulted in it losing a contract worth up to $340 million to provide gas turbine units and maintenance services. GE further maintained that it was only after 16 months that Siemens disclosed the possession of secret information, and that it unfairly won eight additional deals during this time. The company said in its complaint, 'The sprawling and calculated theft of GE's trade secrets has enabled Siemens to win, so far, billions of dollars of contracts and remains ongoing -- all at the expense of GE's ability to fairly compete.' Siemens Energy reportedly has undertaken an internal investigation into the matter. 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. Ilyasah Shabazz, third daughter of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz, is an educator, activist, motivational speaker and award-winning author of Betty Before X and X: A Novel (with Kekla Magoon). She is also an advocacy worker and an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Shani Mahiri King is a law professor at the University of Florida, where he is director of the Center on Children and Families and an associate director of the Center on Race and Race Relations. He is a writer (Have I Ever Told You?) and scholar in the area of children's rights and family law. Here, the two discuss education, historical truth and their recently published books, Shabazz's YA biography The Awakening of Malcolm X (written with Tiffany D. Jackson; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $17.99) and King's middle grade Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter? (illus. by Bobby C. Martin Jr.; Tilbury House, $17.95). Ilyasah Shabazz: Let's start on the topic of honoring and informing people about Black figures. We are both educators and college professors, and what we have in common is that we are controlling our own narratives to ensure that our stories are accurate and that young people are learning truths. We are providing information about those who have equally made significant sacrifices and contributions to our historical society so that all of our children, including BIPOC, have an opportunity to open a book and see a positive reflection of themselves and based on historical facts. Ilyasah Shabazz (Shala W. Graham Photography) Shani Mahiri King: Yes, and it is also important that children have a positive sense of others. This is true in all of your work, like Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X (which I LOVE by the way!). Shabazz: I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it. King: Also for me, this means, in part, fostering a positive view of one's race and talking about race with children in different ways. As we both know, there is a lot of science which suggests that children see race from a very, very young age. Even before they can speak. I think that one wonderfully accessible and concrete way to begin to discuss race with kids is through children's literature. Shani Mahiri King (photo: Donielle Nardi) Shabazz: Agreed--if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare and even Sigmund Freud are celebrated figures in our nation's textbooks, it is equally important that Geronimo Pratt, Gloria Richardson, Dr. King and Malcolm X are celebrated. Which is exactly what you do in your new book. King: Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter? is a two-part book that was designed with this in mind. The first part is an inspirational narrative that is grounded in Black history. It embodies what one might say to their children--or want to say to their children--every single day. The second half reflects a deeper dive into Black history, by sketching the life trajectories of over 100 of the major historical figures mentioned in the first half--including your father, Malcolm X. Shabazz: Did you know that he is quoted 537,000 times per hour in social media? In spite of an attempt to mischaracterize his integrity, Malcolm X has become one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. Young people are turning to Malcolm X because they are discovering that he spoke truth, and truth is timeless. I wrote The Awakening of Malcolm X to provide an intimate look at Malcolm X's young adult years in prison. It's one that I hope will invite larger discussions on Black power, prison reform and civil rights. King: I love that it's written for teens. Why did you decide to write for a younger audience? Shabazz: We are educators and are both committed to educating young people as truthfully as we can. I am a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where I teach the course Perspectives on Justice in the Africana World. We understand that our young people are tomorrow's gatekeepers, and that they must understand the value of being critical thinkers--and as young leaders they have the capacity to recognize injustice not from the perspective of "Black" and "white" but from the perspective of "right" and "wrong." King: Yes, exactly. My life also has really been dedicated to the next generation. I've spent much of my career as either a lawyer for kids or someone trying to promote large-scale institutional change for children, specifically from traditionally underserved populations. Who knows how these things work, but it could be because my mother was a social worker who grew up in the 1960s in the United States and always had giving back to the next generation in her ethos. My books always come from the same place: conversations with my kids. It's either conversations I have or conversations that I want to have with them. Shabazz: And part of that empowerment also comes from demanding the truth of history. We are demanding a "just" educational curriculum. We are demanding "truth" about history and that these truths are reflected in our historical books. I feel it's such a blessing to have the opportunity to write historical novels for this and future generations of young, bold leaders committed to building a fair and just world. King: Why did you choose to have a co-author? Shabazz: Two brains are always better than one. I feel absolutely humbled and honored to have brainstormed, worked with and learned from some of our nation's top and award-winning novelists: Kim McLarin, Kekla Magoon, Renee Watson and, in the case of The Awakening of Malcolm X, the extraordinary Tiffany D. Jackson. How did you come to work with your artist? King: I was already familiar with graphic designer Bobby C. Martin's amazing work. When I realized that we would be collaborating, I was excited. I knew he was the one to bring something powerful, unique and fun to the table. His work is reminiscent of cut paper, positioned in unique and dynamic ways. It is really a wonderful medium for this project--and an important topic that needs to be covered in a distinct, fun and creative way in order to appeal to kids. Our collaboration was really the epitome of artistic freedom. I want to be clear, though, the design is 100% his brilliance and creativity. The collaboration was a seamless one and a lot of fun. This has been such a fun and inspiring conversation! Shabazz: You and I, Shani, agree that every child deserves an opportunity to know that they are worthy of self-love, worthy of a quality education and worthy to participate in mainstream society if they so desire--that they certainly can be both educated and inspired by BIPOC. King: It is so important that we validate the place of all people in society, including Black people. This is true whether we have Black children or not, and whether or not teachers have Black children in their class. It's so important for kids to be able to see themselves in the pages of books. It really helps kids become who they are. What are we to make of the news from Capitol Hill? The political posturing is out of control, and the comparison to Nazis once again creeps into the conversation on both sides. It's so unserious, yet it could have profound implications. The Democrats have been consistent, at least. But what is the goal of the Republicans? What is to be gained by parroting the Democrats? Do the Trump voters support that? It seems unlikely. The assault on the Capitol on January 6 is the rationale behind all this angst. The parallels to the events and conditions of right now and the totalitarianism of the Nazis and Hitler are quite scary, but invoking those entities is also flawed. For us, the comparison between today and the Nazi era are off by bit. Yes, how the angry, out-of-control crowd that came into the U.S. Capitol is being used by the Democrats and the left eerily reminds many of the events of the Reichstag fire in 1933, where the newly installed National Socialists and Hitler used that event as a pretext for removing the rights of Germans, starting with the communists and then everyone else. But if truth be told, around one third of Germans welcomed a move toward totalitarianism and already looked to the NSDAP (Nazis) to relieve their anxieties about the future. It wasn't a secret. Hitler was an open book in that sense. The Weimar Republic was floundering and had been for a few years at least. Technology and 20th-century mechanization had begun to transform German society, which made the people apprehensive. President Paul von Hindenburg, who had defeated Hitler for president, along with Chancellors Heinrich Br nig and Franz von Papen, favored, to some degree or another, a more authoritarian approach to society's ills. They thought it necessary to restore social order. This had broad support from the elites in the country. They wanted little part of Hitler's more heavy-handed tactics at least until things got out of control. But clearly, they all had some idea of ruling without the Reichstag's involvement, perhaps even as some sort of dictatorship. In July 1932, the Reichstag elections brought the NSDAP their largest gains to date, and they became the largest party in that body. However, a new election was called for November 6. For the first time, the NSDAP actually lost seats and support (over 4%). They could not gain enough power on their own, but at that point, neither could anyone else. In December 3, General Kurt von Schleicher was asked to form a new regime under Hindenburg. By January 28, he was gone, replaced by Hitler on the 30th. The infamous Reichstag fire was February 28. It was not long before the parliament itself gave up any power it still controlled to Hitler with the "Enabling Act." It was signed into law March 23, 1933. Still, it was some time before he was able to consolidate power and become "the Fuhrer," but it hardly mattered by then. I can only imagine the political maneuverings that took place in the chaos of the early '30s. After all, ambitious people with their sights on control will usually stop at nothing to gain power. It proved you didn't actually have to be a Nazi to throw in with them. Have some of our political leaders decided that the path to power is now in unity with each other, not the people? I pray not, but let's make sure they don't cheaply sell our rights in return for some temporary calm or political expediency. We will never get them back. Jeremy B. Kay is the executive director of the Library of the Holocaust Foundation (HolocaustLibrary.org). Image: Louis P. Hirshman via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. (CNN) Johnson & Johnson says it plans to have data from advanced, Phase 3 trials of its coronavirus vaccine by the end of the month. If they're positive, the company plans to apply for emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration and make the vaccine available to the public. Early stage trial data published Wednesday shows a single dose of the vaccine prompted an immune response in all volunteers after a few weeks and if the company wins an EUA for the single-dose approach it would be the first single dose vaccine to get an OK in the US. Two vaccines already have FDA and European authorization and three are authorized in the UK. Here's how some of the top coronavirus vaccines and vaccine candidates work. Pfizer/BioNTech Pfizer and its German-based partner BioNTech use a new approach to making vaccines that uses messenger RNA or mRNA. This design was chosen for a pandemic vaccine years ago because it's one that lends itself to quick turnaround. All that is needed is the genetic sequence of the virus causing the pandemic. Vaccine makers don't even need the virus itself -- just the sequence. In this case, BioNTech researchers used a little piece of genetic material coding for a piece of the spike protein -- the structure that adorns the surface of the coronavirus, giving it that studded appearance. Messenger RNA is a single strand of the genetic code that cells can "read" and use to make a protein. In the case of this vaccine, the mRNA instructs the muscle cells in the arm to make the particular piece of the virus's spike protein. Then the immune system sees it, recognizes it as foreign and is prepared to attack when actual infection occurs. "RNA is like snapchat messages that expire. RNA vaccines do NOT become a permanent part of your body. They are temporary messages instructing cells to make one viral protein temporarily," Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said on Twitter. "It takes 25 different coronavirus proteins to make a coronavirus, so there is no worry about the RNA making a virus." Clinical trials showed Pfizer's vaccine was 95% effective in preventing symptomatic infections. Pfizer is working to show the vaccine can prevent all infections, including those that don't cause symptoms. MRNA is very fragile so it's encased in lipid nanoparticles -- a coating of a buttery substance that can melt at room temperature. That's why Pfizer's vaccine must be kept at ultracold temperatures of about minus 100 degrees F (minus 75 degrees C). That means special equipment is needed to transport and store this vaccine. Pfizer's vaccine won FDA EUA in December and is being delivered to millions of people in the US and UK. The US government has contracted to buy 200 million doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine. Side-effects are rare and usually mild. They include fever and headache, although a very few people have experienced allergic reactions to the vaccine. It's not clear what causes the allergic reaction, and the US FDA and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating. Moderna Moderna's vaccine is also based on mRNA. "mRNA is like software for the cell" Moderna said on its website. And like the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, it codes for cells to make a piece of the spike protein. That was a careful choice -- scientists had to pick a piece of the virus they thought would not mutate, or change much, as time passed. The virus uses the spike protein to grapple the cells it attacks and the structure does appear to stay stable through generation after generation of viral replication. Like Pfizer's vaccine, the Moderna vaccine goes into the muscle cells of the arm, and perhaps to nearby immune system cells, and instructs them to make pieces of spike protein. Clinical trials showed Moderna's vaccine was 94% effective in preventing symptomatic infections and the company says it has data showing the vaccine also prevents all infections, including those that do not cause symptoms. Moderna has come up with a different formulation for the lipid nanoparticles to protect the mRNA in its vaccine. These formulations are corporate secrets, but Moderna thinks its approach is better and said its vaccine can be shipped at minus 20 degrees C (minus 4 degrees F) and can be kept stable for 30 days at 2 degrees to 8 degrees C (36 to 46F), the temperature of a standard home refrigerator. The US FDA authorized Moderna's vaccine in December and the US has contracted for 200 million doses of Moderna's vaccine. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine arm Janssen Pharmaceuticals Janssen's coronavirus vaccine is a recombinant vector vaccine. It uses a genetically engineered version of adenovirus 26, which can cause the common cold but the gene tinkering has disabled it. It also delivers the genetic instructions to make a piece of spike protein. This is one vaccine that has been tested on the market before. The adenovirus 26 vector was used to make the company's Ebola vaccine, which won marketing authorization from the European Commission in July. It's a one-shot vaccine. Phase 1-2 trial data published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week show the vaccine generated an antibody response in volunteers aged 18 to 55 as well as a second batch of volunteers 65 and older. Side-effects were minimal. The company is also testing a two-dose regimen in volunteers to see if adding a second dose gives better protection or longer-lasting protection. AstraZeneca AstraZeneca's vaccine, made with a team at Britain's Oxford University, is called a vector vaccine. It uses a common cold virus called an adenovirus to carry the spike protein from the coronavirus into cells. It also aims to make people's bodies produce their own vaccines by churning out little copies of spike protein, but the delivery method is different. This adenovirus infects chimpanzees but doesn't make people sick. It was modified so that it doesn't replicate itself -- then genetically engineered to inject cells with the DNA encoding for the full coronavirus spike protein. It's a cheaper way to make vaccines -- but slower than using RNA. The company has pledged to make its vaccine available inexpensively to countries around the world. The vaccine can be kept stable for six months at standard refrigerator temperatures, the company said. It's approved in Britain but the US FDA is waiting for data from US trials. Confusing data from trials indicated AstraZeneca's vaccine could be 70% effective on average. Novavax Maryland-based biotechnology company Novavax specializes in "protein subunit" vaccines. They use virus-like nanoparticles as a base and cover them with genetically engineered pieces of the coronavirus spike protein. This is also a tried and true vaccine approach. A hepatitis B vaccine given to newborns is a protein subunit vaccine, as is the human papillomavirus or HPV vaccine and FluBlok, Sanofi's influenza vaccine. Novavax uses an insect virus called a baculovirus to get the coronavirus spike protein into moth cells, which then produce the protein. This is harvested and mixed with an adjuvant -- an immune booster --based on saponin, found in soap bark trees. Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline This is also a protein subunit vaccine, using Sanofi's FluBlok technology with a GlaxoSmithKline adjuvant. It also uses a baculovirus to grow little bits of spike protein. Phase 1/2 trials showed the vaccine elicits an immune response comparable to patients who recovered from Covid-19 in younger adults, but the vaccine did not produce the desired immune response in older adults. The companies plan to launch a new trial in February. Sinovac and Sinopharm Chinese company Sinovac's CoronaVac uses an inactivated virus -- one of the oldest methods for vaccinating people. Whole batches of coronavirus are grown, "killed" and then made into vaccine. Likewise, Sinopharm's vaccine in an inactivated virus. Sputnik V Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is an adenoviral vector vaccine. It uses two common cold viruses called adenovirus 5 and adenovirus 26 to carry the genetic material for the spike protein into the body. This story was first published on CNN.com Here's how some of the leading coronavirus vaccines work 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. 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Its simply mesmerising a Teotihuacan stone mask owned by Pierre Matisse An exquisite work of Pre-Columbian art, revered by the Aztecs and a prized possession of the distinguished New York art dealer, is coming to auction on 9 February Shortly before Christmas 1924, Pierre Matisse arrived in New York aboard a French steamship, the Savoie. He was still in his early twenties, spoke only what he called halting English, had no job to go to and no friends to call on. What he did have was the ambition to make it as an art dealer in the biggest city on Earth as well as his famous surname, of course. Pierre was the youngest son of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), and he began his career in New York selling his fathers prints and drawings. In 1931, he opened the Pierre Matisse Gallery in the new Art Deco Fuller Building on 57th Street, initially showing work by European artists of his fathers generation, such as Bonnard (1867-1947) and Rouault (1871-1958). Pierre Matisse in 1950 12 years after his purchase of the Teotihuacan stone mask sitting for his portrait by Alberto Giacometti. Silver gelatin print. Coll. Fondation Giacometti. The Estate of Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti, Paris and ADAGP, Paris), licensed in the UK by ACS and DACS, London 2021 It was by introducing a younger group of artists to the American public Miro (1893-1983), Giacometti (1901-66), Tanguy (1900-55) and Dubuffet (1901-85) that he came into his own, however. He went on to become one of most important dealers in the United States, regularly updating his father on his progress in letters signed with the words votre fils devoue (your devoted son). Pierre Matisse and Pre-Columbian art One of the ways in which Matisse pere had transformed Western art in the early 20th century was by introducing stylistic elements from non-Western art forms such as Islamic textiles and, in his late-career cut-outs, Chinese calligraphy. Matisse fils had inherited his fathers love and knowledge of world art, and he enhanced his reputation by mounting major exhibitions of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art, which was little appreciated in 1930s New York. When the gallerist died in 1989, The New York Times quoted fellow Manhattan dealer Eugene V. Thaw as saying, In the heyday of his gallery, and in his own house, there were always unexpected things above all, wonderful examples of pre-Columbian art. Teotihuacan serpentine mask, circa 450-650 AD. Sold for 437,500 on 9 February 2021 at Christies in Paris The house in question was a handsome townhouse on East 64th Street where Matisse had settled when his career took off and where he kept his favourite artworks. Among the most precious was a greenstone mask from the Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan that he had purchased in 1938 and held onto until his death. It is now offered for sale in Quetzalcoatl: serpent a plumes at Christies in Paris on 9 February. The 500 stone masks of Teotihuacan Thirty miles north of Mexico City, Teotihuacan is one of the most impressive archaeological sites in the world. At the height of its prosperity in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, it had 125,000 citizens, making it one of the five most populous cities on Earth. Today, it is best known for its monumental architecture: the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon are visited by millions of tourists every year. But Teotihuacan is also renowned for its stone masks carved from travertine, limestone, listwanite or as in the case of the mask coming to auction serpentine. More than 500 such masks survive to this day, many of them in the worlds top museums. The Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon in Teotihuacan, Mexico. In the 6th century AD the city had 125,000 inhabitants, making it one of the five most populous cities on Earth. Photo: David South / Alamy All are characterised by a refined simplicity. Rather than specific individuals, they appear to depict a kind of idealised human face, trapezoidal in shape, with a wide forehead squared off at the top, two gently curved brows, a triangular nose and rectangular ears. It is thought that the depressions in the eyes and the mouth may have originally been inlaid with shell. What is more certain is that the term mask is something of a misnomer: weighing up to six kilograms (13 pounds), each piece was far too heavy to be worn, and the eyes lacked holes to see out of. Of those that have come to market, the Pierre Matisse mask is considered one of the finest, distinguished by its rich green colour, mottled patterning and boldly carved features Why such pieces were made, and what they represented, remains a mystery. For a while, it was assumed theyd been attached to funerary bundles, but that view is now largely rejected, as so few of the masks were excavated in burial sites. The Pre-Columbian art expert Professor Esther Pasztory has suggested that perforations such as those around the temples and on the forehead in the Matisse mask might provide a clue. The masks may have played a part in rituals, attached to supports that have long since perished. That is not certain, however, and the possible meaning of any such ritual remains obscure. Teotihuacan and the Aztecs Remarkably, the stone masks have been collectors items since the 14th century, when they were coveted by the Aztecs. Teotihuacan had been burned and sacked in around 650 AD, then fallen into ruin and for the Aztecs, who came to dominate the region centuries later, the city was a place of cosmic legend. Moctezuma II, the emperor killed during the Spanish conquest, made numerous pilgrimages there, and it was the Aztecs who named it Teotihuacan or Birthplace of the Gods (the original name isnt known). The masks appear to have been objects of reverence among the Aztecs a number of the 500-plus stone masks known to exist came from excavations on the site of the Aztec Templo Mayor. Teotihuacan serpentine mask, circa 450-650 AD. Sold for 437,500 on 9 February 2021 at Christies in Paris Of those that have come to market, the Pierre Matisse mask is considered one of the finest, distinguished by its rich green colour, mottled patterning and boldly carved features such as the sharply chiselled cheeks. The lines on either side of the mouth are another unusual feature, possibly suggesting a slightly older face than in most other examples. Sign up today Christies Online Magazine delivers our best features, videos, and auction news to your inbox every week Subscribe 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 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. Problems slow rollout of Covid vaccine across state In the four weeks since a Charlotte doctor became the first in the state to receive a shot of Covid-19 vaccine, federal officials have shipped nearly 1 million doses of the drugs to North Carolina hospitals, long-term care facilities and public health officials. Yet most other states managed to roll out the vaccine more quickly than North Carolina, which has so far administered only about one-third of its allotment. That speed matters, as federal officials have said future distributions may be based on how quickly states are putting shots into arms. But exactly why North Carolina has fallen behind is complicated. A survey of dozens of county health departments across the state by the N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network shows a range of problems that have hampered their ability to vaccinate people in the first phase of the rollout namely front-line health workers and the elderly. Problems include: The public health workforce in many counties is stretched thin. Social distancing guidelines and facility size limit how many patients health care workers can see at a time. A new vaccine management system launched by the state has made record-keeping more complex. And planning has been difficult both for the state and county health departments because they learn how many doses theyre getting only from week to week. Some health directors also noted slowdowns over the holidays and some hesitancy to take the vaccine among those in phase one groups. I dont want to be a Negative Nelly, but I would hope people would be patient with us, said Karen Lachapelle, Edgecombe County health director. As a whole across the state, were all doing the best we can. In my 28 years, weve never dealt with something this big. As the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services ramped up its vaccine distribution, Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen put an emphasis on equity. She wanted to make sure at least some doses got to all 100 counties in the state. But not all health departments have the same capacity to carry out the final step. As a result, some counties told DHHS they would be OK taking smaller shipments, while other counties will see their allotments increase. Cohen acknowledged the emphasis on geographic equity contributed to the delay. Now, the state will push for speed. There is a tension between speed and equity, Cohen said. And we were trying to find that right middle ground. The federal government has distributed about 850,000 doses to North Carolina as of Wednesday, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. That figure includes roughly 120,000 doses allocated but not yet arrived in the state and 165,000 doses dedicated to long-term care facilities. Providers have given initial doses to about 267,000 North Carolinians, which amounts to 31% of allocated shots. That rate ranks North Carolina 37th out of 50 states, according to the CDCs Covid Data Tracker, right behind Wisconsin and South Carolina. Texas, Florida and New York states allotted nearly twice as many doses as North Carolina have all administered a higher share of their vaccines than the Tar Heel State. And West Virginia has so far managed to administer nearly 70% of its dosages. Accounting for a vaccine regimen that includes two doses per person and involves vendors, hospitals and local health departments across these jurisdictions makes exact comparisons difficult; and the standings change from week to week, if not day to day. State health officials announced this week they were setting up 10 high-throughput sites around the state that will receive a combined allocation of 45,000 doses. Cohen said these sites plus higher efficiency from county health departments will eat through the backlog of doses. But as more doses of the vaccines roll in, local health officials say theyre continuing to work through problems on the ground as they execute the largest mass vaccination program in U.S. history. Its one thing to make a plan, Pam Brown, Lenoir County Health Department director, said. Its another thing to operationalize it, and operationalize it when you have such a difficult environment. Dosage allocation issues hamper planning Health departments across the state say one of the biggest factors complicating the rollout of the vaccine is the supply. But its not just about the limited number of doses. Federal officials announce the supply allocated to each state weekly, normally by Tuesday. State officials then apportion that number across counties and alert local health departments, which expect to receive their shipments early the following week. That week-to-week notice, several county health directors said, makes it difficult to plan. You cant easily tell people to sign up for vaccination appointments next week if you dont know how many shots youll have. Its not like the state can say to us, For the four weeks in January, were going to send you 200 doses a week, Brown said. Theyve got to wait for their weekly allocations from the federal government. And once the allotted doses are in hand, adjusting the size of vaccination clinics up or down takes time. I think sometimes people look at that and say, Wow, look, theres a ton of doses you guys are sitting on, said Ryan Jury, COVID-19 vaccine clinical liaison for Wake County public health. But the reality is we may have gotten that dose within 24 to 48 hours, and it just takes us a minute to be able to scale up operations to meet that demand. Local health officials also have to plan clinics with enough space to keep patients and staff socially distant and build in time to monitor patients for up to 30 minutes after they receive their shot. You cannot have a waiting room full of people. From start to finish, one person can take upward of an hour to complete. That is not quick, Graham County Health Director Beth Booth said. The limited supply of vaccine itself is also a problem. Census estimates put the total number of people ages 75 and older in North Carolina at upward of 650,000, a count that includes those living in long-term care facilities. Many counties are also still in the process of vaccinating the more than 140,000 front-line health care workers as part of the first phase of the rollout. The number eligible to be vaccinated grew even larger Thursday morning after Gov. Roy Cooper announced an expansion of phase 1b of the program to those 65 and older, consistent with federal guidelines just released this week. For some counties, that will mean significant portions of their populations are eligible, but the doses simply arent there. Youre looking at about one-third of our population in Brunswick County, said Brunswick County Commission Chair Randy Thompson. Our health officials have followed the state guidance and the state plan. We just need to make sure that we have the additional doses coming in. When 800 spots were opened in Buncombe County on one recent day, they were filled in 90 minutes. Next week, as soon as we get confirmation of our doses, well do the same, but by scheduling as many people as possible now, we can give our community some peace of mind while waiting for larger quantities of vaccine from the state, county communications director Lillian Govus said. Elaine Russell, Transylvania County health director, said her county hasnt yet received enough vaccine to offer it to everyone eligible. She said theres been frequent communication between local and state health officials. One of the issues, Wayne County Health Director Dr. Brenda Weis says, is a lack of control over execution, coupled with intense state oversight without state funding. It is remarkable that while COVID-19 is the primary issue for voters, there is no parallel commitment to fund local health departments that are at the center of so many critical COVID response activities, Weis said in a statement last week. Computer system causing problems for rollout Again and again in interviews with local health department officials, the topic turned to issues with the states newly launched Coronavirus Vaccine Management System, commonly referred to as CVMS. Developed at a cost of at least $1.2 million specifically for the vaccine rollout, CVMS was intended to be a cloud-based system for sharing data across providers, hospitals, agencies, and local, state and federal governments on one common platform, according to DHHS. The state chose to build its own system instead of using the one developed by the federal government. Cohen said her department opted for its own system to be able to make ongoing improvements and because the federal option didnt interface with private hospital records. But several health directors said the system isnt quite working as planned. The CVMS system was not designed with mass vaccinations in mind and has been a hurdle, said Rowan County Health Director Alyssa Harris. Trey Wright, director of the Rockingham County Health Department, noted that the process of vaccinating people is delayed by the considerable time it takes to enter data for each patient into the CVMS database. Fred Thompson, director of the Anson County Health Department, echoed those concerns. It is labor intensive for the local Health Department staff to manually upload each person into CVMS, which is what we have to do right now, Thompson said in an email. Although she said DHHS has been excellent at communicating with local health departments, Waynes Weis said CVMS is probably the biggest hurdle for counties during the vaccination process. The states CVMS is not fully functional, despite being several weeks into the vaccine delivery, and this has been a serious impediment to registering, attesting eligibility and tracking vaccine receipt and delivery, Weis said. Health Department staff spend many hours a week contacting the states COVID help desk. In counties like Edgecombe and Transylvania with spotty internet access, health officials now take patient information down on paper and enter it into the system after vaccinations are complete. It has taken a significant amount of staff time to access and learn this new software, and we have been experiencing technical issues with connectivity that have required us to develop paper-based workarounds, Russell, with Transylvania County, said. In Hyde County, Health Director Luana Gibbs said one of her staff members was still waiting on access to the system. We receive guidance constantly, but the technology piece of this project has been spotty, Gibbs said. Cohen has staunchly defended the system and pointed to the more than 200,000 shots administered as proof that the system does work, though she acknowledged it could be better. The system is working, she said in an interview with the NC Watchdog Reporting Network on Wednesday. The issue is we want to continue to make improvements to enhance it. So it works faster, better, more efficiently. Despite the problems, almost all county health directors acknowledged that they receive ample support and communication from state health workers at DHHS and that the agency was working to improve the system. Cohen said the state plans to roll out improvements to the system every other week. Were anxious for some new enhancements, improvements with all the technology, Jury, with Wake County, said. But generally speaking, we feel very supported and have felt that our state partners have been there to help us along the way. With staffing taxed, some counties asking for help For county health workers, the massive vaccination effort comes after more than nine straight months of dealing with a pandemic, which has in recent weeks infected and hospitalized an unprecedented number of patients. We have not stopped our COVID response, Mecklenburg County Health Director Gibbie Harris said in a Jan. 5 press conference. We have just added vaccination to that. Thats taxed many in the workforce, especially in counties with limited staff. Local health directors described borrowing staff from other county departments, using volunteers and hiring temporary staff to help meet the demands. Our staffs are stretched thin as we are both working hard to still prevent COVID from spreading, manage case investigation for new positives and now adding on the distribution of vaccines, Rowan Countys Alyssa Harris said. Gov. Cooper announced earlier this month that he was tasking the National Guard with aiding the vaccine rollout. But only four health departments that responded to questions from the N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network said they were using or planning to use National Guard troops in the rollout of the vaccine. The National Guard has been assigned to Mecklenburg County since late October. The guard initially worked on testing. Now it will work on vaccinations, Gibbie Harris said, freeing the staff for other tasks. Guardsmen are also working in different capacities at vaccine sites in Guilford and New Hanover counties as well as Albemarle Regional Health Services, which serves an eight-county region in the northeastern part of the state. While some county health directors said they didnt need that level of assistance yet, others said they hadnt received details from the state about the possibility of National Guard help. But several county directors said such assistance would aid their efforts to get more doses out the door. NCDHHS has made us aware of support from the N.C. National Guard to assist some areas in vaccine deployment and would welcome collaboration if that becomes available, said Melissa Bracey, spokeswoman for the Appalachian District Health Department. Only so many hours in a day With the number of doses still relatively low for now, county health officials say theyre looking ahead to the future and a possible surge of supply. The Health Department cannot vaccinate all who are entitled alone, Teresa Ellen, Wilson County health director, said in an email last week. When there is a larger amount of vaccine available, it is our hope that all medical providers will be administering the vaccine in our community. Union County Health Director Dennis Joyner said participation from pharmacies and others that routinely administer vaccinations would also help. Without those providers, he worries demand from the public is going to tax their capabilities. There are only so many hours in a day to vaccinate, Joyner said. In Rockingham County, the rate of vaccinations picked up on Tuesday, when the county offered its first drive-thru vaccination clinic. All of the countys available doses were used that day. That will likely help the county as the state tweaks its formula for doling out doses. The more (doses) we administer, the more well receive, said Wright, the county health director. But with many counties still waiting to transition to the next phase of the rollout, how long will it really take to provide vaccinations to all who want them? I wish I knew, Wright said. Thats the million dollar question. * * * * * This story was jointly reported and edited by Kate Martin, Laura Lee and Frank Taylor of Carolina Public Press; Ames Alexander and Gavin Off of The Charlotte Observer; Tyler Dukes, Lucille Sherman and Jordan Schrader of The News & Observer; Nick Ochsner of WBTV; Emily Featherston of WECT; Travis Fain of WRAL; and Jason deBruyn of WUNC. Marmorstein: You might soon be living in a million dollar home unfortunately Its a humanitarian issue: North Dakota mulling bill to ban abortion in most circumstances Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A bill aimed at banning abortion with exceptions for certain circumstances is being considered in North Dakota at a time when some states are loosening their restrictions on the procedure. Known as House Bill 1313, it was introduced by state Rep. Jeff Hoverson, who's also a pastor, on Monday, given first reading, and then referred to the Human Services Committee. The legislation seeks to add abortion to the states preexisting laws against murdering an unborn child, which in current state law exempts abortion when performed by a licensed doctor. HB 1313 does include a stated exemption for abortions performed to save the life of the pregnant woman, but not for reasons such as rape or incest. A person that intentionally or knowingly aids, abets, facilitates, solicits, or incites another person to commit an abortion is guilty of a class C felony, the bill adds, with such a felony carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison and/or a fine of $10,000. North Dakota is one of several states that has a law in place that will trigger an abortion ban should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade. However, Hoverson told The Associated Press that he did not trust the Supreme Court to make such a decision, stating that I want North Dakota to take this matter into our own hands. Its a longshot, I know, he also told the AP regarding how the legislature and the legal system are unlikely to support his bill. But this is about babies crying and babies dying. Its a humanitarian issue. Some believe Roe v. Wade might one day be overturned because President Donald Trump appointed three conservative-leaning judges to the Supreme Court. In response, many states have either passed stricter laws regulating abortion, such as banning the practice once a baby's heartbeat can be detected, or have attempted to codify Roe v. Wade. In 2019, on the anniversary of Roe, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Reproductive Health Act into law, which removed abortion from the state criminal code. "The Reproductive Health Act is a historic victory for New Yorkers and for our progressive values," said Cuomo at the time he signed the RHA. In the face of a federal government intent on rolling back Roe v. Wade and women's reproductive rights, I promised that we would enact this critical legislation within the first 30 days of the new session and we got it done. Recently, in response to the RHA, a group of New York residents filed suit against Cuomo and other state officials, arguing that it changed New York law in ways that harm women and dehumanize children. CMC Telecom under a new agreement will provide technological solutions to help VietNamNet maximize its ability to provide content on digital platforms. The signing ceremony Editor in Chief Pham Anh Tuan said that he hopes technological strength will help the newspaper make a historical development step. The strategic cooperation signing ceremony between VietNamNet and CMC Telecom took place on January 14 at VietNamNets head office. Making its debut in 2003 as one of the first online newspapers in Vietnam, VietNamNet has been operating for 23 years in the field of journalism and communications. Press agencies are facing an epochal challenge participating in digital transformation. Because going digitized is a must for development, VietNamNet will apply the most modern technological and telecommunication solutions. With the cooperation agreement, VietNamNet will be accompanied by CMC Telecom, one of the leading telecom service providers in Vietnam, in its digital transformation process. CMC Telecom has a standardized Make in Vietnam cloud-computing CMC Cloud and is the only CSP (Converged Services Provider) in Vietnam. The firm platforms allow CMC Telecom to satisfy requirements and implement important tasks in VietNamNets transformation. The advantages of the two parties will be exploited to bring the strong development of a modern press to readers. Tuan said newspapers with developed content will all become technological institutions. It takes a press agency two, five or 20 years to become a technological institution. VietNamNet believes that finding a strategic partner is the solution for becoming a technological institution. The signing ceremony today is the start of a new period. This will be a historical period for VietNamNet, Tuan said. Under the cooperation agreement, CMC Telecom will be the partner to give advice, design, build and deploy modern information technology and telecommunication solutions suited to the press model in the 4.0 industry era. CMC Telecom will provide the most advanced solutions such as a data center, internet TV channel solutions, cloud computing, added value services and other services. The solutions will not only help VietNamNet promote its ability to provide content on a digital platform, but also improve information quality to readers requirements. Ngo Trong Hieu, CEO of CMC Telecom, said at the signing ceremony that technology has helped media develop rapidly, erasing geographical boundaries. Therefore, CMC Telecom must not be an outsider. Hieu said he believes that cooperation with VietNamNet will bring benefits to both sides. VietNamNets Deputy Editor in Chief Hoang Thi Bao Huong and Deputy CEO of CMC Telecom Dang Tung Son signed the contracts on the services. Binh Minh Impressive figures for Vietnam's digital transformation in 2020 While Covid-19 had a negative impact on socio-economic development globally, Vietnam was able to control the outbreaks and grab an opportunity to step up national digital transformation. BOSTON Business at MGM Springfield and the states other two resort casinos rebounded in December, according to figures released Friday by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission but revenue still remains well below pre-COVID levels. Plainridge Park Casino, MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor generated about $50 million in gross gaming revenue in December 2020, according to the Gaming Commission, which releases updated revenue figures on the 15th of each month. The three casinos reported about $45 million in gross gambling revenue for the month of November. But the December figures dont offer a full picture of the impact of the states tighter 25% occupancy restrictions, which took effect Dec. 26. Those rules remain in pace until at least Jan. 24. MGM Springfield reported $11.4 million in gambling revenue in December. Thats up about 8.5% from the $10.5 million MGM reported in November. In December 2019, though, MGM reported $19 million in gross gambling revenues. In December 2018 it reported $21.6 million. At Encore, the Gaming Commission reported gross gambling revenue of $29.3 million, up about 7% from $27.3 million in November. At Plainridge, gross revenue from slot machines was $9.2 million in December, up about 20% from $7.6 million in November. Plainridge does not have table games. November was historically bad for MGM Springfield, with a revenue figure that was even lower than the $10.7 million recorded for July, when it wasnt even open a full month following the states shutdown. State regulators said Thursday that crowds at casinos arent even big enough to cross the new, lower, thresholds. MGM Springfields biggest crowd in recent weeks was 22% of its capacity for its Winning Wonderland new car drawing Dec. 26, which was a Saturday and the day after Christmas. After the promotion, occupancy fell back to about 19%. MGM is operating under strict COVID precautions. Hours are only from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily and with only about a third of the spots at its gambling tables. Many of its slot machines are not available. There is no hotel, no movie theater, and no spa. Food service is limited, with Chandler Steakhouse open only from 4 to 9:15 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Related content: You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close LAist only exists with reader support. If you're in a position to give, your donation powers our reporters and keeps us independent. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe By Anna Maria Barry-Jester 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. In these first lumbering weeks of the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history, Dr. Julie Vaishampayan has had a battlefront view of a daunting logistical operation. Vaishampayan is the health officer in Stanislaus County, an almond-growing mecca in California's Central Valley that has recorded about 40,000 cases of covid-19 and lost 700 people to the illness. Her charge is to see that potentially lifesaving covid shots make it into the arms of 550,000 residents. And like her dozens of counterparts across the state, she is improvising as she goes. From week to week, Vaishampayan has no idea how many new doses of covid vaccines will be delivered until just days before they arrive, complicating advance planning for mass inoculation clinics. The inoculation clinics themselves can be a bureaucratic slog, as county staffers verify the identities and occupations of people coming in for shots to ensure strict compliance with the state's multitiered hierarchy of eligibility. In these early days, the county also has provided vaccines to some area hospitals so they can inoculate health care workers, but the state system for tracking whether and how those doses are administered has proven clumsy. EACH COUNTY FOR ITSELF With relatively little help from the federal government, each state has built its own vaccination rollout plan. In California, where public health is largely a county-level operation, the same departments managing testing and contact tracing for an out-of-control epidemic are leading the effort. That puts an already beleaguered workforce at the helm of yet another time-consuming undertaking. A lack of resources and limited planning by the federal and state governments have made it that much harder to get operations up and running. "We are flying the plane as we are building it," said Jason Hoppin, a spokesperson for Santa Cruz County. "All of these logistical pieces are just a huge puzzle to work out." It's a massive enterprise. Counties must figure out who falls where in the state's multitiered system for eligibility, locate vaccination sites, hire vaccinators, notify workforce groups when they are eligible, schedule appointments, verify identities, then track distribution and immunizations administered. Some of that burden has been eased by a federal program that is contracting with major pharmacies Walgreens and CVS to vaccinate people living in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, as well as a California mechanism that allows some large multicounty health care providers to order vaccines directly. As of this week, some smaller clinics and doctors' offices also can get vaccine directly from the state. But much of the job falls on health departments, the only entities required by law to protect the health of every Californian. And they are doing it amid pressures from the state to prevent people from skipping the line and a public eager to know why the rollout isn't happening faster. 'TOO SLOWLY' As of Monday, only a third of the nearly 2.5 million doses allocated to California counties and health systems had been administered, according to the most recent state data available. Gov. Gavin Newsom has acknowledged the rollout has "gone too slowly." Health directors counter it's the best that could be expected given the short planning timeline, limited vaccine available and other strictures. "I would not call this rollout slow," said Kat DeBurgh, executive director of the Health Officers Association of California. "This isn't the same as a flu vaccine clinic where all you have to do is roll up your sleeve and someone gives you a shot." It has been one month since the first vaccines arrived in California, and just over five weeks since the state first outlined priority groups for vaccinations, then passed the ball to counties to devise ways to execute the plan. Like most states, California opened its rollout with strict rules about the order of distribution. The first phase prioritized nursing home residents and hospital staffs before expanding to other broad categories of health care workers. In the weeks after the vaccines first arrived, state officials made clear that providers could be penalized if they gave vaccinations to people not in those initial priority groups. Multiple counties said there had been little in the way of line-skipping, but stray reports in the media or complaints sent directly to community officials need to be chased down, wasting precious public health resources. The same goes for reports of vaccine doses being thrown away. One of the vaccines in circulation, once removed from ultra-cold storage, must be used within five days or discarded. State officials have since loosened their rules, telling counties and providers to do their best to adhere to the tiers, but not to waste doses. On Jan. 7, California officials told counties they could vaccinate anyone in "phase 1a," expanding beyond the first priority group of nursing homes and hospitals to nearly everyone in a health-related job. Once that wide-ranging category is finished, counties were supposed to move to "phase 1b," which unfolds with its own set of tiers, starting with people 75 and older, educators, child care workers, providers of emergency services, and food and agricultural workers before expanding to all people 65 and older. Mariposa and San Francisco both said they would be vaccinating people in the first 1b categories this week. That means residents will start seeing inequities among counties, said DeBurgh, noting that some counties had not yet received enough vaccine doses to cover health care workers while others are nearly finished. Stanislaus County, for example, had received approximately 16,000 first doses as of Jan. 9, but estimates it has between 35,000 and 40,000 health care workers for phase 1a. CHANGING ORDERS And the orders are changing yet again, forcing counties to pivot. On Tuesday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the Trump administration would begin releasing more of its vaccine supply, holding onto fewer vials for second doses; and he encouraged states to open up vaccinations to everyone age 65 and older. In response, California officials said Wednesday that once counties are done with phase 1a, people 65 and older are in the next group eligible for vaccines. Some local health directors expressed dismay at the prospect, saying they welcome the influx of vaccines but need to prioritize people 75 and older who represent the bulk of hospitalizations. They also noted that states already offering broader access have had their own challenges, including flooded health department phone lines, crashed websites and fragile seniors camping out overnight in hopes of securing their place in line. While sensible in theory, California's phased approach to the rollout has proved cumbersome when it comes to verifying that people showing up for shots fall under the umbrella groups deemed eligible. In Stanislaus, for example, 6,600 people qualify as in-home support workers. Someone from another county department has to sit with health department staffers to verify their eligibility, since the health department doesn't have access to official data on who is a qualified member of the group. Complicating matters, about half the county's in-home workers are caring for a family member, and many are bringing that person with them to get vaccinated. The county is required to turn those family members away if they don't meet the eligibility criteria, Vaishampayan said. A range of other hiccups hampered the rollout. Across the state, uptake of vaccination slowed to a crawl from Christmas to New Year's. Health workers, particularly those who do not work in hospitals, were on vacation and enjoying a few days off with family after a tough year, several county officials said. Many chose not to get vaccinated during that time. Others are choosing not to get vaccinated at all. Across the state, health care workers are declining vaccinations in large numbers. The health officer for Riverside County has said 50% of hospital workers there have declined the vaccine. And in Los Angeles and Sonoma, officials described software challenges that prevented them from quickly enrolling doctors' offices to receive vaccines and perform injections. Still, statewide, officials said they were confident that the pace would pick up in the coming days, as more doses arrive, data snags get sorted out and more vaccination sites come on board. Los Angeles County announced this week it would convert Dodger Stadium and a Veterans Affairs site from mass testing sites into mass vaccination clinics. Similar plans are underway at Petco Park in San Diego and the Disneyland Resort in Orange County. Officials hope Dodger Stadium alone can handle up to 12,000 people a day. The move solves one problem, but potentially exacerbates another: The two Los Angeles sites have been testing 87,000 people a week, according to Dr. Christina Ghaly, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services director. That will put new constraints on testing, even as covid cases in the nation's most populous county continue to rise and hospitals are beyond capacity. This story was first published by California HealthLine. : Park has been sulking since she was impeached in 2017 and was tried in absentia. With the final verdict Park theoretically becomes eligible for the customary pardon that all Korea's jailbird presidents have benefited from so far. But the government is divided over the issue and sources close to Park say she remains silent. Ex-President Park Geun-hye continues to sulk after the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld her 20-year prison sentence with a fine of W18 billion for corruption and abuse of office (US$1=W1,098). One admirer, Cho Won-jin of the hard-right Our Republican Party, told the Chosun Ilbo on Thursday, "Park insists that her trial was a political vendetta... and has protested through silence over the last three years and 10 months. She has yet to make any comments about a pardon and probably won't respond in the future either." Park was recently taken to hospital twice for treatment. She had surgery on her shoulder in September last year and was hospitalized for 78 days before being sent back to prison. Now her shoulder pain has reportedly spread to her neck and back. Former lawmaker Suh Chung-won said, "We asked a key ruling party official to suspend her sentence for badly-needed hospital treatment, but were rejected. The president must now make a decision to pardon her on humanitarian grounds." Park is at any rate talking to nobody. "Even her lawyer Yoo Yeong-ha is unable to meet her often now due to the coronavirus epidemic," a source said. There is no appetite either among the public or in the ruling party for a pardon at this time, but talks between Cheong Wa Dae and ruling-party figures continue. Some conservatives feel the disgraced ex-president should be freed because she has already spent nearly four years behind bars and is in poor health. A Cheong Wa Dae official said, "It would be inappropriate to talk about a pardon so soon after the Supreme Court delivered its ruling. The question could be raised during the president's press conference next week." The question of a pardon also applies to Park's predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, who has been jailed for 17 years for embezzlement and corruption in office. Park has already served a separate two-year sentence for meddling in the nomination of party candidates during her time in office. If for some reason she is not pardoned, she will be out of jail in 2039, when she turns 87. The talks were held in Berlin on January 12. Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba has commented on the results of the latest meeting of advisers to the leaders of the Normandy Four countries Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France. The comment came during a Q&A session with Twitter users the minister did Thursday, January 14. "There were no breakthroughs, but the atmosphere of the conversation was a little better than at previous meetings," Kuleba wrote. Talks of Normandy Four leaders' advisers in Berlin On January 12, in Berlin, the German Chancellor's Office hosted a round of talks between political advisers to the leaders of the Normandy Four countries. Ukraine was represented by head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak, and Russia by deputy head of the Presidential Administration Dmitry Kozak. The previous meeting of advisers to the leaders of Ukraine, France, Germany, and Russia took place on September 11, 2020. Reporting by UNIAN The head of South Korea's leading business lobby group on Friday sent a letter to a Seoul court asking for leniency in the upcoming sentencing of the Samsung Group heir in a bribery case, the group said. Park Yong-maan, who heads the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), sent the letter to the Seoul High Court and asked judges to render lenient sentencing on Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong. The plea marked the first time that Park has written a character reference letter to ask for leniency in a case involving businessmen since he became the chief of KCCI in 2013. In the letter, Park expressed his concerns that putting Lee behind bars again will negatively impact not only Samsung, but also the country's economy. "I have been watching Vice Chairman Lee for quite a long time," he said. "I sent the letter in a hope that the court can give another opportunity to Lee considering the weight of Samsung's presence in our society." The Seoul High Court is scheduled to give its ruling on Lee on Monday. Lee was indicted in February 2017 for bribing former President Park Geun-hye and her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil. He was sentenced to five years in prison later that year, but was freed in 2018 after the Seoul High Court reduced the sentence to 2 1/2 years, suspended for four years, dismissing most of the bribery charges against him. The Supreme Court, however, in 2019 overturned the previous court ruling and sent it back to the Seoul High Court for a review. (Yonhap) A man accused of barricading himself into a motel on East Main Street in Westminster has been taken into custody, according to Massachusetts State Police spokesperson David Procopio. Orange Police secretary Brenda Anderson confirmed to MassLive that one person sustained an injury. The man was located at the Rodeway Inn in connection to the shooting on Luis Street in Orange, Friday morning. The man was taken into custody just after 1 p.m., according to Procopio. The Northeastern District Attorneys office told MassLive they will release further details on the shooting when more information is available. Orange Police and Chief James Sullivan, along with Special Tactical Operations Team, a crisis negotiator, Troop C patrols and detectives from the Massachusetts State Police were there to assist the Westminster Police Department. Got a news tip or want to contact MassLive about this story? Email newstips@masslive.com or message us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also call our news tips line at 413-776-1364. COLUMBUS, Ohio - "Buy low and sell high" says the old adage about investing in the stock market. But a relatively new type of investment fund is luring unsophisticated investors into buying when values are at their highest, resulting in losses almost immediately, a new study has found. The lure? Buying into trendy investment areas like cannabis, cybersecurity and work-from-home businesses. "As soon as people buy them, these securities underperform as the hype around them vanishes," said Itzhak Ben-David, co-author of the study and professor of finance at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business. "They appeal to people who are not sophisticated about investing. They may have an extra $500 and decide to try to make what they think is easy money in the stock market." The research was presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association and is available on the SSRN preprint server. These investment funds are a particular type of Exchange Trade Funds, or ETFs, which were first developed in the mid-1990s. ETFs are investment funds that are traded on stock markets and are set up like mutual funds, holding a variety of other stocks in their portfolios. The popularity of ETFs is growing quickly. By the end of 2019, in excess of $4 trillion was invested in more than 3,200 ETFs. The original ETFs were broad-based products that mimicked index funds, meaning that they invested in large, diversified portfolios, such as the entire S&P 500, Ben-David said. But more recently, some companies have introduced what Ben-David and his colleagues call "specialized" ETFs, which invest in specific industries or themes - usually ones that have received a lot of recent media attention, like work-from-home opportunities. "These specialized ETFs are often promoted as the 'next big thing' to investors who are wowed by the past performance of the individual stocks and neglect the risks arising from under-diversified portfolios," said study co-author Byungwook Kim, a graduate student in finance at Ohio State. For the study, the researchers used Center for Research in Security Prices data on ETFs traded in the U.S. market between 1993 and 2019. They focused on 1,086 ETFs. Of those, 613 were broad-based, investing in a wide range of stocks. These are the Walmarts of ETFs, appealing to value-conscious consumers, Ben-David said. The remaining 473 were specialized ETFs, investing in a specific industry, like cannabis, or multiple industries that are tied by a theme. These are the Starbucks of ETFs, appealing to consumers who are willing to pay more for what they see as higher quality, he said. "The securities that are included in the portfolios of specialized ETFs are 'hot' stocks," said co-author Francesco Franzoni, professor of finance at USI Lugano and senior chair at the Swiss Finance Institute. "We found that these stocks received more media exposure, and more positive exposure, than other stocks in the time leading up to the ETF launch." In 2019, the new ETFs included products focusing on cannabis, cybersecurity and video games. In 2020, new specialized ETFs covered stocks related to the Black Lives Matter movement, COVID-19 vaccine, and the work-from-home trend. The performance of broad-based versus specialized ETFs was very different, the researchers found. Broad-based ETFs had earnings over the study period that were relatively flat, the analysis showed. But specialized ETFs lost about 4 percent of value per year, with underperformance persisting at least five years after launch. "Specialized ETFs, on average, have generated disappointing performance for their investors," said co-author Rabih Moussawi, assistant professor of finance at Villanova University. "Specialized ETFs are launched near the peak of the value of their underlying stocks and start underperforming right after launch." The study found that the types of investors who bought into specialized ETFs were different from those who invested in the broad-based products. For example, large institutional investors who have professional managers, such as mutual funds, pension funds, banks and endowments, generally avoid specialized ETFs. The study found that institutional investors own about 43 percent of the market capitalization of broad-based ETFs in their first year, but less than 1 percent of the capitalization of specialized ETFs. In contrast, data from one online discount brokerage that caters to individual investors showed that its customers are much more likely to invest in specialized than broad-based ETFs. Other research has suggested that investors using that discount brokerage exhibit "sensation-seeking behavior" and their holdings can be described as "experience and curiosity holdings," Ben-David said. The results suggest that most people should be wary of investing in specialized ETFs, Ben-David said. "If you purchase a specialized ETF, you are likely to lose money because their underlying stocks are overvalued," he said. ### Contact: Itzhak Ben-David, Ben-David.1@osu.edu Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu Watertown, NY (13601) Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Queenslanders have been urged to watch for symptoms of Covid-19 after the virus was found in sewage in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast. The fragments were detected in wastewater treatment plants at Gibson Island, Luggage Point, Wynnum, Capalaba and Loganholme in Brisbane this week. Wastewater samples in the Gold Coast suburbs of Pimpama and Coombabah also tested positive to coronavirus. A health care worker tests people at a COVID-19 drive through testing clinic at Murarrie in Brisbane. Muarrie includes Gibson Island, which is one of seven QLD suburbs put on alert for Covid-19 after viral fragments were found in sewage Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young said people in these areas need to be vigilant for symptoms of Covid-19 'I continue to urge anyone who feels unwell in these communities to get tested and isolate,' Dr Young said. 'Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue, diarrhoea, nausea or vomiting, and loss of taste or smell. 'If there is a case we are not yet aware of, it is critical we detect it through our testing mechanisms as quickly as possible to contain any potential spread.' She said the sewage detection 'does not mean we have new cases of Covid-19 in these communities'. 'We are treating these detections with absolute caution, especially considering the Hotel Grand Chancellor cluster,' Dr Young said. 'A positive sewage result means that someone who has been infected was shedding the virus. 'Infected people can shed viral fragments and that shedding can happen for several weeks after the person is no longer infectious.' Local residents exercise near Southbank, Brisbane during the three-day lockdown on Monday. Queensland suburbs Gibson Island, Luggage Point, Wynnum, Capalaba, Loganholme, Pimpama and Coombabah have been put on alert Luggage Point (pictrured) in Brisbane is one of five suburbs in the city put on alert The warning comes after Queensland reported three new cases of coronavirus on Friday - two in hotel quarantine and one historical case. The historical case was a man from Cairns who caught the virus weeks ago. He is no longer infectious but the virus can shed for up to nine months. A total of 129 detainees evacuated from the Grand Chancellor Hotel have all tested negative for coronavirus after the UK super strain leaked on the seventh floor earlier this month. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she is still investigating using Outback mining camps instead of Brisbane hotels to quarantine returned travellers. The state will propose the option to National Cabinet next Friday after coronavirus spread from a returned traveller in hotel quarantine, infecting a cleaner and two other travellers. Premier Palaszczuk is still considering using mining camps instead of hotels to quarantine Brisbane's Grand Chancellor Hotel was evacuated on Wednesday as officials scrambled to work out how the UK super-strain of Covid-19 was transmitted on the seventh floor. Police are investigating by checking CCTV and engineers are checking if virus particles travelled in the air conditioning. A total of 129 travellers, some of whom were just an hour from being released, have been forced to restart their two-week quarantine in new hotels. Some 226 employees who have worked at the hotel since December 30 must also be quarantined and tested. Premier Palaszczuk said the evacuation and re-quarantining process has been backed by Health Minster Greg Hunt and the AHPPC. She said the mining camps she wants to use instead of hotels were comfortable and had balconies or outside space, just like the Northern Territory's Howard Springs quarantine facility. If you've been on the lookout for a VPN, you may have come across the term "no-logs VPN" a lot. If you're not sure what that means or how it's useful for your online security, don't worry. You'll find everything to know about the topic below. Meanwhile, here's a curated list of VPNs that don't keep logs - a great place to start if you're not sure what to look for (or just find research boring). All providers have been proven to keep your data safe, whether by third party audit or through court documents. What Are No-logs VPNs? You probably have a rough idea of what VPNs do. Namely, encrypt (or garble) your data so it can't be read by your Internet provider, hackers, or government agencies. However, some people are worried that VPN providers themselves will start using their data for shady purposes. Well, they're not far from the truth. Just take a look at how some free VPNs were selling user data to advertisers - not unlike many ISPs today. This is where no-logs VPNs come into play. As you may have gathered, these providers do not record your online activity while using their services. "True" no-logs VPNs don't even keep the (arguably) safe connection logs needed for troubleshooting purposes. These logs can't be used to identify VPN users directly, but no-logs providers would rather remove that risk entirely. Of course, there's always the risk of a rogue employee monitoring your VPN activity in real time. After all, your data still needs to pass through the provider's servers, even if it's not being logged. That being said, the chances of that happening are extremely low, and could be said about any other online service. What No-logs VPNs Won't Protect You From VPNs are good at what they do (i.e. encrypting your data, masking your IP address, etc.). However, you shouldn't confuse them for a complete security package. There are quite a few ways websites and online services can identify you online, even while using a VPN. #1 Cookies You know those irritating cookie warnings that have been popping up ever since the EU GDPR kicked in circa 2018? Well, those notices pretty much let you know how much data cookies gather about you. Normally, cookies collect data such as: A unique visitor ID Your website preferences Which pages and sub-pages you've visited (say, product pages on e-stores), as well as time spent on each page. Of course, advertisers can also use cookies to create detailed profiles about you and your interests. This is why every website asks you to "review your preferences" when they serve you those cookie notices. Websites used to sign up EU users for ad-tracking, relying on the fact that people just click "OK" on cookie notifications without a second thought. That is, before an EU court ruling stated that active consent is required from the user. If you live outside the EU (and depending on the website), the tracking cookie checkboxes might come pre-checked. The easiest solution is to clear your browser cookies - either manually, or by setting up your browser to clear them after each session. Keep in mind that you're sacrificing a bit of convenience, since cookies are required for automatic logins and maintaining your preferred page settings. #2 Web Beacons Web beacons are usually 1x1 pixel transparent GIF files, or small JavaScript code snippets embedded into web pages. You may have heard of them referred to as tracking pixels. They're typically used alongside cookies to - you guessed it - track your online behavior. An infamous example is Facebook Pixel. The API was deemed illegal by Belgian courts for its ability to track people even if they don't use the social media platform. Beacons may also be present in emails, mainly for statistical purposes. Of course, most email providers nowadays block external images (including tracking GIFs), or give users the ability to "load external content." Google downloads all external images to its own servers before they can be displayed in your emails. Then again, Gmail is not exactly the most privacy-friendly email service. In any case, web beacons in any form can easily be avoided with a content-blocking extension like uBlock Origin. uMatrix offers more granular control over what content can be displayed in your browser. However, its learning curve may turn away some users. Privacy Badger is a neat alternative too. These three extensions are also somewhat useful at mitigating browser fingerprinting, which you can read about below. #3 Browser Fingerprinting Ever logged in to a service from a different device than usual? Then you've probably received a security email with several details about that device, such as: IP address and location Browser type and version Operating system This is a type of browser fingerprinting, and is useful at detecting unauthorized login attempts. The details above (and more) are part of your unique fingerprint, which is shared by less than 287,000 other browsers, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). That might seem like a lot, but keep in mind that there are over 31 billion Internet-capable devices out there. If you're in a situation where privacy is essential to your livelihood, browser fingerprinting can be highly detrimental. We mean whistleblowers, journalists communicating with anonymous sources, and the like. Unfortunately, it can't be completely avoided. However, using the Tor Browser and a 'no-logs' VPN in tandem will put you in a pool of 3 million similar browser fingerprints. This is a definite improvement privacy-wise, but one that can greatly affect your Internet speeds. Of course, speed is probably the least of your concerns in such scenarios. #4 Out of Sync System Time Pretty straightforward. Websites can detect that you're a VPN user by checking your local system time. Simply set your PC or phone's time to reflect the time zone of the VPN server you're connecting to. This is especially helpful when spoofing your location to unblock media unavailable in your region. A French computer programmer transferred more than $500,000 in Bitcoin to far-right activists just before his death last month, including some involved in last week's U.S. Capitol riot, officials said Friday. The 35-year-old Frenchman scheduled an alleged suicide note to post on his personal blog the next day and his December 8 death was confirmed by one of his relatives to French site 20 Minutes. The suicide note revealed he was chronically ill and wanted to leave his wealth to 'certain causes and people' as he lamented 'unprecedented civil liberties violations' stemming for the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. Chainalysis, a firm that investigates Bitcoin transactions, found that the majority of the 22 transactions to 18 wallets on December 8 went to Nick Fuentes, a far-right internet influencer. Fuentes was in the crowd in Washington D.C. but has denied being part of the deadly mob that stormed the Capitol. DailyMail.com linked the Bitcoin wallet with the username 'pankkake' identified in the Chainalysis report to an email address that is tied to the personal blog of French computer programmer Laurent Bachelier, pictured above in a YouTube video in 2017 Chainalysis, a firm that investigates Bitcoin transactions, found that the majority of the 22 transactions on December 8 went to Nick Fuentes, a far-right internet influencer. He is pictured above at the Stop the Steal rally on January but says he was not part of the riot Chainalysis, a firm that investigates Bitcoin transactions found the recipients included anti-immigration organization VDARE, white nationalist leader Patrick Casey, the Daily Stormer blog, alt-right streamer Ethan Ralph, and a number of unidentified addresses Chainalysis, a New York-based startup, specializing in countering money laundering and fraud in the digital currency space, launched the investigation after Yahoo News said they provided the company with the data points about the transaction. 'We have also gathered evidence that strongly suggests the donor was a now-deceased computer programmer based in France,' Chainalysis said in the report. The transaction was made by the alleged French donor by being sent to an intermediary wallet that has been active since 2013, 'suggesting that the extremist donor is a relatively early adopter of Bitcoin whose holdings have grown in value significantly'. Chainalysis used open-source intelligence to find a bitcoin address linked this intermediatry wallet registered on NameID, with the pseudonym 'pankkake' as the username. This username was linked to an email address that is tied to the personal blog of the French computer programmer. The last post on the blog is a text entitled 'End Note' containing the same suicide note referenced in the Chainalysis report. Chainalysis did not release the man's identity but the website and suicide note were tracked down and can be identified by DailyMail.com as belonging to a man named Laurent Bachelier. An Associated Press journalist also reported to have found his blog and suicide note. A funeral home published his obituary, including burial information, but later deleted it; a cached version can still be found on the internet, the Associated Press added. And on Friday, a relative confirmed to 20 Minutes that he had died by suicide on the day the transactions were made and that they consider the suicide note authentic. By retracing the researchers' steps, DailyMail.com linked the Bitcoin wallet with the username 'pankkake' identified in the Chainalysis report to an email address that is tied to the personal blog of French computer programmer Laurent Bachelier. It contained this suicide note Chainalysis were able to trace the transactions through this Bitcoin wallet Federal investigators in the United States are now looking into possible 'coordination or planning' ahead of the riot. They added that they are using a number of methods they deploy routinely in criminal investigations, including examining financial transactions and cellphone and travel records. Michael Sherwin, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said investigators were also examining whether there was any 'command and control,' and he vowed to bring charges if prosecutors can prove a conspiracy. No conspiracy charges have been brought so far. French financial investigators declined to comment. In his suicide note, the computer programmer talked about the 'decline' of Western civilization and lamented 'rejection of our ancestors and our heritage', it added. It was posted to his personal blog that had remained inactive since 2014 until a new post was published on December 9, 2020 the day after the donations were made. In the post, the Frenchman appears to claim that George Floyd died of a drug overdose, not because a police officer was kneeling on his neck and preventing him from breathing during his arrest. 'While it's a long-term trend, this year in particular has shown how submissive the population can be,' he stated, 'first when accepting unprecedented civil liberties violations on the pretense of a virus less dangerous than seasonal flu, than kneeling down for a career criminal who happened to die of an overdose while resisting arrest, of pretend to fight for freedom of speech while jailing people for their ideas. 'Oddly, as trust in media is at historic lows, the population has blindly accepted those reality distortions. To top it all, F9 has been pushed back to 2021,' he added referencing the delay in the release of the ninth installment of the Fast and the Furious movie franchise. Fuentes has hit back at claims he stormed the U.S. Captiol with other rioters The transaction was made by the alleged French donor by being sent to an intermediary wallet that has been active since 2013, as pictured in the Chainalysis graph above It was then sent on to 22 other wallets, most of which have not been identified The Chainalysis investigation found that the Frenchman sent 28.15 Bitcoins, worth about $522,000 to 22 addresses, including many belonging to American far-right activists and organizations. Fuentes, who was permanently suspended from YouTube last year for hate speech, received 13.5 bitcoins, worth about $250,000 at the time of the transfer, making him by far the biggest beneficiary of the donation, according to the blog post. 'The December 8 donation of over $250,000 worth of Bitcoin is by far the largest cryptocurrency donation Fuentes has ever received,' the report noted. 'Previously, the most he had ever received in a single month was $2,707 worth of Bitcoin.' Other recipients included anti-immigration organization VDARE, white nationalist leader Patrick Casey, the Daily Stormer blog, alt-right streamer Ethan Ralph, and a number of unidentified addresses. 'The donation, as well as reports of the planning that went into the Capitol raid on alt-right communication channels, also suggests that domestic extremist groups may be better organized and funded than previously thought,' the researchers wrote. It added that it was 'the single biggest month weve ever observed in terms of cryptocurrency received by addresses associated with domestic extremism'. Chainalysis said it was 'the single biggest month weve ever observed in terms of cryptocurrency received by addresses associated with domestic extremism', pictured Other recipients included anti-immigration organization VDARE Daily Stormer blog was among the other recipients, pictured above According to Yahoo News, which first reported the discovery any motivation that the transfer was carried out to support the Capitol riot will be hard to prove. Chainalysis declined to directly link the transaction to the violence but wrote the 'timing warrants suspicion'. It was made just less than a month before Trump urged his supporters on January 6 to 'walk down Pennsylvania Avenue' and 'take back our country', leading them to launch the deadly riot that resulted in the death of five people. A source told Yahoo News that federal investigators are now hoping to prevent any further attacks with their probe into this transaction. They are also hoping to uncover any potential foreign involvement in or support of right-wing activities and cut it off. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are favored for illicit transactions because they are perceived as hard to trace. The cryptocurrency is created using a software that develops an address and private key known only to the user. Even when the software is allowing transactions, it does not itself view the password. It made Bitcoin popular among criminals and in countries such as China and Venezuela, where governments have raided bank accounts established by more traditional means. And it also became highly popular among extremist groups after its anonymous 2009 release as open-source software. The cryptocurrency's value has spiked in recent weeks but gained more mainstreamed popularity in 2017 after alt-right figure Richard Spencer tweeted, 'Bitcoin is the currency of the alt right'. Smoke from pepper-spray ball exploded and used against pro-Trump protesters during storm of Capital building. It is not known if the transactions are linked to the riot Trump supporters gather as supporters storm the Capitol Building, pictured That same year The Washington Post carried an investigation that explored how alt-right groups moved toward bitcoin following the deadly 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It has led to some prominent right-wing groups or sites displaying their bitcoin wallets as a means of receiving donations. Yet by displaying their wallets in this way, it also means that its transactions can be traced, making it easier for the likes of Chainalysis to track back its donations. 'With the right tools you can follow the money,' Maddie Kennedy, Chainalysiss communications director, told Yahoo News. 'Cryptocurrency was designed to be transparent.' Chainalysis warned in its report Thursday that it may become even more popular, therefore making these transactions between these groups harder to track, as they are kicked off other platforms. 'As mainstream payment platforms remove extremist groups and figures, we may see them embrace cryptocurrency more as a donations mechanism,' the company said. 'Luckily, thanks to the inherent transparency of cryptocurrency blockchains, law enforcement can track these transactions in real time and work with cryptocurrency businesses to prevent funds from reaching violent groups who may use them to fund their operations and commit acts of violence,' it added. 'Chainalysis is actively looking to identify any additional extremist payments and activity and will keep our customers updated.' A Proud Boys member called 'Spaz' who lit up cigar for a 'victory smoke' inside the Capitol after he was 'seen leading hordes of MAGA mob rioters and smashing window' has been arrested after turning himself in. Dominic Pezzola, 43, was taken into custody Friday morning after turning himself in and has been charged with smashing a window at the Capitol on January 6, according ABC News. Pezzola, considered a 'risk of flight and risk of danger,' was ordered to be held in custody pending a bond hearing to be set for a later date in Washington, D.C. Prosecutors have charged with Pezzola with destruction of government property, obstruction of an official proceeding, and illegally entering a restricted building. He faces more than 20 years in federal prison if convicted, the Democrat & Chronicle reported. Pezzola, of Rochester, owns a business called D Pezzola Flooring. Calls from DailyMail.com to numbers listed for the business were not returned. Dominic Pezzola, 43, was taken into custody after he was pictured smoking a cigar and breaking a window to enter the Capitol on January 6 Dominic Pezzola is pictured marching in support of Trump in Washington, DC, on December 12, Prosecutors have charged with Pezzola with destruction of government property for breaking the window Court documents show Pezzola bragged about breaking the window Pezzola faces more than 20 years in federal prison if convicted for being a part of the MAGA mob A witness said Pezzola talked about killing Vice President Mike Pence Videos show Pezzola, a Marine Corps veteran, using a riot shield to break windows and enter the capitol. 'Victory smoke in the Capitol, boys. This is f**king awesome. I knew we could take this motherf**ker over [if we] just tried hard enough,' Pezzola said, according to a criminal complaint. The witness also said that Pezzola 'bragged about breaking the windows to the Capitol and entering the building.' Pezzola was also pictured wearing the Proud Boys logo at a MAGA rally on December 12 in Washington, D.C. which resulted in four stabbings. A witness told the FBI that Pezzola talked about killing Vice President Mike Pence 'if given the chance.' The rioters that stormed the U.S. Capitol were just 100 feet from the officer where Pence and his family were hiding,it was revealed on Friday. The rioters were just 100 feet from the officer where Pence and his family were hiding Pezzola was also pictured wearing the Proud Boys logo at a MAGA rally on December 12 where four people were stabbed Court documents show Pezzola bragged about breaking the window It took 14 minutes to evacuate Pence from the Senate Chamber after the MAGA mob first broke into the building, according to law enforcement officials and video footage obtained by The Washington Post. Secret Service agents eventually managed to convince the VP to leave and rushed him and his family into an office before they were taken to a second secure location. Secret Service agents eventually managed to convince the VP to leave and rushed him and his family into an office before they were taken to a second secure location. Less than 60 seconds after Pence was taken to his hideaway, a violent crowd followed a Capitol officer up a flight of stairs - just 33 yards from the office but away from the chamber where many lawmakers still remained. The FBI is investigating 37 people over the death of Capitol cop Brian Sicknick who was reportedly beaten to death with a fire extinguisher during the riots last week. The New York Times reports that the bureau is pursuing 37 people over Sicknick's death but no one has been arrested yet. None of them have been identified. Sicknick, 42, was trying to fight the crowd off when he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. Pezzola has been ordered to be held in custody until a future bond hearing No footage of that attack has yet emerged but other videos from the riot show the mob using fire extinguishers as weapons, tossing them towards cops and spraying them in their faces. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised the possibility of criminal prosecutions of Republican lawmakers if they are found to have provided Capitol tours to people who took part in the Capitol riots. Speaking to reporters days after the House voted to impeach President Trump for inciting insurrection, Pelosi responded to claims by multiple lawmakers who have raised alarms about the tours on the eve of the riots. 'If in fact it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection if they aided and abetted the crimes there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecution for that,' Pelosi said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling his Republican colleagues President Trump's impeachment trial will be a 'vote of conscience' an absence of pressure that effectively allows them to vote guilty. And yet, while the peaceful transfer of power will no doubt come as a relief to many, the events of Jan. 6 have left a deep scar on American democracy and on our image abroad one that wont be healed quickly or easily. Restoring faith in democracy and the rule of law, both at home and abroad, will be one of the most important tasks of the new president and his administration. 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. Heartfelt condolences to the victims: Rahul on fire at cracker factory in TN Working on getting stronger every day: Tiger Woods returns to home, continuing recovery from car accident 10 women, driver dead after minibus collides with truck in Karnataka's Dharwad India oi-Briti Roy Barman Dharwad, Jan 15: Atleast eleven people were killed in a road accident in Karnataka's Dharwad district when a minibus carrying members of a women's club, en route to Goa, collided with a tipper truck on Friday morning. Ten women passengers and the driver of the truck died in the accident. Six injured have been shifted to Hubballi's KIMS hospital. PM Narendra Modi expressed grief saying saddened by the loss of lives due to a road accident in Karnataka's Dharwad district. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray for a quick recovery of those injured. Police said that some other people, who were injured in the mishap, have been taken to Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences hospital. Condition of five of the injured persons is critical, police said. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News The deceased persons were from Davangere and were on their way to Goa for a family function. According to local reports citing residents, a long-pending demand seeking widening of the road has been reportedly delayed because of the issues between the contractor and the government. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 13:19 [IST] Press Release January 15, 2021 Dispatch from Crame No. 1,018: Sen. Leila M. de Lima on #SINOVACumita? The lack of transparency in the Sinovac COVID-19 Vaccine Naamoy niyo rin ba ang alingasaw ng anomalya? This administration's obtrusive and forceful action of short-changing the process and blind preference to the Sinovac vaccine only breeds mistrust and serious suspicions of corruption and "kickbacks" in the deal. For reference, Indonesia's State-owned pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma confirmed in October last year that its procurement of the Sinovac vaccine will be priced at around 200,000 rupees or around ?700 per dose when it became available. Meanwhile, submitted data by our government shows that we have procured the same at ?3,629 per person or ?1,815 per dose. What gives? Akala ko ba close tayo sa China? Four years of kowtowing to their every whim and demand and this is the best we can do? Either Sec. Galvez and company have seriously overstated their negotiating skills or something fishy is indeed going on here. If indeed the price will be lower if Sinovac will be procured under the COVAX facility, then they must show proof that the transaction is indeed made through the said facility and not directly with the Chinese government or companies. Sasabihin niyo pa na mas mura talaga ang Sinovac kaysa sa inaakala ng publiko pero sikreto yung presyo? Anong klaseng palusot yan? Enough with the gaslighting already. Incoherent data and incomplete documents available about this vaccine, on top of a dubious approval and special treatment given by the Duterte government, only serve to exacerbate the vaccine hesitancy of the general public. Kung walang itinatago, ilabas niyo ang mga resibo. Saklaw pa rin ang paksang ito ng karapatan ng taumbayan sa impormasyon sa ilalim ng Konstitusyon. The right of the people to information on matters of public concern should not be consigned to the sidelines on the mere convenient excuse of a non-disclosure agreement that you have given no evidence of its actual existence. Mahal na nga, nakakaduda pa kung epektibo, at kulang-kulang din ang dokumento, pero aprubado na at may order na agad. Tanong ng bayan: #SINOVACumita? Pati ba naman bakuna, pinagkakakitaan pa! (Access the handwritten version here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatchno1018) An ex-lover of former Spanish king Juan Carlos told a court yesterday how her life was threatened in a London hotel by a spymaster on the monarchs orders. Corinna Larsen claimed General Felix Sanz Roldan, the former head of Spains CNI intelligence services, made threats against her and her children as he tried to recover financial documents from her. In explosive testimony, she also claimed a book about the death of Princess Diana mysteriously appeared in one of her homes. Afterwards she says she received an anonymous phone call in which the caller referenced many tunnels. Miss Larsen saw this as a threat linked to Dianas fatal crash in a Paris tunnel. Corinna Larsen (pictured) claimed General Felix Sanz Roldan, the former head of Spains CNI intelligence services, made threats against her and her children as he tried to recover financial documents from her She was giving evidence at the trial of former police chief Jose Manuel Villarejo, who faces charges of making a false allegation and slander for saying General Sanz Roldan had threatened to kill Miss Larsen. During her affair with the king, which ended in 2012, two years before his abdication, Miss Larsen, 56, said she had received sensitive documents about the financial and business dealings of the king and the royal household, which the security services wanted. Speaking to a court in Madrid by video call from London yesterday, she claimed she was directly threatened in May 2012 by General Sanz Roldan at a meeting at Londons Connaught Hotel. Miss Larsen, a German-born businesswoman, said: The general was saying various conditions and instructions, recommendations that I should follow. And he said unless I followed them, he could not guarantee my physical safety or the physical safety of my children. Former Spanish king Juan Carlos pictured on the balcony of the Oriental Palace in Madrid, 2004 Miss Larsen said his words terrified me and claimed the meeting had been organised at the express wish of the king himself. Later that day, she flew to Switzerland and on entering the family apartment in the Alps, found a book about Dianas 1997 death in a high-speed car crash in a Paris tunnel. Several hours later, during the night, she claimed she received an anonymous call saying: There are many tunnels between Monaco and Nice. Larsen, who has been a resident of Monaco since 2008, told the court: This hit home the reality of the threats and the danger I found myself in. General Sanz Roldan has dismissed the accusations that he threatened Miss Larsen. Juan Carlos has previously declined to comment on the various allegations of wrongdoing against him. The case continues. Over the last 72 hours, I have received multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry. I have been labeled a coward, sellout, a traitor to the Holy Spirit, and cussed out at least 500 times. This is the beginning of a Facebook post from Sunday by conservative preacher Jeremiah Johnson. On Jan. 7, the day after the storming of the Capitol, Johnson had issued a public apology, asserting that God removed Donald Trump from office because of his pride and arrogance, and to humble those, like Johnson, who had fervently supported him. The response was swift and vicious. As he put it in that later Facebook post, I have been flabbergasted at the barrage of continued conspiracy theories being sent every minute our way and the pure hatred being unleashed. To my great heartache, Im convinced parts of the prophetic/charismatic movement are far SICKER than I could have ever dreamed of. This is what is happening inside evangelical Christianity and within conservatism right now. As a conservative Christian friend of mine put it, there is strife within every family, within every congregation, and it may take generations to recover. On the one hand, there are those who are doubling down on their Trump fanaticism and their delusion that a Biden presidency will destroy America. I rebuke the news in the name of Jesus. We ask that this false garbage come to an end, conservative pastor Tim Remington preached from the pulpit in Idaho on Sunday. Its the lies, communism, socialism. The violent Know-Nothingism, which has always coursed through American history, is once again a torrent, threatening more violence in the days ahead. On the other hand, many Trump supporters have been shaken to the core by the sight of a sacrilegious mob blasting Christian pop music and chanting Hang Mike Pence. There have been defections and second thoughts. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who delivered a prayer at the Trump inaugural, told his congregation Sunday, We must all repent, even the church needs to repent. Trump-supporting Texas pastor John Hagee declared: This was an assault on law. Attacking the Capitol was not patriotism, it was anarchy. After staying basically level for four years, Trumps approval ratings in several polls dropped roughly 10 points across several polls in a week. The most popular piece on the Christianity Today website is headlined, We Worship With the Magi, Not MAGA. In the world of secular conservatism, The Wall Street Journal editorial page called on Trump to resign. Addressing Trump supporters, conservative talk show host Erick Erickson wrote, Everything from the storming of the Capitol to people getting killed to social networks banning you to corporations not giving you money everything is a logical consequence of you people lying relentlessly for two months and taking advantage of American patriots. One core feature of Trumpism is that it forces you to betray every other commitment you might have: to the truth, moral character, the Sermon on the Mount, conservative principles, the Constitution. In defeat, some people are finally not willing to sacrifice all else on Trumps altar. The split we are seeing is not theological or philosophical. Its a division between those who have become detached from reality and those who, however right wing, are still in the real world. Hence, its not an argument. You cant argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You cant have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups. Its a pure power struggle. The weapons in this struggle are intimidation, verbal assault, death threats and violence, real and rhetorical. The fantasyland mobbists have an advantage because they relish using these weapons, while their fellow Christians just want to lead their lives. The problem is, how do you go about reattaching people to reality? David French, a conservative Christian writer who fought in the Iraq War, says the way to build a sane GOP is to borrow a page from the counterinsurgency handbook: Separate the insurgents from the population. That means prosecuting the rioters, impeaching the president, and not tolerating cyberterrorism within a community or congregation. Others have to be reminded of the basic rules for perceiving reality. They have to be reminded that all truth is Gods truth; that inquiry strengthens faith, that it is narcissistic self-idolatry to think you can create your own truth based on what you feel. There will probably have to be pastors and local leaders who model and admire evidence-based reasoning, wrestling with ideas. On the left, leaders and organizations have arisen to champion open inquiry, to stand up to the cancel mobs. They have begun to shift the norms. The problem on the right is vastly worse. But we have seen that unreason is a voracious beast. If it is not confronted, it devours not only your party, but also your nation and your church. Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. 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. Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America in 'Avengers: Endgame'. (Credit: Disney/Marvel) The news of Chris Evanss potential return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Captain America sent social media into a frenzy last night. Deadline reported that Marvel and Evans are closing in on a deal for the 39-year-old actor to return in some form to the iconic role. The article suggested that this would likely take the form of something akin to Tony Starks extended cameo in Spider-Man: Homecoming, rather than a fresh solo outing for Captain America. Read more: Evans turned down Cap role due to anxiety As for the man himself, though, he seems less than convinced that he needs to take the vibranium shield out of storage. Evans tweeted to his 14 million followers that the revelation was news to me and added a shrugging emoji for good measure. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. This would appear to pour cold water on the theoretically exciting news, but it would not be the first time Marvel stars have engaged in trickery to conceal superhero surprises. Just recently, She-Hulk star Tatiana Maslany denied she was involved in the show, despite a tweet from Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo welcoming her to the family. Read more: What did Captain America do in the past? Evans said in May last year that he was not keen to return to the MCU fold after Caps touching farewell in the final moments of Avengers: Endgame. After travelling back through time to return the Infinity Stones to their original timelines, Steve Rogers chose to stay with first love Peggy Carter and was seen appearing as an old man in the final scenes, handing over his shield to Anthony Mackies Falcon. The actor said it would be risky to revisit [the character] after ending on such a strong note. Watch: Son of Captain America creator denounces Capitol rioters A hint of some possible regret, though, came through in the summer when Evans admitted that he misses playing the role, despite his new career possibilities. I absolutely loved my time with Marvel, he said. I already miss it, but theres no denying that it is very exciting to just have complete freedom to pursue whatever my creative appetite wants. Story continues Read more: Evans sends Captain America shield to dog attack boy Evans has already lined up a handful of very interesting jobs, in addition to his turn as a district attorney defending his own son in Apple TV+ series Defending Jacob. He will portray the human inspiration for the iconic Toy Story action figure in Lightyear for Disney, as well as teaming up with Adam McKay for star-studded Netflix film Dont Look Up. Evans has also signed up to unite with Ryan Gosling for actioner The Gray Man set to be Netflixs most expensive movie to date. Watch: Kevin Feige discusses WandaVision and MCU future Photo: The Canadian Press FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo supporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington. An Arizona man seen in photos and video of the mob wearing a fur hat with horns was also charged Saturday in Wednesday's chaos. Jacob Anthony Chansley, who also goes by the name Jake Angeli, was taken into custody Saturday, Jan. 9. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File) Federal prosecutors said there was strong evidence the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week aimed to capture and assassinate elected officials, but the head of the investigation cautioned Friday that the probe is still in its early stages and there was no direct evidence of such intentions. The accusation came in a motion prosecutors filed late Thursday in Phoenix in the case against Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man who took part in the insurrection while sporting face paint, no shirt and a furry hat with horns. Strong evidence, including Chansleys own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States Government, prosecutors wrote in their memo urging the judge to keep Chansley behind bars. But Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, backed away from those claims later Friday, saying they have no direct evidence at this point of kill, capture teams. Sherwin said there appears to have been confusion among some prosecutors in part because of the complexity of the investigation and number of people involved. Prosecutors raised a similar prospect Thursday in the case of a former Air Force officer who they alleged carried plastic zip-tie handcuffs because he intended to take hostages. The sprawling investigation involves multiple cities and jurisdictions, in part because so many of the rioters simply went home; only 13 were arrested in the moments after the building was cleared. The FBI has been investigating whether any of the rioters had plotted to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage, focusing particularly on the men seen carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs and pepper spray. The prosecutor in that case against Chansley said when he climbed up to the dais where Vice-President Mike Pence had been presiding moments earlier, Chansley wrote a threatening note to Pence that said: Its only a matter of time, justice is coming. Pence and congressional leaders had been ushered out of the chamber by the Secret Service and U.S. Capitol Police before the rioters stormed into the room. Gerald Williams, Chansleys attorney, didnt return a phone call or respond to email Friday morning seeking comment. A detention hearing is scheduled in his case for later Friday. Chansley, who calls himself the QAnon Shaman and has long been a fixture at Trump rallies, surrendered to the FBI field office in Phoenix on Saturday. News photos show him at the riot shirtless, with his face painted and wearing a fur hat with horns, carrying a U.S. flag attached to a wooden pole topped with a spear. QAnon is an apocalyptic and convoluted conspiracy theory spread largely through the internet and promoted by some right-wing extremists. Chansley told investigators he came to the Capitol at the request of the president that all patriots come to D.C. on January 6, 2021. An indictment unsealed Tuesday in Washington charges him with civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, and demonstrating in a Capitol building. More than 80 people are facing charges stemming from the violence, including more than 40 people in federal court. Dozens more were arrested for violating a curfew that night. The federal charges brought so far are primarily for crimes such as illegal entry, but prosecutors have said they are weighing more serious charges against at least some of the rioters. Some were highly-trained ex-military and police. Sherwin said this week that he has organized a group of national security and public corruption prosecutors whose sole focus is to bring sedition charges for the most heinous acts that occurred in the Capitol. The Air Force officer, Col. Larry Rendall Brock, Jr., was arrested Sunday in Texas after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs. "He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Weimer said, without providing specifics. Brocks attorney, Brook Antonio II, noted that he has only been charged with misdemeanours. Antonio said there was no direct evidence of Brock breaking doors or windows to get into the Capitol, or doing anything violent once he was inside. Michel Spingler | AP The Chicago Department of Public Health and Illinois Department of Public Health on Friday announced the first case in Illinois of the SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7 first identified in the United Kingdom. The new strain was first identified in the United States about two weeks ago in Colorado and has since been identified in several other states. Evidence suggests that this variant can spread more easily than most currently circulating strains of COVID-19, but there is no evidence that the new strain affects the sensitivity of diagnostic tests or that it causes more severe illness or increased risk of death. In addition, data suggest current vaccines will be effective and safe in providing protection against the variant. Hannah DelCurto-Wyffels Hannah DelCurto-Wyffels, an instructor in the College of Agricultures Department of Animal and Range Sciences, received the Teaching Innovation Award. The award recognizes faculty who have incorporated outstanding teaching practices into their classes at Montana State University. The award includes a $2,000 honorarium. DelCurto-Wyffels teaches introductory animal science courses and specialized courses in livestock evaluation, calving and livestock management. She also advises MSUs Steer-A-Year program, through which students oversee all elements of raising and caring for steers donated by agricultural producers across Montana. Meat from those steers is served annually in MSUs dining halls. Hannah provides students in our department with an exceptional hands-on and innovative learning experience, wrote Marley Manoukian, a graduate student in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences, in a nomination letter. Beyond being an instructor, she has been a mentor to not only me but to many other students as well. She has gone above and beyond to provide students with a variety of opportunities to be successful in their future careers in the agricultural industry. DelCurto-Wyffels partners with Extension agents around Montana to maximize community education efforts, provides workshops to statewide FFA and 4-H students, judges county fairs each summer and advises MSUs Collegiate Stockgrowers student groups. She also assists with new student recruitment to the department and the College of Agriculture. Hannahs work mentoring students has led to a higher retention rate within the department, specifically for students coming from rural areas of the region, said Patrick Hatfield, department head for animal and range sciences. It is her priority to get to know the goals and aspirations of as many students as possible to not only help them in learning key animal science principles but also help them achieve their academic and career goals. (CNN) This year could be the most consequential for Alibaba since it was founded two decades ago. China's most famous tech company faces a host of challenges at home and abroad that risk fundamentally changing it forever. Chinese authorities are investigating the company on antitrust grounds as part of a growing crackdown on the tech industry, while also pushing its sprawling financial affiliate, Ant Group, to overhaul its business. Washington could still be a threat, too. While the Trump administration has backed off a proposal to ban American investment in Alibaba and two other prominent Chinese tech firms, US-China tensions are likely not going away anytime soon. And in the middle of it all, the company's figurehead co-founder and former chairman and CEO Jack Ma has been out of public view for months. "Alibaba, like all other big Chinese tech, is in [an] existential crisis," said Alex Capri, a research fellow at Hinrich Foundation and a visiting senior fellow at National University of Singapore. An escalating crackdown at home Capri pointed to the growing clampdown within China as a particular concern for Alibaba and its peers. President Xi Jinping is urging officials to rein in the country's tech champions. Last month, he called efforts to strengthen anti-monopoly efforts against online platforms one of the most important goals for 2021, according to state news agency Xinhua. The antitrust investigation of Alibaba and probes into other firms have underscored that priority. On Thursday, another Chinese e-commerce company VIP Shop confirmed that it, too, was being investigated by authorities for "alleged unfair competition practices." And Alibaba e-commerce competitor Pinduoduo has been caught in a public firestorm over its work culture, suggesting that the government is willing to stoke broader criticism of the industry. Beijing's desire to extend its influence over private tech firms extends far beyond such investigations. And while the crackdown has accelerated in recent weeks, the government has been laying the groundwork for some time. Capri pointed out that some tech firms have been compelled to join forces with state businesses as was the case when Ant Group's Alipay teamed up state-owned UnionPay in 2018 to develop new technology. "The weeks and months ahead will see this trend accelerate," Capri said. "Access to and control of data and digital platforms is key. Thus, if this means breaking up Alibaba or making it a quasi-state owned company, this could happen." While Alibaba's business is predominately in China, any major change to its operations could have global ramifications. The company has traded on Wall Street since 2014 when it held the record for the world's largest IPO. It counts Japan's SoftBank as a major shareholder. Global investing powerhouses including Vanguard, T. Rowe Price and BlackRock have all bought in, too. Pressures abroad Beijing may want to be somewhat careful about how hard it pushes Alibaba and other companies, though. The United States has been punishing Chinese companies left and right as tensions between the two countries continue to simmer. It just hit China's second-biggest smartphone maker, Xiaomi, with a ban on accessing American investment. The New York Stock Exchange halted trading in a group of Chinese firms this week to comply with an executive order that bans Americans from investing in businesses deemed to be affiliated with or supportive of the Chinese military. And President Donald Trump recently signed into law new rules that could force Chinese companies to delist from American stock exchanges if they failed to meet US auditing standards. The Trump administration reportedly considered prohibiting Americans from investing in Alibaba and other tech firms, prompting their stocks to fall last week. And while Reuters and Bloomberg report that the plan is off the table now, analysts warn that these companies might not be out of the woods yet. "Washington's focus on these matters will continue under a [Joe] Biden administration," Capri said, referring to the president elect. "Thus, even if there is a return to measured language and diplomacy, we could see more strategic decoupling from Chinese digital companies." Alibaba's cloud services, for example, could face the kind of global backlash that embattled Huawei's 5G business has run into. "China won't want to seem [like it would be willing] to destroy one of its biggest national champions in plain sight of a new administration in DC," said Rana Mitter, professor of history and politics of modern China at Oxford University. He added that he suspects any kind of change to Alibaba's business would therefore be on a "medium scale," rather than "full breakup." "I think Beijing will want to get a sense of what lies behind the Biden team's rhetoric before assessing the effect of any US moves," Mitter added. However Beijing allows Washington's behavior to influence its decisions, co-founder Ma's prolonged silence compounds Alibaba's troubles at home and "can only undermine market confidence in the company," said Brock Silvers, chief investment officer for Kaiyuan Capital. "Ant Group's IPO is now a distant memory, and the company looks like it may be broken up and regulated toward a vastly reduced overall valuation," he said. Chinese regulators shelved the much-anticipated public offering last November, and there's no sign of it being revived. On Friday, the Financial Times reported that Ant Group's major global investors have been left in limbo after investing billions of dollars in anticipation of the offering. And while Alibaba seems more likely to remain intact, the company isn't immune from regulatory threat. "Whether 2021 is more kind to Alibaba may depend on the ultimate nature and length of Jack Ma's sudden silence," Silvers said. This story was first published on CNN.com. The Centre is likely to intimate the qualified bidders for national carrier Air India by the end of the month, as the evaluation of the expressions of interest (EoI) is still underway, official sources said. The government was to intimate the bidders by January 5. People in the know of the developments said that the transaction advisors are in touch with the interested bidders regarding several queries and the qualified bidders will be intimated only after the government is satisfied with the responses from the bidders. The second phase of the strategic disinvestment of Air India was scheduled to start on January 5 with the announcement of the names of the qualified bidders. Tata Sons and the New York-based Interups Inc backed by strategic NRI investors from the US and Europe are said to be the interested bidders for the national carrier. DIPAM Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey had earlier said that the government has received multiple expressions of interest for the strategic disinvestment of Air India. The process has been divided into two stages. In stage I, expressions of interest have been submitted by the interested bidders and they will be shortlisted based on the eligibility criteria and other terms mentioned in the Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM). In stage II, the shortlisted interested bidders will be provided with a request for proposal (RFP) and thereafter there will be a transparent bidding process. In view of the prevailing situation arising out of the Covid-19 pandemic, the last date for submission of EOIs was extended up to December 14, 2020. The privatisation of the flag-bearer has already faced several hurdles with initial lack of interest for the airline. Last month, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had said that in view of the post-Covid situation and the severe impact on the aviation sector, the government has considered various options related to disinvestment, including bidding parameters in the PIM, while meetings have been held regularly of the inter-ministerial group and the core group of secretaries on disinvestment to review the disinvestment process. The interested bidders were asked to indicate their interest on the enterprise value of Air India. The PIM for inviting EoI issued on January 27, 2020 had offered 100 per cent sale of equity share capital of Air India Ltd (AIL), sale of AIL's 100 per cent shareholding in the Air India Express Ltd (AIXL) and sale of 50 per cent shareholding in Air India Airport Services Private Ltd (AISATS). Will justice ever be served for Patrice Lumumba? Aged just 35, the charismatic hero of Belgian Congo's independence was assassinated 60 years ago in a plot linked to the fledgling nation's colonial master. He was shot by firing squad by Katangese separatists and Belgian mercenaries on January 17, 1961 in southeastern Congo during the chaotic first months of independence. His body, dissolved in acid, was never found, except for one tooth. The nationalist leader was perceived as a post-colonial firebrand with communist sympathies and a threat to Belgian interests, particularly in the copper-rich province of Katanga. According to diplomatic messages between Brussels and its former colony, Lumumba, the newborn republic's first prime minister, was the "devil" and a man to be "eliminated" with a target clearly marked on his back. Sixty years later, an investigation in Belgium for "war crimes" is in its final phase, according to lawyer Christophe Marchand, who filed a complaint in 2011 on behalf of Francois Lumumba, a son of the slain leader. "We are heading for a hearing this year before the council chamber of the Brussels court to see whether or not the case can lead to a jury trial," Marchand told AFP. - 'Vast conspiracy' - For the lawyer, time is running out. Only two of the 10 people initially targeted by the complaint are still alive. They are a former Belgian diplomat and ex-EU Commission vice president, Etienne Davignon, 88, and a former senior civil servant, Jacques Brassinne de la Buissiere, 91, according to sources close to the case. The complaint, consulted by AFP, accuses "various administrations of the Belgian state" of having "participated in a vast conspiracy with a view to the political and physical elimination of Patrice Lumumba". It recalls that the Belgian army had kept some 200 troops to back the security forces of the secessionist province of Katanga, where the crime took place. Story continues For now, the only solace for Lumumba's long-grieving family is his tooth. It was seized from a Belgian policeman who, by his own account, took it while helping to dispose of the body. Last month, the Democratic Republic of Congo's president, Felix Tshisekedi, said Belgium would return the tooth to his family in time for independence anniversary celebrations on June 30. "It is an important symbol for the family and all the Congolese people," the head of the Belgian federal prosecutor's office, Frederic Van Leeuw, told AFP. The restitution should take place in the coming weeks or months at an official ceremony in Brussels with the children of the deceased in attendance, the prosecutor said. Juliana Lumumba, daughter of the murdered icon, asked for the tooth's return in a letter addressed to Belgium's King Philippe last year, in the heat of Black Lives Matter protests. - 'Tonnes of archives' - For Van Leeuw, formal charges are only possible if "you have proof that someone in a chain of command knew what was going to happen and really wanted what happened". The research has been "particularly hard" for the few investigators who were confronted by "tonnes of archives", Van Leeuw said. He noted that by qualifying the assassination as a "war crime" in 2012, "the Brussels court of appeal has gone beyond the inquiry committee" of the Belgian parliament, which in 2001 had concluded that Belgium was "morally responsible". A year following that legally vague admission, the Belgian government presented the country's apology. Since then, official mention of Lumumba in Belgium has been rare, with ghosts of the colonial past still present. For the anti-racist association Bamko, Lumumba is a major figure who deserves more than the small city square that was inaugurated in 2018 on the edge of Matonge, the heart of the African diaspora in Brussels. "People like him allow us to stand up and be worthy," said Mireille-Tsheusi Robert, president of Bamko. "To do justice to him is also to do justice to all the Afro-descendants of Congo," he said. mad/arp/rmb/ri (SAN ANTONIO, January 15, 2021) - The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has been awarded a three-year, $5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the university's community partnerships in advancing racial justice. The grant, administered through the Mellon Just Futures Initiative, supports visionary, unconventional, experimental, and groundbreaking projects that address the long-existing fault lines of racism, inequality, and injustice within democracy and civil society. UTSA's project -- Democratizing Racial Justice (DRJ) -- will be a transformative, community-based People's Academies for Racial Justice. Through the People's Academies, selected community fellows and faculty fellows will collaborate on a public-facing project each year of the grant as determined by that cohort. Grant funding will further support community dialogues with key scholars working in fields related to social justice. The project was developed and will be led by Jackie Cuevas, associate professor and assistant chair of the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies and director of the Women's Studies Institute. Project co-leads are Alejandra Elenes, professor and chair of the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Rhonda M. Gonzales, professor and chair of the Department of History. "These Academies represent a path-making effort to bring together activist-scholars, students, and community members to formulate community-centric, ethical collaborations where people of color remember histories, respond to community needs, conduct collective research, and imagine thriving futures where racial justice is possible," said Cuevas. Project partners include the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures, which will manage and promote an online repository of DRJ archives, including oral histories, public murals or other materials. The non-profit Esperanza Center, led by director Graciela Sanchez, will serve as the anchor community organization for facilitating the People's Academies. Northwest Vista College will serve as institutional partner for the companion Educators' Academies for Ethnic Studies and Sandra Garza, coordinator of the Mexican American Studies Program at Northwest Vista College, will serve as project liaison for participating Alamo Colleges District campuses. "Higher education plays a key role in simultaneously advancing the social mobility of individuals and promoting stability and prosperity of our communities," said Kimberly Andrews Espy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. "Hispanic-Serving Institutions such as UTSA can play an even larger role in addressing inequality and injustice because of our longstanding commitment to advancing educational attainment for underrepresented groups." Overseen by the Mellon Foundation's Higher Learning Program, the Just Futures Initiative was launched in 2020 to address systemic inequities that disproportionately impact communities of color, as highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The programs seek to improve access to and accelerate demographic transformation in higher education, and support humanities education that builds and centers more complete and accurate narratives for a fuller account of the human experience. UTSA is one of only 16 universities in the U.S. and the only institution in Texas to be awarded a grant through the Just Futures Initiative. "The DRJ project was conceived to leverage our department's and UTSA's own interdisciplinary strengths in the humanities, ethnic studies, and intersectional gender studies, and then build on those strengths through the external partnerships," said Elenes. "DRJ was developed as an academic-community collaborative -- and one that will serve as a model for innovative humanities and ethnic studies education in the region." In total, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is awarding more than $72 million to support multidisciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative teams producing solutions-based work that contributes to public understanding of the nation's racist past and can lead to the creation of socially just futures. ### About UTSA The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is a Hispanic Serving University specializing in cyber, health, fundamental futures, and social-economic development. With more than 34,000 students, it is the largest university in the San Antonio metropolitan region. UTSA advances knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. The university embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property--for Texas, the nation and the world. Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. US blacklists Xiaomi as 'Communist Chinese military company' To bookmark you need to sign in After Huawei and ZTE, the US government has now taken on the Chinese conglomerate Xiaomi, blacklisting it as a "Communist Chinese military company". In a fresh list, the US Department of Defense has targeted Xiaomi, which means that the company is also vulnerable to the outgoing President Donald Trump's executive order that bans the US firms from investing in such companies. The move may force US companies and other investors to divest in Xiaomi this year. "The Department is determined to highlight and counter the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernisation goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programmes that appear to be civilian entities," the Department said in a statement late Thursday. The Department released its initial list of companies to Congress in June 2020 and has now included Xiaomi. Xiaomi is yet to react to the US move. Most of the other companies on the list are more industrially oriented, specialising in aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, chemicals, telecommunications, construction, and other forms of infrastructure. In July 2020, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated Chinese telecom companies, Huawei and ZTE, as national security risks to America's communications networks. "Both companies have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China's military apparatus, and both companies are broadly subject to Chinese law obligating them to cooperate with the country's intelligence services. "The Bureau also took into account the findings and actions of Congress, the Executive Branch, the intelligence community, our allies, and communications service providers in other countries," the FCC said. Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article. - Common shareholders to receive US$3.03 per share in cash, representing a 48% premium to the 30-day volume weighted average price per common share on the NYSE - Convertible debentures to be converted to common shares, including a make whole premium; following conversion, debenture holders will receive US$3.03 per share in cash - Preferred shareholders and medium term noteholders to receive cash representing meaningful premiums to recent trading prices DEDHAM, Mass., Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Atlantic Power Corporation (NYSE: AT) (TSX: ATP) ("Atlantic Power"), an independent power producer with operations in eleven U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with I Squared Capital, a leading global infrastructure investor, under which the company's outstanding common shares and convertible debentures, and the outstanding preferred shares and medium term notes of certain of its subsidiaries, will be acquired. The total enterprise value of the deal is approximately US$961 million (based on current foreign exchange rates) and the transaction was unanimously approved by Atlantic Power's board of directors. "We are pleased to announce this transaction with I Squared Capital. The independent directors of the Board, with the assistance of our financial and legal advisors, carefully analyzed I Squared Capital's offer, and after extensive negotiation and thorough consideration, concluded that the agreement is in the best interests of Atlantic Power," said Kevin T. Howell, Chairman of Atlantic Power's Board of Directors. "The all-cash price of US$3.03 per common share represents a significant premium to our recent trading levels," said James J. Moore, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer of Atlantic Power. "As our fellow shareholders know, the future value of our shares is highly dependent on power prices and re-contracting outcomes for several major Power Purchase Agreements that are expiring in the next three to five years. The acquisition of our shares for cash would remove this uncertainty for investors and provide immediate and significant cash value. We have carefully considered the offer and we encourage our fellow shareholders to join management and the Board in voting to approve this transaction." "The agreement also provides for the acquisition of our other public securities for cash, delivering a positive outcome for all of our security holders. Completion of this transaction is conditioned upon the approval of these holders, as well as other required approvals, which are discussed in this press release," continued Mr. Moore. "I Squared Capital is a strong financial organization whose leaders have significant experience in the power sector. Thomas Lefebvre and his team have been resilient and resourceful in putting together this transaction, which we believe is an excellent opportunity for the security holders and employees of Atlantic Power." "We are excited to partner with Jim Moore and the management team, who have made great progress over the past several years in improving the company's balance sheet and leverage ratio while addressing operational challenges," stated Thomas Lefebvre, Partner at I Squared Capital. "Atlantic Power has an attractive portfolio of assets that I Squared Capital is well positioned to manage and we look forward to working together." Transaction Highlights Common shareholders of Atlantic Power will receive US$3.03 per common share in cash, representing a 48% premium to the 30-day volume weighted average price per common share on the New York Stock Exchange for the period ending January 14, 2021 . per common share in cash, representing a 48% premium to the 30-day volume weighted average price per common share on the New York Stock Exchange for the period ending . Atlantic Power's 6.00% Series E Convertible Unsecured Subordinated Debentures due January 31, 2025 will be converted into common shares of Atlantic Power immediately prior to the closing of the transaction based on the conversion ratio in effect at such time (including the "make whole premium shares" issuable under the terms of the trust indenture for the convertible debentures following a cash change of control). Holders of the convertible debentures will receive US$3.03 per common share held following the conversion of the convertible debentures, plus accrued and unpaid interest on the convertible debentures up to, but excluding, the closing date of the transaction. will be converted into common shares of Atlantic Power immediately prior to the closing of the transaction based on the conversion ratio in effect at such time (including the "make whole premium shares" issuable under the terms of the trust indenture for the convertible debentures following a cash change of control). Holders of the convertible debentures will receive per common share held following the conversion of the convertible debentures, plus accrued and unpaid interest on the convertible debentures up to, but excluding, the closing date of the transaction. Atlantic Power Preferred Equity Ltd.'s ("APPEL") cumulative redeemable preferred shares, Series 1, cumulative rate reset preferred shares, Series 2, and cumulative floating rate preferred shares, Series 3, will be redeemed for Cdn$22.00 per preferred share in cash, representing meaningful premiums to the recent trading prices of such shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange. per preferred share in cash, representing meaningful premiums to the recent trading prices of such shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Atlantic Power Limited Partnership's ("APLP") 5.95% medium term notes due June 23, 2036 will be redeemed for consideration equal to 106.071% of the principal amount of medium term notes held as of the closing of the transaction, plus accrued and unpaid interest on the medium term notes up to, but excluding, the closing date of the transaction. Holders of medium term notes that deliver a written consent to the proposed amendments to the trust indenture governing the medium term notes (as described below) will also be entitled to a consent fee equal to 0.25% of the principal amount of medium term notes held by such holders, conditional on closing of the transaction. The acquisition of Atlantic Power's outstanding common shares and the redemption of the outstanding preferred shares of APPEL will be completed by way of a plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia). In connection with the Arrangement, Atlantic Power's shareholder rights plan will be terminated and all rights to purchase Atlantic Power's common shares issued pursuant to the shareholder rights plan will be cancelled. Recommendation of the Board and the Special Committee The board of directors of Atlantic Power (the "Board"), after consultation with financial and legal advisors, and based on the unanimous recommendation of a special committee of the Board (the "Special Committee") comprised entirely of independent directors, has unanimously approved the Arrangement and determined that the Arrangement is in the best interests of Atlantic Power, and recommends that Atlantic Power's common shareholders vote in favor of the Arrangement. The board of directors of APPEL has similarly unanimously approved the Arrangement and determined that the Arrangement (together with a proposed continuance of APPEL under the laws of British Columbia) is in the best interests of APPEL and recommends that the preferred shareholders of APPEL vote in favor of the Arrangement and the proposed continuance. The Board, after consultation with financial and legal advisors, and based on the unanimous recommendation of the Special Committee, has also unanimously determined that the mandatory conversion of Atlantic Power's convertible debentures in accordance with the terms set out in the Arrangement Agreement (the "Arrangement Agreement") is in the best interests of Atlantic Power and recommends that holders of the convertible debentures vote in favor of an amendment to the trust indenture governing the convertible debentures to provide for their mandatory conversion on closing of the Arrangement into common shares of Atlantic Power based on the conversion ratio in effect at such time under the terms of the trust indenture (including the "make whole premium shares" issuable under the terms of the trust indenture following a cash change of control). In addition, the board of directors of the general partner of APLP, after consulting with financial and legal advisors, has unanimously determined that the mandatory redemption of its 5.95% medium term notes due June 23, 2036 in accordance with the terms set out in the Arrangement Agreement is in the best interests of APLP and recommends that holders of the medium term notes vote in favor of an amendment to the trust indenture governing the medium term notes to provide for such mandatory redemption on closing of the Arrangement for consideration equal to 106.071% of the principal amount of the medium term notes held plus accrued and unpaid interest thereon up to, but excluding, the closing date of the transaction. Holders of medium term notes that deliver a written consent to the proposed amendments to the trust indenture governing the medium term notes will also be entitled to a consent fee equal to 0.25% of the principal amount of medium term notes held by such holders, conditional on closing of the transaction. Blair Franklin Capital Partners Inc. has provided the Special Committee and the Board, and the board of directors of APPEL, with its opinions that, as of the date of the opinions, and subject to the factors, assumptions, limitations and qualifications on which such opinions are based, the consideration to be paid to holders of Atlantic Power's common shares and convertible debentures, and the preferred shares of APPEL (in each case other than I Squared Capital and its affiliates), is fair, from a financial point of view, to such holders. Each of the directors and executive officers of Atlantic Power has entered into a support agreement to vote their common shares and preferred shares, if any, in support of the Arrangement, and to vote their convertible debentures and medium term notes, if any, in support of the amendments to the trust indentures governing the convertible debentures and the medium term notes, as applicable. The Arrangement Agreement The Arrangement Agreement, entered into with affiliates of infrastructure funds managed by I Squared Capital (the "Purchasers") provides that the transaction (the "Transaction") is subject to a number of closing conditions, including court approval of the Arrangement, regulatory approvals (including under the Competition Act (Canada) and the U.S. Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended, the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, and the Federal Power Act, as amended), as well as the receipt of certain third-party consents. The Transaction is also conditional on the approval of two-thirds of the votes cast by holders of Atlantic Power's common shares voting in person or by proxy at a special meeting of Atlantic Power's common shareholders and the approval of two-thirds of the votes cast by holders of APPEL's preferred shares (voting as a single class) in person or by proxy at a meeting of APPEL's preferred shareholders in respect of both the Arrangement and the proposed continuance of APPEL under the laws of British Columbia. In addition, the Transaction is conditional upon the approval of the holders of the convertible debentures and the medium term notes, respectively (in each case either by way of votes of the holders of the convertible debentures and the medium term notes holding at least two-thirds of the principal amount of the convertible debentures and the medium term notes, respectively, voted in person or by proxy at separate meetings of the holders of the convertible debentures and the medium term notes or by way of separate written consents of the holders of the convertible debentures and the medium term notes holding not less than two-thirds of the principal amount of convertible debentures and medium term notes outstanding, as applicable), of certain amendments to the trust indentures governing such securities, as described above. Atlantic Power and APLP will seek the approval of the holders of the convertible debentures and medium term notes by way of separate meetings and/or consent solicitations. A bondholder representing approximately 66% of the principal amount of medium term notes and approximately 19% of the principal amount of convertible debentures outstanding has agreed to vote in favor of or otherwise consent to amendments to the trust indentures governing those securities. The Arrangement Agreement is subject to customary non-solicitation provisions, including Atlantic Power's right to consider and accept unsolicited superior proposals in certain circumstances, subject to a right to match in favor of the Purchasers. A termination fee of US$12.5 million will be payable by Atlantic Power to the Purchasers should the Transaction not close under certain circumstances, including if the Arrangement is not completed as a result of Atlantic Power accepting an unsolicited superior proposal. A reverse termination fee of US$15 million will be payable by the Purchasers to Atlantic Power should the Transaction not close as a result of an uncured breach by the Purchasers of the Arrangement Agreement (provided Atlantic Power is not then in breach of the Arrangement Agreement). Further information regarding the Transaction, including without limitation information regarding the Arrangement, the amendments to the trust indentures of the convertible debentures and the medium term notes, the terms and conditions of the 0.25% consent fee in respect of the medium term notes, copies of the fairness opinions and the various factors considered by the Board, the board of directors of APPEL and the board of directors of the general partner of APLP will be included in Atlantic Power's management information circular and proxy statement, which will be mailed to Atlantic Power's shareholders and APPEL's preferred shareholders, and the management information circulars and/or consent solicitation documents to be mailed to Atlantic Power's convertible debenture holders and APLP's medium term noteholders. Copies of the Arrangement Agreement and the management information circulars will be available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov, or through Atlantic Power's website at www.atlanticpower.com. Following closing of the Transaction, the common shares of Atlantic Power will be delisted from the TSX and the NYSE and the preferred shares and convertible debentures will be delisted from the TSX. The parties currently expect to close the Transaction in the second quarter of 2021. Financial and Legal Advisors Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC is acting as lead financial advisor to the Special Committee. Blair Franklin Capital Partners Inc. is acting as financial advisor to the Special Committee, the Board and the board of directors of APPEL and has provided its fairness opinions on a fixed-fee basis. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP is acting as U.S. legal counsel to the Special Committee and Atlantic Power, and Goodmans LLP is acting as Canadian legal counsel to the Special Committee and Atlantic Power. Kingsdale Advisors is acting as strategic shareholder advisor and proxy solicitation agent to Atlantic Power. RBC Capital Markets is acting as financial advisor and arranging financing in support of the deal for I Squared Capital. Sidley Austin LLP is acting as U.S. legal counsel to I Squared Capital, and Stikeman Elliott LLP is acting as Canadian legal counsel to I Squared Capital. Investor Conference Call and Webcast Atlantic Power's management team will host a telephone conference call and webcast to discuss this announcement on Friday, January 15, 2021 at 8:00 AM ET. An accompanying presentation will be available on the Conference Calls page of Atlantic Power's website prior to the call. Phone Numbers: U.S. (Toll Free): +1 (855) 239-3193 Canada (Toll Free): +1 (855) 669-9657 International (Toll): +1 (412) 542-4129 Conference Access: Please request access to the Atlantic Power conference call. Webcast: The call will be broadcast over Atlantic Power's website at www.atlanticpower.com . Replay: Access conference call number 10151644 at the following telephone numbers: U.S. (Toll Free): +1 (877) 344-7529 Canada (Toll Free): +1 (855) 669-9658 International (Toll): +1 (412) 317-0088 The replay will be available one hour after the end of the conference call through February 15, 2021 at 11:59 PM ET. About Atlantic Power Atlantic Power is an independent power producer that owns power generation assets in eleven states in the United States and two provinces in Canada. Atlantic Power's generation projects sell electricity and steam to investment-grade utilities and other creditworthy large customers predominantly under long term PPAs that have expiration dates ranging from 2021 to 2043. The company seeks to minimize its exposure to commodity prices through provisions in the contracts, fuel supply agreements and hedging arrangements. The projects are diversified by geography, fuel type, technology, dispatch profile and offtaker (customer). Approximately 75% of the projects in operation are 100% owned and directly operated and maintained by Atlantic Power. The company has expertise in operating most fuel types, including gas, hydro, and biomass, and it owns a 40% interest in one coal project. Atlantic Power's shares trade on the NYSE under the symbol AT and on the TSX under the symbol ATP. For more information, please visit Atlantic Power's website at www.atlanticpower.com. Copies of Atlantic Power's financial data and other publicly filed documents are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com or on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml under "Atlantic Power Corporation" or on Atlantic Power's website. About I Squared Capital I Squared Capital is an independent global infrastructure investment manager focusing on energy, utilities, digital infrastructure, transport and social infrastructure in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Headquartered in Miami, the firm has over $24 billion in assets under management and offices in Hong Kong, London, New Delhi, New York and Singapore. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements To the extent any statements made in this news release contain information that is not historical, these statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and under Canadian securities law (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Certain statements in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements, which reflect the expectations of Atlantic Power's management regarding the future growth, results of operations, performance and business prospects and opportunities of Atlantic Power and its projects and the Transaction. These statements, which are based on certain assumptions and describe Atlantic Power's future plans, strategies and expectations, can generally be identified by the use of the words "plans", "expects", "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "estimates", "forecasts", "targets", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "believes", "outlook", "objective", or "continue", or equivalents or variations, including negative variations, of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results, "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Examples of such statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the following: the anticipated benefits of the Transaction to the parties, Atlantic Power's shareholders and convertible debenture holders, APPEL's preferred shareholders and the holders of medium term notes of APLP; the anticipated receipt of required regulatory, court and securityholder approvals for the Transaction; the receipt of third-party consents necessary to satisfy closing conditions to the Transaction; the ability of the parties to satisfy the other conditions to, and to complete, the Transaction; Atlantic Power's intention to hold meetings of its shareholders and convertible debenture holders, APPEL's intention to hold a meeting of APPEL's preferred shareholders and APLP's intention to hold a meeting of the medium term noteholders; the mailing of the management information circular and proxy statement and/or consent solicitation documents; and the anticipated timing of the closing of the Transaction. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not or the times at or by which such performance or results will be achieved. Risks and uncertainties inherent in the nature of the Transaction include, without limitation, the failure of Atlantic Power, APLP, APPEL and I Squared Capital to obtain necessary securityholder, regulatory and court approvals, including those noted above, obtain third-party consents, or to otherwise satisfy the conditions to the completion of the Transaction, in a timely manner, or at all, failure to realize the expected benefits of the Transaction and general economic conditions. Failure to so obtain required approvals or consents, or the failure of the parties to otherwise satisfy the conditions to or complete the Transaction, may result in the Transaction not being completed on the proposed terms, or at all. Please also refer to the factors discussed under "Risk Factors" and "Forward-Looking Information" in Atlantic Power's periodic reports as filed with the SEC from time to time for a detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties affecting Atlantic Power. The anticipated dates provided may change for a number of reasons, including unforeseen delays in preparing securityholder meeting or consent solicitation materials, the inability to secure necessary securityholder, regulatory, court or other third-party approvals or consents in the time assumed, delays resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, or the need for additional time to satisfy the other conditions to the completion of the Transaction. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what are believed to be reasonable assumptions, investors cannot be assured that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements, and the differences may be material. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and, except as expressly required by applicable law, Atlantic Power assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Additional Information about the Arrangement and Where to Find It This news release is not intended to and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to subscribe for or buy or an invitation to purchase or subscribe for any securities or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction, nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction in contravention of applicable law. This release is being made in respect of the Transaction involving Atlantic Power, APPEL and I Squared Capital pursuant to the terms of the Arrangement Agreement by and among Atlantic Power, APPEL and I Squared Capital and may be deemed to be soliciting material relating to the Transaction. In connection with the Transaction, Atlantic Power will file a management information circular and proxy statement relating to a special meeting of its common shareholders with the SEC and Canadian Securities Administrators. Additionally, Atlantic Power will file other relevant materials in connection with the Transaction with the SEC. Securityholders of Atlantic Power are urged to read the management information circular and proxy statement regarding the Transaction and any other relevant materials carefully in their entirety when they become available before making any voting or investment decision with respect to the Transaction because they will contain important information about the Transaction and the parties to the Arrangement Agreement. The definitive management information circular and proxy statement will be mailed to Atlantic Power's common shareholders. Securityholders of Atlantic Power will be able to obtain a copy of the management information circular and proxy statement, and the filings with the SEC and Canadian Securities Administrators that will be incorporated by reference into the proxy statement as well as other filings containing information about the Transaction and the parties to the Arrangement Agreement made by Atlantic Power with the SEC and Canadian Securities Administrators free of charge on EDGAR at www.sec.gov, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, or on Atlantic Power's website at www.atlanticpower.com. Information contained on, or that may be accessed through, the websites referenced in this communication is not incorporated into and does not constitute a part of this press release. We have included these website addresses only as inactive textual references and do not intend them to be active links. Participants in the Solicitation Atlantic Power and its directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the holders of Atlantic Power's common shares in respect of the Transaction. Information about Atlantic Power's directors and executive officers is set forth in the proxy statement and proxy circular for Atlantic Power's 2020 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, which was filed with the SEC and Canadian Securities Administrators on April 28, 2020. Investors may obtain additional information regarding the interest of such participants by reading the management information circular and proxy statement regarding the Transaction when it becomes available. Contacts: For Atlantic Power Atlantic Power Corporation Investor Relations +1 (617) 977-2700 [email protected] For I Squared Capital Andreas Moon, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations [email protected] +1 (786) 693-5739 SOURCE Atlantic Power Corporation Related Links http://www.atlanticpower.com The Gateway Foundation released its concept for the world's first rotating space station. The new idea looks like it is from a popular sci-fi movie such as "Star Trek" or "Star Wars." 1/ Ladies and Gentlemen introducing The SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station. The Future is Now! This fascinating video will show you every aspect of design as well as who will be able to go and visit it. https://t.co/hFsI68SbSD pic.twitter.com/Flk7PZIGu1 JALREIGN (@JALREIGN) February 23, 2019 Also Read: NASA Scientist Admits Giving US Intellectual Property to China, Will Face Up to 5 Years in Prison Will the company's idea be better than the current design of NASA's ISS? Aside from this, is a new concept achievable? According to Universe Today's latest report, Gateway Foundation was founded in 2012. It was formed specifically to build the first rotation space station. Since the concept is so complex, building it will not be an easy task. The company must establish the essential infrastructure in orbit and the development of a series of smaller models to test the idea. The Gateway rotating space station The concept Von Braun Wheel inspired The Gateway rotating space station. The inspiration is a proposal made by Wernher von Braun, a German space architect, and rocket scientist. The Gateway Foundation's researchers and scientists also used the idea of the pinwheel space station, which was proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian scientist and the father of astronauts, as well as other earlier wheel ideas. The concept stated that the rotating space station would rely on solar energy and a closed-system greenhouse. On the other hand, the developers explained that the space station would rotate to generate artificial gravity. Gateway Foundation's concept is also inspired by the space station in the 1968 film called "2001: A Space Odyssey." If you search all the concepts that the company followed, you'll notice that they all rely on centripetal force to stimulate the sensation of gravity. Gateway Foundation's space station Vs. ISS Unlike Gateway Foundation's rotating space station that relies on circular design, the International Space Station consists of different shapes. NASA Gov's PDF explained that ISS is currently the largest orbiting laboratory. It is built by NASA, and other space agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, and Russia. ISS includes different shapes such as triangles, beams, spheres, and canisters. It also relies on wide and flat panels. ISS orbits between 370 and 460 kilometers above the Earth's surface. As of the moment, it is hard to conclude if the Gateway Foundation's new concept is better than NASA. It seems like people should still wait until the actual rotating space station is built. However, the new space station could take years to finish. For more news updates about NASA, ISS, and other space agencies, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes. Related Article: NASA's TESS Mission Finds 'Super-Earth,' 50% Larger and 3X Heavier than Earth, as One of the Oldest Stars This article is owned by TechTimes. Written by: Giuliano de Leon. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. There are few American tire brands more well-known in the U.S. than BF Goodrich (now known as "BFGoodrich"). Originally a part of the Goodrich Corporation, the tire company was acquired in 1990 by French tire manufacturer Michelin, one of the world's largest makers of rubber tires. The raised-white-letter BFG logo on its products exists on many American cars, trucks, and SUVs. The company's history and where their tire comes from makes for a good tale. A Storied Past Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich first founded the tire company in 1870 as the B.F. Goodrich Company. This iconic American brand was one of the first rubber tire makers to be located west of the Appalachian Mountains. In 1869, Goodrich purchased the Akron, Ohio-based Hudson River Rubber Company and began his new company's existence first as a manufacturer of rubberized fire hoses. As it continued to grow B.F. Goodrich branched out into the manufacture of a pneumatic or inflatable bicycle tire and then, in 1896, an inflatable automobile tire. It thus became the first American company to make such products for the newfangled motorcars, which were then making their way around on mostly unpaved American roads. Competition Grows By the turn of the 20th Century, Dr. Goodrich's tire company was facing several competitors. Today, they all exist as either standalone companies or as conglomerates. Even today, Goodrich has always been at the leading edge of tire technology, and the company is known for extensive research and scientific testing. Henry Ford was so impressed with BF Goodrich and its product's ability to withstand wear he chose the company's tire for his new Model A in 1903. Leading Innovation For years, the Goodrich tire brand was a leader in American innovation, including in 1947, when the company introduced the first tubeless tire in the United States, a signal achievement at the time. With no need for an inner tube, a tire could be both more reliable, stable, and comfortable in ride quality. Like its present corporate parent, BFG was also a pioneer of the radial tire in the U.S., first introducing it in 1965. Up until then, older style bias-ply tires had dominated the market. Radials provide both longer tread life and deal with road bumps more effectively, both qualities that help contribute to increased safety. Acquisition by Michelin By 1988, though, BF Goodrich or the Goodrich Corporation had stopped making tires and subsequently sold the business and their name to Michelin. That company completed the sale in 1990 by purchasing both Goodrich and Uniroyal, one of its subsidiary brands. Both US tire brands are popular original equipment on many different domestically produced American cars, trucks, and SUVs. Production by Michelin In the 21st Century, Michelin North America, Inc., a part of the global Michelin empire, is responsible for producing the Goodrich tire brand in three different U.S. factories in Alabama and Indiana. All three facilities turn out many millions of Dr. Goodrich's visionary and innovative BFG products every year and they're sold as aftermarket offerings in more tire stores and retailers than can easily be counted. WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI Thousands of Washtenaw County residents have already received a COVID-19 shot while others are now just waiting until their appointment. The Washtenaw County Health Department still intends to vaccinate more than 2,000 people the week of Jan. 18, after being forced to cancel its vaccine clinic scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 19, due to low supply, officials announced Friday. The health department had 960 appointments scheduled for Jan. 19 that will need to be rescheduled, officials said. Those who were supposed to get vaccinated on Jan. 19 will be contacted in order to schedule a new date as soon as possible, the health department said in a post to social media Friday. There are 2,360 COVID-19 vaccination appointments scheduled in Washtenaw County as of Jan. 15, according to county data, which also shows the Washtenaw County Health Department has administered 4,382 vaccine doses as of Wednesday, Jan. 13. Through the week of Jan. 11, the health department reported vaccinating 2,400 people. People are excited to be vaccinated which thrills us, but theres this big expectation that people that are eligible should be able to get that appointment right away, health director spokeswoman Susan Ringler-Cerniglia said Thursday. Were trying to do our best with limited supplies, but everybodys not going to be able to get an appointment right now. The health department has made efforts throughout the last several days to make it clear to residents that despite the state of Michigans decision to move to Phase 1B, they still may not be able to schedule an appointment. Even though we are trying to schedule as many folks that are eligible in that 1B group, we really are right now still vaccinating some folks in 1A and were bringing in as many of those older adults as we can, as well as a few of those essential worker groups, Ringler-Cerniglia said. Health officials understand the frustration from residents who are anxious to be vaccinated and want to know when and where they will get their vaccine, Ringler-Cerniglia said. Folks who have been calling us, calling the healthcare providers and calling everywhere and feeling like its a runaround, Id say we are probably just as frustrated with that as they are, Ringler-Cerniglia said. Individuals within Phase 1A who have been eligible since vaccinations began last month are still being granted priority over those now eligible within Phase 1B, the health department said. The state estimates that it could be until May before Michigan expands its vaccination efforts to the next group of people beyond groups 1A and 1B. There are currently three sources of vaccine working to get shots in the arms of people around the state of Michigan and in Washtenaw County: Local health departments, health systems and pharmacies that have been administering vaccines to long term care facilities, like CVS and Walgreens. Teachers are among the groups eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, but the health department said it has not started scheduling them for appointments just yet. Were hoping that (teachers can schedule appointments) as early as the beginning of February but its tricky with the large numbers of people that are eligible and a heavy priority on our older adults right now who are more vulnerable, Ringler-Cerniglia said. If you believe you are among the 80,000 Washtenaw County residents currently eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, complete the appointment request survey online, or reach the health department at 734-544-6700, or wchdcontact@washtenaw.org. For those who have called to schedule an appointment and did not reach a representative, the health department is reassuring callers that they will hear back within 24-36 hours if not within the same day. The health department has restructured staffing to support the capacity for a higher volume of calls and currently have three staff members working phone lines, Ringler-Cerniglia said. If you are currently eligible, your survey will be accepted, and you will be in line to receive a link (or call) to register for an appointment. You will see a confirmation screen and receive an email if your survey is accepted and it may be days or weeks before you receive a scheduling link, the health department said. READ MORE FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS: Whos eligible for COVID-19 vaccine and what else to know about program expansion Call for in-person school, vaccine for teachers top priorities for Michigan schools now Michigan governor calls for in-person learning to resume by March 1 Former Detroit police officer opens cannabis shop in Ann Arbor The Philippines government pushed on with plans to rapidly deploy towers in the country to improve connectivity, by adding another company to its exclusive list of independent tower companies. CommsUpdate reported, Meralco Industrial Engineering Services Corporation (MIESCOR), a subsidiary of Manila Electric Company (MERALCO), was named as one of eight companies licensed by regulator the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to operate as an independent tower company. Other companies to work with the government for tower deployment include: CEEC Tower, Communication and Renewable Energy Infrastructure, Desarrollos Terrestres, ISOC Edotco Towers, Ison Tower, Transcend Towers Infrastructure (Philippines) and LBS Technologies Asia Pacific. Each player gained a five-year certificate of registration. In light of the current health crisis, DICT simplified the process to securing permits, yielding a 4,544 tower construction permits issued between July and November 2020, apparently, an increase according to the National Telecommunications Commission, with the total number of towers erected standing at 22,405 at the end of November 2020. Globe Telecom is the leading operator in terms of tower portfolio with 10,270, second was PLDT brand Smart Communications with 10,069, while third place was DITO Telecommunity with 2,066. DICT is aiming to have 50,000 towers deployed nationwide in the next five to 10 years. [January 15, 2021] Golden Leaf Holdings Announces Oversubscribed Private Placement and increase in offering size NOT FOR RELEASE IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. WIRE SERVICES PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd. (CSE:GLH) (Golden Leaf or the Company), a premier, consumer-driven cannabis company specializing in production, processing, wholesale, distribution and retail, is pleased to announce an increase in the size of its non-brokered private placement (the Non-Brokered Offering) of units (Units), previously announced on December 21, 2020, for gross proceeds of approximately C$3 Million. Due to increased demand, the private placement will now consist of up to 133,333,333 units at a price of C$0.03 per Unit for gross proceeds of C$4 million. Each Unit is comprised of one common share of the Company (a Common Share) and one Common Share purchase warrant (a Warrant). Each Warrant is exercisable to acquire one Common Share (a Warrant Share) at an exercise price of C$0.06 per Warrant Share for a period of 24 months from the closing. The Units will have a hold period of four months and one day from the date of issuance. Finder's fees of 5% cash and 5% finders warrants, each such warrant entitling the holder to acquire one Common Share for C$0.06 for a period of 24 months, are being paid on certain subscriptions. To facilitate the increased demand, the close of this Non-Brokered Offering has been extended to January 22, 2021. Insiders participation in the Non-Brokered Offering is expected to increase to a total of approximately C$300,000. As previously disclosed on January 12, 2021, certain directors and officers are participating by subscribing for approximately C$400,000 at a deemed issue price of C$0.05 per Unit in satisfaction of foregone 2020 compensation. The securities described herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act), or any state securities laws, and accordingly, may not be offered or sold within the United States except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities requirements or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any securities in any jurisdiction. About Golden Leaf Holdings Golden Leaf Holdings is a premier consumer-driven cannabis company specializing in production, processing, wholesale, distribution and retail, with seven dispensaries in Portland, Oregon. The company is committed to developing a dynamic portfolio built around the recognized brands of Chalice Farms, with a focus on health and wellness. Markets served include Oregon, California, Nevada, and Washington. Visit glhmonthly.com for regular updates. Investor Relations: John Varghese Executive Chairman Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd. 971-371-2685 ir@goldenleafholdings.com Neither the Canadian Securities 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. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Police in Washington D.C. have released images of a suspect they believe to be responsible for deliberately crushing an officer in the doors of the Capitol. Daniel Hodges, 32, was filmed being squeezed between the doors at the West Terrace at the Capitol Building last Wednesday. On Friday night, the Metropolitan Police Department shared two photos of the man thought to be behind the callous act. 'You've seen images of Ofc Hodges crushed in the doorway during the insurrection at the US Capitol. Now we need your help finding the suspect who used a police shield to pin him against the door jam. Have info? Call the FBI's Tipline,' the Department tweeted. Officer Daniel Hodges, 32, was filmed being crushed between doors at the Capitol Police have now released images of the suspect believed to be responsible The Metropolitan Police in Washington D.C. have released two photographs in the hope of catching the person responsible 'During the insurrection at the United States Capitol, the suspect assaulted and used a clear police shield to pin MPD Officer Daniel Hodges in a door jam,' a police statement read. In one viral video, Hodges can be seen pinned in a glass doorway between officers and the crowd, as rioters strip his gas mask from his face and beat him with his own police-issued baton. One rioter tried to gouge his eyes. As he choked on tear gas, he is seen on video gasping for air to call out for help. Enough police were eventually able to push through the melee to extract him. Daniel Hodges, 32, was filmed being squeezed between the doors at the West Terrace at the Capitol Building last Wednesday Hodges has since revealed that the only reason he and other officers did not open fire on the crowd was that they had more guns and he knew the police would lose in any firefight. He has since told how he thought he was going to be permanently disfigured or die in the stampede. There were some 15,000 people in the mob of rioters and fewer than 1,000 cops. Had gunfire broken out, Hodges said the mob would have won. 'I didn't want to be the guy who starts shooting, because I knew they had guns we had been seizing guns all day. 'And the only reason I could think of that they weren't shooting us was they were waiting for us to shoot first. 'And if it became a firefight between a couple hundred officers and a couple thousand demonstrators, we would have lost,' he told The Washington Post. It's unclear how many weapons were seized in total. The Department of Justice has opened 275 cases but only 98 people have been arrested. The only person shot was Ashli Babbitt. She was killed as she tried to break her way it into the Senate. No one else was killed by gunfire. The DC Police Department has released two pictures of whom they believe to be responsible for the attack on Officer Hodges These are some of the weapons found in homes of the rioters arrested so far. Officer Hodges said he knew most of the crowd was armed There were some 15,000 MAGA rioters against fewer than 1,000 cops One cop - Brian Sicknick - was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher and later died in the hospital. Another cop committed suicide days after the riot. Three other MAGA rioters died; a woman who was trampled in the Rotunda and two men suffered heart attacks. On Friday, federal prosecutors in Arizona filed documents claiming some of the mob planned to capture and kill members of Congress. Other cops also described how they were beaten, sprayed in the face with bear mace and yelled at. Michael Fanone, 40, a father-of-four, told how the rioters tried to grab his gun and yelled: 'Kill him with his own gun!' 'We weren't battling 50 or 60 rioters in this tunnel. We were battling 15,000 people. 'It looked like a medieval battle scene,' Fanone said. He and his colleagues rushed to the Capitol after hearing an urgent call for back-up on the radio. He was among the few cops who tried to defend the West Terrace. When he got there, he was stunned by the scene. Fanone starting trying to fend the crowd off. He yelled to his colleagues: 'Dig in! We got to get these doors shut.' At the time, they were unaware that protesters had already breached the Capitol and were inside. He was dragged from the doors into the mob. Photographs show him screaming as he fights against them. On Thursday, Fanone revealed that some of the rioters tried to grab his gun. He said he feared they would shoot him and instinctively started pleading with them not to kill him. The crowd sprayed bear mace at the officers, which is far stronger than any other type of mace He says he was only spared because he pleaded with them not to kill him for the sake of his children. 'Some guys started getting a hold of my gun and they were screaming out, 'Kill him with his own gun. So, the other option I thought of was to try to appeal to somebody's humanity. And I just remember yelling out that I have kids. And it seemed to work.' After he did that, he says some of the rioters protected him from the others. 'Thank you, but f*** you for being there,' he said to those rioters who shielded him. Fanone said that his colleagues had mace sprayed in their faces, had their batons stolen and were then beaten with them. 'We were getting chemical irritants sprayed. The cops are shown washing their eyes after being maced by the MAGA mob 'They had pipes and different metal objects, batons, some of which I think they had taken from law enforcement personnel. They had been striking us with those,' he said. He says that it was impossible to fight the crowd. 'It was just the sheer number of rioters. The force that was coming from that side. It was difficult to offer any resistance when you're only about 30 guys going up against 15,000,' he said. Commander Ramey Kyle of the DC Metropolitan Police was among the cops who rushed to help after the situation started escalating. He told The Washington Post: 'I was fairly certain we were going to be overrun. 'I scouted out an area we could fall back to another fighting position.' Kyle recalled how the cops fought the protesters off, step by step. 'We all just made a decision. We weren't going to let these individuals in the building. No matter what,' he said. They were unaware at the time that other doors had been breached. 'We all believed we were fighting for our lives. We believed at the time that we were the only door in jeopardy of being breached,' Kyle said. Other cops say many in the mob used military strategies to take them on. He added that the crowd used so much mace and tear gas that it was 'impossible to breathe' without a gas mask on. 'Everything they did was in a military fashion,' said Cmdr. Robert Glover of the D.C. police told The Post. He said they used hand signals and waved at each other before moving forward in 'military formations'. Avalanches and landslides are common at the glacier during the winters and temperatures can drop to as low as minus 60 degrees Celsius. (File picture: Reuters) Last year tied with 2016 as the worlds warmest on record, rounding off the hottest decade globally as the impacts of climate change intensified, the European Unions Copernicus Earth observation service said on Friday. In the United States, the warmer temperatures contributed to a record 22 separate disasters that each caused more than a billion dollars of damage, including wildfires and hurricanes, according to a new U.S. government report. Meanwhile, the fingerprints of climate change were also starkly visible in Europe, which experienced its hottest year on record in 2020, and in the Arctic and northern Siberia, which suffered extreme heatwaves and fires, Copernicus said. With governments due to meet for a climate summit in Glasgow in November, the latest data prompted renewed calls for faster action to slash greenhouse gas emissions in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid catastrophic climate change. The key here is to - for every year and as quickly as possible - reduce the amount we emit, thus reducing the amount we actually add into the atmosphere, said Freja Vamborg, senior scientist at Copernicus. In 2020, temperatures globally were an average of 1.25 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than in pre-industrial times, Copernicus said. The Paris accord aims to cap the rise in temperatures to well below 2C and as close as possible to 1.5C to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change. The Arctic and northern Siberia continued to warm more quickly than the planet as a whole in 2020, with temperatures in parts of these regions averaging more than 6C above a 30-year average used as a baseline, Copernicus said. The region also had an unusually active wildfire season, with fires poleward of the Arctic Circle releasing a record 244 million tonnes of CO2 in 2020, over a third more than in 2019. Arctic sea ice continued to deplete, with July and October setting records for the lowest sea ice extent in that month. In August, instruments documented the highest temperature ever reliably recorded, when a California heatwave pushed the temperature at Death Valley in the Mojave Desert up to 54.4C (129.92F). Record spate of disasters NATO is greatly concerned about Russia's increased military build-up, including in the Black Sea region and in Crimea, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He said this at a briefing on Thursday evening following a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani. "This is something we follow and monitor very closely at NATO. It's part of a pattern of increased Russian presence, not only Libya, but in other parts of Africa and in the Middle East, in Syria and in the Black Sea region in Crimea, and also in the Baltic region and also in the High North. So the reality is that we have seen increased military build-up by Russia, from the High North all the way to the Baltic region, Black Sea, Middle East and North Africa. And this is something which is of great concern," Stoltenberg said. He noted that NATO had increased the readiness of forces, invested more in new capabilities and is adapting in response also to a more assertive Russia, which is investing heavy in new military equipment and also increasing its military presence along our borders, including in North Africa and in Libya. "When it comes to Libya in particular, we have seen the presence of fighter jets, of mercenaries, financed by Russia and older Russian military capabilities. For NATO this just highlights the importance of supporting the UN-led efforts to find a political, negotiated solution. We welcome the progress we have seen, we welcome the ceasefire, we continue to strongly support the efforts of the UN and also the Berlin Process," Stoltenberg said. op To encourage visitors to practice social distancing and other important COVID-19-related safety measures, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University uses humor. Cute, eye-catching placards throughout the museum are attention-grabbing reminders to keep patrons safe. Often, the signs bring a smile in an otherwise stressful situation. We try to have a little humor where we can in our signage, Stephanie Gleit, the museums senior graphic designer, said of the campaign rolled out in July. Considering this pretty scary time, I wanted the signs to be friendly to our visitors who range in age from 1 to 90-something. Using the animals they have in the building moose, bears and llamas, to name a few Gleit created witty phrases to remind visitors to keep six feet apart and to ask employees to hum but not speak in elevators. One of her personal favorites is a sign declaring, Welcome Back to the Mooseum complete with a masked moose. The Academy reopened to the public Jan. 8. Throughout the Philadelphia region and beyond, businesses and communities have found creative reminders to follow pandemic safety measures. From South Street sidewalks reminding folks to Be smart, Stay 6-feet Apart, to the Princeton University campus employing its mascot in its plea to keep one tiger apart from others, the signs have become a fixture during the pandemic. Thats especially important with fewer staff at many businesses to offer safety reminders. People are looking for some guidance, Gleit said. When there isnt a person available to talk to, a sign is a helpful reminder. I hope these signs help people think of the greater good when they are keeping in line with all the COVID rules so we can get through this quickly, she said. Inquirer staff photographer Tom Gralish has taken many images with his iPhone of creative social distancing signs throughout the pandemic. A collection of Gralishs signs can be viewed in the gallery below. Girard College, a private Philadelphia boarding school for grades one through 12, will unveil student-designed social-distancing floor placards at Mondays community COVID-19 testing event to commemorate the Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service. The free testing, provided by the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, will take place from 9 a.m. to noon. Students were challenged to create innovative signs, with five winners getting prime floor space at the school. Copies of the vinyl signs will also be shared with other community organizations. Unlike in past years, when students worked together on a mural, this year they needed to find a virtual way to inspire engagement. We created an art contest that allowed every student at Girard College to participate virtually, said Corin Wilson, project manager with the Community Murals Department at Mural Arts Philadelphia. It would also give kids an opportunity to do something thats both helpful about spreading a health and safety message, but also can inspire them while they are so far away from one another. The goal was to create signs that are beautiful, inspiring and informative, she said. The students imagination led to cartoon aliens, ballerinas and even interpretations of a COVID-19 cell giving safety advice. Philadelphia is the host of the biggest MLK Day of Service in the country and Mural Arts has been proud to partner with Global Citizen annually on different art and activism projects at Girard College, Wilson said. This was a great hands-on way to keep as many of those students as possible involved and connected to their city. Delhi principals welcome decision to open schools India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: School principals in the national capital welcomed the government's decision to reopen schools for classes 10 and 12 students, saying it will give them ample time and good atmosphere for preparing for board exams. "The decision to call students will help them to prepare for their upcoming board exams. Also, there are a number of steps that the school authorities will take to ensure that the students stay safe from the infection. The safest way for the students to commute to school would be via the private vehicles of their parents and guardians," said Alka Kapur, Principal, Modern Public School, Shalimar Bagh. "At a time, only a certain number of students would be present in the class which would allow the school authorities to easily maintain proper physical distancing among the students and further reduce the chances of infection getting spread," she said. Delhi schools outside containment zones to open on Jan 18 for Classes 10, 12 The Delhi government has allowed all schools outside COVID-19 containment zones here to reopen for classes 10 and 12 from January 18 in view of board exams. However, it made clear that physical attendance is not compulsory and students will attend schools only with consent of parents. Schools are reopening in the national capital after 10 months, after being shut last year to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, and they have been instructed by the Directorate of Education (DoE) to follow all COVID-19 guidelines when classroom studies resume on Monday. According to Priyanka Barara, Principal, MRG School, Rohini, while the government has made optional for parents to send their wards to school, it is recommended that they come for better board exam preparations. "The decision to reopen the schools comes around just the right time, when vaccination drive has been started around India. These announcements reflect the forthcoming positive times. It is not a compulsion stated by the Delhi government, but as a principal my recommendation to parents would be to send their wards to school for better board preparations and also to break the mundane cycle of remote learning." "We will be ensuring complete safety protocols in our campus, and would maintain social distancing at all times, with mandatory temperature checks. This is a crucial time for students preparing for boards, so detailed and classroom learning would be a big support to their exam preparations," Barara said. Jyoti Arora, Principal, Mount Abu School said, "Reopening of schools for 10 and 12 was a much awaited notification. It will help students to solve doubts, refocus on weak areas, polish their strengths and warm up before board exams. Above all, the entire school fraternity is pleased to have our heartbeats back in school campuses." The Action Committee of Unaided Private Schools (ACUPS), an umbrella organisation of over 1,500 private schools in Delhi, welcomed the decision to resume classroom studies for Classes 10 and 12. "We welcome the decision of the Delhi government to reopen schools for Classes 10 and 12 from January 18. This will help schools to bridge the learning gap and students to cope up with learning outcomes," ACUPS general secretary Bharat Arora said. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Telangana to reopen schools for Class 9 to 12 from February 1 The Union education ministry has already announced that board exams for Classes 10 and 12 will be conducted from May 4 to June 10, even though the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is yet to release an examination date-sheet. Over 3 lakh students have registered from the Delhi region for the Class 10 CBSE board exam while over 2.5 lakh candidates have registered for the Class 12 exam. The Delhi government has suggested that schools conducted pre-board exams for Class 12 from March 20 to April 15 and Class 10 pre-board exams from April 1 to April 15. Shirley Abrahamson, an indefatigable jurist known for her activist voice and tart dissents who was the first woman on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and later its first female chief justice, died on Dec. 19 in Berkeley, Calif. She was 87. Her son, Daniel, said the cause was pancreatic cancer. Justice Abrahamson spent 43 years on the bench, 19 as the chief justice. She was long the only woman on the court, but when she retired in 2019 and moved to California, five of the seven justices were women. There are now six. At Justice Abrahamsons retirement ceremony, her friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was the second woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court (and who died in September), said in a videotaped tribute, As lawyer, law teacher and judge, she has inspired legions to follow in her way, to strive constantly to make the legal system genuinely equal and accessible to all who dwell in our fair land. In opinions, speeches and articles, Justice Abrahamson wrote about the rights that state constitutions provide citizens like protections against unreasonable searches and seizures but that the federal constitution does not. The wife of the Trump fanatic who killed himself after being arrested at the Capitol riots appears to share his conviction that the 2020 Presidential Election was 'stolen' by Democrats, DailyMail.com can reveal. Kelley Edles whose husband Christopher Georgia, 53, shot himself in the chest Saturday created a new Twitter account in November to post anti-Biden propaganda and communicate with other 'voter fraud' protesters. She retweeted numerous messages alleging voting fraud in Georgia, mocking the President-Elect as well as a Breitbart story critiquing Mark Zuckerberg's Safe Elections project, before the account disappeared after her husband's shocking suicide. Edles (pictured) retweeted numerous messages alleging voting fraud in Georgia, mocking the President-Elect as well as a Breitbart story critiquing Mark Zuckerberg's Safe Elections project, before the account disappeared after her husband's shocking suicide Kelley Edles whose husband Christopher Georgia, 53, shot himself in the chest Saturday created a new Twitter account in November to post anti-Biden propaganda and communicate with other 'voter fraud' protesters 'What time are we meeting? I'm flying in,' Edles tweeted on December 21 to other Trump supporters discussing how they intended to get there A post in the lead up to last Wednesday's mayhem indicated the mother-of-two, 47, was hoping to fly into DC with banking exec Georgia to join Trump's now-infamous Stop the Steal March which exploded into rioting. 'What time are we meeting? I'm flying in,' Edles tweeted on December 21 to other Trump supporters discussing how they intended to get there. It's not clear whether Edles made it to DC or was present when her husband was arrested last Wednesday night for illegally entering Capitol property and defying a police curfew. Georgia appeared in court the next day on two misdemeanor charges then returned home to Alpharetta, an northern suburb of Atlanta, where he killed himself Saturday morning in his basement. Police seized two semi-automatic rifles from his family's four-bed, $600,000 home, where Georgia, a regional portfolio manager with BB&T, lived with his wife, two daughters and elderly mother-in-law. Edles declined to comment when approached by DailyMail.com. His eldest daughter Sadie who is pictured at a May 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in several posts on her Instagram page - asked a reporter to leave. Public records indicate Christopher Georgia legally changed his name to Christopher Edles in 2002, stating that Edles was the name of his biological father, rather than Georgia, who was a man married to his mother. However he appears to have maintained the name Georgia professionally in his various well-paid financial sector jobs, which included stints at Atlanta branches of brokerage firms Bear Sterns and UBS. It's not clear whether Edles made it to DC or was present when her husband was arrested last Wednesday night for illegally entering Capitol property and defying a police curfew Georgia married Edles, then Kelley Morris, in September 2000 and the couple appeared to have had their ups and downs. Edles filed for a divorce in July 2014 but just one month later had the petition dismissed. Georgia's social media appears to have been taken down after news of his arrest broke last week and Atlanta-based Antifa activists posted his photo online. His wife's Twitter has been removed or taken down but cached fragments are still accessible indicating her political positions mirrored her husband's belief that November's vote was rigged. In a December 1 tweet she responded to a now-deactivated 'Stop The Steal' activist account calling for Trump supporters to attend a rally in Atlanta the following day where pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood were due to speak. Police seized two semi-automatic rifles from his family's four-bed, $600,000 (pictured) home, where Georgia, a regional portfolio manager with BB&T, lived with his wife, two daughters and elderly mother-in-law Edles declined to comment when approached by DailyMail.com Georgia appeared in court the next day on two misdemeanor charges then returned home to Alpharetta, an northern suburb of Atlanta, where he killed himself Saturday morning in his basement 'I live in Alpharetta. Let me know if I can help. I'll be at the Capitol on Thursday also,' she wrote, presumably referring to the Georgia State Capitol. Edles also retweeted messages of support for Powell and Wood who have been key figures in Trump's failed attempt to overturn the election results and push unsubstantiated theories of mass voter fraud, particularly in Georgia. On December 7 she retweeted a post saying: 'You're living in the exact moment that your grandkids will one day ask what you did to stop Communism from overthrowing America.' One week later she retweeted another post featuring a photo of Biden and the caption: 'The most popular Presidential candidate in history. Yeah right. Trump would pull a bigger audience reading the phone book.' Documents obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com show Georgia's wife called 911 on Saturday morning, telling authorities there was 'blood everywhere' and that 'my husband is dead.' Dispatch notes from the Alpharetta Police Department state that, when an officer arrived on scene, he was confronted with an 'obvious death' and that family members were 'extremely distraught'. According to documents from the Superior Court of DC, Georgia had been charged with attempting to 'enter certain property, that is, the United States Capitol Grounds, against the will of the United States Capitol Police.' At around 7:15pm on Wednesday, January 6 - the night of the riots - Georgia was reportedly among a group outside in violation of the District's 6pm curfew that had been put in place earlier that day to stem the chaos wreaked by the pro-Trump mob. According to documents from the Superior Court of DC, Georgia had been charged with attempting to 'enter certain property, that is, the United States Capitol Grounds, against the will of the United States Capitol Police' Outside their family's home, they have a flag celebrating the Second Amendment Protester Ashli Babbitt was shot dead as she attempted to climb through a shattered window of a barricaded door near to the chamber When officers gave the group several warnings to disperse, Georgia and his group reportedly refused, according to the documents. They were then placed under arrest as a result. Unlawful entry is a misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum penalty of up to 180 days in jail and fines of up to $1,000. So far authorities have opened more than 160 cases and charged 70 people over the Capitol outrage, warning the arrests are 'just the beginning' with significant felony charges likely to include sedition and conspiracy. Five people also died in the shocking scenes of violence that were beamed live around the world. Protester Ashli Babbitt was shot dead as she attempted to climb through a shattered window of a barricaded door near to the chamber. Three more died from 'medical emergencies' while police officer Brian Sicknick, 42, was killed after he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. A second member of the Capitol Police, Howard Liebengood, who was on duty during the riots, died by suicide the following Saturday. After three major Chinese telecoms were delisted from New York Stock Exchange ( NYSE ), the Trump administration blacklisted nine other Chinese companies that have alleged connections with the Chinese military. Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi, Oil giant Cnooc are amongst the nine companies that have been delisted. This is a part of a final push to ratchet up pressure on Beijing before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Other firms include state-owned planemaker Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd., or Comac, which is central to Chinas goal of creating a narrow-body plane that can compete with Boeing Co. and Airbus SE. The announcement follows a December decision to blacklist more than 60 other Chinese companies. Chinas reckless and belligerent actions in the South China Sea and its aggressive push to acquire sensitive intellectual property and technology for its militarization efforts are a threat to U.S. national security," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. CNOOC acts as a bully for the Peoples Liberation Army to intimidate Chinas neighbors, and the Chinese military continues to benefit from government civil-military fusion policies for malign purposes." The moves will further increase tensions with China, Washington's strategic rival in Asia, days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Wednesday. The Biden transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In its response, the Chinese embassy referred to Jan. 7 Foreign Ministry comments accusing Washington of "pinning political and ideological labels on economic and trade issues and exploiting its state power to crack down on foreign companies, under the pretext of national security." The United States has long opposed China's extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea, a potentially resource-rich area that is also a strategic trade route. Washington accuses Beijing of intimidating states such as Vietnam and the Philippines that have competing claims there. China accuses Washington of trying to destabilize the region by sending warships and planes to the South China Sea. Xiaomi surpassed Apple Inc. in smartphone sales in the third quarter, according to the International Data Corporation. It joined Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index in September after grabbing market share from Huawei Technologies Co. as U.S. sanctions on Huawei deepened. Cnooc is the smallest of Chinas so-called big three state-owned oil majors after China National Petroleum Corp. and China Petrochemical Corp., also known as Sinopec. The companys operations in the South China Sea have proved controversial with neighbors because China claims drilling rights in waters far from its borders, and within 200 miles of countries like Vietnam and the Philippines. But the ban doesnt apply to sales of hydrocarbons such as crude oil and also wouldnt affect joint ventures between Cnooc and Western companies, a senior administration official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, told reporters in a briefing Thursday. (With inputs from agencies) Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. A UNHCR officer talks to refugees in Mai Aini refugee camp. The biggest concerns of the refugees are food, clean water, and the security situation in the camps. The refugees report almost nightly looting by armed gangs. UNHCR/Chris Melzer I remain extremely troubled by the humanitarian situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and its impact on civilians, in particular Eritrean refugees hosted in the region. We have recently seen some positive developments, working with the government to access and assist vulnerable populations, including the transport and distribution of food to some 25,000 Eritrean refugees in the Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps in Tigray. Last week UNHCR and partners carried out a rapid assessment mission at the two camps with the Ethiopian Agency for Refugee and Returnee Affairs and have been able to start restoring the water supply and limited health services. We hope that soon we will be able to re-establish full protection and other humanitarian activities. However, in spite of repeated requests, UNHCR and partners have not yet had any access to the Shimelba and Hitsats refugee camps since the start of the law and order operation two months ago. I am very worried for the safety and well-being of Eritrean refugees in those camps. They have been without any aid for many weeks. Furthermore, and of utmost concern, I continue to receive many reliable reports and first-hand accounts of ongoing insecurity and allegations of grave and distressing human rights abuses, including killings, targeted abductions and forced return of refugees to Eritrea. Reports of additional military incursions over the last 10 days are consistent with open source satellite imagery showing new fires burning and other fresh signs of destruction at the two camps. These are concrete indications of major violations of international law. Ethiopia has long given refuge to people fleeing conflict and persecution. The Federal Government has provided assurances that measures are being taken to minimize the impact of the conflict on civilians. I have impressed upon the Ethiopian leadership the urgency of ensuring the protection of refugees, preventing forced return, and keeping refugee camps safe from attacks and other threats from armed actors. Equally distressing to UNHCR teams on the ground has been our inability to assist thousands of Eritrean refugees who continue to flee the camps in search of safety and support. Refugees arriving on foot to Shire town in Tigray are emaciated, begging for aid that is not available. Refugees who reached Addis Ababa are being returned to Tigray, some against their will. While access to Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps is a good start, I must reiterate the UN-wide call for full and unimpeded access exploring all options to safely provide desperately needed assistance. UNHCR remains committed to work with the Ethiopian government to carry out our mandate to protect and assist those forced to flee in line with the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality. We remain available to seek solutions together - to the current humanitarian problems in a spirit of collaboration and constructive partnership. Safe access and swift action are needed now to save thousands of lives at risk. 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US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan McCracken Library Director Takes Indiana Job By West Kentucky Star Staff MCCRACKEN COUNTY - Susan Baier, Director of the McCracken County Public Library, has accepted a position as Executive Director of the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Fort Wayne, Indiana.Baier informed the McCracken County Public Library Board of Trustees that her last day would be February 10. She will begin her new role on March 1.Before becoming director at the McCracken County Public Library, Baier served as an administrator of 19 libraries in Los Angeles County, California. She told West Kentucky Star that she felt it was time to return to a similar role.She said, "I cut my teeth in that larger, urban, more complex system and thought it was time to go back to that. But I'm so grateful to have had the experience here in Paducah."The Allen County Public Library consists of 14 branches across the city, including their main location in downtown Fort Wayne. The library is home to the second-largest genealogy center in the country and one of the largest collections in the world.Baier told West Kentucky Star that being selected for the position is an honor."It's a huge honor. It is an incredible opportunity that I just couldn't say no to. The only bad part is that I have to leave Paducah." Baier continued, "Whoever takes my position will be the luckiest library director in the world."She began serving as director of the McCracken County Public Library in 2017. With her guidance, the library developed partnerships that support numerous community initiatives including workforce, economic development, STEM education, and health and wellness. Under her leadership the library also acquired a bookmobile and eliminated overdue fines."We have a phenomenal staff at McCracken County and an incredibly supportive board." Baier said. "The library is in such good hands and I can't wait to see what else they accomplish."The Board will appoint an interim director and begin the search for a new Director in coming weeks. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump plans to leave Washington on Wednesday morning before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in, according to a senior administration official. Trump had previously announced he would not attend his successor's inauguration at the U.S. Capitol, breaking with decades of tradition. Instead, Trump will attend an farewell event at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, where Air Force One is kept. No recent president has had his own send-off ceremony at Andrews during the swearing-in ceremony. Former president George W. Bush had a military send-off at Andrews after attending President Barack Obama's inauguration where he said goodbye to the troops. MOUNT STERLING Dot Foods has partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to donate food to disaster relief agencies across the United States. Since March, Dot Foods has donated more than 6 million pounds of food worth an estimated $10 million that originally started with local donations but now has expanded nationwide. 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. World Health Organization Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned the world is at a 'defining moment' in the coronavirus pandemic (Xinhua/Xinhua via Getty Images) The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the world is at a defining moment of the coronavirus pandemic. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appealed to individuals to follow social distancing rules, and for governments to support people, as he urged fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines, and prioritisation of frontline workers. Dr Ghebreyesus told a media briefing on Friday that the WHO emergency committee had met on Thursday to discuss the continued pandemic. He said: It will come as no surprise to you that variants and vaccines were heavily discussed as well as the current epidemiological situation. Some countries in Europe, Africa and the Americas are seeing spikes in cases with multiple factors driving transmission risk. The board of the World Health Organization has urged people not to 'fatigue' of cornavirus restrictions (Photo by Tolga Akmen / AFP) This is because we are collectively not succeeding at breaking the chains of transmission at the community level or within households. Ghebreyesus said countries need to close the gap between intent and implementation of restrictions at the country and individual level because at present theres immense pressure on hospitals and health workers. He said: With almost two million deaths, and new variants appearing in multiple countries, the emergency committee emphasised the need for governments to do all they can to curb infections through tried and tested public health measures. The more the virus is suppressed, the less opportunity it has to mutate. There is only one way out of this storm and that is to share the tools we have and commit to use them together. In the UK a total of 1,564 deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test was reported on Wednesday, the highest daily amount since the pandemic began. The government has recorded more than 86,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, though figures compiled by the PA news agency suggest more than 100,000 can be linked to coronavirus. A programme that aims to give everyone over 70 and those extremely vulnerable to COVID-19 a dose of a vaccine by mid-February has been rolled out across the UK. Story continues However, Ghebreyesus said that distribution of vaccines needed to be addressed to ensure that frontline workers in the health system in all countries were prioritised for protection. He said: Health workers are exhausted, health systems are stretched and were seeing supplies of oxygen run dangerously low in some countries. Now is the time we must pull together as common humanity and rollout vaccines to health workers and those at highest risk. Watch: UK death toll rises by 1,280 This is key to saving lives, protecting health systems and driving a fair recovery. Read more What you can and can't do under current lockdown rules Members of WHO echoed Ghebreyesus pleas. Executive director of WHOs emergencies programme, Michael Ryan, told the briefing: The virus is exploiting our lack of tactical commitment, our fatigue. The vaccine is light at the end of the tunnel but it doesn't address these issues. It's about protecting those who are most vulnerable - our frontline workers. Ryan also dismissed the idea that the emergence of new variants of coronavirus was to blame for the continued spread of the virus. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. He said: "It's not new variants driving transmission, it's too easy to lay the blame on the variants. It's also what we didn't do that's to blame, it's our responsibility for the virus getting out of control. Concluding his speech, the director general emphasised his commitment to ensuring that the most vulnerable are given access to coronavirus vaccines. I will keep repeating this over and over again during the coming weeks, he said. I want to see vaccination underway in every country in the next 100 days so that health workers and those at high-risk are protected first. I am looking forward to the executive board next week and working with manufacturers and countries to ensure that vaccine supply is available and distributed equitably around the world. Watch: Travel corridors scrapped over new coronavirus strains The logo of the World Health Organization (WHO) at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on Jan. 30, 2020. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters) What Will WHO Experts Find During Their Wuhan Trip? Commentary On Jan. 14, a team of experts from the World Health Organization was finally allowed to travel to Wuhan and investigate the origin of the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. The announcement issued by the National Health Commission on Jan. 11 contained only a short sentence. It didnt mention the length of the trip, nor did it specify a detailed itinerary. The trip takes place more than a year after the virus first emerged. It has since spread to 191 countries and regions. Can WHO experts find the source of the CCP virus in Wuhan? I think its unlikely. The reasons are as follows: First, tracing the virus origin and tracing whos responsible for its global spread are closely linked. If Wuhan is found to be the source of the pandemic, but the CCP allowed virus carriers to fly from Wuhan to other parts of the worldcausing at least 93 million infections and more than 2 million deaths reported to datethe CCP will be held accountable. This is something the CCP is absolutely unwilling to face. On May 19, 2020, under strong pressure from the international community, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution to investigate the source of the virus. WHO experts requested to visit Wuhan, but the CCP dragged its feet again and again for more than seven months. Why did it take so long? Some experts believe it was to clean up all the evidence at the scene of the virus outbreak. Since the outbreak in 2020, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department repeatedly offered to send experts to China, but was rejected time and time again. In the end, China agreed that the U.S. experts could go to China with the WHO expert team. In February 2020, after a nine-day trip, Canadian Bruce Aylward, team leader of the WHO China Joint Mission, was asked by reporters in Geneva why he didnt go through quarantine after visiting Wuhan. His answer accidentally revealed the fact that he hadnt been to any dirty areas of the Wuhan hospital. In other words, the expert group only went where the CCP allowed and anything they saw and heard was carefully arranged. Also, the CCP will silence all relevant voices. Yan Limeng, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health, fled to the United States to reveal the truths about the CCP virus. Officials from the Ministry of National Security went to her hometown of Qingdao to harass her family. She said that since mid-May 2020, the CCP has attacked her on the internet, spread rumors, and destroyed her reputation. The CCP set up a fake Facebook account with her name and resume, she alleged. The CCP lied about her being kidnapped in the United States, and claimed that she was lying and mentally ill. Yans mother was subsequently arrested. The CCP has brutally clamped down on those Chinese citizens who requested to investigate the source of the virus and hold leaders accountable. For example, Ren Zhiqiang, former business tycoon and red princeling, was sentenced to 18 years for his outspoken criticism of the CCP; Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist who went to Wuhan to investigate the epidemic, was sentenced to four years in prison; and citizen journalist Fang Bin has disappeared, with many suspecting that hes been detained by authorities. The CCP has repeatedly retaliated against Australia, which proposed an independent investigation into the source of the virus. The Chinese regime has banned imports of Australian barley, imposed tariffs of 107.1 to 212.1 percent on Australian wine, blacklisted six Australian beef suppliers, and placed other restrictions on imports of Australian coal, cotton, and lobster. The CCP continues to blame other countries as the source of the virus. On March 12, 2020, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian posted a tweet claiming, without evidence, that the virus was brought into Wuhan by the U.S. Army. After that, the blaming wars commenced. Chinese state media have claimed, on different occasions, that the virus originated in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, India, Bangladesh, Australia, Italy, Russia, Greece, and Czech Republic. Since the Australian government proposed in April 2020 that an independent global investigation into the source of the virus be conducted, the international community has begun the research. In early July 2020, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response was set up, with former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark and former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf serving as co-chairs. Some experts and officials outside of China have raised the possibility that the CCP virus leaked out of a virology lab in Wuhan. The CCP will definitely do everything possible to conceal the truth about the source of the virusdeceit is in its nature. But nothing can be kept hidden forever. The truth will eventually come to light. Wang Youqun graduated with a doctorate in law from the Renmin University of China. He once worked as a copywriter for Wei Jianxing (19312015), a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee from 1997 to 2002. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Deputy Information Minister, Pius Enam Hadzide has urged Ghanaians to continue adhering to the COVID-19 safety protocols. Speaking on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', he cautioned the citizenry against the transmission of the disease stressing it is very dangerous, so it behoves every person to protect himself or herself. He reminded Ghanaians of the need to wear masks, use hand sanitizers and practice all the preventive measures to curb the disease. He also stated that, although there are reports of vaccines for the disease, it is important for Ghanaians to know that the first vaccine is their attitude to prevent the disease. ''The first vaccine to curb the disease is our own attitudes. Indeed, the wearing of face masks may inconvenience some people but it's better than contracting it. The wearing of face mask is not punishment'', he stated. Ghana's COVID-19 case Ghana confirmed cases of COVID-19 currently stands at 56,981 with 55,236 and 341 deaths. The country's active cases also stand at 1,404 with 175 new cases. 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 This article is part of The Inquirers guide to tenants rights in Philadelphia. Got a question? Ask us using the form at the bottom of this article. Finding a place to rent can be difficult, and it can be particularly complicated if you have a disability. Sometimes, you might need specific modifications or accommodations to make a space suit your needs. But under the law, you do have rights when it comes to renting, designed to prevent discrimination, and allow you to enjoy your property in the same way that someone without a disability would. And its important to know your rights, whether youre looking for housing, or trying to get what you need where you already are. A lot of people dont know what their rights are, which really puts them at a disadvantage when theyre dealing with housing providers, says Rocco Iacullo, a staff attorney with the advocacy agency Disability Rights Pennsylvania. Its important to know how to ask for accommodations so that they can stay in their homes. So, if you have a disability, what are your tenants rights? Here is what you need to know: What are my rights as a renter with a disability? If you have a disability, your housing rights are primarily defined under the federal Fair Housing Act, which provides for protection against discrimination in private housing. Other federal laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, as well as the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, extend those rights to other housing, such as publicly funded housing, and create additional accessibility standards. Under the FHA, a disability is considered to be a physical or mental impairment that significantly impacts at least one major life activity, such as walking, learning, or caring for yourself. That could be anything from a mental illness or drug addiction (so long as you are not currently using illegal drugs) to mobility issues or HIV/AIDS. In general, its illegal for landlords to discriminate by denying you housing based on your disability, or any benefits or facilities included with that housing, under the FHA. Its not legal to ask for disability information generally when you are applying for an apartment, says Sherry Thomas, director of the housing initiative at the Legal Clinic for the Disabled. You cant not rent to someone because they have a disability, or if someone in their household has a disability. Landlords are also required to make reasonable accommodations and allow for reasonable modifications to rental units for people with disabilities when necessary, with very few exceptions. More on that below. READ MORE: Your rights as a tenant: Check out our tenants' rights guide. What are reasonable accommodations and modifications? A reasonable accommodation is any change to a landlords policies that would help someone with a disability have the same opportunity to use and enjoy a property as someone without a disability. For example, changing the date that rent is due to coincide with someones Social Security Disability Insurance payments in order to avoid late fees, or allowing for an assistance animal despite having a no pet policy. A reasonable modification is any change to a rental unit or buildings common areas that would give someone with a disability an equal opportunity to use the property. That could be installing grab bars in the bathroom, or a ramp to allow for easier wheelchair access. Under the FHA, the landlord isnt generally responsible for paying for modifications the tenant is (though Iacullo says that might be different for federally subsidized housing). Can my landlord deny my request for an accommodation/modification? Generally, landlords have to make reasonable accommodations and modifications, so long as they dont create an undue hardship on the landlord or fundamentally alter how they operate. But in either case, the landlord should work with you to find a solution, according to the Fair Housing Law Center. There does need to be some connection, between your disability and what youre asking for and, under certain circumstances, your landlord can ask for documentation to prove it. (If your disability is obvious, such as if you use a wheelchair and you need a ramp to get in and out of building, your landlord is not legally allowed to ask about that connection.) If you do need to provide proof, you can get a letter from a doctor or other health-care provider but the landlord cant ask for your medical records. You could also write a self-attestation, meaning you explain the connection yourself, Thomas says. Landlords cant charge you extra if you need a reasonable accommodation or modification. But there are some conditions that they may impose for modifications to the property, such as requiring work be done to local codes and standards, or asking that the unit be restored to its original condition when you move out. How to request an accommodation/modification You can request a reasonable accommodation or modification at any point during the rental process, whether you are applying or are already a tenant. Landlords, Thomas says, must respond to your request in a timely fashion and if they dont, that could be considered discriminatory. You (or someone who represents you) can make your request verbally, but Iacullo recommends doing it in writing, either by letter or email. That way, you will have a record that you made the request, and a timeline of when it was made and when your landlord got back to you. Those are important in case you need to file a discrimination complaint or legal action. Your request should include certain information so its considered reasonable, and to avoid confusion over what you are asking for. According to the Housing Equality Center of Pennsylvania, it should contain: That you qualify as a person with a disability (though you dont need to explain the nature or severity of your disability) The policy or physical barrier that is an issue for you, and how it interferes with your use of the housing The accommodations you are looking for A request for a written response in a defined timeframe Your signature and the date Some providers may have their own forms that you can use to make requests. However, Iacullo points out, you dont have to use them, and it may even be an issue under the FHA if those forms ask for too much information. So you should feel free to send your own correspondence. What can I do if I have been discriminated against? If you have questions about whether your request is reasonable, or feel you have been discriminated against, there are number of organizations you can reach out to, including: Organizations like the Legal Clinic for the Disabled serve people with disabilities in the Philadelphia region who are low-income, and they can help, by contacting your landlord to try to come to a solution, or by helping you file a discrimination complaint. If you want to file a complaint, you can do so with the Department of Housing and Urban Development up to one year from the date of the alleged discrimination, or with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission up to six months. Thomas suggests also filing a complaint with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations if you live in the city. Generally, filing a complaint will result in an investigation, and may lead to mediation to try to get the issue resolved, Iacullo says. But you can also file a lawsuit in federal court under the FHA, if you prefer. Theres no administrative exhaustion requirement under the FHA, Iacullo says. So, you could pursue a complaint with HUD, or just get a private lawyer and file a federal lawsuit off the bat without going through that process. READ MORE: Our best Philly tips: Read our most useful stories Expert sources: Sherry Thomas , J.D., director of the housing initiative at the Legal Clinic for the Disabled Rocco Iacullo, J.D., staff attorney with Disability Rights Pennsylvania 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. MEXICO CITY - Three months after Mexico's former defense minister was arrested in Los Angeles on drug-trafficking charges - a shocking move that would strain U.S.-Mexican relations - the case came to a close on Thursday night, after Mexican authorities decided not to pursue charges against Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. The U.S. Justice Department had initially billed the case against Cienfuegos as a blockbuster. The retired military leader was arrested on Oct. 15 on arrival at the Los Angeles airport on charges he had helped the H-2 cartel send thousands of kilos of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines to the United States. But weeks later, after intense pressure from the Mexican government, the Justice Department made the highly unusual decision to drop the charges and send him home for investigation. In accepting the Justice Department's move, U.S. federal judge Carol Bagley Amon said in mid-November that she had no reason to doubt that "Mexican prosecuting authorities sincerely wish to pursue an investigation and prosecution of this defendant." Cienfuegos was swiftly returned to Mexico. But he was never imprisoned. And on Thursday night, the Mexican attorney general's office said he would not be prosecuted. "After analyzing the evidence sent by U.S. authorities and the material submitted by Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, the #FGR has concluded that he had no meetings or communications with any criminal group," the attorney general's office said in a tweet, using the Spanish-language acronym for the institution. "It has determined it will not take any penal action." The case illustrated the power of Mexico's military, which has become the main force fighting the country's criminal cartels. Under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the armed forces have also assumed a variety of other roles - running ports, delivering vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic, and building airports and other infrastructure projects. The military has long been subservient to civilian rule, but the government has rarely subjected it to the same congressional oversight or judicial scrutiny as other institutions. Many senior military officials were outraged at the detention of Cienfuegos, whom they viewed as an honest leader. They feared the U.S. arrest might lead to future investigations against other members of the armed forces, according to analysts and officials. Stung by the anger among the military and Mexican politicians, Lopez Obrador threatened to limit anti-drug cooperation with Washington. Analysts said the quick investigation would do little to resolve doubts about the case. "Is it possible that Cienfuegos is innocent? Yes. Was there a magnificent opportunity to demonstrate that in an impartial, rigorous and exemplary trial? Yes," wrote Carlos Bravo Regidor, a well-known analyst and professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, in a tweet. "Without this trial, is his innocence credible? No." Then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr had tried to resolve the impasse with Mexico by sending Cienfuegos back for prosecution. But in December, Lopez Obrador's government retaliated anyway, urging Congress to pass a law that would limit the activity of Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Mexico. It passed rapidly and was signed into law. U.S. prosecutors said the case against Cienfuegos was strong. But it was built around thousands of BlackBerry messages intercepted in the United States that referred to a shadowy figure called "the Godfather," who officials said was Cienfuegos. Many Mexicans remained unconvinced. Cienfuegos served as defense minister from 2012 to 2018 under President Enrique Pena Nieto, and was not widely regarded as corrupt. Denton, TX (76205) Today Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Activity in the New York manufacturing sector unexpectedly grew at a slower pace in the month of January, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York revealed in a report released on Friday. The New York Fed said its general business conditions index slipped to 3.5 in January from 4.9 in December, although a positive reading still indicates growth in regional manufacturing activity. Economist had expected the index to inch up to 6.0. The unexpected drop by the headline index came as the shipments index slid to 7.3 in January from 12.1 in December and the number of employees index fell to 11.2 from 14.2. On the other hand, the new orders index rose to 6.6 in January from 3.4 in December, indicating modestly faster growth. The report said the prices paid index also climbed to 45.5 in January from 37.1 in December, while the prices received index increased to 15.2 from 10.0. Looking ahead, the New York Fed said firms remained optimistic that conditions would improve over the next six months, although the index for future business conditions dropped to 31.9 in January from 36.3 in December. 'Manufacturing is slated to stay solid in 2021, but growth will likely moderate in the coming months as vaccines quell goods demand and consumer spending tilts back more towards services,' said Oren Klachkin, Lead U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics. Next Thursday, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve is scheduled to release its report on regional manufacturing activity. The Philly Fed Index is expected to inch up to 12.6 in January from 11.1 in December. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de TOKYO (Reuters) - Carlos Ghosn concealed the scale of his compensation at Nissan because he feared the French government would force him out of Renault if it discovered how much he earned, an executive at the Japanese carmaker told a Tokyo court on Thursday. Hari Nada, a former Nissan vice president in charge of legal affairs, is a key whistleblower in the case brought by Japanese prosecutors against former Nissan and Renault boss Ghosn, who was arrested in 2018. Nada was testifying at the trial of former Nissan executive Greg Kelly who is charged with helping Ghosn hide 9.3 ... U.S. shale oil companies are hedging against future price drops as West Texas Intermediate enjoys a rebound above $50 a barrel, Reuters has reported, citing unnamed sources in the know. Crude oil prices had been recovering slowly during the final quarter of last year, and they jumped sharply earlier this month as vaccine rollout advanced, albeit slowly, in the United States and Europe. At the same time, Saudi Arabia served a pleasant surprise to oil markets by declaring it would cut an additional 1 million bpd from its production on top of cuts agreed with OPEC+. As a result, WTI hit the highest since February last year, trading at over $52 a barrel at the time of writing. Brent crude rebounded to above $55 a barrel. According to the Reuters report, short positions on oil contracts in the futures and options market opened by producers have been rising since last fall, hitting a five-month high in the middle of December. They may have continued to rise this month as oil benchmarks continued improving. Optimism is growing in the industry, according to Reuters sources, who said some shale producers are waiting for prices to rise even higher before they lock in production on the market. Some of them (producers) are pretty torn between hedging at a level they would have killed for six months ago and their perpetually optimistic nature, Steve Sinos, VP at consultancy Mercatus Energy, told Reuters. Production growth in the shale patch, meanwhile, is little likely in the short term, according to forecasters and the industry itself. Despite the optimism, perpetual or temporary, shale companies are wary of another price slump, despite OPEC+ cuts, and are taking a cautious stance. At the moment, they are focusing on free cash flow, the Reuters sources also said. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: WASHINGTON The nearly 1,100 members of the New York National Guard deployed to Washington on Friday began their mission patrolling the Capitol building and its grounds, and working on traffic control ahead of Wednesday's inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Col. Richard Goldenberg, a spokesman for the New York National Guard, said their presence was required in light of the events of Jan. 6, when a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol as members of Congress voted to accept the results of the presidential election, resulting in five deaths and dozens of injuries. ANNA MONEYMAKER/New York Times More than 20,000 National Guard troops from around the nation have been deployed to the city to ensure a safe inauguration. Final numbers of guardsmen and other security forces will be announced by the U.S. Secret Service, which has ultimate responsibility for inauguration safety. The New York National Guard sent 1,090 troops, 200 of whom are members of the Air Force; the rest are soldiers, spokesman Eric Durr said. This is kind of a routine mission, Durr said. We normally send personnel to the District of Columbia for every inauguration. Leading up to Inauguration Day, some of the New York guardsmen have been on duty in and around the Capitol; they are armed, Durr said. Others are assisting in traffic control. All are prepared to be redeployed to address potential civil unrest. Col. Jamey Barcomb, the senior officer on the ground for the New York National Guard, said his unit has been stationed in the Capitol and were being relocated to the Library of Congress to provide security to key infrastructure in the area. Goldenberg said the troops are staying in area hotels. The primary duty is the one that has been consistent with all previous inaugurals, which is providing security assistance to local law enforcement, he said. Barcomb explained that he and members of his unit train for these types of events year-round. We prepare to work with civil authorities, said Barcomb. We will do tabletop exercises and command-post exercises as individual units. And we will also, at times, do integrated training exercises with civil authorities for that purpose. Unlike previous missions, this mission required a much faster and more robust response to respond to the civil disturbances, he said. Barcomb, who has been with the Army National Guard since 2006, explained how important this mission was to him. My greatest hope is that we are able to look back on this many years from now, and realize that although it was an unfortunate circumstance that brought us here we made a positive difference, he said. We were able to help facilitate the peaceful transition of authority. Jay Silver is a graduate student in Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Representative image The ninth round of talks between protesting farmer unions and three central ministers got underway in Delhi on January 15 to break the over-a-month-long deadlock on the three new agri reform laws. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash, who is an MP from Punjab, are holding the talks with the representatives of around 40 farmer unions at the Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. On January 14, Tomar had said that the government's ninth round of negotiations with protesting farmer unions would take place as scheduled and the Centre was hopeful of positive discussions. "The government is ready to hold talks with farmer leaders with an open mind," Tomar had told reporters here. The Supreme Court on January 11 had stayed the implementation of the three laws till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse. Follow our LIVE blog for the latest updates of the farmers' protest Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann on January 14 recused himself from the committee appointed by the apex court. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are the other three members on the panel. On January 8, the eighth round of meeting remained inconclusive as the Centre ruled out repealing the three contentious laws claiming nationwide support for the reforms. However, farmer leaders had said that they were ready to fight till death and their 'ghar waapsi' would happen only after 'law waapsi'. Though talks till now have remained inconclusive, in the sixth round held on December 30 2020 some common ground was reached on two demands -- decriminalisation of stubble-burning and continuation of power subsidies. Scientists are exploring the possibilities of turning mycelium, the fungus that produces mushrooms, into a new type of building material. Credit: Rob Hille/Wikimedia, licensed under CC SA3.0 In the summer of 2014 a strange building began to take shape just outside MoMA PS1, a contemporary art centre in New York City. It looked like someone had started building an igloo and then got carried away, so that the ice-white bricks rose into huge towers. It was a captivating sight, but the truly impressive thing about this building was not so much its looks but the fact that it had been grown. The installation, called Hy-Fi, was designed and created by The Living, an architectural design studio in New York. Each of the 10,000 bricks had been made by packing agricultural waste and mycelium, the fungus that makes mushrooms, into a mould and letting them grow into a solid mass. This mushroom monument gave architectural researcher Phil Ayres an idea. "It was impressive," said Ayres, who is based at the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture in Copenhagen, Denmark. But this project and others like it were using fungus as a component in buildings such as bricks without necessarily thinking about what new types of building we could make from fungi. That's why he and three colleagues have begun the FUNGAR projectto explore what kinds of new buildings we might construct out of mushrooms. Mushrooms might sound like an outlandish building material. But there is certainly good reason to drastically rethink construction. Buildings and construction are responsible for 39% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and a whopping 21% of those emissions come just from the making of steel and concrete. Construction also uses vast amounts of natural resources. Take sand, one of the principal ingredients in concrete. It takes a special sort, with just the right roughness, to make concrete. These days it is a lucrative commodity and controlled in some parts of the world by sand mafias and stolen by the boatload from islands. Such troubles are set to worsen over the next decades as the world's population grows faster and gets wealthier. We need a lot more homes and if you do the maths, the amount we need to build is staggering. "It's like building a Manhattan every month for the next 40 years," said Ayres, borrowing a line from Bill Gates. The mycelium composite can be grown over a woven scaffold for a period of 7-10 days, eventually encasing the structure. Credit: FUNGAR/CITA, 2019-2020 Fungi bricks Can fungi really help? Absolutely, says mycologist Professor Han Wosten at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Fungi are not consumers of CO 2 like plants are. They need to digest food and so produce carbon dioxide, like animals do. However, the organic waste streams (such as straw or other low value agricultural waste) that the fungi digest would be degraded to CO 2 anyway, either by composting or burning. Plus, fungi bricks permanently fix some of that waste inside them and so act as a store of carbon. All this makes fungi buildings a climate winand certainly miles better than using concrete, steel and bricks. The FUNGAR project began in late 2019 and so far Prof. Wosten has been experimenting with how to make building materials. At Prof. Wosten's lab in Utrecht, the team have been combining mycelium, the 'roots' of fungi, with agricultural waste such as straw. Then they allow the fungi to grow for about two weeks, until the fungus has colonised the straw. This binds the straw together, producing a white-ish foam-like material. Then they heat-treat it to kill the organism. They can also process it, for example by applying coatings or by squashing it. "If we press it we can get a material like hardboard," said Prof. Wosten. By varying the type of fungi and agricultural waste, the growth conditions and the post-processing, Prof. Wosten says they are getting all sorts of candidate building materials with different mechanical properties. "It's very early days to start saying your house will be made entirely of fungus," said Ayres. But parts of it already can be. Mogu, a company based near Milan in Italy, already produces and sells sound-dampening velvet-textured wall tiles and floor tiles based on mycelium foam. The company's chief technology officer Antoni Gandia is another FUNGAR project partner. He said that Mogu is also developing mycelium-based insulation material for buildings. Ayres is hoping that the FUNGAR project will go way beyond just using fungi-based products as components in existing building designs. He wants to think about what entirely new kinds of building might be made from fungi. Foremost in his mind is building with living fungus. Living fungus Mycolite panels are made by pouring the composite into a mould. Credit: FUNGAR/CITA, 2019-2020 There are two principal advantages to this. First, living fungus might behave as a self-healing material, simply re-growing if it becomes damaged. Second, mycelium networks are capable of information processing. Electrical signals run through them and change over time in a manner almost akin to a brain. "We've discovered that fungal materials respond to tactile stimulation and illumination by changing their patterns of electrical activity," said Prof. Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, who is coordinating the project with Ayres. The idea is that perhaps the very structure of a mushroom building might sense and respond to its environment independently. It might for instance sense when CO 2 levels from the mycelium are building up and open the windows to release the gas, according to Gandia. Building with living mycelium will be a big challenge. This is because the longer it grows, the more of the substrate materialthe straw, or whatever wasteit decomposes. Since the straw gives the materials their structural integrity, allowing the fungi to grow for too long isn't desirable. There may be ways around this though. Depriving the fungi of water puts it into a dormant state: alive but not growing. And so one of Ayres' ideas is to construct walls with two layers of dead fungus enclosing a layer of living fungus inside. This set up would shut out water from the inner layer, keeping the fungus there dormant. One of the few other people who have explored working with fungi in construction is Jonathan Dessi Olive at Kansas State University in the US. He says that working with living mycelium is a very interesting new idea because it offers the possibility of the building being able to heal itself. But for him the real attraction of what he calls 'myco-materials' is that they 'give us a way of reshaping how we think about the permanence of architecture. "What if somenot allof our buildings were meant to only last a couple of years and could thereafter be recycled into shelter, food, or energy?" he said. The next major goal for the FUNGAR project is to build a small, freestanding building. They plan to pull that off within a year and then spend time monitoring it as it ages. It is crucial, says Ayres, to be able to monitor the living structure and see how it changes. It isn't yet clear exactly what sorts of structures might end up being made from fungi, but they will probably start small. "I wouldn't be crossing a bridge made of fungi, would you?" joked Prof. Wosten. You might be wondering what happened to Hy-Fi, that igloo-like structure in New York. The answer points to one of the most beautiful things about mycelium buildings. No wrecking ball or slow decay for them. It was taken down and composted. Explore further How fungi can help create a green construction industry Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission Following the Delhi governments order allowing schools to reopen for students of classes 10 and 12 from January 18, the school administrations have started preparing to keep COVID-19 safety norms in place. The Delhi government has allowed all schools outside COVID-19 containment zones to reopen for Classes 10 and 12 from January 18 in view of upcoming board exams. Over 3 lakh students have registered from the Delhi region for the Class 10 CBSE board exam while over 2.5 lakh candidates have registered for the Class 12 exam. In view of the safety of students amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, schools will have shorter hours and fewer students when classes resume on January 18, reported The Times of India. According to the report, the schools are planning to make sitting arrangements for only 12-15 students in one classroom, and provide handwashing consoles and sanitisers readily available in the corridors for the students and staff. 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 Follow our LIVE blog for the latest updates of the novel coronavirus pandemic Most of the schools in the national capital are looking to divide the class 10 and 12 students into two batches for each class, as per the report. Each batch will attend school on alternate days, it said. While ordering to reopen schools after 10 months, the Delhi government has made clear that physical attendance is not compulsory and students will attend schools only with the consent of parents. The schools have been instructed by the Directorate of Education (DoE) to follow all COVID-19 guidelines when classroom studies resume. Only schools outside containment zones will be allowed to reopen, the DoE officials said, adding that students, teachers and staffers living in these zones will not be allowed to attend school. The DoE has clearly directed schools not to hold assemblies and physical outdoor activities. Principals have been asked to guide children not to share books and stationery items. Also read | Tamil Nadu schools to reopen for class 10, 12 students from January 19 In talks with the publication, Ameeta Mulla Wattal, principal, Springdales School, Pusa Road, said the students are excited to return. Wattal said the students of class 10 have not attended a single class this year. In a few months, they will leave school forever, so I am sure many of them will attend classes, she added. Besides private schools, the government schools are making arrangements for COVID-19 safety on their campuses. The principal of one in east Delhis Seemapuri said the school administration has instructed sanitation workers to sanitise the school before and after classes. As the school has a large number of students, teachers will be deployed at the entry and exit points to see that social distancing norms are adequately followed, said the report citing the principal. The Delhi government had suggested that schools conducted pre-board exams for Class 12 from March 20 to April 15 and Class 10 pre-board exams from April 1 to April 15. (With inputs from PTI) Follow our full coverage on COVID-19 here 3 1 of 3 Handout / Getty Images Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Franklin Templeton Investments Show More Show Less 3 of 3 The Giants issued a statement Thursday in response to questions about political donations made by principal owner Charles B. Johnson and his wife to Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a first-term Congresswoman who has faced criticism for actions during and after last weeks attack on the U.S. Capitol. The San Francisco Giants strongly condemn last weeks violence and events in Washington D.C., read the statement sent by a Giants spokesperson to The Chronicle. Our organization has a longstanding policy that prohibits company campaign contributions to candidates for federal office. Individual contributions of employees and investors are considered personal in nature. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. [January 15, 2021] Centric Software Receives Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Leadership Award CAMPBELL, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its analysis of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions for the fashion, retail and consumer goods industries, Frost & Sullivan presents Centric Software with the 2021 Best Practices Customer Value Leadership Award. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home decor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals. With over 1,200 analysts, growth consultants and visionaries in 45 global offices on six continents, Frost & Sullivan's experts continuously identify and evaluate multiple industries, technologies and regions. The Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award recognizes people and organizations that have accomplished an innovative or disruptive breakthrough and stand at the forefront of their industries. The Customer Value Leadership Award is presented to the company that offers products or services that customers find superior for their overall price, performance and quality. Maksym Beznosiuk, Best Practices Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan, says, "As the world continues to generate uncertainty, Centric's record of customer service excellence, industry expertise and flexibility gives customers confidence that products will go from design to launch with greater speed, efficiency and profitability. Centric's commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction has propelled its global growth." In the past two years, Centric has increased its customer base by over 50%. Centric was well-positioned to help companies shifting to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, rapidly launching Quick Start PLM packages and 100% remote deployments. Over 70 companies have purchased Centric PLM since the pandemic began, ranging from smaller emerging brands such as Australia's PE Nation, to the French mega-retailer Monoprix, to large fashion brands such as razil's C&A and Germany's s.Oliver. Even with large numbers of users, Centric PLM implementations can be completed quickly. For example, s.Oliver recently remotely deployed 750 users in 4 months. "At the heart of Centric's success is its agility, allowing customers to embrace a digital workflow and a remote work model while paying close attention to the unique needs of every client," Beznosiuk explains. Frost & Sullivan's report pays particular attention to Centric's flexibility, innovation and customer service, noting that Centric PLM brings benefits to brands, retailers and manufacturers of all sizes across a wide variety of industries, from food to fashion. Centric proudly boasts a customer satisfaction rate of over 95%. Additionally, 35% of Centric's customers have switched from another PLM solution. Frost & Sullivan identifies specific highlights of Centric's solutions, including Centric PLM's unparalleled efficiency in product development and sourcing, sophisticated merchandise planning capabilities, groundbreaking 3D integration, innovative product quality inspection features and transformation of internal buying processes with virtual showrooms. "We would like to thank Frost & Sullivan for awarding Centric Software the Customer Value Leadership Award," says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. "This award is a recognition of our entire team's vision and dedication to innovation. We are proud to be a market-led company that works in tandem with our customers to solve their most pressing challenges, and we believe this award reflects the experience of our customers." Read the full report from Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan (www.frost.com) Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation, and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages more than 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the investment community from 45 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit https://www.frost.com. Centric Software (www.centricsoftware.com) From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a Digital Transformation Platform for the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor and consumer goods including cosmetics, beauty, food and beverage. Centric's flagship Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform, Centric 8, delivers enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, quality and collection management functionality tailored for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric SMB provides innovative PLM technology and key industry learnings for emerging brands. Centric Visual Innovation Platform (VIP) offers a new fully visual and digital experience for collaboration and decision-making and includes the Centric Buying Board to transform internal buying sessions and maximize retail value and the Centric Concept Board for driving creativity and evolving product concepts. All Centric innovations shorten time to market, boost product innovation and reduce costs. Centric Software is majority-owned by Dassault Systemes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the world leader in 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and PLM solutions. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition, including being named by Red Herring to its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015 and 2016. Centric also received various excellence awards from Frost & Sullivan in 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2021. Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software Inc. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. SOURCE Centric Software [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] POTTSVILLE The Schuylkill County commissioners on Wednesday approved a contract with a consulting firm, which includes two former two state legislators, to aid it in obtaining government grants. Effective Feb. 1, the county will pay Allen-Goodman & Associates Ltd. $5,000 per month for its services under the terms of the one-year contract. Commissioners Chairman Barron L. Hetherington said the firm will try to get state and federal funding for county projects, including long-term ones such as improvements at the airport and dredging Sweet Arrow Lake. Otherwise, he said, county taxes would have to be increased to raise money for the projects. Commissioner Gary J. Hess also said the firms services will be valuable, since some projects have had to be put on hold due to questions over funding. Other counties have these services, he said. These are other voices. The Allen in the firms name is former state Rep. Bob Allen, a Pottsville Republican, while the Goodman is former state Rep. Neal P. Goodman, a Mahanoy City Democrat who retired at the end of 2020. County Administrator Gary R. Bender also said the men will help the county get money for important projects. Also on Wednesday, the commissioners approved the agreement with the City of Pottsville to resolve questions about the cost of collecting taxes. Under the agreement, the county will pay one-third the cost of the citys tax office, except for the deputy clerk handling city trash accounts. The county will pay one-sixth of that employees salary and benefits. I just wanted it resolved, Bender said. Once we all communicated, it worked out. The commissioners also voted to add Cornerstone Advisors as a fiduciary to the countys deferred compensation program. Cornerstone will receive an annual service fee of 0.5% on the first $3 million in plan assets, 0.15% on the next $17 million and 0.8% on the next $30 million. Any fund amounts under $1 million will be billed at the minimum rate of $5,000. Also on Wednesday, the commissioners approved three supplemental 2020 budget appropriations. One is for $67,925 for the Schuylkill County Transportation Authority. Bender said the appropriation consists of additional state money for the authority, not a diversion from the county contingency fund. A second is for $15,493 for the Children & Youth agency. Bender said that money will be used for additional security enhancements, which he declined to specify. A third is $6,387 for the Adult Probation & Parole Office. Bender said that money will be used to buy additional equipment. In another matter, the commissioners approved six budget adjustments for 2020 and two for 2021. The 2020 ones include the following: 911 Communications, $3,350 Administration, $62,345 Human Resources, $40,000 Magisterial District Judges, $160 Planning and Zoning, $570 Public Works, $2,650 The two for 2021 are as follows: Children & Youth, $6,800 Human Resources, $53,120 Also, the commissioners: On behalf of the Office of Senior Services, increased the contract cap with Diakon Child Family & Community Ministries, Middletown, by $710,750.02 to $1,664,868.02 for 2020-21. Approved purchase-of-service agreements with five companies on behalf of Children & Youth for answering services and foster care and residential placement. Approved the repository bid sale of 152 Llewellyn Road, Branch Township, to Michael Kyriannis. Increased by $4,627.92 and $6,019.28, respectively, the payments for 2020-21 and 2021-22 to the Schuylkill County Transportation Authority to account for increases in shared ride fares. Appointed Dr. Manish Mishra to fill a vacancy in the Senior Services Agency Advisory Board. Reappointed Mark J. Scarbinsky, of Saint Clair, to a one-year term on the Highridge Improvement District Authority. Appointed Jacquelyn Burke, of Shenandoah, as a county caseworker 1 with Children & Youth. The county Salary Board approved her salary of $18.1499 per hour. The military has met its goal of reducing the number of troops in to about 2,500 by Friday, a drawdown that appears to violate a last-minute congressional prohibition. President Donald Trump, who ordered the reduction in November, said Thursday that troop levels in had reached a 19-year low, although he did not mention a troop number. Last February his administration struck a deal with the Taliban to reduce American troop levels in phases and to go to zero by May 2021, although it is unclear how the incoming Biden administration will proceed. President-elect Joe Biden, who has advocated keeping a small counterterrorism force in as a way to ensure that extremist groups like al-Qaida are unable to launch attacks on the United States, faces a number of questions on Afghanistan. One is how and whether to proceed with further troop cuts. Trump in his brief statement alluded to his longstanding desire to get out of Afghanistan entirely. I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars, he said, referring to U.S. wars that have dragged on in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq for much of the period since 2003. Although senior military officials had cautioned against speedy troop reductions in Afghanistan, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller announced on Nov. 17 that he was implementing Trump's order. As a result, military commanders scrambled to pull more than 1,500 troops out of the country in the last few weeks. At Trump's order, commanders also cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 2,500 from about 3,000 in the same period. The Afghanistan decision was seen by some as unnecessarily complicating the decision-making of the incoming administration. Trump at the time had refused to acknowledge that he had lost the election and would be ceding to Biden on Jan. 20. Some in Congress, including fellow Republicans, opposed Trump's decision. Under the National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress two weeks ago, the Pentagon was explicitly forbidden to use money from this year's or last year's budget on reducing the number of troops below 4,000 or below the number that was in the country the day the bill was finalized, which was January 1. Trump vetoed the measure, but both the House and Senate voted to override his veto. The Pentagon has not yet fully explained how it squares its continued drawdown with the legal prohibition. In response to questions about this, the Pentagon issued a written statement saying, DoD will adhere to all statutory provisions of the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act, to include those in Section 1215 that impact the ongoing drawdown in Afghanistan. It said it has been working with the National Security Council on the most efficient means to ensure consistency amidst an anterior drawdown already occurring across Afghanistan, and in a manner that continues to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel. The defense legislation provides two conditions under which the Pentagon could get around the prohibition -- a presidential waiver or a report to Congress assessing the effect of a further drawdown on the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan and the risk to U.S. troops there. As of Thursday the Pentagon had met neither of those conditions. The prohibition on completing the drawdown put the Pentagon in a bind, coming weeks after it had begun the drawdown, which involved a large logistical effort to remove equipment as well as troops. Because of less-than-transparent military procedures for counting troops in Afghanistan, it is possible that the 2,500 figure may be fudged. The main reason for concern about a too-quick troop withdrawal is what the Pentagon sees as continued high levels of Taliban violence against the Afghan government. Some U.S. officials have questioned he wisdom of fully withdrawing, in accordance with the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban, if violence remains high. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was aimed at overthrowing the Taliban regime, running al-Qaida out of the country and laying the groundwork for a global war on terrorism. It turned into something more ambitious but less well-defined and became far more costly in blood and treasure. During Biden's time as vice president, the U.S. pushed U.S. troop totals in Afghanistan to 100,000 in a failed bid to compel the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. When Trump took office four years ago there were about 8,500 troops in the country, and he raised it to about 13,000 that summer. Last month, when he met with Afghan officials in Kabul and with Taliban representatives in Qatar, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he emphasized to both sides that in order to give fledgling peace talks a chance, they must rapidly reduce levels of violence. Everything else hinges on that, Milley told reporters. During Milley's visit, Army Gen. Scott Miller, the top commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, told reporters that the Taliban had stepped up attacks on Afghan forces, particularly in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and against roadways and other infrastructure. (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.) New Delhi/Darjeeling: The Centre on Tuesday despatched 600 paramilitary personnel to assist the West Bengal government in restoring normalcy in violence-hit Darjeeling hills which witnessed incidents of stone pelting on the second day of GJM-sponsored indefinite bandh. The Centre also sought a detailed report on the prevailing situation in the hill district from the state government. A Union home ministry spokesperson said that as many as 600 paramilitary personnel, including 200 women, were sent to Darjeeling. Around 400 personnel, already stationed in West Bengal, have also been deployed in the hill areas along with additional forces. The home ministry said it was closely monitoring the situation in Darjeeling and was ready to offer all assistance to the state government to restore normalcy there. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat in Kolkata that the situation in the hill district was peaceful. She, however, said that the Centre did not seek any report on the Darjeeling situation from the state government. As their indefinite shutdown entered its second day today, protesters demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland hurled stones at the police at Chowkbazar area in Darjeeling after they were stopped from enforcing their shutdown in many government offices. Senior police officers were seen leading large police contingents in various parts of the hills. Police pickets and barricades were put up in front of the government and the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) offices and various entry and exit points of the hills, while Rapid Action Force (RAF) and a sizable number of women police personnel were also deployed. ALSO READ | Centre closely monitoring situation in Darjeeling, ready to offer help: Official Shops downed shutters as the violence broke out. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leadership, however, accused the police unprovoked lathi-charge on its procession. The police resorted to unprovoked lathi-charge on a peaceful rally. The more they use force against us, the more intense will be the struggle for a separate Gorkhaland state, GJM general secretary Roshan Giri told PTI. Yesterday too, Gorkhaland supporters vandalised government offices as the GJM-sponsored indefinite shutdown forced tourists out of the picturesque hill station due to threat of violence. The GJM, which controls the GTA, has called a shutdown of all state and GTA offices to press its demand for creation of a separate state. Giri said that a meeting of six political parties, including GJM and Gorkha National Liberation Front during the day, decided to strengthen the movement for a seperate Gorkhaland. Their next meeting has been scheduled on June 20 to discuss the future course of action, he said. GJM chief Bimal Gurung said that he was in constant touch with the Centre and was hopeful that its ally the BJP would consider its demand for a separate state compassionately. I am constantly in touch with the central government and various ministers. I am very hopeful that they will understand our pain and struggle and will consider our demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland. The government at the Centre is our ally and they will surely consider our demand compassionately, Gurung said. BJP, he said, has always been in favour of small states. The GJM chief slammed West Bengal chief minister for calling out the Army to control the situation in the hills and advised her to stay away as the people of Darjeeling are well equipped to take care of themselves. My advice to Mamata Banerjee is please stay away from the hills. We dont need your charity. The people of the hills will not accept TMCs hegemony, he said. Hitting out at the chief minister for calling the Army to control the situation in the hills, Gurung said, Mamata Banerjee is just pursuing opportunist politics. In December last year she had accused the Army of trying to attempt a military coup. She can do anything for the sake of cheap politics, he alleged. We are not like her. We respect the Indian Army. Every year hundreds of youth from the hills join the Indian army, he said. ALSO READ: Govt offices sabotaged on 1st day of shutdown called by GJM in Darjeeling For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. After the year weve had, a year that made many of us feel as if wed lost ground in our pursuit of justice and equality, we especially need the nourishment of Dr. Kings vision of unity and healing, Lightfoot said at the virtual event, which was part of the Together we Heal campaign the city launched in December. A powerful figure with a hand in most important files in Premier Brian Pallister's government is on his way out eventually. A powerful figure with a hand in most important files in Premier Brian Pallister's government is on his way out eventually. Paul Beauregard has given notice he will leave his role as Treasury Board secretary once his replacement is found. However, he will remain a part of Manitoba's Vaccine Implementation Task Force "until the latter stages of the vaccine rollout," a government spokesman said. Beauregard, a key adviser to the premier who is said to be more powerful than most cabinet ministers, has been a "senior leader" in the government's pandemic response, Pallister has said. He joined the government in 2017 after working in executive positions with both Manitoba Telecom Service Inc., and BCE/Bell Canada. Beauregard has been given responsibility for negotiating contracts with outside suppliers, informing institutions and unions of government cuts, and last year made news when it was revealed he had warned senior officials of Manitoba Hydro, on behalf of the government, not to bid on a lucrative provincial contract through its telecom subsidiary. He also made headlines when he filed a workplace harassment complaint against NDP MLA Adrien Sala, who had charged that Beauregard had improperly directed Hydro over the contract, which wound up being awarded to his old employer, Bell MTS, without a competition. "I am incredibly proud of the work done by my colleagues and myself in the public service," Beauregard said in a brief statement to the Free Press late Thursday. "In recent months, I have been repeatedly defamed by those who neither knew me nor took the time to obtain correct facts, which is deeply unfortunate," he said. The CBC reported late Wednesday evening that Beauregard had resigned. It quoted a provincial spokesperson as saying Beauregard had asked the clerk of the executive council, the province's chief bureaucrat, David McLaughlin, to start looking for a new leader of the Treasury Board Secretariat, which is responsible for overseeing government spending. Blake Robert, Pallister's director of media relations and issues management, said Thursday that Beauregard "has been and continues to be a valued member of the civil service's senior leadership team." "He recently advised his colleagues at the Treasury Board Secretariat that he will be stepping down from his role as secretary once a successor is chosen, but also that he will continue his important work with Manitoba's Vaccine Implementation Task Force until the latter stages of the vaccine rollout. At that point, he has signalled his intention to return to private life," Robert said in a late afternoon email. "Career transitions are common among senior leaders, and the suggestion that this is anything other than routine is false and should not be entertained," Robert wrote. Earlier in the day, before the government clarified Beauregard's status, the Opposition NDP had expressed concern that the powerful bureaucrat was leaving government at a critical time in the pandemic response. Just last week, the premier installed a new health minister, Heather Stefanson, in place of Cameron Friesen, whose performance during the health crisis had been panned in some circles. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Shares of Tata Motors extended their winning run to the 11th straight day on Friday after the stock rose 7 per cent to hit a 28-month high of Rs 261.50 on the BSE in an otherwise weak market. The stock was trading at its highest level since September 2018. The stock, however, pared gains later, and was ruling 5 per cent higher on the BSE after it clarified that the company had no plans to form partnership with US-based Tesla for electric mobility. "Tata Motors has not taken any decision regarding a strategic partner for its PV business and categorically denies any and all rumours suggesting the same," it said in a press release.Media reports had earlier suggested that Tesla may choose Tata Motors for its much awaited foray into the Indian market. The rumour was further fuelled when the official twitter handle of Tata Motors' electric vehicles-wing (TatamotorEV) tweeted an encrypted message welcoming Tesla to India and talking about their rumoured partnership. The tweet, however, was later taken down. In the past one week, it has rallied 32 per cent after the company's subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) posted a second successive quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) recovery in sales, despite the continuing impact of Covid-19. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex gained 1 per cent during the week. With todays gain, Tata Motors share price has risen 42 per cent thus far in the month of January 2021, against a 3 per cent rise in the benchmark index. JLR on Monday released its quarter ended December 2020 (Q3FY21) sales figures, which reflect a considerable hit as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the company highlighted signs of recovery as sales in China remained strong. China sales were particularly encouraging, up 20.2 per cent on the prior quarter and 19.1 per cent year-on-year (YoY), JLR said in a media statement. The management said JLR's performance in China, the region least impacted by Covid-19 in the most recent quarter, has been particularly encouraging with our sales there growing on both a year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter basis. Other are also showing strong signs of recovery, despite second Covid waves across the globe, it said. On January 1, Tata Motors said the company reported a 21 per cent increase in total vehicle sales in the domestic market to 53,430 units in December. M&HCVs and ILCVs led the recovery, growing by 10 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively over Q3FY20 with higher demand in infrastructure, including road construction, mining and e-commerce segments. The offtake continued to be higher than retail to support sequential month on month growth in retail while ensuring healthy inventory levels in the pipeline, the company said in a press release. Meanwhile, ICICI Securities expects Tata Motors to report stable performance in Q3FY21. JLR volume recovery along with improvement in product mix and market mix continues to be on track. This coupled with cost-cutting and controlled capex will drive sharp improvement in profitability and free cash flow (FCF), said analysts at Motilal Oswal Securities. If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here 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. As Chicago Public Schools works through its first week of in-person learning since March, 100 educators are still considered absent without leave, meaning they have been denied pay and locked out of their Google accounts for failing to report to school buildings for an extended length of time. Some parents say CPS is effectively punishing their children by cutting off their teachers access to remote teaching, in some cases even though none of their students has returned for in-person classes. New Delhi: At the United Nations Security Council, India on Thursday highlighted the plight of Yemenis, especially children who have be impacted by the ongoing famine in the west Asian nation. India's envoy to the United Nations, TS Tirumurti said, "The plight of millions of Yemenis facing, inter alia, severe food insecurity, as well as children suffering malnourishment, are immediate needs which should move the conscience of the world community. India will continue to provide medical and other assistance to those affected by the conflict." Yemen is undergoing the worst famine, termed as by UNICEF as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. According to the UN Body with more than 24 million people some 80 per cent of the population requires humanitarian assistance which includes more than 12 million children. The Indian envoy said, "It is time we put the people of Yemen at the centre of our efforts in the midst of all other developments". He called on for the implementation of the Stockholm agreement that calls for Yemeni govt and Houthi rebels to address the humanitarian situation as "there are predictions of a widespread famine in Yemen in 2021." The country has seen a number of attacks, the latest being attack at the Aden airport when a plane carrying newly formed Yemeni government has landed in the city. As many as 28 people were killed in the attack, which includes, members of the red cross. The Indian envoy said that these recurring incidents highlight the safety and security issues faced by humanitarian workers in Yemen. He commended the valiant efforts of all humanitarian workers to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Yemeni people in need, in face of the daunting challenges. During the UNSC meeting on Yemen, India welcomed the recent political developments in the country, including the formation of a new cabinet, security redeployments in southern Yemen which it said "has triggered a wave of hope". New Delhi appreciated the role played by Saudi Arabia and others in facilitating these developments and acknowledged the key role of a unified GCC in promoting peace, stability and prosperity in Yemen. Recently Qatar and other GCC countries agreed to bury the hatchet with the signing of the Al Ula declaration. India has had close ties with Yemen, with around 300,000 Indians of Yemeni origin living in India. Before the crisis began, a large number of Indians used to work in the country. TS Tirumurti said, "...strong connect with Yemen, makes the instability, violence and suffering in Yemen painful for India and all Indians." Live TV Dependence on foreign oil has climbed to over 70 percent. A dock worker wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) looks at an oil tanker unloading crude oil at a port in Qingdao, Shandong province, China March 26, 2020. China claims that it made gains in energy security last year although oil imports continued to rise far faster than domestic production. On Dec. 31, the official English-language China Daily reported that increases in oil and gas output were "helping strengthen energy security" in 2020, citing data from the National Energy Administration (NEA). "It is the first time that oil production picked up momentum after production dropped for three consecutive years," the paper said. The report sowed confusion because it apparently used production numbers from 2019, identifying them as from 2020. The NEA had released higher production figures quoted by the official Xinhua news agency and Reuters earlier in the month. According to the NEA's director, Zhang Jianhua, crude oil production last year was estimated to reach 194 million metric tons (3.87 million barrels per day), a 1.6-percent increase from 2019 output of 191 million tons (mmt), as recorded by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Reuters clarified that the 2020 performance was the "second straight year-on-year rise" in oil production," not the first after three years of decline, as China Daily said. The conflicting accounts illustrate the difficulties of getting consistent energy data from China's many official agencies. But the differences in oil production are largely academic, since production has been stuck in the range of 3.8 million-3.9 million barrels per day (mbpd) since 2017. While domestic output has stagnated, oil imports surged 7.3 percent from a year earlier to an average of 10.9 mbpd, according to customs data released Thursday. Based on the NEA and customs figures, China's import dependence for oil rose to 73.6 percent last year. In other words, nearly three out of every four barrels of oil that China consumed had to be delivered from abroad. According to RFA calculations, China's reliance on foreign oil reached 72.6 percent in 2019. Business as usual China's import dependence has been a long-standing and largely neglected issue for China's energy security, leaving it vulnerable to disruptions, although the government has gradually built up a strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) with the goal of covering 90 days of imports as recommended by the Paris-Based International Energy Agency (IEA). Last March, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) promised to "ensure energy security," acknowledging the seriousness of the issue in its annual work report to the National People's Congress (NPC) for the first time. "We will make steady progress in developing the production, supply, storage, and sales systems of coal, petroleum, natural gas, electricity, and petroleum reserve bases, and better regulate the operations of energy companies," the government's top planning bureaucracy said. "We will improve our contingency plans in response to major changes in supply and demand at home and abroad, ensuring an overall balance of supply and demand and the stable operation of our markets," the agency told the NPC. China's recent electricity shortages and energy supply problems during the unusually cold winter have raised doubts about whether the NDRC's commitments are being fulfilled. Domestic oil production has languished for well over a decade due to commercial pressures and difficult geology, leaving the government with few alternatives to rising import reliance as demand continues to grow. China's import dependence reached 50 percent for the first time in 2008. The country became the world's leading oil importer in 2017. In the decade before 2018, domestic oil production rose at an average annual rate of less than 0.05 percent, the BP Statistical Review of World Energy said. Consumption grew at an annual rate of 5.4 percent. The government believes that production has been held back by the reluctance of state-owned oil companies to allow third-party access to their pipelines. Reshaping the industry After years of delay, the government launched a restructuring of the industry with the establishment of the China Oil & Gas Pipeline Network (PipeChina) in December 2019, taking control of the infrastructure. But it is too soon to say whether the new pipeline monopoly will lead to a significant increase in independent exploration and production. Edward Chow, senior associate for energy security and climate change at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, suggested that it will be hard to reverse an energy security risk that has been built up over years. "Chinese import dependency has already reached dangerously high levels of 70 percent for oil and over 40 percent for gas. In spite of reported modest increases, domestic production cannot keep pace with demand," said Chow. "More importantly, while international oil is going through a period of moderate prices, sustaining domestic production volumes will require government subsidies to compete with lower cost imports." Last year, China's estimated growth in gas production of over 7 percent exceeded the import growth rate of 5.3 percent reported by Reuters, slowing the rise of import dependence for the cleaner burning fuel as demand weakened with the COVID-19 lockdown in the first half. But import dependence for gas is believed to have grown over time to some 42.6 percent, following much the same path as the reliance on foreign oil over the years. In 2008-2018, China's gas production rose at an average annual rate of 7.2 percent, but it was surpassed by the 13.2- percent annual growth of consumption, according to BP. Extreme cold weather in the past month has prompted a surge in imports of liquid natural gas (LNG), driving up prices and exposing China to more energy security risks. "In the short to medium term, China has to rely on diversity of import sources and import routes in order to mitigate the risks of over-dependence on foreign oil and gas," Chow said. "In the longer run, China is working on transition away from oil and gas, not only for environmental and climate policy reasons but also for energy security reasons," he said. On Jan. 7, Platts reported that Asian spot market prices for LNG soared to a record U.S. $21.45 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), rising 47 percent from the previous week. The LNG price spike was nearly 12 times higher than record lows reached last April when demand slumped due to the pandemic, Platts said. Although most of China's imports have been covered by longer-term contracts at lower cost, prices for trucked LNG in the northern Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region nearly doubled from a week earlier in the week starting Jan. 3, according to Platts. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Apple Store India, the company's online shop on Friday announced a new cashback and no-cost EMI offer. Starting January 21, consumers can avail a cashback of Rs 5,000 on orders above Rs 44,900 in India as well as a no-cost EMI offer up to six months on Apple products. According to Apple's website, the cashback is available for qualifying HDFC Bank Credit Cards. Apple says that the maximum cashback of Rs 5,000 will be applicable on a single order that totals up to Rs 44,900 or more. Multiple orders cannot be combined for the cashback. The cashback, once an order is successfully paid, will be credited to the user's HDFC credit card account within a period of 7 days. The offer cannot be clubbed with the Education Program offers and is valid only on a single item purchase once per card. Much like the Rs 5,000 cashback offer, the no-cost EMI offer also ends on January 28, 2021. Apple clarifies "Card eligibility subject to terms and conditions between you and your card issuing bank." The No-Cost EMI offer is applicable on HDFC Bank Credit Cards on EMI transactions on a six-month tenure only. The Apple India Online Store went live in September 2020. It offers customers a full range of products and support with the same premium experience found in Apple store locations around the world. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Source: GMW.cn| 2021-01-15 19:05:50|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close "Since many countries around the world are still searching for ways to co-exist with Covid-19, I want to share China's reality with Japan and other countries, as an example, as a hope." Cover of documentary "The Post-Pandemic Era" by Japanese director Ryo Takeuchi A 33-minute documentary titled with "The Post-Pandemic Era" by Japanese director Ryo Takeuchi, features China's efficient pandemic control and economic recovery made its debut on Jan. 1, 2021. Once released, it has been well received by audience worldwide, and has made it to the front page of Japan's most visited website Yahoo! Japan. Entering winter, the world struggles to deal with a spike in Covid-19 cases brought by the cold weather. Japan alone, tops 300,000 total coronavirus cases on Jan. 13, 2021 as daily deaths hit record 97, Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper The Japan Times reported. On the same day, Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan would expand its state of emergency to seven more prefectures and ban all foreign nationals from entering the country. As the pandemic continues to rampage in Japan and many other countries around world, the documentary no doubt is endowed with even bigger significance. Screenshot of the documentary "The Post-pandemic Era" by Japanese director Ryo Takeuchi, on Youtube. With China having largely contained the coronavirus, "The Post-Pandemic Era" gives a full record to Chinese people's daily life in the post-pandemic era as its name indicates. It is divided into four chapters, "No Human Involved", "Live Streaming Kingdom", "Getting Rid of Coronavirus" and "'Zero Infected' in Wuhan", in which China's efforts in pandemic prevention and control as well as work and production resumption have been objectively recorded and acknowledged. Takeuchi Ryo, the director of the documentary, lives in China now and has been living there for seven and more years. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the increasing prejudice and bias against China by western media saddened him and gave him the idea of recording the real life combating the coronavirus in this country. Cover of documentary "Long Time No See, Wuhan" by Japanese director Ryo Takeuchi Worth noticing, "The Post-Pandemic Era" is not the first film Takeuchi made themed with China's battle against the coronavirus. His two previous works under such topic are also widely noticed. One is "Nanjiang First Scene: A city sees no more new confirmed Covid-19 cases", which recorded the immediate and efficient measures China taken to contain the coronavirus in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province; the other one "Long Time No See, Wuhan" presented 10 days of 10 people's daily lives in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, which have been reasonably back to normal. Photo taken on Jan. 2, 2021 shows crowds celebrating the New Year at Fuzi Temple, Nanjing City, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Photo by Yang Suping/Guangming Picture) "From what I can tell, China has entered the post-pandemic era by successfully controlling the epidemic and refueling the economy," Takeuchi spoke of his documentary on Weibo, one of China's biggest social media platform, "since many countries around the world are still searching for ways to co-exist with Covid-19, I want to share China's reality with Japan and other countries, as an example, as a hope." The documentary is broadly supported by audience domestic and overseas, and has drawn great attention on the global stage. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying expressed her appreciation to the film during a regular press conference on Jan. 6, 2021. The world needs to know the real situation and feel the true emotions, just as what director Takeuchi conveys, Hua says, calling on more international journalists to see, write, film and document with not only eyes and pens, but also with hearts and humanity. "As the documentary pointed out, 'at present, China's anti-epidemic achievements and economic recovery is the best reward for all the efforts put in by the 1.4 billion people,' Hua stressed about enhancing mutual understanding, "we commend director Takeuchi for objectively and truthfully recording this extraordinary passage China has traversed." UPDATE: 16-year-old EMS volunteer gets COVID vaccine after a month of searching for Pfizer Kelsey Quinones is about as frontline of a healthcare worker as you can get. She volunteers with the Cranford First Aid Squad, working 12-hour weekend shifts responding to emergencies and often taking patients to area hospitals. The work qualifies her to get the coronavirus vaccine, now, as an EMS member of Phase 1A. But Kelsey is 16 years old, and can only receive the Pfizer vaccine, which is cleared for people as young as 16. The Moderna vaccine is only for people 18 and older. Kelsey Quinones, a first responder with the Cranford First Aid Squad.(Provided photo) While Kelsey attends high school, her mother Carole Quinones has been trying to get her daughter a vaccination appointment for well over a week now. Its been a frustrating, dizzying swirl of emails and phone calls, none that have yielded answers, or an appointment. Carole believes her daughter and others teens who work in EMS, especially in volunteer squads, are a population overlooked by the state as it rolls out its COVID-19 vaccine process. I feel like Ive emailed a million people, Carole said. People have been super helpful, but nobody has Pfizer. As of Thursday, the states COVID-19 dashboard indicated that 287,840 vaccinations had been administered and 47% of them have been Pfizer, however no one in the 16 to 17-year-old age group had received one, according to state statistics. Pfizer also requires storage at temperatures if minus 70 degrees Celsius, and only certain facilities like hospitals - are equipped to handle it. The Moderna dose also has to be frozen, but at minus 20 Celsius, like a regular freezer. In addition to all the local, county and state health officials shes queried, as well as her pediatrician, Carole has also called several hospitals and their parent healthcare companies, and even Sen. Cory Booker, looking for tips. Nobody has answers, Carole said. Complicating matters, when facilities list that they have the vaccine, they do not specifically say if they have Pfizer, so showing up and hoping seems like a bad plan, she said. And calling them, forget it, she said. The list of sites to get vaccinated is currently over 100 and growing. Carole was particularly perplexed at the two hospitals where the rescue squad transports the most patients - Overlook Medical Center in Summit, and University Hospital in Newark - told her Kelsey was not eligible, despite her presence in their hospitals. Kelsey, as a cadet member, is sometimes in or around the hospitals for up to an hour, delivering a patient, restocking and cleaning the ambulance, her mom said. The Cranford First Aid Squad says its their policy to not send cadet members on emergency calls of known or suspect cases of COVID. Last week, after four fruitless days on the phone and computer, Carole gave up and took the weekend off, while her daughter worked at the squad. Kelsey is not even an EMT yet; shes enrolled in a training course that starts in two weeks. Shes volunteering because she wants to be a nurse, she said. Because shes a minor, her mom has been the main caller, but Kelsey is engaged in the search too. This is a problem, Kelsey said. This week, the difficulty of the 16-year-old being able to get a vaccine grew tremendously as the state opened up eligibility to anyone 16 to 64 years of age with certain medical conditions or smoke, and anyone over 65. Thats 4.7 million people. As of Thursday, the list the state maintains now shows the age eligibility for each facility, but only three sites show they can vaccinate a 16-year-old. Several other 16 and 17-year-olds work in EMS in Cranford, and other Union County towns, Carole said. Volunteers of local squads are often not even employees of the towns they serve, but of the squad organization, which are usually nonprofits. How they fall on a towns radar for vaccinating first responders is unclear. Cranford has a paid EMS squad that operates Monday through Friday during the day, and the volunteers cover the night shift and weekends. The towns administrator did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Carole said she does not seek special treatment for Kelsey, and she understands the hierarchy of the phase system. Its an equal access issue. Shes she a 1A first responder, and shes at risk. Editors Note: This story was updated on Jan. 15, 2021 with comment from the Cranford First Aid Squad. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. 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. The two leaders representing a coalition of more than a dozen opposition parties met hundreds of supporters in Gyumri at the start of the tour. They admitted that protests staged by their Homeland Salvation Front following the Russian-brokered ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh failed to attract large crowds. I thought that that there are one million people in Yerevan and they all will take to the streets because they were humiliated, but people were so depressed and aggrieved I know many people who cry at home but dont bother to come out. We have a lot to do about that, said Vazgen Manukian, a veteran politician who has been nominated by the opposition alliance to serve as a caretaker prime minister. Many people sitting at home are urging us to act more resolutely, complained Ishkhan Saghatelian of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a key member of the alliance. People must take to the streets, organize themselves and oust this government. There is no other option, he said, adding that the alliance will also keep pressing pro-government lawmakers to stop supporting Pashinian. That Nikol will leave is a fact He wont avoid that. The question is when he will do that, claimed Saghatelian. The parties making up the alliance as well as other opposition groups hold Pashinian responsible for Armenias defeat in the recent war in Karabakh and want him to hand over power to an interim government that would hold snap parliamentary elections by the end of this year. The prime minister has rejected the opposition demands backed by President Armen Sarkissian. He has dismissed the street protests against his rule as an elite revolt not backed by most Armenians. A group of Pashinian supporters blocked a highway outside Gyumri in a bid to bar Manukian, Saghatelian and other opposition figures from entering Armenias second largest city. Police intervened to unblock the road. Manukian, who had served as the countrys prime minister and defense minister in the early 1990s, labeled the protesters as tramps hired by Pashinians My Step bloc for cash. An organization that lobbies for the rights of blind people has formed a task force and hired an outside consultant after apologizing for allegations of sexual misconduct in its programs, which surfaced in an open letter last month. The letter was sent to the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind and the National Blindness Professional Certification Board, a Louisiana-based organization that certifies instructors for the blind. It includes hundreds of signatures from people the letter describes as "victims, survivors, and witnesses of sexual and psychological abuse at programs, conventions, and blindness rehabilitation centers . . . and their allies and supporters." The letter calls for an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations and the institution of new policies by Aug. 31 to prevent misconduct, among other demands. Advocates said they were motivated to come forward amid a movement to shine a light on sexual assault. "We are writing this open letter to urge action to be taken to reduce and eliminate the widespread instances of emotional/psychological abuse, sexual assault/harassment, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and all other forms of abuse within these agencies," the letter said. In a speech this month, National Federation of the Blind president Mark Riccobono said the organization has partnered with the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network "to assist us in furthering a safe, inclusive and welcoming culture free of sexual misconduct." RAINN will help the organization create a mandatory sexual misconduct training program and review its code of conduct, Riccobono said, as the federation launches a "survivor-led task force" to "implement a sustainable, positive culture change." The National Federation of the Blind is the oldest and largest nationwide organization of blind Americans, according to its website. Founded in 1940, it works to expand blind people's access to the ballot and paperwork for federal disability benefits, among other initiatives. Riccobono, who apologized in a Dec. 16 letter for the federation's handling of sexual misconduct, said in an interview that the organization "wanted to be very aggressive and bring in as many experts as we can." The task force will not investigate individual complaints, he said, but did not rule out providing financial assistance to those who have endured misconduct. "The survivors are going to lead this and guide us on this," he said. "I'm completely open." Sarah Meyer, a member of the task force, said the effort would "amplify survivor voices." RAINN confirmed the partnership with the federation but declined additional comment. The National Blindness Professional Certification Board said it is reviewing its code of ethics to ensure the highest standards for professional behavior. "We have proactively encouraged anyone with knowledge of any professional we certify who may have behaved inappropriately to contact us so that we can gather all relevant information and take the necessary actions," the board said in a statement. "We remain committed to ensuring that those we certify conduct themselves both professionally and ethically." Stacy Cervenka, a 40-year-old consultant for a Nebraska state rehabilitation agency who helped to write the letter, said advocates were concerned the National Federation of the Blind "will not address rooting out the many past offenders and those who have covered acts of sexual misconduct for years." She said she was sexually assaulted at federation events in 2000 and 2008. "It's important and necessary to put new systems and policies in place, but there is a lot of distrust," she said. Danielle Montour, a 23-year-old assistive technology specialist from Texas who signed the letter, said in an interview with The Washington Post that she was raped in a Boston hotel room in 2012 at a federation-affiliated student seminar when she was 15. Montour, who was blinded during infancy by the rare cancer bilateral retinoblastoma, said she grew up in New Hampshire with few blind peers. She fought with her parents, who were concerned about her safety, to attend the Boston conference. "It was my first opportunity to meet an organized group of blind people" in an academic setting, she said. "I was really excited." Montour said her assailant was a 19-year-old fellow student who had more functional vision and whom she was asked to mentor during the conference, even though he was older. She said she reported the rape to the federation and to law enforcement in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but nothing was done, and her assailant still attends federation events. Federation spokesman Chris Danielsen declined to comment on specific allegations. Boston police said they do not release complaints involving victims of sexual assault, while New Hampshire state police, citing privacy concerns, said they could not confirm the existence of the report. Montour said society views blind people as asexual "cherubs" - people who are routinely touched by strangers who want to help them navigate the world when, often, they need no such help. Partly for this reason, Montour said, the blind community does not get sufficient sex education, particularly about consent. "We're taught our bodies are not just our property," she said. "If that's how it is in public, imagine how it is when it comes to sex and people aren't educated." Other sexual misconduct allegations were linked to federation training centers, which teach students life skills like Braille, home economics and use of the organization's signature long white canes, which can improve blind people's ability to travel without assistance. The centers, which host months-long programs, are known for a strict philosophy that challenges students to become independent. In an interview, Maria Salazar, 25, who also signed the letter, said she moved from Los Angeles to Littleton, Colo., in 2019 to join a training center. She was born blind, she said, and also has poor hearing in one ear and a kidney problem that has left her on dialysis for seven years. She wanted to improve her mobility and learn to live in her own apartment. "I can take care of myself at the very least," she said. "I don't see blindness as a problem - as a reason not to do something." At the program's conclusion she sought to stay in Colorado, where she thought she had a better chance of getting a kidney transplant. She said the training center pressured her to move out of its housing and into an apartment with another student - a middle-aged man who raped her in November, she said. Salazar reported the incident to police. Littleton police declined to release a report or other details, citing the nature of the complaint. Riccobono, who attended the Colorado center 21 years ago, said the centers "are committed to protecting blind people." He added: "The boards of those centers are committed to making sure that the environment is challenging and safe and healthy." Now living with her parents in Los Angeles, Salazar said she is waiting for her federal coronavirus stimulus payment to she can return to Colorado. "Everything is just a disaster, honestly," she said. "I'm just hoping that something good can happen." A number of San Antonio-based companies including USAA have indirectly supported the rejection of presidential electoral votes by supporting Congressmen like Ted Cruz, according to the San Antonio Express News. Cruz has received almost $35,000 from six local companies according to the Express News analysis of campaign contributions. But that support may not continue as many companies including Walmart have said they will no longer support candidates amid the chaos in Washington D.C. RELATED: Here Are the U.S. Companies Hitting Pause on Political Donations Hallmark has asked for some legislators to return funds, according to Bloomberg. Take a look at all the local supporters of Cruz and other Republicans who fought election results below. New Delhi, Jan 15 : The CBI said on Friday that it had registered cases against two companies based in NCR as well as Karnal in Haryana on the charge of cheating banks of more than Rs 340 crore and carried out searches at six locations. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raids were conducted at the premises of the two companies as well as their accused officials/owners. A CBI official said that the agency had registered a case of fraud on a complaint by State Bank of India against Naftogaz India Private Limited, New Delhi/Noida, and others, including its CMD and unknown public servants or persons for causing a loss of Rs 219.81 crore. The official alleged that the company cheated the bank through diversion of bank funds, fraudulent transactions, criminal misappropriation, submission of false stock or debt statements etc. The complainant bank alleged that the company was incorporated in 2005 as EPC contractor for exploration, drilling, extraction and production of mineral oils, natural gas and petroleum products. The fraud came to light when forensic auditors submitted a report on February 18 last year for the period from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2014. The official said that searches were conducted at three locations, including in National Capital Region at the office and residential premises of Naftogaz and other accused. The second case was filed on a complaint by the Punjab National Bank against Hari Har Overseas Private Ltd, engaged in rice milling, at Karnal. The case was registered against the company and others, including its Directors, guarantor and unknown public servants and persons for causing a loss of Rs 121.75 crore to the bank. The accused had fraudulently sold the company stocks as well as machinery, which was hypothecated to the bank. The bank complaint alleged that the accused did not deposit the sale proceed with the bank and, as per the forensic audit, falsified its financial data to avail of loan. The official said that searches were conducted at three locations, including official and residential premises of the accused in Karnal, which led to recovery of incriminating documents. After months of bilateral tensions over maritime borders and gas exploration rights, Turkish and Greek diplomats are scheduled to resume on Jan. 25 talks in Istanbul on long-standing territorial disputes in the Aegean Sea. The meeting will break a nearly five-year hiatus in the talks, but the prospect of any meaningful de-escalation and confidence-building appears elusive. The meeting will mark the 61st round in the so-called exploratory talks between the two troubled neighbors, initiated nearly two decades ago in a bid to define and resolve a tangle of clashing territorial claims in the Aegean. The two sides have reported little progress over the years, while the disputes involving continental shelves, airspace boundaries, islets with disputed ownership and Greeces militarization of islands close to Turkeys shores have grown even more complex since the last round in March 2016 amid a fresh row over gas drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean. Ankara signed a maritime delimitation deal with Libyas Tripoli-based Government of National Accord in November 2019, while Greece struck a similar deal with Egypt in August. The agreements cover overlapping zones in the Eastern Mediterranean, meaning that the Turkish-Greek disputes have spilled over beyond the Aegean, growing into a regional crisis involving other littoral states. The Turkish-Greek exploratory talks began in 2002 amid a thaw in bilateral ties, spearheaded by then Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem and his Greek counterpart, George Papandreou. The process has been volatile, mirroring the ups and downs in bilateral ties. While more than 30 rounds of talks took place in the first three years, the dialogue became less frequent or fell into lengthy hiatuses in the ensuing years. Last summer, bilateral tensions simmered around the Greek island of Kastellorizo, a stones throw from Turkeys Mediterranean coast, as Ankara sent a research ship escorted by military vessels to the area where Greece also claims maritime rights. Though the area is not part of the Aegean Sea per se, the issue is expected to come up in the Jan. 25 meeting as maritime rights form the core of bilateral rows in both seas. The two sides will take stock of how their positions have changed in the past five years and what they can negotiate next. The Greek side wants to limit the discussion to the demarcation of maritime zones, while Turkey wants to bring up also the status of eastern Aegean islands as well as islets it describes as of undetermined ownership. The meeting to be chaired by Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal and veteran Greek diplomat Pavlos Apostolidis is unlikely to produce any breakthrough in the short term. Still, Ankara has agreed to resume the talks, even though it appeared bent on muscle-flexing and coercive diplomacy with Greece until recently. What lies behind its change of heart? The reasons have to do more with external factors than a policy shift in Ankara. The chief external factor is the change of guard at the White House. The imminent departure of President Donald Trump will deprive Ankara of its chief helper in Washington over the past four years. Incoming US President-elect Joe Bidens administration is not only unlikely to be as lenient on Ankara but is expected to coordinate tougher positions with the European Union. Ankaras decision to resume talks with Greece resonates as a message to the Biden administration and the EU ahead of critical NATO and EU summits. At the Feb. 17 NATO summit in Brussels, Biden and EU leaders are expected to discuss joint decisions on Turkey. Therefore, Turkey wants to display a commitment to diplomacy with Greece ahead of the summit, even though it expects little from the talks. Ankara is abuzz with talk of intensive efforts to arrange a meeting between Erdogan and Biden on the fringes of the summit. Erdogan has reportedly made multiple attempts for a phone call with Biden over the past month, but with no success thus far. Whether Biden eventually meets with Erdogan in Brussels will be an important sign of how Turkish-US relations proceed in the coming months. Another milestone for Ankara is the EU summit in March. The blocs summit in December ended with a decision to defer discussions of possible sanctions against Turkey over its unauthorized drilling activities in the Eastern Mediterranean to the March summit. The EU will seek to coordinate with the US on matters relating to Turkey and the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean, a European Council statement added. Ankara is eager to show that it favors de-escalation both at the negotiating table and on the ground. The Oruc Reis seismic research ship, which surveyed Mediterranean waters for gas throughout the summer, is moored in the Gulf of Antalya until June 15. The resumption of talks with Greece has deeply irked Turkeys nationalist quarters, including retired admirals and generals suspicious of the West. They see the talks as beating the air or a diplomatic gimmick to distract Turkey while Greece advances its interests on the ground. Retired Adm. Cem Gurdeniz credited as an architect of the Blue Homeland concept, which advocates for Turkeys geopolitical expansion and aggressive protection of its maritime interests believes that the Foreign Ministry has been too meek in the exploratory talks and that their resumption endangers the Blue Homeland tenets. In remarks to the media this week, Gurdeniz said that Turkey was nearing a geopolitical junction where it must decide whether to continue to align with the Western security block in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea or opt for independent strategies to protect its interests. He slammed the government for backing down from its hard-line attitude in the row with Greece, adding, You cannot manage Turkeys geopolitics with such zigzagging. In sum, Ankaras decision to resume talks with Greece looks like a gesture to find favor with the incoming Biden administration and the EU. The same can be said for Athens. By posing for the cameras in the same room, the Turkish and Greek delegations will have accomplished their mission on Jan. 25. aawaz.com announces the launch of its Urdu edition. aawaz is India's largest podcast and spoken-word audio on-demand and podcast network with 100% original audio content. Live since January 2019, with Hindi, English, and Marathi audio programming, the audio network has now expanded to Original Audio in Urdu, hosting a total of 1000+ hours of audio content. Existing users of the aawaz app can listen to English, Hindi, Marathi, and Urdu content by simply choosing their preference within the app or on the website. At the time of launch, listeners of aawaz will be able to access Four Urdu Original audio shows across genres including, Biographies of renowned poets & authors, Sher-o-Shayari, Urdu Ghazals and Nazms or Poetry. The lineup of various shows brings out the true spirit of the language. Signature shows include Main Shayar Toh Nahi which narrates stories of famous Urdu poets like Majhrooh Sultanpuri, Mirza Galibh, Kafi Azmi and many more. There is another show called Sher-o-Shayari which recites Urdu poetry by poets like Jaun Eliya, Nida Fazli, Gulzar, Rahat Indori among others. aawaz is a product by Mumbai based Agrahyah Technologies Pvt Ltd. Commenting on the Urdu edition launch, aawaz CEO Sreeraman Thiagarajan said, "After Hindi and Marathi, Urdu is widely read and has the second-largest number of publications. At aawaz we would receive requests for the language, which is not just restricted to people who speak Urdu regularly. People love to listen Urdu poetry, ghazals and shayari thats why we decided to introduce audio shows dedicated to this language. In our endeavor to bring Indian languages on a single platform, we have added Urdu language podcasts to our kitty. Urdu language is liked by all, and this is a small step to bring the various offerings in Urdu in the form of poetry, ghazals, and Shayari. Our team has taken a lot of efforts to collate the biographies of renowned Urdu poets and bring them to the audience. We have taken right efforts to offer high quality audio shows to our Urdu listeners", says Rushabh Vasa, Co-founder& CTO of aawaz.com In October 2019, the center staged a simulation called Event 201 aimed at gauging American and global readiness for a worldwide pandemic. The timing was coincidental the center had held several such exercises since 2001 involving a range of potential public health crises but the scenario was eerily prescient, positing a new strain of coronavirus that leaps from animals to humans and spreads rapidly around the globe, stalling economies, halting travel and setting social media afire with disinformation. But as participants gamed out the medical, financial and logistical challenges such a pandemic could (and, as it turned out, did) present, how to quickly and effectively inoculate people against this new coronavirus didnt come up. We never anticipated that wed be able to have effective vaccines in less than a year, Toner said. Thats never happened before. Add to that the particular complexities of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the two authorized for use to date. Both require extremely cold storage (especially the Pfizer shot) and two doses to achieve full efficacy. It would have been surprising if it did go perfectly, Toner said. 2. Vaccine supply is limited and uncertain. Dose delivery fell short of expectations almost from the start. On the campaign trail in 2020, President Trump touted a goal of 100 million vaccine doses by year-end. Even after the administration revised that target down to 20 million, many states saw their weekly allocations from the federal government reduced shortly after the initial vaccine shipments in mid-December. The challenge we face is that week by week, we dont know how many doses we will receive, making it difficult to plan for more than a week in advance, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said this week. That challenge has trickled down to the health care providers that are putting shots in arms. The unpredictable nature of vaccine shipments has challenged hospital vaccination efforts, including for staff, said Maryellen Guinan, principal policy analyst at Americas Essential Hospitals, an association of public and nonprofit hospitals serving a safety-net role. The inability to know the exact number of doses to be delivered and the timing of deliveries directly impacts vaccine scheduling. The two-shot regimen has also affected supplies, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) initially holding millions of doses in reserve as second shots for people whove gotten the first. The agency recently started releasing those doses to further enhance available stocks, in conjunction with its call for states to open up vaccination to people age 65 and over and other vulnerable populations. HHS Secretary Alex Azar said on Jan. 12 that Moderna and Pfizer are producing enough vaccine that we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve, with second doses being supplied by doses coming off of manufacturing lines. Some states said that even with increased availability they will struggle to vaccinate an exponentially larger pool of eligible people. There are simply vastly more Georgians that want the vaccine than can get it today, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said at a news conference this week. I would prefer that we have ample supply and that we could vaccinate everyone immediately. Unfortunately, that is simply not possible. 3. States were left largely to their own devices. The federal government spearheaded vaccine development, but decisions on how to distribute and administer shots have been left largely to state and local officials, creating a patchwork of plans and priorities, public health experts say. For the vaccine rollout, as weve seen for so many other parts of the pandemic response, its been very much left to the states to take up the responsibility for making public health come alive on the ground, said Howard Koh, M.D., a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. We need the federal coordination and leadership now. Leana Wen, M.D., an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University, praised the federal governments announcement this week that it would help states expand their vaccine provider networks and set up mass inoculation clinics to speed vaccination but said the feds took a long time to step up. Its almost as if they saw their role in Operation Warp Speed as developing the vaccine, which is no small task, but they saw it as developing the vaccine and then shipping the doses to the states. Their responsibility appeared to stop at that point, said Wen, who formerly served as Baltimores health commissioner. But that is not the way this should be done. This is a federal, state, local partnership. The federal government needs to be the one thats setting the tone, the urgency thats needed. 4. Public health departments are underfunded. Years of budget cuts have hamstrung the ability of state and local health agencies to respond to outbreaks and other emergencies, according to a 2019 report by the nonprofit Trust for Americas Health. COVID-19 further stretched thin resources, as local health services took on much of the burden of testing, contact tracing and, now, vaccination, said Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president and health policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Until this last stimulus was passed, the amount of money that they had received for vaccine distribution was very small relative to the task, Kates said, referring to the $900 billion COVID relief bill Congress passed in late December, which includes $8.75 billion for vaccine distribution. You add that to years of underfunding of public health states were already acting at a deficit and some states had more of a deficit than others. That is certainly a factor here. I suspect the biggest limiting factor is personnel to administer the shots, Toner said of the pace of the rollout. If that is the case, finding ways to augment [public health] personnel would be very helpful. Some states, including West Virginia and Maryland, are deploying National Guard units or the volunteer Medical Reserve Corps to assist their professional health care ranks with vaccine administration or logistics. The new federal money should also stimulate vaccine speed, Kates said. While only about half of the vaccination pot is set aside for states and localities, she noted, I think theres no question that money will make a difference. 5. Hospitals were already overwhelmed. The initial vaccine shipments went largely to hospitals charged with administering shots to their frontline staff. They arrived just as these facilities were facing a record crest in COVID-19 caseloads, complicating in-house inoculation efforts. These are hospitals that are already responding to huge surges in their communities, Wen said. Now youre also asking them to administer doses or to pull their nurses from their normal shifts to also give doses, and the same individuals coordinating the surge at their hospitals are also overseeing this effort. Those issues remain even as vaccine eligibility broadens and hospitals prepare to administer even more shots, to people beyond their workforces. One essential hospital, faced with a surge, had to reinstate a decision to eliminate elective surgeries, allowing it to reposition staff to aid vaccination efforts, Guinan said. Azar said this week that large-scale vaccination clinics, supported by the federal government, would reduce reliance on hospitals. Hospitals made sense as early distribution sites when the focus was on health care workers, but they are not where most Americans go to get vaccines, he said. States should move on to pharmacies, community health centers and mass vaccination sites as desired. 6. Not everyone wants the shot. Two of the high-priority groups targeted at the outset for fast vaccines frontline health care workers and long-term care employees have also been among those most reluctant to get COVID shots, even as surveys show vaccine hesitancy waning among the broader public. Reports and internal surveys of hospitals show 30 to 50 percent of their health care workforce citing a hesitancy to be vaccinated, Guinan said. At long-term care facilities, staff willingness to get the shot has "been as low as 20 percent and in other buildings as high as 80 percent," said Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, an industry group. "We think the overall rate is probably in the 45 to 50 percent range." That can create delays and keep vaccines on shelves, if there arent enough willing participants at a long-term care center to schedule an on-site vaccine clinic. Hospitals and long-term care facilities are embarking on vaccine education campaigns and even offering employees incentives to get the shots. Toner and Parkinson said they expect reluctance to abate as more and more workers see friends and colleagues safely getting shots. Theres vaccine hesitancy and then theres, I dont want to be the first one to get the vaccine, Toner said. I hear that from people working in the hospitals. Its not irrational. But I think once people start seeing their friends and colleagues getting vaccinated and theres no problems, they will be amenable to it. 7. States set aside doses for high-priority groups. There was near-universal agreement among federal and state health officials that early distribution target high-risk health care workers and residents and staff at long-term care communities, but that initial exclusivity kept shots on shelves as vaccination programs at some sites stumbled. For example, millions of doses allocated to the states on paper actually went to CVS and Walgreens, the giant drugstore chains contracted by CDC to deliver shots in most of the countrys nursing homes and assisted living facilities. That effort has gotten off to a notably slow start, with about a quarter of the allocated shots administered so far. Given the vulnerability of long-term care residents and staff, whove accounted for 37 percent of the countrys COVID-19 deaths, states feel an obligation to hold that vaccine in the hope that this week or soon theyre going to be up and running, Toner said. (CVS and Walgreens have said they will complete first doses at all facilities by Jan. 25.) But with shots going unused, federal officials have criticized state leaders for not opening up eligibility to other vulnerable groups, such as the 65-plus population and people with medical conditions that put them at high risk for complications from COVID-19. 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. COLUMBIA, S.C., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, South Carolina families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. South Carolinians are hosting 720 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week, including a statewide virtual school fair on Wednesday, Jan. 27. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In South Carolina, the Governor's Mansion will light up all week from Jan. 24-30. The SkyWheel in Myrtle Beach will also illuminate in yellow and red from 5:30 to 7 p.m on Jan. 24. Additionally, Governor Henry McMaster has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as South Carolina School Choice Week. "During this challenging school year, South Carolina educators and families are increasingly speaking up for how children need options, and different school choices can coexist," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This School Choice Week is a time to celebrate all the parents, educators, and learning programs that inspire kids to happiness and dare them to be great. " In South Carolina, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. In South Carolina, students with disabilities may qualify for a state-run scholarship program. South Carolina families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to South Carolina school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, including a video from Gov. McMaster, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/south-Carolina National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Cameron Martin / Cameron Martin WESTPORT Police are advising residents to be on the lookout after receiving reports of telephone scams in which the callers posed as Westport police officers or FBI agents. The callers warned residents that they are the subject of an arrest warrant and wanted by our agency, Westport police Lt. Jillian Cabana said Thursday, before demanding payment in gift cards to avoid arrest. All of will be under a stricter curfew starting Saturday at 6 p.m. for at least 15 days to fight spread of the French Prime Minister Jean Castex also announced strict new controls for those arriving in from countries outside the European Union. Starting Monday, they must produce a PCR test with negative results and self-isolate for seven days followed by a new, negative test. wants to coordinate a response with the European Union about arrivals from EU countries, he says. The French government is trying to avoid a third lockdown with partial measures like curfews the prime minister calls both preventative and reactive. Most regions were under an 8 p.m. curfew, but now everyone must be home at 6 p.m., Castex says. That means that stores must close by then. Bars and restaurants have been closed for months. The average contamination rate for the stands at about 16,000 people per day. France has one of the highest death counts in Europe, at more than 69,000, and ranks No. 7 in the world. (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, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Tree Pledge and the Radical Resilience Lab are launching Good Shade , an urban reforestation tree-planting program developed in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation , with funding from California ReLeaf and CALFIRE. The pilot project commences Jan. 13, 2021, at Alondra Community Regional Park (3850 Manhattan Beach Blvd, Lawndale, CA 90260) with 50 trees planted and an education campaign to raise awareness of the mental and physical health benefits associated with human connection with trees and nature. The trees will be planted by venerable green jobs organization, Los Angeles Conservation Corps. Using heat-mapping and other geo-data tools Good Shade seeks to address environmental justice issues, including health risks associated with poor air quality, lack of tree shade and the need more for green infrastructure in urban communities. The Alondra Park area sits within a ring of densely utilized highways and air pollution that accompanies such traffic. It carries a pollution burden of 87%, bordered by a census tract with a 91 - 100% pollution burden (the Highest Score). Using heat-mapping and other geo-data tools, the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation determined that the area possesses tree canopy density of only 11% and low levels of shade and tree buffer for particulate matter from air pollution due to nearby transportation corridors. "We are proud to partner with TreePledge to bring 'Good Shade' to Alondra Park and very-high park need communities in South Los Angeles, where parks are often the only access to nature, fresh air and physical activity that many households, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is vital that we invest in disadvantaged communities that are at higher risk of respiratory illness due to lack of trees and shade equity," according to Norma E. Garcia-Gonzalez, Director of Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation. Good Shade was designed to address shade equity disparities in underserved areas of Los Angeles and to generate multiple co-benefits through tree planting and education. Good Shade will improve the physical, emotional, social, and economic health and well-being of local residents, reduce heat islands, reduce stormwater runoff and increase connection with nature. Through Good Shade, the partners seek to plant hundreds of trees throughout the region in communities designed "Very High Need" for more trees and offer a multidisciplinary range of education opportunities, and engage residents in supporting the new trees. "Trees give us so much more than just oxygen," asserts The Tree Pledge founder, Rachel Payne. "They make our communities healthier and happier. Trees help us reconnect with nature and they are one of the most important tools we have to address climate change and reduce harmful greenhouse gases in our local communities. Our program seeks to support environmental justice, community resilience and better health outcomes through access to nature." Numerous studies show a clear relationship between the urban forest and physical health: shade trees promote physical activity and mitigate the effects of heat on health. Tree-rich neighborhoods often enjoy better health outcomes than tree-poor neighborhoods. Trees combat air pollution and absorb carbon dioxide while releasing oxygen back into the air. Not only do trees beautify areas, but their shade also cools down overheated neighborhoods, and their roots prevent soil erosion and help save water. Together, planting and maintaining trees create opportunities for placemaking and help foster community. According to Los Angeles County tree canopy data, disadvantaged communities in Los Angeles County have less tree canopy than affluent areas and will see four times as many 95F+ days by 2050 due to climate change. "Public spaces play a central role in the health of our communities," says Radical Resilience Lab co-founder, Anastasia King. "We are excited to work with the dedicated folks at The Tree Pledge and the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation to employ the power of the county's park system in advancing the resilience of Los Angeles and her residents." Visit us at: Goodshade.LA Follow us on Instagram: @GoodShade_LA The Coalition includes: Good Shade, The Tree Pledge, Radical Resilience Lab, Los Angeles County of Parks and Recreation, Los Angeles Conservation Corps, California ReLeaf _____________________________________________________ FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Jennifer Gross Evolutionary Media Group [email protected] 323-658-8700 Related Images los-angeles-county-department-of.jpg Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation Using heat-mapping and other geo-data tools SOURCE Good Shade St. Lukes Health Sugar Land Hospital is now one of 30 Texas hospitals with a Level II Maternal Facility in Prenatal Care designation. On HoustonChronicle.com: Giving back: Katy resident feeds 300 people for his 40th birthday The designation granted by the Texas Department of State Health Services goes to hospitals that offer care for complex maternal medical conditions, obstetrical complications and fetal conditions. The family birthing center at St. Lukes in Sugar Land received the designation for both its maternal and neonatal units in September 2020. Maternal Program Manager Lisa-Ann Brown said to achieve Level II status, the hospital had to show it could serve pregnant and postpartum patients that had medical, surgical and obstetrical conditions that cause low to moderate risk for maternal mortality and morbidity. She said the accomplishment was entirely a team effort, from the obstetricians and neonatologists to the housekeeping staff, who work hard to keep the facility clean and operating available. She also credited the work of the laboratory and having blood and the intensive care unit ready to go in case patients need them. On HoustonChronicle.com: Missouri City native takes reins at Miss USA Organization Its not just about womens services per se, but its really a tribute to the entire hospitals dedication to making sure that we provide excellent care to everyone, Brown said. She explained that leadership and dedication also played a significant role. You have to have leaders be on board, and they were 100 percent supportive in this endeavor because it is a lot of man-hours. And theres a lot of quality work, making sure that everything is, you know, exceeding expectations, Brown said. There are a few hospitals across the Houston area that have the designation, including St. Lukes Health The Woodlands Hospital. Brown noted that more than 1,100 babies were born in the Sugar Land birthing center in 2020. The hospital is part of the CommonSpirit Health network, which Brown said delivers one in every 40 babies born across the United States. On HoustonChronicle.com: Sugar Lands Chef Rey launches his own online cooking show Providing quality care is important to reduce maternal and newborn mortality, said Director of Womens Services Lisa Grimes-Lewis. For mothers and newborns, the period around childbirth is the most critical for saving the maximum number of lives and preventing stillbirths. Our goal is to end preventable maternal death and severe maternal morbidity and to improve maternal safety through implementing best practices. Grimes-Lewis said the designation reflects positive work the birthing center has already been doing. For example, they are active with the TexasAIM initiative that assists hospitals and communities in fostering maternal safety through applying best practices. The designation, Brown said, shows women and their families that St. Lukes is exceeding standards and reassures them that during the already overwhelming process of having a baby, they can have confidence that the hospital is dedicated to maternal care and great outcomes. On HoustonChronicle.com: Mala Sichuan Bistro opens Sugar Land location The rule for designating hospitals maternal levels of care began in March 2018. Beginning in September 2021, the designations will be an eligibility requirement for Medicaid reimbursement. A hospital must first be surveyed before applying to receive Level II to IV designations. The Level II designation is valid for three years. Some facilities receive it with contingencies, but Brown was proud that St. Lukes passed without them. The family birthing center is getting ready to mark its fifth anniversary; it began on Feb. 29, 2016. Brown said the DSHS officials told her the hospital had done a great job reaching Level II so quickly. There are 15 birthing suites in the center. Its neonatal intensive care unit has glassed-in rooms within a unit to give families more privacy. There are certified pediatricians, neonatologists and lactation consultants. Brown said all the services make families feel as though they are at a downtown facility rather than a community hospital. tracy.maness@hcnonline.com 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. CONCORD, N.H., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, New Hampshire families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. New Hampshire families, schools, and organizations are hosting 133 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. Governor Chris Sununu has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Vermont School Choice Week. "Just as New Hampshire differs from Vermont or Massachusetts, each child is unique and has distinct learning needs," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "School Choice Week encourages New Hampshire parents and educators to work together for the more flexible, affordable learning options families so urgently need." In New Hampshire, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. New Hampshire students in families below a certain income level are eligible for publicly-run scholarships. New Hampshire families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to New Hampshire school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/new-hampshire. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Chandigarh: The Captain Amarinder Singh led Punjab Government is all ready to roll out most awaited corona vaccination programme under which firstly, Health Care Workers (Central, State & Armed Forces Medical Services) to be vaccinated with their consent at dedicated 59 sites in the State. The Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu stated that Covid-19 vaccination is being launched on 16th January 2021 and the first batch of vaccine doses have already been distributed to all District Cold Chain Stores. Orientation on the use of these vaccines has also been conducted. Balbir Singh Sidhu Earlier, a dry run for the smooth run of vaccination was also done at all sites as per SOPs of GoI. He clarified that only registered beneficiaries (HCWs) to be vaccinated whose data was uploaded on the CoWIN site. Giving details of corona vaccine doses supplied to the districts, Sidhu said that a total of 20,880 have been supplied to district Amritsar, 41,60 to Barnala, 12,430 to Bathinda, 5,030 to Faridkot, 4,400 to Fatehgarh Sahib, 4,670 to Fazilka, 6,200 to Ferozepur, 9,790 to Gurdaspur, 9,570 to Hoshiarpur, 16,490 to Jalandhar, 4,600 to Kapurthala, 36,510 to Ludhiana, 3,160 to Mansa, 2,600 to Moga, 5,860 to Pathankot, 11,080 to Patiala, 6,360 to Roopnagar, 7,660 to Sangrur, 13,640 to SAS Nagar, 5,300 to SBS Nagar, 5,420 to Sri Muktsar Sahib and 8,210 vaccine doses have been distributed to district Tarn Taran. Covid-19 vaccine He said that the doses proportionally distributed for Health Care Workers on the basis of database and maximum 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each site. The sites which have already provided the first dose shall necessary plan for second dose post 28 days as per protocol, he said. Notably, the vaccine has been planned in a phased manner with priority groups- Healthcare workers, Frontline workers, Elderly (above 50 year age) and Population below 50 years and with comorbidities. 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. Large restaurants providing prepared meals to supermarkets for sale is causing the Government some concern as it says this is adding to additional customer traffic at those supermarkets, as it wants less movement of people during the State of Emergency. Congress Bipartisan House bill would block Schedule F conversions Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) introduced a bill on Wednesday aimed at blocking the implementation of an executive order that could move swaths of the civil service into the excepted service, taking away civil service protections from employees in those positions and making them essentially at-will employees. The Preventing a Patronage System Act blocks the reclassification of any competitive service position to an excepted service schedule made after September 30, 2020. The Schedule F executive order was signed on October 21 of last year, so if signed into law, the bill would block the reclassification of positions to Schedule F. It allows agencies to move certain policy-related and supervisory positions to the new Schedule F category. It wouldn't block the reclassification of positions to other schedules that already existed on Sept. 30 of last year, including Schedules A through E, although it would limit reclassifications to those categories to the terms and conditions that existed for them as of that date. The bill would also limit the transfer of excepted service positions to other excepted service schedules made after Sept. 30 of last year. Fitzpatrick said in a statement that his bill would "make sure our dedicated civil servants are not undercut by patronage." "Congress has a responsibility to protect our civil service from returning to a failed patronage system," said Connolly, who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Agencies have an initial deadline to send the Office of Personnel Management a list of positions to move by Tuesday, which is the day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. The incoming president has been called on by good governance groups, public sector employee groups and management organizations to repeal the executive order. The Office of Management and Budget created its initial list of positions to be reclassified, which included 88% of their workforce, in late November. About the Author Natalie Alms is a staff writer at FCW covering the federal workforce. She is a recent graduate of Wake Forest University and has written for the Salisbury (N.C.) Post. Connect with Natalie on Twitter at @AlmsNatalie. Legislation to block the executive order was introduced in the 116Congress, but did not pass. Efforts to block the order's execution via appropriations legislation also failed. Not long ago, two new intangible cultural heritage items from China were inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, making the country top the list with 42 items. The newly enshrined items are Taijiquan, a kind of traditional martial arts, and Wangchuan ceremony and related practices for maintaining the sustainable connection between man and the ocean, which was nominated by China together with Malaysia. Both items have a history of several centuries in China. Taijiquans relaxed, circular, gentle and flexible movements, the traditional concepts reflected in the movements of Taijiquan, including the cycle of Yin and Yang, the two opposing principles in nature, and the theory that man is an integral part of nature, as well as the standing posture featuring straightness of the body demonstrate the unique characteristics of gentleness, inclusiveness, and strength in Chinese culture. As a vivid example of respecting lives and revering nature, the Wangchuan ceremony has also witnessed the spread of Chinese culture in countries along the Maritime Silk Road. As the two items containing the genes of Chinese culture have been recognized as world-class intangible cultural heritage, they will surely enhance Chinese peoples confidence in their culture, and open the door to the unique concepts, wisdom, and charm of Chinese culture wider for the rest of the world. In recent years, a multitude of Chinese intangible cultural heritage items have been acknowledged by the UNESCO, such as Kunqu Opera, Peking Opera, the Dragon Boat Festival, Zhusuan, also known as Chinese abacus, acupuncture of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the 24 solar terms. It signifies that the values deeply rooted in China and the traditional Chinese wisdom based on several thousand years of history are increasingly recognized and respected by the international community, and that Chinas unique cultural resources and spiritual pursuits are making new contributions to the building of common values of humanity. In fact, besides intangible cultural heritage, other achievements made in Chinas cultural sector have also attracted global attention in recent years. Cultural activities on Chinese festivals have been held all over the world; Chinese film and television works have won a great number of overseas followers; and the export of online works of Chinese literature has become global cultural phenomenon. Chinas achievements in bidding for the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list have shown the recognition Chinese culture has gained worldwide as well as the countrys commitment to ensure the inheriting of fine traditional culture. The traditional Li textile techniques of spinning, dyeing, weaving and embroidering of China, which is now an item on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, was in imminent danger of extinction when China decided to nominate it as intangible cultural heritage over a decade ago. At that time, the centuries-old techniques had less than one thousand inheritors. After it was officially inscribed on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list, China has put into action its promise to protect the traditional techniques and mobilized various social forces in facilitating the inheriting of the techniques, eventually revitalizing the precious intangible cultural heritage. Successful entry into the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list is not the destination, but a new starting point for the inheriting and protection of cultural heritage. Only by constantly improving its capability to protect intangible cultural heritage and effectively addressing problems troubling the protection and development of various intangible cultural heritage items, can China comprehensively raise public awareness of intangible cultural heritage and help it shine more brightly in the world. The number of items of intangible cultural heritage jointly nominated by countries hit a new high in the year 2020, according to a press communique released by the UNESCO. Culture has served as the bridge between hearts and brought countries separated by mountains and rivers closer to each other. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented people from gathering, cultures and intangible cultural heritage have linked people around the world closer with each other, said an official of the UNESCO. The popularity of Taijiquan in foreign countries and the role of the Wangchuan ceremony in enhancing people-to-people bonds have both proven the importance of making the protection of the worlds intangible cultural heritage a common goal of mankind and intensifying cultural exchanges, mutual learning, and understanding between peoples of various countries around the world while jointly advancing the protection of culture. Only in this way can countries better draw wisdom and strength from different civilizations, and provide spiritual support and comfort for people in tackling various challenges confronting mankind. Editors Note: After this story published, the governors office clarified that employees outside of Trenton can still show up to work. Gov. Phil Murphy is closing state offices in Trenton Wednesday, the day President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in, amid fears of more violence. State employees will work remotely Jan. 20, Murphy said Friday during his coronavirus press conference in Trenton. We felt that was right thing to do given the level of tension right now in the county, he said. He reiterated that there is no specific threat facing New Jersey, but advised residents to lay low in the coming days. Spokeswoman Alexandra Altman said Tuesday that the closure did not affect offices outside the capital. Trenton based employees have been asked to work remotely out of an abundance of caution, Altman wrote in an email. This doesnt apply to other areas of the State at this time. Five people died this month when a mob loyal to President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. The states top Homeland Security official has asked residents to report any suspicious activity amid reports of armed marches nationwide, although local Second Amendment groups have advised gun owners to stay away. The State Police said no organization has been given a permit to rally at the Statehouse in the coming days, and almost nobody showed up to protest over the weekend. NJ Advance Media staff writer Matt Arco contributed to this report. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Blake Nelson can be reached at bnelson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCunninghamN. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. 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. Several Spanish regions on Friday announced new measures aimed at containing the third wave of the coronavirus, which is already yielding record case numbers and stretching some hospitals to breaking point. These measures include earlier curfews, more perimetral lockdowns in municipalities, and shorter business hours for bars and restaurants. But despite growing calls from politicians, public officials and unions for a full home confinement, the central government continues to oppose a strict lockdown like the one that placed the countrys economic and social life on hold between mid-March and mid-June last year. The difference of views and the fact that decisions are shared between central and regional administrations is leading to some confusion over the kinds of measures that are allowed. Controversial curfew The government of Castilla y Leon on Friday said that the overnight curfew will start at 8pm, only to have the Health Ministry quickly note that this schedule is not compatible with the rules of the second state of alarm, the legal framework underpinning Spains current emergency measures. Under the terms of the state of alarm, which has been approved until May by Spains lower house of parliament, the Congress of Deputies, freedom of movement may not be curtailed before 10pm. But regional officials have fallen back on a judicial report to support their decision. Starting tomorrow, being out on the street will be forbidden from 8pm onwards, said Francisco Igea, the deputy premier of Castilla y Leon, a large region that is home to major cities such as Segovia, Valladolid, Salamanca and Burgos. These are tough measures, but this is an exceptional and very tough situation. The time has come to ask citizens for responsibility. The coming two weeks are going to be very difficult. Regional authorities in the Basque Country said that they would like to introduce an even earlier curfew of 6pm, but that they see that as not being possible because of the rules. Basque officials said they would like a review of the state of alarm in order to make allowances for earlier curfews than 10pm. Madrid restrictions In the Madrid region, the curfew is being brought forward to 11pm while bars and restaurants will have to close at 10pm. And starting on January 18, residents of 19 municipalities and 47 healthcare areas administrative zones that do not coincide with city limits are now confined to these spaces (see the list here), which they may only exit from or enter for essential business. Regional officials also pleaded with citizens to reduce their social contacts to the bare minimum. We must not get together at home with people from other households, said Antonio Zapatero, the deputy chief of Public Health and Covid-19 in the Madrid region. In Aragon, the regional health chief Sira Repolles said that all three provincial capitals Zaragoza, Huesca and Teruel are being sealed, as well as six smaller municipalities. This means that two out of every three residents of the region will be confined to their own city limits. In Murcia, all hospitals have cancelled non-essential surgeries and medical visits will be conducted through video conference for the next two weeks, said regional officials. Other regions of Spain, including Valencia, have also rescheduled elective procedures due to a surge in Covid-19 patients. Calls for home confinement The leaders of the regions of Galicia and Castilla y Leon, Alberto Nunez Feijoo and Alfonso Fernandez Manueco, both of the Popular Party (PP), on Friday urged citizens to stay home except for work, school or grocery shopping. Regional governments do not have the power to introduce mandatory home confinement, but both Nunez Feijoo and Fernandez Manueco said in statements to the television network Antena 3 that the central government should allow the regions to impose shelter-at-home orders at the local and provincial level. This idea is being echoed by the leader of the liberal party Ciudadanos (Citizens). On Friday, Ines Arrimadas offered the government support for a new state of alarm that would allow an intelligent confinement now and prevent putting Spaniards under a severe lockdown like the one they experienced last year. Lets act now. The third wave has already flooded Spain, said Arrimadas. If the primary healthcare system breaks down because of Covid-19 cases, the vaccination drive will be hampered. The leader of Mas Pais (More Country), a leftist splinter party created by Podemos co-founder Inigo Errejon, has sent a letter to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, of the Socialist Party (PSOE), asking for tougher restrictions, including a halt on all non-essential social activities. We feel that, in order to take good care of Spain, we need to prioritize saving lives, toughening the current measures of the state of alarm, writes Errejon. We cannot waste a single day more. Lets not make the same mistakes again. In Valencia, regional premier Ximo Puig called the situation tremendously negative but did not introduce any additional restrictions on top of those already in place. The fundamental thing is for people to strictly observe restrictions right now, he said. Vaccination irregularities Valencia authorities are investigating cases of three mayors who were irregularly vaccinated for the coronavirus despite not being in the priority groups for inoculation. They are the mayors of El Verger (Ximo Coll), Els Poblets (Carolina Vives) and Rafelbunyol (Fran Lopez). Lopez has stated that he was offered the chance on the first day of vaccination, and did not think twice about it. Valencia Deputy Premier Monica Oltra said on Friday that elderly or at-risk people could have been vaccinated before the mayors of El Verger and Els Poblets, and promised to conduct an in-depth investigation into the matter. Spains vaccination drive got underway in late December and is currently inoculating residents of senior homes, their carers and healthcare workers. English version by Susana Urra. WASHINGTON - Top officials within the Trump administration are warning Mexico it is in violation of their new free trade agreement in favoring state-owned energy companies over American firms that have invested tens of billions of dollar since the nation opened up its energy sector to foreign investment six years ago. In a letter earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said reports the Mexican government was blocking permits for foreign owned firms and writing regulations to favor Pemex and other state-owned companies were, "deeply troubling." "While we respect Mexico's sovereign right to determine its own energy policies, we are obligated to insist that Mexico lives up to its (United States, Mexico Canada Agreement) obligations, in defense of our national interests," the letter reads. RELATED: In Mexico, US energy firms face a 'slow rolling expropriation' The move represented the most forceful intervention to date by the Trump administration in what U.S. observers describe as a devolving situation since the election of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador two years ago. Last month former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza said Obrador was engaging in a "slow rolling expropriation done through Mexicos regulatory bodies, and thats making it increasingly difficult to do business in the country." Since former Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto ended a near century long policy that kept foreign companies out of Mexico oil fields, close to $100 billion is estimated to have been invested in Mexico's energy sector by foreign firms, including Texas companies such as the refiners Phillips 66 and Valero. The trade group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers said last month that U.S.-branded gasoline stations in Mexico are being cited for minor or nonexistent infractions and fuel from U.S. refineries is being held up at the border. In July, the Mexican government ordered Talos Energy to work with Pemex in developing a massive oil field in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Houston firm had discovered three years earlier after winning what had appeared exclusive drilling rights at a government auction. So far Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, has shown no sign of backing down, telling reporters in October that he was willing to roll back the 2014 energy reforms in order to protect Mexican jobs and keep domestic energy prices low. We need to rescue Pemex (and other state energy companies), he said, according to the Mexican newspaper Reforma. If that is not possible under the current legal framework, I will send, if necessary, an initiative to reform the Constitution. CHICO, Calif. A man was sentenced to six years in state prison Wednesday for vandalism and hate crimes within the city of Chico, according to Butte County District Attorney, Mike Ramsey. On Oct. 21, Thomas Bona, pled no contest in court to felony vandalism with a hate crime allegation and four additional misdemeanor counts of vandalism with two counts of violating civil rights, according to Ramsey. His conviction stemmed from an incident on June 12, 2019. Ramsey said Bona approached a man in a vehicle yelling racial slurs at the man and kicking the drivers side of the mans vehicle leaving a large dent. Bona then used a knife and carved a white supremacy symbol into the hood of the vehicle. RELATED: Man charged for string of racist graffiti in Chico Ramsey also said his misdemeanor convictions involved two incidents from April 9, 2019, when Bona was seen on surveillance at a minority-owned Chico gas station using a black marker to mark walls and a door with white power statements. A black marker was found on Bona when arrested. On the same day, Ramsey said that Bona broke a window of a local minority-owned food truck when his payment card was refused. Then, on May 6, 2019, he was seen marking a wall of a Chico building on Orange Street with symbols of unknown meaning, said Ramsey. However, on April 8, 2020, Ramsey said a local judge released Bona from custody, after a request of his defense attorney and over the objection of the prosecutor. On June 2, 2020, Ramsey said Bona was recorded marking multiple swastikas at the Chico City Plaza, where numerous people had gathered in response to the death of George Floyd. Bona was arrested a few days later and returned to custody. Throughout the pendency of his cases, Bonas mental health had been an issue, said Ramsey. Bona was twice declared incompetent to stand trial and proceedings were suspended. At Wednesdays sentencing, when sentencing Bona to the upper term, Judge Kimberly Merrifield acknowledged Bonas mental health issues, but also noted Bona posed a significant risk to public safety if not imprisoned. Ramsey said Bona will have access to mental health services while serving his prison term and would be subject to earlier release if he actively engages with treatment. Despite the rising number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in New York, the state is expected to temporarily resume indoor dining throughout most areas with the exception of New York City. Gov. Andrew Cuomo will be easing up on indoor dining restrictions, following a court decision made on Wednesday that stated New York has no rational basis for imposing such strict guidelines on restaurants in certain areas, while restaurants operating in other areas with higher COVID-19 hospitalization rates have been allowed to continue indoor dining service. About 100 Erie County dining establishments that currently operate within orange zones, which have been restricted from offering indoor dining, sued the state over these dining regulations that have been in place since mid-December. Westchester County and cities including Syracuse, Rochester and Elmira, are currently classified as orange zones. The new court ruling, however, will allow restaurants in these areas to operate under yellow zone restrictions for the time being, which will enable them to provide indoor dining at 50% capacity. While the state is complying with the new ruling it does not agree with the decision. We are reviewing the decision, Kumiki Gibson, one of the governors counsels, said in a statement. While that process is ongoing, to ensure uniformity and fairness, all restaurants operating in Orange Zones can now operate under rules governing Yellow Zones. We disagree with the court's decision and its impact on public health as Federal CDC data clearly demonstrates indoor dining increases COVID-19 spread. From the start of this pandemic, the State has acted based on facts and the advice of public health experts, and we will continue that approach." New York City is under an entirely different classification, despite containing orange zones in parts of Staten Island, and will not be allowed to reopen any indoor dining in any of its five boroughs. Still, many restaurant owners are vexed at their inability to serve their patrons indoors. The NYC Hospitality Alliance slammed the governor for keeping the city from allowing indoor dining along with other parts of the state following the courts decision this week. "The court's preliminary decision and the governors action to remove indoor dining restrictions in all 'orange zones' makes the status of the indoor dining ban in New York City all the more outrageous and destructive to thousands of restaurants across the five boroughs, especially when our infection and hospitalization rates are lower than most counties in the state where indoor dining is permitted at 50 percent occupancy," Andrew Rigie, the Alliances executive director, and counsel Robert Bookman, said in joint statement, released on Thursday. Ukraine does not accept language of conditions, ultimatums from Bosnia-Herzegovina regarding return of stolen icon MFA Ukraine does not understand the language of conditions and ultimatums from member of the Presidium of Bosnia and Herzegovina Milorad Dodik, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Oleh Nikolenko said. "The fact that the icon comes from the Ukrainian territory is an indisputable fact. The General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine has opened criminal proceedings in the case of illegal export. Expertise and its early return to Ukraine," Nikolenko told Interfax-Ukraine on Friday. The spokesperson said Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina are states parties to the 1970 Convention on Measures Aimed at Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. "In accordance with Article 7, the states parties to this convention are obliged to prohibit the import of cultural property stolen from a museum or religious and secular historical site, as well as at the request of another participating state to take appropriate steps to return any such cultural property," he said. As reported, during the visit of Lavrov, an accomplice of Russian foreign affairs, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, he was presented with a 300-year-old Ukrainian icon, previously kept in Luhansk. Later, the Ukrainian icon returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina for examination. Dodik, it is stated that no messages related to her have been provided, Radio Slobodna Evropa (Radio Free Europe) said. "If Ukraine proves that it asked for the icon before the day when I met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, I will accept it and we will hand it over to them," Dodik said. UPDATE: Oregon to start COVID-19 vaccinations of teachers Jan. 25, seniors 80+ to wait to Feb. 8 Oregons ability to begin administering vaccines to an expanded group of people beginning Jan. 23 is in jeopardy after expectations of more doses from the federal government proved false. Earlier this week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced an unspecified number of doses held in reserve for second doses would be released to states. Gov. Kate Brown responded Tuesday by welcoming extra doses and announcing all teachers and people over 65 would be eligible for the vaccine beginning next Saturday, in conjunction with more vaccines arriving. But Brown said Friday that on Thursday night she learned from Gustave F. Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, that no reserve of doses exists and the states allocation of vaccines would remain essentially flat. Oregon does expect it could see a small bump in doses. Precisely what that means for the states vaccination timeline isnt immediately clear. Oregon is sitting on nearly 200,000 unused doses and could attempt to move forward in some capacity using those doses and regularly scheduled shipments. States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses, Brown said in a series of tweets Friday morning. This is a deception on a national scale. Oregons seniors, teachers, all of us, were depending on the promise of Oregons share of the federal reserve of vaccines being released to us. Last night, I received disturbing news, confirmed to me directly by General Perna of Operation Warp Speed: States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses. Governor Kate Brown (@OregonGovBrown) January 15, 2021 In a letter to Azar, the director of the Oregon Health Authority said if the state did not receive the increased shipment of doses, as expected, the ramifications could be dire. If true, this is extremely disturbing, and puts our plans to expand eligibility at grave risk, Patrick Allen wrote. Those plans were made on the basis of reliance on your statement about releasing the entire supply you have in reserve. If this information is accurate, we will be unable to begin vaccinating our vulnerable seniors on Jan. 23, as planned. Allen, speaking on OPBs Think out Loud program Friday, went a step further, saying: Thats just all now not going to be possible because it was completely dependent on there being an increased supply. Confusion over the vaccine allotments stems from Azars comments Tuesday, when he said its time to move onto the next phase of the vaccination campaign and urged states to begin vaccinating people 65 and older. Among other things, Azar said we are releasing the entire supply we have for order by states, rather than holding second doses in physical reserve. Azar did not make clear the federal government had already begun shipping its supply of second doses, nor did he make clear that the decision would not meaningfully increase supplies received by states. Federal officials originally held those doses in reserve to ensure supply challenges did not prevent people who received their first shot from receiving a second booster shot several weeks later to complete the inoculation schedule. There was never a reason that states needed to complete vaccinating all healthcare providers before opening vaccinations to older Americans and other vulnerable populations, Azar added. States should not be waiting to complete 1A priorities before proceeding to broader categories of eligibility. According to The New York Times, 28 states have already started vaccinating seniors based on their current vaccination allocations. Thirty-two have significantly expanded vaccination eligibility to include essential workers, including teachers, based on their current vaccination allocations. But Oregon had resisted vaccinating seniors, prioritizing health care workers and residents in long-term care first. The state expected about 1.1 million doses through February, enough to provide two shots to everyone in phase 1a groups estimated at 500,000 people. In response to the federal governments announcement, however, Brown said people 65 and older and teachers could be vaccinated beginning Jan. 23. State officials made the announcement despite not having clear information about how many more vaccines Oregon would receive. While this is an unexpected change in course from the federal government, receiving more vaccines is welcome news for states and Oregon is ready to devote all resources necessary to ramp up distribution with our health care partners, Brown said Tuesday. Now that the state has found out it will not receive dramatically more doses, Oregon is posed to halt its plan to include seniors and K-12 educators, two groups that top 800,000 people. Oregon currently has about 189,000 unused doses, according to its state tracking system and CDC figures. Oregons vaccination manager, Rex Larsen, didnt receive details from federal officials until late Thursday about the minimal impact of the federal governments announcement. We may anticipate a 2-5% increase in allocations over the prior two weeks if safety stock is released, but there isnt a 2nd dose stock as had been previously reported, Larsen wrote to Allen in an email obtained through a public records request by The Oregonian/OregonLive. 2nd doses were actually supplied from an anticipated manufacturing holdback and there are no warehoused doses available to ship to states. Larsen told Allen that officials for Operation Warp Speed asked that he not ask for more information until Jan. 21, a day after President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration. Questions to the Oregon Health Authority about contingency plans to get vaccines to Oregons teachers and older people were not immediately answered Friday morning. Sen. Jeff Merkleys office said it has been in contact with the federal administration and is awaiting further explanation from Operation Warp Speed. General [Gustave] Perna and HHS Secretary Azar need to immediately answer for deceiving states AGAIN this time about the supply of vaccines in the strategic reserve, undermining Oregons vaccination efforts, Merkley said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. This is completely unacceptable. I am demanding answers. Sen. Ron Wydens office said the senior senator was blindsided by the news. Its hard to tell which is worse the Trump administrations lies or its incompetence, Wyden tweeted Friday. Either way, its latest failure to provide vaccines is completely unacceptable for Americans counting on them. Ill be pressing for answers. New leadership cant come soon enough. Wyden and Brown were not alone in their anger with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee demanding that the Trump (administratiion) must answer immediately for this deception. This one is so far beyond the pale to be almost unimaginable, Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz, a Democrat, told the Associated Press. Whos going to be prosecuted for this? What are the states to do when theyve been lied to and made all their plans around this? Oregonian/OregonLive reporters Aimee Green, Andrew Theen and Brad Schmidt contributed to this report. -- Kale Williams; kwilliams@oregonian.com; 503-294-4048; @sfkale When Joe Biden takes the oath of office as the 46th US president on 20 January, the ceremony will not proceed in the customary way. The inaugural parade, in which the outgoing president escorts the incoming one to the crowds cheering crowds, will not take place. Instead, the president-elect and his wife will walk a short distance to greet Democratic Party supporters before the inauguration ceremony, but afterwards they will not be given the traditional welcome tour of the White House. The usual celebration of American democracy has been marred so much by a bitter electoral battle but by anxieties over the balloting process that undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect, which emanate from President Donald Trump himself. In a marked departure from democratic norms, where allegations of fraud never come from the incumbent president, Trump has consistently maintained that the election was rigged. Since 2016, and with renewed force after 3 November 2020, of all the worlds political figures the American president has been complaining about the opposition a true crisis in which the very concept of democracy is being brought into question, with some asking whether democracy is really universally applicable regardless of time and place something that looks like a recurrent theme for a while yet. Democracy of course did not receive a very warm welcome from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers; and it had little traction among eastern philosophers later on. In modern times fascist and socialist philosophers mounted a fierce assault on democracy, arguing that it did not serve the interests of justice or competent government. Trump is simply a new test for democracy. The phenomenon of has not been confined to the US. Versions of Trump are in power in Poland, Hungary, Brazil and India; many more enjoy leading positions in Western parliaments. In the UK, the tendency has caused a break with globalisation, an important ideological corollary of democracy, and led to Britain exiting the EU. A rebel who revolted against the institutions and customs of the US being escorted out of the White House against his will brings the crisis of democracy to a head. When diagnosed as a symptom of demagoguery a phenomenon Greek philosophers described as an ailment that was hard to remedy and brought disaster to the societies it struck the glitch was thought to lie in the democratic mechanism or process being exploited by populists, bringing societies to the brink of anarchy indeed. The time between polling and inauguration (3 November-20 January) is enough opportunity for the populists to throw the concept of democracy into doubt. Already the disparity between the popular vote and the Electoral College vote which ultimately determines the outcome primed the scene for confusion over legitimacy. The situation was easy to anticipate given how George Bush Jr and Trump prevailed thanks to the Electoral College results in 2000 and 2016, even though Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in those elections. The scene looked increasingly fraught: media outlets anticipating results, state governments settling objections and suits, Electoral College or both houses of confirming results or turning them over to the Supreme Court and a possible recount orders. All the while American and the rest of the world were kept in suspense. Trump left no stone unturned to exploit every possible gap and loophole through successive defeats at court and despite general public frustration. A significant number of Republic congresspersons backed him in these efforts, so much so that Republican Party is now on the threshold of a schism. If this occurs, it will eliminate one of the most important advantages of American democracy: the stability made possible by two major parties able to balance out each other in order for power to change hands peacefully. Trump went so far as to phone Georgias Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to pressure him into tampering with the election results. Fortunately, the Washington Post obtained and publicised a recording of the phone call in which Trump used flattery and threats in the hope of persuading Raffensperger to overturn his defeat. Richard Haass, an American diplomat and the long-serving president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted, Listening to the full tape of @realDonaldTrumps call, [it is] impossible not to wonder about long-term vulnerability of American democracy as well as whether/how US will ever be able to promote democracy elsewhere again. According to Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor on Robert Muellers Russia investigation, the call contained evidence of criminal intent. Other competent sources agreed that it violated both Georgia and federal law. Many have voiced stronger opinions, accusing Trump of treason and of sowing the seeds of dictatorship. Yet the crisis of democracy is deeper than the need to accommodate to new technologies, economic, health and even climate cries putting the modern state under pressure, and the global division between democratic and autocratic governments. What we see today in the US and the UK is that democracy as a kind of ideological whip compelling the world to live according to systems and charters that were shaped by various historical, social and cultural circumstances. In any event, the subject merits looking past the shame caused by Trump and Trumpism, as these phenomena are probably more than mere obstacles on an otherwise victorious path. *The writer is chairman of the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. *A version of this article appears in print in the 14 January, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly. Short link: AFP Even as India is yet to officially roll out its COVID-19 vaccination programme, the country is all set to export the domestically manufactured vaccines. Brazil, which has the second-highest death toll from COVID-19 in the world after the US will be the first country to export the vaccine from India. The country has said that it has begun preparations to bring two million doses of coronavirus vaccine from India. Read more Here's How Haryana Farmers Have Planned To Mobilise Bigger Crowd Protesting Farmers / PTI To sustain the farmers agitation in the coming days and mobilise even a bigger crowd, farmers from Haryana villages have started a unique donation drive, The Indian Express has reported. Farmers are donating Rs 100 per acre to local leaders to manage the transportation and food items. In some villages, farmers have offered Rs 200 to Rs 500 per acre while some have even contributed in thousands for the stir. Read more Snapdeal, Palika Bazar Among Names In US Notorious Markets List BCCL 32 GB memory card for Rs 100, Ray-Ban Sunglass for Rs 500, 'original' leather wallets for Rs 500 are just a few of the most popular 'exciting' deals you can get at Delhi's Palika Bazar. The underground market in the heart of the national capital is a hub of fake and pirated products. So it should not come as a surprise that Palika Bazar has been named in the latest 2020 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy issued by the Office of the US Trade Representative. Read more Teen Allegedly Forced To Change Sex In Delhi, Repeatedly Raped By 6 Men PTI In a shocking incident, a 13-year-old boy was forced to undergo a sex change operation and then gang-raped for months in Delhi's Geeta Colony area, officials said. Two persons have since been arrested in the case. Delhi Commission for Women received a complaint over the incident following which an FIR was lodged. Police said that the teenager was also forced into begging. The teenager's ordeal began when he met the accused three years ago at a dance event in Laxmi Nagar. Read more Nearly 100 People Got COVID Due To An Inflatable Christmas Costume Getty A California hospital is facing a potential $43,000 fine from county health officials for alleged delays in reporting a Covid-19 super-spreader event linked to an inflatable Christmas tree costume. The fine issued on last Tuesday is $1,000 for each delayed report of a positive case, but since early January the number of infections connected to the Christmas event has ballooned to 92, from an initial figure of 43. Read more United Airlines passengers who risked their lives by giving CPR to a 69-year-old man who collapsed mid-flight and died of COVID-19 were given measly $200 gift voucher as a 'thank you' from the airline. Tony Aldapa and Steven Chang were compensated after the EMTs spent more than 45 minutes giving first aid to Isaias Hernandez, who had coronavirus. Hernandez had collapsed mid-flight after suffering acute respiratory failure while traveling from Orlando to Los Angeles on December 14. Hernandez died in a Louisiana hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in New Orleans. Aldapa has since received a phone call from an airline representative who let him know he'd be receiving the $200 voucher by email, he told TMZ. He added that the rep did not mention the man who died from COVID-19 in the call. When reached by DailyMail.com, Aldapa said 'it was a crazy experience. But I have no comment on the voucher situation.' Tony Aldapa and Steven Chang and an ICU nurse performed CPR on Isaias Hernandez, who had coronavirus United Airlines thanked the EMTs for giving aid to the man with a $200 flight voucher and a phone call Tony Aldapa said it took authorities 10 days to notify him of exposure to COVID 'We apologize for the inconvenience you experienced on your recent trip,' the email simply reads, according to the outlet. After giving Hernandez CPR, Adalpa later experienced symptoms and was tested for the virus. 'Essentially I just feel like I got hit by a train,' he said. 'I had a cough, my whole body still hurts, I had a headache,' Aldapa previously told CBS. Chang, who also helped give the man chest compressions, also got the call and $200 voucher which his wife, who was also on the flight, did not receive, TMZ reported. Megan Hubbard and Cameron Roberts, two other passengers who were near Hernandez on the flight, did not get vouchers. The measly vouchers come after United said it was not responsible for notifying passengers of exposure Electronic travel certificates can be used to book travel or select Economy Plus seating on United flights within two years of being issued, according to the company's website. DailyMail.com has reached out to Chang and United Airlines for additional comment. Twitter users have since slammed the airline for such a 'cheap' paltry sum. 'Giving him $200 for risking his life is pretty insulting,' one person commented. Another said: 'How about added some zeros to that big 200 bucks.' 'Just $200 he contracted covid and could of died himself. He deserves way more for risking his life to help another during a pandemic,' a third person said. The meager vouchers come after it was revealed that United Airlines claimed it was not responsible of notifying all 179 passengers that a man on-board later died had COVID-19. A spokesperson said the airline had already given the names of passengers to the CDC. TMZ reported that a spokesperson told the outlet they weren't medical professionals and it is up to the CDC to contact those who may have been exposed. Adalpa told the outlet it took 10 days to finally hear from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health that he had been exposed to the virus on the flight. Passengers are asked before boarding a flight whether they have tested positive for COVID-19 or are suffering any symptoms. United has since said Hernandez acknowledged United's 'ready to fly'' pandemic health checklist prior to boarding. A third ICU nurse also helped provide Hernandez with first aid. A Mexican woman who sued the administrators of an immigration detention center in Houston, alleging that she was raped on the premises, dismissed the charges after confessing that she lied with the hope of obtaining a visa designed for victims of certain crimes. The woman, named Jane Doe in court documents, filed a lawsuit in 2020 against CoreCivic Inc., the company contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run the Houston Processing Center, where she claimed the rape took place the night before she was deported two years earlier. Based on the false allegations, she sought monetary relief for bogus injuries she claimed she suffered that CoreCivic and other defendants in the case failed to prevent. The woman said in the lawsuit, Jane Doe vs. CoreCivic, before the U.S. Southern District of Texas that she was sexually assaulted and impregnated in the Houston facility, where she was detained for two months. The lawsuit was widely publicized by Jane Doe lawyers when it was filed last May. The plaintiff said she was raped around midnight on the eve of her scheduled deportation June 1, 2018, in a dark room in the facility where guards placed her with two other female detainees. However, a transcript of a phone interview with a Harris County Sheriffs Office investigator and an ICE special agent shows the plaintiff confessing that she lied in order to get a visa to stay in the U.S. In the interview, the agents informed the plaintiff that they found and interrogated the other two women, who said they were not raped and did not witness any sexual assault. The accuser, insisting that she was raped, then admitted it did not happen at the CoreCivic facility, as stated in the lawsuit. She told the investigators the rape happened in Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican side of the border with Texas, just after sh was deported. It indeed happened, but not there in the cells. It was here in Mexico, Jane Doe told the investigators. She said she doesnt know who her childs father is because she was raped by three strangers. The plaintiff told the agents that she wanted to apply for a visa for victims after her deportation to come back legally to the U.S. She said some women in Nuevo Laredo recommended that she say shed been raped to qualify. As the confession emptied the lawsuit of any merit against CoreCivic and its employees, Jane Does lawyers voluntarily dismissed the case. The court closed it in November. The lead attorney in the case did not answer requests for comments. Ms. Does false allegations have caused and continue to cause CoreCivic significant harm, Steven Owen, vice president of communications for the company, said in an email. However, Jane Doe has unequivocally recanted and withdrawn her allegations against CoreCivic. Jane Doe lived in Texas for 10 years, two of those while serving a prison sentence after being convicted of injury to a child causing bodily injury in Wood County in East Texas. She was residing illegally in the country, and ICE placed a detainer on her to be removed after the completion of her sentence when she was transferred to the Houston Processing Center. olivia.tallet@chron.com Twitter.com/oliviaptallet 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 Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 21:07:50|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HONG KONG, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The Office of the Commissioner of the Chinese foreign ministry in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Friday refuted an annual report of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), stressing that "a lie told a thousand times remains a lie." The CECC report, full of lies and bias, tried to exert pressure on the HKSAR government and even threatened to provide shelter for offenders from Hong Kong based on U.S. domestic law, a spokesperson of the commissioner's office said in a statement. It is a flagrant interference in China's internal affairs in breach of international law and basic norms governing international relations, said the statement. Despite the fact that the "one country, two systems" principle has been earnestly implemented in Hong Kong since its return to the motherland, the CECC report arbitrarily misinterpreted the principle and vilified the Chinese central authorities' just efforts including exercising its legal mandate and enacting the national security law in the HKSAR in accordance with the Constitution of China, the Basic Law of the HKSAR and other laws, the spokesperson said. The report is intended to undermine "one country, two systems", China's sovereignty and security, as well as the interests of all Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, the spokesperson said. The spokesperson said that it is right and proper for the HKSAR authorities to combat crime and uphold the rule of law, fairness and justice. Ironically, some in the United States called those who recently stormed the Capitol Hill "rioters" and "villains" but those who committed violent crimes in Hong Kong "peaceful protesters" and "prominent democracy advocates" in yet another outright application of double standards, the spokesperson said. The spokesperson emphasized that Hong Kong is part of China and any foreign interference of whatever form in Hong Kong affairs, which are China's internal affairs, will be firmly opposed. Stability is being restored to Hong Kong and any attempt by the U.S. side to hamper "one country, two systems" will be futile, the spokesperson said. Enditem Barcelona / LondonFirst obstacles to supply of Pfizer vaccines for Europe. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) said Friday that countries on the continent will receive fewer vaccines than expected starting next week, which may further complicate the slow deployment of immunisations. Hours after the news was made public, the same company has confirmed to the Spanish government that Spain will receive only 56% of the doses scheduled for next week (67% if we take into account that six doses come out of each vial). This means around 196,000 vaccines. People have shared some of the best, and largely unknown, solutions to everyday problems in an online gallery. Among the findings, collated by Bored Panda, is a shirt with a lens cloth sewn on, making it the perfect item for those who need to wear glasses but forget to clean them before leaving the house. Elsewhere, a train boasts seats facing the idyllic window scenes, while public swings power chargers for phones in one train station. Gathered from across the world, the images also include a fitted sheet with labels telling you where each corner should be placed. People have shared some of the best, and largely unknown, solutions to everyday problems in an online gallery. Among the findings, collated by Bored Panda , is a shirt with a lens cloth sewn on (pictured) The invention you never knew you needed! A train in Japan boasts seats facing the idyllic window scenes instead of inside This mask from Russian airline Aeroflot is perfect for sleeping while on a fight as it has different sides depending on if you want the flight attendant to wake you up for meals or not How the ruins are displayed in Serbia! Krusevac Fortress in Serbia is displayed with a window to demonstrate how it would've looked in the past They look like fun! In this image, public swings power chargers for phones in one train station at an unknown location Gathered from across the world, the images also include a fitted sheet with labels telling you where each corner should be placed (pictured) Clever! These chairs have a piece cut out at the top so that the handles on bags can be placed there, instead of leaving any belongings on the floor This idea was praised online, with the medical centre suggesting a covert way to help patients reveal when they wanted a private audience That's handy! One person was keen to showcase their pill bottle which keeps track of when it was last opened No issues here! The city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia boasts crosswalks projected onto roads so they can still be seen in winter weather Best of both worlds! The back of this seat can be moved so that a person can either look at the boats or people watch This keypad changes the numbers every time it's used so someone doesn't figure out the password from a person's hands movements More than one use! This control proved to be highly useful for one person, as they showcased the keyboard found on the back of the product This American product was praised online by social media users for showing the purpose for each ingredient included More recently, a conservative online outlet in 2016 targeted Doggie Hamlet, an outdoor dance project by the choreographer and performance artist Ann Carlson involving actors, sheep and dogs. Described as a full-length outdoor performance spectacle that weaves dance, music, visual and theatrical elements with aspects from competitive sheep herding trials, the project was ridiculed in The Washington Free Beacon under the headline Taxpayers Foot Bill for Doggie Hamlet. The agency defended its funding for the project, saying it was in line with its mission to give Americans the opportunity to exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Mr. Trump has argued that with all the financial pressures the country is facing, no federal money should be going to the arts and that it was not up to government to decide what art was important anyway. And so, it became a yearly ritual: Mr. Trump proposed taking away the agencys funding, and Congress voted to put it back again. Those who lobbied in support of the arts agency cited a few of the Republican lawmakers who provided particularly strong support, including Representative Elise Stefanik of New York and Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat and vice chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional arts caucus, said one reason the endowment survived was the broad reach of its programs. That money trickles down to artists and rural schools that would not be able to have an arts program, she said in an interview, adding that she would be fighting to increase its budget in coming years. Mr. Trumps critics say his attempted budget slashing was just one way he demonstrated his antipathy to the arts. They cite how he gave out National Medals of Arts only twice during his term, the second time just days ago in the midst of his second impeachment. He also disbanded the Presidents Committee on the Arts and Humanities after its members resigned to protest his defense of white nationalists after the violent demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. (White House officials said Mr. Trump had already decided to shut down the committee.) Their concerns only grew when President Trumps choice to lead the agency was Mary Anne Carter, a Republican political strategist with very little background in the arts. Prior leaders of the agency had been higher profile arts figures, like Jane Alexander, the actress, and Rocco Landesman, the Broadway producer. But Ms. Carter has won broad applause from the arts community for her advocacy and for maintaining the agencys work during the Trump years. The appointment of a new senior deputy chairman for the agency also won praise for bringing know-how about how to help the arts at the local level. BOSTON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Massachusetts families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Massachusetts families, schools, and organizations are hosting 436 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Massachusetts, the Kenneth F. Burns Memorial Bridge will light up from dusk to dawn on Jan. 24. Governor Charlie Baker has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Massachusetts School Choice Week.A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Massachusetts cities of Dennis and Rehoboth. "The disruptions of this past year have underlined the continued need for all the types of schools Massachusetts families choose for their children," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Now is the time to build up more affordable, effective education options in Massachusetts. This National School Choice Week, let's talk about how families and educators need school choice that works for them." In Massachusetts, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling. Massachusetts families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Massachusetts school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/massachussetts. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com The Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways, and MSME on Friday announced that construction of 13 highway projects of 847 kilometers at a cost of Rs 21,000 crore in the North region has been approved. He was speaking after laying the foundation stone for the construction of the Elevated Corridor at Rani Chennamma Circle, Hubballi, and the construction of a bridge over Bedthi channel at Dastikoppa village, Kalghataki Taluk. "The Government of India is committed to the development of highways in 13 projects will be taken up in the State including the construction of 4 lane road in Hubballi - Dharwad Bypass and 4 lane ring road in Belagavi," he explained. He assured that the ongoing projects in the North region including Hubballi - Hospete Highway will be completed shortly. "Karnataka is a progressive State. The Government of India will work hand in hand with the State Government to eradicate poverty by giving impetus to agriculture and industries. In the Transport Sector, priority will be given to the use of green fuel which will benefit the farmers," he explained. Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa expressed his happiness for initiating National Highway Projects for the second time in a month in the State. The construction of an Elevated Corridor at Rani Chennamma Circle, Hubballi, and the construction of a bridge over the Bedthi channel at Dastikoppa village will ease the traffic in Ankola - Gooty Highway, he opined. He appreciated the Union Government's measure to invest Rs 1.16 lakh crore for the development of Highways in the State. He said that all cooperation will be extended to complete all highway projects within the stipulated time. The construction of an Elevated Corridor at Rani Chennamma Circle, Hubballi will ease traffic congestion in Hubballi City, Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Prahlad Joshi said. Govind Karjol, Deputy Chief Minister who spoke on the occasion appreciated that, during Nitin Gadkari's tenure as Union Minister for Highways, 222 projects at a cost of Rs 77,297 crore have been approved and action has been taken to upgrade 8,819 km of road. He also thanked the Union Minister on behalf of the people of Karnataka for his guidance and concern, economic and technical support for the construction of roads even during the covid 19 pandemic situations. Jagadeesh Shettar, Minster for Industries said that a long-standing demand of the people of Hubballi City is being realized. He requested the Union Minister to complete the work of Hubballi- Dharwad Bypass road and expansion of Hubballi - Hospete National Highway works. Union Minister, DV Sadananda Gowda, Road Transport and Highway Minister for State General V.K.Singh, and others were also present at the event. (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: Greys Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey, who starred opposite Amy Admas in the 2007 musical rom-com as lawyer Robert Philip, is returning for the sequel Disenchanted. The sequel, which will stream on Disney+, will take the story of Adamss Giselle forward. In an interview with Good Morning America, Dempsey said, I just got this script for the second movie, and then Im starting to go through and get notes together. Theres talk that well start shooting that in the spring, which is exciting. Adams played a fairy tale princess Giselle whos banished to New York City by an evil queen (Susan Sarandon) ahead of her wedding to charming Prince Edward (James Marsden). In the city, she meets Robert and falls in love with him instead. Dempsey also praised Adamss performance in the movie as Giselle. Amy Adams is so amazing in that film. It was a fun project to be a part of, he said. Disney had already announced Adamss return to the sequel during an investor call in December. Posted Friday, January 15, 2021 6:51 am Many Washington businesses have had to survive a slew of crises during the COVID-19 pandemic, from government shutdown orders to customers staying away from some stores, to drop-offs in entire industry sectors. But businesses surviving on government aid have had another vexing headache: the possibility of paying taxes on the relief dollars they received. "That's a horrible surprise for any business," said Rep. Amy Walen, D-Kirkland. Now, Walen and others are sponsoring a bill to fix that with a proposal that could provide a measure of relief for as many as 100,000 taxpayers across the state. House Bill 1095 is one of several proposals by lawmakers and Gov. Jay Inslee intended to help businesses amid the governor's emergency restrictions on commerce to slow the spread of the virus. The bill provides exemptions for the Business & Occupation tax, as well as taxes on public utilities and retail sales that would apply to qualifying grants received since Feb. 29 of last year, the day Inslee declared an emergency for the pandemic. The bill would be retroactive to that date and would also apply to government grants given under future emergency proclamations, said Walen. The bill which is co-sponsored by 16 other lawmakers, including several Republicans got a public hearing Tuesday in the House Finance Committee. During Tuesday's public hearing, Walen called the legislation "a symbolic message to our business community that we support and love them." The legislation would apply to government aid, such as the federal money distributed by Inslee's office as small-business grants, as well as loans through the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program, which can be ultimately forgiven. "Because government grant funds are generally considered gross income, they would be subjected to taxation under current law," Michael Bailey of the state Department of Revenue told lawmakers in the hearing. Public utility taxes are also calculated by gross income, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. That analysis estimated that as many as 100,000 taxpayers could get relief if the bill passes. It's hard to know how much revenue that might cost the state. But if all loans and grants were forgiven, the number could be as high as $209 million, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill. Walen, however, said she considers the legislation a clarification of existing law, rather, rather than a new exemption. Rep. Matt Boehnke, R-Kennewick and co-sponsor of the bill, called the effort to help businesses a way "to get them back going." But Boehnke, like other Republicans, is frustrated that the governor's strict public-health restrictions continue to take a toll on small businesses. "The businesses want to stay open, they're doing all they can to protect customers," he said. "Because they want to stay in business." In the meantime, to start attracting new businesses, Boehnke is sponsoring House Bill 1170, an effort intended to create manufacturing jobs in Washington. Among other things, that bill would explore whether it's feasible to create both a state manufacturing office and a state office on research and development to help boost those types of jobs. The bill has drawn several Democratic co-sponsors. Meanwhile on Thursday, a special Senate committee released a report spelling out broad guidelines for the state's recovery from the pandemic. The 12-page report from the bipartisan Special Committee on Economic Recovery which was formed as the COVID-19 outbreak took hold includes a number of suggestions on business recovery. As of Sept. 15, close to 5,000 businesses closed at some point during the pandemic, according to the report, with almost 60% indicating they had closed for good. That report recommends easing the burden of unemployment-insurance taxes, boosting funding from programs that encourage entrepreneurship and expanding business recruitment and retention. "There was a lot of sense that we don't have a strong economic development strategy, because we haven't had to in this state," said Sen. David Frockt, D-Seattle, who pointed to the state's powerhouse industries like technology and aviation. "We need to be more aggressive in business recruitment," added Frockt, one of the special committee members. "When was the last time we heard about a company being recruited to move here?" There are other ideas to help kick-start economic recovery amid the pandemic. Rep. Drew MacEwen, R-Union, has drafted bills to help businesses by creating a temporary suspension of some Business & Occupation taxes, giving a pandemic-related tax credit for businesses assessed those taxes, and delaying payments on permits for liquor licenses. In his new state budget plan released last month, Inslee proposed among other things an effort to expand capital-construction projects to create new jobs. ___ (c)2021 The Seattle Times Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan British purchasing agency Crown Agents will purchase COVID-19 vaccines for Ukraine, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said during a press briefing in Kyiv on Friday. "At an extraordinary meeting of the government, it was decided that the procurement of vaccines against COVID-19 will be carried out by the international organization Crown Agents. It will have the authority to conclude contracts in accordance with the preliminary negotiations held by the Ministry of Health, the leadership of the state, as well as logistics support of goods," he said. Stepanov noted that the company is purchasing vaccines against COVID-19 for different countries, in particular for the UK. "We have changed the purchasing organization, because at the end of 2020, the work of the State Enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine was extremely ineffective. I consider the organization of the process by the leadership of this company ineffective," the minister added. This year our dine and drink business locations throughout the Gorge have suffered with closures. You can help support your favorites by purchasing take out and gift cards. Many of these business will offer curb-side delivery and some will deliver to your home. Lets keep the Gorge going strong! They cost their weight in gold, and they are worth it the drawings of Jean-Honore Fragonard As 14 masterful works on paper come to auction, specialist Stijn Alsteens reveals how Fragonards glorious draughtsmanship elevated the status of drawing in 18th-century France In the catalogue for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts 2016 exhibition Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant, the art historian Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey claims that recent history has focused on Fragonards painted oeuvre, while his drawings have received only secondary attention. This was not the case in his lifetime, she says. During the 1770s and 1780s, she writes, the prices at auction of certain sheets were comparable to those of paintings. One contemporary connoisseur, she adds, remarked that the artists works on paper cost their weight in gold, and they are worth it. Each sheet is a masterpiece of grace, poetry, and humour art historian Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey Whether working in chalk, ink or wash, Fragonard was addicted to drawing, says Christies Old Master Drawings specialist Stijn Alsteens. He did it constantly, on whatever subject he could think of, and in whatever medium he had at his disposal. As a result, he became one of the greatest draughtsmen of his era. And unlike many other Old Master artists, who used drawings simply as a preparatory tool for their paintings, Fragonard viewed them as works of art in their own right. Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806), A Young Woman Dozing. Traces of black chalk, red chalk. 9 x 7 in (24 x 19 cm). Sold for $1,110,000 on 26 January 2021, Online From January 14-26, in Old Master and British Drawings, Christies is offering 14 drawings that illustrate the breadth of Fragonards skills. A Young Woman Dozing (above) highlights the variety of marks the virtuoso could draw on from his repertoire. There is so much happening in the exquisite folds and ruffles of the silk dress worn by the sitter thought by some to be Fragonards daughter that it becomes the subject of the picture, says Alsteens. Its less a portrait of her and more a portrait of her dress. The study was most likely executed between 1775 and 1785, at the height of Fragonards fame, and belongs to a series of drawings praised in the late 19th century by the French writers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. Using the same gilded vocabulary as Fragonards pictures, they wrote how the red chalk, almost crushed under the artists pressure, seeming to flog the backgrounds with its corkscrew markings, brutalises the stuffs, the trimming of a dress, rumples triumphantly the fanciful fripperies and adornments of costume, attacks with the same force the features, hacking them with shadow, and performs the miracle of revealing, beneath such violent handling, the smile of a pretty woman. The drawing, explains Alsteens, comes from the estate of the editor Cornelia Bessie (1929-2020), wife of the American publishing tycoon Simon Michael Bessie, and was given to her on Christmas Day in 1982 by her mother, the art dealer Kate Schaeffer. The other 13 drawings coming to auction are from a group of at least 179 that Fragonard produced circa 1780 to illustrate part of Ariostos 16th-century epic poem, Orlando Furioso. With its tales of knights and maidens, magic and mysterious beasts, the work was particularly popular in hedonistic 18th-century France. These sheets reveal Fragonards ability to adapt his manner of drawing. Completed over the course of more than year, they are loosely executed in black chalk applied in a whirlwind of intricate and twisted lines from which the figures powerfully emerge. Layers of blue and grey wash applied over the chalk add a theatrical sense of depth. Its unlikely this series was ever intended to be published, says Alsteens. The sheer quantity and they dont even cover half the poem would have made it an unwieldy, laborious process. Instead, theyre more likely a personal passion project. Ariosto spent his entire career in the service of the Este court in Ferrara, Italy, and dedicated Orlando Furioso to Cardinal Ippolito dEste. Nearly 250 years later, in 1760, Fragonard spent a summer there as a guest of the Este family, where it has been suggested he became familiar with the original Italian text. There are details in the drawings that he could only have captured from the Italian version, says the specialist. He had a deep understanding of the chivalric spirit of the poem. In 2003, Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey painstakingly identified the subjects of all 179 sheets, each of which, she says, is a masterpiece of grace, poetry, and humour. After Fragonards death in 1806, the drawings remained with his family in Grasse. They eventually passed to the great French collector Hippolyte Walferdin, who in turn sold them in 1880 to Louis Roederer, owner of the renowned champagne house. In 1922 they were bought by a book dealer in Philadelphia, who gradually began to disperse them. Today, sheets from the series can be found in the Morgan Library and Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Harvard Art Museums in Massachusetts, the Louvre in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The 13 examples offered in the sale, kept together since Fragonards death, are thought the be the largest group in private hands. They come from the collection of the New York patrons and collectors Nina R. and Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Arthur Houghton served as president and later chairman of the Metropolitan Museum, and endowed Harvard with the Houghton Library of rare books and manuscripts. Sign up today Christies Online Magazine delivers our best features, videos, and auction news to your inbox every week Subscribe ESSEX COUNTY, NJ The following news release comes courtesy of Essex County. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site. The Essex County Correctional Facility Civilian Task Force will host a virtual public hearing on Saturday, January 30. The focus of this public hearing will be on addiction treatment and Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) practices at the Essex County Correctional Facility. Due to the increase in COVID-19 transmission in New Jersey and to promote social distancing, the meeting will be held remotely as follows: Date: Saturday, January 30, 2021 Time: 10 a.m. to noon Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5dUT5wIwyHspxjJL256Dw/featured, or facebook.com/essexcountyciviliantaskforce The Task Force is committed to thoroughly and rigorously examining how the Correctional Facility treats inmates and detainees coping with addiction issues. Our upcoming hearing will focus on how best to ensure and enhance the health and wellbeing of the persons we serve, Task Force Chairman and Former Governor Jim McGreevey said. During the hearing, Task Force members will be interviewing relevant ECCF staff and gathering information, which will ultimately inform the items of inquiry addressed by the Task Force. The hearing will be provided via a YouTube link, and a recording of the hearing will be available on either the Essex County Civilian Task Force YouTube Channel or The Essex County Civilian Task Force Facebook Page. The hearing will be livestreamed on those platforms on January 30th. This is the fourth public hearing scheduled this fall by the Civilian Task Force. The previous meetings held in September, October and December focused on the medical services and mental health services provided at the ECCF. Those wishing to contact the Civilian Task Force, submit a complaint or want more information about the public hearing should e-mail to JailTaskForce@admin.essexcountynj.org or call 973 877-8037. For more information about the Task Force, visit www.essexcountynj.org/corrections/ and click on the link for the Civilian Task Force. Story continues The intent of the nine-member task force is to provide transparency and accountability of the ECCF staff, to protect the lives, health, safety and rights of all people confined at the ECCF and ensure the conditions of their confinement are safe, sanitary, respectful and humane, according to language in the ordinance. It will act independently of County government and have the authority to inspect the ECCF, interview corrections officers, inmates, detainees, and review systematic issues and concerns. Members of the Task Force were nominated by Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr. and appointed by the Board of Chosen Freeholders in June through an established advice and consent procedure that is used to fill vacancies on all county boards and commissions. Send local news tips and correction requests to eric.kiefer@patch.com This article originally appeared on the Bloomfield Patch Today the Indian Army celebrates its 72nd Army Day. General K.M. Cariappa took over from the last British commander General, Sir Francis Robert Roy Bucher, who served the Indian Army on top position from January 1, 1948 to January 15 1949. The day is since celebrated as Army Day. This year on the Army day, for the first time, combat drones of the Indian Army flew in public. To some they might look like a flock of birds from afar. But up close, their humming leaves no doubt that they are machines that fly in a neat formation. #WATCH | For the first time ever, Indian Army demonstrates combat swarm drones at #ArmyDay parade 2021 in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/F12rfo4emN ANI (@ANI) January 15, 2021 These combat drones of the Indian Army can swarm enemy forces and trump their defences. More than fifteen such Army swarm drones flew in public for the first time at the Army Day parade in Delhi. The presenter at the parade said these drones can penetrate up to 50 km behind enemy lines and cause havoc, while drone operators can remain hidden safely. Also Read: Captain Tania Shergill Scripts History, Becomes The First Woman Army Officer To Lead Men In Army Day Parade Twitter Swarm drones are seen as a potent tool in future warfare. The first elements of their swarm-drone strike packages are being developed by the US, China, Russia and a few European countries. The drone development initiative has been strongly backed up by the government as part of the Make in India programme. A disruption in warfare milestone achieved by the #IndianArmy today with a demo of 75 unit autonomous drone swarm offensive & close support ops display at Cariappa Parade ground. Can enter 50 km inside enemy territory & carry out independent military tasks & destroy targets pic.twitter.com/wbQum0NCsa A. Bharat Bhushan Babu (@SpokespersonMoD) January 15, 2021 @SpokespersonMoD account tweeted, A disruption in warfare milestone achieved by the #IndianArmy today with a demo of 75 unit autonomous drone swarm offensive & close support ops display at Cariappa Parade ground. Can enter 50 km inside enemy territory & carry out independent military tasks & destroy targets. How these drones are used in future warfare is yet to be seen. BERLIN Germanys largest political party will choose a new leader on Saturday, with the winner well positioned to succeed Angela Merkel as the next chancellor of Europes leading economy. Regardless of the result, it will signal a new chapter for Germany and Europe, where the staid but steady leadership of Ms. Merkel has been a constant for the past 15 years. She earned respect for holding Europe together through repeated crises and, most recently, her deft handling of the coronavirus pandemic over the past year. In a sense, an era is ending, said Herfried Munkler, a political scientist at Humboldt University in Berlin. But in certain basic positions, such as the geopolitical situation and the economic conditions within the E.U., that all remains unchanged, regardless of whos the chancellor. German voters will elect a new government on Sept. 26, and Ms. Merkels conservative Christian Democratic Union remains the countrys most popular party, according to a survey by Infratest/Dimap last week. Washington: America's powerful gun advocacy group the National Rifle Association on Friday (Saturday AEDT) filed petitions with a US bankruptcy court seeking protection from creditors by restructuring. The NRA filed the Chapter 11 petitions, which allow a business to stay alive while reorganising, in Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, the association said in a news release. The NRA said it would restructure as a Texas nonprofit to exit what it said was a "a corrupt political and regulatory environment in New York" state, where it is currently registered. National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre intends to incorporate the organisation to Texas. Credit:AP The influential group said in a statement there would be no immediate changes to its operations or workforce, and that it "will continue with the forward advancement of the enterprise confronting anti-Second Amendment activities, promoting firearm safety and training, and advancing public programs across the United States". Tributes have poured in for a 'dedicated' police officer tragically killed in a road crash with a lorry. Darryl Street, 59, died at the scene of the collision on the A66 near Baron's Hill, Penrith, Cumbria, at 7.20am on Thursday. The married father-of-three's grieving family hailed him the 'most incredible man' and said they were 'struggling to come to terms with this awful loss'. Mr Street, who worked for the Civil Nuclear Constabulary at Sellafield, was driving his Jaguar F-type when it collided with the HGV, whose driver suffered minor injuries. He had previously served with Cumbria Police and in the British Army as a soldier. Tributes have poured in for 'dedicated' police officer Darryl Street, 59, who was tragically killed in a road crash with a lorry in Cumbria Mr Street, 59, died at the scene of the collision on the A66 near Baron's Hill, Penrith, Cumbria, at 7.20am on Thursday (file photo) Today, his wife Joanne and children Ruby, Lily and James said in a statement: 'We are all completely devastated by the tragic sudden death of our wonderful son, brother, husband, dad, police officer, soldier, friend and hero. 'He was a man who always tried to make the world a better place and had a huge impact on everyone who was lucky enough to cross paths with him. 'Over his lifetime he worked so hard for the RSPCA, the Army, Cumbria Police, and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary at Sellafield. Working hard to protect people in this country as well as deployments to fight overseas to protect his country. 'He was the kindest, funniest, most loyal, generous, incredible man and we are all struggling to come to terms with this awful loss.' The married father-of-three's grieving family hailed him the 'most incredible man' and said they were 'struggling to come to terms with this awful loss' (picture provided by the family) Simon Chesterman, Chief Constable of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), said: 'Darryl was a dedicated and committed police officer who had spent years of his life serving and protecting the community. 'Although we only had the pleasure of his experience and commitment for just over a year at the CNC, his loss is keenly felt by all of his colleagues and friends.' Michelle Skeer, Chief Constable of Cumbria Police, said: 'The sudden death of former Cumbria Constabulary police officer Darryl Street has left everyone within the constabulary shocked and deeply saddened. He was an extremely well-respected and popular officer. 'Colleagues who worked closely with Darryl would describe him as always going the extra mile to help others, demonstrating compassion and kindness whether he was dealing with a member of the public or assisting colleagues.' WALLDORF (dpa-AFX) - German software major SAP SE (SAP) said Friday that its Supervisory Board has appointed Julia White and Scott Russell to the Executive Board. White will take a new Executive Board role as chief marketing and solutions officer, while Russell will head SAP's Customer Success organization. Russell will succeed Adaire Fox-Martin, who has informed the Supervisory Board that she will depart the company at the end of this month. White joins SAP after nearly 20 years at Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), where she led product marketing for Microsoft Azure over the past five years. Previously, she was responsible for product marketing for Microsoft Office 365 during the transition to the cloud. SAP noted that White will strengthen the company's go-to-market approach with a focus on product, industry and digital marketing, as well as focus on bridging customer and ecosystem needs with product development. Russell brings over 20 years of experience in sales, management, consulting and technology to his new role. As president of SAP Asia Pacific Japan or APJ, Russell was responsible for SAP's extensive business growth and presence expansion in the APJ region for the past three years. He has held several senior leadership positions across SAP and joined SAP from IBM Corp. (IBM) in 2010. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. A commando of CRPFs elite unit CoBRA allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself with his service weapon in Chhattisgarhs Sukma district during an anti -Naxal operation in the wee hours of Friday, police said. As per preliminary information, Head Constable Harjeet Singh (40), belonging to CoBRAs 206th battalion, shot himself with his service rifle when a squad of his unit was out on an anti-Naxal operation in Chintagufa police station area, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police Sunil Sharma told PTI. A team of the 206th battalion of Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) had launched the operation from its Temelwada camp on Thursday night based on inputs about movement of Naxals and laid an ambush on Koyalmeta hill, located over 450km from state capital Raipur, he said. During the operation, Singh allegedly shot himself and died on the spot, Sharma said, adding his body is being shifted to a local hospital. Prima facie the incident seems to be a suicide and an investigation is underway to ascertain the exact reason that prompted him to take the extreme step. "However, police will also probe whether he misfired from his service rifle, Sharma added. Singh was a native of Ludhiana district in Punjab. The CRPF is deployed in south Bastar for anti-Naxal operations. (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| 2021-01-15 21:14:10|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- With less than a week to go, the outgoing U.S. administration announced on Thursday a fresh move to blacklist nine more Chinese firms over groundless national-security charges. This 11th-hour episode of anti-China insanity is a clear demonstration that those political arsonists, including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, of the current administration are running around the clock to hit China, and to dig as many holes for future China-U.S. relations as they can. Washington's latest China-bashing hysteria does not strike as a surprise. Over the past four years, it seems that this administration simply measured the success of its diplomacy by how hard it can batter China. As their days in power are numbered, their desperation to bully China has gone unprecedentedly wild. From hyping up the so called "red scare," to the extremely provocative move of lifting restrictions on official contacts with China's Taiwan region, and now to expanding its hit-list of Chinese firms, those China hawks are trying desperately to damage the world's most important bilateral relationship beyond repair. It is their ultimate fear that the end of the outgoing administration could spell the very end to their political life. In the past few years, the White House has repeatedly launched witch-hunt against Chinese companies by resorting to the flimsy fig leaf of national security. In their obsolete Cold-War thinking, containing China is the most effective way to secure America's interests. However, in this highly connected and interdependent world, Washington's zero-sum logic and its unscrupulous abuse of state power to punish law-abiding foreign investors will only scare away foreign investors, corrode fair competition, and chip away global confidence in a free and open U.S. market. And once the confidence in America's business environment crumbles, it is immensely hard to build it back. While those sanctions may inflict some damage on a number of Chinese firms, those punitive plots will never suffocate Chinese enterprises' aspiration to continue to embrace a more open world and join their global partners for mutual benefits. With their last show of madness, those anti-China political clowns will find their audience cheering for their belated exit. Ultimately, they will fall into oblivion despite their political farce. Enditem The Latest Arrests Over Jan. 6 Capitol Incident WASHINGTONThe latest arrests from the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by protesters: Retired Air Force Officer Arrested A prosecutor says a retired Air Force officer who was part of the group that stormed the U.S. Capitol carried plastic zip-tie handcuffs because he meant to take hostages. Retired Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. appeared at a detention hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursday. The 53-year-old is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. A judge said he would release Brock to home confinement. Brocks attorney says there is no evidence that he did anything violent inside the Capitol. Arkansas Man Arrested An Arkansas man accused of beating a police officer with a pole flying a U.S. flag during the storming of the U.S. Capitol has been arrested. In an arrest affidavit filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, an FBI agent said Peter Francis Stager is shown in video and photographs striking a prone police officer repeatedly with the flagpole. The affidavit says confidential informants had recognized Stager in video and photographs and alerted authorities, who have charged Stager with interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorneys office in Little Rock, Arkansas, confirmed Stager was in custody Thursday. No attorney was listed for Stager in court records. A man calls on people to enter the Capitol building in Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) Alabama Man Arrested Prosecutors say an Alabama man who was photographed on the Senate floor during the storming of the U.S. Capitol and who recorded an anonymous YouTube video days later about the angry crowd has been arrested. Joshua Mathew Black, of Leeds, was arrested Thursday and charged with entering a restricted building and violent entry or disorderly conduct. Black said in the video that the crowd went crazy over Congress proceeding with certifying President-elect Joe Bidens win over President Donald Trump and believed Vice President Mike Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election. According to investigators, Black said on the recording: We just wanted to get inside the building. I wanted to get inside the building so I could plead the blood of Jesus over it. That was my goal. It was not immediately clear if Black has a lawyer. Black said his cheek was pierced by a projectile during the incident while trying to help a law enforcement officer who was being stomped on by members of the crowd. Protesters stand on the veranda of the U.S. Capitol at a rally in Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Brandon Drey) Delaware Man Arrested Prosecutors say a Delaware man photographed carrying a Confederate battle flag during the storming of the U.S. Capitol has been arrested after authorities used the image to help identify him. Federal prosecutors say Kevin Seefried, who was seen carrying the flag, was arrested in Delaware along with his son Hunter Seefried. Prosecutors say both entered the Senate building through a broken window. They were charged with unlawfully entering a restricted building, violent entry, and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and degradation of government property. Court documents say the men were identified after the FBI was told by a coworker of Hunter Seefrieds that he had bragged about being in the Capitol with his father. No one answered the phone Thursday afternoon at a number listed for them. Protesters storm the Capitol Building in Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Ahmed Gaber/Reuters) Pennsylvania Firefighter Arrested A retired Pennsylvania firefighter has been arrested on suspicion of throwing a fire extinguisher that hit three police officers during the siege at the U.S. Capitol. Former Chester firefighter Robert Sanford was arrested Thursday on charges including assault of a police officer and unlawfully entering the Capitol. The charges against Sanford are not related to the widely publicized attack on an officer who was hit with a fire extinguisher and died. Sanford is appearing in federal court in Pennsylvania, but the case will be prosecuted in Washington. Sanford couldnt be reached for comment Thursday, and it wasnt clear whether he had an attorney. Andy Anokye, who performed under the stage name Solo 45 (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) A grime artist who held four women against their will and repeatedly raped them will have his sentence reviewed by the Court of Appeal. Andy Anokye, 33, who performed under the stage name Solo 45, was found guilty at Bristol Crown Court of 30 charges relating to a two-year period. These were 21 rapes, five counts of false imprisonment, two counts of assault by penetration and two of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He was handed a 29-year extended sentence, made up of a 24-year jail term and an extended licence period of five years, in July last year. The Attorney Generals Office (AGO) has referred his sentence to the Court of Appeal under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme and it will be considered by senior judges on Friday. Lawyers representing the AGO will argue that Anokye should have either been given a life sentence or that his jail term should have been longer. The court will also hear an appeal by Anokye against the length of his sentence. A man who assaulted, tortured and threatened to kill four women he falsely imprisoned and violently sexually assaulted has been convicted of a total of 30 offences, including 21 counts of rape. https://t.co/Bg1jCuZLwA pic.twitter.com/kJtVg2KuYa Avon and Somerset Police (@ASPolice) March 11, 2020 The musician, who was part of the grime collective Boy Better Know, derived sexual pleasure from torturing the women by water-boarding, interrogating, assaulting and raping them, the court heard. He claimed the acts were part of consensual role play, or a game he played called Catch me, Rape me, and said he told women he would terrorise them. Police began investigating Anokye, who is from London but had a harbourside apartment in Bristol, in 2017 after a woman complained she had been raped by him. After his arrest, officers discovered harrowing footage filmed by Anokye on his mobile phone that revealed he had abused multiple women. Judge William Hart, passing sentence in July, said Anokye had become addicted to the perverted pleasure he took from abusing the women in the case. The judge added: You have a background that includes gang associations and criminal violence. Im entirely satisfied that your career as a music artist was flourishing at the time of this offending and that you would have gone to great heights. You were part of a well-known collective Boy Better Know. The fellow artists from that collective have achieved great success. The judge said none of those fellow artists were aware of Anokyes behaviour, or dark side. They are in no way tarnished by your misdeeds which you carried out in a private way, the judge told Anokye. Your convictions have deprived you of that career but the fault is yours alone. Expand Close An image of a shotgun was shown during the court case (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An image of a shotgun was shown during the court case (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) During the trial, the graphic video clips filmed by Anokye were played to the jury. They showed Anokye interrogating the women about previous sexual partners, slapping them, insulting them and raping them. Anokye, who was signed to Island Records and had collaborated with Stormzy, JME and Wiley, was described as a violent, controlling narcissist and a bully by prosecutors during the case. The trial heard he forced one woman to lie in a bath of freezing cold water, held a shotgun to the head of another woman, and made one sit with a bottle of water tied to her finger with a shoelace. His abuse included holding a cloth covered in bleach to womens faces, with one woman telling jurors he had forced a mobile phone down her throat. Giving evidence, Anokye told the court he had dacryphilia sexual arousal from tears. Following Anokyes arrest, police examined videos and images on three mobile phones, an external hard drive and a laptop found at his apartment in Bristol. They contacted further women and three came forward with complaints of abuse at his hands. A fifth woman also gave evidence against Anokye during the trial, but jurors heard he could not be charged with alleged offences against her as they took place abroad. The Court of Appeal hearing will start at 10am on Friday. Several diplomatic missions in Bucharest celebrated the National Culture Day online, with lyrics by Mihai Eminescu, whose birth, 171 years ago is celebrated on January 15, or with messages in support of the arts sector in general. The German ambassador to Bucharest, Cord Meier-Klodt, had a more personal message, as he posted a video in which he sang the first lines of Eminescu's poetry "Mai am un singur dor" [One wish alone have I]. "Being a man from northern Germany, I immediately liked this quiet, melancholic, sober and simple atmosphere of this poem and this lied, as we say in German. So I present to you this gesture that is perhaps a little unusual and I hope you receive it with "Goodwill and generosity. Happy birthday in memory of the great poet Mihai Eminescu, happy birthday, Romanian culture!," said the Ambassador in his message, in Romanian.France's ambassador to Bucharest, Laurence Auer, also sent a video message from the French Institute in the Capital City."Here, at the French Cultural Institute in Bucharest, we practice culture every day. During the pandemic, we continue cultural exchanges and work in the literary sector. On this national holiday, culture allows us to look to the past, guided by the spirit of the the poet we celebrate today, Mihai Eminescu, but also to the future, because culture must be understood as a product in society and in the economy. I want to remind my Romanian friends that we stay by their side, to celebrate culture every day," said the French Ambassador.The Israeli Embassy marked this day with photos from various Romanian cultural spaces and with the message "Today we rejoice with all Romanians who celebrate their culture and we appreciate all those who wear it all over the world," he said on Facebook.Also, the Belgian Embassy in Bucharest celebrated the day of January 15, on Facebook, with the first lines of Eminescu's poem, "Au trecut anii ...[The years have passed ...].The National Culture Day - celebrated on January 15, the birthday of Mihai Eminescu - was established by law in 2010. Every year, on this day, artistic events take place throughout the country, but also in Romanian cultural institutions abroad. A probation officer who previously admitted sexually assaulting a woman he supervised while she was in drug court and threatening to send her to jail if she resisted was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in state prison, officials said. Henry C. Cirignano, 48, of Wall Township, an 18-year veteran of the New Jersey State Probation Department in the Vicinage of Monmouth, pleaded guilty on February 24, 2020 to three counts of second degree sexual assault by coercion, and one count of second degree official misconduct, according to a statement from the Monmouth County Prosecutors Office. Cirignano will also be subject to parole supervision for life and must register as a sex offender under Megans Law, and faces a lifetime ban on public employment in the state, as well as the forfeiture of his benefits, the office said. In previous court proceedings, Cirignano admitted to sexually assaulting the probationer multiple times from 2016 to 2019 in three locations: the victims apartment, her mothers home and at a halfway house. Cirignano admitted he threatened to write violations against the woman if she did not have sex with him, telling the woman: As long as you fulfill my needs, you stay on the street. I think thats fair enough. He admitted that he told her that she could drink alcohol or use narcotics and he would take care of her in drug court. Cirignano also admitted he excused 46 of the womans absences from drug court proceedings between 2016 and 2019 without proper documentation. At least once, Cirignano admitted he excused her by lying and saying she was receiving treatment for cancer, despite her never being diagnosed with cancer. He also sent the woman photos of his genitals, and required she send him nude photographs, he admitted. Cirignanos actions represent the worst type of predatory behavior, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni said in a statement. He trampled upon the oath he took as a public servant, and abused his power by forcing the victim to provide sexual favors, extorting her with threats of incarceration if she refused. Thankfully, he will serve a significant jail sentence, be registered as a sex offender, and never hold a public job again. Cirignano has been held in the Ocean County Correctional Institution since his arrest on February 4, 2019, the office said. 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. How Nidhi Razdan of NDTV Was Conned with a Job Offer at Harvard University Nidhi Razan, who has been anchor at New Delhi Television (NDTV) for over 21 years, came out in the open to describe how she became victim of a very serious phishing attack. She was offered a post of associate professor of journalism at Harvard University, which later turned out to be fake. In a tweet, Nidhi says, "I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. Im putting this statement out to set the record straight about what Ive been through. I will not be addressing this issue any further on social media." I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. Im putting this statement out to set the record straight about what Ive been through. I will not be addressing this issue any further on social media. pic.twitter.com/bttnnlLjuh Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) January 15, 2021 Nidhi says, in June 2020, she decided to move on from NDTV and was made to believe that she would be joining Harvard University in September 2020. "While I was making preparations to take up my new assignment, I was later told that due to the ongoing pandemic, my classes would commence in January 2021. Along with these delays, I began noticing a number of administrative anomalies in the process being described to me. At first, I had dismissed these anomalies as being reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic, but recently the representations being made to me were of an even more disquieting nature." When Nidhi reached out to senior authorities at Harvard University for clarity, she was told to share some of the correspondence that she had received from the University. "After hearing from the university, I have not learnt that I have been the victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack. I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty. The perpetrators of thsi attacked used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email or social media accounts," she says. Nidhi had filed a complaint with police and shared all documentary evidence. She also requested Harvard University to take this matter seriously. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 22:49:01|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DHAKA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh has again extended the closure time of educational institutions, except madrasas (Islamic religious schools) to prevent further spread of the COVID-19 in the current cold weather. Bangladesh's Ministry of Education said in a statement Friday that the government extended the closure of all educational institutions till Jan. 30. Previously the closure was extended in phases till Jan. 16. Bangladesh on March 16 first announced to close all the educational institutions in the country from March 17 in an effort to halt the spread of the COVID-19. Since March 8, the virus has spread to nearly every Bangladeshi district and the total number rose to 526,485 with 7,862 deaths so far. Enditem BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China will initiate anti-dumping measures against imported meta-Cresol from the United States, the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK) and Japan, the Ministry of Commerce said Thursday. China's domestic industry has suffered substantial damage due to the dumping of such products by the United States, the EU, the UK and Japan, the ministry said in a final ruling based on an anti-dumping investigation launched in July 2019. Starting from Friday, duties will be collected at rates ranging from 27.9 percent to 131.7 percent for a five-year period, according to the ministry. The meta-Cresol is widely used in the fields of medicine, pesticides and antioxidants, among others. AUGUSTA, Maine, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Maine families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Mainers are hosting 130 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Maine cities of Cushing and Woodstock. "National School Choice Week unites educators, leaders, and families in pursuit of a common goal: educating and inspiring children for the future," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "During this challenging year, let's show our gratitude for great schools and educators, and talk about how we can better serve Maine students." In Maine, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling. Students in certain Maine towns may be eligible for the state's tuitioning program, allowing them to attend schools in other communities. Maine families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Maine school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/maine. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Change: Michael Gove said VAT on profits would be reinstated Second-hand car dealers are seeking answers on whether they will be able to move vehicles over the border without hefty extra tariff and customs fees. Revenue Commissioners in Dublin will make a call on whether vehicles moved over the border will face a more than 30% hike in charges. The strict language of the Withdrawal Agreement suggests Northern Ireland dealers can import vehicles from Britain, then sell them on without the added cost, said Cecil Hetherington, managing director of Used Cars NI. "It is still up for discussion whether it is possible for cars to be sold through NI if proof is shown they were imported from GB," said Mr Hetherington. "However, people from the RoI Revenue are saying something different at the moment. "We are trying to work it out as we speak." Earlier this week local dealers learned with relief that they will avoid having to pay 20% Vat on the value of used vehicles imported from Britain under the Brexit protocol. Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said the Government would instead reinstate Vat on profits, saving dealers thousands of pounds. Cars bought new here, then sold second-hand in the Republic, will face Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) and NOx emission costs already in place, but nothing extra. However, if a dealer from the Republic travels to Britain, buys a car second-hand and brings it back, a 21% tariff and 10% customs fee will be added to the cost. The potential advantage for local used car dealers over those based in the rest of the UK is clear if they can sell cars on in the Republic. Dealers are trying to clarify whether they are able to buy in Britain, bring the vehicle over, then sell across the border without incurring the extra cost. There is a "brisk trade" between Britain and the Republic, but that is going to be disrupted, said Mr Hetherington. "For buyers of used cars in the south, the net effect will be higher prices and less choice in used cars as a current source of supply is being cut off," he added. Representatives were told by the Republic's Revenue officials that it is all based on rules of origin - that if the vehicle is manufactured in, or has passed through Britain, then it will be subject to the increased cost, Mr Hetherington said. But the Withdrawal Agreement wording suggests to him "we can bring them through Northern Ireland" without facing tariffs and customs costs. He added there is the possibility the Republic's tax collectors could face a legal challenge if they do impose the charges. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein MP Francie Molloy has welcomed confirmation that used cars imported from Britain and sold to businesses and consumers here will not incur the higher Vat charges. "This additional 20% would have crippled many businesses in the North, resulted in the loss of jobs and resulted in families paying extra money for cars," the Mid Ulster MP said. DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has already welcomed the move, saying the protocol was "on the verge of destroying practically every second-hand car business in Northern Ireland". When Savindi Wimalarathne gets a vaccine or injection, her mind isnt on the potential pain but rather what the doctors and medical staff are doing and why. Savindi Wimalarathne is all smiles after accepting an offer to UWA to study medicine. Credit:Lauren Pilat Ever since Savindi was young she liked hospitals because she enjoyed watching how everyone worked together, hoping one day shed be one of those doctors. That dream is now in reach for the 18-year-old, who this week accepted a first-round offer to study medicine at the University of Western Australia. Savindi is among thousands of 2020 WACE students to be offered places at the states four major universities from this week, with the Tertiary Institution Services Centre releasing admissions data on Thursday. The actor said he is sold on editing out the US Presidents role. Photo by: PA Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin has joined calls to have Donald Trump edited out of the movie after he has been impeached for a second time. In Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay, crosses paths with the future US President in the Plaza Hotel, which is owned by the businessman. Kevin asks Trump for directions and he replies. Its his only dialogue and feature in the film. The actor said he is sold on editing out the US Presidents role and digitally enhancing himself in now, as a 40-year-old man. Read More A Twitter user suggested the idea to which Macaulay replied. They wrote: petition to digitally replace trump in 'home alone 2' with 40-year-old Macaulay Culkin. Sold. Macaulay Culkin (@IncredibleCulk) January 13, 2021 On Wednesday, President Trump was impeached by the US House of Representatives for a historic second time. Mr Trump was charged with incitement of insurrection over the deadly mob siege of the Capitol in a swift and stunning collapse of his final days in office. With the Capitol secured by armed National Guard troops, the House voted 232-197 to impeach Mr Trump. The proceedings moved at lightning speed, with representatives voting just one week after violent pro-Trump loyalists stormed the US Capitol, egged on by the presidents calls for them to fight like hell against the election results. Ten Republicans joined Democrats who said Mr Trump needed to be held accountable and warned ominously of a clear and present danger if Congress should leave him unchecked before Democrat Joe Bidens inauguration on January 20. Mr Trump is the only US president to be impeached twice. It was the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in modern times, more so than against Bill Clinton in 1998. Read More With reporting from PA President-elect Joe Biden has doubled down on his promise to get 100million Americans vaccinated in his first 100 days but warned that 'things will get worse before they get better'. Biden first unveiled the ambitious goal Thursday as part of his $1.9 trillion 'American Rescue Plan' which includes about $400 billion to tackle COVID-19. Speaking from Wilmington, Delaware, Friday, the Democrat insisted 'we can get it done' as he vowed to 'manage the hell out of this operation'. 'Some wonder if we are reaching too far. Let me be clear, I'm convinced we can get it done.' He added: 'You have my word: We will manage the hell out of this operation.' The target is a huge uplift from the current rate of rollout which Biden on Thursday slammed as a 'dismal failure' by the Trump administration. So far, the US has administered just 13 million shots of the vaccine 34 days on from the day the first American was given the first dose on December 14. President-elect Joe Biden has doubled down on his promise to get 100 million Americans vaccinated in his first 100 days but warned that 'things will get worse before they get better' 'This is the time to set big goals and to pursue them with courage and conviction because the health of the nation is at stake,' said Biden. Biden maintained that his administration can accomplish the goal through a five-step plan that includes: getting more people vaccinated, increasing vaccination sites, increasing supply, mobilizing the personnel to administer it, and ensure Americans have confidence in the vaccine. By using the Defense Production Act, Biden said he can boost supplies of the vital vaccine He said he will also work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up 100 vaccination centers across the country by the end of his first month in office. And local pharmacies will also be mobilized to get more shots in arms and will 'increase vaccine supply and get it out the door as soon as possible.' Biden instructed states to start giving COVID-19 vaccines to all essential workers and Americans over 65 immediately, to stop doses from lingering on shelves. 'The process of establishing priority groups was driven by science, but the problem - the implementation has been too rigid and confusing,' Biden said. That has caused 'tens of millions of doses of vaccines sitting unused in a freezer,' he said. However, Biden warned Americans that the nation is not out of the woods yet as COVID-19 deaths edged closer to the grim 400,000 mark. 'Almost a year later [from the start of the pandemic], we're still far from back to normal. The honest truth is this: Things will get worse before they get better,' he said. 'We remain in a very dark winter,' he added. Biden spoke Friday from Wilmington, Delaware about his vaccination plan after calling the Trump effort 'dismal' in a Thursday night address about Congressional funding he'll need to right the pandemic response. He used the same adjective Friday. David Cheng, director of inpatient pharmacy, places trays of the Pfize vaccine into a freezer at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. Biden said Friday he wants to expand the first priority group to all Americans over 65 and all essential workers to prevent the vaccine supply from going bad President-elect Joe Biden wants to set up federal centers so there are major places where the shots of the vaccine can be given The Trump administration left it up to states and localities to define priority groups, but that has often meant wasted doses when, for instance, medical professionals didn't show up for their vaccination appointments. 'If you were to ask most people today, they couldn't tell you who exactly should be getting vaccinated,' Biden observed. Biden also confirmed CNN's reporting last week that he wants to release a majority of vaccine doses in the U.S., under the theory that it's better to get more Americans one shot than fewer people two. 'Let me be clear: we are not changing the FDA's recommended dosing schedule. We believe it is critical that everyone should get two doses within that FDA recommended timeframe,' he said Friday. However, the Washington Post reported Friday that when Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar made the same call - to release the stockpiled doses - no such stockpile existed. The two approved vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, are two-shot regimens. President Donald Trump called his administration's push for a fast COVID-19 vaccine Operation Warp Speed. The Biden team plans to dump that branding The president-elect said he would 'move heaven and earth' to pick up the pace of vaccines being put in Americans' arms. He'll debut a vaccine distribution plan later Friday in Wilmington Incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained on Twitter Friday that OWS - Operation Warp Speed' - used to describe the U.S. government's rapid push for a COVID-19 vaccine would have a different name under the Biden administration FIVE STEPS JOE BIDEN WILL TAKE TO GET MORE COVID VACCINES IN ARMS 1. Get more people vaccinated Encourage states to allow more people to be vaccinated including individuals 65 and older as well as frontline workers. The process of establishing priority groups was driven by science, but the implementation has been too rigid and confusing. We now see doses of vaccines sitting in freezers unused while people who want the vaccine cannot get it. President-elect Bidens plan encourages states to open up eligibility beyond healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents and staff, to include frontline essential workers like teachers, first responders, grocery store employees, and anyone who is 65 and older. It wont mean that everyone in these groups will get vaccinated immediately, as supply is not where it needs to be. But it will mean that as vaccines become available, they will reach more people who need them. For states with the capacity and supply to further expand, we encourage that as well. The federal government will continue to look to the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) framework for an equitable, effective vaccination program. Ensure equity throughout the vaccination process to reach those in hard-to-reach, marginalized communities. We will ensure that there is equity in the vaccination process by using data to target resources to hard-hit communities, ensuring no out-of-pocket costs for vaccinations, and equitable access to vaccines in marginalized and medically-underserved communities. Partnerships with state, local and community-based organizations and trusted health care providers, like community health centers, will be central to this effort. 2. Create more vaccination sites Stand up new, federally-supported community vaccination centers across the country. Getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible will require close coordination between the federal government and all states and territories. Knowing that not all states and jurisdictions have the resources to scale vaccinations at the pace this crisis demands, the Biden-Harris administration will leverage federal resources and emergency contracting authorities to launch new vaccination sites and to expand state and local efforts across the country. With the support of Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), these sites will mobilize thousands of clinical and non-clinical staff and contractors who will work hand-in-glove with the National Guard and state and local teams. The program will be scaled based on what is working best on the ground for state and local partners, and the communities they serve. Fully reimburse state deployment of the National Guard to support vaccinations and provide additional FEMA assistance. Many states are planning to use their National Guard to support vaccine distribution efforts, including to support critical transportation and logistics functions. To further support states, President-elect Bidens plan fully reimburses states for the use of the National Guard and provides 100% cost match for state and local emergency costs through FEMA. Launch mobile vaccination clinics and provider partnerships to reach underserved urban areas and rural communities. President-elect Biden will deploy mobile vaccination clinics in the most hard-to-reach communities and to support those who face challenges accessing vaccination sites, including individuals who live in underserved urban and rural areas. The federal government will partner with states and local providers, including primary care providers, to ensure that they have the resources needed to help get vaccines to the communities they serve. The federal government will launch targeted programs to engage community health centers, rural health clinics, critical access hospitals, and tribal health services to ensure that we can meet the needs of all communities. Make vaccines available in pharmacies. Millions of Americans turn to their local pharmacies every day for their medicines, flu shots, and much more. Nearly 90 percent of Americans live within five miles of a pharmacy. President-elect Biden will quickly jumpstart efforts to increase capacity at chain and independent pharmacies across the country to get Americans vaccinated. Launch a new partnership with Federally Qualified Health Centers nationwide. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) serve more than 30 million patients each year one in 11 people nationwide. Many are people of color and many live in rural communities. FQHC patients are often individuals struggling to make ends meet. Given the critical role that these providers play in their communities, President-elect Biden will launch a new program to ensure that FQHCs can directly access vaccine supply where needed. At the same time, the administration will encourage jurisdictions to engage and work closely with health centers in their community vaccination planning. And to ensure that health centers have the resources they need to successfully launch vaccination programs, President-elect Biden has called on Congress to provide additional funds to support community health centers, and HHS will launch a new program to provide guidance, technical assistance, and other resources to prepare and engage these providers nationwide. Launch new models to serve high-risk individuals. The administration will make programs available for high-risk congregate settings, including homeless shelters, jails, and institutions that serve individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 3. Increase supply and get it out the door as quickly as possible Ensure a robust vaccine supply and spur manufacturing. To help people get vaccinated more quickly, the president-elect will maximize the manufacture of vaccine and vaccine supplies for the country, including using the Defense Production Act. This effort will prioritize supplies that could cause bottlenecks, including glass vials, stoppers, syringes, needles, and the fill and finish capacity to package vaccine into vials. Be a reliable partner for states by providing actionable data on vaccine allocation timelines and delivery. To effectively plan and scale distribution, states and localities rely on both advanced understanding of their allocations and timely delivery of their ordered doses. Under President-elect Bidens plan, the federal government will provide regular projections of the allocations states and localities will receive. The federal government will build on the operational plans in place to ensure the effective distribution, storage, and transit of vaccines to states, including support for maintaining or augmenting the vaccine-specific required cold chain. The federal government will also fully leverage the Defense Production Act to fill any distribution gaps, including with respect to any needed refrigeration, transportation, or storage facilities. Increase vaccine availability while maintaining a commitment to the two-dose schedule. President-elect Bidens plan will release the vast majority of the vaccines when they are available, so more people can get vaccinated quickly, while still retaining a small reserve for any unforeseen shortages or delays. To continue ensuring second-dose availability on the timeline recommended by the FDA, the Biden-Harris administration will closely monitor development, production and release of vaccines, and use the DPA as needed to ensure adequate supply for second doses on the timeline recommended by the FDA. 4. Mobilize more personnel to get shots in arms. Surge the public health workforce to support the vaccination effort. A diverse, community-based public health workforce is essential to an effective vaccination program. President-elect Biden will address workforce needs by taking steps to allow additional qualified professionals to administer vaccines and strongly encourage states to use their flexibility fully to surge their workforce, including by expanding scope of practice laws and waiving licensing requirements as appropriate. The federal government, in partnership with states, will provide appropriate training, including thorough use of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The president-elect will also act swiftly to amend the current COVID-19 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act declaration to permit certain qualified professionals, including retired medical professionals, that are not licensed under state law to administer vaccines to be able to do so with appropriate training in order to expand the number of qualified professionals able to administer the vaccine. Mobilize a public health jobs program to support COVID-19 response. President-elect Biden has asked Congress to make an historic investment in expanding the public health workforce, funding 100,000 public health workers to nearly triple the countrys community health roles. These individuals will be hired to work in their local communities to perform vital tasks like vaccine outreach and contact tracing in the near term, and to transition into community health roles to build our long-term public health capacity that will help improve quality of care and reduce hospitalization for low-income and underserved communities. 5. Ensure the American people have the information and confidence they need to get vaccinated Launch a federally led, locally focused public education campaign. The federal government will build public trust through increased transparency, communication around progress and setbacks, and a public education campaign that addresses vaccine hesitancy and is tailored to meet the needs of local communities. The campaign will work to elevate trusted local voices and outline the historic efforts to deliver a safe and effective vaccine as part of a national strategy for beating COVID-19. Advertisement 'Truthfully we remain in a very dark winter,' Biden told the small crowd of journalists watching him speak at the Queen theater in Wilmington Friday. He noted that infections were up 34 per cent and the country was seeing 3,000-4,000 deaths a day. 'That's staggering to state the obvious,' Biden said. He expressed disgust that Trump had made the pandemic worse by politicizing mask-wearing, one of the easiest ways to stop the spread. 'What a stupid, stupid thing for it to happen,' Biden commented. Biden also tore into the group of Republican lawmakers who refused to wear masks as the Capitol was being mobbed by angry Trump supporters last week. 'It was shocking to see members of Congress, while the capitol was under siege by a deadly mob of thugs, refusing to wear a mask while they were in a secure location,' Biden said Friday in Wilmington. He applauded the efforts of his home state congresswoman, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who was seen in footage from that day trying to hand out masks to a group that included 'QAnon' Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. 'What the hell is the matter with them?' the incoming president asked. 'Time to grow up.' 'The result?' Biden continued. 'At least four members of Congress today, including a cancer survivor, now have COVID-19 who were in those rooms.' 'For God's sake,' Biden added. Speaking from Wilmington, Delaware, Friday, Biden insisted 'we can get it done' as he vowed to 'manage the hell out of this operation' ' His target is a huge uplift from the current rate of rollout which Biden on Thursday slammed as a 'dismal failure' by the Trump administration He reminded the country that his day-one ask will be 100 days of mask-wearing to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Beyond allowing a bigger group to be vaccinated at the start, the president-elect said he planned to open up federal sites where needles could go in arms. 'On my first day in office, I will instruct the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, to begin setting up the first of these centers,' Biden said. Biden pointed to places like stadiums where this could happen. 'We'll make sure there are vaccination centers in communities hit hardest by the pandemic, in Black and Latino communities, and rural communities as well,' he added. He also said the administration would work with 'independent and chain pharmacies' where vaccines could also be distributed. Biden said he'll also increase the number of healthcare professionals, even pulling from the ranks of the retired, so there are people to administer the shots. Biden said he'll use the Defense Production Action immediately to get vaccines and equipment made. He said the suppliers have already been identified. The president-elect said the administration would launch a massive public education campaign to deal with 'vaccine hesitancy.' 'It's a critical piece of the tragic reality,' he noted, pointing to the disparities in the death rates between white Americans and Americans of color. Biden said his fifth and final step was to be 'honest and transparent about where we stand.' 'Both the good news and the bad,' he said. 'We will make sure that state and local officials know how much supply they are getting and when to expect it so they can plan,' he added. Earlier, the incoming administration confirmed that Biden would be doing away with the name 'Operation Warp Speed.' '[Operation Warp Speed] is the Trump team's name for their program. We are phasing in a new structure, which will have a different name than OWS,' incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Twitter. 'Many of the public servants will be essential to our response, but urgent need to address failures of the Trump team approach to vaccine distribution.' Bloomberg first reported Friday morning that the moniker 'Operation Warp Speed' would be replaced by the more obvious 'COVID response.' Psaki said the 'comprehensive COVID response' would be run directly out of the White House. Trump used Operation Warp Speed as the name for his administration's push to get drug companies to rapidly develop a COVID-19 vaccine, which was successful. The administration has continued to use the brand while distributing the vaccine. So far the distribution of the two approved vaccines has been marked with problems. On Friday morning, the Biden-Harris transition announced additional appointments to the administration's COVID-19 team. Dr. Bechar Choucair, who is currently the chief health officer for Kaiser Permanente, will be responsible for meeting the administration's goal of getting 100 million Americans vaccinated within its first 100 days, Psaki explained in her tweets. Biden announced Friday he was appointing former FDA chief David Kessler as his chief science officer for the vaccine drive. Kessler's job, which falls under Biden's Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Xavier Becerra, will be to maximize the current supply of vaccines and work with drug companies to add to the U.S. supply. Even before Friday's rollout, Biden's team had expressed concern that the 'Operation Warp Speed' branding was hurting the reputation of the vaccines. 'One last myth that I want to dispel is a concern that I've heard from some people that this vaccine was developed too fast, right?' Vivek Murthy, the incoming surgeon general, said on a call this week, Bloomberg reported. Vivek said he realized that perception may be coming from the project's name. 'So, even the name of the entity in government that was charged with trying to figure out how to get a vaccine quickly was called Operation Warp Speed, right?' he said. Becerra, Vivek and and COVID Coordinator Jeff Zients held a call Monday with union leaders on COVID-19 vaccinations assuring participants that working people would have access to doses. On Thursday afternoon, President-elect Joe Biden released the details of a $1.9 trillion stimulus/relief bill he plans to propose to Congress. One point nine trillion is a big numberthe 2009 stimulus passed under Barack Obama came in around $800 billionand the bill is laden with evidence of the success the Bernie Sanders wing of the party has had in advocating for direct public spending. It includes: Additional stimulus checks of $1,400 per adult and dependent, subject to adjustment in the same ways as previous checks. Advertisement An increased and extended federal unemployment supplement of $400 a week. A $15 federal minimum wage. A big increase in the child tax credit, as well as the key tweak of making it refundable, which means that families under a certain income threshold can use it to pay their tax bill but also get an additional direct check for whatevers left over after taxes. 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. As economic legislation goes, this makes Barack Obama look like Herbert Hoover. The plan has still been subject to some sharp criticism because of the first item abovethe $1,400 checks. To understand why, heres a timeline of what happened with the last stimulus bill, which Donald Trump signed Dec. 27: The House passed a bill including $600 checks. Democrats wouldve liked more, but $600 was the number that the Republican Senate was expected to accept. Advertisement The Senate passed the $600 version. Donald Trump, because he was (already) angry at Mitch McConnell for not supporting his effort to overturn the election, came out of nowhere to demand $2,000 stimulus checks instead. He claimed he wouldnt sign the bill if the number wasnt raised. Congressional Democrats, and Georgia Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, saw this as a big opportunity to potentially pass a more useful bill while squeezing Republicans. (More money is more popular than less money among everyone except hardcore fiscal conservatives.) Ossoff, Warnock, and figures like Sanders endorsed the higher figure. Trump chickened out as always and signed the $600 bill. Warnock and Ossoff continued to campaign on $2,000 checks until the Jan. 5 special elections even as the $600 payments started to go out. Advertisement Advertisement When Biden announced a $1,400 check, some people thought, That makes senseit will add up to $2,000. But others thought, Wait, I thought there was going to be a check that literally said $2,000 on it. According to a quick survey of Slate staff and one Slate parent who resides in Georgia, this confusion did not necessarily break down along ideological lines: Some center-leaning individuals thought it was a letdown/screwup, while some who lean left had assumed the next check would be $1,400 all along. Online, though, leftists in particular seized on the gap as evidence that Biden and the Democrats were already betraying the people who got him (and Ossoff and Warnock) elected. Some indicative content: Advertisement If someone, having paid you $600, says that this is not enough and they will write you a $2000 check, and then they write you a check for $1400, did they go back on their word? (A) Yes. or (B) Yes. https://t.co/egtobFR8Av Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) January 15, 2021 Advertisement If someone hears "$2,000 checks" over and over again and then does not get a $2,000 check because "Aha! You actually already got $600!" they're going to think of used car salesmen not the logical brilliance of the government saving money nick (@JucheMane) January 15, 2021 Advertisement it's pretty wild that the Biden admin isn't even waiting until he's inaugurated to start spitting in people's faces Brendan O'Connor (@_grendan) January 15, 2021 Advertisement Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also said Thursday night that the new checks should be for $2,000, albeit more politely. What makes this unlike Democrats-in-disarray moments of the past is it seems like it could be easily resolved. There is an unprecedented consensus inside the party (and outside the party) about ignoring spending-related objections raised by partisan Republicans. Progressive economists and economics writers like Jason Furman and David Dayen have also for the most part applauded Bidens bill. The president-elect could realign the entire party behind his proposal without creating any obvious new problems by changing it to call for $2,000 checks. And then no one would ever fight online again! BOSTON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the sixth straight year, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Massachusetts School Choice Week by the state's governor. This year, Gov. Baker's proclamation for the Week recognizes that every Massachusetts student deserves an effective education and the importance of parents exploring and identifying the best school option for their children. More than a dozen other governors, as well as hundreds of county, city, and town leaders, have officially recognized Jan. 24-30 as School Choice Week. Nationally, more than 33,000 safe celebrations have been planned for the Week, which is transforming into a virtual extravaganza this year due to COVID-19. Massachusetts parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 436 events and activities to celebrate choice and spark conversations about the diverse and innovative learning opportunities that help children succeed. Nationally, schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will participate in the Week through online fairs and rallies, drive-in events, statewide photo and essay contests, and more. "We are excited about Gov. Baker's proclamation and Massachusetts families joining in the national celebration of students, teachers, and learning," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Families can use School Choice Week to start a conversation about school plans for next year, or to show their gratitude for their current school and teachers." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/massachusetts. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com KALAMAZOO, MI A Grand Rapids man who sold a lethal dose of fentanyl that killed a 33-year-old woman was found guilty Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Kalamazoo. After a three-and-a-half day trial, Javontae Quintez White, 28, was found guilty Jan. 14 by a 12-member jury of one count of distributing fentanyl resulting in death. The victim in the case was Elaine Christensen, 33, also known as Elaine Mamagona. Christensen was the daughter of retired Grand Rapids District Judge Michael Christensen and Nancy Christensen. Related: Man accused of providing fatal dose of fentanyl to retired judges daughter White, who has previous drug convictions on his record, is expected to be sentenced April 26 to a term of life in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Maloney. Elaine made awful choices that were criminal, U.S. Attorney Austin Hakes said during his closing argument Jan. 14. She chose to order heroin with her boyfriend and she died facedown inches from her cell phone because the fentanyl killed her so quickly she was unable to call for help. Mr. White chose to sell a drug to make money. There must be an accounting for a human life. Christensens boyfriend Ryan Hall testified at the trial, stating that he and Christensen had been awake on a two-to-three-day bender when he contacted middle-man Mark Blodgett to purchase heroin. Blodgett then obtained the heroin from White and sold it to Christensen. Whites defense attorney Parker Douglas argued that neither Blodgett nor Hall, both of whom were found guilty of drug charges stemming from the incident, could be considered trustworthy. Douglas said Hall was an admitted alcoholic and addict and Blodgett an admitted liar, and both of their stories had changed numerous times since Christensen was found dead on July 8, 2018 in her Fulton Street East apartment. Douglas brought in Dr. Yale Caplan, the former president of the American Board of Forensic Toxicology, to provide medical testimony which differed in opinion from the medical examiner and toxicologist that worked the case. A difference of opinion between doctors is what we call reasonable doubt, Douglas told the jury. Hakes scoffed at the notion during his rebuttal, telling the jury he wanted to make sure they understood the difference between the three doctors who testified. Two, he exclaimed, were practicing doctors who handled Christensens case directly and get paid to perform medical duties, while Caplan, the third, is a retired doctor who gets paid to testify. Also on MLive: Kalamazoo man responsible for selling fatal dose of fentanyl will serve 25-35 years in prison Nonprofit petitions for urban campground for homeless people in downtown Grand Rapids Detroit Lions tout new GM Brad Holmes expertise with latest technology, analytics The government of Nepal has asked India for early provision of coronavirus vaccines even as New Delhi indicates that it may be some time before it starts meeting demands from abroad. Nepals Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali made the request during the sixth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission. Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Brazil are among several countries looking to secure vaccine supplies from India, which has given clearance for the emergency use for the vaccine developed by Oxford University and U.K.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca, and another developed by the Indian company Bharat Biotech. The spokesman for Indias External Affairs Ministry, Anurag Srivastava, said Thursday that it was too soon to comment on the country's ability to provide vaccines to other countries. ``We are still assessing production schedules and delivery, and we will take decisions in this regard in due course. This may take some time, he said. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show On Saturday, India is launching an immunization program aimed at vaccinating 300 million people healthcare workers, frontline workers including police, and those considered vulnerable due to their age or other diseases by August 2021. Since President Trump withdrew the U.S. from a multilateral agreement aimed at curbing Irans atomic ambitions, Tehran has moved steadily to step up uranium enrichment and, most recently, said it was starting work to produce a key material used in nuclear warheads. European diplomats, who have sought to salvage the accord, say they see the Iranian moves as an effort to increase pressure on Washington and President-elect Joe Biden to rejoin to the deal and lift sanctions. The question now is: Have the Iranians gone so far that a U.S. return is less likely? Since the Trump administration started its maximum-pressure sanctions campaign, policy makers in Tehran skeptical of the 2015 accord have gained more sway, pressing President Hassan Rouhani to take increasingly serious steps that shorten the path to a nuclear weapon, according to Iranian officials. The hard-liners want to show public opinion they can achieve better outcomes," said one senior Iranian official. Mr. Biden has said he intends to rejoin the nuclear deal if Iran comes back into compliance. His administration is expected to include veterans of the Iran nuclear talks, including lead negotiator Wendy Sherman as deputy secretary of state. Iranian officials say their moves are easily reversible if the U.S. rolls back sanctions. Its growing stockpiles of enriched uranium can be diluted or shipped out, as they were after the nuclear agreement. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has issued a decree banning development of nuclear weapons. Still, Tehran has methodically moved to increase its capacity to develop atomic arms since Washington left the nuclear agreement, which also includes the U.K., France, Germany, China and Russia. View Full Image Iran's nuclear ambitions Iran is now stockpiling more than 10 times as much low-enriched uranium as the accord allows, albeit far below its pre-deal levels. The maximum purity of this current stockpile is 4.5%, but if enriched to weapons grade of 90% purity it would be enough material for two weapons, some experts say. In December, after the killing of a top Iranian nuclear scientist in an attack Tehran has blamed on Israel, the nations parliament passed a lawenacted even though Mr. Rouhani refused to sign itrequiring the government to take additional steps prohibited by the 2015 deal. Last week, Iran said it had resumed enrichment of uranium to 20% purity. Then on Wednesday, a confidential report from the United Nations atomic agency said Iran was taking another major step: preparing to start production of uranium metal, a key material used to make the explosive core of atomic bombs. Iran informed U.N. inspectors of its moves and said they are aimed at making reactor fuel, not weapons. There is definitely a risk that Iran is overplaying its hand," said Eric Brewer, a former counterproliferation official at the U.S. National Security Council now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. If the Biden administration comes in and Iran makes excessive demands its going to be pretty escalatory," he added. Iranian officials say the latest steps go beyond what was desired by President Rouhani, a political moderate. Some argued that 20% enrichment, production of uranium metal and eviction of nuclear inspectors not only jeopardized any effort to restore the accord but risked solidifying U.S. sanctions. The pressure from hard-liners to ramp up nuclear activities also poses a challenge to Mr. Rouhanis allies ahead of the Iranian presidential election in June, in which Mr. Rouhani cant run due to term limits but some of his allies are expected to compete. Mr. Rouhani hopes an interim agreement before the election would bring Iran back toward full compliance and reduce tensions with the U.S. and Europe, said an official in his government. The Iranian official said the president is aware that further breaches of the accord could undermine that goal and strengthen hard-liners who would have no problem closing the door on diplomacy with the West. Mr. Rouhanis conservative opponents say President Trumps withdrawal from the nuclear deal vindicated their view that the U.S. couldnt be trusted, and diplomacy was a mistake. Iranian officials say the recent breaches are a response to Europe and the U.S. failing to fulfill their side of the deal. Not only has the nuclear deal failed to bring Iran economic benefits, said Foad Izadi, a conservative political analyst and University of Tehran lecturer, Iran now has the worst of both worlds: U.S. sanctions, which the deal was meant to lift, as well as reduced nuclear capabilities. Should the other side show no interest in returning to the" deal, he said, Iran should be able to keep the pressure on them." 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. 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 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. Fan, 30, came from China to the university in 2014 to study in the financial mathematics program and was enrolled in a joint doctoral program of the Booth School of Business and the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics. He also was a research professional at the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance, according to the university. He was hoping to propose his dissertation later this year. BREAKING: Utah activist John Sullivan was taken into custody today for his role in the U.S. Capitol attack. @abc4utah pic.twitter.com/m5XDexHH7r Jason Nguyen (@FollowWIN) January 14, 2021 A Utah activist who filmed the fatal shooting of a California Trump supporter during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week was arrested Thursday, according to authorities. John Sullivan, 26, a self-described journalist and liberal activist, released footage to the FBI that showed him entering the Capitol on Jan. 6 and roaming the building, according to arrest documents. He was charged with civil disorder, violent entry or disorderly conduct and entering a restricted building or grounds. Sullivans footage also included video of when Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, of San Diego, was shot by Capitol Police outside the Speakers Lobby, according to court documents. In one video, Sullivan can be heard cheering on the crowd as they broke through the final barricade before the Capitol and saying We did this together... We are all a part of history. In at least two encounters, Sullivan can be heard telling officers to stand down so they dont get hurt and saying the people have spoken, according to an affidavit. He told the AP earlier this week that he was only there to document the events at the U.S. Capitol and didnt attend the riot as a Trump supporter. Sullivan was also charged with rioting and criminal mischief on July 13 following a June protest in Provo that resulted in an SUV driver being shot while driving through the two opposing groups. The case is still pending. Sullivan did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon, and it is unclear if he has an attorney. His initial court appearance is scheduled in the District of Utah on Jan. 15. Researchers from University of Stavanger, University of Melbourne, and University of Wisconsin-Madison published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how major projects undertaken by temporary organizations can be better managed so that cost overruns are minimized. The study forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing is titled "Mobilizing the Temporary Organization: The Governance Roles of Selection and Pricing" and is authored by Elham Ghazimatin, Erik Mooi, and Jan Heide. When consumers return to the skies again, they may do so in Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. But the project, or "temporary organization," created to make this plane a reality ran much over-budget and created significant dissatisfaction among Boeing's customers. Such cost overruns are a common outcome of major engineering and construction projects. In fact, studies show that nine out of ten have significant cost overruns, with overruns above 100 percent quite common. The implications of cost overruns go beyond financial metrics and can include reputational damage, litigation, and future overreliance on rigid and formalized relationship features. Managing suppliers and subcontractors, who can run into the hundreds in major projects, is an enormously difficult task. It necessitates considerable coordination and monitoring in a context where parties often have not worked together, they lack shared procedures or rules, and there is a great need to get up to speed quickly. As one of Boeing's engineers put it, "The importance of thorough planning, accounting for all interdependencies, cannot be overestimated." Through studying 429 completed construction projects, the researchers find that supplier selection and pricing format decisions that reflect key characteristics of the project, such as the size of the project, duration, and type of customer, are best at reducing a significant part of the cost overruns observed. They conduct "what-if" analyses to show that the reductions in costs can be substantial. Ghazimatin adds that "We also show that the benefits from getting selection right outweigh those that result from getting pricing right, suggesting that selection should be, relatively speaking, a higher strategic priority for a firm. " This study is particularly useful to managers who wish to minimize cost overruns in projects. Pricing and selection decisions, which are typically fixed at the start of a project, are predictive of cost overruns that can only be observed after a project is completed, typically after many months or years. The pricing and selection aspects studied--fixed vs. variable pricing and selection on price vs. ability--were proposed by industry representatives and thus have direct managerial relevance. Results also show that simple managerial heuristics, such as only relying on price-based selection or deploying fixed pricing, are unlikely to be effective at minimizing cost overruns. ### Full article and author contact information available at: https:/ / doi. org/ 10. 1177%2F0022242920982545 About the Journal of Marketing The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Christine Moorman (T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University) serves as the current Editor in Chief. https:/ / www. ama. org/ jm About the American Marketing Association (AMA) Mysterious footage has emerged of an unidentified flying object shooting through the sky over the Gold Coast. Local resident Zoe-Ann Bradley spotted the 'spectacular' unknown object in the air just before 7pm in the Worongary area, west of the CBD, on Thursday night. She shared the video on a community Facebook page where some suggested the object was simply a 'high flying jet with the sun on its exhaust vapours'. The mystery sighting (pictured above) captured by Gold Coast resident Zoe-Ann Bradley has left many people baffled Another stated: 'It's an airliner contrail. The airliner is at altitude, so the sun is still shining on it, even though we on the ground are in the dark. 100% certain.' Ms Bradley remains unconvinced, and would love a definitive answer from experts. 'Planes don't fly downward,' she told 7NEWS.com.au. 'I just think it looked (a little) different. I don't think a plane does that. 'It was spectacular and quite bright...more like a circular object with flames coming from either side of it.' (Bloomberg Opinion) -- President-elect Joe Biden's first and most urgent task will be to repair the government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Given how badly the current president has bungled the job, it won't be hard to do better. Even so, the scale of the task is daunting.From the start, President Donald Trump failed to organize the response or create a national plan to allocate medical supplies, coordinate test-and-trace efforts and prepare states to distribute vaccines. He refused to heed scientific reality or let professionals lead the public health response. He fomented bitter disagreement among his own advisers. Trump hasn't even bothered to wear a mask or otherwise lead Americans to take basic precautions.In most ways, Biden simply needs to do the opposite. He can change the national conversation on Covid by restoring professional public health leadership, improving communication with the states and expediting the vaccine rollout internationally as well as within the U.S. It's good that he's already outlined a solid pandemic response plan and gathered a team of experts who can be trusted to focus on ending the pandemic.Above all, Biden should keep his pledge to heed advice from scientists and public health authorities especially those at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC can do much to rationalize the pandemic response, as long as the president and his political advisers keep out of its way. The new administration should return to the tradition of CDC-led public briefings, to keep Americans up to date on the course of the pandemic and the progress of vaccination, and to deliver a consistent message about the need for masks, social distancing and hand-washing. The CDC should be granted its former authority to gather all detailed data on Covid infections, hospitalizations, deaths and so on from the states and feed this into a public national dashboard, as Biden has promised. And the agency should give states clear direction about when and how it's safe for restaurants, stores, gyms, schools and businesses to be open.Biden is rightly preparing to address the pandemic's disproportionate effect on Black, Latino and Native American communities where the Covid mortality rate has been as much as triple that among White Americans by creating a special task force, led by Marcella Nunez-Smith, an eminent expert on disparities in health-care access. Her challenge will be to ensure that vulnerable communities are adequately tested and treated for Covid-19, that people get the support they need to isolate and quarantine when necessary, and that they get vaccinated without delay. She must be given the authority her difficult job will require.Vaccinations aren't going well. Operation Warp Speed has delivered vaccines to states but isn't guiding distribution appropriately. And states, cities, hospitals, nursing homes and other agencies in charge of shot-giving need to do better. Biden has pledged to push the pace to at least 1 million shots per day, by setting up more sites, deploying mobile units, and sending the message that vaccines are safe and essential.Biden also wants to get schools open by the spring. He'll need to persuade Congress to pay for adapting school buildings and buses to social distancing. (If new variants of the coronavirus spread readily among children, vaccinating teachers and school staff will be even more urgent.) He wants to provide the resources to get more Americans tested, more quickly, by setting up a national pandemic testing board along the lines of Franklin Roosevelt's War Production Board. He says he'll boost production of personal protective equipment, and work with governors and mayors to push, prod and inspire people to wear masks. All these efforts should have begun months ago.As if all this weren't enough, Biden should also join the international effort to ensure that all countries get Covid-19 vaccines and treatments by reversing Trump's withdrawal from the World Health Organization; joining Covax, the global vaccine purchasing pool; and donating and helping to procure vaccine supplies for poorer countries. As things stand, much of the world's population may have to wait until 2022 for a shot. It could take years to immunize 60% of the people in Africa. Yet no country can be safe from Covid-19 until all countries are safe.Finally, Biden must do everything possible to make sure that the next pandemic is not as deadly or as costly. That begins by restoring the National Security Council's Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, whose job was to monitor disease outbreaks around the world until the Trump administration dissolved it in 2018. The U.S. must also support the WHO, the agency best positioned to help all countries recognize and head off emerging health threats.By the time Biden is sworn in, nearly 400,000 Americans will likely have died of Covid-19, and the disease will still be raging. The new president need be in no doubt about his first and most urgent task.Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. DES MOINES, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Iowa families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Iowa families, schools, and organizations are hosting 331 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the most notable activities for the week are a statewide dance contest and a statewide "Why I Love My School" video contest for K-12 students of every learning background. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Iowa, the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge in Council Bluffs will light up in red and yellow from dusk to 8 a.m. on Jan. 24. "Iowa's students thrive in a variety of K-12 education environments like STEM-focused schools, art schools, or vocational schools," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "School choice allows families to find a school where their child is inspired to work hard and dream boldly." In Iowa, there are a variety of educational options including: traditional public schools, charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. Iowa families can take tax deductions for nonpublic school expenses, and families under a certain income level can qualify for state-run scholarship opportunities. Iowa families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Iowa school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/iowa National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com KABUL The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan extends its profound sympathies to the government and fraternal people of Indonesia over the tragic loss of lives and large-scale destruction by a devastating earthquake that struck Sulawesi's island this morning, leaving dozens killed and hundreds of others injured. Saddened by the incident, the Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar offers his sincere condolences to Foreign Minister H.E. Retno L.P Marsudi, the families and friends of the deceased, and the friendly nation of Indonesia. We wish Allah's mercy upon those who lost their lives and pray for the safety of those missing and the speedy recovery of those injured. 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. New Braunfels, TX (78130) Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 74F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 74F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. 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. Experts have hailed a 'quantum leap' for women with ovarian cancer as a breakthrough treatment was given the go-ahead yesterday. The drug niraparib was approved for use by regulators in the biggest improvement in 30 years for ovarian cancer treatment. Niraparib can halt the disease for around 12 months, putting off the need for further chemotherapy and allowing women to have the best quality of life possible. It will be available for women with advanced ovarian cancer from their first round of treatment, meaning around 3,000 patients will have access to it every year. Target Ovarian Cancer, a UK charity, described the treatment as a 'major milestone' in the fight against the disease. Experts have hailed a 'quantum leap' for women with ovarian cancer as a breakthrough treatment was given the go-ahead yesterday (Stock image) Targeted treatments so-called because they exploit specific weaknesses in cancer cells such as niraparib are rare in ovarian cancer and just a handful have been approved for use on the NHS. These treatments have previously been available only to women who have mutations on specific genes approximately 13 per cent of all those diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And only patients whose cancer had returned were administered it. However, niraparib which stops cancer cells from repairing themselves will be available to all patients who are newly diagnosed with stage three or four ovarian cancer. This type of cancer is one of the most deadly and 11 women die every day from the disease. Two-thirds are diagnosed once the cancer has already spread, making it harder to treat and likely to return. Experts said niraparib, which is taken as a daily pill, is significant because it could help ovarian cancer patients, who have limited treatment options, survive for longer. Research showed it significantly extended the time it took for the disease to return. Annwen Jones of Target Ovarian Cancer said its approval is a 'major milestone in the fight against ovarian cancer, bringing hope during a pandemic where we have concerns about how many women are being diagnosed late.' He added: 'We haven't had such a breakthrough drug available to so many since the introduction of chemotherapy drug paclitaxel Taxol in the 1990s.' Meanwhile, Cary Wakefield of Ovarian Cancer Action said the news marks a 'quantum leap for women with advanced ovarian cancer'. She added: 'Up until now, treatment options have sadly been extremely limited. Personalised medicine is now available to thousands of women and this will be life-changing.' The approval, given yesterday by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), will also be replicated in Wales and Northern Ireland. A verdict on the drug in Scotland is expected later this year. Professor Jonathan Ledermann, director of Cancer Research UK, said: 'The decision marks a turning point in advanced ovarian cancer treatment.' A St. Louis-based lawyer for one of the men charged with participating in the U.S. Capitol riot last week says President Donald Trump should pardon his client because he was following Trumps instructions. Lawyer Albert Watkins said in an interview Thursday that Trump invited Jacob A. Chansley and other supporters of the president to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He invited his faithful, those who had been longstanding supporters of him and his cause, those who felt for the first time in their lives that their political voices were being heard, the lawyer said. Hes the president. He can go wherever he wants with those that he invites. Watkins said Chansley, also known as the Q Shaman, did not participate in violent attacks that led to the death of a Capitol Police officer and injuries to other officers. A protester was also fatally shot. Chansley has appeared often at past pro-Trump rallies. Watkins said Chansley was unarmed, nonviolent and did not hide his identity. He also did not break through any barricades, doors or windows, as others did, the lawyer said. He just walked in with the whole crowd that was walking in on the peaceful side of things. Watkins said many Capitol police officers were supportive of the protesters, who gathered by the thousands to condemn presidential election results that they falsely believed included widespread fraud and voting irregularities. President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump and will take the oath of office next Wednesday. Chansley was indicted by a federal grand jury this week on six counts, including violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Charging documents say Chansley was spotted in the hallways and standing on the dais inside the Senate chamber. He was wearing horns, a bearskin headdress and red, white and blue face paint, and was holding a six-foot spear with an American flag tied just below the blade. In a statement, Watkins said, His attire was consistent with his long-held Shaman beliefs. The day after the riot, Chansley, who also goes by Jake Angeli, called the Washington field office of the FBI and admitted being in the Capitol. He said that he came as a part of a group effort, with other patriots from Arizona, at the request of the president that all patriots come to D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, the charging documents say. Chansley turned himself in and will cooperate with the government, Watkins said. Asked whether Chansley adheres to the widely discredited and false QAnon conspiracy theory about widespread voting fraud, Watkins said, I think he was open to the suggestion that the election was rigged and forces were out to get Trump and he believed Trumps statements that this was like Valley Forge all over again. Christ, youve got a president who has been rabble-rousing for six or seven months, Watkins said. Watkins called in to CNN Thursday to defend Chansley on Cuomo Prime Time with host Chris Cuomo. Watkins said his client was answering the call of our president, and likened the relationship between Trump and his followers to the relationship between cult leader Jim Jones and members of the Peoples Temple. In 1978, after convincing members to move to a commune in Guyana, Jones orchestrated a mass suicide among his followers. In a detention motion filed Thursday, prosecutors said Chansley was one of the first rioters in the building, disobeyed a Capitol police officers order to leave and instead went to the Senate floor, where he sat in a seat vacated by Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before. Chansley then wrote Pence a note saying, its only a matter of time, justice is coming, prosecutors said. Chansley, who is unemployed and a regular user of psychedelic drugs, including mushrooms and peyote, also has mental health issues, they said. Chansley has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality, the motion says. Chansley has advocated hanging traitors in the U.S. government. The attack on the Capitol led the House on Wednesday to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection. Chansley, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, is being held in quarantine in a federal facility in Phoenix after surrendering, Watkins said. Given the peaceful and compliant fashion in which Mr. Chansley comported himself, it would be appropriate and honorable for the president to pardon Mr. Chansley and other like-minded, peaceful individuals who accepted the presidents invitation with honorable intentions, Watkins said. Watkins is a veteran of controversial and high-profile cases and has occasionally been criticized for his public statements connected to them. He initially represented Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who waved guns at protesters outside their Central West End home in June. His representation of the husband of the woman with whom former Gov. Eric Greitens had an affair led to the outing of the relationship, and eventually Greitens downfall. He once claimed babies had been stolen from St. Louis historic Black Homer G. Phillips Hospital and sold, before separate investigations by the FBI and the Post-Dispatch refuted the claim. (c)2021 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Medical staff have been battling to cope with the "carnage" in hospitals since Christmas because of the explosion in Covid-19 cases. One junior doctor said that nurses, medics and support staff in Cork University Hospital (CUH) are now "out on their feet" exhausted trying to cope with the combination of soaring cases and having to work longer as staff stay home ill. A staff member at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) - which recorded the most Covid-19 cases of any acute hospital - warned that they felt "overwhelmed". UHL had the highest number of confirmed cases (142) of any hospital in the country followed by CUH (139), Galway University Hospital (127), St Vincent's Hospital Dublin (123) and Drogheda Hospital (110). Only three critical care beds were left available at UHL. Twelve seriously ill Covid-19 patients were being treated at the 28-bed critical care unit. A UL Hospitals spokesperson confirmed there were "a total of 574 staff across UL Hospitals Group unavailable for work due to Covid-19". More than 4,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in Limerick over the past two weeks. CUH is one of six acute hospitals struggling to cope with more than 100 Covid-19 cases. A total of 1,686 patients are being treated in hospitals for the virus. Crisis At one point, more than 140 CUH staff, including 100 nurses, were off work having either tested positive or having been a close contact of a positive case. A further 14 hospitals have each got 50 or more cases. The CUH junior doctor - who asked to be unnamed - said staff were called to a meeting and briefed that they were now facing "the peak crisis of the entire pandemic". "There are times you look around and you wonder how much more pressure the system can take. You can see the strain on the faces of doctors and nurses," they said. "It has been very tough. It was tough last April when the first wave peaked but this has been something else." Even medical rotations have effectively been suspended as doctors struggle to cope with soaring patient numbers. "The commitment of doctors, nurses, hospital support staff and managers has been incredible, but you can see the toll it is taking on everyone," the source said. "I left a ward a few days ago and went into a store room to find a nurse crying. "I still don't know if it was exhaustion, stress or worry about a loved one with Covid." Junior doctors have borne the brunt of the pandemic third wave by working longer hours, taking extra shifts to cover for sick colleagues and postponing leave. "A few of my classmates opted to work as junior doctors in Australia and New Zealand and their work demands are like night-and-day compared to ours. "When I chat to them on social media and explain what it has been like here since Christmas, they just can't believe it. The UHL staff member admitted the situation was challenging. "The last two weeks it has gone ballistic. There are areas of the hospital full of Covid patients. "We have doubled down on numbers; in corridors they are on top of one another. "It's impossible to maintain social distancing in the ED, and staff are demoralised and overwhelmed," they added. Some 2,400 staff across the group's UHL, Ennis Hospital and University Limerick Maternity Hospital facilities have received the first of two vaccine doses. "Ultimately, the vaccine will be rolled out across all hospitals in UL Hospitals Group," a UL Hospitals spokesman said. This year's event, titled "United to Heal," addresses the new and bitter chapter of painful division that has left our communities severed in strife over matters of racial and social injustice, income disparity, and political discord. "Deep in these detachments lies a moment of great possibility," Riverside Clergy Association President Rev. Paul Munford said. "This is a test for the soul of our nation. A call to come together for the dignity of all humanity and to foster unity to heal this wounded nation." Local officials scheduled to speak at the event include Riverside Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson, and Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez. Messages of prayer and song will also be shared by members of the Riverside Clergy Association. Members of the public are encouraged to attend. What: "United to Heal" MLK Event When: 4 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17 Link: To join, visit http://bit.ly/newjoymlk The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., dedicated his life to the purpose of promoting equality among all people, overcoming racial and social injustice, and crusading for the humanity of all. His ongoing message of unity encouraged the resolution of conflict by working together in peace, rather than fighting in battle against one another. "We must all learn to live together as brothers," King said, "or we will all perish together as fools." The program is sponsored by Ali Sahabi, co-founder of Optimum Seismic, Inc., who has contributed to this and other events for many years. "We are deeply appreciative of the support of Ali Sahabi for sponsoring this celebration since its inception 17 years ago," said Rev. Paul Munford, president of the Riverside Clergy Association. "He recognized the importance of this event early on and has been a staunch supporter ever since." About the Riverside Clergy Association The Riverside Clergy Association is an organization representing more than 30 churches in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. For more than 15 years, we have celebrated Dr. King's words and his impact on our nation. His vision is as relevant today as it was half a century ago. About Optimum Seismic, Inc. The Optimum Seismic team has been making California cities safer since 1984 by providing full-service earthquake engineering, steel fabrication and construction services for multifamily residential, commercial and industrial buildings. With more than 3,500 earthquake retrofit and renovation projects completed, Optimum Seismic's work includes soft-story multifamily apartments, unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings and tilt-up, non-ductile concrete and steel moment frame buildings. For information, contact Optimum Seismic at (833)-978-7664 or visit optimumseismic.com. SOURCE Optimum Seismic, Inc. Related Links https://www.optimumseismic.com Richa Chadha Reacts To The Criticism Of The Film's Poster The actress said, "This film was learning experience for me, for us all. The promotions were no different. The first poster that was released faced severe criticism, rightly so. What to me (and my privileged eyes) was a mere prop used by my character in a scene , came across as a stereotypical portrayal of Dalits for many of our people." Richa Chadha Apologizes For The Controversial Poster And Calls It A 'Regrettable And A Completely Unintentional Oversight. She further continued, "As an actor, I receive the communication for posting, complete with the copy, handles and hashtags. Needless to say, I have no role in the designing of promotional materials. By saying this, I am not throwing the makers under the bus. They realised this inadvertent error and took this criticism in their stride. They responded immediately by retracting the objectionable poster and by releasing a new poster the very next day. It was a regrettable and a completely unintentional oversight, not a deliberate insinuation. We are sorry. Our heart is in the right place. Hopefully you will see that for yourself when you watch the film. Richa Chadha Says They Have Made The Film With Love "We have made this film for love, as though we were on a mission to tell this story. Tara, one feisty oddball of a woman, fights patriarchy, caste oppression, brutal violence along with the usual betrayals of politics, to rise to the top and affect change. And she does so with incredible dignity and courage. I could relate to her righteous rage. She spoke to me. As the film nears release, I am becoming aware that I have to say goodbye to Tara. I am also aware that she will never entirely leave my side," Richa concluded her statement. 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. ROCHESTER, Minn- Rochester International Aiport might not have been busy earlier but there were some brave people who were still traveling. On Thursday, a small group of travelers awaited at the airport for outgoing flights. "I have no fears," said Mike Harris who was traveling back to Long Island New York. "I've been traveling a lot so I don't really worry about the weather." According to RST Marketing and Communications Manager Tiana O'Connor, the airport operations team is always prepared for the winter season and crews keep the airffield open during nearly all winter storms. In addition to New York, people were traveling to Idaho, Lousiana, and Oklahoma. While people came to Rochester for Mayo Clinic and were leaving to head home, one lady who lives in the city was departing from it because of a family tragedy. "My brother died," said Laura Katter . "I have the do the funeral arranging." It is recommended to always check with your airline for the updated flight status before heading to the airport. Katko a sane voice amid GOP extremism To the Editor: I commend Rep. John Katko for standing up for law and the Constitution (Rep. John Katko among 10 House Republicans who vote to impeach Trump, Jan. 13, 2021). Like others, I did not vote for him, but I certainly recognize his moral action in voting for impeachment. He represents the reality that our community is bipartisan and rational. On the other hand, your paper today also highlighted an article about apparently dozens of Republicans in our Congress who seem very extreme and dangerous. In the article Some GOP lawmakers dodge new House metal detectors, Republican Rep. Debbi Lesko from Arizona is quoted tweeting, We now live in Pelosis communist America! because of new metal detectors for everyone, including lawmakers entering the Capitol. We all are accustomed to metal detectors in schools and certainly in our government buildings. It is not an infringement on our liberty, but an obvious security precaution. This article also revealed that Rep. Lauren Boebert, Republican from Colorado, and many others, refused to abide by this rule. More ominously, Boebert actually tweeted about the location of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the riot! While rioters were going through hallways threatening to hang Pelosi, Vice President Mike Pence and others, this Republican representative was trying to give rioters Pelosis location! These Republicans also assert their right to carry guns with them when the House rules require firearms to be restricted to a members office. Why would a legislator want to carry a weapon or even have one in Congress? I would be fearful of being in a Congressional setting with these extremist Republican lawmakers. I hope that Katkos action can help rebuild a Republican Party that is sane and bipartisan and that will get something done for the American people. Diana Green Syracuse I salute you for your honesty and courage To the Editor: Rep. John Katko, you make us so proud! I salute you for your honesty and courage. (Yes, I have no doubt it took a lot of courage.) I have lived in Syracuse for more than 46 years. I can now always walk around with my head held high. You have earned my undying respect and gratitude. Probal Sanyal Syracuse Praise from a critic To the editor: I applaud Rep. John Katko for standing up for democracy. In the past, I have criticized him in letters to the editor for not breaking as much from Trumpism. But when it counted, Katko considered his oath to protect our nations democracy above politics. Thank you, John Katko. Don Siegel Syracuse Et tu, John? To the Editor: In regard to Rep. John Katkos apostate vote to impeach President Donald Trump, William Shakespeare said it best: Et tu, John? Jim D. Dooher DeWitt Katko, an ex-prosecutor, followed the law To the Editor: I respect Congressman John Katkos reasoned decision to vote in favor of the article of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Wednesday. No doubt the congressman would have preferred a more thorough investigative process, but he was not in the drivers seat on the timing of the House vote, the Democrats were. Given what he knew of the factors that led to the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Katko drew a clear line connecting the presidents words and actions and the unlawful outcome. Katko said in part of Trump: By deliberately promoting baseless theories suggesting the election was somehow stolen, the president created a combustible environment of misinformation, disenfranchisement, and division. When this manifested in violent acts on January 6th, he refused to promptly and forcefully call it off An impeachment by a legislative body is akin to an indictment handed down by a grand jury in criminal law. It is not a guilty verdict nor a conviction, and therefore the standard of proof for an impeachment is lower than for a trial, which in the case of the federal government will now be handled by the U.S. Senate. Katko saw, in my view correctly, that there is sufficient cause for our president to stand trial for his role in the crime in question. For Katko, this impeachment was not a referendum on Trumps policies and actions over the last four years. During congressional debate prior to the impeachment vote, there was a fair amount of extraneous testimony coming from both sides of the aisle. I heard Republicans complain of hypocrisy on the part of Democrats who had spoken justifyingly of riots that plagued U.S. cities during the summer of 2020. While these allegations of a double standard are interesting and weighty, they had no direct bearing on the question of impeachment before the House on Jan. 13. The fact (stated by some Republican representatives and admitted by at least one Democrat I heard) that the Democrats have wanted to oust Donald Trump since the day he took office is similarly beside the point. I heard Democrats lay on deep seated vitriol against the president for his supposed policy blunders, distain for science, misogyny, racism, etc. All irrelevant to the charges at hand. The most sobering opposition to impeachment, and the one Katko admittedly weighed heavily, came from Republicans who felt this action by Congress will result in deepening division in our country. However, that too is a political calculation, to which Katko, informed by his background as a prosecutor, stated: But I also believe firmly that I must follow the law and the facts and hold this president accountable for his actions. A grave crime was committed in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. The proper legal response overrides, in Katkos mind, other factors including the observation that Trump is leaving office soon anyway and that the country is still facing serious public health and economic challenges. John Katko, we appreciate your representation of the NY-24 district. Stay safe and may God be with you going forward as you deal with the investigation of the Capitol security situation and the many other issues on your plate. Vonden Sleight Fayetteville Related: Rep. Katko took principled stand against Trump (Editorial) India's vaccination programme is set to begin from January 16 (Representative Image) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Tata Main Hospital in Jamshedpur will kick off the vaccination roll out on January 16, by giving doses to health professionals. Eventually, 3,000 of health professionals will be vaccinated. Run by Tata Steel, the TMH in Jamshedpur has been the largest COVID care facility in Jharkhand, with over 1,000 beds dedicated for the purpose. As on date, TMH is one of the designated hospitals for conducting COVID vaccine trials. "We will continue to work with the Govt and as and when further vaccines are made available, we would vaccinate our employees as per the guidelines," a Tata Steel spokesperson said on January 15. Overall, reports add, about 8,000 health professionals will be given the jabs in the first phase of vaccination in the state. About 16,200 doses of the vaccine arrived on January 13. Companies across sectors are beginning to make plans to vaccinate employees. Manufacturing companies seem to be leading the way, as few of their employees have the comfort of working from home, and thus are more vulnerable to catch the infection. The JSW Group, for instance, has begun talks with vaccine makers to procure vaccines for its 25,000 employees and their families. Similarly, JSPL has also engaged with vaccine makers for buying doses. Vaccines produced by Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech have got the nod from the government for emergency use. TASHKENT -- An Uzbek man has been jailed after complaining about corruption in the distribution process of housing compensation for those who lost their properties when a dam burst last year. Murodjon Mamaraimov, 34, was arrested and sentenced to seven days in jail on January 14, a week after he issued a video statement accusing local authorities in the eastern Sirdaryo region of unfairly distributing new houses. The dam of the Sardoba Reservoir in the eastern Uzbek region of Sirdaryo burst early on May 1, 2020, resulting in the death of six people and forcing the evacuation of at least 70,000 people. Over 600 homes in neighboring Kazakhstan were also flooded. Mamaraimov claimed in his video that in some cases, authorities in the region were giving new houses and financial allowances to people who were not affected by the disaster, and that when he tried to raise the issue with regional authorities they refused to talk to him. It was not immediately clear what the charges against Mamaraimov were. His relatives refused to talk to RFE/RL and the authorities in the Oqoltin district were not available for immediate comment. Local residents told RFE/RL that at least two other people had been sentenced to jail terms between three and seven days in recent weeks for what was officially described as minor hooliganism and disobeying the authorities after they tried to raise the issue of the distribution of housing and financial assistance among people affected by the dam collapse. According to official figures, a total of 2,570 private houses and 76 multi-story apartment blocks were destroyed by the flooding, while 1,781 private houses and 52 multi-story apartment blocks were partially damaged. Some 17 people, including energy officials, top officials of the state railway company, and heads of construction companies that were involved in the construction of the dam are currently on trial in Tashkent over the disaster. They have been charged with negligence, abuse of office, document forgery, embezzlement, and the violation of water distribution and safety regulations. The Sardoba Reservoir was completed in 2017 after seven years of construction work. Officials in neighboring Kazakhstan said at the time the floods caused crop damage worth more than $400,000 -- mostly to cotton, which is a major crop in the southern Turkistan region. On Wednesday, 4,100 people died from COVID-19 in the United States, the fifth day that the death toll surpassed 4,000. The number of daily new cases has surged to more than 200,000 every single day so far this year. In the first two weeks of 2021, more than 43,000 people in the US have died from COVID-19, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) projects that as many as 90,000 more people could die in the next three weeks. Globally, the death toll has surpassed two million. However, the official statistics give only a partial picture of the horrific reality, with one recent analysis showing that excess deaths around the world have been more than 30 percent higher than the official count of COVID-19 fatalities. On top of this already disastrous level of mass death and infection, experts are now warning that new, more infectious variants of COVID-19 will lead to an even greater surge in deaths. An article in the medical journal Stat noted Thursday, As horrific as the US Covid-19 outbreak looks right now, it is almost certainly about to get worse. The report continued, Theyve raced through South Africa, the United Kingdom, and, increasingly, elsewhere, and now, new, more infectious variants of the coronavirus have gained toeholds in the United States. If they take off here which, with their transmission advantages, they will, unless Americans rapidly put a brake on their spread it will detonate something of a bomb in the already deep, deep hole the country must dig out of to end the crisis. This massive health care catastrophe is taking place simultaneously with the unprecedented political crisis in the United States following the January 6 fascistic insurrection incited by Donald Trump, and the ongoing threats of fascist violence throughout the country prior to and on Inauguration Day, January 20. Amidst the endless coverage in the media on the events in Washington, however, there is no attempt to connect the two. It is as if the effort by Trump to overthrow the Constitution bears no relationship to the central element of the administrations policy over the past year: the insistence that no measures be taken to stop the spread of the virus. It is a political fact that the main programmatic demand of the fascistic organizations cultivated by Trump over the past year has been the removal of all restrictions on economic activity to save lives. This was the demand of the rallies organized in April and May, in the aftermath of the bailout of Wall Street in late March. It was this that motivated the fascistic conspiracy in Michigan to kidnap and assassinate the states governor, Gretchen Whitmer, exposed in October. In his first public remarks after the election in November, Trump doubled down on his administrations response to the pandemic, while making a case to the ruling class that he should remain in power. As the death toll was rising, he insisted on November 16, This administration will not be going to lockdown. While time will tell who ends up in office on January 20, Trump repeated his earlier insistence that the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. Emphasizing the central class interests motivating this homicidal policy, Trump pointed to the rise of the stock markets, noting that its ready to break the all-time record. There is an essential connection between the policy of the ruling class in response to the pandemic and the breakdown of democracy in the United States. As the WSWS wrote in October: The homicidal policy of the ruling class in response to the pandemic is at the center of the unprecedented political crisis in the United States. To implement this policy, the ruling elite is resorting to ever more violent and dictatorial forms of rule. The reality of the pandemic also underlies the Democrats response to the coup. Since the events of January 6, the Democrats, led by President-elect Joe Biden, are doing everything they can to cover up the extent of the conspiracy. Biden has insisted on the need for a strong Republican Party and has appealed to his Republican colleaguesthat is, Trumps co-conspiratorsfor bipartisanship, particularly in any legislative response to the pandemic. As a party of Wall Street, the Democrats greatest fear is the emergence of a movement of the working class against Trumps coup attempt that will develop into a conflict with the entire ruling class and the capitalist system. It is necessary to move on with the policy of the oligarchy, to look forward, not backward. One bank CEO quoted by Politico (Wall Streets big wish: Please move on) summed up the attitude of the ruling class. Speaking of the fascist coup, he said: I understand all the emotions around it and how strongly people feel about it. And I dont discount any of it. But I think Joe Bidens folks would agree with me on this, we have to get serious about moving forward right now. Moving forward means continuing the policy of herd immunity. Far from responding to the disastrous surge in COVID-19 deaths to press for measures to save lives, the entire US political establishment is demanding a further reopening of the economy, aimed at protecting the profits of major corporations at the expense of human lives. Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday she wants the citys bars and restaurants to reopen for indoor service as soon as possible. On Wednesday, Whitmer herself announced the resumption of group fitness classes, reaffirming that the state is planning to reopen indoor dining in two weeks. The most explicit argument for reopening businesses was provided by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, another Democrat, who declared in his State of the State address, We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy. Cuomo presides over a state that includes New York City, the most unequal place in the world, home to 113 billionaires. Almost without exception, US billionaires are now far, far wealthier than they were a year ago. Topping the list is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who this week became the wealthiest man in the world, at $201 billion. In the past year alone, Musk has made a shocking $170 billion, even as close to 400,000 Americans died from the pandemic, and 10 million jobs were destroyed. The claim that society cannot afford the cost of saving human lives, yet has $170 billion to dole out to a single man in one year, is absurd. Every aspect of the response to COVID-19 has been based on ensuring the availability of cheap labor in the midst of a raging pandemic, allowing the uninterrupted extraction of profits from the labor of the working class. This week, Brian Deese, Bidens incoming director of the National Economic Council, told a Reuters conference, We need to get the schools open so that parents can get back to work. In other words, the lives of teachers and students are to be sacrificed to maximize what the New York Times, commenting on the remarks, called labor force participation. In the midst of mass death and a general breakdown of democracy in the United States, it is noteworthy that the US markets surged throughout the entire week. In an article, Why the Stock Market Doesnt Care About the Capitol Riot, the Washington Post cited one Wall Street trader as saying, The market is agnostic about politics We like to think democracy is better. But at the end of the day, investors dont seem to care so much about that. The defense of democratic rights, just like the preservation of human life against COVID-19, cannot be entrusted to any faction of the ruling class. Containing the pandemic requires the intervention of the working class to demand the immediate closure of nonessential businesses and trillions of dollars for testing, contact tracing, safe quarantine areas and vaccination. We urge workers in every factory, workplace and neighborhood to build rank-and-file committees to fight for these demands and to join the Socialist Equality Party. As a performance poet, Kae Tempest knows how words can be sparks that ignite the fuse of fellow feeling. This finely crafted, deeply thoughtful essay examines creativity as an electrical current that connects the atomised individual with the larger whole. The dynamics of this process are dramatically felt every time Tempest steps on to the stage to perform. When the connection is made, everything is linked and moving towards a moment of mutual feeling ... that binds the entire room into a unified present. With searing honesty about personal struggles and failings, Tempest cuts through the ego-driven aspects of artistic creation to excavate what Jung calls the spirit of the depths beneath the spirit of the times. Connection happens, Tempest says, when I get myself out of the way. There is a certain slyness to the subtitle What Australia Can Learn From New Zealand of this fascinating essay. While it implies that we should be taking a leaf out of our neighbours playbook, Laura Tingle is often pointing especially regarding economic deregulation to how we can learn from New Zealands mistakes. The irony is that both countries have managed largely to ignore each others trajectories while living side-by-side. How many of us know there is a section of our constitution that refers to New Zealand as a potential state in the new federation, or that we have the closest economic relationship of any two countries on earth? And, of course, we do have much to learn from the Kiwis, from how to re-address the impact of colonisation on Indigenous people to greater civility in politics. A Cry From the Far Middle P. J. ORourke Grove Press, $29.99 Credit: When political satirists start calling for an end to polarisation, you know things have gotten dire. In the introduction to this collection of opinion pieces, P. J. ORourke argues for extreme moderation ... Lets bring the Wishy and the Washy back together, along with the Namby and the Pamby. This is all good fun but there is a kneejerk quality to his reactions in many of the essays as he wheels out the standard banes of the libertarian right climate change activism, regulation, wokeness, political incorrectness, tolerance and caricatures them ad absurdum. At his best, hes neither left nor right, casting a wry eye over the idea of America itself. Of the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness he remarks, We are a pursuit without a purpose. Always on the go with no idea where. Out of Copley Street Geoff Goodfellow Wakefield Press, $24.99 A group of wealthy women from Barnes, west London who usually spend 18,000 each on glamorous holidays were shocked to discover how much 'fun' they can have on a budget after swapping trips with a trio of struggling mums from Harlow, Essex in the latest episode of Rich Holiday, Poor Holiday, which returns to Channel 5 for a second series on Sunday. Retired pilot and mother Lorraine, flight attendant, model and make-up artist Andrea and mum-of-one interior designer Bally are used to flying first class and eating Michelin starred meals on luxury holidays to glamorous destinations such as Rio de Janerio, Hong Kong, Val-d'Isere and Barbados. But after heading on a budget break to Paphos, Cyprus, the group discovered a taste for kebabs and cheesy chips - which they deemed 'better than sushi'. The trio, who met while working in the airline industry, swapped holidays with mum-of-four Kelly, who works at discount home store, single mum-of-three Jackie, and Ruth, who is a sole carer for her autistic son. The Harlow mums usually spend around 400 on a holiday, and love boozy trips to the likes of Benidorm and Magaluf, where they party and relax on the beach. But instead of their usual drunken adventures, the group were sent to Halkidiki, Greece for a teetotal wellness retreat, at the eye-watering price of 9,400 for six days - where they took part in yoga, dined on Michelin starred cuisine and had relaxing private yacht trip - which left them 'bored' and 'missing the banter of a booze cruise'. Meanwhile, Lorraine, Andrea and Bally were a world away from their usual trips as they flew to Paphos for a week of bar crawls, supermarket shopping and kebabs on a budget of 862, which included 184 accommodation, 228 flights and 450 spending money. Retired pilot and mother Lorraine (centre), flight attendant, model and make-up artist Andrea (left) and mum-of-one interior designer Bally (right) are used to flying first class and eating Michelin starred meals on luxury holidays to glamorous destinations such as Rio de Janerio, Hong Kong, Val-d'Isere and Barbados. The London trio, who met while working in the airline industry, swapped holidays with mum-of-four Kelly (centre) who works at discount home store, single mum-of-three Jackie (left) and Ruth (right) who is a sole carer for her autistic son. The group are shocked to discover they have to share a bed, make their own food, pick up their own sun loungers and even took homemade sandwiches to the beach for the first time. In one scene, the women - who are in the top five per cent of UK earners - head for a night out on the Paphos strip and are perplexed by the range of cocktails and food available, at bargain prices. Meanwhile back at their budget hotel a lack of good electricity makes getting ready a struggle. 'If you've got a hair dryer and hair straighteners the whole room goes into pitch blackness,' Andrea explained. 'Then you have to ring a man who drives here and has to push a button to fix it'. After glamming up and heading out on the town, the women are bewildered by the noise and lack of table service in the bars. 'Do you have to get your own drink here?' Andrea asked as they sat down at the bar, 'Or does somebody serve you?' Further confused by the cocktail list, Andrea says she's never even heard of the booze on offer, including a Cheeky Vimto, and a WKD Blue. The group are shocked to discover they have to share a bed, make their own food, pick up their own sun loungers and even take homemade sandwiches to the beach. During a night on the Paphos strip the London trio are perplexed to discover the range of cocktails and food available, at bargain prices, and while back at their hotel a lack of good electricity makes getting ready a struggle. Left to right: Lorraine, Bally and Andrea The group are then offered a free shot of Apple Sourz, which model Andrea described a 'like Benylin'. 'It tasted like the worst mouthwash I'd ever had,' Lorraine added. After leaving the bar unimpressed, the group headed for dinner, but are upset to discover they can only find kebabs. 'I've have never heard before of chips with cheese,' Andrea said, before complaining that her kebab was served without Greek salad. Meanwhile, (left tor right) Kelly, Jackie, and Ruth, miss the excitement of the strip while at their luxury Greek resort. Sitting down for dinner on the first night, they say they wouldn't have ordered the Greek salad they were served as 'they don't know what it is,' but do say they enjoy a break from the booze. 'It was very loud and quite dark, I felt uncomfortable,' Bally explained,' added the view [of the strip] and the atmosphere, is not for me'. However, by the end of the week they develop a taste for the end-of-the-night cuisine, with model Andrea saying it's her biggest discovery from the trip. Meanwhile, Kelly, Jackie, and Ruth, miss the excitement of the party strip while at their luxury Greek resort. Sitting down for dinner on the first night, they say they wouldn't have ordered the Greek salad they were served as 'they don't know what it is,' but do say they enjoy a break from the booze. 'It's actually really nice to do something different together,' Jackie said 'I can't remember the last time we went out without wine. And while many would pay hundreds for the luxury dinner they were served, the trio struggled to get down the cuttlefish, that was cooked for them by a Michelin starred chef. 'It's probably a really nice dish over here,' Kelly explained, 'but it's not steak and chips'. Kelly, Jackie and Ruth are seen preparing to leave their home in Harlow, Essex. The trio had a luxury teetotal holiday to wellness resort in Greece 'Usually when I go on holiday I'm quite a plain eater, half a chicken and chips, five nights in a row, I think I might have even had it one day for lunch and dinner,' she added. The next day, the mums take a trip on a luxury private yacht on an idyllic blue waters. 'I don't think - I'm just being honest here - I miss the banter of people we get on a party boat. We always talk to everyone don't and we have the banter with a group of us, I'm missing that,' Jackie told her friends. 'Normally when we go on a boat trip it's full of people, there's about 50 people on a boat. And it's all running for the beer, running for the cheap cocktail they got on board. And we're all sitting there getting drunk,' she added. Kelly agreed, saying that all three of them would pick a party boat over a private yacht. After the trip Bally (left), Lorraine (centre) and Andrea (right) say they will budget more in the future Bored of the resort, where they are doing yoga and getting massages everyday, the mums make a break for it and head into the local town for a boozy night. 'Yoga teacher not here tonight, so it's a night on the town,' Kelly explained, 'we're going to bust some moves and hopefully get very drunk and have a good night. 'I've never drunk so much water on holiday. Who does that, drinks water on holiday?' she continued. 'We're gonna get drunk tonight, do shots, fall up the stairs, we're having it'. After ordering a vodka, rum cocktails, and two bottles of wine, tequila and more, Kelly said their yoga teacher would be 'devastated' as she's 'done so much hard work with us'. The Harlow trio said they would 'head to Benidorm' for their next holiday and weren't a fan of the Greek resort 'We will carry it on,' she added, 'but not tonight. Sorry, f*** your health, we're having a good night'. The next morning, their yoga teacher discovers them hungover in bed and whipped up a recovery smoothie, but the women said they'd prefer bacon and eggs. Escaping their holiday was also on the mind of the London group, who splashed out 40 euros on hiring a car for the day to explore the island of Cyprus and drive to Aphrodite's bath, where the Greek goddess of love is said to have bathed in magical pools. 'I think we get itchy feet beaus we travel so much,' Lorraine explained, as the group reflected on their time on the budget holiday, adding: 'I'm so grateful for our friendship' . 'It doesn't matter where you are in the world, the thing is it's the people that you share it with,' Andrea added. Later she adds her 'biggest takeaway' from the trip was her newfound love of cheesy chips. 'Normally everything we do tends to end up costing a lot,' Andrea added. 'But I think this week we had such fun, and we did this on a budget. We laughed a lot, and it was fun.' After discovering their trip came in at less than 1000 - a 50,000 saving on their usual holidays - Bally is shocked, and says she's going to 'be more cautious about spending money'. 'It's about the friends your with and the journey you take,' Andrea added. Meanwhile, the Essex group are equally astonished upon discovering their trip cost nearly 10,000. 'I think we need to give these girls a lesson on how to budget their money,' Jackie said. 'For the activities we've done, I could never justify 10,000, never.'. While admitting they learned things and have experienced a lot more than they usually would, the Harlow group didn't change their mind amount the kind of holidays they'd like in the future. 'Next year, definitely Benidorm, here we come!' Kelly said. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 04:04:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KHARTOUM, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan's President Salva Kiir has expressed readiness to mediate between Sudan and Ethiopia to end their border conflict, said Sudan's Sovereign Council on Thursday. Chairman of Sudan's Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan on Thursday met with Tut Gatluak, South Sudan's presidential adviser on security affairs, who conveyed a verbal message from Kiir, the council said in a statement. "President Salva Kiir has expressed readiness to mediate between Sudan and Ethiopia to reach a political and diplomatic solution according to the recognized international borders in preservation of the fraternal ties between the two countries and the peace in the region," Gatluak was quoted by the statement as saying. Al-Burhan underlined "the friendly and fraternal solution" for the border dispute with Ethiopia, Gatluak added. Since Sept. 2020, the Sudan-Ethiopia border has been witnessing rising tensions and skirmishes between the two sides. On Wednesday, Sudan's Foreign Ministry said an Ethiopian military plane penetrated the Sudanese airspace in what it termed as "a serious and unjustified escalation." Sudan accuses Ethiopian farmers, backed by armed forces, of seizing Sudanese lands at Sudan's Fashaga area along the border and cultivating them since 1995. On Dec. 16, 2020, the Sudanese army announced that Ethiopian forces and militias ambushed its troops on the Sudanese side of the border. On Dec. 19, 2020, the Sudanese army announced the deployment of strong reinforcements to the Gadaref State on the eastern border with Ethiopia. Khartoum then announced retaking of what it terms as "the seized lands." Enditem After months of anticipation, the first Covid-19 vaccines finally started being administered in the UK last month. Amid the rollout, several rumours and myths have been circulating about the vaccine, including fears that the jab could affect fertility. Now, Professor Lucy Chappell, NIHR Research Professor in Obstetrics at King's College London, is attempting to reassure women that the Covid-19 jab will not affect their fertility. Her advice comes shortly after a poll of 55,642 Brits found that more than a quarter of 18-to-34-year-old women said they would say no to the jab, citing concerns over the vaccine's effect on fertility and pregnancies. Amid the vaccine rollout, several rumours and myths have been circulating about the vaccine, including fears that the jab could affect fertility (stock image) COVID-19 VACCINE FEARS Young non-voting women are most likely to turn down a Covid vaccine if it were available tomorrow, a poll has found. While more than 78 per cent of those sampled said they would accept the jab, nearly a fifth (18 per cent) intend to refuse it. The Find Out Now poll, which sampled 55,642 people, also found the younger you are, the more likely you are to be anti-vaccination. More than a quarter of 18-to- 34-year-old women said they would say no to the jab, citing their concerns over the vaccine's effect on fertility and pregnancies. By contrast, only seven per cent of those aged 65 and over said the same. Advertisement Professor Chappell says it is understandable that there have been questions about the new vaccines but notes that fearful claims which can be easily found online have never been substantiated. 'I dug into all those sources and I can see absolutely no basis for concerns about any of the Covid-19 vaccines that are licensed in the UK and fertility,' she told the PA news agency. She described the claims as 'spurious' because they relate to similarities between some aspects of the proteins involved in fertility and the Covid-19 vaccines, but these are 'very speculative and entirely not supported by any of the data'. There is no concern from a biological point of view and evidence has not been presented that women who have been vaccinated have gone on to have fertility problems, she said. Pregnancy, the new virus and vaccines are 'a constantly evolving area' which needs further research, as there is very limited experience in trials on pregnant women, according to Prof Chappell. She hopes that vaccine companies may change this situation in the future. Women who are in the highest risk Covid-19 groups, such as carers and health workers or the clinically extremely vulnerable such as those with underlying health conditions, should try to have 'a sensible discussion' about their concerns about the jab. Women who are in the highest risk Covid-19 groups, such as carers and health workers, or the clinically extremely vulnerable such as those with underlying health conditions should try to have 'a sensible discussion' about their concerns about the jab (stock image) They are among the first phase of people to be vaccinated and their obstetrician or midwife is the obvious person to try and seek useful information from. Prof Chappell suggested that 'we may be in a different place in six months in terms of how we can have those discussions' as new and updated information comes through from the real-life current use of vaccines. Bigger trials are needed involving pregnant women to help answer questions about safety and risk but how the woman views her risk of exposure and complications is an important factor that needs to be taken into the mix. Prof Chappell said there are 'very clear checks and balances' involving the women who take part in research trials. Professor Chappell's advice comes shortly after a poll revealed that young women are the most likely to turn down the Covid-19 vaccine. The Find Out Now poll, which sampled 55,642 people, found that more than a quarter of 18-to- 34-year-old women said they would say no to the jab, citing their concerns over the vaccine's effect on fertility and pregnancies. By contrast, only seven per cent of those aged 65 and over said the same. President-elect Joe Biden, over the last few weeks, nominated a long list of members for his cabinet and White House team. Since the Democrats have secured a majority in the US Senate, it is likely that Biden will be able to fill in top spots with the people he has nominated so far. Many of these people will influence Biden's foreign policy and in turn, Indo-US relationships. Heres a look at who Biden has picked for key positions to fulfil his agenda promised in the run-up to the US Presidential elections, and also what his means for his policies towards India. Antony Blinken as Secretary of State Blinken has been a long-time confidante of Bidens, Reuters reported, and served as No. 2 at the State Department and as deputy national security adviser in President Barack Obama's administration. In recent comments about India, Blinken has said, "India has been a bipartisan success story of our successive administrations," Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken told members of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. "During the Obama administration, we deepened cooperation on defense procurement and information sharing, and the Trump administration carried that forward including its concept of Indo-Pacific and to make sure we were working with India so that no country in the region including China could challenge its sovereignty and also working with it on concerns that we share about terrorism," he said. Earlier, in July last year, in a conversation about US foreign policy, especially in relation to India, Blinken had said, I think from Vice President Bidens perspective, strengthening and deepening the relationship with India is going to be a very high priority. Its usually important to the future of the Indo-Pacific and the kind of order that we all want; its fair, stable, and hopefully increasingly democratic and its vital to being able to tackle some of these big global challenges. Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary Yellen has been a Federal Reserve chair and remained active in policy debates at the Brookings Institution think tank since Republican President Donald Trump replaced her as head of the central bank in 2018, reported Reuters. If she secures the position, Business Standard reports that one of the first things she will have to tackle with India are exchange rates. On Tuesday Indian shares ended more than 1% higher on hopes of more foreign fund inflows into the domestic market, as incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is expected to bolster the case for heavy stimulus in the United States. Yellen had said the government must act big with its next coronavirus relief package. Lloyd Austin as Defence Secretary Austin is a retired four-star Army general. He oversaw US forces in the Middle East under Obama, would be the first Black U.S. secretary of defence if the Senate confirms him. PTI quoted Austin as saying "If confirmed, my overarching objective for our defense relationship with India would be to continue elevating the partnership" "I would further operationalise India's ''Major Defence Partner'' status and continue to build upon existing strong defense cooperation to ensure the US and Indian militaries can collaborate to address shared interests," Austin said in response to a question submitted before his confirmation hearing. Austin said his understanding is that Pakistan has taken constructive steps to meet US requests in support of the Afghanistan peace process. Pakistan has also taken steps against anti-Indian groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, although this progress is incomplete, he said. "Many factors in addition to the security assistance suspension may impact Pakistan's cooperation, including Afghanistan negotiations and the dangerous escalation following the Pulwama terrorist attack," he said. Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas was the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration. A lawyer by profession, if confirmed, he will become the first Latino and first immigrant to head the department. Ron Klain as White House Chief of Staff Klain has been a longtime Biden adviser with experience in responding to the Ebola pandemic. PTI reported that Klain will work to build a diverse, experienced and talented team to help President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris meet the urgent challenges facing the country. John Kerry as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Kerry is a former Senator and Secretary of State. Reuters reported that Kerry will act as climate czar in the Biden administration. Kerry helped negotiate the Paris climate deal that Biden is likely to re-join. Syed Akbaruddin, a former diplomat and a former MEA spokesperson, wrote in the Hindustan Times, The announcement of John Kerrys appointment to the new post of special presidential envoy for climate is an indication that US President-elect Joe Bidens climate agenda is global. Kerrys assertion that, America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat that it is reflects the thinking that the impact of the climate crisis is becoming more complex. Jake Sullivan as National Security Adviser Sullivan was Bidens national security adviser when he was vice president and also served as the deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Economic Times reported that when Clinton visited India, Sullivan played a key role, and is likely to further build on partnerships between US and India. Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence Haines was the first woman to serve as CIA deputy director and was deputy national security adviser under Obama. Reuters said she has held several posts at Columbia University after leaving the outgoing Obama administration in 2017. William Burns as CIA Director Burns, if confirmed, will be the first career diplomat to lead the CIA. He is currently heading USs leading policy think-tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. On the rise of China, Burns had written in The Atlantic, Preventing Chinas rise is beyond Americas capacity, and our economies are too entangled to decouple. The U.S. can, however, shape the environment into which China rises, taking advantage of the web of allies and partners across the Indo-Pacificfrom Japan and South Korea to a rising Indiawho worry about Chinas ascendance. Neera Tanden as Office of Management and Budget Director Tanden is one of the many Indian-origin people who will hold a key post in the Biden administration. She is the president of the progressive Center for American Progress think tank that helped create Obamacare. Katherine Tai as US Trade Representative Tai played a key role to attain stronger labor provisions in the US.-Mexico-Canada trade deal. She will lead trade talks with China, previously worked at the office she will now run, heading China trade enforcement from 2011 to 2014. AFP reported she would be the first Asian-American and the fourth woman to serve in the cabinet-level role. Tai is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, currently works as the chief trade lawyer for the House Ways and Means Committee. A reputable licensed mining firm, Kingsperp Mining Limited has made available documents signed by relevant government appointees to rubbished claims that it is engaged in illegal mining, also known as Galamsey. The firm was given authorization by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for Prospecting for gold in a concession area in Oda River Forest reserve near Aboaboso in Bekwai Forest District in the Ashanti Region. The permit was issued on February 14th, 2020 and expected to expire on February 13th 2022. The clarification follows a report by Multimedia which claims Kingsperp Mining Limited is engaging in active illegal mining despite a nationwide campaign by the Nana Addo-led government to curb the operation. Multimedias Erastus Asare Donkor was part of a media task force in charge of clamping down on illegal miners. But documents available to Peacefmonline.com and signed by the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Kwaku Asomah-Cheremeh indicates that government granted Kingsperp Mining Limited the permit to operate. A statement signed by PRO for Kingsperp, Murtala Mohammed, also revealed that "the piece of land stretched from Aboaboso to Taabosere in the Western Region and from Aborkyire Yawkrako near Numreso in the Amansie Central District and Edubea South Districts, all in the Ashanti Region of Ghana." Whiles dismissing claims that Charles Owusu, Head of Monitoring Unit at the Forestry Commission is an employee of the mining firm, the statement indicated the company's resolve to use all legitimate means to "retrieve" its ceased equipments. "We are herewith informing the general public that, there is nothing illegal about the activities of Kingsperp Company Limited..... ......The company will use all legal means to retrieve equipments and accordingly continue with its legitimate duties," Kingsperp Find attached documents below: Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Watertown, NY (13601) Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. President contributed over Rs 5 lakh for the construction of a grand in Ayodhya as the nationwide drive to collect donations kicked off on Friday. Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu's family have already contributed over Rs 5 lakh for the construction of the temple. Earlier in the day, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat performed a puja at the Valmiki temple in the capital. The biggest contribution of over Rs one crore came from Surendra Bahadur Singh, former MLA of Tezgaon in Baiswara district of Rae Bareli, who donated a cheque of Rs 1,11,11,111 to Champat Rai, VHP's vice president and general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), part of the RSS-led ideological family, was at the forefront of the Ram Mandir construction movement. The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra rust has mandated the VHP to collect funds for the temple's construction. "The VHP today started its campaign for collection of funds for the construction of the temple by receiving Rs 5,00,100 from the first person of the country, President on his and his family's behalf," its international working President Alok Kumar told PTI. Naidu's wife Usha Naidu has already contributed Rs 5,11,116 on behalf of the entire family for the construction of the temple. To receive donation from the President, treasurer of the Temple Trust Govind Dev Giri, VHP's Alok Kumar, trustee of the trust and former principal secretary to Prime Minister Nripendra Mishra and RSS's Delhi leader Kulbhushan Ahuja met Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhawan here. According to reports, contributions were also made by governors and chief ministers across the country. A VHP delegation also met Uttarakhand Governor Baby Rani Maurya and received Rs 1.21 lakh as donation for the construction of the temple, while state chief minister also gave Rs contributed 1.51 lakh. Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Deputy Chief Minister of Gujarat Nitin Patel and Governors of Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand also gave their contributions to the visiting VHP delegations. (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 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says the Russian authorities should repeal the controversial "foreign agents" law and ensure that national telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor is not used to threaten and harass media organizations and censure journalists. "Russian authorities regularly think up new tools and implementations to obstruct the flow of news and information, to the detriment of their own public," Gulnoza Said, the New York-based media-rights group's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said on January 14. The CPJ's comments come two days after Roskomnadzor drew up its first eight administrative protocols -- all against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty -- for violating the "foreign agents" law. The offenses are "for noncompliance by the media performing the functions of a foreign agent with the requirements of the law on labeling information disseminated by them," Roskomnadzor said in a statement on its website on January 12. The protocols target four of RFE/RL's Russian-language projects -- its main service for Russia, Radio Liberty; the Current Time TV and digital network; and Siberia.Reality and Idel.Reality, two regional sites delivering local news and information to audiences in Siberia and the Volga-Urals region. The outlets failed to label their content as "foreign agent-produced," the protocols said. The foreign agents law, originally passed in 2012, requires designated organizations to report their activities and face financial audits. Amendments to the law in December oblige the media to note the designation whenever they mention these individuals or groups and expanded the law to cover individuals who work at outlets that receive foreign funding. Roskomnadzor's January 12 statement said the protocols would be sent to a judge within three working days to decide on imposing fines, which can be as high as 500,000 rubles ($6,800) for companies and 50,000 rubles ($679) for individuals. Individuals can also face up to five years in prison if charged and convicted of violating the foreign agents law. It is the first time Russian authorities have pursued fines under the foreign agents law. "Moscow has demonstrated by its repressive threats exactly why Radio Liberty and Current Time are needed," RFE/RL President Ted Lipien said. "The Kremlin can make it harder for us to bring accurate information to Russians and others. But it can't stop us from playing that essential role." CPJ said it requested comment from Roskomnadzor and the Russian Ministry of Justice but did not receive any responses. Moscow last month began adding individuals to the list, including three journalists who contribute to RFE/RL: Lyudmila Savitskaya and Sergei Markelov, freelance correspondents for the North Desk (Sever.Realii) of RFE/RL's Russian Service; and Denis Kamalyagin, editor-in-chief of the online news site Pskov Province and a contributor to RFE/RL's Russian Service. Authorities also added the Czech Republic-based news agency Medium-Orient, the parent company of the news website Caucasus Times, to the list in December. Islam Tekushev, Medium-Orient's project coordinator, told CPJ that Medium-Orient had no permanent presence or bureau in Russia, which Tekushev said should make it exempt from the foreign agents law. He plans to appeal the decision in a Russian court. Russian officials have said that its move in 2017 to amend the foreign agents law to include mass media was a "symmetrical response" to the U.S. requirement that Russia's state-funded channel RT register under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). U.S. officials have said the action is not symmetrical, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws differ and that Russia uses its foreign agents law to silence dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas. In a separate reaction to the Russian move, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on January 15 that the 27-member bloc "strongly disagrees with the recent decisions by the authorities of the Russian Federation." "The EU, once again, urges the Russian authorities to repeal these legislations and to respect their international obligations on freedom of association, assembly, and expression," Peter Stano, Borrell's spokesman, said in a statement on January 15. Ham radio centre at Ganga Sagar By January 14 (Makar Sankranti) around 780,000 pilgrims had arrived at Ganga Sagar and radio amateurs from the West Bengal Radio Club established a QO-100 satellite ground station on the island The Millenium Post newspaper reports In a bid to help people access information when phones and conventional broadcast systems fail during natural calamity, Ham radio operators have installed amateur radio satellite communication (using Qatar-OSCAR-100 the first geostationary amateur radio transponder) at Ganga Sagar Island. "Through this system, we will be able to send live video, photos and data of the situation after the natural disaster anywhere and help can also be sought by making a voice call," said Ambarish Nag Biswas VU2JFA, custodian and secretary of West Bengal Radio Club (WBRC), an organisation of ham radio enthusiasts in the state. Read the full story at http://www.millenniumpost.in/kolkata/ham-radio-centre-at-ganga-sagar-429289 West Bengal Radio Club http://www.wbrc.in/ https://twitter.com/wbradioclub https://www.facebook.com/Wbradioclub/ It will be for the first time in over five decades that India will not have a chief guest at the Republic Day parade Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro was the chief guest at Republic Day celebrations last year. (Photo: PTI/file) New Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday announced that there will be no foreign leader as the chief guest at the upcoming Republic Day celebrations due to the global situation arising out of the coronavirus pandemic. It will be for the first time in over five decades that India will not have a chief guest at the Republic Day parade. "Due to the global COVID-19 situation, it has been decided that this year there will not be a foreign head of state or head of government as the chief guest for our Republic Day event," MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said at a media briefing. The decision comes days after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancelled his visit to India to grace the Republic Day celebrations in view of the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom. India had invited Johnson as the Republic Day chief guest and he accepted India's invitation, calling it "a great honour". However, on January 5, Johnson cancelled his India visit due to the pandemic. The last time India did not have a chief guest at the Republic Day parade was in 1966 when it had taken place in the aftermath of death of then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. India did not have any foreign leader as Republic Day chief guest in 1952, 1953 also. Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro was the chief guest at Republic Day celebrations last year. He was the third President from Brazil to have been invited as the chief guest for Republic Day. In 2019, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was the chief guest at the R-Day parade, while in 2018, leaders of all 10 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries attended the celebrations. In 2017, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan was the chief guest at the celebrations, while then French president Francois Hollande graced the occasion in 2016. In 2015, then US president Barack Obama watched the parade. We are all aware of the Public Provident Fund (PPF), Employees Provident Fund (EPF), National Pension Scheme (NPS) and LICs pension plans to help us save for our retirement. Mutual funds, too, had offered schemes, in the industrys early days, targeting retirement savings. Launched in December 1994, UTI Retirement Benefit Pension Fund (UTI RBPF) was one such scheme. Recently, it turned 26. But with over 500 equity schemes and around 350 debt funds available at present, does UTI RBPF still make for a compelling choice as your retirement vehicle? What is it all about? UTI RBPF is an open-ended fund. Your investments are locked in for five years or till your retirement age, whichever is earlier. It invests in a mix of equity (up to 40 percent of its corpus) and debt instruments. Your investments are eligible for income-tax deduction under Section 80C, up to a maximum amount of Rs 1.5 lakh, though you could invest more. This is different from a typical equity-linked mutual fund scheme (ELSS) that also offers Section 80C tax deduction. ELSS schemes come with a three-year lock-in. Once the unitholder completes the lock-in of five years or turns 58, she can either withdraw her money or opt for a systematic withdrawal plan to ensure regular payments during retirement, though returns are not fixed, as they are market-linked. Till 2011, apart from UTI and its closest peer Franklin India Pension Plan, there wasnt any other retirement focussed mutual fund scheme. From 2011 onwards, the capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) allowed mutual funds to again offer retirement-specific schemes. The likes of Tata Mutual, Nippon India Mutual and HDFC Mutual funds entered the fray. ELSS schemes, too, grew in popularity over the years and the shorter lock-in of three years also helped. There were not too many other (retirement) funds into existence. Soon after the ELSS category got evolved and became the core category, they (the regulators) started giving blanket approvals to ELSS with 80C benefit, says Suraj Kaeley, a SEBI-registered investment advisor. But UTI MF did its bit to popularise the scheme. Under the helm of UK Sinha, former head of UTI mutual fund, UTI mutual fund took UTI RBPF to the unorganised sector and tied up with several non-government organisations (NGOs) and banks to get their members to invest in this scheme. For instance, in 2006, more than 43,000 milk producers of Bihar associated with Bihar State Co-operative Milk Producers Federation invested in the scheme. In 2007, more than 5000 women members of Tamil Nadu associated with Self-Help Promotion for Health & Rural Development invested in this fund. At present, the schemes assets are worth Rs 3,118 crore, with over 21 lakh of folios. Portfolio The scheme invests up to 40 percent in equities, with a bias towards large-cap stocks. As per the latest portfolio of December 2020, around 66 percent of the equity portion was invested in large-caps, 22 percent in mid-caps and 12 percent in small-caps. With the cap of 40 percent on equities acting as a risk mitigation tool and the rest being invested in debt securities, the scheme has a well-diversified portfolio. It is the right blend of debt & equity securities in a portfolio that brings stability, says Amandeep Chopra, head of fixed income at UTI mutual fund. Amandeep manages the debt portion of UTI RBPF and V Srivatsa looks after the equity part. The top sectors in the schemes portfolio are Banking, Software, Finance, Consumer Non-Durables and Pharmaceuticals. ICICI Bank, Infosys, L&T, SBI, Axis Bank, Vardhman Textiles and Federal Bank have been part of its holdings over the long term. On the debt side, the fund manages its duration strategy, dynamically by investing across maturities, in corporate bonds, government securities and money market instruments. However, allocations made to relatively lower-rated bonds eying on higher yields had backfired on the fund. The scheme was hurt due to investments made (though marginally) in distressed debt assets issued by DHFL, Idea Cellular and IL&FS. An average performer As a result, UTI RBPFs performance has been average, especially when compared to that of Franklin India Pension Fund. Rolling returns are a better way to assess a funds performance as they cover multiple entry and exit points. We took the schemes five-year rolling returns over a period of 15 years. UTI RBPF gave 9.1 percent returns while Franklin India Pension delivered 9.8 per cent. The conservative hybrid mutual fund category delivered 8.6 percent. Should you invest? Given its high allocation to debt, the fund doesnt appeal much to young and millennial investors. UTI RBPF is suitable for investors above, say, 45 years and not for young and/or investors with high risk appetite. Return is likely to be better than PPF considering that it has an allocation to equity, says P.V. Subramanyam of Subramoney.com. Moneycontrol recommends investing in regular open-ended mutual fund schemes to plan for goals such as retirement. Just be disciplined and do not touch the corpus till you reach your retirement. Investigations editor Larry Parnass, investigations editor, joined The Eagle in 2016 from the Daily Hampshire Gazette, where he was editor in chief. His freelance work has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant and CommonWealth Magazine. WAAY 31 learned federal law enforcement agents were in Falkville at the home of the man arrested in Washington D.C. after the riots, according to the Cullman Daily. Lonnie Coffman lives off Old Highway 31 in Falkville on Bell Springs Court. Courtesy: Cullman Daily Courtesy: Cullman Daily Court records show that Coffman might not be back at his home in Falkville anytime soon. His attorney's request for his release was denied. The next hearing for his case isn't set until the end of the month in Washington D.C. The Cullman Daily shared photos with WAAY 31 of federal law enforcement agents at Coffman's home Thursday morning. The Daily said officials were talking to an unidentified woman, who left a short time after talking with the agents. The agents left the home around 11 Thursday morning. It's unclear what agency the law enforcement was with or why they were at the home. Coffman is facing a 17-count federal indictment after 11 Molotov cocktails were found in a cooler of his truck and he was found in possession of four guns and ammunition. WAAY 31 reached out to a spokesperson with the FBI to find out if they were the agency in Falkville at Coffman's home. A spokesperson with the bureau told us he could not comment. Members of the National Guard walk through the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington on Jan. 13, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) Up to 25,000 National Guard in DC for Inauguration: US Army The U.S. Army confirmed that as many as 25,000 National Guard members will be stationed in Washington D.C. for Inauguration Day next week. The Defense Department authorized up to 25,000 service members to be deployed, which is an increase of 5,000 from numbers earlier this week. A statement from the Army to news outlets on Friday said the increase would support the federal law enforcement mission and security preparations during the inauguration, and it would be led by the U.S. Secret Service. Our National Guard soldiers and airmen are set around the city to protect our nations Capital, National Guard Bureau Chief Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson said in the statement. All 50 states and D.C. will have National Guard members to support the event, ostensibly due to the breach at the U.S. Capitol building last week during the Jan. 6 Joint Session of Congress. In a statement on Wednesday, President Donald Trump reiterated to Americans that they shouldnt engage in violence. In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking, and NO vandalism of any kind, Trump said. That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers. Thank You. Hundreds of National Guard troops hold inside the Capitol Visitors Center to reinforce security at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 13, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo) There were rumors on social media that the National Guard was moving to implement a nationwide lockdown or quarantine, but the South Carolina National Guard, among others, said that this claim is false. The rumors that the South Carolina National Guard is supporting a statewide or nationwide lockdown or quarantine are not true, the South Carolina National Guard post said. Rumors like this can create confusion and anxiety in the organization and our communities. If you hear or see something that seems unfounded, do not continue spreading the information. Verify that information with one of the official sources pertaining to the National Guard Bureau, the South Carolina National Guard, and the state of South Carolina. In D.C., the perimeter of a fence surrounding the Capitol was pushed out to encompass the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. Roads and other access points were closed, and some businesses said they would shut down. The National Park Service has closed the Washington Monument to tours and Mayor Muriel Bowser has asked visitors to avoid the city. Reuters contributed to this report. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 08:57:57|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HOUSTON -- Governor of the U.S. state of New Mexico Michelle Lujan Grisham has issued a state of emergency due to the ongoing and pervasive threat of riots and insurrection, local media reported on Thursday. According to the Albuquerque Journal, the executive order referenced the events of Jan. 6 when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. (U.S.-State of emergency) - - - - GENEVA -- The most urgent focus now for the World Health Organization (WHO) is ensuring that all countries have access to vaccines on an equitable basis, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. He also said at the 6th Meeting of the Emergency Committee on COVID-19 that there are two urgent issues now: the first is the recent emergence of new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the second is the potential use of vaccination and testing certificates for international travel. (WHO-COVID-19-Outbreak) - - - - ALGIERS -- As many as five people were killed and three others injured Thursday when an improvised bomb exploded in Algeria's eastern province of Tebessa, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. It specified that "five civilians were killed" when their car passed by the bomb in the locality of Telidjane in Tebessa, near the border with Tunisia. Another three passengers were wounded, added the source, without providing more details. (Algeria-Explosion) - - - - BERLIN -- German energy company RWE will build its first onshore wind farm in France, the company announced on Thursday. The onshore wind farm, located in the Centre-Val de Loire region, 250 kilometers south of Paris, is already under construction and would have a capacity of 26 megawatts, according to RWE. (Germany-RWE-Wind) Enditem Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka has hit out at Deputy President William Ruto accusing him of hypocrisy over the rotational president debate. According to the former Vice President, Ruto should stop portraying himself as a nationalist because he showed his true colours in 2013 when he distributed his cabinet share to the Kalenjin community. Kalonzo claimed that the DP went as far as pushing out some Cabinet Secretaries from other communities. He cited former Health Cabinet Secretary Cleopa Mailu, who was kicked out of the Cabinet after Jubilees reelection in 2017. Even Ambassador Mailu would be a minister today. I followed that story very closely with President Kenyatta and I was told he [Uhuru] had no problem with Mailu. He would have continued as a minister, Kalonzo stated. The Wiper leader said Mailus exit left the whole Kamba community without a single Cabinet slot. You have a community with not a single minister and you really think you can come and confuse Wakamba with those monies of wheelbarrow economics? posed Kalonzo. Since 1963 when this country had Independence, we used to have at least two Cabinet ministers from that community. This is not tribalism; it is the reality of the situation. Kalonzo, who spoke on Wednesday, said Ruto should stop casting a nationalistic figure. Who doesnt know that President Uhuru Kenyatta got 50 per cent of the government, William Ruto got 50 per cent of the government to the exclusion of everybody else? At least President Uhuru took his 50 per cent as a national leader. What did his counterpart [Ruto] do? Look at the structure of the government, you will be amazed, he said. Speaking at his Wiper headquarters in Karen, Nairobi, Kalonzo agreed with Uhuru that it is time for other communities to produce the next President. This is the way to go, accept that we can have unity in our diversity. People hide behind some call to confuse Kenyans so that their community can continue sitting on everybody else, already you are sitting on everybody. We shall speak this truth, he said. Developer Abe Atiyehs second attempt at bringing a grocery store to his property at Center Street and Dewberry Avenue failed to garner city planners support Thursday evening. Atiyeh, under the company name Bethlehem Manor Village LLC, asked the Bethlehem Planning Commission for support to create a zoning overlay on the property at 1538 Center St., which would make a grocery store a permitted project. The developer argued the addition of the German supermarket chain Lidl to the neighborhood would benefit residents, whove long fought his controversial development plans for the site. The property is zoned for institutional uses like educational, medical and health facilities or other public institutions like parks. A grocery store is not allowed. Commission member Tom Barkers motion to recommend the change to Bethlehem City Council failed to garner support from Chairman Matthew Malozzi and member Joy Cohen. Prior to the vote, Lidl real estate manager Chris Dailey introduced the commission to the grocers fast-growing North American footprint via a virtual presentation. By the end of 2021, the supermarket chain hopes to have 150 U.S. stores open, he said. The property is described as an ideal location for Bethlehems first Lidl, given its proximity to Moravian College and downtown and suburban shoppers. Lidl is a true neighborhood grocer, Dailey said. If the zoning change was approved, Lidl would buy the land from Atiyeh and build the store, Atiyeh explained. (Route) 512 is a heavy traffic highway now, Atiyeh said. Its not ... the old Center Street of the past. City Planning Director Darlene Heller said the institutional overlay district was created for land abutting the Lehigh University campus, including Farrington Square, to create a seamless transition from the school boundary and the surrounding neighborhood. The Center Street property is much different, surrounded by a church, Catholic high school, homes and apartments, she said. The city is already struggling to support its existing commercial space and logistically the proposed project doesnt work with the terms of the overlay, she said. Is this site really the proper site for commercial use in the city? Heller said. And really our opinion is that its not. The overlay was intended as a bridge from one zone to another and this property doesnt fit the bill, Malozzi said. Thats what gives me pause personally, he said. I would love to see something developed on this site as well. Atiyeh has tried for more than a decade to develop the site as assisted living, a psychiatric hospital, drug treatment center and a 125-unit apartment complex. Barker noted the citys zoning allows a rubber manufacturing company on the property. Of all the proposals floated over the years, a grocery store is not a bad development, he said. Heller acknowledged the zoning did say such a use was permitted, but she believes it is a typo as no other manufacturing is allowed in an institutional zone. Back in September, Bethlehem City Council rejected another of Atiyehs zoning requests for the site. That wouldve permitted grocery stores on this property -- plus every other property citywide that is zoned Institutional. Council members labeled the request to change the institutional zoning district citywide as an overreach. Lidl opened its first Lehigh Valley store in Wilson Borough in May 2019. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Members of the House of Representatives said they are looking to amend a 22-year-old law to beef up the Department of Energy's defense against sudden fuel price spikes. The House Committee on Energy met Friday to discuss several measures proposing changes to Republic Act No. 8479 or the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation Act of 1998, after learning that the regulator has been rendered powerless in terms of oil price control. The initiative came after some lawmakers questioned swift changes in retail pump prices, which immediately occur when global crude rates surge. "Bakit nga tumaas ang presyo eh lumang stock naman 'yun? Binili niyo at a much lower price," Representative Stella Quimbo of Marikina's second district said. "Kapag bigla ang pagtaas ng oil price sa world market, biglaan ding tumataas ang presyo dito domestically. Pero 'pag biglaang malaking pagbaba sa world market, hindi ganoong kalaki or mabagal ang pag-reflect ng pagbaba ng presyo domestically," she added. [Translation: Why are prices surging when it's the old oil stock that's being sold? You (fuel companies) bought that at a much lower price. When there's a big spike in oil prices in the world market, domestic prices also shoot up. But if there's a big drop in the world market, the decline is not reflected as fast domestically.] Bayan Muna Party-List Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate said this may be due to "greed for profit." RELATED: Duterte hikes tariffs on petroleum products to raise funds for COVID-19 fight Existing DOE rules require oil firms to keep a minimum inventory worth 15 days for petroleum products. The requirement is higher at 30 days' worth of crude oil for refiners, while suppliers of liquefied petroleum gas or LPG must always have at least seven days' worth of supply. Rino Abad, director of DOE's Oil Industry Management Bureau, said there's not much the DOE can do as the 1998 law leaves price adjustments to market forces. "There is not even a definition of the law now on what is reasonable or unreasonable price. Lahat ng ito, kapag kinonekta natin [All these, if we connect them], removes the power of the government to control anything about the price," Abad told lawmakers in the virtual hearing. "Hindi mo ngayon ma-cite ang isang company na overpricing [Now, you cannot cite a company for overpricing]. There is no such thing in the oil deregulation law," he added. The Energy Department said it can only monitor and publish prevailing market prices under the said law, which was initially meant to attract new industry players and disrupt oligopoly with a "fair market" setup over two decades ago. Local pump prices have risen in the first two weeks of 2021 according to DOE's online oil monitor. This mirrored recent upticks in the benchmarks Dubai crude and Platts Singapore, which cited tighter supply from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Meanwhile, Abad explained that the DOE tried to make the pump pricing mechanism of private companies more transparent by asking them to "unbundle" or disclose how they set the weekly rates. However, the firms questioned the circular before the court to stop its implementation. READ: Oil companies oppose requirement for them to disclose factors behind fuel price increases Baguio City Representative Marquez Go said this exposed the loopholes of the existing law. "I think the consensus is we are willing to have it amended to respond to the changing times of our country," he told fellow lawmakers. The FBI is investigating 37 people over the death of Capitol cop Brian Sicknick The FBI is investigating 37 people over the death of Capitol cop Brian Sicknick who was reportedly beaten to death with a fire extinguisher during the riots last week. The New York Times reports that the bureau is pursuing 37 people over Sicknick's death but no one has been arrested yet. None of them have been identified. Sicknick, 42, was trying to fight the crowd off when he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. No footage of that attack has yet emerged but other videos from the riot show the mob using fire extinguishers as weapons, tossing them towards cops and spraying them in their faces. Sicknick returned to his field office afterwards, where he collapsed. He was taken to the hospital and he later died. Another cop committed suicide days later and four MAGA rioters- two men and two woman - died. Ashli Babbitt was shot as she tried to break into the Capitol with the mob. Roseanne Boyland was trampled in the Rotunda, according to her family, and two men - Ben Phillips and Kevin Greeson - suffered heart attacks. The MAGA mob descending on the US Capitol on January 6. They overwhelmed the relatively few Capitol cops who were there Riot police push back a crowd of supporters of US President Donald Trump after they stormed the Capitol building The hunt for Sicknick's killer comes as more details have emerged about the angry mob. Several Capitol cops have described being beaten by the crowd who were 'foaming at the mouth'. Michael Fanone, 40, Christina Laury and 32-year-old Daniel Hodges were among the Capitol cops who were overpowered by the mob on January 6. On Thursday, they spoke at a press conference to share details of how the rioters beat them after breaking in to the Capitol Building while the House certified the election result. Fanone, a father-of-four, told how the rioters tried to grab his gun and yelled: 'Kill him with his own gun!' Hodges is shown speaking at the Capitol on Thursday about the attack 'We werent battling 50 or 60 rioters in this tunnel. We were battling 15,000 people. 'It looked like a medieval battle scene,' Fanone said. He and his colleagues rushed to the Capitol after hearing an urgent call for back-up on the radio. Some say they had their batons stolen. One officer, who was dragged into the mob, said they tried to grab his gun. The FBI, Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies are now playing catch up to track down the 15,000 people who stormed the Capitol. Nancy Pelosi spoke on Friday threatened Republican lawmakers who 'aided and abetted' the mob that they also may face prosecution. SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- USAA Federal Savings Bank has named Lindsay Sacknoff as Senior Vice President and General Manager of its Omnichannel Sales and Service organization reporting to Bank President, Chad Borton. Sacknoff comes to USAA from TD Bank, where she was responsible for all consumer deposit products and payments across TD's U.S. footprint. She led the organization responsible for managing the consumer deposit products and services end-to-end across TD's 9 million customers. Previously, she served as the Senior Vice President for the U.S. Contact Centers overseeing the bank's contact center operations which were responsible for providing customer care through phone, social media, secure message and the TD Helps platform. "Lindsay's experience overseeing multiple member-facing channels is a natural fit for our Omnichannel organization," said Chad Borton, president of USAA Federal Savings Bank. "Our entire team has welcomed Lindsay to USAA and is integrating her more than 20 years of financial services industry expertise and leadership into our operations for the benefit of our membership." Recently named to it's "Most Powerful Women: Next" series, American Banker has recognized Sacknoff as one of the top female bankers under 40 in the United States. "Because USAA serves a membership with diverse needs, an omnichannel strategy that incorporates digital, phone and physical channels is critical," said Sacknoff. "The opportunity to help lead a team that provides mission-driven service when and where it's needed is something I'm passionate about and looking forward to." USAA Founded in 1922 by a group of military officers, USAA is among the leading providers of insurance, banking and investment and retirement solutions to nearly 13 million members of the U.S. military, veterans who have honorably served and their families. Headquartered in San Antonio, Tex., USAA has offices in seven U.S. cities and three overseas locations and employs more than 35,000 people worldwide. Each year, the company contributes to national and local nonprofits in support of military families and communities where employees live and work. For more information about USAA, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@USAA), or visit usaa.com. Contact: USAA Media Relations [email protected] 210-498-0940 USAA on Twitter: @usaa SOURCE USAA Related Links http://www.usaa.com 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. The Detroit Tigers spent big bucks on two shortstops Friday, the start of the international signing period. Cristian Santana of the Dominican Republic is getting a franchise-record $2.95 million signing bonus, according to MLB.com. That exceeds the $2.85 million paid to Cuban Roberto Campos in 2019. The Tigers also signed Venezuelan shortstop Abel Bastidas for $1.175 million deal, according to MLB.com. Santana is ranked No. 14 on MLB Pipelines list of top international prospects, while Bastidas is No. 27. The #Tigers have landed a pair of the best shortstops in the international class, agreeing to deals with No. 14 prospect Cristian Santana and No. 27 Abel Bastidas. @JesseSanchezMLB has more: https://t.co/qf1zLy0yQq pic.twitter.com/J3XO3Ac35W MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) January 15, 2021 In addition to the two big deals, the Tigers announced that they had signed Dominican shortstop Jensy De Leon, Cuban outfielder Carlos Pelegrin, Venezuelan outfielder Elian Riera, and Dominican right-handed pitchers Joel Baez and Rayner Castillo. MLB.com says Santana has five-tool potential with a chance to have plus tools across the board, while Bastidas compares to a young Carlos Guillen. Bastidas was trained at Academia de Beisbol Izturis, run by brothers and ex-big leaguers Cesar and Maicer Izturis. RELATED: MLB international signings: Hits and misses over the last 10 years Players in Canada and the United States, including Puerto Rico, are subject to the annual amateur draft in June. Players outside those countries may sign contracts when they turn 16. The signing period normally begins on July 2 but was pushed back to Jan. 15 due to the ongoing pandemic. Teams may spend between $4.2 million and $6.43 million annually on international free agents, depending on a variety of factors. They are no longer allowed to acquire additional bonus pool money from other teams in trades. The Tigers were allotted $6,431,000 to spend in this class. Although most high-profile players sign immediately at the start of the signing period, signings can continue until Dec. 15, 2021. Virtually all newly signed players will begin their careers at the Tigers academy in the Dominican Republic before moving up to rookie ball in Lakeland, Fla., in a couple of years. The journey to the big leagues -- if they make it that far -- can be a long one. Pitcher Anthony Castro, who made his Major League debut in 2020, signed as a teenager out of Venezuela in 2011 and had the third-longest tenure in the organization after Miguel Cabrera (2007) and Harold Castro (2011). Mayor Bill de Blasio presented the citys preliminary $92.28 billion Fiscal Year 2022 budget at a press briefing Thursday a financial plan that reflects huge gaps caused by the coronavirus pandemic. After one of the most painful years in our Citys history, this budget puts us on a path to recovery while making responsible choices in light of steep revenue losses due to COVID-19, de Blasio said. The mayor, though, struck a positive note early in the presentation because some proposed cuts will be reassessed following the announcement of a deal that will bring federal aid to New York. Sen. Chuck Schumer announced the deal for federal funding just hours before the briefing, leaving no time for de Blasio to update slides that said there would be no 3K expansion and that showed cuts to Fair Student Funding -- both of which he said would be restored. Despite the newly-announced influx of federal monies, de Blasio said the city must still reduce its overall headcount. Since Jan. 2020 he said the total number of city employees has been reduced by 7,000, and he said another 5,000 jobs would be cut in the coming budget. He talked about achieving the reductions through attrition, with a three-to-one hiring plan only one person hired for every three departures. De Blasio also said he would continue working with labor unions to find another $1 billion in labor savings. TAX REBATE FOR SOME HOMEOWNERS De Blasio also said during the briefing that the federal funds will allow the city to pursue a proposed tax rebate for some New York homeowners. The mayors presentation said that low-income homeowners have been hit by state laws that increased the assessed value of one, two and three family homes. The citys proposal is to use stimulus funds to create a new property tax rebate for families who own and live in a one, two or three family home with a market value of less than $500,000. He said up to 293,000 New York families may qualify. Pres. Trump signs bipartisan law creating ambassador position to combat anti-Semitism Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A bipartisan bill creating an ambassador-at-large position to combat anti-Semitism was signed into law by President Donald Trump on Wednesday. The Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act, introduced in the House by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., elevates the special envoy position and provides more clout and resources to the office in charge of leading the U.S. response to fighting anti-Semitism worldwide. Anti-Semitism [has been] on the rise in many countries around the globe over the past 10 years, Smith warned in a statement. Weve seen members of the Jewish community harassed, intimidated, assaulted and even killed. Weve seen sacred places like synagogues and graves desecrated. Weve heard the use of anti-Semitic slurs and threats, and the open targeting of the State of Israel with what the great Soviet refusenik and former religious prisoner Natan Sharansky told me are the three Ds demonization, double-standards and de-legitimization of Israel. Part of the job description of the position is to implement foreign policy objectives to combat hatred and discrimination toward Jews. The person currently serving in that role is Elan S. Carr, the son of Iraqi Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Iraq. Carr formerly served as deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County and has prosecuted violent crimes for more than a decade, including hate crimes. Smiths bill was co-sponsored by 87 members of the House from both major political parties. Sens. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Jackie Rosen, D-Nev., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and their staffs helped push through the legislation on the Senate side. My new law will raise the special envoy to the rank of ambassador-at-large, a high-level position that will allow the special envoy to report directly to the secretary of state, Smith said. The official rank of ambassador comes with greater seniority and diplomatic access not only here in Washington, but equally important, overseas in dealing with foreign governments. In short, it gives the special envoy the clout required to do the job more effectively. The House voted twice to approve Smiths legislation, once in September 2018 and again in January 2019. But in each instance, the bill stalled in the Senate even though it had the backing of human rights groups, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee Hadassah and Agudath Israel of America. The upper house passed the bill last December. The enactment was praised by Jewish leaders. Sadly, we have seen a surge of anti-Semitic incidents around the world in recent years, Nathan Diament, executive director for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, said in a statement. With the passage of this legislation, Congress is providing powerful new tools to the State Department to lead impactful international efforts to combat what has been aptly called the worlds oldest form of hatred and roll back the tide of anti-Jewish hate. Chaplain Taakov Wegner of the National Chaplains Association called the new law a welcome step in battling divisiveness and hate. The National Chaplains Association applauds President Donald J. Trump for approving Congressman Chris Smith's important bill which will help battle the scourge of anti-Semitism worldwide, Wegner said in a statement shared by Smiths office. In May, the international Jewish human rights organization Ant-Defamation League reported that the American Jewish community experienced record levels of anti-Semitic incidents in 2019. The organization began tracking such incidents in 1979. The group reported as many as 2,100 acts of assault, vandalism and harassment across the U.S. In recent years, the Jewish community in the U.S. was targeted in horrific attacks on their places of worship and businesses, such as the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh in 2018, the Poway synagogue shooting in California in April 2019, the Jersey City kosher mart shooting in December 2019 and the December 2019 stabbing at the home of a Hasidic rabbi in Monsey, New York. In 2019, there was a spree of violent assaults against Jewish people in New York City. Anti-Semitism is not just a problem in the U.S. In October 2019, a far-right gunman conducted an attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, while worshipers were inside celebrating Yom Kippur. Failing to break in, the gunman killed two people outside the synagogue. On Wednesday, police in Montreal, Quebec, arrested a man who reportedly was caught defacing the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim synagogue with swastikas and planning to torch the building. The new laws enactment comes over a year after President Donald Trump passed an executive order aimed at combatting anti-Semitism on college campuses in the U.S. The order directs federal agencies to treat anti-Semitic acts as a violation of civil rights. Trumps order relied upon the definition of anti-Semitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews, the definition reads. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. The order was opposed by critics who argued that it would enable the government to withhold funding from colleges that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The movement is aimed at opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Smith, who has served in Congress since 1981, is seen as arguably the leading congressional champions for international religious freedom, taking the baton from retired Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia. He previously served as co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. He also authored the 2016 Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, which bolstered the State Department's ability to help counter-terrorism and the increasing persecution of religious minorities. Azerbaijan and Hungary discussed how Hungarian companies can participate in the reconstruction of areas previously affected by Second Karabakh war, Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Hungarian co-chair of the Hungarian-Azerbaijan IGC Peter Szijjarto wrote on his official Facebook page. Szijjarto noted that the topic was discussed during a video conference with Sahil Babayev, the Azerbaijani Minister for Labor and Social Welfare, Co-Chair of the Hungarian-Azerbaijani Joint Economic Committee. Szijjartos said there is no doubt that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been among what has made headlines in the international press alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. "Hungary has always stood up for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. After the end of the conflict, we have now discussed how Hungarian companies can participate in the reconstruction of areas previously affected by the war," he said. Szijjarto added that the Azerbaijani side welcomed this intention, and Hungarian EximBank has opened a $100 million credit line for Hungarian companies intending to participate in the reconstruction program. In order to reduce the consequences of the war, Hungary also offered a grant of 25,000 euros for de-mining activities, he said. 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. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. BISHKEK, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The new authorities of Kyrgyzstan have a great opportunity to bring relations with China to a new level, Kyrgyz political scientist Edil Osmonbetov told Xinhua on Wednesday. The expert said that new opportunities and new prospects for Kyrgyz-Chinese cooperation appeared with the election of a new president and new authorities in Kyrgyzstan. "On the one hand, we have a strategic partnership and, accordingly, today we can talk about real projects that could be within the framework of Kyrgyz-Chinese cooperation," the expert said. "In addition, we have a geographical proximity, we have a common border with China," he said. The expert said he hopes to see Kyrgyzstan and China further promote their relations and for this, it is necessary to strengthen inter-parliamentary, inter-state and cultural ties. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Osmonbetov expressed optimism in bilateral cooperation in fight against the novel coronavirus. Kyrgyzstan could receive great help from China, especially in the field of medical equipment, the political analyst said. "This would be a great contribution to the development of bilateral relations, because this is no longer just economic aid in the form of grants and loans. A higher level of humanitarian and cultural interaction is an opportunity to save lives, and it will always remain in the memory of the people," said Osmonbetov. The expert said he believes that the priority of bilateral relations would be the Belt and Road Initiative, which would strengthen the economic potential of Kyrgyzstan, including boosting the export of Kyrgyz products to the huge Chinese market. Federal grand juries are the mechanism used by prosecutors to bring an indictment against a defendant. The grand jury which consists of 23 members of the public who convene over a period of months or even years operates in secret, issuing subpoenas for records through federal prosecutors and hearing testimony from witnesses before deciding if probable cause exists to believe a crime was committed. Wednesdays news that people 65 and older could now get the coronavirus vaccine began kindling a bit of hope for millions of older Californians and their family members. But on Thursday, they were greeted not with needles or appointments, but with busy phone lines, overwhelmed websites and physicians who said they had little idea when theyd be able to give their senior patients vaccinations. Information seemed more scarce than the vaccine itself. Kaiser Permanente patients reported receiving a message that they would have to wait as long as four hours to speak to anyone who could schedule an appointment. They had better luck than Sutter Health patients, who said they found the phone lines were down, along with the health care providers website. And Stanford Health Care patients said their website and mobile phone apps were operating, but offered scant information about vaccination availability for seniors. Frustration was growing Thursday amid a sputtering vaccine rollout in the Bay Area and across California. There is no information available or anybody who can tell us about it, said Vijay Khasat, an 80-year-old insulin-dependent diabetic from Hayward, in an email. We contacted our health care providers who also gave us the silent treatment. Carolee Ziegenhagen, 74, of Alameda, said her sister in Florida got her first shot last week and is due with the second scheduled for Feb. 3. Meanwhile, she cant get an answer from her doctors, medical group, insurers or pharmacy. I would love to know when I can sign up for mine, she said. In Richmond, Mayor Tom Butt said he has been unable to get any information from his provider, Kaiser, about when he can sign up for a vaccine. Butt, who is 76, said he signed up on the Contra Costa County website Wednesday morning. Im a little baffled Im not hearing anything from Kaiser, he said. I went to their website and Im not finding anything there. Late Thursday afternoon, Kaiser Permanente Northern California announced it would contact all members 65 and over to discuss the availability of vaccines but warned that the supply was limited. A Sutter Health spokeswoman acknowledged Thursday night that phone lines were overwhelmed and the website problems are being investigated, though both are working. Patients who qualify for vaccines should now be able to schedule them. "At this time, Sutter is prioritizing the states most vulnerable populations including those who are 75-plus years of age and our community health care workers," spokeswoman Angeline Sheets said. Sutter's phone appointment line will be staffed over the three-day weekend and scheduling would soon be available through its online portal. At UCSF, spokeswoman Elizabeth Fernandez said the health system has sent out messages to its members about the status of vaccines, including the limited and sporadic supply. We have almost finished vaccinating our health care workers, she said. On Friday, she said, we are starting with our primary care patients aged 75 and over, and hope to move to patients age 65 to 74 soon. San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney said the city is erring by relying on health care providers hospitals and doctors to provide the inoculations. Instead, to ensure that vaccines get into arms faster, he said the citys health department should launch mass immunization sites at places like stadiums, arenas, parking lots and parks, as other cities have done. The current situation is just outrageous, he said. Weve known about this for months, and there doesnt seem to be a clear plan for widespread distribution by public health. A representative from San Franciscos Department of Emergency Management said the health department is vaccinating patients over 65 in the citys health network in two clinics. As more vaccine comes available, this will be scaled to other clinics, the representative said, adding that the city is working with private health care providers to find additional facilities and accelerate vaccination. Adding to the frustration for older Bay Area residents is the knowledge that friends in other counties and states are getting vaccinations while they wait on hold or continue refreshing their web browsers. While people older than 75 can get vaccinations in Fresno County, Haney said, my parents, who are 92 and 93 and live in San Francisco, cant even get any information. Some of the lucky few who are able to get answers arent very happy with them. Allen Podell, an 83-year-old engineer, lives in Palo Alto, 2 miles from Stanford Hospital. But when he started digging deep to find out where he might be able to get a vaccination, Stanford Health recommended Pinole, Danville and south San Jose all long drives hes not willing to make. So Im just nailed, he said. Nobody else will take me, so I have to wait for Stanford, but theyve fumbled the ball again. Im 83, nearly 84, so Ive learned to be patient. But its really a matter of life or death for us. I can picture these guys sitting around fiddling. Were held accountable to our local county for our vaccine supply and who we vaccinate. We were instructed yesterday that we may begin vaccinating patients who are 75 years and older. Weve been actively preparing for the opportunity to vaccinate our patients, Dr. Niraj Sehgal, Chief Medical Officer for Stanford Health Care said in a statement. Merle Kahree, 71, a retired television news writer, lives in San Francisco, where her doctor told her he wouldnt be getting vaccine to give to patients until June. And thats just the first dose, she said. Kahree said she knew that distribution of the vaccine would be slow but figured there would at least be some general information so people would know what to expect. I just want guidance, she said. How long do I have to isolate at home? But I know Im lucky. Im healthy I think and I have a roof over my head. Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan The WHO team arrives in Wuhan city to investigate pandemic origins, in Hubei Province, China, on Jan. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) WHOs Team Arrives in Wuhan to Investigate Origin of CCP Virus as Chinese Citizen Criticizes Visit A team of experts led by the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Jan. 14 to investigate the origin of the CCP virus. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) called the WHOs visit a scientific research cooperation. The family member of a COVID-19 victim who died in Wuhan told The Epoch Times that he believed the WHO wont find anything and is just being used by the Chinese regime as a scapegoat for the pandemic. Two members of the WHO team stayed behind in Singapore after testing positive for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19. On Jan. 14, the remaining 13 experts arrived in Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged in China in late 2019. CCP authorities required that the WHO team quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. The experts will stay in Wuhan for about one month, during which authorities arranged for them to visit the Huanan food market, local scientific research institutes, and hospitals. Wuhan resident Zhang Hai, whose father died of COVID-19 last year, said in an interview with The Epoch Times, WHO is just a figurehead in my eyesa tool, to put it bluntly. It is now looking for the source of the virus, and the first anniversary of the outbreak has passed, and all (evidence) is gone. Zhang Hais father, Zhang Lifa, was a military veteran. Last year, he went to Wuhan to seek medical treatment for a fractured femur. On Jan. 17, 2020, he was infected with the CCP virus while he was staying at a local hospital, and died within two weeks. Zhang Hai filed a lawsuit at the Wuhan Intermediate Peoples Court on June 10, seeking compensation of 2 million yuan (about $286,730) from Chinese authorities, alleging that the governments decision to cover up information about the outbreak caused his fathers death. He named three government entities as defendants: the Wuhan city government, Hubei provincial government, and General Hospital of Central Theater Command in Wuhan. When the Wuhan municipal court rejected Zhangs case, he filed a second lawsuit in August and sent his complaint documents via postal service to the Higher Peoples Court in Hubei Province. However, the Hubei Higher Court rejected his case. Then in October, Zhang filed a civil complaint to the Supreme Court in Beijing and he is still waiting for a response. Zhang is the second known person to sue Chinese government entities over their botched handling of the virus. Zhang Hai shows his statement regarding suing Chinese governments for concealing the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, which he alleges caused his fathers death. Aug. 20, 2020. (Provided to The Epoch Times) Zhang pointed out, The local governments have never admitted to concealing information about the outbreak. The WHO definitely wont be able to find out anything, so that the officials will have more reasons and excuses not to admit that they concealed information [about the virus], which killed many. As to the CCPs official description of the WHO-led investigation as a scientific research cooperation, Zhang said that the people are not fools and they all know whats going on. The CCP officials can say what they want because the propaganda tools are in their hands and they monopolize the public discourse as they silence dissenters and give them no platform to speak, he added. Zhang asked, If you [CCP] didnt conceal the outbreak in Wuhan, would it cause such serious consequences now?! He also revealed that hes been silenced by Chinese authorities. I am in China, and my voice has been blocked on all the platforms. Zhang is convinced that the WHOs visit to Wuhan at this time is just a show and the United Nations agency is unlikely to conduct an independent investigation. If you are independent, it is impossible for you to enter China or Wuhan. It is as simple as that. The WHO-led investigation, I regard it as a joke, he said. During the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, Chinas Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the Huanan food market was the source of the CCP virus. The Epoch Times previously reported that in early March last year, all market vendor stalls in Huanan food market were demolished, leaving only the framework of the main building. Zhang said that all of the markets sign boards have since been removed, and the building is boarded up. You cant see the Huanan food market at all, and you cant even see its name. Huanan food m arket in Wuhan, China in January 2021. (Provided by interviewee) He questioned, A year later, what is left for you (WHO) to investigate? Are you here to dig out the past? On Jan. 2, Chinas foreign minister Wang Yi tried to shift the blame and suggested that the source of the pandemic was not in China. He said, More and more studies have shown that the pandemic is likely to be caused by separate outbreaks in multiple places around the world. Zhang hopes Chinese authorities can put more focus in showing respect to the people who died from COVID-19. So many people died in Wuhan. I hope that these people [CCP officials] who are telling tall tales can have a little respect for human life. The WHO-led investigative team is due to visit local scientific research institutes. But before the team arrived in Wuhan, Scotland-based Sunday Post reported on Jan. 9 that more than 300 research articles published by the Wuhan Institute of Virology were removed from the website of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The data that was deleted included critical research on virus transmission such as animal-to-human disease studies, the report said. Some experts and officials outside of China have raised the possibility that the CCP virus leaked out of a virology lab in Wuhan. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Conservative leader in the UK and member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance for China, told Sunday Post the Chinese regime was covering up evidence when the critical research was removed. It is vital that there is a thorough investigation into what happened, but China seems to be doing everything it can to prevent it, Smith said. Luo Ya contributed to the report. Recent reports revealed that more Christians are being killed because of their faith amid the COVID 19 pandemic. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, more Christians suffer persecution and face death from different parts of the world. During these times when people are restricted to go out, still more believers go through harassment to the point of losing their lives while the number of those who receive Christ as Lord and Savior continues to increase. Open Doors, a Christian advocacy group just compiled the 2021 World Watch List revealing the most recent statistics on Christian persecutions across the globe. The compilation said there are 340 million Christians suffering from discrimination and persecution due to their faith, The Guardian reported. According to the report, there are 4,761 Christians who lost their lives because of their faith, a 60 percent rise from the figures gathered for the past year. 90 percent of the reported death cases came from Africa. The COVID-19 restrictions did not help to lower the numbers yet even added up to the sufferings of the believers. Christians in some countries of Africa suffer discrimination during the COVID-19 aid distribution. Village heads and committees refuse to give them relief. At times even government officials deprive them of their pandemic aid. Several countries tightened their rules in distributing supplies in favor of other religions during the lockdown. In Kaduna, Nigeria, Muslims receive a majority of the ration while Christians only receive one-sixth of the portion. The country also recorded 3,800 faith-related deaths which are three times higher than the previous year. In India, hospitals, schools, and organizations run by Christian faced a hard time during the pandemic. The government blocked the entry of foreign funding that sustains their needs. The attack carried on by the Hindu nationalist government in India became rampant. The atmosphere of Christian and Muslim harassment has been the norm. The Chinese Communist Party's campaign to "sinicize" Christianity also created a challenge on believers during the trying times. The government installed facial recognition systems on church surveillance. This meant that online services on state-approved churches are monitored as well as the aid distribution during the pandemic. In other countries such as sub-Saharan Africa, Christians faced worse challenges as the world combats the coronavirus scare. Islamist militant groups took advantage of the lockdowns and the weakened government rule implementations. This gave believers a 30 percent increase in suffering from violence initiated by the militant groups. "The increasing persecution of Christians across the world should disturb us all. Freedom of religion is what underpins many other human rights and civil liberties," said David Landrum, Open Doors UK and Ireland head of advocacy. "Oppressive governments know this, and they are exploiting the pandemic crisis to turn the screw on Christians," Landrum added, according to The Guardian. Meanwhile, Muslim volunteers in Northern Iraq encouraged Christians to return to their homes by repairing destroyed churches and houses. Sudan's new constitution on the other hand now gives freedom of religion to every citizen and no longer specifies that Islam is the state religion. New Delhi: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday (January 15) expressed outrage after being grilled by the reporters on the wake of the killing of Rupesh Kumar Singh, a manager with IndiGo airlines, by unidentified assailants. The CM was responding to questions on law and order in the state by the reporters. Nitish also lambasted the media and asked them not to demoralise the police. Addressing the media persons, he said, You are great. Whose supporter are you? You go and find out who is responsible for the murder. He was quoted by ANI as saying, I spoke with the Director-General of Police (DGP), and a special team has been formed. Don`t demoralise police. If someone doesn`t carry out their duty, action is taken. What used to happen before 2005? There was a lot of crime. Is it the same today? Rupesh Kumar Singh was shot at by unidentified bike-borne men in the Punaichak area of Patna on January 12. He later succumbed to his injuries. Meanwhile, the kin of the deceased on Friday demanded the probe to be transferred from Bihar police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Nandeshwar Singh, brother of the deceased, questioned the CMs promise of arresting the culprits within 48 hours. He was quoted as saying by news agency ANI, "Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had given an assurance that culprits will be arrested within 48 hours. But there`s been no arrest. We feel that the Patna administration is unable of making the arrests. So, the Chief Minister should hand over the probe to CBI. UB to offer Indigenous health disparities course this spring Studying these medical inequities from their (Native) perspective ... will not only help provide insights into understanding health equity but provide critical information to improve the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people. BUFFALO, N.Y. As the University at Buffalo seeks to expand its commitment to Indigenous studies, a new course being offered this spring in the School of Public Health and Health Professions aims to teach students about the health disparities Indigenous populations face. The Indigenous health disparities course will be taught by Dean S. Seneca, who grew up in Buffalo and whose family origins are founded in Western New York with the Seneca Nation of Indians. A nationally-recognized expert in health sciences and a global advocate for the underserved, Seneca, who has a masters in public health and a masters of city and regional planning, is the CEO and founder of Seneca Scientific Solutions+. The company is based in Cattaraugus, N.Y., and aims to create healthier and safer communities through evidence-based practices. The course is intended to support future public health leaders as they strive to become experts in promoting well-being throughout the world. The outbreak of COVID-19 has made it clear that health officials need to be better prepared to handle such global pandemics, said Seneca, who designed the course curriculum and will hold an adjunct position in UBs Department of Community Health and Health Behavior. Part of that preparedness is understanding that, on a global level, Indigenous people experience lower life expectancy, lower quality of life, and a higher prevalence of many chronic and infectious diseases in comparison to other populations. Seneca has more than 20 years of experience in the field of infectious disease outbreaks, including anthrax, H1N1, Ebola, Zika and now COVID-19. He previously served as a senior health scientist in the Partnership Support Unit within the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using an evidence-based approach, I will draw on my 20-plus years of work with the CDC, and my experience in the field of infectious disease outbreaks, to provide students with an overview of the many health issues impacting Indigenous populations today and into the future, Seneca said. The course will also explore the social determinants of health, intergenerational trauma, health equity, and racism and health. Students will examine the real histories of Indigenous peoples, their cultural norms and adaptations, their traditional healing practices, and the impacts of colonization on them through the advancement of westernization, all of which are key public health issues, according to Seneca. Studying these medical inequities from their (Native) perspective the social reasons why they occur and within the context of the current health crises of the COVID-19 pandemic will not only help provide insights into understanding health equity but provide critical information to improve the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people, Seneca said. We are building the tool kits to improve the ways in which public health professionals manage such crises and ultimately save lives. Seneca received his bachelors from UB and both of his masters degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Adding the course to the schools curriculum is a nod to the very land upon which UB sits, said Heather Orom, associate dean for equity, diversity and inclusion in the School of Public Health and Health Professions. Offering coursework on Indigenous health is a necessary addition to the UB public health curriculum. UB is built on Seneca land and this is an overdue step toward deepening our connection with our local community, as well as graduating better informed and skilled public health professionals, Orom said. Registration for the course is currently open. Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) and Thales have signed a Teaming Agreement to work in partnership on the STARStreak Air Defence System with the support of both the Indian and the UK governments. The Teaming Agreement, signed at a virtual ceremony held on Wednesday, will facilitate manufacture of STARStreak Air Defence System in India, BDL said on Thursday. BDL, a government company under the Ministry of Defence, will become a part of the STARStreak global supply chain, providing the opportunity for export of the system to existing and future STARStreak Air Defence customers, including the UK Armed Forces through this agreement. The STARStreak Missile System is in service in the British Army and has been procured by defence forces worldwide. The fastest missile in its category, STARStreak is unique due to its three laser-guided darts, which cannot be jammed by any known countermeasure. It has the capability to defeat any air target - even armoured helicopters - as the last line of defence. BDL's Director (Technical) N.P. Diwakar, Thales CEO Alex Cresswell, and Thales Vice President and Country Director, India, Emmanuel de Roquefeuil, signed the agreement in the presence of BDL Chairman and Managing Director, Commodore Siddharth Mishra (retd),UK Minister for Defence Procurement Jeremy Quin, and UK Defence & Security Exports head Mark Goldsack. BDL, in a statement, said that as a part of its global outreach, it is trying to forge alliance with foreign companies to take the 'Make in India' mission further. Earlier, Thales and BDL had signed a Memorandum of Understanding to assess the opportunity for the transfer of technology for STARStreak. "Today's agreement will also provide opportunity for BDL to offer STARStreak missile system to the Indian Armed Forces with a minimum of 60 per cent indigenous content, as well as design and development of the system, qualifying it under the 'Make in India' programme," it said. Mishra said that the partnership between Thales and BDL in this project with transfer of technology for STARStreak will create a new business opportunity for BDL and its supply chain partners in India. "BDL will be able to enhance its footprints in the export market in addition to domestic market with this new business opportunity. The Government of India's 'Make in India' programme, the 'ease of doing business' and recent 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' initiatives have created a congenial ecosystem for the foreign OEMs to tie up with Indian Industries like BDL to establish the production facility in India," he added. Cresswell said that the BDL manufactured system will be exported to various countries including UK. He noted that this is good news for Thales business in Belfast in Northern Ireland, for the strong supply chain of UK SMEs with whom it works and for its teams in India. It was a hopefulness that the powerful inventions could be used to better the human race and unite people in ways that had long eluded us. Such a sentiment seems far-fetched today, as another popular old computer phrase took precedence: Garbage In Garbage Out, which basically means: bad input produces bad output. And tech has certainly helped trash the place the place being America. Hence, the need for reinvention, which I discussed with Mayor Francis Xavier Suarez of Miami last month. It seems like an eternity has passed since our conversation yet it still resonates. I had called the peppy pol because of the spate of attention that the Florida city has gotten recently after a bunch of well-known Silicon Valley investors like Keith Rabois and Shervin Pishevar had relocated there from the Bay Area to begin anew. Remember Miami Vice, the TV crime drama set in Florida that was an 80s phantasmagoria of white suits, fast speedboats and a whole lot of artisanal beard stubble? Now, decades later, consider the latest trend: Miami VC. Mr. Suarez, a young Republican rising star, has garnered a lot of attention lately by using social media to market his balmy city as the next great place to start over. It all began early in December when a longtime investor suggested on Twitter that Silicon Valley should move to Miami. How can I help? Mr. Suarez replied, employing a can-do, come-on-down brio that is in stark contrast to the growing disdain cities like San Francisco have developed for tech culture. Mayor Suarez loves you, tech bro, he really loves you. He kept at it for weeks, with a series of pithy and adorkable comments on Twitter, trying to take advantage of the wholesale re-evaluation many tech firms are having about staying in the Bay Area, given that the pandemic has spurred a rethink of remote work. 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. Despite owning several publications, the brothers tried to keep out of the media spotlight. Privacy is a valuable commodity, David Barclay reportedly once said. But that privacy was shattered last year by a succession drama. A family fight over the inheritance of the business empire and the sale of the Ritz burst into public view in a court case when Mr. Barclays sons were caught spying on their uncle Frederick and his daughter, fraying the relationship between the brothers. It was a great journey in everything that we did, the good, the bad, the ugly, Frederick Barclay said in a statement after his brothers death. We experienced it from being bombed out of our beds in Coventry to the deals that we made and the ones that got away. The Barclay brothers, as they were known, received knighthoods in 2000 for their charitable services. They wore matching outfits to the ceremony light gray waistcoats and bright purple ties in their formal morning dress and knelt together before Queen Elizabeth II in what was called an unusual double dubbing. So reclusive were the twins that there have been no known published photos of them since that ceremony. Whether for reasons of privacy or eccentricity or whether simply to make the most of the luxuries afforded by their wealth the brothers lived in a castle they had built on a small island in the English Channel, off the northeast coast of France, purchased in the early 1990s. A BBC reporter was sued for breach of privacy in 1996 for trying to reach them on the island. ThoughtWorks has agreed to acquire Gemini Solutions, a privately-held software development and consulting services firm. Gemini Solutions is a 2005 founded by a group of Silicon Valley technologists. The company is dedicated to delivering world-class software product development services. Gemini Solutions offers a unique blend of creativity, agility, discipline, and technical excellence which has resulted in enduring partnerships with clients. The acquisition will see the establishment of ThoughtWorks Romania with the Gemini Solutions team at its core. The deal with strengthen ThoughtWorks foundation and European expansion. It will enable ThoughtWorks to provide nearshore support for its clients in the UK and Germany. It will also continue to support Geminis existing clients in North America, France and Germany. The Gemini team brings with them a wealth of experience in IoT, big data, AI, data science, mobility, and cloud that will enhance and strengthen ThoughtWorks' offer in this space. As a part of the deal, Serban Tir, the previous CTO of Gemini, will serve as the General Manager of ThoughtWorks Romania. We are delighted that Gemini Solutions Inc will be joining the ThoughtWorks family. The team will form a key part of ThoughtWorks' global as well as European expansion plans. We have been seeking a premium partner to help increase our nearshore delivery capability and capacity, especially in Europe, and Gemini is a perfect fit. We're excited about taking on the baton from the Gemini founders and taking the business to the next level of its evolution. The team brings with them a wealth of experience and will also accelerate growth in our key strategic focus areas of digital transformation, enterprise modernization, data, and customer experience. Gemini's talent, cultural fit, commitment to delivery, ability to grow, and existing client relationships fit nicely with our own, said Guo Xiao, president and chief executive officer, ThoughtWorks. Since our inception, we have worked to help leading organizations regardless of size or maturity to flourish and thrive by providing exceptional software solutions. ThoughtWorks and Gemini Solutions have a common philosophy and dedication to client success. We are excited to have the opportunity to become part of a leading player in the global IT industry. This acquisition is also a testament and validation of the great talent and capability of the Romanian IT sector that a global organization like ThoughtWorks would look to invest in this market, said Theo Nissim, chief executive officer & founder, Gemini Solutions Inc. The transaction is expected to close in January 2021, subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions. Financial details are not being disclosed. Millions of WhatsApp users abandoned the messaging app ahead of a privacy update that would share their data with Facebook, but due to such a great loss, WhatsApp is now postponing the data-sharing change. The smartphone app canceled its February 8 deadline for accepting an update, saying it would use the pause to clear up misinformation around privacy and security. The firm would instead 'go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15.' However, WhatsApp back peddling on its update may not be enough to regain its losses, as many flocked to the encrypted-messaging apps Signal and Telegram -both have been downloaded more than 1.3 million times since the announcement. Millions of WhatsApp users abandoned the messaging app ahead of a privacy update that would share their data with Facebook, but due to such a great loss, WhatsApp is now postponing the data-sharing change 'We've heard from so many people how much confusion there is around our recent update,' WhatsApp said in a blog post. 'This update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook.' WhatsApp announced the privacy policy change on January 7, which would require all countries outside of Europe and the UK to permit the app to share data with Facebook. Many users were furious by the move and flocked to other messaging apps, primarily Telegram and Signal. WhatsApp announced the privacy policy change on January 7, which would require all countries outside of Europe and the UK to permit the app to share data with Facebook Telegram picked up nearly 1.7 million downloads and Signal gained 1.2 million downloads since WhatsApp notified users of its privacy update Telegram picked up nearly 1.7 million downloads and Signal gained 1.2 million downloads since WhatsApp notified users of its privacy update. Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, said: 'People no longer want to exchange their privacy for free services,' Durov said without directly referring to the rival app. Elon Musk may have also helped with WhatsApp losing millions of users. The billionaire tweeted 'Use Signal' on January 7, which was the same day Signal saw the massive spike in downloads. WhatsApp installations also fell approximately 13 percent to 10.3 million downloads in the first seven days of January, compared to the seven days prior. The update concerns how merchants using WhatsApp to chat with customers can share data with Facebook, which could use the information for targeted ads, according to the social network. 'We can't see your private messages or hear your calls, and neither can Facebook,' WhatsApp said in an earlier blog post. 'We don't keep logs of who everyone is messaging or calling. We can't see your shared location and neither can Facebook.' WhatsApp installations also fell approximately 13 percent to 10.3 million downloads in the first seven days of January, compared to the seven days prior The update concerns how merchants using WhatsApp to chat with customers can share data with Facebook, which could use the information for targeted ads, according to the social network Many users did not waste anytime dumping WhatsApp for other messaging apps following news of the update Location data along with message contents is encrypted end-to-end, according to WhatsApp. 'We're giving businesses the option to use secure hosting services from Facebook to manage WhatsApp chats with their customers, answer questions, and send helpful information like purchase receipts,' WhatsApp said in a post. 'Whether you communicate with a business by phone, email, or WhatsApp, it can see what you're saying and may use that information for its own marketing purposes, which may include advertising on Facebook.' Technology experts note that WhatsApp's new requirement of its users makes legally binding a policy that has been widely in use since 2016. Facebook aims to monetize WhatsApp by allowing businesses to contact clients via the platform, making it natural for the internet giant to centralize some data on its servers. The move has also caught the attention of government officials who find it just as concerning as the public. The Turkish Competition Authority said it is opening an investigation and requiring WhatsApp to suspend the data sharing obligation on its users. However, technology experts note that WhatsApp's new requirement of its users makes legally binding a policy that has been widely in use since 2016 - but users are still not sticking around following WhatsApp making the Several Turkish state organizations -- including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's media office -- switched to Turkcell telecom's new messaging service BiP in response. The terms of service tweak also put WhatsApp in the crosshairs in Italy and India, where a petition has been filed in a Delhi court. WhatsApp's notice to users lacked clarity and its privacy implications need to be carefully evaluated, Italian data protection agency GPDP said in a post at its website. GPDP said it has shared its concerns with the European Data Protection Board and reserved the right to intervene in the matter. Facebook has come under increasing pressure from regulators as it tries to integrate its services. Encrypted messaging app Telegram has seen user ranks surge on the heels of the WhatsApp service terms announcement, said its Russia-born founder Encrypted messaging app Signal has also seen a huge surge in demand, helped by a tweeted recommendation by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. WhatsApp has sought to reassure worried users, even running full-page newspaper adverts in India, proclaiming that 'respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA'. UPDATE: Jenna Ryan, the North Texas real estate agent who took a private plane to participate in the U.S. Capitol protest that evolved into a violent riot on Jan. 6, has been charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building without lawful authority and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In a filing from the Department of Justice submitted Jan. 15, prosecutors said authorities recovered a deleted Facebook live video showing Ryan entering the Capitol building through the Rotunda entrance. Jon Cherry/Getty Images, MBR / TNS "We are going to f---ing go in here," Ryan could be heard saying in the video as she approaches the top of the stairs. "Life or death, it doesnt matter. Here we go." Ryan then exposed her face on camera, saying, Yall know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for your realtor. The video continued to show her entering the building, chanting U-S-A! U-S-A! and yelling, Here we are, in the name of Jesus! She exposed her face on video again while inside the building. Ryan previously claimed she did not enter the Capitol building. She posted a public statement to her Twitter page on Jan. 8. "I was invited to go to Washington D.C. by a friend to witness the march," Ryan wrote. "Unfortunately, what I believed to be a peaceful political march turned into a violent protest. I do not condone the violence that occurred on January 6, 2020, and I am truly heartbroken for the people who have lost their lives. Hatred and violence toward each other are not going to solve our country's issues. As a nation, we need to come together Republican, Democrat and Independent and have an open and honest discussion about the issues in our country and resolve our issues in peace." EARLIER: Facebook.com/jenna.ryan1 One Dallas-area woman flew by private jet to participate in the initial protest at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday that turned violent as the mob breached the building. Realtor and radio host Jenna Ryan took a private jet with three others to Washington D.C. to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump. AFTER THE CHAOS: Internet detectives are identifying scores of pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol. Some have already been fired. "OK guess who's going to DC by private jet?!?! Meeee," Ryan wrote on Facebook on Jan. 3. She and three others can be seen in the private plane in a photo posted Jan. 5. Newsweek's Lydia Smith reports that Ryan flew from US Trinity Aviation in Denton. Twitter/@dotJenna Ryan posted several videos and photos from the Capitol grounds on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. In one photo posted to Twitter, she poses next to a broken window. "Window at The capital," Ryan wrote. "And if the news doesn't stop lying about us we're going to come after their studios next..." Ryan also livestreamed from the Capitol grounds. It is unclear if she ever entered the building. "All these working-class people taking the week off," Ryan said in the stream. "We flew here for freedom. They want to steal the election, they want to steal everything." Australian tourist Travis James McLeod, 43, faces jail in Bali for 'drug possession' The Fremantle man, 43, allegedly had methamphetamine in his Bali villa He was transferred to a drug rehabilitation centre as he awaits his trial McLeod faces 12 years' jail if he is found guilty of being in possession of drugs He won't be charged for possessing kratom because the law is not yet enforced Travis James McLeod (pictured) from Fremantle, Perth was arrested in Bali in November last year after police allegedly found him with 0.86g of methamphetamine An Australian man locked up in a Bali jail he calls 'Hell's hallway' claims he was just investigating the medical uses of a local drug and doesn't deserve to be charged with meth possession. ADVERTISEMENT Travis James McLeod from Fremantle, Perth was arrested in November after police allegedly found him with 0.86g of meth. The 43-year-old was also found with locally grown stimulant called kratom, which comes from a Southeast Asian tree and can have similar effects to opioids. McLeod however was not charged with possession of a local drug known as kratom as the laws are not yet enforced in Indonesia. He was on Thursday transferred to a drug rehabilitation centre where he is awaiting trial after his case was handed over to prosecutors. He was charged with drug possession and could be jailed for up to 12 years, as well as charge of using drugs. McLeod described the prison he has spent the past three months locked up in as 'Hell's hallway' that was 'like a microwave oven'. McLeod, 43, (centre) faces 12 years behind bars for allegedly having meth inside his Bali villa McLeod insists he did nothing wrong because he was just investigating the benefits of kratom which he's described as the 'world's most magical medicinal plant'. 'I am a kratom advocate and I have been using myself as a guinea pig,' he said. Documenting his research, McLeod claimed he visited the the local Dayak tribes in Borneo who claim kratom helps them live longer. One person even lived to 120 years, he claimed. Click here to resize this module McLeod also issued a warning to fellow Australians hoping to travel to Bali when the coronavirus pandemic is over. 'Don't trust anybody, nobody... if somebody offers you drugs, it won't be drugs or they will be the police,' he said. ADVERTISEMENT 'If somebody goes to get you drugs and they get caught they will tell the police and... that's what happened to me, my good friend brought police back to my house.' The Cheltenham Festival is as much an Irish institution as it is a British one. Whether it's the big-hitters like Willie Mullins and the Riccis, Gordon Elliott and the O'Learys, or the smalltime Irish trainers and owners with the horse of a lifetime, a ticket to Cheltenham is the holy grail. That ticket is now far more expensive in the post-Brexit era with owners facing VAT bills if bringing horses from Ireland into the UK for any race meeting. That's according to a report in the Racing Post where Irish training supremo Willie Mullins is quoted as saying VAT bills required stand at 19% the value of the horse itself. Irish-owned and trained racehorses are among the best in the world and often fetch sums far-exceeding six figures. That means VAT bills for owners could extend to tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands for those with multiple horses. Almost 200 Irish horses cross the Irish Sea to compete at Cheltenham every year with the Prestbury Cup tally of Irish vs British winners a running commentary thread throughout the week in Gloucestershire. That could become a foregone conclusion in future years if these mounting costs exclude some Irish runners. Speaking to the Racing Post, Willie Mullins explained that the VAT charges are refundable but could take months to be returned, meaning the financial burden, although temporary, could result in some owners revising plans of a Cheltenham raid with their horse. "I'm told we have to pay 19 per cent of her value in VAT and we mightn't get that back for three months so that would be a bit of a worry," the Carlow handler said. He said the sums of money involved would have to be "colossal" and he doesn't believe it is sustainable, adding, "there has to be a better mechanism in place for Cheltenham." Cheltenham Racecourse owner, Jockey Club Racecourses, told the newspaper that they are working on finding a solution since becoming aware of it. Nevertheless, the situation for the 2021 festival, due to take place in March, is very much uncertain for Irish connections. Avenues being explored for possible solutions by Jockey Club Racecourses include "working with the various authorities, including Horse Racing Ireland, to seek to resolve financial burdens." In response to our requests, a spokesperson for Horse Racing Ireland said: "Ireland is the worlds largest exporter of thoroughbreds, as well as having some of the best horses in training in the world. Anything that impacts on the movement of horses into and out of the country or impinges on that trade was always going to cause great concern, which is why we have consistently spoken about the great difficulties that Brexit would cause for Irelands racing and breeding industry. "VAT is one of a number of issues that have already arisen for both horse racing and breeding, as in many other industries. Horse Racing Ireland is working with the relevant bodies, both here and in Britain, to deal with the consequences of the new environment which follows their departure from the Single Market and the Customs Union," they concluded. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Plant&Co. Brands Ltd. (CSE: VEGN) (FSE: VGP) (OTC Pink: VGANF) ("Plant&Co." or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that it has retained Digitonic Ltd., an arm's-length party to the Company and a leading investor relations and mobile marketing firm based in Glasgow, Scotland, to provide marketing services focused on the North American markets. Under the agreement, Digitonic is to provide content creation, distribution, and advertising services in North America. The Company agrees to pay the service provider up to US$500,000 over a 4-month period. About Plant&Co. Brands Ltd. Plant&Co. Brands (CSE: VEGN) (FSE: VGP) (OTC Pink: VGANF) is modern health and wellness company curating delicious plant-based foods. For additional information, please contact: Shawn Moniz, CEO, ir@plantandco.com or visit www.PlantandCo.com. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release, which has been prepared by management. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to the Company within the meaning of applicable securities laws. 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 business plans for Plant&Co. Brands 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. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators, which are posted on www.sedar.com. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72134 A trio of a doctor, nurse and a sanitation worker will receive COVID-19 vaccine shots in the presence of Delhi Chief Minister at the state-run LNJP Hospital as part of the vaccination roll-out on Saturday, sources said. While the vaccination exercise is set to begin in the morning, Kejriwal is slated to visit the largest Delhi government hospital, which has rendered yeoman service throughout the pandemic. "Hon'ble CM Shri @ArvindKejriwal will visit the LNJP Hospital on Saturday, January 16 at 12 noon, to inspect the COVID vaccination drive of the Delhi government," the Delhi Chief Minister's Office (CMO)tweeted. A source later said a doctor, a nurse and a sanitation worker will receive COVID-19 vaccine doses in the presence of Kejriwal at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital. The national capital is all set for the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccination exercise on Saturday at 81 centres with healthcare workers who have been in the forefront of the fight against the pandemic to be given the shots first. Services offered by doctors, nurses, sanitation workers and other frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic have been hailed by governments and communities across the world. (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.) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) A study of two ancient skeletons recovered from Guam indicates that the early settlers of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific may have originated from the Philippines. Scientists from Germany and Australia analyzed the DNA of two 2,200-year-old skeletons from the Ritidian Beach Cave site in Guam, which is the largest island in the Marianas, and found that their ancestry is linked to the Philippines. Moreover, they are closely related to early Lapita skeletons from Vanuatu and Tonga, suggesting that the early Mariana Islanders may have been involved in the colonization of Polynesia, the study added. Vanuatu and Tonga are countries in the Pacific. The researchers, citing earlier studies on Polynesian origins, said more than 4,000 years ago, Austronesian-speaking people from Taiwan island-hopped through the Philippines and southeastward through Indonesia. They reached the Bismarck archipelago in the Pacific around 3,500 years ago. From Bismarck, they spread throughout Polynesia. The anthropologists urged caution in interpreting the results of the study as they are based on two skeletons. Nonetheless, they said these data exhibited provide some interesting insights into the peopling of Guam. The study titled Ancient DNA from Guam and the peopling of the Pacific was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was conducted by experts from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, Australian National University, and the University of Guam. The US Customs and Border Protection has issued a sweeping Withhold Release Order on cotton products made by slave labour in Xinjiang The US this week stepped up its efforts to crack down on forced labour in supply chains with a sweeping regional ban on the import of cotton products from China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The move looks set to accelerate the industry sourcing shift away from China and could prompt a surge in the adoption of alternative fibres just-style has been told. The blanket Withhold Release Order (WRO) announced by United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) means that from 13 January, cotton products including apparel and textiles will be detained at US ports of entry. The ban also applies to tomato products from the Uyghur Region. "Importers are responsible for ensuring the products they are attempting to import do not exploit forced labour at any point in their supply chain, including the production or harvesting of the raw material," the agency says. Spurred by mounting concerns over the detention of between 1-3 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and others in internment camps across China's Xinjiang province and the forced use of detainee or prison labour in fields and factories this is the fourth WRO that CBP has issued since the beginning of fiscal year 2021, and the second on products originating in Xinjiang. A report from the Center of Global Policy revealed last month upward of half a million people were forced to pick cotton through the government's coercive labour training and transfer scheme. However, until now the detention orders have targeted specific companies instead of a blanket regional ban. In December, for example, a WRO was targeted at cotton and cotton products from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. The move is significant for apparel supply chains because around 80% of China's cotton is produced in the Uyghur region representing around 20% of the industry's global cotton supply much of which is made into yarn used in textile and apparel produced in the region, and other factories globally. According to the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), US brands and retailers import more than 1.5bn garments with Xinjiang content every year, representing more than $20bn in retail sales. This includes finished garments exported from dozens of countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Vietnam, as well as China that use fabric containing cotton from the Uyghur Region. Every one of these garments is now barred from entry. "This ban will redefine how the apparel industry from Amazon to Nike, to Zara sources its materials and labour," says Scott Nova, executive director of the WRC, a member of the coalition to End Uyghur Forced Labour. "Any global apparel brand that is not either out of Xinjiang already, or plotting a very swift exit, is courting legal and reputational disaster. The days when any major apparel brand can safely profit from Xinjiang cotton are over." What does it mean for the apparel industry? But with the complexity of global supply chains and the fact Xinjiang produces 20% of the world's cotton, just how big is the impact of this decision on the US apparel and textile industry? According to industry experts, multinationals saw this move coming and so were taking the necessary steps to insulate their businesses. Dr Sheng Lu, associate professor in the Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies at the University of Delaware, says US companies were already pulling back from China before the latest CBP action in part due to additional tariffs imposed by the US government on Chinese imports over the last year. "The newest WRO, which targets any textiles and apparel containing cotton from XUAR, could make US fashion companies accelerate their plan to reduce China exposure," says Dr Lu. He notes that in value terms, only 15.4% of US cotton apparel came from China between January and November 2020 compared with 22.2% in 2019 and 28% in 2017. During the same 11-month period in 2020, China's total textile and apparel exports to the US fell by 32%, compared with 41.1% and 47.2% in 2019 and 2017 respectively. One of the biggest challenges for companies is how to prove the provenance of the cotton, with Xinjiang supplying much of the raw material to global apparel manufacturers. "Many brands and retailers have already distanced and cut their ties with the Xinjiang region," explains Mike McCue, director of communications at the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC). However, he adds: "Even if they suspend any direct purchases from that region, it would be difficult for them to completely rule out any cotton (including cotton picking) from the Xinjiang region from their entire textile value chain." While Andrew Olah, CEO at Olah Inc and founder of the Kingpins denim trade show, believes the only answer is to mark the cotton from the gin out. "So far there are two options forensic (check the body after it died) or "live" where you can scan the garment and see the history of the scans." How will the CBP's decision impact cotton supply and prices? Cotton prices have been on the rise, according to ICAC, increasing from 69.9 cents per pound in August 2020 to 86.5 cents per pound in January 2021. But this is due to a combination of several factors including some countries lifting or easing lockdown restrictions; lower production in the US which is the world's largest cotton exporter; and a faster economic recovery in China, the world's largest cotton consumer, and the recovery of its textile and apparel sector. Drilling down further, Lu suggests the WROs and other US policy actions against cotton products associated with forced labour in XUAR have had some impact on the market price. "For example, according to data from the Federal Reserve of St Louis, the import price of US cotton apparel and household goods barely changed from January 2020 to December 2020." Similarly, some industry sources show the average price of cotton apparel newly launched to the US retail market in 2020 (January to December) edged up 4% from a year ago, he says. Perhaps the biggest difference is that while cotton-based apparel product categories have seen a higher price increase, such as tops (up 6%), bottoms (up 8%), and hosiery (up 6%), the price increase of cotton apparel 'Made in China' jumped 23% in the US retail market from 2019 to 2020. The price could spike further, with Olah noting that speculators may "take advantage of this situation" and hold cotton they own, pushing the market towards an apparent shortage. ICAC's McCue also believes efforts by US textile buyers to trace or prove that their products have no forced labour links the Xinjiang region will lead to higher costs. "These costs could then either be absorbed by US textile buyers or transferred to the US consumers of cotton products from China (which have a good market share pertaining to their low prices) or to the Chinese textile sellers." One thing the experts agree on is that alternative fibres are likely to see a boost in demand. "Bear in mind that China is currently the largest producer of synthetic and viscose fibres (67% of the total)," says McCue. "So the current ban could help the Chinese economy by increasing their exports of synthetic and cellulosic products to the US." Olah agrees: "This situation basically deletes cotton from China which accounts for 20% of the global production. The most obvious solution is to simply replace the missing 20% of cotton with manmade fibres and hey presto, there is no longer a need or shortage for Chinese cotton. Again this is already going on." Effective enforcement One of the key challenges around the new ban is effective enforcement. "It's now up to the incoming Biden administration and new Congressional leadership to up CBP's game on enforcement," says WRC's Nova. "The complexity and opacity of the brands' supply chains create major challenges and CBP's track record on enforcement is mixed, but it can be done. The effective and transparent enforcement of this order should be among the immediate regulatory priorities of the new administration." A joint statement from the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), National Retail Federation (NRF), the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), and the US Fashion Industry Association (USFIA) said their member companies "have long made eradicating forced labour in our supply chains a top operational and public policy priority." But they also make the point enforcement must be "smart, transparent, targeted, and effective. We urge CBP to share with industry the evidence gathered, and the evidentiary thresholds used, that led to today's announcement. "Additionally, we ask CBP to share enforcement actions so that the industry can further inform their due diligence and amplify and expand CBP's enforcement efforts." Under US law 19 USC 1307 it is illegal for the United States to allow entry of goods, "produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labour." CBP's action is an effort to ensure effective enforcement of this existing law and is based on the recognition that there is a high risk of forced labor on any Xinjiang farm and therefore in any garment containing tainted cotton regardless of where the garment is sewn. Dr Lu warns the latest WRO "sends out a strong signal that the XUAR forced labour issue is far from over yet, and more 'draconian actions' are not unlikely in the future." For example, two pending pieces of legislation in Congress last year the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (H.R. 6210) and the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act (H.R. 6270) intended to establish a "guilty until proven innocent" blanket standard that would affect ANY products made in Xinjiang. "Although neither of them became law, I won't be surprised if new bills with similar content are reintroduced to Congress in early 2021," Dr Lu adds. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) yesterday (14 January) said in its 2020 Annual Report that new evidence had emerged that "crimes against humanity and possibly genocide are occurring" in China's treatment of Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in Xinjiang. A US genocide declaration would mean increased reputational and compliance risks for companies doing business with the region, as well as raising the spectre of further US sanctions against China. New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case on a complaint from State Bank of India against a private company (borrower company) based at Delhi/Noida and others including its CMD & unknown public servants/persons for causing an alleged loss of Rs. 219.81 crore(approx) to State Bank of India. It was alleged in the complaint that the accused, M/s Naftogaz India Private Limited, New Delhi/Noida & Others has cheated the Bank by way of diversion of bank funds, fraudulent transactions, criminal misappropriation, submission of false stock/debt statements etc. The State Bank of India complaint says that company was incorporated in 2005 starting as EPC contractor for exploration, drilling, extraction and production of mineral oils, natural gas and petroleum products. The alleged fraud came to light when Forensic Auditors submitted the report on 18.02.2020 for the period 01.04.2010 to 31.03.2014. Searches were conducted by CBI at three locations including Delhi / NCR at the office & residential premises of Borrower Company and other accused. Live TV The other case was registered on a complaint from Punjab National Bank against a private company (Borrower Company) engaged in rice milling activities at Karnal Kaithal Road, Nissing, District Karnal(Haryana) and others including its Directors/Guarantor & unknown public servants/persons for causing an alleged loss of Rs.121.75 crore (approx) to bank. It was alleged that the accused, M/s Hari Har Overseas Private Ltd, Nissing, District Karnal (Haryana) & Others had fraudulently sold its stock as well as machinery, which was hypothecated to the bank. It was further alleged that the accused had not deposited the sale proceed with the bank. It was also alleged that as per the Forensic Audit, the borrower company had falsified its financial data to avail the loan facilities. Searches were conducted at three locations including official & residential premises of accused at Nissing, Dist. Karnal which led to the recovery of incriminating documents. Almost seven years after the crime began, Michigans Flint Water Prosecution Team announced indictments Thursday of nine state officials for their roles in the poisoning of the citys population and then covering up the dangerous condition of the water. Flint has become known around the world for the odious crime carried out against the population in which its most basic necessityclean waterwas replaced with water laced with lead, sickening residents and resulting in numerous deaths. Most significant in the indictments is that of former governor Rick Snyder who faces two willful neglect of duty charges, misdemeanors with potential sentences of one year each and/or a $1,000 fine. The limited charges fly in the face of Flint residents who consider him chiefly responsible for the suffering they are still enduring. Snyder was governor when the switch over to Flint River water was made in 2014. His administration worked to downplay and cover up the ensuing crisis. Top row from left: Howard Croft, Richard Baird, Jerrod Agen; Middle: Nick Lyon; Rick Snyder; Eden Wells; Bottom: Nancy Peeler, Darnell Earley, Gerald Ambrose (Source Gennesse County Jail) The states prosecution team is led by Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. Evidence was presented before a secret grand jury in January 2020 in order to bring the charges in the most expedient and efficient manner. In this way, preliminary hearings are avoided and charges will be brought directly to trial. In announcing the 42 indictments against the nine defendants, the prosecutors asserted that they could not have announced them before their arraignments, which took place earlier Thursday morning, to which all defendants pleaded not guilty on all charges. Worthy and Hammoud maintained that none of the evidence behind the indictments could be discussed publicly. The full list of indictments against the nine defendants in the order given today is as follows: Nick Lyons, former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS): Nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, each a 15-year felony and/or $7,500 fine; one count of willful neglect of duty, a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. Eden Wells , former Chief Medical Executive of MDHHS: Nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, each a 15-year felony and/or $7,500 fine; two counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine; one count of willful neglect of duty, a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. , former Chief Medical Executive of MDHHS: Nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, each a 15-year felony and/or $7,500 fine; two counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine; one count of willful neglect of duty, a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. Nancy Peeler , current Childhood Health Section Manager of MDHHS: two counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine; one count of willful neglect of duty, a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. , current Childhood Health Section Manager of MDHHS: two counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine; one count of willful neglect of duty, a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. Gerald Ambrose , former Flint Emergency Manager (January 2015-April 2015): four counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine. , former Flint Emergency Manager (January 2015-April 2015): four counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine. Darnell Earley , former Flint Emergency Manager (September 2013January 2015): three counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine. , former Flint Emergency Manager (September 2013January 2015): three counts of misconduct in office, each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine. Howard Croft , former Director of Flint Public Works Department: two counts of willful neglect of duty, each a five-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. , former Director of Flint Public Works Department: two counts of willful neglect of duty, each a five-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. Rick Snyder , former Michigan Governor: two counts of willful neglect of duty, each a five-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. , former Michigan Governor: two counts of willful neglect of duty, each a five-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine. Jerrod Agen , former Director of Communications and former Chief of Staff, Executive Office of the Governor: one count of perjury, a 15-year felony. , former Director of Communications and former Chief of Staff, Executive Office of the Governor: one count of perjury, a 15-year felony. Richard Baird, former Transformation Manager and Senior Adviser, Executive Office of the Governor: one count of perjury, a 15-year felony; one count of official misconduct in office, a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine; one count of obstruction of justice, a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine; one count of extortion, a 20-year felony and/or $10,000 fine. The prosecutors asserted that this is not the final list and that they will go where the evidence takes us. Besides the addition of Snyder, Baird and Agen to the list, no new defendants other than those whose charges were previously dropped in June of 2019 have been named. It is significant that Baird faces the longest possible prison time, up to 45 years if convicted on all counts. It is public knowledge that Snyder and Baird go way back and that he has the reputation as Snyders fixer. His role in Flint was that of enforcer and damage control. Baird presided over town hall meetings, in particular, an April 2017 meeting provocatively held in a church where six residents were arrested. Just before Snyder, who was term-limited, left office at the end of 2018, key defendants were allowed to plea bargain, accepting minor charges and therefore are protected against being re-charged under the double-jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. This action could not be justified except for providing legal protection for Snyder. These defendants were: Stephen Busch of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), who falsely reported to other agencies that corrosion control measures were being applied to Flint River water. of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), who falsely reported to other agencies that corrosion control measures were being applied to Flint River water. Michael Prysby, the MDEQ District Engineer who ordered that corrosion control not be used, in violation of federal drinking water laws. the MDEQ District Engineer who ordered that corrosion control not be used, in violation of federal drinking water laws. Liane Shekter-Smith , the MDEQ director of the Office of Drinking Water, who told Flint residents that a whistle-blowing Environmental Protection Agency expert was being silenced for exposing the malfeasance of the MDEQ, was fired in 2015. , the MDEQ director of the Office of Drinking Water, who told Flint residents that a whistle-blowing Environmental Protection Agency expert was being silenced for exposing the malfeasance of the MDEQ, was fired in 2015. Adam Rosenthal from the MDEQ ordered the collection of falsified samples to supposedly prove that Flint water met federal safety standards. The inability to bring these four to trial may have meant that Nessels prosecutors were unable to acquire enough evidence against Snyder to bring any felony charges. When the original three defendants were named in 2016 by Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette and his appointed prosecutor Todd Flood, the World Socialist Web Site reported: The most obvious question raised by the indictments is, what forces were behind the instructions to Busch and Prysby to falsify test results? The idea that the men indicted were alone responsible for the Flint tragedy is absurd. Evidence points to the involvement of officials at the highest levels of the state government and federal Environmental Protection Agency, who clearly knew of the dangers facing Flint residents, but covered them up. The list of defendants announced this week has some glaring omissions. To name just one: State Treasurer Andy Dillon, a Democrat who worked closely with Snyder in the forced bankruptcy of Detroit and who signed the authorization for the city of Flint to switch its water source, despite his advisers urging not to. Perhaps outside the jurisdiction of the Michigan courts is EPA Region 5 Director Susan Hedman, who silenced expert Miguel Del Toral from warning that Flint was not using corrosion control. The prosecutors claim that they conducted a full and thorough investigation and that all the charges brought are provable in court beyond a reasonable doubt. Without analysis of their evidence, that will remain to be seen. Seven years after the poisoning began, it is clear that the social crime committed against the largely impoverished, multi-racial working class population of Flint was not the result of negligence, nor was it about saving money. It was the outcome of a scheme hatched by the states political establishment, Democrats and Republicans alike, to use the dire financial crisis of a municipality and its residents to make substantial profits for a layer of business elite. Guangzhous Liwan district carried out nucleic acid tests throughout Wednesday night and Thursday in a bid to control the spread of Covid-19. The southern metropolis is under pressure to prevent imported infections, after a person was confirmed Friday to have contracted a strain of the coronavirus first found in India. The city reported three new cases, one local and two imported, on Wednesday May 27, 2021 05:09 PM A Nebraska news anchors family health scare has prompted him to issue a heartfelt plea for parents to learn how to perform CPR on their infants and children. Bill Schammert, the evening news anchor for CBS affiliate KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Neb., choked up during his broadcast on Monday evening after returning to the news desk following his newborn sons hospitalization. As an emotional Schammert relayed to viewers, on Jan. 5, his younger son, 13-day-old Cameron, appeared unwell, later turning purple and gasping for air as his father loaded him into his car seat. Though Schammert and his wife, Kym, had received infant CPR training as part of their prenatal classes a couple of months prior to the 2018 birth of firstborn son Theo, he tells Yahoo Life that he went into panic mode as he and Kym frantically called 911 for help. Especially when its your own child youre panicked and confused and you dont know what to do, Schammert says. Bill Schammert (pictured with wife Kym and sons Cameron and Theo) is raising awareness about the importance of learning infant CPR following his newborn's health scare. (Photo: Emily Hardy Photography) Fortunately, a 911 dispatcher whom Schammert hailed as a hero in his now-viral broadcast was able to walk us through everything as both he and Kym performed CPR on their son. She also sent over paramedics, who arrived shortly after Cameron started crying, a sign that the infant had regained his breath. Cameron spent the next 36 hours in the hospital, where a chest X-ray revealed an unknown viral infection in his lungs. [Doctors] believe he had mucus that clogged his airway, and at 13 days old he didnt know how to expel, so he stopped breathing, Schammert says, adding that Cameron is currently doing great. Hes a healthy, normal baby boy right now. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. While the Schammerts were able to avoid a tragic loss, the newsman says the incident highlighted the importance of learning infant and child CPR. He and Kym received their own refresher course while in the hospital with Cameron last week, watching videos and speaking to a nurse about what to do in the event of another scare. I would encourage everybody every parent, grandparent, guardian if they havent taken a CPR class, to do it, and if they have taken one, and its been more than a year, it doesnt take too long to brush up, he tells Yahoo Life. He adds that he and his wife plan to meet with the dispatcher who helped them save Camerons life. 911 operators are truly the first line of defense, he says. Theyre our first first responders, and theyre so underappreciated, and they shouldnt be. Hes also combing through the comments that have flooded in from his broadcast, many of them from other parents who shared their own frightening experiences. The comments, and the messages, and the outpouring of support is beyond anything we ever could imagine, and Ive read every single one of them on Facebook, and on Twitter, he says. When you go through something like this with your own child it can feel isolating and like no one understands what youre going through, when in fact this has let me know the exact opposite. Theres so many people that know exactly what were going through, and people that may have lost their child that are just so gracious that ours survived, that are sharing their stories of survival and the impact CPR has made on their lives, and that is overwhelming. The whole point of this is to let people know: This little thing, CPR, the 10-minute class you get at work once a year, or the thing you learn for 30 minutes before you have a baby, dont brush it off, because you never know when youre going to need to know it, and it can truly were proof save lives. Infant CPR training courses are available online via the American Red Cross. (Photo: Getty Images stock photo) Dr. David Markenson, chief medical officer for American Red Cross Training Services, agrees that its crucial for caregivers to know how to administer first aid and perform CPR, saying, in what could be a tragic situation, you can save a life if youre trained. Its also important for that training to be specific to infants and children, he adds. Because childrens bodies and the way they work especially infants are different from adults, you need to know how to help them, and the technique for CPR and some first aid steps are very different for an infant and a child, he tells Yahoo Life. So while its good to know what to do for adults, for children and infants you have to have special training on their CPR and their first aid. Some of the differences that are important are where you put your hands on the chest [to do CPR] when a child isnt breathing and isnt responding, Markenson explains. In an infant, its right between the nipple line, and you do want to press hard and fast, but the depth of pressing is less in an infant than in adults, about an inch and a half. If youre untrained, the best thing to do is to press between the nipple line about an inch and a half as fast as you can, up and down, up and down. While he stresses that the best thing to do is to get trained, relying on the three Cs can also be life-saving in a pinch. We tell people to remember three things in an emergency, and its simple to remember. The three Cs: check, call, care, he explains. Check and figure out whats going on. Call 911 next, and then provide care as youre trained. All steps are important and easy to remember, but we really, really stress calling 911 early ... that dispatcher will not only get help to you, but can talk you over the phone through what to do. He also advises using the speaker phone feature to keep the hands free for compressions while a dispatcher guides you through the process; the Red Crosss First Aid app, he notes, will provide instruction and connect users to a 911 dispatcher over speaker phone. Markenson stresses the value of getting training in an in-person, hands-on classes which he assures are safe and perfectly clean during the pandemic thanks to social distancing and the use of single-person equipment but online training is also available through the American Red Cross. While it is a rare event to need to do CPR or first aid for an infant or a child, it can occur, he says. And if you dont know what to do, the outcome can be, of course, horrific ... In the heat of an emergency, the fear of not knowing what to do is the biggest barrier. The training allows you to do something. Read more from Yahoo Life Want lifestyle and wellness news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Lifes newsletter. 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. Widow of Late Louisiana Rep.-elect Luke Letlow Will Run for His Vacant Seat The widow of U.S. Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-La.), who died from CCP virus-related complications before he could begin his term, announced Thursday that she is going to run for the congressional vacancy left by the death of her husband. Julia Letlow, also a Republican, revealed her intention to run for the U.S. House seat by putting out a written statement a little over two months before the March special election in Louisiana. Everything in my life and in my marriage has prepared me for this moment. My motivation is the passion Luke and I both shared: to better this region that we called home and to leave it a better place for our children and future generations, she said in the statement. She added: I am running to continue the mission Luke startedto stand up for our Christian values, to fight for our rural agricultural communities, and to deliver real results to move our state forward. Luke Letlow died days before he was to take office, leaving behind their two children. The 41-year-old had a long career in Louisiana politics and won the 2020 election by a wide margin of 62 percent. Shortly after Julias announcement, a friend to Luke, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) endorsed her. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) speaks with Peter Welch (D-VT) on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 8, 2017. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) I am proud to endorse Julia Letlow for Louisianas 5th Congressional District. The loss of my friend Luke Letlow just days before he was to be sworn in has been nothing short of devastating. Like many have said, Luke represented what is best about public service, Scalise wrote. He had incredible energy, a humble spirit, and an enormously bright future ahead of him. Julia shares the same commitment to public service and I cant think of anyone better to carry on Lukes legacy in representing Louisianas 5th Congressional District, he added. Julia has had many positions in higher education but currently works at the University of Louisiana at Monroe as the top assistant to the president for external affairs and community outreach. She holds a Ph.D. in communication. She worked on her husbands political campaign but this will be her first time running her own. During Lukes campaign for Congress last year, Luke and I traveled to every corner of Louisianas 5th Congressional Districtfrom Bastrop to Bunkie to Bogalusaand all points between, Julia wrote in her statement. I met many of the hardworking people of the district and listened to the dreams and ideas they have for our district. A special election will be held to fill Lukes seat. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has set March 20 as the date for the primary election and April 24 as the date for the general election. Qualifying will be held from Jan. 2022. Besides Lukes seat, the second Louisiana congressional seat is vacant because Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) resigned to work in President-elect Joe Bidens administration. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Los Angeles-based Filipino nurse Pamela Surla-Milligan shared to CNN Philippines her experience after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine made by US drugmaker Pfizer. Milligan, a nurse at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, said she experienced a bit of soreness in the part of her arm where she was injected with her first dose around second week of December. She experienced some mild flu symptoms a day after getting her second dose. "I felt a little bit achy, some chills like low-grade fever. It was like a case of 24-hour mild flu. The day after that, I was back to normal," Milligan said. Despite her experience, Milligan is encouraging everyone to get vaccinated since most of her hospital colleagues did not experience side effects on the first and second doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. "Some immunity to COVID-19 is better than absolutely none. We should trust the data," Milligan said. She also said Filipinos should be given the chance to choose what vaccine brand will be administered to them once doses arrive in the country. Milligan thanked her fellow medical frontliners for the sacrifices they made during this health crisis and expressed hope the release of COVID-19 vaccines will signal the end of the pandemic which has already infected more than 93 million people and claimed over 1.9 million lives worldwide. "The vaccine gives us hope and the feeling that finally, there's light at the end of this dark tunnel that we have been on this 2020. I'm really hopeful that our lives will regain some normalcy like we can travel again, enjoy the world and our families," she said. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 3 mesi fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Market Reports on Saudi Arabia Provides the Trending Market Research Report on Breakfast Cereals (Bakery and Cereals) Market in Saudi Arabia - Outlook to 2024; Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics (updated with COVID-19 Impact) under Food category. The Breakfast Cereals (Bakery and Cereals) Market in Saudi Arabia is projected to exhibit highest growth rate over report offers a collection of superior market research, market analysis, and competitive intelligence and industry reports. Breakfast Cereals (Bakery and Cereals) Market in Saudi Arabia - Outlook to 2024; Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics (updated with COVID-19 Impact) is a broad level market review of Breakfast Cereals Market in Saudi Arabia. Cereals - includes all breakfast cereals (whether designed to be eaten hot or cold). Includes porridge oats and oatmeal. Breakfast Cereals market in Saudi Arabia registered a positive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.84% during the period 2014 to 2019 with a sales value of SAR 1,233.71 Million in 2019, an increase of 5.76% over 2018. The market achieved its strongest performance in 2018, when it grew by 9.40% over its previous year and its weakest performance in 2019, when it increased by 5.76% over 2018. The research handbook provides up-to-date market size data for period 2014-2019 and illustrative forecast to 2024 premised on Covid-19 hit, covering key market aspects like Sales Value and Volume for Breakfast Cereals and its variants Hot Cereals, Ready-to-Eat Cereals. Request a free sample copy of Saudi Arabia Breakfast Cereals Market Report @ http://www.marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com/marketreports/sample/reports/2155198 Furthermore, the research handbook details out Sales Value and Volume for top brands for the year 2016 to 2019 and overall market sales by Distribution Channel ("Dollar Stores", Variety Store & General Merchandise Retailers, Cash & Carries and Warehouse Clubs, Convenience Stores & Gas Stations, Department Stores, Drug Stores & Pharmacies, Chemists/Pharmacies, Parapharmacies/Drugstores, eRetailers, Food & Drinks Specialists, Health & Beauty Stores, Hypermarkets & Supermarkets, Direct Sellers, Others, On Trade, Vending Machines, Other Specialist Retailers, Tobacco Specialists) where ever applicable. 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Reasons to Buy - Get access to authoritative and granular data on the Breakfast Cereals (Bakery & Cereals) market and fill in the gaps in understanding of trends and the components of change behind them. - Enhance your understanding of the market to update your strategic and tactical plans based on volume and value changes, brand dynamics and distribution trends. - Analyze the components of change in the market by looking at historic and future growth patterns. - Use the data to understand future patterns of the market trends from winners and losers to category dynamics and thereby quickly and easily identify the key areas in which you want to compete in the future. Browse our full report with Table of Contents: http://www.marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com/marketreports/breakfast-cereals-bakery-and-cereals-market-in-saudi-arabia-outlook-to-2024-market-size-growth-and-forecast-analyt/2155198 About Us Market Reports on Saudi Arabia provides you with an in-depth industry reports focusing on various economic, political and operational risk environment, complemented by detailed sector analysis. We have an exhaustive coverage on variety of industries ranging from energy and chemicals to transportation, communications, constructions and mining to Food and Beverage and education. Our collection includes over 2000 up-to-date reports all researched, analysed and published by top-notch international research firms. Contact us at: Market Reports On Saudi Arabia Tel: +91 22 27810772 / 27810773 Email: info@marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com Website: http://www.marketreportsonsaudiarabia.com Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and the UN Special Envoy have met to discuss the ongoing situation in Syria and the need for a settlement writes SANA. Special Representative of the Russian President and Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Bogdanov, discussed with UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, the situation in Syria and the need for boosting a settlement process to the crisis in the country. The two sides discussed, in a phone call, the situation in Syria and the region with a concentration on the need for finding a comprehensive settlement process to the crisis in the country, based on UN Security Council Resolution 2254, a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. It added Bogdanov and Pedersen also tackled a number of issues related to the upcoming meeting of the Constitutional Committee in Geneva and the international meeting about Syria in the formula of Astana. 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. 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 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. The Sydney family of a Melbourne mother-of-four who drowned after she was swept off the rocks have fought tooth-and-nail to enter Victoria for her funeral amid Covid-19 travel restrictions. Aida Hamed was among four family members who were wiped off rocks at Bushrangers Bay near Cape Schanck on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula at 3.30pm on Wednesday. Two men nearby jumped into the water to assist but Ms Hamed, a 45-year-old Australia Post worker from Lalor in Melbourne's north, could not be saved. Ms Hamed's son Daniel Hamed and his partner Alisar Najem, both 25, were worried they were about to be dealt another cruel blow in the wake of her death. The couple live in Sydney and were fearful they would miss Ms Hamed's funeral due to the current border closures. They pleaded for an exemption on the Victorian health department's Covid-19 hotline on Thursday and Friday. Mother Aida Hamed, 45, (pictured) drowned after being wiped off rocks at Bushrangers Bay near Cape Schanck on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula at 3.30pm on Wednesday Ms Najem said two different staff members hung up on her when she didn't accept 'we can't help you' for an answer to her request. She also contacted Service NSW, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the supplied email address for Victorian border exemption permits and the COVID hotline. They consistently said 'we don't know' when the pair asked if they would be allowed to enter the southern state for a funeral. 'We have tried every government department I'm not joking,' Ms Najem told NCA Newswire. 'It's really frustrating because, what do you mean, you don't know? Who can help us? 'There's no compassion. Why aren't they being trained to have compassion?' Ms Najem then decided to speak to the media, which resulted in the DHHS calling at 5.40pm on Friday to confirm she would be able to enter the state. This was just 20 minutes before her and her partner's scheduled flight to Melbourne at 6pm. Ms Hamed's brother Nizar Ibrahim said his sister loved the outdoors and the beach. He said she described Bushrangers Bay as the 'most amazing beautiful place she had seen' before she lost her life there A DHHS spokeswoman said: 'Exemptions requested on compassionate grounds are top priority and processed as quickly as possible - our thoughts are with the family during this difficult time.' The family's battle to enter Melbourne comes after Ms Hamed's brother Nizar Ibrahim revealed his sister's last phone call to him and his wife. 'That day (Wednesday) she had called my wife and was telling her about this beach that she had found and how it was the most amazing beautiful place she had seen,' Mr Ibrahim told The Herald Sun. 'Who would have thought that this would be the place to take her.' Mr Ibrahim said his sister was a caring woman and everyone who knew her is deeply saddened by her sudden death. 'We are currently going through a hard time to accept what has happened,' he said. Mr Ibrahim wants to raise money for Ms Hamed's four children - three in Melbourne and her son in Sydney. Gut-wrenching footage showed Ms Hamed and her family being swept off rocks by a wave on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula on Wednesday afternoon Ms Hamed's 16-year-old daughter begins her VCE studies this year but will do so without the guidance of her mother. Her 19-year-old daughter and her friend, 47, both survived being swept off the rocks and are now at Frankston Hospital in stable conditions. Ms Hamed's 13-year-old daughter and two men, aged 28 and 47, also survived but have since been discharged. 'We are deeply saddened at the passing of Aida Hamed,' an Australia Post spokesman said in a statement to AAP. 'We extend our deepest sympathies to Aida's family and colleagues at this sad time.' Friends have taken to social media to pay tribute to Ms Hamed, with one calling her 'a true angel'. 'No words can be said to describe the pain of losing you,' another friend said. 'You brought happiness to everyone that met you with your gorgeous smile and warming heart, we will miss you forever.' One of her other friends said: 'You will always be my sunshine, my beautiful friend. You were taken from us way too soon'. Bushrangers Bay Beach is unpatrolled and according to Life Saving Victoria, 'moderately safe when waves are low'. But it warns swimmers should 'stay on the bar and clear of the rocks and rips'. Ms Hamed (pictured) was among four people who were at Bushrangers Bay near Cape Schanck when they were swept off rocks on Wednesday afternoon Police said had the two men not gone in to help, more people could have died, The Age reported. 'If they hadn't done that, I think more people (would have) drowned, more people (would have) lost their life,' Mornington Peninsula Local Area Commander Inspector Janene Denton said. Ms Hamed was one of three people to die in separate incidents along Victoria's coast on Wednesday. The second death was at Venus Bay in Gippsland. A woman in her 20s was pulled from the water after going in to help save a teenage girl who was seen struggling to swim. An off-duty lifeguard performed CPR but the woman could not be saved. The third death was that of a man in his 80s, brought to shore unconscious at the popular Rye Front Beach in Tootgarook, also on Wednesday afternoon. All three incidents will be investigated by a coroner. Thousands of armed National Guard troops were on their way to Washington to bolster security for next weeks inaugural celebration as federal investigators turned their attention to the difficult question of how many military and police personnel took part in the violent attack on the Capitol, a law enforcement official said on Thursday. Adding to the tensions, dozens of people on a terrorist watch list were found to have been in Washington on Jan. 6 for pro-Trump events that ultimately devolved into the assault on the Capitol, according to two government officials briefed on the ... PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) Guardians of a Rhode Island moped driver who was sent into a coma with a head injury after he crashed while being followed closely by a Providence police cruiser filed a federal lawsuit on his behalf alleging brutality and excessive force. Kendra Thibault and Tia Tribble, identified as legal guardians of Jhamal Gonsalves, 24, allege civil rights violations, negligence, assault and other offenses in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island. It seeks unspecified monetary damages. Gonsalves was among hundreds of people riding dirt bikes, ATVs and other vehicles, some street-illegal, through the city Oct. 18. The women argue that Gonsalves was operating his moped safely when police led him to lose control, cross the sidewalk and hit a wall in the Oct. 18 crash. The officer following him turned his cruiser in a negligent and reckless manner onto the sidewalk, hitting a stop sign and Gonsalves, according to the women. The defendants include the city, Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare, and several other officers. Pare said that he had no comment and that the department would respond to the lawsuit in court. A spokesperson for Mayor Jorge Elorza said the city does not comment on pending litigation. Attorney General Peter Neronha said last week that investigators determined the officer following Gonsalves did not directly strike Gonsalves or his moped, as witnesses have said, and no criminal charges were warranted. The officer was suspended for two days for not driving safely and not wearing a seat belt. Gonsalves remains unconscious in a New Jersey rehabilitation facility, his family said last week. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presleys relationship started when Priscilla was a minor. Naturally, her parents were concerned. It certainly wasnt a normal situation, but somehow, Presley was able to convince Priscillas parents that he had good intentions, despite the ten year age gap between the two. However, to this day, Priscilla looks back on her relationship with Elvis fondly, and has since opened up about how it developed, and what went down with her parents. How did Priscilla Presley and Elvis Presley meet? Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley | Hulton Archive/Getty Images RELATED: Elvis Presley Admitted He Never Wrote a Single Song Elvis Presley met Priscilla Presley during his service in the military. In 1959, Presley was stationed in Germany. Priscilla was spending time at the Eagles Club for American service families when Currie Grant approached her. He explained that he was a close friend of Elvis Presleys. Im a good friend of his. My wife and I go to his house quite often. How would you like to join us one evening? Priscilla recalls him asking Her parents were introduced to Currie, and her father knew Curries commanding officer. Eventually, Currie reassured them that shed be chaperoned and in good hands, and her parents sent her off to visit Elvis Presley. Presley was impressed by Priscilla, and the two struck up a romance, despite the fact that Priscilla was only 14 years old at the time. She explained that she used to wear her mothers makeup and clothing when she went out with Presley to try and look older. Priscilla Presleys parents were concerned Priscilla Presley and Elvis Presley | Bettmann/Contributor Priscilla Presleys parents were suitably concerned over the fact that their underage daughter was seeing a man ten years her senior. Priscilla recalls them laying down an ultimatum. If you want to continue seeing Elvis, were going to have to meet him, her father told her. Priscilla recalled that Presley wasnt thrilled at the idea at first, and only agreed to come if he could bring his own father along as well. My parents became confused and bewildered by our relationship. We tried to make them believe that it was proper and platonic, and they wanted to believe me, Priscilla wrote. Whenever they tried to stop us from seeing each other, I pleaded and cried and made them and myself miserable. In retrospect, I dont think anything could have stopped me from seeing Elvis. When Presley finally did come over to meet her parents, he disarmed them rather quickly. Shes a lot more mature than her age and I enjoy her company. It hasnt been easy for me, being away from home and all. It gets kinda lonely. I guess you might say I need someone to talk to. You dont have to worry about her, Captain. Ill take good care of her, Priscilla recalls Presley saying. Elvis Presley used her like a doll Elvis Presleys wife, Priscilla Presley | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Eventually, the two were to be married. Priscilla Presley later explained that Elvis Presley basically treated her like a living doll. He hated to see her without her hair and makeup done, and she claims he never truly did. Some cant have the truth. I always had a little bit of makeup. He never wanted to see me getting dressed, he wanted to see the end result, she told Loose Women. To sustain the farmers agitation in the coming days and mobilise even a bigger crowd, farmers from Haryana villages have started a unique donation drive, The Indian Express has reported. Farmers are donating Rs 100 per acre to local leaders to manage the transportation and food items. In some villages, farmers have offered Rs 200 to Rs 500 per acre while some have even contributed in thousands for the stir. Protesting Farmers / PTI Funds to be used for food, transportation The donation drive is aimed at boosting food supplies and transportation services for those who go to Tikri border from the village to join dharna on everyday basis. Additionally, one vehicle has specially been arranged that will take round trips from Sisai village every day to supply milk and food items to the agitators at Tikri border. The village of Sisai is about 9 kilometres from Hansi tehsil in Hisar district of Haryana and about 150 kilometres from Tikri border. Notably, it is the biggest village of Haryana in terms of population and size. PTI Many of the vehicle owners take only fuel charges in lieu of providing transport services for the agitators. For instance, four buses full of women and children went to Tikri from the village on Wednesday but the bus owners took only fuel charges from the agitators, farmers told The Indian Express. The donation funds will further help the villagers to commute to the protest site. The collection is growing fast with a sentiment gaining ground that the ongoing farm agitation is meant to protect the lands of farmers from corporates. People with no land have contributed too Employees, shopkeepers, labourers and people from Scheduled Caste communities who normally dont have land holdings, also contributed to the agitation. With the help of these funds, villagers plan on running langers (community kitchen) at the outskirts of their villages and at the borders of Delhi. Visuals from Farmer's Protest / Reuters I have deposited Rs 85,000 for the agitation as part of our donation for 160 families of our clan who have 850 acres of land in total in the village, farmer Pradeep Sihag told The Indian Express. Sihag is from Sisai village. Sihag estimates the village has a population of over 35,000 while farmers here have around 15,000 acres of land. Almost every farmer has already deposited their share of donation following a decision by the villagers some days ago. Now, the collection stands at almost Rs 15 lakh from farmers of our village. A former sarpanch, Rajesh Sihag, has donated Rs 1.11 lakh for the agitation, says Sihag, adding, We are fighting to protect our land. If we succeed to save our land with such contributions, such donations wont be a big deal for us. We have to fight to get fair prices of crops in mandis but this time our land is being targeted by the corporates. PTI Local BJP, JJP leaders donated to the cause As sentiment in favour of farmers have been growing, even local leaders of BJP and JJP have provided their share of financial assistance. First, I am a farmer, then a politician, says a JJP leader from Hisar district, who has given his share of donation as per his land holding in his village. The state has 7,088 villages with some having agricultural land holdings in hundreds while others have land holdings in a few thousands. Like Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattars native village Nindana (Rohtak) has 8,836 acres of land while Nangal village of Karnal district has 1,000 acres. BCCL A farmer leader from Jind, Ramphal Kandela said that apart from farmers, other sections of society are also offering donations. For example, labourers donate at the rate of Rs 100 per family. A minimum amount is collected from every family now with a sense that the agitation may continue for months, said Kandela. Every section of society lending a helping hand The agitation has been going on for the past one and half months against three central farm laws, which have been termed as anti-farmer by the agitators. A former Haryana IAS officer, S K Goyal, who has backed the farmers in their ongoing agitation, says every section of society is offering help to agitators. Goyal has already toured over half a dozen villages of Bhiwani districts to make farmers aware about the adverse impacts of the three farm laws. ANI If the agitation continues for long, it would further erode the base of ruling dispensation very fast. Keeping in view the sentiments of farmers and cold, the government should repeal these farm laws as early as possible, Goyal said. On a summer evening in 1978, Donald Harris took his two young daughters to the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, Calif., to their first concert. Kamala, the girl who would become vice president, was the eldest at 13. And as she watched Bob Marley and the Wailers sing and sway at the outdoor arena on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, she found herself mesmerized. "We sat up top in the back of the theater, and, as I watched the performance, I was in complete awe," Harris said in an email to The Washington Post. "To this day, I know the lyrics to nearly every Bob Marley song." The experience was meant to be more than musical. Her father, a prominent Jamaican economics professor teaching at Stanford University, was trying to imbue his two American-born girls with a sense of pride in their roots. Like the Harrises, Marley was from a parish on the north coast of the island called St. Ann. "My father, like so many Jamaicans, has immense pride in our Jamaican heritage and instilled that same pride in my sister and me," Harris wrote. "We love Jamaica. He taught us the history of where we're from, the struggles and beauty of the Jamaican people, and the richness of the culture." Most of the time Kamala Harris and her sister, Maya, spent growing up was with their mother, the consequence of a bitter divorce and tough custody battle. Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher who grew up in India, had taken a job at McGill University a little over a year before the concert. Three seasons a year, the girls lived in Montreal. Summers were meant to be bonding time with their father. Throughout Kamala Harris's historical political career - a zenith of which will be her swearing-in as the country's first female, first Black and first Asian vice president - Donald Harris has chosen to be in the background. The two are on good terms, friends and relatives of Donald Harris say. But at 82, he has little desire for the attention or celebrity that comes with his daughter's ascent. The only major comment he made about her political campaign came after Harris jokingly cited her Jamaican heritage on a radio show in 2019 when asked if she ever smoked marijuana. "Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty," Donald Harris wrote in a column for Jamaica Global Online. After that comment, Harris has repeatedly told reporters that he wanted to stay out of politics. Today, the man lives near his daughter's condo in Washington's West End, but Kamala Harris's transition team is not sure whether he will be part of any inauguration festivities. Her father did not respond to several requests seeking comment. Harris has noted that her mother was the most formative parent in her life. Gopalan took her daughters to her hometown of Chennai in southern India and dressed them in Indian jewelry. Tamil Americans have been delighted to Harris use the word "chitti" - a term of endearment for the younger sister of one's mother - in high-profile speeches. Gopalan was also a student of the civil rights movement and knew society would see her daughters as Black Americans. So she also introduced them to Aretha Franklin, sent them to a Black church and a preschool with Harriet Tubman posters on the wall, steeping them in the African American experience. But there was a third culture that influenced Kamala Harris, and that came from her father, who wanted to make sure his children understood his homeland of Jamaica. This contribution is perhaps the most singular impression he made on the identity of the senator from California. Donald Harris deemed those lessons both a patriotic and a paternal duty. In a 2018 essay published by Jamaica Global Online, Harris described that duty as the continuation of a philosophy bestowed upon him all his life, from his youth in a rural island town to his career teaching at some of the most respected universities in the world. The philosophy was often delivered in the Jamaican patois: "member whe yu cum fram." Remember where you come from. - - - Harris's Jamaican family comes from Brown's Town, so named after enslaver Hamilton Brown. It remains a rural area that bustles with markets, where merchants sell meat, spices and other goods. Harris's great-grandmother, Christiana Brown, is thought to be a descendant of Brown and enslaved Jamaicans, according to Latoya Harris, 39, who is also a great-grandchild of Brown, a stern business executive everyone called Miss Chrishy. Brown had children with Joseph Harris, a landowner of European ancestry who raised cattle and planted fields of pimento berries, also known as allspice. Miss Chrishy owned a small store along the town's main street. The family has since given up operating the store, but the structure remains. The store sold everyday goods and featured a large brick oven that was used to make its famous bulla cakes, flavorful flat pastries made with flour, ginger and molasses. This was a family of merchants, a legacy that continued with Kamala Harris's grandfather and Donald Harris's father, Oscar. In his 2018 essay, Donald Harris wrote that he would go to Miss Chrishy's store after school so she could drive him home. It was Miss Chrishy's love of discussing business and politics - as well as his experience spending summers on his maternal grandparents' sugar cane farm - that shaped a curiosity about labor economics that became his life passion. The generations-long Harris tradition, according to Latoya Harris, had been "to always try to do the most." She recalled elders waking her to redo class assignments if they thought she had not worked hard enough on them. And her uncle Donald - their brilliant relative who taught in the United States - was often held up as a prime example. Donald Harris's love of economics took him to the University of the West Indies and then to Berkeley, where he received his PhD in 1966. Harris was then embroiled in what was known as the Cambridge Controversy - so named because it featured academic sparring between professors publishing from the two major Cambridges, Massachusetts and England - about theories of economic growth. In the late 1970s, American University professor Robert Blecker was an undergraduate at Yale, eager to learn about these theories at a lecture from a visiting professor. When Don Harris - as he is known in academic circles - walked into the room, Blecker was surprised. "I had heard his name, and I may have seen his articles, but none had discussed his race," Blecker said. "The name didn't resonate in any identifying way. And in came this Black guy. And not just a Black guy, but one with a Jamaican accent - and a very erudite Jamaican accent." At that point, Blecker said, he did not recall seeing any other Black professors or women in the department. "This was all very different," he said. He was so inspired by Harris that he went on to pursue a graduate degree in economics under his tutelage at Stanford. In the United States, Harris's brand of economics was seen as a part of the academic counterculture. He questioned the mathematical presumptions of supply and demand that depended on the theoretical "rational man" to understand economic growth. Instead, he incorporated the philosophies of economic thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx; questioned the relationship between production and profits; and discussed the importance of income distribution. His premise, though, was not simply based on those who had written books. It came from watching Miss Chrishy discuss the meaning of work at the family store and hearing workers in sugar cane fields discuss wages. At Stanford, he became the first Black economics professor to receive tenure. His students joked about the way he frequently arrived for class about 10 minutes late - some attributed it to his easygoing Caribbean demeanor. His high-minded theories, though, were no joke. By the end of one of his lectures, the chalkboard would be dusty from his scribbling of matrix equations and linear curves. The students who were interested in the "alternate approach to economics," however, tended not to be so fond of math, according to Steve Fazzari, another one of Harris's students who now teaches at the Washington University in St. Louis. Harris gained a reputation in his department for being a prolific author and engaging speaker who was not always accessible. In his colleague Duncan Foley's autobiography, the economist referred to Don Harris as a brilliant man who had "a tendency to overcommitment." There's something about the incoming vice president that reminds Don Harris's students of their old graduate adviser. Even while they could become annoyed by his hands-off approach, they admired his incisive questioning of graduate students and visitors giving presentations to the department. "He had a way of getting to the heart of the matter," said Tracy Mott, a former student who is now a professor at the University of Denver. "And I loved watching Kamala grill people at the Judiciary Committee hearings. I'd hear her and say, 'She's smart like Don.' " Harris also took an interest in the civil rights movement. He and Gopalan were part of a social circle that read, debated and theorized on the best ways to achieve Black liberation, according to Aubrey LaBrie, an old family friend. Harris was one of the more reserved people in the group, friends recall, eager to have long discussions about philosophy and policy but less at home standing on campus soapboxes and addressing large crowds. Never forgetting his life back home, he even wrote pieces in Jamaican newspapers describing the importance of Malcolm X to the United States. He and Gopalan fell in love protesting, and Kamala Harris often speaks about accompanying them to demonstrations while she was in a stroller. But their marriage did not last. In Kamala Harris's memoir, "The Truths We Hold," she wrote that the two "stopped being kind to each other" by the time she was 5. When Don Harris took a visiting professorship at the University of Wisconsin, Gopalan stayed behind with the girls. In 1971, when Kamala was 7, the two divorced. The relationship became so tense, Kamala Harris wrote in her memoir, that she worried her mother would not even show up at her high school graduation if her father was there. (He attended, and so did she.) "It was hard on both of them," Kamala Harris wrote in the book. "I think, for my mother, the divorce represented a kind of failure she had never considered." - - - After the marital split, Kamala Harris's weekends and summers were with her father. He watched the pet hamster and took the girls to Disneyland. But the most memorable trips were the ones back to Jamaica. On the island, they visited the markets of Brown's Town where her great-grandmother had the family store and her great-grandfather is buried in the Anglican Church graveyard. The sisters ran through the old family properties and the sugar cane fields. They'd attend get-togethers in the hills, where an uncle would be making a big pot of curry goat outside, and relatives prepared signature Jamaican dishes: rice and peas, jerk chicken, beef patties. "When someone comes back home, we roll out the red carpet for them," said Latoya Harris, her second cousin, who works in educational philanthropy. "That's just who we are." Kamala and Maya would bite into sugar cane on front porches, buy fruit at the markets and cruise around with their uncle Chris, a racecar driver. "I remember him calling speed bumps 'sleeping policemen,' '' Harris told The Post. "That's where I got my love of driving a little too fast." When Kamala Harris got a little older, her father introduced her to Marley and Jimmy Cliff. She picked up some patois, the distinct Jamaican dialect that blends English with African languages. But he also tried to shape an understanding of the culture that went beyond food and music. He taught his daughters about the history of the Jamaican Maroons, kidnapped Africans who rebelled and headed for the hills when their captors tried to enslave them. The elder Harris taught her about the vast gulf between the wealthy and the poor in Jamaica, and the challenges to economic growth - blending his experience with his expertise. Those challenges still consume Donald Harris. After retiring from Stanford in 1998, he moved to the District of Columbia to consult with agencies such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) on economic issues in the Caribbean. Harris's prescriptions have included limiting government intervention in exchange rates, the creation of credit bureaus and tax policy changes, according to Gerry Johnson, a former general manager of the Caribbean Country Department at the IADB. These changes have "basically created the possibility of Jamaica to start increasing its productivity and stop being a poor country and have a brighter future," Johnson said. "The country has received accolades for its growth. And that's a tribute to the type of policies that Don Harris has been promoting." It is also a part of his philosophy of remembering where he came from. His daughter says she tries to do the same. Even as she prepares for the transition to the vice-presidential residence at One Observatory Circle, she wrote that she still has frozen Juici patties in her fridge and a recipe for oxtail that she is longing to perfect. Her fluency in the culture still tends to surprise some. In 2018, months before she would announce her own presidential campaign, a group of prominent Jamaicans and Jamaican Americans in South Florida gathered to greet her at a private fundraiser for then-Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., in downtown Miami. They had all admired her political career, but they still had questions about her comfort with the culture. The word "Jamaica" is not even cited as a keyword in the index of her memoir. At the end of the fundraiser, the group gathered to ask questions. Harris told them that her family came from Brown's Town and that she has relatives in St. Ann's Bay. Winston Barnes, a city commissioner from Miramar, thickened his Jamaican accent to see whether she could keep up. "What you know about St. Ann?" he recalled asking her. To his surprise, Harris switched into a patois inflection. "How you mean?" she responded. "I know there from growin' up." And then she began to tell the stories about her adventures with her father. "That's what I needed to hear," Barnes reflected. "She is one of us." These awards are based on end-user feedback. To be honored with a Modern Library award is, by extension, to be honored by our customers. I find that both humbling and gratifying. - Patrick Crowley, President, The Crowley Company The Crowley Company (Crowley), a worldwide leader in digitization scanning solutions and services with offices in Frederick, Maryland, San Dimas, California and Basingstoke, UK, is pleased to announce that the firm has been honored with LibraryWorks Modern Library (MLA) awards for the seventh consecutive year. Since the award programs inception in 2015, Crowley has amassed 22 total awards, this year earning four Platinum distinctions, the highest honor offered. Notes Crowley Company president, Patrick Crowley, These awards are based on end-user feedback. To be honored with a Modern Library award is, by extension, to be honored by our customers. I find that both humbling and gratifying. Digital Scanners, Digitization Services Receive Platinum Awards The Modern Library Awards were created to recognize the top products and services in the library industry. Applications were submitted in the Fall of 2020, batched into small groups and sent to the LibraryWorks database of more than 80,000 librarians at public, K-12, academic and special libraries for judging. Only customers having experience with the products or services submitted were permitted to judge, resulting in an unbiased format. All entries were ranked and scored by direct end-users. 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Mekel Technology MACH-series microfilm scanners. Manufactured by The Crowley Company, the MACH-series scanners are three-time platinum (2021, 2020, 2016) and one-time gold (2018) MLA award winners. The MACH-series scanners, powered by Crowleys custom Quantum software suite, are a staple for libraries with large collections of microfilm. Designed to handle a wide variety of 16 mm and 35 mm microfilm types, Mekel scanners provide superior, FADGI-rated image quality at high scan speeds. The Mekel Technology MACH10 is known for its image quality and speed, capturing a 100' roll in 2.5 minutes with up to 600 dpi true optical resolution. The MACH12, used in libraries and service bureaus to fulfill National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants and to meet National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) requirements, offers up to 750 dpi true optical resolution. The MACH5 and the new portable MACH Mini models round out the scanner series. Zeutschel OS Q Overhead Scanner. 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Tags: #ModernLibraryAwards #Crowley #libraries #microfilm scanners #bookscanners #CrowleyImaging #scanning #Mekel #Zeutschel #digitization #libraryscanners #archives Twitter tags: @LibraryWorks @CrowleyScans WASHINGTON - The violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 came perilously close to Vice President Mike Pence, who was not evacuated from the Senate chamber for about 14 minutes after the Capitol Police reported an initial attempted breach of the complex - enough time for the marauders to rush inside the building and approach his location, according to law enforcement officials and video footage from that day. Secret Service officers eventually spirited Pence to a room off the Senate floor with his wife and daughter after rioters began to pour into the Capitol, many loudly denouncing the vice president as a traitor as they marched through the first floor below the Senate chamber. About one minute after Pence was hustled out of the chamber, a group charged up the stairs to a second-floor landing in the Senate, chasing a Capitol Police officer who drew them away from the Senate. Pence and his family had just ducked into a hideaway less than 100 feet from that landing, according to three people familiar with his whereabouts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. If the pro-Trump mob had arrived seconds earlier, the attackers would have been in eyesight of the vice president as he was rushed across a reception hall into the office. The proximity of the Jan. 6 mob to the vice president and the delay in evacuating him from the chamber - which have not been previously reported - raise questions about why the Secret Service did not move him earlier and underscore the jeopardy that top government leaders faced during the siege. As an increasingly hostile and violent crowd surrounded the Capitol, Pence remained center stage, presiding over a joint session of Congress for more than an hour after the Capitol Police chief said he alerted his superiors that his force was being overrun and needed emergency reinforcements. The potential exposure of the vice president underscores how law enforcement agencies struggled to manage the rapidly expanding crisis in real time. The Secret Service declined to comment on any element of Pence's movements in the Capitol or his evacuation, other than to say that he was "secure" during the siege. "While the Secret Service does not speak specifically about the means and methods of our protective operations, Vice President Pence was secure at all times on Jan. 6," Secret Service spokeswoman Catherine Milhoan said in a statement. A spokesman for Pence declined to comment. Pence was ultimately evacuated from his office off the Senate floor to a more secure location elsewhere in the Capitol complex. It is unclear exactly how long that took. But as the vice president made his way through the building, a growing number of rioters were joining their cohorts and coursing through the Capitol's labyrinthine halls. Once inside, they used pipes, flagpoles and other weapons to shatter windows and break furniture. One police officer later died of injuries sustained during the onslaught.Dozens of officers were wounded, including some who were struck with a fire extinguisher and another who was dragged down a set of steps and attacked by the crowd. Many of those in the mob had their sights on Pence - enraged that he had refused President Donald Trump's demand that he head off the electoral college count that formalized President-elect Joe Biden's victory. According to the FBI, one man who was charged this week with trespassing and disorderly conduct after making his way into the Senate chamber said in a YouTube video: "Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like, officially, the crowd went crazy. I mean, it became a mob." At one point, a group of rioters began chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!" as they streamed into the main door on the east side of the Capitol. One man who made his way into the Senate chamber reached Pence's chair on the Senate dais. Shirtless, wearing face paint and a furry coyote-tail hat and carrying a six-foot-long spear, Jacob A. Chansley of Arizona left a note on the vice president's desk that read in part, "it's only a matter of time, justice is coming," according to court filings. Chansley - who has been charged with two felonies, including threatening congressional officials - told investigators he was glad to reach Pence's desk because he believes the vice president is a child-trafficking traitor, but said he did not mean the note as a threat. Pence had just begun presiding over the joint session of Congress that afternoon when law enforcement officials realized that the crowd massing around the Capitol had grown dangerous. Rioters had pressed up against the barriers surrounding the building - with some using them as weapons against the police. "I realized at 1 p.m., things aren't going well," outgoing Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund told The Washington Post in an interview Sunday. "I'm watching my people getting slammed." Sund said he immediately called acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III, who rushed 100 officers to the scene. Meanwhile, the joint session of Congress convened at 1 p.m. in the House chamber for an alphabetical roll call of each state's electoral college results, quickly pausing when Trump's allies protested Biden's victory in Arizona, which sent Pence and senators across the Capitol to their chamber to debate challenges to that state's electoral vote. At 1:09 p.m., Sund said he told the top Capitol security officials, House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger, that he wanted an emergency declaration and to call in the National Guard. At 1:50 p.m., the D.C. police on-scene commander declared a riot. At 1:59 p.m., Sund said, he received the first report that rioters had reached the Capitol's doors and windows and were attempting to break at least one window. At about 2:11 p.m., video footage shows that the rioters successfully broke through a window with a piece of lumber. A minute later, a member of the mob entered through the window, the footage shows. At 2:13 p.m., Pence suddenly left the Senate floor and was moved to the nearby office, according to C-SPAN footage and a Post reporter on the scene. But the rioters were not far behind. They chased Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up a flight of stairs, arriving on the landing at 2:14 p.m., video footage shows - seconds after the vice president had been whisked inside the office. Pence's Secret Service detail stood guard at the door. Inside the office with the vice president were his wife, Karen Pence, his daughter, Charlotte Pence Bond, and his brother, Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind., who had gone to the Senate and was watching its debate over Arizona's electoral vote with his sister-in-law and niece as the Capitol was being invaded. Agents on the Secret Service's protective details are drilled in training to focus on one strategy at the sign of danger: They must "cover and evacuate" their protected VIP. Yet, on the afternoon of Jan. 6, danger was already all around them and streaming through different parts of the building. Twice the vice president's agents told Pence that they recommended he and his immediate entourage evacuate the Capitol, according to two people briefed on the episode. Pence declined the recommendation both times, saying he did not want to be driven out of his own office and the Capitol building by an unruly mob, the people said. The third time, Secret Service didn't give Pence a choice, the people said. Detail agents told Pence they were all going - that instant. They left the office for a secure room in the Capitol complex. The evacuation route they took is unknown. A group of snipers on the counter-assault team that travels with Pence would have scoped out the path and ensured it was clear. Pence and his detail did not encounter any rioters on their way through the overrun Capitol, according to the people familiar with the events. In addition to the vice president, the group that evacuated to the second location included Pence's family, his chief of staff Marc Short, his press secretary Devin O'Malley and several other staffers. The Post is not identifying the location in the Capitol complex where Pence was taken for security reasons. Once shepherded to the secure location, Pence remained there throughout the siege, even as most key congressional leaders were evacuated to an off-site secure location, according to administration and congressional aides. It would take several hours before Capitol Police - aided by reinforcements of hundreds of D.C. police officers, FBI SWAT team members, Secret Service officers and National Guard soldiers - ejected the rioters from the grounds and secured the building. As lawmakers debated where and how they should reconvene to continue the electoral vote count disrupted by the violent mob, Pence pushed to continue the session where it had begun - in the Capitol. Once the Capitol Police gave the all-clear, Pence left his secure location and returned to the Senate chamber after 8 p.m. Before Congress resumed its work, the vice president addressed the day's violence in an unusual speech as president of the Senate. "Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol," Pence said, adding: "We will always be grateful to the men and women who stayed at their posts to defend this historic place. To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the People's House." - - - The Washington Post's Aaron C. Davis, Peter Hermann, Spencer S. Hsu, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Meg Kelly, Dalton Bennett, Elyse Samuels and Sarah Cahlan contributed to this report. 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. The agricultural sector is one of the primary contributors to the Indian economy.To assist the farmer and to provide high-quality produce to consumers, a number of agri-tech startups have come up with innovative methods of cultivation and supply chain management. Below are some startups that are helping the farmers to connect with buyers and even helping them to sell their produce on e-mandis. Aqgromalin Aqgromalin is one of the fastest-growing farm diversification companies that aims to supplement the income of small landholding farmers through ready to implement micro-farms. It makes access easier for various agricultural implements and technology. Backed by technology, the full-stack company offers innovative growth ideas to farmers in the areas of Agriculture, Aquaculture, Animal Husbandry, and Insect farming. Its buyback policy ensures farmers that they get a fair price for their produce hence improving their trust in the system. Access to information, Machinery, Credit, and Materials are made at a single point which makes lives better and profitable for farmers. DeHaat Gurugram and Patna-based agri-tech platform DeHaat offers an online marketplace to farmers. It is a technology-based platform offering full-stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of high-quality Agri inputs, customized farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce. Currently, we are operating in -Bihar, UP, Odisha, and WB - with 350,000 farmers in our service network and our goal is to bring our services to 5 million farmers by 2024. Clover Bengaluru-based greenhouse agri-tech startup Clover focus on demand-led cultivation. Clover partners with farmers across India and markets premium quality, branded, greenhouse-grown fresh produce through B2B and B2C channels. Clover claims that its business model centres around demand-led cultivation, a managed farm network, and full-stack agronomy. Bijak Bijak a business-to-business (B2B) startup for agricultural commodities that connects traders, wholesalers, food processors, and farmers. It creates buyer and supplier ratings based on their transaction history to bring transparency and enforce accountability. Farmers get access to a mandi-wise list of buyers and suppliers for each of their commodities on the Bijak app, which becomes even more relevant in the wake of the recent farm legislations that throw the sector open to private players dealing directly with farmers. To keep the supply chains functional, some of Indias agri-tech startups are lending a helping hand to the farming community through artificial intelligence, data analytics, and various Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Appointment 15 January 2021 Norbert Speth has been appointed to the newly created position of Vice President Corporate Strategy & Openings at Deutsche Hospitality with effect from 1 February 2021. Mr. Speth, who has also worked at InterContinental and Marriott, will be responsible in future for the pooling and development of strategic initiatives and will also take charge of the Future Openings Division. From 2017 onwards, the 42-year old was Area Director of Operations at SV Hotel AG. After completing vocational education and training as a cook at the Hotel Traube Tonbach in Baiersbronn, Mr. Speth started his career as a Restaurant & Bar Manager for the US-based lifestyle chain W (Starwood). He subsequently advanced to Director of Food and Beverage roles in Germany and Switzerland for InterContinental and Marriott respectively. In 2014, Marriott International appointed him to the post of General Manager of the Residence Inn Munchen City Ost und Courtyard Zurich Ost hotels. Mr. Speth's most recent role was as Area Director of Operations at SV Hotel AG, where he was also a member of the Management Board. V.Narayan Distinguished - BHPian Join Date: Aug 2014 Location: Delhi-NCR Posts: 2,879 Thanked: 32,113 Times Re: Biggest desi defence deal : IAF to get 83 Tejas aircrafts for Rs. 48,000 crore Quote: SmartCat Originally Posted by http://delhidefencereview.com/2020/0...tejas-fighter/ Myth 1: Combat endurance of Tejas is just 1 hour, compared to 3 hours for the Gripen and 4 hours for the F16. Article debunking negative media articles (possibly funded by the import lobby) on HAL Tejas:: Combat endurance of Tejas is just 1 hour, compared to 3 hours for the Gripen and 4 hours for the F16. Quote: Myth 2: Combat payload of Tejas is just 3 tonnes Quote: Myth 3: Lifespan of Tejas is just 20 years, compared to 40 years for Gripen & F-16 Quote: Myth 4: Can do just 1 sortie a day. Needs lot of maintenance Selection of an aircraft is not on brochure figures alone but on several other factors especially given that we have been hurt in the past:- - availability of spares & support - always without strings - availability of the designer/ manufacturer to liaise with the IAF constantly on ironing out kinks, evaluating new items, integrating new weapons later on - reliability on the front line - access to continuous training - flexibility of war load {most fighters have this now} - job creation - developing your indigenous capability Glad to see the total order for Tejas cross 120. At long last, thank God at long last we are on our way. I first read about the LCA in c.1984. When the home Air Force puts its weight behind a indigenous design only then it can blossom forth. Finally the IAF has learnt that it, as the customer, has a big role to play in aiding itself by supporting indigenous designs. As I have never tired of saying the IN learnt that in 1972. The IAF has caught up after half a century. Went through the Times of India article and the Delhi Defence Review rebuttal. My comments given below against the points/mythsAnswer the endurance of the Gripen E version and Tejas Mk1 are probably exactly the same give or take a few minutes. At full afterburner Tejas probably lasts a few minutes longer due to a slightly higher fuel fraction and a slightly lower thrust. At ferry cruise both are identical. The F-16 IN is better than both. Fuel fraction is (weight of internal fuel) / (clean take-off weight). At roughly 0.30 or so with modern metallurgy & composites you get to the maximum internal fuel after which you start burning fuel simply to carry the extra fuel. There is no figure called combat endurance but multiple figures depending on configuration, fuel, weapons, flight profile, speed, weather etc. Ferry range for both Gripen C & Tejas is ~ 1750 nm or about 3.5 hours at optimum cruise. Gripen E is about 400 nm more. This figure of ferry is only used for comparison purposes and has no bearing in combat. Given that at least on the Western border 90% of likely targets are less than 200 nm from the border both aircraft have adequate range to do their job.You can only guess at this stage as to what is the weapon payload. Along with fuel carried it is usually not shared openly though some public figures are put out there. The full load for Tejas has been claimed at between 3500 kgs and 5300 kgs and that of Gripen C & E at 5300 kgs. Given their empty weights and engine thrust the payload has to be in the ball park of 15% of each other.A typical fightersairframe today is typically called out at 6000 hours at the start and then with periodic refits extended to 9000 and then to 12000 hours. 6000 hours translates to 15 to 20 years of frontline flying. These are 'fighter hours' not airline hours which tend to be much much higher due to the more steady flying. Can the Tejas last 40 years -I do not know. HAL's design & delivery is being tested for the first time after the HF-24. Can it last 20 years - without a shadow of doubt. Can the Gripen or F-16IN with proper maintenance last 40 years - yes they can.I don't believe that. That is like saying a car designed in 2010 needs a crank handle to get it started. The test flying itself would have tested how many sorties can be sustained in a day a long while back.Selection of an aircraft is not on brochure figures alone but on several other factors especially given that we have been hurt in the past:-- availability of spares & support - always without strings- availability of the designer/ manufacturer to liaise with the IAF constantly on ironing out kinks, evaluating new items, integrating new weapons later on- reliability on the front line- access to continuous training- flexibility of war load {most fighters have this now}- job creation- developing your indigenous capabilityGlad to see the total order for Tejas cross 120. At long last, thank God at long last we are on our way. I first read about the LCA in c.1984. When the home Air Force puts its weight behind a indigenous design only then it can blossom forth. Finally the IAF has learnt that it, as the customer, has a big role to play in aiding itself by supporting indigenous designs. As I have never tired of saying the IN learnt that in 1972. The IAF has caught up after half a century. Who is Herman Bavinck, and why should contemporary Christians care about him? James Eglintons penetrating new study, Bavinck: A Critical Biography, goes a long way toward answering these questions. Eglinton, who teaches Reformed theology at the University of Edinburgh, has produced a magisterial work that figures to become the leading biography of the great Dutch Reformed theologian (18541921). Along with Abraham Kuyper, Bavinck was an important figure in the neo-Calvinist movement in the Netherlands in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. A theological giant in his own right, Bavinck has received increased attention in the English-speaking world, especially following the translation of his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics, but is still too little known (especially outside the Dogmatics). Eglintons biography provides a welcome correction, surpassing previous accounts of Bavincks work in several ways. It is impressively researched, drawing from a wide array of unpublished and frequently overlooked material. Related to this, it provides generally better-informed interpretations of Bavincks life and thought, identifying reasons to depart from previous scholarship on a variety of issues. It is also well written and clearly organized, guiding the reader through varied subjects without a sense of wasted space or meandering. The books great theme is that Bavinck, as a theologian, was both orthodox and modern. In the introduction, Eglinton sets up the biography as an extension of his earlier book, Trinity and Organism, which had argued against the tendency to separate these two aspects of Bavincks thought. Rejecting what he terms the two Bavincks approach (or the Jekyll and Hyde Bavinck), Eglinton aims to portray his subject as a man of unified theological visiona man who was thoroughly immersed in the concerns of the modern world without leaving off the orthodox commitments of his Dutch Reformed heritage. Holiness and Activism Eglinton effectively shows how Bavinck aspired to meet the challenges of modernity with neither retreat nor compromise. For me, the fact that Bavinck navigated this tension in an earlier and different phase of modernity (a century ago and in Europe) makes him an especially interesting thinker to engage. Bavinck had a pious upbringing, with his father serving as a pastor in the Seceder church (the Christian Reformed Church) that had separated from the state church (the Dutch Reformed Church). It is endearing to read the earnest prayers recorded throughout his youthful journals or to observe how Bavinck came to love his flock even while struggling during his year in pastoral ministry. At the same time, throughout his theological career he found himself increasingly drawn into engagement with the concerns of the modern world, particularly around the turn of the 20th century. While he never rejected his Seceder background, his circles and interests kept expanding. In his final decades he devoted considerable energy to engaging Nietzsche, World War I, and female suffrage. This tension between unchanging theology and ever-changing culture, as well as between distinctness from the world and engagement with the world, is a challenge that has marked evangelicalism from its outset and continues to the present moment. Exploring how Bavinck balanced these concerns is instructive and inspiring. Consider, for instance, how expansive Bavincks social and cultural vision was, together with that of Kuyper and the neo-Calvinists more generally. Bavinck was active in politics and served as a Dutch parliamentarian for several years. He had global interests and warned of the dangers of colonialism. He frequently spoke and wrote about education policy. After World War I, he spent a great deal of energy addressing the dangers of war. In his later years, Bavinck was an ardent advocate for female suffrage and for valuing the role of women in society. He spoke often to womens societies around the Netherlands. Earlier he had called upon the Free University of Amsterdam to admit women as theological students. Article continues below During his visit to America, Bavinck became deeply concerned about racism, warning about its future consequences. He studied and wrote on all kinds of subjects, especially psychology. (He even wrote about topics like art, travel, and raising teenagers.) He believed the church had a responsibility to care for the poor, and like the English church leader John Stott, he insisted that the gospel included a social dimension, over and against others in the Seceder church who defined it mainly in terms of personal sin and salvation. What is striking from these facts is how far Bavinck was from being a fundamentalist, despite standing squarely within a relatively conservative theological framework. Bavinck was eloquent in his criticisms of the modernist theology he had experienced as a student at Leiden and elsewhere. Opposing the assumption that Christianity had to be modernized to have a future, Bavinck countered (in Eglintons words) that to have a future, modern culture had to be Christianized. Thus, for Bavinck, holistic societal engagement was not a departure from his Reformed heritage but its proper expression. In particular, he was sympathetic to Kuypers vision of Calvinism as a social force, a dynamic power that must work itself into every layer of society. All told, Bavinck described his theological outlook as a balancing act that sought to maintain both holiness and activism. When leaving the Seceder school in Kampen to teach at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1902, Bavinck described two different poles within the church of his upbringing: one that emphasized personal holiness and another that emphasized engagement in the world: There was the idea that we need to leave the world to its own fate, but precisely because I come from the circles that I do, I felt obliged to seek out an education at a university, because that church was in great danger of losing its catholicity in order to hold on to holiness of life. And then the thought arose in me: Is it possible to reconcile these? My goal is to hold tightly to both, and not to let go of either. This reference to catholicity brings up another intriguing quality of Bavincks Calvinism: namely, its generous posture to non-Calvinists. He was as deeply committed to the Reformed heritage as nearly anyone; it was Bavinck who wrote the foreword to B. B. Warfields Calvin as a Theologian and Calvinism Today, a book that ended with the line, Calvinism is nothing more, and nothing less, than the hope of the world. At the same time, Bavinck was not sectarian: He described the spirit of his Calvinism as cosmopolitan, and he was dismayed at the failure of various Seceder churches to unite. In response to the threat of Nietzsche, he spoke of a theistic coalition, seeking to make Christianity itself, not Calvinism, visible to the culture. Eglinton notes comparisons drawn between Bavincks 1906 essay The Essence of Christianity and C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity a century later, stating that Bavinck was now balancing an increasingly specific neo-Calvinism in the revised Reformed Dogmatics and a generalized notion of Christianity in the public domain. Later, he observes that from the time Bavinck delivered the Stone Lectures at Princeton in 1908, he held these two goals equally in view: For every book on neo-Calvinism, it seems, a Mere Christianity would also be needed. Article continues below A Multifaceted Legacy Bavincks legacy for contemporary Christians is thus rich and multifaceted. To speak personally, before reading this book I had appreciated and used Bavinck mainly for his theological stature. He was an intellect of nearly unparalleled range, one of the theological titans of the modern eracomparable to Karl Barth, perhaps, but less theologically erratic (from my perspective). From Eglintons biography I now have a greater sense of Bavinck the man and his broader relevance to the perennial tensions of Christ and culture. My simple remark to contemporary Christians navigating that tension is this: Bavinck is both more theologically profound and more socially aware than most of us. On both fronts, and especially on the challenge of holding them together, we would do well to learn from his efforts. Gavin Ortlund is senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai, California. He is the author of Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. Updated 11:15 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 16, 2021 - A mass vaccination drive-thru clinic is being held today (Saturday) in Redding at Benton Airpark. The classification of Shasta County citizens eligible for the vaccination has expanded. If you are in any of these classifications you can get a vaccination today. The drive-thru clinic will be closed at 2:00 p.m. today. Over the age of 75 Are a community health worker Are an In Home Supportive Services worker Or are ANY type of health care worker According to Kerri Schuette of the Shasta County Health & Human Services Department, the flow of people has been steady. She said because of this they have been able to open up the vaccination opportunity to more people. Benton Airpark is located at 2600 Gold Street in Redding. --- SHASTA COUNTY, Calif. People 75 and older in Shasta County will be able to get COVID-19 vaccines starting Tuesday, Jan. 19, according to the countys Health and Human Services. People 65 and older will be eligible starting Feb. 1. This comes after the California Department of Public Health announced Wednesday that it is immediately allowing residents 65 and older to get scarce coronavirus vaccines. More information on how these groups can sign up to be vaccinated will be announced as soon as details are finalized, said Shasta County Health and Human Services. Shasta County residents who are healthcare personnel or 75 years of age and older are welcome to call Shingletown Medical Center at 474-3390 to schedule an appointment to be vaccinated. Public Health says it is working with other local clinics to schedule eligible groups for vaccine, as well as enrolling additional medical offices with the state so they can also vaccinate people. Health officials ask residents to check the ShastaReady Vaccinations page for instructions when your group is eligible. Meanwhile, Public Health and its partners said they continue to vaccinate people at the highest risk of exposure, including health care personnel and long-term care residents and staff. Shasta County Public Health has received 11,075 vaccines so far, which does not include vaccine provided through the federal government to the Veterans Administration or to local tribal clinics. Demand far exceeds supply. The county said it has 14,000 licensed healthcare workers and 36,500 residents over age 65, so it will take some time to vaccinate all people who wish to receive vaccine, and each person needs two doses. While Shasta County is following the state rollout plan, each county is going at a different pace, depending on the number of healthcare workers they have and the amount of vaccine they receive. There is also a mass vaccination clinic planned for Saturday, Jan. 16, at Benton Airpark in Redding for In-Home Supportive Services providers who provide services outside of their home and have multiple clients, and to Community Health Workers who do hands-on, direct patient care, and do not work for a health center or hospital. Hours for last names between A-M are 9 to 11:30 a.m., and for last names between N-Z, hours are 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Health officials ask you to bring the completed pre-registration paperwork, identification, and proof of employment as an IHSS worker or Community Health Worker. Health officials are asking you to not attend this vaccination clinic if you have history of anaphylaxis or severe allergies. RELATED COVID-19 VACCINE CONTENT: Employees store coffins, some marked with "infection risk" as others have "corona" scrawled in chalk, in the mourning hall of the crematorium in Meissen, eastern Germany, on January 13, 2021, amid the new coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. As Germany's Meissen crematorium struggles to cope with an explosion in deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in the region, coffins are stacked up to three high or even stored in hallways awaiting cremation.(JENS SCHLUETER / AFP) The surge in Europe's biggest economy comes as the global death toll from the pandemic approaches two million and many countries double down on virus restrictions, with vaccination drives still in their infancy. Portugal entered a fresh lockdown Friday while Britain began requiring negative tests for entry, and fresh curbs on populations were announced from Brazil to Lebanon. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday pushed for a "significant" tightening of curbs to slow the infection rate as the European Union's most populous country added more than 22,000 new cases. The chancellor said she wanted to bring forward crisis talks with regional leaders to the coming week, participants at a meeting of her centre-right CDU party told AFP. They quoted her as saying the virus could only be stopped with "significant additional measures" and that people urgently needed to reduce social contact. At the Meissen crematorium in the state of Saxony, coffins were stacked up to three high, or even stored in hallways, awaiting cremation. The eastern region has been one of Germany's worst-hit areas in recent weeks. Manager Joerg Schaldach, 57, said anyone still denying the severity of the pandemic should come and take a look at the bodies piling up. "This is heavy work, so why don't the Covid-19 deniers come and do it," he said. "We have a disastrous situation here." - 'Worrying' - Germany has fared better than many of its European neighbours in the pandemic, with France, Italy, Spain and Britain all recording more infections despite smaller populations. Britain on Thursday said it would ban all arrivals from South American countries from Friday, over fears of importing a new coronavirus strain. "I've taken the urgent decision... following evidence of a new variant in Brazil," Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Twitter. The new strain, known as E484K, has raised alarm among researchers over its possible impact on immunity. Partly over fears of new variants, France said it would impose a daily nationwide curfew at 6 pm starting Saturday and remaining in force for at least two weeks. Most of France had already been under an 8 pm curfew, with some areas, especially in the hard-hit east, already under the stricter 6 pm limit. Brazil's northern Amazonas state also announced a curfew from 7 pm to 6 am as the health system is pushed to breaking point in the state capital Manaus. Global health experts were expected on Friday to issue recommendations to stem the spread of this variant and other new strains, which the WHO called "worrying". The WHO's emergency committee normally gathers every three months but its meeting was brought forward by two weeks. "When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease we now call Covid-19 had been reported to the WHO," director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks to the emergency meeting Thursday. - Stimulus plan - Scientists say large-scale vaccination is the only way out of the crisis but 95 percent of the doses so far administered have been limited to just 10 countries, the WHO's European branch said. Progress on administering vaccines has often been slow. India's mammoth immunisation programme will only begin on Saturday. In the United States around 10 million people have received a first shot. American policymakers were on Thursday focused on addressing the economic damage from the pandemic, with President-elect Joe Biden unveiling a proposal for a $1.9 trillion relief package aimed at revitalising the world's largest economy. Biden aims to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, help struggling state and local governments, safely reopen schools, boost the vaccination campaign and raise the size of stimulus cheques Congress approved last month. "In this moment of crisis... we cannot afford inaction," Biden said. A person carries a plant out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds in Washington, U.S., January 14, 2021. REUTERS/Erin Scott TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Snapchat is paying millions of dollars to influencers who post viral videos on its new Spotlight service, including a 19-year-old who has earned more than $3million. Last year, Snapchat said it would be paying $1million a day total to several influencers who generate clicks with viral clips as part of its new Spotlight initiative aimed at taking on rival app TikTok. While Snaps shared on private profiles are usually only seen by friends in the app, Spotlight lets users share posts publicly while still protecting their identity from strangers. This means that content creators will have a chance to create a Snap that's widely viewed, whether they have two Snapchat friends or 2 million. Since the launch of Spotlight, thousands of teenage influencers have earned cash by posting short-form content. Cam Casey, 19, of Los Angeles, California, had already established himself as a presence on TikTok. Cam Casey, 19, (left) and Joey Rogoff, 21, two social media influencers who room together in Los Angeles, have earned more than $3million and $1million, respectively, for posting viral videos on Snapchat's Spotlight initiative, which invites users to post content for money Casey and Rogoff have amassed a huge audience by posting viral clips of them conducting science experiments and card tricks When he heard that Snapchat was launching Spotlight, he started posting old videos from his phone, including a science experiment where a Coca Cola bottle explodes, according to The New York Times. Two weeks later, after uploading other clips, Snapchat told him that he was going to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Casey kept uploading more videos, posting as many as 120 clips per day. He has earned more than $3million total from the company for the viral content, according to the Times. Another influencer, 21-year-old Joey Rogoff, has earned more than $1million through Spotlight. Dominic Andre, 27, of Los Angeles, has earned $600,000 from videos that he posted to Spotlight. Katie Feeney, 18, of Olney, Maryland, has earned more than $1million from videos she posted to Snapchat in the past two months TikTok stars do make money, but their checks aren't written by the platform's parent company, ByteDance. Instead, brand names pay influencers with a massive following on TikTok to hawk their products. Popular TikTok stars earn as much as $200,000 per 60-second post, and could charge major brands as much as $1million next year if current trends continue. This means that a star like 17-year-old singer Loren Gray, from Pennsylvania, who has over 38million followers, can charge nearly $200,000 per post. BabyAriel, with an estimated 30million followers, could earn around $150,000 per post, while LA-based Pomeranian dog Jiffpom would rake in $100,000 per post. She is known to have collaborated with EA Games on its Sims 4: Get Famous. Still, Rogoff told the Times he thinks more TikTok stars will migrate to the more lucrative option offered by Snapchat. TikTok set that precedent of what kind of content people are looking for, Rogoff said. Snapchat has done a really good job of recreating that in their own way, building that into their own app. Theyre the highest paying platform right now. Hopefully other platforms see that and will follow their lead because ultimately thats whats going to make creators the happiest. Casey said his exploding popularity on Snapchat and the high earnings that come with it is burnishing his Q rating among influencers in the Los Angeles area. I think its already starting to help me get into that mainstream social media world with all the other mainstream creators, Casey said. CJ OperAmericano, 24, of Los Angeles, has been posting primarily on TikTok. But since Spotlight started, she has managed to earn more than $100,000. Everyone is talking about Spotlight, Katie Feeney, 18, of Olney, Maryland, said. In November, Snap Inc, the parent company that owns Snapchat, announced it would be paying out $1million per day to social media influencers who post viral content on Spotlight Its definitely very well known among all TikTokers and all social media influencers. Feeny, a high school senior, has earned more than $1million from Snapchat in the past two months. In one clip, she is seen spinning on a hoverboard while appearing in several outfits. Feeney said that the money she has earned has made her reconsider colleges that she previously ruled out due to the exorbitantly high cost. I think its going to take me a while to really process it, Feeney told the Times. I now have the opportunity to go to the school of my choice. For a lot of people Spotlight is going to change their life and its unbelievable. Still, TikTok remains the dominant platform for Gen Z influencers. TikTok is the place to be right now, its where all the attention is going, all the energy is going, Casey said. Another disadvantage for Snapchat is that competition on Spotlight is getting more intense, which means that there is less money to be earned among those in a larger pool of influencers. Theres more competition, said Casey. Its harder to get views. More people are posting. While Andre was being interviewed by the Times, he said: I just got a DM from Snapchat right now saying that I earned another $100,000. Rogoff and Casey said that since the Spotlight initiatve was rolled out, many influencers migrated from TikTok to Snapchat. Rogoff and Casey are seen above in one of their viral TikTok videos Im earning about $100,000 a week on average. Casey and Rogoff are roommates who share an apartment in the Studio City section of Los Angeles. Casey told the Times that he plans to give back some of the money he has earned on Snapchat to his family as a thank you for raising and supporting him. Yes, it is just making videos, but theres so much more that goes into creating what you see on camera, he said. I want to use the money to put back into my videos and create a life for myself where Im able to become one of the biggest influencers on the internet. Ive always had very big aspirations. Were in a weird industry where anything can happen at any moment. Snap Inc, the US company behind Snapchat, said in November that it is lowering the threshold for people to be able to monetize videos a luxury usually only afforded to influencers with millions of followers. 'Snapchatters are some of the most expressive and creative mobile storytellers in the world and Spotlight gives them an opportunity to share their creations broadly,' said Snap Inc. 'With over four billion snaps created each day, Spotlight empowers the Snapchat community to express themselves and reach a large audience in a new way.' Usually on Snapchat, Snaps the short video clips themselves can only be seen by people you are friends with on the app. Spotlight allows users to post a public Snap, while keeping the rest of their profile private. Other users can see and share the Spotlight Snap, but no-one can reply or see the poster's profile. Some celebrities and other influencers already have 'public' Snapchat accounts, which means that other users can search for and view their Stories. Usually on Snapchat, Snaps the short video clips themselves can only be seen by people you are friends with on the app. Spotlight allows users to post a public Snap, while keeping the rest of their profile private But with Spotlight, users don't need to have a public account for their Snap to appear on Spotlight only 'a great Snap'. Having created a video within Snapchat, users will now see a new Spotlight option appear when choosing where to send their clip. Snap Inc admitted that Spotlight was 'inspired by other platforms', including TikTok, but the feature is 'defined' by the Snapchat community and 'lowers the barrier to content creation'. 'Spotlight gives our community a place to share publicly, which we see them desiring by the way they post to other platforms,' the firm said. Spotlight also 'upholds its values on privacy' as it doesn't feature public comments and profiles are set to private by default. By distributing cash prizes per day to anyone who makes entertaining Snaps that appear on Spotlight, the company claims to be making the app more fair and fun and one that doesn't prioritize celebrities or public figures. Extra affordable units are planned for two Brisbane inner-city locations, including the former children's court, as part of a Queensland government housing strategy dubbed the Build to Rent. Both major parties took similar policies to the last year's Queensland election. Labor announced projects in Newstead and Fortitude Valley, while the LNP announced a similar policy during the campaign. Construction of an affordable unit complex - similar to this block - will be built at Brisbane's North Quay. This image is representative only. Effectively, the Queensland government subsidises a proportion of the construction so units can be built more affordably and rented out for a lower rate. Although there is no specific employment requirement, the inner-city units are designed to be rented to inner-city health workers, police, transport and fire and emergency workers. COLUMBUS, Miss. (WTVA) - A Lowndes County man is back at home after a tornado destroyed his home in 2019. Gregory Mixons family had owned the previous structure for more than 40 years. However, due to the damage that the house sustained from the storm in 2019, volunteers had to demolish the old structure. More than 85 volunteers from Community Recovery of Lowndes County and Mennonite Disaster Service have since rebuilt his home. Due to the pandemic, construction had been halted, but Mixon is finally able to step foot into his new home. Mixon said the feeling is hard to believe. He never thought a day like Thursday would come. Now, he looks forward to sitting inside his new home and soak in the experience and joy. Tyre maker India on Friday launched a new tyre, V-Steel Mix M721, for commercial vehicles to establish a strong presence in the drive axle tyre category. The latest offering is specifically for the general cargo, long haul and highway application, and seeks to target the rapidly growing fleet segment, said India Managing Director Parag Satpute at the virtual launch. India, which is a subsidiary of Bridgestone Corporation of Japan, has its presence in both passenger and commercial segments, and caters to both aftermarket and the original equipment (OE) space. The company has two manufacturing facilities, one each at Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh and Chakan in Pune, which cater to almost the domestic market demand. The segment is focussed on optimising total cost of operations to achieve higher profitability. The V-STEEL Mix M721 is targeted towards the general cargo segment, which is the largest portion of the CV segment and delivers 15 per cent extra tyre mileage and subsequent reduction in cost per kilometre (CPK) for the fleet operators, said Satpute. Priced at 7-10 per cent higher than other comparable Bridgestone tyres, the V-Steel Mix M721 is a combination of low rolling resistance compound, deeper tread depth and tie bar which enables extra tyre mileage and even wear, according to Satpute. "What we would like to focus on while working with fleet customers is the total cost of ownership (TCO). This new product addresses the TCO," he said. Over the past few years, this segment has grown rapidly and with its experience from the advanced economies, the company has helped in this process, Satpute added. Bridgestone India's strategy is to aggressively grow its core tyre business, providing the right product and by building a wide servicing infrastructure for the highways for the fleet customers, he said. Satpute added that the new product addresses the issues of both tyre fuel mileage and cut-chip resistance. "The other focus is to provide higher value to our customers with our new business models such as pay per kilometer. "With these business models, we look to leverage our expertise in tyre management and create a win-win situation for fleet operators," Satpute said. Last month, Pune-based Bridgestone India announced an undisclosed investment in fleet management firm Fleeca India to strengthen its positioning in the digital application-based mobility solutions. It will further strengthen its existing service Infrastructure for providing comprehensive tyre services across national highways. In line with its global journey of becoming a mobility solution, Bridgestone India is working towards providing end-to-end tyre management solutions to its customers, Satpute said. Bridgestone India has started doing this (services like pay per kilometre) as a new business model and it is making good progress and it remains the core part of the strategy going forward, he said. The company started the 'pay per km' business model for the fleet segment in 2018 but started scaling it up from 2020. "Today, it is a commercially available solution from Bridgestone. We have a dedicated team for PPK business and it is growing rapidly. "We are investing in this space and we are committed to bring the technology to the Indian market," he said. On the overall India business, Satpute said India is still a developing market and therefore, there is a lot of growth in the OE segment. "Overall, we have a strong position in the tyre business in India and our ambition is to become one of the leading players in the TBR (truck and bus radial) space in the country." Satpute said that 2020 was a "unique" year, owing to the emergence of the pandemic that brought all economic activities to a halt for nearly two months. However, from August-September onwards, industrial activities started coming back and 2021 is expected to continue with that momentum. "We are mindful that COVID-19 is still around, there are countries around the world who are in the second and third wave... but there is a lot of positivity because of the vaccine. I am cautiously optimistic about 2021," he said. Bridgestone India has a high emphasis on providing tyre management solutions and will continue to develop its network with both PV and CV segments getting a lot of focus, he said. The company has a "very robust" product line in the next few years, he added. CHESS CubeSat Constellation to carry FUNcube transponders In 2020, a project between AMSAT-UK, AMSAT-NL and Swiss universities started with the aim of equipping two Swiss satellites with a linear transponder for amateur radio With a linear transponder, several QSOs can take place simultaneously. The satellites can be operated in CW/SSB with the simplest equipment. The satellites also include features for classroom demonstrations and experiments. In numerous teleconference discussions, the technical possibilities could be sounded out and the realisation prepared. The CHESS [Constellation of High Energy Swiss Satellites] project includes two satellites, which will be built simultaneously and later launched as a constellation. Both will provide a linear transponder for amateur radio use. The first satellite will have a nearly circular orbit at an altitude of 400 km. The second will have an elliptical orbit with an altitude of 3501000 km. The satellites themselves are a project of the Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne (EPFL) with support from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU Institute of Electrical Engineering IET), the University of Bern, the Valais University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HES-SO), the Haute Ecole Neuchatel and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. The amateur radio payload is a project of AMSAT-UK/-NL. On 18 December 2020, the successful system requirements review took place. The project coordination between CHESS and AMSAT lies with the Amateur Radio Association of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts Technology & Architecture, Horw. The Swiss AMSAT Operators provide information about the CHESS project at https://www.amsat-hb.org/funcube-chess/ EPFL Spacecraft Team https://www.epflspacecraftteam.com/chess-1 President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks on the CCP virus pandemic at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del., on Dec. 29, 2020. (Mark Makela/Getty Images) Biden Announces $1.9 Trillion Plan for CCP Virus Relief Seeks to raise federal minimum wage to $15 an hour President-elect Joe Biden late Thursday announced a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan to address the ongoing CCP virus pandemic in the United States. We have no time to waste when it comes to getting this virus under control and building our economy back better, he announced in a statement. In his address to the nation on Thursday evening, he said that immediate action will prevent long term economic damage, adding that the benefits will far surpass the costs. Biden asserted that more spending early on would reduce the long-term economic damage caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus lockdowns and restrictions. Biden said his plan involves two steps, rescue and recovery. He said he will announce his Build back Better recovery plan next month to address infrastructure and innovation. The American Rescue Plan includes $1,400 stimulus payment checks that will be added on top of the $600 checks that were issued under the last stimulus. This amounts to some $1 trillion in direct relief. Biden said the $600 provided per person so far is not enough. The legislative proposal also provides about $440 billion for in critical support to struggling communities, including for small businesses, educators, public transport workers, and first responders. Biden is also calling to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a $15 federal minimum wage would lead to the loss of 1.3 million jobs. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Democratic socialist, has long pushed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15. The legislative proposal also extends moratoriums on foreclosures and evictions until Sept. 30, and include $25 billion in funding for rental and $5 billion for utility assistance. If we dont act now there will be a wave of evictions and foreclosures, Biden said. This will provide more than 25 million Americans greater stability instead of living on the edge every single month. More than 2 million Americans have contracted the CCP virus and more than 385,000 deaths have been linked to the CCP virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease. Jobless claims have risen to 965,000, according to the latest figures issued by the Labor Department. People line up outside Kentucky Career Center prior to its opening to find assistance with their unemployment claims in Frankfort, Ky., on June 18, 2020. (Bryan Woolston/Reuters) Bidens proposal increases the supplemental unemployment insurance to $400 a week from $300 a week, and the payments will be extended to September. The package also includes assistance to fight hunger, including proposing to extend the 15 percent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit increase to September, investing $3 billion in the in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and $1 billion in additional nutrition assistance for U.S. territories. About $415 billion will be channeled toward health care, including $20 billion to support a national vaccine program, $50 billion to expand testing, investments for workers to conduct vaccine outreach and contact tracing, and funding for states. Bidens goal is to administer some 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration. He said it will be the most challenging operation and his administration will have to move heaven and earth to achieve this goal. The legislation proposal calls for $350 billion in emergency funding for state, local, and territorial governments to help pay front line public workers, distribute the vaccine and scaling COVID-19 testing, reopen schools, and other services. Biden is allotting $130 billion toward his goal of reopening schools across the country by the 100th day of his administration. The funds would also go toward supporting remote learning. Biden is expected to be inaugurated on Jan. 20the anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said they would move quickly to pass legislation. After Congress passed the most recent emergency COVID relief bill in December, Democrats were clear that much more needed to be done, they said in a statement. We are pleased the Biden-Harris package includes much of what Congressional Democrats have been fighting for, including an increase in direct payments to $2,000 for American families, support for vaccine distribution and testing, additional aid to small businesses, funding to safeguard state and local jobs, extension of unemployment benefits, help for renters and children in poor and middle-class families and more. The very health of our nation is at stake, Biden said in his address. The emergency legislation would be paid for with borrowed money, adding to trillions in debt. Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. The High Court has been asked to wind up an Irish-registered company within the Norwegian Air airline group. An examiner was appointed to the airline, which owes its creditors some $5bn (4.13bn), as well as several of its subsidiaries last month. Arising from Norwegian's decision earlier this week to cease its long-haul services, the examiner to the companies Kieran Wallace on Friday asked Mr Justice Michael Quinn to make an order winding up one of its Irish subsidiaries, Torskefjorden Leasing Ltd (TLL). The matter came before the judge on Friday morning and he adjourned proceedings until the evening in order to allow any creditor the opportunity to air any views they may have on the application. Kelly Smith SC for Mr Wallace said that as part of its efforts to restructure, the airline announced to the Oslo Stock Exchange that it had decided to cease its long-haul activities. Counsel said that going forward the airline plans to concentrate on its Nordic routes. Counsel said while Mr Wallace was broadly in agreement with that plan, which he continues to evaluate, the decision meant that (TLL) was no longer commercially viable. TLL operated as a lessor of 24 wide-body Boeing jets, which it had sub-leased to other companies within the group to operate its long-haul routes. TLL's only income, counsel said, came from the sub-leasing arrangements. As a result of the decision to end long-haul services, Mr Wallace was of the view that (TLL) should exit the examinership process and be liquidated. TLL, along with other Irish-registered companies Arctic Aviation Assets DAC, Norwegian Air International Ltd, Drammensfjorden Leasing Ltd and Lysakerfjorden Leasing Ltd, was granted the protection of the Court from their creditors late last year. The firms are involved in the leasing, management and subleasing of assets, including aircraft, and financing. The court also placed the Norwegian registered parent company Norwegian Air Shuttle (ASA) into examinership. Mr Wallace is in the process of putting together a scheme of arrangement with the airline's creditors, which if approved by the High Court will allow Norwegian to continue to trade as a going concern. The court heard that while the business plan may have a significant impact on workforce numbers, he remains of the view that the airline has a reasonable prospect of survival if certain steps are taken. The group's creditors include subsidiaries of Airbus, Boeing, aircraft leasing firm Avolon, the ExportImport Bank of the United States (EXIM) and the Irish Revenue Commissioners. Declan Murphy BL for the group said it was not opposed to the examiner's application regarding TLL, and added that it would save time and money if Mr Wallace and Andrew O'Leary of KPMG were appointed as that firm's official liquidators. Rossa Fanning SC for a group of creditors, including EXIM and aircraft lessors, said his clients were not opposing the application. Lawyers representing other creditors, including Revenue, said they were not opposing the application, and took a neutral stance in relation to the application to wind up TLL. Mr Justice Quinn noted that not all creditors were present at the remote hearing, for which less than 24 hours' notice had been given and so he adjourned. Late last year Norwegian's board of directors petitioned the court for the appointment of an examiner who could put together a survival plan based on factors including the group's core business is good. In 2019 the group employed over 10,000 staff and operated 20 bases in 11 countries. However last year was difficult for the group and it commenced several cost reduction measures aimed at restoring it to profitability. The grounding of Boeing 737 Max and Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft had also adversely affected the airline's finances, the court also heard. The Norwegian government announced earlier last month that it would no longer provide financial support to the group. BISMARCK, N.D., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, North Dakota families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. North Dakotans are hosting 42 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Nebraska, the Alerus Center in Grand Forks will light up Jan. 24-30. Additionally, Governor Doug Burgum has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as North Dakota School Choice Week. "North Dakota offers some education options, but this past year has shown that families need more flexible choices that reflect their values and health needs," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "School Choice Week provides an upbeat, hopeful time to talk about K-12 education and how we can better serve North Dakota kids." In North Dakota, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. North Dakota families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to North Dakota school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/north-dakota. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Rome, Jan 15 : Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told President Sergio Mattarella that he will address Parliament rather than offering his resignation after one of his coalition allies withdrew its support, according to an official statement. "The Prime Minister told the President of the Republic tha he wants to carry out an essential political clarification by addressing parliament," Xinhua news agency quoted the statement issued from Mattarella office on Thursday as saying. The date for the parliamentary speech has not yet been set. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, now a senator who leads the Italia Viva party, pulled out of the ruling majority on Wednesday, triggering a government crisis. Italy's current coalition government is backed by the center-left Democratic Party, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, and Italia Viva, the party that Renzi founded in late 2019. Conte now needs to find another political ally with enough votes in Parliament to give him a new majority. If this effort fails and Conte resigns, it will be up to Mattarella to sound out Italy's political forces in order to form a new government to guide Italy through the end of the current legislature's natural five-year term, in March 2023. If Mattarella also fails and no new governing coalition can be found, Italian voters will be called to a snap election. Italy's last general election was held in March 2018. As the summer months waned, an outbreak of COVID-19 in Urumqi destroyed the usual tranquility. For months, the people of the capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region battled the epidemic. A documentary filmmaker captured the daily lives of locals during those tumultuous times. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 21:05:57|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China has been enhancing its civil aviation infrastructure sector over the past five years, with big investment and significant progress achieved, according to the country's civil aviation authorities. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), a total investment of 460.8 billion yuan (about 71.2 billion U.S. dollars) was injected into the sector, according to data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). China positioned the civil aviation industry as an important strategic industry for the country's socio-economic development. Significant progress has been made in the scale and speed of construction as well as the volume of investment in airports, which represent the key infrastructure of the civil aviation industry, the CAAC said. As of the end of 2020, China's total number of certified civil transport airports and general airports reached 241 and 313, respectively. Enditem A motorist was killed Thursday night when two cars collided on a road in Salem County, New Jersey State Police said. Maribel Pacheco, 47, of Bridgeton, was driving east on Porchtown Road in Pittsgrove Township just before 11 p.m. when her car collided head-on with an SUV traveling in the opposite direction. Pacheco died of her injuries, police said, and the other driver, a 28-year-old Bridgeton man, suffered moderate injuries. He was listed in stable condition at a hospital. Additional details were not released. The crash remains under investigation. State Police are also investigating a one-car accident in Pittsgrove that occurred Friday morning and left a driver hospitalized. A motorist traveling west on Route 40/Harding Highway near Dutch Row Road around 6:30 a.m. veered off the roadway and struck a utility pole. The car overturned and the driver was thrown from the vehicle. He suffered serious injuries, police said. He was taken to Inspira Medical Center Elmer and later airlifted to Cooper University Hospital in Camden. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 01:14:15|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close A man waits in the arrivals hall at Heathrow Airport in London, Britain, on Dec. 21, 2020. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua) The new ban was announced after a meeting of senior British government officials on Thursday, the BBC reported. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday told MPs in the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, that the government was "concerned" about the new virus variant detected in Brazil. LONDON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- The British government on Thursday announced its decision to ban arrivals from more than a dozen South American countries and Portugal starting from Friday, after the detection of a new coronavirus variant. British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted: "I've taken the urgent decision to BAN ARRIVALS from ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, BOLIVIA, CAPE VERDE, CHILE, COLOMBIA, ECUADOR, FRENCH GUIANA, GUYANA, PANAMA, PARAGUAY, PERU, SURINAME, URUGUAY AND VENEZUELA -- from TOMORROW, JAN. 15 at 4 a.m. following evidence of a new variant in Brazil." "Travel from PORTUGAL to the UK will also be suspended given its strong travel links with Brazil, acting as another way to reduce the risk of importing infections. However, there is an exemption for hauliers traveling from Portugal (only), to allow transport of essential goods." "This measure does not apply to British and Irish Nationals and third-country nationals with residence rights -- but passengers returning from these destinations must self-isolate for TEN DAYS along with their households," he added. A woman waits in the arrivals hall at Heathrow Airport in London, Britain, on Dec. 21, 2020. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua) The new ban was announced after a meeting of senior British government officials on Thursday, the BBC reported. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday told MPs in the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, that the government was "concerned" about the new virus variant detected in Brazil. "We already have tough measures... to protect this country from new infections coming in from abroad," he said. In December 2020, Britain has suspended flights from South Africa after the discovery of a new and concerning variant there. Johnson said there were "lots of questions" over the latest variant, including whether it is resistant to COVID vaccines. At present, experts are uncertain how effective existing vaccines will be against the new variant, the Evening Standard newspaper reported. Patrick Vallance, the British government's top scientist, told ITV that the new variant contains "a change of the genetic code, at position 484, and that changes a part of the protein, it changes a bit of a shape of the protein". He said that there is no evidence new variants are more deadly. The latest development came as another 1,564 have died within 28 days of a positive test, the highest daily death toll since the pandemic began in the country, according to official figures released Wednesday. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 84,767, the data showed. Another 47,525 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 3,211,576, the figures showed. England is currently under the third national lockdown since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country. Similar restriction measures are also in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to develop coronavirus vaccines. Photo taken on June 8, 2020 shows a plane taking off from Heathrow Airport in London, Britain. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua) Porterville, CA (93257) Today Mostly clear. Low 54F. NNW winds shifting to S at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Mostly clear. Low 54F. NNW winds shifting to S at 10 to 20 mph. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. MONTREAL - Quebec's workplace safety board has issued fines to nine Dollarama locations in the province for failing to respect sanitary guidelines. A Dollarama store is seen Tuesday, June 11, 2013 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson MONTREAL - Quebec's workplace safety board has issued fines to nine Dollarama locations in the province for failing to respect sanitary guidelines. The Commission des normes, de l'equite, de la sante et de la securite du travail visited 68 Dollarama locations since March 2020 and issued 11 fines to the nine locations, the agency said Thursday. "The government wants to send a clear message: Health guidelines must be respected in every workplace to contain the pandemic," Quebec labour minister Jean Boulet said in a news release. In its statement, the CNESST did not specify the nature of the violations by Dollarama. The CNESST has issued 124 "correction notices" to Dollarama facilities since last March. The agency's announcement comes after Dollarama workers held protests last year decrying a lack of sanitary measures at the company's facilities. Dollarama workers described a lack of personal protective equipment and inadequate physical distancing at the company's warehouses and complained of improper barriers between staff and customers at retail stores. Dollarama gave its workers wage increases after the initial COVID-19 lockdowns in March, but ended the program in August after a six-week extension. The company also gave all of its workers a one-time bonus in December as it reported higher third-quarter profit and raised its dividend. The nine Dollarama locations that were fined are in the regions of Gaspesie, Valleyfield, Saint-Jean-sur-le-Richelieu, Saguenay, Quebec City and Yamaska, the CNESST said. Dollarama said it could not comment on the nature of the notices, adding that it has not received all of them and the ones it has received do not "clearly indicate what the infractions are." "We are both surprised and disappointed to have been targeted in such a manner, especially since we are in regular communication with the CNESST and that in the last several weeks neither their concerns or nor these notices were brought to our attention," said Lyla Radmanovich, a Dollarama spokeswoman. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 15, 2021. Companies in this story: (TSX:DOL) The state of Arizona launched a virtual court system with the goal of making hearings run more efficiently by having all case-related information available in one platform.The Digital Evidence Center, which is the result of a partnership between the state of Arizona and Thomson Reuters, is a cloud-based platform that allows courts to facilitate virtual and hybrid hearings, while providing all parties within a case the opportunity to organize and present documents, multimedia exhibits and evidence.According to Steve Rubley, president of the government segment of Thomson Reuters, the center came about after evaluating the inefficiencies associated with the existing state judicial system.Originally a product from a U.K.-based company, the Digital Evidence Center , formerly known as CaseLines, was built for the purpose of sharing digital evidence among lawyers and judges.We found a company in the U.K. that had a product on the market that was built for sharing digital evidence, Rubley said. The company worked with 1,500 judges in countries around the world who found CaseLines to be a highly secure tool that enabled their agencies to adopt the cloud.The partnership, Rubley said, started at the beginning of the pandemic. We liked what they built, and after testing their product, we decided to acquire the company. Shortly after that, we brought the product to the U.S., he said. "The state of Arizona adopted the technology statewide.From a judicial perspective, Dave Byers, director of the administrative office of the Arizona Courts, said, Our courts are associated with the National Center for State Courts. Within the organization, its joint technology committee conducted a study around two to three years ago that focused on what courts are going to do as the amount of digital evidence continues to increase.From that study, he said, due to the rapid expansion of digital evidence being provided by police body cams, car cams, iPhones, security cameras and so on, the state decided to set up its own committee to investigate what to do regarding this matter.As the committee compiled information related to this issue, the state began what would become an 18-month search for a system that could manage and store troves of digital evidence.CaseLines is the only system that met our requirements, Byers said. The system needed to not only receive digital evidence, but needed to manage it and store it for years to come as evidence from over the years can be requested for appeals.As for how this platform is currently being incorporated into Arizona state courts, Byers said, we are going to introduce the Digital Evidence Center platform to six courts; three that handle general jurisdiction issues such as criminal and felony cases and three that handle limited jurisdiction issues such as traffic violation cases.Once we prove that the system works well, he said, the platform will be expanded and incorporated into 180 other courts throughout Arizona.Other focus areas regarding the platform include evaluating how the platform can reduce evidence storage costs, Byers said.The goal is to come up with a way to move evidence from active storage, he said, which includes evidence that is relatively new or highly to be used in a hearing and "cold storage," which consists of older evidence.If there is an appeal, being able to move evidence from cold storage to active storage on demand could help significantly, Byers said. We hope to prove that this concept works. If it does, it could potentially decrease storage costs by 90 percent. ROSEBURG, Ore. Roseburg Police Chief Gary Klopfenstein is speaking out after a new citizens group published a website calling for his resignation. The website, timetogogary.com, was published by a group called Citizens for Truth. It lays out all the concerns they have with Klopfenstein. In his position, he said he understands he cant please everyone. In public safety, one half is usually happy and the other half is not happy, said Klopfenstein. Thats not uncommon. The website was disabled Thursday afternoon. It was run by a man named Joshua Brennon, who Klopfenstein said hes never met before. Its unfortunate they feel that way, he said. But, they have a right to their opinion. On the website, it said the group has two major issues with Klopfenstein. First, they claim he targeted Caseys Restaurant when he reported them to Oregon OSHA for violating the Governors COVID-19 shutdown mandate in May. His report led to a 14,000 fine to the restaurant owners. They also called him a hypocrite, claiming he showed up to a Black Lives Matter rally without a mask. Second, they claim he misreported crime statistics to the FBI. However, Klopfenstein said he never lied about the statistics and he was simply doing his job when he reported Caseys. With Caseys, we educated, we warned and they did not cease operations, he said. So a report was generated and sent to the state regulatory as required by the governor. The group also sent a letter to the city on Monday that outlines their concerns. However, Klopfenstein said he is being supported by city staff. I have the support from my boss, city manager Nikki Messenger, he said. Were following the law and I feel comfortable about that. Klopfenstein said there is nothing they can do about the website or the allegations because the group has the right to freedom of speech. However, he said he hopes the group comes forward to address their concerns in a direct way. During these unprecedented times, I am committed to community safety and following the law, said Klopfenstein. KEZI 9 News reached out to Brennon for comment, but he declined. Watertown, NY (13601) Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. HONG KONG and LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) today announced that the provisional total number of visitor arrivals in 2020 was 3.57 million, a 93.6% drop from 2019. Arrivals in January 2020 alone accounted for the majority of the annual total. As COVID-19 started to spread around the world in February, Hong Kong limited entry to overseas visitors and introduced stringent quarantine measures from mid-March onwards. Most people arriving in Hong Kong thereafter were visiting family members or traveling for other essential reasons, reducing the number of tourists to almost zero. HKTB Chairman Dr. YK Pang said, "The tourism industry has been through an extremely tough year. The Hong Kong Tourism Board has renewed its strategies and approach in response to the immense challenges of the pandemic. As visitors could not come to Hong Kong in person, we took the initiative to concentrate on improving the city's atmosphere and ambience while maintaining its international exposure, to attract visitors back to Hong Kong as soon as the COVID-19 situation eases. Looking ahead to 2021, the HKTB is well prepared for the resumption of travel. We will further strengthen our cooperation with the travel trade to jointly develop new products and itineraries and enhance Hong Kong's service quality to ensure we are ready to welcome visitors back with warm hospitality when the pandemic situation is stabilized." Key initiatives of the HKTB in 2020 Promoting Local Atmosphere With visitors and Hong Kong people both unable to travel, the HKTB launched a first-of-its-kind promotion to encourage Hong Kong people to be tourists in their own city as a way to boost domestic consumption, deliver a positive message about Hong Kong to source markets, and generate confidence among visitors considering coming to the city in future. A "Holiday @ Home" promotional platform launched in June. The one-stop platform provided over 15,000 offers in dining and retail outlets and attractions. The campaign was well received by both the industry and the public, with more than 3.7 million visits to the campaign website by the end of the year. A second phase of "Holiday @ Home" launched in late October with a Free Tour program. Members of the public could redeem a quota for a free local tour upon spending HK$800 in physical retail or dining outlets, generating consumption chain and boosting the domestic tourism simultaneously. The program received an overwhelming response with the 10,000-place quota for tours filled within around a week of its launch. By the end of the year, 7,500 people had taken the tours. Because of the evolving pandemic situation, the Free Tour program was suspended in December. The remaining tours, numbering around 100, will take place when the COVID-19 situation improves. in physical retail or dining outlets, generating consumption chain and boosting the domestic tourism simultaneously. The program received an overwhelming response with the 10,000-place quota for tours filled within around a week of its launch. By the end of the year, 7,500 people had taken the tours. Because of the evolving pandemic situation, the Free Tour program was suspended in December. The remaining tours, numbering around 100, will take place when the COVID-19 situation improves. After the positive response to the Free Tour program, the HKTB is discussing with trade partners to explore the possibility of a similar campaign. Maintaining Hong Kong's International Exposure Competition for visitors around the region is expected to be fiercer than ever in the post-pandemic era. The HKTB has therefore taken a number of steps over the past year to maintain Hong Kong's international exposure with a view to bringing visitors back as soon as possible when the outbreak subsides. Innovative Promotions The HKTB launched a #MissYouToo community promotional campaign in April to spread the message that Hong Kong misses its visitors from around the world. The campaign invited representatives from the tourism industry and Hong Kong celebrities to engage with an international audience on social media platforms, using their networks to express a sincere wish to see visitors return to the city. The campaign reached 35 million viewers. misses its visitors from around the world. The campaign invited representatives from the tourism industry and celebrities to engage with an international audience on social media platforms, using their networks to express a sincere wish to see visitors return to the city. The campaign reached 35 million viewers. A number of source markets responded to the promotion. HKTB offices around southeast Asia launched a "100 Reasons to Miss Hong Kong" campaign in July, inviting influencers in those markets to describe why they miss Hong Kong on their social media platforms. The South Korean office also published a "Hello Hong Kong!" coloring book in September. The book featured illustrations of Hong Kong landmarks and icons by popular illustrators and was distributed to celebrities and influencers. The celebrities and influencers then colored the illustrations and shared their work with their online audiences. launched a "100 Reasons to Miss Hong Kong" campaign in July, inviting influencers in those markets to describe why they miss on their social media platforms. The South Korean office also published a "Hello Hong Kong!" coloring book in September. The book featured illustrations of landmarks and icons by popular illustrators and was distributed to celebrities and influencers. The celebrities and influencers then colored the illustrations and shared their work with their online audiences. The HKTB launched a "360 Hong Kong Moments" campaign in October with the aim of producing around 20 videos on a variety of themes by the end of March 2021 . Applying the latest 360-degree Virtual Reality panoramic technology or other innovative filming techniques, the videos allow audiences grounded by the pandemic to enjoy immersive journeys through Hong Kong's diverse travel experiences from their homes. . Applying the latest 360-degree Virtual Reality panoramic technology or other innovative filming techniques, the videos allow audiences grounded by the pandemic to enjoy immersive journeys through diverse travel experiences from their homes. The HKTB worked closely with international broadcasting networks while media outside Hong Kong were unable to visit the city. TV programs filmed earlier in Hong Kong were broadcast at different times in 2020, including Expedition Asia on The Discovery Channel, Chasing the Sun on Nat Geo People , Maximum Foodie (Hong Kong Episode) on the Asian Food Network, and many others, continuing to bring the city's rich diversity of travel experiences to a global audience. Mega Events in New Formats The HKTB organized mega events in new formats to comply with social distancing rules, providing a business platform for the industry and promoting the appeal of Hong Kong's mega events. The hugely popular Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival, for instance, adopted a new "Online+Offline" format, while the Hong Kong Winterfest and the Hong Kong New Year Countdown Celebrations were held online for the first time. A video of the Hong Kong New Year Countdown Celebrations attracted more than 5 million views on the HKTB's social media platforms. A total of 110 media organizations in Hong Kong, on the Mainland and overseas also reported on the event, including the China News Service, the Xinhua News Agency, Phoenix TV, CNN, and the BBC. Some of the media organizations broadcast the event live or rebroadcast it. Communicating and Working Closely with Trade Partners The HKTB maintained cooperation and communication with members of the tourism industry around the world through webinars, forums, business matching platforms, and organized virtual tours. More than 100 webinars have been organized by the HKTB since March 2020 , and more than 15,000 trade representatives from the Mainland and overseas have participated. , and more than 15,000 trade representatives from the Mainland and overseas have participated. A major webinar was held in April to maintain communication with global trade partners and analyze the pandemic's impact on tourism. It was attended by 1,500 trade representatives from Hong Kong . In June, the HKTB held its first global online forum, titled "Beyond COVID-19: Global Tourism's New Normal" in June at which internationally-respected industry leaders shared their insights. The forum attracted over 4,000 registrants, including tourism industry members, journalists, and academics. . In June, the HKTB held its first global online forum, titled "Beyond COVID-19: Global Tourism's New Normal" in June at which internationally-respected industry leaders shared their insights. The forum attracted over 4,000 registrants, including tourism industry members, journalists, and academics. The HKTB launched its first online matching platform to connect companies interested in organizing MICE events in Hong Kong with operators, venue providers, attractions, and hotels. The platform successfully matched over 500 Hong Kong businesses and Mainland enterprises, and set up more than 1,300 meetings. with operators, venue providers, attractions, and hotels. The platform successfully matched over 500 Hong Kong businesses and Mainland enterprises, and set up more than 1,300 meetings. From September, the HKTB worked with a Japanese travel agency to host virtual tours to Hong Kong . More than 10 tours were organized and the cooperating agency said the tours were the most popular virtual tours they had arranged. . More than 10 tours were organized and the cooperating agency said the tours were the most popular virtual tours they had arranged. In October, the HKTB introduced a set of standardized hygiene protocols for tourism related sectors to help establish Hong Kong's reputation as a safe and healthy destination for future travel, sponsoring application fees in full for its trade partners. By mid-January 2021 , more than 1,500 outlets were certified under the scheme. Provisional Total Visitor Arrivals of 2020 Market December (year-on-year change) January to December ('000) (year-on-year change) Mainland 2,425 (-99.9%) 2,706 (-93.8%) Non-Mainland* 2,442 (-99.7%) 862 (-92.9%) Short-haul 1,159 (-99.7%) 360 (-94.3%) Long-haul 861 (-99.7%) 330 (-91.6%) New markets 331 (-99.2%) 54 (-91.5%) Total 4,867 (-99.8%) 3,569 (-93.6%) Note: Because of rounding up, the total may differ from the sum of the individual figures. *Includes figures from long-haul, short-haul, and new markets, as well as the Macao SAR. (Full details of December visitor arrivals and arrivals from individual markets in 2020 will be released on January 29, 2021.) SOURCE Hong Kong Tourism Board Related Links http://www.hktb.com A World War II Luftwaffe flag with a Nazi swastika will be auctioned in Queensland this weekend, but the Anti-Defamation Commission has labelled it a "disgrace" and an "emblem of pure inhumanity". The Gold Coast auction house selling the flag has hit back, saying it is a "major historical antiquity" and they are "not flying the flag, so to speak" of Nazi values by selling the piece. The 1945 Luftwaffe flag from the Dutch city of Groningen has attracted a lot of interest from potential buyers. Credit:Danielle Elizabeth Antique & Estate Auctioneers Danielle Elizabeth Antique & Estate Auctioneers managing director Dustin Sweeny said the seller was an Italian diplomat who was stationed in the Netherlands in the 1980s. The vendor, who now lives in Queensland, claims to have had the 1945 Luftwaffe compound flag in his possession for about 40 years and is selling it because he is downsizing his home. We welcome your opinions at Chattanoogan.com. Email to news@chattanoogan.com. We require your real first and last name and contact information. This includes your home address and phone number. We do not post the contact information, but need it for verification. There is no word limit, but if your article is too long you may lose your reader. Please focus more on issues than personal attacks. "Being recognized by Forbes Travel Guide as Philadelphia's first-and-only Five-Star hotel has been a key moment in my career. This accolade is one that not only elevates the Hotel, but also the City of Philadelphia as a whole," says Lasvigne. "I'm proud to serve the Hotel in the capacity of Hotel Manager, and work with the local community to further establish the city on the international stage." Lasvigne graduated from the Hospitality School of Strasbourg. An 18-year Four Seasons veteran, he has travelled the globe with the company, as well as created a Four Seasons love story with wife Verena Lasvigne-Fox, whom he met while working together at Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris. Together with their two children, they have completed assignments in Paris, Morocco and the Seychelles islands. An avid music lover who plays the guitar, Lasvigne loves big motorcycles and finds peace in the kitchen. You can follow his creations on Instagram at @charleslasvigne. CONTACT: Melissa Quinones DeShields, 267-780-3393, [email protected] SOURCE Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Upcoming political events in the Bay Area. Events take place online unless otherwise noted: TUESDAY Insurrection: Former Barack Obama communications director Dan Pfeifer on the pro-Trump insurrection and how its changed the country. Hosted by Mannys. Noon. More information is here. Climate change: The future of climate change action and politics under the Joe Biden administration, with Michael Mann, director, Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and Leah Stokes, assistant professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. Noon. More information is here. Obama book club: Reading and discussion of former President Barack Obamas book A Promised Land, with Brian Bond, LGBT liaison to Obama. Hosted by Mannys. 5 p.m. More information is here. WEDNESDAY Inauguration watch party: A virtual watch party of President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration. Hosted by Mannys. 8:30 a.m. More information is here. Socially responsible corporations: Can corporations put social responsibility in front of profits? Panelists include filmmakers Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, whose works include The New Corporation; Elizabeth Davis, dean of the School of Economics and Business Administration at St. Mary's College; Kevin McGarry, St. Marys College assistant professor of accounting and director of the Elfenworks Center for Responsible Business; and Elizabeth Carney, chair of the Commonwealth Clubs Business and Leadership Forum. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 6 p.m. More information is here. THURSDAY Capitol siege: Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland and Alicia Garza of the Black Futures Lab on the double standard in the law enforcement reaction to the pro-Trump siege on the U.S. Capitol and Black Lives Matter protests. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 10 a.m. More information is here. Biometrics: Journalist Annie Jacobsen talks about her new book, First Platoon, on the governments use of biometric personal recognition technology. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here. Rep. Eric Swalwell: East Bay Democrat on the siege of the Capitol and impeachment of President Trump. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 6 p.m. More information is here. JAN. 26 History of racism: Tyler Stovall, history professor and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University, traces the relationship between freedom and race from the Age of Revolution to today. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here. Dolores Huerta and Luis Valdez: A conversation with United Farm Workers civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, and playwright, Luis Valdez, on the history, land and people of Santa Clara Valley and greater California. Hosted by the Peninsula Open Space Trust. 7 p.m. More information is here. JAN. 28 Series on Race: Fremont Democratic Rep. talks with Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, as part of Khannas livestream Series on Race. 3 p.m. More information is here. How to Make a Slave: Jerald Walker on his new book about being a Black man in America, How to Make a Slave and Other Essays. Hosted by KPFA-FM. 7 p.m. More information is here. FEB. 3 Jennifer Siebel Newsom: Californias first partner and filmmaker discusses the documentary The Great American Lie with student filmmakers whose work looks at social justice and gender equity issues. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here. FEB. 4 Black womens history: Historians Daina Ramey Berry of the University of Texas and Kali Nicole Gross of Rutgers University discuss their new book, A Black Womens History of the United States. Hosted by KPFA-FM. 7 p.m. More information is here. To list an event, please email Chronicle politics editor Trapper Byrne at tbyrne@sfchronicle.com Edinburgh, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Five judges at Scotland's highest court of criminal appeal on Friday upheld the conviction of the only man found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The family of former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, which brought the posthumous appeal, said they were "heartbroken" at the decision, their lawyer Aamer Anwar said. They will appeal to the UK Supreme Court within 14 days, he added. Youre reading Our View, one of two perspectives in Todays Debate. For the Opposing View, read Cabinet picks are missed chance for change. Some presidents hire teams of rivals. President-elect Joe Biden is assembling a team of retreads. And thank goodness for that. Biden completed his Cabinet nominations two days after the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob a tragic and all too appropriate coda to the Trump era. Boring is the new thrilling, CNN commentator Van Jones said a few days after Biden won the election. As President Donald Trump incites his supporters to violence and becomes increasingly erratic in his final days, not to mention making history as the first president to be impeached twice, boring is still an elusive goal. But Biden holds out promise for duller days ahead. And by dull, we mean steady, professional and aligned with American values. Experience and expertise Its hard to overstate the importance of experience and expertise, both in policy areas and in the workings of government, for the team that will confront the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall havoc inflicted by Trump and his administration. Bidens nominees not only know what theyre doing, some of them have literally done it before. Agriculture Secretary-designate Tom Vilsack and Surgeon General-designate Vivek Murthy held the same jobs in the Obama administration. Biden's secretary of State pick Antony Blinken and secretary of Homeland Security choice Alejandro Mayorkas were deputy secretaries in those departments during the Obama years. President-elect Joe Biden, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, announces key Cabinet nominees on Jan. 7, 2021, in Wilmington, Delaware. Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, will return to the Justice Department, where he supervised several high-profile cases during the Clinton era. Michael Regan, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, would head the Environmental Protection Agency, where he previously served under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Story continues Some of Bidens picks have never been part of an administration, but they make sense. Education Secretary nominee Miguel Cardona, a former public school teacher, principal and assistant superintendent of schools, has been Connecticuts education commissioner through the COVID-19 crisis. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Bidens Labor secretary nominee, joined a union at age 21 and as mayor fought for labor causes such as the $15 minimum wage and paid family leave. Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, the Commerce secretary nominee, led her state out of one of the nations worst unemployment crises and earlier had founded the first venture capital firm in her state. Trumps scattershot Cabinet None of this should be noteworthy, and yet it is, because it is such a stark departure from Trumps scattershot Cabinet selection criteria: Do well on Fox News? Look like a statesman? Pledge loyalty? Eager to weaken and disrupt their agency? Never met an Obama policy they wanted to keep? This is how you end up with an oil CEO as secretary of State, a neurosurgeon as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an acting director of national intelligence with no national intelligence background, an Education secretary with little knowledge of (and seemingly even less interest in) public education, and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director who seemed to forget for months that his primary, most essential job was to convey clear, science-based information and guidance on COVID-19 to states, the health sector and the public. Democrats might want to remind their Republican colleagues of all this when they go after nominees such as Transportation Secretary designate Pete Buttigieg. The 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, served in the military, was a McKinsey management consultant and ran a creditable race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. That background stacks up nicely against Team Trump's John McEntee, 30, the presidential personnel director in charge of purging officials deemed disloyal, fired by the administration in 2018 for online gambling but brought back last year, and James Bacon, the college senior he hired as his director of operations. Like most of his Cabinet appointees, the White House staff Biden has chosen is also squarely in the category of been there, done that starting with incoming chief of staff Ron Klain, who was vice presidential chief of staff for both Al Gore and Joe Biden, and later served as President Barack Obamas Ebola response coordinator. One reason you need old hands is the old hands know where the old bodies might be buried, Biden said last month. He himself, at age 78, with decades of service in the Senate and as Obamas vice president, is the old hand in chief. By giving him the Democratic nomination and electing him president, voters made clear what they wanted. Progressives are dismayed by some of Biden's nominees, particularly the corporate business they did between stints in government. But as Trump continues to ignore a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and stokes the lies and violence that led to terror, gunfire, vandalism and death at the Capitol Biden's focus on experience is not surprising. There will be a time for fresh faces. Now is not that time. By commentary editor Jill Lawrence on behalf of the Editorial Board. USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff and the USA TODAY Network. Most editorials are coupled with an Opposing View, a unique USA TODAY feature. To read more editorials, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion email newsletter. To respond to this editorial, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joe Biden Cabinet nominees: Old hands will give America a new start A California hospital is facing a potential $43,000 fine from county health officials for alleged delays in reporting a Covid-19 super-spreader event linked to an inflatable Christmas tree costume. Healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente on Tuesday denied any delay in reporting the Covid-19 cases connected to a Christmas party at its San Jose Medical Center's emergency department. Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Jose, Calif. (Google Maps) "The suggestion that we are anything other than forthcoming with our reporting is inaccurate," Kaiser Permanente said in a statement to NBC News, adding it has "maintained consistent communications with multiple state and local agencies regarding COVID-19 cases at our facilities." The fine issued on last Tuesday is $1,000 for each delayed report of a positive case, but since early January the number of infections connected to the Christmas event has ballooned from 43 to over 90. Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak As of Tuesday, county health officials said that they have counted 77 staff and 15 patient cases connected to the event. One staff member died. The Santa Clara County Department of Public Health said it was was unaware of the first 43 cases until news reports last week. "Kaiser Permanente failed to report any of these cases in the Countys Worksite Case and Contact Reporting Portal as it is required to do by the Public Health Order issued on Oct. 5," the department said in a statement. Earlier this month, Kaiser Permanente said the inflatable Christmas tree costume while still not definitively linked to the outbreak, county health officials clarified was an innocent gesture that "only sought to lift the spirits of those around them during what is a very stressful time." Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak The organization said they are reviewing the Santa Clara County citation and will respond before the deadline on Friday. According to the California Department of Public Health, Bay Area hospital intensive care units are over 95 percent full as of Tuesday. In recent days, as the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases rapidly approaches 3 million in California alone, Governor Gavin Newsom has received increased criticism for a slow rollout of Coronavirus vaccines in the state. London: Germany doesn't really 'do' leadership instability. Not like Australia, anyway. Since 1982 Europe's largest economy has had just three chancellors while Canberra churned through 10 prime ministers - seven of whom have come and gone since Angela Merkel rose to power. No wonder she had to glance at a cheat sheet before meeting Scott Morrison in 2018. But Merkel's time is nearly up and the starter's gun on the race to replace is being fired this Saturday. Merkel - who grew up in East Berlin and went on to become one of the most influential world leaders of the modern era - will retire by September after nearly 16 years in office. "Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern are two of the greatest ever role models of female political leadership," says Lucy Turnbull, the Sydney businesswoman who was awarded the German Cross of the Order of Merit for forging stronger links with Berlin. "Angela is strong, decisive and has a deep understanding of cultural and historical values. Her life represents an extraordinary arc of history." German Chancellor Angela Merkel as her victory was announced back in 2005. Since then seven Australian prime ministers have come and gone. Credit:AP Merkel, the leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union since 2000 and Chancellor since 2005, announced during a rocky political period in late 2018 that she would immediately step down as party leader and not contest the 2021 election. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk as they make their way to take the 'family photo' during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in the Danang, Vietnam, on Nov. 11, 2017. (Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images) Russia Follows US in Withdrawal From Open Skies Treaty MOSCOWRussia said on Friday that it will withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities after the U.S. exit from the pact, compounding the challenges faced by the incoming administration of president-elect Joe Biden. Russias Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty last year significantly upended the balance of interests of signatory states, adding that Moscows proposals to keep the treaty alive after the U.S. exit have been cold-shouldered by Washingtons allies. The ministry said that Russia is now launching the relevant procedures to withdraw from the pact due to the lack of progress in removing the obstacles for the treatys functioning in the new conditions. The Russian parliament, which ratified the treaty in 2001, will now have to vote to leave it. The treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West by allowing the accords more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each others territories to collect information about military forces and activities. More than 1,500 flights have been conducted under the treaty, aimed at fostering transparency about military activity and helping monitor arms control and other agreements. U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty, arguing that Russian violations made it untenable for the United States to remain a party. The U.S. completed its withdrawal from the pact in November. President Donald Trump and Russias President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) Russia denied breaching the treaty, which came into force in 2002. The European Union has urged the United States to reconsider and called on Russia to stay in the pact and lift flight restrictions, notably over its westernmost Kaliningrad region, which lies between NATO allies Lithuania and Poland. Russia has argued that the limits on flights over Kaliningrad, which hosts sizable military forces, are permissible under the treatys terms, noting that the United States has imposed more sweeping restrictions on observation flights over Alaska. As a condition for staying in the pact after the U.S. pullout, Moscow unsuccessfully sought guarantees from NATO allies that they wouldnt transfer the data collected during their observation flights over Russia to the United States. Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said in televised remarks Friday that Russia could review its decision to withdraw if the United States decides to return to the pact, but acknowledged that the prospect looks utopian. Moscow has warned that the U.S. withdrawal will erode global security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, particularly amid Russia-West tensions after the Russian annexation of Ukraines Crimea in 2014. A Russian Federation Tupolev Tu-154 Open Skies Treaty reconnaissance aircraft sits on the runway at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska prior to its departure for two overflights of central Alaska, on June 10, 2004. (Mark Farmer/File/AP Photo) The demise of the Open Skies Treaty follows the U.S. and Russian withdrawal in 2019 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The INF Treaty, which was signed in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, banned land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,410 miles), weapons seen as particularly destabilizing because of the shorter time they take to reach targets compared with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The only U.S.-Russian arms control pact still standing is the New START treaty that expires in three weeks. Moscow and Washington have discussed the possibility of its extension, but have so far failed to overcome their differences. Biden has spoken for the preservation of the New START treaty and Russia has said its open for its quick and unconditional extension. But negotiating the deal before the pact expires on Feb. 5 appears extremely challenging. New START was signed in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance. Arms control advocates have warned that its expiration would remove any checks on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, striking a blow to global stability. By Vladimir Isachenkov Keeping ourselves away from the biscuit tin is a challenge many of us have tried and failed at during the long days of lockdown. So we shouldnt be surprised that our canine companions show equally poor discipline when faced with the prospect of sweet treats, at least if a hilarious new challenge sweeping the internet is anything to go by. In The Five-Biscuit Challenge, dog owners are asked to film themselves throwing five biscuits onto the floor around their pet, who must then wait for their master or mistress to count to five before they tuck in. Vinnie, four, strikes a pose for owner Claire Archer from Oxfordshire, while Boo looks proudly at owner Maxine Lower in East Sussex and Kai can't take his eyes off the prize in Lancing Copper, the three-year-old cocker spaniel from East Sussex did owner Sallie Cordery proud If they gobble the biscuits before the count is up, owners are asked to send UK charity Spaniel Aid 2. Unsurprisingly, many gulp down the first biscuit before their owner has counted to two or even one. Its been good news for Spaniel Aid, where staff have waded through vast amounts of footage sent in over the past few days, showing quite how spectacularly the nations dogs have failed to make the grade. Some dogs are so desperate for a snack they practically vault through the air to intercept them. Lucinda Southern, a 33-year-old gundog trainer from Nottinghamshire, came up the idea as a way to combat boredom in this lockdown. Four-year-old cocker spaniel Solo looks pleadingly at owner Nicola Davies from West Sussex Desperate: Cocker spaniel Ruby avoids temptation for owner Cathy Grieve in Gunnislake, in Cornwall while Rumploe pleads with owner Maxine Lower in East Grinstead She says: In the first lockdown I did free training tips and videos on how to teach your dog to do different things for friends, which was really popular. 'So this time I thought, Why not do something for a good cause and make it fun? Its a challenge anyone with any kind of dog could take up. Naturally, her dogs Labradors Macy, Solly, Pip and Roy, and three-year-old springer spaniel Ted all passed with flying colours. But it has shown a nation of dog-lovers how naughty and greedy many canine companions are. Maxine Lower, head of fundraising at Spaniel Aid, says shes been sent almost too many films to count since promoting the challenge on the charitys Facebook page. Its impossible not to laugh. Dogs are just very greedy, especially spaniels, she says. That includes her own elderly spaniel Rumpole, who only completed the challenge after about take 500. Count quicker mum: Macy gives an imploring look to owner Christine Southern from Nottinghamshire (left) while Christine's other pooch sibling Pip plays it cool (right) Owners of naughty pups can console themselves with the fact that while their training may not be quite up to scratch, the charity which helps rescue and rehome dogs has already raised 900. Maxine will pick a winning entry from all the footage in coming weeks. Its going to be tough to pick a favourite, she says. Its a lovely way to raise some money and some smiles at this tricky time. See facebook.com/spanielaiduk CLARK COUNTY, Ill. (WTHI) - The Illinois House has passed a controversial police reform bill that now heads to Governor JB Pritzkers desk to be signed into law. The bill passed the House with a 60-50 vote after being approved by the Senate. News 10 caught up with Clark County Sheriff Bill Brown in Illinois. He voiced his concerns with the 754 page bill--A bill that was presented to the Illinois Senate just before 4AM and was voted on at 4:45 AM. This bill includes mandating the use of police body cameras for all officers in the State of Illinois by 2025. It also includes additional training for all police officers. This focuses on de-escalating situations, identifying mental health issues, and only allowing the use of deadly force when an officer acts in self-defense or when defending others. Sheriff Brown says hes absolutely behind more training and body cameras for police officers. The problem, he says, becomes funding these endeavors. He says they are unfunded mandates that will affect the tax base in Clark County. He also says hes 100% on board with focusing on de-escalation and mental health training, but that may cause unforeseen issues in real-life situations. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with de-escalation training. The more we can de-escalate a situation, the better it is for everyone involved, Sheriff Brown said, I have a duty, though, and an obligation to protect me or maybe the bystanders that are with me. In that split second decision, you dont get to make the choice and say, okay they may have mental health issues, so I cant stop the threat. Thats not how it works. Sheriff Brown says his biggest concern with this bill is the elimination of cash bail within two years. He says that part of it directly affects the safety and peace of mind of citizens in Clark County. What it means to me is that if Im letting someone out that just broke into somebodys house and I let them right back outAre they going to go reoffend? Sheriff Brown explained. My concern is yes they might. Thats a personal thing for me because we take great pride in trying to help take care of the citizens of our County. Sheriff Brown says he believes that a lot of this bill comes from problems they have in Chicago. He says just because they need fixing up there doesnt mean areas like Clark County need fixing. Sheriff Brown says hes about 150 pages through the massive, 754 page police reform bill. While he voice his concerns about this newly introduce legislation, he takes more of an issue with the way it was handled in getting it passed. Im not saying that there are not ways that we can work together and come up with good ideas and solutions to make law enforcement and policing better. In every profession, theres always ways to make things better, Sheriff Brown explained, However, lets do it collectively as a group of legislators, sheriffs, chiefs of police, and states attorneys. Lets bring all the stakeholders to the table, hash it out together, and come up with the best plan. Overall, Sheriff Brown says he and his Sheriffs Office will always abide by the laws in place. Were going to put our uniform on every day, were going to be proud of the job we do, were going to do it right like weve always done it right in Clark County, were going to work for the citizens of this county, and were going to keep doing our job. Sheriff Brown says he anticipates Governor Pritzker to sign the bill into law. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stands in the House Chamber during a reconvening of a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021. Win McNamee/Getty Images Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas plans to attend President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, after weeks of elevating misinformation about the election results. Cruz has faced immense backlash and increasing pressure to resign following his objection to the election certification last week. Biden has even criticized the Texas senator and said he should be defeated in 2024. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas plans to attend President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next week. The senator had objected to the election certification and spent weeks elevating misinformation about the 2020 presidential results. Since November, Cruz has sown doubts into the electoral process, regularly pushing President Donald Trump's unfounded claims of voter fraud and that the election was stolen and rigged. A staunch supporter of the president, the Texas senator had even offered to represent Trump in a Supreme Court case to overturn the results. The court never took up the lawsuit, adding to the dozens of legal battles that Trump and his lawyers have waged and lost. Read more: Joe Biden is hiring about 4,000 political staffers to work in his administration. Here's how 3 experts say you can boost your chances of getting one of those jobs. A spokesperson for Cruz confirmed to Insider on Friday that the senator will be at inauguration on January 20. The news was first reported by NBC-affiliate station KXAN. Trump has said he will not be at the inauguration, becoming the first outgoing president since 1869 to refuse to attend his successor's swearing-in. Cruz announced his commitment to challenge the results in Congress in early January, despite state officials and former Attorney General William Barr concluding that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Cruz first objected to the electoral votes in Arizona last Wednesday, shortly before swarms of Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol. After Congress reconvened to complete the election certification, Cruz continued his objection and voted to reject the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Story continues The Texas Republican has been blamed for helping incite the Capitol riots and has faced immense backlash for his actions, with growing calls for his resignation from Democratic lawmakers and Texas state legislators. Cruz's communications director, Lauren Blair Bianchi, also left her job in the wake of the siege. Biden has also criticized Cruz along with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who also challenged the election results. "I think they should be just flat beaten the next time they run," Biden said last Friday, when asked if the two Republican senators should step down. Cruz has defended his behavior and claims that he had been trying to "find a way to reestablish widespread trust in the system." Read the original article on Business Insider Turkish authorities have rebuffed a request from the United Nations for more information on the murders of Syrian-American journalist Halla Barakat and her mother, Orouba Barakat. In a letter dated Oct. 7, published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard sought clarity on the depth of the investigation into the brutal 2017 killings, calling it a matter of "international concern." "The political nature of the Barakats' work, and the death threats they received, make it imperative that a possible politically-motivated killing be considered and investigated and the evidence for and against that conclusion shared with the family and the public," Callamard wrote. "Such an investigation would make it more likely that all culpable parties are identified." In response, Turkish officials defended their actions, declined to provide any further information and reasserted the "complete conscientious opinion" that the murders were committed over "family issues." "As in all cases, the investigation and prosecution of the present case was carried out by Turkish authorities with utmost diligence," Turkish officials wrote on Dec. 2. "As the hearings were held openly, the Government is of the view that due transparency was provided in the process." PHOTO: Halla Barakat, a journalist, and her mother Orouba Barakat, an activist, were Syrians living in Turkey. (ABC News) (MORE: An American journalist was murdered in Turkey. Why didn't the US investigate?) The exchange, sparked by an 18-month investigation of the killings by ABC News and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, represents the first official response to lingering questions about the case raised by the Barakat family and their allies, who contend that the motivations behind the murders and the possibility of a broader conspiracy were not adequately probed after Turkish authorities declined the FBI's offer of forensic assistance. Story continues Callamard declined to comment beyond saying that she was "analyzing the situation to see what my next steps might be." Rep. David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, had previously called on State Department officials to appeal to their Turkish counterparts to grant the authorization for "FBI work on the ground." He said he was encouraged that Callamard is seeking answers but disappointed in the lack of engagement from Turkish authorities. "Unfortunately, the Turkish government was not detailed or comprehensive in its response, leaving many loose ends in the investigation," Price told ABC News and Reveal in a statement. "My hope is that the UN special rapporteur will continue seeking the truth Halla and Orouba Barakat deserve justice. I support the U.S. government using its diplomatic tools to help ensure this case is given every possible consideration." Suzanne Barakat, a family member in San Francisco who has led the effort to bring further scrutiny to the case, responded to the Turkish letter by renewing her demand for U.S. and Turkish law enforcement to cooperate in reexamining the evidence. "If they think this was all done well, there shouldn't be any concern with us all collaborating and getting the evidence we have and corroborating all the different pieces," Suzanne told ABC News and Reveal. "If they are in fact aligned in seeking justice in Halla and Orouba's names, then I don't see why there would be any issue about collaborating." PHOTO:Surrounded by loved ones, Suzanne Barakat speaks about her brother, shooting victim Deah Shaddy Barakat, during a press conference at Swift Creek Community Center, Feb. 11, 2015, in Raleigh, N.C. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images, FILE) The Barakats were fierce critics of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and members of the Istanbul-based opposition to his regime. Their brutal double murder in September 2017 in Istanbul sparked headlines around the world, and a suspicion among their family, friends and colleagues that their work may have threatened powerful figures with the motive and means to silence them. The crime scene, to many observers, suggested the work of a professional. Halla was an American citizen born in North Carolina while Orouba was visiting relatives there who had worked for a U.S. media outlet. So two U.S. lawmakers from the state, Sen. Thom Tillis and Rep. Price, soon called for a thorough investigation. H.R. McMaster, then a senior member of the Trump administration, even invited Suzanne Barakat to the White House, where, she said, intelligence officials and diplomats assured her that the case was a priority. By then, Turkish authorities had arrested and secured a confession from a distant relative named Ahmed Barakat, who had been working for Orouba since arriving in Turkey from Syria six months earlier. Orouba owed him money, Ahmed told prosecutors, according to court documents, claiming that when he confronted her in the apartment she shared with her daughter Orouba refused to pay and attacked him with a kitchen knife, which he then used to kill her. When Halla screamed, he said, he killed her, too. After a brief trial, Ahmed was convicted and given two life sentences. The case, as far as prosecutors were concerned, was closed. But questions about the case lingered, so in the three years since the murders, a trans-Atlantic team of journalists some based in Turkey, others in the United States, some of whom knew Halla and Orouba personally sought answers to those questions. That reporting, led by ABC News, where Halla briefly worked in the months before her death, and Reveal, was featured in a special edition of "Nightline" and an episode of the Reveal podcast in October. ABC News and Reveal obtained hundreds of pages of documents from the investigation led by the Turkish National Police including police statements, autopsy reports, witness testimony, evidence inventories and court transcripts. Coupled with more than a dozen interviews with family members, friends, colleagues, government officials and outside experts familiar with the case, the documents reveal several inconsistencies and outright contradictions in the official narrative. And records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, filed by Reveal, show that despite assurances from officials at the White House National Security Council and U.S. Department of State to the contrary, the FBI never opened a case. PHOTO: The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, Dec. 3, 2019 in Brussels, regarding the UN investigation into the unlawful death of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. (Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images) (MORE: An American journalist was murdered in Turkey. Why didn't the US investigate?) Those findings prompted Callamard, the human rights and international law expert who determined in June 2019 that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the premeditated killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, to launch her own inquiry. Citing a "presumption that crimes committed against journalists are in relation to their work and reporting until proven otherwise," Callamard questioned whether Turkish authorities had adequately examined that possibility. "It is unclear whether the investigative authorities consider if [Ahmed] acted in concert with or at the direction of others," Callamard wrote, "such as representatives of the Syrian Government, or of an armed group such as ISIL." She posed many of the same questions raised by the ABC News and Reveal reports about the effectiveness of the Turkish investigation, the level of transparency provided the family, and the apparent lack of international cooperation in pursuing the evidence. Then she echoed the call from the Barakat family and U.S. lawmakers to permit the involvement of U.S. law enforcement. "Given Ms. Halla Barakat's US citizenship, would your Excellency's Government reconsider receiving assistance from the FBI," Callamard wrote, "particularly with respect to investigating aspects of the case relating to social media?" Suzanne Barakat hopes that fresh scrutiny will change the official narrative. Shortly after ABC News and Reveal's investigation aired, Suzanne and her attorney met with officials at an FBI field office to present their case for further investigation. "What we're looking for is just answers and the truth," Suzanne told ABC News and Reveal. "The Turks have some answers." Fariba Nawa, a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, ABC News' James Gordon Meek, former Reveal senior reporter Aaron Glantz, and Chris Harland-Dunaway, a freelance producer and reporter based in Los Angeles, contributed to this report. Turkish authorities rebuff UN inquiry into murder of Syrian-American journalist originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Ranchi, Jan 15 : A Maoist guerrilla carrying Rs 15 lakh reward on his head surrendered to the police in Chatra district in Jharkhand on Friday, officials said. Police said Maoist Muneshwar alias Mukesh Ganjhu surrendered before Chatra Superintendent of Police Rishabh Jha and CRPF Commandant Pawan Basan. He was wanted by the National Investigating Agency in murder and terror funding cases. Mukesh was second in command in the Maoist group Tritiya Sammelan Prastuti Committee. His surrender is considered a big achievement for the police. Mukesh had joined the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist, but later alligned with its splinter group TSPC in 2005. He was also involved in the killing of journalist Indradeo Yadav in 2016. After his surrender, he said that the Maoist group had strayed from its ideology. Ukraine has slammed the statement as "unacceptable". The Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, says he will transfer to Ukraine a centuries-old Orthodox icon, which had earlier been handed as a gift to Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on condition that Kyiv proves it has actually been searching for it earlier. That's according to the Ukrainian media outlet European Pravda, referring to Radio Slobodna Evropa on January 15. In particular, Dodik said he had not heard back from the Ukrainian side as to whether they were searching for the icon, and no data related to it was allegedly provided whatsoever. "If Ukraine proves that it asked for the icon before the date when I had a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, I will accept to hand it over," he said, as per Sarajevo Times. Read alsoUkraine demands from Bosnia return of relic icon FM KulebaDodik mentioned the icon as he was addressing the situation in Bosnia's judicial system, which he called "catastrophic." "An example of this is the icon, which has been the subject of a wide debate lately, although Ukraine hasn't been looking for it. There is a statement by the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is responsible for cooperation with Interpol, that the latter has no information about the icon being sought," he said. Commenting to UNIAN on the said statement, Press Secretary of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Oleh Nikolenko said: "Ukraine does not accept the language of conditions and ultimatums from a member of the Presidium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik. The fact that the icon comes from Ukrainian territory is indisputable. The Office of the Prosecutor General f Ukraine has launched criminal proceedings into its illegal export. We expect that the Bosnia and Herzegovina's side will not use the icon in the internal political fighting, but provide assistance within the framework of a criminal investigation and examination and in its early return to Ukraine as soon as possible," Nikolenko said. The spokesman noted that "Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina are parties to the 1970 Convention on Measures Aimed at Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property." "According to Article 7, the parties to this convention undertake to prohibit the import of cultural property stolen from a museum or religious and secular historical monument, as well as at the request of another participating state to take appropriate steps to identify and return any such cultural property," Nikolenko said. Background The Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, presented a Ukrainian icon to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. After that, the Ukrainian Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina demanded an explanation from that country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as to how the icon had appeared in the country in the first place. Subsequently, the Russian foreign ministry announced that they would return the icon to the side that had presented it so that its history could be traced through Interpol. According to local media reports, the icon is almost 300 years old and was stored in the Ukrainian city of Luhansk, which is now occupied by Russian-controlled forces. Read alsoUkrainian icon presented to Lavrov in Bosnia estimated at EUR 12.5 mlnThe Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy intends to appeal to law enforcement agencies with a request to establish a chain of the icon's movement from Ukraine to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The prosecutor's office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has opened a respective criminal case. Reporting by UNIAN JonBenet Ramsey's half brother is speaking out about the pageant queen's murder in a new 20/20 TV special. Six-year-old JonBenet was found dead inside the basement of her parent's palatial home in Boulder, Colorado back in 1996, and the case captivated the world. Almost a generation later, the murder remains unsolved, but the new two-hour 20/20 special - airing this Friday night on ABC - sheds new light on the case. JonBenet's wealthy parents, John and Pasty, were considered prime suspects in the initial stages of the investigation, but the pair protested their innocence. JonBenet's older half-brother, John Andrew, was 20 years old at the time and was not living at the home. However, the now 45-year-old - who was one of three children from John Ramsey's first marriage - steadfastly believes that his dad and step-mom had nothing to do with the death. John Andrew also believes his half-brother, Burke, who was living at the Ramsey residence, is innocent of the crime. Some suspected that Burke may have killed JonBenet before their parents covered it up. John Andrew was a supporter of Lou Smit, a former homicide detective who was brought out of retirement to investigate the murder of the child beauty queen. Smit was initially hired by the prosecution but quit the case when his investigation convinced him that an outside intruder was responsible for JonBenet's murder. He went on to work for the Ramsey family as an independent investigator to help establish their innocence. Six-year-old JonBenet was found dead inside the basement of her parent's palatial home in Boulder, Colorado back in 1996, and the case captivated the world JonBenet Ramsey's half brother is speaking out about the pageant queen's murder in the 20/20 TV special, blasting cops for pointing the finger at his family John Andrew was one of three children from John Ramsey's first marriage. He is pictured top right with his father (center), full sister Melinda (top left), step-mom Patsy (front center), JonBenet (front left) and half brother Burke (front right) Lou Smit was initially hired by the prosecution but quit the case when his investigation convinced him that an outside intruder was responsible for JonBenet's murder. 'Lou Smit was a legendary detective,' John Andrew states in a preview of the 20/20 special, obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com. He made comprehensive video diaries detailing his investigation - some of which will air for the first time on 20/20. 'The evidence he collected over the years is a virtual encyclopedia of the case,' ABC News Legal Analyst Jami Lloyd states in the 20/20 preview clip. Tragically, Smit passed away in 2010, before he could uncover the killer. However, he handed a list of potential suspects to his family who are continuing on with the investigation. JonBenet's wealthy parents, John and Pasty, were considered prime suspects in the initial stages of the investigation, but the pair protested their innocence. They are pictured in 1997 'The evidence he collected over the years is a virtual encyclopedia of the case': Lou Smit worked on the case for more than a decade, and did not believe JonBenet's parents were guilty of murder John Andrew believes that Smit's work, combined with advancement in DNA technology, will finally bring the murderer to light. 'I think it is really important for people to understand that this case can be solved. We will find this killer,' he triumphantly declares during the 20/20 special. One expert states during the program: 'DNA technology is evolving constantly, so we are in a better position today than we've ever been to solve the JonBenet' case.' The body of JonBenet was found bludgeoned and strangled in her basement hours after she was reported missing on Christmas morning. She was covered by a white blanket with a nylon cord around her neck, her wrists bound above her head and her mouth covered by duct tape. John and Patsy had called police to report her kidnapping and said they found a note demanding a ransom of $118,000 for her safe return, which instructed them not to contact the authorities. JonBenet was found dead in the basement of her parents home on Christmas Day 1996; the case has not been solved and continues to captivate the world Despite this, police arrived to their home shortly after in clearly marked vehicles. John and Patsy would remain the primary suspects in their daughter's death for more than a decade, and it was not until 2008 that police finally cleared them of any wrongdoing. Patsy was suspected by members of the public of being the murderer after reports emerged that handwriting on the ransom note was similar to her own, but after she willingly provided a sample to police it was determined she did not write the note. Many also suspected someone in the family, as they claimed there were no footprints in the snow around the house. Several years ago, CBS aired The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey, which concluded with investigators revealing that after extensive research into the events that happened on the night of the murder they believed Burke Ramsey was responsible for killing his sister. Burke sued the network and settled that case after demanding damages of $750million. Patsy Ramsey tragically passed away in 2006. The two-hour '20/20' airs on Friday, January 15 at 9:00 p.m. ET on ABC This is the well known photograph of JonBenet Ramsey was taken in 1995, the year before her murder (Newser) A waitress in Florida says it raised a red flag for her when she noticed that an 11-year-old boy wasn't being allowed to order food. When she saw bruises on his face between his mask and his hoodie, she decided to do something. Police say the quick thinking of the waitress, Flavaine Carvalho, helped rescue the boy from abuse so severe it would have likely ended in murder, WFTV reports. Carvalho, who works at the Mrs. Potato restaurant in Orlando, wrote "Do you need help?" on a piece of paper and held it up where the boybut not his parentscould see it. When he nodded, she called 911. "I'm super concerned and I don't know what to do, can you give me some advice? What I can do?" Carvalho told dispatchers, per Fox 35. "The boy is with bruises and he's not eating," she said, "The others are eating." story continues below Police discovered that the boy's body was almost entirely covered in bruises. He told investigators that stepfather Timothy Wilson had beaten him with fists and a broom, hung him upside down from a door, and handcuffed him to furniture. The boy, who was around 20 pounds underweight, said food was regularly withheld as punishment. "What this child had gone through was torture," Detective Erin Lawler said. "There was no justification for it in any realm of the world." Wilson was arrested for child abuse and Kristen Swann, the boy's mother, was charged with child neglect. The boy and his 4-year-old sister were removed from the couple's custody. Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon praised Carvalho for intervening. "The lesson here for all of us is to recognize when we see something that isnt right to act on it," he said. "This saved the life of a child." (In Kentucky, a pizza delivery driver helped rescue two abused girls.) You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Joe Biden does indeed want to go big. The president-elect is proposing a new, $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on Thursday night as the first item on his to-do list in office, a plan aimed at speeding up the vaccination rollout while providing vast amounts of financial support to households as well as state and local governments. Of course, the proposal includes checks. Biden would top off the last round of cash payments Congress approved in December with an extra $1,400, bringing the total to $2,000 per individual (the payments still phase down and eventually disappear for higher earners). He would also bump the federal unemployment insurance supplement from $300 to $400 per week, and extend it all the way to September, instead of allowing it to expire in March. Theres an additional $130 billion for schools, and $350 billion in emergency funding for state and local governments, with more for transit systems. There is additional money for small businesses, child care, emergency paid leave, rent relief, and utility bill relief. It would also extend the federal eviction moratorium into September. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement This is a piece of legislation that meets the demands of the moment. One way to think about it is that Americas output gapbasically, the economic dent created by coronavirus crisisis probably somewhere between 3 percent and 5 percent at the moment. The $1.9 trillion would fill that and then some. Biden is also taking a prudent approach. The bill Donald Trump signed last month was only really designed to carry the country until the spring; if the vaccine rollout went slower than expected (as it in fact has), many Americans would have been left financially high and dry before they could go back to work. The Biden plan is meant to get shots in arms faster and provide an economic lifeline for Americans at least until the fall. Hes taking the precautionary principle about the crisis, without sweating the deficit. Advertisement Biden also slips some long-term policy goals into the plan. He will ask Congress to beef up Obamacares insurance subsidies, and increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The president-elect will also seek to increase the value of the Child Tax Credit to $3,000 for older children and $3,600 for those under six, while making it fully refundablemeaning the poorest families will for the first time be able to receive the entire credit as cash, even if they dont owe any income taxes. The changes to the credit would only last for one year, but the vast majority of Democrats have backed permanent versions of the reform, and Bidens temporary move could set the stage for a major, long-term expansion of the welfare state. Advertisement This is only Act I of Bidens COVID response. As a follow-up next month, he is promising to present an infrastructure and green energy bill that will provide long-term stimulus for the economy. There is no shortage of ambition here. There are, however, some big question marks hanging over how Biden will actually get this plan through Congress. At the moment, Biden says he wants to try and pass his initial relief bill with bipartisan support, instead of resorting to the budget reconciliation process that would allow it to be enacted with just a bare majority in the Senate. That seems far-fetched. After all, the majority of Republicans spent the entire summer and fall resolutely rejecting any kind of a deal that involved aid for state and local governments, and the GOP tends to oppose ideas like a $15 minimum wage or expanding Obamacare. Its hard to imagine that there are 10 GOP votes in the Senate that would help break a filibuster on this proposal. Advertisement During a call with reporters, a senior administration official said that the strategy for convincing Republicans to sign on was to make the case clearly about the immediacy of the need. But moral suasion does not exactly have the greatest track record with the GOP (see: the partys response to last weeks insurrection). Granted, almost everybody in the media, myself included, has underestimated Biden at some point or another, so its entirely possible he knows something the rest of us dont. But one cant help but ask: Will Biden ultimately let the GOP shave down the size of this bill in order to win their votes? Will he spend precious time fruitlessly trying to court them, before resorting to reconciliation? Or is this mostly just a self-aware feint toward unity from a man who campaigned on bringing Americans together, but knows hell probably need to pass his agenda on a party-line vote? Hopefully we wont burn too much time waiting to find out. 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. Tia Mitchell The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS) WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he is inclined to wait until after Joe Biden is inaugurated before he begins the second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. By that time, the two senators from Georgia are likely to have been sworn in. Once the state certifies the results of the Jan. 5 election, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock can take the oath of office in Washington. That should happen around the same time as the Jan. 20 inauguration. Their election pushed the number of Democrats in the Senate to 50; with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris having a tie-breaking votes that pushed the party in the majority. Once Warnock and Ossoff are sworn in, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer will become the majority leader. Warnock and Ossoff will get to work right away. The Senates first order of business is likely to be the impeachment trial where Trump faces a charge of incitement of insurrection tied to the violent and deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The House voted to impeach Trump on Wednesday. A two-thirds majority of senators is required to convict him. That means if all 50 Democrats agree they still need 17 Republicans. Meanwhile, Bidens team is also pushing for the Senate to begin confirming his political appointees. Cabinet-level positions require just a majority vote. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 00:33:47|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close -- With the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc across the globe, the AIIB has unveiled immediate measures to help its members to weather economic and healthcare strains. -- Since its launch, the AIIB has been dedicated to promoting infrastructure construction, regional connectivity and mutual development in Asia. -- Looking forward to Asia's post-pandemic future, the AIIB has highlighted green and social infrastructure among its five key focus areas. By Xinhua writers Guo Xiaoyu, Liu Hongxia and Yu Jiaxin BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Embracing its fifth anniversary on Saturday, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) remains committed to promoting economic growth and social progress in pursuit of more inclusive and sustainable development, and keeps forging cooperation with more parts of the world. In half a decade since kicking off operations, the Beijing-headquartered multilateral development institution has grown from 57 founding members to more than 100 approved members from all around the globe. In addition, it has continued to maintain the highest credit rating with a stable outlook from the largest credit rating agencies, including Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch. HELPING HAND IN PANDEMIC With the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc across the globe, the AIIB has unveiled immediate measures to help its members weather economic and healthcare strains. The bank has created a COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility to support AIIB members and clients in mitigating economic, financial and public health pressures brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Between April 2020 and Oct. 16, 2021, the facility is expected to offer up to 13 billion U.S. dollars worth of financing to both public and private sector entities in AIIB members facing or at risk of adverse pandemic-induced impacts. Apart from supporting emergency public health needs, such as health infrastructure for emergency preparedness and clients whose infrastructure investments are severely impacted by the pandemic, the facility aims to provide financing for other productive sectors hit by the COVID-19 pandemic to sustain production capacity. Targeted assistance has been offered to those hit hard by the pandemic. To help Bangladesh respond to COVID-19, the bank has approved a loan of 100 million dollars to help the country ramp up testing, tracing and treatment capacity and improve long-term pandemic preparedness. Shedding light on the project in Bangladesh, Laurel Ostfield, director general of AIIB's Communications Department, said the bank is part of the coordinated international response to support its members in navigating the health and economic impacts of the pandemic. She expected the investment to help Bangladesh contain COVID-19 and strengthen its pandemic preparedness. Jin Liqun, president of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), speaks at a press conference in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 13, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xin) "A well-managed and robust development institution must be nimble enough to deal with external shocks and responsive enough to adapt to the changing needs of its clients while also adhering to our mission of promoting economic and social development in Asia," said Jin Liqun, AIIB president and chair of the board. The international community needs to come together to pool resources to help the world navigate the current pandemic and economic upheaval, Jin said, adding that AIIB is committed to fully playing its role. Photo taken on Jan. 14, 2021 shows the construction site of the affordable public housing project of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), in the northern Colombo suburb of Applewatta, Sri Lanka. (Xinhua/Tang Lu) MUTUAL PROSPERITY Since its launch, the AIIB has been dedicated to promoting infrastructure construction, regional connectivity and mutual development in Asia. To date, the bank has provided over 22 billion dollars in infrastructure investment for its members and approved 108 projects. The latest progress can be seen in Sri Lanka, where the AIIB's first affordable public housing project in the country broke ground in November 2020. Scheduled to be completed and opened by July 2022, the project aims to build 700 housing units in the northern Colombo suburb of Applewatta. "We thank AIIB for all the cooperation given to us. We are hoping to cooperate more and more with them in order to accomplish his excellency the president's vision, which is that shelter is a right for everybody," said Sirinimal Perera, secretary to the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing. The AIIB has provided much-needed funding and resources to countries that are still in their early stages of development, said Zhu Ning, professor of finance and deputy dean at Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is also providing a very important working mechanism among different countries in terms of trying to provide much needed developmental financing and trying to help the economy grow in different parts of the world, Zhu added. Photo taken on Jan. 13, 2021 shows the headquarters building of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Li Xin) GREENER FUTURE Looking forward to Asia's post-pandemic future, the AIIB has highlighted green and social infrastructure among its five key focus areas. Stressing expanding green infrastructure investment, Jin called for efforts to help its members complete their shift to new energy, adding that infrastructures should minimize the use of energy in urban construction of Asian countries. Continued efforts have been made by the AIIB in pursuit of its green endeavor in recent years, including initiating a project for low carbon energy transition and air quality improvement in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. By approving financing worth 500 million dollars, the project aims to increase the availability of natural gas to help reduce coal consumption and related emissions in the region. Meanwhile, the bank has decided that climate financing will account for half of its total financing approvals by 2025. Green infrastructure will help relevant countries and regions accelerate economic transformation and upgrade, as well as move toward carbon neutrality, Jin said. Such infrastructure will also facilitate economic and social development without "leaving footprints" on the environment, he said. (Xinhua reporters You Zhixin in Shanghai and Liu Chuntao in Dhaka contributed to this story.) (Video reporter: Liu Hongxia; Video editors: Liang Shun, Xu Yalan, You Zhixin.) Boris Johnson The UK is "very likely" to be in a much-improved situation by the spring, although no exit strategy from the current national lockdown has yet been announced. Professor Chris Whitty told a Downing Street press conference that whilst is it not the case that "suddenly in spring it is all over", there is an expectation that things will be "substantially better than they are at the moment". He said: "The hope is that is a kind of reasonable timeframe to be thinking about. But if we try to put a hard stop on this we will be caught out by events. "I think that broad timeframe still feels to me a reasonable one, provided what we are not expecting is completely back to two springs ago." Boris Johnson added that the Government's goal remained vaccinating 15 million by mid-February. He said once this was reached he will look at how restrictions can be eased. However he cautioned the easing of restrictions also depended "on where the disease is". "We can't have any false sense of security, lifting restrictions altogether and then the disease runs riot," he said. Prof Whitty added: "We're not going to move from a sudden lockdown situation to nothing. "It will have to be walking backwards by degrees, testing what works, and then if that works going the next step." 05:38 PM Risks of restrictions being eased Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance stressed that it is a "suppressed peak" that would "boil over for sure" if controls are eased. He says: "This is not the natural peak that's going to come down on its own, it's coming down because of the measures that are in place. Story continues "Take the lid off now and it's going to boil over for sure and we're going to end up with a big problem. "And that's a lesson about making sure it's all cooled down enough before you get to that position. "So I don't think we should view the point as a natural turning point in the disease, it is a suppressed peak that we need to keep on top of." 05:32 PM Things are looking up - but no hard stop Prof Whitty insists we shouldn't think "suddenly in Spring it's all over and that's the whole thing done". He says: "Certainly, that's a reasonable time frame but if we put a hard stop on things we will be caught out by events." However, he adds, "it's going to be a lot better than we are now". 05:27 PM Grant Shapps confirms travel suspension The Transport Secretary says its impossible for the Joint Biosecurity Centre to provide live scientific updates to predict which countries or regions will now originate new variants. As a result, the suspension had to happen: This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. 05:20 PM Step by step Prof Chris Whitty cautions that come Feb 15th, it can't be a case of lifting all restrictions. It will be in "steps", he says. 05:18 PM When will lockdown restrictions be lifted? "We want to get to a stage where we are confident we've vaccinated the 1-4 cohorts," Mr Johnson says. He says the most vulnerable groups have to be vaccinated, as he cites February 15th as the goal to vaccinate the current cohort, then adds "we will think about what steps we could take to lift the restrictions". The PM cautions it depends also "on where the disease is". "We can't have any false sense of security, lifting restrictions altogether and then the disease runs riot." 05:08 PM Travel restrictions The new travel rules, which have been agreed with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, will come into force from 4am on Monday. 05:05 PM All travel corridors closed The PM says: "If you come to the UK you must have a negative test 72 hours before travelling, filled in a passenger locator form and airline will request both before take off." Also: - Substantial fines if refusing to comply. -Quarantine before leaving home for 10 days. -Enforcement at border and in country will be stepped up. 05:04 PM Wash your hands The PM reminds the public that catching the virus is "not just in the supermarket queue", but by handling something touched by an infected person. He says one in three people don't have symptoms and washing hands is as important now as it has ever been. 05:02 PM Press conference begins Boris Johnson says the chances are "you know someone personally who has received a vaccine". He says it would be "fatal" if the vaccination roll-out causes any kind of complacency. 04:42 PM 'It has been an honor' The U.S. Ambassador to the UK, Robert Wood Johnson, has given a statement before he heads back to the US next week, after four years in the role. He says: "It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the UK." Mr Johnson says he "never forget" President Trump calling him into the Oval Office and pointing at the bust of Sir Winston Churchill. He says the President told him: Woody, this is the Special Relationship. It's a great speech if you have time to read it in full, which can be found here. 03:56 PM Exam results could be published early to allow for longer appeals process, Oqual recommends Students could receive their A-level and GCSE results in early July, to allow for a longer appeals process, England's exams regulator has proposed. Ofqual has launched a two-week consultation on the options for exam alternatives in England after this summer's A-level, AS and GCSE exams were cancelled due to the pandemic. Normally students receive results in mid to late August, but under the watchdog's plans students are "most likely" to be awarded grades in July. Student appeals could then be submitted immediately after results are issued, Ofqual said. Last summer the system was thrown into chaos after the Department for Education insisted an algorithm be used to avoid grade inflation. However it was eventually disbanded in favour of teacher assessment following an outcry over the results. 03:52 PM Do 'dark forces' really threaten Britain's vaccine supply chain? Does Britain have enough vaccine or hasnt it? Its really the only thing people want to know but the government is not saying. For more than a month now, officials have been fending off journalists questions about vaccine supply with dark mutterings about national security. Loose lips sink ships. Do you have an encrypted Telegram account like Michael Gove? I could tell you but then Id have to kill you that sort of thing. On Wednesday, under mounting pressure, Whitehall went public with its James Bondery. It was not the stories of rogue states and criminals tracking vaccine consignments that had been whispered about only a week before but a finessing of the same theme. Everyone in the world wants these vaccines, and if other countries see how much we are getting they are likely to put pressure on the drug firms to give them some of our allocation, explained one Whitehall official. Read our analysis of the secrecy surrounding the supply of vaccines here. 03:42 PM EU countries raise warning over 'unacceptable' delays to Pfizer vaccine Six European Union countries have written to the European Commission on Friday expressing "severe concern" over delays to supplies of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine. Ministers from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden said in their letter that the situation was "unacceptable" and "decreases the credibility of the vaccination process". "We are obliged to inform our public and the particular risk groups... that their vaccination will be delayed, regardless of the outstanding efforts by our governments to ensure timely delivery," the letter said. "We request you to urgently engage with BioNTech/Pfizer to demand a public explanation of the situation and to stress the need to ensure stability and transparency of timely deliveries." Officials in the six countries have been informed by BioNTech/Pfizer that deliveries would be "substantially reduced in the coming weeks". 03:36 PM Further 807 Covid deaths registered in English hospitals A further 807 people who tested positive for the coronavirus have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 59,519. Patients were aged between 32 and 101 years old. All except 51, aged 40 to 97 years old, had known underlying health conditions. The date of death ranges from 18 November to 14 January 2021. The South East was the worst-affected region, with 190 deaths, followed by the Midlands with 157 and the East of England with 149. There were 129 deaths in London, 90 in the North West, 52 in the North East & Yorkshire and 40 in the South West. 03:32 PM Tony Blair: Ruth Davidson has been sole 'effective opposition" against SNP in years Ruth Davidson has been the "only effective opposition" against the SNP in the last decade, Tony Blair has said, the day after Scottish Labour's leader resigned. Speaking at a Chatham House even the former prime minister said: "I think... what has put Scottish independence back centre-stage again are two things. "First of all the Labour Party lost its position in Scotland completely for, I think, reasons that were avoidable. "And, really, the only effective opposition that has come to the SNP in the last decade was actually when Ruth Davidson was the Conservative Party leader in Scotland. "And, the second thing was that Brexit put it back on the agenda again. The fact is it's given the nationalists a whole new lease of life." Scottish Labour today began a search for its fifth leader in seven years after the sudden resignation of Richard Leonard from the post ahead of parliamentary elections in May. Former Scots Tories leader Ruth Davidson was "the only effective opposition" against the SNP, Tony Blair claimed - Getty 03:26 PM Contingency measures put in place over deletion of arrest records, says Kit Malthouse Policing minister Kit Malthouse said the deletion of records from the Police National Computer is under investigation, adding: "We have already put a stop to the problem so it can't reoccur. "And we are now working very quickly with policing partners and within the Home Office to try and recover the data and assess the full extent of the problem." Mr Malthouse said he was "not entirely sure" whether it would have an operational impact "although we have put in place contingency measures to allow the police to continue with their investigations that rely on the PNC, or indeed to rerun checks when we do recover the data." He added: "The key thing for us now is to, I guess, rectify the situation, we've got some work to do over the next two or three days to assess the full scale of the issue and then the recoverability of the data from the various linked databases that come into the Police National Computer and then we will have more of a sense of where we are and I will be able to update you later next week." 03:07 PM Post-Brexit supply chain vulnerability cannot be overstated, Irish freight group warns An Irish freight group has warned of huge post-Brexit disruption to supply chains in coming weeks, as the impact of Britain leaving the EU takes hold. The Freight Transport Association of Ireland (FTAI) wrote to Ireland's premier Micheal Martin on Thursday warning him of empty supermarket shelves, job losses and rising prices unless the Government takes action to assist the industry trying to bring goods into the country. "There is a growing backlog of goods of all hues, from mechanical parts (car parts) to electrical household goods, furniture, clothing, food supplies, sitting in depots because there are not enough agents to process the declarations correctly," the group said. "The net result will be that companies operating on very tight margins will cease trading, creating unemployment, supply lines will disappear, and the consumer will be left with less supply and increased prices," it added. "The island's vulnerability in these challenging times cannot be overstated." 02:58 PM Patrick O'Flynn: The Government will not be forgiven for repeating its tragic care home mistake It is at times of maximum pressure and stress that the weakest point in any system will generally become clear. For the NHS to have more than 36,000 Covid patients in hospital and yet still be creating extra capacity every day and not turning away anyone in immediate need of treatment is a remarkable effort. For it to devise a genuinely world-beating vaccination programme that is on course to achieve what was initially dismissed by many commentators as an unattainable target of inoculating 15 million people by mid-February is more remarkable still. The great British public's response, flattening the curve despite the more infectious variant, is little short of astonishing. And yet, notes Patrick O'Flynn, there are still worrying signs that the national effort against this foul plague has sprung a serious leak. Unsurprisingly it is in the most unglamorous and under-resourced part of the system: the care sector. The risk of a further tsunami of care home deaths is being exacerbated by Whitehall guidance - AP 02:45 PM Union boss pays tribute to Parliamentary staff member who died of Covid-19 The general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union has paid tribute to a Parliamentary security staff member who has died of Covid-19 (9:39am). Godfrey Colin Cameron was aged just 55 and leaves behind a wife and children. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "We are all deeply saddened at PCS by the loss of Godfrey. "He was a hard-working, dedicated member of our parliamentary security branch who was devoted to his job and his colleagues across Parliament. "It is imperative the Government resumes a remote, virtual parliament to protect staff from contracting Covid-19, which has caused over 80,000 deaths in the UK alone." 02:34 PM Scotland's health secretary apologises to Matt Hancock after publishing 'sensitive' vaccine details Scotland's health secretary has apologised to Matt Hancock after the vaccine deployment plan mistakenly published "sensitive" details about supplies from manufacturers. Jeane Freeman said she regrets publishing the figures for weekly supplies, information which UK Government ministers consider to be commercially confidential. She said: "I regret that we published information that the UK Government considers to be sensitive - I've had those conversations with them and respect their view. "We've withdrawn that information and the plan, with that part removed, everything else there is back up on our website." The UK Government believes manufacturers may come under pressure from other countries if the UK's allocation of "finite" supplies is made known. 02:21 PM Covid deaths likely to peak in next 10 days, says statistics expert Coronavirus deaths are likely to peak in the next week to 10 days, a senior statistical expert has said. Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter of the Statistical Laboratory at Cambridge University said the peak in infections had passed "a good few days ago" which would lead to a reduction in the numbers dying from the disease. "They are likely to level off in a week - 10 days maybe - at a peak which is probably going to be bigger than the first wave peak of 1,000-a-day, but then should decline due the reductions in cases that we are seeing and, of course, the vaccine programme," he told BBC Radio 4's The World At One. However, hospital admissions would fall more slowly "in particular, in intensive care". Only 55 per cent of those being admitted to hospital and 25 per cent of those in intensive care were over 70. 02:10 PM Have your say: Is Boris Johnson's leadership really at risk? Steve Baker's suggestion that Boris Johnson's leadership would be "on the table" if he did not set out a "clear plan" is going down badly with Tory MPs today, who feel he has "misread the room". Simon Hoare, chairman of the Northern Ireland committee called it "hubristic, ideological clap trap" while others have accused the CRG co-head of being a "a poor man's version of Machiavelli" (see 8:24am). However, the reaction this morning makes it clear that there are concerns about long-term support for the Prime Minister if he does not set out a clear road map, and back away from suggestions that lockdown could be toughened. So is the PM's leadership really at risk, or is this just a rogue agent? Have your say in the poll below. 02:09 PM Brussels backs vaccine passport, says Ursula von der Leyen Brussels has backed the idea of a vaccine passport, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has said. "It is a medical must to have a certificate that you have been vaccinated," von der Leyen told reporters ahead of a visit to Portuguese capital Lisbon. But she added that "whether that gives a priority or access to certain goods, this is a political and legal decision that has to be discussed on the European level". The World Health Organization in December trailed plans for digital vaccination certificates as countries began rolling out shots to their populations. However Downing Street has repeatedly ruled out equivalent plans for one in the UK. 02:00 PM Boris Johnson tells people to 'think twice' about leaving home this weekend Boris Johnson has urged people to "think twice" before leaving their home this weekend. In a direct appeal to the public, the Prime Minister said: "Jab by jab we will win this fight," noting that the UK was forging ahead with the vaccination programme. But saying that one in three Covid patients were "silent spreaders" without symptoms, he stressed that it was "safest to assume" you may have the virus. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. 01:48 PM R-rate narrows, Sage scientists confirm Experts advising the Government said the ranges for the growth rates and R number have narrowed for the UK, England and most regions, which reflects greater certainty around the estimates. The latest estimate, for for the whole of the UK to January 11, is between 1.2 and 1.3, while for England it is between 1.1 and 1.3. The growth rate estimate for the UK is between +2 per cent and +5 per cent. Sage said: "The latest figures show that we need to remain vigilant to keep this virus under control, to protect the NHS and save lives. "We all need to play our part, and if everyone continues to follow the rules, we can expect to drive down the R number across the country." 01:40 PM Schools unlikely to reopen next month as planned, Scottish ministers suggest Scottish government ministers have warned that schools are unlikely to reopen next month as planned. Asked on the BBCs Good Morning Scotland programme whether he thought schools would fully reopen on 1 February, the education secretary, John Swinney, said: "I think thats a tall order to be honest." This was echoed by health secretary Jeane Freeman at the regular press briefing today, who said: "I understand why he would say it was a tall order, I would share that view." This morning education committee chairman said the same was true of England. He told the Today programme: "I don't think it's very likely that they're going to open, very sadly, after half term as has been suggested. "I think it'll be much longer before they are open." 01:37 PM Wales imposes stricter rules for supermarkets in bid to halt spread of new variant Stricter rules for supermarkets are to be introduced in Wales to help prevent the spread of the new variant of coronavirus, the First Minister has announced. Mark Drakeford said regulations would be strengthened to make sure retailers offer sanitisers for hands and trolleys, limit the numbers of people inside stores, and ensure people keep their distance from others. Specific Covid-19 risk assessments, such as ensuring adequate ventilation, making sure people are physically distancing and using PPE, and to consider whether their employees can work from home, are also being introduced. Mr Drakeford said: "Ministers have also met this week with key retailers to discuss their vital role during the pandemic... "We will strengthen regulations to ensure retailers take these steps so that their premises are as safe as possible for shoppers and their employees alike. Many are already operating high standards and we need to raise the bar for those who could and should improve. 01:23 PM Lobby latest: Red tape may be cut but 'not at expense of workers', says Downing Street Downing Street has conceded officials are looking at a post-Brexit overhaul of labour laws, but insisted it will not come "at the expense of workers' rights". The Financial Times reported that the 48-hour working week could be scrapped as part of the shake-up, prompting Labour to brand the move a "disgrace" and warned it would fight any such moves "tooth and nail". The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said labour market policy was kept under "regular review" to ensure businesses had the "appropriate freedoms and flexibility to innovate and grow" while safeguarding protections for workers. This afternoon the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "We will continue to look at policies to help stimulate business growth, innovation and job creation but those policies would never be at the expense of workers' rights." 01:09 PM Boris Johnson to give press conference this evening Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference alongside England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance at 5pm, No 10 said. Boris Johnson faced MPs of the liaison committee on Wednesday - AFP 01:07 PM Lobby latest: Downing Street defends speed of Brazil travel ban Downing Street has defended its action against the Brazil variant, saying the Government acted "as quickly as possible" to impose the ban on travellers from South America. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "It's obviously right that we continue to look at different variants and take action accordingly. "As soon as we identified this variant our teams were quickly working on this and, given that we know this could pose a significant risk to the UK, we acted as quickly as possible, which is why you've seen this travel ban from those countries enacted quickly." 01:06 PM Lobby latest: Evidence suggests vaccines still effective against Brazil variant, says Downing Street Evidence currently suggests that the concerning new Brazilian variant of coronavirus may be more transmissible but does not affect vaccines, Downing Street has said. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said that scientists at the Government's Porton Down research facility are investigating the new strain. "As with some of the other variants we've seen, the Kent variant and the South Africa variant, evidence does suggest that it may be more transmissible," he added. "More research is required to confirm this and Porton Down will conduct that research but current evidence does not suggest that the strain causes any higher mortality rate or that it affects the vaccines or treatments." 01:02 PM Dutch government resigns over child benefit scandal Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government resigned on Friday over a scandal in which thousands of parents were wrongly accused of child benefit fraud, leaving many facing financial ruin, local media has reported. Rutte's cabinet decided to quit with just two months to go until elections, and he was set to make an announcement at 2:15pm (1315 GMT), according to reports by Dutch news outlets. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government resigned - AFP 12:56 PM EU medicines regulator 'hopeful' that AstraZeneca vaccine will be approved by Jan 29 The head of the EU medicines regulator has said that she is "hopeful" that the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine will be given European approval at the end of the month. The UK regulator the MHRA approved the jab at the end of last year, helping pave the way for more than three million people to be vaccinated as of yesterday. But Emer Cooke, executive director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said the health body had a "tentative" plan in place to make a decision on the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab on January 29. "There are two big trials ongoing," she said. "We know with one of them we won't have all the information by the end of January. But we do hope we'll have sufficient (data) to be able to come to a scientific conclusion by then. "At the same time things can go wrong. These dates depend on everything going right. "It's challenging but I'm hopeful." 12:46 PM 'Lifeline' insurance claims must be paid out at speed, says Treasury committee chairman The chair of the Treasury select committee has hailed today's Supreme Court ruling on business interruption insurance (10:48am), and urged the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to ensure claims are paid out at speed. Mel Stride, a former Treasury minister, said: "This ruling will be welcomed by many businesses who are struggling through the pandemic; it may provide a lifeline for many of them. As the Treasury committee has been urging, its right that the FCA will now ensure that valid claims are paid by insurers as quickly as possible. 12:38 PM Garry White: Johnson & Johnson's one-shot vaccine will help save the economy Science may be about to score its biggest victory against Covid since it emerged in Wuhan at the end of 2019. Trial data published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week indicated that Johnson & Johnsons single-injection vaccine candidate is safe and appears to generate an immune response in both the young and old. The results of its final phase 3 trial are expected to be released before the end of January, with approval possible before March. The three vaccines approved by UK authorities all require two injections to generate the full immune response making the logistics of distribution of the J&J vaccine much, much simpler. As Garry White points out, rapid deployment of this vaccine will be the shot in the arm the UK economy needs. 12:23 PM Brazil variant found in UK 'not the one causing concern' Panic over - at least on one front. Professor Wendy Barclay, G2P-UK lead and head of department of infectious disease and chairwoman in influenza virology at Imperial College London, has issued a new statement confirming the Brazilian variant detected in the UK is not the one causing the concern. The scientist had earlier (11:26am) said one of the two variants had been found in the UK. In a subsequent statement, she explained: "The new Brazilian variant of concern, that was picked up in travellers going to Japan, has not been detected in the UK. "Other variants that may have originated from Brazil have been previously found." 12:19 PM Government must act over 'enormous fear' of double-dip recession, says shadow chancellor Labour's shadow chancellor has said there is an "enormous fear" that the UK economy is on track for a double-dip recession as she calls for more targeted measures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said UK gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 2.6 per cent month-on-month in November. GDP at the end of the month was 8.5% below its pre-pandemic peak but is expected to fall further after a third lockdown took hold this month. Speaking to Sky News, Anneliese Dodds sad: "We really need to see action now. We need much more clarity around business support... the business rates holiday, furlough." Small firms should not have to wait until the Budget in March to find out about next steps, she added. Ms Dodds also called for the Government to "shift position on family finances" such as rowing back the planned council tax hike and reduction in Universal Credit, saying this could come "at precisely the wrong time". 11:46 AM Schools unlikely to reopen after half term, warns education committee chairman Schools are unlikely to open after the February half term and could be closed for "much longer", the chair of the Education Select Committee has warned. Robert Halfon, Conservative MP for Harlow, told the BBC's Today programme: "The schools are closed and I don't think it's very likely that they're going to open, very sadly, after half term as has been suggested. "I think it'll be much longer before they are open." It comes as England and Manchester United striker Rashford joined TV chefs Jamie Oliver, Tom Kerridge, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the actress Dame Emma Thompson to press ministers to develop a strategy which could help end child food poverty. In a letter to the Prime Minister, backed by more than 40 NGOs, charities and education leaders, they welcomed the "robustness" of his response to the "inadequate" meal parcels being provided by some private companies, but said it was the right time to "step back and review the policy in more depth". 11:38 AM Take-away coffee to be targeted in new Covid campaign Dramatic language could be used in hard-hitting new anti-coronavirus adverts, warning that going for a coffee could kill. A national campaign is to be unveiled within days as the Government eyes tougher restrictions amid a surge in infections. One of the slogans being considered is "Don't let a coffee cost a life", it is believed. Another message in the campaign is "Covid takes the train too". The move is aimed at presenting a stark message to the public to try to ensure compliance with tough lockdown measures as Britain battles mutant strains of the disease. Takeway coffees are allowed - but a new campaign will warn against getting one - PA 11:26 AM One of two Brazil variants detected in UK, leading scientist confirms One of the Brazilian variants has been detected in the UK, a leading scientist has said. Professor Wendy Barclay, head of G2P-UK National Virology Consortium, a new project set up to study the effects of emerging coronavirus mutations, said one Brazilian variant of coronavirus has been detected in the UK. She said: "There are two different types of Brazilian variants and one of them has been detected and one of them has not." She added: "In the databases, if you search the sequences, you will see that there is some some evidence for variants from around the world, and I believe including the Brazilian one, which probably was introduced some time ago. And that will be being traced very carefully." This morning Grant Shapps defended the delay in imposing a travel ban from South America, saying there had been no direct flights from Brazil this week. Asked if the Brazilian strain was currently in the country, the Transport Secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Not as far as we are aware, I think, at this stage. 11:22 AM David Davis: I fear BBC chairman-designate is wrong appointment Former Brexit secretary David Davis has said the man earmarked to become the new BBC chairman is the " wrong appointment", following Richard Sharp's appearance before MPs yesterday. Mr Sharp, a former Goldman Sachs banker and multi-millionaire Tory party donor, told the DCMS committee that he didn't think the BBC's Brexit coverage was biased overall, but "there were some occasions when the Brexit representation was unbalanced". He also described the licence fee as "terrific value", saying he was "not in favour of decriminalisation". All this has prompted the MP for Haltemprice and Howden to question his credentials. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. 11:09 AM Jonathan Saxty: We Brexiteers are being blamed for the problems we warned about As problems mount for UK businesses, both in dealing with mainland Europe and regarding Northern Ireland, dont be surprised if Brexit and Brexiteers get the blame for what is a failure of Government, as the possibility of reintegration via the backdoor looms. Many businesses are reporting difficulties adapting to the post- Brexit trading landscape, with the Federation of Small Businesses claiming many small firms have not had the time, money or clarity to prepare. German logistics group DB Schenker became the latest parcels operator to suspend cross-border delivery, following a similar move by DPD. Jonathan Saxty asks how the Government did not anticipate what many Brexiteers saw coming as it rushed through an eleventh-hour deal? 10:57 AM Amber Rudd exacts her revenge on Boris Johnson with dig at his 'establishment' roots Amber Rudd has once again called into question Boris Johnsons treatment of the opposite sex, suggesting that he has a sort of language which he is quite rightly nervous of using in front of women. The former home secretary, who resigned from the Department for Work and Pensions over Mr Johnsons hard Brexit stance, criticised his leadership in an interview with the Institute for Government (IfG). Decrying the kind of boys club-type behaviour in Parliament, the former women and equalities minister said: It is still more like a public school or a university club than anywhere else youll ever go, I fear that its going backwards a bit at the moment." Read the full story here. Amber Rudd said Boris Johnson has a "sort of language which he's quite rightly nervous using in front of women" - PA 10:48 AM Business Secretary welcomes 'lifeline' Supreme Court decision on Covid insurance The new Business Secretary has said the Supreme Court ruling on Covid insurance is "very welcome". Judges this morning "substantially allowed" an appeal brought by the Financial Conduct Authority in a landmark 1.2 billion legal battle over businesses' ability to claim on insurance for coronavirus-related disruption. The case could affect around 370,000 businesses which insurers including Arch, Argenta, Hiscox, MS Amlin, QBE and RSA argued were not covered for the Covid-19 pandemic. Kwasi Kwarteng said: "This will be a lifeline for tens of thousands of hairdressers, bars, restaurants and other small businesses that did the right thing and closed their doors to protect the health of the nation." Richard Leedham, a partner at law firm Mishcon de Reya who represented the Hiscox Action Group (HAG), said: "This is a landmark victory for a small group of businesses who took on a huge insurance player and have been fully vindicated. "What is important now is that Hiscox accepts the Supreme Court's verdict and starts paying out to its policy holders, many of whom are in danger of going under." 10:35 AM Robin Aitken: The BBC has nothing to fear from its naive, Andy Pandy-loving prospective new Chairman As a man will plenty of things to worry about the Director General of the BBC, Tim Davie, can this evening cross at least one thing off his list; hes not going to have any problems with the Corporations likely new Chairman. Richard Sharp, the chairman-designate, was up in front of the Digital, Media Culture and Sports select committee yesterday, but if you think that sounds like a daunting prospect, it wasnt. Because, as it turns out, Mr Sharp is going to be very much a "continuity chairman" a man who really isnt going to rock the boat. Which put him very much in sync with the committee but, points out Roger Aitken, not most of the BBCs critics. Richard Sharp who has been nominated by the British government as the next chairman of the BBC, said the broadcaster was "incredibly balanced". - AFP 10:21 AM Union attacks Government over plans to scrap 48-hour working week Reports that the government is drawing up post-Brexit plans to change the 48-hour working week have been attacked as "a huge mistake" by the union Unite. General secretary Len McCluskey said: "No decent government would pick this moment to launch an attack on the rights of its citizens. The people who have kept this country fed, safe and supported under unimaginable pressures deserve so much better than to be threatened with the loss of their basic rights. "In our time of need it has been working people who have stepped up and kept this country safe and supported. The vulnerable and low waged have paid the highest price in this pandemic. Respect these workers - do not take away their basic rights." However, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng last night stressed the Government was "ot going to lower the standards of workers rights". This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. 10:08 AM Grant Shapps 'not aware' of Brazilian variant cases in UK Grant Shapps said he is "not aware" of any cases of the Brazilian coronavirus variant in the UK as travellers from across South America were banned from entry. The ban, which also covers the Central American state of Panama and Portugal - due to its strong travel links with Brazil - and the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, came into force at 4am on Friday. Mr Shapps described the ban as a "precautionary" measure to ensure the vaccination programme rolling out across the UK was not disrupted by new variants of the virus. Asked if the Brazilian strain was currently in the country, the Transport Secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Not as far as we are aware, I think, at this stage. "There haven't been any flights that I can see from the last week from Brazil, for example." 10:00 AM Fraser Nelson: Vaccine success is on the brink of transforming the lockdown debate After almost a year of watching the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of Covid-19, the speed of progress now is hard to take in. Just a few months ago, Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, was telling colleagues he didnt believe a vaccine would come in time. Now we have several of them, highly effective, already delivered to millions worldwide. The logistics, the safety: its all going as well as can be expected in Britain, especially. The big question, says Fraser Nelson, is what happens next. The PM confirmed last night that 3m have already had the jab, raising hopes that the 15m target will be met by mid-February - PA 09:50 AM Delay in airport testing to avoid making 'criminals out of people', says Grant Shapps The delay in airport testing being introduced until Monday is to avoid making 'criminals out of people' who have taken the wrong test, Grant Shapps has said. The Transport Secretary told ITV's Good Morning Britain: "Knowing that Brits returning, for example, would want to be able to see which version they could legally use, up to the correct specification, it turns out there are so many different ones, we didn't want to make criminals out of people just because they weren't able to guess which one had the right, what's called sensitivity and specificity. "So, we have just given a small grace period until Monday morning to let people safely return, and not create some sort of repatriation crisis." 09:39 AM Member of Parliament's security staff dies from Covid A member of Parliament's security staff, Godfrey Colin Cameron, has died after contracting Covid-19, aged just 55. MPs of all parties have put their names to a motion expressing "sincere condolences to his devoted wife Hyacinth, children Leon and Renee, his sisters Arlene and Cynthia, his brother, Carlton". Mr Cameron "was a private man who showed selfless care for the others", they added, sending "our deepest sympathies to all those who knew and worked with Godfrey, and our heartfelt thanks for the contribution of all those workers who have continued to serve the public during this public health crisis". The motion also called on House authorities to work with trade union representatives "to undertake an updated risk assessment in relation to health and safety on the Parliamentary estate, and take all appropriate measures to help keep staff safe". 09:27 AM Have your say: Is Boris Johnson's leadership really at risk? Steve Baker's suggestion that Boris Johnson's leadership would be "on the table" if he did not set out a "clear plan" is going down badly with Tory MPs this morning, who feel he has misread the room. Simon Hoare, chairman of the Northern Ireland committee called it "hubristic, ideological clap trap" while others have accused the CRG co-head of being a "a poor man's version of Machiavelli" (see 8:24am). However, the reaction this morning makes it clear that there are concerns about long-term support for the Prime Minister if he does not set out a clear road map, and back away from suggestions that lockdown could be toughened. So is the PM's leadership really at risk, or is this just a rogue agent? Have your say in the poll below. 09:09 AM UK population 'in biggest fall since Second World War' The UK population may have fallen by as much as 1.3m - the biggest decline since the Second World War - in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, academics have said. A study by the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence highlighted an unprecedented exodus of foreign-born workers following the outbreak of the virus as well as shortcomings in official surveys inflating the number of UK workers. Labour data - more reliable than migration statistics - suggest a drop of more than half a million in the number of foreign born residents in the year to last September, authors Michael OConnor and Jonathan Portes said. Read the full story here. 09:03 AM Gavin Williamson under pressure as regulator refuses to approve mass testing in schools It's not just the latest row over free school meals that is putting pressure on Gavin Williamson this morning (see 8:27am). This morning The Guardian reports that the Education Secretary's plans for mass testing in schools are in disarray, with regulatory MHRA not having authorised the daily use of 30-minute tests "due to concerns that they give people false reassurance if they test negative." The lateral flow tests, which have been used for mass testing in Liverpool, have been shown to miss 30 per cent of people with a high viral load, The Guardian says. The Government has spent 1.5bn on its lateral flow tests rollout so far. 08:53 AM Transport Secretary: "Don't take any travel advice from me." The Transport Secretary has told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he is "the last person you should take travel advice on this from". Grant Shapps reminded listeners that he booked a holiday to Spain with his family, after it was opened up through the summer's travel corridors. "And, within an hour of getting there, I, myself, put Spain... took them out of the travel corridor, meaning that I needed to come home and start my quarantine, leaving my family there," he said. "So, don't take any travel advice from me." Shapps: "Don't take any travel advice from me." - Reuters 08:38 AM Officials 'working at pace' to find 150,000 deleted arrest records, says minister Officials are "working at pace to recover" the 150,000 arrest records accidentally wiped from the police databases, the policing minister has said, as he vowed the problem has been corrected "so it cannot happen again". Kit Malthouse said: "Earlier this week, a standard housekeeping process that runs on the Police National Computer deleted a number of records in error. A fast time review has identified the problem and corrected the process so it cannot happen again. "The Home Office, NPCC and other law enforcement partners are working at pace to recover the data. "While the loss relates to individuals who were arrested and then released with no further action, I have asked officials and the police to confirm their initial assessment that there is no threat to public safety. "I will provide further updates as we conclude our work." Kit Malthouse, policing minister - Paul Grover for the Telegraph 08:35 AM Travel bans 'always behind the curve', says epidemiologist Travel bans are "always a little bit behind the curve", but the latest one should "hopefully" reduce the risk of the Brazilian variant entering the UK, an epidemiologist has said. Dr Mike Tildesley suggested the South America travel ban, which came into force at 4am on Friday, was late but will still "minimise the risk". Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Dr Tildesley said: "We always have this issue with travel bans of course, that we're always a little bit behind the curve. "With Covid we need to remember that when you develop symptoms you could have been infected up to a couple of weeks ago, so it's really important that these travel bans come in quickly so that we can prevent any risk. "My understanding is that there haven't really been any flights coming from Brazil for about the past week, so hopefully the immediate travel ban should really minimise the risk." He added that scientists will know "in the next few days" whether the ban has had "a significant effect". Britain has banned all arrivals from South American countries and Portugal - AFP 08:29 AM Parents would prioritise food if given cash instead of parcels, says Labour MP The Government should give parents struggling to feed their children extra cash rather than food boxes or vouchers, Labour's shadow education secretary has said. Kate Green told ITV's Good Morning Britain that "research going back many decades" showed that parents would spend money on food and other essentials if they receive it. "We know that when families haven't got enough money to feed their children properly, it's parents, particularly mums who go without," she added. "Of course we need children to be properly fed with nourishing foods, but we need mums and dads to be properly fed with nourishing food so they can look after their families properly. "Everything we know is that if you give parents money to spend on their children, that's what they do, that's what they prioritise - as any parent would." 08:27 AM Labour calls for Gavin Williamson to quit over food parcels row Shadow education secretary Kate Green has called on Gavin Williamson to resign following the latest row over food parcels provided to families in need of support during the pandemic. Images of parcels containing just 4 or 5 worth of food instead of the promised 30 were shared online earlier this week, sparking a public outcry and a renewed campaign from Marcus Rashford. Ms Green told Good Morning Britain: Patience has completely run out with Gavin Williamson and I do think it is time for him to go. "Our children's future, our children's education, our children's well being, is too important to be left in the hands of someone who plainly isn't up to the job and I think it's time for him to go." The contents of one food parcel, meant to be worth 30 08:24 AM Tory MPs round on 'poor man's Machiavelli' over PM leadership threat Conservative MPs have rounded on Steve Baker, after the co-head of the Covid Recovery Group warned Boris Johnson that his leadership would be "on the table" if he did not set out a "clear plan". But the Wycombe MP's warning that "debate will become about the PM's leadership if the government does not set out a clear plan for when our full freedoms will be restored" was not entirely wrong, they noted. One senior Tory said: "Baker overrates how important he is - but BJ has pissed off his base within the party, so he could have more issues." Another likened it to Grant Shapp's failed bid to oust Theresa May in 2017, adding: "But it doesn't come out of nowhere. There are a lot of unhappy people." A third was more damning of Mr Baker, saying: "By all means have a debate about lockdown, but to start going on about challenging Boris is bonkers, He won us a majority of 80 last year for goodness sake. Steve's ego needs some sanitiser. He needs to get some self-control and stop being a poor man's version of Machiavelli." 08:17 AM 'Shocking' care home Covid outbreaks at levels not seen since first peak Outbreaks of Covid-19 in care homes have more than trebled in a month, with levels of infections now similar to the peak of the first wave, figures show. The latest surveillance data from Public Health England (PHE) reveals that, in the week to January 14, there was the second highest weekly total since records began in April. On Thursday night, senior figures said the numbers were "shocking" and warned: "Care homes cannot be neglected again." Read the full story here. 08:11 AM Travel ban from Brazil needed to stop UK 'tripping up at the last moment' says Shapps Grant Shapps has defended the delay in imposing a new travel ban on travellers from South America and Portugal several days after the Brazil variant was first identified, saying it is needed to avoid "tripping up at this last moment". The travel ban came in at 4am this morning, five days after it was identified and two days after Boris Johnson said he was "concerned" about it. The Transport Secretary told Sky News: "We are at this late stage now, we have got so far - we have got jabs into the arms of three million Brits now - that's more than France, Spain, Germany, Italy put together, and we do not want to be tripping up at this last moment. "Which is why I took the decision, as an extra precaution, to ban those flights entirely." Mr Shapps added: "Everybody coming from anywhere not on a travel corridor must, by law, quarantine. "And there are not exceptions to that and you can end up with a criminal record if you don't." 07:56 AM PM considers overhaul of workers' rights Boris Johnson is considering a post-Brexit overhaul of labour laws to free businesses from regulations originally imposed by the EU. The 48-hour working week is one of the regulations being targeted by the Government, it was reported on Thursday night, in a move that is likely to meet with resistance from trade unions. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), has asked business leaders for their views on the ideas, which are understood to be at an early stage. Ministers believe the current laws, imported from EU law as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, can be tweaked to benefit both businesses and workers. Read the full story here. San Francisco will soon open three large vaccination sites around the city, and officials hope to eventually administer at least 10,000 doses a day, Mayor London Breed said Friday. One site likely will open by the end of next week at City Colleges main campus. But theres a major hurdle holding the city back from opening the others: Californias limited vaccine stockpile, which has been unpredictably distributed around the state. Were ready for more doses, we need more doses and were asking for more doses, a visibly frustrated Breed said at a Friday news conference. We can ramp up and open these sites the minute we have the vaccines. Were mobilizing the entire city. Fridays announcement comes after a week of finger-pointing and grievances over who is to blame for Californias sluggish vaccine rollout, which is among the slowest in the country. Not only is the distribution a massive logistical challenge, but it has also stoked political tension among elected officials who are all mad about the same issues: a shortage of vaccines and a lack of certainty of when their constituents will get them. style= "margin-bottom: 20px"> Meanwhile, hospitals are grappling with a deadly surge of cases, and new, highly contagious virus strains that could potentially wreak more havoc on the health care system. The stakes could not be higher for cities, counties and the state to get more shots into peoples arms. Our case rate is higher than it has ever been, but vaccines are our way out, San Franciscos public health director, Dr. Grant Colfax said at Fridays event. And we need more as soon as possible. San Francisco hopes to increase its distribution by partnering with private health care providers which are receiving the majority of the states supply to run the large vaccine sites. Those providers include Kaiser, Sutter, Dignity Health and UCSF. That means anyone in the city, with or without insurance, can go to the sites when its their turn. The sites will be located at City Colleges main campus on Ocean Avenue near Interstate 280, Moscone Center in SoMa and The SF Market, a wholesale produce site in the Bayview. Officials chose those sites because they are in or near neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the virus. The public health department also plans to administer vaccines at more than a dozen community clinics and at several pop-ups around the city. On Tuesday, San Francisco residents will be able to access a website, www.sf.gov/vaccinenotify, where they can submit their contact and eligibility information, and then be notified via email when its their turn to get vaccinated. But considering how slow the vaccine rollout has been thus far, city residents might be waiting a while for that email. California has administered only about 28% of the approximately 3.5 million doses it has been given as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That puts California far behind most states. San Francisco County has received 33,975 doses so far. By Friday, only 13,566 vaccines had been administered which is about 1,200 more than the day prior. Those doses dont include vaccines sent directly to the big health care providers. Breed said all of the available doses have been assigned to someone, and the city anticipates using all of its available doses in the next week. Officials are asking the state for another large volume order. Still, logistical issues remain: Some vaccines have been allocated to facilities that are still scaling up their operations, while others must be set aside so people can get the required second dose. We are not sitting on any vaccines, Breed said. They are all moving out the door. Officials in San Francisco and around the Bay Area have also complained that they are getting an inconsistent and unpredictable supply from the state, which makes it hard for them to plan how many appointments they can make or how much staff they will need on a given day. San Francisco, for example, received 3,900 doses in the first week of January and then 11,825 the following week. Next week, the county was told it will receive 4,275 doses. Thats a large drop, without much reason given. Meanwhile, residents who are eligible for the vaccine have reported mass confusion on how, when and where they can get their shots. Some who have called their providers for answers have had to wait several hours on hold. And those agitated residents have inundated their elected officials with questions, wondering why the process seems confusing with scant information, though officials seemingly had ample time to prepare. Supervisor Matt Haney channeled this frustration through Twitter this week, and sharply criticized the public health department for what he thought was a lackadaisical approach for vaccinating residents. He said it was incredibly inappropriate and just flat-out wrong for private providers to be largely in charge of distribution, even though its up to the state to decide who gets what doses. Still, he called for a more aggressive rollout by the city, and for the creation of a mass vaccination site, like at Petco Park in San Diego and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which opened Friday. He will hold a hearing on the citys distribution plan Wednesday. Haneys comments infuriated many in the public health department and in the mayors office, who said they were in the midst of working on a larger distribution plan but their hands were tied by the short supply from the state. I know people are asking us to put up all these sites everywhere, Breed said Friday. Well, were putting up the sites. We just dont have complete control of the vaccines. The state has blamed its erratic supply on the national shortage of vaccines and also on a lack of leadership from the federal government. As manufacturing ramps up, Darrel Ng, a California Department of Public Health spokesman, said Thursday that counties will begin seeing larger quantities of the vaccine and more predictability in the supply. At the news conference, Breed said she understood why people were angry and confused about the vaccine rollout. But, just as she has since March, the mayor urged more patience from her city. Weve come too far to start falling apart now, she said. I know more than anyone, with everybodys life riding on my shoulders, the importance of getting the city open as quickly as possible. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani U.S. authorities have arrested and charged an MIT professor with accepting foreign money, much of it from China, and not disclosing it. Gang Chen was arrested Thursday at his home and charged with wire fraud, failing to file a foreign bank account report and making a false statement in a tax return, the Department of Justice said in a news release. Chen worked as director of the MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory and director of the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center. Since 2013, Chen's research has been funded by more than US$19 million in federal grants, the DOJ said. During that same time, he reportedly received approximately $29 million of foreign funding, including $19 million from the PRC's Southern University of Science and Technology. 50. THE WILD GOOSE LAKE; Diao Y'nan 49. TENET; Christopher Nolan 48. ZOMBI CHILD; Bertrand Bonello 47. SUMMER OF 85; Francois Ozon 46. THE ASSISTANT; Kitty Green 45. BILL AND TED FACE THE MUSIC; Dean Parisot 44. PERFECT 10; Eva Riley 43. HIS HOUSE; Remi Weekes 42. BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS; Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross 41. A WHITE, WHITE DAY; Hlyunr Palmason 40. POSSESSOR; Brandon Cronenberg 39. KAJILLIONAIRE; Miranda July 38. PROXIMA; Alice Winocour 37. SOUL; Pete Docter & Kemp Powers 36. DA 5 BLOODS; Spike Lee 35. COLLECTIVE; Alexander Nanau 34. SWALLOW; Carlo Mirabella-Davis 33. MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM; George C. Wolfe 32. COUNTY LINES; Henry Blake 31. I'M NO LONGER HERE; Luis Fernando Frias De La Parra 30. LES MISERABLES; Ladj Ly 29. A FAMILY TOUR; Ying Liang 28. THE OTHER LAMB; Magorzata Szumowska 27. LYNN + LUCY; Fyzal Boulifa 26. SELAH AND THE SPADES; Tayarisha Poe 25. A SUN; Chung Mong-Ho 24. MAKE UP; Claire Oakley 23. CLEMENCY; Chinonye Chukwu 22. EMA; Pablo Larrian 21. TIME; Garrett Bradley 20. SHE DIES TOMORROW; Amy Seimetz 19. SMALL AXE; Steve McQueen 18. BAD EDUCATION; Cory Finley 17. THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF; Benjamin Lee 16. THE WOMAN WHO RAN; Hong Sang-Soo 15. THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD; Armando Iannucci 14. DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA; Spike Lee 13. THE VAST OF NIGHT; Andrew Pattinson 12. BACURAU; Kleber Mendonca Filho, Juliano Dornelles 11. DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD; Kristen Johnson 10. SAINT MAUD; Rose Glass 9. CALM WITH HORSES; Nick Rowland 8. AND THEN WE DANCED; Levan Akin 7. WOLFWALKERS; Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart 6. BABYTEETH; Shannon Murphy 5. ROCKS; Sarah Gavron 4. BEANPOLE; Kantemir Balagov 3. MATTHIAS & MAXIME; Xavier Dolan 2. A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD; Marielle Heller 1. NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS; Eliza Hittman Welcome to the annual best of the year movie lists - taking place of thearticle for December, as a lot of these films I did actually watch last month for the first time in my end of year catchup. I've seen a lot of great movies in 2020 and whilst it may have been the smart thing to cut down this list, in a year with so little else going for it, one of the best things about this year has been the wide quality of consistently great movies that we've had over the course of 2020. In a year so good that I could quite happily have upped this list to 60 films (you'll notice that excellent blockbusters,and, in addition to the wonderful animationdon't feature on this list but are every bit as recommended anyway) without hesitation. There's a whole lot of goodness in here so I'll get stuck into it quite quickly - but before I do, there's a quick reminder that I'm going by UK releases this year as I'm based in the UK, so to qualify will have to have been theatrically released (or on streaming) in 2020.That said, there are a few exceptions that are perhaps worthy of note:andall featured on last year's list along with, so they won't show up here. This also means that films like the excellentanddon't qualify, as they are getting UK releases at some point in 2021. And it also rules out films that I haven't seen yet for obvious reasons likeand. But now that we've got the obligitary rules out of the way - let's get started - and feel free to leave your favourite films that you watched last year in the comments below, as well as what you thought of the films that made this list.Betweenand, Chinese noir is having something of a resurgence of late and this hardboiled, ultra-stylised crime thriller is a perfect example of its success. Diao Y'nan borrows cues from Sejuin Suzuki to craft a cat and mouse game of memorable proportions, using vivid imagery of striking neon colours to create one of the most beautiful films of the year. Truly unforgettable - the fact that this film makes 50th on this list should tell you something about how great a year it's been for movies.Full confession: I was very much *not* a fan ofwhen I first saw it but like with most Christopher Nolan films it finds a way to warm up to you after repeat viewings and I'm now very much glad I gave it another shot. It's Christopher Nolan's, if he dropped it somewhere in the middle of an arc-heavy episode ofSeason 6. Incredibly convoluted and not without its problems - the final act rivalsin its execution and although its sound problems still remain, the spectacle is so demanding it feels made for the biggest screen possible. The charismatic performances from John David Washington and Robert Pattinson triumph over the underwhelming villainous turn by Kenneth Branagh, and it remains a joy to watch that you should, for all intents and purposes, not try to overthink - as Nolan flat out warns you to avoid doing right from the start.I've been a Bertrand Bonello fan ever since his brilliantandhas stuck with me long after I watched it at the London Film Festival in 2019. Richly compelling in its fresh take on the zombie (or should that be zombi?) drama with unique imagery, Bonello utilises the setting of an elite private school to offer a damning critique of colonialism in this powerful contexutalised work.How is this only my first Francois Ozon film? He's evidently a talented director and this coming of age drama earns its richcomparisons as it explores the relationship between two boys, Alexis and David, who find themselves torn apart by an ultimately tragic ending to their tale. Utilising flashfowards that let you know howis going ot play out from the start, Ozon's latest feels like the rare beast of a film that looks, in every sense, like a movie made in the '80s (akin to how Olivier Assayas'feels like a movie made in the '70s) rather than a film made in the present day about the '80s. It'd be hard to overlook this film without mentioning its soundtrack too - The Cure'sand Rod Stewart'swill remain stuck in your head long after the film has finished no matter how famjliar you are with the songs already.Just the right amount of understated,moves along at a slow crawl as it finds a way to creep under your skin that most other movies fail to do. Kitty Green's realistic portrayal of a toxic work enviroment benefits from a truly star turn by Julia Garner, exploring an office culture filled with fear and abuse. Garner's portrayal of clear visual discomfort tells you everything whilst saying nothing, and the fact that the film goes on for a long runtime whilst keeping the score deliberatly hidden only works in its favour. Chillingly unforgettable, it won't leave your mind anytime soon.They said it couldnt be done. But this long overdue third film capitalised on the Keanuissance in order to receive the funding that it did to get made in style and bombast: time has caught up to wannabe rockstars Bill and Ted who are still trying to find a way to write a song that will unite the world and bring it all under one banner to create a future that they were told was coming. Now theyre experiencing a midlife crisis, their band has fallen apart and their daughters Billie and Thea, are on treading the same path as them. Until the future arrives with a mission: They have 24 hours to save the world. Its a crowd pleasing and joyous experience that combines the tone and pacing of the first two films into one, with Billie and Thea sent out on their own quest separate from Bill & Teds. Come for the great crowd-pleasing character interactions and an easy-to-like ending that serves as a great anditode for 2020. Stay for the Mozart/Jimi Hendrix musical battle and the 40-minute-long bass solo from Death himself. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter havent lost any of their chemistry as Winter pours his heart and soul into the role that hes best known for, and but the true stars are Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine, who deserve all their own sequels, proving that lightning can very much strike twice.The fact that this film hasn't quite seen the incredibly talented Frankie Box break out among awards conversations yet should be a crime,is a debut that feels like a British Kitchen sink drama of old - Andrea Arnold'sis rightly comparable to a film that explores a longing for family and a split between multiple identities, whilst acting as a brillaint portrayal of the class divide. Eva Riley's debut may be a small film but it comes with a big heart, opting for a wholesome approach to its coming of age drama set on the outskirts of Brighton.2020 has been something of a memorable year for horror films and Remi Weeke'sis further proof of that in the best way possible: a terrific case study of immigration that humanises its central characters, boasting great performances by Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu that go some way into crafting clear and sympathetic identities for themselves. Echoes ofare present in(not the first film on this list to earn that comparison) and it will find a way to keep you spellbound over the course of its brilliantly paced 93 minute that have plenty to say - it works just as much as a ghost story as it does a social commentary, drawing parallels with Mati Diop's terrificthat more than earnt its place on last year's list.This isn't a documentary although it plays out so naturally it will trick you into thinking it's one.neither victimises or idolises a bunch of barflies around a bar before a last call, going a great way to humanise them and explain their choices and what led them to this point in a way that will have you longing for a shared communal experience that in this new normal is so hard to find.This slow moving Icelanic noir won't be for everyone, but if you adjust to its level and tone you'll find yourself right at home with one of the more unique oddities of the year. It never quite goes in the direction that you'd expect it to and you're more than thankful for that, with the film tearing apart broken men in a powerful study of loneliness and toxic mascilunity that offers a truly memorable performance by Ingvar Sigurdsson.Brandon Cronenberg's unhinged, often delilerious blood-soaked extravaganza does not hold anything back. It's raw, brutal and a hundred percent commited to its vision, opting for a-esque mind-melting horror show where bodies are swapped without the owners' will, giving the occupant pretty much free run of the host's body.kept me guessing at every turn as it careered towards its end in a gloriously unpredictable fashion, utilising unique visuals and a well-anchored cast. It's clear Sean Bean is having a great time in his role as an utterly despicable CEO, Andrea Riseborough is fantastic as the face-stealing assassin, and the film is best not watched late at night, as it will keep you guessing long after it's over.The other film on this list that took me two watches to truly warm up to (not helped by a first viewing that was marred in technical issues leaving me unable to give it a fair experience, Miranda July'sis delightfully odd in all the best possible ways - best exprienced on the big screen. A truly weird, rich and unique experience that feels appropiately one of a kind, this film about a family of hustlers explores a dynamic that is rarely before seen on screen. It'd be wrong to compare it to, but its heartfelt exploration of connection is meaningful and important, turning a world of low stakes grifting into a compelling family affair that boasts incredibly underrated turns from the stellar Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger & Evan Rachel Wood.An effective counterpart to the brilliantandkeeps things grounded as it explores an astronaut who is suffering from increased isolation in training and is torn between her work and a longing to be with her family, having watched her daughter grow up from afar. Alice Winocour's film is at its best exploring the mother-daughter dynamic that is so central to the film's strengths it would hard to imagine the drama without it,feels like a significant upgrade on Noah Hawley'sand boasts plenty to say.Its a Pixar film. Of course,was going to be on this list. I was lucky enough to see it at the Cine Lumiere as part of LFF during the film festival that was hosted in London earlier last year, and Soul is a movie that is so disappointing to see it not get released on the big screen as it truly deserves to be seen in cinemas. Although that said, being released on Disney+ on Christmas day wasn't a bad Christmas treat. Its a completely magical movie featuring stellar vocal performances by Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey, and boasts completely stunning animation by the Pixar team that faithfully create a bold new storyline that gives a joyous and hopeful energy that never fails to disappoint. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross give us one of Pixars best scores to date in a film that cannot, and should not be missed.Spike Lee delivered one of the best films of the year. A testament of the brilliance of Lee's directing power and the split between the past and present narrative structure paying off dividends with the film adopting a-influenced approach,excells in showing the impact that the Vietnam War has left on African American soldiers who fight in it for a country that ignores them and brandishes them aside. It's a damning portrayal of colonialism and a stirring anti-war film, unafraid to tackle the impact that it has left on those who were left behind in Vietnam. Performances across the board, especially from Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors and Chadwick Boseman, are instantly memorable in this drama that's one part treasure hunt and one part war epic, the film leaves a clear and distinct impression on the audience with a powerful statement of intent, and nobody is spared from Lee's wrath. Once again Terrence Blanchard's score is truly remarkable, he adds beautiful depth to another Spike Lee masterpiece.is a powerful-esque documentary that delivers on its damning portrayal of the Romanian Government and its corrupt institutions in a way that feels, unfortunately, universal in its themes of abuse of power. Timely and effective with not a second spared in its meticulously detailed approach, Nanau gets effectively to the point in a way that deserves wider recognition that hopefully Oscar success will give it.Haley Bennett delivers the best performance of her career so far in this hypnotic and entrancing horror movie that finds a way to get under your skin keeping the tension high throughout. Acting as a powerful portrayal of isolation and mental illness,feels quietly brilliant - told with a true sense of purpose to it that never escapes its unshakable sense of dread.If anything, the praise for Chadwick Boseman's performance inis undersold. He's Oscar-worthy good here and should walk away with the best actor oscar in a role that should have been another terrific entry to his list of great accomplishments rather than what amounts to a tragic final major performance in a movie. Wolfe's direction turns this emotionally charged story into a force to be reckoned with, with its final few minutes finding a way to break your heart into pieces. As great as Boseman is - Viola Davis is equally good in her lead role, with both acting talents showing true mastery of their roles. A true actor's movie.Unflinchingly bleak and told without narrative compromise akin to Celine Sciammasfeels like a harsh watch, but very much a necessary one. It opens with a chilling warning about those mixed up in a lethal nationwide drug selling enterprise where the main character, a young boy still at school, is told: do you know what the acceptable loss for your business is? You and cuts back six months earlier to showcase his path that led him to that moment. Refreshingly mature in a way that avoids the-homages most of its ilk falls into,is about as far removed from Danny Boyles masterpiece as you would expect, a towering drama that shows a side to an often-told story that you havent seen before.is a vibrant odyssey of dance and soul that feels truly alive. Following an immigrant teenager who struggles with loss and alienation in his new surroundings,uses music as an escape from the real world against the backdrop of its setting. Culturally rich and stylistically brilliant, the film opts for a remarkably warm and wholesome approach whilst still finding plenty to say in a work of great relevanc that is highly recommended - if you liked HBO's, you'll want to check out more from its writer-director.No, this is very much not another adaption of the classic Victor Hugo source material. Instead;tears apart the systemtic abuse of police power in French neighbourhoods of Paris, exploring corruption and gang violence in a way that has shades ofand, hardboiled and instantly reminiscent of French classic. From its first shot of a united Paris celebrating France's World Cup win to its last, haunting image -is a force to be reckoned with - as every bit a tour de force as its reputation suggests.A holdover from 2018 that has finally been released on Mubi internationally,has a deep sense of longing and reconnection - painfully honest and authentic storytelling from a director who himself, is living in exile. It's one of the best films of whatever year you decide to count it as released in - the fact that it has rarely left my mind since I saw it back in LFF 2018 is an incredible feat. Poignant and political, this film draws from the director's own experiences to focus on family in a way that is beautifully brought to life from cinematographer Ryuji Otsuka.A memorable, controlled descent into madness, folk horror is having something of a resurgence that is lead by the brilliant. Taking place in what amounts to a near-timeless setting that could barely be placed in any one location, you are drawn into a darkly twisted cult led by its sinister leader, the only male member. Director Magorzata Szumowska gets the most out of the incredibly talented Raffey Cassidy and brings some utterly breaktaking visuals to the table. I was hooked at every turn: its short runtime and slow pace proved to strike a clear, distinctive chord with me, and for a film that reminded me instantly ofandI was surprised as to how well it rivalled both in terms of quality.Fyzal Boulifas debut is heartbreakingly authentic and devastatingly real, one of the most uncomfortable experiences that Ive had watching a movie this year. Exploring a life-changing event that shakes the foundational friendship between two lifelong friends,offers a depressingly social realist commentary akin to Ken Loach that is unavoidable and unshakable in its harsh outlook on life. Roxanne Scrimshaw and Nichola Burley are terrific in this understated film that harkens back to the days of the old British Kitchen Sink drama: the Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold comparisons feel earned.Talk about a film that came completely came out of nowhere and took me by surprise. Reminding me of Rian Johnson'swere it to borrow fromrather than film noir,turns high school cliques into a ruthless, double-crossing battleground for survival (so like, an ordinary high school?), where you'll get characters as well-developed and as well-acted as any other film - with Tayarisha Poe directing something that soars in its creative vision. Amazon have recently comissioned a TV series out of this film so you'll want to get ahead of the curve and watch it before the series arrrives on their platform, as if it's anywhere near as good as the film - it's almost certainly going to be a mega hit.A Taiwanese family epic that is almost three hours long and earns every second of its runtime, I never felt the length of this film once. Released on Netflix and promptly buried like most of the films on its service this gem of a foreign film looks at the troubles that befall horrible people doing horrible things, and gives them a reason to be doing those things in a way that feels incredibly tragic as as a family is torn apart by circumstances outside of its control. Chung Mong-Hong impressively handles both directoral and cinematography duties to create a unique experience that is one of the richest films of the year.Claire Oakley's debut is a real treat. Released in the UK inbetween lockdowns and aired on broadcast TV as part of BBC's partnership with the BFI later in the year,is an under-the-radar drama that's best left going in with no preconcieved perceptions, it will only throw you off. Set against the backdrop of a rurual Holiday Park in the UK the film works as a journey of self-discovery for young Ruth, who has moved to the park to be with her boyfriend. The chilling atmosphere of offseason haunts the empty carriages of Ruth's workplace, and its residents are even more unique and distrubing. There's an eerie edge tothat keeps it interesting and delightfully unpredictable, with Oakley earning clear and distinct praise comparable to the likes of Ken Loach and David Lynch, maxmimising its social commentary with a uniquely twisted underbelly of dark, disturbing secrets. This is a film that will pull you in and keep you entranced under its spell, ending in a way that makes it a rewarding watch.A powerful death-row drama that tears down just how flawed the system is and how it completely destroys everyone attatched to it - from the guards to the Wardens to the victim's family and yes, of course the victim themself. Chinonye Chukwu's drama is passionate, raw and an especially hard watch of memorable proportions, as it explores the dynamic between a prison warden and a new innmate who she is about to execute. Alfre Woodard, exceptional in, is awards-worthy brilliant in this film, and Aldis Hodge puts in an equally memorable turn opposte her.Give yourself to the dance. Playing out likeramped up to eleven,director Pablo Larrian returns with a slow and gradual descent into anarchy that offers a unique take on the marriage falling apart story. With vivid imagery and hypnotising dance moves you'll find it hard to look away from the deconstruction of sex, power and family that benefits from stellar performances from the impeccably talented duo of Mariana Di Girolamo and Gael Garcia Bernal.2020 has been an excellent year for documentaries andis right up there with the best of them - the fact that it is not the best says something about just how good of a year it's been. Brilliant, heartbreaking and a critique of the horrific US prison system, this film spans 21 full years in the space of 81 minutes effortlessly, acting as a rallying cry of profound proportions. Easily one of the most emotionally-charged documentaries that I've seen - you will be left devastated by the end of this film as director Garrett Bradley succeeds in making a clear mission statement. Its hard-won triumphs have rarely felt more earned.Amy Seimetz delivers a movie that feels like it was made for 2020, an unflinchingly smart and subversive indie horror film that will keep you guessing at every turn about where it's going to go next. Casting a spotlight on a woman, named Amy, who is convinced she's going to die tomorrow, the film follows her pathway as she becomes more and more unhinged, trapped in a dizzying spiral that she cannot escape from. What's worse is that her curse is contagious: people nearby her find themselves entrapped in the constant state of misery that Amy brings with her. The neon lighting thatbrings to the table makes the film all the more stylishly brilliant, the lightning-in-a-bottle premise is presented in such a unique way that you won't see another film quite like this one in 2020. It's the perfect blend of anxiety, nihilism and dread that captures the creeping build of tension and paranoia brilliantly.What's better than one new Steve McQueen film? FIVE new Steve McQueen films. With one of the year's most ambitous projects, McQueen pulls together a variety of true events and a stellar cast for a series of different storylines that soar.beatsat its own game in the courtroom for legal affairs - powerfully devastating and richly rewarding, whilstoffers a glimpse into one of the greatest parties ever filmed. And thenboasts a stunning performance by John Boyega as it tears down the racism in the Met Police. All films have a point to prove but it's these three that are the standouts, boasting a memorable Ska and Reggae-fuelled soundtrack that comes from the vibrant heart and soul of Trojan Records, making London feel as alive and as vibrant as ever. Regardless of whether you countas a TV series or a film (BBC and Amazon are similarly divided in its marketing but Steve McQueen is clear that they are films) Every entry here is unmissable.It's a shame thatis not elegible for the Oscars this year as it features Hugh Jackman's strongest performance since, if not his whole career. He is just on another level as a corrupt school superintendent whose secretive embezzlement scheme is discovered by an doggedly determined student journalist. Jackman's manipulative brilliance is on full effect in this roaring-esque dark comedy that pulls audiences in and refuses to let go: Robert Kolker & Mike Makowsky's fast-track dialogue keeps audiences engaged from start to finish, and the supporting cast, Allison Janney and Geraldine Viswanathan, round out the ensemble on a terrific note. The humour is perfect, there is distinct Yorgos Lanthimos-influences on the script, and the look into the dark, hidden secrets buried underneath the American Dream allows for a rewarding watch that plays brilliantly with an audience. Cory Finley's debut,, may be a stellar movie in its own right, butis even better.A documentary so dramatic it feels like a work of fiction more than a real depicition of true events, but this exploration of a bond between a painter and a thief who stole her art is tremendous, deeply captivating at every turn. It finds ways to test the boundaries of the format in more ways than one, acting as accomplished piece of storytelling genius from Lee that enables a comprehensive look into the lives of two self-destructive people who get the best, and worst out of each other.Hong Sang-Soo is the most prolific filmmaker currently working often putting out multiple new films each year - so you'd expect a quality drop at some point but the fact that it hasn't happened yet is a true testaement to his skill., although simple in its plot and short in its length, emerging as a bitesize slice-of-life novella type filmmaking, it allows the director to step away from the confines of his self-insert characters that he has perpetuated in his earlier work in favour of a female-centered perspective of a woman simply going about her life doing her day-to-day chores. Boring for some, but in an otherwise hellish year, the return to relative normalcy thatprovides us with is irresistibly welcome.Im no Charles Dickens fan butwon me over completely with its magical and completely engrossing experience that updated Dickens semi-autobiographical work for a new audience bringing the titular character life with a stellar performance from the incredibly talented Dev Patel. Iannucci takes delight in bringing Copperfields story to life with an all-star ensemble of colourful characters: Peter Capaldi, Ben Whishaw, Tilda Swinton, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie and Morfydd Clark all ensure that this film wont be forgotten any time soon and it emerges as a delightful family favourite that may well end up being the best Dickens adaption thus to date. When it can even win non-fans over, you know its going to be something special.Few musicians are lucky to have one all-timer of a concert film under their belt during their career. The inheritably likeable David Byrne now has, betweenand, two. From the moment the film begins you get a much-needed sense of optimism and openness, as Byrne brings the audience into the film in a way like no other:has the band dance through the audience much to their delight, and its great to see a crowd so into the greatest hits of The Talking Heads that Byrne executes to a near-unmatched level of perfection, connecting the audience with his band in a way that feels instantly welcoming and all-inclusive. Im sorry, but as good asis, it doesnt come anywhere close toOne of the years most daring and bold sci-fi debuts comes from the low-budget but ambitiousthat came out of absolutely nowhere to take me by complete surprise when I watched it on Amazon Prime Video earlier last year. Its fast-paced dialogue helpscapture the spirit of a radio play in nature, and its-inspired roots really help make it shine. Its full of twists, turns and moves at a fast pace that feels wholly remarkable: a rare breath of fresh air in a genre that has seen every possibility told and retold countless of times over.This gritty, violent and pulpy Brazilian western sees a small town cut off from the rest of the world in the wake of the loss of its matriarch, 94-year-old Carmelita. What follows is an experience that has to be seen to be believed in a smart, engrossing social commentary of a film that provides an interesting background for the talented Filho and Dornelles to build on their impressive filmography after the masterpiece of. Its wild and uncompromising from start to finish, domestically released on the same day as The Hunt in the United States but by far the superior film dealing with similar themes in a much better way. Theres a lot of strong political allegory in Bacurau, and its a true rollercoaster of an experience that refuses to compromise.What do you do when you know your dad is going to die? You kill him off over and over again in multiple, creative ways, and film it for a documentary. Such is the good-natured black humour of Kristen Johnson and her family that makepossible, enjoyable and as richly entertaining as it is: the Netflix documentary is a phenomonal follow up to Johnson's medium-definingthat was released back in 2014. It can make you both laugh and cry in the same scene in a way that few movies are able to even attempt to capture - and as a stirring tribute to a man who we likely never knew existed before this documentary,does its job perfectly - emerging as a true celebration of life at its finest.I saw this back at the London Film Festival a year ahead of its theatrical release andis something that truly left an impact on me - I've been unable to forget it and it has stayed in my mind ever since. The performance from Morfydd Clark is instantly memorable in this unflinchingly dark debut that pulls you in in a way like few other movies of its ilk: Thinkfor a more direct comparison and it more than lives up to the billing in that regard. The atmosphere and mystery is rich right from the word go, and there are multiple moments that left me breathtaken by the sheer audacity that Rose Glass is able to accomplish in her debut. It's a psychological drama that gets under your skin the way few movies have been able to, with Clark playing a devout live-in care-giver who finds herself swayed by an otherworldly influence that does not have her best influences at heart. Obsession and possession are concepts that have never been explored as richly or as in depth, and Glass makes sure thatis an experience that audiences won't be able to forget anytime soon...Nick Rowlands intense, gritty debut has a touch of melancholy tothat sees it earn comparisons to Chloe Zhaosand Nicolas Winding Refns. Set in rural Ireland the film explores the pull between a mans family and the life of crime that there is seemingly no escape from with stunning performances that offer a gripping portrayal of the cycle of violence and how hard it is to break out of for those once you are in. Cosmo Jarvis and Barry Keoghan are remarkable in this film, with Niamh Algar impressing in what amounts to an incredibly strong ensemble. The film even finds time for a memorable car chase, skilfully pulled off when you least expect it in an entirely personal drama that had resounding repercussions on me when I watched in the year. Unforgettable.Thematically and tonally similar to, but superior by far in its executionfollows Merab, a dancer at the National Georgian Ensemble who finds his place challenged by the new arrival of his strongest rival and a new love interest. Set against the backdrop of a deeply conservative environment, the film explores identity and tackles themes of self-destruction with care, escaping its familiar set-up with an exciting feel to it. Keep an eye out for the stunning party one-shot, where Levan Akin maximises his creativity and gets the most out of a remarkably talented lead performance by Levan Gelbakhiani.may be the animated film that is the favourite to win at the Oscars this year, but the dark horse,, is infinetly more magical, mystical and brilliant, drawing from a rich tradition of Irish folklore in favour of an emotionally investing tale for all ages that's able to keep the family entertained as much as adults. Despite its dark nature it captures the all-ages appeal that a film like this needs, every frame feels like a painting and the artwork comes to life before your eyes in a way where you will believe that everything that you see before you is completely and utterly real.Shannon Murphys directorial debut is an exciting one that showcases, just as with last years, how good Eliza Scanlen is at breaking your heart over and over again. Scanlen puts in everything she has to her performance as a terminally ill teenager who brings a small-time drug dealer back to her parents home after meeting him on a train platform much to their displeasure. The complex family dynamics are explored to perfection in this film that could easily have put so many steps wrong, but thanks to a carefully balanced tonal structure you will find yourself in love withby the end. Keep an eye out for the excellent supporting cast: Ben Mendelsohn proves that his strengths lie in comedy as much as being typecast as Hollywood villains, and Essie Davis is terrific. Expect to cry by the end and if you dont, youre soulless.is a proper London movie. Set in the capital of England and capturing the mood of the classroom and its subjects to precision, the film explores a young girl and her brother on the run from a system that is meant to protect them. Its an emotionally investing experience that feels deeply alive and empowering, thanks to the strong mix of non-professional and professional actors in its cast. I cant praise Bukky Bakray and Kosar Alis entirely natural performance enough, their chemistry feels as believable and authentic as the dialogue, and its so good to see Sarah Gavron represent a side of London on screen in a way that does not get depicted on screen often. As far as coming of age movies go, its wonderful.Set in post WW2 Leningrad,isnt an easy watch. Focusing on two female soldiers returning from war and adjusting to the city that they left, it is a punishing experience that will be gruelling and leave you uncomfortable by the end. But in the same way as films like, if you stick withyoull be rewarded with the very best film of the year. Striking images and unique cinematography from the incredible Kseniya Sereda help bring this version of Leningrad to life in immaculate detail that doesnt miss a beat, providing a backdrop for the emotionally heartbreaking and entirely devastating journey thatwill take you on. It is meticiously planned and well-executed from the first shot to the last: unavoidably harrowing but refreshingly authentic in its rare moments of compassion and kindness that all come together for an historical epic for the ages.Xavier Dolans latestis the most beautiful film of the year. Anchored by gorgeous cinematography by Andre Turpin, this exploration of unspoken love between two close friends who are asked to share a kiss on a short film changing their relationship and their family dynamics forever in the process. The soundtrack, as usual with Dolan, is full of non-stop bangers: Arcade Fire, Pet Shop Boys & Phosphorescent all make up its eclectic discography, and the nostalgic tinge tofeels pure, poetically intricate and incredibly heartfelt. Full praise has to go to both Dolan and Gabriel DAlmeida Freitas, who pour their heart into every scene. A much-needed improvement over the underrated but messy, and a welcome return to form.Between this and acting in, it's been quite the year fordirector Marielle Heller. An understated portrayal of America's icon, Fred Rogers, in possibly a career-best role for Tom Hanks subverts the normal fallbacks of a biopic in favour of a heartwarming and endearing tale that feels accessible and uplifitng for all audiences, boasting a strong supporting turn from Matthew Rhys. As someone who knew nothing about Fred Rogers going in - he's virtually unknown in the UK among my agegroup at least -found a way to be endearingly hopeful and kind from start to finish, hitting me in the heart right where I needed it to.Eliza Hittmans importantis deeply heartwrenching and unavoidably moving, it should be required viewing by all. Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder put in years best-performances as a pair of teenage girls travelling unaided to New York city to seek out medical help as a result of an unplanned pregnancy. The film tackles its central theme of abortion strongly and decisively without missing a beat and Hittmans natural social/political criticism game is very strong in this approach with a special and memorable way. Helene Louvarts cinematography is marvellous, and the film sees Hittman's promise after the fantasticfully emerge before our eyes in what amounts to one of the year's most powerful films - that titular scene will leave you breathless. 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. An attorney for the former San Antonio campaign worker arrested Wednesday raised questions about the nature of the arrest. Former Bexar County District Attorney Nicholas "Nico" LaHood is representing Raquel Rodriguez, who was charged with election tampering by the state attorney general's office. As of Thursday morning, Rodriguez was being held at the Kendall County Jail, northwest of San Antonio, waiting to appear before a magistrate. READ MORE: San Antonio woman arrested on election fraud charges based on Project Veritas video "Every citizen accused of a criminal allegation deserves a fair process and an aggressive defense and our goal is to make sure shes afforded both," LaHood said Thursday. The allegations against Rodriguez surfaced last fall after the conservative activist group Project Veritas posted an edited video of her appearing to help an elderly person fill out a mail-in ballot form and discussing unlawful tactics, including assisting people at the polls. The video included only snippets of what appear to be multiple conversations, and it was not clear who Rodriguez believed she was speaking to or under what context. COURTESY PHOTO / Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said in a statement that his office reviewed dozens of hours of unedited footage, and that Rodriguez says at one point that she knows her actions are illegal. Rodriguez was charged with four counts, all felonies. "Nothing that we've reviewed, even thats out there in the public arena, concerns us as to her guilt," LaHood said. Rodriguez's attorney questioned the site of the court process for the case. "They're only allegations, but even the allegations that we believe the AG is making, no one is going to say they occurred in Kendall County," LaHood said. LaHood, pointing to his past experience as a prosecutor, also wondered why the evidence was not presented to a grand jury. "You walk a warrant when theres a clear and present danger to a citizen or complainant or alleged victim. We don't see that here," LaHood said. "Theres no election going on. The elections two months over and theres not another one for another 10 months." In October, Rodriguez, who also goes by the first name Rachel, posted on Facebook that Project Veritas had approached her saying it represented an anonymous candidate with money looking for help in a future city council race. I immediately suspected something was wrong with this conversation, she said, adding: I chose to continue the conversation and play along in order to discover the source and gather my own evidence that I could submit to legal authorities. At the time of the video, she appeared to be working on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate, and mentioned working for several other San Antonio area political figures, including former Republican state Sen. Pete Flores, newly elected state Rep. Elizabeth Liz Campos, a Democrat; and former state District Judge Renee Yanta, a Republican. Yanta sued Rodriguez days after the video was released, saying Rodriguez defamed her by claiming to the Veritas interviewer that she had Yanta and several other judges in her pocket. The suit is pending. LaHood said he is not representing Rodriguez in that case. Staff writers Jeremy Blackman and Elizabeth Zavala contributed to this report. 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. (Newser) The leader of the Proud Boys has been banned from the nation's capital, and now he says the rest of the group is likely to stay away from Washington, DC, as well on Jan. 20. "Were going to take a chill pill," Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, the far-right gang's chairman, tells USA Today. I feel like this part of the battle is over." The newspaper reports that other far-right leaders and provocateurs are issuing similar messages amid an atmosphere in which many of their online gathering spaces are shuttering, the Capitol is being heavily secured, and those who stormed it on Jan. 6 are being rounded up and arrested. But one official warns that not all far-right extremists are associated with a group, and violence could still occur. The AP reports the FBI is monitoring an "extensive amount of concerning online chatter." story continues below Meanwhile, Kyle Rittenhouse, the now-18-year-old charged with fatally shooting two people during the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the summer, was spotted at a bar with Proud Boys members, flashing white power signs and being "loudly serenaded" with the group's official song, WTMJ-TV reports. Prosecutors are now asking that his bond agreement be amended to require that, among other things, he stay away from the Proud Boys and any other white power, white supremacist, or militia groups, and that he be barred from displaying white power or white supremacy signs, symbols, or gestures. Far-right protests are also being planned for Sunday in DC as well as all 50 state capitals, and Vox takes a look at how those locations are preparing for possible violence. (Read more Proud Boys stories.) Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. International news outlets picked up the strange tale of a bird named Joe, and the internet marveled at its apparent journey. The authorities said they believed it had most likely hitched a ride on a cargo ship. Brad Turner, secretary of the Australian National Pigeon Association, told The Associated Press that he had heard of cases of Chinese racing pigeons reaching the Australian west coast aboard cargo ships, a relatively shorter trip. Mr. Celli-Bird thought it was all a bit of good fun, but the Australian authorities had a different view. The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment said Joe posed a direct biosecurity risk to Australian bird life and our poultry industry. It intended to euthanize him, local media reported on Thursday. Australia has notoriously strict biosecurity laws. In 2015, Barnaby Joyce, then agricultural minister, threatened to euthanize the actor Johnny Depps two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, because they had not been declared to customs when they arrived in Queensland aboard a private jet. Luckily, arrangements were made for the two dogs to be flown back to the United States. Amber Heard, then Mr. Depps wife, later pleaded guilty in a Queensland court to providing false information on her passenger card after she and the dogs landed on the Gold Coast to visit the actor. The couple offered an apology. Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack showed no mercy earlier on Friday about the pigeon matter at a news conference, saying: If Joe has come in a way that has not met out strict biosecurity measures, then bad luck, Joe. Either fly home or face the consequences. Facing the prospect of Joes demise, Mr. Celli-Bird had second thoughts about the name he had given the bird. Last night I thought maybe we should have called him Donald, he said. Maybe we could have gotten a presidential pardon or diplomatic immunity. But on Friday morning, information suddenly emerged that seemed to give the bird a reprieve: Joe may not be an American pigeon after all. 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. [January 15, 2021] Flower One Receives Notices of Default on Delayed Debt Payments Flower One Holdings Inc. ("Flower One" or the "Company") (CSE: FONE) (OTCQX: FLOOF) (FSE: F11), a leading cannabis cultivator, producer and innovator in Nevada, announced today that it received payment default notices from RB Loan Portfolio II, LLC (the "Lender") in respect of interests in the amount of $262,500 due on January 1, 2021 in connection with a loan from RB Loan Portfolio I, LLC (the "Lessor") to the Company in the amount of US$30,000,000, and from RB Loan Portfolio I, LLC (the "Lessor") in respect to lease payments in the amount of $526,677 due on January 5, 2021 in connection with the Company's lease of the greenhouse facility located at 3950 North Bruce Street in North Las Vegas. The Company also has not paid: (i) the January lease payment of $248,268 in connection with the lease of its cultivation and production facility at 343 Neeham Road in North Las Vegas, and (ii) interest payments due on two other loans (totaling $152,306 and $27,575), all of which were due January 1, 2021. No default notices have been received in respect to these payments. The Company's Interim CFO, Richard Groberg stated that, "While the Lender and Lessor each have reserved all rights and remedies in regard to the default notice, both lenders are in discussions with the Company about possible solutions. Further, the Company is working closely with its other major creditors and landlords as we continue to pursue a range of financing alternatives." About Flower One Holdings Inc. Flower One is the largest cannabis cultivator, producer, and full-service, brand fulfillment partner in the state of Nevada. By combining more than 20 years of greenhouse operational excellence with best-in-class cannabis operators, Flower One offers consistent, reliable and scalable fulfillment to a growing number of industry-leading cannabis brands. Flower One currently produces a wide range of products ranging from wholesale flower, full-spectrum oils, and distillates to finished consumer packaged goods including: flower, pre-rolls, infused pre-rolls, concentrates, edibles, and topicals for the top-performing brands in cannabis. Flower One's flagship, 400,000 square-foot greenhouse and 55,000 square-foot production facility is used for large-scale cannabis cultivation, processing and manufacturing. Flower One also operates a second production facility with 25,000 square-feet of indoor cultivation and a commercial kitchen that produces several of the nation's top-performing edible brands. The Company's common shares are traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the Company's symbol "FONE", in the United States on the OTCQX Best Market uner the symbol "FLOOF" and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol "F11". For more information, visit: https://flowerone.com. Forward Looking Statement Statements in this press release that are not statements of historical or current fact constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of United States securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other unknown factors that could cause the actual results of the Company to be materially different from historical results or from any future actual results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In addition to statements which explicitly describe such risks and uncertainties, readers are urged to consider statements labeled with the terms "believes," "belief," "expects," "intends," "anticipates," "potential," "should," "may," "will," "plans," "continue" or other similar expressions to be uncertain and forward-looking. Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements relating to the notices of default received by the Company; the Company's ability to make outstanding payments or obtain financing, the Company's leadership as a cannabis cultivator, producer, innovator and full-service brand fulfillment partner; the Company's ability to offer consistent, reliable and scalable fulfilment to its brand partners; and the production of the nation's top-performing edibles brands. The Company is indirectly involved in the manufacture, possession, use, sale and distribution of cannabis in the recreational and medicinal cannabis marketplaces in the United States through its subsidiary Cana Nevada Corp. Local state laws where Cana Nevada Corp. operates permit such activities; however, these activities are currently illegal under United States federal law. Additional information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's business are contained under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Management Discussion and Analysis dated September 30, 2020 (the "MD&A") filed on its issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, the "Cautionary Statement regarding Forward-Looking Information" section contained in the MD&A. All forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. The forward-looking statements contained herein are also subject generally to assumptions and risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the Company's public securities filings with the Canadian securities commissions, including the Company's MD&A. Although Flower One has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, including, but not limited to: dependence on obtaining regulatory approvals; investing in target companies or projects that are engaged in activities currently considered illegal under United States federal law; changes in laws; limited operating history; reliance on management; requirements for additional financing; competition; hindering market growth and state adoption due to inconsistent public opinion and perception of the medical-use and adult-use marijuana industry and; regulatory or political change. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. Flower One Holdings disclaims and does not undertake any intention or obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR THEIR REGULATIONS SERVICES PROVIDER HAVE REVIEWED OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005568/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] The Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Construction amending and supplementing a decree which allows for the renovation and reconstruction of old apartment buildings without approval from 100 percent of the residents in the affected tenements. According to the proposal, the government will be permitted to allow property developers to tear down old apartment buildings in order to build new residential complexes after receiving consent from just 50 percent of the affected owners. Those who dissent from giving up their property will be forced to relocate in order to facilitate construction. The proposal was framed as an alternative to current regulations which prohibit the renovation on or reconstruction of old buildings until 100 percent of the affected residents give their approval. The buildings in question are meant to be those which authorities deem in danger of collapse. The Truc Giang apartment building in Ward 13, District 4 is a prime example of the ongoing struggle between residents who wish to keep their homes and authorities who claim those homes are too dangerous to inhabit. Though an assessment by authorities in 2017 noted that the building was heavily degraded, no renovations have been made to Truc Giang as not all residents have not given their consent. Meanwhile, the District 4 Peoples committee believes the building to be in such a state of disrepair that they have relocated 119 Truc Giang households to temporary residences. Four households, however, have refused to leave the building in order to show their disapproval of the renovation plan. The Vinh Hoi apartment building in the same district has faced the same problem. The ultimate purpose of renovating or demolishing old apartment buildings is to improve the urban area and reorganize peoples lives in a more secure, proper, and stable way, said Vo Thanh Dung, deputy chairman of District 4. The government forcing people to move out of old and dangerous condominiums is not a punitive measure but a drastic action to protect peoples lives and property, and ensure order and security of the locality, Dung added. According to an expert from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, most of the disapproval stems from the failure of private developers and apartment owners to reach a consensus on compensation value or relocation methods. The Department of Construction also claimed that the longer the negotiations take, the more compensation value is deflated. As such, the municipal Peoples Committee suggested that the government only compensate apartment owners in old buildings by resettling them in new apartments, not by money. Apartment owners who oppose the relocation will receive only compensation or assistance equal to the average value of the new apartments provided for those who agree to the reconstruction project. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! NHLANGANO Members of the public were treated to a spectacle yesterday as police officers, in their cars, chased after vehicles which were performing a car salute for the late Mario Masuku. Masuku was a former president of the Peoples United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) which is a proscribed entity. The car salute was sanctioned by the Regional Secretary of PUDEMO, Saverious Nsibande in a press statement. Police, on the other hand, were all out waiting for the car salute to begin. They held a roadblock at the T-junction which joins the route from Manzini and Nhlangano Town. Commuters who were on board public transport vehicles were searched during the roadblock prior to proceeding with their journey. Detained Members of the PUDEMO who were wearing T-shirts branded with Masukus picture were made to take off the T-shirts before being released to continue with their journey. Others were said to have been detained by the law enforcers. The number of people who were detained could not be established as Nsibande said he did not receive a full report on the matter. Police seemed taken aback by the number of people who had come for the car salute as the law enforcers mainly stopped public transport vehicles yet many others had actually come in their private cars. Soon after the convoy which had Masukus stickers emerged at the T-junction also known as KaMjuda, police swiftly boarded their cars and started chasing after the vehicles which were to take part in the car salute. Most of the cars made their way towards Makhosini, with the cops in hot pursuit. While police were wrapping their equipment, which they had set up at the roadblock, the convoy stopped for a few minutes by the roadside and the occupants danced to political songs which were playing from the car radios and left soon as they saw the police boarding their vehicles. Police somehow managed to block some of the vehicles through the use of various routes within the town. Three members of the car salute convoy; one of whom was wearing a T-shirt written You can scare others, not me, not PUDEMO approached the police and questioned them on why they had closed the road as they were getting out of town. Is driving a crime lately? What did we do now? Why are you closing the road, why? the police officers were questioned. None of the law enforcers uttered a single word. Soon after this episode, the police removed their vehicles and blocked the road leading back to town, allowing them to drive towards Makhosini direction. Others who used other routes were also followed by police officers who were also blocking them and allowing them to drive towards Makhosini. The convoy then made its way out of town and was followed by police officers to Makhosini. Peaceful The PUDEMO members who were interviewed stated that the reason they chose the car salute was to pay their last respects to their former president and it was meant to be peaceful. They said they did not understand why police were fighting them as they were only driving, which was what anyone could do. They said the car salute was due to the COVID-19 regulations, which they believed Masuku would have encouraged them to comply with. We cannot dance and sing in our numbers as per the norm, but we can salute our hero using our cars. The cars can dance and sing for us, they said. Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said they were yet to get a full report regarding the matter. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Australia will be holding an online public meeting to commemorate the life of Barry Jobson, a longstanding comrade, who passed away on December 11 at the age of 78. The meeting will start at 2 p.m. on January 17, 2021 and will be livestreamed. His life holds crucial political lessons for workers and young people coming into revolutionary struggle today and we encourage you to attend. Comrade Barry joined the Socialist Labour League (SLL), the precursor to the SEP, in 1974. From that time, he played an indispensable role in the bringing the program of the Fourth International into the working class in key strategic areas. In particular, he worked for many years in the Elcar railway workshops in the southwestern Sydney suburb of Chullora. In close collaboration with Comrade Terry Cook, he defended the interest of railway workers against the betrayals of the Labor Party, the Communist Party Stalinists and the trade union bureaucracies, all the time seeking to educate them in the program and principles of the Trotskyist movement. Barry Jobson understood the critical importance of studying and assimilating the writing of the Marxist movement and grasping the strategical historical lessons of the 20th century. He undertook a detailed study of this history to ground himself on these essential lessons and bring them to bear on his political work. Later in life he brought this knowledge and experience to youth and students, regularly campaigning on the University of Newcastle campus where he patiently explained the key political issues of the day. His grasp on complex political and historical knowledge was so impressive that students many times asked him which faculty he taught at. His obituary, published on the WSWS in December, concluded with the following: Barry Jobson wrote an imperishable page in the history of the struggle for the program of Trotskyism in the working class. He has gone but his legacy lives on. Above all, his life underscores for youth and students now coming into the Trotskyist movement the crucial importance of winning workers in key sections of industry, of the necessity for their training and education as Marxists and the decisive role that these worker-Marxists can and will play in shaping the course of the revolutionary struggles now unfolding. The SEP invites WSWS readers, supporters, workers and youth to attend our commemoration on Sunday, 17 January 2021, at 2 p.m. AEDT. Register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event. ACSV Legal managing partner Mark Oakley, of counsel, and head of Energy Practice Tim Dobson In February 2020 the Politburo issued Resolution No.55/NQ-TW on the national energy development strategy until 2030 with a vision to 2045. In this, the goal was set out to develop infrastructure with sufficient capacity to import about eight billion cubic metres of LNG in 2030 and 15 billion cu.m in 2045. As evidenced by Resolution 55, Vietnam is intent on developing LNG-to-power projects due to an anticipated power shortage in southern Vietnam from 2021-2025 caused by many reasons. So far, no LNG power plants have begun commercial operation in Vietnam. Several large-scale LNG-to-power projects have been included in the National Power Development Plan VII (PDP7) in many provinces. Among those, the initiative in the Mekong Delta province of Bac Lieu developed by Delta Offshore Energy stands out due to its large capacity of 3,200MW and the fact it is the first LNG power plant developed as an independent power producer (IPP) under the Law on Investment (meaning a private entity owning power plant facilities to generate power for sale). There are also other large-capacity ventures being proposed for inclusion in PDP8, such as that in Chan May-Lang Co Economic Zone in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue with a capacity of about 4,000MW and multiple LNG power plants in South Van Phong Industrial Zone, in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa. Other than general laws regulating foreign investment, the government has only issued Decree No.87/2018/ND-CP to regulate business activities (trading, import, and transport) related to LNG. The conditions to trade, import, and transport LNG in Decree 87 are general and need further guiding regulations for practical implementation. Of note, Decree 87 also does not mention the use of floating storage and/or regasification units or facilities in LNG activities, which is a notable omission, since it is not clear how the government would manage and regulate such facilities. Potential structures There are two regulatory frameworks to develop an LNG-to-power project, being public-private partnership (PPP) laws and the Law on Investment. If selected as the developer of a PPP venture following the tendering process under the Law on Bidding, the sponsors and a competent governmental authority will enter into a concession agreement, commonly in the form of build-operate-transfer (BOT), to allocate risks. For non-PPP IPP under the Law on Investment, sponsors will develop under the Law on Investment without a concession agreement. Sponsors choosing the PPP framework for BOT typically must wait a much longer time to be officially selected as the developer than the non-PPP framework. But in return, PPP developers generally receive better government support, especially in terms of power purchase agreement (PPA) bankability and government guarantees which are required to obtain non-recourse project financing from foreign lenders. The fundamental difference between PPP projects, which are nearly always BOT, and IPP ones under the Law on Investment will be that under a PPP BOT project Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) will end up owning the power plant facilities, whereas under an IPP one, EVN is simply buying power, and this has an impact on what is included in the PPA for an IPP scheme. Vietnamese law also requires many regulatory approvals in different fields such as power, environment, and corporate. The final decision heavily depends on discretion of the licensing authorities. Meanwhile, after issuance of the investment registration certificate for non-PPP IPP projects or signing of concession agreement for PPP BOT equivalents, the sponsors must set up a project company in Vietnam to start implementing it. For non-PPP projects, the equity or charter capital amount normally must be no less than 15 per cent (for those using more than 20 hectares of land) or 20 per cent (for those using less than 20 hectares of land) of the total capital. By law, sponsors must contribute the entire charter capital amount of the project company within 90 days from incorporation date. For PPP initiatives, the owners equity amount must be at least 15 per cent of total investment capital and be contributed following schedules provided in the concession agreement. Power projects under the PPP BOT umbrella have in the past been able to use a relatively detailed and sophisticated PPA containing terms necessary to achieve bankability acceptable by international lenders. However, for non-PPP IPP schemes, strictly speaking, the contents of the PPA should follow the template PPA issued by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) under Circular No.56/2014 dated December 2014, as amended. Unfortunately, the template PPA in Circular 56 is too simple for an LNG-to-power project and not sufficiently bankable to obtain non-recourse financing from foreign lenders. Although Circular 56 suggests that the template PPA can be amended, the extent of amendments acceptable to the Vietnamese authorities remains to be seen, and we are not aware of any Circular 56 PPAs that have been signed which matches the sophistication and detail of the PPA granted to PPP BOT projects. Whether a non-PPP IPP developer can have a detailed and bankable PPA that satisfies foreign lenders will depend heavily on the cooperation of EVN, the MoIT, and the government. Allocations and rights Integrated LNG-to-power ventures will require sea or coastal areas to place vessels, terminals, and underwater pipelines for transporting LNG. To obtain the title to use sea areas offshore, the developer will need to apply for approval to use the sea areas in accordance with Decree No.51/2014/ND-CP released in May 2014 on providing the assignment of given sea areas to organizations and individuals for marine resource exploitation and use. Decree 51 and its guiding regulations are not clear in determining the sea use fees, sea areas and licensing regulations to use sea areas, resulting in a lengthy process to allocate sea areas to a developer and brings with it additional expenses for developers. Decree 51 also does not contain any provisions on whether the developer can use the allocated sea, coastal area, and offshore facilities as security assets for project financing. It is expected that the decree replacing Decree 51, which is being drafted, will resolve the shortcomings. Elsewhere, under the Law on Land, the land use rights can only be mortgaged if the project company uses the land with land rent being paid in full and upfront. For those companies that pay land rent annually or are exempted from it (treated the same as paying rent annually), they can only mortgage assets attached to the land. Lenders usually prefer mortgages of both land use rights and the assets attached thereto. Further, the Law on Land only allows companies to mortgage land use rights and assets attached to land to credit institutions operating in Vietnam. Up until now, foreign lenders have used a bank in Vietnam acting as the security agent on behalf of the lenders to receive the mortgage and foreclose the mortgaged assets if required. While this has been accepted practice in the past, the legality of such arrangement is unclear and has yet to be confirmed by the authorities. Since this is likely to be an important issue for foreign lenders, the parties will need to explore ways that this problem can be legally solved - for example have a local bank included as one of the lenders. Without a doubt, LNG-to-power projects will play a major role in the power market of Vietnam in the future. Although, to ensure sustainable development and interest of investors, more must be done, such as development of a more concrete and streamlined legal framework and provision of better support to developers. Until the LNG market in Vietnam becomes more developed, pioneer sponsors and financiers will face certain legal and practical issues in developing and financing an LNG-to-power scheme. However, these are not insurmountable, and it will be interesting to see how the current LNG-to-power projects currently working their way through the system fare. Twelve leading doctors of Assam are among the health workers who will be administered COVID-19 vaccine from the first vial on Saturday morning as part of the country-wide vaccination drive, state Health and Family Welfare minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. The exercise will begin in 65 sites in 33 districts across the state after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launches the pan-India roll out of the COVID-19 vaccination drive via video conferencing, the minister told a press conference here. In the state, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will inaugurate the drive at Assam Medical College Hospital, Dibrugarh and the health minister at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital here. An estimated 6,500 people of the 1.9 lakh health workers, designated as COVID warriors, will be vaccinated on the first day, Sarma said. "Taking the vaccine is entirely voluntary but considering the challenges being faced by the medical fraternity, it is imperative that health workers take it as they are directly dealing with coronavirus patients and are at high risk," the minister told journalists at a press conference here. Former vice chancellor of Srimanta Sankardeva University of Health Sciences Dr Umesh Chandra Sarma will be the first to receive the initial dose, he said. The other doctors to be vaccinated are Padma Shri awardee and surgeon Dr Ilias Ali, Sahitya Akademi awardee and former principal of Barpeta Medical College and Hospital Dr Dhrubajyoti Borah, GMCH principal Dr Achyut Baishya and its superintendent Dr Abhijeet Sharma. An observation room has been set up at the vaccination sites for monitoring the condition of those who will be vaccinated, for at least half an hour for side-effects, if any. Assam has received 2,21,500 doses of vaccine so far, including 2,01,500 Covishield and 20,000 Covaxin, Sarma said. As many as 2.9 lakh people of the northeastern state have registered in the CoWIN portal so far. Covishield vaccine will be administered in 59 sites and Covaxin in six sites. In the first phase, 1.9 lakh health workers of both government and private health facilities, comprising doctors, nurses, paramedical staff, ambulance drivers and cleaners will be included and this will take around eight weeks. Altogether 100 persons will be inoculated at each of the vaccination sites. The second stage will cover one lakh frontline workers, including police, army and paramilitary forces. In the third phase, all persons above the age of 50 will be vaccinated and in the next phase, people below the age of 50 but with comorbidities will be included but for these categories, the guidelines will be announced by the Centre later, the minister said. Tentatively around one crore people in the state will be covered in these phases, Sarma said. The second dose of the vaccine will be administered after 28 days of the first and after that there will be a waiting period of 14 days, following which the person will attain immunity. Sarma said, there will be no immunity after the first dose and a person may test positive during this period even after taking the vaccine. The minister claimed that the COVID-19 situation in Assam was now under control and the number of new cases detected daily has been less than 50 since December 31. Sarma mentioned that COVID-19 will be there at the community level, though not as a pandemic, as mutant strains have been detected in other countries. 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. 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. Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) -White Metal Resources Corp. (TSXV: WHM) ("White Metal" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that its partner Noronex Ltd. (ASX: NRX) ("Noronex") has commenced an airborne electromagnetic ("EM") geophysical survey over the DorWit Copper-Silver Project (the "Property" or the "Project"), located about 150 km east of Windhoek, Namibia. The EM survey is the first ever state-of-the-art airborne survey to be undertaken within the Project area. The use of the significantly improved modern technology and geophysical interpretation is intended to generate new exploration targets to expand on the 150,000 m of historical reverse circulation and diamond drilling that has already identified numerous sedimentary hosted Cu-Ag deposits. Michael Stares, President & CEO, commented, "We are very pleased to see our exploration partners have initiated the 2021 program and specifically this airborne survey over the Witvlei and Dordabis properties. The earn-in agreement we completed Noronex confirms our project generator model which has been successful in finding a quality partner to advance the Project while maintaining a 25% interest for the Company." The geophysical contractor NRG will commence flying the Witvlei Property (EPL7028 and 7029) and then move to the Dordabis Property (EPL7030). Noronex is also expecting to update the historical JORC 2012 mineral resource estimates which is currently being completed by MSA Group, with initial results expected by February 2021. White Metal completed the earn-in agreement (the "Agreement") with a subsidiary of Noronex which novated the rights under the original earn-in deal with RZJ Capital Management LLC under which White Metal previously received a C$100,000 cash deposit. Under the Agreement, Noronex can earn up to 70% of the Project by meeting certain payment milestones and following feasibility studies, has the right to acquire White Metal's remaining interest of 25% (see Company news release dated October 16, 2019). The transaction has resulted in the additional payment of C$500,000 to White Metal via the issue of C$250,000 in shares in Noronex (represented by 5.5M Noronex shares) and the payment of C$250,000 in cash. Noronex will also take over the funding obligations under the previously announced earn-in arrangement. White Metal looks forward to working with Noronex as it embarks on a busy first year exploration program that seeks to build on the extensive (150,000 m) drill hole database which successfully located numerous Kalahari Copper belt deposits in the past. The work program will include geophysics, including an aerial EM survey of the project areas (which has never been undertaken in the past) and IP surveys to trace potential extensions to known deposit areas that have not been tested with drilling. Noronex is also targeting updated JORC (2012) resource estimates and based on the outcome of the various surveys an additional drilling program is also planned for 2021, aimed at expanding the mineral resource base. About the DorWit Copper-Silver Property Exclusive Prospecting Licences 7028, 7029, and 7030 (DorWit Property), are located about 150 km east of capital city of Windhoek, Namibia and cover about 65 km of prospective stratigraphy in the Kalahari Copper Belt which extends eastward into Botswana where several major copper deposits occur and are being financed at present (e.g., Cupric Canyon Capital news release dated February 25, 2019). Six historical copper deposits occur within these three licences along with other zones with anomalous copper in historical drill core intercepts which the Company believes can be expanded upon through future exploration (see Company news release dated June 18, 2019). Technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Scott Jobin-Bevans (P.Geo.), Vice President Exploration and a Director of White Metal, who is a Qualified Person under the definitions established by the National Instrument 43-101. About White Metal Resources Corp (TSXV: WHM): White Metal Resources Corp. is a junior exploration company exploring in Canada. For more information please visit the Company's website at www.whitemetalres.com. On behalf of the Board of Directors of White Metal Resources Corp. "Michael Stares" Michael Stares President & CEO, Director 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: Michael Stares 684 Squier Street Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, P7B 4A8 Phone: (807) 358-2420 Fax:(807) 475-7200 To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72097 BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. dollar showed mixed trading against its major counterparts in the European session on Friday, after a data showed that the nation's retail sales continued to decline in December. Data from the Commerce Department showed that retail sales fell by 0.7 percent in December after tumbling by a revised 1.4 percent in November. Economists had expected retail sales to come in unchanged compared to the 1.1 percent slump originally reported for the previous month. Excluding sales by motor vehicle and parts dealers, retail sales plunged by 1.4 percent in December after sliding by 1.3 percent in November. Ex-auto sales were expected to edge down by 0.1 percent compared to the 0.9 percent decrease originally reported for the previous month. Data from the Labor Department showed that U.S. producer prices increased slightly less than expected in the month of December. The Labor Department said its producer price index for final demand rose by 0.3 percent in December after inching up by 0.1 percent in November. Economists had expected producer prices to rise by 0.4 percent. Excluding food and energy prices, core producer prices crept up by 0.1 percent in December, matching the uptick seen in the previous month. Core prices were expected to edge up by 0.2 percent. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed that activity in the New York manufacturing sector unexpectedly grew at a slower pace in the month of January. The New York Fed said its general business conditions index slipped to 3.5 in January from 4.9 in December, although a positive reading still indicates growth in regional manufacturing activity. Economist had expected the index to inch up to 6.0. On stimulus front, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion aid package to combat the economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan includes $1 trillion in aid to families, $350 billion for state and local governments and $160 billion to expand vaccination and testing efforts, and other health programs. Biden proposed $1,400 in direct payments, which, along with the $600 provided in the most recent COVID-19 bill would take the aid to $2,000 per person. Supplemental unemployment benefits would be raised to $400 a week from $300 a week and will run through September. The greenback climbed during the Asian session, as worries about rising U.S.-China tensions offset investor optimism over Biden's coronavirus rescue plan to boost the world's largest economy. The greenback advanced to a 3-day high of 1.3594 against the pound from Thursday's close of 1.3685. If the greenback strengthens further, it is likely to test resistance around the 1.34 level. Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that the UK economy contracted less than expected in November despite a second nationwide lockdown. The gross domestic product shrank 2.6 percent on month in November but slower than the 5.7 percent fall economists' had forecast. The decline reversed a 0.6 percent rise posted in October. The greenback approached 1.2106 against the euro, its strongest level since December 11. The greenback is poised to challenge resistance around the 1.18 mark. Data from Eurostat showed that Eurozone exports increased for the seventh straight month in November. Exports grew 2 percent on month and imports climbed 2.4 percent from October. However, compared to the month before restrictions were imposed in February, both flows were still down by 4.4 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively. The greenback was steady against the franc, after easing off to 0.8869 at 5:15 am ET. At yesterday's trading close, the pair was valued at 0.8879. The greenback rebounded slightly to 103.80 against the yen, from a low of 103.62 seen at 5:30 am ET. The greenback is seen finding resistance around the 106.00 mark. The U.S. business inventories data for November and University of Michigan's preliminary consumer sentiment index for January will be released at 10:00 am ET. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de China on Friday imposed a temporary travel ban on Pakistani citizens due to COVID-19 concerns. According to reports, 10 Pakistani citizens, who had left the country with negative test results, tested positive for COVID-19 upon arriving in China on Thursday. The positive results of the 10 passengers prompted China to place Pakistan on the temporary travel ban list. China has also suspended Pakistan International Airline (PIA) from operating flights in the country. Read: China To Allow In WHO Member With Virus Antibodies A spokesperson of the airline on Friday confirmed that China has temporarily suspended PIA flights from operating in the country for three weeks after 10 Pakistani passengers tested positive for COVID-19. The COVID-19-positive passengers had arrived in China via a PIA flight on Thursday. This comes amid several local cases of COVID-19 are emerging in China after not reporting daily infections for months. Read: China Possibly Committed 'genocide' Against Uyghurs In Xinjiang: US Commission Report Rising cases in China As per reports, China recorded 144 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, which was its highest single-day rise in months. China has reportedly imposed restrictions in Hebei province, after the region recorded at least 90 locally transmitted cases yesterday. China has also banned large gatherings, including sporting events in the region to prevent the spread of the disease. China has recorded a little more than 87,000 cases to date and 4,635 deaths, which significantly less for a country where the disease is believed to have emerged later in 2019. Read: COVID-19: China Aims To Vaccinate 50 Million As Lunar New Year Celebrations Loom Large Meanwhile, Pakistan has recorded more than 5,14,000 infections and over 10,000 deaths since the first COVID-19 case emerged in the country earlier last year. Experts believe that the cases in the country are way more than what is being reported because the country has allegedly failed to conduct large scale testing of its population. Read: US Imposes New Sanction On Beijing Over South China Sea (With inputs from ANI) The Member of Parliament(MP) for Nkoranza South, Hon. Emmanuel Kwadwo Agyekum has assured his constituents of his commitment to prioritizing their security issues to provide a friendly environment for business transactions and other activities. The NDC Legislator has said, the constituency can thrive only if security in the area is given much attention by means of supporting the Police personnel with the needed logistics to fight crime as well as spreading police post in the constituency evenly to scare away social vices. He made these comments when he broke grounds for the construction of a Police Post at Bonsu in the Nkoranza South Constituency. Hon. Emmanuel Kwadwo Agyekum has therefore called on other inhabitants to help enrich security in the constituency since security issues are not solely the responsibility of the government but rather a shared responsibility. Bonsu the community which according to the newly sworn-in Legislator has always been the centre of attacks by these robbers hence the decision to mount a police post in the area. He was hopeful that after it is completed within the stipulated three months period, it would go a long way to forestall all criminal activities perpetrated against the traders. Source: Prince Kwadwo Boadu / Hellofm 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 T he Supreme Court test case ruling on business interruption payouts was welcomed as a lifeline for small businesses which will unlock claims for hundreds of thousands of firms worth an estimated 1.2 billion. But experts said the ruling was described as a catastrophic outcome for British insurers, and one which will have significant consequences for future policies. Supreme Court justice Lord Hamblen announced that the FCA and campaigners had substantially won their case, and: In addition to the particular policies chosen for the test case, some 700 types of policies across over 60 different insurers and 370,000 policyholders could potentially be affected by the outcome of this litigation. Small business owners and industry leaders in the pandemics hardest-hit sectors welcomed the decision, but warned that it applies only to specific policies and insurers - and that the detailed implications of the ruling are yet to be ironed out. UK Hospitality chief executive, Kate Nicholls, said that obviously, we still need to pore over the details but that should this result in pay-outs to policy holders a point which is still not clear at present - this could provide an additional lifeline that many businesses desperately need. She said: It could be the difference between keeping staff members on or being forced to let them go; it could mean the survival of a business that was previously staring collapse in the face." Richard Burge, chief executive of London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told the Standard: While much may still depend on the small print of policies, this ruling is significant in ensuring Covid-19 business interruption pay-outs for many small businesses who will clearly welcome this news. It also shows how insurance has become an essential service in a volatile and uncertain world, and its provision needs re-examination. Mark Pring, partner at law firm Reed Smiths Insurance Recovery Group, said that the decision was at least in principle a catastrophic outcome for insurers. "The finding on causation will have very significant consequences for business interruption policies and many other types of policy, he said. If it werent for remote working, we would likely have heard the collective groan of insurers as the Supreme Court issued its verdict. "For all the excitement at the ruling, however, we must remember that for policyholders this is just the first step. The FCA has certainly made life easier by throwing its weight behind relevant policyholders but it is still incumbent on businesses to demonstrate the losses suffered were caused (broadly) by the pandemic. This is no easy task. "Prior to Judgment today, insurers had been warned not to damage the reputation of the sector by continuing to challenge claims that are backed by some evidence of financial loss in reliance on complex technicalities. The message to insurers is now very clear, return to your offices and, where some evidence of a loss can be provided, prepare to pay out." Daniel Lloyd-John, chief executive of Broadway Insurance Brokers, described the ruling as "a watershed moment" for the insurance industry. He said in a statement: "This judgment presents insurance with the biggest challenge it's faced in many generations. The insurance sector rallied on Friday after initially seeing some firms share prices fall on the news. Hiscox, one of the companies at the centre of the denial of access claims from policyholders, tumbled immediately after the ruling, dropping 6.3% between 9.45am and 10.20am on Friday. Once the markets had time to digest the results, however, shares quickly rebounded. The firm was up 2.6% by 2pm. Shares in other listed insurance giants saw small falls, with Prudential down by 0.6%, RSA down 0.08%, and Aviva down 0.09%. Matt Connell, director of policy and public affairs of the Chartered Insurance Institute, said that the judgement will have huge ramifications for insurance beyond business interruption and it is important this is also looked at as openly as possible". He said that the CII believes believe both trust and confidence in insurance firms can be restored if this process remains open and transparent to the public. Huw Evans, director general of the Association of British Insurers (ABI), said in a statement that insurers have supported this fast-track legal process every step of the way and we welcome the clarity that the judgment will bring to a number of complex issues. He said the insurance industry expects to pay out over 1.8 billion in Covid-19 related claims across a range of products, including business interruption policies, and stated that customers who have made claims that are affected by the test case will be contacted by their insurer to discuss what the judgment means for their claim. "All valid claims will be settled as soon as possible and in many cases the process of settling claims has begun. Martha Swift, founder and owner of cupcake specialist Primrose-hill based Primrose Bakery, is one of hundreds of thousands of business owners who will now make a claim on her insurance. PINELLAS COUNTY, FL Coronavirus vaccine preregistration began at 10 a.m. Friday, minus the system snags that caused the preregistration system to crash last week, frustrating thousands of seniors age 65 and up. Florida Department of Health-Pinellas officials said all appointments for the 10,000 doses of vaccine that the county received from the state were claimed by 11:30 a.m. The county has contracted with a new vendor, CDR HealthPro, to register residents for vaccine appointments. It's the same vendor being used in Hillsborough and Pasco counties. Speaking Friday morning at a news conference, Pinellas County Administrator said it's more reliable and easier to use. Burton said county staff and fire paramedics are partnering with the DOH-Pinellas to distribute the 10,000 vaccines starting Tuesday. County offices are closed for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, Jan. 18. However, Burton added that the county is aware that demand exceeds the supply of vaccines the county is receiving from the state. There are an estimated 250,000 seniors in Pinellas eligible to receive vaccines under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's vaccination plan. "We are well aware of the urgent need for more vaccine in our county and will continue to request the state to provide more to our hospitals, pharmacies and to the health department to distribute over the next weeks and months," said Burton. "This first-come, first-served approach is still the fastest way to get shots in arms, which is the primary goal at this time," said Dr. Ulyee Choe, DOH-Pinellas director. The state has put the Florida Department of Health's 67 county offices in charge of vaccine distribution. Appointments are mandatory to get the vaccine. Residents who were unable to book theirs on Friday may sign up on the portal for alerts when the next state shipment arrives here. There are no vaccines available for residents without appointments, and there is no waiting list. Story continues Fire paramedic crews will operate four new public vaccination sites for seniors over 65 starting Tuesday, Jan. 19. Those locations are not being divulged to people showing up trying to get vaccinated who have not preregistered. The state is also providing vaccine allotments and distribution to long-term care facilities, hospitals, health centers, pharmacies and local health agencies. The availability of vaccines at those facilities will be announced once they're available. To get a vaccine appointment, residents must first create an account at the CDR HealthPro portal, answer some questions about medical history and complete a consent form, and then select an available time. This process takes, on average, anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the user. (Note: creating an account does not guarantee availability for this round of appointments. It is possible that those who completed the preregistration and the medical and consent portion Friday morning could get a notice that all slots have been booked.) Those without internet access or who need assistance with the portal can call 844-770-8548. The call center is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can provide guidance in English and Spanish. Any resident with the ability to access the internet is strongly encouraged to use the online portal, as phone wait times have been exceptionally long in neighboring counties using the same platform. Appointments for the required second dose will also be made at the time of scheduling. Family members must sign up and register individually for appointments. Those arriving ahead of schedule for an appointment may be instructed to return at their scheduled time. For more information about vaccines and what to expect at your appointment, click here. Courtesy DOH-Pinellas See related stories: This article originally appeared on the Clearwater Patch WASHINGTON When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans. The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line. Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will not immediately increase, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding eligibility for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions. Health officials in some cities and states were informed in recent days about the reality of the situation, while others are still in the dark. Because both of the vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States are two-dose regimens, the Trump administrations initial policy was to hold back second doses to protect against the possibility of manufacturing disruptions. But that approach shifted in recent weeks, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The result is that next weeks allocations will remain flat. These officials were told that Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administrations initiative to speed the development of vaccines and therapeutics, stopped stockpiling second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the end of last year, instead taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line. The last shots held in reserve of Modernas supply, meanwhile, began shipping out over the weekend. The shift, in both cases, had to do with increased confidence in the supply chain, so that Operation Warp Speed leaders were confident they could reliably anticipate the availability of doses for booster shots required three weeks later in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech product and four weeks later under Modernas protocol. But it also meant there was no stockpile of second doses waiting to be shipped, as Trump administration officials suggested this week. Azar, at a Tuesday briefing, said, Because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve. He explained the decision as part of the next phase of the nations vaccination campaign. READ MORE: Biden taps former FDA chief David Kessler to lead vaccine science The lack of reserve is not expected to interfere with people getting their second shots. States are still getting a regular supply of vaccine, if smaller than they had anticipated, but officials say they are angry and bewildered by the shifting directions. HHS spokesman Michael Pratt confirmed in an email that the final reserve of second doses had been released to states for order over the weekend but did not address Azars comments this week, saying only, Operation Warp Speed has been monitoring manufacturing closely, and always intended to transition from holding second doses in reserve as manufacturing stabilizes and we gained confidence in the ability for a consistent flow of vaccines. He also said states have ordered only about 75 percent of what is available to them. Azars comments followed a Jan. 8 announcement by President-elect Joe Bidens transition team that his administration would move to release all available doses, rather than holding half in reserve for booster shots. Bidens advisers said the move would be a way to accelerate distribution of the vaccine, which is in short supply across the country. When Azar embraced the change four days later after initially saying it was shortsighted and potentially unethical to risk the availability of a booster shot -he did not say the original policy had already been phased out, or that the stockpile had been exhausted. Signaling to states that they would soon see expanded supply, he also urged them to begin vaccinating adults 65 and older and those under 64 with a high-risk medical condition. Officials in some states embraced that directive, while others said suddenly putting hundreds of thousands of additional people at the front of the line would overwhelm their capacity. In subsequent conversations with state and local authorities, federal officials sought to temper those instructions, said people who participated in the conversations. Gustave F. Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, spoke directly to officials in at least two of the jurisdictions receiving vaccine supply, explaining that allocations would not increase and that they did not have to broaden eligibility as they had previously been told, according to a health official who was not authorized to discuss the matter. READ MORE: Hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines havent been used in Pa. and N.J. Heres why, and whats next. The health director in Oregon, Patrick M. Allen, was so disturbed by the realization that he wrote a letter Thursday to Azar demanding an explanation. Earlier today, we became concerned when we discovered there were no additional doses available for allocation, he said in the letter, which was reviewed by The Washington Post. On a call with Perna earlier the same day, Allen wrote, the four-star Army general informed us there is no reserve of doses, and we are already receiving the full allocation of vaccines. If true, this is extremely disturbing, and puts our plans to expand eligibility at grave risk, Allen added. Those plans were made on the basis of reliance on your statement about releasing the entire supply you have in reserve. If this information is accurate, we will be unable to begin vaccinating our vulnerable seniors on Jan. 23, as planned. The revised instructions led additional jurisdictions to hold off on broadening their priority groups. One state health official noted that the updated guidance announced Tuesday as to eligibility did not appear on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even though it was stated as federal policy by Azar and by Robert R. Redfield, the CDC director, in their remarks earlier this week. Under the original recommendations, adults 65 and older and frontline essential workers were to comprise the second priority group, known as phase 1b, in line after medical workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities. But the issue of supply was most troubling to state health officials. States were shocked and surprised that they did not see an increase in their allocations, and when they asked for explanations, some of them were told there was not a large stockpile of second doses to draw from,said an official working with numerous states on vaccination planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount sensitive conversations. They thought they were getting more doses and they planned for more doses and opened up to 65 and up, thinking they were getting more. In an email that reached some state officials on Friday morning, Christopher Sharpsten, an Operation Warp Speed director, called it a false rumor that the federal government was holding back vaccine doses in warehouses to guarantee a second/booster dose. But it had been Azar who said Tuesday hat one of the changes being made in the governments next phase of vaccination was that we are releasing the entire supply we have for order by states, rather than holding second doses in physical reserve. There was additional confusion. Another change Azar announced this week making allocation of doses dependent on how quickly states administer them would not take effect for two weeks, he said. But Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, D, on Thursday tweeted that federal officials had notified the state that it would receive an additional 50,000 doses next week as a reward for being among the fastest states to get shots into arms. West Virginia, meanwhile, which is moving at the fastest clip based on CDC data, did not get any additional doses, said Holli Nelson, a spokeswoman for the states National Guard. In a sign that the incentive structure may not be long-lived, a senior Biden transition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address ongoing deliberations, said this week the team did not look kindly on a system that punishes states. A vegetarian cassoulet is also available for takeout, and the zine reveals a vegan recipe too. The revered dish does have as many partisans as politics or pizza. Some say it has to have duck and sausage. Others insist on pork and partridge. When I made the dish at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the best part for me was the golden breadcrumb topping. Thats how I improved a canned cassoulet from Leader Price, a supermarket chain similar to Aldi in France. We can only imagine what the Brotherhood would say about SDCs vegan cassoulet recipe. 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. 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. By Nolan Higdon Mickey Huff If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. Lao Tzu January 14, 2021 " Information Clearing House " - For the past few years, the corporate/establishment news media oft analyzed Donald Trumps presidency in an historical vacuum, ignoring the decades-long, bipartisan embrace of neoliberalism that helped bring about his successful candidacy while focusing sensationally on his cult of reality TV personality. Such bread and circus tunnel vision misses the bigger picture. Trump, even with all his faults, is a symptom of a much larger pattern brought on by increased privatization of the public sphere, especially in the realms of education and media, which go back over half a century, particularly the past forty years. With the continued degradation of these key pillars of our society, our civic and information literacy has suffered greatly at a time when the world has become more complex, and our country more unequal. As a consequence, we have become more partisan, more divided, and more estranged from one another as a society. We argued this in our book, United States of Distraction, and unfortunately our thesis continues to ring true. Most legacy media outlets sought to persuade voters to choose Joe Biden for president because democracy is on the ballot and once Trump was out of office, things would return to normal, we could all go back to brunch. However, this analysis overlooks the crucial realities of how we got here and, as Lau Tzu might suggest, where we have been and are heading. The return to normal rhetoric distracts from the reality of American democracy: it is in such an emaciated state that a more adept and sophisticated version of Trump could easily come to power. It was our infatuation with what passes for normal that brought about this historical moment. The Democracy Index rates the U.S. as a flawed democracy, which means that the elections are free and fair, basic civil liberties are respected, but there are underlying issues (e.g. the erosion of the free press and suppression of opposition political parties and viewpoints). Prior to Trump, scholars noted that the U.S. was an oligarchy, not a democratic republic. However, rudimentary corporate news media narratives concerning the so-called coup at the U.S. Capital January 6th leave out crucial realities that can easily lead audiences to glean that Donald Trump and his followers single handedly undermined the American democratic experiment. To be clear, Trump as a person and as a symbol has been responsible for the proliferation of dangerous and disgusting attitudes and behaviors in the U.S. However, we have been heading here for decades. To alter where we are heading, we need to confront certain realties that media narratives distract attention from on a ritual basis. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter The first reality is that we have to focus our energies on helping citizens discern fact from fiction. Trumps behavior is unequivocally reckless, but his rhetoric would have been unsuccessful sans a significant population whose material decline, after 50 years of neoliberal policies, became susceptible to the fake news that permeates the internet. Indeed, their behavior illuminates a rarely discussed aspect of so-called fake news: it is particularly dangerous when it leads people to believe they must take aggressive actions they deem are morally justified. For example, the people at the Capitol would be heroes if there was actually well-sourced, demonstrable factual evidence that 2020 election was stolen. So too would the individual who shot up the restaurant in Pizzagate, to expose a pedophilia ring. In both cases, individuals showed concern for children and democracy, but reacted to false or incomplete information. That is to say, someone is not necessarily a bad person for engaging with fake news, but it can lead them to engage in horrific behavior. We saw this from left leaning voters as well. When it came to Russiagate, the Democrats repeatedly red-baited with the baseless and disproven claims that the Russians aided Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign, colluded with Trumps 2016 campaign, shut down a Vermont power plant, put a bounty on U.S. soldiers, hacked the Democratic Partys emails in 2016, and released Hunter Bidens computer. People who engage with fake news are not bad people, but too often lack the skills to evaluate and analyze content critically. The second reality is that those who chide Trump are often responsible for Trump. They have already extracted everything they needed from his presidency. Take prominent Republicans like Mike Pence, Lindsay Graham, and Mitch McConnell. They excused or ignored Trumps racism, classism, and sexism to get tax cuts and judicial appointments. Similarly, big-tech companies reaped massive profits by creating a platform for Trump to build his electoral brand where his opponents could virtue signal against him. Only after Trump lost the election and threatened their business model with the repeal of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act did they oppose him. Closely related, the corporate media, even the supposed resistance outlets like MSNBC, who owe their increased audience size and massive profits to Trump, have recently admitted that their existence depends upon lazy and reckless coverage of Trump. Perhaps a harbinger of whats to come is happening at Twitter. Just days after they dumped Trump from the popular social media platform, their stock plummeted by 10 percent, still down nearly seven percent at the close on Monday. These media companies helped create the need for a Trump figure to make profits, and as journalist Matt Taibbi recently noted, this is another major reason why we need a new media system, one preferably of, by, and for the public, which was the topic of Victor Pickards stellar book, Democracy Without Journalism. The third reality we must all face is that Trump is a key symptom, not the cause, of declining democratic culture in the U.S. Trump would not be able to undermine the pillars of democracy if they had not already been in shambles. This is crucial to understand because a return to the normal politicians will do little if anything to slow the corrosion of democracy. The reality is that Trumps fake news epithet was effective because the news media had traded journalism for profiteering, partisanship, and political grandstanding decades ago. Trumps faux populist derision of elites found a sympathetic audience after policy failures such as NAFTA, the bogus justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the pre- and post-2008 economic collapse response, and their polling and analysis about the 2016 and 2020 elections. Worse, the so-called party of the people, the Democratic Partys (and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC) shifted their appeal to educated elite rather than the working class, as Boots Riley recently noted. This helps explain why 100 million Americans refuse to vote because they feel that neither party speaks to their needs. In fact, non-voters are less educated, poorer, and more likely to be minorities, single and women. By the 2014 polls showed the DCCC had its lowest approval rating ever resulting in the party holding less seats under President Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosis leadership than any time since 1920. It is no wonder that in 2020, Pelosi proved to be such an effective bogeyperson for GOP attack ads that the DCCC lost seats in the House of Representatives (where she is the Speaker). If the U.S. hopes to avoid another, and more sophisticated version of Trump, the neoliberal behaviors, attitudes, policies, and politicians of the last forty-years must be sent to the dustbin of history and studiously avoided moving forward. The fourth reality is that we cannot censor our way back to a strong democracy. Censorship, a practice long associated with authoritarian regimes, is now embraced by those that oppose Trump. Censorship is dangerous because studies show that it not only fails to stop the targeted information, it popularizes the content in what is known as the Streisand Effect, and punishes bystanders who experience a chilling effect. The post- January 6th removal of Trumps social media accounts saw Democrats cheer just as they had a few years earlier when other right-wing accounts were removed. We find it difficult to celebrate censorship by algorithms and technocrats, especially given the impacts go far beyond right wing fringes as suppression of expression comes with major civic consequences. Furthermore, the actions of these big tech overlords amounts to censorship by proxy considering the Silicon Valleys wealth is dependent upon the federal governments revolving door, loans and innovation such as the internet, and contracts to collect citizens data and surveil them. Censorship by proxy defined the Second Red Scare which saw the federal government intimidate industry and collude with the Screen Actors Guild, through Ronald Reagan, to develop the Hollywood Blacklist. Rather, than censor we need to cultivate a populace who are invested in the society, have faith in a more transparently accountable system, and are equipped with the critical thinking skills to effectively evaluate and analyze content. History has been very clear that this will not come about by mocking, labeling, and censoring individuals or content. Donald Trump has helped peel back the gilded veneer of democracy in America. His presidency has revealed what neoliberalism has wrought: a post-democratic U.S. ripe for fascism. Democracy ceases to exist unless the citizenry participates in and respects the process, put its faith in and defends public institutions, accepts verifiable electoral results, and attains the critical thinking and media literacy skills necessary to make well informed and sophisticated decisions. We cannot, and should not, return to normal, as by this point we are all too aware of what normal has wrought. Kristen Wright is on a mission to reinvent real estate. DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / Her team, Be the Reason Real Estate Group, based in Dallas, TX, is determined to shift the industry from a sales focus to one solidly founded on serving the customer. But these aren't just "nice" realtors--Wright's philosophy embodies the "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" mentality. "I'm focused on true customer service while being a shark with your money," she says, emphasizing the balance she is committed to striking with each client she works with. Each prospective member of Wright's team at Be the Reason is critically assessed on their ability to fiercely negotiate, tackle conflict, and protect a client's finances while simultaneously concentrating on kindness and honesty. This approach allows Wright and her team to serve a big window of consumers, from first-time homebuyers to high-end clientele. Wright has always believed that customer interactions are meaningful, whether she was waiting tables or working as an executive in telecommunications. When she entered the world of real estate, she saw the sales emphasis of the business as a dire oversimplification. "Home buying is an entire process, only one part is signing a line and actually selling something," she explains. Wright's approach is one that puts power in the hands of the customer while relieving some of the stress by educating them on the home-buying process and instilling confidence with transparency and integrity. She consistently reminds her team to always be respectful, always be professional, and always be truthful with every person they work with, regardless of bank account or status. Be the Reason Real Estate Group takes their depth of character everywhere they go. Wright is passionate about everyone on her team being involved in his or her communities and inspires each person to pick a cause to serve throughout the year. She primarily works with the homeless, but the group has also served at food banks and animal shelters. Be the Reason has also been known to DoorDash a meal to a client in the middle of a life crisis-not to gain clout, but to express that they truly care. Wright has built a team that is, in her words, "100% bought into one another's success," stating that the lack of competition amongst her realtors is something you have to see to believe. And it's no wonder since this innovative business owner refuses to compromise on the character and competency of those that she hires. . By flipping the real estate game on its head, Wright hopes to inject honesty, clarity, and inspiration into the home-buying process. She is committed to aggressively protecting financial investments and gently educating customers about the procedures. Wright has built a team of the nicest sharks you will ever meet. And they are passionate about helping their customers find houses to call home. For more information on Wright and her team, employment opportunities, and real estate inquiries, contact them through their information listed below. Contact: Contact Name: Kristen Wright Business Name: Be the Reason Real Estate Group Address: Serving Dallas / Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas Phone Number: 314-791-4216 Website Link: https://www.bethereasonrealestategroup.com SOURCE: Credibility PR View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624488/Kristen-Wright-Queen-of-the-Customer-How-One-Dallas-Based-Realtor-Is-Prioritizing-People-And-Killing-Negotiations The Cat Who Came Back: Patches, Believed Killed In Mudslide, Shows Up 3 Years Later NPR (David L) Fake US leg band may get pigeon a reprieve in Australia Associated Press (resilc) An Eden's #whale trap feeding in the Gulf of #Thailand. This extraordinary behaviour (where the whale treads water) is thought to have developed because #pollution has made the Gulf of Thailand a hypoxic #environment. pic.twitter.com/OnPur033UR Big Blue Ocean Cleanup (@bigbluecleanup) January 14, 2021 YOUR BEES, YOUR HONEY. First ever beehive designed for home beekeeping BEEING and Lasso (Robert M). Promising pro-environment products featured at CES. Animal Planet New York Times (Robert M) How the famed Arecibo telescope felland how it might rise again ScienceMag (Kevin W) On the Rise of Hyper-Individualism Plebity (Mark W) Turn off that camera during virtual meetings, environmental study says PhysOrg (Robert M). Ive always hated the idea of any form of video calls. Now you have an excuse for opting out. New Study Claims Your Face Can Tip Off Your Political Beliefs Gizmodo (David L) From guurst. When I lived in Escanaba, Michigan, it was a big deal when the ice breaker would come in every March (Escanaba is the biggest iron ore port on Lake Michigan). But they didnt use cute tugs. The Coast Guard cutters would open a path and the ice breaker would widen it. Some tugs & ice to brighten things up https://t.co/5x47Vs9P6p Ron Aird (@ron_aird) January 5, 2021 #COVID-19 Nigeria launches biggest job creation scheme in its history after long delay Guardian. Resilc: But USA USA can only muster a new space force. The Securitization of the Coronavirus Crisis in the Middle East Academia Brexit Scottish fishermen threaten to dump rotten shellfish outside British parliament Reuters New Cold War RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 14 JANUARY 2021 by Patrick Armstrong Sic Semper Tyrannis (Kevin W) Syraqistan Iraq issues arrest warrant for Trump over Soleimani killing Military Times (resilc). If the US only had an extradition treaty with Iran, this would solve a lot of Bidens problems. Imperial Collapse Watch Trump orders DoD to explore use of nuclear power for space DefenseNews Trump Transition Impeachment Capitol Seizure Biden Inside Joe Bidens plan to avoid a midterm shellacking Politico. UserFriendly: Insert DOOMED in the headline. They dont even know what the problem is and are as usual relying on better propaganda. And sending Vilsack out as a surrogate to rural America? ROFLMAO. Interventionist Samantha Power is latest pick to serve in Joe Biden administration as USAID head RT (Kevin W) Our Famously Free Press Lack of Tiny Parts Disrupts Auto Factories Worldwide New York Times (resilc) Tesla Would Take Nearly 1,600 Years To Make The Amount Of Money The Stock Market Has Put Into It Jalopnik (resilc) When to trade bitcoin? When Saturn crosses Mercury, of course Reuters The World Is Watching in Shock: Global Investors Are Getting Jittery as America Descends Into Political Turmoil Vanity Fair (resilc) Toxic positivity is real, and this is the antidote Fast Company (resilc). IMHO, anxiety and anger are extremely productive, albeit a drag to harbor. Class Warfare Antidote du jour (DL). Apologies! Got this in Sept, and saw only now! And a bonus (guurst): I have a few questionspic.twitter.com/DLsXtDlJuF Rex Chapman (@RexChapman) September 9, 2020 See Yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. A witness called by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in the trial of a professor, could not continue his testimony on Thursday after the defence counsel rejected a new prosecution lawyer. The trial, at a state High Court, Uyo, involves Ignatius Uduk, a university professor accused of election fraud. Mr Uduks lawyer opposed the appearance of a new lawyer who is leading the prosecution on behalf of INEC. The new lawyer, Clement Onwuenwunor, took over from another lawyer, Kpoobari Sigalo, whom the judge, Justice Archibong Archibong, described as being unstable after he (Sigalo) made some blunders in court, including failing to file the witness statement. Mr Uduk, a professor of Human Kinetics in the Department of Physical and Health Education, University of Uyo, is facing a three-count charge which includes unlawful generation of election results during the 2019 general elections in Akwa Ibom State and lying under oath. Abasiodiong Ekpenyong, lawyer to the accused, said Mr Onwuenwunor, a Lagos-based private lawyer, did not have the authority of the attorney general of the federation to prosecute the case on behalf of INEC and therefore should not be allowed by the court. Mr Ekpenyong told the court that a letter from an INEC administrative officer to Mr Onwuenwunor could not be accepted as a fiat. In the Nigerian justice system, it is only the police, the attorney general of the federation or that of the state that have the power to prosecute criminal cases. A fiat is a legal document which indicates that an attorney general, either at a federal or state level, has delegated some of his powers to a private individual to prosecute an offence. Mr Onwuenwunor asked the court to discountenance the objection of the lawyer to the accused, arguing that the objection was not supported by any statutory provision. Mr Onwuenwunor said the letter he provided was binding under Section 150 (2) of the Electoral Act 2010. The section of the electoral act cited by the lawyer said, Prosecution (of offences) under this Act shall be undertaken by legal officers of the Commission (INEC) or any legal practitioner appointed by it. Mr Onwuenwunor cited several other legal authorities to support his position. The case was adjourned to April 1 to enable the professors lawyer to respond to the argument by the INEC lawyer. Background Mr Uduk was an ad-hoc official of INEC and the returning officer for the Essien Udim State Constituency election. In a hand-written report to INEC, Mr Uduk said he was compelled to declare election results not collated by him, but by undisclosed persons who handed them to him. However, in another deposition, this time in a typed written statement on oath, Prof Uduk, driven in a dark tinted vehicle to the Election Tribunal venue, surprisingly stood as a witness against the Commission, to defend the same election results he did not collate but were given to him by undisclosed persons, INEC had said in a statement. Mr Uduk, before now, had refused to appear before a panel set up by INEC to investigate the alleged election fraud. He even threatened, through his lawyer, to sue INEC if the election commission continued to pester him with an invite to appear before the panel. Another professor, Peter Ogban, in the same university, was similarly arraigned for election fraud in November, for allegedly trying to help a former senator, Godswill Akpabio, win re-election. ADVERTISEMENT Mr Akpabio, who is now the minister of Niger Delta Affairs, lost the election to the Peoples Democratic Partys candidate, Chris Ekpenyong, a former deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State. This is the first time ever that INEC will be prosecuting two professors for fraud. Photo taken on Jan. 14, 2021 shows the scene of a lockdown in Tripoli, Lebanon. Lebanon's Higher Defense Council declared a state of emergency from Jan. 14 to 25 that includes a total lockdown in hope to restrict further spread of COVID-19, Al-Jadeed local TV channel reported. (Photo by Khaled/Xinhua) As we begin a new year, we do so with renewed hope of overcoming COVID-19 as vaccine distribution begins. Another public health crisis, however, looms large over the state. Much like COVID-19, this deadly disease also disproportionately affects vulnerable and minority populations. Diabetes affects more than 500,000 people statewide. Information from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control shows diabetes is the seventh-leading cause of death in the state. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those with diabetes also are more likely to experience severe symptoms if they contract COVID-19. To help reduce disparities in care and create generational change, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina and the BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation, after consulting the Alliance for a Healthier South Carolina and the states Department of Health and Environmental Control, launched the DiabetesFree SC initiative in 2020. The goals of the diabetes initiative include improving pregnancy outcomes in women with diabetes, reducing the lifelong risk of diabetes in children and preventing diabetes and its complications in adults. We already have seen promising results from prenatal programs established through the program. Like the multispecialty program piloted at the Medical University of South Carolina, two new prenatal programs were opened through the initiative in Greenville and Columbia/Sumter. Nearly $3.5 million will be invested in them over the next three years. COVID-19 has cast a dark shadow but also has shined a bright light on opportunities to address disparities in health care. The initiative aims to be part of the solution by tackling inequalities in health care head-on to help prevent and reduce diabetes in residents statewide. There are many great programs in South Carolina that work together to help us get rid of the impact of diabetes on our families, and DiabetesFree SC seeks to align and support them. Dr. TIMOTHY LYONS Executive Medical Director DiabetesFree SC Percival Road Columbia Graziano and ICE I am writing with regard to recent letters criticizing Charleston County Sheriff Kristin Grazianos decision to end her departments relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The letter writers have asked that she continue to work with ICE, and at least one stated that it is not up to her to pick and chose which laws she is to enforce. I want to point out that Sheriff Graziano is a state official. She has no obligation to enforce federal laws, and in fact, our great Constitution provides that all matters relating to immigration are exclusively the jurisdiction of the federal government. Very few police agencies in this country have entered into 287(g) agreements with ICE for both constitutional and practical concerns. At the constitutional level, powers are enumerated between the federal government and state governments. Section 287(g) makes a mockery of that concept. Sign up for our opinion newsletter Get a weekly recap of South Carolina opinion and analysis from The Post and Courier in your inbox on Monday evenings. Email Sign Up! On a practical level, allowing local law enforcement to act as federal agents places all society at substantially greater risk. Anyone victimized while in America while not being here legally would have no recourse to help from the police, as doing so would ensure certain deportation. That allows marginalized people to be preyed upon and allows those doing the preying to become more brazen. This makes society a more dangerous place for all of us. ROBERT JOHNSTON Hartnett Boulevard Isle of Palms Military training I had some weak times as a young man, as other boys teased me and I developed an inferiority complex. At age 19, I joined a judo class at the YMCA and I developed a love for the skills I learned. I even enlisted in the Marine Corps. I loved the training, but my platoon had some members who teased me. On the first day of judo class at Parris Island, the instructor recognized me and told the recruits that I knew as much as he. Wow, did my popularity change. I taught hand-to-hand and French foot fighting for six years. In this new year, I encourage all young men to consider military training. Gods blessings have encouraged me not to be afraid and to help others. JACK CRANWELL Pinnacle Lane Charleston Photos of vaccine If you want to turn people off or get them to shy away from getting the coronavirus vaccine, just keep showing pictures or videos of patients actually getting the needle. This is a major turnoff for a lot of people. Who really likes to see someone actually getting a shot except for the precious ones administering it? RICKY MARTIN Dogwood Road Charleston Describing the Bill that can decide which minor port should remain operational and which has to be shut down as blot on the federal spirit, the state government has dashed off a letter to the Centre asking the latter to convene a meeting with all the maritime states before proceeding further on the proposed legislation. (Representational image) Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh has strongly opposed the Centres move to snatch control of even minor ports from the states through the proposed Indian Ports Bill, 2020. Describing the Bill that can decide which minor port should remain operational and which has to be shut down as blot on the federal spirit, the state government has dashed off a letter to the Centre asking the latter to convene a meeting with all the maritime states before proceeding further on the proposed legislation. AP's objections come close on the heels of the Gujarat Martime Board (GMB), the oldest autonomous authority that revolutionised the maritime sector in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's native state, also opposing several provisions of the Bill. While GMB soft-peddled on the Bill apparently due to political compulsions, the AP Maritime Board explained in detail how the Bill is ultra vires the Constitution. The Centre under the guise of the new Bill cannot step into the shoes of states and take away all their powers, said N.P. Ramakrishna Reddy, APMB chief executive officer, in his latest letter to the Union ministry of shipping. Earlier, too, the state authorities had expressed concern over the provisions of the Bill and insisted that minor ports should remain with the states. Ramakrishna Reddy explained that sub clause 5 specifies that all ports operating prior to the appointed date shall not function after two years, unless permitted by the Centre. "This cannot be accepted as it is against the long-term concession agreements signed with private developers, he pointed out. While the state developed or proposed to develop a few minor ports on its own, it alloted a few others to private players to develop under the public private partnership mode. The Centre proposed a single entity, the Maritime Port Regulatory Authority, which will have control over the 130-odd minor ports nationwide. Though the states will have their boards, the Centre will appoint the constituents and will play big brother to every decision of the state boards. Ramakrishna Reddy drew the Centres attention to previous enactments on subjects included in the concurrent list and empowering the states to regulate them as in the case of labour, industrial and energy laws. Another feature of the Bill that may threaten to lead to biased development of the maritime sector is the Centres power to decide and publish a plan for development of ports. Waterfront and land in the sea up to the baseline belong to the state and we should decide development of our 974-km long coastline, not the Centre, the APMB chief said. The Bill is likely to hamper the states growth if the Centre ignores development of minor ports in a particular state due to reasons other than technical and commercial, which, in other words, mean political. The dispute resolution and adjudication process suggested in the Bill is also faulty and will not withstand the legal scrutiny, he pointed out in the letter. 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. Free newborn screening for sickle cell disease has been launched at the 37 Military and the Greater Accra Regional (Ridge) Hospitals. The screening is an initiative of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Ghana (SCFG) being implemented in collaboration with the American Society of Haematology (ASH). It will be funded from the Consortium on Newborn Screening in Africa for Sickle Cell Disease of ASH. It is aimed at screening more than 10,000 babies at the facilities annually to improve the health outcomes for infants with sickle cell. The move also forms part of efforts to expand the National Newborn Screening Programme for Sickle Cell Disease (NNSPSCD), which is ensuring that persons diagnosed with the disease received appropriate health care, including counselling and clinical treatment. Speaking at the virtual launch of the programme last Tuesday, the President of the foundation, Professor Kwaku Ohene-Frempong, said newborn screening was a public health intervention aimed at the early diagnosis to facilitate early and timely interventions. That, he said, could reduce associated mortality, morbidity and disabilities. African /National situation He said that out of the about 450,000 babies born with sickle cell worldwide every year, 75 to 80 per cent were born in sub-Sahara Africa. He said 50 to 90 per cent of such babies ended up losing their lives due to lack of proper care. In Ghana, it is estimated that 15,000 babies are born with the condition every year, representing two per cent of the countrys total annual births. Many a time, children born with the disease do not show any symptoms in the first few months of their lives and in a year time, many of them pass away without their parents being aware that sickle cell disease killed their children, he said. In light of this, Prof. Ohene-Frempong said it was imperative to expand the screening programme to every part of the country to mitigate the situation. For newborn screening to reach every baby born in Ghana, it has to be a national programme a national programme of the Ministry of Health administered and managed by the Ghana Health Service and the other health agencies, he averred. In a few months, we will also extend newborn screening to all the regional hospitals where there is no screening. This is coming through the generosity of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Clinton Health Access Initiative, he added. Admonition The Member of Parliament (MP) for Ellembelle, Mr Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, shared his experience as a parent of a child with sickle cell and admonished Ghanaians to join the initiative to make the objective of attaining a nationwide coverage a reality. He reiterated that early screening and management of his daughters condition was a helpful intervention. As a four-time MP, the legislator pledged to use his voice in Parliament to promote the cause of the initiative. Appreciation The Medical Director of the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, Dr Emmanuel Srofenyoh, expressed gratitude to the SCFG and ASH for extending the programme to the facility. He said he was convinced that the hospital was well-positioned to take advantage of the intervention and pledged his commitment to the success of the programme. 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 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. Credit: CC0 Public Domain A week after indefinitely suspending President Donald Trump's Snapchat account, the social network has confirmed it has permanently banned him. The move is the latest by one of the nation's leading social media platforms that have removed nearly all of the president's online megaphones, which allowed him to directly reach Americans. On Tuesday, Google's YouTube blocked Trump's official channel from uploading new content for at least a week, citing the potential for violence after the deadly Capitol siege. Trump has been permanently banned from Twitter and has been blocked from posting to Facebook and Instagram at least through the end of his term. "In the interest of public safety, and based on his attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incite violence, which are clear violations of our guidelines, we have made the decision to permanently terminate his account," SnapChat said in a statement to U.S. TODAY on Wednesday night. The company said it had been "assessing what long term action" was in the best interest of its community since the indefinite suspension. Snapchat said it stopped promoting it in June on its Discover platform, where it curates content. That means Trump's account has been visible only to users who chose to subscribe or search for him since June. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel outlined the company's earlier decision to not promote Trump's account in a statement in June. "We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover," Spiegel said. "Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America." Explore further YouTube suspends Trump's channel for at least a week (c)2021 U.S. Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Building Damaged, Fulton Street Closed After Crash By West Kentucky Star Staff FULTON - The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has closed a section of East State Line Street in the city of Fulton due to concerns about a damaged building.The building the 200 block was hit by a vehicle. The closure is just east of the KY 307 intersection near Pontotoc Park.City officials asked that the roadway be closed until engineers have an opportunity to examine the building.Portable message boards and temporary signage are posted to establish a detour along KY 1218/Reed Road, U.S. 45, and KY 116 to route truck traffic around the closure site.Passenger vehicles may use side streets. This winter, Chabad Centers throughout Orlando will offer Journey of the Soul, a new six-session course by the acclaimed Rohr Jewish Learning Institute that will answer a question which has occurred to every self-reflective person: What happens when we die? The course will begin Feb. 2 and run through March 9, from 7:30-9 p.m., at Chabad of Altamonte Springs, Nates Shul in Lake Mary, Chabad of Greater Orlando, and 7 8:30 p.m. at Chabad Center of Jewish Life in South Orlando. The course will be offered over Zoom as well as in-person with masks and social distancing. Please see each... Russian rescues workers from the Emergency Services Ministry have continued patrols in the Lachin transport corridor of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, helping drivers stranded by traffic accidents and breakdowns. Since the end of November, rescue workers have provided assistance 15 times to vehicles in adverse weather conditions and road accidents, the ministry said. The Lachin corridor is a narrow strip of land in a mountainous region that is the only transit option between Armenia and Stepanakert, the capital of the breakaway territory of Nagorno Karabakh. A Russian peacekeeping mission, including emergency workers, deployed in the area after a Russian brokered ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan after weeks of armed conflict. (Image Credit: AP) (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) 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 Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Drone Delivery Canada Corp. (TSXV: FLT) (OTCQX: TAKOF) (WKN: A2AMGZ) (FSE: ABB) (the "Company") is issuing this press release in response to a request by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada to comment on recent trading activity of its common shares. The Company announces that it is not aware of any material undisclosed developments and has no material information or change to report, at this time. The Company will keep the market informed as required. About Drone Delivery Canada Corp. Drone Delivery Canada Corp. is a drone technology company focused on the design, development, and implementation of its proprietary logistics software platform, using drones. The Company's platform will be used as a Software as a Service (SaaS) model for government and corporate organizations globally. Drone Delivery Canada Corp. is a publicly listed company trading on the TSX.V Exchange under the symbol FLT, on the U.S. OTC Q B market under the symbol TAKOF and on the Frankfurt exchange in Germany under the symbol A2AMGZ or ABB.F. Read more about the Company at: www.DroneDeliveryCanada.com or on DDC's social media: https://www.linkedin.com/company/drone-delivery-canada https://www.youtube.com/dronedeliverycanada https://www.facebook.com/dronedeliverycanada https://www.instagram.com/dronedeliverycanada https://twitter.com/DroneDeliveryCa For further information: Investor Relations: Mr. Michael Zahra, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Bill Mitoulas, Telephone: (416) 479-9547, Email: billm@dronedeliverycanada.com Media Relations: Mr. Nelson Hudes, Hudes Communications International, Telephone: (905) 660-9155, Email: nelson@hudescommunications.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking information that involves substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. This forward-looking information is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company, including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, and dependence upon regulatory approvals (both in Canada and internationally). Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward looking information. The parties undertake no obligation to update forward-looking information except as otherwise may be required by applicable securities law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72151 A detective in the Philadelphia District Attorneys Office has been placed on restricted duty and had his gun taken away after posting on social media that hes ready to go to war over the false claims that the presidential election was rigged. Im unfortunately ready to go to war. Theres no negotiating when its believed the election was rigged, Detective Vincent Rotondi wrote in a recent Facebook post obtained by The Inquirer in which he used the name Vinny Ro. Unfortunately only war will change this outcome as is was needed for then revolutionary war and first civil war. Im done debating, just waiting now. District Attorney Larry Krasner said Thursday that a detective in his office had been placed on restricted duty for making inflammatory remarks on social media but would not confirm the detectives identity. We take very seriously any post in which a law enforcement officer appears to be advocating violent crime, Krasner said. And we take very seriously any post in which a law enforcement officer appears to be giving the same talking points that are given by white supremacists. Rotondi, an employee of the District Attorneys Office detailed to the Philadelphia Police Department major crimes unit, posted his remarks in response to a post by a friend who did not support the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Five people died in the siege, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries sustained in the attack. John McNesby, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5, which represents detectives at the District Attorneys Office, said he could not comment Thursday because he had not spoken with the detective. Efforts to reach Rotondi were unsuccessful. The action comes after a Philadelphia police detective had her gun taken away after attending the Jan. 6 rally and posting vitriolic, far-right rhetoric on social media, including calling Vice President Mike Pence a traitor and pedophile. Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has promised swift and definitive action against any Philadelphia police officer found to have played a part in the violence at the Capitol. That investigation is ongoing. On Wednesday, SEPTA Police Chief Thomas J. Nestel III said an internal investigation has found no evidence that seven of his officers who had attended the rally in Washington had stormed the Capitol. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 00:55:59|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HARARE, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwean Vice President Constantino Chiwenga on Friday assured the nation that there are enough hospital facilities to cater for COVID-19 patients for the time being. Chiwenga, who is also the Minister of Health and Child Care, said contrary to reports on social media, there were enough hospital beds to cater for patients and these would be increased if need be. "It would be, however, an exaggeration at this stage, to suggest that our health institutions are overwhelmed by cases of COVID-19. Admittedly, the recent escalation of cases of the pandemic in the country caused a high demand for health care. "Nonetheless, let me reassure citizens that Zimbabwe's public and private health institutions still have adequate capacity to offer health services to all patients," he said. As of Jan. 14, the country had recorded a cumulative total of 25,368 confirmed cases, including 14,714 recoveries and 636 deaths. At least 47 people died on Jan. 14, as the pandemic wreaks havoc among communities, while all the latest infections are local. "In light of widely circulating reports alleging that there is a serious deficit of hospital beds, let me point out that these were 'embellished social media allegations by some pen-mercenaries'. "However, if the need arises in future, my ministry may consider options of increasing facilities currently designated for COVID-19 or designate more hospitals to take in patients. In a worst case scenario, that has so far not manifested, all hospitals in the country may be directed to take in citizens affected by COVID-19," he said. Chiwenga said among the active cases recorded so far, two to three percent warranted hospitalization with specialized treatment, at least 12 to 13 percent required discharge within two to three days of admission, while the bulk of 85 percent only required self-isolation. Some administrative issues that had posed a gridlock in the smooth admission of COVID-19 patients in public hospitals had since been resolved, he added. The government has since extended COVID-19 allowances which had been due to end in December 2020 as incentives to health care and frontline workers, civil servants and vulnerable members of society and provided the necessary personal protective equipment, he said. He, however, hinted that the 30-day national lockdown imposed earlier during the month to flatten the curve could be extended if the rate of infections did not decline. "There might not be any need of extending the 30-day national lockdown if the progression of the pandemic is tamed. "However, let me warn my fellow countrymen that current statistics are indicating a marginal increase in new cases. The total confirmed cases continued to mount," he said, adding that the prevailing situation was posing a grave threat to public health. On the issue of vaccinations, he said the government was following the development and dissemination of COVID-19 vaccines by other states with keen interest. "Despite the observations made that other African, European and Asian countries had started rolling out vaccines, Zimbabwe adopted a measured approach, with experts interrogating all safety concerns. "As soon as all technical and administrative obligations are met, Zimbabweans can expect to be vaccinated. The vaccination is going to be voluntary. Let me underscore that my ministry is doing everything possible to ensure that our citizens are safe from possible side effects of some COVID-19 vaccines, currently on the shelf," he said. Chiwenga bemoaned lack of discipline among members of the public in observing lockdown measures, warning that security forces could be deployed to contain the situation. "Honestly, would you require security forces to persuade you to conform to some of these basic guidelines? We are not interested in arresting our people; therefore, I urge you to reawaken internal discipline," he said. He also said that the government was eager to enhance its testing capacity, which currently stands at 6,000 people per day. On the use of traditional medicines and herbs to treat COVID-19, Chiwenga said it was possible that they could help, but there was need for scientific research to be done to ascertain their efficacy. "The Ministry of Health and Child Care actually operationalized the Traditional Medicines Department, which is pre-occupied with researches in this area," he said. Enditem Dr Hoyer has overseen a significant expansion and transformation of the Bank. One of the most notable successes under his tenure has been the European Fund for Strategic Investments, a key initiative to foster job creation and economic growth in the EU. Under Dr Hoyers leadership, the EIB has also consolidated its position as the leading multilateral provider of climate finance worldwide. In 2019, the EIB set a world precedent in the fight against climate change by announcing that it will end financing for fossil fuel energy projects by the end of 2021 and support 1 trillion of climate action and environmentally sustainable investment in the decade to 2030. Find out more about President Hoyer Fox executives are said to be fearful a shake-up is on the cards as Rupert Murdoch heads back to the US thanks to the COVID-19 vaccine, courtesy of the UK's NHS. The media mogul, who will turn 90 in March, got the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in recent days, sources told The Daily Beast. Murdoch is a US citizen and was born in Australia but has been isolated with his fourth wife Jerry Hall at his home in England since the summer. Back in March, his 89th birthday party set to be held at Moraga Vineyards in Bel Air, California, was canceled out of concern for his health, The New York Times reported. He had been spending most of his time at the estate with his wife. He received the first dose at a local clinic in Henley on December 16 where he sang the praises of NHS staff and scientists and said he 'strongly encouraged' others to get the shot. In the UK, people over 80 are currently eligible for the vaccine, along with frontline health and social care workers, care home residents and their carers. Sources said he was waiting for the second dose before heading back across the pond, where rumors are circling that positions of some top executives are on the line after ratings have slumped in recent months. Fox executives are said to be fearful a shake-up is on the cards as Rupert Murdoch is heading back to the US thanks to him getting the COVID-19 vaccine courtesy of the UK's NHS The media mogul, who will turn 90 in March, got the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in recent days, sources told The Daily Beast. He received the first dose at a local clinic in Henley on December 16 where he 'strongly encouraged' others to get the shot The News Corp. boss has reportedly taken a more hands-on role at the right-wing network in recent days alongside his son Lachlan. Top of the priority list is to tackle the decline in ratings seen since Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election in November, insiders said. Multiple insiders told The Daily Beast Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace are both fighting to keep their jobs after taking the lion's share of the blame for the figures. Fox has denied there is any truth to the rumors, issuing a statement that reads: 'Your premise is wrong. It is wishful thinking by our competitors.' Sources said Murdoch and Lachlan are 'disenchanted' with the pair. 'Fox News has been absent a leader with the exception of [Fox Corporation's Chief Legal and Policy Officer] Viet Dinh running the operation between the network and the White House,' one insider said. 'Rupert re-taking the reins is a sign of the gross mismanagement to date.' Murdoch has already made his return known with the announcement of a significant revamp of Fox's daytime scheduling Monday. Multiple insiders told The Daily Beast Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott (left) and President Jay Wallace (right) are both fighting to keep their jobs after taking the lion's share of the blame for the ratings Changes include Bill Hemmer returning to co-anchoring the network's first two hours of news programming at 9 a.m. and Martha MacCallum moving to the 3 p.m. slot. A new opinion program at 7 p.m. will also replace the news-focused show 'The Story.' 'I mean Rupert got involved with the shuffling of the lineup so that's never a good sign for someone in charge,' a current Fox staffer told The Daily Beast. 'What is the point of having a manager running your business if you have to run the business yourself?' Two sources told the outlet former Fox News vice president David Rhodes has been tipped by Lachlan to take Scott's job with another source saying the Murdochs ''like Rhodes a lot'. Sources said Wallace's job is also rumored to be on the line after the network was first to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night. Latest figures from Nielsen show that, since December 28, Fox News' total viewership is down 15 percent compared to the same time last year The state was won by the Democrat but the call was deemed premature by many and sparked outrage from Trump who allegedly personally called Murdoch in a fit of rage. Sources said the move damaged ratings with Trump supporters switching to the right-wing, pro-Trump Newsmax. A press release from December reported that, in 2020, Fox News Channel made history by becoming the first network to surpass 3.5 million viewers in primetime for an entire year. But latest figures from Nielsen show that, since December 28, Fox News' total viewership is down 15 percent compared to the same time last year. By contrast, CNN viewership is up 150 percent and MSNBC 89 percent. [January 15, 2021] Zamansky LLC Investigates Merrill Lynch Financial Advisor Ryan Raskin of Beverly Hills, CA Zamansky LLC is investigating former Merrill Lynch broker Ryan Raskin of Beverly Hills, CA (News - Alert) . In March 2020, Mr. Raskin was fired by Merrill Lynch for reported business practices that were "inconsistent with Firm standards, including inappropriate investment recommendations," according to a regulatory disclosure notice. Recently, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) barred Mr. Raskin for his failure to cooperate with the investigation of his dismissal. According to his FINRA BrokerCheck record, Mr. Raskin was accused by one of his customers of unauthorized trading and churning of mutual funds and money-market funds. The trading of mutual funds which are long-term hold investments is highly suspect and possible evidence of misconduct, says Investment Fraud Attorney Jake Zamansky. Any customer of Mr. Raskin, or any investor who sees frequent trading of mutual funds in his or her account, should be concerned, he says. What Investors an Do If you were a customer of Mr. Raskin, or your financial advisor has traded mutual funds in your account, you should contact the law firm for a free evaluation. The law firm will review your accounts and advise you of your legal rights, without obligation or cost to you. To set up an evaluation, email Jake Zamansky at jake@zamansky.com or call the law firm at (212) 742-1414. About Zamansky LLC Zamansky LLC is one of the leading law firms with a practice focused on investment fraud and financial services arbitration and class action litigation. We represent both individual and institutional investors. Our practice is nationally recognized for our ability to aggressively prosecute cases and recover losses. To learn more about Zamansky, please visit our website, www.zamansky.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005468/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Searching for a Houston COVID-19 vaccination hub that's not completely booked up? You could be in luck this weekend. In the push to give Houstonians more access to the vaccine, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced additional appointment times at the Minute Maid Park vaccination megasite this weekend. The Houston Health Department stated in a tweet that COVID-19 vaccinations will be done this Saturday and are by appointment only. On Friday, the department announced that 2,600 new appointment slots had just opened up. Health department officials stated that they are contacting people who have appointments to inform them of the new location. In an effort to accommodate more Houstonians, the Houston Health Department stated that they hope to add more appointments on Saturday. The information would be released on HoustonEmergency.org as soon as more appointment slots are available. Right now, vaccines are administered to people in Phase 1A and Phase 1B, which include health care workers, residents in long-term health facilities and individuals who are 65 years or older, according to the Texas Department of Health Services. Mayor Turner hopes to launch more vaccine sites next week, and instructed the Houston Health Department to get the vaccine doses out to the public as soon as the city receives them in a press briefing on Thursday. The virus is not waiting and because the virus is not waiting, I don't want us to wait," Turner said. "So my plan is you send them, we get them, we dispense them." Last weekend, the Houston Health Department administered nearly 3,800 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at Minute Maid Park. The push to get more Houstonians vaccinated every day is essential to flattening the COVID-19 curve achieving herd immunity, according to Infectious Disease expert Dr. Peter Hotez. "If you look at the numbers right now, it's about 1,000 a day (at new clinic), but we have to figure out a way to vaccinate 10,000 Houstonians from now to the end of the year. The question is how do we do that," Hotez told Chron in a recent interview. The U.S. military has reduced troop levels in Afghanistan to 2,500, bringing force levels down to their lowest number in nearly two decades, the Pentagon said on January 15. President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of about 1,500 troops in November, drawing a backlash from Congress at a time of continued Taliban attacks on the Afghan government despite exploratory peace talks between the two sides. The United States is closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war and welcoming in an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process to achieve a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive cease-fire, Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller said in a statement. Under a U.S.-Taliban deal reached last February, all foreign forces are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by May 2021 in exchange for security guarantees from the militant group, including severing ties with Al-Qaeda. Afghan government and Taliban negotiators have made halting progress since direct talks began in Qatar in the autumn against the backdrop of violence and calls for a cease-fire. Despite the troop reduction, the Pentagon said U.S. forces were still capable of counterterrorism operations and training and assisting Afghan security forces. Military commanders will continue to plan for a possible full exit from Afghanistan by May in line with the deal with the Taliban. The Pentagon stated any such future drawdowns remain conditions-based. All sides must demonstrate their commitment to advancing the peace process, it said. President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office on January 20, will make key decisions on how Washington handles peace talks and any further troop withdrawals. Under Trump's order, commanders also cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 2,500 from about 3,000 in the same period. In a separate statement, the Pentagon said that goal had been met, reflecting "the increased capabilities of the Iraqi security forces" against the Islamic State militant group. Miller added that U.S. forces would still conduct counterterrorism operations in Iraq to support partner forces with airpower and intelligence. With reporting by AP and Reuters The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. The Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget 2021-22 on February 1. The budget session will be held in two parts from January 29 to February 15 and March 8 to April 8. This year's Budget comes at a time when the economy has been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. With two-quarters of contraction, the Indian economy is in a technical recession for the first time in history. At 11 am on January 29, President Ram Nath Kovind will address both the houses of Parliament. Finance Minister Sitharaman will start the Budget presentation with a speech at 11 am on February 1. Halwa Ceremony To mark the process of printing the documents of the Budget, every year, a 'Halwa Ceremony' is organised by the Finance Ministry. The ceremony will be hosted 10 days before the Budget presentation in Parliament. However, as per the reports, breaking the age-old tradition the Finance Ministry has decided to go paperless and will not print the Budget 2021 due to the pandemic. Expectations from Budget 2021 The main expectation from Budget 2021 is to provide a credible roadmap for economic recovery amidst COVID-19 pandemic. Economists and experts are of the opinion that the Union Budget 2021 should look to provide a fiscal stimulus, and the government at the time being should not look at meeting a tight fiscal deficit target. With the focus on Atmanirbhar Bharat and the need for a self-reliant economy, the Budget is expected to see announcements that support domestic manufacturing, agriculture sector and to give a boost to healthcare expenditure. Finance Minister Sitharaman formerly served as the Defence Minister of India and this year will be her third full-time budget presentation. In the latest in our series of articles by Derry genealogist Brian Mitchell on the history behind the local area's most common surnames, we look today at the names which rank from five to eight in the 20 most common in the local area. 5 - MOORE This name, which can be of English, Irish or Scottish origin, is among the 20 most common in Ireland and has the distinction of being found in every county. A quarter of all Moores in Ireland are in County Antrim alone and the name is common too in Counties Derry and Tyrone. In Northern Ireland, most Moores are of Scottish origin. This name, which is the seventh most common in the city of Derry, is regarded as the most numerous name in the city for which a gaelic origin is unlikely. Nowadays, Moore is quite common in the lowland hinterland to the east, west and south of Derry, but not in Inishowen. Although Moore is one of the 40 most numerous names in England, deriving from residence in or near a moor or heath, it also comes from that area in the south and west lowlands of Scotland which provided so many of the seventeenth century settlers in Ulster. The surname was first noted there in a variety of places, including Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, in the 13th century. In Scotland, the name often took the form Muir. There were Mores, a sept of Clan Leslie, and Muirs, a sept of Clan Campbell. The defeat of the old Gaelic order in the Nine Years War, 1594-1603, and the escape of the most prominent Gaelic Lords of Ulster in the Flight of the Earls in 1607 from Lough Swilly, County Donegal were ultimately responsible for the settlement of many Scottish families in the northern counties of Ireland. In 1609 the Earl of Salisbury, Lord High Treasurer, suggested to James I a deliberate plantation of Scottish and English colonists on the forfeited estates of the Gaelic chiefs in counties Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Londonderry (then known as Coleraine) and Tyrone. Settlers to Ulster came, by and large, in three waves: with the granting of the initial leases in the period 1605 to 1625; after 1652 and Cromwells crushing of the Irish rebellion; and finally in the 15 years after 1690 and the Glorious Revolution. It is estimated by 1715, when Scottish migration to Ulster had virtually stopped, the Presbyterian population of Ulster, ie of essentially Scottish origin, stood at 200,000. Scottish families entering Ireland through the port of Derry settled in the Foyle Valley which includes much of the fertile lands of counties Donegal, Derry and Tyrone. The lands along the Firth of Clyde in the county of Ayrshire, the Clyde Valley and the Border Lands consisting of the counties of Wigtown, Kirkcudbright and Dumfries were home to many of these Scottish settlers. Confusion arises because the Irish sept name of OMore was invariably changed to Moore. The OMores, derived from Gaelic O Mordha, meaning majestic,' were the leading sept of the Seven Septs of Leix. They were based at Dunamanse, near Portlaoise, County Laois (also known as Leix) in central Ireland. The ancestor who gave the OMores their name, ie Mordha, was 21st in descent from Conall Cearnach, the legendary hero of the Red Branch Knights of Ulster. 6 COYLE This name is most common in Ulster in its homeland, County Donegal and in Counties Derry, Tyrone and Cavan. Coyle is among the top ten names in the city of Derry today. The name illustrates the very close links between the city of Derry and County Donegal. As Derry developed an industrial base in the 19th century in shirt making, shipbuilding and distilling it attracted much of its workforce from Donegal. Ireland was one of the first countries to adopt a system of hereditary surnames which developed from a more ancient system of clan or sept names. From the 11th century each family began to adopt its own distinctive family name generally derived from the first name of an ancestor who lived in or about the 10th century. The surname was formed by prefixing either Mac (son of) or O (grandson or descendant of) to the ancestors name. Surnames in Ireland, therefore, tended to identify membership of a sept. Coyle is derived from Gaelic Mac Giolla Chomhgaill, meaning son of the devotee of St Comgal. St Comgal was the patron of Galloon parish in south Fermanagh. This sept was based in the parish of Meevagh in the barony of Kilmacrenan in County Donegal. The name was first anglicised as McIlhoyle, then McCoyle and finally Coyle. One branch of the Coyles were erenaghs, ie hereditary stewards, of the church lands in Galloon Parish, County Fermanagh. Owing to the mistaken belief that the Gaelic word coill, meaning wood, was part of this septs name, Mac Giolla Chomhgaill was often anglicised to Woods. Coyle has also become confused with McCool. Although the surnames of Coyle and McCool have quite distinct origins their ultimate origins have become confused as a result of anglicisation. In some cases people whose origins are Mac Giolla Chomhgaill of Kilmacrenan may be disguised by bearing the surname McCool. The origins of the name McCool are not certain. It has been suggested that McCool, derived from Mac Giolla Comhghaill, meaning son of the devotee of St Comhghal or from Mac Comhghaill, is a distinct sept from the Raphoe area of County Donegal. The surname McCool is most common in Counties Donegal and Tyrone. This name has also been made Cole, which is a common English surname, in the Glenties area of Donegal. In Scotland MacCool can be a variant of MacDougall, Gaelic Mac Dhughaill. In a few cases, therefore, the name may have come with Scottish immigrants at the time of the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century. 7 HARKIN Harkins are found only in Ulster where over half are in County Donegal and most of the rest in County Derry. The name is particularly associated with Inishowen, County Donegal. This name, which is among the top ten in the city of Derry, illustrates the very close links between the city of Derry and Inishowen. As Derry developed an industrial base in the 19th century in shirt making, shipbuilding and distilling it attracted much of its workforce from Inishowen. Ireland was one of the first countries to adopt a system of hereditary surnames which developed from a more ancient system of clan or sept names. From the 11th century each family began to adopt its own distinctive family name generally derived from the first name of an ancestor who lived in or about the 10th century. The surname was formed by prefixing either Mac (son of) or O (grandson or descendant of) to the ancestors name. Surnames in Ireland, therefore, tended to identify membership of a sept. Harkin is derived from Gaelic O hEarcain, the root word being earc, meaning red. In 1659 the Harkins were recorded as a principal name in the barony of Inishowen, County Donegal. This septs association with Inishowen is recorded long before that, for the OHarkins were erenaghs, i.e. hereditary stewards, of the church lands of Cloncha. One appears as such in Bishop Montgomerys diocesan survey of 1606. Daniel OHarcan, who died in 1581, was one of the Ulster martyrs defending the Roman Catholic faith. The Parish of Cloncha, which includes Malin Head, is the most northerly parish in Ireland. Many Inishowen families trace their lineage to Eogan, son of the fifth century High King of Ireland, Niall of the Nine Hostages, who ruled from the Hill of Tara, County Meath. Eogan and his brother Conall Gulban conquered northwest Ireland, ca. 425 AD, capturing the great hill-fort of Grianan of Ailech which commanded the entrance to the Inishowen peninsula between Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle. Eogan, styled King of Ailech, established his own kingdom in the peninsula still called after him Inishowen (Innis Eoghain or Eogans Isle). Eogan was converted to Christianity by St Patrick, when he travelled to Ailech, ca. 442 AD. His descendants, known as the Cenel Eoghain (the race of Owen), became the principal branch of the Northern Ui Neill (descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages). The Cenel Eoghain in the next five centuries expanded to the east and south from their focal point in Inishowen. Today there are more Harkins in Derry city than in their original homeland of Inishowen. 8 BRADLEY This name is most common in Ulster and, in particular, in County Derry, where it is the fourth most numerous, and in Counties Antrim, Donegal and Tyrone. The name is most concentrated in central and south Derry. Ireland was one of the first countries to adopt a system of hereditary surnames which developed from a more ancient system of clan or sept names. From the 11th century each family began to adopt its own distinctive family name generally derived from the first name of an ancestor who lived in or about the 10th century. The surname was formed by prefixing either Mac (son of) or O (grandson or descendant of) to the ancestors name. Surnames in Ireland, therefore, tended to identify membership of a sept. Bradley and OBrollaghan, an earlier anglicized form of the name, are derived from Gaelic O Brollachain, meaning descendant of Brollach. Brollach is an old personal name, the root word being brollach, meaning breast.' The territory of this sept was the area which straddles the borders of Counties Derry, Donegal and Tyrone. In the 12th century, in particular, The Annals of The Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters makes many references to the OBrollaghans. In 1158 Flahertagh OBrollaghan was appointed as successor of Colum Cille, i.e. Abbot of all monasteries under the rule of Colum Cille, which included Derry and Iona in Scotland. He began preparations for the erection of a new cathedral in Derry worthy of its distinguished founder, St Colum Cille (also known as Columba). In 1164, in the space of 40 days, Templemore or the great church of Doire was erected near the original Dubh Regles or Black Abbey church. From this cathedral, the parish of Templemore, which contains the city of Derry, derived its name. Today, OBrollaghan has been entirely anglicised to Bradley. In some instances, notably in County Derry, the earlier version of OBrallaghan survived into the 17th century. For example the Hearth Money Rolls of 1663 for Maghera Parish, County Derry records one Edmond O Brallaghan. A branch of the OBrollaghans was established, in the 12th century, in the Highlands of Scotland through their connections with the monastery on Iona. Donal OBrollaghan, prior of Derry, who died in 1202, was Abbot of Iona in the 12th century. Here too the name was anglicised to Bradley. Another branch of the OBrollaghans early migrated to County Cork and the numerous Bradleys of that area descend from them. Bradley is also an English name derived from many places of that name in northern England. Here Bradley is derived from the Old English bradleah, meaning broad wood or clearing. Few Bradleys in Ulster, however, are of English origin. JACKSON, Miss. (WTVA) The Mississippi State Department of Health is not prohibiting people who got the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine through one of its free drive-thru vaccinations from getting it at another location. The agency on the website to sign up for vaccinations asks people to schedule the second dose at the same spot the first dose was given. However, Deputy State Epidemiologist Doctor Katie Taylor said while that is recommended, it is not required. People who get the first shot get a date when that second shot should be administered, but the state tells people it is up to them to schedule the follow-up vaccination. For example, people who got the Moderna vaccine Thursday at the state's drive-thru vaccination in Columbus were told to get the second shot on February 11. But the state vaccination website at multiple times Thursday morning did not list Columbus as an option for the second shot on the recommended date. On Thursday night, the site did have the Columbus location listed, but the appointments were unavailable. It did list open appointments for Greenville, McComb and Natchez for February 11 or February 12. It also is possible the window did open for appointments in Columbus at some point during the day. Open vaccination appointment times can quickly disappear because of the demand. While the locations can be different, there is one thing that must remain the same for both doses of the vaccine: the type of vaccine received. The state health agency said if you get a certain kind of coronavirus vaccine the first time, you should get the same kind the second time. Standing on the raised deck of a neighbor's camp, Brenda Fanguy looked out over Grand Isle's levee at a newly constructed beach 20 times wider than what was there last year. "It's amazing," Fanguy yelled, shouting down from her perch. Where last year's storms had scoured the 13-foot-tall levee and ripped the fabric from its clay "burrito" core there is now an almost fully repaired hurricane protection barrier and about 200 feet of beach separating it from the Gulf of Mexico. Fanguy and her husband, Houma residents, have owned their Grand Isle camp, "Five 'o Clock Somewhere," for 16 years. They say there hasn't been a beach to speak of on the western tip of the island since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Seeing the new expanse of sand is a welcome change. "It's a buffer. Anything that keeps the water at bay is good," Fanguy said. Before the latest work began, the beach sand extended no more than 10 feet, and in some places the water lapped directly against the levee, said Rudy Simoneaux, engineering chief of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority For residents and property owners on Grand Isle, the new beach means not only more space for fun in the sun but also more protection for the embattled burrito levee, which the Army Corps of Engineers completed in 2014 only to see it damaged in 2016, 2017 and again in 2020. +2 Grand Isle again scrambling to fix 'burrito' levee before start of hurricane season Officials from the state, Jefferson Parish and Grand Isle are scrambling to fix a half-mile stretch of beach and levee on the island's western Last year's storms did little damage to other parts of Grand Isle that had a wide beach, Simoneaux said. "So, you can see the benefit of having the beach," he said of the expansion on the western end of the island. Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up After Tropical Storm Cristobal damaged the levee in June, Louisiana and corps officials squabbled over fixing it. The state wanted quick repairs ahead of additional storms that were expected to and, ultimately, did arrive. But the corps, already involved in a $15 million project placing breakwater rocks on the western tip of the island and adding sand, said it couldn't accelerate its timeline. +14 No quick fix for damaged Grand Isle levee as Louisiana and feds squabble over repairs, money Grand Isle's storm-ravaged levee won't get the quick fix state and local leaders say is necessary to protect the island from the next storm. So the state spent $7.5 million to repair the levee breaches and construct the 1-mile-long beach, which already was authorized in the corps' project. The beach required dredging about 760,000 cubic yards from a mile offshore and pumping to the island. The state's contractors broke ground in November and are nearing completion. Under the corps' timeline, work would not have begun until this month. Coastal Authority Chairman Chip Kline said his agency is working to get $7.5 million of credit from the corps for other restoration projects. The agency also is working with Louisiana's congressional delegation to move that section of the levee into a federal maintenance program. "Then, when a storm eats away at it, we can go to the government to front the money for repair," said Kline, adding that the new process would be quicker and bypass emergency permitting. Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle said he was grateful for the state's repairs and beach construction. He called on the Corps to continue to step up for the island community. "It's time to stop studying," Camardelle said, especially when it comes to adding more breakwater rocks along the rest of the shoreline. The Corps is considering that request, along with proposals to elevate the levee, add more sand to the western end and perhaps even to build a seawall. "As long as there's a grain of sand to place the American flag on Grand Isle," Camardelle said, "we're going to keep saving it." Departure: James Lenton, CFO of UK property giant Hammerson which co-owns the Dundrum Town Centre, is stepping down from the role. James Lenton, the chief financial officer of UK property giant Hammerson, is stepping down from the role. The board of Hammerson has started a search for his successor, and Mr Lenton will continue as CFO and as an executive director of the company until a successor has joined, according to a brief statement from the group. Mr Lenton said: "Following successful completion of the rights issue, VIA Outlets disposal and induction of the new chair of the board and CEO, I feel now is the right time to look for a new opportunity. I remain fully committed in the role until my successor is in place." Hammerson co-owns Dundrum Town Centre, with the other half owned by Allianz. The group also owns half of the Pavilions shopping centre in Swords, and the Ilac Centre in Dublin city centre. It owns 40pc of the Kildare Village premium outlet mall. Mr Lenton leaves the role after less than two years in the position. In September, Hammerson appointed Rita-Rose Gagne as chief executive. Prior to joining Hammerson, Ms Gagne was most recently president of growth markets at the Canadian real estate company Ivanhoe Cambridge where she had responsibility for $7.6bn (6.2bn) of real estate assets across Asia Pacific and Latin America. Last month, Hammerson announced a secondary listing on Euronext Dublin in response to Brexit. At the time the company said it was seeking a secondary listing given the importance and scale of its investor base and operations in continental Europe and the Republic of Ireland. As of November last year, 27pc of Hammerson's share capital held by institutional investors was held by investors based in the European Economic Area, excluding the UK. Hammerson operates in seven different countries, with a number of flagship retail centres including the Bullring in Birmingham, UK. A report from Goodbody Stockbrokers last October warned that the value of Hammersons Irish property portfolio would slump by 13pc in the second half of 2020 and by 12pc this year. Hammerson said in August that its prized assets in Ireland were valued at 834m (922m) at the end of June, which represented a 9.9pc decline in the capital return for the properties. Hammerson has been dealing with the fallout from a slump in retail activity as the Covid pandemic redraws the sectors landscape, with increasing numbers of people shopping online. ECRU, Miss. (WTVA) - Ashley Furniture employees from the companys facilities in Ecru, Ripley and Saltillo donated $32,338 to Le Bonheur Childrens Hospital. The donation was made possible through the company's Dollar a Week program. In total, Ashley employees have contributed $266,470 toward the cause since 2006. In addition to the employees contribution, the founder and chairman of Ashley, Ron Wanek, and his wife Joyce Wanek, made a personal donation of $5,000 to the hospital. The photos and video footage from the recent siege at the Capitol left an imprint on Rabbi Gideon Estes of Congregation Or Ami. It was horrifying, he recalled. It wasnt about the politics or partisanship, the rabbi explained; it was the symbolism that shook him up. Estes has visited Washington, D.C., in the past and walked in the halls of Congress. Its a memory I cherish, he said. Its an amazing place, a place of history. When Estes thinks of the Capitol, he pictures the State of the Union address, the president standing at the podium with members of the House, Senate and Supreme Court in the audience. For him, the image is of coming together and unity. But on Jan. 6, that message was attacked, as dissension led to the invasion of the Capitol. Representatives and senators were whisked away into hiding and the building vandalized. For Estes, the events felt like a violation. The Capitol and D.C. are great symbols of American democracy, he said. Violence there is jarring for us as Americans. To add to the shock were symbols of hate and intolerance, present both on the lawn outside and in the walls of the Capitol. Symbols like the black shirt worn by one rioter, which read Camp Auschwitz, with the words work brings freedom underneath a translation of the German phrase placed at the entrance of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 2019, Estes took a trip to Auschwitz. The horror of that place, its beyond comprehension, he said. To see something like that in America, its upsetting and disturbing. A noose and Confederate flag were further symbols of hate visible on Jan. 6. Words matter, speech matters, all the different forms of communication, the symbols that we use really do matter, Estes said. This is something that needs to be addressed. The Holocaust Museum Houston issued a statement on Jan. 7, condemning the events of the day before: As the Holocaust has demonstrated, words have consequences and a great capacity to do real harm. What began as violent rhetoric now threatens the foundation of our democratic process. The statement also urged Houstonians to stand up for democracy, adding, In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. The museums CEO Kelly J. Zuniga said that anti-Semitism was a common thread with extremist groups present at the Capitol. Such a public display of hate surprised me, and its absolutely frightening, Zuniga said. The answer to this is education and commitment to working with the public, making people aware of how dangerous this is. In fact, the museum is currently at work on a weeks worth of programs for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is Jan. 27. The museum is also launching the Creating Possibility / Disallowing Hatred Program, designed to cultivate upstanders, who can help the community understand history, social justice and the negative power of hatred on decision-making. Mary Lee Webeck, the museums Holocaust and genocide education endowed chair, said the programs are more essential than ever. I have been thinking so much about the faces in the group taking part in the insurrection, she said. I am also thinking about how to address the issues that motivated each person to be there and to act. We must find ways to talk beyond boundaries and to create areas that we disallow in our culture, two actions that may seem contradictory. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt issued a statement on Jan. 6, calling for an end to violence, followed by a second statement issued by the ADL and Greenblatt on Jan. 8: Racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and so many other forms of hate were on full display as extremists perpetrated violence and sedition. We must root out this evil if we are ever to heal as a nation. Rabbi Adrienne Scott of Congregation Beth Israel spoke of the need to show strength in a challenging time. Standing firm in what we believe is nothing new for us, she said. We have to remain committed to who we are. Scott noted that in the midst of hatred and persecution, she finds unity in Houston. Stand strong, she said. Its natural for us to have an emotional, guttural, pained response to this. And also know there is strength in who we are. We can say, I believe in my synagogue, I believe in the ADL. Mark Toubin, the ADL southwest regions director, said recent events were disturbing and scary. He also found Jan. 6 to be the most predictable terrorist attack in modern U.S. history. Extremist militant groups were spreading conspiracies long before the siege, Toubin explained, including white supremacists and QAnon. Their threats continue to be a concern, he said, adding that as extremists overtly assert their plans to violently disrupt our democratic process in the days leading up to and including the inauguration, ADL will continue to work with law enforcement, social-media companies and national leaders to mitigate threats. In a recent audit, echoed by the FBI, the ADL found that hate crimes against Jews increased by 14 percent between 2018 and 2019. Weve observed that where there is anti-Semitism, there are other forms of hate, and we cannot be successful fighting just one type of hatred, Toubin said. We need to fight them all. Houstons Muslim community also voiced concern about recent events in Washington. Due to recent events occurring right now in Washington, D.C. by far-right extremists, we urge our community to please exercise extreme precaution, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Houston chapter (CAIR-Houston) warned in a Jan. 6 alert. The nonprofit also asked that any suspicious activity be reported immediately to local authorities and to CAIR-Houstons online incident report. Weve been doing work in Houston for 19 years. Theres always hate to fight. The work doesnt stop, said Ambreen Hernandez, a program coordinator at CAIR-Houston. Shariq Ghani, director and founder of the Minaret Foundation, which works to increase civic engagement in the Muslim community, is committed to spreading understanding. Its our duty as Muslims to stand up and voice our concerns, Ghani said. He pointed to the Prophet Mohammads words: If someone among you sees wrong, he must right it by his hand if he can. If he cannot, then by his tongue; if he cannot, then by his gaze; and if he cannot, then by his heart. Building bridges of support and understanding among religions can end hate, Ghani explained. Muslims stand with Jews, he said. All of the religions in Houston are interconnected. Ghani suggested that Houstonians build awareness by holding vigils, events to promote compassion and using social media to show support. Just reaching out and talking to your neighbor is an important thing, he added. Hate and resentment dont only come from envy and jealousy. It also comes from just not knowing each other. We all have to do our part and take responsibility. Ghani also asks for prayer for the safety of the U.S. Praying for the success of our nation is also praying for the success of freedom and democracy, he said. Other countries see us as a beacon of hope and a beacon of light. Lindsay Peyton is a Houston-based freelance writer. In a major blow to the company, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) has added Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi to a blacklist of companies that allegedly are controlled by the Chinese Military. In response, Xiaomi has strongly objected to these claims and denied having connections with the Chinese military. Xiaomi has been added to the blacklist by the USA DOD under the National Defense Authorization Act of 1999. What this means is that US investors will be forced to sell any shares or holdings in the company by November 11th this year, and will be restricted from doing so in the future. This blacklist however, is not the same as the Entity list that HUAWEI was added to last year. That list blocks the company from purchasing components doing any business with US companies entirely. It is unclear if Xiaomi will be added to that list in the future. Xiaomi has come out and denied these allegations, claiming they are not linked to the Chinese military. In a statement, a Xiaomi spokesperson said: The Company reiterates that it provides products and services for civilian and commercial use. The Company confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a Communist Chinese Military Company defined under the NDAA. Another spokesperson said: The Company has been in compliance with the law and operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses. The Company reiterates that it provides products and services for civilian and commercial use. The list also mentions 8 other Chinese companies, which can be seen here. Source | Via 1 | 2 Donald Trump Jr. was asked by the attorney generals office in the District of Columbia to sit down for questioning in relation to a lawsuit claiming President Donald Trumps inaugural committee illegally overpaid for events at a Washington hotel owned by his family business. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine sent a formal deposition request to Donald Trump Jr., spokesman David Mayorga said Thursday. Racines office sued in January 2020, claiming that Trumps inaugural committee made an unjustified payment of more than $1 million to the Trump hotel for events from Jan. 17, 2017, to Jan. 20, 2017, after failing to consider less expensive alternatives. The deposition request was earlier reported by The Washington Post. The Attorney Generals Office has already deposed several other family members and associates of Trump. In December, lawyers for Racine interviewed Ivanka Trump, who said on Twitter that she spent more than five hours answering questions. The office has also deposed Mickael Damelincourt, the managing director of the Trump hotel in downtown Washington, and Eric Danziger, who runs Trumps hotel business, as well as Thomas Barrack Jr., a longtime friend of the presidents and chairman of the inauguration committee. Ivanka Trump in October in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Nicole Hester/Mlive.com)Nicole Hester/Mlive.com Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. But he has previously argued that the rates charged at the Trump hotel were in line with what other five-star hotels charged during the inauguration festivities. The case is District of Columbia v. 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee, 2020 CA 000488 B, Superior Court of the District of Columbia. By David Yaffe-Bellany, Bloomberg News (TNS) FP Trending A new study, conducted by researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has found that the temperatures in the upper 2,000 metres of the ocean hit a record high in 2020. The study further illustrated that just over 90 percent of the additional heat due to human-caused climate change is absorbed by the ocean. According to study authors, Ocean heat is a valuable indicator of climate change because it does not fluctuate as much as temperatures at the Earth's surface, which can vary in response to weather and natural climate variations. Study authors opine that the increase in ocean temperatures can cause a number of societal impacts as well. They add that the uneven vertical heating of the ocean also causes it to become more stratified, which in turn inhibits ocean mixing and the distribution of dissolved oxygen and nutrients, impacting marine ecosystems and fisheries. Speaking about it, co-author of the study Kevin Trenberth revealed that ocean heat has exacerbated many significant climate-related events in recent history and has also contributed to the record number of billion-dollar disasters in the US in 2020. For the study, the team, led by Lijing Cheng, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, used two different ocean heat datasets. One was from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, and one from the National Centers for Environmental Information, which is part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The study authors found that the two datasets yielded slightly different values for the globally integrated ocean heat in 2020 and even found that 2020 was the warmest year on record. Co-author John Fasullo added that the study showed them definitively that the ocean is warming and has been for decades. The results of the study have been published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science. Syracuse, N.Y. Rain Lounge, one of Central New Yorks best known gay bars, is closing for good after struggling to keep afloat during the Covid 19 pandemic. Owner Duke Epolito announced the decision Thursday on social media, prompting outpourings of support from long-time fans of the 20-year-old club. Thank you for everything, one commenter posted after seeing the news. Rain always felt like home. So much love. Rain opened in 2001 at the corner of Herald Place and North Franklin Street, just down from the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. It moved to its current location at 105 N. Geddes St., near Erie Boulevard West, in 2011. The building is now listed for sale. In 2013, Out Magazine listed Rain as one of the top 200 gay bars in the world, and it was the only one in New York state outside of New York City. Syracuse lounge Rain caters to a diverse crowd of college kids, lesbians, drag queens, and other queers which defy categorization, the editors of Out wrote. Im so proud that we were recognized like that, Epolito said today. It was always our goal to be welcoming to everyone. Its a place where girls can dance and not be hassled, he told syracuse.com in 2011. Its eclectic. Epolito recognizes that closing Rain may leave a gap in the local club scene (though there are other gay and gay-friendly bars in town). He said hes proud of the role Rain played in the LGBTQ community. He remembers receiving a letter a few years ago from a girl who had visited Rain one night. She had been struggling with her identity, her sexual identity and was considering suicide, Epolito said. But after she came to Rain, she felt welcomed, and more positive about herself. She told me her visit to Rain changed her outlook. Im so glad we were able to provide that space, and that comfort. Rain had only opened intermittently during much of the pandemic, Epolito said. But it has been closed since November, just before Gov. Andrew Cuomo placed the city in an orange zone, prohibiting indoor dining and drinking. (That ban was lifted, at least temporarily, Thursday). Although the bar was known as place for people to dance, mingle and socialize, Epolito said it was never found in violation of any of the Covid 19 safety protocols when it was open. The state task force (enforcing the protocols) came in every single day that we were open, he said. But they never found anything wrong. We followed all the guidelines. Epolito said the state restrictions made it difficult to operate. I dont want to be political, he said. I cant imagine how hard it is to be the governor and make these decisions. But I dont think he understood how hard this is for a small business. In his social media posts announcing the closing, Epolito wrote: What our Governor will never understand is that a small business is like a child to its owner. Rain is the only daughter I will ever know. She was an amazing baby a true learning lesson while a toddler and as teen she was fiercely independent. Im so grateful to watch her grow into adult hood. I will love my baby forever and all those who helped raise her. I hope her memory brings you a smile. MORE ON CNY BARS AND RESTAURANTS NY orange zone restaurants can reopen, but will they (and when)? Struggling CNY restaurant in a Cuomo orange zone: Its a losing battle here How brutal has 2020 been for CNY restaurants? Can it get worse? (See closings list) Don Cazentre write 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. Pro-democracy activist Lester Shum is taken away by police officers in Hong Kong, on Jan. 6, 2021. (REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo) US Sanctions 6 Foreign Officials Over Recent Mass Arrests in Hong Kong The United States on Jan. 15 sanctioned six Chinese and Hong Kong officials in response to mass arrests of pro-democracy figures in the city last week. Among those sanctioned is a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official You Quan, who heads the Party agency that oversees foreign influence operations. Hong Kong authorities arrested 53 pro-democracy politicians and activists on Jan. 6 on suspicion of subversion under the national security law (NSL), which Beijing imposed on the city last summer. Most of those arrested had taken part in an unofficial primary for a legislative election that was later postponed. An American lawyer, John Clancey, was among those arrested. Describing the events as an appalling crackdown, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the arrests were yet another stark example of Hong Kongs freedoms and democratic processes being fundamentally undermined by the PRC [Peoples Republic of China]. The secretary called on the regime and Hong Kong authorities to immediately release people who have been targeted under the NSL and dismiss the charges against them. He said the United States will continue to use all tools at our disposable to hold those responsible to account. We condemn PRC actions that erode Hong Kongs freedoms and democratic processes, Pompeo said. The sanctions hit four Hong Kong officials, including police officials, and two Chinese officials, including Quan, who is Vice Chairman of the CCPs Central Leading Group on Hong Kong and Macau Affairs. Quan is also head of the Partys United Front Work Department. The group coordinates thousands of groups to carry out foreign political influence operations, suppress dissident movements, gather intelligence, and facilitate the transfer of technology to China. The United States has already imposed sanctions on 29 Chinese and Hong Kong officials, including Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, over their roles in undermining the citys freedoms. The arrests last week attracted international condemnation. The governments of Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, in a Jan. 10 joint declaration, said the NSL was a clear breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and is being used to eliminate dissent and opposing political views. In the Joint Declaration, a 1984 treaty governing Hong Kongs handover from British to Chinese rule, Beijing had promised the citys inhabitants autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in the mainland, under a framework known as one country, two systems. BCC To Host Virtual Registration Day Saturday PITTSFIELD, Mass. Berkshire Community College (BCC) will be hosting a Virtual Registration Day event on Saturday, Jan. 23 at 8:00 AM via Zoom. The event will allow students to apply, register, get assistance with financial aid, and become enrolled students, prior to the start of spring classes, which begin on Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. Offices that will be available via Zoom from 8:00 AM till 12:00 PM for students to receive assistance in joining the College will be Admissions, Advising, Student Financial Services and Registrar. The Follett Bookstore will be open for curbside pick-up. The goal of this virtual registration day is show that its not too late to become a student this spring at BCC. The link to register and the Zoom link to receive assistance form 8:00 AM 12:00 PM for the Virtual Saturday Registration day on January 23, 2021 is at www.berkshirecc.edu/news- events/2020/ saturdayregistration. First we Americans have some old business to clean up. I dont deny that Democrats had plenty of good reasons to make Trump the first president to be impeached twice, as if we didnt notice the first time. Trump certainly has behaved outwardly as if he didnt notice, even if he is sulking about it inside. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. If youre among those planning to protest the inauguration of Democrat Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, do me a favor: Leave your weapons home. Dont carry any firearms or knives. Dont bring any pipe bombs. In other words, do what you said you wanted Black Lives Matter and Antifa protestors to do last summer: Protest peacefully, without threats of violence. Theres no excusing the death and mayhem caused by supporters of President Donald Trump when they stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Those who committed crimes should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Trump lit the fuse and has been impeached a second time by the House for it. Violence is not the answer when youre trying to make a political point. And it was sad and infuriating to see the U.S. Capitol, the very home of American democracy, overrun. But lets keep things in perspective. This wasnt another 9/11, as some have irresponsibly said. That terrorist attack took the lives of 3,000 Americans in a single day and countless more who have died from 9/11-related illnesses in the years since. It wasnt Kristallnacht, despite what Arnold Schwarzenegger said. It wasnt the same as the British burning of Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812. I happened to be watching NBC News coverage of the Capitol chaos last week. The hosts said that the actions of the protestors should make Americans squeamish. They likened the scenes to those seen in lawless foreign countries ruled by juntas. Really? These are some of the same talking heads that applauded and enabled violent protests last summer over the police death of George Floyd. Where was all the squeamishness when protestors launched Molotov cocktails at NYPD vehicles or burned entire city blocks or looted stores? Heres what we were told then by those on the left: Sometimes protest gets violent. Sometimes the wrongs that need to be righted are so serious that you cant expect people to remain peaceful and reasonable. Protest, even violent protest, is everybodys right. And contrast the anger that were seeing on the left now with the shrugs that we saw when rioters and criminals formed lawless and dangerous, so-called autonomous zones in Seattle and Portland. How was I supposed to feel when police buildings were occupied and federal facilities threatened? Squeamish? No, I was told that this was an American moment. And lets think back to the glorious 1960s, an era that to this day is portrayed by dewy-eyed writers, filmmakers and aging hippies as a period of proud grassroots protest against the Vietnam War, racial injustice and the law-and-order tactics of GOP President Richard Nixon. There were violent protests all across the country. Demonstrators occupied buildings on college campuses. Protestors violently disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. In a more extreme case, radicals from the Weather Underground bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1971 to protest the Vietnam War. Left-wing domestic terrorists carried out a host of bombings and other violent actions against military, law enforcement and corporate targets in the 1970s and 1980s, including another bombing of the U.S. Capitol in 1983. Boy, those were the days, huh? They really stuck it to The Man. I guess that the acceptability of violence depends on what youre fighting for. Or against. The American colonies made war against the British for independence. Americans fought each other in the Civil War. Weve fought other nations in world wars. Weve fought in Korea and Vietnam and in the Middle East. The political disagreements that we have in the United States right now do not require violence to resolve. Not last summer and not now. Biden is going to be sworn in as president of the United States next Wednesday. There can be protest, but there should be no attempt to disrupt the inauguration. He won the election. He is the duly elected president. Showing up in Washington or at state capital armed and ready, even if youre allowed to carry a firearm, is a provocation that we do not need. Think about it. Researchers in Israel have conducted a study showing that increased hospital load due to rising coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases resulted in higher COVID-19-related mortality, despite hospitals not exceeding their defined threshold for meeting patients' treatment needs. The team attributes the increased mortality rate to the rapid influx of new cases over short time periods leaving healthcare systems overwhelmed and under-resourced. Malka Gorfine and colleagues found that even when patient load was only moderately heavy, the rate of in-hospital COVID-19-related mortality significantly increased, compared with periods of lower patient load. They further showed that this increased mortality could not be attributed to changes in the patient population, such as older age or increased clinical vulnerability. The team says the findings highlight that even in countries where healthcare systems do not reach the defined threshold for being unable to meet patients' treatment needs, the increase in workload may lead to rises in patient mortality. The study emphasizes the importance of quantifying excess mortality to define an appropriate level of caring capacity, inform timely healthcare policies and allocate the necessary resources, say the researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, and Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. A pre-print version of the research paper is available on the medRxiv* server, while the article undergoes peer review. Hospital overwhelmed by increased workload The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many healthcare systems quickly becoming overwhelmed by an increased workload. "The heavy workload imposed on hospital services might have negatively affected patients' outcomes and exacerbated mortality rates," said Gorfine and colleagues. In Israel, the first COVID-19 case was identified on 2nd February 2020. The country's ministry of health (MOH) responded by gradually introducing social distancing measures to help curb the pandemic's spread. Following the relaxation of these measures in May, the number of new cases substantially increased, and by 10th September, the country had the highest rate of COVID-19 cases per capita globally. A national lockdown was imposed in mid-September, but its relaxation during October led to a further rise in cases and a subsequent third lockdown in January 2021. In hospital COVID-19 related mortality cases by date. Daily mortality is marked by gray circles, and a 7-day average is plotted as a solid line. B. Number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations by day in all hospitals in Israel. Colors depict different clinical states. A threshold of 500 severe and critical patients per day is presented by a dashed horizontal line. Dashed vertical lines separate weeks that are over/under this threshold. C. COVID-19 related deaths for sets of patients that were first hospitalized in different weeks. Observed deaths for each week are marked by a solid line. Expected deaths as predicted from the model are marked in dashed black line. Monte-Carlo-based pointwise 10%-90% confidence predictions are marked in gray. Weeks in which excess deaths were observed ( positive difference between true and expected curves) are filled in red; and weeks in which deaths were overestimated ( negative difference between true and expected curves) are filled in green. X-axis is marked by the week number. Abbreviations: SE - Standard Error What did the researchers do? The researchers investigated the effects of increased hospital load due to rising COVID-19 cases on the mortality rate among patients hospitalized with the disease. They conducted a nationwide study using the records of 19,336 COVID-19 patients (aged a mean of 59 years) hospitalized in Israel between 7th July 2020 and 6th January 2021. Excess mortality was assessed using a model previously developed for predicting patient mortality based on daily information on disease course. Disease severity was classified as mild (signs and symptoms of COVID-19 such as fever, cough); moderate (evidence of pneumonia); severe (advanced breathing problems) or critical (requiring ventilation or presence of multiorgan dysfunction). Patient data also included information on age, sex, hospitalization date, and clinical outcome (death or hospital discharge from hospitalization). Data were divided into four time periods: period 1 covered hospitalizations from 15th July to 8th September; period 2 from 9th September to 27th October; period 3 from 28th October to 14th December and period 4 from 15th December to 6th January. Excess mortality was estimated by comparing the observed mortality and the model's predicted mortality. What did the study find? The researchers showed that patient mortality significantly exceeded the model's predicted mortality during period 2 (9th September to 27th October) and period 4 (15th December to 6th January). During these periods, the daily number of severe and critical patients exceeded 500, which classifies as a moderately heavy patient load, according to the MOH definitions. During periods 1 and 3, the daily number of severe and critical patients was between 250 and 500, which classifies as a lower patient load. "The threshold defined by policymakers in Israel as an upper bound in which the healthcare system won't be able to treat patients adequately was 800 severe and critical patients," writes the team. However, under the moderately heavy load (periods 2 and 4), the in-hospital rate of COVID-19-related mortality significantly increased, compared with during the periods of lower patient load (1 and 3).> The researchers point out that this higher mortality rate cannot be attributed to changes in the patient population during periods of heavier load. "The model adjusts for age, sex and clinical state upon the first day of hospitalization, and the predictions, therefore, take these differences into account," they write. Furthermore, the increase in observed mortality occurred despite clinicians becoming more experienced in treating COVID-19 and acquiring an improved understanding of pharmacologic approaches over time. The team proposes that the excess mortality during periods 2 and 4 is most likely due to the rapid increase in the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations, which may have resulted in insufficiency of healthcare resources that negatively affected patient outcomes. "Our work emphasizes that even in countries in which the healthcare system did not reach a specific point defined as insufficiency, the increase in hospital workload was associated with quality of care and patient mortality," says Gorfine and colleagues. "In addition, our study highlights the importance of quantifying excess mortality in order to assess the quality of care, and define an appropriate carrying capacity of severe patients in order to guide timely healthcare policies and allocate appropriate resources," they conclude. *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. "Most people don't even know that a job in tech sales is even a possibility," says Shaan Hathiramani, the founder and chief executive of Flockjay, a company offering a tech sales training curriculum to the masses. Hathiramani sees his startup as an on-ramp to the tech industry for legions of workers who have the skillsets to work in tech, but lack the network to see themselves in the business. Just like coding bootcamps have enabled thousands to get jobs as programmers in the tech business, Flockjay can get into the industry talented people who had never considered a job in tech. The company -- which had previously raised $3 million from investors, including Serena Williams and Will Smith, along with tech industry luminaries like Microsoft chairman John Thompson, Airtable head of sales Liat Bycel, Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit, and former Netflix CPO Tom Willerer -- has just raised new capital to expand its business in a time when accelerated on-ramps to new jobs have never been more important. A former financier with the multibillion-dollar investment firm Citadel, Hathiramani sees Flockjay, and the business of tech sales, as a way for a number of people to transform their lives. "We provide a premier sales academy," Hathiramani said. "It costs zero dollars if you take the course and dont get a job and costs 10% of your income for the first year if you do get a job. That nets out to 6 or 7K." A few hundred students have gone through the program so far, Hathiramani said, and the goal is to train 1,000 people over the course of 2021. The average income of a student before they go through Flockjay's training program is $30,000 to $35,000 typically, Hathiramani said. Upon graduation, those students can expect to make between $75,000 and $85,000, he said. Increasing access among those students who have not necessarily been exposed to the tech world is critical for what Hathiramani wants to do with his sales bootcamp. Story continues Flockjay founder Shaan Hathiramani. Image Credit: Flockjay The entrepreneur said roughly 40% of students don't have a four-year college degree; half of the students identify as female or non-binary, and half of the company's students identify as Black or Hispanic. About 80% of the company's students find a job within the first six months of graduation. These are students like Elise Cox, a former Bojangles' manager and Flockjay graduate, who moved from Georgia to Denver to be a sales tech representative for Gusto. She tripled her salary from $13 an hour in the food service industry to a salaried position with wages and benefits. I enjoy being able to generate revenue for the company, Cox, a 41-year-old grandmother, whose five-year plans include a sales leadership role, told Fast Company two years ago. The revenue is the lifeblood of the company and being part of the team gives me sense of fulfillment. Partnerships with Opportunity@Work, Hidden Genius Project, Peninsula Bridge and TechHire Oakland help to ensure a diverse pool of applicants and a more diverse workforce for the tech industry -- where diversity is still a huge problem. As Hathiramani looks to take his company from training a couple of hundred students to over a thousand, the founder has raised new cash from previous investors, including Lightspeed, Coatue and Y Combinator, and new investors like eVentures, Salesforce Ventures, the Impact America Fund, Cleo Capital and Gabrielle Union. For the New Jersey-born entrepreneur, Flockjay was a way to give back to a community that he knew intimately. After his family settled in New Jersey after immigrating to the United States, Hathiramani went first to Horace Mann on a scholarship and then attended Harvard before getting his job at Citadel. Even while he was working at the pinnacle of the financial services world he started nonprofits like the Big Shoulders Fund and taught financial literacy. After a while, he moved to the Bay Area to begin plotting a way to merge his twin interests in education and financial inclusion. "That led to me spending a year helping startups for free and trying to understand their problems with hiring and training" said Hathiramani. "It helped me surface this economic waste in plain sight. There were all these people talking to customers and they were spending three months on the job learning the job and they didn't want to do the job or they weren't very good at it." Tech salesforces were a point of entry in the system that almost anyone could access, if they could get in through the door, Hathiramani said. Flockjay wants to be the key to opening the door. So, the company now has $11 million in new funding to bring its sales training bootcamp to a larger audience. Hathiramani also wants to make the bootcamp model more of a community with continuous development after a student completes the program. "I view education as a membership and not a transaction," he said. "We focus on continuous learning and continuous up-skilling." Part of that is the flywheel of building up networks in a manner similar to Y Combinator, the accelerator program from which Flockjay graduated in 2019. "We went through YC to learn... how they manufacture the privilege in the world that they have afforded," said Hathiramani. "How do you take some of that and provide it to someone who is starting their careers in tech. You get better at your job the more connections you have. As we accelerate the alumni piece they can draw on other alums that theyre selling into." FLINT, MI Former Gov. Rick Snyder and eight other former officials in state and city government were charged with various crimes in connection with the Flint water crisis, but the charges dont seem to spell justice for some city residents. Attorney General Dana Nessel with Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy on Thursday, Jan. 14 announced criminal charges against Snyder and his former senior advisor Richard Baird, former Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon, former Chief Medical Officer Dr. Eden Wells, two former Flint emergency financial managers, Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose, former Snyder Chief of Staff and Communications Director Jarrod Agen and Nancy Peeler, Director of the MDHHS Program for Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting. Flint resident Darlene McClendon is glad the charges were brought against Snyder and other officials he appointed, but she heavily contemplated if he or others will actually be convicted of the crimes. Im glad that the charges were finally brought, McClendon said. I have been wondering for years why he had not been charged with something. Snyder, 62, served two terms as the governor of Michigan from 2011 until 2019. He was arraigned Thursday, Jan. 14 with two counts of willful neglect of duty, misdemeanors punishable by up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine. (Snyder) never really confessed responsibility but it was done under his watch, so he has to be responsible, even if he didnt know at the beginning -- I will give him that benefit of the doubt, McClendon said. But he did know and he was made aware of things and he did not do much after he found out to help Flint. Related: Flint residents hopeful water crisis charges against Snyder, other officials will bring justice Although he has previously apologized for allowing the citys water to become contaminated with lead and bacteria, many Flint residents blamed Snyder for the crisis because of his failure to change the citys water source from the Flint River in 2014 and 2015 -- a time when emergency managers he appointed were in charge of the citys affairs. The most serious charges Thursday were filed against Wells and Lyon, each facing nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, punishable by up to 15 years in prison; and Agen and Baird, who are each charged with perjury, punishable by up to 15 years in prison Its still heartbreaking, McClendon said. " Its maddening that we even have to file lawsuits and youre debating whether or not we deserve this. We still have children that were injured medically, physiologically and well always have that to live with and we still dont know the final effects. McClendon added justice will never be served enough to make up for this travesty that was done to us all. Former Attorney General Bill Schuette tweeted about the criminal charges announced on Thursday, saying the people in Flint deserve justice. People in Flint deserve justice, Schuette said in the tweet. Their water was poisoned - 12 people died. Our independent team conducted an investigation by the book. I stand by the charges filed during my terms as Attorney General of Michigan. It would be Improper for me to comment on the recent charges. The charges brought by Schuette were among those dismissed in 2019. Laura Gillespie MacIntyre, a Sociology lecturer and newly elected Flint Community Schools Board of Education member, said the charges are a slap in the face. She said it is too little too late, adding that she believed Snyder should have been charged more harshly. Laura Gillespie MacIntyre ( second from left), Sociology lecturer and newly elected Flint Community Schools Board of Education memberJake May | MLive.com What a disappointment, she said. Theres all sorts of feelings and emotions, this just runs the gambit. After years of attending meetings and protests over the water crisis from the beginning, MacIntyre said she feels like Flint residents are being played. Im exhausted right now..., she said. What do they expect us to say? Ohh yay? Im just tired of my emotions being manipulated or played with and I dont like being that person whos angry. Snyder should face felony charges for his role in the water crisis, said Kent Key, a health disparities research and faculty member at Michigan State Universitys College of Human Medicine in Flint. He said two misdemeanors did not match the crime. If people under Snyder have been charged with manslaughter, Key said Snyder should be charged at the same level. At the end of the day, the buck stopped with him and quite often people who work for the actual person at the top take the fall, he commented. I think they all have a role in the fall, but I dont think that should lessen the role that the person at the top played in this. Enough evidence suggested strongly that Snyder knew what was happening and what the consequences would come from changing the water source, Key said. Justice is not just charges, Key noted, pointing out it is important to remember and understand the long-term impact on the community and its youth. He added every part of the city was affected by the crisis, including education, health and the economy. The road to justice is not just conviction alone, but it is the appropriate conviction to match the crime. It is also free healthcare for the residents of Flint and the generations to come that are affected by the water crisis, as well as free college education for the youth, for the children we know were affected by it. It has been six years since the citys water source was switched from Detroits public system to the Flint River under guidance from state emergency managers. During the switch, corrosion inhibitors were not used, triggering a leaching of lead from old pipes and triggering triggering a public health crisis in the community when lead leached into the system from old pipes. The Flint community has always been resilient and has continued to support one another, even when officials failed them, Key said. We banded together, and we are weathering this storm. We are being resilient in the face of most of the country thinking the water crisis is over when it is not, we have only switched back to Detroit water, Key said. The water crisis is not over. All service lines have not yet been replaced, Key noted. Provisions have also not been made for residents to replace in-home plumbing, he added. Flint also didnt have a chance to rebound from the water crisis before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the nation, Key said. The only way we have been able to move forward is pulling and garnering strength from the community, he argued. Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley said the states criminal investigation confirms there were multiple levels of wrongdoing in the community. We now have to work toward striking a balance of dispensing justice and restoring confidence. Todays announcement did just that. The Flint community has waited nearly seven years for these steps toward justice, Neeley said in a statement Thursday afternoon. I will continue to advocate for our community while praying for justice and healing. Flint is strong and we shall overcome these wrongs that were inflicted upon us. I continue to be appreciative to Attorney General Dana Nessel and her team for their commitment to finding the truth and fully investigating all possible criminal activity. Progress continues to be made in Flints recovery efforts. The massive service line replacement project to replace household lead service lines is nearly complete. Household service lines have been excavated at more than 26,750 homes and there are fewer than 500 left to check. Lead or galvanized steel pipes were found at 9,900 of those homes and replaced, according to city leaders. Related news: Former Gov. Rick Snyder shows up at Genesee County Jail ahead of court appearance on water crisis charges There are no velvet ropes, AGs office says as former officials are charged in Flint water crisis Flint water prosecutors focus on Legionnaires deaths in charging Snyder, eight others Former Gov. Snyder, 8 others criminally charged, accused of trampling trust of Flint people Watch as former Gov. Rick Snyder gets arraigned on charges related to Flint water crisis Former Flint DPW director charged with two counts of neglect of duty in water crisis probe This indictment is a travesty, attorney for key official in Flint water case says Former Gov. Rick Snyder charged with willful neglect of duty in Flint water crisis Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder pleads not guilty on Flint water charges Secondary school principals in Northern Ireland have slammed the Education Minister for implying they provide a "second class" option for pupils. Peter Weir apologised for a "clumsy" tweet in which he said cancelling the transfer test was a "denial of opportunity" for some pupils. He said that he did not believe he had let children down over the test debacle but accepted that the disruption was disappointing for many families. On Wednesday AQE announced the cancellation of its planned single transfer test scheduled for late February. The minister was unable to rule out remote learning continuing until Easter, although he did say he did not want it to continue on a prolonged basis. Yesterday, several principals of non-selective secondary schools hit out at Mr Weir's apparent dismissal of the quality of their teaching as "disgraceful". Graham Gault, principal of Maghaberry High School and head of the National Association of Head Teachers NI, said: "Some genuine attempts to develop a fair and thorough contingency plan at some point in the last nine months would have helped. This is not good." Jackie Bartley is head teacher at St Genevieve's High School in Belfast. She said: "Rest assured minister I lead a non-selective school that certainly does NOT limit opportunities. We ensure our girls aspire to be their best and fulfil their aspirations." Read More Businesswoman Tina McKenzie, a past pupil at the school, said it had been the bedrock of her future. "I have just been informed that I have been shortlisted as businesswoman of the year in ROI - deeply humbled and yes (Peter Weir) I did have a secondary school education which seems not to have limited my opportunities," Clare McCleave, ICT teacher and head of year 12 at the school, said she was "absolutely disgusted" by Mr Weir's comments adding "the sky is the limit for our pupils and I truly believe this". Martine Mulhern, principal at St Cecilia's College in Derry, said: "This year we were named 'UK Secondary School of the Year' but here in NI our education system will always deem us 'second class' because we are a secondary school and not grammar! Described by our own Education Minister as 'limiting children's opportunities': HOW DARE HE!" Larne High School principal Stephen Reid said: "So non-selective schools limit opportunities for children? A disgraceful comment. I thought that the minister's visit to LHS had demonstrated how we create opportunities - the minister's competence is hardly an advert for grammar school education." Deirdre O'Kane is principal of St Patrick's and St Brigid's College in Claudy. She shared a video seeking to reassure year seven pupils and spoke of how she had been made to feel inadequate after failing the 11-plus exam as a girl. Despite attending a secondary school, she said she received a first rate education which allowed her to realise her dreams. "I'm sitting here as principal of a highly successful, non-selective school in the Derry area. That didn't come about by attending a grammar school," she said. Mr Weir told BBC's Good Morning Ulster: "While the transfer test has never been about being compulsory for either a school or an individual parent, it does enable parental choice as a result." He said he did not think the "in and out" way the test had been handled by AQE - which postponed, rescheduled and finally cancelled the test - had been "particularly helpful" and lacked "consistency". Apologising for his tweet, he said: "There was no adverse intention meant toward non-selective schools." Mr Weir said schools have now had guidance on criteria giving them "effectively two paths to go down". He said the options were using primary school data - but not direct teacher assessments - as a form of academic selection or non-academic criteria such as siblings attending the school. Nolan was an artist known for celebrating the human spirit, but the trial compelled him to explore mans lesser nature. Al Alvarez comes to lunch, he wrote on July 23, 1961. He is going to Poland. We talk about concentration camps. If we could paint the subject it would be a duty to do so. During the Eichmann trial The Observer had asked Alvarez to write on the camps and Nolan was invited to illustrate the article. He made up his mind two weeks later: Decide to go to Poland, he wrote in his diary. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Judges and Victims). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 For months before the visit, the camps haunted Nolan and he made notes on how he might paint them. Then, between November 27 and December 10, in the two weeks before Eichmanns judges passed sentence, he filled sheets of paper with the same face and features over and over again recording do 50 today on one day alone. Some were simple outlines, others fully formed, but every image had the same broad forehead, receding hair, thick rounded glasses, thin lips, and in most a collared shirt buttoned to the top. All mirrored photographs of the notorious prisoner. On December 12, 1961, Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Two days after that, Nolan deliberated, I am reluctant in a way to dig deeper into Europe but I do not see how the question of the camps can be forever shelved. Perhaps they will never be the material of art, he wrote. It is impossible to tell. How can a disease be painted? Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 The next day Eichmann was sentenced to death and it provided the release Nolan needed. He immediately switched from Eichmanns face to painting more than a hundred images of Auschwitz and concentration camp inmates, keeping them with the Eichmann portraits in a folder he titled Judges and Victims. There were three distinct groups, dated roughly six days apart. The first was characterised by prison stripes faces sliced by bars or vacant eyes above vertical stripes of the camp uniforms. The next group were wreathed in smoke, which suddenly cleared to expose harsh heads scratched from paint with screaming mouths. Finally, there were skeletal heads tortured and twisted. The evolution was clear and their titles unequivocal: Head of Prisoner Concentration Camp and Skeletal Head in a German Concentration Camp. Nine days passed in peace. Then suddenly more images poured out, a tortured stream of figures crucified on smoking crosses, skeletons overflowing wheelbarrows and bodies laid out in neat rows of death. Nineteen of the pictures were dated January 7, 1962, more than 90 were untitled, and one was reproduced by Londons Marlborough Graphics in 1967. Sidney signed and dated the artists proof, inscribing Auschwitz on the back. His iconography was obvious. More than a million human beings became smoke and ash in the Auschwitz ovens. Faith was death and wheelbarrows were for the living to carry the dead to roll call. With an economy of strokes Nolans pictures were as convincing as photographs. He found nothing to redeem the human race. Nolan travelled to Poland with Alvarez two weeks later. On January 29, 1962, he wrote, Go to Auschwitz. Alvarez recalled: Auschwitz is a difficult experience to handle, even as a tourist. You grab hold of whatever you can to keep your mental balance. He went on to describe what Nolan saw: Mountains of human hair, suitcases, spectacles, shaving brushes, artificial limbs. Great mounds of old shoes reach up like rubble after an air raid, all of it covered in dust and human ash, left as though the owners would momentarily return. In his autobiography, Alvarez remembered that Nolan was upset less by the obvious horrors the crematoria, the mountains of shorn hair, discarded spectacles, suitcases and artificial limbs than by the orderliness of the camps layout. He explained: The interiors of the barracks were dreadful the tiers of bunks in which the prisoners slept, six men to a bunk, like battery hens waiting to be slaughtered but the neat grids in which the buildings were arranged troubled him even more. Turning to Alvarez, Nolan had quietly evoked the disdain his friend and mentor Kenneth Clark had for abstract art and its lack of humanity: It looks like a bloody Mondrian, he said. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 Overwhelmed, Nolan refused to illustrate The Observer article. It was an emotional experience for which he had been completely unprepared and the visit triggered an unexpected and lasting retreat from any direct Auschwitz imagery. Unwilling, or even psychologically unable, to translate the experience into paint, he would avoid speaking of it for more than 20 years. Thirty years later he still remembered the disruption it caused to his long-established habit of mixing music and painting, as he wrote in his diary: I could not listen to music for months after going to Auschwitz. Alvarez added to Nolans emotional turmoil in 1962 by sending a draft of his article. Dear Sid, he wrote, heres a draft much scribbled on. I hope you can make it out. I feel very dissatisfied with it. So do, please, be as ruthless as you can with it. I cant waste this opportunity to get the thing said straight. In his article, Alvarez suggested that in modern times all humanity had the capability to be inhuman. If they [the camps] were simply the playgrounds for sadists who, in another society would have been locked away, then they were an aberration best forgotten, for they prove that our sickest fantasies can be acted out. The Eichmann affair has shown us that they were not. Nolan scrawled on his copy: High civilisation can perish; and when the civilisation is a world one, we cannot afford it ... Art has always been a geiger counter for civilisation. Long committed to literature and religion as symbolic languages, Nolan expressed Auschwitz using one to disguise the other. Six weeks after returning he painted an elephant, using the symbol of freedom conjured in Romain Garys book The Roots of Heaven. Garys lead character, Morel, survived Nazi concentration camps by thinking of elephants. I would close my eyes and think of elephants at liberty, running freely across Africa, hundreds and hundreds of magnificent animals that nothing can resist no cement wall, no barbed wire, nothing ... Thats liberty I tell you! In camps designed to destroy the human spirit we came to look at the SS men with smiles, he said, as we thought how from one moment to the next, this magnificent charge would pass over them. Sidney loved elephants, Nolans widow, Lady Mary Nolan, confirmed in a 2001 interview with curator and researcher Jane Clark. He really did love elephants ... Elephants represented a lot to him. In Garys book elephants had represented the old human rights, the rights of man, and on March 6, 1962, Nolans first major painting after his visit to Auschwitz was an elephant straight from Garys opening chapter describing those noble giants, pressed back more and more towards the marshes and condemned by man to disappear from the earth. It was imagery that allowed Nolan to put symbolic flesh on Auschwitz bones. Youve got to belong to a civilisation thats doomed and express paradise but if you have too much of the Nazis you cant expect to do very well, he said in an interview with British art critic Peter Fuller many years later. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 From September 1962, Nolan chased visions of paradise during a three-month trip through Africa. But a deep well of grief ran through the resulting work. There were faces and figures of disenfranchised tribes and races, subjugated by colonial empires. He posed apes as Ecce Homo Christian iconography representing the abasement of human beings in war and floated gorillas in earthen tombs, lamenting, He is a better kind of man. He doesnt make war ... so we kill him off. In 1965, Nolan briefly placed apes and saints on smoking crosses while helmeted Nazis marched beneath or leered at women. Then two years later he revealed to Gavin Souter of the Sydney Morning Herald: When I went to Auschwitz I was struck by the enormity of the scandal of the position of women, and then linked Auschwitz to Dantes Inferno, a nine-panelled painting of female figures stacked like firewood in the streets, telling Hal Missingham, then director of the Art Gallery of NSW, as I painted they levitated ... whirling around in the sky and looked more like ... lost souls. Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, Nolan continued to stare into the pit. Am I moving towards Austwitz [sic] painting at last? he wrote in 1985. I hope not. He deplored human suffering, his friend of 40 years, George Ivan Smith, recalled at Nolans 1993 memorial service. He had raged against human tragedy, Smith said, a painter driven by deep respect for life and by deep grief when [he] sensed that life was being crushed in that eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness. Loading The impact of the Holocaust on Sidney Nolan has remained invisible. But soon after visiting Auschwitz he said, What an artist really wants is to say something which one day out of contemporary context will mean something important. In a world still troubled by genocide, racial disenfranchisement and nationalism, Nolans Holocaust images reflect something he and Alvarez often discussed the arts didnt just reflect society, they were a kind of early warning system. This year, the 60th anniversary of Eichmanns trial, we are well-positioned to exhume and examine Nolans warning. To look back towards the crematoria and barbed wire, and through his exploration of our lesser nature, acknowledge and honour the ghosts pleading to be remembered. This is an adapted extract from Andrew Turleys upcoming book, Nolans Africa. LONDON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Britishvolt, Britain's foremost investor in battery technologies, today announces that it has entered into an exclusive technology collaboration agreement with Siemens. The collaboration will see Siemens provide Britishvolt with access to its automation, electrification solutions and Digital Twin manufacturing execution technology. This innovative system gives the opportunity to simulate gigaplant production processes and flows ahead of construction completion, optimising design and efficiencies. It also promises to speed up delivery times, allowing Britishvolt to stay on track to deliver the first lithium-ion batteries at the end of 2023. Additionally, Siemens is providing Britishvolt with its latest design and simulation development tools, accelerating the time it takes for state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery cells to go from laboratory to production at scale. Britishvolt CEO, Orral Nadjari: "We are delighted to enter into this technology collaboration. Working with Siemens and utilising its global expertise in Digital Twin and simulation technologies will play a pivotal role in Britishvolt achieving its tight deadlines to begin producing world-class batteries, at scale, by the end of 2023. Being able to simulate production of lithium-ion batteries and cell development speeds up a complicated process and allows us to bring crucial batteries to market quicker. Working with leading global partners such as Siemens helps us stay firmly on course in our mission to build the UK's first battery gigaplant." Carl Ennis, CEO Siemens GB and Ireland: "This is an exciting and vital project to quickly ramp up availability at commercial scale of the batteries required by the electric vehicle market to help the UK reach its carbon net zero goals by 2050. In order to give manufacturers and end customers the confidence to switch to electric vehicles, we need to have this crucial part of the supply chain here in the UK. "Siemens has the manufacturing and energy infrastructure technology and services to help Britishvolt build the most efficient, sustainable gigaplant. We are keen to start working with Britishvolt to get the Blyth site operational by 2023, supplying batteries and delivering crucial investment in the North East, helping to level up the UK economy." Britishvolt's gigaplant is one the largest industrial investments ever undertaken in the UK and the largest in North-East England since the 1980s. With construction due to begin this summer, Britishvolt remains on track to begin production of world-leading lithium-ion batteries in 2023. Notes to Editors About Britishvolt Britishvolt is Britain's foremost investor in battery technologies. It is dedicated to supporting the future of electrified transportation and sustainable energy storage, producing world-leading lithium-ion battery technologies. Britishvolt's aim is to establish the UK as the leading force in battery technology. It is working with leading partners and suppliers to achieve this because it is of paramount importance to the future of the UK automotive industry and the overall economic and industrial health of the UK. The company believes that the UK is the right place for its investments because of the strength of its automotive and energy industry, its expertise and history of industrial and academic battery research and development. Quarter four of 2023 has been targeted as the start of production in Britain's first gigaplant. SOURCE Britishvolt Related Links https://britishvolt.com PHILIPSBURG:--- Over the last six months, the police of Sint-Maarten (KPSM) has issued several notices to owners of scooters and other vehicles, which were impounded over the last year to visit the police station and collect these items. After several public requests, very few owners have shown up to retrieve their vehicles. Through this press release, the Police of Sint-Maarten would again like to request does persons, who may own, any of these vehicles, which are impounded at the police station, to visit the station and collect their property as soon as possible Persons still wishing to retrieve their bike(s) can now do so until the end of January 2021. The scooters and motorbikes that are allowed to be retrieved are those that were taken out of circulation, because they were being used in a way that was against the law, for instance, used without insurance, or because they had a technical problem. Bikes that are confiscated for further investigations will not be available for retrieval. The Prosecutors office is the only entity allowed to return a bike confiscated after investigation purposes. If you know your bike or scooter is present at the police station, you can take it home with you if you can present the following documents: proof of your identity (a driver's license, identity card, or passport) and proof that you are the rightful owner of the scooter/motorbike. You will also have to show proof of insurance and inspection for the scooter/motorbike. If you can do so, your motorbike/scooter or car will be returned to you. KPSM Press Release. 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. On Jan. 14, Greys Anatomy fans went wild when Jessica Capshaw (Arizona Robbins) reunited with a few members of the cast. The actor stopped by the groups Stars In The House panel after an invite from Camilla Luddington (Jo Wilson). So, naturally, viewers are hoping Capshaw will return as Arizona in Greys Anatomy Season 17. Jessica Capshaw left Greys Anatomy after Arizona Robbins moved to New York Jessica Capshaw as Arizona Robbins on Greys Anatomy | Kelsey McNeal/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images RELATED: 4 Greys Anatomy Couples That Deserved to Be Endgame Two seasons before Capshaw left Greys Anatomy, Arizona and Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) fought for custody of Sophia. Callie wanted to move to New York City with Penny Blake (Samantha Sloyan). Then Arizona won sole custody of their daughter. But even so, Arizona and Callie realized they both deserved to be happy. So they decided Sophia would split time between Seattle and New York City. In Greys Anatomy Season 14, Arizona realized Sophia was having a difficult time adjusting to bicoastal living. Sophia missed her friends, school, and mom back in New York. Then in a turn of events, Arizona got the opportunity to start a new womens health center alongside Nicole Herman (Geena Davis). So, Arizona moved to New York. Now, its also possible Arizona and Callie got back together on Greys Anatomy. In Capshaws final episode, Arizona admitted she couldnt stop smiling while texting Callie about the move. But the couples relationship status has yet to be confirmed by the show. Meanwhile, current Greys Anatomy showrunner, Krista Vernoff, shared why the show chose to write Arizona out of the story, alongside April Kepner (Sarah Drew). As writers, our job is to follow the stories where they want to go and sometimes that means saying goodbye to characters we love, Vernoff said at the time, per Variety. Capshaw also opened up about her exit on social media. For the past ten years I have had the rare privilege of not only playing Arizona Robbins but also being madly in love with playing her, Capshaw wrote on Twitter. Arizona Robbins is kind, intelligent, funny, insightful, bold, playful, fierce and really good at her job. She was one of the first members of the LGBTQ community to be represented in a series regular role on network television. Her impact on the world is permanent and forever. Forever. She continued, I am grateful that I have gotten to bring her to life and for the life that she has brought to me. I am sad to see her go but I am consoled by the idea that she will continue to live on and on in all of our consciences and our imaginations. Jessica Capshaw reunites with the Greys Anatomy Season 17 cast RELATED: Greys Anatomy: Camilla Luddington Says Jo and Jackson Would Be a Really Fun Couple Now, its been over two years since Capshaw appeared as Arizona on Greys Anatomy. But in the Jan. 14 episode of Seth Rudetsky and James Wesleys Stars In The House YouTube series, Capshaw reunited with the current cast. The event focused on raising money for The Actors Fund as the stars of Greys Anatomy discussed everything from season 17 to honoring frontline workers amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In the first half, Greys Anatomy fans were treated with appearances by Chandra Wilson (Miranda Bailey), James Pickens Jr. (Richard Webber), Kelly McCreary (Maggie Pierce), Kim Raver (Teddy Altman), Kevin McKidd (Owen Hunt), and Anthony Hill (Winston Ndugu). Then in the second half, Wilson was joined by Luddington, Jake Borelli (Levi Schmitt), Chris Carmack (Atticus Link Lincoln), Greg Germann (Tom Koracick), and Richard Flood (Tom Koracick). Meanwhile, Capshaw dropped in midway through the second half. The Greys Anatomy actor revealed that Luddington encouraged her to join the chat while they were texting. Luddington also hinted at Capshaws return while teasing Jos upcoming arc on Greys Anatomy Season 17. Its already been teased. But shes thinking about changing to being an OB. So thats going to be a pretty big storyline for her, Luddington said. Im ready for my pink scrubs. And maybe Capshaw can come back. Capshaw replied, Youre never ready for the pink scrubs! Greys Anatomy fans react to the possibility of Arizona Robbins return Anything for my girl @camilluddington And alsoplease DONATE!! https://t.co/v3k4IdBeUh Every little bit helpswe got this. https://t.co/krztwk17gB Jessica Capshaw (@JessicaCapshaw) January 15, 2021 RELATED: Greys Anatomy: Ellen Pompeo Could Leave After Season 17 But She Wont Take the Decision Lightly Given Capshaws surprise appearance on Stars in the House, fans questioned whether Arizona will return in Greys Anatomy Season 17. Jessica Capshaw are you coming back to Greys Anatomy, a fan wrote in the YouTube chat. If Jessica comes back Ill be so happy, another fan wrote. Then after Luddington teased the possibility of Arizonas return, some viewers were definitely on board. Its a win/win, a fan wrote on YouTube. Jo gets a switch, where she brings babies into the world, but still remains a surgeon. It would also lead to Camilla and Jessica working closely together OMGGG, another fan wrote. She needs to come back Whatever happens when Greys Anatomy returns with new episodes, its clear Capshaw is still loved by the fandom. So stay tuned. Season 17 is expected to come back on March 4, 2021. FLINT Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym L. Worthy announced on Thursday that after 12 months of grand jury proceedings nine individuals have been indicted on a total of 42 counts related to a series of alleged actions and inactions that created the historic injustice of the Flint Water Crisis. The Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit in Genesee County appointed Judge David Newblatt to act as a one-man grand jury to investigate crimes related to the crisis. Indictments were issued after the grand juror listened to and evaluated the evidence presented. The following defendants were charged by Solicitor General Hammoud and Prosecutor Worthy as part of the criminal investigation into the Flint Water Crisis: Jarrod Agen Former director of communications and former chief of staff, Executive Office of Gov. Rick Snyder One count of perjury a 15-year felony Gerald Ambrose Former City of Flint emergency manager Four counts of misconduct in office each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine Richard Baird Former transformation manager and senior adviser, Executive Office of Gov. Snyder One count of perjury a 15-year felony One count of official misconduct in office a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine One count of obstruction of justice a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine One count of extortion a 20-year felony and/or $10,000 fine Howard Croft Former director of the City of Flint Department of Public Works Two counts of willful neglect of duty each a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine Darnell Earley Former City of Flint emergency manager Three counts of misconduct in office each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine Nicolas Lyon Former director, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Nine counts of involuntary manslaughter each a 15-year felony and/or $7,500 fine One count of willful neglect of duty a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine Nancy Peeler Current Early Childhood Health section manager, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Two counts of misconduct in office each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine One count of willful neglect of duty a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine Richard Snyder Former governor of Michigan Two counts of willful neglect of duty each a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine Eden Wells Former chief medical executive, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Nine counts of involuntary manslaughter each a 15-year felony and/or $7,500 fine Two counts of misconduct in office each a five-year felony and/or $10,000 fine One count of willful neglect of duty a one-year misdemeanor and/or $1,000 fine The defendants turned themselves in and were arraigned Thursday before Judge Elizabeth A. Kelly for the Seventh Circuit Court and Chief Judge Christopher Odette for the 67th District Court. Details on their arraignments and subsequent court dates will be forthcoming. The prosecution team sought and obtained indictments based on evidence that could be proven in court. Status, position or political affiliation of a defendant are not factors in the charges sought. Furthermore, charges were not pursued unless the evidence and law supported it. The secrecy provisions over the grand jury proceedings do not allow for discussion of the grand jury evidence underlying the charges at this time. However, going forward, the cases will proceed in the respective courts to which they are assigned, presided over by those judges in accordance with Michigan law. When an entire city is victimized by the negligence and indifference of those in power, it deserves an uncompromising investigation that holds to account anyone who is criminally culpable. That is what all residents in this state are entitled to, regardless of their zip code. And that is what this prosecution team did. Our approach was simplewhere we believed the evidence would prove a criminal charge, we sought and obtained indictments for those crimes, said Solicitor General Hammoud. We must remember that the Flint Water Crisis is not some relic of the past. At this very moment, the people of Flint continue to suffer from the categorical failure of public officials at all levels of government, who trampled upon their trust, and evaded accountability for far too long. We understand that our work is not done and although the criminal justice system alone cannot remedy all the suffering that every person endured, we took our part seriously. We hope others will do the same to ensure this never, ever happens again. This case has nothing to do with partisanship. It has to do with human decency, resurrecting the complete abandonment of the people of Flint, and finally, finally, holding people accountable for the unspeakable alleged atrocities that harmed this city for years, said Prosecutor Worthy. Pure and simple this case is about justice, truth, accountability, poisoned children, lost lives, shattered families that are still not whole, and simply giving a damn about all of humanity. In April 2014, the water supply reaching thousands of homes, schools and businesses within the City of Flint was switched from water sourced from Lake Huron to the Flint River. As a result of that switch, the Flint Water Crisis quickly became an ongoing public health crisis that has left a lasting impact on thousands of Flint residents. By early 2016, then-Gov. Snyder declared a State of Emergency in Genesee County and an investigation was launched by a private law firm appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Schuette that was then designated as the former Office of Special Counsel (OSC). In late 2018, Attorney General Dana Nessel was elected and upon taking office in 2019, she made decisions to put a conflict wall in place to ensure the criminal investigation and civil litigation following the Flint Water Crisis were conducted by completely separate teams. Nessel decided to lead the civil litigation team. The OSC which proved to be an unnecessary cost to taxpayers was no longer needed, and Hammoud and Worthy were tapped to lead the criminal investigation. Citing grave concerns about the investigative approach and legal theories embraced by the former OSC particularly regarding the pursuit of evidence, Hammoud and Worthy announced in June 2019 the dismissal without prejudice of all pending criminal charges previously brought by the OSC. The prosecution teams voluntary dismissal allowed them to move forward in conducting a thorough, methodical and ethical investigation. The dismissal also was not a determination of any defendants criminal responsibility, nor was the team precluded from refiling charges against the specified defendants, or adding new charges and additional defendants. Processed by Victoria Ritter, vritter@mdn.net Two of Oregons top prosecutors on Friday vowed to stand against any political violence tied to President-elect Joe Bidens upcoming inauguration. Oregon U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams decried the violent mob of President Donald Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week and said federal authorities are working to investigate and prosecute all forms of domestic terrorism including the attack on the Capitol. And Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt echoed the sentiment, noting the countys public safety system stands ready to confront any violence and property destruction. No amount of property damage or violence is acceptable, he said in a statement. Williams said the threat of political violence persists nationwide and in Oregon. He said his agency is working with federal, state and local agencies to identify, investigate, and disrupt anyone intent on engaging in violence in Oregon. Schmidt said he hopes people consider the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday of reflection and contemplation. Our public safety system continues to take a critical look at itself to find solutions to the injustice and racism highlighted during months of nightly protests last summer, he said. Both prosecutors said tipsters who have information about any potential upcoming violence can call 503-224-4181 or submit information online. -- Jim Ryan jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 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 Gardai say they are working as expeditiously as possible to bring the case involving an alleged cannabis find worth 1m near Newbridge to hearing. Two defendants appeared before Naas District Court by videolink from prison where they are being held, on January 13. Tran Khanh Duc and a co defendant whose name was amended during the hearing to Quang Nguyen, both of no fixed abode, face additional allegations of possessing cannabis valued at 13,000 on the same occasion as well as cultivation of the drug. They were previously charged with possessing cannabis for sale or supply at Ballysax, Curragh, on November 3. This followed the discovery of 800,000 worth of cannabis plants which were found in Ballysax and 200,000 worth of cannabis was found in a vehicle at Junction 12, on November 3. Sgt Jim Kelly asked Judge Desmond Zaidan to amend court documents to reflect the amended name and also to amend Mr Nguyen's date of birth to November 16, 1996. The proceedings were translated through a Vietnamese interpreter from the courtroom. Read more County Kildare news Mr Nguyen said he hoped that the trial would proceed quickly and he asked to go back to Vietnam after any forthcoming trial. Judge Zaidan noted that the pair have been in custody since the case first came to court. Two other defendants are on bail. Sgt Kelly said that no application had been made for bail by or on behalf of the two men in custody. Judge Zaidan adjourned the matter to January 27. He noted that one has made contact with the Vietnamese embassy and he said he should remain in touch with the embassy. Grime star Solo 45 has had his 24-year jail term for holding four women against their will and repeatedly raping them in sadistic sex attacks increased to 30 years. Senior judges at the Court of Appeal today concluded the sentence handed down to the rapper, real name Andy Anokye, in July was 'unduly lenient'. The 33-year-old was found guilty last year of 30 charges - made up of 21 rapes, five counts of false imprisonment, two counts of assault by penetration and two of assault occasioning actual bodily harm - relating to a two-year period. He was handed a 29-year extended sentence, made up of a 24-year jail term and an extended licence period of five years at the time, but this was today increased to a 30-year jail term and five years additional licence. Lady Justice Macur, sitting with two other judges, said the original sentence did not reflect the fact Anokye committed multiple offences of rape against four separate victims. Grime star Solo 45 has had his 24-year jail term for holding four women against their will and repeatedly raping them in sadistic sex attacks increased to 30 years Andy Anokye, who was part of the grime collective Boy Better Know, claimed the acts were part of consensual role play, or a game he played called 'Catch me, Rape me' to 'terrorise' them GRIME STAR'S SECRET LIFE OF ABUSING WOMEN REVEALED IN FOOTAGE HE FILMED Less than a year before Solo 45 was arrested at his waterfront flat in Bristol, he was signing an album deal with Island Records as his single Feed Em To The Lions played. Footage shows the musician, real name Andy Anokye, holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a pen in the other as he signs the deal in June 2016. The 20-second clip was played as Anokye, now 33, stood in the witness box at Bristol Crown Court to give his defence to charges including rape and false imprisonment. He became emotional as he charted his journey from Tottenham's Broadwater Farm estate to performances in front of large crowds chanting his lyrics. Anokye became involved in music at the age of 14 but was also a keen computer programmer. At the age of 16, Anokye left secondary school after being stabbed and spent his time working on a pirate radio station as well as being involved in criminal activity. He had already given himself the stage name Solo 45 and within two years, he had become part of the Boy Better Know collective. Anokye said he had filmed himself taking part in 'vigorous and rough' sex with tens of women over the years. Later, he discovered the phrase dacryphilia - arousal from tears - and it explained why he preferred 'raw emotion' when it came to sex. 'I don't think women I get myself involved with would look at me and think 'he's going to make slow, sensual, candlelit love to me',' Anokye told the jury. 'They were all aware of what kind of sex I was into. I would explain to them that it would involve terrorising them. 'We would do a lot of things that pushed the boundaries. I would humiliate them, degrade them, call them names. 'I've got my own quirks and my own kinks.' Those quirks and kinks included raping women, imprisoning them in his home and assaulting them, the jury found. Jurors were shown videos filmed by Anokye, showing women frightened, crying and in pain as the musician laughed, sexually abused and insulted them. Advertisement His sentence was referred to the court by the Attorney General's Office (AGO) under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme. Speaking after the ruling, Solicitor General Michael Ellis QC said: 'Anokye's crimes were truly shocking. 'The Court of Appeal's decision to increase his sentence recognises the severity of the abuse he inflicted upon his victims and the danger he poses to the public.' The court rejected an argument by lawyers representing the Solicitor General that Anokye should have been given a life sentence. The judge also refused a bid by Anokye to appeal against the length of his original sentence. The musician, who was part of the grime collective Boy Better Know, derived sexual pleasure from torturing the women by waterboarding, interrogating, assaulting and raping them, the court heard. He claimed the acts were part of consensual role play, or a game he played called 'Catch me, Rape me' and said he told women that he would 'terrorise' them. Police began investigating Anokye, who is from London but had a harbourside apartment in Bristol, in 2017 after a woman complained that she had been raped by him. After his arrest, officers discovered harrowing footage filmed by Anokye on his mobile phone that revealed he had abused multiple women. Judge William Hart, passing sentence in July, said Anokye had 'become addicted' to the 'perverted pleasure' he took from abusing the women in the case. The judge added: 'You have a background that includes gang associations and criminal violence. 'I'm entirely satisfied that your career as a music artist was flourishing at the time of this offending and that you would have gone to great heights. 'You were part of a well known collective - Boy Better Know. The fellow artists from that collective have achieved great success.' The judge said none of those fellow artists were aware of Anokye's behaviour, or 'dark side'. 'They are in no way tarnished by your misdeeds which you carried out in a private way,' the judge told Anokye. 'Your convictions have deprived you of that career but the fault is yours alone.' During the trial, the graphic video clips filmed by Anokye were played to the jury. They showed Anokye interrogating the women about previous sexual partners, slapping them, insulting them and raping them. Anokye, who was signed to Island Records and had collaborated with Stormzy, JME and Wiley, was described as a 'violent, controlling narcissist and a bully' by prosecutors during the case. The trial heard that he forced one woman to lie in a bath of freezing cold water, held a shotgun, pictured, to the head of another woman, and made one sit with a bottle of water tied to her finger with a shoelace Prosecutors previously described Anokye as 'dangerous' to the public and said he posed a risk of physical and sexual violence The trial heard that he forced one woman to lie in a bath of freezing cold water, held a shotgun to the head of another woman, and made one sit with a bottle of water tied to her finger with a shoelace. His abuse included holding a cloth covered in bleach to women's faces, with one woman telling jurors that he had forced a mobile phone down her throat. Giving evidence, Anokye told the court that he had dacryphilia - a sexual arousal from tears. Following Anokye's arrest, police examined videos and images on three mobile phones, an external hard drive and a laptop found at his apartment in Bristol. They contacted further women and three came forward with complaints of abuse at his hands. A fifth woman also gave evidence against Anokye during the trial, but jurors heard he could not be charged with alleged offences against her as they took place abroad. Anokye will only be released from prison after serving at least 20 years of his 30-year jail term behind bars and when the Parole Board is satisfied he no longer poses a danger to the public. A police reform bill that passed 60-50 Wednesday during the Illinois Legislatures last day of a lame-duck session has some law enforcement officers feeling like theyre the ones being handcuffed. I hope people realize that were doing the best job for our city but lawmakers are handcuffing us, Beardstown Police Chief Martin Coad said. It leaves the public in limbo. Illinois House Bill 3653 now is on its way to Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office to be signed into law. While it initially included language that would have done away with law enforcement officers qualified immunity from job-related lawsuits, the Black Caucus leadership had it stripped from the bill. Proposed stricter use-of-force guidelines also were cut from the final bill. Still, law enforcement officers are unhappy with the bills no-cash bail stipulation and a requirement that all police will have to wear body cameras by 2025. Those cameras are to be paid for by the officers department. If you do the crime, you should have to pay to get out, Coad said, adding that he understands the need for reform but feels the stipulation is going to free criminals to go out and commit more crime. Theyre just going to go right back out and do it again. Jacksonville Police Chief Adam Mefford, who has yet to see the bill in its entirety, recognizes there are some reasons to have a no-cash bail policy. The details have not yet been released, he said, adding that there are some crimes that people really dont need to sit in jail for and wait for a trial such as minor traffic violations. Feeling that the legislators made a sweeping change, Mefford would prefer there be more of a categorized no-bail system. For example, domestic violence, homicide cases or driving under the influence arrests should have to wait for a trail. Some of the crimes are against victims and people need to cool off, Mefford said. Were making the victims feel unsafe. Also under the bill, all law enforcement departments in the state will be required by 2025 to have officers wear body cameras and departments would have to fund both the cameras, the ongoing training and storage for the footage created by them. That will give us some time to budget it all in, Coad said of the timeline. But there are no grants out there for this type of thing. With 11 full-time officers and three part-time officers in Beardstown, Coads timeline to budget for the body cameras is not his top concern. Storage of the footage is especially since what that will require hasnt been specified. The storage portion of it is going to be the killer, he said, adding that some counties, like Sangamon County, pay around $100,000 a year for video storage. Mefford and his department have already been working toward equipping his team with body cameras and the move doesnt impact him, and his budget, too badly. Were a bit ahead of the process with this, he said. His concerns, however, are for agencies with smaller budgets and the fact that the possibility of having funding taken away if some agencies have not been able to equipment their department with body cameras by the deadline. It doesnt feel right being punished for not having the funding, Mefford said. Cass County States Attorney Craig Miller also believes the no-cash bail stipulation will make his job harder, he said. I know it will make our jobs difficult, Miller said. Miller said he still needs to learn more about the 700-plus page bill, but he doesnt agree with how the bill was passed. There should have been more time for everyone to read and analyze what was on the table, he said. Pritzker said he was pleased with the bills approval. This criminal justice package carries with it the opportunity to shape our state into a lesson in true justice for the nation by abolishing cash bail, modernizing sentencing laws, instituting a certification and decertification system for police officers statewide, requiring body cameras, reforming crowd control response, and amplifying law enforcement training standards. Echoing Miller, Mefford wished that lawmakers would open the communications with those who have boots on the ground. We as law enforcement officers are willing to work with lawmakers, Mefford said. On Tuesday, I asked Health Minister Greg Hunt a fairly simple question. For several weeks, I had been reporting on uncertainties about the effectiveness of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine, the centrepiece of Australia's COVID-19 vaccination strategy. While the evidence suggested it was safe and prevented people from dying, the data on how well it prevented symptomatic COVID-19 infections was cloudy. In groups that were given standard doses, it was 62 per cent effective; in a small group accidentally given the wrong dose, it was 90 per cent effective. One goal of an immunisation strategy can be herd immunity: enough people are vaccinated that a virus cannot find new hosts, and the epidemic dies out. This protects people who cannot or will not be vaccinated, and those for whom the vaccine does not work well. Herd immunity is the stated goal of Australia's childhood immunisation schedule. 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. Alabama teachers have been essentially bumped down the priority list to get the COVID-19 vaccine, State Superintendent Eric Mackey told the state board of education during Thursdays work session in Montgomery. Alabama considers teachers and schools support staff to be part of phase 1b to be vaccinated, behind frontline health care workers and residents of long-term care homes. But the state now plans to prioritize other essential workers in 1b, such as firefighters and police officers, and those who are age 75 years old and older, before giving teachers their shots, he said. Teachers are still considered to be in 1b, but its like theyre in 1b-slash-a, Mackey said. There has been talk in other states about moving teachers farther down the list, but he said he has been pushing hard to keep teachers in 1b. The waitlist also will likely lengthen if Alabama opens the vaccine up to those 65 years old and older, as recently recommended by federal officials. Under the state Department of Public Healths current plan, teachers likely will begin to get their first shots in February or early March, according to Mackey. Potential delays and the need for everyone to get a second dose, however, means school staff may not be fully vaccinated and receive immunity before the end of the current school year. The slow rollout might affect plans for summer school, too, Mackey said. Mackey told state board members he has been told that Alabama is getting 50,000 doses of the vaccine a week. With two doses needed for roughly 200,000 public school employees statewide, he said he understands why its taking a while to get shots in teachers arms, but is concerned delays could further impact learning. Our whole social and economic structure is built around kids going to school, Mackey said. [Schools] are one of the largest employers in the state. In many counties, we are the largest employer. Children need to be back in school full-time, he said, and the only way to do that is to get teachers vaccinated as soon as possible. We dont need our teachers to be pushed any further back [down the vaccine priority list], he said. Teachers in Tallapoosa and Marion counties already are being vaccinated, he said, after hospitals there offered unused vaccine doses. But only about 50% of those school employees are taking the offered doses, which worries Mackey. Thanks to North Mississippi Medical Center of Hamilton for providing Covid 19 vaccines to Marion County Education employees!! Posted by Marion County Schools on Friday, January 8, 2021 All the science says you have to have 70 to 90% for immunity protection, he said. If we were to end up in a situation where only 50% of people get vaccinated, the pandemic wont end. Itll get better, but it will be this prolonged pandemic instead of ending. I deeply philosophically believe in the power of education and public schools, Mackey said. I think we have to be the leaders. We have to show people that the logic and the science and the caring for one another, the uplifting of our democracy as a whole, that that is our responsibility. So weve got to be the leaders and show the way. Mackey said he plans to get the vaccine but not before it is widely available to teachers. The state department will not make the shots mandatory for public school employees, he said, but local school boards could choose to do so. He said he has not heard of any school boards planning to make the vaccine a requirement for employment. Mackey said any eventual decision about whether to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for school attendance would be made by public health officials, and will likely not be considered until the vaccine receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration. CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2021) Moldovan President Maia Sandu said on Friday that Moldova needed to reset relations with the European Union and to build closer ties through democratic reforms. "An important partner with which we need to reset relations is the European Union. We want to build closer ties with the EU through democratic reforms that will turn Moldova into a European country. We want Moldova to become part of the EU, but it is important to maintain good relations between Moldova and other partners," Sandu said. Sandu recalled that in 2018, the EU froze financial assistance to Moldova due to numerous corruption scandals and a lack of progress in the implementation of reforms. MOSCOW Russia said on Friday that it was pulling out of a decades-old treaty that allowed countries to make military reconnaissance flights over each others territory. The move escalates Russias growing military competition with the United States and Europe just weeks before the incoming Biden administration will have to negotiate the extension of the central nuclear arms-control treaty between Moscow and Washington. The decision by President Vladimir V. Putin to leave the accord, the Open Skies Treaty, matches an action taken by President Trump in May. The treaty, which dates to 1992, is of limited use to the United States, which has a network of spy satellites. But it has been important to European allies as a way of keeping track of Russian troop movements along their borders. When Mr. Trump announced the American withdrawal, which was completed late last year, he predicted Mr. Putin was going to come back and want to make a deal. He did not. And Russias move signaled that the country did not intend to make it easy for the administration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to reverse Mr. Trumps rejection of a series of arms-control and military monitoring treaties. The Russian announcement, if followed by an official notification to the other remaining parties in the treaty, starts a six-month clock toward final withdrawal. The notification would also require a meeting of all the signatories including the European nations who are most concerned about Russian activity after its years of incursions into Ukraine within 60 days. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. An Aboriginal activist who led a 21-year campaign to change the 'racist' Coon cheese name is reportedly disappointed after the new Cheer brand was unveiled. Author and anti-racism activist Stephen Hagan said the Indigenous community was not consulted about the product's new name. 'I would have liked it (the name) to be something more inclusive of First Nations people,' Mr Hagan told the Sydney Morning Herald. Author and anti-racism activist Stephen Hagan said the Indigenous community was not consulted about the product's new name Coon cheese will now be named Cheer (pictured) as the name 'coon' is also used as a racial slur Dr Stephen Hagan, has spent the past two decades lobbying to have the brand name changed as the word 'coon' is a derogatory slur against people of colour. 'We weren't even consulted on names,' he said. 'We would like to have contributed.' SkyNews commentator Chris Smith claimed Mr Hagan was 'grossly entitled' after details emerged that the activist is pursuing legal damages of $2.1million. 'He (Stephen Hagan) says it has been 21 years of corporations undermining his claims against the word 'Coon',' SkyNew's Chris Smith said. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, claims that Mr Hagan's response is the prime example 'why you never bend the knee to the PC mob'. Sky News commentator Chris Smith (pictured) has slammed Mr Hagan's disapproval of the new 'Cheer' brand, labelling the Indigenous activist as 'grossly entitled' Ms Hanson criticised Mr Hagan's decades long activism campaign as a 'politically correct crusade' 'Recently Coon Cheese caved to a decades-long complaint campaign and changed its name to Cheer cheese but the activist behind the politically correct crusade isn't cheering', she wrote online. The One Nation leader also condemned Mr Hagan's legal case, insinuating the move is a back-handed 'thank you to the cheese formerly known as Coon.' 'Like I've always said, you give an inch to the PC woke mob and they will take a mile.' One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (pictured) has criticised Mr Hagan's response as another reason 'why you never bend the knee to the PC mob' When Cam Bruce, the commercial director of Coon's owners, Saputo Dairy Australia, revealed the name on Tuesday, the decision sparked a divided reaction. 'The name Cheer has the significance of pleasure and joy,' Saputo's chief executive Lino Saputo in a statement. 'It's nice when you take a picture you say cheese and when you give a toast you say cheers.' Mr Saputo said it was a lengthy process to come up with a new name that reflected the brand. Saputo announced Coon Cheese would be renamed in July. 'We believe we all share in the responsibility to eliminate racism in all its forms and we feel this is an important step we must take to uphold this commitment,' they said at the time. See which country has the same population as your state as Stacker compares 2019 population data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the World Bank. A coalition of big tech companies, including Microsoft is developing a COVID passport, with the expectation that a digital document linked to vaccination status will be required to travel and get access to basic services. The group is calling itself the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), and includes Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle. The US health provider Mayo Clinic is also involved in the project, which is being described as the most significant vaccination effort in the history of the United States. The idea is now a familiar one. Anyone who has been vaccinated will receive a QR code that can be stored on their mobile phone in the wallet app. Those without phones will have access to a printed version. We have previously reported on the development of this so called CommonPass, which also has backing from the World Economic Forum, and now more details have emerged. Screenshot: CommonPass outline click to enlarge The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records, said Paul Meyer, CEO of non-profit The Commons Project, also involved in the project. Meyer said that the document will allow people to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy. Meyer said the coalition is working with several governments, and expects standards to be adopted that will see mandatory negative tests or proof of vaccination, in order to re-engage in society. Individuals are going to need to have to produce vaccination records for a lot of aspects of getting back to life as normal, he added. We live in a globally connected world. We used to anyway and we hope to again. Were excited to announce that weve partnered with @MITREcorp and a broad coalition of industry leaders across healthcare and technology to accelerate digital access to COVID-19 vaccination records. Read more: https://t.co/9tJR8Cbymc #vaccinecredential pic.twitter.com/e9leRz2Bza The Commons Project (@commons_prjct) January 14, 2021 The Financial Times reports that The Commons Project has received funding for the project from the Rockefeller Foundation, and that it is being implemented by all three major airline alliances. The Rockefeller Foundation has previously touted its plans for a Covid-19 data and commons digital platform as well as a desire to launch a Covid Community Healthcare Corps for testing and contact tracing. Coordination of such a massive program should be treated as a wartime effort, the foundation states on its website, adding that there should be a public/private bipartisan Pandemic Testing Board established to assist and serve as a bridge between local, state, and federal officials with the logistical, investment and political challenges this operation will inevitably face. Screenshot: Rockefeller Foundation Covid action plan website Screenshot: Rockefeller Foundation Covid action plan website Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce join a push for digital vaccination credentials. Read more via @nytimes on #vaccinecredential https://t.co/AOXrVtRJEW The Commons Project (@commons_prjct) January 14, 2021 The group also wants to see a global standardisation of the so called vaccine passports, noting that The current vaccination record system does not readily support convenient access, control and sharing of verifiable vaccination records. The coalition of big tech firms is looking to customize all aspects of the vaccination management lifecycle and integrate closely with other coalition members offerings, which will help us all get back to public life, said Bill Patterson, an executive vice president at Salesforce. With a single platform to help deliver safe and continuous operations and deepen trust with customers and employees, this coalition will be crucial to support public health and wellbeing, Patterson claimed. Mike Sicilia, executive vice president of Oracles Global Business Units added that This process needs to be as easy online banking. We are committed to working collectively with the technology and medical communities, as well as global governments. Ken Mayer, founder and CEO of Safe Health also stated that the VCI will enable application developers to create privacy-preserving health status verification solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into existing ticketing workflows. Put more simply, it will help get concerts and sporting events going again, Mayer said. The context seems clear. Those without the COVID passport will not be allowed to travel or engage in social events. Hundreds of Tech companies are scrambling over themselves to develop COVID passport systems. As we reported last month, the IATA, the worlds largest air transport lobby group, expects its COVID travel pass app to be fully rolled out in the first months of 2021. A further COVID passport app called the AOKpass from travel security firm International SOS is currently undergoing trials between Abu Dhabi and Pakistan. We have exhaustively documented the privacy and rights concerns associated with the move toward adoption, and more importantly the global standardisation of so called COVID passports. UK based human rights group Privacy International has warned that if immunity passports are issued by some governments, it could signal a creep toward digital identity schemes and other mandatory ID schemes. Once you have multiple uses (e.g. access to services) in multiple domains (i.e. public sector, private sector), in multiple countries (i.e. travel), then we are approaching a global identity document needed to live your life, the group warned. Sweden based human rights group The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) warned recently that 61 per cent of countries have used COVID restrictions that were concerning from a democracy and human rights perspective. Anna Beduschi, an academic from Exeter University, commented on the potential move toward vaccine passports by EU, noting that it poses essential questions for the protection of data privacy and human rights. Beduschi added that the vaccine passports may create a new distinction between individuals based on their health status, which can then be used to determine the degree of freedoms and rights they may enjoy. The EUs own data protection chief Wojciech Wiewiorowski recently labeled the idea of an immunity passport extreme and has repeatedly said it is alarming, and disgusting. A report compiled last year by AI research body the Ada Lovelace Institute said so called immunity passports pose extremely high risks in terms of social cohesion, discrimination, exclusion and vulnerability. Sam Grant, campaign manager at the civili liberties advocacy group Liberty has warned that any form of immunity passport risks creating a two-tier system in which some of us have access to freedoms and support while others are shut out. These systems could result in people who dont have immunity potentially being blocked from essential public services, work or housing with the most marginalised among us hardest hit, Grant further warned. This has wider implications too because any form of immunity passport could pave the way for a full ID system an idea which has repeatedly been rejected as incompatible with building a rights-respecting society, Grant further urged. Gloria Guevara, CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), has also slammed the passports as discriminatory, saying We should never require the vaccination to get a job or to travel. Speaking at a Reuters event, the head of the WTTC also condemned airline Qantas for their previous assertion that unvaccinated people would not be allowed on their aircraft. It will take a significant amount of time to vaccinate the global population, particularly those in less advanced countries, or in different age groups, therefore we should not discriminate against those who wish to travel but have not been vaccinated, Guevara noted. Nevertheless, the spectre of so called immunity passports is looming globally. As noted above, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has penned a letter to EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, demanding that the Commission should standardise a vaccine passport across all member countries, and that it should be required for people to travel throughout the area, further outlining that Persons who have been vaccinated should be free to travel. The request is set to be debated in the coming days. Vaccine passports have previously been touted by the EU, with officials suggesting back in April that visa applicants would also be required to be vaccinated. EU countries including Spain, Estonia, Iceland, and Belgium have all indicated that they are open to some form of vaccine passports, as well as sharing the data across borders. Denmark recently announced that it is rolling out a Covid passport, to allow those who have taken the vaccine to engage in society without any restrictions. Poland has also announced plans to introduce vaccine passports, which will allow those who have taken the COVID shot greater freedoms than those who have not. Having left the EU, Britain would not be part of any standardised European scheme, however it has now confirmed that it is rolling out vaccine passports, despite previous denials that it would do so. Recently, the government in Ontario, Canada admitted that it is exploring immunity passports in conjunction with restrictions on travel and access to social venues for the unvaccinated. Last month, Israel announced that citizens who get the COVID-19 vaccine will be given green passports that will enable them to attend venues and eat at restaurants. A litany of other government and travel industry figures in both the US, Britain and beyond have suggested that COVID passports are coming in order for life to get back to normal. In addition, hotels have also indicated they will do the same. Insurers have also indicated that they will fall in line with any standardisation of vaccination passports, and may demand to see proof of vaccination before covering those wishing to go on holiday. The international Travel and Health Insurance Journal reported that If the EU obliges travellers to vaccinate, travel insurance providers may refuse to cover those who decline to have the vaccination. EU news website Schengenvisainfo also reported on the likely move by insurers, pointing out that anti-vaxxers will likely be specifically targeted by the mandates. Even if anti-vax travellers find a loophole in the requirement and manage to enter any of the Member States, travel insurance providers may refuse to cover them, the report states. It continues, With the high volume of fake news and conspiracy theories that have been going on for months now on the pandemic and vaccination, the real challenge for the EU will not be to purchase the necessary vaccine doses, but rather to convince people to be vaccinated. The report adds that Conspiracy theorists, in Europe and further in the world, have targeted Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is known as a supporter of vaccination, claiming he is responsible for the Coronavirus pandemic. While surveys have indicated that around half the people in the world are not willing to take the vaccine at this stage. However, a recent poll has indicated that 74% of Americans say they are willing to get a COVID vaccination passport, should they be introduced in the U.S. Hyundai Serious About Fuel Cell Power - Partners With Guangzhou Company For New Fuel Cell System Plant +VIDEO Father Of China's Battery Electric Vehicle Movement Abandons First Child In Favor Of Fuel-cells Hyundais first offshore fuel cell system plant to be built in Guangzhou, China Construction to begin next month, to be completed in the second half of 2022 New plant will initially produce 6,500 fuel cell systems a year and aims to gradually increase capacity in line with market demand Investment advances the Groups global hydrogen leadership and supports its push into Chinas rapidly growing hydrogen industry SEOUL, January 15, 2021 Hyundai Motor Group (the Group) announced today that it signed an investment contract with the government of Guangdong Province to establish an offshore fuel cell system production facility in Guangzhou, China. The investment advances the Groups global hydrogen leadership and supports its push into Chinas rapidly developing hydrogen industry. Attendees at the signing ceremony included Kwang Guk Lee, President and Head of China Operations at the Group; Hyuk Joon Lee, Senior Vice President and Chief Government Affairs Officer of Hyundai Motor Group China Ltd.; Lin Keqing, Executive Vice Governor of Guangdong Province; Hu Hong, Vice Mayor of Guangzhou Municipal Government; and Chen Yong, District Chief of Huangpu District Guangzhou Municipal Government. Construction is scheduled to begin next month and will be completed by the second half of 2022. The plant will be the Groups first fuel cell production base outside of Korea, with the initial capacity to produce 6,500 units of fuel cell systems per year. The Group will gradually increase the capacity in line with market demand. Chinas rapidly growing fuel cell system industry The Guangzhou plant will leverage the Groups extensive expertise in fuel cell system production to secure a technological leadership position in Chinas rapidly developing hydrogen industry. At the new plant, the Group will manufacture the same proven fuel cell systems that are used for Hyundai Motors NEXO fuel cell electric SUV. Moreover, the Group will work with Chinese companies to participate in the Guangdong governments hydrogen-related pilot project and initiatives, which will help Hyundai secure a competitive advantage in Chinas hydrogen industry. Global companies from Japan, Germany, the UK and other countries have also been working with the Chinese partners to develop technology related to fuel cell vehicles and to advance the local hydrogen industry. In October 2020, the China Society of Automotive Engineers released a technology roadmap, under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The roadmap reflects Chinas ambition to foster a hydrogen economy, adding that the country aims to have 1 million FCEVs on its roads by 2035 centering on commercial vehicles. The Groups hydrogen strategy In December 2018, Hyundai Motor Group announced its own long-term roadmap, Fuel Cell Vision 2030, to reaffirm its commitment to accelerate the development of a hydrogen society by leveraging its global leadership in fuel cell technologies. As part of this plan, the Group aims to produce 700,000 fuel cells annually to meet demand from various industry sectors. The Group has decades of experience in fuel cell system development, having introduced the worlds first mass-produced fuel cell electric vehicle, the ix35, in 2013, followed by the second-generation NEXO, in 2018. The Group also successfully delivered the first seven units of its XCIENT Fuel Cell trucks, the worlds first mass-produced fuel cell electric heavy-duty truck, to customers in Switzerland in late 2020. As part of the Groups effort to foster zero-emission society, Hyundai recently launched HTWO, a new brand to represent its world-leading hydrogen fuel cell system. It has also strengthened its research and development capabilities and partnerships across a multitude of industries to lead development of the hydrogen economy. ### About Hyundai Motor Group Hyundai Motor Group is a global corporation that has created a value chain based on automobiles, steel, and construction and includes logistics, finance, IT and service. With about 250,000 employees worldwide, the Groups automobile brands include Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp and Genesis. Armed with creative thinking, cooperative communication and the will to take on all challenges, we are working to create a better future for all. More information about Hyundai Motor Group, please see: www.hyundaimotorgroup.com Disclaimer: Hyundai Motor Group believes the information contained herein to be accurate at the time of release. However, the company may upload new or updated information if required and assumes that it is not liable for the accuracy of any information interpreted and used by the reader. The Serious Fraud Office has dropped its investigation into British American Tobacco over allegations it bribed government officials in Africa. After more than three years investigating the cigarette giant, the SFO said it did not have enough evidence to support a realistic prospect of conviction. Probe: After more than three years investigating the cigarette giant, the SFO said it did not have enough evidence to support a realistic prospect of conviction BAT was accused of bribing government officials from at least five African nations in an attempt to undermine a United Nations public health treaty, in breach of the UK Bribery Act. The misconduct allegations first surfaced on Panorama in December 2015, when the BBC current affairs programme broadcast claims by whistleblower, Paul Hopkins. Loading the player... Farm bills have potential to represent important measure for agri reforms in India: IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes the farm bills passed by the Indian government have the potential to represent a significant step forward for agricultural reforms, a spokesperson of the organisation said here. There is, however, a need to strengthen the social safety net for those who might be adversely affected by the transition to the new system, Gerry Rice, Director of Communications at IMF, said at a news conference in Washington on Thursday. Google removes loan apps from Play Store over safety policy violations Search engine giant Google reviewed hundreds of loan apps on the Play Store and found that an unidentified number of apps violated the Play Store's safety policies. The company has removed these apps from its platform. Google's crackdown on lending apps in the country comes after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that it was forming a working group to regulate digital lending. Passenger vehicle sales grow 13.6% in Dec; signals rebound in auto sector Passenger vehicles sales grew 13.59 per cent in December 2020 at 252,998 units compared to 222,728 units in December 2019, according to industry body SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers). This is a significant improvement in PV sales after growth of 4.65 per cent was recorded in November. IT companies' revenues to grow up to 9% on tech demand: ICRA Demand for digital technologies and resumption of normal economic activities will drive sales for IT companies, and the sector will post a revenue growth of up to 9 per cent in 2021-22, a report said on Thursday. Rating agency Icra gave a "stable" outlook for the sector, whose size is pegged at over $180 billion by industry lobby Nasscom, including the business process outsourcing business. President-elect Joe Biden announces $1.9 trillion stimulus to jump-start US economy President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a stimulus package of $1.9 trillion designed to jump-start the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. Biden campaigned last year on a promise to take the pandemic more seriously than President Donald Trump, and the package aims to put that pledge into action with an influx of resources for the coronavirus vaccine rollout and economic recovery. Gold saw choppy moves as US Treasury yields edged up yet again. Markets focused on the US stimulus and pushed up the benchmark US 10 year treasury yields by more than 3%. In a key update, the US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell noted that the recovery of the economy from the pandemic recession is far from Fed's goals, thereby turning down any concerns that the Fed might soon withdraw some of its support for the US economy. This is likely to shape up well for Gold. The metal currently trades at $1946 per ounce, down 0.23% on the day. Covid-19 scenario stays well under control in India now and the mass vaccinations will be rolled out soon. Record high local equities can likely keep a tab on fresh investment demand for Gold in domestic markets. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Berejiklian government plans to spend as much as $400 million on the state's national parks over three years to boost access and aid the recovery from last summer's devastating bushfires. The funds include $257 million to be invested in new facilities, including more than 750 kilometres of new and upgraded walking tracks, upgrades to 33 campgrounds and 61 new and improved picnic areas. The Berejiklian government plans to spend as much as $400 million on the state's national parks over three years to boost access and aid the recovery from last summer's devastating bushfires. Credit:James Brickwood "This is about making national parks accessible and available to everyone, regardless of age or ability," Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean said during a visit to the Grand Canyon lookout near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains on Friday. "It will not only improve the experience of those visiting our parks but it will create jobs, drive investment and draw tourism into our regions," he said. The Leicester Fashion Technology Academy will offer the opportunity to work towards entry-level qualifications in core industry skills including pattern-making, fabric inspection, laying and cutting, machine maintenance and stitching. Leicester will be the second city in which Fashion Enter has launched a fashion academy A new UK project to deliver apprenticeships and accredited training for the textiles and fashion industry is set to be launched in Leicester. Leicester City Council has teamed up with training provider Fashion-Enter and local clothing company Ethically Sourced Products Ltd to develop a new textiles skills centre the Leicester Fashion Technology Academy (LFTA). The city has the second-largest concentration of textile and fashion manufacturing businesses in the UK and has been under the spotlight in recent years due to the poor treatment of textile and garment workers in some of its factories. Most recently, Boohoo Group has faced scrutiny of its Leicester garment supply chain, while The Financial Times published an expose on the Leicester garment industry in 2018, and a year earlier a Dispatches investigation focused on wages and working conditions. This led to a visit to the city in April 2017 by a select committee, which reported that labour rights abuses were endemic. Recognising the importance of the sector to the local economy, the city council is now investing GBP300,000 (US$408,488) to help set up the pilot project to offer apprenticeships and accredited training for people working in the local textiles industry. The new academy will also look to work closely with local textile and fashion manufacturing businesses. City mayor Peter Soulsby said: "Leicester has a long and proud history of textile manufacturing and we want the industry to play an important and positive role in the city's future. "We have some fantastic textiles businesses in the city. Many are working with leading fashion brands and retailers and together they employ thousands of people. However, many businesses have told us that they struggle to recruit workers with the right skills. We also know that many local workers want to develop their skills and progress within the industry. "Establishing this new training academy with leading experts in the field is a way of supporting the fashion and textiles industry in Leicester and helping ensure that local workers have the best opportunities to develop their skills and careers." Leicester's new textiles training centre will be operated by Fashion-Enter, a specialist technical skills training provider. The not-for-profit social enterprise is based in both London and Newtown, Wales, and is recognised as a centre of excellence for the development of skills in the fashion and textiles industries. Fashion-Enter set up its successful Fashion Technology Academy in north London in 2015. Leicester will be the second city where it has launched a fashion academy. The new academy will offer people the opportunity to work towards entry-level qualifications in core industry skills including pattern-making, fabric inspection, laying and cutting, machine maintenance and stitching. People can then work towards advanced certificates and progress onto one of Fashion-Enter's apprenticeship schemes for retail/e-tail employers. "We have worked with Leicester over the last five years and we know what a major cluster of garment manufacturing there is. We now have a unique opportunity to create a quality-based hub that will engage with retailers and manufacturers to create a new generation of highly trained specialists," said director Jenny Holloway. The new training centre will be based on the top floor of Ethically Sourced Products' factory premises in Spinney Hills. The company's expansion into its new premises was supported by a GBP1.5m loan from the city council's investment fund which helped it to completely rebuild five derelict warehouses on Stonebridge Street to create a modern new manufacturing base. Ethically Sourced Products was formed almost 20 years ago and originally produced organic Fairtrade T-shirts as tour merchandise for artists including Radiohead and Stereophonics. Now specialising in production for British heritage and luxury brands, garments made at its Leicester factory are sold all over the world. Richard Olley, owner and managing director, said: "The launch of the Leicester training centre will give real practical help not only to manufacturers looking to recruit new, or upskill existing employees, but to members of the community wishing to enter the industry". The new Leicester Fashion Technology Academy is planning to open in early summer, following refurbishment of the new premises, with delivery of an initial taster programme. Last month, Holloway told panelists on a webinar hosted by the Association of Suppliers to the British Clothing Industry (ASBCI) in partnership with e-learning platform Motif, despite the uncertainly wrought by both Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, they have also presented a real opportunity for all domestic manufacturers. Click here to read Why UK clothing sector must work to bridge the skills gap. A couple and their dog have had an incredible chance rescue after they walked more than 40 kilometres in the sweltering heat of the South Australian outback without food and water, stopping to leave notes and etch "SOS" on a dirt road along the way. Jose Merlos, 29, Nicky Wong, 32, and their dalmatian puppy Loki were driving from Cairns to Adelaide and planned to detour through NSW when their plans changed due to coronavirus border closures. Lucky to be alive: Jose Merlos, Nicky Wong, and Loki. Credit:Royal Flying Doctor Service On January 3, they were driving along a remote outback road after taking a wrong turn when their Toyota RAV4 became bogged in sand. They attempted to get the car out for several hours, then abandoned it and started walking. The pair left a note to say they were walking to the tiny town of Innamincka in South Australia's north-east. As they walked for hours, and the temperature climbed to the high 30s, the couple left more notes. Exhaustion set in, and they paused to scratch "SOS" into a dirt road. Well, folks, I am pleased to inform you all that there is still a whole lot of good that has happened over the past week, that despite popular conceptions, there is so much more to life than impeachments, domestic terrorist attacks, and every terror du jour of the past 9 days. First up, Dolly Parton may finally earn the recognition she deserves as America's sweetheart, potentially getting her own statue outside of the Capitol building in her home state of Tennessee. On Tuesday, Democratic Representative John Mark Windle presented a bill to honor the country legend, racial justice advocate, childhood literacy promoter, and vaccine champion via a commemorative statue for "all that she has contributed to this state," the Associated Press reported. Although the details of the statue's specifics would be decided by the state capitol commission, the monument would not be paid for through taxpayer money, being expensed through a fund created by the bill, and will also likely face towards the Ryman Auditorium, where Parton has performed. Continue Reading Below Advertisement "At this point in history, is there a better example, not just in America but in the world, of a leader that is (a) kind, decent, passionate human being?" the lawmaker said earlier this week. "(She's) a passionate person who loves everyone, and everyone loves her." Between her consistent advocacy for those in need, apparent dedication to kindness, and her absolutely beautiful voice, what's not to love! Remember, folks, the expression "What Would Dolly Do" exists for a reason. OSTERSUND, Sweden, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Skanska sells Parkview office building located in Prague, Czech Republic, to Deka Immobilien, one of Europe's leading real estate investors and asset managers, for EUR 77M, about SEK 770M. The transaction will be recorded by Skanska Commercial Development Europe in the first quarter of 2021. The transfer of the property is also scheduled for the first quarter of 2021. Parkview benefits from its strategic location in Pankrac, one of the most prestigious and modern districts in Prague. The property comprises of approx. 16,000 square meters of office space and is 94% leased to international tenants including Grant Thornton and Jacobs Douwe Egberts. The sold property was completed in the second quarter of 2020. Responding to the highest environmental, technological and tenants' health and well-being standards, Parkview received the LEED Platinum with 97 points which makes it one of the most sustainable buildings in the Czech Republic and the entire CEE region. The building also aims for WELL Gold Shell and Core certificates and WELL Health-Safety Rating which awards high-quality office spaces with top safety standards that reduce the risk of disease transmission and facilitate creating healthy and safe workplaces in the post-COVID reality. Skanska is one of the leading development and construction companies in Europe. Outside the Nordics, the company has operations in building construction and civil engineering in Poland, Czech Republic & Slovakia and the UK. Skanska develops commercial properties in selected home markets in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary, while residential development is active in Poland, Czech Republic and in the UK with the BoKlok concept. In 2019, Skanska had sales of SEK 33 billion and about 11,700 employees in its European operations outside the Nordics. CONTACT: For further information please contact: Aleksandra Markiewicz, Communications Manager, Skanska commercial development business in CEE, tel +48 797 229 147 Jacob Birkeland, Head of Media Relations & Public Affairs, Skanska AB, tel +46 (0)10-449 31 34 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-sells-office-building-in-prague--czech-republic--for-eur-77m--about-sek-770m,c3268588 The following files are available for download: https://mb.cision.com/Main/95/3268588/1359655.pdf 20200115 CZ office building Prague https://news.cision.com/skanska/i/image-20210115-parkview-by-skanska-exterior-north-by-toma-s-hejzlar,c2867309 Image 20210115 Parkview by Skanska exterior north by Toma s Hejzlar SOURCE Skanska Advertisement Vice President Mike Pence stopped at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday night to thank National Guardsmen for their service ahead of next week's inauguration ceremony. 'Thank you for stepping forward for your country,' the vice president told the guardsmen, who huddled up around him as the Capitol Dome stood, light up in the background. It was Pence's first trip back to the Capitol since MAGA rioters attacked the building last week. Some were heard shouting 'where's Pence' and 'Hang Mike Pence.' Pence had been whisked off the Senate floor moments before the insurgents stormed it. There will be 20,000 guardsmen in Washington D.C. for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony as the FBI director warned the agency is hearing more threats online about the event. Pence wished the guardsmen 'a safe inauguration.' 'God bless you. It's been my great honor to serve as your Vice President,' he told them. Pence did not go back inside the Capitol, where he presided over the certification of Biden's victory last Wednesday, returning to oversee the process after rioters were cleared from the building. Pence is credited with helping coordinate the response to the attack, speaking with officials last Wednesday from the Capitol basement as the mob raced through the building. He chit chatted with individual guardsmen outside on the East Front of the building, asking them where they are from and how long they served. Pence ended with a final thanks and wishes for 'a safe inauguration and a swearing in of a new president and Vice President.' 'Hooah,' the guardsmen yelled in response. Vice President Mike Pence stopped at the U.S. Capitol to thank National Guardsmen for their service ahead of next week's inauguration ceremony Vice President Pence made his first visit back to the Capitol after MAGA rioters last week were heard searching for him when they raided the building 'Thank you for stepping forward for your country,' the vice president told the guardsmen, who huddled up around him as the Capitol Dome stood, lit up in the background Pence wished the guardsmen 'a safe inauguration.' 'God bless you. It's been my great honor to serve as your Vice President,' he told them Pence did not go back inside the Capitol, where he presided over the certification of Biden's victory last Wednesday, returning to oversee the process after rioters were cleared from the building Pence chit chatted with individual guardsmen outside on the East Front of the building, asking them where they are from and how long they served. Pence ended with a final thanks and wishes for 'a safe inauguration and a swearing in of a new president and Vice President.' 'Hooah,' the guardsmen yelled in response FBI Director Chris Wray finally spoke more than a week after the MAGA riot Thursday to warn the agency is monitoring major new 'potential' for armed violence nationwide around Joe Biden's inauguration. He appeared at a briefing on the inauguration security plans with Vice President Pence and bluntly warned about the potential for armed protests in Washington D.C. and nationwide. 'When we talk about potential threats, we have to say about that we are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter about a number of events surrounding the inauguration,' he said. It was the first public appearance for Pence and Wray since last week's attack that left five dead and the Capitol building in shambles with shatter glass, broken furniture and torn up offices. Wray said more threats were coming in ahead of January 20th's inauguration ceremony. 'Right now we're tracking calls for potential armed protests and activity leading up to the inauguration,' he noted. Wray spoke as National Guard troops continued to flood into the capital and were told they are authorized to use deadly force against any terror threat. 'We're concerned about the potential for violence at multiple protests and rallies,' Wray told Pence at the briefing, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The building is just block away from the National Mall, which in an unprecedented move will be closed for the inauguration and close to where a razor wire fence is now being erected around the Capitol. He said much of the work was being done behind the scenes to get ready for next Wednesday, when Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States. Wray assured the American people that they 'should be confident that there's an awful lot of work all across the country, going on behind the scenes out in spotlight.' His words come as law enforcement on Capitol Hill was criticized for not being better prepared for last week's attempted insurrection. Wray acknowledged last Wednesday's riot and said the FBI have already made 100 arrests of MAGA rioters and said they have 100 more suspects identified. 'We're looking at individuals who may have an eye towards repeating that same kind of violence that we saw last week,' he said. 'My advice to people who might be inclined to follow in the footsteps of those [from last week] is to stay home,' Wrap said. 'From January 6th alone, we've already identified over 200 suspects. So we know who you are, if you're out there, and FBI agents are coming to find you.' Pence thanked the group for their work and acknowledged the complications caused by the MAGA riot on Capitol Hill last week, when a group of pro-Trump insurgents swarmed the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Joe Biden's victory. 'We all lived through that day, January 6. As the President made clear yesterday, we are committed to an orderly transition into a safe inauguration. The American people deserve nothing less,' he said. He vowed to make sure that Biden and incoming Vice President Kamala Harris 'are sworn in as the President and Vice President of the United States in a manner consistent with our history and traditions.' Security measures are intensifying in Washington DC with razor wire now installed on anti-climb fences outside the Capitol and the National Mall set to be closed off during Joe Biden's inauguration - as the FBI warns police chiefs across the US to be on 'high alert' for extremist activity. Authorities continued to erect fences, set up road blocks and boarded up building across much of downtown DC on Thursday in a bid to fortify the capital ahead of next week's inauguration. Banning access to the National Mall, which is where crowds usually gather during inaugurations, is the latest security measure to be announced, sources say. Access to the Capitol grounds and Washington Monument is already prohibited. A spokesman for the National Park Service, who oversees the National Mall, said an official announcement would be made by the Secret Service when a decision had been made. It is not yet clear when the National Mall will be blocked off. The move comes as security continues to intensify in DC with up to 20,000 National Guard troops being called in to protect and fortify the capital and law enforcement on heightened alert over possible armed protests and attacks. A dire bulletin put out by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Justice and Homeland Security Departments on Wednesday warned of threats from armed militia groups and racist extremists. It did not detail specific plots to target next week's inauguration but warned that extremists largely viewed the violent breach of the Capitol as a success. Briefing: Chris Wray, the FBI director who has not been seen since the MAGA mob stormed the Capitol, briefed Mike Pence on inauguration security at the Federal Emergency Management Agency Security measures are intensifying in Washington DC with razor wire now installed on anti-climb fences outside the Capitol Barbed wire is installed on the top of a security fence surrounding the US Capitol on Thursday as security intensified ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration next week National Guard soldiers stand guard on the grounds around the US Capitol in DC on Thursday as security intensifies Authorities continued to erect fences, set up road blocks and boarded up building across much of downtown DC on Thursday in a bid to fortify the capital ahead of next week's inauguration The Secret Service will take control of inauguration security preparations from today and road closures are now in effect across parts the downtown Washington DC area until after the inauguration. Further perimeters and additional road closures are expected in the coming days. Access to all roads, parking garages and loading docks - including residential and commercial building - in the White House perimeter will be banned from Thursday morning The joint intelligence bulletin, obtained by the New York Times, said extremists 'may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States'. The warning has been sent out to law enforcement agencies across the country. The FBI has already warned of armed protests being planned in Washington and all 50 state capitals in the run-up to the inauguration, including three separate plots to attack the Capitol. In a call with thousands of police chiefs across the country on Wednesday, the FBI also urged law enforcement to be on high alert for any extremist activity and to share any intelligence they come across. The FBI said it was closely monitoring online activity related to planned plots and extremists but urged local law enforcement to be aware of lone wolf attacks, as well as violence planned by larger groups. Federal authorities warned in the bulletin that extremists have been roused by the death of military veteran Ashli Babbit, who was fatally shot by police after storming the Capitol. The bulletin warned that Babbit's death could be considered 'an act of martyrdom' by some extremists in their plots to target the inauguration. The bulletin said it was possible some extremists and militia groups believed 'violent action is necessary' because there 'is no political solution to address their grievances' given the false narrative of a stolen election that has been peddled by President Trump. The FBI is warning police chiefs across the US to be on 'high alert' for extremist activity because the deadly siege on the Capitol will be a 'significant driver of violence' during Joe Biden's inauguration An unscalable fence has now been erected around the Trump International Hotel just a few blocks away from the White House Workers unload anti-climb fencing near the White House as security intensifies in Washington DC ahead of the inauguration Workers board up the buildings near the White House on Thursday ahead of the inauguration Warnings have also been issued about possible armed protests from the Boogaloo Boys - a movement that aims to start a second Civil War. Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton told NBC's Today that he would be more concerned about lone wolf militant attacks rather than plots involving larger groups. He warned that states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota were at higher risk of local attacks because of the less strict gun laws and militia history. 'I'd be more concerned about what you don't see in terms of serious militant type who'd try to upset this event rather than the large crowds we saw on January 6. But, thankfully the law enforcement officials are united this time,' Bratton said. It comes as the National Guard, who descended on Washington DC in the aftermath of the Capitol siege, were told to prepare for the possibility that those plotting inauguration attacks will be using improvised explosive devices and be heavily armed. The troops were briefed on the IED threats after pipe bombs were uncovered in the aftermath of last week's deadly siege on the US Capitol, sources told Politico. A total of 20,000 National Guardsman have now been authorized to descend on Washington to help safeguard the capital ahead of Biden's inauguration. There are already 6,200 troops on the ground in DC and at least 10,000 will be in place by Saturday. The FBI is warning police chiefs across the US to be on 'high alert' for extremist activity because the deadly siege on the Capitol will be a 'significant driver of violence' during Joe Biden's inauguration. Members of the Military Police are pictured assembling in DC on Thursday morning A member of the Military Police stands besides equipment in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday Members of the Military Police are pictured sleeping in the Dirksen Senate Office on Thursday morning The troops have now been cleared to carry handguns and rifles after previously only been authorized to carry protective equipment. National Guard members operate under strict rules of engagement on the use of force. It is not yet clear how many Guardsman will be armed. The troops, thousands of other law enforcement officers and layers of eight-foot, anti-climb steel fencing are among the reinforcements being used to fortify DC a week out from the inauguration in a bid to protect the capital from any violence. The Secret Service is now in charge of inauguration security preparations with the FBI, National Guard, US Marshals Service, local law enforcement and other federal agencies now falling under their command. The increased security measures are being implemented days earlier than scheduled as a direct result of the Capitol siege and the planned plots subsequently uncovered by authorities. Police vehicles sealed off a huge swath of downtown DC on Wednesday, causing immediate traffic snarls. The public is banned from entering the Capitol grounds and access to the Washington Monument is now prohibited for the next two weeks due to ongoing threats. Starting from Wednesday, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said that anyone inside the inauguration perimeter might be stopped and questioned. From Friday, all parking garages in the downtown restricted zone will be sealed until after the inauguration. 'Clearly we are in uncharted waters,' Bowser said, adding that last week's attack had 'impacted the way we are approaching working with our federal partners in planning for the 59th inauguration'. It comes after law enforcement faced intense scrutiny in the wake of the Capitol siege. While Capitol Police have faced the majority of criticism, it has since emerged that the FBI and DHS did not do a formal threat assessment before the riots despite being aware of potential threats. Starting from Wednesday, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said that anyone inside the inauguration perimeter might be stopped and questioned. Starting Friday, all parking garages in the downtown restricted zone will be sealed until after the inauguration Workers set up barricades surrounding the U.S. Capitol late on Wednesday as additional warnings were sent out by the FBI The National Guard, who descended on Washington DC in the aftermath of the Capitol siege, were told to prepare for the possibility that those plotting inauguration attacks will be using improvised explosive devices and be heavily armed The heightened security comes as it was revealed that extremists are now using the encoded app Telegram to coordinate and plan future attacks, NBC reports. Some are sharing knowledge of how to make, conceal and use homemade guns and bombs in advance of the inauguration. The messages are being posted in Telegram chatrooms where white supremacist content has been freely shared for months, but chatter on these channels has increased since extremists have been forced off other platforms. A US Army field manual and calls to 'shoot politicians' and 'encourage armed struggle' have been posted in a Telegram channel that uses 'fascist' in its name. Facebook has also reported seeing an increase in signals indicating potential acts of violence associated with efforts to contest the result of election since the Capitol siege last week. A company spokeswoman said the Capitol siege appeared to be a galvanizing event, spawning efforts to organize gatherings across the country for multiple dates around the inauguration. Signals Facebook tracked included digital flyers promoting the events, some of them featuring calls to arms or the insignia of militias or hate groups. Facebook has banned content promoting the phrase 'stop the steal,' which has become a rallying cry at armed pro-Trump protests. The company was also blocking searches for 'storm the Capitol' and flagging posts that include those phrases for further review, the spokeswoman said. Authorities have already spoken of three separate plots to attack the Capitol ahead of the inauguration, including an 'organized group' of 4,000 people who are planning to prevent Democrats from entering the Capitol. In a closed-door briefing this week, law enforcement informed lawmakers of that plot and said they are following a published 'rules of engagement' on when to shoot and start taking more serious action. Another protest is being planned in honor of Ashli Babbitt, the USAF veteran who was shot at point blank range by a police officer as she tried to clamber into the Speaker's Lobby during the Trump mob's siege. An FBI internal memo warned of a group that was calling for the 'storming' of state, local and federal government buildings, as well as court houses if Trump is removed from office. It is not yet clear how many other plots law enforcement are already aware of. The Coordination Committee has said that the Syrian Democratic Forces must give up on their ambitions for independence and that talks are underway with the SDC reports Enab Baladi. It has been announced for the first time, that the National Coordination Commission (NCC) has been in negotiations with the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) since March of last year. In an interview with Enab Baladi in December 2020, a member of the Executive Office of the NCC Coordination Committee, Omar Masalma, explained that the failure to announce the dialogue and its details is due to, the efforts of some Syrian, regional, and international parties to obstruct any potential political dialogue between the Syrian forces that could reflect positively on the internal situation. Regarding the negotiations of the NCC for Democratic Change with the SDC, Tariq Abu al-Husn, Deputy General Coordinator at the NCC, said, We have held preliminary talks with the SDC, and we agreed on some national principles, the most important of which is the unity of Syria at the level of the land and the people, and the acceptance of a political solution in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254, as well as forming a democratic national opposition unit in the face of the regime. Abu al-Husn believes that there is a need to involve all components in al-Jazira and the Euphrates in the election of local councils that would manage the affairs pertaining to their daily lives, as we wait for a political solution. He also made clear the existence of a divergence of opinion on foreign military intervention and the management of the oil wealth, which Hassan and the NCC see as belonging to the entire Syrian population. Abu al-Husn indicated that the SDC has slammed the brakes on the negotiations, adding, It seems that they stopped the negotiations to figure out what the positions and orientations of US President-elect Joe Biden will be once he takes office. He also stressed that the NCC thinks the Kurds should shatter their illusion of independence which leads to division, and the formation of a national body independent from Syria should end. Abu al-Husn believes that it is not possible to reach an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) before the departure of non-Syrians and its dissolution and joining the Syrian army at a later stage, which he said was agreed upon with the SDC. Regarding their position on the Russians, Abu al-Husn said, In our dealings, we found that the regime is less of a liar than Russia, which, in turn, is less lying than the United States of America, bearing in mind that the three parties are involved in a single conspiracy to destroy Syria. No regime in Syrias future On the political path that the NCC envisions as a solution to the Syrian conflict, Abu al-Husn said, After the internationalization of the Syrian conflict and the presence of the US, Iran, Turkey, and Russia in Syria, we do not see a political solution to the conflict except through the United Nations, and according to the First Declaration of Geneva and UN Security Council Resolutions 2118 and 2254, which provides for three pillars, which are a transitional governing body, a new constitution, and elections under the supervision of the United Nations. Abu al-Husn believes that Russia tried to operate in parallel to the United Nations with Syria, Iran, and Turkey through 16 meetings in Astana and the Sochi Conference, indicating that Russia said it was on board with Resolution 2254. He attacked Russias work, saying that the Commission believes that the line parallel to the United Nations was conceived to ensure the survival of the regime and the continuation of its plan. According to Abu al-Husn, this does not serve the peace process and the Commission refuses to sign on to it, which is why it did not participate in the meetings. He justified the participation of the NCC in the Constitutional Committee on the grounds that it is a segue to three United Nations pillars. According to Abu al-Husn, the political solution requires talks and agreements between two parties, and that the Commission is keen on establishing a civil democratic national system, which would be made possible by eliminating the current tyranny and corruption and building a unified and modern national democratic state, with the approval of transitional justice and the exit of all foreign military forces from 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. Washington: A day after the House impeached President Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection at the Capitol, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate were developing plans to try the departing president at the same time as they work through the agenda of the incoming one. Democrats, poised to take unified power in Washington next week for the first time in a decade, worked with Republican leaders to find a proposal to allow the Senate to split time between the impeachment trial of Trump and consideration of President-elect Joe Biden's Cabinet nominees and his $US1.9 trillion ($2.44 trillion) economic recovery plan to address the coronavirus. Mitch McConnell could sway the result once he indicates how he will vote. Credit:AP "It's far from ideal, no question," said Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal. But"a dual track is perfectly doable if there is a will to make it happen." He said a trial would be straightforward. BERLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA) begins trial runs of autonomous road sweepers on public roads to make the city-state cleaner and more sustainable. The autonomous compact sweeper "Donner", developed by a consortium led by ENWAY and Bucher Municipal, has passed the Land Transport Authority's approval test for autonomous vehicles for use on public roads. "Donner" is based on Bucher Municipal's fully electric CityCat 2020ev. In cooperation with Nanyang Technological University , Sembwaste Pte Ltd , and Wong Fong Engineering Works (1988) Pte Ltd , the team in Singapore adapted the existing ENWAY technology for use in public domains. The project is part of NEA's ongoing efforts to drive innovation and diffusion of technology and improve the environmental services industry. Autonomous technology for street cleaning can improve productivity in supply operations and optimize road use. The project is supported by The National Robotics Programme Office under the Autonomous Environmental Service Vehicles for Singapore grant. The self-driving sweepers are monitored remotely via a teleoperations center, where cleaning routes and times are determined and adjusted if necessary. During the trial runs, the autonomous sweepers must have a safety driver on board to meet the strict operating protocols. Tests on public roads will be conducted in a progressive manner and progress to regular timings during which the autonomous sweeper cleans parallel to everyday traffic. Find more information about "Donner" in our factsheet , and more information about the project in our video and in the NEA press release . Pictures are available in our press area . About ENWAY ENWAY was founded in Berlin in 2017 and has 35 employees in Berlin and Singapore. The company developed a technology platform for high-precision, autonomous machines, with which sweepers clean streets, factories, or large warehouses independently. The vehicles react dynamically to changes and obstacles. ENWAY cooperates with established companies and integrates its technology for autonomous operation into existing machines. Find more information at enway.ai . Press contact Stefanie Ullrich | Marketing & PR [email protected] T: +49 30 6293 8232 ENWAY GmbH c/o The Drivery GmbH Mariendorfer Damm 1 12099 Berlin, Deutschland ENWAY Pte Ltd 160 Robinson Road #24-09 068914 Singapore SOURCE ENWAY Canberra, Jan 15 : A scientist who led the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine on Friday warned Australia against delaying its rollout. The Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology recently called on the Canberra government to pause its planned rollout of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccines, saying it may not be effective enough to generate herd immunity to the virus, reports Xinhua news agency. In response, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group Andrew Pollard said that the focus should be on the vaccine's ability to prevent serious illness or death from COVID-19 rather than its capacity to stop transmission of the virus. "Having a supply of vaccines today and getting them into people's arms is what will save lives. That to me has got to be the absolute focus," he said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday. "The one hard bit of data we have for all the vaccines is that people who are vaccinated do not end up in hospital from Covid-19 and we've seen that consistently from our trials." The Australian government has agreed to purchase 53.8 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine pending approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). Some experts cited trials of the vaccine that found it was 62 per cent effective at preventing Covid-19, compared to about 95 per cent for vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. Pollard said that the impact of a vaccine could only be determined "when they're in people's arms". "We don't have any possibility of herd immunity without having high levels of vaccine coverage and nowhere in the world has had that happen yet," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly on Wednesday dismissed calls to postpone the rollout, which is set to begin in mid-February. Australia has so far reported 28,658 confirmed coronavirus cases, and the numbers of locally and overseas acquired cases in the last 24 hours were zero and 10 respectively, according to the latest figures updated by the Department of Health. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text As a performance poet, Kae Tempest knows how words can be sparks that ignite the fuse of fellow feeling. This finely crafted, deeply thoughtful essay examines creativity as an electrical current that connects the atomised individual with the larger whole. The dynamics of this process are dramatically felt every time Tempest steps on to the stage to perform. When the connection is made, everything is linked and moving towards a moment of mutual feeling ... that binds the entire room into a unified present. With searing honesty about personal struggles and failings, Tempest cuts through the ego-driven aspects of artistic creation to excavate what Jung calls the spirit of the depths beneath the spirit of the times. Connection happens, Tempest says, when I get myself out of the way. There is a certain slyness to the subtitle What Australia Can Learn From New Zealand of this fascinating essay. While it implies that we should be taking a leaf out of our neighbours playbook, Laura Tingle is often pointing especially regarding economic deregulation to how we can learn from New Zealands mistakes. The irony is that both countries have managed largely to ignore each others trajectories while living side-by-side. How many of us know there is a section of our constitution that refers to New Zealand as a potential state in the new federation, or that we have the closest economic relationship of any two countries on earth? And, of course, we do have much to learn from the Kiwis, from how to re-address the impact of colonisation on Indigenous people to greater civility in politics. A Cry From the Far Middle P. J. ORourke Grove Press, $29.99 Credit: When political satirists start calling for an end to polarisation, you know things have gotten dire. In the introduction to this collection of opinion pieces, P. J. ORourke argues for extreme moderation ... Lets bring the Wishy and the Washy back together, along with the Namby and the Pamby. This is all good fun but there is a kneejerk quality to his reactions in many of the essays as he wheels out the standard banes of the libertarian right climate change activism, regulation, wokeness, political incorrectness, tolerance and caricatures them ad absurdum. At his best, hes neither left nor right, casting a wry eye over the idea of America itself. Of the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness he remarks, We are a pursuit without a purpose. Always on the go with no idea where. Out of Copley Street Geoff Goodfellow Wakefield Press, $24.99 A law student who suffered serious back injuries in a road accident in Co. Dublin has lost his High Court damages action. Mr Justice Bernard Barton found James Thomas Ian Smith, now aged 22, had failed to prove liability on the part of Gerard Hanaphy, a taxi driver, over the accident at Stockhole Lane, Cloughran, Co. Dublin, three years ago. Having assessed the evidence, the judge concluded the sole responsibility for the cause of the accident rested with Mr Smith for negligent driving on his part. Mr Smith, of Screeby Road, Fivemiletown, Co. Tyrone, who is studying law at Manchester University, sued Mr Hanaphy as a result of the accident. In his recently published judgment, the judge noted both parties had agreed Mr Smith had suffered serious back injuries although he had made a good recovery. The night of the accident He said the accident happened when both men were driving in opposite directions along an unlit country road, with which Mr Smith was unfamiliar. Driving conditions were poor, it was dark and the road surface was wet. The judge said Mr Smiths Vauxhall Astra car collided with the Skoda Octavia car being driven by Mr Hanaphy, who was driving home having dropped off a fare earlier, on an S-bend and came to rest proximate to, or slightly on, the grass verge of the carriageway on which Mr Hanaphy was travelling. Gardai were called to the scene and both drivers were breathalyzed with negative results. Neither driver had accused the other of driving too fast but both maintained they were on their correct side of the road when the collision occurred. Mr Smiths evidence was that, as he approached the bend at 25-30km an hour, he was keeping tight to his left hand side of the road when a car suddenly appeared from the other direction, straddling a continuous white line on the crown of the road, and collided with him. Mr Hanaphys evidence was that he was very familiar with the road, had just come out of one bend and was going into another when the lights of a car coming in the opposite direction suddenly appeared and there was a collision. Both men said they had no time to brake or swerve. The judge's ruling Having observed both men giving evidence, the judge said he had no doubt each truly believed he was at all times on the correct side of the road. That could not be correct and one or the other, or both, are mistaken, he said. Having regard to factors including engineering evidence, the damage to the front of the cars and the rest location of the cars, the judge found both men were mistaken in their evidence as to where they thought the collision occurred. He held it occurred much further around the bend and also held the most likely point of impact of the two vehicles was on the defendants side of the road. He concluded the cause of the accident rested with Mr Smith for what was, in all the circumstances of the case, negligent driving on his part. Because Mr Smith had failed to prove his case on the balance of probabilities, and had failed to establish liability on the part of Mr Hanaphy, the damages issues did not arise, the judge said. Formal orders arising from the judgment will be made on a later date. No more confusion over Baijius English translation By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-01-15 10:41 The Chinese General Administration of Customs agreed to change the English terminology of Chinese liquor in the Customs catalog to Chinese Baijiu, announced the China Liquor Industry Association. Instead of Chinese distilled spirits in previous catalogs, the 2021 Import and Export Tariffs of the People's Republic of China, implemented on January 1, adopted Chinese Baijiu for the category. Alcoholic beverages can be classified into three categories: beer, distilled spirits or liquor, and wine. Distilled spirits are divided into varieties like Chinese liquor, whiskey, vodka, brandy and rum. Therefore, in the past, Chinese liquor was often literally translated as "Chinese distilled spirits". Other translations like "liqueur","liquor" and "spirit" are also not standardized. In the College English Test Band 4 in September 2020, students were required to translate a sentence meaning Moutai is the best Chinese liquor. Various translations of Moutai, like white water","white beer" and "white wine", were given. Therefore, the officially named Chinese Baijiu has caused a sensation among those examinees, who will now know how to translate the most famous Chinese distilled spirit into English We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. This includes cookies from third party social media websites and ad networks. Such third party cookies may track your use on Sharedots sites for better rendering. Our partners use cookies to ensure we show you advertising that is relevant to you. If you continue without changing your settings, we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on Sharedots website. However, you can change your cookie settings at any time. Learn more Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. SCHODACK Two people were killed at an Angelo Drive home Wednesday night by an assailant who then took his own life, State Police said. The 57-year-old homeowner, Bhupinder Singh, shot and killed his mother-in-law, Manjeet Kaur, 55, and his daughter, Jasleen Kaur, 14, county law enforcement sources said Thursday. His wife, Rashpal Kaur, 40, suffered wounds to her arm but survived, and investigators were waiting to speak to her at Albany Medical Center Hospital on Thursday. Related: Three fathers allegedly murdered their families. What drove them to kill? The violence at 1313 Angelo Drive happened before 9:15 p.m. Wednesday, the time when ambulances were called in to assist. Residents estimated the shooting may have occurred at 8:45 p.m. The home is near the entrance to the dead-end street at the intersection of Angelo Drive and Sand Road. The house backs up to Interstate 90 and is between exits 11 and 12. Residents described the neighborhood as quiet. An official familiar with the case said Rashpal Kaur sought help from neighbors after fleeing the house, bleeding from her wound. Jim Lundstrom, who lives next door to the house where the shootings took place, said he was lying in bed at around 9 p.m. when he heard his doorbell ring for about a minute without pause. The person outside had kept their finger on the doorbell, and as Lundstrom got up to see who it was, he heard a piercing scream outside his home: Help me! Help me! We live on a dead end street, so the only people who come up here are the people who live here, Lundstrom said. Ive lived here for 27 years. Nobodys rang my doorbell constantly holding on like that. So my first reaction was, Somethings wrong with somebody. When Lundstrom checked outside his window, he saw someone walk away from his home and stumble their way up the street to another house. He opened his door, turned on the front porch light and looked down at his driveway. There was blood everywhere, Lundstrom said. Rashpal Kaur proceeded to walk up the street, visiting two or three other residences to seek help. An ambulance was dispatched to a home four houses away from the shooting scene. Lundstrom called police, and around 10 or 15 minutes later, police vehicles from several agencies filled Angelo Drive, he said. Police at the scene advised arriving emergency crews from the Castleton Ambulance Squad and Mohawk Ambulance that there were three shooting victims and two handguns at 1313 Angelo Drive. The surviving shooting victim was up the street, where a Mohawk Ambulance with advanced life support equipment was sent. The street would remain a crime scene throughout the night as officers gathered information from neighbors. Lundstrom said officers could trace which houses Rashpal Kaur had knocked on by following the trail of blood she left while crisscrossing homes and driveways in the neighborhood, seeking help. Lundstrom and other neighbors said she eventually collapsed on the street before an ambulance arrived. On Thursday afternoon, one home four houses down from the crime scene still had blood on its front doorsteps. Lundstrom said he heard no gunshots, but he did wake up to the sight of a bullet hole on his neighbors home, which he could see from his house as he stood outside on Thursday morning, still reeling from the nights events. Lundstrom said the homeowner's wife visited him and his wife three times in 2020 to talk about problems shed been having with her husband. Shed come here and say, I dont have any food, or, He doesnt let me go anywhere, or, I cant drive my car, Lundstrom said, adding that there was likely domestic violence involved. Rashpal Kaur, neighbors said, would often walk up and down the street. Neighbors said she is a nice person who had said she didn't have a driver's license and complained she couldn't leave home. They said she had asked for assistance in getting a learner's permit. In 2017, Singh was acquitted of third-degree rape in a weeklong Rensselaer County Court trial. Singh said at the trial that he had lost business, money and respect in my community without reason. Troopers had said in December 2016 that the victim of the alleged rape was physically helpless, unable to consent to sexual contact and that Singh was acquainted with the woman. Neighbors said Jasleen, the couple's daughter, attended Schodack schools. The school district delayed the start of high school and junior high classes Thursday to allow crisis counselors to meet with students and staff. "She was a pretty little girl," said Donna Conlin, who lives across the street from 1313 Angelo Drive and is a retired Schodack town clerk. Singh, who had lived in the neighborhood for eight or nine years, didn't interact much with his Angelo Drive neighbors, and Lundstrom said this was his second marriage and that the homeowner rarely made eye contact and was "not friendly." "He kept pretty much to himself," Conlin said. Singh was the owner of Pit Stop 66 in Hudson, a beverage store. A worker there on Thursday morning, who asked to not be identified, said they learned about what happened at the residence through a customer. The worker said other employees were confused and concerned about the shooting, but added that Singh had been a good boss. On the driveway of where the shooting took place, the license plate of a black BMW X5 read, PITSTOP6. Jasleen's death was felt throughout the Schodack school community. "It is with deep sadness and regret that we inform you of the passing of one of our students in the Jr./Sr. High School," the district wrote on its website. "As you can imagine, our initial reaction was one of shock and disbelief. All of us are still struggling to make sense of this tragedy and the sudden loss of such a bright young woman." Superintendent Jason Chevrier said in a statement that "words cannot express the shock, pain and grief that we are feeling at this time. All of us are struggling to make sense of this loss of such a bright young life." Rensselaer County took the added step of offering assistance through its Mental Health Office to those affected by the shooting, especially those in the immediate neighborhood, officials said. The county's Office of Mental Health can be reached at 516-270-2800 or through the Mental Health Crisis Unit at 518-292-5499. Officials said all calls will be kept confidential. State Police said they will continue to investigate the shooting. 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. ADVERTISEMENT A High Court in Rivers State has moved to sequester the assets of the countrys premier lender FirstBank of Nigeria Limited in an effort to recover the damages oil major Royal Dutch Shell owed the Ejama Ebubu community of Rivers State in a legal contest spanning many decades, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Police operatives and court officials arrived the banks main branch in Port Harcourt on Tuesday to execute an order to seize the lenders asset. The bank said the incident leading to the confiscation of its properties was unjustified, illegal and a reckless misuse of the machinery of justice, FirstBank said in a statement quoted by Bloomberg. It said the confiscation disregarded an interim court ruling Shell secured in December, forbidding the lender from paying out any money in settling the judgement debt and restraining the Ejama Ebubu community from moving to force FirstBank to do so. A representative of First Bank told PREMIUM TIMES the bank has filed a motion to nullify the verdict authorising the seizure of its property. Decades-long battle Lagos-headquartered FirstBank resolved to guarantee the damages awarded against Shell by a Rivers State high court judge a decade ago. According to the estimation of a court last year, the damages and the accrued interest came to $479 million (N183 billion). Shell has been embroiled in an enduring lawsuit with Rivers State community, which in 2010 sought several millions of dollars in damages against the firm for environmental pollution. Ejama Ebubu has won many appeals instituted by Shell including a November 30 verdict rendered by the Supreme Court, upholding the 2010 ruling. The knotty legal wrangle is a product of an oil spill incident, half a century old, reaching back to 1970, when a mishap at a Shell oil extraction facility caused thousands of barrels of crude to spill into the sea. That accident brought a major disaster to ocean life with fishes dying in their numbers and severely disrupting fishing, a popular for locals. ALSO READ: First Bank donates N1 billion to fight Coronavirus The November ruling implies the coast is clear for enforcement of the judgment of 2010, said Lucius Nwosu, one of the communitys lawyers. First Bank will not honour their guarantee because they, at their own peril, failed to get a cash backing from Shell before they issued the guarantee, he added. Mr Nwosu said neither Shells interim court ruling nor First Banks pending motion could override the decision of the apex court. Shell has not taken responsibility for the incident, which it blamed on third parties during the Nigerian civil war that ran from 1967 to 1970, adding that a clean-up had been implemented in the polluted area. It is unfortunate that the judicial proceedings in this case have for so long focused on procedural issues and not on the merits of the case. Any attempt to claim payment should not be allowed because of other similar ongoing proceedings () We have always maintained that we are ready to defend this case on the basis of the facts available, the oil major said in November. Federal law enforcement officials Thursday say they have taken into custody a man seen in widely distributed pictures carrying a large Confederate flag during last week's siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Justice Department officials confirmed Kevin Seefried, along with his son, Hunter, turned themselves into the U.S. Marshalls Service in Wilmington, Delaware, about 174 kilometers northeast of Washington. Published reports say both Seefrieds will be charged with misdemeanor accounts of trespassing and disorderly conduct, while Hunter Seefried has also been charged with destruction of property. The FBI had distributed a bulletin via social media and elsewhere seeking information about Seefried, featuring four pictures in which he can be seen walking the halls of the Capitol carrying a large Confederate flag, which goes back to the American Civil War between the North and the South in the 1860s, but has come, in modern times, to represent white supremacy. Author and Civil War historian John Reeves says the flag known today as the Confederate flag was known as the Rebel battle flag during the war, and was a call to arms for the South, while a sign of treason for the those in the North. Reeves said the flag reemerged during the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s as sign of opposition to efforts to abolish segregation and ensure voting rights for African Americans. He said it is common to see white supremacists carry it at rallies. Reeves said many in the southern United States have argued the flag is simply a symbol of their heritage, but Black Americans have always known exactly what it stands for. One of the countrys most powerful labor unions is urging the incoming Biden administration to quickly fire the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, a potentially precedent-setting move that labor groups argue is necessary to protect worker rights. Peter Robb, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the GOP Senate, has 10 months left in his term as the labor boards quasi-prosecutor. The general counsel plays a crucial role in shaping U.S. labor policy, pursuing cases and setting rules that can determine how easy or difficult it is for workers to bargain collectively. The 2-million-member Service Employees International Union sent a memo to President-elect Joe Bidens transition team in late December making the legal and moral case for sacking Robb, calling him an extreme, anti-union ideologue and a uniquely destructive figure in labor relations, according to a copy of the memo provided to HuffPost. On Friday, union activists plan to take their call to fire Robb public. The Fight for $15 campaign in fast food, which was spearheaded by SEIU, has organized a one-day strike at McDonalds restaurants in several cities to coincide with the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Firing Robb is expected to be a central theme of those protests. The general counsel of the NLRB may be an obscure official to most Americans, but what Biden chooses to do about Robb could be a bellwether for how he governs as a consensus-making moderate who wants to play nice with Republicans, or as a hard-nosed progressive who wants to deliver for labor unions and other allies. SEIU supported Bidens candidacy and campaigned for him on the ground in crucial swing states like Michigan. Bloomberg Law reported in November that worker advocacy groups were hatching a pressure campaign aimed at getting Biden to fire Robb. Since then, SEIU has circulated memos not just to transition officials but to other allies in the labor movement arguing for Robbs removal. Story continues Terrence Wise, a Fight for $15 leader and McDonalds worker from Kansas City, Missouri, said Biden should not hesitate to oust Robb. The NLRB is supposed to be there to help workers get a union. That hasnt been the case. [Robb] has led the fight against unionization, Wise said. Fast-food workers protest outside of a McDonald's in Los Angeles on May 24, 2017, as part of the Fight for $15 movement. Fight for $15 is calling on President-elect Joe Biden to fire the NRLB's general counsel, Peter Robb. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson / Reuters) The NLRB is an independent agency that referees disputes between employers and unions, with a five-member board that decides important cases, kind of like a supreme court. The general counsel, who is separate from that board, is supposed to investigate and prosecute cases where employers or unions run afoul of the law, and to manage the work of the agencys field offices. The general counsel serves a 4-year term and is not normally fired when a new president takes office, even from a different political party. Robbs term is scheduled to end in November 2021. Firing him instead would allow Biden to install a new general counsel more friendly to workers and unions right away. GOP-appointed general counsels have historically favored businesses over unions, but labor groups argue that Robb has been egregiously anti-labor. SEIU and other unions were furious over his handling of the NLRBs case against McDonalds. The general counsel under Trumps predecessor, Barack Obama, had brought a case against the fast-food giant alleging it had retaliated against workers with the Fight for $15; after Robb took over, he reached a settlement with McDonalds determining that the company wasnt on the hook for labor violations alongside franchisees. A judge initially rejected the settlement, saying it left franchisees with no real obligations to do anything. Since then, Robb has gone after so-called neutrality agreements between unions and employers that make it easier for workers to organize. And he has recently taken on Scabby the Rat, the labor-dispute protest icon beloved by unions and progressives. Robb apparently hates the rat and wants to ban its use as unlawfully coercive. The board has asked the public to submit briefs on the issue and could hand down a decision that takes the air out of Scabby. Created in Chicago nearly 30 years ago, Scabby, the giant inflatable union protest rat that has become a fixture at picket lines, may be banned by new labor board rulings. (Photo: Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) Mary Kay Henry, the president of SEIU, said in an interview that Robbs handling of the McDonalds case shows he has done and will continue to do enormous damage to working people in the coming months. She said she has recommended he be fired in conversations with Biden transition staff. A spokesperson for the NLRB said the agency declined to comment. Aside from SEIU, no other national unions appear to be making public calls for Robbs ouster. But a source close to the AFL-CIO, a federation of 55 unions that does not include SEIU, said it supports the idea of booting Robb. A spokesperson for the Biden transition did not respond to an email seeking comment. The results of the special Senate elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 have likely only firmed up SEIUs conviction that Robb should be fired. With a Democratic majority in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans will have a harder time stonewalling the nomination of a new, Democratic general counsel or other nominations to the NLRB. The main danger is that such a move would establish a new precedent and that a future Republican president in Bidens shoes would oust a Democrat before their term ends in favor of someone who is anti-union. Those who support firing Robb might argue that Democrats should not observe hitherto political norms under the expectation that Republicans will pay them the same courtesy when they regain power. Trump has smashed one standard after another as other GOP leaders stood by, and McConnell has been ruthless in reshaping the Supreme Court to conservative ends. Henry argued the new administration shouldnt fret about setting a precedent. I think that working people are in the depths of a crisis. I think action is required, she said. This questioning about norms doesnt deal with what weve lived through in the last 40 years in his country, where norms around working people have been eroded steadily. I think that working people are in the depths of a crisis. I think action is required. Mary Kay Henry, president, SEIU With most of another year left in his term, unions fear Robb could do more damage to their cause, especially with a 3-1 Republican majority remaining on the board. One seat is currently open, and the next vacancy comes up in August. If Robb is permitted to stay on, SEIUs general counsel, Nicole Berner, wrote in a memo, he will help that majority continue their anti-worker project through November 2021 when his own term expires, and beyond, when the Board still will be able to decide pending cases from his tenure. Brandon Magner, a union-side attorney, recently wrote on his substack Labor Law Lite that a presidents ability to fire the NLRB general counsel appears clear. Appointees to the five-member board can only be hooked for malfeasance or neglect of duty under the law, but no such stricture applies to the general counsel. Saying the labor movement was in a crisis, Magner concluded that Biden shouldnt be able to stand having Peter Robb serve a second longer than necessary. Wise, the McDonalds worker, agreed with that assessment, comparing Robbs tenure to the fox guarding the chicken coop. Thats why were calling on the Biden administration and I would say the first day, not the first 100 days to get rid of this guy, he said. This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated. CLEVELAND, Ohio The office building connected to the famous Agora Theatre in Clevelands Midtown neighborhood has new owners who plan to convert some of the rambling building into apartments. Asaf Gishron of the Hungary-based Sabor Group confirmed that the company and a firm in Geauga County now control the Euclid Avenue building, which is about 90 percent filled with tenants. The new owners plan to keep much of the office space while adding new living units. Gishron, who handles the Sabor Groups real estate projects in Cleveland, said he sees Midtown as a neighborhood with potential for growth in the coming years. It will take time with Midtown, and we decided to go for it, Gishron said of the purchase in an interview Thursday from his home in Israel. Cuyahoga County property records show that Agora RS Partners LLC bought the four-story building and parking lot from an affiliate of the Cleveland-based Hemingway Development on Jan. 4 for $1.7 million. The new ownership company is a partnership between Sabor Group and Renew Partners of Chardon. The sale does not include the theater, which re-opened in 2018 after massive renovations and almost immediately became a prime concert venue for mid-sized touring acts. The Los Angeles-based promoter AEG Presents owns the concert venue. The MidTown Cleveland development corporation acquired the office building, which had fallen in disrepair and was mostly vacant, in 2011 from the LoConti family. The family, which donated the property made it the new home for the Agora in the mid-1980s after a fire damaged the original location. The development corporation, which also has its offices there, partnered with Hemingway and renovated the building to offer space to startups. Jim Doyle of Hemingway said he and his business partners were proud of their work to revitalize the building. He said they sold it because it made financial sense, and some of his business partners including longtime Cleveland developer Fred Geis were looking to shrink their portfolios as they neared or entered retirement. We filled up the building with a good list of quality tenants, Doyle said. Weve done that for more than 10 years. Its in fresh hands that are glad to take that complex to another level. Sabor Group had the building under contract in 2019, but the pandemic slowed down the sales completion, Gishron said. MidTown Executive Director Jeff Epstein said in a text that the organization supported the sale. Gishron said his team met with LDA Architects on Thursday to discuss how to renovate the building in the coming years. He said the complex is already on the National Register of Historic Places and plans to seek tax credits to take advantage of the designation. Sabor Group, which was started in 1997 by developer Georgette Avruch in Budapest, has started to work in the city in recent years. It is behind the Offset Lofts on Euclid Avenue, turning an old industrial building in the 3800 block of Euclid Avenue into a dozen apartments. It also undertook projects in Detroit, and the company has more Cleveland deals in the works, Gishron said. The deal to buy the Agora appears to be the first Cleveland project for Renew Partners, though not in Northeast Ohio. The company is behind renovations the old village hall in Mentor, the Historic Chardon Post office and a historic Ashtabula hotel. Gishron, who is Avruchs son-in-law, said he met Charlie Borsukoff of Renew while working on another project. Borsukoff also runs JCI Contractors. He said he was interested in working with the Chardon firm because it developed projects involving historic tax credits. He said he plans to travel to Cleveland on Feb. 1, after receiving the second dose of the coronavirus vaccine. I think weve got a good crew over there, Gishron said. Were looking for a bright future in Cleveland. Diversified on Friday said it has registered interest to seek COVID-19 vaccines for its employees, as per priorities and sequence to be specified by the government. The farm equipment-to-aerospace conglomerate said it would take the responsibility for the inoculation of its rather than have the government subsidise them. "We have registered our interest to seek vaccines for our employees, in accordance with the priorities and sequence to be specified by the government," a spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson further said, "We believe it is our duty to take responsibility for the inoculation of our employees, rather than have the government subsidise them." India is all set to roll out the world's biggest vaccination programme on Saturday with over 3 lakh healthcare workers to be inoculated on the first day of the much-anticipated drive against coronavirus. The vaccination drive has been planned in a phased manner, identifying priority groups. Healthcare workers, both in government and private sectors including ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) workers, will receive the vaccine during this phase, according to the health ministry. has presence in over 100 countries, employing over 2.5 lakh people. (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.) Key Companies Covered in Ultrasonic Cleaning Equipment Market Research Report Are SharperTek (Michigan, United States), Mettler Electronics Corp. (California, United States), L&R Manufacturing (New Jersey, United States), Elma Schmidbauer GmbH (Singen, Germany), Luneau Technology Group (Pont-de-l'Arche, France), Steelco S.p.A. (Treviso, Italy), Emerson Electric Co. (Missouri, United States), GT Sonic (Shenzhen, China), Kemet International Limited (Maidstone, United Kingdom), Crest Ultrasonics Corporation. (New Jersey, United States), Blue Wave Ultrasonics (Iowa, United States). Pune, Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global ultrasonic cleaning equipment market size is expected to gain momentum by reaching USD 783.1 million by 2027. This is attributable to the rising aerospace industry and the increasing adoption of Industry 4.0 to speed-up the industrial processes that is driving the demand for advanced ultrasonic cleaning equipment globally. Fortune Business Insights, published this information, in its latest report, titled, Ultrasonic Cleaning Equipment Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Type (Standalone, Benchtop, Multistage), By Application (Automotive, Healthcare, Electrical & Electronics, Aerospace & Defense and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2020-2027. The report further observes that the market stood at USD 604.8 million in 2019 and is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 3.3% between 2020 and 2027. Click here to get the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this market. Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/ultrasonic-cleaning-equipment-market-104501 Suspension of Industrial Activities amid COVID-19 to Lead to Market Lull Several countries have halted their industrial operations on account of orders received from the government agencies to limit the widespread effects of the global pandemic. With every industrial application, either suspended or completely stopped, the market is likely to experience turbulent times in the near future. However, once the industrial operations resume, the demand for machine cleaning equipment is projected to gain traction in the forthcoming years. Story continues Ultrasonic cleaning equipment is a type of machine that adopts cavitation bubbles induced with the aid of high-frequency sound waves to agitate liquid surfaces. The agitation enables a high force to remove contaminants such as oils, pigments, dirt, and chemical products from substrates that include glass, metals, rubber, plastics, and ceramics, among others. Request a Sample Copy of Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/ultrasonic-cleaning-equipment-market-104501 What does the Report Include? The market report includes a thorough analysis of several factors such as the key drivers and restraints that will impact market growth. In addition to this, it provides insights into the regional analysis that covers different regions, which are contributing to the market growth in the forthcoming years. It further includes the competitive landscape that focuses on leading players and the adoption of strategies by them to announce partnerships, introduce new products, and collaboration that will further contribute to the growth of the market between 2020 and 2027. Moreover, the research analyst has adopted several research methodologies such as PESTEL analysis to extract information about the current trends and industry developments that will drive the market growth during the forecast period. DRIVING FACTORS Increasing Adoption of Industry 4.0 to Surge Demand Owing to several technological advancements, and the surging demand for efficiency and accuracy across industrial applications is propelling the manufacturers to adopt Industry 4.0 solutions. The increasing adoption of additive manufacturing expedites the accurate monitoring and optimization of this type of cleaning equipment. Additionally, the rising aerospace industry presents a lucrative opportunity for companies to develop advanced precision cleaning equipment. For instance, the aerospace industry requires ultrasonic cleaning equipment solutions to eliminate fracturing of landing gears owing to trapped water that may avert a major mishap. SEGMENTATION Healthcare Segment to Hold Highest Market Share The healthcare segment, based on application, is expected to showcase significant growth backed by the increasing focus on developing healthcare infrastructure that requires advanced ultrasonic cleaner for proper maintenance of high-end medical devices. Ask for Customization: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/ultrasonic-cleaning-equipment-market-104501 REGIONAL INSIGHTS Increasing Focus on Development of Healthcare Infrastructure in North America to Aid Growth Among all the regions, North America is expected to be at the forefront and hold the highest position in the global market in the forthcoming years. This is ascribable to factors such as the increasing focus on developing advanced healthcare infrastructure that propels the demand for efficient ultrasonic cleaning equipment in the region. North America stood at USD 248.4 million in 2019. The market in Asia-Pacific is expected to gain momentum backed by the presence of mid and small-sized cleaning solvent vendors that are developing advanced ultrasonic cleaning equipment solutions in the region between 2020 and 2027. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE Eminent Companies Investing in R&D to Develop Advanced Cleaning Solutions The global ultrasonic cleaning equipment market is fragmented by the presence of major players that are adopting organic and inorganic strategies to maintain their stronghold. These companies are investing in R&D activities to develop advanced ultrasonic cleaning machine to cater to the growing demand across industrial applications. Industry Development: January 2020 Guyson International, a leading U.K.-based industrial finishing equipment manufacturer, announced the launch of its extensive range of benchtop ultrasonic cleaning equipment. According to the company, the ultrasonic bath range offers reliable, powerful, and affordable solutions that are ideal for workshops or laboratories, wherein precision cleaning is required. List of the Companies Operating in the Ultrasonic Cleaning Equipment Market: SharperTek (Michigan, United States) Mettler Electronics Corp. (California, United States) L&R Manufacturing (New Jersey, United States) Elma Schmidbauer GmbH (Singen, Germany) Luneau Technology Group (Pont-de-l'Arche, France) Steelco S.p.A. (Treviso, Italy) Emerson Electric Co. (Missouri, United States) GT Sonic (Shenzhen, China) Kemet International Limited (Maidstone, United Kingdom) Crest Ultrasonics Corporation. (New Jersey, United States) Blue Wave Ultrasonics (Iowa, United States Quick Buy- Ultrasonic Cleaning Equipment Market: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/104501 Major Table of Content: Introduction Definition, By Segment Research Approach Sources Executive Summary Market Dynamics Macro and Micro Economic Indicators Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities and Trends Impact of COVID-19 Short-term Impact Long-term Impact Competition Landscape Business Strategies Adopted by Key Players Consolidated SWOT Analysis of Key Players Porters Five Force Analysis Global Ultrasonic Cleaning Equipment Market Share Analysis and Matrix, 2019 Key Market Insights and Strategic Recommendations Profiles of Key Players (Would be provided for 10 players only) Overview Key Management Headquarters etc. Offerings/Business Segments Key Details (Key details are subjected to data availability in public domain and/or on paid databases) Employee Size Key Financials Past and Current Revenue Gross Margin Geographical Share Business Segment Share Recent Developments Primary Interview Responses Annexure / Appendix Global Ultrasonic Cleaning Equipment Market Size Estimates and Forecasts (Quantitative Data), By Segments, 2016-2027 By Type (Value) Standalone Benchtop Multistage By Application (Value) Automotive Healthcare Electrical & Electronics Aerospace & Defence Others By Region (Value) North America South America Europe Middle East and Africa Asia Pacific TOC Continued.. Speak To Our Analyst- https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/ultrasonic-cleaning-equipment-market-104501 Have a Look at Related Research Insights: Forklift Trucks Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Class I, Class II, Class III, Class IV, Class V), By Application (Mining, Logistics, Construction, Food & Beverage, Natural Resources, Manufacturing, Others (Agriculture, etc.)) and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026 Dump Trucks Market Size, Share and Industry Analysis By Type (Articulated, Rigid), By End Use Application (Mining, Construction, Waste Management, Others) and Regional Forecast 2019-2026 Cranes Market Size, Share and Industry Analysis By Product Type (Mobile, Fixed, Marine), By End-User Industry (Construction, Mining, Industrial, Oil & Gas, Others) and Regional Forecast 2019-2026 Construction Equipment Market Size, Share and COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Equipment Type (Earthmoving Equipment, Material Handling Equipment & Cranes, Concrete Equipment, Road Building Equipment, Civil Engineering Equipment, Crushing and Screening Equipment and Other Equipment), By Application (Residential, Commercial & Industrial) and Regional Forecast, 2020-2027 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 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 Read Press Release https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/press-release/global-ultrasonic-cleaning-equipment-market-10358 'There will be consequences on farm protests': Sharad Pawar warns Centre India oi-Deepika S Mumbai, Jan 16: It was required of any sensible government to understand the sentiments of farmers agitating against the Centre's new laws, but it didn't happen and so there will be consequences of the same, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said on Friday. Speaking to reporters in Mumbai, Pawar also said it will be "strange" if governors of states take part in a mass contact campaign for collecting funds for Ram temple construction in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya. Pawar said he "does not take seriously" the issue of renaming cities like Aurangabad or Osmanabad, but added there was no discord in Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) constituents Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress on it. Farmers Protest: Govt will present its side before SC panel, says Tomar Farmers have been protesting near Delhi border seeking withdrawal of the Centre's three new farm laws. "The farmers are protesting in such cold. Protesters have occupied a 5 kilometre stretch. They are firm on their demands. It was required of any sensible government to understand the sentiments of the farmers. But it didn't happen, so there will be consequences of the same," Pawar said. On a query on the mass contact programme for seeking funds for Ram temple construction, Pawar said it is the right of any organisation to seek funds. "But I have heard, I don't know how far it is true, that governors of states are also taking part in it. If that news is true, then it is strange," Pawar said, without naming anyone. The former Union minister said a governor holds a key post and belongs to the state and all its people. "It would be a sign of being sensible for them (governors) to keep away from such issues on which people held opposite views," he added. On the issue of renaming Aurangabad and Osmanabad cities, Pawar said he does not look at it seriously. "There is no discord among us. You call it Aurangabad, Dharashiv or call it by any other name. I don't look at this issue seriously. Hence, I have not commented on this," he added. Rahul Gandhi leads Congress protest in support of agitating farmers The Shiv Sena has been pitching for renaming Aurangabad and Osmanabad as Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv respectively. The Congress had earlier expressed its opposition to renaming Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar. 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. BARRY COUNTY, MI - A curious puppy led a Michigan Department of Natural Resources conservation officer to an out-of-state hunter who allegedly took two deer illegally, according to a law enforcement report. Conservation Officer Richard Cardenas was in Barry County recently when he saw an ORV with what appeared to be two hunters taking a deer back to a home. He pulled into the homes driveway. While he waited to talk to the hunters, Cardenas said he saw a puppy walk into a pole barn on the property and come back out carrying a deer leg in its mouth, the report said. After talking with the hunters, the officer learned that the person who killed the deer he saw on the ORV was from out of state, and did not have a Michigan hunting license. The puppy reappeared and led CO Cardenas to a trash bag with additional antlered deer parts inside of it, the report said. After some more questioning, it was found that the suspect had hunted and harvested a deer during the archery season as well. The DNR is seeking multiple charges against the hunter through the Barry County Prosecutors Office. READ MORE DNR offers accelerated conservation officer training academy for first time DNR to hire 1,200 seasonal employees to work at Michigan state parks President Donald Trump's second impeachment, on his way out from office, comes as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has continued to speak out about Trumps legacy, particularly the US leader's maximum pressure policy against Iran. Speaking Jan. 13 on the anniversary of when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, fled the country for good, Rouhani said that the shah's departure marked the end of colonialism in Iran and that Trumps departure marks the end of another dictator in America. Rouhani said Trumps election loss is not just the transfer of one government to another but shows that bullying, racism and trampling laws does not have a good end. Rouhani added that during the last three years the Trump administration tried to collapse Irans government and that Trumps exit marks the end of a policy Rouhani referred to as economic terrorism. Rouhani said that despite all the pressure on Tehran from US sanctions and having to deal with the coronavirus, Iran has had positive economic growth the last six months. While some countries in the Middle East will be sad to see Trumps presidency come to an end, Iran is looking forward to a Biden administration that has stated its desire to reenter the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Trump exited the deal and reapplied sanctions, preventing Iran from selling oil and conducting financial transactions with countries in Europe and Asia. The United States also sanctioned numerous entities in Iran. Most recently the United States announced sanctions against Mohammad Mokhber, the head of the Executive Headquarters of Imams Directives and Barkat Ventures, where the Iranian vaccine for COVID-19 is being developed. Iranian media referred to this latest penalty as a sanction on the Iranian coronavirus vaccine. Trumps maximum pressure also included his orders to assassinate Irans Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. While the assassination nearly led to a broader war, Iran is trying to pursue a legal angle. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said an arrest warrant for Trump will be pursued by the Foreign Ministry and other institutions. While Iran knows that no such thing will ever happen, the country is under severe pressure to respond. Shortly after the assassination, Iran launched missiles at a US base in Iraq. While the missiles caused severe damage, no US troops were killed in the attack. While members of the Rouhani administration will be happy to see Trump go, conservative politicians have felt vindicated that their viewpoint on the United States was the more accurate one. Conservative Iranian politicians also took pleasure in covering the chaos in the United States, most recently after the Capitol riots and the calling in of the National Guard to protect the inauguration. Vatan-e Emrooz newspapers top story above the fold showed a picture of the sleeping national guardsmen using a headline with a double meaning, Goodnight America. 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 Snapchat, one of the country's leading social media platforms, recently announced that it has permanently banned President Donald Trump. Snapchat Permanently Banned Trump from its Platform Just one week after Snapchat indefinitely suspends Trump's account, the social media platform is now permanently banning the president. The suspension came a week after Trump supporters riot at the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop President-elect Joe Biden's certification. Five people died amid the storming of the U.S. Capitol. In an official statement released through USA Today, Snapchat said: "In the interest of public safety, and based on his attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incite violence, which are clear violations of our guidelines, we have made the decision to permanently terminate his account." Snapchat added that it had been assessing the company's long-term action for the community's best interest since the indefinite suspension. Snapchat is one of the social media platforms that Trump used to reach millions of Americans directly. It lets users use photos, videos, and messages that appear momentarily before being made inaccessible. However, the company said that it had stopped promoting Trump's account on its Discover platform in June after he continued to post what Snapchat described as dangerous rhetoric inciting violence and hate, CBS News reported. This mean that the president's account has been visible only to users who chose to subscribe or search for him. Read also: YouTube Suspends Trump's Account, Disabled Comments Section Trump's Account Continues to Violate Snapchat's Guidelines The Capitol's riot is not the only reason why Snapchat decided to ban Trump's account permanently. Snapchat said he has continued to violate the company's guidelines dozens of times, according to the CBS report. However, the company did not mention what other guidelines and policies did Trump violated in the past few months. According to its Third Quarter Data, Snapchat has roughly 250 million daily users. Thus, being banned on its platform could have a big impact on Trump. Trump's campaign committee has yet to respond or comment over Snapchat's decision to permanently ban his account. Read also: Twitter Permanently Suspends Accounts of Trump, Flynn, and Powell Other Social Media that Ban or Suspend Trump Snapchat was the latest social media platform that permanently banned Trump. There were others that already permanently banned or temporarily suspended him. Trump now lost access to the country's most prominent social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already said that the company would ban Trump until the end of his term, but a person with knowledge about this matter said this might be indefinite. The restriction also includes access to Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook. Twitter also permanently banned Trump's account, including the @POTUS. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that banning Trump's account was the right decision. The @realdonaldtrump Twitter account has nearly 90 million followers before it was suspended. Recently, YouTube also decided to suspend Trump's account. YouTube is the world's biggest online video streaming. YouTube said that Trump's channel was suspended after one of his recent videos violated its policy for inciting violence, leading to its automatic suspension that will last for seven days. A channel can be permanently banned from YouTube after three strikes. CHEYENNE, Wyo., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Wyoming families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Wyoming community members are hosting 47 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Wyoming, the Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center will light up in red and yellow on Jan. 29. "School choice doesn't just mean building new schools. In rural states like Wyoming, choice means enriching existing schools giving families increased access to a flexible, customized education," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "During a challenging school year, National School Choice Week provides an upbeat, hopeful time to school-search and share ideas for better serving Wyoming kids." In Wyoming, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Wyoming families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Wyoming school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/Wyoming. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Ranging from a historic masterpiece to a 'painfully beautiful' murder mystery, the Duchess of Cornwall has revealed the first four personal picks for her new online 'reading room'. Camilla, 73, who has already attracted more than 30,000 literary enthusiasts to her Instagram site, has launched the initiative with The Mirror and The Light by Hilary Mantel; Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens; Restless by William Boyd; and Elif Shafak's The Architect's Apprentice. In a special film created to welcome readers to the Instagram-based literary initiative, the royal spoke about her own love for reading. 'To me, reading is a great adventure. I've loved it since I was very small and I'd love everybody else to enjoy it as much as I do,' she said. 'You can escape, and you can travel, and you can laugh and you can cry. There's every type of emotion humans experience in a book.' Camilla (pictured), 73, has revealed the first four personal picks for her new online 'reading room' Dame Hilary Mantel's The Mirror And The Light has been picked by the duchess alongside William Boyd's Restless, Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and The Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak (pictured) Camilla is following in the footsteps of TV presenters Richard and Judy by launching her own book club. The Duchess of Cornwall's Reading Room will be a 'celebration of literature' and, she hopes, a hub for literary communities around the world. Four of her recommended books will be unveiled each season, with the first out today. Hillary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light is the conclusion to her Wolf Hall trilogy, based on the life of Thomas Cromwell, and was eight years in the making. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens is set in the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast and tells a coming-of-age story through the eyes of an abandoned child. The New York Times described it as a 'painfully beautiful' first novel. By contrast William Boyd's spy story Restless explores the wartime adventures and peacetime intrigues of Russian emigre Eva Delectorskaya, who is recruited for the British Secret Service in 1939. A stunning portrait (pictured) of the Duchess of Cornwall was released ahead of the announcement of the royal's Reading Room book club's first four titles The Duchess of Cornwall's Reading Room will be a 'celebration of literature' and, she hopes, a hub for literary communities around the world Lastly, The Architect's Apprentice is described as a 'dazzling and intricate' tale from Elif Shafak, set in 16th Century Istanbul. Camilla was inspired to set up the free initiative as a result of the phenomenal response to two suggested reading lists she published during the first lockdown, as well as research which showed that book sales soared by 400 per cent. The duchess and her team decided to set up a more permanent platform to celebrate and explore literature from around the world - @duchessofcornwallsreadingroom. Sources say she has put her 'heart and soul' into the venture, which is a royal first. Each recommended book will be accompanied by exclusive content from the authors, as well as the duchess herself, to spark conversation and debate. Since joining the Royal Family, Camilla has made the issue of literacy - particularly in children -one of the cornerstone of her work and is patron of seven charities including National Literacy Trust. In a few days the nation will mark the 176th anniversary of the first arrival of immigrants from India on May 30, 1845. They would come every year up to 1917, except for a short break between 1848 and 1851, transforming the local society. "They are partly self-funding because they've been caught out without insurance if they have fallen pregnant unexpectedly, and the other thing is people are more concerned due to coronavirus about their health and security so they are deciding to invest more into their health and feel more comfortable giving birth in a private hospital." Melbourne obstetrician Dr Saul Cohen said he had also observed a slight increase in private bookings, but said in his experience, some public maternity services had seen a slight decrease in demand. He speculated it was because some people had lost their jobs or were more anxious about their financial security. "I've had one women say that she decided to have a baby because she couldn't go to Europe," he said. "I think it's about people's ability to weather the storm." Adelaide Shaw is due to give birth to her first child in two weeks. Credit: Simon Schluter St Vincent's Private Hospital said it had not observed a significant increase in births or bookings following the Melbourne lockdowns. A spokeswoman said there had only been a slight increase in bookings for March and April 2021 this year. Adelaide Shaw is expecting her first child, a baby girl, in two weeks. She was not insured for pregnancy and chose to give birth in the public system. "The Royal Women's is known for being one of the best public hospitals in Victoria, so I didn't see the point in paying out-of-pocket costs," she said. After being diagnosed with poly-cystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder causing enlarged ovaries with small cysts on the outer edges, Ms Shaw was advised by her doctor to start a family as soon she could. The 29-year-old Toorak woman, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, said during the pandemic she has felt less stressed, slept more and ate better: a combination she suspects helped her quickly fall pregnant. "It might seem a bit strange to get pregnant during a global pandemic, but there were a few factors that played a role," Ms Shaw, who is booked into the Royal Women's Hospital, said. Loading "Financially we were in a position to do so because we were fortunate enough that the industries we both worked in were not affected and working from home meant we were together more." Another perk was being able to hide her morning sickness for 12 weeks and not feel pressure to tell people she was pregnant until she was ready. Australia's fertility rate plummeted to its lowest level in more than a century even before the coronavirus pandemic, as couples across the country gave up on the idea to have more children. Late last year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed the fertility rate the average number of children had by a woman dropped to 1.66 in 2019, a decrease of 3 per cent from the previous year. And while births may be booming in the private healthcare sector, Melbourne's public hospitals reveal a different story. Births at Northern Hospital in Epping in the 2019-20 financial year hovered at about 289 births per month, but have plummeted by about 10 per cent so far this year, with an average of 261 births booked in per month for next six months. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video At Western Health, which services the city's rapidly growing western suburbs, including Sunshine, Footscray and St Albans, births are also on the decline. There are 526 births booked in for February this year, compared to 554 births last year, while in March there are 593 births booked in compared to 644 in 2020. University of Melbourne professor of demography Peter McDonald said the birth rate usually falls nationally during economic recessions. He said it was important to note there was always a far higher proportion of births in public hospitals. Loading "This means the fall in the public hospitals will be much bigger than the rise in private hospitals," he said. "It's a question of delaying births. Primarily, people in periods of economic uncertainty tend to not take actions as important as having a birth they tend to wait to see how things pan out." "It's the people towards the bottom 50 per cent that are affected much more than the top 50 per cent," he said. "With any kind of economic downturn like that it always affects the lower socioeconomic communities." For Mercy Health, which has maternity services at its hospitals in Heidelberg and Werribee, it is business as usual. Loading "The birthing suites at Mercy Health's two campuses during 2020 Mercy Hospital for Women and Werribee Mercy Hospital have been extremely busy and on par with recent years," a spokesman said. Monash Health, which operates maternity services in Clayton, Dandenong and Casey, however, has bucked the trend with a 6 per cent increase in birth bookings for March and a 10 per cent increase for March to June. Director of the women's and newborn program at Monash Health, Associate Professor Ryan Hodges, attributed this swell in birth bookings to expected population growth. Industry Update Appointment 15 January 2021 Eudo Chan Appointed Director of Development At Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, South East Asia & Pacific Rim (SEAPR) Eudo Chan has been appointed Director of Development for SEAPR. Based in Singapore, Eudo will be responsible for development opportunities within Indochina. He previously held development roles with Onyx Hospitality Group and Radisson Hotel Group, as well as operational roles at Park Hyatt Chicago and Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi. Eudo holds a Master's degree in Real Estate from the National University of Singapore, and a Bachelor's degree in Finance and Asset Management (International Hospitality) from Ecole Hotelier de Lausanne (EHL), Switzerland. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH) is the worlds largest hotel franchising company by the number of properties, with over 9,000 hotels across approximately 90 countries on six continents. Through its network of 813,000 rooms appealing to the everyday traveler, Wyndham commands a leading presence in the economy and midscale segments of the lodging industry. more information Recent Appointments at Wyndham Matt Holmes - Head of Development 15 January 2021 Matt Holmes has been promoted to Head of Development for South East Asia & Pacific Rim (SEAPR). Based in Gold Coast, Australia, Matt will lead a team of developers to drive the development strategy for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts through the expansion of its managed and franchised hotels portfolio across the SEAPR sub-region. read more Monica Melancon - Chief Human Resource Officer 16 December 2020 Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH) today announced the promotion of its human resource leader for managed hotel operations in North America, Monica Melancon, to Chief Human Resource Officer, effective March 1. read more Rights groups are calling on Zimbabwe authorities to drop charges against a prominent journalist and two senior opposition members accused of "peddling falsehoods," saying the charges against the three are part of the government's efforts to stifle critics. Journalist Hopewell Chin'ono, who faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, was denied bail Thursday by Harare Magistrate Lanzini Ncube, who said Chin'ono had a high chance of skipping the country or committing more offenses. Paidamoyo Saurombe from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, the organization representing Chin'ono and the two opposition politicians has a different point of view. "It is our considered view that Mr. Chin'ono is not a convicted criminal, he has not been convicted of any crime in the past and hence to say he has a propensity to commit other offenses whilst on bail would be a gross misdirection on the part of the court," he said. Saurombe says his client will appeal to the High Court to overturn the magistrate's ruling. Decisions on bail for opposition leaders Job Sikhala and Fadzayi Mahere will be made Friday. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights says the charge of "peddling falsehoods" was removed from Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court in 2014. Robert Shivambu, spokesman for Amnesty International in southern Africa, is urging the government to drop the charges, which he says are part of a crackdown on opposition leaders, human rights activists, journalists and any voices critical of the government. "It is consistent with the harassment and intimidation that we have seen against anyone who respects human rights transparency and accountability in Zimbabwe in recent past," Shivambu said. "The government must stop treating dissent as enemies of the state and allow human rights, including the right to freedom of expression, to thrive in Zimbabwe." When asked for a comment, Nick Mangwana, Zimbabwe's information secretary, said, "The decision on who is prosecuted and who is not rests with the prosecutor general in Zimbabwe (Kumbirai Hodzi). Our constitution is clear that that decision by the country's prosecutor general should not be influenced by anybody. In this particular case, one can actually infer that Amnesty International is interfering with the justice delivery system in Zimbabwe, which is wrong." The three defendants Chin'ono, Mahere and Sikhala were arrested for commenting on a video in which citizens accused police officers of fatally assaulting a baby, who was on her mother's back. Police later issued a statement saying neither the mother nor the baby were assaulted. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has awarded Fellowship to Samantha Seewoosurrun, Managing Director of the PR and publishing firm Perpetual Motion and Founder of the CIPR network in Mauritius, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the CIPR and the PR industry. Samantha is one of 7 PR professionals to have been awarded CIPR Fellowship, which is the highest membership grade. She received a nomination at the end of 2020, which was reviewed by the CIPR and an Independent Reviewer, with the formal announcement being made on 12 January. Fellows play an important role at the CIPR in terms of promoting professionalism, demonstrating best practice, and raising awareness of the benefits of CIPR membership. Fellows also help the CIPR to develop best practice standards and policies, sharing their experience and knowledge by contributing to the Institutes working groups, panels and consultations. Samantha has over 20 years of experience in the PR and communications industry, working across corporate, government and institutional communications. She is Managing Director of the PR and publishing firm Perpetual Motion, a CIPR Accredited PR Practitioner, an elected member of the CIPR International Committee, and the Founder of the CIPR network in Mauritius, which she set up in March 2019. As the only member of the International Committee based in an African country, in 2020 she fostered a collaboration between CIPR International and Africa Communications Week, and has launched a series of webinars for PR professionals at pan-African and international level on key topics including crisis communications. Samantha Seewoosurrun commented: I am honoured and humbled to join the ranks of CIPR Fellows, who represent the pinnacle of excellence in the PR profession. I am very much looking forward to the opportunity to contribute my ideas and experience in the various discussions on the development of best practice in the PR industry. In Mauritius, I am committed to further expanding our CIPR network and creating opportunities for PR professionals to build their knowledge and update their skills. I would strongly encourage PR professionals in Mauritius to join the CIPR, which has become a fully virtual organisation since COVID-19 and affords Mauritian PR professionals the same opportunities for professional development as those anywhere in the world. Through taking courses under the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) scheme, Mauritian PR professionals can work towards achieving Chartered PR Practitioner Status. I am delighted to say that one Mauritian professional already attained this status in 2020, and I know that a number of our members are actively preparing to achieve Chartered Status to demonstrate their skills and value in the marketplace. I will also be inviting PR professionals from Mauritius to participate in a joint webinar series between CIPR International and Africa Communications Week, which we launched last year. In 2021, our webinar series will focus on key topics and trends in PR, noting that the industry is in constant evolution with the emergence of digital and AI, among others. This will also provide PR professionals in Mauritius the opportunity to expand their own horizons and to network with their peers on the African continent and beyond. Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn Justin Maxwell Stuart had misgivings about appearing on Grand Designs, the popular Channel 4 show which features people pursuing their vision of a dream home by building it themselves. I think it would be fair to say that he had grave misgivings about the whole thing. It wasn't just that his development was situated inside a West London cemetery, cheek-by-trowel with tombstones and crypts. Justin was going to have lots of neighbours, as presenter Kevin McCloud pointed out, but they were all going to be dead. It wasn't just that he was planning to spend a fortune on converting the dilapidated Victorian Lodge ('ghastly concrete grouting!') and adjacent 1960's toilet block ('just hideous!') into a majestic modern home with a mega man-cave playboy basement, complete with outdoor moat, indoor chainmail waterfall, subterranean swimming pool, wine cellar and all mod cons including underfloor heating and a pair of forged steel chandeliers shaped like bursting seed pods. Justin Maxwell Stuart (above, with fiancee Hideko Kawa) had misgivings about appearing on Grand Designs, the Channel 4 show which features people pursuing their vision of a dream home by building it themselves. I think it would be fair to say he had grave misgivings about the whole thing. It wasn't just that his development was situated inside a West London cemetery. He was going to have lots of neighbours, as presenter Kevin McCloud pointed out, but they were all going to be dead The final bill for the five-bedroom home, designed by architect Simon Gill, was 4.2m, making it one of the most expensive projects in Grand Designs' two-decade history. It also turned into one of their most popular episodes. (Above, excavations for the huge man-cave basement) 'Yah, lovely acorns,' says Justin, admiring their dazzling lustre while giving the impression he can't remember how much they cost (4,000 each). No, he was worried about something else, something much closer to home. He clears his throat. 'I was worried,' he says, 'that people would just think I was a posh twit spending money.' Well, ahem. First, it cannot be denied that he was indeed spending a lot of money. The final bill for the five-bedroom home, designed by architect Simon Gill, was 4.2 million, making it one of the most expensive projects in Grand Designs' two-decade history. It also turned into one of their most popular episodes. And when it comes to posh, they don't come much posher than 47-year-old Ampleforth-educated Justin a former captain in the Scots Guards who now runs a company specialising in adventure fishing expeditions in Russia, Iceland and elsewhere. Is it extreme fishing, I find myself wondering? Above, the finished lodge. Justin hails from an aristocratic Scottish family who can trace their lineage directly back to Mary Queen of Scots yes, he is one of those Stuarts and he grew up in a 1,000-year-old grand house ('so I'm used to living in old buildings') and estate in Peeblesshire 'Jan, you won't be expected to wrestle with grizzly bears every morning,' he says, and I worry that we are digressing too far, but there is no stopping him now. 'Oh, the thrill of catching a salmon,' he continues, cradling an imaginary one in his arms. 'The absolute thrill of achieving something by yourself. It is so satisfying to come back and say this is what I did. On my own.' He hails from an aristocratic Scottish family who can trace their lineage directly back to Mary Queen of Scots yes, he is one of those Stuarts and he grew up in a 1,000-year-old grand house ('so I'm used to living in old buildings') and estate in Peeblesshire. From an early age, wee Justin became adept at hunting, shooting, fishing and spent boyhood Christmases at the family's holiday home on Mustique in the Caribbean. His parents were friends with Mustique's owner Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner another Scottish aristo and in the 1960s were one of the first two families to develop a plot on the private island, along with lifelong Mustique devotee Princess Margaret. The 13-metre swimming pool in the majestic home. 'I now own a house in London that is steeped in history and surrounded by 13 acres of green space,' Justin says and you've got to give him credit for that, despite the thunderously busy main road on its western border The bar in the home's basement. Justin bought the property for 2.2m in February 2015 when he was a single dad living nearby with his son George, now aged nine. They would take regular walks through the cemetery with their dog, a gorgeous mutt called Thunder The kitchen contains a pair of forged steel chandeliers shaped like bursting seed pods. 'Yah, lovely acorns,' says Justin, admiring their dazzling lustre while giving the impression he can't remember how much they cost (4,000 each) Does he remember her? Of course! He recalls being told by his parents to keep her royal personage supplied with cocktail snacks during pre-dinner drinks when she came over to supper one balmy evening. 'After my fifth attempt to shove some peanuts down her throat, she said: "Thank you very much, dear boy. But I've had enough peanuts and I don't even like peanuts anyway." I don't think she was particularly impressed, to be quite honest. That was the last time Princess Margaret came to supper.' And there are certainly twittish moments when striding around his building site in his padded gilet or counting up the mounting cost of his project, when Justin gives off an unmistakably upper class, full-on Rupert, Tim-Nice-But-Dim vibe. 'I was brought up in Scotland where everyone's houses have so much character,' he booms onscreen, which suggests a refreshing lack of familiarity with the kind of Scottish council estate where I was brought up, but no umbrage taken because Justin is such a delightful person and about as snobbish as a burst haggis. 'I liked the idea,' he continued, 'of recreating somewhere like that in London.' Look at it pragmatically and you can see that neither Justin nor his project are as crazy as they sound. 'I now own a house in London that is steeped in history and surrounded by 13 acres of green space,' he says and you've got to give him credit for that, despite the thunderously busy main road on its western border. He bought the property for 2.2 million in February 2015 when he was a single dad living nearby with his son George, now aged nine. They would take regular walks through the cemetery with their dog, a gorgeous mutt called Thunder. He was going through a divorce from his 'lovely' Brazilian-born wife Tania, whom he met in 2004 when they were neighbours. Tania, whom friends say is quite a few years older than Justin, now lives in Ibiza. 'When the for sale sign went up on The Lodge, I pounced. It was a chaotic period in my life, I signed my divorce papers and the contract for the house practically on the same day. It was good for me to have something to focus on.' One of the property's plush bathrooms. 'Mad, beautiful and very funny,' was one popular viewer's verdict of the show, while another declared it the 'best Grand Designs ever' But in typical Grand Designs fashion, costs and problems escalated. At one point, The Lodge was propped up by steel girders as they excavated underneath for the pool, while Justin was terrified the build would be stopped if they unearthed human bones. 'One bit of a wife of Henry VIII and it would have been curtains,' is how he puts it. It might seem a folly too far, but perhaps not when one considers that a nearby terraced house is on the market for 3.9 million, tragically sans media room, cupola, private courtyard, swimming pool, sauna and bar unlike Justin's ring-a-ding-bling palace. 'If you didn't live in London, you will think what I spent is a ridiculous amount of money for a house. If you live one kilometre down the road, you will think it is bloody good value,' he says. He 'rattled up the funds' via a mortgage and a loan from his mother Kirsty, a scion of the wealthy Salvesen shipping family. She died in 2016, leaving 20 million in her will from which Justin and his older sister Laura are the chief beneficiaries. Yes, I know what you are thinking. It is amazing what you can achieve when you've got millions sluicing about in your sporran. Don't stint on the cushions, Morag! But Justin says his personal grand design always had to make financial sense and be worth its own value. As he strived to achieve this over a testing four-year build, viewers warmed to his gung-ho enthusiasm, his can-do attitude and his honesty. 'Have I made a terrible mistake?' he would ask himself in the dead of night. 'Mad, beautiful and very funny,' was one popular viewer's verdict of the show, while another declared it the 'best Grand Designs ever'. If you didn't live in London, you will think what I spent is a ridiculous amount of money for a house. If you live one kilometre down the road, you will think it is bloody good value. After the programme was broadcast last week, he has been overwhelmed by the reaction. 'The Maxwell Stuarts are very understated,' he says. 'We don't like to promote ourselves. I just imagined the show would slip onto daytime TV with no fuss, but the opposite has happened. 'My publicity estimate was way lower than what transpired but I have had the most marvellous experience. Every time I walk out that gate someone says hello or asks me how Thunder is. It has been fantastic and really uplifting.' As his dream became a reality, the last scenes of the programme revealed one final twist, as Justin disclosed he had found a special someone to share his new home. Millions of viewers presumed it was going to be a canine pal, a Lightning for his Thunder. Instead, in walked new girlfriend Hideko Kawa, 42 an accomplished chef already known to many viewers as a finalist in the 2018 series of Bake Off The Professionals. From Kanazawa in Japan, Hideko moved to the UK and has worked for Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal, running the latter's celebrated experimental kitchen. She is a world-class pastry chef and now runs her own company. 'But that's not all she can do,' says Justin, explaining that during the first lockdown they were holed up on his 2,500 acre Scottish estate, feeding themselves from a freezer full of game. 'Pheasant, duck and venison. And she cooked it all superbly. We did not have to buy a single bit of meat for five months,' he roars. The couple met at a party three years ago and have been together ever since. Where are these parties where you meet handsome, eligible, ex-army officer aristocratic millionaires? I'd love to know. Meanwhile, on the night they moved into The Lodge back in November, Justin asked Hideko to marry him. 'I did think about proposing to her actually on Grand Designs,' he says. You did not! 'I did. But I thought it might be rather too awful.' After dinner they had a cocktail in the downstairs bar and he gave Hideko a key to the safe he'd built into one of the York stone walls. 'Inside was a giant oyster shell I recovered from the Seychelles, and inside was the ring,' he says. PS... Traquair, the Stuart familys ancestral seat in Scotland, is an even grander design Advertisement 'It was so romantic,' says Hideko, who shows me the stunning inky sapphire which Justin had commissioned from an ex-girlfriend who happens to be a jeweller. 'I know!' he says, with a shrug. When asked if he plans on having any more children, he says: 'I'm not ruling anything out.' He is full of surprises and has lived a life that has included three tours of duty in Northern Ireland, one in Iraq and running a salmon fly-tying business in Thailand. 'We make the best flies in the world,' says Justin, who knows the lyrics to only one song Happy Birthday. Following our socially distanced chat under the exploding acorns in the kitchen, Justin takes me on a tour of The Lodge, which he plans to rent out on short-term Airbnb-type lets once the world is back to normal. He also rents out the house in Mustique (about 10,000 a week in high season), which he also rebuilt from scratch. This suggests he is more hard-nosed property developer than the wide-eyed dreamer who insists a home isn't really a home unless it has a moat. Off we go, down to the 13-metre pool, where he has a daily swim of 100 laps before tea and toast with homemade raspberry jam; then into the wine cellar with its 'everyday bottles' on the racks and more serious grand cru clarets still being unpacked from their cases. We tour the nanny flat off the utility room, complete with its mini kitchen and narrow bed, upstairs to the master bedroom where Justin has left a pair of socks balled up on the floor ('oops') and into the ensuite with its mirrored bath. We admire the ginger jars decorated with blue marlin, the paintings by his uncle, the photographs of Mustique discreetly displayed. Although Justin remembers seeing the likes of David Bowie and Mick Jagger on the island, his parents always kept a low-key presence. When Colin Tennant invited them to his grand costumed 50th birthday party, they did not attend. 'Not our thing,' said Justin's father, who tended to avoid celebrities and 'didn't fancy getting dressed up in gold Lycra anyway'. Oddly enough, when we are saying goodbye at the front door, local celebrities Clare Balding and Alice Arnold are strolling into the cemetery and beam in his direction while someone else shouts 'Hello Justin!' Almost overnight, this man and this house have become a huge local attraction but like father, like son he does not notice the starry hubbub at all. It is simply not the Maxwell Stuart way, darling. In a few days the nation will mark the 176th anniversary of the first arrival of immigrants from India on May 30, 1845. They would come every year up to 1917, except for a short break between 1848 and 1851, transforming the local society. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. According to Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Manh Hung, the second innovation is digital transformation. The Information and Communication Ministry has embarked on new missions, a new space and new energy. Minister Nguyen Manh Hung. Photo: Trong Dat The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) yesterday held a conference to outline orientations for the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector ahead in 2021 and beyond. In his opening speech, Minister Hung said that humans are living in both a fast changing and unpredictable world where they move from the real world to the digital world. In the move from the real world to the digital world, great challenges and great opportunities always go hand in hand. Digital technology, digital transformation and the media play a particularly important role in this transformation. This therefore requires the ICT sector to grasp opportunities and address challenges in an effective manner in order to meet the ambitions set out in the Make-in-Vietnam strategy. The ICT sector has never had such a big mission as it has now. And this is also a rare opportunity for the ICT industry to reposition itself, to realize challenges and identify new living spaces that are decisive for development, he said. Great achievements The ICT sectors achievements in recent years made specific contributions to making Vietnam a powerful and prosperous country. In the past 5 years, the postal sector has had unprecedented strong growth with an average rate of over 30% per year. In 2020, the total revenue of postal services reached over VND35 trillion, contributing to the state budget VND2.4 trillion. Vietnam currently has 555 postal businesses; 90% of communes have postal service points; 89% of postal service points have an Internet connection. Vietnam can manufacture up to 90% of network safety and security products. Photo: Trong Dat 2020 was the year Vietnam started implementing the national digital transformation program. Based on digital platforms, online public services at level 4 increased dramatically in 2020, reaching over 30%, exceeding the set target. So far, 5 ministries and 28 provinces and cities have issued resolutions and plans to implement digital transformation. One of the biggest successes of Vietnam in 2020 is the comprehensive universalization of awareness of digital transformation in society. This is reflected in the participation of the entire population against the Covid-19 epidemic. In the past 5 years, Vietnam's telecommunications industry also developed spectacularly. The proportion of people using mobile phones increased sharply. Vietnam ranked 2nd in ASEAN, 4th in Asia and 10th in the world for the use of 6th generation (IPv6) Internet addresses on. Telecommunication enterprises contributed to the State budget an average of over VND40 trillion a year. Vietnam's telecommunications ranking increased by 31 spots, from 108th in 2018 to 77th in 2020. The rapid development of 5G is the most impressive feature of Vietnam's telecommunications industry in 2020. In December 2020, 5G commercial service was tested in Vietnam and this added Vietnam to the group of pioneers in the 5G race around the world. Online public services have become popular in Vietnam. Photo: Trong Dat 2020 was the year Vietnam successfully hosted the online Digital World Exhibition and Conference 2020, with the participation of 150 countries and economies. In 2020, campaigns to scan and remove malware on a large scale were effectively deployed. The country ranked second in Southeast Asia, after Singapore, for mobile malware control. The MIC initially launched the Make-in-Vietnam strategy in 2019, with the primary goal of developing 100,000 digital technology enterprises which serve as the cornerstone for the Vietnamese digital transformation process. At present, a total of 60,000 enterprises have been established, a rise of 28% compared to the pre-2019 period. Global ranking increases in various subfields of the industry have been the proof of this contribution. The post rose from the 57th position to 49th, ICT from 108th to 77th, e-government from 89th to 86th, and cybersecurity from 100th to an impressive position of 50th. With the introduction of the scheme Make in Vietnam, the number of businesses in the field has witnessed a development of 28 percent. Human resources in the ICT industry grew from 780,000 people to over 1 million. Remarkably, the post has maintained its average revenue growth of 30 percent per year. More importantly, Vietnam now stands at the second position in the world for mobile phone and parts manufacturing, and tenth in electronic parts production. These two have helped ICT become the industry with the largest export surplus in the Vietnamese economy. Most notably, 2019 alone saw an export surplus in the hardware and electronics industry at an estimated US$28 billion, and Vietnam ranked 13th in the world for digital technology services. Throughout the 2016 to 2019 period, the country rose to become one of the worlds leading hardware and electronics producers in the telecommunications industry. It also ranked second in terms of manufacturing phones and components, and 10th in manufacturing electronics and components. These groups of products represent two of the top 10 main Vietnamese export items, making the ICT sector the economys largest exporter. Last year, MIC restructured the press system and focused on fighting fake news. The number of press agencies fell by 71, to 779 in total. At the event, MIC introduced the Information Portal tingia.gov.vn as well as the Hotline 18008108 to receive reports on fake news related to state and private organizations, businesses, and individuals. The portal also acts as a bulletin board to announce proven fake news and its real counterpart. The portal is under the management of Vietnam Anti-Fake News Center (VAFC), a member of the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information. The center will receive, detect, and assess the authenticity of reported news, then label it as fake news when needed and post the real version for comparison. The center will regularly update methods to identify and handle fake news as well. The Ministry of Information and Communications has established a center for handling fake news in Vietnam. Photo: Trong Dat Also at the meeting, MIC announced its program, co-organized with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, to support small and medium businesses in their digital transformation process, especially during the sensitive time of Covid-19 pandemic. MIC has evaluated and selected these 12 Make-in-Vietnam platforms taking part in the program, namely MISA ASP, an accounting service platform, Novaon Onfluencer, an online advertising platform, Giga1, a product distribution platform, VnPay and Momo, two online payment platforms, StringeeX, a customer care platform, 1Office, a comprehensive business administration platform, BizFly, a platform for stores and restaurants, EZCloud, a platform for hotels and recreation spots, CyRadar, a cybersecurity platform, Consultant Anywhere, a consultation platform, and Vietnamworks, a recruitment platform. These platforms plan to offer various incentive policies like free 3-month trial time, a discount of 50 percent for a 1-year contract, free training and consultation sessions. Further information is available at sme.mic.gov.vn and smedx.vn. Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam Addressing the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam said that 2020 was a special year given the unexpected difficulties but with spectacular progress made. Vietnam managed to overcome major challenges while strengthening national pride and peoples confidence in the Party and administration. More importantly, the trust of Vietnamese people inside and outside of the country in the path towards national development was reinforced, he said, attributing the result to the leadership of the Party, the management of the State, and the engagement of the business community and people, especially those working in the information-communications sector. He called on all IT companies to become involved in programs initiated by the Ministry of Information and Communications by discussing and seeking open platforms based on the practical demands of citizens. Opportunity to reposition the ICT industry The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) aims to basically complete the development of e-government in 2021, with the provision of online public services at level 4 and the completion of national databases on population and land, Minister Nguyen Manh Hung said. The media sector will be developed this year to fully cover events in society, creating consensus and social confidence and driving peoples aspirations for a strong country. The ratio of local people in remote areas accessing at least one form of media is expected to reach 95 percent in 2021 and 100 percent by 2025, he said. Each Vietnamese is hoped to read 4.5 books in 2021 and 5-5.5 books a year by 2025, while the convergent newsroom model is to be applied to 75 percent of all media agencies in 2021 and 90 percent by 2025. The minister said that the ratio of people accessing mobile broadband is expected to be over 80 percent in 2021 and 100 percent by 2025. Trong Dat Information and Communications Ministry proposes solutions to develop VNs digital businesses The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) is developing a national strategy on development of Vietnamese digital firms to 2030. Flash The British government on Thursday announced its decision to ban arrivals from more than a dozen South American countries and Portugal from Friday following the detection of a new coronavirus variant. British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted: "I've taken the urgent decision to BAN ARRIVALS from ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, BOLIVIA, CAPE VERDE, CHILE, COLOMBIA, ECUADOR, FRENCH GUIANA, GUYANA, PANAMA, PARAGUAY, PERU, SURINAME, URUGUAY AND VENEZUELA -- from TOMORROW, JAN. 15 at 4 a.m. following evidence of a new variant in Brazil." "Travel from PORTUGAL to the UK will also be suspended given its strong travel links with Brazil, acting as another way to reduce the risk of importing infections. However, there is an exemption for hauliers travelling from Portugal (only), to allow transport of essential goods." "This measure does not apply to British and Irish Nationals and third country nationals with residence rights -- but passengers returning from these destinations must self-isolate for TEN DAYS along with their households," he added. The new ban was announced after a meeting of senior British government officials on Thursday, the BBC reported. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday told MPs in the House of Commons, lower house of parliament, that the government was "concerned" about the new virus variant detected in Brazil. "We already have tough measures... to protect this country from new infections coming in from abroad," he said. In December 2020, Britain has suspended flights from South Africa after a discovery of a new and concerning variant there. Johnson said there were "lots of questions" over the latest variant, including whether it is resistant to COVID vaccines. At present, experts are uncertain how effective existing vaccines will be against the new variant, the Evening Standard newspaper reported. Patrick Vallance, the British government's top scientist, told ITV that the new variant contains "a change of the genetic code, at position 484, and that changes a part of the protein, it changes a bit of a shape of the protein". He said that there is no evidence new variants are more deadly. The latest development came as another 1,564 have died within 28 days of a positive test, the highest daily death toll since the pandemic began in the country, according to official figures released Wednesday. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 84,767, the data showed. Another 47,525 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 3,211,576, the figures showed. England is currently under the third national lockdown since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country. Similar restriction measures are also in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to develop coronavirus vaccines. WASHINGTON President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., racing against a surge in coronavirus cases and the emergence of a new variant that could significantly worsen the pandemic, is planning a vaccination offensive that calls for greatly expanding access to vaccines while promising to use a wartime law to expand production. But his plan is colliding with a sobering reality: With only two federally authorized vaccines, supplies will be scarce for the next several months, frustrating some state and local health officials who had hoped that the release of a federal stockpile of vaccine doses announced this week could alleviate that shortage. Trump administration officials clarified Friday that the existing stockpile would go toward giving second doses and not to new groups of people. The honest truth is this, things will get worse before they get better, Mr. Biden said. And the policy changes we are going to be making, theyre going to take time to show up in the Covid statistics. The president-elect said he would invoke the Defense Production Act, if necessary, to build up vaccine supply. But the team also sought to tamp down expectations. Mr. Biden said his plan wont mean that everyone in these groups will get vaccinated immediately, because supply is not where it needs to be. But, he added, it will mean that as doses become available, well reach more people who need them. 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. Franklin Templeton MF: AMFI Files SLP before SC; Midas Touch Investor Association Says Cancel FTMFs Registration While the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) has reportedly filed a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court (SC) in the Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund (FTMF) issue, the Midas Touch Investors Association (MTIA) has asked market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to suspend for one year the registration certificate of FTMF. In a representation addressed to Ajay Tyagi, chairman of SEBI, Virendra Jain, founder and president of MTIA, says, "You are requested to suspend their respective certificate of registrations granted by SEBI, under mutual funds regulations, to undertake activities relating to operating mutual funds in India for one year for making false, misleading, biased and deceptive statements while seeking consent of unitholders via e-voting." The apex court is scheduled to hear the matter on 18 January 2021. During a previous hearing last month, the SC, while granting a stay on redemption requests from investors of FTMF, had directed the trustees to call a meeting of unit-holders to seek their consent within a week. The apex court had also directed SEBI to appoint an observer for the e-voting process. Subsequently, the market regulator appointed TS Krishnamurthy, former chief election commissioner (CEC) as observer for the e-voting process and issued a statement on 26 December 2020 when the e-voting process had commenced. The Chennai Financial Markets and Accountability (CFMA), an investor protection body fighting for the cause of investors, had claimed that the appointment of an observer for e-voting by SEBI was an afterthought. The SEBI release says, Mr Krishnamurthy was appointed as observer on 18 December 2020, following an order from the Supreme Court. However, this appointment was made known by SEBI only on 26 December 2020 through the release, after the e-voting process had started and when it was a weekly off at the market regulator's office. SEBI was also directed by the apex court to submit a forensic audit report before the hearing this month. Mr Krishnamurthy also had to submit the election results in a sealed cover. According to Mr Jain, a copy of the AMFI SLP was provided to Ratnajit, an investor, who has filed an impleadment application that may be heard on 18th January. MTIA, however is not a party in the SC proceedings, Mr Jain clarified. In its letter to the SEBI chief, the investor association has reiterated that Franklin Templeton Trustee Services Pvt Ltd (Trustee) have no right to make a distress sale. "Trustees have no right to sell at deep discount knowing that it will hurt unitholders," the letter says, adding, "Redemption of MF units is not subject to sale of securities held in the scheme portfolio and the Trustee cannot stop redemption beyond 10 days under any circumstances. Trustees, asset management company (AMC) and sponsor are obliged to make redemption from their own sources, and it cannot be shifted to investors." Last month, in its letter, Midas Touch Investor Association had asked FTMF not to shift the liability of mismanagement to unitholders and had asked SEBI for remedial action. Read: Franklin Templeton MF: Dont Shift Liability of Mismanagement to Unit-holders, says Midas Touch Investor Association; Demands Remedial Action from SEBI ) Calling the issue of distress sale a bogey, Mr Jain had alleged, This is raised by trustees and AMC to escape their financial responsibility of making payment to unitholders, as and when demanded by them, as per the offer document. The assets under management (AUM) here is Rs26,000 crore invested by unsuspecting three lakh investors. The investor group has said that it completely differs from the views of FTMFs trustees as well as those of SEBI that were expressed in the Karnataka High Court." ( As Moneylife had pointed out, the e-voting of unit-holders of six debt schemes of FTMF, which started on 26th December and ended on 29 December 2020, appeared to be turned into a farce by the mutual fund. What was more startling was the design of the e-voting process, especially the use of green colour for 'Yes' and red colour for 'No' option with appropriate wording accompanying each. Next to the green Yes button were words framed in an affirmative and comforting manner: Means opting for an orderly winding-up of the scheme with a potential to realise fair value from the assets." Next to the red No button were words framed in a scare-mongering and negative manner: Means opting for the Scheme to be re-opened, potentially leading to distress sale of assets and loss of value. This colouring and textual framing made the entire e-voting process biased towards FTMF since we all have the perception of green signal and red signal embedded in our minds. Read: The Farce of Franklin Templeton E-voting: Green for Yes, Red for No ) Everyone who sees a green signal at a traffic post will go ahead and would stop after seeing a red signal. Therefore, the use of this specific colour coding by FTML appears a deliberate attempt to influence the voting process. ( In November last year, the Trustee Services, which initially had argued that mutual funds are empowered to wind up schemes without unit-holders' consent, sought permission from SEBI to hold a vote on the issue on 8th November. The Karnataka High Court, in its judgement in October 2020, had said the decision of Franklin Templeton to wind up the six schemes cannot be implemented unless the consent of the unit-holders is obtained. Earlier, on 23 April 2020, Franklin Templeton had announced shutting down six debt fund schemes due to poor and illiquid investments amid the coronavirus crisis, leaving lakhs of investors in a lurch. The total assets under management (AUM) of the six schemes were over Rs25,000 crore, spread across Franklin India Low Duration Fund, Franklin India Dynamic Accrual Fund, Franklin India Credit Risk Fund, Franklin India Short Term Income Plan, Franklin India Ultra Short Bond Fund and Franklin India Income Opportunities Fund. Seoul: North Korea rolled out developmental ballistic missiles designed to be launched from submarines and other military hardware in a parade that punctuated leader Kim Jong-uns defiant calls to expand his nuclear weapons program. State media said Kim took centre stage in Thursday nights parade celebrating a major ruling party meeting where Kim vowed maximum efforts to bolster his nuclear and missile program that threatens Asian rivals and the American homeland to counter what he described as US hostility. During the eight-day Workers Party congress that ended Tuesday, Kim also revealed plans to salvage the nation's economy amid US-led sanctions over his nuclear ambitions, pandemic-related border closures and natural disasters that wiped out crops. North Korean soldiers march in formation during a military parade. Credit:KCNA The economic setbacks have left Kim nothing to show for his ambitious diplomacy with President Donald Trump, which derailed over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and the Norths denuclearising steps, and pushed Kim to what is clearly the toughest moment of his nine-year rule. DUBLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Solar Microinverter Market, By Type (Single Phase and Three Phase), By Connectivity (Integrated, Standalone), By Application (Residential, Commercial, PV Power Plant), By Sales Channel (Direct and Indirect), By Region, Forecast & Opportunities, 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Solar Microinverter Market was valued USD 1166.24 Million in 2019 and is projected to grow at double-digit CAGR of 24.32% to reach USD 2934.86 Million by 2025. The Global Solar Microinverter Market is driven by ongoing advancements in research and development of solar micro inverters. In addition to this, rapid increase in renewable energy investment is positively impacting the growth of the market during the forecast period. Furthermore, growing requirement for renewable and clean sources of energy to decrease dependency on fossil fuels is expected to bolster the growth of the market over the next few years. The Global Solar Microinverter Market is segmented based on type, connectivity, application, sales channel, company, and region. Based on type, the market can be categorized into single phase and three phase. Out of these, the single phase segment dominated the market in 2019 with share of 79.87% and is expected to hold the largest share in the market, during the forecast period. This can be attributed to the fact that single-phase technology allows the system to have a compact size that is well suitable for residential and commercial applications. Regionally, North America dominated the market until 2019 on account of high number of solar micro-inverter installations in the region, predominantly in US and Canada, which is contributing to dominating position of the region in the market. Major players operating in the Global Solar Microinverter Market include SMA Solar Technology AG, Darfon Electronics Corp., ABB Ltd., Altenergy Power System Inc., Enphase Energy Inc, SolarEdge Technologies, Inc., SunPower Corporation, Chilicon Power, LLC, I Energy Corporation Limited, NEP Microinverter Inc. and others. The key market players are adopting some competitive strategies such as mergers & acquisitions, partnership, agreements in order to expand their geographic reach and to increase their customer bases. Years considered for this report: Historical Years: 2015-2018 Base Year: 2019 Estimated Year: 2020 Forecast Period: 2021-2025 Objective of the Study: To analyze and estimate the market size of global solar microinverter market from 2015 to 2018. To estimate and forecast the market size of global solar microinverter market from 2019 to 2025 and growth rate until 2025. To classify and forecast global solar microinverter market based on type, connectivity, application, sales channel, company and regional distribution. To identify dominant region or segment in the global solar microinverter market. To identify drivers and challenges for global solar microinverter market. To examine competitive developments such as expansions, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, etc., in global solar microinverter market. To conduct pricing analysis for global solar microinverter market. To identify and analyze the profile of leading players operating in global solar microinverter market. To identify key sustainable strategies adopted by market players in global solar microinverter market. Key Topics Covered: 1. Product Overview 2. Research Methodology 3. Impact of COVID-19 on Global Solar Microinverter Market 4. Executive Summary 5. Voice of Customer 6. Global Solar Microinverter Market Outlook 6.1. Market Size & Forecast 6.1.1. By Value 6.2. Market Share & Forecast 6.2.1. By Type (Single Phase and Three Phase) 6.2.2. By Connectivity (Integrated, Standalone) 6.2.3. By Application (Residential, Commercial, PV Power Plant) 6.2.4. By Sales Channel (Direct and Indirect) 6.2.5. By Company 6.2.6. By Region 6.3. Product Market Map 7. North America Solar Microinverter Market Outlook 7.1. Market Size & Forecast 7.2. Market Share & Forecast 7.3. North America: Country Analysis 8. Europe Solar Microinverter Market Outlook 8.1. Market Size & Forecast 8.2. Market Share & Forecast 8.3. Europe: Country Analysis 9. Asia-Pacific Solar Microinverter Market Outlook 9.1. Market Size & Forecast 9.2. Market Share & Forecast 9.3. Asia-Pacific: Country Analysis 10. South America Solar Microinverter Market Outlook 10.1. Market Size & Forecast 10.2. Market Share & Forecast 10.3. South America: Country Analysis 11. Middle East and Africa Solar Microinverter Market Outlook 11.1. Market Size & Forecast 11.2. Market Share & Forecast 11.3. MEA: Country Analysis 12. Market Dynamics 12.1. Drivers 12.2. Challenges 13. Market Trends & Developments 14. Competitive Landscape 14.1. SMA Solar Technology AG 14.2. Darfon Electronics Corp. 14.3. ABB Ltd. 14.4. Altenergy Power System Inc. 14.5. Enphase Energy Inc 14.6. SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. 14.7. SunPower Corporation 14.8. Chilicon Power, LLC 14.9. I Energy Corporation Limited 14.10. NEP Microinverter Inc. 15. Strategic Recommendations 16. About the Publisher & Disclaimer For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rg81vw 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 The case started on Tuesday and surrounds abuses of company assets. The prosecution alleges that 58-year-old Becca used his companies to buy luxury watches between 2004 and 2011, without them being part of any official business. Day Two During the second day in court, it became clear that the actual number of watches amounts to 879, not 842, which were bought in Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, France, and Germany. The additional 37 time pieces were never registered, the prosecution retained on Wednesday. During a police questioning in 2015, Becca stated that the watches were never gifted to third parties. The session on Wednesday further focused on transactional documents, which trace some of the investments made in the matter, including those of Becca's Hong Kong holding firm. Day Three On Thursday, Becca spoke for the first time since the beginning of the case and claimed that not only were all of the watches company investments, but that he also possessed a full inventory of them. The police simply never asked for it, the investor stated. It is currently estimated that the 879 watches are worth around 18 million. Becca also denied claims that his safe was unorganised at the time of the police raid. He emphasised that all watches were properly catalogued, and certificates kept separately for safety reasons. Naturally, nobody could expect that the officers have the same know-how he has, the investor stated in court. He provided a picture of his safe as proof. Attorney Rosario Grasso, who represents Becca's former investment partner Eric Lux, also addressed the court on Thursday. Becca and Lux have been involved in an ongoing legal dispute for several years. The court case will resume on Tuesday. In his latest interview, Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Popov said when there was a shift of power in Armenia in 2018, there was a document on the table according to which the Armenian side returns the five territories, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) isnt recognized yet, but Artsakh, Lachin and Kelbajar remain the way they are, all roads are opened, and years later, the status of Artsakh will be determined through a vote or referendum, and then there would be a discussion on Lachin and Kelbajar. This is what unified candidate of the opposition Homeland Salvation Movement of Armenia Vazgen Manukyan said during a meeting with citizens of Gyumri today, adding that during the war Armenia thought it would give those territories in exchange of recognition of Artsakhs independence. This is also a rather normal option, but Armenia wanted the maximum. If Ailyev recognized Artsakhs independence, he would lose power. A normal leader had to address the people and state the options, but Pashinyan led the whole process of negotiations to failure. First he said Artsakh has to decide on its own, and then he said Artsakh is Armenia, period, and Baku immediately took advantage of this, Manukyan said. According to Manukyan, the authorities have been discrediting the army and instituting criminal cases against this or that army general since they came to power two-and-a-half years ago. Manukyan also said Nikol Pashinyan is stupid, doesnt have a state mindset and is a traitor. He emphasized that if the war was stopped on time, there wouldnt be several thousands of victims and a large part of Armenian territories wouldnt be transferred to the enemy. They say there are people in Armenia who support Nikol. I want to understand if they are using their brains. Nikol Pashinyan hasnt made any right decision and has turned Armenia into a secondary state, he said. "A Farther Shore": American Reflections on the Advent of Irish Independence (1921-22) Press release So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that a farther shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells. Seamus Heaney From The Cure at Troy Since 2012, Irelands Decade of Centenaries has seen us examine and explore the series of seminal events that, politically and socially, shaped our island a century ago. From the introduction of the third Home Rule Bill and the Ulster Covenant in 1912, through the first World War and the Easter Rising of 1916, and onto the formation of the first Dail and the onset of the War of Independence in 1919, we have marked crucial moments, recognising that the shared historical experiences of those years gave rise to very different narratives and memories. Over the coming months, Irelands Embassy and Consulates across the United States will join with the American Conference for Irish Studies & Irish Studies programmes across many of this nations leading Universities to host a series of lectures and panels reflecting on the final and perhaps most contested years of this formative decade. Our reflections will cover: the war of Independence; the emergence of Northern Ireland; the negotiations and debate of the Anglo-Irish Treaty; the foundation of the Irish State and the Civil War. We will consider how these seismic events were viewed across the Atlantic and the role the United States - and Irish-America - played in shaping them, recognising that, for many Irish emigrants, independence was a farther shore they strove to reach. This first seminar of our series Was it for this - focuses on the aftermath to 1916, the renewal of Sinn Fein and the Irish Volunteers, the conscription crisis, the election of 1918 & the First Dail. Hosted by Boston College, in association with the ACIS New England Region & the Consulate General of Ireland in Boston, it features a range of outstanding scholars - Marjorie Howes (Boston College); Rob Savage (Boston College); Fearghal McGarry (Queens University); Bridget Keown (University of Pittsburgh), and Mike Cronin (Boston College) as well as Irelands Ambassador Daniel Mulhall. From there, we will host webinars monthly through the first half of the year, in partnership with universities across America, leading up to the ACIS annual conference in early June. Join us and many of the worlds leading scholars of Irish politics and culture as we reflect on a formative period in our nations history. "Was it for this" will be on Tuesday 26 January at 19:00 EST. Learn more and register for the event here. Previous Item | Next Item Indianapolis, IN (46208) Today Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 64F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.. Tonight Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 64F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch. TORONTO, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Canada Goose launches its first-ever capsule collection, created in partnership with guest designer, Angel Chen. With her experimental approach to design and colour, coupled with a fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetics, Angel Chen is one of fashion's brightest young talents. Through her design language, she brings Eastern elements and traditional techniques to life, creating a contemporary collection without boundaries between countries, age and gender. This capsule collection combines the traditional with the modern, highlighting functional expertise and unique style. With digital-first innovation at the forefront, Canada Goose and Angel Chen are bringing this campaign to life through both augmented reality (AR) and Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI). "Over the years, we have worked with some of the world's best. This season, we introduce a new type of partnership with Angel Chen, our first ever guest designer," said Woody Blackford, EVP Product at Canada Goose. "In our approach, we look for unique and creative perspectives, drawing inspiration from distinct aesthetics that challenge us. Our brief is to reinterpret and reimagine our core design DNA through their eyes. Angel has done just that, putting her signature spin on our most iconic products." Initially revealed during Shanghai Fashion Week in October 2020, the exclusive thirteen-piece collection for women and men follows the transformational journey of the garments from winter in Canada to spring in China, showcasing the evolution of Canada Goose's most iconic parka: the Snow Mantra. Putting her signature twist on the brand's most comprehensive offering in outerwear, Angel Chen creates two distinctive pieces within the collection: the Women's Cropped Snow Mantra Parka for Angel Chen ($1,595 CAD), which can be worn upside down for a discerning look and the Men's Convertible Snow Mantra for Angel Chen ($1,795 CAD), which can be worn four ways by experimenting with the removable lower half, sleeves and hood. This collection leverages Canada Goose fabrics and technologies, which were developed for the harshest weather conditions and proven in the field for decades by scientists, arctic workers and explorers. Angel Chen interprets the brand through her unique perspective, not only through modern silhouettes but also with vibrant colours. Unique colourways, including a bold new red and two new shades of pink, are included to further honour Angel's culture and heritage. "Canada Goose is iconic, the reference for outerwear in the world, and it was so exciting to work with their heritage pieces, reinterpreting them through a new lens for this collection," said designer Angel Chen. "Visiting the brand's headquarters and touring their archival collections was so inspiring! This collection represents the transition from winter in Canada to spring in China. It is a dream watching it come to life through my eyes on the runway to seeing it uniquely styled in the city." This collection further extends into Lightweight Down, Windwear, Rainwear, Knitwear and Accessories categories. The women's collection features the Chaka Vest ($795 CAD), the Mordaga Rain Jacket ($1,295 CAD), the HyBridge Knit Jacket ($895 CAD), the Logo Sweater ($595 CAD) and the Serdang Down Jacket ($895 CAD). It also includes the versatile Crossbody Bag ($595 CAD), which easily converts to a backpack and the Mini Crossbody Bag ($350 CAD). The men's pieces feature the Arxan Bomber Jacket ($995 CAD), the Mogan Rain Jacket ($1,495 CAD), the HyBridge Knit Hoody ($950 CAD) and the Logo Sweater ($695 CAD). The garments are designed to be layered, mixed, matched and transformed for a truly distinctive style, as well as provides custom warmth and protection no matter the conditions. The Angel Chen for Canada Goose in-store visual display includes design elements that bring HUMANATURE to life; Canada Goose's purpose platform, which unites the brand's sustainability and values-based initiatives. The majority of materials used in these displays are recycled, recyclable or biodegradable. The brand is also incorporating an augmented reality (AR) experience to its store windows globally. Starting at the end of January, guests can unlock natural elements, such as blooming flowers by pointing their camera at a QR code on the window. This AR experience will also unveil product features and buying options through hotspots available on the screen. The Angel Chen for Canada Goose Spring 2021 collection is available starting January 15, 2021 at select Canada Goose retail stores and select wholesale partners, canadagoose.com, TMall and WeChat. About Canada Goose Founded in 1957 in a small warehouse in Toronto, Canada, Canada Goose (NYSE:GOOS, TSX:GOOS) is a lifestyle brand and a leading manufacturer of performance luxury apparel. Every collection is informed by the rugged demands of the Arctic, ensuring a legacy of functionality is embedded in every product from parkas and rainwear to apparel and accessories. Canada Goose is inspired by relentless innovation and uncompromised craftsmanship, recognized as a leader for its Made in Canada commitment. In 2020, Canada Goose announced HUMANATURE, its purpose platform that unites its sustainability and values-based initiatives, reinforcing its commitment to keep the planet cold and the people on it warm. Canada Goose also owns Baffin, a Canadian designer and manufacturer of performance outdoor and industrial footwear. Visit www.canadagoose.com for more information. About Angel Chen Angel Chen is a Chinese designer whose colourful approach to fashion coupled with the brand's core-concept of fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetics, has made her one of the country's brightest young talents, stocked internationally at 80+ retailors. Chen is part of a new wave of young Chinese designers making an impact locally and globally. SOURCE Canada Goose Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 07:28:21|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Villager Butri celebrates farmers' New Year in her new house in Gajilin Village of Chaqiug Township in Sa'gya County of Xigaze, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 14, 2021. Residents who were relocated from poverty-stricken area celebrate the farmers' New Year in their new homes in Gajilin Village. In Xigaze and other farming regions of Tibet, people celebrate New Year on the 1st day of the twelfth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar. According to local farming tradition, spring ploughing season always begins as the fall of New Year, thus celebrating one month earlier is to meet the needs of local agriculture. Xigaze City is regarded as a granary of Tibet. (Xinhua/Purbu Zhaxi) 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. Do you have a news tip? Want to share good news story, or do you have information that should see the light of day? Then we want to hear from you. More here TriggerPhoto/iStockBy BEN GITTLESON, KATHERINE FAULDERS, and JOHN SANTUCCI, ABC News (WASHINGTON) -- With just six days left in office and facing a Senate trial, President Donald Trump spent Thursday as the most isolated he has been during his presidency. Key allies on Capitol Hill have bucked him, advisers are avoiding him, and his lawyers have largely refused to defend him as he faces an historic second impeachment trial as soon as next week. Trump has limited time left to exercise his pardon powers. He has suggested to advisers he could grant a pardon to himself, as well as to family members and close allies, according to people familiar with the discussions. As the West Wing clears out, the White House has not announced any upcoming trips for the president to tout what he views as his top accomplishments. While Trump has said he will not attend President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Wednesday, the White House has not said when exactly he plans to leave the building for his final time as president. The president has felt isolated and angry, lashing out at those who have been most loyal to him over the past four years but whom he views as failing him in recent days, according to people close to the president. Among the targets, they said, were Vice President Mike Pence and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is considering voting to convict Trump, McCarthy said Wednesday the president bears responsibility for the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, and the No. 3 House Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, joined nine other Republicans to vote to impeach him. But Trump is not alone in the greater Republican party. Just 17% of Republican registered voters hold Trump responsible for the storming of the Capitol last week, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll released the day before, only 13% of Republicans supported ousting the president before his term expires next week. And while 10 House Republicans voted to impeach him Wednesday, 197 others voted against, sticking by him. Even so, the president's approach to the impeachment looked a lot different from the way he handled the first one. Locked out of his social media accounts, Trump was unable to tweet real-time reactions as he did -- prolifically -- during his first impeachment. The White House communications team did not blast out "rapid response" emails defending the president like it did before, nor did the press secretary mount any sort of public rebuttal. With McConnell leaving open the possibility he may vote to convict Trump during the Senate's impeachment trial -- and several other Republican senators potentially jumping aboard -- the president faces the prospect that 17 GOP senators could join their Democratic colleagues in choosing to convict him. It's unclear how likely that would be. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who just last week split with Trump by saying Biden won the election, flew with him to Texas on Thursday for a visit to the border and told The Washington Post the president asked him to help lobby his colleagues to acquit him during the trial. Graham said he spent time calling senators from Air Force One. The trial could start as soon as next week, but the president has yet to organize a defense team -- and many of the lawyers involved last time did not plan to return for the second round. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputies, as well as outside lawyers Jay Sekulow and Jane and Marty Raskin are all not expected to be involved. Aides to the president have spoken with former Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who played a role in the first impeachment trial, about joining the team, although he is not on board yet. Trump has been increasingly irritated with personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and has not been taking his calls, according to people familiar with the matter, though Giuliani has been spotted in the West Wing recently and may play a key role in the president's defense. Top Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller tweeted Thursday that he had "just" spoken with the president that morning and that "he told me" Giuliani "is a great guy and a Patriot who devoted his services to the country!" Miller did not say if the president planned to have Giuliani represent him during the trial. Another attorney, John Eastman, whose extremist positions have troubled some of the president's lawyers, is expected to be involved. Eastman is a law professor who had represented Trump in a failed quest to have the Supreme Court intervene in the election, and who has pushed a racist conspiracy theory about Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, the West Wing cleared out physically, too. After a handful of White House staffers resigned after Trump called on his supporters to "fight like hell" and march to the Capitol, most elected to stay on until their time came to an end on its own. Many have been packing up their desks and going through the off-boarding process in recent days, with stacks of cardboard boxes seen being delivered to the White House complex on Wednesday. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was photographed walking away from the White House with a large picture of Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. In the final week of the Trump administration, Navarro was one of the last West Wing officials actively defending the president in public. "The Democratic Party did violence to this country by attacking a president, who I believe was legally elected on November 3," Navarro said in an interview with Fox Business Thursday morning. "If the election were held today, hed be elected again." Trump was not elected president in November; Biden was, and his win was certified by the Congress last week. ABC News' Jonathan Karl and Quinn Scanlan contributed to this report. Copyright 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. THE way has been cleared for thousands of pupils with special needs to return to primary and special schools from next Thursday, January 21. The Department of Education issued guidance to principals tonight after detailed discussions today with the education partners to finalise arrangements. The re-opening of schools generally has been delayed until February 1, at the earliest, and this package is aimed at supporting the most vulnerable pupils, who suffered most during the first lockdown, last Spring. It allows for all pupils in special classes in mainstream schools, such as those catering for children with autism and hearing impairment, to go back to the classroom on a full-time basis from Thursday. Read More Meanwhile, the 124 special schools may operate at 50pc capacity, which means that pupils will attend on alternate days. This is in recognition of the significant level of staff and students in these schools and the agreement is aimed at reducing the overall numbers on site at any one time. Schools may also bring back pupils with significant additional needs who attend mainstream classes in primary schools, although it may not be possible to provide the full curricular programme for them. The guidance says it is important that pupils who are prioritised for a return to school are those with the greatest level of need. After providing for children with the most significant level of special needs, schools have the option of opening up to other pupils, suffering educational disadvantage, if they have capacity. While the clear priority is to support in school teaching for children with significant additional needs, schools have the flexibility to support vulnerable children too, the guidance said. It also sets out detailed advice around attendance arrangements for teachers and special needs assistants (SNA) and advises that school transport services for the pupils involved will resume on January 21. Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) general secretary John Boyle described the meeting as constructive and said they had secured clarity for our members on a host of issues from transport to childcare to updated public health advice. He said public health experts who support the school sector and the Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ronan Glynn would host a webinar for special education staff early next week. This will provide reassurance to our members that all necessary steps are being taken to ensure the safety of all involved in this interim support programme for children with complex special educational needs. Mr Boyle said high level meetings regarding the prioritisation of special education staff for the vaccination programme were also taking place. He added that while supporting the continuity of learning remotely is far from ideal, we hope to be able to return to our classrooms fully, but it remains to be seen if the public health landscape improves enough to enable the resumption of classroom-based learning. However Forsa, which represents over 12,000 SNAs, said that an agreement had yet to be reached on enhanced safety measures that would facilitate the safe resumption of services at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The union said it hoped to be able to advise SNAs that it was safe to co-operate with the phased resumption of in-school services to children with special educational needs as soon as possible. But it said this would require agreement on measures that would underpin the safety of students and staff. Forsa said talks with the education department had not concluded, and that a number of issues remained to be resolved. These include the safety of SNAs at high risk of Covid infection, and the absence of childcare arrangements for workers now that the Governments level five restrictions had closed schools and childcare services. 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. At least 70 residents were displaced after a large fire roared through a New Orleans East apartment complex on Wednesday night. Fire investigators were still working Thursday to determine what caused the blaze at the Gentilly Ridge Apartments in the 6000 block of Chef Menteur Highway. No one was killed or critically injured, but Katy Sandusky of the American Red Cross said her organization had to find hotel rooms for 70 residents from the 100-unit complex. Others whose apartments were left uninhabitable had arranged to stay with family or friends. +7 Four-alarm fire roars in New Orleans East apartment complex As many as 90 families displaced at Chef Menteur Highway and Downman Road Among those displaced was Ronald Clay, who packed his car Thursday with his remaining possessions -- three bags of clothes. All we got (left) is a wing and a prayer, Clay said. Thats it. But thank God we (are) safe, though. You know? The fire at Gentilly Ridge, which is next to Banner Chevrolet, erupted about 7 p.m., officials said. Police and firefighters arrived to find flames shooting through the roof of the complex, and evacuated residents who were still in their units. It took 60 firefighters until about 10:55 p.m. to bring the blaze under control, officials said. New Orleans Police Department officials said four officers were treated for smoke inhalation. No additional injuries were reported by the New Orleans Fire Department. 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 A representative of the company that owns Gentilly Ridge credited building staff with aiding the evacuation. Were grateful no one was injured, said Keith Crawford, of CPM Property Holdings LLC. Thats the main thing. Crawford said the fire affected about half of the units in the complex. The company hopes at least some of the damaged units can be renovated quickly, though other apartments will need more extensive repairs, he said. Crawford added that some residents whose units were spared were able to return to their units by Thursday afternoon. He said the company was working with the Red Cross to make sure those displaced had somewhere to stay. Sandusky said all displaced residents not just those in hotels qualify for help from the Red Cross, such as assistance with clothes, food and prescription refills. Still, some residents who lost their homes and possessions said they worried about the uncertain futures they faced, especially with the coronavirus pandemic still raging. Im homeless now, said Denise Richardson, who was wrapped in a blanket given to her by first responders while she watched firefighters try to contain the fires spread Wednesday night. Another resident said she wasnt sure where she and her child would sleep beyond that night. My childs stuff is in there its gone, said the woman, who declined to give her name. What are we going to do? WWL-TV's Danny Monteverde contributed to this report. 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. As someone who has spent more than a decade working for the oldest centrist Republican organization in the United States, I admit that we have fought a losing battle for most of this time. From the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, centrists have largely been relegated to the margins of the Republican political scene content with promoting bromides about the importance of working together while those on the political right win elections and muscle through their priorities on Capitol Hill. Yet, if you are a centrist, now is not the time to concede defeat. Far from it. For as the tragic events on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol made clear, the divide in the Republican Party is no longer between the center and the right wing. The divide in todays GOP is between the insurrectionist wing and everyone else. Many Republicans will no doubt not want to hear this message. Ive worked for GOP candidates and causes since the late 1980s, and whenever there was a sign or possibility of inner-party strife, the message from party leadership was always the same dont rock the boat. Well, we are long past those kinds of admonishments. The question facing Republicans is not whether to rock the boat. The question is which boat do you want to be on. Do you want to be with the insurrectionists, who ignored facts, distorted reality and encouraged the storming of the Capitol last week? Or do you want to stand with principle-based centrists and conservatives who believe in and are driven by the ideas that made our party and our country great? In this June 23, 2020, file photo Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to examine COVID-19 on Capitol Hill in Washington. If you are a principled centrist or principled conservative, now is not the time to remain silent. To do so will lead to more of the same a party devoid of principles and dominated by personalities. It also will lead to centrists and conservatives being challenged by those who stand with and cheered on the insurrectionist wing. Alaska shows what's at stake Take Alaska, which Lisa Murkowski has represented in the U.S. Senate since 2003. Murkowski is conservative on some issues, and more centrist on others. The Ripon Forum recently featured the senator on its cover because of the bipartisan energy reform proposal she has authored that not only acknowledges the threat posed by climate change, but also strikes a balance between meeting our current energy needs while pursuing clean energy for the future. Story continues Last fall, when some questioned whether Murkowski would support the Trump administrations nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin posted a video on Twitter warning Murkowski to do the right thing by supporting the yet-to-be named nominee. Implying that she might challenge Murkowski in the next election if she did not, Palin then added: I see 2022 from my window. Recently, when Palin campaigned in Georgia in the run-up to the runoff election, she claimed that the Nov. 3 general election had been rigged. Around that same time, her website published an interview with Melissa Carone, the Rudy Guiliani-backed witness in Michigan who reminded people of a drunk Cecily Strong. In the interview on Palins website, Carone repeated unsubstantiated claims that Dominion Voting Machines in Michigan had been tampered with and that the state had been delivered to Joe Biden as a result. Does any rational Republican believe that Palin would be a more effective and responsible member of the Senate Republican Caucus than Murkowski? And yet in states and congressional districts across the country, like-minded candidates are no doubt considering similar campaigns. Capitol attack is defining event In 2022, each would-be Republican candidate must be held to account for their actions in the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6. Fortunately, members of the business community are beginning to do just that. Over the weekend, Forbes reported that Marriott International, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Commerce Bank were indefinitely suspending contributions to any official who voted against certifying the election of Joe Biden after the attack on the Capitol. According to this same report, Bank of America, Ford Motor Co. and AT&T plan to take recent events into consideration before making future donations, while CVS Health Corp., Exxon Mobil, FedEx and Target also plan to review their political giving. If the business community has the courage to step up, centrist Republicans should, too. Ten years ago, centrists stood by aghast as a member of their own ranks, then-Congressman and former Delaware Governor Mike Castle, was upset by Christine ODonnell in the states GOP primary. ODonnells rise was rapid. She was embraced by the Tea Party, and then soundly defeated by centrist Democrat Chris Coons in the general election because of her extreme views. That seat was Castles to lose. If it hadnt been for ODonnells challenge, it would be in Republican hands today. More significantly, the Senate would still be under GOP control. ODonnell was a relative unknown and did not have a record to defend. The members of todays insurrection wing are known to all and do have a record. Which is why if you are a principled centrist or a principled conservative who would like to be in the majority and cares about the future of the GOP now is not the time to stay silent. Rather, it is time to stand up to the insurrectionists who would like to carry the GOP banner in 2022 and have them answer one question: After fomenting a rebellion that claimed five lives and desecrated our nations Capitol, why are you still fit to serve? Lou Zickar is editor of The Ripon Forum, a centrist journal of political thought and opinion published by the Ripon Society. The views presented here are his own. You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Centrist Republicans need to stand up against the insurrectionists As talk intensifies about the prospect of reconciliation between Damascus and the Hamas movement, which has been a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assads opposition, the question arises: What is Russias position on the issue? Generally Moscows opinion is left out of these discussions on a potential rapprochement. And strangely so, especially given many analysts' and commentators knack for exaggerating Russias role in the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. Within Russia, such exaggerations are a reflection of a desire to shore up the countrys image on the world stage, while the outside observers often lack complete information about the real situation. Representatives of Hamas have been visiting Moscow for over a decade. The first official visit occurred in 2006 upon the invitation of President Vladimir Putin. Western observers interpreted the visit as a sign of Moscows return to the international arena. But the move provoked condemnation from Chechen rebels, who denounced the decision of Palestinian mujahedeen, the brothers of Chechens, to accept Putins handshake. In reality, though, the Kremlin was not mulling any complicated plans. Putins design was the same as it has always been: using contradictions between political players to his own advantage and showcasing Russias independence from other partners of the Middle East Quartet: the European Union, the United Nations and, most importantly, the United States. So the representatives of Hamas were invited to Moscow nine days after Putin labeled their victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections a strong blow to the peace process. Since then, Russian diplomats have had to toe a delicate line in explaining why Hamas, a movement which sprang up from the Muslim Brotherhood organization (banned in Russia in 2003), came to the Russian capital. And why, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is not labeled a terrorist group (the official reason given is that Hamas does not pose a threat to the Russians). Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood has since 2003 been considered a terrorist organization based on the definition that is only relevant to the groups activity during the 1970s. The signing of the Abraham Accords left Russian diplomacy on the sidelines. Moscow has been making positive statements about the prospect of normalization of ties between the Arab states and Israel, as this suits Moscows concept of security in the Persian Gulf. Yet Moscow is struggling to come out of the Soviet imperial shadow and is irritated that the peace process is advancing without Russia's involvement. Hence the attempt to devalue the results of the diplomatic process and let it be known that, while others are doing publicity stunts to show off their largely superficial achievements, Russia is involved in real, substantive issues. For example, Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh declared last year that Hamas is ready to help find a solution to the conflict in northern Syria. The statement came out shortly after Haniyeh's meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This led some analysts close to Hamas to suggest that Moscow may be acting as a mediator in the talks to normalize relations between the movement and Damascus. In 2016, the Syrian regime referred to Hamas as a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate that will always be a terrorist and a hypocrite. Yet just one year later Assad toned down his rhetoric as talks on reconciliation began. Expectations that Russia could play the role of mediator in Palestine-Syria talks are still kept alive. One reason for this is because this month, Palestine became the first political entity in the Middle East to receive the Russian-produced vaccine Sputnik V. Moreover, Russia features in the list of countries that along with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey have become guarantors for the presidential and legislative elections in the Palestinian territories. Yet this agreement on behalf of Hamas is nothing but a bluff and an attempt to signal to the incoming Joe Biden administration its readiness to reach compromises against the background of declining pan-Arab solidarity and of the readiness of Arab countries and even Turkey to improve ties with Israel. It is hard to imagine what guarantees can be given to ensure the registration of voters, say, in Jordan, given the very large number of Palestinians in the country. In Russia, however, conversations about the prospects of reconciliation between Damascus and Hamas have been virtually nonexistent. Only one Russian news site seems remotely concerned. FAN, a news agency linked to the Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin (who has been tied to the Wagner Group), recently published a small article citing Hamas leader Atef Adwan, the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council's Economic Committee, mentioning the possibility that the relations between Damascus and the movement might return to more what they were before the war. The article said only a fraction of Syrian elites hold an emphatically negative view about such a reconciliation, while Iran and Hezbollah are trying to put pressure on Israel at an inopportune moment, one in which Damascus is trying to improve the situation in the south of the country. According to Al-Monitor sources close to the Russian Foreign Ministry, there is hardly a consensus among Russian diplomats and the military about Hamas role in the Syrian conflict. Some blame Hamas for chasing Arab Gulf money and providing terrorist groups with the plans of underground communications in the Yarmouk refugee camp. Those skeptics also suspect the movement of playing its own game, citing activity in the Palestinian camps in Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon that is kept secret from Hezbollah. Yet others say that Hamas has maintained a largely neutral position during the Syrian war and that the movements affiliates in Syria Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis have been acting in an autonomous fashion. Yet another strand of opinion holds that even after the movement left Syria there were people such as Kamal Ranaja (Kamal Hussein Ghannaje), killed in Damascus in 2012, who stayed in the country and supplied weapons from Iran to Gaza via Syria (and Sudan before that). Putting those judgments to one side, it is worth mentioning that Hamas' connections with the Syrian regime have been cultivated in an indirect, somewhat obscure manner. Thus, the Arab Nationalist Guard units, who took Assads side in the Syrian war, claim to be fighting all the extremists in the area. Yet when Al-Monitor visited the Guards camp in Al-Malihah in Damascus, one of its commanders said the unit is leaning on the support from Hezbollah instructors and had extensive connections with Hamas. He specified the ties were with the Hamas wing that does not have associations with the Muslim Brotherhood, without divulging when exactly such a division in the Hamas ranks appeared. Despite speculation, Moscow is trying to keep its distance from the talks between Hamas and the Syrian government so as to avoid being associated with any one side of the regional rivalry, a source close to the Russian Foreign Ministry told Al-Monitor. Leonid Issaev, a political scientist at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, told Al-Monitor that Russias noninterference is a rational stance, provided that Moscow will still have to negotiate with Israel on such topics as the situation in Syrias southern provinces and on the Israel Defense Forces air force operations. For Russia to take part in the Damascus-Hamas negotiations, it needs serious reasons. As things stand, those incentives are absent. Israel has in the last few years established itself as a firm partner of Russia, while Moscow views in Hamas nothing more than an additional source of leverage, he added. That said, Russia has several reasons to take a positive view on the Hamas-Damascus negotiations, even if they are being overseen by Iran, Issaev said. First, the fact that negotiations are taking place inserts the Syrian regime back into the regional agenda. This is in line with Moscows desire to legitimize Assads regime, Issaev said. Moreover, negotiations might provide Russia with additional leverage over the Palestinians and the Israelis, an area where Russian influence has somewhat faded in the last few years. The strengthening of Hamas via the Syrian regime undermines the negotiations on reconciliation and opens an opportunity for Russia to insist on discussing the issues within the Middle East Quartet and other formats where Russia acts as a guarantor, Issaev added. A third factor involves Russias view of Damascus and Cairo as natural allies of Hamas. This would mean that sooner or later, the movement will have to correct course. Hamas struggle for survival pushes it into finding new supporters. Damascus views Hamas as a potential point of leverage on Israel in the post-Trump era, and formalization of this reconciliation is not a huge problem. While Syrias demands for public apologies from Hamas make little sense, there may yet be a more subtle reconciliation along the lines of the Putin-Erdogan rapprochement in 2016 after the downing of a Russian jet, Issaev said. (Natural News) Videos circulating on Facebook show a woman experiencing terrible leg convulsions after reportedly receiving Pfizers Covid-19 vaccine. (Article by Adan Salazar republished from NewsWars.com) Posts captured the womans legs violently shaking as she attempted to walk to her hospital bed from the bathroom and unfortunately her condition is only getting worse. This is what the Pfizer covid19 vaccine has done to my Mom, a Louisiana man named Brant Griner described in a post Sunday, going on to urge others to reconsider taking the vaccine. In an update Tuesday, after initially believing his mothers symptoms were subsiding, Griner instead noted her condition was getting worse. Mom Is getting even worse today and still dont have any answers from doctors as to how to fix this, Griner wrote. Please pray for her I cant stand to see my mom this way it makes me want to cry knowing I cant do anything to help her. Please dont take the covid19 vaccine. Im adding a 3rd video that she just sent me. Another video posted by a friend of Griner shows the womans leg convulsing uncontrollable while on a hospital bed. Despite being approved by the FDA, reports over the past few weeks have described vaccine recipients experiencing serious adverse reactions ranging from headaches and dizziness to seizures and bells palsy. Some even claim loved ones have died as a result of taking the vaccine. Read more at: NewsWars.com and VaccineInjuryNews.com. Phuket employment chief urges employers to register legal and illegal workers PHUKET: Phuket Provincial Employment Office Chief Santi Nantasuwan issued a reminder today (Jan 15) for employers to register their legal and illegal migrant workers through an online platform especially set up to bring all migrant workers in the country under the law in a bid to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. healtheconomicsMyanmar By The Phuket News Friday 15 January 2021, 06:09PM Register all migrant workers, legal and illegal, Phuket Provincial Employment Office Chief Santi Nantasuwan urged employers. Photo: NNT Today is the first day of employers being able to register their migrant workers, Chief Santi said. The online portal will stop accepting registrations after Feb 13, he added. Chief Santi explained that the move follows a Cabinet resolution on Dec 29, allowing all migrant workers who register to stay in the country for two years, until Feb 16, 2023. Migrants from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia who are or are not currently employed must register through the website, from Jan 15 to Feb 13, Chief Santi said. Migrant workers who have children under 18 years old must also register their children through the website, he added. Mr Santi urged all employers to take the opportunity to register all their workers during the amnesty. After Feb 13, the website will stop accepting registrations, and the opportunity will be gone, he said. The web portal for registering migrant workers is available in three languages Myanmar, Cambodian and Lao Mr Santi noted. Deputy government spokeswoman Traisuree Taisaranakul said on Dec 29 that many migrant workers were found to be infected in the latest COVID-19 outbreak, but when the government tried to test more of them in at-risk areas, many employers moved them to other areas for fear of legal action, and several illegal migrants also fled for fear of prosecution. After the online registration is completed, health officials will conduct physical checkups and COVID-19 tests. The costs of the tests and the required two-year health insurance, totalling B7,200 per worker, must be met by the workers or their employers. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said it was important that business owners cooperated by telling the authorities how many workers they needed. It is the factory owners responsibility. If we find later there was no information submission or miss from the truth and find employment of illegal workers, [the factory] will be on the blacklist, he said. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 19:34:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BUNIA, DR Congo, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- At least 46 people were killed from late Wednesday to early Thursday by rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in a village in Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), local authorities said Friday. The victims, all Pygmies, were beheaded, said Adjio Gigi, interior minister of Ituri province. Only a woman with gunshot wound, and her two-year-old child, managed to escape to report the killing to the authorities. ADF rebels have since last year expanded their actions in Ituri and North-Kivu province, committing mass massacres against civilians, despite operations against them by government troops and the UN mission in the region. Enditem Sorry! This content is not available in your region Fairfax-backed digital insurance company Digit Insurance disclosed on January 15 that it has achieved the valuation of $1.9 billion, becoming the first start-up to enter the unicorn club in 2021. The company said it's valuation has doubled since last year. The insurer said it achieved the $1 billion plus valuation (Rs 14,050 crore to be exact) in three years of operations after existing investors pumped in Rs 135 crore of additional capital in January 2021. In January 2020, Digit had raised raise $84 million (approximately Rs 600 crore) from three growth equity investors - A91 Partners, Faering Capital and TVS Capital. Digit is backed by Prem Watsas Fairfax. Digit is an insurance start-up, founded with the aim of making insurance simple. It has a portfolio of products across motor, travel, property and health insurance. "In an almost-recession like year for most businesses and when the insurance industry itself grew by 0.1 percent, Digit grew by 31.9 percent, earning a premium of $186 million (approximately Rs 1,359.72 crore) in April-December period (FY21)," said the company. In a statement, Digit said it also garnered profits in all three quarters of FY21 and has 15 million customers. Moneycontrol had reported earlier that Digit was eyeing a breakeven by FY21-end. The insurer uses technology to simplify processes for their customers, with methods such as smartphone-enabled self-inspection and audio claims. It is 100 percent on cloud. Digit has also been a part of the sandbox initiative of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) where products can be tested on a pilot basis for six months. Here even during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Digit had launched a health insurance product for the disease. Set up in 2017, Digit is headquartered in Bengaluru and was founded by insurance veteran Kamesh Goyal, who has over 30 plus years of experience in the insurance sector. Shares in FTSE 250 oilfield company Petrofac tumbled more than 20 per cent today after it confirmed that a former senior executive pleaded guilty to three bribery offences at Westminster Magistrates Court. Last night, the Serious Fraud Office said that former sales executive David Lufkin admitted three counts of bribery, which related to 'corrupt offers and payments made between 2012 and 2018'. The SFO said Lufkin 'pleaded guilty to his role in offering and making corrupt payments to agents to influence the award' of contracts.' The SFO said that former sales executive David Lufkin admitted three counts of bribery Payments of about $30million dollars (22million today) were made, or were due to be made, by Petrofac to win work contracts in the United Arab Emirates worth approximately $3.3billion. These charges are in addition to a further 11 charges to which Lufkin pleaded guilty in February 2019. The charges were in connection with corrupt offers around contracts worth $730million in Iraq, and $3.5billion in Saudi Arabia. Petrofac said it is engaging with the SFO as it acknowledged the plea by Lufkin, whom it described as a 'former employee of a Petrofac subsidiary'. It added: 'Petrofac confirms that no charges have been brought against any group company or any other officers or employees. 'A small number of former Petrofac employees are alleged to have acted together with the individual concerned, although none have been charged. 'No current board member of Petrofac Limited is alleged to have been involved.' Lufkin will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on February 11. Petrofac shares fell 22.5 per cent to 129.15p in late morning trading. He survived a terrifying car malfunction that left him fearing for his life last week. And now Daily Mail Australia can reveal that Seb Guilhaus, 31, was driving back to Adelaide after 'already ending his romance' with Elizabeth Sobinoff when his car burst into flames. 'Seb and Liz decided to end things after ringing in New Year together,' a source said. Married At First Sight's Seb Guilhaus, 31, and Elizabeth Sobinoff, 32, are believed to have already 'ended their romance' when his car EXPLODED earlier this month. Pictured together 'In fact, Seb was on his way back to Adelaide for good when his car blew up.' It's understood that Elizabeth, 29, has also relocated from her Sydney's Western Suburbs rental and moved back into her parent's home in Newcastle. 'It's been a pretty terrible start to the year that's for sure,' Seb said when approached for comment on Friday. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Friday, a close friend said that the couple had decided to call their relationship quits after ringing in the New Year together Tragic: Seb was driving back to Adelaide having 'already ended his romance' when his car burst into flames on the side of a highway In a statement this week. Seb and Lizzie said they'd 'mutually decided to end' their relationship and asked for fans to be kind and respectful as they move forward. Earlier this month, Seb left fans horrified when he uploaded several Instagram photos showing the charred remains of his burnt-out Ford Falco. 'So I had a fairly traumatic experience... I was driving 95km/hr and suddenly spouts of smoke entered the cabin just behind my drivers seat,' he said at the time. Relocated: Seb is understood to have relocated back to Adelaide where he has been living the past week. Pictured in Adelaide with his sister on January 9 It's over! Lizzie and Seb surprised their followers on Monday, January 11, after they shared identical posts on their respective Instagram accounts announcing they had split 'I quickly pulled over and jumped out... two seconds later the inside of the car began to set alight... I had just filled the car with fuel and had watched too many movies, so assumed I was about to be blown to pieces,' he continued. Unfortunately, at the time Seb's car was filled with thousands of dollars worth of equipment and belongings. 'After about a minute and in a panic I realised that some precious things were in the car... I sprinted, assuming the car was about to blow, grabbed my camera, my phone and bag with ID and odd bits and bobs, leaving the rest,' he wrote. 'It's been a pretty terrible start to the year that's for sure,' Seb told Daily Mail on Friday Seb has urged fans to treat Lizzie with respect following the couple's split, while also thanking his fans for their ongoing support. 'Hey, I just want to thank everyone for all the supportive messages over the last few days. It really does make a difference,' he wrote on Wednesday. 'Please be kind to Liz and myself over the next little while for the sake of our mental health,' he continued, adding a love-heart emoji. LANSING Michigan taxpayers with past-due tax debts should be aware of an aggressive scam thats making the rounds through the U.S. Postal Service, according to the Michigan Department of Treasury. In the scheme, taxpayers receive a letter about an overdue tax bill, asking individuals to immediately contact a toll-free number to resolve an outstanding state tax debt. The letter aggressively threatens to seize a taxpayers property including bank accounts, wages, business assets, cars, real estate and cash if the debt is not settled. Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci blasted President Donald Trump as 'the domestic terrorist of the 21st century,' comparing him to Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh. Scaramucci, who lasted just 11 days in Trumps administration, denigrated his former boss in an interview with CNNs Anderson Cooper Thursday night. When asked if Trump will leave office quietly Scaramucci said: 'He incited a riot, he incited an insurrection. Hes arguably, at least in the 21st century, you could say Timothy McVeigh for the 20th century, but he is the domestic terrorist of the 21st century.' McVeigh was an American domestic terrorist who carried out a bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995 that killed 168 people and injured 680 others and destroyed a third of a federal building, seeking to inspire a revolution against the federal government. It was the deadliest act of terror in the nation before the September 11 attacks and is the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in US history. Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci (right) blasted President Donald Trump as 'the domestic terrorist of the 21st century,' comparing him to Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh in an interview on Anderson Cooper 360 Thursday night Scaramucci served as White House Communications Director for just 11 days with Trump, starting in July 21, 2017 before he was given the boot on July 21, 2017. The two pictured together on Air Force One Timothy McVeigh was an American domestic terrorist who carried out a bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995 that killed 168 people and injured 680 others and destroyed a third of a federal building. It was the deadliest act of terror in the nation before the September 11 attacks and is the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in US history. McVeigh pictured in June 1995 Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci says he'd like to see President Trump go to jail, but that at the least he must be convicted in the Senate and banned from holding future office. https://t.co/mi9YSgqtdF pic.twitter.com/S0SLyAnEm4 Anderson Cooper 360 (@AC360) January 15, 2021 'You think he will be viewed as a domestic terrorist?' Cooper asked. 'I think right now were all in shock right now because hes the president of the United States and we always try to normalize that office But 50 years from now, a presidential historian will look at this situation and say "My God, he didnt accept the election, he signaled prior to the election that he wasnt going to, and he incited an insurrection where people descended on the Capitol building calling for the death of his vice president,"' Scaramucci replied. 'Youve got to step back, Anderson, and look at it objectively and look at it from 2071, not 2021. And yes, I do think he will be known throughout history as somebody that incited domestic terrorism,' he added. Scaramucci is demanding that Trump be held accountable and serve jail time. 'My personal view is he has to be held accountable, he has to be convicted in the Senate. The guy really should go to jail,' he said. Scaramucci lambasted Trump for the Capitol riot on January 6 where his supporters stormed into the Capitol building and halted Congress' joint session to certify the presidential election A view of security forces at the entrance of the US Capitol clashing with MAGA rioters during the January 6 siege 'Hes the president of the United States so were going to be cautious about that but theyve got to make this very punitive on him. As Speaker Pelosi said, "theres nobody above the law,"' he added. 'Hes got to be punished, in my personal opinion Id love to see him in jail, that will likely not happen, but taking away the powers of an ex-president through the conviction, I think would be a good start,' he reiterated. Scaramucci was asked about how Trump will spend his final days before Joe Bidens Inauguration next week. 'If he could have one more big insurgency he would, but I dont think hes going to be able to get that now because he doesnt have the communication, the direct messaging that was going on social media,' he said. 'I think its going to be sullen, anger based and somewhat solitary,' he added. ANN ARBOR, MI Michigan Medicine is hosting a virtual town hall Saturday, where community leaders plan to engage with residents to answer questions about COVID-19 and alleviate concerns about vaccines. The Program for Multicultural Health at Michigan Medicine has organized the virtual event, COVID-19 and the African American Community, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Jan. 16., to discuss steps toward equitable and ethical healthcare. Panelists include Kiela Samuels, clinical pharmacist at Michigan Medicines Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology; Dr. Jessie Kimbrough Marshall, adjunct assistant professor at Michigan Medicines Division of Hospital Medicine, and the Rev. Harry Grayson, bishop of Ypsilantis Messias Temple. Orthelia Pryor, senior project manager at Michigan Medicines Office for Health Equity and Inclusion, will serve as moderator. A live discussion will tackle the lack of trust in healthcare within Black communities, answer questions based in science and share personal stories about COVID-19, officials said. We want to make sure that older adults and at-risk populations have the science-based data where they can make an informed choice about a COVID-19 vaccine, Tony Denton, chief operating officer at Michigan Medicine, said last week. There are historical fears in communities of color around vaccines and clinical trials, and there are worries that you just dont know what it is youre getting. We want to really listen and acknowledge those concerns and then create engagement and dialogue to try to improve trust and confidence about this vaccine and how it can be of life-saving importance for individuals and families in these communities. Read more: Distrust in COVID-19 vaccine is a real concern Washtenaw health officials say they must address Health officials across Washtenaw County have pointed to the Tuskegee Experiment for Black communities apprehension to take the vaccine. The experiment was a 40-year study that misled impoverished Black men to participate in what researchers said was the observation of the natural progression of untreated syphilis. A large number of participants died or experienced severe health problems, leading to a generation of mistrust between Black Americans and the health care system. Michigan Medicine plans to take a role in vaccine education with initiatives that focus on communication and its sponsorship of awareness campaigns on social media and in town hall sessions and videos, Denton said. We want to push information out across different mediums and to create a space for community voice, with medical and scientific experts and clergy who can join and listen but also share information about the effectiveness of the vaccine, he said. Those interested in attending the live panel should RSVP here to receive the Zoom link. Individuals can join by smartphone, tablet, phone or computer. READ MORE FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS: Find out if youre eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in Washtenaw County Michigan prosecutor will look the other way when it comes to certain kinds of prostitution Washtenaw County asks for patience as 80,000 individuals now eligible for COVID-19 vaccine Lets call this column, and perhaps the next couple of columns, an old-timers memories of the past offered with the hope that they may help u Read more The Boston Police Department is investigating if one of their officers took part in the U.S. Capitol insurrection last week. Social media users identified now defunct Twitter account @mailboxjoe as a police officer, and alerted the department to concerning tweets, the Boston Globe reported. The department told the newspaper it has not been aware of any officers involved prior to being contacted by a reporter. The Twitter account has since been deleted, however some of the tweets have been archived. Beer drinking, Marine Vet, constitutional conservative who believes in peace through strength, the Twitter bio stated. It also included the person running the account was from Boston. It includes multiple tweets in December about an upcoming protest in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. So will you be in DC on Jan 6, one person tweeted at the account. I will definitely be there January 6th, @mailboxjoe tweeted. Bringing your gun(s)? the person tweeted back. @mailboxjoe did not respond. Other tweets included false accusations regarding the election. This is our president. He was re-elected by the legal vote on November 3rd. Lets keep fighting, a retweet by the account stated. Dear Fake News media, another tweet said. When half the country can see the truth that the election was a coup then it isnt a conspiracy. It is now a pretty wildly accepted fact. The account also threatened Vice President Mike Pence on the day of the insurrection, according to the Globe. I hope you never sleep well again @VP your Treasonous Act lead to the murder of an innocent girl and the death of America. You are not a Godley man. I guess @LLinWood was right about you all along, the tweet stated. A photo from D.C. was also shared with the caption, Today is a day for choosing. Today there will only two parties in America. Traitors and Patriots! The account had more than 22,000 tweets and 1,380 followers. Federal agents arrested a New Hampshire man known as Thomas Gallagher, 61, this week on charges related to US Capitol insurrection. Pittsfield resident David Lester Ross, a 33-year-old, was also arrested at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month, and a Massachusetts woman, Anne Lorenz, was charged with assault on a police officer in Washington, D.C. near the U.S. Capitol on the same day. Related Content: Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 13:32:48|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China and Brunei have vowed to further develop bilateral relations and deepen and upgrade their cooperation in all sectors. The pledge came after Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday held talks with Haji Erywan, Brunei's second minister of foreign affairs and Haji Mohd Amin Liew, minister at the Prime Minister's Office and second minister of finance and economy, and co-chaired the second meeting of the China-Brunei intergovernmental joint steering committee. Wang said facing the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, China and Brunei, under the guidance of the heads of state from the two countries, have stood together and helped each other in fighting the virus, becoming the first countries to walk out of the shadow of the pandemic. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brunei and the 30th anniversary of the dialogue relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which also coincides with Brunei's assumption of the rotating chair of ASEAN, Wang said. Both sides should seize the opportunities by focusing on the two themes of fighting the pandemic and development, and map out cooperation on the bilateral and multilateral levels, upgrade bilateral cooperation in all fields guided by the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, so as to push the China-Brunei and China-ASEAN relations to a new high and benefit the peoples of the two countries and the region. China is willing to maintain high-level exchanges with Brunei, make the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties a success, sum up experiences of the development of relations in the past 30 years and work out development prospects for ties for the next 30 years, Wang said. The Chinese state councilor called for efforts to strengthen cooperation on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, open "fast tracks" for personnel movement, plan and build "green lanes" for goods movement, and maintain the stability of industry chains and supply chains. On COVID-19 vaccine, Wang said China supports domestic enterprises in cooperating with the Bruneian side. Wang also called on both sides to push forward the work of the China-Brunei intergovernmental joint steering committee towards the set goals. Wang called for efforts towards the steady progress in the two flagship projects, namely the Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd's oil refinery and petrochemical project and the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor, under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. Both sides should also sustain the development momentum in bilateral economic, trade and investment cooperation, cultivate new growth points in the sectors including 5G, digital economy, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data application, expand cooperation in the fields of agriculture and tourism, among others, and enhance bilateral exchanges in the areas of higher education and students. Stressing that China is willing to provide more development opportunities for Brunei, Wang said his country welcomes Brunei's participation in the China-ASEAN Expo and the China International Import Expo (CIIE), as well as in building the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. China supports Brunei in assuming the ASEAN chairmanship, and is ready to work with Brunei to further elevate the China-ASEAN relations, said Wang. China is also willing to join efforts with Brunei to put into force the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement at an early date, build a China-ASEAN community of cybersecurity, advance cooperation in public health and forge a blue economy partnership, he said. Both sides should support the ASEAN centrality in regional cooperation, keep the open and inclusive regional architecture, and maintain the momentum in East Asia regional cooperation, said Wang. The Bruneian side said Brunei attaches great importance to the ties with China, noting that the two countries share a broad range of common interests with huge potential for cooperation. Brunei stands ready to take the opportunities of the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries as well as the 30th anniversary of the ASEAN-China dialogue relations to deepen the cooperation with China, the Bruneian side said. The Bruneian side thanked China for the assistance in its fight against the pandemic, and commended China for the announcement that China will make its COVID-19 vaccine a public good after successful vaccine research and development and will actively provide the vaccine to ASEAN countries. The Bruneian side hoped to enhance cooperation in fishery and tourism between the two countries, to advance the building of Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd's oil refinery and petrochemical project and the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor. Brunei also welcomes more Chinese enterprises to invest in the country and explore new fields for cooperation such as e-commerce and digital economy so as to contribute to Brunei's economic diversification drive. Brunei, during its ASEAN chairmanship, stands ready to give priority to cooperation with China, lift the ASEAN-China relations to a new high, further promote the building of the free trade area of the two sides, push for cooperation in poverty alleviation, education, cybersecurity and sustainable development, among others, and pool consensus on blue economy partnership, the Bruneian side said, adding that the sultanate will continue to actively participate in the ASEAN-China Expo and CIIE. The Chinese and the Bruneian sides announced that they will launch an energy cooperation working group under the framework of the China-Brunei intergovernmental joint steering committee and maintain communication on establishing a maritime cooperation working group at an early date to jointly promote cooperation in the fields. The two sides said they will remain committed to the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and work towards reaching substantive and effective regional rules at an early date. After the talks, Wang and Haji Erywan attended the logo launching ceremony for the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Brunei, officially launching a series of commemorative activities. Enditem Home > 2021 > Mayhem At Capitol Hill Wake Up Call To Democrats Of The World | Vijay (...) by Vijay Kumar The storming of US Congress in Capitol Hill on 6th January by the mob incited by the outgoing President may be shocking, but not surprising. This attack in the very citadel of American Democracy is a culmination of toxic combination of neoliberalism and demagoguery anchored in racism. It would, however, be a grave mistake to term this unprecedented violence as a unique to US. The symptom of this kind, which is prelude to fascism, is present in many countries, including in India. In fact, the mob attack in JNU and Jamia campuses and elsewhere underscores the spread of virus of hate and has , therefore, more grave implication for Indian democracy. At the time of counting of votes in US Presidential election, I wrote that Trump may have lost the election, but Trumpism was alive and kicking (see Mainstream, 7th November 2020) and that exactly happened on 6th January. The very fact that Trump, despite losing decisively, secured 75 million votes speaks for menacing rise of right-wing phenomenon - not only in the US but also elsewhere, including India. In similar vein, on the eve of assembly election in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, when Rahul Gandhi was busy in temple-hopping, I had written that Congress may win these Assembly elections, but was not in a position to challenge the hideous rise of Hindutva (See the Unchallenged Hegemony of BJP Mainstream, dated 2nd December,2018 ). The trumpism grounded in poisonous notion of racism is as much threat to democracy as the demagoguery rooted in religion and recidivism. Trump is not only demagogue but also incorrigibly narcissist and megalomaniac. His demagoguery is rooted in white supremacy and white supermacism grew side by side with promotion of cult personality _ again a manifestation not peculiar to the US. What happened on 6th January is attack on democracy not only in US but in every part of the world, and this must prompt the democrats and liberals everywhere to consolidate against the rise of mobocracy rather than gloating over the predicament of US. Similarly, the schadenfreude moment articulated by certain segments in Russian and Chinese establishments and media and other countries deserves strong condemnation. Just as injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere, as memorably put in by Martin Luther King, attack on democracy in any part of the world must be a matter of grave concern for all the liberals. What happened on 6th January is a culmination of the process of decaying of Republican Party started with rise of lethal combination of neoliberalism and atavistic passion. I have argued elsewhere that neoliberalism and religious fundamentalism feed upon each other as obscurantism tends to deradicalise the emancipatory potency of progressive politics. The neoliberalism and cultural revivalism started growing side by side within the rank and file of the Republican Party since the presidency of Ronald Reagan and reached its nadir on 6th January, 2021. The party which espoused the cause of Social Ethics and Civic Virtue, associated with one of the greatest President of US, Abraham Lincoln, has degenerated into brazen-faced right -wing party of barbarian. Paradoxical though it may sound, the seed of pernicious phenomenon of white supermacism was sown in otherwise the progressive evolution of democratic politics culminating in Barrack Obama becoming first black president in the oldest constitutional democracy in 2008. The racism which was lurking in the background came to surface and Trump exploited it to the hilt in 2016. The rise of Trump on the strength of post truth and white supremacy was the right -wing reaction to the black becoming president in most powerful country of the world. The democrats in the US are busy in securing accountability of Trump by impeaching him second time by the majority of 232 votes to 197 votes in House of Representatives on 13th January following refusal by the Vice President, Mike Pence to invoke 25th Amendment or prosecuting Trump for full-frontal attack on democracy and republicanism. These are irreducible minima, but the interrogation must go beyond securing accountability. Democrats in US and other parts of the world must confront the rise of right-wing ideology rested solidly on venomous combination of neoliberalism and religious bigotry by demonizing black and minority. Defeating Trump is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. What is paramount is to defeat Trumpism in its numerous shades in different parts of the world, including India. Instead of mocking the hour of shame for US democracy, genuine democrats and liberals must take into account that the institutions in US, particularly media and judiciary lived upto the role of check and balance, whereas these institutions have almost collapsed or on the verge of collapsing in other parts of the world, including India. Not only that, but even a segment of Republicans, however small it may be, broke the rank and distanced themselves from Trump and condemned the attack of mob on 6th January. To begin with, many Republican States rejected the lies of voting fraud mouthed by Trump like propagandist. Even half a dozen federal judiciary, though packed by Trump appointees, rejected the claim of election being stolen in absence of any evidence whatsoever. Similarly, the Supreme Court, despite 6 to 3 majority in favour of Republican Party, repelled the challenge mounted by some of the Republican controlled states through their Attorney Generals. Even Vice President Pence asserted that he had no right to nullify the certification of results done by the States. Again, the Attorney General William Barr, one of the staunchest sidekick of Trump, who resigned few days back, not only condemned the attack on Capitol Hill but before that he had said that he found no evidence of voting fraud at all. And the most indispensible man for the Trump, Mitch McConnell, the leader of Senate who acted as a consigliere found no instance of voting malpractice. Similarly, two Cabinet Ministers registered their protests by rendering their resignations. And last but not the least, the Media, particularly, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post rose to the occasion and spoke truth to the power consistently since 2016. At the time of writing this piece, The House of Representatives under the dynamic leadership of Nancy Pelosi impeached Trump, the first president to be impeached twice, by majority of 232 votes to 197 votes. This speaks for existence of strong opposition party capable of acting as a guard rail against the abuse of power. Therefore, the countries, who are jeering the US democracy, must reckon these silver linings even in the darkest hour of US democracy. Even Trump has conducted Press Conference throughout his tenure of four years, whereas there are some leaders in democratic countries who have not held any press conference at all. Similarly, the extremist groups like QANON, PROUD AMERICA and other fringe outfits, are a phenomenon not confined to US alone. These kinds of right-wing fringe outfits exist in other parts of the world and its numbers are far more menacing. In India, numerous militant outfits like Bajrang Dal, etc. already exist and their numbers are multiplying rapidly and pose threat not only to Indian democracy but also to spirit of tolerance, catholicity and pluralistic inherent in classic Hinduism. The personality cult promoted through plebiscitary appeal to the masses directly by strong leaders by putting them above party, constitutional office and even country is a threat to democracy everywhere. Democracy can be sustained only through strong and independent institutions capable of enforcing rule of law impartially and refusing to be beholden to the leaders of the country. Institution and existence of it and its robust functioning are sine qua non for checking the abuse of power. Francis Fukuyama, one of the foremost political theorists in current time, argued in his two-volume magisterial works Political order and Political decay that the country which is governed on impersonal rule is more developed democracy rather than country governed by the cult of personality, and he choose Scandinavian countries as a role model. The mob attack on the Capitol Hill on 6th January at the instance of Trump is, therefore, a wake-up call for genuine democrats, and committed liberals in every parts of the world must interrogate the slide of democracy into mobocracy, and that can be secured only through progressive and equitable politics centered around people welfare. Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, has constantly been reminding us through his column in the New York Times that reversal of backsliding of democracy is far more challenging than reversal of economic recession and security threats. (Vijay Kumar is Advocate at the Supreme Court of India) The more infectious UK 'super-covid' variant could become dominant in the US by March, triggering massive surges in coronavirus cases, the CDC warns. Already, at least 95 people in 15 states have detected cases of the highly contagious B117 variant, according to DailyMail.com tracking (the CDC has only documented 76 in 12 states). The variant quickly became dominant in the UK, where it was first detected, and triggered the nation's strictest lockdowns yet. CDC experts declined to predict just how many more cases and deaths the variant will lead to in the US. But it is thought to be up to twice as infectious, and 'a higher rate of transmission will lead to more cases, increasing the number of persons overall who need clinical care, exacerbating the burden on an already strained health care system, and resulting in more deaths,' they wrote in a Friday report. If it continues to infect 1.1 people for every one person who catches the new UK 'super-covid' variant, the more infectious form of coronavirus (light purple) will be dominant by March and increase daily cases of the new variant to nearly 50 per 100,000, the CDC estimates The UK variant is not itself thought to be more deadly and early lab studies suggest vaccines will provide protection against it. Meanwhile, similar new threats are emerging across the globe. Scientists are concerned that variants from Brazil and South Africa may evade vaccines. They haven't yet been reported in the US, but with only spotty testing for variants they may already been. And the US now has three homegrown variants of its own. All three are suspected to be more infectious than currently more common variants, and one is virtually identical to the UK variant. Utah and Illinois each reported their first cases of the UK variant on Friday. It has also been reported by health departments in: Colorado California Florida Georgia New York Pennsylvania Texas New Mexico Connecticut Indiana Massachusetts Minnesota Tennessee Wisconsin It quickly spread to a cluster in California - which has a cluster of 32, plus two other cases there - and there are now at least 22 cases in Florida. In the absence of vaccines, the UK variant could push daily case rates past 80 per capita The variant's rapid spread will increase the burden on health resources at a time when infections are surging, further sapping strained healthcare resources and increasing the need for better adherence to mitigation strategies, such as social-distancing and mask-wearing, the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease. It also increases the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated to achieve protective herd immunity to control the pandemic, the CDC said. Dr Anthony Fauci has said that herd immunity could be reached if between 70 and 85 percent of the population is vaccinated against or has had COVID-19. Vaccine rollout has been painstakingly slow in the US. Just 11.9 million Americans have had their first doses. The threat of new variants should add to the urgency of vaccination - but the US has already burned through its stockpile of jabs. MORE 'super-covid' variants are coming, scientists warn: Global surge of nearly 230,000 cases a DAY is fueling more chances for the virus to mutate to beat the immune system in people with chronic infections, expert claims In the span of less than 24 hours this week, US scientists reported three homegrown 'super-covid' variants - and experts say the world should brace for many more, emerging in countries all over the world. And the more people get coronavirus, the more of these highly infectious variants will emerge, scientists believe. Scientists theorize that 'super-covid' variants are only going to become more common as case numbers surge across the globe, because the more cases there are, the greater the number of people with rare, chronic infections will be - and these cases offer a unique opportunity for new, stronger COVID-19 variants to evolve. 'My (highly speculative!) hypothesis is that the emergence of these variant viruses arises in cases of chronic infection during which the immune system places great pressure on the virus to escape immunity and the virus does so by getting really good at getting into cells,' wrote Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center scientist Dr Trever Bradford wrote in a Thursday Twitter thread. Weaker immune systems allow the virus to stay in the body for a longer time, during which the immune system keeps fighting it. Duking it out with the immune system teaches the virus how to stick around better. Dr Bedford isn't the only one who thinks so. 'The uptick in mutations [we are seeing] is expected because there is more circulation of the virus, and more chances for a mutation to occur,' Dr Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation told DailyMail.com. And when people are infected for a long time, 'it is giving the virus an opportunity to mutate within the same host,' Dr Mokdad explained. Researchers say the variant first began spreading rapidly in late June and early July, coinciding with the second wave of the virus in the U.S. He says scientists suspect that that is how the UK variant, B117, arose: 'A person who was infected for 12 days was the one who started this whole thing,' though that theory is yet to be confirmed. The more infectious B117 variant has become dominant in the UK. Similar variants have cropped up in South Africa, Brazil and the US. Now, the US has two other variants. So far, they all appear to likely be more infectious, but not more deadly. Scientists think vaccines will work against them, but that is the key question still looming over them. 'That's why this debate of cutting the dose [of vaccines] or only giving the first dose is very, very dangerous' Dr Mokdad says. 'You want [a vaccine] to knock down the virus very, very low. We don't want to get this virus used to something in small doses so the virus can develop immunity, we want to make sure that when the virus comes into contact with these immune antibodies, it loses every time, and fast.' As cases have surged in countries including Brazil (pictured), there have been more chances for the virus to mutate because more infections means a greater number of chronic cases that give the virus ample time to learn how to better infect humans, experts speculate. One of several more infectious 'super-covid' variants emerged in Brazil Between November 1 and December 31, the variant made up nearly 50% of all U.S. genomes sequenced (right) Chronic COVID-19 infections - not to be confused with 'long-covid,' symptoms that may linger months after someone clears the virus - may last weeks or even months, and most commonly affect people with weak immune systems. A team from Southern Illinois University Carbondale traced the earliest appearance of new variant, called 20C-US, to Texas in May 2020. The variant carries several mutations, including to the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter and infect human cells. Scientists say the variant has not spread significantly beyond the country's borders, and that is most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest. What's more, it could be responsible for at least 50 percent of all American cases, meaning it is very widespread. The researchers predict that 20C-US may be the most dominant variant of the coronavirus in the U.S. at this moment. 20C-US is now one of the growing list of mutations discovered in countries such as the UK, South Africa and Brazil. The news comes just one day after Ohio researchers announced the first discovery of two homegrown variants - one virtually identical to a variant that emerged in the UK and the other completely unique to the U.S. and dominant in the capital of Columbus. The results were published in a pre-print article on bioRxiv.org on Wednesday. Led by Dr Keith Gagnon, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at SIU, the team first noticed the possibility of the new variant while looking at genome sequencing data from Illinois. 'We were just looking at our local, like state-specific Illinois data...and we were asked [by the Illinois Department of Public Health] to specifically look for the spike protein mutations of the UK variant for example,' he told DailyMail.com. 'As we're going through the data, we're not seeing a UK variant but I keep seeing this large outbranching off the final genetic tree that we reconstructed.' Of the viral genome samples taken from March to the present that were sequenced, one variant was more pronounced than the rest. The variant has not spread significantly beyond U.S. borders and is most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest (above) Despite being more widespread, the virus does not appear to more deadly, just more transmissible US SCIENTISTS FIND THREE HOMEGROWN 'SUPER-COVID' VARIANTS The US now has three of its own homegrown 'super-covid' variants that are more infectious than the most common coronavirus types in the US - and the new variants are spreading like wildfire in at least one state. Two variants were identified by Ohio scientists on Wednesday and the third by Illinois researchers on Thursday. One of the new, more infectious variants has already become dominant in Columbus, Ohio, where it was discovered. So far, this homegrown variant has been seen in about 20 samples since Ohio State University (OSU) scientists first detected it in December. It's now present in most of the samples they are sequencing. A second variant has mutations virtually identical to the UK variant's, but arose completely independently on American soil, according to Ohio State University scientists. Just one person with this variant has been found. The third new variant was discovered by a team from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The earliest appearance of new variant, called 20C-US, was traced back to Texas in May 2020. It began picking up prevalence in late June and early July 2020 and could be responsible for up to 50% of all current cases. Advertisement To see if it was present at the the national level, researchers randomly subsampled 3.3 percent of U.S. genomes available on the global genomic database GISAID. The earliest appearance was found from a sample taken in the greater Houston area of Texas on May 20, 2020. 'The crazy thing is it's been around for months, I would say largely unnoticed, uncharacterized,' Gagnon said. 'It wasn't that it wasn't undetected...but nobody I think really picked up on it.' Following the variant over time, there was a notable expansion in the variant's presence in late June and early July 2020, which coincides with America's second wave of the pandemic, in states such as Wisconsin and Illinois. However, between November 1 and December 31, almost 50 percent of all sequenced genomes from the U.S. are the new variant. 'It is coincidental that the rise to dominance of this variant really started at the end of the summer and especially during the third pandemic wave,' Gagnon said. 'It is tempting to speculate that possibly this variant is playing a role. The circumstantial evidence suggests that.' Researchers suggest this means 20C-US has 'surpassed 50 percent penetrance to become the most dominant variant in the U.S.' However, it has a high prevalent in the eastern and Midwestern regions and has no t spread widely to the western half of the U.S. 20C-US has been reported in other countries including Australia, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, but at low levels. The first mutations the virus showed were in genes related to virus particle maturation - a process by which a virus breaks from a host cell and activates to infect more cells - and the processing of viral proteins. Gagnon says these are all important for virus production. Since then, the new variant has formed two new mutations in the spike protein, which demonstrates that it is evolving. However, the variant does not appear to be more deadly. 'Even more speculative, but interesting, is we notice that the death rates are a lot lower even though cases are very high,' Gagnon said. This may suggest 20C-US is highly transmissible but only causes a mild illness. Dr Daniel Jones, of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, who discovered the Columbus variant told DailyMail.com the Illinois variant 'looks closely related but not exactly identical.' Jones said this means the two sets of researchers - in Ohio and Illinois - are likely tracking variants from the same outgrowth. With the first doses of newly approved vaccines being administered across the national, Gagnon said it is unknown whether the variant will impact its effectiveness. 'Based on the mutations so far, I dont think it will significantly impact the vaccines effectiveness,' he said. 'The catch is that the virus continues to evolve, and since May, it has acquired three mutations, and two of them are in the spike protein, one of which might affect antibody binding. There are a lot of unknowns.' Both Pfizer and Moderna have been testing their vaccines against the international variants and say they expect the jabs to provide protection. On Tuesday afternoon, butcher Raul Aguilar-Perez was carefully selecting his chiles, toasting the anchos, guajillos, pasillas, and puyas to a char on the plancha to intensify their flavor, then letting them steep as he prepared the spices, ground pork, oregano, and vinegar to make chorizo a batch of sausage that could potentially change his life. A tasting was scheduled the next day with both the president and head chef of Di Bruno Bros., the company that gave Aguilar-Perez his first steady job as a new immigrant in the Italian Market over 20 years ago eventually sponsoring him for his green card before he went on to become an entrepreneur. This audition could be the comeback break he desperately needed after a spell of terrible setbacks. Go for your dreams, his mother, Rosalia Perez, told him Tuesday by video phone from Mexico City when he was feeling hesitant. Youre going to be OK. The past two years have been an epic struggle. Aguilar-Perez lost Los Amigos, the Mexican butcher shop that he and wife, Beatriz Flores, built to acclaim over a decade on South Ninth Street until difficulties with his landlord, who had the false promise of a tenant proposing a restaurant, ended his run. He drifted through a fog of depression and ill-suited construction jobs until a former customer, Carol Mickey of Sams Morning Glory Diner, encouraged him to get back to his chorizo craft, then gave him the kitchen space and assistance to reboot. But then came COVID-19, which last spring put the 43-year-old in the intensive care unit at Pennsylvania Hospital for a perilous five weeks. The father of two was given a 40% chance to survive, he said, but he refused a ventilator for fear hed never wake up. I lost my business, and I almost died. But Im recovering now and Im ready to work, he said. And if Im still here, its for a reason: I want to do my chorizo for everybody. By Wednesday morning, though, Aguilar-Perez was grieving. His 79-year-old mother, whod seemingly recovered from COVID-19 in December, had taken a turn for the worse overnight with lung complications and died that afternoon in Mexico City. Ill never see my mother again and theres nothing we can do, said Aguilar-Perez, who postponed the tasting to make arrangements to help his sister in Mexico. I hope Ill have this opportunity again. Dreams deferred The journey has never been easy for Aguilar-Perez. Hes an American citizen now, but knew very little English in 2000 when he first came to Philadelphia, where he had an uncle and a growing network of fellow Poblanos whod also begun to settle in South Philly. He worked at a market, picked blueberries in New Jersey, worked at a tuna cannery, and scrubbed industrial jelly buckets with bleach for 11 hours a day. A part-time dishwashing gig in the Italian Market eventually led to a full-time job at Di Bruno Bros., where his bright personality and unwavering work ethic immediately connected with the family behind the renowned cheese market. He had this cool smile that lit up the store and he was a head-down worker from the day he walked in, said company president Bill Mignucci Jr. And he found his way into our Italian family. Ive got old pictures of Raul and Aunt Rita, Raul and Aunt Cecile, Raul and Aunt Edith. Raul had the keys to the store and was the patron of Di Brunos growing Mexican workforce, says Mignucci, explaining why they sponsored Aguilar-Perez for a green card. That work status eventually allowed him and Flores to apply for citizenship under a law that ceased to exist in 2001 but that allowed undocumented immigrants to pay fines and be forgiven for illegal entry, according to his lawyer, Sanjuanita Gonzalez. After eight years at Di Brunos, Aguilar-Perez struck out on his own in a butcher shop directly across the street: I said, Thank you, Billy, you did a lot for me, but Ive decided to do my own thing. And he said, Im very proud of you you should do this. And from the time he opened Los Amigos in 2009, he and Flores earned a loyal following for their tangy Toluca-style chorizo, his ready-to-reheat carnitas, fresh Poblano tamales, and a particularly soulful Hidalgo-style barbacoa, its chile-rubbed lamb steamed to tenderness on the bone for hours in banana and avocado leaves and served with an intense lamb consomme scented with cinnamon and spice. Friction with his landlord over various issues, however, festered. An acquaintance from the local Mexican community convinced Aguilar-Perez to sell the business to him in 2018 to open a restaurant. They agreed to terms on a handshake. But when Aguilar-Perez arrived to end his lease and transfer the business, the landlord and the acquaintance had already come to independent terms, and Aguilar-Perez ended-up with nothing. (Several attempts to reach the landlord were unsuccessful.) He was able to remove his equipment because a restaurant was planned for the space. But Aguilar-Perez was out, and in the following months, hed sit across the street and watch old customers reach for the locked doors, peer in, and walk away. I felt so bad. I worked so hard to become a citizen and pay all my taxes. But I trusted people and lost everything, he said. The restaurant was never built as the storefront at 927 S. Ninth Street remains vacant. A comeback after COVID-19 Building any business is hard enough, but challenges can be compounded for immigrants by cultural and linguistic differences, says Peter Gonzales, president and CEO of the Welcoming Center, the Welcoming Center, a nonprofit Philadelphia resource center for immigrants that promotes economic growth through an array of services and networking. . Even if hes gone through all the processes of becoming a citizen, there are daily challenges hes going to face, including the overall lack of access to capital, and not having a network of professional services to draw on, that hit immigrants harder. The Welcoming Center recently has fostered a growing coalition of Latino restaurateurs around the Italian Market who are forming a mutual aid group to help support the community through entrepreneurship. Such a group could have guided Aguilar-Perez through his struggles, says Nicole Marcote, the Welcome Center program manager. And they still can help. But Aguilar-Perezs own Italian Market network has already responded. Hes a good guy, first of all, an honest, hardworking human being. And his product is really good, says Carol Mickey of Sams Morning Glory Diner nearby at 735 S. 10th St., where both a chicken chorizo and a pork version of Aguilar-Perezs chorizo turned green with fresh peppers are regularly used in the diners frittatas and breakfast burritos. More importantly, Mickey, a labor attorney, helped Aguilar-Perez acquire the licenses to allow him to use the Morning Glory kitchen after hours to produce his food, including the barbacoa, which he markets for delivery from the Los Amigos Facebook page. Mickey has owned the diner since 2012 when her daughter, Samantha Sam Mickey, who opened the Morning Glory in 1997 as one of the pioneers of Phillys homespun brunch scene, died after a long battle with brain cancer. Helping Aguilar-Perez, she says, in many ways carries on her daughters spirit. Aguilar-Perez has others in his corner, as well, including Mignucci, who reached out this month after learning of his sickness and his comeback. Whether its bad luck or bad landlords, youre still vulnerable, says Mignucci. But for Carol to embrace him is not surprising. People like Raul. Theres just something about this guy and his pursuit of his passion. It has also inspired Mignucci to offer Aguilar-Perez the possibility of using Di Brunos industrial kitchen as an independent producer and perhaps even carry his chorizo. The tasting? A formality to introduce his flavors to chef Ashley James, who worked in Mexico for three years. Theyll resume the process once Aguilar-Perez has sorted out his mothers affairs and gets back to the business of chorizo and barbacoa in the coming weeks. Im very optimistic that there is a future for Rauls products and that we are going to be a bridge, Mignucci said. I love great South Philly stories because Ive been part of one with this third-generation business. And Raul has made our lives better because of his story, because it has another chapter. Hes going to reflect on that setback and say, I thought that was the end. But it was really the beginning. Los Amigos chorizo, $5.99 a pound with a 5-pound minimum, and barbacoa, $30 a pound with consomme and salsas, can be ordered for delivery with two days notice by phone by calling 267-307-2354 and through Facebook. (Note: Business is temporarily on hold due a death in the family.) People react as the body of a relative is retrieved from the ruin of a building at an area affected by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing a number of people. (AP Photo/Yusuf Wahil) A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing at least 42 people. More than 600 people were injured by the magnitude 6.2 quake, which sent people fleeing their homes in the darkness. Authorities were still collecting information about the full scale of casualties and damage in the affected areas. There were reports of many people trapped in the rubble of collapsed homes and buildings. In a video released by the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, a girl stuck in the wreckage of a house cried out for help and said she heard the sound of other family members also trapped. "Please help me, it hurts," the girl told rescuers, who replied that they desperately wanted to help her. The rescuers said an excavator was needed to save the girl and others trapped in collapsed buildings. Other images showed a severed bridge and damaged and flattened houses. The earthquake damaged part of a hospital and patients were moved to an emergency tent outside. Rescuers struggled to extract seven patients and staff who were trapped under tons of rubble. After several hours, an excavator came to help and the rescuers eventually retrieved four survivors and three bodies. Residents inspect earthquake-damaged houses in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong inland and shallow earthquake hit eastern Indonesia early Friday causing people to panic in parts of the country's Sulawesi island and run to higher ground. (AP Photo/Rudy Akdyaksyah) Another video showed a father crying, asking for help to save his children buried under their toppled house. "They are trapped inside, please help," he cried. Thousands of displaced people were evacuated to temporary shelters. The quake was centered 36 kilometers (22 miles) south of West Sulawesi province's Mamuju district, at a depth of 18 kilometers (11 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. The Indonesian disaster agency said the death toll climbed to 42 as rescuers in Mamuju retrieved 34 bodies trapped in the rubble of collapsed homes and buildings. The agency said in a statement that eight people were killed and 637 others were injured in Mamuju's neighboring district of Majene. It said at least 300 houses and a health clinic were damaged and about 15,000 people were being housed in temporary shelters in the district. Power and phones were down in many areas. Residents inspect earthquake-damaged buildings in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong inland and shallow earthquake hit eastern Indonesia early Friday causing people to panic in parts of the country's Sulawesi island and run to higher ground. (AP Photo/Rudy Akdyaksyah) West Sulawesi Administration Secretary Muhammad Idris told TVOne that the governor's office building was among those that collapsed in Mamuju, the provincial capital, and many people there remained trapped. Rescuer Saidar Rahmanjaya said a lack of heavy equipment was hampering efforts to clear the rubble from collapsed houses and buildings. He said his team was working to save dozens of people trapped in eight buildings, including in the governor's office, a hospital and a hotel. "We are racing against time to rescue them," he said. Relatives wailed as they watched rescuers pull a body of a loved one from a damaged home in devastated Mamuju. It was placed in an orange body bag and taken away for burial. "Oh my God, why did we have to go through this?" cried Rina, who uses one name. "I can't save my dear sister ... forgive me, sister, forgive us, God!" Motorist ride past the wreckage of a car damaged in an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight, causing landslides and sending people fleeing from their homes in the nighttime darkness. (AP Photo/Sadly Ashari Said) President Joko Widodo said in a televised address that he had ordered his social minister and the chiefs of the military, police and disaster agency to carry out emergency response measures and search and rescue operations as quickly as possible. "I, on behalf of the Government and all Indonesian people, would like to express my deep condolences to families of the victims," Widodo said. The National Search and Rescue Agency's chief, Bagus Puruhito, said rescuers from the cities of Palu, Makassar, Balikpapan and Jakarta were being deployed to help in Mamuju and Majene. Two ships were heading to the affected areas from Makassar and Balikpapan carrying rescuers and search and rescue equipment, while a Hercules plane carrying supplies was on its way from Jakarta. Puruhito is already leading more than 4,100 rescue personnel in a separate massive search operation for victims of the crash of a Sriwijaya Air jet into the Java Sea last Saturday. Recuers search for survivors among the ruin of a building damaged by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight, causing landslides and sending people fleeing from their homes in the nighttime darkness. (AP Photo/Sadly Ashari Said) Among the dead in Majene were three people killed when their homes were flattened by the quake while they were sleeping, said Sirajuddin, the district's disaster agency chief. Sirajuddin, who goes by one name, said although the inland earthquake did not have the potential to cause a tsunami, people along coastal areas ran to higher ground in fear one might occur. Landslides were set off in three locations and blocked a main road connecting Mamuju to the Majene district, said Raditya Jati, the disaster agency's spokesperson. On Thursday, a magnitude 5.9 undersea quake hit the same region, damaging several homes but causing no apparent casualties. Indonesia's meteorology, climatology and geophysical agency, known by its Indonesian acronym BMKG, warned of the dangers of aftershocks and the potential for a tsunami. Its chairwoman urged people in coastal areas to move to higher ground as a precaution. Rescuers search for survivors among the ruin of a building damaged by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021.A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, and triggering landslides. (AP Photo/Daus Thobelulu) Rescuers retrieve the body of a child from the ruin of a building damaged by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing a number of people. (AP Photo/Yusuf Wahil) Rescuers search for survivors among the ruin of a building damaged by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides. (AP Photo/Daus Thobelulu) Rescuers search for survivors among the ruin of a building damaged by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing a number of people. (AP Photo/Yusuf Wahil) Rescuers search for survivors among the ruin of a building damaged by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing a number of people. (AP Photo/Yusuf Wahil) People react at an area affected by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing a number of people. (AP Photo/Yusuf Wahil) Rescuers search for survivors among the ruin of building damaged by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, and triggering landslides. (AP Photo/Yusuf Wahil) Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 260 million people, is frequently struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. In 2018, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in Palu on Sulawesi island set off a tsunami and caused soil to collapse in a phenomenon called liquefaction. More than 4,000 people died, many of the victims buried when whole neighborhoods were swallowed in the falling ground. A powerful Indian Ocean quake and tsunami in 2004 killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia. Explore further Strong earthquake shakes Indonesia's Sulawesi island 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Vice President Mike Pence telephoned Vice President-elect Kamala Harris Thursday to congratulate her and offer his belated assistance filling a leadership role all but abdicated by President Trump, who is planning to fly out of the capital shortly before Joseph R. Biden Jr. is sworn in next week. The Pence-Harris conversation, relayed by two officials briefed on the call, was described as gracious and pleasant. The discussion is the first time Mr. Pence and Ms. Harris have spoken since they debated each other last fall. It also represents the only one-on-one interaction between the dueling 2020 presidential tickets: Mr. Trump has refused to call President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and has not even fully conceded defeat. Mr. Pence and his wife, Karen, may have Ms. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, over to the vice-presidential residence before the inauguration on Wednesday, according to one official. But those plans remain uncertain, in part because the security threats posed to the nations capital have made scheduling fluid. Albany, N.Y. The federal government advised opening Covid vaccine eligibility to millions more people in the last week, but didnt follow up with a boost in supply, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today. The result? Headaches, frustration, tension and anxiety for New Yorkers, Cuomo said during a press conference in Albany. All of this volume and it has to go through the point of a needle, literally and figuratively, he said. Thats the situation that the federal government created. Our constraint is the federal supply. That is creating a scheduling backlog and its creating pressure on what was supposed to be the prioritization process. Federal officials recommended opening eligibility to people age 65 and up earlier this week and New York agreed. People 75 and up, along with teachers, firefighters, police and others also became eligible or shots Monday. The universe of people allowed to get vaccinated ballooned from 2.1 million to over 7 million in a day. New York expected more shots would arrive to deal with the increase, Cuomo said. But there was no federal push to approve new vaccines from other companies and no increase in the amount New York has been getting, he said. In fact, the states weekly allocation dropped from 300,000 doses to 250,000. New York state doesnt get what it needs, Cuomo said. We have to understand the situation were dealing with, with the supply versus the need. The math just doesnt work. Appointments at state-run mass vaccination sites like the one at the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse are fully booked until April. Pharmacies involved in the vaccination effort, including Kinney Drugs, also announced their available appointments were snapped up quickly. New Yorkers eligible for shots have been left checking websites and making phone calls for hours, hoping to secure an appointment. Most have been unsuccessful. Cuomo pointed out that about 15 million people total in New York will eventually be allowed to get the current vaccines since theyre not yet approved for use in children. Nearly half that number is already eligible. Cuomo said he tried to negotiate directly with vaccine companies for more doses, but it didnt work. The federal government controls the supply and until it increases, the system in the state will remain stressed, he said. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources They finally scored Covid vaccine appointments. Then NY state said oops NY orange zone restaurants can reopen, but will they (and when)? Onondaga County vaccine update: New details on whos eligible, when to sign up Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598 NEW DELHI: As the world is still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, several COVID-19 vaccines are now being approved all over the world by different companies on a fast-track basis. All these approved vaccines and potential vaccine options, developed by different countries and pharmaceutical companies have varied efficacy. Vaccines manufactured by Chinese firms are also being shipped to various countries. However, the Chinese vaccine has triggered a controversy and questions are being raised by other nations on its efficacy. To salvage its damaged reputation due to the spread of the virus, the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) in a last-ditch effort began its Vaccine Diplomacy campaign wherein it has promised to provide developing nations priority access to the coronavirus vaccine produced by China's SinoVac Biotech firm. The apprehensions have emerged from a recent Brazilian study, which has revealed that China's CoronaVac vaccine is not as effective as was touted by China and is certainly not the miracle COVID-19 vaccine that the country was hoping for. The Brazilian study, released by the Butantan Institute - a biomedical research centre revealed on 12 January that the Chinese vaccine is only 50.4% effective in preventing COVID-19 symptoms. These new results contradict earlier data provided by the same institute a few days earlier, which claimed that the Chinese vaccine was 78-100% effective against the virus. Several scientists and observers questioned the initial data and later learnt that 78% and above efficacy was manufactured on the basis of incomplete and selective data. After being pressured to release all the data, it was revealed that when all severities of the COVID-19 virus are taken into account, the Chinese vaccine is only 50.4% effective. As per an Al Jazeera report, Gonzalo Vecina Neto, a professor of public health at the University of Sao Paulo and former head of Brazilian health regulator Anvisa stated that there was an urgent need for better communicators. The Chinese vaccine barely meets the 50% criteria set by regulators and is also well below other better tested COVID-19 vaccines such as those by Pfizer and AstraZeneca. While Turkey and Indonesia have approved the Chinese vaccine, the lack of data is already proving to be a hindrance in the SinoVac getting approval in other places. Even Brazilian health regulator Anvisa has stated that it would require more information about the SinoVac vaccine before approving it. Turkey has bought 50 million doses of the Chinese vaccine. Indonesia has also approved the Chinese vaccine for emergency use even though the vaccine was found to be only 65% effective as per Indonesian researchers. Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University has stated that there is enormous financial and political pressure for these trials to massively overstate their results. He added that countries that failed to control the pandemic now seek to overstate the efficiency of the virus in an attempt to deflect blame and win votes. A similar claim has been made by Germany-based neuroscientist Gaghan Kizil who revealed that the efficacy rate of the Chinese SinoVac vaccine is only 50.38%. The main problem remains that there is just too much that is not known about the Chinese vaccine because the Chinese government has refused to share all the data. As compared to SinoVac, western-vaccine frontrunners have disclosed much more comprehensive data on trials while testing their respective vaccines. The Chinese government and Xi Jinping had promised to make the COVID vaccine into a global public good, but this latest data and non-disclosure of trial data is fuelling skepticism regarding the Chinese vaccine. After the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China tried to hide the severity of this new-SARS like a virus by silencing those that tried to warn the world and their colleagues about the deadly new virus. Doctors like Dr Li Wenliang were reprimanded by CCP officials when they tried to spread information about the COVID-19 virus, the CCP claimed Wenliang was attempting to spread rumours. Recently, China also sentenced citizen journalist Zhang Zhan to four years in prison for documenting the early effects of the virus on the city of Wuhan. The revelations made by Zhan went against the CCP narrative and for that reason, the Chinese government attempted to silence her. Ever since the global spread of the COVID-19 virus, China has been called out for its reckless actions that allowed the virus to spread rapidly and left several nations unawares. To minimize the backlash and deflect criticism, the propaganda arm of the CCP has been working overtime to change the narrative surrounding the origins of COVID-19. China has sought to blame other countries for the origin of the virus by stating that the virus entered China from western nations through frozen food packets. Chinese state media even went so far as to take a German scientist's study out of context to try and prove that it was not responsible for the virus. Chinas vaccine diplomacy was also an attempt by the Chinese government to deflect blame and earn some goodwill from the international community. But China has also tried something similar in the past. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, China implemented something called Mask Diplomacy wherein China would send Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to European countries that were struggling with the virus. While China was hoping that its Mask Diplomacy would gain it some points, its gambit failed as several European countries refused to accept shipments of masks and ventilators from China, stating that they were of sub-standard quality. On 29th March 2020, the Dutch health ministry revealed that they had recalled 600,000 face masks supplied by China. The Dutch officials stated that the masks did not fit quality standards and that their filters did not work as expected. A BBC report also revealed that Spains government also encountered similar problems with testing kits ordered from a Chinese company. The Spanish government stated that it had bought hundreds of thousands of tests to combat the virus but then later found out that almost 600,000 of them could not accurately determine if the person has COVID-19. Some EU diplomats at the time had branded these attempts by Beijing as politics of generosity during a global crisis. EU diplomat Josep Borrell back on 24 March 2020, said that through its Mask Diplomacy China was aggressively trying to push the message China was a reliable partner. China's goals with Mask Diplomacy failed and the revelation about the low efficacy rate of its vaccine does not spell good news for its Vaccine Diplomacy plans. The COVID vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are 95% effective in preventing symptomatic cases of Covid-19. Research has shown that the COVID vaccine developed by AstraZeneca is over 90% effective against COVID-19, in addition, AstraZenecas vaccine is also cheaper and easier to use than others. On the other hand, Chinas SinoVac vaccine has been revealed to have an efficacy of only 50.4%. China has in the past months been aggressively pushing the narrative that since China has, as per them, managed to control the virus, its political system is superior to the United States. But the world has started to become privy to the CCPs actions and intentions. The Chinese vaccine that barely manages to clear the threshold required by the WHO and health regulators is another example of Chinas failed attempt to change and manipulate the narrative surrounding the coronavirus. Beijing was hoping that most of the developed world would adopt Chinas new vaccine over the US and European counterparts. But the revelation of Chinas vaccine having such a low efficacy rate is a big blow to nations that had chosen to rely on the Chinese vaccine. Live TV Following a lengthy investigation, Boston police say a man in his early 30s was busted Thursday with $250,000-plus in cash as well as hundreds of grams of cocaine and several bags of marijuana. Officers assigned to the District E-13 Drug Control United took 33-year-old Osvaldo Medina into custody on numerous charges on Armstrong Street in Jamaica Plain shortly before 12:30 p.m. He was arrested after a brief chase, according to a statement from the Boston Police Department. After the Jamaica Plain man was arrested, police executed a search warrant at his home and discovered more than $260,000 in U.S. currency, roughly 455 grams of cocaine, multiple plastic bags of marijuana and other assorted drug paraphernalia, the department said in its statement. Medina will appear in West Roxbury District Court on charges of trafficking more than 200 grams of Class B drugs, distribution of Class A and B drugs and possession with intent to distribute Class D drugs. To be eligible for the program, graduates from CPS and select high schools must have a 3.0 GPA and test near the college level for English and math. Participants receive financial waivers for up to three years and can transfer to a partner school, where they receive $1,000 to $60,000 of financial assistance per year, depending on the particular arrangement, plus advising and transition supports. 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. Bennington, VT (05201) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Film Review: SOUL Passing the love of jazz on to a younger generation, cloaked in the sweetness of an animated movie, is a genius move. Its a bit jarring. A New York City middle school band is murdering the Disney song When You Wish Upon a Star. By the time theyre through, youd wish a dream-fulfilling star had given you earplugs. Still, they continue, inspired by their very patient music teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx). Jazz is the reason their instructor loves music not matter how screechy the band gets. When Joe sits down to play the piano, he improvises like Keith Jarrett, playing with abandonment and using the melody as a starting point, which takes him to his nirvana: The tune is just a tool to bring out the you. Though he dreams of a professional career, reality outweighs his ambition. Hes a grown man still living with his mom (Phylicia Rashad), barely eking out a living. Then one day he gets a tip that saxophone great Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett, Black Panther) is looking for someone to tickle the ivories in her jazz quartet and he scores an audition. ADVERTISEMENT Could things be going Joes way? They are until the day he walks across the street and falls down a manhole. He doesnt exactly die and go to The Great Beyond. Instead, he is marooned in The Great Before, a place where personalities/souls are assembled and dispersed to those who will be born. This way station realm is run by ghostly creatures, many of whom are called Jerry. Joe wants out. His ticket back to real life may be a disgruntled and pessimistic infant soul named, No. 22 (Tina Fey, 30 Rock). Partnership made in heaven? Not exactly. The scenes that take place on earth in New York capture the citys essence. Noise, subways, cramped streets, neighborhood barbershops (Black men socializing in the most warmhearted ways) The Half Note Club, where Williams quartet plays, may be the peak of NYC imagery. It mirrors Greenwich Villages legendary Village Vanguard nightclub, where jazz legends like Betty Carter, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Miles Davis and Anita ODay performed. The red awning, steep stairs that lead from the street to the floor below and the tight club room. Its all the sameand so NY. The music that enhances the visuals is impeccable. Credit Jon Batiste (bandleader The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), a Grammy-nominated musical pianist, for anything that sounds like jazz or looks like it too (his fingers playing the piano were the prototype for Joes). The other musical aspects, particularly the delightful and often electronic score in The Great Before, are courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Oscar winners The Social Network) from the band Nine Inch Nails. Combined, the musical threads are a knockout. Either dreamy and melodious, frisky like jazz or quirky. Heaven on earth: The colors, shapes and scenery in the real world are magnetic. Those used in the New York City sequences are filled with warm earth tones that make you feel more grounded. Also, the richly textured tan, brown and black skin tones of people in the Big Apple glisten (cinematographers Matt Aspbury and Ian Megibben; art director Bryn Imagire). ADVERTISEMENT A cold netherworld: The images in the other world are a bit too sci-fi, techie and not nearly as inviting. The pastel colors tend to be pale with lots of white lines, almost icy looking and very abstract. Thats the films glitch. The longer the camera lingers in The Great Before the more likely it is that adults will lose interest and only kids will stay tunedor they may flake off too. Thus, there are several reasons for wanting Joe to find his way back to his earth. A.) He deserves it. B.) It has the more fascinating turf. Engaging animation is very familiar territory for writer/director Pete Docter (Inside Out and Up). He gets a great assist from playwright Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami) who takes on co-screenwriter and co-director duties. Mike Jones (Evenhand) as the third writer adds in his two cents and the result is a very energetic story about a young man following his dream, aided by an annoying, candidly dour imp and surrounded by either grounded characters or sci-fi ones. Its the right kind of fusion especially as Pixar welcomes the African American experience into their mix for the very first time. After Jamie Foxx won an Oscar for Ray, the roles he picked never truly exploited his talent. Oddly, with just his voice and personality, Foxx shines a lot brighter, like a kid in a candy store, as he gives Joe verve. Ambitious, optimistic, vulnerablehis energy is infectious. Also, Tina Fey is on fire as the little wisp struggling to find her humanity and needing Joe as her guide. Foxx and Fey are symbiotic, especially as their personae crosspollinate. Its a bond that is surprisingly heartwarming. For added attraction, viewers will have fun figuring out which cast members supplied the voices of the various characters. They can pick from: Graham Norton, Donnell Rawlings, Ahmir Questlove Thompson, Daveed Diggs, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Wes Studi Sit down. Grab a glass of wineif youre old enough. Pop some popcorn. Make this an intergenerational event for grandparents, adults and kids and no one will be disappointed. Though parents beware, you may need to explain the meaning of birth, life and death to your offspring. It wont be as tough as the birds and the bees conversation, but After 100 minutes roll by fairly quickly (editor Kevin Nolting), most viewers will leave the room humming. Humming jazz. That simple act will help preserve a music form that dates back to the 1920s. Thats a blessing. Streaming on Disney+ Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOsLIiBStEs Visit NNPA News Wire Film Critic Dwight Brown at DwightBrownInk.com and BlackPressUSA.com. WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Science Mission Directorate will hold a community town hall meeting with Thomas Zurbuchen, the agency's associate administrator for science, and his leadership team at 2 p.m. EST Monday, Jan. 25, to discuss updates to NASA's science programs, the current status of activities, and the science portion of the recently passed FY21 NASA appropriation. Members of the science community, academia, media, and public are invited to participate by joining at: https://nasaevents.webex.com/nasaevents/onstage/g.php?MTID=ec59a35c1937b72ea5bdd13b1dd082087 If prompted, please use event number 199 128 1917, followed by event password MPpwizbH853. To ask a question, participants can go to: https://arc.cnf.io/sessions/kwga/#!/dashboard Participants must provide their first and last name and organization and can submit questions or vote up questions submitted by others. The meeting leaders will answer as many questions as possible. Presentation materials for the meeting will be available for download immediately after the meeting, and a recording will be available later that day at: https://science.nasa.gov SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov Anyone travelling from Brazil is urged to self-isolate for two weeks after new concerns emerged about a variant in the big South American country which has significantly eased its pandemic restrictions. Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health issued the warning in the daily statement from the National Public Health Emergency Team on Friday, January 15. "New variants of COVID-19 have recently been identified in Brazil, and in travellers to Japan from Brazil. There is no evidence of these variants in Ireland. "Anyone who has travelled from Brazil in the last 14 days is advised to self-isolate for 14 days, from the date of arrival, and identify themselves, through a GP, for testing as soon as possible. It is essential that anyone arriving from Brazil self-isolate for 14 days from the date of arrival before entering/re-entering the workplace. We are particularly appealing to employers to enable their employees to protect each other by staying at home for the full 14 days. "Further risk assessment of the new variants is expected from the ECDC in the coming week. We must all continue to adhere to every element of public health advice. This remains our best defence against COVID-19, he said. Itanagar, Jan 15 : Over seven decades after India's independence, the first-ever passenger bus service was flagged off on Friday in the Roing-Anini route in Arunachal Pradesh's Dibang Valley district along the China border, officials said. The passenger bus service on the 233-km-long route was flagged off by ruling Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Mopi Mihu, and will connect the north and northeastern part of the border state. A mini passenger bus of the Arunachal Pradesh State Transport Service would ply thrice a week between border village Roing and district headquarters Anini, he said. "The bus service was a long awaited demand of the local people of the remote areas. It would greatly facilitate the local people to come to the district headquarters, then to the state capital. From Anini, Itanagar is more than 700 km," Mihu told IANS over phone from Anini, the district headquarters of Dibang Valley District. Chief Minister Pema Khandu, in a social media post, said : "Sea of change visible under PM Narendra Modi Ji. First time in 73 years of India's Independence, a government passenger bus has reached #Anini #Dibang Valley near Indo-Tibet (China) border." He said that the bus service was made possible as smooth two-lane highway reaches the remote border district. Largest among Arunachal Pradesh's 25 districts with the lowest density (one person per square km) of population in India, Dibang Valley district came into existence on June 1, 1980 with its headquarter at Anini, after being carved out from Lohit District. With a population of only 8,004 (2011 census), it is named after River Dibang consisting of the Dri, Mathun and Talon and three other smaller rivers -- Ahi, Awa and Emra. Dibang Valley, whose north and northeast areas falls along the China border, consists of rugged undulating mountains with breath-taking green valleys, deep-down gorges, enchanting waterfalls, natural lakes of various dimensions and innumerable meandering rivers and turbulent streams. (Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in) Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 19:38:01|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SANYA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The team of renowned agronomist Yuan Longping on Friday said they planned to plant saline-alkali soil rice to transform 6.7 million hectares of saline-alkali land in China over the next eight to 10 years. The team led by Yuan, dubbed China's "father of hybrid rice," said they had already signed contracts to reclaim 400,000 hectares of saline-alkali land in China. The announcement was made at a forum on saline-alkali soil rice held in the city of Sanya, south China's Hainan Province. "In 2020, we made great strides in the breeding, cultivation techniques and soil improvement of saline-alkali tolerant rice. With joint efforts, we will no doubt achieve the goal of turning 100 million mu (6.7 million hectares) of saline-alkali soil into fertile land," the 90-year-old agronomist said in a video message at the forum. Yuan's team successfully developed varieties of saline-alkali tolerant rice in 2017, with the highest average yield of over 800 kg per mu, or 12 tonnes per hectare, recorded in Jiangsu Province last year. China has about 100 million hectares of saline-alkali soil, of which about one-fifth could be ameliorated to arable soil. Despite years of bumper harvests, China is still in need of more arable land, said Mi Tiezhu, vice director of the Qingdao Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center. China now feeds around 20 percent of the world's population with less than 9 percent of the world's arable land. Mi said on average, the output of saline-alkali tolerant rice across all planting areas stood at more than six tonnes per hectare, which is economically viable for farmers. "If the (saline-alkali) land can be used to grow rice and produce grain, it means that some acreage can be set aside for producing other cash crops," said Mi, also a member of Yuan's team. These efforts to increase food production will also benefit the global food supply and contribute to achieving the UN zero hunger goal, he said. Enditem AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research received recognition on local Lansing news station FOX News 47 for the Certified Insurance Service Representative High School program. The news station highlighted a second-year student at the Wilson Talent Center (WTC) in Mason, Michigan for being the first high school senior to pass the first exam toward the Certified Insurance Service Representative designation. The WTC offers career and technical education programming for high school juniors and seniors. The center offers 18 programs in 12 career clusters, giving students the ability to earn high school academic credit, dual college credit, and either state or national certifications. The WTC partners with business leaders through advisory board participation or by providing work-based learning opportunities for students. Advisory board members from organizations and businesses within specific career fields advise students on curriculum, resource needs, and industry trends. Many of these employers also offer student internships and job shadows. Many of them end up hiring WTC students upon graduation, and some even help them pay for their continued education. In a recent Nat Alliance NOW Podcast, Monique Colizzi, Business & Risk Management Instructor at the WTC, was interviewed about the student's recent milestone and had this to share about the program: "The curriculum is well laid-out with teacher and student guides. The educational videos are nicely done and the curriculum is polished and tailored to fit different learning styles. You don't have to be an expert to facilitate this program. Teachers as well as career and technical education advocates should give it a try. You're never going to do your students a disservice by exposing them to quality curriculum that ties in with everyday life. You'll be doing the world and the industry a huge favor and a great service." Read the article here or listen to the podcast. If you would like to financially support a high school, offer internship opportunities, or bring the CISR High School program to your community, contact Tasha Sheehan at 800-633-2165 or [email protected]. The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research is the nation's premier provider of educational opportunities for insurance and risk management professionals. Learn more at www.scic.com. SOURCE The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research Related Links http://www.scic.com LOS ANGELESThe decriminalization of sex work became an issue in the campaign for mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, this week, when one candidate released a policy platform that called for the midwestern city to destigmatize and decriminalize sex work. But in the four-person race to succeed outgoing Mayor Lyda Krewson, city Treasurer Tishaura Jones (pictured above) found herself alone in calling decriminalization in St. Louis. None of her three opponents would say that they support the policy, while two flatly oppose it, according to a report by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jones also ran for mayor in 2017, but was defeated in a primary election by Krewson. According to a statement by her campaign, she opposes arrests or charges for prostitution, instead advocating social programs for sex workers including employment, housing, and substance abuse treatment. The four-candidate field includes two women and two men. Both male candidates Board of Alderman President Lewis Reed and business executive Andrew Jones said in statements that they oppose sec work decriminalization. Reed said that his opposition is based on what he says is the link between sex work and sex trafficking. Jones, however, said that he is sympathetic to the issues that face sex workers, but the alleged connections between sex work and trafficking meant that, I cannot, in good conscience, support decriminalizing prostitution. The fourth candidate, and other woman in the race, Alderman Cara Spencer, said that she had taken no position on decriminalization, and wants more information about how sex workers are currently prosecuted in St. Louis. Spencer also said that the citys current punitive strategy isnt working well, however. A number of unsuccessful moves toward sex work decriminalization have appeared in some states over the past year. In New York, a group of state lawmakers said in December that they will introduce statewide decriminalization in 2021 the third consecutive year that they will have pushed the proposal. Vermont state lawmakers opened their 2020 legislative session by introducing a sex work decriminalization bill, which also has yet to be adopted by the state. According to the Post-Dispatch report, St. Louis has already adopted an unofficial policy of leniency though not full decriminalization toward sex workers. The citys chief prosecutor, Rich Sykora, told the paper that people arrested for prostitution are charged only in municipal court, and then with minor ordinance violations such as failure to disperse. We certainly dont go out there looking to put these people in jail or fine them, Sykora told The Post-Dispatch. Our interest is in changing their behavior. Photo By Paul Sableman / Wikimedia Commons 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. Historic site: Michelle ONeill and Arlene Foster address media on the Hill of The ONeill high above Dungannon They have been part of evening news bulletins for almost a year - but regular viewers of the Stormont media briefings have noticed a big change this week. Arlene Foster and Michelle O'Neill have taken their press conferences on tour, swapping Stormont Castle for a hill overlooking Dungannon. The familiar blue Executive-branded backdrop has been replaced by sweeping views from high above the Tyrone town, including the towering spire of St Patrick's Church. It is understood the Executive decided to move press conferences from Belfast temporarily so ministers can work from home where possible in line with the guidelines, but the situation is being reviewed on a day-to-day basis. Mrs Foster lives in Co Fermanagh while Mrs O'Neill is from Clonoe, and Dungannon is seen as a suitable meeting point. Briefings were held at the outdoor events space on the aptly-named Hill of The O'Neill on Tuesday and Thursday this week. A source said: "They are now travelling to Belfast really infrequently. They are keen to work from home as much as possible, as everyone is being asked to do. They looked around for options for holding a press conference and Dungannon works well. "It is a large site, which allows for easier social distancing, it is also in the open air. Everyone is keen to stick to the regulations as closely as possible. "It is being kept under review, but so far the Dungannon site has been popular with the ministers and also the media." The Hill of The O'Neill was once the seat of power of the O'Neill family, one of the most powerful dynasties in Gaelic Ulster. The site has a varied history, also serving as the residence of the Plantation of Ulster Commissioner Sir Arthur Chichester. More recently, a British Army base was located here. Over the last decade the site has been redeveloped to become a publicly accessible park, while two towers at the 18th century Knox Hannyngton House have been restored. Ranfurly House at the base of the Hill, the former Belfast Banking company premises, has also been turned into an exhibition space and visitors' centre. Before leaving Thursday evening's press conference Mrs O'Neill - a former mayor of Dungannon - took a photograph of the view, which she posted on Twitter. She wrote: "'The Hill of The O'Neill' is a fantastic space with the most amazing views. "We are very lucky to have such a historical beauty spot on our doorstep." Cathal Mallaghan, Sinn Fein chair of Mid Ulster District Council, said he was "delighted" that the site was hosting the press conferences. Local DUP councillor Clement Cuthbertson said: "It is good to see the focus on Dungannon - the town is at the centre of Northern Ireland, at least in our view. "It is a popular place with locals. On a clear day the views are outstanding. I am told it is possible to see the six counties of Northern Ireland, if not the nine counties of Ulster." In the midst of a COVID-19 surge that has ravaged Southern California, a massive multiday event that draws thousands of visitors and gearheads from across the country is moving forward. The King of the Hammers a series of off-road races in Johnson Valley, San Bernardino County, that combines desert racing and rock crawling is scheduled to kick off on Jan. 28, despite the risk of virus spread, reports the LA Times. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) gave the event the go-ahead Thursday, meaning thousands of off-roaders and fans will gather for nine days in the desert for an event that has been described as Burning Man meets Mad Max. The event has also been approved by the San Bernardino County Public Health Department, to the surprise and concern of local residents adhering to the current stay-at-home order, dealing with no access to public in-school learning and facing unprecedented intensive care unit capacity in local hospitals. The county has been crippled by the recent COVID-19 surge, with 1,737 new coronavirus cases reported Thursday. Officials said 344 people are currently in intensive care units countywide. The county is still deep in the most restrictive purple tier, meaning the virus is "widespread." While the number of attendees at the upcoming event is hard to predict, the approval from BLM means off-roaders, pit crews and fans from across the country will travel to San Bernardino in two weeks' time, despite state guidance strongly discouraging travelers from coming to California for nonessential purposes. BLM public affairs officer Michelle Van Der Linden told SFGATE that proof of a negative COVID-19 test and temperature checks will be required to gain access to the event, alongside COVID-19 rapid result tests being sold onsite for $20. "In continued close coordination and adherence to COVID-19 safety protocols, the County of San Bernardino and the Bureau of Land Management, California Desert District, have concluded that public health safeguards planned by organizers of the King of the Hammers are sufficient to allow the event to take place on public land in Johnson Valley from January 28 February 6," said Van Der Linden, via email statement. "We have developed a COVID Mitigation Plan for the event and intend to test 90% of all participants, media, staff, and vendors before they ever leave home," King of the Hammers founder, Dave Cole, told SFGATE. "This is an entirely outdoor event in a remote desert location that expands over 92,000 acres," Cole said, adding that his team are encouraging fans to watch the livestream and stay home. Outside of the races themselves, the event normally sees the construction of a temporary city known as Hammertown in the desert, with named streets, vendor booths and garages on the federal land that is run by the BLM. There has currently been no cap mandated on how many visitors may attend the event, though recent years have seen a gathering of up to 50,000 people. How the event will play out is muddied with contradictory information. The county's stay-at-home order allows for outdoor racing, though with the stipulation that live audiences are not permitted. Nevertheless, a post on the King of Hammers' Facebook page seeks volunteers for "crowd control at spectator areas." Our town is usually packed the weekend that theyre here, local resident Becky Boyer-Whitehurst told the LA Times, adding, I am very, very concerned, as are a lot of locals. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, right, and European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen chat after posing for a group photo with Portuguese cabinet ministers and EU commissioners at the Belem Cultural Center in Lisbon, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. The Portuguese presidency of the EU is receiving the College of Commissioners of the European Commission for a round of meetings. (AP Photo/Armando Franca) The European Union is looking at a common vaccine certificate to help get travelers to their vacation destinations and prevent tourism from suffering another disastrous year due to the coronavirus pandemic. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the certificates for individuals who have been vaccinated could be combined with COVID-19 tests for those awaiting shots to allow as many people as possible to travel during the summer, which is vital for warm weather Mediterranean destinations like Greece, Italy and Spain. The issue will likely be discussed during a video meeting of EU leaders next week. Europeans have been concerned residents might be split into two campsthose with vaccine certificates permitting them to travel and others who remain limited in where they can go. But von der Leyen said such discrimination is unnecessary because "you can always combine either a certificate or a negative COVID test, if you did not have access to a vaccination so far." "So there are possibilities to find a fair and equal balance," she said during a visit to Portugal's capital, Lisbon, on Friday. Nations that depend heavily on tourism are worried that a second consecutive summer holiday season impacted by the pandemic would hit their tourism industries even harder than the first one. European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen, left, and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa gesture upon arriving at the Belem Cultural Center in Lisbon, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. The Portuguese presidency of the EU is receiving the College of Commissioners of the European Commission for a round of meetings. (AP Photo/Armando Franca) European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen adjusts her earphone during a joint news conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa at the Belem Cultural Center in Lisbon, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. The Portuguese presidency of the EU is receiving the College of Commissioners of the European Commission for a round of meetings. (AP Photo/Armando Franca) Prime Minister Antonio Costa of Portugal, which holds the EU's rotating presidency and has some of Europe's most popular Atlantic beaches, said that "tourism is particularly important to our economies," hence the need for the most unfettered travel possible. "It's essential that when we do move into the next summer that we feel safe and that others feel safe to travel to Portugal and also go to Greece," he said. The Greek government came up with the vaccine certificate plan. Greece will be issuing digital vaccination certificates to each person vaccinated against COVID-19. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he had already proposed the EU adopt such a certificate across the bloc, and von der Leyen said she welcomed the initiative. "We have every reason to be in the first line of the countries fighting so that transportation, the movement of European citizens, can be as free as possible," Mitsotakis told his country's lawmakers. "We believe that this vaccination certificate must obtain a European character, so that the European countries can share, without discrimination, this information in the same way." Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis gestures during a joint news conference with his Portuguese counterpart Antonio Costa following their meeting at the Sao Bento palace in Lisbon, Monday, Jan. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Pedro Rocha) Vaccinations have started across the 27-nation EU, but it is far from clear what proportion of the population will be vaccinated in time for the summer season. Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. London: Thousands of Australians stranded overseas have been hit by even more uncertainty after the national cabinet's decision to slash international arrival caps forced a major airline to suspend all flights to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. There are fears other carriers might also wind back Australian routes because the small number of citizens permitted to return each week has made commercial flights financially unviable. Emirates has announced that it is suspending flights to Australia until further notice. Emirates announced late on Friday night that all flights to and from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane would be suspended until further notice "due to operational reasons". The United Arab Emirates carrier was conducting daily flights between Dubai and Sydney and Melbourne and five flights a week to Brisbane, meaning the decision will wipe out 19 flights per week for Australians in Europe and the Middle East who have been waiting months to get home. Dutch PM Mark Rutte and his entire cabinet resigned today over a child benefits scandal in which thousands of families were wrongly accused of fraud. Rutte accepted responsibility after as many as 26,000 innocent parents were left in financial ruin after being wrongly forced to pay back tens of thousands of euros in a scandal dating back to 2012. Some were targeted because of minor errors in paperwork such as mis-matched signatures, while up to 11,000 were subjected to extra scrutiny for being dual nationals - leading to claims of systemic racism. New elections will be held in March with the centre-right Rutte staying on as a caretaker until then to manage the country's coronavirus response, with Holland currently enduring its strictest lockdown of the whole pandemic. On his bike: Dutch PM Mark Rutte leaves the parliament building in The Hague today as the entire cabinet resigned over a child benefits scandal Rutte, in office since 2010, described the affair as 'shameful' and announced today that 'the buck stops here' after a crisis meeting of his four-party coalition cabinet. 'We are of one mind: if the whole system has failed, only joint responsibility can be borne,' Rutte said.' 'And that leads to the conclusion that I have just now offered the King the resignation of the entire cabinet.' He added: 'The rule of law must protect its citizens from an all-powerful government, and here that's gone terribly wrong.' Rutte defended his decision to resign during a surge in virus infections which has been partly blamed on the new variant that surfaced in Britain late last year. 'Our fight against coronavirus continues,' said Rutte, adding that the caretaker cabinet would 'do what is necessary in the interests of the country.' Polls say that Rutte's Freedom and Democracy Party is likely to win the most seats in the election, putting him in line for a fourth term since 2010. But pressure had been mounting on Rutte to resign over the scandal, with the government facing a possible confidence vote. The clamour grew after opposition Labour party leader Lodewijk Asscher, a former social affairs minister, resigned on Thursday over the scandal. Far-right leader Geert Wilders, known for his strong statements against immigration and Islam, said it was 'right' that the government had quit. 'Innocent people, were criminalised, their lives destroyed,' Wilders said. 'It is not credible that officials should continue as if nothing had happened.' Rutte and his cabinet will stay on as caretakers until a March election to manage the country's coronavirus response (pictured, an empty shopping street in Rotterdam this week) Dutch authorities will pay compensation of at least 30,000 to around 10,000 families after an inquiry found that 'unprecedented injustice' had been done. The parliamentary probe said civil servants cut off benefits to thousands of families between 2013 and 2019, leading to unemployment, bankruptcies and divorce. Dutch media said some 26,000 people had been affected by the scandal. Tax officials were also revealed to have carried out 'racial profiling' of 11,000 people based on their dual nationality, including some of those hit by the false accusations. Victims lodged a legal complaint Tuesday against three serving ministers and two former ministers including Asscher. Several parents released a video calling for the government to quit and 'Rutte resign' has been trending on Twitter since Tuesday. Rutte has led three coalition governments since 2010, most recently winning elections in 2017 despite strong opposition from Wilders. Earlier this week he announced that lockdown measures including the closure of shops and schools until at least February 9 because of the high infection rate. The measures are the toughest yet in the Netherlands after Rutte championed an 'intelligent lockdown' with relatively mild restrictions in the spring. Rutte also cited the threat posed by a much more easily transmissable variant of the disease first identified in Britain, describing it as 'very, very worrying'. Health minister Hugo de Jonge said new British variant of the virus currently made up two to five per cent of infections, but was expected to 'gain the upper hand'. Although the overall infection rate has dropped, the number of new daily cases remains too high to consider any easing of restrictions, Rutte said. Guwahati, Jan 15 : A wild buffalo was shot dead by security personnel after it killed two people and injured two others in Biswanath district in northern Assam bordering Arunachal Pradesh, officials said on Friday. The buffalo killed a young man in Biswanath district on Thursday, while another man was mauled to death by the animal on Friday, besides injuring two other people in the same area. According to the forest and police officials, the wild buffalo from the famed Kaziranga National Park attacked and killed Sukur Ali, 55, a villager, and injured two others on Friday at Muttackgaon area in the district. A forest official said that personnel of the forest department and police rushed to the village on receiving information that one more person succumbed to his injuries suffered in the buffalo's attack. "At the outset we tried to push the wild buffalo into the Kaziranga National Park as our first priority is always to protect the wild animals. But it chased us back and we had no option but to shoot it in self-defence," a forest official told the media. The two injured persons were later shifted to a hospital. The wild animal on Thursday killed Jayanta Das, 43, leading to public anger in Biswanath district. Hundreds of irate people burnt down the Central Range office of the Biswanath Wildlife Division and a car of the forest department on Thursday. Accusing the forest officials of not taking adequate steps to prevent wild animals from entering human habitations and villages from the nearby Kaziranga National Park, hundreds of locals, including women, turned violent and went on a rampage. The villagers have demanded a compensation of Rs 50 lakh for the victims' families. The police and forest officials had a tough time in pacifying the angry mob. For such animal attacks, forest officials and environment experts blamed traditional community fishing, organised every year as a part of the celebration of "Bhogali Bihu", a harvest festival, also called "Magh Bihu". Defying prohibitory orders clamped under Section 144 of the CrPc, around 3,000 people had entered inside a part of the Kaziranga National Park for community fishing. The forest official said that as people unlawfully entered the restricted areas of the park, the wild animals moved from the southern side to the northern side and some animals even crossed the Brahmaputra and entered the north bank area (Biswanath). According to the official when a huge number of people enter protected areas of the sanctuary, it is expected that the animals would move here and there for their survival. Set up in 1908, the Kaziranga National park, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985, is home to more than 2,200 one-horned Indian rhinoceros, approximately two third of the total world population. 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. The reason why limited editions are doing so well is that they provide each individual with something unique in the form of a number. The idea itself is nothing new; it dates back to well before the industrial era of watchmaking, to a time when the likes of Breguet, Leroy, Nardin, Chopard, and Berthoud designed each pocket watch for one specific client. Paradigm shift Nowadays, there are basically three different ways watches can be customised. One is to place a special order with the brand, which it may accept or decline. The historic Manufactures may not always admit to this practice, but have always engaged in it, as is clear when you take a look at some of the watches sold at auctions: a one-of-a-kind piece made for a sultan, a pocket watch for a Head of State, or a complication developed for a high-ranking collector. Certain Manufactures have even made it something of a speciality, such as Blancpain with their erotic watches and Ulysse Nardin with jacquemart watches. Villeret Metiers dArt (2015) Blancpain Between 2000 and 2020, though, emerging independent brands brought about a paradigm shift by publicly announcing customisation services, automatically offered to any customer. Kerbedanz, Romain Gauthier, Czapek, Louis Moinet, Ferdinand Berthoud, and Golay Spierer are just a few examples. Some brands have gone even further, offering an organised programme (such as HYTs Bespoke scheme from 2016 onwards) catering to virtually every whim. ArtyA, the Geneva-based brand founded by Yvan Arpa, is another case in point, designing almost every single watch as a one-of-a-kind piece, numbered 01/01. Vatican (2018) Kerbedanz Straps and engravings: Customisation as (almost) standard The second trend is for simple, affordable, and almost instantaneous customisation. Over the first 20 years of the new century, a craze for interchangeable straps has emerged. Cartier, Montblanc, TAG Heuer, Michel Herbelin, Poiray, and the Fossil group are just some of the scores of firms to have taken this trend on board even the Apple Watch sported a Hermes strap in 2015. Engravings are another avenue for customisation. This service is available as standard for most Baume & Mercier models. And its the perfect finishing touch for certain pieces, such as Jaeger-LeCoultres Reverso, of which the protective side has been engraved or painted as per customer specifications for 90 years. Get someone else to do it for you... The third and last trend is the use of third-party providers. This phenomenon was a particular hallmark of the 2000s and the years immediately following. Firms sprang up for the sole purpose of customising watches that had already been purchased by collectors. Fancy a Rolex Daytona with a black dial, a different set of hands on your IWC Portugieser, or giving your Cartier Ballon Bleu a facelift? Outfits such as Titan Black and Blackout Concept were set up to do just that for you. These small providers took their place alongside other institutional players such as Bucherer and Bamford Watch Department. One important difference, though, is that these latter two firms work directly with brands, as exemplified by the Bucherer Blue editions: timepiece sets produced exclusively for Bucherer since 2016 and sporting blue dials that cant be found anywhere else. *On the occasion of GMT Magazine and WorldTempus' 20th anniversary, we have embarked on the ambitious project of summarising the last 20 years in watchmaking in The Millennium Watch Book, a big, beautifully laid out coffee table book. The Millennium Watch Book is available on www.the-watch-book.com, in French and English. Order now Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain For about one in 13 children in the U.S., normally harmless foodstuffs such as milk, eggs and peanuts can send the body's natural defenses into overdrive. Symptoms of food allergies can vary widely, but at worst, a systemwide allergic response can lead to anaphylaxis, a life-threatening condition characterized by a sudden drop in blood pressure and difficulty breathing. Although there are now some preventive measures for food-induced anaphylaxis, there are not yet any long-lasting solutionstreatments capable of locking the immune system into a state of tolerance, so that it doesn't respond to allergens. Now, a UCLA research team has developed a possible way to impart long-term relief from allergies by inducing an active state of immune tolerance. The technology uses a nanoparticlea particle so small that it's measured on the scale of billionths of a meterto deliver proteins to specific cells in the liver. Those proteins may trigger an allergic response in other organs in the body, but in the liver, they cause the targeted cells to activate a tolerant immune response that switches the allergic response off. A report on the research, published in ACS Nano, indicates that the platform is effective in preventing allergic reactions to an egg protein when ingested or inhaled. The UCLA researchers also showed that delivering a single piece of a protein that triggers allergies is sufficient to ameliorate the allergic reaction. "Huge numbers of people suffer from food allergies, amounting to billions of dollars in annual health care costs," said co-corresponding author Dr. Andre Nel, director of the University of California's Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology, or CEIN, and director of research at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. "Normally, asthma and anaphylaxis are treated with an EpiPen syringe as well as anti-inflammatory and immune-suppressive drugs that only provide transient relief. For the problem to go away long-term, we're looking at the liver to reprogram the immune system to an actively sustained state of nonresponsiveness." The liver is an immune-privileged organ, meaning that it is programmed not to respond to foreign proteins called antigens, which can cause allergic or anaphylactic responses elsewhere in the body. The platform developed by Nel and his colleagues spurs the liver to produce regulatory T cells, cells in the immune system that can go everywhere in the body, to calm allergic responses to food allergens. Nel, who is also a UCLA distinguished professor of medicine and immunologist, said the idea to target the liver came from an intriguing observation from the field of organ transplant medicine. "If doctors transplant a kidney, they have to give a lot of immune suppression to avoid rejection," he said. "But if they transplant a kidney plus a liver, very little immune suppression is necessary to protect the kidney because the liver does so. The liver's secret is the generation of regulatory T cells that protect the kidney from immune rejection." In one experiment, the scientists compared their platform with another nanoparticle-based approach that is currently being evaluated in clinical trials. In that technology, developed by and licensed from scientists at Harvard and MIT, cells that present allergens to the immune system are reprogrammed all over the body to switch off overreactive immune responses. In their test, the UCLA researchers pretreated groups of mice with two injections one week apart to compare the liver-targeting nanoparticles with several versions of the HarvardMIT approach. The mice were then sensitized to an egg protein in a way that would cause it to trigger asthma-like symptoms under normal circumstances. Starting four weeks after the second injection, the mice were exposed to the allergen through inhalation. The scientists found that the liver-targeting nanoparticle containing the egg allergen generated regulatory T cells that are programmed to suppress the allergic response to the egg proteinand that it was just as effective as the HarvardMIT approach in reducing allergic inflammation in the lungs. In a second experiment using mice, the team found that delivering certain fragments of the egg protein with the liver-targeting nanoparticle enhanced immune tolerance, and it did so better than targeted delivery of the entire protein. A third experiment used a mouse model for anaphylaxis triggered by ingesting the same egg protein. The researchers compared mice with the food allergy that received no treatment, mice that were pretreated with injections of the nanoparticle containing the entire egg protein and allergic mice pretreated with injections of one particular fragment of the protein. Mice that received the nanoparticles containing the whole protein and those that received the nanoparticle containing the fragment displayed a dramatic reduction in life-threatening responses to the allergen, such as a collapse in blood circulation causing their body temperature to drop. "These results are very exciting," said first author Qi Liu, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar. "Our preliminary studies showed that our nanoparticles could successfully target cells in the liver and generate regulatory T cells to alleviate inflammation in the airways, and these experiments demonstrated that the platform is also effective against food allergies." The scientists plan to explore other conditions that might be addressed with their new approach. "This platform could be valuable for treating other allergies or autoimmune disease, such as Type 1 diabetes, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis," said co-corresponding author Dr. Tian Xia, a UCLA associate professor of medicine and member of CEIN. "Ultimately, our goal is to help people." Explore further How allergens trigger itching: Finding points to new targets for allergy drug development More information: Qi Liu et al. Antigen- and Epitope-Delivering Nanoparticles Targeting Liver Induce Comparable Immunotolerance in Allergic Airway Disease and Anaphylaxis as Nanoparticle-Delivering Pharmaceuticals, ACS Nano (2020). Journal information: ACS Nano Qi Liu et al. Antigen- and Epitope-Delivering Nanoparticles Targeting Liver Induce Comparable Immunotolerance in Allergic Airway Disease and Anaphylaxis as Nanoparticle-Delivering Pharmaceuticals,(2020). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c09206 Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a staunch supporter of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was buried in Jerusalem Friday, an AFP photographer at the cemetery said. Adelson died of cancer in the United States on Tuesday and his body arrived in Israel late Thursday, according to the Israel Hayom newspaper, founded by the Adelson family. Netanyahu met the coffin and Adelson's wife Miriam at the airport, Israel Hayom reported. Miriam Adelson, born in British mandate Palestine, is the paper's publisher. Adelson was buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. He was 87. Haaretz newspaper said that his wife and his son Matan attended the burial. Israel Hayom quoted Miriam Adelson as saying in an interview ahead of the funeral that she felt "a feeling of great emptiness and loss, but also a sense of comfort, knowing that he is no longer suffering and that he will soon lie in the Mount of Olives, in Zion, next to some of the greatest people of our nation". The coffin was carried by a small group of people, in line with Covid-19 restrictions on public assembly, and a wreath of flowers placed on the grave, an AFP photographer witnessed. The cemetery, where British Jewish media baron Robert Maxwell is also interred, overlooks the Old City's Temple Mount, the holiest site in the Jewish faith. - Impassioned opposition to Palestinians - Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, the first leader of the Jewish state to make peace with an Arab state, is also entombed at the ancient site, along with prominent rabbis. In the Bible, the prophet Zachariah announced that the Messiah would make his apparition on earth on Temple Mount, allowing those who are buried on the nearby Mount of Olives to be among the first people resurrected. Temple Mount, which also houses the Al-Aqsa mosque compound Islamic shrine, is the reputed location of two biblical Jewish temples. Story continues Israel captured mainly-Arab east Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognised internationally. The Palestinians want the east of the city for the capital of their future state. The son of a Boston taxi driver, Adelson brought new heights to the gambling industry around the world. He rose to become one of the richest men on the planet thanks to his chain of casinos. As of Tuesday Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $35 billion. Adelson was equally known for his tireless advocacy for Israel and right-wing causes, and for his impassioned opposition to the Palestinian cause. He caused a furore with many of his remarks, including dismissing the Palestinians as an "invented" people and musing about how the United States should drop a nuclear bomb on Israel's arch-enemy Iran. Netanyahu called Adelson "an incredible champion of the Jewish people". The Adelson family founded Israel Hayom in 2007, and it is now one of the country's most popular papers and a strong backer of Netanyahu. bur/scw/hkb Posted Friday, January 15, 2021 7:10 am Troops from the Washington National Guard will head to Washington D.C. in the coming days to provide support for the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-Elect Joe Biden. This is standard for the WA guard, which also provided support for President Trump's inauguration in 2016, according to a spokesman for the guard. While there is no official number on how many troops are headed to the nation's capital, a guard spokesman said it expects to send members of the communications squadron, as well as squadrons to support local law enforcement with detection of hazardous materials, traffic control and perimeter support. As of Jan. 14, there were about 7,000 members of the National Guard from the District of Columbia, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Virginia on the ground in D.C. The Secret Service, Capitol Police and U.S. Park Police requested assistance from the guard, according to Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the Nation Guard Bureau. There could be as many as 20,000 troops from around the country present for Wednesday's inaugural events, according to a statement from the National Guard Bureau. Troops have been activated in D.C. since Jan. 4, when Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy authorized several hundred members of the D.C. guard to help the Metropolitan Police Department with traffic control ahead of protests in support of President Trump. On Jan. 12, McCarthy authorized the National Guard troops to be armed in support of the U.S. Capitol Police in order to protect the Capitol and members of congress, according to a statement from the National Guard Bureau. ___ (c)2021 The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) Visit The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) at www.TheNewsTribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... PHOENIX Arizona prison officials started offering COVID-19 vaccinations Friday to corrections officers at the Perryville prison in Goodyear, with other prisons to follow in the future. State corrections officers can get vaccinated through either the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry or through the counties where they live. Some counties have already made vaccines available to officers. Centurion of Arizona, the company that provides health care for state prisoners, also has received vaccines and plans to begin offering them to its employees on Monday at the Perryville prison, though many of Centurions providers have already received it, officials said. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Its unknown exactly when vaccines will be offered to the 37,000 state prisoners. Corrections officials say the timeline for inmate vaccinations depends on the amount of vaccines the department receives and when it gets them. In county jails across Arizona, several sheriffs offices said they have already begun offering the vaccine to jail officers. Its unknown exactly when county jail inmates will get vaccinations. Arizona remains the state with the worst COVID-19 diagnosis rate, with 1 of every 111 residents being diagnosed with COVID-19 over the past week. Officials on Friday reported 9,146 additional cases across the state and 185 additional deaths, increasing the states totals to 658,186 cases and 11,040 deaths. Arizonas death toll exceeded 11,000 just six days after passing 10,000. There were 4,866 hospitalized COVID-19 patients occupying inpatient beds statewide, down from Mondays pandemic-high of 5,082. State prisons and some county jails in Arizona have been hard hit by the virus. In all, more than 8,400 inmates in Arizonas prisons have tested positive for the virus during the pandemic, leading to 28 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and another 16 deaths suspected to have been caused by the virus. One in five inmates in state prisons has tested positive for the virus at one time. Nearly 2,200 people who work in state prisons also have tested positive. Corrections officials declined to say whether any staff members have died from the virus, and leaders of the unions representing state corrections officers didnt respond to requests for comment. In county jails across Arizona, more than 2,800 inmates and 700 employees have tested positive since last spring. No inmates are known to have died from the virus while in county jails. A Maricopa County jail officer and a Camp Verde Detention Center employee in Yavapai County died from the virus. Earlier in the pandemic, state corrections officials were harshly criticized for not providing masks to inmates and for a scarcity of virus tests. Inmates were given masks in July, and for the second time authorities are planning to start an effort Tuesday to test all inmates in state prisons for the virus. The corrections department has repeatedly said its top priority is keeping staff, inmates and communities near prisons safe from the virus. Advocates for inmates had accused corrections officials of neglecting prisoners and called for incarcerated people from around the state to be released to try to control the spread of the virus behind bars. Gov. Doug Ducey rejected the calls for the early release of some state inmates. Last year, at least 300 non-violent inmates were released from county jails across Arizona, though about half of Arizonas counties didnt release inmates as a virus prevention measure. Corene Kendrick, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents thousands of inmates in a nearly 9-year-old lawsuit challenging the quality of health care in Arizonas prisons, said the lack of social distancing and inadequate medical services for prisoners still make them sitting ducks for the virus. Kendrick said vaccinating prisoners and corrections employees will help protect the public, noting that people who work in prisons could end up bringing the virus into prisons or transmitting into their communities after they knock off work. They are bringing it to their families and grocery stores, Kendrick said. We are all interconnected. The first inmates who will be offered vaccinations are those who are 75 or older, followed by inmates who have high-risk medical conditions. Vaccinations will be offered to the remainder of state prisoners during phase 1C, which counties are expected to reach by late February or early March. Lillian Coppess, leader of an advocacy group consisting of the loved ones of incarcerated people in Arizona, said she is concerned about prisoners declining to get vaccinated based on a false belief that the government is using them for medical experiments. Sometimes, their family members tell them not to take it, Coppess said. Corrections officials say employees and inmates arent required to take the vaccine, but they are encouraging them to do so. ___ Associated Press writer Paul Davenport in Phoenix contributed to this report. Of that group, seventeen officers were given suspensions and one was issued a reprimand, a light punishment that doesnt result in any docked time, according to the Chicago Police Department. The department did not disclose the severity of the suspensions but said the officers have the option of appealing their punishment, per union contract rules. As the country grapples with Covid-19, Cuban American actor Gina Torres says it's "incredibly humbling" and a "gift" to step into the role of a paramedic captain in the season premiere of the hit drama "9-1-1 Lone Star." "I'm very conscientious of making sure that what we're putting forward what I'm putting forward is accurate and gives them the respect and the attention that they deserve for everything that they're doing day to day to day," Torres, 51, said of emergency workers who are "putting themselves at risk, putting their families at risk." Torres plays Tommy Vega, a former paramedic captain in Austin, Texas, who hung up her uniform eight years ago to raise her twin daughters. She returns to work after her husband's restaurant goes under at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Torres, most recently known for her critically acclaimed portrayal of Jessica Pearson on the USA Network legal drama "Suits" and its short-lived spin-off, "Pearson," spoke about the chance to shed light on the sacrifices of front-line workers. "They'd be the first to tell you, and not unlike 'Suits' or 'Pearson' when you talk to lawyers, it's not that sexy or dramatic a lot of the time," Torres said. "Having said that, I really do believe that the strength of this show is the focus on the characters it is really character-driven and human-driven, and that's what these people are in the face of extraordinary circumstances." A new role, and a reunion It was a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic that Torres got a call from her old friend Tim Minear, the co-creator and showrunner of Fox's "9-1-1: Lone Star"; they had worked together on the cult favorite "Firefly" in 2002. Torres had just gotten notice that her latest pilot was not going to be picked up by ABC. Meanwhile, Minear had discovered that his original female lead, Liv Tyler, would not return for the show's sophomore season, concerned about the commute between her home in London and the production in Los Angeles. Story continues In a reunion that was nearly two decades in the making, Minear's initial phone call with Torres was followed up with an official pitch over Zoom for a new character that he had written with her in mind. Having played "overly accomplished, ridiculously capable and standalone" figures throughout her career, Torres was immediately taken aback by Minear's offer to portray a fierce first responder who is also readjusting to life as a working wife and mother. "You try to have a game face during these phone calls [and say]: 'Yeah, whoa, that sounds interesting. Oh, sure, uh huh, yeah.' But there was no game face, and I'd known him way too long for that, anyway, so I was just like, 'Yup, sounds great to me!'" Torres said with a hearty laugh, later saying she had casually watched the show a few weeks earlier. Image: Gina Torres and Derek Webster in '9-1-1: Lone Star' (Kevin Estrada / Fox) "What's so beautiful and what I just adore about Tommy Vega and this woman that I get to honor is that she's not overly complicated," Torres said, comparing Tommy to other characters she has played. "She's going through what a vast majority of women and families have to go through every day, including myself, in terms of trying to find a balance and not winning that battle all the time and loving what we do but feeling that somehow makes you less than at home. "In all my years of network television and in all the things that I've done that have rarely ever seen the light of day," Torres said, "I'm so excited about finally having a husband, children and friends friends that I can talk to, that came over. One of the dear favors that Tim did me and the character is that there's already a really close and beautiful relationship with the characters of Judd [Jim Parrack] and Grace [Sierra McClain], so that helps quite a bit, and I'm just enjoying it so much." Acting and changing stereotypes After more than two decades in the business, Torres said her years of experience have helped her to navigate the ebbs and flows of a competitive industry in which roles for Afro-Latinx actors, especially leading ones on prime-time television, are already "limited" a word she has always hated. "When I sort of led the charge and grabbed the horns of my career, really wanting to make my dreams a reality, 'limits' couldn't be part of my vocabulary," she said. "It really became my job to [change the minds of] people, whoever was in the room at the time, whatever habit of expectation and false information they'd fallen into regarding what any particular person or sex or ethnicity should look or behave like. "Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. But I did my best not to pander to that expectation or that bad habit, and I continue to do that," she said. "I call it a bad habit because it can be broken. You just have to stop behaving and reacting to things in that way." Torres, a longtime advocate for authentic onscreen representation, said it has gradually become "a little bit easier to be heard" because of her powerful and memorable roles, as well as the connections she has formed with industry professionals and fans, but she acknowledged that "there is so much more to do." "So many people are worried about quotas and overcorrection. I'm like: 'That's great. We're more than due for an overcorrection,'" she said. "Let's do the overcorrection, and some things will fail miserably, because more energy was put into the overcorrection than it was into the actual quality of the project, but that's OK. I can't tell you how many tens of thousands of hours of predominantly white programming is simply awful and mediocre, so why shouldn't we be afforded the exact same privilege? Honestly, it runs forever. It's just astonishing." As the proud daughter of Cuban immigrants, Torres said she does not know whether her heritage has necessarily influenced her craft as an actor, but it has certainly fed her drive and passion, even in this new chapter of her life. "It's such a part of who I am. It's the fabric of who I am," said Torres, an American Latino Media Arts and Imagen award winner. "You can be both you can be Cuban and identify with your culture and love this country that we're in and be absolutely devastated by what happened" at the Capitol on Jan. 6. "Both things are absolutely true, so that's what continues to propel me forward." When asked to preview her character's arc on "9-1-1: Lone Star," Torres excitedly teased the deeply human stories that drew her to the project, in addition to the Texas-size emergencies that made the "9-1-1" spinoff Fox's highest-rated new series of the 2019-20 season. "It's tentative at first. It's a little prickly. She's been away [from the job of a paramedic captain] for a while. She's definitely a little guarded, but that softens up. Sooner than later, the characters really do become a team, and a close one," she said. "I would say in the midst of all the madness from tanks in the streets of Austin to a volcano to a fire there are some really beautiful human moments of bonding, fun, humor and light. "I really do hope that when the fans of the show come in and watch the second season, they'll see themselves reflected in all kinds of ways and honored, really truly honored." Season 2 of "9-1-1: Lone Star" premieres Monday on Fox at 9 p.m. Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. CINCINNATI and BIELEFELD, Germany, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NTT DATA expands in the US by strengthening its foothold in the strategic supply chain segment. itelligence | NTT DATA Business Solutions is announcing its acquisition of the US SAP consulting company My Supply Chain Group, LLC (MSCG), Birmingham, Alabama. With this acquisition, itelligence | NTT DATA Business Solutions, one of the world's most successful SAP service companies, is not only significantly expanding its presence in the USA, but also extending its service portfolio with essential supply chain planning and execution capabilities. MSCG specializes in supply chain process re-engineering and application implementation services utilizing SAP Extended Warehouse Management, Integrated Business Planning/Advanced Planning and Optimization, and Transportation Management and is focused exclusively on SAP Solutions. "With the acquisition of MSCG, we are expanding in a highly strategic market segment in the USA, one of our most important markets," reports Norbert Rotter, CEO itelligence | NTT DATA Business Solutions. "The USA supply chain market is at a turning point, as SME companies in particular are beginning to digitally transform and optimize their supply chains. In this context, MSCG represents an ideal partner for us." According to Gartner, the global market for supply chain management amounted to 14 billion US dollars in 2018 and was set to grow to 19 billion by 2021. It is also expected that 65 percent of goods movements in automated warehouses will be controlled by robots by 2023. In terms of sectors, MSCG has focus in manufacturing, consumer goods, oil and gas, mill products and the life science industries. "Many analysts state five years of digital transformation have taken place in the last several months. No area of business has been more affected by this trend than companies' supply chains," states Steve Niesman, itelligence Americas President and Region Head. "Therefore, we are incredibly excited to welcome MSCG into the itelligence/NTT DATA family to help our collective customers stay relevant and thrive as the pace of supply chain planning and execution continues to accelerate." In the USA, MSCG is a recognized market leader for SAP Extended Warehouse Management and Integrated Business Planning. The cloud solution SAP Integrated Business Planning already has a strong market position in the USA and offers great potential for supporting customers on their digitalization journey. The acquisition of MSCG complements the partnership in the area of global logistics control that NTT has recently entered into with SAP. The two partners are setting out to jointly develop closely integrated solutions for the Intelligent Enterprise. As SAP's strategic partner, NTT will deliver cloud solutions, infrastructure management services and business consulting at a global level. itelligence is a subsidiary of NTT/NTT DATA. "We are delighted to expand our SAP Supply Chain capabilities in the USA market through the acquisition of MSCG," emphasizes Eric Clark, Chief Digital Officer, NTT DATA Services. And he continues: "We consider logistics and supply chain as a strong growth market. In addition, NTT DATA has outstanding expertise in Digital, Vertical and Cloud solutions. The combination of MSCG and our One NTT DATA SAP team offers enormous competitive benefits to customers, particularly those in our commercial and manufacturing verticals, and fits perfectly into our global and local strategies." Together with MSCG, itelligence | NTT DATA Business Solutions is also strengthening the network and collaboration within the overall NTT Group on the American continent. "The strategic investment from NTT DATA and itelligence gives MSCG the partnership we need to expand our best-in-class supply chain services not only in NA and LATAM, but also throughout the NTT global footprint," says Omar Zuberi from MSCG. His partner Neil Patel adds: "The two companies are excited to take advantage of the synergies between MSCG's entrepreneurial spirit and the NTT global brand. We are consequently convinced that we will enjoy strong growth working together in our newly formed partnership." Media contact: Shawnee Schauff itelligence Inc. Cincinnati, Ohio 45242 +1-859-802-2644 [email protected] For international media contact: Silvia Dicke Head of Corporate Communications itelligence AG D-33605 Bielefeld +49 (0) 521 / 9 14 48 - 107 [email protected] About My Supply Chain Group, LLC (MSCG) MSCG is a leading provider of Supply Chain planning and execution process re-engineering and application implementation services. MSCG helps leading brand name companies create a sustainable strategic advantage with excellence throughout their supply chains processes and applications. Our highly experienced consultants incorporate leading edge best practices & processes to ensure Value Maximization & Risk Mitigation for their clients supply chain initiatives. MSCG is made up of consultants that bring real world experience and know-how. About itelligence | NTT DATA Business Solutions itelligence | NTT DATA Business Solutions transforms IT landscapes and business processes through the combination of innovative SAP software and technology with services and products developed in-house. As an SAP platinum partner, itelligence supports SMEs and large enterprises in every phase of their digital transformation. itelligence's range of services includes IT strategy and transformation consulting, software deployment and implementation, as well as application management and managed cloud services. The excellence of these services is built on the foundation of itelligence's local presence, global capacity, and comprehensive industry expertise. itelligence partners with customers to create new and innovative business opportunities through the use of IT for each facet of the customer's business. Thousands of satisfied customers have placed their trust in itelligence, many of them since the company was founded 30 years ago. itelligence's contribution to innovation and long-term business success has been confirmed by numerous SAP awards and leading market analysts. itelligence is part of the global NTT DATA group and employs about 10,000 people across 28 countries. In 2019, itelligence generated about 1 billion euros in total revenues. https://itelligencegroup.com SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. - Cross reference: Picture is available via epa european pressphoto agency (http://www.epa.eu) - SOURCE itelligence AG Related Links https://itelligencegroup.com Athens, Greece (PANA) - Greece on Thursday requested assistance from the European Union (EU) for the "immediate return" to neighbouring countries of nearly 1,500 migrants who it cannot grant asylum Mother Dairy, a leading milk supplier in the Delhi-NCR market, on Thursday said it has expanded its sweets portfolio and is targeting Rs 100 crore sales from this new vertical. Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), has launched two new varieties of sweets -- Mathura peda and mewa atta laddoo -- under its sweets portfolio. Mother Dairy has 1,500 milk booths and more than 300 Safal outlets in the Delhi-NCR market. The company also launched three packaged food products -- frozen drumsticks, frozen cut okra and frozen Haldi paste cubes -- under its Safal brand on the occasion of Makar Sankranti and in the presence of NDDB Chairman Varsha Joshi and Mother Dairy Deputy MD Omveer Singh. Mother Dairy is targeting a business of Rs 100 crore from the sweets portfolio in the next 2-3 years, a senior company official said. "The Indian dairy and horticulture ecosystem have been a significant contributor in driving rural prosperity. The amalgamation of the country's diverse produce and an innovative approach to provide a market for this produce has the potential to benefit both the farmer and the consumer," Joshi said. The introduction of these new products in horticulture with sourcing from tribals of Jharkhand will enable them with newer markets and is going to positively impact their livelihood, she added. "With the addition of new products, our packaged sweets portfolio will now comprise of 7 traditional sweets, whereas the frozen vegetable portfolio will now offer 6 convenient options. We will continue innovating such products which add value to the lives of both farmers and consumers," Singh said. Earlier, Mother Dairy used to sell five packaged sweets -- Milk Cake, Orange Mawa Barfi, Frozen Rasmalai, Gulab Jamun and Rasgulla. In July, Mother Dairy forayed into the bread segment and also announced its target to more than double its revenue to Rs 25,000 crore in the next five years. Its turnover stood at around Rs 10,500 crore last fiscal year. Mother Dairy sells over 30 lakh litres of milk per day in Delhi-NCR. Milk and other milk products are sold under the Mother Dairy brand. It sells fresh fruits and vegetables through around 400 Safal outlets. Frozen vegetables, pulses and honey are sold under the "Safal" brand. The company manufactures and markets edible oils under the "Dhara" brand. Also read: Centrum may submit formal bid to acquire PMC Bank next week 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. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. 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We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. China has imposed a temporary travel ban on Pakistani passengers after 10 of them tested positive for COVID-19. According to Geo News, China has also stopped operating flights from Pakistan Airlines (PIA) for three weeks. PIA spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez confirmed that the national carrier has temporarily halted the flights after the development. Pakistani passengers, who travelled to China with a negative test report, later tested positive upon arrival, informed the spokesperson. On Thursday, China reported 144 COVID-19 infections, the highest number of cases in over 10 months, due to a severe outbreak in the northeast that has put over 28 million people under lockdown, reported Geo News. North China's Hebei Province reported 90 locally transmitted infections and nine asymptomatic cases on Thursday. By the end of Thursday, there were 553 locally transmitted confirmed cases and two imported cases being treated in hospitals in Hebei, Xinhua reported. Meanwhile, Pakistan on Friday recorded 2,417 new infections and 45 deaths, reported ARY News. The total COVID-19 caseload in Pakistan stands at 514,338, along with 10,863 deaths. (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 Spanish police boat has been escorted out of British territorial waters after making a foray into the Bay of Gibraltar. The Royal Navy descended on the Rio Guadalete police boat after she repeatedly ignored sovereignty warnings on Thursday. HMS Dasher, a P2000 Fast Patrol Boat, and a RHIB (rigid inflatable boat) sped out to meet Guadalete and shadowed the Spaniards for around 45 minutes before they sailed for home. An FCO spokesman said: 'We have no doubt about UK sovereignty over British Gibraltar Territorial Waters and protest incursions to the Spanish authorities.' The Royal Navy intercepting a Spanish ship in Gibraltar on Thursday. HMS Dasher, a P2000 Fast Patrol Boat, and a RHIB (rigid inflatable boat) sped out to meet Guadalete and shadowed the Spaniards for around 45 minutes before they sailed for home A Spanish police vessel is intercepted by the Royal Navy yesterday The Spanish police vessel being shadowed by the Royal Navy on Thursday during the standoff The tensions in the Bay come amid uncertainty over the Rock's post-Brexit future. Under Britain's deal with the EU, Gibraltar joined the Schengen zone which allows for freedom movement of people. But despite the agreement, the Spanish have infuriated the Gibraltarians by claiming they can have the final say over who gets to enter the British sovereign territory. It prompted Chief minister Fabian Picardo to tersely declare 'this is our land.' The Spanish foreign ministry has insisted that EU customs officials will now police who enters Gibraltar because the UK has quit Schengen. Boris Johnson has offered his 'wholehearted welcome' to the travel deal with Spain and underscored his commitment to preserving the protection of the interests of Gibraltar and its British sovereignty'. Schengen covers most of the 27 EU members, along with Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Gibraltar's arrangement is to remain in place for an initial four-year period. With a land area of just 2.6-square miles, Gibraltar is entirely dependent on imports to supply its 34,000 residents Even when the UK was in the EU, it never joined Schengen, meaning passports were required to travel to EU member states. With a land area of just 2.6-square miles, Gibraltar is entirely dependent on imports to supply its 34,000 residents. A No Deal scenario would have slowed the cross-border movement of goods with new customs procedures. Border fluidity is also key for some 15,000 people who cross into Gibraltar every day to work, accounting for half of the territory's workforce. Most are Spanish and live in the impoverished neighbouring area of La Linea. In the 2016 referendum, Gibraltar voted 96 per cent in favour of remaining in the EU. Its status as a British overseas territory has always been a thorny issue and remains disputed by Madrid. Face to face with a maskless man threatening to shoot her, Amanda Andrade-Rhoades had limited options. The freelance photojournalist was working solo on assignment for The Washington Post last Wednesday as supporters of President Donald Trump descended on the U.S. Capitol, rioting as Congress voted to certify the 2020 election results. The man was tall and older, with a mustache and a tan jacket, Andrade-Rhoades told VOA. Coming within inches of her face, he said, "I'm coming back with a gun for tomorrow, and I'm coming back for you." She had limited protection no bulletproof vest, no people around to help and saw no reason to escalate the conflict. She walked away. By the end of the day, Andrade-Rhoades says, she had been struck by four rubber bullets three in the leg and one in the upper hip as police clashed with rioters, and three people had threatened to shoot her. The journalist is one of several who say they were attacked or threatened by the rioters last Wednesday. Footage showed crowds smashing equipment belonging to an Associated Press crew, charging and yelling at reporters, and dragging a photographer backward over a ledge. On a door inside the U.S. Capitol someone scrawled "Murder the Media." The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a coalition of free-speech advocates, news organizations and journalism advocacy groups, is investigating about 15 attacks and five arrests or detainments of journalists across the U.S. Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Tuesday his office will investigate and prosecute violence toward journalists. "Some people aren't familiar that some of those rioters specifically targeted members of the media and assaulted them," Sherwin said at a news conference, adding that he has set up a strike force to focus on media assaults. The attacks come after an unprecedented year of hostility toward the press in the U.S., most taking place while media covered rallies calling for racial equality following the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed in police custody in Minneapolis, and clashes with police and protesters. The Tracker documented more than 325 attacks against journalists in 2020 and 123 arrests by far the most it had ever recorded in a year. It is also working to verify about 200 additional incidents that took place last year, managing editor Kirstin McCudden told VOA. Now, journalists and newsrooms are confronting an unsettling reality: The U.S. is becoming an increasingly dangerous place to be a journalist. And they are beginning to take extra precautions to ensure reporters are safe. "We shouldn't have to be doing our work in fear," Andrade-Rhoades said. "But this is the way it is now." Widespread hostility The hostility wasn't confined to the capital. Last Wednesday, Rick Egan was photographing a rally of Trump supporters at Utah's state capitol for The Salt Lake Tribune. At one point, a man yelled into a bullhorn next to his face, "Look at you and your mask you [expletives]." Egan says he continued to take photos. Within minutes, the same man returned, this time spraying pepper spray in his eyes. "I didn't do anything to him. It was just totally out of nowhere," Egan said. "Just the freakiest, craziest thing I've encountered in my work as a journalist." In first-person accounts shared widely on social media and at U.S. outlets, some reporters likened events to their days as war correspondents. Journalists say they have become used to increased hostility in recent years, with people hurling insults or pushing them. But those incidents are "nothing close to what happened" last week, Egan said. Andrade-Rhoades said she thinks the hostility is due in part to "inflammatory rhetoric" including from the president, who has had a tense relationship with large sections of the press, whom he has regularly labeled as "fake news" and "enemy of the people." Trump and many of his supporters believe the mainstream media has been biased in its reporting of him and are attempting to delegitimize his presidency with overly critical coverage. A growth in disinformation on social media has further weakened trust in the media. Egan has noticed a similar change in rhetoric over the past four years. More recently, he said, people hurl insults at him over wearing a mask. "It can be a bunch of [people] ... upset about having to wear masks, and they still attack us and verbally yell and scream," he said. "It's just crazy. It never happened before. I was never worried for my safety." The wearing of masks has become a flashpoint for anger across the world, with people on one side seeing it as a necessary measure to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and others viewing it as an attempt to limit their freedoms. A push for safety As protests calling for racial equality became more intense, Andrade-Rhoades invested in protective gear. The Salt Lake Tribune, where Egan works, ordered safety kits last Wednesday for staff. The kits include protective gear, such as gloves, and there are plans to order helmets for staffers. Journalists are also participating in more official training. "They want us on the front lines. They want us to tell these stories," Egan said. "But they want us to be safe." Frank Smyth is the executive director of GJS Security, a U.S. company that provides hostile environment and emergency first aid training. The company saw trainings skyrocket in 2020 as journalists confronted more dangerous situations, he said. The company's curriculum includes civil unrest, police tactics with the press and an hourlong course on "stopping the bleed" essentially emergency first aid. The company began offering civil unrest training to journalists covering the U.S. in 2016. They provided a few dozen training sessions and by 2020 had conducted more than double the training than four years earlier, Smyth said. But Smyth, who authored a UNESCO report on increasing dangers to the media covering protests globally and whose company usually focuses on training for reporters working in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Venezuela, isn't proud of the increased business. "The fact that this is happening at home is alarming," he told VOA. "It saddens me that we're in this situation. It saddens me that people need training to operate in the United States." The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) also provides training offering courses to 1,096 journalists last year, said program coordinator Maria Alejandra Silva Ortega. That's an exponential rise from the 122 they trained in 2019 something she attributed to both the accessibility of classes during COVID-19 and the increased demand. "Newsrooms are realizing that they also have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their journalists," she told VOA. For Smyth, the increased demand is concerning, and he's worried about the future safety of journalists in the U.S. "The United States is now a hostile environment for the press. I don't think that is hyperbolic to say," he said. Justin Duggar surprised the world in September 2020 when he announced his courtship to Claire Spivey. Since then, Justin appeared to be hanging out in Texas more than in his home state of Arkansas. While some family critics thought Justin might be getting ready to break free of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggars control, that doesnt seem to be the case. It looks like Justin may have just purchased a home, and it isnt far from his parents Arkansas compound. Justin Duggar just bought a house from his father, Jim Bob, for a steal If Justin was planning to make a break for it, the allure of a cheap house is pulling him right back to Springdale, Arkansas. According to In Touch Weekly, Justin just signed a real estate deal with his father. He has purchased a home for only $1, reportedly to help Justin get a head start in life. A source allegedly told the publication that Justin purchased a mobile home from his father ahead of his wedding. The Duggar family | D Dipasupil/Getty Images for Extra RELATED: Counting On: Are Jessa Duggar and Ben Seewald Planning a Move? Justin isnt the first Duggar to be gifted a home for less than the price of a McDonalds order. Joy-Anna Forsyth, and her husband, Austin Forsyth, reportedly purchased a home from Jim Bob for just $10 after spending the first two years of their marriage living in a trailer. Jessa Seewald and her husband, Ben Seewald, also purchased a house that had been previously owned by the Duggar family. Justin and Claire wont be moving in until after their wedding Justin might officially be a homeowner, but he and his betrothed wont be moving into the house before their wedding day. Just like his siblings, Justin has opted to pursue a courtship instead of traditional dating. A courtship is considered dating with a purpose in the Duggars ultra-conservative Christian social circle. In short, Justin and Claire wont kiss until their wedding, so cohabitating before the big day is certainly off the table. All of the Duggars have opted for courtship rather than dating. Jill Dillard and her husband, Derick Dillard, have recently said they didnt consider their relationship a courtship. In a YouTube video, they said they opted to use the term to avoid fan confusion. Derick and Jill have famously broken away from the Duggars belief system and spoken out publicly about issues within the supersized family. When will Justin and Claire tie the knot? Justin is set to be the youngest Duggar to walk down the aisle at just 18-years-old. The teenaged groom announced his engagement just days after turning 18, and fans have spent the last two months speculating about the pairs wedding date. The Duggar dont seem particularly concerned with the Coronavirus, so it has long been assumed that the wedding will go off in the early part of 2021. If a wedding registry on Registryfinder.com is to be believed, family critics were right. 'Counting On' Star Justin Duggar and Claire Spivey Engaged After 2 Months of Courtinghttps://t.co/OAYjHOsh4N pic.twitter.com/msj1zEiBTL PopCulture.com (@PopCulture) November 16, 2020 RELATED: Counting On: Justin Duggars Future Mother-in-Law Might Be Jim Bob Duggars Next PR Nightmare A wedding registry for Justin and Claire lists their wedding date as February 26, 2021. If the date is correct, the couple is just six weeks away from becoming husband and wife. The date listed might not be the actual wedding date, though. The Duggars have created registries with decoy wedding dates to keep fans away in the past. The registry, however, is password-protected, and a venue is not listed. Pune (Maharashtra) [India], January 15 (ANI/NewsVoir): With very few restrictions on end-use and easy repayment options to choose from, a personal loan is a handy solution that can help one meet their planned and unplanned expenses. And while availing financing was traditionally a tedious process that required a lot of time and hassle, there is a faster option available today. Bajaj Finance Limited, the lending and investment arm of Bajaj Finserv, offers collateral-free instant personal loans that one can get with immediate approval and disbursal within 24 hours. 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Quick disbursal: Time is a crucial factor especially when one needs finance for their urgent expenses such as a medical emergency or urgent home repairs. With a Bajaj Finserv Personal Loan, one can expect an instant approval within 5 minutes and receive funds within 24 hours. 4. Pre-approved loan offer: Pre-approved customers can get personalised offers from Bajaj Finserv in just a few clicks. To get this offer, one needs to visit Bajaj Finserv's website, enter their name and phone number, and check their pre-approved loan offer. 5. Online application: The application process for existing customers is completely digital as one can easily get a loan without visiting any branch or meeting any representative. The entire process at Bajaj Finserv is online and quick. 6. No lengthy paperwork: Bajaj Finserv offers hassle-free personal loan against minimal paperwork. To get a personal loan, one needs to submit a few documents such as KYC, salary slips, bank account statement etc. However, an existing customer can enjoy an instant personal loan with no paperwork. Meet the eligibility criteria to get a personal loan Bajaj Finserv offers personal loans to individuals who are: * Residing citizens of India * Aged between 23 and 55 years * Having a stable source of monthly income * Having a CIBIL score of 750 or higher Upon deciding to avail an instant personal loan from Bajaj Finserv, one needs to fulfil the eligibility parameter and fill an online application form to avail the funds. With these exciting features and simple eligibility parameters of an instant personal loan, Bajaj Finserv provides urgent funds to customers to finance their needs. Bajaj Finance Limited, the lending company of Bajaj Finserv group, is one of the most diversified NBFCs in the Indian market catering to more than 40 million customers across the country. Headquartered in Pune, the company's product offering includes Consumer Durable Loans, Lifestyle Finance, Lifecare Finance, Digital Product Finance, Personal Loans, Loan against Property, Small Business Loans, Home loans, Credit Cards, Two-wheeler and Three-wheeler Loans, Commercial lending/SME Loans, Loan against Securities and Rural Finance which includes Gold Loans and Vehicle Refinancing Loans along with Fixed Deposits. Bajaj Finance Limited prides itself on holding the highest credit rating of FAAA/Stable for any NBFC in the country today. To know more, please visit: https://www.bajajfinserv.in/ This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 20:01:43|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HONG KONG, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Asia-Pacific countries reported more COVID-19 cases on Friday as Indonesia announced the highest daily spike of 12,818 infections, bringing the national total to 882,418. The health ministry also reported 238 more fatalities, bringing the country's coronavirus death toll to 25,484. Meanwhile, 7,491 more patients were discharged from hospitals, taking the total number of recoveries to 718,696. India's total tally rose to 10,527,683 as 15,590 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours, said the latest data from the federal health ministry. Nearly 58 percent of the new COVID-19 cases were reported from the southern state of Kerala and the south-western state of Maharashtra. While Kerala recorded nearly 5,500 cases on Thursday, Maharashtra registered over 3,500 cases. According to the official data, the death toll mounted to 151,918 as 191 patients died since Thursday morning. Malaysia reported 3,211 new infections, the health ministry said, bringing the national total to 151,066. Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that five of the new cases are imported and 3,206 are local transmissions. Eight more deaths have been reported, pushing the death toll to 586. The Department of Health (DOH) of the Philippines reported 2,048 new confirmed cases, bringing the total number in the country to 496,646. The death toll climbed to 9,876 after 137 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said. It added 551 more patients recovered, raising the total number of recoveries to 459,737. South Korea reported 513 more cases, raising the total number of infections to 71,241. Of the new cases, 122 were Seoul residents and 180 were people residing in Gyeonggi province. Twenty-nine were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 5,869. Twenty-two more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 1,217. The total fatality rate stood at 1.71 percent. A total of 764 more patients were discharged from quarantine after making full recovery, pulling up the combined number to 56,536. Thailand reported 188 new infections, bringing the total caseload during the past month to 7,213, according to the Center for the COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA). Of the new cases, 154 were domestic infections while 34 others referred to those from abroad, CCSA spokesman Taweesin Visanuyothin told a press conference. Thailand has so far confirmed 11,450 infections, 9,204 of which were domestic cases while 2,246 others had returned from abroad, Taweesin said. Enditem 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. This week, as the headlines of major media outlets fixated on the threat to American democracy, the coronavirus pandemic continued to rage. Every day, the United States reported more than two-hundred-thousand confirmed new cases of COVID-19; according to data from Johns Hopkins University, Tuesday set a new daily record for COVID deaths, with more than four-thousand reported. Public health experts have criticized the slow pace of the vaccine rollout; on Tuesday, the Trump administration told states to loosen their vaccine eligibility criteria and pledged to release all its available doses immediately, rather than hold back second doses for people who already had their first. The economic toll is intensifying, too: yesterday, the Labor Department reported the biggest weekly rise in filings for unemployment benefits since the early days of the pandemic. These dire data points are a reminder: the urgency of pandemic coverage does not rise and fall to reflect the gravity of the situation. As Politicos Renuka Rayasam put it this week, You cant impeach the virus. It wasnt just the pandemicthere was other major news this week, too: We learned that 2020 effectively tied (with 2016) as the hottest year the planet has ever recorded. The Supreme Court ruled that women seeking to use mifepristone, a pregnancy-termination drug, must collect it in person, and not by mailthe courts first abortion decision since adding Amy Coney Barrett, who has a history of anti-abortion views. Prosecutors in Michigan charged Rick Snyder, the states former governor, with willful neglect of duty in relation to the contamination of drinking water in Flint. (He has pleaded not guilty; eight other defendants, including other ex-officials, have also been charged.) The case, Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor, said, is aimed at finally holding people accountable for their alleged unspeakable atrocities that occurred in Flint all these years ago. New from CJR: Our year of pandemic words Much of the weeks non-insurrection news involved Trump administration policies, including some that officials are trying to ram through before leaving office next week. Whistleblowers alleged that Trump appointees overseeing the Census Bureau were pressuring staff to hurriedly count undocumented immigrants in order to exclude them from Congressional apportionment (though on Wednesday, the bureau seemed to abandon the effort). The State Department designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, reversing an Obama-era decision, then moved to designate Houthi rebels, an Iran-backed faction in Yemens war, as a terrorist group. The Environmental Protection Agency banned the regulation of emissions from stationary infrastructure including oil wells and gas refineriesa move that was variously interpreted as a preemptive brake on Bidens climate agenda and as a parting gift to pollutersand diluted safety advice around PFBS, a toxic chemical that is widely present in drinking water. On Wednesday, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomerythe first female prisoner to meet that fate since 1953, and the eleventh prisoner of any gender to be executed since Trump re-authorized federal capital punishment. The twelfth, Corey Johnson, was executed last night; the thirteenth, Dustin Higgs, will be executed today. And yesterday, the Justice Departments inspector general published a report on the Trump administrations policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border. Afterward, Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general who oversaw the policy, said that it should have never been proposed or implemented. None of this is to say that the intense focus on the insurrection, Trumps impeachment, and the ongoing threats of fascism and white supremacy isnt justified; nor is it to say that the stories listed above havent been coveredthey were, and diligently so, by reporters at a range of outlets. CNN, to pick one example, made an effort to spotlight the pandemic on air: Sara Sidner, a correspondent, reported from an overwhelmed hospital in California, the tenth shed visited recently to speak with doctors and relatives of COVID patients. A woman described holding her mothers funeral in a parking lot. Sidner broke down in tears. To see the way that these families have to live after this, and the heartache that goes so far and so wide, she said. Its really hard to take. Still, the coup attempt by Trump supporters has undeniably swallowed reporters time and news consumers attention. Trump has not had favorable coverage this weekand its tone will, in all likelihood, remain in historical tellings of the Trump presidency, with the infamy of the Capitol siege and two impeachments at the fore. In a way, though, he still won: by creating a horrific display of his disgrace, hes avoided adequate, focused scrutiny on past offensesfrom his climate denialism to child separationsthat deserve prominent placement in news reports and assessments of his legacy as he prepares to leave office. Media critics often lament that election campaign coverage relegates substantive talk about policy. It turns out that election overthrow coverage does, too. Sign up for CJR 's daily email The turbulence of the White House transition could serve as an opportunity for the news media, if only we choose to seize it. Experiencing the shock of how fragile American democracy is should jolt journalists out of our past, often complacent way of doing things; political reporters ought to recenter civic conversation around the long-term wellbeing of the republic and its citizens. Last night, Biden gave a detailed speech outlining his vaccine strategy and stimulus plans; networks carried it in full and, this morning, Bidens pledges top many major homepages. It was a hopeful foreshadowing of a news cycle less drenched in the shallow daily outrages of the Trump era. Cutting away from the speech, CNNs Erin Burnett seemed almost dumbfounded by its normality: it was the kind of speech that we have, you knowwe canits a presidential speech, she said. Of course, Trumps impeachment trial is yet to come, and it will coincide with Bidens first days in office. Our balancing act isnt done yet. Below, more from a news-filled week: Other notable stories: ICYMI: Platform ban of Trump and Parler raises questions about speech and power Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop. Moshi, Tanzania, Dec. 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TANZANIA, AFRICA Flights are coming in and out of Tanzania on a regular basis and many of them are nearly empty, making the flight experience safe and more comfortable for travelers. While some tourists are choosing to play it safe and stay home, others are reaping the benefits of smaller crowds and more personalized attention due to lower occupancy. For some, the pull to travel again has them out and about and they are finding COVID-19 operating guidelines in place and enforced for health and safety. Locally, we know both Qatar and KLM are both very safe options for travel. While information about the cases of COVID in Tanzania has been unclear, what is known is the survival rate remains high. Guests to the area are not required to quarantine on arrival due to our very low rates. However, temperature checks, as well as other health and safety protocols, are being strictly followed allowing us to safely welcome guests to Tanzania and all the beauty it offers. The wilderness is more inviting than ever, and all of our accommodations have been modified to meet government standards for social distancing, sanitation and cleaning, facial coverings and more. While planes are mostly empty, so too are the plains of the Serengeti, with less crowds than usual. Limited tour sizes are giving travelers a more intimate experience, which makes for ideal conditions for travelers looking to explore Tanzania. For those willing and able to travel, we invite you to do so and look forward to showing you the hospitality and splendor of Tanzania. About ZARA TOURS Our full-service East African travel company owns and operates local hotels, lodges, and wild camps to create a truly amazing adventure-of-a-lifetime. Tanzania offers a landscape for every traveler: white beaches on the coast, the Serengeti plains full of wildlife, tropical rain forests full of monkeys and brightly colored birds, and one of the worlds largest mountains, Mt. Kilimanjaro. With over 30 years of experience, award-winning Zara Tours offer the best in trained climbing guides, accommodations, and safari operators to give a once-in-a-lifetime experience you will want to relive time and again. Find us online at zaratours.com. Press Contact Godwin zara@zaratours.com 1-866-550-4447 Publicity and Marketing Department Read ##KISS PR NEWS DISCLAIMER## Brand Story powered by KISS PR Story PressWire https://story.kisspr.com This news has been published for the above source. ZARA TOURS [ID=15688] Disclaimer: The pr is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied: The content publisher provides the information without warranty of any kind. We also do not accept any responsibility or liability for the legal facts, content accuracy, photos, videos. if you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above. Attachment Over a nearly 50-year career as a cardiothoracic surgeon, J. Marvin Smith III earned a reputation as the go-to guy for complex heart surgeries in San Antonio. Smith would take on difficult cases, such as ruptured aortic aneurysms, where the risk of death is high, according to fellow physician John Holcomb, a pulmonary and critical care specialist. Smith also has held various prestigious posts, including chief of staff at Methodist Texsan Hospital, chairman and president of the Bexar County Medical Society, and on the Society of Thoracic Surgeons committee for standards and ethics. Yet Smith now alleges vindictive leaders at Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio are ruining his career by waging a smear campaign against him first by saying his patients had excessive, or unacceptable, mortality rates for certain surgeries, and then by asserting he has a medical condition that prevents him from safely practicing medicine. Methodist has totally blocked Smiths ability to practice cardiothoracic surgery despite no evidence or findings that he poses any danger to patients whatsoever, he has said in litigation unfolding in state District Court in San Antonio. Smith said Methodist took action against him because of his refusal to practice corporate medicine. It wants to force him out of his practice in favor of surgeons who happily comport with (its) plans to increase profits by acquiescing to mandatory (but medically unnecessary) secondary consults for every patient, the lawsuit added. The malicious actions of Methodist Hospital tarnished and destroyed my medical career because I refused to place the hospitals interests ahead of the interests of my patients, Smith said in a statement provided by his attorney, Eric Pullen, who declined to make the doctor available for an interview. Smith seeks at least $5 million in damages from Methodist for what he said was false and disparaging information about him and for interfering with his business relationships. A Methodist spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit. In a brief answer to Smiths lawsuit, Methodist provided a general denial to the allegations. It said Smith failed to exhaust his remedies through the hospital systems administrative process before filing the lawsuit. It wants the lawsuit stayed until those proceedings are resolved. Methodist is jointly owned by HCA Healthcare Inc., a publicly traded company based in Nashville, Tenn., and nonprofit Methodist Healthcare Ministries. Methodist Healthcare paid about $76 million to acquire TexSan Heart Hospital at 6700 Interstate 10 W. from MedCath Corp. and a group of San Antonio physicians in early 2011. Smith said he helped design and staff the cardiothoracic facilities at the hospital. Hundreds of surgeries Smith has performed hundreds of surgeries at Methodist Texsan, maintaining a high degree of competence and care with a correspondingly low (patient) mortality rate throughout his career, according to his lawsuit. Out of the blue, in November 2018, the lawsuit added, Methodist provided Dr. Smith with statistical information indicating his (patients) mortality rate with coronary artery surgery was excessive. The rate for aortic surgery he performed was deemed unacceptable. Smith later turned to Holcomb to review Methodists findings. Holcomb recalled Smith was presented with only a handful of cases, which he considered a small sample size. Two of those cases resulted in patient deaths, Holcomb said, but those patients had an aortic root replacement. You have to risk-adjust those patients because theres probably a 50 percent mortality rate as they come through the door, said Holcomb, who was previously employed by Methodist but is not involved in the litigation. My sense is, in the general environment today, that a lot of doctors are afraid to do high-risk cases, but Marvin is not, Pullen said. A lot of the cases he did were high-risk. He was the guy people sent cases to when they were tough. Kerrville cardiologist J. Nat Sanderson said hes referred cases to Smith and never found him to have an issue with high mortality rates. I think hes proven that, Sanderson said. Ive had good results over the years with Marvin. Sandersons practice is owned by HCA. Before it began a peer review process of Smith, Pullen said, Methodist already had shared the mortality rate with members of its medical staff. That marked the start of the Methodists misinformation campaign, he added. Methodist asked Smith to consult with physicians who treat patients in intensive care known as intensivists on his postoperative patients. He also was asked to consult with the hospitals Heart Team on all preoperative, valve and aortic cases pending Methodists review of the surgical cases it identified as concerning, the complaint stated. Smith has maintained that such consults provided no meaningful benefit, but he agreed with Methodists demands rather than face discipline or revocation of his hospital privileges. In March 2019, Smith received a report from Methodist regarding his practice performance from January to August 2018. The report stated all of the data are within expected parameters of performance, according to the lawsuit. Pullen called the conflicting evaluations unexplainable. Methodist wants to have it both ways, he said. Medical condition After the mortality data was shown to be incorrect, Methodist requested that Smith submit to third-party evaluations of his medical condition and his surgical competency, according to the lawsuit. Methodist has alleged that Smith suffers from a cognitive impairment that affects his ability to practice and perform surgery, Pullen said, though the attorney didnt know the precise medical diagnosis. Smith has disputed the allegation. IF Dr. Smith actually had the medical condition alleged, it could impact his ability to practice if it was not properly treated, Pullen said in an email. However, Dr. Smith does not have it. Methodist presented Smith with options to undergo competency evaluations through two programs. One of the programs provides assessments and education for doctors who have perceived needs or want to return to practice. The lawsuit said, however, that the evaluation process was replete with errors and the findings were inconsistent and contradictory. The findings that Smith has so much cognitive decline that he cant be trusted to operate is absolute bullshit, Holcomb said. I dont know where they got that, added Sanderson, the Kerrville cardiologist. Ive had no question about his cognitive abilities. Smith hired two well-qualified and well-known physicians who diagnose and treat the condition, Pullen said. Both confirmed Smith does not have cognitive impairment, Pullen said, declining to name the doctors. Smith continued to participate in Methodists peer review process, but he said its actions prove it already has decided the outcome that he be ousted, the complaint said. No income In 2019, Smith voluntarily agreed to give up his privileges to practice at Methodist pending the outcome of the peer review. Hes not able to renew his privileges at other hospitals either, including Baptist Health System, so his once high-six-figure annual salary is effectively $0, the suit said. Meanwhile, Smith also is defending a Texas Medical Board complaint made against him. The nature of the allegations couldnt immediately be determined. Pullen isnt representing Smith in the matter. The identity of anyone who files a complaint is kept confidential by law. Holcomb said Smiths case reminds him of similar litigation in Houston, where a well-regarded heart surgeon sued a hospital for launching a whisper campaign to smear his reputation to keep patients from following him to a competing hospital. In 2017, a Harris County jury awarded $6.4 million in damages to Dr. Miguel Gomez III in his dispute with Memorial Hermann Health System. Gomezs case turned on peer review, a confidential process conducted by committees of physicians to weed out bad doctors, the Houston Chronicle reported. Gomez, however, alleged Memorial Hermann misused the process by manipulating data on the outcome of his surgeries to suggest his patients were more likely to die. The hospital system said its decision to review data on quality was not to hurt Gomez but to improve patient safety. A state appeals court upheld the verdict in 2019. The hospital has asked the Texas Supreme Court to review the case and issue a judgment awarding Gomez nothing. The request is pending. In his lawsuit, Smith alleged Methodist has delayed a Fair Hearing, a procedure it has established to allow Smith to submit evidence and present expert witnesses before a panel of three physicians. That hearing has now been set for next month, Pullen said, so Smiths lawsuit likely will be put on hold pending the outcome. pdanner@express-news.net TKC isn't a cheerleader for the creative-class but it's a fact that Kansas City has a reputation as a cultural hub of the American Midwest. Yes, we're only competing with dump truck burgs and vapid suburbs but, nevertheless, this cowtown is an artsy mecca. Now, in a MUST READ COLUMN, Kansas City arts scene expert and veteran journalist Robert Trussell explains the local crisis. Check-it . . . Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has offered to administer Covid-19 vaccines to people if help is needed when a greater supply is delivered to the country. He said right now lack of administrators is not an issue but that when the country receives more vaccines he is available and certainly happy to help with the vaccine clinics. Speaking on Newstalks The Hard Shoulder, the former GP said: I am available, the medical council extended my registration and that of other non-practicing doctors so I said to the HSE that I am availbale certainly to help with the vaccine clinics if they need me. "Id be more than willing to do it and Ive a group of 150 or so non-practicing or retired GPs who are willing to do it. Read More They dont need us yet because there arent enough vaccines in the country yet but we might get to that point in the next couple of weeks and Im certainly available." The Tanaiste added he would prefer to be working in ICU but that hes not qualified. "Its not the kind of frontline work in ICU that Id like to be doing but to be honest Im out of date and not qualified but I am in certain areas and happy to help out, he said. According to Mr Varadkar and HSE CEO Paul Reid 77,000 people have been vaccinated in Ireland so far. The Tanaiste said these figures will be shortly up online on the Covid hub, however, for the moment they will not be updated daily and he said he could not give a date on when they will be. He added that from next week between 40,000 and 50,000 people will be vaccinated and that this weekly figure isnt likely to change until the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved and delivered to the country. However, Mr Varadkar said when the AstraZeneca vaccine does arrive between 100,000-150,000 vaccines should be administered weekly. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. MONTPELIER, Vt., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Vermont families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Vermont community members are hosting 69 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. Governor Phil Scott has issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Vermont School Choice Week. In addition, the city of Canaan has recognized the Week with its own proclamation. "School choice doesn't just mean building new schools," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "In rural states like Vermont, choice means enriching existing schools giving families increased access to a flexible, customized education. During a challenging school year, National School Choice Week provides an upbeat, hopeful time to school-search and share ideas for better serving Vermont's kids." In Vermont, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Students in specific Vermont towns are eligible for a tuitioning program, which funds their attendance at nonreligious public or private schools outside their communities. Vermont families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Vermont school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/vermont. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com At one point, it was hard for Fox viewers to avoid Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. For several weeks starting in November, the Trump-associated lawyers were an almost-daily presence on Fox shows arguing that the president had been robbed of a second term by a fraudulent process that they claimed they would soon have the evidence to reveal. But Giuliani and Powell have not appeared on any Fox cable news show in more than a month, according to a review by The Washington Post. Giuliani's last appearance was Dec. 12 and Powell's last was Dec. 10, on "Lou Dobbs Tonight," a show that was once a regular vehicle for both her and Giuliani. Ellis has only appeared once on the networks since early December. In November and December, all three were very frequent guests on Fox News and Fox Business Network shows, sometimes doing double-duty, as Powell did in appearing on shows hosted by Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity on the same night - even though she had already been booted from the Trump campaign's efforts. Ellis appeared on three Fox News Media shows on Nov. 20. The network would not comment on the trio's absence. But the timing of their disappearance aligns with the first legal pushback from a pair of voting-technology companies that say they've been falsely smeared by baseless conspiratorial claims of election fraud by President Donald Trump's allies. On Dec. 10, the day of Powell's last "Lou Dobbs" appearance, an attorney for Smartmatic sent a letter to the general counsel for Fox News Media demanding that Fox retract and apologize for "[publishing] and [republishing] dozens of false and misleading statements regarding Smartmatic" in the weeks following the Nov. 3 presidential election. The legal demand letter prominently cited "demonstrably false information and defamatory statements about Smartmatic" that were made by guests Giuliani and Powell on shows hosted by Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo. Ellis was not mentioned by name in the letter. The three lawyers had all appeared regularly on shows hosted by Bartiromo, the longtime financial journalist who has become a reliable supporter of the president and has suggested to viewers in post-election shows that Trump could still manage to claim a second term. Dobbs, meanwhile, had promoted Powell's last appearance by calling her florid claims of a global conspiracy involving the election-technology companies a "cyber Pearl Harbor," writing that she "reveals groundbreaking new evidence indicating our Presidential election came under massive cyber-attack orchestrated with the help of Dominion, Smartmatic, and foreign adversaries." In response, Fox aired a segment attempting to correct misinformation about Smartmatic on the shows that were mentioned in the letter. On Dec. 20, a law firm representing Dominion Voting System, another voting technology company that had been criticized on Fox, sent legal preservation letters to Bartiromo, Dobbs and host Sean Hannity. The network has not aired any segment responding to the legal threat from Dominion. While Giuliani remains a member of the president's legal team, his name has almost disappeared from Fox's airwaves. At the peak of his influence, as a key member of the Trump 2020 efforts to overturn the election, Giuliani was mentioned 324 times on Fox News or Fox Business Network during the week of Nov. 17. Approximately a month later, during the week of Dec. 15, Giuliani's name was mentioned only 13 times. On the morning of Jan. 6, when the pro-Trump audience was still listening to speeches discounting the veracity of the election, Fox News chief White House correspondent John Roberts informed viewers that he had spoken to Giuliani about 45 minutes earlier, relaying that Giuliani was confident that vice president Mike Pence could decline to certify the election. But, the network did not air Giuliani's comments to Roberts. Smartmatic and Dominion also demanded retractions from Fox's lesser-known competitors in conservative media, including Newsmax, One America News and the Epoch Times. In response to Smartmatic's demands, Newsmax issued a sweeping clarification on the air on Dec. 21. "No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election," a Newsmax host said. In contrast, One America has issued no such retraction or clarification. Powell has also been absent from Newsmax's programming, and does not appear to be slated for future appearances on the network. Giuliani appeared on One America last week to talk about his participation in the pro-Trump rally that turned into a mob. "They seemed pretty orderly and pretty quiet," Giuliani said of the Trump supporters. "You're going to see that 99 percent of this was all peaceful," One America host John Ball replied. He also spoke earlier with One America chief White House correspondent Chanel Rion about election issues and about legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Michigan. "They stole an election from us," he said. One America president Charles Herring told The Post in an email this week: "If there is something newsworthy to discuss, we are pleased to have Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on OAN." After last week's riot at the U.S. Capitol, Cumulus Media Group, one of the biggest players on conservative talk radio, issued a memorandum ordering programmers to put an end to on-air rhetoric casting the election results in doubt. It's unknown whether legal liability concerns were a factor in the decision. Two of their most prominent and outspoken hosts, Mark Levin and Dan Bongino, both said this week that they did not receive the memo. There is a general agreement that MBA structure and curriculum has to reflect the changing work place. Rajul Jain is 25 and has her heart set on being a partner in a venture capital firm. Jain who has done her BCom and CMA (US) always wanted to pursue an MBA from a premiere institute to bolster her career. An MBA would give me a two or three notch upgrade. I want to work for a fair number of years before starting up. MBA seems like a fast way to build a network, says Jain. She is pursuing her CFA and is on a sabbatical. It was during this period that she joined Twitter and stumbled upon the Founders of Stoa School, who were tweeting about the new-age MBA. She had multiple conversations with them and ended up pursuing an MBA with Stoa School, where she also helped design a few modules. Stoa School offers a 12-week MBA bootcamp in a community-based learning format. About her decision to join Stoa, she says, During my sabbatical, I often used to think of the cost and time implications of an MBA and Stoa seemed like an elegant solution to both (an MBA with Stoa costs Rs 1,00,000), with the added benefit of peer-to-peer learning and great chances of finding a co-founder. Also read: MBA or hands-on experiencewhat works better in a startup? Jain is not alone. Many students are now pursuing alternative MBA formats. B-schools in India offer roughly 3,200 seats but the number of MBA aspirants is 2,14,000 students (approximate number of students appearing for CAT). The most common reasons to pursue new MBA formats include: 1) Cost and time efficiencies 2) Updated curricula 3) New learning approaches and experiences According to Ronnie Screwvala, Co-founder and Chairman, UpGrad.com, The MBA is still relevant in today's day and age but it needs a full revamp. With data and digital disruption happening, MBAs need to evolve. For example, the way marketing was done is different today. The way sales were closed is different today. The way finance was done is different today. Thus, the generic MBA is irrelevant today, and there is a strong need for a new-age MBA. New-age MBA requires a holistic output that cover the foundation of management programmes, knowledge of data and technology, a different breed of leadership and people management skills. Heres a look at new MBA formats and what they aim to achieve solving: 1) Pay after placement/ income-sharing agreement: Pay after placement (PAP) is a course where the student pays a nominal fee at the onset and a set fee after placement. This fee is determined by the salary the student lands during placement. This model solves for cost inefficiencies. In India, it is being offered by Sunstone Eduversity and IBMR Business School. 2) Intensive workshop, boot camps, community-learning models Intensive models that are developed for higher learning have contemporary programmes taught by industry professionals and not academics. They solve for cost and time inefficiencies as they generally last four-12 weeks. altMBA by Seth Godin and Stoa School in India are leading the way in India. 3) Hybrid MBAs Business schools are evolving new models and IIM- Udaipur has launched a programme where it invites industry leaders and experts for 15-minute online sessions. Similarly, UpGrad.com has tie-ups with global B-Schools like Deakin Business School, University of Essex (Online) and Liverpool Business School to deliver online MBAs. This model works as asynchronous education is here to stay. According to Meeta Sengupta, Founder, Centre for Education Strategy, The MBA provides a certain set of toolkits and these toolkits currently do not include greater impact and business schools are now realising this. For example, the MBA has to reflect the wider impact in the world and measure things that matter in the new work arena. These aspects include mental wellness at the workplace, care and empathy, effects of climate change, etc. The current MBA is extremely mechanistic (in India) and its design has to change. Several founders and Academicians echoed Senguptas perspective and said the following aspects have to be considered to create the new-age MBA: 1) Lifelong learning: An MBA cannot be restricted to one or two years only. With the world evolving at a breakneck speed, an MBA has to be easily available and possibly grant students lifelong access. 2) More focus on purpose than profit: As Sengupta says, MBA is about service to the society and profit is only a byproduct. For example, we no longer only measure employee productivity at the workplace but treat the employees as a customer too. That changes the dynamics of how we treat them and what we measure. 3) Modular or mini-MBAs: MBA is designed to teach leadership, problem-solving and critical thinking and all aspects of a corporate business (done through case studies). Most MBAs can only impart toolkits and not so much real-world experience. Modular or mini-MBAs can solve for that and deep dive into each area through intensive boot camps. Students can take up multiple mini-MBAs whenever they feel the need for any particular type of training. 4) Access to global MBA faculty: Sengupta mentions that when her IIM-Ahmedabad batch meets for a reunion, they yearn for refreshers. How about a model where professors from across the globe open up their calendars (for limited hours) to discuss new and evolving MBA concepts? 5) Teaching more skills than concepts: While most MBAs provide strategic toolkits, what is missing is real-life skills. MBAs have to include an option of life skills that students can choose from and master in. Digital marketing and product thinking or management, to name a few. 6) Support for early-stage founders: MBAs mostly produce great middle managers and hence the degree too is called a Master of Business Administration. The MBA is not designed for an entrepreneur and here lies an opportunity. Founders in the early stages could do with structured mentorship and support and MBA schools can definitely co-create a new curriculum for founders. With cost structures and primitive learning models, many aspirants, including Abhay Jani, the co-author of this piece who hails from a humble background, prefer to work at startups to optimise for skills rather than focus on a degree. Many students today prefer to pursue the hard path and experience first-hand the journey of zero-to-one. This loss of talent (for a B-School) is definitely the gain of early-stage start-ups where there is burning ambition and passion to make it against all odds. (Nisha Ramchandani is Manager-Outreach at Axilor Ventures & Writer, Future of Work and Abhay Jani is growth manager at Frontrow.) Access the Experts: Brian C. Payne In this installment, Payne answers: "How does one plan financially for the future in the midst of a pandemic or other major global catastrophe?" In This Installment of Access the Experts Brian C. Payne, Ph.D., assistant professor of finance, banking and real estate in UNO's College of Business Administration, answers the question: "How does one plan financially for the future in the midst of a pandemic or other major global catastrophe?" About Payne Payne, an expert in finance, can provide valuable insights into the ebbs and flows in the economy, how to be prepared for financial shocks, and why it is important to establish an emergency fund. Access the Experts Access the Experts is an innovative partnership between the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and News Channel Nebraska (NCN), where viewers submit their questions to be answered by UNO faculty members. New segments of Access the Experts air every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:46 A.M. and 6:46 P.M. If youre not sure how to tune in, visit News Channel Nebraskas website to view their coverage areas. View all segments on our Access the Experts page. About the University of Nebraska at Omaha Located in one of Americas best cities to live, work and learn, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) is Nebraskas premier metropolitan university. With more than 15,000 students enrolled in 200-plus programs of study, UNO is recognized nationally for its online education, graduate education, military friendliness and community engagement efforts. Founded in 1908, UNO has served learners of all backgrounds for more than 100 years and is dedicated to another century of excellence both in the classroom and in the community. Become a fan of UNO on Facebook and follow UNO's Twitter updates. The U.S. Department of Justice building is seen in Washington on July 22, 2019. (Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images) Ex-Firefighter Accused of Throwing Fire Extinguisher Charged in US Capitol Breach A retired Pennsylvania firefighter has been arrested and charged for allegedly striking police officers with a fire extinguisher during the U.S. Capitol riots, the Justice Department announced. A criminal complaint identified the man as 55-year-old Robert Sanford, who has been charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, disorderly or disruptive conduct on capitol grounds, civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers while engaged in the performance of official duties. Prosecutors are alleging that Sanford is the man in a video who threw what appears to be a fire extinguisher at three U.S. Capitol Police officers at the lower west terrace of the Capitol. After the fire extinguisher was thrown, it hit one officer in the head, according to a video (pdf) reviewed by federal authorities. That officer was wearing a helmet. The fire extinguisher ricochets and hits two other officers in the head. One of those officers was not wearing a helmet at the time. The man, identified as Sanford, allegedly turned and moved in an opposite direction after throwing the object. Authorities were able to identify Sanford after a tipster told the FBI that Sanford had confessed to them that he was the person the bureau was looking for. The tipster told agents that Sanford had traveled to Washington on a bus with a group of people and had gone to the U.S. Capitol. Earlier in the day, the department said they had arrested a Black Lives Matter activist who was seen storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. John Earle Sullivan in a file mugshot photograph. (Utah County Jail) John Earle Sullivan, 26, told FBI agents last week that he was at the Capitol during the breach, according to court documents. Sullivan had illegally entered a window and was shooting footage inside the building. Videos also showed Sullivan joining others in breaking the barricade and encouraging other protesters to enter the building, according to authorities. He was charged this week with unlawful entry, disorderly conduct, and attempted obstruction of law enforcement. Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, said in a press conference on Tuesday that the department has opened at least 170 cases linked to the Jan. 6 events and have charged over 70 individuals. Individuals are being charged with various offenses ranging from simple trespass, theft of mail, theft of digital devices, assault on local and federal officers to more serious offenses such as theft of potential national security information or national defense information and felony murder, Sherwin said. He added that some individuals who are arrested on misdemeanors may face more serious charges after their arrest. After these criminal charges are filed via criminal complaints, that allows us, that allows law enforcement across the United States to arrest people from Dallas to Arkansas, to Nashville, to Cleveland to Jacksonville. Thats whats happened over the past several days, Sherwin said. After those charges are filed, then we have the ability to then indict these individuals on more significant charges. And thats exactly what has happened. The top prosecutor for the district also said that federal prosecutors are working to build seditious and conspiracy charges against some rioters, which carry a maximum prison term of 20 years. This week, Formula 1 presented a revised calendar for the 2021 season. The Australian GP has moved to a spot in November and the Chinese Grand Prix is missing. In the absence of China and Imola to fill the gap, a "TBC" spot remains. These are the contenders for the race. In 2020 the circuit was suddenly on the calendar for the first time due to all the changes that took place on the calendar due to the coronavirus. The track is a true rollercoaster and was loved by the drivers. The race itself was spectacular due to a few drops of rain and a very strong start from the McLarens. It is a shame that the Portuguese Grand Prix is aanot yet a fixture on the Formula 1 calendar. Istanbul Park is a gem drawn by Hermann Tilke. Like Portimao and multiple circuits on this list, Istanbul Park got a chance to be on the calendar due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The weekend was exciting and an unexpected pole-sitter Lance Stroll emerged. However, this was largely due to the wet conditions combined with the new, slippery asphalt. Turkey may not traditionally be a motorsport country, but they have a great track that deserves a shot at a dry weather race after 2020 where the drivers can open the throttle. However, the chance of this happening seems small, because there is only a week between the "TBC" spot and the Spanish GP. Mugello The likelihood of Mugello returning to the calendar appears to be very slim. It was unique that one country was allowed to organise three Grands Prix in one season. Italy was only the second country ever since 1982 to host three in a year. Still, Mugello should not be missing from this list. Nestled in the Tuscan mountains is the circuit owned by Ferrari. The ties of Ferrari and Formula 1 can always play a role in this. The Eifel Grand Prix was a new name on the 2020 calendar, but the track where the race was held was by no means unknown. The Nurburgring is interested in Formula 1 and would like to bring the circus back to Germany. A free spot on the calendar is therefore always a reason for the legendary circuit to contact Formula 1. Hockenheim has organised the German Grand Prix in the last few years, but that circuit seems to have a lot less chance. Yes, the name Magny-Cours has not yet made it into the rumour circuit, but it would be a perfect stop between Italy and Spain. The circuit is up to date and has hosted several Formula 1 races in the past. The French Grand Prix was cancelled last season due to the coronavirus and this could be an ideal time to catch up with that race. Jerez already announced last season that the circuit was interested in a Formula 1 race. The race eventually went to Portugal. Two Spanish races could well be possible, especially because it is logistically easy. Although the chance seems small, because Jerez, like Magny-Cours, is not yet passing by in the rumour circuit. Second race at Imola or Catalunya In 2020 we saw twice that a race was held on the exact same circuit within a week. However, this did not make the races any less exciting. The races in Austria were quite different from each other, despite the fact that Mercedes did win both Grands Prix. The two races at Silverstone were won by different teams. And by taking different tyre compounds to the races there is some extra tension. Which circuit do you hope to see again on the free spot? Vote in the poll and let us know in the comments why you choose this circuit! This article was written and originally published by Bonne on the Dutch edition of GPblog.com. Vice President Mike Pence called Kamala Harris on Thursday, almost three months after the election was called for her and President-elect Joe Biden. He congratulated her and offered his assistance to his successor as vice president. In the closing days of the administration, Pence appears to be filling a leadership void left by President Donald Trump, who has not reached out to Biden and said he won't attend the inauguration ceremony next week. Pence will be there. Additionally, Pence and his wife Karen may have Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff to the Naval Observatory - the official residence of the vice president - before Wednesday's change in power, The New York Times reported. It was the first time Pence and Harris had spoken since they debated one another during the campaign. It's also the first known contact between the elected members of the outgoing and incoming administrations. Conversations have happened at the staff level regarding the transition of power. Pence and Harris' conversation was gracious and pleasant, officials told The Times. Vice President Mike Pence called Kamala Harris on Thursday to offer his successor his congratulations and any assistance in the transfer of power Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen may have Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff to the Naval Observatory - the official residence of the vice president - before Wednesday's change in power The call came as relations between Trump and Pence have deteriorated significantly since the Capitol riot on January 6, when pro-Trump supporters stormed the building as Pence was presiding over the formal certification of Biden's victory. Trump had called on Pence to block the certification, which Pence did not have the constitutional authority to do and said he would not carry out. Some of the mob could be heard chanting 'Hang Mike Pence.' The Washington Post reported they got within 100 feet of the vice president. As the Trump administration prepares to leave the White House Pence has taken over many duties traditionally done by an outgoing president, including receiving a briefing at FEMA Thursday on inauguration security, stopping at a federal office building to thank executive operators for their work, final photo-ops with staff and their families, handing out challenge coins, and thanking the troops for their service. Pence stopped at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday night to thank National Guardsmen ahead of Wednesday's inauguration ceremony. 'Thank you for stepping forward for your country,' the vice president told the guardsmen, who huddled up around him as the Capitol Dome stood, lit up in the background. It was Pence's first trip back to the Capitol since MAGA rioters attacked the building last week. Pence had been whisked off the Senate floor mere minutes before the insurgents stormed it. There will be 20,000 guardsmen in Washington D.C. for Biden's inauguration ceremony as FBI Director Chris Wray warned the agency is hearing more threats online about the event. Pence wished the guardsmen 'a safe inauguration.' 'God bless you. It's been my great honor to serve as your Vice President,' he told them. Pence did not go back inside the Capitol, where he oversaw the election certification process after rioters were cleared from the building. Pence is credited with helping coordinate the response to the attack, speaking with officials last Wednesday from the Capitol basement as the mob raced through the building. He chit chatted with individual guardsmen outside on the East Front of the building Thursday evening, asking them where they are from and how long they served. Pence ended with a final thanks and wishes for 'a safe inauguration and a swearing in of a new president and Vice President.' 'Hooah,' the guardsmen yelled in response. Vice President Mike Pence stopped at the U.S. Capitol to thank National Guardsmen for their service ahead of next week's inauguration ceremony Vice President Pence made his first visit back to the Capitol after MAGA rioters last week were heard searching for him when they raided the building Vice President Mike Pence attended a briefing at FEMA Thursday on inauguration security During Thursday's FEMA briefing, Pence thanked the group for their work and acknowledged the complications caused by the MAGA riot on Capitol Hill last week, when a group of pro-Trump insurgents swarmed the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Joe Biden's victory. 'We all lived through that day, January 6. As the President made clear yesterday, we are committed to an orderly transition into a safe inauguration. The American people deserve nothing less,' he said. He vowed to make sure that Biden and Harris 'are sworn in as the President and Vice President of the United States in a manner consistent with our history and traditions.' Meanwhile, Trump is planning to hold an unprecedented farewell event at Joint Base Andrews the morning of Biden's inauguration and then leave town before his successor takes the oath of office. Trump's farewell will take place at the base outside Washington where Air Force One is headquartered. No recent president has had his own sendoff ceremony at JBA. Officials are considering an elaborate event that would have the feel of a state visit, with a red carpet, color guard, military band and 21-gun salute all being discussed, the Associated Press reported. He then plans to fly to his Mar-a-Lago residence before Biden takes the oath of office at noon, which is when Biden will become the nation's 46th president. The timing makes it unlikely Trump and first lady Melania Trump will host Joe and Jill Biden for coffee - a tradition by the outgoing first couple for their replacements on the morning of the inuguration. Traditionally, an outgoing president attends his successor's swearing-in, then departs the ground of the U.S. Capitol in a military helicopter to fly to JBA where he takes a government plane to his final destination. The Bidens will be staying across the street from the White House at Blair House, the official guest residence. Some White House advisers have urged Trump to host Biden for a White House meeting ahead of Inauguration Day, but there has been no sign Trump is willing to do that, an administration official told Reuters. Bollywood star Karisma Kapoor poses before a poster of herself during the launch of her debut in a television soap opera "Karisma - The miracles of destiny", during a media gathering in Bombay August 18, 2003. REUTERS/Sherwin Crasto Actor Karisma Kapoor and mother Babita Kapoor have sold an apartment in Mumbai Rs 10.11 crore, joining the list of celebrities and industrialists who are making the most of a cut in stamp duty and the consequent real estate boom in Indias financial capital. Kapoor, who was the lead actress in movies such as Raja Hindustani and Dil To Pagal Hai, sold a 10th floor apartment in Mumbais Khar area. The sale of the 1610 sq ft apartment was registered on December 24. The Kapoors paid a stamp duty of Rs 20.22 lakh, according to the documents accessed by Zapkey.com. The apartment, located in Rose Queen, Khar West, has two car parkings and the buyer is named Abha Damani. Posh apartment in Mumbai Real estate brokers active in Mumbai area said the apartment is located in Mumbais posh Bandra area and the current rate of an apartment of this size is around Rs 55,000 per sq ft. The apartment has been sold at market rate. New buildings in the area command as much as Rs 65,000 per sq ft and sea-facing apartments can go as high as Rs 90,000 per sq ft, said Ritesh Mehta, Senior Director & Head - West India, Residential Services, JLL India. In 2018, Kapoor, who is no longer active in Bollywood, sold her 675 sq ft flat in Bandra for Rs 7 crore, 3.7 times more than the market value of Rs 1.89 crore. She transferred her rights on the flat to Silver Birch Real Estate Private Limited, a Bandra East-based firm, at Rs 1.03 lakh/sq ft. The real estate boom in Mumbai In recent months, Bollywood stars have registered new apartments taking advantage of the stamp duty cut in Maharashtra. Janhvi Kapoor bought a property worth Rs 39 crore at Juhu in Mumbai , Kapoor, 23, the daughter of the late actor Sridevi and film producer Boney Kapoor, took a home loan of Rs 23 crore from a bank to buy the property, showed the registration and loan documents Moneycontrol reviewed. ALSO SEE: Heres a look at properties Bollywood celebrities bought, sold, and rented out in 2020 In October 2020, actor Hrithik Roshan bought two apartments, spread across three floors, worth Rs 100 crore in Mumbais Juhu-Versova Link Road. It had a private elevator and 10 parking slots. In November, actor Alia Bhatt bought a 2,460 sq ft apartment in Bandras Pali Hill Vastu building for Rs 32 crore. The stamp duty cut by the Maharashtra government, low interest rates, discounts offered by developers and the COVID-19 induced price correction has seen the Mumbai registrars coffers swell as homebuyers, including actors, actresses, bankers, brokers and industrialists made the most of the opportunity and came forward to buy property. Properties worth Rs 34,000 crore were sold in Mumbai alone, many of them in the luxury segment, in December 2020. Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. 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Although their potential is underutilised due to low volume of usual orders, the study evidenced that most firms have the capacity to produce personal protective equipment (PPE), which could save their companies and thousands of jobs Clothing manufacturers in Haiti have revealed they expect at least a 30% loss in revenues as a result of the Covid pandemic, but the same study shows there is significant opportunity in the production of personal protective equipment (PPE), which could attract new investment and save thousands of jobs. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has partnered with L'Association des Industries d'Haiti (ADIH) to help the apparel sector in the country navigate and recover from the adverse impacts of Covid-19 and attract investment opportunities in the country. A study conducted by the two between May and June 2020, with funding from the Korean-IFC Partnership Program (KIPP), interviewed 33 firms from the apparel sector that represent 87% of ADIH's membership and collectively employ more than 50,000 workers. The survey is said to provide key insights to help public and private decision-makers navigate the crisis and signals opportunities for the export-oriented garment sector in the country. On the supply side, it confirmed the difficulties manufacturers were facing in accessing raw materials, working capital, and the adverse impacts of restrictions on factory operations during the first months of the pandemic due to the sanitary emergency announced by the Haitian government. Companies indicated that by June, half of orders were reduced or cancelled and a third of the jobs were lost. By August, businesses were still operating at 75% of their capacity, often with reduced workdays per week. The majority of respondents expect at least a 30% loss in revenues in 2020 as a result of the crisis. At the time of the survey, only 22% of respondents were producing at least 60% of their previous capacity. All but one firm reported reductions in and cancellations of orders, and 52% of all firms saw reductions or cancellations of more than 50%. The study did, however, identify encouraging data for business opportunities in the sector. Although their potential is underutilised due to the low volume of usual orders, the study evidenced that most firms have the capacity to produce PPE, which "could save their companies and thousands of jobs and contribute to satisfying the growing global demand." "The report has been a powerful tool to facilitate the dialogue with our membership and public institutions and provides valuable insight on the opportunities for the apparel industry in Haiti to meet the growing global demand for protective equipment and attract more investments," said Wilhelm Lemke, president of ADIH. ADIH members have strived to urgently implement the health protection measures established by the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) to not only protect their human resources but also to ensure that these measures, which have been maintained to date, allow the factories to continue to produce reduced orders of garments in accordance with their buyers' requirements, thus enabling them to export the new PPE production to the foreign market. To take advantage of these opportunities and help the industry in its recovery from the pandemic, IFC will continue to work with the public and private sector to support retention of jobs and investment in the industry, and help companies shift to the production of PPE, find new apparel goods to be produced for export, and attract new investments. "IFC has supported Haiti's apparel industry for more than a decade, during both the good times and also difficult times, and with the current challenges IFC is pleased to be working with this important sector to reach its potential," said Judith Green, IFC manager for the Caribbean. "Our partnership with ADIH and the Government of Haiti is focused on helping the apparel sector navigate the impact of the pandemic and I am confident given IFC's track record in Haiti and tailored approach this project will yield the desired results." The apparel industry is Haiti's largest formal employer, providing jobs for over 55,000 Haitians, supporting more than 450,000 people. Before Covid-19, it accounted for 90% of Haiti's exports of goods. Click here for the full report. Apple releases the second betas for its iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4 to developers so that they could test it and conduct experiments. As of the moment, the latest iPhone and iPad systems are downloadable through the Apple Developer Center after the proper profile has been download on an iPad or an iPhone. One of the major changes that Apple made is in the HomePod 14.4 beta, which is currently available to a limited number of testers. iOS 14.4 adds the smart speaker's new mini functionality. iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4's major changes The new feature takes advantage of the latest mini U1 chip. The HomePod Mini now offers visual, haptic, and audio effects to the iPhone 11 and Phone 12 U1-enabled, making the smartphones take advantage of the mini's U1 chipset. The new effects allow the iPhone flagships to have a soft haptic touch rhythm that gets faster and faster when they get near the HomPod mini. Once the iPhone is complete besides the smart speaker, the interface to transfer a song between the two devices appear. Also Read: Apple Watch Features: Secondary Screen, Remote for iPhone Vlogging, Reporting, and MORE! This new feature will make handoff more reliable and quicker on an iPhone 11 and iPhone 12, as well as on a HomePod mini. However, you need to make sure that all these gadgets are equipped with U1 chips so that their systems could understand or identify where they are in relation to one another. On the other hand, Apple adds the new "Time to Walk" feature in the Workout section of your iPhone's Apple Watch app. This includes a toggle to the "Add Newest Workouts to Watch" option. According to MacRumors' latest report, this suggests that the tech giant manufacturer is planning to add guided walking workouts in the watchOS 7.3 beta. However, the new "Time to Walk Workouts" feature is not functional in the first beta of iOS 14.4 and watchOS 7.3. Although this is the case, speculations claimed that the two systems could activate it soon. New iOS 14 widgets 9To5Mac reported that the Edison Mail adds six new iOS 14 widgets. These are intended to fill the gap left by Apple Mail. One of the most favorite features of iOS 14 is its Widget. This feature will get even more exciting because of Edison Mail's innovation. Edison Mail's six new iOS 14 email widgets are a great way to be updated on your ever-growing email list. If you want to know more details, you can click here for more information. For more news updates about Apple's upcoming new iPhone systems and other new services, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes. Related Article: iPad Pro 11 Leak: Apple's Alleged CAD Images Reveal Design Changes, 12.9-Inch Version Also Revealed This article is owned by TechTimes. Written by: Giuliano de Leon. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. COLUMBUS, Miss. (WTVA) - Hundreds of people lined up inside Fairview Baptist Church's parking lot to get vaccinated Thursday. Columbus resident, Donna Lynn, was grateful to sit in the long line. Lynn said she suffers from coronary artery disease along with other underlying conditions. Lynn said since the pandemic, she hasnt left her home because the coronavirus could kill her. She finally stepped outside Thursday to get one of the last vaccines until February. According to the Mississippi State Department of Health, a recent spike in vaccination appointments claimed all of its doses. The department expects to get a large shipment of vaccines soon. Lynn said she hopes MSDH can get more doses before mid February. "What we need to do is get as many people vaccinated as quick as possible for our immunity and I pray that everybody will get the vaccine really soon," she said. As for second doses, the department of health said people who got the first vaccine will be able to sign up for the second vaccine. Crystal Quarles with the Mississippi State Department of Health said people should not worry about getting their second dose on the exact day they become eligible. Quarles said the state department of health will send a reminder when people can take their second dose. Over a nearly 50-year career as a cardiothoracic surgeon, J. Marvin Smith III earned a reputation as the go-to guy for complex heart surgeries in San Antonio. Smith would take on difficult cases, such as ruptured aortic aneurysms, where the risk of death is high, according to fellow physician John Holcomb, a pulmonary and critical care specialist. Smith also has held various prestigious posts, including chief of staff at Methodist Texsan Hospital, chairman and president of the Bexar County Medical Society, and on the Society of Thoracic Surgeons committee for standards and ethics. Yet Smith now alleges vindictive leaders at Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio are ruining his career by waging a smear campaign against him first by saying his patients had excessive, or unacceptable, mortality rates for certain surgeries, and then by asserting he has a medical condition that prevents him from safely practicing medicine. Methodist has totally blocked Smiths ability to practice cardiothoracic surgery despite no evidence or findings that he poses any danger to patients whatsoever, he has said in litigation unfolding in state District Court in San Antonio. Smith said Methodist took action against him because of his refusal to practice corporate medicine. It wants to force him out of his practice in favor of surgeons who happily comport with (its) plans to increase profits by acquiescing to mandatory (but medically unnecessary) secondary consults for every patient, the lawsuit added. The malicious actions of Methodist Hospital tarnished and destroyed my medical career because I refused to place the hospitals interests ahead of the interests of my patients, Smith said in a statement provided by his attorney, Eric Pullen, who declined to make the doctor available for an interview. Smith seeks at least $5 million in damages from Methodist for what he said was false and disparaging information about him and for interfering with his business relationships. A Methodist spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit. In a brief answer to Smiths lawsuit, Methodist provided a general denial to the allegations. It said Smith failed to exhaust his remedies through the hospital systems administrative process before filing the lawsuit. It wants the lawsuit stayed until those proceedings are resolved. Methodist is jointly owned by HCA Healthcare Inc., a publicly traded company based in Nashville, Tenn., and nonprofit Methodist Healthcare Ministries. Methodist Healthcare paid about $76 million to acquire TexSan Heart Hospital at 6700 Interstate 10 W. from MedCath Corp. and a group of San Antonio physicians in early 2011. Smith said he helped design and staff the cardiothoracic facilities at the hospital. Hundreds of surgeries Smith has performed hundreds of surgeries at Methodist Texsan, maintaining a high degree of competence and care with a correspondingly low (patient) mortality rate throughout his career, according to his lawsuit. Out of the blue, in November 2018, the lawsuit added, Methodist provided Dr. Smith with statistical information indicating his (patients) mortality rate with coronary artery surgery was excessive. The rate for aortic surgery he performed was deemed unacceptable. Smith later turned to Holcomb to review Methodists findings. Holcomb recalled Smith was presented with only a handful of cases, which he considered a small sample size. Two of those cases resulted in patient deaths, Holcomb said, but those patients had an aortic root replacement. You have to risk-adjust those patients because theres probably a 50 percent mortality rate as they come through the door, said Holcomb, who was previously employed by Methodist but is not involved in the litigation. My sense is, in the general environment today, that a lot of doctors are afraid to do high-risk cases, but Marvin is not, Pullen said. A lot of the cases he did were high-risk. He was the guy people sent cases to when they were tough. Kerrville cardiologist J. Nat Sanderson said hes referred cases to Smith and never found him to have an issue with high mortality rates. I think hes proven that, Sanderson said. Ive had good results over the years with Marvin. Sandersons practice is owned by HCA. Before it began a peer review process of Smith, Pullen said, Methodist already had shared the mortality rate with members of its medical staff. That marked the start of the Methodists misinformation campaign, he added. Methodist asked Smith to consult with physicians who treat patients in intensive care known as intensivists on his postoperative patients. He also was asked to consult with the hospitals Heart Team on all preoperative, valve and aortic cases pending Methodists review of the surgical cases it identified as concerning, the complaint stated. Smith has maintained that such consults provided no meaningful benefit, but he agreed with Methodists demands rather than face discipline or revocation of his hospital privileges. In March 2019, Smith received a report from Methodist regarding his practice performance from January to August 2018. The report stated all of the data are within expected parameters of performance, according to the lawsuit. Pullen called the conflicting evaluations unexplainable. Methodist wants to have it both ways, he said. Medical condition After the mortality data was shown to be incorrect, Methodist requested that Smith submit to third-party evaluations of his medical condition and his surgical competency, according to the lawsuit. Methodist has alleged that Smith suffers from a cognitive impairment that affects his ability to practice and perform surgery, Pullen said, though the attorney didnt know the precise medical diagnosis. Smith has disputed the allegation. IF Dr. Smith actually had the medical condition alleged, it could impact his ability to practice if it was not properly treated, Pullen said in an email. However, Dr. Smith does not have it. Methodist presented Smith with options to undergo competency evaluations through two programs. One of the programs provides assessments and education for doctors who have perceived needs or want to return to practice. The lawsuit said, however, that the evaluation process was replete with errors and the findings were inconsistent and contradictory. The findings that Smith has so much cognitive decline that he cant be trusted to operate is absolute bullshit, Holcomb said. I dont know where they got that, added Sanderson, the Kerrville cardiologist. Ive had no question about his cognitive abilities. Smith hired two well-qualified and well-known physicians who diagnose and treat the condition, Pullen said. Both confirmed Smith does not have cognitive impairment, Pullen said, declining to name the doctors. Smith continued to participate in Methodists peer review process, but he said its actions prove it already has decided the outcome that he be ousted, the complaint said. No income In 2019, Smith voluntarily agreed to give up his privileges to practice at Methodist pending the outcome of the peer review. Hes not able to renew his privileges at other hospitals either, including Baptist Health System, so his once high-six-figure annual salary is effectively $0, the suit said. Meanwhile, Smith also is defending a Texas Medical Board complaint made against him. The nature of the allegations couldnt immediately be determined. Pullen isnt representing Smith in the matter. The identity of anyone who files a complaint is kept confidential by law. Holcomb said Smiths case reminds him of similar litigation in Houston, where a well-regarded heart surgeon sued a hospital for launching a whisper campaign to smear his reputation to keep patients from following him to a competing hospital. In 2017, a Harris County jury awarded $6.4 million in damages to Dr. Miguel Gomez III in his dispute with Memorial Hermann Health System. Gomezs case turned on peer review, a confidential process conducted by committees of physicians to weed out bad doctors, the Houston Chronicle reported. Gomez, however, alleged Memorial Hermann misused the process by manipulating data on the outcome of his surgeries to suggest his patients were more likely to die. The hospital system said its decision to review data on quality was not to hurt Gomez but to improve patient safety. A state appeals court upheld the verdict in 2019. The hospital has asked the Texas Supreme Court to review the case and issue a judgment awarding Gomez nothing. The request is pending. In his lawsuit, Smith alleged Methodist has delayed a Fair Hearing, a procedure it has established to allow Smith to submit evidence and present expert witnesses before a panel of three physicians. That hearing has now been set for next month, Pullen said, so Smiths lawsuit likely will be put on hold pending the outcome. pdanner@express-news.net MEXICO CITY, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New Notes Offering The United Mexican States (" Mexico ") announced today that it priced a global offering (the " New Notes Offering ") of 1,514,779,000 aggregate principal amount of its 1.450% Global Notes due 2033 (the " 2033 New Notes ") and 1,184,165,000 aggregate principal amount of its 2.125% Global Notes due 2051 (the " 2051 New Notes ," and together with the 2033 New Notes, the " New Notes "). The aggregate principal amount of New Notes includes approximately 514,800,000 of 2033 New Notes and 384,200,000 of 2051 New Notes intended to fund the purchase of preferred tenders in the concurrent tender offer described below. The closing of the New Notes Offering is expected to occur on January 25, 2021. Banco Santander, S.A., Barclays Bank PLC, BNP Paribas and Citigroup Global Markets Limited served as Joint Lead Underwriters for the New Notes Offering. The New Notes Offering was made only by means of a preliminary prospectus supplement and an accompanying base prospectus. Copies of the preliminary prospectus supplement, the final prospectus supplement (when filed) and the related base prospectus for the Offering may be obtained by contacting: Banco Santander, S.A. collect at +44 7418 709 688 / +44 7742 403 679, Barclays Bank PLC, collect at +44 20 3134 8515/toll-free at +1-888-603-5847, BNP Paribas toll-free at +1-800-854-5674 / collect at +44 (0)20 7595 8222 and Citigroup Global Markets Limited toll-free at 1-800-831-9146. Application will be made for the New Notes to be admitted to listing on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and admitted to trading on the Euro MTF Market of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Tender Offer Mexico's previously announced tender offer (the " Tender Offer ") to purchase the notes of the series listed in the tables below (collectively, the " Old Notes ") on the terms and subject to the conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase, dated Thursday, January 14, 2021 (the " Offer to Purchase "), expired as scheduled at 2:00 p.m., London time, today. All capitalized terms used but not defined under the heading "Tender Offer" in this communication have the respective meanings specified in the Offer to Purchase. The purchase price for the 2.750% Global Notes due 2023 (the " 2023 Notes ") validly tendered and accepted pursuant to the Tender Offer was calculated in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Offer to Purchase and Mexico's press release issued today, based on (i) the Bund Rate (as defined in the Offer to Purchase), which is a yield to maturity based on the average of the bid and ask prices of the reference Bundesanleihe security of the German Government (the " Reference Bund ") identified for such series in Table 1 below and (ii) the Fixed Spread for such series set forth on the cover of the Offer to Purchase. The purchase prices to be paid for each series of the Old Notes, other than the 2023 Notes, validly tendered and accepted pursuant to the Tender Offer were calculated in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Offer to Purchase and Mexico's press release issued today, based on (i) the Interpolated Mid Swap Rate (as defined in the Offer to Purchase) identified for such series in the tables below and (ii) the Fixed Spread for such series set forth on the cover of the Offer to Purchase. Table 1: Tranche A Old Notes Old Notes Outstanding Principal Amount as of January 13, 2021 ISIN Common Code Reference Security Purchase Price(1) 2.750% Global Notes due 2023 1,600,000,000 XS0916766057 091676605 OBL 0% due 04/14/23 (DE0001141778) 1,074.28 1.625% Global Notes due 2024 1,250,000,000 XS1198102052 119810205 2024 Interpolated Mid- Swap Rate 1,052.86 1.625% Global Notes due 2026 1,500,000,000 XS1974394675 197439467 2026 Interpolated Mid- Swap Rate 1,055.20 1.750% Global Notes due 2028 1,500,000,000 XS1751001139 175100113 2028 Interpolated Mid- Swap Rate 1,064.29 (1) Per 1,000.00 principal amount of Tranche A Old Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase. Holders will also receive accrued and unpaid interest on Old Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase. Table 2: Tranche B Old Notes Old Notes Outstanding Principal Amount as of January 13, 2021 ISIN Common Code Reference Security Purchase Price(1) 2.875% Global Notes due 2039 1,500,000,000 XS1974394758 197439475 2039 Interpolated Mid- Swap Rate 1,105.88 3.000% Global Notes due 2045 1,250,000,000 XS1198103456 119810345 2045 Interpolated Mid- Swap Rate 1,129.65 (1) Per 1,000.00 principal amount of Tranche B Old Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase. Holders will also receive accrued and unpaid interest on Old Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase. Tomorrow, Friday, January 15, 2021, Mexico expects (i) to instruct Citigroup Global Markets Inc. as the Billing and Delivering Bank to accept, subject to proration and other terms and conditions as described in the Offer to Purchase, valid Preferred and Non-Preferred Tenders and (ii) to announce the Tranche A Maximum Purchase Amount, Tranche B Maximum Purchase Amount and the aggregate principal amount of Preferred Tenders and Non-Preferred Tenders of each series of Old Notes that has been accepted, and whether any proration has occurred. The Offer to Purchase may be downloaded from the Information Agent's website at www.dfking.com/ums or obtained from the Information Agent, D. F. King & Co., Inc., at [email protected] or from any of the Dealer Managers. The Dealer Managers for the Tender Offer are: Banco Santander, S.A. 2 Triton Square Regent's Place London NW1 3AN United Kingdom Collect: +44 7418 709 688 / +44 7742 403 679 Barclays Bank PLC 5 The North Colonnade Canary Wharf London E14 4BB United Kingdom Collect: +44 20 3134 8515 / Toll-Free: +1-888-603-5847 BNP Paribas 16, boulevard des Italiens 75009 Paris France + 33 1 55 77 78 94 Citigroup Global Markets Inc. 388 Greenwich Street New York, New York 10013 Collect: +1 (212) 723-0859 / Toll-Free: +1(800) 558-3745 The Billing and Delivering Bank for this Tender Offer is: Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Questions regarding the Tender Offer may be directed to the Dealer Managers at the above contact. Mexico has filed a registration statement (including the prospectus) and the preliminary prospectus supplement with the SEC for the New Notes Offering. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement and other documents Mexico has filed with the SEC for more complete information about Mexico and the New Notes Offering. You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at http://www.sec.gov. Alternatively, the Joint Lead Underwriters, the Dealer Managers or the Information Agent, as the case may be, will arrange to send you the prospectus supplement and the prospectus if you request it by calling any one of them at the numbers specified above. Important Notice The distribution of materials relating to the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer and the transactions contemplated by the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. Each of the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer is void in all jurisdictions where it is prohibited. If materials relating to the New Notes Offering or the Tender Offer come into your possession, you are required by Mexico to inform yourself of and to observe all of these restrictions. The materials relating to the New Notes Offering or the Tender Offer, including this communication, do not constitute, and may not be used in connection with, an offer or solicitation in any place where offers or solicitations are not permitted by law. If a jurisdiction requires that the New Notes Offering or the Tender Offer be made by a licensed broker or dealer and a Dealer Manager or any affiliate of a Dealer Manager is a licensed broker or dealer in that jurisdiction, the New Notes Offering or the Tender Offer, as the case may be, shall be deemed to be made by the Dealer Manager or such affiliate on behalf of Mexico in that jurisdiction. Owners who may lawfully participate in the Tender Offer in accordance with the terms thereof are referred to as "holders." This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities nor will there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction. The offering of these securities will be made only by means of the preliminary prospectus and the accompanying prospectus supplement and prospectus. The New Notes are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the European Economic Area (" EEA "). For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client as defined in point (11) of Article 4(1) of Directive 2014/65/EU (as amended, " MiFID II "); or (ii) a customer within the meaning of Directive (EU) 2016/97 (as amended, the "Insurance Distribution Directive"), where that customer would not qualify as a professional client as defined in point (10) of Article 4(1) of MiFID II. Consequently no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 (the "PRIIPs Regulation") for offering or selling the New Notes or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the EEA has been prepared and therefore offering or selling the New Notes or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the EEA may be unlawful under the PRIIPs Regulation. MiFID II professionals/ECPs-only-No PRIIPs KID - For the purposes of each EU manufacturer's product approval process, as defined in Directive 2014/65/EU (as amended, "MiFID II"), EU manufacturer target market is eligible counterparties and professional clients (all distribution channels). No PRIIPs key information document (KID) has been prepared as not available to retail in the EEA. The New Notes are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investors in the United Kingdom (" UK "). For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client, as defined in point (8) of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) No 2017/565 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (" EUWA "); or (ii) a customer within the meaning of the provisions of the UK Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (the " FSMA ") and any rules or regulations made under the FSMA to implement Directive (EU) 2016/97, where that customer would not qualify as a professional client, as defined in point (8) of Article 2(1) of Regulation (EU) No 600/2014 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the EUWA. Consequently no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the EUWA (the "UK PRIIPs Regulation") for offering or selling the New Notes or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the UK has been prepared and therefore offering or selling the New Notes or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the UK may be unlawful under the UK PRIIPs Regulation. UK MiFIR professionals/ECPs-only-No UK PRIIPs KID For the purposes of each UK manufacturer's product approval process, UK manufacturer target market is eligible counterparties and professional clients only (all distribution channels). No UK PRIIPs key information document (UK KID) has been prepared as not available to retail in the UK. In connection with the issue of the New Notes, Citigroup Global Markets Limited (the "Stabilizing Manager") (or persons acting on behalf of the Stabilizing Manager) may over-allot New Notes or effect transactions with a view to supporting the market price of the New Notes at a level higher than that which might otherwise prevail. However, stabilization may not necessarily occur. Any stabilization action may begin on or after the date on which adequate public disclosure of the final terms of the offer of the New Notes is made and, if begun, may cease at any time but must end no later than the earlier of 30 days after the issue date of the New Notes and 60 days after the date of the allotment of the New Notes. Any stabilization action or overallotment must be conducted by the Stabilizing Manager (or persons acting on behalf of any Stabilizing Manager) in accordance with all applicable laws and rules. In Belgium, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer are not directly or indirectly, being made to, or for the account of, any person other than to qualified investors (gekwalificeerde beleggers/investisseurs qualifies) within the meaning of Article 2(e) Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017 on the prospectus to be published when securities are offered to the public or admitted to trading on a regulated market, and repealing Directive 2003/71/EC. (Reglement (UE) 2017/1129 du 14 juin 2017 du Parlement europeen et du Conseil concernant le prospectus a publier en cas d'offre au public de valeurs mobilieres ou en vue de l'admission de valeurs mobilieres a la negociation sur un marche reglemente, et abrogeant la directive 2003/71/CE / Verordening (EU) 2017/1129 van het Europees Parlement en de Raad van 14 juni 2017 betreffende het prospectus dat moet worden gepubliceerd wanneer effecten aan het publiek worden aangeboden of tot de handel op een gereglementeerde markt worden toegelaten en tot intrekking van Richtlijn 2003/71/EG), as amended or replaced from time to time (Belgian Qualified Investor), that do not qualify as consumers (consumenten/consommateurs) within the meaning of Article I.1, 2 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law of February 28, 2013 (Wetboek van economisch recht/Code de droit economique), as amended or replaced from time to time (Consumers). A Consumer within the meaning of Article I.1, 2 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law is any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside their trade, business, craft or profession. As a result, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer do not constitute a public takeover bid pursuant to Articles 3, 1, 1 and 6, 1 of the Belgian law of April 1, 2007 on public takeover bids (Wet op de openbare overnamebiedingen/Loi relative aux offres publiques d'acquisition), as amended or replaced from time to time. Consequently, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer and any material relating thereto have not been and will not be, notified or submitted to, nor approved by the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (Autoriteit voor Financiele Diensten en Markten/Autorite des Services et Marches Financiers) pursuant to the Belgian laws and regulations applicable to the public offering or tendering of securities. The New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer as well as any materials relating thereto may not be advertised, nor distributed, directly or indirectly, to any person in Belgium other than Belgian Qualified Investors acting for their own account who are not Consumers, and may not be used in connection with any offering in Belgium except as may otherwise be permitted by law. The New Notes and the Old Notes will not be registered under Chilean Law No. 18,045, as amended, with the Comision para el Mercado Financiero de Chile (Financial Market Commission of Chile, or " CMF ") and, accordingly, the New Notes and the Old Notes cannot and will not be offered or sold to persons in Chile except in circumstances which have not resulted and will not result in a public offering under Chilean law, and in compliance with Norma de Caracter General (Rule) No. 336, dated June 27, 2012, issued by the CMF. The New Notes may not be offered, sold or negotiated in Colombia, except in compliance with Part 4 of Decree 2555 of 2010. The Offer to Purchase and the New Notes Offering do not constitute and may not be used for, or in connection with, a public offering as defined under Colombian law. The New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer have not been and will not be approved by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, as neither constitute a public offer in accordance with the EU Prospectus Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/1129) nor the Danish Capital Market Act. This announcement does not constitute an offer to the public in France. It is not a prospectus within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation. No prospectus (including any amendment, supplement or replacement thereto) has been prepared in connection with the New Notes Offering that has been approved by the French Autorite des marches financiers (" AMF ") or by the competent authority of another Member State of the EEA and notified to the AMF under the Prospectus Regulation; the materials relating to the New Notes have not been distributed or caused to be distributed and will not be released, issued or distributed or caused to be released, issued or distributed, directly or indirectly, to the public in France, or used in connection with any offer for subscription, exchange or sale of the notes to the public in France. Any such offers, sales and distributions have been and shall only be made in France to (i) qualified investors (investisseurs qualifies) acting for their own account, and/or to (ii) investment services providers authorized to engage in portfolio management services on behalf of third parties and/or to (iii) a limited group of investors (cercle restreint d'investisseurs) acting for their own account, all as defined in, and in accordance with, Articles L.411-2, II, D.411-1, D.411-4, D.744-l, D.754-l and D.764-1 of the French Code monetaire et financier. In the event that the New Notes purchased or subscribed by investors listed above are offered or resold, directly or indirectly, to the public in France, the conditions relating to public offers set forth in Articles L.411-1, L.411-2, L.412-1 and L.621-8 to L.621-8-3 of the French Code monetaire et financier must be complied with. Investors in France and persons into whose possession offering materials come must inform themselves about, and observe, any such restrictions. The Tender Offer is made in the Federal Republic of Germany (" Germany ") to existing holders of the Old Notes only. The prospectus supplement does not constitute a prospectus compliant with the Prospectus Regulation and does therefore not allow any public offering in Germany. No action has been or will be taken in Germany that would permit a public offering of the New Notes, or distribution of a prospectus or prospectus supplement or any other offering material relating to the New Notes. In particular, no prospectus (Prospekt) within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation and the German Securities Trading Act (Wertpapierprospektgesetz) or any other applicable laws in Germany has been or will be published in Germany, nor has any prospectus or the prospectus supplement been filed with or approved by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) for publication in Germany. The prospectus supplement is strictly for use of the person who has received it. It may not be forwarded to other persons or published in Germany. With respect to persons in Hong Kong, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer are only made to, and are only capable of acceptance by, "professional investors" within the meaning of the Securities and Futures Ordinance (Cap. 571) of Hong Kong (the " SFO ") and any rules made thereunder. No person or entity may issue or have in its possession for the purposes of issue, whether in Hong Kong or elsewhere, any advertisement, invitation or document relating to the New Notes, Old Notes or the Tender Offer, which is directed at, or the contents of which are likely to be accessed or read by, the public of Hong Kong (except if permitted to do so under the securities laws of Hong Kong) other than with respect to the Old Notes which are or are intended to be tendered, or New Notes which are intended to be purchased, only by persons outside Hong Kong or only by "professional investors" as defined in the SFO and any rules made under thereunder. The Old Notes and the New Notes, and the Offer to Purchase and the New Notes Offering prospectus supplement, and any other documents or materials related to such offers have not and will not be registered with the Italian Securities Exchange Commission (Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa, or " CONSOB ") pursuant to applicable Italian laws and regulations. The Offer to Purchase and the New Notes Offering are being carried out pursuant to the exemptions provided for, with respect to the Offer to Purchase, in Article 101 bis, paragraph 3 bis of Legislative Decree No. 58 of 24 February 1998, as amended (the " Consolidated Financial Act ") and Article 35 bis, paragraph 4, of CONSOB Regulation No. 11971 of 14 May 1999, as amended; and, with respect to the New Bonds Offering, in Article 1, paragraph 4, letter c), of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129. Holders or beneficial owners of the Old Notes that are resident and/or located in Italy can tender the Old Notes for purchase, and the New Notes Offerings can be offered, sold and delivered, through authorized persons (such as investment firms, banks or financial intermediaries permitted to conduct such activities in Italy in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, the Consolidated Financial Act, the CONSOB Regulation No. 20307 of 15 February 2018, as amended, and Legislative Decree No. 385 of September 1, 1993, as amended) and in compliance with any other applicable laws and regulations or with any requirements imposed by CONSOB or any other Italian authority. Each intermediary must comply with the applicable laws and regulations concerning information duties vis a vis its clients in connection with the bonds or the relevant offering. In Luxembourg, this announcement has been prepared on the basis that the offer of the New Notes, the Tender Offer and the potential exchange offer will be made pursuant to an exemption under Article 1 (4) of the Prospectus Regulation from the requirement to produce a prospectus for offers of securities. Neither the Offer to Purchase, nor any other documents or materials relating to the Offer to Purchase have been approved by or will be submitted for the approval of, the Mexican National Banking and Securities Commission (Comision Nacional Bancaria y de Valores, or the " CNBV ") and, the New Notes have not been and will not be registered with the Mexican National Securities Registry (Registro Nacional de Valores) maintained by the CNBV, and therefore the Old Notes and New Notes have not and may not be offered or sold publicly in Mexico. However, investors that qualify as institutional or qualified investors pursuant to the private placement exemption set forth in Article 8 of the Mexican Securities Market Law (Ley del Mercado de Valores), may be contacted in connection with, and may participate in the Offer to Purchase, and can be offered or purchase New Notes. The participation in the Offer to Purchase or the acquisition of New Notes will be made under such investor's own responsibility. In Norway, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer are made only in accordance with applicable exemptions from the requirement to prepare a prospectus or offer document in accordance with the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. Accordingly, the New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer have not been and will not be filed with or approved by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority, the Oslo Stock Exchange or the Norwegian Registry of Business Enterprises. The Tender Offer is not intended for any person who is not qualified as an institutional investor, in accordance with provisions set forth in Resolution SMV No. 021-2013-SMV-01 issued by Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores (Superintendency of Capital Markets) of Peru, and as subsequently amended. No legal, financial, tax or any other kind of advice is hereby being provided. The New Notes Offering prospectus supplement, the accompanying prospectus and the Offer to Purchase have not been and will not be registered as a prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The Offer to Purchase does not constitute an offering of securities in Singapore pursuant to the Securities and Futures Act, Chapter 289 of Singapore (the " SFA "). The New Notes will not be offered or sold or cause that such New Notes to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase and will not offer or sell such New Notes or cause such New Notes to be made the subject of an invitation for subscription or purchase, and has not circulated or distributed, nor will it circulate or distribute, this prospectus supplement or any other document or material in connection with the offer or sale, or invitation for subscription or purchase, of such New Notes, whether directly or indirectly, to persons in Singapore other than (i) to an institutional investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA) under Section 274 of the SFA, (ii) to a relevant person (as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA) pursuant to Section 275(1), or any person pursuant to Section 275(1A), and in accordance with the conditions specified in Section 275 of the SFA and (where applicable) Regulation 3 of the Securities and Futures (Classes of Investors) Regulations 2018 of Singapore or (iii) otherwise pursuant to, and in accordance with the conditions of, any other applicable provision of the SFA. Where the New Notes are subscribed or purchased in reliance on an exemption under Sections 274 or 275 of the SFA, the New Notes shall not be sold within the period of six months from the date of the initial acquisition of the notes, except to any of the following persons: an institutional investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA); a relevant person (as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA); or any person pursuant to an offer referred to in Section 275(1A) of the SFA, unless expressly specified otherwise in Section 276(7) of the SFA or Regulation 37A of the Securities and Futures (Offers of Investments) (Securities and Securities-based Derivatives Contracts) Regulations 2018 of Singapore. Where the New Notes are subscribed or purchased under Section 275 of the SFA by a relevant person which is: a corporation (which is not an accredited investor (as defined in Section 4A of the SFA)) the sole business of which is to hold investments and the entire share capital of which is owned by one or more individuals, each of whom is an accredited investor; or a trust (where the trustee is not an accredited investor) whose sole purpose is to hold investments and each beneficiary of the trust is an individual who is an accredited investor, securities or securities-based derivatives contracts (each term as defined in Section 2(1) of the SFA) of that corporation or the beneficiaries' rights and interest (howsoever described) in that trust shall not be transferred within six months after that corporation or that trust has acquired the New Notes pursuant to an offer made under Section 275 of the SFA except: to an institutional investor or to a relevant person as defined in Section 275(2) of the SFA, or (in the case of such corporation) where the transfer arises from an offer referred to in 276(3)(i)(B) of the SFA or (in the case of such trust) where the transfer arises from an offer referred to in Section 276(4)(i)(B) of the SFA; where no consideration is or will be given for the transfer; where the transfer is by operation of law; as specified in Section 276(7) of the SFA; or as specified in Regulation 37A of the Securities and Futures (Offers of Investments) (Securities and Securities-based Derivatives Contracts) Regulations 2018 of Singapore . None of the offer materials related to the New Notes Offering or Tender Offer have been approved or registered in the administrative registries of the Spanish Securities Market Commission (Comision Nacional del Mercado de Valores). Consequently, the securities may not be offered, sold or distributed in Spain except in circumstances which do not constitute a public offer of securities in Spain within the meaning of Article 35 of the restated text of the Securities Markets Act approved by Royal Legislative Decree 4/2015, dated October 23, 2015 (Real Decreto Legislativo 4/2015, de 23 de octubre, por el que se aprueba el texto refundido de la Ley del Mercado de Valores), Royal Decree 1310/2005, dated November 4, 2005 (Real Decreto 1310/2005 de 4 de noviembre), or otherwise in reliance on an exception from registration available thereunder. The prospectus supplement is not intended to constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase or invest in the New Notes described therein in Switzerland, except as permitted by law. The New Notes may not be publicly offered, directly or indirectly, in Switzerland within the meaning of the Swiss Financial Services Act (" FinSA ") and will not be admitted to any trading venue (exchange or multilateral trading facility) in Switzerland. Neither the prospectus supplement nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the New Notes constitutes a prospectus as such term is understood pursuant to the FinSA, and neither the prospectus supplement nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the New Notes may be publicly distributed or otherwise made publicly available in Switzerland. Neither this communication, the Offer to Purchase nor any other offer material relating to the Tender Offer or the New Notes Offering has been approved by an authorized person for the purposes of section 21 of the FSMA. This communication, the Offer to Purchase and the prospectus supplement are only being distributed to and are only directed at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the " Order ") or (iii) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom it may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (e) of the Order (all such other persons together being referred to as " relevant persons "). Any investment or investment activity to which the Offer to Purchase or the New Notes Offering relates will only be available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire the same will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. The New Notes will only be available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire the New Notes will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on the Offer to Purchase, the prospectus supplement or any of their contents. The New Notes Offering and the Tender Offer qualifies as a private placement pursuant to section 2 of Uruguayan law 18.627. The New Notes and the Old Notes are not and will not be registered with the Central Bank of Uruguay to be publicly offered in Uruguay. Contact information: D. F. King & Co., Inc. 48 Wall Street, 22nd Floor New York, NY 10005 E-mail: [email protected] Call Collect:: +1 (212) 269-5550 Call Toll-Free: +1 (800) 488-8035 Website: www.dfking.com/ums ANY DISCLAIMERS OR OTHER NOTICES THAT MAY APPEAR AFTER THIS MESSAGE ARE NOT APPLICABLE TO THIS COMMUNICATION AND SHOULD BE DISREGARDED. SUCH DISCLAIMERS OR OTHER NOTICES WERE AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED AS A RESULT OF THIS COMMUNICATION BEING SENT VIA BLOOMBERG OR ANOTHER EMAIL SYSTEM. SOURCE The United Mexican States Kimberly Marika Johnson, 43, was arrested and charged with attempted murder and first-degree arson after she allegedly set fire to her dinner date's home in October 2020 A Las Vegas woman allegedly set fire to her friend's home and tried to kill him after he showed up to their dinner date with just $5 in his pocket. Kimberly Marika Johnson, 43, of Las Vegas, was arrested Tuesday and faces charges of attempted murder and first-degree arson stemming from a fire she allegedly set at a home on October 11, 2020, at about 5.30am. According to an arrest report obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Johnson had gone to meet the friend for dinner at Jerry's Nugget, a casino, earlier in the morning. At some point during the dinner, Johnson learned that the man, who has not been identified publicly, had only $5 with him, which led to the two having an argument, a North Las Vegas Fire Department investigator said in the arrest report. Johnson, the investigator reported, then made the man walk the 2.5miles back to his apartment. It's unclear if he had been expected to return to the casino with more money or their dinner date had ended at that point. About 20 minutes after he arrived back at his apartment, however, the man 'heard a splashing sound on the window and front door,' according to the court document. When the man opened the front door, Johnson 'ignited the gas vapors.' Authorities said Johnson started the fire at her dinner date's home after she discovered that he had turned up for their meal at Jerry's Nugget (pictured) with only $5 in his pocket 'The front door and mat are fully engulfed in flames,' the fire investigator wrote in the report. The man, who lives in a two-story apartment complex, then 'slammed the burning front door shut.' Johnson was said to have then used a wooden-handled hammer to break the front window of the bottom level apartment. The dinner date claimed that Johnson 'threw her purse, which was on fire' through the broken window and into the front room of the apartment. According to the arrest report, the man said that Johnson was 'high on crystal meth' and said she had attempted to 'burn me down.' The fire at the man's house was determined to have been set with 'willful and malicious intent.' Its unclear if there were any injuries suffered during the incident. Online jail records indicate Johnson is being held on $5,000 bail and is due back in court on the morning of January 25. (@FahadShabbir) The US government is closing the National Mall in Washington, DC until after the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden next Wednesday, the National Park Service announced in a news release on Friday WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2021) The US government is closing the National Mall in Washington, DC until after the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden next Wednesday, the National Park Service announced in a news release on Friday. "The National Park Service, at the request of and in cooperation with the United States Secret Service, will implement a temporary public closure of the National Mall beginning at 11 am on Friday, January 15 and extending through at least Thursday, January 21," the release said. Activities of the presidential inauguration and permitted First Amendment activities in designated locations will be allowed and areas near the US Navy. Memorial and John Marshall Park have been designated as demonstration areas for those holding permits, the NPS said. "Demonstrations will be limited in number and participants will be screened prior to entry and escorted to their permitted location, in addition to other safety related requirements. Only those holding permits will be allowed within the closed area," the release said. The closure has been ordered to ensure safety and security within the area of the National Special Security Event designated by the Department of Homeland Security for the presidential inauguration, the release added. A dedicated covid control room at the Nirman Bhawan premises of the health ministry, which has been analysing the spread of coronavirus in the country, will be monitoring the smooth roll-out of the covid vaccines through the Co-WIN digital platform. Health minister visited the control room on Friday to take stock of the preparations for the nationwide launch of the vaccination drive on January 16. The Co-WIN platform is meant to enable real time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries of the vaccine. The digital platform will be used to assist programme managers across the states by tracking beneficiary coverage, dropouts, sessions held and total vaccine utilisation. ALSO READ: Airlines, steel companies, auto makers race to get vaccine for staff The data of beneficiaries will be sorted by gender, age and comorbidity. Vardhan while reviewing the beneficiary registration page suggested that the data for all non-prioritised groups should be uploaded on the software using the electoral database, in addition to other documents that are authorised for registration. Vardhan also said that the indigenously manufactured vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin have proven safety and immunogenicity records and are the most important tools to contain the pandemic. Over 3,000 sites across the country are ready to vaccinate around 300,000 health workers on the first day of covid vaccination. Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on the inaugural day. A 24x7 call centre, 1075, will address the queries related to Covid-19 pandemic, vaccine rollout and the Co-WIN software- the key platform for the vaccination drive. The health minister will visit some of the vaccination centres in the capital on Saturday including All India Institute of Medical Sciences. 1. Yes. The public must have assurances that ethical standards are met by everyone. 2. Yes. As long as an independent board hears the grievances, its a worthwhile idea. 3. No. The concept is too broad. It should be limited to the citys elected officials. 4. No. There are plenty of stipulations in place already. An ordinance is a waste of time. 5. Unsure. Its hard to say without seeing how it would be structured and applied. Vote View Results 1. Yes. The public must have assurances that ethical standards are met by everyone. 2. Yes. As long as an independent board hears the grievances, its a worthwhile idea. 3. No. The concept is too broad. It should be limited to the citys elected officials. 4. No. There are plenty of stipulations in place already. An ordinance is a waste of time. 5. Unsure. Its hard to say without seeing how it would be structured and applied. Vote View Results Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the rollout of India's COVID-19 vaccination programme on January 16, the Union Health Ministry said on Thursday. He is likely to interact via video link with some healthcare workers from across the country who will be receiving the shots on the first day, according to sources. PM Modi is also likely to launch the Co-WIN (COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network) App, a digital platform created for real-time monitoring of COVID-19 vaccine delivery and distribution, they said. The health ministry said, "The massive countrywide COVID-19 vaccination drive will be rolled out by Prime Minister from January 16. This would be the world's largest immunisation exercise. Therefore, it has been decided by the Ministry of Health in consultation with the office of the President of India to reschedule the Polio vaccination day, also known as the National Immunisation Day (NID) or 'Polio Ravivar' to 31st January." A limited number of sites out of the 2,934 inoculation centres have been shortlisted from where the beneficiaries can interact with the prime minister and the authorities in those centres have been asked to make provisions for IT infrastructure for providing a two-way interactive communication facility to enable it to link and interact with the national launch site through a video link, the sources said. Officials at New Delhi's AIIMS and Safdarjung hospitals, which are among the shortlisted facilities, said they are "ready for a two-way communication". Around three lakh healthcare workers will get vaccine shots at 2,934 sites across the country on the first day of the massive nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive, a senior official said. Each vaccination session will cater to a maximum of 100 beneficiaries. According to the guidelines issued to the shortlisted vaccination centres, healthcare workers (those registered in Co-WIN to be vaccinated) on the launch shall include not only doctors, nurses but also nursing orderlies, safai karamcharis, ambulance drivers, and would be from a mixed age group, including above 50 years. The full initial procurement of 1.65 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines - Covishield and Covaxin-- has been allocated to all states and UTs in proportion to their healthcare workers database. "Therefore, there is no question of discrimination against any State in allocation of vaccination doses. This is the initial lot of supply of vaccine doses and would be continuously replenished in the weeks to come. Therefore, any apprehension being expressed on account of deficient supply is totally baseless and unfounded," the ministry said. States have been advised to organize vaccination sessions taking into account 10 per cent reserve/wastage doses and an average of 100 vaccinations per session per day. Therefore, any undue haste on the parts of the states to organize unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day is not advised, the ministry had said on Wednesday. The states and UTs have also been advised to increase the number of vaccination session sites that would be operational every day in a progressive manner as the vaccination process stabilizes and moves forward. According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities. Cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Retailers from Punjab and Haryana selling tobacco and related products on Friday staged a protest in Panchkula near Chandigarh, demanding the recall of the proposed amendments to the law on cigarettes and other tobacco products as they threaten to fu Image Source: IANS News Retailers from Punjab and Haryana selling tobacco and related products on Friday staged a protest in Panchkula near Chandigarh, demanding the recall of the proposed amendments to the law on cigarettes and other tobacco products as they threaten to fu Image Source: IANS News Retailers from Punjab and Haryana selling tobacco and related products on Friday staged a protest in Panchkula near Chandigarh, demanding the recall of the proposed amendments to the law on cigarettes and other tobacco products as they threaten to fu Image Source: IANS News Chandigarh, Jan 15 : Retailers from Punjab and Haryana selling tobacco and related products on Friday staged a protest in Panchkula near Chandigarh, demanding the recall of the proposed amendments to the law on cigarettes and other tobacco products as they threaten to further hit the livelihoods of 'petty traders'. The protest was staged to save the livelihoods of nearly 6.5 lakh micro retailers and their 30 lakh dependants, who have been badly hit by the Covid-induced lockdowns, said a statement by the retailers affiliated to the Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI). The retailers urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to recall the proposed amendment of COTPA (Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act) Bill 2020, proposed by the Heath Ministry, which disallows, among other things, the retail sale of loose sticks of cigarettes and prohibits sale of tobacco products to people below 21 years. Varun Arora, a FRAI member, said the amendments seemed to be aimed at destroying the business of the smaller retailers without impacting the large retailers. "We appeal for immediate rollback of the proposed amendments as they are extremely harsh. By making age-old trade practices like selling loose cigarettes a cognizable offence and an imprisonment of seven years for small violations makes small traders look like heinous criminals," he added in a statement. "An uneducated small shopkeeper who barely manages a square meal will have to struggle to get a licence, and not only that, he will also have to struggle to renew it every year," he said. [January 15, 2021] Loomis Sayles Promotes Kyra Fecteau to Portfolio Manager for Securitized Credit Strategies Managed by the Mortgage & Structured Finance Team Loomis, Sayles & Company, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, announced today that Kyra Fecteau, CFA, has been promoted to portfolio manager for securitized credit strategies managed by the mortgage and structured finance (MSF) team, effective January 1, 2021. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005054/en/ Kyra Fecteau is a vice president of Loomis, Sayles & Company and portfolio manager for securitized credit strategies managed by the mortgage and structured finance team. (Photo: Business Wire) In her new role, Kyra co-manages the Loomis Sayles Investment Grade Securitized Credit strategy with Alessandro Pagani, head of the MSF team. She also joins Alessandro and Stephen L'Heureux in co-managing the Loomis Sayles High Yield Securitized Credit strategy. Kyra retains her responsibilities as an investment strategist for securitized credit, responsible for aiding Loomis Sayles fixed income product teams in constructing and implementing optimal securitized strategies across all segments on securitized assets. "This promotion formally recognizes the critical work Kyra has been doing on our securitized credit strategies and reflects our confidence in her excellent judgment and investment acumen," said Alessandro Pagani. "Kyra has been a key contributor to the team's success since she joined Loomis Sayles in 2015 and we know her continual pursuit of excellence will serve her well in this portfolio management role." Kyra joined Loomis Sayles in 2015 as a portfolio analyst and was promoted to senior portfolio analyst in 2017, and later to investment strategist in 2018. Previously, Kyra worked at Merganser Capital Management where she was a structured products research analyst, trader and co-portfolio manager of their CMBS unconstrained portfolio. Prior to this, she was an internal audit officer at State Street Corporation. Kyra earned a BA from Stonehill College. Under the leadership of Alessandro Pagani, the MSF team hlps over oversee $30.4 billion in securitized investments across the firm in both dedicated mandates and as part of broader investment strategies (as of December 31, 2020). ABOUT LOOMIS SAYLES Since 1926, Loomis, Sayles & Company has helped fulfill the investment needs of institutional and mutual fund clients worldwide. The firm's performance-driven investors integrate deep proprietary research and integrated risk analysis to make informed, judicious decisions. Teams of portfolio managers, strategists, research analysts and traders collaborate to assess market sectors and identify investment opportunities wherever they may lie, within traditional asset classes or among a range of alternative investments. Loomis Sayles has the resources, foresight and the flexibility to look far and wide for value in broad and narrow markets in its commitment to deliver attractive sustainable returns for clients. This rich tradition has earned Loomis Sayles the trust and respect of clients worldwide, for whom it manages $347.8 billion ** in assets (as of December 31, 2020). **Includes the assets of Loomis, Sayles & Co., LP, and Loomis Sayles Trust Company, LLC. Loomis Sayles Trust Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Loomis, Sayles & Company, LP. ABOUT NATIXIS INVESTMENT MANAGERS Natixis Investment Managers serves financial professionals with more insightful ways to construct portfolios. Powered by the expertise of more than 20 specialized investment managers globally, we apply Active Thinking to deliver proactive solutions that help clients pursue better outcomes in all markets. Natixis Investment Managers ranks among the world's largest asset management firms1 with nearly $1.1 trillion assets under management2 (910.0 billion). Headquartered in Paris and Boston, Natixis Investment Managers is a subsidiary of Natixis. Listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, Natixis is a subsidiary of BPCE, the second-largest banking group in France. Natixis Investment Managers' affiliated investment management firms include AEW; Alliance Entreprendre; AlphaSimplex Group; DNCA Investments;3 Dorval Asset Management; Flexstone Partners; Gateway (News - Alert) Investment Advisers; H2O Asset Management; Harris Associates; Investors Mutual Limited; Loomis, Sayles & Company; Mirova; MV Credit; Naxicap Partners; Ossiam; Ostrum Asset Management; Seeyond; Seventure Partners; Thematics Asset Management; Vauban Infrastructure Partners; Vaughan Nelson Investment Management; Vega Investment Managers;4 and WCM Investment Management. Additionally, investment solutions are offered through Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, and Natixis Advisors offers other investment services through its AIA and MPA division. Not all offerings available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit Natixis Investment Managers' website at im.natixis.com| LinkedIn (News - Alert) : linkedin.com/company/natixis-investment-managers. Natixis Investment Managers' distribution and service groups include Natixis Distribution, L.P., a limited purpose broker-dealer and the distributor of various U.S. registered investment companies for which advisory services are provided by affiliated firms of Natixis Investment Managers, Natixis Investment Managers S.A. (Luxembourg), Natixis Investment Managers International (France), and their affiliated distribution and service entities in Europe and Asia. 1 Cerulli Quantitative Update: Global Markets 2020 ranked Natixis Investment Managers as the 17th largest asset manager in the world based on assets under management as of December 31, 2019. 2 Assets under management ("AUM") as of September 30, 2020 is $1,067.3 billion. AUM, as reported, may include notional assets, assets serviced, gross assets, assets of minority-owned affiliated entities and other types of non-regulatory AUM managed or serviced by firms affiliated with Natixis Investment Managers. 3 A brand of DNCA Finance. 4 A wholly-owned subsidiary of Natixis Wealth Management. MALR026581 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005054/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] US Secret Service agents have stood guard in Washington's Kalorama neighbourhood for years, guarding former presidents and Cabinet secretaries. From security threats to secure perimeters, these agents have had to worry about a lot of things. With Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the agents also had to worry about finding a toilet. The duo reportedly instructed the agents not to use any of the six bathrooms inside their house. The agents had to scour for a reliable restroom for use before they landed at a basement studio with a bathroom from one of Kushner's neighbours. Since September 2017, the US government has been spending $3,000 a month -- over $100,000 so far -- to rent the basement studio, according to a report in The Washington Post. The lease of the 820-square-foot basement on Tracy Place NW is set to expire on September 26 this year by when the government would have paid $144,000 in rent. According to the report, the first solution to the restriction was to set up porta-potty in the neighbourhood. This enraged the residents of the elite neighbourhood who protested against it. The porta-potties were then removed, following which the agents began using a bathroom at a garage in former President Barack Obama's house. The garage had been turned into a command post. This was short lived after an unpleasant mess in the bathroom led the agents to be banned from returning. After that the agents had to drive a mile to Vice President Mike Pence's home at the Naval Observatory. There they were allowed to use a bathroom in a standalone guard station. They would sometimes go to nearby restaurants if the mile-long excursion was not viable. A White House spokesperson denied reports that Kushner and Trump restricted agents from using their bathrooms. The spokesperson said that it was the Secret Service's decision not to allow agents inside the 5,000-square-foot house. A secret Service spokeswoman declined to comment and said the agency does not discuss the means, methods and resources utilised to carry out their missions. Two law enforcement officials told the news site the bathrooms were off limits. While one did not know the reason behind this, the other said it was instigated by the couple. "When discussions regarding protecting their home were initially had in 2017, Ivanka and Jared made clear that their home would always be open to the incredible men and women on their detail. It was only after a decision by the Secret Service was made that their detail sought other accommodations. The Kushners have a tremendous amount of respect for the servicemen and women on their detail and for the United States Secret Service as a whole. Their home will always be open to them and they have immense gratitude for their service over the last four years," wrote White House spokesman Judd Deere in an email. Also read: Trump's parting shot at China; imposes sanctions on officials, companies Also read: Trump's impeachment likely to begin on Biden's Inauguration Day New Delhi: The ninth round of talks between protesting farmer unions and three central ministers got underway here on Friday afternoon to break the over-a-month-long deadlock on the three new agri laws. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash, who is an MP from Punjab, are holding the talks with the representatives of around 40 farmer unions at the Vigyan Bhawan here. Farmers' protest On Thursday, Tomar had said that the government's ninth round of negotiations with protesting farmer unions would take place as scheduled and the Centre was hopeful of positive discussions. "The government is ready to hold talks with farmer leaders with an open mind," Tomar had told reporters here. The Supreme Court on January 11 had stayed the implementation of the three laws till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse. Supreme Court Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann on Thursday recused himself from the committee appointed by the apex court. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are the other three members on the panel. An Irish priest who spent much of his life championing the rights of those with HIV in Africa was a true hero, the president has said. Father Michael Kelly, who spent more than 50 years in Zambia as a missionary and educator, died on Friday. He worked tirelessly to educate and promote safe behaviour among youth and those most at risk from HIV throughout sub-Saharan Africa and much further afield, his website said. Michael D Higgins said: I offer my condolences to his family and many friends. Ireland and Zambia mourn the loss of a true hero. He epitomised the great work of Irish missionaries in the education and health spheres in so many parts of the world Michael D Higgins He praised Father Michael for his intellect, his extraordinary positivity and his compassion. Mr Higgins said: He epitomised the great work of Irish missionaries in the education and health spheres in so many parts of the world. His humanity shone through in his work and in his encounters with all who were fortunate enough to have met him. Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said Father Michaels leadership and advocacy on HIV and Aids, and also education and human rights, was inspirational. He said: He leaves a legacy of achievement, driving policy changes not just in Zambia but on the international stage. It was fitting that his outstanding work was marked during his lifetime, including awards for distinguished service from President Higgins in 2012, and President Lungu of Zambia in 2018. Father Michaels energy, dedication, and passion will live on in the memories of those he inspired. Father Michael was a former headmaster at a school in Zambia, took his PhD and became a pro-vice chancellor at the University of Zambia. Since 2006, Irish Aid has honoured his achievements through the annual Father Michael Kelly HIV/Aids event, often timed to coincide with World Aids Day in December. (Newser) A new coronavirus strain moving through the US hasn't caused much damage yet. But unless vaccinations start being given much more quickly and people stick to measures designed to limit the spread of the disease, the variant could bring a surge of new cases by March. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Friday that the B117 variant, which is more easily transmitted, could become the dominant strain in the US by March, STAT News reports. "We're concerned," a CDC official said. "We want to sound the alarm and urge people to continue to do the things that we know work." The strain is the one first recognized in Britain. The US health care system should prepare for more surges, the authors of the CDC article wrote. story continues below Just 76 infections from the new strain have been reported in the US, but health officials assume the actual number of cases is higher and climbing, per the New York Times. The CDC based its predictions on modeling in a new study that assumes the new version is 50% more contagious than the current US strain. The B117 version is about 20 mutations removed from earlier versions of the virus. There's still no reason to think the new virus produces more severe illnesses, but even if mortality rates don't change, the new strain's ability to spread faster would increase the number of COVID-19 deaths. New CDC statistics show that COVID-19 has killed 1 in every 860 Americans over the past year. (The White House task force also has warned about the UK strain.) Razdan said she has filed a police complaint and has requested them to 'take immediate steps to identify, apprehend, and prosecute the perpetrators of this abominable attack' Former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan on Friday said that she has been the victim of a "sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack" that lead her to believe she was offered a teaching position at Harvard University. The offer, she confirmed, was never extended by the prestigious varsity and she had fallen prey to a sophisticated scam. In June 2020, Razdan left NDTV saying that she had been offered the post of associate professor of journalism at the Ivy League university. Razdan, who worked as a television journalist for over two decades, tweeted on Friday that she noticed "a number of administrative anomalies" after her posting was delayed from September 2020 to January 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. Im putting this statement out to set the record straight about what Ive been through. I will not be addressing this issue any further on social media. pic.twitter.com/bttnnlLjuh Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) January 15, 2021 "At first, I had dismissed these anomalies as being reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic, but recently the representations being made to me were of an even more disquieting nature. "As a result, I reached out to senior authorities at Harvard University for clarity. Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I had believed I had received from the university," she said in the statement. Stating that the entire episode was the result of a phishing attack and that the university had not extended the offer, she said, "The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts." She added that she has filed a police complaint and provided the documentary evidence. "I have requested them to take immediate steps to identify, apprehend, and prosecute the perpetrators of this abominable attack." Razdan said that she has also written to the Harvard University about the matter and "urged them to take it seriously". Several Indian journalists and authors like Saba Naqvi and Aparna Jain extended support to Razdan and tweeted that the culprits should be caught as soon as possible. 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. NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Built In announced that OpenWeb, a premium community engagement platform , was honored in its 2021 Best Places to Work awards in three categories, including NYC Best Midsize Companies to Work For, NYC Best Places to Work, and NYC Best Paying Companies. The annual awards include companies of all sizes, from startups to enterprise. "It is an honor to be awarded by Built In as one of New York City's best places to work," said Nadav Shoval, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenWeb. "We've worked diligently to build a team of passionate visionaries who want to change the web, and are proud to be recognized for cultivating this talent and serving our publishers' communities." Built In determines winners for Best Places to Work based on an algorithm, using company data about compensation, benefits and cultural programs. To reflect the attributes candidates are searching for on Built In today, this year's program weighted criteria more heavily, like remote opportunities and programs for diversity, equity and inclusion. "These companies raise the bar for cultural excellence and the ability to adapt to meet changing needs of employees," says Sheridan Orr, Chief Marketing Officer, Built In. "The 2021 winners show a commitment not just to creating meaningful cultures but to delivering talent needs as they change in a dynamic landscape. We're thrilled to extend our congratulations to the winners." Tech professionals rely on Built In's Best Places to Work lists to discover employers that align with their preferences, passions, and values. Since its inception three years ago, the award has expanded in reach, from online views of tens of thousands to just under 1 million views today. OpenWeb is looking to grow its team in the new year, with dozens of positions opening over the coming months. If interested in learning more, please visit https://www.openweb.com/join-our-team/ . About OpenWeb OpenWeb (formerly Spot.IM) is on a mission to empower publishers through decentralized, quality conversations. The platform utilizes AI and machine learning to incentivize healthy dialogue, decrease toxicity, and create thriving, engaged communities. OpenWeb works with more than 1,000 top-tier publishers and hosts 100 million active users each month. Founded in 2012, OpenWeb has 100 employees in New York City and Tel Aviv and is backed by world-class investors including Insight Partners, AltaIR Capital, ScaleUp, Norma Investments, and Index Ventures. To learn more about OpenWeb's quality conversation platform visit OpenWeb.com, or follow @OpenWebHQ on LinkedIn , Twitter , and Instagram . ABOUT BUILT IN Built In, a revolution in tech recruitment, serves more than 1,800 innovative companies of all sizes, from startups to the enterprise, delivering content and digital recruitment solutions that work. The platform amplifies companies' brands as national, local or remote employers of choice, as well as leaders in DEI. Monthly, 2.5 million tech professionals rely on Built In to stay up on trends, grow in their roles and discover companies with missions they want to join. The platform publishes stories about companies' tech, culture and people. ABOUT BUILT IN'S BEST PLACES TO WORK Built In's esteemed Best Places to Work awards, now in its third year, honor companies across numerous categories: 100 Best Places to Work, 50 Best Small Places to Work, 100 Best Midsize Places to Work, 50 Companies with the Best Benefits and 50 Best Paying Companies. Two new national categories reflect what candidates are searching for, including 100 Best Large Companies to Work For and 50 Best Remote-First Places to Work. BEST PLACES TO WORK: METHODOLOGY Built In ranks companies algorithmically based on compensation information, benefits and culture programs. This year, based on data showing tech professionals' needs, the Best Places to Work algorithm added weight to companies' commitment to DEI and remote culture. Rank is determined by combining a company's score in each of these categories. SOURCE OpenWeb Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen attends a celebrations marking the 66th anniversary of the country's independence from France, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Nov. 9, 2019. Cambodias Prime Minister Hun Sen has denied reports that he is using taxpayer money to produce a television series about his life after several senior government officials refused to disclose the source of the projects funding and civil society organizations dismissed it as unnecessary for the nation. Last week, Hun Sen announced he would be setting up a film production committee to produce a television series called The Son Under the Full Moon to document his life struggle. The former Khmer Rouge soldier who switched sides has ruled Cambodia for 35 of his 68 years. The government-appointed filmmaker and Ministry of Information secretary of state Mao Ayuth to chair the committee, which will also include the head of Hun Sens bodyguard unit Hing Bun Heang and National Military Police chief Sao Sokha. Mao Ayuth told the Voice of Democracy that the series will use period props as well as hairstyles and clothing from the various eras depicted. We need to do this carefully and thoroughly because it is historical, he said, adding that It is a huge honor that the top leader has put trust in us, so we must fulfill our obligations to meet his trust. When asked by RFAs Khmer Service Tuesday about the size and source of the budget for the television series, both government spokesperson Phay Siphan and ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) spokesperson Sok Ey San claimed they did not know. RFA also contacted Mao Ayuth, who said he was too busy to talk and was unaware of the details of the funding. Ministry of Culture spokesperson Long Bun Sereyvath said his ministrys film department will provide technical support to the film production committee but refused to disclose the amount budgeted for the series and referred further questions to Mao Ayuth. Call for transparency Speaking to RFA during a call-in show on Tuesday, Cambodian Youth Network Association president Ul Vann said the government should reveal the size and source of the funding for the series, calling for full transparency in how the national budget is spent. As a citizen, I also want to know what the story is about and how much money will be used to make the series, he said. Other analysts and members of the public made similar calls, expressing concerns that Hun Sen is using the budget to distort history and suggesting that independent historians should be responsible for preserving the national record. On Wednesday, following RFAs call-in show, Hun Sen told government-affiliated media outlet Fresh News that he will not use money from the national budget to produce his television series. According to the report, Hun Sen contracted a film production company to work on the project, which will use its own funds to develop the series and will own the rights to it. RFA was unable to independently verify the account published by Fresh News. Promoting a narrative The planned The Son Under the Full Moon series bears the same name as a long-running radio program about Hun Sens life that is aired frequently on a station operated by his daughter Hun Mana, particularly in the lead up to Cambodias elections. Mao Ayuth previously produced a U.S. $1 million film about Sdach Kan, who overcame obscurity to usurp a disliked king in the 16th century and lead Cambodia to greatness during his brief reign. Hun Sen often compares himself to Sdach Kan and in recent years several statues of the former monarch have been built around the country that bear a resemblance to the current prime minister. Hun Sen, who also came from humble beginnings, has ruled Cambodia with an iron fist for more than three decades. Speaking to Voice of Democracy following the announcement of the television series last week, social analyst Seng Sary noted that Hun Sen often remarks that history is written by the victor. Usually, the stories of successful leaders should be recorded by other historians, not by themselves Our society seems backward in recording its history, he said. Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. Chandigarh, Jan 15 : A Pakistani intruder was shot dead by the Border Security Force (BSF) along the international border in Punjab's Gurdaspur sector, the paramilitary force said on Friday. "The BSF personnel detected suspicious movement of an intruder from the Pakistan side near the barbed fence inside Indian territory at 8.45 p.m. on Thursday. Sensing imminent threat, the troops opened fire and shot dead the intruder," the BSF (Punjab Frontier) said on Twitter. The deceased could not be identified as no proof of identity was recovered, an official said. MADISON, Wis., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Wisconsin families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Wisconsin families, schools, and organizations are hosting 679 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the most exciting of these will be "You've Got Talent, Wisconsin!," a statewide virtual talent show featuring K-12 students. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Wisconsin cities of Lake Tomahawk and Neenah. "With five private school choice programs, a multitude of public sector options, and homeschooling, the Wisconsin education landscape recognizes that students have different needs," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "The Week celebrates the great schools, educators, and students who have risen to meet 2020's challenges, and encourages conversation about what learning options families are still seeking." In Wisconsin, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools offer flexible open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Any Wisconsin taxpayer can deduct the cost of private school tuition. Wisconsin students who meet certain income limits, or students with special needs, may qualify for state-run scholarship programs. Wisconsin families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options To download a guide to Wisconsin school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/wisconsin. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his top advisors were the driving force to push for family separations at the U.S. southern border, a scathing report by the U.S. Department of Justices Office of the Inspector General revealed Thursday. The reports release comes two and a half years after the Trump administration initiated its zero tolerance policy ordering migrant parents crossing the border with children detained and charged. The policy led to family separations, with children kept away from their relatives. The investigation finds the Justice Department failed to effectively prepare for, or manage, the implementation of the zero tolerance policy. The Departments single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact, the 93-page report concluded. Under President Donald Trumps policy, more than 2,800 families were separated in 2018, according to lawyers appointed by a federal judge. As of October, the government had still not been able to track down the parents of 545 separated children. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security admitted that some of those parents are believed to have already been deported. The separations marked a grim chapter in U.S. immigration history, as images of children in cages made front-page news around the world, and advocates accused the Trump administration of turning its back on vulnerable migrants, many fleeing violence and extreme poverty back home. In an interview, Gene Hamiltona current Justice Department official told the Office of Inspector General that he blamed the presidents office for the implementation of the policy. If former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen hadnt wanted to target parents, we wouldnt have prosecuted them, he said. Ultimately that decision would be between Secretary Nielsen and the president, Hamilton told investigators. According to the report, Sessions and his advisors ignored dire warning signs from a 2017 child separation pilot program in western Texas, failing to heed advice about widespread problems that arose. We have now heard of us taking breast feeding defendant moms away from their infants, one prosecutor wrote. I did not believe this until I looked at the duty log and saw the fact we had accepted prosecution on (sic) moms with one and two-year-olds. The report also shows how U.S. attorneys offices across the southwest border area repeatedly told Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and their top advisors that they were not prepared to handle the surge in cases against parents arriving with children. Sessions ignored their pleas during a May 2018 call: We need to take away children, he said, according to the report. Investigators noted in the report that Sessions who no longer works for the U.S. government refused various requests for interviews. The Miami Herald reached out to Sessions and Hamilton on Thursday but did not immediately hear back. The report cites an email from another high-ranking official, Rosenstein, defending the policy after the U.S. Attorneys Office refused to separate families. We should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child, he wrote. In a response to the Herald via email, Rosenstein said he regretted the choices made. Since leaving the department, I have often asked myself what we should have done differently, and no issue has dominated my thinking more than the zero tolerance immigration policy. It was a failed policy that never should have been proposed or implemented. I wish we all had done better, he said. According to the inspector generals office, the agency found no evidence Justice Department leaders engaged in discussions with other key federal offices before enacting the policy. The report shows Sessions, Hamilton, and other advisors believed that parents would be prosecuted rapidly and reunited within one to three days. When U.S. attorneys informed them parents were remaining in custody for up to a week or longer, they refused to change directives. Also revealed: U.S. Marshals Service officials warned Justice Department leadership that child separations would hinder the agencys ability to conduct other operations throughout the country, while also resulting in $277 budget shortfall and a shortage of 3,000 beds, which took place. In a joint statement, the Congressional Oversight and Judiciary Committee Chairs called the contents of the report a dark chapter in our history [that] must never be repeated. Todays report sheds new light on the chaos, cruelty, and reckless disregard for vulnerable children in our nations custody, the statement said. In 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit seeking to reunite an asylum-seeking mother and her 7-year-old daughter fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, only to be separated from each other in the U.S. and detained separately, 2,000 miles apart. The barbaric family separation practice was immoral and illegal. At a minimum, Justice Department lawyers should have known the latter. This new report shows just how far the Trump administration was willing to go to destroy these families, said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney on the case. The Biden-Harris administration will inherit the legacy of family separation, and we dont doubt that more horrific details will continue to emerge. ___ (c)2021 Miami Herald Visit Miami Herald at www.miamiherald.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. [January 15, 2021] Master Select Group invites Sky to share his exclusive investment tips HONG KONG, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In order to help investors from all regions obtain convenient learning channels, the world's leading online trading broker - Master Select Group will hold a series of online investment seminars from 2021. In this year, MSG will sincerely invite investment experts and famous teachers with various expertise in the financial market to provide investors with first-hand investment experience and market insights through the online meeting platform Zoom, helping investors enhance their trading skills and obtain long-term and stable investment income. The first webinar in 2021 was successfully held on January 10th. This webinar was jointly promoted by MSG and CMoney which is one of the most popular financial media in Taiwan. In just a few days of the promotion period, MSG had received hundreds of inquiries and applications. For the first important lecture of the year, MSG successfully invited Sky, a very famous FX margin trading teacher in the industry, to bring a remarkable speech to the investors. At the beginning of the lecture, Sky made an introduction to the audience about what is FX margin trading and why it is very suitable for the petty bourgeoisie to start their investment journey. Sky explained that during the learning phase when the petty bourgeoisie do not know much about how to make investments, it i not recommended to put too much money in the market at once. However, if the amount of funds is too small, it will be difficult to make any profit in traditional investment channels such as stocks, ETFs, and deposits. Just because of this, the investment advantages of FX margin trading or CFD trading have emerged. FX margin trading has the features of flexible leverage and flexible trading hands, which can meet the needs of beginners and ordinary investors with small capital and risk control requirements. At the same time, the FX market also has the advantages of 24 hours operation, rich products to choose, huge market volume, openness and transparency, which is very suitable for the petty bourgeoisie to trade after work. Sky believes that concepts, discipline, and risk control are the three key factors for maintaining a long-term and stable profit. First of all, investors need to form good investment concepts, fully understand the products they invest in, understand their risk appetite, understand the mutual influence of the market or products, read more financial-related books, and understand that in every crisis lies an opportunity, avoid fear and greed. More importantly, investors should focus on cultivating their own ability of trading and make investments by themselves rather than third-party advisers. The two-hour webinar came to an end with great success. An audience left a message at the end of the event, said: "Thank you for bringing us this remarkable speech and valuable learning opportunity. I sincerely hope that MSG will continue to hold this kind of event! " MSG responded, "In the future, we will continue to play the key role of an international CFD broker to provide investors with more high-quality learning opportunities, so that more people can have the chance to make long-term and stable income in global financial markets." Please click the link below to watch the video of the webinar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRbpm0S55F8 Welcome to visit MSG official website msgforex.com. For any questions, please contact MSG CS Center Line1: https://line.me/ti/p/69znMq7fuL Line2: https://line.me/ti/p/6SyUaMU0kF SOURCE Master Select Group [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] MONTREAL - Quebec's labour minister on Friday threatened to impose more restrictions on the province's construction and manufacturing sectors for allegedly flouting health orders. MONTREAL - Quebec's labour minister on Friday threatened to impose more restrictions on the province's construction and manufacturing sectors for allegedly flouting health orders. Jean Boulet said in a statement he's received many reports about non-compliance connected to the two sectors since the government imposed new restrictions Jan. 9. He did not, however, provide details about the number of problematic companies or the nature of the violations. Workers work on a home as Quebec lifts the ban on residential construction due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Monday April 20, 2020, in Deux-Montagnes, Que. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz The new measures in effect until at least Feb. 8 require the two industries to limit operations to essential activities and to reduce the number of workers in factories and on construction sites. Most other businesses across Quebec deemed non-essential have been closed since December. Quebec's new health orders also include a provincewide curfew from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m., in an attempt to reduce COVID-19 transmission and reduce the strain on the health system from rising hospitalizations. On Friday, Quebec reported 1,918 new COVID-19 cases and 62 more deaths linked to the novel coronavirus, including nine that occurred in the prior 24 hours. Health officials said hospitalizations dropped by 27, to 1,496, and 231 people were in intensive care, a rise of one. Health Minister Christian Dube said Friday on Twitter it was too early to say if the new restrictions are having an impact. Boulet, meanwhile, said if construction and manufacturing companies don't reduce operations and don't adhere to the other health orders, the government would further restrict their activities. "If the problem persists, the Quebec government will take its responsibilities and will not hesitate to close construction sites or businesses as well as issue tickets to offenders," he said. Quebec's workplace health and safety board said it issued 846 COVID-19 warning letters at 185 manufacturing facilities between Oct. 19, 2020 and Jan. 14, 2021. During that same period, the safety board issued 2,715 warning letters to 16 construction businesses and at 724 construction sites. The board says businesses can be fined if they fail to comply with health orders after they receive warning letters. Between March 2020 and Jan. 14, 2021, the board issued 81 fines and ordered two businesses and 23 construction sites to close. Those numbers, however, don't include closures by public health authorities. Jacques Letourneau, president one of Quebec's largest labour federations, the Confederation des syndicats nationaux, said Boulet's warning was "good news." Quebec's workplace safety board is doing a proper job, Letourneau said in an interview Friday, but he said the agency lacked inspectors. He said he would like to see more fines issued to employers who break the rules. Police said they issued 740 tickets to people violating curfew rules during the first two nights the order was in effect. Noelle Didierjean, a community organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, said that number was a "disgrace" given that only 81 fines had been given to businesses since March for allegedly violating health orders. "It shows that the government cares about protecting business, they care about protecting profits, and they don't actually care that much about keeping people safe," she said in an interview Friday. The government's enforcement priorities are putting the responsibility for public health on individuals, Didierjean said, rather than on the root of the problem, which she said is workplace outbreaks. The Canadian Press recently contacted three construction industry associations, who all said they hadn't reduced operations since the new health order had been imposed. Industry representatives said all ongoing work is essential. "Everything that is in progress is considered essential," Guillaume Houle, spokesperson for the Association de la construction du Quebec, said in a recent interview. Francois Bernier, vice-president of an association representing entrepreneurs in housing, said 20,000 projects are scheduled for delivery in the first half of 2021 and respecting those commitments, he added, is also essential. A third association representing companies that construct major infrastructure said activity in the sector is typically low at this time of year. But, the spokesman said, construction on the light rail network in the Montreal area is going ahead. Quebec's national institute of public health says 33 outbreaks tied to 134 infections were reported on construction sites between Dec. 27 and Jan. 2 4.5 per cent of all workplace outbreaks. "There is nobody who can boast of being perfect in the management of the pandemic and the construction sector is no exception," Houle said. "On the other hand, we took charge, we have a guide with very strict sanitary measures to respect on construction sites and we reminded our members last week that these health measures must be applied as strictly as possible." Quebec has reported 238,745 infections and 8,938 deaths linked to the virus. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 15, 2021. with files from Pierre Saint-Arnaud in Montreal. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Axion Ventures Inc. (TSXV: AXV) (OTC Pink: AXNVF) ("Axion" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Mana Prapakamol as a director of the Board with immediate effect, and Mr. Prapakamol shall also serve on the Company's Audit Committee. Mr. Prapakamol holds more than 18 years management experience in the media and interactive content industry and currently serves as Associate Director in charge of 5G Service Innovation of True Corporation PCL ("True") and General Manager of True Digital Plus Company Limited, the online game business operation of True. He represents True, a substantial strategic shareholder of the Company, and one of the family companies under Charoen Pokphand Group ("CP Group"), a global conglomerate from Thailand. Mr. Prapakamol is also a Director and Investment Committee member of True-Kona Cayman GP, the General Partner of LINE Games-True-Kona Global Fund LP. The fund has Korea Venture Investment Corporation and LINE Games Corporation as lead investors, and it invests into South Korean start-ups in in the gaming sector as well as disruptive technologies. He is also the Founder of the annual Bangkok International Game Show, now known as the Thailand Game Show, and the Co-founder of Online Station Co., Ltd. and Future Gamer which was acquired by True Digital Content and Media. Mr. Prapakamol is also a co-founding director and continues to serve on the board of True Axion Interactive, a subsidiary of the Company. Mr. Prapakamol received his MBA from Golden Gate University. Mr. Yamazaki as Axion's Chairman commented, "We are most grateful by the appointment of Khun Mana on behalf of True and its wholly owned subsidiary, True Incube, a valued shareholder of the Company. We look forward to the continued expansion of our strategic relationship with our esteemed partner from Thailand through Khun Mana's expertise and video game management acumen across Asia. His anticipated contributions to the Company shall provide an immediate and positive impact." Mr. Prapakamol added, "It is my distinguished pleasure to be welcomed to the Company's board, and I look forward to working with my fellow directors as the Company continues its critical reformation including an expanded and improved management team to execute on the compelling potential and opportunity for which True based its initial investment decision in 2017." The Company also announces the formation and composition of the following committees with immediate effect: Audit Committee Nomination and Corporate Governance Committee Stephen Willey (Chair) Grant Kim (Chair) Yasuyo Yamazaki Yasuyo Yamazaki Grant Kim Stephen Willey Mana Prapakamol The Company additionally formed a Litigation Committee as constituted below to effectively deal with the ongoing litigation involving by Mr. Bonner and his wife, and for the Litigation Committee to be empowered with the full authority of the Board to manage and execute any and all matters relating to the litigation affairs of the Company. Litigation Committee Grant Kim (Chair) Yasuyo Yamazaki Stephen Willey About Axion Ventures Axion Ventures is an Investment Issuer with majority ownership in Axion Games, an online video game development and publishing company headquartered in Shanghai, China as well as in True Axion Interactive Ltd., its video game development company headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand cofounded with True Corporation. Axion Ventures also maintains holdings in other innovative technology companies. NEW WEBSITE ADDRESS COMING SOON Contact Information Axion Ventures Inc. Grant Kim Interim Chief Executive Officer +1(604)219-2140 Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information This news release may contain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All information contained herein that is not historical in nature may constitute forward-looking information. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these 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 release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72136 By now many are wondering what Bill Gates does not do or does not have? According to The Land Report , the Microsoft co-founder is the largest farmland owner in America. According to research conducted by the outlet, the billionaire has quietly bought around 97,934.32 hectares of farmland, although that has not been his only investment in land. Gates apparently also owns transitional and recreational lands. The tycoon owns land in 18 states and his largest holdings include Louisiana with 27,952 hectares, Arkansas with 19,395 hectares, and Nebraska with 8,331 hectares. The Land Report explains that the lands are in the hands of Gates through Cascade Investments, a company that he uses to control his investments. You may be interested: Bill Gates predicts what 2021 will be like, alerts us to our immediate future Image: Depositphotos.com Through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the billionaire donated just over $ 300 million with the goal of promoting sustainable agriculture in parts of Africa and Asia. Although Gates is the largest farmland owner in America, John Malone takes the place of the largest landowner in the country with 890,308 hectares of land. Related: Bill Gates es el mayor propietario de tierras agricolas en EU Bill Gates is the largest farmland owner in the US Bill Gates pronostica como sera el 2021, nos alerta sobre nuestro futuro inmediato Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. Departure: James Lenton, CFO of UK property giant Hammerson which co-owns the Dundrum Town Centre, is stepping down from the role. James Lenton, the chief financial officer of UK property giant Hammerson, is stepping down from the role. The board of Hammerson has started a search for his successor, and Mr Lenton will continue as CFO and as an executive director of the company until a successor has joined, according to a brief statement from the group. Mr Lenton said: "Following successful completion of the rights issue, VIA Outlets disposal and induction of the new chair of the board and CEO, I feel now is the right time to look for a new opportunity. I remain fully committed in the role until my successor is in place." Hammerson co-owns Dundrum Town Centre, with the other half owned by Allianz. The group also owns half of the Pavilions shopping centre in Swords, and the Ilac Centre in Dublin city centre. It owns 40pc of the Kildare Village premium outlet mall. Mr Lenton leaves the role after less than two years in the position. In September, Hammerson appointed Rita-Rose Gagne as chief executive. Prior to joining Hammerson, Ms Gagne was most recently president of growth markets at the Canadian real estate company Ivanhoe Cambridge where she had responsibility for $7.6bn (6.2bn) of real estate assets across Asia Pacific and Latin America. Last month, Hammerson announced a secondary listing on Euronext Dublin in response to Brexit. At the time the company said it was seeking a secondary listing given the importance and scale of its investor base and operations in continental Europe and the Republic of Ireland. As of November last year, 27pc of Hammerson's share capital held by institutional investors was held by investors based in the European Economic Area, excluding the UK. Hammerson operates in seven different countries, with a number of flagship retail centres including the Bullring in Birmingham, UK. A report from Goodbody Stockbrokers last October warned that the value of Hammersons Irish property portfolio would slump by 13pc in the second half of 2020 and by 12pc this year. Hammerson said in August that its prized assets in Ireland were valued at 834m (922m) at the end of June, which represented a 9.9pc decline in the capital return for the properties. Hammerson has been dealing with the fallout from a slump in retail activity as the Covid pandemic redraws the sectors landscape, with increasing numbers of people shopping online. 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. Scientists have designed a vaccine candidate that induces protection in mice against "a wide range of related coronaviruses," an innovation that may help protect against future pandemic-potential viruses that jump from animals to humans. The novel 'mosaic nanoparticle' vaccine, described in the journal Science, is shaped like a cage made up of 60 identical proteins, each of which has a small protein tag that functions like a piece of Velcro. In the study, the scientists, including Alex Cohen from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US, assessed fragments of the spike proteins of different coronaviruses, and engineered each to have a protein tag that would bind to those on the cage -- on the other side of the "Velcro." When these viral pieces tag on to the cage, it results in a nanoparticle presenting spikes representing different coronavirus strains on its surface, the study noted. With eight different coronavirus spike fragments, the scientists said this vaccine platform can generate a diverse antibody response -- an advantage over traditional vaccine methods that present pieces from only a single type of virus. According to the study, the antibodies subsequently produced by mice inoculated with the vaccine candidate were able to react to many different strains of coronavirus. The scientists said some of the antibodies in the mice were surprisingly reactive against related strains of coronavirus whose spike proteins were not present on the nanoparticle. "If we can show that the immune response induced by our nanoparticle technology indeed protects against illness resulting from infection, then we hope that we could move this technology forward into human clinical trials, though there are a lot of steps that need to happen between now and then," Cohen said. "We don't envision that this methodology would replace any existing vaccines, but it's good to have many tools on hand when facing future emerging viral threats," he added. The scientists believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19 is unlikely to be the last coronavirus to cause a pandemic. "Alex's results show that it is possible to raise diverse neutralising antibody responses, even against coronavirus strains that were not represented on the injected nanoparticle," said study co-author Pamela Bjorkman from Calteh. "In addition, the nanoparticles elicit neutralising responses against SARS-CoV-2, so it could be possible to use them now to protect against COVID-19 as well as other coronaviruses with pandemic potential," Bjorkman added. Also read: Manufacturers to be liable if anyone falls sick due to Covid vaccine shot Also read: Can COVID-19 vaccine cause infertility? Here's what Dr Harsh Vardhan has to say 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. The FBI is investigating 37 people in the killing of Brian Sicknick, a police officer who died a day after physically engaging with a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, the New York Times reported on Friday. As rioters overpowered Capitol police, Sicknick was pepper-sprayed and hit in the head, his father told Reuters last week. Ambulance crews resuscitated him twice as he was rushed to a nearby Washington hospital. Sicknick died the next day. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Fewer pastors now willing to preach sermons on race, study shows Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Despite massive protests in 2020 against police brutality and racial injustice following the death of George Floyd, fewer pastors, particularly white congregation leaders, say they are willing to preach sermons on race compared to 2020, a new report from LifeWay Research has found. The study, which was based on a survey of 1,007 Protestant pastors conducted Sept. 2 Oct. 1, 2020, showed that only 74% of pastors agree that their congregation would welcome a sermon on racial reconciliation. Of that number, only 32% strongly agreed. In 2016, however, some 90% of pastors said their church would welcome a sermon on racial reconciliation, with 57% strongly agreeing. A small minority of pastors, 5%, who said they were criticized for a sermon on racial reconciliation, have also seen their numbers more than double to a sizable 12%. The number of pastors who said they had not preached on racial reconciliation in the last two years increased, too, from 10% to 16% over the same period. The typical pastor is addressing racial reconciliation from the pulpit and without pushback from their congregation, Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, said in a statement Tuesday. However, the noticeable increase in pastors avoiding the topic and receiving criticism could signal there are new dynamics emerging. While the concept of racial reconciliation is expressed in different ways in specific communities in the U.S., the website Racial Equity Tools explains that it includes public acknowledgement of racist events and crimes such as apartheid or violence against groups of color. The process "may also examine and make public the current impact of such events, as well as their historical occurrence," Racial Equality Tools states. Individual victims can also be allowed to "tell their stories for the record as one part of a healing process" while "individual perpetrators might also acknowledge their complicity. Formal and serious apologies are also often part of this work where victims can choose to accept or reject that apology." While most pastors teaching is not limited to things their congregation wants to hear, it is helpful to know the reaction pastors anticipate from their congregation, McConnell said. Instead of a majority strongly agreeing, now only a third of pastors have no hesitation that their congregation would welcome a sermon on racial reconciliation. African American pastors, 93%, and pastors of other ethnicities, 74%, were more likely than white pastors to say their congregations would be open to a sermon on racial reconciliation. Churches with 250 or more members were also more open to addressing the issue at the pulpit while denominationally, Methodists, 83%; Presbyterian/Reformed, 79%; Pentecostals, 78%; and Baptists, 74%, were found to be more likely than pastors of Lutheran churches, 59%, to believe their congregation would like to hear a sermon on the subject. A Barna report released in September 2020 found that white, self-identified Christians in the United States have become less motivated to address racial injustice and are less likely to believe that the country has a race problem compared to 2019. It found that just 33% of white self-identified Christians believe that the U.S. definitely has a race problem, down from 40% last year. Some 81% of black self-identified Christians agreed, however, that the nation definitely has a race problem, up from 75% in 2019. Hispanic self-identified Christians stayed about the same, with 54% responding definitely in 2019, and 55% responding the same in 2020. The number of white self-identified Christians who felt very motivated to address racial injustice also dropped from 14% to 10% over the period. Hubballi, Jan 15 : Peeved over missing cabinet berth, Karnataka BJP leader A. H. Vishwanath on Friday said that he would soon release a book titled - Bombay Days - a tell-all book, on how the BJP carried out 'Operation Lotus' to come to power in 2019. 'Operation Kamal' or 'Operation Lotus' refers to a BJP strategy to come to power in states where it doesn't have enough seats to form the government on its own. This strategy was first tested in Karnataka after the 2008 Assembly election. The BJP fell three seats short of a simple majority, though it formed the government with the help of five independent MLAs, increasing its numbers to 115. In the name ensuring 'stability', it actively influenced and made at least 18 MLAs from opposition parties then to resign and went for by-polls, eventually made them ministers. In 2019 too, the BJP adopted the same strategy, seeking that 17 MLAs from Congress and JD(S) parties to defect and form the government. Vishwanth is one of the 17 defectors, who flew to Mumbai and stayed in a luxury hotel for nearly two weeks where "Operation Lotus" was designed and executed. He is privy to many issues that went into executing a plan to topple the Congress-JD(S) government in the state. Vishwanth told reporters that the book would be a detailed account of how Yediyurappa executed Operation Lotus with 17 legislators, who all had made up their minds to defect from respective parties. "I am in the process of finalising the last two chapters and shortly it will be released," he said. Last year, when he announced that such a book would be authored by him, he had stated that the book will cover all the factors related to developments that took place in Mumbai. "It is centred around the fall and rise of two different governments," he said. He also coined the name - Bombay Team - referring to all 17 MLAs who had flown to Mumbai to orchestrate the fall of the coalition government. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed a bill Thursday night that would update the states carbon emissions goals, seeking to make the state net neutral by 2050. The Republican governor, like Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano, says hes committed to getting the states carbon emissions to fall by 100% of 1990 levels over the next three decades. But he and legislative leaders ultimately disagreed on how to get there. In a letter to lawmakers, Baker said he vetoed the bill in part because it would slow housing production, running contrary to the goals of the housing choice proposal within the economic development bill he signed into law Thursday. He also said the bill lacked tools local and state officials need to protect cities and towns against present-day natural disasters that can be traced back to climate change. While my administration wholeheartedly supports the environmental justice goals of this bill, intent without the tools to address those issues are empty promises, Baker wrote in a letter to lawmakers. The bill does not have language or funding to address the ongoing impacts of climate change faced by those communities. Because the bill passed a day before the two-year legislative session ended, Baker did not have time to send amendments back to lawmakers and strike a compromise. His options were to sign the bill, veto it or let it die unsigned after 10 days in whats known as a pocket veto. On the 10th day, Baker chose to veto the bill. Had this bill been presented to me with more time while the Legislature was still in session, I would have returned it with amendments to address the concerns set out in this letter, he wrote. Mariano already said he plans to refile the climate conference report. Sarah Finlaw, the governors press secretary, said the governor looks forward to working with the Legislature once the bill is refiled. Sen. Mike Barrett, one of the key negotiators of the bill that passed in early January, said he was perplexed by the governors reasoning. He said the bill is written in a way that gives the state flexibility in addressing concerns the energy stretch code may have on housing construction. The Baker administration was consulted on the bill over several months of discussions behind closed doors. State officials never raised concerns about the five-year emissions goals, targets for transportation or building sectors or other issues Baker alluded to, Barrett said. The near-total absence of critical feedback from the administration for the entirety of 2020 makes me think the kerfuffle of the past two weeks is really about politics, not policy, the Lexington Democrat said. This is pushback, plain and simple and with a hint of panic, against the Legislatures determination to see this governor, as well as future governors, act more boldly against climate change. The climate bill overhauls a 2008 climate law that commits Massachusetts to reducing carbon emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. Climate activists sued the state in 2015, arguing the state wasnt taking steps to meet its interim target of dropping emissions by 25% in 2020. The bill would have reduced the states carbon emissions by at least 85% below 1990 levels over the next three decades, aiming for a 100% reduction. The bill also set emissions targets every five years with mandates to create new regulations for renewable energy. In vetoing the bill, Baker touted his own work on reducing emissions across Massachusetts. In September 2016, he signed an executive order calling for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. He also noted his administration has invested $935 million in mitigation projects. After stating his goals to make Massachusetts net-neutral by 2050, Baker said his administration made the goal part of the states legal emissions limit. Bakers strategy culminated with the launch of his 2050 roadmap and his announcement that Massachusetts, two other states and Washington, D.C., were joining a compact to reduce vehicle carbon emissions known as the Transportation Climate Initiative. The multi-state compact started off smaller than Baker had anticipated years earlier as he vied from support from New Hampshire, Vermont and other East Coast states. The climate bill set benchmarks within the state for trapping carbon through natural resources, boosting offshore wind energy and improving efficiency standards for appliances, among other requirements. The proposal also designated environmental justice communities, requiring that proposed projects that could hurt such a communitys air quality develop an environmental impact report. The bill divided some industry leaders in the energy sector. Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, said the bill favored off-shore wind projects by guaranteeing them contracts for 2,400 megawatts. He said power plants generating nuclear energy, natural gas and hydropower still had to compete within a wholesale market with a separate set of restrictions. To most efficiently drive carbon reductions, the Legislature should enact a meaningful, multi-sector price on carbon emissions, Dolan said. This focus on the actual cause of climate change can create a sustainable, and durable marketplace to meet our climate responsibilities. NEPGA urges the legislature to focus on this approach and not continue its reliance on decades-long contracts that undermine the innovation, competition, and consumer benefits of the New England-wide electricity market. But environmental activists say the veto only delays efforts to bring renewable, clean energy to homes and businesses as the state tries to reach its latest emissions goals. A veto merely delays the inevitable: Senate President Spilka and Speaker of the House Mariano have expressed unified support for the entirety of this bill, said Ellen Tomlinson, communications manager of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, in a statement. We are grateful to the Legislature for their commitment to passing this crucial bill and thank them for their pledge to refile and pass it promptly. Lawmakers and environmental activists are gearing up for another fight over the bill. Charlie Baker is not the first politician in the world to have responded to climate change by procrastinating, Barrett said. Im deeply disappointed in him and his decision, but we should look at the positive side. Dozens of legislators and thousands of citizens have been energized by the battle to get this bill into law. Were more motivated than ever. And were getting right back to work. Related content: France strengthened border controls and extended a curfew to the entire country on Thursday to keep the coronavirus in check, but authorities warned that new restrictions were possible in the coming days if the epidemic worsened. Starting next Monday, all travelers coming to France from countries outside of the European Union will have to present proof of a negative virus test that is no older than 72 hours, and will have to pledge to isolate for seven days before getting tested again, although it is unclear how that measure will be enforced. France will work with other European Union countries in the coming weeks on a coordinated protocol for travel from member states, according to Jean Castex, the French prime minister. Mr. Castex praised the French for following distancing rules over the winter holidays, noting that health authorities had not recorded an epidemic flare-up tied to Christmas or New Years Eve celebrations. But he also said authorities were concerned about new variants of the virus, especially the more contagious one first identified in Britain. We must do everything to prevent it from rapidly spreading, Mr. Castex said. The average number of daily cases in France is at about 16,000, Mr. Castex said far less than at the peak of the second wave last fall, but still over three times the target set by the government to loosen restrictions. Hospitalizations have stabilized at a high plateau, with nearly 25,000 Covid-19 patients. Nearly 70,000 people have died because of the virus. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Bear Creek Mining Corporation (TSXV: BCM) (BVL: BCM) ("Bear Creek" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the bought deal financing announced on January 6, 2021 (the "Offering") has closed. The Offering was conducted by a syndicate of underwriters led by Stifel GMP, and including BMO Capital Markets and Canaccord Genuity Corp. (together, the "Underwriters"). Pursuant to the Offering, the Company issued a total of 10,000,000 common shares (the "Common Shares"), at a price of C$3.00 per Common Share for gross proceeds of C$30 million. The Underwriters also exercised their over-allotment option in full to purchase an additional 1,500,000 Common Shares for additional gross proceeds of C$4.5 million. Including the proceeds from the exercise of the over-allotment option, the total gross proceeds of the Offering is C$34.5 million with an aggregate of 11,500,000 Common Shares being issued. The net proceeds from the Offering will be used for ongoing development activities at the Corani silver-lead-zinc project and for general corporate purposes. The Offering was completed pursuant to the Company's base shelf prospectus dated October 29, 2020. The terms of the Offering were described in a prospectus supplement filed on January 8, 2021 with securities regulators in each of the provinces and territories of Canada, other than Quebec. The Common Shares were also offered and sold in the United States to certain purchasers, who are, or are purchasing for the account or benefit of, one or more U.S. persons or persons in the United States, each of whom qualifies as a "qualified institutional buyer" as defined in Rule 144A under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act"). The securities issued under the Offering have not been and will not be registered under the 1933 Act and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the 1933 Act, and applicable state securities laws. This press release shall not constitute an offer of securities for sale or a solicitation for offers to buy any securities nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. "United States" and "U.S. person" are as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Anthony Hawkshaw President and CEO For further information contact: Barbara Henderson - VP Corporate Communications Direct: 604-628-1111 E-mail: barb@bearcreekmining.com Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding the use of proceeds of the Offering and continued development of the Corani Property. These forward-looking statements are provided as of the date of this news release, or the effective date of the documents referred to in this news release, as applicable, and reflect predictions, expectations or beliefs regarding future events based on the Company's beliefs at the time the statements were made, as well as various assumptions made by and information currently available to them. In making the forward-looking statements included in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including, but not limited to, that general economic and business conditions will not change in a materially adverse manner and that development activity at the Corani Property will proceed as planned. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and risks exist that estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved or that assumptions on which they are based do not reflect future experience. We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as a number of important factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the expectations expressed in them. These risk factors may be generally stated as the risk that the assumptions expressed above do not occur, but specifically include, without limitation, risks relating to general market conditions and the additional risks described in the Company's final short form base shelf prospectus dated October 29, 2020, the Company's latest Annual Information Form, and other disclosure documents filed by the Company on SEDAR. The foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive. Investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the Company or on behalf of the Company, except as required by law. 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. 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/72126 Up to ten mourners can attend a funeral according to Covid guidelines A priest has pleaded with people across the country to stop attending funerals and gathering outside churches, saying it is helping to spread the Covid-19 virus. Co Donegal cleric Father John Joe Duffy said while he appreciated it is a great custom to console bereaved people, we must stop immediately. The Creeslough-based priest said he has seen time and time again that too many people are gathering outside churches for funerals. While funerals are limited to close family inside the church, many are gathering outside churches to show their respects to grieving families. But Fr Duffy has warned that this practice, despite being outdoors, is still helping to spread the deadly virus. Read More He said: "I appreciate the long tradition it is to attend wakes, funeral masses/services and burials and we have all known the comfort, goodness and kindness of those who have walked with us and stood with us on many sad days. "It is plain to see that far too many are attending cemeteries and standing out and congregating far too close at arrivals and removals of remains at Churches, he added. "This beautiful and consoling custom is no longer safe for the bereaved families and for those attending." Fr Duffy said that time and time again, he has witnessed too many people gathering too close together outside churches. A Plainview High School Senior and a local United Family store location were chosen as the Student and Business of the Month for January. Jordyn Olivia Ramirez, 17, and Amigos Supermarkets are the first to be recognized by the Plainview Chamber of Commerce in 2021. Ramirez is the daughter of Nicole and Raymund Ramirez. She is an active student involved in Student Council, the Hale County Junior Literacy Council, National Honor Society, Band, Yearbook, Spanish Club, the National Student Advisory Council and UIL Academics. She is a recipient of a 2019 Tomorrows Leaders Award and was also named student of the month for the Rotary Club. Outside of school, Ramirez is a volunteer for Special Olympics, an occasional volunteer for Snack Pak 4 Kids, and a teacher at the church she attends. She enjoys reading, painting, writing and spending time with her friends when shes free. After graduation, I plan to double major in both English and architecture so I can be an architect as I build my career as a writer and hopefully someday help build schools for underprivileged youth, Ramirez wrote. Every month, the Chambers board of directors chooses a business to recognize from a different industry. This month they chose Amigos. The store is managed by Rebekah Bernal and is led by a team thats encouraged donations by employees to countless charitable causes within the past year. The store is part of a 93-store Texas-based grocery chain with locations across Texas and New Mexico. The United Family includes five unique brands including Amigos, United Supermarkets, Albertsons Market, Market Street and United Express. Plainview is one of four cities with an Amigos store location. The Amigos website describes the store as having a unique blend of traditional and cultural favorites for those who love authentic Mexican flavors and unbeatable values. Queensland has reported three new cases of coronavirus, two in hotel quarantine and one historical case. The historical case was a man from Cairns who caught the virus weeks ago. He is no longer infectious but the virus can shed for up to nine months. A total of 129 detainees evacuated from the Grand Chancellor Hotel have all tested negative for coronavirus after the UK super strain leaked on the seventh floor earlier this month. Premier Palaszczuk is still considering using mining camps instead of hotels to quarantine Health officials rejected reports that a father and daughter from Lebanon who were staying at the hotel breached quarantine before they tested positive. The father was taken to hospital in an ambulance for Covid-19 treatment and his daughter went with him because of his lack of English. Both wore full PPE and were treated as if they were positive. Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said there was no need to tell the public at the time. 'No, I don't think so because this is what we do every single day,' she said. 'We move people out of hotel quarantine to hospitals and have them assessed and we have had other cases where people have then been found to be positive. 'That is what we do and we always do the contact tracing as well as an additional precaution.' Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she is still investigating using Outback mining camps instead of Brisbane hotels to quarantine returned travellers. The state will propose the option to National Cabinet next Friday after coronavirus spread from a returned traveller in hotel quarantine, infecting a cleaner and two other travellers. Annastacia Palaszczuk said the mining camps she wants to use instead of hotels were comfortable and had balconies or outside space. Pictured: Stock image of a camp Premier Palaszczuk said the mining camps would be similar to the Northern Territory's Howard Springs quarantine camp (pictured) Brisbane's Grand Chancellor Hotel was evacuated on Wednesday as officials scrambled to work out how the UK super-strain of Covid-19 was transmitted on the seventh floor. Police are investigating by checking CCTV and engineers are checking if virus particles travelled in the air conditioning. A total of 129 travellers, some of whom were just an hour from being released, have been forced to restart their two-week quarantine in new hotels. Some 226 employees who have worked at the hotel since December 30 must also be quarantined and tested. Premier Palaszczuk said the evacuation and re-quarantining process has been backed by Health Minster Greg Hunt and the AHPPC. She said the mining camps she wants to use instead of hotels were comfortable and had balconies or outside space, just like the Northern Territory's Howard Springs quarantine facility. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the idea to use camps could be more dangerous because they are far away from major airports and the virus could transmit in buses on the way there. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said said held grave concerns about the Hotel Grand Chancellor (pictured) cluster, which has grown to six cases of the highly-contagious UK virus strain NSW Minister Hazzard rejected the idea of using mining camps in his state. He said about 3,500 staff worked in the quarantine system and lived in Sydney, and transporting travellers to regional areas was dangerous because the virus could transmit in buses. Minister Hazzard also said he wants Covid-19 patients to be near major hospitals in case they deteriorate. Also in the Queensland press briefing, Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the ambulance transfer of 129 patients to new hotels on Wednesday was 'perfectly safe'. 'My concern was that I did not know how it spread in the hotel. So I didn't want the virus to potentially spread to more people in the hotel. So that's why I wanted them all out of there,' she said. A returned traveller from the UK and his wife arrived at the Grand Chancellor Hotel on 30 December. He tested positive on 2 January before she also tested positive. A hotel cleaner, who only worked in the hotel on 2 January and did not enter their room, then tested positive on January 7. Her case sparked a three-day lockdown of Brisbane after she visited shops and took trains and buses. She also gave the virus to her partner. Then on January 13 genomic sequencing showed that a father and daughter who returned from Lebanon and were also quarantined on the hotel's seventh floor, had somehow caught the same strain of the virus. No guests have entered since January 7, a review of infection control measures occurred on January 8, and there have been increased cleaning measures including a deep clean of communal areas on January 12. The market witnessed intense selling pressure in mid-afternoon trade. IT, PSU banks and realty shares declined the most. Rising coronavirus cases across US, Europe and China weighed on investors' sentiment. At 14:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, dropped 685.77 points or 1.38% to 48,898.39. The Nifty 50 index lost 224.50 points or 1.54% at 14,371.10. In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index fell 1.90%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index skid 1.44%. Sellers outpaced buyers. On the BSE, 876 shares rose and 2081 shares fell. A total of 136 shares were unchanged. COVID-19 Update: Total COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide stood at 9,31,05,607 with 19,94,440 deaths. India reported 2,13,027 active cases of COVID-19 infection and 1,51,918 deaths while 1,01,62,738 patients have been discharged, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Economy: The government said that over 545 lakh tonnes of Paddy have been procured during the ongoing Kharif Marketing Season. This is an increase of 26.48% against the last year corresponding purchase of around 431 lakh tonnes. Agriculture Ministry said, government continues to procure Kharif crops at its Minimum Support Price from farmers as per its existing MSP Schemes. The Ministry said, more than 73 lakh paddy farmers have been benefited from current Kharif Marketing Season Procurement Operations with MSP value of over one lakh three thousand crore rupees. Numbers To Track: In the foreign exchange market, the partially convertible rupee appreciated to 73.1325 compared with its previous closing of 73.0450. The yield on 10-year benchmark federal paper rose to 5.944% as compared to its previous close of 5.924%. MCX Gold futures for 5 February 2021 settlement slipped 0.03% to Rs 49,025. The US Dollar index (DXY), which tracks the greenback's value against a basket of currencies, added 0.21% to 90.43. In the commodities market, Brent crude for March 2021 settlement lost 68 cents to $55.74 a barrel. The contract gained 0.64% or 36 cents to settle at $56.42 in the previous trading session. Buzzing Index: The Nifty IT index fell 2.02% to 26,420.90. The index has fallen 2.16% in two sessions. Tech Mahindra (down 4.16%), Coforge (down 4.1%), MindTree (down 2.91%), Info Edge India (down 2.9%), Wipro (down 2.85%), Mphasis (down 2.54%), Larsen & Toubro Infotech (down 2.49%), Infosys (down 1.77%) and TCS (down 0.38%) tumbled. HCL Technologies slipped 2.86% at Rs 998.40. The IT firm's consolidated net profit rose 31.1% to Rs 3,982 crore on 6.4% rise in revenue from operations to Rs 19,302 crore in Q3 December 2020 over Q3 December 2019. Sequentially, consolidated net profit rose 26.7% and revenue increased 3.80% in Q3 FY21 over Q2 FY21. EBITDA grew 9.9% to Rs 5,443 crore in Q3 FY21 over Q2 FY21. EBITDA margin improved to 28.2% in Q3 FY21 from 26.6% in Q2 FY21. The company's revenue in constant currency grew 3.5% QoQ and rose 1.1% year-on-year (YoY). The company expects QoQ revenue to grow between 2% to 3% in constant currency for Q4 FY21, including DWS contribution. EBIT is expected to be between 21% and 21.5% for FY2021. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 14:14:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close People gather at the site of a traffic accident in Dharwad, Karnataka State, India, Jan. 15, 2021. Eleven people died and another seven were injured in India's southwestern state of Karnataka after a mini-bus collided with a truck coming from the opposite direction on Friday morning. (Str/Xinhua) NEW DELHI, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 people were killed and several others injured on Friday in a collision between two vehicles in India's southwestern state of Karnataka, police said. Enditem Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a virtual press conference at 10 Downing Street in central London, on Jan. 15, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski /Pool/AFP via Getty Images) UK to Close All Travel Corridors to Curb New CCP Virus Variants Britain will further tighten entry restrictions by closing all its travel corridors with other countries in order to stem the spread of new CCP virus variants, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday. We must take additional steps now to reduce the risk of new strains coming from overseas, he said during a news conference held in Downing Street. To protect us against the risk of as yet unidentified new strains, we will also temporarily close all travel corridors from 0400 on Monday. Travel Corridors assess public health risk from the original SARS-COV-2, but its impossible for the Joint Biosecurity Centre to provide live scientific updates to predict which countries or regions will now originate new variants. Travel Corridors are therefore suspended for now Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) January 15, 2021 He said the government had coordinated with all devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland so that the change will apply across the whole of the UK. The change means all passengers must have a recent negative CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus test and transfer immediately into isolation upon arrival. The isolation period lasts for 10 days, unless the passenger tests negative after five days. The UK has banned travel from South America and Portugal from Friday morning to tackle a potential new CCP virus variant that emerged in Brazil, which has raised concerns among some scientists due to similarities to a variant in South Africa. There will be more enforcement checks & fewer exemptions. International arrivals will need to have a negative COVID-19 test & self-isolate for 10 days or Test to Release after 5. This action will slow the spread of new variants whilst millions receive their vaccinations. Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) January 15, 2021 Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Friday afternoon that all travel corridors must now be closed because its impossible for the Joint Bio-security Centre to provide live scientific updates to predict which countries or regions will now originate new variants. Johnson told reporters that over 3.2 million people had been vaccinated against the virus across the UK. What we dont want to see is all that hard work undone by the arrival of a new variant that is vaccine busting, he said. The UK reported on Friday 55,761 more positive CCP virus cases, and 1,280 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. This is not the time for the slightest relaxation of our national resolve and our individual efforts, Johnson said. Simon Veazey and Reuters contributed to this report. Organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest will decide by sometime in February which broadcast model will proceed for 2021 -but the event will go on in one shape or another. There are 4 possible models planned for Rotterdam in May. The Netherlands is currently seeing new COVID cases of around 4,000 9,000 per day while much of Europe is in lockdown. This means a full scale event, Scenario A, is unlikely. Scenario A: A normal Eurovision Song Contest In this situation, the Eurovision Song Contest will be organised as normal from Rotterdams Ahoy Arena with 9 shows (including the dress rehearsals) in a packed venue, with delegations and artists from all the participating broadcasters and numerous activities in and around Rotterdam. Scenario B: Socially distant Eurovision Song Contest at 1.5 metres Everyone present at the Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam would need to practice social distancing and remain 1.5 metres from each other at all times. Again, there would be 9 shows, with an audience in the arena, but with limited capacity to allow for social distancing. Teams from each participating broadcaster would travel to Rotterdam, but with limits on the number of people in each delegation and on the number of press who could attend. Scenario C: A Eurovision Song Contest with travel restrictions A Eurovision Song Contest, probably also socially distanced, from Rotterdams Ahoy Arena as in scenario B, with 9 shows and a limited number of audience members in the arena. If there are any delegations who cannot travel to Rotterdam, their artists will perform from their own country. Scenario D: Eurovision Song Contest in lockdown Should the Netherlands end up in a lockdown-like situation again, there will be a Eurovision Song Contest without an audience and probably without activities in and around Rotterdam. The performances of the participants will all come from their own country. This recording will be delivered prior to the event and will take place in a studio setting. The recording will take place in real time (as it would be at the Contest) without making any edits to the vocals or any part of the performance itself after the recording. As recently as this week Rotterdams accommodation providers confirmed they kept 3000 rooms reserved for the delegations expected to travel for Eurovision 2021. SBS is yet to announce the song the be performed by Australias representative, Montaigne. Source: wiwibloggs Related The province is adding text messaging to its COVID-19 communication toolbox. Advertisement Advertise With Us The province is adding text messaging to its COVID-19 communication toolbox. "Text messages will now be used to support case and contact monitoring on a daily basis, in addition to phone calls from contact tracers and automated phone messages," said acting deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal Thursday afternoon. Lanette Siragusa Text will serve a number of functions: as an alert that test results are available on the Manitoba COVID-19 online result display, in combination with other support during isolation, as an opportunity to confirm isolation status, to report changes in symptoms, and to request direct contact from a contact tracer. "Over the next few days, this service will be ramped up so that more of the individuals self-isolating will receive texts as part of case and contact monitoring. Text messages are another way public health officials interact with Manitobans and, similar to a phone call, its important that the public respond to these text messages as soon as possible to improve the speed and accuracy of our efforts to stop the spread of COVID," Atwal said. Lanette Siragusa, provincial lead for health system integration and quality and chief nursing officer for Shared Health then took the press present at the virtual meeting through hospitalization numbers: 117 hospitalized with active COVID-19 and 16 people in intensive care with active COVID-19. As for personal care homes, Siragusa said staffing is fairly stable related to meeting the demands of the pandemic. "(Theres) quite a bit of focus is on community outbreaks. Were working with the regional health authorities and partners to make sure that people have safe spaces to isolate whether it be in their regions or coming to Winnipeg," she said. "That work is ongoing." Atwal noted the province is behind on updating active cases in the province rather than 2,866, the reality is closer to 1,394. "Work is being done to correct that administrative issue," he said. Regarding public consultations, which have been promised so that Manitobans can provide input on a way forward when it becomes possible to ease restrictions, Atwal said thats still in the planning phase. "When were ready, that information will be provided to the public," he said. Jazz Atwal 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. THURSDAYS COVID-19 UPDATE The COVID-19 update from the province on Thursday saw two additional deaths listed, including one patient from the Prairie Mountain Health region a male in his 90s linked to the McCreary/Alonsa Health Centre outbreak. The province reported 261 new cases, but two cases were removed due to data correction, bringing yesterdays new cases to 259 The new cases are as follows: - 11 cases in the InterlakeEastern health region; - 139 cases in the Northern health region; - 23 in the Prairie Mountain Health region; - 13 cases in the Southern HealthSante Sud health region; and - 75 cases in the Winnipeg health region. The current five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate was 10 per cent in the province, and 7.1 per cent in Winnipeg. Lab-confirmed cases in Manitoba total 26,954, with 755 deaths or 2.8 per cent. There are currently 2,866 active cases in the province, with 23,313 individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 The province also reported 117 people are in hospital with active COVID-19, as well as 173 people in hospital with COVID-19 who are no longer infectious but continue to require care, for a total of 290 hospitalizations. Sixteen people are in intensive care units with active COVID-19, as well as 21 people with COVID-19 who are no longer infectious but continue to require critical care, for a total of 37 ICU patients. In the Prairie Mountain Health region, there are 218 active cases, with 1,511 recovered. There are 18 people hospitalized, with no patients in ICU, and a total of 43 deaths. Brandons active case count is 73. Wednesday, 2,333 tests were completed, for a total of 446,018 since February. Source: Province of Manitoba PRAIRIE MOUNTAIN HEALTH OUTBREAK NUMBERS As of Jan. 11, the status of COVID-19 outbreaks in Prairie Mountain Health were as follows: Brandon Correctional Centre: 108 total cases, 18 staff infected, 90 non-staff infected, one active case, 107 recovered, zero death. McCreary/Alonsa Health Centre: 42 total cases, 14 staff infected, 28 non-staff infected, 37 active cases, one recovered, four death. Fairview Personal Care Home: 109 total cases, 41 staff infected, 68 non-staff infected, 0 active cases, 92 recovered, 17 deaths. Gilbert Plains Personal Care Home: 42 total cases, 18 staff infected, 24 residents infected, 1 active case, 32 recovered, nine deaths. Grandview Personal Care Home: 37 total cases, 12 staff infected, 25 residents infected, 1 active cases, 31 recovered, five deaths. St. Pauls Personal Care Home: No information Note: An outbreak is considered over one incubation period (14 days) after the final active case. Source: Province of Manitoba Campaigners have been drawing up fresh battle plans to fight a new bid for mining in the countryside close to Yesil Uzumlu, Korukoy and Incrkoy. An application for a quarry and concrete plant in the same area were quashed just 18 months ago and residents had hoped the decision would deter companies with similar plans. However, two fresh applications to mine chromium in two more environmentally sensitive areas near Incrkoy have emerged in recent weeks. Blasting It is understood one of the proposed mines is a traditional excavation into rock faces. The other is an open-cast operation. Campaigners fear the latter may involve blasting with high explosives, eventually destroying a hill top that overlooks Incrkoy. Exploratory work has already been conducted by the mining companies. Both sites are close to both traditional Turkish homes and new-build projects which residents fear could be at risk from noise, dust and pollution. The open-cast mine is also not far from an area known locally as the Honey Forest, dedicated to a number of different plant and herb species intended to encourage bees into the region. Olive groves and at least one major vineyard could also be close enough to be affected by pollution. Initial meeting At an initial meeting held on Monday (January 11) at Incrkoy Village Hall chaired by Ebru Aksoy, attendees included the muhtars of Korukoy and Incrkoy, members of the local environmental groups and lawyer Bora Sarica, who assisted residents in the fight to block the quarry plans. Manager and food engineer from the Beekeepers Union of Mugla, Yasin Krgz, reminded those attending that the region is one of Turkeys few specific bee variety cultivar zones and a bee forest as defined by related government ministries. The area is also home to a number of important crops including lavender, sage, thyme, almonds and olives, medicinal and aromatic plants, a host of small-scale family farms as well as tourism businesses which would be adversely affected by the proposed mines. Debate at the meeting focused on why the proposed mines would be detrimental to the area, methods which could be used to raise awareness of the plans and how locals can object. Due to Government restrictions it is not possible to arrange physical protests but, should it prove necessary, there will be an opportunity to sign a petition, details of which will be announced in due course. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials raided its own headquarters in New Delhi on Wednesday to conduct searches at premises linked to some of its own officials, who allegedly accepted bribes from accused in bank fraud cases. The CBI's anti-corruption unit has also filed a case against its four officials -- RK Rishi, a DSP (deputy superintendent of police) rank officer posted at CBI Academy in Ghaziabad, DSP RK Sangwan, and two officials from BSFC (Banking Security & Fraud Cell), inspector Kapil Dhankad and steno Sameer Kumar Singh. Apart from these officials, some advocates and unidentified persons have also been accused of "compromising the investigation of certain cases". "Searches were conducted at 14 locations including Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Gurgaon, Meerut and Kanpur at the premises of the accused," said CBI Spokesperson RC Joshi, reported India Today, adding that some officials might have accepted bribes at the CBI premises itself. The agency sleuths also conducted searches at CBI Academy in Ghaziabad, where candidates are trained before the beginning of their official CBI career. It has been learnt that the accused officials took bribes to show leniency to companies booked in the fraud cases involving Mumbai and UP-based entities. These companies have allegedly defrauded banks of thousands of crores. Also read: What ails the CBI? It's much more than political intervention Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. The Australian government has thrown Google under the bus after the search engine behemoth admitting that it has blocked local Australian sites from its homepage. Many news outlets believe it's a show of "extraordinary power." Earlier this week, Google ran an "experiment" to measure the "impacts of news business and Google Search on each other." It will reach about 1% of users in Australia and end by early February. As the BBC reported, the government has been fighting over the tech giant's plans and attempting to impose a code on Google and Facebook that would force them to pay a fair price for displaying local Aussie content. "The digital giants should focus on paying for original content, not blocking it. That's my message to those digital giants," Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told the BBC. Read also: Elon Musk's Space X Plan to Mars Generates Comparisons to Video Games' The Outer Worlds' and 'Red Faction.' Google Response Although Google did admit that the company has been inducting the new experiment, the tech giant vehemently refuses to answer questions about removing Aussie sites from search results. Even worse, affected users were never informed of the change at all, although they may still work around it by browsing in incognito mode in Google Chrome. Google denied providing a detailed list of the news outlets affected. Still, reports include the ABC, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC, the Guardian, and the Australian Financial Review in a laundry-list of affected media outlets. "At the same time, Google are now demonstrating how easily they can make Australian news providers who fall out of their favour effectively disappear from the internet - a chilling illustration of their extraordinary market power," Nina, the publisher of the Australian Financial Review, the Age, and the Sydney Morning Herald, says in a statement. Unfortunately, there are no more updates if Google only runs the experiment solely after the Australian government implemented the news media bargaining code, or if there are any more trials planned, or if Google did inform the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission of its plan. What Can Users Do? If users still want Australian websites to reveal on their homepage, they may have to browse from private browsers. The best options to have are the incognito mode in either Google Chrome, Safari, or Mozilla Firefox, although other browsers also work just fine. Another go-to option is to browse the internet using a VPN (Virtual Private Network). It prevents unauthorized people from interfering with the traffic and letting users browse from anywhere in the world, and it's not illegal. There are many options to have, from the free one to the premium one. Plus, the experiment will only affect 1% of Australian users, and it's only come to effect until early February 2021. Related post: Parler Banned: Amazon Drops Support Following Google and Apple, What Can Users Do?. The left has redefined language, what is said and what it means -- words now mean what they say they mean, nothing more and nothing less. Silence can become violence. Actual violence and destruction can sometimes be mostly peaceful at other times, insurrection or sedition. Control the meaning of things and you control the narrative -- control the narrative and you control communication. Through the control of communication, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, they hope to control America and Americans. That is why Democrats perceive Trump as dangerous; he has used Twitter brilliantly, negating their narrative control. They spent four years trying to destroy him with lies. Yet, our leftist elites were doomed by their incompetence and a misunderstanding of why people elected Trump in the first place. The Capitol Hill riots terrified the left because they occurred as Democrats were on the threshold of supposed triumph over an insipid electorate they thought too impotent to fight back. They hate Americans and have so little respect for us they made no effort to hide the steal. To Democrats, the storming of Capitol Hill on January 6th was their worst nightmare, plumbing the depths of their deepest insecurities and fears -- it showed them their grip on the reins of power was tenuous at best and illusory at worst. When they saw those people in the Capitol building, not one Democrat thought to try and engage them. Too afraid, they turned tail and ran from the despised unwashed. In all things, the left is motivated by hate. The Democratic Party is an organization of hate. Blinded by animosity for America and a visceral loathing for Americans, they saw COVID and the Floyd riots as strokes of luck in their battle to control We the People. Conversely, they saw the Capitol Hill storming as 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, a tragedy. Even more ghastly, they also knew it was not just Trump supporters. Antifa infiltrators, such as the man with the backpack and black hat who bullied the officer and broke the window with the tool hidden in his hand just before Ashli Babbitt was shot, helped turn a mostly peaceful protest into a riot. Afraid of the people and no longer in control of their own paramilitary, they ran. Yet when their fear dissipated, they realized the riot could be providential. Here were the right-wing riots they had been yearning for these past decades, but which had always eluded them. They created a crisis they would not waste. Democrats and their partners in media, Big Tech, and Big Finance purged Trump from the public square. Exercising their millenarian instincts to change the world, they intend to use emergency powers to declare war on more than half the country. Yet, they always overreach. They stole an election but seem to have deluded themselves into believing they are winners. They think they can abolish America and we will do nothing. The reason they trumpet Capitol Hill, calling it an insurrection while threatening everyone involved with capital murder, is that they are frightened of the conservative movement. They believe they run the country, but they are out of touch with anyone but their own base. It is the same with Trump; they want to ruin him because he scares the Schiff out of them, knowing if he runs in 2024, he is the favorite. To stymie his candidacy, they are impeaching Trump again. And they are determined to make us pay as well. Anyone who disagrees with them on any policy must be destroyed. Anyone who supported Trump must be ostracized and not merely silenced, but also lose jobs and careers. January 6th allowed Biden to label all doubt of his electoral conquest, the big lie. His solution, of course, is always the lefts solution, a thousand little lies. He says he wants unity. But Biden and his ilk define unity the same way Barry and his minions defined bipartisanship. Both are offers of grace to political opponents who do as they are told. We have seen this movie before; it did not work for Obama and it will not work for chiliastic Joe. Biden is a despicable human being, a pederast, corrupt as hell, not too bright, even before the onset of his aphasic dementia. He will show the world exactly who he is, and it is a good bet he will do so sooner rather than later. He must, because just as with the scorpion, it is his nature. Cancel culture once belonged to the too woke. Now a tool of Left Inc. a motley agglomeration of Democrats, media, Big Tech, and Big Finance, they will wield that weapon with brutality -- all while gaining power and amassing enormous wealth. Democrats once hid who they were. Now, the mask has dropped. They want us to know who they are -- they want us to be afraid. They are making lists and checking them twice. They want us to know they are coming for us. And none of our rights are sacrosanct. Recently, a tall Boston girl (her description) in commenting on one of my Tweets informed me she had reported me to the FBI for the martial content of my articles. I gave her a like. She soon deleted her Tweet. I had wondered why I was getting emails from alt-right sounding sources telling me I should Fight Back Today. Your 2nd Amendment rights allow you to buy a machine gun click here, and telling me I could buy an illegal gun (poison gas, grenades, field mortars, and artillery) online, if I would just click on that button in the email. They were bare-bones emails -- no heading or advertising. This smacks of entrapment to me, but you know the FBI? I felt like George Papadopoulos or Carter Page, with the authorities trying to set me up but doing it in such a clumsy fashion, that no one would (or should) fall for it. Biden should appoint a man in an eyepatch stroking a cat as director. They have completely deplatformed Trump, something I predicted previously. I lost over a thousand followers over a two-day span. It is the drip, drip, drip of the trip to nonexistence. The reason the ayatollah still has his accounts is the Democrats and the ayatollah want the same thing: Death to America. And if they must, they will eliminate as many Americans as they need to in the process. The left is isolated and incompetent. Most Americans do not want what they are selling. So, they will try to use the latest emergency to force their policies on the nation while silencing all who object. To paraphrase Talleyrand, the Democrats, just as the Bourbons, have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. For four years, Trump was able to Tweet, and 50,000 people would show up at an airport in the rain during a pandemic, while Biden could not get 10 people at one time in one place. Trump and his followers are not going away. Parler will be back -- there is too much money involved for them not to be. (It has been reported that they have obtained access to independent servers.) And there are always bootleg coders to make apps that will work on iOS and Android. The Democrats are playing with fire. It is as if they want insurrection. They are foolish. They should look at the electoral map by county. They may control the cities, but the vast landmass that is America is controlled by the people whose rights they seek to abrogate -- and there are many more Americans than Democrats. Who knows, maybe the author can still be followed on Twitter @williamlgensert Image: Pixabay These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. Macaque monkeys living at Uluwatu Temple in Indonesia deliberately steal items from tourists and use them as bargaining chips to get food, a study claims. The unprecedented behaviour was observed by researchers from the University of Lethbridge in Canada. They also noticed older and more experienced primates target high-value items, such as phones, and demand even more food for their loot. Scroll down for video This macaque sits an a perch after thieving a mobile phone at Uluwatu temple. Researchers now believe the animals do this and barter it for food Researchers observed video recordings of the monkeys as visitors approached them at the Hindu holy site between 2015 and 2016. It showed the monkeys would grab an item from a person and wait for a human to offer them food in order to get it back. The monkey would only give the item back after receiving offerings it considered to be sufficient and a fair exchange. Older monkeys, the researchers say, learned what items were of highest value to people and deliberately aimed to obtain them. The scientists say there was a three-stage process which mark a 'successful token-robbing attempt'. Researchers observed video recordings of the monkeys as visitors approached their holy home of Ulwata Temple in Bali (pictured) between 2015 and 2016. It showed monkeys grab an item from a person and wait for a human to offer them food in order to get it back Macaque monkeys living at Uluwatu Temple in Indonesia deliberately steal items from tourists and use them as bargaining chips to get food, a study claims The first stage involved holding on to the stolen object and remaining in the area for a potential bartering engagement, most often going to a member of the temple staff who understood the process. Next came the actual process of 'token/reward-bartering' which often involved 'accumulating several food rewards before returning the token'. The third phase is the monkey 'refraining itself from damaging the token and returned it in good condition, because if the token was damaged by the monkey, the bartering interaction may not occur or may be interrupted', the researchers write in their study, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 'Token-robbing and token/reward-bartering are cognitively challenging tasks for the Uluwatu macaques that revealed unprecedented economic decision-making processes,' the authors add. 'This spontaneous, population-specific, prevalent, cross-generational, learned and socially influenced practice may be the first example of a culturally maintained token economy in free-ranging animals.' archives 23 May - 30 May (2) 2 May - 9 May (3) 25 Apr - 2 May (4) 4 Apr - 11 Apr (2) 28 Mar - 4 Apr (4) 28 Feb - 7 Mar (1) 7 Feb - 14 Feb (2) 10 Jan - 17 Jan (2) 27 Dec - 3 Jan (2) 13 Dec - 20 Dec (3) 6 Dec - 13 Dec (1) 29 Nov - 6 Dec (1) 15 Nov - 22 Nov (6) 8 Nov - 15 Nov (1) 25 Oct - 1 Nov (1) 18 Oct - 25 Oct (3) 4 Oct - 11 Oct (1) 27 Sep - 4 Oct (1) 20 Sep - 27 Sep (2) 13 Sep - 20 Sep (4) 6 Sep - 13 Sep (3) 30 Aug - 6 Sep (1) 23 Aug - 30 Aug (1) 16 Aug - 23 Aug (4) 9 Aug - 16 Aug (1) 2 Aug - 9 Aug (3) 26 Jul - 2 Aug (4) 19 Jul - 26 Jul (5) 12 Jul - 19 Jul (2) 5 Jul - 12 Jul (7) 28 Jun - 5 Jul (2) 21 Jun - 28 Jun (7) 14 Jun - 21 Jun (4) 7 Jun - 14 Jun (4) 31 May - 7 Jun (3) 24 May - 31 May (2) 17 May - 24 May (1) 10 May - 17 May (1) 19 Apr - 26 Apr (1) 12 Apr - 19 Apr (1) 15 Mar - 22 Mar (1) 8 Mar - 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In his briefing to the virtual meeting, UN special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths told the Security Council that Yemen was going through dark times following a deadly attack last month on its newly-formed cabinet, and with millions facing potential famine, but emphasized peace is still possible. Griffiths condemned the Dec. 30 attack at the airport in Aden, which targeted the government officials who had just arrived from Saudi Arabia. Dozens of civilians, aid workers and a journalist were also killed. "The attack cast a dark shadow over what should have been a moment of hope in the efforts to achieve peace in Yemen. The formation of the cabinet and its return to Aden was a major milestone for the Riyadh Agreement and for the stability of state institutions, the economy, and the peace process," he said. "The government has launched an investigation into the Aden attack and has made its conclusions public earlier today that Ansar Allah was behind the attack." For more than five years, Yemen has been mired in conflict between the internationally-recognized government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and Houthi rebels. On Sunday, the United States announced that it will designate the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under domestic law. Griffiths expressed serious concern over this prospect. "I am extremely concerned about the impact of the decision from the United States to designate Ansar Allah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization," he said. "We fear that there will be inevitably a chilling effect on my efforts to bring the parties together. We all hope to have absolute clarity on far-reaching exemptions to be able to carry out our duties. In any event, I remain committed to engage with all parties, including Ansar Allah, designated or not, to end the conflict in Yemen," said the envoy. UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock also expressed his concern over the famine prospect and the impact of the U.S. decision on it. "The most urgent priority in Yemen right now is to prevent a massive famine," said Lowcock. "The data show that 16 million people will go hungry this year. Already, about 50,000 people are essentially starving to death in what is essentially a small famine. Another 5 million are just one step behind them," he added. Lowcock called for the FTO designation to be reversed, outlining its potential impact on aid relief in a country that overwhelmingly relies on food imports. He explained that humanitarian agencies provide food vouchers or cash to needy Yemenis so they can shop at markets. "Aid agencies cannot, they simply cannot, replace the commercial import system," he stressed. "What this means is that what the commercial importers do is the single biggest determinant of life and death in Yemen." Lowcock reported that Yemenis are already rushing to markets to stockpile food, while commercial traders fear the designation will affect their operations. "Some suppliers, banks, insurers and shippers are ringing up their Yemeni partners and saying they now plan to walk away from Yemen altogether," he said. "They say the risks are too high. They fear being accidentally or otherwise caught up in U.S. regulatory action which would put them out of business or into jail." Although the United States plans to introduce licenses so that some aid and imports can continue, the relief chief said further details will not be available until Jan. 19, the day the designation takes force. David Beasley, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), which was last year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, gave a blunt assessment of the prospects, putting aside his prepared remarks to speak "heart-to-heart." "We are struggling now without the designation. With the designation, it's going to be catastrophic. It literally is going to be a death sentence to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people in Yemen," said Beasley. Beasley, an American, also removed his "UN hat" for a moment, to speak about his engagement with Washington, which allocated 3.75 billion U.S. dollars to WFP last year. "I'm very grateful for that," he said. "But this designation, it needs to be re-assessed, it needs to be re-evaluated, and, quite frankly, it needs to be reversed." Beasley added that Yemen is among several countries facing famine, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these crises. The WFP chief called for Gulf states "to pick up the humanitarian financial tab for this problem in Yemen," and urged the Security Council and world leaders to apply pressure on the warring parties to end their fighting. "I can assure you that Mark Lowcock and I will be before you pretty soon talking about other countries," he said. "And if we can't solve this one - this is man-made completely - shame on us." Enditem Photo: The Canadian Press International heath-care student Yugyel Tenzin Pooria Behrouzy was honoured to be offered a full-time job as a COVID-19 vaccine support worker at Trillium Health Partners last month. The international student in health informatics at George Brown College was already on staff at the Mississauga, Ont., hospital network after working on an IT project, and he was eager to contribute to the rollout of the vaccine thats brought hope during the pandemics increasingly grim second wave. But a roadblock stopped Behrouzy from accepting the full-time shifts offered: as an international student, he can only work a maximum of 20 hours per week while classes are in session or he risks losing his study permit and legal status in Canada. Behrouzy, who is now working part time at the hospital, said its disappointing that he cant contribute fully. I can work and I can help against this COVID ... why (am I) not able to do that? said the 42-year-old, who is from Iran. It's very sad that I'm not fully available. His colleague Passang Yugyel Tenzin had a similar experience. Tenzin, a 26-year-old graduate of health informatics currently studying in another IT program, was working on the same project at the hospital as Behrouzy before he received an offer to work on the vaccine support team as well. The non-medical role involves providing scheduling support to ensure all available doses are administered and other administrative tasks that keep the process running smoothly. Tenzin, who is from Bhutan, signed on for the job in a part-time capacity but noted that the 20-hour limit would make scheduling 12-hour shifts a challenge. Working full time would be beneficial for his own education and for the health-care system that's struggling to keep up with skyrocketing COVID-19 infections, vaccinations and other important services, he said. We can learn more and on top of that, we can contribute more to this situation currently, because they actually need a lot of people, Tenzin said in a phone interview. We can contribute a lot if we were given the opportunity to work full time. Ottawa temporarily lifted the restriction on international students work hours last April, saying the change was aimed at easing the staffing crunch in health care and other essential workplaces. The measure expired on Aug. 31, 2020, and has not been reinstated. The press secretary for the office of the federal immigration minister said the government is grateful for the role newcomers have played in Canada's pandemic response. "As more students returned to regular studies in the fall of 2020, the work hour restriction was reinstated at the request of provinces, territories and educational institutions, due to concerns about students working full time while also completing a full course load," Alexander Cohen said in a statement. Behrouzy said he doesn't understand why the limit on work hours was reinstated while the pandemic is still ongoing and hospitals need more support than ever. I'm available to work and all the schools, the universities and colleges are remote now, so why not extend this exception again? he said. Its really disappointing. MYRTLE BEACH Nakato's Japanese Restaurant, a popular spot on Restaurant Row for more than 40 years, announced recently that it is working to reopen as early as March after a 2019 blaze caused it to close. Nakato's, a family-owned Japanese restaurant, recently updated its voicemail message that it plans to reopen in March. A message with Nakato's had not been returned as of Friday morning. It's been more than a year since Nakato's posted the following Facebook message: "Nakato will remain closed until we can make the necessary repairs within our building," according to the post. "We would like convey a big 'Thank you' to everyone that has reached out to us to inquire on when we reopen! Please continue to follow us on Facebook and we will update as soon as we have information available. We truly miss all of our guests and hope to see you soon." Nakato's has been closed since a fire damaged the building in November 2019. Nakato's has locations in the Atlanta area, Charlotte and Springfield, Mo. The Trump administration has designated Xiaomi as a Communist Chinese military company which would qualify it to be one of the blacklisted companies under the Trump Administrations Executive Order from November that bars American securities and investment companies from putting capital resources on investments that fund Communist Chinese military companies. That executive order stated that the PRC exploits United States investors to finance the development and modernization of its military, by selling securities to US investors that trade on public stock exchanges both in the US and overseas. By designating Xiaomi as one of these military companies, which also happens to be the number 3 smartphone maker in the world, the Administration hopes to get US companies to divest in Xiaomi by November 2021. Xiaomi doesnt seem to belong on this list with other industrial, aerospace, and chemical, and telecommunications companies among others. Huawei is on this list, but thats probably because Huawei builds telecom infrastructure on massive scale. With less than a week left before the Biden Administration takes over, there is a possibility of the order being overturned. We wonder if tension between the US and China will be relieved at all by the new Administration and if well ever get to see Chinese phone makers finally make a splash in the US market saturated by Samsung and Apple. Source Via At first, it seemed that people would come out to the streets after two or three rallies because what happened was insulting for all us Armenians, and the authorities would resign, but this wasnt the case. So, we have to work harder. This is what candidate of the opposition Homeland Salvation Movement of Armenia for Prime Minister Vazgen Manukyan told reporters before the meeting with citizens of Gyumri today. Touching upon the fact that citizens had stood in front of the opposition members car and were declaring that they werent going to let Vazgen Manukyan enter Gyumri and were chanting Vazgen Traitor, Manukyan said the following: Yes, the road is closed, our cars are there, but I passed. The My Step faction of the National Assembly had distributed money to those citizens, and they did what they did. They are bums who were paid money. Today a group of citizens stood in front of the cars of Vazgen Manukyan and the escorting cars and didnt let them enter Gyumri. The video posted on Facebook shows them chanting Vazgen Traitor and Nikol Prime Minister. ANSONIA Police released a digitally-aged image of Vanessa Morales, the toddler who has been missing for more than a year. Morales, who would now be nearly 2 1/2, went missing Dec. 2 2019. On that day, police said they found her 43-year-old mother, Christine Holloway, beaten to death in her Ansonia home during a welfare check. Police named Morales father, Jose Morales, as a suspect in Holloways killing and later charged him with murder and tampering with evidence in February 2020. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and is due back in court next week, court records show. In a statement Friday, Ansonia police Lt. Patrick Lynch said the childs image was being released with the assistance of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Ansonia police are asking anyone with information to contact 203-735-1885 or to leave a tip anonymously through TIP 411. Earlier this week, Ansonia police said a toddler found wandering an apartment complex in California turned out not to be Morales. Police had received information Monday regarding a child found wandering around an apartment complex in San Diego, Lynch said Tuesday. Photos of the child posted by the media and local authorities appeared to resemble Morales, he said. Authorities are still searching for Morales, who turned 2 in September. [January 15, 2021] ALYI Announces ReVolt Electric Motorcycle Pre-Order Sell Out DALLAS, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alternet Systems, Inc. (USOTC: ALYI), an electric vehicle innovation company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, today announced all available pre-order slots for the first 200 Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycles have been taken. The company indicated the pre-order form on the company website remains open at this time for people to get on a waitlist in the event an opening in the first 200 pre-orders comes up, or to be notified when more Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycles are available. https://www.revoltmotorbikes.com/preorder-1 The ALYI Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycle is built on a BMW R71 clone frame. The Retro ReVolt has been designed for ALYI by MODUS. The exclusive first 200 Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycles will come with a plate bearing the MODUS signature and the number of the bike. Go to the following link to get on the pre-order wait lst: https://www.revoltmotorbikes.com/preorder-1 Your place on the list will be emailed to you within one week. Within the next thirty days, those on the pre-order list will be required to make a $500 initial payment. When the Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycle goes into production, a $6,000 deposit will be required. When the Retro ReVolt Electric Motorcycle is ready to ship, a final payment of $6,000 will be required. To learn more about the Retro Revolt Electric Motorcycle built on a clone BMW R71 frame, visit www.revoltmotorbikes.com. For more information and to stay up to date on ALYI's overall latest developments, please visit www.alternetsystemsinc.com. Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1421505/ALYI_ReVolt_Electric_Motorcycle.jpg Alternet Systems, Inc. Contact: Randell Torno info@lithiumip.com +1-800-713-0297 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alyi-announces-revolt-electric-motorcycle-pre-order-sell-out-301209445.html SOURCE Alternet Systems, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] I totally agree with their opinion that no single citizen or single state has the right to interfere in the way another state conducts elections. However, I truly believe they ignored several important facts. Approximately 17 other states wanted to join in the lawsuit. Nearly 1,000 citizens had filed signed statements, signed under oath subject to perjury, claiming various observations of fraud and cheating. These 18 states represent a large percentage of the more than 74 million citizens who voted for Trump. Recently Dacia took the wraps off its Bigster concept car and its a preview for what is expected to be the next generation Duster but this time around in a possible three-row configuration. Dacia has not revealed any official details of the car apart from the images and the fact that it is 4.6-metres, a full 300mm more than the current generation car. Whats the meaning of this car for us in India? As the companys literature suggests, its a foray for the brand into the European C-segment market which is the D-segment in India market, a place where Renault currently doesnt have a presence. This three-row SUV in production guise will be a rival for the likes of the Mahindra XUV500 , Tata Safari and even a three-row version of the Jeep Compass . You can see the unmistakable lines of the Duster lineage whichever way you look at the car. Its most evident in the profile view thanks to large wheel arches, alloy wheel design as well as the roofline. Of particular notice is the face which has these LED lights and a curved X like logo in the middle which hints at a future Dacia logo. Renault Duster 9.72 Lakh Onwards Renault | renault duster | Duster John Earle Sullivan, 26, has been arrested over his alleged role in the siege of the Capitol last Wednesday A left-wing activist who told CNN he went inside the Capitol Building during last Wednesday's siege merely to document the chaos has now been arrested by police. According to the Department of Justice, John Earle Sullivan, 26, was not simply a passive observer inside the Capitol, after video emerged purportedly showing him encouraging the rioters. Black Lives Matter protester Sullivan, who is based in Utah, was charged Thursday with one count of knowingly entering a restricted building, one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and one count of interfering with law enforcement. According to a release by the DOJ, Sullivan, 'wearing a ballistics vest and gas mask, entered the U.S. Capitol through a window that had been broken out, pushing past U.S. Capitol Police once inside'. He filmed multiple videos of the event, before posting them to YouTube under his username 'Jayden X'. In one of the clips, he is seemingly heard encouraging other rioters as they enter the building. Sullivan filmed multiple videos of the event, before posting them to YouTube under his username 'Jayden X' In one of the clips, he is seemingly heard encouraging other rioters as they enter the building While Sullivan remains behind the camera throughout most of the footage, he pans down at the start of the video to show how he is decked out in a ballistic vest for the riot, pictured The FBI alleges that Sullivan is heard saying he smashed the glass pane to the left 'We got to get this s**t burned,' he purportedly states, before adding: 'It's our house motherf*****.' Elsewhere in his recorded clips he says to rioters: 'You guys are f**king savage. Let's go!' 'This s**t is ours! F**k yeah. I can't believe this is reality.' The DOJ further alleges he told rioters: 'We accomplished this s**t ... We are all a part of this history.' The department added that Sullivan admits to 'filming and being depicted in video footage' from the moment Ashli Babbit was shot dead by a Capitol police officer. Included in the affidavit are grabs from a 50-minute-long video from Sullivan's YouTube account in which he shows off the gear he is wearing as he joins the Trump supporters at the rally. Sullivan had voluntarily given the footage to the FBI following an interview on January 7, the day after the riot. He is rarely seen in the video but narrates at certain points and can be heard speaking to others storming the Capitol and interacting with law enforcement. As rioters climbed over the wall, Sullivan is heard saying 'You guys are f*****g savage, let's go!' before offering a person his hand to help him climb up. He then films as he climbs through a broken window into the Capitol building before roaming through the building and telling law enforcement to stand down so they don't get hurt. 'You are putting yourself in harm's way,' he tells them, adding 'the people have spoken' and 'there are too many people, you gotta stand down, the people out there that tried to do that s**t, they got hurt, I saw it, I'm caring about you.' Sullivan is heard in the footage offering a Trump supporter help to climb the wall At another point, he is heard saying he has a knife as he tries to get through a crowd The affidavit shows the gas mask and vest that Sullivan was wearing as he joined the riot During the footage, Sullivan is seen entering an office where he looks out a window at the crowds of Trump supporters swarming outside. 'We did this, we took this s**t,' he states as a banging is heard off camera. As he pans away, the window pane beside him that was previously unbroken is now smashed. 'I broke it, my bad, my apologies,' Sullivan states. 'Well, they already broke a window so, you know. I didn't know I hit it that hard. No one got that on camera.' At a later point, Sullican shouts, 'Hey guys, I have a knife, I have a knife, let me up,' as he joins a group of rioters trying to break glass windows to get through another door and get further into the building. The video provided to the FBI also includes the moment that Babbitt was shot as Sullivan stood beside her. 'There's a gun, there's a gun, there's a gun,' Sullivan had shouted moments before as the rioters broke through the windows. The affidavit lists Sullivan's own video as evidence of his crimes At one point, Sullivan enters an office where he is heard praising other rioters Sullivan films as he climbed through the smashed window of the U.S. Capitol 'Shots fired,' he shouts again as he zooms in on the fatally injured Babbitt lying on the ground. The shooting occured in an area of the building that Sullivan was not allowed to be in. However, Sullivan painted a far different picture of his time inside the Capitol when he spoke with Anderson Cooper on CNN last week. He appeared on the cable network alongside a documentary filmmaker, with the pair portrayed as passively watching the chaos unfold. Sullivan spoke with Rolling Stone last week saying he was pretending to build rapport with those MAGA supporters who stormed the Capitol. 'I had to relate to these people, and build trust in the short amount of time,' he stated. According to the publication, Sullivan is already facing rioting and criminal mischief charges 'stemming from a Black Lives Matter protest in Utah last year'. He explained himself further in a Q&A posted to his YouTube account on Tuesday. 'For any misconceptions on why I was there in the first place, because I was documenting this event,' he claimed. 'This monumental event in history. If you knew about this s**t, would you not be there as well. Maybe some of you are scared? And that's valid ... but I put myself in that situation all the time and that wahat my job is to do, that's what my livelihood is ... otherwise I'm broke and I have no life. 'I was there just to record and what I do is blend in with the crowd. Blending in is the key to not getting f****d up. Sullivan painted a far different picture of his time inside the Capitol when he spoke with Anderson Cooper on CNN last week, claiming he was only there to document the event 'Yes, they were kinda doing illegal shit,' he added. 'So they were already in a position to do some more illegal s**t by fucking me up ... They already think I'm Antifa which is not true and they think I'm with BLM and while I think black live matter I'm not with the organization. 'I have my own organization, Insurrgence USA.' Sullivan claims the organization is a social justice group that calls itself anti-fascist and protests police brutality. 'Our mission is the unification of our nation because a people united will never be divided,' Insurgence USA's website states. He also spoke about his earlier encounter with the FBI in which he was detained and questioned about his videos from the Capitol after he had given several national TV interviews about what he had witnessed. 'I was not arrested, I was detained,' he said, two days before he would find himself under arrest by federal agents. 'The FBI did show up to my house yesterday and they got the original files of the video. I gave that to them via USB harddrive. 'Either they take my phone or you give them the f*****g footage, that's pretty straight forward ... I have nothing to hide.' Dozens of rioters stormed the Capitol last week (pictured), following a rally held by Trump Sullivan is one of more than 170 people who have now been charged in relation to the siege. He 'claimed to be an activist and journalist that filmed protests and riots' in his interview with the FBI yet admitted 'that he has no press credentials and the investigation has not revealed any connection between Sullivan and any journalistic organizations', his charging documents state. Some pundits have been left dismayed by the seemingly soft charges that have been leveled at some of the alleged rioters. Many have thus far been charged with misdemeanor offenses. However, acting US Attorney Michael Sherwin said his office will increase charges after more evidence is gathered. 'This is only the beginning,' he told reporters on Tuesday. 'The gamut of conduct is mind-blowing. The FBI is working with the US attorney's office. We're looking at significant felony cases tied to sedition and conspiracy. Their marching orders are to build seditious and conspiracy cases. Those have prison terms of up to 20 years,' Sherwin stated. BLACKROCK FRONTIERS INVESTMENT TRUST PLC (LEI: 5493003K5E043LHLO706) All information is at 31 December 2020 and unaudited. Performance at month end with net income reinvested. One month % Three months % One year % Three years % Five years % Since Launch* % Sterling: Share price 10.1 30.3 -5.4 -14.3 45.1 71.4 Net asset value 5.7 25.3 0.1 -8.9 40.5 76.7 Benchmark (NR)** 1.9 10.0 -7.9 -5.9 38.8 50.9 MSCI Frontiers Index (NR) 3.3 5.2 -1.7 -1.0 46.0 59.9 MSCI Emerging Markets Index (NR) 4.8 13.2 14.7 18.4 97.0 68.8 US Dollars: Share price 12.7 37.8 -2.4 -13.2 34.7 50.9 Net asset value 8.2 32.5 3.3 -7.8 30.5 55.3 Benchmark (NR)** 4.4 16.3 -5.0 -4.9 28.7 33.4 MSCI Frontiers Index (NR) 5.7 11.2 1.4 0.0 35.4 40.2 MSCI Emerging Markets Index (NR) 7.4 19.7 18.3 19.7 82.7 48.0 Sources: BlackRock and Standard & Poor's Micropal * 17 December 2010. ** The Company's benchmark changed from MSCI Frontier Markets Index to MSCI Emerging ex Selected Countries + Frontier Markets + Saudi Arabia Index (net total return, USD) effective 1/4/2018. At month end US Dollar Net asset value - capital only: 162.93c Net asset value - cum income: 163.86c Sterling: Net asset value - capital only: 119.20p Net asset value - cum income: 119.88p Share price: 118.50p Total assets (including income): 289.2m Discount to cum-income NAV: 1.2% Gearing: nil Gearing range (as a % of gross assets): 0-20% Net yield*: 4.5% Ordinary shares in issue**: 241,210,518 Ongoing charges***: 1.4% Ongoing charges plus taxation and performance fee: 1.4% *The Company's yield based on dividends announced in the last 12 months as at the date of the release of this announcement is 4.5% and includes the 2020 final dividend of 4.25 cents per share declared on 11 December 2020 with a pay date of 12 February 2021. Also included is the 2020 interim dividend of 2.75 cents per share, announced on 28 May 2020 and paid to shareholders on 26 June 2020. ** Excluding 612,283 ordinary shares held in treasury. ***Calculated as a percentage of average net assets and using expenses, excluding Performance fees and interest costs for the year ended 30 September 2020. Sector Analysis Gross market value as a % of net assets* Country Analysis Gross market value as a % of net assets* Financials 30.8 Indonesia 14.2 Consumer Discretionary 17.7 Saudi Arabia 11.7 Industrials 14.0 Vietnam 8.7 Materials 13.1 Philippines 8.4 Energy 10.0 Egypt 6.5 Real Estate 5.3 Kazakhstan 5.9 Consumer Staples 5.0 Chile 5.5 Utilities 3.4 Greece 5.5 Communication Services 3.0 Thailand 5.1 Health Care 2.4 Malaysia 4.9 Information Technology 2.1 Poland 4.1 ----- Pakistan 3.4 106.8 Qatar 2.9 ----- Turkey 2.4 Short positions -1.1 Romania 2.1 ===== United Arab Emirates 2.1 Panama 2.0 Hungary 1.9 Pan-Emerging Europe 1.8 Ukraine 1.8 Peru 1.7 Pan Africa 1.6 Kenya 1.0 Colombia 0.8 Nigeria 0.4 Czech Republic 0.4 ----- Total 106.8 ----- Short positions -1.1 ===== *reflects gross market exposure from contracts for difference (CFDs). Market Exposure 31.01 2020 % 29.02 2020 % 31.03 2020 % 30.04 2020 % 31.05 2020 % 30.06 2020 % 31.07 2020 % 31.08 2020 % 30.09 2020 % 31.10 2020 % 30.11 2020 % 31.12 2020 % Long 113.0 107.1 106.4 105.9 109.6 109.8 110.3 110.2 107.8 106.9 107.3 107.9 Short 1.1 3.8 2.5 2.6 2.5 1.5 1.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.1 Gross 114.1 110.9 108.9 108.5 112.1 111.3 111.4 110.2 107.8 106.9 107.3 109.0 Net 111.9 103.3 103.9 103.3 107.1 108.3 109.2 110.2 107.8 106.9 107.3 106.8 Ten Largest Investments Company Country of Risk Gross market value as a % of net assets JSC Kaspi Kazakhstan 3.1 Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa Indonesia 3.0 Mobile World Vietnam 2.7 PTT Exploration & Production Public Thailand 2.6 Astra International Indonesia 2.6 Tupras Turkey 2.4 LT Group Philippines 2.4 National Commercial Bank Saudi Arabia 2.3 United International Transport Saudi Arabia 2.3 Quimica Y Minera - ADR Chile 2.3 Commenting on the markets, Sam Vecht and Emily Fletcher, representing the Investment Manager noted: The Company's NAV returned +8.2% versus its benchmark the MSCI Emerging ex Selected Countries + Frontier Markets + Saudi Arabia Index ("Benchmark Index"), which returned +4.4% in December. For reference, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index ended the month +7.4% and the MSCI Frontier Markets Index +5.7% over the same period (all performance figures are on a US Dollar basis with net income reinvested). For the year ending December 2020, the Company's NAV returned +3.3% versus its benchmark the MSCI Emerging ex Selected Countries + Frontier Markets + Saudi Arabia Index ("Benchmark Index"), which returned -5.0% for the year. For reference, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index ended the year +18.3% and the MSCI Frontier Markets Index +1.4% over the same period (all performance figures are on a US Dollar basis with net income reinvested). December was another very strong month for the Company, both in absolute and relative terms. As we have discussed extensively over the past few months, the Company is positioned for a normalizing economic environment and a return of emerging market growth as COVID-19 pressures ease. News flow around the various vaccines, pointing to significantly higher than expected efficacy, has given investors confidence that we can see normalization come through in 2021. On the back of this, we saw strong returns to our positioning, as some of our more cyclical positions rallied strongly. In Kazakhstan, online payment platform Kazpi.kz (+32%) contributed most to the portfolio as the company continued its post IPO rally. Maiden results, reported in November 2020, showed operating trends tracking in line with our expectations and we believe the company is on track to show earnings growth above 50% for the year. Aeon (+29%), a credit card operator in Thailand, was also a strong performer after the company guided for better credit conditions in the kingdom. National Bank of Greece (+52%) contributed strongly after reporting better non-performing loan trends in its Q3 results. The company also benefited from capital going back to European financials and a better environment for dividends returning across Europe. Ferrexpo (+37%), an Iron Ore producer in Ukraine, benefited from the continued tightness in the iron ore market as Vale, the world's second largest producer, failed to meet production expectations in Q4. Chinese steel demand continues to be at record levels. On the other hand, relative detractors came mostly from positions we did not own in countries like Turkey or Colombia. Our positions in the Philippines gave back some of their earlier gains on concerns current shutdowns will be extended following the emergence of more contagious COVID-19 strains in the UK and South Africa. As markets have rallied, we have locked some profits on stocks that have shown very strong performance, such as Aeon in Thailand and Mr DIY in Malaysia. We initiated a new position in Tupras, a Turkish refiner, expecting some recovery in spreads in 2021 on which basis we think valuation is very attractive. However, in aggregate we have traded little, choosing to maintain current portfolio positioning. We continue to be positioned for a strong rebound in global economic activity which we expect to see over the next six months. We believe that the combination of strong liquidity, easy financial conditions and high levels of disposable income is a very powerful mix for earnings growth, a factor that has been scarce in emerging markets for an extended period. Even now, despite the strong bounce, we believe that frontier and small emerging markets contain some of the best valued companies globally with a number of markets still trading significantly below their average 10-year price to book valuations. Sources: 1BlackRock as at 31 December 2020 2MSCI as at 31 December 2020 15 January 2020 ENDS Latest information is available by typing www.blackrock.com/uk/brfi 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 BlackRock's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Deveron Corp. (TSXV: FARM) ("Deveron" or the "Company") a leading agriculture digital services and analytics provider in North America, is pleased to announce that it has granted an aggregate of 1,225,000 options to purchase common shares of the Company exercisable at a price of $0.43 per common share and expiring on January 15, 2024, to officers, directors and employees of the Company. The common shares issuable upon exercise of the options are subject to a four-month hold period from the original date of grant. About Deveron: Deveron is an agriculture technology company that uses data and insights to help farmers and large agriculture enterprises increase yields, reduce costs and improve farm outcomes. The company employs a digital process that leverages data collected on farms across North America to drive unbiased interpretation of production decisions, ultimately recommending how to optimize input use. Our team of agronomists and data scientists build products that recommend ways to manage fertilizer, seed, fungicide and other farm inputs better. Additionally, we have a national network of data technicians that are deployed to collect various types of farm data, from soil to drone, that build a basis of our best in class data layers. Our focus is the US and Canada where 1 billion acres of farmland are actively farmed annually. For more information and to join our community, please visit www.deveronuas.com/register or reach us on Twitter @DeveronUAS or @MyVeritas_HQ. David MacMillan President & CEO Deveron Corp. 416-367-4571 ext. 221 dmacmillan@deveronuas.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. This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of that phrase under Canadian securities laws. Without limitation, statements regarding future plans and objectives of the Company are forward looking statements that involve various degrees of risk. Forward-looking statements reflect management's current views with respect to possible future events and conditions and, by their nature, are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific to the Company. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. The following are important factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements: changes in the world-wide price of agricultural commodities, general market conditions, risks inherent in agriculture, the uncertainty of future profitability and the uncertainty of access to additional capital. Additional information regarding the material factors and assumptions that were applied in making these forward looking statements as well as the various risks and uncertainties we face are described in greater detail in the "Risk Factors" section of our annual and interim Management's Discussion and Analysis of our financial results and other continuous disclosure documents and financial statements we file with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedar.com. The Company undertakes no obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. The Company relies on litigation protection for forward looking statements. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72187 According to the International Trade Centre (ITC), the trade value of polymers of ethylene or polyethylene in its primary form was estimated to be $85.30 billion in 2018, and it witnessed year on year growth of 11%. This increase is attributed to the diverse applications of polyethylene in a gamut of industries including packaging, consumer goods, and others. The polyethylene market, whose size was evaluated to be $174 billion in 2018, is poised to observe growth at a steady CAGR of 3.9% during the forecast period 2019-2025. The APAC region had the greatest share of the polyethylene market with 43%, in 2018. This is majorly attributable to the fact that in 2018, China and Malaysia observed year on year growth in polyethylene imports at rates of 22% and 33% respectively. Despite the problem of plastic (including polyethylene) waste in Indonesia, the country imported $1.8m worth of polyethylene in 2018 which was a 24% increase in imports as compared to 2017, according to ITC. Growth in imports to China is because of consistent demand from the countrys booming consumer electronics industry. On the other hand, Malaysia and Indonesia packaging industry were found to favor the polyethylene marketplace, and that has contributed to APACs dominance in the polyethylene market. Request Sample Even though import of polyethylene has witnessed a decline, the Indian polyethylene market is projected to observe growth, with demand estimated to catapult at a rate of 129% through to 2023, which will translate to 8.2 million metric tons by the end of 2023, according to Plastivision India. India will make a significant contribution to the APAC polyethylene market revenue during the forecast period. Polyethylene Market Outlook: Polyethylene or polythene is the most common plastic which is used as polyethylene foam, polyethylene sheet, and polyethylene fabric across industries. Polyethylene in cosmetics is also a significant application segment in the polyethylene market. The key application of polythene is in the packaging industry, which is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.6% through to 2025. This can be attributed to the increasing application of polythene in the flexible packaging industry. According to the Flexible Packaging Association (FPA), the industry is poised to grow at a CAGR of 11% through to 2021 due to properties such as being affordable and lightweight, coupled with growth in the packaged foods segment. Subsequently, the polyethylene market is expected to gain traction from growth of the flexible packaging industry. Inquiry Before Buying Polyethylene Market Growth Drivers: The Demand Influx from the Construction Industry Construction industry is a major consumer of polyethylene which is used in the form of sheets, plates, films, foils, and strips that offer plastic protection to floors. These polyethylene products observed trade worth $16.23 billion in 2018, according to ITC. Furthermore, polyethylene is also used in pipes and fittings which form an integral part of construction activities. The construction industry is poised to witness growth in the future in order to fulfill the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations (UN). The industry already had a significant GDP of 25.39% in 2016, according to the World Bank. As the GDP will increase in the future due to the increasing construction activities and infrastructure development, the polyethylene market will observe an augmented traction from the construction industry. The Consumer Goods Sector Creating Opportunities in the Polyethylene Market Consumer goods such as bowls, buckets, water bottles, drums, dustbins and plumbing pipes, are a few polyethylene products utilized on a daily basis. Increased sales of consumer goods offer opportunities to vendors in the polyethylene market. Schedule a Call Jakarta, Jan 15 : Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) has extended the search for victims of last week's Sriwijaya Air plane crash as well as the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and other materials for another three days, a top official said here on Friday. "It was decided that the joint search and rescue (SAR) operation to search for Sriwijaya Air victims will be extended for another three days until Monday," Basarnas' chief Bagus Puruhito told reporters. The Boeing 737-500 passenger aircraft with 62 people aboard slammed into the Java Sea on January 9, minutes after take-off from Jakarta en route to Indonesian city of Pontianak in West Kalimantan province. Basarnas' search and rescue mission coordinator Rasman M.S. said on Friday that as many as 130 divers have been deployed to search for the victims and the aircraft' materials. The agency has also deployed 62 ships, 21 sea rider boats and jet skis as well as 13 airplanes. Rasman said that the aerial search is being expanded to coastal areas. As many as 239 body bags containing human remains had been retrieved and 12 victims have been identified after forensic examinations in the police's hospital as of Thursday. The National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) has retrieved data from the flight data recorder (FDR), but the search team is still looking for the aircraft's CVR. "As further reflection of our smart city leadership, our work with Cawamo to customize a COVID-19 monitoring system for City Hall shows how technology is helping to solve modern problems, while also prioritizing privacy," said Brandon Branham, chief technology officer and assistant city manager of Peachtree Corners. "Our highest priority, and the aim of a smart city concept overall, is the safety and security of our residents and we firmly believe this technology will help us maintain important public safety protocols as we work to slow the spread of the virus. Allowing us to instantly convert existing cameras into smart cameras also shows promise for wider deployment across the city, in addition to within workplaces in the near future." Feature rich platform combining artificial intelligence, cloud and edge computing Accuracy: Combined onsite edge and cloud AI technologies work together to generate high-quality, accurate alerts with virtually zero false alerts Universal: System can be installed on any existing camera or DVR/NVR Privacy: Object detection done without facial recognition no personal identifiable information used in COVID-19 monitoring Cost-Savings for City Government: Cawamo offering municipalities free COVID-19 monitoring service with purchase of onsite equipment "As the first cloud-edge video analytics company to develop mask and social distancing detection technology that connects with any existing security camera, we are thrilled to be helping the City of Peachtree Corners keep its citizens safe using the already-installed security cameras around the city," said David Yakov, CEO of Cawamo. "Peachtree Corners is a premier smart city known around the globe for its dedication to the development of emerging smart city technologies, so it was a no-brainer for it to be the first city in the United States to deploy the technology. We are honored to be providing mask and social distancing monitoring for the city and hope we can expand our footprint and help other municipalities, businesses and organizations with the same level of protection." For more information or to schedule a briefing with city leadership, contact [email protected] . About the City of Peachtree Corners, Georgia Situated alongside the Chattahoochee River and at the southwest corner of Gwinnett County in the metro Atlanta area, Peachtree Corners, Georgia is a vibrant municipality that's home to more than 45,000 residents and an innovation hub that houses some of the world's most disruptive technology companies. As the United States' premiere smart city powered by real-world connected infrastructure Peachtree Corners serves as the model for how government and private industry can better collaborate to create a better future for society and business. From the world's first fleet of teleoperated e-scooters deployed, a fully autonomous shuttle utilized by actual residents, a solar roadway to the largest electric vehicle charging hub in the region, Peachtree Corners is where the most future-forward Internet of Things (IoT) and sustainable technologies come to life for the benefit of its people, and the world. For more information, visit http://www.peachtreecornersga.gov . About Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners Curiosity Lab is a 5G-enabled autonomous vehicle and smart city living laboratory located in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta. The centerpiece of the lab is a 1.5-mile test and demo track which provides a real-world environment to explore emerging technologies. Additional infrastructure includes a network operations center, smart poles, DSRC units, dedicated fiber and a 25,000 square foot tech incubator. Additional information can be found at www.curiositylabptc.com . About Cawamo Cawamo (www.Cawamo.com) provides a game-changing, Hybrid Edge & Cloud, Video as a Service (VaaS) Surveillance Solution. A patent-pending AI-based video analytics technology with superb detection capabilities at BEST cost/performance. We connect to ANY camera and any DVR/NVR and generate high-value alerts and virtually zero false alarms! Our shared cloud & local processing adds to our exceptional performance, also designed to work with limited internet or low power resources. An all web-based solution, installed in minutes and so easy to use, addressing numerous security & safety scenarios. Cawamo's team of professionals applies state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligent (AI) and deep machine learning technologies, augmented by our customer support specialists and management that are committed only for excellence. Cawamo is a private company backed by a few investors. SOURCE Peachtree Corners 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. Syracuse, N.Y. Onondaga County officials today provided new details on coronavirus vaccines, including the news that they cannot yet offer shots to people with compromised immunity. Although state officials said Tuesday that people with pre-existing conditions which weakened their immune systems were now eligible for vaccines, they cautioned that federal officials had not said which conditions would qualify. That uncertainty remains. County Executive Ryan McMahon today said that, for now, immunocompromised people will not be included in the newly eligible group known as Phase 1b. The state has clarified that those who are immunocompromised are not yet in 1b,' he said. They will be, but not yet.' State officials said Thursday they are working with the CDC to finalize the definition. Its not clear how long that will take. People from a wide range of occupations now qualify for vaccines, in addition to anyone 65 or older. For the full list, check the state health department vaccine website. The county had administered 10,215 first shots as of Thursday night, with about 1,260 more scheduled Friday. Here are some other tips and updates provided by county officials: Second shots: You should always get your second vaccine dose at the same location you got the first, McMahon said. If your first dose was administered by the county at the War Memorial, you cant register for a second shot until the county emails or calls you with a link. That email should come during the week you are due for the second shot. (People who get vaccines at the state fairgrounds site register for their second shot while on site for their first. County officials said theyre working on a similar set-up but are not ready yet.) Site moves: Starting Monday, the county will provide vaccines at the Oncenter convention center, not the War Memorial. Free parking is available in the Oncenter garage. Looking for slots: Tuesday is the best day to check the county website for Tuesday is the best day to check the county website for vaccine appointments , because thats the day county officials find out how many doses they will have for the week. Available appointments are then posted for Wednesday through Friday. If extra vaccine becomes available, the county schedules more appointments Monday or Tuesday, so its not a bad idea to check back Friday or Monday. The county does not maintain a waiting list. Call 211: Senior citizens who arent comfortable online, or people facing language barriers, can call 211 to schedule vaccine appointments. The county sets aside appointments each week for this purpose. Side effects: Dr. Indu Gupta, county health commissioner, said anyone who experiences side effects from the vaccine is encouraged to report them to the Centers for Disease Control. The easiest way to do that is by smartphone on Dr. Indu Gupta, county health commissioner, said anyone who experiences side effects from the vaccine is encouraged to report them to the Centers for Disease Control. The easiest way to do that is by smartphone on V-safe . Side effects are not uncommon but reporting them helps federal officials monitor the vaccine. Of the 10,000 doses given so far, a few people have reported aches, dizziness and other minor issues, Gupta said. No one has experienced a severe allergic reaction, she said. Do you have a news tip or a story idea? Contact reporter Tim Knauss of syracuse.com/The Post-Standard: email | Twitter | | 315-470-3023 Hours after hinting at problems with the ruling party in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP from Birbhum Satabdi Roy late on Friday evening took a U-turn on her previous statement. Speaking in Kolkata, Satabdi Roy said that she will continue to remain in the TMC and with state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. READ | TMC MP Satabdi Roy hints at problems with party, may take decision on Saturday She added that she has shared her grievances with Abhishek Banerjee, Diamond Harbour MP and nephew of the chief minister. The MP also added that she will not travel to Delhi. "I am not going to Delhi tomorrow (Saturday). I was with TMC and will remain with TMC. All those in the party who have problems should raise them. If 10 people at the party raise a problem, then the party should solve it. I held talks with Abhishek Banerjee today and he addressed the issues raised by me. I am not going to Delhi tomorrow. I am going to remain with TMC," said Roy. #WATCH I am not going to Delhi tomorrow. I was with TMC and will remain with TMC, says TMC MP Satabdi Roy in Kolkata pic.twitter.com/YifUjQ5ekM ANI (@ANI) January 15, 2021 Earlier in an exclusive phone interview to Zee News, the actor-turned-politician claimed that she was not being informed about party events in her constituency. Her comments came amid an ongoing exodus from the TMC. She had also said that she may take a "decision" on Saturday. She also said that she wanted to visit her constituency but her name was removed from the invites and was also not invited for most programmes. "The distance was gradually increasing in the party. It is for the party to find out who are these people for whom I couldnt go to my own constituency," added Roy. The TMC MP said that there is no point in discussing it with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. "Im sure she is aware of what is happening," she added. Roy said that she "there is no harm or anything wrong in meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah". She added, "I am an MP and he is our minister. I havent decided what I am going to do. But will announce my decision tomorrow (Saturday)." She also stated that she can't "disclose where I am right now". News agency PTI quoted her party sources, saying that Roy is having differences with Birbhum district TMC chief Anubrata Mondal. "I have a close connection with this constituency. But recently many people have been asking me why I am missing from several party programmes. I want to tell them that I want to attend all programmes. But I don't get to know about many programmes and if I am not even informed about events in my constituency, then how can I attend. I was mentally pained because of this," as per a Facebook post on Satabdi Roy Fans' Club page read, reported PTI. Roy said she has spent more time with the people of her constituency than her own family in the last 10 years and even her enemies can't discredit her on this account. "So, this year I am trying to take some decisions so that I can spend the entire time with you. I am grateful to you. You have been supporting me since 2009. Hope you will support me in the coming days too," the post read. "If I take any decision, will let you know on January 16, Saturday at 2 pm," it added. When contacted, Roy confirmed that the post was indeed made by her. "I have tried to reach out to the leadership but it has been of no use. If I am not able to work for the masses then what is the use of continuing in the post," she told reporters. Roy had twice given resignation from the Tarapith Unnayan Parishad but those were not accepted, sources close to the MP told PTI. She is presently on her way to New Delhi, they said. When asked whether there are chances of joining the BJP, she refused to reply. Responding to a query whether she will meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Roy said, "There are always chances of meeting people you know but there is no such possibility." Roy was seen with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a roadshow in Bolpur on December 29. She had first contested and won the Birbhum seat on a TMC ticket in 2009. Roy also won from the seat in 2014 and 2019. A senior TMC leader said that the party will speak with Roy. Not just Roy, another senior TMC leader and state minister Rajib Banerjee, who has been maintaining distance with the party, also said in a social media post that he will reveal his next step in a Facebook live on Saturday afternoon. In the biggest single-day exodus from the TMC, political heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, along with 35 party leaders including five MLAs and an MP, joined the BJP during Shah's rally in Medinipur on December 19, setting off a churning as several disgruntled leaders rallied behind him. Since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP bagged 18 seats from the state, 14 legislators of the TMC, four from the Left Front and two from the Congress have joined the saffron party. None of them, however, have resigned from their posts. Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May. Photo: The Canadian Press FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, file photo, President Donald Trump arrives on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, after returning from Texas. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey broke his silence to defend his companys ban of Trump as the right decision, but warned that it could set a dangerous precedent. The ban, he said, revealed Twitters failure to create an open and healthy space for what Dorsey calls the global public conversation. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File) President Donald Trump will leave Washington next Wednesday morning just before President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration to begin his post-presidential life in Florida. Refusing to abide by tradition and participate in the ceremonial transfer of power, Trump will instead hold his own departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before his final flight aboard Air Force One. Officials are considering an elaborate send-off event reminiscent of the receptions he's received during state visits abroad, complete with a red carpet, colour guard, military band and even a 21-gun salute, according to a person familiar with the planning who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement. Trump will become only the fourth president in history to boycott his successor's inauguration. And while he has now committed to a peaceful transition of power after months of trying to delegitimize Biden's victory with baseless allegations of mass voter fraud and spurring on his supporters who stormed the Capitol he has made clear he has no interest in making a show of it. He has not invited the Bidens to the White House for the traditional bread-breaking, nor has he spoken with Biden by phone. Vice-President Mike Pence has spoken with his successor, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, calling her on Thursday to congratulate her and offer assistance, according to two people familiar with the call. Pence will be attending Biden's inauguration, a move Biden has welcomed. While Trump spends the final days of his presidency ensconced in the White House, more isolated than ever as he confronts the fallout from the Capitol riot, staffers are already heading out the door. Many have already departed, including those who resigned after the attack, while others have been busy packing up their offices and moving out personal belongings souvenirs and taxidermy included. On Thursday, chief of staff Mark Meadows wife was caught on camera leaving with a dead, stuffed bird. And trade adviser Peter Navarro, who defended the president's effort to overturn the election, was photographed carrying out a giant photo of a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Staff are allowed to purchase the photographs, said White House spokesman Judd Deere.) Also spotted departing the West Wing: a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Stewart D. McLaurin, the president of the White House Historical Association, said he had reached out to the White House chief usher, who manages the building's artifacts with the White House curator, because of questions raised by the images. Be reminded that staff have items of their own that they brought to the White House and can take those items home as they wish. Some items are on loan to staff and offices from other collections and will be returned to those collections, he said in a statement. Earlier his week, reporters covering the president's departure from the South Lawn spotted staff taking boxes into the residence for packing up the first family's belongings. And on Friday the packing continued, with moving crates and boxes dotting the floor of the office suite where senior press aides work steps from the Oval Office in the West Wing. Walls in the hallways outside that once featured a rotating gallery of enlarged photographs of the president and first lady framed in gold suddenly were bare, with only the hooks that held the picture frames left hanging. Moving trucks pulled in and out of the driveway outside. While some people have been asked to stick around by the incoming administration, the White House has been reduced to a skeleton crew, with more scheduled to depart on Friday. That includes White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Come Monday, the press staff will be down to two. Trump will leave Washington with his future deeply uncertain, two weeks after his supporters sent lawmakers and congressional staffers scrambling for safety as they tried to halt the peaceful transition of power. While Trump was once expected to leave office as the most powerful voice in his party and the leading contender for its 2024 nomination, he has been shunned by much of the party over his response the violence, which left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer. Trump is expected to be joined in Florida by a handful of aides as he mulls his future. Point Reyes National Seashore on Thursday announced the temporary closure of Drakes Beach to protect the areas northern elephant seals during their winter pupping season. The south-facing beach will remain closed as the 4-ton pinnipeds leave the water to rest and mate a period known as hauling out. Visitors are still welcome to watch the scene from the beachs parking lot, park officials said. Male elephant seals began arriving last month to stake out space on the crowded beach. The pregnant females will arrive throughout January to give birth to a single pup or, in rare cases, twin pups. The Drakes Beach colony could swell to more than 600 animals by early February. You can see the full drama of life with the elephant seals, said Carlo Arreglo, a Point Reyes park ranger. There are huge males sparring to establish dominance and pregnant females that give birth to cute pups with huge eyes. The areas elephant seal population has steadily increased since the finned giants returned to Bay Area beaches in the 1970s after an absence of nearly two centuries. The first breeding pair was discovered several years later. A population boom soon followed that expanded the breeding territory to Point Reyes sandiest spots. Over the years, however, sea level rise and storm surges have contributed to the erosion of other beaches, pushing displaced seals onto Drakes Beach, Arreglo said. Elephant seals were hunted relentlessly for their oil and blubber and were thought to be extinct by the late 1800s. But a cluster of the resilient marine mammals survived near Guadalupe Island off Baja California, expanding northward along the coast. As their numbers grew in the latter half of the 20th century, scientists discovered that seals, like songbirds, communicate using different dialects. You can visit Point Reyes this month and hear the marine mammals deep guttural croaks for yourself, but dont get too close. Female elephant seals are known for territorial and sometimes aggressive behavior, especially when it comes to protecting their pups. Seeing a 4,000-pound marine mammal that is 12 to 15 feet long thats pretty cool, Arreglo said. But, he added, We have to keep the seals safe. Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NMishanec Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. Statehouse Reporter Danny Jin is the Eagle's Statehouse reporter. A graduate of Williams College, he previously interned at the Eagle and The Christian Science Monitor. Danny can be reached at djin@berkshireeagle.com or on Twitter at @djinreports. Sorry, no valid subscriptions were found for this Publication. Please select from an option below to start a subscription. SUBSCRIBE TODAY! 24 Hour Access PHILADELPHIA - Our biological or circadian clock synchronizes all our bodily processes to the natural rhythms of light and dark. It's no wonder then that disrupting the clock can wreak havoc on our body. In fact, studies have shown that when circadian rhythms are disturbed through sleep deprivation, jet lag, or shift work, there is an increased incidence of some cancers including prostate cancer, which is the second leading cause of cancer death for men in the U.S. With an urgent need to develop novel therapeutic targets for prostate cancer, researchers at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer - Jefferson Health (SKCC) explored the circadian clock and found an unexpected role for the clock gene CRY-1 in cancer progression. The study was published on January 15th in Nature Communications. "When we analyzed human cancer data, the circadian factor CRY-1 was found to increase in late stage prostate cancers, and is strongly associated with poor outcomes," explains Karen Knudsen, MBA PhD, executive vice president of oncology services for Jefferson Health and enterprise director of SKCC, and senior author of the study. "However, the role CRY-1 in human cancers has not been explored." A common therapy for prostate cancer involves suppressing the male hormone androgen and/or the androgen receptor, as prostate tumors require androgens to develop and progress to advanced disease. With their collaborators in the U.S. and Europe, the researchers found that CRY-1 is induced by the androgen receptor in prostate tumor tissue obtained from patients, thus explaining in part the high levels of CRY-1 observed in human disease. "This was a clear indication of CRY-1's link to prostate cancer," says Ayesha Shafi, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Knudsen's lab and first author of the study. "As we looked further into the role of CRY1, we unexpectedly found that the circadian factor was altering the way that cancer cells repair DNA." Cancer treatments aim to damage the DNA in cancer cells and cause defects in repair mechanisms; eventually the cells self-destruct when the damage is severe. The researchers probed CRY-1's possible role in DNA repair in cultured cells, animal models and tissue harvested from prostate cancer patients. They first induced DNA damage by exposing cancer cells to radiation and found that CRY-1 levels became elevated, indicating that it was responding to this type of damage. They also found that CRY-1 directly regulates the availability of factors essential for the DNA repair process, and alters the means by which cancer cells respond to DNA damage. The findings suggest that CRY-1 may offer a protective effect against damaging therapies. "The fact that CRY-1 is elevated in late-stage prostate cancer may explain why androgen-targeting treatments become ineffective at those later stages," says Dr. Shafi. "It also tells us that if a tumor has high levels of CRY-1, DNA repair targeting treatments may be less effective for them." "Not only have we outlined a role for CRY-1 outside of its canonical function in circadian rhythms, Dr. Shafi's findings are the first to reveal the means by which CRY1 contributes to aggressive disease," adds Dr. Knudsen. "It's notable that the pro-tumor functions of CRY1 may be viable targets to treat prostate cancer, and this is a direction that Dr. Shafi's future work will explore." Looking ahead, the team plans to explore how best to target and block CRY-1 and what other existing therapies may work synergistically to hinder DNA repair in prostate cancer cells. They also plan to study more circadian rhythm genes and determine how circadian disruption may affect cancer treatment. "It's been shown that circadian disruptions can affect efficacy of treatment, but also that aligning treatment with the body's natural rhythms or giving therapy at certain times of the day can be beneficial," explains Dr. Knudsen. "Our findings open up a multitude of important research questions exploring the link between the circadian clock and cancer." ### This work was supported by a Young Investigator Award and Challenge Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation to Dr. Shafi and Dr. Knudsen respectively, NCI grant F99CA212225, NCI R01-CA182569, The KWF Dutch Cancer Society, SKCC Support Grant (5P30CA056036). Drs. Shafi and Knudsen thank lead collaborators and their research groups - Dr. Felix Feng, Dr. Michael Brunner, and Dr. Wilbert Zwart. The authors report no conflict of interest. Article Reference: Ayesha A. Shafi, Chris M. McNair, Jennifer J. McCann, Mohammed Alshalalfa, Anton Shostak, Tesa M. Severson, Yanyun Zhu, Andre Bergman, Nicolas Gordon, Amy C. Mandigo, Saswati N. Chand, Peter Gallagher, Emanuela Dylgjeri, Talya S. Laufer, Irina A. Vasilevskaya, Matthew J. Schiewer, Michael Brunner, Felix Y. Feng, Wilbert Zwart, and Karen E. Knudsen, "The circadian cryptochrome, CRY1, is a pro-tumorigenic factor that rhythmically modulates DNA repair," DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20513-5, Nature Communications, 2020 Media Contact: Karuna Meda, 267-624-4792, karuna.meda@jefferson.edu. Los Angeles, Jan 15 : Hollywood star Chris Evans has dismissed reports claiming that he is returning to Marvel Cinematic Universe as Captain America. Superhero fans got excited when a report by Deadline stated that Evans is eyeing a return as Captain American in a future Marvel project. Soon, the actor seemingly addressed reports that he will soon reprise his role as Captain America. "News to me," he tweeted early on Friday, adding a shrugging emoji. However, he didn't directly mention the reference of his tweet. "Some of the gif responses are priceless... good work, everyone," he wrote in another tweet. The report in Deadline stated that the actor would suit up for at least one upcoming Marvel film, with the potential for a second. The superhero was slated to appear in an upcoming production but would not be the focus of the project. Marvel did not comment on the speculation. Evans first played Steve Roger and his superhero alter ego Captain America in 2011's "Captain America: The First Avenger". He went on to play the role in "The Avengers" (2012), "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" (2014), "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015), "Captain America: Civil War" (2016), and "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018). He put down the shield in "Avengers: Endgame", with fans believing that Evans' character passed on the shield to Falcon (played by Anthony Mackie). -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. On the occasion of Sandalwood superstar Yash's 35th birthday, the makers of KGF: Chapter 2 shared the teaser of the much awaited pan-India film of 2021. The teaser of KGF 2 received a positive response from the masses. Notably, KGF 2 teaser garnered more than 150 million views on YouTube. Despite gaining so much attention, the Yash-starrer has recently landed into trouble for showing some objectionable scenes in the teaser. The Karnataka State Anti-Tobacco Cell and Health Department have objected to visuals showing the Masterpiece actor lighting a cigarette and smoking. The officials of the wing said that since the visuals show smoking, it violated Section 5 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 2003. The departments have requested the makers to delete the teaser from online platforms, as it has shown those visuals without 'disclaimer'. Apart from Anti-Tobacco Cell, Karnataka Health Department also appealed to Yash to remove the problematic scenes from the KGF 2 teaser. After this appeal, let's wait how Yash would react to the government wing's request. Talking about the film, KGF: Chapter 2 is directed by Prashanth Neel. The film also stars Sanjay Dutt, Raveena Tandon, Srinidhi Shetty, Prakash Raj, Anant Nag and others in pivotal roles. The film is expected to release in the first half of 2021 in Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. Also Read : Yash's KGF Chapter 2 Teaser Creates Record; Becomes Most-Liked Teaser In Shortest Span Of Time Also Read : Yash's Fans Go Crazy On His Birthday, With #HappyBirthDayRockyBhai Trending On Top Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 23:39:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SANYA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The team of renowned agronomist Yuan Longping on Friday said they planned to plant saline-alkali soil rice to transform 6.7 million hectares of saline-alkali land in China over the next eight to 10 years. The team led by Yuan, dubbed China's "father of hybrid rice," said they had already signed contracts to reclaim 400,000 hectares of saline-alkali land in China and will strive to plant saline-alkali soil rice on one-sixth of the land this year. The announcement was made at a forum on saline-alkali soil rice held in the city of Sanya, south China's Hainan Province. "In 2020, we made great strides in the breeding, cultivation techniques and soil improvement of saline-alkali tolerant rice. With joint efforts, we will no doubt achieve the goal of turning 100 million mu (6.7 million hectares) of saline-alkali soil into fertile land," the 90-year-old agronomist said in a video message at the forum. Yuan's team successfully developed varieties of saline-alkali tolerant rice in 2017, with the highest average yield of over 800 kg per mu, or 12 tonnes per hectare, recorded in Jiangsu Province last year. Last year, the Qingdao Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center led by Yuan expanded the ambitious program by planting about 6,667 hectares of saline-alkali soil rice in ten bases across the country. Zhu Ming, an academician with the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, said China's promotion of saline-alkali soil rice planting is of great significance to safeguarding food security as the country has large swathes of uncultivated saline-alkali land. China has about 100 million hectares of saline-alkali soil, of which about one-fifth could be ameliorated to arable soil. Despite years of bumper harvests, China is still in need of more arable land, said Mi Tiezhu, vice director of the Qingdao Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center. China now feeds around 20 percent of the world's population with less than 9 percent of the world's arable land. Mi said on average, the output of saline-alkali tolerant rice across all planting areas stood at more than six tonnes per hectare, which is economically viable for farmers. "If the (saline-alkali) land can be used to grow rice and produce grain, it means that some acreage can be set aside for producing other cash crops," said Mi, also a member of Yuan's team. The ambitious program could thus help China reduce its reliance on imports for corn and soybean, Mi said. These efforts to increase food production will also benefit the global food supply and contribute to achieving the UN zero hunger goal, he said. Global grain production and agriculture must make considerable changes in a bid to help eradicate hunger for 925 million people in the world and feed the newly-added population of 2 billion by 2050, said Yang Lin, a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Coalition of Think Tank Networks for the UN's South-South Cooperation. China's saline-alkali soil rice is transforming agricultural production and the large-scale planting across China and around the world has a direct bearing on global sustainable development, Yang said. It is of practical significance and great urgency to promote the planting of saline-alkali soil rice when the food issue is becoming more prominent amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic, said Wang Nan, a researcher with China-Africa Institute. China can strengthen cooperation with Africa as food security there still faces severe challenges, Wang added. Enditem YEREVAN, JANUARY 15, ARMENPRESS. Creating obstacles for the repatriation of the Armenian prisoners of war, issuing a stamp glorifying the ethnic cleansing of Armenians, as well as the consistent threats being voiced by President Aliyev attest to the fact that Azerbaijan is challenging the trust-building efforts of international mediators, ARMENPRESS reports spokesperson of MFA Armenia Anna Naghdalyan said, answering the question of media outlets. Question: The representative of the Foreign Ministry of Russia stated that the Russian side has always supported the implementation of the humanitarian contacts between the Armenian and Azerbaijani societies. Are there any prerequisites for such programs? Answer: We highly commend Russia's efforts aimed at establishing peace and stability in the region. The Armenian side has always supported the humanitarian contacts between the societies of the region, which should be based on mutual respect and tolerance and be aimed at creating mutual trust. Certainly, relevant prerequisites should be established for such programs. The statements of the leadership of Azerbaijan in recent days demonstrate that Azerbaijan is not yet ready for that. Furthermore, creating obstacles for the repatriation of the Armenian prisoners of war, issuing a stamp glorifying the ethnic cleansing of Armenians, as well as the consistent threats being voiced by President Aliyev attest to the fact that Azerbaijan is challenging the trust-building efforts of international mediators. The provocative statements made by the President of Azerbaijan in Shushi, as well as the attempts to present the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Church, which had been targeted during the war, as a war prize and symbol of victory are particularly deplorable. These realities prove that the conflict is still far from being resolved, and the peace process is necessary to establish lasting peace in the region. The Pentagon announced Friday that it has increased the number of National Guard troops authorized for inauguration security to 25,000, even as military officials scramble to find suitable quarters to house Guardsmen flooding into Washington, D.C. "The Defense Department has agreed to provide up to 25,000 service members to support the Presidential Inauguration National Special Security Event ... led by the U.S. Secret Service," according to a National Guard Bureau news release. "The Department of the Army and the National Guard Bureau are working on a sourcing solution now to support this request." Guard members from all 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia are now scheduled to take part in the massive security effort for the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Read Next: Veterans' Caregivers Are Getting COVID-19 Vaccine Priority, VA Says The announcement of the increase comes less than 24 hours after the Pentagon bumped up the Guard authorization from 15,000 to 21,000, highlighting the urgency of the U.S. military's response to the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, which forced lawmakers conducting the official count of Electoral College votes to stop and shelter in place. The emergency deployment has resulted in large numbers of Guard troops occupying spaces in the Capitol and other buildings. Images of troops resting on the marble floors of Congress during breaks from 12-hour guard shifts have caused lawmakers and the public to question whether troops have a proper place to sleep. Lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee sent a letter to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy on Thursday, asking for the service to provide cots for the hundreds of Guard troops detailed to the U.S. Capitol Complex. Under Secretary of the Army James McPherson and Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph Martin assured congressional staff Thursday "that all of the 7,000 National Guard men and women currently in D.C. have appropriate lodging accommodations and that the additional influx of troops for the inauguration will also have appropriate accommodations," a defense official told Military.com. Currently, all 7,000 Guard members in D.C. are staying at local hotels contracted by the city, a National Guard official told Military.com. Local hotels are likely to fill up, so the Pentagon is also considering D.C.'s Walter E. Washington Convention Center as a place to house troops. The center hosts the city's largest gatherings -- including the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting. The Guard is also working with appropriate staff at the Capitol to give soldiers designated rooms for break areas, the defense official said. "Our National Guard soldiers and airmen are set around the city to protect our nation's capital," Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said in the statement. "At the same time, we have thousands around the country, supporting COVID operations, Operation Warp Speed, and a multitude of soldiers and airmen are deployed overseas supporting combat operations. ... I cannot be prouder to be part of this organization." -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Related: Lawmakers Ask Army to Send Cots for National Guard in US Capitol .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Its impossible not to draw comparisons to Lost and The Lord of the Flies and even The Truman Show when watching the ambitious and cutting-edge series The Wilds, a 10-part survivalist soap opera on Amazon Prime Video. A plane flying over the Pacific Ocean crashes, with a diverse group of passengers miraculously surviving and finding themselves stranded on a remote island that looks like paradise but contains dark secrets. We learn the backstories of the survivors in flashbacks to their lives before the crash. Checkmark the Lost box. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Young people stranded on an island attempt to establish some sort of democracy and work together for the common good, but its not long before theyre at one anothers throats. Checkmark The Lord of the Flies box. Something feels not quite right on the island. There are too many convenient developments, as if someone is manipulating events from afar and might even be watching their every move. Checkmark The Truman Show box. Whats so impressive about The Wilds is how creator Sarah Streicher (Daredevil) and the deeply talented young cast members immerse us in this world so quickly and create an almost instant interest and empathy for these eight teenage girls, who on the surface seem to represent various archetypes the Olympic hopeful, the unsocial bookworm, the quick intense lesbian, the Texas pageant princess, etc. but turn out to be so much more than what their Instagram bios say. Filmed on the North Island of New Zealand and on massive sound stages for the nighttime scenes, The Wilds features breathtakingly beautiful settings that would have the girls whipping out their phones and snapping shots every minute were it not for the fact the island feels like a prison. (Also, the few phones that survive the crash die out before anyone can call for help.) The group was on a chartered plane heading to some kind of girl-power, self-esteem-boosting retreat called the Dawn of Eve in Hawaii when the plane hit heavy turbulence and crashed just off an uninhabited island. Turns out each one of these girls had been experiencing some serious trauma back home, and they werent selected for this trip by accident, and Ill leave it at that. The Wilds tells us from the start the girls will get off that island, but at what cost, and for what purpose? In the opening scene, were in an interrogation room, as a condescending investigator (David Sullivan) explains to a traumatized and bruised girl named Leah (Sarah Pidgeon) that the quarantine will be over soon and her parents are on the way. We see quick-cuts of intense scenes on the island as the investigator continues: Just to be clear, our primary goal is to conduct an investigation. Theres a lot of haze surrounding your circumstances that we just want to clarify. Shell soon be able to return to her life, he assures her. What was so fing great about the lives we left behind? Leah asks, and from there we get our first glimpses of the eight survivors, including Olympic high-dive hopeful Rachel (Reign Edwards) and her whip-smart and socially awkward twin sister, Nora (Helena Howard); the tough-talking outcast Dot (Shannon Berry), who is caregiver to her terminally ill father (Greg Byrk); the evangelical optimist Shelby (Mia Healey); the hot-tempered Toni (Erana James); the quiet and sweet Martha (Jenna Clause); and the gorgeous and narcissistic Fatin (Sophia Ali), who packed her thousand-dollar suitcase with makeup and condoms and designer T-shirts. As the survivors embark on the usual stranded-on-an-island rituals rationing the little food and drink they have, searching for fresh water, trying to build a shelter alliances are forged (and broken) and hidden truths emerge. In addition to the engrossing flashback sequences that add so much depth and context to whats happening on the island, were introduced to one Gretchen Klein (Rachel Griffiths), a controversial and slightly mad researcher who is the architect of the Dawn of Eve retreat and has a keen interest in everything that happens to the survivors. Its complicated, and at times its deeply melodramatic and comes close to becoming overwrought, but the writing is strong and the performances are earnest and indelible. The Wilds isnt afraid to take chances. Gretchen actually invokes the word gynotopia to describe a world in which women take their rightful place atop the hierarchy. Robyn Hitchcocks version of The Psychedelic Furs The Ghost in You is featured prominently in one episode that centers on Leahs sexual history with a man nearly twice her age a man who believed 16-year-old Leah when she lied and said she was 18. The girls find the torso of a mannequin and name it Marcus, a la Wilson the volleyball in Castaway. Theres a shark in the water. This is one strange, compelling, provocative and deeply involving impromptu sleepover. Three years after Iraq officially declared victory over the Islamic State (IS), a new batch of over 3,000 of those displaced by the terror group have returned to their homes from Salamiyah camp in Ninevah governorate. The development is part of Iraq's Ministry of Migration and Displacement plan to close this camp and others, the ministry announced Jan. 9. The ministry is planning to close all the displacement camps across Iraq this year. This is the first government to create a comprehensive plan to bring the displaced persons back to their areas of origin, said Minister of Migration and Displacement Ivan Faiek Jabru, one of three female ministers in Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimis government. We accepted the responsibility to seriously implement this strategy, she told Al-Monitor, pointing out that previous ministries had focused only on distributing food rations and providing health services. There were neither voluntary return efforts nor camp closures, and not even support to refugees abroad, she added. Over the past six months, more than 66,600 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned to their homes. Out of 76 displacement camps before the formation of this government, only 29 camps are still open, said Jabru. Still, we increased the food rations to ensure food security and to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Ninevahs Salamiya camp and Anbars Amiriyat Fallujah camp will be shut down within days. We still need time to solve security and tribal problems for Jadaah camp, to the south of Mosul, Jabru noted. As for the Kurdistan Regions camps, we are about to conduct a special visit to coordinate an effort to close 10 camps in the first phase [of closures]." The minister emphasized that no one will be forced to go back home. However, there was a great deal of criticism from IDPs and relief workers that the displaced are being forced to return home or to move to other camps. They also criticize the government for not ensuring necessary safeguards for their return. The government denies the accusations. It is 100% voluntary return, confirmed Jabru. We worked hard to remove the obstacles by creating a suitable environment, reconstructing their houses, providing job opportunities, holding national reconciliation workshops and establishing income-generating projects. After he fled his hometown of al-Qaim on the border with Syria to Turkey in 2014, Omar al-Tai's relatives and neighbors sought refuge in displacement camps inside Iraq. Most of my relatives in al-Qaim and Rummana voluntarily came back to their homes, the 27-year-old teacher told Al-Monitor. Still, some are struggling financially. Their areas are safe now and the camps should be closed. But some want to stay there due to the lack of services, jobs or places to live. Ahmed al-Ghurairi, a representative of the International Rescue Committees protection program who works in western Anbar, criticized the move. Some were forced to leave the camps recently, he told Al-Monitor. Especially the families from al-Qaim. Most of them have neither homes nor jobs; the infrastructure is destroyed and the economy is in a deplorable state. Mustafa, a displaced man who lives and works in Habbaniyah displacement camp and gave a pseudonym for security reasons, told Al-Monitor, About 100 families cannot go back home and might be forced to leave or move to Amiriyat Fallujah camp. Although the Habbaniyah camp was officially declared closed in November 2020, over 200 families still remain since they have nowhere else to go. However, Jabru denied the use of force in returning the displaced to their homes. She told Al-Monitor that if families do not want to return home for any reason, we do not force them at all. She said that if a given camp only has a few families remaining, it may ask them to move to another camp to maintain the quality of service provided to them." The government hopes to ensure the return of all IDPs, some of whom have lived for six years in camps with poor educational and health services, and faced abuse. We implemented sustainable solutions to bring the people back and guarantee their welfare while we continue providing relief for them, Jabru said. We have distributed 300 flats in Maysan governorate, in the southeast of Iraq, for displaced families; restored 1,600 houses in Anbar and Ninevah; built 490 caravans to house displaced families; and built 41 other caravans as makeshift schools in Ninevah and Diyala in the past six months." The ministry has resumed issuing approvals to allow people to return to their hometowns in tense areas like Sinjar and Jurf al-Sakhar, after working to prevent the release of former IS members. "The approvals to return home needed to cross various checkpoints took around 20 days to obtain, Qahtan Shaqqo, a young Yazidi man who returned to Sinjar six months ago from a camp in Dahuk, told Al-Monitor. As of 2019, more than 250,000 Iraqis were awaiting asylum in neighboring countries. Due to the scope of this problem, Jabru has focused the ministrys efforts on helping refugees whose asylum applications were rejected to return home. Over the past three months, 800 citizens have returned from Turkey and Europe, she said. We have granted 379 land plots to some of these refugees along with a repatriation allocation of 4 million Iraqi dinars [$2,740] each to encourage them to come back. Another 13,000 internally displaced families were granted funding of 1.5 million Iraqi dinars ($1,025) each, Jabru noted. Shaqqo and Tai are hoping to obtain these grants, saying some of their acquaintances already have. Most of the people in Ramadi got those grants, said Tai. However, those in the regions to the west of Anbar havent got them yet, including my father. We havent been compensated for the damage done by aerial bombardments on our house and brand-new car. We have lost almost everything. While many IDPs like Fahad Sultan, a Muslim Kurd who returned to his village on the outskirts of Sinjar after six years in Dahuk, hoped to resume normal life, they encountered unemployment, destroyed cities and infrastructure, tribal conflicts and unexploded ordnance. Ghurairi said that IS militants have recently destroyed transmission towers in al-Qaim. Some families live below the poverty line, and families who depend on female breadwinners are prone to exploitation, he explained. The Migration and Displacement Ministry acknowledges these challenges and expresses determination to continue the efforts to resolve these obstacles. We are organizing visits to the Kurdistan Region to facilitate the rapid return of families, Jabru concluded. The same goes for Jurf al-Sakhar, due to the areas unstable security situation and the presence of unexploded ordnance. It is difficult for families to return at the present time. A jailed Vietnamese democracy advocate has been hospitalized in failing health in Nghe An province after reaching the 50-day mark in a hunger strike launched to appeal for a reduction in his prison term, family members say. Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, now serving a 16-year sentence for subversion for writing online articles criticizing Vietnams one-party communist state, was admitted on an emergency basis to the Vietnam-Poland Hospital in Nghe Ans Vinh City, Trans younger brother Tran Huynh Duy Tan told RFA on Thursday. The date of Trans admission to hospital is still unclear, but reports of the hospitalization, previously denied by hospital staff, were confirmed to his family by the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Trans brother said. The U.S. Embassy told my family that the reports circulating that my brother had been urgently hospitalized in Nghe An were correct, Tran Huynh Duy Tan said, adding that reports that his brother was in hospital were also confirmed by family friends in Nghe An. Launched on Nov. 24, 2020, Trans hunger strike had already left him in a severely weakened state, Trans brother told RFA on Monday following a Jan. 9 visit to Tran at Camp No. 6 of Nghe Ans Thanh Chuong detention center. My brothers health was very poor, and he said he had by then reached the 47th day of his hunger strike, Tran Huynh Duy Tan said. Arrested in May 2009 because of his writings online, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc was convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government under Article 79 of Vietnams 1999 Penal Code. He is now calling for the charges against him to be changed to involvement in preparations to commit a crime, an offense calling only for a five-year term of imprisonment under Vietnams revised 2015 Penal Code, and Trans family and lawyers have petitioned authorities several times for his sentence to be reduced in line with the new law. Reached for comment on Thursday, a hospital staff member confirmed Tran had been admitted, saying, Did you ask about a person from the No. 6 detention camp in Nghe An? Yes, he is here now. But ten minutes later, after being called for more details, a staff member denied Tran was there. He was staying at the No. 6 detention camp, not at my hospital, the staff member said. He didnt have any illness, so why should he be hospitalized? An email seeking comment from the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi received a reply stating they had nothing to share, while an email to the German Embassy received no response. Long hours at hard labor An Australian citizen jailed in Vietnam on charges of engaging in terrorism is meanwhile being subjected to long hours at hard labor in prison, Australias ABC news service said on Wednesday, citing information received from a former prison inmate. Chau Van Kham, an ethnic Vietnamese resident of Sydney, Australia, and member of the banned U.S.-based Viet Tan opposition party, was sentenced on Nov. 11, 2019 to a prison term of 12 years, while his colleagues Nguyen Van Vien and Tran Van Quyen were handed terms of 11 and 10 years respectively. Labeled a terrorist group by Vietnam in October 2016, Viet Tan describes itself instead as committed to peaceful, nonviolent struggle to promote democracy in Vietnam. Australias Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has raised Chaus case nine times between January 2019 and June 2020 over humanitarian concerns, but Chaus family and lawyers have criticized the Australian government for what they say has been a lack of urgency in pursuing the case, ABC reported. Rights activists and relatives of political prisoners in Vietnam called this week for sanctions to be imposed under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, a U.S. law, on Vietnamese officials deemed responsible for torture and other abuses in the countrys jails, as criticisms of Hanois repression of critics and dissenters mounts around the world. The call comes as authorities in Hanoi prepare for the Jan. 25 launch of the 13th ruling Communist Party Congress, cited by activists and rights experts as the reason Vietnams already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply in 2020 with the round-up of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook commentators. Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English by Richard Finney. Princess Suriratna and King Suro of the Gaya dynasty as dramatically depicted in the Queen Hur Wedding Road Festival in South Korea. (Picture courtesy Gimhae City Office) History and Diplomacy: 2000 Years Ago a 16-Year-Old Indian Princess Sailed to Korea and Created Dynasties NEW DELHITwo thousand years ago when there was no internet, no social media, and no matrimonial apps for cross-cultural and cross-national alliances, a 16-year-old princess from India sailed to Korea to meet her husband in a journey that changed the course of dynastic history and continues to drive forward the diplomatic and cultural relations of India and South Korea. The marriage of Indian princess Suriratna, known as Hur Hwang-ock to the Koreans and King Kim Suro of the Gaya Kingdom in 48 A.D. started the Karak dynasty to which six million Koreans today historically trace their ancestry. The love between the iconic couple continues to pave the future of diplomacy between the two countries and the cultural connection between the ancient towns of Ayodhya in India and Gimhae City in South Korea from where Hwang-ock and Suro respectively were. President Moons administration is trying to develop the political relations and strategic ties based on this historical partnership, Dr. Sonu Trivedi, Director of Indian Cultural Centre at the Embassy of India in Seoul told The Epoch Times over the phone. So thats why this has been used as a major tool or foreign policy instrument. The Gimhae City Office defines the story of Gimhae and India as a relationship made by heavens and opening to a new future. The Gaya Kingdom stood at the base of Northeast Asia, blossoming in its prosperity as the center of the Ironware Culture and maritime trade. The love story between the founder of Gaya Kingdom, King Suro, the son of the Heavens, and Hur Hwang-ock from the mysterious land of India transcends two thousand years to open a new future for Gimhae, said the Gimhae City Office in a storybook shared with The Epoch Times. Trivedi said the Gimhae clan people tell Indians that they are also from India because their maternal grandparent was from India. That is the strong connection they still believe in, she said. King Kim Suro of the Gaya kingdom and Indian princess Suriratna, know as Hur Hwang-ock to the Koreans. (Pictures courtesy Gimhae City Office) 2000 Years Ago Princess Hwang-ock came from the kingdom of Ayodhya, the origin of which is found in the Great Tang Records on the Western Region by seventh-century Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzhang, said the Gimhae City Office. Ayodhya is a city of antiquity and was on a major pilgrimage and trade route attracting pilgrims and traders from around the world those days and was thus linked with the global land and sea routes, according to Indian historian Mahendra Pathak, an associate professor of ancient history at the Saket College in Ayodhya. Prof. Pathak was working with the late Korean Prof. Sung-Kyun KIM whose research questions on the historical connections between Ayodhya and Gimhae include tracing records about Hwang-ocks brother, Jangyuhwasang who came from Wolji Country, according to the Gimhae City Office. The Wolji country is also called Yuezhi or the Kushans who at the peak of their conquest ruled from present-day Afghanistan to regions in todays Central India. According to a Bactrian and Greek inscription found in Afghanistan, the Kushan territory included Ayodhya which was then called Saketa. It was in Saketa that Buddha Sakyamuni spent a total of fourteen years at various intervals of his life. The Yuezhi were non-Han people who originated from the Gobi desert region of todays China and one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi in the course of history formed the Kushan dynasty of India which was one of the four main global powers at the time when the princess Hwang-ock sailed to meet King Suro, said Pathak. He said the princess would have most likely taken the sea silk route of those days, which was already existing among traders and through which Indian Mahayana Buddhist monks also traveled to Korea later. Princess Hwang-Ocks and King Suros matrimonial process finds its description in Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), written by Il-Yeon that actually described the period of the foundation of ancient Gaya. King Suro in this memorabilia addresses himself as the son of heaven. Samguk yusa says that the princess parents dreamt of the kings of heavens who asked them to send the princess for King Suro, according to the storybook by the Gimhae City Office. I departed on a ship, but the God of the Oceans did not let me pass with his anger. So I returned and embarked with a stone tower on the ship, and could safely arrive here, quotes the Gimhae City Office in its narration of the Princess Hwang-Ocks journey. The mythical stone tower is currently found in the royal tomb of Hwang-Ock in Gimhae. A depiction of the Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), written by Il-Yeon. (Picture Courtesy Gimhae City Office) The Fish Symbols Dr. Trivedi said a few fish symbols have today become reminiscent of the connection between Ayodhya and the Gimhaes ancient ancestrya pair of fish are found at the entrance of royal tomb and gate and they are also in the state emblem of Uttar Pradesh, the Indian state in which Ayodhya lies today. When The Epoch Times visited Ayodhya in early December, it found fish symbols on many traditional architectural buildings and temple entrances at exactly the same location as that seen in the Royal Tomb entrance pictures shared by the Indian Embassy in Seoul. Following his will, the people painted a pair of fish, Pasa Stone Tower, and an elephant statue, the symbol of Ayodhya Kingdom, said the Gimhae City Office in its booklet about the pair of fish painted on King Suros Tomb. Pathak said in all major civilizational literature theres are stories about a massive flood disaster that is indicated with metaphors of fish and boats. Fish as a metaphor in Indian mythology means creation and reincarnation, he said. In the narrow bylanes of Ayodhya, The Epoch Times found a book on Ayodhyas history by three local writers that mention that Ayodhya was called Matsyakar in Sanskrit, meaning the shape of a fish in the ancient Indian epic of Ramayana. Ayodhya is also believed to the birthplace of King Rama whose life story the Ramayan narrates. This however couldnt be verified from other sources. Everywhere around #Ayodhya I found fish motifs adorning the doors. Most locals dont know what they mean. What I found: Ayodhya is also called #mathyakar or of the shape of a fish12 Yojan (144km) long & 3 Yojan (36 km) wide, as mentioned in valmikis Ramayana pic.twitter.com/4L7zGzudWz Venus Upadhayaya (@venusupadhayaya) December 6, 2020 It has been a decade since the Queen passed away. I will also follow the order of the Heavens and join the Queen. We met through the fate of a thousand years and we will reunite in another fate of a thousand years. When I die, put marks of the Queen on my grave, the Gimhae City Office quoted King Suros death wish as narrated in the Samguk yusa. When Hwang-ock arrived in Korea, she was not alone. Along with her arrived her Indian retinue who were later integrated into the kingdoms royalty and started playing a crucial role in the maritime trade between the two nations. Her seven sons went on to follow Jangyuhwasang to study Buddhism while another son was married to Japan, creating the nation of Yamatai, said the Gimhae City Office. Jangyuhwasang is believed to have built one of the oldest temples on the Korean peninsula, the Eunhasa temple on the western side of Sinosan Mountain, meaning a sacred fish. Princess Hwang-ock also brought along with her matrimonial gifts, which included an Arabian horse for the king and tea saplings that produce Janggun tea, one of the best teas that became a part of the Korean culture and her legacy. Kushans were famous for their horses. Kamboj (a border region between todays Afghanistan and Pakistan) produced good quality horses in that period, said Pathak. Fish symbols on the gate of the royal tomb of King Suro of Gaya Kingdom. (Picture courtesy Embassy of India in Seoul) Todays Diplomacy Ayodhya and Gimhae became sister cities over two decades ago and since then both the Indian and South Korean governments have started various commemorative public projects in the sister cities. The diplomatic relations also involve interaction between the current royalty of Ayodhya and Gimhae. I told them I dont have a history of 2000 years. My ancestors history can be traced back to only 250 years. They told me since you are of Ayodhyas royal family, we consider you that, Bimlendra Mohan Pratap Mishra, the current head of Ayodhyas royal family told The Epoch Times in his palace called the Raj Sadan. Mishra was invited to Gimhae and was accorded royal facilitation about two decades ago after which the Republic of Korea sent a monument on Mishras name thats erected at the bank of Ayodhyas historic river, Saryu, he said. Republic of Korea and Indias connection started because of Ayodhya. As part of this two years ago, the first lady of Korea visited Ayodhya as the chief guest at the Deepotsav festival. This has strengthened the camaraderie between India and South Korea in social, cultural, and other aspects, said Mishra. The Gimhae City Office mentioned that the sister city affiliation between Gimhae and Ayodhya was accorded in honor of Mishras visit. In 2017, Gimhae signed a Memorandum of Understanding of Amity and Cooperation with the State of Uttar Pradesh (UP), the center of Indian politics. The relationship with the State of Uttar Pradesh, a grand city of 200 million population, will help Gimhae to enter the Indian market, said the Gimhae City Office. Last week's assault on the Capitol felt personal to Black Americans, who found the violence similar to what they experienced during the civil rights riots of the 1960s, Rep. James Clyburn told Axios. Why it matters: Clyburn said the pitched assault by President Trump's supporters, some of whom have ties to white supremacist movements, has prompted an important question for him and many African Americans: "Are we getting ready to repeat some history that we thought we'd successfully gotten behind us?" The answer is not what some might expect. The South Carolina Democrat said impeaching Trump for helping trigger the mayhem represents a "renewal" for the country after four years of questioning "whether democracy is on the wane" because of the president's unchecked actions. Background: The country's seat of government was targeted by mobs carrying Confederate flags and shouting racist attacks, including some directed at Black U.S. Capitol Police officers. Those acts infuriated Black lawmakers. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said during a Congressional Black Caucus briefing Wednesday that "this president is headed toward a civil war, and we are the object of their hate." During the impeachment remarks on the House floor, freshman Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) called Trump "a white supremacist president who incited a white supremacist insurrection." What they're saying: In a phone call with Axios on Thursday, Clyburn said that even if the Senate doesn't convict him, Trump "has not gotten away with" the charges or the resulting stain on his political legacy. It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Police have confirmed they believe a fire at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association building was started deliberately. PSNI Chief Inspector Gavin Kirkpatrick said police are also treating the incident as a hate crime. He appealed for anyone with information to come forward and said police had begun an investigation into the fire and were working alongside colleagues in the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS). First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill condemned last nights attack. They said: First and foremost our thoughts are with all those across the community who use the centre. The Belfast Multi-Cultural Association is a vital hub for minority communities in the city, and this mindless destruction will have a huge impact on many peoples lives. This was a despicable attack. It not only caused significant damage to what is a well-used community facility, but it also endangered the lives of the firefighters who had to make sure no one was inside the building and battle to extinguish the blaze. We and our Executive colleagues are committed to doing everything we can to eradicate racism and hate crime. It is vital that everyone in our society makes a stand against such hatred and intolerance, and we would appeal to anyone with information about who may have been responsible for this abhorrent attack to contact the PSNI. Located in the south of the city, the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said it was heartbroken and shocked after a devastating fire broke out at its Belfast building. The organisation said it believed the incident was deliberate. It said it had been on the receiving end of "hostility and Islamophobia for years". A spokesperson for the NIFRS said it responded to a well-developed fire at a building on Donegall Pass around 8.30pm on Thursday. The building, a former Presbyterian Church is occupied by the Belfast Multi Cultural Association and was formerly the home of the now closed Water Margin Chinese restaurant. The building was badly damaged but no one was in the building at the time. Expand Close The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Seven pumping appliances and three specialist appliances were deployed to the scene to deal with the incident. Around 50 personnel were at the scene, breathing apparatus, jets and high reach appliances were used to deal with the fire and bring it under control. Appliance and crew members were reduced but were still at the scene as of 11pm to maintain safety. Frank Belfast's Lord Mayor Frank McCoubrey, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, offered his support to all those affected. I was shocked and saddened to hear news of the fire; while it is a blessing that no one was injured, this is a devastating blow for the volunteers who have been using this base to serve their community and others, and provide much-needed support to some of the most vulnerable in our society, he said. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and it is important that the investigation is completed; but it is sad to hear members of the Association speak this morning of ongoing hostility and tensions. As First Citizen, I want to offer them my support. There is no place in society for hate. Belfast is a diverse city and we are much richer for it. Throughout the ongoing pandemic, I have been heartened by the overwhelming sense of community spirit right across our city and I am certain that the people of south Belfast and beyond will unite in their support of Belfast Multi-Cultural Association, and support them as they work to restore the vital services they provide to the local community. A spokesman for the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said he was told early indications suggested the incident was deliberate. He said the building had been subjected to hate attacks in the past. "It is heartbreaking when the whole building is nearly gone. What we are doing here is to help the community," he told the BBC. "If it is deliberate, it is a really shameful act." In a Facebook post, the organisation added: "We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. Expand Close It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press "We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. "Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all." Sinn Fein MLA Deirdre Hargey said she was shocked to learn of the fire and thanked the fire service for its efforts. The cause of the fire had not yet been determined but this will come as a major blow to the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association and to all those who use its services," she said. Im deeply concerned that people at the centre have been the target of hate crime in recent months. There is an onus therefore on the emergency services to investigate if this devastating fire was started deliberately. Im sure the community in south Belfast will rally round and support them in the time ahead to continue their work. The NIFRS spokesperson added that an investigation would be carried out once the fire was totally extinguished and safe for fire crews to enter. Fire at BMCA Peace be upon you all, Unfortunately tonight we have some awful news, after being at the receiving end of a lot of hostility and Islamophobia for quite some time: tonight BMCA is ablaze. We dont have any details about how this has happened, we will share them as soon as we know. Fortunately none of our volunteers were injured. We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all. BMCA team https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/fire-service-called-tackle-blaze-19629400 Posted by Belfast Multi-Cultural Association on Thursday, January 14, 2021 Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan speaks during a teleconference held by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 14, 2021. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu) BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan on Thursday called for persistent efforts in epidemic prevention and control during this winter-spring period to contain the resurgence of infections. Addressing a teleconference held by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council in Beijing, Sun pointed out that China's overall epidemic situation is currently under control, but the prevention and control task remains arduous due to the emerging clusters of COVID-19 infections. Requiring a round-the-clock command system for epidemic prevention and control to reduce the risk of an epidemic rebound, Sun stressed that the top priority should be epidemic control in rural areas. "Rural clinics, private clinics, pharmacies and other medical institutions should report fevers and other suspected cases within two hours," she said, calling for strict control over temple fairs and other folk activities and the suspension of gatherings at religious sites to reduce crowds. 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. Defense Department officials have delayed a meeting on whether to fire the president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, or USUHS, a retired Army two-star general who has led the military medical school for nearly five years. According to a source with knowledge of the proposed dismissal of Dr. Richard Thomas, a meeting scheduled for Jan. 11, during which Thomas was to present his defense, has been delayed until February. An exact date was not provided. Read Next: Army to Review More than 3,500 'Bad Paper' Discharges For Post 9/11 Vets Maryland Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, both Democrats, wrote Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller on Jan. 8 about the issue, urging him to review a decision to fire Thomas, a board-certified medical surgeon and dentist who served as chief medical officer and director of health care operations at the Defense Health Agency before he retired from the Army in 2016. The senators said that DoD officials planned to remove Thomas from office at the Bethesda-based school and research facility effective Jan. 11 for what "appears to be in retribution for his advocacy on behalf of military medicine." The action, the senators said, "raises serious questions about its basis and whether it is retaliatory in nature." News of the case was first published by Politico, which obtained a copy of a notice of proposed removal signed by Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs Thomas McCaffery on Dec. 17. According to Politico, the DoD said the firing was due to Thomas' "poor management of a subordinate," Dr. Arthur Kellermann. Kellermann served as dean of the university's medical school until last year, when he announced his departure for a new position at Virginia Commonwealth University. He had previously faced allegations of distributing personal information about a volunteer adjunct faculty member found to have plagiarized to encourage military medical organizations to rescind the faculty member's membership. Its not clear if these allegations played a role in his departure. According to the report, McCaffery told Thomas he was "advised that Dr. Kellermann's actions could subject the University and the Department to litigation and potential liability, and that Dr. Kellermann's actions were potentially criminal in nature. ... Despite repeated advisements and warnings, you continued to support ... Dr. Kellermann's actions and failed to take any action to mitigate the risk of exposure to litigation and/or liability for the Agency." Advocates, however, say that the dismissal is linked to Thomas' dedication to the university, which has been targeted for budget cuts. Politico reported that Dr. Jonathan Woodson, president of the university's board of regents who served as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs while Thomas was on active duty, wrote Miller late last year to address the issue. "The relationship between Mr. McCaffery and Dr. Thomas has often been one of professional tension as a result of Dr. Thomas' dedication to mission and firm yet always ethical and enlightened defense of the University from those in the budget community who sought its closure," Woodson wrote in a Dec. 31 letter obtained by Politico. "The timing of the proposed actions, the significant inconsistencies in the letter and the draconian punishment proposed make me suspect other personal issues are involved." In 2019, the Defense Department's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, or CAPE, office recommended that the university be scaled back or eliminated as part of an effort to reduce the budget and size of the military health system. CAPE proposed a $90 million reduction in school operations and maintenance between 2021 and 2025 and also a $73.3 million reduction in research -- essentially cutting all basic research -- and eliminating programs such as the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, and the Center for Deployment Psychology. It also recommended a cutting the budget of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress by 70%. The cuts were included in President Donald Trump's fiscal 2021 budget request and made it into the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act, but were not included in the final bill. The plan to downsize or close the school isn't the first time the institution has been targeted for the chopping block: President Bill Clinton's proposed fiscal 1995 budget called for phasing it out. Among the reasons it is often targeted for cuts is the size of its budget and cost per student. According to the Institute of Defense Analyses, the school has a higher accession cost than civilian schools: It takes about $1 million to train, house and feed a military physician at USUHS versus $400,000 for a medical school scholarship. But it also has a higher retention rate. USUHS-trained physicians stay, on average, six years longer in the service, 15.2 years vice 9.2 years. Woodson did not respond to a request for comment from Military.com. Thomas, who has hired legal representation in the case, said he has been advised not to comment while the situation is ongoing. A Pentagon spokeswoman said the department does not comment on personnel matters. -- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime. Related: Military Medical School to Graduate Students Early, Rush to DoD COVID-19 Response Diane Kruger looked absolutely beautiful in a new Instagram selfie with her lookalike mother Maria-Theresa as they enjoyed a stunning sunset on a leisurely hike. As the actress, 44, smiled softly at the camera, her 70-year-old mother stood closely by her side as they savored the last magical moments of the day together. 'Date night with the mama,' the German star captioned the sweet shot, which she shared with her more than 959,000 Instagram followers on Thursday night. Mother daughter time: Diane Kruger looked absolutely beautiful in a new Instagram selfie with her lookalike mom Maria-Theresa as they enjoyed a stunning sunset on a leisurely hike In the snap, she can be seen sporting a green floral blouse and her bright blonde hair slicked back in a low updo. Kruger appeared to be wearing minimal makeup as she bared her flawless skin apart from a few swipes of blush, which highlighted her youthful complexion. After gracing the latest cover of Vogue Greece, she opened up to the outlet about her days as a model in Paris and the pressure to adhere to 'beauty standards of the time.' Open book: After gracing the latest cover of Vogue Greece, she opened up to the outlet about her life as a model in Paris and pressure to adhere to the 'beauty standards of the time' She reflected to the outlet that she made 'many mistakes' in her career, explaining: 'Especially when I was a model, I was influenced by the beauty standards of the time, I ended up weighing very few pounds. But also as an actor, I have participated in films that I would no longer choose.' Her fashion career took off in the mid-1990s amid a trend of razor-thin models like Kate Moss, who were described as 'heroin chic.' Diane, who has acted in English, German and French, dished: 'I think I also went through a period of terrible arrogance. I spoke three languages fluently, I was a model, I had achievements, I was smart, I made a lot of money. All of this, of course, collapsed when my life proved my ignorance of many things.' Model: Her fashion career took off in the mid-1990s amid a trend of razor-thin models like Kate Moss who were described as 'heroin chic' ( seen walking the runway at the Dries Van Noten Ready to Wear Spring/Summer 1997 fashion show during the Paris Fashion Week in 1996 The Inglourious Basterds actress said: 'I lived in the fashion bubble. Around the age of 30, I embarked on an introspection journey and escaped all this hypocrisy.' In 2018, she gave welcomed a baby girl, whose name has yet to be made public, with her boyfriend Norman Reedus. Two weeks ago, she and Reedus rang in the new year with a quiet night at home, complete with funny masks and some champagne. Cheers! Two weeks ago, she and her boyfriend Norman Reedus rang in the new year with a quiet night at home, complete with funny masks and some champagne 'I love you If we survived this year together were in it for the long haul U n Me,' she wrote on Instagram, adding a rabbit emoji. In the snaps, Kruger was wearing a black and white patterned blouse with a colorful, feathered mask covering her eyes as she smiled for the selfie. While sitting side-by-side, Reedus gave her a kiss on the cheek as he embraced her with a silly mask of his own, with a champagne bottle and glasses on their table. Blissful: In 2018, she gave welcomed a baby girl, whose name has yet to be made public, with her boyfriend Norman Reedus Reedus and Kruger both met in 2015 while filming the movie Sky, though they weren't seen as a couple until July 2016, after Kruger had split with Joshua Jackson. The couple will be staying busy in the new year on the acting front, with new film and TV projects as she is set to be part of an action-packed ensemble in the female-driven action movie The 355, which hits theaters January 14, 2022. Meanwhile, Reedus returns as Daryl Dixon in the final season of AMC's The Walking Dead, which will be spread out over the next two years, ending in 2022. India is all set to kick off the COVID-19 vaccination drive from tomorrow. Around 3 lakh healthcare and frontline workers will be inoculated on inaugural day, said V K Paul, member of Niti Aayog. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the nationwide COVID-19 vaccine drive via video conferencing at 10.30 am on Saturday. India approved the emergency authorisation of two vaccines against novel coronavirus Covaxin by Bharat Biotech and Covishield by Serum Institute of India. Earlier, Britain and Argentina had approved the emergency marker use of coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer by volume, joined hands with British-Swedish drugmaker to produce 1 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine. The local version of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine will be known as Covishield. How does this vaccine work? The 'virus-vectored' vaccine uses a weakened version of a chimpanzee common coldvirus that encodes instructions for making proteins from the novel coronavirus to generate an immune response and prevent infection. Compared to the vaccines by United States drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna, Covishield is "logistically feasible for distribution in the country's both urban and rural parts as it can be stored at two to eight degrees celsius." On COVID-19 vaccine efficacy: Two doses of the vaccine, four weeks apart, were originally thought to offer the best protection against COVID-19. The scientists revealed that the Oxford vaccine had an overall efficacy of 70%, but could be around 90% effective when administered as a half dose followed by a full dose a month later. About 3,000 people were given the half dose and then a full dose four weeks later, with data showing 90% were protected. In the larger group, who were given two full doses also four weeks apart, efficacy was 62%. The led AstraZeneca to announce in November a new global trial of the vaccine with the half-dose/full-dose regime. "Covishield is highly effective vaccine against novel coronavirus," Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer, Serum Institute of India earlier mentioned. The company has made 50 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine. Side-effects of Covishield vaccine Side effects that have been reported with the Covishield vaccine include very Common (may affect more than 1 in 10 people); tenderness, pain, warmth, redness, itching, swelling or bruising where the injection is given; generally feeling unwell; feeling tired (fatigue); chills or feeling feverish; headache; feeling sick (nausea); joint pain or muscle ache; common (may affect up to 1 in 10 people); a lump at the injection sit; fever; being sick (vomiting); flu-like symptoms, such as high temperature, sore throat, runny nose, cough and chills; uncommon (may affect up to 1 in 100 people); feeling dizzy; decreased appetite, abdominal pain; enlarged lymph nodes; excessive sweating; itchy skin or rash, Serum Institute of India mentioned. Cost of Covishield The central government on Monday ordered 11 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India, the Pune-based pharmaceutical firm confirmed. The cost of the vaccine to the government would be 200 per vaccine dose for first 100 million doses, the drugmaker noted. The vaccine will be sold on the private market at 1,000 rupees ($13.68) per dose," Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer, Serum Institute of India told in an interview with the Associated Press. However, the Indian government has not allowed any drugmaker to sell COVID-19 vaccines in the private market yet. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Zimbabwes engagement and re-engagement drive continues to bear fruit after the United Kingdom invited local businesses to participate in next weeks Africa Investment Conference along with companies from 35 other African countries. The key investment conference is organised by the UKs Department for International Trade and will be held virtually on January 20 because of Covid-19. The British embassy in Harare yesterday confirmed the invitation of Zimbabwe. Attending will be business across Zimbabwe industry including large and small firms in finance, agriculture, renewable energy and other key sectors, said the embassy. Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Professor Amon Murwira hailed the gesture, saying relations between Zimbabwe and the UK were improving. As you know, Zimbabwe is a friendly country. We believe our relationship with the United Kingdom is very good and it is improving every day. He encouraged the local business community to take part in the international investment conference to unlock opportunities for growth. We believe that it is important in the spirit of His Excellencys foreign policy of Zimbabwe is Open for Business, that we participate in international business conferences so that we get opportunities for Zimbabwe as well as improve our trade ties with our partners in the world, said Minister Murwira. UK Department for International Trades representative for Africa Ms Emma Wade-Smith said the investment conference was meant to bring together UK-African businesses to discuss emerging and relevant themes around doing business in Africa and to connect UK companies to opportunities of today and tomorrow across the continent. She said despite the current global economic context, the UKs ambition to be Africas investment partner of choice had never been stronger, and strengthening investment relationships would be central in recovering from the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Ms Wade-Smith was announced as Her Majestys Trade Commissioner (HMTC) for Africa in June 2018. She has lived and worked in South Africa since 2016, following her appointment as the UKs Trade Director for Southern Africa. She has also worked on international trade at the UKs Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Prior to working on trade and investment, she had a distinguished career as a British diplomat, spanning more than two decades. The Africa Investment conference will explore how inclusive, sustainable and resilient investment can help Africa transition to a cleaner, greener growth trajectory, in particular as it seeks to build back better from Covid-19. The conference will make the case for a strengthened, closer collaboration and partnership between the UK and Africa, highlighting the UK Department for International Trades support that is available to business and driven by the insights of the recently established Africa investors Group. The conference will have a focus around four key sectors of activity and will showcase UK capability and the emerging opportunities across Africa in Sustainable Infrastructure, Renewable Energy, Financial and Professionals Services, Agriculture and Agri-Tech. Last year Zimbabwe ratified an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the UK. Following the end of the transition period, the EPA now allows Zimbabwean exporters to continue to enjoy tariff and quota-free access to the UK market, laying the foundation for a strong trade partnership in the future, said UK Ambassador to Zimbabwe Ms Melanie Robinson after ratification of the agreement. Also speaking after the ratification of the EPA, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister, Dr Sibusiso Moyo said the ratification of the deal was a big step in the countrys re-engagement efforts. This is a huge step for Zimbabwes re-engagement efforts. The signing of this partnership will undoubtedly bring increased trade and investment to Zimbabwe, said Dr Moyo. The EPA with Britain, ratified last October, allows Zimbabwean exporters access to UK markets free of tariffs and quotas and is expected to boost trade and investment between the two countries as Governments re-engagement drive continues to bear fruit. The ratification of the EPA follows the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, meaning it can no longer trade under the Eastern and Southern Africa-EU EPA. Last year, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini, Lesotho and Mozambique signed the same EPA trade deal with the UK. The development comes as the two countries diplomatic ties intensify, which dovetails into President Mnangagwa engagement and re-engagement drive. The total trade in goods and services both exports and imports between Britain and Zimbabwe in the four quarters to end of the second quarter of 2020 was US$412m. Britain voted to leave the EU following a referendum held in June 2016 and has since been negotiating separate trade deals. Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president Mr Henry Ruzvidzo said the UK has been always a major trading partner with Zimbabwe. We are encouraged with the relationship currently taking place. Its really encouraging. Britain has always been a major partner with Zimbabwe, said Mr Ruzvidzo. The Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) chief executive officer Mr Takunda Mugaga welcomed the development but bemoaned the sanctions against Zimbabwe which he said were a major drawback to Zimbabwes investment opportunities. Of course its a great platform. Unfortunately, the divide and rule tactics by the London administration are not helping matters as they can only weaken the newly established African Continental Free Trade Area (ACfTA). Our wish is to see Africa using the ACFTA engaging UK as a bloc not as individual states. The culture of bilateral agreements is further dampening prospects of regional integration while at the same time, further delaying the works on designing of Rules of Origin agreements amongst African states, said Mr Mugaga. Herald CASS CITY Hills and Dales Hospital began the vaccination process of Cass City Public School staff Jan. 15, and helped with a mass vaccination clinic at the Tuscola County Health Department. According to Danielle Blaine, director of public relations at Hills and Dales Hospital, the hospitals role in the Tuscola County Health Department's vaccine clinic will include providing staff support and assisting in the storage of the vaccine. The hospital is able to begin the vaccination process among Cass City Public School teachers after having available doses following completion of its phase 1A. We were able to partner with the school and get a list of teachers who would like to be vaccinated right away, Blaine said. Cass City Superintendent Jeff Hartel said he is very thankful to Hills and Dales for reaching out to the school to offer those vaccinations. Signup was on a first come, first serve basis, as there are not enough extra vaccines for everyone to get one at this time, but the school will continue to work with the hospital to extend the next vaccines to everyone as soon as possible. The staff vaccine clinic was coordinated through the hospital and our school nurse, Kathy Laponsie, Hartel said. Vaccinations are taking place on Friday at Hills and Dales in 5-minute increments. The second dose for staff members receiving the vaccine this week is scheduled for mid-February. Other schools across the Upper Thumb are working with health department officials but have been advised not to expect staff vaccinations until mid-February. Harbor Beach Superintendent said he has reached out to both Huron and Tuscola County health departments offering to provide support from the Harbor Beach school system in any way. Our district would be eager to help through providing space and time for distribution of the vaccine to our community, Bishop said. Providing support for the greater health and wellness of our community is important to us, and we stand ready to help. My sense is the majority of our staff would be interested in receiving the vaccine, he added. Laker Schools have been in contact with the local health department and Scheurer Hospital, hoping to work with whichever entity can provide vaccines to its staff first. We have been told it would be at least a couple of weeks yet, said Laker Superintendent Brian Keim. I think most of our staff members will be receptive to receiving a vaccine while some may not, a decision which we will honor. A good number of our staff members have already had COVID-19 and may possess natural antibodies, which may be one reason some would decline the vaccine, he added. Bad Axe Schools Superintendent Greg Newland said the school will be working with the Huron County Health Department once the vaccination is made available to school staff members. I have had preliminary discussions with health officials and the specifics will be worked out once we know how many doses will be available and when, Newland said. We have shared that information with staff and will continue to keep them updated as we get more information. While it is still uncertain exactly when many schools can accept the vaccine, the vaccination of Cass City Public School staff this week is the first step forward as many people with in the community hoping to receive the vaccine sooner rather than later. The signup list was made available to all employees, not just teachers, Hartel said. I would assume that everyone is very happy and thankful to have it made available to them. Turkey has vaccinated more than 500,000 people in the first two days of administering COVID-19 shots developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd, health ministry data showed on Friday, among the speediest rollouts globally. Ankara launched the nationwide programme on Thursday, vaccinating health workers first, and inoculated more than 285,000 people on the first day. As of 1137 GMT, the total was 523,338. The government has said the rapid pace has been helped by a nationwide distribution of the vaccines at the start of the week, and also by digitised health records and hospital services. "We are an experienced country in implementing nationwide inoculation programmes. Our infrastructure is more than capable of conducting this programme in a controlled way. We will win the battle with the pandemic together," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter. According to the Our World in Data website, some 2.69 million people have been inoculated in Britain and 2.16 million in Israel. In Russia, the RDIF sovereign wealth fund said on Wednesday 1.5 million Russians had been inoculated with the Sputnik V vaccine. Indonesia, which is also using the Sinovac shot, has inoculated 15,301 people over the past two days, a senior health ministry official there said. The official rollout began Wednesday, but medical workers and selected public workers were injected on Thursday and Friday. Worldwide trials of the Sinovac shot have shown wide-ranging efficacy rates, leading to some criticism. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan received his first dose of the vaccine in Ankara on Thursday and urged other politicians to endorse the programme, calling on Turks to ignore criticism of the CoronaVac shot. Turkey has reported more than 2.3 million COVID-19 infections and 23,000 deaths since March. After a month of weekend lockdowns and nightly curfews, the number of daily cases has fallen below 9,000, with a daily death toll of 170. 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. The government has exhorted domestic steel makers to become more competitive locally as also in export markets besides developing newer products for use in industrial and construction sectors. In the upcoming Budget, the steel makers are expecting relaxation in basic custom duty (BCD) levied on raw materials like coking coal, anthracite coal, graphite, electrode, limestone and dolomite etc. At a conference organised by Indian Steel Association (ISA) on Friday, Union Steel Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said domestic steel manufacturers should focus on increasing production of finished steel while reducing imports and increasing imports. "I expect this from the ISA that when we hope for a tax restructuring from someone, we must increase production, become more competitive, increase exports and minimise import. The Finance Department gets some amount as revenue (on import of steel making raw materials). It must be filled with confidence that when the manufacturing line will be in our country the government can earn more (revenue by means of tax)," he said. "We need to increase our consumption. When volume increases, we (industry) will be able to contribute more to the country. Then the Finance Department will take interest in the reforms we are expecting," the minister said. Citing the example of Japan, Pradhan said the island country is an exporter of finished steel. It is a global supplier of steel for segments like automobile, electronics, big infrastructure etc. When Japan was able to make a global market for itself "why can't we (Indian steel players)", the minister stressed. Minister of State for Steel Faggan Singh Kulaste said the domestic per capita steel consumption at 74 kg is lower compared to the global average consumption. It is one-third of the global average per capita steel consumption, he said. Kulaste asked the ISA, which is the apex body for steel makers in India, to draw a road map to increase ways of increasing steel consumption both in urban and rural areas of the country, and submit it with the ministry. At the conference attended by domestic and international participants, Additional Steel Secretary Rasika Chaube said with government's enhanced thrust on 'Make in India' and focus on 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' mission, a host of opportunities are in the offing for Indian as well as for the downstream industries. The government has earmarked Rs 102 lakh crore for the infrastructure projects in the country over the next 5 years, she said. "I find industry is not in a position to take complete advantage of these upcoming demands to the limitations in manufacturing and fabrication. The feedback we keep receiving from the infrastructure industry is that the desired thickness of plates is not available in the country which forces them to go out of the country for getting main components procured and fabricated in China and other countries. We require product development, " the official said. Various types of steel products will be required in airports, railways, bridges, buildings and structures and the industry's attention must be towards production of new products which find application in these areas, she said. Chaube further stated that the demand for rolled products is likely to rise manifold as the government is making efforts to start stalled projects and bring investment in oil and gas, railways, road development, and implementing Bharatmala project, PM Urja Ganga project, dedicated freight corridor project, Smart City project and Housing For All. Some projects may require special type of flat and rolled products, thus a continuous dialogue and attention is must on product development, the official said. "I think there is a very urgent need to critically evaluate the future requirement of steel and modernise and upgrade our facilities suitably," she 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.) Deal conducted via Barilla's venture-capital fund BLU1877 Barilla, the family-owned Italian food group, has acquired a majority stake in UK-based Pasta Evangelists, primarily a direct-to-consumer business. Parma-based Barilla, which makes a range of dried pasta and sauces such as pesto, has made the investment via its venture-capital fund BLU1877 for an undisclosed sum. The size of the holding was not revealed either in a statement. Pasta Evangelists will operate as a stand-alone company in the group, with co-founder and CEO Alessandro Savelli remaining with the company, along with the other founders Chris Rennoldson and Finn Lagun. They "remain significant shareholders", Barilla said. "This acquisition represents a new step of Barilla's international growth, especially in the UK, and its willingness to invest in new marketing and sales approaches, up to digital as a priority platform for interacting with consumers. Online food sales have seen massive growth in recent years, both in the recipe-box category as well as in the online take-away sector. Pasta Evangelists operates at the convergence of these," the statement read. The deal also marks Barilla's return to fresh pasta after leaving the segment in the late 1990s. Last October, Barilla made another acquisition outside of Europe the Catelli dried pasta business in Canada, complete with a production facility in Montreal, Quebec, from Spain's Ebro Foods. Pasta Evangelists also serves the retail channel, with customers such as Marks & Spencer and Harrods, and Ocado and Amazon. "The Covid-19 crisis has changed consumer behaviour, the way people work, and the way products are distributed. The consumer demand for freshly made, premium food is growing, as well as the boom in e-commerce and subscription-based consumer products," said Gianluca Di Tondo, Barilla's chief marketing officer. "We are excited to expand our family with a brand that underlines these major trends. The UK is at the forefront of both." Another co-founder of Pasta Evangelists, James McArthur, is relinquishing his position as chairman of the business. The company counts Guinness EIS, a fund managed by London-based Guinness Asset Management, Pembroke VCT, a venture-capital trust also located in the UK capital, and First Course, a fund run by Francesco Fumagalli, as investors and shareholders. Pasta Evangelists' CEO Savelli said: "With Barilla's support, we look forward to taking Pasta Evangelists to the next level, including through internationalisation. As an entrepreneur, and as an Italian, for me this is a dream come true." Neglected Baby Living in Filthy Trailer Saved by Deputy, Makes Amazing Transformation With New Family In July 2018, a sheriffs deputy came across a starving baby girl living in squalor, inside a filthy trailer with her father. The deputy was responding to an unrelated call in San Bernardino County, California; and fearing for her life, the officer intervened. Almost three years later, the little girl is now thriving in a new forever home after winning the hearts of her foster parents. San Bernardino County Sheriffs Deputy Mike Richardson had been investigating a shooting in a Rancho Cucamonga neighborhood, and upon questioning neighbors, he was led to a man named Drake Petronzi in a mobile home. Petronzi was found holding his emaciated baby girl in a wet towel. [T]he baby did not look her true age, Richardson explained in a news release. I have a young daughter, so I know what a healthy six-month-old baby should look like. The babys father insisted she was fed, but Richardson and his partner were not satisfied. Noting a gun on the counter, the smell of rotting food, soiled furniture, and no electricity or running water in the trailer, the deputy took matters into his own hands, and he called for medical backup. Loma Linda University Childrens Hospital pediatrician Dr. Melissa Siccama speculated that the baby may only have had three or four days left to live. [Y]ou could see her bones, she said. She was significantly dehydrated. The babys name was Payge. She was also suffering from numerous signs of abuse and neglect, including a severe skin infection. An investigation revealed that Payges parents had plenty of formula but had neglected to feed her. As Payge was cared for in the hospital, she gained weight, and she was eventually placed with experienced foster carers Dawn and George Huff by county social workers, where she received the love and care she needed. The Huffs say they knew immediately Payge had found her forever home under their roof. We were just the foster family that got the call, Dawn shared, speaking to CBSLA. Payge was officially adopted by the Huffs in August 2020. Payge now also has an adoptive sister and two older siblings, and her life is filled with joya dramatic transformation from her previous situation living with her biological father, who is now scheduled to attend a sentence hearing in February 2021. Richardson and Payge were recently reunited this month. She even gifted the deputy, who became emotionally invested in her welfare, a handmade card as a token of her familys gratitude for his heroic act of intervention. This tops my career, Richardson reflected. I could retire tomorrow and be happy with my accomplishment. Just that one. (Courtesy of San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office) Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired Newsletter here: https://www.theepochtimes.com/newsletter CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Rep. Jim Jordan and Ohio members of Congress voted against impeaching president Trump for instigating insurrection, but did vote to impeach cancel culture and cancel mask mandates, metal detectors, magnetometers, the 2020 election results, democracy and in Jordans case, blazers, sport coats and suit jackets. Jordan is balking over mask mandates on the Congressional floor. Favoring instead the spread of Trumpvid-19,20,21 and jacketless blue shirt and yellow tie mandates. His fellow Representatives from Ohio are also among the Republican members of Congress fuming over having to use metal detectors and magnetometer screenings to enter the House floor. At least 10 members either refused to use the screenings or set them off, including Ohio Reps Bob Gibbs, Bob Latta and Steve Stivers. Rep Stivers told Capitol Police the screenings were unconstitutional. Theyre not. Members of Congress have long been barred from carrying guns onto the House Floor. House rules requires members with licensed firearms to restrict them to their offices. House and Senate members were required to be screened by metal detectors and magnetometers after extremest Trump supporters attacked the Capitol Jan 6, and because of members feeling threatened by fellow members, such as QAnon supporter Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Far Right Rep Lauren Boebert, among others. Rep Greene had previously posted a photo on social media of her holding an assault rifle pointed in the direction of a photo of The Squad members, liberal Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, IIhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. QAnon supporting Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene posted this photo on social media and has since balked at going thru metal detectors. Rep Taylor Greene has gotten into a stand off with Capitol Police over being screened as has newly elected Far Right Rep. Lauren Boebert. Boebert has bragged on social media about carrying a weapon on Capitol Hill. She is among the members of Congress who have set off the metal detectors, then refused to allow the Capitol Police to search her bag. A.O.C has publicly said she feared being killed during the insurgency lockdown because white supremacists in Congress may reveal her location to insurgents who invaded the citadel of democracy, some with the intention to take hostages and execute elected officials, according the the FBI. Members of Congress have also called for an investigation into suspicious Capitol tours given Jan 5 by other members of Congress, or their staff, to groups that fit the profile of the insurgents who attacked the Capitol the following day and had detailed directional information of the large maze-like structure. As an example, new video has emerged of a woman using a bullhorn giving directions to other insurgents on navigating a path to a hard to find lower level room, what doors to open to get there and what door to open when theyre in the room. Tours had been banned in the Capitol since the Covid outbreak. So any tours are unusual, especially large and frequent tours given the day before the worst attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Sargent at Arms have now instituted fines and punishments for members who dont comply with the mask mandate and metal detector/magnetometer screenings. 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. A white college student who belonged to a pro-Hitler Facebook page and stabbed a black college student to death at a Maryland bus stop was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for what prosecutors said was a racially motivated hate crime. Sean Urbanski, 25, apologized to the parents of 23-year-old Richard Collins III for the 'horrible pain' he caused them and said he wishes he could 'go back and change what happened.' Collins was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Army shortly before his death. He was posthumously promoted to first lieutenant. He was days from graduating from Bowie State University, a historically black college, and was celebrating with a friend at bars on the night of his killing. Urbanski had been enrolled at the University of Marylands College Park campus. He, too, was drinking with friends at bars before the killing. Sean Urbanski (left), 25, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday by a Maryland judge for the 2017 fatal stabbing of a black Army recruit, Richard Collins III (right), 23 Second Lt. Richard Collins III (seen in the above file photo) was stabbed to death by Urbanski while waiting for an Uber in the early morning hours of May 20, 2017, on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland. Collins was posthumously promoted to first lieutenant At about 3:30am on May 20, 2017, Urbanski approached Collins while he waited at a bus stop for an Uber driver with a white man who was his friend and an Asian woman whom they had just met. Urbanski brandished a folding knife as he approached the friends from a wooded area, according to prosecutors. Urbanski approached and screamed, 'Step left, step left if you know what's best for you,' according to charging documents. When Collins responded 'No,' Urbanski stabbed him once in the chest. He was rushed to a local hospital where he was later pronounced dead. Urbanski then pocketed the knife and sat down on a bench until police arrived and arrested him at the bus stop. 'There hasn't been a day that's gone by where I haven't thought about what I've done to you, and if I could switch places with your son I would in a heartbeat,' Urbanski told Dawn and Richard Collins Jr during a hearing conducted by video teleconference. In court, prosecutors said Urbanski was 'a member of a Facebook group that paid homage to Adolf Hitler.' The 'Alt Reich:Nation' page had 'poisoned his mind,' according to Prince George's County prosecutor Jason Abbott. 'Theres no cure, no rehabilitation for that.' Prince George's County prosecutors said Urbanski (center) belonged to a pro-Hitler online group called 'Alt Reich: Nation' Maryland prosecutors said Urbanski's 'mind was poisoned' by extremist 'Alt-Reich' Facebook pages like those seen above Prosecutors had sought the maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, but Prince George's County State's Attorney Aisha Braveboy and defense attorney William Brennan said after the hearing that Urbanski will be eligible for parole under the judge's sentence. Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Hill Jr. dismissed a hate crime charge against Urbanski before a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in December 2019. But the judge said Thursday that he believes race and alcohol both were factors in the killing. Hill said he doesn't believe it was a coincidence that Urbanski stabbed the only black person at the bus stop that night. 'Race is always amongst us in the things we do and things we say,' the judge said. Collins' parents said they wake up every night around the same time that their son was killed. They can't bring themselves to clean out his room. 'With the passage of time, we have come to the realization that racist hate was the murderer's only motivation for killing our son,' Richard Collins Jr. said. Collins' relatives are seen above at a memorial service for Collins at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, on May 22, 2017 Urbanski's mother told Collins' parents that the 'horror and devastation' of knowing that her son killed their son is with her every day. 'Your son Richard should be here, and it's my son Sean's fault that he's not,' Elizabeth Urbanski said. Before the jury's verdict, Hill ruled that prosecutors didn't meet their legal burden of showing that racial hatred motivated Urbanski to stab Collins, who didn't know his assailant. But he noted Thursday that he made that ruling before the hate crime law was changed. Earlier this year, Maryland enacted legislation bearing Collins' name to strengthen the state's hate crime law so prosecutors don't have to prove hate is the only motivating factor in committing a crime. The change expanded the law to apply to crimes motivated 'either in whole or in substantial part' by race, color, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, disability or national origin. Collins' parents had lobbied for a change in the law. The judge allowed prosecutors to present evidence that Urbanski saved at least six photographs of racist memes on his cellphone and liked a Facebook group called 'Alt-Reich: Nation.' Earlier this year, Maryland enacted legislation bearing Collins' name to strengthen the state's hate crime law so prosecutors don't have to prove hate is the only motivating factor in committing a crime University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell salutes Collins during a funeral service in Marlboro, Maryland, on May 26, 2017 Prosecutors said alcohol and racist propaganda poisoned Urbanskis mind and emboldened him to act on his hatred of black people. 'Every murder victimizes more than just the deceased,' a county prosecutor, Jonathon Church, told the judge. 'A murder borne out of hate has a ripple effect on the human race.' Defense attorneys said there was no evidence of a racial motive for the killing. An expert witness for the defense concluded Urbanski's blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit at the time of the killing. Defense attorneys didn't dispute Urbanski killed Collins and conceded he committed a crime, but they argued he was too drunk to have the intent or premeditation necessary to support a first-degree murder conviction. They urged jurors to convict Urbanski of second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. 'My son committed the unpardonable sin of saying, "No," to a white man,' a tearful Dawn Collins told the judge. She said her son, her husband and her father-in-law all proudly served their country. 'Not white America. Not black America. The United States of America,' she added. Denton, TX (76205) Today Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch. Canadian government reveals new immigration priorities Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has provided immigration minister Marco Mendicino with a new mandate letter. Canadian government reveals new immigration priorities Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has provided immigration minister Marco Mendicino with a new mandate letter. Canadian government reveals new immigration priorities Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has provided immigration minister Marco Mendicino with a new mandate letter. Kareem El-Assal Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Immigration will remain central to Canadas economy and society. This was stressed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the new supplementary mandate letter he provided today to immigration minister Marco Mendicino. The mandate letter is the most important policy document for Canadas immigration department. Find out if you are eligible for Canadian immigration It outlines the goals that Canadas prime minister is asking the immigration minister and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to pursue during the governments time in power. The mandate letter defines key issues such as Canadas Immigration Levels Plan, which new immigration programs for IRCC to create, improving IRCCs application processing times, among other issues. The release of the mandate letter comes shortly after Canada announced a historic new 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan that will see it target over 400,000 immigrants per year, the highest in its history. The new mandate letter supplements the one that Trudeau provided to Mendicino in December 2019. The reasons for the new supplementary mandate letter are that the Canadian government started a new session of Parliament in September and it also incorporates new objectives born out of the COVID-19 crisis. Key priorities outlined in todays letter include: Continue to welcome newcomers to support Canadas economic growth and post-COVID recovery by expanding pilot programs to welcome refugees through economic class immigration streams; expediting family reunification; and working on sectoral and regional pilot programs. Continue to implement measures to provide permanent residence pathways to those who have provided health care in long-term care homes, medical facilities, or who performed other essential services during the coronavirus pandemic. Continue to work with cabinet colleagues to protect the health and safety of Canadians while managing Canadas ports of entry responsibly and compassionately. Identify additional permanent residence pathways for temporary foreign workers. Work with the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion to protect workers who are vulnerable to COVID-19 and to secure workers to fill labour force needs in farming and food processing. Continue working with Canadas provinces and territories to provide settlement supports to newcomers including French-language training. The new supplementary letter does not contain any surprises and explicitly outlines goals that the Canadian government has been pursuing during its time in power. It adds to the goals outlined in the December 2019 mandate letter which IRCC continues to pursue. The underlying theme of todays release is that Canada will continue to operate its immigration system to the best of its abilities during the pandemic so it can harness the skills and talents of newcomers to support its economic health after the pandemic is behind us. Find out if you are eligible for Canadian immigration CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options. OLYMPIA, Wash., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Washington families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Washington community members are hosting 322 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. Governor Jay Inslee issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Washington School Choice Week. In addition, the city of Enumclaw issued a proclamation recognizing School Choice Week in the community. "As one of the nation's most rapidly growing states, Washington has a diverse array of needs, talents, and values in its communities," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "School choice meets those needs, helping each family find a learning environment that inspires their child. This National School Choice Week, celebrate a teacher who has helped you through this year's challenges, or speak up for the learning options your child is still waiting for. " In Washington, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Washington families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Washington school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/washington. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Investigators seek to detain videographer of Navalnys foundation RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov 17:25 15/01/2021 MOSCOW, January 15 (RAPSI) Investigators on Friday filed a motion to detain Pavel Zelensky, a camera-control engineer of a foundation founded by Alexey Navalny, until February 28 in an extremism case, the press service of Moscows Presnensky District Court told RAPSI. Zelensky stands charged with public calls for extremism. According to investigators, Zelensky published two posts containing threats against Russias high-ranking officials on his Twitter account. Jessica Alba may be a famous actress and co-founder of The Honest Company, but to her three kids she's seen as the 'cringey mom.' The 39-year-old actress and entrepreneur spoke with Ellen guest host Stephen 'tWitch' Boss on Friday's episode. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of her kids are going through 'distance learning,' as she has learned when to 'call them out' if they're not paying attention. 'I have spy cameras in their rooms, so I can see, are they messing around? Are they focusing? I can call them out. If they fight, I can rewind and see who really hit who first,' Alba added with pride. Cringey: Jessica Alba may be a famous actress and co-founder of The Honest Company, but to her three kids she's seen as the 'cringey mom'; she also said she has 'spy cameras' on her kids Given all of her success - including being on the cover of Women's Health magazine right now - tWitch wondered if her kids are in awe of her, but that's not the case. 'They think I'm so cringey. They think I'm the cringey mom, the definition of cringey. They actually said I should use the hashtag #CringeyMom,' Alba said. She told them that's 'so mean' and there are so many 'more cringey moms' than her, adding that, 'in the beginning of their life, they didn't know I was an actress.' tWitch and Jessica: The 39-year-old actress and entrepreneur spoke with Ellen guest host Stephen 'tWitch' Boss on Friday's episode 'I remember when Honor was in first grade, she was mortified and she came home and she was like, "Why didn't you tell me?"' Alba added that her kids, at that point, knew she worked at The Honest Company, but one of Honor's friends brought a magazine into school with her mom on the cover. Taller: Alba said that Honor is, 'in that tween kind of age, she's taller than me now, it happened so fast, she's not a little baby anymore' Honor was asking, 'Why are you on this magazine?' and when she told her she was an actress who is sometimes on magazines, 'she felt so betrayed,' Alba said with a laugh. Alba most recently starred on the Spectrum crime drama series L.A.'s Finest with Gabrielle Union, and she's attached to star in the action movie Trigger Warning. She also opened up about how her 12-year-old daughter Honor reacted after she told her that she was an actress. Distance: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of her kids are going through 'distance learning,' as she has learned when to 'call them out' if they're not paying attention Cringey: 'They think I'm so cringey. They think I'm the cringey mom, the definition of cringey. They actually said I should use the hashtag #CringeyMom,' Alba said Alba said that Honor is, 'in that tween kind of age, she's taller than me now, it happened so fast, she's not a little baby anymore.' She added that her nine-year-old daughter Haven is the one who, 'loves all the friends and socializing,' adding she has 'found her way through COVID.' Alba added they've had so many family 'binge' nights, and that Hayden is the one that shows her all of the TikTok dance moves before she performs them on her own TikTok channel, which has nearly 6 million followers. Burma Popular Shan Party Vows to Cooperate With Myanmars NLD Under New Govt Magwe Region Chief Minister Dr. Aung Moe Nyo of the NLD (center left), U Sai Leik, general secretary of the SNLD (center right) and other representatives of the two parties pose for a group photo after a meeting at the NLDs office in Taunggyi, Shan State. / National League for Democracy-Shan / Facebook YANGONThe most popular ethnic Shan party, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), on Friday held talks with the countrys ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) on ways of cooperating in the legislature and administration under the upcoming government, and said the meetings result was very good. On Friday, three representatives of the SNLD met with three members of the NLDs Central Executive Committee in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State. The dialogue was one of a series of negotiations the NLD is holding with ethnic parties on its plan to form a national unity government with them in its upcoming second term. Since its landslide Nov. 8 election victory, the NLD has been calling on ethnic parties to join it in establishing a federal union. One of the SNLD participants, Joint General Secretary 2 U Sai Kyaw Nyunt, said his party told ruling party representatives that the SNLD was willing to cooperate with the NLDs efforts to achieve national unity, and explained to them the SNLDs core democratic values. U Sai Kyaw Nyunt said the SNLD urged the NLD to build a union based on those values. He said that if the NLD is really eager to cooperate with them, it would have to give SNLD members positions in the new government that will allow the party to assume greater responsibilities. In the Nov. 8 election, the SNLD won a total of 42 seats: two in the Upper house, 13 in the Lower House and 27 in the state parliament. The SNLD also offered to play a mediation role between the NLD and ethnic parties in Mon and Kayah states. In recent weeks, the ruling partys scheduled meetings with the Mon Unity Party (MUP) and the Kayah State Democratic Party (KySDP) were canceled after the NLD insisted the talks be held at its local offices. The ethnic parties demanded the meetings be held at neutral venues. If the NLD gives us this task [to mediate between the NLD and ethnic parties], we will try our best, U Sai Kyaw Nyunt said. We are ready to help. Led by Magwe Region Chief Minister Dr. Aung Moe Nyo, the NLD delegation also included Karen State Chief Minister Daw Nan Khin Htwe Myint, who is also a member of the partys Ethnic Affairs Committee, and Ntung Hka Naw Sam, the chair of the committee. Dr. Aung Moe Nyo said the SNLD urged the NLD to meet all 48 ethnic parties and said they would work hard with the NLD to build trust with other ethnic organizations. In order to perform effectively to build a federal union, the SNLD asked the NLD to give its technocrats and experts effective positions in the legislative and administrative branches of the new government at both the state and union levels, Dr Aung Moe Nyo said. He said his delegation would report back to the partys top leadership, adding that any decision on that request would depend on them. During its visit to Shan State, the NLD delegation also met with representatives of the Taang National Party (TNP), Pa-o National Organization (PNO), Kayan National Party (KNP), Wa National Party (WNP), Lahu National Development party (LNDP) and Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP). You may also like these stories: Myanmars Ruling NLD Holds Talks With Three Ethnic Parties in Shan State Another Meeting Between Myanmars NLD, Ethnic Party Collapses Over Venue Dispute Myanmars NLD, Mon Unity Party Fail to Meet Due to Venue Dispute 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. Hyderabad, Jan 15 : The stage is set for Covid-19 vaccination rollout in Telangana where 4,000 healthcare workers in government-run facilities will receive the first dose on Saturday. Health authorities have made all arrangements to vaccinate the beneficiaries at 139 centres spread across all 33 districts in the state. Health minister Eatala Rajender and director of medical education Ramesh Reddy will receive the vaccine at Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad. Governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan will participate in vaccine rollout programme at Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS). Ministers, members of Parliament, members of state legislative assembly and council and public representatives down to the level of village sarpanchs will participate in the programme in district and area hospitals and in primary health centres in rural and urban areas. Director of public health G. Srinivas Rao said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the programme in virtual mode at 10.30 a.m. Arrangements have been made for two-way communication at two vaccinations centres at Gandhi Hospital and a rural health centre at Narsingi. A maximum of 30 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each centre. The numbers will be ramped up in phases from Monday and in coming days this will reach the maximum level of 100 per centre. Majority of beneficiaries during the first few days of the vaccination drive will comprise staff from sanitation and security wings of teaching, hospitals, district hospitals and area hospitals and ASHA, Anganwadi and other workers at primary health centres . The state health authorities have identified 3.15 lakh healthcare workers in government and private institutions and registered them in Cowin application, especially developed for Covid vaccination. The number of centres for vaccination will also be increased gradually from Monday and in next few days the programme will be conducted at all 1,213 centres depending on the availability of the vaccine doses. Srinivas Rao said Covid vaccine will be given between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday while routine vaccination programme for children and women will continue every Wednesday and Saturday. There will be no vaccination on Sundays and public holidays. The state has so far received 3.74 lakh doses from union ministry of health and family welfare and they were stored in 2-8-degree temperature. The authorities have already transported over 50, 000 doses to the districts. The authorities reassured beneficiaries that both Covishield and Covaxin approved for emergency use by Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) were safe and that there is no need for any apprehensions. When his attention was drawn to reports that some doctors were not ready to take Covaxin as its third phase trials were not completed, director of public health said there should be no discrimination between vaccines. He said as per Government of India guidelines consent will be taken from those who will be receiving Covaxin shot. Their health status will be examined and scrutinised before giving the vaccine and after vaccination they will be monitored for seven days for any adverse events. Similar process will be followed after the second dose which will be given after four weeks. "We should be proud that Covaxin has been developed indigenously and that too on the soil of Telangana. Nobody should have any worried. If necessary, I will take Covaxin in coming days," he said. The officials said they were strictly following the protocols prescribed by the union ministry and the directions of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to deal with any case of reaction following Covid vaccination. An observation room has been set up at each centre where every beneficiary will be monitored for 30 minutes after vaccination. The department has arranged vehicles to shift anybody who may develop some reaction after taking the vaccine. Intensive care units with 5-10 beds have been set up at 57 hospitals across the state to tackle such cases. This arrangement will be in place for entire period of vaccination which may last eight to nine months. "We vaccinate lakhs of people every year under routine immunisation programme. Reactions like pain and developing fever are not uncommon after taking vaccines. One in lakhs may have adverse reaction after vaccination and we are fully geared up to deal with this," said Ramesh Reddy. He hopes that Covid vaccination will weaken intensity of the disease as happened in the case of Swine Flu. "After taking vaccination antibodies will be developed to face the infection. T cells get activated and antibodies kill that particular virus. If this happens we will break the cycle and if we break cycle, the disease will die natural death. Even if it comes back, it will not be intense," he said. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan In patients with bladder cancer, chemotherapy effectiveness is partially determined by the body's immune system response to the malignancy. This is the conclusion of research conducted by a team of scientists from Charite - Universitatsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health. The findings, which have been published in Science Translational Medicine, can be used to predict treatment success and may increase survival in patients with bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is one of the ten most common types of cancer in Germany, and one of the five most common cancers in men. Nationwide, the disease affects approximately 30,000 people a year. The risk of cancer spreading (metastasizing) is particularly high once it invades the muscle layer inside the bladder wall. In patients with non-metastatic muscle-invasive bladder cancer, treatment usually consists of the surgical removal of the bladder. According to current professional guidelines, patients must undergo chemotherapy prior to surgery; they receive drugs that will target cancer's fast-growing cells. The aim of this 'neoadjuvant' chemotherapy is to shrink the tumor prior to surgery in order to reduce the risk of recurrence and/or metastases. However, in more than fifty percent of patients, chemotherapy will not shrink the tumor. Not only do these people not benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy, they are losing valuable time - time during which cancer can continue to grow and metastasize. An international team of researchers led by Dr. Michael Schmuck-Henneresse, a scientist at the Berlin Institute of Health Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT) as well as Charite's Institute of Medical Immunology and the Berlin Center for Advanced Therapies (BeCAT), has discovered a way to differentiate between patients who will benefit from chemotherapy and those who will not. The status of the patients' immune systems before the start of treatment was found to hold the key. Subsequent chemotherapy only proved effective if the cancerous tissue contained large quantities of two specific immune system components known as CXCL11 and CXCR3alt. The process of measuring these two components in the laboratory is relatively straightforward and only requires the biopsy sample which is collected in order to diagnose cancer." Dr. Michael Schmuck-Henneresse, Scientist, Berlin Institute of Health Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT) "This technologically simple method will make it possible to predict the likelihood of chemotherapy success in a specific patient at the point of diagnosis. If neoadjuvant chemotherapy is unlikely to be successful, one could dispense with this therapy altogether and directly move to bladder cancer's surgical removal. This type of personalized approach would not only spare patients the side effects of ineffective treatment, it would probably increase their chances of survival. However, our results will need to be confirmed by further, independent studies before we can get to a stage where CXCL11 and CXCR3alt measurements become standard in patients with bladder cancer." As part of this research, the team studied tumor samples from 20 patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer who had completed their chemotherapy treatment at Umea University in Sweden. Dating back to before the start of treatment, the samples had been collected by Dr. Amir Sherif and his team during diagnostic cytoscopy procedures. The research group identified which immunological messengers were present in the biopsy tissue and which receptors (effectively the 'recipients' of these messengers) the immune cells inside the tumors were producing. For each of the components identified, they then tested whether there was a link between the quantities at which these were present and treatment success. Results confirmed this was the case for both the messenger substance CXCL11 and the receptor CXCR3alt. Chemotherapy only had an effect if the immune cell attractant CXCL11 was present at particularly high levels inside the tumor tissue and if specific immune system cells known as T cells produced the corresponding CXCR3alt receptor. The team subsequently examined their observations using existing data from 'The Cancer Genome Atlas'. Their comparison confirmed that out of a total of 68 patients with bladder cancer who had received chemotherapy, patients whose tumor tissue contained large quantities of CXCL11 were more likely to survive. "The signaling molecule CXCL11 attracts specific T cells into the tumor tissue, where it prompts them to proliferate and fight cancer," explains the study's first author, Tino Vollmer, a doctoral student at Charite's Institute of Medical Immunology and scientist at the BCRT and BeCAT. "Chemotherapy appears to support the body's own fight against the tumor, possibly because the resulting degradation of cancerous tissue makes it easier for T cells to invade it." The immune system's effect on treatment outcome directly contradicts established scientific consensus, which posits that the effect of chemotherapy drugs is solely due to the ability of cancer cells to divide and replicate. "Along with other studies, our research demonstrates the importance of the immune system's active involvement in fighting the tumor," says Vollmer. As a next step, the researchers plan to study whether cell therapy could be used to activate the T cells of patients whose immune systems show a weak response to their bladder cancer. To do this, the team wants to harvest T cells from affected patients, fit them with synthetic CXCR3alt receptors in the laboratory, and then reintroduce them into these patients. The researchers will also study the same approach in relation to the treatment of other cancers. Furthermore, they plan to advance the use of personalized chemotherapy in patients with bladder cancer. To achieve this, the researchers intend to test the predictive power of both immune system components (CXCL11 and CXCR3alt) using a process known as 'predictive validation', which will involve the study of independent groups of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer at various European hospitals. "Should the method's predictive reliability be confirmed, the analysis of a patient's immune status could become a routine tool to support decision-making in the treatment of bladder cancer," says Dr. Schmuck-Henneresse. The twin smokestacks that have long stood like giants along the Monterey Bay shoreline will never again help turn fossil fuels into electricity and planet-warming carbon dioxide. While the 500-foot structures in the coastal hamlet of Moss Landing arent going anywhere, much of the facility around them in Monterey County is being transformed into something else: a huge installation of batteries that will aid Californias transition to a cleaner energy grid. Vistra Corp., a Texas energy company that owns the Moss Landing power plant, announced this month that its long-awaited battery system on the site has begun to come online. At 300 megawatts by the time its fully functional within the coming months, it will be the largest facility of its kind in the world, according to Vistra. The juxtaposition of old and new energy technologies may seem symbolic, but its actually pragmatic, making use of the old plants surrounding infrastructure. This is the way of the future to take these sites that are already permitted as industrial sites and had old power plants and put on them the new technology, said Curt Morgan, the companys CEO. Why would you want to build extra power lines to connect to new power plants? That doesnt make a lot of sense to me. Vistras $400 million Moss Landing battery system is designed to capture excess power when the grids supply is abundant such as the daylight hours when solar farms operate at peak capacity. As day turns to night and solar output drops off, the batteries, which are able to discharge electricity for up to four hours, can release their power back to the grid. In that way, the batteries should help alleviate the problems California faced last summer, when surging electricity demand amid a widespread heat wave led to two days of rolling blackouts. The shortage was caused in part by poor planning on the part of state energy leaders to ensure enough supplies were available when demand for electricity peaked as the sun set and solar farms wound down. The batteries coming online in Moss Landing should help, though they wont be enough to avoid repeating last summers problems on their own. But officials at the California Independent System Operator, the nonprofit that manages most of the states electric grid, have said energy storage projects will help. We know coming out of last summer that we ran into problems in that early evening the 7, 8 oclock time frame, said Elliot Mainzer, the system operators new CEO. This net peak of the system is now the biggest operational constraint. Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Mainzer said the Moss Landing project is among several storage facilities in the works around the state. He expects the market will continue to grow, making large battery projects even more commercially attractive. Im very excited about ... whats going to be a real energy storage revolution here in California and other parts of the world, he said. While storage systems like Vistras are a critical piece of Californias shift toward a power grid more reliant on the sun and wind, batteries will not eliminate fossil fuel electricity by themselves. With the transformation going on in the electrical grid, these large-scale batteries can bring a real boost to grid reliability, and they can support zero-carbon electricitys integration into the grid, said Catherine Hausman, an associate professor at the University of Michigans Ford School of Public Policy. Of course, its really important to remember that batteries alone dont get us to carbon neutrality. We still need low carbon or zero carbon generation to charge up the batteries. Vistra is not the only one installing an energy storage system in Moss Landing. Adjacent to the power plant, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Tesla are partnering on their own 182.5-megawatt battery project. Using Teslas massive Megapack batteries at the site of a PG&E substation, the system is expected to come online this spring or early summer, said PG&E spokesman Paul Doherty. Battery installation began in July, he said. Like the Vistra system, PG&E and Teslas batteries can discharge four hours worth of power and will be able to send excess electricity back onto the grid when needed. That will help alleviate things like we saw last summer, Doherty said, referring to the rolling blackouts. Interactive Vaccine Tracker: Latest developments Detailed information about the coronavirus vaccines as it becomes available. Doherty said original projections put the cost of PG&Es Moss Landing batteries at about $80 million over its first two years. The company estimates that it will save ratepayers about $100 million over 20 years by avoiding costly upgrades to traditional electric infrastructure that would have otherwise been necessary to meet power demand. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. The smokestacks at the power plant, situated at the mouth of a slough near the center of the Monterey Bay shoreline, make the facility stand out so much that a reporter once likened the facility to the city of Oz minus the emeralds. The stacks havent operated for years; Vistra will tear down much of the old infrastructure around them while leaving the twin columns in place. Morgan, the companys CEO, said the smokestacks have become a landmark in the area and he thinks most people want them to stay. Vistra still runs a 1,020-megawatt gas-fueled power plant on the property that will continue to operate alongside the new batteries. At the same time, the company is already working on a 100-megawatt expansion of the battery system, which would bring the total capacity to 400 megawatts by August. The Moss Landing batteries are the centerpiece of the companys Vistra Zero portfolio, which spans 4,000 megawatts of clean energy projects in California and Texas. Morgan said Vistra is also looking at installing batteries on power plant sites in other states, including Illinois and Pennsylvania. J.D. Morris is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thejdmorris Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Also, the majority of the worlds COVID-19 vaccine doses have already been snapped up by wealthy countries. COVAX, a UN-backed project to supply shots to developing parts of the world, has found itself short of vaccine, money and logistical help. As a result, the World Health Organisations chief scientist warned it is highly unlikely that herd immunity which would require at least 70 per cent of the globe to be vaccinated will be achieved this year. As the disaster has demonstrated, it is not enough to snuff out the virus in a few places. Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in a few countries, its not going to protect people across the world, Dr Soumya Swaminathan said this week. Health experts fear, too, that if shots are not distributed widely and fast enough, it could give the virus time to mutate and defeat the vaccine. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the 2 million milestone has been made worse by the absence of a global co-ordinated effort. He added: Science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed. A COVID-19 patient is treated in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Madrid, Spain. Credit:AP Meanwhile, in Wuhan, where the scourge was discovered in late 2019, a global team of researchers led by WHO arrived on Thursday on a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the virus, which is believed to have spread to humans from wild animals. The Chinese city of 11 million people is bustling again, with few signs it was once the epicentre of the catastrophe, locked down for 76 days, with more than 3800 dead. We are not fearful or worried as we were in the past, said Qin Qiong, a noodle shop owner. We now live a normal life. I take the subway every day to come to work in the shop ... Except for our customers, who have to wear masks, everything else is the same. It took eight months to hit 1 million dead but less than four months after that to reach the next million. Loading While the death toll is based on figures supplied by government agencies around the world, the real number of lives lost to is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of inadequate testing and the many fatalities inaccurately attributed to other causes, especially early in the outbreak. What was never on the horizon is that so many of the deaths would be in the richest countries in the world, said Dr Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases expert at Britains University of Exeter. That the worlds richest countries would mismanage so badly is just shocking. In rich and poor countries alike, the crisis has devastated economies, thrown multitudes out of work and plunged many into poverty. In Europe, where more than a quarter of the worlds deaths have taken place, strict lockdowns and curfews have been reimposed to beat back a resurgence of the virus, and a new variant that is believed to be more contagious is circulating in Britain and other countries, as well as the US. Even in some of the wealthiest countries, the vaccination drives have been slower than expected. France, with the second-largest economy in Europe and more than 69,000 known virus deaths, will need years, not months, to vaccinate its 53 million adults unless it sharply speeds up its rollout, hampered by shortages, red tape and considerable suspicion of the vaccines. Still, in places like Poissy, a blue-collar town west of Paris, the first shots of the Pfizer formula were met with relief and a sense that there is light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. We have been living inside for nearly a year. Its not a life, said Maurice Lachkar, a retired 78-year-old acupuncturist who was put on the priority list for vaccination because of his diabetes and his age. If I catch the virus I am done. Maurice and his wife, Nicole, who also got vaccinated, said they might even allow themselves hugs with their two children and four grandchildren, whom they have seen from a socially safe distance only once or twice since the pandemic hit. It is going to be liberating, he said. Throughout the developing world, the images are strikingly similar: rows and rows of graves being dug, hospitals pushed to the limit and medical workers dying for lack of protective gear. Loading In Peru, which has the highest COVID-19 fatality rate in Latin America, hundreds of healthcare workers went on strike this week to demand better pay and working conditions in a country where 230 doctors have died of the disease. In Brazil, authorities in the Amazon rainforests biggest city planned to transfer hundreds of patients out because of a dwindling supply of oxygen tanks that has resulted in some people dying at home. In Honduras, anesthesiologist Dr Cesar Umana is treating 25 patients in their homes by phone because hospitals lack the capacity and equipment. Jonah Gottschalk, writing in the Federalist reports: When a mob of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Thursday, leaders from both political parties universally condemned the historic act of political violence. To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today- you did not win, Vice-President Mike Pence stated to the chamber shortly after the rioters were expelled from the building by police using tear gas and percussion grenades. Violence never wins. He was joined by the Republican senators across the board, including those who had backed plans to object to the elections certification. After ignoring and justifying riots from left-wing groups for months, Democrats also condemned the Capitol violence. This assault is just that. It shows the weakness of those whove had to show through violence what their message was, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., echoed the sentiment, arguing those who using political violence should face the harshest penalties available. Those who performed these reprehensible acts cannot be called protesters no, these were rioters and insurrectionists, goons and thugs, domestic terrorists they must and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The cross-party condemnations came as a welcomed move. But that very the same Congress was anything but united on the issue of mob violence remarkably recently. This July, those same congressional Democrats killed a resolution aimed at curbing mob violence. The bill, which was spearheaded by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, came about after an unarmed Utah man was murdered by a mob of left-wing activists. At least 30 people, ranging in age from 14-77, were killed in largely left-wing riots in summer 2020. Lees resolution offered a statement of support for peaceful protest, while condemning violence and the desecration of monuments. A non-binding resolution is the tiniest first step of a response, Lee read as he introduced it. We need to do much, much more but in this divided political moment, showing that Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats are able to speak with one voice against woke mob violence and in defense of equal justice and civic peace would be a welcome step. Yet the bill was killed upon landing by Senate Democrats. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who spoke immediately after Lee, alleged that the resolution reeks of supremacism. Reeks of supremacist views. And it seeks to mischaracterize overwhelmingly peaceful protests across the nation. He then proceeded to poison pill the legislation by announcing the bill would only be passed if it specifically condemned President Donald Trump. Lee attempted to compromise, saying he was willing to include the section condemning all politicians who incite any violence without specifically naming any. Menendez refused to budge, and the resolution died. Six months later, violence from the other side lead to congressional Democrats voicing opposition to politically charged assault, arson, vandalism, and more. Some commentators, including Laura Ingraham, were swift to show the receipts. Lees bill was not the only time anti-mob legislation was shut down by congressional Democrats last summer. A bill led by Republican Rep. Ken Buck this November, The Blocking Rioters and Insurrectionists from our Cities to Keep us Safe (BRICKS) Act, would have enabled a range of greater legal penalties for such crimes. It died in the Democrat-run House Judiciary Committee. Had the bill been passed, rioters could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison. Those whose acts lead to the serious bodily injury of others would have faced even harsher sentences. Instead, the rioters who stormed the Capitol will take a maximum of five years for rioting an amount just between the U.S. sentencing laws for possession and sale of marijuana. Source: Months Ago, Democrats Blocked a Resolution Condemning Mob Violence (thefederalist.com) Hat tip to Carole Gunn for sending us this link. WASHINGTON - When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses that had been held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans. The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available, starting at the end of December, taking second doses for the two-dose regimen directly off the manufacturing line. Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will remain largely flat, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding access for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions. Health officials in some cities and states were informed in recent days about the reality of the situation, while others were still in the dark Friday. Because both of the vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States are two-dose regimens, the Trump administration's initial policy was to hold back second doses to protect against manufacturing disruptions. But that approach shifted in recent weeks, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. Operation Warp Speed, which is overseeing vaccine distribution, stopped stockpiling second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the end of last year, those officials were told. Shipping of the last reserve doses of Moderna's supply, meanwhile, began over the weekend. The shift, in both cases, had to do with increased confidence in the supply chain, so Operation Warp Speed leaders felt they could reliably anticipate the availability of doses for booster shots - required three weeks later in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech product and four weeks later under Moderna's protocol. But it also meant there was no stockpile of second doses waiting to be shipped, as Trump administration officials suggested this week. Azar, at a briefing Tuesday, said, "Because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve." He explained the decision as part of the "next phase" of the nation's vaccination campaign. Those in line for their second shots are still expected to get them on schedule because second doses are prioritized over first shots and states are still receiving regular vaccine shipments. But state and local officials say they are angry and bewildered by the shifting directions and changing explanations about supply. Their anxiety was deepened by projections that a highly contagious virus variant would spread rapidly throughout the United States and as daily covid-19 deaths averaged 3,320 this week. The health director in Oregon, Patrick Allen, was so disturbed that he wrote Azar on Thursday demanding an explanation. In his letter, he recounted how Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, had "informed us there is no reserve of doses, and we are already receiving the full allocation of vaccines." "If true, this is extremely disturbing, and puts our plans to expand eligibility at grave risk," Allen wrote. "Those plans were made on the basis of reliance on your statement about 'releasing the entire supply' you have in reserve. If this information is accurate, we will be unable to begin vaccinating our vulnerable seniors on Jan. 23, as planned." HHS spokesman Michael Pratt confirmed in an email that the final reserve of second doses had recently been released to states but did not address Azar's comments, saying only, "Operation Warp Speed has been monitoring manufacturing closely, and always intended to transition from holding second doses in reserve as manufacturing stabilizes and we gained confidence in the ability for a consistent flow of vaccines." But the explanations by the federal government were conflicting. The 13 million doses made available for states to order this week - for delivery next week - represented "millions more" than in previous weeks, Pratt said. He also said states have not requested the full amount they have been allocated. Guidance circulated Friday among HHS officials acknowledged, however, that "the notion that there is a large bolus of second doses that will be released to jurisdictions is not accurate." And state and municipal health officials said their allocations for next week had increased only marginally, if at all. Chicago Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady said her city's share had gone from about 32,000 doses to 34,000 doses. "I have stopped paying a whole lot of attention to what is being said verbally at the federal level right now," she said. Nirav Shah, the director of Maine's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said he learned only Friday, by calling his state's designated contact at Warp Speed, that the reserve no longer existed. Maine still plans to broaden vaccination next week to those 70 and older. "Who is in line will not change," Shah said. "The velocity of that line will change because this bolus of doses that we intuited was coming based on Azar's comments is not coming." In an email that reached some state officials Friday morning, Christopher Sharpsten, an Operation Warp Speed director, called it a "false rumor" that "the federal government was holding back vaccine doses in warehouses to guarantee a second/booster dose." In fact, that information had come fromAzar, who said Tuesday that the "next phase" of the country's vaccination campaign involved "releasing the entire supply we have for order by states, rather than holding second doses in physical reserve." Azar's comments Tuesday followed a Jan. 8 announcement by President-elect Joe Biden's transition team that his administration would move to release all available doses rather than holding half in reserve for booster shots. Biden's advisers said the move would be a way to accelerate distribution of the vaccine, which is in short supply across the country. Azar initially said the Biden plan was shortsighted and potentially unethical in putting people at risk of missing their booster shots. When he embraced the change four days later, however, he did not say that the original policy had already been phased out or that the stockpile had been exhausted. Trump administration officials and Biden's team alike have sought to reassure the public that increasing the pace of immunizations would not endanger booster shots. Azar also signaled to states that they would soon see expanded supply, urging them to begin vaccinating adults 65 and older and those under 64 with high-risk medical conditions. Officials in some states embraced that directive, while others said that suddenly putting hundreds of thousands of additional people at the front of the line would overwhelm their capacity. In subsequent conversations with state and local authorities, federal officials sought to temper those instructions, said people who participated in the conversations. Perna, for instance, spoke directly to officials in at least two of the jurisdictions receiving vaccine supply, explaining that allocations would not increase and that they did not have to broaden eligibility as they had previously been told, according to a health official who was not authorized to discuss the matter. The revised instructions led some state and local officials to hold off on changes. One state health official noted that the updated eligibility guidance announced Tuesday did not appear on the website of the CDC, even though it was stated as federal policy by Azar and by Robert Redfield, the CDC director, in their remarks. Under the original recommendations, adults 65 and older and front-line essential workers were to comprise the second priority group, known as Phase 1b, after medical workers and residents and staffers of long-term-care facilities. There was additional confusion from another change Azar announced this week - making allocation of doses dependent on how quickly states administer them. He originally said that would not take effect for two weeks. But Connecticut Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont on Thursday tweeted that federal officials had notified him thatthe state would receive an additional 50,000 doses next week "as a reward for being among the fastest states" to get shots into arms. West Virginia, meanwhile, which is moving at the fastest clip, according to CDC data, did not get any additional doses, said Holli Nelson, a spokeswoman for the state's National Guard. In a sign that the incentive structure may not be long-lived, a senior Biden transition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address ongoing deliberations, said this week that the team did not look kindly on a system that "punishes states." Biden has said he wants to see 100 million shots administered within his first 100 days - an aim that will depend on quickly accelerating the pace of immunization. Together, Pfizer and Moderna have agreed to sell 200 million doses to the United States by the end of March, which is enough to fully vaccinate 100 million people. - - - The Washington Post's Jacqueline Dupree, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Laurie McGinley contributed to this report. Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) on Friday called for the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, saying those who participated in the unrest that left five dead were terrorists attacking this countrys constitutionally-mandated transfer of power. Sasses comments come after the Department of Justice said in court documents that the rioters breached the Capitol with the intent to capture and assassinate elected officials. In a memo requesting that QAnon shaman Jacob Anthony Chansley be kept in detention, Justice Department lawyers in Arizona wrote that strong evidence, including Chansleys own words and actions at the Capitol show that the intent was to harm elected officials. Sasse said it would be wrong of rage-peddlers to try to whitewash the attack on the Capitol, saying that a few bad apples got out of control. Every American needs to understand what the Department of Justice has just made public: Investigators have strong evidence to suggest that some of the rioters who stormed the United States Capitol planned to kidnap and possibly assassinate the Vice President, he said. These men werent drunks who got rowdy they were terrorists attacking this countrys constitutionally-mandated transfer of power, he added. They failed, but they came dangerously close to starting a bloody constitutional crisis. He concluded: They must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The FBI is investigating widespread calls for violence across the country and every American has an obligation to lower the temperature. Last week, before the House impeached President Trump for a second time on an incitement of insurrection charge, Sasse had vowed to consider any articles of impeachment against Trump that came before the Senate. The House, if they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move, Sasse said in an interview with CBS. I believe the president has disregarded his oath of officewhat he did was wicked. More from National Review Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said he wanted to find a solution to Turkey's suspension from the F-35 fighter jet programme with the new US administration under Joe Biden. Ties between the two NATO allies have been strained by Washington's decision last month to punish Ankara for its purchase of the S-400 Russian air defence system with sanctions on its military procurement agency. Washington initially responded by suspending Turkey in 2019 from the F-35 programme of which Ankara was a major buyer and parts manufacturer. US officials warn that the S-400 system is incompatible with NATO hardware and could help Russia better target Western warplanes. Erdogan called the US decision not to deliver the F-35 jets to Turkey "a serious mistake". But he added: "I hope that we can hold talks and see positive results on this issue after Biden's inauguration," which will take place next week. Erdogan also said Turkey would have discussions with Russia on a second consignment of the S-400 system at the end of January. Turkish officials have said the second consignment was part of the original deal Ankara signed with Moscow in 2017. "We take our defence-related steps without seeking permission from elsewhere," Erdogan told reporters. "We won't allow another country to steer our path." Biden's administration is expected to be more hostile to Turkey than the outgoing one of Donald Trump, who called Erdogan his "good friend", and officials in Ankara have indicated their desire for improving relations. Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar earlier this week urged dialogue with the US to resolve tensions over the S-400 purchase. NEWS PROVIDED BY Dr. James Dobson Jan. 15, 2021 OPINION, Jan. 15, 2021 /Christian Newswire/ -- Open letter written by Dr. James Dobson to his friends and supporters: Dear Friends, These are momentous and dangerous days for our country and its people. When I last wrote to you in late December, this was my opening statement: "America faces the possibility of catastrophic change. By the time you receive this letter, you will know what I can only speculate about today. Everything depends on two legal developments: first, whether or not the US Supreme Court addresses the legitimacy of the presidential election on November 3rd; the second depends on the outcome of two runoff elections in Georgia, scheduled for January 5th. On these two turning points hang the future of our great nation, and eventually, the world." Well, we now know the outcome of these two critical contingencies. First, on December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court refused to consider a carefully prepared case brought by the State of Texas and eighteen others.1 It was titled Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al. Sadly, the highest court in the land didn't review a word of the overwhelming volume of evidence. Seven of the nine Justices decided that the states lacked "standing." 2 Though I am not a lawyer, I join my voice with millions of citizens who are profoundly disappointed and alarmed by the Court's failure to do its duty. The integrity of elections is a foundation of the democratic process, yet the one institution that could have sought the truth lamely punted the ball away. A new Quinnipiac University poll says 38 percent of voters believe there was widespread fraud during the November election between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden. 3 Nevertheless, the issue remains unresolved and will be a blight on the history of this great nation. The second critical matter on which the future depends was a runoff election in Georgia to fill two vacant senatorial seats. It was held on January 5th and resulted in two razor-thin outcomes. Democrat Jon Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue, and Democrat Raphael Warnock defeated Republican Kelly Loeffler. With these two victories for the Dems, each party now holds 50 seats. Henceforth, tie votes on legislative issues will regularly occur. In those instances, Vice President Kamala Harris will cast deciding votes, granting victory routinely to the Democrats. The Left has now achieved ultimate power in the White House, in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate. Consequently, as I warned in December, there will be no checks and balances within our system of government. The most radical ideas promoted by President Joe Biden and his majority party will be enacted. We can infer from what they have told us that the years ahead will bring more regulation, less freedom, more taxation, less religious liberty, more socialism, less democracy, more funds for abortion, less support for the sanctity of human life, less funding for the military, more illegal immigration, more restrictions on speech, less patriotism, more wasteful spending, less support for families, more regulations on business, more appeasement of China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea, less support for the electoral college, trillions more dollars for climate nonsense, more LGBTQ propaganda, less moral compunction, more governmental corruption, less oversight of elections, more "cancel culture," fewer police officers, more gun control, and less government of the people, by the people and for the people. We can also anticipate quick passage of the horrendous "Equality Act." You might want to keep track of these items as they occur. This is just the beginning. America and Western civilization will never be the same, because it is not possible to back up on a freeway. Once radical changes are implemented, they will become ensconced in law and culture. I am most concerned about what all this means for the next generation. Children are extremely vulnerable to leftist curricula in the public schools. Specifically, I am worried about parental rights and the legality of home schooling. It is the only protection for kids. I have been expressing this jeremiad since 1990, when Gary Bauer and I wrote a book entitled Children at Risk. What we said then has proved to be prophetic of our day. It described what I called a "civil war of values" that was developing when the book was published. This is what I wrote: "In any major conflict between two established armies, a collision will eventually occur that proves to be decisive. Thereafter, historians will remember those terrible struggles as turning points that made the difference. "For Napoleon, that decisive battle occurred at Waterloo. It was Gettysburg and Vicksburg for the Union Army and for Abraham Lincoln. It was at Stalingrad and Normandy for Hitler's Germany. It was at Midway, Okinawa and Iwo Jima for the Japanese. These were the battles that contributed significantly to the ultimate outcomes of each war." [Continuing to write 30 years ago, as follows:] "It appears that America is now engaged in such a struggle. [I predicted the culture war that was just lost]. The most radical activists have a specific objective in mind. They hope to accomplish it by isolating children from their parents. It will then be relatively easy to reorient and indoctrinate future generations of Americans. This strategy explains why the most bitter campaigns are being waged over school curricula and other issues that involve our kids. The hearts and minds of children are the keys to the future." [This was my prediction:] "Children will be the prize to the winners of the great civil war of values. Those who control what young people are taught and what they experiencewhat they see, hear, think, and believe, will determine the future course of the nation. Given that influence, the predominant value system of an entire culture can be redesigned in one generation, or certainly in two, by those with unlimited access to children." Writing now to parents and grandparents in 2021, never in history has it been more important for you to defend your kids and your rights to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Fight for it with your very lives. If you are too intimidated or distracted to give priority to your children, the popular culture will take them to hell. So where do we go from here? What is the path forward for those of us who feel we have suffered a terrible loss of everything we hold dear? How do we deal with it? Conservatives have historically had a tendency to give up when they lose important battles. For those who feel inclined to surrender, I have a true story to share with you. It was told by Dr. John Corts, who was an executive with the Billy Graham ministry for many years. John said when he was 16 years old, he and his younger cousins were invited to their grandparents' farm for a couple of weeks. When they arrived, they could hardly wait to go out to the fields where the harvest was in progress. It sounded like so much fun to ride the hay wagon pulled by horses, and to romp and play together. On this occasion, however, their grandfather wouldn't let them go. He didn't explain why, but the kids wouldn't take "no" for an answer. They begged and pleaded in one voice. Finally, the patriarch of the family relented, but with one provision. He told John he could take the children to the fields IF he would agree to keep them there all day. No matter how they reacted, he was instructed not to let them come back to the house early. John promised to do as he was instructed. At dawn the next morning, the children dressed and ran excitedly to the wagon. Then they climbed on board. They giggled and threw hay at each other as they rode to the fields. Then they hopped down and ran through the tall grass. But two hours later, they had begun to tire. They had itchy hay down their backs and the sun was blazing hot. The kids were becoming miserable. By lunch, they were grumbling and wanted to be taken back to the farmhouse. John, being the eldest, remembered his grandfather's admonition and he refused. Later in the afternoon, the younger children were crying and visibly upset. Then clouds gathered above them and the kids were scared. Still, John held his ground. It was a long, hard day. Finally, all the field hands packed up to go home, and John gathered the children to the wagon. By the time they reached the farmhouse, they were exhausted, whiny and sweaty. But then they were given baths and provided with clean clothes, followed by a delicious dinner. The kids began talking excitedly about what they had done. They were proud of having spent all day with the workmen. That's when Grandfather pulled John aside and told him why he had been so insistent they stay out there all day. He said, "This farm has been in the family for many years. It is still successful primarily because when we were tired and hungry and wanted to quit and go home, we stayed in the field. We didn't give up. And that became a secret of the farm's success. That's why, John, I wanted the children to have one experience where they hung in there even when the going got tough. Today was one of those times. Thanks for keeping the kids in the field all day." The point of the story is relevant to our situation in 2021. We conservative Christians are now experiencing one of the most difficult challenges of our lives. Everything we have fought to defend and preserve seems to have been lost. Our every impulse for those who are older has been to quit"to head back to the farmhouse." The battle for righteousness has been challenging since the 1960s which was followed by the Roe v. Wade decision. There have been many demoralizing times. We conservative Christians have been ridiculed and out-voted at almost every turn. We have won a few battles, but there have been many devastating losses, especially during 2020. Some may be asking, "What should we do, Lord?" I believe He is telling us to stay in the field. There is work to be done in His vineyard. We must not abandon our conservative politicians who are up against formidable opposition from the Left. Our Bible-believing pastors are facing unrelenting pressure, and it isn't going to get easier. Godly teachers and professors need to know we have their backs. Many Christians in the military may feel lonely and overwhelmed. Police officers and firefighters need to know we are praying for them. Those of us on the home front must not cut and run. Your children are watching you daily. Don't disappoint them at this time of crisis. We must stay in the field. The Scripture speaks to our situation. Isaiah 40:28-31 gives us comfort. It says, "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." Let's pray together: Heavenly Father, we speak collectively to You at this time of sorrow. We have done what we could to preserve righteousness in the culture, but we have encountered one setback after another. Be with those who are discouraged and demoralized. We know You are in control. We ask that You bring comfort to Your people at this time. Strengthen our faith and show each of us what You would have us do. We pray fervently for our nation. We pray for a great spiritual awakening that will sweep across the land in the days ahead. May it engulf the younger generation whose faith has been weakened by false teachers and leaders. We ask for Your miraculous hand of protection on unborn children whose lives are in mortal danger. We also pray for families that are crumbling, even as I speak. These are difficult days, Lord. We turn to you for solace and wisdom. Amen. One final thought, which I urge you to read. I sent a draft of this letter to my colleague, James Gottry, for his comment. James is vice president of public policy at JDFI, and a man of God. This is his response to me this morning. It must be read, especially by despondent Christians: Dr. Dobson, This was a heartfelt and passionate letter. I can't imagine the time and effort it took to draft in the last few days, particularly as the discouraging news continues to swirl around us. As I reviewed the draft, this line jumped off the page at me: What is the path forward for those of us who feel we have suffered a terrible loss of everything we hold dear? How do we deal with it? On the one hand, it resonated. After all, as you noted, what the Democrat platform "offers" is a move toward socialism, dreadful legislation like the Equality Act, increased attacks on parental rights in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity," and a denial of truth (both the truth of Scripture and even basic biological realities). I quite literally put my face in my hands after typing these words. But. On the other hand, we have lost nothing that we need because His Word tells us in 2 Peter 1:2-4 that grace and peace are ours in abundance through the knowledge of God and Jesus, and that His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life! It also says that through His great and precious promises, we may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world [which we are certainly witnessing!] caused by evil desires. Praise God! This gives me hope! Indeed, though the world may be sinking all around us, we serve a risen Christ. And we serve a God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Therefore, we can lose nothing that is found in Him, and in Him we have everything! If the first paragraph caused me to put my face in my hands, this one puts my hands in the sky! And even as the world around us grows darker, I rejoice that His lightwhich the world may see in usgrows brighter by contrast. Because of that, I have hope that this earthly loss may yet result in a great eternal gain! And for that reason, I feel invigorated. Because in dark days like these, we have no chariots or horses to trust in; the only place where we can place our trust is in the name of the Lord our God. He is always the only One who can deliver. We can't preserve righteousness in the culture (as 2 Timothy reminds us, evil men will proceed from bad to worse). But we can bring Jesus to the culture, and we can pray for that spiritual awakening. As my dadwho has been living with stage 4 cancer for more than two yearsoften says, there is news and there is truth. And the news isn't great for our country right now. In fact, it's been pretty awful for the last year on many fronts. But the truth is so good, because Jesus is the truth, and He is the way, and He will never be defeated! Thank you for allowing me to share this. I pray it is in some way encouraging. Bless you, Dr. Dobson. May God bless America, and may every knee bow and every tongue confess that HE IS LORD! James Above all else, continue in prayer. It will be our greatest contribution to the preservation of this nation. America, we love you. God shed His grace on you. And He crowned your good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea. Sincerely, Xiaomi, one of the biggest smartphone manufacturers in China, has seen an 11% dive in stock price after being blacklisted by the US. The tech giant joined 11 firms targeted by Washington, claiming that they "posed a threat to national security." According to the International Data Corporation, Xiaomi Corporation overtook Apple in smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2020 for the very first time in history, thanks to its wide variety of budget and high-end Android smartphones. Last year, Apple launched the iPhone 12, while Xiaomi launched its Mi 9, Mi 11, and Mi Note 10 Pro lineups. In a statement, the US Department of Defense says that it is "determined to highlight and counter the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernization goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities." Read also: Elon Musk's Space X Plan to Mars Generates Comparisons to Video Games' The Outer Worlds' and 'Red Faction'. Growing Tension On the other hand, Xiaomi vehemently denies that the tech giant has ties with the Chinese military. As reported by CNBC, Xiaomi said that the company only provides products and services for commercial use and is not a 'Communist Chinese Military Company' under the National Defense Authorization Act of 1999. NDAA is legislation which Washington used to label Xiaomi as a national threat. Founded in 2010, the Beijing-based smartphone manufacturer has gained a "Chinese Apple" reputation back in its early days. Since then, Xiaomi has named itself one of the best manufacturers that still offer premium products at affordable prices. Its latest product, Mi 11, uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 5G system-on-chip mobile processor. Beijing vs. US Administration In fact, Xiaomi Corp is not the only company to face the consequence of the latest tension between Beijing and Washington. Following the Capitol's recent riot, things are not looking so stable for Trump's administration either. Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC), Luokong Technology Corporation (LKCO), Beijing Zhongguancun Development Investment Center, GOWIN Semiconductor Corp, Grand China Air (GCAC), Global Tone (GTCOM), China National Aviation Holding (CNAH), and Commercial Aircraft Corporation of Chian (COMAC) are the other ten companies to be blacklisted. As Donald Trump's administration comes to an end, the White House seems to be busy ramping up its battle with China. Last November, the president issued an executive order to ban Americans from investing in the enlisted companies deemed to supply Beijing's security apparatus. That said, US investors are now forced to divest or sell out the stakes. If none of the two actions are taken, affected holdings will be blacklisted as soon as November 11 this year. It's still unsure whether the new president and vice president-elect will lift the restriction. Either way, it will affect the company's reputation in the long run. Related post: Huawei Patent Reveals the Use of Tech to Spot Uighur Minorities. The epidemiological curve of the coronavirus pandemic in Spain is steadily rising, and is now at levels registered during the peak of the second wave, which was seen last autumn. The 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants is now well above 500, double the level considered to be high risk by the central government. On Thursday, the central Health Ministry reported 201 Covid deaths and 35,878 new infections, the second highest since the health crisis began. The record was set the previous day with 38,865. The pressure on hospitals is also rising, with non-essential surgeries being canceled in some regions in order to cope with the number of coronavirus patients. There are currently 19,000 people being treated in Spains hospitals with Covid, 2,849 of them in intensive care units (ICUs). A total of 10 of Spains 17 regions now have a 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants above 500. Extremadura is in the worst position, with an incidence of 1,167. The Balearic Islands, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y Leon, Valencia and Madrid are above 600, while Murcia and La Rioja both are at levels exceeding 700. The models developed indicate that there has been a significant change in trend between January 7 and 9, said Fernando Simon, the director of the Health Ministrys Coordination Center for Health Alerts (CCAES), during a press conference to present the latest report on Thursday. And they are associated with a very short period of transmission, of a week, around the end of the year, he added, in reference to the Christmas holiday season. CCAES director Fernando Simon providing a pandemic update this week. EUROPA PRESS/J. Hellin. POOL / Europa Press The governments chief epidemiologist ruled out the new, more contagious strain of the coronavirus that was first identified in the United Kingdom as having an effect, and insisted that increased social interaction during Christmas is largely due to this rapid rise of the curve. Its not that there has been greater transmissibility, but more people passing it on. We all know why, he said. Whether we want to be or not, we are all aware that at Christmas people were having a better time than they should have done. We could have proposed anything, but we knew that this was going to happen, he stated. Simon is taking for granted that the epidemiological curve will continue to rise for several more days, but he is hoping that the more restrictive measures that have been put in place after the Christmas holidays will put the brakes on the rhythm of infections. Hospitals, he said, will continue to be under stress for some time yet. Our ICUs are suffering from an accumulation of cases in a short time, and this could continue to increase, he said. The number of people in hospital with Covid has risen 76% since Christmas, a situation that has prompted a reorganization of activity in order to attend to the growing number of patients. Its not that there has been greater transmissibility, but more people passing it on. We all know why Fernando Simon, director of CCAES Despite the rise in infections and the pressure on hospitals across the country, Simon ruled out another domestic lockdown, such as the one put in place last spring. This measure has been requested by the premiers of the Castilla y Leon, Asturias, Murcia and Andalusia regions, but the CCAES director believes that such a drastic move will not be necessary. The second wave, which had a level of transmission during its peak similar to that being seen now, was controlled by measures that did not include complete confinement. The option of confinement is there, but with the level of transmission that we have and the specific characteristics of this third wave it doesnt seem necessary now, he argued. Simon did warn that the number of deaths from the virus will continue to rise. After incidence rises, then hospitalizations increase, followed by ICU admissions, fatalities are the last data point to go up. According to the official data from the Health Ministry, since the start of the pandemic more than 53,000 people have died after a positive Covid-19 tests. Simon made clear last night, however, that the ongoing vaccination campaign will have an impact on the fatality rate in the short term, given that the most vulnerable groups in society will have been given the inoculations before long and the risk of infection and death will start to fall. English version by Simon Hunter. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan China's express delivery industry handled over 83 billion packages last year, up 30.8 percent year on year, the State Post Bureau (SPB) said earlier this month. The total revenue of the industry hit 875 billion yuan ($135.28 billion), rising 16.7 percent from a year ago, according to the SPB. On 10:00 a.m., Dec. 22, 2020, doctor Xing Zuzhong from the cardiac rehab department of the Second People's Hospital of Hunan Province received an express package, becoming the receiver of the 80 billionth package delivered in China in 2020. This marked a new record of the Chinese courier industry, which crossed the 50 billion mark on Sept. 10 and hit the 80 billion milestone in less than 4 months. China was the only major economy that restored economic growth in 2020. The pickup in the country's domestic consumption significantly boosted the courier industry. According to statistics, the online retail sales of physical goods nationwide neared 8.8 trillion yuan in the first 11 months of 2020, accounting for a quarter of the total retail sales of national social consumer goods. The proportion went up 4.6 percentage points from that in the same period of 2019. Rural market was a major highlight of the Chinese courier industry. "Over 30 billion packages were shipped to and from rural China last year, and the year-on-year growth is 20 percentage points higher than that in the urban market," said Liu Jiang, a research fellow of the Development and Research Center of the SPB. The rising demand for agricultural products significantly boosted the development of the industry, he told People's Daily. It's becoming easier today to send farm produces that were difficult to transport to urban areas, such as beef, mutton, hairy crabs, and loquats, he said. Behind the progress are courier enterprises' efforts to extend services to lower-tier markets, as well as their endeavor to establish rural express delivery networks, including the research on packaging materials and the improvement of cold chain delivery. As of the end of 2020, express delivery services had reached over 98 percent of Chinese townships. Village-level networks were also expanding that express packages could be directly delivered to more than half of the villages in the country. As a result, the exchange of industrial products and farm produces between urban and rural areas totaled 1.5 trillion yuan. The courier industry, apart from witnessing expanding size, is also going through changes in regional structure. In the January-November period last year, the proportions of business volume and revenue in central China to the national total inched up 0.4 and 0.6 percentage points, respectively, and Hunan, Henan, Jiangxi, Shanxi and Anhui provinces all witnessed a 40 percent surge in the business volume of the courier industry, 10 percentage points higher than the national figure. Twenty-seven capitals of provinces and autonomous regions, as well as four municipalities of China, handled over 30 billion express packages over the last year, accounting for 36.7 percent of the country's total volume, down by 12.5 percentage points from 5 years ago. The courier industry growth in third- and fourth-tier cities, and even below, is quite higher than that in first- and second-tier ones, which to some extent indicated the transfer of industries. "Industries in the east transferred westward, while those in key cities are also moving to peripheral areas, and this trend is speeding up," said Liu. Key cities now focus more on R&D and exhibition, and the central and western regions are production bases, he added. The fierce competition in the courier industry further brought down the average shipping rate. The average price per waybill for the first time fell below 11 yuan last May and further decreased below 10 yuan 5 months later. The average rate stood at 9.86 yuan in November. SPB head Ma Junsheng expects that a total of 95.5 billion packages will be handled this year, up 15 percent from 2020, which will help the industry increase 12 percent of its revenue to 980 billion yuan. The country will keep enhancing efforts to bring express services to villages, striving to cover all villages in the east with direct express services before the end of this year. Meanwhile, 80 percent of administrative villages in central China and 60 percent in the west will also be offered such services, Ma added. Irish designer Simone Rocha has been criticised after it emerged that her anticipated range of clothes for H&M will not be size-inclusive. It was announced this week that the 34-year-old Irish-born designers luxury brand would be releasing a limited range with the high street store on March 11. But H&M has since said that the range will not be available beyond a size 14 in its European stores. In the United States, the range will be available up to an extra large. Ms Rocha is set to become the first Irish designer to take part in H&Ms prestigious collaborations. The announcement on social media this week prompted widespread excitement, particularly for Irish shoppers who believed they would have the chance to own one of Ms Rochas designs at a more affordable price point. In a promotional video, Ms Rocha claimed that the range would be available for all sizes. But in a post on Instagram on Friday, H&M said that the range would only be available up to a European size 42 which is around a size 14. Louise McSharry, the 2fm presenter who is also plus size, said she was deeply disappointed to find out that the range would not be inclusive. Read More Its incredibly disappointing to see that despite the PR materials around this collaboration and Simone Rocha herself referring to catering to all sizes, that instead the range will only include clothes up to a size 14, Ms McSharry said. Plus size women are constantly excluded from fashion, and its deeply frustrating to see designers and brands use buzz words around inclusivity in statements and on websites when the collections themselves are exclusive by definition. The reason this is so upsetting is because I was really so excited. I didnat initially get my hopes up because Iam used to being excluded from these things but she specifically said aall sizesa so like an absolute eejit I let myself get excited. Louise McSharry (@louisemcsharry) January 15, 2021 The range will feature Ms Rocha designing menswear, childrenswear and beauty products for the first time. The clothing campaign is set to be modelled by Daisy Edgar Jones, the Normal People star, and actor Micheal Ward. It is understood that Ms Rocha was in negotiation with the Swedish high-street brand since 2018. In an interview with Vogue, Ms Rocha said that when H&M approached her she said: If Im going to do it, I want to do it for everybody, not only women, but for men and children and to make sure they get the quality. A spokeswoman for H&M told the Irish Independent: "It was important to Simone Rocha and H&M to design a collection that can be styled in many different ways, with all items in the collection designed to be special, cherished pieces. H&Ms overall product offering is continuously reviewed depending on the collection, season and customer demand. For this collection we have decided to offer our customers sizes up to 42, but we offer other collections up to size 54." According to H&M's own website, a size 42 is a UK size 14. Ms Rocha is the latest high-profile designer to announce a collaboration with the high street store. Since 2004, H&M has announced at least one collaboration with apremium brand like Versace, Balmain or Lanvin each year. The limited ranges usually sell out within minutes or hours and can often be found being resold for vast multiples of their original price online. Ms Rochas team have been approached for comment. Read More Newly installed Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams announced two key hires at a news conference Thursday, his first major moves to reshape the office as the fate of scores of holdovers from Leon Cannizzaros tenure remained uncertain. Bob White, the first assistant in Plaquemines Parish since 2009, is returning to Orleans Parish to serve as Williams' first assistant, a role that is traditionally seen as the district attorney's second in command. Tyronne Walker, who served as Williams campaign manager and the communications director for former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, will take on the newly created role of chief administrative officer. The announcements brought into clearer focus the leadership team for an office thats at a moment of transformation. Williams, who was sworn in on Monday, was highly critical of what he called a win at all costs culture during Cannizzaro's 12-year tenure. He vowed to hire and fire employees in line with his progressive vision. While Williams spent his prior legal career as a criminal defense attorney, Whites expertise lies on the other side of the courtroom. A Navy veteran and pilot, he earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1998 and became the executive officer for the naval air station in Belle Chasse the next year before entering the legal world as a prosecutor. Bob White has worked his whole life delivering real reforms for the public," Williams said Thursday. "I dont need folks to come and say everything that I already know, everything that I already believe. I want to be challenged, I want tough questions. White played several key roles under District Attorney Eddie Jordan, including chief of public corruption where he handled the final months of the state prosecution of New Orleans police officers involved in the Danziger Bridge shooting. The case was already in legal jeopardy by the time White took it over from another prosecutor. Then-interim District Attorney Keva Landrum handed it off to federal authorities in 2008 rather than appeal a district judges decision crippling the case. After a protracted legal process, 10 officers pleaded guilty in federal court. Williams was highly critical of Landrums decision ahead of his Dec. 5 runoff against her, but he defended White Thursday, nothing that White wasn't district attorney at the time. In 2009, White moved to the Plaquemines Parish District Attorneys Office to serve as first assistant. He drew praise from Plaquemines District Attorney Charles Ballay, who cited Whites military-style organizational skills and breadth of knowledge about criminal law. Defense attorneys praised him as well. He is one of the few people from any prosecutor's office in this area that is virtually universally respected and well-liked by both sides, said private defense lawyer Michael Kennedy. I hope this is going to usher in a very good new era for the New Orleans justice system. 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 The position of first assistant is typically the number two job in the district attorney's office and a person that is able to step into the top spot if ever necessary. But it was unclear Thursday whether White would serve as district attorney in the event Williams is convicted of the 11 tax fraud counts pending against him in federal court. Under state law, first assistants automatically take over as district attorney only if they meet the requirements for the job, including two years of residency, according to Loren Lampart, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association. White lives in Plaquemines Parish and is in the process of moving to New Orleans. Williams dismissed the idea that the residency issue would cause problems. The other key hire announced Thursday was Walker, who as campaign manager for Williams helped guide him to a decisive victory over Landrum despite opposition from most of the citys political establishment. Walker previously served as vice president of communications for the Greater New Orleans Foundation. Before that, he held top positions under Landrieu including senior adviser for communications and local government affairs. His experience includes helping to craft Landrieus NOLA for Life murder reduction plan. Walker, who is not a lawyer, will help lead administrative, operational and external affairs at the District Attorney's Office. Aside from those top two positions, most of the district attorney's organizational chart was still hazy, although Williams promised changes that will ensure junior prosecutors receive more guidance and training. Other section chiefs have yet to be named, except for former Innocence Project New Orleans Director Emily Maw, who will head up a new civil rights division. That section will be charged with investigating cold cases, reviewing long sentences and reversing wrongful convictions. Current employees interviewed for their jobs last week and are awaiting word as to whether they will be retained. Williams said he expected to make those decisions by the end of the week. The new district attorney left open the possibility that his hires will include Nicole Burdett, his law partner and co-defendant in the federal tax fraud case. He said shes been working early mornings and late nights with his transition team. It could happen, Williams said. I want to make sure we deal with current employees first. Actor Vineet Kumar Singh says he learnt pottery for his upcoming film Aadhaar, adding that he has now become a pro at the art of making pots. Image Source: IANS News Actor Vineet Kumar Singh says he learnt pottery for his upcoming film Aadhaar, adding that he has now become a pro at the art of making pots. Image Source: IANS News Actor Vineet Kumar Singh says he learnt pottery for his upcoming film Aadhaar, adding that he has now become a pro at the art of making pots. Image Source: IANS News Mumbai, Jan 15 : Actor Vineet Kumar Singh says he learnt pottery for his upcoming film Aadhaar, adding that he has now become a pro at the art of making pots. "I spent a lot of time learning the art of pottery. It started six months before the shoot when I visited the same village in Deoghar, Jharkhand, with my director Suman Ghosh," Vineet said. "We shot a few things at the potter's house, who taught me the art. He told me that to make pots, you will have to rotate the wheel yourself and there is no other way to do it. I did that the first time and realised that it is not an easy thing to do. So I kept learning," he added. Vineet added: "Because I have scenes in the film while doing pottery. So I tried my best to learn the basics of this beautiful craft. I started learning pottery six months prior to the shoot of Aadhaar. Now, I have become a pro at the art of making pots. In fact now, I can rotate the potter's wheel while talking as well. I can make items like a glass or a small pot." Directed by Suman Ghosh, Aadhaar tells the story of the protagonist (played by Singh) in Jamua, Jharkhand, to obtain his Aadhaar number. The Drishyam Films and Jio Studios project also features Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Mishra and Raghubir Yadav. The film is slated to release theatrically on February 5. Former FDA Chief Kessler to Head Bidens COVID-19 Response A former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner will lead the Biden administrations COVID-19 response, including its efforts to quickly vaccinate more Americans as the death toll climbs to new records on a near-daily basis. President-elect Joe Bidens team announced Friday the choice of David Kessler as the chief science officer for its response to COVID-19, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Kessler will replace Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a President Donald Trump pick who was asked to resign. Gen. Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer for Trumps Operation Warp Speed, is expected to stay on. Kessler was commissioner of the FDA from 1990 to 1997. He later became dean of Yales medical school before being appointed as co-chair of the Biden transitions COVID-19 task force. Operation Warp Speed, a major governmental effort to speed up the development of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, paid off, with two vaccines receiving emergency authorization last month. But projections of 20 million Americans getting injected by the end of the year proved overly optimistic, by about five times. The federal government has as of Thursday passed over 30 million doses to states, but states have used just 11.1 million of those, as some fail to efficiently administer the doses. After Bidens team said he planned to release nearly all doses of the vaccine after taking office, the Trump administration said it would do so. The administration had been holding some in reserve because both authorized vaccines require two doses spaced several weeks apart. We now believe that our manufacturing is predictable enough that we can ensure second doses are available for people from ongoing production, Health Secretary Alex Azar said on Tuesday. Biden has pegged a goal of vaccinating 1 million people per day for the first 100 days hes in office, though some experts say even that number is too low. Nurse Patti Ward inoculates EMT Jazmin Murillo with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at UMass Memorial Hospital in Marlborough, Mass., on Jan. 12, 2021. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) A forecast from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published this week projected more than 92,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 over the next three weeks, underscoring the urgency of vaccination efforts. The Biden team plans to federalize more aspects of the distribution and administration, versus the state-centric approach the Trump administration took once doses reached the states. We are in a race against time, and we need a comprehensive strategy to quickly contain this virus. The individuals announced today will bolster the White Houses COVID-19 Response team and play important roles in carrying out our rescue plan and vaccination program. At a time when American families are facing numerous challenges I know these public servants will do all that is needed to build our nation back better, Biden said in a statement. Joining Kessler will be Rosa Po, a former aide to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Obama administration assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services. Po will be deputy chief of staff for the COVID response team. Other former Obama administration officials were also tapped: Andy Slavitt, former administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid; Vidur Sharma, a former health policy adviser, and Dr. B. Cameron Webb, a former White House fellow, will work on the COVID response effort. PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time ever a mainland home in Northern Palm Beach County has broken the $ 30 million dollar mark. An incredible 30,000 square foot estate is the most expensive home ever listed in Jupiter and brings the community into the exclusive $30 million and up club. The property is owned by racing legend Johnny Gray and is being listed at $ 32.5 million by Waterfront Properties and Club Communities. The Admirals Cove Estate property features a million dollar movie theater crafted by an associate of Film Legend George Lucas, an air conditioned 25 car state of the art garage with workshop and indoor parking for a tour bus, a trophy room, a million dollar winding pool with swim-up bar, 2 Jacuzzi's, a waterfall, a dock for a 160ft. mega yacht, and other amenities. Magnificent 30,000 sq.ft. Celebrity home most exclusive ever listed in Jupiter, Florida. Agent: Rob Thomson, Waterfront Properties Grand Staircase Entry at 176 Spyglass Lane, Jupiter, Fl. Home includes a million dollar theater designed by an associate of George Lucas, an air conditioned 25 car garage with workshop and indoor parking for a motor coach, 365' of prime waterfront with space for a mega yacht, and much more ! Listing Agent Rob Thomson of Waterfront Properties says a new era for the area is beginning right before our eyes, "This is the most exclusive listing ever in Jupiter and northern mainland Palm Beach County. Prices for luxury real estate in the area are coming into their own as more people discover the beauty and lifestyle offered by Jupiter and Northern Palm Beach County." The home also features 6 bedrooms, 7 full and 3 half bathrooms, a gym, a commercial elevator, state of the art electronics including drop down TV's and sound system, and other touches crafted by special attention from the owner. For more information on the property contact Rob Thomson, Waterfront Properties, (561) 346-1881. Video link (aerial and interior b-roll with interview Q&A at end) News media is granted permission to edit and use the video for coverage of this release/story. Q&A Subject: Rob Thomson, Waterfront Properties Video : https://drive.google.com/file/d/15hjHmXyGiQk9RJ-1KSCuaBctPDpNHQqg/view?usp=sharing Property listing : https://www.waterfront-properties.com/listing/rx-10684338-176-spyglass-lane-jupiter-fl-33477/?tvald MEDIA CONTACT: Chase Scott (561) 644-1169 [email protected] SOURCE Waterfront Properties (Newser) A Navy SEAL pleaded guilty Thursday to involuntary manslaughter for his role in the hazing death of a Green Beret while the men were stationed in Africa. Chief Petty Officer Tony DeDolph, a member of the elite SEAL Team 6, also offered a detailed account of the night in which he and other servicemembers initiated a prank known as a "tape job" on Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar. DeDolph told a military judge that the men were trying to teach Melgar a lesson over perceived slights while they served in Mali in 2017. But the SEAL said they were soon "in a state of shock and deeply disturbed" after the duct-tape-bound Melgar remained unresponsive for several minutes, the AP reports. DeDolph said his role in the prank was to cause Melgar to temporarily lose consciousness by placing him in a martial-arts-style chokehold. story continues below Melgar lost consciousness in about 10 seconds, but failed to wake up after the typical 30 seconds, the SEAL said. He is the third of four US service memberstwo SEALs and two Marinesto face a court martial for the death of Melgar. DeDolph said Wednesday that Melgar "had ditched" service members as a "prank." DeDolph said the plan to prank Melgar in return included breaking down Melgar's door with a sledge hammer, binding him with duct tape, and performing the chokehold. Someone was supposed to dance around in a gorilla mask. DeDolph, who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, hazing, and obstruction of justice for trying to cover up the cause of death, faces a maximum sentence of 22 1/2 years in prison. (Sources said there was an "ongoing disagreement" between Melgar and the SEALs.) Egyptian Ambassador to the US Moataz Zahran said on Friday during a virtual dialogue with the National Council on the US-Arab Relations that there are many cooperation opportunities between Egypt and the US under the administration of President-elect Joe Biden. He added that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi was one of the first leaders who congratulated President Biden over his new presidential post. As for the violent events at the Capitol earlier this month, Zahran added that the Egyptian people were shocked at the events that took place on January 6. He further noted that Egypt welcomed peace agreements between Egypt and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Egypt has always been keen on supporting regional peace, he pointed out, adding that Egypt has been supporting peace in the region for the past 40 years. Egypt is now playing a role for enhancing this peace in the region, he said adding that the Middle East peace process is the major issue in the Middle East. As for Iran, he noted that the nuclear file is not the only problem created by Iran in the region as its interference in the internal affairs of other countries and its efforts of destroying assets owned by Arab countries in the region should also be confronted. There is a chance for cooperation with the new US administration in light of the escalation of Iranian interference in different conflicts within the region such as in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He also added that Egypt is having consultations with the Republicans and Democrats about Iran and its interference in the internal affairs of countries in the region. As for Sudan, the Egyptian ambassador said Egypt hopes that Sudan could confront all challenges facing it. As for the issue of the Ethiopian dam, he noted that Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia are three parties in this file and cooperation is needed to achieve progress. Meanwhile keeping in mind two important things; first the Ethiopian needs for development and second realising the threat facing Egypt and Sudan if the three countries could not reach an agreement in this regard or if Ethiopia would take unilateral action. As for the Libyan file, Zahran said that Libya became the first threat to the Egyptian national security due to the chaos that is spreading there these days. Egypt is supporting peace efforts in Libya and is playing a major role in reaching an understanding by the Libyan parties. Egypt is still worried about foreign interference in the Libyan file he said, adding that Cairo has called on all foreign parties to leave Libya as their presence there leads to the worsening of the situation. As for the current economic reform program in Egypt, he mentioned that Egypt has started its economic reform program a few years ago. These reforms led to achieving economic growth rates reaching 3.6 percent, which is not realized by most of the world countries due to the coronavirus pandemic. He further noted that there are many investment opportunities in the Suez Canal axis especially in the energy sector. He then added that Egypt enjoys huge infrastructure as 14 new cities are being built while development efforts are made in the education sector for adopting high technology methods in the educational process. Short link: Joseph R. Biden Jr. will become president of the United States at noon Wednesday in a scaled-back inauguration ceremony. While key elements will remain traditional, many events will be downsized and reimagined to better adapt the celebration to a nation battling the coronavirus. Heres a guide to the event. What will the inauguration look like? Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn in on the Capitols West Front sometime before noon. The new president is then expected give his inaugural address and conduct a review of military troops, as is tradition. But instead of a traditional parade before cheering spectators along Pennsylvania Avenue as the new president, vice president and their families make their way to the White House over a mile away, there will be an official escort with representatives from every branch of the military for one city block. For remote viewers, the inaugural committee has planned what it is calling a virtual parade across the country featuring music, poets and dancers paying homage to Americas heroes on the front lines of the pandemic. MLC Adagur H Vishwanath said he would soon release a book Bombay Days a tell-all account of what transpired at Mumbai during 'Operation Kamala-2'. Speaking to the media in Hubballi on Friday, he said the book would detail the conversations between Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa and the 17 rebel MLAs. "The incidents unfolding over the past three days have hurt me. The BJP government which came to power in the state based on the sacrifice made by the 17 rebel MLAs has not kept its word," he said, adding that the book will spill the beans on all the issues that led to the 17 MLAs rebelling against their parties and what we were assured by the BJP leaders then. Also Read | Karnataka Cabinet expansion: AH Vishwanath expresses his displeasure "Court might have bared me from holding a ministerial post, but why wasn't Munirathna made a minister as promised? What are the credentials of C P Yogeshwar and Arvind Limbavli to be ministers" he said. Without naming Yogeshwar and Vishwanath, he said it is the prerogative of Chief Minister to include MLCs against whom there are more than 9,731 cases and stands every chance to go to jail if the court vacates the stay order. BSY is Kamadhenu Going soft on Yediyurappa, Vishwanath said the CM is like a Kamadhenu. However, he doesn't know what is happening around him as his life is in others' hands. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fighting a war against dynasty politics, in Karnataka, the exact opposite is taking place. While one son of Yediyurappa is an MP, another son is super CM and his son-in-laws and close relatives are wielding power. Sought time with Central leadership Vishwanath said he has sought an appointment with Union Home Minister Amit Shah to discuss the leadership issue and political scenario in Karnataka, during Shah's visit to the state. Hope we will get to meet his, he said. Whether youve taken the pledge to go vegan for a whole month or are just experimenting with the idea, The Red & Black has compiled a list of six Athens restaurants with vegan options to try this month. A doctor was charged Wednesday with sexually abusing a patient during a medical appointment at his Somerset County practice, authorities said. Dr. Chike J. Aguh, of Belle Mead, faces charges of sexual assault and sexual contact, according to Somerset County Prosecutor Michael H. Robertson. The victim told police on Tuesday that the 64-year-old doctor assaulted her at his Franklin Township office, Robertson said in a statement. Aguh is an obstetrics and gynecology specialist with 39 years of medical experience, according to a profile on Healthgrades.com. He is listed as being affiliated with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and Saint Peters University Hospital. Spokespeople for both hospitals would not comment Thursday night. The prosecutors office said Aguh was held at the Somerset County Jail ahead of a detention hearing. It was not immediately clear if he had retained an attorney. Anyone with information on the case can call the Somerset County Prosecutors Office Sex Crimes Unit at 908-231-7100. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Dating app Bumble has restored its political filter on profiles in the U.S. after being accused of 'protecting insurrectionists' and 'terrorist' for removing the option on Thursday. The company temporarily deactivated the filter after it emerged users were hunting down Capitol rioters and luring them into sending picture evidence that is then submitted to the FBI. Bumble said it removed the filter to 'prevent misuse' but that it still condemned 'illegal activity'. Yet the company was forced to quickly reverse the decision on Friday after immediate backlash and calls for them to ban those who promoted their participance in the January 6 violence on their profiles. Social media users on Thursday reported the removal of the political filter Bumble users in D.C. reported seeing an influx of profiles of Trump supporters last week such as the one pictured above in which the man wore a shirt claiming Biden did not win the election It came after Allison Norris revealed the practice of catfishing Trump rioters 'On January 13, we took the action to temporarily remove our politics filter in an effort to prevent that kind of misuse and abuse while we took the steps necessary to ensure we had the proper moderation tools and protocols in place,' a spokesperson told Fox News. 'Having completed that process, the politics filter has been turned back on in the United States.' The trend of catfishing the Trump mob emerged last week when dating app users in D.C. noted the high influx of conservative profiles, as thousands descended on the city for the Stop the Steal rally and then proceeded to storm the U.S. Capitol. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser even called the rioters 'audacious' for heading to dating apps after the destruction they'd caused, according to The Lily. Washington Post reporter John Hudson shared a screen capture from a friend on January 7 which showed a Trump loyalist promoting the unfounded claims that Trump won the election but was thwarted because of widespread voter fraud The profile of Chris, 31, pictured him wearing a sweatshirt reading, 'marked safe from believing Biden won'. 'Here for America. Got alcohol and a hotel room. If you want to come talk about freedom or whatever,' he wrote in his bio. Twitter user Alia Awadallah also noted the change in D.C. profiles saying it was 'funny but actually serious'. 'There are DOZENS of men on DC dating apps right now who were clearly here for the insurrection attempt yesterday,' she wrote. 'Some say it directly, others are obvious from MAGA clothing, location tags, etc. Is that info useful at all for law enforcement? 'I assume some used Tinder in DC and others just had apps open, so location updated automatically. None posted any incriminating evidence of illegal acts, but are police tracking this? Is it useful as a starting point?' Bumble has claimed it did so only temporarily and because of 'misuse' Last Friday, a woman named Allison Norris responded to say she knew of people reporting the profiles to the FBI after tracking them down by changing their political preferences. 'I know a friend of a friend who changed her preference on Bumble to Conservative. She's matching with MAGA bros and they're bragging and sending her pics and videos of them in the Capitol,' Norris wrote. 'She's sending them to the FBI.' Awadallah tweeted that she was 'on hold with FBI and police' as she tried to report the profiles. 'No idea if this will end up being useful but I feel like there's a good story there anyway, so everyone get on the apps and start screenshotting,' she wrote. 'It's funny how obvious it is when people aren't local. My app went from real estate agents, accountants, and contractors to...none of that.' Twitter user Alia Awadallah revealed she had called thw FBI about some of the profiles Awadallah also revealed that she had submitted the information to the FBI tip line which has been established to aid in the search for those involved in the violence that resulted in the deaths of five people. Other users told how they were reporting the profiles to the app itself, while others criticized Bumble for not acting to remove them previously. The calls for further action from the company heightened on Tuesday after a Bloomberg interview with rioter Brandon Fellows who claimed that his Bumble profile had been 'blowing up' since he added pictures from last week. Fellows said he had 'no regrets' about breaking into the building and smoking marijuana in the office of a U.S. Senator. 'Might want to do something about a domestic terrorist using your site,' user @aznananc wrote to Bumble. 'Hey @bumble you may want to consider the types of things your members are sharing - like participation in insurrection?' added another named Marie, while Valerie Chicola wrote: 'Hey @bumble , when are you going to ban these guys from your apps?' Bumble was called to take action against the profiles after a Bloomberg interview with rioter Brandon Fellows on Tuesday who claimed that his Bumble profile had been 'blowing up' since he added pictures from last week. He said he had 'no regrets' about his part in the riot A Twitter user named Bri shared a grab of her successful attempt to have a rioter banned One user named Bri shared her success at having one profile removed. 'I GOT THE CAPITOL KID BANNED FROM BUMBLE YALL FJDJSJSHJS,' she tweeted, sharing a grab of her message from the app. Emily Goodman, 29, told The Lily, that she reported profiles that read: 'In DC for a few days. STOP THE STEAL.' Another featured a man pictured was wearing an all-black T-shirt emblazoned with a white American flag who identified himself as a member of the far-right group the Proud Boys. 'It's scary,' Goodman said. 'These people came to D.C. and wreaked havoc on a U.S. building and don't seem to show any kind of remorse or are proud about it. 'It's just trying to protect my female friends, you know, let them know that these people are still in town.' Bumble responded to users criticizing their lack of action claiming it was removing profiles Bumble said it will remove 'anyone who's been confirmed as a participant in the attack on the Capitol' from the app in reesponse to criticism shared on social media The dating app claimed that the politicial filter is only temporarily removed Yet despite these actions, Bumble faced further criticism Thursday over the decision to remove the political filter before it was eventually restored just a day later. 'It looks like I broke Bumble?' wrote Norris when she learned that her tweet had led to the filter removal. 'But I guess Bumble was already broken if it's so quick to protect terrorists.' 'It definitely tells me @bumble is protecting insurrectionists, which is a gross look,' tweeted Natasha Boyd. 'We've temporarily removed our politics filter to prevent misuse,' the company told Boyd. 'However, please rest assured that we prohibit any content that promotes terrorism or racial hatred, and we've already removed any users that have been confirmed as participants in the attack of the US Capitol.' 'Why did you take away political preferences? This benefits no one,' wrote Maggie Lucio. Bumble responded stating: 'We've only temporarily removed our politics filter to prevent misuse. Don't worry; it'll be back soon!' 'So, @bumble is gonna let its users promote their involvement in insurrection to get dates?' argued user John Julitx. 'Absolutely not!' the app responded in a tweet. 'Bumble prohibits content that encourages any illegal activity. We've taken action on accounts that have violated this policy,' it added. 'We are monitoring activity & will continue to remove any users that have been confirmed as participants in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.' The app was accused of 'protecting insurrectionists' but said it was still taking action 'Absolutey not!' the app responded in answer to claims the profiles would remain Bumble has not revealed when the political preference filter will return Yet the app was still accused of 'protecting terrorist and insurrectionists' In an official statement, Bumble claimed that it acted immediately on January 6 to begin scanning profiles. It did not comment on whether it considered the search for rioters a misuse of the app. 'We immediately ensured that our hate speech scanning and protocols addressed the attack on the US Capitol and began removing any insurrection-related content from our platform,' a Bumble rep said Thursday. 'If we see anything that would suggest someone has or is in the process of committing a potentially criminal act, we will take appropriate steps with law enforcement.' Bumble said it is also looking ahead to next week's inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and is 'closely monitoring' activity amid concerns about further violence. 'Where our AI technology flags photos, hate symbols or text content that promotes the insurrection or related activities, those are removed, with repeated offenses or more extreme content resulting in a user being banned,' the Bumble rep said. Worry in North Mecklenburg Future Investment (TNS) Charlotte, N.C., leaders face a bumpy road as they seek support for a "transformational" transit and mobility plan, partially paid for with a one-cent sales tax that could go before Mecklenburg County voters this November.During a two-day retreat this week, the Charlotte City Council authorized City Manager Marcus Jones to move ahead with a sweeping transit framework intended to keep pace with the region's exploding growth.The Silver Line expected to run from Matthews to north of uptown, and westward past the airport to Gaston County is a key focal point. But the plan also calls for expansive greenways, bicycle networks and a bus system to keep the region interconnected, according to a report from the Charlotte Moves Task Force, headed by former Mayor Harvey Gantt.Initial estimates show the program would cost $8-12 billion, half funded locally. But it's still too early to know how officials will allocate funding across the slate of transit projects. The City Council is expected to adopt a funding strategy by April, followed by a comprehensive mobility and infrastructure plan in June or July. It fits into a broader plan that city planners are also fine-tuning, which envisions the future of economic development, affordable housing, zoning policies and other infrastructure needs in Charlotte with an emphasis on equitable growth."We are in a very beginning phase of our Charlotte Moves conversations, where overall, council agrees that we do need to invest in our infrastructure," City Council member Dimple Ajmera said Tuesday. "The challenge is: How, and the details?"Support is lacking throughout the region, as the coronavirus pandemic batters the local economy and causes unprecedented hardship for some of Mecklenburg's most vulnerable residents. Opponents say the city's approach has been too narrow, leaving out crucial perspectives from surrounding towns and counties."This isn't a weighted vote for Charlotte," Mayor Vi Lyles said during the retreat, signaling the plan needs support from Mecklenburg's six towns.When the council approved the task force's recommendations Monday afternoon, Lyles reminded Jones: "You've heard the urgency behind this request."County commissioners recently criticized the timing of the tax, saying it's difficult to contemplate the hefty and enduring investment as COVID-19 upends how people live, work and commute to office jobs in uptown Charlotte. The sales tax would exclude groceries and medications.Commissioner Elaine Powell has called her north Mecklenburg district a "mobility desert.""I have been hearing from a lot of people, and I wanted to say I still haven't heard any enthusiasm for the proposed plan," Powell, vice chair of the commissioners, said during last week's board meeting. "I hope that they are looking at it and tweaking it to make it better and a countywide plan, not just a citywide plan."In a recent letter to Lyles, the mayors of Cornelius, Davidson and Huntersville listed their concerns about the proposed tax, including a "lack of a guarantee for tangible projects for north Mecklenburg, in particular a light rail project (Red Line) connecting north Mecklenburg to Charlotte and the rest of the CATS system.""North Mecklenburg communities' citizens have contributed sales tax for over 20 years to the CATS system, but most capital has been spent in Charlotte," Mayors Woody Washam, Rusty Knox and John Aneralla wrote in their letter, which was shared with theMecklenburg already has one of the highest sales tax rates in the state, at 7.25 percent. But Charlotte's peer cities across the country are much higher, including Seattle at 10.10 percent and Nashville at 9.25 percent.Not everyone on the Charlotte City Council is on board yet, either.City Council member Braxton Winston urged his colleagues to ensure all residents have a chance to weigh in before city planners lock into certain decisions and repeat historical mistakes that harmed marginalized communities."Staff members can only work off the policies that we give," Winston said. "And if we're not specific, we're going to leave people out."City Council member Tariq Bokhari said Charlotte is working against a tight timeline, with little room for error to finalize the transit recommendations and educate Mecklenburg voters before November. City officials also need to secure legislative approval to put the referendum currently dubbed a "one cent for mobility" tax on the ballot."The task force report to me is a very robust description of how much money to ask for and how to sell that ask to the public," Bokhari said Monday. "It is not a plan for what to do with the money. I don't have any idea how much money goes to light rail versus roads versus buses."It's also difficult to anticipate which investments will make the most impact years from now, Bokhari said, depending if smart transit options including autonomous vehicles and aerial taxis become ubiquitous.Before the pandemic, almost 77 percent of Charlotteans traveled to work, with less than 5 percent biking, walking or taking public transit, said Taiwo Jaiyeoba, assistant city manager and planning director. With a transit plan, he said Charlotte can "rebalance" those modes and steer away from a car-centric city.City Council member Renee Johnson said Charlotte must also pursue temporary strategies before light rail and other options become available."We have a struggle that we are gridlocked now. We are already overcrowded," Johnson said. "We're looking at a $12-billion referendum when we're looking at areas that don't have buses today." Havas Life Sorento, the award-winning health and wellness communications agency from Havas Group India umbrella has further strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Arunima Singh as Vice President Digital, her appointment is in line with boosting the digital capabilities for the agency. In this new role, Arunima will drive health digital & technology vision and strategy for Havas Life Sorento. She will be based in Mumbai office. Arunima has successfully spearheaded digital media planning, brand management, campaigns & promotions across brands & agencies like Wunderman Thompson, Adfactors PR, Digital Law & Kenneth, ICICI Bank Ltd and Acme Health Care Products. She has established consistent business practices, delivered highest customer satisfaction with a focus on quality content, conceptualized effective plans for clients business, reputation management, SMM/SEO, content management, media strategies, asset development resulting in consistent business wins. Arunimas last stint was at Social Beat as Executive Vice President. Commenting on the appointment, Sangeeta Barde, Managing Partner, Havas Life Sorento said, The Health & Wellness industry is at the forefront of changes seen due to pandemic. It has majorly changed the way we manage our health, digital is the order of the day with advancements in telehealth, e-commerce, e-detailing, multi-channel marketing, health tech products etc. HLS is thriving amidst these changes and will continue to remain agile by riding on this digital wave. Arunima is a seasoned professional and I am confident that her skill- set and experience will add immense value to our client businesses as they step forward on their digital journey. I am delighted to have Arunima on board and welcome her to the group. I am excited to join the Havas Life Sorento team and take up this opportunity to further build HLSs prowess in health digital. I look forward to leading a great team, driving innovation, building great case studies for clients and making a meaningful difference together. Looking forward to a stunning career with HLS and contributing to taking it to newer & greater heights. said Arunima Singh. 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. BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from the University of Milan have discovered that a woman in the northern Italian city was infected with COVID-19 in November 2019, according to media reports. Through two different techniques on skin tissue, the researchers identified in a biopsy of a 25-year-old woman the presence of RNA gene sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus dating back to November 2019, according to Italian regional daily L'Unione Sarda. "There are, in this pandemic, cases in which the only sign of COVID-19 infection is that of a skin pathology," Raffaele Gianotti, who coordinated the research, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "I wondered if we could find evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in the skin of patients with only skin diseases before the officially recognized epidemic phase began," said Gianotti, adding "we found 'the fingerprints' of COVID-19 in the skin tissue." Based on global data, this is "the oldest evidence of the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a human being," the report said. The findings in Italy are the latest among studies worldwide that have added to the growing evidence that COVID-19 was silently circulating outside of China earlier than previously thought. In Brazil, the health department of the state of Espirito Santo announced on Tuesday that the presence of IgG antibodies, specific for SARS-CoV-2 virus, was detected in serum samples from December 2019. The health department said that 7,370 serum samples had been collected between December 2019 and June 2020 from patients suspected of being infected with dengue and chikungunya. With the samples analyzed, IgG antibodies were detected in 210 people, of which 16 cases suggested the presence of the novel coronavirus in the state before Brazil announced the first officially-confirmed case on Feb. 26, 2020. One of the cases was collected on Dec. 18, 2019. The health department stated that it takes around 20 days for a patient to reach detectable levels of IgG after infection, so it could have occurred between late November and early December 2019. In France, scientists found a man infected with COVID-19 in December last year, roughly a month before the first officially recorded cases in Europe. Citing a doctor at Avicenne and Jean-Verdier hospitals near Paris, BBC News reported in May that the patient "must have been infected between 14 and 22 December, as coronavirus symptoms take between five and 14 days to appear." In Spain, researchers at the University of Barcelona, one of the country's most prestigious universities, detected the presence of the virus genome in wastewater samples collected on March 12, 2019, the university said in a statement in June. In Italy, research by the National Cancer Institute in Milan, published in November, showed that 11.6 percent of the 959 healthy volunteers who participated in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 to March 2020 had developed COVID-19 antibodies well before February when the first official case was recorded in the country, with four cases from the study dating to the first week in October last year, which means those people were infected in September. On Nov. 30, a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that COVID-19 was likely in the United States as early as mid-December 2019, weeks before the virus was first identified in China. According to the study published online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, CDC researchers tested blood samples from 7,389 routine blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from Dec. 13, 2019 to Jan. 17, 2020 for antibodies specific to the novel coronavirus. COVID-19 infections "may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019," about a month earlier than the country's first official case on Jan. 19, the CDC scientists wrote. These findings are yet another illustration of how complicated it is to solve the scientific puzzle of virus source tracing. Historically, the place where a virus was first reported has often not been that of its origin. The HIV virus, for instance, was first reported by the United States, yet it's believed that the virus originated outside of the U.S. Meanwhile, evidence has proved that the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain. Regarding these studies, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it will "take every detection in France, in Spain, in Italy very seriously, and we will examine each and every one of them." "We will not stop from knowing the truth on the origin of the virus, but based on science, without politicizing it or trying to create tension in the process," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late November. After months of trying to gain entry into China for a COVID-19 investigation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has finally sent a team of investigators to the country, with the team landing in the country this Thursday, January 14, 2021. WHO Members Tested Positive for IgM Antibodies According to TIME, the team has arrived in Central Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease where the novel coronavirus was initially discovered and scattered. The "global team of researchers" included ten members from various nations, including the United States, Britain, Australia, Japan, Germany, Russia, Vietnam, Qatar, and the Netherlands, who will all complete a two-week quarantine like everyone else. Upon landing, the members quickly underwent both throat swabs as well as serum antibody tests. Nevertheless, two members of the WHO investigation team were left in Singapore after they were blocked from entering the country due to testing positive in the coronavirus antibody test. In a report by CNN, the organization confirmed the news via their Twitter account, and as of now, is re-testing the remaining two members who were able to acquire negative results for COVID-19 multiples times. Since November 2020, China mandated anyone entering the country must show a negative IgM antibody test and a PCR test. IgM antibody is often the first sign of coronavirus infection. Meanwhile, all the members who have landed in China today can start their investigation as soon as their quarantine period is over. Read More: Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine Update: Generated Immune Response in Volunteers, Reported Minimal Side-Effects WHO Lands in China After Months of Rebuffs Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a press conference this Thursday that the country "will strictly follow the relevant epidemic prevention regulations and requirements, and provide corresponding support and facilities for WHO experts who come to China to carry out international cooperation on tracing the origin of the virus." When asked about the remaining members left in Singapore, Zhao did not comment, and instead directed the reporters to "relevant authorities." The health organization has repeatedly asked China for permission to send scientists to the city of Wuhan to start their investigation and further understand how COVID-19 came to be, but they were reportedly repeatedly rebuffed. However, the WHO team was supposed to enter the country earlier this month but were blocked from entering by the country's authorities. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has then expressed his disappointment over the news, saying that the investigation is a top priority for the United Nations' agency and that they are "eager" to start the mission at the earliest time possible. COVID-19 Investigation to Begin Ideally, WHO scientists were supposed to land on-site 24 hours after the outbreak to collect samples as well as interview both patients and clinicians. But what happened when the outbreak happened was far from that as the Chinese authorities immediately sanitized the Huanan Seafood Market where the first victims were allegedly from. As a year had passed, the team will be focusing on gathering data from clinicians and medical staff about treating patients, examining data during the timeline of admissions, and analyzing various medical records. For now, the agency and the rest of the world will have to wait until the investigation starts. Related Article: NHS App for COVID-19 Not Working Properly on Android Phones, User Data Won't Upload This article is owned by Tech Times Written by: Nhx Tingson 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. An endangered Indian rhinoceros was born in a Polish zoo, a hopeful development in efforts to preserve the rare animals. Cameras captured Maruska, a seven-year-old female at Wroclaw Zoo in Southwest Poland, giving birth to a female on January 6. The unnamed calf is the first Indian rhino born at the zoo in its 155-year-history. Both Maruska and the infant's father, 11-year-old Manas, are first time parents. Scroll down for video An endangered Indian rhinoceros was born at the Wroclaw Zoo in Poland on January 6 Zoo president Radoslaw Ratajszczak said Maruska is behaving like a pro. 'She looks after her daughter, allows her to nurse and is very delicate, despite weighing more than 2 tons,' he said. For example, when she lies down, she's very careful not to crush the little one, and even gently moves her aside.' The gestation period of Indian rhinos is around 16 months. The calf was born to first-time mom Maruska, a seven-year-old female, and Manas, an 11-year-old male. The trio are among the roughly 170 Indian rhinos kept at zoos around the world So far, the new baby is being cared for away from zoo visitors but she can be seen in video of their enclosure. Mothers typically stay close to their calves for their first three or four years. An adult Indian rhinoceros can grow more than 12 feet tall and weigh up to three tons. They mainly feed on grass, leaves and twigs, as well as fruit and aquatic vegetation. Maruska, Manas and their baby are among the roughly 170 Indian rhinos in captivity at 66 zoos around the world. Pictures is just moments after the baby rhinoceros was born Zoo president Radoslaw Ratajszczak said the mother, Maruska, is behaving like a pro. 'She looks after her daughter, allows her to nurse, and is very delicate, despite weighing more than 2 tons,' he said The unnamed calf is the first Indian rhino born at the zoo in its 155-year-history Wroclaw Zoo is the third largest zoo in the world in terms of the number of species - home to about 1,132. The Indian rhino is known scientifically as Rhinoceros unicornis because, unlike the Sumatran rhinoceros, it only has one horn. They once roamed across the fertile North Indian River Plain but overhunting and agricultural development devastated the population: In the early 1990s, there were estimated to be less than 1,895 mature Indian rhinos in the wild. Thanks to conservation efforts that number has risen to nearly 3,500, but the creatures are still listed as 'vulnerable' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Poaching in India has risen in the past year, as a lack of human traffic has made it easier for hunters to flout laws. The Indian rhino is known scientifically as Rhinoceros unicornis because, unlike the Sumatran rhinoceros, it only has one horn This is the first Indian rhinoceros born in Wroclaw Zoo's 155-year-history They can earn as much as $150,000 for one rhino horn on the black market, according to media reports, serving foreign demand for its use in traditional Chinese medicine. A lack of vehicles on the highway near Kaziranga National Park in Assam state home to the world's biggest population of one-horned rhinos has seen animals move towards the boundaries, making them vulnerable to poachers. In April, more than five attempts to slaughter the rare creatures were thwarted by park rangers and a special rhino protection force set up by the state government. Flash Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah (L) meets with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, on Jan. 14, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua] Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah met with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi Thursday, and both sides pledged to carry on joint fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and promote bilateral cooperation in all areas to new high. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, both countries have joined hands in fighting the virus and deepened mutual trust and friendship, demonstrating the real nature of the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership, Wang said. He noted that as both countries celebrate the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations this year, bilateral ties have reached a new historic point. He called on both sides to fully implement the consensus reached by leaders of the two countries and align China's Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 with Brunei's national vision, the Wawasan 2035, so as to promote bilateral cooperation in all areas to a new level. Wang pledged to carry on joint fight against the pandemic and build the "fast tracks" for personnel movement and discuss the building of "green lanes" for goods movement. He called on both sides to speed up cooperation projects such as Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd's oil refinery and petrochemical project and Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor, push forward cooperation in agriculture and fishery, create new growth opportunities in sectors of 5G, big data and cloud computing so as to contribute to Brunei's economic diversification drive. Wang said China supports Brunei in taking over as the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will take the chance of the 30th anniversary of the China-ASEAN dialogue relations to elevate the China-ASEAN relations, build blue economy partnership consensus and put into effect the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership at an early date. China has always appreciated and supported the dual-track approach proposed by Brunei in addressing the maritime issue, and wish to strengthen cooperation and solidarity with all ASEAN countries and properly manage disputes, so as to ensure that the South China Sea is a peaceful and stable sea, he said. Hassanal, for his part, said China is Brunei's traditional, friendly neighbor and important cooperation partner, and the relations between the two countries are established on the basis of mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win. Expressing gratitude to China for its valuable support to Brunei in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Hassanal congratulated China on successful research and development of COVID-19 vaccines, and hoped to conduct cooperation with China in the field of vaccines so as to provide guarantee for the people to people exchanges and the cooperation in all fields between the two countries. Hassanal said his country firmly adheres to the one-China principle and stands ready to dovetail its national vision Wawasan 2035 with China's Long-Range Objectives Through the Year of 2035 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between the two countries, boost cooperation with China in the sectors of agriculture and fishery, press forward the construction of important projects including Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd's oil refinery and petrochemical project and the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor as well as deepen the strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries. He said Brunei, which holds the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year, is willing to play its role in promoting mutual trust and cooperation between ASEAN and China and maintain regional peace and stability. On the same day, Wang Yi also held talks with Haji Erywan, Brunei's Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Haji Mohd Amin Liew, Minister at the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister of Finance and Economy, and co-chaired the second meeting of the China-Brunei intergovernmental joint steering committee. Wang Yi also attended the logo launching ceremony for the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brunei, and met with ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi. Sam Frost has reinvented herself as an actress, with the former reality star celebrating four years starring on Home and Away this year. On Tuesday, the star looked absolutely radiant, beaming in a boho frock as she shot scenes for the soap. The 31-year-old smiled from ear to wear while traversing the sand at Sydney's Palm beach. Wow! On Tuesday, Sam Frost (pictured) was on the set of on Home and Away in Palm Beach, Sydney. The star looked absolutely radiant The former Bachelorette star opted for a glamourous bohemian number in a gorgeous shade of turquoise. It featured flowing, caramel toned tassels flowing from the widened sleeves and knee-high hemline. A deep V-neck showed off a hint of cleavage, and a cinched-in waist showcased the beauty's slim figure. Stunner! The former Bachelorette star opted for a glamourous bohemian number in a gorgeous shade of turquoise Pretty: It featured flowing, caramel toned tassels flowing from the widened sleeves and knee-high hemline A look: A deep V-neck showed off a hint of cleavage, and a cinched-in waist showcased the beauty's slim figure Blooming beautiful: A floral pattern appeared on the skirting, flowing throughout the loose design of the outfit A floral pattern appeared on the skirting, flowing throughout the loose design of the outfit. Sam added a pair of beige high heels, which she expertly walked on despite having to navigate the sand beneath her feet, and carried a straw clutch with shell details. For makeup, she chose a bronzed palette with a natural glow and demure pink lipstick. Skills! Sam added a pair of beige high heels, which she expertly walked on despite having to navigate the sand beneath her feet Bag it! The actress carried a beachy straw clutch with shell details along the flap Glowing: For makeup, she chose a bronzed palette with a natural glow and pink lipstick Cheerful! The 31-year-old smiled from ear to wear while traversing the sand The blonde's hair was pulled partially off her face in loose up do, and she added a pair of statement earrings in a teardrop shape. Sam filmed scenes with her co-stars, Lukas Radovich and Sam Barrett, which appeared to be set around a food truck or festival setting. The star returned to Sydney to continue filming this week, after spending the Christmas holidays with her family in Melbourne, The Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday. Party time: Sam filmed scenes with her co-stars, Lukas Radovich (left) and Sam Barrett (centre) Nice day for it: The scenes appeared to be set around a food truck or festival Pretty in pink: Sam opted for a casual floral dress in a pastel shade and white sneakers Upstart: Sam has reinvented herself as an actress, with the former reality star celebrating four years starring on Home and Away this year The blonde beauty shared photos from her festive family reunion featuring her brothers Josh and Alex. 'Home. Finally back in Melbourne with my brothers. Only two out of four pictured. I cannot even tell you how happy I am!!! My heart feels so full,' she added. Sam's return to set comes as her character, Jasmine Delaney, embarks on a sizzling romance with Lewis Hayes, played by Luke Arnold. Adel Abdel Bary is back among us. He has been given, one might say, a second chance to be a good citizen. Or a fresh opportunity to wreak havoc. Championed by the Hard Left and Amnesty International as a respected human rights lawyer and prisoner of conscience, and granted political asylum by a complacent Tory administration which cosied up to Islamists, the Egyptian lawyer had made his home in a fashionable corner of West London where he and his wife raised six children on benefits provided by the munificent British state. That he has not been seen there for some time is down to one reason a rather uncomfortable one for those who painted him as a hero. Bary has only recently been released from a 25-year prison sentence in America for his role in one of the worlds worst terrorist atrocities. And back to Britain he has come. Adel Abdel Bary (pictured returning to his exclusive London home) is back among us. He has been given, one might say, a second chance to be a good citizen Some 224 people were killed and thousands more injured when Al Qaeda truck bombs detonated outside two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Adel Abdel Bary was Osama bin Ladens mouthpiece and spin doctor in the aftermath. He was part of the plot. Last October a U.S. court ruled that Bary should be released a few weeks early on compassionate grounds because his morbid obesity and asthma made him vulnerable to Covid-19 in jail. This week, a man identified as the Egyptian-born Bary was photographed outside the same two-storey council flat valued at 1 million in a period property in which he was living prior to his imprisonment and where his wife and family have continued to reside. It is on one of the white stuccoed avenues which run through Maida Vale from grungy Kilburn to chi chi Little Venice. For many years the comic actor John Inman lived on the same road as the Barys. Inman, who died in 2007, was known for his ebullient catchphrase: Im free! How many times has his former neighbour uttered those very words sotto voce in disbelief? At one stage Bary had been facing life behind bars without parole. Firemen in action at the site of a huge bomb explosion that shook a bank building and US Embassy in central Nairobi, Kenya, in August 1998 Few yellow ribbons were evident in the W9 neighbourhood while the radical, aged 60, was incarcerated in America. Today there is precious little joy that he is among us once again. His American lawyer has said: After all this time, all Mr Bary wants is to enjoy a quiet life with his family. MI5 and the Metropolitan Police are understood to be less sanguine about his return to these shores. And well they might be. One of his confederates in the years leading up to the embassy attacks was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a fellow Egyptian Islamist with whom he had shared jail in Cairo in the 1980s. After Bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan in 2011 al-Zawahiri took over as global head of Al Qaeda. He remains at large. The U.S. Department of State website confirms there is still a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to his capture. There is also the matter of Barys son Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary who was also born in Egypt, came to Britain after his father was established here and grew up in West London. Today, while he remains on the Maida Vale electoral roll, Abdel-Majed is to be found in a Spanish jail, having joined the Islamic State and fought in Syria where he was once suspected of being the groups executioner, Jihadi John. He was not that distinction belonged to another West Londoner called Mohammed Emwazi. But Bary Jr did appear in a picture he posted on social media holding the severed head of a Syrian soldier, alongside the comment Chilling with my homie or whats left of him. This story is not so much about a culture clash what would Bary have made of the flamboyantly gay Inman? but an enduring hangover. It is on one of the white stuccoed avenues which run through Maida Vale from grungy Kilburn to chi chi Little Venice. Pictured: Conspirator now lives here It emanates from an era when foreign Islamist radicals were viewed by HM Government as potentially useful strategic tools rather than the internal threats they became. In the 1980s and 90s, London was allowed to become what some called Londonistan a bolthole for jihadists from Muslim countries ruled by secular, human rights-abusing, often Moscow-aligned, regimes, such as those in Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. In his book Secret Affairs: Britains Collusion With Radical Islam, the Chatham House academic and journalist Mark Curtis sets this out. He wrote: Whitehall not only tolerated but encouraged the development of Londonistan the capital acting as a base and organising centre for jihadist groups even as this provided a de facto green light to terrorism abroad ... Some elements, at least, in the British establishment, may have allowed some Islamist groups to operate from London not only because they provided information to the security services but also because they were seen as useful to British foreign policy, notably in maintaining a politically divided Middle East a long-standing goal of imperial and post-war planners. Put in simpler words, this is a version of the old adage divide and rule. Curtis suggested there was an understanding that if the British state left the London Islamists alone, they would in turn leave Britain alone. With the emergence of Al Qaedas world jihad, that understanding withered and died. The UKs policy came home to roost. The radicals either had British passports or indefinite leave to remain and were here to stay as they plotted violence against the West. Bary was born and grew up in a middle-class family in Cairo. After the militant group Egyptian Islamic Jihad assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981 following his peace treaty with Israel, Bary was one of hundreds of suspected Islamists who were arrested, imprisoned and tortured. He studied law behind bars. On release he was arrested and tortured again. When in 1991 he was allowed to fly to America to legally represent an Egyptian militant who was alleged to have murdered a rabbi, he instead went to London and claimed political asylum. In the words of Barys American lawyers: Mr Barys application for asylum was supported by Amnesty International, who named Mr Bary a prisoner of conscience. The UK granted him refugee status on March 30, 1993, and in 1997 he was granted leave to remain indefinitely as a refugee. Bary was granted this status when Kenneth Clarke was Home Secretary. This week, Lord Clarke told the Mail: I am afraid I have no recollection of this at all. The Home Secretary does not personally approve or decline every application for asylum. These decisions are usually made by a junior Minister and senior officials exercising their powers on his behalf. A spokesman for Amnesty said: Back in 1991, Amnesty raised legitimate concerns that he would face torture and other human rights violations if he was returned to Egypt. There was clear, irrefutable evidence that as a defence lawyer he had previously been tortured while in detention. In time, Barys wife Ragaa and their three children, including Abdel-Majed joined him. The couple would have a further three children in London and Mrs Bary would be granted British citizenship. And so this former prisoner of conscience could pursue his Islamist causes with a degree of freedom and security. He rented office space nearby and set about the work of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was led by al-Zawahiri. Bary was de facto leader of its London arm. To quote the later U.S. indictment against Bary, the EIJ was dedicated to the forceful overthrow of the Egyptian Government and to violent opposition of the United States, in part, for its support of the Government in Egypt. By February 1998, EIJ had effectively merged with al Qaeda and [together they began] targeting American civilians. In February 1998, Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri endorsed a purported fatwah which stated that Muslims should kill Americans including civilians anywhere in the world. On August 4 that year, the EIJ published a statement threatening to retaliate against the U.S. for its alleged involvement in the arrests of foreign-based EIJ members. A copy would be found in Barys office. Three days after EIJ threatened America, Al Qaeda struck. Bombs outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, caused extraordinary death and destruction. The following month, Barys home and office were raided by police. He was arrested and charged with possession of gas canisters. At trial he was acquitted of wrongdoing but was not out of the woods. He had acted as a conduit between the media and senior Al Qaeda figures including Bin Laden (pictured) The massive U.S. investigation into the bombings had implicated him. It was he who transmitted Al Qaedas claim of responsibility for the attacks as well as threats of further atrocities. He had acted as a conduit between the media and senior Al Qaeda figures including Bin Laden. He had been integral. In 1999, the U.S. applied for Barys extradition on 279 terror-related counts including murder and conspiracy to murder, and he was arrested and remanded in custody. He was to stay behind bars in Britain for the next 13 years as his lawyers fought the extradition proceedings. During this time he was portrayed in some quarters as a gentle innocent who had been caught up by mistake in a Kafkaesque nightmare. In 2012, a motion was put forward in the House of Commons by future Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and future shadow chancellor John McDonnell, calling Bary a respected human rights lawyer and saying no credible evidence has been levelled against him. It called on the Government to reject extradition and release Bary to allow him to return to his family. To no avail. Barys fight went to the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights, until he lost his final appeal in August 2012. That October he was flown to America. Before his trial the Guardian ran a sympathetic interview with his wife in which it was suggested that Bary was a bit player and the only evidence against him was a faxed copy of the EIJ threat against America These faxes were everywhere in the Arab areas of London at the time. The article told of Mrs Barys difficulties raising her family on state benefits. In fact, she had wanted to work to support them but her Islamist husband forbade it. But the scales were about to fall from the eyes of many who had fallen for these sob stories. In September 2014 the innocent Bary put forward a plea bargain in which he admitted his part in the Al Qaeda bomb plot in return for a vastly reduced sentence. He admitted three of the charges against him; conspiring to kill U.S. nationals, conspiring to make a threat to kill, injure, intimidate and damage and destroy property by means of an explosive, and making such a threat. The judge accepted his pleas. It is instructive to examine the submissions put forward by Barys legal team prior to his February 2015 sentencing. He claimed to oppose violence but nevertheless took part in a monstrous and murderous plot, as if he were holding his nose as he did so. We respectfully submit that Adel Abdel Bary played a post-event role in a crime of unspeakable magnitude, the submission stated. Nothing we can say and no amount of regret that Mr Bary has expressed can undo the pain suffered in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In formulating an appropriate sentence we simply ask your Honour to consider that Adel Abdel Bary is a unique human being, who has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the use of violence. It added: Mr Bary admits that he knew the goals of each conspiracy, that he purposefully sent the faxes and that his acts furthered the conspiracies goals. Bary was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. He was also ordered to pay more than $33 million in damages to the victims families and the U.S. Government. One should also mention a letter which had been written to the sentencing judge by Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell. It read: Mr Bary is part of an older generation who can now say that they warned younger men in the UK of the wrong direction they were being led down ... We are certain that far from being a risk to the UK Mr Bary can be a positive influence for our troubled Muslim youth. Alas, not least among that troubled Muslim youth was Barys own son Abdel-Majed. After finding some success as a rapper on the London hip hop scene, Bary Jr left the UK for Syria in 2013 and joined the Islamic State as a fighter. The following year his familys Maida Vale home was raided by anti-terror police investigating the recruitment of young people to IS. This infuriated Bary Jr, who posted on social media: These kuffar (non-believers) mi5 have removed ma mum and fam from house and raided mums house. They have nothing to do with this, they did not even know where I am. I havent lived at home for years you pagans. He later said he hoped to die for the cause, tweeting: Imagine dieng shaheed in ramadan, ya Allah. How sick would that be. But die he did not. Having posted the sickening picture of the severed head he fled Syria when the caliphate began to collapse. In April last year he was arrested in the southern Spanish city of Almeria, having been smuggled to Europe by boat from Algeria. It was suggested he was trying to make it back to the UK. Today he remains in a prison near Madrid, still under investigation by Spanish authorities. As his British citizenship was revoked because of his activities in Syria it remains unclear where he will go next. His father was released in October last year having spent 21 years behind bars, including time on remand. Photographs recently taken in London of a man identified as Bary show him to be portly though by no means incapacitated or obviously unwell. Yesterday, barrister Ben Keith, an extradition and international crime specialist who sits as a deputy judge in immigration and asylum tribunal hearings, described the decision to release Abdel Bary on compassionate grounds as pretty exceptional. He added: Normally, a prisoner will only qualify because they are extremely elderly or even terminally ill so he must have been in serious poor health. The Mail understands that because of Barys legal status and family here and the human rights record of his native Egypt, Britain had little choice but to take him back. The authorities will now explore legal measures by which they can monitor his activities. A notification condition can be applied for under several acts including the Serious Crime Prevention Act or the Terrorism Prevention and Investigative Measures Act, said Mr Keith. It is likely to be granted given the circumstances here but it would have to go before a court, possibly the High Court, to be ratified. When the Mail visited the Bary family home in Maida Vale this week and asked to speak to Adel Abdel Bary, a younger man insisted that no one of that name was in residence. Unlike John Inmans former home which has a blue commemorative plaque there is no indication that Al Qaedas mouthpiece has lived there or is living there again. But he is free and back in Britain. And that knowledge raises the hackles rather than a smile. 2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning -- 4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS. We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover. We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Fauquier Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come. WASHINGTON - Abraham Lincoln rose from his chair and walked to the speaker's table on the East Portico of the Capitol. He pulled his cut-and-paste address from the breast pocket of his coat, and slowly put on his metal-rimmed glasses. As he stood bareheaded, a throng of 30,000 people spread before him - the largest inauguration crowd the city had ever seen, and one that included many African Americans, who were legally banned from the grounds unless on "menial" duty. But below the platform the Army had deployed artillery. Snipers watched from rooftops and windows, and Lincoln had been guarded by infantry and cavalry on his carriage ride through the streets to the Capitol. Many people wanted him dead. "There goes that Illinois ape, the cursed Abolitionist," a woman in crowd was heard to say. "But he will never come back alive." As a tense Washington approaches President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Wednesday amid apocalyptic right-wing threats and a massive military lockdown, historians say it was Lincoln's first inaugural that was really the most hazardous in the life of the country. "By far," said Lincoln historian Harold Holzer. Since his election in November 1860, there had been endless reports of plots to kidnap or kill him, or march on Washington and seize the government, according to accounts by Holzer and fellow historian Ted Widmer. One alleged plot called for the seizure of the city and the public archives, and for the insurrectionists to be acknowledged abroad as "The United States of America." "Government of the people hung by a slender thread," Widmer wrote. As for Lincoln, someone had planted a bomb on one of his railroad cars. He had been offered a pistol and a knife for his protection. (He declined.) And he had to be sneaked to Washington through hostile Baltimore as the "package" on a secret train under the code name "Nuts." The country was seething over the issue of enslavement, which Lincoln and many in the North would seek to end, and most in the South vowed to maintain at all costs. Seven states had already seceded from the Union to set up an "alternate" government, as Holzer put it in an interview. And there were those who believed that his inauguration on the steps of the Capitol would be the perfect theater for assassination, Widmer wrote in his new book, "Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington." Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, sat behind Lincoln during the event, "expecting to hear . . . the crack of a rifle" at any moment. But "his hour had not yet come," Greeley recalled. The tragedy would not play out for four more years. The Army officer in charge of security, the aging General Winfield Scott, called it "the most critical and hazardous event with which I have ever been connected." Scott, who was 74, had received death threats himself, according to the website abrahamlincolnonline. But he stood 6-foot-5, had been in the Army for 50 years, and said of his artillery: "If any of the Maryland or Virginia gentlemen who have become so threatening and troublesome show their heads or even venture to raise a finger, I shall blow them to hell." The ceremony on March 4, 1861, took place at the same East Portico where part of the right-wing mob incited by President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol last week and terrorized members of Congress. The mob stampeded up the main steps there and celebrated beneath the nine-foot-tall marble figures of "America," "Justice" and "Hope" in the architectural pediment over the central entrance entitled "Genius of America." The figures are reproductions of the originals, which were there when Lincoln spoke. And while the Jan. 6 rioters threatened current legislators with death, it was Abraham Lincoln who in 1861 "had engendered more hatred than anyone in American history," Widmer wrote. That hatred would erupt only six weeks later in the Civil War, and eventually claim the lives of Lincoln and about 750,000 Americans - about 2.4% of the population of 31 million at the time. That percentage of today's population of 328 million would equal the deaths of about 7 million people. As he adjusted his glasses that Monday 160 years ago, he had just completed a 13-day, multicity, 1,900-mile train journey from his home in Springfield, Ill., where he had told well-wishers he didn't know when, or if, "I may return." Even before he left, word came that assassins awaited him in Baltimore, a city known as "mob town" for its violent street gangs, and a place where 30 people had been killed on Election Day four years earlier. Lincoln's security people later learned alleged details of a plot by assassins to jump him there, create a diversion and kill him. But that was near the end of the journey. Some in his circle thought the trouble would come earlier, on Feb. 13, while he was in Cincinnati, the day presidential electoral votes were counted in the Capitol back in Washington. "Ever since Lincoln's victory in November, rumors had ricocheted around Washington that the recount offered the South a chance to turn back the election," Widmer wrote. "Through parliamentary maneuver, or sleight of hand, it might be possible to declare a miscount and throw Lincoln's election back into the cloakrooms," he wrote. "There a more acceptable result could be found." Just before his train left Cincinnati, an unattended carpetbag was found in Lincoln's car. Inside was a time bomb set to explode in 15 minutes, Widmer wrote. By one account, it could have destroyed the car and everyone in it. From Cincinnati the train went on to - among many other places - Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, N.Y., Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa. Huge, festive crowds and VIPs greeted him along the way with cheers, bands and fireworks. But then came Baltimore, the last stop before Washington. Because of the danger, Lincoln's approach to Baltimore was secretly changed, according to Widmer. The original plan was for Lincoln to arrive from Harrisburg at the Calvert Street station, Widmer said. But detectives learned that supposed assassins planned to ambush him as he got off the train there. So Lincoln was instead spirited from Harrisburg back to Philadelphia. And in the middle of the night was placed incognito on a routine passenger train that arrived at Baltimore's President Street station, Widmer wrote. But that presented another problem. Because of restrictions on locomotives in the city, the cars at President Street had to be pulled by horses many blocks around the Inner Harbor to the Camden Street Station. There they were attached to locomotives that took them south to Washington. But that slow horse-drawn trip would be the danger point. After the official stop in Harrisburg on Feb. 22, Lincoln changed some of his clothes. He put on a soft wool cap and an old coat, seeking to camouflage his lanky 6-foot-4 frame. He thought it worked. "I was not the same man," he said. He got into a carriage with aides and hurried to the depot. He boarded a small train, with its lights out, and headed for Philadelphia, 100 miles east. All other trains had been diverted. A detective telegraphed ahead: "Nuts left at six." "The package" reached Philadelphia at 10:03 p.m., and just before midnight he was sneaked onto a private sleeping car aboard the last train south. At 3:30 a.m. it reached Baltimore. The locomotive was uncoupled and horses hitched. "The streets were deathly quiet as the horses pulled Lincoln's car, hearse-like, through the dark streets," Widmer wrote. But the transfer was uneventful. The southbound train left at 4 a.m. and arrived in Washington two hours later. But as he got off the train, a mysterious-looking man watched from behind a pillar. As Lincoln passed, still semi-disguised, the man reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Abe, you can't play that on me," he said. A Lincoln aide, the detective Allan Pinkerton, elbowed the man and got ready to slug him. But Lincoln grabbed Pinkerton's arm. "Don't strike him, Allan, don't strike him!" Lincoln cried out. "That is my friend Washburne - don't you know him?" It was Elihu B. Washburne, a congressman from Illinois and a longtime friend and ally who was worried about Lincoln's safety and had come to meet him at the station. No one else took note of them. Nine days later, Lincoln stood before the crowd to be inaugurated. "Fellow-Citizens of the United States," he began, stressing the word "united." "A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted," he said. "I hold that . . . the Union of these States is perpetual." "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war," he said. "You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.' " "We must not be enemies," he said. "Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. This years largest gathering in the world started in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, raising fears that a huge increase in infections might follow. The UK variant of the coronavirus has been detected in the country. The vaccination campaign begins tomorrow with a Made-in-India vaccine. New Delhi (AsiaNews) - One of the largest gatherings in the world, the Kumbh Mela, began yesterday, bringing together millions of Hindu devotees on the banks of the Ganges. The faithful hope to attain moksha, purification and liberation from the cycle of birth and death, by praying and bathing in the divine waters. The Kumbh Mela, which will last until April, is centred this year on the city of Haridwar, Uttarakhand. Given the ongoing pandemic, authorities are concerned that masses of people crowding the river banks will cause a huge spike in COVID-19 infections. In view of the situation, the government issued directives months ago concerning Hindu festivals. They include: mandatory testing, splitting the millions of pilgrims into smaller groups, social distancing, wearing mask, disinfecting venues, etc. However, on the very first day of the Kumbh Mela, people can be seen in close proximity to each, without a mask. Increasing the authorities fears, the UK variant of the coronavirus, deemed even more contagious, has been detected in Uttarakhand. Yesterday, 154 new cases were reported in the state. So far, India, a country of 1.3 billion people, has reported more than 10.5 million COVID-19 cases with 151,918 deaths. Tomorrow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to launch the vaccination campaign with a speech to the nation. Between 9 am and 5 pm, Indian hospitals, rural dispensaries, and private clinics will start to immunise people with a Made-in-India vaccine, with priority given to healthcare workers. LAist only exists with reader support. If you're in a position to give, your donation powers our reporters and keeps us independent. Our reporting is free for everyone, but its not free to make. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe When I was five years old, the police came to our house. How To Participate Since June 2020, we've asked for your stories about how race and ethnicity shape your life and and published as many of these stories as we can. We call this year-long effort Race in LA. Click here for more information and details on how to participate. That experience of brutality directed at my Mexican American family forever affected the way I think and feel about myself. So did something that my brother Charlie did. I grew up in Whittier with four older brothers. There is a 10 year age gap between the youngest brother and me. While I was busy being the baby of the family, my brothers were unbridled teenagers going through many changes, exploring their worlds. They all fell into their particular cliques in and out of school, but were always fiercely devoted to one another. Sometimes, they ran through bouts of high-school-boy shenanigans that got them into trouble, and my parents always worried about them, as all good parents do. Immersed in my own burgeoning world, I was very much the tomboy, and looked up to their indestructible circle of strength. There was something so powerful in their self-assured masculinity. They were also my protectors. I would never feel lost as long as they were there to guide me. Esther's brothers from left to right: Pablo, Victor, Charlie and Jimmy. (Courtesy of Esther Lira) It was surprising to all of us one day in the mid-1980s when my eldest brother, Victor, who was about 18, piqued the interest of two policemen, who followed his reportedly suspicious figure one weekend morning. He led them straight to our front door. It was a lazy Saturday, the kind of day that all my brothers prioritized for lounging about the house and doing foolish boy things. My father was working that day. Victor ran into our house and his fear was clearly palpable. We surrounded him in the living room as he nervously told us that the police had started to follow him as he walked down the street. We waited for the knock on the door in anticipation, confused as to why they targeted him. Anxiously we knew that trouble was brewing for the household. I remember a feeling of battening down the hatches, our hearts beating fast and our souls aroused to perhaps an inescapable bad ending. It was understood, though not spoken, that a young Mexican American boy singled out by a couple of white cops would not end well. I felt my family's tense energy. Next came the pounding on the door. My next-eldest brother, Charlie, who happened to be the level-headed one of the bunch, the self-appointed keeper of all my brothers, answered the door with my curious mother. Esther at age five. (Courtesy of Esther Lira) I stood some feet away, afraid but feeling nosy. Words were exchanged but I have no idea what they were, even to this day. Charlie supposedly insulted one of the policemen by saying something defiant, I was later told, in response to a rude remark made by the cop. Then suddenly there was a turbulent burst of commotion and violence that came out of nowhere. Was I dreaming? It felt so unreal. The policemen tore into our home sweet home, our sacred ground, like a tornado. One pushed my mother so hard against a piece of furniture that it injured her back. She would have back problems as a result of that assault for the rest of her life. Nothing mattered to them. They were hell-bent with bloodthirsty insane eyes. I dove under the dining room table and could hear their terrifying weapons and obnoxious gear clacking beside their bodies as they ran past my cowering figure. They were huffing and puffing through the living room, blowing our house down. The policemen doggedly ran out the back door in pursuit of Charlie. I stupidly ran after the storm of chaos, wanting to know why this was happening. Then Charlie, the 17-year-old, miraculously sprouted wings. Like lightning, the adrenaline in him helped him lift off the ground to effortlessly jump the towering fence that separated our yard from the neighboring elementary school. He was suddenly the God of Wind, Hermes, the divine trickster, flying like a bird above the hellish scene. I could not believe my eyes! The older cops were slow, scrambling over the gate, not able to catch up with him. My brother disappeared without a trace, into only territories he knew. Moments later, more policemen arrived at our house. My other three brothers were detained in different parts of our backyard. They were handcuffed, their faces shoved in the dirt, they were yelled at and brutalized by these savage men in power. I wailed like a banshee as my nervous, tormented little five-year-old body crookedly walked from brother to brother. First to Victor, the oldest weirdo who listened to the Beatles nonstop and played air guitar in his room. Then to Pablo, Daddy's fast-talking favorite son, who had just met a pretty charismatic Puerto Rican girl. Soon they would run away together at his tender 16 years, and I would never really see him again. Then to Jimmy, the rebel without a clue, the very tall, lanky introverted brother who lived in a world of his own. A vintage photo of Esther's brother Charlie in one of his classic cars, in the backyard of the family home. The school fence is seen at the upper right. (Courtesy of Esther Lira) My beautiful untouchable brothers, brought down in one unjust swoop. My mother was in pain and crying. Her hands trembled as she telephoned my father, conveying the incident to our angry patriarch, who was in disbelief at what had just occurred in his home. I am grateful today that Dad was absent from the mayhem that turned our household upside down. It would have broken his spirit to see what I was forced to witness. The restriction of his handicap -- he lost his leg in a car accident when he was a teenager -- would have tormented him. Very much like my own uselessness as the little girl watching and crying over the scene, which has forever haunted me. I don't think I have ever been so helpless and frightened in my own skin in all of my life. I wanted to save my brothers. I did not understand why the cops insisted on hurting innocent young boys whose only crime was being labeled the "other type of boys" in the neighborhood. They were all taken away to the station soon after, on what charges remains a mystery. What was it about Victor that the officers thought was so suspicious? Later, we concluded that he was racially profiled. They thought he was drinking a bottle of beer concealed by a paper bag as he strolled through the mostly white neighborhood. Turns out, it was just a can of soda pop. MORE FROM OUR RACE IN LA SERIES As an adult, I now realize that if we would have been a so-called "acceptable" family in America, in our suburban Whittier neighborhood, this would have never happened to us. There was something "off" about Victor because he did not "fit in" to the neighborhood. It didn't matter that we are light-skinned Mexicans Americans. There seemed to be a problem with looking too different, and having lingering accents because the Spanish mother tongue interfered with the white Californian dialect spilling out of our mouths. People in the neighborhood assumed my brothers were in gangs, were up to no good, because of our last name. There were too many of us filling the house because we were poor, and poor people are not supposed to know right from wrong, but of course, we did. My parents were the strictest, most God-fearing straight-as-arrows human beings the world has ever known. They were forever correcting, instructing and watching our every move. So much so that they were like a heavy weight in our lives. I have no idea how this incident made my family feel. No one ever talked about it afterward. I do know my brothers were forever stuck in defensive mode after it happened. They were more vigilant and aware of how others perceived them. Esther, circa 2015. (Courtesy of Esther Lira) When I am out in the world, I too feel the need to watch my back. I think about how others will judge me before I speak or act. Which is the appropriate version of me that I must summon when dealing with a particular person? Many people do that in life. They reach for a specific mask in a given situation. But for me, my racial-ethnic difference is my greatest motivation for indulging in that balancing act. When the safety you feel within your family is shattered, and you witness people you love being treated like animals, cruelly tied down without explanation other than it being a game of power, you will begin to exist cautiously in the world, even as a five-year-old. The little hardcore feminist in me was summoned that day too, because when the men in your life are brought down, you recognize that you must rise up and stand for up for yourself, not only as a human being, but as a female, too. It may sound strange, but my sense of hope, the idea of freedom left imprinted in my mind, happened when my brother Charlie jumped the fence and escaped into the school, because he was the only one who wrestled free from the grip of the officers' twisted desire for dominance. In a sense, he had freed himself from the injustice of it all, it and offered my kid eyes a sign of promise. He embodied what Frida Kahlo said, "Feet, what do I need you for if I have wings to fly?" That day taught me to challenge those in any kind of authority who try to reduce me to a second-class citizen or a disposable individual. Had I witnessed Charlie's face kissing the dirt, and the boot of oppression pinning him down, I would have known a very different version of me. I loved him so much more that day for not letting me down, and evading the humiliation of being punished for being something other than white in my little every-town U.S.A. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Esther Lira teaches in L.A. schools and is a writer and entrepreneur. She recently completed a Masters Degree in Liberal Studies with an emphasis on gender, religion and society, subjects that she researches and writes about frequently. She spends her free time volunteering and working to empower people in lower-income communities through education and the arts. Taiwans National Communications Commission (NCC) demanded Asia-Pacific Telecom (APT) improve its 4G coverage before it is allowed to enter a 5G network sharing agreement with rival Far EasTone Telecommunications. Taipei Times reported, the operators struck a strategic partnership through a share swap deal which saw APT contribute TWD$9.4 billion (333 million) to construct a 5G network on the 3.5GHz band with Far EasTone. This would account for two-ninths of the total construction costs of the network, which would gain APT that fraction of access to the network for 20 years. The NCC is currently reviewing the operator partnership which will be the first network sharing agreement in Taiwan if approved, noted Taipei Times. Wong Po-tsung, NCC Vice Chairman said: We are cautiously optimistic about the partnership, but we want the two carriers to offer more information on how each of them can manage the network independently, maintain 5G service quality, raise the service coverage rate and ensure full disclosure of information. Wong noted the NCC is particularly concerned by APTs 4G service coverage rate, and that it was significantly lower than rivals. From our perspective, if they want to share the use of the spectrum and network, subscribers in both companies must be treated equally. They should experience the same download and upload speed when they access the 5G services, for example, said Wong, calling for APT to fully disclose service information such as 4G coverage to consumers. The Indian benchmark indices ended Friday's session lower, down over 1 per cent, triggered by an across-the-board sell-off that saw all the Nifty sectoral indices ending the session in the red. Among headline indices, the S&P BSE tumbled as much as 788 points from the previous day's close to 48,796 in the intra-day deals, before partially erasing the losses and ending at 49,035, down 549 points. The broader index ended the day 1.1 per cent lower at 14,434. The fall comes amid worries over the Indian markets' soaring valuations and profit booking by investors after the major information information technology (IT) companies posted better-than-expected results in the December quarter. According to S Ranganathan, head of research at LKP Securities, " began circumspectly amidst weak job data in the US even as Joe Biden unveiled details of the $1.9 trillion rescue package. Friday's afternoon trade saw profit taking in IT stocks despite the biggies putting out positive commentary with large deal wins as market-capitalisation to GDP crossed 100 per cent leading to volatility," he said. Head of research at IDBI Capital, AK Prabhakar said a correction was long overdue in the Indian which has been logging fresh record highs almost on a daily basis. "We have been rallying for a very long time without any correction so, this correction was needed. It is a healthy correction, and another 300-400 points down would have been ideal. The important thing is that IT as a sector, which has been doing very well till now, has corrected," he said. Here are the key factors behind today's fall in the markets: Profit booking: Investors booked profits, especially in the major tech companies which came out with better-than-expected December quarter results. The Nifty IT index plunged 2.24 per cent and was the top sectoral loser in Friday's session. Among individual stocks, Tech Mahindra, Coforge, HCL Tech and Wipro fell over 3 per cent each while Naukri, Mindtree, LTI, and Infosys fell over 2 per cent each. Since November, the index has rallied 25.3 per cent, till Thursday, amid massive liquidity, strong foreign fund inflows and development on the vaccine front. As for the Nifty IT index, it has surged 29 per cent in the same period. Valuation concerns: The combined market capitalisation of all listed companies in India crossed the countrys GDP for the first time in more than 10 years. On Thursday, the market-capitalisation on the BSE reached Rs 197.7 trillion, against Indias nominal GDP at current prices of around Rs 190 trillion during the year ended December 2020. READ MORE Such rich valuations with the economy still in the recovery phase also prompted investors to exercise caution. Global cues: The Indian started Friday's session on a feeble note, and extended their losses, mirroring the subdued trends in major Asian and European indices. Asian shares stumbled lower in afternoon trade as rising Covid-19 cases in China reinforced investor concerns over the prospects for a global economic recovery. More than 28 million people are under lockdown in China. On Friday, it reported the highest number of new Covid-19 cases in more than 10 months. Consequently, Chinese blue-chips shed 0.97 per cent. Besides Hong Kongs Hang Seng fell 0.29 per cent and Australias ASX 200 was flat, while Japans Nikkei lost 0.65 per cent. European stocks were also set to end a four-week winning streak on Friday with losses. The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.4 per cent. The German DAX was down 0.4 per cent and Frances CAC 40 fell 0.6 per cent. UKs FTSE 100 declined 0.4 per cent. Technical setup According to Jay Purohit, Technical & Derivatives analyst at Motilal Oswal Financial Services, "at current juncture, crucial support for Nifty is placed at 14,430 levels and from last few sessions we are witnessing buying interest from lower levels. Thus, we continue to maintain our bullish stance on index and expect Nifty to move towards 14,750 14,800 zones in coming days. On the flipside, support is placed at 14,430 and then 14,220 zones. Considering overall structure, traders should use ongoing corrective move in index as a buying opportunity." Real estate investor Eric Baird celebrates his purchase of Sarasota's historic Kress Building as he plans its retail revitalization. SARASOTA, FL / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2020 / Selling last year for $5.8 million, downtown Sarasota's Kress Building was purchased by local real estate investor Eric Baird. Celebrating his acquisition of the iconic site, Baird has gone on to reveal plans to bring in a number of luxury retailers as part of his anticipated revitalization of the almost 90-year-old Art Deco style property. "It's such a spectacular structure," says the Kress Building's proud new owner, Eric Baird, speaking from his home in Sarasota County, Florida, "and represents a great opportunity to deliver new, high-end retailers to bustling downtown Sarasota's Main Street." Bringing an all-new luxury retail experience to the Kress Building's first floor, the Art Deco masterpiece's existing tenants will remain on the second and third floors, it's understood. New owner Eric Baird himself, meanwhile, will move his own firm's operations-those of investment outfit Baird Inc.-to the site's fourth floor. The property also boasts a large rooftop deck, affording those lucky enough to visit with a spectacular view out over the surrounding area. Spanning over 25,000 square feet in total, the historic Kress Building is located at 1440 Main Street in downtown Sarasota. First opened in 1932, the United States federal government added the Kress Building to its National Register of Historic Places in 1984. "With its distinct facade, the iconic Kress Building is one of the few remaining Art Deco landmarks to be found locally," adds proud new owner Eric Baird, further remarking on his acquisition. Visual highlights of the famous and much-loved local building include wrap-around display windows, intricate terracotta detailing, and striking ornamental pilasters. Numerous interior elements are believed to take inspiration from the Middle East, while the Kress insignia still appears at the imposing front entrance, even now, almost a century since work first began on the construction of the building. Eric Baird is reported to be understandably delighted with his purchase. "The iconic Kress Building structure has been here for nearly 90 years," says the renowned real estate investor, "and it should continue to be celebrated." "Having successfully purchased the site, and with plans now afoot for its retail revitalization," he adds, "I'm excited to be a part of Sarasota history moving forward." Eric Baird is the founder and CEO of investment firm Baird Inc., where, at its helm, the Sarasota-based entrepreneur and real estate investor channels his decades-long business background and his passion for the industry to help service the needs of the company's roster of both small-cap and mid-market clients. Under entrepreneur and real estate investor Eric Baird, the business specializes in financing solutions, including senior-secured and asset-based lending intended at its core to positively alter the trajectory of growing small businesses. The philanthropic business visionary also serves as the president of the Gail Baird Foundation. The Gail Baird Foundation's mission, led by the Sarasota-based Baird Inc. founder, is to support initiatives committed to increasing awareness of, researching, and ultimately curing ovarian cancer. CONTACT: Caroline Hunter Web Presence, LLC +1 7865519491 SOURCE: Baird Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624571/Eric-Baird-Celebrates-the-Purchase-of-the-Historic-Kress-Building . The European Union has suspended budget support for Ethiopia worth 88 million euros ($107 million) until humanitarian agencies are granted access to people in need of aid in the northern Tigray region In a blog post published on Friday, the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell said Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed now needed to live up to the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in 2019 by doing all it takes to end the conflict in Tigray. "We are ready to help, but unless there is access for humanitarian aid operators, the EU cannot disburse the planned budget support to the Ethiopian government," Borrell said. Abiy's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In December, the government's task force for Tigray said it had reached a deal with the United Nations in which Addis Ababa would call the shots on access for aid agencies. Conflict erupted in Tigray on Nov. 4 between Ethiopian federal forces and the party ruling the northern region. Thousands have been killed, millions displaced and more than 50,000 refugees have fled to Sudan. Abiy's government declared victory over the rebellious leaders in at the end of November but they vowed to fight on. The United Nations has said there are reports fighting is still going on in various parts of Tigray. Reuters reported in December that the EU was delaying budget support to Ethiopia over the Tigray crisis, according to internal documents. Borrell said the Tigray conflict had become far more than an internal "law and order" operation and was now a direct threat to the stability of the whole region. "We receive consistent reports of ethnic-targeted violence, killings, massive looting, rapes, forceful returns of refugees and possible war crimes," he said. Reuters was unable to independently verify events in Tigray as the government is restricting journalists' access. "Moreover, there are regional spill-over effects of the conflict, with for instance Eritrean troops being involved in the military operations in Tigray and with Ethiopian troops being withdrawn from Somalia," Borrell said. 'Smear Campaigns' The EU has provided 815 million euros of development aid to Ethiopia over the past seven years, on top of 409 million euros of projects focused mainly on supporting refugees and host communities in the country. The United Nations said on Thursday there had been major violations of international law in Tigray at two refugee camps, home to people who fled repression in neighbouring Eritrea long before the latest conflict. It said satellite imagery showed fires burning and fresh signs of destruction at the Shimelba and Hitsats camps. The U.N. refugee agency, which decried the lack of humanitarian access to the camps, did not say who was responsible, but said there had been additional military incursions over the past 10 days. "UNHCR seems to indulge, yet again, in another bout of gratuitous & irresponsible smear campaigns against Eritrea," Eritrea's Information Minister, Yemane Meskel, tweeted on Friday. After repeated denials of the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray by both countries, a senior Ethiopian general has since said they had crossed into the northern region uninvited. Borrell also said there needed to be a de-escalation of tension between Ethiopia and Sudan. Ethiopia has said it is running out of patience with Sudan's continued military build-up in an area populated by Ethiopian farmers on the Sudanese side of their disputed border. Sudan's foreign ministry said this week that an Ethiopian military aircraft had crossed the border in a "dangerous and unjustified escalation". Short link: .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Copyright 2021 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE New Mexico illegally discriminates against independent candidates in special congressional elections by requiring them to collect thousands of petition signatures to secure a spot on the ballot, unlike major party candidates, according to a lawsuit filed this week. The 12-page suit asks the court to block Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexicos chief election officer, from enforcing the signature requirement in state law, arguing it violates the state and U.S. constitutions. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ The lawsuit comes as New Mexico prepares for a special election to replace U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, a Democrat, in the 1st Congressional District. She is President-elect Joe Bidens choice to serve as Interior secretary and expected to give up her House seat later this year. Under New Mexico law, there wont be a traditional primary election. Instead, 1st Congressional District members of the state central committees of the Democratic and Republican parties will choose their nominees. The Libertarian Party may also choose a nominee in accordance with its rules. But independent candidates must gather signatures from more than 6,400 voters to appear on the ballot an unconstitutional barrier, according to the new lawsuit. Attorney Ken Stalter filed the lawsuit in the states 2nd Judicial District Court on behalf of independent voters. The plaintiff is J. Edward Hollington, an independent voter from Bernalillo County. Stacking the deck against independents is not only anti-democratic, its unconstitutional, Stalter said in a written statement. New Mexicos special election system is a holdover from a bygone era of insider politics and political patronage. Alex Curtas, a spokesman for Toulouse Oliver, said courts have rejected similar challenges to New Mexicos election laws. This case does not offer a new legal argument, Curtas said in a written statement. An independent candidate is not similarly situated to a qualified political party candidate seeking to be included on a special election ballot. Qualified political parties go through a much more rigorous process to be included on the ballot and have already demonstrated a substantial level of support, unlike independent candidates. The 1st Congressional District is based in Albuquerque and covers part of central New Mexico. Haaland doesnt have to give up the seat until shes confirmed by the U.S. Senate. At least one independent candidate has already announced plans to run former state Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn, elected as a Republican in 2014, though he changed his affiliation, at one point, to Libertarian. Democratic candidates so far include state Reps. Georgene Louis and Melanie Stansbury, state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, attorney Randi McGinn, and Victor Reyes, the legislative director for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Radio station owner and host Eddy Aragon has announced a run on the Republican side. 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. WASHINGTON, D.C. A man seen carrying the Confederate battle flag through the halls of the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 assault has been arrested, according to reports. Kevin Seefried of Laurel, Delaware, and his son, Hunter, were arrested Thursday, Delaware Online reports. Both face multiple federal charges, which include entering a restricted building, as well as violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Their arrests come as federal authorities continue to track down people involved in the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters who believe the election of Joe Biden was fraudulent. On Thursday, Christine Priola, 49, a former occupational therapist for the Cleveland schools, was arrested in Willoughby. She is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building, violent entry, and unlawful activities on Capitol grounds. In Chester, Pennsylvania, retired firefighter Robert Sanford, 55, was arrested on four federal charges, WPVI Channel 6 reports. Sanford is accused of throwing a fire extinguisher that hit three police officers during the Capitol raid. An Arkansas man accused of beating a police officer with a pole carrying the U.S. flag was arrested Thursday, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports. Peter Stager, 41, is facing one count of obstructing a police officer from his duties during a civil disorder. Two Virginia police officers were arrested earlier this week. Jacob Fracker, 29, and Thomas Robertson, 49, were arrested on misdemeanor counts of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, Business Insider reports. Fracker also is a member of the National Guard, reports say. Larry Rendall Brock Jr., a retired Air Force officer, appeared in court in Texas on Thursday, where prosecutors say he was carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs during the raid and intended to take hostages, the Associated Press reports. Brock is facing two federal charges. According to Reuters, prosecutors say in a court filing Thursday in Arizona that many of the people attacking the Capitol intended to capture and assassinate elected officials. The claims were made in a detention memo on Jacob Chansley, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was seen bare-chested and wearing horns during the raid. According to azfamily.com, Chansley is hoping to receive a pardon from President Trump. Touching your girlfriend isnt generally considered a punishable offence, but things change considerably when your date for the day is a rental. A Taiwanese university student learned that the hard way, after getting a bit too close to a girlfriends he had rented by the hour, and getting sentenced to jail for it. In July of 2019, the boy, identified only as Chen, paid 7,200 Taiwanese dollars ($260) to rent a girlfriend for three hours, from a company called Love Acting-Extra. The service had very specific rules detailing what the client was allowed to to with his rented girlfriend, but also what was forbidden. Unfortunately for Chen, he got carried away, and paid a steep price for it Photo: Giang Vu/Unsplash People renting services are nothing new. Weve actually featured numerous examples from countries like Japan and China, including extreme ones like that of a single mom who rented a father for her child over many years. Taiwans Love Acting Extra, is no different, allowing people to rent paid actors to play all kinds of roles, from lovers, to parents and even simple friends to talk to. But at the end of the day, its only a service with that sets important boundaries. In Chens case, there was a contract he agreed to sign before placing his order with Love Acting-Extra. It mentioned that the client was allowed to hold the hand of the rented girlfriend, stroke her hair, and even hug her, but also placed specific boundaries. He was not allowed to try and kiss his girlfriend, or touch her in any way that could be considered inappropriate. On August 2nd, 2019, Chen and his rented girlfriend met at Taipei Main Station for their scheduled 3-hour date. Everything started out smoothly, the two dined at at fast-food restaurant, and then went for a stroll in Daan Forest Park. It was here that things started going south. Chen started talking weird, at one point telling the girl I will kidnap you, and making inappropriate remarks. Then he started touching her Photo: Waldemar Brandt/Unsplash According to the girls testimony, her client touched her inner thighs, unbuttoned her shirt to look at her chest, and touched her backside, knowing full well that all these things were forbidden, according to the contract he had signed. She was scared he was going to harm her, but there was no one around to call for help, so she had no choice but to endure. Luckily, when the three hours were up, Chen respected the contract and let her go. Only the rented girlfriend went straight to the nearest police station and reported him. He was immediately arrested and confessed his guilt, even writing a letter of apology to the rented girlfriend. Unfortunately, it was not enough to save him from jail time. The judge who ruled in this case considered Chens behavior reprehensible, but also took into consideration his repenting attitude and the fact that he had no prior convictions. He found the university student guilty of compulsory indecency, sentencing him to six months in jail, and ordering him to pay a fine of 180,000 Taiwanese dollars ($6,420). Although this story dates back to 2019, it made news headlines in Taiwan, after Chens appeal was dismissed by Taiwan High Court yesterday, meaning that he will have to serve his jail sentence. Third Generation DAmour Family Appointments at Big Y Colin M. D'Amour has been named senior director of Big Y Express Gas & Convenience Stores division, and Christian P. D'Amour is director of e-commerce SPRINGFIELD, Mass. The Board of Directors of Big Y Foods, Inc. announced the promotion of the following 3rd generation D'Amour family members. Colin M. D'Amour has been named senior director of Big Y Express Gas & Convenience Stores division, and Christian P. D'Amour is director of e-commerce. Both appointments represent new and expanding divisions within the company. Both D'Amours report to Richard D. Bossie, senior vice president of operations and customer experience. Colin's responsibilities include oversight of store operations, sight selection, sight acquisition and day to day responsibility for product procurement including fuel for this division. Currently, there are 12 Big Y Express locations with 4 more planned for the coming year. Previously, he served as senior manager of procurement within Big Y's Real Estate and Development Team as well as a member of the Real Estate Committee where he remains involved in evaluating viable expansion opportunities across all operating formats including Big Y World Class Markets, Big Y Express Gas and Convenience Stores, Fresh Acres Specialty Foods, and Table & Vine Fine Wines & Spirits. In addition, he oversees multiple programs and initiatives with Topco Associates, a Chicago based member owned cooperative that provides aggregation, innovation and knowledge management solutions for its food industry member owners. Colin began working as a service clerk at Big Y Supermarkets in 1998 at the age of 14. From there, he held several positions including produce clerk, warehouse selector, construction/remodel store projects coordinator and completed Big Y's Supermarket 101 training program. In 2007, he accepted a commission with the United States Marine Corps as Second Lieutenant where he served with distinction, ultimately earning the rank of Captain. In 2010, he was deployed to Helmand, Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. While serving in the United Stated Marine Corps, he was both a purchasing officer and a construction manager in support of the Afghan National Security Forces throughout his area of operations. He was actively involved with project prioritization, scope identification, project bidding and evaluation. In 2014, he left active duty in the Marines and returned to Big Y by entering into their store director training program. One year later, he was appointed assistant store director in their Great Barrington market. By 2016, he was promoted to store director in Pittsfield and later Lee before being selected as a corporate center store sales manager until 2019. A graduate of Boston College, he holds personal decorations from his military service including both the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation and Achievement Medals. He and his wife, Sharee have four children. Christian is responsible for Big Y's e-Commerce platform. This platform currently includes relationships with Instacart for grocery home deliveries and DoorDash for prepared meal home deliveries. In addition to these services, he will be launching Big Y's MyPicks Online ordering. With MyPicks, customers will be able to order their groceries online for curbside pickup at the store of their choice or for home delivery. MyPicks will utilize a fully automated grocery fulfillment center attached to the Chicopee Big Y World Class Market. Using robotics, this 12,000 square foot center can quickly and safely select up to 7,000 online orders a day for delivery to customers. Like his brother, Colin, Christian began his career at Big Y at the age of 14 as a service clerk. After college, he was a sales and marketing representative for an insurance company based in Providence, R.I. He re-joined Big Y as a store director trainee in 2014. One year later, he was appointed assistant store director in their Wilbraham World Class Market. In 2016, he was promoted to store director in Southampton. He next went on to manage their Wilbraham market before being tapped as store manager at Table & Vine's flagship location in West Springfield. In 2019, Christian was appointed a district sales and merchandising mentor for Big Y's supermarket 15 store district within Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin and Berkshire Counties of Massachusetts. In this role, he was responsible for all sales, merchandising and store team development across all departments. He also continued to oversee the operations of the company's Table & Vine flagship. Christian holds a BA from St. Michael's college in Vermont and spent a semester studying at The National University of Ireland at Galway. He and his wife, Olivia, have three children. Colin and Christian represent two of six 3rd generation D'Amour family who are actively involved in the company. They are grandsons of Big Y co-founder, Gerald E. D'Amour and sons of president and CEO, Charles L. D'Amour. One hundred years ago this week, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Councillor Donal OCallaghan, presented testimony in Washington before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland and stated: "I charge the British Crown forces with the Burning of Cork". His journey to America to appear before the Commission was an incredible story in itself. Fearing for his life after the Burning of Cork in December 1920, Donal OCallaghan fled to America as a stowaway on board the steamship, West Cannon. After being discovered by the Master of the ship, Corks lord mayor was put to work as a crew member. On arrival in Newport News, Virginia, on 4 January 1921, OCallaghan and his travelling companion, Peter MacSwiney (brother of Terence), were arrested. ANALYSIS. Donal OCallaghan during his US trip, in the office of his attorney, Michael Francis Doyle, in Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of Cork City and County Archives. The following day they appeared before a Board of Special Inquiry, composed of US immigration officials. MacSwiney possessed a passport issued by the American Consul and he was set at liberty. OCallaghan had no passport and a deportation order was issued against him. With the help of Irish-American supporters of Sinn Fein, OCallaghan reached out to two attorneys, Michael Francis Doyle and J.T. Lawless. They submitted an appeal against the deportation order and he was released to them. Pending the hearing, Corks Refugee Mayor made headlines in Ireland and America. Read More Night of terror and chaos as Cork City burns In an interview carried on the front page of The New York Times on January 10, OCallaghan expressed confidence that he would be allowed to testify in Washington at the Commission on Conditions in Ireland. That same day, his case was formally placed before the US Secretary of Labour, William B. Wilson. Doyle and Lawless focused on the term seaman, as defined in an Executive Order issued by President Woodrow Wilson on 22 May, 1918. The attorneys argued that OCallaghan was a stowaway employed on West Cannon and therefore constituted a seaman as defined in law. Donal OCallaghan during his US trip at the famous Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Photo: courtesy of the Cork Public Museum The US Secretary of Labour, agreed and he ordered the cancellation of OCallaghans parole, allowing him to present evidence at the Commission. OCallaghan immediately made his way to Washington. Over the course of two days, 13 and 14 January, at the Commission in Hotel LaFayette, OCallaghan provided detailed testimony and became the public advocate of his city and his country. The Commission, which arose from a call by the New York newspaper, the Nation, was made up of public figures from across the United States, including senators, congressmen and mayors. Other prominent figures included the newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, and the African-American civil rights activist, William Edward Burghardt du Bois. Read More Burning of Cork: Family recalls night that inspired generations of firefighters Levi Hollingsworth Wood was appointed as Chairman of the Commission. Frederic Howe was the Vice Chair and amongst the other Commission members were the sociologist Jane Addams (Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1931) and the former Governor of Massachusetts, David Walsh. The Commission gathered for six public hearings between 18 November, 1920, and 21 January, 1921. Muriel and Mary MacSwiney, widow and sister respectively of Terence MacSwiney, both gave evidence to the Commission. Unsurprisingly, the British Government took a dim view of the Commission and the London Times (September 22, 1920) disparagingly described it as a strange mixture of Anglophobes, idealists and radicals. For Donal OCallaghan, the Commission hearings were an opportunity to tell an American audience of the situation that prevailed in Ireland, and especially in Cork. An example of the lapel pins distributed by Donal OCallaghan during his speaking tour in America after his star turn at the Commission. He did not waste the opportunity. When asked about how difficult it was to carry out his duties as Corks first citizen, OCallaghan replied: "I have moved around the city without a break, excepting possibly a week or two, since my election as lord mayor. "While in the city, I move around carefully, always keeping a careful look-out for unwelcome visitors; and of course at night moving from house to house in the way that all men in Ireland connected with the movement do." OCallaghan explained that he was in constant danger of arrest and, over the previous six months, his house had been raided eight times. He said that this situation applied to his fellow councillors as well, who were frequently targeted by British forces. He was very well prepared for his appearance before the Commission and he read more than 30 affidavits, depositions and testimonials relating to incidents such as the shooting of Professor William Stockley and the burning of the city. At the conclusion of his second and final day of testimony, OCallaghan was thanked by Chairman Levi Hollingsworth Wood for having come before the Commission and for being so well prepared. Irish Press newspaper coverage of Donal OCallaghans evidence before the Commission. Coverage in Britain thad a different view of the proceedings with the London Times disparagingly described it as a strange mixture of Anglophobes, idealists and radicals. When the Chairman asked if he had any general remarks to make by way of conclusion, OCallaghan took full advantage, not so much delivering remarks, but a 1,500-word pre-prepared speech, during which he challenged America to come to Irelands aid. He also pledged that Ireland was prepared to fight to annihilation for the right of self-determination. The lord mayors lengthy closing speech was greeted by sustained applause from those present. His testimony was widely reported across America, which was partly due to the fact that William Randolph Hearst was a member of the Commission. OCallaghans evidence went a long way to counteracting the official version of the Burning of Cork. The published report of the Commission concluded: Behind the tragedy in Ireland lies the determination of the Imperial British Government to hold Ireland in its grip even at the cost of substituting for the orderly government of the peoples choice, fairly established in the face of opposition, a system which can only be called organized anarchy. "The answer to this attempt, as events make increasingly plain, is violence and yet more violence". The report referred to the testimony of the lord mayor, about the Burning of Cork. It stated that he had charged the British Imperial forces as being guilty. The cover of the Commission Report. While there was not direct proof of this accusation, the Commission felt on balance that this was indeed the case. The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland was undoubtedly one-sided in terms of the evidence it heard but it made an impact and helped turn public opinion in America towards support for Irelands fight for self-determination. OCallaghan was at the heart of this. After his star turn at the Commission, he was a man in high demand and he embarked on a series of high-profile public lectures across America. * Username This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely! Jimmy Sengenberger is host of The Jimmy Sengenberger Show on News/Talk 710 KNUS. He also hosts Jimmy at the Crossroads, a webshow and podcast in partnership with The Washington Examiner. 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show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan 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. (Newser) The acting US attorney for DC says Capitol rioters could face charges under a Civil War-era sedition law. The law was last used in 1995, when 10 Islamic militants were convicted of seditious conspiracya crime involving forceful opposition to government authority or seizure of government propertystemming from a plot to bomb New York landmarks, including the United Nations and FBI building. "Conspiracy was a layup because of the nature of the terrorist cell we were targeting," Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor who secured the convictions, tells the AP. He says it's logical that sedition charges would be brought in "an organized armed assault on the Capitol," particularly one seeking to block the certification of electoral votes. But if they are, prosecutors will need to prove participants conspired to use force, McCarthy says. story continues below In September, Jeffrey Rosen, now acting US Attorney General, suggested "rioters" taking part in racial injustice protests could be charged under the law, which was enacted to arrest those who might continue to fight the US government after the Civil War. He said proof of a plot to overthrow the government wasn't necessary. But federal prosecutors on Thursday did mention a "violent insurrection that attempted to overthrow the United States Government" in the case against Jacob Anthony Chansley, aka "Q Shaman" and Jacob Angeli, per Politico. Michael Sherwin, acting US attorney for DC, says he's ordered prosecutors "to build seditious and conspiracy charges related to the most heinous acts that occurred in the Capitol," per NPR. Strong evidence, including Chansleys own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government, prosecutors wrote, reports Reuters. (Read more U.S. Capitol stories.) Find Banquet is budding as a leading platform not just for the users to plan their events but helping the vendors fosters their business too. If you are a vendor providing any of the services like decoration, dance classes, catering, etc., you can register yourself up to this amazing platform, which is helping people flourish their business. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / PRURGENT Find Banquet is budding as a leading platform not just for the users to plan their events but helping the vendors fosters their business too. 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A 31-year-old man has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a Brooklyn father on the street in Mariners Harbor in a suspected road-rage incident four months ago. The suspect, Jahel Ashley, lives on Grandview Avenue, a short distance from where Sean Dallas, 29, was fatally shot on Sept. 15 at about 8:45 a.m. near the corner of Grandview and Arlington Place, according to an NYPD statement. When officers arrived, they found Dallas lying on the ground with gunshot wounds to his chest and right arm. EMS responded and Dallas was taken to Richmond University Medical Center in West Brighton, where he was subsequently pronounced dead. Ashley was taken into custody on Thursday morning and has been charged by police with murder, criminal use of a firearm, criminal possession of a weapon that is a loaded firearm and criminal possession of a firearm. Dallas was picking up his children at the time and the murder happened in front of the kids eyes. Police respond to the fatal shooting of Dallas on Grandview Avenue in Mariners Harbor on Sept. 15, 2020. (Staten Island Advance/Jan Somma-Hammel) A road-rage dispute is thought to have led to the fatal encounter between Ashley and Dallas, sources with knowledge of the investigation said. DAY OF SLAYING At the time of the slaying, one source told the Advance/SILive.com that Dallas was alone in his car when, a short time before the shooting, he had a brief verbal dispute behind the wheel with another driver in or near Mariners Harbor. Dallas then continued driving and picked up his two children. He drove about a half block to the corner of Grandview Avenue and Arlington Place where he stepped out of his car and was shot, according to the source. It was literally a senseless killing for nothing of a guy picking up his kids and road rage, Kergen Merrill, a friend of Dallas, told the Advance/SILive.com on the day of the shooting. Family is the only thing weve got nowadays, he said, adding that there are kids without a father now. Ashley has numerous prior arrests, including charges of robbery and assault, a source said. His most recent arrest occurred in March, where he faces drug charges, the source said. 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. 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. An executive at the beleaguered social media app Parler has said that Apple CEO Tim Cook is a possible 'ally' after he offered to allow the app back on iPhones if it purges certain content. Amy Peikoff, Parler's chief policy officer, on Thursday highlighted Cook's recent remarks saying that the app had been suspended, not banned, and could return after changes. 'With respect to this particular fight, I see Apple as an ally,' Peikoff said in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson. 'Tim Cook has said we can come back onto the app store if we improve our content moderation.' Before returning to the iPhone, Parler must resolve a slew of other issues to get the app operational -- including finding a hosting service after Amazon kicked the app off its servers. Amy Peikoff (right), Parler's chief policy officer, said that Apple CEO Tim Cook is a possible 'ally' after he offered to allow the app back on iPhones 'Parler has some issues with moderation, there are some incitement to violence examples on there, and they need to step it up with the moderation,' Cook said on Wednesday. 'Our hope is that they do that and get back on the store' Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Twitter banned President Donald Trump on Friday and began purging thousands of his supporters, who flocked in droves to Parler, which bills itself as a free speech alternative and has minimal moderation. Parler shot to No. 1 in Apple's App Store on Saturday, but its sudden popularity appeared to draw a furious response from the tech giants of Silicon Valley. Apple suspended the app from the App Store on Sunday, after Google had taken a similar move to block it from Android phones. The death blow came when Amazon revoked hosting service , accusing Parler of ignoring its warning to purge violent content. Without servers, Parler is currently offline and inaccessible. On Wednesday, Apple's CEO said that Parler could return to the App Store if it makes changes to comply with Apple's Terms of Service. 'Parler has some issues with moderation, there are some incitement to violence examples on there, and they need to step it up with the moderation,' Cook said. 'Our hope is that they do that and get back on the store.' 'We suspended them, we did not ban them,' Cook added. 'We have Terms of Service for our App store, and some of those Terms of Service he's in violation of. All we're asking is he meet the Terms of Service,' he said, referring to Parler's CEO. Parler shot to No. 1 in Apple's App Store on Saturday, but its sudden popularity after the Capitol riot appeared to draw a furious response from the tech giants of Silicon Valley Peikoff said in the interview on Thursday that Parler had also been dropped by Twilio, which provides tools for programmers, and Flurry, which provides analytics tools for mobile apps. She also said that core backbone internet services providers were also causing problems for the startup. 'Whether they're all working together, or whether they're all caving in to the same cancel culture pressure, obviously at Parler we do think we were singled out unfairly,' Peikoff said. 'This inciting content that is wrong, was unfortunately everywhere,' she added. Peikoff, a lawyer and philosophy professor who subscribes to the Objectivist school of Ayn Rand, suggested that the situation was a result of a 'Faustian bargain that Big Tech has made with statist government'. She argued that the immunity social media companies enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, combined with pressure from Congress to moderate more and more questionable content, amounts to 'censorship by proxy.' 'This is a very cozy relationship that I think is very disturbing,' Peikoff said. The Parler logo is seen on an Apple iPhone in this photo illustration. Parler on Thursday urged a U.S. judge to order Amazon to restore the company's account Meanwhile, Parler on Thursday urged a U.S. judge to order Amazon to restore the company's account, saying Amazon had no evidence the social media platform was used to incite last week's storming of the U.S. Capitol. At a hearing in Seattle federal court, Parler's lawyer David Groesbeck said the company would suffer irreparable harm if forced to close and that keeping it alive served the public interest. He also downplayed Parler's role in the riots in Washington. 'Millions of law-abiding Americans have had their voices silenced,' Groesbeck told U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein. 'There is no evidence, other than some anecdotal press references, that Parler was involved in inciting the riots.' Parler is favored by many Trump supporters and claimed more than 12 million users before it was shut down. Amazon Web Services cut off Parler on Sunday night, saying Parler had shrugged off repeated warnings to remove violent content. It said this content included calls to assassinate Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the journalists. Ambika Doran, a lawyer for Amazon, said Parler violated its contract by allowing such content and had not shown it could effectively monitor content. 'Amazon made the only real choice that it could, which was to suspend the account,' she said. John Matze, Parler's chief executive, claimed Wednesday that Amazon Web Services (AWS) pulled his site from the internet because Donald Trump wanted to join it as 'Person X' Parler said Amazon had no contractual right to pull the plug and did so in a politically motivated bid to benefit Twitter, a larger Amazon client that Parler said failed to censor violent content targeting conservatives. Parler wants a temporary court order to be restored to Amazon's servers while it litigates. Rothstein said she would rule 'as quickly as possible.' John Matze, Parler's chief executive, claimed Wednesday that Amazon Web Services (AWS) pulled his site from the internet because Donald Trump wanted to join it as 'Person X'. Matze said in a court filing: '[Retracted], who is a Joe Biden supporter, was AWS's representative assigned to me by AWS, and was aware since at least October 11, 2020, that Trump was considering moving to Parler under the pseudonym 'Person X'. 'AWS knew there was a possibility that Trump might obtain a Parler account, likely bringing with him a surge of followers to the Parler platform.' He argued that Amazon wanted to protect its larger client, Twitter, from potential competition if Trump drove a surge in popularity for competitor Parler. 'It was only after Twitter announced its intention to terminate Trump from its platform that AWS expressed any concern about Parlers compliance with its agreement,' he said. Knockdrin Castle and estate is located 3km from Crookedwood, Co Westmeath and is a 10-minute drive from Mullingar. Knockdrin Castle and its 1,180 estate near Crookedwood in Co Westmeath sold recently for 10m in a landmark sale. A business couple, Noel and Valerie Moran, who made their money in financial services in London, bought the property as an entire in a sale handled by David Ashmore of Sothebys. The estate, located 3km from Crookedwood, is a 10-minute drive from Mullingar. A 70-year-old Alabama man arrested following the breach at the U.S. Capitol will be held without bond until his trial. Though Lonnie Coffman is a retired veteran with no prior criminal convictions, a federal magistrate said Thursday the seriousness of charges and evidence against him outweigh his seemingly non-violent past. The handwritten notes found in his vehicle suggest that he came here with the intent to use the cache of firepower found in his vehicle to commit violence against government officials or to assist others in doing so,' the magistrate wrote, citing the substantial number of firearms and homemade incendiary devices found in his possession suggesting a ready access to both. Coffman, an ex-husband and father who lives in north Alabama, was taken into custody Jan. 6 in D.C. Coffman was arrested by federal authorities just hours after the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Since then, he has been indicted on 17 charges following the seizure of nearly a dozen Molotov cocktail explosive devices from his pickup truck, as well as a number of guns, ammo and concerning handwritten notes. The feds have asked that he be held without bond because of his concerning history and characteristics that raise a grave risk that he would endanger the community should he be released from custody. Among the handwritten notes was a letter in which he named U.S. Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, with a note reading Muslim, and also named a judge with words bad guy beside the judges name. Another note read, We The People Are the Rightful Masters of Both The Congress and The courts, Not To Overthrow The Constitution But to Overthrow The Men Who Pervert The Constitution, and attributed the words to Abraham Lincoln. Coffmans truck was parked just a few blocks from the Capitol. Authorities noted he had apparently been living in the truck in the D.C. area for a week prior to the breach. Surveillance footage showed he parked the truck near the Republican National Club, a few blocks from the Democratic National Committee Headquarters, both targeted for reports of explosive devices, about 9:20 a.m. that Wednesday. Investigators spotted a gun in Coffmans truck and later carried out a search of the vehicle. He was detained later in the day when he returned to his vehicle. Other items found in Coffmans truck and used as exhibits as to why he should remain in federal custody pending trial include a loaded 9 mm handgun, a loaded rifle, several large-capacity ammunition feeding devices loaded with more than 10 rounds of rifle ammunition, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a crossbow with bolts, several machetes, camouflage smoke devices, a stun gun, and the 11 mason jars filled with flammable liquid, which authorities said was the equivalent to homemade napalm. There was also a lighter and rags. Two of the guns were in Coffmans pockets. Attorneys for Coffman asked that he be allowed to return to Alabama, citing his nearby family. They noted he was retired military, had at one time held a steady job, and that he lawfully possesses a firearm in Alabama. Defendant also questioned the weight of the evidence, emphasizing that many of the weapons and ammunition underlying his indictment were not found on his person and the government has not offered DNA or fingerprint evidence linking the weapons to him. He also noted that his age and underlying health conditions make him more susceptible to COVID-19 and that the D.C. Jail is a bad environment for spread of the virus. Coffman is being represented by the public defender for the District of Columbia. It wasnt immediately clear in which branch of the military he served or where he worked in north Alabama. His ex-wife has said he was a strong supporter of President Trump but declined to comment further. Coffman in 2011 joined a web forum called Patriots for America, which describes itself on its homepage as focused on sacrifice to protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. In 2013, Coffman posted a series of messages in the forum that expressed his frustration with the state of American politics, his distaste of politicians like President Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. John McCain, and called for violent resistance. [t]he time for a peaceful resolution of the crisis America faces has past (sic), he wrote in one posting. Coffman is among several Alabamians identified so far as being at the Capitol that day. Joshua Matthew Black, 44, of Leeds, is being held in a west Alabama jail on federal charges after he was identified as being inside the Capitol and the Senate chamber on Jan. 6. Authorities say he was identified by an anonymous caller who recognized Black from the videos and photos released by the FBI. The federal affidavit said Black on a YouTube video also confessed to possessing a dangerous weapon. I actually had a knife on me, but they neverI had too much cloths on, it was freezing out there, you know, so I never, I wasnt planning on pulling it. I just carry a knife because I do. I work outside and you need knives, you know. I just, youre not allowed to carry guns in DC and I dont like being defenseless. Black said on the video that once he saw the door to the U.S. Senate, I just felt like the spirit of God wanted me to go in the Senate room, you know. So I was about to break the glass and I thought, no, this is our house, we dont act like that. I was tempted to, Im not gonna lie. Cause Im pretty upset. You know? They stole my country. Another Alabama man had his six-figure bond revoked in a state drug case after Lee County prosecutors said he participated in the riots. William Watson, 23, of Auburn had been out on $103,000 bond in a drug trafficking case from July, but violated the terms of his bond banning him from leaving Alabama after he was spotted inside the U.S. Capitol during last weeks riots in which four people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, died. Kevin Greeson, a 55-year-old Athens man, also traveled to D.C. that day. He died from a heart attack outside of the Capitol during the riots. AL.com journalist Connor Sheets contributed to this report. Artist John Deckert has found a way to honor frontline workers, one portrait at a time. While working from his home in Santa Rosa, California, he started thinking about the essential workers who did not have this same luxury. Deckert got out his paint, brushes, and canvas, and first painted a deliveryman, followed by his mailman and a cashier. Now, Deckert is focused on painting the nurses at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. He asked emergency room nurse Sheila Smith for photos of her colleagues, which he uses as inspirations for each one of his portraits. Once he is finished with a painting, Deckert gives it to his subject as a gift. Smith told NBC Bay Area her portrait is "one of my most prized possessions now" and is "a bright light in a really hard season of being a nurse." Deckert said the portraits are an acknowledgment of the hard work and sacrifice shown by frontline workers, and a way for him to say thanks. "You shared what skill you have," he told NBC Bay Area, "and I shared mine." More stories from theweek.com 5 more scathing cartoons about Trump's 2nd impeachment An 'influential' Palm Beach eye doctor is reportedly on Trump's clemency list What the Constitution really says about removal from office A Susquehanna Township School District teacher who attended a rally in Washington, D.C. the day a mob violently invaded the U.S. Capitol said an online petition calling for him to be fired is unjust. Jason Berry, a physical education teacher at the district for the past seven years, said he went to the nations capital to pray for the country and didnt do anything illegal. Christian friends went with me to pray in DC and we did just that, Berry said. We prayed and worshiped Jesus. We were not part of the small percentage of people that raided the capital building, but rather the millions of people that gathered together peacefully. Footage of us praying and worshipping God was aired on a Christian News Network. After a video of Berry in Washington, D.C. was posted on social media, an online petition was started calling for him to be fired. It gathered more than 5000 signatures. The districts superintendent published a video to the school systems website explaining there would be an investigation into the matter, and petition organizers declared that they had achieved their purpose. The petitioners specified that they didnt have any evidence that Berry entered the Capitol or broke any law. One of my friends excitedly posted the video of us being featured on the news to social media, Berry said in a statement. An individual decided to copy the post and assert defamatory statements about me in which she demanded that I be fired from my job immediately. Berry said he believes he was being persecuted for my faith in Jesus Christ. Officials at Susquehanna Township didnt immediately respond to questions Friday about the status of their investigation. I am very thankful that Susquehanna Township School District took the time to investigate the matter and examine all the evidence, Berry said. Susquehanna is world-class and Im honored to serve there. Here is Berrys statement in its entirety: My name is Jason Berry, and I am a veteran, school teacher, and youth pastor. Im having my reputation assaulted and career slandered due to praying for our great Nation. I took a personal day on January 6, 2021 to go to Washington, D.C. and pray for our nation as it is written, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land 2nd Chronicles 7:14. This personal day was approved in advance by the Susquehanna Township School District. I also took the following day off to visit my Grandma who was on her deathbed. She passed-away the next morning. I traveled with Christian friends to pray in DC. We were not part of the small percentage of people that raided the Capitol building. We were part of the millions of people that gathered peacefully. Footage of us praying and worshipping was aired on a major Christian News Network. One of my friends excitedly posted the video of us being featured on the news to social media. An individual decided to copy the post and assert defamatory statements about me in which she demanded that I be fired from my job immediately. The reality of the issue, as documented by the defamatory statements, was that I was being persecuted for my faith in Jesus Christ along with the false assumption that everyone in DC was a terrorist. The false claims escalated on social media as the individual tried to ruin my reputation as a teacher and destroy my career. This led to someone taking screenshots of the video (not showing the video of us actually praying) and creating a petition to get me fired where they labeled me as an insurrectionist and anti-democratic intimidator simply because I went to D.C. The accusers neglected to mention that the video was of us praying and stated that my actions did not represent the diverse student body of Susquehanna. If you look at the video or the picture of my friends, we are as diverse as it gets. As a Christian, I see everyone created in the image and likeness of God. The outrageous petition to get me fired was online. Most of the people who signed the petition have never met me. Many live outside of Pennsylvania and are only reading a slanderous account of what occurred. I am very thankful that Susquehanna Township School District took the time to investigate the matter and examine all the evidence. Susquehanna is world-class and Im honored to serve there. It was my constitutional right to pray for my country and I took an approved personal day to do it. I will have zero disciplinary action against me, and my God has delivered me from the lions den. To the hundreds that supported me, thank you! To those of you who slandered my name to this community: I have collected evidence from the beginning and have received legal counsel that assures me that I have every right to sue you for slander, defamation of character and punitive damages. Instead, I have chosen to forgive you and pray for you. This is my true character. Veteran, Author, School Teacher, and Pastor Jason Berry Read more from PennLive Trump should pardon Q Shaman for following his instructions in Capitol breach: lawyer Donald Trump Jr. wanted for questioning in lawsuit over $1M payment to family hotel Flash A United Nations official announced on Thursday that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) holds contacts with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's office on resuming the U.S. financial support to the Palestinian refugees. Commissioner-General of the UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini told a news conference in Gaza that the contacts are held with Biden's office, and "we are optimistic about the resumption of relations with the new U.S. administration." He added that the agency looks forward to the U.S. financial allocations to restore its previous status during the next stage, as soon as the new administration assumes its duties. Lazzarini told reporters that the UNRWA will continue all services and employment programs for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA, one of the United Nations agencies, provides humanitarian services to over 5.6 million Palestinian refugees. The agency's officials have repeatedly announced that the UNRWA is passing through a severe financial crisis, which began when United States President Donald Trump decided to cut 360 million U.S. dollars from the agency in early 2018, which represented 30 percent of UNRWA's budget. Massachusetts sheriffs, who run county jails and houses of correction, are ramping up for Mondays start of COVID-19 vaccinations in those facilities. According to the Massachusetts Sheriffs Association, it has been preparing by working with state officials and Dr. Alysse Wurcel, its resident infectious disease specialist. Our mandate is for the safe custody and care of those remanded to us by the courts, but we also have a critical responsibility for the health and safety of the men and women who deliver on that mandate, said Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins, the newly elected president of the association. These vaccinations protect both our incarcerated populations and the people who oversee their safety, which ultimately protects the health and safety of the general public. Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi said he hopes the vaccinations will mark a turning point. I think its important that correctional staff and the people in our care and custody are offered the COVID vaccine at the same time, not only from a medical standpoint to maximize immunity, but to build trust, he said. The vaccine is the subject of some skepticism, but I am encouraged by the science. And Im hopeful that our staff and the people whose health and safety we are responsible for will continue to be accepting of it through education and seeing others around them be inoculated. Wurcel said that based on her discussions, some people are interested in the vaccine and others have questions. Even with all of the prevention, testing and mitigation strategies in place, people who are in jail and prison represent one of the highest risk populations, she said. I am excited to work closely with the sheriffs to plan an equitable roll-out of the vaccine to their staff and all of the people in custody. "Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., on Newsmax TV responded Thursday to CNN host Jake Tapper's questioning his commitment to democracy over his comments about the riot at the Capitol last week. Mast, on the House floor on Wednesday, questioned whether anyone had interviewed the rioters themselves about why they stormed the Capitol. During CNN's coverage Wednesday, Tapper questioned Mast's ''commitment'' to the United States. ''I served this country, I fought for this country,'' Mast, a veteran who lost both his legs while on duty in Afghanistan, told Thursday's ''American Agenda.'' ''I love this place more than anything. And it brings me to tears to think about some of the sacrifices I've seen for this country.'' newsmax *********** I said, if you see them anywhere, if you see them in a restaurant, if you see them in a department store, even at a gasoline station, just tell them, youre not welcome here or anywhere, she recalled. Of course it frightened a lot of people, she added. But, the exact quote was a bit more in depth: Lets make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them theyre not welcome anymore, anywhere. Weve got to get the children connected to their parents, Waters said at the Wilshire Federal Building in June." gregjarrett.com quoting Maxine Waters ***** "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Congress is looking into media literacy initiatives, including a commission to help "rein in" misinformation in the wake of last weeks deadly breach of the U.S. Capitol and one critic slammed AOCs suggestion as "wholly un-American." During a lengthy live stream on Instagram on Tuesday night, the leader of the so-called "Squad" discussed the aftermath of the Capitol riot, how she feared for her life during the chaos and what needs to be done going forward." foxnews ********* "As with the War on Terror, short-term victories seem certain, and enticing; Big Tech made it harder for Trump to disrupt the inauguration, which is great. But in the longer term, we may radicalize people who were previously neutral, and thereby empower even worse foes than the ones we vanquished. The other day I heard from a never-Trump friend, a Biden voter, who is convinced that eventually, after we all get comfortable with what Big Tech has done, it will come for conservatives like him. If that happens, he and others like him are not going to ally with their censors, public or private. But those of us who opposed Trump should also be cautious about such alliances. The right-wing fringe is about to discover what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the anti-terror surveillance state it supported so enthusiastically. Perhaps we could learn from their example and ask what sort of society we want to live in before we start authorizing sweeping new powers." Meghan McCardle --------------- Pilgrims, students at Harvard University are petitioning to have the degrees of alumni who supported Trump revoked. Bless their little hearts! AOC was afraid? That poor little thang was afraid? The obvious response should be to re-educate the press, bloggers, etc. so that people don't say or write things that make her unhappy or afraid. And this fellow Mast, how dare he talk back to Jake Tapper? We all know the depth of the sufferings that Tapper has endured for his country. Meghan McCardle - She says that she and her friends thought that people who judged the invasion of Iraq to be foolish were "naifs." But now she sees that the big bad wolf of censorship may bite her. Better late than never. pl https://thegreggjarrett.com/maxine-waters-says-she-threatens-trump-supporters-all-the-time/?utm_source=socialflow AOCs suggestion of commission to 'rein in' media slammed as wholly un-American | Fox News https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-should-be-frightened-by-tech-companies-censoring-of-conservatives/2021/01/12/e9da7ce2-5512-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/brian-mast-jake-tapper-military-veteran/2021/01/14/id/1005662/ New Delhi, Jan 15 : Uttar Pradesh's talented shooter Saurabh Chaudhary and Haryana's Manu Bhaker on Friday aced the T1 men's and women's 10metre air pistol trials, respectively, at Dr Karni Singh range here. In the ongoing national shooting trials, both world No.4 Saurabh and world No.2 Manu topped their qualification rounds, before going on to win the finals as well. Saurabh shot a sizzling 590 in the 60-shot qualification round, before smashing the finals world record to record a stunning 246.9 to annihilate the opposition. A National Rifle Association of India official, however, clarifed that this record would not go into records books as it has come in trials. North Korea's Kim Song Guk holds the finals world record with a score of 246.5. Haryana's Manu, on the other hand, shot 580 in qualifying, which was enough to give her the top spot. She then shot 239.3 to win the finals. Tamil Nadu's Shri Nivetha came second while Uttar Pradesh's Neha came third. The pope has advocated that everyone should get the vaccine, calling it an ethical option performed not only for ones own health but for the lives of others. (Photo: VATICAN MEDIA / AFP/file) Vatican City: The Vatican has confirmed Pope Francis received the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine on Thursday. No photos of the 84-yer-old pontiff receiving the shot have been released. The pope has advocated that everyone should get the vaccine, calling it an ethical option performed not only for ones own health but for the lives of others. The Vatican has beefed up coronavirus restrictions amid a spike in cases in Italy. The pope, who is missing part of one lung since a surgery in his 20s, has been saying the traditional Angelus blessing from a library in the Apostolic Palace, and not a window overlooking St. Peters, in a bid to prevent gatherings. The Vatican launched its vaccination programme this week, administering the Pfizer vaccine. Vatican City has had at least 27 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including a cluster among the Swiss Guards last fall. Everyone in Northern Ireland has a transfer test story to share. Whether it's the story of the person who didn't get the grade they expected but still flourished at secondary school or the high-flying executive from a disadvantaged background who had a world of opportunity opened up by passing their test, everyone has a story to share. Except for this year, our P7s will not be afforded the opportunity to tell their story, rather, it will be the success of a sibling, a parent's academic journey, accident of family birth order or postcode lottery that decides their fate. I have a daughter, Charlotte, who has worked tirelessly to write her story and gain entry to the school of her choice; she worked through the spring lockdown, giving up her time on summer holidays, even sitting a test the day after Boxing Day. Like all our P7s she was focused on writing a test that would allow her to stand on her ability alone, to write the next chapter in her life for herself. For that chance to have been taken away is unfair, yet another thing Covid has cruelly stolen from our kids. But what compounds the unfairness is the fact that it did not need to be this way. When schools closed in spring last year, the critical question was: what will happen to examinations? While GCSEs and A-levels stuttered to a solution, no planning seemed to be carried out for the transfer test. If any strategy did exist, it was cross your fingers and hope for the best. By not implementing a no-test contingency plan in spring last year, the Minister of Education and the testing bodies failed the class of 2021. This failure to plan was compounded by the decision, without consultation, to move the tests back by two weeks in the autumn. This opened the door to judicial review proceedings, the settlement of which pushed the tests further back to January. With winter health pressures looming, it was obvious that the prospect of the tests being cancelled was real. But yet again the Minister and testing bodies failed to put in place a contingency plan. If not planning for the cancellation of the tests in spring 2020 was a failure, not implementing a plan B in the autumn was catastrophic. Our kids deserved better. Peter Weir is right when he says he has no legal power to intervene in the transfer tests, but as Minister of Education he has, at the very least, a moral duty to lead. Deflecting from the issue at hand, the Minister spent the autumn and winter telling parents and children this was a matter for the testing bodies alone. He had a duty to put forward a plan, he failed to do so. But he was not alone. Our education committee also failed to lead. Several education spokespersons from various parties, preferred to point the finger at the Minister's failings, rather than propose a way forward of their own. Only Robbie Butler of the UUP grasped the nettle and proposed an alternative. While his plan has its flaws and needs legal refinement, it represents a base upon which to build. This week, the Minister has stated that academic criteria can still be employed by schools as part of the admission process. It is therefore not too late for the Minister to finally take the lead, Peter Weir has one more chance. In the absence of a test, he needs to set out clearly and without ambiguity what that academic criteria is, giving Boards of Governors confidence that selecting on academic grounds will be legally robust. It will not be good enough if the Minister, once again, hides behind a legal smokescreen saying it's nothing to do with him, passing the buck to schools and their Boards. It is past time for Peter to lead and build on the Butler plan. When this year's transfer story is told, it will be a story of children being failed by the system. It will be the tale of people not having the moral courage to lead in a pandemic. But, it will also be the story of resilience. One thing I've learned in this period of uncertainty is my daughter is much tougher than I knew. Our kids have been the heroes of this year's transfer process. They have spent hours writing tests and working on their Maths and English. Whatever school they end up in, we know they will thrive because us parents, the reluctant home-schoolers, have daily glimpsed how great they'll be. Tim Cairns is a parent and former DUP Spad Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. The "Toys Games Retailers in Europe" newsletter has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Toys Games Retailers in Europe is a practical source of information that displays clear rankings and profiles with all key data of national and international toys games retail chains. The retailer profiles feature the name and headquarter address as well as contact details, management (CEO), data on turnover development, shop types, banners, number of stores, website and much other relevant information. Many profiles display storefront pictures as well. Multinational retailer profiles feature the head office in each country as well as the local management of the subsidiaries. The retailer rankings per country provide a clear overview of the retailers based on recent turnover data. The database focuses on European markets such as Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain. Nevertheless, many other countries are included as well. Some countries do not offer full coverage yet. Rankings and profiles are given in the same way for all retail companies, sectors, and countries. All data are updated frequently by our international research team. The total number of retailers in the database grows as new retailer profiles are added daily. The current number of retailers in the database can easily be seen via the search menu at Home Search. Via this page an additional 14 retail sectors are accessible. Companies Mentioned Amazon Blokker Holding Game Digital Gamestop MediaMarkt/Saturn Micromania Mothercare Simba Dicke Group Toys R Us Vedes For more information about this newsletter visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/auds94 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005244/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 When I got home that night, after the adrenaline stopped pumping, the fright seemed to me a metaphor for how weve dealt with COVID-19. Raised on fairy tales, I have never given up looking for happy endings. Raised on fables, I have never given up looking for lessons. The virus was all around us, threatening on every street corner, at every deli counter. But once attacked, every victim was alone. Those who were taken to hospitals died in isolation, cut off from their loved ones. Then experts and everyday people joined forces. Scientists took to their laboratories to create vaccines; volunteers risked their lives to serve as guinea pigs. Heroes provided us with hope for rescue. But on Jan. 6, another peril knocked us off our feet. This time, the monster pounding on the gate was not disease but terror, an angry crowd spreading vitriol as marauders invaded the U.S. Capitol building. It was a scare of a wholly different nature, sharing with the pandemic only two things: its ability to shock and threaten. Wed been mesmerized by daily death counts on the newspapers front page, and now we were glued to our TVs watching enraged supporters of President Trump attempt to tear apart the foundations of our government. Switching from station to station, we fruitlessly sought words of reassurance among the platitudes of politicians trying to sound distinguished while protecting their own electability prospects. We witnessed these things together, but at the moment of infection, the moment of riot, we were alone, individuals. Where would it stop? Just before Christmas, I bundle up for the last dog walk of the day around 10 p.m. Often, to make the walk go faster, I play games with myself. The night before, my losing bet had been on counting 50 houses with Christmas trees or holiday decorations in the windows. There had actually been 60 along my eight-block route. Arriving at the corner of Broderick and Haight this night, I turn to walk west up the incline on Haight Street. The nights are particularly quiet these days, thanks to the COVID-related curfew, starting at 10 p.m. Behind me I hear some rustling. I turn to glimpse the shadowy outline of someone lurching up the street about a quarter block behind me. Im on alert, although the man has posed no particular danger. But Greenberg always seems to sense my anxiety. Usually, when we pass people walking toward us, he bounds over and presses himself against their legs, looking to be petted. Always, though, when I am the least bit wary, he barks. Tonight is the same. I havent said anything, I havent done anything, but somehow he knows that I am uneasy, and he starts making a shrill racket. This is often embarrassing, and I usually try to hush him while apologizing to the target of his barks. In this case, it is the man behind us, who seems to be walking faster than we are and gaining on us. With Greenberg yipping and yowling, I apologize to the stranger and tell the dog, as sternly as I can, to be quiet. The man is alongside us now, and leans in to ask for some money. Sorry, I tell him, perceiving that him asking for something and me turning him down has raised the stakes of the conversation. I look up and down the street. No one else is around. Greenberg, more into shrill shrieks than polite chitchat, continues his coloratura expressions of outrage. At this, the man starts screaming, dog, dog, DOG! over and over. His face is distorted, and his neck muscles bulge as he yells as loud as he can. He is not violent, but the force of his voice feels dangerous, that he, a grown man of average size, is as out of control as my 12-pound dog. Terrified at the timbre of the mans shouts, Greenberg goes into an even greater frenzy, barking, alternately lunging and cowering, and trying to drag me into the street. The man continues yelling. If I run, I think, he could run after me, and that would be even worse. I walk a few steps more and the man keeps up with me. He doesnt touch me. He doesnt threaten me. He doesnt come closer than 5 feet away. But his demeanor feels unpredictable, as though he could attack at any time. Standing on the deserted sidewalk, that is what scares me. Suddenly, I hear another mans voice from the other side of the street. Is everything all right? he hollers. Are you OK? I peer into the darkness and see the man has come out of his house and is addressing me from a landing on his front steps. As he calls, the dog-screamer stops. Maybe he was tired of yelling, or maybe the presence of a witness has shut him up. Yes, I say, so relieved to have an ally that I run across Haight Street to be closer. Greenberg in tow, I tell him what happened, that I am not harmed or hurt in any way, just shaken. Are you going far? he asks. I can walk you home. No need, I say. I cant tell you how grateful I am that you came out to see what was happening. A minute later, on Page Street, I run into a man I often see walking his dog. His dog is wearing a surgical keep-away-from-the-wound cone, and I know it had been neutered a day or so before. Hows he doing? I ask. Better, the guy says. And then, because my heart is still racing and my knees are still wobbly, I tell him what happened, ending with my gratitude for the neighbor who cared enough to investigate what was going on. Well, sure, says the dog-walker. We are a community. When I took a break from watching the news last Wednesday to walk Greenberg at 5 p.m. or so, neighbors were bursting out of their houses. Some, like me, had dogs to walk. Others were just taking recesses from their TV screens. Unbelievable, we said to each other. Could you imagine that this is America? All Ive been doing is watching and eating. Well, its been coming for four years, hasnt it? We were a community, ordinary folks in sweatpants and parkas, sharing our sorrows and fears, and that seemed to help. In the terrors, the horrors, the disappointments, the outrages of recent times, our strongest feelings will be bonds with each other. Leah Garchik is a former Chronicle columnist and curator of the daily Public Eavesdropping feature. Email: culture@sfchronicle.com Mobiles Old Majestic Brewing Co. has opened the door to investors in a drive to raise funds to purchase canning equipment. Old Majestic founders John Minton and Chad Marchand have set a target of $50,000 for the campaign at mainvest.com. The pitch is that improved distribution, including canning equipment, will leave the brewery better positioned to tackle the new COVID environment. Mainvest operates differently than sites such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter. Rather than using early access, premiums and a sense of charity to motivate donations, Mainvest drives are based on revenue sharing notes in which investors are repaid from future business revenue until they receive a specified return. The site cautions that it does not guarantee returns. The Old Majestic campaign promises a 170% return over the next six years: For example, an investor who puts up $1,000 will be repaid $1,700 by January 1, 2027. The minimum investment is $100. Old Majestic opened in December 2019 on the fast-developing St. Louis St. corridor in downtown Mobile. Other current activities include a Bacon, Brews & Blues event planned for Jan. 23; the occasion will feature the release of a new Smoked Bacon Porter along with food trucks, music and other attractions. VANCOUVER, WA / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2021 / ORCHID VENTURES, INC. (CSE:ORCD)(OTC PINK:ORVRF) (the "Company" or "Orchid") is pleased to announce its audited annual financial results for thirteen-month period ended June 30, 2020 ("Fiscal 2020"). All amounts, unless specified otherwise, are expressed in United States Dollars. Financial statements are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Detailed information regarding the Company's financial results as well as management's discussion and analysis can be found at https://sedar.com/ and https://ir.orchidventures.com/. Fiscal 2020 Financial Highlights Thirteen months ended Year ended June 30, 2020 May 31, 2019 Revenues $ 1,568,276.00 $ 5,514,593.00 Cost of goods sold $ 1,704,190.00 $ 3,541,475.00 Gross profit /(loss) $ (135,914.00 ) $ 1,973,118.00 Expenses including non-cash items $ 6,921,543.00 $ 6,875,827.00 Net loss for the year $ (7,051,457.00 ) $ (6,692,581.00 ) Number of common shares outstanding 90,348,067 66,151,847 Loss per share $ (0.08 ) $ (0.85 ) Cash $ 76,017.00 $ 111,671.00 Working capital (deficit) $ (1,786,153.00 ) $ 2,580,475.00 Total assets $ 1,488,021.00 $ 4,369,123.00 Shareholders' equity (deficiency) $ (1,445,434.00 ) $ 2,933,140.00 Long-term financial liabilities $ 211,896.00 $ 0.00 Dividends paid per share $ 0.00 $ 0.00 Results Of Operations During the thirteen months ended June 30, 2020 ("2020"), the Company reported a net loss of $7,051,457 against revenues of $1,568,276 compared to a net loss of $6,692,581 against revenues of $5,514,593 for the year ended May 31, 2019 ("2019"). Sales decreased from the comparative period while the company was focused on a fundamental shift in their business strategy and operations. Sales also decreased due to the general health backlash related to vape products in the industry. As the causal factors were identified and sourced to the illegal cannabis market, legal vape sales improved as a consistent focus on education and providing high quality, safe products reinforced consumer confidence. The Company would like to reiterate that all Orchid products are sent to third-party independent laboratories for emissions testing. To date, there have been no reported incidents of illness or health related issues with Orchid's products and Orchid continues to work with state regulators to ensure that all testing and mandated quality and safety standards are met. Orchid has also been working with state regulators to inform and educate as to the materials and ingredients that are used in Orchid products and to ensure that Orchid remains at the forefront in terms of quality, safety and efficacy. During Q2 2020, the Company terminated its distribution agreement with Cypress Manufacturing Company, a California corporation doing business as Indus Distribution ("Indus"), and entered into a distribution agreement with Nabione, Inc., doing business as Nabis ("Nabis"), a distributor in the business of providing warehousing, storage space, material handling, and transportation services. Total operational expenses were $5,465,417 during 2020 compared to $6,875,827 for the comparative year. Operational expenses for 2020 include non-cash items such as bad debts expense of $493,091 (2019 - $42,610), depreciation and amortization of $267,157 (2019 - $13,601) and share-based payments of $1,105,474 (2019 - $2,171,891). The primary reason for the decrease in operational expenses this year compared to 2019 is due to a stronger focus on cash and expense management which resulted in decreases pertaining to legal and professional fees, sales, marketing and advertising expenses, and management fees. Other factors reported in the net loss for YTD 2020 include a non-cash impairment of $905,881 (Q2 2019 - $Nil) relating to the terminated GreenBloom acquisition. Management Commentary The net assets of the Company decreased from $2,933,140 at May 31, 2019 to a deficiency of $1,445,434 at June 30, 2020, a decrease of $4,378,574. At June 30, 2020, the Company had cash of $76,017, trade receivables of $69,750, GST receivable of $194, prepaids of $172,288, and inventory of $567,157, compared to cash on deposit in the amount of $111,671, trade receivables of $2,273,289, GST receivable of $17,849, prepaids of $231,813, and inventory of $1,381,836 at May 31, 2019. The most significant liabilities at June 30, 2020 were trade payables of $1,145,754 (2019 - $838,468). The Company's primary source of revenue is from its vaporizer cannabis products. The Company can for the near term generate the necessary capital resources required to finance operations by way of the sales of its products. Management takes all necessary precautions to minimize risks however additional risks could affect the future performance of the Company. Path to Profitability With fifteen states opening up to the recreational sale of cannabis, sales will continue to grow as new population groups, like Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials, realize the magnitude of cannabis applications and cannabis is accepted by more demographics. Orchid plans to capitalize on the opportunity by launching several new initiatives, including the expansion of the Orchid Brand franchise through a licensing model and by expanding their product portfolio and leveraging new technologies. Based on Orchid's branding, marketing and operational expertise the company will continue to create opportunities for licensing the Orchid brand in order to expand reach into new markets and build strategic partnerships with high quality and respected local operating companies in the Cannabis industry. These licensees will leverage their operational strength and core capabilities to penetrate new markets by leveraging the Orchid brand and portfolio of products to accelerate growth and secure market share. PurTec Delivery Systems ("PurTec"), sells vaporizers and other delivery systems that are highly differentiated and have gone through the strictest emissions standards in the world, set by the European Union. PurTec has announced the launch of two new technology platforms, PurCore R1 and PurCore F1, both differentiated and disruptive within the cannabis vaporizer market in terms of safety and performance In addition, the company will continue to focus on driving operational efficiencies and cost control measures as the new strategic shift proceeds and begins to gain traction in terms of revenue generation and product/technology advancements. Investment will focus on People, Process and Technology to better position the company for growth. Fiscal 2020 Key Developments In October 2019 the Oregon regulatory body (OLCC) banned the sale of botanical based or flavored vaporizer products state-wide due to health concerns. This negatively impacted revenues for the Company's 2nd and 3rd fiscal quarters. Ultimately the ban was reversed after 2 weeks but negative consumer perception persisted. Over time the OLCC concluded that all issues pertaining to EVALI (E-Cigarette or Vaping Associated Lung Injury) were a result of products acquired from illegal dispensaries and from black market products with a harmful cutting agent called Vitamin-E Acetate used as a filler ingredient to reduce costs. Orchid products have never used anything harmful in their products, as they adhere to all state regulated quality standards and the company conducts emissions testing with their vape hardware to ensure all Orchid products test clear of any harmful heavy metals and safe when emission tested compared to AFNOR standards used in Europe. Starting in January 2020, the Company pivoted and adjusted its business strategy to focus on building an Orchid Ecosystem that is non-cannabis touching and better focused on the company's core strengths, capabilities and product innovations that will better differentiate within markets and disrupt the status quo. The key pillars to the strategy involve 1) expanding the Orchid brand portfolio and commercializing new product innovation, 2) fine-tuning and leveraging a licensing model to accelerate growth in California and Oregon, plus expand into additional North American markets, 3) diversification beyond making cannabis products to servicing the cannabis industry with differentiated and disruptive hardware delivery systems, intellectual property development and strategic opportunities, plus 4) leveraging the company's core capabilities to provide go-to-market services like marketing, sales and retail expertise, e-commerce, plus packaging and distribution. To support this strategy, Orchid has either fully developed or secured exclusive access to highly impactful product innovations and intellectual property, which forms the foundation of the Orchid Collective. This Collective consists of 3 wholly owned subsidiary companies that form a dynamic network, interacting with each other to create and exchange sustainable value for consumers and ultimately shareholders. Orchid Essentials Pivoted away from the traditional business model of "Vertical Integration" and the production and manufacturing of cannabis products by moving to a Licensing business model. Locate high quality operational partners that will leverage the Orchid Brand through a licensing arrangement. Purtec Delivery Systems: Company sells proprietary, patent pending hardware delivery systems to the Cannabis and CBD industries both in North America and globally. PurTec offers unique and differentiated hardware options that are disruptive to the industry, by providing a safer, more enhanced consumer experience and value. Cellg8 Sciences: Company provides CELLg8 technology to manufacturers and brands in the Cannabis industry. On May 3, 2020 the Company entered into a Licensing Agreement for the Oregon business with the Tine Trading Company, a privately held enterprise, under the dba Orechid LLC. Pursuant to the Licensing Agreement the Licensee has the exclusive right to manufacture, produce, package, distribute, market and sell the Orchid Essentials Brand franchise in the State of Oregon for a 10 year period. Tine Trading has over 30 years of sales, manufacturing, and supply chain experience in the food service and CPG industries. On June 9, 2020, the Company partnered with Driven, California's fastest growing online cannabis retailer and direct-to-consumer logistics company, to launch the Company on its new ecommerce platform, Brand Budee. The new platform will allow the Company's customers to purchase directly from the Orchid website for delivery throughout the state. The company remains in the arbitration process with Greenbloom and is confident that it's position in the case is strong and the company's legal defense team is steadfast in their resolve and belief in the company's strategy. Furthermore, the company's insurance provider has engaged legal counsel to assist in the arbitration process, which the company believes will add more strength to the legal team. Management expects that their continued commitment and execution to their strategic priorities, driven by further developing and fine-tuning their product offerings and operations for each company within the Orchid Collective, will place them on a consistent path to revenue and profit growth in FY 2021. Efforts will continue to focus on creating differentiation with superior, high quality and safe products combined with leveraging new technologies and innovations to disrupt markets, attract more consumers and build market share. The company believes that the new business model and strategy will establish a more viable and attractive option for not just consumers, but for employees and investors as well. Highlights of Subsequent Events On September 23, 2020, the Company launched three new product lines in California and Oregon: Orchid Vibes, featuring a newly developed PurTec Summit cartridge and introducing more contemporary terpene profiles such as Mimosa and Purple Punch. Improved Orchid Classic line up, which are mid-tier products featuring their classic Orchid Essential formulations like Jack Herer and Dutch Treat. Orchid Gold live resin, full spectrum, seasonal craft strains and flavours that rotate throughout the year, launched in Oregon through licensee, Tine Trading Company. On October 20, 2020, the Company entered into a Supply and Licensing Agreement ("Agreement") for the manufacturing and distribution of Orchid products into the regulated Nevada cannabis market with 1933 Industries Inc. ("1933"). The Company entered into an exclusive agreement with 1933, for the purposes of manufacturing, selling and marketing Orchid Essentials Brand products in Nevada, leveraging 1933's extraction expertise and well-established sales and distribution channels in the state. In December 2020 PurTec Delivery Systems ("PurTec"), launched an innovative ceramic film atomization heating and world's first cotton-free vaporizer technology, PurCore F1. jointly developed with our strategic partner, JWEI Group Advanced Technology Research Institute, built on the JWEI Kera Ultra technology platform. PurCore R1 is another joint development project with our strategic partner, JWEI Group Advanced Technology Research Institute, This new technology will set new product safety standards throughout the cannabis vaporizer industry. Manufacturing partners and the supply chain in China are operational and have been active since March 3rd. The Company has experienced a slight slowdown from manufacturers in China amidst the pandemic but much less than other manufacturers. Despite the pandemic, the Company is seeing an increase in order volume from several key accounts. In October 2020, Mathew Lee, the Chief Financial Officer tendered his resignation from the company, due to his desire to pursue other opportunities. His resignation was accepted and is effective January 15, 2021. The Company has since filled the CFO role, having recently hired Yousuf Jaffar, FCA who is a Chartered Accountant with thirty years of post qualification experience in corporate finance. He has worked in senior positions in the manufacturing, telecommunication and real estate industries and has vast exposure to business environments in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. Mr. Jaffar was appointed as CFO effective January 15, 2021. ABOUT ORCHID ESSENTIALS Orchid Essentials is a California-based cannabis innovation company that has developed a mass-market brand and loyal consumer following with its premium cannabis products and unique vape hardware delivery systems. Orchid also owns 100% of PurTec Delivery Systems, a company that produces, markets and sells clean vaporizer hardware that has been emissions tested against the most stringent standards in the world set forth by the EU and has unrivaled product quality and value pricing. Orchid's management brings significant branding, product development and distribution experience with a proven track record of scaling businesses and building sustainable revenue growth through value-generating partnerships and innovation that creates enterprise value. Learn more at https://orchidessentials.com/ ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS - ORCHID VENTURES, INC. Corey Mangold CEO and Director investors@orchidessentials.com Investor Relations Corey Mangold 949-357-5818 corey@orchidessentials.com The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Safe Harbor Statement Except for historical information contained herein, statements in this release may be forward-looking and made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend" and similar expressions, as they relate to Orchid Ventures, Inc. and Orchid Essentials any of its affiliates or subsidiaries (collectively, the "Company") or its management, identify forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about the Company's business based, in part, on assumptions made by management. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may, and probably will, differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements due to numerous factors, including those described above and those risks discussed from time to time in the Company's Canadian securities regulatory filings with sedar.com, Factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements include such factors as (i) the development and protection of our brands and other intellectual property, (ii) the need to raise capital to meet business requirements, (iii) significant fluctuations in marketing expenses, (iv) the ability to achieve and expand significant levels of revenues, or recognize net income, from the sale of our products and services, (v) the Company's ability to conduct the business if there are changes in laws, regulations, or government policies related to cannabis, (vi) management's ability to attract and maintain qualified personnel necessary for the development and commercialization of its planned products, and (vii) other information that may be detailed from time to time in the Company's Canadian securities regulatory filings with sedar.com. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE: Orchid Ventures, Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/624570/Orchid-Ventures-Reports-Annual-Financial-Results-for-Fiscal-Year-2020 Fake news is likely to be leading people in ethnic minority communities in the UK to reject the coronavirus vaccine, a leading NHS official has warned. Dr Harpreet Sood who is leading the health services campaign against disinformation said doctors were now reaching out to community leaders to help correct so much fake news about the jab. Some of the myths and false information circulating on social media and WhatsApp groups has been religiously targeted including false claims the vaccines contain particular animal produce or alcohol. We need to be clear and make people realise there is no meat in the vaccine, there is no pork in the vaccine, it has been accepted and endorsed by all the religious leaders and councils and faith communities, Dr Sood, NHS Englands associate chief clinical information officer, told BBC News. He said the NHS was working with religious leaders, as well as celebrity influencers, on a new campaign to help debunk myths being shared online about the vaccine. Were making sure the look and feel of it reaches the populations that matter, said Dr Sood. Recommended UK bans South America travel over new variant It comes as a group of around 100 mosques said they would begin using Friday prayers to dispel myths around vaccinations. A campaign by the Mosque and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), will also include Imams and community leaders filming themselves being vaccinated. One December poll commissioned by the Royal Society of Public Health found only found 57 per cent of black, Asian and other ethnic minority people in the UK would be happy to have the Covid-19 vaccine, compared to 79 per cent of white people. Leeds-based Imam Qari Asim, who is chair of MINAB, said: The Covid vaccines administered in the UK are halal, permissible from Islamic perspective, and there should be no hesitation in taking them from a moral perspective. Mr Asim has also written a special sermon which tackles some of the fake news about the vaccine circulating on social media. My message to Muslim communities is to make an informed choice and take up the offer when their turn for being vaccinated comes, he said. He added: Dont miss the opportunity by believing in fake news about the vaccines. By taking the vaccine, we are protecting ourselves and others from being infected by this deadly virus that is sweeping through our country and potentially saving lives. A medical worker takes a swab sample from a man as people queue to get tests for Covid-19 coronavirus at an office building in Harbin, in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province after the province declared an "emergency state" as daily Covid-19 numbers climb., Jan. 14, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic produced spikes cases in northeastern Chinas Heilongjiang province this week, prompting an order for its 37.5 million residents to stay home, while Hebei, the province that surrounds Beijing, reported scores of new cases and its first coronavirus death in nearly eight months, authorities said. The Health Commission of Heilongjiang Province announced that 43 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed on Wednesday, and another 68 asymptomatic cases were reported. Local authorities have been conducting contact tracing and implementing strict quarantine measures, and disinfecting places that the new group of COVID-19 patients have visited. Heilongjiang announced a state of emergency, ordering its 37.5 million residents to stay in place, and putting Suihua, a city of 5 million, under lockdown Monday after 45 asymptomatic cases were reported. A resident of Lanxi county, in Suihua city surnamed Li told RFA Thursday that the local government ordered an indefinite home quarantine: Currently, the towns will be under lockdown no matter whether there are cases reported or not. The government is locking down cities, towns, and villages. Then the officials will conduct COVID-19 Nucleic Acid PCR tests. There is no clear indication as to when the lockdown will lifted, he told RFA. Wangkui county resident Li Hui, whose neighborhood was hard hit by COVID-19, told RFA that there are 56 asymptomatic cases in her county. Several communities have been locked down. The city is in lockdown. Even our family members were infected. More than 60 communities were shut down, she said. Heilongjiang provincial capital Harbin resident Liu Yang told RFA that there had been a COVID-19 case reported two days ago. Now even going to the supermarket in the community requires undergoing strict checks. We have have our temperature checked before being allowed to enter the market. Masks are mandatory. Registration is also required. Its getting strict again, said Liu. In Hebei, the provincial health commission of reported Thursday 81 new COVID-confirmed cases in the province, 75 of which were reported in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang, while another six cases were recorded in Xingtai city. There were no details available on the new death case in Hebei, the provinces first confirmed COVID-19 death case in 8 months. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) Deputy Director Feng Zijian told Chinese media that compared to the previous outbreaks, there are more cases in the current Shijiazhuang outbreak, and the spread is much faster. Shijiazhuang, with a population of 11 million is in comprehensive lockdown now, with individuals and vehicles not permitted to leave the city. A truck driver from Baoding city in Hebei said he was denied access when he tried to refuel his truck in a gas station in Korla, in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. In a video that was widely shared on social media, the driver complained as a gas station employee refused to fill his tank. What crime did I commit that you will not fill my gas tank? Im from Hebei Baoding. Here I am at a Sinopec gas station, he said. Trucks from Hebei are being denied access to refuel our tanks. This is discrimination. Do you know that? the man said. A man surnamed Wang, a resident of Shunyi outside Beijing, told RFA that even though the local situation is not bad, authorities appear on high alert. The measures are tightened in Beijing. Our community here is to shut down today. Members in the WeChat group commented that our community should not be shut down because we are in a low-risk area. Yet all but one entrances were closed off, he said Thursday. People enter and exit only from one entrance. Couriers and food deliveries are not allowed at all. In my moms community, facial recognition is required for entry," Wang added. Mi Feng, a spokesperson for Chinas National Health Commission, told reporters the recent outbreak featured faster transmission speeds, older patients, and more cases found in rural areas. Reported by RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated by Min Eu. DUBAI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 15th Jan, 2021) Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) supports Dubais efforts to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, in cooperation with the public and private sector to keep society safe, and accelerate digital transformation for customers and employees. Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, said DEWA is committed to the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to turn challenges into opportunities. DEWA collaborates with other government organisations to protect and reinforce the UAEs leading global position. DEWA supported Your City Needs You campaign launched by H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council. DEWA provided logistical support to the health and social sectors in Dubai during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many DEWA staff also volunteered to support the first line of defence. Watani Al Emarat Foundation honoured DEWA for its role in the campaigns success and for reflecting a positive image of the solidarity and cohesion in society. Through its state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, DEWA enables its customers to access its services anytime and anywhere using its smart app and website for their safety. DEWA provides several options for flexible bill payment in collaboration with public and private organisations. These include Smart Dubais Dubai Now app, which was used to complete more than 650,000 payment transactions in 2020. More than 490,000 transactions were conducted through the Etisalat Public Payment machines, and more than 4,000,000 transactions through the smart channels of around 24 banks. DEWA also provides Tayseer bill payment by using a reference number, via Emirates NBDs Cheque deposit machine and Apple Pay. All of these are available as self-services at DEWAs Customer Happiness Centres. DEWAs Youth Council collaborated with the Federal Youth Authority (FYA) to launch an awareness campaign under the hashtag #StayResponsible, for all precautionary measures. The Youth Council distributed FYAs guide containing 100 ideas to invest young peoples energy and time during the implementation of the UAEs National Sterilisation Programme. DEWA regularly disinfects its electric vehicle Green Chargers across Dubai, in collaboration with ENOC and ADNOC, using the best disinfectants and distributed face masks and sanitisers to its employees; in line with best international health standards. Over several months, DEWA has organised multiple awareness and online training by experts from the public and private sector for its employees. This includes 70 awareness workshops and 54 online sessions. Following nine weeks of punishing restrictions in which Manitobans have been banned from gathering with friends or opening their businesses, epidemiologists caution the way out of code red will be uphill as public health officials decide what to reopen and when. Following nine weeks of punishing restrictions in which Manitobans have been banned from gathering with friends or opening their businesses, epidemiologists caution the way out of code red will be uphill as public health officials decide what to reopen and when. "Its a very difficult question, but its probably the most important question to be thinking about now," said Dr. Joel Kettner, an epidemiologist and former chief provincial public health officer. So far, public health officials, including Manitobas top doctor, Brent Roussin and his deputy, Dr. Jazz Atwal, have shared few insights into the provinces plans to potentially ease public health orders. Manitobas current set of restrictions, which have outlawed household social gatherings, limited retail purchases, closed places of worship and capped funeral sizes, are set to expire on Jan. 22. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS On Thursday, Manitoba reported 261 new cases of COVID-19; 75 of which were in Winnipeg while outbreaks continue to drive high case counts in the north. "Manitobas strategy it is a more generalized strategy, and therefore the harms that come from those social, and educational and economic consequences of the generalized strategy are quite significant," Kettner said in an interview with the Free Press. "Of course, that would be part of the method of deciding what to open up: what are the most harmful consequences of the restrictions? That would be a very important part of the considerations." Manitoba public health officials say the orders have reduced cases after they soared throughout the late fall and winter, with the five-day test positivity rate topping out at 14.2 per cent. On Thursday, Manitoba reported 261 new cases of COVID-19; 75 of which were in Winnipeg while outbreaks continue to drive high case counts in the north. However, in the capital city, the number of tests that came back positive over the past five days dipped to 7.1 per cent, the lowest its been since late October. Provincially, the five-day test positivity rate was 10 per cent. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Many restaurants on the Exchange District are still open for delivery or pick-up during the provinces COVID code red. Shawarma Khan at 225 McDermot Ave. Atwal has called the trajectory encouraging but said numbers need to continue to decline to reduce the burden on hospitals and avoid a resurgence. On Thursday, 290 people were receiving treatment in hospital related to COVID-19, including 37 in intensive care. When it comes to the priority areas for reopening, Atwal said Wednesday officials will consider the regional and provincial epidemiology of the virus, risks and lessons learned. "Again, we want to have the least amount of restrictions placed on Manitobans," Atwal said. "But we also want to make sure that we dont end up on a pendulum here, where it swings the other way really fast and were in a dire situation with the number of cases developing in a short period of time." In contemplating the loosening of restrictions, Kettner said public health officials should examine where COVID-19 infections are occurring, and in particular, where those who experienced severe outcomes from the virus came into contact with the disease. He called for more transparency and data sharing by the province on both accounts. "We would answer the question about what could have been done to protect that person who was at high risk, then we have a strategy that becomes more specific to what the actual goals and objectives are," Kettner said. Winnipeg epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said lifting restrictions on household social gatherings is unlikely to form a part of the provincial governments initial rollback, adding household spread is "common, its quick and its often asymptomatic." "I would not at all encourage household gatherings until weve done some of these other openings, which might sound counterintuitive because globally its more people, but its more people for shorter periods of time in larger areas," Carr said. Rather, areas likely to see more flexibility as part of the provinces early reopening will be health care services that have been postponed or cut back, expanded retail options, recreation for children and even limited dining-in at restaurants, she said. However, loosening restrictions should only be considered if Manitoba can get the average number of cases a day per 100,000 people down to about five, Carr said. At that rate, the Harvard Global Health Institutes COVID-19 suppression guidance suggests the virus can be managed with rigorous testing and tracing programs. John Woods / The Canadian Press The provinces contact tracing system is also managing the current volume of cases; 80 per cent of contacts are reached by a public health nurse within 24 hours, and 90 per cent are reached within 48 hours, he said. Currently, Manitoba is averaging 11 cases a day per 100,000 people, which would fall into the orange-risk level, indicating accelerated spread of the virus. "Id like to have something stronger than where were at now just to see a continuation of a trend towards that target of the green zone," Carr said. Carr said regional epidemiology of COVID-19 should also be taken into account when considering the eventual easing of restrictions, something public health officials have said is on the table. "A measure that might apply to an urban setting such as Winnipeg is not the same as what might need to be done in areas, whether its rural or northern, because we all have very different living conditions, access to health care, opportunities for self-isolating," Carr said. On Thursday, Atwal described the spread of COVID-19 in Winnipeg as being among close contacts, many of whom are from the same household. At present, there are about 1,394 active cases provincewide, he said. The provinces contact tracing system is also managing the current volume of cases; 80 per cent of contacts are reached by a public health nurse within 24 hours, and 90 per cent are reached within 48 hours, he said. When the time comes to ease restrictions, public opinion should form part of the decision-making process in combination with scientific data and evidence collected by public health Kettner said. "Were talking about things related to the economy, education, social and psychological circumstances a whole bunch of things that really have more to do with social values, priorities," Kettner said. "They are more things for the public to decide on how to weigh benefits and harms." Atwal has said public consultation on the new health order will occur, but details have not yet been announced. danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca Chloe Johnson covers the coastal environment and climate change for the Post and Courier. She's always looking for a good excuse to hop on a boat. 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. Flash French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday announced a new series of stricter COVID-19 rules -- among them an earlier nationwide curfew -- as the pandemic "is under control" but remains "worrying" because of the new rapidly spreading variants. Speaking at a press conference, Castex said that a night-time ban on people's movement, in force since mid-December, would be brought forward by two hours across the national territory. The earlier curfew has already in place in 25 out of the country's 101 departments. Starting from Saturday, the country's 67 million inhabitants are ordered to stay at home from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. for at least two weeks. Permissions will be available for those who have health emergencies and those who work at night, he added. Besides, all non-European travelers arriving in France would have to present a negative COVID-19 test less than 72 hours before boarding their flights. They would have to self-quarantine for seven days and then take a second test, he added. The French premier stressed that the emergence of more contagious coronavirus strains was particularly worrying. On Thursday, France's Public Health Agency counted 66 new infections of VOC 202012/01 (the variant first detected in the UK) and three new cases of 501Y.V2 (the variant first reported in South Africa). Castex, however, added that "the situation is under control" compared to other European countries and that there is no need, at this stage, to issue a third stay-at-home order. "The situation doesn't require that we impose a new lockdown. But if we observe a strong epidemic deterioration, we would be led without delay to new confinement," he said. Castex said the new measures will "lead us to devote all our forces to the vaccination campaign. It offers us a prospect of hope." On Thursday, 71,049 people in France received the first dose. A total of 318,216 inhabitants have got the shot since Dec. 27 when the country launched its campaign. "The sooner we vaccinate the most vulnerable, the sooner our hospitals will be spared the risk of being overwhelmed," Castex told reporters, adding that the government aims to vaccinate more than one million people by the end of January. As of Thursday, France has tallied 2,851,670 COVID-19 infections, after 21,228 new cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours. Health authorities recorded 282 new deaths, bringing the toll to 69,313. Hospital admission and the number of critically ill patients stood at 25,017 and 2,726 respectively. As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines. Meanwhile, 236 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Jan. 12. 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. Having to cull a wedding guest list before the big day is a nightmare many couples have shared during the COVID-19 pandemic. But after making the tough decisions on who to uninvite, some Sydney couples had to scramble in recent weeks to invite guests back after many cancelled because of the COVID-19 outbreaks around Sydney, including on the northern beaches. Soon to be newlyweds, Zishan Zeng and George Yang at the Christian Assembly of Sydney in Roseville during their wedding rehearsal on Friday, Credit:Cole Bennetts Zishan Zeng and her fiance George Yan, who will tie the knot in Roseville at 3pm on Saturday, were forced to reduce their original wedding guest list from 103 to about 70. Some guests cancelled just before Christmas during the northern beaches outbreak. "Some guests were scared about COVID," Ms Zeng said. [January 15, 2021] Inkscreen's CAPTOR Secure Camera App Wins Inaugural CyberSecured Award for Best Enterprise Mobile Application Inkscreen, experts in secure content capture for government and enterprise customers, today announced that the company's CAPTOR business camera and document app has been awarded the 2020 Inaugural CyberSecured Award for best Enterprise Mobile Application. CAPTOR is the industry's leading secure content capture solution, trusted by organizations around the world to help employees securely manage and govern sensitive images, scan and protect documents, and record audio and video. "We are thrilled to be recognized by the CyberSecured Awards as an innovator in enterprise mobile applications," said Josh Bohls, Inkscreen Founder. "With COVID-19 forcing the shift to remote working, the lines between personal and work devices are forever blurred. CAPTOR is the solution of choice to help IT Managers secure their company's sensitive data, meet critical compliance requirements and protect against insider threats, all while supporting an employee's productivity and right to privacy on their mobile devices." First introduced in 2014, CAPTOR combines the functionality of a camera, document scanner, video recorder, audio recorder, QR Code reader, and annotator in a single app. CAPTOR is deployed in a wide range of enterprise and government environments, and is particularly sited for regulated industries, as it supports extensive policies and controls to protect sensitive data. CAPTOR customers include remote nurses and hospice workers documenting patient status and recovery progress; insurance claims adjusters taking photos and videos to document property damage; federal, state and local law enforcement documenting crime scene evidence; lawyers scanning documents for a case file or recording video depositions; and government auditors documenting subjects of investigations. In 2020, Inkscreen expanded CAPTOR with the introduction of CAPTOR Compliance, the industry's first insider threat logging and data loss prevention alert system for managed camera and document capture apps. CAPTOR Compliance addresses the increasing regulatory liabilities posed by the common use of personal mobile devices for business use, and helps companies demonstrate best practices in mobile data compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA. CAPTOR integrates with leading enterprise mobility management platforms including MobileIron, BlackBerry UEM, Microsoft InTune, and VMware/ AirWatch (News - Alert) . About the CyberSecured Awards and 1105 Media Group The CyberSecured Award Program was established by the 1105 Media Group in 2020 to recognize the outstanding achievements of companies who are helping to transform the cybersecurity industry. In the inaugural year of this independently judged program, winners were honored in 23 award categories. 1105 Media's Infrastructure Solutions Group includes leading industry media brands that provide new product and technology solutions for security professionals: Security Today, securitytoday.com, CyberSecured, Campus Security & Life Safety, campuslifesecurity.com, and GovSec. The brands' print, digital, custom media and research products integrate physical and IT security coverage and provide the smartest, most cost-effective solutions for reaching security decision makers. About Inkscreen Inkscreen was founded in 2012 to provide enterprise-ready mobile applications to manage and control sensitive content captured on mobile devices. Company founders have extensive backgrounds in enterprise mobility, Fortune 500 IT consulting, and ERP software. For more information, please visit: https://www.inkscreen.com/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005328/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Advertisement As many as 3,000 Hondurans set off on foot Thursday for the Guatemalan border in hopes of reaching the United States, setting up a possible test of the incoming Biden administration's immigration policies just as a tough-on-migrants Donald Trump is set to leave office. The people in the caravan likely are hoping to take advantage of what Biden has promised will be a more humane approach to immigration, but officials from countries along their route to the US say they'll be stopped before they reach America by governments including Mexicos that have stepped up efforts to halt the caravan. Caravan members, who are fleeing violence and an economy battered by two Category 4 hurricanes and lockdowns imposed to control the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, organized their latest attempt at a chance to seek asylum from the United States via WhatsApp and Facebook groups last week. A group of 300 was spotted departing Thursday evening from a bus terminal in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The number of caravan walkers then swelled significantly overnight as thousands more left the terminal around 5am local time. A Honduran mother runs with her son in her arms to find transportation toward the Guatemalan border and continue their way to the United States on Friday as some 3,000 residents joined a caravan A family in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, gets down from a box truck for a police checkpoint as they head toward the Honduran-Guatemalan border on Friday Honduran migrants, members of a caravan of some 3,000 asylum seekers, get down from a van for a police checkpoint in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, as they make their way to the Guatemalan border where they hope they will be allowed to enter before making their way into Mexico and then eventually to the United States, their final destination On Friday, members of Mexico's National Guard were dispatched to the southern city of Ciudad Hidalgo and positioned along the banks of the Suchiate River across from Guatemala to prevent a migrant caravan of Central Americans, most from Honduras, who are seeking to travel to the Mexico-United States border and seek asylum The asylum-seeking Honduran adults were spotted carrying small children in their arms at the outset of a 162-mile journey to the Guatemalan border town of Agua Caliente as Honduras mobilized 7,000 police officers to supervise them. Dozens could be seen on trucks while others were spotted dangling off them. The move comes just five weeks after hundreds of Hondurans were bused back from Guatemala after a short-lived attempt to cross the border into Mexico was thwarted. On Friday, the Guatemalan government deported an unknown number of Honduran nationals who illegally crossed into the neighboring Central American nation that borders with Mexico. Coordinated security and coronavirus travel restrictions among countries will make it hard for the group to reach Mexico or continue their journey north to the United States. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico are keen to halt the first migrant caravan of the year, which comes before Biden takes office next Tuesday. Members of the National Migration Institute and the Mexico National Guard walk toward the Suchiate River in the southern city of Ciudad Hidalgo to guard the border and prevent a migrant caravan of Central Americans expected to enter from Guatemala Some Hondurans in the caravan were thwarted on their journey to the US and were rounded up Friday, where they waited in line to board buses and return to their home country after being stopped for illegal entry into Guatemala Hondurans who are part of a new caravan of migrants heading to the United States try to climb a truck in Cofradia, Honduras, on Friday A girl walks past Honduran security forces checking the documents of caravan members who abandoned their homes and set off a journey to the United States where they plan to seek asylum Hondurans climb into the back of a pickup truck as they advance in a new migrant caravan bound for the United States, in Cofradia, Honduras Young Honduran men secure a spot in the back of a truck traveling down a road in Cofradia, Honduras, as hundreds of others travel by foot toward the Guatemalan border en route to the US The Guatemalan government on Thursday declared seven departments in a state of 'alert.' The decree limits public demonstrations and allow security forces to disperse any public meeting, group or demonstration by force. Only those whose travel documents are up-to-date and can provide a negative coronavirus test will be allowed to enter Guatemala. Mexican authorities said late Thursday that 500 immigration officers were being deployed to the Guatemalan border in anticipation of the caravan's arrival. Honduran Jessenia Ramirez, walking in the caravan, told AFP she left her husband and three children behind in hopes of providing them better options. Hondurans walk along a road in the caravan of migrants, aiming toward the US A man kisses his daughter as he takes part with other Hondurans in a new caravan of migrants traveling to the United States A woman holds her baby as she joins other Hondurans in a new caravan of some 3,000 migrants who could soon test the immigration policy of incoming President Joe Biden, who has promised a more 'humane' approach to immigration when compared to that of the Trump Administration 'We are going in search of a better future, a job so we can send a few cents' back home,' Ramirez said. 'We are trusting in God to open our path, Biden is supposed to give work opportunities to those who are there [on American soil].' While Biden has promised a more humane approach to migration, in a departure from outgoing President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant policies, the countries on the migration route are expected to maintain their own security measure to limit irregular flows reaching the U.S. border. Border arrests reached the highest level in nearly two years in December when U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 73,513 apprehensions. Mark Morgan, acting commissioner at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, warned caravan members last Friday. Honduran residents formed part of the latest caravan of would-be asylum-seekers. US officials have asked them to turn back, and countries along their routes have promised to halt their march Honduran migrants cheer as they walk in a caravan toward the Guatemalan border early Friday Hondurans heading to the United States walk in the middle of a street of Honduran police officers revising travel documents 'Do not waste your time and money, and do not risk your safety and health,' he said in a statement. 'Migrant caravan groups will not be allowed to make their way north in violation of the sovereignty, standing public health orders, and immigration laws of the respective nations throughout the region.' Meanwhile, many are undeterred: In one Facebook group that has more than 5,500 members, people exchanged advice on how to reach 'paradise', how to protect themselves against fraudsters and the coronavirus on their trip north, and share prayers. Central America is reeling from a wave of violence and growing hunger crisis in the devastating fallout of the Hurricanes Eta and Iota. Coronavirus lockdown measures have disrupted the job market. Authorities in Central America and Mexico have stepped up efforts to stop the caravan well before the U.S. border, using anti-coronavirus measures as the latest tool to curtail migration. Migrants walk carrying the Honduran flag as part of a caravan heading toward the Guatemalan border Friday before dawn Despite warnings from the United States government, Hondurans took their chances and formed a caravan of some 3,000 asylum-seekers who abandoned their homes and set off for the Guatemalan border, hoping they will be allowed to transit through the neighboring Central American country before attempting to cross into Mexico before traveling north to the United States That will likely be a relief for Biden, whose aides have privately expressed concerns about the prospect of growing numbers of migrants seeking to enter the United States in the early days of his administration Biden has vowed to undo many of the border policies that were set in place by the Trump administration, but is seeking at least six months to develop a plan to process immigrants and obtain funding for immigration judges over fears of having 'two million people on our border.' 'It will get done and it will get done quickly but it's not going to be able to be done on Day 1,' Biden said. Grammy-winning, boldly stylish music artist Lil Nas X, creator of the smash hit country-rap song Old Town Road, has made his childrens publishing debut with the alphabet picture book C Is for Country, illustrated by Theodore Taylor III (Random House). The work stars a young Black cowboy and his trusty pony Panini on an adventure-filled ride through an alphabet that showcases wide-open spaces and fun on the farm, a loving family, and a spirit of individuality. Individuality certainly fueled Lil Nas X (born Montero Lamar Hill)s rise to fame. He first made his name as an internet personality, creating popular memes and comedy videos on various social media platforms in the mid-2010s. By 2018 he had begun to focus more on music and in December of that year he released Old Town Road, a blending of trap (a Southern-flavored subgenre of hip-hop) and country. It became a viral sensation thanks to the memes he made to promote the song, and the #Yeehaw Challenge on TikTok, where millions of usersincluding lots of kidsdressed in their best cowboy/girl gear and used the song for their soundtrack. That success led to a contract with Columbia Records. A remix of the song featuring vocals by country artist Billy Ray Cyrus was released in April 2019 and it soared to new heights, including awards recognition and the amassing of more than 12.5 million followers for Nas across online apps. Amid this flush of success Nas came out as gay. Old Town Road (Remix) went on to hold the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a record-breaking 19 consecutive weeks and win two Grammys. On January 9, Old Town Road (Remix) was recognized as the highest certified song ever by the Recording Industry Association of America, reaching 14-times platinum. Its been streamed 2.9 billion times in the U.S. Tapping into his massive young fan base for another creative outlet was a natural segue for Nas. With all the major success of Old Town Road and the fact that kids were a big part of that, the opportunity to create a fun and educational book for them just made so much sense, he told PW. I hope this makes learning the ABCs a lot more fun for them. And beyond mastering the alphabet, Nas said that he would like to see young readers take away a genuine confidence that they can do whatever they want to do and be whoever they want to be. Random House was eager to join in the venture. Nas and his team came up with the idea for C Is for Country and brought it to usand as soon as we received it, we knew theyd hit on an amazing concept, said Sara Sargent, senior executive editor at Random House Books for Young Readers. The title perfectly encapsulates who Nas is and how he effortlessly blends his different styles and influences. From there, we brought on award-winning artist Theodore Taylor III, who brought Nass childhood world to life with bold, bright artwork. Though Nass following and iconic stature in the music world had obvious appeal, Sargent noted that she also felt strongly about taking on the project for additional reasons, namely Nass openness around and embrace of his identity as a queer Black man. That was a cornerstone of why I wanted to acquire the bookhe sets an extraordinary example to readers about the power in being fully yourself, she said. Moreover, Nas is unique in how much he wants to connect with kids and how much his young audience means to him. Its clear from both Nass words and actions that he believes in inspiring and encouraging children, which made it a perfect fit. Nas believes that wearing the hat of a childrens author is a good look for him. It feels amazing and very surreal to see my name on this book, he said. Its never something I thought would happen for me so its very special. The response has been greateveryone thinks its super cute and loves all the illustrations. Theodore did such a great job. Sargent noted that early feedback from kids, Nas fans, and media outlets has been very positive. She points out that one of the books biggest fans is Nas himself. When working with a celebrity author who has all kinds of projects going on, its immensely gratifying to see them so deeply affected by the gravity of putting out a book, Sargent said. Will there be any more books down the road? Its clear that Nas wants to make as big an impact as possible on his young fans, so hes definitely talked about wanting to do more books, Sargent said. What form that may take is still in the works. Nas is on the same page regarding his publishing career. Im sure I will [do another book] at some point, he said, but revealed that hes not developing a new idea at the moment. Right now, his biggest focus lies elsewhere. Im working on my debut album thats going to be coming out later this year, he said. Im so excited for everyone to hear what Ive been working on for so long. Ive worked harder on this album than anything in my entire life. I know the fans are going to love it! C Is for Country by Lil Nas X, illus. by Theodore Taylor III. Random House, $18.99 Jan. ISBN 978-0-593-30078-7 The leader of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) caucus in parliament, Mr Haruna Iddrisu says his side has no difficulty sitting on the left side of the Speaker in the Chamber. "Let me assure the Ghanaian people that the NDC 137 MPs have no difficulty sitting to the left of the Speaker so long as our numerical strength is respected and respected in the composition of committees and in the determination of leadership of committees, whilst we continue to pursue legitimate legal and constitutional processes to procure what we deserve as a majority party, someone will say, what is on the left or what is on the right, we have no difficulty at all," Mr Iddrisu said at a press briefing in Parliament on Thursday, January 14, 2021. He also stated that despite the fact that the Fomena MP Andrew Asiamah Amoako, who is an independent MP has officially written to do business with the NPP caucus in Parliament, it does not make the NPP side the majority in Parlaimnet. Advisedly and wisely, he is not seeking to join a political party and therefore nobody should do an easy mathematics of a 137 plus one. I will cooperate, or I will collaborate does not mean I am joining, or I am crossing over because it has its own constitutional implications which probably will require that a by-election be conducted if he was to join a political party, Mr Iddrisu indicated. In his view, both parties still have 137 seats apiece in Parliament and therefore the NPP cannot claim to have majority seats in the House. Fomena MP officially joins NPP caucus in Parliament The Independent Member of Parliament for Fomena, who has also been elected second deputy speaker of the eighth Parliament Andrew Asiamah Amoako has officially written to the Speaker informing him of his decision to do business with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) caucus in parliament. This comes as the two sides engaged in endless debates over who has the majority and is entitled to sit on the right side of the Speaker. Both the NPP and the NDC have 137 seats each in the house with no clear majority. But the NPP through MP for Effutu, Alexander Afenyo Markin has written to the Speaker to declare their side the majority because the Fomena MP has agreed to do business with them giving them 138 seats. Although the Fomena MP had told the media he was going to work with the NPP, there was no official communication to that effect to Parliament. However, on Wednesday, 13 January 2021, the lawmaker wrote to officially confirm his position. The letter read: I Andrew Asiamah Amoako an independent MP for Fomena constituency and now the second deputy speaker for the same parliament do hereby declare that I shall for purposes of transacting business in the house, associate with the NPP caucus in the 8th parliament. For the avoidance of doubt, I do hereby affirm that I shall cooperate and collaborate with the NPP caucus in parliament, it added. Source: classfmonline.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 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. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-11 04:13:18|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TIRANA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Heavy rainfall and severe weather conditions in the past few days have caused landslides and flooding across Albania as authorities are closely monitoring the situation, the country's Defense Ministry said on Sunday. Albanian Armed Forces are engaged in the most affected areas across the country to intervene and help residents stranded in flooded areas, the ministry said in a press release. There are no immediate reports on any deaths or property damages, it said. Shkodra and Lezha regions in the northwest are the worst-hit area by the heavy rainfall. The ministry reported that nearly 7,000 acres of land are under water in the two regions. On Sunday, Prime Minister Edi Rama visited the city of Lezha. According to him, the damages caused by landslides and flooding this year "are minimal compared to those back in 2010" despite heavier rains recorded. Lezha mayor Pjerin Ndreu said authorities have evacuated 40 families to safer areas. Bad weather and colder temperatures are expected to continue next week, according to weather forecasts. Enditem This story originally appeared on the Texas Tribune Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the only state attorney general in the United States who did not sign on to one of two letters sent this week condemning the violent insurrection of the U.S. Capitol mounted last week by supporters of President Donald Trump. Paxton has individually condemned the violence on television and social media while falsely claiming the pro-Trump mob that invaded the Capitol was infiltrated by liberal antifa activists. There has been no evidence that antifa activists participated in the Jan. 6 attack that left five people dead and was intended to disrupt the certification of the presidential election results. Attorneys general from 46 states in addition to those representing Washington D.C. and three U.S. territories signed a letter Tuesday sent to Acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen condemning the attack. Only Paxton and the Republican attorneys general from Louisiana, Indiana and Montana did not sign the letter. The events of January 6 represent a direct, physical challenge to the rule of law and our democratic republic itself, the attorneys general wrote in the letter, sent by the National Association of Attorneys General. As Americans, and those charged with enforcing the law, we must come together to condemn lawless violence, making clear that such actions will not be allowed to go unchecked. By Wednesday, those three holdouts sent Rosen their own letter, which Paxton also did not sign. In addition to condemning the violent mob, the three attorneys general urged their colleagues to stand together against all political violence, calling out antifa activists. Asked why he did not sign either letter of condemnation, Paxton said through a spokesperson that he already addressed this issue multiple times and pointed to recent tweets and a Fox News interview in which he disavowed the mob and absolutely said its violent actors should be prosecuted. A certain, small percentage of those people crossed the line, and when you cross the line, and you start harming other peoples property, and you start harming people, you should be held accountable, Paxton said in the Jan. 7 interview with Fox Business. Paxton signed on to a Jan. 6 statement from the Republican Attorneys General Association condemning the violence, saying I call on protesters in our state and our nations Capital to practice their constitutional right in a peaceful manner. I stand for election integrity and the democratic process. I will not tolerate violence and civil disorder. Paxtons critics said they are not surprised the attorney general, among a number of Republicans and Trump supporters who have falsely claimed the election was stolen by Democrats, did not sign on to the letters. The morning of the attack, Paxton, a co-chair of the Lawyers for Trump coalition, urged Trump supporters to continue fighting President-elect Joe Bidens victory. After inciting the violence we saw last week and wasting Texas taxpayer dollars on baseless lawsuits that never see any results, Paxton is an embarrassment to this state and a traitor to this country, said Abhi Rahman, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party. On Wednesday, Paxton's office was also hit with the loss of one of its top staffers. Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins is leaving the agency at the end of this month. The exit comes in the wake of a scandal at the agency, and also Paxton's controversial lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn the election results, which Hawkins the agency's appellate expert did not sign onto. Hawkins has not answered questions about why his name did not appear on the case. His replacement will be Judd Stone, an attorney in the solicitor general's office who previously worked for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. To the Editor: President Trump and the Republicans have raised millions of dollars since the election, peddling their false narrative about voter fraud. Now that their supporters have ransacked the Capitol, they say that the time has come for national healing and reconciliation. An excellent first step in that process would be for Mr. Trump and the Republicans to voluntarily reimburse American taxpayers for the damage done to the Capitol by their supporters. Such a gesture would, of course, not recompense for the deaths and the harm done to our democratic institutions. But at least it would demonstrate that Mr. Trump and Republicans have some sense of responsibility. Dana Gumb Bayside, Queens To the Editor: So who should be blamed most for the wild assault on the nations Capitol? Lets go down the list: President Trump and his tweeting, Ted Cruz and his band of apologists for Mr. Trumps attempted coup detat, the Capitol Police, the many Republicans who did not dare to stand up to Mr. Trumps provocations? None of these factors except possibly Mr. Trumps Twitter account, which has been suspended comes close to playing as much of a role as the trio of bomb throwers at Fox News: Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. This irresponsible trio of Trump backers has done more to divide this country and stir up the animals within us than any other force. HALIFAX - Easily one of Canada's most recognizable landmarks, the rugged point of land surrounding the postcard-perfect lighthouse at Peggys Cove, N.S., will be getting a much-needed facelift this summer. An artist's rendition of a new viewing platform at the Nova Scotia tourist attraction Peggys Cove is shown in a handout. THE CANADIN PRESS/HO-Develop Nova Scotia Mandatory Credit HALIFAX - Easily one of Canada's most recognizable landmarks, the rugged point of land surrounding the postcard-perfect lighthouse at Peggys Cove, N.S., will be getting a much-needed facelift this summer. Plans were unveiled Friday to build a large viewing platform to improve access to the site and, at times, prevent people from venturing onto the rocks when storms roll in. The wood and concrete structure will include steel guardrails knitted together to look like fishing nets. "While travelling is currently restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we know that interest in Nova Scotia travel remains high," provincial cabinet minister Lena Metlege Diab told a virtual news conference. "We look forward to safely welcoming visitors again soon. In the meantime, we know there is a need to maintain and enhance our tourism icons." The $3.1-million deck the province is contributing $1.7 million and Ottawa is kicking in the rest is expected to built by the end of June. In 2018, the red-and-white lighthouse and nearby fishing village attracted more than 700,000 visitors. Provincial officials say one in three tourists who visit Nova Scotia make a point of heading to the lighthouse one of the world's most-photographed lightstations. A 40-minute drive southwest of Halifax, the community of Peggys Cove population 40 remains an authentic fishing village, despite the annual onslaught of tourists. "The popularity of Peggys Cove has created challenges in the community around pedestrian safety, traffic congestion and accessibility, all negatively impacting the experience for visitors and residents alike," Metlege Diab said. "It's crucial that we take this opportunity to address these challenges." As a key access point to the site, the new platform will be used to deter thrill-seeking gawkers from getting too close to the ocean when the weather turns foul and big waves start crashing into the cove's large, bald rocks. Visitors, however, will be free to roam the shoreline when weather permits. "Part of the experience of Peggys Cove is being on those rocks," Peter Bigelow, vice-president of planning and development at Develop Nova Scotia, said Friday. "We are not going to limit that when it is safe." The smooth granite under and around the lighthouse turns black and gets slippery when the ocean surf starts heaving salt spray into the air. Rogue waves have been known to sweep onlookers into the cold, turbulent waves. In July 2015, a 26-year-old Ontario man was rescued after slipping into the churning sea. Three months earlier, a 25-year-old Ontario man was swept off the rocks and disappeared. The two incidents prompted a wave of commentary on social media, much of it was abuse hurled at people from outside the province unfamiliar with the fickle moods of the sea. The province responded by installing more warning signs. One of the older signs embedded in the rock warns, "Injury and death have rewarded careless sightseers here. The ocean and rocks are treacherous. Savour the sea from a distance." Architect Omar Gandhi said the fully accessible platform and its cantilevered look-off will be the preferred location for prudent travellers. "The new viewing platform keeps people above the height of the waves," he said. "The lookoff provides the experience of being out on the rocks and near the water, but in a controlled and contained manner." The 14,000-square-foot platform will sit on an existing road and parking lot in front of the SouWester gift shop and restaurant. The parking lot will be replaced by a drop-off area at the rear of the building, improving the view. The project is part of a $6.2-million plan aimed at improving safety, traffic flow and community sustainability. The site will also get new public washrooms and improved trail connections to the lighthouse and parking lot. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 15, 2021. Edmonton, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - TrustBIX Inc. (TSXV: TBIX)("TrustBIX") is pleased to announce that due to strong investor demand it has increased the size of the previously announced non-brokered private placement offering of units ("Units") to $2,000,000, or up to 10,000,000 Units, at a price of $0.20 per Unit, subject to regulatory approval. Each Unit is comprised of one (1) common share in the capital of TrustBIX ("Common Share") and one (1) Common Share purchase warrant ("Warrant"), whereby each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one (1) Common Share at a price of $0.30 for a period of one (1) year from the date of closing. If the closing price of the Common Shares on the principal market on which such shares trade is equal to or exceeds $0.50 per Common Share for twenty (20) consecutive trading days, TrustBIX will have the right to accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants. In the event of acceleration, the expiry date will be accelerated to a date that is thirty (30) days after the date that written notice has been given to the warrant holder or the date that TrustBIX has issued a press release announcing the exercise of the acceleration right; and thereafter, no further notification will be provided by TrustBIX to the subscribers. The issuance of Units to insiders pursuant to the Private Placement will constitute a "related party transaction" as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101, Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Offering will be exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101. In particular, TrustBIX anticipates that the exemptions set out in paragraphs (a) and (b) in section 5.5 of MI 61-101 are applicable since the aggregate consideration to be paid by the related parties will not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of TrustBIX and TrustBIX is not listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but only on the TSX Venture Exchange. In addition, regarding the minority shareholder approval exemptions, the independent directors have determined that the exemptions set out in paragraphs (1)(a) and (b) in section 5.7 of MI 61-101 are applicable in that the aggregate consideration to be paid by the related parties will not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of TrustBIX, the distribution of the securities to the related parties will have a fair market value of not more than $2,500,000 and TrustBIX is not listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but only on the TSX Venture Exchange. TrustBIX will use the proceeds from the Private Placement for general working capital and growing its business. The closing of the Offering is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange. The securities issued under the Offering will be subject to the standard four-month hold. About TrustBIX (TSXV: TBIX) As an innovative leader, TrustBIX provides agri-food traceability. By addressing consumer and agri-food business demands, the Company has a goal to become the most trusted and largest source of third-party food traceability and sustainability information globally - Gate to Plate. TrustBIX Inc.'s focus is to create a world where we trust more, waste less and reward sustainable behaviour. The Company's proprietary platform, BIX (Business infoXchange System), is designed to create trust without compromising privacy through innovative use of data and technology. Extensive R&D has allowed TrustBIX to create a new blockchain-derived technology to complement its mature and proven traceability systems. By leveraging BIX and its unique use of incentive solutions, the Company can deliver independent validation of food provenance and sustainable production practices within the supply chain. ViewTrak Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary, provides a suite of hardware and software solutions to the livestock industry in Canada, United States, Mexico and China, such as Auction Master Pro, Market Master, Feedlot Solutions and pork grading probes. For more information, visit www.trustbix.com, or follow us on Twitter twitter.com/@TrustBIX_Inc, Facebook at www.facebook.com/BIXSco, or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bixsco-inc-/. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Hubert Lau President and CEO Telephone: (780) 456-2207 Email: info@trustbix.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 of accuracy of this release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72156 Mitochondria are vital for the human body as cellular powerhouses: They possess more than 1,000 different proteins, required for many central metabolic pathways. Disfunction of these lead to severe diseases, especially of the nervous system and the heart. In order to transport proteins and metabolites, mitochondria contain a special group of so-called beta-barrel membrane proteins, which form transport pores in the outer mitochondrial membrane. So far, scientists have not been able to explain the operating mode of the sorting and assembly machinery (SAM) for the biogenesis of these beta-barrel proteins. A team led by Prof. Dr. Toshiya Endo from Kyoto University/Japan, Prof. Dr. Nils Wiedemann and Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Pfanner from the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr. Thomas Becker from the University of Bonn has now solved the structure and function of the SAM complex. The researchers have published their results in the journal Nature. The SAM complex consists typically of two beta-barrel subunits named Sam50, which are capped on their outside by the two additional subunits Sam35 and Sam37. The researchers found that while the SAM complex forms a new beta-barrel protein, it contains only one Sam50. The second beta-barrel subunit functions as a flexible placeholder: it temporarily leaves the SAM complex, freeing the space for the new beta-barrel protein to form. This dynamic mechanism suggests how a new beta-barrel protein can mature to full size in the SAM complex and only be released as a completely folded protein. "This enabled us to identify a new principle for the formation of membrane proteins that perform vital functions in our cells," explains Wiedemann. ### Nils Wiedemann and Nikolaus Pfanner are group leaders at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and project leaders in the clusters of excellence in biological signaling BIOSS and CIBSS as well as the Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine at the University of Freiburg. Original publication Takeda, H., Tsutsumi, A., Nishizawa, T., Lindau, C., Busto, J.V., Wenz, L.S., Ellenrieder, L., Imai, K., Straub, S.P., Mossmann, W., Qiu, J., Yamamori, Y., Tomii, K., Suzuki, J., Murata, T., Ogasawara, S., Nureki, O., Becker, T., Pfanner, N., Wiedemann, N., Kikkawa, M., Endo, T. (2021): Mitochondrial sorting and assembly machinery operates by -barrel switching. In: Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03113-7 Contact: Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Faculty of Medicine University of Freiburg Isolated Half-Inch Snow Could Stick Tonight By National Weather Service PADUCAH - The National Weather Service in Paducah has issued a special weather statement that snow showers tonight could bring some patches of light accumulation to isolated areas.Snow showers are expected to develop across the region this afternoon and persist into the overnight hours. Accumulation will be spotty and generally a half an inch or less.Ground and air temperatures will be above freezing during the daytime hours. However, a few of the showers this afternoon may be strong enough to produce very isolated bursts of moderate to even heavy snow. If the heavier snow showers develop, road surfaces could briefly be coated with snow and become slick.In addition, visibilities could be reduced to well under a mile within the heavier snow showers.Friday night, as temperatures cool to near freezing, a few slick spots may develop, mainly on bridges and overpasses.This event could end a measurable snow drought of more than 420 days for Evansville and Paducah.On the Net: 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. Haiti - FLASH : Towards the reestablishment of the state of health emergency The Prime Minister Office acknowledges receipt of a note from Dr Marie Greta Roy Clement, the Minister of Public Health, concerning the reestablishment of the state of health emergency in view of the increase in cases of coronavirus in the country. Faced with this situation, the Government is reflecting on the political and socio-economic impacts that these measures could have in order to make the best decision. Extract from the note from the Ministry of Public Health : "[...] Considering a very clear increase in Covid-19 cases observed in recent weeks in the country https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-32773-haiti-covid-19-haiti-special-report-300.html [...] which raises concerns about a second wave of the pandemic in Haiti. Considering that to date, 814 new positive cases have been identified in December 2020, an increase of 300% compared to the 221 cases identified in November 2020. For the first nine days of January 2021, 288 new cases of contamination are reported, which translates to a daily average of 32 confirmed cases. The situation in the metropolitan region remains particularly worrying where 714 of the 814 cases or 87.71% of the new positive cases were notified during the month of December [..] Considering that in the context of the end of the year celebrations, travel within the national territory or even Haitians from the diaspora returning to Haiti, the risks of the pandemic spreading have increased. Given that during these events barrier gestures, such as wearing a mask, washing hands and physical distancing are not respected very much. Considering that with the launch of pre-carnival festivities as well as the resumption of school and academic activities in non-compliance with barrier measures, the country risks being drawn into a spiral of the appearance of new foci of the spread of the pandemic if drastic measures are not taken at the highest levels of the Haitian state. In parallel, the international scientific community, observed, at the end of December 2020, the rapid spread of a new variant of COVID-19 called VUI 202012/01. Initially discovered in the UK, it has spread to many other countries including the United States of America. [...] It would seem that this new strain is more transmissible and that it mainly affects young people. Considering that this 'evolution' of the virus complicates, even more, the reality of the pandemic in the world, particularly in the United States of America, the country most affected by the pandemic, from which also come the majority of flights returning to Haiti and place of residence of many artists and other Haitian compatriots [...] the alarm must be raised if we want to avoid the worst. Faced with this observation, the Ministry of Public Health requests the intervention of the Prime Minister and the Presidency for the reestablishment of the state of health emergency in order to prevent us from a second wave of the virus which would further complicate the situation of our country. It will be, through this decision of public interest, to impose on the population during the next 15 days the strict respect of the following measures : 1. Curfew from 10:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. 2. Cessation of artistic and cultural activities; 3. Closure of bars, restaurants and night clubs; 4. Reduction of staff working in public institutions while encouraging homework; 5. Installation of water washing points in public spaces; 6. Compulsory wearing of a mask in public spaces; 7. Respect for physical distancing in public spaces; 8. Temperature taking in all private and public institutions and passenger embarkation and disembarkation points; 9. Cancellation of the pre-carnival Sunday festivities; 10. Restriction of the number of participants in ceremonies such as: Baptisms, weddings, funerals, voodoo ceremonies and other religious activities; 11. Operation of universities and schools following a shift and/or rotation system to limit the number of attendees in classrooms." HL/ HaitiLibre Many of Houstons mainstay events marking the annual Martin Luther King Jr. holiday are moving online this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, including at least one of the citys two major parades. The shift to a virtual event is a break from tradition for the Original Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Parade, which began in 1978, and last year was attended by some 20,000 people. This year, inspired by the ongoing reckoning around racism sparked by the killing of George Floyd, parade leaders are making the theme Truth, Love and Justice. "We need to get through these times and come together as a community to support one another first. Only then can we move to the work of building a more equitable world," said Black Heritage Society Executive Director Sylvester Brown, whose organization is hosting the event along with the city of Houston. Though the event will not include in-person spectators, the parade itself will feature two hours of marching by local schools and organizations, including the University of Houston marching band and student groups from Booker T. Washington High School. The livestream also will include video footage from the inaugural parade and those from other years. Since 1995, Houston has held dueling MLK parades whose leaders have clashed over permits, sponsors and attendees. It was not immediately clear if the other parade, known as the MLK Grande Parade, would be held in person, virtually or canceled altogether. Grande Parade founder Charles Stamps could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and the parades website did not include details about plans for this years holiday. This year, Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo are set to serve as grand marshals for the Original MLK, Jr. Day Parade. It is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Monday and will stream from the parades Facebook page and the citys live television feed. The event began 10 years after King was assassinated and featured Kings father as the first grand marshal. Along with the virtual festivities, parade leaders are organizing a "Parade of Giving Monday, encouraging Houstonians to drop off donations for local charities. The city similarly hosted a food distribution event last year in place of its annual Thanksgiving parade, which was canceled for the first time in its 71-year history. Other organizations also are moving their annual MLK events online and adopting themes to reflect the renewed national focus on racism and racial justice. The Greater Houston Frontiers Club and KHOU 11 are partnering to virtually host the 33rd Annual Martin Luther King Scholarship Breakfast, a fundraiser for the nonprofit club, which provides scholarships to high school seniors in Harris County. The theme for this years breakfast is Good Trouble: Marching for Education, named after U.S. Rep. John Lewis signature phrase exhorting people to fight for civil rights. Lewis, who organized and marched with King in the 1960s, died last year at age 80. Some organizers are opting to cancel their annual events altogether instead of holding them virtually. One such event is the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in The Woodlands, organized by Montgomery Countys Martin Luther King Jr Foundation Committee. Cheryl Tyson, chairwoman for the 2020 event, said the event which can draw up to 1,000 people presents too great of a risk during the pandemic. She said she looks forward to holding a larger celebration in January 2022. Meanwhile, Lucilles 1913, the nonprofit arm of the Museum Districts southern restaurant Lucilles, has announced it is partnering with Fort Bend County to distribute 1,000 meals and 500 personal protective equipment kits at food drives in Richmond and Rosenberg. The nonprofit is planning to give out another 1,000 meals at Fifth Wards Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church. The Fort Bend meals will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis, while registration is required for the Fifth Ward food drive. For details, visit lucilles1913.org. Ryan Nickerson and Sondra Hernandez contributed to this report. jasper.scherer@chron.com To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! Porterville, CA (93257) Today Mostly clear. Low 54F. NNW winds shifting to S at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Mostly clear. Low 54F. NNW winds shifting to S at 10 to 20 mph. BERLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA) begins trial runs of autonomous road sweepers on public roads to make the city-state cleaner and more sustainable. The autonomous compact sweeper "Donner", developed by a consortium led by ENWAY and Bucher Municipal, has passed the Land Transport Authority's approval test for autonomous vehicles for use on public roads. "Donner" is based on Bucher Municipal's fully electric CityCat 2020ev. In cooperation with Nanyang Technological University , Sembwaste Pte Ltd , and Wong Fong Engineering Works (1988) Pte Ltd , the team in Singapore adapted the existing ENWAY technology for use in public domains. The project is part of NEA's ongoing efforts to drive innovation and diffusion of technology and improve the environmental services industry. Autonomous technology for street cleaning can improve productivity in supply operations and optimize road use. The project is supported by The National Robotics Programme Office under the Autonomous Environmental Service Vehicles for Singapore grant. The self-driving sweepers are monitored remotely via a teleoperations center, where cleaning routes and times are determined and adjusted if necessary. During the trial runs, the autonomous sweepers must have a safety driver on board to meet the strict operating protocols. Tests on public roads will be conducted in a progressive manner and progress to regular timings during which the autonomous sweeper cleans parallel to everyday traffic. Find more information about "Donner" in our factsheet , and more information about the project in our video and in the NEA press release . Pictures are available in our press area . About ENWAY ENWAY was founded in Berlin in 2017 and has 35 employees in Berlin and Singapore. The company developed a technology platform for high-precision, autonomous machines, with which sweepers clean streets, factories, or large warehouses independently. The vehicles react dynamically to changes and obstacles. ENWAY cooperates with established companies and integrates its technology for autonomous operation into existing machines. Find more information at enway.ai . Press contact Stefanie Ullrich | Marketing & PR [email protected] T: +49 30 6293 8232 ENWAY GmbH c/o The Drivery GmbH Mariendorfer Damm 1 12099 Berlin, Deutschland ENWAY Pte Ltd 160 Robinson Road #24-09 068914 Singapore SOURCE ENWAY KYODO NEWS - Jan 15, 2021 - 17:28 | All, Japan Japan urged South Korea during a senior officials' videoconference Friday to take action over a recent court ruling in Seoul that ordered the Japanese government to pay damages to former "comfort women," the Japanese Foreign Ministry said. Japan is angered by the Seoul Central District Court ruling over the Korean women who worked at Japanese military brothels, calling it a violation of sovereign immunity under international law that allows a state to be shielded against the jurisdiction of foreign courts. Takehiro Funakoshi, director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of Japan's Foreign Ministry, requested his South Korean counterpart Kim Jung Han ensure that the South Korean government will take "appropriate action to correct the violation of international law," the ministry said. Related coverage: Japan mulls "various options" against S. Korea comfort women ruling South Korea likely to confirm ex-comfort women's win next week Japan foreign minister protests S. Korea's "comfort women" ruling Kim responded by explaining South Korea's stance, a Japanese ministry official said, without providing further details. A South Korean government spokesman has said Seoul respects the court's decision. Japan asserts the ruling violates a 1965 bilateral agreement that settled compensation issues related to its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and an accord reached by the two countries in 2015 to "finally and irreversibly" resolve the comfort women issue. Earlier Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi reiterated that Japan is contemplating "various options" in response to the ruling. "We will decide on the most effective measure that will induce a forward-looking response from South Korea, while continuing diplomatic exchanges," Motegi told a press conference. Government sources said Thursday that Japan may delay sending its new ambassador Koichi Aiboshi to South Korea, though it was cautious about adopting an option of taking Seoul to the International Court of Justice. Japan said it will not appeal the ruling as doing so would mean it falls under South Korea's jurisdiction. The deadline for the appeal is set on Jan. 22. The Seoul Central District Court on Jan. 8 ordered the Japanese government to pay 100 million won ($91,000) in damages to each of 12 former comfort women. It also granted a provisional execution of the compensation order, making it possible to seize Japanese government assets. The relationship between the two neighbors had been at its lowest point in decades even before the ruling, over a wartime labor row and trade. JANET STREET-PORTER: I would drop everything and crawl to any location. So far, nought. If you're loaded or homeless, you've got more chance of getting a jab in the next couple of weeks than most pensioners (me included). Travel agents are offering trips to Dubai by private jet for a jab - for 40,000 a pop. And in Oldham, the council has decided to offer the vaccine to everyone who is homeless, regardless of age. So far, 3,700 people have taken up the offer. Are there really that many homeless people in Oldham? How do they check? In theory there are strict guidelines about who should be vaccinated first, but in reality, GP's and local councils are interpreting the rules differently effectively making decisions that could cost someone who doesn't get the vaccine their life. The wait for a jab is already causing huge anguish and resentment, with Boris' target of 200,000 a day only achieved yesterday - the day that the virus finally claimed over 100,000 lives. At 74, I'm in Tier 4, with millions of more worthy citizens ahead in the queue. My phone is fully charged 24x7, with an alarm call each morning - even though I have no office to go to - just in case I get a text from the NHS offering a slot. I would drop everything and crawl to any location. So far, nought. In my area, just 27% - around one in four - of over 80's - has been vaccinated, so there will be many more anxious days ahead for me and millions of others. So will Britain's biggest bluffer be able to deliver on his promise that 13.9 million of us- the vulnerable and everyone over 70 will get offered a jab by February 16th? And in Oldham, the council has decided to offer the vaccine to everyone who is homeless, regardless of age. So far, 3,700 people have taken up the offer. Are there really that many homeless people in Oldham? How do they check? Pictured: Lee Ullha receives his jab at the shelter I couldn't be more thrilled that The Queen, Prince Phillip and Joan Bakewell have now all had their jabs, but if past form is anything to go by, there's every possibility that Feb 16 will come and go, another Tory Target that wasn't acheivable for all sorts of unlikely reasons. This time will it be a shortage of clip boards for the inevitable forms each jab requires. There are currently 21 million doses of the main three vaccines in the UK - more than enough to achieve the mid Febuary deadline - but the rollout out is proving sporadic and uneven. Some areas are streaking ahead, having completed the initial top category of the vulnerable and very elderly, with some GP's complaining that further supplies of vaccine are being withheld meaning they can't move on to the over 70's. In London, the Mayor complains that the programme is proceeding at a slower pace than in Yorkshire and the North East. Having made a big noise about bringing in the army, Boris has finally acted sensibly, asking major pharmacies to help administer the jabs. Why didn't he think of this earlier? Most of us use local chemists for flu jabs, and it couldn't be easier. So far, only six pharmacies can offer the vaccine all large branches of the Boots and Superdrug chains. But there are also 11,500 high street pharmacies in Britain, many of which could easily comply with social distancing rules- if Boris and Hancock would cut through all the red tape and action the rollout. Instead, delays and dithering cause anxiety and distress. Whitty and Co continue to warn that receiving a vaccination doesn't mean a return to normal life, hugging, partying and snogging in the street. But it will allow us to visit the lonely, the relatives we haven't seen for nearly a year. It marks the start of hope, the light at the end of a very long tunnel. It would restore my confidence about travelling on public transport, eating out, shopping and visiting friends - all of which I miss very much. But before I can get the jab, the very vulnerable, the over 80's, and the over 75 year olds take precedence. Plus the 'key workers', whatever that means? Stuart McNeill, founder of the Knightsbridge Circle (pictured), is completely unrepentant, claiming he is a 'pioneer' promoting a new form of luxury travel. His supplies of the Pfizer and Sinopharm vaccines come from India and the UAE - and he's thinking of adding another destination - Marrakech, in Morocco. Like most of Boris' rules - like the one about 'staying local' for exercise, for instance - it is tantalisingly vague. Exactly what are the 'key' jobs? You can bet your life rule bending is rife. Does it includes all hospital staff, even the ones frying chips in the canteen and collecting the bins? The pen-pushers and bean-counters? Does it mean the well-paid bosses of our privately owned care homes and their relatives? There have been stories of some care home executives receiving jabs before their workers. Why should the boss of an NHS Trust or an NHS Quango - and god knows, there are enough of them- receive a jab before every single nurse or doctor? Are MPs key workers? Like everything in life, the combination of scarcity and anxiety will lead to queue jumping by the rich and well-connected. A private travel club in London (with an annual fee of 25,000) is offering members flights on private jets to Dubai where they will receive the vaccine, stay in a luxury apartment for 21 days before receiving a booster jab, and fly home. The cost is said to be in the region of 40,000. Stuart McNeill, founder of the Knightsbridge Circle, is completely unrepentant, claiming he is a 'pioneer' promoting a new form of luxury travel. His supplies of the Pfizer and Sinopharm vaccines come from India and the UAE - and he's thinking of adding another destination - Marrakech, in Morocco. What's the morality of taking a vaccine that people desperately need and selling it to the highest bidder? Mr McNeill has no qualms, saying he's not booked anyone under 65 on his trips. In Harley Street, I'll bet that some unscrupulous private doctors will already be secretly offering the jab to wealthy patients for thousands of pounds. Meanwhile, in Oldham, no one was willing to comment on how offering the vaccine to homeless people might push pensioners and other physically and mentally vulnerable people further down the queue. Boris has never really had a plan about how to deal with a virus that's continuing to mututate. He operates in fire-fighting mode, with big promises and hollow Churchillian rhetoric. The Prime Minister is also a rule-bender (last weekend's bike ride, for starters) so it's no wonder that mentality has infected the rest of us. Don't be surprised to discover that getting a covid jab could depend on who you know and what you earn. Unless someone takes control to ensure these desperately-needed doses of vaccine are handed out fairly, uniformly and efficiently, there will be social unrest and endless recriminations. We can't trust a politician, so who? BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF) announced today that the use of the generic antidepressant fluvoxamine helped speed the recovery of dozens of COVID-infected workers at Golden Gate Fields, the Berkeley horse racing venue that reopened Friday. The track physician, Dr. David Seftel, offered fluvoxamine to infected employees after learning about the 100% success rate in avoiding hospitalization in a Phase 2 randomized controlled trial published on November 12, 2020, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. None of the 77 employees at Golden Gate Fields who opted to take fluvoxamine required hospitalization, compared with a 12.5% hospitalization rate for the 48 employees who declined the drug. "This is one of the most extraordinary therapeutic effects I've witnessed in my 25 years of practicing medicine,'' said Dr. Seftel, who is CEO of Enable Biosciences and a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health. "There is no doubt in my mind that fluvoxamine significantly helped the workers at Golden Gate Fields battle this virus. In every case, respiratory decline reversed within about three days after starting the drug." The effect was so profound, Dr. Seftel said, that it was evident to other employees. "When we first offered the drug, only 40% of the workers opted to take it. Just two weeks later, all of the employees wanted the drug because they saw the disparity in outcomes between co-workers who took the drug compared to those who didn't." The detailed results of the study have been submitted for imminent publication in the authoritative medical journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The Golden Gate Fields experience with fluvoxamine confirmed earlier findings from a 152-patient randomized clinical trial at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In that outpatient trial, Dr. Eric Lenze and colleagues found that fluvoxamine was 100% effective in preventing respiratory deterioration that normally would require hospitalization compared with an 8.3% hospitalization rate in the placebo group. "These results are game changing for the treatment of COVID,'' said Steve Kirsch, a Silicon Valley high-tech entrepreneur and the founder of CETF. "I am not aware of a single case where fluvoxamine failed to rapidly recover a patient from COVID. It has been used successfully on both outpatients and hospitalized patients and even on intubated patients. More importantly, Dr. Seftel discovered that in his study, none of the people who took the drug had any COVID symptoms after two weeks, but in the no treatment group, 25% of the workers had 5 or more COVID symptoms after two weeks." CETF is funding a Phase 3 clinical trial with 880 patients. The trial began in December. More information can be found at stopcovidtrial.wustl.edu Fluvoxamine holds promise for anyone with COVID, said Dr. Seftel. He noted that 75% of track workers were male and 84% were Latino. Of the group that declined fluvoxamine, two required intensive-care stays and one died. Dr. Seftel said that respiratory rates for those taking fluvoxamine improved faster by the seventh day of treatment. I have a long-standing interest in taking FDA-approved drugs for one disease and seeing how a particular drug might work for another disease, and the results of these three studies are very encouraging, said Dr. Vikas P. Sukhatme, Dean of the School of Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta. If you have COVID, I encourage you to enroll in the trial, participating from the comfort of your home. For more information on how to enroll, go here stopcovidtrail.wustl.edu. If for any reason you cannot enroll, please talk with your doctor about treatment options including fluvoxamine, especially if you have health conditions that put you at high risk of being hospitalized. Enrolling is free, and you can participate from the comfort of your home. For more information on how to enroll, go to stopcovidtrial.wustl.edu For more information about CETF, please visit treatearly.org. Dr. Sukhatme's views do not necessarily represent those of Emory University. SOURCE COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund Related Links https://www.treatearly.org Scientists at the Institute of Physics of the University of Tartu have found a way to develop optical quantum computers of a new type. Central to the discovery are rare earth ions that have certain characteristics and can act as quantum bits. These would give quantum computers ultrafast computation speed and better reliability compared to earlier solutions. The University of Tartu researchers Vladimir Hizhnyakov, Vadim Boltrushko, Helle Kaasik and Yurii Orlovskii published the results of their research in the scientific journal Optics Communications. While in ordinary computers, the units of information are binary digits or bits, in quantum computers the units are quantum bits or qubits. In an ordinary computer, information is mostly carried by electricity in memory storage cells consisting of field-effect transistors, but in a quantum computer, depending on the type of computer, the information carriers are much smaller particles, for example ions, photons and electrons. The qubit information may be carried by a certain characteristic of this particle (for example, spin of electron or polarisation of photon), which may have two states. While the values of an ordinary bit are 0 or 1, also intermediate variants of these values are possible in the quantum bit. The intermediate state is called the superposition. This property gives quantum computers the ability to solve tasks, which ordinary computers are unable to perform within reasonable time. Qubits of mixed-ion crystals Researchers of the Institute of Physics of the University of Tartu showed that microcrystals, synthesised on the basis of mixed optical fluoride crystal matrices doped with erbium, praseodymium and some other ions of rare earth elements, can work as qubits that enable ultrafast optical quantum computing. Professor Vladimir Hizhnyakov, member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, says that when selecting the ions, their electronic states of very different properties are of utmost importance. "They must have at least two states in which the ion interaction is very weak. These states are suitable for basic quantum-logic operations on single quantum bits. In addition, a state or states are needed in which the ion interaction is strong - these states enable quantum-logic operations with two or more qubits. All these states must have a long (milli- or microsecond) lifetime and optical transitions must be allowed between these states," Hizhnyakov explained. He says that so far, finding such electronic states of rare earth ions was not considered possible, and that is why scientists have not looked for such states suitable for qubits among them. "So far, mostly the spin states of atomic nuclei have been studied for the role of qubits. However, their frequency is a million times lower than the frequency of our quantum bits. This is why also quantum computers created on the basis of these qubits would be significantly slower than computers with our electronic states-based quantum bits," he explained. Higher speed and fewer errors An ultrafast working cycle would allow, according to Hizhnyakov, to overcome one the major obstacles in the creation of quantum computers. Qubits are namely very sensitive to their environment, which is why any environmental interference may lead to errors in quantum computation. "The coherence time of qubits, i.e. the duration of the pure quantum state, is very short. The faster the computation cycle, the less interference is caused by the surrounding environment in the work of qubits," Hizhnyakov explained. It has been ascertained that the spectral hole-burning method, previously developed at the Institute of Physics of the University of Tartu can be used for selecting a set of qubits in a microcrystal acting as a computer instance. According to Hizhnyakov, this at present one of most powerful methods of optical spectroscopy, which allows to find those ions in a microcrystal that are the most suitable for use as computer qubits. Although it is still a long way full of obstacles to an actually working quantum computer, researchers of the laser spectroscopy laboratory of the University of Tartu have started building a pilot prototype of quantum computer based on the new method. According to the researchers, they are on the threshold of presenting the work of the basic elements of the new type of quantum computer. The completed research study is a part of the joint project "Spectroscopy of entangled states of clusters of rare-earth impurity ions for quantum computing", conducted by the Laboratory of Laser Spectroscopy and the Laboratory of Solid State Theory at the Institute of Physics of the University of Tartu. ### As the nation celebrates slain human rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., several organizations will host virtual and live events to commemorate the holiday. Weve also included a list of whats open and closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the Portland area Monday, Jan. 18. EVENTS Bridge Over Troubled Water The World Arts Foundation presents a tribute to Kings life and legacy. This virtual production will stream on multiple platforms and includes decades worth of digitally transferred recorded content from the organizations archives. Historic media has been combined with contemporary interviews of community leaders and past program participants. Noon-5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18, streaming at worldartsfoundation.org, the organizations Facebook page, OpenSignalpdx.org, and broadcast on radio station KBOO 90.7 FM; free. PSU Living the Legacy series Portland State University offers three community events in conjunction with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 5:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15; via Zoom link Lasana Hotep, University of California Berkeleys first-ever Director for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, gives a virtual multimedia lecture offering a look behind the experiences that shaped King, as well as his contribution to current antiracist movements. 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 23; via Zoom link Virtual Racial Justice Teach-in presented by the Campus Collaborative including programming that centers the history and narratives of Portlands Black community during, and around, Martin Luther King Day. 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26; via Zoom link The PSU faculty panel discussion, In Conversation, looks at the history of Black life in Portland. The panel includes Walidah Imarisha, director of the Center for Black Studies, Julius McGee assistant professor, Black Studies, and Darrell Millner, professor emeritus, Black Studies; Details and required registration information at PDX.edu Day of Service with SOLVE SOLVE will celebrate King by welcoming the community to participate in a volunteer downtown Portland litter cleanup day. Supplies and litter disposal are provided. Volunteers can register at several locations: Southwest 12th Avenue at Main Street - Northwest Academy Southwest 18th Avenue at Morrison Street - Providence Park Southwest Broadway at Harvey Milk Street - The Benson Hotel Southwest Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at Taylor Street Urbanite Leaders will provide instructions. All volunteers must adhere to COVID-19 safety guidelines including wearing masks at all times and social distancing. Staggered check-in times 8:45-9:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 18. Event will go through about 11 a.m.; solveoregon.org/mlkpdx; free March organized by Don't Shoot Portland for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Portland, 2018. File photo Dave Killen/staffLC- The Oregonian Reclaim MLK 2021 The annual MLK March for Human Rights and Dignity is hosted by Dont Shoot PDX, Social Change Matters, Artists for Black Lives and other local civil rights groups. 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18, beginning at the north end of Peninsula Park, near Rosa Parks Way; dontshootpdx.org Angela Davis will give the keynote address for Oregon State University's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. File photo. Jake May | MLive.com Angela Davis virtual keynote address The renowned American political activist, philosopher, academic and author will give the keynote address in Oregon State Universitys annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. Her talk is part of a week of events including workshops, presentations and service opportunities. Keynote address 9:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 18, online. Registration is required; diversity.oregonstate.edu; free MLK 2021: Awareness in Action The Tigard Library hosts a program of music by Ben Rice and guest speakers including King City Mayor Ken Gibson, Tigard Mayor Jason Snider, and other area mayors as well as members of the Tigard High School Black Student Union. 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18; via Zoom, registration is not required; https://www.tualatinoregon.gov/library/mlk-2021-awareness-action The Power of Resilience Silverton will hold its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration online, via Zoom. The keynote speaker, Portland activist Cameron Whitten, started the nonprofit Brown Hope to support communities of color suffering from inequities and injustices. The virtual event will also include readings and songs. 6 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18; via Zoom, registration required; silvertongrange.org Why We Cant Wait Live-streamed video program hosted by the Southern Oregon MLK Day Committee that reflects on the 1960s as documented in the Why We Cant Wait book by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The program includes chapter discussions from community members, performances from local artists and community groups, and is followed by a live panel discussion on the topic. 2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18 Facebook Live @SOMLKDay; somlk.org; free Hands On Greater Portland has postponed its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend of Service. Portland parking meters will not be enforced Monday, Jan. 18. Elliot Njus/Staff GOVERNMENTAL SERVICES Federal offices: Closed. U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon: Closed. Oregon and Washington state offices: Closed. Oregon and Washington state courts: Closed. Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas and Clark county offices, city of Portland and Vancouver offices, Metro Regional Center: Closed. Portland parking meters: Free except in Washington Park, the Oregon Zoo and Willamette Park. Banks: Closed, some in-store branches may be open. U.S. Postal Service offices: Closed, no regular mail service. Multnomah County libraries: Closed. Washington County libraries: Most are closed. Each librarys on-site hours, on-site services and procedures, and book drop hours are different. Check with your local branch. Clackamas County libraries: Some closed, call branches. Fort Vancouver Regional Library District: Closed. TRANSPORTATION TriMet: WES and Portland Streetcar will run regular weekday schedules. Buses and MAX will be on Sunday schedules, which is a change from prior Martin Luther King Jr. Day holidays. See trimet.org for details. Portland Aerial Tram: No service. CTran: All buses on regular schedules. Admission to National parks, including Crater Lake, is free on Monday, Jan. 18. (File/The Oregonian) ATTRACTIONS Oregon Zoo: Open, but reserved online ticketing is required. oregonzoo.org Oregon Museum of Science and Industry: Close due to COVID restrictions National park entry is free across the United States for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Rosemarie Stein, rstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-4376 Two men were shot to death in Salem City early Friday, authorities said. Police responded to the 200 block of Wesley Street around 1:30 a.m., where they found a man dead in a vehicle, according to Salem County Prosecutor John T. Lenahan. While canvassing the area, officers found the second man dead in an alley between Wesley and Sinnickson streets, not far from the first victim, Lenahan said. More than six shots were fired, according to Salem City Police Chief John Pelura III. Investigators have no motive for the killings and no arrests have been made. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Rich Ware at 856-935-2847 or call 856-935-2TIP. The identities of the victims are being withheld pending notification of their families. Police from several surrounding departments responded to assist with securing the scene and crowd control. A woman was arrested for obstruction of justice and allegedly spitting on an officer, Pelura said. Following a bloody 2020 that saw 10 homicides in Salem City, these killings mark the first homicides of 2021 in Salem County. The city police department and county prosecutors office are being assisted by New Jersey State Police and the FBI as they investigate the latest carnage. The agencies formed a task force in 2020 to combat the spike in violent crime. I appreciate the assistance from our federal and state partners who are helping us deal with this violent streak that we are contending with, Lenahan said. Police got the call about the Friday killings as they were still on scene across town, where a woman was shot in the buttocks on Thompson Street around 11:15 p.m. Thursday. Additional information on that incident was not immediately available. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Franklin Graham had some strong words for the 10 U.S. House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on Wednesday. The evangelist posted a message on his Facebook page and called out the representatives for turning their back on and betraying Pres. Donald Trump. "Shame, shame on the ten Republicans who joined with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in impeaching President Trump yesterday," Graham wrote. "After all that he has done for our country, you would turn your back and betray him so quickly?" he continued. He then went on to enumerate Trump's accomplishments since he became president in 2016, including defending religious liberty, having a pro-life stance, securing the country's southern border, boosting the economy, lowering taxes, defeating ISIS in Syria, and strengthening the military. He also credited Trump for being the first U.S. president to meet with a North Korean head of state. Trump met with Kim Jong Un in June 2018, with a 40-minute private discussion with only interpreters present, followed by a 3-hour meeting with their aides present. The summit, which was held in Singapore, resulted in an agreement that both the U.S. and the DPRK will work toward achieving peace and prosperity. The DPRK also committed to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. This agreement will be put to the test as Kim Jong Un recently threatened to build more nuclear weapons just days before the inauguration of Joe Biden, who previously called him a "thug." Graham also praised Trump for the recent peace deals he initiated between Israel and Middle East countries. The Abraham Accords normalized Israel's relationship with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The agreement, which Trump signed as a witness, resulted in the three countries opening their embassies and exchanging ambassadors with each other. Trump also brokered a similar deal between Israel and Sudan in October 2020 and Israel and Morocco in December 2020. "Just his Mideast peace initiatives in the last couple of months deserve a Nobel Peace Prize," Graham said. Graham also said that while Trump isn't perfect and that he doesn't agree with everything the president said and did, the country "never had a president like him" in his lifetime. Graham added that despite all of the president's accomplishments since he took office, the Democrats impeached him "because they hate him and want to do as much damage as they can." He criticized the 10 Republicans who cast their votes for Trump's impeachment "It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal," Graham wrote. Trump was impeached for "incitement of insurrection," with 232 voting for and 197 voting against. The article of impeachment accused him of violating his constitutional duty by "willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States." The 10 Republican representatives who joined the Democrats in voting to impeach Trump were Liz Cheney of Wyoming, David Valadao of California, Tom Rice of South Carolina, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Fred Upton of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Dan Newhouse of Washington, and John Katko of New York. All eyes now turn to the Senate, which is set to hold a trial for Pres. Trump's impeachment. BRUSSELS/VILNUS: European governments said the credibility of their vaccination programmes was at risk on Friday after U.S. pharmaceutical firm Pfizer announced a temporary slowdown of deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccines. Shots developed by Pfizer with its German partner BioNTech began being delivered in the EU at the end of December, but around nine of the 27 EU governments complained of insufficient" doses at a meeting this week, a participant said. Pfizer initially said deliveries were proceeding on schedule, but then on Friday announced there would be a temporary impact on shipments in late January to early February caused by changes to manufacturing processes to boost output. This situation is unacceptable," the health and social affairs ministers of six EU states said in a letter to the EU commission about the Pfizer delays. Not only does it impact the planned vaccination schedules, it also decreases the credibility of the vaccination process," the ministers, from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia said. Germany, Europes largest purchaser of the Pfizer vaccine, called the decision surprising and regrettable, while Canada said it was also affected, because its supplies come from a Pfizer factory in Belgium. Norway and Lithuania had earlier said the company was reducing supplies across Europe. What we want is for Pfizer-BioNTech to restore their deliveries to the agreed schedule," Lithuanian health minister Arunas Dulkys told Reuters. The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said Pfizer had reassured her that deliveries planned to the EU in the first quarter would not be delayed. PROMISED INCREASE Pfizer, which is trying to deliver millions of doses at a breakneck pace to curb a pandemic that has already killed nearly 2 million people, said its changes would provide a significant increase in doses in late February and March". Neither the company nor the EU have indicated how many doses are expected in the first quarter. A second EU source told Reuters that in another EU internal meeting with diplomats on Wednesday, an EU Commission official said deliveries would be limited at least until March, with production set to be ramped up in earnest only by September. Pfizer and BioNTech have contracts with the EU to supply up to 600 million doses this year. They have agreed to deliver 75 million shots in the second quarter and more later in the year. The EU has also approved the vaccine developed by U.S. biotech firm Moderna which began deliveries this week. Moderna has committed to delivering 10 million doses by the end of March and 35 million each in the second and third quarter. Another 80 million doses are also to be delivered this year but without a clear timetable yet. PRO RATA? Pfizer and Moderna have not published detailed calendars of deliveries for each of the 27 EU countries, which are expected to receive a portion of vaccines in proportion to their share of the EUs 450 million population. Pfizer said the information was confidential, while Moderna said: At this stage we can only confirm that the doses will be distributed on a pro-rata basis between EU countries." But deliveries do not seem to be proceeding evenly. The German Health Ministry website says the country, with a population of 83 million, will receive nearly 4 million Pfizer doses by the end of January. Romania, with a population four times smaller, says it expects to receive only 600,000 doses in the same period. Bulgaria, with less than one-tenth of Germanys population, expects to receive only about 60,000 Pfizer shots in January. A spokesman for the EU Commission said national timetables partly depended on contracts signed by each state. It is not clear whether all EU governments ordered their full allocation of vaccines, as this information is confidential. The EU has secured nearly 2.3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines and candidates from six firms, but most are yet to be approved. Decisions on AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are expected in late January and in February respectively. 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 WINONA, Miss. (WTVA) - The city of Winona joined with Montgomery County leaders to bring Biewer Lumber to the town. Its going to be a very huge impact on Winona and Montgomery County," said Winona Mayor, Jerry Flowers. "We are very excited. The mayor of Winona and several other city leaders announced Thursday morning that Winona will be home to a new sawmill for Biewer Lumber, creating 150 jobs for those seeking employment after the pandemic. It makes all the difference in the world because a really good company like this who is stable, theyre here and they will be here for years, said Flowers. Biewer Lumber will sit on almost 350 acres of land. This is the second mill the company built in Mississippi. The success of the mill in Newton is bringing hope to the Director of Economic Development, Sue Stidham. It had given the town a whole new atmosphere, a whole new change because of the economy that it has grown," she explained. "Thats what were looking for also here in Montgomery County. The sawmill is projected to cost $130M. A company spokesperson said the sawmill will be able to produce 350 million board feet of lumber per year. Stidham believes this lumber labor could bring families back together. Just having new people, having families reconnecting and bringing their children that have left this area for work back home is going to be very important to us," she said. This deal with Biewer is something the city and county have been working hard to obtain for its people. Mayor Flowers said it's great to see their hard work pay off. This has been some time coming," he said. "Weve been working hard for years and we are, its come to fruition and we are happy. Mayor Flowers said the lumber company hopes to start construction on the sawmill in April. They are hoping to have the mill completed by January 2022. A: I feel like all of the all of the imagery that were used to, the stuff on YouTube and the soundbites... its always Malcolm responding to usually the next day or on the same day as the most hideous instances of racism or police brutality or political injustice. Its no wonder hes riled up and impassioned and angry in so much of that archive footage. Watching him when he wasnt speaking, when he was listening and watching him in the moment in the transition between listening and when he was just about to respond, this humanity opened-up. I dont know how to describe it. Also, I think I was a little bit in la la land by the end of it. I wasnt eating. I was kind of wired. My blood was full of nicotine and caffeine and my mind was just sort of filled with these ideas. The whole process was just a little bit surreal and a little bit of a whirlwind. United Nations, Jan 15 : The stalled negotiations for reforming the Security Council will restart on January 25, General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir said on Friday. He said that during the four months since he took over, he held negotiations with almost every group involved in the reform process known as Inter-governmental Negotiations (IGN). "I listened to their views, exchanged views with them and then I appointed two co-chairs for the IGN process -- the Permanent Representatives Alya Ahmed Saif Al-Thani of Qatar and Joanna Wronecka of Poland and "they're going to start the Intergovernmental negotiations", he said. "There's no doubt that the membership of the Security Council as well as working methods must reflect the realities of the 21st century," he said stressing the need for reforms. Calling it a "complex challenge", he said the process is driven by the member states and "I believe that dialogue among member states is the most effective way to bring the reform process forward". The meetings later this month "will also give some lights on what we will be able to do in the following months, refining meetings", he said. The negotiations have been hung up for more than a decade by a small group of countries known as United for Consensus (UfC) that has blocked the IGN from adopting a negotiating text so the reform process can proceed. UfC is led by Italy and includes Pakistan. At an Assembly session on reforms in November, India's Permanent Representative T.S. Tirumurti said: "They are using the IGN as a smoke-screen to stop themselves from being identified by paying lip-service to Security Council reform." "Inside the IGN, nothing has moved for more than a decade except hearing passionate statements on the need for reform," he said. India is a member of G4, a four-member group that includes Brazil, Japan and Germany, which mutually support each other for permanent membership on an expanded Council. At the same meeting on behalf of G4, Germany's Permanent Representative Christoph Heusgen said of the co-facilitators: "We count on them to resist those who would like to derail the process, either openly or in a rather opaque manner. We count on both of them to live up to their role as 'facilitators' by doing their utmost to propel the reform process forward and guide the IGN into the right direction." The Trump administration on Thursday imposed new sanctions on Chinese officials over Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea. The penalties are yet another Trump administration move that may make President-elect Joe Biden's diplomacy with China more difficult when he takes office next week. In its waning days, the Trump administration put in place travel bans on an unspecified number of Chinese officials and their families for what it said were violations of international standards regarding the freedom of navigation in those waters. The administration also said it was adding China's state oil company, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, to a list of companies with which US citizens are banned from doing business. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the sanctions less than a week Inauguration Day, next Wednesday, in what is the latest in a series of last-minute U.S. moves against China. The United States stands with Southeast Asian claimant states seeking to defend their sovereign rights and interests, consistent with international law," Pompeo said. We will continue to act until we see Beijing cease its coercive behaviour in the South China Sea." Since the fall of 2019, the administration has steadily pressured China over human rights issues in Tibet, Hong Kong and the western region of Xinjiang, as well as over trade, Taiwan and the Chinese response to the coronavirus pandemic. On Wednesday, the administration banned the import to the US of some agricultural goods, provoking an angry response from Beijing. Thursday's move affects Chinese officials and others involved in South China Sea activities. The announcement did not specific which officials would be targeted but many may be covered under previous actions, In July, Pompeo announced that the US would reject virtually all of China's maritime claims in the South China Sea, which are disputed by most of China's smaller neighbours. 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. For over 40 years, the Home Design and Remodeling Show has been South Florida's largest and most trusted destination for everything home design and home improvement. 2020 was set to be an exciting year with the expansion of the Palm Beach Home Design and Remodeling Show set to take place in May. However, two weeks before the first Miami show in March of 2020, COVID-19 forced the postponement of all of events until 2021. When the pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on production, advertising and ensuring success to go to waste, Adam Kayce, President of the Home Design and Remodeling Show decided to face these tough times head on and innovate the entire business to expand his reach and become the year-round destination that South Florida has always needed. "We have been forced to innovate and reimagine what our business is in order to continue to be that reliable home design and home improvement resource for South Florida," said Kayce. "Our goal is to make home improvement and home design more approachable in ways that motivate others to be able to learn the information that they should know when going into projects - such as how to hire a contractor, what questions to know to ask, how to maximize budgets and what is available to them here in South Florida, directly from the experts." The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced consumers and organizations alike to conduct business endeavors virtually, and the Home Design and Remodeling Show is no exception. Now no longer just an event, but rather a platform where homeowners and industry trendsetters can unite. Homeowners and industry leaders can find the latest tips, trends, information and inspiration not only right here in South Florida, but also in one virtual location. Home Show Management Corporation's media mindset has launched Shop The Pros, the online resource for homeowners and industry trendsetters to find inspiration and connect with the top businesses for home improvement. Users now have the opportunity to shop the site, year-round and find products and services to make a house a home. In addition to Shop The Pros, the Home Design digital magazine supports more industry spotlights and features discussing experiences, inspiration, and tips for achieving a better home lifestyle. Homeowners can now learn directly from the experts and gather the necessary information needed before hiring a professional or selecting product by watching and listening to Home Design's produced video and podcast content. Home Shows is also bringing the home experience full circle as they celebrate the top real estate listings, professionals, developments, and editorial pertaining to local real estate market. About Home Show Management Corporation: For more than 40 years, Home Show Management Corp. has been bringing together industry-leading professionals from the entire spectrum of home renovation products and services in South Florida. With home renovation shows in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach every year, the Home Show always features the latest trends and brands in the home improvement industry. Due to its regular interactions with the local market, Home Show Management Corp has established strong relationships with many of the best companies in the area to allow home improvement events to consistently meet impressive standards in terms of quality and size. Learn more at https://homeshows.net/. Contact : Adam Kayce President [email protected] SOURCE Miami Home Design and Remodeling Show This transcript appears in the January 15, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Beethoven, the Living Experience of Creativity [Print version of this transcript] The following is an edited transcript of Mr. Sigersons opening remarks to Panel 4, A Human Future for Youth: A Beethoven-Driven Renaissance of Classical Culture, of the Schiller Institutes December 12-13 Conference, The World after the U.S. Election: Creating a World Based on Reason. Let me attempt to introduce to you the real Ludwig van Beethoven, and to indicate why Beethovens mastery of the Coincidence of Opposites in the domain of Classical, well-tempered polyphonic music, is so crucial for us to grapple with today. For those of you who arent yet familiar with this kind of music, thats probably an advantage, since youll have less useless academic opinion to clear away. I shall begin with a glimpse of Beethoven through the eyes of another great creative genius, Lyndon LaRouche, for whom Beethoven resonated so strongly through his life. Ill then dig into how Beethoven threw off the chains, not just of his own deafness, but also of the prison of the mind, which the British-German philosopher Immanuel Kant constructed during Beethovens lifetime, and which continues to corrupt so many minds up to the present day! Ill counterpose this to Nicholas of Cusas utterly different, liberating approach of the Coincidence of Opposites, and will indicate, with brief examples from Beethovens great overture to Fidelio and from his great celebratory mass, the Missa Solemnis, how Beethoven adopted Cusas method, through what LaRouche termed Beethovens double-fugal method. And to conclude, well experience the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus in a performance of the opening Kyrie movement of the Missa Solemnis: a virtual performance which weve prepared as best we could under the present near-impossible conditions for musical performance. On December 8, 1985, over German TV, Lyndon LaRouche watched the concluding concert of a two-week Extraordinary Synod of Catholic bishops, presided over by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI). With the Pope, cardinals, and bishops leading the 10,000 people attending, Beethovens Missa Solemnis was performed in the Vaticans Sala Nervi, as an affirmation of the great potential for good which the synod represented. A few days later, LaRouche produced an article titled, The Popes Synod and Interpretation of International Law, which appeared in the December 13, 1985 EIR, in which he wrote: As the television cameras panned over the assembled audience, on the faces of some of the cardinals and bishops, joy was evident. Other faces showed a stunned expression. The Papacy was using every weapon at its disposal, including the weapon of well-tempered Classical polyphony, to lead the entire world into an about-face, away from the past hundred years trends in European cultures degenerating cultural-paradigm shifts. Unfortunately, since then, those degenerating shifts have grown far worse, in no small part due to the subsequent persecution and imprisonment of Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche added: Even those who are merely not musically illiterate, and who hear merely adequate performance of Beethovens greatest work, his Missa Solemnis, must sense some extraordinary power at work through this music. The power of the Credo section to evoke tears of joy, is beyond any experience to be found in any musical composition yet known. So, what is this power, which LaRouche experienced, perhaps more acutely than anyone else on that occasion? Earlier, in 1977, in an article titled, The Secret of Ludwig van Beethoven, LaRouche lifted the veil on his own unique and intimate relationship with the composer. He wrote: Beethovens essential quality is that of an epistemologist, but one who developed his own epistemological world-outlook by treating music as a rigorously lawful domain of human practice. To restate this: the key to discovering Beethovens creativity is to view him as one of the greatest creative scientific minds in history, whose compositions, taken within the process of his musical self-development, are the subsumed predicates of a process of fundamental, epistemologically ordered discoveries. This writer has been specially advantaged to solve that aspect of the problem on two interrelated grounds. First, because musicmost emphatically Beethovens musicwas established early as most agreeable and beneficial to his own internal mental self-development. Second, because this writer has pursued a course of intellectual self-development throughout his life which has, during the past two decades, brought him to the forefront among the intellectual influences contributing to a fundamental, epistemological breakthrough in our understanding of the nature and implications of what we call science. The interconnections among these two elements within the writer enables and obliges him to defend Beethoven from Beethovens mean enemies and misguided admirers of today. Not so much to defend the importance of Beethovens music, but the identity of Beethoven himself, the living Beethoven who created the music. Over the years, Beethoven became increasingly important to this writers projects. In this process, it was the inner aspect of Beethoven, the ordering principle expressed in the developmental features of his music, rather than the music in itself, which the writers needs seized upon as something social which echoes my sense of the quality of humanity resonating within me from the preceding work. As the writer has deepened his moral agreement with Beethoven, his successive outbursts of new and deeper insight into Beethoven, that process has always occurred notably in the immediate aftermath of some sustained creative effort. LaRouche never tired of rising to the defense of Beethoven against the Aristotelians, who, being unable to deny Beethovens power, were, and are, nonetheless dead set on corrupting and destroying that power, by insisting that Beethovens genius was just an unknowable freak of nature, unfit as a guide to human practice, which could be conveniently relegated to the dustbin of history. Indeed, in 1787, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, the cleverest of the Aristotelians, set out to construct a prison of the mind for anyone who even considered attempting to think like Beethoven. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant used formal logic to prove the futility of attempting to do so, because, so he claimed, that attempt always leads to logical contradictions! In his typically convoluted language, Kant ranted: Hence, the antinomy of pure reason will present us with the transcendental principles of a pretended pure (rational) cosmology,not, however, to declare it valid and to appropriate it, butas the very term of a conflict of reason sufficiently indicates, to present it as an idea which cannot be reconciled with phenomena and experience. Kant presented four, what he called, antinomies. Lets examine just one of them: Thesis: Causality according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality operating to originate the phenomena of the world. A causality of freedom is also necessary to account fully for these phenomena. Antithesis: There is no such thing as freedom, but everything in the world happens solely according to the laws of nature. With supreme sophistry, Kant proceeded to argue that both the Thesis, and the Antithesis, could be proven logically to be true, and that therefore, neither of them has any bearing on real human experience! And with a neat trick, which marijuana smokers will certainly appreciate, he equates freedom with mere mindless, causeless spontaneity. Kant later wrote an entire book about practical reason which argues that all art, and all probing into final causes, is ultimately a total waste of time. Neither Beethoven, who was a teenager when Kant built that prison, nor Friedrich Schiller, would have any of this! For them, freedom and necessity were provably one, and indeed had to be one. As Beethoven famously penned as the motto of his supreme Groe Fuge, his Great Fugue, So streng wie frei, that is, as lawfully necessary, as it is free! Beethoven and Schiller followed in the footsteps of Nicholas of Cusa, who over three hundred years earlier, in 1453, wrote the following prayer in his Vision of God: O Lord, Thou Sweetness most delectable, Thou hast left me free to be mine own self, if I desire. Hence, if I be not mine own self, Thou art not mine. For Thou dost make freewill necessary, since Thou canst not be mine if I be not mine own. Since Thou hast thus left me free, Thou dost not constrain me, but Thou awaitest that I should choose to be mine own. This resteth, then, with me, and not with Thee, Lord, who dost not limit Thy supreme lovingkindness, but dost pour it out most abundantly on all able to receive it. But how shall I be mine own unless Thou, Lord, shalt teach me? Thou teachest me that sense should obey Reason and that Reason should bear sway. I am, then, mine own when sense serveth Reason ... Whence I now perceive that, if I hearken unto Thy Word, which ceaseth not to speak within me, and continually enlighteneth my Reason, I shall be mine own, free, and not the slave of sin, and Thou wilt be mine, and wilt grant me to behold Thy face, and then I shall be whole. This is clearly Schillers concept of the Beautiful Soul. But lets now see how we can get at this in Beethovens music itselfor, rather, in how Beethoven organizes his music. Here were not talking about mere themes or melodies, but rather about the generative principle behind those themes or melodies. These generative principles are implicitly polyphonic, that is, they imply multiple voicesimplicitly human singing voicesinteracting simultaneously and in opposite ways. The first concept to grasp, therefore, is what is often termed inversiona practice in music comparable to rotation or refraction in physical action. Let me play, for example, the first notes of the main theme of Beethovens Leonore Overture No. 3, his most profound condensation of his opera Fidelio: Beethoven first introduced, but didnt develop, this little theme in the concluding bars of the Gloria section of his earlier Mass in C. It goes up a major third, then up a minor third, and up a step, in this case a whole step. But part of the beauty of the well-tempered system as pioneered by J.S. Bach, is that it has modes, each of which implies all the other modes. Lets therefore play this in another mode, called minor: Now, those of you who know something about great Classical music, will perhaps recognize this as the opening notes of J.S. Bachs Musical Offering. We only need to complete it with one more note. I could say so much more about this, but let me now just invert this material: And now listen to this slight variation: Listen to the overture, and you will hear this as the second theme, introduced later. And therefore, what appears to be a different theme, is merely an inversion of the first theme, or what might be even better termed a rotation of the theme in the Gaussian complex domain. Ill not go further into this piece. Just listen to it, listen to Bachs Musical Offering, and roll these themes around inside your head. Think of Bach, and think of Beethoven thinking about Bach, and you will be delighted. Now for my second example, and my introduction of the Missa Solemnis itself: Today the chorus will be presenting the opening Kyrie section, which is a cleansing of the soul in preparation for worship of the Creator. In his 1985 review, LaRouche pointed to the central role of the later Credo section, the affirmation of faith, which were rehearsing right now, however I must point out that when I, along with my wife Renee, and with Mindy Pechenuk, visited Lyndon in prison on January 4, 1993, we found him preoccupied with yet another section of the mass, namely the transition from the Benedictus (blessing) to the concluding Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) section. But back to the Kyrie, sung to the words Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Here well get a glimpse of Beethovens double-fugal method. It opens with three related falling figures on the word Kyrie (Lord), each one sung by a different solo voice. This is then immediately followed by a second idea on the word eleison, introduced by the alto and then picked up by the full chorus: Especially the second rising note-pair is important (its an interval called the fourth): Now lets visit the second section, Christe eleison (Christ, have mercy). As you will experience, despite sounding different, it is in every way both an enfolding, and simultaneously an unfolding of the opening Kyrie section! For one thing, this section is in the minor mode, which is a rotation of the major mode, but much more. The pairs of Christe should be obvious: But then there is a simultaneous, implicitly fugal second theme on the eleison: This takes the rising fourth we heard in the earlier section and folds it into its own inversion, now proceeding stepwise downward. And it is these actions which drive the development forward. And by the way, the German word for development is Entwicklung, which literally means unfolding. And thus we have, simultaneously, both an unfolding and an enfolding in Beethovens double-fugal method. Heres what Cusa has to say about this, again in his Vision of God: Trusting in Thine aid, Lord, I return again to find Thee beyond the wall of the coincidence of enfolding and unfolding, and, as I go in and go out by this door of Thy word and Thy concept, I find sweetest nourishment. When I find Thee as the power that unfoldeth, I go out: when I find thee as the power that alike enfoldeth and unfoldeth, I go in and go out alike. I go in, passing from the creatures to Thee, their Creator, from effects to the Cause; I go out, passing from Thee, the Creator, to the creature, from Cause to effects. I go in and go out simultaneously when I perceive how going out is one with going in, and going in with going out. In this manner one that reckoneth [talking about the scientist, as Beethoven was in fact] doth alike enfold and unfold, for he unfoldeth the power of unity, and enfoldeth number in unity. For the creature, to go forth from Thee is to enter into the creature, and to unfold is to enfold. When I behold Thee, my God, in Paradise, girt by that wall of the coincidence of opposites, I see that Thou dost neither enfold nor unfold, whether separately or together. For disjunction and conjunction alike are that wall of coincidence, beyond which Thou existest, set free from all that can be spoken or thought. Sigersons presentation was followed by Beethovens Kyrie, performed virtually by the Schiller Institute NYC chorus. Mumbai, Jan 15 : Late actor Rishi Kapoor's last film, Sharmaji Namkeen, is being readied for a big screen release on his birth anniversary on September 4. The shoot of the film is still pending, and actor Paresh Rawal has agreed to complete Kapoor's incomplete portions. The film is a light-hearted coming-of-age story of a 60-year-old man. Produced by Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar in association with MacGuffin Pictures, it directed by debutante Hitesh Bhatia. "#SharmajiNamkeen, last film of late #RishiKapoor will be released in theatres this year aa it is his final performance. Produced by @excelmovies with #MacGuffinPictures of @HoneyTrehan & #AbhishekChaubey. Helmed by @thisisnothitesh," trade analyst Komal Nahta tweeted on Friday. After battling leukemia for about two years, Rishi Kapoor passed away on April 30 last year. He was 67. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text 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. While warm and settled conditions will see out the week for most of New Zealand, MetService are forecasting temperatures to drop considerably next week as a new, cooler airmass moves over the country. Much of the South Island will see a dramatic swing, with Central Otago and Southland predicted to plummet from this weeks high twenties to the teens by Wednesday. Invercargill in particular should expect a remarkable plunge, going from 27C to a mere 13C. The North Island also sees a few regions dropping nearly ten degrees. The ridge of high pressure dominating Aotearoas weather for the past few days is beginning to break down, allowing rain, strong winds, and cooler temperatures to slip in," says MetService meteorologist Alwyn Bakker. While the high pressure keeps the weather mostly dry into the weekend, there will be a few showers for inland areas in the afternoons and evenings. Some of these showers may be heavy, with the odd thunderstorm, says Alwyn. "Saturday sees fine weather for most, but northerly winds start picking up over the South Island. Seabreezes may be in play for the sailing around Auckland. "A low in the Tasman Sea gradually pushes west as the high breaks down. Its associated fronts are expected to bring rain and strong winds to much of the country, starting with the west coast of the South Island from Saturday afternoon. "The fronts spread slowly north and east, and the rain will linger for much of the next week." (@FahadShabbir) CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2021) Former Moldovan President Igor Dodon, the leader of the Party of Socialists, believes that the inaction of President Maia Sandu has triggered the current political crisis in the country. Moldovan Prime Minister Ion Chicu resigned in December so that the country could hold early parliamentary elections. In accordance with local legislation, the president must nominate a candidate for prime minister, but instead of this, Sandu went to the Constitutional Court to ask whether the parliament could announce its dissolution. "There is a political, constitutional and governmental crisis in the country, provoked by the inaction of the current president," Dodon said on Facebook. Dodon added that he decided to convene the executive committee of the Party of Socialists on January 18 to discuss the difficult political situation in the country after the election of the new president. The Party of Action and Solidarity, which was founded by Sandu, has pushed for the dissolution of parliament with the aim of holding elections. Moldova's next parliamentary elections must be held by 2023, although opposition lawmakers have expressed their desire to hold a snap vote in order to gain the mandate to pursue pro-EU policies. 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. 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. The Humanities and Fine Arts Division of Chattanooga State Community College will host the fourth installment of its 2020-2021 virtual Chautauqua Lecture Series on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 2 p.m. This is a fully virtual Zoom event, with pre-registration required. Sign up at eventbrite.com/e/136468778791 In 1874, people gathered on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in New York State to enjoy speakers, teachers, musicians, and specialists who entertained and educated members of the community, thus catalyzing an adult education movement that subsequently spread throughout rural America. Since 2014, Chattanooga State has hosted its own monthly Chautauqua to unite faculty, students, staff, and the larger Chattanooga community in exploring a wide array of topics within the Humanities. This month, Halley Andrews will present But It Sounds So Catchy! Why We Enjoy Violent Pop Songs. Her virtual presentation will focus on pop songs that all have overtly violent lyrics surrounded by surprisingly upbeat music. Despite their troubling subject matter, these songs are pleasant to listen to, as is evident from their popularity. With that observation in mind, Andrews will examine the possibility that the emotional-physiological effects of sound can supersede those of language. The event is free to all members of the public. Ottawa (Canada) 15 January 2021 (SPS)- Spanish Canadian Assistant Professor in Carleton University, Mrs. Vivian Solana, considered that anyone who opposes colonialism should oppose Trumps recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, in a statement to SPS on the initiative by some international Academics who issued a Letter of Solidarity with Western Sahara that was signed by some 336 Academic from many countries for the past five days. For Prof. Solana, Trump has openly bargained Palestinian and Sahrawi rights for political and economic gains. Anyone who rejects colonization and imperialism should oppose Trumps recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. On another hand, She considered that Trumps tweet made it crystal clear how interconnected the Palestinian and the Sahrawi struggles are, stressing that the group behind the initiative of the letter of solidarity wanted to reach out to those who stand against US imperialism in the region (and beyond) and remind them there are very good reasons to find common cause with the Sahrawi. She regretted the fact that the international media was silent about the issue and was only alerted after the infamous twits by Trump. Although it was sickening to see how a single tweet could command more attention than half a century of Sahrawi anti-colonial resistance, it is undeniable that Trumps tweet had the unintended effect of providing a moment of visibility for the conflict in Western Sahara, she said. She further considered that one of the goals of the initiative is to reach out to all academics, intellectuals and researchers who work in other parts of Africa and the Middle East, but who have not always had the plight of the Sahrawi people in their radar. This is relevant, she said, especially that Trumps tweet made crystal clear how interconnected the Palestinian and the Sahrawi struggles are. We wanted to reach out to those who stand against US imperialism in the region (and beyond) and remind them there are very good reasons to find common cause with the Sahrawi. Answering a question about her expectations from the US coming administration, Prof. Solana thinks it is possible that the incoming administration will rescind Trumps political pact with Morocco as part of a larger attempt to clean the USAs image. She considered however that the problem is that restoring business as usual in US foreign policy, does not guarantee Sahrawi rights. After all, the US has long privileged friendly relations with Israel and Morocco over ensuring the enforcement of international law. Nevertheless, she added I do believe that restoring a symbolic order whereby the US rhetorically affirms its respect for international law will make it much more probable for Morocco and the Polisario Front to sit around a negotiating table sooner rather than later. Hoping that this small window of opportunity exists, she adds, the group of concerned scholars who wrote the open letter calling for solidarity with Sahrawis also wrote a second letter that we are sending to Biden himself, soon. Asked about her expectation from the European Union and her own countries, since she has Spanish and Canadian nationalities, Prof. Vivia Solana recalled that both countries profit from and are complicit with the on-going colonization of Western Sahara. In response to Trumps tweet, she recalled, Canadas Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a contradictory message that welcomed the announcement of the normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel on one hand, while adding that Canadas long-standing position on Western Sahara remains unchanged. ON the other hand, she said, Spains Ministry of Foreign Affairs was more critical, declaring that the conflict in Western Sahara does not depend on the will or unilateral action of one country. However large that country may be, Nevertheless, Spain has a long history of tacitly acquiescing to Moroccos position, Solana regretted. To calrify this last point, Prof. Solana recalled that most recently, Spain has failed to listen to some of its parliamentarians who demanded Spain to discontinue its arms sales to Morocco in light of the current war. Yet, she concluded, I would like to see both of these governments leave their hypocritical double speak behind, start listening to their citizens, and exert political and economic pressure on Moroccos regime to comply with international law. I would be particularly proud to see Spain lead Europe down this path, she hoped. Prof. Vivian Solana Moreno, who has done various academic researches on Western Sahara, is interested in Political and feminist anthropology, postcolonial studies, forced displacement, anti-colonial revolutionary movements, gender, generation and transnational activism, as indicated in her profile in the official website of Carleton University. (SPS) 090/500/60 (SPS) KYODO NEWS - Jan 15, 2021 - 21:14 | World, All, Coronavirus Sea piracy and armed robbery in Asian waters jumped 17 percent last year compared with a year earlier, with a particularly high occurrence in the Singapore Strait, a Japan-led international center to combat the scourge said on Friday. A total of 97 such incidents were reported last year, of which the largest -- 34 -- took place in the Singapore Strait, the ReCAAP Information Sharing Center said in its annual report. Masafumi Kuroki, its executive director, partly attributed the rise in incidents in the region to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing economic hardships impacting many coastal communities and also the fatigue of shipping crew stranded for long periods at sea amid border controls. "The negative impact of COVID-19 can be one of the causes," Kuroki said. The Singapore Strait, one of the world's busiest, remained a high-risk area last year, continuing the trend in 2019 when there were 31 incidents. The second highest was in Indonesia with 22 cases, followed by the Philippines with 13, India with nine and Vietnam with six. However, the severity level of the incidents remained moderate, it said. The center, established in Singapore in 2006 under the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, issued five alerts for the shipping community on the risk of the piracy in the Singapore Strait last year. The Singapore Strait is difficult for ships to navigate because it is quite narrow with high traffic, Kuroki said, adding that this causes ships to decrease speed, giving pirates the opportunity to board. "I don't think the coastal states reduced their vigilance," he added. Related coverage: Singapore, Malaysia scrap high-speed rail project Singapore administers Asia's 1st doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine FOCUS: Cruise lines test waters in pandemic with "cruises to nowhere" T he son of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has lost a posthumous appeal against his late fathers conviction. Former Libyan intelligence officer al-Megrahi was found guilty in 2001 of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people as they flew from London to New York on December 21 1988. The mass murderer was convicted and jailed for life with a minimum term of 27 years, but he was controversially released in 2009 on compassionate grounds while terminally with cancer. He died in Libya in 2012, and his family brought a posthumous appeal against the conviction to the High Court in Edinburgh at the end of last year, arguing he should be exonerated of the murders. But Judges at the Court of Appeal today rejected the bid, deciding that the conviction should stand. Lord Carloway, the Lord Justice General, said in a written judgment the contention that the trial court reached a verdict that no reasonable court could have reached is rejected. He added: On the evidence at trial, a reasonable jury, properly directed, would have been entitled to return a guilty verdict. The contention that the Crown failed to disclose material which would have created a real prospect of a different verdict is rejected. Both grounds of appeal having been rejected, the appeal against conviction is refused. The family of Megrahi said they are heartbroken at the decision, and plan to appeal against it at the UK Supreme Court. The appeal is the third in al-Megrahis case, and was lodged after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) found it was possible a miscarriage of justice had occurred. Judges then granted his son, Ali al-Megrahi, permission to proceed with the appeal in relation to the argument no reasonable jury could have returned the verdict the court did, and on the grounds of non-disclosure of documents by the Crown. PA In a statement released through their lawyer Aamer Anwar after the ruling was published on Friday, the family said: Ali Al-Megrahi, the son of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, said his family were left heartbroken by the decision of the Scottish courts, he maintained his fathers innocence and is determined to fulfil the promise he made to clear his name and that of Libya. All the Megrahi family want for Scotland is peace and justice, but as Ali stated today their journey is not over, Libya has suffered enough, as has the family for the crime of Lockerbie, they remain determined to fight for justice. Megrahis original trial was held at a special Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. During the appeal hearing in November, advocate depute Ronald Clancy QC, for the Crown, said trial court judges were fully entitled to infer Megrahi was involved in the Lockerbie bombing. He said Megrahis use of a false passport to travel to Malta from where the plane carrying the bomb left just before the atrocity taken along with other evidence, combined to form a pattern that suggested his involvement. Claire Mitchell QC, representing the Megrahi family, said evidence in relation to identification was of poor quality and the dock identification, when shopkeeper Tony Gauci said Megrahi resembled the man who bought the clothing later found in a suitcase containing the bomb, was virtually of no value. Mr Clancy said that ignores the important point that the dock identification was simply the last of a series of consistent resemblance identifications going back to February 1991. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi / PA Megrahis first appeal against his conviction was refused by the High Court in 2002 and was referred back five years later after an SCCRC review. He abandoned this second appeal in 2009, shortly before his release from prison on compassionate grounds. Meanwhile, the US Justice Department charged a third conspirator in connection with the bombing on the 32nd anniversary of the atrocity last month. The US alleges Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Marimi was the bombmaker and has charged him with terrorism-related crimes. Scotlands Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC said the investigation into the atrocity continues and there remain suspects under active investigation. He said: The bombing of Pan Am 103 is, to this day, the deadliest terrorist attack on UK soil and the largest homicide case Scotlands prosecutors have ever encountered in terms of scale and of complexity. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte arrives with daughter and first lady Sara Duterte-Carpio to attend the enthronement ceremony of Japan's Emperor Naruhito in Tokyo, Japan, Oct. 22, 2019. Reuters Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday declared that the presidency was no job for a woman because of their emotional differences to men, and dismissed speculation that his daughter would succeed him next year. "My daughter is not running. I have told Inday not to run because I pity (her) knowing she will have to go through what I am going through," Duterte said at the launch of a highway project, referring to his daughter Sara by her nickname. "This is not for women. You know, the emotional set-up of a woman and a man is totally different. You will become a fool here. So... that is the sad story." The Philippines has had two women presidents, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from 2001 to 2010 and Corazon Aquino from 1986 to 1992. Duterte, 75, is notorious for comments often deemed offensive, sexist and misogynistic, but his office typically calls his remarks harmless jokes. He remains hugely popular among female voters in the Philippines. Daughter Sara Duterte-Carpio, 42, who succeeded him as mayor of Davao City, came top in a recent opinion poll that asked the public to choose a preferred candidate from a list of possible contenders for the 2022 elections. Two other women, Vice President Leni Robredo and Senator Grace Poe, were hypothetical contenders. Presidents in the Philippines are allowed only one, six-year term in office. Arroyo's was longer as she took over from an impeached former president. Responding to Duterte's remarks, Cristina Palabay of human rights group Karapatan said women are as capable as men in any job. "What matters most especially when we talk of the presidency and public office is if the interests of the poor majority are upheld," she said. Duterte-Carpio has cultivated an image as a reluctant successor as mayor of Davao, where she is hugely popular for showing the same tough, no-nonsense character as her father, who ran the city for two decades. She is no stranger to presidential duties, serving as first lady because of her father's annulled marriage. Duterte-Carpio on Thursday told Reuters said had informed her father she did not intend to run and would not be a late entry as he was six years ago. "I am not being coy nor am I doing a 'last-minute'," Duterte-Carpio said in a text message. "If the whole country does not want to believe (this) then I can't do anything about it. Not everyone wants to be president. I am one of them." She added: "I thank all of them for their trust and confidence in what I can do but my refusal to run for president is not the end of the world." (Reuters) Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Thiruvananthapuram: To strengthen the partys grassroot base in Kerala, Congress is all set to hold over 24,000 family meets with an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The meets will also highlight the anti-people policies of the centre and state government. Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee sources here said family get together, which will see participation of senior leaders, MPs and MLAs of respective areas, will be held in 24,417 booth committees of the party during June-July. The evening get together, titled as Indira Family Meets, are planned as part of the birth centenary celebrations of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, they said. Indira memorial lectures would be organised and documentaries on the life and contributions of the former prime minister would be screened during the events. The anti-people and fascist policies of BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, which is celebrating its third anniversary, and Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government in state, which completed its first year in office, would be exposed before the public in the string of family meets, they said. ALSO READ | Indira Gandhi most acceptable Prime Minister of democratic country till today: President Pranab Mukherjee Short films exposing the administrative failure of both the central and state governments would also be screened. KPCC General Secretary Thampanoor Ravi said this is the first time that the party is organising family meets on such a large scale. The strength of the party lies in the strength of booth committees. KPCC is organising family meets in such a massive scale to strengthen the booth committees and revitalise grassroot level party workers, he told PTI. He said the party is aiming at rejuvenating its grassroot level base through the family meets targetting the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. We will expose the fascist face of BJP-RSS forces who are trying to destroy the secular fabric of the country. The politics of violence promoted by ruling CPI(M) in the state will also be unveiled before public, Ravi said. Besides this, the local issues of respective areas would also be discussed in the meets. As many as one lakh tree saplings, five in each booth, would be planted across the state in memory of Indira Gandhi, the leader said, adding, two KPCC officials have been designated to supervise preparations of the meet. Congress veteran A K Antony will launch the state-wide programme at Jagathy here this evening, he added. A host of prominent leaders, including KPCC president MM Hassan and opposition leader in the state Assembly Ramesh Chennithala, would attend the meet. ALSO READ: Items from Indira Gandhis family collection sell big at Mumbai auction For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia A Dakar Rally racer who was badly injured after crashing his motorbike has died aboard a medical flight from Saudi Arabia to France, race organizers said Friday. Pierre Cherpin died while being transported from Jeddah to Lille on Thursday night, four days after his crash during the seventh stage from Hail to Sakaka. The 52-year-old Frenchman was found unconscious after the crash and the medical report revealed serious head trauma. Cherpin underwent surgery in Sakaka and was kept in an induced coma before being airlifted to a hospital in Jeddah, organizers said. The entire Dakar caravan would like to extend its sincere condolences to his family, relatives and friends, the race said in a statement. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Cherpin had described himself as an amateur interested not in podium finishes but rather outdoor adventures, the statement said. He was 77th in the general standings after six stages. This was his fourth Dakar Rally. ___ More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports [January 15, 2021] Autonomous sweeper from Berlin startup approved for public road use in Singapore Milestone achieved: ENWAY, the Berlin software manufacturer of self-driving utility vehicles, the Swiss sweeper manufacturer Bucher Municipal, and other partners who have been testing autonomous street cleaning in Singapore since 2019, are contributing to Singapore's efforts for ecological mobility. BERLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA) begins trial runs of autonomous road sweepers on public roads to make the city-state cleaner and more sustainable. The autonomous compact sweeper "Donner", developed by a consortium led by ENWAY and Bucher Municipal, has passed the Land Transport Authority's approval test for autonomous vehicles for use on public roads. "Donner" is based on Bucher Municipal's fully electric CityCat 2020ev. In cooperation with Nanyang Technological University , Sembwaste Pte Ltd , and Wong Fong Engineering Works (1988) Pte Ltd , the team in Singapore adapted the existing ENWAY technology for use in public domains. The project is part of NEA's ongoing efforts to drive innovation and diffusion of technology and improve the environmental services industry. Autonomous technology for street cleaning can improve productivity in supply operations and optimize road use. The project is supported by The National Robotics Programme Office under the Autonomous Environmental Service Vehicles for Singapore grant. The self-driving sweepers are monitored remotely via a teleoperations center, where cleaning routes and times are determined and adjusted if necessary. During the trial runs, the autonomous sweepers must have a safety driver on board to meet the strict operating protocols. Tests on public roads will be conducted in a progressive manner and progress to regular timings during which the autonomous sweeper cleans parallel to everyday traffic. Find more information about "Donner" in our factsheet , and more information about the project in our video and in the NEA press release . Pictures are available in our press area . About ENWAY ENWAY was founded in Berlin in 2017 and has 35 employees in Berlin and Singapore. The company developed a technology platform for high-precision, autonomous machines, with which sweepers clean streets, factories, or large warehouses independently. The vehicles react dynamically to changes and obstacles. ENWAY cooperates with established companies and integrates its technology for autonomous operation into existing machines. Find more information at enway.ai . Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420922/ENWAY_Logo.jpg Press contact Stefanie Ullrich | Marketing & PR media@enway.ai T: +49 30 6293 8232 ENWAY GmbH c/o The Drivery GmbH Mariendorfer Damm 1 12099 Berlin, Deutschland ENWAY Pte Ltd 160 Robinson Road #24-09 068914 Singapore [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Rep. Annette Glenn, R-Midland, this week presented special legislative tributes to Meridian Public Schools Superintendent Craig Carmoney and to the Midland Rotary Club honoring significant achievements within the community. Carmoney was recognized for his selection as 2021 Superintendent of the Year by the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators. The Midland Rotary Club was recognized as it celebrates its 100th anniversary. Finance Ministry and Niti Aayog had raised red flags before Adanis clean sweep of six airports This assumes significance given that on August 31 last year, the Adani Group signed another deal to acquire a controlling interest in the countrys second largest airport, in Mumbai the Airports Authority of India cleared that takeover on January 12. Written By Pranav Mukul, Anil Sasi - Courtesy: Indian Express Both The Finance Ministry and Niti Aayog had put on record objections regarding the 2019 airport bidding process, which were over-ruled, clearing the way for a clean sweep of six airports by the Ahmedabad-based Adani Group, records accessed by The Indian Express show. This assumes significance given that on August 31 last year, the Adani Group signed another deal to acquire a controlling interest in the countrys second largest airport, in Mumbai the Airports Authority of India cleared that takeover on January 12. Aviation is one sector the Competition Commission of India has marked for review of market dominance. From running a private air-strip Finance, Niti Aayog raised red flags before Adanis clean sweep of 6 airports at Mundra, the Adani Group is today the countrys largest private developer in terms of number of airports handled; and the second largest, in terms of passenger traffic, over a span of just 20 months. The seven airports Ahmedabad, Mangalore, Lucknow, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram, alongside Mumbai together handled 7.90 crore passengers during the last fiscal (2019-20). This translates into nearly a fourth of the 34.10-crore domestic air passenger traffic. In addition to this, the Mundra airport, to where commercial flights started in 2018 under the governments regional connectivity scheme, has also been cleared to be converted into a full-fledged international commercial airport. Following the GVK deal, Adani also has a controlling stake in the upcoming Greenfield airport in Navi Mumbai. Records show that before bids were invited for the privatisation of the airports at Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangalore, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram the NDA governments biggest privatisation programme so far the Centres Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) discussed the Civil Aviation Ministrys proposal for the process on December 11, 2018. During the discussions, according to minutes of the meeting accessed by The Indian Express, a note from the Department of Economic Affairs said: These six airports projects are highly capital-intensive projects, hence it is suggested to incorporate the clause that not more than two airports will be awarded to the same bidder duly factoring the high financial risk and performance issues. Awarding them to different companies would also facilitate yardstick competition. The DEAs note, dated December 10, 2018, to the PPPAC was submitted by a director in the departments PPP cell. To buttress its argument, the DEA cited the precedent of the Delhi and Mumbai airports, where GMR, despite being the only qualified bidder originally, was not given both the airports.It also referred to the privatisation of Delhis power distribution. In the case of Delhi Power Distribution privatisation, the city was carved out into three zones and given to two companies, it said. At the PPPAC meeting, according to the minutes, there was no discussion on this red flag raised by the DEA. On the same day as the DEA note, the NITI Aayog also raised a separate concern regarding the airport bidding. Said a memo prepared by the PPP vertical of the governments key policy think-tank: A bidder lacking sufficient technical capacity can well jeopardise the project and compromise the quality of services that the government is committed to provide. In response to this, the PPPAC, chaired by the then DEA Secretary SC Garg the first note of objection was, ironically, from his department said that the EGoS (empowered group of secretaries) had already decided that Prior airport experience may neither be made a prerequisite for bidding, nor a post-bid requirement. This will enlarge the competition for brownfield airports, which are already functional. Garg, who was transferred from the finance ministry to power ministry in July 2019 and is now an advisor to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, did not respond to queries on the issue. A year after it won the bids for the six airports, the Adani Group signed concession agreements for Ahmedabad, Mangaluru and Lucknow airports in February 2020. A month later, the Adani Group invoked a Covid19-linked force majeure to seek a delay until February 2021 in taking over the three airports from AAI, citing difficulties in the transitioning processes, particularly with regard to the airport staff. The AAI had asked the Group to take over the three airports by November 2020. Three of these six airports Ahmedabad, Mangaluru and Lucknow were consequently handed over to the Adani Group in November 2020. The concession agreement for the other three airports Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram were signed between AAI and Adani Group in September. Just under six months after it sought more time from AAI citing the Covid-19 pandemic, the Adani Group went on to acquire a controlling interest in the countrys second largest airport in Mumbai and the upcoming Greenfield airport in Navi Mumbai from the Hyderabad-based GVK Group. During the bidding process for the six AAI-run airports, the Adani Group outbid its rivals, including experienced players such as GMR Group, Zurich Airport and Cochin International Airport Ltd in addition to other infrastructure players, by a big margin in each of the six bids, thereby winning the rights to operate all six airports for a period of 50 years. This is a departure from the privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports, where the concession period was 30 years, in addition to the AAI holding 26% equity in both these airports. Incidentally, the governments first target to hand the airports over to Adani Group in November 2019 coincided with a clearance from the Competition Commission of India for the groups acquisition of a minority stake in Mumbai airport from two South African companies Bidvest and Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA). In its order, the CCI pointed out the nature of an airports geographical monopoly and said that the geographic market, in this case, appears to be as narrow as each of the airport of the parties (i.e. Adani and MIAL), as for providing or availing any services at the airports, the service provider/consumer needs to have access to the facilities / premises of the concerned airport. Establishing this, the CCI said that presence of both the parties in the same line of business was not likely to raise any competition concerns as presently no other airport wherein Adani group has stake operates within the vicinity of MIAL. Even as CCI cleared the minority stake purchase in Mumbai airport by the Adani Group, concerns flagged by the Department of Economic Affairs about a single company having a significant hold over several key infrastructure projects were reinforced. The GVK Group, which had signed an agreement with investors including Indias sovereign fund NIIF in October 2019, trying to fend off Adani Group from getting into Mumbai airport, gave in and agreed to cooperate with the Ahmedabad-based conglomerate in August 2020. On August 31, GVK Group signed an agreement to let Adani Enterprises acquire its stake in Mumbai airport and Navi Mumbai airport. According to a notification by the CCI, the acquisition of MIAL by Adani Group was deemed approved, given that there was no overlap of businesses offered by either of the parties in the relevant geographic market. The CCI notification was uploaded in September 2020. The AAI, which holds 26 per cent in MIAL, has also approved Adani Groups acquisition of the countrys second largest airport. Incidentally, just a month before it decided to throw in the towel, GVK Group had to face the heat from multiple investigative agencies. On July 7, the Enforcement Directorate registered a complaint under Section 3 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the GVK Group and its chairman GVK Reddy, his son GV Sanjay Reddy and a few others, based on an FIR filed by CBI against them on June 27. The CBI alleged irregularities of over Rs 705 crore in the development of Mumbai international airport. E-mails sent to the Adani Group and the Ministry of Civil Aviation did not elicit a response. Sources at the Adani Group said the bidding was as per specified norms that followed due process and due diligence. Asked about the delay in taking over the three airports from AAI, they said that was on account of difficulties anticipated in transitioning of airport staff and personnel in the middle of the pandemic. The Indian Express (P) Ltd 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. Ice cream has tested positive for coronavirus in China and left health authorities scrambling to trace people at risk of infection. Three samples of locally produced ice cream were found to be contaminated in the Tianjin municipality, in the north east of the country. Some 4,836 boxes have been identified as contaminated by the Tianjin Daqiaodao Food Company, of which 2,089 have now been sealed in storage. A further 1,812 was dispatched to other provinces and 935 entered the local market but only 65 were sold, according to China Daily. Ice cream has tested positive for coronavirus in China and left health authorities scrambling to trace people at risk of infection (stock images) Medical worker inoculates a recipient with a COVID-19 vaccine at a community healthcare center in Jizhou District of Tianjin Shoppers who picked up one of the 450g boxes - using milk poweder from Ukraine and whey from New Zealand - were urged by health officials to record their movements so potential infections could be tracked. The 1,662 company employees have been ordered into self-isolation and underwent testing yesterday. Dr Stephen Griffin, a virologist based at the University of Leeds, said the ice cream's positive test likely derived from human contact and was a 'one-off'. He told Sky News: 'The chances are that this is the result of an issue with the production plant and potentially down to hygiene at the factory.' That the ice cream is made with fat and is stored at cold temperatures would make it easy for the virus to have survived, he said. But he added: 'We probably don't need to panic that every bit of ice cream is suddenly going to be contaminated with coronavirus.' A message in a bottle dropped by an American girl was found nearly two years later after traveling 1,500 miles to Papua New Guinea. Conservation ranger Steven Amos found the message dropped by 17-year-old Niki Nie while he was cleaning the beachfront on Panasesa island. Niki was sailing to the Marshall Islands from Vanuatu with her family when she dropped the bottle while crossing the equator on January 8, 2019. She left her email in the message and the pair struck an unlikely friendship nearly two years later over a chat on Zoom. A message in a bottle dropped by American Niki Nie (pictured centre, with her family), 17, was found nearly two years later after traveling 1,500 miles to Papua New Guinea Niki was sailing to the Marshall Islands from Vanuatu with her family when she dropped the bottle while crossing the equator on January 8, 2019 In the letter, Niki explained she had been living in the Pacific for six years while her parents did humanitarian work. The message said: 'We lived aboard our 60-foot sailboat, my family, my parents, my older brother, and I and our dog, Bella. I suppose if you are reading this, it means that this bottle has survived its long journey and managed to safely land in your hands. 'I hope it finds you well! I am extremely curious to know where this bottle landed and how long it took to get there.' Steven said he was so excited he could not sleep when he found the letter nearly two years later. Conservation ranger Steven Amos found the message dropped by Niki while he was cleaning the beachfront on Panasesa island He told ABC: 'Oh, I was so excited. I was so excited because this is my first time coming across [something like] this. 'And then I really wanted to find the owner of this and be a friend to her. I opened it and I was shocked.' He tried to contact her via the email address written in the letter but the message bounced. But a social media post eventually found its way to her and they were able to meet over a video call. Niki told the Guardian: 'When I threw the bottle overboard, I never imagined that I would actually meet the person who found my message. In the letter, Niki explained she had been living in the Pacific for six years while her parents did humanitarian work, doing translation 'I also would never have guessed that it would have landed in Alotau, Papua New Guinea but its incredibly amazing. 'I just wanted to leave a little piece, a memory bobbing around the ocean that we spent so much time in.' She told ABC: 'I was shocked, I ran upstairs, I immediately started telling my parents.' Niki had returned to the US to begin college in Washington DC by the time the message in a bottle had travelled 1,500 miles (2,400km) to Papua New Guinea. During the call, Steven invited Niki to the Conflict Islands after coronavirus restrictions ease. Over the past day, January 14, six ceasefire violations were recorded in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) area in Donbas. One Ukrainian serviceman was wounded. The armed formations of the Russian Federation fired a grenade machine gun and a heavy machine gun near Hnutove (20km north-east of Mariupol). As a result of the attack, a Ukrainian soldier sustained light shrapnel wound. The soldier was promptly taken to a medical facility, where he was provided with the necessary medical care, the press center of the JFO Headquarters informs. In addition, the enemy opened fire from grenade machine guns on Ukrainian troops outside Vodiane in the Sea of Azov area; grenade machine guns and small arms in the area of Marinka (23km south-west of Donetsk). Ukrainian positions near Talakivka (17km north-east of Mariupol) came under grenade launcher and small arms fire. Ukrainian troops opened fire in response to the attacks launched by the armed formations of the Russian Federation. The OSCE representatives were informed about all the facts of ceasefire violations through the Ukrainian side of the Joint Control and Coordination Center (JCCC). In the area of responsibility of the operational and tactical group "North", the ceasefire was observed. Today, January 15, no ceasefire violations have been recorded in the Joint Forces Operation area. ol Weve been quiet about Brexit because so many things have been happening on other fronts, and truth be told, because reporting has been thin. That isnt necessarily due to a lack of newsworthy developments but that getting a good picture would involve things like interviewing haulers and farmers or at least their trade associations, and that means developing new sources, which equals work. But even adverse outcomes for the City are getting surprisingly little notice. Some of that may be Brexit fatigue. But many UK businesses are making surprisingly little noise relative to the pain they are suffering. Is that because they recognize or have been told that the Government simply is not going to petition the EU for waivers any time soon, so they are not wasting the few chips they have? We are therefore even more than usually dependent on our Brexit brain trust and Twitter. And we will stick to very broad strokes. The Brexit Deal Was a Triumph for the EU I have to confess to completely misreading the EU continuing to extend negotiating deadlines. I lacked the imagination to realize that it was because the EU had already settled many issues lopsidedly in its favor, and the UK was so clueless as to what the agreed sections of the pending deal that the EU had every reason to press on, that they had very good odds of doing well on the contested points. The notion that the EU kept extending its deadlines.for what? for fear of not getting a deal? for a desire to establish for history and maybe for smaller EU states that it had been more than fair didnt seem sufficient reasons to go past the December EU Council meeting and into the Christmas holiday period. The lack of adequate reasons for the EU to be so indulgent nagged at me, but I didnt have an alternate theory. And the EU also gets kudos for being totally poker faced. Barnier regularly briefed the EU ambassadors who are an extremely leaky bunch. I would very much like to know how Barnier and his team kept from letting on how much ground they had taken. Perhaps they kept their updated to high level issues, where the degree to which they EU had secured advantages was evident only in the detail.which the ambassadors would see, but only when they received the final text as part of the approval process. As PlutoniumKun said: Everything Ive read over the past week or so shows the agreement is full of little tripwires for British businesses or foreign businesses operating there. Ive no idea if this was a deliberate strategy by the Commission it would well be simply the inevitable outcome of a negotiation in which only one side was serious about details. I think well see if it was deliberate or accidental over the next few months by how the EU reacts to UK attempts to renegotiate details to fix the problems. David replied: I think its deliberate in the sense that the EU, which has had hundreds of specialists working on the detail, without being distracted by elections, Covid and so on, did what any sensible negotiating team does, and built negotiating fat into each of its positions. The normal assumption is that the other side turns up in much the same state, and during the negotiations you trade bits of your negotiating fat for bits of the other guys, and you arrive at a situation you can both live with. But of course the UK was a hopeless negotiating partner, and was exclusively fixated on a small number of politically visible issues. Its not clear to me whether the UK never read large chunks of the Commission draft, or just didnt care. But the effect was a 19-1 victory for the EU, rather than a 10-10 draw or something similar, which is what negotiating theory would have predicted between two teams who knew what they were doing. There are, as you say, all sorts of nasty surprises which would normally have been spotted and challenged, and in some cases negotiated away or neutered. This is not necessarily a good thing, even for the EU. Theres a situation (its been called the Versailles syndrome) where one side is comprehensively shafted and everybody knows it. At that point, the legitimacy of the process itself starts to be questioned, and the hunt is on for traitors who betrayed the people. My impression from todays news is that that process is now starting. PlutoniumKuns response: The Versailles Syndrome may explain the remarkable silence of European politicians on the situation. For the Irish government, it was a triumph they got pretty much everything they wanted (only a few fishing ports complained, but even that was half hearted). Arguably, they got more than they wanted, because so far as I can work out, the application of the phytosanitary provisions will give a clear advantage to Irish dairy interests over British ones in trade. But they havent said anything in public, apart from the usual welcomes for the deals. I can only explain this by an informal agreement among EU leaders to expressly avoid any triumphal statements, or even anything that could be interpreted as inflammatory. Many (Too Many) UK Businesses Unprepared Mind you, a certain amount of failing about and initial gear-grinding would have been inevitable for many player, given how late the deal was concluded. At a minimum, exporters would/should have prepared for a no deal, so tariffs and quotas and thin deal, no tariffs and quotas outcome. The Government was unhelpful by failing to prepare much in the way of guides, particularly on documentation.but where were the industry associations? Why werent they stepping up? There was very little lobbying by business about Brexit, or even much pressure in the form of comments to the press about possible damage. The noteworthy exception was the Japanese automakers, who were early to speak up and uncharacteristically blunt. It was hard to fathom the lack of self protective action. Our experts believe that whether it was actually the case, many companies believed that if they spoke out, the Government would find a way to make their lives miserable. The City did ask for what it wanted, equivalence, and kept nattering on about that even after the EU had said nein very early on. The whole spectacle of the Citys lobbyists occasionally nattering to the press when they had no seat at the table (services issues werent part of these negotiations, and services deals are vastly more complicated than trade deals and generally take years more to conclude) was bizarre. It was awfully reminiscent of the Monty Python King Arthur sketches, where the King gallumphs around Britain only to find no one has much respect for his rule. This appears to be due to neglect. As Colonel Smithers wrote: The support, including funding and campaigning, for the Tories from the traditional City (shorthand for banks, insurers and fund managers and firms based in the square mile) has weakened since the turn of the century, especially as foreign firms have become more prominent and the founding families cashed out. Much of the money for the Tories now comes from investment firms, often based in Mayfair, so not the square mile, and overseas or goes to proxies / allies like the Tufton Street think tanks. In some cases, the investment firms have employed think tank employees, e.g. Matthew Elliott, for political analysis, a cover to advance their interests. Americans by contrast, recognize that if you want politicians to stay bought, you have to keep buying them. But the reason many businesses were caught flat-footed is that they didnt understand what getting a deal meant. They believed in cakeism, that the UK could leave the EU yet still enjoy no/low friction trade. This is rank incompetence. To illustrate that there is no excuse for having been caught flat-footed. Speaking of the Japanese: Japanese companies in the UK who have moved their product distribution hub to the EU in anticipation of what is now happening. One in a long thread, just to make a point that *some* companies have been preparing for worst case Brexit for years 1/13 Pernille Rudlin/Rudlin Consulting (@pernilleru) January 8, 2021 By contrast: And in a sign of potential trouble ahead, he said he'd received multiple calls from businesses today who thought they didn't need any new paperwork to cross the border, because the free-trade deal meant they could continue as normal () 5/ Joe Mayes (@Joe_Mayes) January 4, 2021 For instance: So first the problem: its a tad complicated but basically goods that are imported into UK and then 'hubbed' onwards into Ireland or other parts of the EU are facing full EU tariffs this is particularly bad for food stuffs, which attract high tariffs. Why is this? /2 Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) January 6, 2021 The brilliant @AnnaJerzewska does a better job than me of explaining, but the important thing is that this is a nightmare for companies that 'hub' /distribute products through the UK and that's both EU and UK companies /4 pic.twitter.com/EMk9eKrVWK Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) January 6, 2021 From a policy person: The bit I did not know well is that this TRACES process creates a Common Health Entry Document filling in the 'CHED' correctly is one of the key live problems it has to be done 100% right. Ensuring the CHED is right has proved to be a key priority issue for border officials. pic.twitter.com/IYfiCjIy2I Shane Brennan (@ColdChainShane) January 14, 2021 Also pre-empting the pile on to say 'how ridiculous' and 'we can do it better' tweets remember THEIR BORDER, THEIR RULES. Also there is genuine amazement EU side that we did not know that this is what they require, it's what they do for all 3rd countries (and so should we BTW) Shane Brennan (@ColdChainShane) January 14, 2021 You get the picture. Brexit Pain Is Underreported Mind you, there has been some bleating. But what is noteworthy is that the noise on Twitter isnt much making it through to the press. For instance: Ok, it's time to blow the bloody doors off the notion that Brexit is somehow benign It is already HURTING large numbers of companies. Here are 140+ examples of firms in the UK and the EU who have had to drastically change their plans because of Brexit.https://t.co/34XaTQuQpE Edwin Hayward (@uk_domain_names) January 3, 2021 This is odd because journalists are all over Twitter. Its now acceptable to integrate tweets directly into article or mine their quotes. And if you want to look like you did more in the way of reporting, you can contact the tweeter and get more detail and contacts. Admittedly, there have been some exceptions. From the Guardian last week: Ministers must restart trade negotiations with Brussels immediately to sort out the baffling array of post-Brexit rules and regulations that now threaten much of the UKs export trade to the EU, leading business groups have said. Amid mounting anger among UK firms at cross-border friction they were told would not exist, British manufacturing and trade organisations met Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove in an emergency session on Thursday The prime minister had hailed what he claimed was a zero-tariff and zero-quotas deal that would allow free and simple access to the single market. Less than a month on, however, Britains EU departure appears to be anything but pain-free. One leading figure involved in the talks with Gove described the new rule book as a complete shitshow. Another said Gove seemed very concerned at hearing reports of problems In the first week after the UK finally left both the single market and customs union, the parcels firm DPD suspended some of its services, bookseller Waterstones halted sales to customers in the EU and UK fishermen warned they would not be able to sell their fresh produce into EU markets because of delays at borders. And yesterday in the Independent: Exports to the EU will plunge by more than one-third because of Boris Johnsons hard Brexit trade deal, a new study predicts. Total UK trade will nosedive by 13 per cent, according to the London School of Economics (LSE) analysis, making a mockery of the governments claims of a buccaneering Global Britain outside the bloc. And Britons will feel the pain in their wallets and purses, with income-per-head forecast to fall by 6 per cent just 2 per cent less than if there had been a no-deal Brexit. The City is taking body blows. As soon as the transition period ended, 6 billion of daily trading in European stocks moved from London to the Continent. Vlade pointed out that thats over 50% of LSE trading volumes. Bloomberg anticipates that fund managers (who to be buzzword-compatible, are typically in Mayfair, not the City) are next in line: Fund managers in London have already seen stock-trading upended by Brexit. Now, they worry they could be next. As the European Union weighs tighter rules on outsourcing key functions such as stock-picking, theres a risk that management of some assets could be forced out of London, putting another dent in the citys status as a global financial center. Firms in the U.K. handle about 1.4 trillion pounds ($1.9 trillion) for hedge and mutual funds in the EUs main hubs of Ireland and Luxembourg nearly half of all fund money managed in Britain. The trade deal reached at the end of last year largely ignored financial services, and said nothing about this kind of outsourcing, known as delegation. Curbing this practice would impact the entire fund-management industry, from U.S. giants like BlackRock Inc. to U.K. and European firms such as Schroders Plc and Allianz SE, disrupting their long-standing business model and forcing them to move teams responsible for managing EU funds into the bloc.. The extent of the threat is still unclear. It depends on how far EU regulators goThe goal of the European Commission, the blocs executive arm, is to prevent the creation of so-called letterbox firms that outsource so much business that that they cant be effectively supervised or control their own operations. Fund managers and lobbyists interviewed for this article said they think its unlikely the EU will resort to what one hedge fund executive called the nuclear option forcing portfolio managers to relocate because the current system benefits both sides. In the EU, delegation has helped tiny Luxembourg become the worlds second-largest fund center after the U.S., and fueled a tripling of assets held in Dublin over the past decade. Still, the industry is lobbying hard behind the scenes to prevent major changes to EU rules. Remember fish? Remember also how fisherman said theyd go bust if they were subject to 5% tariffs? The impact of the non-trade tariff barrier of more documentation looks to have the potential to kill them stone dead. From Reuters earlier this week: Scottish fishermen have threatened to dump rotten shellfish outside the British parliament after their deliveries to the European Union were blocked by post-Brexit red tape. Logistics group DFDS suspended its groupage export service which allows multiple exporters to ship products in a single consignment on Jan. 8. It aims to resume the service on Jan. 18 after it clears a backlog, but it will take longer than before Britain left the EU. To get fresh produce to European markets, logistics providers now have to summarise the load, giving commodity codes, product types, gross weight, number of boxes and value, plus other details. Errors can mean longer delays and French importers have also been hit by the red tape. Fishermen in Scotland have stopped sending their boats out to fish. The Scottish government says the disruption has cost the industry millions of pounds in lost contracts, and meant lower prices at market. And its not just fish: Oops "UK pork processors are experiencing significant issues in exporting products to the EU. Additional checks, new labelling and certification requirements causing delays at ports have already brought part of the industry to a complete standstill."https://t.co/saCiocEYHy Brexit Bin #BrexitReality (@BrexitBin) January 14, 2021 On the Great Britain end, the trucking disruption means food shortages could be coming. And its not as if the EU hasnt tried to help the UK: European Road Haulage Organisation spokesman, "Without the flexibility we have seen from the French and Belgian governments the UK would have faced very serious food shortages. We now have very many members no longer interested in driving to the UK"#Brexit RS Archer (@archer_rs) January 11, 2021 From inews yesterday: Fears over food shortages on supermarket shelves are growing as figures show French and German delivery companies are avoiding post-Brexit red tape at UK ports in record numbers. Data from logistics software company Transporean show the number of haulage companies from Germany that are rejecting delivery contracts to the UK have more than doubled since the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December. French trucking firms are rejecting three times as many UK deliveries. This has led to around half the usual deliveries coming into the UK since the turn of the year, and is increasing fears of food and other product shortages in the coming weeks. And the Daily Mail flagged a new spanner in the works, more stringent Covid testing. From a story yesterday: France is demanding that truckers have Covid tests which can take 72 hours to give a result before being let in amid growing fears of further Dover chaos. Last month the French government banned HGV drivers from crossing the English Channel in a desperate bid to prevent the spread of mutant coronavirus detected in London and the South and East of England. The unprecedented ban left thousands of lorry drivers stranded in Kent during the Christmas period and led to clashes with police at the border only resolved when the UK gave drivers lateral flow tests which take 20 minutes to produce a positive or negative result. But now the French government is worried about the accuracy of the tests and has called on the UK to introduce a fully saliva-based PCR test for the truckers, according to the Times. Ministers, who are already drawing up plans to allow supermarket lorries to bypass queues at the Channel ports amid fears of food shortages in the UK, are concerned that the demand will result in gridlock at the border again. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) said that drivers already queue for up to eight hours in the Waterbrook Park estate while waiting for approval for border paperwork. The park is being used for customs checks until March, when the massive 1,700-capacity Kent lorry park will then take over operations. Meanwhile, Brexit disruption has lead to deserted ghost ferries leaving for France, with boats on the Dover to Calais route which should be filled with HGVs and drivers eerily quiet while many trucks are being held up at factories, warehouses and truck stops across the UK, rather than heading to Europe. To be clear, the PCR test requirement isnt just for haulers. France is requiring it of all entrants from the UK starting January 18. And if this sort of thing doesnt get straightened out, youll see haulers charging much more to go in and out of the UKto the extent they are willing to come at all: On Wednesday (!) he was informed his paperwork got a green light and told to come back to Ashford custom place only to find that custom truck park is full. He was told to park on yet another truck park which serves the queue. 2/4 Tomasz Orynski (@TOrynski) January 14, 2021 Also, in Ashford drivers have to wait up to 4 hours outside in the rain in the queue to the customs office: Cc: @donnyc1975, @mrjamesob @BBCSangita @aljwhite Source in PL: https://t.co/VeH4yRgtdP 4/4 pic.twitter.com/TJIStS66sA Tomasz Orynski (@TOrynski) January 14, 2021 In other words, things are turning out to be just as bad as we expected. Remember we said repeatedly wed rather not be proven right. Businesses yesterday called for tougher lockdown measures, with some going as far as proposing a long curfew spanning from 6 p.m to 6 a.m. The curfew now starts at 9 p.m. and goes till 5 a.m. Businesses also called on the Government to free up the importation of Covid-19 vaccines to allow private sector participation and to allow people to travel overseas to get vaccinated. In 1944, federal judge Learned Hand gave a speech on the spirit of liberty, in which he reflected, liberty is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. In this passage, Hand explains liberty comes from one trying to understand another and must be held by individuals as sort of a mutual agreement that benefits all parties. As the Democratic Party takes full control of our federal government, it must embrace this form of positive liberty and unite its message. In this past election I suspect a good number of Democrats and those Republicans who voted for President-elect Joe Biden did so in protest of President Trump and not in affirmation of any Democratic party vision. There is an apparent division in the Democratic party with its progressive democratic socialist wing, represented by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and its moderate wing. One way to consolidate the Democratic Party ideologies to create a more coherent political identity is to rebrand itself as the party of positive liberty and to criticize conservatism and its libertarian and Tea Party variants as defenders of negative liberty. What are these types of views of liberty or freedom? Negative liberty is the view that individual liberty is to be free from external control, that real freedom is to do as one wants independent of governmental intervention as long as one does not harm others. This is largely the view of the Republican Party and especially its libertarian and Tea Party identifying members. But there is a fuller view of liberty represented by the notion of positive liberty. To be become free, self-governing individuals require not only freedom from external control but the power to exercise liberty. The creation of this power requires certain basic public goods and resources, such as pre-kindergarten education, affordable higher and vocational education, and universal health care. To make the potential of freedom real, individuals need early education to develop their brains and emotional and social intelligences, post-high school education to gain the knowledge and skills to enter the workforce and to be informed, critically thinking citizens, and they need to stay physically and mentally well. Society equips individuals with these powers and then it is up to them to be responsible for the outcomes of their lives. Such is the nature of a positive view of liberty. This positive view of liberty can be understood as a development in United States history of the social welfare programs that were established with President Franklin D. Roosevelts leadership during the Great Depression. Despite differences in rhetorical tone, the different factions within the Democratic Party appear to agree on a positive view of liberty, on the necessity of the above public goods for people to be self-governing. By identifying itself as the party of positive liberty, including its progressive wing, Democrats can deflate the bogus charge that Republicans always make: the Democratic Party is really socialist, or will be led in the future by its socialist wing. Of course, the canard that the Democrats are socialists is absurd, but why invite the potential abuse by having some democratic socialists in their midst? Set aside the fact that the Preamble to the Constitution empowers government to act for the general welfare. And set aside the fact that there is already state socialism in the forms of subsidies to the agricultural, transportation, financial, and energy sectors of the economy. There is a fundamental philosophical difference between socialism and a social welfare state. Socialism is a form of government in which the federal government plans and owns the economy and prohibits private economic enterprise, and such governments are also autocratic and not based on individual rights or liberties. On the other hand, social welfare states, like Canada and many countries in Europe, have extensive private economies but fund basic public goods like health care, college education, retirement and an extensive safety net. Social welfare states are really defenders of positive liberty. So in this new moment of Democratic control of the entire federal government, there is the opportunity for the party to clarify its identity better by proclaiming itself to be the Party of Positive Liberty in contrast to its competitor. Lou Matz is chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of the Pacific. Email: lmatz@Pacific.edu Home Search ICH Question Everything! Purpose and Intent of this website: Tech coalition working to create digital COVID-19 vaccination passport By Justine Coleman January 15, 2021 " Information Clearing House " - A coalition of health and technology organizations are working to develop a digital COVID-19 vaccination passport to allow businesses, airlines and countries to check if people have received the vaccine. The Vaccination Credential Initiative, announced on Thursday, is formulating technology to confirm vaccinations in the likelihood that some governments will mandate people provide proof of their shots in order to enter the nation. The organization hopes the technology will allow people to "demonstrate their health status to safely return to travel, work, school and life while protecting their data privacy." The initiative, which includes members like Microsoft, Oracle and U.S. nonprofit Mayo Clinic, is using the work from member Commons Projects international digital document that verifies a person has tested negative for COVID-19, the Financial Times reported. The Commons Projects technology, created in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, is being utilized by three major airline alliances. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter The coalition is reportedly in discussions with several governments to create a program requiring either negative tests or proof of vaccination to enter, Paul Meyer, the chief executive of The Commons Project, told the Times. The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records so they can use tools like CommonPass to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy, Meyer said in a release. The people who have vaccinated are currently receiving a piece of paper confirming their vaccination he said, but the coalition could develop a digital certificate using electronic medical records. The technology will need to allow patients to keep their data secure while being available in a digital wallet or a physical QR code for them to regulate who sees the information. The Vaccination Credential Initiative expects certain businesses such as event planners and universities will require their consumers, students and workers to provide proof of vaccination, according to the Times. A coalition of health and technology organizations are working to develop a digital COVID-19 vaccination passport to allow businesses, airlines and countries to check if people have received the vaccine. The Vaccination Credential Initiative, announced on Thursday, is formulating technology to confirm vaccinations in the likelihood that some governments will mandate people provide proof of their shots in order to enter the nation. The organization hopes the technology will allow people to "demonstrate their health status to safely return to travel, work, school and life while protecting their data privacy." The initiative, which includes members like Microsoft, Oracle and U.S. nonprofit Mayo Clinic, is using the work from member Commons Projects international digital document that verifies a person has tested negative for COVID-19, the Financial Times reported. The Commons Projects technology, created in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, is being utilized by three major airline alliances. The coalition is reportedly in discussions with several governments to create a program requiring either negative tests or proof of vaccination to enter, Paul Meyer, the chief executive of The Commons Project, told the Times. The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records so they can use tools like CommonPass to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy, Meyer said in a release. The people who have vaccinated are currently receiving a piece of paper confirming their vaccination he said, but the coalition could develop a digital certificate using electronic medical records. The technology will need to allow patients to keep their data secure while being available in a digital wallet or a physical QR code for them to regulate who sees the information. The Vaccination Credential Initiative expects certain businesses such as event planners and universities will require their consumers, students and workers to provide proof of vaccination, according to the Times. Hospital offering employees money in exchange for getting COVID-19... Markets rise ahead of Biden proposal, despite jobless spike Mike Sicilia, the executive vice president of Oracle's Global Business Units, said in a statement said the passport "needs to be as easy as online banking." "We are committed to working collectively with the technology and medical communities, as well as global governments, to ensure people will have secure access to this information where and when they need it," he added. The project is also developing as new strains of COVID-19 are popping up worldwide, including the spread of the variant believed to be more contagious that was discovered in the United Kingdom. - " Source " - Post your comment below Registration is necessary to post comments. We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive language. Please be respectful of others. See also Search Information Clearing House The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Click Here To Support Information Clearing House Your support has kept ICH free on the Web since 2002. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. To prevent the reopening of schools, Chicago educators must organize independently of the CTU through the formation of an Illinois Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee. This committee will unite educators, parents, students and the broader working class, to prepare strike action to close all schools and nonessential workplaces. We urge all those who want to join this struggle to send us your contact information today send us your contact information today. Following the reopening of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to in-person instruction on Monday, reports from educators and parents about COVID-19 cases at schools are predictably pouring in on social media from around the city. Far from calling for strike action against what is now a life-and-death question, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is negotiating with the school district to reopen schools to serve as day cares while parents are herded back to unsafe factories and workplaces. Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union (Wikimedia Commons) The biggest cluster of infections to have emerged so far is at McCutcheon Elementary, in the North Sides Uptown neighborhood. As of Wednesday, a second worker at McCutcheon, a teacher, has tested positive. According to a city statement, this teacher was a close contact of the first worker to test positive. Despite the fairly clear timeline, district spokesperson Emily Bolton had the audacity to suggest the CPS workers might have become infected elsewhere. Bolton, a former communications director for the Virginia Democratic Party, wrote in a statement, While the district cannot rule out the possibility of in-school transmission, it also cannot rule out the possibility that these cases were acquired in the community, outside of school. The outbreak at McCutcheon has resulted in chaos, according to a CTU statement, as the positive COVID-19 tests have put an additional eight people in quarantine. Those quarantined include the principal and assistant principal, and there is now just one teacher left working in-person at the school. Needless to say, this is not the only case. According to a report in Chalkbeat, the district has reported 23 positive COVID-19 diagnoses this week. Additionally, a teacher who is on the executive board of the CTU has compiled a list of schools with positive COVID-19 cases and has received reports from 40 schools so far. She notes that this is likely a vast undercount, writing in a tweet, This is just people who reported to ME when I asked on FB. Many were too scared to even put in the comments section and sent me private messages for fear of retaliation. Which means there are likely MORE cases out there unreported or not being counted publicly. In response to this dire situation, the CTU, far from uniting their roughly 30,000 members in a struggle against the reopening plan, is working around the clock to come to an agreement with CPS to get all teachers back into classrooms. Rejecting the essential demands that learning should continue remotely and non-essential production be shut down until the pandemic is under control, the union has accepted that more teachers and students will be brought back. In fact, officials have even touted this as part of their strategy. In a video posted Monday as the first wave of students returnedthose in Pre-K and special education cluster programsCTU president Jesse Sharkey, a former leading member of the pseudo-left International Socialist Organization (ISO), said, In two weeks, we have over 10,000 more of our members coming back, all of our K-8 staff, which will then be the large majority of our union. Sharkey added, So, the stakes do get higher. They will have to bargain with us. Already, bargaining has improved somewhat. Just in the past several days We want a health metric, and so do parents, principals, public health experts. Give us a metric, we say, but if they wont, weve suggested an alternative: delay restarting school, vaccinate staff, allow staff voluntary return, put testing and other mitigations and negotiate over the calendar. This situation shows them to be completely unreasonable, and us being creative in talking about ways to open, etc. Pressure is mounting on CPS. In other words, the CTU accepts the basic framework of reopening schools and further infections of educators, students and others in the community. They are simply trying to find the best formula for covering up their complete betrayal of teachers. As can be seen from the experience in New York City, the unions demand for a health metric is a diversion to prevent educators from taking any independent initiative. Once the metric was agreed upon, the UFT facilitated school reopenings, and rolled over completely once New York Citys Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to simply ignore it. In fact, the CTU, along with the national teachers unions and the Biden administration, promotes the fiction that schools can be safely reopened for in-person instruction, provided the union has a seat at the table in formulating the plans. In October, a CTU video merely called on CPS to provide a clear plan for safety that includes investment in the proper ventilation, contact tracing and routine, comprehensive COVID-19 testing in our school and appealed to the district to invest in making our buildings safe. The return of CPS educators to the classroom will also serve as a cudgel to force other teachers back into the classroom, such as those in Cicero District 99, just west of the city. Around 85 percent of teachers in Cicero rejected a request from the district superintendent to teach remotely from school buildings and failed to report. The reason for the CTUs fecklessness is not simply its leaders. Their chief task, as with all the unions, is to prop up the Democratic Party and to suppress the class struggle. There is nothing that the CTU would fundamentally disagree with in the recent statement from Bidens chief economic adviser, financier Brian Deese, who said, We need to get the schools open, so that parents, and particularly women, who are being disproportionately hurt in this economy, can get back to work. Indeed, Sharkey and the CTU featured prominently in an ad for Biden filmed during the 2019 teachers strike. In fact, CTU and its allies declined to report widely on the nearly identical statements made by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has pushed aggressively to reopen schools. Chicago alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who is a member of the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America, only recently reported, The Latino caucus met with Mayor Lori Lightfoot some weeks ago, maybe a few months ago. We said mayor, why do you want to do this? She said, one, Im hearing from employers that they want their employees back in the workplace, two, Im hearing from downtown businesses that they dont have any customers and three, because Im worried about the kids. This sentiment was later confirmed from excerpts of a letter Lightfoot sent to state senators opposing a bill expanding CTUs bargaining rights. Significantly, the CTU and its leading figures have remained quiet about Trumps coup attempt and have refused to organize teachers to oppose the threat of fascism in the same way they have refused to defend educators lives. This is no accident, because to raise the alarm against both dangers would cut across the interests of the Democratic Party and threaten to unleash the vast social anger that has built up in the working class throughout the pandemic. In order to stop the reopening of schools for in-person learning, teachers must organize independently of the CTU, which has shown itself to be a pliant tool of Lightfoot and the Chicago elites. The turn must now be to the working class, uniting with Ford autoworkers at the Chicago Assembly Plant, Amazon workers at the sprawling hubs throughout the metro region, health care workers enduring ever-greater catastrophe on the front-lines of the pandemic, and all other sections of the working class. All non-essential workplaces must be shut down and workers paid to stay home until vaccines can be widely distributed. The vast wealth of the financial oligarchy must be redirected to meet the needs of society, including fully funding remote learning and providing every student and educator with state-of-the-art technology. It is on this basis that we call on educators to join the Illinois Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, which is in the process of formation. We are part of a network of rank-and-file committees that have formed among educators, autoworkers, Amazon workers and other sections of the working class across the US and internationally. Our aim is to prepare for a nationwide political general strike to put an end to the homicidal policies of the ruling class and oppose the growing threat of fascism. All those who wish to join this struggle should sign up today at wsws.org/edsafety. As a measure of further tightening the security ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, several large United States airlines will impose on DC travelers a gun ban, prohibiting passengers flying to major airports serving the Washington D.C with firearms on Thursday. Based on the new policy of the American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines, starting this weekend and running through next week, the companies emphasized the DC travelers gun ban due to the deadly riot at the United States Capitol last week and a spate of politically motivated disturbances on flights and airports. Only law enforcement are authorized to carry firearms as they are exempted from the new policy. Days before the inauguration, airlines, airports, and hotels are already ramping up their security. Based on a number of airports, they have mentioned that they will be adding more police in their vicinity and premises, while airlines will also be increasing their staffing at airports and booking overnighting crews at airport hotels instead of the city center to cater costumers and increase their efficiency, CNBC reported. On Wednesday, American Airlines mentioned late Wednesday that it will suspend alcohol sales for D.C. flights and will provide private transportation for their crew to and from the airport instead of having their usual shared vans. Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Airlines shared in an interview that they are all on high alert based on the events weeks ago in Washington. According to the spokeswoman of the Transportation Security Administration, which scans checked and carry-on bags, shared it can detect improperly checked or undeclared firearms, The Washington Post reported. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration mentioned that they implemented a 'zero-tolerance' policy for travelers who are unruly or interfere with flight crew duties, and fined them up to $35,000. Read also: Republicans Slam Use of Metal Detectors in House Chamber Access, Calls It Unnecessary According to New York Post, Alaska Airlines stated that it will be requiring travelers, flying to Reagan National, Dulles Internation, and Baltimore-Washington to remain seated for one hour from take-off before landing. The imposed new policy is reminiscent of a post-9/11 rule wherein passengers flying in and out of Reagan National stay seated for 30 minutes after departure or before arrival, however, that federal rule was scrapped in 2005. Alaska also mentioned that it would be limiting the number of seats sold into the D.C. area. Last week, the carrier mentioned that it banned 14 travelers on a Dulles-Seattle flight for refusal of wearing masks, as they have mentioned that the said travelers were rowdy, argumentative, and harassed their crew members. In addition, Airline Company Delta Airlines, have shared that they have banned travelers who harassed Republican Utah Senator Mitt Romney on one of its flights this week. The airline company also shared mentioned that have also banned not less than 880 travelers for their refusal to comply with the mask requirements, as part of the safety protocols imposed to avoid coronavirus infection during this time of the pandemic. Related article: House Votes on Trump Impeachment, First US President To Be Impeached Twice @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Five mass vaccination sites are planned and a website is ready for Montgomery County residents seeking inoculation, but emergency officials are missing the key component: vaccines. In Galveston County, the top health official said they are ready to administer about 1,500 vaccines a day between the government and the University of Texas Medical Branch there, with a countywide plan to double or triple that number. But theyre also lacking vaccines. And when state officials earlier this week announced 28 providers across Texas would serve as vaccination hubs receiving the majority of vaccines available this week to streamline the process not one was in the suburbs of Houston. The three hubs in the region were all in Harris County, making officials in some of the states most populous counties fear theyve been forgotten. Between two providers, Galveston County received just 400 doses for the week, according to the states allocation list. Montgomery County, one of the fastest-growing counties in the U.S. with more than 600,000 residents, received 600 doses. Fort Bend County also received 400 doses. Officials allotted 29,125 doses to Harris County. The states numbers did not include a breakdown of 121,875 doses provided to a federal pharmacy and long-term care partnership. As of today, weve been left out, Philip Keiser, Galveston Countys local health authority, said midweek. If we are going to get ahead of this epidemic, what we desperately need to do is get as many people vaccinated. Anxious residents have been flooding medical providers with calls and emails trying to track down the much-desired vaccines, especially for elderly residents. For the most part, their efforts have been fruitless. Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said he and the agency certainly understand peoples frustration but that the main obstacle has been a lack of supply to meet demand. There just wasnt enough vaccine, Van Deusen said. The focus had to really be on getting a smaller number of providers a larger number of vaccine or focusing on areas that were really remote. Part of the difficulty, Van Deusen added, is that the state receives different quantities of doses from the federal government every week. For instance, this week the state had just fewer than 200,000 doses to allocate. Next week, state officials are expecting to distribute about 330,000. The supply and demand issue is not exclusive to Texas. Earlier this week, federal officials instructed state officials to vaccinate everyone 65 and older who wants to be vaccinated and people with medical conditions that put them at greater risk. Additionally, federal officials plan to release all available vaccine doses instead of keeping half to later release for second doses. That will change the equation somewhat, said Van Deusen, adding there will likely be more hubs than the current 28 sites. Its just going to take time, and we just really appreciate peoples patience. Not having a steady, consistent supply of vaccines even if its a small amount presents a great challenge, Keiser said. That allows us to plan, that allows us to communicate with our population, he said. Rafael Lemaitre, communications director for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, noted the whole region overall has received a tiny number of vaccines. Meanwhile, the pandemics threat remains present. Our primary message for the public right now is to be patient and to stay informed on vaccine availability, Lemaitre said. We are in an emergency situation when it comes to the state of this virus In Montgomery County, officials and the providers they will partner with need at least 7,000 vaccines to operate just one of the planned vaccination sites for one week, said Meghan Ballard Arthur, spokesperson for the countys office of homeland security and emergency management. County officials have been in contact with state health officials but dont have a clear idea when they will receive a significant allotment of doses. We are just kind of in a waiting game at the moment, Arthur said. We kind of dont have an ETA to when we will be able to start mass vaccination in Montgomery County. She added: We are willing to take whatever they are willing to give us. Brazoria County Judge Matt Sebesta said the county has a plan to open a mass vaccination site if it receives a big allocation. But he much preferred that each of the 110 providers that signed up to distribute vaccines in the county receives doses so that the distribution is more spread out. Were rocking along. We would love more vaccines to be available to our citizens, he said. He said vaccine supply is absolutely an issue, comparing it to the supply-chain issues that occurred in the beginning of the pandemic when personal protective equipment and coronavirus tests were in short stock but high demand. Were still in the first five or six weeks of having the vaccine approved for use, he said. Asked if the states hubs plan concerned him, Sebesta said he wanted to ensure the county wasnt forgotten. We just want to make sure we get our fair share, he said, and be able to get that to the citizens that want the vaccine. Keiser, the Galveston County official, said there appeared to be not a lot of rhyme or reason to the states distribution process. While some pharmacies in the county have received an allotment, he said, so had an oil refinery. No one really understands why places are chosen to get vaccines, he said. From our point of view, it seems very chaotic and random. If something doesnt change in the near future, he warned, the county could very well be in a situation like the one in Los Angeles, where health officials recently said 10 people are testing positive for COVID-19, on average, every minute about 10 percent of whom end up hospitalized. Our case count is rising, our hospitalization rate is rising, our death count is rising, Keiser said. We really just want to take good care of the people we are responsible for. alejandro.serrano@chron.com twitter.com/serrano_alej RICHMOND, Va., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Virginia families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Virginians are hosting 679 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week, including a "Virtual Day at the Capitol" on Jan. 29. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Virginia, the Virginia Beach Clark Nexen Building will illuminate in red and yellow from dusk to dawn on Jan. 24 for National School Choice Week.. "Just as Virginia differs from California or Alabama, so too each child is unique and has their own set of education needs," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "In the midst of a challenging school year, School Choice Week encourages Virginia families to celebrate their school options, find the best fit for their child, and work toward a future where every child is excited to learn and give back." In Virginia, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Virginia students who meet certain income requirements or have special learning needs may qualify for a state-run scholarship program. Virginia families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Virginia school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/virginia National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected] National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Conakry, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Guinea's President Alpha Conde has accepted the resignation Prime Minister Ibrahima Kassory Fofana's government, the presidency said Friday. The resignation had been expected for several days in the West African country, following contested parliamentary and presidential elections last year. Conde instructed Fofana, who offered the resignation after serving as prime minister since May 2018, to "handle day-to-day affairs until a new government team is appointed," the presidency said in a statement. Conde won a disputed third term in October's election against a backdrop of violence, with dozens killed during clashes between protesters and security forces. Critics accuse Conde of cracking down on dissent and breaking the country's constitutional two-term presidential limit. The 82-year-old president said a constitutional tweak passed in a March referendum allowed him to bypass the limit. A parliamentary election was also held in March 2020, Conde's party winning a majority in a vote boycotted by the main opposition parties and marred by violence. The Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), India's leading 'Navaratna' PSU under the Ministry of Defence, has called for applications from eligible and interested candidates for filling IT Apprentices posts with BEL in the Fitter, Turner, Machinist, Electronics Mechanic, R&AC and Electrician trades in BEL through Walk-in-Test scheduled on January 17, 2021 at Machilipatnam from 9:00 am onwards to be posted at BEL's Machilipatnam unit in Andhra Pradesh, India on a fulltime basis. CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts IT Apprentices posts with BEL Organisation Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) Educational Qualification Passed SSC/Class 10 or equivalent and ITI in Fitter, Turner, Machinist, Electronics Mechanic, R&AC and Electrician trades Experience Freshers can apply Job Responsibilities null Skills Required Desirable Job Location Machilipatnam Salary Scale Monthly stipend of Rs. 8,050 Industry Ministry of Defence Application Start Date January 17, 2021 Application End Date January 17, 2021 BEL Recruitment 2021: Age Criteria And Fees Candidates interested in applying for BEL ITI Apprentice Jobs 2021 through BEL Recruitment 2021 must meet the age criteria as per the BEL Recruitment norms, with relaxation (upper age limit) for reserved categories as specified in the BEL Recruitment 2021 Notification. For details regarding application fee for BEL ITI Apprentice Jobs 2021 through BEL Recruitment 2021, refer to the official BEL Recruitment 2021 Notification given at the end of the article. Also Read: HAL Recruitment 2021 For PRT, TGT And PGT Posts At HAL Schools In Bengaluru, Apply Offline Before January 30 BEL Recruitment 2021: Education And Eligibility Desirous candidates applying for BEL ITI Apprentice Jobs 2021 through BEL Recruitment 2021 must have passed SSC/Class 10 or equivalent and ITI in Fitter, Turner, Machinist, Electronics Mechanic, R&AC and Electrician trades from a recognised Board/Institute as detailed in the BEL Recruitment 2021 Notification. BEL Recruitment 2021: Selection And Pay Scale The selection of candidates to BEL ITI Apprentice Jobs 2021 through BEL Recruitment 2021 will be done through Written Test only scheduled on January 17, 2021 at Machilipatnam as mentioned in the BEL Recruitment Notification 2021. Candidates selected to BEL ITI Apprentice Jobs 2021 through BEL Recruitment 2021 will be paid a monthly stipend of Rs. 8,050 per month. Also Read: IBPS Recruitment 2021 For Analyst Programmer And IT Engineer Posts, Apply Online Before February 8 BEL Recruitment 2021: How To Apply Candidates applying for BEL ITI Apprentice Jobs 2021 through BEL Recruitment 2021 must first register themselves online on the official NAPS portal. Candidates must appear for the "Walk-in-Test" scheduled on January 17, 2021 at the "Lady Ampthil Government Junior College, Ramanaidu Peta, Machilipatnam - 521 001" from 9:00 am onwards along with their relevant documents listed in the BEL Recruitment 2021 Notification. Download BEL Recruitment 2021 Notification PDF for ITI Apprentices posts 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. In 1993, President Clinton nominated Lani Guinier to head the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division. Guinier was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school (she later moved on to Harvard), and a friend of the Clintons going back to their law school days. She had attended their wedding. However, Guiniers nomination led to scrutiny of her scholarly work and that scrutiny led to charges that she was too radical. For example, she appeared to support race-conscious districting, i.e., shaping electoral districts to ensure a black majority, and a minority veto in legislative bodies. She was also accused of supporting racial quotas in employment. Bill Clinton said he wasnt aware of Guiniers positions on voting when he nominated her. One should always be skeptical of Clintons utterances. However, in this case he might have been telling the truth. The theories Guinier was pushing by the 1990s werent current when the two were in law school in the early 1970s, and I doubt that Clinton kept up with cutting-edge election law theories thereafter. In any event, it became clear that Guiniers view were too far outside the mainstream for a majority of Senators. In fact, some Democratic Senators, including Ted Kennedy, David Pryor, and Carol Moseley Braun (an African-American) urged Clinton to withdraw the nomination. Clinton did so, in an emotional statement to the press. He insisted that he would have fought for Guiniers confirmation even in the face of stiff opposition, had he agreed with her writings. However, he said that, on reading the ones in question after the controversy developed, he did not agree with some of her positions on voting. Clinton stated: The problem is that this battle will be waged based on [Guiniers] academic writings. And I cannot fight a battle that I know is divisive, that is an uphill battle, that is distracting to the country if I do not believe in the ground of the battle. This has nothing to do with the political center. This has to do with my center. I have to tell you that, had I read them before I nominated her, I would not have done so. (Emphasis added) However, the Clinton White House forcefully denied that Guinier favored race-based quotas in employment Twenty-eight years later, Joe Biden has nominated Kristen Clarke for the same job. She is a far worse choice than Guinier was. Biden should follow Clintons example and pull the Clarke nomination. Clarke openly favors making employment decisions based on race, in order to guarantee diversity a position that, to my knowledge, Guinier hadnt taken at the time of her nomination. And unlike Guinier, Clarke has insisted that Blacks are superior to Whites. She also invited an openly anti-Semitic professor to speak at Harvard and defended his ravings as based on indisputable facts. Guinier, whose mother was Jewish, never did this. I very much doubt she would have been a friend of Bill Clinton at school if she had. Moreover, Guinier was a good-faith advocate for the positions she held. Her advocacy appeared in scholarly writings, not in broadsides. To my knowledge, she did not viciously attack those who took positions with which she disagreed. Clarke is very different. Shes no academic. Shes a far-left activist who has trashed the likes of Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch with false allegations, and has lied about the Trump Civil Rights Divisions record. This will be the subject of my next post in this series. Network energy saving has never been so important, with climate change one of the most pressing challenges of our era, says Tang Xue of ZTE. In an article recently published in Developing Telecoms' new special report on Leveraging the Benefits of 5G in Emerging Markets, Tang discusses the role the mobile sector must play in reducing energy use, both because of its scale and its capability to make significant reductions. According to Tang, 5G is becoming the most critical technology for two major reasons: firstly, the introduction of 5G into the networks with 2G, 3G and 4G, brings more power consumption; second, although 5G can provide faster services, its energy efficiency is not always optimal - especially at the initial stage of deployment and with low traffic. To solve these challenges ZTE Corporation recently launched a revolutionary 5G energy saving solution, PowerPilot, in a bid to help operators realize higher energy efficiency, lower carbon footprint and achieve more sustainable growth. Using AI, ZTE PowerPilot intelligently evaluates network service requirements saving up to twice as much energy as existing energy saving solutions with a typical network configuration. PowerPilot has significant advantages over conventional AI-based energy saving solutions and can save up to 20% of energy in a multi-mode network, thereby effectively reducing the operational expenditure. Commercial trials undertaken with China Telecom in Chengdu in late 2020 showed that over 35% of the network energy consumption of 4G/5G can be reduced without impacting network performance or user experience. To read the full article by Tang Xue about energy saving and more details about ZTE's PowerPilot solution including a video, please download Developing Telecoms new Special report "Leveraging the Benefits of 5G in Emerging Markets". Tang Xue is Vice General Manager of the RAN Product Line at ZTE Corporation. The Manitoba government has changed its plans for a vaccination "super site" for the North just days after it was announced after local officials argued the original proposal was unworkable. The Manitoba government has changed its plans for a vaccination "super site" for the North just days after it was announced after local officials argued the original proposal was unworkable. Some northern residents will still get their COVID-19 shots at Thompson's airport, but "Vaxport" will be less super than originally planned, providing injections only to residents of fly-in communities. Most northern residents will get their shots at the Thompson Community Recreation Centre, which is centrally located in the city of about 13,000. "This makes much more sense logistically, and for the citizens of Thompson," Mayor Colleen Smook said Thursday after touring the airport site, which is located 10 kilometres from the city and isn't serviced by public transportation. The airport is at $25 taxi ride away and has internet service that "isn't very good," Smook said. "This makes much more sense logistically, and for the citizens of Thompson." Mayor Colleen Smook A provincial government spokesperson said there will be more information in the coming days. "Launching Vaxport in Thompson is another milestone in our campaign to immunize Manitobans against COVID-19," the spokesperson said in an email. Smook said she heard Premier Brian Pallister's announcement about the site which he dubbed "Vaxport" on Jan. 6 and immediately had concerns. "We weren't given a heads-up, there was no consultation; we were all in the dark," she said. "I thought, 'Frick that's not going to work.'" She said she sent two pages of concerns to the province about the location and asked if anyone making the decisions had even checked it out in person to ensure it was suitable. That happened Thursday. GOOGLE EARTH / CNES / AIRBUS / MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES Thompson Municipal Airport is located about 10 kilometers north of the city of Thompson and about a $25 taxi ride away. "They saw how unrealistic for their big plan it was going to be," she said. The entourage which included Smook, regional and senior provincial health officials and others also visited the rec centre. The city-owned facility closed under provincial code-red pandemic restrictions is on a public-transit route, has plenty of space and has been used for flu-vaccination campaigns. "We just did this year's flu shots above the normal capacity," she said. The province should have consulted with people on the ground in Thompson before rolling out its plans but in the end, they acted on them, the mayor said. "Kudos to the province for listening to us," she said. "They saw how unrealistic for their big plan it was going to be." Mayor Colleen Smook Smook, 68, learned the vaccine will arrive during the last week of January, and health-care workers and the most vulnerable will be at the front of the appointment line. She said they need just 48 hours to have the community centre set up, adding 60 per cent of the city's residents are Indigenous, and 70 per cent of them don't have a means of transportation. Northern Manitoba is dealing with an exponential rise in cases 139 were reported Thursday, surpassing the entire Winnipeg region's 75. The Northern Health region had 1,297 active COVID-19 cases compared to 820 in Winnipeg. "We've had a terrible outbreak at Lynn Lake and it's trickled down here," Smook said. The town, located 230 kilometres northwest of Thompson, has just 482 residents but there are 144 active cases. The northern surge in COVID-19 cases prompted four NDP MLAs from the region to write to Health Minister Heather Stefanson saying there's an urgent need for vaccinations and information. "We need to have a clear plan on how and where they're going to do the vaccine rollout," Danielle Adams (Thompson) said. "We need to have a clear plan on how and where they're going to do the vaccine rollout." Danielle Adams The letter, signed by Adams, The Pas-Kameesak MLA Amanda Lathlin, Flin Flon MLA Tom Lindsay and Keewatinook MLA Ian Bushie commended Indigenous leadership for quickly getting the Moderna vaccine into the arms of those who need it most. "It is concerning that the provincial government has not been able to do the same thing, despite having months to plan," said the letter, dated Tuesday. Adams said the Vaxport plan seems "reactionary" and poorly executed with the provincial government not consulting first with local officials. "A lot of things have involved them saying how they're planning on doing something but not telling the community or the media how," she said. "It leads me to believe they don't actually have a plan for that." Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said the issue is "typical" of the government and illustrates why "the entire pandemic has been a fiasco." "The premier makes things up without telling anybody, so you have a last-minute change," he said. "There's no concept of doing the work to make sure the vaccine gets to people. This should've have been planned months ago. It's unbelievable." carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca LETTER TO NPP AND STAKEHOLDERS Recent happenings leave much to be desired about lengthy epistles with tautologies and rhetoric, so I will try to be as brief and proceed to mind my business like I have always done. I am extremely certain that I would be concentrating on a prayer point, sponsorship proposal or a clients communication strategy for the year, by now, if not for my inquisitiveness and the urge to lend my voice to the current trends on social media and as I have always done, be involved in the current political conversations especially after the events that unfolded on the night and dawn of 6th and 7th January this year in Parliament and the imminent showdown on who occupies the majority and the minority sides of the House today. About the current political trends in Ghana, my interest has been whipped towards WHO BECOMES WHAT IN THE NEXT AKUFO ADDO GOVERNMENT, WHO IS TOO OLD, WHO IS TOO YOUNG, WHO HAS SERVED HIS TIME AND WHO NEEDS TO GO OUT. The passionate commentary and proposals have so far been coming from the NPP party faithful, the neutrals and even the opposition NDC (mindful of the fact that the 2020 presidential election is being contested in a court of competent jurisdiction the result of which I have predicted). I have averred my mind to some young Ghanaians on both sides of the divide (context: Ghana largely a two-party state) who I objectively believe will provide a safe pair of hands in political leadership or governance when given roles (most already wield proven track records). In fact, most of these names that immediately come to mind include Sammi Awuku (NPP National Organizer), Lawyer Justin Kodua Frimpong (CEO, YEA), Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh (MP, Former Minister of Education), Lawyer John Kumah, MP (Former CEO, NEIP), Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP (Former Dep. Min. Education), Edward Omane Boamah (Former Min, Communication), Francisca Oteng MP (Former Board Chair, NYA), Fred Agbenyo (NDC) and the list goes on and on. I am reluctantly scribbling this epistle especially because I know that some of the people mentioned will not be too amused to be seen as pushing and or condoning any agenda that sets them at par or above others. They rather believe in hard work, delivering results and focusing on the development of the youth in our country. Some of them that I have come to admire, particularly frown on any form of sycophancy, stoogism or surrogatism. I therefore want to put on record that there is no inspiration or whatsoever from anyone that gets a mention in this scripture as may be seen on other platforms and perceived as such. It is however instructive to note that upon reading around and seeing the kind of lists being peddled by people, I have committed to bring to the attention of leadership and the appointing authority the disservice they will do to the New Patriotic Party should they fail to put certain individuals in certain SENSITIVE positions. As a journalist of many years standing and an ardent follower of politics and elections in our country; taking into consideration how close the just ended elections was and how polarised the country has become as a result, I believe strongly that the only way the NPP can make a good stride in the 2024 general elections will be to keep figures like Sammi Awuku and Lawyer Justin Kodua in certain sensitive positions, else it will be a difficult run. (NPP de na aba na yreka , NDC nso de ba a, ybka) This observation is openly corroborated by the grassroots of the NPP who will form the basis of winning an election in the next polls. It is also corroborated by floating voters and even members of the NDC. It was bold, the statement the people of Ghana made to the NPP through the ballot in the recently held elections that they will not tolerate any headstrong administration but will embrace a listening government. If the NPP is to do a self-introspection and realize that one key thing to establish dominance in other elections will be to listen, then they should listen to my piece of unsolicited advice: Sammy Awuku for Local Government Minister, Roads and Highways Minister or Deputy, Deputy Chief of Staff, Petroleum Commission, NPA or any ministerial appointment that will empower the organization of the NPP party for any electoral battle. Second: Justin Kodua Frimpong for NPA or any position that will also well-ground the party. Why am I whining? Well these two gentlemen have in simple terms exhibited finesse in their lines of duties especially in those ones that ensured a resounding NPP victory in 2016 and retaining power in the 2020 elections. They are loved and accepted by all. Let me begin with Sammi Awuku, (for his profile you can google), but this is a young chap who took over the reins of the youth leadership while in opposition, endeared himself to the young and old, mobilized the grassroots of the party and won for the party a great victory. Everyone in Ghana can easily associate with names like Peoples Capo, the Supremo, Chairman, Boys Abr, King of the Grassroots, Tireless Don and many others. All these names are names given to him by members of the party who witnessed the NPP National Organizers prowess, hard work and dedication towards securing victory for the party in every elections. Not Going too much back into history, all journalists who followed the NPP and NDC campaigns in the 2020 elections can easily attest to how Sammi Awuku as the National Organizer toured a minimum of two hundred (200) constituencies to campaign for the President Nana Akufo-Addo and the various parliamentary candidates. There were periods he toured three different regions in a single day, even at the peril of his life sometimes, and even when his team and himself had recorded accidents. There was a time when he had moved from the Bono Region, done Ashanti and was heading to the Eastern and was met with an accident, but he still went to the Eastern Region to Campaign. His campaign vehicle was razed down in the North yet he still went ahead to campaign that evening. Note: this is not a "promotion" but I am recounting these because it will be strategic for any political party to keep an organizer of Sammis sort, not to mention his days as a youth organizer. I am however well informed that Sammi has openly stated that he will not contest this position again. Now I am thinking; General Secretary? National Chairman orbut that too, I hear he says NO! Well if this is the case, then I (a nobody with an opinion) will urge the President (appointing authority) to put Sammi Awuku in a veeeery sensitive position, a position that will keep the party and the government together if the next election is considered a very important one. Sammi has exhibited himself as one who will keep the grassroots formidable for any task ahead the boys abr man. Sammi Awuku is a leader with expertise in political leadership and corporate governance with several awards having been crowned a young achiever by many international bodies. He, as board chair of the Youth Employment Agency supervised a massive transformation of the Agency that became free of corruption over the last four years. Mr. President the ball is in your court. In the words of NDCs Allotey Jacobs who is also a former Central Regional Minister, Genuine Advocacy, Mr President, you will need Sammi Awuku in your cabinet to be a bridge between the Party and Government. In the case of Lawyer Justin Kodua Frimpong, Mr president even attests to how the Agency has been cool-headed and seen a massive transformation over the last four years. This is evidenced in the presidents statements at ceremonies to begin construction of YEA offices in the newly created regions. In summary the president stated that the Youth Employment Agency under the leadership of Sammi Awuku and Lawyer Justin Koduah Frimpong has seen job creation and transformation never seen before in the history of the Agency. Indeed, under the leadership of Lawyer Kodua, the Agency has seen a massive facelift with the provision of serene working environments that has highly improved productivity for the young and energetic staff. Over One hundred and Forty Five thousand (145000) people have been recruited over the last four years. Koduas administration has seen to the introduction of timesheets, ensuring value for money and saving the country of over 7million Ghana Cedis monthly. Not to talk of the numerous job interventions he introduced. Today, everyone knows Jobcentre, the Artisan Directory, Agric based flagship projects and many others. Lawyer Justin Koduah truly deserves accolades. He, like Sammi through these interventions garnered massive votes from the youth for the NPP in the just ended elections. More importantly, I am aware that he also toured all the 16 Regions of Ghana with his personal resources to campaign for the president and for the party to be retained. In fact, in Asokwa for instance he is known as the darling boy, and but for him, NDC would have made a big statement there. His people call him Okumkom, to wit hunger killer. Simple reason is, he is always with the grassroots. NPP! You have to put a grassroots man of this nature in strong and sensitive position to rekindle your grassroots. When you give Sammi Awuku the Minister, give the NPA to Kodua. Hes lived his time well at YEA. Give him another big task. I strongly believe he will deliver. If you are NPP and have taken your time to read, get to the higher echelons of power and make a good case for Sammi Awuku and Justin Koduah Frimpong, ny saa deaa, 2024, la wuuu. Meek)da. Tomorrow will be on to other potentials We will talk about NDC, when its their time Kwasi Afriyie Corridors of Fawoade-Mamponteng, Kwabre Source: Kwasi Afriyie Corridors of Fawoade-Mamponteng, Kwabre 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 High Court has deferred delivering its judgment in four important test cases brought by pub owners over Insurer FBD's refusal to pay out on business disruption over the covid-19 pandemic. The delay is to allow the parties lawyers make further legal submissions to the Court arising out of a judgement in a case, where similar issues were raised, due to be given on Friday by the UK's Supreme Court. Mr Justice Denis McDonald was also due to give his judgment in the action against the FBD on Friday. In order to allow the sides make submissions on the UK court's findings, the judge said he was putting back his decision. He said he hopes to deliver his judgment in early February. Four publicans have brought cases challenging FBD Insurance Plc's refusal earlier this year to indemnify them, and the insurers stance that its policies of insurance do not cover the disruption caused to businesses by Covid-19. Over 1,000 Irish pubs and bars are affected by the dispute which arose after the insurer refused to provide them with cover since the pandemic resulted in the temporary closure of businesses in mid-March 2020. On Thursday Mr Justice Denis McDonald was asked by FBD's lawyers to delay his delivering his judgement to allow submissions be made on a judgment due to be given in an appeal by the UK's Supreme Court. That appeal relates to the English High Court's ruling in a case where that court was asked to determine if the pandemic should trigger pay-outs to holders of business interruption insurance policies. The English High court found in favour of the UKs Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) , which brought the case on behalf of the policyholders, on the majority of the key issues. The UK court ruled that pay-outs were triggered under certain non-damage clauses that covered disease and denial of access to business premises. That decision was appealed to the UK's Supreme Court. Seeking the deferral Caren Geoghegan Bl for FBD said the UK case was heavily relied upon by the plaintiffs during the three-week hearing. The fairest and most efficient thing to do would be to adjourn the delivery of the judgement in the Irish action to allow the sides make submissions on the British court's findings, counsel submitted. Lawyers for the publicans said their preference was for Mr Justice McDonald to proceed to judgment as planned, but would make written submissions only on the English court's decision if required. Eon McCullough SC for one of the pub owners, Sean's Bar in Athlone, said his client was concerned about any further delay in the case. In his ruling Mr Justice McDonald said that his judgment was done, and was ready to go, but was prepared to defer giving his decision. While not indicating in any way what his decision is, he did say that he had done his own thing and had not fundamentally relied on the English court's findings. While not wanting to delay judgment any further the judge said this was "an unusual situation," and that in any event further submissions on certain discrete issues would be required. He said he was keen to hear from the parties what they say are the implications of the UK judgement on the issues that were argued before him. He directed that submissions be prepared and exchanged between the parties, and that he would give judgement on February 5th next. The tests cases were brought by four pubs arising out of FBD's refusal to indemnify them for the disruption to their businesses due to Covid19. The actions have been taken by Dublin bars Aberken, trading as Sinnotts Bar; Hyper Trust Ltd, trading as The Leopardstown Inn' and Inn on Hibernian Way Ltd trading as Lemon & Duke. The fourth action was taken by Leinster Overview Concepts Ltd the owner of Sean's Bar, which is based in Athlone. Each of the pub owners claim that under their policies of insurance taken out with FBD they are entitled to have their consequential losses covered by what they claim is an insurable risk. They also claim that by failing to pay out on the policy the insurer is in breach of contract. The publicans claim the policies taken out with FBD contain a clause that states the pubs will be indemnified if their premises were closed by order of the local or Government Authority if there are "Outbreaks of contagious or infectious diseases on the premises or within 25 miles of same." FBD disputes that claim and says the closures did not occur as a result of an outbreak of disease at the premises or areas where the pubs are located. FBD also told the court that it has never provided cover for pandemics and no one in Ireland has ever asked for it. The general insurance market in Ireland does not insure against events like pandemics, it claims. Only specialist brokers, which he said are based overseas, on a bespoke basis offer an insurance policy that cover the fall-out from something like covid19, FBD also argued. IMLAY TWP, MI A traffic crash has killed one person in Lapeer County. About 8:17 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 15, Lapeer County Sheriffs deputies responded to the crash scene on Van Dyke (M-53) south of Bowers Road in Imlay Township. Deputies initial information indicated a woman was trapped in a burning vehicle. A motorist with a fire extinguisher was able to put out the fire. Deputies identified 29-year-old Ruth resident Megan Griffith as the driver and sole occupant of a 2008 Pontiac Torrent that had been traveling south on Van Dyke. About a quarter of a mile to the south of Bowers Road, Griffiths vehicle crossed the centerline and partially entered the northbound lane, police said. The drivers side front of Griffiths vehicle struck the drivers side front of a northbound 2006 International 7500 series truck owned by Kappens Tree Service that had logs as cargo. Griffiths Pontiac rotated before coming to rest within the west ditch. The International truck driven by a 40-year-old man from Clifford continued north until coming to rest along the east shoulder. An off-duty Lapeer County EMS paramedic at the collision managed to free an unresponsive Griffith and start CPR on her. Griffith was taken to a Lapeer hospital where she died of her injuries. The other driver was uninjured. The roadway was wet without the presence of icing. Preliminary investigation suggests neither alcohol nor drugs were contributing factors. Excessive speed over the 55-mph speed limit does not appear to be a factor. The roadway was closed for about three hours. Lapeer County Sheriffs deputies were assisted at the scene by Imlay City Fire and Rescue, Michigan State Police troopers from the Lapeer Post, Lapeer County EMS Ambulance Service, Lapeer County Road Commission, Lapeer County Sheriffs Reconstruction Division, Yakes Towing in North Branch, and Pauls Collision in Almont. The crash remains under investigation. Read more: Chemical spill in Chesaning leads to home evacuations Police arrest man they say crashed truck into Saginaw house, killing sleeping woman Witnesses testify in hearing for Saginaw man charged in fatal shooting of two men There hasnt been much activity on the smart smoke detector front lately. We still consider the Google Nest Protect to be best in class, but it could soon face a challenger: The Owl Wired. Designed to replace not just an ordinary smoke detector, this home safety device can also be used for general home security. In addition to detecting the presence of smoke with its photo-electric sensor, the Owl Wired can also sniff out carbon monoxide using an electromechanical sensor, track temperature and humidity levels in your home, detect motion with a microwave radar sensor, and it has an onboard microphone that can analyze noise levels. The motion detector can send you an alert if motion is detected when you think your everyone in your home should be at rest, and you can program its microphone to send you an alert when noises exceed a defined threshold. Owl Home The Owl Wired can report on a host of conditions inside your home. The Owl Wired is outfitted with a Bluetooth radio, so you can set it up with your smartphone, and theres a Wi-Fi 4 wireless adapter onboard, so that it can send alerts to your smartphone. Multiple Owl sensors connect with each other over Wi-Fi, so that if one detects an emergency condition, the multi-color light rings and sirens in all of them will sound off at once. The Owl Wired depends on AC power to operate, although it has an onboard backup battery that can keep it running for up to three months in the event of a power outage. An Owl Wireless model that runs solely on battery power is in the works. The company says its smoke detectors will be HomeKit compatible and that they will also work with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT. The manufacturer is taking preorders now at discounted prices: $139 for the white model and $149 for the black model. Regular prices will be $169 and $179 respectively. The Owl Wired is expected to ship in October. The lawyer for the QAnon shaman who was part of the deadly siege of the Capitol last week publicly petitioned President Donald Trump on Thursday to pardon his client. In an interview on CNN, attorney Albert Watkins said his client, Jacob Chansley, felt like he was answering the call of our president when he stormed the nations seat of government last Wednesday during a riot that resulted in the deaths of at least five people. Chansley, a 33-year-old man from Phoenix also known as Jake Angeli, was one of the most recognizable perpetrators of the Capitol siege. He carried a spear, wore a furry horned headdress and painted his face in shades of red, white and blue. On Tuesday, Chansley became one of the first three people indicted by federal prosecutors in connection with the violence at the Capitol. He was charged with a felony violation of the Federal Anti-Riot Act, as well as obstruction of Congress and other offenses. In a filing on Thursday, prosecutors said Chansley was as an active participant in and the most prominent symbol of what they described as a violent insurrection. Prosecutors also said Chansley had expressed his intention of returning to Washington, D.C., for President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration next week. The language in the filing suggests more severe charges, such as sedition or insurrection, could be coming for those involved in the siege. Watkins, Chansleys attorney, said on Thursday that his client, like a lot of other disenfranchised people in our country, felt very, very, very solidly in sync with the president suggesting Chansley was incited to storm the Capitol in Trumps name. He felt like his voice was, for the first time, being heard, Watkins said. And what ended up happening, over the course of the lead-up to the election, over the course of the period from the election to Jan. 6 it was a driving force by a man he hung his hat on, he hitched his wagon to. He loved Trump. Every word, he listens to him. Story continues Prior to the Capitol siege, the president, his family members and his political allies riled up his supporters at a rally on the White House Ellipse. When it was his turn to speak, Trump urged those in attendance to march on the Capitol amid Congress certification of Bidens Electoral College victory. If you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore, Trump said. He also said that youll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. On Thursday, Trump became the only president in American history to be impeached twice this time, in a bipartisan vote on a single count of incitement of insurrection. We all have to understand that the words that were spoken by the president meant something, not just to my client. They meant something to a lot of people, Watkins said in his interview. They listened to those words. And those words meant something to them. And they had a right to rely on the words of their president that was strewed forth worldwide, he said. And they did. And now theyre turning around [and] theyre getting arrested, as well many should be. Nevertheless, Trump needs to stand up and own these people, Watkins argued. He has an obligation to them. He has an obligation to our nation. Its not going to happen. Pressed by host Chris Cuomo on what exactly he would like Trump to do, Watkins replied: Oh, give a pardon. As Chansleys attorney, my role is not to judge somebody. My role is to be an advocate, Watkins said. If theres one iota of a chance that the guy whos the president of our country who invited everybody down Pennsylvania [Avenue] will give my client a pardon, you know what? Im going to do it. Watkins acknowledged, however, that his plea was unlikely to succeed. Am I holding my breath thinking that Donald Trump is going to be sitting around going, You know what? Whats the name of that guy with the horns? Yeah lets give him a pardon. But with Trump, you never know, Watkins said. He may say, I want the guy with the horns. Next thing you know, maybe hes represented by the shaman instead of Rudy Giuliani. Watkins went on to compare the presidents supporters who stormed the Capitol to the Jonestown cult members who committed mass suicide at their settlement in Guyana in 1978: You know the only thing different here? Theres no Kool-Aid. The deadpan humour in this strange and original book takes getting used to, as the 36-year-old unnamed narrator woman tells us in a straight-faced way about her experiences in the world of work. She has burnout after 14 years in the one job, which she doesnt identify until the end, so she seeks out a patient employment recruiter called Mrs Masakado and asks for a job that will be easy, simple and uneventful. The series of jobs she undertakes are, at first glance, all of these things. But they are absurd as well, and it becomes clear that this quietly funny book is an effective critique of late capitalism. Kikuko Tsumura explores the relationship between employment and identity, and the ways in which we try to find meaning and satisfaction in our working lives. Jane Smiley first began thinking about this book in 2009 but was working on another, major project. She returned to this charming tale of Paris a decade later, when she felt the world was in dire need of a book about positive emotions and characters. So there are no villains, though there is a certain amount of trouble, for everyone is just trying to get by. Everyone means a curious runaway racehorse, a bereaved and sad but clever dog, a garrulous know-it-all raven, a bold and horny rat, a pair of annoying ducks, and a little boy who is about to become an orphan. Smiley is very good at her job, so this book is not at all twee. But the publisher lists a reading age of 18+, which is ridiculous. I would have adored this story when I was a bookish child, and any other bookish child would agree. Beowulf: A New Translation Maria Dahvana Headley Scribe, $27.99 Credit: Beowulf is a classic text of English literature, an epic poem in Old English, written in the late 10th or early 11th century, set in 6th-century Scandinavia, and featuring an assortment of heroes, monsters, battles and kings. Maria Dahvana Headley is an American writer and editor whose novel The Mere Wife is based on the poem. In the wake of Seamus Heaneys energetic and masterly translation 20 years ago, it took a brave writer to attempt a radically different one. But Headleys engaging introduction to her almost rap-like version shows up many of the places where a translation can slant the original this way or that, and uses her own life and times as a starting point. I come from the land of cowboy poets, she says. I did spend a lot of time imagining the narrator as an old-timer at the end of the bar. Serpentine Philip Pullman Pension, $16.99 by Fady Noun The Maronite patriarch is pushing the president and the prime minister-designate towards reaching an agreement. The relationship between Card Sako and the Shia leader al-Sadr is an example. Public service and political responsibility should overcome personal disagreements. However, acrimony seems to have taken over. Beirut (AsiaNews) Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi is pursuing his mediation to get President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri to find an honourable compromise for the formation of a new Lebanese government. However, his efforts face a certain stubbornness that is not new to Lebanese political life. A comment by former Maronite lawmaker Fares Souhaid can illustrate the situation to better understand this existential obstinacy that prevents the meeting between the two men, On 3 January, a delegation sent by Muqtada al-Sadr visited the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, Card Louis Raphael Sako, to inform him that property improperly taken from Iraqi Christians after the American invasion of 2003 and the mass exodus of Christians from Baghdad, Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities will be returned to them and that a committee has been created to restore justice by ending violations of Christians property rights, even when they were committed by Sadrs own movement. The good news followed the unanimous vote by the Iraqi Parliament in favour of a bill establishing Christmas as a public holiday. The decision was confirmed on 17 December, a few days before 25 December. In both cases, the patriarch of the Chaldeans expressed his gratitude. Recently former Lebanese lawmaker Fares Souhaid wrote a tweet about the decision to return the confiscated properties. After linking this decision and the recent claim by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, telling the Lebanese that his missiles protect them, Souhaid, as a good Maronite, said: We do not want any favours from Iraqis nor protection in Lebanon. We are Christians and citizens. These words reflect a political society that sees itself as Christian, which has always refused to accept anything other than that as a right. The former Lebanese lawmaker believes that Iraqi Christians do not have to thank Muqtada al-Sadr, even if Patriarch Sako want to. Which of these two approaches should be considered appropriate? Which one is the most Christian? To answer this question, it is worth noting that the Shia leaders decision is a step in a process of justice that requires restitution. However, one cannot help but notice how this approach is akin to the necessary process of reparation that accompanies, for a Christian, any request for forgiveness. But by refusing to allow this remedy to come from a source other than the state, which can be understood on the whole, we forget that we owe our countrymen the very existence of this state which we claim as ours. Without loyalty to this project, without the will to live together, the state would not exist, as many political scientists and philosophers, including Paul Ricur, have noted. This means that the will to live together is the source of political power, even at the risk that it might become domination. The original political sin of Lebanons Christians since the creation of Greater Lebanon (1920), with few exceptions, has been precisely to have seen politics not as power, but as domination. This is so much the case that it is safe to say that the Lebanese, Muslim communities come to mind, have not yet seen the light of the Gospel illuminate national life. So, were 150,000 deaths really necessary to have the clause providing for Islamic-Christian parity in Parliament included in the 1976 Constitutional Document (Taif, 1989)? How could anyone see the love of Christ in the brutal war that Christians waged against Palestinian and Islamic progressive forces, conducted initially in the name of self-defence, and the subsequent war, no less ruthless, among themselves for internal military supremacy? Of course, criticising Christians does not mean exonerating other groups from the violence that they too perpetrated; it means instead highlighting a process whose course has not yet been reversed, at least politically. Highlighting Gods judgment in the Gospel according to St Luke: . . . more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more (12:48) is also a basis for moral responsibility in this world. The Maronite patriarch's current approach stems from this principle. Bechara al-Rahi is trying to get the president and the prime minister-designate to base their personal relations not on political domination, but on true human, moral and civic principles, reminding them that their political functions must serve the common good and living together, knowing that everything that weakens this living together also weakens the state of which it is the source. In essence the patriarch is saying: Talking to each other is not an option, it is a duty, given the political issues associated with it, in this case the formation of a government. Unfortunately, political acrimony hitherto expressed has irreversibly compromised this goal. SALEM, Org., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Oregon families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Oregon families, schools, and organizations are hosting 264 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the most notable of these will be a virtual fair highlighting all K-12 education options on Jan. 25. Oregon families will also participate in daily social media challenges for chances to win prizes throughout the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's pause to recognize the impact a child's education has on their ability to achieve their dreams, attain a safe financial future, and give back to their community," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "Across Oregon, different schools help different students succeedall great schools are worth celebrating and supporting." In Oregon, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Oregon families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Oregon school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/oregon. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com ALBANY, N.Y., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, New York families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. New York families are hosting 1,596 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. In New York City, the Children's Scholarship Fund will host a parent panel over Zoom to bring information about school scholarships to all families looking for options. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In New York, Niagara Falls will illuminate in yellow and red from 10:00 - 10:15 p.m. on Jan. 24. The iconic Rochester Kodak Tower will illuminate in yellow and red Jan. 24-30, and the Helmsley Building will illuminate on Jan. 24. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week in their community, including the New York cities of Tuckahoe, Lake George, Hornell, Lewiston, Woodbury, Belfast, Clarkstown, Buffalo, Montour, New Albion, Clyde, Friendship, Esperance, Mount Hope, Middleport, and Painted Post. "The disruptions of this past year have underlined the continued need for all the types of schools New York families choose for their children," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's talk about how families and educators need school choice that works for them." In New York, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, and homeschooling. New York families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to New York school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/new-york. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com A Catholic school that has educated South Philadelphia children for 112 years will close in June, officials said Friday. St. Gabriel Catholic School, at 29th and Dickinson Streets, currently enrolls fewer than 130 students in a building that could accommodate hundreds more. Rising building costs and a declining student population forced the closure, said Bruce Robinson, chief executive of Independence Mission Schools, which operates St. Gabes. The pandemic did not help enrollment figures, Robinson said, but the numbers were low even prior to COVID. Most St. Gabriels students are expected to shift to St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School, which sits about a mile away and is also part of the Independence Mission network, which formed in 2013 to support a group of city Catholic grade schools that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had targeted for closure. The closure was a logical decision, but it certainly isnt an easy decision, just because of the impact it has on the students and the teachers and the principals, said Robinson. St. Gabriels has been there for a long, long time. So many families went to that school and now it wont be there. The building is owned by the parish, not by the network, and so its disposal or reuse will be up to the church. Not operating two large school buildings in the same area will mean investments in St. Thomas Aquinas building and educational program, Robinson said. Families will meet over the next several days with school and Independence Mission staff, Robinson said, and be given information about their options. Children will have access to counseling services, and the network has vowed to pay for new school uniforms to help ease the transition. St. Gabriels tuition has been heavily subsidized by the network, Robinson said, and those subsidies can now benefit students at St. Thomas Aquinas and across the system, which will have 14 schools after the St. Gabes closure. In the rest of our schools, the buildings are fairly well occupied, and we have the ability to move on strongly with our other 14 schools, said Robinson. READ MORE: Two Catholic schools are fighting for their lives. Can Hallahan and McDevitt pull off a miracle? The news comes as the network is poised to release a five-year plan which explores long-term sustainability issues, officials said, and the effects of an economic downturn and the COVID-19 pandemic. Its one in a string of Catholic school closures announced in the past several months, from St. Basils Academy, run by the Ukrainian Sisters of St. Basil the Great; to John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School and Bishop McDevitt High School, which the archdiocese is closing. A decade ago this month, when Brittney Mills was 19, she stopped by her boyfriends house in West Philadelphia. Minutes later, Philadelphia Police Narcotics Field Unit officers raided the place and Mills life was turned upside down. The squad included Jeffrey Walker, who later admitted he and fellow NFU officers routinely planted evidence, robbed suspects, and committed perjury. They said they found drugs in the freezer. The only person arrested was Mills, who had no criminal record but had previously had an altercation with Walker. He told her, This will teach you not to get smart with officers ever again. Charged with drug dealing, Mills spent five days in jail, and a year and a half on probation. The consequences didnt stop there: She lost her job. She became homeless after her father kicked her out, believing she was a drug dealer. Worse, she lost custody of her 3-year-old daughter, then in the care of Mills mother. Eleven years later, Im still trying to snap out of it and get back to reality. Every day I have to relive this is a nightmare, Mills said. In 2014, Mills sued in federal court. But her case was funneled onto a single docket with hundreds of others. Not one has gone to trial, though 212 NFU cases have been settled, for a total of $7.2 million. The rest, including Mills case, have been placed on indefinite hold since February 2017 meaning nearly four years with no progress. Peoples rights were violated by the police, and now theyre being violated again by the court, said Mills lawyer, Margaret Boyce Furey, who has 10 cases stayed under the court order. She first asked for the stay to be removed back in 2017, and renewed the request last summer. Both motions were denied. There is no incentive for the city to entertain any settlement offers, because everything is in suspense. They know theyre not going to trial. READ MORE: Fired, then rehired: How so many questionable Philadelphia cops get their jobs back U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond did not directly respond to a reporters questions about the outlook for these cases, but issued an order Jan. 8 that included a section titled: Path Going Forward. In it, he said the cases were placed on hold at the urging of lead plaintiffs counsel and defense counsel pending settlement negotiations and the resolution of a handful of bellwether cases, which would be indicators of how much, if anything, the city would have to pay out for the remaining cases. (The stay was ordered on Feb. 8, 2017, the same day one of the lawyers then serving as plaintiffs liaison counsel, Larry Krasner, announced his campaign for Philadelphia district attorney.) Diamond said the plan still includes trials for the remaining bellwether cases, even as there are fewer and fewer cases to follow the bellwethers. He said the main factor causing delays now is the pandemic, which has put jury trials on hold until spring. One bellwether case settled for $230,000 last year, resolving a complaint by James McIntyre, who claimed the squad stole about $9,000 from him and planted drugs in his truck. He spent four months in jail. In that case, Diamond had denied summary judgment in a damning 33-page memorandum outlining corruption and cover-ups within the Police Department and its Internal Affairs Bureau. The IAB functioned poorly, in part because of a perception that it operated corruptly: Investigators did not maintain confidentiality, and preferred officers ... were protected by supervisors, Diamond wrote. He also noted that federal prosecutors began declining cases eight years before the Philadelphia district attorney finally acknowledged a problem. The city, for its part, said it is negotiating in good faith, independent of the courts process as indicated by the large number of cases already settled. In making offers, a spokesperson said, the city considers the facts and evidence in each case, and also considers valuations of previously settled, factually analogous matters. Some lawyers see it differently. They believe that the city is now waiting for desperate plaintiffs to give up and accept nuisance settlements. l said that of his 36 clients, three accepted relatively small settlement offers, and two have died. The problem is we have people who, because of this, they have nothing, Shingles said. The city knew this and exploited the desperation of these people to try to get rid of them ... and was not prompted or encouraged by the court to be reasonable. Michael Pileggi, the lawyer now serving as liaison counsel, said he was hopeful Diamonds order last week would jump-start the stalled negotiation process. To me the best route for everyone is ... to resolve them, he said. One of his clients, Kareem Torain, who spent 13 years in prison before his case was overturned, has been fighting seven years for compensation. Meanwhile, more civil cases are still being filed, and immediately placed in suspense over plaintiffs objections. One involved Kevin Gordon, accused of dealing drugs by the NFU squad. After they couldnt find drugs on him, they continued with a warrantless search of his home, drove him around the neighborhood in a police car for hours and arrested his brother, demanding he provide them with cocaine, according to his complaint. Weeks later, branded a snitch due to his interactions with the squad, Gordon was shot in the arm and leg. The officers then went to his hospital room seeking the cocaine his brother had promised, he alleges, before they finally arrested him again. He ended up serving six months in jail. The city offered Gordon $2,000 the last and best offer, city lawyers warned last year. READ MORE: Philly narcotics cops faked paperwork to hide informants. Hundreds of cases may be challenged. Philadelphia officials first acknowledged misconduct by the squad in 2012, when then-District Attorney Seth Williams told police he would no longer call the narcotics officers as witnesses. The next year, a group of narcotics officers Thomas Liciardello, Brian Reynolds, Michael Spicer, Perry Betts, Linwood Norman, and John Speiser were fired and charged. But only Walker, who pleaded guilty and cooperated with federal investigators, was convicted; the six others were acquitted and reinstated to the police force. Yet, Philadelphia judges have continued to overturn cases involving the officers: So far, 1,138 cases have been overturned, according to Bradley Bridge, a lawyer with the Defender Association of Philadelphia. He said 16 cases are still under review. All told, the city has paid out more than $65 million in civil rights settlements against the police just since 2017. Most recently, it settled with Chester Hollman, who was exonerated of murder in 2019 after 28 years in prison, for $9.8 million. That breaks down to $350,000 per year in prison. Mills, who is now a certified nursing assistant and has reunited with her family, said the damage is greater than just the jail time. After her arrest, she had so many questions that she enrolled in a college program for criminal justice. She did not complete it but is still paying off the student loans. It haunts me, and I feel like justice is not being served, Mills said. Youre not saying sorry. Offering me a couple dollars, thats not the answer. Youre brushing me under the rug like I dont matter, like my life didnt matter. Oklahoma-based cybersecurity solution recognized by global insurers for providing 'meaningful impact on cyber risk' OKLAHOMA CITY, Jan. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cyber Catalyst by Marsh program designated TokenEx's Data Protection Platform as a Cyber Catalyst solution due to the platform's ability to address key areas of cyber risk, in the view of participating insurers. "It is a tremendous honor for our Data Protection Platform to be identified as a Cyber Catalystdesignated solution," TokenEx Founder and CEO Alex Pezold said. "Over the past decade, we have grown TokenEx with the mission of protecting the world's most sensitive data from breach. Our clients, both domestically and internationally, have benefitted from the risk-reducing capabilities of our platform, and I believe this prestigious designation will enable more companies to discover and experience the unique data-protection value we provide." TokenEx's Data Protection Platform leverages tokenization to protect and store sensitive personal and/or payment data, enabling its customers to literally offload the risk, effort, and expense of maintaining a sensitive database to security and compliance experts. By using TokenEx as a secure, easily accessible repository of sensitive data, organizations can create a single point of integration that helps simplify interactions between systems, ensuring privacy protection without disrupting payments orchestration or other critical business operations. "The Cyber Catalyst designation signals that leading insurers believe TokenEx's Data Protection Platform can help reduce cyber risk, and strongly merits consideration by organizations who seek solutions that yield meaningful improvements in cyber risk outcomes," said Thomas Reagan, US & Canada Cyber Practice Leader, Marsh. "The 2020 Cyber Catalyst solutions target the five most significant cyber risks identified by cyber insurers and, together with the 2019 designees, comprise a roster of more than 30 cybersecurity products insurers believe can be highly effective against cyber threats." Solutions that receive Cyber Catalyst designations are some of the most effective cybersecurity tools on the market, participating insurers believe, and demonstrate the ability to measurably reduce cyber risk. Because of the risk reduction offered by Cyber Catalystdesignated solutions, organizations deploying them can potentially qualify for enhanced terms and conditions on individually negotiated cyber insurance policies offered by participating insurers. Cyber Catalyst by Marsh assembles leading cyber insurers to evaluate the effectiveness of cybersecurity solutions and to identify products and services that they believe can help reduce cyber risk. Participating insurers -- Allianz, AXA XL, AXIS, Beazley, CFC, Munich Re, Sompo International, and Zurich North America -- assess eligible solutions using six criteria: reduction of cyber risk, key performance metrics, viability, efficiency, flexibility, and differentiation. The TokenEx Data Protection Platform was selected by the insurers after a rigorous, six-month, multi-stage approval process. In order to earn a Cyber Catalyst designation, solutions were required to receive positive votes from at least six of the eight insurers. For more information on the 2020 Cyber Catalystdesignated solutions, visit the Cyber Catalyst pages on the Marsh website. About TokenEx Founded in 2010, TokenEx is an Oklahoma-based cloud tokenization provider committed to protecting the world's most sensitive data from attack. Its industry-leading solution for data protection can secure and desensitize any structured data element to reduce risk, streamline operations, and enable its clients' most critical business processes. For more information, visit TokenEx.com or contact [email protected] directly with any questions about the company or its platform. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/647313/TokenEx_Logo.jpg SOURCE TokenEx, inc. [January 15, 2021] Beyond Type 2 Celebrates Two Years, Launches New Community Platform SAN CARLOS, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, global diabetes nonprofit Beyond Type 1 celebrates the two year anniversary of the launch of Beyond Type 2 - a digital platform for those impacted by Type 2 diabetes, available in English and Spanish. Additionally, today marks the launch of a new way for people with Type 2 diabetes to connect - the Beyond Type 2 Community, a closed social network operated by the organization. Beyond Type 2 is a program of diabetes nonprofit organization Beyond Type 1, providing a home online for those impacted by Type 2 diabetes. Beyond Type 2 operates parallel websites and social media channels in English and Spanish, with unique content tailored to each audience. Since Beyond Type 2 launched in 2019, the web and social platforms have grown to serve a network of nearly half a million individuals impacted by Type 2 diabetes. Across English and Spanish platforms, Beyond Type 2's resources, articles, and personal stories strive to provide readers the resources and support to manage and thrive with Type 2 diabetes. Today's launch of the Beyond Type 2 community - which also includes a Spanish-language section - provides another critical way for people with Type 2 diabetes to connect. The goal of the community, which can be accessed via web browser on desktop or via iOS or Android phone apps, is to provide a safe space online for anyone impacted by Type 2 diabetes (those who live with T2D or care for someone who does) to connect, troubleshoot, interact, and learn. If ou or someone you love is impacted by Type 2 diabetes, request to join the community here . Far too often, a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis carries shame and stigma. While Beyond Type 2 will continue to work to educate the general public, address misinformation and combat stigma related to Type 2 diabetes, this community needs dedicated spaces online - like the new Beyond Type 2 Community App - to connect. "In the two years since launch, we've grown Beyond Type 2 into a rich, diverse resource and community for everyone impacted by Type 2 diabetes," said Beyond Type 1 CEO Thom Scher. "The growth of the platform has been possible because of generous support from our Founding Partners; in 2021, we're excited to be welcoming all of last year's partners back and adding an additional partner focused on cardiovascular health." Beyond Type 2 is grateful for the continued support of Founding Partners Abbott (FreeStyle Libre 2), the Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists (ADCES), Lilly (Baqsimi), and Roche Diabetes Care (Accu-Chek). Founding Partners were joined by Insulet (Omnipod) beginning in 2020 and Lilly (Trulicity) for 2021. Beyond Type 2's partners share the program's vision of helping everyone impacted by Type 2 diabetes live well today. Beyond Type 2 operates as a platform of registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization Beyond Type 1, whose mission is to improve the lives of those living with diabetes. Explore Beyond Type 2 at beyondtype2.org and Beyond Type 2 en Espanol at es.beyondtype2.org . Join the new Beyond Type 1 community at community.beyondtype2.org. Media Contact Kim Pace kpace@lambert.com About Beyond Type 1 Beyond Type 1 is a nonprofit organization changing what it means to live with diabetes. Through platforms, programs, resources, and grants, Beyond Type 1 is uniting the global diabetes community and providing solutions to improve lives today. Founded in 2015 with a focus on education, advocacy and the path to a cure for Type 1 diabetes, Beyond Type 1 has grown to also include programs for those with Type 2 diabetes. A new model of philanthropy, Beyond Type 1 aims to change what it means to live with chronic illness. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/beyond-type-2-celebrates-two-years-launches-new-community-platform-301209278.html SOURCE Beyond Type 1 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] The coldly logical British fictional detective Sherlock Holmes once famously solved a murder mystery because "the dog didn't bark" i.e., a highly trained guard dog didn't bark at the time of a murder because the dog was well acquainted with the perpetrator. Applying this same logic, the question is, why isn't Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey barking i.e., self-righteously and with great publicity removing Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from Twitter, who has repeatedly promised he will eliminate Israel and kill all its Jewish inhabitants, all in violation of Twitter rules? After all, Dorsey barked loudly in a series of oh, so sensitive agonizing tweets, tying himself into easily undone knots, indicating how much he cares, really cares about freedom of speech but also worries oh, so much about setting a dangerous precedent in deplatforming Donald J. Trump (R). Monica Showalter rightly called this out as gaslighting. But Dorsey isn't even quietly growling about Khamenei's violent rhetoric displayed in multiple tweets. Nearly six months ago, Twitter deliberately decided not only to remain silent, but to excuse its silence when Israeli government officials asked Twitter to restrict Khamenei and remove him from Twitter. According to this New York Post report, when asked about Iran's numerous tweeted threats to destroy Israel: Twitter's Vice President of Public Policy Sinead McSweeney said the hateful screed did not violate their policies. "World leaders use Twitter to engage in discourse with each other, as well as their constituents," McSweeney wrote in the June 15 letter obtained by the Post. "Presently, our policies with regards to world leaders state that direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on current affairs, or strident statements of foreign policy on economic or military issues are generally not in violation of the Twitter Rules," she continued. "Our assessment is that tweets you have cited are not in violation of our policies at this time, and they fall into the category of foreign policy saber-rattling on economic or military issues of our approach to world leaders," McSweeney wrote. Khamenei denies that the Shoah (Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered) occurred; has actively engaged troops in Syria, which is on Israel's border; and tweets about Iran's nuclear advances, to cite a few statements, but McSweeney, vice president of Twitter's public policy, dismisses all this as "strident statements of foreign policy" and "foreign policy saber-rattling." Oh. Here is McSweeney's full doublethink letter on this that only a Twitter executive could issue. And Dorsey's future plots have been just revealed by Project Veritas's James O'Keefe. Image via Pxhere. Celeste Ford, Founder and Board Chair, Stellar Solutions, Inc. The Baldrige reputation for quality and excellence is unparalleled in business and a beacon for continuous improvement. We are proud and appreciative of Celestes vision and leadership in fueling our commitment to Baldrige standards in everything we do. -- Michael Lencioni, CEO, Stellar Solutions Celeste Ford, Board Chair and Founder of Stellar Solutions, Inc., has been honored with the 2021 E. David Spong Lifetime Achievement Award, bestowed by the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Inc. The award recognizes individuals who have performed truly extraordinary service, changed their world, and inspired others to do the same. Celeste Ford embodies Baldrige leadership values and principles, and has provided outstanding service to the Baldrige community and beyond, said Al Faber, President and CEO of the Foundation. The Leadership Awards will be presented at an awards event as part of the virtual Quest for Excellence conference on April 14, 2021. The Baldrige reputation for quality and excellence is unparalleled in business and a beacon for continuous improvement. We are proud and appreciative of Celestes vision and leadership in fueling our commitment to Baldrige standards in everything we do, said Michael Lencioni, CEO of Stellar Solutions. Ford led Stellar Solutions to win the 2017 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nations highest honor for performance excellence and sustainability. Since then, Stellar Solutions executives have shared best practices in quality and excellence in the Baldrige and their customer communities across the country. Her values-driven approach to business led to the founding of Stellar Solutions 26 years ago. The companys mission was to deliver high-impact solutions while satisfying customer needs by ensuring that Stellar Solutions highly trained experts are in their dream jobs. Today, Stellar Solutions provides key services in the multi-billion dollar aerospace marketplace for the development, delivery, and expansion of space exploration, communications and intricate technology connections across multiple frontiers. By recognizing the value of motivated employees in delivering client satisfaction, Ford established a culture in which diverse perspectives and skills create a competitive advantage. As an example, Stellar Solutions Crossing Boundaries program was an early model of intersectional problem solving that continues to empower each of its 200+ employees to draw upon the expertise of peers across the organization and the industries they serve. Stellar Solutions has been recognized for its growth and culture as a Fortune Great Place to Work (2014 Present), a Top 50 Women-Owned Businesses by the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal, and one of the Fastest Growing Companies of the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times. Fords recognitions include Ernst & Youngs Entrepreneur of the Year, the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, Fortune Small Business Magazines Best Bosses, and the Women in Aerospace Leadership Award. She is a winner of the 2020 Enterprising Women of the Year Award. Her early career included serving as a guidance and control engineer for COMSAT (Communications Satellite Corporation), and project manager with the Aerospace Corporation where her work on NASAs Space Shuttle Program led to recognition as Woman of the Year. She is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the Board of Simpson Manufacturing and is a Trustee of the University of Notre Dame, where she attained her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. She holds an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Stanford University. About The Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Inc. The Baldrige Foundation is the private-sector partner of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) in the National Institute of Standards and Technology within the Department of Commerce. Its mission is to ensure the long-term financial viability of BPEP and to support organizational performance excellence. The Baldrige Foundation is recognized as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization. https://baldrigefoundation.org/ About Stellar Solutions, Inc. Stellar Solutions is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors. Stellar Solutions provides rapid-response capabilities related to global surveillance and cyber-security, space exploration, risk management, and technology optimization. These solutions to clients critical needs involve satellites in space, sensors on Earth, and intricate technology connections across multiple frontiers. With physical operations in California, Colorado, the greater Washington DC area, London and France as well as employees throughout the U.S. and the globe, Stellar Solutions has become a recognized leader in delivering end-to-end critical expertise and problem-solving skills to dozens of significant programs. QuakeFinder, Stellar Solutions humanitarian R&D division, pursues earthquake prediction models. http://www.stellarsolutions.com 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. A: When I was younger I played with Legos to create buildings using the instruction manual. I soon grew tired of following the guide, so I took off my training wheels and began to create models from my own vision. I did not know until middle school that this was called architecture. I have always been passionate about art and art history, so bringing architectural elements into the mix to create designs for constructing homes and buildings is something that Ive come to enjoy. Huge gap between SA's 4IR strategy and what commission recommends Huge gap between SA's 4IR strategy and what commission recommends How will the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution catapult South Africa? We find a huge gap between what we see on the ground and the recommendations of the commission. The much-anticipated final report and recommendations of the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution were officially gazetted and made available for public scrutiny in October 2020. In summary, the commissions recommendations were: Invest in human capital development; Establish an Artificial Intelligence Institute; Establish a platform for advanced manufacturing and new materials; Secure and avail data to enable innovation; Provide incentives for future industries, platforms and applications of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies; Build 4IR infrastructure; Review and amend (or create) policy and legislation; and Establish a 4IR Strategy Implementation Coordination Council in the presidency. Reading these proposals together with the far more detailed description of each in the final report, we ask the question: How will this catapult South Africa into the 4IR? We find a huge gap between what we see on the ground and the recommendations of the commission. What is it that we see on the ground? Let us look through one of many specific lenses. We have chosen to examine our criminal justice system. The Integrated Justice System Penuell Maduna was minister of justice in President Nelson Mandelas Cabinet between 1994 and 1998. In 1996, he presented his departments vision for an integrated E-Justice system at a local IT conference. It was the first time that some of us, who are now veterans of the South African IT industry, heard about the Integrated Justice System. Today, on the governments official website, the objectives of this system are described as follows: The Integrated Justice System aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire criminal justice process by increasing the probability of successful investigation, prosecution, punishment for priority crimes and, ultimately, rehabilitation of offenders. Further issues receiving specific attention include overcrowding in prisons and awaiting-trial prisoner problems, as well as bail, sentencing and plea bargaining. What should an integrated justice system in 2021 look like? Imagine the following hypothetical scenario: My car was stolen while I was visiting a friend in Norwood, Johannesburg. As soon as I noticed it was missing, I phoned the emergency call centre. I spoke to a chatbot, which captured the relevant information in less than a minute. A digital crime report was logged in a central cloud-based system and I received an SMS with my case number. I forwarded this to my insurance company. My licence plate number was uploaded on to the centralised stolen vehicle database and an alert was issued to hundreds of smart cameras in the area. Each camera is equipped with Licence Plate Recognition software. Within a few seconds, an operator at the Johannesburg central control centre was alerted to the fact that my stolen vehicle was parked outside a small industrial building in Jeppestown, east of the city centre. A live image was brought up on her screen showing two men standing next to the vehicle. She zoomed in on their faces and sent their images to the integrated facial recognition system. Within two minutes, she had information on one of the two men. He had a previous conviction in Durban for receiving stolen vehicles. The system had already automatically dispatched a police patrol car and connected the crew via a secure radio link to the control centre operator. Five minutes later, the patrol vehicle reached the building in Jeppestown. The control centre operator, still watching the scene live on her screen, directed them to a lane at the side of the building where they found a group of men beginning to strip down my vehicle for spare parts. Three men were arrested and two escaped through a back entrance. These two were identified via images received from the bodycams worn by the police officers. They were arrested later in the day. When the men appeared in court a week later, the prosecutor pulled up the digital docket on his laptop. He had video and stills images captured by security cameras and from the bodycams of the police officers. He also had full details of previous convictions of some of the accused. Within an hour all accused had been convicted and sentenced. The diagram in Figure 1 represents the technology and systems that would need to be in place to make the scenario set out here a reality. From this diagram one will see, at the lowest level, first responders, namely police officers and patrol vehicles, are equipped with mobile critical communications infrastructure. They have access to digital radio communication using the Tetra (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) standard, which provides highly secure two-way voice with GPS location and limited data communication independent of public mobile networks. Officers also wear bodycams that can be viewed live and vehicles are equipped with dashcams. Officers may also carry wearable Internet of Things-based sensors (for example, GPS). The onboard computer in the patrol vehicle has access to Licence Plate Recognition software and a variety of data sources on the cloud. At the next level is surveillance technology consisting of smart cameras and Internet of Things sensors. The smart cameras have built-in artificial intelligence (AI) capability, such as Licence Plate Recognition, and can access information via the cloud. They can also detect unusual behaviour, such as the same car passing several times, and will trigger an event that notifies the operations centre. At the highest level is the Intelligence Operations Centre. It is equipped with AI-based software systems and a sophisticated video management system. Personnel in the centre include dispatchers and commanders who can coordinate first responders and back-up teams, and detectives who coordinate collection of evidence. All of these systems, from the first responders on the ground to the Intelligence Operations Centre, require reliable, secure communications and high-capacity broadband connectivity. Anyone who has engaged with the South African criminal justice system will know that the description above remains a distant vision. Have you tried reporting a burglary or a stolen car at your local police station? And what if the burglar is apprehended? Have you sat in court months later ready to give evidence only to hear that either the docket or the accused is missing? In our current system, processes are largely paper-based and manual. Where digital systems are in place, they are outdated and non-integrated. In terms of technology used in crime-fighting, our police systems lie somewhere between the representation in Figure 2 and Figure 3. The scenario above and the representation in Figure 1 is, however, not fanciful and futuristic. Cities around the world implemented such systems several years ago and some are in the process of adding further levels of integration and intelligence. Using technologies such as AI, machine learning, Internet of Things, cloud computing, robotic process automation, drones and advanced image processing, coupled with the drawing in of data from multiple sources including cellphone networks and social media platforms, the fight against crime is reaching the highest level of sophistication. We would argue that the scenario we have presented here, together with its future possibilities, is what the 4IR would look like through our lens of the criminal justice system. We do acknowledge, however, that while our focus is on the advantages derived from the technology described, there is another side to the coin of increased surveillance and monitoring. The disadvantages of these technologies in terms of civil liberties and privacy might in some cases outweigh their advantages. The gap between where we are and the 4IR Why is South Africa lagging behind, and why is it that 25 years after Maduna announced the launch of the Integrated Justice System for South Africa, we still read about it as a statement of future intent on our governments website? There are several reasons for the lack of progress on the implementation of the Integrated Justice System. The vision doesnt go far enough. Government is still working painfully slowly to deliver a system offering the level of functionality that might have been seen as cutting edge in 2010. The vision, design and architecture of the system need to be constantly updated to reflect rapidly emerging technology trends. There is a reluctance on the part of staff in the relevant departments and their labour unions to adopt new technology. There is also a shortage in these departments of the relevant skills. At the heart of an integrated system such as the Integrated Justice System is the need for excellent connectivity at a low cost. Every point of contact in the system, from police stations to court rooms to prisons to patrol vehicles and individual officers, to cameras and central control rooms, must be equipped with a fast and reliable broadband connection. These links must be secure. Such connectivity does not exist, even in our major metropolitan areas. Many implementation projects have failed due to connectivity issues. The other need is for data management. The integration of the Integrated Justice System is its most important requirement. For this to be achieved, common data standards and management protocols must be defined and implemented. Tendering and procurement processes within government tend to slow down and block innovation and implementation. Red tape, inefficiency and sometimes corruption have bedevilled many critical government IT projects over the past 25 years. What does this say about the 4IR in SA and the recommendations of the presidential commission? We would argue that a successful transition to the 4IR would look like the vision we have painted for the Integrated Justice System. One could create similar scenarios for other clusters in our economy, such as education, health, logistics, and so on. In each case, we would expect to see seamless integration of processes supported by data, automation and advanced technologies such as AI. We do not believe that the recommendations submitted by the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution provide a road map for moving us from where we currently are (somewhere between Figure 2 and Figure 3) to where we want to be (Figure 1 and beyond). Let us very briefly consider each of the commissions eight recommendations in relation to the advanced Integrated Justice System outlined above: Invest in human capital development: while skills are a constraint in implementing the full Integrated Justice System, the reluctance of existing staff, supported by their unions and associations, to adopt new digital technology and accept reskilling is the bigger constraint; Establish an Artificial Intelligence Institute: the role of such an institute would be developing skills (see previous point) and new cutting-edge AI-based technology. As we have shown, existing technologies exist and while it would be important in the future to develop our own technological solutions, we have struggled to even adopt off-the-shelf AI technologies; Establish a platform for advanced manufacturing and new materials (this is not relevant to the Integrated Justice System scenario); Secure and avail data to enable innovation: availability, management and integration of data would move us closer to our 4IR goal; Provide incentives for future industries, platforms and applications of 4IR technologies: again, the problem is not innovation, but is rather implementation; Build 4IR infrastructure: Since this includes fast and affordable broadband connectivity and cloud infrastructure, this is an important and relevant recommendation; Review and amend (or create) policy and legislation: one of the constraints in the Integrated Justice System has to do with procurement and tendering. This is a relevant recommendation; and Establish a 4IR Strategy Implementation Coordination Council in the presidency: while this might help, its mandate and powers are unclear. Would this council, for example, be able to unblock obstacles that have made the implementation of the Integrated Justice System so difficult? We are not convinced. We believe that the presidential commission should have looked through specific lenses, as we have done in this article, and developed concrete recommendations on how to move rapidly to the 4IR scenarios, such as the one we have presented. Professor Barry Dwolatzky is Emeritus Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering. Mark Harris is CEO of Altron Nexus. This article was first published in Daily Maverick/Business Maverick. N orth Korea has shown off new submarine-launched ballistic missiles under development and other military hardware in a parade that underlined leader Kim Jong-un's defiant calls to expand the country's nuclear weapons programme. State media said Mr Kim took centre stage in Thursday night's parade celebrating a major ruling party meeting in which he vowed maximum efforts to bolster the nuclear and missile programme that threatens Asian rivals and the American homeland to counter what he described as US hostility. During an eight-day Workers' Party congress that ended on Tuesday, he also revealed plans to salvage the nation's economy, hit by US-led sanctions over his nuclear ambitions, pandemic-related border closures and natural disasters that wiped out crops. The economic setbacks have left Mr Kim with nothing to show for his ambitious diplomacy with Donald Trump, which was derailed over disagreements about sanctions relief in exchange for North Korean denuclearisation steps, and pushed Mr Kim to the toughest moment of his nine-year rule. North Korea's defence minister said in a speech the military would "thoroughly punish hostiles forces" if they threaten the North's safety / AP Mr Kim's comments are intended to pressure the incoming US government of Joe Biden, who has previously called the North Korean leader a "thug" and accused Mr Trump of chasing spectacle rather than meaningful curbs on the North's nuclear capabilities. The North Korean leader has not ruled out talks, but said the fate of bilateral relations depends on whether Washington abandons its hostile policy towards Pyongyang. North Korean state TV on Friday aired edited footage of the parade which showed thousands of civilians and troops roaring and fireworks exploding overhead as Mr Kim stepped out of a building and took his spot at a podium in Kim Il Sung Square, named after his grandfather and the country's founder. Thousands of civilians and troops roared and fireworks exploded as Mr Kim stepped out / KCNA VIA KNS/AFP via Getty Image Mr Kim, wearing a black fur hat and leather trenchcoat, waved and smiled widely as his troops chanted "Let's defend Kim Jong Un with our lives!" and "Protect with our lives the Workers' Party of Korea's Central Committee led by Great Comrade Kim Jong Un!" Reports and video from state media suggested he did not make a speech during the parade. His defence minister, Kim Jong Gwan, said in a speech that North Korea's military would "pre-emptively marshal our greatest might to thoroughly punish hostiles forces" if they threaten the North's safety. The parade came days before Joe Biden, who has previously called Mr Kim a thug, is inaugurated as US President / AP Military aircraft flew in formation across the dark sky, using what appeared to be flares to form the symbol of the Workers' Party - a hammer, brush and sickle. Flag-waving spectators, unmasked despite a fervent domestic campaign to fend off coronavirus, cheered as troops rolled out some of the country's most advanced weapons, including submarine-launched ballistic missiles described by the official Korean Central News Agency as the "world's most powerful weapon". The new type of submarine-launched missiles was larger than the ones North Korea previously tested. The North also displayed a variety of solid-fuel weapons designed to be fired from mobile land launchers, which potentially expand its capability to strike targets in South Korea and Japan, including US military bases. South Africa: PanSALB confirms CEO passing The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) has expressed sadness at the passing of its Chief Executive (CEO), Dr Bongumenzi Emmanuel Mpungose. Dr Mpungose passed away on Thursday morning. The CEO had joined PanSALB in April last year and previously held the position of Section Manager for Language Services & Hansard Publishing at the Parliament of South Africa. He was a renowned linguistic scholar and leader with extensive knowledge and experience. He served in various leadership positions throughout his career and worked at the KZN Department of Arts & Culture. He held a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Public Administration with his research project titled; Determinants of Public Policy Implementation in a Decentralised State The Case of Language Policy in KZN. We have lost a great leader in Dr Mpungose who was a passionate advocate for linguistic human rights and a champion for a multilingual society. He had envisaged many visionary changes to uplift the institution and his untimely passing has deprived us of his contribution. The Board, Management and Staff of PanSALB extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends, said acting board chairperson, Preetha Dabideen. She said the country has lost a great leader and true believer in the founding principles of the country's constitution of freedom and linguistic justice. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-01-15. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The has blacklisted Chinese smartphone maker Corp. and China's third-largest national oil company for alleged military links, heaping pressure on Beijing in President Donald Trumps last week in office. The Department of Defense added nine to its list of Chinese with military links, including and state-owned plane manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (Comac). US investors will have to divest their stakes in Chinese on the military list by November this year, according to an executive order signed by Trump in November. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Xiaomi Corp. overtook Apple Inc. as the worlds No. 3 smartphone maker by sales in the third quarter of 2020, according to data by Gartner. Xiaomis market share has grown as Huaweis sales have suffered after it was blacklisted by the U.S. and its smartphones were cut off from essential services from Google. Separately, the Commerce Department put China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) on the entity list, an economic blacklist that forbids U.S. firms from exporting or transferring technology with the companies named unless permission has been obtained from the U.S. government. The move comes after about 60 Chinese companies were added to the list in December, including drone maker DJI and semiconductor firm SMIC. CNOOC has been involved in offshore drilling in the disputed waters South China Sea, where Beijing has overlapping territorial claims with other countries including Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan, and Malaysia. China's reckless and belligerent actions in the South China Sea and its aggressive push to acquire sensitive intellectual property and technology for its militarisation efforts are a threat to U.S. national security and the security of the community, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. CNOOC acts as a bully for the Peoples Liberation Army to intimidate Chinas neighbors, and the Chinese military continues to benefit from government civil-military fusion policies for malign purposes, Ross said. CNOOC did not immediately comment. Chinese state-owned company Skyrizon was also added to the economic blacklist, for its push to acquire and indigenise foreign military technologies, Ross said. Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, founded by tycoon Wang Jing, drew U.S. criticism for an attempt to take over Ukraines military aircraft engine maker Motor Sich in 2017. The concern was that advanced aerospace technology would end up being used for military purposes. The Victorian government is preparing a February 15 "V-Day" launch for the most potent COVID vaccine, with its newly formed local public health units to play a critical role in delivering the life-saving jab. The DHHS plan is for phase one of the roll-out to deliver 15,000 doses a week of the Pfizer vaccine, with hospital staff and residents, people working in aged care facilities, quarantine and border workers among those first in line for inoculation. Auslag Westling, a resident at a Swedish nursing home, gets the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine on January 7. Credit:Getty Images Phase two of the roll-out, slated to begin in mid-March, will administer the less effective but more readily available AstraZeneca to the broader population. Victorias provisional time frame and dose targets for the Pfizer vaccine, contained in an internal briefing to a major hospital group obtained by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, is not confirmed by the Federal government, which is yet to set a start date for COVID vaccinations. A dog that attacked a 3-year-old girl on Saturday at a Spring restaurant has been impounded in Montgomery County, officials said. The dog, a pitbull named Kingston, was seized from its owner and taken to the Montgomery County Animal Shelter, according to county officials. County attorney B.D. Griffin said in a Friday statement that he is taking legal action against the owner of the dog, whose name was not released. A hearing will be held next Friday during which the county will determine whether the dog will be returned to the owner or kept in county custody and euthanized, Griffin said. Either party will be able to appeal the decision. The dog has already been deemed dangerous because it caused serious bodily injury, Griffin said. The girl was bitten in the face by the dog, which was wearing a service animal vest, when she walked into the Loose Caboose restaurant in Old Town Spring with her family on Saturday, said mother Cleveratta Gordon-Waldroup. Hold your little ones close no matter what.... Update: its NOT the WORST POSSIBLE outcome and THAT is what we are... Posted by Cece Gordon Bertrand Waldroup on Saturday, January 9, 2021 Waldroup said she rushed her daughter to the bathroom to stanch the bleeding while the woman ran out of the restaurant with her dog. Her husband, meanwhile, ran after the dog owner. Video from a witness shows the woman climbing into the passenger seat of a gold-colored sedan and driving away with an unidentified man while Waldroup's husband yells at them. I was taking care of Ronin and he was begging them to stop they never stopped, Waldroup said in a Facebook video in which she appears visibly upset. The lady kept yelling back at my husband that it was our daughters fault ... It is not a 3-year-olds fault for poor training of your dog. In an updated posted Saturday night, Waldroup shared photos of her daughter laying in a hospital bed with her right cheek swollen, bruised, bloody and stitched. It was unclear whether the dog was in fact a service animal, which is defined as a dog trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act does not require service animals to be registered, certified or professionally trained a person with a disability has the right to train the dog themselves. Under Texas law, a person who falsely represents their pet as a specially trained service animal is guilty of a misdemeanor. The crime is punishable by a fine less than $300 or 30 hours of community service, according to the penal code. Justice of the Peace Matt Beasley issued a warrant for the seizure of the dog, whose owner lives in Montgomery County. When animal control officials arrived, the owner surrendered the dog, according to the county. We believe the dog caused serious injuries to this child and is a dangerous and vicious animal," Griffin said. "Were seeking to ensure that this dog is unable to injure anyone in the future." PFAS investigation in Pellston completes second round of samples Officials discovered polyfluoroalkyls in Pellston residential water sources in late 2019. The airport is believed to be the source of the substances. Donald Morrison is an Eagle columnist and co-chairman of the advisory board. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of The Berkshire Eagle. Prime Minister on Friday greeted soldiers on and lauded the Indian Army, saying it is strong, brave and resolute. In a tweet, he said Indian soldiers have made the country proud as he wished them on behalf of the people. is celebrated to mark the first Indian general taking over the command of the from a British officer in 1949. (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 child pornography investigation that began in November ended Thursday with an arrest in Decatur. Xaiver Terrell Reeves, 23, was arrested and charged with possession of obscene matter taken to the Morgan County Jail with a $2,500 bond, according to the Decatur Police Department. On Nov. 9, the police department said it received information that a Decatur resident was in possession of child pornography. The department's Internet Crimes Against Children Unit began an investigation and developed Reeves as a suspect. The investigation continues and more charges may be filed. The department provided this information on the charge Reeves faces: Alabama Criminal Code, Section 13A-12-192 Possession and possession with intent to disseminate obscene matter containing visual depiction of persons under 17 years of age involved in obscene acts. (a) Any person who knowingly possesses with intent to disseminate any obscene matter that contains a visual depiction of a person under the age of 17 years engaged in any act of sado-masochistic abuse, sexual intercourse, sexual excitement, masturbation, breast nudity, genital nudity, or other sexual conduct shall be guilty of a Class B felony. Any transfer of the visual depiction from any electronic device to any other device, program, application, or any other place with storage capability which can be made available or is accessible by other users, is prima facie evidence of possession with intent to disseminate. (b) Any person who knowingly possesses any obscene matter that contains a visual depiction of a person under the age of 17 years engaged in any act of sado-masochistic abuse, sexual intercourse, sexual excitement, masturbation, breast nudity, genital nudity, or other sexual conduct shall be guilty of a Class C felony Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 01:56:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GENEVA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) - A United Nations (UN) spokesperson said here on Friday that significant progress had been made in the ongoing talks on the selection mechanism of a unified executive authority in Libya. Jean Al Alam, spokesperson for the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), told a press briefing that the UN hopes that the delegates will shortly be able to narrow down their differences and reach a consensus on the contentious issues being discussed. The 18 members of the newly established Libyan Political Dialogue Forum's Advisory Committee are meeting at the UN Geneva Office between Jan. 13 and Jan. 16. According to the spokesperson, the committee's main mission here is to discuss outstanding issues related to the selection of a unified executive and to put forward concrete and practical recommendations. At Friday's press briefing, the spokesperson also told reporters that very encouraging progress had been made in Libya recently, including exchanges of detainees as part of wider confidence-building measures, the resumption of flights to all parts of Libya, and the full resumption of oil production and export. Libya's eastern-based army and its UN-backed government fought for more than a year in and around the capital Tripoli before the conflicts ended last June. On Oct. 23, 2020, Libyan delegations signed a UN-sponsored permanent ceasefire agreement in Geneva. At a meeting held last November, 75 representatives of the social and political spectrum of the Libyan society agreed to hold general elections in the country on Dec. 24, 2021. Enditem Saad Admani is a Muslim who has been praying in a building on Branford Place in Newark for seven years and considers the location a prominent mosque that shouldnt be sold or relocated two blocks away. A mosque is sacred land, said Admani, who has been rallying against the sale with other worshippers outside the Branford Place location. The Islamic Society of Essex County, a nonprofit, owned the building at 20-24 Branford Place for decades, but sold it last year and moved to a facility it recently bought about a five-minute walk away at 9 Hill Street. But two worshippers - Khalilah Shabazz and Gloria Lynch - filed suit against the Islamic Society of Essex County in November to block the sale. An attorney for the Islamic Society of Essex County said in oral arguments that the Branford Place location shouldnt be considered a mosque in the traditional sense because it lacked minarets and other features associated with a mosque. The judge on the case said the building should be considered an office building, albeit one where people pray. The verbiage has upset some who have routinely prayed there, including Admani. Thats ridiculous, Admani said. I know its a mosque. An online petition against the buildings sale has gained more than 3,000 signatures. Protesters say the building was donated in 1982 by Ali Habeeb Maghrabi to the Muslim community, and about two floors are devoted to praying and educational services. Shabazz and Lynchs suit claimed the building couldnt be sold due to rules that were laid out in the nonprofits bylaws, which is disputed by the society. An attorney for the two women did not respond to a request for comment. The Islamic Society of Essex County purchased a new building on Hill Street in Newark that features a first-floor prayer hall and a cafeteria in the basement that could be used to host gatherings or feed those in need, the nonprofit said.Rebecca Panico | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com The Islamic Society of Essex County Board of Trustees put out a request to sell the building and voted last year to approve the sale to Paramount Assets, a prominent developer in Newark that has bought other buildings like the Little Theatre in the citys downtown. Adamni said trustees gave little notice to those who pray at the Branford Place location and did not seek their input about the sale. Islamic Society of Essex County Vice Chairman Omar Riad said the chairman would lead Friday Jomaa prayers once a month and discuss important issues with worshippers. Adamni, however, said the developer was within their rights to purchase a building that was ultimately put up for sale, but hopes they will work to preserve the space as a mosque. We would like the developer - if he wants to be a responsible developer and if he really cares about Newark - we think the responsible thing for Newark would be for him to work with the community in preserving the place as a mosque. A spokeswoman for Paramount Assets said there were no plans yet for the building. The society said the 11-story, century-old building on Branford Place was in need of millions of dollars of repairs that it could not afford to pay. The roof was leaking, the heating system was severely damaged, the windows are old and in need of replacement, half of the elevators were out of use and in need of repair and more, said Riad in an email. The Branford building is almost 100 years old, and ISEC simply could not afford the maintenance, repairs or daily costs for continuing its services at the Branford building. The Branford Place building had commercial tenants on other floors that generated modest rental income to the nonprofit that did not cover utility bills and maintenance needed for the building, said Riad. Portions of the building could not be rented out due to the poor condition, he added. The new space on Hill Street will allow the Islamic Society of Essex County to use donations it receives towards educational and religious services instead of repairs on an aging building, the nonprofit argued in court. The 9-story space features a first-floor prayer hall with a basement that has a cafeteria that can be used to feed those in need or host gatherings. The Islamic Society of Essex County is seeking tenants for the Hill Street building as well. The lawsuit that was filed against the Islamic Society of Essex County is still ongoing in court. The Hill Street location hosted its first prayer earlier this month, but Admani said he doesnt plan to pray at the new location and will continue to protest until the sale is reversed. All the protesters, theyve made it clear that theyre never going to pray behind these people, he said. These people, theyve lied in court. Theyd rather pray behind someone with different ideology. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Rebecca Panico may be reached at rpanico@njadvancemedia.com. New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has called a meeting of all state home ministers on July 3 to assess the internal security situation in the country. Home ministers of all states are expected to join the conference that would be chaired by Rajnath Singh. Prevailing situation in Jammu and Kashmir, cross-border terrorism, violence perpetrated by the Maoists and other issues will be discussed at the day-long meeting to be held in New Delhi, a home ministry official said. This would be the first such conference during the NDA government where all home ministers would discuss the security situation in the country. During the previous UPA regime, the home ministry used to call a conference of chief ministers every year to discuss the countrys internal security. However, no such conference was held in last three years. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich exits the Learning from the Righteous mobile studio in London. (JTA) - As one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, Eva Clarke has spent years telling the story of how her mother, weighing just 68 pounds, gave birth to her inside a concentration camp just a month before it was liberated. But this past spring, as COVID-19 shut down public life, Clarke's visits to schools and community centers in the United Kingdom "came to a screeching halt, indefinitely," she recalls. Earlier this month, she got a fresh audience when an RV pulled into her driveway in Cambridge. Inside was Antony Lishak and a retrofitted interior that would allow her to tell her story sa... A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. Credit: CC0 Public Domain A team of neuroscientists and engineers at McMaster University has created a nasal spray to deliver antipsychotic medication directly to the brain instead of having it pass through the body. The leap in efficiency means patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other conditions could see their doses of powerful antipsychotic medications cut by as much as three quarters, which is expected to spare them from sometimes-debilitating side effects while also significantly reducing the frequency of required treatment. The new method delivers medication in a spray that reaches the brain directly through the nose, offering patients greater ease of use and the promise of improved quality of life, including more reliable, effective treatment. Ram Mishra, a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Neurosciences and Behaviour and Co-Director of McMaster's School of Biomedical Engineering, and Todd Hoare, a Canada Research Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering, describe their research in a newly published article in the Journal of Controlled Release. They and their co-authors Michael Majcher, Ali Babar, Andrew Lofts, and Fahed Abuhijleh have proven the concept of their new delivery mechanism in rats, using PAOPA, a drug commonly prescribed to treat schizophrenia. A problem for patients using antipsychotic medications, Mishra explains, is that taking them orally or by injection means the drugs must pass through the body before they reach the brain through the blood. To be sure enough oral or injected medication reaches the brain, a patient must take much more than the brain will ultimately receive, leading to sometimes serious adverse side effects, including weight gain, diabetes, drug-induced movement disorders and organ damage over the long term. When delivered through the nose, the spray medication can enter the brain directly via the olfactory nerve. "The trick here is to administer the drug through the back door to the brain, since the front door is sealed so tightly," Mishra says. "This way we can bypass the blood-brain barrier. By delivering the drug directly to the target, we can avoid side effects below the brain." Mishra and collaborator Rodney Johnson of the University of Minnesota had previously created a water-soluble form of the medication, which was used in the current research. The new form they created was easier to manipulate, but they still lacked an effective vehicle for getting it to the brain. A particular issue was that drugs delivered via the nose are typically cleared from the body quickly, requiring frequent re-administration. Hoare, in the meantime, had been working with an industrial partner to develop the use microscopic nanoparticles of corn starch for agricultural applications. The two scientists, who work across campus from one another, came together after researchers in their labs met at an internal McMaster conference. Two of the researchers, Babar and Lofts, worked on the project in both labs. The engineering team was able to bind the drug to the corn starch nanoparticles that, when sprayed together with a natural polymer derived from crabs, could penetrate deep into the nasal cavity and form a thin gel in the mucus lining, slowly releasing a controlled dose of the drug, which remains effective for treating schizophrenia symptoms over three days. "The cornstarch nanoparticles we were using for an industrial application were the perfect vehicle," Hoare says. "They are naturally derived, they break down over time into simple sugars, and we need to do very little chemistry on them to make this technology work, so they are great candidates for biological uses like this." The gradual release means patients would only need to take their medication every few days instead of every day or, in some cases, every few hours. Explore further Bringing drugs to the brain with nanoparticles to treat neurodegenerative diseases Manitoba issued invitations to international student graduates and skilled workers both in the province and abroad. Manitoba invites 272 in first PNP draw of the year Manitoba invites 272 in first PNP draw of the year Manitoba issued invitations to international student graduates and skilled workers both in the province and abroad. Manitoba invites 272 in first PNP draw of the year Manitoba issued invitations to international student graduates and skilled workers both in the province and abroad. Manitoba invites 272 in first PNP draw of the year Manitoba issued invitations to international student graduates and skilled workers both in the province and abroad. Alexandra Miekus Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Manitoba invited 272 immigration candidates to apply for a provincial nomination on January 14, 2021. The Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP) invited skilled workers and international graduates to apply to one of the following three immigration streams: Find out if youre eligible for Canadian immigration Here are the number of invitations, also known as Letters of Advice to Apply (LAAs), along with their required minimum Expression of Interest (EOI) scores: Skilled Workers in Manitoba 236 LAAs with a score of at least 461; Skilled Workers Overseas 7 LAAs with a score of at least 722; and International Education Stream 29 LAAs, no EOI score requirement. Out of the 272 LAAs issued, 18 went to Express Entry candidates. The MPNP says they will refuse any of these candidates who do not have a valid Express Entry ID, a job seeker validation code, and verifiable experience in an occupation on Manitobas In-demand Occupations list. The MPNP only considered Skilled Worker Overseas candidates in this draw if they were directly invited under a strategic recruitment initiative. If candidates scored higher than the minimum ranking but did not receive an LAA, it could be because: their third-party language test did not have a valid test number; their language test is no longer valid; or the candidate was invited under a strategic recruitment initiative, but they did not send a valid invitation number. The MPNP said that candidates who are in one of these scenarios can update their EOI profile with the correct information in order to be considered for the next draw. Candidates who are working in a regulated occupation have been invited in this draw. The MPNP says that they may refuse candidates who are not actually working in a regulated occupation, or who do not provide proof of having completed all licensing steps to be employed in Manitoba. Those who are in this situation have the option to decline their LAA. About Manitoba immigration streams The Skilled Workers Overseas Category and Skilled Workers in Manitoba streams allow the province to nominate skilled workers who can support Manitobas labour market needs. People who are applying from overseas need to have an established connection to Manitoba. This can be demonstrated through close family ties or friends in the province, previous experience in Manitoba, or an invitation under one of the MPNPs Strategic Recruitment Initiatives. Candidates do not need to be physically present in Manitoba at the time of the application to be eligible. Successful candidates in the Skilled Workers in Manitoba category must meet certain criteria, such as having a full-time permanent job offer from an employer in Manitoba. International students that graduated from an educational institution in Manitoba may receive an LAA under the International Education Stream if they have in-demand skills. Express Entry Manitoba The first step to receiving a provincial nomination through Manitobas enhanced PNP is to submit their profile into the federal governments Express Entry system. Candidates who are eligible for Express Entry are ranked based on a Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score that considers human capital factors such as age, work experience, education, and language ability. The highest-scoring candidates are invited to apply for Canadian permanent residence through regular draws from the Express Entry pool. Those who receive a provincial nomination are awarded an additional 600 CRS points and are effectively guaranteed an Invitation to Apply (ITA) from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Express Entry candidates who received a provincial nomination from Manitoba in this draw declared a valid Express Entry ID and provided a job seeker validation code. New department to help boost immigration to Manitoba On January 5, 2021, Manitoba announced it was creating a new department of advanced education, skills and immigration as part of the provinces post-COVID-19 recovery plan. Our pandemic recovery plan is focused on getting people back to work and ensuring new job opportunities for young Manitobans and new immigrants we welcome into our province, according to a news release. This new department will focus on aligning advanced educational institutions with the needs of the labour markets of today and tomorrow by giving young Manitobans the skills they need to succeed and new immigrants the job opportunities our province can offer. Find out if youre eligible for Canadian immigration CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options. And many of the women in our caucus asked me to step up. I looked them in the eye and answered their questions. And they believe in me because theyve worked with me and they know me, they trust me. And they asked me to step up in this moment. Were going to work together and were not going to disappoint the people of the state of Illinois. We just have to stay away from those distractions. RALEIGH, N.C., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, North Carolina families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. North Carolina families, schools, and organizations are hosting 1,352 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among the most exciting of these will be the announcement of the winners of a statewide K-12 student art contest, who will be featured on social media throughout the Week. Additionally, North Carolina charter school families will share videos about their choice during the Week using the Storyvine app. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In North Carolina, the Wells Fargo Duke Energy Center in Charlotte will light up in red and yellow from 5 a.m. to sunrise and from sunset to 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 24. The Kimpton Cardinal Hotel in Winston-Salem will light up in red from sunset to sunrise on Jan. 24. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the North Carolina county of Alexander and the cities of Creedmoor, Greenville, Kernersville, Fuquay-Varina, Franklinville, and Sunset Beach. "North Carolina educators and families are innovators," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "They have created a variety of educational options to suit different families' needs. This National School Choice Week, we celebrate those options and encourage communities to do even more to increase options, so that every family can reap the benefit of an inspiring education." In North Carolina, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. North Carolina students with disabilities, or whose families meet certain income criteria, can qualify for state-run scholarships. North Carolina families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to North Carolina school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/north-carolina. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said around 200,000 personnel are needed to vaccinate 24.6 million Filipinos. During a Senate hearing on Friday, Duque said 35,240 vaccinators who will include doctors, nurses, or rural health unit midwives, are needed to be able to vaccinate around 24.6 million individuals. An additional 176,200 personnel are also needed to handle registration, education, and screening. This may include barangay healthcare workers, allied health professionals, teachers, and social workers. The secretary added that vaccination will be done in 4,504 sites across the country, and it would take 18 days to complete this. Duque said the COVID-19 vaccination plan will involve 617,239 healthcare workers who will be deployed for its implementation. They will include medical workers, contact tracers, barangay healthcare workers, and social workers. Senator Joel Villanueva expressed concern that the number of vaccinators may not be enough to reach the government's target of vaccinating 70 million Filipinos. But Duque said: "Ito naman po ay [This will be] staggered so we will be able to program in such a way... Kakayanin po. [We can do it]." Meanwhile, Senator Richard Gordon noted that the country still has low vaccination performance. Gordon said he plans to file a bill that would allow the DOH to train personnel on how to administer vaccines even without a health emergency. The training may include those who have no medical background, he added. The government targets to vaccinate 50 to 70 million Filipinos this year. The Food and Drug Administration has already granted Emergency Use Authorization to Pfizer-BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccine, while the applications of other drugmakers like AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, and Sinovac are still pending. Weather Alert ...FROST ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 8 AM EDT FRIDAY... * WHAT...Temperatures in the lower to mid 30s will result in frost formation. * WHERE...All of northern New York, and much of central and northern Vermont away from Lake Champlain. * WHEN...From 1 AM to 8 AM EDT Friday. * IMPACTS...Frost could kill sensitive outdoor vegetation if left uncovered. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Take steps now to protect tender plants from the cold. && EV While were still trying to imagine the level of software prowess needed for the programming of 303 unmanned drones to display the new Kia logo in a record-breaking aerial firework display, the company is already focusing on more serious matters.This is because the newly renamed Kia Corporation has shared - as promised - the first details about its future strategy through an online event. According to their new Movement that inspires slogan, the South Korean automaker is almost ready to go beyond vehicle manufacturing.More than 75 years since creating its first vehicles (bikes, motorcycles, and trucks), the company wants to start developing a new range of products and services that will meet growing demand from customers worldwide for flexible, customizable, individualized mobility solutions, enabled by data and new technologies.Kia, according to its long-term Plan S business strategy, will focus on electric vehicles, MaaS (mobility-as-a-service) solutions and services, as well as PBVs (purpose-built vehicles). The latter will be dedicated to corporate customers, with Kia aiming to become a provider of modular skateboard platforms that will be tailored according to demand from creating car-sharing vehicles to logistics and delivery series.Of course, the passenger car market wont be forgotten, and Kia has prepared a host of shadowy teasers. The one depicting a family of nine vehicles most likely includes a host of PBVs, but theres also room for the increasingly popular battery electric vehicles.As such, were also treated to the announcement of the upcoming arrival of an entire range of passenger vehicles, SUVs and MPVs across several segments, each based on the Hyundai Motor Groups new Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP).The first will be a crossover(we tried to play with the pictures in the gallery to reveal a bit more) thats scheduled for reveal during this very quarter, which is also based on the E-GMP architecture. Thanks to the newly developed and dedicated technology, the CUV is expected to arrive with a range of more than 500 kilometers (311 miles) and feature a 20-minute fast charging time. MEXICO CITY - President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lashed out at the Drug Enforcement Administration on Friday, accusing it of fabricating a narcotics case against Mexico's former defense secretary, in comments that underscored the fragile state of relations with Washington as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office. "Why did they do this investigation this way? Without substance, without evidence?" the president demanded at his daily news conference, referring to the DEA and its case against retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos was arrested Oct. 15 at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of working with the H-2 cartel to ship thousands of kilos of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana to the United States. Facing the fury of the Mexican government, the U.S. Justice Department dropped the case the following month, and sent Cienfuegos back home for investigation. On Thursday, the Mexican Attorney General's Office announced that it had found no grounds to charge the general, who served as defense minister from 2012 to 2018. Cienfuegos was the most senior Mexican official ever detained in the United States on drug charges. The arrest enraged the military, which has become a pillar of Lopez Obrador's government - responsible for the anti-drug fight and a plethora of other activities, including building airports and railways. The Mexican government responded by rushing a law through Congress in December that limits the DEA's ability to work in Mexico. Lopez Obrador said Friday that he would make public the hundreds of pages of evidence the Justice Department sent to Mexico - even though it might anger the U.S. government. That mainly consists of intercepted BlackBerry messages, in which a mysterious figure known as "the Godfather" communicates with suspected traffickers. U.S. prosecutors had said Cienfuegos was the shadowy individual, a charge the former minister has denied. Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau explained the U.S. decision to drop charges against Cienfuegos by telling Mexican journalists this week that U.S. prosecutors "don't necessarily understand all the repercussions of their decisions" when they charge a foreign dignitary, according to media reports. Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York have insisted that their case was strong. Mexican officials have argued otherwise. The exoneration of Cienfuegos unleashed stinging criticism from Mexican analysts, who accused Lopez Obrador of backpedaling on his campaign promises to attack corruption and impunity. The president denied that and sought to blame the episode on the DEA, hinting at conspiracy theories that the agency had a vendetta against Mexico's military. "We believe that impunity must end, and of course corruption, but also that there can't be reprisals, vengeance, and you can't invent crimes," Lopez Obrador said. He accused the DEA of having "little professionalism" and torpedoing the relationship between his government and the Trump administration. The Justice Department, asked for reaction, said: "The United States reserves the right to recommence its prosecution of Cienfuegos if the Government of Mexico fails to do so." Analysts said Lopez Obrador's comments were a message to Biden after an arrest that stunned senior Mexican officials and prompted concerns that they, too, were being surveilled by U.S. agents. The president is asking Biden to "improve coordination and communication between the two countries in security," said Gustavo Mohar, a former top intelligence official. Another former senior intelligence official, Guillermo Valdes Castellanos, said Lopez Obrador's statements amounted to "a very complicated signal" to Biden. "We are still in a dynamic of distancing and conflict and not of reconstruction" of the relationship, he said. "Hopefully Biden's people have the diplomatic skills to convince the Mexican government that it's important to cooperate." Mexico is a crucial player in the anti-narcotics effort; it's the top source of heroin and methamphetamines reaching the United States, as well as a major corridor for cocaine and fentanyl. Lopez Obrador, a longtime leftist who took office in 2018, has been openly skeptical of the "war on drugs," but his government had maintained anti-narcotics efforts with Washington and extradited dozens of alleged traffickers. The Cienfuegos case, however, has put a chill on cooperation. Carl Pike, a former DEA agent who worked on Mexico issues for years, said criminals would be the beneficiaries. "The biggest threat the cartels had, the biggest thing working against them, was the relationship the U.S. and Mexico had," he said. The Mexican Attorney General's Office said in a statement that it concluded that Cienfuegos "never had any meeting" or contact with the H-2 cartel, and "never gave any order to help the crime group." There were also no signs that he had illegal earnings, the office said. - - - The Washington Post's Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report. Last time it snowed in Kansas City two homeless men died because they didn't have any place to go. Now . . . TOUGH BUT TYPICAL KANSAS CITY WINTER WEATHER THREATENS TO EXPOSE MORE 12TH & OAK NEGLIGENCE!!! By now we should be familiar with the routine . . . Politicos cynically align themselves with front line public works employees in order to deflect criticism about mismanagement. In the meantime . . . LET'S NOT FORGET THAT WARMER TEMPERATURES & NOT SNOWPLOWS CLEAR MOST KANSAS CITY STREETS!!! Don't forget that 2020 was the hottest year on record yet this town was nearly at a standstill over less than five inches of snow. But it's not all about amateurish city planning . . . Locals were forced to confront their conscience when two men died during the last cold spell . . . Sadly, not much has changed except for an emergency measure to make room for a handful of more beds for the less fortunate. And so, the deluge has begun and what we've seen so far is that our political leadership is far more adept at manipulating social media than getting streets plowed. Check the links . . . KMBC: Strong winds blowing snow will grow stronger this morning KSHB: Winter weather could wreak havoc Friday in Kansas City Fox4: KC leaders working with nonprofit to provide temporary housing for homeless during winter Action News: KCMO partners with Hope Faith to provide emergency shelter at hotel Channel 9: Closings, delays reported as blowing snow grows stronger across the metro Channel 41: Sudden snow, graupel bursts pop up in Kansas City area WDAF: Blizzard warning, winter weather advisories for Friday snow and wind in Kansas City, NW Missouri Developing . . . Galveston, TX (77553) Today Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 76F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 76F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Over 2,300 people in UK infected with Covid-19 strain found in India; How worrying is the variant? Explained: What is the Status of Avian Influenza in India India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Jan 15: On 14th January, 2021 additional cases of avian influenza among crows have been confirmed in Dangs district of Gujarat. After successfully finishing the culling operations, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have completed sanitisation activities. In Haryana, samples from four poultry farms have been confirmed to be positive for avian influenza (H5N8). The farms are: Maharaja poultry farm in Khatauli; Tara poultry farm, Batour and Singla poultry farm in Mauli village of Panchkula district of Haryana. The central teams formed for monitoring the situation in the affected areas of the country are visiting the affected sites and conducting epistemological studies. The Department requested Ministry of Civil Aviation GOI to allow uninterrupted transportation of samples for expeditious testing of Avian Influenza in designated laboratories. Bird flu confirmed in 9 states: Samples from Delhi, Maharasthra test positive for avian flu In the light of the findings that many states were banning supply of poultry and poultry products from other states, it was suggested to review such policy as this would add to the negative impact on the poultry industry. Further, there is no scientific report available that infection of AI viruses spread through processed products. Consumption of well-cooked chicken and eggs does not pose any risk to humans. In view of the reports received from the designated laboratory that samples of commercial poultry from Ghazipur Mandi, Delhi confirmed that these were negative for AI, FAHD Minister, Giriraj Singh emphasized on removing the ban on sale of poultry and poultry products in a virtual meeting today along with the Deputy CM Manish Sisodia and Mayors of MCD Delhi. The Government of NCT of Delhi revoked the aforementioned ban with immediate effect. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Following the advisories of the department, states are undertaking awareness generation activities through newspaper advertisements, social media platforms etc. Also, constant efforts to generate awareness about Avian Influenza and how to deal with the situation is being shared among the general public through various media platforms including social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook handles. The family of an unarmed black man shot dead by a white cop while he was suffering a mental health crisis have released doorbell footage of the killing as they call for the officer to be arrested and bodycam footage to be handed over. Patrick Warren Sr., 52, died Sunday after allegedly being shot three times in the chest by Killeen Police Officer Reynaldo Contreras outside his home in the 1600 block of Carrollton Avenue in Killeen, Texas. His devastated family said they had requested help from a mental health professional for the husband and father-of-three but that the officer turned up to their home instead. Doorbell footage released by the family's attorney Wednesday shows Warren Sr. coming out of his front door with his arms in the air in front of him. Separate footage shows the 52-year-old getting up from his knees on the front lawn before three shots ring out and a male's voice screams at the cop: 'I told you, don't use a gun'. A protest was held in the area Thursday demanding justice for Warren Sr. as his death marks just the latest in a long line of police killings of black people across America. The family of an unarmed black man shot dead by a white cop while he was suffering a mental health crisis have released doorbell footage of the killing as they call for the officer to be arrested and bodycam footage to be handed over The doorbell footage begins with Contreras arriving at the door to the family home around 5:30 p.m. Sunday evening and ringing the doorbell. Voices are heard inside saying 'come in' to which the officer replies: 'Is the door open?' 'Yes it's open,' a voice replies. Contreras opens the door and steps in while saying 'hello'. Voices are heard inside off-camera but it is not clear what they are saying. 'I will walk back out,' a voice, thought to be Contreras is heard at one point, before he is seen coming out the front door, shutting it behind him and walking away from the house. The footage, which has been edited, then cuts to Contreras standing just on-camera on the front lawn to the left of the door with a beam of white light pointing in the direction of Warren Sr. who is walking out the front door. 'Let me see your hands,' Contreras is heard saying. Warren Sr. has his hands and arms in the air in front of him. He moves his arms in a circling motion to his side and walks toward the officer. Inaudible shouting is heard as Contreras backs away and is no longer on camera - blocked by the side of the house. Warren Sr. continues to hold his hands in the air as he walks slowly in the officer's direction. At this point, a woman appears in the doorway and looks at what is happening. Patrick Warren Sr., 52, (pictured) died Sunday after allegedly being shot three times in the chest by Killeen Police Officer Reynaldo Contreras outside his home in the 1600 block of Carrollton Avenue in Killeen, Texas His devastated family said they had requested help from a mental health professional for the husband and father-of-three but that the officer turned up to their home instead A popping noise is heard at the same moment that Warren Sr. is no longer visible. The woman runs back to the door before leaning out and shouting: 'hey.' The video then cuts to separate footage, which appears to have been recorded on a smartphone. Warren Sr. is seen on his knees on the grass before he clambers to his feet. A male voice, presumably his son, is heard shouting: 'Hey, hey dad. Sit down!' The voice repeatedly shouts 'sit down' and a woman is heard screaming as Warren Sr. walks off camera and is no longer visible. Suddenly, three gunshots are heard. Several people are heard screaming and shouting: 'No, don't shoot him!' The male voice thought to be Warren Sr's son is heard shouting: 'No I told you, don't use a gun.' 'I told you, I told you,' he repeats multiple times after seeing Warren Sr. gunned down. Warren Sr. was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. The doorbell footage begins with Contreras arriving at the door to the family home around 5:30 p.m. Sunday evening and ringing the doorbell. Contreras leaves before returning again The footage cuts to Contreras standing just on-camera on the front lawn to the left of the door with a beam of white light pointing in the direction of Warren Sr. who is walking out the front door. Warren Sr. has his hands and arms in the air in front of him A woman appears in the doorway and looks at what is happening. A popping noise is heard at the same moment that Warren Sr. is no longer visible Patrick Warren Jr., the victim's son, said the family had requested the help of a mental health officer and were surprised when the cop turned up. They said they had also called for help the day before and - as requested - a mental health professional arrived at their home. The professional managed to calm Warren Sr. down and took him to Advent Medical for treatment. He then returned home but continued to suffer mental health issues the next day, his family said. Warren Jr. told CBS Local the family asked Contrera to leave their home because he was 'hostile' toward them. Contrera returned and knocked on the door again just moments later, he said. He said his father answered the door and stepped out with his hands in the air. At this point, he said he noticed the red beam of a taser shining on the door. 'The only reason we got up and walked to the door was because we saw an infrared beam from a taser on the door which concerned us. We heard a pop,' he told the outlet. 'We got up. We ran to the door. By the time we made it outside, my father was on the ground.' Contreras, a five-year veteran of the force, was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. Lee Merritt, the attorney for Warren Sr.'s family and the person who released the footage, is calling for Contrera to be arrested and charged with Warren murder. '#PatrickWarrenSr was murdered by @KilleenPD. He was on his own property. He was unarmed,' tweeted Merritt Wednesday. 'He was suffering a mental health crisis and simply needed help. Instead he was shot three times in his chest and tased. We demand the immediate arrest of this officer.' The video then cuts to separate footage, which appears to have been recorded on a smartphone. Warren Sr. is seen on his knees on the grass before he clambers to his feet A male voice, presumably his son, is heard shouting: 'Hey, hey dad. Sit down!' Warren Sr. walks off camera. Suddenly, three gunshots are heard. The male voice thought to be Warren Sr's son is heard shouting: 'No I told you, don't use a gun' 'A mental health call should not be a death sentence,' Merritt said in a statement. It is not clear if Contreras has had any mental health training. Merritt is also demanding Killeen Police Department release bodycam footage of the shooting and that Contrera's photo is released to the public. Killeen Police Chief Charles Kimble said the department has launched an Internal Affairs investigation. The Texas Rangers is handling the investigation into Warren Sr.'s death. 'As Killeen Police Chief, it is my duty to ensure a thorough investigation is conducted so that all parties, including the public, have the answers they seek,' said Kimble in a statement. 'There are many more facts in this case that are not publicly available at this time. I assure you that more information will be made available as soon as appropriate.' Merritt, who has also represented the family of Ahmaud Arbery, said he is not interested in speaking to Kimble. Warren Jr. told CBS Local his family - in particular his younger brother, who has Down Syndrome - has been struggling to come to terms with what happened. 'He's constantly - he was like, you know, 'My father's in heaven?' And I have to answer that question 1,000 times a day, and sometimes he just breaks down and he just wants to cry,' Warren Jr. said. A rally was held outside of the Killeen police headquarters Thursday demanding justice for the 52-year-old black man and for change in how mental health situations are handled by authorities. The demonstration was led by the Killeen group Brothers and Sisters Against Community Crime. One community member at the rally told CBS Local they wanted to show 'this will not be tolerated in our community. You will not get away with killing this man on his property.' A protest was held in the area Thursday night demanding justice for Warren Sr. (above) as his death marks just the latest in a long line of police killings of black people across America A GoFundMe account says Warren Sr. was the sole provider of his family but had lost his job during the coronavirus pandemic Others said Killeen police officers had been seen continually driving by the home of Warren Sr.'s family since the shooting. A GoFundMe account set up by Warren Jr. to help pay funeral expenses had topped $43,000 Friday. It says Warren Sr. was the sole provider of his family but had lost his job during the coronavirus pandemic. 'Our main objective to make sure this doesn't happen again and that no one else has to go through a tragedy like this and watch your father be shot and killed by someone you called for help,' it reads. Warren Sr.'s death marks the latest cop killing of black men and women in the last year. Protests erupted across America and further afield after Floyd's 'murder' on Memorial Day 2020 after white cop Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. EMT Breonna Taylor, 26, was shot six times in March when three plainclothes officers performed a botched raid at her Louisville apartment. In June, unarmed father Rayshard Brooks was shot dead while he ran from cops in the drive-thru of a Wendy's restaurant in Atlanta. Then, in August, 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. Several incidents have also been during call outs for mental health situations. Back in March, Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old black man, died after cops placed a spit hood over his head and pressed his face into the ground for two minutes in Rochester, New York, while he appeared to be suffering a psychotic episode. on Thursday (local time) said that it has begun preparations to bring two million doses of vaccine from In a statement, Brazil's health ministry said: "The Brazilian government informs that preparations to bring the two million doses of the vaccine against Covid-19 from are already underway." "The Azul airlines flight will be anticipated and will leave Viracopos Airport, in Campinas (SP), at 1.00 pm this Thursday (14t) for Recife (PE), from where it will depart directly to the Indian city of Mumbai. The vaccines are scheduled to arrive in next Saturday (16) at Galeao Airport (RJ)," it said. The Ministry further said that the Airbus A330neo will be equipped with specific containers to ensure temperature control of the doses in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations. The doses have been produced by Indian laboratory Serum Institute of "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Embassy in New Delhi, has made arrangements with the Indian authorities and the Serum Institute of India, following up on a letter from President Jair Bolsonaro to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, dated January 8, and is providing assistance regarding international travel issues and procedures. The Ministry of Defense will contribute to the security of land transportation to the states," the Ministry said. It further said that the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine will be distributed to the Brazilian states within five days after the approval of the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). "Immunization all over the country will be carried out simultaneously and free of charge," it added. Speaking on the India- relations, the Ministry said, "The successful acquisition of doses from the British parent company and the Indian vaccine producer demonstrates the excellent state of Brazil-United Kingdom and Brazil-India relations and the strength of the strategic relationships we have with both countries. (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.) Lars Lehne has been appointed group CEO of Incubeta, the South African-born, global independent digital marketing services group. Lars Lehne, the new group CEO of Incubeta Congrats on your appointment as the group CEO of Incubeta. How do you feel about it? Starting a global leadership role right in the midst of a pandemic is a first for me, but this is a situation no one could have ever predicted. What does your role entail? My aim is to provide the company with a unified voice and to make it easier for the global team to build on the companys success. How and when did this come about/when does it take effect? What excites you most about joining Incubeta? Being a technology driven company, it is crucial to have the right team bridging the gap between technology and people to achieve the best outcomes for our clients. #BizTrends2021: Tech democratisation will set the tone for 2021 If Covid-19 was the villain of 2020, then digital was the hero. As in-store transactions plummeted, e-commerce rushed in to pick up the slack. Rapid digitalisation saw smaller companies suddenly able to compete directly with our large enterprises... What do you love most about your career, the industry and what you do? Innovation and creativity is key, especially in the time of Covid-19. What can organisations no longer ignore when it comes to strategy? Businesses and people have to be agile, curious and constantly on their toes. Most companies have had to accelerate their digital delivery and digital marketing is becoming increasingly important for operations. What advice do you have for other organisations? #BizTrends2021: Digital marketing comes under the spotlight in 2021 Digital marketing was, for many brands, the saviour of 2020. This has been both a blessing and a curse for local CMOs, who now face massive performance expectations for the year ahead.... What trends could we expect to see in the coming year? The former Syzygy AG CEO will be taking over from the founder Alan Lipschitz, whose company, Interface, made the reverse acquisition of IncuBeta Holdings in 2011. Lipschitz will be moving into the role of chairperson of the Board of Directors of Incubeta.Lehne brings with him more than 30 years of industry experience. Prior to Incubeta, Lehne spent four years as Global CEO at Syzygy, a publicly listed WPP Group company. Before that, he spent seven years at Google as country director Agency DACH, paving the way for the tech giant quadrupling revenues in Germany. He has also held various senior management positions in agencies including Maxus, GroupM, Carat and MEC.In addition to his current role as new group CEO of Incubeta, Lehne is a member of the advisory board of Yext, and betterplace.org, a Berlin based NGO. Hes also an angel investor in claimini GmbH.I chat exclusively to Lars Lehne about his latest appointment and what we can expect to see in the upcoming year.Im very excited and overwhelmed by the warm welcome from the whole team at Incubeta. Im also very eager to learn more about the company and the amazing group of people that work tirelessly to make it such a success.As a result, we are all having to reinvent the rules of communication and leadership via our laptops at home.This is a good question. What does the role of a global CEO actually entail? Well, Incubeta is already a very successful and wonderful company, so my role will include giving it a clear direction and vision in unifying the three brands; NMPi, DQ&A and Joystick, into one strong global brand through Incubeta.I will also be on the lookout for emerging innovative companies that can add value to our clients and fit seamlessly with the services we provide.I was first approached in the late summer of 2020. I then went through a perfectly organised virtual interview process with all the regional CEOs where I gave a presentation as to how I would approach and implement the strategy for the next three to five years for Incubeta. I joined as global CEO on 1 January 2021.Apart from working in a more disruptive and predominantly digital space, Im quite frankly fascinated by the calibre and outstanding qualification of people that Alan Lipschitz, the founder and my predecessor, has attracted and assembled over the years.After all, it's a people driven business in the most positive sense.I love that this industry is ever-changing and never stands still. I have the pleasure to work with wonderful people from different cultures around the globe. I also like that Im not caught up in a corporate structure that suppresses innovation and change. Incubeta gives me and the global team around me maximum flexibility, entrepreneurial freedom to take risks and to come up with new innovative ideas.Change is predominant and nobody can foresee the future.Without the willingness to change and the ability to adapt quickly, it will be difficult to survive and thrive. This is the most common misinterpretation of Charles Darwin, it is not about survival of the fittest but survival of the most willing to adapt.It's now or never - we will never go back to square one. The pandemic has accelerated digital and given it the final push to become more prominent, if not necessary, in all areas of business and life.This year we will continue to see heavy investment in e-commerce as many retailers and brands across the world continue to be affected by Covid-19. Further to this, I imagine there will be a strong focus on enhancing the consumer experience online and providing virtual experiences that mimic real-life shopping experiences.One thing that all businesses should continue to be aware of is the evolving privacy regulations that will continue to make data usage more complex. Investing in first-party data will be crucial to remaining competitive, particularly as the digital ecosystem becomes further saturated during these unprecedented times. 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. CENTRAL POINT, Ore. Local officials are hammering down the final details for a planned drive-in coronavirus vaccination event at the Jackson County Expo later this month. But with an increase in vaccine doses no longer expected from the federal government, the upcoming event will be for groups in Phase 1a only. The drive-in event is still planned for January 21, 22, and 23 at the Expo, and several dozen National Guard members are expected to be on-hand to help with all aspects of the initiative from logistics to administering the vaccines. Officials from Jackson County, Josephine County, and Asante held a press briefing on Friday to go over the still-evolving details of the event, with more anticipated in the near future. According to Holly Nickerson, Asante's Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety, a sign-up portal and necessary paperwork specific to this event will be made available on their website beginning Monday, January 18. Eligible members of Phase 1a including healthcare workers, first responders, and both residents and staff of long-term care facilities are strongly encouraged to visit the site and have that paperwork prepared ahead of time. Earlier this week, there was some indication that eligibility could expand to include seniors 65 and older, educators, and childcare workers. However, there has been no corresponding increase in doses to aid local officials in making that a reality, and Jackson County confirmed on Friday that this first event will be for Phase 1a only. When the event begins, people will drive up to a checkpoint to have their paperwork screened. They'll be vaccinated while still in their vehicles, then ushered to a waiting area for observation over a period of 15 minutes or more to ensure that there are no major allergic reactions. Attendees will receive a form showing that they've received the first dose, along with details on how to receive a second dose in the following weeks. The precise hours of the event are still under discussion, but Asante said that they anticipate it being open for roughly 8 hours each day. Nickerson said that Asante has been performing roughly 500 vaccinations per day in southern Oregon, each day of the week. The goal for the Expo event is to vaccinate 5,000 people over the three-day period. A second, similar event is being planned for Josephine County on January 24 and 25, though the site and precise details are still being developed. Officials hope to perform 3,000 vaccinations at this event, which may be open to educators. Both the Jackson and Josephine County drive-in events will be supplied with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which requires ultra-cold storage. Nickerson said Asante's staff is now well-accustomed the process of vaccine storage and thawing, and will have enough doses prepared for use as needed. As of Friday, it was still unclear whether residents of the two counties will be able to receive a vaccine at either event, or if they will be required to attend one within their own county. There are roughly 20,000 people in Phase 1a in Jackson County, public health officials said, and more than 7,000 in Josephine County. Josephine County Public Health director Mike Weber described widespread hesitation about the vaccine in areas of the county, even among the Phase 1a group indicating that vaccinating 60 percent of that group may be a stretch. Dr. Jim Shames, Jackson County's Health Officer, said that he is hopeful that they will soon be able to expand vaccinations to include seniors and educators as was previously promised by state and federal officials but with the latest revelation that shipment numbers have largely remained stagnant, he did not feel comfortable making any promises. Asante said that they currently have 7,000 doses of the vaccine on hand just enough to supply the Jackson County event while still performing daily vaccinations at their own facilities. Shames said that he anticipated continuing to receive new shipments as they have for weeks, but the number does not reflect a local stockpile that could readily supply expanded categories of people particularly as a growing number of people await their second doses. As of Thursday, the Oregon Health Authority reported that 3,888 people had been vaccinated in Jackson County, with 991 having received second doses. 1,132 people had been vaccinated in Josephine County, with only 136 receiving second doses. Shames acknowledged Friday that documentation of the number of vaccines administered on a local level has been lagging in Oregon so while some state-level data suggests that there are large numbers of vaccine doses sitting in reserve, local partners are actually dealing with a relatively thin margin of vaccines that have yet to be administered. The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance, Steffen Seibert, spokesperson for Angela Merkel, said at a press conference on Monday, adding that Merkel had considered Trumps Twitter ban problematic". The German Chancellor is far from being the only person who has raised the alarm on the US Presidents suspension from the social media platform. Other prominent political figures, ranging from Mexicos president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to Frances economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, have expressed their concerns regarding the ban. I firmly stand with their concerns, and if you use social media, then you should too. President Trump's account, with more than 88 million followers, has been locked by Twitter. Photo: Reuters Take Germany for example. Despite hailing free speech as one of its bastions of freedom, Germany has remained relatively strict on which type of content is allowed to exist on social media platforms used by its citizens, owing to its history. If German public authorities detect provocative behavior on social media, such as hate speech or references to Nazism, social media companies are required to remove such content from their platforms, and face a fine of over $60 million for failing to comply. However, Seibert said in the same press conference that the general behavior of social media companies, including their ability to restrict and censor content on their platforms, is under the legal framework decided by legislators, not by those who run the company". Whether or not one agrees about President Trumps conduct on social media, the fact that Twitter, Facebook and other platforms were able to decide on their own to strip away the US Presidents main channel of communication by either restricting (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram) or outright banning his presence (Twitter) is something that not only Americans but also most governments and everyone around the world who uses social media should worry about. Despite having been in our social lives for less than two decades (Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006), social media platforms have rapidly transformed into a global phenomenon where they now serve as the primary medium of communication for billions of people. Once relatively harmless public squares where users can easily interact with one another, social media networks have grown into formidable platforms, giving their creators unprecedented supranational power not just by gathering personal information and collecting trends and being able to sell this information for billions of dollars, but also by dominating, if not directly influencing, social trends through the power of advertisements and information selection. In many cases, this has become a significant matter in national politics for many countries. When Twitter first labelled Trumps false claims about election fraud with a warning for the first time on May 26, ,2020, this was not the first time that Twitter executives publicly expressed their views through political interference. The social media platform, as well as Facebook, has been used by various political groups to rally the public and spread its messages, from the Austrian student protests and the Gaza disputes in 2009 to G20 protests in Toronto and the Arab Spring in 2011. Here, however, the attitude displayed by Twitter with these examples is nowhere similar to what transpired with Trump recently, which resembled more of the 2019-2020 protests in Hong Kong where the platform swiftly removed over 1,000 accounts perceived as being associated with Mainland China or in June 2020 in Turkey where over 7,000 accounts believed to be managed by Turkish authorities as a way to facilitate support for President Recep Erdogan were taken down. I will not argue whether these examples are right or wrong, but they do provide a sound comparison. But perhaps, what happened in America may be the clearest example of how regulators on social media platforms can significantly interfere in politics. Facebook and Twitter executives are known to be pro-Democrat, which was shown after the New York Post published a report on Hunter Biden last October. The same executives at Facebook and Twitter ordered their platforms to suppress information on the report. Facebook deliberately slowed down the spread of information on its platform, while Twitter blocked users from being able to share the report, citing this article contains stolen information. Several weeks later, users could again share the New York Post article with no restrictions after Twitter and Facebook executives were ordered to appear at a hearing in the US Senate, which was requested by a number of Republicans. It may have been too late, however, as tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots, and the October surprise of the Republicans failed to reach many voters. Many conservative politicians and pundits have accused such social media regulators as interfering in the election", but its likely we will never know who is right here. The climax of the engagement was probably when all mainstream social media networks joined forces to shut down Trumps accounts after the Capitol riots, which first alarmed the Mexican president before becoming a matter of concern for the German chancellor, who definitely wont be the last person to view the behavior of social media executives and Big Tech as problematic. Many may perceive that we cannot continue allowing social media networks to act as self-proclaimed courts for deciding what information is allowed on their platforms, but that there needs to be firm regulations that place these companies within the legal frameworks of where they operate. If you have ever been interested in or have read the agreements set out by social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to which you had to agree in order to use their services, you may have noticed a big problem the rules are not based on, or bound by, the laws of any particular country. Any agreement, especially those that may have legal status such as here, needs to be assessed within the specific framework of the legal system governing those agreements. In the case of these terms of services made by social media networks, there is no such system. No such provisions are offered to the users. This means that all behavior, rights and obligations of users on social media will be reviewed and adjudicated by those who run these platforms. It is difficult to imagine the existence of such a social contract, but they exist for every one of the billions of people who use these platforms. Civil society is similar in a civilized society, where one party is both a signatory and a judge of right and wrong in an engagement. And, of course, therefore, it is almost impossible for users to take any sort of meaningful legal action towards these companies, especially for users outside the United States, where all user complaints are addressed either through automated computer systems or by those in Silicon Valley. Most public authorities in countries where these networks are used also hardly have any viable tool to hold these companies liable if the interests of their citizens are violated -- for example, when their accounts are hacked into or stolen. On the other hand, many still think that social media networks do possess the rights to filter information, as they provide their services to users for free. This possibly comes from the fact that, to attract users, social networks hardly force users to submit any monetary fees. However, they collect your personal information, your habits, even your friends, and use that information to make a profit. And so, perhaps, to say that these companies provide an entirely free service to users is rather incorrect. Even in that case, they should always have certain obligations to users, governed by the laws of each country. It is also not advisable to continue associating the idea of statelessness to Big Tech and social network platforms, for it is these same companies that apply their idea of state-boundedness very well when faced with tax issues in the United States, where they use the nationality of their subsidiaries in Ireland, the Netherlands or Singapore to fix their issues. Social network companies only reject the idea of being bound to particular states if it otherwise forces them to be obliged to users, to citizens of particular countries. With Silicon Valley social media executives being directly involved in American politics with their personal political views, they have the power to interfere, and have successfully interfered, with elections and the flow of information as we have seen this past year in the United States, as well as in many other countries. It may be time to put forward the question on the necessity to build comprehensive legal frameworks that will prevent these social media companies from acting outside, standing above the law. Pham Quang Vinh New Delhi, Jan 15 : A doctor, nurse and a sweeper will be vaccinated in the presence of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during the coronavirus vaccine drive at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital on January 16. The Chief Minister will visit the state government-run hospital -- India's largest Covid hospital -- at 12 noon to inspect the Covid-19 vaccination drive. "Three people will be vaccinated in LNJP in the presence of the Chief Minister tomorrow, which includes a sweeper, nurse, doctor," a Delhi government official told IANS. LNJP's Medical Director said that their hospital is prepared to commence vaccination process on Saturday. "Everybody is excited and waiting for the vaccine. We are waiting for that moment eagerly. Everything is in place," said Dr Suresh Kumar. Almost a year after the first case of deadly coronavirus was detected and claimed over 1.5 lakh lives till now, the country is set to witness the historic moment, with the commencement of the most-awaited vaccination drive from January 16. A day ahead of the commencement of vaccination exercise, the national capital has completed all the preparations to inoculate its priority groups. Nationwide, the rollout is expected to cover three lakh frontline healthcare workers across 3,006 sites on the first day. In Delhi, vaccine will be administered to around 2.25 lakh healthcare workers at 81 immunisation sites in Central government, Delhi Government and private hospitals. As many as 264,000 doses of the Covishield and Covaxin vaccine have so far reached the city and been stored securely. According to the Central government, the vaccine will be offered first to healthcare workers, frontline workers and population above 50 years, followed by population below 50 years with co-morbidities, and finally to the remaining population based on disease epidemiology and vaccine availability. The vaccination drive has been planned in a phased manner, identifying priority groups. Healthcare workers, both in government and private sectors including Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) workers, will receive the vaccine during this phase. The doses are stored in bulk at a cold storage facility set up at Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty Hospital, from where they will be sent to cold chain points, and eventually to vaccination sites. The government will provide a staff of 7-8 people at each vaccination site. The staff includes security personnel, nurses, paramedics and a doctor. Three rooms are designated for the vaccination at each site divided into a waiting area, inoculation room and observation area post-vaccination. There will be a reception desk for the registration and verification of beneficiaries. Explaining the process of the vaccination drive, nodal officer of Delhi government-run Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty Hospital Dr. Ajeet Jain said: "The whole process from registration of beneficiaries to observation post-vaccination will take 45 minutes at the site. At the entry point, vaccination officer-I will verify all the documents of the beneficiaries. On being cleared, they will come to the waiting area and wait for their turn." "From the waiting room, they will enter the vaccination room. The rooms are equipped with a stretcher to shift the patient to ICU in case of any untoward incident post-vaccination. ECG machine, monitor and oxygen mask on the spot. After receiving vaccination, the beneficiaries will be kept under observation for thirty minutes," Dr. Jain added. Cut Throat City actress Eiza Gonzalez reported to the Los Angeles set of Michael Bay's Ambulance on Thursday. The Mexican-born beauty - turning 31 on January 30 - wore a black tank top tucked into blue skinny jeans, and black combat boots. Eiza had her hands full carrying an iced tea, box of disposable gloves, and an EMT notepad as she received paramedic training from a grey-haired woman. Pre-production: Cut Throat City actress Eiza Gonzalez reported to the Los Angeles set of Michael Bay's Ambulance on Thursday Hard at work: The Mexican-born beauty - turning 31 on January 30 - wore a black tank top tucked into blue skinny jeans, and black combat boots Another woman joined Gonzalez (born Reyna) and the emergency medical technician during their discussion beside a stretcher and ambulance. All three ladies made sure to protect themselves and others from the coronavirus pandemic by wearing masks. The COVID-19 pandemic is spiking nationwide, with over 975K confirmed cases in Los Angeles leading to 13,234 deaths as of Thursday - according to Johns Hopkins University. Watch and learn: Eiza had her hands full carrying an iced tea, box of disposable gloves, and an EMT notepad as she received paramedic training from a grey-haired woman Busy: Another woman joined Gonzalez (born Reyna) and the emergency medical technician during their discussion beside a stretcher and ambulance Mandatory in CA: All three ladies made sure to protect themselves and others from the coronavirus pandemic by wearing masks Grim: The COVID-19 pandemic is spiking nationwide, with over 975K confirmed cases in Los Angeles leading to 13,234 deaths as of Thursday The former telenovela child star is playing the same role (Julie) Danish actress Helle Fagralid played in Laurits Munch-Petersen's 2005 movie Ambulancen. On December 14, Eiza - who boasts 12.2M social media followers - excitedly posted the cover page for the Ambulance script penned by Chris Fedak (Prodigal Son). Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will co-star as car-jacking criminals in Universal Pictures' Speed and Bad Boys-style action thriller. Remake: The former telenovela child star is playing the same role (Julie) Danish actress Helle Fagralid played in Laurits Munch-Petersen's 2005 movie Ambulancen 'Still buzzing! Thrilled to say the least': On December 14, Eiza excitedly posted the cover page for the Ambulance script penned by Chris Fedak (Prodigal Son) Leading men: Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (L) and Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (R) will co-star as car-jacking criminals in Universal Pictures' Speed-style action thriller That same day, Gonzalez shared a behind-the-scenes snap of her I Care a Lot leading lady Rosamund Pike palming her breast captioned: 'That's my woman.' The British 41-year-old replied: 'Oh Wifey, they warned me you were a handful.' In real life, the lovely Latina has been dating (coincidentally) former firefighter/EMT Dusty Lachowicz as far back as July. 'That's my woman': That same day, Gonzalez shared a behind-the-scenes snap of her I Care a Lot leading lady Rosamund Pike palming her breast The British 41-year-old replied: 'Oh Wifey, they warned me you were a handful' She can ask him for advice! In real life, the lovely Latina has been dating (coincidentally) former firefighter/EMT Dusty Lachowicz as far back as July Eiza was last pictured with the 27-year-old Ford Model shopping at Whole Foods in LA on December 26. On Thursday, the first trailer for I Care a Lot dropped featuring Gonzalez as Fran, the business partner of elder-scamming legal conservator Marla Grayson (Pike). J Blakeson's critically-acclaimed dark gangster satire also stars Dianne Wiest, Peter Dinklage, Alicia Witt, and Chris Messina. US audiences can stream I Care a Lot starting February 19 on Netflix and UK audiences can stream it starting February 19 on Amazon Prime Video. 'Don't miss us being very good at being bad': On Thursday, the first trailer for I Care a Lot dropped featuring Eiza as Fran, the business partner of elder-scamming legal conservator Marla Grayson (Pike) New probes allow scientists to see four-stranded DNA interacting with molecules inside living human cells, unravelling its role in cellular processes. DNA usually forms the classic double helix shape of two strands wound around each other. While DNA can form some more exotic shapes in test tubes, few are seen in real living cells. However, four-stranded DNA, known as G-quadruplex, has recently been seen forming naturally in human cells. Now, in new research published today in Nature Communications, a team led by Imperial College London scientists have created new probes that can see how G-quadruplexes are interacting with other molecules inside living cells. G-quadruplexes are found in higher concentrations in cancer cells, so are thought to play a role in the disease. The probes reveal how G-quadruplexes are 'unwound' by certain proteins, and can also help identify molecules that bind to G-quadruplexes, leading to potential new drug targets that can disrupt their activity. One of the lead authors, Ben Lewis, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: "A different DNA shape will have an enormous impact on all processes involving it - such as reading, copying, or expressing genetic information. Evidence has been mounting that G-quadruplexes play an important role in a wide variety of processes vital for life, and in a range of diseases, but the missing link has been imaging this structure directly in living cells." G-quadruplexes are rare inside cells, meaning standard techniques for detecting such molecules have difficulty detecting them specifically. Ben Lewis describes the problem as "like finding a needle in a haystack, but the needle is also made of hay". To solve the problem, researchers from the Vilar and Kuimova groups in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial teamed up with the Vannier group from the Medical Research Council's London Institute of Medical Sciences. They used a chemical probe called DAOTA-M2, which fluoresces (lights up) in the presence of G-quadruplexes, but instead of monitoring the brightness of fluorescence, they monitored how long this fluorescence lasts. This signal does not depend on the concentration of the probe or of G-quadruplexes, meaning it can be used to unequivocally visualise these rare molecules. Dr Marina Kuimova, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: "By applying this more sophisticated approach we can remove the difficulties which have prevented the development of reliable probes for this DNA structure." The team used their probes to study the interaction of G-quadruplexes with two helicase proteins - molecules that 'unwind' DNA structures. They showed that if these helicase proteins were removed, more G-quadruplexes were present, showing that the helicases play a role in unwinding and thus breaking down G-quadruplexes. Dr Jean-Baptiste Vannier, from the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences and the Institute of Clinical Sciences at Imperial, said: In the past we have had to rely on looking at indirect signs of the effect of these helicases, but now we take a look at them directly inside live cells." They also examined the ability of other molecules to interact with G-quadruplexes in living cells. If a molecule introduced to a cell binds to this DNA structure, it will displace the DAOTA-M2 probe and reduce its lifetime; how long the fluorescence lasts. This allows interactions to be studied inside the nucleus of living cells, and for more molecules, such as those which are not fluorescent and can't be seen under the microscope, to be better understood. Professor Ramon Vilar, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, explained: "Many researchers have been interested in the potential of G-quadruplex binding molecules as potential drugs for diseases such as cancers. Our method will help to progress our understanding of these potential new drugs." Peter Summers, another lead author from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: "This project has been a fantastic opportunity to work at the intersection of chemistry, biology and physics. It would not have been possible without the expertise and close working relationship of all three research groups." The three groups intend to continue working together to improve the properties of their probe and to explore new biological problems and shine further light on the roles G-quadruplexes play inside our living cells. The research was funded by Imperial's Excellence Fund for Frontier Research. Central African refugee Yvette, 57, sits with two of her grandchildren in Ndu village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after fleeing Bangassou in the Central African Republic. UNHCR/Ghislaine Nentobo UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is calling for the immediate end to all violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) as nearly 60,000 people have been forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries since December, a two-fold rise in just one week. Most have fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), across the Ubangui River, where the number of arrivals topped 50,000 after 10,000 Central African refugees arrived in a single day on 13 January. Some 58,000 people are still displaced inside CAR's affected regions, according to the Population Movement Commissions, and nearly 9,000 refugees have arrived in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad, and the Republic of Congo this past month. UNHCR commends neighbouring governments for continuing to grant Central African refugees access to territory and asylum despite border restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. UNHCR and partners in CAR are gathering reports of abuses by armed groups, including of sexual violence, attacks on voters and pillaging. UNHCR is calling for an immediate return of all parties to meaningful dialogue and progress towards peace. The events of the last month since reports of election-related violence began reverse the trend of recent years of Central African refugees returning home. UNHCR and its partners are scaling up assistance for the new arrivals, despite poor infrastructure hampering the humanitarian response. UNHCR was already seeking $151.5 million this year to respond to the CAR situation. The needs of the recently displaced Central Africans are mounting, and we will soon face a substantial funding shortfall. We call on the international community to urgently expand support to the CAR humanitarian response to allow more aid to reach those in remote areas. For more information on this topic, please contact: [January 14, 2021] Bay Alarm Looks Out for the Community in More Ways Than One Bay Alarm, a seventy-five-year-old family owned and operated security company, doesn't just protect homes and businesses, they look out for the communities they serve. This December, Bay Alarm chose Make-A-Wish Foundation to be the recipient of a company-wide philanthropic campaign. Their goal was to raise $20,000 through employee donations to be used to grant wishes to children with critical, life-threatening illnesses. In two short weeks the employees at Bay Alarm company were able to raise $50,000, which is enough to grant wishes to five children. "We set out to grant wishes to two critically ill children. Our family of employees pulled together and delivered five. It's incredible, and at the same time a perfect example of who we are as an organization," said Tim Westphal, Chief Operating Officer of Bay Alarm. "We are so thankful to our amazing partners at Bay Alarm for their inspiring campaign to benefit our wish kids," says Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area CEO Betsy Biern. "Last year was challenging for us all, but particularly our wish families. The generosity of Bay Alarm employees brings so much hope and optimism to start the new year." The funds raised during Bay Alarm's campaign will benefit wish kids and their families from eight Make-A-Wish chapters across the United States, including kids like Santiago wh wished to go to a cabin in the woods and see snow. Bay Alarm has 17 locally-operated branch locations. Each one seeks to strengthen and improve the quality of life for the people in those communities through donations to schools, community support organizations, law enforcement and public safety agencies. In addition to partnering with Make-A-Wish, Bay Alarm and its sister companies donated $25 for every employee to local food banks in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Orange (News - Alert) County, San Diego, Phoenix and Seattle. That's approximately 50,000 meals going directly to families in need. "At Bay Alarm we support each other because we're a family. We live in the neighborhoods we serve. And when we come together as a family, it's amazing to see what we can accomplish," said Matt Westphal, President of Bay Alarm. About Bay Alarm Founded in 1946 in Oakland, California, Bay Alarm is now in its third generation of family leadership. The company has grown to be the largest independently owned and operated alarm company in the United States with 17 branch locations, protecting over 150,000 residential and commercial customers. Learn more about Bay Alarm at www.bayalarm.com. About Make-A-Wish Make-A-Wish creates life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. We seek to bring every eligible child's wish to life because every child deserves a childhood. Research shows children who have wishes granted can build the physical and emotional strength they need to fight their illness. Since its founding in 1980, Make-A-Wish has become the world's leading children's wish-granting organization, serving children in every community in the United States and in nearly 50 countries worldwide. In total, Make-A-Wish has granted more than 330,000 wishes to children in the U.S. and its territories. For more information about Make-A-Wish America and to get involved, visit wish.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114006049/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] She recently touched down in the Maldives after previously joining the descent of influencers living it up in Dubai. And Georgia Steel set pulses racing as she stripped down to her lingerie for her latest set of sultry pictures from her recent United Arab Emirates trip on Friday. Sharing the snaps to Instagram on Friday, the Love Island star, 22, looked sensational as she struck a pose in a navy lace lingerie set from Boux Avenue. Stunning: Georgia Steel set pulses racing as she stripped down to her lingerie for her latest set of sultry pictures from her recent United Arab Emirates trip on Friday She flaunted her enviable physique and fixed the camera with a seductive stare for in the racy new pictures. Georgia styled her brunette tresses in a loose wave across her shoulders and opted for a full-coverage make-up palette. She also showcased the impressive views of Dubai's cityscape as she struck a sexy pose on her hotel room's picturesque balcony. Alongside her lingerie snaps, she penned: 'At the top of the chain Wearing my favourites @bouxavenue the best lingerie ever to be made in London.' Enviable physique: Sharing the snaps to Instagram on Friday, the Love Island star, 22, looked sensational as she struck a pose in a navy lace lingerie set from Boux Avenue The reality star also shared an array of selfies in the gorgeous lingerie set to her Instagram stories later on Friday. She flaunted her pert derriere as she shot a series of short videos from her hotel room in the revealing lingerie set. Georgia strutted around the balcony in the racy attire as she confidently showed off her toned physique while enjoying her Dubai trip. It comes after the influencer and her Love Island pal Joanna Chimonides left the UAE city and touched down in the Maldives on Friday for a week-long 'work' trip. Taking to Instagram, Georgia revealed that the 'work' trip had been planned for a long time and she felt 'lucky' that it could go ahead amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Racy: Georgia flaunted her pert derriere as she shot a series of short video from her hotel room in the revealing lingerie set She said that she felt 'so lucky' to still be able to travel with her 'job' amid the third national Covid lockdown back home in the UK. Georgia also said she hoped they would be able to bring her fans a 'little bit of light' during 'a very dull time', which has seen strict Covid rules enforced across the UK. She penned: 'I feel so lucky to be able to travel with my job at the moment. 'I'm so grateful that I've been given the opportunity to work with @velasserumaldives for the next week and make memories that are going to last me a lifetime. 'I thank the universe every day.' 'Work trip': It comes after the influencer and her Love Island pal Joanna Chimonides left the UAE city and touched down in the Maldives on Friday for a week-long 'work' trip Before adding: 'Me and Jo have planned this trip for ages and actually can't believe we are still able to work with one of the best resorts in Maldives during the current circumstances. 'We are so grateful and feel so lucky that our job enables us to experience things like this. 'We hope to bring you guys a little bit of light during a very dull time. 'Without you guys we wouldn't be there, so thank you.' Her travel to the Maldives from Dubai comes after it was announced on Monday that travellers returning to the UK from the UAE will have to quarantine. 'Grateful': Taking to Instagram, Georgia revealed that the 'work' trip had been planned for a long time and she felt 'lucky' that it could go ahead amid the Covid-19 pandemic The news follows a 52 per cent surge in the number of COVID -19 cases there - an undoubted shock for the influencer-packed city. Georgia joined a slew of Love Island stars living it up in the luxurious city, with many claiming their travel was 'for work' to avoid questions on whether they've breached government restrictions. Under the latest national lockdown rules, which are now in effect, holidays are banned as international travel is only permitted for a strict number of reasons such as for work. Within the UK, domestic holidays are also banned as you must stay at home at all times except for a limited number of 'reasonable excuses' such as shopping for essentials or work. Covid: Georgia also said she hoped they would be able to bring her fans a 'little bit of light' during 'a very dull time', which has seen a strict Covid lockdown enforced across the UK The Government has said if you need to travel you should stay local meaning avoiding travelling outside of your village, town or the part of a city where you live and look to reduce the number of journeys you make overall. Pandemic news has been rumbling at home as earlier this week, it was revealed that new rules will require international travellers to come back negative after a PCR test before arriving in England will come into force from Friday. From 4am on January 15, passengers arriving by boat, train or plane - including UK nationals - will have to take a test up to 72 hours before leaving the country. They will need to present proof of a negative test result - using a PCR test or on some occasions a LAMP or lateral flow test - to their carrier on boarding while the UK Border Force will conduct spot checks on arrivals. (G)I-DLE member Yuqi shocked and worried fans after posting an apology to her Weibo. According to her, she has recently been receiving negative messages through her direct messages. Keep on reading to learn more. On Wednesday, Jan. 13, Yuqi shared an apology to Weibo, a Chinese social media platform similar to Facebook and Twitter. In her apology, she apologizes for not being able to take everyone's opinions and feelings into consideration. She ensures fans that she will be a Yuqi who will keep her word and will never change negatively. Her whole apology reads: "I have read everyone's comments and the direct messages that were sent to me. Thank you all for your messages. Whether it be criticisms or compliments, all of these are important to me. I will keep working hard and putting in more effort. I will do my best to take into consideration everyone's opinions. I apologize that I cannot see everyone's feelings. Please forgive me. I cannot always explain every misunderstanding, but I will never change. I will do as I say, so I hope people will be understanding." According to Yuqi's Korean fanbase, the female idol has been receiving lots of hate from her Chinese audience. The hate allegedly started when she was placed as a permanent cast member on the Chinese variety show "Keep Running," which is often called China's "Running Man." The hate continued to escalate after she filmed a commercial in China that was originally meant to be for another Chinese actress. As it appeared Yuqi was replacing the other person, she was allegedly cursed at by numerous people. In the past, Yuqi has often stated that she is the happiest when she is in South Korea and promoting with (G)I-DLE. While in China, Yuqi often mentions how much she misses her members, alluding to the fact that she is alone when she promotes in China. Many people expressed shock over the hate she receives, with some commenting that the hate Yuqi receives in China is more compared to Shuhua, who is from Taiwan. Many people left comments worrying about the idol and her mental health. People had noted that Yuqi had appeared more dispirited than usual when usually she is known as the group's vitamin and energy pill. Fans asked people to not assume Yuqi will "run away" back to China once COVID-19 guidelines ease, as it appears she truly loves to promote in South Korea. Others sent loving messages Yuqi's way, praising the idol for being sweet and kindhearted. Many people recalled a time where she read all the fans' comments for her and replied to them. During (G)I-DLE's appearance on "STATV," she ended up crying after reading fans' comments and revealed that she is an emotional person. Many hope the hate towards Yuqi will stop. (G)I-DLE recently had their first comeback of the year with "HWAA" from their fourth mini-album "I burn." While the song received generally positive reviews from music critics, not everyone was happy. Notably, member Shuhua's Chinese fan club announced they would halt all album orders following the unfair line distribution of "HWAA." For more K-Pop news and updates, always keep your tabs open here on KpopStarz. KpopStarz owns This Written by Alexa Lewis SEATTLE, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Artisan Talent is proud to announce the opening of their newest digital, marketing, creative staffing and recruiting office in Seattle, Washington. The new Seattle office is an expansion driven by customer feedback and market demands and is part of Artisan's commitment to assisting the creative community. Seattle was recently ranked as a top ten place to live in by U.S. News & World Report. CEO Bejan Douraghy noted: "Seattle has a diverse economy and a highly educated labor force. Seattle is an attractive destination not only for businesses relocating, but it is a hub of high tech companies and agencies that need to augment their staffing. Artisan is in a good position to help staff up these companies. Not to mention, Seattle is a beautiful place to live." The Seattle office is run by veteran Artisan employees whose unique blends of strategic thinking, consultative leadership, and collaborative skills have resulted in hundreds of successful client engagements. Located in historical Pioneer Square, our Seattle staffing agency is at the center of it all: from renaissance revival architecture, first Thursday art walks, delicious lunch spots, and quirky boutiques, to accessing great digital creative jobs, what more can we ask for? From education to aerospace and big tech, we connect talent to digital, creative, and marketing roles in all kinds of companies. About Artisan Artisan Talent is an interactive, digital, marketing, and creative staffing agency combining the service of a boutique firm with the reach of a national agency. Ranked in the top 2% of Staffing agencies nationwide, Artisan advocates for the best talent, including graphic designers, web and mobile developers, UI / UX designers, interactive learning consultants, project managers, and more. Since 1988 Artisan has nurtured relationships with the best clients, from fortune 500 industry leaders to interactive agencies and small non-profits. Media contact: Cameron Douraghy Artisan Talent 800-216-0600 http://www.artisantalent.com SOURCE Artisan Talent US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan Amid an ongoing exodus from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Birbhum MP Satabdi Roy on Friday hinted that she is having problems with the ruling party in West Bengal and may take a "decision" on Saturday. In an exclusive phone interview to Zee News, the actor-turned-politician claimed that she is not being informed about party events in her constituency. She also said that she wanted to visit her constituency but her name was removed from the invites and was also not invited for most programmes. "The distance was gradually increasing in the party. It is for the party to find out who are these people for whom I couldnt go to my own constituency," added Roy. The TMC MP said that there is no point in discussing it with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. "Im sure she is aware of what is happening," she added. Roy said that she "there is no harm or anything wrong in meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah". She added, "I am an MP and he is our minister. I havent decided what I am going to do. But will announce my decision tomorrow (Saturday)." She also stated that she can't "disclose where I am right now". News agency PTI quoted her party sources, saying that Roy is having differences with Birbhum district TMC chief Anubrata Mondal. "I have a close connection with this constituency. But recently many people have been asking me why I am missing from several party programmes. I want to tell them that I want to attend all programmes. But I don't get to know about many programmes and if I am not even informed about events in my constituency, then how can I attend. I was mentally pained because of this," as per a Facebook post on Satabdi Roy Fans' Club page read, reported PTI. Roy said she has spent more time with the people of her constituency than her own family in the last 10 years and even her enemies can't discredit her on this account. "So, this year I am trying to take some decisions so that I can spend the entire time with you. I am grateful to you. You have been supporting me since 2009. Hope you will support me in the coming days too," the post read. "If I take any decision, will let you know on January 16, Saturday at 2 pm," it added. When contacted, Roy confirmed that the post was indeed made by her. "I have tried to reach out to the leadership but it has been of no use. If I am not able to work for the masses then what is the use of continuing in the post," she told reporters. Roy had twice given resignation from the Tarapith Unnayan Parishad but those were not accepted, sources close to the MP told PTI. She is presently on her way to New Delhi, they said. When asked whether there are chances of joining the BJP, she refused to reply. Responding to a query whether she will meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Roy said, "There are always chances of meeting people you know but there is no such possibility." Roy was seen with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a roadshow in Bolpur on December 29. She had first contested and won the Birbhum seat on a TMC ticket in 2009. Roy also won from the seat in 2014 and 2019. A senior TMC leader said that the party will speak with Roy. Not just Roy, another senior TMC leader and state minister Rajib Banerjee, who has been maintaining distance with the party, also said in a social media post that he will reveal his next step in a Facebook live on Saturday afternoon. In the biggest single-day exodus from the TMC, political heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, along with 35 party leaders including five MLAs and an MP, joined the BJP during Shah's rally in Medinipur on December 19, setting off a churning as several disgruntled leaders rallied behind him. Since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP bagged 18 seats from the state, 14 legislators of the TMC, four from the Left Front and two from the Congress have joined the saffron party. None of them, however, have resigned from their posts. Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May. Live TV But before Wednesday, many scientists, doctors and the public did not know about this strategy this calculus at all. That issue had been quietly bubbling away for months as animal and human trial data pointed to difficulties in making vaccines that achieve "sterilising immunity" total immunity from infection, versus immunity from getting seriously ill. Concerns circulated among scientists and doctors on social media. Professor Raina MacIntyre, head of biosecurity at the Kirby Institute, released a video raising the issue on January 4. When you get down to a vaccine thats 60 per cent effective, you basically need to vaccinate 100 per cent of people [to achieve herd immunity], she told the ABC two days later. And thats not feasible. But when the opportunity came to meet the story at the pass on Tuesday by explaining whether Australia was hoping to use vaccines to stop the virus circulating Health Minister Greg Hunt chose to largely ignore the issue and launched a personal attack on "commentators". The story was ready to explode. On Tuesday, it did. The Australasian Virology Society and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology both told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald the government should pause its rollout of AstraZenecas vaccine, due to concerns the data we had so far did not clearly show it would stop the virus circulating. Word leaked before the story could go to press, leading to an extraordinary internal debate within the AVS. About 6.30pm on Tuesday, the society decided to change positions and pull its objection to the rollout of the vaccine. Loading We dont want to undermine the confidence in the vaccine. And we dont have the full picture. We need to go with the most effective vaccine so we can have herd immunity. But we just dont have the full picture at the moment with the AstraZeneca vaccine, society president Professor Gilda Tachedjian said. After coming under tremendous pressure, the Society for Immunology would also reverse its position on Wednesday. But the story was already out. Herd immunity, explained Herd immunity describes the scenario many people imagine: everyone has protection against the virus, leaving it with no hosts to jump to, and causing the epidemic to eventually die out. Is it attainable for COVID-19? To calculate a virus "critical vaccine level" the level of protection needed in the community to reach herd immunity scientists look at how infectious a virus is, measured by a value known as R. R represents the average number of people each infected person passes the virus on to. If that number is over 1, the virus will spread; if it is below 1, the virus will die out. In most countries, the R value varies between 1.5 and 3.5. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video In March last year in Melbourne as the first wave of the virus spread and before the first lockdown the R value was between 1.4 and 1.8, a team of modellers estimated in Nature Communications. To achieve herd immunity, we would need to cut the R value by between 45 and 55 per cent, said Associate Professor James Wood, a University of NSW vaccine modeller and member of the federal governments Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. That would theoretically be achievable with a vaccine with 70 per cent efficacy against transmission but would require in particular high coverage in the 18-35 year group, which appear to contribute a greater fraction of transmission. But there is now a complicating factor that did not exist six months ago: the emergence of B.1.1.7, a variant of the coronavirus that is substantially more transmissible. That virus has an R that is plausibly 30 to 50 per cent higher, said Wood. That means herd immunity is even harder to reach. A third wrinkle: it is plausible immune responses from the vaccines will wane over time, and plausible the virus will mutate to evade vaccines. "If you ask experts in this area, none of them think that the virus is going to be eliminated from Australia long-term," said Wood. "What we do expect is that if youve been previously vaccinated or infected, then you will experience a much milder disease course and that after a couple of transition years COVID-19 will become just another variety of the common cold." Loading Vaccinating the herd Australias current vaccine strategy is to use Pfizers mRNA vaccine to vaccinate the most vulnerable starting from mid February; we have enough on order for 5 million people. At this stage, the rest of the population will be getting a jab made by AstraZeneca; we have 53.8 million doses on order, enough to cover the entire population. Importantly, it is being made here by CSL, guaranteeing supply. A third vaccine on order, under development by Novavax, is yet to report results from phase 3 clinical trials. Can either of these vaccines provide herd immunity? Phase 3 clinical trial data published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December estimates Pfizers jab provides 95 per cent protection against symptomatic COVID-19. However, available data does not allow us to know if it stops people passing on the virus, which is key to herd immunity. It may be you can still catch and pass on the virus without showing symptoms. For AstraZeneca, the data is much cloudier. Some 4440 people were given the jab in two standard doses. Interim analysis, published in the Lancet, shows it offers 62.1 per cent protection against symptomatic COVID-19. But a second group of 1367 accidentally received a lower dose. Yet that offered 90 per cent protection. Between the two groups the average was 70.4 per cent. How do you reconcile those three numbers? Thats not yet clear. AstraZeneca is doing further trials of the lower dose. The British government has started administering the jab at the standard dose, so we will soon get data on how it behaves in the real world. Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has taken to citing the vaccines efficacy as a range: between 62 per cent and 90 per cent. Lets assume the vaccine is 70 per cent effective. Can we use that to get to herd immunity? Data suggests AstraZenecas vaccine does cut infectiousness [to] some degree, wrote Professor Allen Cheng, co-chair of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation on Twitter on Wednesday. But even if all adults were vaccinated, it probably would not achieve herd immunity. Does herd immunity matter? When the story ran on Wednesday, it sent health authorities into a scramble. Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly did the circuit of morning shows and a midday news conference. Reporters were briefed on background. Information that had been jealously guarded suddenly poured out. Herd immunity was not being pursued as a short-term strategy, health officials said. Primarily, this was because on current data we do not know if any of the vaccines available could confer herd immunity, because we do not know if they will cut or prevent transmission. Thats as true for AstraZeneca as it is for Pfizer and Moderna. We seek herd immunity, Hunt told The Age. [But] that outcome will depend on the longevity of protection, the coverage of the population (expected to be high by global standards in Australia), and the impact on transmission, which are yet to be determined for any vaccine. Loading Scientists dont know if the vaccines we have available will stop transmission, but they do know this: Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZenecas vaccines will all save lives. Of the 5807 volunteers in AstraZenecas interim analysis who received the vaccine at any dose from 21 days after injection not a single one was hospitalised, there were no serious cases of COVID-19, and there were no deaths. Given the virus has killed nearly 2 million people around the world, the calculus on what to do is pretty simple. A woman is reflected in a window as she braves wind and rain while walking towards Tower Bridge in London, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 during England's third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) The British government banned travel from South America and Portugal to ensure a new variant of COVID-19 found in Brazil doesn't derail the U.K.'s vaccination program, although there are no signs the variant has reached the country, Britain's top transportation official said. U.K. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the entry ban, which took effect Friday morning, was extended to passengers arriving from Portugal because many people who come to Europe from South America travel through Portugal. "We don't have cases at the moment, but this is a precautionary approach," Shapps told the BBC. "We want to make sure that we do everything possible so that vaccine rollout can continue and make sure that it's not disturbed by other variants of this virus." The announcement comes just a few weeks after many countries banned travel from the U.K. following the discovery in England of another, more contagious variant of the virus that has been blamed for a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Scientists have said there is no indication the U.K. variant reacts any differently to coronavirus vaccines. Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva called the U.K.'s decision "without logic" and said he would seek clarification from his British counterpart. "Suspending flights from Portugal with the argument of the connections between Portugal and Brazil is, with all due respect, completely absurd," he said in an interview published online by the newspaper Diario de Noticias. A woman passes a government conronavirus advert in central London, during England's third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA via AP) The U.K. is ramping up its mass vaccination program as the government seeks to protect the country's oldest and most vulnerable residents before easing a third national lockdown. According to government figures on Friday, a little more than 3.2 million people, or around 5% of the British population, have received a first dose of a two-shot vaccine. Britain plans to give the first dose to more than 15 million people, including those over 70, frontline healthcare workers and others who are particularly vulnerable to the virus, by the middle of February. "We're so close now that we want to make sure we do absolutely everything possible to give us the best chance of beating this virus, which is why it's important that we do act quickly on these things," Shapps said. While the first stage of the vaccination program aims to protect around 85% of those deemed most likely to die from COVID-19, the country is expected to continue recording high mortality rates over the coming weeks because of the lag time between infections and deaths. Joggers exercise in the rain on the banks of the river Thames in London, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 during England's third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) The government reported 55,761 more confirmed cases on Friday and the deaths of another 1,280 people within 28 days of testing positive for the virus. The daily update brought the U.K.'s death toll in the pandemic to 87,295, the highest number in Europe and the fifth-highest in the world. Many of the newly diagnosed are likely to have become infected during the holiday period, before the current national lockdown in England came into force on Jan. 5. The hope is that the lockdown will result in falling infection rates falling over the next week or two, particularly in areas that were locked down before the holiday. They include London and the southeast of England, where the new variant of the virus was first identified. Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Japan's Hiroshima prefecture is to conduct the country's first mass coronavirus tests as it battles a surge of infections, an official said Friday Tokyo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Japan's Hiroshima prefecture is to conduct the country's first mass coronavirus tests as it battles a surge of infections, an official said Friday. Prefectural official Kazuhiro Saito confirmed reports that the tests would be offered to up to 800,000 people living and working in parts of Hiroshima City, home to 1.2 million people. "We want to discover positive cases at an early stage to prevent the virus from spreading, especially in the city area," he told AFP. Eleven of Japan's regions are currently under a virus state of emergency as the country battles a third wave of infections, though Hiroshima is not among them. Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki said Thursday the number of infections in the city in December was "at the level where it could come under a state of emergency", warning that the city faced a rapid expansion of cases, the regional Chugoku Shimbun reported. Details as to when and where the free testing would be conducted are yet to be decided, Saito said. Japan has faced criticism at times for avoiding the strategy of mass virus testing employed by some other countries. Experts argue a targeted testing strategy, paired with contact tracing, can help bring infections under control. The country has experienced a comparatively small outbreak so far, with just over 4,100 deaths since the first infection in Japan was confirmed a year ago. 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. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Copyright 2021 Albuquerque Journal There was as much pomp as there could be given the circumstance. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and safety restrictions that required an intimate ceremony, World War II veteran Orlando Samuel Romero proudly received his high school diploma on Thursday at the age of 96. Socially distanced in the Robert F. Kennedy Charter School gymnasium, the event held just for Romero allowed him to experience the classic graduation moments hed missed up until now. The graduation march rang out as he walked in a cap and gown, turned his tassel and officially received his diploma. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Its been a long time coming for the New Mexico native, who was unable to finish his time at Albuquerque High School because he was drafted into the service when he was 18 years old. Principal Shawn Morris told the Journal that Romero was a Navy Seaman First Class in the South Pacific. Romero said part of his work was translating letters from Spanish to English. After his time in the service, Romero said he did various work, including janitorial and furniture making. His main focus was taking care of his family when he got back and school wasnt top of mind. First things first, he said. But through Operation Recognition, a program that grants certain veterans their high school diplomas, Romero was able to achieve the milestone. American veterans sacrificed so much to protect our freedom. For many of those who served in their youth that includes the chance to receive a high school diploma It is a belated gesture of our lasting respect and appreciation for their service and commitment to our nation, Robert F. Kennedy Charter School director Robert Baade said during the ceremony. Thats why the school was honored to make sure Romero got his diploma. Baade told the Journal that Romero had to meet eligibility requirements and fill out paperwork for the New Mexico Department of Veterans Services to be granted the honor. While Romero didnt get his diploma in the traditional way, Baade said it was still definitely earned. Thursdays ceremony also created an opportunity for Romeros loved ones to celebrate with him, like his honorary granddaughter April Gallegos, who was there cheering him on, beaming with pride for Romero. Its an inspiration that is mutual. When asked why he wanted to receive his diploma after all this time, Romero pointed to Gallegos as a major factor. As for advice for the younger generation, the devout Catholic said what hes learned over the years is its important to do the best you can to help anyone who needs it. On Wednesdays episode of the Sara Carter Show podcast, Carter defends the 75 million Americans who voted for President Trump against the media who has labeled these Americans as terrorists. The 75 million people in this country that voted for President Trump, or believe in America first, you are not terrorists, as The Washington Post and The New York Times and Biden and others are trying to make you out to be. You are not terrorists, Carter said. Many Americans feel targeted and scared of the consequences if they voice their opinions. Carter understands that its defeating to feel that way, but also says resorting to violence is not the answer. I know you feel like the rug has been ripped out from underneath you, Carter said. She continued, I know you feel that you are being targeted by the left because you are being targeted by the left. So am I. But we have to use common sense here. We have to stay unified and not allow ourselves to be dragged into something we will not be able to get out of. We dont want to see bloodshed. If you dont like whats happening, let it be known. Peacefully. Moreover, the left-wing media has grouped 75 million Americans into one category: as white supremacists or domestic terrorists, Carter explained. They are equating every MAGA supporter, every supporter of President Trump with white supremacy. That is a lie, Carter said. Weve seen our President being targeted by an opposition party and being called a terrorist. We are living in very strange and dangerous and frightening times. She says the media has also chosen a rhetoric and stuck with it for the last four years, which has caused a powerful divide in America. The media and social media has been used to develop a disinformation campaign against the President of the United States and the people who voted for him. This is not just about Trump, folks, this is about you. They are looking at you, not President Trump. They are sending a message that you are not allowed to pick your president, Carter said. Finally, Carter reminds her listeners that as Americans, you have the power to choose our electors and the power to fire those who do not defend us. You think this is all about the leftist. This is about the rhinos, too, in the establishment. By the way, I think theyre all the same now. I am disgusted with whats happened. Theyre all the same. They all cover for each other. They all line their pockets. Its our tax dollars that pay for them, Carter said. You are the boss, fire them. Fire the cowards that didnt defend you. Just fire them. Thats why we have elections. Dont be afraid to stand up for what you believe in. But dont cross the line either. Its not worth it. It is not worth it. It is okay to be angry. It is okay to speak your mind. I had to take a step back. We all have to take a step back. And we have to reassess what is happening here and what we need to do as Americans before this gets out of control before we create a history that we will be ashamed of. Source: Click here to listen to the podcast Sara Carter: We are not terrorists, we are 75 million freedom-loving Americans - Sara A. Carter : Sara A. Carter Disney announced Thursday that Peyton Elizabeth Lee will be putting on the white lab coat and stethoscope in Disney+'s upcoming reboot of Doogie Howser, M.D. The 16-year-old actress will take over the position played by Neil Patrick Harris in the original ABC series, which ran from 1989 to 1993. This is the highest profile role to date for Lee, who previously played the title role in the Disney Channel original series Andi Mack. New face: Peyton Elizabeth Lee, 16, will star in a female-led reboot of Doogie Howser for Disney+, retitled Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.; seen in 2019 in Hollywood The new half-house medical series has been transplanted to Hawaii and will be retitled Doogie Kamealoha, M.D., to reflect the character's background. Later on Thursday, Deadline reported that Episodes actress Kathleen Rose Perkins would also be joining the series in a lead role. In the rebooted series, Lee will play the 16-year-old doctor Lahela Doogie Kamealoha. The mixed-race teen has to balance her social life with the commitments of a high-pressure medical career. Old school: Neil Patrick Harris played the title character in the original series, which ran from 19891993, as a 16-year-old doctor. Lee's character has been renamed Lahela Doogie Kamealoha; publicity still for Doogie Howser, M.D. Major part: Episodes actress Kathleen Rose Perkins would also be joining the series as Lahela's 'spit-fire' Irish mother, who's also a doctor and her supervisor at the hospital; seen in 2017 Perkins will star as Lahela's 'spit-fire' Irish mother, who is also a doctor and her supervisor at the hospital. She also has a Hawaiian 'Local Boy' father who struggles to accept that his daughter is soon to be an adult. Leading the rebooted series will be Executive Producer Kang, who previously worked with Perkins on ABC's Fresh Off The Boat. In the original series, which was created by the late Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley, Doogie's father was a doctor, while he had a stay-at-home mother. The new reboot will stay in the family, as Bochco's widow Dayna Bochco and their son Jesse Bochco will executive produce the series with Kang, Jake Kasdan and Melvin Mar. Strong start: Lee was part of a history-making cast during her three-season run on Disney's Andi Mack. She played the title character, who learned at the start of the series that her older sister was actually her mother Making strides: The series was the first on the Disney Channel to feature a gay main character; publicity still from Andi Mack Lee was part of a history-making cast during her three-season run on Disney's dramedy Andi Mack. She played the title character, who learned at the start of the series that her traveling older sister was actually her mother. Andi Mack was the first Disney Channel series to feature a gay main character. Joshua Rush played Andi's friend Cyrus, who came out as gay in the show's second season after developing a crush on the same boy Andi was interested in. Off camera, Lee has a recurring voice role on Disney's The Lion Guard, and she previously appeared on the now-canceled ABC crime series Stumptown. The lone brown pelican colony in southwest Louisiana sits on an island that, like the vast majority of the state's coastline, has fallen prey to erosion. These days, Rabbit Island is barely half the size it was in 1959, having been reduced to a 200-acre mix of open water and low land within Cameron Parishs Calcasieu Lake. When high tide rolls in, it rolls over the island, flooding much of the remaining land. During breeding season, the thousands of birds nesting on the island have no safe spot to raise their hatchlings, if the newborns make it out of their shells before the eggs float away. But the first sand is now being pumped onto Rabbit Island as part of a $15.6 million effort to restore and elevate 88 acres of bird habitat. Using money from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster settlement, Louisiana is dredging sediment from the Calcasieu Ship Channel and piping it to the island, more than doubling the elevation in some spots. At its highest, Rabbit Island now sits 1 feet above Calcasieu Lake, but the typical high tide sends a foot of water over it, said Todd Baker, a project manager for the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. "It inundates the hatchlings and the eggs that havent hatched," he said. When the project is complete, much of the island will rise 3 to 3 feet above the water level, providing the brown pelicans and other birds more space to lay their eggs and raise their young. As recently as 2010, the island hosted 550 breeding pairs of the brown pelican, Louisiana's state bird. That number has dropped to 175 due in part to habitat degradation. The island also hosts almost 2,500 pairs of wading birds such as tricolored herons and great egrets, about 3,900 laughing gull pairs and a few hundred birds that nest on the ground. Without restoration and elevation, computer modeling suggests the island would shrink over 20 years from 200 acres today to about 30 acres of broken marsh, said James McMenis, the project's former manager. Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up "The goal is to have a ... long life on the project with 20 years of continual bird nesting habitat and have brown pelicans out there flourishing like in years past," he said. This is Louisiana's first attempt to restore coastal bird habitat since the completion of Queen Bess Island in early 2020. That was a rousing success. Within weeks of construction wrapping up last February, at least 8,000 brown pelicans started nesting on Queen Bess, more than double what was expected, said Bren Haase, the coastal authority's executive director. And Rabbit Island is more than twice the size of Queen Bess, with 88 acres being rebuilt as suitable nesting habitat. We look forward to welcoming thousands of nesting birds back this spring. Baker said the Rabbit Island restoration will also help limit some erosion on Calcasieu Lake's shoreline, because the island will knock down wave action in the lake. Chip Kline, chairman of the coastal authority, touted the agency's commitment to investing in an area that was pummeled last year by two hurricanes in barely six weeks. "After a devastating hurricane season in southwest Louisiana, this restoration project is even more important to the overall recovery of the region, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will virtually kick-off India's massive coronavirus vaccination drive on Saturday. The Covid-19 vaccine rollout is expected to cover 3 lakh frontline healthcare workers across 3,006 sites in India. "The massive countrywide Covid-19 vaccination drive will be rolled out by Prime Minister from January 16. This would be the world's largest immunisation exercise," the health ministry has said. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states PM Modi will also be interacting with some beneficiaries who will receive the Covid-19 shot on Saturday, via videoconferencing. Everything you need to know about India's Covid vaccination drive: 1) On 16 January, PM Narendra Modi will launch the rollout of India's Covid-19 vaccination programme. 2) PM Modi will also launch the government's CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) app, a digital platform created for real-time monitoring of coronavirus vaccine delivery and distribution, the same day. 3) Nearly 3 lakh healthcare workers will get Covid-19 vaccine doses on day one of the massive nationwide Covid-19 inoculation drive. Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on the first day. 4) Ahead of the Covid-19 vaccination drive, Centre has shared a leaflet of DOs and DON'Ts, highlighting precautions and contraindications for vaccination along with a comparative factsheet for both the vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin). 5) What govt's leaflet of dos and don'ts say: Covid-19 vaccination is allowed only for 18 years and above. Pregnant women or who are not sure of their pregnancy and lactating mothers shouldn't receive the vaccine. Administration of Covid vaccine should be done separated by an interval of 14 days. The second dose should be of the same vaccine of which the first dose was administered. Interchanging Covid-19 vaccines is not allowed. 6) As per the guidelines issued to the shortlisted Covid-19 vaccination sites, healthcare workers (those registered in Co-WIN to be vaccinated) shall include not only doctors, nurses but also nursing orderlies, safai karamcharis, ambulance drivers, and would be from a mixed age group, including above 50 years. 7) A dedicated 24x7 hotline - 1075 - has also been set up to address questions related to the vaccine rollout and the Co-WIN software. 8) The health ministry has said that it has asked the states and UTs to increase the number of vaccination session sites to 5,000 and more. 9) The cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the Centre. Vaccines have been allotted to states and UTs based on their healthcare workers' data. 10) The full initial procurement of 1.65 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines - Covishield and Covaxin-- have been flown to all states and UTs for the first phase of vaccination. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. 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. Italy's new coronavirus restrictions will be in place until 5 March. Italian premier Giuseppe Conte has signed into effect Italy's latest emergency decree, with new coronavirus restrictions in force from 16 January until 5 March. Separately, Italy's health minister Roberto Speranza is due to sign a new ordinance this evening that is expected to place most regions of the country into orange zones - including the Lazio region around Rome. Here is a look at the main points outlined in the government's new decree: Regional travel The government has retained the ban on non-essential travel between all regions of Italy, until at least 15 February. Exceptions to this rule can be made, using the self-declaration form, for urgent or necessary reasons such as work, health or to visit somebody that is alone, in need of help or is not self-sufficient. White zone The government has added a new 'white' zone to the existing red, orange and yellow zones in its tiered colour-coded system of restrictions. The fourth zone is designated for regions with the fewest incidences of covid-19 cases, however currently no region qualifies for inclusion in this new category. Bars and restaurants The sale of take-away food and drinks after 18.00 is prohibited, however home delivery will be allowed. Schools High school students, outside red zones, can return to the classroom for 50 per cent of their lessons, with the other half conducted via distance learning. Museums Museums and archaeological sites can reopen, Monday to Friday, in yellow and white zones. Museums will limit the number of people visiting at any one time, with visitors obliged to book in advance and adhere to coronavirus restrictions. Visitors at home The existing recommendation of receiving a maximum of two non-cohabiting guests in your home remains in place. However this does not apply to children under the age of 14 or to people with disabilities or those who are not self-sufficient. State of emergency Italy's covid-19 state of emergency has been extended until 30 April. This mechanism grants authorities special powers to cut through red tape to implement, modify or revoke emergency measures if and when required. Culture Theatres and cinemas remain closed. Sport Swimming pools and gyms will not reopen until 5 March at the earliest, while ski resorts remain closed until 15 February. Curfew The nationwide nightly curfew, from 22.00 until 05.00, remains in force. For official information relating to the covid-19 crisis in Italy see the health ministry website. Sorry! This content is not available in your region Pope Francis sends a telegramme of condolence on the death of Cardinal Eusebio Oscar Scheid, Archbishop emeritus of the Metropolitan See of San Sebastian, of Rio de Janerio, Brazil. By Vatican News staff writer In a telegramme to the current Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Cardinal Orani Joao Tempesta, O. Cist., Pope Francis says he received with deep regret the news of Cardinal Scheids death. He also offers prayerful solidarity to all the faithful who found him to be a zealous pastor. The Pope writes that the late Cardinals Episcopal motto is God is Good, which he says, Reminds us of Gods goodness to His Church. He adds, This remembrance is truly consoling when we remember beloved Eusebios gift that served the people of God so diligently, having been the first Bishop of Sao Jose dos Campos. Pope Francis also remembered the Cardinals pastoral care as Archbishop of Florianopolis and at the Metropolitan See of San Sebastian of Rio de Janerio. In the telegramme, the Pope thanks the Most High for having given to the Brazilian Church such a generous pastor." I offer fervent prayers to welcome him into eternal happiness and console him with hope in the resurrection and to all those who mourn the loss of their beloved pastor. Cardinal Scheid had tested positive for Covid-19 and been admitted to the hospital on 12 January with a possible case of pneumonia. Life and ministry Bishop Eusebio was born in Luzerna, Santa Catariana, on December 8, 1932. He attended elementary school and high school at the Seminary of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Corupa, Brazil. A religious of the Congregation of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, (also known as Dehonians after their founder, Leo John Dehon), he made his religious profession on 2 February 1954. He studied Philosophy in Brusque, Brazile (1954) and at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy (1955-1957), where he also studied Theology (1957-1964). He was ordained a priest on 3 July 1960 in Rome. He continued his postgraduate studies and received his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Christology. On 18 February 1981 he was named first bishop of the Diocese of Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, where he was ordained bishop on 1 May 1981. On 23 January 1991 he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Florianopolis. In 2001 he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro. He was made a Cardinal on 21 October 2003, by Pope John Paul II. He became Archbishop emeritus in April 2009. Before being ordained bishop, Cardinal Scheid worked at the Cristo Rei Seminary and Northeast Regional Seminary, Recife, Brazil (1964-1965); Professor of Dogmatic Theology and Liturgy at the Theological Institute of Taubate (1966-1981) and Aparecida; Coordinator of Catechesis in Taubate (1970-1974); Director of the Faculty of Theology in Taubate; Guest Professor at PUC, Sao Paulo to teach Religious Culture (1966-1968). As bishop, he performed the following services: Bishop of Sao Jose dos Campos(1981-1991); Archbishop of Florianopolis (1991-2001); President of South Regional 4 - CNBB (1994-1998); Member of the Episcopal Commission of Doctrine of CNBB for 12 years; Ordinary for the faithful of the Oriental Rite without their own Ordinary (2001); director of family pastoral care in South Regional 1 for 8 years. At the Vatican he was a Counselor of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America from 25 November 2002; Member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communication on November 29, 2003; Papal Legate of St. Benedict XVI to the XV National Eucharistic Congress in Florianopolis from May 18-21, 2006. At the CNBB he was a member of the Permanent Council; Member of the Episcopal Commission for the National Sanctuary of Our Lady Aparecida; President of the Eastern Regional 1 - CNBB (2003-2007). Cardinal Scheid participated in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. He was also a member of the Council of Cardinals for the study of the organizational and economic issues of the Holy See from 17 January 2007. Investigations editor Larry Parnass, investigations editor, joined The Eagle in 2016 from the Daily Hampshire Gazette, where he was editor in chief. His freelance work has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant and CommonWealth Magazine. RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With a decline in patients seen by Inland Empire physicians during COVID-19, Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) would like to remind all members and community residents about the importance of seeing their primary care physicians for routine and preventive care appointments. In a recent interview with Good Day LAs Michaela Pereira, IEHPs Chief Medical Officer Dr. Karen Hansberger offered helpful tips about how to access care during the COVID-19 pandemic. IEHP physicians saw a 30% decrease in primary care visits between March September 2020 (compared to the same time the year prior), which has been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many residents bypassing preventive care visits, many medical professionals are concerned how this might impact the health and wellness of the Inland Empire community once the pandemic subsides. In a recent interview with Good Day LA's Michaela Pereira, IEHP's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Karen Hansberger offered helpful tips about how to access care, assuring residents of the precautions being taken to ensure their safety. "Your doctor and health care providers are prepared," Dr. Hansberger said. "They have protocols in place to keep you safe if you need to be seen." "You can also call your doctor," Dr. Hansberger added. "Many of the concerns you may have, like getting prescription refills, can be addressed over the phone and you may have the option for a televisit with your doctor." During the interview, Dr. Hansberger expressed the importance of prioritizing care. She shared that while some appointments like mammograms can be delayed by a few weeks, they should not be put off for more than six months. "Don't be afraid to access health care," said Dr. Hansberger. "Certainly, if you feel sick, you need to access health care." If members or residents have questions about seeking medical attention for non-emergency situations, they are encouraged to contact their primary care physician. Residents in need of medical or health benefits can call (866) 294-4347 for enrollment assistance and to be linked to a doctor. "Your physicians are here and are equipped to support your health and wellness, even during this pandemic," said Dr. Hansberger. "We encourage our members and community residents continue to access the care they need, when they need it so that we can all continue to stive to enjoy optimal care and vibrant health." For more information on telehealth visit iehp.org. About IEHP IEHP, Inland Empire Health Plan, is one of the top 10 largest Medicaid health plans and the largest not-for-profit Medicare-Medicaid plan in the country. With a network of more than 6,400 Providers and more than 2,000 employees, IEHP serves more than 1.3 million residents in Riverside and San Bernardino counties who are enrolled in Medicaid or Cal MediConnect Plan (Medicare-Medicaid Plan). Through a dynamic partnership with Providers and Community, award-winning service and innovative products, IEHP is fully committed to advocating for our Members and providing them with quality, accessible and wellness-based health care services. For more information, visit iehp.org. SOURCE Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) Related Links http://www.iehp.org An official UK study released on Thursday concludes that a past Covid-19 infection provides some immunity for at least five months, but people may still carry and transmit coronavirus. The Public Health England (PHE) analysis found that naturally acquired immunity as a result of past infections provide 83 per cent protection against reinfection, compared to people who have not had the disease before. This appears to last at least for five months from first becoming sick. However, experts cautioned those with immunity may still be able carry the virus in their nose and throat and, therefore, have a risk of transmitting to others. "This study has given us the clearest picture to date of the nature of antibody protection against COVID-19 but it is critical people do not misunderstand these early findings," said Professor Susan Hopkins, Senior Medical Advisor at Public Health England who led PHEs SIREN study. "We now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total and we do not yet know how long protection lasts. Crucially, we believe people may still be able to pass the virus on, she said. She stressed that the findings mean even if you believe you already had the disease and are protected, you can be reassured it is highly unlikely you will develop severe infections but there is still a risk that you could acquire an infection and transmit to others. Now more than ever it is vital we all stay at home to protect our health service and save lives, she added. The PHE says it has been regularly testing tens of thousands of health care workers across the UK since June for new COVID-19 infections as well as the presence of antibodies, which suggest people have been infected before. While the SARS-CoV-2 Immunity and Reinfection EvaluatioN (SIREN) study will continue to assess whether protection may last for longer, its results warn that people who contracted the disease in the first wave may now be vulnerable to catching it again. Between June 18 and November 24, scientists detected 44 potential reinfections (two probable and 42 possible reinfections) out of 6,614 participants who had tested positive for antibodies. This represents an 83 per cent rate of protection from reinfection. The PHE also warned that although those with antibodies have some protection from becoming ill with COVID-19 themselves, early evidence from the next stage of the study suggests that some of these individuals carry high levels of virus and could continue to transmit the virus to others. It is therefore crucial that everyone continues to follow the rules and stays at home, even if they have previously had COVID-19, to prevent spreading the virus to others. Remember to wash hands regularly, wear face coverings and make space from others to help reduce the likelihood of passing on the virus, the experts note. The analysis took place prior to the widespread dissemination of the new highly-transmissible variant VOC202012/01 and the PHE said that further work was underway in the laboratory to understand whether and to what extent antibodies also provide protection from this variant. The study will continue to follow participants for 12 months to explore how long any immunity may last, the effectiveness of vaccines and to what extent people with immunity are able to carry and transmit the virus. The experts stressed that this first report provides no evidence towards the antibody or other immune responses from COVID-19 vaccines, nor should any conclusions to be drawn on their effectiveness. George Eustice has thanked farmers for continuing to provide food on the nation's tables against the backdrop of the pandemic. The Environment Secretary has written an open letter to food producers and all those working in the wider food and drink industry. "I want to pay tribute, once again, to all of you working within our food and drink supply chains as you continue to feed the nation under such difficult circumstances. "The country is grateful for all that you have done and continue to do," Mr Eustice said. He added that it was 'more important than ever' that those working throughout the food and farming industry - 'from farm to fork' - felt safe. "Food businesses have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure workplaces are as Covid secure and as safe as possible, from managing capacity in shops, to encouraging customers to comply with regulations and guidance to keep us all safe. "In the last few days, supermarkets have stepped up again, building on previous work, to further tighten their measures." The Defra Secretary went on to say that he was 'enormously proud' of the work the food and farming industry had done. "I want to thank each and every one of you. You have been, and continue to be, the hidden heroes of this pandemic." Defra has also shared a video on its social media channels thanking farmers for 'working hard to feed the nation'. The post asks the public to 'share to support the UK's #FoodHeroes'. That release could not be found. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, in Washington on Aug. 18, 2020. (Brendon Fallon/The Epoch Times) No Specific, Credible Threats at This Time, Deputy DHS Secretary Says Officials have not identified specific, credible threats ahead of Inauguration Day, a top homeland security official said Friday. Theres no specific credible threats at this point in time. Theres just this raised level of tension. And so were raising our security level. And were doing it across the country, Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said on CNNs New Day. FBI Director Christopher Wray told Vice President Mike Pence in a briefing on Thursday that the bureau was seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter of potential threats before and during the inauguration. Were concerned about the potential for violence at multiple protests and rallies planned here in D.C. and in state capitols around the country in the days that come that could bring armed individuals within close proximity to government facilities and officials, Wray said. Security fencing surrounds the White House in Washington on Jan. 14, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images) National Guard soldiers maintain a watch over the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 14, 2021. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Cuccinelli, who was at the briefing, said he agreed there is a good deal of online chatter regarding both Washington and state capitols, though no specific state capitols have been mentioned or identified. At this point in time, officials are not raising the terrorism threat level, but are taking a number of actions to try to be ready if a threat does manifest. Weve prepared our own civilian law enforcement around the country to be ready to assist state and local allies to the extent they call on us to do so. We are prepositioning people on alert statuses around the country so that we can respond more quickly, said Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general. During a separate appearance on Fox News Mornings with Maria, Cuccinelli said officials expect a safe, smooth inauguration, and nothing has happened to change that, including the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol. While it has raised attention to the security around the inauguration, this planning has been going on across the U.S. Government with state and local partners since last May. It is a very secure event. We are prepared for orders of magnitude or sorts of problems that happened on January 6th, and that was before January 6th, he said. So America can be very confident this is going to be a safe, smooth inauguration and transition of power. The Duke of Cambridge has spoken candidly about how seeing people die when he was an air ambulance pilot left him traumatised for weeks on end and feeling the world was a darker, blacker place. Drawing on his own experiences speaking to front line workers dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Prince William, 38, admitted his work regularly affected his family life and said he really worries about the impact on staff now at seeing such high levels of sadness, trauma and death. The royal, who worked alongside doctors and paramedics providing emergency medical treatment at the East Anglian Air Ambulance, spoke out in a video call conversation to front line workers and counsellors about bereavement support. William, who was joined on the call by his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, 39, who put on a stylish display in a grey blazer with black collar detail, said: Some of it I noticed from my previous spell flying with the air ambulance with the team. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge heard about the crucial mental health support being provided for frontline workers during the pandemic by Hospice UKs Just B counselling and bereavement support line on Wednesday Pictured, top row (L-R): - Carly Kennard, Jules Lockett, Conal Devitt and Manal Sadik. Middle row (L-R): - Phil Spencer, Tony Collins and Caroline Francis When you see so much death and so much bereavement it does impact how you see the world. It is very interesting what you said about being able to see things in a different light. I think you said about thinking everyone around you is going to die, that is what really worries me about the front line staff at the moment. That you are so under the cosh at the moment and so pressurised and youre seeing such high levels of sadness, trauma, death, that it impacts your own life and your own family life because it is always there. Youre so drawn into it, which everyone is, it is only natural that would happen. But thats what I think a lot of the public dont understand, that when youre surrounded by that level of intense trauma and sadness and bereavement. It really does, it stays with you, at home it stays with you for weeks on end, doesnt it, and you see the world in a much more, slightly depressed, darker, blacker place. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were last seen with their children attending a special pantomime performance at London's Palladium Theatre in December (pictured) A general view of the front of Anmer Hall on the Sandringham Estate on January 13, 2013 in King's Lynn The royal couple both stressed it is vital that frontline personnel - including the police, who suffer from the stigma of having to enforce lockdown restrictions - reach out for support at this critical time and that the stigma surrounding seeking help for their mental health must end. Prince William went on: This is an unprecedented time we are all facing. I think that really needs to be nailed home right now is that this is like nothing before that anyone has ever seen, particularly this third wave we are going through right now. People need to understand how you are normal human beings doing a brilliant job in a very, very difficult time and I hope this service gives people the outlet that they need. I fear, like you said, youre all so busy caring for everyone else that you wont take enough time to care for yourselves and we wont see the impacts for quite some time. William spoke to Phil Spencer, wellbeing Inspector of Cleveland Police, who told the royal couple about the frustration that many police felt at being on the sharp end of the pandemic, having hand out fines to people breaking stringent lockdown regulations. He said: Emergency service work is difficult at the best of times, policing is really difficult at the best off times, but throw the pandemic into it.... Were all the same and dont get me wrong, and the NHS rightly so are absolute heroes and my heart goes out to London Ambulance Service and the rest of them, but we [the police service] are seen as the villains sometimes - again cant do right for doing wrong - having to put the fines out and lay down the law. The Duchess of Cambridge (pictured) has said her thoughts are with workers on the front line of the pandemic as she celebrates a 'very different' birthday. Pictured, on royal train tour in December He warned: Perhaps further down the line when all this is gone were going to have some broken police officers and emergency services staff. Because we are too busy focusing on protecting the most vulnerable people in communities but hand on heart, I think our service are the most vulnerable people right now and it is horrible to see. We need so much help. William replied: This is an unprecedented time you are all facing. This is like nothing before that people have ever seen, particularly this third wave we are going through right now. People need to understand how you are normal people doing a brilliant job in a very difficult time. You are all so busy caring for everyone else that you wont take time to care for yourself. The Duchess of Cambridge also questioned the front-line workers on what more could be done to convince their colleagues of the importance of prioritising themselves for help with mental health. Kate said: Never has there been a more important time to have services like this out there, so I am so glad they are being used as well. The call on Wednesday also highlighted how William and Kates Royal Foundation was helping to provide financial support through its Covid-19 Response Fund. The foundation has partnered with NHS England, NHS Improvement and the Department of Health and Social Care to help fund Hospice UKs Just B support line, which supports NHS staff, social care workers, carers and all emergency services personnel. Under Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. peace envoy, the American government has been willing to take dramatic steps, even in the face of opposition from the military and law enforcement, to extricate the United States from its longest war and bring about some type of peace in Afghanistan. In addition to the large-scale prisoner releases, the Trump administration has pushed for a quick withdrawal of military forces in the country, often over the objections of the Pentagon. The U.S. military has drawn down to 2,500 troops, still stationed at roughly a dozen bases in the country, despite opposition from U.S. lawmakers. But as President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepares to take office, a key question remains whether he will keep Mr. Khalilzad in place, or, push for a veteran diplomat of his own choosing. Mr. Biden has long had a skeptical view of a sizable American presence in Afghanistan, but unlike President Trump, he has also argued for a counterterrorism force in the country. The F.B.I., according to U.S. officials, placed Ms. Hasan on a list of people who should not be released as part of the Feb. 29 deal between the United States and the Taliban, in which the U.S. agreed to push the Afghan government to free 5,000 prisoners. Officials in Australia and France also pushed, to no avail, for a small number of the 5,000 prisoners, those who were convicted of killing their citizens, to remain locked up. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who oversaw the negotiations and guided them based on his interpretation of what Mr. Trump wanted, told foreign governments that there was no alternative but to move forward with the prisoner releases as the parties had agreed, according to an official who worked on the February agreement. Internally, the State Department eventually overruled the request to keep Ms. Hasan behind bars, as well. The decision was part of a broader effort by the White House to expedite talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban before the November presidential election in the United States, the officials said. In a statement to The Times, a State Department spokesperson said the prisoner swap was a difficult decision for the Afghans to make and for the United States to accept, adding that it was not something we are happy about. (New York, NY) Chairman Arthur Stark, CEO William Daroff and Vice Chair Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, issued the following statement: Once again, we demand that the Palestinian Authority stop encouraging and incentivizing terror through its reprehensible pay-to-slay policies rewarding acts of terror against Israelis by financially compensating perpetrators and their families with so-called martyr payments. Palestinian leadership is going to extraordinary lengths to continue these payments, insisting on paying convicted terror... The Delhi High Court on January 15 began hearing a petition against messaging platform WhatsApp's updated privacy policy. The petitioner, Advocate Chaitanya Rohilla, said the revised policy violates the Right to Privacy, legal news website Bar & Bench reported. The plea also said the Facebook-owned platform's policy provides a "360-degree profile into a person's online activity", without any government oversight. It also said there is no clarity on the extent to which sensitive data will be shared. Also read: WhatsApp Privacy Policy 2021 | Read the full text here "WhatsApp has made a mockery out of our fundamental right to privacy while discharging a public function in India, besides jeopardizing the National Security of the country by sharing, transmitting and storing the users data in some another country and that data, in turn, will be governed by the laws of that foreign country", the petition reads, as quoted by the website. Justice Prathiba M Singh recused herself from hearing the case, and will transfer it to a single-judge bench. The judge also said the matter should be treated as Public Interest Litigation (PIL). Also read: WhatsApp's new data privacy policy | Take a look at the info the messenger service will collect from you The matter will next be heard on January 18, Bar & Bench reported. WhatsApp has received backlash over the policy, due to concerns over data sharing with Facebook. WhatsApp has also issued a clarification, stating that the update relates to messages with a business over WhatsApp. WhatsApp users have time until February 8, 2021 to accept the new policy. Messaging apps Signal and Telegram, which are seen as more secure, have seen a surge in popularity after WhatsApp's updated policy. A man suspected of kicking in a doorway during a November burglary is now in custody. Police responded to a burglary call on Hixson Pike in November, and when police arrived they spoke to the victim. He said he was home when the suspect broke into the house. The victim described the suspect as a tall and thin white male with scraggy facial hair. He told police the suspect knocked on the front door, looked through the back window, and then knocked on the rear door. The victim said the suspect did this a few times, and then kicked in the back door, knocking the door frame off the wall. The victim said he then ran out of the other back door and took a picture of the suspects vehicle, at which point the suspect saw him, yelled at him, and then ran to his vehicle and fled the scene. The suspect did not appear to have taken anything. Police said the vehicle from the picture was registered to the girlfriend of Christopher Brent Chambers, 28. Chambers fit the description given. Police could not find any fingerprints. The victims father owned the house, and said the damage to the doorway was in the realm of $1,000. A week later, the victim said he had located the suspect on social media and identified Chambers as the man who kicked the door in. On Sunday, police made contact with Chambers and transported him to the Hamilton County Jail. He is charged with theft of property, aggravated burglary of an occupied residence, and felony vandalism of over $1,000. Veteran who served in all 3 defence sevices presented with silver salver caps India oi-Briti Roy Barman New Delhi, Jan 15: Colonel Prithipal Singh (Retd), the only officer to serve in Indian Army, Navy and Airforce was presented with a 'Silver Salver' on behalf of the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat on the occasion of Veterans Day. Col. Singh has the unique distinction of serving in all three defence services. Col. Singh has fought in the Indo-Pak War of 1965, World War II, and as a sector commander with Assam Rifles in Manipur. The veteran soldier retired at the age of 70 when he was a Colonel and was finally posted with Assam Rifles in Manipur. He recently celebrated his 100th birthday. Making veiled references to China and Pakistan, General Naravane said, "While remaining committed to resolving disputes through dialogue and diplomacy, the Indian Army has been swift and decisive in its response to counter any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo on the Line of Actual Control. Relentless operations against state-sponsored terrorism have reinforced moral and operational ascendancy along the Line of Control." The Army Chief said the forces are taking rapid steps to acquire new capabilities and a large number of projects to acquire better technologies are underway. "The Indian Army enjoys a distinctive space in the hearts and minds of our citizens. I am sanguine that we shall continue to uphold our core values and ethos and live up to the trust reposed in us by the nation. The Indian Army is and will always remain strong and capable," General Naravane added. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News While speaking about the army veterans Naravane "Some Veterans had expressed disappointment that not much importance is being given to the 50 yrs of 1971 war. I'd like to say that this entire year will be celebrated as 'Golden Victory Year' to mark 1971 war victory. Several events will be organised across the country. Last year had been very challenging for our nation & the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces bravely stayed at the northern borders while also battling the pandemic efficiently. I'm proud that we had the support of our Veterans in carrying this out". For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 12:17 [IST] As some governors criticized the Trump administration Friday for a potential shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, Connecticut officials said they have no indication next weeks shipment here will be affected. The Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said earlier this week that the federal government would stop holding back a reserve of second vaccine doses in an effort to speed up the distribution. But in a tweet Friday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said she had been informed by the head of Operation Warp Speed that states will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses. In subsequent tweets, Brown characterized the news as deception on a national scale, and said she was demanding answers from the Trump administration. The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond Friday to a list of questions sent by Hearst Connecticut Media about the potential impact on Connecticut. On Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont said Connecticut would receive an additional 50,000 doses of the vaccine, which a spokeswoman for Chief Operating Officer Josh Geballe later confirmed would come out of the national stockpile. The state has been receiving around 46,000 doses of vaccine from the federal government each week, so a boost of 50,000 doses would be roughly equivalent to one weeks supply, according to the governor. The Lamont administration indicated they were led to believe that boost in doses would be ongoing but its unclear how many extra the state will receive each week. Lora Rae Anderson, Geballes spokeswoman, said Friday there was no communication or indication, Connecticuts allotment of vaccine had changed. Numbers from the state Department of Public Health show Connecticut is projected to receive 96,125 doses next week. Maura Fitzgerald, a spokeswoman for DPH, said those numbers include 50,000 doses from Operation Warp Speed, and allocation of excess vaccine that would have been administered at long-term care facilities. Connecticut has remained among the nations leaders, administering the most COVID-19 vaccines per capita in the Northeast, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has added a vaccination tracker to its website. Overall, more than 31 million doses have been distributed nationwide. Less than half a little more than 12 million have been administered to patients, according to the CDCs data. In Connecticut, vaccine sites began administering the shots this week to those 75 and older who are not living in nursing homes. As of Thursday, 171,035 doses of vaccine had been administered in Connecticut, Lamonts office said. Of those, 154,994 people have received their first dose and 16,041 have received their final dose. The vaccination efforts come as Connecticut recorded 1,878 new COVID-19 cases on Friday. The new cases were found among 30,303 tests for a daily positivity rate of 6.2 percent. Hospitalizations continued to decline with 20 fewer patients, dropping the statewide total to 1,098. However, 41 more deaths attributed to the disease were recorded Friday, increasing the death toll to 6,594. Yale New Haven Health announced Friday it would open vaccine clinics to those 75 and older beginning next Wednesday. Sites will open in North Haven, New London, Old Saybrook and Trumbull, with a site in Greenwich opening the week of Jan. 25. More are expected to open in the future. Health care providers are also expected to begin reaching out directly to their patients. Some hospital systems are also scheduling vaccinations directly through their websites. UConn Health and Hartford Health Care have prominent links on their websites where patients can register. The state has announced three options for seniors to register for a vaccination appointment. Residents can apply through the state website to access the Vaccine Administration Management System, a federal portal. That option requires users to have an active email address. Those without access to a computer can also call 877-918-2224 to schedule an appointment. State officials have warned the phone system is experiencing delays due to a high call volume. 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. About Us BibleStudyTools.com is the largest free online Bible website for verse search and in-depth studies. Search verses using the translation and version you like with over 29 to choose from including King James (KJV), New International (NIV), New American Standard (NASB), The Message, New Living (NLT), Holman Christian Standard (HCSB),English Standard (ESV), and many more versions of the Holy Bible. Our rich online library includes well known and trusted commentaries including the popular Matthew Henry Commentary, concordances like Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and Naves Topical Concordance, Bible dictionaries, Biblical encyclopedias and historical Christian and church books including Fox's Book of Martyrs. Our library of resources also includes Bible reading plans, Parallel Bible, and many other additional Christian resources including dictionaries and encyclopedias. For a more in-depth study of Scripture, our website offers Greek and Hebrew Interlinear for the New and Old Testament, lexicons for original Greek and Hebrew reading of Scripture, as well as popular Church history books. Our most popular content, Bible verses by topic, provides Biblical encouragement and wisdom for all of lives situations and events. Search over 200 topical verses to meet your need, or sign up for our daily bible to receive a verse by email to start your day. Read more About Us, Use BST on your site, and view our Online Bible Sitemap. HARRISBURG, Pa., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Pennsylvania families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Pennsylvania families, schools, and organizations are hosting 1,769 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of these activities will be the launch of a series of video testimonials from Pennsylvania families sharing how their lives have been transformed because of the opportunities of virtual education. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the Pennsylvania counties of Union and Snyder; the cities of Bethel Park, Aliquippa, Hollidaysburg, East Prospect, Blooming Grove, Gettysburg, Pottsville, McKees Rocks, Delmont, Coleraine, Wind Gap, Union, and East Cocalico; and the townships of Vanport, Mead, East Cocalico, North Union, and South Woodbury. "During this challenging school year, Pennsylvania educators and parents are increasingly speaking up for how children need options, and different school choices can coexist," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week is a time to celebrate all the parents, educators, and learning programs that inspire kids to happiness and dare them to be great. " In Pennsylvania, there are a variety of educational options to attend including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Pennsylvania families in low-achieving school zones or who fall below a certain income level may be eligible for state-run scholarship programs. Pennsylvania families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Pennsylvania school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/pennsylvania. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected] National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Let Freedom Ring is the title the Brooklyn Academy of Music has given to its public exhibition of images by seven Brooklyn-based artists as part of its 35th Annual Brooklyn Tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The images appear through next Friday on the giant BAM sign (typically used to advertise upcoming shows and events) at the corner of Lafayette Avenue and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The phrase Let freedom ring resonates deeply with me. It takes me back to that moment as a child watching television with my own Black family, immigrants from Jamaica, arriving in New York in the 1970s, and quickly, intuitively understanding that we had to make common cause with Black Americans who were then (when are they not?) energetically engaged in the struggle for social and economic equity. Together, my father, mother and sister watched a program about civil rights that featured the grainy, black-and-white footage of King giving that speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963 the famous I have a dream speech. In it the refrain let freedom ring was so gripping to me that looking at the electronic billboard I can hear his voice again: Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Community Conversation May 18, 2021 | 3:30 PM ET What will William & Mary look like in a post-pandemic world? President Katherine Rowe hosted the second and final Community Conversation centered on the university's strategic planning effort: Vision into Action. During this phase of planning, we are charting a longer-term vision and near-term actions that will maintain the university's positive momentum under pandemic. Need a refresher on strategic planning? Review Phase I: Vision, Mission, Values and Phase II: Environmental Analysis. Guests included: Peggy Agouris, Provost, Co-chair of SPSC Ginger Ambler, Vice President for Student Affairs, Co-author of Flourishing & Engagement White Paper Henry Broaddus, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives & Public Affairs, Phase III Lead of Strategic Planning Steve Hanson, Vice Provost for International Affairs and Director of the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies, Co-author of Teaching & Learning White Paper Amy Sebring, Chief Operating Officer, Co-author of Research & Innovation White Paper {{youtube:large|VJEmbKYItBM}} Watch past Community Conversations 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. A man stands in front of the Nordstrom store, closed for in-store shopping, in downtown Toronto on Nov. 23, 2020.(Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images) Ontario MPP Who Spoke Out Against Provincial Lockdown Removed From PC Caucus A member of the Ontario provincial Parliament was removed from the Progressive Conservative (PC) caucus after he sent a letter to Premier Doug Ford urging him to end the province-wide lockdown that is deadlier than COVID. Roman Baber, who was elected in 2018 and represented Torontos York-Centre riding, was removed by Premier Doug Ford Friday morning after he spoke out against the provinces lockdown measures in his letter. Effective immediately, Mr. Baber will no longer be sitting as a member of the PC Caucus and will not be permitted to seek re-election as a PC member, Ford said in a statement. Baber responded on Twitter, calling Fords move a regretful decision since many colleagues agree with me incl @fordnation in large part. I dont regret speaking out for millions of lives & livelihoods decimated by Public Health, I serve the public, he wrote. The Lockdown is grounded in false public health narrative, poor planning & bad data. While Doug only cares about re-election, Lockdowns are killing more than saving. I couldnt watch the suffering anymore. I hope I encouraged other professionals to speak out. Lockdowns are deadlier than Covid. I wrote a respectful letter to Premier Ford, asking to end the Lockdown. Look @ the data -the virus is real but the crisis is mostly in LTC. Let's focus on LTC & hospital capacity, but ending the Lockdown is best for our health.#onpoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/IIuvB7OXQo Roman Baber (@Roman_Baber) January 15, 2021 In his two-page letter posted on social media Friday morning, Baber told Ford that lockdown measures are causing an avalanche of suicides, overdoses, bankruptcies, divorces and takes an immense toll on our children. He also warned that the medicine is killing the patient and argued that Ontarios Hospital and ICU Capacity are better than in the last 3 years. Babers letter came days after Ford imposed a second 28-day state of emergency, issued a stay-at-home order, and added new restrictions to the province. Ford said Babers comments are irresponsible. By spreading misinformation, he is undermining the tireless efforts of our front line health care workers at this critical time, and he is putting people at risk. I will not jeopardize a single Ontarians life by ignoring public health advice, Ford said. I am the first to recognize that COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on people. However, as premier, my number one priority is the health and safety of all Ontarians. We must respect the advice and recommendations of public health officials and the Chief Medical Officer of Health. There is no room for political ideology in our fight against COVID-19rather, our response has been and will always be driven by evidence and data, he added. Ontario Premier Doug Ford at a press conference at Queens Park in Toronto on Dec. 21, 2020. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press) Baber said in his letter that COVID is real, but the fear of COVID is exaggerated. While every death is tragic, after 10 months we learned that COVID is not nearly as deadly as first thoughtit has a 99.98 [percent] Infection Survival Rate, he wrote. Baber also said in his letter that the infection fatality rate, according to the estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, varies between age groups, with rates higher for those who are older. He cited the rates with percentages, however, which meant the figures were off by a factor of 100, but later issued a correction. Look @ the data the virus is real but the crisis is mostly in LTC [long term care], he said on Twitter. Lets focus on LTC & hospital capacity, but ending the Lockdown is best for our health. Baber went on to argue in his letter that the lack of capacity in the health-care system is created artificially by rationing healthcare resources in response to modelling by the Command Table, except that the Tables modelling is almost always wrong. Besides that, Baber noted that Ontarios overdose rate is trending 50 percent above normal and that cancer screenings are only at 60 percent capacity in a Toronto hospital. Ten percent of adults reported recent thoughts or feelings of suicide (x4 normal), he wrote, citing data from the Canadian Mental Health Association. Among Canadians aged 19-35 the rate is 20 [percent]. In addition, the shutting down of businesses means the province is faced with a catastrophic wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures. The Government is criminalizing normal human behavior and putting law abiding Ontarians in legal jeopardy, Baber wrote. Public health cant change human behavior. The letter concludes that the lockdowns are objectively deadlier than COVID as Hot zones like Toronto and Peel have been in Lockdown since Thanksgiving without success. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. The first Covid-19 vaccines have arrived, and the race is on to get them into as many arms as possible as soon as possible. But vaccination rates have fallen frustratingly short of what is needed to turn the tide of this pandemic, which continues to claim thousands of lives every day. The currently authorized vaccines are meant to be given in two doses. To speed things up, some scientists have floated the idea of delaying the second dose, only giving people only a single dose or halving the dose size. UK regulators have prioritized giving as many individuals their first dose of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines as possible even if that means waiting up to 12 weeks for the second shot. Other countries are also considering changes to their vaccine dosing regimens. Some experts say there are not enough data on the amount and length of protection these altered dosing schedules provide, however. They argue that the bigger problem is distributing the existing vaccine supply and that changing the schedules without rigorous evidence could compromise public trust in vaccines. We should really think long and hard any time we advise people to deviate from what the evidence actually shows in terms of efficacy, which has only been tested for those standard dosing regimens, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown Universitys Center for Global Health Science and Security. Before we start tinkering with the vaccine regimens, we should worry about making sure that we can actually give people the vaccines that we already have. The US Food and Drug Administration has said it does not support changing vaccine dosing or schedules, calling such actions premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence. This week President Donald Trumps administration recommended immediately opening up vaccinations to everyone older than 65. The Department of Health and Human Services also said it would release all available vaccine doses instead of holding back the second ones. That assertion was made just days after President-elect Joe Biden announced similar plans once he takes office next week. The Biden administration has said it does not intend to skip second doses and expects that companies will be able to manufacture enough vaccine by the time people need their second round. Heres what the data suggest about tweaking vaccine doses. Delaying the second dose The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines both of which involve viral genetic material known as mRNA were given to clinical trial participants in two doses (a prime dose followed by a booster three or four weeks later). After both doses, the Pfizer vaccine was found to be 95 per cent effective in preventing Covid, and Modernas came in at 94.1 per cent. In the trials, the Pfizer vaccine provided partial immunity about two weeks after the first dose, with an efficacy of 82 per cent. But there are no data on whether protection lasts longer than three weeks, when the second dose was given. Immunological evidence suggests the antibody response to the vaccine increased substantially after the second dose as well. While decisions on alternative dosing regimens reside with health authorities, Pfizer believes it is critical to conduct surveillance efforts on any alternative schedules implemented and to ensure each recipient is afforded the maximum possible protection, which means immunization with two doses of the vaccine, the company said in a statement shared with Scientific American. Rasmussen agrees. The bottom line is that theres not really any efficacy to support a delayed second dose, at least of [the] Moderna and Pfizer [vaccines], she says. A World Health Organization advisory group called SAGE (Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization) concluded that the two doses of the Pfizer vaccine should ideally be given three to four weeks apart but that countries experiencing exceptional epidemiological circumstances could consider delaying the second dose by up to six weeks in order to vaccinate more people. Modernas clinical trial included a relatively small, nonrandom group of people who received only a single dose. Among these individuals, one dose was found to be 80.2 per cent effective in preventing Covid when researchers followed up with them about a month later. There are no data on whether protection lasts longer than that, however. Moderna did not respond to a request for comment. The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford involves an adenovirus and is authorized in the UK, India and other countries. It was given to clinical trial participants in two doses between four and 12 weeks apart. The vaccines clinical trial data have been somewhat confusing, however: An interim analysis indicated an efficacy of 70.4 after two doses. But a further breakdown of the data showed that the efficacy was 62.1 per cent when given in two full doses and, surprisingly, 90 per cent in a subset of participants who mistakenly received a half-dose followed by a full one. Scientists are still puzzled as to possible reasons for the latter result. Some speculate that it may be linked to the longer interval between doses in the half-dose group. According to an AstraZeneca spokesperson, an exploratory analysis found the vaccines efficacy was 73 per cent after a single dose, for a dose interval between 22 days and 12 weeks. Nevertheless, the UKs Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency recommends two doses, given at an interval between four and 12 weeks. Data on participants immune response showed antibodies increased after the second dose and also did so if there was a longer interval between doses. Preliminary data (which are yet unpublished) suggest the increased immune response with longer dosing intervals could result in increased efficacy, the companys spokesperson says. This is not surprising, says Shane Crotty, a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunologys Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research. Whether the booster immunization is given a day, 21 days, 28 days or 12 weeks [after the first shot], if you take a population of people six months after that and ask, How are they doing? I would expect all of those to be relatively the same or, if anything, the 12-week booster group to be doing even better, he says. The bigger problem is the window of vulnerability between doses because it is not clear how long protection from the first dose lasts. The reason to give people second immunizations faster is definitely not that it gives a better immune response, Crotty adds. Its that you get the person protected faster. Skipping the second dose Some have also suggested skipping the second dose altogether. But given the lack of data on how long protection from a single dose lasts, many experts are wary of this idea. I dont think a single dose with mRNA [which the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines rely on] makes any sense, Crotty says. Theres clearly a substantial increase in immune response after the booster immunization. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, agrees. I think every company would have preferred to have a one-dose vaccine if it worked similarly well. But they made [the decision to have two doses] based on what was most likely to work and what they saw in the immunological data, she says. The only way to truly know whether a single dose would work is to run a clinical trial, Dean notes. Doing so would likely require a lot of time and resources that are in short supply, however. By the time the trials would yield data, other vaccines might have been authorized and could alleviate the shortage. On Twitter, Florian Krammer, a professor of microbiology at Mount Sinais Icahn School of Medicine, pointed out another concern with giving only a single dose: the possibility that it might cause a weak immune response, which could make the virus more likely to mutate and potentially make the vaccine ineffective. That is a possibility but may not be a huge concern, Crotty says. Halving doses Perhaps the most plausible suggestion put forth to extend the vaccine supply is to halve the dose of certain vaccines. Earlier this month, Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser of the Trump administrations vaccine effort Operation Warp Speed, said officials were contemplating giving half-doses of the Moderna vaccine to Americans between the ages of 18 and 55. (This week Slaoui resigned from his position, but he will remain for 30 days.) In clinical trials, he said, people who received half of the Moderna vaccines 100 microgram dose had an identical immune response to those who received a full dose. But he added that it would ultimately be up to the FDA to decide whether to authorize such a change in dosing. Additionally, the data on half-doses were from a phase II clinical trial so there is not sufficient evidence that half-doses prevent disease, Crotty notes. Ultimately, the risks of altering data-backed vaccine-dosing strategies could outweigh the benefits. Discussions of changing the dosing regimen with no data to support them could create doubt and skepticism about the process and lead to increased vaccine hesitancy, Rasmussen says. Crotty agrees. In emergency situations, I think its reasonable to have [this] dialogue, he says. But in the end, I think its important to go with whats proven. Bharat Biotech's Covaxin has been approved by 11 states for inoculation in the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination programme. The vaccination drive which begins tomorrow i.e January 16 will cover 10 million healthcare workers. Out of the 11 states that have agreed to deploy the Covaxin, five are opposition-ruled. According to an Economic Times report, every state will dedicate six centres to Covaxin. This would roughly work out to 3-5% vaccination centres depending on the size of the state. These numbers could surge as the public immunisation programme broadens its scope and reach. Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Karnataka, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana are the states which have said yes to the Covaxin. Ten of these states have already received 20,000 doses of Covaxin, while Assam has so far got 12,000 doses. Tamil Nadu health secretary J Radhakrishnan confirmed the state had identified six centres from its list of 160 vaccination sites for administering Covaxin. A Delhi government spokesperson also confirmed that of its 81 vaccination centres, six will be dedicated for the Bharat Biotech vaccine. Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covishield manufactured by Serum Institute of India and Bharat Botech's Covaxin were granted emergency use approval earlier this month. There has been mounting criticism over India's approval of Covaxin with opposition lawmakers and health experts criticising it for lack of efficacy data, typically obtained from a large, Phase III human trial - which the manufacturer is still conducting. Opposition-ruled states like Chhattisgarh, Punjab and Jharkhand have spoken against the move. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee too had raised the issue of safety of Covid-19 vaccines in the Prime Minister's meeting with chief ministers on Monday. However, the health ministry has maintained its stance on the vaccines being safe and effective. Also read: No COVID-19 vaccine interchangeability, no shots for pregnant women: Health Ministry Also read: PM Modi to virtually roll out COVID-19 vaccination drive on Jan 16 Irish Water and Offaly County Council are currently working to repair a burst water main serving Blundell Wood, Edenderry and surrounding areas which is impacting the water supply to homes and businesses. Crews are working to repair the burst as quickly and as safely as possible, in accordance with the current Level 5 COVID-19 restrictions, and restore the water supply to customers. These essential works are scheduled to take place until 5pm this evening, however, we recommend that you allow 2 to 3 hours after the estimated restoration time for your water supply to fully return. John Gavin, Operations Lead with Irish Water, said, Irish Water and Offaly County Council understand the inconvenience when a burst occurs and thanks customers for their patience while we work to repair the burst and restore normal supply to impacted customers. We are encouraging customers to conserve water for essential purposes while repairs are underway. There are ways to conserve water that will not impact on hygiene or handwashing. Simple water conservation efforts can have a big impact on reducing demand on the supply such as not running taps needlessly, taking showers instead of baths and to postpone using dishwashers and washing machines where possible. The customer care helpline is open 24/7 on 1850 278 278 and customers can also contact Irish Water on Twitter @IWCare with any queries. For updates please visit the water supply and services section of the website and search the reference number, OFF00027752. S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster in a statewide address Wednesday night again advocated for keeping the historic Savannah River Site plutonium settlement out of the state budget, a maneuver he said would prioritize Aiken, Barnwell and nearby counties. The nod to the Savannah River Site neighbors drew scattered applause, including from Aiken-area lawmakers. Officials throughout Aiken County have been in communication with the governors office about the $525 million payout. Having the governor so prominently acknowledge the value of spending the money locally, in the counties surrounding SRS, is extremely helpful, state Rep. Bill Taylor said Thursday. By segmenting the money in separate legislation, the Aiken Republican continued, it doesnt get commingled with the state budget money, where it would be easier to see much of the money go elsewhere. McMaster initially recommended a standalone appropriation bill when he unveiled his fiscal year 2022 budget request earlier this month. The executive budget proposed no specific investment of the funds millions and millions of dollars and instead called for full accountability, transparency and equitable distribution. Both the governor and state Attorney General Alan Wilson have said they want to see a substantial chunk of the plutonium money invested in the Savannah River Site region, often seen as the crescent of Aiken, Barnwell and Allendale counties. State Sen. Tom Young, R-Aiken, in a brief interview Thursday, reiterated their shared position. We agree with Gov. McMaster and Attorney General Wilson that a large portion of the settlement funds should go to Aiken and other counties in the region, he said. State Rep. Bart Blackwell, another Aiken Republican, echoed Taylor and Young: To hear Gov. McMaster repeat that sentiment during last nights State of the State ensures that the entire General Assembly is now aware of his position. This is good news and helps the delegation to secure this funding for our community. The $525-million sum stems from a landmark agreement reached by South Carolina and the Department of Energy, the Savannah River Site landlord, last year. Terms of the deal included a DOE promise to remove from South Carolina 9.5 metric tons of plutonium by 2037 and an upfront $600 million payment from the Trump administration. The settlement is the single largest in Palmetto State history. Such a significant purse is sure to cause a scramble in Columbia. The rumours of Paul Beauregard's demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated. The rumours of Paul Beauregard's demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated. Email inboxes and phone lines were burning-hot Thursday morning with the news that Treasury Board Secretary Beauregard arguably the most powerful bureaucrat in the Manitoba government and the point man for the province's pandemic response had resigned his post while the province is still very much in the grips of a public-health crisis. Beauregard is a controversial figure who been caught up in a scrap with the Opposition NDP over allegations he was improperly involved in the awarding of a contract to Bell MTS, his former employer. The political battle prompted Beauregard to file an unprecedented harassment and bullying complaint against an NDP MLA. Pallister's trusted adviser signals his departure Click to Expand MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Paul Beauregard has given notice he will leave his role as Treasury Board secretary once his replacement is found. Posted: 5:41 PM Jan. 14, 2021 A powerful figure with a hand in most important files in Premier Brian Pallister's government is on his way out eventually. Paul Beauregard has given notice he will leave his role as Treasury Board secretary once his replacement is found. Read Full Story But even with all of Beauregard's baggage and the myriad problems with Manitoba's pandemic response, changing leadership mid-crisis would be a horrible blow to a government already suffering from a deficit in public confidence. If true. Which it isn't. Not quite. It turns out that an ill-fated effort to answer questions about Beauregard's employment status with a perfunctory and opaque written statement left an impression that Beauregard had, in fact, resigned and was leaving government imminently. News reports immediately connected that decision to the Bell MTS contract controversy. However, two facts became abundantly clear as Thursday unfolded: first, Beauregard had not resigned; and as a result of the first fact, there was really no connection to the Bell MTS contract story. Government sources confirmed that Beauregard sent an email to his staff at the Treasury Board Secretariat this week announcing that he plans to step down from his post at some point, when the pandemic and the vaccine program, are well in hand to pursue opportunities in the private sector. Although his intentions were reasonable, the decision to send that email only to people working at TBS created a dilemma for political staff in the premier's office, who were not in the loop but were deluged with requests for comment. Eventually, Communications Services Manitoba the agency within government that handles departmental communications (rather than ministerial communications) issued a statement that really did nothing to dispel the idea that Beauregard had resigned. "The Secretary will continue in his current role until a replacement is found and, along with hundreds of other public servants, will continue to support the work of Manitobas COVID-19 vaccine task force," the statement read. While not strictly untrue, it really doesn't tell enough of the real story to be considered accurate. Where does that leave Beauregard and the pandemic response? He continues to oversee all aspects, including the distribution of vaccines, now and for the foreseeable future. A senior government source said that Beauregard has assured everyone that there will be no "sudden departure" and that he "isn't going anywhere, anytime soon." After much prodding, Beauregard issued a statement later in the day confirming that while he had "provided advance working notice" of his intention to leave, he will not depart until "my work is complete in helping the Vaccine Implementation Task Force." This was a pretty simple matter that could have been easily handled by disclosing a few salient facts. Instead, thanks to a badly written statement, Beauregard and the government he works for had to endure an entire day where people thought he was running from his job to escape a scandal. The misdirection on this story also diverted attention away from a more fascinating angle; Beauregard and his boss, Premier Brian Pallister, have offered eerily similar descriptions of their intentions to leave government. Notwithstanding his chronic coyness, Pallister told reporters in year-end interviews he had no intention of leaving politics until COVID-19 was largely under control. "I'm committed to seeing (the pandemic) through," he told the Canadian Press. Although just as vague as the canned statement on Beauregard's future, Pallister's admission piqued already rampant speculation about his future. The premier's popularity has plummeted along with his government's public support, which had fed the idea that he will get out of politics long before the next election. And in many ways, it's not surprising that Beauregard Pallister's right-hand in all matters fiscal would be thinking about ending his career in the public service around the same time that the premier was considering a departure from politics. Of all those involved in forging the government's response to the health crisis, Pallister and Beauregard are the most vulnerable to post-pandemic reviews. It's not clear what kind of review will be conducted; Pallister has resisted calls to launch a full-blown, independent investigation but Manitoba's auditor general has pledged to conduct a series of audits of pandemic activities. Either way, it's unlikely the results of those reviews are going to be flattering for the Tory government in general, and Pallister and Beauregard in particular. So, for better or worse, both men remain in their current jobs for the foreseeable future. Perhaps just long enough to make up for past shortcomings in the pandemic response and write a more flattering final chapter for each of their careers in government. dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca LEELANAU COUNTY, MI A woman was injured in a rollover crash in Northern Michigan. The Leelanau County Sheriffs Office is investigating the crash which occurred on South Cedar Road near White Road in Solon Township at 1:10 a.m. on Friday. A citizen had come across a silver 2005 Buick damaged off the roadway as well as an injured female walking a short distance away. The citizen called to report the incident and stayed with the female victim until help arrived. When first questioned about the accident, the female, a 28-year-old from Traverse City, stated a male subject had been driving the vehicle when the accident occurred but she later she admitted to driving, police said. The driver, who was suffering from non-life-threatening injuries, was transported to Munson Hospital for treatment. The woman was driving with a suspended drivers license, her second offense, and she had open intoxicants in her vehicle, according to police. Charges are pending with the Leelanau County prosecutors office, police said. A firm of London plumbers is looking at introducing a 'no jab, no job' policy requiring all its workers to be vaccinated against coronavirus, its founder has revealed. Charlie Mullins, of Pimlico Plumbers, says he has been talking to his lawyers about making the vaccine mandatory for all new hires within a few months. The firm is also exploring how it might modify existing staff contracts, he said, although he insisted no one would be forced to receive a vaccine or be fired over the issue. The Government has pledged to vaccinate 15 million people in Britain by mid-February, with Boris Johnson promising that 200,000 doses would be administered per day by the end of the week. Charlie Mullins (pictured), of Pimlico Plumbers, says he has been talking to his lawyers about making the vaccine mandatory for all new hires within a few months Vaccinations will soon be available on the High Street, alongside in around 50 hubs which will be set up in venues across the UK in a bid to get the jab to as many Britons as possible. However, Mr Mullins told the BBC he was willing to pay for private immunisations for those at Pimlico Plumbers, should they become available. He added he has set aside 800,000 to pay for inoculations for more than 400 workers. 'We wouldn't dream of forcing anybody but I'm pretty much certain that 99 per cent of our staff would jump at the opportunity,' Mr Mullins said on Thursday. 'Who in their right mind would turn down one needle or one jab that could save your life?' Asked whether there was a contradiction between saying contracts could be modified to require vaccines while also saying no one would be forced out, Mr Mullins presented the issue as one of persuasion rather than coercion. 'It's not a contradiction because I think you'll find if you encourage people and advise them ... I'm happy to pay for anyone that works for us to have the vaccine,' he said. The Pimlico Plumbers boss added he believes that private vaccinations will be available within a few months. The firm is also exploring how it might modify existing staff contracts, he said, although he insisted no one would be forced to receive a vaccine or be fired over the issue He also said he does not think people will find a 'no jab, no job' policy controversial. 'Nobody moans now you've got to get on a plane with a negative Covid test,' he said, referring to new rules requiring passengers arriving in Britain to provide proof of a negative test taken less than 72 hours before travel. Many other countries have had such requirements for months. However, despite Mr Mullins' plans to adopt a 'no jab, no job' policy, lawyers have suggested this move could lead to claims of discrimination or constructive dismissal. Nick Wilcox, a partner at BDBF, told the Guardian that mandatory vaccinations 'could be an issue', advising employers to consult workers about jabs rather than imposing them. Since the beginning pandemic, members of the Mid-Island Rotary have delivered food and masks to food pantries throughout Staten Island every month. At the end of December, they supplied the Oakwood Community food pantry, the St. Joseph/St. Marys food pantry, the Vanderbilt Moravian Church food pantry and the El Centro food pantry with 200 bags of groceries and 200 masks. Larry Vann, Bob Moore and George Dougherty at St. Joseph/St. Mary's food pantry. (Courtesy/Robert Moore) The generous donations were made through the Bernard DelRey Memorial Fund. Bernard was a former president and beloved member of the Mid-Island Rotary who died a few years ago. Because of the memorial fund in his name and because of the generosity of Bernards family members and friends along with Lidl Grocery who matched the food purchase to double the donation the event came to fruition and was successful. We originally planned on gathering enough groceries to support only two pantries, but with their match, we were able to support four, feeding many more hungry families, said Bob Moore, president of the Mid-Island Rotary Club. Vanderbilt Moravian Church food pantry volunteers. (Courtesy/Robert Moore) The foundation will continue to do their best to serve the community of Staten Island by providing much needed food and masks to even more food pantries each month going forward. And we are also optimistically searching for other service-driven grocers like Lidl to assist us in our efforts, Moore explains. George Dougherty, Bob Moore, and Rev. Terry Troia at El Centro food pantry. (Courtesy/Robert Moore) In July members of the club donated food to restock the food pantries at Our Lady of Good Counsel R.C. Church, the Stapleton Union American Methodist Episcopal (UAME) Church, the St. Peters Food Pantry and Project Hospitality, and they distributed PPE including masks and gloves to volunteers and patrons at those locations. Since this pandemic began, the need for food has risen tremendously, said Linda Aubrey, secretary of the Mid-Island Rotary Club. Much of the funds we used for this have been generously donated to the Bernard DelRey Memorial Fund. Bernard was a prominent Rotarian in our club who passed away too soon, and this money was donated in his name. He always felt the importance of feeding the hungry, so we are continuing his legacy. Carol Crocitto from the Oakwood Community Center food pantry helps distribute food. (Courtesy/Robert Moore) Aubrey said the club also supports two Interact Clubs, which is the high school version of Rotary. Last summer, the club was instrumental in the volunteerism of some high school students who expressed a desire to get involved and assist the community. Volunteers Larry Vann and sons Nicholas, Ryan and Christian at Oakwood Community Center food pantry. (Courtesy/Robert Moore) Aubrey notes the motto for Rotary is Service Above Self. Those interested in making any type of donation to the Mid-Island Rotary to help serve the less fortunate, should contact Moore at midislandrotary@gmail.com The top federal prosecutor in Harrisburg, Pa., announced Friday that his office has closed an investigation into nine discarded ballots found in the northeastern part of the state that President Donald Trump had touted to support his unfounded claims of election rigging, saying in a statement that the probe had found "insufficient evidence to prove criminal intent on the part of the person who discarded the ballots." The investigation had been controversial from the start, as election law experts said the department seemed to be violating department policy and tradition in revealing an ongoing probe in such a way that could affect the election. Though just nine ballots in a dumpster were at issue, then-U.S. Attorney David Freed, who oversaw prosecutors in Middle District of Pennsylvania, announced the probe in a public statement in September soon after Trump alluded to what happened on Fox News Radio's "The Brian Kilmeade Show." Freed also first claimed that all nine ballots were cast for Trump, though he later clarified seven of the ballots had been cast for the president and two were found sealed. Freed is no longer the U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Pennsylvania; the closure of the case was announced by his successor, Acting U.S. Attorney Bruce D. Brandler. "After a thorough investigation conducted by the FBI and prosecutors from my office, we have determined that there is insufficient evidence to prove criminal intent on the part of the person who discarded the ballots," Brandler said. "Therefore, no criminal charges will be filed and the matter is closed." The statement gave no new details of the investigation. Though the case drew significant attention because of its public disclosure, investigators had long been skeptical that it would produce a significant finding of wrongdoing. According to people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe nonpublic details of the case, the person who discarded the ballots was thought to have an intellectual disability. Local officials said the person was an independent contractor who was fired in the wake of the incident. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania's top elections official, had said in September it was "a bad error," but added, "This was not intentional fraud." Justice Department policies and tradition generally call for prosecutors to avoid taking public steps in cases that could affect a political race so close to an election, even in cases of voter fraud. When Freed announced the case, election law experts said he seemed to be trampling on those policies - and, even worse, seemed to be doing so in support of the president. After the November election, then-Attorney General William Barr controversially relaxed those guidelines in instances when the wrongdoing could change the result. Soon after Freed issued his statement, a Trump campaign spokesman wrote in a tweet "Democrats are trying to steal the election." The post was later deleted. Trump had seemed to refer to the case publicly even before the Justice Department's announcement, responding to a question on Kilmeade's show about his refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. "I think we have a long way before we get there," Trump said. "These ballots are a horror show. They found six ballots in an office yesterday in a garbage can. They were Trump ballots - eight ballots in an office yesterday in - but in a certain state and they were - they had Trump written on it, and they were thrown in a garbage can." The next day, it was revealed Barr had personally told Trump about the matter. Toyota will pay $180 million to settle U.S. government allegations that it failed to report and fix pollution control defects in its vehicles for a decade. The company also agreed in court to investigate future emissions-related defects quickly and report them to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a timely manner. Toyota's actions undermined the EPA's self-disclosure system and likely led to delayed or avoided emissions-related recalls, Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. Attorney in Manhattan said Thursday in a prepared statement. The Japanese automaker's actions from 2005 to 2015 brought financial benefits and excessive vehicle pollution, the statement said. The company was accused in a government lawsuit of delays in filing 78 emissions defect reports as required by the Clean Air Act. The reports covered millions of vehicles, and some of them were as many as eight years late, the statement said. The lawsuit was filed Thursday and settled on the same day, according to the statement. PHNOM PENH Oun Retra received a scholarship to study a masters degree in international human rights law in 2017, another step towards her ultimate goal of becoming a judge. Later that year, she got married and went to visit her in-laws in Battambang province. The 28-year-old said she had serious gastrointestinal pain after a meal with the family. She visited a local clinic and was prescribed over-the-counter medicines for digestive issues. The pain and bloating subsided. Not satisfied with the diagnosis, Oun Retra visited a reproductive health clinic in Phnom Penh and was informed she had cysts in both ovaries. The family decided to send her to Thailand, where after multiple tests and scans she was diagnosed with colon cancer, and it was spreading. Before I was sick, I had so many dreams. I thought I would have a bright future, said Oun Retra, in an interview with VOA reporters in November 2019. After an extensive regime of chemotherapy in Thailand and a brief return to work and her studies, Oun Retra died in September 2020, a little over three years after she was first diagnosed. Grim outlook VOA Reporters spoke to Oun Retra on separate occasions in the 12 months leading up to her death. Her case highlights the challenges faced by Cambodians diagnosed with cancer; from low awareness of the disease and screening measures to inadequate treatment facilities and heavy financial costs. A World Health Organization 2020 brief on cancer cases in the country, with data from the Global Cancer Observatory, showed that 18,375 people were diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and 12,638 died from the disease. The country profile showed a high prevalence of cancer in the lungs and liver in men, around 40 percent, whereas women were diagnosed with breast and cervical cancers in 30 percent of the cases. Another World Health Organization report reveals limited access to screening measures and treatments in Cambodia. In 2020, there were 2.6 mammographs, 12.4 CT scanners, 1.3 MRI scanners and zero PET or PET/CT scanners per 10,000 cancer patients. There was no data on the number of oncologists, surgeons and radiologists per 10,000 cancer patients in the country. And the country generally lacked critical resources, such as a breast cancer screening program, bone marrow transplantation services or palliative care facilities. VOA Khmer interviewed an array of doctors who said that while it was inarguable that the country, in general, lacked medical resources, it was the late-stage diagnosis of cancer and the lack of specialized doctors that were resulting in a high number of deaths. Dr. Preap Ley, who has worked with breast cancer patients in Phnom Penhs Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope, said most of the patients are diagnosed with stage 3 and stage 4 cancers. Some [patients] can live as long as four to five years. But if they come at stage 3 or stage 4, they probably live around one and a half years, he said. Cancer staging describes the size of a tumor and if it has spread to different parts of the body. Stages 0 to 3 mean the cancer is small and hasnt spread, but stage 3 to 4 shows that the cancer is larger and may have spread to either nearby tissues and lymph nodes or other body organs. According to the International Agency for the Research on Cancer, more than 70 percent of cancer patients referred to oncologists in Cambodia were at an advanced stage of the disease. In comparison, a third of patients in developed countries are diagnosed at a late stage. Dr. Ley said this could be attributed, in some cases, to peoples preference to first visit traditional medicine practitioners or spiritual healers, delaying their eventual diagnosis. Often, they would try health products and medication advertised online, he added. Oun Retra said she had similar gastrointestinal issues in 2013, four years before her diagnosis. She had chosen to go to local clinics to have the problem diagnosed, but every doctor prescribed her medication for digestive issues, giving her only temporary relief. She could not confirm if she already had cysts in her ovaries or a tumor in 2013. Costly experience Once diagnosed, cancer patients in Cambodia have to navigate the limited options they have in the country, or, like many, they choose to go to Thailand to receive treatment, often a higher cost. A 2017 article from the International Atomic Energy Agency, showed that of the 15,000 cases that year, nearly 13,500 cases needed radiotherapy, but local facilities could only treat 500 people annually. The same article reported that 1,500 patients, 10 percent of that years cases, traveled overseas to get radiotherapy, still leaving a large number of patients will little access to the critical treatment. Ev Sokha, head of the National Cancer Centre at Calmette Hospital, said that there were only 50 qualified physicians in the country to treat cancer, far lower than what was required. We may need around 1,000 cancer doctors to respond to the needs of patients and families, he added. He said patients, both treated locally or those who travelled overseas, incurred heavy costs a common issue faced across countries, he said. It consumes a lot of resources from the family, said Eav Sokha. Lots of people use their out-of-pocket money for treatment. Even people in rich countries like the United States complain that the cost of cancer treatment is so huge, its beyond our ability to afford it, and the treatment takes years, he added. Oun Retra recounted how her family had to spend more than $40,000 on several rounds of chemotherapy in Thailand, informing VOA Khmer reporters that her treatment had stopped with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Community assistance The Phnom Penh resident was still getting treatment in Phnom Penh but the familys financial resources were severely depleted. They had spent the money they got from selling a family-owned home to fund Oun Retras treatment. Her parents sold noodles at the local market. A last-ditch attempt to seek public donations yielded surprising results. We couldnt believe other people were willing to help us financially, said Oun Soknea, Oun Retras sister. My mother was crying. Oun Retra said she found it helpful to post about her progress in a diary at first, soon taking her experiences to Facebook. I have described my side effects in my Facebook posts, she said. It started from my first chemotherapy. I described what had been changing in my body. The cancer patient tried to start a Facebook support group for other patients but said it did not do well, adding that it was possible people did not want to talk about these issues publicly. Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hopes Preap Ley said increased public awareness was key to catching the disease in an early stage one of many steps to ensure that patients get treatment before it is too late. Do not go to the 'kru Khmer,' or monks. It's going to be late, she said, referring to traditional healers. First, come to medical doctors. Lawyers for Aidan Ferguson claim anti-terrorism legislation was unlawfully used to examine him on his return from a trip to Spain. (Niall Carson/PA) A north Belfast republican has secured High Court permission to challenge a decision by police to stop and question him at an airport. Lawyers for Aidan Ferguson claim anti-terrorism legislation was unlawfully used to examine him on his return from a trip to Spain. He was granted leave to seek a judicial review in a case brought against the PSNI. Mr Ferguson, who describes himself as a community activist, issued proceedings over an incident at Belfast International Airport in November 2019. The Ardoyne man claims he was approached on arrival by police officers who knew his name and gave the impression they were stopping him for specific reasons. He was informed that the action was being taken under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, according to papers in the case. During a 20-minute period he was allegedly asked his views on the Irish border, Brexit and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In an affidavit provided as part of the case, Mr Ferguson claimed he was not free to leave until he answered, and was not able to seek legal advice. He alleged that it seemed like a targeted stop rather than a random action. "I felt embarrassed to be singled out in this way in front of my fellow travellers, and annoyed to have my travel back from a great weekend away interrupted in this way," he stated. His legal team are challenging both the decision to stop and question him, and a subsequent alleged refusal to provide any contemporaneous records. They contend that police acted unlawfully and without justification, using powers which breached human rights. A judge granted leave to seek a judicial review based on papers in the case after counsel for the PSNI confirmed the initial stage was not being opposed. Outside court his solicitor, Gavin Booth of Phoenix Law, said: "We believe that Schedule 7 powers are being used unlawfully at airports and ports by the PSNI, and have been successful in moving to a full hearing on this matter. "We believe that our client's dentition for the purpose of questioning without access to legal advice was unlawful." The Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAAC), headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has converted options to order six more forty-foot battery-electric Xcelsior CHARGE heavy-duty transit buses from New Flyer. The purchase, supported by Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Low or No Emission (Low-No) Grant Program funds, will replace end-of-life diesel vehicles with efficient, sustainable battery-electric buses. In 2019, PAAC ordered its first two New Flyer electric buses, with the contract including options to buy eight more buses over the next five years. The additional six will bring PAACs zero-emission fleet to eight Xcelsior CHARGE buses. PAAC is the second-largest public transit agency in Pennsylvania, providing more than 62 million annual passenger trips in Allegheny County. For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. In my corkscrew travels I often like to revisit familiar, favorite regions looking for unfamiliar wines. Here's a thrilling Chianti Classico, a vivid reminder not to take Tuscany for granted. We also have a deep, savory red from Portugal's Douro Valley, and a powerful Rhone Valley blend that resembles a higher-priced Chateauneuf-du-Pape. To wrap up the week, we also have a delicious and lively red from Uruguay and a refreshing sauvignon blanc from Chile. - - - GREAT VALUE L'Erta di Radda Chianti Classico 2017 Three and a half stars (Extraordinary/Sublime) Tuscany, Italy, $22 Limited to one word to describe this wine, I'd say "energetic." It has the classic chianti flavors of dried cherry and cocoa from the sangiovese grape, with hints of rosemary and sage. While there's an earthy element in stony minerality, this wine seems to reach for the sun with its brightness. The importer says this wine won the annual chianti consorzio tasting, in which winemakers evaluate one another's' wines. Alcohol by volume: 13.5 percent. - - - Churchill's Estates 2017 Three stars (Extraordinary) Douro, Portugal, $21 Churchill's is known primarily for port, but this unfortified table wine makes me wish they'd explore this category more. This delightful red is a blend of touriga nacional, touriga franca and tinta roriz, three grape varieties that form the mainstay of traditional port blends. A vibrant violet color meets the eye, while aromas of blackberry, pine and stones entice the nose. Plush texture and soft tannins carry the flavors of boysenberry and herbs to a fine finish. ABV: 13.5 percent. - - - Domaine la Roubine, La Grange des Briguieres 2018 Three stars (Extraordinary) Sablet, Cotes du Rhone Villages, France, $22 Hearty, earthy and deep - ideal for hearty winter stews - this one is for people who love their wines big, or for budget-minded fans of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. It's a traditional southern Rhone blend of grenache with some syrah and cinsault, pushed to the ripeness limit. The depth of the fruit manages to carry the high alcohol. ABV: 15.5 percent. - - - GREAT VALUE El Capricho Assemblage TTC 2017 Two and a half stars (Excellent/Extraordinary) Uruguay, $17 Assemblage TTC stands for tannat, tempranillo and cabernet sauvignon, the blend for this juicy red wine. Look for rustic flavors of blueberry, sour cherry and wild sage, with a hint of "lifted" aromas that curl up from the glass. ABV: 13 percent. - - - Loma Larga Vineyards, Lomas del Valle Sauvignon Blanc 2019 Two stars (Excellent) Casablanca Valley, Chile, $17 Here's a crisp, minerally sauvignon blanc from a region in Chile that enjoys cooling ocean breezes, which help maintain acidity in the grapes. This wine is not grassy in the New Zealand-style that Chile often emulates. Instead, it's ripe, with notes of guava and star fruit and a hint of wild herbs. Fair-trade certified. ABV: 13 percent. - - - Availability information is based on distributor records. Prices are approximate. Check Winesearcher.com to verify availability, or ask a favorite wine store to order through a distributor. New York, N.Y. -- The aircraft had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport when a flock of geese disabled the engines. Capt. Chesley Sully Sullenberger safely glided the US Airways Airbus 320 jetliner to a water landing, and all 155 passengers and crew members were rescued in what became known as the Miracle on the Hudson. Today marks the twelfth anniversary of this remarkable event. View the images from that day here. An Airbus 320 US Airways aircraft that went down in the Hudson River is seen in New York, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009. (AP Photo/Edouard H. R. Gluck)ASSOCIATED PRESS The wreckage of USAir flight 1549 remains stranded in the icy waters of Lower Manhattan Saturday, Jan. 17, 2009 as a plan for lifting the plane slowly proceeds.(AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)ASSOCIATED PRESS In this Jan. 15, 2009 file photo, passengers in an inflatable raft move away from US Airways Flight 1549 that went down in the Hudson River in New York. The passenger jet that survived a bird strike and crash landing in the Hudson River in New York 10 years ago is going into storage while the museum where its currently displayed seeks a new home. The Charlotte Observer reports the Carolinas Aviation Museum holds the Miracle on the Hudson plane in a 40,000-square-foot hangar at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, but the museum is closing temporarily, starting Sunday, July 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)AP The pilot, crew, and passengers on board a plane that made an extraordinary landing on the Hudson River are marking the twelfth anniversary of that remarkable day. (Photo Courtesy/ Sean Sweeney) The US Airways Airbus 320 jetliner is removed from the Hudson River twelve years ago. (Photo Courtesy/ Sean Sweeney) The US Airways Airbus 320 jetliner is removed from the Hudson River twelve years ago. (Photo Courtesy/ Sean Sweeney) Former Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger near the fuselage of US Airways flight 1549 inside the Carolina Aviation Museum Charlotte, N.C., Saturday, June 11, 2011. The plane that made a miraculous landing on the Hudson River two years ago will be displayed in a museum in Charlotte. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)AP Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger poses with crew members and passengers who were on US Airways Flight 1549, which he piloted to a splashdown in the Hudson River in New York on Jan. 15, 2009, after a bird strike took out both engines in the Airbus A320. The group marked the 10th anniversary of the event at the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Skip Foreman)AP OneWeb has raised $1.4 billion in total financing SoftBank to take a seat on OneWeb Board of Directors LONDON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OneWeb, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications company jointly owned by the UK Government and Bharti Global, announced today that it has secured additional funding from SoftBank Group Corp. ("SoftBank") and Hughes Network Systems LLC ("Hughes"), bringing OneWeb's total funding to $1.4 billion. The capital raised to date positions the Company to be fully funded for its first-generation satellite fleet, totaling 648 satellites, by the end of 2022. OneWeb's mission is to deliver broadband connectivity worldwide to bridge the global Digital Divide by offering everyone, everywhere access including to the Internet of Things (IoT) future and a pathway to 5G. OneWeb's LEO satellite system includes a network of global gateway stations and a range of user terminals for different customer markets capable of delivering affordable, fast, high-bandwidth and low-latency communications services. In December 2020, OneWeb launched 36 new satellites, built at its Airbus Joint Venture assembly plant in Florida, USA, bringing the Company's total fleet to 110 satellites, all fully-functioning and benefitting from International Telecommunication Union spectrum priority. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Executive Chairman of OneWeb, commented, "We are delighted to welcome the investment from SoftBank and Hughes. Both are deeply familiar with our business, share our vision for the future, and their commitment allows us to capitalise on the significant growth opportunity ahead for OneWeb. We gain from their experience and capabilities, as we deliver a unique LEO network for the world." Secretary of State, BEIS, The Rt. Hon. Kwasi Kwarteng, MP said: "Our investment in OneWeb is part of our continued commitment to the UK's space sector, putting Britain at the forefront of the latest technological advances. Today's investment brings the company one step closer to delivering its mission to provide global broadband connectivity for people, businesses and governments, while potentially unlocking new research, development and manufacturing opportunities in the UK." Masayoshi Son, Representative Director, Corporate Officer, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank, said, "We are excited to support OneWeb as it increases capacity and accelerates towards commercialisation. We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Bharti, the UK Government and Hughes to help OneWeb deliver on its mission to transform internet access around the world." Pradman Kaul, President of Hughes, remarked, "OneWeb continues to inspire the industry and attract the best players in the business to come together to bring its LEO constellation to fruition. The investments made today by Hughes and SoftBank will help realise the full potential of OneWeb in connecting enterprise, government and mobility customers, especially with multi-transport services that complement our own geostationary offerings in meeting and accelerating demand for broadband around the world." Neil Masterson, CEO of OneWeb, added "OneWeb's mission is to connect everyone, everywhere. We have made rapid progress to re-start the business since emerging from Chapter 11 in November. We welcome the investments by SoftBank and Hughes as further proof of progress towards delivering our goal." In connection with the investment, SoftBank will gain a seat on the OneWeb Board of Directors. Hughes is an investor through its parent company EchoStar, and also an ecosystem partner, developing essential ground network technology for the OneWeb system. About OneWeb OneWeb is a global communications network powered from space, headquartered in London, enabling connectivity for governments, businesses, and communities. It is implementing a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites with a network of global gateway stations and a range of user terminals to provide an affordable, fast, high-bandwidth and low-latency communications service, connected to the IoT future and a pathway to 5G for everyone, everywhere. Find out more at http://www.oneweb.world About SoftBank The SoftBank Group invests in breakthrough technology to improve the quality of life for people around the world. The SoftBank Group is comprised of SoftBank Group Corp. (TOKYO: 9984), an investment holding company that includes telecommunications, internet services, AI, smart robotics, IoT and clean energy technology providers; the SoftBank Vision Fund, which is investing up to $100 billion to help extraordinary entrepreneurs transform industries and shape new ones; and the SoftBank Latin America Fund, the largest venture fund in the region. To learn more, please visit https://global.softbank About Hughes Network Systems Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), an innovator in satellite and multi-transport technologies and networks for 50 years, provides broadband equipment and services; managed services featuring smart, software-defined networking; and end-to-end network operation for millions of consumers, businesses, governments and communities worldwide. The Hughes flagship Internet service, HughesNet, connects more than 1.5 million subscribers across the Americas, and the Hughes JUPITER System powers Internet access for tens of millions more worldwide. Hughes supplies more than half the global satellite terminal market to leading satellite operators, in-flight service providers, mobile network operators and military customers. A managed network services provider, Hughes supports nearly 500,000 enterprise sites with its HughesON portfolio of wired and wireless solutions. Headquartered in Germantown, Maryland, USA, Hughes is owned by EchoStar. To learn more, visit www.hughes.com or follow HughesConnects on Twitter and LinkedIn. About EchoStar EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS) is a premier global provider of satellite communication solutions. Headquartered in Englewood, Colo., and conducting business around the globe, EchoStar is a pioneer in communications technologies through its Hughes Network Systems and EchoStar Satellite Services business segments. For more information, visit echostar.com. Follow @EchoStar on Twitter. Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1421335/OneWeb_Logo.jpg SOURCE OneWeb Ambassador of Belarus A.Konyuk meets the Minister of Defense of Armenia On January 14, 2020 the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Republic of Armenia, Alexander Konyuk, met with the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia, Vagharshak Harutyunyan. During the conversation the parties discussed issues of specialized Belarusian-Armenian cooperation, as well as interaction between the two countries within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. print version US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan Franklin Graham compares Republicans who voted for Trumps impeachment to Judas Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The Rev. Franklin Graham took to social media to slam the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump, comparing them to the infamous Judas Iscariot. Shame, shame on the ten Republicans who joined with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in impeaching President Trump yesterday, Graham wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. The House Democrats impeached him because they hate him and want to do as much damage as they can. And these ten, from his own party, joined in the feeding frenzy. It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal. By referencing thirty pieces of silver, Graham seemed to be suggesting that the 10 House Republicans who supported Trumps impeachment were akin to Judas Iscariot, a disciple of Jesus Christ who betrayed him to the Roman authorities in exchange for 30 pieces of silver. While Graham did not mention them by name, the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump were Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. According to Graham, these Republicans votes to impeach the president for incitement of insurrection constituted a betrayal because of all that he has done for this country. We have never had a president like him in my lifetime. He gave us lower taxes, a strong economy, and low unemployment. He made NATO take notice and pay their own way. He had the guts to take on North Korea and meet with their leader personally. He didnt let China walk all over us. Just his Mideast peace initiatives in the last couple of months deserve a Nobel Peace Prize, he said. He has defended religious liberty like no president before him, and that matters to all people of faith. He has worked to bring prison reform and secured our southern border. He defeated the ISIS caliphate in Syria, and he strengthened our military. He was also the most pro-life president we have ever had. The Democrats have been trying to get rid of the president since the day he took office. What they did yesterday only further divides our nation. I hope President-elect Biden will keep his word and work for unity as he has said, he concluded. Graham has called for Trump, whose term expires Jan. 20, to meet with President-elect Joe Biden, contending that such a meeting would begin the healing and preparation for a smooth transition. He also requested that Vice President-elect Harris as well as Biden's and Harris respective spouses be invited to the meeting. In addition to praising the presidents record, Graham announced that he took issue with some of the things the president said and did the last couple of weeks, referring to Jan. 6 as a low point in his presidency. On Jan. 6, hundreds of fringe Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying the electoral college votes of the 2020 presidential election, unleashing violence and vandalism that left five people dead. The events of Jan. 6 ultimately led to the presidents impeachment, as House Democrats argued that a speech he gave to his supporters urging them to continue protesting the election results incited them to resort to violence. Violence at the Capitol erupted while Trump was still speaking to hundreds of thousands of his supporters at the Ellipse near the White House before they were to walk to the Capitol for a separate rally where other speakers were scheduled to speak. That event, however, never took place because the riot had already ensued. Graham condemned the violence, remarking that he was deeply saddened by what took place in our nations capital. Our country is in trouble. We need Gods healing and we need Gods help. Pray for peace and the protection of our nation. Lets come together on our knees, he added. Compared to standard machine learning models, deep learning models are largely superior at discerning patterns and discriminative features in brain imaging, despite being more complex in their architecture, according to a new study in Nature Communications led by Georgia State University. Advanced biomedical technologies such as structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI and fMRI) or genomic sequencing have produced an enormous volume of data about the human body. By extracting patterns from this information, scientists can glean new insights into health and disease. This is a challenging task, however, given the complexity of the data and the fact that the relationships among types of data are poorly understood. Deep learning, built on advanced neural networks, can characterize these relationships by combining and analyzing data from many sources. At the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS), Georgia State researchers are using deep learning to learn more about how mental illness and other disorders affect the brain. Although deep learning models have been used to solve problems and answer questions in a number of different fields, some experts remain skeptical. Recent critical commentaries have unfavorably compared deep learning with standard machine learning approaches for analyzing brain imaging data. However, as demonstrated in the study, these conclusions are often based on pre-processed input that deprives deep learning of its main advantage--the ability to learn from the data with little to no preprocessing. Anees Abrol, a research scientist at TReNDS and the lead author on the paper, compared representative models from classical machine learning and deep learning, and found that if trained properly, the deep-learning methods have the potential to offer substantially better results, generating superior representations for characterizing the human brain. "We compared these models side-by-side, observing statistical protocols so everything is apples to apples. And we show that deep learning models perform better, as expected," said co-author Sergey Plis, director of machine learning at TReNDS and associate professor of computer science. Plis said there are some cases where standard machine learning can outperform deep learning. For example, diagnostic algorithms that plug in single-number measurements such as a patient's body temperature or whether the patient smokes cigarettes would work better using classical machine learning approaches. "If your application involves analyzing images or if it involves a large array of data that can't really be distilled into a simple measurement without losing information, deep learning can help," Plis said. "These models are made for really complex problems that require bringing in a lot of experience and intuition." The downside of deep learning models is they are "data-hungry" at the outset and must be trained on lots of information. But once these models are trained, said co-author Vince Calhoun, director of TReNDS and Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, they are just as effective at analyzing reams of complex data as they are at answering simple questions. "Interestingly, in our study, we looked at sample sizes from 100 to 10,000 and in all cases, the deep learning approaches were doing better," he said. Another advantage is that scientists can reverse analyze deep-learning models to understand how they are reaching conclusions about the data. As the published study shows, the trained deep learning models learn to identify meaningful brain biomarkers. "These models are learning on their own, so we can uncover the defining characteristics that they're looking into that allows them to be accurate," Abrol said. "We can check the data points a model is analyzing and then compare it to the literature to see what the model has found outside of where we told it to look." The researchers envision that deep learning models are capable of extracting explanations and representations not already known to the field and act as an aid in growing our knowledge of how the human brain functions. They conclude that although more research is needed to find and address the weaknesses of deep-learning models, from a mathematical point of view, it's clear these models outperform standard machine learning models in many settings. Deep learning's promise perhaps still outweighs its current usefulness to neuroimaging, but we are seeing a lot of real potential for these techniques." Sergey Plis, Study Co-Author and Director of Machine Learning at Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Georgia State University Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 20:21:57|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) celebrates its fifth anniversary on Saturday. As the first multilateral development bank initiated by China, the bank has been making unique and much needed contribution to prosperity of Asia and beyond. Click to hear what AIIB President Jin Liqun said in an interview with Xinhua. Produced by Xinhua Global Service An oil tanker leaves Yangpu Port in Hainan Province, south China, on September 23, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua] Can the China-U.S. relationship bottom out after the severe setbacks caused by Washington's hostile policy during Donald Trump's presidency? To Li Qiangmin, the answer is "sure" and he believes expanded energy cooperation could help ease tensions between the two countries. Li, former Chinese Consul General in Houston, the U.S., said energy trade with China is essential for increasing U.S. exports, a priority of the upcoming U.S. administration under Joe Biden. China is the world's largest oil and natural gas importer. According to Forbes, the U.S. will become the world's largest exporter in just a few years. Li said this makes the two countries natural trading partners. "The U.S. needs a promising market and China can provide that market," Li said at the China International Energy Conference in Beijing on December 11, 2020. "The export of energy products, especially oil and natural gas, is an excellent means to reduce U.S. trade deficit with China." Back on track The economic disruptions caused by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and a slump in oil prices led to a remarkable decline in the value of China's crude oil imports from the U.S. in the first quarter of 2020, but it recovered quickly from May onward. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in the first 10 months of 2020, China overtook Canada to become the largest destination for U.S. crude oil exports, importing more than 125 million barrels. Generally, one ton of crude oil equals 7.3 barrels. "Over the past year, engagement [between China and the U.S.] has still increased steadily during the pandemic. This tells us that the economic ties between the two are inseparable and undeniable," Eric Fang, President of the National Center for Sustainable Development (NCSD) in Washington, D.C., the U.S., told Beijing Review. EIA Data indicated that U.S. crude oil exports to China reached a peak of about 390,000 barrels per day in the first half of 2018. But in 2019 the annual volume was 40 percent off from the previous year after the Trump administration launched a trade war against China, falling to less than 50 million barrels. China declined from the second to the seventh largest importer of U.S. crude oil. The United States' exports of liquefied natural gas were also affected, with China falling out of its top 15 buyers from the third largest importer before the trade war. On January 15, 2020, China and the U.S. signed the phase-one economic and trade agreement. China agreed to increase its imports of U.S. energy commodities by $52.4 billion from a 2017 baseline. This deal, as well as China's economic recovery from COVID-19, has facilitated an increase in energy trade between the two countries. Fang anticipates continuous growth in bilateral energy trade under the Biden administration. "Energy cooperation will continue very strongly as both countries require a stable political climate," he said. A promising market China is the world's largest energy consumer. In the face of increasingly severe global challenges such as climate change, environmental degradation, and energy and resource constraints, China will accelerate transformation toward green and low-carbon development in both its economy and society. But the process will be gradual. Sun Renjin, a professor at China University of Petroleum, said though China's demand for oil and gas may decline over the coming decades because of the need for environmental protection and development of alternative energy sources, it will remain at current levels in the coming five to 10 years. At the China International Energy Conference, Xu Changdong, President of the Western Returned Scholars Association's Entrepreneur Alliance of China, said, "China's rapid development will continue to boost its consumption of energy, creating a huge market for oil and gas exporters." China currently depends on imports for about 70 percent of its oil and gas consumption. Data from the General Administration of Customs of China showed in the first 11 months of 2020, the country imported 504 million tons of crude oil and 90 million tons equivalent of natural gas, 9.5 percent and 3.9 percent more than a year ago, respectively. Energy collaboration between China and the U.S. is not limited to fossil fuels. The two countries should collaborate on new energy, clean energy and energy innovation in response to global climate protection, said a white paper on China's energy development released by the State Council Information Office in December 2020. Despite the tensions in bilateral relations over recent years, Neil Bush, President of the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, told Beijing Review that he hopes shared interests in addressing climate change will be a catalyst for U.S.-China collaboration. China has achieved the target of replacing 15 percent of its total energy consumption with non-fossil sources by 2020 and will lift the figure to 25 percent by 2030. According to Sun, China will continue to develop its clean energy and renewable energy capabilities. "In regard to global cooperation on clean and new energy, technology is key," he said. The white paper said China has invested $818 billion in new-energy power generation since 2010, accounting for 30 percent of the global total over that period. Additionally, China has eased market access for foreign investment in the sector of new energy, and it is willing to work together with other countries to expand cooperation on global energy governance. Some U.S.-based energy companies, such as ExxonMobil and GE, are steadily expanding investment in China. "The wide application of renewable energy technologies in the Chinese market is helping to reduce the cost of renewable energy and accelerate the green transition process across the globe," the white paper said. In addition to large companies, Fang said many small businesses in the U.S. are also looking to China as a major opportunity. Small U.S. manufacturers have produced many innovative petroleum and chemical products and chemical derivatives, however, they do not understand the Chinese market, have no resources to deal with developing it, and most Chinese small businesses do not know the U.S. market either, he added. During the conference, energy exchange company Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area International Energy Transac-tion Center announced the trial operation of its Da Yang Energy Mall, an international energy spot trading platform. Mitchell F. Stanley, Chairman of NCSD, said the digital platform would provide channels for small and medium-sized U.S. energy enterprises to enter the Chinese market. It is essential that the governments of both countries focus on methods to cultivate collaboration and exchange between small businesses on technological solutions of energy, environmental and water resource issues, Fang said. North Adams Man Sentenced to 60 Years for Child Pornography BOSTON A North Adams man was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Springfield to 60 years in prison for child exploitation offenses. Anthony Deordio, 46, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Mark G. Mastroianni to 60 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release. In August 2020, Deordio pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, three counts of advertising child pornography, two counts of distribution of child pornography, two counts of transportation of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography. He was initially charged in 2018 in Berkshire Superior Court for rape and abuse of a child, aggravated by an age difference. The charges related to an incident the year before involving an 8-year-old. According to U.S. Attorny Andrew E. Lelling, Deordio used the minor victim to produce child pornography. The video file he produced was later recovered in a separate jurisdiction, and further investigation led to the identification of Deordio as the perpetrator. He was also convicted of offering to sell child pornography on the internet, distributing child pornography over the internet and receiving and possessing child pornography. Deordio was previously convicted of possession of child pornography in Massachusetts state court in 2006. The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a U.S. Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to protect children from exploitation and abuse. www.projectsafechildhood.gov/. William Cooper is an attorney who has written for the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, New York Daily News and USA Today, among others. For Irish politicians sorry used to be the hardest word but now sorry seriously risks becoming a political commonplace and the nation is near apology fatigue. Micheal Martin became the fourth taoiseach in recent times to publicly say sorry to perhaps the most wronged and vilified group of people in the history of the State:those inconvenient children and their mothers whose only crime was to be poor. The reality is that the burgeoning trend in Irish political apologies is part of an international pattern. In his fascinating 2004 book, On Apology, the late Dr Aaron Lazare, a US academic, said there had been a rush on apologies and demands for apologies in the previous 12 years from 1990 to 2002. This was proven by his own delightful unscientific method of reading and clipping from five major newspapers every day for several years. Some other observers reckoned Pope John Paul II played a big part in this sorry increase". By one count the much-travelled Pontiff had apologised for 94 church acts going back 1,000 years. These included things like the Crusades and persecuting Galileo for insisting the world went round the sun. Matters got much tetchier when the late Pope touched on the Catholic Churchs response to the Holocaust under Hitler. Dr Lazares apologia focus began with the personal. But he extrapolated out to groups and even nations. In summary he found there are four parts to a good apology: 1. The most important part is the acknowledgment, or confession, which must be complete and honest. 2. Then comes offering an explanation which it is hoped will mitigate the seriousness. 3. There follows an expression of remorse or shame. 4. The fourth part is reparation, the How can I make it up to you? It's a healing. If an apology fails, one or more those four parts is defective or not there. Granted, its not rocket science but it can help us understand what were going through at the moment. Perhaps we could cite two examples of apologies which involved Ireland and our near neighbours Britain in recent years. In June 1999, a month after he took office as UK prime minister, Tony Blair made a statement on the Irish Famine of 1845-47. It was read by the actor, Gabriel Byrne, at a commemoration in Millstreet. Read More It fell a distance short of a formal apology, but it was the first time that a British prime minister publicly acknowledged that his predecessors in government had failed the people of Ireland in their hour of greatest need. It met with a mixed reaction, perhaps because it did not really get much past number 1 cited above. The second came in 2010 when another UK prime minister, David Cameron, apologised for the 1972 murders by the British paratroopers on what we now know as Bloody Sunday in Derry. This was very well received but it did not entirely meet point number 4 above. Bertie Ahern opened our quartet of apologies in May 1999 to the thousands of victims of child abuse in so-called industrial and reform schools. Mr Ahern lamented the States collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue. Mr Ahern said too many of our children were denied love, care and security. For Ireland at the time it was ground-breaking stuff and it attracted global headlines. Spool on to February 2013 and taoiseach Enda Kennys national mea culpa this time specifically apologising to the women who suffered in those terrible places known as the Magdalene Laundries. I, as taoiseach, on behalf of the State, the government and our citizens deeply regret and apologise unreservedly to all those women for the hurt that was done to them, and for any stigma they suffered, as a result of the time they spent in a Magdalene Laundry, he said. In July 2019 taoiseach Leo Varadkar apologised to the victims of child sexual abuse in schools in the wake of the landmark European Court of Human Rights ruling in favour of Louise OKeeffe. But Mr Varadkars apology was about the subsequent failures of redress for people in situations like Ms OKeeffe. It is too easy and quite wrong to deride Micheal Martin's apology on Wednesday to the residents of the mother and baby homes. Indeed he is entitled to have his words taken at face value for now. Let us park the philosophical dispute about whether the potent alliance of church and state actually caused that catalogue of malovelence, or whether that dual alliance's role was to reinforce a society's deeply warped code of values which was the main factor. But the clue to Mr Martin's and his Government's problems lies in Mr Varadkar's 2019 apology. It relates to our "point 4 in a good apology. The time for sincere talking is over now people will only believe in action and restitution. Farmers are being encouraged to report to the police every livestock worrying incident they suffer from to help paint a 'true picture of the situation'. Avoidable losses, such as those that occur when a dog chases or attacks livestock, remain a significant source of frustration for the livestock sector. While industry initiatives have had some impact on curbing the crime, farmers say they are concerned of a recent uptick in incidents. The Farmers Union of Wales (FUW) says all livestock attacks should be reported to the police to 'ensure that the right actions can be taken'. The union said it recognised that there was no quick fix to the issue, and that a mixture of education, campaigning and legislative changes were needed. FUW Deputy President Ian Rickman said: As part of our work in this area, we will continue to lobby for real changes to be made to current legislation in order to provide a better deterrent to irresponsible dog ownership and to ensure that the penalties fit the seriousness of the crime. "However, to get a true picture of the situation and to help us get those legislative changes, we need farmers to report such incidents to the police. It comes after an out-of-control dog attacked and killed a heavily pregnant Highland cow on Saturday 9 January. The four-year-old heifer, named Lexi, was due to give birth to her first calf on 28 January. Farms across the country have recently experienced similar attacks. On Christmas Eve, an out-of-control dog killed 30 sheep on a farm in Cheshire. And in a separate incident last month, a loose dog massacred 46 sheep in Suffolk. Pembrokeshire PCSO Jude Parr, from the Rural Crime Team, said she had fears that some farmers were not informing the police of livestock worrying incidents. "Many just seem to deal with it themselves or go directly through to their insurers," she said. "We fear that numbers will increase because of lockdown and more people buying dogs. According to figures released by NFU Mutual, livestock worrying cost farmers across the UK 1.2 million in 2019. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan 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. PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Drip Capital has reached a major company milestone; financing over US$ 1B of cross-border trade through its platform. The global fintech company provides working capital solutions to small and medium-sized importers (SMBs) in the United States and exporters in emerging markets like India and Mexico. Sharing his views on the company's milestone, Pushkar Mukewar, Co-Founder and CEO, Drip Capital said, "Our core focus has been to innovate and solve credit access problems for the export-import community. With the company crossing the US$ 1B mark, we are confident about taking the business to new markets and continuing to bridge the trade finance gap for SMBs globally." Drip has been providing SMBs with working capital solutions since its launch in 2016 and has continued supporting them through the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic disrupted supply chains globally and caused traditional capital providers to stop lending. As demand from consumer-led economies returns, many SMBs -- importers and exporters -- remain cash-starved and need working capital to service this spike, further underscoring the need for alternative financing solutions like the ones Drip Capital provides. "Since our financing products are short term in nature, around 30-50 days, we have performed well during COVID. As economies have opened up, we have seen a significant increase in demand for our financing products. We have witnessed over 50% quarter on quarter growth in the last three quarters," adds Mukewar. Unlike traditional financial institutions, Drip Capital leverages data analytics and technology as the basis for its underwriting engine, allowing it to scale rapidly and providing a seamless and simple experience for SMBs. Currently, it is working with over 1,500 sellers and buyers throughout the world. Drip has raised nearly US$ 200M through venture capital and debt since 2016. On the equity front, the company has raised over US$ 45M through investors such as Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Wing VC, and Y Combinator. Drip has also partnered with institutional investors, family offices, and wealth advisors to provide investors short-term (3 Months to 1 Year) Notes backed by a diversified pool of trade finance assets. Investors seeking uncorrelated returns in the mid to high single digits find Drip's Notes attractive in a low yield and volatile environment. Speaking to the company's financials, Karl Boog, Head of Capital Markets at Drip Capital said, "Our platform gives qualified investors unprecedented access to trade finance assets. The continuous infusion of debt capital has helped Drip finance receivables from its diversified pool of exporters in India and Mexico with buyers mostly in North America and Europe. While the majority of Drip's debt investors are based in the United States, the company has added global clients and is seeing significant interest from European and Asian investors too, where attractive, stable yields are hard to come by. Moreover, impact minded investors see trade finance assets as a way to support thousands of SMBs involved in cross border trade and indirectly drive significant job growth across supply chains." Trade receivables are short-term assets that are an alternative source of income. Their performance is uncorrelated with traditional asset classes such as equities, fixed income, or even real estate. To date, Drip has issued US$ 150M in Notes. The company has reported zero principal losses and has made US$ 6M in monthly interest payments to its debt investors since inception. About Drip Capital Drip Capital is a global financial technology company backed by Accel, Sequoia, Wing VC, and Y-Combinator. Drip offers unique and innovative trade financing solutions to solve working capital problems among small and medium-sized businesses in emerging markets like India and Mexico and developed markets like the US. The financing solutions are collateral-free and offered through a completely digital process. To apply for Drip's offering, customers need to complete a quick online application with minimal paperwork. The company uses electronic data and an automated risk assessment platform, thereby ensuring a quick turnaround. Drip Capital was recently honored as a CB Insight's Top 250 Global Fintech Companies in 2020. Read more about the company here: www.dripcapital.com Press Contact: Vanita D'souza Communications Manager Mobile Number: +1 650-590-0455 Email: communications@dripcapital.com Investor Contact: ir@dripcapital.com Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1420674/Pushkar_Mukewar_Drip_Capital.jpg The Birbhum MP said she has been unsuccessful in reaching out to the party leadership and would not want to continue in the post if she is unable to work for the masses Kolkata: Amid an ongoing exodus from the TMC, Birbhum MP Satabdi Roy hinted that she is having problems with the ruling party in West Bengal and may take a "decision" on Saturday. The actor-turned-politician, in a Facebook post, claimed that she is not being informed about party events in her constituency and this has caused "mental pain" to her. The three-time Birbhum MP, who is on her way to New Delhi, said she will inform the public at 2 pm on Saturday if she takes any "decision". Her post has created ripples in the TMC, which promised to reach out to Roy. As per party sources, Roy is having differences with Birbhum district TMC chief Anubrata Mondal. "I have a close connection with this constituency. But recently many people have been asking me why I am missing from several party programmes. I want to tell them that I want to attend all programmes. But I don't get to know about many programmes and if I am not even informed about events in my constituency, then how can I attend. I was mentally pained because of this," the post on Satabdi Roy Fans' Club page read. Roy said she has spent more time with the people of her constituency than her own family in the last 10 years and even her enemies can't discredit her on this account. "So, this year I am trying to take some decisions so that I can spend the entire time with you. I am grateful to you. You have been supporting me since 2009. Hope you will support me in the coming days too," the post read. "If I take any decision, will let you know on 16 January, Saturday at 2 pm," it added. When contacted, Roy confirmed that the post was indeed made by her. "I have tried to reach out to the leadership but it has been of no use. If I am not able to work for the masses then what is the use of continuing in the post," she told reporters. Roy had twice given resignation from the Tarapith Unnayan Parishad but those were not accepted, sources close to the MP said. She is presently on her way to New Delhi, they said. When asked whether there are chances of joining the BJP, she refused to reply. Responding to a query whether she will meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Roy said, "There are always chances of meeting people you know but there is no such possibility." Roy was seen with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a roadshow in Bolpur on 29 December. She had first contested and won the Birbhum seat on a TMC ticket in 2009. Roy also won from the seat in 2014 and 2019. A senior TMC leader said that the party will speak with Roy. Not just Roy, another senior TMC leader and state minister Rajib Banerjee, who has been maintaining distance with the party, also said in a social media post that he will reveal his next step in a Facebook live on Saturday afternoon. In the biggest single-day exodus from the TMC, political heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, along with 35 party leaders including five MLAs and an MP, joined the BJP during Shah's rally in Medinipur on 19 December, setting off a churning as several disgruntled leaders rallied behind him. Since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP bagged 18 seats from the state, 14 legislators of the TMC, four from the Left Front and two from the Congress have joined the saffron party. None of them, however, have resigned from their posts. Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has sent Tesla, the world's biggest electric car manufacturer, a letter saying that the agency has determined the defective touch screens on some Tesla cars as a risk to the security of the drivers and others in the highway. NHTSA Sends Letter to Tesla According to NBC New York, the letter was sent to Elon Musk's company this Wednesday, January 13, 2021. Experts believe that sending the letter meant that Tesla balked at recalling approximately 159,000 cars with defective touch screens, but the US agency declined to further comment about the letter and Tesla representatives are yet to issue a response as well. Based on the report, it was a "rare" step towards a public hearing as well as an eventual legal action. The cars in question were the Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles, which were manufactured somewhere between 2012 and 208. According to the NHTSA, they have opened an investigation last June 2020 regarding complaints about these cars wherein touch screens would go dark and would not respond. Read More: Tesla FSD Patent Asks to Use mmWave Radar for Sensing Objects on the Road--4D Radar and Still no LiDAR? 'Increasing the Risk of a Crash' Tesla has sent over data to the agency, who found out that there are 12,000 customer complaints about the screens, warranty claims, field reports, and other claims that are related to the defective screen. The investigation further led to an engineering analysis in November, a few months after the probe began, and based on the analysis, the US agency said that the screens were defective due to the finite number of program-and-erase cycles in their computer processors. Furthermore, they noted that the defect can pose a great threat to the security of Tesla owners as defrosters could malfunction and backup cameras may go dark. "The lack of a functioning windshield defogging and defrosting system may decrease the driver's visibility in inclement weather, increasing the risk of a crash," the letter read. As per the letter sent by the agency to the electric car manufacturer, the screen would fail in five to six years, something that is not up to par with their safety-critical features, and further saying that they also determined that the failure rate for the screens on the Tesla cars were higher compared to the vehicles that had similar issues in the past. "Given Tesla's projects of MCU repairs, even MY [model year] 2018 subject vehicles will experience 100% failure of the MCU within approximately 10 years," the letter further said, according to a report by CNBC. Tesla Fixes Solution, But It's Not Enough As a way to fix the issue, Tesla has done several over-the-air software updates, but the agency said the solution was still not enough. The letter ended by saying that the company must provide the NHTSA with an explanation if they do not recall the cars, or else they could arrange a public meeting regarding the issue and may even turn it over to the Justice Department as they proceed with legal action. For anyone who wants to read the entire letter of the NHTSA to Tesla, it is available to read via the official website of the agency. Related Article: Porsche Boxster 718 25th Anniversary Limited Edition Car: Specs, Price, and MORE This article is owned by Tech Times Written by: Nhx Tingson 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A British man in his late 20s, with the Chinese name of Ding Yirui, has found pleasure in recording his life in China through his phone. Ding Yirui shows a short video he filmed. (Photo/Yang Yudi) Currently living in Chengdu, capital city of southwest China's Sichuan province, he has produced 15 video clips about the city since 2020. In the videos, I show how Chinese people entertain themselves and celebrate festivals, said Ding, the son-in-law of a local family. Most of Dings videos are about Chinese culture. Last year, while hanging out with a Chinese friend at a local tea house, Ding became deeply attracted to Chinese tea art and shot a video about it. British people drink tea as well, but that culture is vastly different from this one in China, he explained, expressing hope that his videos could present the diversity found across different cultures to people from all over the world. In his videos, Ding also shared stories about his difficulties in adapting to life in Chengdu, speaking on topics such as stress at work and snacks that are not his cup of tea. However, this does not affect my love for Chengdu, he explained. At the beginning of 2020, Dings team shot short videos about Chengdus fight against COVID-19, introducing China's anti-epidemic experience and efforts. The videos are very useful, because they taught people in South Africa how to protect themselves against the virus through reducing gatherings, said a member of Dings team who comes from South Africa. "I'd like to shoot videos about various aspects of Chengdu," Ding shared, adding that he plans to display more about the delicious food and the catering culture in the city. Chinas global stature has suffered since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, even though the country has fared better than many major states in managing the crisis. In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 14 industrialized countries in the fall, three-quarters or more of respondents in most of those countries saw China in a negative light, a much greater proportion than the previous year. A majority of respondents in another Pew study from the summer also held consistently negative views about Russia. Does the propaganda work at home? Chinese and Russian media coverage of the current crisis in Washington is designed to fuel nationalistic sentiments in both countries, and to some extent it succeeds at that. Take this popular post by Global Times showing side-by-side pictures of the storming of the Capitol last week and of the protesters who broke into Hong Kongs Legislative Council building in July 2019. Here is a comment responding to it that attracted more than 1,000 likes: The beautiful sight that Pelosi favors has finally happened in her own office, referring to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who had used the phrase to describe not the LegCo break-in but a 2019 vigil in Hong Kong for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The comment also said, The United States doesnt have double standards. It simply has no standard for right and wrong. At the same time, the chaos in Washington was widely broadcast on both mainstream media and social media in China, and mostly with little censorship, which is unusual. Allowing or even facilitating that flow of information seems to have been a propaganda gambit. But it could backfire for the Chinese government by breeding more fascination with the United States among Chinese viewers, especially if the story in America becomes a tale about the resilience of a democracys institutions against a dangerous president. Some of the discussion on Chinese social media has analyzed the recent events in granular detail, drawing historical analogies. Commenting on a video that recorded the sound of a gunshot inside the Capitol, one Weibo user described it as the Lexington gunshot, a reference to the beginning of the American Revolution. Another Weibo user compared a picture of Trump supporters waving a Make America Great Again flag on top of a car to Liberty Leading the People, the famous painting commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 in France. And then, of course, theres the fact that Mr. Trumps attempted coup failed. That the elections results have been certified. That he eventually if belatedly and, it seems, reluctantly denounced the violence of some of his supporters. And now, that he has been impeached again. After Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of Global Times, claimed in a Weibo post on Jan. 7 that Americas democratic system had just imploded, one Weibo user argued instead, the American systems capacity to rectify mistakes is strong; it has withstood the challenge, adding: If this were the Chinese system, Trump could continue to stay as the president. Of course, China should prevent someone like Trump from taking office. Reporter Heather Bellow, a member of the investigations team, joined The Eagle in 2017. She is based in the South Berkshire County bureau in Great Barrington. Her work has appeared in newspapers across the U.S. (TNS) The Los Angeles Police Commission this week, approved new rules for LAPD's use of a controversial facial recognition technology that allows detectives to compare photos of crime suspects to millions of L.A. County inmate mugshots. The practice has drawn fierce opposition from civil rights activists and privacy advocates.The new policy places some restrictions on how detectives can use the system. They can only use the database to help them in criminal investigations, and when they need to identify incapacitated, unconscious or dead people.LAPD also cannot upload any photos obtained from officers' body-worn cameras, in-car videos, or from any handheld device an officer might have. Doing so is banned under California law regulating how police can use facial recognition technology.The L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which runs the county's jails, operates the mugshot database and photo comparison system. An LAPD lieutenant at the meeting Tuesday said the database contains more than eight million mugshots.The new policy bans LAPD from using any other facial recognition technology beyond the Sheriff's Department system. It also sets up oversight requiring LAPD to collect data on how the system is being used and whether it's effective.The system spits out webpages of potentially hundreds of mugshots when detectives upload footage they've obtained of a crime suspect. The images can come from such places as security cameras, social media or drivers' licenses that become part of an investigation.LAPD Chief Michel Moore said the system is much narrower than facial recognition apps built by some private companies, like Clearview AI, which scan billions of photos from the internet.He compared the system to the old "mug books" that detectives used to use to identify suspects that contained page after page of inmate mug shots."This is an efficient way of working through what otherwise is a human, manual process," Moore said.The approval of the new policy comes after LAPD made repeated denials over the years that the department used facial recognition technology at all. But it has used it for at least a decade, LAPD officials have acknowledged in recent meetings.Dozens of activists flooded the police commission's video meeting on Tuesday, calling on them to ban the technology outright. They also sent hundreds of letters to the commission opposing the new rules.Mohammad Tajsar, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, said Tuesday that facial-recognition technology is "uniquely dangerous and harmful."He said studies have shown it to frequently be inaccurate.Despite tens of thousands of uses of the technology by LAPD, he added, the department has not come forward with numbers showing it works."Even if there were safeguards, we believe that its invasiveness will inevitably violate the civil rights of over-policed communities of Angelenos," Tajsar said. "LAPD really can't demonstrate that facial recognition technology works ... there's been no rigorous analysis within the department."Part of the policy approved Tuesday will require LAPD to begin analyzing the system in that way. After an unexpected but most certainly welcomed day off, the Orlando Magic headed to Boston on Thursday afternoon for what they hope is a return to their playing schedule. Wednesdays game between Orlando and Boston was postponed because the Celtics did not have the required eight available players, mostly due to COVID-related issues. Magic coach Steve Clifford said he expects his team to be on the TD Garden floor Friday night. I think were very confident itll be played, Clifford said during his post-practice media session Thursday. I think the communication between the teams in the league is every day. And so our plan is that that will that will be playing. The postponement of Wednesdays game came just before the Magic (6-5) were set to leave Orlando on Tuesday. Some players hadnt arrived at the airport yet. There was no logistical repeat on Thursday, however, as the team boarded its flight to Boston shortly before 2 p.m., a team official confirmed. The Celtics (7-3) also expect to be playing again. General manager Danny Ainge, in a radio interview Thursday, said that it looks like were moving in the right direction. In addition to Wednesdays postponement, Boston lost two other games this week because some players tested positive for COVID-19 and others were ruled out because contact tracing showed that they could have been exposed to the virus. The Celtics had nine players on the leagues 1:30 p.m. injury report, with Carsen Edwards, Jayson Tatum and Robert Williams listed as out due to health and safety protocols. Jaylen Brown, Javonte Green, Semi Ojeleye and Daniel Theis are listed as questionable due to health and safety protocols. Kemba Walker (knee) and Romeo Langford (wrist) are out due to injuries. League officials have told teams they are considering additional game-day testing for players and officials, according to the Associated Press. Teams have been told to look for a lab that can process PCR tests locally with a short turnaround time. The extra tests would be done on the morning of a game, with results back at least an hour before tipoff. Fridays game is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. and will be broadcast on Fox Sports Florida. This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Roy Parry at rparry@orlandosentinel.com Facepalm: One of the problems with virtual currencies is the potential for them to be lost or become inaccessible. A famous case is that of UK computer engineer James Howells, who accidentally threw away a hard drive with around $285 million of Bitcoin on it in 2013. Now, he's offering his local government a quarter of the crypto to help him find the devicebut it isn't interested in the deal. Howells, 35, mined 7,500 Bitcoin back in 2009 when they were worth almost nothing. He gave up his mining endeavours after his girlfriend became sick of the noise, selling his equipment but holding on to the hard drive containing his private keys. When clearing out his desk in 2013, Howell accidentally threw the drive away. "I had two identical hard drives, and I threw out the wrong one. I know I'm not the only person who has ever thrown out the wrong thing, but it usually doesn't cost people over 200million." he said. "I have to laugh about it now." The drive ended up in a general waste bin at his local landfill site in Newport, South Wales, where it was buried. Howells has repeatedly asked Newport city council to aid him in retrieving the Bitcoin, offering a 25 percent cutaround $71 millionif it helps him recover the drive. There's the question of whether a hard drive from 2009 that's been buried in a landfill for eight years will still work. Howell's optimistic: "There is no guarantee of that because of the environment it's been in, but there are things that give me confidence. The outside case might be rusted. But the inside disk, where the data is stored, there should be a good chance that it still works," he said. "But the longer this drags on, though, it's less likely to be a possibility." Howells says a hedge fund has agreed to back the project so the council won't be out of pocket, and he believes there's a way to narrow down the search. "The way the landfill operated in 2013 was when a general waste bin was full, it was given a serial number, it was dragged off to the open pit and it was buried. It was also given a grid reference number. So what that means is, if I could access the landfill records, I could identify the week that I threw the hard drive away; I could identify the serial number of the bin that it was in; and then I could identify where the grid reference is located," he explained. "I'd like the opportunity to sit down with the decision makers and present to them an action plan for what we want to do. I hope we can get that [] We want to employ an inflatable structure to create an air-tight seal around that area to stop landfill gases escaping." For Newport council, it seems the risks outweigh any potential benefits. "Newport City Council has been contacted a number of times since 2014 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to contain Bitcoins," said a spokesperson. "The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds - without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order." "The council has also told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area." "Even if we were able to agree to his request, there is the question of who would meet the cost if the hard drive was not found or was damaged to such an extent that the data could not be recovered. We have, therefore, been clear that we cannot assist him in this matter." This week brought news of Stefan Thomas, a programmer who has lost the password to a hard drive containing 7,002 Bitcoin in a digital wallet. He has two guesses left before the $240 million worth of crypto becomes permanently inaccessible. Cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis estimates that around 20 percent of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, worth around $140 billion, is lost or stuck in inaccessible wallets. On the eve of the vaccine rollout, Harsh Vardhan reviewed the preparations and visited the dedicated COVID -19 control room set up in premises of the health ministry The Centre and state governments are set to carry out the world's biggest COVID-19 vaccination programme on Saturday (16 January) for three lakh healthcare workers. The Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said that the extensive exercise is "probably the beginning of the end of COVID-19 " in the country. A total of 3,006 session sites across the country will be virtually connected during the launch at 10.30 am by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government has said that around 100 people will receive jabs at each of the vaccination sites on Saturday. On Friday, Modi tweeted that the country will enter a "decisive phase" against the pandemic. On the eve of the rollout, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan reviewed the preparations and visited the dedicated COVID -19 control room set up at the Nirman Bhawan premises of the health ministry. He said, "Tomorrow is an important day...it is the last phase of the battle against coronavirus . I say, this is probably the beginning of the end of COVID now which is going to start tomorrow." However, he cautioned that despite the vaccination drive, there should not be any complacency and urged people to follow COVID-19 appropriate behaviour. A day ahead of the vaccination drive, the country's total caseload rose to 1,05,27,683 with 15,590 new cases reported in 24 hours. Recoveries also rose to 1,01,62,738 in the same span of time, the Union health ministry said. The country's toll also rose to 1,51,918 with 191 new fatalities. Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government said that schools will reopen for Classes 5 to 8 from 27 January after remaining closed for over 10 months. The BMC, however, said that schools and colleges in Mumbai will stay shut "till further orders". COVID-19 vaccination drive to kick off across country tomorrow Sudhir Bhandari, the principal of Jaipur's Sawai Man Singh (SMS) Medical College, will be the first person in Rajasthan to be given the COVID-19 vaccine shot, while in Madhya Pradesh, a hospital security guard and an attender will be among the first to get the jab. Around three lakh healthcare workers, both in government and the private sector, will be given the COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday. The vaccination drive has been planned in a phased manner, identifying priority groups. Health minster Vardhan said India's exercise to vaccinate its population against COVID-19 shall be the largest immunisation drive of the world. He reiterated that both the indigenously manufactured vaccines, Covishield by Serum Institute of India and COVAXIN of Bharat Biotech, have proven safety and immunogenicity records and are the most important tools to contain the pandemic. An online digital platform CoWIN, developed by the health ministry, will be used to drive the vaccination programme. Adequate doses of both Covishield and Covaxin have already been delivered to all states and Union territories, the health ministry said. A dedicated 24x7 call centre 1075 has also been set up for addressing queries related to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine roll-out and the Co-WIN software. According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities. Cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government. All states and union territories are geared up for the inoculation programme. In Delhi, the drive will kick off from the state-run LNJP Hospital with a simple ceremony in the presence of Chief Minister Kejriwal and Health Minister Satyendar Jain. A trio of a doctor, nurse and a sanitation worker will receive COVID-19 vaccine shots in the presence of Kejriwal at LNJP Hospital. The 81 sites named in the National Capital for administering the jabs include six central government facilities like AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, RML Hospital and Kalawati Saran Children Hospital and two ESI hospitals. In Gujarat, medical superintendents of government hospitals in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar will be among the first to get the shots in the sttae, where over 16,000 health workers will be vaccinated during the day. In Assam, an estimated 6,500 people of the 1.9 lakh health workers will be vaccinated on the first day. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will inaugurate the drive at Assam Medical College Hospital, Dibrugarh and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. Former vice chancellor of Srimanta Sankardeva University of Health Sciences, Dr Umesh Chandra Sarma, will be the first to receive the initial dose in Assam. The other doctors to be vaccinated are Padma Shri awardee and surgeon Dr Ilias Ali, Sahitya Akademi awardee and former principal of Barpeta Medical College and Hospital Dr Dhrubajyoti Borah, GMCH principal Dr Achyut Baishya and its superintendent Dr Abhijeet Sharma. In Mumbai, as many as 4,000 health workers will be administered COVID-19 vaccine every day at nine vaccination centres, the BMC said on Friday. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray will launch the vaccination drive from a centre at Bandra Kurla Complex on Saturday. The vaccination will start at Vile Parle-based Dr RN Cooper Hospital. Vaccines will be administered at 40 booths in nine centres, including KEM Hospital (Parel), Sion Hospital (Sion), Cooper Hospital (Vile Parle), Nair Hospital (Mumbai Central), Bhabha Hospital (Bandra), VN Desai Hospital (Santacruz), Rajawadi Hospital (Ghatkopar), Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital (Kandivali) and BKC Jumbo COVID-19 centre. Maharashtra govt to open schools for Classes 5-8 from 27 Jan Students from Classes 5 to 8 will start going to school across Maharashtra from 27 January. Earlier, schools for Class 9 and 10, and junior colleges (till Class 12) had reopened in parts of the state earlier this month based on the COVID-19 situation in respective areas. "I have informed Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray that schools can be reopened for Classes 5 to 8 from 27 January," state education minister Varsha Gaikwad said. Local authorities including district collectors, municipal commissioners and district civil surgeons will have to assess the ground situation before taking a call on reopening schools and colleges, Gaikwad added. "Earlier, schools for Classes 9 and 10 commenced after all teachers underwent RT-PCR tests and premises were sanitized. Similar measures will be taken before reopening schools for Classes 5 to 8," she said. The civic body in Mumbai issued a fresh circular stating that all schools and colleges of various mediums will remain shut till further orders in view of a second wave of the virus in other countries and in some states. Earlier, the BMC had decided to keep all schools and colleges in the city shut till 15 January. COVID-19 caseload details The national COVID-19 recovery rate rose to 96.53 percent on Friday, while the COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.44 percent. The COVID-19 active caseload remained below three lakh. There are 2,13,027 active coronavirus infections in the country which comprise 2.02 percent of the total caseload, the data stated. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 18,49,62,401 samples have been tested up to 14 January, with 7,30,096 samples being tested on Thursday. The 191 new fatalities include 70 from Maharashtra, 19 from Kerala, 17 from West Bengal, 14 from Uttar Pradesh, 10 each from Chhattisgarh and Punjab, eight from Madhya Pradesh, six from Haryana, and four each from Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. A total of 1,51,918 deaths have been reported so far in the country, including 50,291 from Maharashtra, followed by12,246 from Tamil Nadu, 12,155 from Karnataka, 10,722 from Delhi, 10,010 from West Bengal, 8,543 from Uttar Pradesh, 7,138 from Andhra Pradesh and 5,473 from Punjab. With inputs from agencies Britain's Home Secretary Priti Patel arrives for a cabinet meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London on Sept. 22, 2020. (Leon Neal/Pool via Reuters) UK Home Secretary Pressured After 150,000 Arrest Records Deleted From Police National Computer Britains Home Secretary has come under fire after 150,000 arrest records were accidentally deleted from the database that shares mission-critical information between police and criminal justice services across the country. The files were wiped from the Police National Computer (PNC) last week due to an error, rather than a deliberate cyber hack, in a mass erasure of biometric data such as DNA and fingerprints, the Times of London reported on Friday. The Times later reported that up to 400,000 records may have been deleted. The opposition Labour Party reacted strongly to the initial data loss report. Writing on Twitter, Labours shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to show some overdue leadership and account for yet another terrible error on her watch. He also called on the government to come clean about the causes and scale of this security breach. In a video posted on the social media platform, he said Patel must have previously known about the data error otherwise The Times could not have run the story. He called on her to be open and transparent, and sought clarification over the three different explanations that have come out today. These were, he said, that the data breach was due to a software bug, that it had happened during a data weeding process, or that it had occurred during a housekeeping exercise. In a statement, also posted on Twitter, Thomas-Symonds described the data deletion as an extraordinarily serious security breach that presents huge dangers for the public. My statement in response to todays report in @thetimes that 150,000 arrest records have been deleted by the Home Office. This is an extraordinarily serious security breach and the public deserves immediate answers: pic.twitter.com/5e4fLcS4ki Nick Thomas-Symonds MP (@NickTorfaen) January 15, 2021 Policing Minister Kit Malthouse, however, played down the threat posed by the error. Earlier this week, a standard housekeeping process that runs on the Police National Computer deleted a number of records in error. A fast time review has identified the problem and corrected the process so it cannot happen again, he reportedly said. The Home Office, NPCC [National Police Chiefs Council] and other law enforcement partners are working at pace to recover the data, he added. While the loss relates to individuals who were arrested and then released with no further action, I have asked officials and the police to confirm their initial assessment that there is no threat to public safety. I will provide further updates as we conclude our work. Catching Criminals The breach is concerning because the lost data could have proved key to catching criminals in the future if the deleted records relate to people who later go on to offend. These are likely to be a few people, a handful, Stuart Hyde, the former chief constable of Cumbria Police in Englands North West, told BBC Radio 4s Today program. However, he said the deletion of the equivalent of around a quarter of the UKs yearly 600,000 to 700,000 arrest records still represents a risk. Without going through each and every case, it would be hard to make that judgement, but that risk exists nonetheless, he said. Its both a risk to public safety, and a risk to safeguarding of vulnerable people across the country. Hyde played down any responsibility on the part of the police themselves over the lost data. The providers of the software to the police need to be held to account for why this happened, he said. The police dont design software; thats down to the companies. This is the second time in the last three months the PNC has met with problems. In October last year, it suffered a 10-hour blackout of its normal 24/7 availability after an engineer unplugged it. The Home Office did not respond to a request for comment. 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. Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) funded solar energy project at Berbera City in the African nation of Somaliland has been connected to the local electricity grid. It will meet the increasing demand of the entire city of approximately 50,000 people. Set up at a cost of AED29.3 million, the 7-megawatt Berbera Hybrid Mini-grid Project is seen as a game changer for the city, as it will significantly bring down energy tariffs, apart from supporting economic development and reducing the countrys carbon footprint. The expansion of Berbera city has created additional demand, which the plant will fulfil. The project was launched by Abdirahman Abdilahi Ismail, Vice President of the Republic of Somaliland, under the auspices of Jama Mohamoud Egal, Minister of Energy and Minerals, in the presence of officials and dignitaries from both sides. Commenting on the occasion, Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, Director-General of ADFD, expressed satisfaction over the completion of the project in a record time of seven months, from March to October 2020, overcoming the obstacles created by the coronavirus pandemic. "Our renewable-energy project in Berbera will play a strategic role in our larger effort to sustainably drive up the economy and raise the standard of living in benefited area," he said, adding that its benefit would be felt at many levels. "The demand for energy is growing continuously in Berbera as the population swells, stated Al Suwaidi. "This project will supply energy at a comparatively affordable price as it will replace the costly diesel with solar energy. That will lead to heightened economic activity, financial savings, reduction of carbon emissions and, therefore, improve the air quality. This will bring a qualitative transformation in the city," he added. Jama Mohamoud, thanked ADFD for completing the project in record time notwithstanding the many challenges. "It came at a time when we needed it the most," he said, commending the role of the UAE and the Fund in supporting his countrys economy through infrastructure development," stated Mohamoud. "This is the first of its kind project in the country that will benefit individuals and businesses, while supporting the expanding port infrastructure. More importantly, its positive effect will be felt beyond the city borders," said the energy minister. "The project will stabilise electric supply in the city and make electricity more affordable to its estimated 50,000 people. The power plant will further support commercial development and port expansion. We are also happy to be joining the rest of the world in our efforts to tackle greenhouse emissions," he added. A MoU was signed on the sidelines of the event, which was witnessed by ADFD, transferring the plants ownership to the Ministry of Energy and Minerals on behalf of the Government of Somaliland and appointed a consulting company, Coretec, to provide necessary support to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources in developing an overall operational structure for the project. The deal agreed in principle on a public-private partnership (PPP) to operate and maintain the solar plant, the first of its kind in the country. "This could well serve as a reference model for the rest of the country," said the minister. Gov. Phil Murphy pushed back Friday against criticism that the state included roughly 2 million smokers in the big expansion of coronavirus vaccine eligibility that started on Thursday, while leaving out some groups of essential workers like teachers. The governor, speaking during his regular COVID-19 briefing, said he rejected the false narrative that smokers are jumping the line as a cheap shot, and noted that the state was following federal guidance by including smokers. I get it. I understand the optics here and that attacking folks who took up the habit of smoking and who are now addicted may be politically expedient, Murphy said. But at this time we are stuck in a position where we have to prioritize our limited vaccine doses based on medical fact and not political want, he said. We cannot lose sight of a critical medical fact that this is a respiratory virus. Smoking like other chronic and medical conditions put someone at a higher risk. In this, we are in agreement with the CDC guidance. He added: We need to protect our hospitals from a patient surge. Beginning Thursday, people 65 years old and older became eligible to get the vaccine in a massive expansion of the program by Murphy. People ages 14 to 64 with chronic illnesses, which included smoking, were also added to the list of people able to get a shot. Previously, health care workers, people living and working in nursing homes and police and firefighters were the only people able to get a vaccine. That means there are about 4 million people out of 9 million residents now eligible for the vaccine. Many teachers are upset that smokers were granted access to the vaccine before educators, according to union leaders. A lot of people sort of reacted to the smoker part of it, said Anthony Rosamilia, president of the Essex County Education Association. If at this point, in 2021, you dont know how dangerous smoking is and you still choose to smoke and then that puts you ahead of someone who doesnt its not just educators, I think the general public is not happy about that. But demand continues to far outpace supply with about 100,000 doses being delivered to New Jersey each week. More than 300,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered in the state as of Friday morning, according to the states COVID-19 dashboard. Of those, 273,335 were the first of two doses people will receive, while 37,077 were the second dose, according to the dashboard. The single-day high so far was Jan. 8, when 24,482 doses were administered, according to the state. New Jersey has averaged about 10,000 shots a day through the first 30 days of the program, including Christmas Day when no doses were administered. The state has been averaging about 17,000 shots a day over the last seven days, state records show. The state has faced criticism for rolling out inoculations too slowly. Officials stress there may be an undercounting of the number of vaccines administered because of reporting delays and New Jersey, like other states, is depending on the federal government for its supply. Officials have said doses should be available for the general public by April or May. Health officials have said they hope to vaccinate 70% of its adult residents about 4.7 million people by the end of May. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage New Jersey health officials reported 5,490 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 67 additional deaths on Friday as vaccination locations reported a huge surge in appointments with the eligibility expansion that started a day earlier. New Jerseys top health official warned Wednesday the state is preparing for a surge in hospitalizations from the latest spike cases that could come as soon as next week and may trigger a new round of restrictions, particularly with elective surgeries. While hospitalizations have remained between 3,500 and 3,900 for weeks, far below the more than 8,000 peak in the spring, Department of Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said that hospital officials are concerned about the weeks ahead due to available staffing. We are preparing for the predictive surge that may start as early as next week into the middle of February, Persichilli said Wednesday. What we will not have is the appropriate level of staffing that people are familiar with, conventional staffing, she said. So we will be working with our hospitals if they need to progress to what we call contingency staffing, and hopefully never crisis staffing. Murphy has warned that hospitalizations above 5,000 patients would likely trigger some new restrictions particularly on elective surgeries, which include procedures like removing tumors. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Welcome to Morningstar.co.uk! You have been redirected here from Hemscott.com as we are merging our websites to provide you with a one-stop shop for all your investment research needs.To search for a security, type the name or ticker in the search box at the top of the page and select from the dropdown results.Registered Hemscott users can log in to Morningstar using the same login details. Similarly, if you are a Hemscott Premium user, you now have a Morningstar Premium account which you can access using the same login details. France gives $10M to Palestinian group that promotes Israel boycott By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) The French government has allocated about $10 million to a Palestinian organization that is a leading promoter of the boycott Israel movement. Promoting that boycott has been found illegal in France in several high-profile cases. The French Development Agency, or AFD, which focuses on on climate, biodiversity, peace, education, urban development, health and governance, last year gave an 8 million Euro grant to the NGO Development Center, or NDC, a Palestinian group that says it promotes goo... Despite an outcry by its citizens over massive blackout recently, government on Friday has once again planned to raise the power tariffs amid increasing debt. It will be increasing the power tariff by (Pakistani Rupee) Rs 1.90 per unit to revive the stalled loan programme under the USD 6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF), top official sources told The News The government has projected that the circular debt will mount up to Rs 2,805 billion by the end of June 2021, putting the bleeding power sector into a severe cash constraint situation. The PTI government led by has already hiked the power tariff several times, but it has not helped. A hike of Rs 3.30 per unit had been agreed on by the government in phases. The first hike of Rs 1.90 per unit is expected to be announced in the next few days, reported The News The multilateral creditors, including the IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank, had often suggested increasing power tariffs in the past to fix the problem of circular debt. The circular debt was persistently raising trends and it might escalate to Rs 2,805 billion by the end of June 2021. It had climbed to Rs 2,150 billion during the last financial year 2019-20, indicating that the bleeding of the power sector surged by Rs 538 billion just in 12 months from July 2019 to June 30, 2020, reported The News This shows that the circular debt went up by Rs 44.8 billion on a monthly basis in the last financial year. Meanwhile, the Imran government shifted the blame on the COVID-19 pandemic and said that the situation ballooned the circular debt in the second half of the last fiscal year. The government performance was also exposed as it claimed that the monthly accumulation of circular debt was curtailed at just Rs 10 to 12 billion. However, it proved wrong because senior officials of the power division did not include all the heads while calculating the circular debt, reported The News International. The amount payable to IPPs is projected to grow from Rs 1,038 billion at the end of June 2020 to Rs 1,711 billion by the end of June 2021. "There is a projection that the circular debt might increase by Rs 499 billion in the financial year 2020-21," said an official. (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.) 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. Budget airline Norwegian has axed its long-haul network, leading to the loss of 1,100 pilot and cabin crew jobs at Gatwick Airport. The carrier said it will operate a 'simplified business structure and dedicated short-haul route network' after being badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Norwegian shook up the UK's long-haul aviation market in recent years by offering transatlantic flights at knockdown prices. Some of its most popular deals included 99 trips to New York putting it in direct competition with British Airways. Budget airline Norwegian has axed its long-haul network, leading to the loss of 1,100 pilot and cabin crew jobs at Gatwick Airport But it struggled to contain costs during its rapid expansion, and has come under further strain due to the virus crisis. Its entire Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet has been grounded since March 2020. In August 2020, the airline announced that it would need more financial support to get through the pandemic, after reporting a loss of 442 million for the first six months of the year. Under its new plan, it will only fly within Norway, across the Nordic region and to 'key European destinations'. Chief executive Jacob Schram said: 'Our short-haul network has always been the backbone of Norwegian and will form the basis of a future resilient business model.' Around 2,160 jobs will be lost around the world - including at Gatwick - as the firm also has longhaul bases in France, Italy, Spain and the US. Brian Strutton, general secretary of pilots' union Balpa, said: 'This news will be personally devastating for all Gatwick-based crew. Make no mistake - aviation remains in serious crisis.' Customers with affected bookings will be contacted by the airline and refunded. It said on Thursday that it has resumed talks with the Norwegian government about further state support. Khartoum, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Sudanese authorities Thursday banned aircraft from flying over a flashpoint border area with Ethiopia after alleging an Ethiopian military aircraft entered its airspace in "a dangerous escalation" to bilateral tensions. "The Civil Aviation Authority issued an international aviation notice, stating that aircraft are prohibited from flying over al-Fashaqa border region," the CAA said in a statement. An official told AFP that "this decision is meant for military aircraft." Tensions have been running high between Khartoum and Addis Ababa over the Al-Fashaqa region, which has been hit by deadly clashes in recent weeks. The region is inhabited by Ethiopian farmers who cultivate fertile land claimed by Sudan. On Wednesday, Sudan said that an Ethiopian military aircraft flew over the Sudanese-Ethiopian border in that area, and warned of "dangerous ramifications". An Ethiopian military spokesman, General Mohamed Tessema, told AFP he had no "tangible information" concerning Sudan's claim about the aircraft, but that the situation at the border was "normal" on Wednesday. Khartoum and Addis Ababa have been trading accusations of violence in Al-Fashaqa since December. This week, Ethiopia claimed that Sudanese forces were pushing further into the border region while Sudan said an Ethiopian gang killed at least six Sudanese people on the border. In December, Sudan accused Ethiopian "forces and militias" of ambushing Sudanese troops along the border, leaving four dead and more than 20 wounded. Ethiopia, for its part, said in mid-December that Sudanese military forces had "organised attacks... using heavy machine guns". The two sides held border talks last month, and Sudan declared in late December that its army had restored control over all border territory that had been taken over by Ethiopian farmers. Al-Fashaqa region -- which has seen sporadic clashes over the years -- borders Ethiopia's troubled Tigray region where deadly conflict erupted in November between Ethiopia's Federal and Tigray's regional forces. The fighting sent some 60,000 Ethiopian refugees into Sudan. The Sudanese-Ethiopian tensions come at a delicate time between the two countries, who along with Egypt have recently hit another impasse in talks over the massive Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River. India has immense goodwill due to our foreign policy says Dr. Jaishankar at India Inc event Jaishankar to pay 5-day visit to US from May 24; Vaccine procurement on agenda Jaishankar arrives in New York: Focus to be around vaccination production EAM Jaishankar holds talks over bilateral relations with Nepalese counterpart Gyawali India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Jan 15: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday held talks with his Nepalese counterpart Pradeep Kumar Gyawali with a focus on various key aspects of the bilateral relations. The talks are taking place under the framework of the Indo-Nepal joint commission meeting (JCM), officials said. Gyawali arrived here on Thursday on a three-day visit. Farmers' Protest: Ninth round of talks begin with three Union ministers He is the first senior political leader from Nepal to visit India after the ties between the two countries came under strain following a border row. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava on Thursday gave clear indication that the boundary issue is unlikely to be discussed at the JCM. Responding to questions on the border row, he said at a media briefing, "Our position on the boundary issue is well known. Let me say that the JCM and boundary talks are separate mechanisms." India dealt with COVID-19, its economic consequences decisively: IMF chief Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News He said the JCM is an important mechanism that provides the opportunity of reviewing the entire gamut of bilateral partnership and providing political guidance to further enhance the unique ties between the two countries. "We look forward to constructive discussions on the numerous sectors that encompass our bilateral agenda," he said. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, January 15, 2021, 13:59 [IST] Prior to publication, the information contained within this announcement was deemed by the Company to constitute inside information for the purposes of Article 7 under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014 ("MAR"). With the publication of this announcement, this information is now considered to be in the public domain. 15 January 2021 BWA Group PLC ("BWA", or the "Company") Positive Results from Reconnaissance Surface Sampling at the Dehane Rutile Sands Project, Cameroon BWA Group plc [AQSE: BWAP], which has mineral exploration licences split between Canada and Cameroon and is quoted on London's AQSE Growth Market (formerly NEX), provides an update on its recent surface sampling programme at its 90% owned Dehane rutile sands project located in western Cameroon ("Dehane" or the "Dehane Project"). BWA currently has two heavy mineral sands ("HMS") licences in Cameroon, both of which are at an early stage of exploration. The Dehane Licence is 132 km2 comprising part of the prospective Nyong river system and located 166 km to the south west of the capital, Yaounde, and the Nkoteng Licence ("Nkoteng" or the "Nkoteng Project") with area 497 km2, comprising part of the prospective Sanaga river system and located 60 km to the north of Yaounde (link to map below). BWA is pleased to announce the results of a preliminary reconnaissance surface grab and auger sampling programme conducted on the Dehane Project, reported in accordance with JORC (2012). The limited six-sample field work programme within the northern section of the Dehane licence has identified an area of alluvial HMS mineralisation related to the extensive Nyong river system, (link to map below). Results from surface samples confirm the area has anomalous titanium (Rutile-Ilmenite), zirconium (Zircon) and aluminium (Kyanite) with samples reporting up to 26.9% TiO2, >1.00% Zr and 10.8% Al2O3. Highlights: Six samples collected around the Village of Dehane, with: Five samples in excess of 1% TiO2 with associated elevated Zr and Al2O3. Including one sample containing 26.9% TiO2 and >1.00% Zr. Strong elevated titanium, zircon and aluminium multi-element associations Mapping and data interpretation indicate extensive prospective floodplain target areas Preliminary granulometric studies suggest that some kyanite mineralisation is hosted in 5-3 mm fraction, increasing with rutile in the 3-1 mm fraction. Kyanite, rutile and isolated leucoxene are most abundant in the 1 mm fraction. Implications of the granulometric studies are as yet not fully recognised, although suggest distinctive mineralised size fractions Additional information on the project, including maps, the table of sample results and the JORC (2012) Table 1, can be viewed here . Outlook The Company is processing the data and is still in the early days of exploration and evaluation, understanding distribution of mineralisation and related size fractions, but are encouraged by the presence of elevated amounts of Rutile-Ilmenite, Zircon and Kyanite within an area prospective for heavy mineral sands, and that the first campaign in this area has returned such positive results to warrant further exploration. At this stage of the exploration programme there are no resource estimates, however it is the Company's current intention to progress in that direction, which will require the Company to raise additional capital. Our COVID-19 health and safety protocols continue to allow the team to be effective in the field. Richard Battersby, Non-executive Chairman of BWA, commented: "We regard the initial geochemical test results for the Dehane licence as encouraging and supportive of BWA's long-held view of the prospectivity for rutile mineralisation in the Nyong river system. These results, albeit of a limited nature, do demonstrate the presence of titanium, zircon and aluminium at levels of potential economic interest within interpreted extensive depositional environments along the prospective Nyong river system contained within the licence. The Company will now carry out similar initial tests at our Nkoteng licence situated on the prospective Sanaga river system with a view to producing initial results for that area, as well as expanding the exploration work at Dehane. We become increasingly attracted by our prospects in Cameroon." Implications for Exploration The exploration work has demonstrated that there is potential for HMS mineralisation and deposit development within the area tested at sufficient levels to warrant further next stage systematic exploration. Although the sample area tested is relatively small, the results are extremely encouraging as the basement geology and depositional environments are interpreted as being favourable over the available approximate 15 kms of the Nyong river system within the BWA landholding. BWA are considering the next phases of exploration to start in early-2021. The next phases are being planned and are likely to consist of exploration pits and trenches to log and sample the various horizons over a wider area along the Nyong river system and associated floodplains. This work will provide a better indication of the HMS exploration potential within the licence and better focus intended follow up drill programs. Summary ofExplorationWorks In accordance with JORC (2012) reporting guidelines, a summary of the material information used is set out in the additional link included above. Four (bucket) grab samples from across the active riverbed and two hand-auger samples from river island sand banks were collected from the project and are classed as surface geochemical. The samples were oven dried for 24 hours and riffle split at Afrigeolabs in Yaounde to approximately 3kg and sent to ALS Johannesburg for sample preparation and multi-element XRF analysis by method ME-XRF11bE. The remaining sample was used for the granulometric studies. Quality assurance and quality control measures included the insertion of external certified reference materials, and internal lab standards and duplicates. The remaining sample rejects were used for granulometric studies and visual size fraction analysis. Six sieves were used to fraction off the sample with each size fraction having a detailed description and analysis. The preliminary granulometric studies suggest that some kyanite mineralisation is hosted in 5-3 mm fraction but it increases significantly in the 3-1 mm fraction, which also sees the start of the rutile mineralisation. The smaller fraction of <1 mm sees the most abundant Kyanite, rutile and isolated leucoxene mineralisation. Implications of the granulometric studies are as yet not fully recognized and further testwork required going forward, although the preliminary work suggest the minerals of interest occur within specific size fractions. Geology and Geological Interpretation The Dehane licence is located to the west of Yaounde, close to the coast, the port of Douala and deep seaport of Kribi. The Dehane licence is located on the Western Cameroon Domain, which extends along the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. This domain consists of a series of medium-grade to high grade schists and gneisses of volcanic and volcano-sedimentary origin, intruded by later-stage granitoid complexes, the basement rocks are source of heavy minerals. The Nyong river is the main river which runs through the licence area. The BWA licence accommodates approximately 15 km of the prospective Nyong river floodplain system and associated tributaries. The licence encompasses a large active river system and an even larger paleo-floodplain area, observed in satellite imagery (click here for map), although this has yet to be fully ground-truthed through fieldwork. This paleo-floodplain is likely to be a significant target for exploration and covers the length of the river with an initial expected width of over 2 km in the north and increasing in the south. Other rivers of various importance are found there: Owoumbe, Nkoudou, Bidinga, Mbebe, Mboke, and Ongue. A summary delineation of the plains completed by geological contractors GIMERC (Generateur de Solutions) in 2020 along the Nyong River, shows plains in the south of the licence increasing to widths of up to 5 km. The Dehane area has been known for some historic small scale artisanal historical rutile mining area. However, the extent of its exploitation has not translated to concentrated modern exploration. Heavy mineral sands are loose aggregates of unlithified material containing combinations of minerals with a high specific gravity, generally above 4 g/cm3. The heavy minerals at Dehane occur in a variety of igneous and metamorphic rocks, but because of their resistance to weathering and comparatively high specific gravity, they are found to accumulate in river channels. Competent Person's Statement The information in this report which relates to exploration results for the Dehane Project is based upon and fairly represents information collected and compiled by Mr Emmanuel Simo, MSc., Senior Geologist and Chief Geologist for BWA who is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists. The exploration results were reviewed by Mr J.N. Hogg, MSc. MAIG, Principal Geologist for Addison Mining Services (AMS) and Non-executive Director of BWA. Mr Simo and Mr Hogg have sufficient experience relevant to the style of mineralisation, the type of deposit under consideration and to the activity undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the JORC Code 2012 edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Mr Hogg has reviewed and verified the technical information that forms the basis of and has been used in the preparation of this announcement, including all sampling and analytical data, and analytical techniques. Mr Hogg consents to the inclusion in this announcement of the matters based on the information, in the form and context in which it appears. Forward Looking Statement This announcement contains forward-looking statements which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are expressed in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis. These statements reflect current expectations, intentions or strategies regarding the future and assumptions based on currently available information. Should one or more of the risks or uncertainties materialise, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary from the expectations, intentions and strategies described in this announcement. No obligation is assumed to update forward looking statements if these beliefs, opinions and estimates should change or to reflect other future developments. For further information on the Company, please visit http://www.bwagroupplc.com/index.html or contact: BWA Group PLC Then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping toast during a state luncheon for China hosted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the Department of State in Washington, on Sept. 25, 2015. (Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images) Will Biden Unwind Trumps China Policy? Commentary With the Trump administration ending with Joe Bidens inauguration on Jan. 20, its quite likely that much of President Donald Trumps comprehensive China policy will go with him. That includes Trumps executive order that mandates delisting Chinese companies from U.S. capital markets. In fact, its almost a fait acompli. Wall Streets Priorities This can be said with confidence because even though U.S. investment and retirement accounts are heavily invested in fraudulent Chinese companies, American money managers have a strong financial motivation to ignore Trumps order. Big Chinese money and the lure of an open Chinese market to U.S. financial services and global investment firms are driving their behavior. Both promise to deliver great financial windfalls to Wall Street investment banks. In fact, even though the executive order specifically identifies how U.S. capital markets are enabling Chinas military and industrial growth to pose growing threats to America both at home and abroad and undermine U.S. financial stability, Wall Street doesnt care. Biden has the opportunity to prove his mettle up front by enforcing Trumps executive order and reining in the big investment banks. It would also send a message to both allies and China alike, Bidens political Achilles heel, that he has a clear understanding of the present challenges and is unencumbered by the past. But if those things dont happen, it would free up the U.S. financial communitys singular priority, which is making money, even at the expense of national security. With a Biden administration now imminent, insiders predict, however, that the executive order will be short-lived. Others say that it may never be put into full effect. Undercutting the Trump Legacy But there are more aspects to Trumps China policy than blocking Chinas access to U.S. stock markets and indexes, as important as those things are. Will Bidens presidency undercut Trumps hard-line approach to trade with China? Or will he choose a middle way? In either case, Biden needs a strategy that encompasses protecting intellectual property rights, keeping a closer eye on academic exchange programs, closer relations with Taiwan, and even such minor things as internet apps. Lets look at recent news for China apps, for example. Trumps latest executive order adds bans on the popular apps WeChat and TikTok. Many experts have identified Chinese apps as vectors for data and identity theft, as well as for tracking anti-China activity. But in a Biden administration, its not certain that this executive orderlike the previous onewill be recognized or acted upon. As far as Trumps steep 25 percent tariff on Chinese manufactured goods is concerned, its thought that Biden wont reverse them and othersat least not initially. The rationale is that the new president will use them to cut a new trade deal with China, perhaps with the participation of European nations. If past is prologue, multilateral agreements tend not to favor the United States. That may or may not be the case; it remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen how Biden plans to stop the Chinese from stealing U.S. intellectual property, which is estimated to be between $225 billion and $600 billion per year. The Trump administration made IP protection a big part of its China trade policy. But will Biden, with his deep financial ties to China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), be willing or able to continue protecting the United States from the CCPs longstanding policy of IP theft? Lets hope so. Will Biden Curtail Academic, Research Exchanges? A significant part of Chinas IP theft apparatus is its deep and pervasive academic relationship with U.S. universities and researchers. Through various initiatives such as the Confucius Institutes and the Thousand Talents program, the Chinese regime has been able to gather enormous amounts of IP and technological innovation. Too often, key scientists became Chinese assets. Under the Trump administration, universities began to kick Confucius Institutes, which are essentially CCP indoctrination and IP gathering centers, off of their campuses. The Thousand Talents program is literally a means by which the best and brightest scientists and researchers in the United States are paid handsomely to relocate to China to do their work. Of course, the CCP has reaped enormous technological rewards from both of these programs. China: A Competitor, Not an Adversary As vice president of the eight-year Obama administration under which these efforts flourished, why should we expect a President Biden to behave any differently? Biden is perceived as the best president the CCP could wish for. Regardless of how much or how little money the incoming president has made in his dealings with China, the fact is that he views China as a competitor, not an adversary. Will he change his view? If so, such a shift in perspective could make a world of difference when it comes to forming a new China policy. Will Biden Abandon Taiwan? This is particularly important regarding U.S.Taiwan relations. On Jan. 9, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that restrictions limiting contacts between Taiwan and U.S. officials will be removed. This effectively means an official recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state, a key part of Americas One China policy, which only recognized the Beijing government as the government of China and Taiwan. Prior to this change in diplomatic policy, the Trump administration sold more defensive arms to Taiwan in one year than Obama did in eight years. The idea is to enable the island nation of 23.5 million people to deter an invasion from mainland communist China. Whats more, given that the CCP now has Hong Kong under its boot heel, its not unreasonable to presume that Beijing plans a similar fate for Taiwan. Indeed, the CCP leadership has declared that as a main geopolitical objective. Will the United States revert to the One China policy? What will the Biden administration say or do if China invades Taiwan? Will we see a return to the United States enabling the rise of China as the dominant global power, or will Biden challenge the CCP? We dont know. Perhaps a simpler question will do: Will a BidenHarris administration rise to the challenge that the CCP poses to the United States? Well soon find out. James R. Gorrie is the author of The China Crisis (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. President-elect Joe Biden is proposing a coronavirus action plan that centers on mass vaccination in the United States and more financial assistance to help the economy. The plan could cost as much as $1.9 trillion dollars. Biden sees the pandemic as the countrys biggest problem. He said last week, Thats my No. 1 concern, to get the virus under control. The plan aims to speed up vaccination of Americans by delivering more vaccine and working closely with states and local communities to get shots into the arms of more people. Biden has set a goal of giving out 100 million shots in his first 100 days. Right now, the U.S. is vaccinating almost one million people a day, but it needs to get up to two million to reach Bidens goal. Biden has said the plan would have billions of dollars to speed up vaccination. He is also asking Americans to look past their sense of pandemic fatigue. He wants a commitment to wearing masks, practicing social distancing, and avoiding large indoor gatherings. The president-elect wants Congress to send more money to American states to help reopen schools and to avoid laying off teachers, police officers and health workers. Bidens incoming White House economic adviser, Brian Deese, told Reuters the measures may include direct payments of $1,400 to most Americans. A nation divided The plan comes as a divided nation is experiencing the pandemics most dangerous wave yet. So far, more than 380,000 Americans have died. Biden hopes his plan will put the country on the path to recovery by the end of his first 100 days. Its going to be hard, Biden said Monday after he got his second vaccine dose. Its not going to be easy. But we can get it done. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the Biden COVID-19 plan will be the new Congresss first action this year. But the biggest question for Biden is if he can win the hearts and minds of the American people to follow his lead, said Dr. Leana Wen. She is a public health expert and emergency physician. Under the Trump administration, more than 29 million doses of vaccine have been sent but only 10.3 million have gotten the first of two shots. Biden wants to quickly increase that number by working closely with states and local communities to get more people vaccinated. It will need cooperation at all levels, as well as resources, said Dr. Nadine Gracia. She is the executive vice president of the nonpartisan Trust for Americas Health. Experts say, however, that the biggest problem may be public suspicion about the vaccine. Research shows it is a big problem, especially among Black Americans. Its important towork to earn trust and build vaccine confidence in communities, said Gracia. Im Susan Shand. The Associated Press and the Reuters News Agency reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. _____________________________________________________________ Words In This Story wave n. a movement dose n. the correct amount of medication to be taken at one time fatigue n. tiredness mask n. a face covering confidence n. a feeling of trust and certainty We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, and visit our Facebook page. The Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission unanimously approved over $639,000 in funding from both the federal government and the county to three local organizations that have helped residents through the pandemic in a special called session Tuesday night. Posted Friday, January 15, 2021 6:49 am As mutated versions of the novel coronavirus pop up across the U.S. including at least one that is more contagious researchers in Washington say surveillance in the state is falling short of what's needed to quickly spot new variants. While Washington is doing better than many other states, only about 1.7% of viral genomes has been sequenced since the start of the pandemic. In December when the new variants began to explode across the U.K. and other countries more than 70,000 people in Washington tested positive, and fewer than half a percent of those cases have been sequenced so far. Public health, academic and industry scientists who are preparing a recommendation for the incoming Biden administration say an effective program would sequence viral genomes from at least 5% of positive cases, looking for mutations that could make the virus more transmissible, more virulent or resistant to vaccines, said Lea Starita, a research assistant professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington and Brotman Baty Institute. It's likely at least one of the variants is already in the state and just hasn't been detected yet due to the low level of sequencing, she added. That means health officials are largely flying blind at a time when new forms of the virus could be spreading silently. "With anything like this, you want to be able to put out the fire before it gets too big," Starita said. "If you can't see the fires starting, you might be in big trouble." A more infectious variant that arose in the U.K. is now the dominant virus there and probably accounts for the country's steep rise in cases, scientists say. Though it spreads more easily, it does not appear to cause more severe illness, and recent tests found it remains vulnerable to the Pfizer-BioNTec COVID-19 vaccine. The U.K. variant has been detected in several U.S. states, including California, Florida and New York. Another potentially worrisome variant now circulating widely in South Africa has not yet been detected in the U.S., nor has a third variant from Brazil. Researchers in Ohio this week also reported the discovery of two distinct variants that appear to have emerged in the U.S. and may be spreading more rapidly than the original viral type. The U.K. variant was detected soon after it emerged because public health labs there sequence about 7.4 percent of all positive cases, 25 times the U.S. rate. The main reason for the slow pace of sequencing in Washington and across the country is that there's no national strategy or dedicated funding, researchers say. Viral sequencing in Washington is conducted by two academic groups. The UW Medicine Virology Lab aims to sequence 100 to 200 genomes a week out of the thousands of samples sent to the lab for diagnostic testing, said computational biologist Pavitra Roychoudhury. Researchers at the Brotman Baty Institute are getting back online after shutting down for several weeks to switch to a cheaper, faster sequencing system, said Starita. They're just starting to process December's backlog and hope soon to crank out 100 genomes a day. The group analyzes positive cases detected through SCAN, a surveillance network in King and Pierce counties, and samples provided by the Washington State Public Health Laboratory in Shoreline. The sequences are shared in a national repository coordinated by scientists at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center and other institutions. Since most samples come from the Puget Sound area, that leaves big blind spots in other parts of the state, Starita said. That's also the case nationally. North Dakota, which recently experienced the world's highest infection rate, just submitted its first sequence to the repository, Starita said. "That's just appalling," she said. "There's very little sequencing outside of the main technology centers." The UW Virology group has to juggle sequencing with its more pressing mission of processing diagnostic tests, said assistant director Alex Greninger. "We can't prioritize sequencing above patient care," Greninger said. "We don't have special sources of funding that are earmarked for this." Genomes are sequenced in batches that take three to five days to run. Greninger estimates each individual genome costs at least $100 in staff time and supplies with the latter sometimes still in short supply. Roychoudhury and her colleagues recently found themselves scrambling to find enough freezer space for specimens. At times, they've had to stop sequencing when reagents also used for testing are running low. A new CDC program is offering grants to boost sequencing and help fill in the gaps, and scientists hope the incoming Biden administration will make it a higher priority, Starita said. While the U.K. sequences genomes at a higher rate than the U.S., British surveillance was also aided by serendipity: The country's most common diagnostic test just happens to detect one of the key mutations. But that test is not widely used in the U.S., though it's sometimes employed as an initial screen to prioritize samples for sequencing, Greninger said. The variant that swamped the U.K. is likely to follow a similar trajectory in the U.S., said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at The Hutch. It appears to be about 50 percent more contagious, with each infected person passing the virus along to 15 percent of close contacts, compared to 10 percent for the original strain. It's still rare in the U.S., accounting for probably one infection in a thousand, Bedford said. He expects it will be detected in Washington any day now and is likely to become dominant in the state and nationwide by March. That doesn't bode well for winding down the pandemic, he added. "I am worried that we'll see a spring wave associated with the variant when just four weeks ago I was expecting Washington state and the U.S. to be getting things mostly under control by around March," Bedford said in an email. In an interview last week, Gov. Jay Inslee described the U.K. variant as extremely concerning and said it could necessitate even stricter control measures. "If it took hold in our state, even if we had the highest level of reduction of mobility that we had in the spring, we would still have to have additional intervention to bring the [transmission] level down," he said. Better surveillance could help guide and tailor the public health response, Starita said, possibly identifying hot spots early enough to snuff them out. The new variants circulating now don't represent the end of the evolutionary story for the novel coronavirus. It will keep evolving, looking for ways to dodge the human immune system, and the vaccines, Roychoudhury said. Reducing the number of infections is one of the most effective ways to slow that process. "Every case is a new petri dish for the virus to evolve and change and have these mutations come up," she said. It's likely to be several years before the virus morphs enough to render current vaccines impotent, said Jesse Bloom, a virologist at The Hutch who has been studying thousands of possible mutations. And tweaking vaccines is something pharmaceutical companies know how to do, he added. But the emergence of new variants makes it even more important to take the precautions already known to slow the spread of the disease, Greninger stressed. "These viruses do not leap tall buildings in a single bound," he said. "They actually need your help. Masks make a difference. Washing your hands makes a difference. Reducing your interactions with other people make a difference." Seattle Times staff Reporter Jim Brunner contributed to this report. ___ (c)2021 The Seattle Times Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. A SIGNIFICANT amount of cash which was seized at a house in the city is to be forfeited to the State after a judge ruled it was most likely related to the sale of illicit drugs. The president of the district court, Judge Colin Daly, rejected claims from Sarah ONeill that the cash had arisen out of a credit union loan which she told gardai she had drawn down. Ms ONeill, 29 of Talbot Avenue, Prospect opposed a Police Property Application seeking to have the 3,500 be forfeited to the State. Detective Garda Brian Culbert of Roxboro Road garda station told Limerick District Court that more than 7,500 in cash was seized when gardai searched the respondents home on February 22, 2018 having been granted a search warrant. He said gardai had received confidential information that deals of heroin were being concealed in kinder eggs at the property and he confirmed that 39 deals were found during the search. The drugs, he said, were found in a bedside locker and the cash was found in a number of different locations. He told Judge Daly, Ms ONeill removed a kinder egg from the fridge when gardai arrived at the house and that she concealed the egg on her person. Ms ONeill was the sole occupant of the house and was arrested and questioned under drugs legislation. A file was prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions and she was subsequently charged with obstructing gardai under the provisions of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1977. Ms ONeill, the court heard, refused to hand over the kinder egg and she declined to undergo scans when bought to University Hospital Limerick following her arrest. Detective Garda Culbert said nearly 4,000 of the cash seized during the search was later returned to a sister of the respondent. He said this was because gardai were satisfied it was from a loan which had been drawn down a short time earlier by the sister. The detective told barrister Liam Carroll, representing Ms ONeill, that the money totalling 3,950 consisted of fresh 50 notes which was found in a white envelope. A further 80, which was found in a purse during the search, was also returned. The remainder of the money (3,500) was retained by gardai despite Ms ONeill stating that it was cash that she had drawn down having taken out a credit union loan a number of days earlier. The detective told the court he did not accept this ascertion and that no evidence of a loan agreement had been produced. She said she had gotten a loan two days previously but she could not produce any agreement, he stated. Judge Daly was told Ms ONeill remained silent when it was put to her by gardai, during interview, that she had not drawn down any loan. She failed to provide an account for it during interview, said Detective Garda Culbert. He added that the 3,500, which was submitted as evidence during the hearing, included notes of various denominations, including 20s, 10s and 5s, and was rolled up with each roll totalling exactly 500. Seeking the return of the cash, Mr Carroll, who was instructed by solicitor Sarah Ryan, asked the court to note that his client had not been charged with any drugs offence relating to the seizure. He said it was not disputed by gardai that Ms ONeill was the owner of the cash and he submitted the lack of crispness in the notes was a tenuous argument which should not be entertained. The barrister further submitted that his clients conviction, last summer, for obstruction was not evidence that the money had been come by in an ill-gotten fashion. He also asked the court that his clients partner, has a number of previous convictions for drugs offences. Having considered the matter, Judge Daly commented that he was not accepting Ms ONeills account of where the cash had come from given its make up. It doesnt lead me to believe this is an acceptable account, he said. Im satisffied to find it likely came from some illegal activity, most likely the sale of illegal drugs, he added. The judge granted the garda application. MUMBAI: The strong performance of Tata Steel Long Products Ltd for the December quarter, boosted marker sentiment for Tata Steel Ltd as well. On Friday, when broader indices were in the red, the Tata Steel stock traded higher. Shares of Tata Steel Long Products rose more than 8%. Tata Steel Long products among the countrys largest sponge iron manufacturers. Tata Steel had bought the steel business of Usha Martin, through Tata Sponge Iron and thereafter renamed it Tata Steel Long Products. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Rising demand and strong realisations have led to the Tata group company reporting a 15% surge in revenue sequentially, and a 36.5% jump year-on-year. The major benefits were seen on the operating performance front, helped by improving realisations. Ebitda (earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation) jumped 123% sequentially and grew more than nine-fold on a year-on-year basis. On a per tonne basis, the improvement was remarkable. Blended steel and sponge iron Ebitda/tonne rose by $102 / tonne sequentially. After this performance, all eyes will be on another group company - Tata Steel BSL. EBITDA for Tata Steel BSL is expected to increase 12% sequentially to 1,240 crore, as per Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd. EBITDA/tonne is seen rising 36% sequentially to 11,788. On a consolidated basis, Ebitda is likely to grow more than two-folds. Robust realisations will brighten prospects for Tata Steel going ahead. Its integrated operations in India will cushion it from rising raw material prices globally. We expect steel prices to remain elevated on-demand recovery, shortage of steel and significant cost-push," said analysts at Credit Suisse Equity Research in a note to clients. Tata Steel remains their preferred pick on ore integration. Though European operations have been a drag for Tata Steel, rising steel prices should boost the companys prospects. The major trigger for the stock though can be provided by the sale of its Netherlands business that will aid debt reduction too. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Another 1,244 Covid-19 deaths have been reported in in a 24-hour period, the highest daily figure since the start of the pandemic, official data showed. To date, 43,881 people in have succumbed to the disease, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the government's agency for disease control, Xinhua news agency reported. Another 25,164 people have tested positive in the 24 hours, raising the total number of confirmed cases in to about 1.98 million, RKI data showed. At a press conference on Thursday, RKI President Lothar Wieler warned that a lag in testing over the New Year could mean that the latest numbers still don't show the full picture, German news agency dpa reported. Germany "must massively reduce the case numbers" so as to bring normal life back to Germany, he said, urging more employers to switch to work-from-home models and appealing to the public to reduce contact with others to an absolute minimum. "It is possible that the case numbers have stabilized," but much more still needed to be done, dpa quoted Wieler as saying. Wieler also called for attention to frontline medical workers. Medical staff in Germany was already working at the limits, and many contracted Covid-19 themselves. "Without them, we cannot run beds for treatment either," Wieler warned. In 10 German states, more than 85 per cent of intensive care beds were occupied, and beds in normal wards were also becoming increasingly scarce, according to the RKI. Wieler also urged Germans to get the vaccine if they are offered vaccination. As of Wednesday, Germany has vaccinated a total of almost 760,000 people. As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in Germany and some other countries with the already-authorized vaccines. Meanwhile, 236 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the on Tuesday. --IANS int/ (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 foreign ministry appointed a new ambassador to Nigeria on Friday, replacing the former envoy under a probe over alleged misconduct in the hiring of an ex-embassy employee. Kim Young-chae, who previously served as the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, will head the mission in the African country, according to a ministry release. Kim, a career diplomat, also served as the head of the South Korean missions to the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) and in Libya before moving to the special envoy position in May 2019. His appointment comes as the ministry is seeking a prosecution investigation into the allegations that the former ambassador, Lee In-tae, gave undue favors to a Korean employee in the course of recruitment in 2019. The ministry said earlier that it ordered Lee to return to Seoul. Lee has denied the allegations. (Yonhap) Brad Pitt relaxes poolside in Miraval Rose 'Spirit of the Riviera' campaign Brad Pitt has been snapped savouring the relaxing mood of the French Riviera in a new campaign for wine brand Miraval Rose. To coincide with the launch of the brand's 2020 vintage this week, Miraval has launched a campagin with the tagline 'Spirit of the Riviera', in which award-winning actor Pitt is captured by fashion photographer Lachlan Bailey. Miraval sought out Bailey - an Australian photographer known for his highly cinematic, sophisticated style - to shoot the campaign, which is designed to encapsulate the 'chill-out mood' of the Riviera. It shows Pitt relaxing beside a swimming pool - in Los Angeles, rather than France - to demonstrate that Miraval can help drinkers to achieve that Riviera mood anywhere. Produced in the brand's chateau in Provence, Miraval says its 2020 Rose has an elegant pink hue, a fresh and fruity nose, and 'vivacity', minerality and citrus notes on the palate. Photo: Miraval x Lachlan Bailey 15 January 2021 - Bethany Whymark The Co-WIN platform, the Government of Indias app designed to enable citizens to self-register for the Covid-19 vaccination process, initially will be accessible to healthcare workers alone and will be open to usage for the general public within a month. Besides the COVID warriors, the app will effectively be used by central and state governments to implement the inoculation drive. The initial accessibility of the Co-WIN app has been limited to the healthcare staff to enable them to provide a database regarding their vaccination and receive information around it, The Times of India reported. Meanwhile, the app has been fed information in bulk for about one crore health workers. Co-WIN will be available to the general public in the form of an online website as well as a mobile application within a month, an official told TOI. Earlier, the Centre had explained that the Co-WIN app comes with five modules, namely - Administrator module, Registration module, Vaccination module, Beneficiary Acknowledgement module, and Report module - to ensure smooth tracking and registration for COVID-19 vaccine in the country. The mobile app is also an upgraded version of the eVIN (Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network) and it will be available to download for free via the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, though its availability details remain unclear. The app may also launch on Jio phones that run on KaiOS. Citizens who are not frontline health workers can register for the vaccine via the 'Registration Module' (once the app is available). Photo identity will be required for registration. As expected, the admins via the 'Administrator module' will be able to track the information provided by citizens on India. "It will upload bulk data on co-morbidity provided by local authorities or by surveyors," the government had explained last month. Admins will also be responsible for creating sessions, and the respective vaccinators and managers will receive relevant notifications and alerts Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to launch worlds largest Covid-19 vaccination drive at 10.30am on January 16 across 3,006 sites via a video link. "A dedicated 24x7 call centre 1075 has also been established for addressing queries related to the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccine rollout and the Co-WIN software. Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on the inaugural day, the government said on Thursday. The Vaccination module of the Co-Win app will verify the beneficiary details and update vaccination status. The 'Beneficiary Acknowledgement Module' will then send SMS to beneficiaries and also generate QR-based certificates after one gets vaccinated. Lastly, the Report Module will prepare reports of how many vaccine sessions have been conducted, how many people have attended those, how many people have dropped out etc. Earlier, Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan clarified that vaccine will be free for frontline workers. It is not yet clear whether the vaccine for people above 50 years and people with co-morbidities will be free or subsidised. Lucknow, Jan 15 : The Sankissa village in Uttar Pradesh's Farrukhabad district, one of the most ancient Buddhist sites in the world, will soon be developed as a centre for Buddhist pilgrimage. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed officials to develop Sankissa on the lines of Kushinagar, Sarnath, Kapilvastu and Kaushambhi. A government spokesman said: "It is a matter of pride that Uttar Pradesh is a home to several important places related to Lord Buddha and these are being developed under the Buddhist circuit." The Chief Minister has asked the officials to chalk out the action plan on this and draw a route map from Sarnath to Gautam Buddha Nagar, adding Sankissa village as sixth Buddhist destination in the state. He wants that people from across the world should visit Sankissa, Kapilvastu, Shravasti, Kushinagar, Sarnath and Kaushambhi and see the ancient stupas and learn about the thoughts of Lord Buddha. Adityanath also said that once Sankissa is developed as a tourist place, employment opportunities will increase and the system of road, electricity, and water will be better. Also, the hotel and market business will bloom. Sankissa, earlier known Sankasia, Sankassa and Sankasya, is an ancient city. It came into prominence at the time of Gautama Buddha. According to a Buddhist source, it was 30 leagues from Savatthi. After Gautama Buddha's 'Mahaparinirvana', King Ashoka developed this place and installed one of his famous Pillars here. He also built a stupa and a temple commemorating the visit of the Buddha. This temple exists even today and the ruins of the stupa are also present as a temple of Vishari Devi. It is said that the name Visahari Devi is given to the mother of the Buddha. Currently, Sankissa has ruins of old monasteries and Buddhist monuments. It is rarely visited by pilgrims since it lacks facilities for travel. Sankissa is now identified with Sankisa Basantapura on the north bank of the Ikkhumati river (Kalinadi), between Kampil and Kannauj in Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh state of India. It may be mentioned that Alexander Cunningham has described Sankissa village in his book "The Ancient Geography of India". There is immense reverence for Sankissa among the followers of Lord Buddha settled across the globe. These devotees of Lord Buddha have built temples and stupas here. The Burma temple built here in Sankissa is built by Buddhist followers of Myanmar. In this temple, the figures of the soles of both feet of Buddha have been made. India recorded 87 fresh coronavirus cases per million population in the last seven days, which is one of the lowest in the world, when compared with countries like America, Britain, Russia, Germany, Brazil, France and Italy, the Union Health Ministry said on Friday. The Health Ministry further said that only one new death per million population was reported in the country in this period. "With a case fatality rate of 1.44%, COVID-19 deaths per million population in India are one of the lowest in the world," the ministry underscored. India's total coronavirus active caseload continues to manifest a sustained downward movement and has dropped to 2.13 lakh comprising just 2.03% of India's total infections, it added. The daily new cases added to the country's Covid-19 numbers have been below 20K in the recent days, it said. India's Covid-19 caseload rose to 1,05,27,683 with 15,590 people testing positive for the infection in a day, while the recoveries have surged to 1,01,62,738. "New cases per million population in India in the last seven days are 87. It is one of the lowest in the world. The number is significantly low when compared with countries like Russia, Germany, Brazil, France, Italy, USA and UK," the ministry highlighted. The total recovered cases stand at 10,162,738. The country's death toll increased to 1,51,918 with 191 daily new fatalities. "The gap between COVID-19 recoveries and active cases is steadily increasing and has crossed 99 lakh and currently stands at 99,49,711," the ministry underlined. It said that 81.15% of the new recovered cases are observed to be concentrated in 10 states and union territories. Kerala has reported the maximum number of single-day recoveries with 4,337 newly recovered cases. 3,309 people recovered in Maharashtra in a span of 24 hours followed by 970 in Chhattisgarh. At least, 77.56% of the new cases are from seven states and union territories. Kerala continues to report the highest daily new cases at 5,490. It is followed by Maharashtra with 3,579, while West Bengal reported 680 new cases. One hundred and ninety-one case fatalities have been reported in a span of 24 hours. Six states and union territories account for 73.30 per cent of new deaths. Maharashtra saw the maximum casualties (70). Kerala and West Bengal follow with 19 and 17 daily deaths, respectively. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Feature Article Dark Energy Survey makes public catalog of nearly 700 million astronomical objects DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Shown here is the elliptical galaxy NGC 474 with star shells. Elliptical galaxies are characterized by their relatively smooth appearance as compared with spiral galaxies, one of which is to the left of NGC 474, which is oriented with South to the top and West to the left. The colorful neighboring spiral (NGC 470) has characteristic flocculent structure interwoven with dust lanes and spiral arms. NGC 474 is at a distance of about 31 megaparsecs (100 million light-years) from the sun in the constellation of Pisces. The region surrounding NGC 474 shows unusual structures characterized as 'tidal tails' or 'shells of stars' made up of hundreds of millions of stars. These features are likely due to recent (within the last billion years) mergers of smaller galaxies into the main body of NGC 474 or close passages of nearby galaxies, such as the NGC 470 spiral. For coordinate information, visit the NOIRLab webpage for this photo. (Photo: DES/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA. Acknowledgments: Image processing: DES, Jen Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIRLab), Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin. Image curation: Erin Sheldon, Brookhaven National Laboratory) Editor's note: The DES second data release will be featured at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The session "NOIRLab's Data Services: A Practical Demo Built on Science with DES DR2" takes place on Thursday, Jan. 14, 3:10-4:40 p.m. Central time. The session "Dark Energy Survey: New Results and Public Data Release 2" takes place on Friday, Jan. 15, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Central time. The Dark Energy Survey, a global collaboration including the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, has released DR2, the second data release in the survey's seven-year history. DR2 is the topic of sessions today and tomorrow at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held virtually. The second data release from the Dark Energy Survey, or DES, is the culmination of over a half-decade of astronomical data collection and analysis with the ultimate goal of understanding the accelerating expansion of the universe and the phenomenon of dark energy, which is thought to be responsible for this accelerated expansion. It is one of the largest astronomical catalogs released to date. Including a catalog of nearly 700 million astronomical objects, DR2 builds on the 400 million objects cataloged with the survey's prior data release, or DR1, and also improves on it by refining calibration techniques, which, with the deeper combined images of DR2, lead to improved estimates of the amount and distribution of matter in the universe. Astronomical researchers around the world can access these unprecedented data and mine them to make new discoveries about the universe, complementary to the studies being carried out by the Dark Energy Survey collaboration. The full data release is online and available to the public to explore and gain their own insights as well. DES was designed to map hundreds of millions of galaxies and to discover thousands of supernovae in order to measure the history of cosmic expansion and the growth of large-scale structure in the universe, both of which reflect the nature and amount of dark energy in the universe. DES has produced the largest and most accurate dark matter map from galaxy weak lensing to date, as well as a new map, three times larger, that will be released in the near future. One early result relates to the construction of a catalog of a type of pulsating star known as "RR Lyrae," which tells scientists about the region of outer space beyond the edge of our Milky Way. In this area nearly devoid of stars, the motion of the RR Lyrae hints at the presence of an enormous "halo" of invisible dark matter, which may provide clues on how our galaxy was assembled over the last 12 billion years. In another result, DES scientists used the extensive DR2 galaxy catalog, along with data from the LIGO experiment, to estimate the location of a black hole merger and, independent of other techniques, infer the value of the Hubble constant, a key cosmological parameter. Combining their data with other surveys, DES scientists have also been able to generate a complete map of the Milky Way's dwarf satellites, giving researchers insight into how our own galaxy was assembled and how it compares with cosmologists' predictions. Covering 5,000 square degrees of the southern sky (one-eighth of the entire sky) and spanning billions of light-years, the survey data enables many other investigations in addition to those targeting dark energy, covering a vast range of cosmic distances -- from discovering new nearby solar system objects to investigating the nature of the first star-forming galaxies in the early universe. The Dark Energy Survey uses a 570-megapixel camera mounted on the Blanco Telescope, at the CTI Observatory in Chile, to image 5,000 square degrees of southern sky. (Photo: Fermilab) "This is a momentous milestone. For six years, the Dark Energy Survey collaboration took pictures of distant celestial objects in the night sky. Now, after carefully checking the quality and calibration of the images captured by the Dark Energy Camera, we are releasing this second batch of data to the public," said DES Director Rich Kron of Fermilab and the University of Chicago. "We invite professional and amateur scientists alike to dig into what we consider a rich mine of gems waiting to be discovered." The primary tool in collecting these images, the DOE-built Dark Energy Camera, is mounted to the NSF-funded Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, part of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Chilean Andes, part of NSF's NOIRLab. Each week, the survey collected thousands of pictures of the southern sky, unlocking a trove of potential cosmological insights. Once captured, these images (and the large amount of data surrounding them) are transferred to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications for processing via the DES Data Management project. Using the Blue Waters supercomputer at NCSA, the Illinois Campus Cluster and computing systems at Fermilab, NCSA prepares calibrated data products for public and research consumption. It takes approximately four months to process one year's worth of data into a searchable, usable catalog. The detailed precision cosmology constraints based on the full six-year DES data set will come out over the next two years. The DES DR2 is hosted at the Community Science and Data Center, a program of NOIRLab. CSDC provides software systems, user services and development initiatives to connect and support the scientific missions of NOIRLab's telescopes, including the Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. NCSA, NOIRLab and the LIneA Science Server collectively provide the tools and interfaces that enable access to DR2. "Because astronomical data sets today are so vast, the cost to handle them is prohibitive for individual researchers or most organizations. CSDC provides open access to big astronomical data sets like DES DR2 and the necessary tools to explore and exploit them -- then all it takes is someone from the community with a clever idea to discover new and exciting science," said Robert Nikutta, project scientist for Astro Data Lab at CSDC. "With information on the positions, shapes, sizes, colors and brightnesses of over 690 million stars, galaxies and quasars, the release promises to be a valuable source for astronomers and scientists worldwide to continue their explorations of the universe, including studies of matter (light and dark) surrounding our home Milky Way galaxy, as well as pushing further to examine groups and clusters of distant galaxies, which hold precise evidence about how the size of the expanding universe changes over time," said Dark Energy Survey Data Management Project Scientist Brian Yanny of Fermilab. ### This work is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. About DES The Dark Energy Survey is a collaboration of more than 400 scientists from 26 institutions in seven countries. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Funding Authority for Studies and Projects in Brazil, Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the German Research Foundation and the collaborating institutions in the Dark Energy Survey, the list of which can be found at http://www.darkenergysurvey.org/collaboration. About NSF's NOIRLab NSF's NOIRLab (National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), the US center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the international Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC-Canada, ANID-Chile, MCTIC-Brazil, MINCyT-Argentina and KASI-Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and Vera C. Rubin Observatory. It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du'ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai'i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachon in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O'odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively. About NCSA NCSA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides supercomputing and advanced digital resources for the nation's science enterprise. At NCSA, University of Illinois faculty, staff, students, and collaborators from around the globe use advanced digital resources to address research grand challenges for the benefit of science and society. NCSA has been advancing one third of the Fortune 50 for more than 30 years by bringing industry, researchers, and students together to solve grand challenges at rapid speed and scale. For more information, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu. About Fermilab Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association, Inc. Visit Fermilab's website at http://www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab. The DOE 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, please visit science.energy.gov. New Delhi/Washington: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on June 26 hold talks with President Donald Trump on a range of issues, including terrorism and Indias concerns over possible changes in H1B visa rules, in their first bilateral meeting after the new administration took over in the US. The External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi said today that their meeting would provide a new direction for a deeper bilateral engagement on issues of mutual interest and consolidation of multi-dimensional strategic partnership. Modis US visit would begin on June 25, it said. In Washington, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump looks forward to his meeting with Modi on June 26 and discuss ways to strengthen the bilateral ties to advance our common priorities: fighting terrorism, promoting economic growth and reforms, and expanding security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. President Trump and Prime Minister Modi will look to outline a common vision for the US-India partnership that is worthy of their 1.6 billion citizens, Spicer said. He said they are expected to set forth a vision that will expand the bilateral partnership in an ambitious and worthy way of both countries people. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in her annual press meet last week, however, said Modi would also raise the issues surrounding the US plans to reduce the number of H-1B visa slots that are mainly used by Indian IT workers. Almost 1.8 million H-1B visas have been distributed in fiscal years 2001 through 2015, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. From fiscal years 2001 to 2015, workers from India received the largest share (50.5 per cent) of all H-1B visas for first-time employment. Also Read: US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross: No objection to free trade agreement with India Despite the recent hiccups over the issue, US-India trade has grown six-fold since 2000, from USD 19 billion to USD 115 billion in 2016, according to the White House. US energy and technologies, including natural gas, are helping to build Prime Minister Modis vision for a new India and creating thousands of US jobs in the process, Spicer said. Apart from ways to enhance trade and business cooperation, Modi and Trump are expected to discuss defence ties. US Defence Secretary James Mattis has already made it clear that his country recognises India as a major defence partner partly out of respect for New Delhis indispensable role in maintaining stability in the Indian Ocean region. The US was exploring new ways to address new challenges as well from maritime security to the growing threat posed by the spread of terrorism in Southeast Asia, Mattis has said. Regional security situation including Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and other international issues are expected to figure prominently during the meeting of the two leaders. Modis visit also comes in the backdrop of Trumps announcement to withdraw the US from the historic Paris Climate Agreement signed by over 190 other countries. Trump had blamed India and China for the US withdrawal. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions of dollars from developed countries, he had said. Also Read: US diplomat Nisha Desai Biswal to visit India for bilateral talks Strongly rejecting Trumps contention, India said it signed the Paris deal not under duress or for lure of money but due to its commitment to protect the environment. During his visit to France this month, Modi even said that India would go above and beyond the Paris deal to protect climate for the future generations. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Supporters of President Donald Trump riot outside the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. While a sitting presidents incitement of an attack on the Capitol may be unprecedented, Western Massachusetts scholars also see historical forces at play. Australians are being promised a two-stage strategy to protect the population from COVID-19 under a federal commitment to pursue herd immunity while making vaccines available as soon as possible. Health Minister Greg Hunt confirmed the ambition on herd immunity after scientists raised questions over the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine to achieve the objective when compared to alternatives from Pfizer and others. Health Minister Greg Hunt says Australia will pursue a herd immunity strategy as it waits to see how effective the COVID-19 vaccines are. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen In another day of debate over vaccine options, health giant CSL shot down talk about Australian production of the potential Novavax vaccine by saying it could not make it and the AstraZeneca vaccine at the same time. The developments cement the government plan for a widespread roll-out of the AstraZeneca vaccine to most of the population and a more limited roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine to up to five million people, subject to final test results for both. The attempts of indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton to keep secret the cost of bringing a frivolous lawsuit in a disastrous attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election is yet another public disservice. All we know at this point is state taxpayers are footing a $12,000 bill for printing charges. Paxton has refused to reveal much else about the litigations expenses, asserting the information is exempt from disclosure. In other words, this public official doesnt think the public gets to know how much his office spent trying to overturn the presidential election. Why arent taxpayers allowed to know how Paxton has squandered their money to erode democracy? We cant believe we have to even ask such a question, but we cant believe in 2018 voters chose Paxton over the supremely qualified Justin Nelson, valedictorian of Columbia Law School and legal ninja. But we digress. Paxtons lawsuit was summarily denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found Texas lacked legal standing. The lawsuit, which 17 state Republican attorneys general had joined and 126 Republican members of Congress supported, had sought to throw out election results in four battleground states that had gone for President-elect Joe Biden. Paxtons lawsuit argued emergency pandemic-related election rule changes that were adopted by governors or other officials without the approval of state legislatures were unconstitutional. He also made unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. Besides the printing charges, it is unclear what other costs might be associated with the case. The state was represented pro bono by special counsels Lawrence Joseph and Kurt Olsen, Hearst Newspapers reports. Even so, taxpayers need to know the price tag on that donated legal work. Is Paxton reporting it as a political contribution? Texas taxpayers have the right to know. It is all about maintaining an open government and accountability. Hearst Newspapers requested information on the litigation in early December, as did state Rep. Chris Turner, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a member of the public. The requests also asked for communications between the office and the Trump administration, the Trump legal team and any other affiliates. Turner has blasted Paxton for using public funds in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election. Through an incomplete response to my public information request, we have so far learned that the taxpayers of Texas are on the hook for about $12,000 in printing costs for a bogus lawsuit that was dismissed out of hand by the U.S. Supreme Court. In reality though, the price paid by Texas and America is far greater. Ken Paxtons lawsuit was an assault on our democracy, plain and simple, Turner said. We find it deeply troubling that the denial of the request for the lawsuit cost information is being handled by Paxtons own employees. The attorney generals office is seeking a ruling from Paxtons open government division on whether some of the records are required to be disclosed under the Texas Public Information Act. Where are the checks and balances on this? What this all means is there will likely be further litigation to keep the information secret, meaning the tab to taxpayers will only continue to increase. This isnt exactly surprising, unfortunately. Paxton spoke at the Save America rally before the insurrection and hasnt joined letters from other attorneys general condemning the insurrection. As the president might say, it is what it is. Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Rather than retreat from the riverbanks in the wake of 2011's devastating floods, architects have praised the way in which Brisbane has embraced its river more effectively since that disaster. Australian Institute of Architects Queensland chapter president Michael Lavery said Brisbane made better use of its river in 2021 than it did in 2011. Brisbane' floating Riverwalk at New Farm was partially destroyed on Thursday January 13, 2011. Credit:Michelle Smith "I would have to say certainly we are more attuned to the river now," Mr Lavery said. "We haven't always done that, when you look at the history of Brisbane, in terms of architecture." Examples included having a drink at Howard Smith Wharves, catching a CityCat from one of Brisbane's new "floating" ferry stops or walking along the new flood-resilient Riverwalk. The devastation of the floods gave the city "moments of opportunity", which Mr Lavery believed it had seized. 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. Brent Crude prices are set to hit $60 a barrel in the second half of this year and then stabilize at those levels, thanks to inventory drawdowns also helped by the extra Saudi production cut in the first quarter, ANZ Bank said on Friday. The move by Saudi Arabia to cut output by 1mb/d has stabilised the oil market amid rising risks of ongoing weakness in demand. Air traffic remains subdued, while demand for road transportation fuel is falling again, analysts at ANZ Bank said. The near-term oil demand outlook is not constructive for oil as major economies in Europe are on lockdown to fight soaring COVID-19 cases. The United States is also grappling with high new daily cases, and now China is expanding lockdowns to battle a resurgence of the virus. There are downside risks to short-term demand, which are likely to cap oil prices in the next few months, ANZ Bank said, as carried by FXStreet. The analysts, however, expect global oil demand to rise by between 4 million barrels per day (bpd) and 5 million bpd in the second half of 2021. We now expect Brent crude to hit$60/bbl in H2 2021 before stabilising at those levels. WTI crude should follow a similar path, according to ANZ Banks note quoted by FXStreet. Related: Why Oil Will Keep Rising In 2021 Other banks also believe that oil will hit and exceed $60 a barrel this year, especially in the second half. One of those is Goldman Sachs, which is bullish on oil, seeing Brent Crude averaging $65 in 2021. According Goldman Sachs, Saudi Arabias unexpected major oil production cut was indeed surprising, and while it will support oil prices in the near term, it also signals that the Kingdom expects weakening oil demand in the first quarter of 2021. Saudis action and the prospect for a tight market in 2Q21, as the rebound in demand stresses the ability to restart production, will likely support prices in coming weeks, leading us to reiterate our bullish oil view, Goldman Sachs said, as carried by Reuters. Early on Friday, Brent Crude prices were down by 1.6 percent at $55.49 and headed for their first weekly decline in three weeks. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Concern is developing over a variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that shows similar mutations to the South African and UK variants of the disease. The variant, thought to have originated in Brazil, is affecting travel to South America as effort is made to prevent its spread. Meanwhile, areas of Brazil are experiencing surging numbers of COVID-19 cases and oxygen supplies are running out. Image Credit: Near D Krasaesom / Shutterstock.com Identified in Japan Japanese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of their concern over a new SARS-CoV-2 variant on 9 January after detecting it in airport tests from four travelers from Brazil. Whole-genome sequencing detected the variant. The detected variant came from the B.1.1.248 lineage. Its mutations include the N501Y mutation, which it has in common with the variants reported by South Africa and the UK, and the E484K. This is the second variant detected from Brazil containing the E484K mutation. WHO is currently working with both Japan and Brazil to evaluate the variant, determining if this variant is more severe, has higher transmission, or if it could be detrimental to current therapies, diagnostics or vaccines for the disease. Technical consultations were scheduled to occur on the 12 and 15 January by the R&D blueprint for epidemics in which it discussed its agenda regarding evolving variants and vaccines. Across the world, many countries are developing their own teams to monitor variants and their effect; for example, the UK launched their G2P-UK job today, a group consisting of scientists from a broad spectrum of specialties working to evaluate new variants and their potential effects on vaccines or transmissibility. The situation in Brazil Cases in Brazil are currently surging and hospitals are running out of space and oxygen. The situation has reached new levels in Manaus, a city in the Amazonas state, where patients have had to be transported out of their hospitals due to severe oxygen shortage. The new variant, detected by the Japanese authorities, was traced back to this region of Brazil. There is much concern that this lack of help and supplies will result in many deaths as the situation becomes more desperate and healthcare workers send out pleas for oxygen supplies. Why is this variant concerning? Further research is needed to determine if this variant is going to increase negative public health concerns. At the moment there is no evidence of any variants that cause more severe illness or that render the current vaccines ineffective. Similar to the UK and South Africa variant, the Brazilian variant appears to have mutations in its spike protein that may make it more highly transmissible. There is also concern that the South African and Brazilian variants may carry a mutation allowing them to evade some of humans natural immune responses, although more research is needed to confirm this. If this is the case, it could reduce their response to the current vaccines. Countries have started to enforce protective measures against the introduction of the variant, with the UK suspending arrivals from South America, Panama, Cape Verde and Portugal. Reducing the spread What remains important is reducing the spread of the virus as much as possible. Mutations and new variants will continue to occur as the pandemic continues. The more it spreads, the more chance it has to mutate, and the more chance a mutation will affect the current vaccines. WHO advises all countries to increase testing the sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 viruses where possible and to share sequence data internationally, so that changes in the virus can be monitored." World Health Organisation WHO has encouraged countries around the world to increase genomic sequencing of the virus and to share the data, allowing for better monitoring of the evolving variants. They have advised individuals to continue to employ protective measures such as mask-wearing, physical distancing, avoiding crowds, ventilating rooms, and washing hands thoroughly and regularly. 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. By Emma Farge GENEVA (Reuters) - Fiji, the favourite of Western nations, won the presidency of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday, beating Bahrain and Uzbekistan in a secret ballot that resolved a tense deadlock over the selection. The vote was called after an impasse that meant the Council, the only intergovernmental global body to promote and protect human rights worldwide, began meetings this week leaderless for the first time in its 15-year history. The presidency rotates geographically with each region typically making a selection by consensus but members of the Asia Pacific group could not agree, forcing the first-ever secret ballot in the Council. Fiji's Nazahat Shameen Khan, a British-educated former High Court judge, won with 29 votes versus 14 for Bahrain and 4 for Uzbekistan, Vice-President Ali Ibn Abi Talib Abdelrahman Mahmoud told a nearly-empty U.N. chamber where delegates voted one-by-one due to COVID-19 measures. The deadlock over the presidency came at the start of a year that is widely expected to see the United States rejoin after quitting the forum in 2018, and with a review of the Council's activities expected to begin. Observers and diplomats saw Fiji's rivals as being backed by Russia, China and Saudi Arabia although a Chinese diplomat said he would be happy for any candidate to win. Officials from Russia and Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment. China's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Chen Xu, congratulated Fiji in a tweet on Friday and pledged support. The 47-member Council does not make legally binding decisions but it can authorise probes into alleged rights violations by mandating international fact-finding missions. Marc Limon of the Universal Rights Group think-tank, welcomed Khan's selection. "It is important for the Council to have a country like Fiji that has a positive record on human rights and a good story to tell," he said, alluding to the collapse of the former U.N. rights body after Muammar Gaddafi's Libya led it. Story continues A diplomat said he expected debates to be more intense this year, given that Russia and China return to the Council after periods off it. "I expect a lot of heated debates and the potential for acrimony," he said, saying China's actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang could be flashpoints. (Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Frances Kerry) PIERRE, S.D., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Jan. 24 through Jan. 30 will officially be South Dakota School Choice Week, thanks to a recent proclamation from Gov. Kristi Noem. This is just the second time in ten years that South Dakota School Choice Week has been officially proclaimed by the state's governor. Gov. Noem joins more than a dozen other governors and hundreds of local leaders around the country who have issued proclamations for National School Choice Week, which raises awareness about school options and opportunity in K-12 education. National School Choice Week has turned virtual this year due to the pandemic, and South Dakota families, schools, and organizations will be participating with more than 60 virtual or at-home celebrations. The Week's activities aim to celebrate the school choices available to families and spark timely conversations about how parents can find the best educational fit for their children. Nationwide, more than 33,000 independently planned activities will safely raise awareness about opportunity in education. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will join in the celebration. "School Choice Week, in South Dakota and across the country, is about spotlighting the kids, parents, and educators who are impacted every day by school choices," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "It is inspiring to see South Dakota families speaking up for the choices they appreciate and the choices they wish they had." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/south-Dakota . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Pedestrians walk through an empty downtown in Calgary on Dec. 9, 2020. Alberta is easing some of its public-health restrictions imposed in December to limit the spread of COVID-19. (The Canadian Press/Jeff Mcintosh) Alberta Eases Some COVID 19 Rules as a Test, Including for Hair Salons, Outdoor Groups EDMONTONThe Alberta government is easing public-health rules around funerals, outdoor gatherings, and hair salons while warning residents to keep following other restrictions in place to limit the spread of COVID-19. Starting Monday, personal and wellness services, including hair salons and tattoo parlours, can open by appointment only. Outdoor social gatherings, which were previously banned, will be allowed in groups of up to 10 people. And the limit on the number of people who can attend funerals is increasing to 20, although receptions are still prohibited. On Thursday, Alberta reported 967 new cases of COVID-19 and 21 additional deaths due to the illness. There were 806 people in hospital, with 136 of those in intensive care. Albertas hospitalizations and case numbers remain high and they pose a threat to our health system capacity, Health Minister Tyler Shandro told a news conference. Today, we cant entirely ease up but we can make small adjustments to provide Albertans with some limited activities. Back in November, the United Conservative government banned indoor gatherings and limited outdoor groups, along with funerals and weddings, to 10 people. In early December, as COVID-19 infections spiked to well over 1,000 a day, Premier Jason Kenney announced a strict lockdown similar to one in the spring during the first wave of the pandemic. In addition to banning outdoor gatherings, restaurants and bars were limited to delivery and takeout. Casinos, gyms, recreation centres, libraries, and theatres were closed. Retail stores and churches were allowed to open but at 15 percent capacity. He also imposed a provincewide mask mandate, making Alberta the last province in the country to have one. Those rules remain in place and need to be followed, said Shandro. Albertas chief medical health officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, said officials looked at the provinces COVID-19 data along with research from other parts of the world about what settings were seeing the most transmission. Funerals, outdoor gatherings, and personal service businesses show a lower level of risk, she said. Easing these rules now will act as a test case, she added. Case numbers will have to be lower before any other restrictions are loosened. This is our opportunity to give Albertans a little bit more freedom and the ability to do a few more activities in a safe way, Hinshaw said. This really is up to all of us to be able to meet those step-wise levels going down to be able to open additional things going forward. Facebook has banned a Dorset-based historical re-enactment society for a second time after mistaking it for a far-right militia group. Five elderly members of the Wimborne Militia of Dorset were left bemused after their Facebook accounts were suspended last month. The social media giant has been taking down and restricting accounts of right-wing paramilitary groups in the US for the last six months - and efforts were renewed with vigor following the storming of the US Capitol last week. Although the militia members' pages were reinstated after a mistake in December, they have again been taken off the platform following the events in Washington on January 6. On Monday, a committee page for five members who are administrators on the official Wimborne Militia Facebook page was disabled. Wimborne Militia recreates historic battles from the 17th century and helps out with other local events - including recently turning on a town's Christmas lights One of those affected is Chris Brown (pictured), who is also the local town crier Wimborne Militia currently has about 60 members and recreates historical events such as the Battle of Monmouth. Pictured, its Facebook page When they try to access the page it states the link has been disabled and that it was 'irreversible'. Wimborne Militia currently has about 60 members and recreates historical events such as the Battle of Monmouth. It is well known at local events, such as the annual switching on of the Christmas lights in Wimborne. With many of its activities cancelled during the pandemic, the group has relied on social media to keep in touch with members and stage virtual events. Chris Brown, 64, a member of the Wimborne Militia and the town crier, said: 'The committee page for the five officers who run the group was taken down on Monday. 'The page says it has been disabled and when you click on the link it says it is irreversible. 'We were led to believe after the first time it happened we would be marked as "ok" and it would not happen again. Although the militia members' pages were reinstated after a mistake last month, they have again been taken off the platform following the events in Washington last week (pictured) A supporter of Donald Trump carries a Confederate battle flag on the second floor of the US Capitol near the entrance to the Senate after breaching security defenses on January 6 Wimborne Militia entertain the crowd by firing their muskets. The group relies on social media to keep the public informed of its activities - especially during the coronavirus pandemic 'There must be an algorithm picking out the word "militia", although the bizarre thing is our normal society page is still active. 'We are a bunch of eccentrics who like to dress in fancy clothes, not people who want to topple the government. 'We'd like to think we are conscientious members of society and I also help run Neighbourhood Watch pages. Facebook vs US militias: How the tech giant has banned thousands of pages Facebook has removed thousands of accounts, pages and groups as part of what it called a 'policy expansion,' seeking to limit violent rhetoric tied to QAnon, political militias and protest groups like Antifa. Facebook has been under immense pressure to clamp down on hate speech and dangerous conspiracy theories, both of which are found in abundance on the site. Last year the company announced new policies to reduce the visibility of vaccine misinformation on its platform, including rejecting advertising and excluding groups and pages from search results that spread 'vaccine hoaxes.' Facebook will now deliberately push down in its rankings QAnon, militia and anarchist protest groups on users' News Feeds and in Facebook and Instagram's search engines. Advertisement 'We are the opposite of the people storming the US congress last week. The whole thing is very weird.' A spokesman for Facebook said: 'Some of the access on a few of these accounts were restricted in error and have now been restored. Were very sorry for any upset this has caused and weve taken extra steps to prevent this happening again.' The group relies on social media to keep the public informed of its activities - especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Last month it said in a post on Facebook: 'Hello, It seem that due to events overseas, Facebook is deleting anything to do with Militias. 'Unfortunately despite being a British Reenactment society we seem to have been caught up in the algorithm. 'So if this page disappears that is why. We shall have to start again!' The Monmouth Rebellion, also known as the Pitchfork Rebellion, the Revolt of the West or the West Country rebellion, was an attempt to overthrow James II. Facebook began banning militia groups in the US after critics claimed the platform was being used to encourage violence. In October the company began down-ranking content in restricted pages and groups, meaning members would only see it further down in their feed. 'We are also prohibiting anyone on our platform from running ads that praise, support or represent militarized social movements and QAnon,' Facebook said in an update. In August, Facebook had banned about 900 pages and groups and 1,500 ads tied to the conspiracy theorists which believe the president is secretly fighting against elite Satan-worshiping pedophiles in the government. The effort was part of what they called a 'policy expansion,' seeking to limit violent rhetoric tied to QAnon, political militias and protest groups like Antifa. Brian Fishman, who runs Facebook's global counterterrorism team, said they identified more than 300 groups under the policy and removed more than 6,500 groups and pages between August 19 and September 15. Facebook, which moved to take down or restrict controversial accounts last year, said it had restored the militia members' accounts after an 'error'. The Jan. 6 morning President Donald Trump urged his supporters to head to the Capitol, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of the presidents de facto lawyers, spoke at a rally in support of Trump and added his kindling to the bonfire: What we have in President Trump is a fighter. And I think thats why were all here, Paxton said to attendees that morning. We will not quit fighting. Were Texans, were Americans, and the fight will go on. Four hours later the Capitol was breached. The rioters scaled marble walls; they smashed windows to gain entry. They carried the Confederate battle flag into the United States Capitol. The secessionist standard originated during the Civil War, but it never entered the Capitol during that time or since until Jan. 6. The mob filched memorabilia of their occupation, including an attempt at taking the carved wooden podium bearing the seal of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick was killed by the mob. Paxtons moment was several days in the making. Two days before the mob broke through the Capitols barriers Paxton advertised on his Twitter account that he was confirmed to attend a March to Save America and that all patriots need to be present to stand with President Trump. The day before the riot, Paxton tweeted: Someday they will say that on Jan 6, 2021 some people did a thing ... those people were Patriots and what they did was save a nation. Over the last four years Americans became accustomed to such charged rhetoric. We always let it go. After the events of Jan. 6 we can no longer ignore inciting language. The First Amendment protects all kinds of ill-mannered speech, but the Bill of Rights doesnt preclude political repercussions for elected leaders who know better than to encourage rioting. The Texas Legislature convened on Tuesday, and the Texas House should immediately use its constitutional power of impeachment to suspend Paxton from office for his outrageous behavior which includes encouraging violence at the United States Capitol, filing frivolous litigation in the United States Supreme Court weeks before the riot, firing his offices whistleblowing leadership, exposing Texas taxpayers to costly judgments and private attorneys fees, and his alleged activities in using his office to support his major political donor Nate Paul. The Dallas Morning News reports that two sources told the newspaper that Paxton has admitted to having an affair with an aide later hired by Paul. But the worst of it was Paxtons behavior the morning of Jan. 6. Instead of tending to his duties in Texas, Paxton knowingly aided Trumps ambition to overturn a presidential election. And in a decidedly un-Texan, cowardly refusal to take responsibility for his extremely poor judgment, Paxton now, in a masterpiece of avoidance, claims the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol was, he assured us, actually antifa rioters. Thats insulting to us all. Thats shameful. Paxton is no longer to be trusted to perform the duties of the Office of the Texas Attorney General. I acknowledge that Trumps election and presidency voiced a serious complaint among the American electorate, a discontentment we as a people need to understand and resolve democratically and constitutionally. My problem with career politicians like Ken Paxton is that they are not trying to resolve the voters concerns; they are satisfied with capitalizing on their grievances for personal and political gain. Enough is enough. Jaworski is a national mediator, former mayor of Galveston and a declared candidate for Texas Attorney General. 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 WARWICK, R.I., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- InsureMyTrip is tracking the latest COVID-19 travel requirements and providing insight on how travel insurance may or may not apply. This week, travel insurance agents reported a high number of inquiries from would-be travelers regarding the latest negative COVID-19 test requirement, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for all air passengers entering the US. InsureMyTrip has issued the following explanation regarding testing requirements and how it relates to travel insurance: Q: Does travel insurance cover new COVID-19 testing requirements for air passengers? A: No. According to travel insurance experts at InsureMyTrip, travel insurance will not cover the cost of a general COVID-19 test that may be required for travel. However, some medical plans may cover testing in the event a policyholder becomes ill during a trip and a test is ordered by a physician. On January 12, 2021 the Centers for Disease Control issued an order requiring all air passengers arriving to the US from a foreign country to get tested no more than 3 days before their flight departs. Proof of a negative result or documentation of having recovered from COVID-19 will be required before boarding the flight. This order will go into effect on January 26, 2021. (Source: CDC) Pandemic Travel Insurance Coverage During the coronavirus pandemic, more traditional travel insurance companies are now expanding or adapting coverage for travelers. Here are some general examples: Reimbursement for covered medical treatment during a trip due to a COVID-19 illness Get sick with COVID-19 and must cancel a trip by physician's order Physician orders a quarantine before trip Lost a job during the coronavirus pandemic by no-fault of your own InsureMyTrip recommends travelers strongly consider a Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) upgrade. This upgrade offers the most trip cancellation flexibility and is the only option available to cover fear of travel. Full terms of coverage will be listed in state-specific policy. If eligibility requirements are met, reimbursement is up to 50-70 percent of the insured pre-paid non-refundable trip cost. The unbiased travel insurance comparison site also released a groundbreaking "COVID-19 recommendation tool" to guide travelers towards plans that may be best suited to cover COVID-19-related travel concerns. MORE: Coronavirus & Travel Insurance Information Hub Pandemic Travel Insurance Expert: Meghan Walch 401-773-9210 [email protected] Note: Traditional travel insurance does not offer cancellation coverage for fear of travel, whether related to COVID-19 or not. Cancel For Any Reason is required. About InsureMyTrip It's simple. InsureMyTrip finds you the right travel insurance plan, every time. InsureMyTrip is the authority on travel insurance. We are committed to empowering travelers to make the best possible insurance decisions by leveraging our technology, data intelligence, and expertise. InsureMyTrip is rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau. To speak with a travel insurance expert, contact [email protected]. SOURCE InsureMyTrip Related Links http://www.insuremytrip.com The city of Mobile and USA Health have begun drive-through COVID-19 vaccinations at the Mobile Civic Center, but arent yet able to say when the appointment-only operation will be able to expand from healthcare professionals and first responders to senior citizens in the general public. Natalie Fox, chief nursing officer for USA Health, said Thursday that USA Health Hospitals have been administering vaccine to healthcare workers and first responders at other locations since Dec. 15. We have put over 5,000 shots in peoples arms, so we are really proud of that, she said. Transferring those operations to a drive-through clinic at the Mobile Civic Center should allow an expansion in capacity, Fox said, but there are some bottlenecks. The site had handled about 150 appointments on Thursday, she said, and was ramping up to handle an expected 250 appointments per day next week. However, she said, many of those would be follow-up appointments for people receiving their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, which is the only one the site is handling right now. Fox said USA Health has about 1,500 appointments on the books for booster shots, which inevitably means fewer openings for people to get their first shots. Fox said that there are plans to expand the number of personnel on hand, perhaps even by drawing from area nursing schools. But the limited supply of vaccine is another factor making it hard to say when the site will begin accepting patients from the general public. At some point, she said, USA Health will open an online pre-registration portal. Right now the demand greatly exceeds supply, she said. Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson said the Civic Center operation is the latest product of a collaboration thats been going on since early in the pandemic, when USA Health and the city teamed to create testing sites. USA still does testing at the Civic Centers Expo Hall, where Fox said theyre testing about 200 people a day. The vaccination program allows people to drive onto the main arena floor, where the personnel administering the shots can work in a weatherproof, climate-controlled environment. There may be some criticism out there because things seem to be a little bit disoriented, said Stimpson. But I can just say that the healthcare workers are doing the very best they can and the city is collaborating every way we can to make sure that you get vaccinated as quickly as possible. Fox said the USA site will remain appointment-only, in contrast to sites operated by other entities that may be first-come, first served. One of those will operate on Saturday, when the Mobile County Health Department has said it will give 1,000 vaccinations to first responders, healthcare workers and anyone else 75 or older. James Barber, the citys executive director of public safety, said law enforcement personnel will be on hand to provide traffic control at the Mobile Cruise Terminal for the health department event. The announcement of unscheduled first-come, first-served testing we anticipate to cause incredible issues as far as volume of traffic coming in, Barber said. Theres a very limited amount of vaccine available, and at some point were going to have to cut it off. Barber said hes concerned that the health departments plan has attracted regional attention, when the amount of vaccine on hand probably wont scratch even local demand. It could be very congested, come Saturday, Barber said of the Health Department event. We would love to have people that are not from the immediate area to keep back, because we do expect, we know for a fact, theres not enough vaccine for the demand. For those that do come, be patient, if we can get you in, well get you in, Barber said. If not, therell be other opportunities. As we stand on the verge of Democrats taking control of the federal government, and as emboldened leftists across media, politics, punditry, and the general population seek to silence and punish conservatives -- even going so far as to draft legislation that would criminalize the political rallies of their opponents -- it seems a good time to take a step back and remind everyone what exactly conservatism is trying to conserve -- or should be conserving. Conservatism must conserve the Constitution. The United States of America is not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic. As the young United States was floundering under the weak Articles of Confederation, Founding Fathers such as Alexander Hamilton and Fisher Ames knew well that in order to preserve the Union and to protect liberty, a sound Constitution was required. Among many other magnificent things, in order to provide for a unique Union of a variety of states, the Constitution represents a brilliant compromise between large states and small states on balanced representation in Congress and the manner in which the President is chosen. Among many other magnificent things, the Bill of Rights protects religion, speech, assembly, and the right to bear arms. The Constitution is the worlds most enduring charter of government. In 1878, William Gladstone rightly described our Constitution as the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. Conservatism must conserve law and order. States are laboratories for democracy, we are told. Of course, under federalism, this would be the case with local governments as well, especially large cities. The most repeated and verified political experiment in U.S. history is this: via liberalism, or leftism -- whatever you want to call it -- Democrats have turned American cities into some of the most dangerous, dirty, and lawless places in the world. Under authoritarianism -- the ultimate goal for American leftists -- the regime is the law. For American colonists languishing under the British Monarchy, this would be translated as the King is the law. As Thomas Paine put it in Common Sense, In America, the law is king. And the supreme Law of the Land in America is the U.S. Constitution. If the law is ignored, if the Constitution is ignored, chaos reigns -- borders are dangerously porous, the police are reviled, buildings are burned, businesses are looted, elections are corrupt, and so on. Conservatism must conserve capitalism. The U.S. has long been the worlds leading economic power. Nothing contrived by man is more responsible for this than capitalism. Likewise, no other economic system the world over has done more to lift people out of poverty than capitalism. As history has clearly demonstrated, no economic system has proven better than the free-market economics touted by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations had an almost immediate impact on government financial policy worldwide and is considered by many to be the most important treatise on economics ever written. Smiths seminal work was enthusiastically embraced by Americas Founding Fathers, and thus capitalism in America was born. Walmart, Ford, Exxon, IBM, CVS, AT&T, Kroger, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and the like all owe their existence to American capitalism. Not one of these companies would exist as they do today without hopeful investors seeking a profitable return -- even Jeff Bezos went to such with his hat in his hand -- and without customers operating in a free market. Conservatism must conserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life. Marriage is the oldest institution in the history of humanity -- older than God's covenant with the nation of Israel, older than the Law, older than the church. Marriage is one of the earliest truths revealed by God. If anything is true, marriage as the union of one man and one woman is true. On this, there can never be compromise. Married mothers and fathers are the foundation of every sound society the world has ever known. No law written by human beings should ever subvert this ancient and foundational institution. President Ronald Reagan summed it up well when he noted, The family has always been the cornerstone of American society in the family we learn our first lessons of God and man, love and discipline, rights and responsibilities the strength of our families is vital to the strength of our nation. Conservatism must conserve life. From Americas beginning, it was clear that the right to life was considered unalienable by Americas Founders. In other words, this right is conferred upon us by our Creator, and any effort to take this away -- no matter the stage of life -- is a struggle against the One who made us all and His eternal Law. The plight of the unborn is the greatest civil rights battle of all time. Any person who refuses to protect the most innocent and helpless among us should never be placed in a position of power in any nation, but this should especially be the case in the United States of America. Above all, conservatism must conserve that we are one nation under God. Conservatism must conserve the idea that there is a God who created all things, who is the Author of all life, who is the Lawgiver, the ultimate Arbiter for what is moral, the final Judge, the Savior of all humanity, and the One to whom we owe our ultimate and final allegiance. Because all law is rooted in someones idea of what is moral, conservatives must reject the foolish notion that we should not legislate morality. If conservatism seeks to conserve anything, it is those things that have been settled for all time. If conservatism seeks to conserve anything, it is the idea that there is an Author of truth and that the laws of mankind and all good government must be rooted in His Law. If we want our nation to endure as our Founders envisioned it, these things must be conserved. Trevor Grant Thomas At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith and Reason. www.TrevorGrantThomas.com Panaji, Jan 15 : Triple Oscar winner Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro will be honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award at the 51st edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI). The festival will be held in Goa from January 16 to 24, in hybrid format this year due to the pandemic. "This year at #IFFI51, Mr. Vittorio Storaro, Italian cinematographer will be honoured with the prestigious lifetime Achievement Award. He has received three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography. He is one of three living persons who has won the award three times," read a tweet posted on the festival's handle on Friday. Storaro is known for his work in films like "Apocalypse Now" (1979), "Last Tango In Paris" (1972), "The Bird With The Crystal Plumage"(1970), and "The Conformist" (1970). The festival will also honour late actors Irrfan Khan, Sushant Singh Rajput, Rishi Kapoor and Chadwick Boseman. "The 51st Edition Of IFFI Is All Set To Pay Homage To Eminent Film Personalities. a 19 From India a 9 From Across The Globe. In memoriam: #IFFI51 Will Also Pay Homage To The Luminaries Of Cinema By Honouring Their Contribution To The Film Industry," read a tweet by the festival on Thursday. (@ChaudhryMAli88) CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2021) Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Friday mentioned planning to ask for financial assistance during her upcoming visit to Brussels. The presidential office previously announced that Sandu would have a working trip to Brussels from January 18-19. "I am going to Brussels because we require assistance. I want to launch negotiations on a large five-year assistance package for agriculture, for that, we need to come up with an irrigation system process. This year, the European Union will be planning budgets for five years and I do not want us to miss an opportunity to get financing through various foundations," Sandu said on air via the RTR Moldova channel. The president will also request the EU to assist in acquiring COVID-19 vaccines and discuss a regional development initiative so that local authorities will receive financial assistance directly and not through the government. Sandu is said to be scheduled to meet with the bloc's key figures, including European Council President Charles Michel, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and President of the European Parliament David Sassoli. Guests from the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Queensland forced into a second round of quarantine after cases of the UK coronavirus strain appeared there will be released from 6pm Saturday if fit and well. Queensland reported no local cases and one overseas acquired case of coronavirus on Saturday - prompting Victoria to open the border to Greater Brisbane residents. The overseas case is a child from South Africa who is in hospital with their parents who are also positive for Covid - bringing the total number of active cases in Queensland to 29. Queensland reported one overseas acquired case of coronavirus in the 24 hours to Saturday (pictured: Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk) A three day lockdown was triggered earlier in January after a hotel cleaner at the Grand Chancellor tested positive to the UK strain of coronavirus (pictured: health workers at a drive-through testing clinic in Murarrie. Queensland in January) There were 9.521 tests carried out in the 24 hours leading into Saturday in the Queensland. Victoria will loosen its hard border for those in Greater Brisbane from 6pm on Saturday, following low case numbers in the Sunshine State, provided they are tested within three days of arrival. The move was prompted after a cluster of the UK strain was discovered in one hotel used for quarantine in Brisbane appears to have been contained by authorities. The 129 detainees previously evacuated from the Grand Chancellor Hotel have all tested negative for coronavirus after the UK super strain leaked on the seventh floor earlier this month. Those who have already completed their first two weeks of quarantine will be free to leave from their new isolation digs if not displaying symptoms as the 14-day cycle since the January infection incident is complete, making it safe for them to leave. Workers at the hotel who were not close contacts of a cleaner confirmed to have caught the UK strain are also free to leave their precautionary quarantine since being in isolation since December 30. Health officials earlier rejected reports that a father and daughter from Lebanon who were staying at the hotel breached quarantine before they tested positive. The father was taken to hospital in an ambulance for Covid-19 treatment and his daughter went with him because of his lack of English. Both wore full PPE and were treated as if they were positive. Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said there was no need to tell the public at the time. 'No, I don't think so because this is what we do every single day,' she said. 'We move people out of hotel quarantine to hospitals and have them assessed and we have had other cases where people have then been found to be positive. 'That is what we do and we always do the contact tracing as well as an additional precaution.' Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on Friday she is still investigating using Outback mining camps instead of Brisbane hotels to quarantine returned travellers. The state will propose the option to National Cabinet next Friday following the Hotel Grand Chancellor cluster, infecting a cleaner and two other travellers. Annastacia Palaszczuk said the mining camps she wants to use instead of hotels were comfortable and had balconies or outside space. Pictured: Stock image of a camp Premier Palaszczuk said the mining camps would be similar to the Northern Territory's Howard Springs quarantine camp (pictured) The hotel was evacuated on Wednesday as officials scrambled to work out how the UK super-strain of Covid-19 was transmitted on the seventh floor. Police are investigating by checking CCTV and engineers are checking if virus particles travelled in the air conditioning. A total of 129 travellers, some of whom were just an hour from being released, were forced to restart their two-week quarantine in new hotels but are free to leave from 6pm Saturday. Some 226 employees who have worked at the hotel since December 30 must also be quarantined and tested. Premier Palaszczuk said the evacuation and re-quarantining process has been backed by Health Minster Greg Hunt and the AHPPC. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said said held grave concerns about the Hotel Grand Chancellor (pictured) cluster, which has grown to six cases of the highly-contagious UK virus strain She said the mining camps she wants to use instead of hotels were comfortable and had balconies or outside space, just like the Northern Territory's Howard Springs quarantine facility. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the idea to use camps could be more dangerous because they are far away from major airports and the virus could transmit in buses on the way there. NSW Minister Hazzard rejected the idea of using mining camps in his state. He said about 3,500 staff worked in the quarantine system and lived in Sydney, and transporting travellers to regional areas was dangerous because the virus could transmit in buses. Minister Hazzard also said he wants Covid-19 patients to be near major hospitals in case they deteriorate. Guests at the Hotel Grand Chancellor will be moved to other hotels in Brisbane after the coronavirus cluster grew to six cases. Pictured is two guests on their balcony at Hotel Grand Chancellor on Wednesday Also in the Queensland press briefing, Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the ambulance transfer of 129 patients to new hotels on Wednesday was 'perfectly safe'. 'My concern was that I did not know how it spread in the hotel. So I didn't want the virus to potentially spread to more people in the hotel. So that's why I wanted them all out of there,' she said. The cluster began when a returned traveller from the UK and his wife arrived at the Grand Chancellor Hotel on 30 December. He tested positive on 2 January before she also tested positive. A hotel cleaner, who only worked in the hotel on 2 January and did not enter their room, then tested positive on January 7. Her case sparked a three-day lockdown of Brisbane after she visited shops and took trains and buses. She also gave the virus to her partner. Then on January 13 genomic sequencing showed that a father and daughter who returned from Lebanon and were also quarantined on the hotel's seventh floor, had somehow caught the same strain of the virus. No guests have entered since January 7, a review of infection control measures occurred on January 8, and there have been increased cleaning measures including a deep clean of communal areas on January 12. The bill, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker has indicated he supports despite the lack of transparency, will eliminate across Illinois the system of cash bail that attempts to ensure defendants return to court. The bill allows for the release of anyone charged with an offense, including those charged with felonies, while they await the conclusion of their cases no detention at all. If judges do determine an accused defendant is a flight or public safety risk who must remain behind bars, the bill requires judges to justify their decisions with a written finding as to why less restrictive conditions could not be offered. Google Maps A service dog at the center of an Old Town Spring attack is now in the pound, authorities said. The pup allegedly attacked a 3-year-old girl inside the Loose Caboose restaurant over the past weekend, according to Channel 2's Aaron Barker. The girl and her family had just walked in when the dog lunged at her and bit her face, the family told the TV station. New Jersey was one of the first states leveled by the COVID-19 outbreak this spring, quickly logging thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths before the flowers were in full bloom. Despite that devastating introduction to the disease, New Jersey has been slower than many other states at getting doses of the coronavirus vaccine into peoples arms. As of Friday, the state ranked No. 36 out of the 50 states in vaccinations administered per 100,000 people, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yes, reaching the states six-month goal of vaccinating 70% of New Jerseys eligible population by the end of May about 4.7 million people was never going to be easy. But New Jersey encountered a variety of problems in the earliest days of the rollout, similar to many other states: Uncertainty about when and how much vaccine would come from the feds. Bureaucratic hurdles to get pharmacy chains vaccinating in nursing homes. The reluctance of some health care workers to get vaccinated over the holidays, or at all. And the logistical challenge of setting up vaccination clinics when the states health care workers are fighting a worsening surge of the virus. While other states responded nimbly by opening up eligibility to get more vaccines in arms, New Jersey remained inflexible, experts said. Perry N. Halkitis, the dean of Rutgers School of Public Health, said that state leaders should have rethought the phased approach as soon as it was clear that vaccinations were lower than expected in the first eligible group. The state, meanwhile, has defended its approach as adhering closely to CDC guidelines. Good leaders need to admit when things arent working, Halkitis said. Gov. Phil Murphy did change course Wednesday, following new guidance from the CDC to expand COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to people 65 and older and for those who are 16 to 64 with underlying health conditions. More than 4 million residents are now newly eligible. The governor defended the states rollout during his daily news briefing, saying it was important to prioritize at-risk workers and avoid nightmare scenarios like those in Florida, where elderly residents have waited in line all night for shots. Asked about the states ranking nationally, he said the federal data swings day-to-day and is a substantial undercount due to reporting lags from vaccinations sites. The states own vaccination tracker shows nearly 37,000 more doses administered than the CDC. Our goal is to get shots in arms, period, Murphy said. We want to do it the right way, the most equitable way. But get as many shots in as many arms in New Jersey, as soon as possible and as much as possible. Supply and demand Murphy and Commissioner of Health Judith Persichilli have said the biggest limitation to expanding vaccination has been the supply coming from the federal government. The state has been getting fewer doses than requested, including two weekly shipments in December that were short by 20% and 38%. According to data from the CDC, New Jersey has only administered 263,422 of the 658,800 doses its received, or 40%. Based on the states data that shows 310,595 doses administered the percentage is 47%. The Department of Health said Friday the federal government has been holding back the second does, and that the state does not have a vaccine stockpile. Persichilli has cited the reporting lag and also said Wednesday that 215,000 doses or about one-third of the states doses have been reserved for long-term-care and assisted-living facilities. They have been sent to CVS and Walgreens, which are responsible under the federal program for vaccinating long-term-care residents and staff. There are doses for long-term care. They will get their vaccinations, Persichilli said. Its the vaccinators getting individuals into 655 facilities. Its a pretty significant task. Public health experts also said a lack of federal leadership and coordination slowed the rollout nationwide. The government has largely left it up to states to determine who gets the vaccine and when. The results have ranged from Florida, where local health departments were overwhelmed by a plan to vaccinate anyone over 65, to West Virginia, where using local pharmacies allowed nursing homes to receive first doses before most states had even started. It has the top vaccination rate in the country. The rollout has been too slow, said Brian L. Strom, the chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. Unfortunately, I dont blame this on the state; I blame the feds. The feds have given inconsistent advice and no direction. This is a very, very complicated program. And the need to get shots into arms has never been greater. The coronavirus is surging all over the country, and New Jersey is seeing its highest daily cases ever. Daily death counts have been topping 100, including some people who die in nursing homes while waiting for the vaccine. While New York City has 24-hour clinics, some vaccine sites in New Jersey are still operating only during normal business hours. The state says its first megasites are open six days a week but can vaccinate hundreds a day versus thousands because they cant get enough vaccines from the federal government. Other vaccination hubs said they have plenty of doses and just need more space and staff. If theres anything that this pandemic has taught us, its that things dont necessarily go as planned, said Corey Basch, professor and chair of William Paterson Universitys Public Health Department. Its the reaction to the change that really makes all the difference. Basch said the states plan was based on the assumption that those in 1A would get the shot quickly. But leaders of several hospitals and nursing homes said many staffers preferred to wait a few weeks to see if their colleagues had unpleasant side effects and to avoid getting it around the holidays. Vaccination rates have improved, they said, with Inspira Health, Hackensack Meridian Health and University Hospital all reporting vaccination rates of 70% or better. There also have been logistical challenges in scaling up clinics. Joshua S. Coren, interim associate dean of clinical affairs and head of the community vaccination clinic at Rowan Universitys School of Osteopathic Medicine at Stratford, said the biggest barrier to expanding capacity at his facility is the space needed to vaccinate hundreds of people a day. In addition to the actual injection, patients then need to sit for 15-30 minutes for monitoring for any reactions all while maintaining social distance. Staffing is also an issue given many health care workers are treating COVID-19 patients. Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist and professor at Montclair State University, said vaccinating EMTs earlier could have increased the potential pool of willing vaccinators. State officials called for retired health workers to join their local medical reserve corps, but not until Jan. 7. The state has also relaxed rules to expand the kinds of pharmacy staff who can give the shots. More roadblocks In the states long-term-care facilities, the rollout of vaccines by CVS and Walgreens hasnt gone smoothly from the start, Murphy and Persichilli admitted Wednesday. New Jersey officials missed a deadline to join the federal program, delaying the start of vaccinations by a week. Plus, rules from the CDC required states to put aside 50% of needed doses a week before it could even launch the program, Persichilli said. As of Wednesday, roughly 33,000 or 15% of the 215,000 doses New Jersey sent to the pharmacies have been used mostly at nursing homes, which have been prioritized over assisted-living and other long-term-care facilities. Both chains have promised to finish vaccinations at skilled nursing facilities by Jan. 25, and Murphy said state officials have been pounding away to make sure that they get on track. The process started off slow, but has been picking up and appears to be working quite well at the present time, said Stuart Shapiro, interim president and CEO of the Health Care Association of New Jersey, a trade group that represents long-term-care facilities. Virtually all nursing homes have been scheduled. Hundreds of them have had their first dose. Its working at this point. Given all the setbacks, Basch said, the state will need a quick turnaround to meet its goal to vaccinate 70% of the population within six months. I dont think its impossible, but I do think it will take quite a great deal of effort, she said. Were not on track for it, but the entire U.S. is off track. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @RebeccaJEverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattStanmyre. Find NJ.com on Facebook. A desperate family are being forced to pay hundreds of pounds a day to look after a British father who is stuck in a Chinese hospital. Mark Poole, from Burnley in Lancashire, moved to China several years ago to pursue a career in teaching. But shortly before Christmas the 56-year-old was taken to hospital after experiencing a severe seizure which left him in a coma. While his treatment is covered by health insurance, Mr Poole's daughter Danielle, 32, says the family are having to pay 500 a day for someone to feed and wash him because nursing staff are not provided in the hospital. Danielle Poole with her father Mark, who has been hospitalised in China The 56-year-old teacher was taken to hospital after experiencing a severe seizure which left him in a coma The English teacher will require three separate doctors to help him fly back to the UK. Ms Poole said: 'We are frantically planning to get my Dad back to the UK and our only option so far is to have him flown on a commercial flight with a flight medic in first or business class to allow him to lie down - this is going to cost approximately 90,000. 'The closest airport that has flights to the UK is in Hong Kong. So he will require a flight to Hong Kong first. 'Then he will fly from Hong Kong to Germany, then from Germany to Manchester. 'Because of the COVID restrictions and regulations the trip will require three separate flight medics, as each medic cannot fly into one country and then out again. 'They'll also be required to self-isolate for two weeks, hence the extortionate costs.' Ms Poole said her grandparents have spent some 9,000 of their pension to cover basic care provisions The English teacher will require three separate doctors to help him fly back to the UK Ms Poole said her grandparents have spent some 9,000 of their pension to cover basic care provisions. The 32-year-old added: 'Everything I hear is literal Chinese whispers a doctor says one thing, it gets passed down the grapevine until it gets to someone at the hospital who speaks English, then to my gran, then to me. 'We've got no idea how he's really doing. The hospital wouldn't tell us if the care they were giving him was substandard, and he's not well enough to talk on the phone. 'All we know is that he went in after suffering a seizure in October, and then contracted some kind of infection in hospital. 'They say it's not coronavirus, but whatever it is, he spent ages in a coma and only came off the ventilator a few weeks ago. 'It breaks my heart to see him like this. I just want my dad home, I want to give him a hug and tell him I love him. 'The idea of him getting worse terrifies me it'll cost 90,000 just to get him home, and it'll be a lot more if his condition deteriorates.' The family have launched a GoFundMe page to get Mr Poole home, with nearly 5,000 raised so far. Ferrous scrap buyers started withdrawing from the spot market in key importing country Vietnam during the week to Friday January 15 due to growing sentiment of a downward price trend, market sources told Fastmarkets. Offers for Japanese H2 were at $460 per tonne cfr southern Vietnam and $465 per tonne northern Vietnam compared with bids at $450-455 per tonne cfr Vietnam. But buyers remained wary amid expectations of more price declines. Given the current price trend, it is much better to wait and see, a buyer source in Vietnam told Fastmarkets. Bids for bulk Japanese H1&H2 (50:50) were at $460-465 per tonne cfr Vietnam and offers were at $470 per tonne cfr Vietnam before the Kanto Tetsugen auction results. Market sources feel a definite downward price trend has started and are not looking actively to purchase cargoes. A major South Korean steel mill had lowered its bid for Japanese scrap, looking for H2 at 42,000 ($404) per tonne fob this week, causing sentiment to weaken in Asia. It also bid for HS and shredded scrap at 46,500 per tonne and Shindachi Bara at 47,500 per tonne. Major Japanese mini-mill Tokyo Steel had also lowered its bid for ferrous scrap at its Utsunomiya plant by 1,000 per tonne to 42,000 per tonne. These have caused collection prices in the Tokyo Bay area to fall further to 40,000-41,000 per tonne, a Japanese trader told Fastmarkets on January 14. Buyers said they received offers for bulk Japanese HS at $482-483 per tonne cfr Vietnam. Hong Kong-origin H1&H2 (50:50) was offered at $455-460 per tonne cfr Vietnam. Domestic scrap in thicknesses of 3mm and less was being sold at 9,000-9,200 Dong ($389.40-398.05) per kg. Fastmarkets weekly price assessment for steel scrap H2, Japan-origin import, cfr Vietnam was $450-460 per tonne on Friday, widening downward by $10 per tonne from $460 per tonne a week earlier. Offers for bulk cargoes of HMS 1&2 (80:20) from the United States fell continually throughout the week. While traders said offers were at $490 per tonne cfr Vietnam mid-week, with bids at $480-485 per tonne cfr Vietnam, buyers said they had received offers at $480 per tonne cfr Vietnam for HMS 1&2 (80:20), at $485 per tonne cfr Vietnam for shredded and $490 per tonne cfr Vietnam by Friday. Bids also fell to $473 per tonne cfr Vietnam by Friday. Estimates that market prices were at $485 per tonne cfr Vietnam earlier in the week were no longer valid, sources said. Fastmarkets weekly price assessment for deep-sea bulk cargoes of steel scrap, HMS 1&2 (80:20), cfr Vietnam was $473-480 per tonne on Friday, down by $5-12 per tonne week on week from $485 per tonne. Containerized cargoes were offered at $445 per tonne cfr Vietnam, with bids at $440 per tonne cfr Vietnam in the earlier part of the week. A transaction at $440 per tonne cfr Vietnam for US-origin material was heard concluded on Thursday. Market participants said negotiations for containerized cargoes were mainly at $440-445 per tonne cfr Vietnam. Explore the six macroeconomic and steel-specific dynamics set to rebalance the Asia steel and scrap market in 2021. Please read our full report Asia Steel and Scrap: Six Key Forces in 2021 today. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. Denton, TX (76205) Today Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. A few storms may be severe. Low around 65F. SSW winds shifting to ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch. A member of the Rhode Island State Police Mobile Crime Laboratory confers with detectives outside a Main Street home in the Manville section of Lincoln Thursday, where the suspicious deaths of a married couple are under investigation. Washington: At one point, it was hard for Fox viewers to avoid Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. Since the November 3 election, the Trump-associated lawyers were an almost-daily presence on Fox shows arguing that the President had been robbed of a second term by a fraudulent process that they claimed they would soon have the evidence to reveal. Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal frowns at a photographer at a hearing about election fraud in Michigan in December. Credit:The Grand Rapids Press/AP But Giuliani and Powell have not appeared on any Fox cable news show in more than a month, according to a review by The Washington Post. Giuliani's last appearance was December 12 and Powell's on December 10, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, a show that was once a regular vehicle for both her and Giuliani. Ellis has only appeared once on the networks since early December. In November and December, all three were very frequent guests on Fox News and Fox Business Network shows, sometimes doing double-duty, as Powell did in appearing on shows hosted by Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity on the same night - even though she had already been booted from the Trump campaign's efforts. Ellis appeared on three Fox News Media shows on November 20. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) votes in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Dec. 13, 2019. (Patrick Semansky/Pool/Getty Images) Swalwell Returning to Homeland Committee as AOC Named to Financial Services Committee Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) is returning to the House Homeland Security Committee despite concerns about his links to a purported Chinese spy, while rising Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will be a member of the House Financial Services Committee, it was announced Thursday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced a slew of new appointments, including Swalwell and Reps. Al Green (D-Texas) and Elaine Luria (D-Va.) to the Homeland Security Committee. Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC, will serve on the Financial Services Committee along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a fellow member of the so-called Squad. The grouping is of so-called Democratic socialists who are attempting to shift the Democratic Party further to the left. Other appointments include Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) to the Agriculture Committee, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) to the Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) to the Education and Labor Committee. In the election, the American people elected a Democratic House Majority that not only will ensure that our nation recovers from this historic pandemic and economic crisis, but will Build Back Better, Pelosi said in a statement. As House Speaker, I am pleased to announce the appointments of these outstanding Members to key Committees, where they will be relentless in leading Democrats work to combat disparities in our economy and country and to advance justice and progress For The People. Some appointments were approved earlier this month. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), a Black Lives Matter activist, will join fellow progressives Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez on the Oversight and Reform Committee while Democratic socialist Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who unseated longtime Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), will be a member of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Rep. Kai Kahele (D-Hawaii), who replaced Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) after she declined to run for reelection, will be on the Armed Services Committee. Pelosi last week announced full appointments to the House Rules Committee. Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) kept the position. Eight Democrats will be members of the committee, including Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), and Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.). At least one peacekeeper was killed and another two were injured on Friday, during an attack against the UN soldiers in Grimari, a city located at 200km from the capital of Central African Republic, the United Nations Mission in the country said in an statement. The increase in the violence in the last weeks has forced about 60,000 people to leave the country and flee seeking refuge in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and other neighbouring countries. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) the number means a two-fold rise in just one week. Cameroon has seen an increase in the number of families, especially women and children, coming from CAR, the UN Agency for refugees reported. People are allowed to cross from Central African Republic to Cameroon, but the borders are closed for traders and trucks, and supplies have not entered into CAR for several days, said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Cameroon spokesperson, Helen Ngoh Ada. On Wednesday security forces repelled attacks by rebels trying to seize Bangui, after intense fighting on the city's outskirts in a major escalation of violence that has rocked the country since last month. At least one Rwandan peacekeeper has been killed and another injured, said the United Nations. The rebels are protesting the re-election on Dec. 27 of President Faustin-Archange Touadera. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan Big Techs coordinated silencing of conservative voices, including President Trumps, signals a crossing of the Rubicon in the debate over government involvement to protect free speech. Even conservatives like me, who have long argued that small-business competition is the best way to moderate the tech oligarchs power, recognize that government may now have an interest in making some large companies, such as basic web-hosting platforms, utilities akin to AT&T. Since last weeks U.S. Capitol riots, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have indefinitely banned the president, eliminating his primary means of communication with the American public. They have also canceled social media accounts that speak of election irregularities and other conservative topics. Countless conservative commentators have inexplicably lost tens of thousands of followers. Ostensibly, this purge is intended to prevent further violence and rioting. In reality, it is a power grab. No matter their political ideology, Americans must reject this violation of free speech and recognize that this muzzle may one day be used on them. As the ACLU states, It should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions. Since social media first began censoring political viewpoints, starting prominently with Alex Jones in 2018, conservatives have generally responded by noting that these are private companies free to deny services to whomever they please. Even though these social giants are 21st-century versions of the town square, they are private businesses first and foremost. Dont like their de-platforming decisions? Start a competitor that doesnt censor. Often left unsaid in this argument is that these companies enjoy special regulatory treatment, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This protection shields them from liability as mere communications platforms, like a phone carrier, rather than as traditional publishers legally responsible for what they publish. Yet eliminating this regulatory advantage by repealing Section 230 would likely backfire. If tech companies are suddenly liable for their content, then censorship would only increase, resulting in even less speech. Regulating social media companies as traditional publishers would also entrench their oligopoly status because new content-moderation burdens would be so costly that it would prevent new competitors from entering the market. The argument for more small-business competition in this space is undercut, however, when Big Tech can simply team up to de-platform and even de-host their competitors, banishing them from the Internet altogether. Last weekend, Google, Apple, and Amazon worked in tandem to destroy Twitter competitor Parler. Google and Apple banned it from their app stores. Then Amazon, one of the few web-hosting clients that can accommodate a data-rich site like Parler, pulled the plug by terminating its hosting completely. The tech companies justified their unprecedented decision by claiming that Parler is a threat to public safety. Yet Parler doesnt allow incitement to violence and has roughly the same amount of objectionable content as Twitter and Facebook. Could some of its content conceivably encourage riots? Of course. But by that standard, Twitter and Facebook accounts that promote Black Lives Matter content, which inadvertently fueled riots last summer, should also be purged. Techs black-holing of Parler is likely more about destroying small-business competition and cementing its own power. Before being shut down, Parler was the number one downloaded app. With Trump likely to encourage his 88 million followers to migrate to the site after his Twitter ban, it was primed for exponential growth. Big Tech killed it in its cradle. Parler CEO John Matze said that the purge was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace. Many conservatives like me are hesitant to claim that government is the solution to this problem. But when small businesses cant even get hosting, what are they supposed to do next? Create their own Internet? If these companies cant even find a foothold on the web, then regulating web-hosting in ways akin to utilities would become a proper use of government. Just as utilities such as AT&T cant exclude services to users based on political beliefs, neither could utility web-hosting companies. Lets hope that it doesnt come to this, and that a bipartisan coalition of Americans can rise up to demand tech companies put broad free speech goals above narrow partisan interests. Yet we may already have crossed over the brink. A good perfume is a staple in any woman's life and whilst different people may prefer varying scents, it seems one fragrance has come out on top. Research from online beauty retailer Lookfantastic analysed Google searches across the globe to reveal the most popular women's and men's perfumes worldwide. Caroline Herrera's Good Girl placed first for women, closely followed by Black Orchid by Tom Ford and Daisy by Marc Jacobs, while the top spot for men's fragrances went to 1 Million by Paco Rabanne. Good Girl was the number one most-searched for womens fragrance in 42 countries - including Paraguay, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and Vietnam. Caroline Herrera's Good Girl (pictured) was the number one most searched for womens fragrance in 42 countries and the most popular around the world This was closely followed by Black Orchid by Tom Ford and Daisy by Marc Jacobs (right) - which was the UK's top fragrance for women The powerful perfume was released in 2016 but has since become a favourite amongst shoppers, with top notes of Almond, heart notes of Jasmine and Tuberose, and base notes of Cacao and Tonka Bean. Carolina Herrera also made an appearance on the list of men's top perfumes, with the male counterpart of her woman's fragrance, Bad Boy, which was released in 2019 and has energetic notes of Pepper and Bergamot, Cedarwood and Sage. Coming in second on the women's list was Tom Ford with Black Orchid, a timeless fragrance released in 2004 with notes of Black Truffle, Bergamot, Black Orchid, Black Plum, Noir Gourmand Accord, Patchouli. Black Orchid was the favourite for 21 countries, topping the fragrance lists in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The world's most popular frangrances Women's fragrances Good Girl by Carolina Herrera Black Orchid by Tom Ford Daisy by Marc Jacobs Black Opium by Yves Saint Laurent Si by Giorgio Armani Femme by BOSS I Love Love by Moschino Modern Princess by Lavin Decadence by Marc Jacobs The Only One by Dolce & Gabbana Girl by Tommy Hilfiger Brit for Her by Burberry Light Blue by Dolce & Gabbana Arpege by Lanvin Lost Cherry by Tom Ford Men's fragrances 1 Million by Paco Rabanne Tobacco Vanille by Tom Ford Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier Only The Brave by Diesel Beau De Jour by Tom Ford L'Homme by Lanvin Touch by Burberry Tacit by Aesop Blue Jeans by Versace Bad Boy by Carolina Herrera Brit for Him by Burberry Toy Boy by Moschino Desire Blue by Alfred Dunhill Legend Spirit by Montblanc Fuel for Life by Diesel Advertisement Yves Saint Laurent Black Opium Eau de Parfum was fourth on the list, with notes of Cedarwood Essence, White Musk and Patchouli Other popular scents for women included Si by Giorgio Armani (pictured left) and Femme by BOSS (pictured right) Third is Marc Jacob's signature fragrance Daisy, which was the UKs top womens fragrance, but not as popular in the rest of Europe. This signature Marc Jacobs scent was also the number one in North America, Australasia and a large percentage of Asia. The fragrance additionally ranks highly in places such as Australia, the United States and China. Other popular scents for women include: Black Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, Si by Giorgio Armani and Femme by BOSS. Topping the list for men's fragrances was 1 Million by Paco Rabanne, followed by Tobacco Vanille by Tom Ford and Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier. Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has confirmed that Pfizer is to slow down the production of its Pfizer/BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine. The Minister for Employment and Enterprise was not clear whether this is an issue directly related to Ireland or a broader development. A statement by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) said the American multinational will temporarily reduce its deliveries to Europe of its vaccine against Covid-19 while it upgrades its production capacity. We received this message today a little before 10am (0900 GMT). We had expected 43,875 vaccines doses from Pfizer in week 3 (next week). Now it appears that we will get 36,075 doses, the FHI said in a statement. The reduction in deliveries is due to Pfizer limiting output so that it can upgrade production capacity to 2 billion vaccine doses per year from 1.3 billion currently, the FHI said. Tanaiste Leo Varadkar confirmed the vaccine production slowdown this afternoon. Picture: Brian Lawless This temporary reduction will affect all European countries, said the FHI. It is as yet not precisely clear how long time it will take before Pfizer is up to maximum production capacity again. Pfizer said it had to make modifications to the process and facility that will require additional regulatory approvals. Although this will temporarily impact shipments in late January to early February, it will provide a significant increase in doses available for patients in late February and March, Pfizer said in a statement. Timeline announced The Pfizer production announcement comes as the first clear timeline for the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines to the entire population has been revealed, with the expectation that everyone will be inoculated by September. Minister of State for Public Procurement, Ossian Smyth, published a timeline which shows when different sections of society will be vaccinated. Earlier Tanaiste Leo Varadkar said the approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the end of January, would enable Ireland to ramp up the number of vaccinations, from about 50,000 this week to well over 100,000 a week in February. Under the new timeline, three categories of people will have received their vaccines by the end of March residents/staff in nursing homes, frontline healthcare workers, over-70s. By the end of June, the following groups will be vaccinated: Other healthcare workers. Those aged 55 to 69. Key workers and those in crowded environments. Those with chronic illnesses. Education workers The final three groups essential workers in less crowded environments, those aged 18-54 and those under 18 or pregnant will be vaccinated by September. Mr Smyth said that "procurement and IT are vital to the success of the vaccination programme" and Ireland was in a strong position on this front, with 10 million doses secured. "In addition to procuring the vaccines themselves, we need millions of surgical steel needles and syringes to administer up to 10m vaccine doses," he said. "The rest of the world is trying to procure the same equipment. The chief procurement officer and the chief information officer report to me and have confirmed that Ireland has secured enough supplies to administer 10m vaccine doses." Vaccine rollout needs to be "agile" The head of the Governments vaccination task force has acknowledged however that it may have to adjust its roll out plan because of a decision by manufacturer Pfizer to reduce deliveries in Europe as it scales up its plant in Belgium. Professor Brian MacCraith told RTE radios News at One that the task forces implementation model had been built around the amount of product available. However, he said he had a high degree of confidence about deliveries, but was awaiting more details from Pfizer so that he could be more precise. Ive always said that the implementation plan had to be agile. We will wait and see. It is difficult to predict. We will adjust accordingly, he said. The first clear timeline for the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines to the entire population has been revealed. When asked about the decision to extend the number of days between the first and second dose of the vaccine from 21 days to 28 days, Prof MacCraith said that decision had come from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee and was based on information from Pfizer. Some countries had extended that period up to 12 weeks he pointed out. Pilot mass vaccination centres will be set up this weekend in Dublin, Galway and Portlaoise to support the GP community, he said. Advance planning on the remaining 12 centres was ongoing, he said with discussions taking place with local authorities. Prof Mac Craith said that vaccinators will have to undertake a two to three hours online training course which was specific to the Covid-19 vaccine. At the peak of the vaccination programme between 2,500 and 3,000 vaccinators will be required, he said. At present over 4,000 have completed their training. Among the vaccinators will be GPs, pharmacists and cohorts of retired GPs, while a number of hospitals had offered weekend and evening clinics. Prof MacCraith also defended the pace of the roll out of the vaccination programme. He hoped that data now being supplied by the HSE on its dashboard would put to bed any concerns. The fact that Ireland was now second highest in Europe was significant and a real tribute to the frontline workers who had been working day and night to get it right. The 97% take up in some hospitals was also impressive, he said. Comparisons with Northern Ireland were not fair as their campaign has started three weeks earlier. The rate per week of vaccinations was actually higher in the Republic, he said. Prof MacCraith said there would be a significant step up in the public information campaign with more segmented data so the public would be informed as well. Vaccine supply Speaking about the European Union's (EU) approach to procuring vaccinations, which has come under criticism in recent days, Taoiseach Micheal Martin praised the policy and said smaller states would have struggled to secure adequate doses. "I am a strong supporter of what has happened in terms of the European Union approach, in terms of having a joint approach to the purchase vaccines. "I think smaller countries will have been in difficult situations trying to compete with larger states for a vaccine so this was the only fair way of doing it, and in terms of having a broad range of companies to sign up with," said Mr Martin. The Taoiseach added the vaccination policy will enter its most important phase later in the second quarter of the year. "The second point is that, our own capacity, and we're doing well now in European terms. In terms of the details so to speak, although that can change in terms of administration of vaccines, but we've had a low, relatively low level of vaccines in so far across Europe, relative to what will happen in the second quarter of the year. "The second part is going to be critical and so, the National task force that have been on the ground is working hard in terms of the logistics of the various phases of this operation, who I think are doing a fantastic job, really genuinely I say that from testing and tracing capacity being expanded to very significant levels in the last week, to the vaccine rollout, and to coping with incredible pressures on our hospital systems. "We have the capacity to achieve that (4 million people being vaccinated by the end September), and I'm looking to midsummer for significant numbers of our people having been vaccinated. "The AstraZeneca vaccine is the next crucial one and we're awaiting authorization, towards the end of this month on that and that in itself would be a significant game changer. in terms of ramping up the vaccination of our people," he said. -With reporting from Reuters Read More Contact tracers stopped asking people where they caught Covid-19 over period of 10 days Roughing It on a Busy Oregon Coast: Seaside's Multiple Layers, Part III Published 01/14/21 at 12:06 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Seaside, Oregon) - Its no secret that Seaside is likely one of the most crowded towns during peak seasons on this vast Oregon coast even on not-so-busy days. So finding an empty spot is a bit of an art. But they exist and they host loads of natural wonders. The strange secret about this frenetic beach town is that its hidden beaches are really more so, because so much attention is concentrated in the main area around the Turnaround and downtown. There are ways to get away from it all here. This is part 3 of the series. Multiple Layers to Seaside, Oregon Coast Go Deep, Beyond Obvious: Part I -- Seaside's Different Sides Part II: Where Oregon Coast History Meets Kooky At the Proms northern edges, at 12th Ave., things become markedly more deserted. This final access gives way to a host of chunky, wispy dunes, and eventually an estuary and the mouth of the Necanicum and its slightly weird mudflats. For some reason, people tend to migrate south of this rather popular entrance, but leave the northern section alone which is where the river mouth sits. Walk this stretch of perhaps a quarter mile or a little more, and youll discover one of the more unusual spots on Oregons coast, albeit deceptively so. At any regular glance, it looks completely average, perhaps even slightly boring and featureless. However, it cloisters a treasure trove of unbroken sand dollars likely the most youll ever find on any beach on these shores. Reasons for this are not entirely certain, though its known theres simply less people here so the goodies dont get picked. Also there are major streams of nutrients funneled in here that feed the little critters enough so theres bundles of them. Exactly what causes so many to wash up isnt known, however. Why This N. Oregon Coast Spot Has So Many Sand Dollars, Brown Waves, Clams All this depends on conditions, but it is easy to find way more of these sand dollars freshly washed up than the average beach. Like Cannon Beach and many other beach towns, often the extreme southern and northern ends tend to be the least populated, usually because theyre farther from beach accesses or the center of activity. With Seaside, the southern end known as the cove - is also a bit more unpopulated. It is, however, often a hotspot with surfers. Beachcombers dont find it to easy to stroll on as the large stones are bulky and a little ankle-twisting, and in turn the sandy stretches there are hidden by the tide half the time. More alone time can be found just north of the Cove, however. About Ave. U the Prom comes to its end. From here back towards downtown, that walkway is a simple concrete path that runs alongside the beach. Between Ave. E and Ave. U - the beach slowly changes from the softer sands to rocky and stone-covered, which is a little more like the entire beach of Seaside was back in the early part of the century, before the building of the jetties in Astoria. These several blocks or so tend to be even more deserted than the southern end, as nothing but summer homes and suburban neighborhoods occupy this part of the beachfront. Tourists tend not to gather here in any great numbers. Jet down these sandy paths to the beach and youll almost always find less people. Looming above it all is Tillamook Head, where a strenuous hiking trail takes you past amazing viewpoints. Its six miles between here and Cannon Beach: all of it rugged and sometimes formidable hiking bliss. Along the way, theres the eye-popping remnant of an old military installation, where radar once scanned the skies for invaders during World War II. There was even an entire base here, including barracks and other buildings, but almost all trace is gone. Theres also a primitive campground along the way, and a marker for the spot Lewis & Clark stood one day in 1806 as they sauntered down to Cannon Beach to look into a beached whale. If you know where to look, it turns out Seaside is not just the kitschy, commercialized place its often slapped with for a label. People often forget its on the beach, and then they dont know what those beaches hold. It is possible to get away from it all, even in this nutty, frenzied beach town. Hotels in Seaside - Where to eat - Seaside Maps and Virtual Tours MORE PHOTOS BELOW Southern, more deserted end of Seaside 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 Iran has ordered the removal of the private encrypted messengering application Signal from local application stores after it reportedly was deemed "criminal content" by the Islamic republics filtering committee. Iranian media reported on January 14 that local app stores Cafebazaar and Myketappstore confirmed the removal of the Signal app. Users have reported that when trying to install Signal, they have received a message that said the application has been removed by the order of the Criminal Content Designation Taskforce, which is in charge of Internet censorship. The committee has not publicly commented on the decision, which comes amid the reported migration of many users worldwide to Signal and Telegram following an update by WhatsApp of its privacy policy reserving the right to share user data with its parent company Facebook Inc. WhatsApp has said its update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way," adding that the policy changes were necessary to allow users to message businesses on WhatsApp. Many Iranians have said in recent days that they had migrated to Signal because of the change. U.S.-based digital security expert and entrepreneur Nima Fatemi suggested on Twitter that Signal's removal from local app stores was an attempt by authorities to slow down the migration, while some users said that authorities were worried that Signal would become as popular locally as the messaging app Telegram. Amir Rashid, the New-York-based director of Internet security and digital rights at Miaan Group, which focuses on digital security in the Middle East, told RFE/RL that the authorities could move to block Signal. "Usually, [authorities] first issue the order to remove [a tool] and then they block it," Rashidi said. "For now Signal remains unblocked. In the early years of the administration of [President Hassan] Rohani it was filtered. But the filtering was removed without any explanation," he said. In 2019, Iran blocked Telegram, used by half of the countrys 81 million people, claiming it endangered national security. Many Iranians still use it despite the state-imposed filtering. In December 2020, Iran executed Ruhollah Zam, the manager of the popular Telegram channel Amadnews, which had been accused of inciting violence during the countrys antiestablishment protests in late 2017 and early 2018. Iran routinely filters tens of thousands of websites, including news sites and social-media networks, but Iranians frequently access banned sites through anti-filtering tools. Senior state officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, frequently use Twitter even though it is banned in Iran. Jon Bernthal, the star of Marvel's hit Netflix series The Punisher, slammed 'misguided and lost' MAGA supporters who used the iconic hero's logo while rioting at the U.S. Capitol. Bernthal's comments come after the skull logo was spotted on multiple rioters including the masked zip-tie man wearing the logo on the front of his flak jacket. Fans of the comics and show ripped into the rioters, with one fan writing: 'No matter how many nut-jobs steal his logo, I'll still be a Punisher fan.' 'They don't understand what it truly symbolizes. If they did, they wouldn't wear it. And I'm not going to let them take it from me.' Jon Bernthal, the star of Marvel's hit Netflix series The Punisher, raged against 'misguided and lost' MAGA rioters who embraced the hero's symbol Bernthal's comments come as fans call on Marvel to 'aggressively enforce their trademark' That tweet caught the attention of Bernthal, who retweeted it. 'I'm with you. Beautiful work. These people are misguided, lost, and afraid. They have nothing to do with what Frank stands for or is about. Big love. J,' Bernthal wrote. Another fan called on Marvel to 'either aggressively enforce their trademark so it isn't printed everywhere or abandon the Punisher completely.' 'You can't allow your characters to be used by terrorists,' @comictropes wrote. Other photos taken from the Capitol riot includes a man wearing a military uniform with the Punisher logo visible on his right arm - where a real soldier's unit patch would go underneath an American flag. The Punisher logo was seen on the masked zip-tie man, identified as Eric Munchel, wearing it on the front of his flak jacket Munchel's Punisher logo featured the skull on top of an American flag above a thin blue line Another rioter was seen wearing the logo where a real soldier's unit patch would go underneath an American flag Comic book writer Garth Ennis, who has authored some Punisher stories and created The Boys, has long criticized the use of the logo by police and tore into their use during last week's siege. 'The people wearing the logo in this context are kidding themselves, just like the police officers who wore it over the summer,' Ennis said, according to SyFy. 'What they actually want is to wear an apparently scary symbol on a T-shirt, throw their weight around a bit, then go home to the wife and kids and resume everyday life.' The signature skull has long been embraced by cops and members of the military, who relate to the fictional vigilante anti-hero and his military backstory. Frank Castle's original creator, Gerry Conway, has actively denounced the use of the Punisher skull by police officers during last summer's Black Lives Matter protests. 'It's disturbing whenever I see authority figures embracing Punisher iconography because the Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system,' Conyway told SyFy. 'He's supposed to indict the collapse of social moral authority and the reality some people can't depend on institutions like the police or the military to act in a just and capable way.' The Punisher launched on Netflix in November 2017 as a part of the streaming network's The Defenders universe along with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and The Iron Fist. The signature skull often come under fire after being embraced by cops and members of the military Bernthal has been reported to be in talks with returning the show for a third season after it was cancelled in 2019 as Netflix purged its Marvel shows The series ran for two seasons before it was ultimately cancelled along with other Marvel content on Netflix. But Bernthal has been reported to be in talks with returning the show for a third season. In November, Bernthal appeared as a guest on the Geek House Show where he said he said 'there's always hope' for a third season. 'It's unbelievably humbling how much people responded to this version of Frank, and I can't tell you how much it means to me. He means so much to me. He's in my blood, my bone,' he said. 'Too many people are focused on trying to get an opportunity in this business, and to me, it's what you do with the opportunity you have. 'Whether we do it or not, it's about getting it right. Doing the version that fans deserve. We'll see. All of those decisions are made in rooms that I am not invited into.' The latest: The Punisher character and Marvel are falling under extra scrutiny after rioters were seen wearing the likeness of the character amid their January 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol Opinions were scattered about the imagery seen in the riot and how Marvel should react Some fans on social media have called on Marvel to retire the character or take other aggressive action. The character's alter ego is military veteran Frank Castle - who emerges as a violent anti-hero who tortures and murders his rivals - after seeing his family killed. The symbol of the character, which first debuted in comic books in 1974, is a white skull with long teeth against a black background. A Twitter user under the handle @CTropes posted a picture of a rioter brandishing the logo on a protective chest device. 'The seditionists that invaded the Capitol today wore a Punisher logo,' the user wrote. 'I say @marvel needs to either aggressively enforce their trademark so it isnt printed everywhere or abandon the Punisher completely. You cant allow your characters to be used by terrorists.' The sentiment drew more than 1,400 likes and plenty of reactions, with some saying fans of the character shouldn't be deprived because of the actions of others. 'I love the the punisher logo still triggers people,' one said. 'Its just a symbol for gun rights and taking down bad guys. Relax.' Another said it would be 'ridiculous' to eliminate the the character based on last week's events. 'You shouldn't just remove the punisher because someone did something wearing the characters logo,' the user added. Another pointed out, 'Why would Frank Castle ever stand by actions like these? Captain America is his personal hero and he fought in Vietnam. Imagine him coming home and seeing this s***. The people who invaded the Capitol are likely just as dangerous and corrupt as the people he kills in the comics.' A pair of new studies demonstrates that two metal alloys are able convert light into electric current efficiently thanks to their topology. This fundamental research could provide a new approach for developing devices such as photo detectors and solar cells in the future. Credit: University of Pennsylvania Two recent studies demonstrate that there is a topological origin of two related metal alloys' ability to convert light into electrical current. New fundamental research on rhodium monosilicide (RhSi), published in NPJ Quantum Materials, and on cobalt monosilicide (CoSi), published in Nature Communications, could provide a new approach for developing devices such as photo detectors and solar cells. Both studies were led by assistant professor Liang Wu and involved collaborators from the University of Fribourg, French National Centre for Scientific Research, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Donostia International Physics Center, University of Maryland, Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, and University of Grenoble. Wu and his lab are working on a number of projects involving topological materials, whose underlying theories were pioneered by Charlie Kane and Eugene Mele, the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics winners. The goal of Wu and other researchers in this field is to use these theories to study and develop topological materials for new applications and devices. The group's most recent findings are focused on ways to convert light into electric current through a better understanding of the relationship between photocurrent and topology. While there had been experiments conducted on CoSi and RhSi before, what helped the team gain new insights was the use of terahertz emission spectroscopy. This involves shining submillimeter pulses of light to study a material's response within the mid-infrared regime. "Because we pushed into this regime, we were able to show that the photogalvanic effect in CoSi was topological," says Wu. "By doing a careful analysis, we can measure the photo response that a theory can calculate, so we can compare the magnitude of the response between experiment and theory, and that was not done in the past." The researchers found that both CoSi and RhSi's photocurrents were purely topological in origin, although in RhSi this response was less pronounced. The conclusion in RhSi applies at much lower photon energy than previous theories predicted, which could be due to the presence of more defects in this compound. "These materials are predicted to have a particular topological structure in their band structure, but really the grail here is to try to associate that with some experimental observable," says Mele, a co-author on the Nature Communications paper. "In the first couple of years of this field, there were attempts to do this, and I think Liang's work is really the most careful work that lays out exactly what it is you need to see that phenomenon." In addition to its topological origin, what was also interesting to Wu was how high the photo-current of CoSi in the mid-infrared regime was higher than what had previously been observed in other types of materials with chiral structures. This is something that might enable new approaches for making devices, such as photo detectors, that can work in this regime. "This study will potentially enable new electronic-device concepts based on these emerging topological materials that consume less power, are more energy efficient, and ultimately lead to new electronic systems with improved size, weight, and power for the U.S. Army," says Joe Qiu, program manager at the Army Research Office, which funded this research. Through their latest findings, Wu and his team now have the experimental procedures and analytical methods in place to study other types of materials and phenomena that could be relevant for materials science and engineering applications. "And for materials with less disorder, it also may have some application in, for example, solar cells," says graduate student Zhuoliang Ni, co-first author of both studies, about how these results could help researchers find ways to enhance an existing material's photoconductivity. By using a combination of both experiment and theory, these results also have further implications for improving topological materials for more widespread use in the future. "This is an experimental demonstration people are trying to associate with a topological character that may well be in the observed properties if we can make the materials a little better, and I think that's really being done here for the first time," says Mele. "Right now, the materials aren't quite there, but it looks like they could be. And that is a pretty amazing idea." Explore further First-ever evidence of exotic particles in cobalt monosilicide More information: Zhuoliang Ni et al. Giant topological longitudinal circular photo-galvanic effect in the chiral multifold semimetal CoSi, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Zhuoliang Ni et al. Giant topological longitudinal circular photo-galvanic effect in the chiral multifold semimetal CoSi,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20408-5 Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release SubCategory Select Sub-Category Casteres From her childhood spent in the Southwest of France, Anne-Catherine Casteres kept a taste for painting. From an early age, she took refuge in art, and palettes and brushes became her favourite playmates. In adulthood, this passion continued, and she joined the Ecole du Louvre (Paris) for theoretical training and painted frantically in parallel. She taught herself in her studio where she advanced step by step in her creation. In 1999 she decided to devote herself entirely to her art. She became a professional artist and returned to live in Biarritz, in the south of France, where she opened her studio gallery. Anne-Catherine Casteres is fascinated by characters, attitudes and expressions. She enjoys studying human behaviour and different poses. Bodies and faces have become her favourite subjects. She deals with shapes and contours freely and voluntarily makes caricature deformations to give each individual its own character. She paints mainly with oils, liking this medium for its smoothness and sensuality. The artist uses touches of pastel to highlight the features. Her expressionistic style features an explosion of colours that she uses to shape light and shadow. In 2009, she moved to Reunion Island and enjoyed the different colours of the islands landscape. She finds in the colours a balance between excess and subtleness, tenderness and madness. Anne-Catherine Casteres is nourished by moments of everyday life and the arts (dance scenes or music). Back in the studio, she likes to create stories. With cunning, she invents a context and places her characters at will. The German Expressionist movement (twentieth century) and the painters associated with it (Klimt, Van Dongen) inspire her. Their use of colour is essential for her and a source of emotions in her work. On the occasion of Army Day, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General on Friday expressed gratitude to Indian soldiers, saying that their valour and sacrifices are an inspiration to many. "On the historic Army Day, we pay homage and express our gratitude to those brave soldiers, whose valour and Supreme sacrifice in line of duty inspires us to rededicate ourselves with renewed vigour," Rawat said in a message. He added, "Your dauntless courage, indomitable spirit and unparalleled devotion to duty in the true traditions and ethos of the will continue to inspire future generations. Jai Hind!" is observed every year on January 15 to celebrate the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the - Field Marshal Kodandera M Cariappa. The position was taken over on 15 January 1949 from General Sir Francis Butcher, the last British Commander-in-Chief of India. (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.) Les membres du gouvernement ont pris note que la Central Water Authority (Dry Season) Regulations 2020 sera revoque prochaiment, la promulgation du Education (Amendment) Regulations 2021, del a situauon du Covid-19 dans le monde et dans le pays ainsi que lextension de la quarantaine au 31 mars 2021 entre autres. 1. Cabinet has taken note that the Central Water Authority (Dry Season) Regulations 2020 would be revoked as there has been an increase in the overall storage level of the reservoirs following the recent rain, with La Nicoliere Reservoir at 100 percent. The situation would continue to be monitored and the Central Water Authority would pursue with its save water sensitisation campaigns, including through social media platforms. 2. Cabinet has agreed to the promulgation of the Education (Amendment) Regulations 2021. The Education Regulations are being amended: (a) to enable a citizen of Mauritius who has resided in the Republic of Mauritius for not less than four consecutive years (instead of seven years) immediately preceding 1 December of the academic year in which is held the State of Mauritius Scholarship examination for which he sits, and who has not been absent from Mauritius for more than three months (instead of 24 months) in the aggregate during such residence to compete for scholarship awards; (b) to provide for specific cut-off dates for the obtention of qualifications, submission of applications and documents; (c) to provide for the number of absences authorised for Higher School Certificate (HSC) candidates competing for the scholarships to be amended from 10 to 15 days (in either of the two school years) in line with the requirements of the current student attendance policy which provides for not more than 15 days of absences to qualify for full sponsorship of examination fees; and (d) to update the list of eligibility subjects under the Second Schedule to the Education Regulations which sets out the subjects to be offered to HSC candidates wishing to compete for the State of Mauritius Scholarships. 3. Cabinet has taken note that Regulations would be promulgated to enable Firearms Licensees stranded abroad or in quarantine facilities locally to renew their firearms licences if they have not been able to do so, as required by law, by 31 December 2020 due to COVID-19. The Regulations would be made: (a) under the Interpretation and General Clauses Act to extend the COVID-19 period to 01 January 2021 for the purpose of the Firearms Act only; and (b) under the Firearms Act to extend the validity of the firearm licence of: (i) a licensee who was in a quarantine facility in Mauritius during the period 01 to 31 December 2020 to 31 January 2021; and (ii) a licensee who was outside Mauritius on 31 December 2020 and who is confined in a quarantine facility following his arrival into Mauritius, to 30 days from the day of his release from the quarantine facility. 4. Cabinet has taken note that the Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development would promulgate the Double Taxation Agreement (Kingdom of Eswatini) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 under section 76 of the Income Tax Act. The Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) between Mauritius and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) was signed on 29 June 1994. At the request of Eswatini, the DTAA was amended by way of a Protocol which was signed on 28 August 2020. The main changes brought to the DTAA are as follows: (a) the term Competent Authority has been updated so that for Mauritius, it now refers to the Director-General, Mauritius Revenue Authority or his authorised representative instead of the Commissioner of Income Tax or his authorised representative as was previously the case; (b) it has been clarified that an insurance company would be considered as a Permanent Establishment in a Contracting State, and therefore taxable in that Contracting State, if it collects premium in that State or insures risks situated therein through a person other than an agent of an independent status; (c) the applicable withholding tax rate on the interest income in the country where such income is sourced has been raised from 5 percent to 7.5 percent; (d) the Article on Exchange of Information has been updated and aligned with the international standard as prescribed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; and (e) a new Article has been introduced in the DTAA for mutual assistance in the collection of tax due to the other Contracting State, as a measure to reinforce the fight against tax evasion. 5. Cabinet has taken note of the findings of the National Drug Observatory Report 2019 prepared by the National Drug Secretariat. The main objective of the Report is to, inter alia, provide reliable data to enable concerned authorities to respond proactively, efficiently and in a timely manner to drug-related problems. The Report also provides drug-related data on arrests effected by the Anti-Drug and Smuggling Unit (ADSU), drug seizures by the different law enforcement agencies, drug-related convictions and imprisonment, and health response in terms of treatment, rehabilitation and prevention programmes. The National Drug Observatory Report 2019 would be shared with all the stakeholders and uploaded on the website of the Prime Ministers Office. 6. Cabinet has agreed to the signing of an Implementation Framework between the Government of the Republic of Mauritius and the Government of the Republic of South Africa on cooperation in the fields of arts, culture and heritage. The proposed Framework would cover the following areas of co-operation: (a) exchange of information, experience and documentation related to artistic and cultural activities and administration; and (b) establishment of direct contact and co-operation between respective associations, institutions and individuals, in the fields of arts, culture and heritage, at both government and non-government levels. The Implementation Framework would, inter alia, address the following: (i) cooperation between institutions of both countries in the fields of museums, archives, libraries and heritage; (ii) participation in major cultural celebrations and annual commemorations such as the Abolition of Slavery in Mauritius and the Heritage Month in South Africa; (iii) exchange of music, drama, dance or folk ensembles and individual performing artists during each others major cultural festivals by mounting programmes in the field of performing arts; (iv) opportunities for developing the film industry in both countries as well as training and skills development; and (v) engage in the twinning of institutions, such as the Slave Lodge Museum in South Africa and the Beekrumsing Ramlallah Interpretation Centre of the Aapravasi Ghat World Heritage Property in Mauritius to preserve the indentured labourers heritage in both countries. 7. Cabinet has taken note that the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security and the Agricultural Marketing Board (AMB) would make necessary arrangements for the supply of vegetables, coconuts and lemons through the outlets of the AMB, in addition to the usual market supply during the forthcoming celebration of Thaipoosam Cavadee and Maha Shivaratree festivals. 8. Cabinet has taken note that: (a) the quarantine period in Mauritius would be extended from 15 February 2021 to 31 March 2021 and in this regard, the Minister of Health and Wellness would issue a Notice under the Quarantine Act 2020 and make appropriate Regulations under the Quarantine Act; and (b) the Prime Minister would accordingly amend the Order under section 3(1)(a) of the Quarantine Act 2020 to extend the prohibition of entry of aircrafts and ships in Mauritius until 31 March 2021, except for those aircrafts and ships as may be approved by the Prime Minister. 9. Cabinet has taken note of the alarming situation of the COVID-19 pandemic prevailing across the world and the spread of the new variants of the virus which have been detected in UK and South Africa. A new variant has also been detected in Brazil and Japan and the Ministry of Health and Wellness is closely monitoring the situation. With regard to Mauritius, no local case has been recorded since 26 November 2020. As at 15 January 2021, 547 cases of COVID-19 had been registered. Currently, there were 20 active imported cases of COVID-19 in Mauritius. The public should continue to observe strict sanitary precautions. Passengers coming from UK and South Africa or those who have transited through these countries during the last 15 days would not be allowed to enter Mauritius until 31 January 2021. 10. Cabinet has taken note of the measures and projects implemented by the Ministry of Public Service, Administrative and Institutional Reforms to improve service delivery and spearhead the transformation of the Public Service. Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn New Delhi, Jan 15 : As WhatsApp faces intense scrutiny over its upcoming data and privacy policy in India and elsewhere, another user data violation has been reported, this time on the WhatsApp on Desktop (Web) application, allegedly exposing personal mobile numbers via indexing on Google Search. Although WhatsApp is primarily a mobile app, currently being used by over 400 million users in India, some working professionals also use the instant chat app on their desktops and PCs via the Web version. Independent cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia on Friday shared some screenshots with IANS showing indexing of personal mobile numbers of WhatsApp users via Web version on Google Search. "The leak is happening via WhatsApp on Web. If someone is using WhatsApp on laptop or on an office PC, the mobile numbers are being indexed on Google Search. These are mobile numbers of individual users not business numbers," Rajaharia told IANS. Earlier this week, concerned at private group chat links being available on Google Search, WhatsApp said that it had asked Google not to index such chats and advised users not to share group chat links on publicly accessible websites. Google had indexed invite links to private WhatsApp group chats, meaning anyone can join various private chat groups with a simple search. The indexed WhatsApp group chat links have now been removed from Google. "Despite WhatsApp advising users and telling Google to remove the earlier exposed group chat links, the mobile numbers via WhatsApp Web application are now being indexed on Google Search," Rajaharia noted. A WhatsApp spokesperson said in an earlier statement that since March 2020, WhatsApp has included the "noindex" tag on all deep link pages which, according to Google, will exclude them from indexing. "We have given our feedback to Google to not index these chats. Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website," the company spokesperson said. The issue was first cropped up in February last year when app reverse-engineer Jane Wong found that Google has around 470,000 results for a simple search of "chat.whatsapp.com", part of the URL that makes up invites to WhatsApp groups. According to Rajaharia, the latest leak of personal mobile numbers via WhatsApp on Web has not been addressed so far by the either Facebook-owned platform or Google. The revelation comes at a time when WhatsApp is changing its privacy policy and users will have to "agree and accept" if they plan to keep using the app post-February 8. On Friday, a single judge bench of the Delhi High Court recused from hearing a petition against the WhatsApp's upcoming data and privacy policy, on the grounds that it violates the right to privacy of citizens of India. The plea will now be listed before another bench and would come up for hearing on January 18. Restaurants around the Bay Area have closed at unprecedented rates since last March. Despite a nerve-racking year, Third Culture Bakery is ready to put 2020 behind and grow its mochi muffin empire. Last year was such a crazy blur of things, and we were just responding and reacting to all the changing state and local ordinances, said Wenter Shyu, who co-owns Third Culture Bakery with husband and chef Sam Butarbutar. So, we really set our intention this year to not just react, but to set our own goals. Part of that comes in the form of not only a new location in Denver, but a yet-to-be-announced East Bay location that will differ from the classic Third Culture Bakery showrooms in Berkeley and Aurora, Colo. The forthcoming shops will continue to offer mochi muffins and doughnuts, but theyll both add matcha drinks and desserts. Shyu describes the upcoming sites as more of a conceptual store layout and design. The concept is going to be more matcha-centric and kind of just a remix of our pastries, Shyu added. Its a dream state 2020 was just such a crappy year that I want [customers] to escape reality when they come into our stores, forget about everything else that's going on outside, and to just be in this third culture world that we've created for ourselves, Shyu said. Nicola Parisi/Special to SFGATE Third Culture Bakery opened its Aurora, Colo. outpost in February 2020 with the intention of opening a Denver outpost that same summer. The Denver lease had been signed in January, but plans to open the store were pushed back after the March coronavirus shutdown. Now, the goal is to open the new Colorado site in February (about a full year after the Aurora, Colo. opening), and later welcome guests to the second East Bay outpost sometime this summer. In January, Shyu and Butarbutar moved to Denver, where they will oversee the Colorado projects, alongside CFO Rachel Taber, and plan to fly back to the Bay Area to help with Berkeley operations led by general manager Kevin Batchelor. Like so many businesses around the Bay Area and beyond, things got difficult for Third Culture Bakery last spring. Shyu says that for some time, it felt like the bakery had to survive on takeout orders under the pressure of operational bills. KGO reported in April that Third Culture Bakerys biggest monthly expense was payroll, which was about $55,000 a month for 22 staffers in Berkeley and 10 in Colorado. It was really terrifying we thought we had the possibility of losing the bakery, Shyu said. Nicola Parisi/Special to SFGATE Days after the March 16 shutdown, Third Culture Bakery closed its Berkeley and Aurora, Colo. showrooms for three days while the team devised its next move. What followed was the launch of nationwide shipping an idea that had been previously considered but never executed. Shyu said that in the past, customers who moved away from the Bay Area had asked the bakery to consider nationwide shipping. We've been getting asked to ship before the pandemic, but it was something that was put on the back burner just because we were so busy trying to open up Colorado, Shyu said. Three days after we closed, we went live with the website that was always in construction but never really finalized. The pandemic pushed that through, and it really helped us out. It was a move that kept the ovens on at Third Culture Bakery, Shyu says. Nationwide shipping also helped the bakery keep its staff employed -- they havent laid off a single person. Many of them had their hours reduced in half, however. Looking back at total shipping sales during March and April, Shyu said that nationwide shipping made up about 40% to 50% of the companys finances, while the rest came from takeout orders. There was a turning point in June, coincidentally the month that outdoor dining started in the Bay Area, when customers began to buy more mochi muffins and doughnuts at the physical store locations. According to Shyu, sales during June through August were high performing months that allowed the staff to regain full-time hours, plus hire two more employees. Something happened in June where all the locations [were] actually [doing] better than before we shut down, and people were just coming out and seeing us, Shyu said. Once June came around, that kind of took us all the way to the end of the year. Shyu shared that in-house sales are at 80% now and currently higher than nationwide shipping, which dropped to about 15% to 20%. Shyu said the company isnt too concerned about the dip. I feel like our muffins are really meant to be enjoyed in person, Shyu said. Our [shipped] muffins are engineered with a slightly different recipe so that it can withstand a longer transit time and they are meant to be reheated. We don't ship any donuts because they do not survive transit very well, Shyu added. Despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic during 2020, Shyu looks forward to 2021 with the two matcha concepts under way and a new sense of gratitude. 2020 was such a difficult year and I think we were lucky in so many ways, Shyu said. I think the pandemic just helped us be able to focus on what really mattered. In 2021, we're definitely going into the new year much better and stronger, and I think our team feels that. We're really lucky. Third Culture Bakery is located at 2701 Eighth St. in Berkeley and 9935 East Colfax Ave. in Aurora, Colo. [January 15, 2021] Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy Files Lawsuit Against Bank of America for Allegedly Failing to Protect the Accounts of Thousands of Unemployed Californians Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy filed a major lawsuit late Thursday, January 14, 2021, in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleging that Bank of America failed to protect the unemployment benefits of thousands of Californians. The Complaint alleges that under its exclusive contract with the California Employment Development Department (EDD), Bank of America was required to provide secure accounts for unemployment payments; but failed to provide basic security measures, such as industry-standard chip technology to safeguard EDD debit cards. As a result, thousands have lost their only lifeline due to fraudulent transactions and hacked accounts. The Complaint further alleges that, despite its "Zero Liability" policy, Bank of America has failed to respond in a timely way to thousands of defrauded customers. The bank's ineffectual response to rampant fraud takes various forms, including not answering the customer service phone lines it advises EDD debit cardholders to call to report fraud, opening claims and then immediately closing them, failing to extend provisional credit to EDD cardholders, and the worst being freezing EDD cardholder accounts without warning or explanation. The plaintiff, San Francisco resident Jennifer Yick, described her experience, which was typical of many: "My account was emptied by unauthorized transactions on my Bank of America EDD debit card. When I tried to report the fraud to the bank, I was repeatedly disconnected, told to call back later, transferred to various departments to no end." To date, like so many out-of-work Californians, she has never been reimbursed for any of the unauthorized transactions on herEDD debit card, despite Bank of America's "No Liability" policy. According to Brian Danitz, a partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, representing the many defrauded Californians: "Bank of America failed to safeguard the accounts of EDD debit cardholders and then failed to handle fraud claims when made. The volume of unauthorized transactions was completely foreseeable, given the lack of basic security measures. Hundreds of millions in California unemployment benefits have already been lost to fraud. Bank of America's failure to help these fraud victims in a timely way is unconscionable and must be addressed." Andrew Kirtley of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, stated: "It's no secret that this pandemic has been economically devastating for millions of Californians. For many, EDD unemployment benefits are a matter of survival. As alleged in the complaint, Bank of America utterly failed to prevent a massive theft of EDD benefits form Bank of America accounts, and then made it next to impossible for account holders to get reimbursed. EDD benefits recipients may not be Bank of America's most lucrative customers, but they are among its most important. This lawsuit is a wake-up call for Bank of America." Noorjahan Rahman of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, put it bluntly: "When a big corporation like Bank of America contracts with the State to administer unemployment benefits, it's not just providing a service, it's taking on a solemn duty to protect some of the most vulnerable in society. As alleged, Bank of America has utterly failed to uphold that duty." The Complaint alleges that by failing to safeguard these state benefits from fraud and failing to address claims in a timely manner, Bank of America violated the California Consumer Privacy Act, California's Unfair Competition Law, and Regulation E of the federal Electronic Funds Transfer Act; breached its contract with EDD cardholders; failed to warn EDD cardholders about the risks associated with its EDD debit cards; and negligently performed its contract with the California EDD, among other violations of law. The lawsuit is Yick v. Bank of America, Case No. 3:21-cv-00376, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. About Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP engages exclusively in litigation and trials and has earned a national reputation for its dedication to prosecuting or defending socially just actions. To learn more about the firm, visit www.cpmlegal.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005139/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Even with lower efficacy COVID vaccine can save lives, says expert THAILAND: Even if a COVID-19 vaccine proves to have a lower disease prevention rate in some trials, it could still save lives, a highly respected virologist said yesterday (Jan 14). ChineseCoronavirusCOVID-19healthdrugs By Bangkok Post Friday 15 January 2021, 08:21AM Dr Yong Poovorawan, chief of the Center of Excellence in Clinical Virology at Chulalongkorn University, during his interview on the National Broadcasting Services of Thailand TV channel yesterday (Jan 14). Photo: Screenshot from the channels Facebook page. Dr Yong Poovorawan, chief of the Center of Excellence in Clinical Virology at Chulalongkorn University, said vaccines for many diseases had low disease prevention efficacy rates, but could prevent illness and death. He was speaking during an interview broadcast on the National Broadcasting Services of Thailand (NBT) TV channel yesterday afternoon. The interview followed reports that Brazil found the COVID-19 prevention efficacy rate of the Sinovac Biotech of China vaccine to be just 50.4%. The Thai government has ordered 2 million doses of Sinovacs COVID-19 vaccine. Dr Yong said Brazil trialled the vaccine on 10,000 medical workers who were always at high risk of infection. Naturally, efficacy rates were lower among at-risk people and higher among the general population, he said. Sinovacs vaccine showed disease prevention efficacy rates of 65% during its trial in Indonesia, 90% in Turkey, 86% in the United Arab Emirates and over 70% earlier in Brazil, when it was trialled in the general populace, not medical workers only, he said. He insisted that he had no conflict of interest with any COVID-19 vaccine producer, and was not speaking in favour of the government. The World Health Organization accepted any COVID-19 vaccine with an efficacy rate of over 50%. Despite lower efficacy in disease prevention, medical authorities gave vaccines because they could prevent infected people falling ill and dying. About 30 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were used worldwide, Dr Yong said. He also said it took at least five years to determine whether a new vaccine would be safe for general vaccination. There were 10 COVID-19 vaccines that had been trialled for a few months and given to people for 3-4 months, and all manufacturers would have to continue studying the effects, Dr Yong said. No one could now tell how long the effect of a COVID-19 vaccine would last, he said. Vaccination for the time being was aimed at containing the pandemic crisis, he said. He suggested the government acquire samples of COVID-19 vaccines it had already ordered for early trials with local people, to study their effects before accepting the ordered vaccines. Dr Yong said he put out questionnaires through his social media account, and most of the 30,000 respondents said they were ready for COVID-19 vaccination. In case there was still any doubt: Mobile has not issued and will not issue any permits for downtown Mardi Gras parades leading up to Fat Tuesday, Feb. 16. On Friday, the office of Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson confirmed that it had notified parading organizations of the decision on Thursday, as first reported by the Mobile Mask. However, Stimpsons office described it as an update on the status quo, rather than a freshly issued mandate. During a call with leaders from several Mardi Gras organizations on Thursday, Mayor Sandy Stimpson was asked and confirmed that there will be no parades prior to Ash Wednesday, said a statement provided by a city spokesperson. At the time, there were only two or three organizations that had not canceled their own scheduled parades. Of the organizations that have not canceled, none applied to receive a parading permit prior to the December 11, 2020 deadline. No new action was taken yesterday regarding Mardi Gras parades. One of the main topics covered in our call with local carnival associations was ways we can celebrate Mardi Gras in Mobile while mitigating the spread COVID-19, Stimpson said in the city statement. At this point, we are still working with those organizations and other community groups to come up with some safer alternatives. Mardi Gras is a holiday and its significance to our citizens and our Citys identity cant be overstated. We will continue to look for ways to balance these important traditions and the health of our citizens and City employees. That leaves the calendar virtually clear of large-scale parades in coastal Alabama. Saturday, Jan. 16, normally would bring the first parade in the region, the Krewe de la Dauphine on Dauphin Island, but it was canceled weeks ago. The Dauphin Island Peoples Parade, which was to fall on Jan. 23, has been postponed. All municipal parades in Baldwin County have been called off, though a small parade on the Fort Morgan peninsula has received approval to proceed on Feb. 14. Its possible that other neighborhood parades will roll elsewhere in the region, though these often attract little notice outside the communities where theyre held and tend not to draw problematic crowds. Alternatives include an informal circuit of homes decorated like floats in Mobile. For updates on that event, visit www.mobileporchparade.com. Dollar General to Pay Employees to Receive Vaccine By Kentucky News Network GOODLETTSVILLE - Dollar General said it plans to pay for its store employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.In an official statement released on Wednesday, the company said it would offer a one-time payment of four hours of regular pay after an employee completes COVID vaccination. The company said the additional hours of payment are intended to compensate employees for travel time, child care or other necessities in order to receive the vaccine."Understanding the vaccination of healthcare personnel and long-term care facility residents is underway and the CDC currently recommends the next phase of vaccinations be offered to frontline essential workers, we want to be on the forefront of facilitating our employees ability to receive the COVID-19 vaccine if they so chooseand we encourage all of our team to receive the vaccine when its available to them," the statement read.Dollar General does not have an on-site pharmacy or systems in place for employees to receive a vaccine at their work site. Additionally, the company acknowledges that getting the vaccine is a personal choice, although it is encouraged, despite not being required."While the vaccine is one critical way to slow this pandemic, we continue to take the necessary precautions to help slow the spread of COVID-19, which include wearing a mask or facial covering, practicing good hygiene (including frequent handwashing and use of hand sanitizer) and proper social distancing," the statement read. "We are staying informed and following guidance from the CDC, as well as state and local health officials regarding continued COVID-19 safety." Grant Denyer addressed past speculation of a drug habit on Thursday's episode of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! And now a Woman's Day article that sparked the false rumours has resurfaced. The 43-year-old TV host was asked about the allegations on the show by his co-star Toni Pearen after a 2014 report by the magazine claimed he had checked into a Thai rehab facility. Speaking out: Grant Denyer (pictured) addressed past rumours of a drug habit on Thursday's episode of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! In the February 2014 story, Woman's Day reported that Grant and his wife of 10 years, Chezzi Denyer, had sought treatment for an 'ice' habit at The Cabin rehab facility in Thailand. The magazine also claimed that the Family Feud host had a $200,000 a year methamphetamine addiction. Grant vehemently denied the rumours and released a statement at the time claiming he would take legal action against the publication, which never eventuated. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in July 2014, Woman's Day stated: 'As far as we are aware, no legal proceedings have been entered into at this time. Woman's Day stand by our story.' Revisiting the past: The 43-year-old TV host was asked about the rumours by his co-star Toni Pearen (right) after a 2014 report by Woman's Day magazine claimed he had checked into a Thai rehab facility Grant's agent, Titus Day, told Daily Mail Australia at the time that while legal proceedings had been considered, it ultimately proved to be too costly for the star. 'Legal fees were quoted to be over $1million and at least two years wait until there would be a trial. That was a significant consideration at the time and probably still is,' Day said. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in 2014, Grant labelled the publication of the story 'a very hurtful and an uncomfortable thing'. Claims: In the February 2014 story, Woman's Day reported that Grant and his wife of 10 years, Chezzi Denyer (left), had sought treatment for an 'ice' habit at The Cabin rehab facility in Thailand 'It was a cruel article by a silly magazine, so I don't worry about it too much. If sticks and stones hurt me too badly I probably shouldn't be in television,' he added. At the time of the allegations, Day issued a statement resolutely denying them, saying Grant was being treated in Thailand for an 'ongoing unknown stomach illness'. 'The wellness centre they attended in Thailand specialises in the treatment of PTSD and exhaustion, and they spent four weeks there to finally address these ongoing health concerns,' he said. Damning: The magazine also claimed that the Family Feud host had a $200,000 a year methamphetamine addiction Grant also addressed the rumours on Thursday's episode of I'm A Celebrity, where he emotionally denied the report. 'For me, the worst of it happened at a time when I was at my worst and wasn't very strong,' he began. 'I basically had chronic fatigue. I'd run myself into the ground. Yeah, it was a horrible period. I was the breadwinner. And, you know, we had a kid.' 'For me, the worst of it happened at a time when I was at my worst and wasn't very strong,' he began, before growing emotional Grant said his exhaustion made him unable to fulfill his obligations at Channel Seven, who he was employed by at the time. 'Someone sold a story to a magazine that claimed we had a significant drug issue. That wasn't true. Just, you know, how do you counter so many stories and articles once the gossip machine is fired up?' he continued. 'They're totally made up, ludicrously ridiculous stories that are just fabricated to sell magazines. It was hard. It was really hard. You don't know what to do. You're so scared.' 'You just don't know where to run 'cause they're coming at you from every angle and you just want to go and never come back. So we got away from it all. We went overseas and just worked on ourselves,' he said He added: 'You just don't know where to run 'cause they're coming at you from every angle and you just want to go and never come back. So we got away from it all. We went overseas and just worked on ourselves.' An emotional Grant admitted that Chezzi, 40, 'had a fair bit of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] from it all', while he was concerned he'd never land another television job. 'I'm surprised that anybody touched me after that. I really am. But Family Feud came along and, as I said in my Gold Logie speech, it saved my career and it also saved me,' he admitted, wiping away tears from his eyes. Amber Rudd has said Boris Johnson has a sort of language which hes quite rightly nervous using in front of women as the ex-home secretary hit out at the boys club atmosphere in the Commons Ms Rudd also accused the Prime Minister of going backwards on promoting women. The former Cabinet minister said she quit Mr Johnsons top team as work and pensions secretary in September 2019 because she did not like his style of government over Brexit. The comments came as part of a project by the Institute for Government (IfG) aimed at getting ministers to reflect on their time in power. In the study, former leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom revealed that relations with ex-Speaker John Bercow reached such a low that she would not hold regular weekly meetings with him alone. Read More Ms Rudd expressed concern that the situation regarding the promotion of women was going into reverse. She said: There is a kind of boys club-type behaviour in parliament because it is still more like a public school or a university club than anywhere else youll ever go. I fear that its going backwards a bit at the moment because unless you have the leadership really making an effort to ensure that women are promoted as equals, all the time not just because, oh, lets promote the women, we forgot about the women its going to be a problem. I see that in Boris Johnson, Im afraid. Even though I dont dislike him at all. Hes come from that establishment group. And also, he has that sort of language, which hes quite rightly nervous of using in front of women. Ms Rudd, who resigned as home secretary in 2018 over the Windrush scandal, said she quit the Cabinet again after a return to the top table as work and pensions secretary because of the way Mr Johnson treated people in order to get his Brexit agenda through. She said: It was Boris Johnsons style of government, really. It was the way he treated other people and his determination to deliver Brexit, whatever the cost in terms of the economy and, I thought, the consequences to peoples lives. Ms Rudd, a prominent Remainer in the 2016 Brexit campaign, famously remarked of Mr Johnson in a referendum TV debate: Boris is the life and soul of the party, but he is not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening. Ms Leadsom and Mr Bercow regularly clashed when he was Commons Speaker. Recalling their weekly meetings, she said: It reached a point where I had to take someone with me, because of the level of vitriol in those meetings. And he, likewise, said he needed to have someone there, because apparently I was extraordinarily difficult. The two had a public spat after Mr Bercow was accused of calling Ms Leadsom a stupid woman. Former attorney general Jeremy Wright told the IfG that David Cameron would become more publicly irritated at situations as prime minister than Theresa May did after she succeeded him. Mr Wright said: David Cameron let his irritation show more often and more visibly than Theresa ever did, getting the advice that she was being given. The ex-Cabinet minister also insisted the government should have done more to defend judges hearing high-profile Brexit cases from media criticism. He said: Where I think we were going wrong was to allow the sort of abuse to play out in the newspapers, of those who were doing their job as judges and as lawyers. Former business secretary Greg Clark said some international firms were alarmed at how Britain was handling the post-Brexit vote turmoil. He said: The further that you go from these shores, the more people were alarmed at what they thought was uncertainty and unpredictability in a country that they had always thought of as a byword for predictability. COVID-19 cases in children, adolescents, and young adults up to age 24 have been increasing steadily since the summer, but especially among Americans over age 18, a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. The findings could help inform school districts as they decide when to reopen schools. In Philadelphia, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said Thursday that the districts youngest students could return to in-person learning as soon as February. Between March 1 and Dec. 12, there were more than 2.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Americans younger than 24. After splitting the data by age group, researchers found that COVID-19 cases increased with age. Most of the cases 57.4% occurred in young adults between ages 18 and 24, with a distinct peak during the week of Sept. 6, when most colleges started their fall semester. Researchers found evidence that case increases in the 18-to-24 set preceded increases in the under-18 groups, suggesting that young adults might contribute more to community transmission than those under 18. One key finding was that while 62% of school districts across the country offered either full or partial in-person learning, reports of outbreaks to the CDC have been limited, especially from schools for younger children. This suggests that the risk for transmission among children associated with reopening child-care centers and elementary schools may be lower than for reopening high schools, researchers pointed out. As of December, counties where school districts offered in-person learning have similar total numbers of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people as counties offering only virtual learning. A lot of the data around school reopening was really very consistent with what we in the scientific community knew to be true, said Craig Shapiro, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington. Which is that in-person schooling does not cause a rise in community transmission, and that it is safe. It can be done safely and does not necessarily lead to an increase in cases in children, especially young children. A CDC study released last week linked in-person instruction on large college campuses with 20,000 or more students to higher rates of COVID-19 in the community. The difference is because in-person instruction at elementary, middle, and high schools takes place in very controlled environments, Shapiro said. Mitigation strategies such as hand-washing, physical distancing, and mask-wearing are easier to enforce in a school vs. on a college campus, he said, and the study reinforced that those precautions do help prevent transmission. In a college setting, young adults tend to have a lot more ability to congregate even though many of these schools have gone to virtual learning or significantly reduced the size of their classes, Shapiro said. Its all of the activities that occur outside of the classroom, on and off campus, that really cant be controlled. One limitation of the newer study is that the occurrence of COVID-19 cases is likely underestimated among younger age groups because fewer children have been tested. Asymptomatic infections occur frequently in children and adolescents, and testing during much of the pandemic has prioritized those who were symptomatic. Testing is extremely important here to give us information that we need to get a good picture of how prevalent the disease really is in the pediatric age groups, Shapiro said. These epidemiological studies and the work that our public health colleagues do help identify where the spread is occurring and how its occurring, so that we can better prepare to prevent the next wave of disease and bring down the spread were currently seeing. TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Florida families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Florida families, schools, and organizations are hosting 3,467 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the biggest celebrations will be a drive-through scavenger hunt for Tampa families on Saturday, Jan. 23. Meanwhile, in Orlando, the Osceola County School District will host a mini-fair to show school spirit and bring information to prospective families during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. In Florida, the South Florida Science Center and Aquarium building will illuminate in red and yellow from 6-11:59 p.m. during School Choice Week. A growing number of Florida cities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week in their community, including the cities of Springfield, Tarpon Springs, South Daytona, Malabar, Bradenton, Jupiter, Pensacola, Indian Harbour Beach, Maitland, Haines City, Hillsboro Beach, Daytona Beach Shores, North Redington Beach, Niceville, and Chipley. "Florida families are passionate about school choice," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "As the state has led the nation in expanding education options, it's also developed a track record of academic excellence. Floridians have much to celebrate this National School Choice Week, and much insight to share during this challenging school year." In Florida, there are a variety of educational options available to attend including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling. Florida's state-run scholarship programs extend to students in families with modest incomes, with an Individualized Education Plan, or victims of violence in public schools, in addition to a few other student groups. Florida families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Florida school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/florida. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Some 1.9 million tourists visited Moscow during the 2021 holiday season, most of them - from St. Petersburg, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on TV. "The total number of tourists who visited Moscow in the ten days of holidays is 1,900 thousand. This is less than last year, of course, but youve got to agree, this is a rather large number," Sobyanin said. According to the Mayor, the number of car drivers coming to Moscow from St. Petersburg increased twofold compared to the last year. Besides, Moscow saw tourists from Kaluga, Vladimir, Tver, Tula, but no foreigners, TASS reported. Alpine looks primed to get its long-sought park. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors earlier this month unanimously approved the purchase of 98 acres next to Wrights Field behind Joan MacQueen Middle School to build a county-owned public park. The supervisors will decide on Feb. 13 how to pay for the property. The projected cost, according to the county, is $1.6 million, which includes the appraised value of $1.37 million for the land and $200,000 in one-time land protection costs. Land protection includes the initial stewardship featuring fencing, signage, access control measures and vegetation management. The land, along South Grade Road, is part of 140 acres owned by Texas-based Wrights Field Partnership LLC. Advertisement Unlike other county areas, such as Lakeside, Flinn Springs and Pine Valley, Alpine is without a major park. The county reports that Alpine has just 1.83 acres of park land per 1,000 residents, far less than its goal of 10 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. The Alpine Union School District has some parkland on several of its campuses, but the parks are small in size and offer limited community access. The 230-acre Wrights Field is run by the Alpine-based Back Country Land Trust. The BCLT is a nonprofit land conservancy that preserves natural, scenic areas and watersheds in San Diegos backcountry. Wrights Field is a popular open space area off Tavern Road protected from development in perpetuity. It is used by hikers, runners, on-leash dogs and equestrians, but lacks amenities such as public washrooms, a playground area and picnic tables. The purchase of the land for the park will preserve it from residential development and will extend passive parkland to nearly 330 acres in Alpine. Back Country Land Trust has been working to save that land for decades, said BCLT program director and outreach director Jon Green. Were glad to see that its going to be saved as open space and were looking forward to seeing the countys plan for the park. I like the idea of having more county money for maintenance and I like the idea of better law enforcement with park rangers. I would like to see us all work together between the Alpine community and the county to make it the best it can be. This is a long time coming and Alpine deserves a park. Mary Harris, part of a group that calls itself A Park for Alpine that surveyed more than 500 residents about what they wanted in a park, has been campaigning for a dog park for several years. Advertisement Harris, who said she has been living in Alpine since the 1970s, said that with the upcoming development of Alpine, it is important to have a park and preserve open space. The county estimates a yearly cost of $2,500 for needs such as vector control and water for the park. Operational costs to manage the property are estimated at $73,000 annually starting in fiscal year 2019-20. This endeavor has been challenging to say the least, as weve worked roughly 20 years trying to identify a suitable piece of property that could serve the recreational needs of the community, said Supervisor Dianne Jacob. However, issue after issue location, access, price, etc. popped up and put a stop to any such efforts. But alas, we have persevered and (now) starts the process ... for future park land and recreational facilities. Jacob said the community will have opportunities to weigh in on the design and amenities of the park. The county Department of Parks and Recreation will hold public meetings to receive community input, she said. Advertisement I am thoroughly excited to get this project out of the starting gate and I look forward to bringing much-needed parkland to the community of Alpine and making it a much more livable and healthier community, Jacob said. Jacob said she is still in full support of a plan raised by the Alpine Community Planning Group to work with the county and the Alpine Union School District to make improvements at Joan MacQueen to refurbish several fields on the campus, for a more active park. There is no question in my mind that we can do both and each project can complement one another, Jacob said. There does not need to be any competition between projects. Advertisement karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, has seen many associates jailed or go into hiding as security forces cracked down on opposition supporters they fear could mount a street uprising leading to regime change. Wine insisted he was running a non-violent campaign. The pop star, of the National Unity Platform party, has said he did not believe the election would be free and fair, hence his telling supporters to linger near polling stations to protect their votes. Bobi Wine votes in Kampala in a presidential election tainted by widespread violence. Credit:AP But the electoral commission, which the opposition sees as weak, said voters must return home after casting ballots. Our polling agents and our polling coordinators and polling assistants are on the run because they are being surrounded and being pursued by the police and the military as if they are criminals, Wine told reporters. Electoral commission chief Simon Byabakama said the election had been "generally peaceful in the whole country. He acknowledged the failure of some biometric kits meant to verify voters but said the affected people were able to vote. Internet access had been cut on Wednesday. No matter what they do, the world is watching, Wine tweeted in response. This election has already been rigged, another opposition candidate, Patrick Oboi Amuriat, told NTV as polls opened, adding that we will not accept the outcome of this election. Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, then 75, performs push-ups in a video released to the public via the president's social media accounts last year. Credit:UPPU/AP The governments decision this week to shut down access to social media in retaliation over Facebooks removal of Museveni-linked Ugandan accounts accused of inauthentic behaviour was meant to limit the eyes on the election and, therefore, hide something, said Crispin Kaheru, an independent election observer. The 76-year-old Museveni's support has traditionally been concentrated in rural areas where many credit him with restoring a sense of peace and security that was lost during the regimes of dictators including Idi Amin. Security forces have deployed heavily in the area that encompasses Kampala, where the opposition has strong support partly because of rampant unemployment even among college graduates. Security forces stand outside a polling station in Kampala on Thursday. Credit:AP Museveni is putting all the deployments in urban areas where the opposition has an advantage, said Gerald Bareebe, an assistant professor of political science at Canada's York University. If you ask many Ugandans now, they say the ballot paper is not worth my life. Some young people said they would vote despite the apparent risks. This government has ruled us badly. They have really squeezed us, said Allan Sserwadda, a car washer. They have ruled us for years and they say they have ideas. But they are not the only ones who have ideas. Asked if the heavy military deployment fazed him, he smiled and said: If we are to die, let us die. Now there is no difference between being alive and being dead. Bullets can find you anywhere. They can find you at home. They can find you on the veranda. Supporters of leading opposition challenger Bobi Wine cheers as election officials count the ballots in Kampala. Credit:AP At least 54 people were killed in November as security forces put down riots provoked by the arrest of Wine for allegedly violating campaign regulations aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Wine has captured the imagination of many in Uganda, and elsewhere in Africa, with his bold calls for the retirement of Museveni, whom he sees as a part of a corrupt old guard. Museveni has dismissed the 38-year-old Wine as an agent of foreign interests" who cannot be trusted with power. Wine has been arrested many times on various charges but has never been convicted. Museveni, who decades ago criticised African leaders over not leaving power, now seeks more time in office after lawmakers jettisoned the last constitutional obstacle age limits on a possible life presidency. I grew up when he was president. Even my children have been born when he is president, taxi driver Mark Wasswa said as voting began. We also want to see another person now. The rise of Wine as a national leader without ties to the regime has raised the stakes within the ruling National Resistance Movement party. [Ruling] party members and supporters ought to know that this is a watershed election to shape, determine and install a Museveni successor, government spokesman Ofwono Opondo recently wrote in the Sunday Vision newspaper. 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. With the UK now well into its third national lockdown, many are still working from home while parents are back to home schooling children. Technology is essential to help keep households working, learning and entertained. However, it is still an uncertain time for millions with households around the country struggling financially. Some internet firms are offering free data for educational sites to help those home schooling As a result, many broadband firms have offered support to their customers to help them including offering free access to learning resources sites and free data for vulnerable customers. This is Money spoke to the top broadband companies to find out what help they are offering their customers. Virgin Media Virgin Media has announced a number of steps to help keep its customers connected and entertained during the latest lockdown. Firstly, it is offering free access to the Oak National Academy learning resources website to support pupils with home-schooling meaning children can access the service without using any of their mobile data. Virgin Media's broadband packages already provide connectivity with no data caps. For its TV customers, it is also making a range of pay TV and on-demand programming available to customers at no additional cost including Animal Planet HD, Crime+Investigation HD, Discovery Science, Eurosport 1 and 2 HD and Sky History. It has also extended free access to the Hopster app which is aimed at pre-schoolers, providing a safe, ad-free environment for youngsters to learn, featuring family-favourites such as Pingu and Sesame Street, as well as educational and world culture programmes. Mobile customers will also get 20GB of additional mobile data per month for families facing financial difficulties so their children can get online and take part in remote learning. People are continuing to work from home during the third national lockdown in Britain In addition, Virgin Mobile is offering vulnerable customers who are on Pay As You Go contracts 500 minutes, 500 text messages and 1GB of extra data at no extra cost every month, while vulnerable customers on Pay Monthly contracts can receive unlimited minutes and 10GB of additional data every month. Both offers are available until the end of March. For those looking for a cheaper plan, its Essential broadband services offers an affordable connection for customers who receive Universal Credit. The plan costs 15 per month for 15Mbps with no fixed-term contract length and no price changes while Universal Credit payments are being received. It added it is still installing customers WiFi hubs whilst following coronavirus guidelines. BT BT and the BBC is making the popular BBC Bitesize free for all EE, BT Mobile, and Plusnet Mobile customers, while schools remain closed. The agreement means that from the end of the month customers accessing BBC Bitesize for kids' educational purposes, can watch, read and interact with as much immersive content as they need, even if they have run out of data. No registration will be required and the scheme will end as schools reopen across the UK. It is also giving unlimited data to eligible families on EE and BT Mobile to help children with online learning. BT has also been offering BT WiFi vouchers for free internet access since June which users can use to connect to BT WiFi hotspots. It will shortly be offering these directly to schools in England, Wales and Scotland, as well as its charity partners, and increasing the vouchers available. To help those who may be in difficulty, EE and BT Mobile have also free rated websites supporting people with money worries, victims of crime/domestic abuse, as well as the NHS and GOV websites. As well, over 300,000 NHS staff on EE and BT Mobile are receiving free unlimited mobile data. These are pay monthly customers which have registered using an NHS email address. For those struggling with funds, BT is also offering a low cost package called BT Basic from 10.07 a month for broadband and line rental. This is available to customers who receive means-tested benefits like Pension Credit and Universal Credit. It has permanently removed usage limits on all broadband packages. A BT spokesperson said: 'We know this is a stressful time for customers worried about their finances, and we're committed to supporting those who need extra help with their bills.' Help: BT is is making BBC Bitesize free for all EE, BT Mobile, and Plusnet Mobile customers Sky Sky Mobile is part of the Department for Education's scheme to offer mobile data to disadvantaged school children who don't have fixed broadband. Those that need this can apply via their school. It is also planning to zero rate the Oak National Academy website, the same as Virgin Media. Meanwhile, Sky Broadband last year removed any data caps from its broadband products. Sky has said customers who would like to discuss their bill or are struggling financially should get in touch with the firm to discuss their options. Currently, due to the ongoing situation with coronavirus, Sky has paused some engineer visits. Those that do go ahead will take place outside of the home. It is prioritising loss of service and Home Move visits so it can continue to keep people connected during lockdown. Free texts, calls and data for vulnerable and customers struggling financially is one initiative TalkTalk Whilst TalkTalk has no specific deals for lockdown customers, all of its broadband packages are unlimited there are no data caps. A spokesperson said: 'We pride ourselves on always being one of the best value providers in the market. 'Covid lockdowns should not prevent a child getting the education they deserve. We are talking to the Department for Education, Openreach and an increasing number of local authorities to see how we can work together.' It said it encourages anyone struggling with paying their bill to get in touch so you can discuss your options. With regards to installations, it said the majority can be done without requiring an engineer visit to the home, but this does depend on the service selected. It has been advised by BT Openreach it will be delaying the longer in-home engineer installation appointments for their industry partners for the safety of their engineers and customers. SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Illinois families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Illinois families, schools, and organizations are hosting 1,288 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the county of Jefferson and the cities of Waukegan Township, Arlington Heights, DePue, South Rock Island, Sheridan, Palatine, Chicago Ridge, Elmwood Park, Matteson, and North Utica. "2020's learning disruptions made it clear just how much families need flexible, excellent, and affordable education choices," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week, let's celebrate all of Illinois' great schools, and work to give all families' access to additional learning opportunities." In Illinois, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with flexible open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Illinois offers tax deductions for most students in private or home schools, and state-run scholarships for students under a certain income level. Illinois families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Illinois school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/illinois National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Continental Study Finds U.S. Respondents Prefer Driving Independence, Automated Driving Reservations Decreasing SEE ALSO: The Auto Channel Autonomous Vehicle News Archive AUBURN HILLS, Mich.---Continentals latest Mobility Study confirms that owning a car is the most important form of transportation for United States residents. The sixth edition of the technology companys study finds that the majority of U.S. respondents are traditional drivers: they prefer to be behind the wheel, in control of their own car. While there is demand among drivers to have the latest technology in their vehicles, the majority of survey respondents still have reservations about fully automated driving. While the results of the Mobility Study are not necessarily new findings, the attitude toward private car ownership has seemingly strengthened in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said Robert Lee, president, Continental North America. In fact, there has been a clear international trend toward private transportation. While its growing more prevalent across the world, the U.S. has a particular affinity for traditional driving. The study surveyed drivers and non-drivers in the United States, Germany, France, Japan and China. Of the U.S. respondents, 77 percent like to be in the drivers seat when riding in a vehicle the second highest total of all countries surveyed. Owning a car is also particularly important in the U.S., with 88 percent of respondents saying they prefer to have their own car to drive. Traditional driving doesnt mean that drivers dont want technology in their vehicles. We actually see that many drivers want to have new, emerging technology in the car, they just dont want to relinquish control of their vehicle to it, explained Lee. Many people simply arent ready for fully automated driving yet. However, a building block approach can help them get there, allowing drivers to get comfortable with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and experience its lifesaving potential in phases. The number of skeptics who feel automated driving will never work properly has greatly reduced from 75 percent in 2018 to 52 percent in 2020. And 46 percent of U.S. respondents say they prefer the latest technology in their vehicle, while 32 percent are eagerly awaiting automated driving features a slight increase from 2018. However, respondents belief that automated driving can help prevent vehicle crashes continues to hover right around 50 percent. We are encouraged to see a large drop in those who are concerned about automated driving reliability. Most drivers increasingly see the value of safety systems like ADAS, however in the US, they are still slow to accept the idea of a fully automated system. We believe there are a number of reasons for this, added Lee. One major factor is a lack of understanding of how ADAS or automated technology works, which can lead to confusion about the benefits and equally important limitations of such features. We are committed to helping address this. Continental has long been committed to educating the public about the benefits of advanced vehicle safety technology. It is this dedication that led to the creation of Continentals #SafelyThere initiative, designed to help people better understand ADAS features commonly found on todays vehicles, increasing trust along the way. One of the biggest advantages to assisted and automated driving is a reduction in traffic crashes. Today, choices made behind the wheel account for an astounding 94 percent of all traffic crashes. Automated vehicles have the potential to remove human error from the crash equation, which can help protect all road users. Additionally, according to a AAA Foundation study, large-scale deployment of existing ADAS could potentially prevent 29 percent of deaths and about 40 percent of all passenger-vehicle crashes. The 2020 Mobility Study is the sixth edition of the study completed to gain insights into international feelings on key mobility trends, including automated driving and electric mobility. The 2020 edition took place in two stages with different emphases. The first stage was completed in September 2020 with a focus on electric mobility. Continental partners with the market and social research institute infas to conduct the representative survey of drivers and non-drivers in the United States, Germany, France, Japan and China. Click here to view more about the 2020 study, and the history of findings dating back to 2011. Learn more about Continentals leading safety technologies driving the future of mobility during the All-Digital CES 2021 on January 11-14, 2021. Search Continental or any of the following key words, 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Car Audio, Cloud Computing / Data and Vehicle Tech to locate our virtual booth. You can also visit our website, www.continental.com/en-us for more information or to download a press kit. About Continental Continental develops pioneering technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. Founded in 1871, the technology company offers safe, efficient, intelligent, and affordable solutions for vehicles, machines, traffic and transportation. In 2019, Continental generated sales of 44.5 billion and currently employs more than 233,000 people in 59 countries and markets. In 2021, the company celebrates its 150th anniversary. Social Media For the latest Continental news and information, follow us on: Facebook: Continental USA Twitter: @ContiPressUSA LinkedIn: Continental #SafelyThere Campaign: www.continental.com/safelythere A six-month narcotics investigation on both sides of the Delaware River in the Trenton area led to 18 arrests, the seizure of dozens of pounds of drugs, 11 guns, six cars, wads of cash - and key intelligence that led investigators to solve two murders, police said. The investigation, targeting Trentons H Block gang, also discovered that a Bucks County, Pennsylvania man was supplying North Trenton with heroin, authorities said. Investigators watched several drug deals, and arrested two men at a West Windsor hotel last week with a box full of heroin, which theyd apparently stashed in the woods nearby, Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri said in a Thursday statement. The two homicide arrests, for the deaths of three people, had already been disclosed publicly, but Onofri said it was the investigation that developed the evidence. The prosecutors office called it Operation Eight-Ball, after the eight ball logo the gang uses, Onofri said. In the spring of 2020, as the number of shootings and homicides in Trenton began increasing at an alarming rate, we set out to expose trends and connections that might be responsible for triggering the uptick in violence, Onofri said. The city finished with 40 homicides in 2020, a record. What resulted, the prosecutor said, was a joint effort by over a dozen local, state and federal agencies that put several people under surveillance in Mercer County and Bucks County, and the eventual use of 40 search warrants. Operation Eight-Ball was an enormous investigative endeavor and as a result, many violent offenders have been taken off of the street, the prosecutor said. One of two significant arrests Onofris office highlighted was an undercover drug sale in November, allegedly made from Joseph Kaite, a 19-year-old from Trenton. After the deal at a gas station in North Olden Avenue, officers moved in to arrest him, but he fled and crashed his car into a police car, then ran away on foot. Officers caught up to him and arrested him and Vincent Bowman and Zaire Jones, 20-year-olds from Trenton who were in the car. Investigators used search warrants to locate 30 bricks of heroin and shotgun. Then, they searched an apartment on Beakes Street in North Trenton and found evidence about the October shooting death of Derek Colley, a 26-year-old who was cornered and slain in a Spring Street deli. Detectives charged Kaite and Tabika Hale, 26, with killing Colley. The investigation wrapped up last week with arrests or searches in Trenton, Ewing and Bristol and Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Onofri highlighted the arrests of three suspects. It started with officers following Deshawn Abner, 31, as he traveled by cab from Bond Street in Trenton to the Extended Stay Motel on Route 1 in West Windsor, the prosecutor said in a statement. Abner allegedly met up with Aziz Stroman, 31, of Trenton and officers watched as they searched a wooded area near the motel for 30 minutes. Officers then saw Abner retrieve a box from the motels bushes and get into the Mercedes Benz Stroman was driving, the statement said. Officers pulled it over and found the box on the front passenger floor, with 210 bricks of heroin, Onofri said. After Abner and Stroman were arrested, detectives contacted officers in Pennsylvania who had Ricardo Moise, 31, under observation. The investigation had identified hm as the alleged supplier of heroin into North Trenton. Th Bristol resident was moving items out of his Beaver Street residence in Bristol Township, and Mercer County detectives, with an assist from Pennsylvania police, arrested him on existing warrants accusing him of distributing 75 bricks of heroin to an undercover officer in the spring of 2020. Operation Eight-Ball also led to the arrests of three young men, alleged H Block gangsters, in the August 2020 deaths of William Irizarry and Julius Vargas, who were slain in front of a South Trenton corner store. The victims had apparently disrespected the gang on social media. Also charged with drug offenses were: Prince Attoh, 20, Trenton; Daishawn Dickerson, 30, Trenton; Aniyah Boone, 20, Bensalem, Pa.; Casimer Phillips, 22, Newtonville (Atlantic County); Aleque Williams-Dixon, 21, Blackwood; and Kevonte Bivens, 23, Montgomery, Alabama. Kashawn Batts, 33, Trenton and Jaquane Leonard, 32, Trenton are charged with firearms violations. In all, the investigation netted 1,000 grams of heroin, 1,000 grams of methamphetamine, 15 pounds of marijuana with a combined street value of $228,000. Our law enforcement challenges this year required a coordinated plan, and Im thankful for the city, county, state, and federal officers who stepped up to make Trenton a safer place to live, Trenton Police Director Sheilah A. Coley said of the operation. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Farmers' Protest: 9th round of govt-farmer talks concludes, next meet on Jan 19 India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Jan 15: The ninth round of talks between farmer unions and three union ministers on Friday ended with stalemate over new agricultural laws. The two sides will meet again on January 19. Farmers union and three central ministers on Friday committed to continue holding direct talks to resolve the over-one-month-long deadlock over three agri laws, with Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar urging farmer leaders to be flexible in their approach as has been done by the government. Rahul Gandhi leads Congress protest in support of agitating farmers Speaking to the media, Congress leader Bhupinder Hooda said that they would force the BJP-led central government to repeal the farm laws. The Congress is observing the day as Kisan Adhikar Diwas in support of the rights of farmers who have been protesting against the Centre's three farm laws. The party is also protesting against hike in fuel prices. Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. How the pro-Khalistan Sikhs For Justice is influencing the farmers protest On Tuesday, the Supreme Court had stayed the implementation of three farm laws till further orders. It had also announced the formation of a committee to hear the grievances of the farmers and the opinion of the government. Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann, Shetkari Sanghatana Maharashtra president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati were appointed on the panel. However, Mann, on Thursday recused himself from the four-member committee. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News It can be seen that the Supreme Court-appointed panel on farm laws is likely to hold its first meeting on January 19. Farmers unions-SC appointed panel to meet on January 19 The protesting farmer leaders, meanwhile, said they will attend the ninth round of talks with the government amid indication that it may be last such meeting with the Centre, but added that they don't have much hope as they will not settle for anything less than the repeal of the contentious farm laws. Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) Joginder Singh Ugrahan said, "We are going to hold talks with the government on Friday. We don't have much hope from the Friday meeting as the government will cite the SC-appointed panel. The government doesn't have good intention to resolve our issues." 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 Susanne Salvestrin, a businesswoman and community volunteer with a passion for St. Helena history, died Dec. 16 at the age of 79. Salvestrin died after fighting pancreatic cancer for two and a half years, her family announced Friday. Salvestrin helped run Salvestrin Winery and the Inn at Salvestrin (formerly Sunny Acres Bed & Breakfast), served as president of the St. Helena Historical Society and the St. Helena Cemetery Association, operated the Creative Needle shop downtown in the 1980s, was highly regarded as a baker and pastry chef, and was active with the St. Helena Junior Women, Federated Women of Upper Napa Valley, Napa Valley Quilt Guild and St. Helena Catholic Church. Salvestrin received the St. Helena Chamber of Commerces Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. She had an effective but gentle way of persuading people to support her cause, said Mariam Hansen, research director for the St. Helena Historical Society, who nominated Salvestrin for the Lifetime Achievement Award. She was always so enthusiastic about everything that she did. She made you feel like you were a really special person, and your gifts were needed in this cause. Born Susanne Austin in Honolulu in February 1941, Salvestrin and her family moved to St. Helena during World War II while her father was stationed at Mare Island. Her family moved frequently, but after high school she returned to St. Helena, where she worked for Olneys Gifts & Hardware, where she met mail carrier Ed Salvestrin. They married in 1961 and had three children: Mark, Richard and Lynn. She was a family matriarch a wonderful family that worked together tirelessly to make their business a success, Hansen said. In 1990 the Salvestrins restored the Victorian house on their property that had been built in 1859 by Dr. George Belden Crane, an early St. Helena pioneer and one of the founders of the local wine industry. The meticulous work brought Salvestrin into contact with Cranes descendants and inspired her fascination with local history. Salvestrin started inviting local pioneer families to her house to talk about history. When then-Library Director Larry Hlavsa placed an ad in the Star about forming a St. Helena Historical Society, Salvestrin jumped in with both feet, becoming a founding boardmember and encouraging other people to get involved, Hansen said. For the rest of her life Salvestrin was dedicated to preserving St. Helenas history and educating the public through events like Museum for a Day and the Spirits of St. Helena cemetery tour, Hansen said. She also chaired the historical society's History Becomes Art fundraiser. Salvestrin was skilled at arts and crafts, once giving Hansen a baby quilt for Hansens first grandchild. She was also a renowned cook and baker, teaching a cake decorating class, competing alongside other members of the historical society in Hall Wines Cabernet Cookoff in 2011, compiling a cookbook published by the Federated Women, and winning a Peoples Choice award in a salsa contest at the St. Helena Public Library. She had the most wonderful kitchen with every gadget you could think of, Hansen said. Bonnie Thoreen, another longtime member of the historical society, said Salvestrin faced her illness and death as she did her life with determination, thoughtfulness, fearlessness and humor." She made my life richer, and I treasure the time I was able to work with her as a mentor, leader and friend, Thoreen said, calling Salvestrins death a loss not only to the St. Helena Historical Society but to the entire community. Energetic, impossible to intimidate, and never afraid to speak her mind, Salvestrin had big visions and didnt settle for anything less, Thoreen said. Salvestrin lived long enough to see one of her most ambitious visions realized, with last years establishment of the St. Helena Heritage Center at the former St. Helena Catholic School. Salvestrin lobbied hard to secure a permanent home for the St. Helena Historical Societys vast but scattered collection of memorabilia. Before the historical society moved into the Catholic school, Salvestrin pursued several other sites, including the former Thrifty Manor behind the St. Helena Catholic Church, the Carnegie Building, and the citys Adams Street property. Skip Lane, who served with Salvestrin on the historical society board for 15 years, said he didnt always see eye to eye with her, but he always respected her indefatigability. She just wouldnt quit, he said. She was a firebrand. Salvestrin stayed involved in the establishment of the Heritage Center even as she battled cancer, Lane said. Everyone knew she was sick, but it didnt seem to affect her much, Lane said. According to her obituary, Salvestrin will be laid to rest at the St. Helena Cemetery during a private gathering in February. A celebration of life will be held at a later date when outdoor gatherings are permitted. WATCH NOW: NATIVE SONS OF THE GOLDEN WEST DEDICATE HISTORIC RAILROAD LANDMARK IN CALISTOGA HEART OF THE VALLEY: MEET OUTSTANDING MEMBERS OF THE NAPA COUNTY COMMUNITY You can reach Jesse Duarte at 967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com. 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. Inspectors general from a range of federal agencies are opening a coordinated investigation into the catastrophic failures that led to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, amid reports that officials ignored, downplayed and responded sluggishly to a deadly assault on the nations core democratic institutions. Government watchdogs, who are shielded from political interference under federal law, said on Friday that they planned to review the protocols, and policies that were in place in the lead-up to last weeks breach. Their goal: To determine why the federal government was caught flat-footed when pro-Trump rioters attacked Congress, and come up with protocols to prevent similar failures in dealing with a dramatic escalation in political violence in Washington and in state capitols. The review will be jointly conducted by the inspectors general from the Justice Department, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior, according to a statement from the office of Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general. BALTIMORE, Md., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the sixh year in a row, the last week of January is being officially recognized as Maryland School Choice Week by the state's governor. Gov. Hogan joined hundreds of state, county, city, and town leaders in officially recognizing School Choice Week (Jan. 24-Jan. 30) with a proclamation. Nationally, more than 33,000 safe celebrations have been planned for the Week, which seeks to raise awareness about opportunity in education, encouraging families to celebrate great schools and take active roles in their children's education. With School Choice Week taking place virtually this year, Maryland parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 487 virtual activities for the Week. All celebrations aim to spark conversations about how different educational opportunities meet families' needs and help kids succeed. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will be participating in School Choice Week nationwide. "We are grateful Gov. Hogan officially recognized the Week and the need for education options a need many Maryland families felt more keenly than ever this school year," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This is a time to celebrate the impact of K-12 education and work to expand learning options for children across America." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/maryland . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs To Anh Dung Looking back to the 30 years of diplomatic ties between Vietnam and the EU, we can see spectacular and rapid strides in the relationship. From cooperation in some sectors, both sides ties have developed to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) when a new framework cooperation agreement was signed in 2012, replacing the EU-Vietnam Framework Cooperation Agreement inked in 1995. The strong development of the relationship illustrates the reliable partnership and friendship and co-sharing of a long-term vision of both sides in enhancing their bilateral ties and contributing to peace, cooperation, and development in the two regions and the wider world. On the occasion of this event, Vietnamese leaders of the state, government, National Assembly, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and those of the Commission, Council, and Parliament of the EU have exchanged letters of congratulation, reaffirming the importance of both sides relationship. In 2020, exchanges between Vietnam and the EU were vivid, despite massive difficulties caused by COVID-19. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc held a telephone talk with President of the European Commission Ursula Von de Leyen in July, exchanging bilateral cooperation including the effective implementation of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA). Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh and Permanent Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son also had telephone talks with the EU trade commissioner in May and June 2020, respectively. It can be said that both sides existing ties result from dynamic changes in bilateral cooperation from traditional sectors like politics-diplomacy, trade-investment, and development cooperation to other potential sectors like science-technology, security-defence, agro-forestry-fishery, and innovation, as well as in many important multilateral frameworks, contributing to further improving the Vietnam-EU cooperation. For Vietnam, the EU is one of the leading strategic partners with an important role in the international arena, and in issues on security, peace, economy, and development. With its increasingly-growing strength and status after 35 years of national renovation, the country has become a strong partner of the EU within ASEAN and in Asia Pacific, with close cooperation in all sectors, and Vietnam is one of the partners that the EU has the most comprehensive relationship with in the region. One of the attestations for efforts in fostering both sides particular and vivid relationship, demonstrating a political imprint and will, is both sides frequently exchanging visits. Specifically, Party General Secretary, State President Nguyen Phu Trong paid a high-level visit to the EU in 2013 and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in 2018, and National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan in 2019. Many leaders of the Commission, Council, and Parliament of the EU also visited Vietnam. In 2020, while having to cope with the dual crisis in health and economy, both sides still maintained the implementation of commitments and conducted exchanges and cooperation both physically and online. They continued their close combination in many sectors in order to promote important achievements from intensive cooperation in the past, while actively implementing mutual support in anti-pandemic equipment, with the EU assisting Vietnams central provinces suffering from natural disasters in October. Vietnam is expected to welcome even more EU-originated products, and vice versa, photo Le Toan Strength of the EVFTA The important event marking the latest historic milestone in the bilateral ties was the signing, approval, and entry into force of the EVFTA on August 1, 2020, which has a wide range of commitments, creating many new breakthroughs and prospects for the relationship. This is also the shared efforts by the two sides in boosting the overall trend in international economic connectivity and sustainable development. Only five months after the agreement taking effect, both sides two-way trade flourished, with many Vietnamese exports strongly increasing in the EU market such as aquatic products, rice, garments and textiles, and footwear. The EU is now the fifth-largest trade partner, the third-largest export market, and a big foreign investor of Vietnam. It is also a leading non-refundable aid donor for the country. The EVFTA ushers in enormous opportunities for Vietnamese enterprises to enter the EU market home to a population of nearly 450 million people and a GDP scale of about $18 trillion. This will help Vietnam diversify its export markets and carve a firm niche in the EU market, while taking advantage of new opportunities in addition to other advantages resulting from the countrys good control of COVID-19 and maintenance of positive economic growth. This will also enable Vietnam to further join the global value chains. The EVFTA has made an important contribution to both sides boosting economic recovery and regaining growth momentum given the decline in the global economy caused by COVID-19. Besides the economic pillar and trade being a focus in the Vietnam-EU cooperation, many other cooperation sectors have also witnessed big strides. The signing of the Framework Participation Agreement for Vietnams Participation in Crisis Management Activities of the EU, and Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade have been significant achievements, opening up prospects for strengthening more multi-faceted and comprehensive relations between Vietnam and the EU. Both sides successfully organised meetings of the joint committee on implementing the PCA for the first time in May 2019, and online for the second time in December 2020. This has helped boost the effective implementation of commitments, contributing to the realisation and further sharpening of the Vietnam-EU comprehensive partnership. Multilateral cooperation Multilateral cooperation has been attached importance to by the two sides, in which the bonds between ASEAN and the EU have been increasingly strengthened. The EU has major benefits in the Asia-Pacific region, as 40 per cent of the EUs exported and imported goods are with Asia. With the adoption of the EU Global Strategy in 2016, and the Asia-Europe Connectivity Strategy in 2018, the EU and its member states have demonstrated a strategic vision in the region. Vietnam and ASEAN are pursuing trustful cooperation, and want the EU to play a positive and constructive role in the region for peace, prosperity, and boosting multilateralism, trade liberalisation, and respect for the law. The 23rd ASEAN-EU Ministerial Meeting and the seventh ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus organised in December 2020 reaffirmed the consensus of all the parties via the EU-ASEAN joint ministerial statement on connectivity and forging the ASEAN-EU Strategic Partnership, to which Vietnam had made important contributions as ASEAN chair 2020. Last year ended with challenging tasks proudly weathered by Vietnam that has shone and demonstrated its big role and status in successfully undertaking the role as ASEAN chair, non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the term 2020-2021, and chair of the 41st General Assembly of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly. The EU, which is a particular economic and political institution with a deep connectivity level and leading importance in the world and having a big voice in the UN and in the international arena, has been beefing up its close and comprehensive cooperation with ASEAN and its member states including Vietnam. The EU is increasingly demonstrating its clear and strong stance and viewpoints in ensuring maritime security, the law order, and maintaining peace and stability in the East Sea. Over the past 30 years of cooperation and development, the Vietnam-EU relationship has made big strides based on clear-sighted and strategic visions in order to enhance the stature of the partnership. From the first brick used for establishing the foundation of the bilateral ties, the relationship has so far strongly developed with sustainable, firm, and intensive foundations, promising a spillover momentum in 2021 and many following years. Allen, Nebraska A relationship with the Nebraska Business Development Center (NBDC) that began in the 1990s continues to yield professional advice and business opportunities for Kevin Connot and his wife, Barb, co-owners of Genesis Enterprises, LLC in Allen, Neb. In 2007, the Connots purchased the assets of a tent, canopy and tarp manufacturing company in South Sioux City and launched Genesis Enterprises. The following year, the couple moved the business to Allen to take advantage of a more affordable building and a good labor force, Kevin Connot says. Connot became aware of the NBDC in the mid-1990s when he was studying for his MBA degree at Wayne State College and was referred to Loren Kucera, director of the NBDC center in Wayne. I helped with some small business clients for him, Connot says. He was a great person to have as a mentor. I learned a lot from him through the years, and we still keep in touch. Connot continued to tap into the resources made available by NBDC as he sought ways to expand his business. In 2017, he attended a Strategically Fund Your Innovation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) event, and in 2018 attended a Capture Planning Workshop in South Sioux City with NBDC consultant Dick Uhing. Most recently, Connot has worked with NBDCs Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) consultants to find and pursue government contracting opportunities. In 2020, PTAC consultant Meghann Buresh, of NBDCs northeast Nebraska office in Norfolk, assisted Connot with updated market research. Buresh also helped identify additional North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes and revised Genesis Enterprises federal BidMatch profile to improve bid solicitation matches. Connot also worked with Josh Nichol-Caddy, NBDC technology commercialization director, regarding resources from the U.S. Department of Energy and making introductions to access them. Genesis Enterprises offers standard products including tarps, canopies, hoop buildings, awnings, machine covers and frame tents, along with custom designed products using steel frames and various industrial fabric covers. The company also is developing innovative new products, including a motorized mobile livestock shade to cover grazing dairy animals. The shade will move with the grazing animals to keep them out of the direct sun, which will reduce heat stress and corresponding decreased milk production, Connot says. Growth through innovation is a priority for Genesis Enterprises, Connot says. One of our most innovative production accomplishments has been our transition from using sewing machines to nearly exclusively fabric welding, which heat seals materials together without the use of any thread, he says. Genesis Enterprises also has solar panels on the buildings roof that provide most of the energy for the business. The continuing relationship with NBDC and PTAC consultants is having a positive impact on Genesis Enterprises, Connot says. They have helped us find several business opportunities, including a contract with the Kansas Department of Roads to provide covers for its 40-by-60 hoop buildings, he says. From paperwork to federal registrations to billing, they have been very proactive in helping us navigate the various government procurement systems, he says. Weve been very happy with their level of knowledge and their encouragement. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's defiant pledge to return to Moscow from Germany after surviving a poisoning attack puts the Kremlin in a major bind. President Vladimir Putin, observers say, is caught between a rock and a hard place: allow his most outspoken critic to freely return to Russia and risk looking weak, or hand Navalny a lengthy prison term and potentially turn him into a global cause celebre. "There is not a good decision here but some sort of decision will have to be made," political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya told AFP. The 44-year-old's announcement that he was returning to Moscow on Sunday aboard Pobeda -- Aeroflot's low-cost subsidiary whose name means "Victory" in Russian -- drew gasps from admirers and critics alike. Analysts say Navalny's return is a direct challenge to the 68-year-old Putin, who has seen his popularity fall in recent years, and could become a major political factor ahead of parliamentary polls later this year. Western governments say Navalny, who collapsed on a flight in Siberia in August and was eventually taken to Berlin for treatment, was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent. Navalny says he was targeted by the domestic intelligence agency on Putin's orders. Russian authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement and refused to investigate the poisoning case. - 'The guys are panicking' - Instead, investigators in December launched a new criminal probe against Navalny for allegedly misappropriating more than $4 million of donations to his organisations. Masks of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and President Vladimir Putin are seen on sale at a souvenir stall in an underground passage in Saint Petersburg on Thursday. / AFP The prison service said Thursday it would also be "obliged" to detain him upon his return for violating the terms of his probation after a 2014 embezzlement conviction. "They really did not want him to return," said political observer Anton Orekh, referring to the Kremlin. "Now the guys are panicking." Navalny, who has been the target of several criminal probes, has served a number of brief jail stints but never a long prison term. He was handed a five-year prison term for embezzlement in 2013 but it was changed to a suspended sentence after thousands protested in Moscow. Stanovaya said Navalny could still avoid long-term incarceration if authorities find a way to limit his political activities, perhaps by declaring him a "foreign agent" under legislation restricting individuals or organisations who receive funds from abroad. But the Kremlin may have a low appetite for risk, with Russia set to hold parliamentary elections in September and the coronavirus pandemic exacerbating economic woes. "I have a feeling the Kremlin has grown tired of these games," said the head of the R.Politik analysis firm. "The confrontation with Navalny has been going on for too long." Navalny has never held elected office -- he was barred from standing against Putin in the 2018 presidential vote -- and his allies are frequently prevented from running in other elections. Videos of his anti-corruption investigations, often revealing the lavish lifestyles of Russia's elite, are hugely popular and draw millions of views. - Return is 'powerful gesture' - But it is unclear how much support he enjoys among ordinary Russians, especially after years of negative coverage -- or no mention at all -- of his activities on state-controlled media. In a national poll by the Levada Centre in September, only 20 percent of respondents said they approved of Navalny's actions, while 50 percent disapproved and the rest either had not heard of him or could not say. The poisoning ordeal has drawn global attention to Navalny and raised his international profile, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel visiting him while he was undergoing treatment in a Berlin hospital. Navalny and his team seem to be hoping it can also save him from arrest or a long prison term. They are urging Russians to head to Moscow's Vnukovo Airport on Sunday evening in a show of support. A Facebook event for Sunday shows more than 1,900 people planning to go. "This is a powerful gesture no matter what comes after it," said Sergei Medvedev, a Moscow-based political commentator. "This is a return of Russian politics from limbo, from non-existence," he wrote on Facebook, saying this was the moment for Navalny to show if he could be a historic reformer like legendary anti-Communist dissident and later Czech president Vaclav Havel. "The countdown has begun." SAFEGUARDS | Consumer ProductsNO. 006/21 California Proposition 65 (Prop 65) is the 'Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986', a ballot initiative passed overwhelmingly by Californian residents in November 1986. It requires the state to publish a list of chemicals that are known to cause cancer, birth defects and/or reproductive harm. First published in 1987, the list has evolved to approximately 900 chemicals. In Prop 65, one important provision for companies doing business in California is to provide a clear and reasonable warning before knowingly and intentionally exposing anyone to a listed chemical. Unless exempt, businesses have 12 months to comply with this requirement once a chemical is listed. Among the list of Prop 65 chemicals are lead and its compounds as well as six phthalates (BBP, DBP, DEHP, DIDP, DINP and DnHP) that are known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm, or a combination of these toxicities. Over the years, consumer goods containing lead and phthalates have consistently been targeted. In this communication, we summarize several settlements involving products containing these chemicals (Table 1). It is interesting to note that the parties in entries 1 and 2 agreed to a reformulation of no more than 1,000 ppm for DEHP but a more stringent limit of 100 ppm for DBP as part of the settlement agreement. Additionally, the parties in entry 3 agreed to reformulate both lead content and releasable lead as part of their settlement. Entry Scope Reformulation/Warning for lead and Phthalates 1 Shovels = 1000 ppm DEHP, = 100 ppm DBP, and = 100 ppm lead otherwise warning 2 Tote bags = 1000 ppm DEHP, = 100 ppm DBP, and = 100 ppm lead otherwise warning 3 Wheelchairs with vinyl components < 0.1% each of DEHP and DINP, = 90 ppm lead and = 1.0 g lead (NIOSH 9100) otherwise warning Table 1 Abbreviation Name CAS Abbreviation Name CAS BBP Benzyl butyl phthalate 85-68-7 DIDP Di-isodecyl phthalate 68515-49-1 / 26761-40-0 DBP Di-n-butyl phthalate 84-74-2 DINP Diisononyl phthalate ----- DEHP Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate 117-81-7 DnHP Di-n-hexyl phthalate 84-75-3 A Prop 65 settlement is a consent agreement between the parties named in the settlement and a party not named in a settlement is not bound by that settlement. Throughout a global network of laboratories, SGS offers comprehensive testing, product assessment and consultancy services related to California Proposition 65 to help you manage risk in your supply chain for consumer goods such as DIYs, electrical and electronics, hardgoods products, juvenile products, and textile & toy products. In the end, it's only trusted because it's tested. Contact us for more information or visit our website. For enquiries, please contact: Hingwo Tsang Global Information and Innovation Manager t: (+852) 2774 7420 Stay on top of regulatory changes within your industry: subscribe to SafeGuardS! Read more articles for the Consumer Goods and Retail industry SGS Group Management SA - 2021 - All rights reserved - SGS is a registered trademark of SGS Group Management SA. This is a publication of SGS, except for 3rd parties' contents submitted or licensed for use by SGS. SGS neither endorses nor disapproves said 3rd parties contents. This publication is intended to provide technical information and shall not be considered an exhaustive treatment of any subject treated. It is strictly educational and does not replace any legal requirements or applicable regulations. It is not intended to constitute consulting or professional advice. The information contained herein is provided "as is" and SGS does not warrant that it will be error-free or will meet any particular criteria of performance or quality. Do not quote or refer any information herein without SGS's prior written consent. In 2019, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopias prime minister, received the Nobel Peace Prize. He was credited with resolving a decades-long border conflict with neighboring Eritrea and releasing thousands of political prisoners. Ethiopia had once been named the second leading jailer of journalists in Africa by the Committee to Protect Journalists; Ahmed also promised to end state hostilities with his media. In November, while US elections commanded international attention, tensions between Ethiopias government and the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), a political party that ruled for twenty-seven years and is based in the countrys northern Tigray region, violently escalated. The conflict has since displaced thousands of people, with many seeking refuge in neighboring Sudan, and left thousands more dead. Both the government and the TPLF want to control the conflicts narrative, resulting in a flood of propaganda on social media and in the news. And even though Ahmed released political prisoners, including journalists, when he became prime minister, in 2018, members of the press are once more facing punishment. A number of journalists have been arrested for attempting to report on the situation. Most recently, a Reuters cameraman was put in solitary confinement without charge or evidence. And even before the violence between the government and the TPLF started, journalists were being arrested for reporting on other conflicts in 2020. Extended internet and phone communication blackouts imposed by the government are also hampering reporting. Because youre unable to contact sources, its difficult to verify what youre hearing, Muthoki Mumo, the Committee to Protect Journalists sub-Saharan Africa representative, told Voice of America. The Addis Standard, an independent news outlet in Ethiopia, had long warned of the potential for war and continued media restrictions despite the Nobel Prize and the grand promises. In November, one of its own editors was arrested, accused of attempts to dismantle the constitution through violence. CJR spoke with Tsedale Lemma, the Addis Standards editor in chief and founder, about the Ethiopian press, international coverage of the nation, and Ahmed. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. Sign up for CJR 's daily email The landscape for journalists has shifted a lot in recent yearsfrom heavy censorship to liberalization under Ahmed to a reversion. How is Addis Standard navigating that shifting terrain? Previously our struggle was what we call a vertical struggle against a repressive state. But since Ahmed came, that struggle has changed in dynamics. Now it is not only with the government, which is folding on its own promises, but also interest groups. Political parties, civil societies, even religious organizations and private individuals have been empowered. Those interest groups want to influence the media too. So the struggle now is both horizontal and vertical. What do you make of journalists being arrested again and communications blackouts being imposed? So little has changed. The government continues to own and operate so many powerful media outlets. They get unfiltered access from the government. The independent media continues to struggle to assert our own editorial independence and get equal access to information. We have to rely on how the government media packages the narrative. We just take it from them, and we have so little room to scrutinize, to investigate. In 2019, Ahmed was praised on the international stage after winning the Nobel Prize. What did that coverage miss? There was a lot of hysteria, a lot of enthusiasm and happiness around the Peace Prize. That is how the international media functions. There is little room for historical reading of political events in the country and little room to actually look at where the local mediathose who have relatively been or are independent, such as Addis Standardare. For example, the peace agreement with Eritrea. Weve been publishing strong-worded editorials that point out this peace deal wasnt really what the world wanted to see in it. But the world wants to see what the world wants to see. Recently, youve been featured by Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and the BBC, among other international outlets. Is global news coverage now embracing the voices of local Ethiopian journalists more? The international media is confronted with a reality that we have been trying to highlight for a while. Theyre reporting on the prime minister based on his words and based on his actions now. I think there is this moment of reckoning. People are seeing through him for what hes doing. The period of infatuation seems to have come to a screeching halt. And the government, not being used to it, are a bit upset. Thats why you see it creating its own fact-checking social media sites, trying to wrestle the narrative back. One of your editors was arrested, released, and then rearrested. How do you cope with that? We are planning different precautionary measures and looking forward to the next hearing. We have to wait and see. But its a delicate issue, and I dont want to jeopardize it by adding any sentimental opinions into it, as difficult as that is. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Feven Merid is a CJR fellow. [January 15, 2021] Joyal Capital Management Franchise Development Announces 14-Store Dunkin' Deal in Greater Boston JCM Franchise Development (JCM), a wholly owned subsidiary of Joyal Capital Management and a leading M&A, Financing and Advisory firm, is pleased to announce the sale of a 14-store Dunkin' network, located in MetroWest Boston. The deal, with an aggregate transaction value of $44 million, was sourced, negotiated, financed and closed by JCM and marks the first time in decades that a franchise group new to the Dunkin' system purchased a network of this size in the historic Massachusetts market. The buyer is Northern Management Group, a multi-unit franchise company with ownership in top brands across the hotel, convenience store and restaurant space, including more than 100 properties in the Northeast. "For some time, our company wanted to acquire new assets located in New England, specifically in the Dunkin' brand, but finding opportunities was difficult. We went to JCM because we know they have the relationships and the ability to get complicated deals done," said Jigar Patel, one of Northern Management Group's partners. Partner Nilesh Patel added, "JCM addressed all our questions and provided us with all the data we needed to make an informed decision and execute this deal in the middle of a pandemic. We recognize the unparalleled relationships Gary has with the franchisee community at-large and we look forward to closing more deals with him in the fuure." "We are thrilled we were able to create an opportunity where Northern Management Group could acquire a Dunkin' network in Greater Boston," said Gary F. Joyal, CEO and Managing Partner of Joyal Capital Management. "Their experience in retail and consumer-facing businesses will bring tremendous value to the Dunkin' system." JCM is the global leader in the Dunkin' Mergers & Acquisitions. In 2020, even with the coronavirus pandemic creating uncertainty within the restaurant and retail space, JCM had an abundance of activity and was able to deliver a platform for new buyers. JCM brought two different groups of new franchisees into the Dunkin' system with the acquisition of 61 franchised restaurants. In addition to the Northern Management Group 14-store deal in Massachusetts, JCM sourced, negotiated, financed and closed a 47-store Dunkin' network in Southeast Florida, which also represented one of the largest deals by a franchisee new to the Dunkin' system in that state. "I am proud of the JCM team of professionals for navigating these complicated opportunities that were made exponentially more complex because of the pandemic and unstable financial markets," Joyal said. "Interestingly, I am seeing a significant change among new buyers that are showing interest in the Dunkin' brand. What was traditionally an existing Dunkin' franchisee buyer-pool, is now shifting to other brand owner/operators who want to expand their portfolio within Dunkin'. This expansion, in my opinion, will create new value and opportunities, and will add to the prestige of owning a Dunkin' franchise." Joyal Capital Management (JCM) is a full-service financial consulting firm offering Advisory Services, Financing, Debt Placement, Mergers, Acquisitions, Financial Planning and Family Office Services. JCM Franchise Development, a subsidiary of Joyal Capital Management, provides differentiated, value-added services to buyers and sellers of franchised businesses throughout the U.S. Learn more at joycapmgt.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005110/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] In the early hey-days of the Range Rover, following its introduction in the 1970s, it was the vehicle of choice for the British rangers. The... LANSING, Mich., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Michigan families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Michigan families, schools, and organizations are hosting 1,122 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Among these will be a series of video testimonials released throughout the week sharing Michigan families' school choice stories. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of Michigan communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including the cities of Dearborn Heights, Port Sheldon Township, Columbus, Auburn Hills, and Ishpeming Township. "Michigan has education options for families, but this past year has shown that families need more flexible, accessible choices that work for them," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "The Week is a time to set aside politics and talk about real education partnerships, affordable ways that parents and teachers can work together to inspire learning." In Michigan, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with open enrollment on a case-by-case basis, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling. Michigan families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Michigan school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/michigan. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com BURLINGTON COUNTY, NJ Burlington County is asking the federal government for an additional $13 million for rental assistance amid the coronavirus pandemic. County officials announced on Thursday that they have submitted the application to the U.S. Department of Treasury for the funding for a soon-to-launch rental assistance program. Throughout 2020, we made it our countys mission to help our residents and small businesses survive the pandemic, Burlington County Commissioner Director Felicia Hopson said. Were proud of the assistance weve delivered and look forward to a brighter 2021, but we know that the challenges will continue. We will do everything we possibly can to seek funding for programs for our residents and businesses. The latest federal coronavirus relief package, approved last month, included $25 billion in rental assistance. States, territories and local governments with populations of more than 200,000 people are eligible to apply for a direct share of the aid to help residents struggling to cover rent, as well as landlords impacted by losses of revenue. It is expected that tenants and landlords will be able to apply for up to 15 months of assistance, according to guidelines set forth by the Department of Treasury. Funding will go directly to the landlords, unless they decide not to participate, officials said. To qualify for assistance, households must include at least one person who is eligible for unemployment insurance or who has lost income due to the coronavirus pandemic and is at risk of becoming homeless or housing insecure. Eligibility will also be limited to households with incomes at or below 80 percent of the area median income, though those with incomes below 50 percent will receive priority, officials said. While it isnt clear how much Burlington County can expect to receive, officials said early estimates put the early sum at at least $13 million. We have been assisting residents through our Housing Hub since the beginning of COVID-19, but there is still a huge need for this funding program, Hopson said. We would like to get our county program up and running as soon as possible to get this assistance out to those in most need. Story continues The county will also issue a request for proposals for providers interested in administering a rental assistance program with $930,000 in Community Development Block Grant-Coronavirus (CDBG-CV) response funding awarded by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs. It is also applying to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to devote a share of $2.4 million in federal funding to expand the available CDBG-CV response assistance even further with an upcoming bid process. Information will be posted on the county website when the funding is finalized. The federal government has imposed an eviction moratorium through Jan. 31, and Gov. Phil Murphy signed an Executive Order suspending them during the current health emergency. However, once the federal moratorium expires and the New Jersey emergency declaration is lifted, eviction proceedings will be able to move forward. Already more than 3,000 landlords in Burlington County have made filings in Superior Court to begin eviction proceedings once the moratoriums are lifted, according to officials. Thats 3,000 Burlington County families ending up displaced and on the streets. The impact would be catastrophic, said Hopson, who is the boards liaison to the Department of Human Services. Were acting now to try to prevent this looming crisis and keep as many of our residents safe and in their homes. Burlington County already has a Housing Hub at the Burlington County Human Services Building in Westampton to provide a single location for homeless or other residents who are housing insecure or experiencing hardships to come for services from several agencies and programs. A total of 1,066 households received help from the Hub in 2020, including 213 recipients of rental and mortgage assistance that allowed them to remain secure and safe in their homes, according to officials. Close to 1,500 insecure households also received help from the Countys Rapid Rehousing Initiative, which provides subsidies to families to allow them to remain in or enter permanent housing, officials said. Our hub has a tremendous record of success since it launched, but it only shows how great the need is, Hopson said. Thats why were pushing so hard to give out more aid in 2021. Burlington County was one of 12 counties in the state that did not get direct funding from the CARES Act, because the countys population was below a 500,000 threshold. While the Murphy administration did provide Burlington County with a share of the states funding, the other eight counties who received direct federal dollars received tens of millions of dollars to provide aid to renters and businesses. The county has worked diligently to seek other sources of funding to provide similar assistance, officials said. This article originally appeared on the Moorestown Patch The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday named UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, UP Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, vice president Laxman Prasad Acharya and former IAS officer Arvind Kumar Sharma as its candidates for the biennial elections to 12 legislative council seats in Uttar Pradesh. Among the contenders, Sharma is an interesting pick who is said to be a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for two decades. He took voluntary retirement this week to join the BJP. After his six-year stint in the Prime Minister's Office, Sharma was serving as the secretary in the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the Modi government. Reports state that he completed his schooling from Mau and post-graduation in political science from Allahabad University. Sources told News18 that he may become a minister and be given an important position in UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's cabinet in a reshuffle. They said that he is likely to lead some crucial portfolio around infrastructure and 'Make in India'. According to reports, Sharma, who hails from Uttar Pradeshs Azamgarh, is a 1988 batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre. He has been associated with PM Modi since the latter became the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001. During Modi's years in Gujarat, the ex-IAS officer was considered his key man. In that period, Sharma also held the position of Gujarat Infrastructure Development Board (GIDB) chief executive, a position that earned him the reputation of an infrastructure expert, The Print reported. He joined the PMO as a joint secretary in 2014, and was elevated to the additional secretary rank in 2017. The Election Commission of India on Monday issued notification for the biennial election. The MLCs whose terms are ending include UP Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, Chairman of UP Legislative Council Ramesh Yadav and UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh. Polling will be held on January 28 and counting of votes will be done one hour after the completion of polls as per established practice. Nominations for the biennial polls can be filed till January 18 and scrutiny of the same will be held on January 19. The withdrawal of names can be done till January 21. Of the 12 MLCs whose tenure is expiring, six are from the Samajwadi Party (SP) including Ramesh Yadav, Ahmed Hasan, Ashu Malik, Sahab Singh Saini, Ramjatan Rajbhar and Virendra Singh. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, UP party chief Swatantra Dev Singh and Laxman Acharya are from the BJP. The tenure of BSP's Pradeep Jatav and Dharamveer Ashok is also coming to an end besides that of Naseemudin Siddiqui, who left the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and joined the Congress. The poll panel had earlier issued guidelines to be followed during the entire election process. These guidelines state that every person shall wear a face mask during all election-related activities. The chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh has been directed to depute a senior officer from the state to ensure that instructions regarding Covid-19 containment measures are complied with while making arrangements for conducting the election. Celebrating the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations, Vietnam and Kuwait have agreed to increase their cooperation in trade and investment, particularly in the oil and gas sector. The diplomatic relationship between the State of Kuwait and Vietnam was officially established on January 10, 1976. According to a statement given by Kuwaiti Consul General Khaled Falah Kh. A. Almutiri, the relationship is growing exponentially, with bilateral trade between the two countries dramatically surging to US$3.5 billion in 2019 from $350 million in 2017. Even under the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was expected that their bilateral trade value would reach about $3 billion in 2020. A prime example of successful cooperation between the two countries is the $10 billion Nghi Son Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Project in Vietnam's Thanh Hoa Province, which officially entered into full operation in the middle of November 2018. Kuwait Petroleum International Company holds a 35.1 percent stake in the project and is the sole crude oil supplier for its production activities. Nghi Son is Kuwaits largest oil refinery project and the countrys only one in Asia. It is able to process 10 million tons of oil per year, meeting about 40 percent of total local demand for petroleum and contributing to energy security and the development of the oil refining industry in Vietnam. The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and Kuwait Petroleum International also have plans to involve themselves in the second phase of the Nghi Son Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Project and the Crude Oil Terminal, located in the Nghi Son Economic Zone in Thanh Hoa. Kuwait always considers Vietnam as one of its most important and strategic partners in the Asia-Pacific region," Kuwaiti Consul General Almutiri said in the statement commemorating the anniversary. "From the bottom of my heart, I believe that the year 2021 will be an important milestone in promoting the friendship between our two countries. The Kuwaiti diplomat also shared a belief that the two countries have achieved considerable progress in labor export cooperation. The number of Vietnamese laborers in Kuwait has increased more than 10 times, from 121 in 2017 to 1,300 by the end of 2019, working in different fields such as construction, oil and gas, and domestic services. The demand for foreign workers in Kuwait is rather high but has been limited due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Still, Kuwait has plans to reopen its labor market to Vietnamese citizens once the pandemic is under control. Through the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), Kuwait has continuously provided preferential loans for different infrastructure development projects in Vietnam. So far, KFAED has provided preferential loans for 16 projects in the Southeast Asian nation with a total capital of about $190 million. Kuwait has also regularly offered humanitarian aid to address the consequences of natural disasters in Vietnam each year. In the education and training sector, Kuwait grants annual scholarships to Vietnamese students hoping to study Arabic at the Kuwait University, as well as other educational activities in Ho Chi Minh City. The number of tourists from Kuwait to Vietnam rose to 1,080 in 2019 from 550 in 2017. Kuwait was one of the first countries in the Middle East and the first country in the Gulf Cooperation Council to establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam following the latters reunification in 1975. During the last 45 years, the bilateral relationship has been consecutively consolidated on the basis of friendship, mutual respect, and understanding, as well as the solidarity between the peoples of the two countries. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A storm is coming, and it's going to be devastating. We have seen and just experienced a taste of it. The attacks on the First Amendment have already begun. The president and millions of his supporters are deprived of their access to use tech platforms to communicate. Big Tech also is banning anything that indicates that the election was stolen or marked with voter fraud. The efforts to rewrite history are on the way. The left is not pretending. These people mean business, and their business is mean. They are ruthless both in words and deeds. We know the former from their statements in the media or on the House floor. The way they pulled off possibly the greatest election fraud in history can be explained only by wicked deeds. The conservatives now have more questions than answers. Where do we go from here? Can we still save ourselves? Is the Republic done? And who is going to save us? Being attuned to God, they may also ask, "Is God going to save us from ourselves?" While God is not absent in people's business, He also says to "search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve" (Jeremiah 17:10). One may be an agnostic, but the basic message is about the law of intended or unintended consequences. In almost a century, America has had more freedom and prosperity than any other country in history. Ironically, we have corrupted ourselves, found all kinds of excuses to reject freedom, and rushed impetuously into socialism-communism, perhaps the most vile system ever constructed by humans. We arrogantly abort almost a million of our babies per year because they are inconvenient. Yet we hide when some nasty type of flu comes. We are the most diverse country in history. Non-white people generally enjoy the best welfare compared to their counterparts in any other country in the world. Yet we spend almost all of our time whining about how horribly racist and evil we are. We now shun our Founders and our previous great leaders and call them racists. In reality, it is down to this: we often use "humanity" as a cover to appeal to other people's conscience in order to cancel or remove anything we don't like. In reality, our "humanity" is not genuine. Even if it is genuine, it is often driven by a corrupt mind that twisted the truth at worst or naive understanding at best. Perhaps the real reason for shunning the Founders from our lives is to uproot America from her history and replace it with our utopian and wicked version. It is not surprising that we have taken freedom for granted and have no clue about our own heritage. Alas, those who despise their history are usually doomed to repeat its worst parts and dump its best ones. We riot, burn, and beat people over a manufactured problem: systemic racism. We said we are Christians, but we mock God's commandments. Our churches and pastors are more worried about racism than personal virtues and interested in preaching social justice more than true salvation. Thanks to rapid technological development, ours is an increasingly sophisticated world. We marvel at it. Yet our civilization seems to be getting more fragile, ignorant, and spineless. We hide behind the comfort of our technology. The current generation seems more fainthearted than the preceding one. Paradoxically, we are living in the most technologically connected era in history, yet, because of greed and twisted truth, we are perhaps living in the most socially disconnected era in history. Maybe it's no coincidence that the first solution to COVID-19 is socially distancing physically. But we may have been socially distancing socially prior to that. Social disconnection and apathy give rise to all kinds of corrupt enterprises in almost all of our institutions. Hence, the corrupt politicians, judges, and media may be the mirror image of ourselves. Then, when the storm comes, we ask, "God, are You in the midst?" Surely, God is always in our midst. But perhaps He has had enough of this foolishness and rebellion, and He is ready to let us learn things the hard way. Maybe in the midst of helplessness, we need to kneel and pray for forgiveness, wisdom, and courage and then turn from our wicked ways. Then, as He said, "I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14). Only after that can we go out to pursue our freedom. This is what George Washington did when he was filled with helplessness in a dreadful winter at Valley Forge in 1777, while facing the British Army who were well fed on American bread and beef and their barracks warmed by American firewood. Likewise, as Abraham Lincoln said in the middle of tumultuous Civil War, "Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right." Both leaders were faced with their respective defining moments in the history of our country. This year is our defining moment. As we look ahead to the impending storm, we go back to our history and learn how the great founders and defenders of our nation responded. Both Washington and Lincoln kneeled and asked for divine forgiveness and guidance. This serves not only as our inspiration, but also a source of confidence as we struggle to keep the Republic. After all, victory begins with a vigorous spirit. Image via Good Free Photos. Bennington, VT (05201) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. As the clock strikes and the sun rises bearing witness to the election of a new president, I believe this administration has committed itself to be more inclusive and forward-thinking. The issues of closing the gap of health care disparities, eliminating bad cops from the police forces, inequality institutional racism, and violence in our communities will not resolve themselves merely by the passage of time. A tectonic shift in our thinking and approach is what the new administration promises. The insurrection event in our nations capital on January 6 provided the final nail to the coffin of the current administration. Like you, I was appalled as I watched with disbelief and stunned silence as the events played out in real-time. The official National NAACPs position is: This incident reflects the latest of the Presidents failed leadership, we witnessed the Capitol under siege by bad actors who had no other objective than to disrupt the constitutional proceedings of a fair and rightful transition of power. Those responsible must be held accountable for their actions that placed members of congress, the VP elect, and staffers in harms way. Natasha Alford, journalist, digital host, and millennial media executive, summarized the insurrection as an assault on our democracy, and coup incited by President Trump best when she said, When Black Americans talk about generational trauma and terror families this is what we mean. That energy, you saw at the Capitol is the same energy that burned down Black towns, lynched Black citizens, and ensured slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation were encoded into American life. Regardless of your opinion on the outcome of the national election, the election has been certified by Congress and the new administration will be sworn in on January 20. Its time to move on and concentrate on the issues that keep our communities from being our utopias. The vitriol that appears in the media is counterproductive from both the far left and the far right in unifying our country. To disassociate ourselves from the lack of civility, integrity, and reestablish our dignity on the world stage from the past four years we must become an America where citizenship means the same to everyone and where humanitarianism is served in world-class proportions. This will allow citizens to mend the fragile fabric that binds us. How do we accomplish this? Equity and equality make us all a mighty and noble flotilla of ships, sailing the seas of this society and providing opportunities for all citizens. Equality and equity may be inherently different but are also bound together. In order to create true equality of opportunity, equity is needed to ensure that everyone has the same chance of getting there. I believe citizenship is not passive, citizenship involves a commitment from you to make our community better. This implies getting involved and engaged. The coronavirus restrictions on public gatherings have made it easier for the public to listen in on how your government performs. Locally, we can address the health inequalities by encouraging all citizens to get vaccinated. African Americans have been disproportionately impacted by the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic and are the most hesitant to take the vaccine. The vaccine is an important step for the community to get the COVID-19 restrictions lifted. I was on a conference call with Teresa Haley, State President for Illinois NAACP, where she discussed the hesitation within the African American communities to take the coronavirus vaccine. She directed the branch presidents to provide webinars and zoom meetings to enlighten our communities on the importance of getting vaccinated. Within the next three weeks, the Edwardsville Branch will be hosting a Coronavirus Townhall to get the word out about the effectiveness and the safety of the vaccine. Recently, the mayor of the City of Edwardsville reported on the finding of the Race Relations and Equity Committee. In this report, the mayor outlined items the committee believed would make our community more inviting to minorities. We cannot let this report sit on the shelf. It appears as a notice on the citys website. Take a few minutes to read it. What can you contribute to this conversation? If you are asked to serve, serve. If you want to serve, ask. All the protests over the past nine months have heightened the awareness of the racial inequity in our communities. Eyes have been opened. Citizens that did not think these issues existed now realize they do. What will you do to be part of the solution? Walt Williams was elected President of the Edwardsville NAACP in December 2020. He lives in Edwardsville with his wife Chris. Williams finds value in a life of public service. 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. The Hai Yang Shi You 981 oil platform, operated by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), is seen in the sea off Chinas southernmost Hainan province, March 23, 2018. The United States on Thursday blacklisted Chinese oil giant CNOOC and slapped visa restrictions on officials of the Chinese navy, ruling party and state-owned enterprises over land reclamation and coercion of Southeast Asian claimants in the disputed South China Sea. The action by the Trump administration will add to U.S.-China tensions that have spiked in the past year. It comes just six days before Joe Biden takes office as the new U.S. president on Jan. 20. The actions were intended to preserve a free and open South China Sea, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. It follows a hardening of U.S. policy in July against what Washington called Chinas illegal maritime claims in the waterway, and the blacklisting in August of two dozen Chinese state-owned companies and executives it said were involved in constructing artificial islands in the Paracel and Spratly chains. The new visa restrictions target officials and executives responsible for, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarization of disputed outposts in the South China Sea, or the PRCs use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources in the South China Sea, Thursdays statement said, adding that immediate family members may also face the restrictions. PRC stands for the Peoples Republic of China. In addition, the Department of Commerce added the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to its Entity List. That restricts exports to businesses abroad due to their activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States, effectively killing any ability for American businesses to trade or interact with them. Wilbur Ross, the U.S. commerce secretary, said in a statement that, CNOOC acts as a bully for the Peoples Liberation Army to intimidate Chinas neighbors. Pompeo cited CNOOCs role in operating the Hai Yang Shi You 981 movable oil rig in the South China Sea that kick-started a tense and dangerous standoff between Vietnam and China in 2014. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNOOC had been notably absent from the South China Sea-related designations announced by the U.S. in August, Greg Poling, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, noted. But he questioned the impact it would have. These are symbolic punishments for wrongdoing that occurred 7 years ago. Theyre important for messaging, but dont address Chinas ongoing illegal behavior, he wrote on Twitter. The U.S has sanctioned Chinese companies primarily for their role in Chinas extensive dredging campaign in the South China Sea from 2014 to 2017, which saw it build massive artificial islands and military bases to strengthen its claim to disputed waters and support the activities of its military. In his statement on Thursday, Pompeo said: Beijing continues to send fishing fleets and energy survey vessels, along with military escorts, to operate in waters claimed by Southeast Asian nations and to harass claimant state oil and gas development in areas where it has failed to put forth a coherent, lawful maritime claim. Six Asian governments have territorial claims or maritime boundaries in the South China Sea that overlap with Chinas claims. They are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia's exclusive economic zone. While Southeast Asian claimants have been increasingly willing to take a diplomatic stance challenging Chinas claims, they have been cautious about being caught up in the great power rivalry in their backyard. For its part, China has accused the U.S. of destabilizing the region through its military activities such as when it conducts freedom of navigation operations and meddling in regional affairs. In addition to differences over the South China Sea, the U.S. and China have locked horns on trade, Beijings crackdown on pro-democrats in Hong Kong, and the internment of Uyghur Muslims in Chinas far west. It emerged this week that Biden has selected Kurt Campbell, a former U.S. top diplomat for East Asia under the Obama administration, as coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs on the National Security Council. He will play a key role in coordinating U.S. policy toward China. Subscribe to our newsletters Get the latest comment, analysis and breaking news first. Sign up for the just-food newsletter. Get the newsletter We care about your privacy To keep our community informed of the most urgent coronavirus news, our critical updates are free to read. Ongoing coverage is available to subscribers. Subscribe now for full access and to support our work. Hotel Thompson San Antonio the first new luxury hotel in the city in more than five years is scheduled to open downtown on Jan. 27. The 20-story hotel on the River Walk, near the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, will feature 162 rooms and 33 suites, and charge some of the highest room rates in San Antonio. The citys hospitality industry likely will still be struggling when Hotel Thompson open its doors. Many business travelers are staying home, and San Antonios convention business is nearly at a standstill. Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer Nevertheless, visitors are trickling back, though mostly on the weekends. Hotel Thompson originally was scheduled to open in late October or early this month, but its owners decided early next year would be a better time to launch. We decided to push it back a little obviously because of the pandemic, said Ted Knighton, the hotel's general manager. But were ready to introduce it now. On ExpressNews.com: Wary Traveler: Delta markets COVID safety Knighton said a standard room will go for $300 a night during the week and $400 on the weekends. Rates jump to $2,500 a night for the hotel's 2,100-sq.-ft. penthouse suite, with two bedrooms, a dining area, a living room with a pool table and a private terrace. Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer Among San Antonio hotels in the downtown area, only Hotel Emma at the Pearl generally charges higher rates. The hotels website lists a standard room for $475 a night on Wednesday, Jan. 27, the day Hotel Thompson is scheduled to open. Hotel Emma opened in November 2015. The Thompson chain, part of the Hyatt Corp., is aiming for excitement, with celebrity chefs Knighton said the hotel will identify them at a later date anchoring its restaurants, art exhibits and disk jockeys playing music poolside. Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer There really is not a hotel in San Antonio that will have the nightlife scene like we will have, Knighton said. The $130 million building housing the hotel also includes 59 condominiums, called the Arts Residences at Thompson San Antonio. On ExpressNews.com: Wary Traveler: Southwest Airlines to take on United, American in Houston, Chicago and Miami Residents of the condos, which priced from the low $500,000s to more than $4 million, will share the pool deck and workout room with hotel guests. Theyll also have access to hotel services, such as 24-hour room service. Condo owners started moving in last week. Fifty-two of the 59 units are sold. Photos by Kin Man Hui / Staff photographer Amid the COVID-19 downturn, which has forced most hotels to cut workers, Knighton said one factor in Hotel Thompsons favor is the limited number of luxury properties in San Antonio. San Antonio is different, the general manager said. It doesnt have a surplus of luxury products. He said guests in the luxury market are traveling sooner than expected. The hotel, he added, has generated strong interest from groups for meetings and catered events, such as weddings, for next summer and fall. Downtown hotels in all price ranges filled 33.8 percent of their rooms in September, according to STR, a firm that tracks hotel data. Thats down from 64.6 percent a year earlier. The downtown hotel market has been slowly recovering since April, when the pandemic shut down tourism. Only 10.2 percent of hotel rooms were filled that month, the STR data shows. Still, many hotels are a long way from profitability. Hotel consultants say luxury hotels usually need an occupancy rate of at least 60 percent to stay in the black. Overall, Hotel Emma has prospered since opening in late 2015, said Paul Vaughn, senior vice president at Source Strategies, a locally based hotel consulting firm. Vaughn said the San Antonio market should be able to support several luxury hotels Hotel Contessa is another in the downtown area. But how long it will take Hotel Thompson to turn a profit is an open question. It would not surprise me if the first couple of quarters for the hotel are not that hot, Vaughn said. Houston-based DC Partners is developing the Thompson hotel and condo project. DC Partners president and CEO Robert Contreras said he was elated to hear drugmaker Pfizers announcement Monday that its experimental COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90 percent effective. If approved by U.S. regulators, people could start receiving the vaccine late this year. We are hoping that by the second quarter of 2021 things will be getting back to normal in terms of travel, Contreras said. Hotel projects have been scrapped nationwide since the pandemic started, but most hotel developers who had their funding in place and had started construction stayed the course, said Stephanie Ricca, editorial director at the trade publication Hotel News Tonight. Hotel stakeholders need some return on their investment, she said. So in a pandemic situation like this, weve seen a lot of hotels opening. Ricca said, however, that it's not uncommon for developers to push back their debuts several months past their originally scheduled opening. The Thompson chain operates nine hotels in the U.S. and Mexico. DC Partners will open the 10th Hotel Thompson the 51-story building includes apartments in downtown Dallas on Wednesday. Knighton said DC Partners is also planning hotels for Houston and Austin. The San Antonio location will be the Thompson brands 11th property. Thompson will manage the hotel for DC Partners. A reporter toured the San Antonio hotel last week. Many of the rooms were finished, but the lobby, rooftop patio and fourth floor pool deck were still under construction. Knighton said the Thompson plans to draw locals to its first-floor restaurant, called Landrace, and a second restaurant on the roof deck. The hotel will also offer a spa and beauty parlor that will be open to non-guests. The Thompson is hiring 100 employees. Knighton said about 1,500 people have applied for the jobs, a reflection of San Antonios depressed hospitality industry. Managers are conducting Zoom meetings with candidates, and finalists will be invited to a job fair at the hotel on Nov. 17. The hotel-condominium project has not been without controversy. In 2018, CD Partners received $10 million in incentives through a city program to encourage downtown housing. Critics had said the incentives werent necessary to stimulate residential development in the area the real estate market had strengthened in recent years. City officials, however, maintained the subsidy would help stabilize the downtown housing market. The incentives include the reimbursement of $9.5 million in property taxes and water utility and city fee waivers. Without the incentives, Contreras said, the project would not have been financially feasible. The incentives were absolutely essential, he said. Contreras said DC Partners secured 60 percent of the equity for the project while the other 40 percent came from several dozen international investors under the federal EB-5 program. The program allows foreigners to obtain vivas to live in the U.S. by making at least a $500,000 investment in a project in an area with high unemployment. The projects must create at least 10 jobs. Randy Diamond covers tourism and the travel industry. To read more from Randy, become a subscriber. randy.diamond@express-news.net Barbara Smith was just 22 years old when she left Hampshire behind and set off for India on what was meant to be the trip of a lifetime. Like other young adults yearning to escape the economic gloom of 1970s Britain, she was drawn east to the hedonistic world of hippie Asia blissfully unaware of the nightmarish ordeal that awaited her. Within months, the village postmaster's daughter had been ensnared by one of the most infamous criminals of the 20th century. The true story of how evil charmer Charles Sobhraj preyed on young backpackers along South-East Asia's hippie trail is the subject of the BBC's new crime drama The Serpent. This week, television viewers have been binge-watching the eight-part series about the serial killer, played by French actor Tahar Rahim, immersing themselves in the heady world of 1970s Thailand, India and Nepal, where Sobhraj picked off his victims drugging, poisoning and dumping their bodies with casual ease. He is known to have killed at least 12 people but the true tally is believed to be at least double that number. What fans of the drama may be surprised to learn, however, is that it was thanks largely to a young British woman that the psychopath was finally put behind bars. This week, television viewers have been binge-watching the eight-part series about serial killer Charles Sobhraj, played by French actor Tahar Rahim, immersing themselves in the heady world of 1970s Thailand, India and Nepal, where Sobhraj picked off his victims The story of how Barbara Sheryl Smith, whose father ran the village post office at Barton Stacey in Hampshire, met Sobhraj and, for a while, fell under his spell, has never fully been told until now. This week the Mail tracked down the 64-year-old, who now lives hundreds of miles from Hampshire. For her own safety Sobhraj's criminal underworld connections linger to this day we have decided not to reveal her whereabouts or her new name. Asked about her role in the Serpent case, she said: 'I just want to leave it all in the past, where it belongs.' A close relative described Barbara's time in jail as 'an episode in her life she has never said much about'. He added: 'We heard she had got into some sort of bother in India because she contacted her dad for financial help. 'He went out there to try to sort things out and when she agreed to give evidence against Sobhraj we hoped she would come back. 'We were surprised they kept her in jail because they thought there was a chance she would abscond.' The relative recalled meeting Barbara after she finally returned to the UK in 1978. 'I asked her what had happened but she clammed up,' he said. 'She looked very uncomfortable and clearly didn't want to talk about it.' Now Barbara is grey-haired and bespectacled, her neighbours would be amazed to know about the crucial role she played in Charles Sobhraj's downfall. It was her evidence, after she bravely agreed to work with prosecutors, that put an end to his 13-year killing spree, after she was unwittingly used as 'bait' to lure in his last known victim, a young French traveller in India. Sobhraj was a French national born to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother in what was then Saigon. Raised in France and Vietnam, he became involved in theft and petty crime as a teenager, moving on to commit serious fraud, robbery and murder. Sobhraj was a French national born to an Indian father and a Vietnamese mother in what was then Saigon. Raised in France and Vietnam, he became involved in theft and petty crime as a teenager, moving on to commit serious fraud, robbery and murder Most of his victims were carefree young men and women who had journeyed to Asia from France, Holland, Israel and the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their passports, travellers' cheques and cash allowed him to fund a glamorous lifestyle and to travel under different aliases. His ability to evade detection by police across Asia eventually earned him the nickname The Serpent. But he was also known as the Bikini Killer because some female victims were discovered in their swimwear. The bodies of others were found burned and dumped by the roadside. In 1976 alone he killed ten travellers. Among the dozens of unwitting backpackers who were befriended by Sobhraj and his beautiful French Quebecoise girlfriend, played by British actress Jenna Coleman in the series, was Barbara Smith. Barbara was born in Karachi in 1956, where her father was working for the Pakistani company Aeroradio. The previous year, Eric Smith had been awarded the MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for his work on radar. When her family returned to the UK, Barbara, still a schoolgirl, won a place at a girls' grammar school. After A- levels she found work as a research assistant in Southampton but became restless and quit her job so she could travel to Asia. By the time Barbara met Sobhraj in Mumbai in the summer of 1976, he was already wanted by Interpol for murders in Thailand and Nepal as well as in France. He was adept at spotting vulnerability in his victims and those he groomed as bit-part accomplices, and Barbara was a perfect target. When she was introduced to Sobhraj by a Belgian traveller with whom she had become friends, she was struggling to get by. Her parents later claimed all her money had been stolen. Sobhraj, posing as a wealthy gem dealer and calling himself 'Daniel', offered her a place to stay and she fell under his spell, finding herself dragged into his circle of associates. Sobhraj used his grateful acolytes to draw in potential robbery victims in the hope of taking their money and passports, which he adapted using his own photograph so he could slip between countries undetected. Many of those who worked for him had no idea at first what he was up to, believing Sobhraj wanted to be introduced to wealthy Europeans who would buy his gems or help him get them back to Europe. By the time many realised the truth, they were being paid by him. Such was his Svengali-like hold, they felt a mixture of gratitude and fear that kept them under his control. According to documents from the time, Barbara was unwittingly used as 'honeytrap' bait by Sobhraj. An attractive brunette, she wore her long hair parted in the middle and embraced the hippie flower-girl look of the time. Sobhraj had promised a night with her to a young French traveller, Jean-Luc Solomon. It was a tactic he would use time and again. After inviting Jean-Luc to join them for dinner one night in June 1976, Sobhraj slipped drugs into the Frenchman's chicken curry and, when he was unconscious, robbed him. He was found by hotel maids the next morning and taken to hospital, where he later died. Barbara Smith was just 22 years old when she left Hampshire behind and set off for India on what was meant to be the trip of a lifetime This murder was just the tip of the iceberg. Sobhraj, already wanted for crimes in Thailand and Nepal, was desperate for cash so he could flee to South America. He ordered his young associates to find him more victims. A 1979 book entitled On The Trail Of The Serpent, by journalists Richard Neville and Julie Clarke, includes Barbara in a trio of young women described as Sobhraj's 'new 'family' of accomplices'. The group moved on to the Indian city of Agra in hope of finding more victims at the Taj Mahal. Barbara found herself caught up in one of Sobhraj's most audacious robbery plots which proved his undoing when it went badly wrong when he drugged an entire group of engineering students and their leaders from Tarbes, in France. Sobhraj had befriended the group, and, warning them of the perils of dysentery, offered to give them drugs to prevent it. The capsules, which according to Neville and Clarke's book he had previously tested on Barbara, were a crude mixture of sleeping pills and laxatives. Sobhraj met the group for dinner at the Vikram hotel in Delhi and handed over the tablets, telling them to take them straight away. But instead of falling into a deep sleep, 20 of his would-be victims began vomiting and collapsing. There was pandemonium in the dining room, the police arrived and Sobhraj was arrested. Over the next few days, his accomplices were also taken into custody. Although Barbara agreed to give evidence against Sobhraj, to ensure she didn't leave the country before she could appear at his trial, she was locked up in prison with another of Sobhraj's former associates, a 27-year-old nurse from Sydney called Mary Ellen Eather. Eather also agreed to give evidence for the prosecution, then panicked and changed her mind in the witness box when she found herself face to face with Sobhraj. During the two years the women spent in prison, they took an overdose after befriending a female prison doctor and stealing barbiturates from the medical store. A letter found in their cell in May 1977 said they were depressed about the conditions in their cell and the length of time they had been held. They were taken unconscious to hospital but both recovered in time for Sobhraj's trial in Delhi in July 1977. Julie Clarke, co-author of On The Trail Of The Serpent, saw Barbara in the packed courtroom on the opening day. She was wearing traditional Indian dress and had a sprig of jasmine in her hair as she told the court what she knew about Sobhraj. Barbara was pardoned and released from prison in July 1978, telling her parents she planned to travel home overland because, after two years in prison, to return by air would be too great a shock. Speaking to a Sunday newspaper at the time, her stepmother, Norma, described her as the 'chief prosecution witness' at Sobhraj's trial. 'Barbara was the only one the prosecution could use to give evidence against him,' she said. She later went to university, married and had children. The Serpent's Bafta-nominated director, Tom Shankland, told me this week that he had also been gripped by Barbara's story when he began developing the series. 'When we were still in development I was very keen,' he recalled. 'I said: 'There's this fantastic young British woman who was under massive pressure from Sobhraj not to shop him. And she was with an Australian woman who didn't turn on Sobhraj but Barbara did. And I thought, 'wow, you're young and under all that pressure. You're so interesting'. But there wasn't time to get into the nitty-gritty of the trial. 'We cover a lot of territory in the series but there is so much more to explore and I think her story in itself would be amazing.' Barbara was not the only Briton caught up with Sobhraj. A British drug dealer who met the killer in prison later helped mastermind his daredevil escape from Tihar maximum security prison complex in Delhi in March 1986. Sobhraj was coming to the end of his ten-year sentence but knew he faced extradition to Thailand, where he would, in all likelihood, have faced the death penalty for murders he committed there. In a plot that could have come straight from a Hollywood movie, 28-year-old David Richard Hall was allowed by guards to drive into the prison, where Sobhraj, who had ingratiated himself with staff and inmates, was holding early birthday celebrations. Hall brought bunches of grapes, plates of fruit custard and spiked sweets which were used to drug the guards, the warden and the assistant superintendent, who had been invited to join in the revels. When they regained consciousness half an hour later, they found that Sobhraj and six other prisoners had escaped in Hall's car. Three weeks later, undercover police posing as waiters captured Sobhraj and Hall after laying a trap at a seafood restaurant in Goa. Sobhraj was sent back to prison and forced to serve extra time for his escape. By the time he was released in 1997, the Thai extradition order had expired. Hall was also jailed. Hall's whereabouts are unknown. Sobhraj's jailbreak also prompted Indian authorities to try to extradite a third Briton. Gordon Greenall, a 31-year-old from Haverhill in Suffolk, was accused of being involved in a plot to assassinate witnesses in the UK. After an extradition hearing in London in 1987, the case against him was dropped for lack of evidence. After being released from prison in Delhi in 1997, Sobhraj enjoyed several years of freedom in France before in 2003 in an act of self- sabotage he travelled to Nepal, despite knowing he was still wanted there for murder. Some say he couldn't cope with freedom and craved the attention of another run-in with the law. The 76-year-old is now languishing in a Nepalese prison cell. Back in Barton Stacey, there are families who still remember the Smith family vividly but, strangely, none of them recall Barbara's role in the dramatic murder trial. One villager who knew the family confessed she was 'stunned' to hear Eric Smith's daughter was connected to The Serpent. Asked why she thought he never mentioned the fact, she said simply: 'I suppose it's not the sort of thing you brag about.' Ashland Zions Reformed United Church of Christ, 2400 Centre St., will have a free soup-and-sandwich lunch for the community from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20. It holds the lunches on the third Wednesday of every month. For more information, call Samantha Pogash at 570-875-2700. Hometown Marian High School is inviting the local community to its eighth annual polar plunge on Jan. 30 at Mauch Chunk Lake Park, Jim Thorpe, a fundraiser for the Catholic high school. Event participants, according to a release, may plunge into the icy waters, or register as a chicken for $35 per person (plunger or chicken) or $25 for Marian students. Spectators are welcome at no cost. Masks and social distancing will be required. Registration will begin at 10 a.m. at the lakes beach area and the first wave of plungers will enter the water at noon. The event will have live local radio coverage. For more information, or to register, go to www.mariancatholichs.org. Pottsville A general meeting of the Pottsville Rotary Club will be held via Zoom on Jan. 27. Bill Parulis, who edits the club bulletin, said invitations will be sent via email. Due to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, in-person club meetings have been suspended. Shenandoah Dalton Babcock is the director of the Shenandoah Area Free Public Library, Washington and Main streets, according to the library website at www2.iu29.org/shenandoahpl. The board of trustees includes Mary Ellen Matunis, president; Julie Buchinsky, vice president; Mary Ann Mickelonis, secretary; Mary Luscavage, treasurer. Board members include Eve Bauser, Andrea Pytak, Eric Becker, Angie Salvadore and borough representative John Thomas. People may reach the library via email at shenfpl@ptd.net or by calling 570-462-9829. This editorial appears in the January 15, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. EDITORIAL The Invasion of the U.S. Capitol: Color Revolution or September 11th? [Print version of this editorial] This editorial was translated from the German by EIR. Jan. 9The video reportage on the intrusion of a few hundred demonstrators into the Capitol in Washington on January 6 shows disturbing scenes. During the live broadcast of the session of Congress, which was about the confirmation of the Electoral Colleges decision in the election of the next President, one could see the camera view shift from the meeting to the entrance of the building, to a group of intruders entering the buildingintruders who came in relatively relaxed and without being hindered by the police officers present. They had an incredible two hours to rummage through elected officials offices without security forces intervening. The new Senate Majority Leader, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, whose closeness to the secret services is legend (and who famously warned Trump on MSNBC that the secret services would have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you if defied), spoke immediately of a desecration of this temple to democracy and characterized the events as an uprising against the United States, incited by the President. The President must not hold office for another day, he demanded, and must be removed immediately by the Vice-President and cabinet on the basis of the 25th Amendment; and if they refuse, Congress must meet to initiate impeachment. A chorus of Atlanticist politicians and media representatives unhesitatingly agreed to this reading of things, reinforced by another chorus of Democrats such as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, Ben Rhodes (former advisor to Obama), and Michael McFaul (ex-U.S. Ambassador to Moscow), who promptly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for the events. The course of events is absolutely monstrous; the potential consequences can become existential for the question of war or peace. With all the hysteria and excitement, it is urgent to ask the question, cui bono: what did the riots in the U.S. Capitol achieve? Narrative vs. Reality First of all, the first and only chance that the two chambers of Congress, the American people, and the world public could get comprehensive information about the various irregularities and manipulations in the Presidential election which occurred on November 3 in at least six swing states, was destroyed. There are over a thousand eyewitnesses to this electoral fraud and it has been the subject of hearings in the respective state legislatures, but this does not prevent the political establishment and the international media from repeating ad nauseam that, contrary to Trumps claims, there is not the slightest evidence for this election fraud. Relatively soon after the debate in the two chambers of Congress began on January 6, in which the results and controversies regarding the six contested states were to be debated in alphabetical ordernamely, discussion of the results of Arizona firstthe rioters broke through the barriers and began their expedition through the offices and halls of Congress. The meeting was broken off, government officials and representatives of the people were brought to safety, and when the meeting resumed a few hours later, there was no resumption of the intended debate on the electoral irregularities. Instead, the official narrative was spread on both sides of the Atlantic that Trump was responsible for the attack on Congress because of his insistence on the existence of massive electoral fraud. And this is exactly where the deception lies. It is true that Trump has made countless declarations since November 3, alleging election fraud. It is also true that he tried to mobilize his supporters, asserting that January 6 would be the big day when this fraud would have to be corrected with the help of representatives of the House and Senate. And it is also true that in his speech to the crowd, he listed the various election frauds and then asked the demonstrators at the end of his speech: Lets walk down Pennsylvania Avenue! But to derive from this remark that he was responsible for the attack on the Capitol, is absolutely wrongit indicates an entirely different authorship. Even if the investigation can by no means be complete, an investigation of video recordings and eyewitness reports from participants in the rally, as well as a consideration of the absolutely astonishing lack of security measures, gives a completely different picture: Some probably authentic video recordings clearly show that people dressed in black tried forcibly to gain entry into the outer area of the Capitol and that another group of people shielded these rioters so that normal demonstrators could not get to them. Numerous eyewitnesses report that strange minibuses with people dressed in black, but also people with Trump-MAGA hats (Make America Great Again), suddenly joined the rally, who clearly stood out from the peaceful demonstrators. Other participants in the demonstration report that at one point a group of 12-15 men made their way through the crowd shouting: Lets burn the place down; but only a few demonstrators allowed themselves to be caught up in this, while those who distanced themselves from it were in turn molested. Everything indicates that these professional-acting provocateurs are the same phenomenon that Nelson Mandela described in South Africa as the third force that induced tribal clashes aimed at discrediting the ANC. This is the same modus operandi according to which the snipers in the coup in Kiev in February 2014 fired on both sides from occupied buildings, i.e., at both the demonstrators and the police. Various comments in the Chinese and Russian media, among others, have indicated that the U.S.A. has now received a mild form of the same medicine that it had previously orchestrated and celebrated during similar uprisings in Serbia in 2000, in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014, as well as in Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, or in 2011 with the Arab Spring. The Chinese press has underscored Speaker Pelosis double standard of describing the Hong Kong uprising as a beautiful sight to behold. Such assessments miss the point, the real character of this drama. Perhaps former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had a better idea when he told Interfax that these riots were apparently planned in advance and that the masterminds were obvious. The official bodies, who were responsible for ensuring that the security precautions were invitingly lax in view of the expected large-scale demonstration, belong in any case to the first line of suspects. Fighting the Real Dangers There is every reason to believe that the assault on the Capitol is a direct continuation of the 9/11 attacks, the real masterminds of which have never really been named. Lyndon LaRouche had presciently predicted this terrorist act nine months earlier, on January 3, 2001, by predicting that the Bush Administration, which would take office three weeks later, would stage a Reichstag fire incident due to its inability to deal with the coming financial meltdown, as a pretext to implement dictatorial measures. This is exactly what happened with the introduction of the Patriot Act, which largely curtailed civil rights, not only for Americans, and which set in motion worldwide mass surveillance by the NSA, GCHQ, etc. In the same fashion, the riot at the Capitol is intended to provide the pretext to eliminate any dissent towards the policies of the neoliberal establishment. Significantly, Michele Obama immediately afterwards urged Silicon Valley IT giants, who are an integral part of the military-industrial complex, to ban Trump and all supporters of the January 6 events from social media. The alarm bells must ring for all people who hold dear the constitutional state, freedom of expression, and civil rights. What this is about is a total dictatorship over opinion and the elimination of any political opposition to the policies of the transatlantic financial elite. The financial system, dominated by Wall Street and the City of London, has been hopelessly bankrupt since 2008, and ever since then has only been maintained by a massive increase in liquidity and a gigantic redistribution of wealth in favor of speculators. The last phase of this mega-fraud at the expense of the common good is now to be set in motion with the so-called Great Reset, in which, under the pretext of realigning the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, all financial flows are to be directed exclusively into the Green New Deal, which will lead to unprecedented de-industrialization and an associated population reduction. The enforced conformity of the media, and censorship of social media, is meant to eliminate any opposition to this intended dictatorship in the tradition of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitlers Minister of Economics. The world knows better: We are in acute danger of a new fascism! The only alternative to this dictatorship, which would lead to the economic destruction of the West and thus the danger of war against Russia and China, is a comprehensive reorganization of the financial system through the establishment of a New Bretton Woods system, the implementation of Lyndon LaRouches Four Laws as well as cooperation with Russia and China in the expansion of the New Silk Road in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Citizens of all nations who understand the gravity of the situation are called upon to implement this solution. zepp-larouche@eir.de The video and still photographs of the Capitol insurrection are almost surreal in their horror. Those images will haunt many of us for the rest of our lives. Ill never manage to unsee that video of a District of Columbia police officer lying helpless on the ground while being beaten by a rioter with a flagpole that bears an American flag, the symbol of our nation. While the officer was being beaten, other rioters excitedly chanted U-S-A! to express their approval of this barbaric attack. The thugs who so gleefully assaulted the police in our nations capitol were urged on by Donald Trump who, during his re-election campaign, depicted himself as the law and order candidate. During one of his debates with Biden, Trump stated, The people of this country want and demand law and order. Theres an Orwellian quality about followers of a self-proclaimed law and order president beating up police officers. Such a paradox really shouldnt surprise us, though. Trumps entire presidency has been an exercise in Orwellianism. This assault by Trumps followers on police officers becomes even more ironic when we recall that the Fraternal Order of Police, our nations largest police union with 355,000 members around the nation, last autumn endorsed Trump for re-election. Patrick Yoes, the unions president, stated the Fraternal Order of Police is proud to endorse a candidate who calls for law and order across our nation. Im still waiting to hear this union express regret for endorsing a sitting president whose fiery tweets encouraged his fanatical followers to descend on our nations capitol to protest non-existent election fraud. Did Trumps Jan. 6 speech encourage followers to launch an assault on the Capitol? An examination of its text reveals numerous allusions to violence. Republicans, Trump told the throng, have been fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. Republicans want to be so nice and respectful of everybody, including bad people. Rather than being so nice, Republicans should instead fight much harder. Were going to walk down to the capitol andcheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. Trump and his followers define brave senators and representatives as those who publicly echo their lie that election fraud occurred. He admonished the crowd that youll never take back your country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. He blatantly implied the non-existent election fraud negated their responsibility to obey the law. When you catch someone in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules, he said. Trump and his horde expected Pence to reject the state-certified Electoral College results. I hope Mike (Pence) has the courage to do what he has to do, he stated. Pence refused to follow Trumps command, and the mob that stormed the capitol chanted Hang Mike Pence! A makeshift gallows was indeed constructed outside the capitol building. Pence wasnt the mobs only intended target In the days leading up to the rally. The following caption appeared with an image of a noose on Parler: Who would you like to see dispatched first? 1) Nancy Pelosi 2) John Roberts 3) Pence 4) other (please name). I was leaning towards Nancy, but it might have to be Pence. Biden, Trump told his true believers, stole the election and would be an illegitimate president and we cant let that happen. Only the fake news media, which Trump again called the enemy of the people, reports that no election fraud occurred, he told the crowd. If you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore, he warned. And fight like hell they did, just as Trump demanded. Trump incited an insurrection. He is a disgrace to our nation and unfit to serve as our president. John J. Dunphy is an author, the Godfrey 15th Precinct Democratic Committeeperson and recording secretary for the Godfrey Democrats. A leading virologist said one type of the strain had been found and had likely reached British shores some time ago. The revelation comes after Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he was not aware of any cases of the new South American mutations in Britain. Professor Wendy Barclay, who is advising the Governments pandemic response, said on Friday: There are two different types of Brazilian variants and one of them has been detected and one of them has not. She later clarified: The new Brazilian variant of concern, that was picked up in travellers going to Japan, has NOT been detected in the UK. Other variants that may have originated from Brazil have been previously found. Shapps details South American travel ban The scientist, who is leading a new project set up to study the effects of emerging Covid mutations explained: In the databases, if you search the sequences, you will see that there is some some evidence for variants from around the world and, I believe, including the Brazilian one, which probably was introduced some time ago. That will be being traced very carefully. The Imperial College expert said both Brazilian variants the one which was detected in Japan and the other which is more prevalent in Brazil currently have mutations that suggest they might impact the way that some peoples antibodies can see the virus. It is really important that we carry out this work now, and carry it out carefully, and in several different laboratories, to really firm up those results because they have big implications, she stressed. Prof Barclays assessment came just hours after the Government enforced a travel ban on arrivals from across South America. The ban, which also covers the Central American state of Panama and Portugal due to its strong travel links with Brazil and the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, came into force at 4am on Friday. Scientists analysing the Brazilian strain believe the mutations it shares with the new South African strain are associated with a rapid increase in cases in locations where there have already been large outbreaks of the disease. British and Irish nationals and others with residence rights are exempted from the measures that were backed by the Scottish and Welsh governments, though they must self-isolate for 10 days along with their households on their return. Travel to UK from all of South America and Portugal banned over Covid variant Mr Shapps described the ban as a precautionary measure to ensure the vaccination programme rolling out across the UK was not disrupted by new variants of the virus. Asked if the Brazilian strain was currently in the country, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Friday morning: Not as far as we are aware, I think, at this stage. There havent been any flights that I can see from the last week from Brazil, for example. Meanwhile, Dr Mike Tildesley, an epidemiologist and scientific adviser to the Government, said the UK was late in imposing travel restrictions but that these should minimise the risk from the more transmissible variant. We always have this issue with travel bans of course, that were always a little bit behind the curve, he told BBC Breakfast. My understanding is that there havent really been any flights coming from Brazil for about the past week, so hopefully the immediate travel ban should really minimise the risk. Dr Tildesley said although scientists dont believe there is anything to worry about in terms of vaccine efficacy, the higher transmissibility could mean people potentially might end up developing severe symptoms more rapidly which could cause more issues with our health service. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... PHOENIX The Arizona National Guard has no orders to send units to the nations Capitol to assist with security during the presidential inauguration next week, an Arizona National Guard spokesman said Friday. In the wake of the breach of the U.S. Capitol last week, National Guards from multiple states are sending thousands of soldiers to Washington to help provide security for the inauguration. However, the only Arizona personnel going are approximately25 individual volunteers, mostly Air National Guard personnel, to help with administrative and support roles related to the inauguration itself, Maj. Kyle Key told The Associated Press. Its a tradition because the inauguration is a national security event. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn in on Wednesday. Key said the 300 soldiers belonging to the Arizona National Guards two companies of military police are training while on standby and are ready to deploy within two hours if needed. They train every day. Theyre at the ready. They can deploy, Key said of the two companies. One of the two companies has been designated as the Army National Guards quick reaction force for the western half of the country. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ The Automobile Association (AA) is predicting a steep increase in the prices of petrol, diesel and paraffin for February 2021. Image by andreas160578 from Pixabay Based on unaudited mid-month fuel price data released by the Central Energy Fund, the AA estimates petrol will increase by 80 cents a litre, diesel will increase of around 61 cents a litre, and illuminating paraffin for an increase of 63 cents."The problem is international oil prices, which have been consistently climbing with each passing day," the AA says. "A general increase in positive sentiment as Covid-19 vaccines are rolled out has combined with upticks in global economic activity, pushing up demand for oil - and taking prices with it."Thankfully, we have the current Rand/US Dollar exchange rate which has been relatively stable. "Despite some wild swings in the daily exchange rate, and the average rate creeping up from around R14.60 to just over R15, only four cents of the substantial predicted increases come from Rand weakness.""With the Rand relatively strong by recent standards, the only hope for a reprieve relies on a pullback by oil. Unfortunately, the trend lines suggest that the situation may deteriorate further before month-end," the AA concludes. 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. According to a DNA release sent on Friday to AGERPRES, the DNA prosecutors ordered the criminal investigation against the suspect Calin Constantin Anton Popescu-Tariceanu for bribe taking, at the date of the deed having been the prime minister of Romania.The anti-corruption prosecutors note in the ordinance that Tariceanu, as prime minister, allegedly received, indirectly, in the period 2007-2008, from the representatives of an Austrian company, material benefits in the amount of 800,000 dollars, consisting in the payment of consultancy services."In exchange, he exercised his duties so that a series of government decisions would be adopted in favor of the company. The amount of 800,000 dollars, representing a commission from the value of the payments made by the Romanian state to the company, was used for the benefit of the dignitary, to cover some expenses of the electoral campaign, being transferred on the basis of fictitious contracts concluded with several offshore companies", say the investigators.According to DNA, this case was opened in 2018, by joining three criminal cases, one of which was taken over by DNA prosecutors at the request of the Austrian judicial authorities."After the rejection, on June 3, 2019, of the initial request for approval of the criminal investigation by the Senate (institution invested with the solution considering the senator capacity of Calin Popescu-Tariceanu at that time), the prosecutors made, in the same file, criminal investigation in facts and in other persons," the release reads.As a result of the administration of additional evidence, there were elements of novelty that outlined the state of affairs mentioned above with reference to the former dignitary."In order to confiscate the object of the bribe taking offense, in this case a lien on real estate belonging to Calin Popescu-Tariceanu was ordered, up to the amount of 800,000 dollars, equivalent in lei - 3,204,640 lei," the prosecutors mention. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 00:44:07|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close PARIS, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- French Minister for the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire said on Friday he opposed a proposed takeover by Canadian convenience store group Alimentation Couche-Tard of French grocery giant Carrefour, citing food security as a strategic interest. "My answer is extremely clear: we are not in favor of the deal. The 'no' is polite but it's a clear and final 'no'," he told French cable channel BFM TV. "It is my role to defend the strategic interests of the country," he said. "Food security is strategic for our country so that's why we don't sell a big French retailer." Le Maire described Carrefour as France's largest private employer with more than 100,000 workers, which is responsible for nearly 20 percent of food distribution in the country. Under French legislation on foreign investments, which includes strict takeover rules to protect companies deemed strategic, the government can refuse to authorize an investment if the conditions imposed are not respected. The decree, signed in July 2020, covers the fields of national defense, artificial intelligence, microchips, space technology and the retail sector. "We have the legal instrument at our disposal, I would rather not have to use it," Le Maire said. Earlier this week, Alimentation Couche-Tard submitted a non-binding offer of 20 euros (24.24 U.S. dollars) per share for Carrefour, valuing the French retailer at 16.2 billion euros. (1 euro = 1.21 U.S. dollar) Enditem Highlights Xiaomi is under increased scrutiny by US government. US govt has added Xiaomi to a new investment list. Investment in Xiaomi by US firms could seriously be impacted. The United States government has added new names to their infamous list of blacklisted companies. The Trump administration has reportedly added nine Chinese firms to the blacklist of companies with alleged links with the Chinese military. Interestingly, this list includes big names such as mobile phone maker Xiaomi. This information has been revealed by a report by Reuters which claims to have accessed internal documents that show the name of the phone maker along with other big firms such as Comac also added to the list. The report will come as bad news for Xiaomi as its name on this blacklist would mean that it would face difficulties doing business with companies in the United States under Section 1237 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 (Public Law 105-261). Interestingly, the list by the US Department of Defense classifies the list as "Communist Chinese military companies." It is also important to note that this list is different from the Commerce Department's Entity List that the United States' government had put Huawei in. Unlike that list, this one only puts Xiaomi under the scanner and American investors officially asked to "refrain" from dealing with them. However, there is no ban on dealings with them -- something that Huawei had to face last year. Xiaomi responds Reacting to the development, a Xiaomi spokesperson said, "The Company has been in compliance with the law and operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses. The Company reiterates that it provides products and services for civilian and commercial use. The Company confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a 'Communist Chinese Military Company' defined under the NDAA. The Company will take an appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the Company and its shareholders... The Company is reviewing the potential consequences of this to develop a fuller understanding of its impact on the Group. The Company will make further announcements as and when appropriate" How this 'ban' could affect Xiaomi While Xiaomi denies all charges leveled at it, this move by the United States' government complicates things for the tech giant as US companies will now be actively pushed to disinvest in Xiaomi and cut their dealing with the Beijing-based company. Among others, this will directly impact its business with Qualcomm Ventures, one of the many US-based companies that either have or plan to invest in Xiaomi. The US government's move to add Xiaomi to this list also means that Xiaomi could face further pressure in the future, and if things go south, they could end up on the same list that Huawei currently finds itself in. However, going forward much will depend on the incoming Biden administration which may or may not decide to take a more lenient approach towards Chinese companies like Xiaomi. FRANKFORT, Ky., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Medical Glove added 24-production line's, tripling production capacity in the Spring of 2021 of U.S. made medical examination gloves. The 15-million-dollar "U.S. Medical Glove Houston Hub" is the first of five planned advanced manufacturing facilities underway across the United States in addition to the U.S. Medical Glove Research & Development factory in Kentucky. "This is a game changer," said Maj. Gen. Mike Davidson, Co-founder and CEO of U.S. Medical Glove. "We are moving at the speed of the problem and people are stepping forward." Each U.S. Medical Glove Company "Hub" produces 200 million gloves per month and creates 200 jobs generating millions in local economic activity. Nitrile Gloves have become a hotbed of corruption and theft as a scarce commodity under control of foreign ownership. U.S. Medical Glove's roll-out of next generation technology, including sensors used to make gloves, remote monitoring and tracking for just in time delivery are critical in bringing next generation manufacturing to the U.S. Plastic pollution has increased in the medical products sector and Nitrile Gloves are well-suited for conversion to biopolymers that can serve as a springboard to broader applications of the biopolymer across many industries. US Medical Glove Company "Liberty Glove" USMGC "Liberty Glove" is 100% Berry Amendment compliant 100% of raw material manufactured in USA 100% of paper is American paper and medical grade 100% of ink is American made and water soluble New packaging dispensing with dust cover Each USMGC Hub offers high-paying jobs for Americans, employee-ownership and serves as a critical piece of U.S. national security. U.S. Medical Glove Company is committed to provide our front-line warriors, health care workers, essential personnel and our citizens with world-class products. Cushman Wakefield has been retained to select four additional U.S. Medical Glove Company factory locations. For more information on U.S. Medical Glove Co., visit www.usmedicalglove.com SOURCE U.S. Medical Glove Company Related Links https://www.usmedicalglove.com 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. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Representatives of farmers told the Centre on Friday that the four-member committee formed by the Supreme Court to redress their grievances on new farm laws was "not acceptable" to them though they will continue to hold parleys. "During our meeting with the government representatives, we made it clear that the committee formed by the Supreme Court is not acceptable. The farmers will however continue to hold talks with the Centre and try to find out a solution to their demands through dialogue," Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait said after lunch break in the ongoing 9th round of talks with central Ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, and Minister of State Som Prakash. Earlier, farmer leaders began another meeting with the three Union Ministers at the Vigyan Bhavan here. In the afternoon, they partook of lunch brought at the venue by Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee. Tikait said that discussion on their demands for repeal of the three new farm laws and a legal assurance on Minimum Support Price (MSP) for agricultural crops will take place after lunch. "I can't say for how long the meeting will continue. However, the meeting is taking place in a very good environment," he said. This is the first meeting after the Supreme Court on January 12 suspended the three farm laws and formed the four-member committee of experts. Bhupinder Singh Mann, one of the members, has since withdrawn from the committee. Earlier in the morning, ahead of the commencement of the ninth round of talks, Tikait had warned that the farmer leaders would walk out of the meeting in case the government remained stuck on its earlier position on the three farm laws. "If the government is afraid of fulfilling the demands of the farmers on the central farm laws, there is no point in continuing the dialogue," he had told IANS. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Apple isnt exactly known for its low prices. The iPhone X was the first handset to cost more than a thousand bucks, the wheels for the Mac Pro cost $699, and just last month it launched a $549 pair of AirPods. Heck, it sells a charger that isnt even very good for $129. But when it comes to its phones, Apple consistently gets it right. Its true that the most expensive iPhone 12 tops out at $1,399, but for the most part, the iPhone 12 is very attainable, even with 5G and OLED displays across the board. When compared to the top flagship phones of 2020, in fact, the iPhone 12 slides in well under the average premium Android handset. Michael Simon/IDG At $829, the iPhone 12 isnt cheap, but compared to a $1,300 phone like the Galaxy Note 20 it seems like a bargain. But with the launch of the Galaxy S21 this week, it seems as though Samsung has finally caught on. After years of piling on features and specs in an effort to distance its flagship handsets from the iPhone, Samsung has fully embraced Apples strategy with the iPhone, not just cutting the price to match the iPhone 12s price tag but also distilling the S21 down to its most essential parts in a sort of reboot of the lower end of the line. Lowering the price and the parts Last years cheap Galaxy S20 started at $1,000 and brought a bevy of ultra-high-end features you couldnt get in the iPhone 11: 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 120Hz Quad HD+ screen, triple cameras, microSD storage, etc. Its not so much that the Galaxy S21 isnt a high-end Android phone, but like the iPhone 12, it makes certain spec-sheet compromises that add value without degrading the experience. Theres a reason why Apple doesnt list specs for RAM, battery capacity, or clock speed in the iPhone spec sheettheyre unnecessary. Apple doesnt need to wow its users with specs. Rather, it strives to deliver the best possible iPhone experience with the bare-minimum parts. Samsung The S21s back is made of plastic rather than glass this year. And the S21 does something similar. Take a look at the specs compared to its predecessor, the S20: Galaxy S21 Galaxy S20 Display: 6.2-inch Edge Quad HD+ Infinity-O Display (32001440), 563 ppi, 120Hz Processor: Snapdragon 865 RAM: 12GB Storage: 128GB Battery: 4,000mAh Aside from the storage and the battery, the S21 is a seeming downgrade from the S20, with less RAM and lower resolution. Its also made of plastic, versus the S20s all-glass design. But to judge the S21 on its specs is to miss the point. Samsung has finally realized that the spec battle is a losing one. They built a phone that delivers on value rather than numbers. Some people will grouse about losing out on the best features but most people wont even realize their phone has fewer pixels or less RAM. Quite frankly, they might not even notice that its made of plastic. What they will notice is that its $200 cheaper than last year, the first time prices have decreased in years. Theyll also notice that it looks the same as the S21+ and S21 Ultra, shares the same processor and software, and takes fantastic pictures. Thats another way Samsung has followed Apples lead: the camera. Rather than increase megapixels or add lenses for the sake of it, Samsung has kept the same triple-camera hardware on the S21 as it had on the S20, instead working behind the scenes to deliver improvements in the most important areas: portraits and low-light photos. Android iPhone 12 is here For $800, the Galaxy S21 is truly Androids answer to the iPhone 12. More than the Pixel 5, OnePlus 8T, or even the Galaxy S20 FE, the S21 delivers a purely distilled premium Galaxy experience in a surprisingly affordable package, trimming corners rather than cutting them, and sacrificing very little of what people need. Samsung Samsung still makes a family of phones, but the S21 is likely to be the most popular. And like the iPhone 12 Pro Max, if you want the best of the best, the Galaxy S21 Ultra still exists, with a Quad HD+ 6.8-inch display, 12GB or 16GB of RAM, and S Pen support. But for the masses, the S21 will more than suffice, especially when the price inevitably drops to $700 or less. Previous Samsung Galaxy S phones were always among the best phones of the year, but they havent seemed like a good value in years. The S21 changes that, hopefully for good. But mimicking what Apple does best with the iPhone 12, Samsung has created one of the best Android values in years, delivering premium looks and performance in an affordable package. Its no secret that Samsung has been trying to replicate Apples success for years, throwing all sorts of things at the wall to see what sticks. After 11 years, it might have finally found something that works. Tamil Nadu elections 2021: Nadda emphasises on Centres measures for state India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Chennai, Jan 15: BJP chief J P Nadda underlined his party-led Central government's commitment for poll-bound Tamil Nadu's welfare and listed Centre's various measures taken for the state, including sanctioning of an All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Chennai-Bengaluru defence corridor. Participating in the 'Namma Ooru Pongal' celebrations, organised by the party's state unit on the occasion of the harvest festival, Nadda asked cadres to ensure that Centre's campaign of 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' also works in Tamil Nadu. His visit assumes significance as the state assembly polls are likely in April-May. Clad in traditional white shirt and dhoti, Nadda was accorded a warm welcome by party functionaries led by State president L Murugan at the airport. Speaking briefly in Tamil initially, Nadda said Tamil Nadu was a land of saints and sages who have contributed to humanity and the state has got a rich culture. "I remember Saint Thiruvalluvar's contribution which is not only to Tamil Nadu but to the whole country. Tamil is the world's oldest language and Tamil Nadu is proud of it." Lovely experience to see Tamil culture in action: Rahul Gandhi on Jallikattu "In the same way, famous Kings of Cheras, Cholas, Pandiyas, Pallavas have contributed in the development of Tamil Nadu," he said. Religious sentiments have also been taken care of by religious leaders and saints. "I always say that all the 63 Nayanmars (saivite saints) and 12 Alwars (Vaishnavite saints) are from the land of Tamil Nadu which we have to remember. We feel proud of it," he said. On the role of Tamil Nadu in the independence movement, he recalled the valiant efforts of freedom fighters like 'Tirupur' Kumaran, Subramanya Bharathi, Velunachiyar, and V O Chidambaram Pillai. Referring to Tamil poet Kaniyan Poongundranar's lines 'Yathum Oorae, Yavarum keleer' (we belong to all places, and to everyone), Nadda said India was proud when Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to these lines in the United Nations assembly. "That is the love and affection which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has for Tamil Nadu. Time and again he speaks about the poets and poems of Tamil Nadu at the international forums," he said. On initiative for the state's welfare, he said the Centre has taken care of Tamil Nadu so that it takes a big leap in development. "...The 13th Finance Commission during UPA government gave Rs 94,000 crore to Tamil Nadu for development. But the 14th Finance Commission under the NDA government gave Rs 5.42 lakh crore...this shows what feeling the Prime Minister has for the people of Tamil Nadu," he said. On tapping the silk and textile industry in the state, Nadda said, "the central government has allotted Rs 1,600 crore for the development of textiles. This is Atmanirbhar Bharat, this is vocal for local." Nadda said 94 lakh of people from Tamil Nadu have joined Jan Dhan Yojana scheme while 30 lakh gas connections were provided to beneficiaries in the State under the Centre's Ujjvala Yojana scheme. As many as 30 lakh LED bulbs were distributed to the state under the LED bulb scheme launched by the Centre. On the proposed Defence Corridor between Chennai and Bengaluru, Nadda said it was not only a defence corridor but 'opening of an economic corridor' for the State. The Centre has also earmarked Rs 2,800 crore for the Chennai Metro Rail extension programme in Chennai and another Rs 3,267 crore for Monorail programme, he said. Noting that 12 cities in the state would be upgraded to smart cities, he said, when he was the Union Health Minister the Centre accorded the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for TN at an investment of Rs 1,300 crore. Tamil Nadu assembly elections 2021: MNM releases 'Agenda for Industry' "World-class AIIMS hospital is coming to Madurai. Nearly 100 seats will be there for MBBS and more than 100 seats will be allocated for staff nurses," he said. Besides the AIIMS hospital in Madurai, the Centre also approved setting up of 11 medical colleges in the state. On disbursement of loans under Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana Scheme, he said highest number of beneficiaries were from Tamil Nadu in which 48 lakh accounts were opened and Rs 50,000 crore was spent for the scheme in the state. Nadda said during the Covid-19 pandemic the western world which had better health facilities 'collapsed' while PM Modi led the country against Covid-19 from the front. Prime Minister took the decision for lockdown and made the country prepare for the fight against the outbreak, he said, adding, during the outbreak there was not (even) one dedicated hospital for Covid-19 in the country. "Now we have got 2,500 plus dedicated hospitals for Covid-19. During the pandemic, we did not manufacture personal protection equipment (PPE) kits..today the country manufactures five lakh PPE per day. This is Atmanirbhar Bharat." Testing of samples, which was 1,500 per day during the initial part of the pandemic,has increased to 5 lakh per day now. India has got the maximum recovery rate from the infection which is more than 97 per cent, he said. It shows how the country has fought from the front. In line with the efforts taken by the Centre, Nadda said Tamil Nadu's health infrastructure did the same and also responded in fighting the pandemic. Referring to the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, he said Rs 20 lakh crore have to be spent and one has to ensure farmers take advantage of it in agriculture development through farmers producers' organisation. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Later, speaking at the 51st anniversary of Tamil magazine 'Thughlaq,' he said BJP hopes to cash in on the growing popularity and support for Modi in poll-bound Tamil Nadu and ensure it replicated its success in the elections held recently in various parts of the nation. There is tremendous appreciation and support for Modi in mainstream Tamil Nadu for his pro-people initiatives, he said. 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. 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. COVID-19 vaccine will become available at Rite Aid pharmacies and others located within retailers such as Weis Markets, Wegmans and Redners, although vaccine will continue to be restricted to health care workers in the near term. But when theres enough vaccine, the pharmacies will vaccinate others, such as people over 65 and young people with chronic medical conditions, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. It remains uncertain when vaccine will be offered to people outside of health care workers and people living in long term care. State Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine as of late this week stressed that vaccine remains restricted to those high priority groups and we need to be patient. RELATED: Pa. plans mass clinics, other steps to speed up pace of COVID-19 vaccinations However, Levine also said Pennsylvania will comply with new federal recommendations to offer vaccine to everyone over 65 and others at high risk. She said the state is planning how it will accomplish that. The partnerships with local pharmacies will help make it happen. The state on Thursday announced the partnership involving Rite Aid and TopCo Associates, LLC, which provides pharmacy services at retailers including Weis Markets, Wegmans, Redners, Price Chopper, ShopRite, Tops Markets and Giant Eagle, according to a news release from the state health department. The department said the partnership with Rite Aid includes 60 locations, which will appear on a map maintained by the health department next week. The department advised health care workers to check the site next week and contact locations about getting vaccinated. The state also said Thursday vaccinations will begin at assisted living and long term care facilities. Those vaccinations are being handled by national pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens, which partnered with the federal government. Levine said the state has limited input on things such as how much staff the pharmacies devote to the effort, although the state decides how many doses go to long-term care facilities. By the end of his week, 489 skilled nursing facilities will have received the first of the two doses that are necessary. Pennsylvania has about 700 skilled nursing homes along with about 1,200 personal care and assisted living facilities. The announcements come as federal data shows Pennsylvania in the middle of the pack for how quickly its rolling out vaccine. However, Levine, while vowing to speed up the pace, also said limited supply has been the main thing slowing down vaccination in Pennsylvania. Chuck Kray, the president of Hershey Pharmacy and HersheyCare in Dauphin County, agreed the supply is the problem and praised the health departments handling of the rollout, saying its staff is busting their butt they are going above and beyond. He echoed Levines complaint that federal vaccine deliveries often arrive with little advance notice, interfering with planning and adding logistical challenges to administering a vaccine that much be stored at ultra-low temperature using special equipment, then must be allowed to warm up for a few hours before use. Kray expressed confidence that vaccine production is increasing substantially and said he believes vaccine will become abundantly available within the next two weeks. His said his pharmacy has received about 1,000 doses and has quickly distributed them at local nursing and personal care homes as well as to about 200 local health care providers such as local doctors and dentists. He said his pharmacy receives the doses because it long ago signed on with the state as a pandemic pharmacy. Not all community pharmacists have that status, although many are signing up, said Kray, who is the president of the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association. Kray said preparing to handle and administer COVID-19 vaccine has consumed his life for two months, and he views the opportunity to help protect his community against the disease is a highlight of his 40-year career. He expressed hope, as the vaccine supply grows, to hold vaccine clinics at places such as fire halls and the Giant Center and vaccinate school districts in a day. Still, he said Friday he believes Pennsylvania made a mistake in allowing the federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens to handle vaccinations at long term care facilities. He argues it could be done faster by involving other local pharmacies. Kray said he hopes the state doesnt make the mistake of relying too heavily on national chains, at the exclusion of independent local pharmacies, to vaccinate the rest of Pennsylvanians. Leaders of the two associations representing Pennsylvanias long term care facilities have said the pace is going too slowly, and that allowing other local pharmacies to participate would help. Adam Marles, the CEO of LeadingAge PA, said the national chains sometimes have brought insufficient staff to facilities. A CVS spokesman said this week staffing isnt a problem, writing in an email With regard to staffing, we have more than 10,000 health care professionals across the country dedicated to the long-term care facility effort, and have made additional hires where necessary. Bottom line, were staffed appropriately. CVS has a major role in long term care vaccination in most states in addition to Pennsylvania. Kray argues that West Virginia, which is leading the United States in vaccinations and has completed its long term care facilities, opted out of the federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens and has relied heavily on independent pharmacies. Advertisement Britain could face even more super-infectious coronavirus variants because surging infections across the globe fuel the chances of the pathogen mutating to beat the immune system and vaccines, scientists say. More than 90million Covid-19 cases have been recorded worldwide since the pandemic began, with numbers surging 33.8 per cent in the last two months alone. And the spiralling cases will only trigger more mutations because it gives the virus more opportunity to evolve, infectious disease experts fear. Mutations could render vaccines useless, experts fear. Number 10's top scientists believe the current crop of jabs will still work against any of the recently-spotted variants - but may be slightly less effective. Britain has already been hit by two highly-infectious variants, including one that first emerged in Kent and another that was brought in from South Africa. Fears are also growing about a new Brazilian variant, which has yet to be spotted in the UK. The Kent variant - called B.1.1.7 - quickly became the most dominant coronavirus in the UK, and its rapid spread spooked ministers into a national lockdown. Thirty-six cases of a second super-strain from South Africa - named B.1.351 - have also been spotted in Britain. And the US, which has battled against the most cases during the pandemic, has revealed its labs have identified three home-grown variants of the virus. Dr Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, warned labs across the world were recording more variants of the virus because of the spiralling numbers of infections. He told DailyMail.com: 'The uptick in mutations (we are seeing) is expected because there is more circulation of the virus and more chances for a mutation to occur.' Scientists fear the mutations could dodge immunity sparked by vaccines. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the variants are more deadly but they will still trigger more fatalities because they will likely infect more people. Slide me Spreading super-strain: Above is the spread of a mutant US version of the virus in July and August last year (left) compared to November and December last year (right). The dates are laid out in the US form of month/day/year Transmitted around the world: The yellow indicates the spread of a super-strain of the virus first identified in the US. It is now also in Australia and New Zealand Graphs from the World Health Organization showing infections with coronavirus began to spiral worldwide in September All viruses evolve in order to survive. There have been many mutations in Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, since it emerged in 2019, some more significant than others. However, this is to be expected as this virus is an RNA virus, like the flu and measles, and these tend to mutate and change. Mutations usually occur by chance, and the pressure on the virus to evolve is increased by the fact that so many millions of people have now been infected. Sometimes mutations can lead to weaker versions of a virus, and it could even be that the changes are so small they have little impact on how it behaves. But the new UK variant is more transmissible, and it is thought the same may be true of the Brazilian variant. Professor Trevor Bedford, who studies viruses and how they evolve at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, said that new strains of the virus appear to be evolving in the same direction. He tweeted: 'After 10 months of relative (inactivity) we've started to see some striking evolution of SARS-CoV-2 with a repeated evolutionary pattern in the SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern emerging from the UK, South Africa and Brazil. Mutations of the virus have also been identified in the US, South Africa and Brazil (stock pic. It highlights the spike protein, which the virus uses to invade cells) 'The variant emerging in the UK possesses eight mutations in its spike protein (which the virus uses to invade cells), a three amino acid (the building blocks for protein) deletion and a knockout mutation. 'The variant emerging in South Africa has seven mutations on its (spike protein) as well as the same three amino acid deletions. 'The variant emerging in Brazil has 10 mutations on its (spike protein) as well as the same three amino acid deletions.' Suggesting that long infections 'are giving the virus an opportunity to mutate within the same host', he added: 'Hints that these (mutations) are related to chronic infections come from multiple sources. 'First off, we have direct sequencing of viruses from chronic infections that show rapid evolution. US SCIENTISTS FIND THREE HOMEGROWN 'SUPER-COVID' VARIANTS The US now has three of its own homegrown 'super-covid' variants that are more infectious than the most common coronavirus types in the US - and the new variants are spreading like wildfire in at least one state. Two variants were identified by Ohio scientists on Wednesday and the third by Illinois researchers on Thursday. One of the new, more infectious variants has already become dominant in Columbus, Ohio, where it was discovered. So far, this homegrown variant has been seen in about 20 samples since Ohio State University (OSU) scientists first detected it in December. It's now present in most of the samples they are sequencing. A second variant has mutations virtually identical to the UK variant's, but arose completely independently on American soil, according to Ohio State University scientists. Just one person with this variant has been found. The third new variant was discovered by a team from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The earliest appearance of new variant, called 20C-US, was traced back to Texas in May 2020. It began picking up prevalence in late June and early July 2020 and could be responsible for up to 50% of all current cases. Advertisement 'Indeed, this particular chronic infection evolved some of the exact same mutations seen in these variant viruses.' Chronic COVID-19 infections - not to be confused with 'long-covid,' symptoms that may linger months after someone clears the virus - may last weeks or even months, and most commonly affect people with weak immune systems. Dr Mokdad added that cutting the dose of a vaccine or only giving the first dose of them to patients could further boost the risk of the virus mutating. 'You want [a vaccine] to knock down the virus very, very low,' he said. 'We don't want to get this virus used to something in small doses so the virus can develop immunity, we want to make sure that when the virus comes into contact with these immune antibodies, it loses every time, and fast.' A team from Southern Illinois University Carbondale traced the earliest appearance of new variant, called 20C-US, to Texas in May 2020. The variant carries several mutations, including to the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter and infect human cells. Scientists say the variant has not spread significantly beyond the country's borders, and that is most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest. What's more, it could be responsible for at least 50 percent of all American cases, meaning it is very widespread. The researchers predict that 20C-US may be the most dominant variant of the coronavirus in the U.S. at this moment. 20C-US is now one of the growing list of mutations discovered in countries such as the UK, South Africa and Brazil. The news comes just one day after Ohio researchers announced the first discovery of two homegrown variants - one virtually identical to a variant that emerged in the UK and the other completely unique to the U.S. and dominant in the capital of Columbus. The results were published in a pre-print article on bioRxiv.org on Wednesday. Led by Dr Keith Gagnon, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at SIU, the team first noticed the possibility of the new variant while looking at genome sequencing data from Illinois. 'We were just looking at our local, like state-specific Illinois data...and we were asked [by the Illinois Department of Public Health] to specifically look for the spike protein mutations of the UK variant for example,' he told DailyMail.com. 'As we're going through the data, we're not seeing a UK variant but I keep seeing this large outbranching off the final genetic tree that we reconstructed.' Of the viral genome samples taken from March to the present that were sequenced, one variant was more pronounced than the rest. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE BRAZIL VARIANT? Name: B.1.1.248 or P.1 Date: Discovered in Tokyo, Japan, in four travellers arriving from Manaus, Brazil, on January 2. Is it in the UK? Public health officials and scientists randomly sample around 1 in 10 coronavirus cases in the UK and they have not yet reported any cases of B.1.1.248, but this doesn't rule it out completely. Why should we care? The variant has the same spike protein mutation as the highly transmissible versions found in Kent and South Africa named N501Y which makes the spike better able to bind to receptors inside the body. It has a third, less well-studied mutation called K417T, and the ramifications of this are still being researched. What do the mutations do? The N501Y mutation makes the spike protein better at binding to receptors in people's bodies and therefore makes the virus more infectious. Exactly how much more infectious it is remains to be seen, but scientists estimate the similar-looking variant in the UK is around 56 per cent more transmissible than its predecessor. Even if the virus doesn't appear to be more dangerous, its ability to spread faster and cause more infections will inevitably lead to a higher death rate. Another key mutation in the variant, named E484K, is also on the spike protein and is present in the South African variant. E484K may be associated with an ability to evade parts of the immune system called antibodies, researchers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro said in a scientific paper published online. However, there are multiple immune cells and substances involved in the destruction of coronavirus when it gets into the body so this may not translate to a difference in how people get infected or recover. Will our vaccines still protect us? There is no reason to believe that already-developed Covid vaccines will not protect against the variant. The main and most concerning change to this version of the virus is its N501Y mutation. Pfizer, the company that made the first vaccine to get approval for public use in the UK, has specifically tested its jab on viruses carrying this mutation in a lab after the variants emerged in the UK and South Africa. They found that the vaccine worked just as well as it did on other variants and was able to ignore the change. And, as the South African variant carries another of the major mutations on the Brazilian strain (E484K) and the Pfizer jab worked against that, too, it is likely that the new mutation would not affect vaccines. The immunity developed by different types of vaccine is broadly similar, so if one of them is able to work against it, the others should as well. Professor Ravi Gupta, a microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, said: 'Vaccines are still likely to be effective as a control measure if coverage rates are high and transmission is limited as far as possible.' Advertisement To see if it was present at the the national level, researchers randomly subsampled 3.3 percent of U.S. genomes available on the global genomic database GISAID. The earliest appearance was found from a sample taken in the greater Houston area of Texas on May 20, 2020. 'The crazy thing is it's been around for months, I would say largely unnoticed, uncharacterized,' Gagnon said. 'It wasn't that it wasn't undetected...but nobody I think really picked up on it.' Following the variant over time, there was a notable expansion in the variant's presence in late June and early July 2020, which coincides with America's second wave of the pandemic, in states such as Wisconsin and Illinois. However, between November 1 and December 31, almost 50 percent of all sequenced genomes from the U.S. are the new variant. 'It is coincidental that the rise to dominance of this variant really started at the end of the summer and especially during the third pandemic wave,' Gagnon said. 'It is tempting to speculate that possibly this variant is playing a role. The circumstantial evidence suggests that.' Researchers suggest this means 20C-US has 'surpassed 50 percent penetrance to become the most dominant variant in the U.S.' However, it has a high prevalent in the eastern and Midwestern regions and has no t spread widely to the western half of the U.S. 20C-US has been reported in other countries including Australia, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, but at low levels. The first mutations the virus showed were in genes related to virus particle maturation - a process by which a virus breaks from a host cell and activates to infect more cells - and the processing of viral proteins. Gagnon says these are all important for virus production. Since then, the new variant has formed two new mutations in the spike protein, which demonstrates that it is evolving. However, the variant does not appear to be more deadly. 'Even more speculative, but interesting, is we notice that the death rates are a lot lower even though cases are very high,' Gagnon said. This may suggest 20C-US is highly transmissible but only causes a mild illness. Dr Daniel Jones, of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, who discovered the Columbus variant told DailyMail.com the Illinois variant 'looks closely related but not exactly identical.' Jones said this means the two sets of researchers - in Ohio and Illinois - are likely tracking variants from the same outgrowth. With the first doses of newly approved vaccines being administered across the national, Gagnon said it is unknown whether the variant will impact its effectiveness. 'Based on the mutations so far, I dont think it will significantly impact the vaccines effectiveness,' he said. 'The catch is that the virus continues to evolve, and since May, it has acquired three mutations, and two of them are in the spike protein, one of which might affect antibody binding. There are a lot of unknowns.' Both Pfizer and Moderna have been testing their vaccines against the international variants and say they expect the jabs to provide protection. Brazil 'collapses' under Covid as new variant sees epidemic surge: Relatives are forced to supply oxygen for patients, doctors decide who gets to breathe and Amazon's largest city turns into a 'suffocation chamber' Brazil's new strain of coronavirus is ripping through the Amazon where tearful locals wait desperately for dwindling oxygen supplies to keep their relatives alive and doctors face the wretched task of deciding who can breathe. At one hospital in Manaus, a despairing relative carried an oxygen tank for his own mother-in-law just to help her breathe for another two hours - with one expert describing the city as a 'suffocation chamber'. Infections have soared to record levels in Brazil with the new variant feared to be the dominant strain in the state of Amazonas and described by one expert as 'very probably' more contagious than the previous type. The variant has already been detected as far afield as Japan and spooked UK ministers into shutting down travel from the whole of South America, after another new strain was blamed for a dramatic surge in cases in Britain. In Manaus, whose mass graves became a symbol of the first wave of the pandemic in Brazil, cemeteries are again burying record number of patients as the new strain causes a total 'collapse' of the healthcare system. The virus was so rife during the first wave that one study suggested more than 70 per cent of Manaus's population had been infected - raising fears that the new strain has evaded any immunity acquired from earlier infections. In the latest outbreak, hundreds of patients are being airlifted to other states while some non-Covid sufferers are being evicted from their beds to make way for those in greater need. Doctors and relatives have described 'nightmare' scenes of medical workers breaking down in tears. And with nearly 500 people still waiting for beds in Manaus, some elderly virus sufferers are being left to die at home. Heartbreaking: Relatives of patients being treated at the 28 de Agosto hospital in Manaus share a tearful hug as the healthcare system in the Amazon's largest city faces 'collapse' and a dire shortage of oxygen Emergency: Healthcare workers transport a 77-year-old patient on a stretcher at a Manaus hospital after he came down with coronavirus symptoms, as a new strain which is feared to be more contagious spreads across the Amazon Overwhelmed: Gravediggers wearing green and yellow hazmat suits bury a foil-wrapped coffin at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, with mourning relatives having to queue to bury their dead A municipal healthcare worker covers the body of an 84-year-old Brazilian who died at home during the deadly outbreak An oxygen cylinder is wheeled into the Getulio Vargas hospital amid drastic shortages of the substance needed to treat coronavirus patients suffering breathing problems As the oxygen crisis mounts, Brazil's health minister Eduardo Pazuello said a plane full of medical supplies would arrive on Friday, followed by four others, but it was not clear whether this would be enough to fill the gap. The city has 'run out of oxygen and some health centers have become a type of suffocation chamber,' said Jessem Orellana from the Fiocruz-Amazonia scientific investigation institute. The oxygen provider in Manaus, White Martins, said it was considering diverting some of its supply from neighbouring Venezuela - while military personnel delivered 400 oxygen cylinders to Amazonas in five days. At the Hospital Universitario Getulio Vargas, health workers took empty cylinders to the oxygen provider in the hope there would be some to retrieve. Patients waited anxiously in the hospital as oxygen arrived in time to save some, but too late for others. In echoes of the worst days of the crisis in Europe, doctors were having to decide which patients to treat. 'Yes, there is a collapse in the health care system in Manaus,' the health minister said. 'The line for beds is growing by a lot - we have 480 people waiting now. 'We are starting to remove patients with less serious [conditions] to reduce the impact.' Harrowing accounts were emerging of patients who died with no oxygen, with one grieving relative telling Globo: 'You have no idea what it was like... the shouting, people were dying. Even health professionals, everyone was crying.' 'The oxygen stopped, the patients were dying on the stretchers and the nurses did not know what to do,' another relative said. The new variant, described by the WHO as 'worrying', is feared to be more contagious and to have spread throughout Brazil and possibly further - with Britain shutting down travel from South America on Thursday. In a move that prompted consternation in Portugal, transport secretary Grant Shapps said travel from the EU nation would also be halted because of its links with Brazil, although there are exemptions for truck drivers. Cases in Brazil are at their highest level ever, with more than 360,000 in the last week alone, while the daily death rate is hovering around 1,000 for the first time since the first wave peaked in the Southern Hemisphere winter. At least one cemetery in Manaus, a city of 2.2million people, had mourners queuing up to enter and bury their dead, with Brazilian artists and football teams joining the cry for help. According to official figures, Manaus on Wednesday saw a fourth straight day of record burials - 198, with 87 of them deaths from Covid-19. A woman is comforted outside a Manaus hospital as armed personnel keep order during a disastrous outbreak in the city Medical workers wearing white hazmat suits examine the body of 53-year-old Shirlene Morais Costa, who died after suffering coroanvirus symptoms at home in Manaus A tiny stretcher brings in a baby suspected of having Covid-19 at the HRAN hospital in the federal capital Brasilia on Thursday Vitor Cabral comforts his wife Raissa Floriana after her father was hospitalised with Covid-19 at the 28 de Agosto hospital Hospitals in Manaus admitted few new Covid-19 patients on Thursday, suggesting many will suffer from the disease at home, and some will likely die. Park of the Tribes, a community of more than 2,500 indigenous people on the outskirts of Manaus, went more than two months without any resident showing Covid-19 symptoms. In the past week, 29 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, said Vanda Ortega, a volunteer nurse in the community. Two went to urgent care units, but no one yet has required hospitalization. 'We're really very worried,' said Ortega, who belongs to the Witoto ethnicity. 'It's chaos here in Manaus. There isn't oxygen for anyone.' The crisis has prompted the government in Amazonas to transport 235 patients who depend on oxygen to five other states and the federal capital Brasilia. 'I want to thank those governors who are giving us their hand in a human gesture,' Amazonas governor Wilson Lima said at a news conference on Thursday. 'All of the world looks at us when there is a problem [with] the Earth's lungs,' he said, using a poetic term for the Amazon. 'Now we are asking for help. Our people need this oxygen.' Governors and mayors throughout the country offered help amid a flood of social media videos in which distraught relatives of Covid-19 patients in Manaus begged for people to buy them oxygen. A woman cries during a protest outside the 28 Agosto hospital in Manaus, where authorities are planning to transport scores of patients to other states and the federal capital Brasilia Cemetery workers carry the remains of 89-year-old Abilio Ribeiro, who died of the coronavirus, into a grave in Manaus Military police officers patrol the streets in Manaus after a 7pm curfew was imposed to tackle the crisis in the Amazonian city Amazonas authorities have even appealed to the United States to send a military transport plane to Manaus with oxygen cylinders, a Brazilian congressman said. But there are growing demands Brazil's federal government to do more, with president Jair Bolsonaro under pressure to act after long downplaying the dangers of Covid-19. Federal prosecutors in Manaus have asked a local judge to pressure Bolsonaro's administration to step up its support, saying that an air force plane for oxygen transportation 'needs repair, which brought a halt to the emergency influx'. Local authorities recently called on the federal government to reinforce Manaus' stock of oxygen, while the air force said it was deploying two planes to transport patients. During the first wave of the crisis, Manaus consumed a maximum 30,000 cubic metres of oxygen per day, but now the need has more than doubled to nearly 70,000 cubic metres, according to White Martins. 'Due to the strong impact of the Covid -19 pandemic, the consumption of oxygen in the city increased exponentially over the last few days in comparison with a volume that was already extremely high,' White Martins said. 'Demand is much higher than anything predictable and... continues to grow significantly.' The company added that Manaus' remote location presents challenging logistics, requiring additional stocks to be transported by boat and by plane. Governor Lima - once seen as an ally of Bolsonaro - has also decreed more health restrictions, including the suspension of public transport and a curfew between 7pm and 6am. Lima said the state was 'in the most critical moment of the pandemic' as he announced the 10-day curfew beginning on Friday, saying that 'we are in a war operation'. 'Here there aren't any empty beds left, any oxygen tanks, nothing - all we have left is faith,' Manaus resident Luiza Castro said. A struggling patient is transported by medical workers at the Getulio Vargas hospital in Manaus where health workers have been taking empty cylinders to a local oxygen provider in the hope there would be some available A man breaks down outside the 28 de Agosto hospital as Manaus faces a shortage of bed space and oxygen supplies A man walks on an empty street in Manaus after the governor of Amazonas imposed the curfew to curb the infection rate Bolsonaro, a right-wing former army captain often compared to Donald Trump, has raged against lockdowns and described the virus as a 'little flu', laughing off the dangers even when he himself was infected with the disease. He has also flouted social distancing by appearing at rallies of his supporters, and touted the unproven anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19. Felipe Naveca, an expert studying coronavirus mutations in Amazonas, said the new strain was 'very probably' more contagious than the original virus, just like new variants found in Britain and South Africa. The worsening situation in Manaus was not due only to one variant, he added, warning that authorities were expecting a rise in virus cases due to end-of-year parties. 'We need urgent support from the population to reduce the transmission and slow down the virus's evolution,' Naveca said. Experts worry new mutations could eventually show resistance to the vaccines developed to combat the original strain. However, 'right now there's no evidence that this line prejudices the vaccine's response,' Naveca said, and Brazil aims to start its vaccination campaign sometime this month. There is concern, though, the new variant could already have spread throughout Brazil, and it has been detected as far afield as Japan. Brazil has had 8.3million confirmed infections and 207,000 deaths in total. The number of fatalities is second only to the United States. Patna, Jan 16 : Days after sensational murder of 40-year-old Indigo Airlines station manager, a businessman of Danapur was allegedly kidnapped by 6-7 goons. The kidnapped businessman, identified as Abhishek Kumar, has been rescued by the Patna police on Friday evening but the incident has induced fear in the people of Bihar especially businessmen. According to an official of Patna police, the accused came in two cars and forcibly abducted Kumar from his apartment Sai residency located at Gola road under Rupaspur police station on Thursday night. The incident was reported to the police by the victim's younger brother. The accused demanded Rs 20 lakh as extortion from the victim which he denied. "The accused kidnapped him with his car and took him to an unknown place. The accused demanded a ransom of Rs 20 lakh from his brother. The call was made from the victim's phone to his brother," Rupaspur SHO Chandra Bhanu said. "We had put the victim's phone on surveillance and reached the location on Friday. He was held captive at Ganga Ghat locality near Rajapul Bhatha. We have arrested three accused idenfitied as Aashish Kumar, Aakash Kumar and Naveen Kumar. Aakash was residing at Washikunj apartment which is near to the victim's apartment," he said. Patna police also seized three cars including Pajero, Tata Indigo and Swift Dzire from their possession. One of the cars belonged to the victim while another car used in commission of crime had the sticker of district secretary of a political party. Local police also seized a loaded pistol and five mobile phones. "We have identified other accused as well and they will be put behind the bars soon," he said. (Natural News) There have been 13 new confirmed deaths associated with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine in Norway, which adds to the 23 deaths and counting that are said to be associated with the vaccines rollout in the Scandinavian country. The Norwegian Medicines Agency (NMA) officially confirmed the 13 deaths, pegging them as side effects of Chinese virus jabs. All of the deaths are said to have been in people who were old and frail. In total, 23 deaths have been reported in connection with WuFlu injections in Norway, an astronomical number considering the fact that the virus itself has an almost nonexistent death rate. The reports might indicate that common side effects from mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have led to deaths in some frail patients, said NMA chief physician Sigurd Hortemo in a statement. With the help of the National Institute of Public Health (FHI), the NMA assess all reports of side effects to determine whether or not they were caused by the vaccines. The agency has determined that the jabs are, in fact, dangerous, and that people should probably avoid them. If you are very frail, you should probably not be vaccinated, said NMA official Steinar Madsen during a webinar for journalists about coronavirus vaccines. How many people need to die before the world realizes that coronavirus vaccines are a scam? Just days earlier, the NMA launched an investigation into the deaths of two nursing home residents who were vaccinated with Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine. Madsen noted that the two deaths occurred a few days after the individuals were jabbed, prompting a probe into whether or not the vaccines were directly responsible. It was later determined that the vaccines had, in fact, killed the two nursing home residents. And we now know that dozens of others have died as a result of getting jabbed with the mRNA poisons. There will probably be deaths close to the time of vaccination, Madsen is quoted as saying. We must then assess whether it is the vaccine that is the cause of the death, or whether it is a coincidence that it happens so soon after vaccination. According to Norwegian health officials, some 400 people die per week in nursing homes throughout the country. Following the use of the vaccine in the United Kingdom and the United States, some cases of allergic reactions have been reported, the NMA added in a statement. Most side effects occur shortly after vaccination and disappear after a few days. Most cases of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) do not even incur side effects, let alone death, so why would anyone even want the vaccine? This was the question posed by Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado during a recent Fox Business segment with Neil Cavuto. Buck told Cavuto that he is more concerned about the safety of the vaccine than about experiencing the side effects of the disease. It is my choice, the 61-year-old Republican stated. Im an American and I have the freedom to decide if Im going to take a vaccine or not and, in this case, Im not going to take the vaccine. Perhaps Norway will adopt a similar approach, if it has not already, that discourages the public from getting the vaccine. There really is no reason to, and anyone with a brain can see that. COVID-1984 isnt much worse than the flu, wrote one of our own commenters about the vaccine, which thankfully our readers appear to be largely rejecting as dangerous and entirely unnecessary. Mandatory vaccines could lead to genocide. More of the latest news about the dangers and ineffectiveness of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines can be found at Pandemic.news. Sources for this article include: NorwayToday.info NYPost.com NaturalNews.com At the end of last year, Russia adopted a number of new legal measures that many observers say are intended to further restrict the country's already state-dominated media sphere. Among other things, the government has begun placing individuals on its list of "foreign-agent" media, subjecting them to potential fines or prison sentences. The government has also criminalized online defamation. Russia's state media monitor, Roskomnadzor, this week drew up its first eight administrative protocols -- all of them targeting Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty -- for allegedly violating the "foreign agents" law. The protocols target four of RFE/RL's Russian-language projects -- its main service for Russia, Radio Svoboda; the Current Time television and digital network; and Siberia.Reality and Idel.Reality, two regional sites delivering local news and information to audiences in Siberia and the Volga-Urals region. The Siberia Desk of RFE/RL's Russian Service spoke with lawyer Galina Arapova, head of the Voronezh-based Mass Media Defense Center, about the government's latest moves and what impact they could have on Russian civil society. Arapova's center itself has been designated "a noncommercial organization carrying out the functions of a foreign agent" by the Russian government, a designation the center is appealing. The Mass Media Defense Center has provided legal defense assistance in numerous high-profile cases since its founding in 1996, including the cases of RFE/RL Russian Service correspondents Svetlana Prokopyeva and Tatyana Voltskaya. Arapova has won numerous Russian and international human rights awards. RFE/RL: At the end of 2020, the Russian government adopted the law on individual foreign agents and recriminalized online defamation. What danger do these steps present to journalists and Internet users? Galina Arapova: We need to recall the baggage with which we entered 2020 in order to understand the foundations of these innovations. In 2019, the government took steps to tighten accountability for "disrespecting the authorities" and disseminating "fake news." They had passed the law on the so-called sovereign Internet, and the so-called Yarovaya package (Editor's note: a group of amendments to Russia's anti-terrorism laws that expanded law enforcement powers, set new requirements for data collection and mandatory decryption, and restricted some religious proselytizing.). Internet and cellular-network providers had begun saving metadata from all their users' exchanges. The period of total online monitoring had already begun. They didn't do this for themselves but to provide the information to intelligence agencies, which didn't even require a court order. At the end of 2019, they passed the law on registering individual people as "foreign agents" and established the requirement that foreign media outlets designated as "foreign agents" create corporate entities in Russia. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and immediately Roskomnadzor warned journalists to avoid any "subjective" coverage of the coronavirus situation, and it began punishing distributors of "fake news" on this topic. They criminalized the dissemination of "fake news." By the middle of April, they had begun opening criminal cases, including one against Aleksandr Pichugin. For two months they conducted a criminal investigation into RFE/RL Russian Service journalist Tatyana Voltskaya, but they declined to file a criminal case and just charged her with an administrative violation (Editor's Note: Voltskaya was investigated in connection with an interview she published with a doctor about the handling of the pandemic in St. Petersburg). She and her company were fined and we, of course, will appeal the case to the European Court of Human Rights. As we will Pichugin's conviction. They opened rather a lot of criminal cases, but there weren't really that many convictions. I mention that because some laws are passed, but not actively enforced. Both the Yarovaya package and the law on "foreign media agents" were passed quite a while ago but remained dormant for a long time. On the other hand, the law on "fake news" began to be enforced immediately. Across the country law enforcement considered it a matter of honor to find and disarm spreaders of "fake news," not only among journalists but among bloggers and even medical workers and ordinary Internet users. So, in late November and December we saw a literal fusillade of bills introducing new restrictions on journalists and civil society. Taken together with the existing practices, these will practically bury civil society, and journalists won't even be able to cover that. They changed the laws so that journalists are forbidden from taking part in demonstrations or organizing them. While earlier, journalists would participate in one-person pickets in support of their colleagues who were being persecuted for their professional work for instance, Igor Rudnikov from Kaliningrad, Svetlana Prokopyeva from Pskov, Abdulmumin Gadzhiyev from Makhachkala, and Ivan Safronov and Ivan Golunov from Moscow -- now they no longer can. They also can no longer call on their colleagues to protest, as Ilya Azar did. That would be considered "organizing a public protest," with all the attendant consequences. There is also the problem in the new law of requiring journalists to wear distinguishing signs when they are covering public events. The signs will be worked out by Roskomnadzor, together with the Union of Journalists. They claim that this is necessary to ensure the security of journalists. But journalists already could show police their identification to prove that they are professional journalists carrying out their work, but this never prevented police from detaining them and loading them into police vans with other detainees. Sometimes police would detain journalists, drive them around in circles for a while, and then release them without writing up a report. Such tactics have been used to prevent them from covering events and documenting what was going on because there have been cases when journalists' photographs were used as proof of police violence against protesters. RFE/RL: Then what is the point of the new signs? Arapova: I think that "marked" journalists will be easier to pick out in a crowd and, when desired, easier to isolate. If there is no coverage, then there was no event, as they say. The Council of Europe, incidentally, after analyzing violations of the rights of journalists covering protests has said that, in many countries, distinguishing signs do not save journalists, but actually make them targets. RFE/RL: Tell us about the law on criminalizing defamation. Arapova: There has been a significant strengthening of the law on defamation Criminal Code Article 128.1. Earlier, there were fines or compulsory public service, but now there are penalties of up to five years in prison. But probably the most significant change is that the definition of defamation includes not only the knowing dissemination of false information about a specific individual, but also such information about any "individually undetermined individuals." The same is true for "insulting." Defamation has always been specific and targeted, but now our lawmakers have smeared the boundaries of defamation to such an extent that people can be criminally prosecuted for criticizing anything or any group or organization. The desire to mute any criticism of the authorities has trumped any common sense or civilized legal standards. RFE/RL: And there has been one more innovation -- tightening up the law on those who are designated "foreign agents." Arapova: In October, Roskomnadzor ordered "foreign agent" media outlets to publish notes warning their readers. So far, no one is doing this, but I fear that very soon we will see disfiguring designs for publications in which immediately after the headline there must appear a 24-word warning in typeface twice as large as that used for the headline. Under the threat of high, debilitating fines, they will force outlets to mark all their content as that of a "foreign agent," which will put off their audiences. If media outlets do not insert this warning, they will be regularly fined and then blocked. Now, concerning individuals who are designated "foreign agent" media. They have adopted restrictions that affect journalists, bloggers, and any active Internet users. Individuals can now be designated either "foreign agents" or "foreign-agent media." Yes -- individual media, which sort of sounds like "individual orchestra" to me. It sounds absurd and it is impossible to understand, but around New Year's they placed the first five individuals on the list of "foreign media foreign agents." They are three journalists associated with the "foreign agent" Radio Svoboda Lyudmila Savitskaya, Sergei Markelov, and Denis Kamalyagin; one of the country's most prominent human rights activists, Lev Ponomaryov; and performance artist Darya Apakhonchich. No one knows why these five, in particular, were selected for this honor, but apparently this is only the beginning. The authorities will so designate anyone that they think is involved in "political activity" and receiving foreign financing or even any organizational or other assistance from international organizations or foreign citizens. The concept of "political activity" is extensively broad -- it includes any dissemination of information that could influence public opinion, any human rights activism, and much more. For instance, if some successful blogger who comments on sociopolitical topics and places his videos on YouTube and has monetized his content, then he is receiving money from a foreign source for the advertising on his channel. So that fits the definition of "foreign financing for the distribution of information to an unlimited number of people." The law could also cover young academics working on foreign grants or accepting a fellowship at a foreign academic institution. Or human rights activists accepting charitable contributions from international sources. In short, anyone who can be shown to receive foreign money and who says anything that the authorities do not like. The terms in the law are very, very broad, and they can be stretched to cover at least half the country. The law is written in such a way that any person who thinks he is involved in "political activity" and who is receiving any foreign money must present himself to the authorities and request that they place him on the list of "foreign agents." I don't think this requirement is correct. For example, why should it be the case that a journalist writing for a foreign media outlet is carrying out "political" rather than "journalistic" activity? I think the government should bear the responsibility for designating journalistic work as "political activity." If the Justice Ministry wants to keep such a list, let them determine it themselves. Those who fail to get themselves registered are threatened with a fine of 30,000 rubles ($410). But once they are registered, they run additional legal risks and could be fined anyway. Also, those who voluntarily register lose the right to appeal the designation. But if the Justice Ministry places you on the list, you can go to court. Of course, the chances that such an appeal would succeed in Russia are exactly zero. But it paves the way for an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. RFE/RL: Have the authorities been pressuring the lawyers who work for your center? Arapova: The Mass Media Defense Center has been placed on the register of noncommercial organizations serving as "foreign agents" and you can see that designation on our website. We have been listed now for nearly six years, but we oppose it and believe that the formulation "foreign agent" was introduced to stigmatize something as hostile. Of course, this is absurd since we are working in the interests of Russian society. We do not run for office. We do not do lobbying work. We do not work with or for any political parties. We only carry out human rights, legal-defense work, which our government for some reason considers to be "political activity." We are appealing our inclusion on the list of "foreign agents," together with the other 70 organizations carrying out human rights work in Russia. It has already become a joke to say that inclusion on the government's list is a sign of quality. If you have achieved anything in the realm of human rights in Russia, if you work in a professional way, then you simply must be on that list. If you aren't there, it means no one is taking you seriously. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 00:15:29|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close LONDON, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Britain's coronavirus reproduction number, also known as the R number, is estimated at between 1.2 and 1.3, compared with last week's one and 1.4, the British government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) said Friday. The R number is one of many indicators scientists use to determine how fast COVID-19 is spreading in the country. Last week it was estimated that the R number was between one and 1.4. Reproduction rate means the average number of people each person with coronavirus goes on to infect. Therefore, an R number of between 1.2 and 1.3 means on average every 10 people with the virus will infect between 12 and 13 others. If the R number is above one, it means the number of cases will increase exponentially. According to SAGE, the R number varies in the country. It has gone down slightly in London, the South East and South West, as well as the North East and Yorkshire, but it has risen slightly in the East of England, Midlands and North West. "The latest figures show that we need to remain vigilant to keep this virus under control, to protect the NHS (National Health Service) and save lives," SAGE said. "We all need to play our part, and if everyone continues to follow the rules, we can expect to drive down the R number across the country," it added. The latest R number was revealed as a major study by Cambridge University showed Friday that the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 have started to level off in some parts of England and may have peaked in others. Another 48,682 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 3,260,258, according to official figures released Thursday. Another 1,248 have died within 28 days of a positive test. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 86,015, the data showed. England is currently under the third national lockdown since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country. Similar restriction measures are also in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to develop coronavirus vaccines. Enditem The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. A High Court judge has dismissed a damages action by a woman who sued her daughters national school over ankle injuries suffered after she fell on the last of a flight of steps leading to its playground. A core argument made by 36-year-old Ciara Finlay in her case was that the steps should have had hand-rails. Scoil Mhuire National School, Ardee, Co Louth, denied liability and Mr Justice Bernard Barton, in his recently published judgment, ruled it had no liability to Ms Finlay arising from the accident on the morning of August 30, 2017. The judge said Ms Finlay was a wholly decent and genuine witness who gave her evidence in a "truthful and straightforward" manner and he did not doubt her belief a handrail would have made a difference. However, having accepted evidence from the school principal and deputy principal, an impartial application of the law to the facts did not warrant a finding of negligence by the school or breach of the common duty of care, he ruled. Read More Particularly against a background where the static condition of the steps was not alleged to have caused Ms Finlay to lose her footing, and was unlikely to have been the cause of a slip or trip and fall, the retrofitting of handrails would amount to a counsel of perfection, even though the fitting of rails would have been relatively simple and inexpensive, he said. His judgment was not to be taken as laying down a general rule or proposition that an occupier is not required to fit or retrofit handrails to external steps constructed separate and apart from a building, he stressed. There may well be other circumstances in which such a precaution ought reasonably to be taken, he said. The law did not require the school to guard against possibilities but rather to guard against that which is reasonably forseeable and likely to occur as a result of the defendants acts or omissions. Earlier, he noted Ms Finlay had accompanied her daughter to school on August 30th 2017. The child was apprehensive about starting fifth class that day and she had accompanied her to the playground where the child met her classmates. The judge said it was a bright, dry day and Ms Finlay had nearly reached the bottom of a flight of seven steps leading from the playground when she lost her footing and fell forward, landing face down on the ground near the foot of the steps. Read More Ms Finlay had said she was familiar with the steps and did not know why she fell but there was nothing to grab on to when she did so. He said the school principal had given evidence of her belief that no accidents or incidents involving the steps had been recorded in the schools log book during her tenure at the school since 1984. Ms Finlay suffered fractures to her right and left ankles. Her right ankle was in a plaster of Paris cast for eight weeks and her left ankle was strapped. She continued to experience soreness in her right ankle and walking long distances is problematic. Apart from intermittent ankle discomfort, the medical prognosis for the future is her ankle injuries should not cause any disability in the long term and any ongoing discomfort should respond to physiotherapy and occasional analgesia, he said. The leader of Ohios private economic development group says the state has a generational opportunity to emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever. J.P. Nauseef, president and CEO of JobsOhio, provided the keynote address at the Dayton Business Journals 2021 Economic Forum. During his presentation, Nauseef noted the interesting, exciting and transformative year that was 2020, and said this year is shaping up to be equally transformative. Despite the pandemic, JobsOhio took in $1.4 billion in revenue during fiscal year 2020. Aided by this funding and revenue from prior years, the organization was able to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into new programs related to the states pandemic response. Read the full story on cleveland.coms sister site, Cleveland Business Journal. Get the best in local business news sent straight to your inbox with the Cleveland Business Journal. Free to sign up. BRISTOL, United Kingdom, Jan. 15, 2021, the best place for IT professionals to buy cloud products, today announced the launch of Pax8 UK and its strategic leadership team. "Pax8 has laid a foundation for international expansion, starting with our entry into the European market and the launch of Pax8 UK," said Nick Heddy, Chief Revenue Officer at Pax8. "We are thrilled to welcome the Pax8 UK team into the Pax8 family. The leadership team consists of some of the best talents in Europe, and we look forward to Pax8's expansion and development in the European region and globally." The Pax8 UK team has hired close to 30 employees, including the addition of 32 Wirehive employees. The leadership team includes: Robert Belgrave, Chief Executive Officer, Pax8 UK Belgrave will lead the Pax8 UK team as CEO and manage the overall operations and corporate decision-making for the Pax8 UK business. Simon Green, Chief Technology Officer, Pax8 UK: In his role as CTO, Green will lead the Pax8 UK technological needs as well as its research and development. James Rossell, Chief Operating Officer, Pax8 UK: In his role as COO, Rossell will oversee the day-to-day administrative and operational functions of the Pax8 UK business. Cole Knuth, Chief Revenue Officer, Pax8 UK: In his role of CRO, Knuth is an experienced sales leader who is responsible for leading strategic global expansion. Phylip Morgan, Chief Channel Officer, Pax8 UK: Morgan comes to Pax8 UK with more than 30 years of experience in the IT industry. CRN has recognised Morgan on their 'A-List' as being one of the most influential people in the UK Technology Sector and PCR Magazine as one of the top 50 Tech Executives in the UK. In his role, he is responsible for building channel relationships in EMEA and expanding our market opportunities. Jefferson Keith, Chief Financial Officer, Pax8 UK: In his role as CFO for Pax8 UK, Keith will manage the financial actions of the entity. Aaron Watts, Vice President of International Sales: Watts is a proven technology sales leader in the IT industry with experience working across many global markets. In his role at Pax8 UK, Watts is responsible for building and managing a world-class sales organization. In addition to the newly appointed Pax8 UK leadership team, the existing Wirehive leadership team will work closely with Pax8 UK to achieve continued growth and success, including: Chloe Cameron, Managing Partner, Wirehive: In her role, Cameron will continue to support the internal voice of the business, overseeing human resources, finance, and marketing. Kevin MacDonald, Managing Partner, Wirehive: In his role, MacDonald will continue to act as the voice of the customer, leading sales, delivery, and support. As part of its international expansion, the company announced promotions of those who will run global departments at Pax8, including: Jennifer Bodell, Senior Vice President of Global Channel Don Jeter, Senior Vice President of Marketing Amanda Lee, Senior Vice President of Global Communications Heddy continued: "This team is highly regarded in the industry and well-positioned to expand Pax8 operations globally. We congratulate them on the very deserved promotions." Partners in Europe can now access the award-winning Pax8 Platform to purchase products from the following vendors: Microsoft Bitdefender Pax8 Pro SentinelOne Dropsuite Ironscales Liongard SolarWinds Passportal TitanHQ (Private Cloud Only) Acronis Airslate To learn more about Pax8 and how to sign up to become a partner, please visit www.pax8.com. About Pax8 Pax8is modernizing how partners buy, sell, and manage cloud. As a born-in-the-cloud company, Pax8 simplifies the buying journey with cloud automation, empowering the modern partner to achieve more. The company's technology displaces legacy distribution by connecting the channel ecosystem to its award-winning transactional cloud marketplace. Through billing, provisioning, automation, industry-leading PSA integrations, pre and post-sales support, and education, Pax8 is a proven disruptor in the market. Pax8 has ranked in the Inc. 5000 for three consecutive years - #68 in 2018, #60 in 2019, and #111 in 2020 - as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the US. If you want to be successful with cloud, you want to work with Pax8. Get started today at www.pax8.com. Follow Pax8 on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Media contacts: Amanda Lee SVP, Global Communications at Pax8 alee@pax8.com Simon Corbett CEO at Jargon PR simon.corbett@jargonpr.com Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size On Sunday, Brogan Renshaw's lifelong habit of reading the news hit a wall. Since Renshaw, 32, was a boy, his dad would unfurl the newspaper and the day would begin. "I follow The Sydney Morning Herald. I Google it all the time. My general search is just 'SMH'," Renshaw says. ''That day the site did not come up. I thought maybe its just me." It was not. Google had quietly started to hide local news from Renshaw's search as part of an "experiment" aimed at showing how much the media depends on traffic from the company. Whatever one thinks of Google, it was a demonstration of the power of the technology giants that run much of the internet. The past fortnight has been full of other examples. Twitter, YouTube (itself owned by Google), Facebook and its photo app Instagram all banned or suspended US President Donald Trump after the violent storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Online fury and disinformation, like the QAnon conspiracy theory signified on the rioter's jumper, was given physical form when rioters stormed the US Capitol. Credit:AP Shopify, which is behind many of the world's online store fronts, and Stripe, which processes payments, cut off Trump-related accounts. So did Campaign Monitor, a service his campaign used to send email blasts. Advertisement In a dramatic move underscoring their control of speech on apps they do not even own, Amazon, Google and Apple took Parler, a free-speech social network favoured by Trump supporters, off their app stores and the internet. "We're toast," Parler's policy boss Amy Peikoff said when the bans were threatened. Loading Google's decision to stifle Australian media on its platform was triggered by a different motivation to the other platforms, which acted to stop the incitement of violence and hate speech. The search giant is at odds with the government and industry over a news bargaining code, currently before the Senate, that would force it to pay for the news content it displays in a manner it thinks unfair. By contrast, two weeks ago Trump had riled up an insurrectionist mob and directed them to the Capitol building, which they stormed as lawmakers were certifying election results, while Parler hosted graphic threats to murder Black and Jewish people along with police officers. Many cheered the technology giants' actions. Others did not. Among them were some who have their political futures yoked to Trump either here or in America. Divided front: What they said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO We [kept Trump online] because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government. Amazon in a letter to Parler We cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack "I dont believe in that sort of censorship. Theres been a lot of people whove said and done a lot of things on Twitter previously that havent received that sort of condemnation or, indeed, censorship. Liberal backbencher Dave Sharma It is the right decision on the facts'', but he was uncomfortable with the precedent of big tech making decisions about whose speech, which remarks, are censored and suppressed. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg Freedom of speech is fundamental to our society. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese Its about time that people werent given a platform to spread hatred, to spread lies, which has had consequences for [other] people. But there is a third group: people who dislike or even loathe Trump and may even support his ban, but find it worrying the way tech barons atop trillion-dollar companies can act as unappealable global censors. Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny called it an "unacceptable act of censorship" that would give the green light to regimes globally to do the same and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "problematic". Advertisement These debates have upended traditional political divides. There are small "l" liberal warriors whose insistence on free speech has crashed into their insistence on free markets, overturning the classic argument that private companies can choose the terms on which they take customers. Much of Donald Trump's presidency has been conducted by tweet. Credit:AP NSW Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg is clear. "I'm a markets guy," he says. But he is unhappy with the platforms' power to silence and is pushing for a mandatory code to regulate what content remains online and what is taken down if the companies don't agree to self-regulate first. "The reality is they are the railroads of the 21st century. As you know the US imposed the breakup of the railroads," Bragg pauses. "There are a lot of parallels here." Deeming the platforms publishers is not a position the government has moved to adopt. Labor, a party generally much happier with regulation, has taken the opposite approach to Bragg. Advertisement "Im a bit old fashioned, I believe in free enterprise," said the party's health spokesman, Chris Bowen. "I believe that Twitter is a free enterprise and should be able to ban whoever is inciting hate speech as they wish." More than 50 MPs from all parties have joined a parliamentary group dedicated to making social media safe. If there is one thing that unites the industry's critics on both sides, it is a call for consistency and a view that free speech standards chosen by the people through their governments should determine what remains online. "There needs to be consistency to the way in which these tech companies moderate content, with transparent rules and guidelines for everyone," Technology Minister Karen Andrews said this week. Loading "It concerns me that an outcry by prominent people or certain groups on social media may dictate their decision-making when there is incredibly vile, hateful and dangerous content that frequently goes unchecked." Examples are plentiful. Some are relatively constrained. A conspiracy theorist who falsely claimed Australian politicians were paedophiles remained on Facebook until Victorian Nationals MP Anne Webster successfully sued. The poster has now shifted to YouTube. Some are not. In perhaps the worst case, Facebook failed to stop its platform being used by the Myanmar military to incite genocide against the Rohingya in the late 2010s. Advertisement It has since admitted to initial failures, banned some top military figures in Myanmar and said it was proactively taking down misinformation in the country. Others in the sector admit the status quo has not worked well, even if Trump's ban was the right result. Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey defended kicking the President off the service that has defined much of his presidency on Thursday, Australian time, because of an imminent risk of violence but said it marked larger problems. "I feel a ban is a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation," Dorsey said. "Having to take these actions fragment the public conversation," he said. "They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning." Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has admitted the tech platforms' moderation policies have struggled. Credit:Bloomberg The idea that if people did not like Twitter they could simply go elsewhere had also been thrown into question, Dorsey said: "Parler was gone, although it could return, and other platforms had also banned Trump." But the agreement that the technology giants' power, inconsistency and opacity is a problem is not a consensus on a solution. Advertisement Energy and land connectivity, including the construction of a second fuel pipeline, were among key topics discussed by the foreign ministers of India and Nepal on Friday at their sixth Joint Commission meeting. External affairs minister S. Jaishankar and Nepalese counterpart Pradeep Kumar Gyawali also exchanged views on railway connectivity between the two countries, and Indias assistance in providing vaccines to combat the covid-19 pandemic in Nepal. Gyawali arrived in New Delhi on Thursday on a three-day visit setting the tone for a new phase in ties after a rough patch last May following Kathmandus decision to publish a map showing three areas within the Indian territory as part of Nepal. Ties began to improve with Nepals PM K.P. Sharma Oli greeting his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on the occasion of Indias Independence Day. Indian Army chief Manoj Mukund Naravane and foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla visited Nepal last November. The Joint Commission comprehensively reviewed all aspects of multifaceted cooperation between the two countries and explored ways to further strengthen the traditionally close and friendly ties. Both sides discussed several areas of cooperation, including in the areas of connectivity, economy and trade, power, oil and gas, water resources, political and security issues, border management, development partnership, tourism, culture, education and capacity building," according to an Indian readout on Fridays talks. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Tanaiste Leo Varadkar have been dubbed a sickening double act over their respective statements about the mother and baby homes scandal. The Chair of the Coalition of Mother And Baby home Survivors (CMABS) has attacked them for not committing outright to a referendum on access over adoption records. Paul Redmond also described what both men had to say as little more than political waffle. And he dismissed the Commissions report as being both deeply flawed and a contradictory mess, and questioned whether there was any point in survivors giving any of their testimonies in the first place. For his part, the Taoiseach has stated the Mother and Baby Homes Commission report was one all of Irish society needed to address. And he said what happened was something we did to ourselves, and all of society was complicit. It appears both Taoiseach Martin and Tanaiste Varadkar have been reading the Catholic church's bumper book of excuses, Mr Redmond said. Both tried desperately to deflect the blame from the State and their respective political parties. Apparently it was 'society's fault'. As another TD noted "when everyone is to blame, no one is to blame". Protesters hang babys shoes outside Aran and Uachterain to highlight their opposition to the sealing of records into the Tuam mother and baby home scandal. And he added: We listened to both Taoiseach Martin and Tanaiste Varadkar apologise in the Dail against a backdrop of empty seats. It seems the vast majority of our so-called public representatives didn't feel that it was worthy enough to attend the House. Mr Redmond, who was born in the Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home in Co Westmeath in 1964, described the Commission Report itself as deeply flawed. It could never have been any other way since its narrow terms of reference effectively excluded important sections of our wider community, he said. Up to 15,000 people in Ireland and abroad were illegally adopted during the timeframe under investigation and they were excluded. Furthermore the rest of the county homes were ignored by this commission - more than two dozen escaped investigations. Babies died by the thousands in these hellholes directly as a result of the early state's policy of semi-official discrimination against single mothers and their babies. Where is their truth and justice? The taxpayers of Ireland paid over 20m for this contradictory mess And he added: It laughingly says there is no evidence women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or state authorities then says most women had no alternative". The taxpayers of Ireland paid over 20m for this contradictory mess. Many of the statements in the report mention certain issues but then claim they can neither be proved nor disproved. Is the commission saying they don't accept the testimonies of the 500-plus survivors who testified to the Inquiry? It certainly looks like it. What was the point in our testifying if our word was to be doubted? Our testimonies ARE the proof. The Mother and Baby home memorial in Tuam. Photo: Breeda Murphy He said talk of exhuming bodies in Tuam or other former homes was premature, and there should instead be direct and immediate action be taken for the living. Neither of the sickening double act in the Dail bothered to talk about real and immediate action for living survivors, he said. The living survivor community must take priority over exhuming dead bodies or yet another talking shop. This simple message has clearly escaped the double act. And they of course did not commit to the second recommendation of the Inquiry - that a referendum be held (on open access to) sealed adoption records. But not to worry, it will be examined, they proclaimed. Survivors have heard enough political waffle to last a lifetime, we need action while some of us are alive. He also attacked the governments restorative recognition scheme which will provide enhanced medical card provision for all former residents of Mother and Baby Homes and County Homes. But it only applies to residents who were in the homes for for a period of more than six months. He said: The State is already trying to exclude as many survivors as possible from redress by arbitrarily setting a deadline of a "six-month" stay. The sad fact is that losing a baby to forced adoption is a traumatic event in a mother's life. It causes a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and it makes zero difference how soon after birth this trauma is inflicted. The horror remains, so does the depression, anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks, and secondary infertility. The recent resignation of Canadian Cabinet Minister Navdeep Bains has revealed dark secrets behind the Khalistani nexus operating in Canada as it is believed that Bains had to resign over charges of corruption, ties with extremists, and maneuvering gurdwara committees to gain profits. The series of truths that have uncovered as an outcome of inspection behind the resignation are highlighting the sinister designs of the Khalistanis based in Canada. Bains was involved in floating a pseudo gurdwara, only on papers, and getting visas for illegal immigrants under the cover of inviting religious preachers from India to the non-existent gurdwara. This has been a dominant trend amongst the Khalistanis spread all-over Canada, wherein these elements use their hold over the community to bring in illegal immigrants from India, in return for huge amounts of money. These elements have indeed turned places of worship into centers of business. Along with turning places of worship as places of business, Khalistanis have also turned them into political sites. Besides politicising the gurdwara management committees and using the religious sites for inciting violence, the lust of power and dominance amongst the Khalistanis have also led to a fragmented Sikh community. Almost every Sikh now in Canada is compelled to choose sides of groups that he could align to. Living under great standards of human development and enjoying neoliberal rights, the Canadian Khalistanis have themselves been attacking the freedom of expression of other fellow citizens and attacking empirical research pieces. After the release of the report Khalistan: A Project of Pakistan by veteran journalist Terry Milewski and the MacDonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), Khalistani operatives attacked Milewski and MLI and filed a lawsuit against them in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. However, the damage was already done as the report went on to uncover the deadly nexus between Pakistan and Khalistanis and was received with much fanfare as more than 2 million copies of the report were downloaded within a few weeks. Similarly, a group of Khalistanis are ever ready to reach the Indian High Commission or Consulate offices across Canada to protest even for internal policy issues of India. In the most recent series of developments, Khalistanis are launching regular protests in front of Indian diplomatic offices in Canada on the farm laws and organising rallies to oppose India, not the Indian government. Such rallies are characterised by abusive anti-India sloganeering and sometimes even joined by members of the Pakistani diaspora on directions of the ISI. The roots of the recent campaign of banning the entry of Indian diplomats lie in Canada. In 2017, an Indian diplomat was opposed to entry for the first time in any gurdwara as the Indian consul general Dinesh Bhatia arrived at the Dixie Gurdwara, a centre of Khalistanis, to attend a ceremony of a senior member of the community who had recently expired. This triggered a series of incidents and threatening letters were issued all across Khalistani hotspots across the world. SFJ was again leveraging on the issue and sent a letter to the Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland to take notice of the activities of the Indian diplomats posted in Canada which have the potential of creating disharmony and discontent among the peaceful Canadian Sikh community. These developments underscore the fact that Canada is emerging out to be the trendsetter in Khalistani extremism and is setting new parameters of exclusionary practices. The Khalistani elements have also campaigned to sabotage the passage of gay marriage bill and launched a global campaign to call for Khalistani elements across the world to oppose any such legislation in their respective regions. These elements are strongly against the entitlement of any such rights to the LGBTQI community. However, subsequent Canadian governments have been reluctant to act against these elements and tend to promote them instead. To the dismay of pro-democracy advocates, Trudeau's government decided to omit the references made to Khalistani extremism from Canadas annual report on the terrorism under the pressure of Khalistani extremists. Amongst five greatest threats to national security of Canada, the reference to the Khalistani extremism was made for the first time in the annual report, almost three and half decades after the deadly Air India Kanishka bombings, in which 329 citizens lost their lives with majority of them being Canadian nationals. The desperation to gain the popular support of half a million Sikhs in the country is so desperate that in 2018, a motion in the Canadian parliament that denounced Khalistanis and their supporters was vehemently opposed by the MPs. The motion that denounced Khalistani extremism and the glorification of any individuals who have committed acts of violence to advance the cause of an independent Khalistani state in India was dropped after protests from the Liberal Party MPs. However, the Conservatives have also surrendered to Khalistanis at times under the pressure of vote-bank politics. Garnett Genuis, a Conservative MP, received a warm and applauding welcome at a gathering of the community in Ontario where he defended the right to peacefully advocate for Punjab independence. Canada has become the breeding ground for proscribed outfits like the Babbar Khalsa International and international Sikh youth Federation organisations responsible for the 1985 Air India bombings as well. As both these organisations are banned in countries like the US, the UK, Australia, Japan, and India, operatives of these organisations based elsewhere in the world travel to Canada to convene meetings and coordinate strategies. Though these organisations are proscribed in Canada as well but are flawlessly operating under the nose of Canadian intelligence agencies. A response to an information request by Canadas Immigration department highlighted that Khalistani operatives from the UK made visits in the first decade of the century and met top political and community leaders to garner support for lifting the ban from SFI and ISYF. In fact, Canada is probably the only country where proscribed Khalistani groups can operate publicly and deliver violent speeches. Canada was the epicentre of the ISI funded Referendum 2020' campaign led by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun's SFJ. The area regions targeted by the outfit for the campaign were Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. All the Sikhs opposing the campaign were either manhandled or were threatened about expulsion from the community. A number of Sikhs with pro-India sentiments also received death threats for opposing the propaganda campaign. Canada is also increasingly housing Pakistan sponsored Khalistani leaders and dozens of such individuals are believed to be operating from the country now. Recently, under Indian pressure, two Khalistani extremists linked to Pakistani intelligence agency ISI were put on the no- fly list. Canada's Security Service has raised red flags over Bhagat Singh Brar and Parvkar Singh Dulai for playing at the hands of the ISI, planning attacks and radicalising the youth. In 2015, Brar has also travelled to Pakistan in 2015 to visit his father, who enjoys close ties with the ISI. Reportedly, both of them discussed delivering weapons in trenches and financing of terror attacks. The promotion of tacit nurturing of the extremists by the Canadian government has also proved detrimental for the Canadian society as besides the terror incidents, Canada witnesses a number of gang wars emerging due to inter-community rivalry between Sikh groups. A number of Sikh youths in their 20s and early 30s become victims of the gang wars every year. The entire country, especially two regions Vancouver and Ontario experience deadly bloodbath between Khalistanis themselves. The timeline of emergence and acceleration of gang wars between the members of the community was parallel to the growth of Khalistani extremism in Canada as most of these gangs came into being in the early 1980s and 1990s. The Khalistanis are also the main forces behind several incidents of organised crime in Canada. In fact, the Indo-Canadian crime gangs, ranked at the third place in the annual report of the Canadian, is led by the Khalistanis. Live TV It is high time for the Canadian government and the ruling class across party lines to stand up to the Khalistani extremists and proscribe the outfits and their operatives to ensure peace and tranquillity not only in Canada,but across the world. Romantic, stylish, and exquisitely renovated, an airy New Orleans townhouse that's nearly 200 years old racked up the most clicks this week on realtor.com. The three-story home with an abundance of old-school charm was built in 1831 and located just a couple of blocks from Bourbon Street. It's also the oldest home currently available in the Big Easy. The grande dame on the outskirts of the city's famous French Quarter neighborhood has retained some of its original charms, including plaster medallions and hardwood floors. A full renovation in 2013 added an elevator as well as a fancy, modernized kitchen. Other homes you clicked on also straddled the line between rustic and refined. They include the modern cabin Phish bassist Mike Gordon is selling. The property in the gorgeous Vermont woods comes with a recording studio. You were also intrigued by a couple of classic homes from the 1800s, a wood-paneled 1980s time capsule in Ohio, and the Vermont home with its own jail. For a full look at this week's 10 most popular properties available for sale, simply scroll on down. Price: $929,900 Why it's here: This renovated family home sits in Oak Hill on three-quarters of an acre and is just around the corner from the train station for a quick commute. The five-bedroom home has a new kitchen with custom cabinetry, a partially-finished basement, and a grand two-story sunlit foyer to welcome guests. There's also an over-sized deck out back, mud room off the garage, and separate pantry store room. Middletown, NJ realtor.com Price: $179,000 Why it's here: Sitting less than 3 miles from Appalachian Ski Mountain and downtown Blowing Rock, this charming A-frame cottage is in an ideal location. The structure was initially divided into two tiny apartments, but now it's ready to serve as a single-family getaway. The 728-square-foot structure has two bedrooms and a sleeping loft that's accessed by a drop-down ladder. Blowing Rock, NC realtor.com Price: $152,500 Why it's here: This grand five-bedroom home near the Ohio River was built in 1855 for the owner of the local Norton and Belfont Iron Works. Today it still features many of its extraordinary original details, including fretwork molding, yellow poplar floors, and a grand front entrance with 11-foot front doors. The three-floor home has a laundry and bathrooms on each level, a swooping staircase, and transom windows. The third-floor tower offers breathtaking views of the surrounding area. Ironton, OH realtor.com Price: $895,000 Why it's here: Phish bassist Mike Gordon is selling his contemporary three-bedroom cabin on 12 wooded acres. Built in 1990, the cabin comes with a full music studio. Other highlights of the home include reclaimed cypress walls, stained-glass windows, exercise room, workshop, and rec room with built-in storage. Essex, VT realtor.com Price: $925,000 Why it's here: This modern estate in western New York overlooks the city and sits on the 15th green of the Bartlett Country Club. Built in 1993, the 4,999-square-foot home features a grand mahogany staircase with brass railings, custom double-sided fireplace in the master suite, and radiant in-floor heat. Orlean, NY realtor.com Price: $149,000 Why it's here: Last week's winner slides four spots. This unassuming Vermont home complete with its own jail continues to lock up plenty of clicks. Guildhall, VT realtor.com Price: $890,000 Why it's here: Known as the Cartright house, this historic landmark was built in 1883. It boasts 20-foot columns, a wraparound porch and balcony, nine fireplaces, and two parlors. Featuring custom woodwork and moldings throughout, the six-bedroom Victorian has been updated with a new kitchen, master suite, and light fixtures. Outside the acre-plus lot includes a pool, covered deck, and gazebo. Terrell, TX realtor.com Price: $600,000 Why it's here: Built in 1981, this four-bedroom ranch is filled with fantastic '80s-era details, including a dance floor in the basement. You'll see an abundance of wood throughout the residence, particularly the kitchen. The home overlooks the park woods and includes an indoor pool, dumb waiter, two wet bars, a 60-foot balcony, and circular tiled shower. Hamilton, OH realtor.com Price: $315,000 Why it's here: Storybook lovers, rejoice! Gilbert Johnson was the architect behind this charming English Tudor from 1926. Located in the city's historic Brown's Hills district with views of the Rock River, the five-bedroom home features a grand foyer, updated kitchen, and lower-level rec room with kitchenette. Rockford, IL Price: $2,200,000 Why it's here: Restored in 2013, this 1830s Creole townhouse is stunning and stylish. The exterior gives off plenty of vintage vibes, and the residence still features original plaster medallions, moldings, fireplaces, and wood floors. The three-story, three-bedroom main home comes with an elevator. Out back, there's a spacious courtyard as well as a detached two-bedroom unit. New Orleans, LA realtor.com The post Crazy for Creole Style: New Orleans Townhouse From 1831 Is the Week's Most Popular Home appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. Mumbai: The RBI on Tuesday identified 12 accounts each having more than Rs 5,000 crore of outstanding loans and accounting for 25 per cent of total NPAs of banks for immediate referral for resolution under the bankruptcy law. Without naming the defaulters, the Reserve Bank said the lenders will be asked to initiate insolvency proceedings to recover the dues. The banking sector is saddled with non-performing assets (NPAs) worth over Rs 8 lakh crore, of which Rs 6 lakh crore is with public sector banks (PSBs). The Internal Advisory Committee (IAC), the central bank said, has arrived at an objective, non-discretionary criterion for referring accounts for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). In particular, the IAC recommended for IBC reference of all accounts with fund and non-fund based outstanding amount greater than Rs 5,000 crore, with 60 per cent or more classified as non-performing by banks as of March 31, 2016, the RBI said in a statement. The IAC noted that under the recommended criterion, 12 accounts with about 25 per cent of the current gross NPAs of the banking system would qualify for immediate reference under IBC, it said. The apex bank, based on the recommendations of the IAC, will accordingly be issuing directions to banks to file for insolvency proceedings under the IBC in the identified accounts. Such cases will be accorded priority by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). Also read: Reserve Bank of Indias action on NPA resolution expected soon, says FM Arun Jaitley Also read: Jaitley discusses NPA scenario with top bankers, takes stock of banks' finances For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Analyst Colin Barnden has given some insights on what features we could expect from Apple Car. The features include an Apple C1 processor, in-cabin eye-tracking technology, and more. Its no secret that Apple is working on the Apple Car. There are rumors that Apple is in talks with Hyundai to manufacture the long-rumored Apple Car. Apple also considered to invest, or rather acquire, in the electric car company Canoo in 2020. Now, an extensive report has been published by EETimes, which offers some insights on what features we could expect from Apple Car. The analyst believes Apple Car, or as he calls it iCar, could feature an automotive-grade processor which he calls Apple C1. He says that Apple could turn to Samsung or TSMC for the processor. TSMC is believed to be working on a 7nm-node process-based chip for cars, and Samsung already has an Exynos Auto V9 SoC for automotive. The report then goes on to highlight that Apple might go with a modified version of its A12 Bionic chip, found on iPhone XR. Im certain Apple would make some tweaks, changes and additions to keep us all guessing, but if the iCar is to enter production in 2024, then a lightly modified variant of the A12 looks like a great starting point for the C1. For a comparison between Teslas SoC for cars, and Apple C1, Teslas self-driving chip has 6 billion transistors and a power consumption of 36W. While the A12 Bionic has approximately 7 billion transistors and boasts a power consumption of only 3.5W. The report then goes on to say that Apple could implement a plethora of in-cabin AI features in the iCar. These features include driver eye-gaze tracking technology. This technology will measure driver workload based on real-time observations of eye movement and glance patterns. Colin believes that Apple would combine in-cabin AI and large, complex, displays to make the car more appealing to customers. We Want to Hear From You What are your thoughts on this report? What feature would you like to see on Apple Car? Do you think Apple could give a tough competition to Tesla? Let us know in the comment section below! People wear masks while they walk as the territory of Nunavut enters a two week mandatory restriction period in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, on Nov. 18, 2020. (Natalie Maerzluft/Reuters) British Columbia Reports First Case of South African COVID-19 Variant British Columbia has reported the first case of COVID-19 linked to the variant found in South Africa. Dr. Bonnie Henry, the B.C. Provincial Health Officer, confirmed the finding during a press briefing on Jan. 14. The infected person has not been traveling and hasnt been near anyone who recently traveled, Henry said. We are still investigating where this person might have contracted this virus, Henry said. It is of course concerning that we dont know where this arose. However, at the moment it does not appear to have spread in the community beyond the person that we have identified. Henry also noted that the province has previously identified four cases of COVID-19 linked to the variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus found in the UK. Three of the cases were linked to one specific traveler, while the fourth case was linked to another. There are no other contacts and we dont believe this has spread at all from these four cases, Henry said. Both the latest case of the UK variant and the new case of South African variant were found in residents of the Vancouver Coastal Health region. The South Africa reportedly carries a mutation known as E484K. Scientists have suggested that this variant of the CCP virus, as well as the UK variants, are more transmissible; but they havent found evidence suggesting that the variants will cause more severe illnesses. On Thursday, B.C. added 536 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total infection to 59,608. As of Jan. 13, the province has 69,746 residents vaccinated. Henry said the B.C. government will continue to monitor the spread of the virus through the whole genome sequencing. She urged the public to follow existing public health measures to not gather and keeping contacts to a small group of people. I have spoken many times before about how were in different boats. How our experiences are unique though this pandemic, even if were in the same storm, Henry said. Were all susceptible to getting ill from this virus, and we all have a choice about our daily activities and how we treat those around us. Editorials represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They are written and edited by the editorial staff, which operates separately from the news department. Editorial writers are not involved in newsroom operations. BATTLE CREEK, Mich., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Tues., Jan. 19, 2021, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will virtually host the fifth annual National Day of Racial Healing, an afternoon of essential and timely conversations about racial healing, equity and justice with leading advocates, artists and influencers. The 100-minute (approx.) online event will feature conversations, panels and performances featuring Ta-Nehisi Coates, John Legend, Padma Lakshmi, Yara Shaidi, Storm Reid and more. The program will be led by Kellogg Foundation President and CEO La June Montgomery Tabron, and include performances by Aloe Blacc, Connie Lim (MILCK), Flor de Toloache, the Detroit Youth Choir, including an original poem by Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman. The annual program is designed to bridge divides, affirm our common humanity and inspire action. Conversations explore the truth-telling and trust-building that lead to racial healing and a more just and equitable future for all. The event will also recognize work done by grantees implementing the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) process in communities across the U.S. What: A 100-minute (approx.) virtual National Day of Racial Healing event with panels, conversations, videos, music and creative performances; local virtual events are also being held across the country. Where: To RSVP for the national event, please visit: www.dayofracialhealing.org When: Tues., Jan. 19, 2021 from 3:00 pm - 4:45 pm EST Who: Hosted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and featuring: Aloe Blacc Cheryllyn Branche Dominique Brown Ta-Nehisi Coates Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas Detroit Youth Choir Dr. Monica Moreno Figueroa Flor de Toloache Amanda Gorman Maria Hinojosa Saru Jayaraman Fr. Tim Kesicki Padma Lakshmi Connie Lim (MILCK) (MILCK) Hasan Minhaj John Legend Dr. Manuel Pastor Rabbi Jonah Pesner Storm Reid Martin Sensmeier Yara Shahidi La June Montgomery Tabron Jerry Tello Baratunde Thurston Lance Wheeler And other youth advocates, performers and speakers Visuals: Speakers, panelists and conversations, as well as music, dance and spoken-word poetry performances. Visit www.dayofracialhealing.org for a complete list of events taking place around the country including Los Angeles, CA; Chicago, IL; Selma, AL; New Orleans, LA; Buffalo, NY; Baton Rouge, LA; Battle Creek, MI; Flint, MI; Kalamazoo, MI; Dallas, TX; and Richmond, VA. Join the conversation on social media via the hashtag #HowWeHeal. About National Day of Racial Healing The "National Day of Racial Healing" was established by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in 2017 to promote healing as a critical path for ending racial bias and creating a society in which all children can thrive. The annual outreach grew out of W.K Kellogg Foundation's Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation effort, a national and community-based process designed to bring transformational and sustainable change to communities, while addressing the historic and contemporary effects of racism. About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal innovator and entrepreneur Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, W.K. Kellogg Foundation works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special attention is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. W.K. Kellogg Foundation priority places in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans; and internationally, are in Mexico and Haiti. Contact: Aprill O. Turner, [email protected] or (202) 499-0102 SOURCE W.K. Kellogg Foundation The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has decided to conduct PCR tests on all suspects upon arrest, regardless of whether they show COVID-19 symptoms or not. The move comes after multiple detainees were confirmed to be infected. Seventeen detainees tested positive last month at a police station in Shinjuku. A total of 38 detainees tested positive across Tokyo. Previously, only those showing symptoms were tested. In the future, saliva samples will be taken from everyone who is arrested. The samples will be analyzed at police facilities. If a detainee tests positive, the police will contact a medical institution and move the person to a detention center for the infected. If necessary, the individual will receive treatment at a hospital. First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance By Annie Jacobsen Dutton. 386 pp. $28 - - - By 2012, President Barack Obama and much of the American public had given up on any prospect of victory in Afghanistan. But the soldiers of First Platoon, part of the Army's famed 82nd Airborne Division, were still out on patrol, wondering why they were there. They had shipped off to war expecting to battle Taliban fighters, build schools and protect innocent villagers from the ravages of a merciless enemy. Instead they set off on daily foot patrols through fields seeded with buried bombs. The missions seemed designed to provoke a Taliban attack. Once fired at, U.S. troops could shoot back and kill the otherwise shadowy enemy. "Stir the pot. Shake it up. If necessary, take fire," is the way an officer describes an average day in Afghanistan in Annie Jacobsen's book "First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance." The infantrymen had another task in 2012: to collect fingerprints, iris scans and DNA from their living and dead combatants. The First Platoon soldiers told Jacobsen that their commanders seemed inexplicably obsessed with gathering biometric data from the enemy, a process called "battle damage assessment," or BDA. Often they were asked to gather the biometrics while still under fire. "Headquarters wouldn't let up," recalls Sgt. Dan Williams. "Iris scans from dead Taliban? Half of them didn't have any heads left," observes Pfc. Sam Walley. Jacobsen traces the obsession back to the Pentagon, where senior officials had alighted on a new strategy to win the stalemated war. The brass dubbed it "Identity Dominance," a massive effort to gather biometric information on virtually all of Afghanistan's military-age men. "By the time First Platoon set up its Alaska tents inside Strong Point Payenzai's fortified walls, the war in Afghanistan had become about the quest for identity," Jacobsen writes. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff were now fixated on the idea that the 'discovery of true identities' of insurgents could turn the tide and win the war." Once the U.S. military had insurgents' biometric data, the Pentagon reasoned, it would be easier to link them through their DNA or fingerprints to attacks on U.S. troops and then arrest or kill them. In "First Platoon" Jacobsen tells two stories. One is about the two dozen or so soldiers who made up First Platoon and suffered through a crushing deployment that included casualties, carnage and a leader who ordered them to commit war crimes. First Lt. Clint Lorance took command of First Platoon in late June 2012, shortly after the unit's initial leader was wounded. During his three short days at the helm, Lorance averaged a war crime a day, a military jury later found. On his last day before he was stripped of his command, he ordered his troops to open fire on three Afghan men standing by a motorcycle on the side of the road who he said posed a threat. He served six years of a 19-year prison sentence before President Donald Trump pardoned him in November 2019. Jacobsen brings empathy, compassion, compelling writing and some truly dogged reporting to this first story. The book's second story is a dystopian tale that seeks to document the ways in which biometric and surveillance technology, developed for the Afghanistan war, is being abused by the Pentagon, U.S. law enforcement and government leaders in China. This ambitious and potentially alarming line of reporting often feels rushed and thin. The story of First Platoon begins with its deployment to a remote district of southern Afghanistan that was the site of some of the war's heaviest fighting. When the platoon leader was wounded by a buried bomb, Lorance was sent to lead the men, though he had no combat experience. His soldiers hesitated when he first ordered them to open fire on the three men who approached on the motorcycle. "Why aren't you shooting?" Lorance demanded, according to testimony at his trial. A U.S. soldier shot and missed. The motorcycle carrying the three men, none of whom appeared to be armed, came to a stop. The puzzled Afghans were now standing next to the stopped motorcycle, "trying to figure out what had happened," according to one soldier's testimony. They waved to some Afghan army soldiers who were accompanying Lorance's troops. "Smoke 'em," Lorance ordered over the radio. Another U.S. soldier opened fire, killing two of the three Afghans. Lorance then sought to cover up his crime by telling his troops not to collect biometric data on the dead. So it was somewhat surprising when John Maher, Lorance's lawyer, built his appeal around biometrics. Maher said his legal team plugged the names of the three men on the motorcycle and a fourth Afghan who witnessed the attack into the Army's classified biometric database. The results, he insisted, showed that at least three of the four men were Taliban fighters. The revelation was dismissed as irrelevant by a military appeals court, but it got big play on Fox News and was critical in persuading Trump to pardon Lorance. Using documents painstakingly retrieved through Freedom of Information Act requests, Jacobsen shows that the evidence Maher used to sell the pardon to Trump was sloppily assembled and almost certainly wrong. The names that Lorance's legal team plugged into the military database were relatively common. Although the four Afghans had names that were similar to those of known Taliban fighters who had left DNA or fingerprints on bombs used to attack Americans, they weren't same men or they weren't Taliban, according to the Army. In one case, Jacobsen shows that one Taliban member, whom Lorance's lawyers insisted was killed near the motorcycle by their client on July 2, 2012, was arrested by U.S. forces 21 months later and could not be the same person. Another was a member of the Afghan police and, according to the Army, probably "contaminated evidence as part of his [police] duties." Even after Jacobsen informed Maher of his mistake in September 2019, two months before Lorance's pardon, Maher continued to push the false information to the president, Congress and average Americans who were duped by the bogus biometric information into making donations to help pay for Lorance's defense. "Do either of you feel regret or remorse that you portrayed murder victims as Taliban bombmakers?" she asked the lawyer. Maher's dismissive response is infuriating. He didn't deny the accusation. Rather he asked her not to "insult him," according to Jacobsen. Just as crushing is the fate of the First Platoon soldiers. Last year I wrote about the platoon's struggles with the war, the crimes and their aftermath for The Washington Post. Since returning home in 2013, five of the platoon's two dozen soldiers have died from suicide, cancer, a drunken car crash, a PTSD-fueled gunfight and a blood clot caused by a battlefield wound. At least four others have been hospitalized following suicide attempts or struggles with drugs or alcohol. Jacobsen spent hours on the phone with James Twist, a First Platoon soldier, Michigan state trooper and father of three young children before he died by suicide in October 2019, just three weeks before Lorance walked free. "Everything good we did ended up getting destroyed," he told Jacobsen. Jacobsen stumbles in portraying the U.S. military's efforts to biometrically track military-age Afghans as the centerpiece of the war effort. She quotes the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, an influential advisory group, as telling then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "The [Global War on Terror] cannot be won without a 'Manhattan Project'-like tagging, tracking, and locating program for national security threats." But the effort, which envisioned using biometric data to identify and then kill or arrest the elusive enemy, was always more of a sideshow than a centerpiece of the Afghanistan war. Other U.S. intelligence assets, such as drones and eavesdropping technology, were far better at finding the enemy; but even they weren't good enough. By 2008, U.S. commanders had begun to acknowledge that they would never be able to arrest or kill enough Taliban fighters to win the war. Instead, they embraced a strategy that was predicated on helping the Afghans build competent security forces and a functioning government that could win the backing of the Afghan people and hold off the Taliban. These tasks also proved well beyond America's capacity. Jacobsen is even less convincing in her prediction of a dark future in which the biometric and surveillance technologies developed for Afghanistan are used by U.S. law enforcement to track the activities of law-abiding American citizens. She cites as evidence PredPol, a company that boasts of its ability to use mountains of data to predict criminal behavior before it even happens. "The behaviors that a hunter-gatherer uses to choose a wildebeest versus a gazelle are the same calculations a criminal uses to choose [to steal] a Honda versus a Lexus," the company's co-founder is quoted as saying. The company, according to Jacobsen, already has contracts with more than 60 U.S. police departments. Still, its boasts come off as completely nonsensical when juxtaposed with the U.S. military's experience in Afghanistan. The Pentagon spent hundreds of billions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance platforms, aerial drones and biometric tracking and still couldn't effectively find enough Taliban fighters to hinder the group's progress. Jacobsen is right to sound the alarm about the dangers associated with the modern surveillance state. But the real legacy of the Afghanistan war for the United States probably isn't the dystopian future she predicts. It's the struggles of the men of First Platoon and others like them, which she so ably documents. Smoke from California wildfires in August obscures the view of traffic traveling on Interstate 80 in Sparks, Nev. Lead Senior Associate Jonathan McHugh [Jons] a leader who is trusted and relied upon by colleagues and clients alike, and were lucky to have him on our team. Livesay & Myers, P.C. proudly announces the promotion of attorney Jonathan McHugh to the position of Lead Senior Associate in the firm. "Jons encyclopedic knowledge of domestic relations law, combined with his unflappable and fearless demeanor, have made him a force in the courtroom and at the bargaining table, said Matthew Smith, a partner at the firm. Hes a leader who is trusted and relied upon by colleagues and clients alike, and were lucky to have him on our team. Mr. McHugh joined Livesay & Myers, P.C. as an associate attorney in 2014. He was promoted to the position of Senior Associate Attorney in 2018. Upon joining the firm, Mr. McHugh quickly became known for his commitment to his clients. Mr. McHughs calm and determined style, commitment to client service, and extensive knowledge of family law combined to serve his clients extremely well. Mr. McHugh built a long track record of achieving excellent results for his clients, who rewarded him with a large number of 5-star reviews and testimonials online. Mr. McHugh was included in the 2021 edition of Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch for his work in family law. He has been named a Super Lawyers Rising Star every year since 2017. Mr. McHugh currently holds a perfect 10.0 rating from both Avvo and Justia. Mr. McHugh was born in Boston, Massachusetts and earned his B.A. cum laude from Wake Forest University in 2004. Mr. McHugh then moved to Northern Virginia and worked as a consultant in the Washington, D.C. area for 3 years, before enrolling at The Catholic University Columbus School of Law. Upon graduating from law school in 2011, Mr. McHugh entered private practice as a family law attorney at a law firm in Northern Virginia prior to joining Livesay & Myers, P.C. Mr. McHugh works in the firms offices in Arlington and Leesburg, and represents clients all across Northern Virginia. He resides with his wife and daughter in Northern Virginia. About Livesay & Myers, P.C. Livesay & Myers, P.C. is an award-winning family law firm with offices in Arlington, Fairfax, Manassas, Fredericksburg and Leesburg, Virginia. The firm was founded in 2003 by partners James Livesay and Kevin Myers. By 2016, the firm had made the annual Virginia Lawyers Weekly list of Virginias Largest Law Firms, debuting at #64 and moving up to #52 by the 2020 edition. Livesay & Myers, P.C. appears in the 20182021 Editions of the U.S. News - Best Lawyers listing of Best Law Firms as a Tier 2 firm in Family Law for the Washington, D.C. region. The racing pigeon thought to have flown a heroic 13,000 kilometres from the United States to Melbourne has been spared death row after quarantine officials announced it is "highly likely" the bird is actually Australian. Victorian resident Kevin Celli-Bird discovered the exhausted and emaciated pigeon, whom he named "Joe" after US President-elect Joe Biden, in his backyard in Officer, south-east of Melbourne, on Boxing Day. Joe the racing pigeon: but did he really make an extraordinary 13,000-kilometre Pacific Ocean crossing from the United States to Australia? Credit:AP This week, Australian quarantine authorities asked Mr Celli-Bird to catch Joe and hand him over to be killed, amid fears the bird might be carrying a disease such as avian influenza, fowl typhoid or pigeon paramyxovirus. "Humane destruction of the bird is the best safeguard for Australian poultry and wildlife," the Agriculture Department said in a statement. "Protecting the health of Australian bird populations against potentially devastating losses to disease remains the departments top priority." Supplier News 15 January 2021 The latest edition of the Pulse Report, which tracks activity in the month of December, shows that the majority of markets are continuing to feel serious effects of continued uncertainty amongst bookers due to rapid rises in COVID cases across the globe. North America's pace remains consistently low and Europe is still subject to several lockdowns in various countries, preventing travel and damaging confidence, which is reflected in the latest data. The Americas New bookings for travel across North America remains low. This is due in part to increased risk of COVID exposure and continued state by state travel restrictions. However, when we look at pick up for future stay months, we can see that December 2020 delivered positive momentum in new bookings for stays in January, February and March 2021, while web traffic also showed some increases. Pick up for stays in these months that were booked in December 2020 compared to what had been booked in November 2020 was up by 193%, 91%, and 103% respectively. While of course this positive momentum is welcome news, we do need to keep in mind the fact that the absolute numbers are very low in comparison to prior years. For Latin America, new bookings made in December 2020 for stays over the next twelve months (vs the same period in November) are up by only the slightest margin. January saw a fairly healthy percentage growth of 88%, but considering the size of the absolute numbers, the month over month change was not exactly what we would have liked to see. February through August grew by an average of only 15.7% while September actually moved in the wrong direction, with a slowdown in net new booking activity of -3% as compared to what had been booked in the month of November 2020. Web traffic has also been disappointing for this region as it's clear that people are still uneasy about the prospect of travel. Hannah Weller Barrise, Director of Hospitality Solutions for the Americas, commented: "While we are excited for the year ahead and have an increased sense of optimism about what's to come as vaccines continue to roll out, reviewing the latest round of data reminded us that we're going to have to be patient. In this month's Pulse Report, in North America specifically, we did see a handful of promising figures in terms of month over month percentage growth but when taking into account the absolute numbers, it's clear that there's a long way to go. We continue to look at web traffic as an indicator of consumer demand, and in the coming weeks we'll watch this very closely as we have a better understanding of the vaccination timeline and we'll look to see how this impacts the confidence for summer and fall stays." Europe In Europe, web traffic is down, showing that interest in travel has reduced over the last few weeks of 2020. However, that was to be expected due to the various lockdowns in place and the Christmas holidays. Looking at pick up for the next two months, it seems that despite the challenges, December ended with a positive net pick up for January and February compared to November 2020 of 68% and 24% respectively. It's important to keep in mind however that the numbers are very low in comparison to previous years, but the positive last minute pick up - mostly driven by essential and domestic travel - remains there, which is something to hold on to. Juan Ruano, Duetto's Director of Hospitality Solutions for the EMEA region, commented: "As we look at the data for the start of the new year, we are seeing more of the same uncertainty that filled most of 2020. However, there are several COVID vaccines approved in Europe and rollout plans are being implemented across the continent as we speak. This means there will come a point when a critical mass of the population will be vaccinated, which will mean we will start seeing more pick up coming through, more appetite to travel and consumer confidence starting to grow." APAC In the APAC region, spikes in COVID cases in several countries have led to stricter restrictions being put in place. The Thai Prime Minister has imposed new restrictions in 28 'red zone' provinces, including new travel rules and school closures. Similar tightening of restrictions have also been announced in Malaysia and Japan, whilst border closures in Australia have been reinstated. Currently, the entire region is completely reliant on local domestic travel, as almost all countries' international borders remain closed. With this in mind we are looking at pick up figures drastically lower than the previous two years. For South East Asia net bookings made during December 2020 for the month of January 2021 are 50% less than in the two previous years, as can be expected with the void of international travelers into the region. However, we recognize the domestic market support for the region where net bookings tripled in December 2020 vs November 2020, for the upcoming three months. Greater China has seen extremely short lead times, having shrunk due to the travel restrictions and testing requirements in place. For the next three months we see the vast majority of net bookings made in December 2020 are for January 2021. In fact, the bookings for stay month January 2021 total more than the net bookings for the entire remainder of the year. IMEE: CONSIDER "ASIAN FACTOR" FOR VACCINE SAFETY Senator Imee Marcos has urged the government to give weight to Covid-19 vaccines that included more Asian participants in their efficacy trials. "Besides cost, cold storage requirements, ease of use, and the media hype, we must not overlook the Asian factor in choosing the safest vaccines for Filipinos," Marcos said. Marcos pointed out that three leading vaccine candidates that got emergency use authorization (EUA) in Western countries had conducted trials in which less than 5% of participants were Asian. The US Food and Drug Administration has reported that only 4.7% of participants in Moderna's vaccine trials were Asian, while the medical journal The Lancet showed that Asians averaged only 4.4% in UK and Brazil trials for the AstraZeneca vaccine. Although Pfizer placed the overall efficacy of its vaccine at 95%, only 4.3% of trial participants were Asian and efficacy particularly among non-whites was lower at 74.4%. The lack of a clearer breakdown of various Asian ethnicities in vaccine trials has also led health experts in India to call for greater participation of its ethnically diverse groups before granting an EUA for Western-made vaccines, Marcos said. "Vaccines may actually be customized in the future," Marcos added, citing a study published in December by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Using artificial intelligence and a vaccine similar to that of Pfizer and Moderna, MIT researchers found that Asians were less likely to respond to the experimental vaccine than Caucasians. The Holy Grail of lost collector cars and Carroll Shelby's personal Mustangs reborn as Swiss Made timepieces COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Danish watch brand REC Watches brings iconic vehicles back to life - as a watch. Every timepiece features a handcrafted dial from legendary vehicles. This time, the company has released timepieces with a dial handcrafted from one of the most sought-after vehicles in post-war history: Little Red and Green Hornet. LITTLE RED and GREEN HORNET are the "Holy Grail" of lost collector cars and one-off experimental and mythological 1967 and 1968 Prototype Shelby Mustang GT500 EXPs. Countless enthusiasts and experts were sure they had been destroyed more than 50 years ago and lost forever - and even more people questioned they had ever existed. Both cars were ordered by famous race driver and car designer Carroll Shelby, when he came back from the Le Mans in 1966 with Ford's first overall win, making them his R&D cars and the cars to push the limits of what was possible with the Shelby at the time. At the time, Fords' policy was to destroy prototype vehicles to avoid them entering circulation. Somehow both Green Hornet and Little Red avoided their fate. In 2018, the cars were fully restored to its former glory by car enthusiast and owner of Green Hornet, Craig Jackson. In this process excess sheet metal from the restoration process was donated to REC Watches and built directly into the design of a new generation of Swiss Made limited edition timepieces. The design of the timepieces honors and reflects the automotive history both cars represent. "REC Watches goes to extraordinary means to find unique artifacts and put these into a brand-new timepiece. That intrigued me, coming off with enough sheet metal to build into the watch. They do it in a way that keeps the patina, and they build the watch to represent the vehicle." -Craig Jackson - Car collector & Restorer and CEO of Barret-Jackson Auction Company With this collection, it was REC Watches' mission to ensure that true classic car and Mustang enthusiasts immediately recognize all the small design references, whereas a watch fan would appreciate the masculine and original design of their latest collection. Two years later, they're finally ready to present the final result of that work. Order exclusively on: www.recwatches.com Contact: PR and marketing, Gurcan Bozdogan, [email protected] Related Files REC Watches THE P-51 Little Red and Green Hornet Press Release JANUARY 2021 - IMMEDIATE RELEASE JANUARY 14.pdf Related Images the-holy-grail-of-lost-collector.png The Holy grail of lost collector cars reborn as timepieces This timepiece collection has a dial handcrafted from the most sought-after vehicles in post-war history. Related Links https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cmlzltvhwqff7no/AADOZoQXHSbdJbvbFMesj0bUa?dl=0 http://www.recwatches.com SOURCE REC Watches Researchers from University of Stavanger, University of Melbourne, and University of Wisconsin-Madison published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how major projects undertaken by temporary organizations can be better managed so that cost overruns are minimized. The study forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing is titled "Mobilizing the Temporary Organization: The Governance Roles of Selection and Pricing" and is authored by Elham Ghazimatin, Erik Mooi, and Jan Heide. When consumers return to the skies again, they may do so in Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. But the project, or "temporary organization," created to make this plane a reality ran much over-budget and created significant dissatisfaction among Boeing's customers. Such cost overruns are a common outcome of major engineering and construction projects. In fact, studies show that nine out of ten have significant cost overruns, with overruns above 100 percent quite common. The implications of cost overruns go beyond financial metrics and can include reputational damage, litigation, and future overreliance on rigid and formalized relationship features. Managing suppliers and subcontractors, who can run into the hundreds in major projects, is an enormously difficult task. It necessitates considerable coordination and monitoring in a context where parties often have not worked together, they lack shared procedures or rules, and there is a great need to get up to speed quickly. As one of Boeing's engineers put it, "The importance of thorough planning, accounting for all interdependencies, cannot be overestimated." Through studying 429 completed construction projects, the researchers find that supplier selection and pricing format decisions that reflect key characteristics of the project, such as the size of the project, duration, and type of customer, are best at reducing a significant part of the cost overruns observed. They conduct "what-if" analyses to show that the reductions in costs can be substantial. Ghazimatin adds that "We also show that the benefits from getting selection right outweigh those that result from getting pricing right, suggesting that selection should be, relatively speaking, a higher strategic priority for a firm. " This study is particularly useful to managers who wish to minimize cost overruns in projects. Pricing and selection decisions, which are typically fixed at the start of a project, are predictive of cost overruns that can only be observed after a project is completed, typically after many months or years. The pricing and selection aspects studiedfixed vs. variable pricing and selection on price vs. abilitywere proposed by industry representatives and thus have direct managerial relevance. Results also show that simple managerial heuristics, such as only relying on price-based selection or deploying fixed pricing, are unlikely to be effective at minimizing cost overruns. More information: Elham Ghazimatin et al, EXPRESS: Mobilizing the Temporary Organization: The Governance Roles of Selection and Pricing, Journal of Marketing (2020). Journal information: Journal of Marketing Elham Ghazimatin et al, EXPRESS: Mobilizing the Temporary Organization: The Governance Roles of Selection and Pricing,(2020). DOI: 10.1177/0022242920982545 Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 11:26:23|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KIGALI, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- A Rwandan health official on Thursday said Rwanda has addressed the challenge of storing COVID-19 vaccines at low temperatures and has capacity to store about 300,000 vaccine doses. "Currently we have no storage challenge for vaccines," Hassan Sibomana, head of Rwanda Biomedical Center's vaccination unit, told the national broadcaster Rwanda Television. Five new ultra-cold freezers were purchased while other equipment to be used to transport the vaccines to different parts of the country are also ready, he said, adding that the government takes vaccine safety a priority to avoid any side effects on vaccinated people and have established a specialized and experienced team in charge of vaccine storage. The official said that Rwanda expects to receive its first vaccines in March and aims to launch vaccination for the primary beneficiaries around April 1. Sabin Nsanzimana, director general of Rwanda Biomedical Center, confirmed with Xinhua that the five freezers can store vaccines at temperature below minus 80 degrees Celsius and will help Rwanda to accommodate any type of vaccine conditions. Rwanda on Thursday reported 194 new confirmed COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, breaking the previous record of 172 registered on Jan. 4. The central African nation has recorded a total of 10,316 COVID-19 cases with 6,974 recoveries and 133 deaths. Enditem - Britishvolt, the leading UK battery technology specialist, to collaborate with world-leading technology and service provider, Siemens PLC - Siemens is providing Britishvolt with access to its Digital Enterprise Technology, design, execution and simulation tools to speed up lithium-ion battery development and production - Britishvolt's battery gigaplant, set to be located in the North East of England, is one of the UK's largest-ever industrial investments - Production of world-class batteries to begin at the end of 2023 LONDON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Britishvolt, Britain's foremost investor in battery technologies, today announces that it has entered into an exclusive technology collaboration agreement with Siemens. The collaboration will see Siemens provide Britishvolt with access to its automation, electrification solutions and Digital Twin manufacturing execution technology. This innovative system gives the opportunity to simulate gigaplant production processes and flows ahead of construction completion, optimising design and efficiencies. It also promises to speed up delivery times, allowing Britishvolt to stay on track to deliver the first lithium-ion batteries at the end of 2023. Additionally, Siemens is providing Britishvolt with its latest design and simulation development tools, accelerating the time it takes for state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery cells to go from laboratory to production at scale. Britishvolt CEO, Orral Nadjari: "We are delighted to enter into this technology collaboration. Working with Siemens and utilising its global expertise in Digital Twin and simulation technologies will play a pivotal role in Britishvolt achieving its tight deadlines to begin producing world-class batteries, at scale, by the end of 2023. Being able to simulate production of lithium-ion batteries and cell development speeds up a complicated process and allows us to bring crucial batteries to market quicker. Working with leading global partners such as Siemens helps us stay firmly on course in our mission to build the UK's first battery gigaplant." Carl Ennis, CEO Siemens GB and Ireland: "This is an exciting and vital project to quickly ramp up availability at commercial scale of the batteries required by the electric vehicle market to help the UK reach its carbon net zero goals by 2050. In order to give manufacturers and end customers the confidence to switch to electric vehicles, we need to have this crucial part of the supply chain here in the UK. "Siemens has the manufacturing and energy infrastructure technology and services to help Britishvolt build the most efficient, sustainable gigaplant. We are keen to start working with Britishvolt to get the Blyth site operational by 2023, supplying batteries and delivering crucial investment in the North East, helping to level up the UK economy." Britishvolt's gigaplant is one the largest industrial investments ever undertaken in the UK and the largest in North-East England since the 1980s. With construction due to begin this summer, Britishvolt remains on track to begin production of world-leading lithium-ion batteries in 2023. Notes to Editors About Britishvolt Britishvolt is Britain's foremost investor in battery technologies. It is dedicated to supporting the future of electrified transportation and sustainable energy storage, producing world-leading lithium-ion battery technologies. Britishvolt's aim is to establish the UK as the leading force in battery technology. It is working with leading partners and suppliers to achieve this because it is of paramount importance to the future of the UK automotive industry and the overall economic and industrial health of the UK. The company believes that the UK is the right place for its investments because of the strength of its automotive and energy industry, its expertise and history of industrial and academic battery research and development. Quarter four of 2023 has been targeted as the start of production in Britain's first gigaplant. Syracuse, N.Y. Just weeks before a pandemic struck Central New York, Mayor Ben Walsh announced an aggressive plan to build 50 new homes in Syracuse in two years. It would be the biggest batch of residential neighborhood construction in Syracuse in a generation. Nearly a year after that announcement, the project is behind schedule, with construction just now beginning on a handful of houses. And securing funding for the project has proved more difficult than initially expected as the state closed its purse strings for cities like Syracuse. Despite those speedbumps, construction is underway on two houses on Shuart Avenue and work is beginning soon on three more on Baker Avenue and one on Woodland Avenue. Theres money lined up for 31 of the 50 planned houses. Walsh expects half of those 31 to be completed this year, the other half next year. Considering the circumstances of 2020, Walsh considers any new construction a win. At the onset of the pandemic, he said, there was concern that none of the project would get done. Overall, given the fact that we have been in the midst of a pandemic that has decimated state funding sources and has also decimated city finances, Im thrilled with the progress weve made over the past year, Walsh said. Were building new homes this year. Walsh unveiled his Resurgent Neighborhoods Initiative in his State of the City address last January. It called for the construction of 50 single-family homes in two years, followed by 75 two-family properties. In all, that would create 200 new units of housing in a city where almost all the houses are more than 50 years old. The city has targeted vacant lots on streets where houses could be built in clusters. On Shuart Avenue, for example, two houses are being built simultaneously, next door to one another. The idea is to increase neighborhood density using lots that are mostly controlled by the Land Bank. Were really ... being intentional about trying to build the missing piece in areas where weve had to do a lot of really concentrated blight elimination over the years, said Michelle Sczpanski, housing and neighborhood planning coordinator for the city. Were kind of making that whole again. The 50 single-family houses will cost $13 million to build. Some of that will be covered by the owners mortgages on the homes, but not all. The city, so far, has secured $6,872,025. Thats money from the state, from federal block grants, from the New York Attorney Generals office and from some private donations, including $425,000 from the Allyn Foundation. The city got a $1 million grant in November from the New York State Affordable Housing Corporation. Walsh said securing funding has been a challenge. Many pots of state money are frozen due to the pandemic. Thats delayed the timeline for completing all the houses by about a year. Money for the 75 two-family homes has been even harder to come by. The city wasnt able to secure a low-income housing grant last year that Walsh had hoped would pay for some of the houses. Officials plan to reapply this year and search for other pots of money. On the two-family front, thats been a harder nut to crack, Walsh said. He still expects those houses to get built but doesnt have a clear timeline for when. The infill housing construction is the biggest, most visible piece of the Resurgent Neighborhood Initiative. Other efforts include focusing development on 10 targeted business corridors and improving community outreach on things like code enforcement. To that end, the city began foreclosure on 15 commercial brownfield sites along those corridors last year, according to Eric Ennis, the citys director of business development. Code inspectors also launched a crackdown on several targeted blocks of the North Side. Inspectors issued 229 violations on 103 properties over two-and-a-half months last fall. About one out of every seven homes in that area was cited for things from structural issues to trash and debris on the lawn. Its an effort they plan to replicate in other neighborhoods in the coming year, according to Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens. Thats absolutely the strategy -- to get in the North Side, implement this process, see what worked, what didnt work, and then to replicate it, Owens said. POTOMAC, Md., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- THE INITIATIVE: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership ("THE INITIATIVE"), an organization devoted to systemic change, has partnered with progressive Police Chiefs and Community Based Organizations to launch "CENTRAL," a new technology platform designed to give police agencies the ability to use data and analytics to track the effectiveness of their community policing efforts. CENTRAL is designed to foster trust between police forces and the communities they serve. The CENTRAL tool, which was developed in partnership with Kaizen Analytix and made possible by funding from Lumina Foundation, Microsoft, G6 Hospitality, Kuehne + Nagel Inc. and CAVA, began testing its proof of concept in October 2020 with police chiefs in Fairburn, Georgia and Takoma Park, MD. CENTRAL is the only tool that provides police agencies with a scorecard to track adherence to the principal tenets of effective Community Policing practices: organizational development, officer training, and community engagement. The tool also provides participating agencies with the ability to track and measure Community Policing outcomes against key public safety metrics such as violent crime, property crime, and use of force statistics. "THE INITIATIVE advocates for effective community-oriented policing because there is ample research to suggest that when communities and police agencies partner effectively, this reduces crime, increases civil justice, and results in healthier communities," said Nadine Jones, executive director, THE INITIATIVE. "But we know it is important to validate the efficacy of this approach with data that supports the efforts of the police agencies that subscribe to this approach. This is why we are so proud to partner with advisors, such as Chief Stoney Mathis, Chief Antonio DeVaul, and National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives NJ to pilot technology that has the promise of bringing greater transparency to policing outcomes and scaling effective Community Policing initiatives." "I fully support community policing and the efforts of the Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership initiative. I believe 'CENTRAL', the new technology platform developed by the Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership initiative, will assist police departments across the country in advancing their community policing efforts and taking a holistic review of public safety reforms needed," said, Chief DeVaul for Takoma Park, MD. The CENTRAL platform also helps police agencies to take a compliance-based approach to tracking, measuring and reinforcing training that is essential to improving the culture of police departments in areas such as implicit bias, de-escalation practices, active bystander scenarios, and procedural justice. As affirmed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Department of Justice compliance programs are effective when practices and values are continuously reinforced in an organization using methods that include training, electronic communications, internal slogans and visuals. Indeed, through participation in CENTRAL and by engaging with THE INITIATIVE, police agencies will gain access to vetted, critical value-based learning that officers can take throughout the year. This will include training developed by organizations that have partnered with THE INITIATIVE: the NeuroLeadership Institute, which will provide science-based training focused on cultural transformation, and Polarity Partnerships that enables problem solving through both/and thinking to harness polarizing perspectives that allow for innovative solutions in the community-police relationship. Police and city leaders will have access to a comprehensive reporting and tracking training platform that was developed for THE INITIATIVE by the global corporate ethics and compliance platform leader, LRN. "While the tenets of Community Policingdeveloping community partnerships, engaging in problem solving, and implementing community policing organizational featuresdate back to the 1970s, we didn't have the benefit of the power of 21stcentury data and analytics," said Chief Mathis, one of THE INITIATIVE's strategic advisors. "We believe that providing this kind of analytical power to police agencies and communities will accelerate the partnerships that are needed to build trust, reduce tensions, and promote the kind of environment change needed for systemic change." Another key advisor to The Initiative, Jiles Ship, past NOBLE President and current President of NOBLE NJ, states, "There is no question that police agencies that incorporate community policing effectively, such that they can improve the level of trust with members of the community, will see increases in their solve rates and decreases in crime." THE INITIATIVE plans to introduce CENTRAL to 100 police agencies during its pilot phase which will end March 2021. Agencies wishing to learn more or participate in the effort are encouraged to contact Nadine Jones at [email protected] or [email protected] . About THE INITIATIVE: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership THE INITIATIVE: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership was founded by a group of Howard University Alumni and friends committed to healing the community-police relationship and building healthier communities. THE INITIATIVE identifies and funds programs that bring police and diverse communities together, intending to build productive relationships. THE INITIATIVE's approach involves partnering with stakeholders to evolve legal and institutional practices and implement scalable solutions that create systemic change in policing practices. Visit https://theblueandblackpartnership.org for more information. Media Inquiries: Kwame Romaine, Director of Operations THE INITIATIVE: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership [email protected] Tel: 240-462-8928 SOURCE The Initiative Related Links https://theblueandblackpartnership.org In this review of Tandav, Amazon Prime Video's latest offering, let's check out if the web series has lived up to the expectations. Politics has made me do many bad things, Devki Nandan (Tigmanshu Dhulia) says, But if this man comes to power, he will not just divide, but break everything. Fresh out of a news cycle where the American President has been impeached again, and our country has been divided by ideologies for a while now, this series promises more politics. Is it going to be predictable, I wonder, but Saif Ali Khan has mastered his small screen presence rather well, so I dive in. Three episodes later, Im wondering why things have not changed at all. AR Rahman is still dishing out refried music from Mani Ratnams Yuva and that movie showed up on the big screen way back in 2004. And, the student politics havent changed at all. Youd have to be living under some rock to have not heard students and police clashing over Aazaadi! and We want justice! Saif Ali Khan fits the part so well, you believe him when he says, "We are all responsible for the state of students and student politics." His tactics with Shiva Shekhar are practically brilliant. If you have seen how students (and then ordinary people) were chanting aloud the preamble to the Indian Constitution, then you would know how it feels to be a part of a movement that makes you feel alive. The student characters are beautifully crafted, and yet the ordinary encounters with the police and their infighting makes the whole experience rather predictable. In fact, I wished Rajinikanth would suddenly appear as a hostel warden as he did in Petta and saved the in- fighting among the students. Lupin review: Netflix starts the year with a fabulous new show about a gentleman thief Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub is earnest and, in his practically hundredth performance as the underdog who becomes champion, he manages to convince us that hes a chap from Bihar who only wants to pass the UPSC exams. But, Saif is there to tell him that there are two types of people, one who picks up the phone and does what is told, and the other picks up the phone and tells people what to do. There are gems like this peppered throughout the series. But does everyone have the bandwidth to see the show without hitting the forward by ten seconds? Dimple Kapadia wears the most exquisite sarees and looks so good that one is awed by her acting chops too. She lights up every scene, whether it is to look stricken at her lovers funeral or when she makes a late night visit to Devki Niwas to quietly threaten Saif Ali Khan and his wife. And when she comments about how men are not used to taking orders from a woman, especially in politics, shes awesome. Binge-watch weekend: These Netflix shows will make you stop and think Gauhar Khan (oh so gorgeous!) as Maithili Sharan, Dimple Kapadias right hand girl is a great supporting character. But the scene where the anonymous tip demands a hundred crore and she has to walk to the bin to retrieve information is so trite and so predictable you want to just curl up and switch to something else. Even though the switch from no politics to yes, politics! for Shiva and Samar Pratap Singh is well done and dramatised, you wish there was some respite from the predictability. I always wonder why student leaders fall for the Desh ko tumhari zaroorat hai line. Saif Ali Khan can swear very easily even though he looks like he plays the piano and would rather eat pate rather than pav vada. His fathers right-hand man who then becomes his right-hand man, Gurpal Chauhan, is the best thing to happen to the series. Sunil Grover is often underestimated as a comic actor, but the creepy glasses help make him the gira hua aadmi. The safari suit and the little X-Ray information tip about how Sunil Grover spent hours with the cat to shoot the scene helped too. Characters like Gurpal Chauhan exist everywhere. The enablers to all corruption. They operate in the grey areas, so when he says that theres a fine line between sahi kaam and galat kaam, and thats politics; thats what I am, thats what I do. The little segue with Kailash Kumar (Anup Soni) and professor Sandhya Nigam the brilliant Sandhya Mridul is interesting, but they end it in a really tedious way. I wish they had thought up some path-breaking, This is not a scandal, I love this woman instead of the same ole Political leader is having an affair with the professor... Such stories are being played out right now in politics and its a shame that women are often treated as tropes instead of creating something new, something different. The supporting cast is excellent starting with the students on the Vivekananda University campus to the political leaders like Kumud Mishra who plays the veteran Gopal Das Munshi who in his own words says, I never became PM, but have made three Prime Ministers leave their posts Tandav is an interesting enough show with a star cast that is mind blowingly wonderful. But the material they are dealing with is gilt, not gold. I watched it so you will not jump in with great expectations. Public servants of Gyeonggi Provincial Government and its affiliates line up for coronavirus tests at a makeshift testing center set up at the provincial government building compound in Suwon, Wednesday. Yonhap By Bahk Eun-ji As the third wave of COVID-19 pandemic drags on, more and more local governments, institutions and companies are urging residents and employees to get tested. Although the move is aimed at preventing the spread of infection in advance, some point out that it is inefficient to conduct random tests for all residents or all workers regardless of whether they have been in contact with the virus. It is also a concern that mass testing will increase the workload for quarantine workers and waste administrative costs. Seocho District Office in Seoul has been offering free tests for its 430,000 residents since Dec. 29. As of Friday, about 50,000 residents have been tested, and another 50,000 people who come to Seocho regularly for work also received tests. The Seoul Metropolitan Government and quarantine authorities showed a negative response to the district office's mass testing decision, saying it only increases the total number of tests and thus delays test analysis. "The most important thing is to ensure that test results are not delayed. It is important to find infected people through preemptive measures, but it should be centered on people who have been in contact with confirmed patients as well as those who are in high-risk facilities," a city official said. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) With scams and other forms of fraud growing more popular along with online transactions, experts remind customers also need to be responsible in ensuring their information is secure. "We have to understand that you know, security is a joint responsibility between the cardholder and the banks," Credit Card Association of the Philippines executive director Alex Ilagan told CNN Philippines' The Exchange. "The cardholder will also have to understand na meron pa rin silang responsibility, noh, to preservethe information, protect the information that they have. Ilagan noted that banks now employ more security features, such as sending customers notifications via text and/or e-mail every time they transact. This is how companies give customers a heads-up in case of possible fraudulent transactions. Should these happen, cardholders must contact their respective banks immediately so that their accounts can be blocked as soon as possible, effectively barring any additional anomalous activity. Cardholders, then, must be aware of every notification they receive. This is a view shared by cybersecurity expert and Democracy.Net.PH co-founder Pierre Tito Galla, who also emphasized the need to adopt "healthy suspicion" in texts, emails and even calls received, even from banks. Phishing, for instance, involves scammers masquerading as trustworthy entities like banking institutions and reaching out to individuals in the hopes of acquiring sensitive information from them. Galla likewise encouraged strengthening one's defense against cybercrimes, and this can be done by employing a layered approach like multi-factor authentication. The more layers there are, the smaller the chances fraudsters can infiltrate, he noted. Passwords must also be strengthened, which he suggested may be done by using "pass-phrases" or a phrase only you know. This can come in the form of a specific line from a certain song, for example. Passwords shouldn't also be shared between social media and online bank accounts for stronger security. Ultimately, the public must exercise cyberhygiene and online security when conducting transactions, he reminded. Cyberhygiene can be practiced by avoiding piracy websites and unknown streaming sites, as these are vectors for malware. "It's really on how the person remains safe. It's really up to the person. Hindi siya yung tipong magic bullet na maglalabas sila ng hack-proof na computer. There's no such thing," said Galla. [Translation: It's not like a magic bullet wherein they'll unveil a hack-proof computer.] remaining of Thank you for reading! This is your last free article before you will be asked to subscribe. Already have a paid subscription? Sign in Jamie Foxx, John Boyega and Teyonah Parris were seen shooting scenes for their upcoming Netflix's sci-fi mystery, They Cloned Tyrone, in Atlanta on Wednesday. As the trio stepped on set, the 53-year-old Oscar winner wore a bold retro-inspired suit over a hot pink, snakeskin jacket with a fuchsia fur trim. In addition to wearing his hair in an afro, Foxx sported a gold chain, matching watch and blinged-out rings on nearly ever finger on his left hand. On set: Jamie Foxx, John Boyega and Teyonah Parris were seen shooting scenes for their upcoming Netflix's sci-fi mystery, They Cloned Tyrone, in Atlanta on Wednesday The star, who is portraying the character Slick Charles, appeared in very high spirits as he could be seen beaming and checking his cellphone between takes. Meanwhile, Boyega wore an olive green bomber jacket, white joggers and multi-colored Nike sneakers and appeared to be driving Parris in one scene. As she stood by the passenger seat of Boyega's vintage car, the 33-year-old Dear White People actress rocked a bright blue lipstick and orange fur coat. Getting in character: As the trio stepped on set, the 53-year-old Oscar winner wore a bold retro-inspired suit over a hot pink, snakeskin jacket with a fuchsia fur trim Casual: Boyega wore an olive green bomber jacket, white joggers and multi-colored Nike sneakers and appeared to be driving Parris in one scene Texting away: As she stood by the passenger seat of Boyega's vintage car, the 33-year-old Dear White People actress rocked a bright blue lipstick and orange fur coat Her plunging top was tucked into a pair of leopard-print jeans and her black bra was visible to onlookers. Additionally, Parris' look included massive gold hoop earrings and tan UGG boots. When cameras were not rolling, she dutifully wore a clear face shield amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Shooting scenes: In addition to wearing his hair in an afro, Foxx sported a gold chain, matching watch and blinged-out rings on nearly ever finger on his left hand Foxx, who is portraying the character Slick Charles, appeared in very high spirits as he could be seen beaming and checking his cellphone between takes Foxx made sure to stay caffeinated during the day, and could be seen holding a white Starbucks cup at one point in the parking lot. They Cloned Tyrone is about a series of 'eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy in this pulpy mystery caper,' according to IBMD. In September, news broke that Foxx and Parris were joining the film, starring Boyega. Interesting plot: They Cloned Tyrone is about a series of 'eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy in this pulpy mystery caper,' according to IBMD Star-studded cast: In September, news broke that Foxx and Parris were joining the film, starring Boyega, according to Deadline Working hard: Foxx made sure to stay caffeinated during the day, and could be seen holding a white Starbucks cup at one point in a parking lot Most recently, Foxx has starred in Netflix's Project Power and Soul, which came out on December 25 and made him Disney Pixar's first African-American lead. Speaking of the accomplishment on The Project last month, he said it feels 'amazing' to be part of such a historical moment in movie-making, saying the world needed this 'good, good news' following the challenging year that has been 2020. 'I don't think that it's just good enough to be first African-American, we had to turn it into something fantastic... and I believe that we did it. I'm so happy to be a part of it,' the actor said of the movie. Safe: When cameras were not rolling, she dutifully wore a clear face shield amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic As host Lisa Wilkinson asked Jamie if the timing of the movie felt 'just right' because of the Black Lives Matter movement this year, he responded: 'Oh my goodness, yes. 'We've gone through so many challenges, and we give so much to the culture, so much to society, so when we are going through these terrible things, it is beautiful to have a light. 'It's beautiful to have something that we can watch, and escape and be entertained and get some smiles from. We are in need of some smileage!' Most recently, Foxx has starred in Netflix's Project Power and Soul, which came out on December 25 and made him Disney Pixar's first African-American lead Busy: Parris, is also starring in the upcoming Candyman reboot Yahya Abdul-Mateen II In the movie, Jamie voices middle school music teacher Joe Gardner, who suffers a mysterious 'soul-separating' accident. In the existential fantasy, Joe passes away - but instead of going to heaven, he ends up meeting a group of souls-in-training that help him find his way back to Earth to play a jazz gig at the Half Note Club. The film already has a whopping 98 per cent score on movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, and aired exclusively on Disney Plus from Christmas Day For two years, Boston Capital Development LLC scanned Worcester for available properties to double down on its investment in the city. The multifamily housing investment company already was involved in the Sever Square apartments in Worcester. Its one of more than 1,500 properties across the country for the company. However, Boston Capital targeted Worcester as a city on the rise and prime for investment. The revitalization efforts that have taken place over the past several years with the City Square project, Union Station being so active and the associated private and public investment with projects like those really hits home for us for as an attractive opportunity to invest, Managing Director for Boston Capital Rich Mazzocchi said. The two-year search focused on the Canal District or neighborhoods directly adjacent to that area of Worcester, Mazzocchi said. In the summer of 2020, Boston Capital struck gold when it began speaking with Harry Kokkinis, owner of Table Talk Pies. Discussions involved acquiring the largest available parcel of land within the Canal District, one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city in terms of investment. In a time when the country is experiencing economic instability amid the COVID pandemic, the Canal District saw the opening of the $21 million Worcester Public Market. Across Green Street and a block up a hill, Polar Park is set to open in April of 2021. The park, which will be home to the Worcester Red Sox, is expected to cost roughly $116 million. 35 Grass covers outfield at Polar Park Situated in between both multi-million projects sits Table Talk Pies bakery. A deal to finalize the four-acre property sale to Boston Capital was finalized last week. Table Talk Pies plans to be out of the Kelley Square bakery by the end of 2021 as it moves into a new facility in the Main South neighborhood. Boston Capital hopes to have shovels in the ground in 2022 to begin its first stage of a multi-phase and multi-year project that includes retail, affordable housing, market-rate housing and even a creation of a new road. Were really early in the master plan, Mazzocchi said. It will be multiple phases, but were too early in the process to really identify the number of buildings and details on that at this point. Boston Capital released some plans for its first phase of work, which involves a $36 million investment to create about 80 affordable housing units in a six-story building. The units will include one, two and three-bedroom apartments. The early plans also include Boston Capital reinstituting Spruce Street as a connection from Green Street to Washington Street. We think it will be a great thing for the neighborhood and the community in terms of making that connection, Mazzocchi said. At the very least the space will include one retail shop as the Table Talk Pies Pie Store will remain on Green Street. However, Mazzocchi believes the four-acre lot contains more retail opportunities to complement the Worcester Public Market and the Crompton Building. We think the Green Street location in the existing building sets up well for any number of retail uses, Mazzocchi said. I think once we all bounce back after the vaccine roles out, I think thats when well really focus on specific uses and tenants. Some stores within the Crompton Building closed on Tuesday due to Winter Storm Gail. A recent housing student study sponsored by the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce placed conservative estimates that the city had a $1 billion to $1.5 billion untapped housing market. Specifically, in downtown Worcester, a short walk from the Canal District, more than 32,000 people commute to the area for work, while only 329 live in the neighborhood. The study conducted by Smart Growth Economics also highlighted the need for low-income housing in the city as its population continues to increase. The study said that from 2013 to 2017 the number of low-income residents increased by 3,200 from people moving to the city from other municipalities. Over the same period, Worcester saw its population increase by 13,000, all of it within its urban core. The study said that the average income of residents living in the urban core is $40,000 and half earn less than $25,000 annually. To best serve the public, housing studies need to consider the income level and life stage of residents in the urban core of Worcester, the study said. Dan Benoit, a Worcester native and architect hired by Boston Capital, will be undertaking the design of affordable unites for the projects first phase that will include a six-story L-shaped building. Hes been working on projects within the city for more than 30 years, Mazzocchi said. He has a very strong connection to the community. I consider him a partner on the project. Boston Capital continues to speak with business owners in the neighborhood to ensure the newest building in the district is welcomed with open arms. However, Mazzocchi said the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered much of its public outreach. As the calendar turns to 2021 and vaccines are beginning to be administered, Mazzocchi anticipates more conversations with more people regarding the four-acre site. Wed be happy to speak with anyone in the community about our plans as we continue to progress through the process, Mazzocchi said. Related Content: Photo: Hollie Adams/Getty Images The Guardian has published a fascinating investigation by the journalists Micah Loewinger and Hampton Stall about how the violent far-right rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol last week used the walkie-talkie app Zello to both plan the attack and, in the case of at least two of them, communicate during it. Of course, the invaders used many different apps to plan and post and message during the attack. What makes the Zello angle noteworthy is that for a long time, the app had been seen as a haven for far-right extremism but had refused to take any but the most perfunctory steps to address the problem. Zello ultimately banned some boogaloo and outright white nationalist groups and users, report Loewinger and Stall. The app also de-indexed militia groups so they wouldnt be easily accessible via Google, and block[ed] terms such as Oath Keeper from its in-app search function. But there was still a lot of genuinely ugly and scary stuff on there, and the app had staked out a rather assertive pro-free-speech stance that was at odds with the perspectives of many journalists and activists who monitor online hate. The Guardian story, then, gives rise to a pretty straightforward accusation that seems to have caught on online: Zello contributed directly to last weeks terrible events. This is part of a larger story line, which is that online radicalism has been fueled by lax content-moderation policies on the part of the major platforms where hundreds of millions or billions of people communicate. Hence, the flurry of activity to clamp down on such activity over the last week, including Donald Trumps banning from Twitter and other platforms and Apple and Amazon cutting off Parler. It goes without saying that people often misunderstand the connection between private platforms and the First Amendment in that there isnt one. Private platforms can ban whom they want, for pretty much any reason they want. There are strong arguments to be made that they should ban certain content, even if theres fierce disagreement over where the lines should be drawn. But in the wake of a historically terrifying attack on the seat of U.S. government, its possible some people, understandably fearful of the threat of far-right terror encouraged by a deranged outgoing president with nothing to lose, are overstating the impact and underestimating the potential unintended adverse consequences of banning far-right users and platforms. Lets imagine that, prior to the attack on the Capitol, the outrage over Zello reached a boiling point and the platform had, as a result of legal action or the pullout of a hosting provider, been knocked offline entirely. What effect would this have had on the ability of the radical Trumpians to plot their attack and communicate during it? Approximately zero. To communicate, they could have simply picked another walkie-talkie platform there are many to choose from and set up fresh accounts. Or they could have bought actual walkie-talkies. Or they could have bought burner phones. They would have had too many options for communication untethered from their legal identities to count. As for the plotting, they would have had a similar multitude of options. They could have done some of it on Facebook, for example. As the New York Times Sheera Frenkel told Michael Barbaro on a recent episode of The Daily, Facebook hosted Stop the Steal, which was likely the single internet group most responsible for congregating and riling up conspiracy-addled pro-Trump dead-enders. It was shut down just two days after it launched, but that was more than enough time for it to set last weeks events in motion: And in its short life of 48 hours, it had managed to attract 320,000 people. But more importantly, it spawned hundreds of other Stop the Steal groups on Facebook and on Twitter. And now theyve got Reddit boards. And so that inaction by Facebook, that two days that it took them to notice the group, to shut it down, was enough time to get their followers united against this banner of Stop the Steal. This group was hosted, albeit briefly, on the most mainstream social-media site of all. Surely Facebook continues to host far-right content in private groups that exist beyond the reach of overstretched moderators. The real pros the scary types with designs on committing actual terror plots, rather than just LARPing can just organize underground, anyway. As Frenkel said in another episode of The Daily, the recent clampdowns have driven countless right- and far-right social-media users to encrypted services like Signal and Telegram (Zello itself offers encrypted channels, but the messaging that took place during the Capitol attack was public). In these venues, any hint of restraint tends to fall away: And so their language, their rhetoric, just becomes, day after day, more extreme. They start to see themselves as the true believers, the true soldiers of Trump, who have been kicked off and banned and silenced by the mainstream platforms and have now found their way to these encrypted channels where they can plan what they say is real revolution. Again, none of this is to say platforms shouldnt ban at least some radical content. But if two minutes of reflection reveals that a given instance of non-moderation currently in the news would have had no measurable effect on the sort of thing everyone wants to prevent, it suggests we might not be looking at this problem the right way. In the rush to deplatform, its also possible to neglect unintended consequences. There has been disturbingly little research or journalistic coverage of the possibility implied by Frenkels reporting that deplatforming might make real-world acts of terror more likely to occur. One reason for that is simple and practical: Law enforcement has a tougher time monitoring groups that flee underground. [I]magine youre a local police officer in a state like Ohio or Pennsylvania, and you now have to follow dozens of Signal groups and perhaps hundreds of Telegram channels to figure out exactly what these militias are planning next, she told Barbaro in yesterdays episode. By dividing their efforts like this, theyre really making it as hard as possible for law enforcement to decide what to do ahead of these rallies. But theres also the psychology of radicalism to consider. We dont actually know enough about radicalization to be able to say for sure that, when it comes to the luckily tiny group of Americans who are considering violent acts, it is better to have them in public (by public Im including pseudo-public groups, like large private Facebook groups that are easy to join via invite) or truly private social-media groups. This is all speculation, but there are certainly reasons to think the answer might be public. For one thing, a public group is more likely to have a mix of relative moderates (someone who is suspicious of the election results but not 100 percent convinced Biden stole the election) and true radicals (someone who is so furious over the steal they are ready to bring a rifle to Washington). In such a setting, it might be the case that the moderates can temper the worst impulses of the radicals, providing strong social sanction against (for example) explicit threats. Underground channels, though, are much more likely to purge or to bar entry for moderates. As Frenkel notes, thats where things get much scarier thats where you go to actually plot something. Its reasonable to argue that it might be the case that the more underground far-right channels are scattered across the internet landscape, the more peril we face from their denizens. There could be real advantages to developing moderation practices that have the effect of corralling at least some of these would-be plotters into larger, more diverse (again, relatively speaking) groups that are public. Im leavening this story with a lot of italicized mights for a reason. People are far too confident, and develop far too deterministic theories, about the nature of online radicalization. There is not always a straightforward correlation between the amount of public online radicalism and the amount of resultant real-world violence. Keeping the latter at bay is the important challenge here and cracking down on public speech probably feels to a lot of well-intentioned people like a useful step toward this goal. But its important not to mistake that feeling for strong, well-founded policy. Countering extremist attacks requires an intelligent, data-based approach rather than a knee-jerk fixation on myopic short-term solutions. One wintry night a few days before Christmas, Juan Diaz saw an old man limping while trying to sell mazapanes, a kind of Mexican candy, in front of a taco shop on the West Side of Chicago. Diaz had seen the man before while heading home from work, so he stopped and gave him $20 so that he could go home early to a homeless encampment under a bridge nearby. It was very cold, Diaz said. The man, Enrique Rodriguez, 60, couldnt thank him enough. It was more than what he earns in days, he told Diaz. So he bought some tacos and used the rest to buy more mazapanes to sell the next day. Since then, the two have become friends, and on Christmas Day, Diaz gave the man a gift. It was the only one I got, Rodriguez said in Spanish while sitting under a bus shelter to get out of the cold. Hes been a blessing in my life. Rodriguez is one of about 1,500 Chicagoans who spend their nights in encampments and parks and under bridges, living outdoors year-round. While every one of them faces different struggles and each has a singular story, for Latino immigrants who are homeless unable to speak English and lacking legal documentation the road to stability cant be found in the usual taxpayer-funded channels, leaving individuals and charities to give them a hand. Nearly two years ago, Rodriguez had an accident at work that left him disabled. A few months after falling ill while attempting to carry a boiler by himself as he collected scrap metal, he also used all his savings on medical expenses and sobadores masseurs trying to heal his fractured back. Because of his immigration status, he didnt qualify for medical help or any other federal program while he recovered. After selling his old pickup truck to pay the last couple of months of rent, Rodriguez found himself sleeping in a city bus shelter. One day you can be healthy and successful, the next, you can end up like me, he lamented. Although he has tried, he hasnt been able to find a way out of homelessness because he is unable to do physical work, Rodriguez said. Instead, hes made a home out of an old blue tarp and raggedy blankets under a bridge on Damen near the Pilsen neighborhood. Story continues He relies on walking his white bike to keep him upright as he goes to Damen and Blue Island avenues in the Heart of Chicago neighborhood, where he collects money in front of Raymonds Tacos. Other times, he sells mazapanes outside nearby grocery stores. When it is too cold, or he cant handle the back pain, he stays under the bridge, sometimes going to sleep hungry. Im ashamed to let anyone know how I ended up, he said. I hope I can heal and work again to save enough money to go back to Mexico. Rodriguez said he immigrated alone to the United States from Guanajuato, Mexico in his early 20s, hoping to build a new life in this country and help out his parents in Mexico. But his plans failed even after having various factory and restaurant jobs. His parents died and though he has a brother, he lost touch with him after becoming homeless, so he is alone. God had other plans for me, but Im still faithful, he said. For several years a few other homeless Latino immigrants, some of them residents of the same camp as Rodriguez, have gathered every day in Pilsens Plaza Tenochtitlan, at 18th Street and Blue Island. They call it El Aguila, because of the statue of an eagle that adorns the plaza. Thats where many of them feel most at home, said Adolfo Morales, who has lived six years in the same encampment where Rodriguez lives. At least 10 other Mexican immigrants also live there. Many of them began gathering at the plaza because they are day laborers and get picked up for work there. But more importantly, they feel safe there, Morales said. On any given day at least 20 people gather at the plaza. Most men at the plaza are Mexican immigrants, some are Central American and the rest are African American, said Morales. We all know each other, he said. Its where they can check up on each other to at least make sure that theyre still alive, he said. The plaza also has turned into a meeting spot because community members and some nonprofit groups go there to distribute food, clothing, and now face masks and hand sanitizer. Nicolas Hernandez is Morales friend. They live in the same encampment and let each other know where there might be work or people distributing food. They and their friend, Andres Cano, who stays in Dvorak Park, all 50 years old, met at the plaza. They are part of the community and deserve respect and to be taken care of, said Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, whose ward includes the Pilsen area and Chinatown, where he says encampments have grown in the recent years. We often dehumanize each other and for some people, the issue of homelessness is something that they ignore, but the reality is that we need to find a sustainable solution for them. In Chicago, there were more than 1,500 people sleeping in the street, including in encampments, at the time of the latest yearly count of the homeless population. City statistics dont show how many of those who live on the street are Latino immigrants without legal status. Although some in the area said that the number of Latino homeless in Pilsen has decreased in recent years, Sigcho-Lopez said the overall issue of homelessness has worsened because of the pandemic, which has disproportionately hit Black and Latino communities. Sigcho-Lopez said his ward service office has partnered with the Pilsen Food Pantry, Metropolitan Family Services and other community organizations to try to help some of the homeless population living there, and specifically addressing their undocumented status and language barriers. But its just not enough, Sigcho-Lopez said. Like Hernandez and his friends, most Latino immigrants who live on the street are past their labor prime, forcing them into a cycle of homelessness despite their desire to overcome it, said Dr. Evelyn Figueroa of the University of Illinois Hospital, who has advocated for homeless people in Chicago for several years and in 2018 founded the Pilsen Food Pantry as part of that work. Many of the immigrants who live on the street in Pilsen and other Latino neighborhoods came to the U.S. to work for a better life in their youth, but fell into homelessness after becoming ill, fell prey to addiction because of trauma or have mental illness, Figueroa said. They come to a place where they are socially isolated, linguistically and culturally isolated; which makes people really high risk for disorders like depression, she said. Substance abuse is the most common disorder among Latino immigrants who are homeless and their traumas and frequent mental illness make it extremely difficult to overcome it. Though many government-funded programs and nonprofits offer help for recovery from substance abuse and other medical or mental illness treatment, there are no publicly funded programs that provide housing or long-term resources for immigrants without legal status. It is nearly impossible for them to get help from the system and it shouldnt be that way because they are human beings, Figueroa said. Some homeless people in the area used to find temporary jobs and affordable rooms to rent, but thats no longer the case because of gentrification in the area, Figueroa said. Even if they worked in the summer, they just couldnt save enough to pay for a room in the winter, she added. People such as Rodriguez with no money and undocumented depend on people like Diaz, or on charitable organizations to offer medical help and a road out of homelessness, she said. Mirella Rodriguez, a case manager with the Night Ministry, said Spanish-speaking homeless people tend to remain together in neighborhoods they find familiar, because of the camaraderie. Most are concentrated in the Pilsen and Little Village areas, with the rest in Humboldt Park, she said. Many dont qualify for public aid because of their immigration status. Even when charitable programs offer food or short-term shelter to anyone regardless of immigration status, immigrants often are afraid to seek it because they fear being deported or jailed, Mirella Rodriguez said. Language barriers and lack of trust keeps them from seeking help, she said. And there are not enough case managers, volunteers or advocates who speak their language, understand their particular situation and perform outreach work. In Pilsen, the San Jose Obrero Mission, a shelter set up for Spanish-speaking immigrants, closed in 2018 after 30 years. Julie Dworkin, director of policy for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said theres no shelter or community group thats replaced the mission. George Ivy understands the tough spot immigrant homeless people are in and before the pandemic, he brought together some of his friends to raise money to buy meals for those who gather at the Pilsen plaza. Their mission became more urgent when many shelters or churches in the area that provided hot meals closed because of COVID-19, he said. He also noticed, he said, though most of them were Latino, the rest were African American, so we had to figure out a way to help them, said Ivy, who is Black. Ivy at first made a flyer in English advertising free sandwiches, hot chocolate, mittens and hats at the plaza, but realized that many wouldnt understand, so he asked one of the men to help him translate the flyers into Spanish. He then passed them out to people on 18th Street and under nearby bridges. Now twice a month, people begin to gather in the plaza when they notice a small blue car approach. A few days into the new year, they fed nearly 30 people. As MaryAnn Martin passed out sandwiches, Ivy made sure everyone could get at least one sandwich. As usual, Morales, Hernandez and Cano were there. After they grabbed sandwiches, they sat by the eagle, near where someone had left an assortment of shoes on the ground for anyone who needed them. Siempre nos ayudan aqui, said Hernandez as he ate. They always help us here. Sitting in the plaza, Hernandez said that he fell into alcohol dependency after a broken relationship a few years ago. But Im trying to leave that behind, he said. Back in Heart of Chicago, Diaz said he realized that he had often wrongfully stereotyped all homeless until he met Enrique Rodriguez. Diaz said his attitude began to change when he saw Rodriguez used the money Diaz gave him only to buy food and more candy to sell. For his part, Rodriguez said his biggest dream is to be able to work again. larodriguez@chicagotribune.com Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - West High Yield (W.H.Y.) Resources Ltd. (TSXV: WHY) ("West High Yield" or the "Company") announces that it has completed the settlement of CAD$28,946.40 of indebtedness (the " Debt Settlement") as originally announced on December 22, 2020. To effect the Debt Settlement, the Company issued 144,732 Common Shares (the "Common Shares") at a deemed price of CAD$0.20 per Common Share to two creditors of the Company. The Debt Settlement was approved by the TSX Venture Exchange on January 14, 2021. The Common Shares issued in connection with the Debt Settlement will be subject to a statutory hold period of four months plus a day from the date of issuance in accordance with applicable securities law legislation. About West High Yield West High Yield is a publicly traded junior mining exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral resource properties in Canada with a primary objective to locate and develop economic gold, nickel and magnesium properties. For further information please contact: Frank Marasco President and Chief Executive Officer of West High Yield Telephone: (403) 660-3488 Facsimile: (403) 206-7159 Email: frank@whyresources.com Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Information This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information or statements.. The forward-looking statements and information are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by the Company. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements and information are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements and information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management 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 information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: general economic conditions in Canada and globally; industry conditions, including governmental regulation; failure to obtain industry partner and other third party consents and approvals, if and when required; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; competition for, among other things, skilled personnel and supplies; changes in tax laws; and other factors. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information, which is given as of the date hereof, and to not use such forward-looking information for anything other than its intended purpose. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Not for distribution in the United States. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities in the United States. The securities of the Company will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of U.S. persons except in certain transactions exempt from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act. 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/72185 LAST Saturday, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his team made their usual weekly briefing on the status of the coronavirus in Trinidad and Tobago. Given the rise in cases, the addition of a state of emergency was added to the existing public health measures, setting a curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. The city of Portland plans to lobby the federal government this year to provide reparations for Black and Indigenous communities. Financial payments or other aid to the descendants of enslaved Black Americans and Native Americans harmed by the U.S. government was the top racial justice measure listed in Portlands annual federal policy agenda, which the City Council approved last week. The federal government has to be a partner in any type of reparations conversation, said Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. The agenda acts as a blueprint for the citys federal legislative priorities, which also include advocating for increased financial support for renters and businesses harmed by the coronavirus pandemic and increased fuel efficiency standards to lower carbon emissions. Repaying descendants of Black Americans whose labor and family members were stolen from them and Indigenous peoples whose lands were seized and cultures disrupted was once unthinkable for the nations white majority. But support for some form of federal reparations has grown steadily in Congress over the last three decades and President-elect Joe Biden vowed to focus on systemic racial inequalities during his campaign. Last week, Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, reintroduced a bill that would create a commission to examine reparations for African American descendants of slavery, a proposal thats never been brought to a full House vote. The current measure has 173 co-sponsors, including Oregon Democratic Reps. Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici and Peter DeFazio. -- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632 Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan have agreed in an exchange of letters to resume talks aimed at mending ties, Turkey's top diplomat said Friday. Erdogan wrote a New Year message to Macron expressing condolences for several attacks in France last year, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by local media. Macron sent back a "very positive" letter this week, starting with the greeting "Dear Tayyip" and saying he was open to a meeting, Cavusoglu said. The French presidency confirmed the exchange of letters without providing details. "We now need tangible gestures" from Ankara, the French presidency said. Ankara and Paris last year sparred over a host of international issues, including the conflicts in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. The European Union is now drawing up an expanded list of Turkish individuals to sanction for Ankara's decision to drill for natural gas in eastern Mediterranean waters near Cyprus. The diplomatic tensions have been accompanied by a bitter personal feud between the two men. Erdogan last year accused Macron of "Islamaphobia", suggested he undergo mental health checks, and urged French voters to "get rid of Macron as soon as possible". Macron, for his part, remarked at a meeting with EU leaders that Turks "deserve something else" than the policies of Erdogan. Short link: (CNN) - In wake of the COVID-19 pandemic claiming 2 million lives, the head of the United Nations has called for countries to "commit now" to share excess doses of vaccines. "The worlds leading economies have a special responsibility. Yet today we are seeing a vaccine vacuum. Vaccines are reaching high income countries quickly, while the worlds poorest have none at all," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a video message on Thursday. "Some countries are pursuing side deals, even procuring beyond need. Governments have a responsibility to protect their populations, but 'vaccinationalism' is self-defeating and will delay a global recovery," Guterres said. "We need manufacturers to step up their commitment to work with the COVAX facility and countries around the world to ensure enough supply and fair distribution. We need countries to commit now to sharing excess doses of vaccines." Guterres specifically referred to COVAX, a World Health Organization global initiative to ensure rapid and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries. "Sadly, the deadly impact of the pandemic has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort. In the memory of those two million souls, the world must act with far greater solidarity," Guterres said in his video message. "Safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out and the UN is supporting countries to mobilize the largest global immunization effort in history. We are committed to making sure that vaccines are seen as global public goods peoples vaccines." This story was first published on CNN.com, "UN secretary general calls on nations to share vaccines as world surpasses 2 million COVID-19 deaths" Signaling the brand breaking away from its traditional manufacturing-driven business model, Kia has announced a new corporate name. Removing the 'Motors' from its name (previously 'Kia Motors Corporation'), Kia will expand into new and emerging business areas by creating innovative mobility products and services to improve customers' daily lives. Ho Sung Song, President and CEO of Kia Corporation, comments: "At Kia, we believe that transportation, mobility, and movement represent a human right. Our vision is to create sustainable mobility solutions for consumers, communities, and societies globally. Today we start putting this vision into action with the launch of our new brand purpose and strategy for the future." The 'New Kia Brand Showcase' can be viewed on the Kia Global YouTube channel from 09:00 Korean Standard Time on Friday January 15, 2021 (01:00 CET, January 15 / 16:00 PST, January 14): https://youtu.be/U67RlX9ibfo Introducing Kia's new brand purpose and slogan: 'Movement that inspires' Kia's new brand slogan, 'Movement that inspires', is introduced today at the heart of a brand manifesto which reflects Kia's new purpose of inspiring consumers through products and services, and their experiences with the brand. Kia's new brand purpose emphasizes that movement is at the genesis of human development. Movement enables people to see new places, to meet new people, and to have new experiences. This connection is the essence of Kia's new brand to enable human progress by providing innovative in-car spaces, exciting new products, and meaningful, convenient services that inspire customers and free up time for the activities that they enjoy the most. Artur Martins, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Brand & Customer Experience at Kia, said "Movement has always been at heart of our brand, and moving people at the core of our business. Movement helps humankind to constantly progress, improve, and evolve. That is why at Kia we believe that movement inspires ideas." Kia has been in the 'movement' industry for more than 75 years, and the company went on to create Korea's first domestic bicycles and to manufacture motorcycles and delivery trucks. Today, Kia is one of the biggest automakers globally, providing high-value passenger vehicles to millions of people around the world. Under its new brand purpose, Kia will meet changing customer expectations about how they move, and how their movement impacts the world around them. Consumers are increasingly seeking out flexible, environmentally conscious, and integrated forms of transportation. Kia's new brand strategy is to respond to and shape these changing expectations by developing a range of products and services to meet customers' needs in markets around the globe. These will offer greater access to a wider range of environmentally conscious mobility products and services to meet growing demand from customers worldwide for flexible, customizable, individualized mobility solutions, enabled by data and new technologies. Kia Corporation's broader vision for sustainable mobility Reflecting the brand's broader vision for mobility, Kia has announced today a new corporate name as it expands into new business areas to promote sustainable mobility. By removing the 'Motors' from its name, Kia's new corporate name shows a commitment to its long-term 'Plan S' business strategy. This was announced in 2020, and will see the brand establish a leadership position in the future mobility industry, expanding its business to encompass EVs, mobility solutions and services, purpose-built vehicles, and more. Alongside these efforts, Kia will simultaneously promote more sustainable production through the usage of clean energy and recyclable materials. Kia is focused on popularizing battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and plans to reinforce its global product line-up with the introduction of seven new dedicated BEVs by 2027. These new models will include a range of passenger vehicles, SUVs and MPVs across several segments, each incorporating industry-leading technology for long-range driving and high-speed charging from Hyundai Motor Group's new Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP). Kia is also developing a range of new Purpose-Built Vehicles (PBVs) for corporate customers. These specialized vehicles will be based on flexible 'skateboard' platforms, with modular bodies designed to meet the specific mobility needs of a broad range of corporate and fleet customers. Partnerships with the likes of Canoo and Arrival will mean Kia PBVs can offer different bodies mounted on top of an integrated modular 'skateboard' platform, tailored to users' functional requirements. Demand for PBVs is expected to grow five-fold by 2030 due to rapid and sustained growth in e-commerce and car-sharing services. Bespoke Kia PBVs will be tailored to meet the needs of corporate and fleet customers. For instance, these could include car-sharing vehicles, low-floor logistics vehicles, and delivery vehicles. The change in the company's corporate name also means transforming the organization's working culture. President Song explains: "Changing our corporate name and logo is not only a cosmetic improvement. It represents us expanding our horizons and establishing new and emerging businesses that meet and exceed the diverse needs of our customers worldwide. More importantly, it also means adapting our working culture, enabling the creativity of all our employees and establishing an inspiring work environment." Development of eco-friendly mobility services Another strategic objective under Plan S is a commitment by Kia to diversify its business to offer eco-friendly mobility services, centered on electric and autonomous driving across major global cities. In addition, Kia is ramping up collaboration and partnerships with global mobility solutions businesses, diversifying mobility services in global strategic regions. In 2018, the company invested in Grab, Southeast Asia's largest ride-hailing service, food delivery and payment solutions company; and in Ola in March 2019, an Indian company offering peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride-service hailing, taxi, food delivery and other mobility services. Kia is also establishing other mobility services, including WiBLE, a car-sharing joint venture with Repsol, Spain's major energy corporation, in Madrid. Launched in September 2018, WiBLE operates 500 Kia Niro Plug-in Hybrid EVs (PHEVs) through a free-floating method that allows users to freely rent and return vehicles within the service area. WiBLE remains one of Europe's most successful shared mobility schemes, with over 130,000 members having registered since its inauguration. A new service, KiaMobility, was also launched in locations across Italy and Russia in September 2020, accelerating the company's transformation to becoming a mobility solutions provider. KiaMobility will be introduced to several new markets in the years ahead. Coming soon: Kia's first dedicated BEV and a new design philosophy The first of Kia's next-generation BEVs will be revealed in the first quarter of 2021, embodying Kia's shifting focus towards electrification. Based on new E-GMP technology, this dedicated BEV will boast a crossover-inspired design, while offering an electric driving range of over 500 kilometers and a high-speed charging time of under 20 minutes. This will also be the first global model to bear Kia's new logo. With its growing range of BEVs, Kia is targeting a 6.6% share of the global BEV market by 2025, and global annual sales of 500,000 BEVs by 2026. Kia will also reveal more information about the new design direction of its future products and services in the weeks ahead, with a new design philosophy which reflects the brand's transformation. Karim Habib, Senior Vice President, Head of Kia Global Design Center, explains: "We want our products to deliver an instinctive and natural experience that can improve the daily lives of our customers. Our aim is to design the physical experience of our brand and to create original, inventive, and exciting electric vehicles. The ideas of our designers and the purpose of the brand are more connected than ever, with our customers at the center of what we do." Kia Corporation about us Kia (www.kia.com) is a global mobility brand with a vision to create sustainable mobility solutions for consumers, communities, and societies around the world. Founded in 1944, Kia has been providing mobility solutions for more than 75 years. With 52,000 employees worldwide, a presence in more than 190 markets, and manufacturing facilities in six countries, the company today sells around three million vehicles a year. Kia is spearheading the popularization of electrified and battery electric vehicles and developing a growing range of mobility services, encouraging millions of people around the world to explore the best ways of getting around. The company's brand slogan 'Movement that inspires' reflects Kia's commitment to inspire consumers through its products and services. For more information, visit the Kia Global Media Center at www.kianewscenter.com SOURCE Kia Motors America Related Links www.kia.com Zimbabwes Minister of State for Manicaland, Dr. Ellan Gwaradzimba, has died, according to the state-controlled Herald newspaper. The newspaper quoted unidentified government sources as saying the cause of her death is unknown. The newspaper also reported that 91-year-old nationalist, Morton Malianga, died Friday in Harare. Malianga, who attended the Geneva and Lancaster House talks in the 1970s, was appointed deputy Minister of Economic Planning and Development in 1981. He also served as a senator and member of the board of directors of Zimbabwe Newspapers Group. More details to follow A California hospital is facing a potential $43,000 fine from county health officials for alleged delays in reporting a Covid-19 super-spreader event linked to an inflatable Christmas tree costume. The fine issued on last Tuesday is $1,000 for each delayed report of a positive case, but since early January the number of infections connected to the Christmas event has ballooned to 92, from an initial figure of 43. Since December 25, at least 51 hospital employees have tested positive for COVID-19, the Mercury News reported on Tuesday, citing data from the Santa Clara County Public Health Department. One staff member has died. Getty Inflatable costume's fan may have spread virus particles It all started on December 25 when an emergency room employee at Kaiser Permanente San Jose Hospital briefly wore an inflatable costume to work to celebrate the holiday. But the well-meaning gesture at a California hospital may have backfired this Christmas. Officials suspect that the costume's fan may have splayed infectious particles across the emergency department and led to this fresh outbreak in the hospital. However, Healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente denied any delay in reporting the Covid-19 cases connected to a Christmas party at its San Jose Medical Center's emergency department. Google Maps "Any exposure, if it occurred, would have been completely innocent, and quite accidental, as the individual had no COVID symptoms and only sought to lift the spirits of those around them during what is a very stressful time," Irene Chavez, the hospital's senior vice president, said in a statement to ABC7 News. "If anything, this should serve as a very real reminder that the virus is widespread, and often without symptoms, and we must all be vigilant," she added. AP Virus lives in the air for hours In a statement on Tuesday, public health officials echoed that sentiment. "This is a stark reminder that COVID-19 can be so easily transmitted through the air and that even letting your guard down for a moment can have consequences," the Santa Clara health department said. The coronavirus spreads most commonly through respiratory droplets when a person breathes, speaks, sings, coughs, or sneezes - but research has also shown that tiny virus-laden particles called aerosols can linger in the air for minutes or hours in poorly-ventilated indoor areas. In closed spaces, fans can blow these infectious particles in the direction of another person. AP That's why the World Health Organization recommends that table or pedestal fans should be avoided in homes when people outside the immediate family are visiting. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also cautions people not to wear masks with built-in valves or vents, which can similarly expel infectious particles into the surrounding air. Costume to "lift the spirits" backfired Earlier this month, Kaiser Permanente said the inflatable Christmas tree costume while still not definitively linked to the outbreak, county health officials clarified was an innocent gesture that "only sought to lift the spirits of those around them during what is a very stressful time." The organization said they are reviewing the Santa Clara County citation and will respond before the deadline on Friday. According to the California Department of Public Health, Bay Area hospital intensive care units are over 95 percent full as of Tuesday. Reuters In recent days, as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rapidly approaches 3 million in California alone, Governor Gavin Newsom has received increased criticism for a slow rollout of Coronavirus vaccines in the state. Andy Stanley's megachurch begins 'phased approach' to reopening in-person services North Point Ministries hopes 3 campuses can resume adult services in February Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment North Point Ministries, led by Pastor Andy Stanley, has announced a phased approach to reopening in-person Sunday services after it suspended such services for most of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The nondenominational multi-campus ministry based in suburban Atlanta announced on its website the staggered reopening plan for in-person adult and student services but assured that to create a socially distanced environment, it will continue to make adult services available online and on-demand. Bill Willits, North Points executive director of ministry environment, told The Christian Post in an email that North Points churches are beginning to reopen slowly, thoughtfully and carefully with COVID protocols in place. According to Willits, three of North Points seven churches Browns Bridge, East Cobb, and Woodstock City are hoping to reopen fully with live adult services in February. Our other campuses will be reopening when we can ensure a safe experience and adequate spacing for adults, students and kids at the same time, he explained. The executive director stated that due to the size of most of North Points campuses, the churches cant simply open as usual with 6 feet of spacing between individuals. So we are starting with a staggered approach focusing on our children and student environments, he explained. Of course, anything we do is predicated that there [will not be] a rise in the number or severity of COVID cases, school closings and hospital bed limitations. Currently, North Points childrens ministries are meeting on campus twice per month while the student ministry meets weekly. According to Willits, middle school students meet in the morning and high school students meet in the afternoon. Each group meets in larger than usual areas to insure proper spacing requirements. For example, our student environments are actually meeting in our adult auditorium and our children environment is meeting in our student space for this reason, Willits wrote. North Points churches are among many worldwide that have navigated the waters of the COVID-19 pandemic by switching to online-only services to mitigate the spread of the virus. As many state and local governments have issued orders limiting the size of public gatherings, including religious services, some churches have openly defied ongoing lockdown orders, arguing that continued government restrictions on their services violate their First Amendment rights. In August, the 62-year-old Stanley responded to critics who claimed he was bowing to Caesar because North Point suspended in-person services. We did not suspend services because of government pressure; there was none," Stanley, a well-known Christian author and the churchs founder, said in a video message at the time. "Were not afraid, were not bowing to social, cultural or political pressure. Stanley also said that he got voicemails, emails and letters from longtime church members who told him they were leaving North Point because of the decision to suspend services. This is the version of Christianity consumed with winning, Stanley said at the time. Its a version that sees itself perpetually under attack and consequently feels the need to attack back. It requires an enemy for sustainability. The decision to suspend services for the remainder of 2020 was made as North Point was hoping to begin gathering again in early August. Stanley told the church community in July that a large part of the decision to suspend was because the church could not guarantee the safety of attendees. OAKLAND-WAWANESA For the last 10 years, Westman resident Alyssa Strutt has been tearing up the trails of southern Manitoba with her team of four-legged friends, which has only grown in size throughout the decade. Advertisement Advertise With Us Alyssa Strutt and her partner Doug Nicholls wrangle their dog team to go for a run on Wednesday afternoon. Nicholls has been serving as Strutts dog handler and moral support centre during all her various races in southern Manitoba. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun) OAKLAND-WAWANESA For the last 10 years, Westman resident Alyssa Strutt has been tearing up the trails of southern Manitoba with her team of four-legged friends, which has only grown in size throughout the decade. Strutt told the Sun on Tuesday that her journey into the sport of mushing didnt begin because of some long-standing family tradition that she felt obliged to continue. Instead, it stemmed from her own natural love of dogs and the great outdoors, which she decided to combine in around 2010 by attaching her border collie and husky to a kicksled. "They loved it," Strutt recalls. "My border collie mix pulled on the leash all the time. She wanted to go and it didnt really matter where she was going. She just wanted to run." Brandon Sun Alyssa Strutt heads out with her dog sledding team on Dec. 29, 2020 within the Brandon Hills area of Westman. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun) This enthusiasm was on full display Wednesday afternoon when Strutt invited the Sun to watch her current dog sledding team in action outside her home located near the Municipality of Oakland-Wawanesa. Unlike the uniform dog sledding teams prominently featured in movies and television, Strutts current six-canine squad consists of various breeds, from a French Brittany to a lab pointer. However, with Strutt at the helm, this rag-tag group turned into a cohesive unit once they started moving, making sharp turns and reaching speeds of around 30 km/h. While this level of skill and know-how has helped Strutt achieve success at different dog sled races within the province, she mostly treated mushing as a hobby at the beginning. Brandon Sun Alyssa Strutt straps one of her dogs in for another sledding expedition earlier this week in Westman. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun) "For the first five years I wasnt racing," she said. "Doing this was just my regular winter activity. I would go along the river around Brandon or, after a big snowfall, some of the big walking paths and things like that." But with some encouragement from her partner Doug Nicholls, Strutt eventually started competing in mushing events in 2015, with her first big race taking place at Bird Hill Provincial Park. "She was fast and she had full control of the dogs and it looked like a lot of fun," Nicholls said. "And we liked the camaraderie of the group out in Winnipeg too. They seem to be really friendly and easy to get along with." From there, Strutt and Nicholls decided to branch out and take part in other races hosted by events like the Vita and Area Winter Festival, which usually attracts professional mushers from all over Canada and the northern United States. Brandon Sun Alyssa Strutt poses for a photo with her dog Sally following Wednesday's sledding expedition south of Brandon. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun) "We hadnt actually been to a 10-dog race before," Strutt said. "So we got to see all the teams take off and hear all the deafening barking and the excitement." Based on this exposure, Strutt was driven more than ever to expand her team from two dogs to four, wanting to challenge herself with greater distances and larger gear. Last year, her unit increased to six dogs, with Strutt looking to debut this new team at the 2021 Vita and Area Winter Festival. Unfortunately, festival organizers announced on Jan. 7 that this years event cant move forward due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, following in the footsteps of many other cancelled public sporting events within the province. Brandon Sun Alyssa Strutt competes in a dog sledding race in Birds Hill Provincial Park back in 2019. (Submitted) While Strutt is disappointed that she wont get a chance to compete again this winter, shes grateful that Manitobas broader dog sledding community is remaining supportive during such trying times. "Theres a lot of mushers around Saint Malo and theyve been great to talk to on Facebook or to text," she said on Wednesday. "And theyve said when this is all over, you can come out and train on our trails." However, dog sleddings popularity in Westman is still pretty sparse, with Strutt estimating that there are only a few mushers scattered throughout the region outside of herself. But if anyone is looking to pick up a new hobby under lockdown conditions, Strutt said all you really need to get started, outside of the necessary equipment, is a couple of dogs that weigh over 13 kilograms and the willingness to train them. "Its just doing the groundwork before you hook them up to a sled," she said. "Taking them for walks in the harness and making it a fun experience for them. I mean, as long as the dog loves doing something, its not work." And while there are no dog sledding events to look forward to right now, Strutt said shes going to continue hitting the trails with her team as much as possible, trying to stay sharp for whenever things are allowed to go back to normal. Plus, this activity provides a nice sense of escape for Strutt, which could also come in handy for fellow Westman dog lovers who are looking for a nice distraction to ride out the first quarter of 2021. "If people are already getting out, walking with their dogs, its kind of the next step," she said. kdarbyson@brandonsun. com Twitter: @KyleDarbyson Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.. Tonight Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 46F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. Pharmacy owner of the long established McDevitt's Pharmacy in Ballinamore, Brian Cribbin said they absolutely support the #Bestshot campaign to roll out the covid-19 vaccines from pharmacies but he did add there are a few issues to be ironed out. Mr Cribbin said they have had no direct information from the HSE on community roll out. He said McDevitts would love to be part of the Covid-19 solution but they also want clarity and guarantees. He said McDevitts did not take part in the flu vaccine programme this year as delivery of the vaccine could not be guaranteed. He emphasised that guarantee of supply is the number one concern over the Covid 19 vaccine. He believes all pharmacies are in favour of the community roll out, but that many staff have had their training run out or there are not enough professionals employed to administer it. In relation to McDevitts in Ballinamore, Mr Cribbin said he would need to employ another pharmacist, nurse or retired professional to be able to provide the service. He noted that the AstraZeneca needs 15 minutes observation after administration. He said the Oxford vaccine is expected to not need any monitoring so would be a better fit for the roll out programme. Mr Cribbin said pharmacists are still waiting on confirmation of when they will be vaccinated, he said they have been moved to the priority tier with GPs but added that the whole pharmacy team needs to be prioritised. He also added that remuneration for the vaccine administration needs to discussed. He believes that once these issues are sorted, that local pharmacies are best placed for the community roll out. Mc Devitts join three other Leitrim pharmacies in supporting the #Bestshot campaign by Leitrim Observer and Iconic Newspapers to have the Covid-19 vaccines administered by local pharmacists directly into the communities. It is now accepted that the need for an effective vaccine roll-out is vital for our communities to open up once again. To that end, we in the Leitrim Observer and our colleagues throughout Ireland in the Iconic group, have started a petition to the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly so the people of Leitrim can let the government know that they believe that the vaccine should be delivered straight to our local communities - through our local pharmacies. To back the growing national campaign sign the petition here. Also: Leitrim GAA supports call for vaccine roll-out through local pharmacies On Friday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced COVID-19 restrictions are being eased in some regions around the state. In some areas, COVID-19 positivity rates and hospitalizations numbers have decreased. The current restrictions will remain in place for our entire viewing area. Snapdeals extensive reach in smaller cities and towns of India is helping Indias leading FMCG brands take their value selection deeper into Bharat. Over the last few months, large FMCG & beauty product companies including Godrej, Marico, Himalaya have on-boarded their authorised dealers on to the Snapdeal platform in order to cater to the growing demand for their products from non-metro India. Leveraging Snapdeals positioning as a value-focused marketplace, companies are listing popular, select brands which are priced and positioned for the value-savvy audience. Some of these products include Livon, Set Wet and Parachute from Marico, Godrej Expert, Godrej Aer, HIT, Godrej Protekt from Godrej, Himalaya Baby Lotion, Lotus Herbal facial kits, Lacto Calamine face wash, Vaseline petroleum jelly etc. As part of the arrangement, the products are being offered on the platform directly by dealers authorised by the brands. This ensures enhanced availability of popular, genuine products, flowing directly through channels approved by the respective brands. Due to pandemic-led changes, online buying has gained momentum and the number of first time users has been growing steadily on Snapdeal. Most of these buyers are based outside the top 10 cities of India. The availability of well-priced products from leading brands is of immense relevance to this cohort of buyers, as is evident from the rising number of such brands listing on Snapdeal. Apart from the value-buying by new buyers, existing consumers are also increasingly exploring the value-range especially for home hygiene, personal care, hair and skin care products and beauty items. Face wash products priced below Rs 100, deo-sprays under Rs 150, hair care products under Rs 200 and winter-care products priced between Rs 100-200 from Indias leading brands are some of the popular buys on Snapdeal. The growing availability of value-selection from Indias leading brands on Snapdeal reaffirms our focus on serving the needs of aspirational Indian consumers with high-quality, great value choices. The acceleration in online shopping presents an opportunity to increase consumer choices and offer brands access to a much larger, deep market. We are excited to serve the brands & their users in this journey said Snapdeal spokesperson. Snapdeals decentralised logistics network ensures that dealers do not need to lock-in their supplies in centralised warehouses. Instead, orders are picked up directly from dealer premises by Snapdeals logistics partners to ensure optimal utilisation of inventory and fast delivery to buyers. In addition to the well-established national brands, many upcoming brands including The Man Company, Mamaearth, and Ustraa have also partnered with Snapdeal to leverage their reach in non metros. The pandemic has accelerated online adoption by traditional retail heavy brands, to tap the new channels to reach out shoppers who prefer to shop online. Snapdeal has over five lakh registered sellers and more than 21 crore listings on the marketplace. Snapdeals network covers over 27,000 pin codes across the country including some of the most remote areas of the country. The National Labor Relations Board has set a date for a crucial vote on whether employees at Amazons Bessemer fulfillment center can form a union. According to documents with the NLRB, workers will vote by mail, with ballots being sent out to employees on Feb. 8. Workers must return them by March 29. All employees who have worked four hours or more a week during the 13 weeks prior to the election are eligible to vote. In the 13-page document setting a date, Lisa Henderson, acting regional director for the NLRB, said the vote would be the largest mail ballot election run during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ballot count will take place virtually, beginning at 10 a.m. CST March 30, due to the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and the directions of state or local authorities including Shelter in Place orders, travel restrictions, social distancing and limits on the size of gatherings of individuals, according to the document. The decision was immediately hailed by the group organizing the union drive. Congratulations everyone, were thrilled to share we have a date for our #union election to begin. More details are coming soon but we wanted to share this incredible news! #1U #BamazonUnion #UnionStrong pic.twitter.com/T9cEmchmmo BAmazonUnion (@BAmazonUnion) January 15, 2021 Employees at Amazons facility in Bessemer notified the National Labor Relations Board Nov. 20 that they wanted to hold an election to create a bargaining unit that would cover full-time and part-time workers. The group would be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The move is drawing national attention at a time when online retailers, which have opposed union organization, are seeing record profits due to the demand generated by the pandemic. In December, the online retail giant reached an agreement with labor leaders about which workers at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Bessemer can vote. The vote will include thousands more of the facilitys more than 5,000 workers. The group had originally sought about 1,500 employees. In the 13-page NLRB document setting the date, Henderson noted that Amazon had pushed for in-person voting, while union organizers wanted a mail-in election. In reaching a decision, Henderson cited Alabamas COVID-19 test positivity rate of 17 percent, which is more than three times higher than the threshold for holding a mail-in election, according to NLRB directives. New employees entered Amazons 855,000-square-foot building in Bessemer for the first time March 29, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as online retailers began seeing an avalanche of orders from shoppers hesitant to risk exposure to the virus. During a tour of the facility last year while it was under construction, company officials said the fulfillment center has 22 miles of conveyor belts, and can ship more than 100,000 items a day. Donald Trump has always had his supporters on the conservative side of Australian politics, but he is a disgraced and diminished figure after the insurrection at the United States Capitol. Many Australians who could agree with Trump on some things tax cuts, most of all see him very differently after he falsely claimed electoral fraud and incited a violent mob to march on the Congress. Scott Morrison famously stood alongside Donald Trump at a factory opening in Ohio that had the look and feel of a campaign rally. Yet there was always a scepticism or wariness about Trump and his policies in the Morrison office. Credit:AP Trump and his legacy have been severely diminished, NSW Liberal senator and retired army major general Jim Molan says. Another Liberal, Andrew Bragg, is especially damning of the US President in the light of the physical damage to democratic institutions in Washington, DC. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 05:44:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KIEV, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian Health Ministry will not suggest extending strict quarantine, Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko said on Thursday. "Health Ministry will not yet suggest extending the strict quarantine after Jan. 25," Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted Lyashko as saying on Thursday. According to the official, the Ministry of Health expects to switch to adaptive quarantine, which will increase restrictions only in those regions of Ukraine where an unfavorable epidemiological situation is observed. Ukrainian government introduced a lockdown throughout Ukraine from Jan. 8 until Jan. 24, 2021. Cafes, restaurants, and bars (except for deliveries and takeaways), non-food stores, cinemas, fitness clubs, gyms, theaters, and shopping centers will be closed during this period. All educational institutions, except for kindergartens, will take a break. In addition, all public events will be banned and public transport will operate but with certain restrictions. Grocery stores, banks, pharmacies, postal offices, and hotels will operate as usual. A total of 1,138,764 COVID-19 cases and 20,376 deaths have been registered in Ukraine as of Thursday, while 837,063 patients have recovered, the country's health ministry said. Enditem As India prepares to start vaccinating healthcare workers against Covid-19 starting Saturday, the Union health ministry has laid down list of precautions and contraindications for the inoculation, along with a comparative factsheet for both the vaccines - Covishield and Covaxin. The rulebook contains information on vaccine platform, physical specifications, dosage, cold-chain storage requirements, contraindications and minor AEFIs (adverse event following immunisation). Prime Minister Narendra Modi will kick-off India's massive COVID-19 vaccination drive on Saturday (January 16) via video conferencing, even as adequate doses of Bharat Biotech's 'Covaxin' and Serum Institute's 'Covishield' vaccines have been delivered across the country to all states and Union territories. Here is a walk-through of the Covid-19 vaccination rulebook - A dose of Covishield and CoVaxin may cost in the range of 200 to 295 in India. The full initial procurement amount of 1.65 crore doses of COVISHIELD and COVAXIN vaccines have been allocated to all states and Union Territories in the proportion of Health Care Workers database, the Health Ministry has said. - In a letter to all states and Union territories, the Health Ministry underlined that the coronavirus vaccination is indicated only for 18 years and above under the emergency use authorisation. Besides, interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines is not permitted, the ministry said. Second dose should also be of the same COVID-19 vaccine which was administered as the first dose," the letter written by Manohar Agnani, Additional Secretary, Health Ministry said. - The Health Ministry cautioned about mild side effects following vaccination for both the vaccines. In case of Covishied, some mild adverse effects may occur like injection site tenderness, injection site pain, headache, fatigue, myalgia, malaise, pyrexia, chills and arthralgia and nausea. - Some mild adverse effects in case of Covaxin include injection site pain, headache, fatigue, fever, body ache, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, dizziness-giddiness, tremor, sweating, cold, cough and injection site swelling. Paracetamol may be used to provide symptomatic relief from post vaccination adverse reactions, the letter added. - If required, COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines should be separated by an interval of at least 14 days. - "Pregnant and lactating women have not been a part of any COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial so far. Therefore, women who are pregnant or not sure of their pregnancy and lactating women should not receive COVID-19 vaccine at this time," the letter stated. - The vaccine should be administered with caution in persons with a history of any bleeding or coagulation disorder (like clotting factor deficiency, coagulopathy or platelet disorder, it said. - "Following conditions are not contraindicated for COVID-19 vaccines -- persons with past history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and or RT-PCR positive illness, history of chronic diseases and morbidities and immuno-deficiency, HIV, patients on immune suppression due to any condition," the letter stated. - The government's vaccination app, CO-WIN, will initially be accessible to healthcare workers alone and will be open to usage for the general public within a month. The Co-WIN app is the backbone of the mega vaccination drive and is designed to enable citizens to self-register for the Covid-19 vaccination process, - Besides the COVID warriors, the app will effectively be used by central and state governments to implement the inoculation drive. - The Union Health Ministry has asked programme managers to ensure that the information about precautions and contraindications for COVID-19 vaccination should be disseminated to across all levels and through them to cold-chain handlers and vaccinators for ready reference. - The ministry cautioned against administration of the vaccine in persons with a history of anaphylactic or allergic reaction to a previous dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and in those with immediate or delayed onset anaphylaxis or allergic reaction to vaccines or injectable therapies, pharmaceutical products, food items, among others. - As per the Health Ministrys letter, in case of persons having active symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, coronavirus infected patients who have been given anti-SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma and acutely unwell and hospitalised patients due to any illness, the COVID-19 vaccination is to be deferred for four to eight weeks after recovery. Earlier this week, the Centre finalised purchase orders for 1.65 crore Covid-19 vaccines 1.10 crore Covishield doses and 55 lakh Covaxin doses. The purchase order set off one of the most crucial steps ahead of the first phase of vaccination -- that of transporting the vaccines across the length and breadth of the country. ROME, JAN 15 - Premier Giuseppe Conte is set to seek the backing of parliament next week after his coalition government was plunged into crisis by the withdrawal of the centrist Italia Viva (IV) party. Conte is set to address the Lower House on Monday and the Senate on Tuesday. Confidence votes are expected to follow each address and Conte looks set to need the support of so-far unidentified 'responsible' lawmakers from outside the ruling coalition for his government to survive. IV leader and ex-premier Matteo Renzi said he does not expect the government to find enough 'responsible' MPs to pass the confidence tests, especially in the Senate. "We won't vote in favour of giving the government our confidence and if they do not have the numbers, another government will be formed," said Renzi, who split over the government's COVID-19 Recovery Plan and the failure to take European Stability Mechanism funds to invest in the health system, among other things. The two senior partners in the ruling coalition, the 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), have ruled out patching things up with Renzi, saying IV has proven itself to be unreliable. The centre-right opposition is calling for snap elections. League leader Matteo Salvini said a government that is "minestrone" mix of different elements and just treads water is not good for Italy. He also said he does not expect any defectors to leave the centre right to keep the government afloat, saying the opposite is more likely. "Lots of serious M5S people are knocking at our door," said Salvini. "I see more people joining the centre right than leaving". (ANSA). Uber and Lyft are asking the incoming Biden administration for the opportunity to play a larger part in the national coronavirus vaccine rollout. The companies are offering to drive Americans to get their jabs for free - and are lobbying for their drivers to be given early access, reported The Wall Street Journal. Ride-share firms have seen revenue drop during the pandemic due to restrictions that closed restaurants and bars and limited travel and gatherings. Not only could transporting people to health clinics and mass vaccination sites help kick-start their businesses but it could also speed up the rollout, which has moved at a sluggish pace. Uber and Lyft have been lobbying the incoming Biden administration to provide early vaccine access for their drivers. Ride-share companies have seen a decline in profits due the pandemic and hope that having immunized drivers will kick-start their business The firms are also offering to drive Americans to vaccination sites for free because millions do not have access to public transportation. Pictured: People wait in line in a Disneyland parking lot to receive a dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Anaheim, California, January 13 Megan Callahan, Lyft's vice president of healthcare, said company executives met with the President-elect's transition team in December. She told The Journal that Lyft shared research on the millions of people in the U.S. who have limited access to public transportation or health-care transportation benefits. Callahan estimates that 16 million people currently won't have a way to reach vaccination sites. 'What we want to speak with them about is that there are existing vehicles that the Biden administration will have to ensure that people that need it can get to their vaccine appointments,' she told CBS News. Uber is also seeking access to vaccines for its drivers. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in a letter to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris that she hopes ride-share employees will be included in the next wave of inoculations. 'We are advocating for rideshare drivers and delivery people to receive early access vaccinations' because they are essential workers, she wrote, according to the letter seen by CBS News. In addition, Khosrowshahi wrote that the company could help provide access to underserved communities. 'We also believe that we can use our technology and reach to remove transportation barriers faced by individuals who will need to travel to their vaccination appointments, especially those in higher-risk groups and in communities of color,' the letter read. The company has also said it is willing to ferry people to vaccination sites for free. 'Transportation should never be a barrier to getting the COVID-19 vaccine,' Julia Paige, Uber's chief of social impact, told The Journal. On Tuesday, Uber announced it was partnering with the manufacture of one of the available vaccines, Moderna, and would provide information about the safety of the shot in its app. Officials hope the use of ride-shares will also speed up the vaccination rollout, which has been moving at a slow pace - with just 11.1 million people vaccinated so far (above) In the future, the companies hope users can rely on the Uber app to schedule vaccine appointments or reminders. Last month, Uber pledged 10 million free or discounted rides for people to receive their shots. Executives for both Uber and Lyft hope that immunizing drivers will help people safer about traveling again and increase the amount Because there is no single rollout plan under the Trump administration, state officials have had to come up with their own plans. This has meant variations in who gets vaccinated first and where those vaccines are administered. As a result, just 11.1 million people have been given at least their first shot as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This figure is well short of the Trump administration's plan to vaccinate 20 million people by the end fo December 2020. Bhubaneswar, Jan 15 : Odisha is all set to start Covid-19 vaccinations at 161 centres across 30 districts on Saturday, officials said. A total of 16,100 healthcare workers would receive the Covid-vaccine on the first day of the drive. The state has received 4.08 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine and 20,000 doses of Covaxin vaccine in the first lot and has dispatched to the cold chain points in the districts, the officials said. CBK Mohanty, Director of Medical Education and Training (DMET) said extensive arrangements have been made for the mega vaccination drive for Covid-19. He said that all prescribed protocols will be followed while administering the vaccine and necessary infrastructure have been created across districts for this purpose. On the day of the vaccine launch, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get connected with two sites in Bhubaneswar and Sundargarh. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will interact with beneficiaries at a particular site in each district. The government is targeting to complete the first dose of vaccination of 1.92 lakh healthcare workers within a week using the available vials. The state has 3.38 lakh registered healthcare workers, said an official. Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary informed that the vaccination will be conducted at six session sites of Capital Hospital, Unit IV-based health centre, Bhubaneswar branch AIIMS, KIIMS and SUM Hospital. SYLVAN BEACH, N.Y. With some help from the community, Sylvan Beach Fire Department was able to rescue a dog that fell through the ice on Oneida Lake Wednesday. Fire Chief Rick Johnson and Lt. Austin Brown arrived in an airboat launched from Three Pines Marina just after the dog fell. Rescuers went into the water and saved the dog. The animal was transported to shore and treated for exposure. North Bay Fire Department was also called in to assist with shore command. A post to the fire department Facebook page reads, This is a prime example of the community helping their local fire departments. We could not do it without all your support. Mercy Health Announces New Testing Site Hours By West Kentucky Star Staff PADUCAH - Mercy HealthLourdes Hospital has announced new hours for its flu and COVID-19 testing clinic.Beginning Monday, the Mercy Health Paducah Triage Clinic will be open Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. noon for flu and COVID-19 testing.The clinic is located at 225 Medical Center Drive in the parking area of Mercy Health-Paducah Urgent Care. The hours and services of the urgent care remain unchanged. Mercy Health established designated flu clinics for members of the community who are experiencing flu-like symptoms, which may include fever, cough, shortness of breath, sore throat or body aches.The new hours are being implemented in order to stand up a COVID-19 vaccination clinic for healthcare workers to assist in the completion of the 1A tier of the vaccination plan outlined by The Kentucky Department for Public Health. The vaccination clinic is not open to the general public.Healthcare workers can visit mercy.com for details on scheduling a vaccination. Mass vaccination against coronavirus in Ukraine will begin in February, citizens of Ukraine will receive passports for vaccination against COVID-19 in the same way as citizens of the European Union, said Minister of Health of Ukraine Maksym Stepanov. He noted that negotiations with vaccine manufacturers will allow Ukraine to receive a vaccine against coronavirus in February. "We have taken serious steps with the countries that manufacture these vaccines. I think that in February, which will come in two weeks, we will really start mass vaccination in our country. And everything you say about passports, about all other documents, which will be received by the citizens of the European Union, will also be received by the citizens of Ukraine," Stepanov said on the air of the Ukraine 24 TV channel on Thursday evening. Oil prices were up on Thursday afternoon despite new and extended lockdowns that promise to slow any oil demand rebound that was expected for 2021. At 4:07 p.m. EST, WTI crude was trading at $53.61 per barrel, up $.70 (+1.32%) on the day. Brent crude was trading up $0.28 (0.43%) on the day at $56.30. This comes even as China locks down more than 22 million citizens amid a new wave of Covid-19, on top of announcements that there will be extended curfews in France that will last 12 hours of the day, beginning on Saturday. In fact, Europes oil demand has failed to start the year with any sort of bang, slumping 1.76 million barrels per day so far this month, according to Rystad Energy, as road use in the UK, France, Italy, and Spain fell 37% last week compared with pre-virus levels. Bolstering oil prices, particularly WTI, is the hope that the incoming Biden administration will quickly push through yet another round of stimulus payments in the amount of $1400 per person. This will add onto the current $600 payments that are being distributed now. Also serving as a catalyst for rising prices are analyst rumors of a tightening of supply, despite the persistently low oil demand. Crude oil inventories in the United States were down for the second week in a row, the EIA reported on Wednesday. Still, gasoline and distillate inventories are growing, even though production for the fuels is also down. The market is now hoping that an influx of cash will prop up this sluggish demand. Both benchmarks are trading at an 11-month high. 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Baptist presidency Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Georgia Pastor Mike Stone is a candidate to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention, according to Florida Pastor Tom Ascol, who believes it is vital the denomination be led by a pastor. "We're going to have a faithful Baptist pastor who will be nominated to help lead us as the next SBC president," Ascol, president of Founders Ministries, told The Christian Post in a phone interview Tuesday. The nation's largest Protestant denomination is comprised of churches and the pastors who are called to shepherd those congregations, he explained, underscoring that it's time for the SBC to "get back to the basics" and that all of the entities and agencies within it belong to the churches. "At this critical juncture where we have so many challenges in the culture that have come into the denomination and in our local churches, we need a man on the ground [as president]." Although Ascol is among the Reformed wing of the denomination and Stone represents the traditionalist SBC view which has been a source of contention in the SBC in recent years the Florida pastor speaks warmly of the Georgia minister. Their theological differences have not been a barrier to friendship, Ascol said. "And that's the way it should be in the Southern Baptist Convention, and right now we need all who are committed to the inerrancy and sufficiency, the full authority, of Scripture to unite together. And I think [Mike Stone] will do that. I've not sensed anything from him except just recognition that we are all brothers and these are fraternal discussions we can have but right now we have a bigger concern with what is going on in the culture and the division that has come into our Convention which needs to be addressed by good, clear, simple pastoral leadership." Stone, who is the pastor of Emanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Georgia, confirmed Tuesday in a CP interview that indeed he is in the running for the job, though it was something that he felt prompted by the Holy Spirit while praying during a recent season where the SBC presidency was the farthest thing from his mind. He sensed God say to him: "Would you be willing to be nominated if that were My will for you?" For the Lord to confirm this, Stone prayed that his wife would be in full support of it and for her to initiate it. Stone recounted that his wife is not into Convention affairs at all or the inner workings of the denomination and it would thus be unusual for her to initiate a conversation on the subject. "The very next day, without me breathing a word of it to her, she initiated this conversation and she asked if she could share with me why she thought God may be moving in that direction," Stone said. His staff and lay leadership of his church also began to speak positively about the prospect. "I cannot say that God has called me to be the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I can say that God has led me to allow my name to be put in nomination. And my response is not as much a call to be elected but it's a call to be obedient." Stone plans to emphasize a renewed focus on evangelism as he speaks to SBC leaders about his candidacy which the denomination has historically called our "one sacred effort" as well as the importance of the sufficiency of Scripture and greater grassroots involvement in the denomination. While most Southern Baptists will say they believe that the headquarters of the Convention is the local church given their strong belief of autonomy of every congregation, in practice, the denomination has become top-down management in their approach to the denomination's cooperative efforts. "In order for the Cooperative Program to work it has to be cooperative. What we're seeing, and there is specific evidence of this, is local churches sending cooperative program dollars through their state and regional conventions and then on to the national conventions and entities and the entities are making decisions that hinder the ministries of the supporting state conventions. And you have decisions made on the ground in local areas in local churches that are being dictated by and driven by national entity headquarters," Stone said. "Increasingly, Southern Baptists on the ground have less and less influence and impact over what is happening with their own Cooperative Program dollars." He stressed: "I do think that the Southern Baptist Convention will be best led by someone who has a direct tie to the local church." Stone is also a previous chair of the SBC Executive Committee. The chorus of calls for the resignation of newly-elected Clackamas County Commissioner Mark Shull couldnt get any louder. Voters, local officials and even his fellow commissioners have demanded that Shull step down, after a constituent revealed a multitude of hateful screeds that hes posted on Facebook targeting Muslims and parroting extremist right-wing claims. Yet Shull has been unmoved. He offered his own version of a sorry youre offended non-apology last week and gave a perfunctory pledge to work towards increasing understanding and cooperation amongst all new immigrants to our nation and to our county. He downplayed the substance of his comments as noting problems with integration of Islam into western society and dishonestly tried to suggest that they were made years ago when they were posted throughout 2019 and 2020. These are not simply unpopular or politically incorrect opinions. His remarks ooze paranoia and at times suggest the need for violence, such as one comment that calls for a new D-Day to confront Islam, the most menacing threat to U.S. national security. He accuses Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib of being terrorists and equates Islam with ISIS. He warns ominously that you and yours will wind up dead, thanks to Muslims. His postings, dozens of which were found and shared by Clackamas County blogger Cris Waller and reported on by Pamplin Media, are disgusting, disturbed and devoid of a rational basis. Social media is full of people spewing such vitriol and misinformation. However, our governing bodies should not be. We expect our elected officials to make decisions regarding political appointments, public policy and public resources that consider the needs and rights of the community as a whole. But Shulls racist and conspiracy-minded comments reflect someone who denies the basic humanity of members of a community because of their religion. It is notable that Shull was the only commissioner among the Multnomah and Clackamas County commissions to not vote for Kayse Jama, Oregons first Muslim state senator, to fill the seat previously held by Secretary of State Shemia Fagan. Clackamas County residents should take heart that their elected officials, including legislators, the sheriff and district attorney, have demanded that Shull step down. Clackamas County Chair Tootie Smith and the commissioners on the board also censured him, including calling for his resignation. And county department heads and deputy directors added their names to the list of those condemning his inexcusable remarks. But Shull cannot be forced to resign and on Thursday he said he does not intend to step down. While voters can and should seek to recall him, they must wait six months to do so under Oregon law. Shull, who spent 25 years in the military serving the country, should reconsider. Regardless of his beliefs, that service, which includes a tour in Iraq, reflects his great devotion to the country. He should call on those same instincts, survey the pain his comments have caused and recognize that the greatest service he can offer his community now is to step down. Its the most palatable path left for him. Because no matter what he aims to do in the next six months, with such widespread disgust and the anger among those who would have to work with him, Shull is done. He just needs to admit it. -The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board Subscribe to our free weekly Oregon Opinion newsletter. Email: ANN ARBOR, MI University of Michigan faculty and students are mounting two campaigns to remove Ron Weiser from his regent position, citing his complicity after the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The claim is that his relationship with President Donald Trump and the GOP are conflicts of interest with his duties as a regent. Weiser is poised to become the co-chair of the party in Michigan. A petition for his removal started shortly after the incidents at the Capitol and now has more than 4,600 signatures. Now an open letter penned by faculty that calls for his resignation is circulating. The open letter was signed by hundreds of professors, lecturers, graduate students and other community members. It acknowledges that Weiser was democratically elected to his position on the board and acknowledges his right to seek the chair of the Michigan Republican Party. However, the aims of those positions diverge radically, the letter states. (UM) is a premier, world-renowned institution of higher learning, dedicated to seeking truth and contributing to the emergence of a diverse, equitable and inclusive society, the letter states. The Michigan GOP, by contrast, is a partisan organization that has chosen to side with blatant lies, helped foment an anti-democratic uprising, and worked to disenfranchise the voters of Detroit, a majority Black city. Weiser came under fire after he was quoted in a news article saying he didnt know if he blamed Trump for the violence at the Capitol. He didnt wish to comment for this story, referring back to a text message he sent to MLive/The Ann Arbor News on Jan. 9 stating he is definitely not resigning. I condemned the violence and assault on our democracy once I was aware of what had happened, Weiser wrote in the text message. I spent most of that ugly day in a dental chair having oral surgery. I am guilty of not watching news on TV or social media. Nothing more. Because of this transgression, my children and grandchildren have been harassed. There should be more civility in our community! Weiser founded McKinley Associates Inc., a national real estate investment company, in 1968 and served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Slovak Republic under President George W. Bush from 2001-05, according to the regents website. He was elected to the board in 2016 and his term expires in 2025. In addition to comments made to MLive/The Ann Arbor News, Weiser sent out a series of tweets on Jan. 9, reiterating that the events at the Capitol were incredibly tragic and wrong. He added that he believes in a Republican Party that shares a belief in our Constitution, where the Rule of Law prevails over the whims or dictates of a man or mob. To move forward as a party, we must acknowledge our mistakes and never let them happen again. I promise to do my utmost to bring people together around common-sense solutions and policies that will protect our freedoms and stay within the rule of law, Weiser tweeted. Let me be clear, the events in our nation's Capital this week were both incredibly tragic and wrong. People were misled. And that resulted in death and destruction. That is unacceptable and abhorrent. Ron Weiser (@RonaldWeiser) January 9, 2021 Petition seeking removal of University of Michigan regent Ron Weiser collects 800 signatures in 24 hours Both the petition and the open letter highlight the urgency of the moment, according to Ben Gerstein, a UM senior who served as Central Student Government president in 2019-20. Each CSG president since 2016-17 has endorsed the petition, and Gerstein said they have had to navigate the impacts of the Trump presidency, such as the increased presence of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement officers on campus and different facets of the political climate that gave way to and normalized far-right, racist rhetoric and fascist politics, Gerstein said. Weve all been frustrated, I think, in our time that somebody on the board with the university played a major role in elevating that candidate and elevating that kind of politics, Gerstein said. Several student groups have also endorsed the petition, including the Graduate Employees Organization. Amir Fleischmann, a GEO spokesperson, said the organization has been frustrated with Weiser for a while, specifically with his contributions to right-wing groups and causes. I think its totally inappropriate for this man to be a regent of (UM), Fleischmann said. We think he should resign, and we think that none of the other regents nor the university administration should be working with him because he has such a serious conflict of interest. Ryan Fisher, a College Republicans representative at UM, said he read through the petition which called Weiser complicit in the events at the Capitol and expected to find a quote that was heinous in nature, but that was not the case. Instead, Weisers claim, at worst, seems to be a suggestion that he has not been following the news, Fisher said. And if that is now punishable through recall, then frankly, I am just not sure I agree. Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox announced she would not pursue a second term leading the state GOP, which clears the way for Weiser, who previously served two terms before stepping down. Meshawn Maddock Weisers co-chair is the only candidate for party co-chair, and she is expected to remain on the ballot despite her presence outside the Capitol on Wednesday. Presence at US Capitol ahead of riot not likely to affect prospective Michigan GOP co-chairs candidacy Weisers connection with Maddock is just another ordinary, normal thing that some people are attacking as unusual or heinous, Fisher said. The main reason Weiser is being recalled, according to Fisher, is that there is an R next to his name. The truth is, you know, if there was more bipartisanship across campus or more fairness across campus with regard to political ideology, I think this whole issue with Ron Weiser wouldnt be discussed or even prevalent, Fisher said. READ MORE: Task force will examine public safety practices at University of Michigan University of Michigan campaign still pushing for Go Blue Guarantee on all 3 campuses Lawsuit accuses University of Michigan professor of racist, misogynistic, xenophobic behavior With India's COVID-19 vaccination drive beginning tomorrow, the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare has taken to Twitter to inform Indians about the Co-Win platform that will be used to monitor the vaccination drive in the country. In his Tweet, Dr Harsh Vardhan said that the digital platform will help the government in enabling the world's largest vaccination drive. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to activate the Co-WIN digital platform to facilitate smooth implementation of COVID-19 vaccine in the country on January 16. In his Tweet, Dr Harsh Vardhan shared an infographic that laid out the key features of the Co-WIN Platform. Co-WIN stands for COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network and is an extension of the government's eVIN network. The sole purpose of the Co-WIN platform is to smoothen the COVID-19 vaccination drive, as it will track and monitor beneficiaries across the country. Registration on the Co-WIN app is mandatory for Indians in order to get vaccinated. Initially the accessibility of Co-WIN will be limited to the healthcare staff in order to enable them to provide a database regarding their vaccination and receive information about it. In his post, the Union Health Minister shows all the features of the Co-WIN platform, which will have a Dashboard which will show Users, Beneficiary Coverage, Beneficiary Dropouts, Sessions Planned/ Sessions Held, and will inform users about vaccine utilisation. According to the post, the registration will be through a National Admin, a State Admin, and a District Admin. Users will be able to register themselves and track the status of the vaccination drive straight on the Co-WIN platform. The Co-WIN platform, once live, will have four modules User administrator module, beneficiary registration, vaccination and beneficiary acknowledgment, and status update. Once live, the Co-WIN app or website will give three options for registration including self-registration, individual registration, and bulk upload. Further, the Co-WIN platform will also inform users, which includes healthcare workers as well, about the users, inventory, and other important information. The Co-WIN app is not functional yet as the app is in pre-product stage. It has that data of health officials - the first phase of people to get vaccinated. According to an Indian Express report, over 75 lakh healthcare official have registered for Co-WIN already. FireEye hedges on naming Russians as SolarWinds attackers FireEye has not seen enough evidence to positively trace the hackers behind the ongoing SolarWinds Orion hack to Russian entities, a company executive said. "We don't have sufficient evidence to support naming a specific sponsor," said Benjamin Reed, the cybersecurity company's director of threat intelligence. Reed acknowledged that the federal government recently said the hackers are "likely Russian in origin," but FireEye has been calling the threat group UNC2452, with the UNC referring to uncategorized. That notion that the attackers are likely Russian is "plausible from what we've seen," Reed said during a webinar this week. He added that Russian groups have been observed using the sophisticated methods being discovered by public and private investigators probing how UNC2452 managed to both breach and remain undetected on countless networks for months. FireEye is credited as the first to detect an intrusion in SolarWinds Orion, an IT management software. Although FireEye is not attributing the attack to Russia yet, Reed said the company has also not seen any evidence pointing to another country. Gregory Touhill, the federal government's first chief information security officer and a retired Air Force brigadier general, said FireEye's reluctance to attribute the attack to Russia is likely a matter of due diligence. "When it comes to attribution, what the intelligence and law enforcement community has to do is literally trace it all the way back to the root," he said. FireEye has to gather evidence that "will hold up in court. That's the realm that [FireEye] and others are dealing with. Those who don't have to prove it in court can say whatever they want." This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to GCN. In the 17th-century, when Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei looked out into the unknown vastness of space using his ingenious telescope, he saw the sun, the moon, planets, and stars. Had the polymath been looking through the telescope in the year 2021, he perhaps would have been disappointed to find not stars and other 'space oddities' so eulogized by mortals but bits of trash and plastic. A 'drifting island of plastic' While space enthusiasts sit in their plush homes congratulating themselves over human exploits on Mars and the strong message we are sending to the extraterrestrials who are silently but surely noting everything we do, space is filling up with innumerable pieces of junk. Six thousand tons of it. Recent estimates by experts and scientific models have found 128 million pieces of space debris aimlessly bobbing around in outer space. These account for only the ones that are 1mm in size or smaller. There are also 34,000 larger pieces that measure over 10 cm. In fact, some experts such as Ekaterini Kavvada, directorate general of Defence Industry and Space at the European Commission, have called the mass of space junk - specifically in Earth's lower orbit - a 'drifting island of plastic'. Take that, Galileo. What do we leave behind in space? Harsh as it may sound, it is not surprising that humans have managed to pollute not just the known (Earth) but also the unknown (space). After all, cleaning up after ourselves was never a human hallmark. Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and the likes measure the cost of space exploration in dollars but what indeed it should be weighed in metric tonnes. In fact, each attempt to understand the universe leaves it just a little bit more polluted. Small bits of rockets that break off the body when they are launched in space, or scratches of chipped paint from bygone spacecraft, defunct satellites, leftover rocket boosters, remnants from past explosions of man-made objects, all contribute to space debris. A 2018 estimate by NASA put the number of defunct satellites in space at 500,000. But don't underestimate these drifting vestiges of human curiosity (and vanity). Even a humble 1cm piece of speeding debris poses the threat to potentially destroy multi-million dollar satellites and cause high-velocity explosions in the sky. While space debris has not caused any serious damage to Earth yet, let's not forget that time in 2015 when a rather renegade piece of a defunct Russian satellite traveling at the perilous speed of eight miles per second caused three ISS crew members to take emergency shelter in the Soyuz capsule. Cut to September 2020 when ISS astronauts had to do an "avoidance maneuver" to get out of the way of a wanton piece of celestial junk. And this was just one of three such incidents that occurred in the last year itself. The ISS, which hovers some 240 km above Earth, orbits at the speed of 17,000 miles per hour. At that speed, even a tiny collision can cause unimaginable damage not only to equipment but also to the safety of crew members on board. Cleaning up the universe Mounting scientific evidence of the physical dangers of space pollution has increased the impetus on space waste-management and clean-up over the years. As far as private and state enterprises at the forefront of space exploration go, however, the reaction has been tepid at best. To be fair to Musk, his aerospace company SpaceX did in 2018 launch a Falcon 9 rocket into space that carried along with supplies for the International Space Station an additional experimental "space sweeper" to clean up space debris. With the test run of the device, known as 'RemoveDEBRIS', scientists hoped that that space would get all cleaned up. That was the company's 53rd launch into space. In 2020, SpaceX completed 100 launches with a set of Starlink satellites that were sent to space on October 24. One wonders how many 'RemoveDEBRIS' machines (created by U.K.s University of Surrey Space Center, not SpaceX') it would take to clear up all the debris from all of Musk's satellites alone. The more satellites are sent into space, the greater the risk of them smashing into each other. And with companies like SpaceX and OneWeb sending up entire constellations of satellites into the already crowded Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), experts fear setting off the Kessler syndrome - a chain reaction that leads to the creation of more space junk due to collisions between existing space junk. Optimism or carelessness? Some optimistic scientists hope that the problem of space debris will solve itself as objects in space tend to erode in time due to prolonged exposure to space. But this might be nothing more than wishful thinking. Take, for instance, the case of a failed Envisat remote sensing satellite that is currently roaming outer space after the European Space Agency lost all contact with it in 2012. The satellite, which is the size of an Earthly bus, is expected to hang around for 150 years before naturally eroding. With a view to addressing this problem, SpaceXs president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell proclaimed in an online discussion shared by Time magazine in October 2020 that the company's next-generation Starship programs could help in cleaning up space. But the noble aim remains secondary to the firm's primary goal which is to set up a conventional space route to ferry people and cargo to and from the moon. In comparison, smaller private players are now coming up with alternatives that would do well to garner more attention. Rocket Lab, for instance, has come up with a system to launch rockets into space without creating space debris. By following a process of de-orbiting the launch stages, the company tries to ensure that no pieces of its rockets are left behind in space. Humans have come a long way since the time of Galileo when scientists had to risk their lives to find out more about space. Looking at the celestial traffic jam, however, one begs to question if we have indeed made the life of scientists safer. After all, if a piece of space debris hits the ISS, scientists onboard will be the first in danger. If a weather forecasting satellite explodes in the sky, state governments and citizens bearing the costs of such enterprises will be the first to flay scientists for the failure. Before cheering the launch of the millionth rocket to quench our thirst for space exploration, let us not forget Galileo and the many stars and planets he saw from his telescope back in the 17th century - a sight that arguably played a significant role in understanding and demystifying space. By filling up space with garbage, we have made life a lot duller for the observational astronomers like Galileo of our times who when looking up at the night sky in wonderment in search of distant galaxies today will only find constellations of dead rockets and plastic pride. Sebastopol, CA (95472) Today Mainly clear skies. Low 47F. WSW winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.. Tonight Mainly clear skies. Low 47F. WSW winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph. 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. Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Queues of lorries at borders and empty supermarket shelves confirm what most already knew: the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) has increased trade barriers between the EU and the UK. So what problems are arising, and can anything be done to improve them? 1. Rules of origin Upon announcing the deal on Christmas Eve, Boris Johnson claimed it would "enable UK goods to be sold without tariffs, without quotas in the EU market." This has since been proven to be misleading. Goods traded between the EU and UK avoid tariffs and quotas only where they originate from whichever side exported them. This is governed by the rules of origin, which aim to ensure that goods imported from, say, India into the UK can't be sold on to the EU tariff-free. Complying with these rules is notoriously difficult especially for processed agricultural or industrial goods, which typically include components from around the world. Different products are also subject to different minimum percentages, while some processes incur exclusions while others do not. In some sectors, such as automotive, compliance has already led to increased consumer prices. The difficulty is heightened by the highly integrated nature of UK-EU supply chains and distribution networks. One perverse consequence is that EU goods sold into the UK tariff-free are subject to tariffs if re-exported to the EUunless they have undergone sufficient processing in the UK. This is particularly a problem for the island of Ireland, for whom the UK has long acted as a land bridge for EU products. For many UK-EU traders, accepting tariffs may be easier than trying to comply. 2. Customs hold-ups The prime mister has also incorrectly claimed that the TCA removed all non-tariff barriers to trade with the EU. Like most free-trade agreements, the TCA does little to address regulatory barriers to trade. As the UK and the EU are no longer in a customs union, for example, customs checks and formalities now apply, which can be time-consuming and burdensome. Notably, seafood exporters have been struggling to handle the mountain of customs paperwork needed to ship produce to the EU. Customs bureaucracy has also caused freight forwarders to reject contracts for delivery of goods into the UK. 3. Services Services represent over 80% of the UK economy, and the EU is the UK's largest services export and import market. Yet the TCA does very little for services beyond including standard market access and the non-discrimination obligations that are typical of modern EU free-trade agreements. This is largely because the major trade barriers in services are not tariffs but regulations. The EU internal market in services is imperfect but still easily the most successful example of cross-border services market integration. National restrictions persist on member states offering services across borders or setting up offices in other member states, but must be applied in a proportionate manner by reference to legitimate public interest objectives. Other rules also massively assist services trade between EU members, including mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and sector-specific legislation such as for legal professions and financial services. The TCA replicates none of this. UK nationals no longer enjoy mutual recognition of professional qualifications, for instance. UK financial services providers must now seek prior authorisation from relevant authorities in EU member states. Even before Brexit, UK financial institutions had started taking steps to move some operations back to cities such as Paris, Dublin and Amsterdam. This process has since continued. 4. Level play The "level playing provisions" in the TCA aim to satisfy EU concerns that the UK could use its regulatory and policy autonomy to gain a competitive advantage in trade or attract investment. The provisions go further than typical EU free-trade agreements and could curb the regulatory autonomy of both parties. It remains to be seen whether they will be used and, if so, how TCA arbitrators will interpret them. 5. Northern Ireland Northern Ireland's trading relationship with the EU was settled before the TCA by the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland in the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement. It means that Northern Ireland remains subject to EU customs law and huge swathes of EU law on trade in goods. Designed to avoid checks at the Irish border, the new trade barriers with the rest of the UK are becoming increasingly apparent, with supermarket shelves empty in Northern Ireland because British suppliers are being held up by customs bureaucracy. In the long term, Northern Ireland may have to rely less on Great Britain and strengthen supply chains and distribution networks with Ireland. What can be done The TCA provides the framework for UK-EU trade, but aspects such as financial services recognition and data transfers are to be developed separately. Talks on financial services have begun. The TCA itself will not stand still. Commitments will be tested, defined and clarified through dispute settlement. The TCA also created numerous specialised committees to oversee implementation and explore improvements. The parties could explore relaxing the rules of origin, for example. Agreements on mutually recognising each side's conformity-assessment procedureswhere the EU would recognise the power of UK bodies to assess the conformity of specific UK goods with EU regulations and vice versa - would reduce some of the burden of regulatory compliance checks on goods. This could help both UK-EU trade, and trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. An expansion of sectors that can benefit from visa-free EU travel would also be welcomed, not least by the creative sector. But there are limits to what can be realistically achieved. The limited ambition of the TCA in addressing trade barriers between the EU and the UK should not come as a surprise. It is a direct consequence of political decisions made by the UK and the EU. Unless priorities change, these barriers are here to stay. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The head of Irelands Covid-19 vaccine taskforce has said there will only be a modest impact to the rollout of the vaccination programme (Ian Forsyth/PA) The head of Irelands Covid-19 vaccine taskforce has said there will only be a modest impact to the rollout of the vaccination programme. Pfizer BioNTech has announced a temporary reduction in supplies as it expands its facilities. Professor Brian MacCraith told RTE News: After a stressful day it has been very relieving news to hear from Pfizer this evening that the proposed reduction will only apply to one week and that is this coming week. He said from next month there would be significant growth in supplies coming into Ireland. An additional 50 people have died with Covid-19 in Ireland, the Department of Health said. We have a very long way to go but the majority of people are stepping up & playing their part. Do not be disheartened by stories of non-compliance. Solidarity has been & remains the hallmark of our response to date in Ireland - the silent majority continue to do the right thing. Dr Ronan Glynn (@ronan_glynn) January 15, 2021 All of these deaths occurred in January. Another 3,498 cases were confirmed. Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said new variants of Covid-19 have recently been identified in Brazil and in travellers to Japan from Brazil. He added: There is no evidence of these variants in Ireland. Anyone who has travelled from Brazil in the last 14 days is advised to self-isolate for 14 days, from the date of arrival, and identify themselves, through a GP, for testing as soon as possible. It is essential that anyone arriving from Brazil self-isolate for 14 days from the date of arrival before entering/re-entering the workplace. We are particularly appealing to employers to enable their employees to protect each other by staying at home for the full 14 days. Birbhum MP Satabdi Roy has resigned from the Tarapith Vikash Parishad amid an ongoing exodus from the TMC. Roy hinted that she is having problems with the ruling party in West Bengal and may take a "decision" on Saturday. The actor-turned-politician, in a Facebook post, claimed that she is not being informed about party events in her constituency and this has caused "mental pain" to her. The three-time Birbhum MP, who is on her way to New Delhi, said she will inform the public at 2 pm on Saturday if she takes any "decision". Her post has created ripples in the TMC, which promised to reach out to Roy. As per party sources, Roy is having differences with Birbhum district TMC chief Anubrata Mondal. "I have a close connection with this constituency. But recently many people have been asking me why I am missing from several party programmes. "I want to tell them that I want to attend all programmes. But I don't get to know about many programmes and if I am not even informed about events in my constituency, then how can I attend. I was mentally pained because of this," the post on Satabdi Roy Fans' Club page read. Roy said she has spent more time with the people of her constituency than her own family in the last 10 years and even her enemies can't discredit her on this account. "So, this year I am trying to take some decisions so that I can spend the entire time with you. I am grateful to you. You have been supporting me since 2009. Hope you will support me in the coming days too," the post read. "If I take any decision, will let you know on January 16, Saturday at 2 pm," it added. When contacted, Roy confirmed that the post was indeed made by her. "I have tried to reach out to the leadership but it has been of no use. If I am not able to work for the masses then what is the use of continuing in the post," she told reporters. Roy had twice given resignation from the Tarapith Unnayan Parishad but those were not accepted, sources close to the MP said. She is presently on her way to New Delhi, they said. When asked whether there are chances of joining the BJP, she refused to reply. Responding to a query whether she will meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Roy said, "There are always chances of meeting people you know but there is no such possibility." Roy was seen with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a roadshow in Bolpur on December 29. She had first contested and won the Birbhum seat on a TMC ticket in 2009. Roy also won from the seat in 2014 and 2019. A senior TMC leader said that the party will speak with Roy. Not just Roy, another senior TMC leader and state minister Rajib Banerjee, who has been maintaining distance with the party, also said in a social media post that he will reveal his next step in a Facebook live on Saturday afternoon. In the biggest single-day exodus from the TMC, political heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, along with 35 party leaders including five MLAs and an MP, joined the BJP during Shah's rally in Medinipur on December 19, setting off a churning as several disgruntled leaders rallied behind him. Since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP bagged 18 seats from the state, 14 legislators of the TMC, four from the Left Front and two from the Congress have joined the saffron party. None of them, however, have resigned from their posts. Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May. 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. With the Paycheck Protection Program rolled out again this week to extend aid to struggling small businesses, River City Federal Credit Union CEO and President Jeff Ivey put on another hat. Right now, Im an SBA loan officer, Ivey quipped, adding that San Antonio-based River City has been swamped with Paycheck Protection Program applications from borrowers. He had to step in to assist with the demand. The Small Business Administration reintroduced the program Monday to offer low-interest, forgivable loans to businesses pummeled by the pandemic. The funding which can be used for payroll, mortgage interest, rent or utilities is part of a $284.5 billion relief bill signed into law last month. First-time PPP borrowers with 500 or fewer employees are eligible for loans of up to $10 million. Businesses that received a PPP loan last year can apply this year for loans of up to $2 million, but they can employ no more than 300 people and they have to show their revenue dropped by 25 percent between comparable quarters in 2019 and 2020. Last year, the program initially was funded with $349 billion, but when that ran out in mid-April, lawmakers replenished it with $310 billion. About $130 billion went unused, though. On ExpressNews.com: The Paycheck Protection Program was a boon to big businesses. For small family outfits on San Antonios East, West and South sides, not so much. Many minority-owned businesses were shut out from obtaining a PPP loan last year. So, this time around, community financial institutions with their connections to minority communities got first dibs to make loans. That limited the number of institutions in San Antonio able to make loans over the programs first four days. Among the institutions that have been accepting applications are River City, Generations Federal Credit Union, Firstmark Credit Union, LiftFund and PeopleFund. Weve received a hundred already, River Citys Ivey said. To give you some perspective, we did about 500 of these last year. To me, that just shows and we knew this anyway theres still a lot of businesses that are really hurting and really need the support. Its average PPP loan size was $24,000. River City, which is designated a community development financial institution and a minority depository institution, primarily has been making PPP loans to sole proprietors and independent contractors. A $5,000 loan means a great deal to them, Ivey said. I worked for big banks for a lot of years, and thats not their sweet spot. They look for the larger deals. To really strengthen the business community here, these small operators need to be healthy. They need to be viable. They need access to capital, so were glad to fill the gap. Starting today, institutions with under $1 billion in assets can begin making loans to both first-time and second-time PPP borrowers. San Antonios Crockett National Bank, which made about 265 PPP loans totaling more than $19 million last year, will be among them. San Antonio-based Lone Star Capital Bank only will participate on a limited basis with larger businesses, CEO and President Danny Buck said. All other lenders can begin making PPP loans starting Tuesday. San Antonio-based institutions Frost Bank, Broadway Bank, Vantage Bank Texas, Jefferson Bank and the Bank of San Antonio each intend to participate in whats called the second draw. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio banks weather the coronavirus pandemic Restaurants and hotels can receive as much 3.5 times their average monthly payroll, while other businesses are limited to 2.5 times. Businesses that received a PPP loan last year have to obtain loan forgiveness before applying for a second PPP loan, said Mark Johnston, vice president of commercial services at Generations. Generations has received about two to three dozen applications this week. Last year, it made 85 loans totaling about $3 million. The number of PPP loans LiftFund made this week to Bexar County businesses already exceeds those made last year. It has made 360 loans, averaging just under $25,000. Last year, it made 214 loans, averaging about $22,500 each, said Celina Pena, LiftFunds chief advancement officer. LiftFund provides loans to startups, restaurants and other businesses that cant get loans from traditional financial institutions. Last year, many larger businesses including publicly traded companies got the jump on very small businesses to land PPP money. PeopleFunds San Antonio office has received as many as 80 PPP loan applications this week. It made eight PPP loans last year in San Antonio. It typically handles 10 to 15 small-business loan applications a month. It can loan up to about $200,000, said Bill Anderson, regional lending manager for South Texas. Anderson attributed the jump to PeopleFund rebuilding its presence in San Antonio. The nonprofit has offices around the state. People are interested in getting them (PPP loans) as quickly as possible and not having to wait for everything to open up with the banks, Anderson said. Frost Bank, the largest regional bank based in San Antonio, made more loans here than any other institution last year. Its not sure what demand will be like when it begins accepting applications on Tuesday, however. We expect a number of our customers who got PPP loans last time will want to get another loan this time, Frost Bank spokesman Bill Day said. The economy is still pretty tough and our customers need help. pdanner@express-news.net Advertisement Netflix recently announced its ambitious goal of releasing at least one movie a week in 2021. And on Thursday, the subscription streaming service dropped a trailer for the upcoming comedy thriller I Care a Lot, that's headed to the platform on February 19. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, is basically a vehicle for British actress Rosamund Pike to steal every scene from co-stars Dianne Weist, Peter Dinklage, and Chris Messina. Rosamund Pike is at her icy blonde best as a professional grifter who makes a living as a legal guardian for the vulnerable elderly in upcoming Netflix comedy thriller I Care A Lot Pike, 41, stars as Marla Grayson, a woman who makes her living serving as a court-appointed legal guardian for the vulnerable elderly. Whilst maintaining that she simply 'cares a lot' for her clients, she, in fact, milks them for all they're worth while outwardly appearing to serve their interests. Her modus operandi is to place her clients in assisted living facilities and then sell off their belongings while pocketing the proceeds. Huge scam: Her modus operandi is to place her clients in assisted living facilities and then sell off their belongings while pocketing the proceeds Her scheming, however, begins to fall apart when she takes on a new wealthy retiree played by Dianne Weist Pike finds her match in the older woman who also has a secret. It transpires that the sweet little old lady has connections Marla finds herself kidnapped by a local gangster (Peter Dinklage) who sets out to teach her the error of her ways Her scheming, however, begins to fall apart when she takes on Weist's character Jennifer as a client. The professional grifter finds her match in the older woman who also has a secret. It transpires that wealthy retiree Jennifer has connections, too. Marla finds herself kidnapped by a local gangster (Peter Dinklage) who sets out to teach her the error of her ways. I Care A Lot is written and directed by J Blakeson, best known for The Disappearance of Alice Creed. TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) Indiana National Guard members will continue to assist long-term care facilities in Tippecanoe and surrounding counties until at least the end of February. About 20 Indiana National Guard members are assisting nursing homes in Tippecanoe County. They were originally scheduled to stay until the end of 2020. As News 18 previously reported, more than 1,000 National Guard members were deployed statewide beginning last year to assist nursing homes hit hardest by COVID-19. Sergeant Randy Zellers was deployed to Creasy Springs Health Campus in October. He says he's completing administrative tasks to free up staff and health care workers to focus on resident care. "If I'm able to be here and allow nurses and CNAs to get that direct resident care, that's super exciting for me," he says. Zellers says he enjoys having a direct impact on his community. "These are my friends' families," he says. "I run into people that I've went to school with 40 miles away from here and these are truly my friends and some of my family in these long-term care facilities, so being able to assist has been huge." Some of the House Republicans who supported Wednesdays impeachment of President Trump are providing detailed explanations for their votes in the face of backlash from GOP loyalists. Perhaps the most surprising of the 10 GOP yes votes came from Rep. Tom Rice, who represents the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina. Rice was one of the dozens of House Republicans who objected to the formal certification of the Electoral College vote in the hours after both chambers were cleared due to Trump supporters storming the Capitol. But a week later, he chose to impeach a president he has voted with 94 percent of the time. I have been with this president through thick and thin. I have supported him in campaigning. I have supported him in voting, Rice told the Associated Press on Thursday. It hurts my heart. South Carolinas GOP state chair, Drew McKissick, said in a statement following Rices vote that to say I'm severely disappointed in Congressman Tom Rice would be an understatement. The Seventh District, which Rice has represented since 2013, voted heavily for the president. If it does, it does, said Rice when asked if the vote might cost him his seat, adding, You tell my constituents I love em, and its the honor of my life to do this job. Ive tried to do my best to do the right thing and represent their interests, but if they decide that its time for me to come home, thats OK, too. Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., speaks as the House of Representatives debates the articles of impeachment against President Trump in 2019. (House Television via AP) Rices change of heart appeared to come from Trumps delayed response to calling off his followers. He noted in a statement after his vote, It has been a week since so many were injured, the United States Capitol was ransacked, and six people were killed, including two police officers. Yet the President has not addressed the nation to ask for calm. He has not visited the injured and grieving. He has not offered condolences. Yesterday in a press briefing at the border, he said his comments were perfectly appropriate. This utter failure is inexcusable, concluded Rice. The highest-ranking Republican to vote to impeach was Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who serves on the GOP House leadership team. Following her vote, members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus began circulating a petition calling for Cheney to resign from her post as conference chair. Cheney, however, said she had no intention of doing so. Im not going anywhere. This is a vote of conscience, Cheney told Politico. Its one where there are different views in our conference. But our nation is facing an unprecedented, since the Civil War, constitutional crisis. A number of Republicans have stepped up in defense of Cheney, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, making her ouster from her leadership position far less likely. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and the sole House member from Wyoming, had said in a statement explaining her vote that there has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. Cheney was also targeted by her state party, which issued a statement following her vote. There has not been a time during our tenure when we have seen this type of an outcry from our fellow Republicans, with the anger and frustration being palpable in the comments we have received, said the Wyoming Republican Party. Our telephone has not stopped ringing, our email is filling up, and our website has seen more traffic than at any previous time. The consensus is clear that those who are reaching out to the Party vehemently disagree with Representative Cheneys decision and actions. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. (Erin Scott/Reuters) We are receiving the message loud and clear that what happened yesterday is a true travesty for Wyoming and the country, concluded the scathing list of grievances. The last time a Republican congress member from Wyoming lost a primary challenge was 1968. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington was another one of the yes votes, saying in a floor speech prior to her vote, My vote to impeach our sitting president is not a fear-based decision. I am not choosing a side. Im choosing truth. Its the only way to defeat fear. On Thursday night she posted a lengthy series of tweets in an attempt to further explain her vote, writing, In conversations w/residents about this weeks impeachment vote, some are unclear on what transpired before & during that involved President Trump. Here are the indisputable and publicly available facts. In the more than dozen messages that followed, Herrera Beutler laid out how the president had called his followers to Washington, D.C., lied to them about Vice President Mike Pences ability to overturn the election and spoke at the rally immediately preceding the assault on the Capitol. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. The commander in chiefs primary job is to protect U.S. citizens, concluded Herrera Beutler. While this mob hunted for Pence, who had fled to a secure location, the only action we know the president took was calling GOP Senators, seeking their support to delay the Electoral College certification. Hours after the Capitol was breached, the president released a pathetic video denouncing the violence but telling the perpetrators I love you, and you are special. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., during a House debate on the objection to confirm the Electoral College vote from Pennsylvania. (House Television via AP) At least one Republican womens group has already vowed to challenge Herrera Beutler in next years primary, but Washingtons rules could make it slightly more difficult to target her. The state has a top-two primary, in which all candidates from all parties compete, with the two highest vote totals advancing to November. Another yes vote on impeachment, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, sat down with a local conservative talk radio host to explain his vote. Gonzalez told Bob Frantz that he knew listeners are furious with me and I know you are, too. But let me tell you this, he continued. Every single person listening, every conservative listening right now, we have got to come together at some point. We have to, and I know were divided right now, but we have Joe Biden coming into office in a couple days. We have a Democratic Senate. We have a Democratic-controlled House. We are going to have to be unified and pushing back on the agenda that we know is so bad for this country. You got guts for coming on the day after the vote, Frantz said, because you know that a lot of people are angry. You knew youre going to get challenged here, so I do appreciate you coming on. But I will say this: Im going to question that commitment to liberty that you just made on all those other issues, because to me the ultimate testimony to liberty is the Constitution, and yesterday you voted to deny Donald Trump his constitutional right to due process. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, during a House Financial Services Committee hearing. (Greg Nash/The Hill/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Jim Renacci, chair of the Medina County Republican Party in Ohio, told BuzzFeed News he was slammed with residents calling for Anthony Gonzalez to step down, be recalled, and/or primaried. Gonzalez represents the 16th District, which encompasses the area south of Cleveland and is safely Republican under the current map. He won a primary against a stalwart pro-Trump candidate to win the seat in 2018. Freshman Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan was elected only two months ago, meaning two of his first major votes in the House were on whether to object to election results (he did not) and to impeach the president. It may have been an act of political suicide but its what I felt was necessary for the good of the country, to have accountability in this moment but also to set a path to moving forward, Meijer told the Detroit Free Press on Thursday. Meijer further explained his thinking to the New York Times in a podcast released Friday morning. To me, the breaking point was when the presidents video came out at 4:17 p.m., Meijer said. We were in this committee hearing room; it had been probably 90 minutes that we were in there nobody knew what was going on, we were very much on kind of tenterhooks, and this video comes out and its just kind of almost thanking the people. His tone was appreciative, supportive. Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., during the lockdown of the House gallery in the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly via Zuma Press) Meijer said Trumps actions that day were disqualifying and unfit and that he didnt want his opinion to be swayed over concerns of a primary. The congressman added that he had already had someone call him to say there would be 1,000 or 2,000 people outside his house this weekend to protest the decision. In an interview Thursday with MSNBC, Meijer said his colleagues were starting to purchase body armor and alter their routines to protect their families. Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us, he said. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: 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. BOSTON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In connection with the proposed acquisition of Eaton Vance Corp. (NYSE: EV) by Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) announced on October 8, 2020, shareholders of Eaton Vance Floating-Rate Income Trust (NYSE: EFT), Eaton Vance New York Municipal Income Trust (NYSE American: EVY), Eaton Vance Senior Floating-Rate Trust (NYSE: EFR) and Eaton Vance Senior Income Trust (NYSE: EVF) (each, a "Fund" and, collectively, the "Funds") were asked to approve new investment advisory agreements for the Funds at a joint special meeting of shareholders held on January 12, 2021 (the "Meeting"). The Meeting of EFT, EVY and EFR (the "Adjourned Funds") was adjourned to February 5, 2021 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time in order to allow more time for shareholders to vote. For the Adjourned Funds, the record date for the Meeting remains unchanged, and is fixed as of the close of business on October 29, 2020. Shareholders of the Adjourned Funds who have already voted do not need to take further action . If, as of October 29, 2020, you were a holder of record of an Adjourned Fund's shares (i.e., you held Fund shares in your own name directly with the Fund) and you wish to participate in and vote at the adjourned Meeting, you must email your full name and address to AST Fund Solutions, LLC ("AST") at [email protected] You will then be provided with credentials to participate in the Meeting. You will be able to vote at the Meeting by entering the control number found on the WHITE proxy card you previously received. Requests to participate in and vote at the Meeting must be received by AST by no later than 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on February 4, 2021. If, as of October 29, 2020, you held an Adjourned Fund's shares through an intermediary (such as a broker-dealer) and you wish to participate in and vote at the adjourned Meeting, you will need to obtain a legal proxy from your intermediary reflecting the Fund's name, the number of Fund shares held and your name and email address. You may forward an email from your intermediary containing the legal proxy or attach an image of the legal proxy to an email and send it to AST at [email protected] with "Legal Proxy" in the subject line. You will then be provided with credentials to participate in the Meeting, as well as a unique control number to vote your shares at the Meeting. If you would like to participate in but NOT vote at the Meeting, please send an email to AST at [email protected] with proof of ownership of Fund shares. A statement, letter or the Vote Instruction Form from your intermediary will be sufficient proof of ownership. You will then be provided with credentials to participate in the Meeting. All requests to participate in the Meeting must be received by AST by no later than 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on February 4, 2021. Whether or not you plan to participate in the Meeting, the Funds urge you to submit your vote on the WHITE proxy card in advance of the Meeting by one of the methods described in the Funds' proxy materials. The Funds' proxy statement is available online at https://funds.eatonvance.com/closed-end-fund-and-term-trust-documents.php. Please contact AST at [email protected] with any questions regarding access to the Meeting and an AST representative will contact you to answer your questions. Shareholders of EVF voted at the Meeting not to approve the new investment advisory agreement for EVF. The Board of Trustees of EVF will consider what additional actions to take with respect to EVF. The final vote tabulations, as certified by the independent inspector, First Coast Results, Inc., will be published in each Fund's next report to shareholders. About Eaton Vance Corp. The Funds' investment adviser is Eaton Vance Management, a subsidiary of Eaton Vance Corp. ("Eaton Vance"). Eaton Vance provides advanced investment strategies and wealth management solutions to forward-thinking investors around the world. Through principal investment affiliates Eaton Vance Management, Parametric, Atlanta Capital, Calvert and Hexavest, the Company offers a diversity of investment approaches, encompassing bottom-up and top-down fundamental active management, responsible investing, systematic investing and customized implementation of client-specified portfolio exposures. As of December 31, 2020, Eaton Vance had consolidated assets under management of $583.1 billion. For more information, visit eatonvance.com. Shares of closed-end funds often trade at a discount from their net asset value. The market price of Fund shares may vary from net asset value based on factors affecting the supply and demand for shares, such as Fund distribution rates relative to similar investments, investors' expectations for future distribution changes, the clarity of a Fund's investment strategy and future return expectations, and investors' confidence in the underlying markets in which the Fund invests. Fund shares are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principal invested. Each Fund is not a complete investment program and you may lose money investing therein. An investment in a Fund may not be appropriate for all investors. Before investing, prospective investors should consider carefully a Fund's investment objective, strategies, risks, charges and expenses. This press release is for informational purposes only and is not intended to, and does not, constitute an offer to purchase or sell shares of a Fund. Additional information about the Funds, including performance and portfolio characteristic information, is available at www.eatonvance.com. Statements in this press release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined by the U.S. securities laws. You should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on forward-looking statements because they are subject to uncertainties and other factors that may be beyond a Fund's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. SOURCE Eaton Vance Management Related Links http://www.eatonvance.com Many countries have started a vaccination drive against coronavirus. Fiji, the Island nation which recorded d 53 cases in total with two deaths so far, is also all set to start the vaccination drive to protect countrymen from the virus. Fiji's health ministry is prepared to securely handle the corona vaccine from its procurement to the vaccination process and is training staff to administer it. According to Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), Fiji's Minister for Health Ifereimi Waqainabete informed that the training of the staff carrying out the ground work is completed. Waqainabete said they will begin the registration process to ensure the right people get vaccinated, which will also help the health ministry track Fijians intending to travel overseas. He said, "If that person decides to go overseas after the vaccination program, then we can say you have the right person coming." Waqainabete said the corona vaccination will come in batches, therefore the ministry will categorize the priority groups. Fiji is working to register all receivers planned for the first phase of vaccination. Fiji's Permanent Secretary for the Health Ministry James Fong said earlier that frontline workers and people aged 60 years and above will get vaccinated first. Also Read: Mexico registers record 16,468 new corona cases The year 2020 witnessed one of 3 warmest years on record Following Twitter, Snapchat too permanently bans Trump's account Supporters of former President Park Geun-hye call for her release from jail in front of the Supreme Court, southern Seoul, Thursday, ahead of the court's ruling on her corruption charges. Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han By Kim Rahn The possibility of presidential pardons for two jailed former presidents has become a hot issue in Korean politics after the sentence for former leader Park Geun-hye was confirmed at the Supreme Court, Thursday. While Cheong Wa Dae is cautious about the special pardon, which is the President's sole authority, politicians are divided over the issue, with differences of opinion even within the conservative and liberal blocs. Former President Park Geun-hye attends the first hearing of her trial over corruption allegations at the Seoul Central District Court in this May 23, 2017 photo. / Korea Times file The idea of pardoning former conservative presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park, who have been in jail after each were separately charged with corruption, was first brought up by liberal ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) head Rep. Lee Nak-yon. In his New Year's interviews earlier this month, he said he would propose pardons for the two former heads of state to President Moon Jae-in at an appropriate time to seek reconciliation and bridge the ideological rift between liberals and conservatives. Lee quickly withdrew his proposal following strong internal backlash from the party. But the issue has reemerged as Park's 20-year prison term was confirmed by the top court. The final verdict makes Park eligible for a special pardon granted by the President. Lee Myung-bak is also eligible since he was handed a 17-year prison sentence last October. After the court announced its sentence, Lee Nak-yon did not comment at length and said only that he believes the ruling would offer momentum for the nation's democracy to develop further. "The DPK concluded public consensus and the former presidents' self-reflection are important, and I respect that conclusion," the ruling party chief told reporters, Thursday. The DPK did not mention anything about a pardon. In its official stance, announced by party spokesman Rep. Shin Yeong-dae, the DPK called on former President Park to apologize to the public, saying, "Park's apology and self-reflection can only make the country break away from the unhappy past." The minor opposition Justice Party called on politicians to stop talking about the pardon, saying it will only instigate national division rather than achieving national unity. "Pardons can be made only when the people call for it," Justice Party senior spokesman Jeong Ho-jin said in a statement. The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) refrained from making an official comment about the pardon. Both former presidents were members of the PPP's predecessors. "We respect and accept the court decision," PPP spokesman Yoon Hee-seok said in a statement. "It is our duty not to repeat such regrettable history." But some PPP members continued to call for pardons. Former PPP lawmaker Yoo Seong-min urged President Moon to grant the pardons, saying it is time to move forward for the sake of achieving national unity. "President Moon needs to think about why the Constitution gives the President this power. The power allows the President to carry out political acts when there is a cause that is greater than the judiciary's decision," Yoo wrote on his Facebook. Independent lawmaker Hong Joon-pyo, a former member of the PPP's predecessor, said the two former presidents should be "released," not "pardoned." "Pardon is discharging a criminal by the head of the state as a favor. But the two (former presidents) were scapegoats of political judgment, so it is wrong to demand pardons on the premise that they are guilty," Hong wrote on Facebook. Presidential spokesman Kang Min-seok gives a briefing on the Supreme Court decision for former President Park Geun-hye, at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday. Korea Times photo by Wang Tae-seok Rome, Jan 16 : Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has signed a new decree with fresh Covid-19 containment measures, the prime minister's office said in a statement. According to the new decree signed on Friday, galleries and museums in Italy can reopen, but only on weekdays, and that eating or drinking outdoors after 6 p.m. is no longer allowed, Xinhua news agency reported. The new decree also maintains a nationwide 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, bans travel between Italy's 20 regions from January 16 to February 15, and makes mask wearing mandatory in public, both indoors and outdoors. Meanwhile, it maintains the closure of gyms and swimming pools, gaming and betting venues, cinemas and theaters as well as concert halls and nightclubs. Fairs, conferences and any kind of festive gatherings, whether indoors or outdoors, remain prohibited. The new decree replaces a previous decree that expires on Friday. It goes into effect on Saturday through March 15. Italy on Thursday reported 17,246 new Covid-19 cases, pushing total active infections to 561,380, according to the ministry of health. The figures also showed that the death toll has risen to 80,848. Meanwhile, another 20,115 patients have recovered, bringing overall recoveries since the start of the pandemic to 1,694,051. After riding the rocky waves of 2020, all in the dairy industry are hoping for smoother sailing in the year ahead when it comes to milk prices. But do agricultural economists see calmer waters in our future? Mark Stephenson, University of Wisconsin-Madisons director of dairy policy analysis, addressed the current dairy situation and price outlook in the January Hoards Dairyman monthly webinar, titled Pandemic, prices, and PPDs . . . What will 2021 offer? Stephenson pointed to a number of forecast factors that are positive. One is the newest round of the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box program. He said dairy will be part of the $1.5 billion spent on food for the program. Initially, this just included the purchase of fluid milk and certain cheeses, but Stephenson said it has been expanded to include a wider variety of cheeses and other dairy products, such as sour cream. Another positive indicator is strong grocery store sales. While Stephenson said people are getting eager to eat out of home more (or at least order more takeout), home cooking is still a thing, and we are doing more of it than we did before. Although restaurants and schools are still struggling with plans on how to reopen and remain open, Stephenson noted that we are starting to move more dairy product through those channels again. Similarly, 2021 will likely bring more people back to work in offices and some version of normal, he said. And as always, export opportunities will play an important role in U.S. milk prices. Stephenson shared that U.S. milk production is bouncing back from where it was earlier in 2020, but the same can be said for other major dairy regions, including the European Union, Oceania, and Argentina. We need worldwide demand to hang tight if we are going to continue to sell a lot of milk in export markets, he said. Price predictions for the year Looking back at 2020, Stephenson pointed to the Class III highs $24.50 per hundredweight (cwt.) in July and lows below $13 per cwt. in May. Right now, his predictions for 2021 are more level, but he admitted that the stability currently being forecast is somewhat of a guess as opposed to him seeing nothing but tranquil waters. I think we are going to have some more tightness in the marketplace during periods of time, and I think we will see some time periods when markets are challenged again, he predicted. He does not anticipate the kind of troughs we experienced in April and May of 2020, though, since the markets would be better equipped to handle another pandemic-induced shutdown, if that became necessary. Stephensons forecast for 2021 includes an average Class III price of $17.35, Class IV price of $16.56, and an All-Milk price of $18.50. He reminded the audience that 2020 is not really in the rearview mirror yet, as we are in the middle of another spike in COVID-19 cases. It (the pandemic) has been providing heavy impacts in the marketplace, he said. He emphasized that we are in the tailspin of a worldwide recession and that it will take a while to dig out. The virus has induced many supply chain disruptions, not just dairy, he said. Stephenson said that effective vaccines, more testing, and better tracing give him optimism about dairy markets this year. Still, there are concerns about how rapidly the vaccine is going to be administered, and he said it will take time before we achieve herd immunity. So, although the situation is improving, the problems of 2020 didnt just disappear with the flip of the calendar page. Even when we do (achieve herd immunity), the U.S. is going to take a while to dig out from this recession, as is much of the rest of the world, Stephenson said. This is not going to be an easy thing for us to climb out of. To learn more, watch the full webinar, Pandemic, prices, and PPDs . . . What will 2021 offer?" This webinar was sponsored by Cargill. To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com. (c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2021 January 14, 2021 HDFC Life Insurance Company announced the resignation of Stephanie Bruce (DIN: 08594969), Non-executive Nominee Director of the Company with effect from 13 January 2021. With this, Rushad Abadan (DIN: 08035538), Alternate Director to Stephanie Bruce also ceased to be Alternate Director of the Company with immediate effect. Consequent to the recent stake sale by Standard Life, their shareholding in the Company has reduced below 10%, and thus they cease to have the right to nominate a Director on the Board of the Company. In view of the above, and in accordance with the applicable provisions of the AoA of the Company, Standard Life has withdrawn the nomination of Stephanie Bruce from the Board of HDFC Life. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 15) -- As the Philippine Navy eyes foreign shipbuilders to acquire additional multi-mission vessels, including warships and submarines, as part of its long-term modernization program, a local company wants to get a share of the country's defense spending on maritime assets. But it admits the ambitious plan could not be carried out without challenges. Propmech Corporation, a Manila-based boatbuilder and engine repair company said it is "absolutely 100%" sure it wants to work with the government to develop larger naval assets that could be deployed to the country's territorial waters for long-haul patrol and security. "The Navy, the government, is an important partner of ours, an important client," Propmech Director Glenn Tong told defense reporters during a virtual conference on Friday. "We are definitely interested and we look forward to, if given the opportunity in the future." Since its establishment in 1991, the company has sold P7-B worth of maritime vessels to the government, including landing craft utility ships for the Navy, high speed tactical watercraft boats for the Philippine National Police, and aluminum rescue boats for the Philippine Coast Guard. Propmech's projects include the 12 units of the Navy's multi-purpose attack craft or MPACs, which have now evolved into four variations and were built from 2007 to 2019. The MPACs play a key role in some of the Navy's internal security and coastal defense operations. The most notable was in early November last year, when Air Force and Naval operatives intercepted and clashed with the notorious Abu Sayyaf Group in the Sulu Sea, killing all 7 bandits onboard a speedboat. While the Air Force provided aerial support, the Navy used one of its MPAC units to pursue the gunmen at high sea. Propmech cited the MPAC's "effective ballistic armor" that protected the soldiers while coming under heavy fire from the armed group. The government, in recent years, has acquired big-ticket items for the Navy abroad, including its first-ever missile-capable frigates from South Korea and two warships from Indonesia. Defense and Navy officials have also expressed interest on patrol vessels from Israel and Australia, as part of the country's continuing efforts to strengthen its naval fleet. Tong said while Propmech is keen on collaborating with the Navy to design and build bigger ships for territorial defense, he admits local shipbuilders will need more than just the capacity to build and maintain the vessels, but also acquire expertise on "additional electronics, navigation, and certain special capabilities" that their clients will require. "I think, in terms of the ability to build vessels, the Philippines can actually do a lot. We have some large-sized shipyards. We have some medium-sized shipyards. A lot of the assets can potentially be built here. What we lack is probably the experience, the proven track record," Tong explained. "It's one thing to be able to physically build the ship, another to have the experience to make a warship," he added. On the upside, tapping local shipyards to build the Navy's warships can be good for the economy, particularly the labor sector. Propmech alone currently has about 600 employees. "One of our advantages (if Navy ships are built locally) is that we can do the maintenance without having to fly engineers from abroad. And we can keep the equipment in good running condition for a long time," Tong said. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana had previously said instead of outsourcing projects abroad, he favors Philippine-based shipbuilding companies to generate more jobs for Filipinos, both for the development and maintenance of Navy vessels. 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. 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. New Delhi, Jan 15 : On Friday, when President Ramnath Kovind donated Rs 5 lakh in personal capacity for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya to the trust, life came a full circle for the Indian Republic. In 1951, when deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel wanted the Somnath temple to be renovated by the Congress, it was opposed tooth and nail by Pandit Nehru, who wanted the new state to be at arm's length from the renovation of the Somnath temple in Gujarat. It led to a terse exchange of letters between Sardar Patel and India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The context was Somnath temple but the fight was over the idea of India and how the state will deal with religion in future. Nehru wanted distance but many in the Congress felt that Hinduism cannot be dealt with the European model of separating the state and the church. Today the national consensus based on French secularism has been replaced by cultural nationalism promoted by the RSS. The latter has moved to the political fringe and former has become mainstream. Nehru did not participate in the renovation of the temple. After Sardar Patel passed away, the matter was carried forward by another Cabinet Minister KM Munshi. Nehru was also opposed to President Rajendra Prasad attending the lingam installation ceremony which he eventually attended in 1951. Though money was raised from non-state actors by K M Munshi but it was enough to raise temperatures within the Nehru government which had become very sensitive to the issue of religion. Despite Nehru's objection Munshi and Rajendra Prasad ensured that they remained attached to the renovation project. In fact the first Lok Sabha elections were fought by the Congress on the issue of communalism and inter-religious harmony. The construction of Ram Temple has become synonymous with national pride. Instead of remaining a legal issue about ownership of a piece of land, it became a matter of faith in the 1980s. Though the meeting between the President and the Trust was personal in nature, it is a reflection of how mainstream acceptance of nationalism has changed in India. It marks a move from Constitutional Nationalism to Cultural Nationalism where the state does not feel uncomfortable with religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, for the Hindu Right group Somnath was symbol of a wounded Hindu pride as the temple was desecrated thrice over a period of 500 years. The issue did not receive much traction because of Nehru's leadership but all this changed in next 50 years especially after Balasaheb Deoras became the RSS chief. He pushed the VHP to make the Ram Temple a political agenda and the BJP ultimately had to adopt it as their political agenda during the Palampur Session in Himachal Pradesh. It is for this reason that LK Advani started his Rath Yatra from Somnath temple for the construction of Ram Temple in 1990s. The Indian Constitution during the Emergency also saw the word secular added to its preamble but the matter remained contentious even then. The difference is that there exists public acceptance to the phrase 'cultural-nationalism' and change in mindset towards the relationship of the state with Hindu religion. It also reflects the realignment of Hinduism with nationalism. Whether, India of the future resets the clock or not, for now cultural nationalism is here to stay. The relationship between state and Hinduism has s been further cemented through the process of through the process of judicial scrutiny and construction of the temple. CHICAGO, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to market research report on "Cloud Services Brokerage Market by Service Type (Integration & Support, Migration & Customization, and Automation & Orchestration), Platform, Deployment Model, Organization Size, Vertical, and Region, - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Cloud Services Brokerage Market size is expected to grow from USD 5.9 billion in 2020 to USD 12.9 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.8% during the forecast period. The flexibility and agility of cloud-based models would support the IT service needs of enterprises. The leading CSPs/hyper scalersMicrosoft, IBM, and AWSare expected to increase their CAPEX primarily for data center expansion to support the increasing workload for their internal and external stakeholders. The increasing volume of data generation in websites and mobile apps, rising focus on delivering customer-centric applications for driving customer satisfaction, and growing need to control and reduce Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) are a few factors driving the growth of the emerging technologies. The emerging technologies, such as big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML), are gaining traction, which is ultimately leading to the growth of the Cloud Services Brokerage Market globally. Browse in-depth TOC on "Cloud Services Brokerage Market" 234 Tables 48 Figures 222 Pages Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=771 The sudden shutdown of offices, schools, colleges, and physical retail stores has massively disrupted operations; this has led to an increase in the demand for digital workplace tools and services, such as Zoom, Slack, Blackboard, Lynda, Canvas, Google Classroom, AnyMeeting, and Moodle. AWS, Microsoft, and Google host and manage all applications in a public cloud environment. Increased spend on cloud services by select industries due to COVID-19. Industries such as IT and ITeS, telecom, online retail/commerce, media, and BFSI, are expected to increase spending on cloud-based services to sustain their business. Highly regulated and cash-rich industries, such as BFSI, are also expected to move selective workloads to public cloud environments. The market is expected to be driven by the need of cloud migration and customization Cloud migration services have gained popularity as enterprises across the globe continue to migrate workloads from on-premises infrastructure to cloud environments for better operational efficiency and cost savings. The demand for cloud services has surged in recent times due to COVID-19, and many enterprises across the regions have shifted enterprise workloads on cloud environment. Therefore, CSB vendors specializing in migration and customization services are in high demand. Cloud brokers offer customization services to the customers as per business needs, which provides better-bundled offerings facilitating higher returns on cloud investments. Increased security capabilities and customized costing in private cloud-based services is driving the adoption of private cloud-based deployment A private cloud is a computing model that offers a proprietary environment dedicated to a single business entity. A private cloud provides extended and virtualized computing resources. This deployment model enables a company to have better control over its data and reduce risks, such as data loss and issues related to regulatory compliance. The private cloud is used in banking and financial institutions, large enterprises, and government organizations, where only authorized users can access the system. The acceptance of private cloud deployments for enterprises with compliance concerns is due to its security and control benefits. Service providers offering hosted private cloud address significant essentials of compliance with regulations, such as HIPAA and PCI. Some of the popular private cloud providers are VMware, DXC, Dell EMC, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Get Special Pricing on Bundle Reports: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/RequestBundleReport.asp?id=771 North America to dominate the global Cloud Services Brokerage Market in 2020 North America has been continued to dominate the CSB market in terms of revenue and is expected to have the largest market size among regions in the CSB market as the organizations are shifting toward cloud-based solutions and services with the increasing adoption of digital business strategies. This trend is expected to continue during the forecast period. North America is a mature market due to the presence of various players offering CSB. Enterprises are increasing their budgets to accommodate CSB, which is favoring the growth of the Cloud Services Brokerage Market in North America. The US and Canada are the top countries in North America, which contribute to the CSB market. The US, being a major economy, holds a significant market share due to the country's technological advancements and the inclination toward innovation and the adoption of new technologies. Organizations have invested substantially in advanced technologies to gain a competitive advantage and increase business productivity. The Cloud Services Brokerage Market is expected to grow steadily as enterprises are adopting cloud-based solutions and services at various levels as a part of their strategy to sustain themselves in the market and achieve improved business functioning. The Cloud Services Brokerage Market includes major vendors, such as Accenture (Ireland), IBM (US), VMware (US), Jamcracker (US), ActivePlatform (Belarus), Arrow Electronics (US), Cloudmore (Sweden), Wipro (India), DXC Technology (US), iPortalis (UK), Cognizant (US), InContinuum (Netherlands), Flexera (US), BitTitan (US), OpenText (Canada), CloudFX (Singapore), Proximitum (UK), Eshgro (Netherlands), NEC (Japan), AWS (US), CloudSME (Germany), Shivaami (India), NTT Data (US), Infosys (India), TCS (India), Pax8 (US), Oracle (US), Fujitsu (Japan), Microsoft (US), Capgemini (France), and Doublehorn (US). The major players have implemented various growth strategies to expand their global presence and increase their market shares. Key players such as Accenture, IBM, VMware, Jamcracker, and ActivePlatform have majorly adopted many growth strategies, such as new product launches, acquisitions, and partnerships, to expand their product portfolios and grow further in the CSB market. 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Latest publication: Index of turnover in industry 2021, March Published: 15 January 2021 Turnover in industry decreased by 1.6 per cent in November According to Statistics Finland, working day adjusted turnover in industry (TOL BCD) decreased in November by 1.6 per cent year-on-year. Among the main industries, turnover decreased most in the chemical industry, where it was 17.1 per cent lower than one year earlier. Seasonally adjusted turnover in industry (TOL BCD) grew by 1.7 per cent compared with October. Annual change in working day adjusted turnover in manufacturing (BCD), % (TOL 2008) The turnover of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply declined in November by 12.1 per cent and that of the forest industry by 6.1 per cent from one year back. In the food industry, turnover was 4.1 per cent lower than one year previously. The growth in turnover was strongest in the electrical and electronics industry, where it amounted to 17.5 per cent from one year ago. In mining and quarrying, turnover grew by 7.9 per cent and in the metal industry by 5.5 per cent from the previous year. The turnover of the textile, clothing and leather industry was 2.8 per cent bigger than one year ago. Annual change in working day adjusted turnover in manufacturing by industry, November 2020, % (TOL 2008) Export turnover and domestic turnover decreased in October for most of the main industries Export turnover decreased most in October in the textile, clothing and leather industry, by 11.3 per cent year-on-year. In mining and quarrying, export turnover decreased by 9.4 per cent and in the forest industry by 7.3 per cent from the previous year. Export turnover in the chemical industry was 4.8 per cent lower and in the food industry 2.3 per cent lower than one year ago. Export turnover grew in the electronic and electrical industry, by 15.0 per cent, and in the metal industry, by 2.1 per cent. Annual change in working day adjusted export turnover and domestic turnover in manufacturing by industry, October 2020, % (TOL 2008) Domestic turnover decreased in October strongest in the chemical industry, by 26.4 per cent, and in the forest industry, by 10.8 per cent from one year ago. The domestic turnover of the textile, clothing and leather industry decreased by 2.7 per cent and that of the metal industry by 2.2 per cent. The domestic turnover of the food industry also decreased slightly from one year ago. Domestic turnover grew in mining and quarrying, by 16.6 per cent, and in the electrical and electronics industry, by 8.0 per cent from one year back. Trend series of turnover, export turnover and domestic turnover in manufacturing (BC), January 2007 to October-November 2020, % (TOL 2008) The index of turnover in industry describes enterprises whose main industry is manufacturing. The calculation of the indices is based on the Tax Administrations self-assessed tax data which are supplemented with data obtained with Statistics Finlands sales inquiry. The monthly turnovers of manufacturing enterprises can vary considerably, especially in the metal industries. The variation is mainly due to invoicing practices. The final invoice for major machinery deliveries and projects may be recorded in the sales of one month, even if the delivery had required the work of several months or years. The factors caused by the variation in the number of weekdays are taken into account in adjustment for working days. This means taking into consideration the lengths of months, different weekdays and holidays. In addition, seasonal variation is eliminated from seasonally adjusted series, on account of which it makes sense to compare observations of two successive months as well. In terms of turnover, data for the latest month are preliminary and are released at a delay of around six weeks. The data may become significantly revised particularly on more detailed industry levels in coming months. Export turnover and domestic turnover are, for the time being, still released at a delay of two and a half months. Source: Index of turnover in industry 2020, November, Statistics Finland Inquiries: Maija Sappinen 029 551 3348, Heli Suonio 029 551 2481, myynti.teollisuus@stat.fi Head of Department in charge: Katri Kaaja Publication in pdf-format (341.4 kB) Updated 15.1.2021 Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Index of turnover in industry [e-publication]. ISSN=1798-596X. November 2020. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 28.5.2021]. Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/tlv/2020/11/tlv_2020_11_2021-01-15_tie_001_en.html Gillian Anderson has reflected on taking on the role of Margaret Thatcher in the third and fourth seasons of The Crown. The actress, 52, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday about portraying the late Prime Minister, saying she was concerned it would be a 'huge stretch' to take on the part but felt she could relate to her. Detailing how show creator Peter Morgan asked 'out of the blue' if she wanted to play Thatcher, she said: 'I thought, "Actually, that makes sense to me. I don't know a huge amount about her, but I feel like I get her on a level and it would be fun a huge stretch but fun."' 'I felt like I understood her': On Thursday, Gillian Anderson reflected on taking on the role of Margaret Thatcher in The Crown even though she was worried it would be a 'huge stretch' She went on: 'I felt like I could do her I felt like I understood where we met and that it wouldn't be too difficult of a stretch. 'There've been times when I have said yes to roles where I've thought, "Mmm, OK, I'm not entirely sure I should have been cast," but I've said yes because I want to be in this film or whatever and it's proven that I probably shouldn't have.' Gillian went on to talk about getting Thatcher's voice right, saying she felt that was what would make her convincing in the role for the audience as the 'physicality' of the character was the easiest part. Despite her keen interest in getting the Iron Lady's voice down, she added that Peter advised her to not try and 'force' it, as he wanted her to keep 'an element of [her]' within the character. Part: Detailing how show creator Peter Morgan asked 'out of the blue' if she wanted the role, she said: 'I thought, "I don't know a huge amount about her, but I feel like I get her on a level"' In December it was revealed The X-Files had split from The Crown's creator, the pair, who were together for four years, are said to have parted ways amicably after their relationship ran its course. The Daily Mail exclusively revealed the pair had broken up, with Baz Bamigboye reporting they had split due to 'various work commitments and family logistics' but 'remain great friends'. Representatives for Gillian and Peter declined to comment to MailOnline. Reports that Gillian had found love with Peter first broke in October 2016 when The Daily Mail's Sebastian Shakespeare confirmed she was telling friends about dating the screenwriter. On screen: Gillian (pictured in The Crown) went on to talk about getting Thatcher's voice right, as she felt that was what would make her seem convincing in the role for the audience Gillian who lives in London, was at a party in New York with Peter to promote The Crown, where she was overheard telling friends they were in a relationship. Peter, whose cinematic hits include The Queen and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, was married to Lila Schwarzenberg - born Princess Anna Carolina zu Schwarzenberg - until 2014. He already has five children with her. Since the relationship revelation, Gillian has supported Peter when The Crown went up for a nomination at The Golden Globes. Gillian has daughter Piper, 26, with ex husband Clyde Klotz, who she was married to from 1994-1997. Over: In December it was revealed Gillian and Peter, who were together for four years, had parted ways amicably after their relationship ran its course (pictured January 2020) She also has sons Oscar, 14, and Felix, 12, with ex partner Mark Griffiths, who she dated until 2012. The Fall star was also married to documentary filmmaker Julian Ozanne from 2004-2006. In January this year, Gillian revealed it 'would be the end' of her relationship with her screenwriter partner if they ever moved in together and that she preferred the pair of them living in separate homes. The Sex Education star told The Times she liked that 'there is nothing locking us in' by living separately, adding that they don't have to fear how they would manage the logistics should they ever split in the future. Speaking about her relationship with Peter, Gillian said: 'If we did, that would be the end of us. It works so well as it is, it feels so special when we do come together. And when I am with my kids, I can be completely there for them. It's exciting. 'We choose when to be together. There is nothing locking us in, nothing that brings up that fear of ''Oh gosh, I can't leave because what will happen to the house, how will we separate?''. 'I start to miss the person I want to be with, which is a lovely feeling. And it is so huge for me to be able to see a pair of trousers left lying on the floor at my partner's house and to step over them and not feel it is my job to do something about it!' Back in November Gillian insisted she had 'very clear boundaries' with her partner Peter when they worked together on series four of The Crown. Gracing the front cover of Harper's Bazaar, Gillian told the publication: 'For our own sanity, and actually for the benefit of the relationship, we had very clear boundaries. 'I am not going to comment on the script, but you are not allowed to comment on the performance!' Courtesy of Midland ISD New Years Day is often a time when we reflect back upon the previous year and set new goals for the coming year. For some, this means resolving to work out more or eat right. For me, I have resolved to make my family a priority and spend more time together. No matter what your goal for 2021 is, it is based on an important concept: the power to choose. Despite the obstacles that may get in the way, we all have the power to choose where we spend our time, energy and resources. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has begun a four-nation trip to Myanmar, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines in a bid to strengthen relations with Southeast Asian nations. The visit is to not just rekindle waning interest among nations for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects but also improve regional relations before the new American government comes to power. The visit assumes importance because Myanmar occupies a strategic geopolitical location, straddling South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is therefore a country of enormous interest to India, Japan and China's long-term rival, the US. For Wang, the paramount concern was to push the China Myanmar Economic Corridor projects, to ensure Myanmar's structural reliance on Beijing. Deeper connectivity and economic bonds can then be leveraged to expand China's strategic influence in Myanmar. To add a "feel good" factor to the visit, Wang launched his four-nation tour from Myanmar by promising three lakh coronavirus vaccines and other pharmaceutical products to support the country in its fight against the pandemic. Wang met Myanmar President U Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in capital Naypyitaw. But the core driver of the visit was to draw structural connectivity linkages between the strategic deep-water port of Kyakhphyu and the Chinese mainland. Unsurprisingly, China revisited its pet aspirational project extending a railway from the port to its Yunnan province during Wang's visit. Ahead of the trip, China and Myanmar agreed to conduct a feasibility study on the Mandalay-Kyaukphyu Railway project, an important segment of the China Myanmar railway plan under the CMEC. The ambitious $20 billion rail project is to connect China's Yunnan province to the Myanmarese Kyaukphyu port in the Bay of Bengal, allowing China access to the Indian Ocean region bypassing the Malacca strait that links the South China Sea to the Andaman Sea. The railway will run parallel to an oil and gas pipeline that has been already commissioned that will flow energy consignments off-loaded at Kyaukphyu to Yunnan. The Irrawaddy reports that this infrastructure project has been delayed for nearly a decade due to local objections. Though China projects the CMEC as a development project which will bring riches to its southern neighbour, Myanmarese remain apprehensive. Many feel that this Chinese project could push Myanmar in a debt-trap and even exacerbate conflict in regions where the project passes through. Wang's visit is also important as Myanmar has been inching closer to its western neighbour India. Last year, Indian Army chief Gen. Manoj Naravane and Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had visited Myanmar to bolster border and military cooperation. In December 2020, Myanmar began operating an Indian submarine Sindhugosh, refurbished by India. The two countries are also flushing out, in joint operations, militants of the Arakan Army on their nearly 1,600 km long border, besides developing the mega Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport (KMTT) project which connects the Kolkata port to the Myanmarese port of Sittwe. Wang and Suu Kyi also discussed peace and stability on the border, regional cooperation and China's role in the repatriation of the Rohingya refugees by mediating between Bangladesh and Myanmar. The two nations also signed agreements for economic and technical cooperation as well as five-year development programme for Myanmar. Wang's visit took place at a time when China-Myanmar relations were going south. The China proposed, and environmentally unsound Myitsone dam has stirred public outrage in Myanmar. Wang's trip to Myanmar is significant also because of the steadily creeping tension between the two neighbours over issues like Chinese support to Myanmarese rebels, the unilateral construction of a high-tech border fence as well as pushing for progress in the CMEC. Myanmar has reduced Chinese role in the CMEC by either stalling projects or reducing Chinese monopoly by opening up the projects to other countries.mega-dam project has stirred public sentiment against China. Besides, the Myanmarese military has confronted China for supporting the Arakan Army, an insurgent group against the government. So far, Naypyitaw has been reluctant to go ahead with giant China funded projects, to prevent the country from falling in a debt-trap, the hallmark of projects falling under Beijing's BRI. With Wang's visit, China has embarked on a course correction exercise, with the revival of the railway project as the spearhead. But one visit will not be enough to erase the mistrust between the two countries, which has historical roots, especially when key countries, especially India, the US and Japan, part of the Indo-Pacific Quad, have launched their own initiatives, which maybe more appealing to Naypyitaw. (This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text PORTLAND, Ore. (KGW)--Thirty members of the Oregon National Guard, mainly military police, leave Friday for Washington D.C. to help with security for Joe Biden's presidential inauguration. The 1186th Military Police Company has been to D.C. for many inaugurations. Sgt. Alicha Smoot will lead a squad as they guard the U.S. Capitol building. She does not think this mission will be all that different from years past. I mean, were trained to respond to volumes of crowds be able to maintain safety for everyone, if its individuals in the crowd or our fellow agencies were gonna be working with," Smoot said. "And I dont think the mission is going to change with past or recent events." Smoot is a marijuana inspector for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission in her civilian life. This will be her third call up for active duty in the last year. Shes seen the pictures of soldiers already in the nations capital and is not concerned about sleeping conditions. A lot of soldiers would not mind sleeping on marble floors. It would probably be better conditions than we have slept in," Smoot said. "Myself, when we were doing fires, I slept in a horse arena basically that was outside. But Ill take a marble floor. I dont care as long as were there doing our mission. The nation's 59th presidential inauguration will be on Wednesday, Jan. 20. Arne Duncan was U.S. secretary of education in the Obama administration. April Ryan is a long-time journalist and White House correspondent for theGrio. has once again demonstrated a submarine-launched during a military parade that commemorated the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, North Korea's state-run KCNA news agency reported on Friday. The military parade was held in Pyongyang on Thursday. "The world's most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missile, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces," KCNA reported. Most recently, Pyongyang held a military parade in October on the 75th anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea where it also showcased a submarine-launched missile and a new intercontinental (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.) Bennington, VT (05201) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 43F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. File image live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Tata Motors electric vehicle division Tata Motors Electric Mobility has denied rumours about a possible rumours about a partnership with Elon Musk's Tesla in India, CNBC-TV18 reported. Aajkal tere mere pyaar ke charche har akhbaar mein Sab ko malum hai aur sab ko khabar ho gayi!#WelcomeTesla #TeslaIndia@Tesla @elonmusk Tata Motors Electric Mobility (@TatamotorsEV) January 15, 2021 Earlier, in a cryptic tweet referencing an old Hindi song, the twitter handle of Tata Motors Electric Mobility said: "Aajkal tere mere pyaar ke charche har akhbaar mein. Sab ko malum hai aur sab ko khabar ho gayi!" (There's talk of our love in the newspapers. Everyone knows and is informed!) The tweet welcomed Tesla to India and cheered for the global EV maker's Indian advent. Tata Motors shares have surged after the tweet. While the account says it is the official twitter handle for Tata Motors Electric Mobility, it is not a verified account. The post raised eyebrows as rumours about a Tata-Tesla partnership have been doing the rounds for a while now. Sources earlier said there was no partnership yet. A company spokesperson told The Economic Times that there was no truth to the reports." Last Friday was a big day for the police reform movement. Fix SAPD, a local activist group formed last year in response to the horrifying video of a Minneapolis police officer putting his knee on the neck of an African American man named George Floyd for nearly nine minutes, submitted a petition to the city clerks office. The petition included more than 20,000 signatures in support of the repeal of Chapter 174 of the Texas Local Government Code, which provides police officers with the power to engage in collective bargaining. If at least 20,000 signatures prove to be valid, San Antonio voters will be able to decide in May if they want to eliminate collective bargaining for police. The signature-gathering process was a labor of love for local activists, who are driven by righteous frustration with a process that has failed in the past to produce real reform. They are disgusted by a San Antonio collective bargaining deal that limits disciplinary action against police officers to 180 days after an incident occurred, provides an accused officer 48 hours of preparation time before an interrogation can take place and enables the officer to examine all relevant evidence before being interviewed. Without question, many local progressives are celebrating Fix SAPDs petition achievement. But some local advocates of police reform are privately expressing concerns about the implications of a ballot initiative that could take away collective bargaining for police. This isnt coming out of sympathy for the San Antonio Police Officers Association. And it isnt coming out of a lack of appreciation for the noble intentions of Fix SAPDs leadership. The conflict is over strategy, not objectives. Its important to realize that Fix SAPDs repeal effort has been aimed at two statutes: Chapter 143, which provides a civil service system for police and firefighters, and Chapter 174. While it takes only 20,000 San Antonio petition signatures to force a vote on the collective bargaining statute, nearly 80,000 signatures are required for the civil service law. Thats not going to happen anytime soon. When police unions in this state negotiate contracts with cities, the terms of those contracts supersede the employment provisions in Chapter 143. If you repeal Chapter 174, however, youre left with Chapter 143. The practical effect is that we go from having a publicly negotiated collective bargaining process, in which disciplinary reforms could be hammered out, to a default Chapter 143 structure in which state-prescribed disciplinary procedures (such as the 180-day statute of limitations for incidents) come into effect. That helps to explain why Police Chief William McManus, a longtime critic of the way the citys contract has tied his hands on disciplinary matters, sounds lukewarm about the prospect of a Chapter 174 repeal vote. I am not opposed to collective bargaining, McManus said during a Jan. 4 news conference with Danny Diaz, the incoming president of the police officers association. I think that what we need to do can be done at the negotiating table. That is a fairly common view now at City Hall, even among SAPOAs fiercest critics. Last Saturday, Fix SAPD made a presentation to the North East Bexar County Democrats. According to attendees, the response was polite but hardly enthusiastic, no surprise given that old-school labor union people made up a major part of the Democratic contingent in the room. Ojiyoma Martin, the co-founder of Fix SAPD, said police accountability can be achieved only by repealing both 174 and 143. She said her organization will continue to work on the difficult task of meeting the signature threshold for a 143 repeal. Progress comes in strides, and we will take those steps, Martin said. Ron DeLord was the chief negotiator for a 2018 Austin police contract. He played the same role in San Antonios last round of collective bargaining. DeLord was often depicted by municipal officials as the epitome of a win-at-all-costs police union mentality that has poisoned the bargaining process in the past. DeLord, however, describes himself as a liberal Democrat who is receptive to the idea of police reform. He argues that such reform can best be achieved through collective bargaining. When the parties work it out, everybody has a buy-in, he said. We can get something that everyone thinks is a better deal. Theres reason for hope on that front, but also plenty of cause for skepticism. Scottish seafood firms are just 'days from collapse' unless emergency cash is paid out to compensate for the Brexit border chaos, industry leaders have warned - as one fishermen threaten to dump tons of rotting stock outside No10. Desperate bosses said they face imminent closure as they urged Boris Johnson to deliver on his pledge to finally support the struggling sector. A third of fishing boats in Scotland are currently tied up at harbours and crewmen are forced to stay on land without pay. Jamie McMillan, managing director of Lochfyne Langoustines, has threatened to dump tons of rotting seafood at Downing Street next week if the problems are not resolved Fresh shellfish, crab and lobster landed this morning at Pittenweem harbour in Fife What new customs checks are needed for fish and what is causing the delays? Fish exports from Scotland to the EU are being held up by the deluge of additional paperwork involved in the new customs arrangements, IT problems and delays to safety checks. All exports require a catch certificate to prove the fish has been landed by a UK flagged catching vessel into the UK, and an export health certificate. Last night, sources said vet checks on live seafood exports were taking up to four hours to complete, when they should take between 45 minutes to an hour. In addition, rather than a few boxes being removed for checks, entire trailers are being emptied so every box and label can be checked. The issues have been compounded by a series of IT problems on the French side of the border. Advertisement The industry is estimated to be losing 1million a day. A lack of buyers has seen many species of Scottish seafood plummet in price by around 50 per cent this week. Fishermen have been unable to export their produce on time following the UK's departure from the European Union due to delays with the new customs procedures. Jamie McMillan, managing director of Lochfyne Langoustines, has threatened to dump tons of rotting seafood at Downing Street next week if the problems are not resolved. He said: 'We can't continue to let this happen for another week because we will be out of business.' His comment came after shipping firm DFDS announced a further delay in exports of Scottish consignments of seafood to the EU. It halted shipments last week after delays in getting new paperwork for the EU border posts in France. Some loads which would normally take 24 hours to reach France from Glasgow are taking three to five days to get there, reducing the freshness and value of the food. On BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme, Mr McMillan said: 'We've been screaming for the last six months eight months that we have to get our produce to market within 12 to 24 hours. 'Any delays in that process, our shellfish will arrive in France dead. We lost two pallets last week. It took five days to arrive in Boulogne from Scotland, so our goods were rotten on arrival. 'Customers are not buying from us any more we have become unreliable suppliers. 'Everybody has stopped buying. This has happened for the past two weeks. We can't continue [to let] this happen for another week because we will be out of business. 'We have no sales to the EU, our biggest market for live shellfish, in the last two weeks. 'If we go another week without that, we are finished.' A third of fishing boats in Scotland are currently tied up at harbours and crewmen are forced to stay on land without pay He highlighted 'sticking points' at both transportation hubs in the UK and at the border in France. He said: 'There are delays at the borders in France for up to 30 hours, I'm hearing.' According to industry sources, there has been a particular issue with 'groupage' transportation. This is when small deliveries are batched together by haulage firms. Recent changes have led to lengthy checks on the produce and paperwork. Another seafood firm said it had managed to get just 12,000 worth of products into the EU last week compared with the 1million average. It has been forced to stop fishing with its 27 boats. A Scottish whitefish processor that last year exported 100 tons of seafood in the first two weeks in January managed 8.5 tons last week and none this week. Jimmy Buchan, of trade body the Scottish Seafood Association, said firms were facing a 'serious' problem. 'It is not so much the red tape the red tape is a hurdle, we always knew that was something we would have to overcome but it is the sheer frustration and the time it's taking to check these lorries prior to export.' Last night, sources said vet checks on live seafood exports were taking up to four hours to complete, when they should take between 45 minutes to an hour. On Wednesday, Boris Johnson said he understood the 'temporary frustration' of the fishing industry and pledged to provide compensation. Environment Secretary George Eustice told the House of Commons yesterday he was 'looking closely' at the issue amid growing demand for emergency financial support for the seafood sector. It is understood UK Government officials are looking at options for providing compensation in the coming weeks. Sources said it could be separate from 100million of investment previously announced by the Prime Minister. However, concrete plans are yet to be decided on despite the growing desperation of firms. Scottish Government officials say they would welcome cross-government discussions on the matter. On Wednesday, Boris Johnson said he understood the 'temporary frustration' of the fishing industry and pledged to provide compensation Mr Eustice has described the problems as 'teething issues' and claimed they were caused by factors such as the colour of ink used to fill out forms, as well as the numbers of pages of paperwork presented to EU customs officials. Donna Fordyce, chief executive of Seafood Scotland, said: 'The sector is at rock bottom and needs space to breathe. 'Trying to navigate the system we have at the moment is like pushing water uphill and it is not improving. Getting anything out of the UK into the EU is being achieved by luck rather than design. 'In the meantime, businesses that have been operating for generations, the people that work for them and their families and communities, are bearing the brunt of the issues. 'Everyone has their sleeves rolled up desperately trying to help companies meet the requirements for export but, at the heart of it, the UK system needs fixed. This cannot be done while it is 'live'. This was inevitable, given such a complicated process was put together at the last minute. With some breathing space, the system can be fixed and rebooted and companies will then be able to keep moving.' Writing in today's Scottish Daily Mail, Miss Fordyce adds: 'Some businesses, many which have been run by families for generations, are now days away from collapse.' Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said that fishermen should be compensated for seafood export delays. He said that financial compensation is 'clearly needed by our fishermen right across the country'. Mr Eustice insisted the Government is 'working hard to address these problems'. Mr Ross shared the story of a skipper whose catch is currently worth 'half of what he needs to cover his costs'. He added: 'So can the Secretary of State outline the discussions that he's having with the Scottish Government regarding the problems?' Mr Eustice replied: 'I am having a discussion with DFDS later today to see if we can offer help. 'They are working through quite a difficult situation, working hard to address these problems, as are Food Standards Scotland.' Orkney and Shetland Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael, who tabled a Commons question on the issue, described the situation as 'a shambles of the Government's own making'. He said: 'For years this Government has promised our fishing industry a sea of opportunity, but today our boats are tied up in harbour, their propellers filled with red tape manufactured in Whitehall.' Responding, Mr Eustice told MPs: 'Yesterday we had a meeting with the Dutch officials, earlier this week we had a meeting with the French, on Friday we had a meeting with the Irish to try to iron out some of these teething problems once people get used to using the paperwork goods will flow normally.' On compensation, he said: 'We will look closely at this issue but, in the meantime, we're going to work very closely with the industry to make sure we can iron out these difficulties.' A spokesman for Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing said: 'The Tories are 100 per cent to blame for the catastrophe now facing the Scottish seafood sector and their shameful bid to try to shift the blame won't fool anyone.' Ambassador of Belarus Y.Senko meets the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of China On January 13, 2021 the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Peoples Republic of China, Yuri Senko, met with the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, Le Yucheng. During the conversation the interlocutors discussed a wide range of issues of Belarusian-Chinese cooperation, as well as the organization of contacts at the highest and high levels in 2021. The parties reaffirmed the unity of their positions on topical international problems and the latest world events and outlined strategic directions for the development of relations between Belarus and China. print version US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan A family on holiday had a horrible start to the morning after they woke to find their toddler missing - before the kindness of the local community and social media brought him home. Police were called to a house on Waratah Street, West Albury in NSW, at about about 4.30am on Friday where they discovered the blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy 'wearing pyjamas with Bluey the dog on them'. Officers commenced an initial search for the two-year-old's parents but were unable locate them. Detective chief inspector Mick Stoltenberg said the boy was taken to the police station while officers scoured the area. A toddler has been reunited with his parents after he was found wandering into a home unaccompanied in the early hours of Friday morning The child's parents were finally located at 8am and reunited with their son who had 'let himself out' of the house. 'He's obviously woken up and decided to go for a walk. He hadn't travelled very far which was a good thing,' Insp Stoltenberg told The Albury Wodonga News. The success of the operation was credited to the local community who banded together on social media to locate the toddler's parents. 'Someone told me it takes a village to raise a child, and today was a perfect example,' Insp Stoltenberg said. 'He turned up at a house where a local lady virtually adopted him as a grandson, so we're very lucky.' Inspector Stolenberg said it would be a 'terrible' ordeal for any parent but is the perfect reminder to keep a close watch on wandering children. New South Wales police have praised the local community for their support. Posted Thursday, January 14, 2021 11:25 am A bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers and the state's teachers union are pushing Gov. Jay Inslee and state health officials to bump up teachers and other school staff on the priority list for the coronavirus vaccine. Right now, more than half of the state's educators would have to wait until nearly the end of the school year to get their first dose of vaccine. Meanwhile, teachers in New York could start making vaccine appointments as of Monday; some California teachers are expected to be eligible for appointments as soon as Friday. The push in Washington comes amid an abrupt change in the federal government's vaccine guidance. On Tuesday, federal officials shifted into overdrive, calling on states to speed up vaccine distribution and expand eligibility to those aged 65 and older and people who are more prone to complications from the virus. The federal move could spur a faster vaccine rollout in Washington, and officials in Inslee's office say they're considering the federal changes on eligibility. But it's not yet clear how any change would affect where teachers fall in the vaccine line: Under the state's existing distribution timeline, roughly 60% of the state's K-12 workforce wouldn't qualify until April. Officials in Inslee's office said Wednesday that teachers may move up on the priority list. "It's important to get kids back in school, vaccinating all school staff is still a high priority, but moving all educators including healthy young ones ahead of individuals with underlying health co-morbidities would be risking more deaths," said Mike Faulk, spokesperson for Inslee. "If we can increase our supply from the federal government, we may be able to move up the timeframe for all educators and school staff." Vaccinating teachers could be especially important given the rise of new coronavirus variants, some experts say, including one that was first detected in the United Kingdom and that has sparked widespread lockdown of schools and colleges there in the past week. The federal government had previously recommended that states prioritize school employees and other front-line essential workers after health care professionals and people living in long-term care centers. But Washington's current guidance would result in an extended vaccination timeline for adults who work in schools. Teachers and other staff who are at least aged 50 could get their first dose in February if they are serving students in person; a Seattle Times analysis suggests that roughly 40% of the state's 153,000 public school employees are in this age group. All younger employees teachers, counselors, bus drivers, paraeducators aren't eligible until April. Some school nurses have started receiving the vaccine, but others say they've had trouble making appointments. On Monday, state Democratic and Republican lawmakers from both chambers urged Inslee and Department of Health officials to revise the "recent guidance so that all school employees who wish to get a vaccination can receive one in February." For many employees, "by the time they are fully vaccinated and gain full protection from the virus, school districts across Washington will be nearing the end of the school year. This is unacceptable," wrote the group, which includes the Democratic chairs of the state Senate and House education committees, Sen. Lisa Wellman and Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, and the Republican ranking members, Sen. Brad Hawkins and Rep. Alex Ybarra. "It puts our schools in a very, very difficult situation and then that puts our families in a very difficult situation," Rep. Tomiko Santos said in an interview. Then, on Tuesday night, the Washington Education Association (WEA) teachers union called on policymakers to make vaccines available to educators "regardless of age." "The opportunity to have more vaccine available is good news," WEA President Larry Delaney said Wednesday, referring to changes to the federal guidance. "We just have to make sure the vaccine actually makes it into the arms of educators. That's where we're currently seeing some breakdowns in the system." State schools chief Chris Reykdal said he, too, asked Inslee to get teachers vaccinated earlier. He said it makes more sense to start with teachers than it does to vaccinate workers who would have to stay home because their children are learning remotely. "You could put 500,000 shots in arms over the next two months. A huge percentage of those will be those who can't go to work ... because they have to stay home with their kids," he said. Prioritizing more teachers, he said, would "jump-start the recovery." Some schools in Washington have been open for months, and teachers and staff show up daily without an available vaccine; many Puget Sound-area districts have plans to bring elementary schoolers back to school buildings in the coming weeks. But many experts say vaccinating teachers and school staff will make returning to school substantially safer. Others go further and say it's unethical to bring adults back to schools until they've had an opportunity to be vaccinated. "To me, it just feels unjust and immoral that we are putting teachers knowingly into these environments," said Dr. Vin Gupta, a critical care pulmonologist and an affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. A month ago, Gupta said, there was relative consensus in the scientific community that reopening school buildings was unlikely to lead to superspreader events. "In the last four weeks that has changed with the emergence of this new strain that is more transmissible, across more age groups, not just older adults," he said, referring to the fast-spreading U.K. variant. As of Wednesday, the variant hadn't been identified in Washington state, but Gupta cautioned that we should "assume it's already here." "It should force us to reconsider what we're doing with schools," he said. Seattle Times reporter Joy Resmovits contributed reporting. ___ (c)2021 The Seattle Times Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. University Hospital Limerick (UHL) is moving to the second stage of its surge capacity plan to handle rising Covid-19 hospitalisations. Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, Colette Cowan, chief executive of the University of Limerick hospitals group, said the next two weeks are going to be very difficult for the hospital and that they are in an "emergency situation". The next two weeks are going to be very difficult, we are in an emergency situation," she said. The hospitals chief said 579 staff, including over 200 nurses and 50 medical team doctors are unable to work for Covid-related symptoms or close contacts. Surge plans second stage UHL has the highest number of Covid-positive patients in the country at 163 with 47 patients isolated in emergency care waiting for admission. The hospital only has one available bed in an intensive care unit (ICU). The hospital's high dependency unit (HDU) is also full. Outpatient services and elective work has been cancelled as six beds have been made available from the HDU for ICU. Ms Cowan said the surge plan is extensive but the staff redeployments will effect available care. Our plan is quite extensive and well developed by the clinicians and can flex to up to 64 beds, but of course there is a warning with that in the sense that we would have to divide the workforce very much and the level of care would drop if we had to open to that level, she said. The hospital boss confirmed some staff who have been identified as close contacts have been asked to return to work to help with staffing shortages. She said this is done on a risk-assessed basis after 10 days. The derogation process has asked six staff to return work who have their temperatures checked twice a day. You have to be very careful about derogation because that can create a risk. So we risk assess them and check their temperatures twice a day, but its a small number," said Ms Cowan. Covid-19 outbreaks in Nenagh hospital and St John's hospital prevent the transfer of patients at the moment, said Ms Cown, but Ennis hospital is available. The orthopedic hospital in Croom, Co Limerick has also been converted to a medical hospital to help with Covid-19 patients she added. Hospitalisations across the country The HSE chief Paul Reid said ICU surge capacity has not been used yet but remains an option. Picture: Colin Keegan/Collins Dublin Covid-19 hospitalisations have continued to increase according to the latest figures published by the Department of Health. The latest figures show 1,846 patients have been hospitalised with coronavirus and 171 of them are receiving treatment in ICUs. This is an increase on figures reported yesterday evening when 1,838 were hospitalised and 169 patients were in intensive care. 133 people were admitted to hospital in the past 24 hours and 105 people have been discharged. 12 patients have been admitted to intensive care while 10 people have been discharged. Unfortunately, our #COVID19 hospital cases continue to rise, 1,846 this morning & 171 in ICU. People are extremely sick with this virus. Despite some hopeful trends on transmission levels, it's still hugely prevalent in your area. Please stick with us. @HSELive Paul Reid (@paulreiddublin) January 15, 2021 Paul Reid, chief executive of the HSE said hospitalisations remain serious even with the recent positive trends in the spread of the virus. On Twitter, Mr Reid said: Unfortunately, our Covid-19 hospital cases continue to rise, 1,846 this morning & 171 in ICU. People are extremely sick with this virus. Despite some hopeful trends on transmission levels, it's still hugely prevalent in your area. Please stick with us. Remaining ICU capacity Meanwhile, 13 hospitals nationwide have no ICU capacity left. According to HSE statistics, this includes hospitals in Galway, Letterkenny, Portlaoise, Navan and Naas. 32 intensive care beds are available nationwide across both adult and pediatric units. The HSE chief said hospitals are still coping and have not activated the available emergency surge capacity for ICU, of up to 350 beds, but the option remains a possibility if hospitalisations continue to climb. We have not gone into what we would call our surge capacity on beds, But if the levels of projections of what we have currently in the hospital transpire into ICU beds, that will increase absolutely, probably close to that 350, he said Figures released by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation's (INMO) trolley watch has shown 139 admitted patients are waiting for beds this morning. 125 patients are in the emergency department and 14 people are in wards elsewhere in hospital. University Hospital Limerick (UHL) has the most patients waiting at 36 followed by Cork University Hospital (CUH) at 23. GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- The West Michigan Partnership for Children (WMPC) aims to use $600,000 in early childhood millage dollars over the next two years to help parents with young children entering the foster care system in Kent County. WMPC officials said Thursday, Jan. 15, they plan to use the millage dollars to help parents by building relationships, providing emotional support, mentoring and modeling, encouraging case plan responsibilities and supporting parents in court and family team meetings. The funds were approved in December by Kent County Board of Commissioners for the nonprofit that manages the foster care system in the county. Through this new program, parents will receive increased peer-to-peer mentorship and encouragement from individuals who have been in their shoes, supporting timely reunifications and preventing re-entry to foster care, said Kylene Dalton-Koons, director of care coordination at WMPC. WMPC is proud to be part of the Ready by Five Provider Network. Family engagement, peer support and mentoring are proven strategies to promote safety and permanency of children and families in the child welfare system. To conduct the program, WMPC will be hiring one full-time parent engagement coordinator and five part-time parent engagement specialists for the work. WMPC officials say the roles will rely on the knowledge of lived experience within the child welfare system and work with families at five private partner agencies in the county, which are Bethany Christian Services, Catholic Charities West Michigan, D.A. Blodgett - St. Johns, Samaritas and Wellspring Lutheran Services. First Steps Kent is proud to support (WMPCs) mission and we look forward to partnering with (WMPC) as we work to improve the lives of Kent Countys youngest children and their families, said Annemarie Valdez, president of First Steps Kent. First Steps Kent is the nonprofit that manages the programming and finances for Kent Countys early childhood millage. The millage, approved by voters on Nov. 6, 2018, aims to bridge gaps in early childhood funding and services in the county for up to age 5. WMPC was one of 12 organizations allocated early childhood millage dollars. The 12 organizations received a total of $2.6 million for early childhood programming in 2021 and 2022. A full list of those programs can be found here. It was the second round of program funding so far by the board, which in February 2020 signed off on $3.27 million in millage dollar allocations to early childhood development programs that began that march and will end December 2021. A full list of those programs can be found here. Expecting parents and those with children up to age 5 can get connected with early childhood resources at First Steps Kents webpage, https://www.firststepskent.org/forparents. Read more: Congressman Meijer talks armed guards, body armor in wake of U.S Capitol attack Lansing mayor says Proud Boys, boogaloo groups planning armed protests at Michigan Capitol McDonalds pledges to stop using PFAS in food packaging by 2025 Early data from Israel suggests Covid-19 infection rates began to decrease among a group of vaccine recipients two weeks after they received the first shot of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SEs vaccine, offering important insights to other countries as they roll out their own campaigns. The small countrywhose roughly nine million population is about the size of New York Cityshas vaccinated nearly a fourth of its population in just under a month, the first country to hit that mark as it fights an upsurge in new infections. Israels largest health-care provider, Clalit Health Services, compared test positivity rates among 200,000 people over 60 who received the vaccine with 200,000 that didnt. Until day 14, there was little difference between the two groups. But after that, the data showed a 33% fall in infection rates among those who had already been vaccinated compared with those who hadnt. Clalit noted that the number of people infected was statistically significant, but said it wouldnt release final numbers until its study is published. Pfizer says people must receive both doses of the vaccine for it to be fully effective. In Pfizers trials, the vaccine was shown to take about 12 days before it started to protect people. The Clalit study suggests that the first dose could reduce infections among those vaccinated as early as two weeks after injection. While Pfizers research was based on people who had symptomatic Covid-19 and a positive lab test, Clalits data analysis was based on Covid-19 tests provided both to people who felt symptoms and to those who didnt, such as people who came into contact with others who had Covid-19, according to Ran Balicer, chief innovation officer at the Israeli health-care provider. Israel, like many other countries, has given priority to those over 60 in the first stage of its vaccination drive, making the group the best fit for study, said Mr. Balicer, who is also chairman of Israels national advisory team on Covid policy. Nearly three out of four people in this age group have received the first dose of the vaccine since Israels campaign began on Dec. 20. View Full Image Total doses administered Israel has committed to providing Pfizer with real-time data about their vaccine, from effectiveness to side effects, which Israeli officials said helped it procure early shipments from the vaccine maker. Separately, Israels Health Ministry published data about side effects from the vaccine, saying they were similar in frequency and character to other vaccinations given to its people. Of the 1.7 million who were vaccinated by the time the report was published, just 1,127, or 0.06%, reported side effects, which included weakness, headaches, dizziness and fever as well as pain or swelling at the site of the shot. So far 15 people needed to be hospitalized after the shot, mostly due to pre-existing conditions. Even as Israel accelerates the vaccines rollout, aiming to inoculate the majority of its population by March, its Health Ministry officials warned that people must still be vigilant. Israel has hit a pandemic peak in recent days at an average of over 9,000 new daily infections and is averaging between 40 and 50 deaths a day. As of Thursday morning, 1,842 patients with coronavirus were hospitalized, of which 1,095 were in critical condition. Israel last month imposed a third lockdown to contain the new surge in infections. Among those who are critically ill, 17% of them have already received their first doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Israeli health officials say the latest surge can be explained by the fact that much of the population remains unvaccinated. People in ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities that are hardest hit arent taking the shots as much as those in other communities and the spread of the virus has increased since the detection of the new U.K. coronavirus variant, health officials say. 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. Francis Lee came across the story of Mary Anning while touring to promote his 2017 film Gods Own Country, an unexpected hit about two men working with sheep in England's remote Lake District fells where Lee grew up and still lives. Feeling a bit lonely in a succession of hotel rooms, he started looking online for an interesting rock to take home as a birthday present for his minerally inclined boyfriend. Every time I looked for a fossil, this womans name kept coming up: Mary Anning, he says. What he found out about her reminded him very much of himself, despite the fact that she was born more than 200 years ago. Anning had lived her entire life 48 years in Lyme Regis, a market town on Dorsets Jurassic Coast, so-called because it is so easy to find fossil shells on its stony beaches. She was a fossil hunter who, despite being barely educated and never managing to do more than scrape a living, was the countrys greatest palaeontologist. Interest in natural history was surging, but while Charles Darwin toured the world on the Beagle, Mary Anning sold relics from a small village shop. It wasnt that nobody knew about her. Gentlemen collectors would come to pick her brains, usually leaving with one of her finds that they could claim as their own; she was far too rough and the wrong sex to be asked to speak at the Royal Society. Thus she remained an outsider, which is very much what Lee felt himself to be when he was an aspiring filmmaker. Im not saying Im as brilliant as Mary Anning, at all, but there was a little bit of a parallel, he says. And as a working-class queer filmmaker, Im very obsessed by class and this idea of patriarchy and gender. He had met his next subject. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan Inauguration Day, it appears, can't come soon enough for Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. He told reporters Thursday that he "cannot wait to leave this job," according to a transcript released by the Pentagon on Friday. "Believe me," Miller said on his 67th day on the job since President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the election. Read Next: Lawmakers Push to Award Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol Police Hero, Army Vet Miller was speaking to reporters en route to Washington, D.C., where tens of thousands of National Guard members are securing the city ahead of troubling threats in the leadup to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration -- and after a violent mob overtook the U.S. Capitol last week. Though Miller has been in the acting secretary job for just a couple of months, he has faced several challenging tasks. He has overseen the start of the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, questions about the response to the Capitol riot, and now a massive activation of National Guard members leading up to the end of his boss's presidential term. In the short conversation with reporters, Miller appeared to break ranks with most military leaders who cite China as the top long-term threat to the U.S. When asked about the biggest Defense Department challenge that needs to be fixed, he said: "What do I think? I think it's changing our mindset that is focused on. ... Everybody says, 'Oh, all we've been focusing on is counter violent extremism, and the Chinese stole a march on us.' Historians will figure that one out. ... I think it's not accurate." The Navy's top officer released a new 10-year strategy this week that is largely focused on China. "China," the strategy states, is "our most pressing long-term strategic threat." Miller went on to say that if he had been in the job longer, he would have liked to clean up some of the Defense Department's notoriously slow and complicated acquisition processes. "Talk about [a] wicked problem," he said. He zeroed in on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which the Congressional Research Service describes as the Defense Department's largest weapon procurement program. "I gotta tell you, yesterday we were talking to some guy, some lieutenant colonel, or colonel. [We] said, 'What are you flying?' [He] said, 'F-35,'" Miller recalled. "I was like, 'That's a piece of ...' and he laughed, and I was like, 'No seriously, tell me about it,' and he ... said ...'Unbelievable aircraft.'" A defense official who was traveling with Miller said the acting defense secretary did not end the sentence about the F-35 being a "piece of" with any particular word. "The Secretary often uses casual and humorous language with reporters and personnel during travel," the official said. "That characteristic does not convey well in a written transcript but was obvious to participants." Miller's not the first person serving in that role to have negative views about the program. Another one of Trump's acting defense secretaries, Patrick Shanahan, called the F-35 Lightning II program "f---ed up." When Shanahan was investigated in 2019 over allegations that he used his position to promote his former employer, Boeing, when he said that the F-35 aircraft itself is "awesome," but that the program is "f---ed up." There are too many expensive retrofits, he said, and the planes are too often on the ground awaiting those fixes. The F-35 is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, a Boeing competitor. Shanahan was ultimately found not to have promoted Boeing while serving as acting defense secretary. Miller was also asked Thursday what he'd learned about Russia's capabilities while serving in the job. He responded by saying he has "professional respect for how they do things," citing the country's irregular warfare capabilities. Top military leaders have, in recent years, called a resurgent Russia one of the top threats to the United States. "I think they've played a really bad hand of card[s] very, very well," Miller said. "Declining population, single source of economic revenue through natural resources. I kind of, you know, like professionally, I'm like, 'Wow, they're doing pretty well.' And they're using a lot of irregular warfare concepts, information, all this stuff, in a way that, you know, like ... good on them." Other U.S. military leaders have also expressed professional appreciation for Russian military capabilities. One of the U.S. Navy's top submarine officers was so impressed with Russia's new Project 885 nuclear attack boats that he had a model of K-329 Severodvinsk built for his office, USNI News reported in 2014. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Related: IG Report: Shanahan Called F-35 Program, Not Plane, 'F-----d Up' Kansas City connection to the aftermath of an American insurrection that continues to spark fear. Fox4: Congressman Cleaver introduces bipartisan bill honoring officer who saved Senate from angry mob Deets . . . Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) is part of a bipartisan group of legislators working to honor Eugene Goodman, the lone man who led an angry mob of pro-Trump rioters away from the Senate chambers during last weeks attack on the U.S. Capitol. Rep. Cleaver as well as Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) introduced the bill Thursday. H.R. 305 would award a Congressional Gold Medal to Officer Goodman for his quick-thinking actions that doubtlessly saved lives and brought security personnel precious time to secure and ultimately evacuate the Senate before the armed mob breached the chamber. Related reading . . . American MAGA Roundup Man seen holding Confederate flag inside U.S. Capitol during riot arrested Two Delaware men, one of whom was seen in a viral photograph holding a Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol during last week's riot, have been arrested on federal charges, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. American Terror Unchecked Dozens on FBI's terrorist watchlist were in DC day of Capitol riot Dozens of people on a terrorist watch list were in Washington, D.C., the day a mob attacked the Capitol, The Washington Post reported Thursday. The people were on the Terrorist Screening Database, a massive list kept by the government of people who have been flagged as potential security threats. Crytpo Conspiracy?!?! Bitcoin May Have Financed Pro-Trump Capitol Riot: Reports - Decrypt Pro-Trump protesters stormed the US Capitol building in DC on January 6. Image: Wikimedia Commons In brief A foreign account transferred half a million in Bitcoin to those who took part in the capitol riot last week, according to reports. Chainalysis believes the source of the funds was a French donor. BLM Charge Amid MAGA Chaos Left-wing activist charged in Capitol riot after saying he was just there to 'document' A Black Lives Matter activist who told Fox News last week that he'd followed a pro-Trump mob into the Capitol in order to "document" the siege is now the subject of a criminal complaint in connection with his alleged participation, according to the Justice Department. Airman Accused Retired Air Force officer at Capitol riot intended "to take hostages," prosecutor says A retired Air Force officer who was part of the mob that storrmed the U.S. Capitol last week carried plastic zip-tie handcuffs because he intended "to take hostages," a prosecutor said in a Texas court on Thursday. "He means to take hostages. He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. Social Media Smackdown Facebook criticized by Dems, liberal watchdog for skirting Capitol riot blame As Facebook tried to shift blame over the Capitol riot to Parler or other smaller platforms popular with conservatives, several Democrats and a liberal watchdog group slammed the tech giant for doing too little, too late to crack down on pro-Trump, radical groups organizing violence in Washington. MAGA In The Military?!? Pentagon probes extremism in U.S. military as thousands of troops guard D.C. after Capitol riot The Pentagon's internal watchdog on Thursday announced an investigation into whether the military is doing enough to root out extremist and supremacist ideologies among active-duty personnel after last week's deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Developing . . . Last summer, Jali Henry was feeling lonely and depressed after many of her friends moved out of the city because of the pandemic. I literally had no one, she said. I was like, What the hell am I doing here? Then she began noticing street cats in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she lives: first, a group of four that lived behind a school; then, a cat on her block, obviously sick and infested with fleas. Ms. Henry, 28, who had started volunteering with the rescue group Puppy Kitty NYC, corralled the cat and took it to the vet. I kind of chased her around the neighborhood, it was really crazy, she said. Random people stopped to help me. As a corporate recruiter working from home, Ms. Henry started to foster kittens, too. I used to feel like I didnt want to be in New York anymore, but once I started fostering, she said, I finally found something that made me happy and really occupied my time. Finding the best car insurance deal can be a hassle that takes time for many drivers. However, brokerage websites will help drivers find the best insurance deal without wasting time, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company. Compare-autoinsurance.org has launched a new blog post that explains how drivers can compare online car insurance quotes. For more info and free car insurance quotes online, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/how-to-compare-car-insurance-quotes/ Drivers who are looking for a car insurance plan while having a tight budget are less likely to have the time required to read the paperwork, look for the right agent, insurance company and the right insurance policy at the same time. To save time while looking for car insurance that can satisfy their needs, drivers can compare car insurance quotes. To properly compare car insurance quotes, drivers should follow the next steps: Use a brokerage website. Brokerage websites are the best sources of online car insurance quotes. These types of sites are working with multiple car insurance companies. Using a brokerage website is quite simple. Drivers will only need to complete an online form with information about themselves, their cars, their driving history, and then wait for the results to be displayed. In most cases, drivers will obtain multiple insurance offers from multiple national and local insurance companies. Make a list of financial ratings. Some persons already know what coverages they want to buy from a particular insurance carrier. Others can be attracted by certain insurance providers that are offering special discounts to their profession or special fidelity bonuses. In both cases, drivers should make a list of insurance companies from where they want to buy from and compare their financial ratings and their insurance offers. Drivers can look for the financial rating of each insurer by checking the websites of various rating agencies like A.M. Best, Fitch, Moodys, and Standard & Poors. Look online for an insurance agent. Drivers who prefer to work with an insurance agent can check several websites that will guide them to agents that work in their areas. Drives can check the agent's recommendations and also they can choose an agent based on his specialization. For additional info, money-saving tips and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/ Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc. Advertisement Chinese and Indian tanks are facing off just hundreds of yards from each other at their disputed Himalayan border, according to an image shared on Chinese media. The photo shows armoured vehicles lined up against each other beside encampments along the 2,000-mile border where last year grisly hand-to-hand combat left 20 Indian soldiers dead. The image was first shared on Chinese social media site Weibo by a 'military blogger' and the story has since been picked up by pro-Beijing news sites which boast of the prowess of their Type-15 tanks. Since June's clash, the first deadly fighting in 45 years, India and China have heavily fortified their positions on either side of India's Ladakh region and deployed thousands of troops. The photograph was first shared on Chinese social media site Weibo by a 'military blogger' and the story has since been picked up by pro-Beijing news sites which boast of the prowess of their Type-15 tanks Since June's clash, the first deadly fighting in 45 years, India and China have heavily fortified their positions on either side of India's Ladakh region On Monday, the Times of India reported that the Chinese had moved around 10,000 troops held in reserve up to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) - the line drawn by the foes after the 1962 Sino-Indian War. There are up to 35 Chinese tanks close to outposts captured by the Indian army in late August. It is not clear how many tanks the Indians have in reply. Last year's Galwan Valley battle led to boycotts of Chinese goods and furious protests on the streets of Indian capital New Delhi. In November, the two sides began formulating a disengagement plan to withdraw troops and establish no-patrol zones, but the talks appear to have fallen through. The deaths of the soldiers are still bitterly felt by the Indian troops and they were remembered again on Friday during Army Day 2021 in Delhi. General Manoj Mukund Naravane lauded the 'supreme sacrifice' of the Galwan Valley 'bravehearts.' He said that the army 'took swift action during the India-China LAC standoff' to protect the border and a 'befitting response' was given to the Beijing 'conspiracy' to shift the frontier. 'We are committed to finding the resolution of our disputes through discussions and political efforts but no one should test out patience,' the general said. Between April and May last year, the Indians claim that the Chinese deployed nearly 50,000 troops close to the boundary, as well as heavy artillery and the infrastructure to support its men. Earlier this week, Beijing propaganda mouthpiece China.com published an article which proudly boasted of the superiority of the Chinese Type 15 tanks against India's T-17 and T-90s. It said: 'India has been operating on the western border for many years and has many practices in the use of tanks and armoured vehicles. 'However, the PLA (People's Liberation Army) was able to quickly form an advantage in the number of tanks at specific locations, and the level of equipment and technology was immediately superior.' Last Friday, a Chinese solider was arrested by Indian forces after he allegedly strayed over the border. 'The PLA soldier is being dealt with as per laid down procedures, and circumstances under which he had crossed the LAC are being investigated,' a statement from the Indian Army said. The PLA claimed the soldier went missing in 'the darkness and complicated terrain' and insisted India was informed. 'India should strictly abide by the relevant agreements between the two countries, and promptly transfer the missing person to China, to help with cooling and de-escalating the China-Indian border situation,' the military newspaper added. Another Chinese soldier was briefly held by Indian forces in the same region in October. In June, the Indian army accused the Chinese of using clubs fashioned with barbed wire and nails to beat their troops. The Galwan Valley clash left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead Prior to June's deadly skirmish, footage was leaked which purported to show an Indian forces battering a PLA soldier in May Tensions flared between China and India last June when a clash along the disputed Himalayan border led to the death of at least 20 Indian soldiers. In the following months, the nuclear-armed neighbours deployed tens of thousands of soldiers across India's Ladakh region and China's Tibetan plateau. India and China inherited their territorial disputes from the period of British colonial rule. Three years after India's independence in 1947 and a year after the communists came to power in China, the new government in Beijing began strongly asserting its claims and repudiating earlier treaties it says were signed under duress, but which India says are fixed. Beijing's approach has strengthened under Xi Jinping, China's most powerful leader in decades who has sworn not to surrender even an inch of territory. In the 1950s, China started building a strategic road on the uninhabited Aksai Chin Plateau to connect its restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. India objected and claimed Aksai Chin as part of Ladakh, itself belonging to the former principality of Kashmir now divided between India and Pakistan. Relations were further strained after India allowed Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to establish a self-declared government-in-exile in the northern Indian town of Dharmsala after he fled his homeland in 1959 during an abortive uprising against Chinese rule. The differences led to a bitter month-long war in 1962. Firefights broke out again in 1967 and 1975, leading to more deaths on both sides. They've since adopted protocols, including an agreement not to use firearms, but those protocols have fractured in this year's clashes. Prabhjot Singh, son of Satnam Singh, an Indian soldier who was killed in a border clash with Chinese troops in Ladakh region, reacts next to the coffin of his father during his funeral ceremony in Bhojraj village in Gurdaspur, Punjab India, on June 18, 2020 Indians burn images of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bhopal on June 16 after news of the violence at the border broke China, in the meantime, began cementing its relations with India's arch-rival Pakistan and backing it on the issue of Kashmir. The fiercely contested LAC separates Chinese and Indian held territories from Ladakh in the west to India's eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety. It is broken in parts where the Himalayan nations of Nepal and Bhutan border China. According to India, the de facto border is 2,167 miles long, although China promotes a considerably shorter figure. As its name suggests, it divides the areas of physical control rather than territorial claims. In all, China claims some 35,000 square miles of territory in India's northeast, including Arunachal Pradesh with its mainly Buddhist population. India says China occupies 15,000 square miles of its territory in the Aksai Chin Plateau, which India considers part of Ladakh, where the current face-off is happening. Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The summer of 2020 was not the first time activists marched in the streets of major U.S. cities, expressing their outrage over high-profile episodes of police brutality and demanding an end to racial inequities. Nor was it the first time that protesters pushed to reform police tactics or remove monuments to Confederate war heroes. Black Lives Matteras a rallying cry and as an organizationhad been around for years. But in 2020, something changed. Words resulted in actions. City councils and state legislatures reallocated policing funds and banned chokeholds. Mississippi's Confederate-inspired flag was redesigned. In her latest research, Gia Nardini, an assistant professor of marketing at the Daniels College of Business, asks the question: Why did the Black Lives Matter movement find success? And what can other social movements use to achieve their goals? "It was such a tragic series of events," Nardini says, noting the prominent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmad Arbury and Breonna Taylor. "But I think what made [this research] exciting is it's easy to feel helpless. This paper made it feel like we could make a difference." Nardini's paper, titled "Together We Rise: How Social Movements Succeed," initially was focused on the fight for marriage equality and an examination of why some movements take off when others fall flat and how they turn "bystanders" to a cause into "upstanders." After Floyd's death in May, however, Nardini and her team realized they had a rare opportunity to pivot to a moment playing out before their eyes. An expert in consumer behavior, Nardini built upon research she conducted on social entrepreneurs, examining how their organizations grow. The same psychological lens, she realized, could also be applied to social movements. "We would think that consumer psychology affects sales," she says. "But can it also affect human well-being or human understanding? Those are areas where it may not be evident right away, but that's where you might be able to make a difference." The differences between movements that succeed and those that fail boil down to a few key factors, Nardini found. The most effective, she discovered, are campaigns that start small and locally. Numbers are important, her paper notes, but the quality and depth of the participation matter just as much. When members feel connected to the movement's causeand one anotherit is easier to grow. To secure commitment and connection, Nardini says, storytelling and humanity must be prioritized. Because people can be motivated by emotions both negative (anger, despair) and positive (hope, altruism), movement leaders must strike the right balance with their messaging. "You don't want to make people super angry or super sad," Nardini explains, "because it may just lead them to feel helplessness." At the center of any successful movement, the study found, is a core group of unselfish, collaborative organizersa group Nardini describes as "leaderful." That was especially true in Black Lives Matter. "Their leaders are able to empower others," Nardini says. "They were in the trenches. I think they put their money where their mouth was really well, motivating other leaders to lead their own communities. They recognize the power of local communities and they empowered those communities." Additionally, her research shows, activists need to massage relationships between groups that may seek the same end, but through different means. Not everybody has to agree on strategy, but organizations have to find a way to coalesce, grow and achieve their goals together. Perhaps most important, however, Nardini's research shows it's critical to start small and realize that large-scale change rarely happens overnight. "We make the case that you don't necessarily want to go for a policy change right away, [or try to] change laws, talk to people at the top," she says. "Instead, try to motivate people at the bottom. I think it's easy to feel demotivated by a lack of progress or how slow progress is. If you can check these boxes, you have a good chance for social change to succeed, but I think it's important to recognize how long the process could be or how arduous it might be as well." The key for sustaining momentum in the Black Lives Matter movement will be keeping people involved and inspired, Nardini says. She hopes that her paper, in addition to benefiting consumer psychologists like herself, can help activists plot their next steps and refine their tactics. "We do have a unique lens in understanding why people do what they do, so I think we can really help understand phenomena like these, but we need a lot more work in this space," she says. "I hope that [this research] inspires people in general that we can make a difference, we can be part of the solution, and maybe we can inspire people to take a stand for something we believe in." Explore further Do black lives matter protests impact fatal police interactions and crime? More information: Gia Nardini et al. Together We Rise: How Social Movements Succeed, Journal of Consumer Psychology (2020). Journal information: Journal of Consumer Psychology Gia Nardini et al. Together We Rise: How Social Movements Succeed,(2020). DOI: 10.1002/jcpy.1201 The Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission will hold its first 2021 meeting on Jan. 21-22 when it returns to Chattanooga and the Westin Hotel. The first day portion of the meeting starts at 1 p.m. Thursday and the second day begins at 9 a.m. Friday. The latest information on chronic wasting disease (CWD) and disease management in West Tennessee will be presented. The deer hunting season concluded the weekend of Jan. 9-10 with the Young Sportsman Deer Hunt. An amendment to change the start of the fall raptor taking season from Sept. 15 to Aug. 15 each year will be presented. It was changed to Aug. 15 in 2012. It has been noticed that it was inadvertently changed to Sept.15 during the last revision in 2018. This amendment will correct the error. A presentation on White-nose Syndrome (WNS) will be given. The disease affects the bats and a population decline in Tennessee has been seen since it was first observed in 2010. WNA has been found in 12 of the 16 species of bats found in the state. The commission will hear an update on the lake sturgeon restoration project. The reintroduction of the native and primitive species into the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers began more than 20 years ago by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and other partners. The long-term goal of the project is to have a self-sustaining lake sturgeon population. The TFWC last met in Chattanooga in July 2018. In addition, the Feb. 18-19 meeting of the TFWC will be held in Franklin at Marriott of Cool Springs. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 11:14:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GENEVA, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Two members of the international expert team of the World Health Organization (WHO) scheduled to fly from Singapore to China's Wuhan on Thursday have been tested positive for IgM antibodies, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. At the 6th Meeting of the Emergency Committee on COVID-19, Tedros said that the other 13 members of the team to study the origins of the novel coronavirus have arrived in Wuhan as scheduled. "The other two are still in Singapore after they tested positive for IgM antibodies, but negative for PCR. They are now being retested for both IgM and IgG, and we are waiting for results," the WHO chief said. The team members who have arrived in Wuhan will be in quarantine for the next two weeks, and will begin working remotely with counterparts in China, he said. They will then continue their work on the ground for another two weeks, Tedros said. A WHO tweet on Thursday said that all team members had multiple negative PCR and antibody tests for COVID-19 in their home countries prior to traveling. "They were tested again in Singapore and were all negative for PCR. But two members tested positive for IgM antibodies," the WHO tweeted. The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday announced that an international expert team of the WHO is scheduled to fly from Singapore to Wuhan on Thursday, and the team for the origin-tracing of the novel coronavirus will conduct joint research with Chinese scientists. Enditem Type address separated by commas Your Email: The remaining eight regions in Pritzkers plan must meet a number of criteria to qualify for the looser tier two rules those three regions are under. The coronavirus test positivity rate the percentage of positive results as a share of total tests must remain below 12% for three straight days on a seven-day rolling average; at least 20% of staffed hospital and intensive care unit beds must be available for three consecutive days on a three-day average; and there has to be a sustained decline in hospital admissions for COVID-19. Home Search ICH Question Everything! Purpose and Intent of this website: Israel is losing the fight to obscure its apartheid character New report will make it harder to smear Israel's critics as antisemites for arguing that Israel is a racist state. By Jonathan Cook January 14, 2021 " Information Clearing House " - For more than a decade, a handful of former Israeli politicians and US diplomats identified with what might be termed the "peace process industry" have intermittently warned that, without a two-state solution, Israel is in danger of becoming an apartheid state. The most notable among them include Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, two former Israeli prime ministers, and John Kerry, who served as former US President Barack Obamas secretary of state. Time is rapidly running out, they have all declared in the past. Their chief concern, it seems, was that without the alibi of some kind of Palestinian state - however circumscribed and feeble - the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state will increasingly come under scrutiny. Apartheid will arrive, the argument goes, when a minority of Israeli Jews rule over a majority of Palestinians in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan controlled by Israel. Demographic threshold The apartheid threat has been wielded by the so-called peace camp in hopes of mobilising international pressure on the Israeli right, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The goal has been to force it into making sufficient concessions that the Palestinian leadership agrees to a demilitarised statelet, or statelets, on fragments on the original Palestinian homeland. Meanwhile, demographic trends have continued apace, and the Israeli right has ignored all warnings, preferring to pursue their Greater Israel ambitions instead. But strangely, the apartheid moment never arrived for the Israeli peace camp. Instead, its expressions of concern about apartheid fizzled into silence, as did its once-vocal worries about a Palestinian demographic majority. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter This entirely cynical approach to Palestinian statehood was very belatedly blown apart this week with the publication of a report by BTselem, Israels most prominent and respected human rights group. It broke ranks to declare what has been obvious for many, many years. Israel has created a permanent reality in which there are two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, sharing the same territorial space, but a regime of Jewish supremacy has been imposed by the stronger side. This unequivocally qualifies as apartheid, BTselem said. It dismisses the sophistry that apartheid relates to some self-serving demographic deadline - one that never materialises - rather than the explicitly segregationist practices and policies Israel has enforced throughout the territories it rules. It also dismisses arguments made by Israels partisans abroad that Israel cannot be an apartheid state because there are no South African-style whites only signs on park benches. Hagai El-Ad, BTselems executive director, notes that Israels version - apartheid 2.0, if you will - avoids certain kinds of ugliness That Israels definitions do not depend on skin colour make no material difference: it is the supremacist reality which is the heart of the matter. The report concludes that the bar for apartheid was met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians. Daring analysis What is perhaps most daring about BTselems analysis is its admission that apartheid exists not just in the occupied territories, as has been observed before, including by former US President Jimmy Carter. It describes the entire region between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River - which encompasses both Israel and the Palestinian territories - as an apartheid regime. It thereby denies Israels claims to be a democratic state even inside its internationally recognised borders. BTselem has abandoned the pretence that apartheid can be limited to the occupied territories, as though Israel - the state that rules Palestinians - is somehow exempt from being classified as integral to the apartheid enterprise it institutes and oversees. That was always obvious. How much sense would it have made in the former South Africa to claim that apartheid existed only in the Bantustans or black townships, while exempting white areas? None at all. And yet, Israel has been getting away with precisely this clearcut casuistry for decades - largely aided by the peace camp, including BTselem. Now, BTselem observes: Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights - given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews. Israels Jewish supremacist ideology is revealed in its obsession with Judaising land, in its bifurcated citizenship laws and policies that privilege Jews alone, in its regulations that restrict movement for Palestinians only, and in its denial of political participation to Palestinians. These discriminatory policies, BTselem notes, apply also to the fifth of Israels population who are Palestinian and have nominal Israeli citizenship. El-Ad concludes: There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal. The only first-class people here are Jewish citizens such as myself. Permanent occupation What BTselem has done is echo the arguments long made by academics and Palestinian civil society, including the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, that Israel is a settler-colonial society. In an emailed response to the report, Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS movement, said it helped to put an end to the vicious and deeply racist lies about the not-so-perfect Israeli democracy that has a problem called the occupation. The BTselem report observes that, while occupation must be a temporary situation, Israel has no intention of ending its military rule over Palestinians, even after more than five decades. A Palestinian state is not conceivably on the agenda of any Israeli party in sight of power, and no one in the international community with any influence is demanding one. The two-state solution has been smothered into oblivion. For that reason, it argues, all of Israel and the Palestinian territories under occupation are organised under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group - Jews - over another - Palestinians. There are good reasons why BTselem is biting the bullet now, after decades of equivocation from it and the rest of the Israeli peace camp. Firstly, no one really believes that Israel will be pressured from outside into conceding a Palestinian state. Trumps so-called peace plan, unveiled a year ago, gave Netanyahu everything he wanted, including support for annexing swaths of the West Bank on which illegal settlements have been built. Four years of Trump, and the recruitment of much of the Gulf to Netanyahus side, has shifted the conversation a long way from efforts to secure Palestinian statehood. Now, the focus is on how best to delay Israels move towards formal annexation. US president-elect Joe Biden will at best try to push things back to the dismal state they were in before Donald Trump took office. At worst, he will quietly assent to all or most of the damage Trump has inflicted on the Palestinian national cause. Deeply isolated Secondly, BTselem and other human rights groups are more deeply isolated at home than ever before. There is simply no political constituency in Israel for their research into the systematic abuses of Palestinians by the Israeli army and settlers. That means BTselem no longer needs to worry about messaging that could antagonise the sensibilities of Israels so-called Zionist left - because there is no meaningful peace camp left to alienate. The disappearance of this peace camp, unreliable as it was, has only been underscored by the Israeli general election due in late March. The battle for power this time is being waged between three or four far-right parties that all support annexation to varying degrees. The Israeli left has ceased to exist at the political level. It comprises a handful of human and legal rights groups, mostly seen by the public as traitors supposedly meddling in Israels affairs on behalf of European interests. At this stage, BTselem has little to lose. It is almost entirely irrelevant inside Israel. Thirdly, and as a result, the only audience for BTselems careful research exposing Israeli abuses is overseas. This new report seeks to liberate a conversation about Israel, partly among Palestinian solidarity activists abroad. Their campaigns have been stymied by the failure of the Palestinian leadership under Mahmoud Abbas to signal where they should direct their efforts, now that prospects for Palestinian statehood have vanished. Activists have also been browbeaten into silence by smears from Israels partisans in the US and Europe, decrying any trenchant criticism of Israel as antisemitic. These slurs were relentlessly deployed against the UKs Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn because of his support for the Palestinian cause. Breaking a taboo By calling Israel an apartheid state and a regime of Jewish supremacy, BTselem has given the lie to the Israel lobbys claim - bolstered by a new definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance - that it is antisemitic to suggest Israel is a racist endeavour. BTselem, a veteran Israeli Jewish organisation with deep expertise in human rights and international law, has now explicitly declared that Israel is a racist state. Israels apologists will now face the much harder task of showing that BTselem is antisemitic, along with the Palestinian solidarity activists who cite its work. The report is also intended to reach out to young American Jews, who are more willing than their parents to foreground the mistreatment of Palestinians and to forgo the Zionist idea that Israel is their bolthole in times of trouble. Significantly, the BTselem report has been published in the wake of two groundbreaking essays this past summer by influential American Jewish journalist Peter Beinart. In them, he broke a taboo in the US Jewish mainstream by declaring the two-state solution dead and calling for a single democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians. It doubtless served as a wakeup call to Israeli groups such as BTselem that the conversation about Israel is moving on in the US and becoming much more polarised. Israeli human rights groups need to engage with this debate, not shy away from it. Battle for equality There is one possible lacuna in BTselems position. The report suggests a reticence to focus on outcomes. Nowhere is the two-state solution ruled out. Rather, the report notes: There are various political paths to a just future. Statements by El-Ad to Middle East Eye indicate that his organisation may still support a framework of international pressure for incremental, piecemeal change in Israeli policies that violate Palestinian human rights. That is very much what western states, particularly Europe, have been paying lipservice to for decades, while Israeli apartheid has entrenched. Does BTselem hope its apartheid criticisms will prove more effective than Barak and Olmerts apartheid warnings, finally galvanising the international community into action to push for a Palestinian state? If so, Bidens performance in office should soon dispel any such illusions. El-Ad observes that the goal now is "a rejection of supremacy, built on a commitment to justice and our shared humanity." That cannot happen within the two-state framework, even on the untenable assumption that the international community ever seriously rallies behind Palestinian statehood, against Israels wishes. So why not say so explicitly? The best-case two-state scenarios on the table are for a tiny, divided, demilitarised, pseudo-Palestinian state with no control over its borders, airspace or electromagnetic frequencies. That would not offer "justice" to Palestinians or recognise their "shared humanity" with Israeli Jews. As welcome as the new report is, it is time for BTselem as well as Palestinian solidarity activists who look to the organisation to explicitly reject any reversion to a "peace process" premised on ending the occupation. The logic of an apartheid analysis needs to be followed to the very end. That requires unequivocally embracing a democratic single state guaranteeing equality and dignity for all. Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israels Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net . If you appreciate his articles, please consider making a donation - " Source " - Post your comment below Registration is necessary to post comments. We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive language. Please be respectful of others. See also Search Information Clearing House The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Click Here To Support Information Clearing House Your support has kept ICH free on the Web since 2002. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. * Username This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely! 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. YEI RIVER, South Sudan - First, the soldiers stole their belongings. Then they took their food. On their third and final visit, the woman said, the soldiers raped her and her daughter-in-law until they were unable to walk. A soldier walks through a market outside of Yei town in Central Equatoria state, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020. Ten years after South Sudan gained its independence and two years after its own deadly civil war ended, large-scale fighting has subsided but clashes continue between communities and between the government and groups that did not sign the peace deal and the use of rape as a weapon remains rampant. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick) YEI RIVER, South Sudan - First, the soldiers stole their belongings. Then they took their food. On their third and final visit, the woman said, the soldiers raped her and her daughter-in-law until they were unable to walk. What sets these assaults in South Sudan apart from many other rapes by soldiers in the troubled country is this: The women brought the men to court and won. Ten years after South Sudan gained its independence and two years after its own deadly civil war ended, large-scale fighting has subsided but clashes continue between communities and between the government and groups that did not sign the peace deal and the use of rape as a weapon remains rampant. Justice is exceedingly rare, but the September conviction has raised hopes that such crimes will increasingly be prosecuted. I was traumatized, the older of the two women, a 48-year-old mother of eight, told The Associated Press in Yei, a town in the southern state of Central Equatoria where she now lives. The AP does not typically identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they grant permission, and the woman said she continues to fear for her safety and is too afraid, for instance, to return to her home village of Adio. She said she has found some solace in seeing her two attackers convicted and sent to prison after she reported the rape in May to South Sudan's army chief when he visited her village. A new army chief of staff, responding to growing frustration with such crimes, sent military judges from the capital, Juba, to oversee the case and those of 10 other women and girls who also came forward. In the end, 26 soldiers were convicted, some for rape but others for offences including looting. It was the first time soldiers had been convicted of rape since the 2016 rampage at the Terrain Hotel, where five international aid workers were gang-raped and a local journalist was killed. The army hopes the trial will be a warning to its troops. We apologize, we wont let it happen again, and well arrest people who do it, said Michael Machar Malual, head of civilian-military relations for the army in Central Equatoria state. A government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. The woman hopes the verdict will encourage more survivors to speak up in a country where sexual assault is a scourge. Some 65% of women and girls in South Sudan have experienced sexual or other physical violence, the United Nations childrens agency said in 2019. Between July and September, the U.N. reported an 88% increase in conflict-related sexual violence from the previous quarter even as overall violence dropped. It said there were more than 260 violent incidents in total during the period, but it did not specify how many involved sexual violence. The villages around Yei have been hit hard as fighting continues between government forces and the National Salvation Front, which did not sign the peace deal. Civilians say they are caught in the middle, with women often accused by soldiers of supporting the rebels and assaulted especially if their husbands arent around. In February, three women and a 14-year-old girl were raped by soldiers about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Yei, according to a report by the independent body charged with overseeing the implementation of the peace deal. One woman was gang-raped while held at gunpoint, the report said. When the AP visited Yei in December, civilians and soldiers said the situation was improving and there had been fewer reports of sexual violence since the trial. The once-bustling town and nearby villages are slowly returning to life after the war. Yet some residents said they feel as unsafe as ever. A group of women walking home from the market said they hide their food in the bushes, worried that hungry soldiers will steal it from their homes. An economic crisis in South Sudan fueled by a drop in oil prices and the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic means soldiers havent been paid in months and experts are warning of famine. Rights groups have hailed the recent case as important but only a first step and are pushing the government for more accountability. This should be a lesson for those with power, especially those with guns, to know that they are not above the law, said Riya William Yuyada, executive director of Crown the Woman South Sudan, an advocacy group that has pressed the government for accountability. A hybrid court is meant to be established as part of the peace deal to try people accused of committing wartime atrocities, but implementation is slow. Nyagoah Tut Pur, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, noted that those convicted of such crimes are often lower-level officers, and senior leaders should be held responsible. She added that accountability must also include compensation and services for survivors. Some women brutalized by soldiers have taken matters into their own hands. In 2017, Mary Poni said she watched soldiers decapitate her father and gang-rape three of her sisters until they died, before she was assaulted herself. She has written a book about her experience in the hope that it will be a small step toward reconciliation in her country. I want the civilian population to be confident in the army, and the army to be able to protect our women and girls, Poni said. Women are living in silent fear, not able to open up about things they went through. Associated Press writer Maura Ajak in Juba, South Sudan, contributed to this report Apart from its plan to engage in domestic and foreign borrowings to fund the 2021 budget, the federal government has confirmed that it will also sell some government-owned properties for the same purpose. The government also said it will sell some non-oil assets to serve as additional source of finance for the years budget. This is contained in a Tuesday presentation made in Abuja by the finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, to stakeholders about the signed 2021 budget. PREMIUM TIMES obtained a copy of the presentation. The presentation, titled, Public Presentation of 2021 FGN Approved Budget Breakdown and Highlights was dated January 12. President Muhammadu Buhari had on December 31, 2020, signed the N13.58 trillion budget for the 2021 fiscal year about N505 billion higher than the budget proposed in October, 2020. In the approved budget, about N496.5 billion was approved for statutory transfers and N3.3 trillion was approved for debt services. The recurrent expenditure was put at N5.6 trillion with capital expenditure at N4.1 trillion and fiscal deficit at N5.2 trillion (5,196,007,992,292). Already, many have condemned the federal governments consistent resolve to borrow to fund budgets annually. For this year, the government is to borrow N5.6 trillion from domestic and foreign resources. The amount being the total deficit for the 2021 budget. This represents 3.93 per cent of the GDP. This paper had reported how the deficit will be financed, according to the ministry of finance. Both the president and Ms Zainab had said Nigeria will borrow money from the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and countries like Brazil to fund the budget. Besides borrowings According to the document, another means by which the government intends to fund the budget is by selling and concessioning government-owned properties and non-oil assets. Sales of government property and non-oil asset sales were listed under the additional financing section of the document. This section shows an overview of how the deficit will be financed. Although the document did not state the companies that have been put up for sale, neither did it state the expected revenue from the sales, this confirms earlier speculations of the governments plan to sell off some properties. In November 2020, the Senate committee on privatisation said it was not aware of the governments plan to sell or concession some national properties through the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE). This was during the agencys 2021 budget defence session. Documents presented to the committee showed plans by the federal government to sell the Integrated Power Plants in Geregu, Omotosho, and Calabar at N434 billion in 2021. Also in the document were plans to concession the National Arts Theatre, Tafawa Balewa Square, and all the River Basin Development Authorities at N836 million while the National Stadium in Lagos, the Moshood Abiola Stadium, Abuja, and two others were pegged for concessioning at N100 million. ADVERTISEMENT The chairman of the committee, Theodore Orji, had said the panel was not aware of the planned transactions. He also complained that the Director General of BPE, Alex Okoh, refused to carry members of the panel along. However, when contacted, the Clerk of the panel, Sadia Abdullahi, told PREMIUM TIMES Wedneaday that the matter had been resolved. She said Mr Okoh appeared again before the panel to submit the necessary documents containing the list of national properties that are up for sale or concessioning as well as their prices. She also said both the committee, the BPE and the federal government are now all on the same page. Additional financing Besides selling off national assets, the federal government also intends to finance the years budget through Borrowing from Special Accounts. Although no amount was stated for this purpose, many believe it is the governments plan to borrow money from dormant accounts, as announced earlier. Ms Ahmed had disclosed that the government is targeting about N850 billion from unclaimed dividends and dormant bank deposits. The government will also finance the budget through proceeds from privatisation of some public assets which has been put at N205.1 billion. Other means are Multilateral/Bi-lateral Project-tied Loans pegged at N709.68 billion and New Borrowings of N4.7 trillion (N4,686,775,885,696) which includes borrowing from domestic sources of N2.34 trillion and from foreign sources of N2.34 trillion) The government also hopes to finance the budget from its share of oil revenue- N2.01 trillion, NLNG Dividend N208.5 billion, Minerals and Mining N2.65 billion and non-oil at N1.48 trillion. Others are Company Income Tax (CIT) N681.7 billion, Valued Added Tax (VAT)-N238.4 billion, Customs N508.2 billion and Federation Account levies at N60.5 billion. The minister said about N7.97 trillion is available to fund the 2021 budget. She might be wearing a terrifying disguise, but Natalie Portman's latest stunt is not for a film role. The actress turned heads when she was spotted wearing a creepy venom-inspired face mask in Sydney on Friday. The 39-year-old Oscar winner looked flawless - despite the odd choice of mask - as she showcased her makeup-free visage. You wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley! Natalie Portman, 39, was spotted wearing a terrifying horror mask with teeth as she stepped out in Sydney on Friday Natalie cut a casual figure in a light blue T-shirt and a pair of denim jeans. The Star Wars icon had her hands full during the outing, juggling a purple refillable water bottle and her iPhone. She completed her look with a black Christian Dior handbag. The 39-year-old Oscar winner looked flawless - despite the odd choice of mask - as she showcased her makeup-free visage Inspiration: Natalie appeared to be wearing a face mask based on Venom, a Marvel Comic villian (a similar mask is pictured) The Black Swan star has been in Australia for several months while filming Thor: Love and Thunder. Although in Sydney now, she recently spent time in Byron Bay, where co-star Chris Hemsworth is based. Staying safe: Natalie Portman joined the ranks of fellow Hollywood stars urging followers to wear masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus on Wednesday During a recent live cross interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Natalie revealed that her children have started using the 'local language' while living Down Under. 'They say lollies instead of candy, tomato sauce instead of ketchup. 'When you want what you want, you gotta say it like the locals,' she told Jimmy. 'I'd like some tomato sauce with my chips,' Natalie said with a slight Australian accent. Turkmenistan on Friday opened a gas compressor station it hopes will help boost natural gas supplies to China and elsewhere Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2021 ) :Turkmenistan on Friday opened a gas compressor station it hopes will help boost natural gas supplies to China and elsewhere. Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said this week during a meeting with China's ambassador that the new pumping station could more than double volumes of gas pumped into the Central Asia-China gas pipeline. Delegates from the local branch of the China National Petroleum Corporation looked on as the pumping station at the Malay gas field in Lebap province began operations, the Turkmen foreign ministry said in a statement. The statement quoted Li Shuliang, general manager of CNPC's branch in Turkmenistan, as saying that the new facility would "expand the opportunities of exporting natural gas of Turkmenistan to international markets". Neither Beijing nor CNPC have said they plan to immediately ramp up imports from Turkmenistan, which were more than 30 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year before a slump triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. The new gas compressor, which can process up to 30 bcm of natural gas per year, was built by London-based Petro Gas and a company that belongs to the German group Siemens. Turkmenistan sits on the world's fourth largest gas reserves but remains heavily dependent on Chinese purchases. Pipelines carrying gas from the country to Russia and Iran are believed to transport less than 10 bcm per year combined, with Russia only renewing purchases in 2019 after a three-year hiatus. New Delhi: Asking people to join the farmers' "satyagraha" against the Modi government, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday spoke out in support of the ongoing protests and against rising fuel prices in the country. The Congress is observing the day as Kisan Adhikar Divas and will take out protest marches in all state capitals. Participating in the "SpeakUpForKisanAdhikar" campaign of his party, Gandhi said on Twitter, "The country's farmers are holding a satyagraha against the arrogant Modi Government to win their rights." "The entire country today is raising its voice against the atrocities being committed on farmers and the rise in price of petrol and diesel. You should also join this campaign and be a part of this satyagraha," he added in his Twitter post in Hindi. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross speaks during a news conference at the US State Department in Washington, on Sept. 21, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) US Sets New Rules to Block American Purchases of Chinese Telecom Tech The U.S. Commerce Department on Jan. 14 announced new rules to allow the federal government to block American companies from buying information and communications technology from five foreign adversaries, including China. The new rules were made to implement an executive order (E.O. 13873) that President Donald Trump signed in May 2019 to safeguard U.S. supply chains in information and communications technology and services (ICTS) from being exploited by foreign adversaries, including via industrial espionage. According to the executive order, ICTS included hardware, software, or other product or service primarily intended to fulfill or enable the function of information or data processing, storage, retrieval, or communication by electronic means, including transmission, storage, and display. In other words, the new rules could see the Commerce Department having oversight over American purchases of a broad range of technologies, including tech products used in critical infrastructure and mobile apps that collect user information. Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), described Trumps order as a significant step toward securing Americas networks in a statement in May 2019. Aside from China, the new rules apply to imports from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and the Venezuelan regime under Nicolas Maduro, according to a press release from the Commerce Department. The new rules will come into effect in 60 days. Since day one, President Trump has been committed to protecting the national security of all Americans, and the implementation of this rule is a pivotal moment in this Administrations efforts to put America First and hold bad actors accountable, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in the press release. Ross added: Aggressively securing the ICTS supply chain will protect American citizens and businesses from vulnerabilities that could undermine the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their personal information or sensitive data by malicious foreign adversaries and those who wish harm on the United States. The announcement came on the same day that the Commerce Department added state-run oil giant Chinese National Overseas Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to its entity list, which prevents U.S. companies from doing business with blacklisted companies unless they secure a special government license. Ross said CNOOC acted as a bully for the Peoples Liberation Army to intimidate Chinas neighbors in the South China Sea, where Beijing has built artificial islands to stake its territorial claims. Additionally, the Commerce Department also added Chinas state-owned aerospace company Skyrizon to its new trade blacklist called the Military End User list. Ross said the companys effort to acquire and indigenize foreign military technologies poses a significant threat to U.S. national security. Known by its full name as Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, the company drew U.S. criticism over its effort to take over Motor Sich, a Ukrainian manufacturer of helicopter and airplane engines. Skyrizon bought a majority stake in the Ukrainian company in 2017, but the purchased shares were frozen by a local court pending an investigation by Ukraines security service. According to Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post, Skyrizon filed an arbitration case against Ukraine in December last year for blocking the deal. Last month, the department had named 58 Chinese and 45 Russian entities on the MEU list. 75 Shares Share December is typically busy in the ICU. Flu and respiratory viral pneumonia cases start trickling into the ICU, interspersed with cardiac arrests, strokes, pulmonary emboli, septic shock, and COPD exacerbations. The ICU census starts creeping up. December 2020 has been unique and challenging. There were seemingly endless days of patients coming to the ICU, only to die. People with COVID-19 and the usual ICU ailments seemed sicker than usual. Patients have delayed routine care and have been terrified of the ED. Many have tried to ride it out at home, and when they finally come to the hospital, there is little anyone can do for them. Among this grim backdrop, my rainbow of 2020 was the COVID-19 vaccine. This vaccine is as novel as the virus it protects against. Though the first of its kind, an mRNA vaccine, the technology is three decades old, spearheaded by a little-known Hungarian born scientist named Katalin Karico in the 1990s. It took her another decade of trial and error to figure out how to stabilize the mRNA without alerting the bodys defenses. It was not until 2005 that this discovery came under Derrick Rossis radar, a Canadian post-doc fellow, who by 2009 used this technology to create stem cells, bypassing embryonic cell lines that had created ethical challenges. Rossis discovery finally led to the creation of Moderna by Rossi-Langer-Springer in 2010 to see its revolutionary potential beyond stem cells. In Germany, BioNTech was created by a married team of research entrepreneurs. Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, Turkish born scientists, had long been interested in immunotherapy, which harnesses the immune system to fight cancer. In 2013, BioNTech hired Kariko as senior vice president to help with its mRNA work and transform cancer care. Chinese scientists posted the new viruss genetic code that emerged in Wuhan on January 10, 2020. Forty-two days later, Moderna created an experimental vaccine candidate. Over in Germany, Sahin, the head of BioNTech, realized the beginning of a pandemic, and a partnership with Pfizer was created to develop another vaccine candidate. Both Pfizer and Moderna began their late-stage vaccine trials in July 2020. Both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are made up of lipid nanoparticles that encapsulate the mRNA that codes for the Spike protein on the virus. The vaccine contains stabilizers but no preservatives, egg, or meat products, and is not produced in embryonic/fetal cell lines. Once administered into the muscle, it is taken up by the human cells. The lipid vehicle releases the mRNA into the cytosol of the cell. RNA is very labile and cannot enter the cells nucleus, hence it cannot change/integrate with human DNA. The code carried into the cell is then translated into the Spike protein, seen by the human immune system. The immune responses involve TH1, antibody, and T cell responses. This immune response is generated within 14 days. The mRNA is destroyed once it forms the spike protein. I was privileged and grateful to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on December 23, 2020. I struggle to describe my emotions that day coherently. I posted the mandatory vaccine selfie on social media (VAXIE). I encouraged others in my network to do the same. I captioned the selfie with #ThisIsOurShot. I did not want to dilute the message with a soliloquy on why this was such a monumental day. But I will attempt to do so now. 2020 has been a hopeless year. Science and public health have been decimated by a dangerous and divisive politicization, which has left the nation deeply divided. The virus, unfortunately, has shown a predilection for communities of color and ageism. It has crippled an economy that was thriving. COVID-19 deaths are over 360,000 and expected to keep rising. I have borne witness to the lonely isolation and hopeless despair of COVID units. I have feared for my life. I have feared for my family. I have mourned loved ones and colleagues, some known, many unknown to me, that have fallen victim to COVID-19. I carry with me the stories of those I cared for. I remember their eyes glassy with fear and air hunger, the agony in their loved ones voices, the inevitable spiral to death, and maybe eternal peace. I recall photographs, cards, posters hung in patient rooms. I recall the emptiness of these same rooms after they are terminally cleaned. I am scheduled for my second dose on January 14, 2021. I am counting down to the day. I am hopeful, but its an almost hopeless hopefulness that emerges after almost a year of unspeakable agony and pain. Rizwana Khan is a pulmonary and critical care physician and can be reached at DrKhanMDOnCall. Image credit: Shutterstock.com A single mother-of-four who drowned after she was swept off the rocks called her brother's wife to say the beach was 'most amazing beautiful place she had seen' before her tragic death. Aida Hamed was among four family members who were wiped off rocks at Bushrangers Bay near Cape Schanck on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula at 3.30pm on Wednesday. Two men nearby jumped into the water to assist but Ms Hamed, a 45-year-old Australia Post worker from Lalor in Melbourne's north, could not be saved. Ms Hamed's brother Nizar Ibrahim said his sister loved the outdoors and the beach. Mother Aida Hamed, 45, (pictured) drowned after being wiped off rocks at Bushrangers Bay near Cape Schanck on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula at 3:30pm on Wednesday 'That day she had called my wife and was telling her about this beach that she had found and how it was the most amazing beautiful place she had seen,' Mr Ibrahim told The Herald Sun. 'Who would have thought that this would be the place to take her.' Mr Ibrahim said his sister was a caring woman and everyone who knew her is deeply saddened by her sudden death. 'We are currently going through a hard time to accept what has happened,' he said. Mr Ibrahim wants to raise money for Ms Hamed's four children - three in Melbourne and a son who lives in Sydney with his father. Ms Hamed's 16-year-old daughter begins her VCE studies this year but will do so without the guidance of her mother. Her 19-year-old daughter and her friend, 47, both survived being swept off the rocks and are now at Frankston Hospital in stable conditions. A 13-year-old girl and two men, aged 28 and 47, also survived but have since been discharged. Ms Hamed's brother Nizar Ibrahim said his sister loved the outdoors and the beach. He said she described Bushrangers Bay as the 'most amazing beautiful place she had seen' before she lost her life there Gut-wrenching footage showed Ms Hamed and her family being swept off rocks by a wave on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula on Wednesday afternoon 'We are deeply saddened at the passing of Aida Hamed,' an Australia Post spokesman said in a statement to AAP. 'We extend our deepest sympathies to Aida's family and colleagues at this sad time.' Friends have taken to social media to pay tribute to Ms Hamed, with one calling her 'a true angel'. 'No words can be said to describe the pain of losing you,' another friend said. 'You brought happiness to everyone that met you with your gorgeous smile and warming heart, we will miss you forever.' One of her other friends said: 'You will always be my sunshine, my beautiful friend. You were taken from us way too soon'. Bushrangers Bay Beach is unpatrolled and according to Life Saving Victoria, 'moderately safe when waves are low'. But it warns swimmers should 'stay on the bar and clear of the rocks and rips'. Police said had the two men not gone in to help, more people could have died, The Age reported. Ms Hamed (pictured) was among four people who were at Bushrangers Bay near Cape Schanck when they were swept off rocks on Wednesday afternoon 'If they hadn't done that, I think more people (would have) drowned, more people (would have) lost their life,' Mornington Peninsula Local Area Commander Inspector Janene Denton said. Ms Hamed was one of three people to die in separate incidents along Victoria's coast on Wednesday. The second death was at Venus Bay in Gippsland. A woman in her 20s was pulled from the water after going in to help save a teenage girl who was seen struggling to swim. An off-duty lifeguard performed CPR but the woman could not be saved. The third death was that of a man in his 80s, brought to shore unconscious at the popular Rye Front Beach in Tootgarook, also on Wednesday afternoon. All three incidents will be investigated by a coroner. Lifesaving Victoria general manager Liam Krige encouraged members of the public to swim between the flags and warned against immediately trying to rescue others. The group were at Bushrangers Bay near Cape Schanck (pictured) on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula on Wednesday afternoon when tragedy struck 'We would urge all bystanders to, if they see someone in difficulty, dial triple zero and request the correct resources to help,' he told ABC Radio on Thursday. 'Don't take the sea for granted - it can be a dangerous, albeit beautiful place.' Mr Krige added that the easing of coronavirus restrictions heading into summer could have contributed to Victoria's record number of drownings in the past six months. 'People probably aren't as fit as they used to be... their abilities probably aren't what they thought,' he said. Phuket international school dodges charges for illegally hiring British teachers PHUKET: An international school in Rawai will not face any charges for illegally hiring two British teachers arrested at the school for working without a work permit, Chalong Police have confirmed. By The Phuket News Friday 15 January 2021, 11:48AM Chalong Police Station. Photo: The Phuket News / file The case of the two foreign teachers working illegally has already been submitted to the Public Prosecutors Office, two weeks ago, Chalong Police Chief Col Sarawut Chuprasit told The Phuket News. Col Sarawut declined to give any more information regarding the two teachers arrested, both British nationals, arrested at the Palm House International School in a raid by Phuket Immigration officers acting on a tip-off on Nov 4 last year. The case, and the two foreigners arrested, were handed over to Chalong Police to process. Chalong Police Chief Col Sarawut did confirm that Chalong Police were not pursuing any charges against the operator of the school for illegally hiring foreign workers. I have no reason to press any charge against the school at all. It is not right to accuse the school, Col Sarawut said. Col Sarawut declined to give any reason for not pursuing charges, especially considering that Chalong Police themselves are pursuing charges against the two British nationals who were arrested at the school. Let this issue be the prosecutors responsibility. Please go to ask the prosecutor, he said. The Phuket Provincial Public Prosecutors Office told The Phuket News today (Jan 15), We are willing to give an update, but we need the police case number or the suspects names. Please go to ask the police for this information. So far Chalong Police have refused to give any information that will allow further investigation into the case. As recently as Monday this week (Jan 11), Capt Somkiet Sarasin of the Chalong Police, the leading investigator in the case, declined to explain any further details of the case, and declined to provide the names of the two foreigners arrested. Chalong Police Col Sarawut told The Phuket News that he was unable to remember the foreigners names, or the case number. Please ask Capt Somkiet, he said. Capt Somkiet has continued to decline to give that information. Capt Somkiet on Nov 24 told The Phuket News that the investigation into the school will take time. 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. Press Release January 15, 2021 De Lima files bill to grant President power to halt PhilHealth contribution hike Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has filed a measure granting the President of the Philippines the power to suspend the scheduled increases in the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation's (PhilHealth) premium contribution rates to lessen the public's financial burden especially during a national emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic. De Lima, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development, filed Senate Bill (SB) No. 1977 amending Republic Act (RA) No. 11223, or the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act, to grant the Chief Executive the power to suspend or defer the scheduled increases in premium rates as long as it is in the interest of the public. "These most trying times require from our government and our leaders' exceptional efforts and emergency responses that will not only secure the health of the people, but would likewise cushion and mitigate the worst economic shocks of a pandemic of this scale," she said. "Universal access to quality and affordable health coverage is fundamental to equipping our people with the capability of withstanding the shocks brought about by unexpected national health emergencies. It does not only epitomize a strong focus on equity and social justice, it likewise encourages more to trust the system. Section 10 of the UHC Act authorizes PhilHealth to implement annual increases in the premium rates of direct contributors until 2024 in order to raise revenue for the implementation of the UHC Act. For 2021, the premium rate is scheduled to increase to 3.5 percent of the monthly basic salary, from the 2020 rate of 3 percent. De Lima expressed concern about the increase, saying several issues hounded the PhilHealth which put to question their capability in implementing the UHC Act, including the Senate investigations revealing that almost 15 billion pesos was lost to corruption in the last few years alone. Likewise, De Lima noted that the PhilHealth owes payables reaching more than a billion pesos to many hospitals and healthcare institutions, including the Philippine Red Cross in spite of infusion of funds from the Bayanihan Law. The lady Senator from Bicol stressed that these issues have brought the credibility of PhilHealth to an "all-time low", which, in turn, discourages members to actively and regularly pay their membership dues. "Unless and until there is a clear showing from PhilHealth that the funds are properly used and the corrupt officials are duly punished, it will always be viewed as a corrupt institution unfit to manage the UHC funds," she added. De Lima further pointed out that the lockdowns and most stringent protocols brought by the COVID-19 pandemic likewise crippled many of the citizens' capacity to pay the premium contribution, much less the scheduled increase for this year. "Given ongoing economic hardships, we can expect a difficulty on the part of PhilHealth members and employers to comply with the increased premium rates this year. Such increases will only further decrease households' disposable incomes and stifle their consumption," she said. "Proceeding with the increase in PhilHealth premium contributions at such an inopportune time imposes as an unjust burden to the Filipino taxpayer. Sa pakiramdam ng ating mga kababayan: ninakawan ka na, pinagkaitan ka na nga ng nararapat na serbisyo, pagbabayarin ka pa ng dagdag na pasanin. Sino'ng hindi magagalit?" she added. Under SB No. 1977, the scheduled increase in a certain year will fall to the year following the lifting of the suspension. Sorry, no valid subscriptions were found for this Publication. Please select from an option below to start a subscription. SUBSCRIBE TODAY! 24 Hour Access Ambassador of Belarus S.Terentiev meets the Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt On January 14, 2021 the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Arab Republic of Egypt, Sergei Terentiev, met with the Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt, Amr Talaat. During the meeting the interlocutors noted the high potential for the development of Belarusian-Egyptian cooperation in the fields of high technologies, information security and training of specialists in the field of telecommunications, as well as discussed promising areas for cooperation between specialized organizations and IT companies of the two countries. The Parties agreed on an algorithm for the further development of bilateral contacts in the field of information technology, including the exchange of visits by delegations of the relevant institutions and organizations of Belarus and Egypt. print version .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Never stop learning. Thats an ideal the leaders at Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts are cultivating especially during the pandemic. The Albuquerque-based nonprofit has been providing students in Kaliningrad, Russia, with the curriculum from Keshets M3 Movement + Mentorship = Metamorphosis program. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ A free virtual event at 10 a.m. Jan. 23 will give the community a peek into an international learning exchange between Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts and Kaliningrads Pchyolka Organization. This exchange has grown out of the development of Keshets M3 curriculum, and all initiatives are focused on finding solutions to pressing social issues common to the U.S. and Russia. Register at keshetarts.org. Core to the philosophy of both Keshet and Pchyolka is the empowerment of youth and young adults through community and long-term mentorship, says Shira Greenberg, founder and artistic director of Keshet. We are thrilled that our M3 Curriculum can be shared and translated across cultures to activate the powerful vehicle of the arts, supporting of the work of Pchyolka and the incredible young individuals they serve in Kaliningrad. Keshets effort is supported by the Eurasia Foundation through the U.S.-Russia Social Expertise Exchange. The support facilitates the international partnership with Kaliningrads Pchyolka Organization, providing Keshet the opportunity to train Russian arts educators to utilize Keshets unique M3 Curriculum which has been highly successful as a form of alternative programming in the Juvenile Justice system, decreasing recidivism rates and shifting trajectories of young lives impacted by the justice system. Greenbert says Keshets M3 faculty share their curriculum with art specialists at Pchyolka in Kaliningrad, Russia, as Pchyolka specialists are developing their arts programming to better serve at-risk and orphaned youths. Kaliningrads Pchyolka Organization reached out to Keshet in 2019 to begin conversations exploring the opportunity to train Russian arts educators to use Keshets unique M3 curriculum. Pchyolka works with youths and young adults within the Russian orphanage system. Russian youths who age out of the orphanage system at 16 years old have an average life expectancy of merely 30, with 9 out of 10 orphan graduates falling prey to addiction, prostitution, crime, gangs, trafficking or suicide. 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. Kathmandu, January 15 The Ministry of Health and Population has informed that the countrys Covid-19 tally has reached 266,816 as of Friday afternoon. The ministry says 270 new cases were confirmed in the country in the past 24 hours. Of them, 172 positive cases were reported in the Valley. In this period, 3,084 swab samples were tested. So far, 2 million and 5,125 people have been tested in the country. As of today, 4,301 cases are active. Nepals recovery rate is 97.7 per cent. Of the total cases so far, 260,567 people have achieved recovery whereas 1,948 died, according to the ministry. In the past 24 hours, 390 people have been discharged whereas five deaths have been reported. Over 200 people are quarantined across the country. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment What do you do when you want someone to think theyre getting a different product or service even though its the same thing? You rebrand it. For mainstream media, its calling something a fact-check. And its increasingly used to pretend their lies are still true. Thats exactly what PolitiFact did in its effort to compare the (many, many, many) Black Lives Matter riots with the recent Capitol riot. Just for context, PolitiFact was created by the Tampa Bay Times (see another one of my takedowns of TBTs blatant #fakenews piece about Planned Parenthood). TBT and PolitiFact are owned by the leftist Poynter Institute which is responsible for Facebooks bogus fact-checking regime. Ahhh, clarity. The recent and horrific storming of the Capitol by a crazed handful of pro-Trump supporters cannot be justified or revised. Funny how a few rioters somehow define all Trump supporters, but thousands of BLM rioters in cities thrown into chaos don't define a movement. The Capitol breech was a despicable act of violence that directly led to the deaths of two people: U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick who was fatally injured by the mob and rioter Ashli Babbitt who was shot by Capitol police inside the building. (Many articles are claiming five deaths, but there are no details as to the cause of the other three reported deaths.) All involved in the attack should be arrested and prosecuted. As a Christian, I abhor violence, and I reject it as a means to achieve a political end. Yet so many seem to suffer amnesia of the anarchy that has gripped our nation for the past six years under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter. Since its emergence in 2014 (and no better handled under the Obama/Biden administration), weve heard nothing but justifications, praises and denials from mainstream media about the massive destruction caused in the name of racial equality. Funny. I dont feel any more equal. PolitiFact immediately suggests the alleged difference in responses wasdrum roll, pleaseracism. And there is no escaping that the people the police faced looked different in the two situations, those hard-working fact-checkers proclaim. Well, of course! In an act of leftwing delusion, PolitiFact outfit paints an innocent picture of the Black Lives Matter chaos in DC during the summer. PolitiFact only refers to BLM activists as protesters and demonstrators. They certainly didnt extend the same graciousness to Trump supporters who were referred to as rioters eleven times. Biden is quoted as calling them a mob of thugs, a description he never once gave to the thousands of BLM rioters across the country that left cities in smoldering ruins this past summer. Perhaps he missed all the unbiased news coverage while tucked away in his basement. This is the only statement PolitiFact issued in regard to BLM rioters actions: Tensions flared when some protesters stopped at the White House, pushing down metal barriers that separated them from law enforcement before the march continued on through the city. #Fakenews. The rest of the BLM description was filled with details about the (implied) excessive local and federal police response, detailing the numbers and the type of anti-riot equipment without providing any context of why it was necessary. PolitiFact summed up the BLM DC riots this way: The crackdown was aggressive, but no protesters or police died in the District. Oh, ok. Shouldnt a fact-check include all the relevant facts? How about the widespread violence, the arson (including the fire set in the basement of the historic St. Johns Episcopal Church), the looting and destruction of businesses, vandalism of federal monuments, demonstrators assaulting law enforcement officers, and over 60 Secret Service officers injured? Nationwide, more than 700 law enforcement officers were injured in BLM peaceful protests across the country following George Floyds tragic death. Some were killed like retired police captain David Dorn whose black life didnt seem to matter to the movement. Hundreds of stores were looted from Santa Monica to Chicago to New York City. The Insurance information Institute labeled the riots a multi-city catastrophe event and the costliest civil disorder in history. Axios reported that the massive damage resulting from mostly peaceful BLM protests exceeded $2 billion. Perhaps that explains a heavy police presence. Then, as if someone were submitting a paper for a high school creative writing class, PolitiFact strangely switches gears to provide vibrant details about Trump supporters struggles against the police: But as soon as one person decided to press on, the momentum swelled. The marchers and officers struggled over control of the barricade. The weight of the crowd soon sent officers sprawling backwards. The article then proceeds, by timestamp, to detail the play-by-play of the (inexplicably, at least for now) easy and violent breech of the Capitol building. Here's a reality check. Cities like Portland and Minneapolis look like war zones. Its okay; its social justice. Im amused at how a Vox writer accurately (though unintentionally) exemplified the Lefts hypocrisy in two different articles. The first, about Black Lives Matter, is entitled: Riots are destructive, dangerous, and scary but can lead to serious social reforms. The subtitle continued: To prevent more violent uprisings and protests, we need to take their causes seriously. His take on the pro-Trump Capitol riot, however, had a slightly different tone, as he entitled it: Every person who forced their way into the Capitol should be arrested. The subtitle was even more subtle: Lock them all up. Yes. There are two radically different responses. The explanation isnt racism. But it is color. I call it #BlackPrivilege. The explanation is also political. I call it #LiberalPrivilege. Despite numerous deaths, cities burning, more racial division, looting, vast destruction and calls for Black Power and the defunding of police, corporations shelled out millions to the Black Lives Matter movement. In the wake of the politically dubbed Capitol Insurrection, Corporate America has gone out of its way to denounce conservatives, show outrage over deaths, get a conscience about violence against law enforcement, and feign disgust over damage to government property. Suddenly, law and order matter. Civil behavior matters. But it doesnt ever seem to matter when it comes to #BlackLivesMatter. It's not US versus THEM. It's not black versus white. It's wrong versus right. Anyone who doesn't get this, doesn't understand the nature of sin and the chaos and confusion it always creates. Sin doesn't discriminate by color. It will occupy ANY heart that welcomes it in. Toyota Motor Corp will settle a Justice Department civil probe into its delayed filing of emissions-related defect reports for $180 million, sources briefed on the matter said. The US Attorney's Office in Manhattan is set to announce the settlement later on Thursday, the sources said, that will include a consent decree. Toyota first disclosed in 2016 it was under investigation for the delayed reports to the Environmental Protection Agency. Toyota and the Justice Department did not immediately comment. Also read: Tesla incorporates firm in Bengaluru with 3 directors, scouts for land 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. Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu said on Friday that Romania will also be affected by the slowdown in the delivery of anti-COVID vaccine doses by the producer Pfizer, but the vaccination campaign will continue, considering that our country has a reserve of doses. "Romania will also be affected, deliveries will be reduced in the next three weeks. We will be able to continue this campaign, because at the moment we have a certain reserve, which, on the one hand, provides us with the reminder that the booster needed by those who have already been vaccinated with the first dose. We also have a reserve of about 100,000 vaccines. With that reserve and the vaccines we still receive, we can move on, not at the speed we would like. I mention once again: the main problem we will have in the next period will not be the speed with which we vaccinate, but will be the number of vaccines. And this is not a problem of Romania, it is a problem at European and global level," Vlad Voiculescu told a press conference at Victoria Governmental Palace. The American company Pfizer confirmed on Friday that its vaccine deliveries will slow down at the end of January and the beginning of February, time to make changes in the production process and thus to increase the pace for the next weeks, AFP reports Life is a risk and there have been typical bad reactions to the vaxx reported by mainstream news. Accordingly, here's important testimony to that locals can have more info on the many local threats that exist amid pandemic harsh times. Read more . . . Pub giant JD Wetherspoon is set to announce a dramatic sales slump over the key Christmas period after being impacted by coronavirus restrictions. Investors in the pub group will be keen to see the full extent of the impact of November's lockdown in England as well as tighter tiered restrictions in December when it posts its latest trading update on Wednesday January 20. All of the budget pub group's UK sites are currently shut as a result of the nationwide lockdown. In November, the group said it would burn through 14 million for each month its pubs remain shut to customers across the country. At the end of last year, chairman and founder Tim Martin lashed out at the Government for its 'baffling and confusing' coronavirus restrictions as Wetherspoon reported a 27.6% plunge in first-quarter sales for the 15 weeks to November 8. Pub giant JD Wetherspoon is set to announce a dramatic slump in sales over the key Christmas period as pubs were closed due to lockdown restrictions. Pictured: Founder Tim Martin Last month Mr Martin offloaded 431,500 of the company's shares at a price of 11.66 each on Tuesday, leaving the firm's founder and chairman with a 27 per cent stake. He also sold 5 million worth of shares in the summer. Prior to the introduction of the tier system across the country, Mr Martin accused the Government of making 'reckless decisions', with MPs only having an occasional opportunity to intervene. 'There is overwhelming scientific evidence that lockdowns and quasi-lockdowns can be counterproductive, as the World Health Organisation has recently emphasised. He also said that Boris Johnson was 'embarking on economically ruinous policies, with no health benefits' by imposing the contentious new tier system. Restaurants, pubs, hotels, bars and many other venues in the hospitality industry have been forced to closed several times since the nationwide lockdown was implemented in March 2020, and remain closed today across most of the UK. Mr Martin, founder and chairman, has previously accused the Government of embarking on economically ruinous policies. Pictured: A staff member in a Wetherspoons pub in London As various lockdowns and tiered restrictions have been implemented in the months since, the sector, which is responsible for five million jobs and generates a 130billion contribution to the economy, has been asked to respond accordingly often at short notice. Sales are set to tumble further as a result of the November lockdown and tiered measures, with JD Wetherspoon keeping 366 of its 872 pubs shut at the start of December after pubs were stopped from serving dine-in customers in Tier 3. By the end of the month, all of the pub firm's sites were within Tier 3 and Tier 4 areas and therefore forced to close. Emma Lou Montgomery, associate director for personal investing at Fidelity International, said shareholders will have questions around when Wetherspoon can return to profit even after sites reopen due to the impact of restrictions. 'The hospitality sector, in general, works on such tiny margins that even being down 10% can be enough to force many publicans to call time on their pubs,' she said. 'For Wetherspoon pubs that all need to be packed out to thrive, following a variation of the pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap business model, how they can function profitably long-term with social distancing in place is the big question.' A sign in the window of the Wetherspoon pub in Windsor, Berkshire, as restrictions came in However, Liberum's analyst Anna Barnfather said pub groups should have reason for optimism after there was evidence of pent-up demand following previous lockdowns, alongside vaccine progress. 'We are cautiously optimistic of the easing of restrictions across England and the rest of the UK as of March/April 2021, in line with a successful roll-out of a vaccine to those most at risk,' she said. 'This provides some optimism for the sector after a difficult winter and almost non-existent festive period. 'Encouragingly, the sector saw high levels of pent-up demand for leisure activities and socialising following Lockdown 1.0, and we are optimistic that this will be the case when the sector reopens, with an even swifter recovery once health and safety concerns have minimised.' Earlier this week, No10 was said to be privately gloomy about the prospects of an end to the third lockdown next month and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already warned that lockdown measures are unlikely to all be lifted at once. A source told the Sunday Times that the May Day bank holiday was a more likely reopening date for pubs and restaurants. Responding to the speculative date, the British Beer & Pub Association said pubs across the UK will be lost for good if they cannot reopen until May 2021 and do not get extended financial support from Government. The trade association also said the Government needs to be clear on its roadmap for the reopening of pubs. Emma McClarkin, Chief Executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, said: 'We strongly believe that pubs are safe places to socialise and can play an important role in our social and economic recovery. 'If pubs are forced to stay close until May, it would mean they have faced 14 months of lockdowns and restrictions. How on earth could the Government expect them to survive? 'UK pubs will be screaming 'mayday' long before a May reopening without significantly more financial support from Government. 'The Government has a duty to tell publicans when it plans to let them reopen with a clear roadmap alongside the vaccination programme. 'If it won't be until May then it needs to extend financial support for them to survive and to brewers whose businesses also face jeopardy. 'In the more immediate future this means an extension to the Chancellor's latest grant support package and not just for pubs, but also breweries. 'In the longer term it means extensions to the Business Rates holiday and VAT cut, as well as a beer duty cut throughout 2021 and beyond. 'Without such support, local pubs in communities across the country will be lost forever. We hope though that we can open safely and serve our customers and communities as soon as possible.' The San Antonio City Council unanimously reappointed attorney John Steen to the CPS Energy Board of Trustees on Thursday, despite a handful of citizens urging council to reconsider. This will be Steens second term; he will serve until Jan. 31, 2026. Organizers launched a petition four months ago calling for a citizen vote on abolishing the board of trustees and replacing it with City Council members. The petition also called for replacing the city-owned utilitys current CEO, Paula Gold-Williams, restructuring its rates and closing the Spruce coal-fired plant by 2030. On ExpressNews.com: Facing legal challenge and lacking signatures, Recall CPS petition campaign comes to an end As a member of the board, (Steen) has not worked to get the utility to create a pathway to close the polluting Spruce Coal Plant, said Dee Dee Belmares, the lead organizer behind the petition, at Thursdays meeting. Pollution from the coal plant is contributing to the climate crisis and affecting the health of our most vulnerable community members. About 14,000 people signed the petition 6,000 signatures short of what was needed to put the initiative on the May ballot. In November, CPS Energy lawyers argued the petition wouldve been invalid anyway, stoking the ire of those who put forth the petition. Thousands of people signed this petition, Belmares pointed out. John Steen, as part of the Board of Trustees, essentially said the voices of the people who signed the petition, the ratepayers, simply dont matter. All 10 council members and the mayor approved the reappointment of Steen, a former Texas Secretary of State, but not without addressing some of the petitioners concerns. I support the continuation of John Steen serving on the board, said District 9 Councilman John Courage. But I do it with a little bit of trepidation because I do feel that CPS Energy hasnt been as forthcoming as it should. I hope that the members are listening to the comments made by the public and my comments about (being) better forthcoming on how we can reduce our energy reliance on coal and several other issues that were brought forward through the petitioners, Courage said. Steen said the board has been making improvements. I do hear the voices of our community that are asking for more transparency and more accountability and more public participation Weve made significant strides in these areas in the years Ive been on the board and were going to continue to do that. During the pandemic, CPS Engergy Board meetings are being conducted via telephone, allowing the public to speak for about two minutes each, Steen said. Tribhanga is an entertaining, thoughtful, well-acted female bonding flick, as unconventional as the three women whose stories it tells Yaari, dosti, yaarana there was a time when Bollywood routinely churned out films on this theme, and a foreigner studying India through Hindi cinema might have been misled into believing that only men form friendships here. By the turn of the century, the preferred label became male bonding flicks, which was a more honest, accurate description of this almost-exclusively-male genre. The likes of Dil Chahta Hai and Rock On have finally begun making way for women, the most high-profile example of this evolution being Shashanka Ghoshs Veere Di Wedding (2018). I remember speaking to women friends who were as tickled as I was that Veere caused discomfort among so many gentlemen we know. Believe it or not, yaaron and doston, women bond too; contrary to what the public discourse tells you, women can be allies of women; and this might come as a shock women are not devis or every mans (virtuous) maata, behen or desh ki beti; women are flawed and fabulous in ways that do not conform to patriarchal stereotypes. That Renuka Shahane is conscious of all the above is evident throughout her directorial venture, Tribhanga Tedhi Medhi Crazy, a welcome addition to the so-far-scanty female bonding genre in Bollywood. The actor best known for her endearingly toothy smile as a co-anchor of the 1990s Doordarshan cultural programme Surabhi, Shahane has written and directed this film starring Tanvi Azmi, Kajol and Mithila Palkar as three generations of a family who clash, crash, burn, love and laugh together. Kajol in Tribhanga plays Anuradha Apte, a controversial Bollywood star and Odissi dancer who is often the subject of gossip in the media. She has had a difficult relationship with her famous mother, the multiple-award-winning writer Nayantara Apte (Azmi). These two feisty, non-conformist women are more alike than Anuradha can tell, and completely unlike her daughter Masha (Mithila Palkar). The narrative kicks off with Nayantara she is trying to write a letter to Anuradha and her son Robindro (Vaibhav Tatwawaadi), watched by Milan Upadhyay (Kunaal Roy Kapur), a writer who is helping her with her autobiography. When she collapses from a stroke in the middle of an interview to Milan, the family gathers at the hospital where she lies in a coma. Through Milans recordings of interviews with Nayantara, his interviews in the present day with Anuradha and Masha, the mother-daughter pairs interactions with each other and flashbacks to the trios earlier years, Shahane unfolds a story of women making their own road against humongous odds in a world that expects them to kill their dreams and desires for their spouses, offspring and social acceptance. For decades, Bollywood assumed that cinema centred around women must perforce be teary-eyed, if not completely tragic. It has taken too long for them to realise that women-centric films can and should cover the entire gamut of cinema from frivolous, frothy and fun to grave and grim, as men-centric films do. Tribhanga is at the mid-point of these extremes: moving, sometimes amusing, thought-provoking. Kajol is the major star of the pack here, but Shahane is careful not to give her Anuradha more importance than the other two women, from the first shot to the last and all the way in between. This is just as well because both Azmi and Palkar are fine actors, as are the artistes cast as the younger versions of the protagonists, in particular Shweta Mehendale as young Nayantara. Azmi imbues Nayantara with warmth and a tthehraav, a stillness and calm, that can only come when inner turmoil has settled and an older person has come to embrace herself for who she is, warts and all. She is, as always, excellent here. The age make-up and styling for Azmi and Kajol are subtle and interesting. Kajol always needs a watchful director to rein her in when her acting goes OTT and lets her Kajol-ness subsume a character she is playing. Shahane largely manages to keep her in check and extracts a solid performance from her in Tribhangas more subdued passages. When the drama is all in Anuradhas mind, Kajol is spot-on. Mithila Palkar is a good foil to the stars dynamism, an understated young artiste with the versatility to pull off fieriness in Karwaan (2018), a maturing adult in the sweet Netflix series Little Things and the somewhat diffident adult she is here. The leads are backed by a well-chosen supporting cast, a script that smoothly blends Hindi, Marathi and English as they would be spoken in Tribhangas setting, and a clear-headed director. Tribhanga is a rare Bollywood film that gives centrality to an older woman, joining a small club that includes Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017) starring Ratna Pathak Shah and the Amazon Prime Video anthology, Unpaused (2020) with Pathak Shah and Lillete Dubey. Without being overtly didactic, Shahane litters her script with insightful conversations that have set me thinking, most especially about how young people often confuse normalcy with patriarchy. The films title comes from a scene in which Anuradha uses Indian classical dance poses to characterise her mother, her daughter and herself. Tribhanga is Odissis signature triple bend pose, in which the artistes knees are bent in one direction, hips in another, shoulders and neck in the opposite direction again. She uses Tribhanga tedhi medhi (weird, skewed), crazy but sexy to describe herself. But for me, it also describes Nayantara, Anuradha and Masha as a composite whole. I also suggest you try to hold the Tribhanga position for a few minutes to gauge the tremendous muscle strength and balance it requires despite its deceptively easy appearance. Life throws soul-crushing challenges at women but we make it look easy, the title seems to say. The conformism and rebellion in Tribhanga come in layers, placing a spotlight on a question we rarely discuss: when a woman refuses to be straitjacketed, social opprobrium is directed not at her alone, but at her loved ones too is it inconsiderate on her part to rebel nonetheless? (Minor spoiler alert in this paragraph) A female character in Tribhanga apologises to another, though she does so and this is crucial not for the choices she made, but for being unaware of how society consequently treated that other person. (Spoiler alert ends) That moment in the film, when Anuradha sees her mothers life reflected in her own, arrives without fanfare and lingers without the intent being spelt out. It is the lynchpin of this enterprise, for which Shahane truly deserves applause. Unlike the recent Shakuntala Devi that was driven by a daughters dislike and judgement of the iconic real-life woman whose story it told, Tribhanga is non-judgemental even as it shines a light on Nayantara, Anuradha and Mashas failings and strengths, foolishness and wisdom. That said, I am waiting for a time when Bollywood consistently makes films in which alcohol, cigarettes or a foul mouth are not underlined as a marker of a strong woman character or an emblem of her strength and freedom. I am not passing moral strictures here, but pointing out gently that there exist in this world many tough-as-nails women who have none of these habits, but even some wonderful filmmakers have treated these as symbols of feminism (rewind to the cigarette after the heroine vanquishes the villains in NH10 or the one passed around in a group in Lipstick Under My Burkhas climax), thus giving fuel to anti-feminists who want to define feminism in such superficial terms rather than by the massive battles women worldwide are fighting against female foeticide, sexual violence, regressive families, discriminatory employers and worse. For the most part, Tribhanga walks a tightrope without falling off, but it does very consciously use the glass of alcohol in Nayantaras hand as representative of her liberation, even getting literal about it in an interview scene. This is a necessary debate, but what is beyond debate is that Tribhanga is an entertaining, thoughtful, well-acted female bonding flick, as unconventional as the three women whose stories it tells. I would pay Netflixs entire annual subscription fee just for the joy of watching a film gutsy enough to have a female character describe marriage as societal terrorism, for Tanvi Azmis dignified screen presence or for the manner in which Shahane presents that final, poignant shot of the three women with Sanjoy Chowdhurys sublime score playing in the background. Lovely. Tribhanga streams on Netflix. Rating: ***1/2 Beijing, Jan 15 : Amid the news of deaths of 23 elderly Norwegian people who received Pfizer's mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine, Chinese health experts have called on Norway and other countries to suspend the use of it, especially among elderly people due to the vaccines' safety uncertainties. According to a Chinese immunologist, the new mRNA vaccine was developed in haste and had never been used on a large scale for the prevention of infectious disease, and its safety had not been confirmed for large-scale use in humans. As of Thursday, Norway has reported 23 deaths in connection with the vaccination, Global Times reported on Friday. "So far, 13 of these have been assessed. Common side effects may have contributed to a severe course in frail elderly people," the Norwegian Medicines Agency said on its website. All the deaths have occurred in frail, elderly patients in nursing homes. All are over 80 years old and some of them over 90, Norwegian media NRK reported. Two Covid-19 vaccines, Comirnaty, from BioNTec/Pfizer, and Moderna, are used in Norway. The vaccines have been developed on mRNA technology and have received temporary approval in the EU, according to the agency. Norway launched a mass vaccination campaign at the end of December, with the very oldest citizens and residents of nursing homes being offered vaccination first, including those over the age of 85. The Norwegian Medicines Agency admitted that the studies that form the basis for the temporary approval of the vaccine included very few people over the age of 85, and there is little known about how any side effects will affect these age brackets, but it said, "we assume that the side-effects will largely be the same in the elderly as in those over 65 years of age." Chinese experts said the death incident should be assessed cautiously to understand whether the death was caused by vaccines or other pre-existing conditions of these individuals. Astronomers and citizen scientists from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have announced an unprecedented census of 525 L, T, and Y-type dwarfs within 65 light-years of the Sun, including 38 new discoveries. By determining the distances to all the objects in the census, the team has been able to build a 3D map of the distribution of cool brown dwarfs in the Suns local neighborhood. Brown dwarfs are cool, dim objects that have a size between that of a gas giant planet, such as Jupiter or Saturn, and that of a Sun-like star. Sometimes called failed stars, they are too small to sustain hydrogen fusion reactions at their cores, yet they have star-like attributes. They have masses between 11 and 80 times that of Jupiter, and are classified spectrally into M-, L-, T- and Y-type dwarfs. Despite their name, they are of different colors. Many brown dwarfs would likely appear magenta or orange-red to the human eye. Their low mass, low temperature, and lack of internal nuclear reactions make them extremely faint and difficult to detect. Brown dwarfs are the low-mass byproducts of the process that forms stars, yet the least massive of them have many characteristics in common with exoplanets, said Dr. J. Davy Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at Caltech/IPAC. Theyre exoplanet laboratories, but since they are usually by themselves and lack the complications caused by a blinding host sun, theyre much easier to study. To help identify elusive brown dwarfs in massive datasets, the astronomers enlisted the help of the Backyard Worlds collaboration, a worldwide network of more than 100,000 citizen scientists. They also used NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope to observe a set of 361 local brown dwarfs of types L, T, and Y, and combined them with previous discoveries to make a 3D map of 525 brown dwarfs. Besides the citizen science discoveries, scientists made use of CatWise, a NASA-funded catalog of objects from WISE and NEOWISE missions, to complete their census. One of the most intriguing results of the study is that it provides more evidence that the Suns immediate neighborhood (within roughly 7 light-years) is rather unusual. While most stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs, earlier results revealed that the Suns closest neighbors are much more diverse, with different types of objects, from Sun-like stars to brown dwarfs, appearing in roughly equal numbers. The new results add to this disparity by turning up no more extremely cold brown dwarfs like our close-by neighbor WISE 0855, the coldest known brown dwarf, even though the team expected to find at least several more within 65 light-years of the Sun. This result hints at the possibility that yet more cold brown dwarfs have so far eluded detection. Thanks to the efforts of volunteers around the world, we have a better idea than ever of the objects in our cosmic backyard, said co-author Dr. Aaron Meisner, an astronomer at NSFs National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory. But we suspect that more of the Suns cold and close neighbors still await discovery within our vast data archives. A paper on the findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. _____ J. Davy Kirkpatrick et al. 2021. The Field Substellar Mass Function Based on the Full-sky 20-pc Census of 525 L, T, and Y Dwarfs. ApJSS, in press; arXiv: 2011.11616 Sensor Test Development Engineer Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino) , California , United States Hardware Summary Posted: Jan 14, 2021 Weekly Hours: 40 Role Number: 200216719 PPOS-T team is seeking for an exceptional sensor test development engineer with responsibilities for research, development, evaluation, qualification and deployment of test solutions for various sensing modules. Key Qualifications 3+ years relevance experience in test hardware development/deployment. Strong fundamental knowledge of Electrical, Mechanical and/or MEMS. Excellent trouble shooting skills for various engineering challenges (HW/SW). Knowledge in volume production test equipment Gauge R&R, correlation, failure analysis, data analysis, design of experiments, etc. Self-motivated and passionate in delivering best in class test solutions. Excellent communication, documentation and presentation skills. Experience and background in one or more of the below area preferred: 2D/3D CAD fixture design and tolerance stack-up analysis. Prototype/Bench test setup. C/C++ programming and/or board level firmware development. MEMS sensor testing system. Electrical and mechanical noise isolation. Description Collaborate with cross-functional teams and vendors for HW/SW design/development, prototyping, qualification and deployment of test infrastructure for high volume manufacturing. Authoring fixture design, testing, qualification and buy-off requirements document and ensure fixture are in compliance to all requirements for deployment. Key member of an internal cross-functional team defining and implementing test strategy and test coverage to ensure best system performance. Provide onsite support during initial fixture bring-up, troubleshooting and issue resolutions. Transfer test infrastructure ownership to operation team during ramp up phase and serve as a consultant to operation team during mass production phase. Provide regular update on project status, issues/resolutions and help needed to cross-functional team. Deliver executive level presentation. Education & Experience MS/PhD Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or equivalent Additional Requirements Frequent travel to both Apple and suppliers' facilities will be required for production bring up. Gov. Tom Wolf announced Friday that another 1,000 members of the Pennsylvania National Guard will descend upon Washington, D.C. to assist District of Columbia National Guard and D.C. civil authorities in the days leading up to the presidential inauguration. The members are being sent to help ensure the safe and peaceful inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, Wolf said in a statement. The total number of Pennsylvania National Guard members in the nations Capitol is approximately 2,000. By having one of the largest Guards in the nation, the Pennsylvania Guard has the trained resources needed to respond to concurrent missions within our commonwealth, across our nation and overseas, Wolf said. I am thankful for their selfless service, as well as the sacrifices of our service members families and their employers, especially during these unprecedented times in our nations history. Pennsylvania has the second-largest National Guard in the country with approximately 19,000 members located in more than 80 armories and readiness centers statewide. Read more from PennLive 4 Pa. residents among those arrested so far over riot at U.S. Capitol Some evangelicals who backed President Trump are doing soul searching after Capitol attacks On 7 January, Turkish and Greek coastguard vessels clashed in the Aegean Sea, escalating the tensions between the two NATO members. On 22 December, Turkey announced it would continue to conduct its seismic research activities in the Eastern Mediterranean region, also raising tensions with Greece. The moves came in the wake of an EU announcement on 10 December that it would impose sanctions on Turkey over illegal and aggressive actions in the area. This followed clashes between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus over disputed maritime borders in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, with the contest over Eastern Mediterranean natural gas exploration only adding fuel to the fire between NATO members. Turkey has thus become a rebellious member of NATO, isolating itself within the alliance as a result of a number of controversial decisions and exacerbating increasing differences among its members. Founded in 1949, NATO was designed to guarantee collective security against the threat then posed by the former Soviet Union to Western Europe and the United States. But the alliances principles have been challenged by individual actions taken by different member states over recent years. Turkey was against any military intervention in Libya during the 2011 crisis that saw the overthrow of the countrys former leader Muammar Gaddafi. However, its priorities changed with the signature of the controversial maritime agreement with Libyas Government of National Accord (GNA) in November 2019. The agreement caused serious tensions with many actors in the resource-rich Eastern Mediterranean region, and it pushed Italy and Greece to establish an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) between the two countries in the Ionian Sea in an accord signed in June 2020. Tensions between Turkey and Greece peaked with Turkeys sending drilling vessels into disputed territorial waters in the Aegean Sea. Greece announced plans to extend its territorial waters from six nautical miles to 12 off its western coastline. France has also voiced its strong condemnation of Turkeys actions in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the United States has condemned Turkeys role in escalating the tensions. These have not only been limited to maritime boundaries, but have also extended to areas of conflict such as in Syria and Libya, where NATO members have had different objectives. French President Emmanuel Macron contested the withdrawal of US troops from northeast Syria in October 2019 that was implemented to avoid clashes with NATO ally Turkey. Consultations did not take place with other allies, including France, which had taken part in the US-led Coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group in the region. Macron said the decision would increase the vulnerability of French troops in the area and would interfere with US logistical supplies to the coalition. French experts criticised the move, saying that the US withdrawal would make Syrian Kurdish forces, a previous US ally in the war against IS, vulnerable to Turkish offensives. NATO disagreements over Syria also opened the door for Russia to increase its foothold in the region, and Russia coordinated with Turkey to launch joint patrols in northeast Syria. The US has also directly criticised other NATO members, saying European members were not paying enough to support it and accusing Germany of being delinquent with regard to its contribution. The criticisms were followed by a decision in July 2019 to withdraw 12,000 US troops from Germany, which had failed to meet its defence-spending target. Nearly 5,600 US troops were to be redeployed in other NATO member countries, mostly in Eastern Europe, to address threats to them by Russia. However, the decision has not been implemented because of attempts by US lawmakers to halt the planned troop reductions. The US contribution to NATO is equivalent to 70 per cent of total expenditure, making it the biggest contributor by far. Frances contribution represents 5.6 per cent and Germanys 4.8 per cent, pushing the alliance to adopt increases of 4.6 per cent in defence spending by the European members and Canada. The cracks in the alliance have seemed to increase during the Libyan crisis, particularly as a result of Turkeys military agreements with the Libyan GNA and increases in military training and logistical support for it. In March 2020, the EU launched its IRINI naval operation in the Mediterranean to implement the UN Security Council arms embargo on Libya. It has since stopped several ships suspected of transporting weapons to Libya, and tensions rose between Germany and Turkey when a German frigate prevented a Turkish-flagged vessel from entering the area. Disagreements between the NATO allies have also been manifested in the Caucasus, where France has opposed Turkeys intervention in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Macron said he was concerned at warlike messages from Turkey, adding that we wont accept them. France is the sole EU representative on the Minsk Group that is helping to mediate between the two sides in order to bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Turkey is an ally of Azerbaijan. Moreover, in 2017, Turkey purchased a Russian mobile surface-to-air missile system, the S-400, for $2.5 billion against the express wishes of the alliance. The US then imposed sanctions on the Turkish weapons-procurement sector as part of the Countering Americas Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which sanctions countries undertaking decisions negatively affecting US interests. The tensions that have arisen between members of the alliance have led to some NATO members calling for modifications to the alliances decision-making process to overcome barriers against action against rebellious allies, thus overriding the principle of collectivity. Meanwhile, most NATO members are putting their hopes on Bidens presidency as part of US President-elect Joe Bidens objective to rebuild alliances lost under outgoing president Donald Trump. While the alliances unity has been suffering, its role might be reactivated under a newly engaged US presidency. Turkeys actions in the Eastern Mediterranean and its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system remain the biggest unresolved issues to date, complicating the room for collective action. *A version of this article appears in print in the 14 January, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly. Short link: Sorry! This content is not available in your region With Wednesday's announcement that U.S. Space Command is set to make its new home at Redstone Arsenal, it lead to a common couple of questions: what is U.S. Space Command and is it different from Space Force? The answer to the second question is yes, Space Command and Space Force are not interchangeable. U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson, U.S. Space Command commander, talks about his vision for the combatant command and the role of noncommissioned officers Dec. 9 at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. (U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Dennis Hoffman) U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson, U.S. Space Command commander, talks about his vision for the combatant command and the role of noncommissioned officers Dec. 9 at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. (U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Dennis Hoffman) Space Force was stood up in December 2019, several months after Space Command was stood up on August 19, 2019. Space Force is under the command of Gen. John W. Raymond. Originally called the "Air Force Space Command," Space Force is a military service that has about 2,000 uniformed personnel as of late 2020, according to the Department of Defense. There are also about 6,000 civilian professionals in the service as well. It's mandate, according to the DoD is to be a "'pathfinder and protector' of America's interests." Comparatively, Space Command is designed to protect the interests of the United States in space. It operates in the area 60 miles above the Earth's surface and beyond. "The space economy of the United States gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I think we'll see the day when it's like 10-20 percent of our economy will be based on what we have in orbit and beyond," said Homer Hickam, a member of the National Space Council Users' Advisory Group. According to the DoD, the mission of Space Command is as follows: Deter aggression Defeat the nation's enemies through posture and preparedness Deliver space combat power Defend U.S., allied and partner interests "They're not the folks who launch astronauts into orbit or anything like that. But they're very much aware of any enemies out there who may try to impact our space assets, like all the communications and satellites that we have up there and so on," Hickam said. Space Command also has the ability to call upon service components from the various military branches. For instance, it works with the Army through the Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) and it works with the Space Force through Space Operations Command (SpOC). Once at Redstone, Space Command will be in direct proximity to SMDC, which is currently headquartered at Redstone. With the arrival of Space Command at Redstone will come the return of a familiar face. On August 20, 2020, Gen. James H. Dickinson was appointed as the commander of Space Command. He previously served as the commander of the SMDC as well as the Director of Test for the Missile Defense Agency. An Air Force spokesperson said it's too early to determine when Dickinson will make a return visit to Redstone following the announcement of the headquarters moving. That spokesperson also said that even when Space Command moves to Redstone, it will continue to function as it has been. "U.S. Space Commands way of life relies on the services and capabilities provided by the critical space assets it protects and defendsno matter where it is based." The transition could take up to six years to move from Peterson Air Force Base to Redstone Arsenal. According to the Air Force, Redstone rose above the other five competing sites "based on factors related to mission, infrastructure capacity, community support and cost to the Department of Defense. Huntsville compared favorably across more of these factors than any other community, providing a large, qualified workforce, superior infrastructure capacity, and low initial and recurring costs." Some in Colorado are challenging the decision and argued that it was politically motivated. WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Thanks to a proclamation issued by Gov. Jay Inslee, Jan. 24-30 will officially be School Choice Week in Washington. Around the country, National School Choice Week raises awareness about opportunity in K-12 education, encouraging families to celebrate and discuss their school options. The proclamation marks the fourth time in the past five years that the Week has been proclaimed by Washington's governor. Similar proclamations have been issued by more than a dozen governors and hundreds of city and county leaders nationwide for the Week. Washington parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 322 virtual or socially-distanced activities to celebrate School Choice Week, such as social media contests, virtual school fairs, and at-home activities. The annual public awareness effort encourages families to explore education options and find the educational fit that works best for them. More than 33,000 virtual activities have been independently planned for the week nationwide. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will participate. "We are grateful for Washingtonians' enthusiasm for school choice and thankful for Gov. Inslee's proclamation," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We hope the Week's activities spark a state-wide conversation about educational opportunity and how important diverse learning options are for our children's happiness and future success." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/washington. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during his morning press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, on May 31, 2019. (Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images) Mexican President Mounts Global Campaign Against Big Tech Censorship Mexicos president publicly pledged to lead a global effort to fight against Big Tech censorship after a number of major companies moved to deplatform President Donald Trump. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he is reaching out to other governments already. He criticized the power Big Tech companies wield and said they should not be able to stifle free speech. I can tell you that at the first G20 meeting we have, I am going to make a proposal on this issue, Lopez Obrador said on Thursday. Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but this cannot be used as a pretext to suspend freedom of expression. How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed? he asked. Experts have told The Epoch Times this censorship by Big Tech could cause countries to consider developing their own platforms rather than depend on a handful of private U.S. companies that have the ability to cut off communication to millions. Other concerns have also been raised, such as what to do about Section 230, an outdated law protecting platforms from litigation for content their users post, which critics and lawmakers say shields the companies too much and needs to be repealed or reformed. Mexicos Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said they have already started communications with a number of countries for their campaign. Given that Mexico, through our president, has spoken out, we immediately made contact with others who think the same, Ebrard said, noting they had heard from officials in France, Germany, the European Union, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The presidents orders are to make contact with all of them, share this concern and work on coming up with a joint proposal, Ebrard said. We will see what is proposed. Twitter has permanently banned Trumps account, while Facebook and Instagram have blocked him from posting on their platforms at least until the transition to President-elect Joe Biden is complete. Snapchat and Twitch have also disabled Trumps account. The companies acted against Trump after Democrats and some Republicans accused him of inciting the violence at the U.S. capitol on Jan. 6. Its not just social media companies who have moved to restrict Trump. Stripe, which handles payments and transactions on many websites, has said it will no longer process payments for Trumps campaign. Multiple world leaders and officials have recently came out to vocally criticize Big Techs censorship of Trump. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the companies actions problematic. Merkels spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the chancellor believes freedom of opinion is an essential right of elementary significance. This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislatorsnot according to a decision by the management of social media platforms, Seibert said. Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked. In recent days officials from Poland, Australia, and other countries have also come out to publicly criticize the censorship of Trump by Big Tech companies. Any ideologically driven decision to censor political speech is going to have ramifications, said Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China. Mosher said the companies are grossly underestimating the number of people in and out of governments overseas who support Trump. It will spark a massive move off of their platforms to other existing and new platforms that will be created, Mosher told The Epoch Times. In fact, a few years down the road, we may well be talking about how they destroyed their own business model. This move will cost them and their shareholders tens of billions of dollars. On Tuesday Lopez Obrador posted an invitation on Facebook for his followers to switch to Telegram, a cloud-based instant messaging software and application service. He said private companies should not have the right to decide who can speak. The Associated Press contributed to this report The warning came as life-changing warnings so often do completely out of the blue. I simply wasnt ready for it and, anyway, life is scary enough as it is. Ocado has warned that prepared carrots are out of stock. Tesco has issued a similar warning in relation to packs of cauliflower. The significance of this cannot be overstated. It means that if we want to eat carrots in the foreseeable future we might very well have to scrub them in water to remove any dirt, or even peel them. As for cauliflowers, how can we be sure what they are if they dont come in a plastic pack with cauliflower printed on the label? It means that if we want to eat carrots in the foreseeable future we might very well have to scrub them in water to remove any dirt, or even peel them [File photo] OK, enough of the clumsy sarcasm. There is an important point here. The story appeared in a perfectly serious report on these pages about the problems the food industry is facing because of a combination of Covid and Brexit. When Id finished reading it, I got on my bike, cycled to my local market and stocked up with a weeks fruit and veg from the same packed stall Ive used for 40 years. Its run by John, but his mother Sylvia still helps out even though shes well into her 80s. Johns father set up the stall after the War when the government was giving small grants to demobbed servicemen who were coming home to no jobs and no prospect of getting one. They wanted to encourage the spread of local markets and they succeeded. John has been working on the stall since he left school. You can buy just about anything in Shepherds Bush market from fresh fish to food for your goldfish and from showy dresses to suitcases to carry them home in. Anything except, that is, prepared carrots. John is about as likely to offer them to his loyal customers as I would be to buy them. As for cauliflowers, how can we be sure what they are if they dont come in a plastic pack with cauliflower printed on the label? I struggle to understand why anybody has ever needed a prepared carrot. Maybe its because they look clean, but I bet most people wash them anyway even if theyre about to boil them. As for the bags, surely weve all got the message about unnecessary plastic by now. Plastic pollution is doing massive harm to our precious planet something that this newspaper was campaigning about long before David Attenborough shocked us all by showing a dying turtle struggling to escape from a plastic bag. I suspect the answer to my bewilderment lies in one of the most misused words in the English language. Convenience. We became consumers back in the 1960s. The marketing geniuses who tell us why we absolutely must have what we didnt even know we wanted conned us into believing that convenience trumps everything. As a marketing ploy its hard to beat. If you package something as convenient, its a sure sell. Theres one big reason why this has come to be so. For decades, we have been living lives that came to be described as money rich and time poor. Thats to say, weve focused on earning the dosh even if it consumes all our time. So the young father never gets home from work in time to bath his baby before bedtime. Not to worry: just think of the pay packet! In such a world, what is convenient must be desirable simply because it saves us time. We have fallen for that message however ludicrous and even harmful to the planet it may be. Hence prepared carrots. But something interesting has happened in the past ten months. Covid has turned the message upside down. Most of us have found ourselves, whether we like it or not, living lives that are time-rich and money- poor. People have found themselves with time on their hands, doing things they didnt do before. The supermarkets ran out of flour because we all started making our own bread. DIY took off partly because people didnt want strangers in their homes doing jobs they could do for themselves. I confess I wasnt one of them. My own career in DIY came to an explosive end 35 years ago when I was trying to fix a hole in a flat roof and hired a bitumen burner. I turned on the gas to melt the stuff, stupidly shoved a match into the combustion chamber and an hour later I was in the local hospital getting treated for rather nasty burns to my hand and arm. I vividly remember reading the Nine OClock news on telly that night with my right arm hidden under the desk. Peeling a carrot is less risky. My mother eventually got her washing machine but never grasped the concept of leisure. Little did she know that she had a legal right to it Its not that convenience is, of itself, a bad thing. But it is when the benefit is trivial, or even non-existent, and the cost is real. Nor, God forbid, am I suggesting a return to the life that working-class mothers endured in the days before the birth of the convenience culture. My own mother was one of the millions who were both time-poor and cash-poor. Shed have leapt at the chance of a washing machine. But even they have their costs. A few days ago, a report was published showing that countless trillions of tiny, toxic plastic particles end up in the worlds oceans because we put clothes made from polyester in washing machines. They are a threat to the fish that swallow them and to us because we eat the fish. The solution is not to abandon washing machines but to do what the French are already doing and fit them with special filters to capture the particles. My mother eventually got her washing machine but never grasped the concept of leisure. Little did she know that she had a legal right to it. The right to rest and leisure is provided for in Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 when she was a young woman. Shed have been attracted to that notion but not if it meant buying prepared carrots. Whod risk a fortune on Emperors clothes? There are three possible reactions to the strange story of Stefan Thomas. He is the computer programmer who was paid in bitcoin for making a video about crypto- currency. That was ten years ago. At the time, bitcoin were worth a few dollars apiece. They have done rather well since then. His are now worth about 200 million. But theres a snag. To cash them in, he cant just pop into the bank. He has to use his password to get into a hugely sophisticated hard drive and he cant do that because hes forgotten it. Hes made eight guesses. All wrong. He gets two more shots at it. If hes still wrong, he loses the lot. It may all sound like a proposal from a pretty desperate game show producer but not if youre Mr Thomas. So those three reactions, it seems to me, are these: The first: serves him right for being so careless. The second: poor chap . . . good luck to him! The third: what is a bitcoin anyway? Im prepared to bet you dont know either. Weve all read masses of stuff about the currency but that doesnt mean we understand it. We know that to mine bitcoins, they use unimaginable amounts of computing muscle and burn enough electricity to power an entire city. But do we really know what mining means? Or why theyre going to stop mining them in 19 years? Or who invented bitcoin in the first place? Maybe our ignorance doesnt matter. Theres lots about the world of finance I dont begin to understand. But the notion that a coin that doesnt even exist can be worth a fortune today and virtually nothing tomorrow scares the life out of me. Why do I keep wanting to shout: The Emperor has no clothes! MIAMI, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Atlantic Sapphire ASA ("Atlantic Sapphire" or "the Company") (Oslo Brs: ASA;OTCQX: AASZF), the producer of Bluehouse Salmon the brand revolutionizing the salmon industry with its proprietary, sustainable technology is elated to join the OTCQX Best Market. The future of seafood is available in stores and now accessible to U.S. investors looking to make an impact. The Company, originally established in Norway, is already indexed on the main list of the Norwegian stock exchange Oslo Brs. With a vision to propel the animal protein production industry towards a more sustainable future, the Company established roots in Florida and celebrated its first U.S. harvest of Atlantic salmon in fall of 2020. Raised responsibly onshore in Florida, with 95% of water sourced from the Floridian saltwater Aquifer, Bluehouse Salmon is transforming the future of food with zero impact on coastal areas and at a fraction of the carbon footprint of fish imported by air. Contrary to the restricted growth prospects of the conventional sea-based salmon farming industry due to biological constraints, Atlantic Sapphire's unique technology allows for rapid volume growth. With amplified U.S. distribution, joining OTCQX, a premium US market operated by OTC Markets Group, was a natural progression for the company. Atlantic Sapphire Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Johan Andreassen said, "since the first U.S. harvest in September 2020, our Bluehouse Salmon has expanded its retail footprint to more than 1,000 locations, with more and more stores coming online as we continue to ramp-up production towards our 2031 target of 220,000 tons of harvest, the equivalent of almost 1 billion servings a year. As the world's largest land-based salmon farming company with primary operations in the U.S., we're thrilled to be quoted on a U.S. market and to further diversify our investor base as we expand operations." Atlantic Sapphire's groundbreaking, cutting-edge technology and aquaculture yield a healthy product that helps eliminates environmental concerns associated with conventional salmon farming. Bluehouse Salmon has a delicious mild flavor, is sushi grade and Non-GMO, is raised without antibiotics or pesticides in a water source free of micro plastics for an unmatched farm to fork freshness. As an innovator shaping the industry for a greener tomorrow, investors looking to make a difference can find Atlantic Sapphire ASA on OTCQX under the symbol "AASZF" starting today. For more information about the Company, visit: www.atlanticsapphire.com and for the brand, visit www.bluehousesalmon.com. U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the Company on www.otcmarkets.com. About Atlantic Sapphire ASA: Atlantic Sapphire is pioneering Bluehouse (land raised) salmon farming, locally, and transforming protein production, globally. Atlantic Sapphire has been operating its innovation center in Denmark since 2011 with a strong focus on R&D and innovation to equip the company with technology and procedures that enables the company to commercially scale up production in end markets close to the consumer. In the U.S., the company has since 2010 worked to identify and permit the ideal location for Bluehouse farming in Miami, Florida. The Company has completed its phase 1 build out which is projected to harvest approximately 10,000 tons of salmon annually and performed its first commercial harvest in the U.S. in September 2020. The Company has also secured the key U.S. water permits to produce up to 90,000 tons onsite and has a targeted harvest volume in 2031 of 220,000 tons. About OTC Markets Group Inc.: OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN, we connect a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for investors. To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com. FOR MORE MEDIA INFORMATION: DESTA GOURLEY BRIGHT RED AGENCY 850.668.2222 [email protected] SOURCE Atlantic Sapphire Related Links http://www.atlanticsapphire.com Regulatory News: ESI Group (Paris:ESI) (FR0004110310 ESI), leader and pioneer in Virtual Prototyping solutions, hereby releases the total number of shares making up the company's capital and the total number of voting rights in December 31, 2020, in accordance with articles 223-16 and 221-3 of the General Regulations of the "Autorite des Marches Financiers". Number of shares Number of theoretical voting rights * Number of voting rights ** 6,036,592 8,298,004 7,933,232 * The number of theoretical voting rights is calculated based on all shares eligible for voting right (single or double), including shares temporarily deprived of voting rights (treasury shares). ** All Group shares have equal right to vote, except treasury shares, which are deprived of the right to vote, and registered shares held for more than four years that are eligible for double voting rights. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005391/en/ Contacts: ESI Group 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. Uday Kotak Covid-19 has increased the risks associated with digital transactions in the Indian banking system and overall instances of fraudulent transactions have risen during the pandemic, veteran banker, Uday Kotak said. During COVID, we have witnessed increased fraud in the banking system. The thought of losing my customers money to theft is what keeps me up at night, Uday Kotak said in an interview given to a business magazine. So, while COVID has brought about a significant increase in digital adoption and transactions, it has also increased the risks associated with digital, Kotak said. Even before Covid, bank frauds have seen a major spike in the Indian banking system. According to RBI data, many banks, across the private and public sector, have seen a significant spike in number of fraud cases in 2019-20 and the quantum of money involved, indicating that challenges on risk management continues in the system. For instance, PNB (Punjab National Bank) reported Rs 14,633 crore worth of frauds in FY 20 from 509 cases, more than double compared with Rs 5,903 crore from 216 cases in FY 19, according to the official figures. To cover this, the bank has made a provision of Rs 14,625 crore in FY 20. In FY19, the bank has provided Rs 7,320 crore to cover the fraud, data showed. Stressing that risk management lies at the core of what distinguishes financial institutions, Kotak said the technology will be at the forefront for building the core of the banking business with customer-centricity as the focus. Fintechs and banks To a question on fintechs, Kotak said, while fintechs are very good at is understanding customer convenience, there is a balance between customer convenience and the safety of their money. This is a very important distinction one that we as bankers normally learn the hard way. As a leveraged institution, the bulk of our money is other peoples money, and net equity ratios of banks are obviously much higher than those of any other form of company, Kotak said. Covid taught banks the importance of risk management, Kotak said. Frankly, you never thought something like this would happen. It brings you to the core of risk management, because the cost of planning for this risk, which is a once-in-100-years event, is extremely difficult, Kotak said. Though most of us moved fast with work-from-home, I dont think many of us thought about the risk or our preparedness enough, compared to the speed with which we changed our business models or lives, the veteran banker added. More consolidation in the offing Kotak is of the view that the Indian banking system will undergo consolidation moving ahead and eventually private banks will control half of the assets of the banking system. Noting that even now about 65 percent of the Indian banking system is still owned by the state, Kotak said more private-sector banks are taking a share. My personal view is that you will see consolidation among public-sector banks, youll see greater consolidation in banking as a whole, and, long term, I think state-owned banking and private-sector banking will move to a ratio of 50/50, Kotak said. Last year, the government effected a major consolidation drive among state-run banks. It merged ten public sector banks into four. As part of the plan, Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India were merged into Punjab National Bank, Andhra Bank, and Corporation Bank into Union Bank of India, Syndicate Bank into Canara Bank, and Allahabad Bank was merged into Indian Bank. Covid--a great leveler Kotak said Covid is a great leveler to bridge the gap between urban and rural India. Though historically, there has been a migration from rural to urban India for more opportunities, if connectivity and broadband infrastructure could be properly built out in semi-urban and rural India, there would be less need to move to cities, Kotak said. This can lead to a more balanced India with a strong push to rural and semi-urban growth, even as urban India, which was otherwise choked, learns to live with the new way of life, said Kotak. Dr. Zaher Sahloul and Maysoon Almisri were awarded The Gandhi Peace Award for their work to help civilians in Syria and their peace building efforts. In a significant gesture by an American liberal organization, two influential Syrians were presented with a prestigious award. Promoting Enduring Peace, a nonprofit group, announced the recipients in March. Dr. Zaher Sahloul and Maysoon Almisri from Syria were given the prestigious award. Sahloul is a physician and past president of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), and Almisri is a former volunteer with the Syria Civil Defense (also known as the White Helmets), who rescued civilians caught up in Syrias civil war. The Gandhi Peace Award has been presented since 1960. Its laureates include Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Day, Benjamin Spock, Caesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., Bill McKibben, Ralph Nader, Amy Goodman, Jackson Browne and many more. The award comes with a 5,000 dollar prize and a medal fashioned from Peace Bronze, which is formed from metals extracted from retired nuclear weapons systems. The Syrian Observer spoke to both recipients to understand what this award meant to them and what it means for the Syrian cause. Dr. Sahloul said that he looks at the award as a recognition not of him personally but of the Syrian healthcare professionals on the frontline of defending medical neutrality and who have built resilience within their communities throughout the 10 years of war. He said the award recognizes the brilliant performance of the medical staff who fought for the safety of the Syrian people, in spite of limited resources, the frequent use of barbaric siege tactics, chemical weapons, illegal weapons like cluster bombs, and more importantly being systematically targeted by the Assad regime and Russia. More than 930 Syrian doctors and nurses have been killed on duty and more than 550 hospitals bombed according to Physicians for Human Rights. Maysoon Almisri told The Syrian Observer she felt motivated morally by the award. She says the award came just at the right time to highlight the great suffering of the Syrian people. The Syrian people are enduring the international communitys negligence. Their agony continues to this day. My organization continues its work in extremely difficult circumstances. Both recipients highlighted the lack of material and logistical capabilities, and the continued bombing of civilians on the one hand and defense centers and civil personnel on the other hand. The Gandhi Peace Award has been presented annually since 1960 to individuals and influencers who contributed to world peace, human rights, justice, and goodwill. This is the first time it has been awarded to a Syrian or a Muslim American. According to Dr. Sahloul, the award is, a recognition by the Left of the just struggle of the Syrian people against tyranny, brutality and oppression and also to counteract the disinformation campaign waged by the Assad regime, Russia, Russia Today and people like Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, Sara Flounders, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Dr. Zaher Sahloul is from Chicago and has given an enormous amount of his time to helping Syrians. He was last in Syria last winter. He is currently the president of Medglobal, which gives crucial help to victims in fourteen countries. Dr. Sahloul is a pulmonary specialist based in Chicago and has treated many patients suffering from Covid-19. He has frequently been quoted in the media, including the Wall Street Journal and Democracy Now!. He believes that it is important that, progressive and justice organizations and activists differentiate between the lies and propaganda of the Syrian regime and its allies and between facts on the ground. Regarding how Dr. Sahloul see the positive impact of the award on his performance as an activist and influencer, he said, The award brings attention to the principled struggle of the Syrian people for self determination and dignity, at a time when the world is paying no or minimal attention. It also coincides with the Biden administration coming to power, he added. He hopes it will serve as a reminder to the Democratic administration of its responsibility towards the Syrian people in order to avoid the mistakes that its predecessors have made in Syria. What happens in Syria matters, he said, and it will come back to haunt us if we dont end the crisis and bring peace. Almisri told The Syrian Observer that the award has prompted her to work more to alleviate the suffering of the people in Syria and to continue volunteering for the White Helmets Organization from her exile in Canada. In 2018, Almisri and her husband, along with dozens of other White Helmet volunteers, were evacuated to Canada after enduring relentless shelling and bombardment. The Toronto Star reports that Almisri and her fellow evacuees are slowly rebuilding their lives, while worrying about those still in danger. Almisri has been a volunteer in the Civil Defense, since its establishment in Daraa. It has been the most beautiful and most inspiring thing I have done in my life, Almisri says. Before working for the White Helmets, Almisri worked in the media. She still admires the role of the media and the people who wok in that domain, but for her, it is more inspired by rescuing the people lives. Working with the White Helmets, she says, gives me a strong motivation to continue difficult challenges and alleviate the suffering of our people, and today my pride is in my organization, which embodies the beautiful Syria with all its sects and affiliations. Operating in areas of Syria controlled by opposition forces, the White Helmets have been attacked by Damascus and Moscow for documenting war crimes perpetrated by both of those regimes. When asked why the regime and the Russians are vigorously attacking the White Helmets and consider it their first enemy, Almisri said that the White Helmets undo what the Russians and the regime do. They save the people they want to kill. They are the symbol of the Syrian peoples resilience and resistance and they change all the regimes victories into defeats. This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Syrian Observer. remaining of Thank you for reading! This is your last free article before you will be asked to subscribe. Already have a paid subscription? Sign in The program offers an innovative and transparent path to obtaining a legal education. Willamette University College of Law is excited to announce the creation of Law School Bound, a new initiative for qualified Willamette University undergraduate students providing transparent and direct access to a legal education. At its core, the Law School Bound program offers exclusive and enhanced pre-law advising to select students, placing them on a pathway to either a 3+3 or 4+3 direct admission program. Willamette University undergraduate students are eligible to apply for and be admitted to Law School Bound at the time of their undergraduate admission. The 3+3 BA/JD direct admit program requires that students meet the admissions requirements for Willamette University, and, by the end of their third undergraduate year, meet admissions criteria for the College of Law. Eligible students formally apply to the 3+3 program in their junior year, take the LSAT or the GRE and achieve a score no lower than the current median of Willamette Laws most recent entering class. Willamette Laws 3+3 program enables students to complete their education more quickly, reducing costs and student loan debt while providing students with an extra year of earning power after they graduate. The 4+3 BA/JD direct admit program enables Willamette undergraduate students to receive direct admission into the College of Law based on certain academic credentials. The 4+3 program includes four years of study at the College of Arts & Sciences and three years at Willamette Law. Students admitted to the program are guaranteed a $25,000 scholarship, renewable each year they are enrolled at Willamette Law and remain in good standing. The scholarship provides a cumulative $75,000 financial benefit to eligible Willamette University students. Collectively, the direct admit programs are designed to provide Willamette undergraduate students enhanced transparency in the law school admissions process alongside a transparent and durable scholarship. Students are supported in their academic journey through Willamette Laws mentorship-based approach to admissions. That approach offers undergraduates exclusive high-touch and personalized pre-law programming from Willamette Laws Assistant Dean of Admissions Leah Straley. "Historically, Willamette undergraduates who attend Willamette Law become phenomenal law students and attorneys, successfully pass the bar exam and find full-time employment upon graduation, Straley said. Willamette Law is extremely excited to provide two transparent pathways toward law school for Willamette undergraduate students. Mary Randers, Willamette University dean of admission, is equally excited for the expanded access the Law School Bound program provides for undergraduate students. Willamette draws students from all over the country with an interest in pursuing law, Randers said. Willamette University is distinct because we have partnered with Willamette Law to offer degree pathways through law school, helping distinguish us among many great undergraduate college options. Law School Bound is available immediately to applicants seeking admission to the undergraduate class of 2025. Both the 4+3 and 3+3 programs will likewise be made available to currently eligible Willamette University undergraduate students. Coronavirus. Credit: European Centers for Disease Control Nigeria will receive 10 million doses of coronavirus vaccine in March, Health Minister Osagie Ehanire said in a statement late Thursday. The vaccines add to 100,000 expected doses of Pfizer vaccine, he said. The statement did not specify which type of vaccine would be used for the 10 million doses. It was also unclear whether the batch would be financed by the African Union (AU) or as part of COVAX, which links the World Health Organization (WHO) with private partners to work for pooled procurement and equitable distribution. The most populous nation in Africa, with around 200 million people, Nigeria has officially reported some 104,000 COVID-19 cases, of which 1,382 have been fatal. But these figures are believed to fall short of the real toll, since the number of tests in low. Cases have risen sharply since the end of November, notably in the economic capital Lagos, a city of about 20 million people. The death rate has also increased. A variant strain of coronavirus has been discovered in recent months but it remains unclear whether it is more contagious or deadly. The authorities recently announced that they hope to vaccinate 40 percent of the population in the year 2021. But the challenges of transporting and storing vaccines for many millions of people are enormous in a country where adequate hospital facilities are lacking. Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 AFP A south Belfast special school has said its pupils can only attend part-time for two days a week from Monday. Fleming Fulton became the first special school in Northern Ireland to scale back on attendance, citing the increasing number of Covid cases in the community as the main reason for the decision. The move goes against the Education Minister's instruction that special schools should remain open to all students. In a letter to parents, principal Karen Hancock said no additional guidance from the Department of Education had been received by the school since January 5. "In light of the increasing numbers of positive cases and lack of additional guidance to mitigate risk from Monday 18, January, 2021, I am changing provision to a blend of pupils attending school for two days on either a Monday and Tuesday, or a Thursday and Friday," she said. "This new arrangement will help ensure that all pupils have equal access to provision. It is currently not possible for teachers to carry out face-to-face teaching as well as provide home learning activities. "I am very aware of anxiety of both staff and pupils returning to school, including travel on Education Authority (EA) buses and numbers of people in the school building. "I believe that this will help by reducing the numbers of pupils throughout classes, reduce numbers using EA transport and help ensure consistency and continuity." Read More Arrangements will be reviewed by governors on Tuesday, February 2. "If schools receive additional guidance from the minister to mitigate risk, combined with a reduction in Covid-19 cases within our communities, I hope to be able to return to full-time provision as soon as it is safe to do so," she added. The National Association of Head Teachers said that while special schools staff would work hard to keep them open, there might be circumstances in which a school would be required to reduce hours for pupils. "That could happen if safe levels of staffing cannot be maintained due to staff illness or absence, vital support from the Education Authority or the Department of Education (DE) is unavailable, or vital and irreplaceable support services and therapies that are needed by children and schools are unavailable," it said. "We recognise that DE have explained that where onsite provision is not possible for individual young people, remote provision will be made by the school. "However, we assert that the minister needs to be clear with parents that some factors will inevitably arise to require a reduction in onsite provision in order to keep children safe." Barbara Spence, chair of the Special Schools Strategic Leadership Group, said she fully understood the reasons behind the Fleming Fulton decision. "Every child that comes through our doors is a unique child," she said. "Every school estate is different. Schools have taken decisions, and they haven't taken them lightly. They've taken them for the best, for the needs of the children." Bengaluru, Jan 16 : A section of the discontented legislators who could not make it to the third round of cabinet expansion in Karnataka are likely to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who will be on a two-day visit to the state from January 16, on Sunday to put forth their grievances, in Belagavi. Yediyurappa on Wednesday expanded his 17-month-old government by inducting seven new ministers and dropping Excise Minister H. Nagesh. The cabinet was expanded after much deliberations and the exercise already saw some aspirants who could not make it, publicly airing their displeasure. At least a dozen legislators including party chief whip Sunil Kumar, Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, M. P. Renukacharya, Sathish Reddy, G. H. Thippa Reddy, Abhay Kumar Patil, Siddu Svadi, S. A. Ramadass and A. H. Vishwanath, who could not make it, have been airing their displeasure openly but so far none of them have confirmed that they will be meeting Shah. But the speculation is rife in the wake of Yediyurappa himself advising his critics on Thursday to meet party central leaders to complain against him, if they have any complaints. The disgruntled leaders are likely to target Yediyurappa's second son B.Y. Vijayendra when they meet Shah. Majority of ruling party MLAs have attacked Vijayendra's style of functioning while even some ministers in private conceded that his interference is increasing, but the ministers have not come out about it openly. The disgruntled leaders feel that they have a chance of meeting Shah and freely express their feelings in front of him on Sunday. 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. Just a short stroll from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and 300 yards north of the Lincoln Memorial is a blank space on the Washington, D.C., National Mall where the National Desert Storm and Desert Shield Memorial will go. With the 30th anniversary of the Persian Gulf War this month, the organizers of the memorial are looking to break ground and begin construction. There's just one problem: They're a little short on cash. Concept Design for the National Desert Storm and Desert Shield War Memorial. ( National Desert Storm and Desert Shield Memorial Association) "In December 2019, we received a $10 million pledge from Kuwait toward the construction of the memorial," Cee Freeman, vice president of the National Desert Storm War Memorial Association, told VFW Magazine. "We still need about $20 million to finish our fundraising." Read: Desert Storm Memorial Is Way Short of $40 Million Fundraising Goal To be able to start the construction, the memorial association must have 110% of the cost of its construction in the bank. The association has raised more than $9 million on its own while the Veterans of Foreign Wars contributed $500,000. The American Legion passed a resolution in 2017 supporting the memorial's construction. Approval for the design and location was received in December 2019, a process that was supposed to take around 18 months, but instead took three years. The delay was caused because extra effort had to go into making the memorial fit into the landscape, staying conscious of the other memorials around it. The U.S. Commission on Fine Arts approved the design and, once Congress decided on an area, the location was determined by the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission. Scott Stump, a Marine Corps veteran of Desert Storm and president of the National Desert Storm and Desert Shield Memorial Association hoped to have the memorial dedicated by Veterans Day 2021, in time to mark the 30th anniversary of the end of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The memorial's design is a circular wall, a swirl that curves left, moving outward, recalling the strategy used by the U.S. to cut off Iraqi troops. American forces made a 150-mile sweep from the west through the Saudi Arabian desert, a "left hook" (as it came to be known) that cut off Iraqi supply lines and routes of escape. (U.S. Army) Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and quickly overran the small Gulf nation's defenses. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would soon annex Kuwait as a new province. The United Nations and the Arab League attempted a diplomatic solution through negotiations and sanctions but, ultimately, Hussein's rhetoric turned to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. At the request of the Saudi King Fahd, U.S. President George H.W. Bush approved Operation Desert Shield, the strategic buildup of U.S. military forces to counter the perceived threat of an Iraqi invasion. As negotiations failed to dislodge Iraq, U.N. Resolution 678 gave Iraqi troops until Jan. 15, 1991, to leave Kuwait or be removed by force. Forces from 34 countries had already converged in Saudi Arabia when the deadline passed without any word from Iraq. The next day, coalition air forces launched a 42-day air war. The ground campaign was launched on Feb. 24, 1991, forcing a full Iraqi retreat from Kuwait in 100 hours. In all, 298 American troops died in the conflict. Their names will be included on the Gulf War Memorial Wall, as well as the 34 countries who joined the American coalition to liberate Kuwait. Anyone interested in learning more about the Desert Storm Memorial can go to the National Desert Storm and Desert Shield Memorial Association website. You can also donate and buy merchandise to help the cause. -- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook. Want to Learn More About Military Life? Whether you're thinking of joining the military, looking for post-military careers or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to Military.com to have military news, updates and resources delivered directly to your inbox. 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. Several international airlines have streamlined flights to South Africa this week following travel restrictions meant to limit the spread of a new coronavirus variant fuelling a rapid infection resurge. A growing list of countries are limiting travel to and from South Africa since a more transmissible variant of the virus, dubbed 501Y.V2, was announced in December. The new border closures have forced major airlines to either suspend or reduce flights in and out of Africa's most industrialised economy. Emirates this week announced a 13-day halt on all South Africa routes for "operational reasons". KLM said it had to modify its schedules after the Dutch government restricted travel from South Africa to Amsterdam, forcing the company to cancel several flights this week. Lufthansa also told AFP it was "adjusting its flight program" to South Africa to "reduced demand". The curtailing comes amid a worrying resurge in South Africa's coronavirus infections -- widely attributed to 501Y.V2 -- that forced authorities to impose a new set of restrictions in December. Concerns over spiralling infections prompted South Africa's education ministry on Friday to delay the start of the school year by two weeks to February 15. "This is done to provide relief to the health system which is already struggling to cope with the current demands," Deputy Basic Education Minister Reginah Mhaule said in a statement. South Africa has recorded close to 1.3 million cases and over 35,500 fatalities since March -- the highest on the continent. More than 240,000 infections and 6,000 deaths have been reported in January alone. The uptick in cases, which started in southern South Africa, has rapidly hit the most populous Gauteng province, home to the financial hub Johannesburg and capital Pretoria. Premier David Makhura this week warned that coronavirus-linked deaths had skyrocketed as a result. "When we do a comparison per week, we see the number of people succumbing to Covid-19 is increasing quite significantly," Makhura said during an update on the province's health response. Gauteng, one of the epicentres of South Africa's outbreak during its first infection wave, accounts for over a quarter of the country's cases and 18 percent of deaths. 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. West Belfast man Tim Brannigan has said he was "full of emotions" following the publication of the long-awaited final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission. Mr Brannigan (55) spent almost a year in Nazareth Lodge care home in Belfast after his mother Peggy, a mother of three, found out she was pregnant after having an affair. His mother later collected him from the care home and brought him up believing he was adopted. Speaking this week, Mr Brannigan said the stigma of being a child given up at birth followed him through his life. "It seems alien now but in my childhood it was very much part of my culture that there were secrets. I sensed the stigma that sometimes came in the street but also a couple of times at home," he said. "The first time I realised I was black was when one of my brothers pointed it out to me and told me I was born in a home." In those days, the church saw so-called "illegitimate" children as a problem to be solved, he said. "When people went to the home in those days in the 1960s, there were 200 kids there at any one time. Kids were seen as problems and the nuns were glad for someone to take them off their hands," he added. It led to a culture where anyone could pick any child they wanted - meaning black children or those who had a disability were left behind. "The questions were, 'have you got a job' and 'have you got a house'. That meant you were respectable. Children were seen as problems and that's all over the report." Mr Brannigan didn't know the truth of the circumstances surrounding his birth until he was 19. "She wrote not for adoption in the big ledger book [in the home]. The Catholic Church was all nods and winks but on a moral level there wasn't much they could do because I was her child. They facilitated this plan. This week I felt very lucky as I listened to people on the radio," said Mr Brannigan. Expand Close Difficulties: Tim Brannigan and as a child with his mother Peggy / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Difficulties: Tim Brannigan and as a child with his mother Peggy The publication of the report, which details the experiences of women and children who lived in 14 mother and baby homes and four county homes - a sample of the overall number of homes - between 1922 and 1998 and confirms that about 9,000 children died in the homes under investigation, has prompted emotion alongside other events in Mr Brannigan's life, he said. A daughter he never knew he had has reconnected with him in recent weeks. "She waited until it was the right moment in her life. When I was her age, I was hostile to the idea of searching for my father but life changes you. "A lot of the reaction is why do you come forward and what do you want. When I was listening to people last night, there was a man saying 'I just want to know'. There's something elemental and primal in humans," he said. Of the infants who are known to have died in mother and baby homes, Mr Brannigan says there is survivor guilt and he feels "lucky" he was not left there. He is glad Taoiseach Micheal Martin on Wednesday offered an apology for the treatment of women and children in the homes. "I felt glad that he said it and that the state acknowledged what happened and it wasn't your fault all the stuff the nuns did to you," he said. "All the names you were called. The nuns were wrong, that was abuse. I'm aware that there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied." The Minister of Justice, Stelian Ion, on Friday discussed with the Italian Ambassador to Romania, Marco Giungi, about the situation of persons who were convicted in Romania but carry out their sentence in Italy, expressing their intention to analyze in the future the resumption of the exchange of liaison magistrates. According to a press release of the Ministry of Justice sent to AGERPRES, Stelian Ion had a courtesy meeting with the Ambassador of the Italian Republic in Romania, Marco Giungi. "During the meeting, they discussed the relations between Romania and Italy in the field of justice and voiced their satisfaction over the strengthening of the bilateral cooperation. At the same time, some elements of interest were highlighted, especially regarding an increased exchange of experience in areas such as the fight against organized crime, fight against corruption, judicial cooperation in civil matters - an area in which the importance of technical meetings on the issue of civilian aspects of the international abduction of children was underlined," the same press release read.Regarding judicial cooperation in criminal matters, the press release said that the Minister of Justice thanked for the very good collaboration with the Italian authorities in this field and mentioned the situation of convicted persons in Romania and who are serving their sentences in Italy.The Minister of Justice specified that, although the Romanian side is aware that, in these cases, the Italian legislation that gives effect to the ties of those persons with the Italian state applies, he would like a closer communication with the Italian authorities on this matter, including a future analysis in the future of the resumption of the exchange of liaison magistrates between the two countries.The Ministry of Justice states that Stelian Ion also expressed his desire to have a meeting in the near future with his Italian counterpart, during which the aspects of cooperation that are a priority can be addressed in detail. In a shocking development, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) on Friday has issued a statement threatening the Chief Justice of India Sharad Arvind Bobde, the chief judge of the Supreme Court (SC) over the ongoing farmers' protests. In a statement accessed by Zee News, SFJ General Counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has said, "Do Not Stop Punjab Farmers Kesari Tractor Rally On January 26. READ | Bhupinder Singh Mann receives threats from Canada after recusing himself from Supreme Court-appointed panel The statement added, "You have sided with those who had committed genocide of Sikhs and now you are siding with (Narendra) Modi government who is responsible for enocide of Punjab Farmers. This is not 1990s; Its 2021 and SFJ Will hold all justices accountable under the international laws. On January 12, the Supreme Court had ordered a stay of the implementation of the contentious three new farm laws hoping this will end the prolonged protests by the farmers and also constituted a four-member panel of agri experts to resolve the impasse between their leaders and the Centre. But in their response to what the apex court called an extraordinary order of stay, the farmer unions made it clear they will not call off the protests until the three laws enacted in September are repealed. Thousands of farmers, mostly from Haryana and Punjab, are protesting at Delhi borders since November 28 last, demanding a repeal of the three laws and a legal guarantee to the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system for their crops. The leaders of the unions also claimed the members of the court-appointed committee tasked to listen to their grievances are "pro-government" and asserted they will not appear before it. On January 14, Bhupinder Singh Mann, one of four experts nominated by the Supreme Court for negotiations with farmers protesting against the farm laws, is learned to have received threats from Canada after recusing himself from SC-appointed panel. Bhupinder Singh Mann on Thursday announced to withdraw his name from the Supreme Court-appointed panel. He quit the panel saying he wanted to remain impartial and due to public sentiment in connection with the farmers ongoing protest. Mann said, "While I am thankful to Hon'ble Supreme Court of India for nominating me in the 4 member committee to start a dialogue with Kisan Unions on the three laws brought in by the Central Government. As a farmer myself and a Union leader, in view of the prevailing sentiments and apprehensions amongst the farm unions and the public in general, I am ready to sacrifice any position offered or given to me so as to not compromise the interests of Punjab and farmers of the country, I am recusing myself from the Committee and I will always stand with my farmers and Punjab." Earlier on Tuesday, the top court had named four experts to the panel including Ashok Gulati, agricultural economist; Bhupinder Singh Mann, President, Bhartiya Kisan Union-Mann; Anil Ghanwat, President, Shetkari Sangathan; and Pramod Kumar Joshi, International Food Policy Research Institute. On Tuesday, Attorney General (AG) KK Venugopal had told the Supreme Court that the Khalistan supporters have infiltrated the farmers protest against the three farm laws. When a bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde along with and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian told the AG that if there is infiltration by a banned organisation, then the government has to confirm it. The CJI asked Venugopal to file an affidavit by Wednesday, AG replied, "Yes, I will file an affidavit and the IB reports." The Chief Justice queried the AG, "Will you confirm this?" The AG replied "We have said that Khalistanis have infiltrated into the protests," He added the government cannot allow one lakh people protesting against the farm laws to come into the national capital. "One group may go to the Parliament...the other group may come to the Supreme Court", said the AG. The Chief Justice further queried the AG, "Isn`t it in your power to check the number of people and see if they are armed or not and if there is an infiltration by a banned organisation? The AG reiterated the government will bring on record the IB report on the aspect of infiltration. Live TV In Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Facebook kept up posts that it had been warned contributed to violence. In India, activists have urged the company to combat posts by political figures targeting Muslims. And in Ethiopia, groups pleaded for the social network to block hate speech after hundreds were killed in ethnic violence inflamed by social media. The offline troubles that rocked the country are fully visible on the online space, activists, civil society groups and journalists in Ethiopia wrote in an open letter last year. For years, Facebook and Twitter have largely rebuffed calls to remove hate speech or other comments made by public figures and government officials that civil society groups and activists said risked inciting violence. The companies stuck to policies, driven by American ideals of free speech, that give such figures more leeway to use their platforms to communicate. But last week, Facebook and Twitter cut off President Donald Trump from their platforms for inciting a crowd that attacked the US Capitol. Those decisions have angered human rights groups and activists, who are now urging the companies to apply their policies evenly, particularly in smaller countries where the platforms dominate communications. When I saw what the platforms did with Trump, I thought, 'You should have done this before and you should do this consistently in other countries around the world,' said Javier Pallero, policy director at Access Now, a human rights group involved in the Ethiopia letter. Around the world, we are at the mercy of when they decide to act. Sometimes they act very late, he added, and sometimes they act not at all. David Kaye, a law professor and former United Nations monitor for freedom of expression, said political figures in India, the Philippines, Brazil and elsewhere deserved scrutiny for their behavior online. But he said the actions against Trump raised difficult questions about how the power of American internet companies was applied, and if their actions set a new precedent to more aggressively police speech around the world. The question going forward is whether this is a new kind of standard they intend to apply for leaders worldwide, and do they have the resources to do it, Kaye said. There is going to be a real increase in demand to do this elsewhere in the world. Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, is the worlds largest social network, with more than 2.7 billion monthly users; more than 90 percent of them live outside the United States. The company declined to comment, but has said the actions against Trump stem from his violation of existing rules and do not represent a new global policy. Our policies are applied to everyone, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks chief operating officer, said in a recent interview with Reuters. The policy is that you cant incite violence, you cant be part of inciting violence. Twitter, which has about 190 million daily users globally, said its rules for world leaders were not new. When it reviews posts that could incite violence, Twitter said the context of the events is crucial. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all, Jack Dorsey, Twitters CEO, said in a post Wednesday. Yet, he said, the decision sets a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation. There are signs that Facebook and Twitter have begun acting more assertively. After the Capitol attack, Twitter updated its policies to say it would permanently suspend the accounts of repeat offenders of its rules on political content. Facebook took action against a number of accounts outside the United States, including deleting the account of a state-run media outlet in Iran and shutting down government-run accounts in Uganda, where there has been violence ahead of elections. Facebook said the takedowns were unrelated to the Trump decision. Many activists singled out Facebook for its global influence and not applying rules uniformly. They said that in many countries it lacked the cultural understanding to identify when posts might incite violence. Too often, they said, Facebook and other social media companies do not act even when they receive warnings. In 2019 in Slovakia, Facebook did not take down posts by a member of parliament who was convicted by a court and stripped of his seat in government for incitement and racist comments. In Cambodia, Human Rights Watch said the company was slow to act to the involvement of government officials in a social media campaign to smear a prominent Buddhist monk championing human rights. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has used Facebook to target journalists and other critics. After a wave of violence, Ethiopian activists said Facebook was being used to incite violence and encourage discrimination. The truth is, despite good intentions, these companies do not guarantee uniform application or enforcement of their rules, said Agustina Del Campo, director of the center for studies on freedom of expression at University of Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And oftentimes, when they attempt it, they lack the context and understanding needed. In many countries, theres a perception that Facebook bases its actions on its business interests more than on human rights. In India, the country with the most Facebook users, the company has been accused of not policing anti-Muslim content from political figures for fear of upsetting the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling party. Developments in our countries arent addressed seriously, said Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, a digital rights group in India. Any takedown of content raises the questions of free expression, but incitement of violence or using a platform for dangerous speech is not a free speech matter, but a matter of democracy, law and order. But even as many activists urged Facebook and Twitter to be more proactive to protect human rights, they expressed anger about the power the companies have to control speech and sway public opinion. Some also warned that the actions against Trump would cause a backlash, with political leaders in some countries taking steps to prevent social media companies from censoring speech. Government officials in France and Germany raised alarms over banning Trumps accounts, questioning whether private companies should be able to unilaterally silence a democratically elected leader. A draft law under consideration for the 27-nation European Union would put new rules around the content moderation policies of the biggest social networks. Barbora Bukovska, the senior director for law and policy at Article 19, a digital rights group, said the risk was particularly pronounced in countries whose leaders have a history of using social media to stoke division. She said the events in Washington provided momentum in Poland for a draft law from the ruling right-wing nationalist party that would fine social media companies for taking down content that is not explicitly illegal, which could allow more targeting of LGBTQ people. These decisions on Trump were the right decisions, but there are broader issues beyond Trump, Bukovska said. By Adam Satariano c.2021 The New York Times Company NOTE: Tomorrows podcast is going to be epic, due to the intel we have already received this morning. Dont miss it. Hear the full podcast below, or visit the home page of NaturalNews.com to download the MP3 files directly. But Trump still holds all the cards, and hes still President for five more days. The deep state is in a total panic, and this is why they were desperately trying to remove Trump from office with a drive-by impeachment following a staged false flag attack on the capitol. Trumps declass bombshell is part of the exposure of the corrupt, criminal cabal that currently runs America. Joe Biden may even be implicated, and its certain that Chief Justice Roberts will be named in some of the documents, as he signed the illegal FISA warrants. About the author: Mike Adams (aka the Health Ranger) is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com called Food Forensics), an environmental scientist, a patent holder for a cesium radioactive isotope elimination invention, a multiple award winner for outstanding journalism, a science news publisher and influential commentator on topics ranging from science and medicine to culture and politics. Follow his videos, podcasts, websites and science projects at the links below. Mike Adams serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation. He has also achieved numerous laboratory breakthroughs in the programming of automated liquid handling robots for sample preparation and external standards prep. The U.S. patent office has awarded Mike Adams patent NO. US 9526751 B2 for the invention of Cesium Eliminator, a lifesaving invention that removes up to 95% of radioactive cesium from the human digestive tract. Adams has pledged to donate full patent licensing rights to any state or national government that needs to manufacture the product to save human lives in the aftermath of a nuclear accident, disaster, act of war or act of terrorism. He has also stockpiled 10,000 kg of raw material to manufacture Cesium Eliminator in a Texas warehouse, and plans to donate the finished product to help save lives in Texas when the next nuclear event occurs. No independent scientist in the world has done more research on the removal of radioactive elements from the human digestive tract. Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and American Indians. He is of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his Health Ranger passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution. Adams is the author of the worlds first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books. In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products. In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories. With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies. Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed strange fibers found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health gurus, dangerous detox products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics. Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness. In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over fifteen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics. Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com. Find more science, news, commentary and inventions from the Health Ranger at: Brighteon.com: Brighteon.com/channel/hrreport Diaspora: (uncensored social network) Share.NaturalNews.com GAB: GAB.com/healthranger Podcasts: HealthRangerReport.com Online store: HealthRangerStore.com #1 Bestselling Science Book Food Forensics: FoodForensics.com iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-health-ranger-report/id1063165791 SoundCloud: Soundcloud.com/healthranger Health Rangers science lab CWClabs.com Health Ranger bio HealthRanger.com TruthWiki.org Search engine: Webseed.com Specifically, Mr. Johnsons lawyers argued that the combination of the coronavirus and the governments lethal injection protocol would place him especially at risk of experiencing flash pulmonary edema while still sensate. Flash pulmonary edema, a condition in which fluid rapidly accumulates in the lungs, has been at the center of some challenges to the federal governments execution protocol. The courts have been largely unreceptive to those claims. But briefly, it seemed as if the coronavirus would provide Mr. Johnson a reprieve. A judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia suspended Mr. Johnsons execution and another execution scheduled for Friday until at least March. Shortly after, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned that order. Joined by another judge on the panel, Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the Appeals Court cited Supreme Court precedent that states that the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death something that, of course, isnt guaranteed to many people. In a filing with the Supreme Court, the government contrasted its lethal injection protocol with death by hanging, claiming that hanging could cause suffocation that lasts several minutes. Even if coronavirus infections would make the prisoners executions more painful, the government argued, the brief duration of pain, most likely measured in seconds or at most two minutes, would be far less than that of inmates executed by hanging. Mr. Johnson is a convicted serial killer who murdered and maimed multiple people on different occasions, and whose victims included innocent bystanders, the government said in a separate filing with the Supreme Court. Their families have waited decades for the sentence to be enforced and are currently in Terre Haute, Ind., for the execution. A majority of the Supreme Court sided with the government in declining Mr. Johnsons requests for reprieve. Mr. Johnsons lawyers also sought to challenge his execution by arguing he was intellectually disabled, rendering it unlawful. President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and President of Afghanistan Mohammad Ashraf Ghani launched new international infrastructure facilities, including the railway between the Afghan stations Akina and Andkhoy, built by the Turkmen railway workers, as well as the Kerki (Turkmenistan) - Shibergan (Afghanistan) power transmission line and fiber-optic communication lines. The leaders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan joined the inauguration ceremony of the facilities via teleconference - the President of Turkmenistan from the city of Turkmenabat and the President of Afghanistan from Kabul. The commissioning of these facilities will open up opportunities for the two states to efficiently implement the transit transport, energy and communication potential of cooperation. Speaking at the ceremony, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov noted that these three projects would give a powerful impetus to the long-term development of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. According to him, this work will contribute to strengthening the security and economic development of the region. In his turn, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani emphasized that projects for development of railways, electricity trade and establishment of a fiber-optic network would help to improve the living conditions of the Afghan people and create conditions for development of the region. We want to turn Afghanistan into a regional crossroads, and, undoubtedly, Turkmenistan, which has achieved many successes in this area, can play an important role in this regard as a good neighbor and strategic partner of Afghanistan, he stressed. The 30 kilometer-long Akina-Andkhoy railway branch is part of a large-scale transport project initiated by Ashgabat with the view of connecting the countries of the region with the railway network of China, the Caucasus and Turkey. The Kerki (Turkmenistan) - Shibergan (Afghanistan) power transmission line is 153 kilometers long with the capacity of 500 kW. It is part of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power transmission line project that provides for exports of Turkmen electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The new fiber-optic line between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan is designed to serve as a key information bridge between the countries of the region and the world. TURKMENISTAN.RU, 2021 Some of Australia's largest employers are delaying plans to bring workers back to the office in Sydney and Melbourne until February as government advice on borders and CBD access chops and changes. Despite COVID-19 cases not breaching double digits in any of the major states since Melbourne's second wave last year, state premiers have been quick to slam shut borders and prescribe masks to contain outbreaks as they arise. Melbourne's Bourke Street, empty in August 2020, shows the vulnerability of CBDs in the pandemic. Credit:Wayne Taylor Many office spaces are now decorated with signs explaining social distancing and limiting the number of staff per room, with some employers offering subsidised parking to ease the pressure on public transport. In Victoria, up to 50 per cent of office workers can return to their desks from Monday, without being required to wear a mask indoors, after the state recorded nine consecutive days of zero community transmission of the deadly virus. This was originally slated to commence on January 11, but was pushed back after a cluster broke out in the city's south-east. Texas House Bill 427 proposes a constructive adjustment to state transportation funding. Lawmakers would be remiss not to make it. The bill would establish an annual fee, in addition to registration, for electric and hybrid vehicles $200 for electric and $100 for hybrid. The fee would boost state transportation revenues somewhat in the near term, but the long-term significance is far greater given the seismic changes underway in how we get around. It takes about $6 billion each year to keep Texas moving. That number counts only the most conventional highway projects in the states transportation improvement program, and it multiplies quickly when nontraditional road projects, operating costs of the Texas Department of Transportation, and metropolitan and rural transit systems are included. Per-gallon motor fuel taxes paid by road users historically have covered a good chunk of those highway costs. But the state gas tax has been stuck at 20 cents per gallon for 30 years. Gas tax revenues also cannot keep pace with vehicle use and rising highway construction costs. As cars and trucks grow more fuel efficient and electric vehicles become more popular, per-gallon tax collections shrink relative to miles driven on Texas roads. Ideally, legislators would raise the state gas tax to answer these trends. Instead, they won approval to divert state sales tax and oil and natural gas production (severance) tax revenues to supplement road funding. Those taxes are not road user fees, and both support other important public purposes including K-12 education, the rainy-day fund and general fund expenditures such as health and human services. The bill, introduced by state Rep. Ken King of Hemphill, will help to recoup infrastructure costs from hybrid and electric vehicle drivers who currently pay little or no gas taxes. Projected near-term revenues are about $55 million, but that number will grow with Texas electric vehicles usage. In mid-2022, the Ford F-150 one of Texans favorite vehicles will hit the market in electric form, and Teslas Gigafactory could produce cars before years end. Still, HB 427s significance may be greater in the long term. The fee would help Texas prepare for a transportation future that is less reliant on petroleum. Authorizing this new revenue source would begin to reconcile Texas transportation funding with the future of 21st-century mobility. Experts agree that the future will be increasingly shared, electrified and autonomous, and it will demand new approaches to funding and investing in transportation. As researchers who study mobility and public policy, we think this proposal is worth doing. The fee is unlikely to suppress demand for renewably fueled vehicles in Texas. Drivers considering such a purchase would also weigh anticipated savings from avoided fuel costs in their decision. Still, a lower EV fee would be more equitable. By comparison, drivers of conventional internal-combustion engine vehicles pay about $103 annually in Texas gas taxes, and the average electric vehicle fee across states that collect them is $120 per year. Later, legislators can examine distance-based road user charges to align fees with road usage. The current bill directs the revenues to the state highway fund, restricting them to road and bridge investments. That might be another area of the bill for lawmakers to revisit. Forward-thinking adjustments would allow the fee to support other transportation modes and policy measures to increase electric vehicle market share such as support for charging infrastructure. Transportation contributes more than a third of Texas carbon emissions, and per capita motor fuel use in Texas is 20 percent above the national average. The future of mobility demands transportation funding and investment practices that support a sustainable course. The Legislature should reimagine the laws for transportation revenue collection and expenditure to enhance sustainable mobility. House Bill 427 is a step in the right direction. The same proposal was introduced in 2019 but did not advance beyond the transportation committee. Letting that happen again would be a wrong turn for the future of mobility and more sustainable transportation in Texas. Sciara is an assistant professor of community and regional planning at the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. Waxman is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. When Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was enacted in 1996, the internet was a far smaller and friendlier place. The controversial law--which frees online platforms of legal responsibility for most of the content that their users post--passed amid the early days of the dot-com bubble, when many of today's tech giants were still young upstarts. Social media platforms Facebook and Twitter were years away from launching, let alone becoming the behemoths they are now. Section 230 played a big role in enabling the astounding growth of tech firms that rely on third-party content. Now, with calls to repeal the law coming from all over the political spectrum, it's fair to ask whether a startup in 2021 still could thrive without its protections. That's a quandary facing both lawmakers and digital rights advocates. Critics of repealing 230 argue that new platforms, fearful of mountains of litigation, will opt to no longer allow any third-party content at all. Some fear that repeal could end the free internet as we know it. But even among the anti-repeal factions in Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley, there's a growing consensus that the law is in need of some sort of reform. "Section 230 was laid out in a very different era online, and while many aspects were prescient and should be preserved, others are overdue for reform," says William Partin, a research analyst at the internet research group Data & Society. Some have suggested that the law be amended to include only written speech, as opposed to photos, videos, and other types of content. "I think the vital thing is ensuring that its worthy goals are preserved," Partin says. "That is, to protect moderation efforts by platforms that can be demonstrably shown to have been conducted in good faith." Repealing Section 230 has long been a policy priority of President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. The issue gained steam in the aftermath of the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, when Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and other big tech companies concluded that Trump had violated their content policies and booted him from their platforms. Google, Apple, and Amazon also effectively shut down Parler, a relatively new social platform where users regularly called for violence in the weeks leading up to the riots. Trump's supporters see the demise of the law as a way to punish the tech giants for what they perceive as an anti-conservative bias. But it's Section 230's "tech immunity shield" that has granted those supporters an online environment where they can post nearly whatever they want in the first place. Online platforms have enormous latitude on how much or how little they moderate, which has allowed the type of content that preceded the riots to proliferate. Thanks to Section 230, social media giants have been able turn a blind eye as their platforms fuel online harassment and violent acts, influence elections, and become a portal for state-sponsored propaganda. Instead of global events influencing social media, it's become the other way around. That's an outcome that both regulators and internet companies could scarcely have imagined in 1996. For his part, President-Elect Biden has said he is in favor of repealing the law as well. But Congress may be more likely to take action than the eecutive branch. While the FCC under Trump argued that it had rulemaking authority over Section 230, FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who is expected to lead the agency under Biden, has said that it's not the job of the FCC to serve as the president's "speech police." Measured reforms like the Earn It Act and the PACT Act have bipartisan support in Congress. And while both bills have drawn their fair share of criticism from tech groups, academics, and civil rights organizations, most seem to agree that reforming Section 230 is a better way forward than dumping the law altogether. "If you repeal Section 230, one of two things will happen. Either platforms will decide they don't want to moderate anything, or platforms will moderate everything," says Sinan Aural, an MIT professor and the author of The Hype Machine. Instead, he is advocating for a national commission of industry experts, scientists, journalists, and academics that can weigh the fate of everything from Section 230 to election influence to antitrust issues surrounding big tech. But how would Section 230 reform affect small businesses? Co-sponsored by senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and John Thune (R-North Dakota), the PACT Act--which requires online platforms to remove content in certain cases, such as when served with a court order--includes some rule exemptions for platforms that generate less than $25 million in annual revenue and attract fewer than one million monthly active users. No further action on the bill was taken after it was referred to the relevant Senate committee last summer. Even if it were to be reintroduced in the new Senate, there are still concerns that such rules wouldn't be enough to protect small tech firms from liability. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group that opposes the PACT Act, argues that it gives big tech an advantage over startups. Small firms, the organization argues, simply don't have the financial resources to meet new regulations or take on the burden of liability for their user content. There's also ample criticism of the Earn It Act, which would amend Section 230 to hold businesses liable for acts of child sex exploitation that occur on their platforms. Filtering content to comply with the measure would be far too expensive and onerous for small companies, note Katie Jordan and Ryan Polk, senior policy advisers at nonprofit think tank the Internet Society, in a blog post. The Senate judiciary committee unanimously approved the legislation last summer, and a companion bill in the House was introduced in October. What remains clear is that while we no longer live in the internet of 1996, we no longer can live in the internet of today without real threats of harm to many groups and individuals. Moving forward, tech platforms need to look very different, and reforms to Section 230 will likely play a pivotal role in shaping them. But any one-size-fits-all approach to reform has the potential to benefit big tech over small and midsize businesses. Founders of tech startups, instead of being passive actors in the reform process, should make the most of the advantages they have at this moment over large, established companies. It's easier to design a new product with a certain vision in mind than to tailor an existing platform and risk alienating your user base. Birbhum MP Satabdi Roy, who resigned from the Tarapith Vikash Parishad on Friday and voiced her discontent with the Trinamool Congress, later in the day clarified she will remain in the party and not visit Delhi tomorrow. This statement has put to rest all speculation of her quitting the TMC and joining the BJP ahead of crucial West Bengal assembly elections. "I held talks with Abhishek Banerjee (TMC leader and Mamata Banerjee's nephew) today and he addressed the issues raised by me. I am not going to Delhi tomorrow. I am going to remain with TMC. All those in the party who have problems should raise them. If 10 people in the party raise a problem, then the party should solve it," ANI quoted Roy as saying. Earlier in the day, Roy hinted she has had problems with the ruling party in Bengal and may take a "decision" on Saturday. The actor-turned-politician in a Facebook post claimed she is not being informed about party events in her constituency, which has caused her "mental pain". "I want to tell them that I want to attend all programmes. But I don't get to know about many programmes and if I am not even informed about events in my constituency, then how can I attend. I was mentally pained because of this," the post on Satabdi Roy Fans' Club page read. Roy said she has spent more time with the people of her constituency than her own family in the last 10 years and even her enemies cannot discredit her on this account. "So, this year I am trying to take some decisions so that I can spend the entire time with you. I am grateful to you. You have been supporting me since 2009. Hope you will support me in the coming days too," the post read. "If I take any decision, will let you know on January 16, Saturday at 2 pm," the post added. The three-time Birbhum MP had said she will inform the public at 2pm on Saturday of any "decision". Her post had created ripples in the TMC, which had promised to reach out to Roy. On being asked earlier in the day whether she will meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah during her visit to Delhi, Roy had said, "There are always chances of meeting people you know but there is no such possibility." Roy had twice resigned from the Tarapith Unnayan Parishad, but her decision was not accepted, sources close to the MP said. Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May. (with inputs from PTI) 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. Jan 15 : Around 300 to 400 Pakistan-based terrorists are waiting in launchpads across the Line of Control to infiltrate into the Indian side, said Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Friday, adding that forces at forward locations are keeping an eye on their activities. The Army Chief also said that the forces deployed at Line of Control are giving a befitting reply to Pakistan's Ceasefire violations. "There has been a around 44 per cent increase in ceasefire violations by Pakistan at the LoC," said General Naravane, speaking during the Army Day celebrations on January 15 in Delhi. Till December 28 this year, Pakistan carried out 4,700 incidents of ceasefire violations at Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Ceasefire violations have jumped to 4,700, the highest in the last 17 years. In 2019, there were 3,168 ceasefire violations. Interestingly, out of the 3,168 ceasefire violations, 1,551 have taken place since August. The security establishment noticed that it was after the government abrogated Article 370 in August last year that there was a steady rise in ceasefire violations. In 2018, Pakistan carried out 1629 incidents of ceasefire violations. Pakistan is using drones and tunnels to smuggle arms and ammunition into the country. "At LoC, our forces are keeping an eye on Pakistan's activities. The counter-infiltration grid has been strengthened making it nearly impossible for Pakistan to push terrorists into Indian territory," said the Indian Army Chief. He also pointed out that the strengthening of the counter-infiltration grid has led to decrease in terror activities in Jammu and the Kashmir Valley. Last year, around 200 terrorists were killed in counter-terror operations, Indian Army Chief said. Talking about the situation in North East states, Gen Naravane said that around 600 extremists surrendered in the last one year and huge cache of arms and ammunition were recovered. "We have got huge success in counter-terror operations working along with the Myanmar army," the Indian Army chief said. He also said that the force, along with Assam Rifles and state governments is able to successfully implement the government's Act East Policy. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Wake up, eat breakfast, join Zoom meetings. Eat lunch, join more Zoom meetings, sleep. Ditto the following day and the remaining days of any given week. This happens to be a typical schedule for most Philadelphian high school students who have been confined to their homes during the global pandemic. For many of us, it can be stressful to wake up and go through the same uneventful routine each day. As a junior at William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, it would be an understatement to say I have found virtual school difficult. READ MORE: COVID-19 meant mental health challenges in 2020. Heres how to get help in 2021 It may not appear as though high school students have been struggling with online classes, but remote learning comes with an array of issues, students everywhere feeling the weighted impact. People think online school is easier than the actual experience, said Anthony Rivers Jr., a junior at LaSalle College High School in Wyndmoor. In reality, I would rather wake up every morning and spend eight hours in a building with 500 people rather than spending eight hours in my room in front of a computer screen. High school is an important part of adolescence. Its not only vital to a students academic success and future but also vital to their social development. There is a stark difference between sitting in a classroom as opposed to sitting in front of a computer screen. This difference can result in a lack of participation, enthusiasm, and overall growth. Mali James-Gordon, a junior at Penn Charter in Philadelphia, says she feels less confident when asking teachers questions during online meetings. Online, it feels like the attention is fully on you, and I get worried that what Im saying is wrong, so I would rather sit back and just listen. Recent studies have suggested that high school students in quarantine are beginning to suffer from mental health issues. And in recent months, declining mental health has become a dominant topic on social media as students express their feelings about the disruptions COVID-19 has created in their daily lives. Anyone else used to stay organized, did their homework, and didnt procrastinate, and now all you do is go on your phone during classes...stopped your normal habits, dont feel like hanging out with people, and just sleep/go on your phone all day? asked one TikTok user. Such practices can point to early signs of depression, anxiety, and other emotional disorders. Many teenagers are feeling anxious and depressed due to the pandemic, and the stress that comes along with school closures have made matters worse. READ MORE: Educators hurt when their students are hurting: College faculty experience rising rates of stress, burnout due to COVID-19 So how can students find peace and stay mentally healthy in these uncertain times? Gabbi Polite, a student at Penn Charter, deals with her negative feelings through art and social contact: I make playlists of my favorite songs because its really relaxing, and, of course, I keep in touch with my friends through FaceTime or texting. Perhaps the most important thing to do to take your mind off stress is to talk with someone. Whether it is a mental health professional, a parent, a helpline, or even your pet, its important to address your feelings and try to avoid negative thoughts. Therapy has long been an effective tool for behavioral health and is increasingly accessible virtually. Most of all, we need to remember that this time is arduous for both students and educators. We need to encourage each other to reach out for help in this difficult time. None of us has to pretend that virtual school is normal or easy. Amani Rivers is a junior at William Penn Charter School and a participant in the Acel Moore High School Journalism Workshop, which first published a version of this article. 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. US president elect Joe Biden is constituting an economic team to help America steer out of the economic distress caused by the coronavirus pandemic. As Biden's teams continue to be diverse with people of color holding important posts, his latest addition to the National Economic Council is Kashmir-origin Sameera Fazili. She will be the deputy director of the NEC whose focus is manufacturing, innovation and domestic competition. The Biden team made the announcement on Thursday. Fazili, mother of three, before this worked as Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Director of engagement for the community and economic development. She has also served as a senior policy adviser at the White Houses National Economic Council where she covered retirement, consumer finance, and community and economic development. She previously served as a senior adviser at the NEC and at the Treasury Department during Obama administration in the offices of Domestic Finance and International Affair, the Bloomberg reported. Fazili, a graduate from Harvard College and Yale Law School, started her career as a clinical lecturer at Yale Law School's community and economic development clinic. She was born to Yusuf and Rafiqa Fazilu in Williamsville, New York. She has worked at the Treasury Department on issues of domestic policy ranging from community development financial institutions to housing finance to small business finance, as a senior adviser to the undersecretary for the international affairs, Her career includes work on consumer, housing, small business, and microfinance. Before Fazili, Aishah Shah, another woman of Kashmiri origin, joined the Biden team. She was picked by Biden for a key role for the White Houses Digital Strategy Team. Shah was named as Partnerships Manager at the White House Office of Digital Strategy, which would be headed by Rob Flaherty, Director of Digital Strategy, according to an announcement by the Biden transition team. Raised in Louisiana, Shah previously served as digital partnerships manager in the Biden-Harris Campaign. She currently serves as an advancement specialist for the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to this role, Shah worked as an assistant manager on the Corporate Fund of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, supporting the first-ever expansion of a presidential memorial. The New Orleans City Council on Thursday shot down four tax breaks worth millions of dollars for upgrades the Folger Coffee Company made to its roasting plants in New Orleans East. Council members rejected the companys applications unanimously, saying that improvements did not meet standards set by the city to qualify for exemptions and arguing the city needed the money in the face of coronavirus-related budget shortfalls. "We are dealing with what really is a financial crisis here in our city and we cant afford to keep giving away these exemptions," said Councilmember Helena Moreno, who had led opposition to Folger's application for the incentive known as the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP. The councils decision on Thursday closes the book on a process that began last month, when members turned down Folger's two other requests to waive 80% of the property taxes on improvements made to the facilities in recent years. The council deferred on the companys other four requests, however, in part because they pre-dated the rules the city approved to rein in that program. +2 Folgers' request for $25M in tax breaks the first major test for New Orleans' new ITEP rules Folgers is seeking about $25 million in tax breaks in New Orleans, including millions for projects that have been completed for years, in an e The tax breaks before the City Council on Thursday would have cost the city $4.1 million over five years, according to an analysis performed by the New Orleans Office of Economic Development. If the six tax breaks for the J.M. Smucker Co., which owns Folgers, were all allowed to continue for their maximum length of 10 years, City Hall, the public schools and other taxing entities would be out about $25 million, according to a state analysis. The projects resulted in a total of 27 new permanent jobs. A Smucker representative said Thursday the denial of the applications would impact the company's decisions in the future. "As you can imagine, this will have a negative impact on investment plans for our New Orleans facility," Smucker Communications and Media Relations Director Ray Hancart said in an email. "We are confident the community recognizes the overwhelmingly positive impact businesses like ours have on the area and are hopeful local leaders will ensure they are fostering an environment that encourages business growth and reinvestment." Commentary: By any measure, City Council must say No to Folgers Many factors influence important political decisions, whether its voters deciding who will hold public office or elected officials weighing c The Folgers tax breaks were one of the first major tests of the restrictions the City Council and School Board put in place in recent years to curb the use of ITEP. The program, designed to encourage industries to invest in the state, had traditionally allowed state officials to decide whether to waive property taxes for companies, something that hit the bottom lines of local governments who had no say in the process. Garey Forster: An anti-business city uses John Bel Edwards rules as club against Folgers Many think Louisiana and New Orleans economies need to diversify their job markets beyond hospitality jobs, especially since Gov. John Bel Edw While the program has been used extensively by oil and gas and chemical plants elsewhere, in New Orleans its primary beneficiary has been Folgers, which roasts and packages a variety of brands of coffee at its facilities in the city. 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 Gov. John Bel Edwards changed the rules in 2016, however, allowing individual governing bodies to set their own standards to qualify for the breaks. Both the City Council and the Orleans Parish School Board were among the bodies that took him up on that, setting minimum requirements on wages and hiring needed to qualify. Under the state rules, Sheriffs Offices are also allowed to decide whether to approve breaks on the portion of the taxes that they would receive. The Orleans Parish Sheriffs Office did not respond to a request for comment on whether it was approving its share of the breaks. None of the six projects met the standards set by the City Council. But Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen successfully argued to delay a decision on four of the applications last month, noting that they were completed before the City Council adopted its new rules in 2018 and saying more study was needed. On Thursday, she said that while she wanted to stress that "Folgers has not done anything wrong," she was voting to deny the breaks because the company did not meet the standards the council set. A coalition of advocacy groups had rallied to get local governments to shoot down the exemptions, arguing they were particularly egregious when New Orleans residents were suffering from the economic impacts of the pandemic. Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center Director of Policy and Communications Maxwell Ciardullo said in an email after the vote that the council had chosen the people of our city over a multinational corporation. With tens of thousands of families still out of work and behind on rent or their mortgage, we hope city leaders will continue to prioritize essential services like housing, education, and libraries over corporate tax giveaways, Ciardullo said. The company had lobbied hard for the tax breaks and some of its supporters had argued their rejection could stymie economic development in the city. There are relatively few locations or opportunities for industrial projects in an urbanized area like New Orleans, however, making it unclear how often ITEP could potentially be invoked. New Orleans Business Alliance President and CEO Quentin Messer, whose organization is charged with economic development in the city, suggested in an email the councils move was understandable in an environment where local government must be ever more vigilant over decisions on taxes. But he said it by no means suggests that New Orleans is not open for business, especially in New Orleans East. LONDON, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Over half of the nation's parents have turned to search engines to seek guidance on key school subjects. Google data suggests that curriculum-related queries have increased by up to 398% since April 2019. This is a direct result of the pandemic having forced schools to close across the nation. Now parents are left frantically brushing up on 'Fractions' or 'Flags of the World' in a bid to help tutor their children at home. It comes as no surprise, then, that at the top of every parent's wish list is access to reliable learning resources that kids want to do. An analysis of home-schooling during the coronavirus (published by the Office for National Statistics) found that 52% of parents have a child in their household who is struggling with home education, 77% of which is due to "lack of motivation". This is where 8th generation Toymakers, Jaques of London, come in. At the beginning of January, Jaques of London launched their new initiative for 2021, 'Mini Minds Hub'where education meets fun! Throughout the next six weeks of national lockdown, the company will release free resources to millions of parents who desperately need new ways to make learning fun. The Jaques' resources have all been designed by UK Teachers and stand to be a saving grace for many UK households. As committed toymakers, their legacy has teaching, education, and Montessori play wrapped up in a neat bow. Joe Jaques, Co-Owner of Jaques of London, said: "During these difficult times, we all need to do our bit to help each other. We aim to keep kids at the centre of everything we do, which is why we employ teachers to design our toys and why it seemed natural for us to now focus those efforts into making as many free educational resources as possible. For the past 225 years, our motto has been to 'Teach the world to play' and, given the current crisis, we now hope to 'Teach the world to learn' because learning should be fun first and foremost!" Though many classrooms have taken up online lessons to bridge the learning gap until school resumes, many believe that online learning cannot facilitate education in the same way. One Primary School teacher said: "Teaching the children online is a real challenge because every child learns at their own pace. Online learning has obvious limitations, particularly for younger children, as some children need face-to-face interaction to give them confidence. That's why we urge parents to continue the learning at home wherever possible." For parents who are searching for that helping hand, the Jaques' Mini Minds Hub might be just the ticket. In one fell swoop, they have answered the call for credible, cost-free resources that keep children engaged and help to support all those hard-working Mum and Dad heroes. There is no sign-up or purchase required to grant you accessit has all been made available for anyone to enjoy. A quick browse on their website will show you a whole host of fun and informative worksheets that are printable at the click of a buttoncomplete with low-colour versions to save parent's pennies on printer ink! It is home learning made easy. Joe Jaques went on to say: "As a Dad of two, I know too well how problematic it can be to keep kids interested in learningespecially with all the distractions we have at home. Our newly launched campaign is where education meets fun. Parents will find free activities for kids, a reward chart to track development, and a certificate of completion to celebrate their progress. It's essentially a home-schooling survival kit to reward kids for their hard work and to applaud parents for doing such a great job at assuming this new parent-teacher role!" As family figureheads up and down the country dust off their teaching caps and hero hats, in their corner is Jaques of London. With a band of UK Teachers behind them, Jaques of London aim to make a real difference in homes up and down the country by engaging children with the joys of learning and supporting parents during this historic time. Find out more at: jaqueslondon.co.uk/blogs/resources Press Enquiries: [email protected] Related Files Jaques of London - Press Contacts.docx Related Images jaques-of-london.jpg Jaques of London We make our toys with love - Each of our wooden toys is designed by UK teachers. With 225 years experience making traditional toys and games, our family business includes 8th generation toymakers. Related Links www.jaqueslondon.co.uk/blogs/resources SOURCE Jaques of London As thousands of National Guard troops flood into Washington, D.C., coronavirus cases have spiked among them. Of the roughly 7,000 Guardsmen currently deployed to the District of Columbia, there are now 43 positive cases of COVID-19, Air Force Capt. Tinashe Machona, spokesman for the D.C. National Guard, said in a statement. The spike in cases comes as the Pentagon has increased the Guard authorization for inauguration security in D.C. to 25,000, a jump of 10,000 over the past 24 hours. Read Next: Trump's Acting Defense Secretary Says He 'Cannot Wait' to Leave the Job But the D.C. Guard, which is in command of incoming forces, does not believe that the troops contracted the virus while in the district. "We are unaware of anyone contracting COVID while on duty here," Machona said in the statement. "The D.C. Guard continues to promote [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines, which includes social distancing, wearing masks and increased hygiene measures." Military Times first reported this story. Each unit commander is responsible for making sure CDC guidelines are followed and that troops are provided personal protective equipment, Machona said in the statement. "Incoming Guard men and women are screened upon departure from their individual states and upon arrival to the D.C. Armory," Machona said in the statement. "Temperature checks and screen questions are in place. Masks and social distancing are required where the mission allows." D.C. Guard officials could not immediately answer how many soldiers are under quarantine. The Pentagon initially authorized up to 6,200 Guard members from Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania to deploy to D.C. to provide security through Inauguration Day. The move came after Trump supporters escalated a rally into a siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as lawmakers were meeting for the official count of Electoral College votes to affirm President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the Nov. 3 election. The number grew to an authorization of 15,000 on Monday and then jumped to 21,000 Thursday before National Guard Bureau officials announced Friday that the mission had increased to 25,000 Guard members from all 50 states, three territories and D.C. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Related: Military Pledges Proper Housing for Troops in DC as National Guard Force Grows to 25,000 60% rise in Christians killed worldwide in 2020: Open Doors report Governments use COVID-19 as excuse for persecution of Christians Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment 2020 continued a trend of rising persecution around the world, with governments often using COVID-19 restrictions as tools of repression, Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors USA announced in its annual report. Open Doors' 2021 report revealed two important persecution trends in 2020. The number of Christians killed has increased by 60% this year, mostly because of Islamic violence against Nigerian Christians. Secondly, anti-Christian governments around the world use COVID-19 restrictions to persecute Christians. This past year 2020 has been a year of uncertainty and fear. Weve been all fighting a virus that we cannot see with the naked eye. Less known but equally as viral has been the discrimination, isolation and violence against Christians by using COVID-19 as a leverage and as justification, Open Doors President and CEO David Curry told the conference. In Nigeria, over 2,200 Christians were murdered by radical Islamists. This number makes up slightly less than half of the 4,761 Christians killed for their faith worldwide, according to Open Doors statistics. Most of the Christians killed in 2020 gave up their lives to extremist groups, not governments, Curry said. Extremists [] are emboldened by government weakened by COVID-19 restrictions, knowing that they can steal food and medical supplies from already embattled Christian communities around the world, he said. Violence by Islamists in Nigeria amounts to genocide, Curry said. Attacks have spilled over into neighboring countries. Across Africa, even countries with sizeable Christian majorities like Mozambique and Burkina Faso have suffered from Islamic persecution. It only takes a few extremists to commit violence against Christians. Other persecution hotspots around the globe include China and India, Open Doors announced. In China, the Communist Party has cracked down on Christians by using surveillance technology. In the last year, it has integrated its social credit and video security system, enabling it to track its people and punish them for attending church. In India, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has encouraged persecution of Christians by sanctioning Hindu extremism, Open Doors research found. The party has told its nation that only Hindus are truly Indian, Curry told The Christian Post. Political leaders have discouraged police from responding to attacks on Christians. I put the responsibility at the feet of the ruling party, the BJP, which is very nationalistic. Their message to the population has been, we want India to be a Hindu nation, said Curry. I have a strong belief that if most Indian citizens knew what was happening in these Christian communities they would vote for different people. COVID-19 restrictions have covered up persecution in many places, Curry said. In many countries, Christians lose their jobs because of COVID-19. Then, governments refuse to provide aid to believers and employers dont hire them back. It looks like more suffering caused by COVID-19, but its a quiet persecution. In the northeast of Nigeria, Christians have been reporting only 15% of the emergency rations that others have gotten. COVID has clearly affected all of us around the world, yet for some their faith has made them more vulnerable, he said. Similar events have happened in India, he said. For the first time, every country in Open Doors list of the top 50 persecutors has very high or extreme levels of persecution, the report said. This trend will likely continue, Curry added. The embedded forces that are driving these scores up, religious extremists, Hindu extremism in Nepal, Hindu extremism in India, the Islamic extremist groups which we most recognize as ISIS or al Qaeda, thats an ideology that does not need a territory. When ISIS was conquered, that cancer has metastasized around the world. That trend is growing in strength. You also have governments now who have the ability to use surveillance to watch private behavior, said Curry. Christians face the most persecution worldwide because they are the largest minority faith in many countries, he said. The sheer number of [Christians persecuted] is significant, he said. You do have other faiths and we want to speak up that everybody should have the right to choose their own faith. This is about freedom of conscience. New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visited Mandsaur on Wednesday and met the family members of farmers killed in police firing. The chief minister handedover a cheque of Rs 1 crore to the family of one of them. The state government on Tuesday sanctioned financial aid of Rs 1 crore each to the families of the six farmers killed during the violent stir by peasants in Mandsaur. The aid was sanctioned from the chief minister's discretionary fund and it would be given by the Mandsaurcollector through e-payment facility, a public relations official earlier said. On June 6, five farmers were killed as the agitation by peasants turned violent in Mandsaur. Besides, a 26-year-old farmer had died in Baldwin village of Mandsaur district. Locals on June 9 had alleged that he was beaten up by policemen. The chief minister had already announced compensation of Rs one crore to the kin of deceased in the incident and had observed fast for peace in the state. He had also announced several initiatives for the welfare of farmers. On Tuesday, the Madhya Pradesh government had appointed a single-member commission to inquire into the police firing incident in Mandsaur, in which five persons were killed on June 6. Retired High Court judge Justice J K Jain would chair this Commission of Inquiry. The commission headquarters will be at Indore and it will submit its report in three months, a state public relations department official had said. #TopStory: MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan to visit Madhya Pradesh's #Mandsaur today, to meet families of farmers killed in police firing. pic.twitter.com/Zm7vXvpWdF ANI (@ANI_news) June 14, 2017 The commission will find out, among other things, the circumstances under which the firing incident took place and whether the force used by the police was reasonable under prevailing circumstances or not, and if not, who was responsible for this. The points of the commissions inquiry also include whether the district and police authorities had taken timely and appropriate steps during the prevailing circumstances and the incident. The commission will also suggest ways to prevent such incidents in the future, the official said. The farmers protest in Madhya Pradesh, which began on June 1, took a violent turn on June 6, when five persons were killed in the police firing at Mandsaur. Also Read | MP farmers protest | Shivraj Singh Chouhan at fast: We will help our farmer brothers to earn better profits Subsequently, the farmers protest had witnessed bandh and arson as the agitation spread to other districts of western Madhya Pradesh including Neemuch, Dhar, Ratlam and Jhabua. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Anger over perceived censorship by social media companies is bridging the divide between far-right extremist groups and Trump supporters. And that growing solidarity could increase the likelihood of violence over the weekend and on Inauguration Day, researchers who study hate and extremism warn. Thats largely to do with the rhetoric that we are seeing and the degree to which people are unifying around this issue of censorship or perceived censorship from tech companies, said Michael Edison Hayden of the Southern Poverty Law Center. It has provided a unifying grievance between groups that had no connection with one another before. The rallying cry that unaccountable companies run by liberal elites are silencing conservative voices has been taken up by everyone from Jack Posobiec, a Trump supporter known for advancing conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, to Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website. These grievances only escalated following the attack on the U.S. Capitol, as social media companies suspended President Donald Trumps accounts and cracked down on QAnon and other extremists advocating violence. Twitter QAnon purge: Trump allies and GOP lawmakers lost thousands of followers on Twitter after Capitol riot Banned from Facebook and Twitter: Pro-Trump extremists hatch Inauguration Day violence in dark reaches of the web Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a QAnon supporter, wore a mask that read CENSORED while delivering nationally televised remarks from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. "Its sort of become a secondary version of the Second Amendment: 'They want to take your guns away.' Now its become 'they want to take your speech away,'" said Hayden, a senior investigative reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center. 'Biggest imaginable crackdown on the right wing' A Pro-Trump Twitter account quoted Fox News host Tucker Carlson saying: "This isn't really about Donald Trump, it never was. It's definitely not about what happened last week at the Capitol. It's about controlling you & the country you thought was yours forever." Story continues Darren Beattie, who was fired as a Trump speechwriter in 2018 after attending a conference with white nationalists, tweeted Friday: Even Chinese media and scholars are deriding the censorship regime the corrupt Globalist American Empire has become. And a post from The Daily Stormer appeared to suggest people should be willing to die over the cause of censorship. The elite have made the decision to do the biggest possible, the biggest imaginable crackdown on the right-wing. We are all going to be portrayed as terrorists, Donald Trump is being stripped of his assets and is probably going to jail, theyre shutting down all the websites and apps and everything else and the feds are coming to your house, the post reads. Election erodes buffers between mainstream GOP and extremists The barriers in right-wing politics that once buffered mainstream GOP supporters from neo-Nazis and more extreme elements eroded after the election. Not all of these groups turned out on Jan. 6 to keep Trump in office, but pro-Trump forces and far-right extremist groups united around their shared belief that social media companies are engaging in systematic censorship that targets their political speech. This idea that conservative voices are being taken away from the public, that they are being deleted by elites, has surged as something you can put forth that is not really about Trump, Hayden said. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Capitol Hill Jan. 13, wearing a "CENSORED" face mask. NRA bankruptcy: National Rifle Association files for Chapter 11 A recent poll shows how widely held these views are. Majorities in both parties think political censorship is likely occurring on social media, and that belief is most prevalent on the political right. Nine in 10 Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party say its at least somewhat likely that social media platforms censor political viewpoints they find objectionable, up slightly from 85% in 2018, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. The First Amendment prohibits government censorship but does not apply to decisions made by corporations. However, there is growing discomfort across the political spectrum with a handful of companies controlling what speech is acceptable. No evidence to support claims Facebook, Twitter target conservatives Still, researchers say theyve found no evidence to support GOP grievances that tech companies target conservative voices. They say the algorithms that determine what people see on these platforms dont have a political affiliation or party, but instead favor content that elicits strong reactions, much of it from the political right. I know of no academic research that concludes there is a systemic bias liberal or conservative in either the content moderation policies or in the prioritization of content by algorithms by major social media platforms," Steven Johnson, an information technology professor at the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce, told USA TODAY in November. That has not stopped the rapid spread of anti-conservative bias claims in recent years, boosted by Trump, who made social media abuses a major plank of his administration and reelection campaign. With tens of millions of followers on Twitter and Facebook, Trump wielded one of social medias largest megaphones until mainstream platforms yanked his accounts out of concern that his posts would incite more violence. A spike in mentions of censorship followed Twitters decision to permanently suspend the president on Reddit, Gab, Parler, 4chan, 8kun and TheDonald, a message board formed after the group was banned from Reddit, as the political right cried foul. Most Americans, but not most Republicans, supported the suspension, according to a new survey from The Harris Poll shared exclusively with USA TODAY. Twitter purge inflames Trump supporters, conservatives Twitters subsequent decision to purge at least 70,000 accounts linked to QAnon, causing Republicans to lose thousands of followers, prompted another angry outcry. Trump ally and powerful House conservative Jim Jordan of Ohio lost the most followers: 176,672, or about 9% of the 2 million followers he had on Jan. 6, a USA TODAY analysis found. Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul shed 142,156, and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy 103,815. A total of 37 lawmakers, all Republicans, lost at least 10% of their followers. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., lost 18%, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., lost 15% and Kelly Loeffler, an incumbent Georgia senator who was defeated in Georgias runoff elections, lost 14%. Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor of public policy, information and communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said it's more likely that GOP officials lost followers because their followers included QAnon adherents. It's not a very flattering explanation, but it's more plausible, in my opinion, than a broad crackdown against conservatives on these networks, Zuckerman told USA TODAY. Contributing: Kevin Crowe This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Facebook, Twitter censorship outcry unites Trump supporters, Neo-Nazis Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. QINGDAO, China, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SOS Limited (NYSE: SOS) (the "Company" or "SOS") today announced the agreement by several accredited investors to exercise certain warrants to purchase up to an aggregate of 16,125,000 of its American Depositary Shares ("ADSs") issued by the company on December 22, 2020, at an exercise price of $1.55, and January 7, 2021, at an exercise price of $1.85 per ADS, respectively. The ADSs issuable upon exercise of the warrants are registered pursuant to a registration statement on Form F-3 (File No. 333-250145) which became effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 30, 2020. The gross proceeds to the company from the exercise of the warrants are expected to be approximately $26.6 million, prior to deducting placement agent fees and estimated offering expenses. Maxim Group LLC is acting as the exclusive placement agent for the offering. In consideration for the immediate exercise of the warrants for cash, the exercising holders will receive new unregistered warrants to purchase ADSs in a private placement pursuant to Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act"). The warrants will be exercisable into an aggregate of up to 25,800,000 ADSs, at an exercise price of $2.00 per ADS, which have a term of exercise approximately equal to five years. SOS intends to use the proceeds from the offering to develop its planned blockchain-based cryptocurrency mining and security and insurance technology business and acquisition in the cryptocurrency industry as well as for working capital and general corporate use. The new warrants described above were offered in a private placement pursuant to an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the 1933 Act and, along with the ADSs issuable upon their exercise, have not been registered under the 1933 Act, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration with the SEC or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. The securities were offered only to accredited investors. The company has agreed to file a registration statement with the SEC covering the resale of the ADSs issuable upon exercise of the new warrants. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. About SOS Limited SOS Limited, through its operating subsidiary, SOS Information Technology Co., Ltd. ("SOS") is a high-technology company providing a wide range of services to its corporate and individual members, including marketing data, technology and solutions for emergency rescue services. SOS transforms digital technology into data-driven operations through the research and development of big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, blockchain and artificial intelligence. We have created a SOS cloud emergency rescue service software as a service (SaaS) platform with three major product categories: basic cloud, cooperative cloud, and information. This system provides innovative marketing solutions to clients such as insurance companies, financial institutions, medical institutions, healthcare providers, auto manufacturers, security providers, senior living assistance providers, and other service providers in the emergency rescue services industry. SOS has obtained a national high-tech enterprise certification and the title of "big data star enterprise," awarded by Gui'an New District Government. Staying on the forefront of digital technology innovation, the Company has registered 32 software copyrights and 2 patents. For more information, please visit: http://www.sosyun.com/ Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements made herein are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "estimate," "plan," "outlook," and "project" and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. Such forward-looking statements include timing of the proposed transaction; the business plans, objectives, expectations and intentions of the parties;, SOS's estimated and future results of operations, business strategies, competitive position, industry environment and potential growth opportunities market acceptance of our products; the ultimate impact of the current Coronavirus pandemic, or any other health epidemic, on our business, our research programs, healthcare systems or the global economy as a whole; our intellectual property; our reliance on third party organizations; our anticipated financial and operating results, including anticipated sources of revenues; our assumptions regarding the size of the available market, benefits of our product offering, product pricing, timing of product launches; management's expectation with respect to future acquisitions; statements regarding our goals, intentions, plans and expectations, including the introduction of new products and markets; and our cash needs and financing plans and etc. These forward-looking statements reflect the current analysis of existing information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. As a result, caution must be exercised in relying on forward-looking statements. SOS may not realize its expectations, and its beliefs may not prove correct. Due to known and unknown risks, our actual results may differ materially from our expectations or projections. All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning these and other factors that may impact our expectations and projections can be found in our periodic filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019. SOS's SEC filings are available publicly on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. SOS disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE SOS Limited Related Links http://www.sosyun.com/ Sir Brian Leveson has published his first report on Boohoo's supply chain overhaul Sir Brian Leveson, known for his inquiry into the Press eight years ago, has published his first report on Boohoo's supply chain overhaul. Last year the fashion retailer was exposed for sweatshop-style conditions and low pay at the Leicester factories it uses. Following the revelations retired judge Leveson (pictured) was hired in November to oversee Boohoo's so-called Agenda for Change with accountants KPMG tasked with independently tracking its progress. As part of the agenda the company has been reviewing its UK supply chain across Britain and internationally to replace bad actors with alternative ethical suppliers. So far Boohoo has removed 64 suppliers from its UK roster. Leveson said it had started well although some areas remained a 'work in progress if the group is to create and establish a critical 'hearts and minds' programme involving everyone in the buying chain'. Executive chairman Mahmud Kamani said he was 'immensely proud' of the speed of change at the company. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, more known as the socialist Democrat AOC, shared that some members of the Congress feel that there is a need to "rein in" media sources that allegedly proliferated "disinformation and misinformation" that allegedly contributed to the fiasco at the Capitol on Jan. 6. On Jan. 12, the congresswoman went Live on Instagram where she detailed her discussion with some of her peers in Congress. "I do think that several members of Congress, in some of my discussions, have brought up media literacy because that is a part of what happened here," she said. "And, we are going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you cannot just spew disinformation and misinformation. It is one thing to have differing opinions, but it is another thing entirely to just say things that are false. And so, that is something we are looking into," she continued. It's important to note that AOC said the commission they plan on creating for the task of reining in media "seems to be more investigatory in style rather than in truth and reconciliation." Rep. Ocasio-Cortez did not give concrete examples of what they deemed as "disinformation and misinformation" by the media which could be conveniently used as an excuse to pin on them some of the blame as they did to President Donald Trump. On the flip side of the issue, while mainstream media like CNN and The New York Times weaved their narratives on making President Trump as the main culprit to the Jan. 6 mayhem, using his White House speech as the trigger, neutral sites like the fact-checker Snopes states that the President "did not explicitly tell people to 'storm' or 'breach' or 'break into' the Capitol. Democrat law professor Jonathan Turley, from The George Washington University Law School, himself said the President "never actually called for violence or a riot." Trump himself actually told his supporters to "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." Evidence reveals, however, that leftists from antifa, BLM and other such groups blended in with the President's supporters and are believed to have caused or incited the chaos at the Capitol. An Example of Media Bias LifeSite News did an analysis on the time discrepancies between the President's speech and the riot as reported by the mainstream media. Read their analysis below. "The timeline of the day reveals that Trump concluded his speech at about 1:11 PM with the words: 'We're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue... and we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give... our Republicans, the weak ones... the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.' It's about 1.6 miles (a 45 minute walk with the crowd size) from the Ellipse to the Capitol building. The crowd that listened to Trump's speech would not have begun arriving at the Capitol building until after 2 PM. But mainstream media, such as the BBC, reported that 'chanting crowds start to gather on both sides of the [Capitol] building at around 13:10, grappling with police at the metal barricades.'" This shows that the chaotic demonstration has commenced 45 minutes ahead of the estimated time for the marching Trump supporters to arrive at the Capitol. Other reports corroborate this fact. Life Site went on to conclude that given the timeline, those who first clash with the police and wrought havoc at the Capitol were not real Trump supporters. Video footage that captured some of the demonstrators' faces revealed that there were "left-wing activists" who were the real instigators of violence and disorder. To be fair, other genuine supporters of the President may have also fallen to the ploy and being the patriotic people that they are, joined in the breach. The City of Melbourne has been threatening to fine people protesting against the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers under bylaws designed to stop buskers disturbing the peace. Victoria Police officers have worked with council officers to penalise the protesters under a little-known bylaw that restricts the use of "excessive noise" that is "capable of interfering with the reasonable comfort of any person who may be in the vicinity of [a] public place". Protesters have been protesting outside the Park Hotel regularly. Credit:Jason South The practice has been described as outrageous by advocates who say the right to protest is being undermined by a misuse of the council bylaws. Protesters have been holding daily rallies outside the Park Hotel, where more than 60 men who were medically evacuated to Australia from detention in Manus Island and Nauru are being held. DUBLIN, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Butterfly Pea Flowers Market by Type (Whole Dried Flowers, Powder, Extract), Application (Food Products, Beverages, Tea), Distribution Channel (Direct, Indirect), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The butterfly pea flowers market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.5% from 2020 to 2027 to reach USD 102.4 million by 2027. Succeeding extensive secondary and primary research and an in-depth analysis of the market scenario, the report conducts the impact analysis of the key industry drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges. This market is characterized by more diversified operations, which offer shelf-stable and healthy products, mainly due to the growing use of butterfly pea flower products as natural food colors, increasing demand for healthy tea alternatives, and a wide range of butterfly pea flower benefits. Increased research for new raw material sources provides significant opportunities for manufacturers in the butterfly pea flowers market. However, changing government regulations is expected to restrain the future growth of this market marginally. Based on type, the sterilized powder segment is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This can be attributed to its wide availability and ease of handling, transportation, and storage. Based on distribution channel, the indirect/B2C segment is expected to dominate the butterfly pea flowers market during the forecast period of 2020-2027. The dominant position of this segment is mainly attributed to the traditional consumption of flowers and well-established commercial farming for these flowers in the region, especially in Thailand. Increased online shopping and social media use further support the growth of this segment. Based on application, the beverages segment is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period. The rapid growth of this segment is mainly attributed to the growing consumer interest in traditional beverages, specifically in regional cultures, greater nutritional value, increasing per capita spending on beverages, the expanding retail sector, and increased use of butterfly pea flowers as a raw material for producing multiple color options for beverages. An in-depth geographic analysis of the industry provides detailed qualitative and quantitative insights about the five geographic regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa). The Asia-Pacific region is expected to dominate the butterfly pea flowers market with the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. The large share of this region can be attributed to the presence of a large number of butterfly pea flower farmers and a well-established commercial farming market for butterfly pea flowers, especially in Thailand. Also, the growing application areas of butterfly pea flowers, increasing awareness about the health benefits of butterfly pea flowers, strong food and beverage manufacturing base, and the emerging trend of healthy food and food ingredients further support the growth of this region. Key questions answered in the report: What is the current value of revenue generated by the butterfly pea flowers market? At what rate is the demand for the butterfly pea flowers market is projected to grow over the next 5-7 years? What is the historical market size and growth rate for the butterfly pea flowers market? What are the major factors impacting the growth of this market at the regional and country levels? What are the major opportunities for existing players and new entrants in the market? What impact does the current COVID-19 pandemic have on the butterfly pea flowers market? Which segments in terms of the type, distribution channel, and application create major traction for the vendors in this market? What are the key geographical trends in this market? Which countries are expected to offer significant growth opportunities for the vendors operating in the butterfly pea flowers market? Who are the major players in the butterfly pea flowers market? What are their specific product offerings in this market space? Market Dynamics Drivers Growing Demand for Natural Food Colors Increasing Demand for Healthy Tea Alternatives Growing R&D Activities in the Food & Beverage Industry Restraints Dynamic Government Regulations Opportunities Increased Research for New Raw Material Sources Trends Increasing Awareness Regarding Clean-Label Products The Impact of Covid-19 on the Butterfly Pea Flowers Market Scope of the report Butterfly Pea Flowers Market, by Type Whole Dried Flowers Sterilized Powder Extract Butterfly Pea Flowers Market, by Distribution channel Direct/B2B Indirect/B2C Butterfly Pea Flowers Market, by Application Beverages Tea Other Beverages Food Products Other Applications Butterfly Pea Flowers Market, by Geography Asia-Pacific (APAC) (APAC) China India Thailand Malaysia Japan RoAPAC North America U.S. Canada Europe Germany France Italy U.K. Spain RoE Latin America Middle East and Africa Companies Mentioned TSUJIKO Co. Ltd. Siam Industries International Siam Hibiscus Limited Arisun ChemPharm Co Ltd. EverforEver BioTech Paraman Food Works Shaanxi Hongda Phytochemistry Co. Ltd. Specialty Natural Product Co. Ltd. Woodland Foods My Blue Tea Wild Hibiscus Flower Co. Yumchaa For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/nvqmrh 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 Everyone knew Mr. Rogers, the cardigan-clad television host who journeyed with generations of children to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, helping them learn the things one must in the course of growing up, such as how to tie shoelaces and what it means to die. But there was also Mrs. Rogers - she relished identifying herself that way - his loyal partner for 50 years and later a memory-keeper for his message of kindness. Joanne Rogers, who died Jan. 14 at 92, was for years largely unknown to the millions of youngsters and former youngsters who grew up watching her husband, Fred, on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," the celebrated show that aired on public television from 1968 to 2001. They did, however, know the puppet she inspired - Queen Sara Saturday, a gentle, tempering influence on the sometimes pompous King Friday XIII. King Friday bore little resemblance to her husband, who voiced all the puppets on his show. Daniel Striped Tiger, with his deep feelings and tender reserve, was "the real Fred," Rogers said. Rogers did voice work on her husband's show "The Children's Corner," which preceded the nationally syndicated "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" on Pittsburgh public television. She shared his love of music - a concert pianist, she was said to have been the better musician, though he also was by all accounts a fine one - and said modestly that she brought "a little more of the light side of life to him." But she assumed her most active role in the neighborhood long after he had moved on, and well after his death in 2003 from stomach cancer. In recent years, Fred Rogers has inspired what has often been described as "a moment," with the release of two films about his life and the emergence of what at times has seemed a collective yearning for the almost unworldly goodness that he projected. Rogers appeared in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (2018), a documentary directed by Morgan Neville. She was thrilled, she declared, when actor Tom Hanks was cast to portray her husband in the drama "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" (2019) and spent considerable time on the set, making a cameo in the final product. (Actress Maryann Plunkett played her in the film.) As she emerged as a celebrity in her own right, Rogers delighted her husband's admirers with stories of his incongruously naughty sense of humor. (She told the Los Angeles Times that he took pleasure in amusing her at boring public events by intentionally passing gas.) But her chief role was to confirm for everyone who had loved Mister Rogers from afar that he was the same Fred Rogers she had loved up close. "I want to assure everyone," Rogers said in a TEDx Talk in Pittsburgh, "he was that person that you knew on television." Sara Joanne Byrd was born in Jacksonville, Fla., on March 9, 1928, 11 days before her future husband was born to an affluent family in Latrobe, Pa., east of Pittsburgh. Both were only children. Joanne - she would shed her first name, finding it too fancy, and, indeed, Fred Rogers found it fit for his puppet queen - grew up in a considerably less wealthy but immensely loving home. Her father worked as a teacher, a traveling coffee salesman when the Depression struck and later as a postal employee. He traversed the South by train, Rogers told Maxwell King, the author of the Fred Rogers biography "The Good Neighbor" (2018), tossing mail bags from a rail car as the train rumbled from town to town. Her mother, a homemaker, loved music and encouraged Rogers's budding interest in the piano. A turning point in her life came early, when she was 5: A neighborhood friend introduced her to the piano teacher who would give her lessons for the next 13 years. Rogers later remembered her mother sitting near her at the keyboard as she practiced, a show of communion with a child that anticipated the philosophy of Fred Rogers. "She didn't read music," Rogers told King, but "she would sit with me at the piano for all my practice time, and it was wonderful, because I wasn't alone. I can't say enough about that for young children and music, that if their parents can invest that time with them, it makes it a less solitary thing." Jason Merritt/Getty Images for Focus Features Fred Rogers, too, loved music from a young age. Before Fred's 10th birthday, King wrote, his maternal grandmother agreed to buy him a piano - and did not flinch when Fred, after trying all the models at the Steinway & Sons store in Pittsburgh, selected a 1920 concert grand priced at roughly $3,000, the equivalent of more than $50,000 in today's currency. Rogers kept the piano, a display of his grandmother's early faith in him, for the rest of his life. Joanne and Fred met at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., where she received a music scholarship, and where he transferred from Dartmouth College. She favored classical music, while he preferred improvisation and jazz. They became good friends, with dating limited to fraternity and sorority dances. (Fred, she said, was a superb dancer.) He was deeply self-conscious of his family's wealth and was perhaps drawn to her, she told King, because she was not "extravagant." Rogers graduated in 1950, Fred the following year. She proceeded to Florida State University, where she studied with Ernst von Dohnanyi, a noted Hungarian composer, and received a master's degree in 1952. By that time, Fred had moved to New York for an apprenticeship at NBC. He proposed to Joanne in a letter, and she called from a pay phone to accept. They were married in 1952 in New York. They later moved to Pittsburgh, where they raised their two sons, Jim Rogers and John Rogers, who survive, along with three grandchildren. Rogers gave piano lessons to beginners as well as to more experienced musicians. Later in life, she performed in concerts with Jeannine Morrison, a friend from Rollins, with whom she made two recordings, "A Virtuoso Duo-Piano Showcase" (1995) and "Duo-Piano Favorites" (1997). Rogers also played the piano with her husband, in private. "Music meant a lot to both of us," she said in the TEDx Talk. "We had that in common, and we talked often about how do people live without music?" After her husband's death, Rogers sought to carry on his legacy through nonprofit organizations including Fred Rogers Productions and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe. Her death was confirmed by David Newell, who played McFeely, the "Speedy Delivery" man of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," and was a longtime friend. The cause was not immediately available. Especially after the two films about her husband were released, she kept up a busy schedule of promotion. She objected to depictions of him as a saint. "I think he was perfectly human," she said in a 2019 interview with ABC News. "Or imperfectly human, I should say." In 2019, when an NBC correspondent inquired about the matter, she pronounced that her husband would have been "appalled" by the unkindness, even cruelty of the prevailing political climate. But mainly she sought to perpetuate his message, as she described it, of "making goodness attractive." "I don't mean to sound boastful, but he was my icon before he was anyone else's," she wrote in a foreword to the book "The World According to Mister Rogers" (2003). "Being Fred Rogers has been the most remarkable life I could ever have imagined." She did not favor showy jewelry but did wear a ring, given to her by her husband, designed to resemble a castle battlement. It was a tribute to her, and to Queen Sara. Kate Winslet has claimed she would worry about if her 'bum looked big' when she was filming scenes in a body bag for disaster movie Contagion. The actress, 45, spoke candidly on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast on Thursday about how she felt about her 'curvy' figure during her career, as she reflected on the unfair expectations put on women in the industry. Speaking about Contagion, she admitted: 'I get slung into a ditch in a body bag. Almost every take, I'd open one eye and say, "Does my bum look big in this?" Stupid, typically vain nonsense.' Past worries: Kate Winslet revealed on Thursday that she had concerns about her 'curvy' figure and how she looked in a body bag in Contagion Detailing how she perceived her weight in the past, Kate added: 'People would talk about me like I was different, because I was slightly bigger than average. I was a size six.' She went on to say that in Hollywood in the 90s was 'completely riddled with very slender women in a way that was not entirely balanced'. However, Kate did stipulate that she feels the film industry has changed, and said she 'values and appreciates' how she can embrace her natural beauty in Ammonite. Struggle: Speaking about the movie, Kate (pictured in Contagion) said: 'I get slung into a ditch in a body bag. Almost every take, I'd open one eye and say, "Does my bum look big in this?"' Candid: Kate said she struggled with her 'curvy' figure because of the unfair expectations put on women in the industry, and claimed: 'People would talk about me like I was different' Despite her previous concerns, Kate said she is happy with how her figure looks now, as she added: 'I feel very proud of my 45-year-old self.' In Ammonite, the actress and Saoirse Ronan transform into lovers Mary Anning and Charlotte Murchison, who embark on an intimate affair. The plot centres around the famous paleontologist, who becomes involved in a forbidden romance with Saoirse's character after she they are sent to convalesce by the sea together. Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh, explored a scenario in which a lethal and fast-moving influenza is spreading around the world, a topic that feels quite prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Happy: Kate did stipulate that she feels the film industry has changed, and she 'values and appreciates' her figure now and how embraces her natural beauty in Ammonite (pictured) In December, the director revealed he was was reuniting with Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns on the project, which he called a 'philosophical sequel' to the original film. Speaking on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast, he said: 'Ive got a project in development that Scott Burns is working with me on, thats a kind of philosophical sequel to Contagion but in a different context. 'Youll kind of look at the two of them as kind of paired but very different hair colors. So, Scott and I had been talking about, So, whats the next iteration of a Contagion-type story? the director continued. While he wouldn't give any more details, he insisted they were hard at work on the story, but admitted, 'We should probably hotfoot it a little bit.' Relevant: Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh, explored a scenario in which a lethal and fast-moving influenza is spreading around the world Tessa Thompson has been enjoying a nice career path with Westworld under her belt as well as a Men In Black movie and a pivotal role in Creed. And now the 37-year-old Los Angeles native is starring in the love story Sylvie's Love. In the February 2021 cover story for Town & Country magazine - which was shot by Erik Carter - she told Roxanne Gay she is thrilled that all her success has helped land her a development deal at HBO. 'That's my favorite thing to think about, particularly in building this company,' she told the publication. 'Thinking around the voices I invite into it.' A beauty: Tessa Thompson has posed for the February 2021 issue of Town & Country where she talked about her new HBO deal And she likes to ponder 'how I allow them to retain as much ownership over their work and their ideas as possibleI'm really interested in trying to create a utopia.' The Thor actress added, 'It's imperative, because I'm curious about being able to give opportunity to folks that people might say are less experienced. 'A lot of people are batting a lot higher than their average because they just, frankly, haven't been given the opportunity.' Boss woman: 'That's my favorite thing to think about, particularly in building this company,' she told the publication. 'Thinking around the voices I invite into it,' she said Her new movie is Sylvie's Love which she found refreshing as it focused on love. 'We haven't necessarily gotten to see ourselves as the romantic leads, and when we have, particularly in period pieces, there's less focus on the interpersonal, like how hard it is to be two humans trying to love each other,' said the former Santa Monica College student. 'There's a lot of emphasis on historical context, which is, obviously, wildly important. I was conflicted as to whether it would work, whether you could tell a story like that.' Utopia! And she liked to ponder 'how I allow them to retain as much ownership over their work and their ideas as possibleI'm really interested in trying to create a utopia,' the star said On stepping outside of her comfort zone: 'I think that's why I like what I do. I've always felt a little afraid of what happens when we get too comfortable, that we're not growing. 'Maybe I'm a masochist or maybe I'm a sucker for the discomfort of the first squeak.' And she added that she hopes to be a role model. Ready to be creative: The Thor actress added, 'It's imperative, because I'm curious about being able to give opportunity to folks that people might say are less experienced' Dancing days: 'A lot of people are batting a lot higher than their average because they just, frankly, haven't been given the opportunity,' she noted 'There's invariably people in the room that have been silenced. I remember a distinct moment on set. 'A squeak just came out of me, I didn't even mean for it to, and then I could see the secret little smile on some of the women around the room, and you realize that there's a choir of wheels waiting to squeak together. 'It emboldens folks, and you realize you have support and you're not squeaking just on your own behalf. You're squeaking for everybody.' Michael B. Jordan also talked to the magazine. The two worked together on Creed. 'She's extremely talented, and a lot of the dynamics we had working together came from her asking the right questions and caring about the right things,' he offered. 'She always brought so much to the table and made us think outside the box. She challenged stereotypes, and she always made sure we were being true.' Also in the magazine is an in-depth look at power couple VP-elect Kamala Harris and husband Douglas Emhoff, whom are not only shredding political stereotypes, but also showing what a successful marriage can look like. 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. A highflying Chinese private equity firm was punished for misconduct in a private share placement by one of its subsidiaries after a 2-year investigation in a regulatory crackdown on market irregularities. Tongchuang Jiuding Investment Holding Co. Ltd. (Jiuding Holding, ) was fined 100 million yuan ($15.5 million) by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the agency said Thursday. Wu Gang, a former CSRC official and a director of Jiuding Holding, was fined 100,000 yuan, the subsidiary, Tongchuang Jiuding Investment Management Group Co. Ltd. (Jiuding Group) said in a filing (link in Chinese) with the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ). Details of the punishments were disclosed in administrative penalty notices handed down to the two companies by the CSRC, which also accused Jiuding Group (link in Chinese) of violating laws and regulations related to information disclosure. Jiuding Holding, which became a star of the private equity (PE) market in the 2010s and gained a reputation for savvy pre-IPO investments, was put under investigation by the CSRC in March 2018 on suspicion of securities law violations. Read more Cheers, Jeers for a Not-Your-Daddys PE Fund The CSRCs punishments relate to a 2.25 billion yuan private placement by Jiuding Group, which Wu chairs. The company is traded on the NEEQ, the largest over-the-counter stock-trading platform in China. In August 2014 it applied to the NEEQ to issue 573.8 million shares to 11 investors in a private placement and said that after the deal it would have 173 shareholders, meaning it didnt need approval from the CSRC. Regulations stipulate that companies need the commissions go-ahead for any stock sale that takes the number of shareholders above 200. However, the CSRC later discovered that five of the 11 investors entered into secret agreements with Jiuding Holding to buy shares in the private placement with money lent by the company. Their holdings would then be transferred to 161 individual and institutional investors. As a result, Jiuding Group had a total of 335 investors, which the commission said put it in breach of regulations. The CSRC said the company concealed the real number of shareholders, falsified records and issued misleading statements, putting it in breach of regulations requiring information to be disclosed in an accurate, timely and complete manner. The commission fined Jiuding Holding 100 million yuan over its illegal use of other investors trading accounts and Jiuding Group 600,000 yuan for violations of information disclosure rules. In addition to his 100,000 yuan fine for illegal use of others trading accounts, Wu was issued a warning and a fine of 300,000 yuan for violations of information disclosure rules. Five other executives were handed financial penalties and warnings. The CSRC found that Jiuding Holding took control of the stock trading accounts of the five investors to sell shares in Jiuding Group, making a profit of 501.3 million yuan from August 2014 to May 2015. The regulator confiscated the profit, ruling that the conduct violated Chinas securities law barring the use of other individuals stock accounts for share trading. Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com) and editor Nerys Avery (nerysavery@caixin.com). Download our app to receive breaking news alerts and read the news on the go. A railroad bridge in Louisiana is back in place after reportedly being hit early on Jan. 13 by a tugboat, officials said. The swing bridge over the Rigolets near Slidell was reportedly hit by the tug Robert Cenac about 1 a.m., the Coast Guard said in a news release. The Coast Guard is investigating what caused the accident. The agency says the bridge is owned by CSX Transportation. CSX crews responded and theyve been able to return the bridge to limited service and is working on mobilizing equipment to complete repairs, the company said in a statement. Damaged portions of the bridge have been removed and temporary supports installed, it said. No reroutes have occurred and train traffic has resumed operating at a reduced speed. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Louisiana You are here: World Flash The Iranian naval force on Thursday fired torpedoes from the home-made Fateh(Conqueror)-class submarine, as well as cruise missiles from the seashore and vessels on the second day of a large-scale drill in Iran's southern waters, Press TV reported. This is the first time Iran's indigenous submarine has fired torpedoes. The cruise missiles and the torpedoes hit mock targets successfully during the last stage of the massive military drill in the Sea of Oman, codenamed Eqtedar-e Daryayi (Naval Strength) 99. Meanwhile, Deputy Navy Commander for Coordination Hamzeh-Ali Kaviani, spokesman of the maneuver, issued a warning against any hostile "violation or encroachment" on Iran's maritime borders. A foreign submarine was detected approaching the area during the exercise, said a statement issued by the public relations office of Iran's Army. The underwater intruder was monitored by helicopters in a timely manner and left the area immediately after a warning was issued, the statement added. The Makran forward base ship, hailed by local media as Iran's largest-ever military vessel, and missile-launching frigate Zereh (Armor) joined the drill that started on Wednesday. The 48-hour week could be scrapped by the UK government under reported plans to rip up key working protections following Brexit. The weekly cap on working hours is set to be ditched along with other protections enshrined in EU law as part of an overhaul of labour rules, according to the Financial Times. Labour described the reported plan as a "disgrace" and warned it would fight any such moves tooth and nail," but the government denied it would water down labour protections. No 10 is said to have given the go-ahead for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) to draw up a package of deregulatory measures. The 48-hour working week known as the EU working time directive was designed by the European Commission to protect workers rights by putting a limit on the amount of hours that can be worked and mandating how long breaks can be. The policy is thought to be the main target for UK regulatory divergence from the EU by No 10. But any changes to labour market conditions could incur the wrath of Brussels who may seek redress through the post-Brexit trade deal. Any potential changes to employment rights would also put the government on a direct collision course with trade unions. Labours shadow business secretary, Ed Miliband, said ministers were preparing to take a sledgehammer to workers rights. He added: "These proposals are not about cutting red tape for businesses but ripping up vital rights for workers. People are already deeply worried about their jobs and health. It's a disgrace the government is considering forcing them to work longer hours or lose paid holidays. But business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng denied there were plans to water down worker protections. He tweeted: "We are not going to lower the standards of workers rights. The UK has one of the best workers rights records in the world - going further than the EU in many areas. We want to protect and enhance workers rights going forward, not row back on them. Beis has been approached by The Independent for further comment. The government has previously dismissed fears it would seek to slash workers rights after Brexit, with Mr Kwarteng insisting in 2019 that such suggestions were exaggerated. P rime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a Downing Street briefing later this afternoon as the UK continues its battle with the Covid-19 pandemic. A Downing Street official told Playbook that the PM will insist theres still a way to go and continue to urge people to stick to the rules with deaths hitting a record 1,820 deaths earlier this week. The Prime Minister is expecting to provide an update on the vaccine rollout after revealing that two million people have been vaccinated in the last week alone. Mr Johnson has been under pressure from Tory backbenchers to reveal a date that the national lockdown could be lifted but has maintained its too early to say. His comments came as Professor Paul Elliott, who is leading the React study at Imperial College London, suggested the current measures may not be strict enough to see a drop in infections and the reproductive rate the R. Mr Johnson told reporters on Thursday: I think its too early to say when well be able to lift some of the restrictions. He said: We're looking at that February 15 deadline, as you know, for the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advisory body) groups one to four - the elderly, the vulnerable groups that we want to vaccinate first, that 15 million people across the UK that we want to have been offered a vaccination slot by 15 February." New plans under consideration by ministers are to have everyone who tests positive for Covid in England given 500. The aim of proposals, which would reportedly cost up to 450million a week, would be to encourage more people to take tests and self-isolate. Such a plan is said to be the preferred position of Matt Hancock's Department of Health, according to reports on Thursday night. There are also two hand prints next to the painting, which has been found in Indonesia and is the worlds oldest known cave painting. Photo: Maxime Aubert/Griffith University via AFP Archaeologists have discovered the worlds oldest known cave painting: a life-sized picture of a wild pig that dates back at least 45,500 years in Indonesia. The finding, which has been described in the journal Science Advances, provides the earliest evidence of human settlement of the region. Co-author Maxime Aubert, of Australias Griffith University, told AFP it was found on the island of Sulawesi in 2017 by doctoral student Basran Burhan, as part of surveys the team was carrying out with Indonesian authorities. The Leang Tedongnge cave is located in a remote valley enclosed by sheer limestone cliffs. It is only accessible during the dry season because of flooding during the wet season. Measuring 136cm by 54cm, the Sulawesi warty pig was painted using dark red ochre pigment and has a short crest of upright hair, as well as a pair of horn-like facial warts characteristic of adult males of the species. There are two handprints above the pigs hind legs, and it appears to be facing two other pigs that are only partially preserved, as part of a narrative scene. The pig appears to be observing a fight or social interaction between two other warty pigs, said co-author Adam Brumm. Humans have hunted Sulawesi warty pigs for tens of thousands of years, and they are a key feature of the regions prehistoric artwork. Mr Aubert, a dating specialist, identified a calcite deposit that had formed on top of the painting. He used uranium-series isotope dating to confidently say the deposit was 45,500 years old. This makes the painting at least that age, but it could be much older because the dating that were using only dates the calcite on top of it, he explained. The people who made it were fully modern, they were just like us, they had all of the capacity and the tools to do any painting that they liked, he added. The previously oldest dated rock-art painting was found by the same team in Sulawesi. It depicted a group of part-human, part-animal figures hunting mammals, and was found to be at least 43,900 years old. Cave paintings such as these also help fill in gaps about our understanding of early human migrations. Its known that people reached Australia 65,000 years ago, but they would probably have had to cross the islands of Indonesia, known as Wallacea. This site now represents the oldest evidence of humans in Wallacea, but its hoped further research will help show people were in the region much earlier, which would resolve the Australia settlement puzzle. The team believes the artwork was made by Homo sapiens, as opposed to now-extinct human species like Denisovans, but cannot say this for certain. LANSING, MI - In some ways, the first day of the 101st Michigan Legislature followed the normal script. Lawmakers approved House and Senate rules and took their oaths of office. Republican leadership outlined legislative priorities. Rinse and repeat from the 100 sessions before it. What set apart Wednesdays start to the new session was an immediate call from the minority party for censures, unseating and overall punishment towards Republican lawmakers who challenged the 2020 presidential election results. Heres a summary of this weeks start to the 101st Legislature, from those speeches and resolutions from Democrats to the first slew of bills introduced. Democrats seek censures of some Republican colleagues Both Senate and House Democrats introduced resolutions seeking punishment for Republican lawmakers who led efforts to question the 2020 presidential win for President-elect Joe Biden, giving credence to a number of unsubstantiated or debunked claims of election fraud. Sens. Adam Hollier, D-Detroit, and Erika Geiss, D-Taylor, introduced a pair of concurrent resolutions seeking an end to election challenges, as well as censure of the 11 Senate Republicans who signed a letter last week requesting further electoral investigation. More than half of Michigans current Republican state senators signed a Jan. 6 letter asking Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to pursue every available option to investigate claims of election fraud. The letter was released hours before the attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol, though many of the co-signers publicly condemned the riots. The co-signers were Sens. John Bizon, R-Battle Creek; Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte; Kim LaSata, R-Bainbridge Twp.; Kevin Daley, R-Lum; Dan Lauwers, R-Brockway Twp.; Rick Outman, R-Six Lakes; Jim Runestad, R-White Lake; Lana Theis, R-Brighton; Curtis Vanderwall, R-Ludington; Roger Victory, R-Hudsonville and Dale Zorn, R-Ida. Read more: More than half of Michigans GOP senators air unfounded election concerns in letter to Congress Senate Concurrent Resolution 3 condemns the attempted coup to overturn election results, and states there is no place for further undermining the 2020 November election with baseless conspiracy theories. Senate Concurrent Resolution 4 asks for the Senate to acknowledge the role the 11 Republican senators played in contributing to the atmosphere that led to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The two resolutions are largely symbolic and unlikely to pass, as Republicans still hold a 20-16 majority in the Senate. Republicans have two seats to fill after former Sens. Pete Lucido and Peter MacGregor left to take offices in their local county governments. Read more: Democrats in the Michigan Senate want Republican colleagues punished for questioning election results In addition, a pair of House Democrats will introduce separate resolutions to reprimand and investigate Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford Twp., for his attempts since the November election to overturn results. Rep. Abraham Aiyash, D-Hamtramck, and Rep. Darrin Camilleri, D-Browntown Township, cited Maddocks involvement in dismissed federal lawsuits challenging the election, including the one led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. In addition, they pointed to Maddocks appearance in Washington speaking to a pro-Trump crowd a mile from the U.S. Capitol the day before the Jan. 6 riots, plus Maddocks involvement in an attempt to have Republican electors cast their votes alongside Democratic ones in Michigans Electoral College certification. House Speaker Rep. Jason Wentworth, R-Clare, defended Maddock for his speech at a peaceful protest the day before the Jan. 6 riots, so the House resolutions are not expected to go anywhere. Additionally, Republicans hold a 58-52 advantage in the House. Along similar lines was House Resolution 8 from Rep. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, which would urge Congress to make domestic terrorism a federal crime. She called the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol building as an act of domestic terrorism. Wentworth pushes for ethics reform out the gate Michigan House Republicans hope to make ethics reform a top priority in the new session. Wentworth and House Speaker Pro Tempore Pamela Hornberger, R-Chesterfield Township, introduced proposals Wednesday to shore up conflict of interest policies for lawmakers and put limits on bills jammed through legislative lame duck sessions. Hornbergers bill, House 4001, specifically states a member of the legislature could not vote on legislation if they have a personal or professional interest in the measure. And a resolution from Wentworth would require a two-thirds vote on any bill taken up after November general elections in even years. They said the proposals are the first of several reforms the House plans to introduce aimed at making Michigan government more accessible, accountable and transparent. In the Senate, Sen. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake, introduced Senate Bill 21, which would bar lawmakers from lobbying jobs until theyve been out of office for at least three years. Senates first bill rehashes vetoed attempt to limit public health orders to 28 days The first bill introduced in the Michigan Senate is a second attempt to cancel public health orders by restricting their timeline to 28 days. Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Sen. Lana Theis, R-Brighton, would amend the public health code to limit orders from the Department of Health and Human Services to 28 days, unless an extension is approved by the Legislature. This mirrors Theis Senate Bill 1253, which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer predictably vetoed on Dec. 30. Seeing as Whitmer has leaned on public health orders to help prevent public gatherings to mitigate COVID-19 spread, the new Senate bill is also likely doomed to fail. There is not enough bipartisan support in either chamber to override the vetoes. Read more: Whitmer vetoes bills that would limit public health orders and repeal governors emergency powers Other bills and resolutions introduced: Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny says a member of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has been detained on a charge of inciting extremism. According to a tweet by Navalny on January 15, Pavel Zelensky was detained over a tweet he sent last year following the self-immolation of journalist Irina Slavina in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. In his tweet on October 2, Zelensky condemned the Russian authorities, saying they were responsible for the journalist's death. Slavina died after setting herself on fire in front of Nizhny Novgorod's city police department on October 2 following a police raid on her apartment in an apparent search for evidence linking her to an opposition group. Before setting herself on fire, Slavina posted a statement on Facebook saying, "Blame the Russian Federation for my death." Slavina's self-immolation caused a public outcry, with many people demanding justice for the journalist. The Commission on Freedom of Speech and the Protection of Journalists and the Commission on Civil Rights at the presidential Council on Human Rights have called on Russia's Investigative Committee to thoroughly probe the circumstances surrounding Slavina's suicide. Last year, the Investigative Committee twice refused to launch an investigation into the tragedy, saying there was "no evidence" to prove that Slavina's death was a crime. On January 12, the lawyer for Slavina's family, Aleksandr Karavayev, said that the Investigative Committee had resumed a preliminary investigation into the journalist's death. Mumbai, Jan 15 : In another crackdown, Maharashtra Goods and Services Tax (GST) sleuths arrested a businessmen in connection with an alleged Rs 31 crore GST fraud, a statement said on Friday. According to a GST statement, accused Anuj Gupta, who has five registered firms, including two in the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, was nabbed from Vile Parle. He was produced before an Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate which sent him to 14 days judicial custody. Giving details, the GST Department said that the accused had shown bogus purchases of around Rs 272 crore and available fake Input Tax Credit of more than Rs 31 crore without actually buying goods or services. The bogus purchases were made through Gupta's registered firms Savvy Fabrics, Shiv Textiles, Shakti Textiles (Maharashtra) and Subhlene Fabrics and Shubhmangal Textiles (in the UT), which even received a refund of over Rs 11 crore. Suspecting something amiss, the Maharashtra GST, with help from the Dadra and Nagar Haveli GST officials, launched an investigation into the matter. It emerged that the companies had barely 20 percent of the stocks they claimed they had in their physical possession, while various transporters gave statements that they had not transporters any goods as contended by the five companies using their names. This is the third major action against persons perpetrating GST frauds in the past three months, involving several companies indulging in such practices causing huge losses to the government. In November 2020, the GST sleuths nabbed four Mumbai businessmen in a Rs 408 crore scam and on December 30, arrested one more trader for a Rs 185-crore fraud. The MGST Dept has cautioned that such fraudulent offences are non-bailable with a provision of a jail term upto five years under the GST Act, 2017, and warned errant GST manipulators to comply with the laws. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... TAIPEI, Taiwan Pipi already dines well. The plump, black-and-white street cat lives near a night market in a neighborhood of Taiwans capital where volunteers have fed and taken care of strays for years. But Pipi and his fellow street cats got an upgrade of their dining situation recently with the Midnight Cafeteria project. Launched in September, the cafeteria is actually 45 small wooden houses painted by Taiwanese artists and scattered across Taipei. The idea is to give the cats a place to rest while making feeding them less messy. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ It began in math teacher Hung Pei-lings neighborhood, where about 20 neighbors are helping stray cats in addition to their full-time jobs. We want to push forward this philosophy that you dont have to be part of a very top-level association or something that takes up all of your time, she said. You can just be one person doing something a little bit at a time, a little bit, and taken all together, you can achieve a lot. Hung began volunteering after a good friend rescued and raised a stray cat. For five years, she has worked with other cat lovers in the neighborhood who buy the cats food, help clean the houses and coordinate with residents who may have complaints. Hung also helps capture injured cats and cats that need spaying, takes them to get veterinary attention and then returns them to their haunts. The wooden houses in Hungs neighborhood were hand-painted by a local artist Stefano Misesti and feature smiling felines as well as street food that is loved in Taiwan such as stinky tofu. In addition to food bowls, one houses basic medicine for the cats. Neighbors have brought small cushions as well as decorated cardboard boxes to add to the houses. Started by Chen Chen-yi, a researcher at the Taiwan Animal Equality Association, the cat houses help ensure stray cats get fed well and local residents do not have to deal with a mess. They also raise awareness about the spaying program and the condition of stray cats. In Taiwan there are a lot of people who feed strays, but often they leave a mess, and then the public becomes annoyed by it and they become annoyed with strays as well, he said. The cat houses were a multi-team effort. Chen applied for a grant from the Taipei city government to fund the project, and then connected with a local ward leader as well as volunteers to carry it out. On a recent Sunday, Pipi and two of his friends were enjoying attention from Hung and another volunteer who came to feed them. After eating at the cafeteria, they settled in for a lazy morning nap. Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Eric Lis factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesnt plan to expand operations -- a reticence that could slow the pace of Chinas economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.Surging prices of raw materials means margins are compressed, explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co. Ltd., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity, he adds.The combination of higher input prices, uncertainty about export prospects and a weak recovery in domestic consumer demand meant Chinese manufacturing investment from January to April was 0.4% below the same period in 2019, according to official statistics (comparing to 2019 strips out the distortion of last years pandemic data).Due to the vast size of Chinas manufacturing sector, that poses a risk both to the nations growth -- which is currently predicted to reach 8.5% in 2021, according to a Bloomberg tally of economists estimates -- and to a global economy thats grappling with supply shortages and rising prices.Falling ProfitsWeaker-than-expected investment could have a sizable impact on GDP growth this year, said Citigroup Inc.s China economist, Li-gang Liu. Lower investment may dent imports of capital goods and equipment from developed economies like Japan and Germany, which in turn could drag their economic recovery and rebound as well, he added.AnHui HERO Electronic Sci & Tec Co. Ltd. is one of those companies feeling the squeeze. Based in the eastern province of Anhui, the company manufactures capacitors used to make electronic circuits, with sales mainly in the domestic market. Jing Yuan, the founder, says orders are up as much as 30% year-on-year, but profits are down 50% due to increasing materials costs that are not easily passed onto clients.The company is under huge cash pressure as it needs to pay half a month in advance of delivery in order to secure copper and other metals, which they previously paid for months after receiving, he said. The commodity issue has to be addressed by the government, he added.What Bloomberg Economics Says...Chinese industry is absorbing significant cost pressures from rising commodity prices -- damping the inflationary impact for the rest of the world. Will it last? Our analysis of gross margins suggests it could for a while longer: downstream industries -- where the cost crunch is most severe -- still have a small cushion.David Qu, China economistFor the full report, click here.Input shortages mean some manufacturers arent able to make use of their existing facilities, so expansion would be of little use. Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. suspended production at one of its factories last month, due to a shortage of microchips.Modern Casting Ltd., which makes iron and steel products in Guangdong, issued a note to clients this month saying it would not be able to meet its current orders due to high raw material costs. A member of staff who answered the phone at the companys office confirmed the note, but declined to give further details.Growth TransitionOn top of the higher input costs, Chinese companies face a bumpy transition toward domestic consumer spending to sustain its post-pandemic recovery.Exports, Chinas strong-suit last year, may begin to slow as vaccine roll-outs cause consumers in wealthy countries to shift spending back to services. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Chinese consumer spending has yet to fully recover.Investment sentiment among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises is below levels seen even in 2018-9 when uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade war were a brake on expansion plans, according to a regular survey of more than 500 Chinese companies by Standard Chartered Plc.Demand is still mainly underpinned by exports, so domestic companies are aware that this is not sustainable, said Standard Chartereds China economist, Lan Shen.While some export-oriented sectors have been pushed to their limits, large amounts of slack remain for manufacturers targeting Chinese consumers due to subdued domestic demand.Retail sales growth was 4.3% in April on a two-year average basis, which strips out base effects from the pandemic, less than half pre-pandemic growth rates. Overall capacity use at Chinas manufacturers fell to 77.6% in the first quarter from 78.4% in the previous three months, with the automotive sector hit hardest by overcapacity following three years of declining sales volumes.Even for electric vehicles whose sales are surging, most companies have already built their capacity and will now focus on incremental upgrades. The majority of the investment has been done, said Jochen Siebert of JSC Automotive Consulting.China ordered state-owned companies to expand last year, with their investment growth of 5.3% in 2020 from the prior year easily outstripping the 1% increase in private investment. But for a sustainable pick-up in investment, the market, not the state, needs to feel confident.Carsten Holz, an expert on Chinese investment statistics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, estimates that privately-owned companies have accounted for 87% of manufacturing investment in 2015, the most recent year of available data. They are more sensitive to input costs.There is a pandemic plus insecurity about future trade given a new U.S. administration, neither of which is conducive to investment that relies on long-term growth prospects, Holz said.Mixed PoliciesTransport bottlenecks are also a challenge for export-oriented manufacturers. Gordon Gao, who exports gardening products from China, said that he has had to reject 80% of orders this year due to port delays. In one case, an order placed before mid-February could only be shipped three months later when a client finally secured a container.Beijing has tried to improve conditions for private companies by ordering a crackdown on speculation to curb commodity prices and easing access to bank loans.Yet the government continues to gradually withdraw fiscal and monetary stimulus measures introduced amid the pandemic last year. It set a relatively unambitious target of above 6% growth for this year, and the Communist Partys Politburo signaled last month it would prioritize reforms to control house prices and debt growth.The policy stance has definitely shifted away from supporting growth and back toward de-risking the financial sector, said Adam Wolfe, an economist at London-based Absolute Strategy Research. The risks for economic growth seem tilted to the downside, especially for capital-intensive, construction-linked sectors.For manufacturers such as Li, a longer period of domestic growth and control over input prices will be needed before capacity expansion is on the cards. While his company of 200 workers took on new permanent staff before the pandemic, for now hed rather pass the risks of investment on to others.I wouldnt do that now, I would rather hire some temporary workers and outsource the rest, he said.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P. " " The Mojave Megaphone is located in a lonely spot of the Mojave Desert National Preserve. Eric Edwards/CampsitePhotos.com The Mojave Desert is the driest desert in North America, and though it rests between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, it is remote, mostly roadless and full of secrecy. Not far from the ghost town of Crucero, California, this arid emptiness is home to the enigmatic Mojave Megaphone, so-called for its resemblance to a loudspeaker. Located in a remote corner of the Mojave Desert National Preserve, this "megaphone" is a rusty hunk of metal permanently embedded into a rocky outcropping. No one has been able to identify what, exactly, this thing is. Some call it the Sentinel Enigma. Others call it art. Everyone calls it a mystery, much like the Utah monolith that made worldwide headlines in November 2020. Furthermore, there's nothing and no one, for miles around. It's a riddle as to how this heavy, roughly 8-foot- (2.4-meter-) long, unwieldy object wound up in its resting place. Comprised of two horn-shaped pieces of metal bolted together in the middle, it's too big to be a one-person job. A group of people or perhaps aliens? went to a lot of work to place this monstrosity far from any civilized place, mounting it on the cliffside. No one knows how long it's been there, either. "My best guess is that it was put up there about 30+ years ago," says Eric Edwards, the founder of CampsitePhotos, via email. He wrote about the Sentinel Enigma on his blog and has visited it. "Although it is in two pieces, each piece is very heavy but a few people could probably carry and drag it up there. Still, it would be very difficult and take a long time to get it up that hill." " " You can see the megaphone at the very top of this hill. Eric Edwards/CampsitePhotos.com Advertisement Possible Explanations for the Sentinel Enigma There's also another lingering question: What in the world is it? "That's the big question," says Edwards. "It has some similarities to a siren (circa 1940s and 1950s), but [that seems] unlikely. Still, the area was used to transport chemical agents (on rail) and perhaps a siren was used if there was a mishap." He also pointed out that there are no markings on it to indicate what it is or where it was made. Recently someone put animal skin over the openings and used it as a drum, but he says he doesn't think that was its original purpose. Others have speculated that it's part of a rocket system or perhaps a pipeline venturi, an hour-glass shaped enclosure that's used to control the flow rate of a fluid. Because it has crosshair shaped metal strips inside it, others believe it's a gunsight or sighting device of some sort. There are more fantastical theories, too perhaps it's a tool pointing out the location of a California cave system that extends for hundreds of miles, or even an "X" marking the spot of a huge gold hoard. Given its shape, though, the megaphone nickname makes a lot of sense. Maybe it's part of an antiquated alert system, as some people have guessed, like tornado siren on steroids. Or perhaps not. "It's probably not a civil defense or air raid siren," says Sarah Robey, a history professor at Idaho State University via email. "The early Cold War versions almost always have a rectangular mouth, WW2-era air raid sirens didn't really look like that either, even the ones that were more cylindrical. Moreover, you'd expect to find such civilian-oriented sirens in much more heavily populated areas than out in the desert." Her guess? It's a measurement tool of some kind. "Its proximity to Edwards Air Force Base (as well as Navy and Army sites) is a much bigger clue," she says. "Edwards is where the Air Force did a lot of sound barrier experiments, including Chuck Yeager's famous flights. I could definitely see something like the megaphone being some sort of measuring instrument related to flight, shock/sound waves, etc." She also points out that the Nevada Testing Site (now the Nevada National Security Site) isn't too far away. That's where all of the U.S. continental nuclear weapons were tested these were conducted above ground until 1963, then below ground after. "Even though the megaphone is 150+ miles [241+ kilometers] away, it's plausible that something like this could have been used to detect long-range shock waves or other disturbances," she says. "However, I kind of doubt it." Advertisement Visiting the Mojave Megaphone If you have a rugged vehicle with high clearance, you can make the journey to the megaphone and then hike the ridge to see it with your own eyes. "To reach it, someone would need to use a 4WD vehicle and drive through the Mojave River, then on dirt roads and through sand," says Edwards. "From Highway 15, exit Afton Canyon road and go east to the campground. From there, continue another 13 to 15 miles [21 to 24 kilometers] east through the canyon and follow the railroad tracks. Turn right (south) on Crucero Road for a few miles then start looking for it on top of a small hill." Once you're on location, it may be helpful to have the megaphone's exact coordinates (35.0056 degrees N, 116.1963 degrees W). Even if you don't have the motivation or means to see the megaphone in person, it's clear that these odd objects seem to spark the human imagination in weirdly moving ways. "The desert, especially remote desert locations, are inherently mysterious," says Edwards. "Often you'll find pristine areas with amazing views and beautiful (sometimes strange) geological formations. I think people like to put these strange objects in these locations because they add even more mystery and wonder. I doubt their intentions are to draw interest to any particular area, but rather to have a little fun and see how people might react." Now That's Interesting Think a megaphone finding adventure might be in your future? This stretch of the Mojave Desert can be deadly, with temperatures that approach 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54 degrees Celsius) in the summertime. Visit in cooler seasons instead. Also, keep in mind that no matter the weather, this is a remote location and you probably won't have cellphone service in case of car trouble or emergency. Take a friend for safety and make sure you pack spare tires and extra water, too. And in these times of COVID, some campgrounds and visitor centers at the Mojave National Preserve are closed, so check with them before setting out. For years evangelical leaders have been warning that the very actions of the faithful could destroy their faith community. Before the 2016 presidential election, some evangelical faith leaders warned of the dangers of embracing Donald Trump. Warnings of doom were repeated in 2020 when some evangelical leaders cautioned on the danger and political hypocrisy in embracing a twice-divorced man who flaunted his ethical and moral transgressions. Now in the wake of the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol, evangelical leaders are increasingly coming to the consensus that the day of reckoning has arrived. Some fear that their once potent religious community may be self-destructing. We are reaping the whirlwind of a deal with the devil, said Pastor Joel Kime, of the Faith Evangelical Congregational Church in Lancaster. There is an evangelical reckoning that needs to happen in our country. Kime denounced the insurrection at the Capitol, which on Wednesday, led to the second impeachment of the president. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for inciting a riot and spurring insurrection, with some lawmakers saying hes a threat to national security. It was extremely wrong and discouraging, Kime said. I see the influence of President Trump as very much connected to it, inciting it but also his actions and leadership have been extremely selfish, arrogant and wrong. Faith leaders pray with President Donald Trump during a January 3 rally for evangelical supporters at the King Jesus International Ministry church in Miami. Evangelical leaders are increasingly taking stock of their support of the president in the wake of the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol last week. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)AP A harsher condemnation was issued at the national level by Ed Stetzer, a Wheaton College dean and professor who leads the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. In an op-ed for USA Today, Stetzer excoriated evangelicals for long failing to rebuke Trumps flawed character and assault on Christian values. Trump burned down the Republican Party, and emboldened white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, Stetzer wrote. Yet of greater concern for me is the trail of destruction he has left within the evangelical movement, Stetzer wrote in the USA Today piece. Tempted by power and trapped within a culture war theology, too many evangelicals tied their fate to a man who embodied neither their faith nor their vision of political character. Faithful to Trump To be sure, a substantial number of evangelicals remain steadfast Trump loyalists. In 2016, 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. In 2020, support dipped but still, 78 percent voted for the president. Amid the presidents unrelenting unsubstantiated claims about the election, some high-profile evangelical Christians and Trump supporters havent lost their faith in the president. Before he traveled to Washington for Trumps rally ahead of the siege, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, for instance, called the effort to overturn Trumps election loss as a death match with the Democrat party. " The Franklin County Republican, a retired military colonel who is considered a possible candidate for governor in 2022, issued a statement condemning the pro-Trump insurrection, insisting that he took no part in the violence and calling for those who did take part to be prosecuted. Other evangelicals, like Paula White-Cain, a longtime spiritual counselor to Trump who served as a faith adviser in his White House, delivered no rebuke of the presidents role in the insurrection. Instead, she made only subtle allusions to the deadly siege even as she echoed warnings from some conservatives that their freedom of speech was being threatened. Even Franklin Graham has had to fend off sharp criticism of his about-face support of the president. In the hours after the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol, Graham took to Twitter to bemoan what he said was the division in the country, calling on Christians to unite our hearts together in prayer for President-elect @JoeBiden and Vice President-elect @KamalaHarris, and for the leadership in both parties. But his call for reconciliation came weeks after he bolstered Trumps baseless claims of a stolen election. When he says this election was rigged or stolen, Graham said of the president in December, I tend to believe him. Division and fracturing It is, indeed, a difficult position in which evangelicals and especially, evangelical leaders, find themselves, said John Fea, professor of American History at Messiah University. What we are seeing is a lot of evangelical and especially a lot of evangelical leaders are distancing themselves from the violence that happened on January 6, Fea said. They are condemning the insurrection but they are not backing away from claiming Trump to be a good president for America simply because Trump delivered for them on their social issues like abortion, Supreme Court and religious liberty, as they define it. They are doing a tight rope walk. Fea in 2018 gave a blistering critical analysis of the evangelical embrace of Trump in his book, Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. Fea, a white Christian evangelical, excoriated his brethren for being ignorant and hypocritical in aligning with a narcissistic, vulgar and misogynistic candidate. Evangelical scholar and Messiah College history professor John Fea has long warned of the potentially dangerous alliance between evangelicals and President Trump. Sean Simmers |ssimmers@pennlive.com Evangelicals may not be endorsing the violence that took place last week, but the discord amid their faith community with regards to the Trump legacy is beginning to tear at the fabric of a community that once stood solid in the face of the flawed moral evidence against Trump, he argues. You are seeing a lot of division and fracturing even among those who voted for Trump, Fea said. Still, Fea notes that even among those that believe President-elect Joe Biden won the election, there remains a reluctance to denounce the baseless claims of fraud about the vote. They believe Biden won the election. Some believe Trump should be impeached, Fea said. But they are not willing to stir some kind of pot. Faith in God, not politics In the meantime, evangelical church leaders like Kime are reconciling with the idea that while the might of their voting bloc resulted in the appointment of three conservative judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, the embrace of the president comes at a high cost. I look at myself. Was I too silent in my own sphere of influence, in my congregation? Kime said. Its so hard to know where to engage in the political realm as a pastor. Generally we try hard not to bring politics into the pulpit or to become partisan, he continued. We try hard to focus on the kingdom of God and the mission of Jesus hoping that will take the higher road to get to what is really important ... but I wonder if myself and other evangelicals were too silent. I think a lot of evangelicals were very complicit, almost making a deal with the devil. Pastor Mike Leonzo, of Living Water Community Church in Harrisburg, said he remains focused on shepherding followers of Christ. Our standard simply needs to be Gods word and not any kind of political candidate or office holder, he said. What weve been doing for the past 20 years is point people to Gods work and to say this is how you are supposed to live to effect change in the community, Leonzo said. The Bible tells us, Dont envy the violent or choose any of their ways. The Lord detest the perverse and takes the upright into his confidence. When God says we are not to envy violence or choose their way, what I tell people is that God detests lawlessness and violence in every form. That which happened last Wednesday and over the summer God detests all that lawlessness. Leonzo implores his faith community to return to its devotion of the Gospel and God and away from politics. We are putting our hope in Jesus and not in some political system, he said. We need to live out His word. Do justice and walk humbly with God. Thats what we need to do. If we put our hope in politics, our church implodes. Our church completely implodes if that is what we do. That is why I have to point people to the Gospel. More from PennLive U.S. Reps. Scott Perry, Lloyd Smucker could lose money from corporate boycotts over election claims That lie and we know its a lie thanks to more than 60 failed lawsuits and the words of the U.S. attorney general and election officials, Democratic and Republican, from every state is causing all this chaos. That lie led to the domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol that left a police officer and four others dead. It is motivating Trumps legion of most slavish followers a dangerous mix of white supremacists, self-declared militia members and even regular citizens driven to violence by a near-constant disinformation feed to organize and plan for an uprising. To plan for murder. And insurrection. After months of anticipation, the first Covid-19 vaccines finally started being administered in the UK last month, raising hopes that the end of the pandemic could finally be in sight. But a new study has warned that certain factors may reduce the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines for some people. The researchers warn that depression, stress and loneliness can weaken the bodys ability to develop an immune response to vaccines. Thankfully, the team believes that it may be possible to reduce these negative effects with simple measures such as exercise and sleep. A new study has warned that certain factors may reduce the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine for some people (stock image) WHAT IS DEPRESSION? While it is normal to feel down from time to time, people with depression may feel persistently unhappy for weeks or months on end. Depression can affect anyone at any age and is fairly common approximately one in 10people are likely to experience it at some point. Depression is a genuine health condition which people cannot just ignore or 'snap out of it'. Symptoms and effects vary, but can include constantly feeling upset or hopeless, or losing interest in things you used to enjoy. It can also cause physical symptoms such as problems sleeping, tiredness, having a low appetite or sex drive, and even feeling physical pain. In extreme cases it can lead to suicidal thoughts. Traumatic events can trigger it, and people with a family history may be more at risk. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement Previous studies have shown that mental health conditions can weaken the body's immune system and lower the effectiveness of certain vaccines. Now, researchers from The Ohio State University have revealed that the same appears to be true for the Covid-19 vaccine. Annelise Madison, a Doctoral Student in Clinical Psychology and lead author of the study, said: 'In addition to the physical toll of COVID-19, the pandemic has an equally troubling mental health component, causing anxiety and depression, among many other related problems. 'Emotional stressors like these can affect a person's immune system, impairing their ability to ward off infections. 'Our new study sheds light on vaccine efficacy and how health behaviours and emotional stressors can alter the body's ability to develop an immune response. The trouble is that the pandemic in and of itself could be amplifying these risk factors.' Vaccines work by triggering the immune system, resulting in the production of antibodies that target specific pathogens. The continued production of antibodies helps to determine how effective a vaccine is at offering long-term protection. Worryingly, a review of previous research found that depression, stress and loneliness can lengthen the amount of time it takes to develop immunity, as well as shorten the duration of immunity. Dr Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at The Ohio State University and senior author on the paper, said: 'The thing that excites me is that some of these factors are modifiable. Worryingly, the study found that depression, stress and loneliness can lengthen the amount of time it takes to develop immunity, as well as shorten the duration of immunity (stock image) 'It's possible to do some simple things to maximise the vaccine's initial effectiveness.' The researchers suggest that simple measures could help to improve the effectiveness of the vaccine for people with depression, loneliness or stress. One strategy is engaging in vigorous exercise and getting a good night's sleep 24 hours before the vaccine, according to the researchers. This may help your immune system to operate at peak performance, ensuring the best and strongest immune response as quick as possible. Ms Madison added: 'Prior research suggests that psychological and behavioural interventions can improve vaccine responsiveness. Even shorter-term interventions can be effective. 'Therefore, now is the time to identify those at risk for a poor immune response and intervene on these risk factors.' BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- A few days before the New Year, senior leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) sat down in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound for an annual criticism and self-criticism session. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, urged his colleagues at the meeting -- all members of the Political Bureau the CPC Central Committee -- to set an example for the entire Party to continuously improve conduct. The meeting capped a year's endeavor in that regard. In 2020, an extremely unusual year rattled by COVID-19, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core led by example to forge the Party's good conduct, pooling extraordinary strength to overcome difficulties. PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST The Party's fundamental purpose is to serve the people wholeheartedly. In the face of the once-in-a-century pandemic, Xi has personally taken charge and planned the national response against the virus. He presided over a series of high-level meetings, made the decision to close outbound transportation channels from the virus-ravaged city of Wuhan and the province of Hubei, and undertook field trips to Beijing and Wuhan at critical moments to command the fight. Under this strong leadership, Party members stepped up the fight against the virus with great unity and courage. The year 2020 also marked the final stage of the country's mission to eradicate absolute poverty and complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects. To overcome various difficulties and challenges and achieve the targets on time, Xi engaged himself in unusually frequent inspection tours, visiting 13 provincial regions one after another, attending a series of important meetings and events, and leading efforts on multiple fronts to fight COVID-19, floods and poverty. Xi knows that the correct path comes from the people. In creating the proposals for formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan, Xi convened seven symposiums and met with rural teachers, farmers, truck drivers, deliverymen and restaurant owners to hear their voices. He also instructed the proposal drafters to open online channels to solicit opinions from the public. In two weeks, more than 1 million pieces of suggestions were collected. LEADING BY EXAMPLE As a leader dedicated to people's wellbeing, Xi always liked to interact with those local residents he met during domestic inspections. He also insisted that his entourage pay for the meals incurred during the inspections. He was firm in curbing food waste and called for society-wide respect for frugality. The fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee in October set an example by advocating participants to clean their plates when they dined in canteens. Xi made it a prime area of focus to implement the Party's eight-point code on Party and government conduct. He stressed the issue at various high-level meetings he convened over the past year. He also issued more than 50 important instructions on rectifying formalities for formalities' sake and bureaucratism, as well as ending food waste. Senior leaders including Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, Han Zheng followed suit, starting with themselves and the places, sectors or departments under their watch. National meetings were streamlined and digitalized, with more video and telephone meetings replacing on-site ones. The past year also saw official documents and briefings reduced, as well as fewer outbound visits made by senior officials. The senior leaders also strictly abided by regulations on housing and using official vehicles, and set good examples in preventing food waste. CONTINUOUS ENDEAVOR At a plenary meeting of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in January 2020, Xi once again stressed the need to firmly implement the eight-point conduct code to prevent old problems from resurging and new problems from emerging. Prominent problems concerning undesirable conduct, such as the practice of formalities for formalities' sake and bureaucratism, have been rectified stringently. The CCDI and the National Supervisory Commission continued publishing their monthly report on the punishment of officials who have violated the eight-point conduct code, having published it continuously for 87 consecutive months by December. As the number of cases involving the problems of hedonism and extravagance decreased, improved Party conduct also led to the elevation of overall social ethics. The shady interests that were involved in public fund consumption have been removed and the extravagant spending has been stopped. Party members and cadres have taken the lead in inheriting and promoting the traditional virtues of diligence and thrift, as well as establishing good family virtues. Stepping into 2021, China has embarked on a new quest to fully build a modern socialist country. The century-old CPC, with its ever-strong ability to self-reform, is sure to lead the nation to secure one victory after another. According to information published on January 14, 2021, the government of Romania has approved the purchase of the NSM (Naval Strike Missile), a subsonic anti-ship missile jointly developed by the United States and Norway. According to information published on January 14, 2021, the government of Romania has approved the purchase of the NSM (Naval Strike Missile), a subsonic anti-ship missile jointly developed by the United States and Norway. Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) launches a Naval Strike Missile (NSM) during exercise Pacific Griffin. (Picture source U.S. DoD) The value of the contract for the acquisition of the Naval Strike Missile (NSM) by Romania is estimated at $286 million and will include four ground-based launch vehicles and associated command, control, and support equipment, with delivery by 2024. In October 2020, the U.S. State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Romania of Naval Strike Missile (NSM) Coastal Defense Systems (CDS) and related equipment. The Government of Romania had requested to buy two (2) Coastal Defense Systems (CDS) consisting of: up to ten (10) Link-16 Multifunctional Information Distribution System - Joint Tactical Radio Systems (MIDS-JTRS). Also included are two Coastal Defense System Fire Distribution Centers; four Mobile Launch Vehicles; Transport Loading Vehicles; Naval Strike Missiles; non-operational Inert Handling/Loading Missile (IHM) to support missile handling and loading/unloading; training missile and equipment spares; associated containers; training and training equipment; publications and technical documentation; spares parts; loading and mobile maintenance support; U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services; and other related elements of logistical and program support. The Naval Strike Missile (NSM) is an anti-ship and land-attack missile developed by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) in collaboration with the American, company Lockheed Martin. The missile can be launched from land and naval platforms. The NSM missile is able to fly over and around landmasses, travel in sea skim mode, and then make random maneuvers in the terminal phase, making it harder to stop by enemy countermeasures. It has a length of 3.96 m and carries an HE (High Explosive) fragmentation warhead with a maximum payload of 125 kg. It has a maximum firing range of 185 km. This is the Impeachment Briefing, The Timess newsletter about the impeachment investigation. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. What happened today A day after the House impeached President Trump for a second time, the Senate scrambled to figure out the trial that could determine whether he will be barred from holding future office, which most likely wont begin until after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is sworn in next week. Some Democrats said Speaker Nancy Pelosi might wait until Monday, Jan. 25, or longer, to transmit the article of impeachment, to allow time for the Senate to confirm Mr. Bidens national security team. Others cautioned that she could transmit it as soon as Friday, though the Senate would wait to act. Behind closed doors, Democratic and Republican leaders worked to try to carve out a set of rules that would allow the chamber to split time between the trial and the legislative business of confirming Mr. Bidens cabinet nominees and assembling another stimulus package. Senate Republicans made clear they were weighing the practical and political calculations involved. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, signaled she was open to convicting Mr. Trump at the trial. She voted against conviction during his first impeachment trial. McConnells split with Trump Earlier this week my colleague Jonathan Martin reported that Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, had concluded that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes impeachment could make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party. I asked him more about how Mr. McConnell reached this point. Jonathan, as we approach a trial, who is more powerful in the Republican Party: McConnell or Trump? It depends what branch of the Republican Party youre asking about. The congressional and donor wing of the party prefers Mitch McConnell. Surveys show that grass-roots voters care more for Donald Trump. But this is a moving story. People are still absorbing what happened last week its still unfolding what Trumps role in it was. There are only going to be more details that emerge about his role in the riot and the aftermath. And we just dont know what kind of role Trump will have in three months, let alone next year especially with no Twitter. Why the dramatic public split now? McConnell thinks Trump is a bad actor and bad for the party. He wants a more traditional G.O.P. pro-free trade, internationalist on national security, pro-business and lower taxes. Most significant, McConnell wants to win elections and reclaim the majority. He views Trump as an impediment to doing just that and is shaped by the many losses his party suffered, before and during the Trump years, because of who came out of G.O.P. primaries. McConnell potentially voting to convict Trump seems like a remarkable ending to their relationship after four years of symbiosis. How did it come to this? Two children in Japan 'caught' cancer from their mothers, in a rare medical phenomenon, new case reports. They likely inhaled cancer cells from their mothers, each of whom unwittingly had cervical cancer. The children each developed lung cancer years later. A baby has to pass through the mother's cervix during childbirth and doctors think that cancer cells find their way into the amniotic fluid surrounding the infant, who then inhales the cells as they open their mouth to take their first breath and cry. It's extraordinarily rare - only 20 cases have been documented - and the children weren't diagnosed for nearly two and 10 years after their respective births, scientists reported in a New ENgland Journal of Medicine case study, published this month. In rare cases, a baby can inhale cervical cancer cells that have drifted into amniotic fluid in the birth canal, causing them to develop lung cancer years later The scientists estimate that about one in every 500,000 mothers with cancer passes the disease on to her baby during childbirth. And only one in every 1,000 mothers has cancer during pregnancy in the first place. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer for women, striking about 570,000 women a year and killing 311,000 worldwide. And women are diagnosed at the average age of 50, with most cases occurring between ages 35 and 44. Doctors advise that women start getting screened at age 25, via physical exams and pap smears, but because the cancer isn't common during the most fertile years of women's lives, so it may not be top-of-mind for those trying to conceive. And nearly half of all pregnancies - about 45 percent - are still unplanned. So women often don't get screened via a prenatal exam before they become pregnant. Without that, the cancer is hard to detect. Plus, even if a woman gets pregnant while she has cancer or is diagnosed with cancer while pregnant, it's very rare for the cancer to affect her developing baby. But there are, of course exceptions - as was the case for the for the two children described in the case report. There is no way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that cancer was transmitted from the mothers to the babies, but there were some tell-tale signs. For one, the location of the mothers' cancers made them easier to pass on. The cervix is located at the bottom of the uterus, and at the top of the vaginal opening. A baby develops in the uterus, surrounded by amniotic fluid, which is like liquid insulation to protect the baby, and provide it with water, nutrients and other chemicals form the mother. While in the womb, a baby doesn't breathe the way adults do. Instead, it absorbs oxygen through the umbilical cord and placenta. So even if tumor cells from the cervix wind up in the amniotic fluid, there isn't much opportunity for them to be transmitted to the baby. But as the baby comes through the birth canal, there is a brief window of opportunity to inhale the amniotic fluid from near the cervix, allowing tumor cells to enter the lungs. The first child was diagnosed with lung cancer about 23 months after his birth, when he developed a persistent cough. After several rounds of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and surgery to remove a lobe of one of his lungs, the child eventually went into remission and was cancer free a year later. Sadly, his mother's cancer spread throughout her body and she eventually died. But before then, scientists sequenced genes in the mother's and child's tumors, and saw a clear link between them, suggesting that the cancer had probably been transmitted from mother to baby. The mother of the second child died when he was just two years old. He showed no signs of illness for another four years, but at age six, developed chest pain and was diagnosed with lung cancer as well. Genomic sequencing showed that his tumor, too, was linked to the mother's, and the tumor was positive for HPV, the STI which is a common cause of cervical cancers - but not lung tumors. Together, these pieces of evidence suggested that he probably 'caught' his mother's cancer. The boy had to have one of his lungs removed, but was alive and cancer-free 15 months later. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Amid the debate over privacy concerns, several people are switching to Telegram and Signal from WhatsApp. However, terrorists in India and abroad are using a much more advanced secure messaging platform to communicate with their counterparts across the globe without being traced and without leaving any digital footprint, a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe has revealed. The NIA during its probe into the Islamic State Iraq and Syria Khorasan Province (ISIS-KP) case has found that arrested accused Jahanzaib Sami Wani and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh and Bengaluru-based doctor Abdur Rahman aka 'Dr Brave' were using Threema, a secure messaging platform. Wani and Beigh were arrested in March 2020, while Rahman was caught in August. In a statement on January 12, an NIA spokesperson had said: "Till recently Rahman was in regular communication with ISIS terrorists located abroad as well as in India, including Sami on 'Threema', a secure messaging platform." The revelations were made on Tuesday when the anti-terror-probe agency filed a chargesheet against Rahman, who had returned from Syria in December 2013 and was misusing his medical knowledge to develop a laser-guided missile system for the banned terror group. According to NIA officials connectd to the probe, who wished to remain anonymous, Rahman was using his knowledge of ophthalmic lasers for developing a project on a laser-guided system through which the trajectory of an unguided missile can be changed with laser technology for the benefit of the ISIS. The official said that the "basic components" for such a system are pulse transmitters and receivers, which are the same or almost similar in flight circuits or opthalmology nanosecond lasers and could be used to guide missiles or rockets or payloads towards the intended targets. The NIA ISKP case is based on the one registered by Delhi Police's Special Cell in March 2020 after the arrest of Wani and his wife from Okhla Vihar in Jamia Nagar area here for alleged links with the terror group. The NIA had taken over the probe on March 20, 2020. However, this is not the first time that the NIA has come across the secure messaging platform used by the IS terrorists as well as Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Al Qaeda terrorists. Earlier, various top investigative agencies in India have taken the help of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to crack the messages of the terrorists in connection with several cases. An NIA official, who was part of the probe into the 2019 Pulwama terror attack, wishing not to be named told IANS, "Cracking the messaging code of the terrorists was a challenge for us in the beginning. But once we got terrorist Mohammad Umar's phone, we got the entire data extracted by forensic experts in the country." The official said that the data was "humongous". "The data was studied and analysed threadbare. It included several voice notes of terrorists as well," the official added. On February 14, 2019 40 CRPF troopers were killed after an IED driven vehicle hit the CRPF convoy. The NIA and the Intelligence Agencies in their probe had earlier found that Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists were using peer-to-peer software service -- YSMS -- or a similar mobile application to communicate with their counterparts in India and abroad. An NIA source connected to the probe told IANS: "The terrorists are using Threema application as well as its desktop version as it leaves minimal digital footprint making it almost impossible to be traced back." "Tracing of the message or call generated from the Threema is tough." According to NIA officials, Threema is a secure messaging platform which has been developed in Switzerland and is a paid open-source end-to-end encrypted instant messaging application for iPhone and Android smartphones. The source said that on Threema like so many other secure applications, a user does not have to enter an email address or phone number to create an account, thus allowing the user to use the service with a very high level of anonymity. The source said that Threema also hides all the tracks of the user as it minimises the footprint on servers that route traffic. The source claimed that on Threema the contacts and messages are stored on the user's device, instead of on the server. He said that Threema offers text and voice messages, voice and video calls, groups and distribution lists as features in the application, thus allowing the terrorists to remain "untraced". The official said besides the mobile application, there is also a browser-based secure desktop chat option of Threema which also does not log IP addresses or metadata of the user. (Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in) GENEVA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- More multilateralism and the reform of multilateral institutions are urgently needed to confront the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Secretary General Martin Chungong said. "The pandemic taught us that multilateralism is needed today more than ever before. We saw how it was important for countries to be working together to face the challenge of the pandemic," he said in an interview with Xinhua Thursday. Those who challenge the benefits of multilateralism are mistaken, he noted. "Of course it is not perfect, and that is the problem. We want to make sure that the institutions that embody multilateralism, including the IPU, are developed and reformed in a way as to make them better functioning for the implementation of the challenges faced by mankind today," he added. The IPU, which works closely with the United Nations (UN), was founded in 1889 and is one of the world's oldest multilateral organizations. Asked about the key lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic, he said: "We have learnt that the pandemic has taken on global proportions. It was important that the global community came together in a spirit of solidarity to address this." "It was not a question of one country resolving the problem by itself. This pandemic has shown that it knows no borders," he said. Chungong also stressed that the coronavirus crisis has forced a different way of doing business with a renewed sense of solidarity around the world. "The second thing that we have learnt is that as soon as the surprise was over, people and institutions began to take things into their hands and improve the way they were doing business," he said. "The pandemic and the way it has been managed have led us to rethink our business models especially with regard to international organizations. We can no longer do business as usual," he added. Looking ahead, Chungong said that one of the main challenges for the IPU would be to help its members cope with the fallout of the pandemic, and urge them not to overlook other pressing global issues such as climate change and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). "We know that the effects and the impacts of the crisis are yet to be felt," he said. "We have already seen that the SDGs, for example, are suffering because of the fact that the global community has had to reset priorities, focusing on fighting the pandemic and not investing enough in other aspects that are crucial for sustainable development." "This is something that the IPU and the global parliamentary community will have to look at very carefully. How can we help countries and parliaments revise laws, allocate resources, and hold governments accountable for the SDGs, for instance for climate change," he said. Rahul Gandhi leads Congress protest in support of agitating farmers India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Jan 15: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday led the party's protest in the national capital in support of the agitating farmers, and said his party will not relent till the new farm laws are repealed. He was accompanied by AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and other leaders of the Delhi Congress at the protest outside the Delhi LG's residence here as part of the countrywide agitation. Addressing the gathering, the former Congress chief said the Congress party will not step back till the time the government repeals these three farm laws. India dealt with COVID-19, its economic consequences decisively: IMF chief "These laws are not to help farmers, but to finish them. These laws are aimed at helping corporates like Ambani and Adani instead," he charged and added, "That is why we are standing in favour of the farmers". Coronavirus cases: India records 15,590 new COVID-19 cases, 191 deaths in last 24 hours "The BJP government will have to take these black laws back. Till the time these laws are repealed, Congress party will not relent," he told the protesting Congressmen. "The Narendra Modi government earlier tried to take away the land of farmers, when it brought the land acquisition Act and the Congress party stopped them at that time. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Now the BJP and their two-three friends are once again attacking the farmers and have brought these three farm laws," he also alleged. The Congress is taking out protest marches at all state capitals in the country and will gherao Raj Bhawans. The party is also protesting against fuel price hike. The Congress is observing the day as Kisan Adhikar Divas in support of farmers' rights. The protests come on a day the government is holding the next round of talks with leaders of farm unions to end the deadlock over their agitation. BATON ROUGE, La., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Louisiana families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Louisianans are hosting 699 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. A growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing School Choice Week, including Jefferson Davis Parish and the cities of Delhi, Leesville, Minden, Plaquemine, and Cottonport. "Pandemic or no pandemic, every parent wants their child to be happy and prepared for the future, and a personalized education is the best route toward that," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "There are many types of schools that families can choose from in Louisiana. This Week shines a positive light on all those options, celebrating great schools and educators across the state. " In Louisiana, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with open enrollment at the discretion of each district, charter schools, magnet schools, online schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Louisiana families can deduct nonpublic educational expenses from their taxes, and families with incomes below a certain level can qualify for state-run scholarships. Louisiana families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Louisiana school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/louisiana National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com 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. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Joanne Rogers, an an accomplished concert pianist who celebrated and protected the legacy of her husband, the beloved childrens TV host Mister Rogers, has died in Pittsburgh. She was 92. Rogers died Thursday, according to the Fred Rogers Center. No cause of death was given. The center called her a joyful and tender-hearted spirit, whose heart and wisdom have guided our work in service of Freds enduring legacy. Joanne and Fred Rogers were married for more than 50 years, spanning the launch and end of the low-key, low-tech Mister Rogers Neighborhood, which presented Fred Rogers as one adult in a busy world who always had time to listen to children. His pull as Americas favorite neighbor never seemed to wane before his death in 2003. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ I cant think of a time when weve needed him so much, Joanne Rogers told The Associated Press in 2018. I think his work is just as timely now as it was when it came out, frankly. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Fred Rogers produced the pioneering show at Pittsburgh public television station WQED beginning in 1966, going national two years later. He composed his own songs for the show. It offered a soft haven for kids, in sharp contrast to the louder, more animated competition. The final episode of what his widow called a comfortable lap aired in August 2001. PBS stations around the country still air Mister Rogers Neighborhood and some can be found on the PBS Kids video app. There are DVD collections on Amazon and episodes stream on Amazon Prime. The city of Pittsburgh, where the show was produced, tweeted that Joanne Rogers was one of Pittsburghs greatest neighbors. It said the couple forever changed our city. Other tributes came from such varied fans as tennis star Billie Jean King to designer Kenneth Cole. Fred Rogers effect on popular culture was profound: Eddie Murphy parodied him on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s and one of Rogers trademark zip-up sweaters hangs in the Smithsonians National Museum of American History. Hes had a category dedicated to him on Jeopardy. 2018, the 50th anniversary of when Rogers first appeared on TV screens, prompted a PBS special, a new postage stamp, the feature-length documentary Wont You Be My Neighbor? and, a year later, the Tom Hanks-led biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Born Sara Joanne Byrd in 1928, Joanne Rogers met her future husband at Rollins College in Florida. After Fred Rogers death, she helped develop the Fred Rogers Center Center for Early Learning and Childrens Media at St. Vincent College in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Joanne and Fred were Pennsylvania treasures committed to improving our communities and the lives of our children. We will never forget their legacy of kindness, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said in a statement. She is survived by two sons, James Byrd Rogers and John Rogers. ___ Associated Press reporter Michael Rubinkam contributed to this report from Pennsylvania. "El sistema esta pasando de rebrote a un crecimiento mas acelerado. Estamos en una segunda ola. El proximo ano estaremos en condiciones mas normales", senalo hoy la ministra Pilar Mazzetti durante su participacion en el #CADEejecutivos. pic.twitter.com/JnSoL5Ev0h AXIS Capital Holdings Ltd. said it wont insure oil and gas projects in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, becoming the first North American underwriter to make the commitment after pressure from native Alaskans and environmentalists. The move follows similar pledges from Frances AXA SA and Swiss Re AG and comes as indigenous tribes that live in Alaska and Canada push investors, oil companies and insurers to end their support for Arctic oil drilling. Related: Warming Arctic Is Key to Understanding Climate Change Risks, Experts Say Lloyds Moves to End Insurance and Investments in Coal for Climate Sustainability We believe climate-related risks are among the most serious issues facing the world today, Conrad Brooks, general counsel and corporate secretary of Bermuda-based AXIS Capital, wrote in a letter to the Gwichin Steering Committee, which represents tribes in Alaska and Canada. We also recognize the importance of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to you and your families, as well as our planet. Brooks said AXIS wont underwrite new insurance or offer facultative reinsurance contracts, nor provide investment support for projects involved in exploration, production or transportation of oil and gas in the refuge. The decision is one of several moves by AXIS to enhance its environmental and climate-risk strategy, Brooks said. The company has already limited underwriting of thermal coal and oil sands projects. The rugged Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska has become the latest front in a fight over oil drilling. When the Trump administration auctioned drilling rights in the refuges coastal plain last week, just two oil companies bid for tracts alongside an Alaska economic development corporation that spent about $12 million nabbing leases on the states behalf. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to permanently protect the refuge, which is home to polar bears, caribou herds and other wildlife and is among the fastest-warming places on the planet. The recent lease sale ignored all our concerns and dismissed the climate crisis, but the commitment from AXIS today shows that other companies agree with us and respect us, said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwichin Steering Committee. We need more companies to stand with us, respect our human rights and our way of life. Photo credit: The Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) stands near Copperville, Alaska, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017. Four decades after the Trans Alaska Pipeline System went live, transforming the North Slope into a modern-day Klondike, many Alaskans fear the best days have passed. Photo credit: Daniel Acker, Bloomberg Copyright 2021 Bloomberg. Topics Energy Oil Gas Closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High 'impacts our entire town' The Washington County Board of Education held a public hearing on the closing of Hancock Middle-Senior High School; the crowd pleaded against it. Gardai have been giving examples of breaches of Covid-19 regulations which led to 100 fines for non essential journeys. In one case, a driver stopped in Ringsend in Dublin "stated that he and two passengers travelled from Co. Meath to collect burgers from a takeaway restaurant in Dublin 4 having travelled approximately 80km from home." All three occupants of the car each received a Fixed Penalty Notice of 100. Other examples included: Checkpoint in Middleton. Female driver was requested to return home. Subsequently the driver was observed at a beach amenity outside the 5km limit. Driver acknowledged she was breaching Covid regulations and offered no further reasonable excuse. Two cyclists stopped near Carrick, Galway, not from same household, no social distancing, or face coverings, 19km from home and in another county. Claimed reasonable excuse of physical exercise, but were outside 5km applicable limit. North County Dublin four persons observed leaving rear of gym. Further examination included speaking with two gym instructors who claimed to be working from the gym as no Internet at home to conduct online sessions - 6 FPNs issuing. Waterford city - male stopped walking on the street, said he had been out for food and then to see friends on the other side of the city - no reasonable excuse. Checkpoint outside Cork City - male and female not from same household stopped while driving and claimed to be travelling to visit elderly relative. On completion of checkpoint a few minutes later Gardai patrolled local amenity carpark and found the same driver. He had not travelled to visit elderly relative, had no reasonable excuse and was outside 5km limit for physical exercise. Both car occupants issued FPNs. Gardai said: "An Garda Siochana has been consistent in our graduated policing response to supporting Public Health Regulations and guidelines in line with our tradition of policing by consent. This has seen Gardai engage, explain, encourage and, as a last resort, enforce. "Where breaches of the travel regulations are detected and a person does not comply with a direction of An Garda Siochana, a prosecution can be commenced by means of a 100 Fixed Payment Notice. Where more appropriate, An Garda Siochana may seek a direction from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions." 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. Many European Union nations say they are receiving lower-than-expected supplies of Covid-19 vaccines and complain in internal meetings of uncertainty over future deliveries, EU officials told Reuters, as distribution proceeds unevenly among EU states. The vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer with its German partner BioNTech began being delivered in the EU at the end of December. U.S. biotech firm Moderna started deliveries of its shot this week after the bloc approved it on Jan. 6. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Yet about one-third of the 27 EU governments cited "insufficient" doses of vaccines at a video-conference of health ministers on Wednesday, according to a person who attended the virtual meeting. They also complained about uncertain timetables for future deliveries, the official added, without naming any country. Belgium has said it expects to receive only around half of the planned doses of the Pfizer vaccine in January due to a logistical issue while Lithuania says it was told this week its supplies would be halved until mid-February. "The manufacturer told us the cuts are EU-wide,", Lithuanian health ministry spokesman Vytautas Beniusis told Reuters on Friday. Lower-than-expected amounts were delivered to Italy at the beginning of January, but the issue seemed now largely resolved, an Italian official said. Deliveries were proceeding "according to the schedule agreed," a spokeswoman for Pfizer said. There was no production problem to report, but timelines were "aspirational" and were subject to changes, she added. A second EU source told Reuters that in another EU internal meeting with diplomats on Wednesday, an EU Commission official said deliveries would be limited at least until March, with production set to be ramped up in earnest only by September. The Commission's top vaccine negotiator Sandra Gallina had told EU lawmakers in a public meeting on Tuesday she had heard only three instances of "relatively minor" complaints about deliveries from EU governments. A Commission spokesman declined to comment on concerns about limited supplies and uncertain timetables. PRO-RATA? Pfizer and BioNTech have two contracts with the EU for the supply of up to 600 million doses this year. They have agreed to deliver 75 million doses in the second quarter and more later in the year. It is unclear how many doses can be distributed in the first three months. Moderna has committed to delivering 10 million doses by the end of March and 35 million each in the second and third quarter. Another 80 million doses are also to be delivered this year but without a clear timetable yet. The vaccine makers have not published detailed calendars of deliveries for each of the 27 EU countries, which are expected to receive a portion of vaccines in proportion to their share of the EU's 450 million population. Pfizer said the information was confidential. "At this stage we can only confirm that the doses will be distributed on a pro-rata basis between EU countries," a spokesman for Moderna said. But deliveries do not seem to be proceeding evenly. The German Health Ministry says on its website that the country, with a population of 83 million, will receive nearly 4 million Pfizer doses by the end of January. Romania, with a population four times smaller, says it expects to receive only 600,000 doses in the same period. Bulgaria, with less than one-tenth of Germany's population, expects to receive only about 60,000 Pfizer shots in January, in proportion much less than Germany. The EU has secured nearly 2.3 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines and candidates from six firms, but most of them have not yet been approved. Decisions on AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are expected respectively in late January and in February. 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. US President-elect Joe Biden has announced the final members of his cabinet of 24. Its a team, he says, that looks like America. It is the first-ever cabinet to be evenly composed of women and men, and the first with a majority of people of colour. Plus, Biden said, it has more than a dozen history-making appointments, including the first female treasury secretary, the first African American defence decretary, the first openly gay cabinet member, the first Native American cabinet secretary. US President-elect Joe Biden has announced the final members of his cabinet. Credit:AP What he didnt brag about is that its also one of if not the oldest cabinets in US history, with 46 per cent of its members in their 60s or 70s. If Biden himself who, at 78, will be the oldest person ever to become president, and his 56-year-old Vice-President are included, the average age of the cabinet is 58.5 years. Were it not for 38-year-old Pete Buttigieg, nominated for Secretary of Transportation, it would be even older. Of course, in the US politicians, judges and business leaders (and, yes, even journalists) have a much longer shelf-life than is usual in Australia. Seems like the nation constantly wants to know whats happening with journalist and newsmaker Arnab Goswami. Every time one spots him trending on social media, a meme fest takes over as viewers continue to lose their ability to take his words seriously. Republic Recently, advocate Prashant Bhushan, who is a public interest lawyer and activist shared leaked screenshots of WhatAapp conversations between Arnab and ex-CEO of BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) Partho Dasgupta, who is also currently swimming in the TRP scam case. These are a few snapshots of the damning leaked WhatsApp chats between BARC CEO & #ArnabGoswami. They show many conspiracies&unprecedented access to power in this govt; gross abuse of his media&his position as power broker. In any Rule of law country, he would be in jail for long pic.twitter.com/6aGOR6BRQJ Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) January 15, 2021 The TRP scam, in question, began last year in October when the BARC filed a complaint against a few TV channels (including Republic TV) and accused them of rigging their TRP numbers. The former CEO Partho Dasgupta and Arnab Goswami are being accused of rigging numbers. When the question of actress Rhea Chakrabortys chats being leaked arose in the past, many claimed it was being done in national interest, ergo some are pointing out the hypocrisy over the hue and cry around Arnabs chats being leaked now. As soon as the tweet became viral on the internet, people couldnt help but joke about this whole situation. #ArnabGoswami Error! Filename not specified.Suddenness, the sheer suddenness of the moveError! Filename not specified.. So finally it is proved that Whatsapp is no more secure, neither end to end encrypted. Installing Signal. Carbonated (@saqibhafix) January 15, 2021 The whole situation explained in a video #ArnabGoswami pic.twitter.com/HR7rFSICCk Manoj Tiwari(Parody) (@ManojMujra) January 15, 2021 #ArnabGoswami :- What is this behaviour Zuckerberg ? Zuckerberg :- I am sorry Babu. Rhea & Karma smiling while reading this 73+ MB chat. pic.twitter.com/1au0vZNYnD Ahmed Bilal Chowdhary ( ) (@AhmedBilal_JK) January 15, 2021 While people cant help but make memes about this situation, many others are exhibiting their angst towards the horrendous misuse of power that these chats reveal. The sheer power of #ArnabGoswami, a News Editor. Reminding me of Dileep Padgaonkar's infamous comment: I am the most powerful man after the PM. A man with zero accountability discussing scrapping of Art 370 with NSA Doval a day before the formal announcement @pbhushan1 pic.twitter.com/lbjyjZEee6 Poonam punekar (@PunekarPoonam1) January 15, 2021 Whats the point of you higher education and degree plus your experience and age if you wasting on such issues which has no value addition to it?!! Just asking! What kind of example are you setting for your future generations? So sad to read venomous negativity from you always. Kavita Damle Error! Filename not specified. (@KavitaDamle) January 15, 2021 A lot of people on social media are questioning the authenticity of these screenshots but turns out, that the Mumbai Police extracted data from BARC CEO's phone and these are apparently a part of that. Mumbai Police releases 500 pages WhatsApp chat between Arnab Goswami and Partho Das Gupta ( Ex CEO of BARC) pic.twitter.com/C3wnxjRi0N Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) January 15, 2021 The alleged leaked chats reveal some crucial information, including how Arnab Goswami met National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval two days just before the abrogation of Article 370, especially the fact that he knew all about the Article 370 abrogation discussion. Some of the messages also suggest that the former BARC CEO allegedly sent a confidential note to Arnab explaining that he had jammed the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) and Goswami allegedly replied that he may meet the Prime Minister in this matter. The court hearing is scheduled for 29th January 2021. Until then, the High Court has withheld any coercive action against all accused. The government on Friday asked protesting farmers to form an informal group to prepare a concrete proposal about their objections and suggestions on the three farm laws for further discussion at their next meeting on January 19 to end the long-running protest at various Delhi borders, but unions stuck to their main demand of a complete repeal of the three Acts. As nearly five hours of talks between 41 unions and three central ministers did not reach a decisive stage in the ninth round of talks at Vigyan Bhawan here, the two sides decided to meet again the next Tuesday. Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told farmer leaders at the meeting that the government has been flexible in its approach and urged the same from them. Incidentally, the tenth round of talks has been scheduled for a day when a Supreme Court-appointed committee to resolve the impasse is also likely to hold its first meeting. A day before that, the apex court is likely to hear a petition against a tractor rally call given by the protesting farmers for the Republic Day on January 26. After the meeting, Tomar told reporters that two separate deliberations can run parallelly as the farmer unions want to continue their talks with the government and the court-appointed panel has also been set up with an aim to resolve the crisis and a solution can emerge from anywhere. "Discussions happen at various platforms and a solution can emerge from anywhere... Our effort is to find a solution at the earliest through dialogue so that the farmers' protest ends. Farmers are sitting in cold weather amid the threat of COVID-19 and the government is concerned about that also and is therefore engaging with farmers with an open mind," he said. The minister said the government will also present its side before the SC-appointed panel whenever it is asked to do so. Farmer leader Joginder Singh Ugrahan said after the meeting that the unions urged the Centre to repeal the three laws, but the Centre was unwilling to do so. Ugrahan said the union leaders also raised the issue of NIA raids on transporters in Punjab who are supporting farmers' protests and were providing logistic support for the agitation. Shivkumar Kakka, national president of Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Mahasangh, said the union leaders raised the issue of Income Tax raids on 'arhtiyas' (commission agents) in Punjab. "Cases were also filed against 900 Haryana farmers under IPC section 307, while the NIA raided transporters and called them for interrogation. You are taking vindictive action against those who are helping us. This is not constitutional," he said. The farmer leader said that Tomar told them the government will look into it and see why it was happening. Farmers union leaders, who had their own langar food during the lunch break, said at the meeting they are committed to continuing holding direct talks to resolve the over-one-month-long deadlock over three agri laws, even as a committee has been formed by the Supreme Court to resolve the deadlock. In his opening remarks, Tomar urged farmer leaders to be flexible in their approach as has been done by the government. Besides Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash were part of the government side. "Both the government and farmer unions have reaffirmed their commitment to continue with the direct dialogue process," said All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee member Kavita Kuruganti, who was part of the meeting. "In his opening remarks, Tomar ji said you keep saying that the government is adamant and making it an issue of ego, even though we have accepted several demands. Don't you think you should be flexible and not stick to one single demand of repealing the laws," said Baljit Singh Bali of Punjab Kisan Morcha. Farmer leader Darshan Pal said there was a good discussion on all three laws. "There is a possibility of some resolution. We are positive," he added. Another leader Rakesh Tikait said: "Government has told us that solution should be found through dialogue and not a court. Everyone is of the same view. There is a possibility of some solution." Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over a month now against the three laws. On January 8, the eighth round of meeting had remained inconclusive as the Centre ruled out repealing the three contentious laws claiming nationwide support for the reforms. However, farmer leaders had said that they were ready to fight till death and their 'ghar waapsi' would happen only after 'law waapsi'. In the sixth round held on December 30 last year, some common ground was reached on two demands -- decriminalisation of stubble-burning and continuation of power subsidies. Enacted in September 2020, the government has presented these laws as major farm reforms aimed at increasing farmers' income, but the protesting farmers have raised concerns that these legislations would weaken the minimum support price (MSP) and "mandi" (wholesale market) systems and leave them at the mercy of big corporations. The government has maintained that these apprehensions are misplaced and has ruled out a repeal of the laws. The Supreme Court on January 11 had stayed the implementation of the three laws till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse. Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann, however, on Thursday recused himself from the committee. Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's former director (South Asia) Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati are the other three members on the panel. Tomar said the meeting with farmers unions was cordial and all three laws were discussed, while there was a detailed discussion on the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. "During the discussion, farmers expressed their views and our minister (Goyal) also shared the details and tried to address their concerns. But the discussion did not reach to a conclusion. After that, the government and union mutually decided to meet again on January 19 at 12 noon," he said. The minister said he hopes that unions will take forward the talks based on today's discussion. "We have also suggested them to form an informal group of those who can talk properly about the laws, about expectations from the government and also about provisions of the laws that they feel are against farmers. If they discuss all these and come out with a draft of concrete proposals then the government is ready to discuss that with an open mind," he said. Tomar said the government has understood farmers' apprehensions in the course of several rounds of discussion so far and had expressed its willingness to address those apprehensions and a written proposal was also sent to unions. "But they didn't accept the proposal and therefore the discussions are happening... I hope that we will move forward towards finding a solution," he said. On protests held by Congress party across the country and allegations levelled by Rahul Gandhi against the government with regard to the farm laws, Tomar said, "The entire Congress party also laughs at and makes fun of Rahul Gandhi's statements and action." "I want to tell him through media that they had promised to undertake these reforms in their 2019 election manifesto. If he doesn't remember, he can read his manifesto again. If it is there in the manifesto, then Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi should come before the press and make it clear if they were lying then or are lying now," he said. By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The European Union is looking to engage quickly with the Biden administration to resolve major trade irritants, including disputes over digital taxes and commercial aircraft subsides, EU Director General for Trade Sabine Weyand said on Friday. Weyand told an online forum that the EU is planning to present a World Trade Organization reform proposal in February and is now willing to consider reforms to restrain the judicial authority of the WTO's dispute settlement body. The United States has for years complained that WTO Appellate Body makes unjustified new trade rules in its decisions and has blocked the appointment of new judges to stop this, rendering the body inoperable. The Trump administration, which leaves office next Wednesday, had threatened to impose tariffs on French cosmetics, handbags and other goods in retaliation for France's digital services tax that it said discriminated against U.S. tech firms. Washington said last week it would put those tariffs on hold as the U.S. Trade Representative's (USTR) office looked into similar digital taxes planned by Austria, Britain, Italy, Spain, Turkey and India. Weyand told the event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that she saw the decision to not collect tariffs on French goods as a positive sign. "We are working on an EU proposal and we have timed it so that it coincides with the OECD process and I think there is a possibility to discuss it," Weyand said. The OECD has been overseeing an effort by countries to come up with a global solution to digital taxation, but the talks bogged down last year. Any solution would be non-discriminatory and in full-compliance with WTO rules, Weyand added. "What we had said to the previous administration was that if you have concerns about WTO compatibility, then to take it to the WTO. What we cannot accept is that the U.S. takes the law into its own hands." Story continues Weyand said the EU was surprised by USTR's Dec. 31 move to boost tariffs on French and German aircraft parts and wines in the Boeing-Airbus subsidy dispute, but the bloc had decided to hold off on retaliation for now. She said the EU's ambition is to reach a negotiated settlement within six months to the WTO subsidy dispute that began in 2004. "We've been holding our fire because we said, 'okay it's three weeks to the new administration.' So let's engage rapidly in this, but our objective here is to come to a situation where both sides hopefully would agree to suspend the tariffs," and create space for negotiations. (Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrew Heavens) 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. Paresh Kariya of Anugrah Stock and Broking Arrested by EOW To bookmark you need to sign in Paresh Kariya, the founder and director of Anugrah Stock and Broking Pvt Ltd (ASBPL), was arrested last night. The brokerage firm is accused of having cheated investors across the country of hundreds of crores of rupees and multiple FIRs have been filed against the owner and the broking firm. Moneylife was the first to report this in August 2020 as the story of a scam brewing up at Anugrah . Confirming the arrest, a senior official told Moneylife that Mr Kariya would be in custody till 22 January 2021. Anugrah faces litigation by over 500 investors who have moved the Bombay High Court through multiple cases. Several of these have made SEBI (the Securities and Exchange Board of India), NSE (the National Stock Exchange), NSE Clearing Corporation and Edelweiss Custodial Services party to the litigation. Investors had pleaded for a multi-agency probe into what happened with Anugrah. The bulk of investors in Anugrah had come through an associate firm called Teji Mandi Analytics, which was apparently running a derivatives portfolio of over Rs1,000 crore like a ponzi scheme with assured monthly returns. Investigations revealed that Mr Kariya had invested the investors money in F&O (futures and options) and had also pledged his clients shares worth more than Rs100 crore to get a trading margin. Anugrah traded in the F&O segment and the companys clients margins (in shares) were kept as collateral. Investigations point that after the firm suffered a huge loss in the market, the clearing house sold off all the collaterals (margins of investors). So eventually the clients were left with no shares in their hand in which they had invested their money. Mr Kariya had failed to keep his clients informed about the losses in the market. In September 2020, the Bombay High Court barred the brokerage house from touching the assets worth Rs58 crore of more than 25 petitioners who had made investments through it till further orders. In September, the economic offences wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police had registered a case of cheating against the troubled stock-broking house for duping an investor of Rs8 crore. On 13th November 2020, market regulator SEBI suspended the brokerage firm till the completion of enquiry proceedings, after finding it in violation of several market norms. The findings of forensic audit report submitted by NSE included mis-statement about debtors and creditors, shortfall of client funds and client securities, payments made to clients having running debit balance and discrepancies in maintenance of records, among others. Post-disablement of the firm's trading terminals by NSE in August 2020, SEBI has received 2,352 complaints under the SEBI complaints redress system (SCORES) as on 11 November 2020. On 27 November 2020, NSE expelled the tainted broking firm from its membership and declared it as a defaulter. Stockholm, 4 January 2021 (SPS) - The Green Party in Sweden on Sunday called on the Swedish government to recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and criticized the European Union's "weak position" on the conflict in Western Sahara, media reported. "The Green Party wants Sweden to recognize Western Sahara as a state. Swedish recognition will send an important and clear signal to the international community and to the liberation movements who believe in peace and democratic development in the region," underlined the official spokesperson of the Swedish Greens party for foreign policy affairs, Ms. Janine Alm Eriksson, in a joint article with the official youth spokesperson of the Green party Aida Badili, published on December 29 in the newspaper "Goteborg-Posten". The two officials strongly criticized the obstacles erected by outgoing US President Donald Trump to peace efforts in Western Sahara, through his "irresponsible and illegitimate" recognition of Morocco's alleged sovereignty over the occupied territory. "The fact that the outgoing US president is now using his last days in power to end an already deadlocked peace process is extremely unacceptable and irresponsible, but it is also a position which shows that it is the duty of the international community to act to resolve the conflict ", wrote the two leaders of the Green Party in their article. For these two spokespersons, Trump's announcement made on December 10 relating to the Saharawi question, "threatens human lives and constitutes an irresponsible position for the American president, because it can cause serious damage and prolong decades of conflict and of occupation ... ". The two officials believe, in the same context, that the logical solution to the conflict is "Morocco's withdrawal from Western Sahara and the end of the conflict through international recognition of the SADR". Referring to recent events in the buffer zone in El Guerguerat, south-western Western Sahara, following the Moroccan aggression on 13 November against Sahrawi civilians, Ms Badili and Eriksson deplored the fact that the 30-year ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front that was to lead to the independence of Western Sahara "was violated when the occupier attacked (peaceful) demonstrators" in the region. She continued: "Morocco's actions constitute a serious violation of the cease-fire agreement", before adding: "by this behavior, the security and stability of the region are in danger and it becomes necessary to shed light on a long-term solution that would restore the right of the Sahrawis to their homeland ". The two leaders of the Swedish Green party criticized the European Union's "weak position" with regard to the conflict in Western Sahara, occupied since 1975, stressing that "it is time for the international community and the United Nations" to intervene to allow the Saharawi people to exercise their right to self-determination and independence in a referendum ". "The occupation must end, the people of Western Sahara have the right to freedom and self-determination, and the international community has a duty to intervene - not to hinder the process," they concluded. (SPS) 062/090/T (Israel Hayom via JNS) The World Health Organization has leveled strong criticism at China for refusing entry to a team seeking to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a rare rebuke, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said two scientists on the agencys team had already left their home countries for Wuhan when they were told that Chinese officials had not granted the necessary permissions for them to enter the country. The arrangements had been jointly agreed with China in advance, reported CNN. I am very disappointed with this news, Tedros said at... Kazakh Prime Minister Askar Mamin's Cabinet has resigned following the parliamentary elections in the country. In a statement, the Kazakh Presidency said that under the constitution, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree on the continuity of the current Cabinet members to fulfill their duties until the approval of a new government in the country after the parliamentary elections, Anadolu Agency reported. The ruling Nur Otan Party, led by former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, swept the parliamentary elections held Sunday with nearly 72% of the vote. The Kazakh parliament has a Senate and a lower chamber. The Ak Zhol Democratic Party obtained 10.95% of the vote, followed by the People's Party of Kazakhstan with 9.10%. While the number of total voters stands over 11.91 million, the turnout rate was 63.3%. More than 310 candidates from the ruling Nur Otan Party, Ak Zhol Democratic Party, Auyl Peoples Democratic Patriotic Party, and the Adal Party ran for 107 seats in the parliament. A total of 76 seats were secured by the Nur Otan Party, 12 by the Ak Zhol Democratic Party, and 10 by the People's Party of Kazakhstan. The other nine deputies will be members of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan. LATEST Jan. 15, 11:45 a.m. A Bumble representative told SFGATE that they have turned the political views filter back on in the United States. "Where our AI technology flags photos, hate symbols or text content that promotes the insurrection or related activities, those are removed, with repeated offenses or more extreme content resulting in a user being banned," a Bumble spokesperson told SFGATE. Jan. 15, 7:44 a.m. The quest to find a potential date never stops, even if, say, you're a rioter who broke federal law by invading the Capitol. A tweet by attorney Allison Norris where she told the tale of an acquaintance who matched with "MAGA bros" who were at the Jan. 6 riots and proceeded to send their information to the FBI caught traction online. And, now, Bumble has removed a filter allowing users to select prospective matches based on their political affiliation in order to "prevent misuse," presumably by the likes of other people on dating apps who heeded Norris' call to action. (The filter will eventually return, but it is unclear when. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from SFGATE.) Bumble assured Mashable, which first broke the news, that it would remove "any insurrection-related content" from its platform, and will "monitor activity" in the D.C. area in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. Social media platforms have been instrumental in helping the FBI and other authorities identify the participants of the Jan. 6 siege. Parler, reported Business Insider, gave agents a lead to a Proud Boy who used the platform to make threats against Georgia Sen.-elect Raphael Warnock. Other internet investigators, such as an Instagram account named @homegrownterrorists and countless Twitter posters, have also been key to finding the mob's participants. More than 50 alleged victims have been identified in a case against a Belfast man accused of a vast campaign of child sexual abuse, a court heard today. Prosecutors claimed he used 45 different aliases to target children aged as young as eight who were either threatened online or physically molested. He is now expected to face in excess of 200 charges when the case reaches trial, a judge was told. The 51-year-old defendant cannot be named to protect his alleged victims' identities. He is currently accused of rape, sexual assault, sexual communication with a child, attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming, harassment, blackmail, threats to kill, possessing and distributing indecent images, and sexual activity with a person unable to refuse due to a mental disorder. The alleged offences were committed on dates between July 2019 and March 2020. One of those he is charged with abusing is his own severely disabled daughter. Belfast Magistrates' Court heard claims that she featured in 2,500 images discovered, wearing provocative clothing chosen by her father. In total, almost 8,000 photos of children were found on the defendant's phone, many categorised as extreme or prohibited, according to a Crown lawyer. "These are predominantly first generation images, generated from direct contact online," he said. Providing an update in the case, the lawyer contended: "Fifty-four victims have been identified in relation to the defendant's alleged offending from examination of three devices. "The victims range in age from eight to sixteen, and have been subjected to various threats of violence and blackmail." Fourteen children have already completed interviews as part of the ongoing investigation involving other UK police forces. District Judge George Conner was told nearly 600 user names were located on the man's devices. "We have identified 45 different aliases used by him," the prosecutor said. He added: "Police suspect there will be over 200 charges and (the defendant) is still to be interviewed about a significant amount of evidence." With the accused remanded in custody, defence counsel Chris Sherrard argued that he is entitled to know when he can expect to stand trial. Adjourning the case for four weeks, Mr Conner stressed: "I would like some indication how long the outstanding work is going to take." Secretary of General of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committee Thongloun Sisoulith. Photo Vientiane Times HA NOI General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam Central Committee and State President Nguyen Phu Trong has sent a message of congratulations to newly-elected Secretary of General of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committee Thongloun Sisoulith. Thongloun Sisoulith was elected as the Secretary of General of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committee at the 11th National Party Congress that ended on Friday. Trong said he believed that under the leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party led by Thongloun Sisoulith, the Lao people will continue to gain many new achievements in the renewal process, successfully implementing the Resolution of the 11th National Party Congress of the Party and successfully build an independent, democratic, united and prosperous Laos in accordance with socialist goals. The Party, State and Vietnamese people will work together with the Party, State and people of Laos to preserve and nurture friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Laos and Viet Nam towards developing in depth, practicality and efficiency in all fields, bringing benefits to the people of the two countries, for peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and in the world. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc also sent a congratulatory message to Thongloun Sisoulith while National Assembly chairwoman congratulated Pany Yathotu for being re-elected as a Politburo member. VNS [January 15, 2021] Huawei Recognized as a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice for Data Center and Cloud Networking with the Highest Rating SHENZHEN, China, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei, a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices, is excited to share that they were named a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice for Data Center and Cloud Networking for its CloudFabric Data Center Network (DCN) Solution. Huawei has a high 4.9/5 stars as of November 2020, ranking first among almost 20 vendors. As of November 2020, Huawei CloudFabric has received customer feedback from various industries worldwide, covering products and solutions such as CloudEngine series data center (DC) switches, iMaster NCE-Fabric an autonomous driving DCN management and control system, and Huawei iMaster NCE-FabricInsight an intelligent analysis platform designed for DCNs. In the Product Capabilities, Integration & Deployment, and Service & Support categories, Huawei received high ratings from customers in different industries such as finance, Internet, carriers, and public services. "Our departments use Huawei switches, and the branch also chooses Huawei. The switch did not disappoint, its technology is first-class and its functions are very stable" - Feedback from a finance product manager - Feedback from a finance product manager "High-quality switch and services!The ADN solution is very impressive,we already deployment AC-DCN Controller, it really improve the standardization and efficiency of network management. And we have deployed their network analyzer FabricInsight,hundreds of network failures have been helped to fast locate during yearly period ." - Feedback from an O&M Engineer in the government industry "We are honored to receive this distinction once again, with the highest rating (4.9/5) and recognition from global customers. We thank everyone that gave us feedback on Gartner Peer Insights," said Leon Wang, President of Huawei Data Center Network. "In the future, we will remain committed to meeting customer requirements and continuously innovating, ultimately providing products and solutions that are recognized by customers and in doing so help to accelerate their digital transformation." Huawei CloudFabric serves over 9200 enterprise customers in more than 140 countries. Customer trust is derived from Huawei's continuous innovation on and leading position in DCNs. In 2020, Huawei released the all-new CloudFabric 2.0 Solution. Based on an open architecture, this solution can connect to multiple clouds and is compatible with devices from multiple vendors, reducing operating expenses (OPEX) by 28%. The high-density 400GE intelligent and lossless network features zero packet loss and low latency, improving the computing capability by 27% and data storage IOPS by over 30%. Huawei launched the CloudEngine 16800 next-generation 400GE DC switch. Based on the industry-leading new platform, new optical interfaces, and new intelligence, the switch enables efficient collaboration between different fields of 'new infrastructure' and accelerates the industry's digital transformation. In addition to innovative solutions and products, Huawei CloudEngine DC switches have gained the trust of customers worldwide. According to Gartner's Market Share: Enterprise Network Equipment by Market Segment, Worldwide, 2Q20, 29 September 2020 [1], market share of Huawei's 10Gbps and 25Gbps Ethernet Switches rank highest in the global port shipments. Gartner Peer Insights is an online platform of ratings and reviews of IT software and services written and read by IT professionals and technology decision-makers. The goal is to help IT leaders make more insightful purchase decisions and technology providers improve their products by receiving objective, unbiased feedback from their customers. Gartner Peer Insights includes more than 350,000 verified reviews in more than 340 markets. For more information about Huawei CloudFabric DCN Solution and CloudEngine DC switches, visit Huawei DCN Solution website. Disclaimer: Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice constitute the subjective opinions of individual end-user reviews, ratings, and data applied against a documented methodology; they neither represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner or its affiliates. [1] Gartner, Market Share: Enterprise Network Equipment by Market Segment, Worldwide, 2Q20, 29 September 2020 SOURCE Huawei [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Authorities claim that HKChronicles violated national security laws. Website managers: it is censorship; we will operate on another domain. Democratic field: fears for the freedom of information online. The authorities step up their crackdown. Hong Kong (AsiaNews / Agencies) Honk Kong authorities yesterday blocked an anti-government website, HKChronicles, citing national security reasons. The news was confirmed by the Hong Kong Broadband Network, one of the servers that hosted the site: it is the first time that online content has been blacked out under the draconian security law set up by Beijing. The website managers immediately announced that they had purchased a new domain name in order to continue their business. HKChronicles has been targeted by censors for collecting information on the protests organized in 2019 by the anti-extradition movement. To help the Democratic protesters, it also revealed details of police officers and establishment supporters responsible for acts of brutality. Observers note that while HKChronicles is banned, a site targeting pro-democracy activists and journalists continues to remain online. The democratic camp fears that the pro-Beijing executive wants to restrict free information on the web: a new blow for the citizens of the former British colony who are fighting to defend their democratic freedoms. Recently, city authorities have intensified the repression. On January 14, the National Security Police arrested 11 personalities including the well-known lawyer Daniel Wong Kwok-tung, Democratic District Councilor and tenacious advocate for many young people arrested during the 2019 demonstrations. On January 6, 1000 security policemen arrested 53 activists from the democratic world. Most were then released on bail the next day. According to many local and international observers, the security law is being used to eradicate democracy in Hong Kong. Houston ISD trustees remained deadlocked Thursday evening on who to select as their 2021 board president, an unusual standoff that illustrated the lack of clear governing majority on the closely watched body. After 10 rounds of voting on board president candidates yielded no resolution, trustees agreed to end a six-hour meeting and delay choosing a board president until Jan. 21. Some trustees argued the impasse reflected a slate of strong candidates, while others expressed unease about the stalemate. I do believe one week of us resting and thinking things over will be a help, said Trustee Myrna Guidry, who joined the board in December and represented a potential swing vote. HISDs school board has grappled with in-fighting in recent years, resulting in embarrassing episodes that hurt the districts reputation, but in 2020 trustees avoided major blemishes. Board members face multiple challenges headed into 2021, including choosing a permanent superintendent, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and dealing with ongoing litigation over the states effort to strip power from the elected board. Although HISDs board president has no additional voting power, the chosen leader often establishes the tone for the nine-member board. The president is responsible for setting meeting agendas with the superintendent, presiding over meetings and serving as a lead spokesperson for the board, among other tasks. The annual vote to select a president often reveals allegiances on the HISD board, which sometimes lacks a majority faction. However, trustees have avoided prolonged debates during board meetings about who to select for the position, often amid lobbying ahead of the vote. I feel like one of the reasons weve come to this impasse is weve had such a history of real and perceived deal-making by the HISD school board, incumbent Board President Sue Deigaard said. And for the first time, that didnt happen. And thats a good thing. This year, board members opened voting with three potential candidates: Deigaard, second-year trustee Pat Allen and fifth-year trustee Anne Sung. Ultimately, each candidate voted for herself and received support at various points from three trustees falling one vote short of a majority. Deigaard agreed to retain the post and garnered votes from trustees Judith Cruz, Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca and Dani Hernandez. Allen earned the backing of trustees Kathy Blueford-Daniels, Myrna Guidry and Elizabeth Santos. Sung found support from Flynn Vilaseca, Santos and Guidry. Board members tried to break the deadlock by holding three more votes for the same three candidates, to no avail. Nominations for Cruz and Flynn Vilaseca surfaced in the fifth round of voting, but both board members only tallied three votes. Trustees went into closed session for about 90 minutes, tackled other business, then returned to continue voting for board president. Four more rounds of voting yielded no progress. After an hour-long return to closed session and a 10th round of voting, board members agreed to the week-long delay. The disagreement over leadership positions marked a stark contrast from 2020, when the districts four newly-elected trustees flexed their muscle and voted in a manner that ensured all three remaining board who participated in the quickly-reversed ouster of Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan did not receive top jobs. The secretive move to replace Lathan ultimately led to a state investigation and contributed to Texas Education Commissioner Mike Moraths ongoing effort to temporarily replace all HISD trustees. This year, two of the four trustees Allen and Blueford-Daniels did not support giving Deigaard a second term as president, prompting the deadlock. In the past 20 years, no HISD trustee has served two consecutive full terms as board president FP Trending Vaio laptops are making a comeback in India today and will be available for purchase through the e-commerce platform Flipkart. The announcement was made by Vaio India on its official Twitter handle. "#ExperienceTheFuture of personal computing on 15th of January from 1 PM onwards," read the post. With the relaunch of its laptops, Vaio focuses on reclaiming its space in the market while having an unrivalled demand by the customers, said Seema Bhatnagar, Regional Business Director, South Asia, Vaio, in a press statement. We are delighted to bring to you something exciting to look forward to in the new year! Can you guess what it is? Flipkart (@Flipkart) January 3, 2021 Flipkart has also created a microsite ahead of the launch of the new Vaio laptops in India. It also gives glimpses at the design of the upcoming range and says that the laptops will be lightweight. Apart from the launch date, the details about the model, specifications, price are still not known but customers can expect sleek, colourful and portable laptops assuring high-performance capability. Till 2014, Vaio laptops were released under the Sony Vaio branding in India and the rest of the world. However, in 2014 Sony sold off its Vaio PC business to a Japanese investment fund. Sony had said it has determined that concentrating its mobile product lineup on smartphones and tablets and transferring its PC business to a new company established by JIP is the optimal solution. 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. Tesco became the latest supermarket to serve up a sales feast over Christmas, but problems on the island of Ireland cast a shadow over the results. As it posted an 8.1 per cent rise in UK sales over the festive period, the supermarket group revealed it has had trouble delivering fresh foods, particularly meat, to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after the transition period with the European Union ended on December 31. Problems surround paperwork, with meats requiring the correct veterinary sign off in order to be transported through the borders. Chief executive Ken Murphy said: 'We're working very closely with government on both sides of the Irish Sea to smooth the flow of product. Tesco became the latest supermarket to serve up a sales feast over Christmas, but problems on the island of Ireland cast a shadow over the results 'Ready meals are the ones that are most heavily impacted because they typically operate on an eight-day shelf life so if there's a delay at port of four hours, that's a day of shelf-life lost effectively.' Tesco is one of the largest food retailers in Ireland, making up 22 per cent of the market. Irish sales account for 5 per cent of the business's total group sales. Murphy, born and educated in Cork in the republic, added: 'We have a big business that we want to nurture and keep. I can tell you with 100 per cent confidence that we are committed to our customers in Ireland and we will find a solution for them.' He also said there had been 'teething problems' with supply flows from continental Europe to the UK. 'Inevitably there are bedding-in issues, teething issues, that you would expect with any new process that's been set up at relatively short notice. We're working our way through those and we would hope over the coming weeks and months that we will end up with a much smoother flow,' he added. Tesco followed supermarket rivals in reporting buoyant Christmas trading, driven higher by sales of champagne and mince pies. It also reported an increase in its low or no-alcohol products and sales of its vegan Plant Chef range, underlining the growing trend of health conscious shoppers. The FTSE 100 grocer said UK sales rose 6.7 per cent in the 13 weeks to November 28 and 8.1 per cent in the following six weeks to January 9. Business in the UK was boosted by a 14 per cent rise in sales of its 'Finest' range. Over the 19-week period, internet trading soared by more than 80 per cent, handing it an extra 1 billion of sales. And it had given all front-line staff a 10 per cent bonus over Christmas. Rivals Sainsbury's and Morrisons last week reported similar sales surges. 'This was our sixth consecutive Christmas of growth and a record performance,' Murphy said. A Jamaican drug dealer whose deportation was halted by a last-minute appeal was freed from custody by a judge last night. The criminal, who can be identified only as 'RS', was due to be on board a Home Office charter flight on December 2. But he and 22 other Jamaican criminals who were also due to be kicked out of the UK submitted legal challenges which delayed their removal, to the fury of Home Secretary Priti Patel. Now lawyers for RS who was jailed for seven and a half years for dealing Class A drugs have successfully argued that he should be freed from immigration detention while the Home Office prepares another flight. The High Court ruled that keeping him locked up was 'unlawful' and ordered Miss Patel to release him on bail. A Jamaican drug dealer whose deportation was halted by a last-minute appeal was freed from custody by a judge last night. He and 22 other Jamaican criminals who were also due to be kicked out of the UK submitted legal challenges which delayed their removal, to the fury of Home Secretary Priti Patel (pictured) A Government source said: 'This highlights the difficulties we are facing when it comes to deporting foreign criminals.' The court's decision will reignite a debate which saw Miss Patel criticise 'do-gooding' celebrities and Labour MPs who supported the criminals. Miss Patel said it was 'deeply offensive' for stars including supermodel Naomi Campbell and Line Of Duty actress Thandie Newton to compare the criminals with victims of the Windrush scandal, who were innocent of any wrongdoing. In the latest development, Judge Timothy Corner QC ruled yesterday that RS's 'mental health is very seriously impaired and detention is making it worse'. Miss Patel said it was 'deeply offensive' for stars including supermodel Naomi Campbell (left) and Line Of Duty actress Thandie Newton (right) to compare the criminals with victims of the Windrush scandal, who were innocent of any wrongdoing He concluded that 'the lack of a clear timescale for his deportation means that he should be released', adding: 'I think there is a strong prima facie case that his continued detention is unlawful.' RS was released from prison in August 2019 and, after periods on bail, was taken into immigration detention in November. He submitted a claim to the Home Office on December 1, the day before the aircraft was due to take off, it emerged in the court's ruling. This led to him being removed from the charter flight manifest. The ruling went on to disclose details of a series of legal challenges that have since been brought by RS and his lawyers. The High Court heard that RS who first came to the UK in 2002 said he had been kidnapped and 'shot in the head by a gang' in Jamaica in 2001. He also claimed he had been raped in prison in 2016. His lawyers argued he was suffering from 'severe' depression and PTSD which was being made worse in detention. The court heard he had applied for asylum protection as he 'feared ill-treatment in Jamaica' and that deportation would 'increase his risk of suicide'. Judge Corner was told by Home Office lawyers that the next flight to Jamaica could take place in March. But the judge said there was no 'actual evidence' to back this up. A savvy mother-of-five has revealed how struggling parents can feed their families for just 20.21 a week. Lorna Cooper, 44, from Paisley near Glasgow, has shared her budget shopping list, along with a weekly meal plan, in a bid to help low-income families feed their children nutritious meals during the pandemic. The money-saving recipes cover breakfast lunch and dinner for seven days a week and include tasty dishes such as 'dirty cajun rice' as well as more traditional meals like cottage pie. The plan is designed for a family of two adults and two children. Lorna Cooper, 44, from Paisley near Glasgow, has revealed the budget-friendly recipes she uses to feed her family (pictured) The mother-of-five shared a shopping list that allows parents to feed their family delicious meals including cottage pie (pictured) for just 20.21 a week Lorna's plan has been designed to feed a family of two adults and two children. Pictured: Lorna's chicken fried rice The cheapest meals to cook at home revealed SHEPHERDS PIE Minced beef - 74p Porridge oats - 7p Onions - 16p Carrots - 29p Beef stock cubes -3p Mash Potato or root vegetables TOTAL COST = 1.29 CHICKEN FRIED RICE 300g cooked and cooled rice - 14p 100g leftover cooked chicken -17p 200g frozen mixed veg - 13p 1 egg beaten- 6p Store cupboard 1bsp oil 1tbsp soy sauce TOTAL COST = 50p CHICKEN KORMA For four: 2 x chicken breasts: 2.08 1 x onion: 10p Cream: 15p Paste was made from spices in the store cupboard Cornflour is also from the store cupboard Chicken stock is homemade TOTAL COST: 2.33 CHINESE CHICKEN CURRY For four: 2 chicken breasts: 2.08 1 onion: 10p Curry paste: 40p TOTAL COST: 2.58 or 65p per portion CHICKEN OR PEPPERONI PIZZA For two pizzas: Dough is made from store cupboard basics Sauce: 10p 1 chicken breast: 1.04 Pepperoni: 50p Mozzarella: 90p TOTAL COST: 2.44 or 1.22 per pizza Advertisement Lorna, who is a mother-of-three and stepmother-of-two, learnt how to shop smart, batch cook and minimise waste after losing her own mother when she was just 11-years-old. She also suffered a back injury six years ago which forced her to start cooking on a budget. The thrifty mother has since she set up a Facebook page sharing homecooked meal ideas and has also written a book called 'Feed Your Family For 20 A Week'. Lorna said: 'Some of the photos I have seen on social media of the food packages some families have received are unacceptable. Lorna said most of the items on her shopping list (pictured) can be found at supermarkets including Tesco and Aldi Lorna learned to save money on food by batch cooking and shopping smart after losing her mother at age 11. Pictured: Lorna's weekly meal planner Savvy mother Lorna (Pictured), also began to enforce a tight budget after injuring her back six years ago 'I wanted to show people how they can get much more on a small budget with my weekly meal plan. 'Hopefully this helps some families who are struggling financially as a result of the COVID pandemic and not being able to have access to free school meals.' She continued: 'Most of the products in the shopping list can be found at Tesco, the eggs from Farmfoods and stock cubes from Aldi. 'Sometimes it is best to shop around, it may be less convenient, but it makes a huge difference to your budget.' Linda has set up a Facebook page sharing homecooked meal ideas and has also written a book called 'Feed Your Family For 20 A Week'. Pictured: Lorna's cottage pie recipe The savvy home chef has become a master at making large meals for her family while on a tight budget, including chicken fried rice Linda (pictured) said she began sharing her tips because she wants to show people what can be achieved on a small budget Meanwhile she went on to suggest seeking out bargains by looking at a supermarket's own range of products. She said: 'If you don't have access to a lot of supermarkets nearby, it is good to have a look at your local supermarket's 'basic' range as they are often just as good as some branded products. 'It is also good to check the price per kg of items to make sure you are getting the best value for your money.' Linda said it may be less convenient to shop around, but it makes a huge difference to your budget. Pictured: Lorna's egg muffin recipe In an unmanned bank in Shanghai, intelligent robots powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are acting like reception managers to answer clients questions and help them handle businesses. This is the epitome of the rapid development of Chinas unmanned economy. According to query platform Tianyancha.com, China is home to over 73,000 enterprises involved in unmanned economy. Among them, 33 percent are wholesale and retail companies, 28.8 percent are research and tech service companies, and 3.6 percent are manufacturing companies. A woman buys products at an unmanned supermarket in Fengtai district, Beijing. (Photo/Xinhua) New technologies represented by 5G, AI, the industrial internet and the Internet of Things have given a strong boost to the development of unmanned economy, making economic activities and living smarter. In Nanjing, capital city of east Chinas Jiangsu province, robots are sorting packages at an unmanned warehouse of Cainiao Network, the logistics arm of Alibaba Group. At a port in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, 25 domestically-developed self-driving electric trucks have ran for more than 30,000 hours and accomplished more than 8,000 container transportation tasks after they were put into use. In Zhangjiakou, north Chinas Hebei province, villagers have lifted the annual yield of raspberries to 3,000 kg per mu (667 square meters) with the help of AI technology, no longer having to be at the mercy of the weather. Unmanned economy enjoys broad development prospects as it meets consumers individual needs, improves efficiency and reduces costs, said Pan Helin, executive dean of the Digital Economic Research Institute of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. For example, unmanned shelves, similar to vending machines, have been put into use in office buildings in many cities. Consumers can use their smartphones to scan a QR code on a shelf to pay for goods. During Chinas fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, new contactless services, such as unmanned retailing and delivery, have played their role. JD Logistics, the logistics arm of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, adopted unmanned vehicles to deliver goods to medical workers in Wuhan, capital city of central Chinas Hubei province and the former epicenter of the epidemic. Similar robots were used to deliver medicine, food and recycled medical waste in isolation areas at hospitals in the city, effectively curbing the spread of the virus. Best, worst of times Israeli Arabs make up 21%, or about 2 million, of Israels approximately 9.2 million citizens. These numbers do not include the more than 5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, who are not Israeli citizens and do not vote in Israeli elections. About 90% of the Israeli Arabs who take part in elections vote for members of the Arab Joint List, the coalition of four Israeli Arab parties in the Knesset. In the March 2020 elections, the Joint List got 15 seats the most in its history out of the 120 seats in the Israeli parliament. That may not seem like much, but it is Israel has lots of small parties, and postelection politicking to put together a majority coalition can come down to just a handful of seats. The Joint list is the third-largest faction in the parliament. Those 15 seats, however, have generally brought Israels Arab citizens little but disappointment. Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Likud coalition, and the Blue and White alliance led by Benny Gantz, made clear in the politicking leading up to their now-broken unity government that they would not be working with the Arabs to form a government. So the 15-strong bloc and the 2 million citizens it represents were bystanders yet again in Israeli governance. The road to Nazareth But now theres a rethink going on. It all started when Knesset member Mansour Abbas of the Islamist Raam (United Arab List) party, a member of the Joint List coalition, said he was ready to work with Netanyahu, shaking up not only the Arab parties, but Israeli politics more broadly. Ben Caspit told us that Raam working with Netanyahu is more of a shock than if the US conservative Tea Party movement joined forces with liberal US Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who made a strong run for the Democratic presidential nomination last year. In other words, it makes no sense in any way. Ra'am is also a fellow traveler with the Muslim Brotherhood. It all amounts, in Caspits words, to a historic drama. Next came the center-left Meretz party, which has only three seats in the Knesset. This month Meretz named two Arabs among its top five candidates on its list for the March elections: activist Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi from Nazareth and former Knesset member Esawi Frej. Meretz is willing to work with any and all opposition parties, including those on the right, to unseat Netanyahu, as Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz told Caspit in a podcast interview last month. The centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) Party, which holds 15 Knesset seats and is chaired by former Finance Minister Yair Lapid, is also considering adding an Arab candidate to its list for the March elections. Lapid, by the way, accused Netanyahu of incitement and dismissed Gantzs ability to lead the opposition to the prime minister in a podcast interview with Caspit in August. And now even Netanyahu realizes that in a tight race to hold onto power, the disaffected 2 million Arab citizens might be the key. There is talk he may name Nail Zoabi, a Muslim Arab from the northern village of Nein, to a slot on the Knesset list. So Netanyahu, who plotted to delegitimize the Arab vote" in previous elections, writes Afif Abu Much, is now its leading suitor, indirectly paving the way for parties on the center-left to resume their wooing of Arab voters. And that brings us to the spectacle of Netanyahu stumping for votes in Nazareth on Jan. 13. Nazareth has about 78,000 citizens, almost all Arabs. Mazal Mualem describes the scene: As usual, Netanyahu hogged the agenda. He arrived with the full trappings of his high office in Israels largest Arab city, accompanied by a long convoy of cars and dozens of Shin Bet security agents. The highly unusual visit was carefully scripted in the best marketing tradition. Netanyahus Nazareth speech, as he dubbed it himself, was designed to signal a new era in his relationship with Israel's 21% Arab minority and create momentum for his fourth reelection bid in less than two years. His lines were at once cynical and historic. The man who repeatedly incited against the Arab population, questioned their loyalty to the state and warned about their electoral power was now standing before them asking for their support. And Nazareth Mayor Ali Salem, according to Mualem, was clearly awed by Netanyahu and the fanfare of the visit. No one has done what the prime minister has done, he said. We have never had it as good as we have now. ... You look out for all the residents. And in the middle of this mess, you make peace, and peace is a good thing. I promise you we will support you so that you can continue giving. Joint List on the precipice It is too early to say whether Netanyahu can pick up two or three Knesset seats from Arab voters on March 23, but he has clearly presented the Joint List with the greatest challenge since its inception in late 2014, Mualem writes. He correctly identified the disappointment of its constituents who realized that the unprecedented power they handed their lawmakers has been meaningless in terms of political influence and impact on their lives. Violent crime is ravaging entire Arab communities, as is the coronavirus, and to top it all, Netanyahu has pulled off historic peace and normalization agreements with Arab and Muslim states, refuting the paradigm of peace with the Arab world only following peace with the Palestinians. There is no doubt that Israels normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have rattled the Joint Lists constituency. Israeli Arabs have welcomed the opening and connection, as Afif Abu Much explained on the "On the Middle East" podcast, while the Joint List voted against the normalization deals. The grim polling that give the Joint List only 10 or 11 seats in the next Knesset, compared to 15 in the previous elections, is undoubtedly a catalyst for the Jewish parties courting of the Arab vote, Abu Much concludes. However, the question remains whether the Arab public will forget its treatment by the Jewish parties in previous elections. The violent attack on the US Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump has led to a surge of interest from wealthy Americans wanting to purchase property and move to the safety of Australia. Christies International Real Estate agent Ken Jacobs said he received more than eight inquiries in the immediate aftermath of the riots that killed at least five people. The Americans cited not only concerns about the riot, but also the direction of the US government, the high numbers of disenfranchised Americans and the prevalence of guns. The violent attack on the US Capitol building has led to a surge of interest in Americans buying property in Sydney. Credit:AP Normally we get inquiries from all around the world on specific properties, this time there have been inquiries of people actually saying [they're] considering a move to Australia, Jacobs says. A High Court judge has dismissed a damages action by a woman who sued her daughters national school over ankle injuries suffered after she fell on the last of a flight of steps leading to its playground. A core argument made by 36-year-old Ciara Finlay in her case was that the steps should have had hand-rails. Scoil Mhuire National School, Ardee, Co Louth, denied liability and Mr Justice Bernard Barton, in his recently published judgment, ruled it had no liability to Ms Finlay arising from the accident on the morning of August 30, 2017. The judge said Ms Finlay was a wholly decent and genuine witness who gave her evidence in a "truthful and straightforward" manner and he did not doubt her belief a handrail would have made a difference. However, having accepted evidence from the school principal and deputy principal, an impartial application of the law to the facts did not warrant a finding of negligence by the school or breach of the common duty of care, he ruled. Particularly against a background where the static condition of the steps was not alleged to have caused Ms Finlay to lose her footing, and was unlikely to have been the cause of a slip or trip and fall, the retrofitting of handrails would amount to a counsel of perfection, even though the fitting of rails would have been relatively simple and inexpensive, he said. His judgment was not to be taken as laying down a general rule or proposition that an occupier is not required to fit or retrofit handrails to external steps constructed separate and apart from a building, he stressed. There may well be other circumstances in which such a precaution ought reasonably to be taken, he said. The law did not require the school to guard against possibilities but rather to guard against that which is reasonably forseeable and likely to occur as a result of the defendants acts or omissions. The day of the fall Earlier, he noted Ms Finlay had accompanied her daughter to school on August 30, 2017. The child was apprehensive about starting fifth class that day and she had accompanied her to the playground where the child met her classmates. The judge said it was a bright, dry day and Ms Finlay had nearly reached the bottom of a flight of seven steps leading from the playground when she lost her footing and fell forward, landing face down on the ground near the foot of the steps. Ms Finlay had said she was familiar with the steps and did not know why she fell but there was nothing to grab on to when she did so. He said the school principal had given evidence of her belief that no accidents or incidents involving the steps had been recorded in the schools log book during her tenure at the school since 1984. Ms Finlay suffered fractures to her right and left ankles. Her right ankle was in a plaster of paris cast for eight weeks and her left ankle was strapped. She continued to experience soreness in her right ankle and walking long distances is problematic. Apart from intermittent ankle discomfort, the medical prognosis for the future is her ankle injuries should not cause any disability in the long term and any ongoing discomfort should respond to physiotherapy and occasional analgesia, he said. The words of Abraham Lincoln to honour the soldiers that sacrificed their lives in order that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth were spoken at Gettysburg, but these words apply as well to the countless soldiers that died for the cause of democracy in the following 150 years. by Raj Gonsalkorale Barend Ter Haar, Senior Research Associate writing in Clingendael()says obviously, if politicians believe that voters cannot be trusted with the truth, democracy is seriously at risk. For a democracy to function it is essential that a government respects the people and takes them seriously, not only those that have voted for that government, but all people. Furthermore, in order to exercise their democratic rights properly, people should be informed as fully as possible.Democracy is a form of conflict management within states, just as diplomacy is a form of conflict management between states. Both therefore usually lead to a compromise between different views and different perceived interests. That is certainly the case when a decision requires both agreement between and within states. This rings very true in Sri Lanka (as it is no doubt in many other countries) where people matter only to the extent of getting their vote and then to be forgotten till the next occasion to seek their vote. Once in power, a government does not seem to function as a government for all people but only for those who voted in the government. The Opposition too functions as if their task is to oppose everything and anything that a government does without any constructive engagement with the government. Formulation of a new Constitution has been listed as a priority item by the current government and a committee has been appointed to formulate a draft after public submissions and consultations. The haste to draft a document leaves one with the feeling that a draft has already been developed and what is proceeding is only a formality and an intent to fine tune what has already been drafted. If this is the case, it is an opportunity lost to give thought to whether the country should look towards a different and more visionary model that will better address what democracy means and should mean to the current generation and for generations to come. A new constitution should overcome the imaginary notions that exist about representative democracy and where it is held that voters are supreme and the parliamentarians are their servants. There is the false premise that parliamentarians represent the interests of those who vote them into Parliament. The present system of electing them on a district list basis based on the 1978 constitution bears no link to a voters expectation of representation, in particular, once an election is over. A consultation process does not exist to elicit the views of the ordinary folks of the country and major decisions are taken binding the present generation and generations to come. Leaving the COVID pandemic aside, the major economic and political decisions taken by successive governments since independence in 1948 cannot be classed as ones taken in consultation with the voters. The economic situation of the country was perilous before COVID and the constantly simmering, unsolved inter communal issues have become issues due to lack of a genuine consultative process.Power brokers on all sides have made this an issue and kept it going as an issue. Besides this, the constitutions of political parties have not afforded an opportunity for members of political parties to have a voice in who should be considered to stand for election. Party heavyweights decided on candidates and party heavy weights basically ran governments. The voter was effectively the cartoon character PunchiSingho depicted in W R Wijesomas famous cartoons. A helpless individual who had his day once in 5 or 6 years when those seeking his vote came to him with betel leaves and garlands, and plenty of promises, and then ignored him for the next 5 or 6 years. This is the opportunity to introduce a new governance mechanism which must bring people closer to the decision making process, and through such a process, make them shareholders of the process and the outcomes. In the life of the PunchiSinghos and PodiMenikes in the country, their lifes priorities are not about what happens to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jing Ping. Much of their concerns are about a roof over their heads, the health and education of their family, and how they are going to earn enough money to live. They encounter problems with basic public services and often they find minor issues becoming insurmountable ones due to the indifference of public officials. This is where their elected representatives matter to them and where they need their interventions to address issues that are important to them. A strong local government system should therefore underpin the countrys governance structure. Voters should be able to directly elect their representatives irrespective of whether they belong to a political party or not. Municipal Councils, Urban Councils, and the Pradeshiya Sabha system must play a more active role as they are the entities that are closest to the people. These entities need to be better funded and provided with resources to ensure services are being delivered to the people they serve. Greater participation by the public in meetings of these entities would enable their views to be heard by policy makers at national level, and it will also afford an opportunity for national politicians to convey information direct to the people through these entities. Provincial councils There is much debate about the need and the future of provincial councils. It is true they were introduced at the behest of the Indian government in 1987 as a means of addressing political issues that had turned violent. Those who oppose them should ask the question whether the political issues have been addressed and whether or how the provincial council system has assisted in addressing them. If they are to continue, the structure and functions perhaps could change, with provincial councils becoming centres for discussing and deliberating matters that are of common interest to local government entities within each province. Such meetings could be held periodically, say, bi annually (or as determined), and decisions arrived at to be acted upon by provincial administrations. Each council could consist of all heads of local government entities, who are already elected by the voters in each such entity. It does not and will not serve any purpose to have another set of elected officials at provincial level if the above mentioned model becomes functional.The need for provincial chief ministers and ministers would become superfluous in such a situation as implementation of conclusions arrived at during Council meetings would become and administrative task and therefore the responsibility of the provincial administration. The provincial council system should be about administrative devolution as services are delivered to people through an efficient and effective administrative service and not through political devolution. If this principle is accepted, then the number of councils may have to be increased marginally to adjust a geographical area that has a large population and many local government entities. If the principle of governance being service to the people, is the basic objective that needs to be pursued, provincial boundaries will need to be re demarcated so that there is a more equitable population distribution amongst provinces. A provincial governor will perform a useful task as this office will be the link to the central government on matters that need to be dealt with at a high political level. Central government A strong local government system should negate the need for a large National Parliament and if one is serious about reform and new thinking in constitution drafting, the number of Parliamentarians should be reduced to a maximum of 150 members of Parliament who could be directly elected by the people, but on the basis that the successful candidate obtains more than 50% of the vote in the revised electorates. The current system of proportional representation and the previous first past the post system it replaced, does not give a fair and equal opportunity for minorities to be heard and represented in Parliament and this is an area that needs to change if constitutional reform is the goal. A possible way to address this might be to have an equal number of Parliamentarians being elected from within each province irrespective of the population in each province. The number of provincial councils could be increased to say 10 councils by redrawing boundaries and 15 members of Parliament being elected from each council. Although not perfect, it would offer a better opportunity for greater minority representation in the National Parliament. Under this proposed system, there will be potential for minority group representation to increase to 30-35% of the National Parliament, and therefore to become a stronger and more inclusive voice in it and in formulation of policy. The members of Parliament from each province should attend the bi annual (or otherwise determined) Council meetings and function as the political link between the local government entities and the National Parliament. If genuine political devolution is to be addressed, it could be done by requiring key Parliamentary Bills such as the National Budget requiring the approval of each provincial council within a given time frame. This would give an opportunity for the local government system which represents people at the grass roots level, to submit their views and suggestions to the National Parliament for their consideration and adoption. Currently, no such avenue exists for people to exercise their democratic rights. Female representation Another important reformist constitution revision should be about female representation at local government level as well as at national level. With more than 51% of the countrys population being female, it has to make sense that all elected bodies including the national parliament should have at least a 50% representation by females. Cabinet of Ministers One of the most reformist changes that could take place in the new Constitution and which requires county before self, and guts, is to limit the number of ministers to 15, and even more drastically, select capable, competent individuals from outside of the Parliament as ministers. Ministers so selected will have be responsible to the Parliament and should act on policies introduced by the Parliament. The only exception should be in respect of defence where the President of the country should be responsible for defence and with the Armed Forces reporting to him or her. The President and the Prime Minister It really does not make sense to have a separately elected President with Executive Powers and a Prime Minister without such powers. Neither is it sensible for both to have executive powers. It also does not make sense to have the President as the head of the cabinet and have a Prime Minister who is not. In the conceptual model proposed here, the powers and responsibilities of the Presidency and the Prime Ministership could be reviewed and a clearer distinction made as to what each office is responsible for. If the proposal to appoint ministers from outside the Parliament is accepted, the Prime Minister too could be so appointed, and made responsible for carrying out the policy agenda of the Parliament along with the 15 ministers proposed. The Prime Minister then will be the head of the cabinet. The President could be elected by the people based on a policy agenda that he or she presents to the people and which must then be approved by the National Parliament. The Presidents executive powers could then be exercised to ensure the Prime Minister and the national cabinet carries out the policy agenda presented to the people during a presidential election and subsequently approved by the Parliament. This is an opinion column. What are you afraid of? Serious question. What are you afraid of thats causing you to buy guns in such a frenzy? Causing you to stockpile weapons and ammunition like bread and water ahead of a storm? (Which I still dont understand). Gun store proprietors are giddy. Theyre trying to keep up with you as best they can. One Alabama gun store owner told my Al.com colleague Ramsey Archibald that gun sales are up 1,000 percent since last weeks terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol by a delusional mob of folks who apparently believe the person with most votes shouldnt win. Or that their vote counts for more than those of voters who chose differently. They believe it because of the lies injected into them by the sore-loser, twice-impeached occupant of the White Houseonly for the next few days, thankfully. They believe it because of the dark cave of conspiracies in which they dwell. So, they buy guns. At unprecedented rates. Not just here in Alabama, and not just since last week. On Monday the FBI revealed it conducted a record 39.7 million background checks on gun buyers in 2020, trumping the 2019 record (29.4 million) by 40 percent. Why? Blame the early surge on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as Americans lost jobs and faced new pressures to care for their families. Then came the summers uncomfortablebut necessaryracial reckoning after we watched the tragic killing of George Floyd beneath the knee of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin unfold over a heinous 8 minutes and 43 seconds. Now, in the wake of perhaps the most democratic and securitized presidential election in history, there is this: I think people are afraid, shared a gun-shop owner in Blount County. Of what? That guns may go poof during the term of President Joe Biden, who vowed during the campaign to address gun violence and tweeted he would defeat the National Rifle Association? Or maybe that someone will come knocking on your door and confiscate your arsenal? Neither will happen, of course, but that doesnt matter to those inhabiting an alternate universe of their own misinformed creation. Previously, Sen. Biden supported the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993 and a 10-year ban on some assault weapons and ammo the following year. During the campaign, the NRA (which has shot itself in the toes numerously in recent months) stoked the long-smoldering embers of gun owners by calling Bidens promises an all-out onslaught on the Second Amendment and gun owners. Biden will ban and confiscate the most-commonly-owned rifle in the United States and will arbitrarily limit the number of guns that can be bought per month, it claimed. Among Bidens proposals is limiting the purchase of guns to no more than one per month. Do you really need to buy more than one gun each month? Biden has also talked of preventing folks convicted of hate crimes from owning guns and forbidding the sale and manufacturing of high-capacity weapons and ammo. A proposal that has slowly gained bipartisan support is the red flag law, which allows for the temporary confiscation of weapons from those believed to be a risk to themselves or otherstypically in cases of domestic violence. About two dozen states currently have such a law. In 2019, Alabama State Rep. Merika Coleman D-Birmingham introduced a version of the law, called the Gun Violence Protective Order Act, but the legislation didnt come out of committee. (It was re-introduced in 2020 but stalled in what became a COVID-19 stifled legislative session.) This scares you into historic levels of gun-buying why? Maybe theres more to ita lot more. A lot of people, theyre buying it not so much because of the tax, but because they think somethings coming, shared Joe Phillips, who owns a bun shop near Birmingham. People believe something big is going to happen, whether it be a bigger Ruby Ridge civil war or civil uprising. I certainly dont speak for everyone, but Im not interested in fighting foolishness. Neither is anyone else. We watched bemused last week (though not at all surprised) as your delusional, anarchistic (and now increasingly criminally charged) brethren breached the U.S. Capitol and terrorized people inside and outside the building. We shook our heads as rioters arrogantly returned to their homes as if theyd been chaperones on a school field trip. Now, we chuckle as, one by one, they are arrested and charged for their lawless actions by the FBI. (Seventy-year-old Alabamian Lonnie Coffman is slammed with 17 charges after driving his pickup truck filled with Molotov cocktails to Washington, D.C and parking it just blocks from the Capitol.) And we watch with curiosity as lawmakers who may have enabled rioters or been complicit in the uprising are exposed. (Were especially watching you Mo Brooks.) Civil uprising? Nah. Weve got more vital concernslike healing and rebuilding all that was broken during the last four years, and over a much, much, longer time. Like getting Americans vaccinated quicker and more efficiently. Like addressing health and wealth disparities, rethinking policing, and, yes, gun violence, along with the conditions that lead to it. Actions of sedition and insurrection? Theyre more likely, unfortunately. Maybe what should scare you most, as you stockpile weaponry and ammo, is staring at you in the mirror. Or living next door. Maybe the rest of us should be scared. Of you. Unafraid to start uncomfortable conversations, Roy is a voice for whats right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama (and beyond). His column and profiles of intriguing Alabamians, appear in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as in the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj Pfizers vaccine delivery is being temporarily reduced in Europe due to its production ramp up, the Associated Press reported. On Tuesday, Jan. 12, Albert Bourla, Pfizers chairman and CEO, announced the company plans to produce 2 billion doses of the vaccine this year. On Friday, the company announced the ambitious production goal is temporarily reducing the amount of vaccines being delivered within Europe. The European Commission ordered 600 million additional doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech product. Related: Pfizer ramps up vaccine production to 2 billion doses for 2021 Line Fedders, a spokeswoman for Pfizer Denmark, said that to meet the new target Pfizer is upscaling production at its plant in Puurs, Belgium, which presupposes adaptation of facilities and processes at the factory which requires new quality tests and approvals from the authorities. As a consequence, fewer doses will be available for European countries at the end of January and the beginning of February, she said. This temporary reduction will affect all European countries, she said in a statement to the AP. As of Thursday, 4.48 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed across the European Union, according to a University of Oxford database. Pfizers Belgian plant supplies all shots delivered outside the United States, including Canada where procurement minister Anita Anand said Friday that the U.S. drug-maker is temporarily reducing deliveries because of issues with its European production lines, according to the AP. While the company said it still was able to deliver 4 million doses by the end of March, that is no longer guaranteed, she said to the AP. Canada has received just 380,000 doses of the vaccine so far and was supposed to get another 400,000 this month, and is expecting almost 2 million doses in February, according to the AP. Pfizers U.S. manufacturing sites include Portage, Michigan which took center stage as the lead distribution center when the vaccine was first rolled out. There has not been any announcement about Pfizers U.S. supply being affected. A U.S. spokesperson for Pfizer did not immediately respond to MLives request for comment. The United States purchased an additional 100 million doses, doubling the original amount. Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will deliver at least 70 million doses by June 30, with the balance of the 100 million doses to be delivered no later than July 31, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As of Friday, 12.28 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed across the European Union, according to a University of Oxford database. More on MLive: 4% of Michigan adults vaccinated so far; see numbers in your county Michigan considers itself a leader in COVID-19 vaccination effort despite CDC ranking How Pfizers coronavirus vaccine was produced and distributed from Michigan plant in record time Pfizers vaccine works against extra-contagious COVID-19 mutations, study shows New variant of COVID-19 very likely in Michigan, but no confirmed cases yet Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-14 21:12:54|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Co-founder of Robohand Turkey Association Hakan Pakten adjusts an artificial hand in Istanbul, Turkey on Jan. 13, 2021. (Photo by Osman Orsal/Xinhua) ISTANBUL, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- A Turkish charity makes a difference and puts a long-lasting smile on the faces of children with limb deformity, designing and printing low-cost mechanical hands and arms for them using 3D printers. The Robohand Turkey Association or Robotel Turkiye Dernegi in Turkish, based in Istanbul, the country's finance and technology hub, has been "touching people's lives and hearts" since it was founded by Zeynep Karagoz and a few close friends in 2014. "When we first started, few people were aware of the 3D printing technology," Karagoz, who is an architect and chairwoman of the non-profit organization, told Xinhua. The group first printed a mechanical hand in 2014 for 18-year-old Mehmet Ali Toprak, who lost four fingers in an accident while working for a printing company. Karagoz and her friends got their inspiration from a global volunteer movement "Enabling the Future," which provides an alternative to a prosthesis, enabling children with limb deformity to have a more comfortable life. "I wanted to do the same in my country with custom-made and low-cost robotic limbs and reach to children and families traumatized by a missing part," explained Karagoz. Karagoz and other volunteers published the process of fitting children with new hands and saw a growing demand for the custom-made limbs across Turkey. "Until now, we have created over a hundred hands for children in need, and over a hundred others are currently in line to get one fitted in time," she explained, remarking that the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be challenging for their work. Robotel's network spread nationwide in time with a total of 3,000 volunteers who also help to join together the hands printed in parts. The printed hands, free of charge, are created in accordance with the users' wishes and can be inspired by their favorite superhero characters, such as Batman or Iron Man, and there is no limit to the palette of colors. Children born with organ deformities cannot have bionic prosthetic limb implants until the age of 18. Robotic hands offer them an opportunity to carry out simple daily activities, like playing, riding a bicycle, or eating, said Karagoz. And the 3D printed hands cost only a fraction of a bionic prosthesis. "An electronic bionic hand can cost 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. dollars, while we create our hands at under 50 Turkish liras or 6.5 dollars," indicated Karagoz, noting that as the children grow, they also need their hands to be reprinted almost every year. The new hand boosts the children's self-esteem and helps them socialize, according to Karagoz. "The feeling you get when you see a child when they leave our workshop with a smile on their faces is priceless," she noted, stressing that it doesn't take to be a technology buff or a 3D printing expert to be a volunteer for her organization. "Everyone can be a volunteer for our association, you can print billboards or simply convey our message," she added. Enditem Washington: President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted the Pentagon authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan, a US official said, a move that could lead to the deployment of thousands more soldiers. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official told AFP that Pentagon chief Jim Mattis can now directly adjust troop numbers, though the official would not confirm whether a new "force management level" -- currently at around 8,400 -- had been finalized. "The White House has done the same that it did with Iraqand Syria, which is to grant the secretary of defense the authority to set troop levels," the official said, referring to recent adjustments Trump has approved for the fight against the Islamic State group in those two countries. Under Barack Obama, troop levels in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were closely managed by the White House and commanders complained they felt shackled by the strictures. The development came just hours after Mattis gave lengthy testimony to lawmakers, some of whom were exasperated at how long it has taken for Trump to come up with a new strategy in Afghanistan. The official said the final decision to give Mattis the power to adjust troop levels actually came during his testimony, at which he said America still is "not winning" in Afghanistan. The "Taliban had a good year last year, they are trying to have a good one this year," Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing about the Pentagon's budget. "Right now, I believe the enemy is surging." Mattis's latest assessment comes nearly 16 years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and amid a war that continues to claim the lives of US troops each year -- and those of thousands of local forces and civilians. US military commanders, who saw fragile security gain seroded under Obama-era troop drawdowns, have been pushing fora new strategy that could see thousands of additional soldiers deploy to Afghanistan to help train and advise beleaguered Afghan partners. Media reports have said Mattis is considering asking for 3,000 to 5,000 additional US and NATO troops, but the defense chief has said little on the matter. In February, General John Nicholson, who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan, warned that he needs "a few thousand" more troops to reverse what he called a stalemate. Despite months of expectation that a full Afghanistan strategy announcement is imminent, Mattis said the new plans not be ready before mid-July. Republican Senator John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, voiced his "palpable" frustration. "We're now six months into this administration, we still haven't got a strategy for Afghanistan," McCain said, noting it was difficult to get behind an Afghanistan budget request without knowing what the plan is. "We know what the strategy was for the last eight years: Don't lose. That hasn't worked." Mattis acknowledged the reality on the ground. "We are not winning in Afghanistan right now. We will correct this as soon as possible," he said. The defence chief, who was a Marine combat commander in Afghanistan at the start of the war, stressed America must not walk away from the country and suggested a long-term residual US force needs to remain to help the Afghan army maintain abase line of security. "It's going to be an era of frequent skirmishing and it's going to require a change in our approach from the last several years if we're to get it to that position," Mattis said. The Afghan conflict is the longest in American history,with US-led NATO troops at war there since 2001, after the ousting of the Taliban regime just months after the September 11 terror attacks in the United States. The ongoing security crisis has seen not just the Taliban gain ground, but also the emergence of other groups such as alocal Islamic State affiliate. On Saturday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an insider attack in which an Afghan commando turned his weapon on American troops, killing three and wounding another. US troops in Afghanistan number about 8,400 today, and there are another 5,000 from NATO allies, who mainly serve ina training and advisory capacity. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. 01/15/2021 Photo (c) MCCAIG - Getty Images Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.) Total U.S. confirmed cases: 23,337,896 (23,103,550) Total U.S. deaths: 389,191 (385,503) Total global cases: 93,363,092 (92,563,274) Total global deaths: 1,999,849 (1,983,691) Biden proposes big aid package President-elect Biden has followed through on his promised addition to the coronavirus (COVID-19) aid package that Congress passed last month. Thursday evening, in an address to the nation, Biden proposed a $1.9 million bill providing aid to consumers, businesses, and state governments. The highlight of the measure as far as consumers are concerned is a $1,400 direct payment to every American. Added to the $600 payment in last months law, it would raise the total direct payment to $2,000 per person. Theres mounting evidence that the U.S. economy needs help to counter the effects of the pandemic. Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose last week to 950,000. The Commerce Department reported today that retail sales, excluding automobiles, fell 1.4 percent in December. Surgeon General urges doctors to use antibody treatments Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams says the U.S. has a large stockpile of therapeutic drugs, mainly antibody treatments made from the plasma of recovered COVID-19 patients. But he says many of these drugs remain on the shelf because doctors arent using them. You need to think about and be willing to prescribe these medications much more frequently as a way to protect your patients, preserve your hospital capacity, and to support your exhausted colleagues, Adams said, addressing doctors through a news conference. The U.S. government has already shipped more than 1 million courses of the drugs to hospitals and recently agreed to purchase more from Regeneron. Hospitalizations suddenly fall back Amid all the grim news about the pandemic, there has been a small glimmer of good news this week. The rate at which COVID-19 patients have required hospital treatment has gone down a bit. According to data from The Atlantics COVID Tracking Project, around 128,900 people are currently being treated in U.S. hospitals, down from 130,300 as of Wednesday and from 131,300 as of Tuesday. It comes as good news because hospitals in many parts of the country -- especially Southern California -- have been strained to the breaking point. Changing the guard at Operation Warp Speed President-elect Biden has chosen former U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. David Kessler to head Operation Warp Speed, the executive branch task force driving the COVID-19 response. Kessler headed the health agency from 1990 to 1997, spanning the Bush and Clinton administrations. His appointment was cheered by public health advocates. The necessary interface between Operation Warp Speed and the FDA will benefit under his leadership as will the entire process of development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostic tests, said Sidney Wolfe, founder and senior adviser of Public Citizens Health Research Group. Restaurants reflect on 2020s huge changes The National Restaurant Association has released its 2021 Restaurant Trends Report, and as you can imagine, it looks quite different than the assessment made at this time a year ago. The pandemic had yet to rear its ugly head in the U.S., and consumers were still packing full-service restaurants. This year, restaurants are fighting just to survive. The associations top trends include off-premises dining, scaled-down menus, selling grocery items, and alcohol to go. These food and menu trends didnt offset the industrys devastation, but they do illustrate the resiliency, innovation, and commitment of restaurateurs, said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of Research and Knowledge for the association. Around the nation Georgia state health officials reported on Thursday there have been 142 additional deaths due to the coronavirus. The current total is 10,721.There were 6,407 new cases, as that total reached 660,720 confirmed cases of coronavirus.Hospitalizations are at 45,893, up 360 from Wednesday.Here are the numbers by county:Catoosa County: 3,911 cases, up 37; 43 deaths, up 1; 169 hospitalizations, up 2Chattooga County: 1,761 cases, up 9; 46 deaths; 127 hospitalizations, up 4Dade County: 855 cases, up 2; 8 deaths; 42 hospitalizationsWalker County: 4,522 cases, up 43; 57 deaths; 190 hospitalizations, up 3Whitfield County: 12,352 cases, up 132; 146 deaths, up 10; 591 hospitalizations, up 6 Police Blotter: Woman With Stolen Phone Won't Cooperate; Garbage Can Thief Hits On Burnt Mill Road Hamilton County Has No More Coronavirus Deaths, 28 New Cases; Tennessee Has 22 More Deaths Georgia Has 35 More Coronavirus Deaths And 486 New Cases A man contacted police from Sky Zoo, 5709 Lee Hwy. He said his phone was stolen while he was there the night before. He said he last had it around 11 p.m. when he set it down somewhere. He doesnt ... (click for more) Hamilton County had 28 new coronavirus cases reported Thursday, bringing the total to 45,099. There have been no more deaths from the virus, as the total remains at 499 in the county. There ... (click for more) Regulatory News: Veolia (Paris:VIE) takes note of the decision of the Paris Judicial Court, ruling in summary proceedings, to declare it has no jurisdiction to rule. Veolia would like to remind that the Paris Court of Appeal ruled, in its judgment of November 19, 2020 that the deadline for consulting Suez's employees representative bodies was set at three months. The information-consultation of Suez's employees representative bodies began on November 5, 2020, as confirmed by the Suez group before several courts. Consequently, it ends on February 5, 2021 at the latest and Veolia will recover all of its rights on that same date. Only the management of Suez is under legal duty to organize the information-consultation of its employee representative bodies. Veolia has provided Suez's management with all the information and documents necessary for this information-consultation. Several weeks ago, the Veolia group has made available to experts from these bodies an extended data room, and an individual, privy and secured access to information which is normally of a confidential nature linked to trade secrets. Veolia's voluntary approach goes beyond the legal information obligations due to the representative bodies of a third-party company, especially since Veolia has already sent Suez, since mid-October, all the information enabling the employee representative bodies of Suez to assess the importance of the proposed operation and to deliver an opinion. The Veolia group notices that as of January 15, 2021, these documents have still not been consulted by the experts of the bodies representing Suez's personnel. Veolia finally reminds that the various delaying tactics by Suez and its employee representative bodies to impede the smooth running of the information-consultation procedures are currently the subject of several legal proceedings, in particular an action before the Judicial Court of Nanterre whose decision is expected on February 3 and an appeal to the Court of Cassation, which will be ruled on March 24. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005507/en/ Contacts: Veolia Group Media Relations Laurent Obadia Sandrine Guendoul Tel.+ 33 1 85 57 42 16 sandrine.guendoul@veolia.com Analysts Investors Ronald Wasylec Ariane de Lamaze Tel. 33 1 85 57 84 76 84 80 investor-relations@veolia.com Mexico won't pursue criminal charges against former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos, officials have announced - a decision that raised criticism and comes despite US prosecutors' accusations he collaborated with drug lords. Cienfuegos, a member of former President Enrique Pena Nieto's government, was arrested in October at Los Angeles international airport and accused by US prosecutors of collaborating with the H-2 cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organizations. His arrest sparked outrage among Mexico's top officials, who reportedly threatened to expel American federal drug agents if the DOJ refused to abandon its case. A federal judge in November granted a US government request to drop drug charges against Cienfuegos and return him to Mexico, which the US hoped would restore trust in the neighbors' severely strained security ties. However, all charges were dropped and Cienfuegos, who was never placed under arrest after he was returned by US officials, is no longer under investigation. The Mexican attorney general's office said in a statement late Thursday that an analysis of the evidence showed Cienfuegos 'never had any encounters with members of the criminal organization investigated by US authorities'. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (pictured left in December) on Friday said he supported Mexico's attorney general's office decision to exonerate former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos (right) US prosecutors dropped their case against Cienfuegos (pictured in court in November) under the pressure of Mexico's implicit threats to restrict or expel US agents, so could he be returned to Mexico and investigated under Mexican law It also claimed he did not 'maintain any communication with them, or carry out acts tending to protect or help said individuals.' Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador then on Friday accused the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of fabricating crimes against the former general. 'The attorney general's office acted because it considered that the evidence presented by the United States government, in this case by the agency known by its acronym as the DEA, has no evidentiary value,' Lopez Obrador said. 'Why did they do the investigation like that?' he added. 'Without support, without proof?' The president said the evidence shared by the US against Cienfuegos would be made public, because the people should see and it had been a strike against Mexico's prestige. He suggested that there could have been political motivations behind the arrest noting that the US's investigation had been ongoing for years, but the arrest came shortly before the US presidential election. The seven-year investigation by the US authorities was completely disproved by Cienfuegos within five days of having the US evidence shown to him, the statement said. Cienfuegos is seen left alongside Mexico's then-President Enrique Pena Nieto during the annual Independence Day military parade in Mexico City's main square in November 2020 Cienfuegos is the highest-ranking former Mexican Cabinet official arrested since top security official Genaro Garcia Luna (pictured) was arrested in Texas in 2019. Mexico demanded he be extradited last month Few had ever expected Mexico to really prosecute Cienfuegos. Lopez Obrador has relied more on the army than any other recent president, trusting it with everything from infrastructure projects to operating airports and trains. Some thought Mexican prosecutors might dismiss the case on technical grounds of inadmissible evidence. But the attorney general's office went further than that, absolutely clearing Cienfuegos of accusations that he helped a drug cartel in return for bribes in a move that could mar Mexico's already-bumpy relations with the US in the post-Trump era. Lopez Obrador had a close, friendly relationship with President Donald Trump, and waited longer than almost any other world leader to congratulate Joe Biden on his election. Last month's restrictions by Mexico on US agents, and Lopez Obrador's veiled warnings to the Biden team to stay out of Mexican affairs, appeared to foreshadow thorny relations. The Cienfuegos decision may only add to that perception. Cienfuegos, a general who led Mexico's army department for six years under President Enrique Pena Nieto, was the highest-ranking former Mexican Cabinet official arrested since top security official Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested in Texas in 2019. Mike Vigil, a former US Drug Enforcement Administration chief of international operations, expressed his dismay at the decision. 'This is a very big stain on the Mexican justice system,' Vigil said in a television interview with Mexican broadcaster Milenio. Vigil said Ciefuegos' case would be a model for corruption and impunity in future. The decision drew criticism from some Mexicans who saw the decision as another example of long-standing impunity for the military Mexican university professor Carlos Bravo Regidor said the move lacked credibility without a proper trial 'Apart from that, the general is going to be a model of corruption and impunity, that's what it is about, in Mexico there is a justice system for some and another for those who have power,' he added. 'And this is going to have an extremely large impact on the bilateral coordination between the DEA and other agencies that work with Mexico because how can we trust the Mexican justice system?' Vigil said, adding that the evidence against Cienfuegos is 'overwhelming'. Mexican columnist Juan Ibarrola told the news station that US ambassador Cristopher Landau said that there was no type of negotiation or any investigation by the Mexican government against Cienfuegos. Reuters was not able to contact Ciefuegos. His arrest in the United States followed a multi-year investigation that used wire taps to track a military figure who traffickers called 'El Padrino', or The Godfather. He was accused of conspiring with the H-2 cartel in Mexico to smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana while he was defense secretary from 2012 to 2018. Prosecutors said intercepted messages showed that Cienfuegos accepted bribes in exchange for ensuring the military did not take action against the cartel and that operations were initiated against its rivals. He was also accused of introducing cartel leaders to other corrupt Mexican officials. Under the pressure of Mexico's implicit threats to restrict or expel US agents, US prosecutors dropped their case so Cienfuegos could be returned to Mexico and investigated under Mexican law. Acting US Attorney Seth DuCharme told a judge at the time, 'The United States determined that the broader interest in maintaining that relationship in a cooperative way outweighed the department's interest and the public's interest in pursuing this particular case.' Had Cienfuegos been convicted of the charges in the US, he would've faced at least 10 years in federal prison. However, the attorney general's office said there was no evidence Cienfuegos had 'used any equipment or electronic means, or that he had issued any order to favor the criminal group identified in this case.' Scrutiny of Cienfuegos' wealth and tax obligations uncovered no evidence that he had received illegal income, it said. Duncan Wood, the director of Wilson International Center's Mexico Institute, who had been critical about the cases, reacted to the news on Twitter Friday These were among the reasons authorities had decided not to pursue criminal charges against Cienfuegos, a former general, the attorney general's office added. Some Mexicans saw the decision as another example of long-standing impunity for the military. Mexican political writer Denise Dresser said the move showed the armed forces are 'untouchable' and 'act above the law.' '[T]hey are the true untouchables, they will continue to be out of democratic scrutiny, they are the ones who actually govern and have become the new mafia in power,' she said in a tweet in the wake of the news. 'Is it possible that Cienfuegos is innocent? Yes. Would it have been a great opportunity to show that in an impartial trial? Yes. Without any trial, is his innocence credible? No,' said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a CIDE University professor. Even though the US yielded on Cienfuegos, Mexico's Congress a few weeks later passed a law that will restrict US agents in Mexico and remove their diplomatic immunity. The law was widely seen as a broadside against the United States, after weeks of tension with Washington over anti-drug operations. The decision to drop the charges was made by Attorney General William Barr (pictured) in November based on the 'balancing of interests' between pursuing prosecution and of deference to America's relationship with Mexico Mexico has traditionally relied on US agents to generate much of its intelligence information on drug gangs, but it has history of officials leaking such information and even at times sharing it with drug cartels. The new law was considered a victory for Mexico's infamous drug cartels, with US Attorney General Bill Bar saying it will 'benefit the violent transnational criminal organizations and other criminals that we are jointly fighting'. Lopez Obrador, who has been highly critical of the DEA since Cienfuegos's arrest, proposed the bill in early December. Under the new law, all foreign agents will be forced to share information they gather in the country with Mexican authorities. It also specifies that any Mexican public servant - state, federal or local - who has as much as a phone call or text message from a US agent, would be required 'to deliver a written report' to Mexican officials within three days. In most countries, government agents are often given full diplomatic immunity or some form of limited or technical immunity in that country. The law, however, would eliminate all immunity. Among the more onerous requirements, agents' meetings with local officials would have to be approved by a new federal government security committee and a foreign ministry official would have to be present at those meetings. 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show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan (CNN) China was already outperforming every other major world economy last year as the coronavirus pandemic upended the globe. It looks like the country's relatively sure footing also gave it the edge in its trade war with the United States. The world's second biggest economy closed out 2020 with an overall trade surplus of $78 billion for December, according to official customs data released Thursday. China's overall surplus for the year hit a record $535 billion, up 27% from 2019. Exports, meanwhile, rose to an all-time high. "Amid all the noises on de-coupling and de-globalization, somewhat unexpectedly, the pandemic has deepened the ties between China and the rest of the world," wrote Larry Hu, chief China economist for Macquarie Capital, in a research report. Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, attributed China's gains largely to the country's management of the pandemic, which broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan just over a year ago. He added that China has benefited from a lot of demand for protective gear and electronics as people around the world worked from home. "After having recovered from its own Covid-19 crisis, China was open for business when the pandemic triggered huge demand in the US (and other countries) for Covid-19 related goods," Kuijs said. China's trade relationship with the United States, meanwhile, became even more imbalanced: Beijing's trade surplus with Washington rose to $317 billion in 2020, a 7% increase from the year prior and the second highest amount on record, according to Iris Pang, chief economist for Greater China at ING. The amount is just $7 billion shy of 2018 levels, when Trump launched a blistering trade war to right what he called a lopsided relationship with the world's second largest economy. "Judged by the surge of US imports from China in 2020, it seems fair to say that Trump's trade war with the country failed," Kuijs said. The good trade news comes days before China is expected to announce GDP figures for the end of 2020 another likely positive showing. Analysts widely expect that China's economic growth will pick up even more during the last three months of the year. Analysts polled by Reuters expect Chinese GDP to increase 2.1% for all of 2020. "As [China] plays a critical role in many supply chains and remains a fundamentally very competitive place to produce, it is much easier said than done to 'decouple' from it," Kuijs said. China's future isn't without its challenges, though. Analysts point out that President-elect Joe Biden likely won't reverse some of the pressure on the country after he takes office next week. "The Biden government will take a different, less combative and more steady approach to China," Kuijs said. "But it is politically not possible for Biden to remove the tariffs on Chinese goods any time soon." This story was first published on CNN.com China is winning the trade war and its exports have never been higher WATERBURY A man was arrested after slashing a tire on another mans vehicle following an argument, according to police. Police and first responders were called to the Brass Mill Center shopping mall on Union Street for a possible assault around 5:55 p.m. Thursday, police Lt. David Silverio said. Mall security was with a male who had a laceration to his hand, which appeared to be not life-threatening, he said. While patrol officers investigated, and as medics assessed the cut to the individuals left index finger, a caller reported to police dispatch a disturbance where a car tire was slashed, Silverio said. The 23-year-old caller told police it happened in the area of Union and Washington streets. Silverio said investigators learned that the man with the cut on his hand 21-year-old Giovanni Rivera was involved in a disturbance at a Woodtick Road home and in the area of Union and Washington streets, where he was injured. Rivera was involved in an argument with a woman at the Woodtick Road house when a man intervened, Silverio said. Rivera is accused of grabbing the mans phone and running out of the home, Silverio said. The 23-year-old man left the Woodtick Road soon after and saw Rivera walking on Washington Street near Union Street, Silverio said. The man got out to try to retrieve his phone, but Rivera went to the back of the mans car and slashed or cut the right rear tire, according to Silverio. He said its unclear what Rivera used to cut the tire. It was later determined that Rivera cut his own hand accidentally while he was slashing/cutting the tire of the Jeep Cherokee, Silverio said. Rivera was treated at the hospital and released. He was charged with second-degree breach of peace, third-degree criminal mischief and fifth-degree larceny. He was released on a written promise to appear in court. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. 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. Haiti - Politic : Appointment of a new Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister's Office In the official journal "Le Moniteur" #6 of Wednesday January 13, 2021, Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe published two decrees : In a first decree, citizen Mathias Pierre was appointed Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister, in charge of electoral questions and relations with political parties. In the second Decree, the citizen Mario Claude St-Rome, was appointed Director General of the Office of Civil Aviation (OFNAC), [he replaces Olivier Jean at this post]. HL/ HaitiLibre 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 By Robert Patrick, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS) ST. LOUIS A St. Louis-based lawyer for one of the men charged with participating in the U.S. Capitol riot last week says President Donald Trump should pardon his client because he was following Trumps instructions. Lawyer Albert Watkins said in an interview Thursday that Trump invited Jacob A. Chansley and other supporters of the president to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He invited his faithful, those who had been longstanding supporters of him and his cause, those who felt for the first time in their lives that their political voices were being heard, the lawyer said. Hes the president. He can go wherever he wants with those that he invites. Watkins said Chansley, also known as the Q Shaman, did not participate in violent attacks that led to the death of a Capitol Police officer and injuries to other officers. A protester was also fatally shot. Chansley has appeared often at past pro-Trump rallies. Watkins said Chansley was unarmed, nonviolent and did not hide his identity. He also did not break through any barricades, doors or windows, as others did, the lawyer said. He just walked in with the whole crowd that was walking in on the peaceful side of things. FILE - In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 file photo supporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington. Jacob Anthony Chansley, the Arizona man with the painted face and wearing a horned, fur hat, was taken into custody Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021 and charged with counts that include violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, file)AP Watkins said many Capitol police officers were supportive of the protesters, who gathered by the thousands to condemn presidential election results that they falsely believed included widespread fraud and voting irregularities. President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump and will take the oath of office next Wednesday. Chansley was indicted by a federal grand jury this week on six counts, including violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Charging documents say Chansley was spotted in the hallways and standing on the dais inside the Senate chamber. He was wearing horns, a bearskin headdress and red, white and blue face paint, and was holding a six-foot spear with an American flag tied just below the blade. In a statement, Watkins said, His attire was consistent with his long-held Shaman beliefs. The day after the riot, Chansley, who also goes by Jake Angeli, called the Washington field office of the FBI and admitted being in the Capitol. He said that he came as a part of a group effort, with other patriots from Arizona, at the request of the president that all patriots come to D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, the charging documents say. Chansley turned himself in and will cooperate with the government, Watkins said. Asked whether Chansley adheres to the widely discredited and false QAnon conspiracy theory about widespread voting fraud, Watkins said, I think he was open to the suggestion that the election was rigged and forces were out to get Trump and he believed Trumps statements that this was like Valley Forge all over again. Christ, youve got a president who has been rabble-rousing for six or seven months, Watkins said. 56 Trump supporters storm U.S. Capitol Watkins called in to CNN Thursday to defend Chansley on Cuomo Prime Time with host Chris Cuomo. Watkins said his client was answering the call of our president, and likened the relationship between Trump and his followers to the relationship between cult leader Jim Jones and members of the Peoples Temple. In 1978, after convincing members to move to a commune in Guyana, Jones orchestrated a mass suicide among his followers. In a detention motion filed Thursday, prosecutors said Chansley was one of the first rioters in the building, disobeyed a Capitol police officers order to leave and instead went to the Senate floor, where he sat in a seat vacated by Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before. Chansley then wrote Pence a note saying, its only a matter of time, justice is coming, prosecutors said. Chansley, who is unemployed and a regular user of psychedelic drugs, including mushrooms and peyote, also has mental health issues, they said. Chansley has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality, the motion says. Chansley has advocated hanging traitors in the U.S. government. The attack on the Capitol led the House on Wednesday to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection. Chansley, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, is being held in quarantine in a federal facility in Phoenix after surrendering, Watkins said. Given the peaceful and compliant fashion in which Mr. Chansley comported himself, it would be appropriate and honorable for the president to pardon Mr. Chansley and other like-minded, peaceful individuals who accepted the presidents invitation with honorable intentions, Watkins said. Watkins is a veteran of controversial and high-profile cases and has occasionally been criticized for his public statements connected to them. He initially represented Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who waved guns at protesters outside their Central West End home in June. He once claimed babies had been stolen from St. Louis historic Black Homer G. Phillips Hospital and sold, before separate investigations by the FBI and the Post-Dispatch refuted the claim. Paris, TX (75460) Today Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. SSW winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected.. Tonight Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. SSW winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected. Two out of three Koreans want to wait for their coronavirus vaccinations until they see that it works for others. In a poll of 1,094 people released Thursday, 67.7 percent of respondents said they will wait before getting the jab, while 28.6 percent said they want to get vaccinated as soon as possible. The poll was conducted on Jan. 8-10 by a team at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Public Health. The response reflects mounting worries about the safety of vaccines after reports about side effects in countries where vaccinations have already started. Asked if they believe proper clinical trials were performed, only about half or 50.3 percent said yes, while 43.6 percent said no. UK Ban on Travel From South America Comes Into Force The UK ban on travel from South America has come into force, with the transport secretary describing it as a precautionary decision to tackle a potential new variant of the CCP virus that emerged in Brazil. The new travel ban, which also includes Portugal, was announced on Thursday afternoon by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and came into force at 4 a.m. this morning. The ban does not apply to British or Irish Nationals or people with UK residency rights. Shapps said the decision was taken following evidence of a new variant in Brazil. That variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, has raised concerns among some scientists due to similarities to a variant in South Africa. Explaining the decision on Friday, Shapps said it was a precautionary approach, and also noted that there have been no flights from Brazil in the last week and that people were already required to quarantine. [The Brazil variant], as with the variant that we saw in Kent or the one in South Africa, shows its significantly enough of interest to us just to take this precautionary approach of stopping all those flights from Brazil and South America, Shapps told Sky News. Our scientists arent saying that the vaccine wont work against it, but we do not want to be tripping up at this last moment, which is why I took the decision as an extra precaution to ban those flights entirely. Unlike the variant currently thought to be pushing a surge of the pandemic in the UK, there is not yet any evidence of faster transmission in the Brazilian variant. However, scientists are worried that it appears to be similar to the variant that emerged in South Africa, which scientists are also concerned about. The Brazilian variant has three key mutations in the Spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) that largely mirror some of the mutations we are worried about it in the South African variant, hence the concern, Ravi Gupta, professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. The SARS-CoV-2 RBD is one of the main targets for our immune defences and also the region targeted by vaccines and changes within this region are therefore worrisome. Vaccines are still likely to be effective as a control measure if coverage rates are high and transmission is limited as far as possible. The UK has been introducing other travel restrictions. From Monday, passengers bound for the UK will have to provide proof of a negative test before they board their planes, trains, and boats. Aden, Jan 15 : Yemen's Interior Ministry has said that "foreign experts" supported the Houthi rebels in firing ballistic missiles at Aden's airport last month that killed 27 people. Addressing the media here on Thursday, Interior Minister Ibrahim Haydan said "the preliminary results showed evidence that Iranian and Lebanese experts were behind the missiles which were used in the terrorist attack", reports Xinhua news agency. Haydan headed the investigation committee formed by Yemen's President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi following the attack that targeted the airport on December 30, 2020. He clarified that his committee had collected information from different sources and discovered that the ballistic missiles were launched from a site in the Houthi-controlled area 135 km away from the airport. The deadly missile attack struck Aden's International Airport, causing three huge explosions just minutes after a plane carrying members of the new power-sharing government arrived from Saudi Arabia. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Saudi-backed Yemeni government accused the Houthi rebels of being behind it. Senior officials of the Houthi group has denied the accusation and blamed it on Yemeni military factions linked to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the government-controlled southern provinces. The country's health authorities said nearly 27 people were killed and 110 others were wounded, including international aid workers and media employees, in the explosions. The southern port city of Aden is considered Yemen's temporary capital where the Saudi-backed Yemeni government has been based since 2015. Yemen has been locked into a civil war since late 2014, when the Houthi rebels overran much of the country and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa. A quiz about the whether motorbike riders are allowed to weave in and out of congested traffic has sparked heated debate among motorists. The road rules test by motoring club RACQ asked whether motorbikes were allowed to weave in and out of congested traffic in Queensland. Some angry drivers said even if motorbike riders were allowed to bypass cars, they should stick to waiting in line with everyone else. A quiz about the laws around motorbikes in traffic congestion has sparked heated debate amongst drivers and motorbike riders Lane filtering is allowed as long as traffic is less than 30 kilometers per hour and the motorbike rider has an open licence in Queensland, RACQ confirmed. 'Lane filtering is legal in most Australian states, except Western Australia where no laws on lane filtering exist,' Stephanie Brown from Shine Lawyers told Daily Mail Australia. 'In contrast, lane splitting is moving past slow-moving or stationary vehicles at speeds faster than 30km/h or more ... lane splitting is illegal.' The quiz by motoring club RACQ asked whether motorbikes were allowed to weave in and out of congested traffic Despite the legality of the practice, motorists were split on how safe they thought it was. 'Most ridiculous law that has ever been passed,' one commenter said. '[I] have had experience of riders doing this while traffic moving on the major motorways - putting themselves and others in danger.' Another was more forgiving of the practice. 'Don't have a problem with them doing it, when done with common sense and safety,' they said. 'Really it is a benefit of having a bike.' A motorbike rider posted though they were allowed to do it, they didn't feel safe lane filtering. 'I ride a bike and I consider this to a very dangerous practice. I wouldn't recommend it.' Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer People across Texas who want to receive the COVID-19 vaccine can travel to another county in which they dont reside for inoculation. But health officials warn that a short supply of doses persists and health providers are concentrated on vaccinating persons who qualify and are at greater risk due to preexisting conditions. In a video posted to Reddit, a man wearing a Sacramento Republic FC sweatshirt appears to describe the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol building. "This is my first time being in the Capitol," he says at one point in the video after discussing being in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office and getting sprayed with a fire extinguisher. "This was my first time in D.C. Hey, everybody." The video was posted to a Reddit group titled "Capitol Consequences," a community "focused on the social and political fallout, those who participated and those who have been held responsible for their actions." Before long, he was identified as Jorge Riley, a Sacramento man who serves as corresponding secretary of the California Republican Assembly (CRA), a conservative activist group that is chartered by the California Republican Party. The CRA subsequently confirmed Riley's involvement and released a statement to multiple Sacramento TV stations announcing that "CRA President Johnnie Morgan has demanded that the member, Jorge Riley of Sacramento, resign his membership," and before long, the group announced that Riley did in fact resign. Unfortunately on that particular day he made some decisions that were not representative of the values or vision of the California Republican Assembly, Craig DeLuz, a CRA spokesperson, said in a subsequent statement to Sacramento outlets. Riley also posted 89 photos of the event to his Facebook page, many of which show scenes from inside the Capitol building. In the days since the riots, many have been arrested on charges as simple as violent entry or knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building. The pictures from inside the Capitol still remain on Riley's page. In the video, Riley describes a shoving match with Capitol police, stating, "They set up like this line, and they were trying to push us out of the room for like a long time, it was like a hella long power struggle and we were pushing back and forth on each other." At the end of the video he states, "The cops were very nice to us," before ending on, "We stopped the steal because they were in there and they weren't going to stop the steal, so we stopped the steal, we took our country back, fk you guys." Once the Capitol building was cleared, Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers returned to certify President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. New stills of Lee Joo Young for the upcoming drama "Times" have been released! From a funny and friendly character of Lee Joo Young in the drama "Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo" and her impressive gender-bender role in "Itaewon Class," she will be making a huge leap in front of the viewers with a new, matured, and never before seen character onscreen. OCN's "Times" is a time-wrap political-mystery drama about a reporter named Lee Jin Woo, portrayed by Lee Seo Jin, who always pursues the truth in line with the job that she has. Meanwhile, Lee Joo Young will be playing the role of Seo Jung In, a passionate reporter. The two will have an unexpected communication from five years in the past by a phone call, and they will help each other to prevent the death of South Korea's President Seo Gi Tae, played by Kim Young Chul, who happened to be Seo Jung In's father. But upon solving the situation, they will embark into a not-so-easy journey and will face a dangerous truth during the process. To give a glimpse of what to look forward to in the upcoming drama, OCN finally revealed some stills of Lee Joo Young. Seo Jung In lives in the year 2020 and works as a reporter who follows the footsteps of her father, who also begins his journey working in the industry of broadcasting as a reporter. Through the shared photos, she can be seen portraying a bright and persistent reporter who aims to do what is right and will do anything to uncover the truth. The 28-year-old actress takes on a challenging role where she is set to impress the viewers with her chic and unique character. She already gained recognition from his previous roles because she gives justice to every character she portrays. People who watched her in the drama "Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo" will see another side of Lee Joo Young in this upcoming OCN drama. Also Read: OCN Reveals Cast for New Drama 'Times' Lee Joo Young will also show various charm and chemistry with her co-stars. This is a challenging yet interesting role for the actress and she will also be teaming up with actor Lee Seo Jin, as well as the never-ending opportunity of working with the most talented actors in the industry. Fans are finally looking forward to Lee Joo Young's new role and can't wait to know how the story of "Times" will unfold. Are you also excited to see Lee Joo Young in the new drama "Times"? Share your comments with us! For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news and updates, keep your tabs open here at Kdramastars. Kdramastars owns this article. Written by Shai Collins 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. Sea shanties are taking over TikTok as users are rushing in their droves to upload their own renditions of the traditional folk songs to the video sharing site. The craze began when Scottish postman Nathan Evans' rendition of Leave her Johnny, which was often the last song sung at the end of a voyage by sailors, gathered 1.1 million views last year. The aspiring musician later uploaded a cover of the 19th Century sea shanty Wellerman, which tells the story of the Australian shore whaling company Weller Brothers, and has since seen his video amass 4.3million views and spark the viral trend #ShantyTok. Google Trends revealed earlier this week that sea shanties are being searched for more now than at any other time in the site's history. Social media users have since added their own harmonies, melodies and bass lines and are dubbing the tune over moving images of popular memes. Some of the most shared examples include Kermit the frog's take on the song and a remix featuring electronic dance music. Technology has also been used to make it look like a picture of four lads outside an All Bar One - a meme which went viral last year - are singing along to the anthem which is growing in popularity. Kermit the Frog's rendition of the 19th Century sea shanty Wellerman has been widely shared Technology has also been used to make it look like a picture of four lads outside an All Bar One - a meme which went viral last year - are singing along to the anthem which is growing in popularity Sea shanty tiktok is WILD pic.twitter.com/rjY1iXFQkA Kristian (@vonstrenginho) January 14, 2021 A Wellerman remix to electronic dance music is another example of how the craze is taking social media by storm Nathan Evans, 26, from outside Glasgow, Scotland, has become an internet sensation with his versions of sea shanties SeaShantyTok keeps getting better pic.twitter.com/yWLEHzlPlB Peter Fries (@Peter_Fries) January 8, 2021 What are sea shanties? Sea shanties were sung among sailors as they carried out manual tasks onboard their ships, such as walking around the capstan or hoisting the sails, and date to as far back as the 1400s. The word shanty is derived from the French verb 'chanter', which means 'to sing'. The folk songs are usually sung by a shantyman and his crew in a 'call and response' technique. They were created to encourage a sense of community among the group and to help establish a rhythm to their work. Among the most famous sea shanties are Spanish Ladies, which describes the voyage from Spain to The Downs, in the southern North Star near the English Channel, from the viewpoint of the Royal Navy and What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor? Drunken Sailor, which was was sung to accompany certain work tasks aboard sailing ships in the early 19th century, was revived as a popular song among non-sailors in the 20th century. Advertisement The craze has grabbed the attention of social media users worldwide, with many describing it as treading the fine line between madness and genius. That was certainly the view of Blink-182 star Mark Hoppus, who tweeted: 'I cant tell if the whole sea shanty thing is the perfect wholesome distraction from the horror of life in 2021, or the final nail in coffin of my psyche.' Author and comedian Josh Gondelman joked: 'I don't know why they call it a sea SHANTy when every time I hear one I think "yes I SHALL sing along".' Journalist Tom Chivers added: 'I've been kind of ignoring all this sea shanty stuff, and now I have listened to a few seconds of it I'm afraid I have to go and fight Napoleon's navy off the coast of Tripoli.' Plenty of others have also reacted to the craze, with one writing: 'I am not at all trying to insult the sea shanty thing, but, like, we really are all going insane, aren't we' Another added: 'Can't wait till covid is over so I can sing Sea Shanty's with the boys again.' A third said: 'Seeing a lot of people overthinking the sea shanty thing. No need for long threads they're just really catchy and boats are cool.' The trend is proving popular as TikTok is designed to promote collaboration, with people dancing and lip syncing to the same recordings having previously proved successful on the platform. Sea shanties were sung among sailors as they carried out manual tasks onboard their ships, such as walking around the capstan or hoisting the sails, and date to as far back as the 1400s. The word shanty is derived from the French verb 'chanter', which means 'to sing'. The folk songs are usually sung by a shantyman and his crew in a 'call and response' technique. They were created to encourage a sense of community among the group and to help establish a rhythm to their work. SeaShantyTok keeps getting better pic.twitter.com/yWLEHzlPlB Peter Fries (@Peter_Fries) January 8, 2021 Blink-182 star Mark Hoppus, who tweeted: 'I cant tell if the whole sea shanty thing is the perfect wholesome distraction from the horror of life in 2021, or the final nail in coffin of my psyche' Author and comedian Josh Gondelman joked: 'I don't know why they call it a sea SHANTy when every time I hear one I think "yes I SHALL sing along" Journalist Tom Chivers added: 'I've been kind of ignoring all this sea shanty stuff, and now I have listened to a few seconds of it I'm afraid I have to go and fight Napoleon's navy off the coast of Tripoli' Plenty of others have also reacted to the craze, with one writing: 'I am not at all trying to insult the sea shanty thing, but, like, we really are all going insane, aren't we' Another added: 'Can't wait till covid is over so I can sing Sea Shanty's with the boys again' A third said: 'Seeing a lot of people overthinking the sea shanty thing. No need for long threads they're just really catchy and boats are cool' Among the most famous sea shanties are Spanish Ladies, which describes the voyage from Spain to The Downs, in the southern North Star near the English Channel, from the viewpoint of the Royal Navy and What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor? Drunken Sailor, which was was sung to accompany certain work tasks aboard sailing ships in the early 19th century, was revived as a popular song among non-sailors in the 20th century. Mr Evans described yesterday how he received his first request for a sea shanty in July last year. Speaking on Radio 4's Today show the young musician said: 'I did a sea shanty back in July 2020 just because somebody had asked underneath one of my videos in a comment. 'So I uploaded that and it reached 1.1million views so I thought it must have been in demand. 'People were looking forward to more coming out after that one and they were commenting underneath every video after that saying: ''Can you sing this one?''. It was just a request through fans.' Senator James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who spent weeks trying to reverse the results of the presidential election before changing his mind at the last moment, apologized on Thursday to Black constituents who felt he had attacked their right to vote. In a letter addressed to his friends in North Tulsa, which has many Black residents, Mr. Lankford, who is white, wrote on Thursday that his efforts to challenge the election result had caused a firestorm of suspicion among many of my friends, particularly in Black communities around the state. After decades of fighting for voting rights, many Black friends in Oklahoma saw this as a direct attack on their right to vote, for their vote to matter, and even a belief that their votes made an election in our country illegitimate, he wrote, according to the news site Tulsa World. Mr. Lankford said in the letter that he had never intended to diminish the voice of any Black American. Still, he added, I should have recognized how what I said and what I did could be interpreted by many of you. Representative Image (REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro) Big retail players in India are looking to aggressively expand outlets and reach in the coming years, banking on the surge in demand after lows caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, retail real estate companies said. More Retail is looking at real estate in several cities to open 300 supermarkets and hypermarkets over the next three years, while Reliance Retail is considering hundreds of properties for its Smart Point format stores, multiple real estate agent told The Economic Times. Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report. Meanwhile, DMart is looking at properties in Delhi-NCR region, which is currently underserved, according to Shriram PM Monga, principal consultant at F&B and retail real estate advisory SRED. JLL MD Shubranshu Pani told the paper that every supermarket operator is expanding, including Reliance, More, and DMart 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 India has the worlds third largest food and grocery market with 12 million neighbourhood stores dominating the sector. Potential of Indias organised food and grocery retail space is pegged at over $500 billion, it said. Avenue Supermarts (DMart), Aditya Birla Groups More Retail and Reliance Retail did not respond to queries, the report said. A report from India Ratings however highlighted meaningful recoveries by food and grocery retailers in October and November 2020 with many stores seeing 90 percent operations in the quarter compared to 70 percent in the September quarter. Reliance Industries (RIL) which is the parent company of Reliance Retail is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd which publishes Moneycontrol. The Department of Children has been sharply criticised for the manner in which it communicated to childcare providers regarding the closure of services earlier this month. A number of childcare providers have slammed the pressure they felt to remain open from January 11 in order to deliver care for the children of frontline staff and those designated as being essential workers. Meanwhile, care facilities which closed of their own volition may be denied State childcare subsidies a situation described as very wrong by chairwoman of the Association of Childcare Professionals Marian Quinn. Providers were subject to a number of U-turns and last-minute policy changes on the part of the department, eventually being told late on the afternoon of Friday, January 1, that preschool services would be postponed until January 11 in line with primary and secondary schools. That reversal was itself dialled back on late on the evening of January 6 when the department stated that preschool services would be postponed indefinitely. Creches and afterschool services could remain open, but only for the children of frontline and essential workers. In the latters case, at first the Government stated that such workers must actually leave their home to work in order to qualify as such. Within a day, that instruction had also changed. The Irish Examiner has spoken to multiple such facilities, all of whom related being put under extreme pressure to remain open, even though they did not wish to do so, both for business and safety reasons. Some bowed to the pressure, others did not. All requested anonymity for fear of prejudicing their business. We just couldnt stay shut, said one, though it made most sense for everyone. It was just too much. The owner of another Dublin facility, which chose to remain closed, said she fears the loss of subsidies from the Early Childhood Care and Education and the National Childcare Schemes, due to her decision being made without the blessing of the department. Theyre just winging it, is my honest opinion, she said. I think theyre blackmailing us, because if you dont open, if the HSE tells you to close, youll get funding but if you close for the safety of your staff and kids, you wont. This comes down to the departments interpretation of force majeure because early learning is considered safe to operate, those who close of their own volition will not be recompensed. In response to a query on these matters, the department said that all services can claim wage subsidy scheme supports regardless of whether they are open or closed, though this does not cover the other expenses of a business. Services which chose to close without direction or permission will not be in a position to provide childcare to the children of essential workers or vulnerable children, and so will not continue to receive department funding, as they are not providing the service they are contracted to supply, a spokesperson said. They added that the department is considering various scenarios for funding the sector should the lockdown be extended. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Congress must decide whether social media companies are analogous to newspapers or telephones. Newspapers are legally liable for their content, including advertisements. This newspaper will not publish a full-page ad defaming a person or company. Nor will it provide space to a militia recruiting fighters to overthrow the government. On the other hand, telephone companies are forbidden from listening to your calls, let alone cutting the line if you say something seditious. Every day, thousands of people discuss criminal and offensive topics. Social media platforms tried to stake out a middle ground, and it hasnt worked. Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act holds tech companies harmless if their customers post illegal or offensive materials while granting the companies leeway to delete the content as they see fit. No one is happy with that arrangement. TOMLINSONS TAKE: Businesses and markets see nothing to fear in attack on the Capitol Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has famously declared he is not a publisher and should play a minimal role in policing content. President Donald Trump and his supporters took full advantage, and the world witnessed the consequences at the U.S. Capitol. In response, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon and others have banned Trump and his most radical sympathizers. The poorly-informed declare these actions a violation of the First Amendment. But a quick reminder, our most important civil liberty only protects us from government action, not corporate. Newspapers and other corporations have rights, too, including the option to deny service to someone because of their political views. When Facebook allowed neo-Nazis on their service, the public demanded Zuckerberg impose a ban, and most of us welcomed it. But just about everyone agrees that while Section 230 made sense for the 1990s Internet, Congress needs to update it. I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators, Zuckerberg wrote in an op-ed last March. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve whats best about it. He recommended the government establish a third party to define harmful content rather than relying on a CEOs judgment. All social media companies would follow the same rules and build tools to identify problematic posts and users to remove them more quickly. Facebook would also like Congress to establish rules for online political advertising like those for broadcast and print. And since Facebook is already following Europes General Data Protection Regulation for privacy, the U.S. should adopt it as well. Internet activists and right-wing groups would rather see Congress make social media more like the telephone company: conduits with no responsibility for who posts what, and where everyone has limitless free speech. The difference between a newspaper and a telephone company is how they make money. One charges a fee for the service, the other sells ads against the content. Social media companies will lose money if offensive material drives away users. Advertisers want to reach middle-class families posting vacation photos, not fascist militants plotting a revolt. A new social media service called Clubhouse, which mimics old-school telephone party lines, gets to the heart of the debate. Their schtick is a voice service where people can organize live chats in themed clubrooms. A user-moderator decides who gets to speak. When the conversation ends, there is no lasting trace or post. The company keeps a recording for an hour in case someone files a complaint, but afterward, the discussion deletes automatically. One night, I was delighted to discuss old movies with actor and director Justine Bateman and venture capitalist Marc Andreesen. Ive enjoyed listening to Nigerians discuss police reform, and the service is particularly popular among people of color. This is not to say that White supremacists and anti-Semites have not also held meetings on Clubhouse. And at this invite-only stage, there are already controversies over who is on the platform and who should be allowed to join. TOMLINSONS TAKE: Facebook could learn better manners from newspapers Should Clubhouse allow twice-impeached President Donald Trump to hold rallies denouncing President Joe Biden to thousands of followers? How will Clubhouse uphold the ban on recording or reporting on these chats? How will they investigate complaints when dozens of simultaneous conversations become thousands? In limited media interviews, the founders have struggled to explain. Every freedom comes with a concomitant responsibility. You can scream Fire! in a crowded movie theater, but you can be punished for the consequences. As right-wing extremists are discovering now, calling for a violent attack on the Capitol can result in federal prosecution. Congress owes social media clearer rules. If they make money from user-provided content, the companies must take more responsibility for it. If they cannot figure out how to make money that way, they can always ask a newspaper publisher for advice. Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy. twitter.com/cltomlinson chris.tomlinson@chron.com Former director Tirath Das Dogra along with a group of 49 doctors, scientists, and medical professionals have come forward in support of the Made in Covid-19 vaccines and slammed those questioning their efficacy. "We condemn the irresponsible statements made by people with vested interests in print, electronic and social media defaming the Indian scientific community and casting aspersions upon its integrity by making politicised statements doubting the recent research in the field of Covid-19 vaccines," said the statement issued by Dogra. It added that though the efficacy data is not available, the safety parameters of Covaxin are very good and there is a robust immune response seen with this vaccine. This vaccine is a whole virus inactivated vaccine that may have better protection even against mutant strains of the virus as the immune response will be against multiple antigens and not only against Spike protein. Dogra further said that such reprehensible utterances are causing huge credibility crisis for the Indian scientific community which has devoted its lifetime to make a name to reckon with in the export of vaccines all over the world. There is a vision to make a global leader in the field of scientific research. "Due to our untiring efforts, India has emerged a global leader in supply of vaccines to the world. Vaccines are exported from India to over 188 countries. Currently, more than two-thirds of the total volume of the vaccines manufactured is exported while the rest is utilised domestically. The Indian vaccine market reached a value of Rs 94 billion in 2019, and has still got unused potential for the future," the statement said. It further said that the DGCI has granted the approval after a subject expert committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) recommended the two vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin) for emergency use in India. Covishield was recommended for emergency use on January 1, whereas Covaxin was recommended for restricted use on January 2. Though Covishield still needs data from India on immunogenicity and efficacy, it has been given emergency use authorisation keeping in mind the difficult times caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. (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.) When the Capitol riots happened on Jan. 6, the blame of President Trump was all over. Supposedly, he was the instigator. Supposedly, he'd egged the rioters on. The tape of his urging his supporters to stay strong and fight was Exhibit A in the press, and with no skepticism whatsoever, House speaker Nancy Pelosi declared Trump guilty and rushed a crazily hasty second impeachment just days before Trump's exit. She declared that it was all about holding Trump "accountable," and she added that her explicit aim at the uselessly late date was to prevent him from ever running from public office again. Never mind what the voters might want. In more ways than one, in Pelosi's addled mind, their votes don't count. The press also rushed to judgment even the Wall Street Journal's editorial writers, claiming that Trump's political capital and credibility was now gone and he'd never run for president again. But as news of the arrests comes out, showing who these branded Trump so-called supporters are, the conventional argument is starting to splinter apart. The arrests made in the riots case are starting to show the kind of people who like to riot, which is to say extreme leftists. Start with this freak, as reported by Fox News: A left-wing activist who told Fox News last week that he'd followed a pro-Trump mob into the Capitol in order to "document" the siege is now the subject of a criminal complaint in connection with his alleged participation, according to the U.S. Justice Department. John Sullivan can allegedly be heard egging on protesters in video he provided to the FBI, according to a federal criminal complaint. He has also shared the video to his YouTube and Twitter accounts under the pseudonym Jayden X. He was charged Thursday in federal court in Washington after being arrested by the FBI. He remains in custody in Toeele County, in his home state of Utah, on a U.S. Marshals Service hold request. The Epoch Times reports that he was a Black Lives Matter activist. Andy Ngo notes that he's been busted for BLM riot activity, too. GatewayPundit reported that he was caught on video bragging about posing as a Trump-supporter. He had a pal, too, from CNN. According to this report from TrendingPolitics: On Thursday night, damning new footage showed CNN's Jade Sacker inside of the Capitol with John Sullivan, the BLM member who was charged by federal prosecutors for inciting chaos on January 6th. Sacker co-conspired with the liberal activist in order to cause chaos and make Trump supporters look bad. The shocking video shows her and Sullivan celebrating and shouting "We did it!" when they got the footage they were looking for. When she asked Sullivan if he was filming, he said was going to delete it. He never did. Trending Politics ran a tweet of the actual video, and described this: As you can see, Sacker and Sullivan are overjoyed with the fact that they got footage of Trump supporters "rioting". "Is this not gonna be the best film you've ever made in your life?!" Sullivan asks her. Verified twitter user Amuse breaks everything down in further detail in a series of tweets. "To make this clear. CNN was embedded with BLM/Antifa pretending to be Trump supporters taping them incite a riot. This is freaking huge. If CNN is allowed to maintain its press access anywhere in DC there needs to be a serious overhaul of our entire system," he tweeted. Here's another one, who showed up with furs, and also got himself arrested. According to the New York Post: Aaron Mostofsky was busted Tuesday at his brother's house in Brooklyn by federal agents on multiple charges, including theft of government property for allegedly stealing a police riot shield and bulletproof vest, the source said. Mostofsky, who is the son of Shlomo Mostofsky, a Supreme Court judge and a prominent figure in the Orthodox Jewish community, was photographed with both items. Video circulating on Twitter following Mostofsky's arrest shows FBI agents swarming the home and carting out what appeared to be the fur pelts and walking stick he had on him during the insurrection. His politics? According to this report, registered Democrat. Even the press is starting to notice that the pieces aren't fitting together. Rather than a picture of all wicked and crazed Trump-supporters, charging the Capitol, leftist news outfit Bloomberg reported that its survey of various parties involved, including those who died or were arrested, didn't paint the desired picture. Conclusion? Many of those shown in news footage had no party affiliation and voted sporadically, if at all. Bloomberg's survey of the players showed that only the people who died of medical emergencies seemed to be fully normal Republican voters the rest didn't vote at all, voted sporadically, voted Libertarian, independent, or Democrat, and in general were fringe players. Bloomberg, missing that obvious conclusion, seemed to consider these mostly arrested characters "Trump's people" and Trump's "base," in a bid to still pin the riots on Trump. But how anyone who votes Democrat or doesn't vote at all could be a part of Trump's rise and the huge crowds he draws was never actually explained. Trump-supporters...vote for Trump. This isn't rocket science. More and more, it looks as though Trump was framed. This, in addition to transcripts not bearing out the claims that Trump called for an attack on the Capitol, as well as the inconvenient timeline the FBI put out warnings of plans for disturbances days earlier, and the attack on the Capitol began before President Trump finished speaking and probably uttered the words the Democrats literally impeached him on. It was a rush to judgment, a failure to look at facts. It happened in the aftermath of the event, and it turns out that Trump had little or nothing to do with it. Even House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy blamed Trump for the riots. But he, too, disgracefully rushed to judgment, so we await his apology, please. The rush to judgment, incidentally, didn't affect just President Trump, who got a second impeachment from it. There were many rushes to judgment in this leftist hysteria. Here's a blameless man named David Quintavalle, a retired Chicago firefighter, who was falsely accused of being the person who hurled the fire extinguisher that killed police officer Brian Sicknick, who, by the way, really was a Trump-supporter. According to The Patch of Chicago: The retired Chicago firefighter from Mount Greenwood whom social media trolls called a "terrorist" and accused of fatally wielding a fire extinguisher that killed a cop as a mob of Trump-supporting insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was grocery shopping and celebrating his wife's birthday in Chicago, Patch has learned. Twitter exploded with unsubstantiated claims Tuesday that Quintavalle who retired from the fire department in 2016 after 32 years was the bearded "#extinguisherman" in a surveillance video wearing a "CFD" stocking cap wanted for questioning and "soon to be arrested" by the FBI regarding the fatal beating of U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. Quintavalle had all his receipts and proofs. But this is how the left's rush to judgment went for him: By Tuesday night, Quintavalle began getting angry calls from people saying he's a "f------ murderer" who belongs in jail. TV news reporters had staked out his house. Chicago police dispatched a patrol car to keep watch overnight, as well, his lawyer said. Some folks got ridiculed for tweeting that Quintavalle wasn't "the guy" and his facial features don't match those of the man wanted for questioning by the FBI. One post claimed that tweets disputing Quintavalle's involvement in the U.S. Capitol insurrection were pushed by trolling Twitter "bots with practically no followers coming out of the woodwork." This is a hell of a sorry picture. The facts will continue to roll out, and the picture that emerges will likely start to show that these rioters were hardly "Trump's people" as a rule, or people who were egged on by Trump. They were, in general, leftists, political fringers, and people who like to go to riots. There remains to be news of whether and how this fiasco was plotted out but expect news of that to roll out. That leaves Congress and all the jerks who voted for impeachment of President Trump looking like boobs and losers. They've hitched their star to this leftist impeachment obsession, and now have seen it falling flat. Now they are about to sully and overshadow Joe Biden's first days in office with increasingly discredited charges against President Trump, and rest assured: the voters will notice just how bad it is. This rush to judgment will trash their own legacies for history. Image credit: Twitter screen shot. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ALAMOGORDO Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin said he would carry firearms with him to Washington, D.C., where he plans to travel for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Im gonna be there on Jan. 20 and Im gonna take a stand for our country and for our freedoms, Griffin said Thursday. Im gonna leave either tonight or tomorrow. Ive got a .357 Henry Big Boy rifle lever action that Ive got in the trunk of my car and Ive got a .357 single action revolver, the Colt Ruger Vaquero that Ill have underneath the front seat on my right side and I will embrace my Second Amendment. I will keep my right to bear arms. My vehicle is an extension of my home in regards to the constitutional law and I have a right to have those firearms in my car. Griffin, a Republican and founder of Cowboys for Trump, made the statements during the Thursday meeting of the Otero County Commission, where he appeared without a face covering as mandated by New Mexicos emergency public health orders. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ Griffin has a history of controversial statements and he has said the FBI had spoken with him after receiving complaints regarding his actions and speech. Griffin was in Washington, D.C., at the Capitol building on Jan. 6 when a violent insurrection broke out as the Congress worked to certify the 2020 election for Biden. Griffin said he did not participate in the violence on that day, rather was there to hear a speech by President Donald Trump. I went there to support my president and stand up for our country, Griffin said. Griffin said the FBI acknowledged his right to bear arms and transport them in a vehicle. He said he also informed the FBI about threats he personally received, and said the FBI would investigate. I am turning all of my access to all of my county emails over to the FBI, Griffin said. Im turning all of my Facebook page and all of my Facebook inbox messages over to the FBI and Im also gonna turn all of the hate mail that I have received the printed mail over to the FBI and investigations are going to start taking place. The FBI did not respond to requests by the Alamogordo Daily News for comment, citing the bureaus policy of neither confirm or deny ongoing investigations. Griffins statements come as the New Mexico State Police announced it was preparing for potential armed protests at the state Capitol in Santa Fe next week. Such protests were reportedly planned for state houses in all 50 U.S. States. Trump on Wednesday asked for restraint by protestors and demonstrators. I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind, Trump said in a written statement. That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers. Illinois Democrats of the House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to anoint state Rep. Emanuel "Chris" Welch (D) as their next leader. This formally concludes decades of dominion by House Speaker Mike Madigan (D), who was sitting longer in his position more than any other state Speaker in the history of the United States. Welch Elected as New Illinois House Speaker Welch, who represents a suburban district east of Chicago, garnered the votes required to become Speaker after negotiating with state Rep. Jay Hoffman (D), who will hold a leadership post the following year. The Illinois House elected its first Black Speaker to oust the longest-seated legislative leader in modern US history, picking Welch for the position and ousting Madigan following his implication in an ongoing bribery investigation. Welch is has been a House veteran for eight years, hailing from the Chicago suburb of Hillside, reported Herald Sun. Madigan had been a Speaker for 36 of the past 38 years. The vote on Sunday by members of the Democratic caucus underscored he lacked adequate support to keep the gavel. He then suspended his Speaker campaign the following day. Members of the House had taken up nominations for the Speaker role on Wednesday afternoon. Welch obtained the nomination alongside the ceremonial nomination of the current minority leader, Republican Jim Durkin of Western Springs. Welch emerged as the frontrunner on Monday following Madigan, who has been a lock in the said caucus for 18 terms. Assuming Welch prevails in a floor vote as expected with his party dominating the House, he would be the first African-American Speaker in the history of Illinois. Also Read: Trump Says He Will Not Attend Biden's Inauguration on January 20 Madigan failed in a test vote on Sunday to garner the 60 votes required for him to reclaim the gavel, reported Lompoc Record. With the votes, House Speaker Mike Madigan's dominion over the House formally concludes. According to Madigan in a statement, "It is time for new leadership in the House. I wish all the best for Speaker-elect Welch as he begins a historic speakership. It is my sincere hope today that the caucus I leave to him and to all who will serve alongside him is stronger than when I began," reported Daily Herald. Seventy-eight-year-old Madigan was first inaugurated as a House member a half-century ago. He sought another term in his post, notwithstanding 19 members of his caucus declaring their opposition in the previous six months. However, Madigan's allies and associates have increasingly been involved in a broad federal investigation into the lobbying practices of Illinois' largest utility, Commonwealth Edison. Many Madigan associates have been indicted of crimes, but Madigan himself has not been charged with any wrongdoing. After coming up short of votes, Madigan's suspension of his campaign allowed lawmakers to consider other people instead of demanding a potentially drawn-out floor fight that would cripple all other business. Madigan was identified last summer in a Justice Department probing as the beneficiary of a long-running bribery venture involving ComEd. It has since then yielded a ComEd executive's guilty plea and indictments of four others, including Madigan's closest confidante, and a $200 million fine on the utility giant. Related Article: Trump's Response to Permanent Account Suspension: Twitter Has Gone Further and Further in Banning Free Speech @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A report reveals that Open Doors, an organization that supports and aids persecuted Christians worldwide, has some "secret workers" discreetly working to help believers in dangerous places such as North Korea. Since 2002, Christians in North Korea have faced the most intense persecution for their faith. In response to this, Open Doors sends "secret fieldworkers" to support Christians who manage to escape to China, by means of underground networks, Missions Box reported. Secret fieldworkers are always on alert to help North Korean Christians who were able to flee, giving them refuge in safe houses. They also tend to the physical and spiritual needs of more than 90,000 North Korean believers in Christ. Missions Box interviewed one particular secret fieldworker who they simply called "Peter" for the sake of safety. His story describes in detail the dangers such fieldworkers face for simply helping North Korean Christians. Peter has an extremely dangerous job that puts him at risk of being caught and subjected to persecution. Despite experiences of close calls, he still persists knowing that he is supported by the prayers of fellow believers around the world. "My work is to meet North Korean who have already heard of Jesus at some time in their lives to help them survive the North Korean system if they go back. I provide them with spiritual and physical help. This helps the underground church to preserve her faith from within North Korea," he said. There was a time when he was supposed to meet a local contact in secret. Under the cloak of a dark night - and freezing temperatures less than 28 degrees Celsius -- Peter tried calling his contact but could not reach him. After three hours of waiting and several failed attempts to contact the person, his phone suddenly rang. "It was his number. But when I answered it was a strange man. He asked me, 'who are you?' Then it struck me what had happened. Immediately I smashed my phone with a stone and threw it in a drain hole," he recounted. "With nowhere to go I stood all night in the freezing cold and then I quickly left the city. Later, I found out that my contact was being investigated by the police and even agents from North Korea," he continued. Peter's concern for the believers in hiding is greater than his troubles. He understands that North Korea is the world's most dangerous place for Christians, and is urging fellow believers to pray for North Korean Christ-followers. "Among all the countries of the world, Christians in North Korea are the most persecuted. Even at this moment, they go through tribulations and pain, but they still looks to God and pray to God. We need to remember our brothers and sisters there. We need to pour out our hearts for the believers," he said. "Your prayers will strengthen them to worship God in the land. Thanks to your prayers and support, they still remain faithful believers in the land." The Most Dangerous Country for Christians According to other sources besides those by religious groups or organizations, North Korea is now the top persecutor of Christians around the world. They have been relentless at it for eighteen consecutive years. Treating Christianity as a "cancerous threat" to North Korea's national identity, the country's leaders including Kim Jong II and his son Kim Jong Un have cruelly oppressed those who embraced Christianity. The plight of North Korean Christians has led religious and humanitarian groups to mobilize workers and allocate resources for the oppressed believers. For instance, World Help organized a campaign to raise enough funds in order to purchase Bibles to be distributed in North Korea in secret. While food, clothes, and other necessities are vital, Christians in North Korea have Bibles among their top requests. "Whenever we speak with defectors, they make sure we understand that Christians in North Korea want more than anything our prayers and access to Scripture, says Vernon Brewer, CEO and founder of World Help. Voice of the Martyrs Korea CEO Eric Foley also works hard to send Bibles into North Korea using balloons. He and his team had been doing this for 15 years already. South Korea, however, has banned the sending of printed materials over to the northern Communist state, hindering Foley's work as well as those of others like him. Foley, who is facing charges for his work, calls on Christians to keep praying that more North Koreans will receive Bibles. "God is finding ways to get Bibles into North Korea. We're amazed at the avenues He's opening. Please pray that continues. Pray that God is glorified," he said. The virus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019, and eventually spread to nearly every corner of the globe, leading to more than 1.9 million fatalities out of more than 92.3 million total infections, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. The 10-member international team flew into Wuhan after a direct flight from Singapore and immediately entered a 14-day quarantine period. Two other members of the WHO team remained in Singapore after testing positive for COVID-19 antibodies, according to a series of tweets from the agency. A team of experts from the World Health Organization arrived in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Thursday to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus openly expressed "disappointment" with China last week after Beijing failed to grant final permission to the delegation to enter the country, although the plans had been jointly arranged between the two sides. Beijing defended the delay as a "misunderstanding.' The team's arrival comes as China reports its first new COVID-19 death since last May, part of a surge of new coronavirus infections in the northern provinces of Hebei and Heilongjiang. The National Health Commission reported 138 new cases on Thursday, up from the 115 new cases posted just the day before, with Hebei province recording 81 new cases and 43 coming out of Heilongjiang. The other 14 came from outside the country. The surge of new infections has prompted officials in Hebei province to place several cities in lockdown, while authorities in northeastern Heilongjiang province have declared an "emergency state" for the entire province and its 37 million residents. The world appears to be on the verge of another effective COVID-19 vaccine. A study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine found that an experimental vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson generated a strong immune response in both young and elderly volunteer participants in early-stage trials. Unlike the vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine only requires one dose, making it easier to both transport and refrigerate for long periods of time. The vaccine is currently undergoing late-stage trials involving 45,000 volunteers. Johnson & Johnson is expected to seek emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sometime next month. The company has signed a $1 billion contract with the U.S. government to provide up to 100 million doses of the vaccine once it is granted approval. 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. Qatar, Madeira and the Caribbean island of Aruba are among the latest locations to join the UK governments no-go list. They lost their travel corridor status which confers quarantine exemption on travellers to the UK in a Thursday evening announcement from the Department for Transport (DfT). In addition the Foreign Office warns against non-essential travel to each destination, based on the current assessment of Covid-19 risks. The Azores, Chile and the Dutch Caribbean islands of Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba have also been stripped of their travel corridor status. The regular weekly changes to the governments quarantine list were somewhat overshadowed by the outright travel ban imposed on Portugal, Cape Verde and 13 Latin American countries on Thursday afternoon. All flights have been cancelled indefinitely. The changes for Madeira and the Azores are part of the outright prohibition on travel from Portugal, which was due to the strong links it has with Brazil. Chile, along with the rest of the South American continent, also has a sudden ban on travel from the UK, Qatars capital, Doha, is a key Gulf hub for flight transfers, and has a big British expatriate community. The UAE was added to the UKs no-go list on Monday after a significant number of coronavirus infections were imported from Dubai. The measure for Qatar takes effect from 4am on Saturday, making it feasible for people there to travel to the UK on Friday. Qatar Airways has four flights from Doha to Heathrow airport, one to Gatwick and two to Manchester. One-way tickets are available at 576 to London and 703 to Manchester. The list of quarantine-free nations is shrinking by the week. While Finland, Iceland and Norway are still included, they all currently exclude British travellers. Locations that can be accessed relatively easily from the UK comprise the Caribbean islands of Antigua, Barbados, Cuba and St Lucia; Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East; and various British Overseas Territories including Bermuda. Numerous nations in Asia and the Pacific region have travel corridor status, including Australia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. But entry restrictions make them out of bounds for British holidaymakers. ADVERTISEMENT White pigeons caused a stir at the Eagle Square on Friday when they refused to fly after being released by President Muhammadu Buhari. The president was at the venue to mark the Armed Forces Remembrance Day alongside his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, and leaders of the National Assembly. The president had opened the cage housing the pigeons in order for them to fly but the birds refused. In order to salvage the situation, the president picked one and threw into the air but it landed back into the cage and refused to fly. The birds later flew into the air after the president returned to his seat. The ritual is performed every year to commemorate the lives of departed members of the armed forces. It is a symbol of peace. The refusal of the birds to fly has brought up so many debates on social media with some attributing it to the alleged injustice and insecurity in the country. However, a veterinary doctor, Jarumi Barnabas, explained that flying birds are not always eager to fly immediately after release having been confined in a cage for a long period. Mr Barnabas said there are some psychological effects attached to moving the birds from one point to the other. Those doves are usually trained from different sources, bringing them together will cause some sort of psychological effects on each of them, the doctor said. ALSO READ: Buhari launches 2021 armed forces remembrance emblem Pigeons released by the president in 2019 also refused to fly immediately they were released. During the Armed Forces Remembrance Day in 2014, pigeons released by former President Goodluck Jonathan also refused to fly immediately. remaining of Thank you for reading! This is your last free article before you will be asked to subscribe. Already have a paid subscription? Sign in WASHINGTON - From the base of the U.S. Capitol, the new barricades stretch westward, past roadblocks and swarmsof police officers and National Guard troops, all the way to the Washington Monument, where 50 American flags at half-staff flap in a brisk winter breeze. Renee Pinkerton, 59, walked there from her Georgetown apartment the other morning, as she sometimes does, to replenish her sense of national pride. She instead felt an overwhelming sadness as she took in a tableau of workers installing eight-foot-high chain-link fences around the Ellipse. "It's like we're broken as a nation," she said outside the shuttered and mostly deserted monument. "To see all the barricades is a shock. We've always been a nation of stability and democracy. This is not who we are." As the nation's capital, Washington is a beacon of a free and open society, its famous landmarks and grand governmental complexes protected by a vast and often invisible fortress of security that projects power and authority. But its aura of invincibility was shattered last week when a violent mob blew past police lines outside the Capitol and stormed the inner sanctums of Congress. The photos and videos of the invaders - people who had traveled to Washington to show fealty to the president - were astonishing and disorienting, in ways reminiscent of when two airplanes toppled the World Trade Center in Manhattan 19 years ago. Here was a masked man in a hoodie inside the U.S. Senate chamber, casually occupying the chair where Vice President Mike Pence sat just before fleeing. Here was another man, his foot up on a desk in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "We will not back down," read the scrawl on a file folder the marauders left behind. All at once, Washington felt like a city under siege. In truth, though, the siege had begun months before. The novel coronavirus shuttered the city, and the protests and looting after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody pushed unrest to Washington neighborhoods that typically remain out of the national fray: Dupont Circle, Georgetown, Friendship Heights. There was tear gas and rubber bullets, boarded-up storefronts. Over the summer, National Guard troops patrolled federal parks to remind people not to linger, and to remain socially distant. Beyond the blur of news, there was the Georgetown University cafeteria worker who lost her job and had to move her extended family of seven from a spacious house to a two-bedroom apartment. There was the unemployed construction worker who peddles body oils on an Anacostia sidewalk while helping his granddaughter with Zoom classes. There was also the florist in a mostly Black, blue-collar neighborhood who has found herself busy arranging bouquets to honor the dead, many of them victims of covid-19 and gun violence. And there was the Capitol Hill priest who, missing his congregants, has taken to strolling his neighborhood and ministering to police officers guarding the Capitol. After last week's riot, Stephanie Kay, 56, an art teacher at Langdon Elementary School in Washington's Brookland neighborhood, told her fifth-graders she felt renewed hope with Trump's impending departure and the swearing-in of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. "Are you hopeful that things will get better?" she asked the small faces on her screen. Eight of the 11 students turned their thumbs down. "My heart dropped," she said. A couple of days later, she posted to a neighborhood listserv her fears that there would be another violent invasion on Inauguration Day, and suggested that the National Guard establish checkpoints to keep "outsiders without credentials" from entering the city. Commenters ridiculed the idea as extreme, and Kay acknowledged that it defied her normal image of herself as a defender of free speech. But life now is anything but normal, she said. "We are hanging on by our fingernails." - - - The first contemporary sign of far-right paranoia in Washingtonburst into public view on Dec. 4, 2016, during the run-up to Trump's inauguration. That afternoon, a heavily armed North Carolina man walked into Comet Ping Pong, a neighborhood pizzeria on Connecticut Avenue, to investigate what he believed was a child sex-trafficking ring operating out of the eatery. "Pizzagate" became the popular shorthand for the incident- an omen of what was to come. Arising from the murkiest recesses of the Internet - and later amplified by the mysterious conspiracist known as QAnon (or just "Q") - the baseless theory holds that Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats are members of a Satan-worshiping cult victimizing children in tunnels beneath the restaurant. "We still get Pizzagate calls here and there," Erika Mendoza, an assistant manager, said Tuesday night, seated at a table on the otherwise vacant patio. "People asking questions like, 'Where is the basement at,' or 'Where are the tunnels?' " In the chill air, she shrugged and half-smiled. "You know, like crazy questions." Mendoza, 29, a single parent of three school-aged youngsters, was not working on the day of the incident, but she still felt frightened. "We all felt scared for our lives afterward, because we didn't know if another crazy person was going to come another day." Washington has long been the site of historic crises, from the burning of the U.S. Capitol by the British in 1814 to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, to the rioting that began at the corner of 14th and U streets after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death in 1968. What has distinguished the past year is the molten mix of a pandemic, racial justice protests, and political unrest. Stanley Mayes, 71, the owner of A Divine Shine Complete Shoe Care and Repair, grew up in the neighborhood, known as Shaw, and still lives there. He witnessed the looting and arson in 1968, the antiwar demonstrations of the same period, and the crack epidemic of the 1980s and '90s. In some ways, he said, he feels more hopeful now, particularly as cellphone video footage has validated longtime complaints from Black people that they are routinely mistreated by police officers. But the coronavirus killed his sister-in-law and three cousins and hurt his business. And he was jarred by the sight of Trump supporters walking through his neighborhood on the afternoon of the Capitol riot, their allegiance to the president obvious by their flags and their bright red caps that read, "Make America Great Again." "It's like Dante's rings, where you just keep going down," he said. Demonstrations of the past, he said, were intended to pressure the government "to live up to what's carved in the stone at the Lincoln Memorial." But Trump's supporters "are not asking the government to act out of their highest ideals." "They're saying, 'Do what we want.' " He said he feels less secure in his hometown these days but would remain in Washington through the inauguration, even if he closes his shop and stays home. "There are certain things that the body politic should stand down," he said. "I ain't going nowhere." Natasha Warsaw, 48, an educator who lives in Fort Totten, is escaping to North Carolina to see relatives. The violence at the Capitol reminded her of her childhood in Turkey, where her father was stationed with the U.S. Army. She remembers her fear at seeing soldiers in the streets with machine guns. The images of White people hoisting Confederate flags at the Capitol evoked the stories she heard as a child about the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings of Black people.When she returns to Washington, she said, she plans to get a license to carry a gun. "History tells us things are not going to get better," she said. "This mob - insurrectionist behavior - I don't think it's over." One afternoon this week, Teare'Ra Bittle, 31, ordered fried shrimp and crab cakes from a carryout and picked up medication from a pharmacy. She returned to her Capitol Hill apartment, a subsidized two-bedroom she shares with her two children, her mother and father, her sister and two nieces. As she played with her children on the living room couch that doubles as her bed, Bittle's father, Artis Baldwin, a Metro subcontractor and an Uber driver, checked his phone for the stimulus check he is expecting. Until last year, when Bittle was laid off from her cafeteria job at Georgetown University, they lived in a five-bedroom house in Northeast. She earned $1,000 every other week. Now, she gets an $600 unemployment check twice a month. "It's been the year of hell," Bittle said. "It feels like you've died and are living in another world." - - - Across the city, the psychic pain of the past 10 months is discernible in conversations and social media posts about mounting anxiety, dread and anger, and whether the time has come to move away. Nik McCoy, 45, a single mother of five who lives near Anacostia, hasn't slept through the night since the coronavirus killed her brother in May. Barbara Kelly, 63, a school lunch attendant who also lost a brother to the virus, burst into tears as she watched the Capitol riot on television, recalling arson and looting that ravaged the H Street corridor near her home in 1968. "I thought we were doing it all over again," she said. "Only this time it was really scary because we didn't have enough police." The growing financial strain is palpable in the long lines outside food pantries, the pop-up tents now visible at Dupont Circle, and the blocks of shops, bars and restaurants that have shuttered and sent workers searching for new jobs. Gary Lane, 68, of Capitol Hill, hasn't worked since July, when an illness he suspects was covid-19 forced him to leave his job stocking shelves at an Arlington Safeway. It took him until fall to recover. Now, he is perilously behind on his loan payments for his Honda, which he drove around the city the other day, looking for work. Just before noon, he stopped at the Skyland Workforce Center in Southeast Washington, hoping to use their computer and seek help from a job placement specialist. The political maelstrom unfolding on the other side of the Anacostia River was far from his mind. "You can't imagine what if feels like when you don't have a job," he said as he waited. "Why does a person have to go through this just to get a job?" Bilaal Muhammed, 54, once a janitor and construction laborer, has been unemployed since the onset of the pandemic. Now, he sells body oils from a table in front of a boarded-up takeout joint. He waved an arm at the hard-knocks in the neighborhood around him, his home since birth, and said: "Life's like pulling teeth every day, you know what I'm saying? All my life, it's been day-to-day, trying to get by. A little bit here, a little bit there." Then he smiled big, because you have to smile big, no matter what, he said, or you'll lose your mind. In a year of global contagion, racial reckoning and now political violence, Muhammed, whose wife works at an assisted-living facility, said he stays sane by focusing on himself and his loved ones and their needs. He knows that society's larger currents and calamities are beyond his control. "I got a family I got to deal with, man, so I try to stay out of the way of that other stuff, especially that political thing," he said, while his granddaughter Afiah played nearby after a morning of virtual kindergarten. On his table were racks of 20-ounce bottles labeled Egyptian Musk and Sexy Amber, Pink Privacy and Hippie Chick, 100 bottles in all - and he had a wad of cash in a pocket. "I don't let nothing else bother me," he said, and flashed another smile. "I believe in a higher power, so I try to lean on Him and let that carry me through all the craziness." All around Crystal Craft's flower store, shopkeepers are struggling. The racks for suits, shirts and dresses at her brother's adjoining dry-cleaning shop have grown emptier. A neighboring day-care center is behind on its rent. Craft has never been busier. "There's been so many funerals," she said as she prepared a bouquet of blue stocks for a customer to send to a friend. Between covid-19 and rising gun violence, "we've never shut down." The upheaval of the past year has rewarded those Washingtonians able to adapt to the hardships and take advantage of opportunities. Charvis Campbell, 47, says he is among just a handful of Black record-store owners in the country. The distinction helped draw patrons during the racial justice protests, he said, and keep his business open. "It allowed us to acknowledge ourselves." Several miles west, Nick Cervone manages Middle C Music by day. The structure of going to work keeps him grounded and sane. The 24-year-old guitarist hasn't been onstage since before the pandemic. At first, he said, he fell into a rut, wasting hours playing a Nintendo game called "Animal Crossing." But he found a way out: writing his own music at night in his Adams Morgan apartment, a blend of "dance and indie pop" that studiously avoids politics. "I feel weird coming home and seeing the Washington Monument down 16th Street, then going up to my room and making music that is so disconnected from Washington," he said. "But that's my choice." He pointed across the store and laughed. "Hey, surviving is the new thriving, right? We're selling T-shirts with that." - - - Most mornings, the Rev. Eugene Hemrick walks the neighborhood where he has lived for a quarter century, chatting up the U.S. Capitol Police officers who guard the complex of stately federal buildings. The pews at his parish, St. Joseph's, are nearly empty. Hemrick has struggled with the isolation and finds his chats with the officers ever more important for his well-being. "Father Gene!" one officer said on the sixth day after the riots, as the 82-year-old shuffled toward him in a winter coat and fedora. "How have you guys been doing?" Hemrick asked. The policeman told Hemrick he hadn't been in the Capitol during the mayhem, but he had known Howard Liebengood, the Capitol Police officer who was on duty that day and died by suicide three days later. "On top of everything that happened, that was bad," the officer said. "What do you say about all this in your homily?" the officer asked. "What are other priests saying about this craziness going on? Is it, like, 'Hey guys, chill out'?" It was a question Hemrick, the son of a Chicago fireman, had asked himself again and again over the past year. After telling the officer to be safe, the priest returned to his apartment and sat at his desk by a window where he often watches passing families, professionals going to and from work, people walking their dogs. On this day, though, the streets were barren, except for newly erected black metal fences and scores of National Guard members in camouflage, some of them heavily armed. No children were in sight. The priest printed out one of his recent homilies, titled "Freedom at its best." "Freedom's worth," he had written, "is the good it ultimately produces for the common good." A few hours later,he began to hear predictions of more violence in coming days, perhaps even worse than Jan. 6. The officers he talked with were nervous and exhausted. "There's something in the air right now," he said. For the first time in 24 years, the priest decided he would not take his usual stroll when he awoke the next day. BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - French stocks drifted lower on Friday as rising coronavirus cases in Europe and new Covid-19 infections in China cut into optimism about a global economic recovery. Germany, Europe's biggest economy, today passed two million coronavirus cases as countries tighten restrictions to curb the spread of new, more contagious strains of the disease. Portugal imposed a new nationwide lockdown while Britain requires negative tests for entry. Fresh curbs on populations were announced from Brazil to Lebanon. Amid fears of surging cases, Germany is considering a 'mega-lockdown'. France is introducing tougher restrictions for anyone entering the country from outside the EU. The benchmark CAC 40 fell 38 points, or 0.7 percent, to 5,642 after gaining 0.3 percent on Thursday. In stock-specific action, Bouygues edged down slightly after its telecommunications arm unveiled a strategic plan for the next five years aiming to become the second biggest telecoms operator in mobile in France. In economic releases, French consumer prices remained unchanged in December, as initially estimated, final data released by the statistical office Insee showed. Consumer prices remained stable on a yearly basis in December, as initially estimated, after rising 0.2 percent in November. Month-on-month, consumer prices gained 0.2 percent, the same rate as seen in November and in line with the flash estimate. 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. 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. There are a couple articles in this weeks issue that use antisemitism rather than anti-Semitism. In fact, one writer insisted that Heritage use the spelling lowercased with no hyphen. This led to the question why? and an interesting dig into the history of the words anti-Semitism and Semitism. First, Heritage sought the answer by asking Marcia Jo Zerevitz, who used antisemitism in the article January is Florida Jewish History Month. She gladly supplied her answer: This is currently the appropriate scholarly way to spell the word, which was coined in 1879 by W... A South Texas official called for personal accountability after a woman with COVID-19 attended a San Antonio concert. Lewis Owens, the Val Verde County Judge, posted a Facebook video Sunday noting that residents were asking county leaders and the local health authority what officials were doing about a spike in coronavirus cases. "Its not up to us anymore folks," Owens said. "Its up to y'all." READ ALSO: H-E-B beats out Apple, Facebook on Best Places to Work in 2021 list Owens gave the example of a Val Verde County resident who went to the Cody Johnson concert Friday at Cowboys Dancehall. The woman had tested positive for the virus and left quarantine to attend the concert. The woman was seen in Snapchat videos wearing a mask around her wrist, according to Owens. She initially told contact tracers she had left home after fighting with her mother, but eventually confessed she had gone to the country concert. "People say that we need to do a better job. No. Y'all need to do a better job," Owens said. "Thats how this s*** is spreading. People like her bring that stuff back and they kill families and kill their parents or whatever." A citation was issued to the woman. Owens told his constituents that he plans to release her name publicly when the citation process is complete. After the concert, Cowboys Dancehall received two citations for violating San Antonio's emergency orders, for a total of seven since March. The city warned the venue its certificate of occupancy will be revoked if it receives another citation. On Tuesday, Val Verde officials reported 1,312 active COVID-19 cases and a 7-day positivity rate of 29.68 percent. The city of Del Rio introduced a $500 fine for people who violate the mask requirement. The county judge had a stern warning for the woman who went to the San Antonio concert. "You should never have left, young lady," Owens said. "You should never have gone." 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. Cara Lambright, a former nonprofit consultant and high-ranking official at Houston's largest public park, will become CEO of New Orleans City Park in February. The parks board selected Lambright, 47, on Thursday to replace longtime CEO Bob Becker, who was due to retire last year but stuck around to lead the park through financial challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Lambright is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Houston's Memorial Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that maintains and operates most of the 1,500-acre Memorial Park. She said she applied for the job as a longtime admirer of New Orleans and its signature 1,300-acre park, adding that the opportunity was too good to pass up. City Park "is the pulse, the heartbeat of the city," Lambright said. "That this opening became available at a park that means so much to all New Orleanians ... Im honestly still pinching myself, that its a reality." Lambright's experience in planning and program development made her an ideal choice for the role, said City Park Improvement Association President Jay Batt. Before her work at Memorial Park, she was president of AndrisinAbbey, a firm that provided management consulting and other services to nonprofits. Ms. Lambright has a clear understanding of City Parks unique history and her vision for our programming, conservation and progressive initiatives align with those of the board perfectly," he said. Lambright will be expected to draw from her experience managing park operations, finances and programs to help the 167-year-old staple of New Orleans recreation rebound after a tumultuous year. Though City Park saw a surge in public use after COVID-19 restrictions took hold in New Orleans, those same rules hampered the park's ability to raise money. Limits on gatherings forced the cancellations of major moneymakers such as the Voodoo Music + Arts Experience, weddings and other functions. That proved challenging for a park that generates roughly 90% of its annual revenue. Another 10% comes from a slot machine tax at the Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots. 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 Beginning this year, the park will also snag a $2 million boost from local property taxes as a millage rededication voters approved in 2019 takes effect. But the park last year still had to slash its $22.5 million budget by 22% and furlough all 275 part-time employees. Full-time workers had their pay cut by as much as 25% and another third of full-timers were laid off. Tweaking that funding model is high on Lambright's priority list. "What can we do to make sure that when a moment like that faces us again, we have enough diversified revenue sources to meet any challenge?" she said. During her time at Memorial, the Houston park quadrupled its annual operating budget and raised over $200 million for capital improvements. +7 From Hurricane Katrina to coronavirus, how Celebration in the Oaks is coming full circle In December 2005, swaths of New Orleans remained dark and empty because of Hurricane Katrinas floodwaters, and Celebration in the Oaks organi City Park did see a $2.5 million emergency funding boost from the state Legislature last year, after officials pleaded with state lawmakers for months to help shore up its dwindling reserves. And a revived Celebration in the Oaks driving tour sold out nearly every night from Thanksgiving to Jan. 3. Lambright also sees the job as an opportunity to return to a city she has loved since her childhood. Her father's family is from New Iberia, and she'd spend her summers there as a child and visit New Orleans with her mother on vacations. In 2015, she bought a home in the French Quarter to be closer to the city, She now lives Uptown where her daughter, Catherine, attends Loyola University. Even as the pandemic cut into City Park's finances, it has also put a spotlight on the park's importance to New Orleans, not only for active recreation, but as a space to support mental health, Lambright said. She pledged to work to highlight the park's relevance to the public in the coming years and find new funding sources, particularly as the park grapples with the effects of deferred maintenance on its trees and plants and other challenges wrought by budget cuts. "I think you can ask a lot of New Orleanians, 'What is your park?'" Lambright said. "They almost always answer, 'City Park.' ... Parks are really personal for people, and City Park was and is my park." The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson and mega-donor to US President Donald Trump, who died on Tuesday aged 87 after a long illness, has been buried in Jerusalem. The casino mogul's coffin was greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Adelson's wife Miriam on Thursday night, and was buried on Friday. The billionaire mogul and power broker, who built a casino empire spanning from Las Vegas to China and became a singular force in domestic and international politics, was being treated for non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. At one point the third richest man in the world, Adelson first announced that he was being treated for the cancer back in 2019. Draped in an Israeli flag, Adelson's coffin arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday, near the Israeli city of Lo, and was met by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was pictured alongside Miriam Adelson. The coffin was then taken Jerusalem's Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery on Friday, with pictures showing his coffin being carried by mourners followed by his wife. The cemetery is the most ancient and important Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem, with burials starting there some 3,000 years ago. It contains anywhere between 70,000 to 150,000 tombs, containing some of the most significant figures in Jewish history. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before the casket of Sheldon Adelson , next to the wife of the deceased Miriam Adelson, upon its arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, near the Israeli city of Lod, on January 14 Mourners carry the casket of Sheldon Adelson at Jerusalem's Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery on January 15 Las Vegas Sands chairman and major Donald Trump donor Sheldon Adelson, pictured, above died on Monday aged 87 afer a long illness, the company announced Adelson is mourned by official Israel as a powerful benefactor with direct access to U.S. presidents. Others on Wednesday saw a legacy tinged with controversy and touched by deadly conflict. The Las Vegas casino magnate was a prolific donor to causes that aligned with his hawkish vision of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He had a robust alliance with Netanyahu, and spent tens of millions of dollars supporting President Donald Trump's election campaigns. Trump's election in 2016 opened a final, four-year window for Adelson's clout with both leaders to produce policy that overwhelmingly favored Israel over Palestinians. As the sun sets on the Trump presidency and Netanyahu fights for re-election, Adelson's influence survives. 'With a new administration entering the White House and the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, Israel must cut the umbilical cord connecting it to the conservative wing of the Republican party,' the liberal Haaretz daily wrote in an editorial Wednesday. Trump paid tribute to Adelson following his death on Tuesday. Miriam Adelson stands before the casket of her husband, Sheldon Adelson, upon its arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, near the Israeli city of Lod,on January 14 Miriam Adelson, wife of Sheldon Adelson attends his funeral in a cemetery in Jerusalem, January 15 The coffin of Sheldon Adelson is carried to be buried during his funeral in a cemetery in Jerusalem, January 15 'His ingenuity, genius, and creativity earned him immense wealth, but his character and philanthropic generosity his great name,' Trump said in a statement. 'Sheldon was also a staunch supporter of our great ally the State of Israel. He tirelessly advocated for the relocation of the United States embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and its neighbors,' the president added. 'Sheldon was true to his family, his country, and all those that knew him. The world has lost a great man. He will be missed.' He was considered the nation's most influential GOP donor over the final years of his life, at times setting records for individual contributions during a given election cycle. He recently gave $75 million to a super PAC that attacked President-elect Joe Biden in the lead-up to last November's election. Adelson and his wife Miriam, 75, set new records for political donations in the 2020 cycle, giving a total of $218 million to President Donald Trump's campaign and various Republican causes. Adelson and his wife Miriam, 75, set new records for political donations in the 2020 cycle, giving a total of $218 million to President Trump's campaign and various Republican causes Former president George W. Bush also called Adelson 'an American patriot'. 'Sheldon battled his way out of a tough Boston neighborhood to build a successful enterprise that loyally employed tens of thousands and entertained millons,' said former President Bush. 'He was an American patriot, a generous benefactor of charitable causes, and a strong supporter of Israel.' Adelson also underwrote a free daily newspaper that served as an unofficial mouthpiece for Netanyahu. Critics said the publication amounted to a multi-million dollar campaign contribution. 'That level of political funding gave him unprecedented access and influence over Israeli politics,' said Anshel Pfeffer, a Haaretz columnist, adding that Adelson would be remembered as a 'corrosive' influence in both U.S. and Israeli politics. His wife Miriam, pictured with him above, called Adelson the 'love of my life' Sheldon Adelson (left) listens to Israeli President Shimon Peres in August 2007 Adelson was more about policy than people. He occasionally differed with Netanyahu, said Yossi Beilin, a dovish former Israeli Cabinet minister who, despite deep ideological differences, worked with Adelson on the Birthright program. He noted that Adelson had some conflicts with Trump before his election, only to become a driving force in White House policy. 'He supported the policy of the right in Israel, whoever led this policy,' said Beilin. 'And what he thought was right for Israel, it was usually very much to the right, with a capital R.' Netanyahu, in one of a string of effusive eulogies by Israeli leaders, called Adelson 'an incredible champion of the Jewish people, the Jewish state and the alliance between Israel and America.' But others saw Adelson as a front-and-center presence of a series of of inflammatory moves by Israel during the Trump administration. Hanan Ashrawi, a former senior Palestinian official and peace negotiator, said Adelson's support 'enabled Israel and encouraged it to continue with its impunity and lawlessness, to expand settlements.' 'His impact on policy in the U.S. and Israel was enormous and extremely negative,' she said. He advanced 'an agenda of (Israeli) expansion and total disregard for Palestinian rights.' Adelson pictured in 2008 with members of his family. He is survived by three sons, Gary, Adam and Matan Adelson; three daughters, Shelley Adelson, Sivan Dumont and Yasmin Lukatz Don King (pictured right) speaks with Sheldon Adelson before the first 2016 presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on September 26, 2016 In 2018, Adelson watched from the front row as the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and other administration officials triumphantly dedicated a new U.S. Embassy in contested Jerusalem, underscoring the administration's view of the city as the capital of Israel. Palestinians, who see Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their future capital, were infuriated. On the same day, Israeli forces shot and killed dozens of Palestinians and wounded hundreds during mass protests along the Gaza border against the embassy's move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was by far the deadliest day of cross-border violence since a devastating 2014 war between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers. Nearly a year ago, Adelson was present at the White House when Trump unveiled a Mideast plan that endorsed Israel's claims to Jerusalem and its ongoing settlement enterprise in the West Bank. Adelson's philanthropy includes a new medical school in a West Bank settlement. More recently, Adelson reportedly purchased the U.S. ambassador's official residence near Tel Aviv for some $67 million in a move that was seen as helping prevent the embassy from relocating back to Tel Aviv after Trump leaves office. And just weeks ago, Adelson provided a private plane for Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who spent 30 years in prison for spying for Israel, to move to Israel. Pollard kissed the ground as Netanyahu welcomed him. Sheldon Adelson, Miriam Ochsorn and Texas Governor Rick Perry in 2014 President George W. Bush led the tributes to Adelson on Tuesday Donald Trump Jr. also called Adelson an 'American Patriot', pictured above A son of Jewish immigrants, Adelson was raised with two siblings in a Boston tenement, who over the second half of his life became one of the world's richest men. His father was descended from Jewish Ukrainian and Lithuanian ancestors while his mother had immigrated from England. Among his ancestors had been a Welsh coal miner, Adelson claimed. He was the majority shareholder of the Las Vegas Sands, and one of the world's biggest casino moguls. The company owns the Venetian and Palazzo hotel and casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, along with properties in Singapore and Macao. The chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation brought singing gondoliers to the Las Vegas Strip and foresaw correctly that Asia would be an even bigger market. Multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson at The Palazzo Las Vegas in 2008 He also owned the largest circulating newspaper in the Nevada, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Though Adelson is not the listed publisher of the Review-Journal, the rival Las Vegas Sun recently accused him of having 'operational control' of the paper in a court dispute over a joint-operating agreement. In 2018, Forbes ranked him No. 15 in the U.S., worth an estimated $35.5 billion. 'If you do things differently, success will follow you like a shadow,' he said during a 2014 talk to the gambling industry in Las Vegas. Adelson was married twice. He and his first wife, Sandra Shapiro, were divorced in 1988. Three years later, he married Miriam Farbstein-Ochshorn, an Israeli-born doctor he met on a blind date and whom many believe helped deepen his involvement with Israel. Their honeymoon trip to Venice inspired Adelson to raze the historic Sands hotel-casino, once a favorite hangout for Frank Sinatra among others, and replace them with a pair of massive complexes: The Venetian and The Palazzo, one of the citys tallest buildings. Sheldon Adelson adopted his first wife's three children - Gary, Mitchell and Shelly - and had two children, Adam and Matan, with his second wife. He also had two stepchildren, Yasmin Lukatz and Sivan Dumont; and 11 grandchildren. Among numerous philanthropic projects, he and Miriam Adelson were especially committed to the research and treatment of substance abuse, a personal cause for Adelson. His son Mitchell, from his first marriage, died of an overdose in 2005 and Adelson would spend millions opposing Nevada efforts to legalize marijuana. Sheldon Adelson with his sons from his second marriage, Adam and Matan, in 2009 Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sheldon Adelson and his wife Dr. Miriam Adelson talk at a pre-show reception on the opening night of 'Phantom - The Las Vegas Spectacular' in 2006 Sheldon Adelson, wife Miriam Adelson, former Speaker of the House John Boehner, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista at Trump's 2016 inauguration Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (right) reads a book along side Dr Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson along side Dr Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson during a ceremony in 2006 Former New York City Mayor (pictured center) kisses the hand of businessman Sheldon Adelson's wife Miriam Ochsorn before the debate between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in September 2016 'Much has been written and said about how Sheldon, the son of poor immigrants, rose to the pinnacle of business success on the strength of grit and genius, inspiration and integrity,' his wife Miriam wrote in a statement Tuesday. 'His was an all-American story of entrepreneurship. When Sheldon launched a new venture, the world looked on with anticipation.' 'Sheldon was the love of my life. He was my partner in romance, philanthropy, political activism and enterprise. He was my soulmate,' she added. 'To me - as to his children, grandchildren, and his legions of friends and admirers, employees and colleagues - he is utterly irreplaceable.' Blunt yet secretive, Adelson resembled an old-fashioned political boss and stood apart from most American Jews, who for decades have supported Democrats by wide margins. Adelson is a Republican megadonor who recently gave $75 million to a super PAC that attacked President-elect Joe Biden in the lead-up to last November's election 'Much has been written and said about how Sheldon, the son of poor immigrants, rose to the pinnacle of business success on the strength of grit and genius, inspiration and integrity,' his wife Miriam, pictured with him above, wrote in a statement Tuesday The chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation brought singing gondoliers to the Las Vegas Strip. Adelson is pictured above in July 1999 In what was widely seen as a mark of the Adelsons' influence with Trump, Miriam Adelson was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018. For the 2018 midterm elections, Adelson donated about $113 million to the Republican Party through various conservative political action committees. In 2012, Politico called him 'the dominant pioneer of the super PAC era'. Adelson regularly hosted the party's top strategists and most ambitious candidates at his modest office, wedged among the casinos on the Strip. Throughout, he helped ensure that uncritical support of Israel became a pillar of the GOP platform, never more visibly demonstrated than when the Trump administration relocated the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. The inflammatory move had been adamantly opposed by Palestinians and was long a priority for Adelson, who had even offered to help pay for it, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, of which he was the primary benefactor. Adelson and Miriam were front and center at the ceremony in Jerusalem. Adelson also recently made news for offering his private jet to Jonathan Pollard, who spent 30 years in U.S. prison for spying for Israel. Pollard used Adelson's lavish private Boeing 737 to return to Israel last month, after finishing his sentence for selling classified U.S. secrets to the nation in the 1980s. Adelson and his wife Miram, 75, (together in 2019) set new records for political donations in the 2020 cycle, giving a total of $218 million to Republican causes Adelson and wife Miriam pictured with Vice President Mike Pence Adelson pictured center with Sophia Loren at the opening of the Venetian in May 1999 With Adelson's death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses a key U.S. backer who for the last four years had the ear of the American president and worked tirelessly to push Israels priorities at the White House and in Congress. He also bids farewell to an important backroom player in Israeli politics who funded an influential free daily newspaper that served as an unofficial mouthpiece for Netanyahu. 'Sheldon's great actions to strengthen Israels position in the U.S. and to strengthen ties between Israel and the diaspora will be remembered for generations,' Netanyahu said in a statement, adding he had received news of Adelson's death with 'deep sorrow and heartbreak.' 'We will forever remember Sheldon and his great contribution to Israel and the Jewish people.' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was also among those paying tribute to Adelson on Tuesday. 'Our nation lost a remarkable American with the passing of my friend Sheldon Adelson,' McConnell said in a statement. 'Sheldon built an incredible life and career. He climbed from sleeping on tenement floors during the Great Depression as a young boy to literally towering over Las Vegas and beyond.' House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy called Adelson 'one of the greatest, most generous businessmen in history'. 'Sheldon Adelson had a deep love of country, love of community, and love of Israel,' McCarthy added. 'His life made him a fearless advocate for freedom and entrepreneurship and a source of counsel and support to a generation of conservatives, including me.' 'Sheldon was a true American patriot and a giant among men,' Trump Jr. wrote in a tweet. 'He treated his employees like family. His philanthropic generosity changed countless lives. The US-Israel relationship is stronger today because of him. My heart goes out to the Adelson family.' Sheldon Adelson stands before some of the Italian artwork that was recreated to adorn the Venetian Resort hotel-casino in Las Vegas in March 1999 Sheldon Garry Adelson was born in 1933, in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. His father was a taxi driver, his mother the manager of a knitting store. A natural entrepreneur, he was selling newspapers by age 12 and running a vending machine business at 16. After dropping out of City College of New York and serving in the Army, he attempted to start dozens of businesses, from toiletries to de-icing windshields. Adelson, who said he disdained email, began to amass his fortune with a technology trade show, starting computer convention COMDEX in 1979 with partners before selling his stake in 1995 for more than $800 million. When he bought the Sands Hotel in 1989, he was thinking convention space, not just gambling, would make money. It did. He built a convention hall to keep his hotel rooms full on weekdays and others soon followed the business model. Meanwhile, his effort to replicate the Strip in Macau, the only Chinese province to allow gambling, made his wealth grow exponentially. When faced with water and marsh land, Adelson directed his company to build land where there wasn't any, piling sand up to create the Cotai Peninsula. Soon his Macau revenue outstripped that of his Las Vegas holdings. He later expanded his business to Singapore, where his Marina Bay Sands hotel and its infinity pool were featured in the hit film 'Crazy Rich Asians', and had been pressing to open a casino in Japan. His Macau business also spawned a long-running wrongful termination lawsuit brought by a former chief of Sands China Ltd. who accused Adelson and the company of firing him for exposing a host of misdeeds. Adelson often clashed with attorneys while appearing on a Clark County courtrooms witness stand. The Sands China lawsuit was among dozens involving Adelson, whose cases included his suing a Wall Street Journal reporter for calling him 'foul-mouthed' (the parties settled, the words remained) to being sued by his sons from his first marriage for cheating them out of money (he won). A long-running feud with fellow casino tycoon Steve Wynn turned to friendship when Wynn joined Adelson's effort to end online gambling. Critics said Adelson was trying to stifle competition. Adelson countered that there was no way to ensure children and teenagers wouldnt gamble and said he was 'not in favor of it exploiting the worlds most vulnerable people.' Adelson speaking about the construction of The Venetian in January 1999 Adelson's company owns the Venetian and Palazzo hotel and casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, along with properties in Singapore and Macao (above) When asked at a gambling conference what he hoped his legacy would be, Adelson said it wasn't his glitzy casinos or hotels, it was his impact in Israel. He donated $25 million, a record sum for a private citizen, to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. He established a think tank in Jerusalem. He was closely aligned with the conservative Likud party and funded a widely-read free daily newspaper called 'Israel Hayom,' or 'Israel Today,' so supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that some Israelis nicknamed it 'Bibi-ton.' In the U.S., Adelson helped underwrite congressional trips to Israel, helped build a new headquarters for the lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and later was a top supporter of the Israeli-American Council, whose conferences have attracted top Republicans (Vice President Mike Pence) and Democrats (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi). He sponsored 'Birthright' trips to Israel for young Jewish adults that were criticized by some participants as intolerant of opposing views. His attachment to Israel was life-long and so deep that he once said he wished his military service had been in an Israeli uniform instead of an American one. Acting CEO of Las Vegas Sands' Rob Goldstein is expected to retain his new position on a permanent basis following the death of the company's chairman Sheldon Adelson. Goldstein, 64, was named to the position on Friday as it was announced that Adelson was taking a medical leave of absence for treatment. Rob Goldstein, pictured above left with Sheldon Adelson, took over as Acting CEO of Las Vegas Sands last Friday after it was announced Adelson was receiving cancer treatment. Adelson passed away on Monday night aged 87 after his lengthy battle with cancer Last year saw Las Vegas Sands make massive losses due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns Over the past six months, the company has slowly started to grow back after taking a massive hit during the coronavirus pandemic as it focused on the gambling market in Asia Shares in Las Vegas Sands took a fall after the announcement of Adelson's death Yet analysts believe the company is poised for further success under gambling veteran Goldstein. 'Adelson built a strong and loyal culture with the appointment and ascension of Rob Goldstein, Wilfred Wong, Patrick Dumont amongst others,' Macquarie Research analyst Chad Beynon said of Goldstein's takeover 'We believe the executive structure has long been in place and is well positioned for transition. 'The new leadership of the company could open the door for future M&A given Adelson's preference of developing assets, not acquiring.' 'While it's sad to see his passing the company is in good hands with Rob Goldstein,' added Charles Norton, a portfolio manager at Dallas-based Penn Davis McFarland, who owns approximately 200,000 shares of Las Vegas Sands Corp. The gambling industry has been one of the hardest hit during the global pandemic, with Adelson already having made the decision to look into the sale of Sands' two flagship hotel-casinos in Las Vegas. It was revealed in October 2020 that Sands, the world's largest casino company, was looking for potential buyers for the Venetian Resort Las Vegas and the Palazzo, as well as Sands Expo Convention Center, which are all based along the city's famous Strip As of June 30, Sands had $13.82 billion total outstanding debt, excluding finance leases, and reported a third-quarter loss of $565 million. Then Sands President and COO Goldstein had said at the time: 'I've never felt more gloomy than I do today about what's happening in Las Vegas. We're in a world of hurt here in terms of Las Vegas.' Adelson was the majority shareholder in the company currently valued at $37.5billion and the sale of the company's casinos is Vegas would have marked his departure from the U.S. gambling market and left the mogul focused on Asia. It is not immediately clear who will take over Adelson's shares in the company. According to Seeking Alpha, the controlling equity of Las Vegas Sands will evolve into the family foundation. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office said that a former employee of Petrofac has admitted additional charges under the UK Bribery rule. The charges relate to three contract awards in the UAE in 2013 and 2014. Petrofac confirmed that no charges have been brought against any Group company or any other officers or employees. A small number of former Petrofac employees are alleged to have acted together with the individual concerned, although none have been charged. No current Board member of Petrofac is alleged to have been involved, Petrofac said in a statement. Separately SFO said Thursday that David Lufkin, a British national and the former Global Head of Sales at Petrofac, has pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court to three counts of bribery. The offenses relate to corrupt offers and payments made between 2012 and 2018 to influence the award of contracts to Petrofac in the United Arab Emirates worth approximately $3.3 billion. Specifically, Lufkin has pleaded guilty to his role in offering and making corrupt payments to agents to influence the award of an engineering, procurement and construction contract to Petrofac in 2013 on the Upper Zakum UZ750 Field Development Project, and a front-end engineering design contract awarded to Petrofac in 2014 on the Bab Integrated Facilities Project, each located in Abu Dhabi. Total payments of approximately $30 million were made, or were due to be made, by Petrofac to those agents in connection with these contracts. The charges are in addition to eleven charges of bribery already brought by the SFO, to which Lufkin pleaded guilty in February 2019. Those charges related to corrupt offers to influence the award of contracts to Petrofac in Iraq worth in excess of $730 million and in Saudi Arabia worth in excess of $3.5 billion. Lufkin's case has been committed for sentence to Southwark Crown Court on 11 February 2021. The SFO said that its investigation into the activities of Petrofac, its officers, employees and agents for suspected bribery, corruption and money laundering continues. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX PETROFAC-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de By Philip Giraldi January 15, 2021 " Information Clearing House " - The U.S. may morph into two nations with the increasingly impoverished helot deplorables under the heel of the empowered social justice warriors. In a recent article Catholic University professor Claes G. Ryn wrote Few people are really open to persuasion in any casenot just on political subjects but on any subject about which they care and on which they have adopted certain views. Diehard partisans for a certain outlook will refuse to have their beliefs questioned, and so will many others. They will be no less dismissive of a document challenging their opinions if it is full of footnotes and appendixes. Such a document will, indeed, make them resist it even more. As for the relatively few people who are truly open-minded, they will not find another persons observations dispositive. They will, as they should, want to consider the evidence on a contested matter for themselves. The observation immediately calls to mind the red-blue political division that has hardened in the United States over the past several years, with the two sides persistently talking past each other. Part of the problem is that once someone has staked out an essentially ideological position, he or she will regard new developments in such a way as to fit with that preconception. Once one is locked into a viewpoint in that fashion it becomes practically speaking impossible to consider the evidence on a contested manner for oneself. That tendency to want to believe that something is indisputably true means that most people find it difficult to entertain two somewhat contradictory ideas at the same time. In the current context it should be possible to believe that Donald Trump has been a very bad president based on some aspects of his performance while also conceding that many of his failings have been spawned by the unrelenting criticism he has received from the media as well as the clandestine efforts within the government establishment to undermine and destroy him. Most who emphasize the conspiracy against the president also feel compelled to defend his record. Those who dont believe there was a conspiracy against him, including Russiagate, support his being impeached and also condemn his achievements. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter Or there is the election itself, with one side believing it was stolen and the other maintaining that there was no fraud. In reality, an objective review of the actual evidence and examination of the registration and voting systems that are in place suggests that there certainly was fraud, though the issue of whether it amounted to a change in the outcome is likely a question that will never be answered as the Democrats are now in charge. Voting by mail, much promoted by the Democrats, either was a way of expanding the voters rolls or a mechanism that would permit widespread fraud. It is not unreasonable to regard it as doing both. COVID-19 is another good example of linear thinking. Critics of the pandemic tend to go all the way, minimizing the impact of the disease while also contending that it is a hoax contrived by the government to take away the rights of citizens. Against that, one should be able to recognize that the disease is both highly contagious and deadly for certain demographics while also accepting that the government has mishandled the response to it and is seeking to aggrandize its power over ordinary citizens. So both viewpoints can more-or-less be true. So, we come to the incident at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on January 6th. Various unofficial estimates put the number of Stop the Steal protesters objecting to what was seen as a fraudulent election at between 20,000 and 200,000. The language being used to describe what occurred that afternoon is suggestive and would likely delight George Orwell. The liberal media (nearly all of it) as well as some Democratic congressmen have officially declared it incitement of insurrection. Other expressions that are popping up include domestic terrorism, sedition, right wing mobs, a coup or a storming of the building, all reportedly driven by incendiary language used by President Trump. Others preferred describing a breaching of security or even a riot or possibly treason. A local newspaper in Virginia wrote a headline saying that the Capitol building was ransacked while Politico sounded the alarm about the mob who breached the Capitol. The New York Times thundered that the mob included infamous white supremacists and conspiracy theorists. What is not in dispute is that five died during the incursion into the building, including a woman Air Force veteran who was unnecessarily shot and a Capitol Police Force officer who was murdered by being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. That the death toll was not higher is inevitably being attributed by some to restraint by the police due to white privilege as most of the demonstrators were Caucasian. Trump allies reject the language and all it implies, insisting that the president did not ever unambiguously encourage actual violence on the part of participants in the March to Save America and that most of the demonstration was peaceful, consisting of ordinary Americans who are shocked by the dying spasms of the country that they grew up in. A Newsweek poll determined that nearly half of Republican voters supported the demonstrations at the Capitol, while no less than 68% opined that they were no threat to the American political system, demonstrating just how divided the country is. There have also been claims that infiltrators from Antifa and BLM might have exploited the opportunity to initiate the successful assault by the demonstrators that broke the police line and forced the entry into the Capitol building. Some Democrats are also suggesting that the entry was itself aided by some of the police, a not completely unreasonable suggestion given the inexplicably poor performance by the Capitol Police Force and some photographic evidence showing demonstrators being assisted by security personnel. One might have noted that the only thing missing from the event had been the allegations that it included interference by the Russians or possibly even the Chinese, but it now appears that some Democrats are actually pointing their fingers at Vladimir Putin. And surely the Iranians and even the North Koreans must have had something to do with it. We will have to wait until the Biden Administration is installed, if it is, to find out which foreigners exactly will have to be implicated and punished. One eagerly awaits the inevitable Washington Post cartoon showing Putin in his office laughing while watching on TV events in Washington. One thing that is for sure and that is being ignored by many of those who have taken up contrary positions is that there will be consequences from what took place last week. Given the polarization in the discussion itself, truth will be the first entity sacrificed as the Republicans will make haste to walk away from Trump while the Democrats will not be eager to permit anyone to dig any deeper into the mechanics of the election. No matter what the GOP chooses to do, it will be the long-term loser even if Trump himself is successfully made the designated fall guy and it will have to learn how to retain the support of the Trumpsters without Donald Trump. In spite of all the media and talking head fulminations, it nevertheless remains unlikely that Trump will actually be impeached and convicted by both houses of Congress or removed under Article 25 as that would permit his lawyers to mount a defense, which would embarrass everyone. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has nevertheless raised tension by contacting the Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and inquiring whether the president can be denied the nuclear weapons codes as he appears to be unhinged. There is also speculation that an attack on Iran in coordination with Israel might be under consideration to change the narrative. Perhaps more interestingly, some Democrats are calling for investigation and punishment for some fellow politicians, government employees and ordinary citizens who might be found guilty of supporting the Trump coup. Several identified demonstrators have already lost their jobs while the Washington Post has demanded that seditious Republicans must be held accountable. There is even some discussion of setting up a truth commission to investigate and punish those individuals who aided in Trumps other alleged crimes. Such people might have their liberty to travel on commercial flights, to associate in groups and/or to hold certain jobs restricted, expanding on existing anti-terror legislation that would now include a focus on rightwing terrorism while also increasing the number of hate crimes. Surveillance of individuals who have committed no crimes would likely increase dramatically. Any or all of those moves by Biden would, however, set a very bad precedent, sure to beget more violence. And also there are calls for greater restrictions on what appears on social media. One ex-Obama adviser has even claimed that social media caused the Capitol building riot by enabling the spread of the lies, hate speech, and conspiracy theories [by rightwing extremists] that led to the attack. Since the Democrats now command a majority in both houses of Congress as well as the White House that will mean that those labeled white supremacists and their message will be expunged while politically correct social justice content will be promoted. Several social media platforms have begun banning what they call right wing material and Biden as well as several senators have, in fact, already promised to bring in stronger domestic terrorism prevention legislation based on the Patriot Act. And even those who believe themselves safe as holding reliably progressive views will eventually discover that any deviance from Establishment acceptable positions will be forbidden. Free speech in America will become as dead at the Dodo and the United States would become effectively two nations with the increasingly impoverished helot deplorables under the heel of the empowered social justice warriors. It wont be pretty, and it wont be stable. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 18:14:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian anti-drug police arrested two Laotian men in Northeastern Stung Treng province for allegedly trafficking 41 kg of illicit drug, the National Police reported on Friday. The two suspects were arrested on Thursday along the Cambodia-Laos borderline in Stung Treng province's Borey Osvay Senchey district while they were smuggling the drug into Cambodia. "After their arrests, the police had seized 41 packs containing 41 kg of crystal methamphetamine," the National Police said on its website. Cambodia has no death sentence for drug traffickers. Under its law, someone found guilty of trafficking more than 80 grams of drugs could be jailed for life. According to the Anti-Drug Police Department, the Southeast Asian nation nabbed 20,913 drug-related suspects and confiscated 3.25 tons of illicit drugs last year. Enditem US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan 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. As the saying goes, you have to learn to walk before you can runand interior design is no exception. Though few designers projects are magazine-worthy from day one, there is little imagery online that suggests otherwise. Designers on Instagram and Pinterest have risen to a new standard of project photography, dominated by high-resolution effortlessness (leaving the years of mistakes that led up to such a room hidden). For Nashville, Tennesseebased interior designer Lori Paranjape, social media wasnt telling the whole story, and after looking back at her old project photos, she decided to do something about it. Lori Paranjape Courtesy of Mrs. Paranjape As she scrolled through images from early in her career, she was struck by a startling juxtaposition: her memories of feeling such pride about the details in the photos, paired with a feeling more akin to embarrassment reflecting on those same images today. There was a little bit of a cringe in me, she tells Business of Home. But the fact is, thats where my business started. Seeing these old projects was a bit of a wake-up call for Paranjapeit helped her realize just how much shed progressed as a designer. Armed with that sense of appreciation, she decided to share the photos. On December 2, she took to Instagram Stories (which she uses for more candid, personal content, saving her grid for more professional posts) and posted photos of her old work alongside some lighthearted commentary. There was more than a little vulnerability at play as she addressed her 88,000 followers, revealing work that didnt exactly measure up to her present-day standardsand her followers loved it. It was incredible how people were responding, she says. New designers were writing me these really emotional responses, saying, You have no idea what it means for me to see a successful designer share her beginnings. So Paranjape turned her Stories into something of a campaign, using the hashtag #showmewhereyoustarted as a call to action for designers to share their earliest projects. The initiative garnered attention from designers at various stages of their careers, with lessons for onlookers of all stripes. For younger designers, it sent a reassuring message that all designers begin somewhere, and that early work is rarely a knockout. And for more seasoned designers, it served as a timely reminder to recognize how far theyve come and take a moment to savor it. Paranjape heard from dozens of designers via DMs, many of whom shared their own photos on personal accounts. BOH reached out to three of those designers to hear what went through their heads when looking back on old work. An early project by Lori Paranjape Courtesy of Mrs. Paranjape A recent dining room designed by Paranjape Courtesy of Mrs. Paranjape Left: An early project by Lori Paranjape Courtesy of Mrs. Paranjape | Right: A recent dining room designed by Paranjape Courtesy of Mrs. Paranjape Brian Patrick Flynn HGTV star Brian Patrick Flynn has achieved the success that many designers dream of: high-budget projects, television appearances, a large Instagram following, the works. He joined Paranjapes campaign, he explained, because he loves seeing the creative evolution of designers. Some of my first projects were hideous, but at the time I just worked with what I had available, he says. Its humbling to see where I started, and a great way to remind [myself] that I am constantly learning and can still improve upon the work Im doing today. Flynn also hoped that by sharing his old projects, he could bring a little transparency to others in the industry. Social media can be terrifying to designers, because it causes us to compare our workthe reality is, there is no need to compete, he says. There is room for all of us, and I think letting our peers know that we, too, are still figuring it all out and refining our process is comforting. Jennifer Harrup Houstonbased interior designer Jennifer Harrup approached #showmewhereyoustarted with a healthy sense of humoras a self-described new designer, seeing that not all of her role models were magazine-ready out of the gate offered a sense of reassurance. I thought it was hilarious to see where these incredible designers that I seriously respect came from, she says. Its comforting to know that no one starts off producing amazing spaces. Harrup decided to share her college bedroom, a space that she invested a lot of effort into 12 years agothe same effort that she brings to her spaces now. The result is just wildly different! Haneen Matt Blogger and interior designer Haneen Matt reached out to Paranjape because she appreciated the reminder that as all artists grow, tastes change with experienceand that old work should be viewed as a testament to that, rather than forgotten or viewed as an embarrassing mistake. Its easy to wince at old projects knowing I would do it entirely differently now, but thats the beauty of growth, isnt it? she says. After seeing Paranjapes campaign debut on social media, Matt shared some of her own old work, and found that doing so strengthened her sense of community within the industry. The design community sharing reflection and growth shows continuous support and camaraderie. Seeing [the] mistakes or the past choices of designers you admire really drives home the point that we all start somewhere and grow from there, she says. You cant compare your beginning to someone elses middle, or your middle to someone elses end. Homepage image: A bedroom recently designed by Lori Paranjape | Mary Craven, courtesy of Mrs. Paranjape ALBERT LEA, Minnesota - It's a celebration over three years in the making. The new MercyOne North Iowa clinic inside Northbridge Mall is a result of a multi-year effort launched when Mayo Clinic announced in 2017 that it would be moving in-patient medical services to their Austin campus. On Thursday morning, groundbreaking for the new clinic was officially held inside the former Herbergers space, with 14,000 sq. ft. of the 64,000 sq. ft. space being designated for phase 1 of the primary care clinic. The Albert Lea Healthcare Coalition, an evolution of what started out originally as Save Our Hospital and then Save Our Healthcare, purchased the space last year, and will be leased to MercyOne. ALHC President Brad Arends noted during the ceremony that when the announcement was initially made, citizens made their voices loud and clear that they wanted to keep essential care services available in their community, and were willing to contribute around $5 million altogether during the fundraising process. He adds that it's the people's continued work and patience that have made this clinic possible. "This is a testament to the perserverance, the dedication, and the will of the citizens of Albert Lea. It's them who deserve the credit today, and their fortitude and their attitude that, not only do we want these important services in Albert Lea, but we need them. We need them to be a vibrant community. For a community the size of Albert Lea, it is an expectation to have these kinds of services." Though the ceremony was limited to MercyOne representatives, coalition trustees and architects, community members packed the parking lot in front of the future clinic, listening through their radios and honking their horns in lieu of applause to celebrate this milestone. "It really is a testament of what can be done with a cause and a lot of supporters that are passionate. And that's what happened here." MercyOne North Iowa agreed to partner with the coalition to run the clinic in September 2019. President Rod Schlader says it's the organization's first foray into Minnesota. "It's been a huge amount of work and collaboration with these partners. We've gone through a few rough edges trying to negotiate this, but in the end, we had the same mission and vision to provide healthcare here in Albert Lea. I think our organizations fit together beautifully to get that done." The first phase for the clinic, which will also include a mobile imaging center set up outside, is aimed to be completed by July 1 of this year. Future phases will include additional exam rooms, an in-house imaging center, an outpatient surgery center and other services, depending on patient needs. Lenovo Tab P11 Released 2021, February 10 490g, 7.5mm thickness Android 10 64GB/128GB storage, microSDXC 1.4% 73,182 hits 34 Become a fan 11.0" 1200x2000 pixels 13 MP 1080p 4/6 GB RAM Snapdragon 662 7700 mAh Li-Po Disclaimer. We can not guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct. Read more Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Germany on Friday passed two million coronavirus cases as a World Health Organization emergency committee readied to issue advice on stemming the spread of new, more contagious strains of the disease. The surge in Europe's biggest economy comes as the global death toll from the pandemic approaches two million and many countries double down on virus restrictions, with vaccination drives still in their infancy. Portugal entered a fresh lockdown Friday while Britain began requiring negative tests for entry, and fresh curbs on populations were announced from Brazil to Lebanon. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday pushed for a "significant" tightening of curbs to slow the infection rate as the European Union's most populous country added more than 22,000 new cases. The chancellor said she wanted to bring forward crisis talks with regional leaders to the coming week, participants at a meeting of her centre-right CDU party told AFP. They quoted her as saying the virus could only be stopped with "significant additional measures" and that people urgently needed to reduce social contact. At the Meissen crematorium in the state of Saxony, coffins were stacked up to three high, or even stored in hallways, awaiting cremation. The eastern region has been one of Germany's worst-hit areas in recent weeks. Manager Joerg Schaldach, 57, said anyone still denying the severity of the pandemic should come and take a look at the bodies piling up. "This is heavy work, so why don't the COVID-19 deniers come and do it," he said. "We have a disastrous situation here." 'Worrying' Germany has fared better than many of its European neighbours in the pandemic, with France, Italy, Spain and Britain all recording more infections despite smaller populations. Britain on Thursday said it would ban all arrivals from South American countries from Friday, over fears of importing a new coronavirus strain. "I've taken the urgent decision... following evidence of a new variant in Brazil," Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Twitter. The new strain, known as E484K, has raised alarm among researchers over its possible impact on immunity. Partly over fears of new variants, France said it would impose a daily nationwide curfew at 6 pm starting Saturday and remaining in force for at least two weeks. Most of France had already been under an 8 pm curfew, with some areas, especially in the hard-hit east, already under the stricter 6 pm limit. Brazil's northern Amazonas state also announced a curfew from 7 pm to 6 am as the health system is pushed to breaking point in the state capital Manaus. Global health experts were expected on Friday to issue recommendations to stem the spread of this variant and other new strains, which the WHO called "worrying". The WHO's emergency committee normally gathers every three months but its meeting was brought forward by two weeks. "When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease we now call COVID-19 had been reported to the WHO," director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks to the emergency meeting Thursday. Stimulus plan Scientists say large-scale vaccination is the only way out of the crisis but 95 percent of the doses so far administered have been limited to just 10 countries, the WHO's European branch said. Progress on administering vaccines has often been slow. India's mammoth immunisation programme will only begin on Saturday. In the United States around 10 million people have received a first shot. American policymakers were on Thursday focused on addressing the economic damage from the pandemic, with President-elect Joe Biden unveiling a proposal for a $1.9 trillion relief package aimed at revitalising the world's largest economy. Biden aims to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, help struggling state and local governments, safely reopen schools, boost the vaccination campaign and raise the size of stimulus cheques Congress approved last month. "In this moment of crisis... we cannot afford inaction," Biden said. Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak 2021 AFP One of the Antigen Rapid Test kits donated through the Taiwan Embassy here. The Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on behalf of the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan), handed over 14,700pcs Taiwan developed COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Tests to the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment here. The tests were donated by Taiwanese manufacturer TaiDoc Technology Corp. and Fora Care Foundation, and were handed over on January 14. The donation is expected to strengthen the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines capacity to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic The donation is the concrete practice of the public-private collaboration, which upholds the spirit of "Taiwan Can Help to combat the CONVID-19 pandemic in particular, and to fulfill the World Health Organizations goal of "Health for All. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) has assisted the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in its effort to prevent and control COVID-19, by providing medical supplies such as masks, ventilators, PCR machines, isolation gowns and forehead thermometers, and sharing its experience in the fight against COVID-19. Taiwan has also reached out to diplomatic allies and like-minded countries in their efforts to combat the pandemic, through its successful "Taiwan Model, and to promote the health and well-being of the international community. (Source: Taiwan Embassy, SVG) New Delhi: President Ramnath Kovind met with a delegation of the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerath Kshetra Trust on Friday who had come to seek the President's contribution for the construction to the Ram Temple. In a stunning gesture, Kovind gave a cheque of Rs 5 lakh and 100 from his personal account in the name of Ram Janmabhoomi Teerath Kshetra Trust. The delegation comprised VHPs international working president Alok Kumar, Govind Dev Giri treasure of the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerath Kshetra Trust and former bureaucrat Nripendra Misra, who heads the temple construction committee. The trust has been mandated to collect funds for the temples construction. The fund collection campaign will be carried out across 52,50,00 villages and the money collected will be deposited in banks within 48 hours. Funds above Rs 20,000 will be collected through cheques. Earlier, the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Shetra Trust had announced that the Ram temple in Ayodhya will be constructed using only domestic funds collected from the general public through a mass contact programme. Champat Rai, the general secretary of the trust, underlinend that the trust will start the mass contact and contribution campaign across the country for the construction of the temple. He said that the trust did not have the required approval for accepting donations from abroad. The 'Shri Ram Mandir Nidhi Samarpan' drive will run from January 15 to February 27, he had said. Live TV Michelle Beckley has spent ten months avoiding a virus she cant afford to get. The small business owner and Democratic state representative follows health guidelines, is tested daily for the coronavirus, and even sat out the first day of the new legislative session this week as someone with underlying health issues. She returned Wednesday for in-person voting, under the impression that her colleagues were required to take some of the same precautions. But on Thursday night, Beckley learned that her seatmate in the lower chamber, Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, had tested positive after not being screened for days. It was one of several probable infections among politicians and staff that Beckley is already aware of as the new session gets underway. I am angry and frustrated, she said Friday morning, while back home in Carrollton under quarantine. It could have been avoided and it shouldnt have happened. RELATED: Public comment will be in-person at Texas Legislature, despite COVID The exposure, announced Friday morning, is an early test for the Republican-led House, which has been determined to carry out as open and unrestricted a session as possible even as the pandemic rages in Austin and across most of the state. Testing is optional for lawmakers, masks arent required at all times, and members desks are spaced well within the six feet of separation that is recommended by health officials. Deshotel, 69, said he tested positive after taking a free rapid test on his way out of the Capitol Thursday, after last testing negative Monday. He said he wore a mask most of the time while he was on the House floor this week, sometimes removing it to speak at a microphone. A photo from the Texas Tribune on Thursday shows him seated at his desk with his mask pulled down below his nose and mouth, as several masked lawmakers talked and worked nearby. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Deshotel received the first of two doses of the Moderna vaccine last month and appeared to be under the false impression it gave him immunity; it takes a few weeks for antibodies to begin building after the first dose. He also said he was unaware that daily testing is recommended for lawmakers. Ive never heard of anybody getting tested every day, he said, adding that he did not know that the Senate had added that as part of its rules. I dont mind doing it. Its unclear how many lawmakers were potentially exposed, and House leadership is not conducting any contact tracing. In a memo sent late Friday morning, newly-elected Speaker Dade Phelan told members that the chamber was following federal recommendations, which call for anyone exposed to quarantine for seven to 10 days. It said testing is left to the discretion of each House member. None of the members had proposed mandating testing on Thursday, when the rules were discussed. A spokesman for Phelan said the speaker has talked with Deshotel and hopes for a speedy recovery. The House isnt expected to reconvene again until Jan. 26. Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, announced on Twitter that she had also been in close contact with Deshotel and would be quarantining. Grateful that I chose to wear a N95 on the floor, and grateful that Rep. Deshotel chose to inform colleagues quickly and set a tone of transparency for this session, she wrote. Zwiener had been wearing a cloth mask on top of the more protective N95 face covering while on the House floor. Beckley said her office has been receiving 40 rapid tests per week, which they self-administer. They have also been taking temperature checks each morning and the office is closed to in-person visits. She said staffers in other offices have reportedly tested positive, but there is no central database tracking infections or outbreaks. Our rules are not adequate, she said. Responding to the announcement Friday, Rep. Justin Holland, R-Rockwall, called those who arent testing themselves regularly selfish. The 15-min free state-provided Rapid Binax Test for Antigens is painless and simple, he tweeted, before it was widely known that Deshotel was the person who had tested positive. Anyone that objected to take one prior to Tuesday clearly did so out of pride. Shame on them. Beckley was one of two House Democrats who sat out the opening ceremony on Tuesday because of the exposure risk. She returned on Wednesday and Thursday because the House was deciding rules for the session, which required an in-person vote. I had to be there on the floor to vote, she said, adding that she takes her responsibility to her constituents seriously. But I have to be healthy to do it. Editors note: This story has been updated to reflect that Rep. Deshotel, who initially said he had last tested negative for the virus on Friday, later said he misspoke, and that it was Monday. jeremy.blackman@chron.com taylor.goldenstein@chron.com Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-15 08:56:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. - - - - SANTIAGO -- COVID-19 cases in Chile increased by 36 percent in the last week, amid a resurgence of infections in the middle of the summer season, Health Minister Enrique Paris said Thursday. In its daily report, the Chilean Ministry of Health reported 4,177 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the accumulated total to 656,712. - - - - NEW YORK -- Total COVID-19 hospitalizations reached 8,823 on Wednesday in New York State, down from 8,929 on Tuesday, tweeted Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday. Of the 212,589 COVID-19 tests reported on Wednesday in the state, 13,661 were positive, or 6.42 percent of the total, down from 7.4 percent one day earlier, said Cuomo, adding that the fatalities went up to 202 on Wednesday, compared with 165 on Tuesday. - - - - RABAT -- Morocco's COVID-19 tally rose to 456,334 on Thursday as 1,279 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours. The Moroccan Ministry of Health said that the death toll from the coronavirus in the kingdom climbed to 7,854 as 44 more COVID-19 patients died in the last 24 hours. - - - - JERUSALEM -- Israel's health ministry reported 10,933 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the total number in the country to 528,204. The death toll from COVID-19 in Israel reached 3,860 with 57 new fatalities, while the number of patients in serious condition increased from 1,094 to 1,117, out of 1,802 hospitalized patients. - - - - ADDIS ABABA -- The Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Thursday disclosed that five African countries represent about 69 percent of confirmed COVID-19 positive cases across the African continent amid uneven impact of the pandemic on the continent. The five highly-COVID-19 affected African countries include, South Africa 1,278,303 accounting 41 percent, Morocco 455,055 accounting 14 percent, Tunisia 168,568 accounting 5 percent, Egypt 152,719 accounting 5 percent, as well as Ethiopia 129,455 accounting 4 percent. - - - - HONG KONG -- A spokesman for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government said on Thursday that COVID-19 vaccines used in Hong Kong must satisfy the relevant requirements and procedures, and obtain emergency use approval in accordance with the Prevention and Control of Disease (Use of Vaccines) Regulation, with a view to ensuring the safety, efficacy and quality of the vaccines. The HKSAR government made the statement after noticing the various views voiced by different people on the effectiveness and administration of COVID-19 vaccines. Enditem Featured stories 83 Ohio counties on red alert for coronavirus spread; Hamilton at higher purple alert concern; Lorain placed on watch for going purple (cleveland.com) Heres where older Northeast Ohioans can get vaccinated in Phase 1B of coronavirus vaccine (cleveland.com) Former Cleveland schools therapist arrested on federal charges involving attack at U.S. Capitol (cleveland.com) Gov. Mike DeWine sends more Ohio National Guard to D.C., vows significant presence in Columbus for protests (cleveland.com) Cleveland City Hall, other government buildings to close leading up to Bidens inauguration (cleveland.com) Coronavirus in Ohio Ohio now exceeds 800,000 coronavirus cases; 22,875 new vaccine doses given: Thursday update (cleveland.com) Ohios coronavirus vaccine plan puts the burden on older residents: How does it compare to other state plans? (cleveland.com) Pharmacists wrapping Ohio nursing home vaccinations, state ready to begin vaccinations for people age 80 and older (cleveland.com) Ohio reports increase of 2,679 K-12 student coronavirus cases, 1,312 staff, on week of Jan. 4 (cleveland.com) Coping through COVID: People in recovery rely on fellowship, but the pandemic forced them to isolate (cleveland.com) Crime Woman shot to death while chasing man who stole her phone at Cleveland store, police say (cleveland.com) Tremont bar owner gets year in prison for bribing police officer to stay open after-hours (cleveland.com) Cleveland / Cuyahoga County The Cuyahoga County Board of Health on Thursday announced plans for Phase 1B vaccination efforts. Heres what you need to know for 1B vaccinations in Cuyahoga County (cleveland.com) Heres how Cleveland Clinic patients aged 80 and older can schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment (cleveland.com) Heres how to register with University Hospitals for Phase 1B of the coronavirus vaccine (cleveland.com) Cuyahoga County stay-at-home advisory extended to Jan. 31 (cleveland.com) Sewage samples in Cuyahoga County suggest coronavirus on the decline after December spikes (cleveland.com) Cleveland confirms 4 deaths, 162 new cases of coronavirus: Thursday update (cleveland.com) Cuyahoga County awards grants to 168 restaurants (cleveland.com) Cleveland Landmarks Commission OKs plan to turn former Catholic school in Tremont into low-income senior housing (cleveland.com) Cleveland Museum of Art to reopen with normal hours starting Monday, MLK Day (cleveland.com) Local news East Orange council seeks input from residents on proposed extension of trails (cleveland.com) State Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost seeks to block decoupling charge for FirstEnergy in House Bill 6, questions ex-regulators role in shaping law (cleveland.com) Rep. Bob Gibbs and other Ohio Republican Congress members object to metal detectors to access House floor (cleveland.com) Advocates call for Ohio lawmakers to allow public to testify virtually on bills during coronavirus pandemic (cleveland.com) Liz Walters elected chair of Ohio Democratic Party (cleveland.com) Many Canadians I talk to are horrified by the prospect of voter suppression such as that which played out in the Georgia Senate runoffs in the U.S. The fact deliberate attempts would be made to keep people from voting, by limiting or distancing polling stations, or that roadblocks to registration rather than assistance would be offered to eligible voters, is seen as dishonest and undemocratic. Opinion Many Canadians I talk to are horrified by the prospect of voter suppression such as that which played out in the Georgia Senate runoffs in the U.S. The fact deliberate attempts would be made to keep people from voting, by limiting or distancing polling stations, or that roadblocks to registration rather than assistance would be offered to eligible voters, is seen as dishonest and undemocratic. But before we are too quick to judge, we might acknowledge that we also experience some rather unsophisticated, but conscious and pervasive, efforts at citizen suppression. The Manitoba government, particularly in health care and education, is becoming very adept at thwarting legitimate and necessary citizen participation. In fact, like the Republicans in the U.S., our government does not even bother to cover its tracks or hide its intentions. It was hard to watch our premier barely hiding his glee as he proclaimed falsely, again that our education system was failing and that the system was too top-heavy, and that he could hardly wait to see the "modernizations" he was about to introduce in education. The pattern has been set in health care, and the script is being followed in education. Citizen suppression takes many forms, all of which are used to some degree in our current political situation. Among other things, they include manufactured crises, downplaying real issues, secrecy and discouraging reasonable and rightful participation. While this government knows there is no current crisis in education, it continues to peddle the myth that Manitoba students are somehow shortchanged, based on international test results. The facts are that more than 85 per cent of the students actually do very well on the tests, and the remainders performance can be attributed to other reasons, such as child poverty, which have little to do with schooling but which are summarily dismissed or avoided. In health care, when governments cut positions and salaries at the top, if there are any savings, they do not necessarily find their way to the hospitals. Similarly, education cuts are unlikely to find their ways to classrooms. In both cases, health and education, consolidations simply mean people have to travel further to access the same services. Both of these concerns are no doubt a cover for the real agenda, which appears to be, plain and simple, cutting government expenditures in two essential services in spite of public will. Poll after poll shows that is more a reflection of a premiers not-so-secret private agenda than a public priority. Deceit and secrecy also extend to the legislation currently slated for government consideration. Bill 64, ostensibly part of educations modernization, is just the latest example in which a bill passes first reading without its details being made public. It seems obvious that if legislation and policy indeed, all public decisions affecting the public good are too sensitive to pass rigorous public scrutiny, they have no business being enacted. But secrecy is also achieved through other means. Perhaps the most offensive means, and also the most destructive of public trust and participation, is to undertake reviews that are sham consultations with foregone conclusions, and to shut out the very people who know most about the enterprise and will have to live with the consequences. The very questions in the "education review" signalled the governments biases and its pronouncements anticipated the likely conclusions, reinforced by the hiring of an external consultant who shares those public predispositions. And, as in health care, the people most affected in this case, educators are portrayed as problems with self interests rather than knowledgeable and caring public servants and partners who should be part of any problem-solving. They, and their leaders, have reason to rightfully fear that there are targets on their backs. The consequence is a deafening silence from trustees, superintendents and teachers and their organizations in the face of attacks on their integrity and their livelihood. This is not what a healthy functioning democracy looks like. Democracies at their liveliest are messy and noisy sometimes chaotic with a reasonable dose of moral disagreement on how best to serve the interests of individuals and society. What makes them special is their agreement on the overall goals the best interests of everyone, and the fact that everyone is encouraged, if they wish, to express how that is best to be accomplished. It does not mean shutting down dissent and getting your way unchallenged. Deliberately and consciously leaving anyone or any group out, legally or illegally, is citizen suppression, plain and simple, and an attack on democracy. John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba. A lifelong educator, he has served as a teacher, counsellor, work education co-ordinator, principal, school superintendent and university professor. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Federal authorities brought criminal charges against a Cleveland recreation worker Friday that stem from an FBI investigation linked to Councilman Kenneth Johnson. Prosecutors filed the charge of conspiracy to commit theft from a federal program against Robert Fitzpatrick in a bill of information in U.S. District Court. Fitzpatrick, a 35-year employee of the city, is expected to appear for an arraignment in the coming weeks. He is the first to face charges in an ongoing FBI investigation of Johnson, the longtime representative of Ward 4, the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood. The FBI has been investigating Johnson regarding his office and reimbursements for several months. This week, WKYC reported on subpoenas that federal authorities had filed with the city regarding Johnson. The charge filed Friday does not identify any member of Cleveland City Council, but it does refer to Fitzpatricks longtime friendship with a member of the panel. Prosecutors referred to that person as Official 1. Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reported Fitzpatricks relationship with Johnson in 2018. The reports said Johnson submitted monthly reimbursement forms to Councils office each month for several years. He sought the maximum amount, $1,200, each time and attached information that Fitzpatrick performed services for the ward. The charge against Fitzpatrick mirrors those reports. It said that from January 2013 to March 2019, Official 1 attached Fitzpatricks false timesheets to each of the false expense forms the Council member submitted to City Council for reimbursement. Fitzpatrick signed timesheets, attesting that he had performed ward services, when, as he well knew, he had not actually completed any ward services, the charge said. The filing said that Fitzpatrick worked as the regional manager in the citys recreation department. He oversaw operations at seven recreation centers in the city. Prosecutors said in the document that the Council member and the members executive assistant approached Fitzpatrick more than 10 years ago and asked whether he would be willing to help in the members ward. The work entailed cutting grass, checking on abandoned properties, helping with snow removal and looking for homes that could be renovated and sold for a profit. Fitzpatrick did the work for about six weeks, but he never received payment for it. But three years later, he began signing his name to a timesheet later submitted for reimbursement, prosecutors said in the filing. The document said the Council member also attached receipts that showed that he had paid Fitzpatrick in cash. The charge said the official obtained the reimbursement checks from City Council and deposited them in his bank account. The filing said the object of the conspiracy was to enrich Official 1 and others, but it is unclear whether Fitzpatrick received any money from the scheme. Fitzpatricks attorney, Carlos Johnson, said the case is just getting started and declined to comment further. Repeated attempts to reach Kenneth Johnson were unsuccessful. Officials with the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys office also would not discuss the matter. A spokeswoman for the city said it had no comment. Johnson was first elected to Cleveland City Council in 1980. In recent years, he has been the focus of intense scrutiny. The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com reported that the FBIs public corruption office in Cleveland had been investigating Johnson and the Buckeye-Shaker Square Development Corp., which Johnson helped with tax dollars. Reporter Robert Higgs contributed to this report. A member of the Philadelphia District Attorneys investigative team is on restricted duty after a social media post shared white-supremacist conspiracies and advocated violence, according to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inquirer identified the investigator as Vincent Rotondi, who went by the name Vinny Ro on Facebook. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner did not identify the investigator to the outlet. A photo of a social media post by the account shared by the Inquirer showed that the writer was ready to go to war because theres no negotiating when its believed the election was rigged. The post went on to say that the VP Kamala Harris dropped out of the presidential race early without much support and will probably be president within the first year. The post finished by saying only war will change this outcome, either by civil and revolutionary war. The post said the writer is just waiting now. Krasner told the outlet his office takes any post from a law enforcement officer that appears to advocate violent crime and sharing the same talking points used by white supremacists very seriously. A representative of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5 that represents the investigators in the DAs office did not comment to the Inquirer on Thursday. This restriction came as dozens of officers across the country are being investigated for their part in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Others in public service, such as a retired firefighter and school therapist, are facing federal charges in connection with the riot. Read more on PennLive: If youve ever wondered why America needs the Electoral College, the state-by-state process for electing a president, look no further than the angry mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Without it, contested elections, massive political protests, and civil unrest would likely occur with much greater frequency. The framers of our Constitution distrusted government power, but they also worried about mob rule. To protect us from these twin evils, our founders deliberately created a decentralized system for choosing our chief executive. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that the president is to be chosen by electors selected by each individual state. The U.S., therefore, does not conduct a single nationwide election or operate a unified election system. Rather, the 50 states and the District of Columbia each conduct their own popular vote for president. Based on these results, the 51 jurisdictions appoints electors who cast direct votes for president in a process that we call the Electoral College. By constitutional design, electors cast their ballots for president and vice president in their respective state capitals, away from the undue influence of outside interests. This decentralized process ensures that concerted political pressure (or mob violence) directed at a single institution wont alter the outcome. The federalist principles embedded in our Constitution not only prevent any one entity from overruling a presidential election, they also make it difficult to rig the outcome in the first place. Thats because election tampering and voter fraud can only affect the overall outcome if it occurs in key states, which can be hard to predict ahead of time. Does that mean that voter fraud isnt a problem? Of course not. Voters are right to be concerned about election integrity. But whatever one thinks about claims of a stolen election, last weeks protesters and rioters were barking up the wrong tree. Our founders clearly intended for the states to address these sort of election issues. Those who expressed concern about President Trumps refusal to concede the election to Joe Biden should be particularly concerned about attempts to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote. With the Electoral College, recounts are limited to cases where the vote tally in a particular state could change the Electoral College outcome (such as Florida in 2000). As a result, refusal to concede is highly unusual. With a national popular vote, it would become the norm. Thats because in the United States, the nationwide vote count is often close in relative terms. Electoral College outcomes, however, are almost always decisive. Consider, for example, the 1960 presidential contest between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. It remains unclear whether Kennedy or Nixon won more votes nationwide. (Its fair to say it was, essentially, a tie.) But in the Electoral College, Kennedy won decisively -- 303 to 219. Despite the close nationwide vote count and widespread allegations of voter fraud, particularly in Chicago, Nixon conceded. It is unlikely he would have done so under a national popular vote system, which would have given Nixon an incentive to litigate the count in any jurisdiction where he stood a change of picking up votes. How such a scenario would have played out is anyones guess. But, by encouraging finality, the Electoral College in 1960 very likely averted a true constitutional crisis. So, what would American elections look like without the Electoral College? Theyd look a lot like 2020 -- but possibly much worse. To begin with, there would be increased incentives for voter fraud, as fraud anywhere could tip an election. There would also be more litigation, as the loser of any close race would likely challenge the outcome in precincts all across the country, not just in one or two states. And, with increased fraud and increased litigation, demonstrations and protests aimed at the federal authority in charge of any new national election apparatus would, sadly, become routine. Think Latin American-style politics. Our founders understood that in a pure democracy, might often conquers right, and politics can quickly devolve into mob violence. No election system is perfect. But, as the events of last week make clear, getting rid of the Electoral College would be a dangerous gambit. Pauline Hanson's website has been redirected to the Australian Refugee Council homepage after the domain name was bought by a mysterious prankster. Paulinehanson.com.au has been leading internet users to the not-for-profit group's homepage since Thursday night. The link used to direct users to Ms Hanson's homepage, which gave an overview of the One Nation leader's policies. The licence to the domain name was up for renewal after it expired on Thursday. Before the moderator of the website could re-purchase the domain name, a mystery buyer swooped in and bought it. Pauline Hanson's website has been redirected to the Australian Refugee Council homepage after the domain name was bought by a mysterious prankster Although the domain name is registered to the Refugee Council of Australia, the new buyer of the domain can register it under a third party Although the domain name is registered to the Refugee Council of Australia, the new buyer of the domain can register it under a third party. Daily Mail Australia contacted Refugee Council of Australia for comment. Social media users have been quick to heap praise on the prankster. 'Pauline Hanson's domain name expired, was nabbed and redirected to a more appropriate website,' one person wrote. Another person commented: 'Best morning news Ive seen in a while'. Ms Hanson has courted controversy over her hardline stance against immigration. Ms Hanson claimed the country was being 'swamped by Asians' during her maiden speech in 1996. Then she said Australia 'was in danger of being swamped by Muslims' in her second maiden speech in 2016. Ms Hanson has courted controversy over her hardline stance against immigration The One Nation leader was dumped as a regular guest on the Today Show following her comments about Melbourne's public housing tenants in July 2020. Nine high-rise blocks in Flemington, Kensington and North Melbourne were placed into lockdown as the city struggled to contain the second outbreak of Covid-19. Ms Hanson said of the tenants: 'A lot of these people are from non-English speaking backgrounds, probably English is their second language'. MANCHESTER A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a Manchester man to five years in prison in connection with fentanyl distribution, according to prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New Haven sentenced 31-year-old Mike Mega Cruz, also known as Mike Flores, to 60 months in prison, followed by four years of supervised release. The judge also ordered Cruz to pay a $10,000 fine. In January 2020, police learned that Cruz was distributing large quantities of narcotics from his Manchester apartment, federal prosecutors said. On Feb. 18, 2020, investigators bought about 50 grams of fentanyl from Cruz, prosecutors said. He was arrested on a federal criminal complaint in Manchester on Feb. 27, 2020. When he was arrested, authorities said he was in possession of 100 grams of compressed fentanyl. When investigators searched his vehicle, they also found about 2,000-dose bags of fentanyl and other substances. In his home, officials said they found $29,408 in cash. Authorities said Cruz distributed or possessed with intent to distribute about 245 grams of fentanyl in about one month. Cruz has been detained since his arrest. He pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl on Sept. 23, 2020. The judge ordered Cruz to forfeit the cash seized during the search of his home. 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. Press Release January 15, 2021 Transcript of interview of Senate President Vicente C. Sotto III with Ms. Pinky Webb of The Source, CNN Philippines On the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments convening into a constitutional assembly. SP Sotto: I was informed that a House official, or their chairman of the Constitutional Amendments committee declared themselves already as a constituent assembly and of course, we in the Senate will definitely say that is not possible. For you to be able to conduct yourself or declare yourself as a constituent assembly, it is the Congress that has to do that and we are not in session, we are on recess. They will resume today, perhaps they can do that today, but definitely not in a committee and not during a recess, that is the point. Q: I understand. Sabi ninyo nga, kailangan tama muna ang rules, kung hindi, parang tabingi. Yun ata yung tinweet, and of course, that particular statement of yours that you are on recess, kung meron man, even Majority Leader Migz Zubiri was saying even if anything can happen during recess it's only a committee hearing. SP Sotto: Correct, it is a committee hearing and perhaps that is the recommendation of their committee, a declaration to that effect. Definitely, it is not official. Q: I spoke to Cong. Garbin yesterday, I wanted you to listen to what he said kaya lang we have a little bit of a problem playing that statement he said. But let me read a portion of that. Kasi tinanong ko po siya, how is this a con-ass, yung nangyari Committee on Constitutional Amendments on Wednesday, ang sagot po niya ganito "well, when we speak of constituent assembly, we really need to understand the definition of a constituent assembly. It is a body authorized by the Constitution to propose amendments or revisions and the body that is authorized by the Constitution in Congress." Next, he said "the last time I know na ang aking committee ba na kung saan ako chairman, part ng Kongreso kaya nga meron kaming delegated power from the plenary, the authority to exercise and exhaust all means that a constitutional reform shall be advanced, as necessary." Is that clear to you? SP Sotto: Yes, it is clear to me. It is clear that he is overstepping his power. That is not possible. His exact words, that they are part of Congress, correct. When you say Congress, it is the entire both Houses of Congress and the work of a committee, whatever it is, whatever you approve, must be approved by the entire Congress, I mean the House of Representatives themselves, or the House of the Senate then in becomes a committee report or a Congress approval. Therefor, a committee cannot declare itself as a constituent assembly. That is not possible. Q: Idagdag ko lang, because hinanap ko din po yung sinabi ni Cong. Garbin. He said "siguro, kailangan lang aralin yung Section 17 of the 1987 Constitution," I think he is referring to Article 17 of the Constitution. "If you have a copy of the Constitution, pustahan tayo wala diyang nagsasabi na magconvene muna as constituent assembly." And I did read Article 17 of the Constitution. It is true though, that wala po talagang nahahanap doon na constituent assembly. Ang nakasulat lang talaga, it is very simple, it says "Article 17: Any amendment to or revision of this Constitution may be proposed by 1) the Congress upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members or 2) a constitutional convention. Do you submit na wala talagang nakasulat na doon sa Article 17 na constituent assembly. SP Sotto: Of course, it is not written because it is implied. Common sense, it is implied. You cannot be a constituent assembly when you are a committee. Common sense. Your committee must take it up in plenary and the Congress, the House of Representatives, will declare itself as part of a constituent assembly. Again, part, because the other half is the House of the Senate. Q: Ganito po. Ang pinag basehan po kasi nitong cha-cha sa House, was Resolution of both Houses No. 2 by then Cong. Lord Alan Velasco kasi 2019 niya ito ipinasa and then of course, ngayon Speaker na siya. In that Resolution of both Houses No. 2, nakasulat nga po doon na the two chambers, voting separately, so that alone, speaks of a con-ass hindi po ba? And if that is the basis of the House hearing on cha-cha, then it becomes quite clear that it is implied that it is a constituent assembly. SP Sotto: Yes, but parliamentary procedures dictate that they take it up in plenary. That it is the House of Representatives who will say that they have approved the resolution. They are talking of the resolution that they did not even approve on the floor. They are talking of a resolution that was filed, it is a simple resolution filed, therefor it is the committee only that is approving the resolution. We are on recess, how can the House of Representatives approve that resolution, they are on recess? Parliamentary procedures and rules dictate that a resolution is not approved until it is approved on the floor in plenary. Q: What happens if the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments, what if they insist that what they are doing, or they are already being part of a constituent assembly, what can the Senate do about that? SP Sotto: We won't do anything about it. It is up to them, if they want to insist that their committee has declared itself as a constituent assembly already, if somebody takes it up with the Supreme Court, I am very confident that the Supreme Court will throw it into the trashcan of history. Q: Kayo po ba ang nagsabi na bakit parang nagmamadali? SP Sotto: Correct. Why not wait today? Bakit hindi ninyo gawin today, hindi ba? Bring it to the floor today and then approve it on the floor today, then you have declared yourself as a constituent assembly, not in a committee. Q: And just to understand the process again, if they take it up on the floor and they are able to pass this in plenary, the second hurdle will have to be still the Senate. There is already a resolution also in the Senate passed by Senators Tolentino and Bato Dela Rosa and there, it is also asking the House to convene as a constituent assembly to propose amendments or revisions to the Constitution, hindi po ba? SP Sotto: Yes. I referred it to the Committee on Constitutional Amendments. It is there in the committee right now. Q: I also interviewed Sen. Kiko Pangilinan and sabi po niya, ang kanyang suggestion is magkaroon ng all-senators caucus on this. Is this something you agree with? Mag usap-usap po muna kayo on charter change and everything that covers charter change, or palagay ninyo pwede nang diretso sa constitutional amendments pagusapan ito? SP Sotto: Before I do that, I would want to correct myself, I said wait today. I had at the back of my mind because we are having a hearing at 10 o'clock that we are starting sessions today. Why don't they wait on Monday, I should say? Monday, January 18, when we resume, then they can declare themselves ito a constituent assembly in plenary, not in a committee. I stand corrected. At the back of my mind, I thought we were convening today because of the... or resuming today, I thought it was Monday. It is the hearing of the Committee of the Whole in the Senate. Alright, going to your question, yes, there was a suggestion of Sen. Pangilinan that I call an all-senators caucus. I made some calls even about two weeks ago when the resolution was brought up... more than two weeks ago. It was late last year when the President gave us the idea or suggested the idea of calling for a constituent assembly in order to address the concerns that he mentioned. I took it upon myself to talk to the other members of the majority. I did not discuss it with the minority itself, but I did discuss it with Sen. Drilon, As a matter of fact, Sen. Drilon knew, as the minority leader, knew that I was talking to my colleagues and we were discussing it. We talked about the procedures, we talked about the possibilities of if ever we do so, we need three-fourths vote to approve any amendment to that effect and of course we will definitely insist on voting separately, we will insist that nothing is taken up outside of the economic provisions, but that was it. It was just plain talk; we did not arrive on anything concrete. And so, if there is a call or request for me to call for an all-senators caucus on the matter, we will. Perhaps I will, after the House acts on it. If they do approve it in plenary and they declared themselves into a constituent assembly properly, then we will discuss the matter as a whole, sa Senate. Q: I think the operative word there was when you said properly. Yun po bang cha-cha, dalawa po ang nakikita natin so far: economic provisions and improving or strengthening the partylist law and I know you are filing or have filed a resolution on this. Just quickly on economic provisions, personally, are you in favor of easing economic restrictions? SP Sotto: Marami yun eh. Marami yung economic provisions and restrictions na dapat i-tackle and right now there is a bill pending in the Senate which is called the trade liberalization bill. Kung ganoon, medyo magiging mabusisi pa rin and so I agree with the suggestion of former Speaker Sonny Belmonte that a simple line being added into the Constitution on specifically the economic provisions would do it: "as may be provided by law." Let's go back, the partylist system was only enabled by an enabling law. In the Constitution it is merely mentioned and says that there must be an enabling law. There are about, if I am not mistaken, more than four or five points in the Constitution that are mentioned as depending on an enabling law or it should be enacted through an enabling law. May mga ganoon and forgive me if I think that nung araw kasi, when they were doing the Constitution they were quite in a hurry, and so instead of debating on all those points, they just placed it there. Therefor, yung sa partylist system needed an enabling law. It was the Committee on Electoral Reforms during our time in the 10th or 11th Congress, I cannot recall right now the exact Congress, but it was Sen. Raul Roco who sponsored it and I was his vice-chairman, and we were confining it to the marginalized sector, Republic Act 7941. We enabled it, therefor, if we tinker with it in the Constitution, what do we do? We will remove that, when what we can do right now is to amend the enabling law. I told that to the President. I immediately answered him with that when he was mentioning the issue on the partylist system, that we take it up also with the constituent assembly. I suggested, I said that "Mayor, why don't we just look into the enabling law and amend the enabling law?" And he said that he was worried, baka dalhin lang sa Supreme Court yan, madedelay, matatagalan, something to that effect. We did not finish the issue. Hindi kami, kung baga sa salita sa Tagalog, hindi kami nagtapos sa usapin na yun. Anyway, going to the economic provisions as you were asking, as may be provided by law, Congress may be able to tackle one by one the different issues and not just a general opening of the economic provisions. So right now, that is my suggestion, I leave it to the other members of Congress, of both Houses, to accept it or not. Let's see. It is up for debate right now. Q: Are you saying that we need charter change to be able to ease the economic restrictions and fix the partylist system or sinasabi ninyo, hindi na kailangan yan, kailangan lang natin gumawa ng legislation para ilagay yung "otherwise provided by law," doon sa economic provisions, and then again, an ordinary legislation to strengthen the partylist system? SP Sotto: Offhand, I have yet to be convinced that we need a charter change. When you say kasi charter change, you have to change the Constitution. You are changing the Constitution, not just charter amendments. So, right now, I am not convinced that we need a charter change or cha-cha. Perhaps we need 'cha-cha,' character change, that is what the country needs, CHA-CHA din yun but different pronunciation. Anyway, charter amendments would probably be acceptable particularly on economic provisions but then again, as I said, lumawak masyado, ibang usapan, but yung sinasabi ko na "as may be provided by law," when we take it up like a regular bill or law, mas madaling pagusapan. There is no room for apprehensions on term limits or extension of terms, or other issues that might not be acceptable to the people. Limitado lang talaga at saka malinis, maliwanag na yun, we will definitely be voting separately because they pass the bill on their side, we pass it on our side, then we ask the President to approve it and then nit turns into a plebiscite. Because any change to the Constitution or any amendment to the Constitution must undergo a plebiscite and therefor if we want to do this, a simple one-liner amendment we can include it in the 2022 elections without cost to the people or to the government. Q: I am still a little confused about that. So, if you add that one line, "unless otherwise provided by law," ano po ba yun, is that ordinary legislation or do you have to convene as a constitutional assembly to add that line? SP Sotto: It takes the form of an ordinary legislation, but it could be amending the Constitution itself. The (unclear) has done that so many times, they have never changed the Constitution, but they have amended their... anyway... Q: I know you will also file legislation to strengthen the partylist groups, when is this going to be filed, or has this been filed? SP Sotto: I am on the verge of finishing the draft. We are soon filing it. By next week, I will be filing it. I will try my best to go back to the original intention when Sen. Roco sponsored the bill enabling the partylist system, we will go back there. Marginalized. Sino ba ang marginalized, di ba? Yun bang tunay na marginalized at hindi na sumobra ang lawak, which is ang original intention was the urban poor, the farmers, labor, women, youth, and indigenous people, yun yung original eh. Unless otherwise gusto nilang magdagdag, pero that is the real marginalized sector of our society that the original intention of the Constitution was for. Q: Would you say it has been abused? SP Sotto: Oh yes, definitely it was misinterpreted by both COMELEC and an interpretation decision by the Supreme Court. On the Senate Committee of the Whole. Q: There is a question on how much Sinovac is, are you going to press officials today to disclose how much this is? Because it was saying it was one of the most expensive, and then Sec. Roque was saying it was not the most expensive, it was actually among the middle of the six vaccines that could be made available here in the country. SP Sotto: Kaya nga, if it is not the most expensive, how much is it? Why don't you tell us, hindi ba? Because it is the people, let me be very blunt about this, it is the people who are worried. It is not us, it is not the Senate, so yung mga namimintas na bakit daw kami naghe-hearing, ang publiko ang humihingi nito eh. They want to be clarified; they want to know more. Some are afraid, di ba? So, the lingering questions that will be taken up in a few minutes would center on the issue of is this really cheaper, the first vaccine we will receive is really cheaper? We want to hear from the, this time we are not hearing from government lang, we are hearing from the private sector. We are hearing from Zuellig, we are hearing from Pfizer, we are hearing from Unilab, and then the Philippine Medical Association, the LGUs, we will be centering on them today. We want to hear more from them, and then we let Sec. Galvez and Sec. Duque react to what they will hear from these resource persons, so we can finalize more or less and give the assurance to the people that what government is going to do is safe secure, di ba? Yun ang mahalaga. Q: But will you compel them to disclose the amount of Sinovac and will you tell the public the cost of this? SP Sotto: Yes, it is found on the internet, I don't know why they cannot tell us publicly, but if they refuse and they say it is confidential, then we can go into an executive session as suggested by the Majority Leader, Sen. Zubiri. We go into an executive session and ask them to tell us what these confidential matters are. Q: Do you think a price would be confidential in nature? Should it be confidential? I remember Sen. Zubiri saying this is public funds. SP Sotto: I don't think so, it should not be confidential. Bakit confidential? And now that there are other vaccines that are available, let's make it all available, let's make them all available. Also, by the way, if I may take this opportunity, later on, I will be asking the Philippine Medical Association bakit, masyado ba tayo talagang umaasa sa vaccine? Bakit hindi medication? There are two or three countries that I have heard na hindi na sila takot kahit may vaccine or wala, kasi they found the medicine to cure. Para kang may sipon, may ubo, may lagnat, pero may gamot para doon. Hindi ka natatakot magkaroon ng sipon or ubo, di ba? Baka naman pwedeng tanungin natin ang PMA tungkol diyan. How are we into also finding a medical cure, not just a vaccine because the vaccine will last how long, sabi nila six months? One year? Thereafter, ano, magpapa inoculate tayo ulit, hindi ba? So perhaps we can dwell into these matters, also during the hearing later. Abraham Associates, an independent publishers' rep group headquartered in Minneapolis, announced yesterday that Stu Abraham has transferred ownership of the group to his business partner, John Mesjak. The change in ownership became official on January 4. Mesjak, who was named PWs Sales Rep of the Year in 2018, has been associated with the company since 2007. He and Abraham became partners almost 10 years ago and their intention was that Mesjak eventually would become head of the group after Abraham eased into retirement. Abraham launched the business in 1992. Besides Abraham and Mesjak, the group includes Emily Johnson, Sandra Law, and Ted Seykora. The group sells to accounts in 13 Midwestern states and its clients include Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, Diamond Book Distributors, Chronicle Books, Candlewick Press, Moleskine, Ideal Bookshelf, and Peter Pauper Press. In a 2018 PW profile of Mesjak, Abraham lauded him as his Zen master, my can-do partner. Abraham added, Hes not only my partnerhes a partner to booksellers, other reps, and publishers. Hes more than a good rep: hes a big picture guy. Mesjak told PW that he and Abraham picked up the pace of their transition plan due to the pandemic, explaining, "We initiated the first steps back in 2011 it was initially designed to be a 10-year process of me taking on more responsibility and Stu gradually stepping back, and finding the right balance for his workload. We got to the point this past spring/summer where we knew we were coming to the end of that 10-year arrangement; the worries about Covid really put an exclamation mark on our timeline. We wanted to have it all squared away and legally recognized with a plan for all of us. Our goal has always been to make sure that the stability of our rep group, our responsibilities for our client publishers, and our relationships with our booksellers around the Midwest continue into the future. Although Abraham has ceded ownership, Mesjak stated that he will continue to work for the group for the next five years, handling select accounts in Minnesota and other projects. The groups overall territory and account coverage will remain the same as before. 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. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 05:28:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close QUITO, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Ecuador is experiencing a new spike in the COVID-19 infections, along with increased demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds, Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos said on Friday. In a virtual press conference, Zevallos blamed the rise in COVID-19 cases on family gatherings and festivities over the Christmas and New Year holidays. However, he said, Ecuador was not undergoing a second wave of outbreaks, as is occurring in Europe. "I think there have been no waves, waves are what's happening in Europe, unfortunately, something that rises uncontrollably and saturates hospital capacities. We have not had that," Zevallos said. In the capital Quito, the number of cases registered in December and so far in January "is much lower than what we had in June and July," when cases peaked, he noted. The country has also detected four cases of the new variant of the virus first identified in the United Kingdom, but authorities say its spread is being contained. The Health Ministry on Friday reported 864 new daily infections and 21 more deaths from COVID-19, for a total caseload of 226,866 and a death toll of 9,669 since the first case was detected on Feb. 29. Enditem STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Staten Island recorded four overdose fatalities in the first two weeks of 2021, representing a slight decrease from the same period last year, according to preliminary data from the Staten Island District Attorneys office shared Thursday. The borough also recorded 12 overdoses an increase of one compared to the same period last year, the DAs office said. Though the fatalities decreased, Michael McMahon said the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has made the addiction and mental health crisis vastly worse. I fear there have been significantly more overdoses than what the numbers even currently show. We must continue to sound the alarm and dedicate more resources to combating the drug crisis, expanding treatment options, and saving lives, McMahon said. McMahon said his HOPE team, which includes peer advocates, social workers and attorneys, is always available for help. The HOPE team can be reached at 917-334-8019, or by emailing Floyd.Miller@rcda.nyc.gov. I and my entire team are here to help at any time, and additional treatment resources can be found by visiting SIHOPE.org, McMahon said. JACKSON, MI A grocery store in downtown Jackson thats been in the works for six years could be opening soon, and Napoleon police solved a mystery surrounding an ice fishing hole and some gear left by it. Here are some headlines you might have missed this week. Peach Market hopes to address Jacksons food desert downtown, owner says Its taken nearly six years of research, grant proposals and renovations, but Andrew Kokas hopes to finally open an urban grocery store in downtown Jackson this year, addressing a food desert at the center of the city. Peach Market, a 7,000-square-foot grocery with fresh produce, a coffee and liquor bar, deli, prepared foods and more intends to open at the end of spring 2021, said Kokas, who owns and is developing the former Evanoffs Food and Cocktails building with his wife, Yizhuo Olivia Liang. Police solve mystery of abandoned ice fishing gear: I was just thankful he was alive The mystery of who left ice fishing gear by a hole in a Napoleon Township lake has been solved. Two 14-year-old boys went ice fishing Thursday, Jan. 7, at a spot their dad told them not to go, when they then fell through the ice into Mellencamp Lake, Napoleon Township Police Chief Duaine Pittman said. They were able to safely get out of the lake. Mans careless smoking, burns down home, official says An intoxicated man caught his Blackman Township home on fire early Wednesday morning, officials said. Firefighters responded to the fire at a condominium in the 1400 block of Longfellow Avenue at 12:17 a.m., Jan. 13 and found smoke and flames coming out of the building, Blackman-Leoni Director of Public Safety Mike Jester said. The homeowner was the only resident of the condo and started the fire through careless smoking, Jester said. Fair trade gift shop leaves Jackson Crossing in favor of downtown location At this new marketplace in downtown Jackson, customers can buy Bulgarian knit hats, ethically sourced chocolates and Christmas ornaments made in Kenya. The intention of Marketplace Manna, isnt just to sell unique gifts -- its also to help families abroad. The nonprofit store first opened in November 2018 in Jackson Crossing. Its now moving downtown, President Al Mellinger said. Calhoun County deputy placed on administrative leave after arresting man collecting signatures A Calhoun County Sheriffs deputy was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of an arrest where a man was collecting signatures in a neighborhood. A Ring doorbell camera captured footage the incident, which occurred in Springfield on Jan. 2. In the video, a man identified as Laron Marshall was going door-to-door collecting signatures for his tenants association. Boy Scouts collect 200 discarded Christmas trees for goats, sheep Boy Scout Troop 424 collected hundreds of Christmas trees this year, even though things were different because of COVID-19 restrictions. The troop collected more than 220 Christmas trees in the city of Jackson and Summit Township on Saturday, Jan. 9. In the years before COVID-19, they could grab 1,000 trees, Committee Chairman Tom McKown said. Schools optimistic but urge patience for teachers getting COVID-19 vaccine in Jackson, Washtenaw counties School and health officials in Jackson and Washtenaw counties are optimistic about the availability of the COVID-19 vaccination for teachers and staff, but they urge those hoping the vaccine will immediately lead to more face-to-face learning to be patient. With teachers and students operating in a remote learning format since this past March, Ann Arbor Education Association President Fred Klein said the availability of a vaccine for teachers and staff is an important first step in returning to the classroom. In the meantime, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer strongly encouraged schools to offer an option for in-person instruction no later than March 1. Henry Ford Allegiance Health partners with Jackson County to expand community vaccination effort Henry Ford Allegiance Health and the Jackson County Health Department are working together to coordinate community vaccination efforts. As a result of the announcement by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to expand immunization efforts across the state starting Monday, Jan. 11, the two organizations said in a statement they are actively preparing to meet the expanded demand in the Jackson community. New Arbys brings third franchise to Jackson Roast beef sandwich lovers in Jackson now have another place to pick up a favorite meal. Arbys has opened its third franchised restaurant in the community. The restaurant at 2565 Airport Road had a soft opening for several days during the week of Christmas, General Manager John Ali said. Its first full week of operation came at the start of January. Vaccine clinic at Jackson nursing home immunizes 70 against COVID-19 The mood at Mission Point Health Campus in Jackson was so jubilant, you could forget there was a vaccination clinic going on. Oh my goodness, you would not believe that people were receiving shots, Executive Director Laurie McCullough said. They were so excited to actually receive an injection. It was so upbeat and so hopeful. More than 70 residents and staff members at the skilled nursing and assisted living facility on Robinson Road received the first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, Jan. 7. Jackson man arrested in Albion-area shooting, police say A Jackson man accused of shooting a man was arrested. The 25-year-old Jackson man was arrested Monday, Jan. 11, Michigan State Police said. He has not yet been arraigned and is lodged at the Jackson County Jail. He is accused of shooting a 30-year-old man, who a witness found laying alongside D Drive South near M-99 at 5:09 p.m., Jan. 5, in Albion Township. EUGENE, Ore.-- A local conservation group is suing the federal government after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed gray wolves from the endangered species list. Officials in the federal government justified the removal by citing large numbers of gray wolves living in the Great Lakes region of the country. Even though data shows more than 4,000 living in that part of the country, only 158 live in Oregon. Nick Cady, legal director at Cascadia Wildlands, said this should show the federal government, the gray wolf population is far from being recovered. "One of their main arguments and this is kind of one of the laughable ones, they argue wolves weren't even a species that could be protected under the act," Cady said. Gray wolves almost went extinct in the early 20th century after years of poaching and poisoning. Over the past two decades, the wolf population in North America has slowly recovered. However, Cady said they still have a long way to go. He said gray wolves are keystone predators that help balance an ecosystem. For example, he said there's evidence in Wyoming of gray wolves improving waterways. Wolves use the waterways to hunt, keeping much of their prey away from the shoreline. As a result, more vegetation can grow, creating more shade and cooling down the water. Cady said there is data showing fish populations are becoming healthier because of this. "These keystone species have a huge rippling effect on entire ecosystems," Cady said. "It's going to be important not just for conservation values, but important for commercial fishing industries and a lot of other businesses as well." Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife said under current rules, ranchers can only shoot a wolf if it is caught in the act of biting, wounding or killing livestock on their property. A few ranchers can shoot wolves for chasing livestock, but only if they are in the area of the Rogue Pack that has depredated livestock multiple times. For more information, click here. ODFW said only three wolves caught in the act of harming livestock have been killed. Wolves remain protected in Oregon under the state's Wolf Management Plan. Subscriber content preview SEATTLE (AP) Seattle received a setback in its effort to create a supervised heroin consumption site after a federal appeals court denied a similar effort in Philadelphia to create locations for heroin users to inject the drug with a nurse present. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 on Tuesday that a heroin consumption site in Pennsylvania could not open because it would violate federal drug laws, KOMO-TV reported. . . . The son of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has lost an appeal against his late father's conviction. The bombing of Pan Am flight 103, travelling from London to New York on December 21 1988, killed 270 people in Britain's largest terrorist atrocity. Former Libyan intelligence officer Megrahi was found guilty in 2001 of mass murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 27 years - the only person convicted of the attack. A third appeal against his conviction was heard in November at the High Court in Edinburgh, before a panel of five judges sitting as the Court of Appeal. Judges have now rejected both grounds of appeal, meaning his conviction stands. Former Libyian intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing which claimed 270 lives Lawyer Aamer Anwar, pictured today, said the family have instructed him to lodge an appeal against the ruling at the UK Supreme Court The Megrahi family statement in full 'On Friday 15th January at 9.30am, the family of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi were advised of the opinion of the Scottish Appeal Court in the miscarriage of justice appeal for the Lockerbie bombing, this was six long years after they began the fight for an appeal, eight years after al-Megrahi died of cancer and 32 years after the bombing which saw the murder of 270 innocent people. 'The Court of Criminal Appeal in Scotland has upheld the verdict of the trial court and rejected both grounds of appeal and therefore the appeal against conviction is refused. 'Ali Al-Megrahi, the son of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, said his family were left heart-broken by the decision of the Scottish courts, he maintained his father's innocence and is determined to fulfil the promise he made to clear his name and that of Libya. 'As of this morning, the Megrahi family have instructed our legal team to appeal to the UK Supreme Court, we will lodge an application within 14 days. 'The family demand the release of secret evidence held by the UK Government, which they believe incriminates others such as Iran and the Syrian-Palestinian group, the Foreign Secretary had refused to do so, this must happen for the truth to emerge. 'Significant material has been received by the legal team over the last several months, but especially since the announcement by Donald Trump's former attorney general William Barr on the 21st December 2020, where he stated that the USA wished to extradite a former Libyan intelligence officer, Abu Agila Mohammad Masud for the Lockerbie bombing, 32 years later. 'Masud's confession to being involved in the conspiracy with al-Megrahi to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 was supposedly 'extracted' by a 'Libyan law enforcement agent' in 2012, whilst in custody in a Libyan prison. No new information appeared to be presented by attorney general Barr. 'What was significant in the US criminal complaint against Masud was his claim that he bought the clothes to put into the Samsonite suitcase that is claimed went on to blow up Pan Am Flight 103. 'Of course, the problem for the US Department of Justice is that the case against Megrahi is still based on the eyewitness testimony of Toni Gauci stating that Megrahi bought the clothes. How can both men be held responsible? 'The al-Megrahi family believe that if the conviction against their father were to be overturned then the US case against Masud would be non-existent. 'Undoubtedly there will now be huge pressure on Libya and the GNA, the Government of National Accord based in Tripoli, to extradite Abu Agila Masud to the US, but of course the American authorities will be aware that if the Megrahis were to be successful at the Supreme Court, the 'so-called' case against Abu Masud would crumble. 'All the Megrahi family want for Scotland is peace and justice, but as Ali stated today their journey is not over, Libya has suffered enough, as has the family for the crime of Lockerbie, they remain determined to fight for justice. 'They are grateful to their legal team for their unwavering commitment and also to the British families for their compassion and search for justice. 'Ali said God willing, he will visit his father's grave one day to tell him that justice was done and that he fulfilled his promise to clear his name and that of Libya. 'In this appeal, the legal arguments related to two distinct challenges to the conviction. The first was that it was contended that no reasonable jury properly directed could have convicted Mr Megrahi on the evidence led, focusing in particular on the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci stating that Megrahi bought clothes from him that were ultimately planted into a suitcase containing the bomb planted on the plane. 'The second ground was that the failure to disclose information to the defence led to the trial being unfair and thus a miscarriage of justice, these related to the reliability of Mr Gauci's identification of Megrahi as the person who bought the clothes, as well as the content of CIA cables. 'In relation to the second ground of appeal, the failure to disclose information to the defence, the decision of the Appeal Court is the determination of a 'compatibility issue' - an issue arising from a question relating to the breach of human rights, in this case Article 6 - the right to a fair trial. 'Where the Appeal Court in Scotland determines a compatibility issue, it is competent to seek leave to appeal from the Appeal Court of the determination of that issue to the UK Supreme Court in London. 'If leave to appeal by the Scottish courts is refused, it is competent to seek leave to appeal directly to the Supreme Court in London.' Advertisement The family of Megrahi said they are 'heartbroken' at the decision, and plan to appeal against it at the UK Supreme Court. Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds while terminally ill with cancer, and died in Libya in 2012. The latest appeal against his conviction was lodged after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred the case to the High Court in March 2020, ruling a possible miscarriage of justice may have occurred. Judges then granted his son, Ali al-Megrahi, permission to proceed with the appeal in relation to the argument 'no reasonable jury' could have returned the verdict the court did, and on the grounds of non-disclosure of documents by the Crown. In a statement released through their lawyer Aamer Anwar after the ruling was published on Friday, the family said: 'Ali Al-Megrahi, the son of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, said his family were left heartbroken by the decision of the Scottish courts, he maintained his father's innocence and is determined to fulfil the promise he made to clear his name and that of Libya. 'All the Megrahi family want for Scotland is peace and justice, but as Ali stated today their journey is not over, Libya has suffered enough, as has the family for the crime of Lockerbie, they remain determined to fight for justice.' Megrahi's original trial was held at a special Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. During the appeal hearing in November, advocate depute Ronald Clancy QC, for the Crown, said trial court judges were fully entitled to infer Megrahi was involved in the Lockerbie bombing. He said Megrahi's use of a false passport to travel to Malta - from where the plane carrying the bomb left just before the atrocity - taken along with other evidence, combined to form a pattern that suggested his involvement. Claire Mitchell QC, representing the Megrahi family, said evidence in relation to identification was of 'poor quality' and the dock identification, when shopkeeper Tony Gauci said Megrahi resembled the man who bought the clothing later found in a suitcase containing the bomb, was 'virtually of no value'. Mr Clancy said that ignores the 'important point' that the dock identification was 'simply the last of a series of consistent resemblance identifications going back to February 1991'. Megrahi's first appeal against his conviction was refused by the High Court in 2002 and was referred back five years later after an SCCRC review. He abandoned this second appeal in 2009, shortly before his release from prison on compassionate grounds. Meanwhile, the US Justice Department charged a 'third conspirator' in connection with the bombing on the 32nd anniversary of the atrocity last month. The US alleges Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Marimi was the bombmaker and has charged him with terrorism-related crimes. A second suspect, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial with Megrahi but was acquitted. Scotland's Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC said the investigation into the atrocity continues and there remain suspects under active investigation. He said: 'The bombing of Pan Am 103 is, to this day, the deadliest terrorist attack on UK soil and the largest homicide case Scotland's prosecutors have ever encountered in terms of scale and of complexity. 'The evidence gathered by Scottish, US and international law enforcement agencies has again been tested in the Appeal Court, and the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi stands.' The written judgment rejecting the appeal, delivered by Scotland's most senior judge, Lord Carloway, the Lord Justice General, states 'the contention that the trial court reached a verdict that no reasonable court could have reached is rejected'. 'On the evidence at trial, a reasonable jury, properly directed, would have been entitled to return a guilty verdict,' it continues. 'The contention that the Crown failed to disclose material which would have created a real prospect of a different verdict is rejected.' The judgment concludes: 'Both grounds of appeal having been rejected, the appeal against conviction is refused.' Police Scotland Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said: 'The bombing of Pan Am 103 and the terrible loss of 270 lives has had a profound impact in Lockerbie, Scotland, and internationally. 'On behalf of the Police Service of Scotland, I pay tribute to the families of the victims who have demonstrated courage and dignity for over 30 years and my thoughts remain with them today. 'Since 1988 policing in Scotland has been committed to carrying out the largest terrorist and murder investigation ever undertaken in this country. 'Police Scotland will continue to work closely on this investigation with the Crown Office, our American law enforcement colleagues and other international partners.' The damaged aircraft cockpit of Pan Am 103 that exploded killing 270 people is pictured after the bombing n a statement released through their lawyer Aamer Anwar, pictured, after the ruling was published today, the family said: 'Ali Al-Megrahi, the son of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, said his family were left heartbroken by the decision of the Scottish courts, he maintained his father's innocence and is determined to fulfil the promise he made to clear his name and that of Libya' Three decades of doubt: 30 years later there are still unanswered questions over Lockerbie December 21, 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit, via London and New York, blows up over Lockerbie in Scotland. A total of 270 people died November 1991 Britain and the US accuse Libyans Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khailifa Fhimah of the bombing. However, Libyan authorities deny involvement January 1995 MPs demand an inquiry after US intelligence suggests Iran was behind the bombing, instead of Libya January 2001 Megrahi was convicted of mass murder while Fhimah is found not guilty August 2003 The UN lifts sanctions on Libya. Blame was accepted in Tripoli and the government compensates families of the victims August 2009 Megrahi is freed after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He did not die until 2012 May 2018 A review of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction for the bombing is to be carried out by the Scottish Criminal Cases Commission November 2018 The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission says there was no criminality in the Megrahi case Advertisement The judgment continues: 'The critical question for the trial court was not whether Mr Megrahi had been identified beyond reasonable doubt as the purchaser of the clothes. It was whether it had been proved beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Megrahi had participated in the deliberate delivery of the bomb onto the Frankfurt flight from Luqa, with the bomb's eventual destination being on flight PA 103 from Heathrow. 'Mr Gauci's identification of Mr Megrahi as resembling the purchaser was but one of several elements in that proof. In analysing the evidence, it is not appropriate to isolate that of Mr Gauci's identification from these other 32 elements. The evidence has to be looked at overall.' Scotland's Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf said: 'My thoughts continue to be with all those who lost loved ones on that terrible evening more than 30 years ago. The strength and compassion they have shown has created a legacy of friendship and ensured that the memory of those who died lives on. 'The Scottish Government has always been clear that as Mr al-Megrahi was convicted in a court of law, that is the only appropriate forum for determining his guilt or innocence. 'The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Mr al-Megrahi's conviction back to the Appeal Court, through established procedures, because it believed that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. 'Having heard the appeal on behalf of the late Mr al-Megrahi, the Appeal Court has determined that there was no miscarriage of justice and his conviction for his part in the Lockerbie bombing stands. 'The Scottish Government does not comment on nor intervene in any criminal case. The investigation into the Lockerbie bombing remains ongoing.' The legal team last year demanded access to secret Government papers - covered by a public interest immunity certificate - claiming it was 'in the interest of justice' that the defence got to see the two documents. An appeal against Megrahi's conviction was lodged after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred the case to the High Court in March, ruling a possible miscarriage of justice may have occurred. December 1988: Some of the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 after it crashed onto the town of Lockerbie in Scotland Prosecutor insists investigation into atrocity will continue The investigation into the Lockerbie bombing continues 32 years on from the atrocity, Scotland's top prosecutor has said. Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC and Police Scotland reiterated their commitment to the inquiry after the son of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi lost an appeal against his late father's conviction. Megrahi is the only person convicted of bombing Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988, killing 270 people. After the third appeal against his conviction was rejected, the Lord Advocate said: 'For 32 years, the families of the 270 people murdered on the night of 21 December 1988 have shown dignity in the face of the loss they have suffered. Our thoughts are with them again today. 'The bombing of Pan Am 103 is, to this day, the deadliest terrorist attack on UK soil and the largest homicide case Scotland's prosecutors have ever encountered in terms of scale and of complexity. 'The evidence gathered by Scottish, US and international law enforcement agencies has again been tested in the Appeal Court, and the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi stands. 'After Megrahi was convicted in 2001 my predecessor as Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, confirmed to the Scottish Parliament that the investigation into the involvement of others in this terrible crime would continue. 'I reiterate that commitment today. 'For almost 20 years since that date, Scottish police and prosecutors have continued the search for evidence. This work will continue, and there remain suspects under active investigation.' A second suspect, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial with Megrahi but was acquitted. The US Justice Department charged a 'third conspirator' in connection with the bombing on the 32nd anniversary of the atrocity last month. Police Scotland said it would continue to work with the Crown Office and international partners as investigations continue. Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said: 'The bombing of Pan Am 103 and the terrible loss of 270 lives has had a profound impact in Lockerbie, Scotland, and internationally. 'On behalf of the Police Service of Scotland, I pay tribute to the families of the victims who have demonstrated courage and dignity for over 30 years and my thoughts remain with them today. 'Since 1988, policing in Scotland has been committed to carrying out the largest terrorist and murder investigation ever undertaken in this country. 'Police Scotland will continue to work closely on this investigation with the Crown Office, our American law enforcement colleagues and other international partners.' Advertisement At a previous virtual hearing in August before the Lord President Lord Carloway, Lord Justice Clerk-Lady Dorian and Lord Menzies, Claire Mitchell QC, representing the Megrahi family, said the defence should have access to the protected documents. She told the court: 'Given the passage of time these documents should fall now to be disclosed. 'As the court will understand, the public interest immunity claimed in 2008 when the proceedings were ongoing in 2008, I would respectfully submit that should not be held to apply in 2020, the reason for that primarily is the passage of time must have an effect, particularly when one is talking about the ever changing world of international relations. 'The information contained within the undisclosed documents must relate to events or actions that occurred prior to the 21st December 1988, that is the documents must relate to events or actions that occurred at least 32 years ago and it is respectfully submitted that given such a lapse it is also in the interest of justice that disclosure is made in respect of these matters.' In its decision published in March, the SCCRC ruled a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in his case on two of the six grounds it considered in the review - unreasonable verdict and non-disclosure, saying the Crown ought to have disclosed certain information to the defence. Ms Mitchell also said there had been a 'systemic failure of disclosure' over a range of other documents. She told the court: 'Looked at in the round, the question is whether or not there was a miscarriage of justice because that trial wasn't fair because the failure to disclose was just systemic.' Advocate Depute Ronald Clancy QC said the Crown had gone out of its way to be 'transparent' and provide material, and that part of the problem with the systemic failure argument is that no attempt was made to define what the proper system should have been at the time. Ian Duguid QC, representing the Advocate General, said the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs continues to assert public interest immunity over the two protected documents. He said the Secretary of State has given consideration to the argument over the passage of time and has lodged an updated public interest immunity certificate with the clerk of court, dated August 2020. Mr Duguid said the validity of the certificate would need to be considered at a court hearing. Lord Carloway said the judges would issue a written decision on Friday's proceedings in due course, while the full appeal court hearing is provisionally scheduled to start on November 23 before five judges. Megrahi's first appeal against his conviction was refused by the High Court in 2002 and referred back five years later following an SCCRC review. He abandoned this appeal in 2009, shortly before his release from prison on compassionate grounds. He died in 2012. The wife of jailed Chinese rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who has been held incommunicado since his detention some three years ago, has finally been allowed a 20-minute video call with him at a detention center in Xuzhou city, in the eastern province of Jiangsu. In an interview with RFA's Mandarin Service, Xu Yan describes the meeting and calls on the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to treat her husband more humanely, including allowing him to serve the rest of his sentence for "incitement to subvert state power" closer to the family home: RFA: How did you feel when you received the news that you would get a video call after no family visits for three years? Xu Yan: When the detention center first agreed to it, it was quite surprising, because they have deprived him of all of his legal rights for the past three years. Visiting should be a normal part of the legal process, but this was a surprise. It seemed special. Anyway, so I put on my make-up and my smile when they told me 2.30 p.m. In that moment when I first saw him [onscreen], I also heard the police officer say that we could only have 20 minutes. But there wasn't time to cry about that. On the one hand, I didn't want to be seen weeping, and anyway, there wasn't time. I was worried that there might not be a next time, and I needed to update him on what is happening outside. I also needed to find out how he was doing, physically, and the conditions he was living in, so that 20 minutes passed pretty quickly. RFA: How did Yu Wensheng appear to you. You have mentioned before that his right hand shakes, and that he suffers from toothache. How is he doing now? Xu Yan: [Yu Wensheng] was sitting on an interrogation chair, wearing the uniform of the detention center and wearing a mask. He has no hair: they shaved it off. It was clear that he was also handcuffed; that's what I saw. I felt bad, because the way he looks now is so different from his previous persona as a lawyer. He was very focused on his professional image back then, and he always wore a suit and tie at work. Seeing him that way was sad and distressing for me. He should never have gone to prison in the first place. He has to suffer like this, be in handcuffs: that's how they treat an innocent person. It's totally unacceptable, but there's nothing I can do about it. I found out more about his right hand. Apparently he can't write because it still shakes too much. I call on the Chinese government to ensure that he receives treatment for his right hand immediately. He told me he had three teeth extracted because of pain. I told him I would ask the judicial authorities to get him fitted with crowns, and stand up for his rights from outside. I don't know if they will give him crowns, but I will definitely be advocating for that, and calling on them to treat Yu Wensheng humanely, in accordance with the law. Xu Yan: I told him that his ... defense attorney Lu Siwei had to attend a hearing for the revocation of his lawyer's license, and he was sad about that and expressed his concern for Lu's future. I told him it wasn't just his case but that he had also represented the 12 Hongkongers ... so that he wouldn't feel too guilty.Xu Yan: One of the problems he wants to get sorted is that there is no congee for him in the mornings. To start with, he was only allowed cold water, but lately they have been allowing him warm water if the weather is cold, but no congee. That's not something most people would be able to tolerate, nothing but cold water [for breakfast] on a cold day. It's not hard to make congee in the morning; this is a very basic humanitarian need.Xu Yan: He has been in the detention center for the previous three years ... and is now due to be transferred to prison to serve his sentence. The next matter at hand is which prison they will assign him to. The defense lawyer and I ... are calling on the Chinese government to transfer him to a prison in Beijing, where he lives.I asked Yu Wensheng [on the video call] if he knew which prison he was being transferred to. He didn't know, but he also asked to be transferred back to a prison in Beijing.This should happen because it is where his household registration is, and so that he can benefit from family visits. They have taken him to Xuzhou, which is 1,600 kilometers away [from his home] and it means I have to travel [all that way] just for a 20-minute visit. That's cruel, and it's a form of persecution for the family.Xu Yan: He expressed his concern for me, and I told him I loved him and that I'm waiting for him and stuff like that. I spoke quite forcefully, and I think that cheered him up a bit; he even smiled a bit towards the end. We were both laughing when we made hearts with our hands and blew kisses. (@ChaudhryMAli88) After Russia's decision on the Open Skies Treaty, NATO allies remain committed to dialogue with Russia on arms control, NATO deputy spokesperson Piers Cazalet told Sputnik BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2021) After Russia's decision on the Open Skies Treaty, NATO allies remain committed to dialogue with Russia on arms control, NATO deputy spokesperson Piers Cazalet told Sputnik. Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the launch of procedures for withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty. The ministry noted that after the US withdrew from the treaty, the balance of interests of the participating states reached at the conclusion of the treaty was significantly violated, and Moscow's partners in the treaty did not support Russian proposals to maintain its viability in the new conditions. "We have taken note of Russia's stated intention to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty. Russia's selective implementation of its obligations under the Open Skies Treaty has for some time undermined the contribution of this important treaty to security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region. All NATO Allies remain committed to effective international arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation - which are essential for our security. Allies continue to consult closely on the future of arms control. We also remain open to dialogue in the NATO-Russia Council on risk reduction and transparency," Cazalet said. what celebrities are involved with this?? Reply Thread Link i really think ontd could have outgrown the "it needs to involve celebrities" thing like a decade ago but here we are Reply Parent Thread Link I would agree but some of the mods will tell reject a post if there is no celebs in it. So which is it? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link she's a fan of Black Pink Reply Parent Thread Expand Link "K-pop girl group Blackpink". Get your reading glasses, martha. Reply Parent Thread Link Hasnt this already happened with another AI Reply Thread Link Yeah, it happened a few years ago with an ai from Microsoft I think? Reply Parent Thread Link Yes Reply Parent Thread Link Also, a little different, but I think it was FB that has the two robots that started communicating to eachother in their own language so FB unplugged them/ceased the experiment. Reply Parent Thread Link Yup, Microsoft's AI Tay. She was "learning" stuff from Twitter so really, it was only a matter of time, sadly. Reply Parent Thread Link if it's imitating language then what does it say about K-netizen? don't worry I full well know the answer~ Edited at 2021-01-15 03:08 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link just copying humanity. think about what people say in conversations they consider "private". yikes. Reply Thread Link not it only taking a month for an ai bot to learn to be antiblack rip Reply Thread Link Textbook I learned it from reading you! Reply Thread Link Edited at 2021-01-15 03:15 am (UTC) *Shitty machine learning intensifies* Reply Thread Link The tweet description mixed with how that thing looks is cracking me the fuck up. After learning to talk like a racist asshole Reply Thread Link Jeeeez this is so dark, horrifying and sad. It has learned such language from the database of all that chat records (without its ability to recognize and filter or block all that negative stuff out). YET all that stuff in the chat records from humans were must have been REALLY that bad enough.... even that South Korean racist slur used... Im shook. Legit made me wonder.... aicham Reply Thread Link Considering it's how your average netizen talks it's interesting that it's "wrong" now that an AI is imitating their behavior. Some folks thou protests too much. Reply Thread Link unsurprising. AI will never be without racial and sexist biases because the humans it's made to emulate have racist and sexist biases. Reply Thread Link well I'll say it's nice that and are now very clearly labelled as racist by a lot of Koreans because the amount who claim it was purely a complement is embarrassing (looking at y'all SONES) Reply Thread Link So how would you *politely* refer to a black person in hangeul/korean? Genuine question btw Reply Parent Thread Link I don't think heukhyeong is a slur tho. Hyeong means brother, every male Korean uses it to refer to an older male whether it is their blood brother or not. The controversy was that they added the heuk which means Black (not a slur, the color) when referring to Blk ppl specifically. They do not add whatever the word for white is when speaking to white ppl so Blk expats said they did not like being called heukhyeong as they felt it unnecessarily highlighted their Blackness and created a divide. A famous Ghanian expat explained it on a few shows that he just wants to be called hyeong and please do not call attention to the skin color differences. From what I understand many Koreans listened and empathized and most stopped using it but it is a recent discussion so some may still use it out of habit(last couple of years). Reply Parent Thread Expand Link the same way they address non-black foreigners, which is simply calling them a foreigner. after learning enough about other ways they've historically talked about Black people imo the specific distinction for Black people isn't meant respectfully. Like their cultural reference for someone having really big lips is Kunte Kinte :/. They have a long way to go in terms of treating other cultures, especially Black cultures, respectfully. Idk if they should be given grace just because they've added in hyung and nuna. The convos moving forward a bit, I think Sam Okeyere's leaving IG this summer after harassment has started the conversation in earnest but that was just this summer. Reply Parent Thread Link we keep teaching AIs about humanity and they keep learning about humanity and then one day we have skynet and pretend to be shocked Reply Thread Link Why don't these stupid ass companies code it so it isn't racist or refutes racist comments just a thought Reply Thread Link For that to happen they'd actually need diversity in hiring. Even when it's pre-coded and not an AI picking it through learning like in this instance, coders unintentionally write their biases into their algorithms all the time. Reply Parent Thread Link New Delhi, Jan 15 : In a move being described as "a new frontier" in persecution of Ahmadi Muslims, Pakistan has demanded that two Ahmadi citizens of the US remove the American Ahmadi community's website, alleging it violates Pakistan's blasphemy and new cybercrime laws. Amjad Mahmood Khan and Harris Zafar, two prominent leaders of the American Ahmadiyya Muslim community, have been told by the Pakistani authorities that failure to remove the website TrueIslam.com would result in fines of up to $3.14 million or criminal sanctions, including possible 10-year-prison sentences. The legal takedown notice was issued by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on December 24 and is a first instance of Pakistan attempting to prosecute Ahmadi US citizens for digital blasphemy. "This is a new frontier in persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in the digital space. Pakistan wants to impose its abominable blasphemy laws on the whole world by targeting US citizens and US websites," Khan, who is President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Lawyers Association USA and a spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, told Religion News Service (RNS), a Washington-based news agency covering religion, ethics, spirituality and moral issues. Khan has through the website's attorneys replied to the PTA notice terming it as "legally infirm, but also patently absurd in its reach". He told RNS that as many as five of Pakistan's top Ahmadi leaders have also had cases filed against them in recent weeks over religious activity on WhatsApp. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which had recommended last year that the Department of State continue to designate Pakistan as a 'Country of Particular Concern' or the CPC, has also condemned the latest Pakistani attempt to further repress the minority community. USCIRF Commissioner Johnnie Moore described the takedown notices as "recklessly brazen" and expected fierce, bipartisan condemnation from both Donald Trump and Joe Biden officials. "Surely, the Pakistani government doesn't intend on threatening American citizens within the US? Surely, Prime Minister Imran Khan doesn't want this controversy, now?," questioned Moore, a leading religious freedom advocate who has also fought against the injustice and silencing of the Hong Kong rights activists in the past. It was after the USCIRF advice, a recommendation the commission has made since 2002, that the outgoing Trump administration had last month, while redesignating Pakistan as CPC, found the Imran Khan government "engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom", as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). "The systematic enforcement of blasphemy and anti-Ahmadiyya laws, and authorities' failure to address forced conversions of religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs, to Islam, has severely restricted freedom of religion or belief," the commission said in its report. IndiaNarrative.com has highlighted the deep and direct involvement of Pakistani state agencies in the enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings of minorities, especially in Balochistan and against the Ahmadis all over Pakistan. In December 2020, USCIRF published a report on 'Violating Rights: Enforcing the World's Blasphemy Laws', which examines the enforcement of blasphemy laws worldwide. This report found that the country with the most cases of state enforced blasphemy laws was Pakistan, with 184 cases identified between 2014-2018. Last week, the US watchdog also demanded an immediate release of a Ramzan Bibi, a 55-year-old Pakistani Ahmadi woman, who has been detained and accused of making blasphemous remarks Bibi was detained on April 30, 2020 and accused of making blasphemous remarks during a personal dispute over the return of her charitable donation to a local mosque in Cheleki village in Pakistan's Punjab province. Bibi was charged under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, an offence that carries the death penalty. She is currently imprisoned at Central Jail Lahore. "The Pakistani government must immediately release Ramzan Bibi, and all others detained for blasphemy," said USCIRF Commissioner James Carr. "Authorities allowing these laws to be used for personal gain or vendetta are only enabling systematic discrimination based on religious belief. This is clear in Bibi's case, as she is facing imprisonment simply because of her Ahmadi faith." The dissidents and critics of the Pakistan authorities who are living in exile are under constant fear with the increasing threats and attacks on them. The mysterious death of Karima Baloch in Toronto and Baloch journalist Sajid Hussain in Sweden last year have made them feel more insecure than ever. While Pakistan's attempt to curb Ahmadis' voice in the United States may only result in the movement getting more stronger, the likes of Amjad Mahmood Khan and Harris Zafar who are US citizens, do fear for the safety of their relatives back home. Just like the Chinese government which has targeted the families of exile Uyghur activists in Xinjiang, its 'iron brother' is also crushing the minorities vehemently in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. (This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Driver Prathipat Masakul was later found to have taken methamphetamine before the incident, airport authorities said A Thai motorist who drove onto an airport runway and into the path of a Boeing 777 that had just landed claimed they had 'taken a wrong turn'. The dramatic moment was captured in footage that showed the car ploughing through security gates and onto the tarmac at the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand on Tuesday. Shocked staff watched as the driver careered along the runway towards the newly-landed plane, while panic-stricken airport security raced out to corner the vehicle. The footage, reportedly taken by an unnamed member of the ground staff, showed the driver being escorted off the runway. A Thai motorist who drove onto an airport runway and into the path of a Boeing 777 that had just landed claimed they had 'taken a wrong turn'. Pictured: Ground staff film the car, which can be seen next to the plane on the runway The dramatic moment was captured in footage that showed the car ploughing through security gates and onto the tarmac at the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand on Tuesday. Pictured: Staff pursue the car on the runway 'I don't know how the car made it onto the runway,' the person filming can be heard saying. 'The airport is such a valuable company, but they haven't even managed to stop the car from getting into the airport. This is such a safety and security breach. It's so terrible'. Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) is operated by Airports of Thailand PLC (AOT), a publicly traded company. Officials said the driver was high on methamphetamine and unknowingly drove into the airport. Squadron Leader Suthirawat Suwanwat, Director of the airport, said that after being informed of the 'intruder', he sent staff who 'immediately intercepted and detained the driver to be investigated and prosecuted'. Shocked staff watched as the driver careered along the runway towards the newly-landed plane, while panic-stricken airport security raced out to corner the vehicle. Pictured: Staff on a motorbike pursue the car The driver, identified as Prathipat Masakul, reportedly told airport authorities that he was drunk but methamphetamine was found in his system and in the vehicle, according to officials. Pictured: The offending blue car is flanked by the vehicles of airport authorities He said the driver was identified as Prathipat Masakul, who told police he was drunk. Tests allegedly showed that Prathipat was under the influence of drugs, which were also found in the car bonnet. The airport boss added: 'The accused admitted that the act was due to drunkenness and he unknowingly drove through the restricted area.' Police detained him on suspicion of intruding into restricted areas within the airport, illegal possession of drugs and illegally consuming and driving while under the influence of methamphetamine. remaining of Thank you for reading! This is your last free article before you will be asked to subscribe. Already have a paid subscription? Sign in 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. (TNS) Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds, the software company at the center of what is considered one of the most sophisticated cyberattacks in U.S. history, said it believes it is closer to understanding how the attack was carried out.The company said last Tuesday that it has reverse-engineered the code used in the attack to better understand how it was deployed. SolarWinds also said the attack might have contained an additional layer of malware layer that breached the system in 2019.SolarWinds has been working to investigate the source of a cyberattack. Reuters broke news of the breach Dec. 13, a day after the company said it first learned of the situation. SolarWinds has since released a number of software updates to address the problem and has said it's working with outside cybersecurity experts and federal law enforcement to investigate the breach.The investigation has shown the breach likely has affected nearly every level of government, as well as potentially hundreds of private companies. Reports of high-profile targets include the Justice Department, the Department of Treasury, Homeland Security and the Department of Energy, along with private companies including Microsoft."We believe we have found a highly sophisticated and novel malicious code injection source the perpetrators used to insert the Sunburst malicious code into builds of our Orion Platform software," SolarWinds said in a securities filing.Federal officials have said the attack was likely Russian in origin. SolarWinds said Tuesday it could not independently confirm that Russia was behind the breach. The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, reported that the attack was carried out by Russian government hackers who go by the nicknames APT29 or Cozy Bear and are part of that nations foreign intelligence service.SolarWinds' Orion software, which was breached in the attack, is used by a range of companies and government agencies. As many as 18,000 of the company's 300,000 customers might have been running software, which contained a vulnerability that let hackers penetrate multiple networks.In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said a "highly sophisticated and novel code" was designed to inject malicious code into the system without arousing the suspicion of the software development and build teams. The hackers used multiple servers based in the United States to mimic legitimate network traffic and avoid detection from SolarWinds, companies, and the government.SolarWinds new CEO, Sudhakar Ramakrishna also became the company's leader this month. The company had announced former president and CEO Kevin Thompson would step down at the end of 2020 after more than a decade in the position, just days before the cyberattack discovery."Although I accepted the position to become CEO before the company was notified of the cyberattack, I feel an even greater commitment now to taking action, ensuring we learn from this experience, and continuing to deliver for our customers," Ramakrishna said in an online post last week.Ramakrishna said SolarWinds will be reflecting on and enhancing its own security policies and practices. He said his goal is to work with the SolarWinds team to immediately improve critical business and product development systems and make Solarwinds a leader in security for the enterprise software industry."Over 20-plus years, SolarWinds has earned the trust of our customers by delivering powerful and affordable solutions," Ramakrishna said. "My mission is to continue to build on that relationship by delivering powerful, affordable, and secure solutions. I am confident in this future."The company said it has so far traced suspicious activity related to the breach in its internal systems back to September 2019, a month earlier than previously thought. A subsequent October 2019 version of the Orion Platform first contained modifications, which Solarwinds said were designed by the hackers to test the ability to insert a code. The first malicious code, dubbed SUNBURST, was inserted into a February 2020 update to the Orion Platform, and customers had access to the software by March 26. Hackers later removed the code in June 2020. The company is still trying to understand how exactly the code entered its software."We recognize the software development and build process used by SolarWinds is common throughout the software industry, so we believe that sharing this information openly will help the industry guard against similar attacks in the future and create safer environments for customers," the company said.On Tuesday, CrowdStrike, one of the companies working with SolarWinds to investigate the breach, said it has also identified a third malware strain, called Sunspot, tied to the attack. The companies have previously identified two other malware strains, the backdoor, dubbed Sunburst, and Teardrop, a tool that the hackers used to go deeper once in the system.As the company continues to investigate, cybersecurity experts have said the full scale of the attack could take years to understand. They also predicted the breach could lead to long-term changes in cybersecurity policies and practices for both the government and private companies.The company is also already facing at least one lawsuit following the attack, which accuses SolarWinds of violating federal securities law and alleges it made materially false and misleading statements related to security measures. Underwater seagrass in coastal areas appear to trap bits of plastic in natural bundles of fibre known as "Neptune balls," researchers said Thursday. With no help from humans, the swaying plants -- anchored to shallow seabeds -- may collect nearly 900 million plastic items in the Mediterranean alone every year, they reported in the journal Scientific Reports. "We show that plastic debris in the seafloor can be trapped in seagrass remains, eventually leaving the marine environment through beaching," lead author Anna Sanchez-Vidal, a marine biologist at the University of Barcelona, told AFP. This accidental cleanup "represents a continuous purge of plastic debris out of the sea," she added. Add pollution control, then, to the long list of services that seagrass provides -- for ocean ecosystems, and the humans that live near the water's edge. There are some 70 species of marine seagrass, grouped in several families of flowering plants that -- originally on land -- recolonised the ocean some 80 to 100 million years ago. Growing from the Arctic to the tropics, most species have long, grass-like leaves that can form vast underwater meadows. They are more than just pretty, however. They play a vital role in improving water quality, absorb CO2 and exude oxygen, and are a natural nursery and refuge for hundreds of species of fish. They are also the foundation of coastal food webs. By anchoring shallow waters, they help prevent beach erosion, and dampen the impact of destructive storm surges. To better understand the plastic bundling capabilities of seagrass, Sanchez-Vidal and her team studied a species found only in the Mediterranean Sea, Posidonia oceanica. In 2018 and 2019, they counted the number of plastic particles found in seaballs that had washed up on four beaches in Mallorca, Spain, which has large seagrass meadows offshore. There was plastic debris in half of the loose seagrass leaf samples, up to 600 bits per kilo of leaves. Only 17 percent of the tighter bundled seagrass fibre known as Neptune balls contained plastic, but at a much higher density -- nearly 1,500 pieces per kilo of seaball. Using estimates of seagrass fibre production in the Mediterranean, the researchers worked up an estimate of how much plastic might be filtered in the entire basin. The oval orbs -- the shape of a rugby ball -- forms from the base of leaves that have been shredded by the action of ocean currents but remain attached to stems, called rhizomes. As they are slowly buried by sedimentation, the damaged leaf sheaths form stiff fibres that intertwine into a ball, collecting plastic in the process. "We don't know where they travel," said Sanchez-Vidal. "We only know that some of them are beached during storms." US President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 pandemic during an event at The Queen theater on January 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Delaware. (Image: AP Photo/Matt Slocum) The recent elections in the United States, both for the presidency and for the two chambers of the US Congress, are not the same for the people of the United States as they are for outsiders. They have different meanings for people on the one hand and for foreign correspondents, diplomats and for those abroad who seek fulfilment of their American dream on the other. For the second category of people, the run-off elections in Georgia last fortnight, for example, which delivered the US Senate for the Democrats was more a media event, not a voting exercise with any real consequences. With or without the victory of the twin Democratic Senate candidates from Georgia, Joe Biden, as the 46th US President, would have had his sway on Capitol Hill. Doomsday predictions since the November results, which produced a Senate with exactly half its 100-strong membership in the hands of Republicans, led to worries of an impending stalemate in the US legislative agenda. Retiring President Donald Trumps partisan rhetoric and his tasteless shredding of time-honoured conventions in public life had created the bogey that the new Senate may not even confirm Bidens Cabinet appointees. The mainstream media, which is now having its revenge on Trump for all the contempt he had shown them for four years, had floated a simplistic argument that the two Senate seats from Georgia must go to Democrats to prevent such a stalemate. They incessantly warned that Biden would be hamstrung by a hostile and intransigent Senate in which the Republicans have a majority. Their argument was that if the two Georgia seats went to Democrats, they too would be at the exact half-way strength of 50 Senators. The next Vice President, Kamala Harris, would then use her casting vote as Senate President and get Bidens agenda passed unimpeded. During the entire campaign for the two run-off elections, this argument went unchallenged. With the camp followers of Trump in the Grand Old Party busying themselves solely in a wasted and self-defeating effort to overturn Bidens victory in the electoral college, this argument gained currency nationwide. That enabled Democrats to convert what would otherwise have been a local poll into a national political cause celebre. Imagine that the two outgoing Republican Senators from Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler had been re-elected. Their victories would have raised the Republican strength in the Senate to 52 while Democrats remained the minority at 48. With the presidency and the House of Representatives in the hands of Democrats, the Senate would have been the only elected nationwide platform in the hands of Republicans. However, the Senate is a legislative chamber of which Biden has been an integral part for 44 years, 36 of which, as a member and another eight years as its presiding officer-cum-US Vice President. Genial by nature and a firm believer in consensus, Biden has a history of reaching across the aisle and he carries with him many IOUs earned from Republican Senators over many years. Barack Obamas signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act popularly known as Obamacare would never have come about if his Vice President Biden had not persuaded many Senators and Representatives to vote for it. Biden eschewed protocol and hierarchy in the first Obama term to reach out to Republican Senators to sell Obamacare. When the India-US nuclear deal proposed by Republican President George W Bush was in the pre-operationalisation stage, Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was chairman of this important committee also on an earlier tenure when Bush proposed the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP), the precursor of the nuclear deal. Non-proliferationists by conviction, many Democratic Senators and Representatives were opposed to both the NSSP and the nuclear deal with India. Although both these initiatives had Republican origins, Biden used his committee chairmanship as a platform for building consensus through bipartisanship. With such a history as a consensus-builder in Washington, Biden did not need the two Democratic Senators from Georgia to push forward his legislative agenda. There are at least four Republican Senators in the new Congress who would never think of blocking Bidens Cabinet choices a strategy which hard core Trump supporters favour. These Republican Senators are Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mitt Romney of Utah. Their reasons for supporting Biden are as diverse as their geographical loyalties and belonging. What is important is that their support would have given Biden the working Senate majority he needed. Indeed, for Biden and Harris, a Republican Senate with a slender majority provided by two members from Georgia may have been a blessing in disguise. The Biden-Harris team could have used such a Senate composition to rein in the Left wing of the Democratic Party, which turned off many voters in November even in counties such Miami-Dade in Florida, which are solidly and traditionally Democratic. Socialism is a spectre for most in the US and a Republican victory in the Georgia run-offs would have been a palliative against the so-called red scourge. Domestically for the US, the Georgia results have a very different meaning. Many people see the election of a black Senator from Georgia as historic. They also view Trumps loss in Georgia as a turning point in US politics. ATLANTA, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the Rocket Community Fund, the philanthropic arm of Rocket Mortgage, the nation's largest mortgage lender, announced a donation of $545,000 to Habitat for Humanity in support of Habitat's neighborhood revitalization program, an essential element of the housing nonprofit's work in the United States. Rocket Community Fund's contribution will provide local Habitat organizations serving their home cities, Cleveland, Ohio, Phoenix, Ariz., and Charlotte, N.C., with funds to meet the specific housing needs of their communities and help more families recover from the worsened housing crisis and economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Habitat for Humanity's neighborhood revitalization efforts are tailored to local communities and completed in collaboration with community leaders and organizations who have an active presence and role in improving their neighborhoods. Habitat utilizes an outcomes-driven framework, in partnership with residents and others, to understand local conditions and collaboratively develop solutions to improve quality of life. This is the sixth year the Rocket Community Fund is supporting Habitat's neighborhood revitalization efforts. To date, Rocket Community Fund has donated over $3 million to Habitat to support communities through this program. "We believe that every American should have access to a healthy, stable home," said Laura Grannemann, vice president of strategic investments for the Rocket Community Fund. "COVD-19 has impacted all of us, but those without the foundation of a home are particularly vulnerable to the turbulence of this time. Through our partnership with Habitat for Humanity, we are proud to build access to the economic opportunity and resiliency that comes with homeownership." Even before the spread of the COVID-19 virus, more than 18 million families in the U.S. were already paying half or more of their income on housing. Now, with multiplied unemployment rates and significant decreases in household incomes, millions of families are faced with impossible choices between trying to pay their rent or mortgage and other essential bills. The Rocket Community Fund's donation will help Habitat partner with more families to achieve and maintain housing stability during and after the pandemic. "The COVID-19 pandemic required us to find alternative ways to continue serving families, and we were reassured by the Rocket Community Fund's response to help us do so," said Tawkiyah Jordan, senior director of housing and community strategy at Habitat for Humanity International. "Together, we partnered with residents to co-create targeted responses that address urgent housing needs in three key communities. Rocket Community Fund's contributions have been significant in furthering our mission by helping provide families with the peace of mind homeownership brings." About Habitat for Humanity Driven by the vision that everyone needs a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity began in 1976 as a grassroots effort on a community farm in southern Georgia. The Christian housing organization has since grown to become a leading global nonprofit working in local communities across all 50 states in the U.S. and in more than 70 countries. Families and individuals in need of a hand up partner with Habitat for Humanity to build or improve a place they can call home. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage. Through financial support, volunteering or adding a voice to support affordable housing, everyone can help families achieve the strength, stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves. Through shelter, we empower. To learn more, visit habitat.org. About Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage Detroit-based Quicken Loans, the nation's largest home mortgage lender, enables the American Dream of homeownership and financial freedom through its obsession with an industry-leading, digital-driven client experience. The company closed $145 billion dollars of mortgage volume across all 50 states in 2019. In late 2015, Quicken Loans introduced Rocket Mortgage, the first fully digital mortgage experience. Currently, 98% of all home loans originated by Quicken Loans utilize Rocket Mortgage Technology. Quicken Loans moved its headquarters to downtown Detroit in 2010. Today, Quicken Loans and Rocket Companies employ more than 22,000 full-time team members nationwide. The company generates loan production from web centers located in Detroit, Cleveland and Phoenix and operates a centralized loan processing facility in Detroit. Quicken Loans ranked highest in the country for customer satisfaction for primary mortgage origination by J.D. Power for 11 consecutive years, 2010 2020, and also ranked highest in the country for customer satisfaction among all mortgage servicers seven consecutive years, 2014 2020. Quicken Loans was once again named to FORTUNE magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list in 2019 and has been included in the magazine's top 1/3rd of companies named to the list for the past 17 consecutive years. In addition, Essence Magazine named Quicken Loans "#1 Place to Work in the Country for African Americans." For more information and company news visit QuickenLoans.com/press-room. SOURCE Habitat for Humanity International Related Links www.habitat.org The core nine-track song cycle for The Soul Cages centers around Sting's deep sense of personal loss following his father's passing. The balance of the album's lyrical content embarks on a recurring seafaring motif in honor of his father's lifetime lamentation about never becoming a sailor, one of his unrealized personal dreams. The opening track, the slow-churning "Island Of Souls," follows a son's reverie about his fervent wish to take his shipbuilding father somewhere, anywhere out on the water in order to get away from it all, while "Why Should I Cry For You" chronicles the arc of the narrator's fragile inner resolve. The relatively jaunty nature of the hit single "All This Time" runs cleverly counter to its burial-at-sea narrative, as the majestic, moody album closer "When The Angels Fall" ruminates on Sting's staunch Catholic upbringing and the long-term effects of familial spiritual beliefs. In fact, the ongoing impact of the deeply entrenched subject matter comprising The Soul Cages would remain with Sting, the artist for decades to come. Ultimately, it fueled him to author the music and lyrics for his first stage musical, The Last Ship, which debuted in 2014 and focused on the rise and fall of the shipbuilding industry in his native England. Produced by Sting and Hugh Padgham, The Soul Cages also marked the first occasion that longtime stage and studio collaborator, the acclaimed guitarist Dominic Miller, appeared on one of Sting's albums. Other notable topline Soul Cages creative contributors include keyboardists David Sancious and the late Kenny Kirkland, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, and drummer Manu Katche. For his own part, Sting played bass, mandolin, and synthesizer on The Soul Cages, in addition to singing all of the album's lead vocals. The Soul Cages has been certified platinum by the RIAA, and it topped the album charts in five countries, including the U.K. and Canada, topping out at No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard 200. The album's lead single, "All This Time," made a tremendous chart impact right out of the gate, ultimately reaching No. 5 on the U.S. Hot 100, No. 1 on both Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock, and No. 9 on Adult Contemporary. The title track, "The Soul Cages," won a Grammy for Best Rock Song in 1992, and it climbed to No. 7 on Mainstream Rock and No. 9 on Modern Rock. The album's other key singles were "Mad About You" and "Why Should I Cry For You." The Soul Cages - Expanded Edition Available HERE: sting.com facebook.com/sting twitter.com/OfficialSting instagram.com/theofficialsting YouTube.com/StingVEVO STING: THE SOUL CAGES - EXPANDED EDITION [digital only] Island Of Souls All This Time Mad About You Jeremiah Blues (Part 1) Why Should I Cry For You Saint Agnes And The Burning Train The Wild Wild Sea The Soul Cages When The Angels Fall I Miss You Kate (Instrumental) [Bonus Track] Come Down In Time [Bonus Track] * Tempted (Live) [Bonus Track] * Ne Me Quitte Pas (Live) [Bonus Track] * Oo La La Hugh [Bonus Track] * Mad About You (Original Remix) [Bonus Track] * Mad About You (Remix Edit) [Bonus Track] * Mad About You (12" Remix) [Bonus Track] * Mad About You (Italian Version) [Bonus Track] Why Should I Cry For You (Spanish Version) [Bonus Track] Why Should I Cry For You (Extended Mix) [Bonus Track] The Soul Cages (Edit) [Bonus Track] All This Time (Edit) [Bonus Track] * Not Previously Available Digitally SOURCE A&M/UMe ATLANTA, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PrimeRevenue, Inc., the leading platform for working capital finance solutions, has been named a World's Best Supply Chain Finance Provider by Global Finance Magazine. As part of the magazine's fourteenth annual awards, PrimeRevenue won Best Platform Connecting Buyers/Sellers/Financial Institutions category. The award acknowledges PrimeRevenue's excellence in technological innovation, platform ease of use, and the ability to help buyers and suppliers navigate unprecedented volatility. The Global Finance editorial team evaluated a host of supply chain finance providers based on several criteria including market share and global coverage, product innovation, customer service, technology, execution skills and client-specific implementations. The economic impact of COVID-19 has drastically increased suppliers' appetite for liquidity, and PrimeRevenue's early payment solutions are helping them get access to the critical cash they need to withstand disruption. Throughout 2020, the number of suppliers onboarded onto PrimeRevenue's solutions grew significantly as did the volume of invoices submitted for early payment. PrimeRevenue also expanded its market reach through innovative capabilities that provide more supplier and buyer organizations access to supply chain finance including pilot solutions such as AdvancePay and patented solutions such as Electronic Time Drafts. "Our innovative early payment solutions have been instrumental in helping companies survive, grow and transform their businesses in the face of disruption," said PJ Bain, CEO of PrimeRevenue. "We're proud to be honored for that achievement and reaffirm our commitment to giving more companies access to the benefits of supply chain finance in 2021." About PrimeRevenue PrimeRevenue's supply chain finance (approved payables financing) solutions help organizations in 80+ countries optimize their working capital to efficiently fund strategic initiatives, gain a competitive advantage and strengthen relationships throughout the supply chain. As the leading provider of working capital financial technology solutions, PrimeRevenue's diverse multi-funder platform processes more than USD$250 billion in payment transactions per year. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, with offices in London, Prague, Hong Kong and Melbourne. Additional information about PrimeRevenue can be found at www.primerevenue.com | Twitter: @primerevenue | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/primerevenue. Contact: Ariane Wolff, (978) 729-3542, [email protected] SOURCE PrimeRevenue, Inc. Related Links http://www.primerevenue.com What does this mean for me? A new law will give workers the option to request to work from home permanently. It does not automatically entitle you to work remotely. So you cant just head home if you are currently able to work on site under the restrictions, or stay at home when it is safe to return to work. But your employer must give a reasoned response if they refuse. What if my employer says no? If youre not happy with their justification, you can take a case to the Workplace Relations Commission. When can I ask to permanently remote work? Probably from the end of this year. The legislation is due to be introduced by the end of September. What else is in the report? A new code of practice on the right to disconnect from email or taking phone calls when your working hours are over. According to the document, this code will be legally admissible. Significant investment in remote working hubs, located to suit commuters and near childcare facilities. A review of tax arrangements and costs to incentivise remote working in the next budget. Potentially speeding up the national broadband plan. Read More If I opt for remote working, will it cost me? As things stand, employers can pay 3.20 a day to home workers to cover costs, but most dont. Workers can instead claim tax relief on a portion of their utility bills and broadband but only get back on average between 30 and 100 a year. The new strategy doesnt change this. It promises to review remote working for tax and expenditure purposes in the next Budget. Consumer tax manager at Taxback.com, Marian Ryan, warned that remote workers should not be financially penalised for their place of work. She said she hopes the Government finds merit in enhancing the tax regime. Her company has called for a new flat rate expense category equal to the 3.20 a day that employers can pay for the new remote workforce. She said this would mean employees would get 100 to 200 more and would take the pressure off struggling businesses. Im a public servant. What does it mean for me? Home and remote working should become the norm for 20pc of public sector employees this year. HR organisation CIPD has recommended that this is a blended approach where staff divide their time between home and the office to reduce the risk of isolation. Partner at Lewis Silkin Ireland, Siobhra Rush said hopefully private sector business would embrace the public sector commitment to remote working. She said it gives greater opportunity to employers to recruit people who might have mobility, travel or caring issues. However, she said one of the challenges will be ensuring data is secure if an employee works remotely, and that employees who arent visible are not passed over for promotion. Why is this strategy being rolled out? Enterprise, Trade and Employment Minister Leo Varadkar said we all hope and pray for the day the pandemic is over, so we can have a new and better normal, incorporating all that we have learned from living our lives and doing business in a very different way. The requirement to work from home where possible, for reasons of public health, has demonstrated how viable home, remote and blended working can be, he said. Post-pandemic, I want remote working to be part of a whole new world of work and this new Government strategy sets out how we will enable it. He said more flexibility, less commuting, more time for family and friends, and reducing transport emissions are among the benefits. Is it really that significant? Employment law solicitor Richard Grogan said the strategy is a significant development but the devil will be in the detail of the legislation. He said remote working under health and safety law requires the workstation in the employees home to comply with these laws. That is more than a desk, chair and a laptop, he said. Many apartments especially do not have the space necessary for a safe home office. This proposal may well mean the size of apartments will need to be increased and houses to be planned to provide for the potential for home working. He said we could soon see premises getting remote working certification, like the energy rating, when going up for sale. Mr Grogan also noted that the Workplace Relations Commission will determine how a business operates. What concerns me in a dispute over the suitability of a home for remote working, which may need an engineers or safety assessment, is who pays, he said. Will it be the employer or employee, or will there be State support for this? Labour spokesperson on employment affairs, Marie Sherlock, said the strategy misses the point and pays lip service to worker protections, including a legal right to disconnect. She said there is a vague commitment, but no detail on what a right to request remote work will look like. Ms Sherlock said there was little detail on the 20pc mandate on public sector remote working and cost of investing in hubs. Will I be able to disconnect? Its unclear, but the promised code of practice should mean better protection for workers. Sinn Fein spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade, Employment and Workers Rights, Louise OReilly, criticised the decision to only introduce a code of practice. She said only legislation will offer workers the necessary protection and asked the Government to support opposition legislation giving workers a right to disconnect. Technological developments have led to such a pervasive 'always on' culture, where workers are contactable and readily available to receive work emails, calls, text messages, and push notifications at every hour of the day, every day of the week, she said. Partner at Lewis Silkin Ireland, Siobhra Rush, said it is unclear how one of the main issues in the strategy paper, the right to disconnect, will be dealt with. Will it be an amendment of the Organisation of Working Time Act, or a new and clear right to disconnect? she said. It remains to be seen. What do employers think? The largest employer group Ibec said the strategy is a welcome and timely recognition of accelerating changes in workplaces. But director of employer relations, Maeve McElwee, said the proposals to introduce legislation will require careful development. Allowing time for a full regulatory impact assessment, including the costs of administration of new employment legislation, will be critical, she added. Will anyone be checking to ensure these promises are kept? An implementation group that will meet every four months is being set up to monitor progress. What you need to know in Vietnam today: Politics -- Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh will attend the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Retreat (AMM Retreat), which will be held virtually on January 21, the Vietnam News Agency cited the foreign ministrys spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang as saying at a press briefing on Thursday. Society -- Vietnam announced 10 imported COVID-19 cases on Thursday, taking the national tally to 1,531 patients, with 1,369 recoveries and 35 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health. -- Ho Chi Minh City authorities are expected to spend VND13 billion (US$564,000) dredging garbage from the Vam Thuat River from March to December 2021. Business -- The State Capital Investment Corporation is planning to pour VND8 trillion ($347 million) into Vietnam Airlines, equal to 25 percent of the national carrier, Nguyen Chi Thanh, general director of the corporation, told reporters on Thursday. -- Military-run network operator Viettel rolled out 5G services at Yen Phong 1 Industrial Park in Bac Ninh Province, located in northern Vietnam, on Thursday. This is the first industrial park in the country to have had access to 5G networks. Education -- An elementary school student is in a critical condition in Ho Chi Minh City after he was found at the bottom of a swimming pool in neighboring Binh Duong Province during an extra-curricular activity on Thursday. World News --"A 6.2-magnitude earthquake on Indonesias Sulawesi island killed at least seven people and injured hundreds on Friday, the countrys disaster mitigation agency said, as panicked residents fled to safer areas after many buildings were damaged," Reuters reported. -- "President-elect Joe Biden outlined a $1.9 trillion stimulus package proposal on Thursday, saying bold investment was needed to jump-start the economy and accelerate the distribution of vaccines to bring the coronavirus under control," according to Reuters. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! (JTA) A federal court of appeals ruled that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos capacity limits on houses of worship in areas with rising COVID-19 cases constituted a violation of religious liberty. The ruling on Monday comes after a Supreme Court injunction last month blocking Cuomo from enforcing the rules until the lower court could reevaluate an earlier ruling that upheld state guidelines limiting synagogue attendance to 10 or 25 people. The case, brought by the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America, an advocacy organization representing haredi Orthodox Jews, was one... 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. A petition for adopted people to have a right to their birth certificate has gained over 17,000 signatures in the wake of the mother and baby institutions report being released. The petition, which was set up by activist Izzy Kamikaze, asks for a single paragraph amendment to be made to the Civil Registration Act to give adopted people the right to access their birth certificates. The petitions descriptions reads: The long-awaited publication of the report of the Commission of Enquiry into Mother & Baby Homes has caused great distress to adopted people and survivors of Mother & Baby Homes for its failure to practically address the problems faced by adopted people and by birth mothers. Signing this petition is a practical act of solidarity with adopted people and survivors and presents an opportunity to do something practical to help them right now." The petition was shared in a Facebook post by Adrienne Corless, daughter of Catherine Corless, the historian who is known for her work in compiling the information concerning the deaths of children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Galway. Expand Close Childrens socks at the grotto on an unmarked mass grave at the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home run by the Bon Secours sister (Niall Carson/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Childrens socks at the grotto on an unmarked mass grave at the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home run by the Bon Secours sister (Niall Carson/PA) Read More In the Facebook post, Adrienne Corless said there was so much to process concerning the final report. In one way: at least we have the report now, flaws and all, she said. It is enormous: hundreds of pages of evidence and testimony, all credit to the courage of those who contributed. I hope there has been healing in coming forward and I hope todays apologies continue that process. She went on to describe her mothers reaction to the report. Mam was deflated and dejected, to say the least: so much so that Ryan Tubridy phoned her after seeing her on the 6 oclock news, she said. She went on to say that: Adopted people still await legislation to access their birth certs. There is no need for delay. As Claire Byrne said on her show today, they passed legislation regarding the banks overnight. Read More Ms Corless also discussed how the wait to excavate Tuam still continues. As an archaeologist myself, I still dont understand why we need this new and seemingly extensive legislation to lift them, nor does any archaeologist I know. It will be a dreadfully sad job and only a select few archaeologists will be able for it - and harrowing as it will be, in the scheme of things it is not a massive job. This is what archaeologists do. On a final note, she discussed the urgency of going through the Tuam burial grounds. There is therefore still no rest for any of us whilst the babies still lie in sewage tanks, she said. You might have seen this picture of the baby shoe from the test excavation. It haunts me. We cant wait another year to get them out of there. TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) - A group is speaking out against several Congressmen from Mississippi over votes concerning the presidential election and the impeachment of President Donald Trump. The group, Indivisible Northeast Mississippi, is calling for the resignations of U.S. Rep Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) and U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) in what the group said was an attempt to overturn the presidential election. Indivisible Northeast Mississippi outside the office of U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly on Jan. 14, 2021. Indivisible Northeast Mississippi outside the office of U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly on Jan. 14, 2021. In a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, both Kelly and Hyde-Smith voted against the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral votes. U.S. Reps. Michael Guest and Steven Palazzo, both Republicans, also voted against the certification. U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) voted for certification. Ultimately, Bidens votes were certified and hell be inaugurated as the 46th president on Jan. 20. The group applauded Wicker for his vote to certify the election. Now the group wants Wicker to support the impeachment of Trump. The U.S. House voted Wednesday to impeach the president whom many blame for the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Kelly, Michael Guest (R-Miss.) and Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) voted against impeachment. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) voted for impeachment. The impeachment proceeding will move to the U.S. Senate where the president faces a conviction of incitement of insurrection. WTVA reporter Chelsea Brown contacted the Congressional offices for Hyde-Smith, Kelly and Wicker but had yet to receive a response as of Thursday afternoon. H ere are two things that happened last week. On Sunday, Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, said council tax should be frozen. On Friday, Sadiq Khan, Labour's main representative in office, decided to increase his part of the council tax by almost 10 per cent. Confused? You shouldn't be, according to Sadiq. His 31 rise is simply further proof that bad things in London are always someone else's fault, usually the government's, and never anything to do with him. His response to any problem, from knife crime to the decline of the high street, is to send out a press release demanding ministers give him more money. We'll hear the old song again as soon as a new bailout deal is negotiated between us and Transport for London. Here, of course, Sadiq does have something else to blame. The main reason TfL needs our help is the collapse in its revenue caused by covid. That's why we've committed 3.5 billion to make up that revenue, and we'll commit more. But covid is not the whole reason TfL was in trouble. The story Khan tells - of a TfL well managed by a fine mayor, derailed only by unforeseen disaster and wicked Tory cuts - is untrue. He claims to have "reduced TfL's operating deficit by 71 per cent on a like-for-like basis." That sentence is perhaps rather carefully worded. A simpler indicator, TfL's debt, rose almost a third under Khan, from 9.1bn in 2016 to 11.7bn on the eve of covid. He attacks us for taking TfL's grant away - but forgets to mention we gave him an extra 1.2bn a year in business rates instead. Khan claims his four-year fares freeze "only" cost 640 million - a figure widely quoted, including by ministers. Because the lost revenue compounds each year, the actual cost is closer to 1.5bn. And then there is Crossrail, which was on time and on budget when Sadiq started - but is now four years, and around 5 billion, adrift. Each of these problems pre-dated covid. On Monday, Sadiq's opening offer landed. Instead of making TfL work better, his plan, as always, is to get others to pay. The mayor with the slogan "London is open" proposes the extraordinary notion of an entry tax - a 3.50 charge on any non-Londoner driving across the GLA boundary. It would divide communities with electronic tollgates. It would damage outer London, which relies on trade across the new Khan frontier. Weeks after our tariff-free Brexit deal, Sadiq Khan, that stern opponent of Brexit, plans a new tariff barrier of his own! We believe in no taxation without representation. If you do want to fling money around, it should at least come from your own taxpayers, who can hold you accountable. Sadiq's new land border with the Home Counties - his Checkpoint Chigwell - is not the answer. In a dispute between two insurers, a federal appellate court ruled that GEICO is solely liable for the cost of replacing a Lamborghini worth more than $100,000 that was totaled in a collision with another vehicle. A panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal rejected GEICOs argument that Ameriprise Auto & Home Insurance should share in the cost because it insured the other vehicle involved in the crash near Tampa, Fla. and had improperly rescinded coverage. In an opinion written by Chief Judge Jeffrey R. Howard, the court found that Philip and Claudia Feldberg snowbirds who split their time between Massachusetts and Florida had violated the terms of their insurance contract by failing to notify the carrier that their Toyota Highlander had been left behind in Florida, where it was regularly operated by a relative. Howard wrote that the undisputed facts show Ameriprise provided plenty of notice in its renewal cover letter and renewal form that the company required the Feldbergs to check the accuracy of the policys information regarding the Highlanders principal place of garaging and its customary drivers. GEICO and Ameriprise squared off after the Feldbergs daughter-in-law collided with a Lamborghini in Wesley Chapel, Fla. while driving the couples Highlander on July 24, 2018. The driver of the Lamborghini was cited for speeding and the daughter-in-law was ticketed for failure to yield. The Ameriprise policy required the Highlander to stay in Massachusetts, where the policy was issued, at least six months of the year. The Feldbergs lived primarily in Peabody, Mass., but they owned a condominium in Naples, Fla. where they stayed approximately half the year. In 2018, however, Philip Feldberg was suffering health problems, so he left the car in Florida and told his daughter-in-law that she could use the car anytime. Ameriprise was aware that the Feldbergs split their time between Florida and Massachusetts because they had filed a claim in January 2018 after their Toyota RAV4 was damaged in a Florida parking lot. A few months later, their grandson was involved in an accident while driving the couples Honda Accord back in Massachusetts. After the Feldbergs filed a claim for damages caused by the collision with the Lamborghini, Ameriprise initially provided five days of rental car coverage for the Feldbergs and paid for medical care rendered to their daughter-in-law. But the carrier also started an investigation to find out where the Highlander was customarily garaged and who usually drove it. After learning that the vehicle has been left behind and that the daughter-in-law was driving it two or three days a week, Ameriprise rescinded the Feldbergs coverage. GEICO insured the Lamborghini. The carrier filed suit, alleging that Ameriprise was liable for a share of the cost of replacing the car because it had improperly rescinded coverage. The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts granted summary judgment in favor of Ameriprise. GEICO appealed, arguing that a jury might decide that the Feldbergs had no duty to inform Ameriprise that the car was garaged in Florida because the annual renewal notice was unclear. In insurance law, any ambiguous language is decided in favor of the policyholder, so coverage would be owed if that argument prevailed. The 1st Circuit didnt find any ambiguity. Ameriprise used language as precise as a GPS tracker: it told the Feldbergs to report any changes to the Highlanders principal place of garaging and to its customary drivers, the opinion says. The appellate panel affirmed the District Court ruling granting summary judgment to Amerprise. It is easier to buy a tiger than adopt a dog in some parts of the US, investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller has said (National Geographic/Muck Media/PA) It is easier to buy a tiger than adopt a dog in some parts of the US, an investigative journalist has said. The murky world of the big cat trade hit the headlines last year with Netflixs wildly popular docuseries Tiger King. It featured eccentric zoo owner Joe Exotic, who kept dozens of animals including tigers and lions at a compound in Oklahoma. Award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller has now pulled the curtain back further on the trade for her National Geographic series Trafficked, which sees her reporting on some of the most dangerous black markets on the planet. Expand Close Bangkok, Thailand- Mariana van Zeller visits a tiger zoo in the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand. (Credit: National Geographic/Muck Media) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Bangkok, Thailand- Mariana van Zeller visits a tiger zoo in the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand. (Credit: National Geographic/Muck Media) Van Zeller said she was stunned to discover how easy it is to buy a tiger in some parts of the US. She said: One of the big reasons we wanted to do this show on tigers is that I knew I wanted to do one of the episodes on wildlife trafficking, but I wasnt sure which animal. And then one day I read a statistic about how there are more tigers in captivity in the United States than there are tigers in the wild in the entire world. And thats the moment that I realised, okay we have to do something, and we have to be able to gain access and try to understand why that is. And, and so yeah while reporting on the show and realising that one of the things that happened is that in some states its actually easier to purchase a tiger than it is to adopt a dog, that is mind blowing. Van Zeller, who spoke with the now-jailed Exotic while researching Trafficked, added: And theres something very wrong about how were operating and the way that the tigers are being treated, not only in the United States but around the world. Expand Close Mexicali, Mexico Mariana van Zeller (L) with a gun runner for the Sinaloa Cartel as he holds an automatic weapon wrapped in paper and plastic. (Credit: National Geographic/Muck Media) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mexicali, Mexico Mariana van Zeller (L) with a gun runner for the Sinaloa Cartel as he holds an automatic weapon wrapped in paper and plastic. (Credit: National Geographic/Muck Media) As well as the wildlife trade, the eight-part Trafficked also explores black markets for drugs, guns and sex workers. Despite the shocking subject matter, van Zeller said she hopes the series shows the humanity of the people at the centre of the black markets who are often motivated by a need to provide for their families. She said: If you actually get a chance to listen to their stories you will realise that in a lot of cases, they become black market operators, smugglers and traffickers because of a lack of opportunity. You then start to realise that theyre a lot more like us than wed like to admit they too are mothers and fathers and they too have dreams, goals, and aspirations. And I think thats the uncomfortable truth sometimes. Trafficked is new and exclusive to National Geographic, Mondays at 9pm from January 18. CSE: VYGR OTCQB: VYGVF Borse Frankfurt: UCD2 NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Voyager Digital Ltd. ("Voyager" or the "Company") (CSE: VYGR) (OTCQB: VYGVF) (FRA: UCD2), a publicly-traded, licensed crypto-asset broker that provides investors with a turnkey solution to trade crypto assets, today announced that Assets Under Management (AUM) crossed USD$500 million this morning. As of January 15, 2021, Voyager's AUM currently stands at approximately USD$485 million. "The significant growth in our assets in such a short time frame shows the power of the Voyager model," said Steve Ehrlich, Co-founder and CEO of Voyager. "Voyager's AUM continues to grow exponentially, as well as the growth of daily net deposits and new accounts on the platform." For more information on Voyager Digital, please visit https://www.investvoyager.com . The Voyager app is available for Android and iPhone . About Voyager Digital Ltd. Voyager Digital Ltd. is a crypto-asset broker that provides retail and institutional investors with a turnkey solution to trade crypto assets. Voyager offers customers best execution and safe custody on a wide choice of popular crypto-assets. Voyager was founded by established Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who teamed to bring a better, more transparent and cost-efficient alternative for trading crypto-assets to the marketplace. Please visit us at https://www.investvoyager.com for more information and to review the latest Corporate Presentation. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No securities regulatory authority has either approved or disapproved of the contents of this press release. Certain information in this press release, including, but not limited to, statements regarding future growth and performance of the business, momentum in the businesses, future adoption of digital assets and the Company's anticipated results may constitute forward looking information (collectively, forward-looking statements), which can be identified by the use of terms such as "may," "will," "should," "expect," "anticipate," "project," "estimate," "intend," "continue" or "believe" (or the negatives) or other similar variations. Because of various risks and uncertainties, including those referenced below, actual events or results may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in such forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements are subject to the risk that the global economy, industry or the Company's businesses and investments do not perform as anticipated, that revenue or expenses estimates may not be met or may be materially less or more than those anticipated, that trading momentum does not continue or the demand for trading solutions declines, customer acquisition does not increase as planned, product and international expansion do not occur as planned and those other risks contained in the Company's public filings, including in its Management Discussion and Analysis and its Annual Information Form (AIF). Factors that could cause actual results of the Company and its businesses to differ materially from those described in such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, a decline in the digital asset market or general economic conditions; the failure or delay in the adoption of digital assets and the blockchain ecosystem by institutions; a delay or failure in developing infrastructure for the trading businesses or achieving mandates and gaining traction; failure to grow assets under management, an adverse development with respect to an issuer or party to the transaction or failure to obtain a required regulatory approval. In connection with the forward-looking statements contained in this press release, the Company has made assumptions that no significant events occur outside of the Company's normal course of business and that current trends in respect of digital assets continue. Forward-looking statements, past and present performance and trends are not guarantees of future performance, accordingly, you should not put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, past performance or current trends. Information identifying assumptions, risks and uncertainties relating to the Company are contained in its filings with the Canadian securities regulators available at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements in this press release are applicable only as of the date of this release or as of the date specified in the relevant forward-looking statement and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after that date or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Readers are cautioned that past performance is not indicative of future performance and current trends in the business and demand for digital assets may not continue and readers should not put undue reliance on past performance and current trends. All figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. SOURCE Voyager Digital (Canada) Ltd. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Paying tributes to Tamil poet and philosopher Thiruvalluvar, Prime Minister said on Friday that his ideals have positively impacted people across generations and urged youngsters to read the Kural. Thiruvalluvar's book, the Kural, is a collection of poems that offer aphoristic wisdom on a variety of issues. "I bow to the venerable Thiruvalluvar on Thiruvalluvar Day. His thoughts and works reflect the immense knowledge as well as wisdom he was blessed with. People across generations have been positively impacted by his ideals. I urge more youngsters across India to read the Kural," Modi tweeted. Thiruvalluvar Day is observed in Tamil Nadu to commemorate the cultural icon. (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.) Survivor of the Chinese Gulag describes Gulbahar Haitiwajis ordeal during a trip to Xinjiang from her home in France. Gulbahar Haitiwaji pictured (2nd from L) with her husband and daughters at her daughter Gulhumars wedding in Paris, in an undated photo. A France-based Uyghur womans trip back to Xinjiang to sign retirement papers in late 2016 turned into a 32-month ordeal of cold-iron shackles, interrogation and brainwashing sessions in one of the northwestern Chinese regions notorious internment camps, detained by communist authorities as an alleged terrorist. In her new book Rescapee du Goulag Chinois (Survivor of the Chinese Gulag), Gulbahar Haitiwajidetails her experience from her extralegal incarceration, wretched food, and brutal living conditions from her disappearance in January 2017 to her release and return to France in August 2019. Haitiwaji disappeared in January 2017, around the time authorities began to detain what is believed to be 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of religious extremism in a vast network of internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Born in Ghulja (Yining)the seat of Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture and the XUARs third largest cityin 1966, Haitiwaji relocated to France in 2006, joining her husband who had moved there four years earlier. While her husband and two daughters took French citizenship, Haitiwaji decided to keep her Chinese nationality so that she could return home to see family members and is living in France on renewable 10-year residency permits. In November 2016, she returned to the XUAR for a two-week trip upon the request of her former work unit to sign papers related to her retirement. However, she said that once she returned home, authorities confiscated her passport and on Jan. 29, 2017 locked her in a detention center. They locked me up in the detention center on accusations of having committed the crime of organizing people and disturbing the social order, but Ive never done such a thing, she told RFAs Uyghur Service. Later they showed me a photo of one of my daughters with the [East Turkestan] flag wrapped around her at a protest [against repression in the XUAR] and told me my daughter was a terrorist, she added, using the name preferred by Uyghurs for their homeland. They detained me on accusations that my husband had gone to France and sought political asylum, that hed taken part in [political] organizations, that I was the wife of a terrorist, the mother of a terrorist. Life in internment At some point, Haitiwaji was brought to an internment camp, which Chinese officials have described as centers for vocational training, despite reporting by RFA and other media outlets which shows that detainees are mostly held against their will in cramped and unsanitary conditions, where they are forced to endure inhumane treatment and political indoctrination. Haitiwaji spoke about the conditions and treatment in the camp, in the XUARs prefectural-level city of Karamay (in Chinese, Kelemayi) including the ways she was interrogated, the brainwashing sessions, prohibited from using the Uyghur language, and the presence of cameras throughout the facility. Our clothing was very thin and we had shackles on our anklesit was so cold. The lights were on 24/7 in both the detention camps and the cells Our food was also horrible, she said. Physically speaking, my knees and back started to ache. My ability to remember things deteriorated, too. I suffered through it and, though there were shackles on my feet, would walk back and forth. I would stretch my muscles. Ive always loved swimming and exercise, so I didnt stay still. Even when they chained me to a bed for 20 days, I would stand up and run in place, stretch my muscles out. While in the camp, Haitiwaji said she received shots from the camp staff on two separate occasions, a detail in line with accounts given by other survivors, who have in some cases described more frequent and regular series of shots or blood withdrawals. The authorities told her and her cellmates that the shots were to prevent the flu, but following the treatment, many of the younger women detained there stopped menstruating, she said. Eventually, Haitiwaji was found innocent of the charges against her and on Aug. 21, 2019, she was able to return to France. Documenting her experience Upon her arrival, Haitiwaji spent a period focusing on her physical and mental health. She told RFA that she has given anonymous testimony about her ordeal to French government agencies as well as to human rights organizations in Europe and throughout the world. Ultimately, she decided that writing a book about her experiences in the camp would be the best way for her to go public with her story and she began the work in early 2020. Her book is co-authored by French journalist Rozenn Morgat and was published in French on Jan. 13. Difficult days have befallen us. We cant cry and complain and sit around allowing ourselves to be defeated just because these days have befallen us. Thats of no use; ultimately, we would be the ones to suffer from it, she said. I have no choice but to accept the difficult days Ive seen, the reality [of what happened to me]. Haitiwaji said she believes that the real intent of Chinas camps is to eliminate the Uyghurs, and to carry out a cultural genocide against them. In writing this book, I want to tell people about what happened in the camp in Karamay, about the difficult days that came upon me, she said. Ultimately, with my book my hope is that the Chinese government will let up on the pressure its putting on Uyghurs, that it will close the camps. That this book will have an impact and that people around the world will care even more once they hear [my story]. Nury Turkel, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent U.S. federal government body, recently said in a tweet that Haitiwajis experience reveals the reality of #Chinas genocidal policies for #Uyghurs in#Xinjiang. The world must stand together against these atrocities, he added. Reported by Gulchehra Hoja for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan The procurement exercise has been planned for the first quarter of the year.North Macedonian state-owned electric company Elektrani na Severna Makedonija (ESM) will tender another 60 MW of PV capacity in the first quarter of the year. North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev made the announcement on his Facebook account. The tendered project is expected to be built at a cost of around 35 million, Zaev said, without providing further details. He revealed, however, that around 62.5 MW of the three solar plants totaling 110 MW tendered in 2020 are already grid-connected. The three plants are all ... 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. As Connecticut forges ahead with vaccination efforts, the state released a schedule Monday that prioritizes residents based on age, along with those who work in schools. The new schedule has vaccines opening up to those people ages 55 to 64 starting March 1, with further expansions for younger groups continuing through May. The plan is different from what Gov. Ned Lamont said it would be earlier this month when the focus was on essential workers and those with preexisiting conditions. As of March, pre-K and K-12 school staff and teachers, and professional childcare providers are expected to become eligible, Lamont announced. But like most things pandemic-related, navigating the process of getting the shot isnt always easy. This guide is intended to help clarify the process, and will be updated periodically as new groups become eligible. Have a question you want to ask, or still not sure how the process works? Email the author at peter.yankowski@newstimes.com. What is the new schedule based on age? On Monday, the state shared its plans for when certain age groups would be eligible to get a shot. Heres what Connecticut is planning for right now: March 1 People 55 to 64 are eligible March 22 People 45 to 54 are eligible April 12 People 35 to 44 are eligible May 3 People 16 to 34 are eligible How do I get a vaccine? Right now, Connecticut is only offering the vaccine by appointment. If you are eligible to get a vaccine in the state (more on that below), you have three options: Register through the federal vaccine portal, the Vaccine Administration Management System, better known as VAMS. To do that, follow this link to the states vaccine website and complete the instructions to create a VAMS account and book an appointment. You will need your own email address. The states website has guidelines for VAMS in English and Spanish, but users have complained of a lack of multi-lingual support in VAMS itself. Some local health departments and health care providers (Bristol Health, Griffin Health, Nuvance Health and Trinity Health of New England) are also using VAMS, rather than their own system. If you prefer to schedule an appointment over the phone, the state has also set up an assistance line available 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily (including weekends). The number is 877-918-2224. The third option is to register for an appointment directly through a health care provider or pharmacy. Check the list below. Your health care provider may also reach out to you directly to schedule an appointment. Hartford HealthCare: Online, or call 860-827-7690; or toll-free at 833-943-5721. Yale New Haven Health: Online. Stamford Health: Online, or call 203-276-7300 (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.). Middlesex Health (patients can select MyChart or VAMS): Online, or call 860-358-7050 (Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.) The states website now also has a searchable map where users can look for a clinic that provides the vaccine nearby. Many of those clinics require an appointment to be scheduled through VAMS. Can I go to my pharmacy and get the shot? It depends, and there are two important caveats. Some CVS, Walgreens and Walmart locations around the state are offering the vaccine, but not everywhere. And like getting the vaccine anywhere else, youll need an appointment. Here are the links to sign up at one of those locations: CVS Walgreens Walmart How do I know if Im eligible? People covered under Phase 1A front-line medical workers, residents and staff of longterm care facilities (nursing homes, for example), and medical first responders have now been getting the vaccine for months. The second group is known as Phase 1B. Right now, only two tiers of Phase 1B are able to get the vaccine: people 75 and older, and as of Feb. 11, those 65 and older. State officials rolled out a timeline for different age groups eligibility and included information on an expansion to teachers and childcare workers, shifting from a focus on essential workers and those with certain preexisting medical conditions. Im an essential worker. Can I get the vaccine in Connecticut? No. Unless you are eligible under another criteria (65 or older for those not living or working in a congregate setting or nursing home), youre not eligible to receive the vaccine yet. The governor previously indicated essential workers would be among those who get the vaccine next. But on Monday, the state announced a plan for vaccinations grouped by residents ages. The state also said that teachers and childcare workers would soon be able to get inoculated. Im not over 65, but I have a medical condition. Can I get the vaccine? No. Unless you are 65 or older, those with underlying medical conditions are eligible. I have a medical condition and Im not eligible. When can I get it? Lamont previously stated that front-line essential workers, and people of any age with underlying medical conditions, would be eligible next. On Feb. 18, Lamont said a full list of the conditions that would make someone eligible for the vaccine would be announced Monday, Feb. 22. Instead, the state shared a timeline Monday for when certain age groups would be able to get vaccinated. What if I live in another state but work in Connecticut? Can I get the shot here? Non-Connecticut residents who work here can get vaccinated in the Nutmeg State when their population group is eligible. So if youre a health care worker, a medical first responder, or 65 or older and work or live in Connecticut, you can get the vaccine here. Those who only have their primary doctor in Connecticut, and do not live or work here, are being told to get the vaccine in the state where they live. [January 15, 2021] Aruba ClearPass Security Portfolio Receives Coveted Cyber Catalyst? Designation Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today announced that its ClearPass family of identity-based access control security solutions has been recognized for its ability to reduce risk by insurers in the Cyber CatalystSM program created by Marsh, a global leader in insurance broking and risk management. Cyber Catalyst by MarshSM is a cybersecurity evaluation program in which participating insurers independently evaluate cybersecurity products and solutions to identify those that they believe have the ability to reduce cyber risk. Developed with the goal of helping organizations make informed decisions about cybersecurity products, the Cyber Catalyst program enables customers that adopt designated technologies to be considered for enhanced terms and conditions on cyber insurance policies from participating insurers. Aruba ClearPass joins Aruba Policy Enforcement Firewall (PEF), which received the designation in 2019, marking the second time in a row that Aruba security solutions have been recognized. Now, with both ClearPass and PEF having received the Cyber Catalyst designation, customers have an integrated identity-based network access control solution that is the foundation for both Zero Trust and Security Access Service Edge (SASE) frameworks. According to the Cyber Catalyst 2020 Risk Outlook report published by Marsh, the global cost of cybercrime is estimated at $1 trillion, with cybersecurity spending forecast to reach $230 billion in 2025.1 With all of this at stake and thousands of products flooding the cybersecurity marketplace, organizations are looking for clarity and guidance from a reliable source that understands risk and the constantly-morphing risk landscape. Since insurers are often called upon to respond to costly, catastrophic cyber events, they possess valuableinsight into how best to protect an organization's assets. Products that receive the Cyber Catalyst designation undergo a rigorous, multi-stage evaluation process in which each of the participating insurers assess the cybersecurity solutions' ability to reduce cyber risk, while meeting key practical considerations such as ease of deployment and ongoing management requirements. A majority voted to designate Aruba ClearPass as a Cyber Catalyst solution for its ability to provide full-spectrum visibility, combined with role- and device-based secure network access control for IoT, BYOD, corporate devices, as well as employees, contractors and guests. Whether deployed alone or used in conjunction with Aruba PEF, ClearPass helps customers adopt a Zero Trust posture to mitigate the risks associated with the explosive growth in attacks targeting IoT devices and users connecting to the network. This approach can also support organizations who are looking to implement a SASE approach to protecting its operations. To further reduce security complexity, while strengthening enforcement functions, ClearPass integrates with an ecosystem of 150+ third-party solutions across a broad range of security capabilities. "Aruba's security-centric and Edge-focused heritage enables them to see the world through a different lens when compared with the view of other networking companies," said Zeus Kerravala (News - Alert) , principal analyst at ZK Research. "It's this unique, edge-to-cloud perspective that enables Aruba to consistently develop proven, built-in security solutions that are well-suited for the needs of the modern enterprise, especially with the growing prevalence of IoT and remote working, which can result in an expanded and rapidly changing threat landscape." "The Cyber Catalyst designation signals that leading insurers believe Aruba ClearPass can help reduce cyber risk, and strongly merits consideration by organizations who seek solutions that yield meaningful improvements in cyber risk outcomes," said Tom Reagan, US Cyber Practice leader at Marsh. "This class of Cyber Catalyst solutions are designed to address the cyber risks that organizations face today and, together with the 2019 designees, comprise a roster of more than 30 cybersecurity products insurers believe can be highly effective against cyber threats." For more information on Aruba security solutions, please visit www.arubanetworks.com/products/security/ Additional resources Blog: Insurance Industry Recognizes Key Components of Aruba Security Capabilities for Demonstrably Reducing Risk About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is the global leader in secure, intelligent edge-to-cloud networking solutions that use AI to automate the network, while harnessing data to drive powerful business outcomes. With Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) and as-a-service options, Aruba takes a cloud-native approach to helping customers meet their connectivity, security, and financial requirements across campus, branch, data center, and remote worker environments, covering all aspects of wired, wireless LAN, and wide area networking (WAN). To learn more, visit Aruba at www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates, follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products, visit the Airheads Community at community.arubanetworks.com. 1 Cyber Catalyst 2020 Risk Outlook. (2020). Marsh. https://www.marsh.com/content/dam/marsh/Documents/PDF/US-en/cyber-catalyst-risk-outlook.pdf View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005032/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 00:10:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Security forces in Ethiopia's Oromia regional state have killed or arrested more than 1,100 Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) rebels, an Ethiopian official said on Friday. Ararsa Merdasa, commissioner of the Oromia Police Commission, said more than 1,100 OLA rebels have been arrested or killed during security operations in recent weeks across the region. Merdasa further said disciplinary measures have been taken on more than 1000 police officers suspected of forming secret ties to OLA. OLA is a breakaway faction of an ex-rebel group Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). The OLF is an opposition political party, claiming to fight for the rights of ethnic Oromos who make up about 35 percent of Ethiopia's 110 million plus population. The OLF was designated as a terrorist group by the Ethiopian parliament in 2011. OLF was removed from the terror list in July 2018 to help facilitate negotiations and foster reconciliation. Enditem President-elect Joe Biden will arrive at the White House next week with the smallest military presence in Afghanistan in nearly two decades. The Pentagon confirmed Friday that it had hit President Donald Trump's Jan. 15 deadline to reduce the number of troops there. The drawdown appears to be happening despite a provision in the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, enacted after a last-minute congressional override of the president's veto, legally restricting the use of defense funds for troop reductions in Afghanistan. "U.S. force levels in Afghanistan remain on trajectory to reach 2,500 by January 15, 2021," Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday. In a statement, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller confirmed Friday that forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan had reached 2,500, in accordance with Trumps mandate. With a force of 2,500, commanders have what they need to keep America, our people and our interests safe, Miller said in that statement. Read Next: Retired SEAL Reportedly Questioned by FBI After Admitting to Riot Participation in Video Under section 1215, the NDAA stipulated conditions, including submission of a report to appropriate congressional committees detailing the drawdown's national security risks and impacts, before the DoD can use any funds appropriated this fiscal year to reduce armed forces deployed to Afghanistan below 4,000 (the number deployed as of the date of the legislation's enactment), and then again before going below 2,000 troops. Miller announced in November that the U.S. would draw down forces in Afghanistan from around 4,500 to 2,500 by Jan. 15. Officials have not provided regular updates on how many troops have departed since the announcement, but a senior DoD official who declined to be named said there were around 3,000 troops in the region as of Tuesday. A House Armed Services Committee aide speaking on background confirmed the Pentagon's continuing drawdown effort despite the legislation prohibiting it. The aide said the committee has requested additional information, and had queried about rumors of a national security waiver. The NDAA allows for waiving the reporting conditions, provided the president establishes that a drawdown delay is not in the country's national security interests. One policy expert suggested that the drawdown leaves remaining personnel more vulnerable to attack, adding that Congress' inability to get the bill into law quickly enough is why the reduction could not be halted in time. "My guess is that this provision of the law is being ignored by the Pentagon. Not because the Pentagon is uninterested in Congress' opinions or considers congressional legislation not to be binding, but because this kind of an issue is constitutionally ambiguous," Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Tuesday, referring to the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief. "And also, the decision from Congress came very, very late." O'Hanlon said that a troop presence of 2,500 is "too small" for the current mission, calling Trump's decision "impulsive." "[The drawdown] probably leaves us with very skeletal staff, maybe insufficient self-protection capability at some bases, or perhaps it's going to require us to close a base in a part of the country where we should still want to remain. So, I don't like it. I think it's a bad policy, and I hope Biden thinks about reversing at least part of the cuts," he said. While O'Hanlon believes a larger U.S. presence is needed in the region, retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, a military expert at think tank Defense Priorities, who served two tours in Afghanistan, said, "The idea that any number of troops can prevent anything or that these troops right now are accomplishing some national security objective is just absolutely a myth." Davis said he finds it troubling that Congress "won't do their constitutionally mandated job of being the only branch of government that will authorize military actions." Instead, it has "objected every time" the Trump administration tried to reduce troops in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan, he said. "[This time], they went as far as to put it in the NDAA, which is the furthest they have gone." He added that the decision for the latest reduction was "made well in advance of the NDAA passing, so I don't think it's retroactive. He said he believes "there certainly won't be any repercussions." Lawmakers from both parties were displeased by the sudden announcement Nov. 17 of the troop reduction in Afghanistan, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., comparing it to the "humiliation" of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. For some in favor of the drawdown, it is about keeping up the American end of the February 2019 U.S.-Taliban agreement, which states that all American forces will leave Afghanistan by May 2021, provided the Taliban upholds its end of the deal. Miller said that although DoD continues preparation to meet the May deadline, it must remain conditions based. According to the deal the U.S. struck with the Taliban in February 2019, moving forward, while the Department continues with planning capable of further reducing U.S. troop levels to zero by May of 2021, he said in his statement, any such future drawdowns remain conditions-based. Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in a Dec. 10, 2020, interview that it doesn't concern the group whether the troops in the region are reduced by Jan. 15, only that the U.S. makes good on the May deadline. "It is not important what they do until January," Mujahid said. "No matter if they reduce or increase troops now, as long as they go according to the agreement they have with us." -- Aishwarya Airy can be reached at airyreports@gmail.com. Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Related: In First, NATO Forces Now Outnumber US Troops in Afghanistan A young girl who fled with her mum to escape violence in Central America after arriving in Tapachula, Mexico. UNHCR/Arturo Almenar UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, applauds the entry into force of important new measures in Mexico to protect the rights of child refugees and asylum-seekers, including the end of immigration detention for boys and girls. Under the reforms, no children, either accompanied or unaccompanied, are to be held in immigration detention centres. Rather, they are to be referred to alternative accommodation. UNHCR is working with relevant government agencies, UN sister agencies and civil society organizations to ensure that referral mechanisms and adequate shelter capacity is in place. Mexico is making a decisive step to end immigration detention for children and we are encouraged by this promising development, said UNHCRs Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs. Triggs remarks came as part of an online discussion on Children and the Global Compact on Refugees held January 13. UNHCR advocates globally for an end to immigration detention of refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant children. Mexicos Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sanchez Cordero, who participated on the panel, said that the measures to give priority to the best interests of children were part of the commitments made by the government of Mexico at the Global Refugee Forum, which took place in December 2019. No child, accompanied or unaccompanied, is now present at our immigration facilities, she declared. The reforms approved in November apply to all children in migration contexts, whether they are accompanied or not. They also reinforce determination of the best interest of the child in migration procedures and make them eligible for temporary humanitarian visas to prevent deportation or return until their best interests can be determined, which facilitates access to international protection and the asylum system. Mexico has become an increasingly important country of asylum in the past five years, with more than 70,000 asylum claims in 2019. Although claims dropped in 2020 as a result of mobility restrictions in neighbouring Central American countries due to COVID-19, asylum applications for December 2020 were at an all-time high. One out of five asylum-seekers in Mexico in 2020 were children. Throughout the pandemic, Mexico has continued to register new asylum claims from people fleeing violence and persecution, helping them find safety. UNHCR reiterates its commitment to support the government of Mexico in implementing the reforms related to child refugees and asylum-seekers and highlight the importance of allocating the financial, human and technical resources to ensure their effective application. For more information: At a time when the government plans to roll out a massive infrastructure project push in its Budget for FY22, to know that Gajendra Haldea, one of Indias most respected names in the sector, is no more, brings back memories. Haldea, who passed away on January 15 at the age of 71, is survived by his wife. It can be safely said that more than a generation of Indias administrators have picked up their toolkit to administer infrastructure projects from this Rajasthan-cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer. In an administrative structure that punishes rather than ... Pennsylvania residents 65 and older will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations sooner than expected. Were working on ... how were going to do that and the conversations are going on now, Gov. Tom Wolf said during an online news conference Thursday. We should have something specific early next week. Based on previous federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, the states plan calls for vaccinations of people 75 and older and many essential workers once vaccinations of frontline health care workers and residents and staff of nursing homes are complete. Critics such as state Rep. Aaron Kaufer, R-120, Kingston, railed against making people 65 to 74 years old wait until the third phase of vaccinations when the state Department of Health announced an amended vaccination plan last Friday. That would likely mean waiting weeks longer. Now, vaccinations of anyone 65 and older is likely to happen sooner, though exactly how soon remains unknown. On Tuesday, the CDC urged states to begin vaccinating anyone 65 or older and people younger than 65 with medical conditions that make them more susceptible to serious harm from COVID-19. Were telling states today that they should open vaccinations to all of their most vulnerable people. That is the most effective way to save lives now, said Alex Azar, Health and Human Services secretary, at a press briefing Tuesday, Healthline.com reported. The Trump administration also wants states to expand vaccination sites to to include community centers, pharmacies, and mega-sites such as convention centers and arenas, Healthline.com reported. Perhaps as a prelude to expanded vaccination, Wolf issued a temporary waiver Thursday that allows pharmacists to order and and administer COVID-19 vaccines without a doctors order once vaccines become widely available to the public. Pharmacists certified to vaccinate already can, but usually enter into agreements with doctors to get reimbursed for flu shots and other vaccinations. Many pharmacies dont have arrangements with doctors and even the ones that do havent had time to amend the arrangements to include COVID-19 vaccination, according to the state Department of Health. The waiver allows pharmacists to order and inject the COVID-19 vaccine without an agreement, the department said. Earlier in the day, new state figures showed the seven-county Northeast Pennsylvania region just suffered its highest two-day COVID-19 death count since April. The latest Department of Health data show 21 deaths in the last day in the seven-county region and 20 a day earlier. The 41 deaths rank third over a two-day period behind 52 on April 21 and 22 and 45 on April 28 and 29. Luzerne County led the way over the last two days with 16 deaths. Lackawanna County ranked second with nine. Luzerne also topped the 20,000 mark in cases. In all, the region that also includes Monroe, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties has seen 1,190 deaths. They are among 18,742 statewide. That total rose by 313, the second day in a row with more than 300 deaths and third this month. Thats the first time since the pandemic began that the Department of Health reported more than 300 deaths on three days in a month. December ended with two consecutive days with more than 300 deaths. Statewide, the department reported another 7,175 cases, raising the total to 748,564. The new cases include 571 in the region, which has seen 44,735 total. Locally: Lackawanna added 166 cases for 10,793 total, including 1,381 probable. Three new deaths raised the county total to 297. Luzerne added 238 cases for 20,151 total, including 1,332 probable. Nine new deaths raised the county total to 522. Monroe added 77 cases for 7,430 total, including 165 probable. Five new deaths raised the county total to 226. Pike added 19 cases for 1,798 total, including 136 probable, One new death raised the county total to 38. Susquehanna also added 19 cases for 1,278 total, including 116 probable, and remained at 42 deaths. Wayne added 41 cases for 2,349 total, including 196 probable. Three new deaths raised the county total to 33. Wyoming added 11 cases for 936 total, including 157 probable, and remained at 32 deaths. COLLINSVILLE By the end of Thursday, an estimated 500 healthcare workers were expected to have received their first shot of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at Collinsvilles Gateway Convention Center. The center will be used as a vaccine distribution center on Thursdays for at least the next few weeks, according to Madison County Health Department Director Toni Corona. At about noon, she said things were pretty smooth on Thursday. Todays clinic is set up only for Phase 1A; those are healthcare workers, she added. Ive said in the past we will be in Phase 1A (for some time). We still have plenty of healthcare workers we have to get vaccine to. It could very likely be a couple of weeks. Long-term care residents are also part of Phase 1A, but are being vaccinated through a different program run by the state. Thursdays vaccinations were by appointment only, with more than 500 registered. After checking in, participants work their way through the process, primarily in the centers main exhibition hall, which gives them a lot of space to spread out. We have a lot of room here, Corona said. This has been a fantastic partnership with the city of Collinsville (owners of the convention center). She said the health department will continue to operate a vaccination clinic at the center each Thursday for the next period of months but is also looking at other locations. It will be a planned, coordinated approach, Corona added. The health department had already completed some outdoor drive-through vaccination clinics. One of the things they have definitely learned is outdoor vaccinations in the winter are problematic. Corona said they plan to continue improvements with each new clinic. Well do a hot-wash after this is over tonight, she said. Well talk about what went well, what we can do better, and what we can improve on for the next time. This is a great opportunity for use to run through the operation and make it a well-oiled machine so that, as vaccine continues to become more available, we can efficiently ramp it up. Much of the timetable depends on availability of vaccine. The Illinois Department of Public Health is now reporting coronavirus vaccination data on its website. It is important to note that vaccine distribution figures are reported in real time, while vaccine administration figures are reported with as much as a 72-hour lag. Throughout the pandemic, we have used data to guide our decisions and actions and we will continue to do so for vaccine administration, said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. Illinois is a very diverse state, geographically and in the make-up of its population. It is important to track where we are seeing both high and low vaccination rates. These data will help us understand what actions we can take to end this pandemic as quickly as possible. Data on the IDPH website include the number of doses administered, the vaccination rate per population, and what percent of the population is fully vaccinated. These data are broken down by county. Additionally, the website includes information on the COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index, also broken down by county. The CCVI looks at indicators such as socioeconomic status, household composition, type of housing and transportation, epidemiological facts, as well as access to health care. Additional data and means to track vaccination rates will be added as available. Vaccination data can be found on the IDPH website at www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/vaccinedata. According to the site, Illinois has received almost a million doses of vaccine, and about half has been distributed. In Madison County, almost 6,000 doses have been administered, and about 1,200 people are fully vaccinated, according to officials. Corona said people still need to wear masks, maintain social distances and take all the other necessary precautions. Were feeling a sense of relief and anxiousness in the sense that the vaccine is here and becoming available, she said. But its too soon for people to let their guard down. Madison County residents interested in the COVID-19 vaccine should visit https://loom.ly/1TalFxQ and complete the survey. For more information, call 618-692-8954. Xiaomi has responded to the US ban that was imposed earlier today. The Chinese smartphone giant has refuted the claims of being affiliated with the Chinese military, and said it is not a Communist Chinese Military Company. Earlier in the day, Xiaomis Hong Kong-listed shares fell nearly 11 percent at the start of trading after the US blacklisted the smartphone maker barring investors from investing in its shares. The US Department of Defense (DOD) added nine companies to its list of Chinese companies with military links, including Xiaomi and plane manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (Comac). The smartphone-maker's shares had dropped 10.6 percent after the development. Hours after the ban, Xiaomi has denied any association with the Chinese military. The Company has been in compliance with law and operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses. The Company reiterates that it provides products and services for civilian and commercial use, a Xiaomi spokesperson said. The Company confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a Communist Chinese Military Company defined under the NDAA. The Company will take appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the Company and its shareholders, he added. The Company is reviewing the potential consequences of the ban at the moment. Until the ban is lifted, Xiaomi will have to comply with an executive order passed by US President Donald Trump in November 2020, which restricts US investors from buying shares or related securities of any companies on the DOD's list. January is on pace to become Pennsylvanias deadliest month of the pandemic, with more than 2,700 deaths recorded in the months first 14 days, according to a new Inquirer analysis of the state health data a grim counterpoint to the sense of hope raised by the arrival of the coronavirus vaccine. It is a continuation of a surge that has seen more than 8,300 Pennsylvanians reported dead since Dec. 1, revealing the true toll of the fall-winter surge of infections that sent case counts skyrocketing. The last month and a half has accounted for almost half of all of Pennsylvanias 18,742 coronavirus fatalities since March. And both Pennsylvania and New Jersey surpassed 18,000 confirmed deaths this week, as Pennsylvania caught up to its once-harder-hit neighbor. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday called the loss almost unfathomable. We mourn the loss of every one of those lives, Murphy said, noting the state has also counted nearly 2,100 probable coronavirus deaths. For anyone whos still left denying that this is real, I dont think theres anything else we can say to try to convince you of reality. With the case surge not over yet, the death toll will keep growing; Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted Thursday that intensive care units in the state were filling up because of COVID-19, and New Jersey officials warned this week that the states hospitals were preparing for a new influx of virus patients. Philadelphia, its Pennsylvania suburbs, and South Jersey have all experienced surges in the death toll since the end of November, the Inquirer data analysis showed. New Jersey was averaging 10 deaths a day on Nov. 1; by Wednesday, that seven-day average had reached 92 deaths a day. Over the same span, Pennsylvanias average has gone from 22 to 223 deaths a day. On Thursday, the Keystone State reported 7,175 newly confirmed cases and 313 deaths; New Jersey reported 5,967 cases and 94 deaths. We continue to lose Pennsylvanians each day to this virus, and we need to protect our friends, family, loved ones and neighbors, said Maggi Barton, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and do all we can to limit the spread of COVID-19. Vaccine update Pennsylvania will update its vaccination plan next week to align with new federal guidance from outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Gov. Tom Wolf said. He promised more specifics as early as this weekend. If the state follows the guidance, people 65 and older and people with high-risk medical conditions will be in the next group to get vaccinated. The state has not yet set a date for when that group will become eligible and has asked residents to wait for more information. This is a work in progress, Wolf said. We will do what we can to make sure were getting this out as fairly and quickly as we can. Philadelphia, which is administering the vaccine independently from the state, will not change its guidelines to match the federal governments, the health department said Thursday. Azars announcement on Tuesday, barely a week before President-elect Joe Biden takes, expanded who was eligible in the next phase but injected confusion and upended plans that states had spent weeks making. Biden was set to unveil a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan Thursday evening aimed at accelerating the vaccine rollout and addressing other economic and health-care issues caused by the pandemic. Were really not paying too much attention to what Secretary Azar said this week because hes a lame duck going out the door any day, Caroline Johnson, Philadelphias deputy health commissioner, said in an interview. We are interested in Bidens plan, particularly about the releases of vaccine in priority groups. Unless the city makes changes, the next group of Philadelphia residents eligible for the vaccine will include people 75 and older, anyone with high-risk medical conditions, and essential workers, as announced by the city earlier this week. People 65 to 74 will be in the following round. READ MORE: Some Philly students will likely return to in-person learning in February, superintendent says The Philadelphia School District announced its students in second grade and younger will likely return to in-person learning for two days a week sometime in February, and Montgomery County said weekly rapid antigen tests will be available for teachers and high-risk students through April. The county will also test any children or staff who come down with symptoms of illness during the school day. The testing began this week at schools operating in person in the Lower Merion and North Penn districts, and later this month it will expand to additional public schools, County Commissioners Chair Val Arkoosh announced Wednesday. A similar program will start later this month at private and parochial schools. Also Thursday, Wolf joined Democratic lawmakers in urging the Republicans who control the legislature to allocate $145 million to hard-hit commonwealth businesses. Wolf said he initiated the transfer just before Christmas, but the General Assembly has yet to authorize turning the money into grants for restaurants, bars, and other establishments. All of us have been suffering greatly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the governor said, and that includes businesses through no fault of their own. Relief, but by appointment only New Jerseyans 65 and older or with high-risk medical conditions became eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, with some immediately making appointments and getting their shots at the states vaccination sites. At a site in Camden County College, there was joy, excitement, and relief among people getting their vaccines. READ MORE: Can I get the COVID-19 vaccine in New Jersey in phase 1B? Heres what you need to know Anyone who is eligible for the vaccine that also includes health-care workers, nursing home residents, and first responders can make an appointment by directly contacting one of the states vaccination sites. The state is using an appointment-only system in order to allocate only as many slots as doses are available and to avoid people waiting in long lines for hours. Residents without internet access can contact vaccination sites directly by phone or call their local pharmacy for guidance. Eventually, residents will be able to get the shots from their regular doctors, but so far, the state has focused its distribution of doses on pharmacies and larger sites that can accommodate more people per day. Documentation of age or medical conditions is not required. State health officials have said they are trusting people to abide by the honor system. People who work in health-care fields and as first responders in New Jersey can be vaccinated there if they dont live there, he said. Residents can also use any location they choose, but they are asked to return to that same place for their second doses. Eventually, this distribution network will grow dramatically, Murphy told Foxs Good Day Philadelphia on Thursday. More than 1.2 million people have registered to get the vaccine, and just under 290,000 people have received the vaccine so far. But with an additional 4.5 million people now eligible for the vaccine, Murphy said the state still needs a lot more doses. Were encouraged by what were hearing, both by the outgoing Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration, he said. Staff writers Jason Laughlin, Erin McCarthy, Laura McCrystal, Kristen A. Graham, and Frank Kummer contributed to this article, along with graphics editor John Duchneskie. Tesco said a strong UK sales performance was sustained into the third quarter with like-for-like growth of 6.7% Tesco has delivered a record Christmas across all formats and channels and expects to deliver full-year retail operating profit in line with 2019/20, excluding the repayment of business rates relief despite forecasts for annual Covid-19-related costs to hit GBP810m (US$1.1bn). In its third-quarter and Christmas trading statement, the UK supermarket retailer said a strong UK sales performance was sustained into the third quarter with like-for-like growth of 6.7%. This accelerated to 8.1% at Christmas, while for the 19-weeks overall, domestic like-for-like sales were up by 7.2%. The company booked an 8.5% total sales rise in constant rates for its UK operations for the 13 weeks to 28 November, which narrowed slightly to 8.4% for the six weeks of Christmas trading. Overall, total UK sales were up 8.5% for the combined 19-weeks. Tesco said its performance was market-leading for every week of the Christmas period. The retailer has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the demand for food and other essential items during the Covid-19 pandemic, with food, in particular, boosting its third-quarter and festive trading growth. Group total sales, meanwhile, were up 7.1% for the third quarter, and up by 6.8% for holiday trading. Like-for-like group sales rose 5.7% and 5.4%, respectively. For the 19 weeks including both the third-quarter and the festive period, Tesco booked a 7% increase in group total sales and a 5.6% hike in group like-for-like sales. "Our focus on looking after our customers, including delivering record availability, robust safety measures, and great value has enabled us to maintain strong momentum through the Christmas period, outperforming the market every week," said chief executive, Ken Murphy. "We delivered a record Christmas across all of our formats and channels." Looking ahead, Tesco said the increasing severity of the pandemic since it last updated the market in October means it now expects incremental costs, such as increased colleague absence, to total GBP810m for the full year. This is up GBP85m from its previous estimate. It added, however: "The strong momentum in the business and the benefits of sustained elevated sales are enabling us to offset the additional Covid-19 costs we are now expecting. "As a result, our guidance for the 2020/21 financial year is unchanged: we remain confident that retail operating profit is likely to be at least at the same level as in 2019/20, excluding the repayment of business rates relief." 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. NORTHAMPTON Newspapers of New England announced Friday that it has named Shawn Palmer as publisher of its Western Massachusetts publications: the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Greenfield Recorder, Athol Daily News, Amherst Bulletin and the Valley Advocate. I am incredibly honored to assume the leadership of these historic American daily newspapers, Palmer, 53, said in a statement published Friday afternoon on the Gazettes website. For more than 200 years, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Greenfield Recorder and, more recently, the Athol Daily News, have been vital institutions in the Pioneer Valley. Palmer comes to the newspapers from Connecticut, where he worked most recently as chief revenue officer for The Day in New London. Palmer also served as publisher of The News-Times in Danbury, Connecticut, and worked as a sales representative and oversaw revenue and digital advertising. He replaces Michael Moses, who became the publisher and chief revenue officer of NNEs Massachusetts operations in May 2019. Moses told the Gazette that after 30 years in the newspaper business he felt it was time to move on. At the end of December, the Gazette laid off Editor-in-Chief Brooke Hauser. She was one of eight employees who were either laid off or took voluntary buyouts in the latest round of cost-cutting brought on by advertising declines exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Recorder Editor Joan Livingston is now editor-in-chief of all the companys Pioneer Valley publications. In July, the Gazettes owners put its building on Conz Street in Northampton on the real estate market after closing its printing operation and contracting the work to a commercial printer in Auburn. That move ended 50 jobs at the Gazette. In December 2019, the Gazette, Recorder and Daily News laid off eight workers and closed the Athol office. 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. In an unusual move Pakistan has moved to seize the assets of former Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour. This is part of its effort to keep itself off the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) blacklist. Currently only Iran and North Korea are on the blacklist and that means they have no access to the international banking system and are unable to obtain loans or sell bonds on international markets. FATF has been around since 2000 and its founding members were major industrial nations that, between them, are the international banking system. The gray list and blacklist were established as sanctions for nations found to be tolerating criminal organizations, including Islamic terrorists, using their financial systems to finance illegal activities. Banned activities were money laundering and raising money for criminal activities. Over the last two decades the existence of FATF has played an increasingly effective role in crippling illegal banking activities. Pakistan was a special case because they had powerful allies, like China, who provided some protection from the blacklist, especially in the UN. China and Russia oppose Islamic terrorism, but they both valued Pakistan as a customer for weapons and other exports. Despite that protection the FATF is closing in. Pakistan keeps making just enough progress to keep themselves off the FATF black list. Pakistan was on the gray list from 2012 to 2015, which was bad for businesses that import or export or need to get foreign loans or sell bonds. After 2015 Pakistan was still on the FATF list but not designated as dangerous. Being on the gray portion of the list makes it more expensive to do business and is very bad for the reputation of Pakistan and Pakistanis. The situation is worse this time because decades of corruption and government mismanagement have left Pakistan unable to raise enough money for its government budget. This threatens the Pakistani military, which has always taken a disproportionate portion of the budget and does not want to reduce its spending. Being on the FATF blacklist would be a financial and economic crisis for Pakistan. Since China is the major foreign investor in Pakistan, and Pakistan is the largest customer for Chinese weapons, China has much at stake here. Despite that, there is only so much China can do to keep Pakistan off the black list. China played a major role in keeping Pakistan off the gray list in early 2018 but the odds were against Pakistan staying off the list because it has long been an open secret that Pakistani support for its own pet Islamic terrorists included making it easier for Islamic terrorists in general to do business in Pakistan. The United States gathered evidence to keep Pakistan on the FATF gray list (along with Ethiopia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Vanuatu and Tunisia) and eventually the black list. FATF meets every three months to consider new evidence to get nations on, or off, the lists. The U.S. now considers Pakistan a problem in the war against terrorism and not a reliable partner. India and Afghanistan share that view as do a growing number of UN members. Back in October 2019 Pakistan had achieved only four of the 27 tasks the FATF set to keep Pakistan off the black list. Pakistan would already be on the blacklist for all that but pressure from China got Pakistan another last chance. Since 2019 Pakistan has raised the number of goals achieved to 14. All 27 reform goals must be met by the next FATF review in 2021. Since 2016 it was increasingly obvious that Pakistan was not making enough effort to block Pakistan-based terrorist groups from using the international banking system to finance their violence. Which leads us to the unusual case of Pakistan seizing the assets of deceased Afghan Taliban leader Mansour. He died in May 2016 when an American UAV missile hit his vehicle in southwest Pakistan, an area that was off-limits to U.S. UAVs. A Pakistani general called this a violation of Pakistani sovereignty that must stop. It is now believed that that Pakistanis tipped off the Americans about where Mansour would be, and indicated a UAV missile attack would be protested but go no further and that Mansour's death might be beneficial to all concerned, except Mansour and his loyalists. Meanwhile the Pakistan government quietly took care of the embarrassing revelation that Mansour was living in Pakistan when Pakistan always insisted they were not providing sanctuary for the Taliban. Yet when the wreckage of the car Mansour was killed in was found, it became public knowledge that Mansour had been carrying one of the new forgery proof Pakistanis IDs that depicted him as someone else. In an effort to placate (by deception) the angry Americans Pakistani police diligently followed the evidence and arrested six government employees who had supplied Mansour, and apparently other Taliban, with authentic new IDs and fake names. But by mid-2017 those six government employees had been bailed out of jail and disappeared as had others who had been close to Mansour in Quetta. All this angered the Americans, who had seen the same sort of behavior in the wake of the 2011 U.S. raid into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. The Pakistani military went to a lot of effort to try and hide their connections with bin Laden but it was an obvious cover up and the Americans (and the rest of the world) accused the Pakistani military of that along with the continued support for Islamic terrorists. In late 2020 a Pakistani investigation revealed that Mansour had used his fake ID to purchase a life insurance policy. It would have paid off if Mansour had died a natural death, but death by American missile revealed the fraud and a Pakistani court compelled the insurance company to turn over the $2,200 in premiums Mansour had paid before his death. Worse for the Mansour heirs was the seizure of five properties Mansour had bought in the post city of Karachi. These were worth $200,000. The court also seized that and other assets are being sought. In going after Mansour's assets Pakistan demonstrated to the FATF that it was doing what it should have been doing for years and had always claimed it was doing. Another Pakistani measure to improve their FATF situation was to make life harder for Taliban leaders living in Pakistan. This action serves a dual purpose. The less publicized one is to punish Taliban leaders who do not follow Pakistani orders promptly, correctly or at all. Since early 2017 a growing number Afghan Taliban leaders, or former leaders, and their families left sanctuaries in Pakistan and returned to Afghanistan. This isnt a long trip as it usually means goring from Taliban headquarters in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province near the border with Afghan Helmand and Kandahar provinces, to safety in Kandahar city. Its a four-hour drive (239 kilometers) from Quetta to Kandahar city. These exiles included those related to or associated with Mullah Omar, one of the Taliban founders and until 2015 the leader of the Afghan Taliban. The problem is that Mullah Omar had died in a Pakistani hospital in 2013 and that was kept secret by the acting head of the Taliban; Mullah Akhtar Mansour. That revelation led many Afghans to wonder if you could trust the Taliban if the Taliban dont trust each other. Mansour had been Omars chief deputy for many years and knew his way around the organization as well as traditional allies like the Haqqani clan, an even more murderous bunch who eventually took control of the Taliban. Because of that anyone close to Mullah Omar now feared their sanctuary guarantee might be revoked at any time so that Pakistan can turn them over to the Americans as part of some deal that restores American aid or prevents stronger international moves against Pakistan, like the FATF blacklist. Despite enjoying Pakistani protection, even from American UAV attacks, since 2002 the Mullah Omar group came to mistrust the Pakistanis and the favorite Afghan Islamic terror group of the Pakistanis; the Haqqani Network. The Taliban refugees in Kandahar spoke freely of their years in Pakistan and admitted, as have a growing number of retired Pakistani generals and senior government officials, that the army and its intel organization (ISI) have indeed provided sanctuaries for helpful (to the army) Islamic terror groups. The Pakistani military officially denies these accusations and usually blames India, Israel, the United States or all three for inventing and spreading lies. That excuse doesnt have the potency it once had and many Pakistanis quietly mock their own military for it. Mocking the generals in public is risky and doing in the media can get you killed, kidnapped (and released after you recant) or disappeared (for those who wont recant). The Pakistani generals needed someone more reliable to run the Afghan Taliban for them. That new leadership was found in the Haqqani Network. This is a group of Islamic terrorists operating in the Pushtun tribal areas along the Afghan border. Founder Jalaluddin Haqqani was a major player during the 1980s war over the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. He joined the Taliban in 1995, and became a senior official. But after 2001 he gradually grew apart from Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The Haqqani Network has survived by being the most obedient Afghan ally of Pakistan. That means no terror attacks in Pakistan and, when called on, carrying out specific attacks that Pakistani intelligence (ISI) wants carried out in Afghanistan. Jalaluddin Haqqani died in 2014 and his successor continued to cooperate with the Taliban and maintain subservience to ISI. Because Jalaluddin Haqqani helped Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders escape Afghanistan in 2001 there has always been a sense of mutual dependence. For that reason, Haqqani leaders were able to help fix the 2015-16 power struggle within the Taliban and thwart (but not stop) the recruiting efforts of ISIL. Given that Haqqani works for ISI, Pakistan is believed to have played a role the growing Afghan Taliban willingness to negotiate a peace deal with the Afghan government. Update: Xiaomi statement "The Company has been in compliance with law and operating in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations of jurisdictions where it conducts its businesses. The Company reiterates that it provides products and services for civilian and commercial use. The Company confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a Communist Chinese Military Company defined under the NDAA. The Company will take appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the Company and its shareholders. The Company is reviewing the potential consequences of this to develop a fuller understanding of its impact on the Group. The Company will make further announcements as and when appropriate," a Xiaomi spokesperson said. Original story Xiaomi Corp. plunged more than 11% after the Trump Administration blacklisted the Chinese smartphone maker and 10 other companies, broadening efforts to undercut the expansion of the countrys technology sector. The U.S. has targeted scores of Chinese companies for the stated purpose of protecting national security, but going after Xiaomi is a surprise. The Beijing-based company has been viewed as Chinas answer to Apple Inc., producing sleek smartphones that draw rabid fans with each new release. It also makes electric scooters, earphones and smart rice cookers. Xiaomi was co-founded by billionaire entrepreneur Lei Jun about 10 years ago, with U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. as one of the earliest investors. A spokesperson for Xiaomi had no immediate comment. The Trump administrations blacklistings have focused on Chinese companies with military ties and strategic value to the industrys growth. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., Chinas largest chipmaker and critical to the countrys ability to build a self-sufficient tech industry, was included in December. The Company is reviewing the potential consequences of this to develop a fuller understanding of its impact on the Group. The Company will make further announcements as and when appropriate. The news was really surprising to me, said Kevin Chen, a Hong Kong-based analyst at China Merchants Securities Co. But the blacklisting will hurt sentiment more than the companys fundamentals, and the stock decline could be short-lived, he added. In the latest actions, the Defense and Commerce departments released new targets just hours apart, in the waning days of Donald Trumps presidency. In the Defense list of nine companies, Xiaomi is joined by lower profile firms, including Luokong Technology Corp., Gowin Semiconductor Corp. and Global Tone Communication Technology Co. Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. is publicly traded in the mainland. The Defense move identifying companies as having ties to the Chinese military means American investors will be prohibited from buying their securities. The Commerce Dept.s blacklisting is more severe and prohibits American firms from supplying those entities. Companies identified as threats are China National Offshore Oil Corp., the nations main deepwater explorer, and Skyrizon, which develops military equipment. Xiaomi surpassed Apple in smartphone sales in the third quarter, according to the International Data Corporation. It joined Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index in September after grabbing market share from Huawei Technologies Co. as U.S. sanctions on Huawei deepened. Museums in Italy expected to reopen in 'yellow' zones on 18 January but the Vatican Museums plans to wait until February. The Vatican Museums are aiming to reopen on 1 February - if coronavirus restrictions allow - according to the museums director Barbara Jatta. The Vatican Museums have been closed to visitors since 5 November, in line with the closure of Italy's museums amid tighter covid-19 restrictions. Earlier in 2020 the Vatican Museums were shut for almost three months, due to the coronavirus emergency, reopening in June. Museums in Italy are expected to reopen in 'yellow' zones from Monday to Friday, beginning on 18 January, under the country's latest emergency decree due to be announced later today. Jatta told Vatican News that work continues behind the scenes: "Editorial work never stopped; all departmental research activity, restoration activity, construction sites and laboratories are up and running." She also said that the Vatican Museums have boosted their online audience with videos of restoration work on YouTube and a different art work each day on the Instagram page, @vaticanmuseums. The former Windy City Rehab star Donovan Eckhardt has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against his former series for painting him as the show's 'villain.' The reality star is asking for $2.2 million for defamation and emotional distress in the lawsuit filed in Illinois's Cook County Circuit Court on Monday, People reports. In his filing, Eckhardt claims that he was set up to look like the bad guy on the series thanks to alleged misleading editing, while his costar Alison Victoria, 39, was portrayed as his victim. Fighting back: Former Windy City Rehab star Donovan Eckhardt (L) filed a $2.2 million lawsuit on Monday alleging that he was unfairly portrayed as a villain, according to People; still from Windy City Rehab Eckhardt left Windy City Rehab in the midst of its second season following a major argument with Victoria over the cost of their renovation projects. Prior to the on-screen blowup, Eckhardt had been threatened with a suspension of his license and the duo were beset by multiple work-stop orders issued by the city of Chicago. They were also hit with two lawsuits from former clients who alleged they had done shoddy work. According to Eckhardt, his portrayal on the series had a major financial impact on him, and he says his yearly income decreased from nearly $1.5 million to just over $250,000 as of 2020. Defamed: Eckhardt claims the series used manipulative editing to create scenes suggesting he stole company funds and was a liar. He claims his income significantly impacted by the show; still from Windy City Reab In his lawsuit filming, Eckhardt disputed many of the ways he claims he was portrayed on the series and says that scenes suggesting he misallocated the company's funds were fabricated. He also claimed that scenes showing his poor ability to communicate with Victoria and suggesting her was a liar were all the result of manipulative editing. Eckhardt alleges that the lawsuit's targets, Discovery Inc., which owns HGTV, and Big Table Media, the production company, were responsible for incurring the work-stop orders from the city. As he tells it, he was 'placed under constant pressure by Big Table Media to complete the projects being filmed for season one,' and 'aggressive filming and production deadlines' led to the orders, along with problems coordinating construction and the loss of licenses and permits for the pair. Rushed: Eckhardt says the network and production company pushed him and Alison Victoria (L) to work too fast, resulting in work-stop orders from Chicago; still from Windy City Rehab Because of the pressure from the production company and the network, Eckhardt claims that he and Victoria 'proceeded with certain work without obtaining approved amendments to necessary permits, without completed inspections, and ultimately received various building code citations which resulted in the temporary suspension of both of their respective licenses and privileges to apply for building permits.' He says the show-stopping arguments seen in the second season were 'carefully scripted, choreographed and edited.' According to the developer, he was set up as 'the villain and cause' of all the pair's problems, while Victoria was 'the unknowing, innocent victim of all of the issues, which Alison allegedly encountered in Season 2 as well as Alison's claimed financial ruin.' The lawsuit alleges that Eckhardt 'has suffered emotional injuries including anxiety, depression, diminished self-esteem, loss of sleep, loss of appetite, inability to concentrate and embarrassment, and has been undergoing continuous counseling and behavioral treatment.' Heroes and villains: Eckhardt says he was set up as 'the villain and cause' of the duo's problems, while Victoria was 'the unknowing, innocent victim'; still from Windy City Rehab It also claims that Discovery Inc. and Big Table Media had undo influence over Eckhardt, and they ignored the fact that he was 'prone to anxiety and vulnerable to emotional distress,' despite allegedly being aware of his condition. The filing claims the show's airing did significant personal damage to Eckhardt, saying his portrayal was the 'most embarrassing, humiliating and traumatic event' he has ever faced. The suit also alleges there was significant damage to both his 'mental and physical health.' As evidence, the filing lists cruel and threatening Instagram comments. How the Government's vaccine plan breaks down PHASE 1 (FEB 15 TARGET) CARE HOME RESIDENTS - 300,000 CARE HOME WORKERS - 500,000 AGE 80+ - 3,300,000 HEALTHCARE WORKERS - 2,400,000 SOCIAL CARE WORKERS - 1,400,000 AGE 75-79 - 2,300,000 AGE 70-74 - 3,200,000 CLINICALLY EXTREMELY VULNERABLE (UNDER 70) - 1,200,000 PHASE 2 (SPRING) 65-69 2,900,000 AT-RISK UNDER 65 7,300,000 60-64 1,800,000 55-59 2,400,000 50-54 2,800,000 PHASE 3 (AUTUMN) REST OF ADULT POPULATION 21,000,000 Advertisement EU leaders will meet next week to discuss plans for Covid vaccine passports which would allow people who have had the jabs to avoid travel restrictions and go on holiday - as UK ministers continue to flip-flop over the controversial policy. The idea of introducing vaccination certifications has already been floated in Europe, with Greek ministers suggesting that EU countries adopt a 'standardised' passport in order to promote travel. Next Thursday Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will urge other European leaders to agree on coronavirus passports 'facilitating the freedom of movement of persons who have been vaccinated against Covid-19'. In a letter to EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, Mr Mitsotakis had suggested: 'Persons who have been vaccinated should be free to travel. 'It is urgent to adopt a common understanding on how a vaccination certificate should be structured so as to be accepted in all member states'. The governments of Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Spain, Denmark and Belgium have all hinted that they would support such a scheme - although the idea is already raising concerns about privacy, data-sharing and discrimination. However, UK vaccine passports would not automatically be accepted by the EU, and the holiday plans of Britons could be delayed until European travel plans have been agreed, the Times reports. It follows reports that thousands of Britons who have already received their coronavirus jabs will be offered a vaccine passport in an upcoming trial, due to last this month until March. The passport, created by biometrics firm iProov and cybersecurity firm Mvine, will be issued as a free app and will allow users to prove digitally if they have had their first or second jab - or no jab at all. Though the Department of Health said there were 'no plans' to introduce vaccine passports, the Government's own science and research funding agency Innovate UK has already pumped 75,000 into the project. Mvine director Frank Joshi said the company, which had started working on the passports to demonstrate test results, later acquired more funding to switch into vaccination passporting. The Government-backed trial will be overseen by two directors of public health in local authorities and is expected to last until March - though the locations have yet to be agreed, according to the Telegraph. The trial is expected to show how the passports can be used to help the NHS keep track of the number of people that have received their first or second jab. iProov boss Andrew Bud told the paper: 'We're talking about a piece of remarkable technology that can be brought to bear and can be readily integrated with the NHS.' Both companies added that if the vaccine passports prove successful, the project could be rolled out to millions of people across the country. Downing Street said it was not aware of trials of so-called vaccine passports in this country. The prime minister's official spokesman said: 'This is not something we're looking at introducing and that remains our policy.' A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'As large numbers of people from at risk groups are vaccinated, we will be able to gather the evidence to prove the impact on infection rates, hospitalisation and reduced deaths. If successful, this should in time lead to a reassessment of current restrictions.' The Government has contradicted itself on the implementation of vaccine passports, with Michael Gove saying they were 'not the plan' while Boris Johnson's vaccine tsar Nadhim Zahawi said they were 'looking at the technology'. Mr Zahawi later told a Westminster Hall debate on Covid-19 inoculation there were 'absolutely no plans for vaccine passporting' and said 'mandating vaccinations is discriminatory and completely wrong'. Health Secretary Matt Hancock last week also denied plans to implement passporting, telling the Spectator: 'It's not an area that we're looking at.' The policy has sparked concern that the passports could discriminate against people who must not be vaccinated, such as pregnant women. Others fear it could keep non-vaccinated Britons under house arrest until they have a jab. In other coronavirus news: All flights from Portugal and South America were finally banned amid fears over a mutant strain; A row broke out over the vaccine rollout in London which lags behind most of England despite having the highest levels of infection; It emerged one in five major hospitals in England now has no spare intensive care beds; Ministers prepared to reveal a controversial new government advertising campaign warning meeting someone for a coffee could 'cost a life'; It emerged Britain's biggest police force is handing out a record 300 penalties a day; A total of 4.46million people were waiting to start hospital treatment in England at the end of November, the highest since records began; A report claimed Covid had caused the largest fall in Britain's population since the Second World War. German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right), European Council President Charles Michel (centre) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (left) hold a joint press conference after the EU Leaders Summit in Brussels, Belgium in December 2020 The Government has contradicted itself on the implementation of vaccine passports, with Michael Gove saying they were 'not the plan' while Boris Johnson's vaccine tsar Nadhim Zahawi (pictured in Parliament) said they were 'looking at the technology' A member of the medical team administers a coronavirus Covid-19 vaccine shot at the NHS vaccination centre in Robertson House in Stevenage We WERE right to opt out of the EU's vaccine scheme, MPs are told The UK's decision to opt out of the EU vaccination scheme has led to it administering more Covid jabs than the rest of Europe combined, MPs have heard. Figures show the UK is fourth in the world for the number of vaccines administered so far at 4.19 per 100 people, behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. This compares to 0.21 per 100 people in France, 0.82 in Germany, with Denmark the closest EU nation at 2.02. Former vaccines tsar Kate Bingham told MPs that the decision to go it alone meant we were now in an 'advanced position' compared to other countries. She told the Commons public accounts committee that EU rules would have meant an end to the negotiations already under way with AstraZeneca. Mrs Bingham, former chairman of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, said: 'We felt the conditions were too tight and that we would actually be able to act more quickly if we did it independently.' In July, officials chose not to join the EU vaccine scheme as it meant having no say on decisions including pricing or which manufacturers to negotiate with. Britain has so far agreed supply deals for seven different vaccines, totalling 367million doses, for at least 3.7billion. The EU's vaccine rollout has been hindered by supply chain issues, after purchasing 300million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Advertisement It comes as London's mayor Sadiq Khan complained about the city's Covid vaccine supply after NHS figures revealed it has given jabs to fewer people than any other region. Only two per cent of people in the capital were vaccinated against coronavirus by January 10, compared to five per cent in the North East and Yorkshire. Fewer than 30 per cent of London's over-80s have had the one dose of the vaccine - compared to the highest figure of 43.8 per cent in the North East and Yorkshire. NHS England's first regional breakdown of vaccines up to January 10 reveal that the Midlands has vaccinated the most people against the disease, managing to get first doses to 387,647 in the first month of the roll-out. This was more than double the 186,291 in the East of England and almost twice as many as London's 199,986. The NHS leaders in the capital, however, insist that London 'is getting its fair share of vaccine supply' and added: 'We have more than 100 vaccination sites up and running across London, including the NHS Covid-19 vaccination centre in the ExCeL London, and more are opening all the time.' Leaked Government targets show that officials are planning to double the number of people protected against Covid next week alone, aiming to hit 500,000 jabs per day and add 3.6million people to the current total 2.6m. Data yesterday suggested that 223,726 jabs were done on Monday, showing the programme is expanding fast. London has accounted for only 10 per cent of the country's vaccinations so far despite being home to 16 per cent of the population with some nine million people. The capital and the East are the only regions where the share of vaccines has been smaller than the share of the population. The North East and Yorkshire, and the South West, are punching above their weight and making up only 25 per cent of the population but using 31 per cent of the first-dose vaccines. Mr Khan said: 'I am hugely concerned that Londoners have received only a tenth of the vaccines that have been given across the country.' London is currently England's region worst-hit by coronavirus but both cases, hospital admissions and deaths across the capital have started to slow down. Mr Hancock claimed the UK has now dished out three million vaccinations since the roll-out started on December 8. The country is aiming to reach 13.9million people by mid-February so ministers can consider easing lockdown restrictions. Mr Khan said: 'I am hugely concerned that Londoners have received only a tenth of the vaccines that have been given across the country. It comes after Mayor Sadiq Khan (pictured) declared a 'major incident' in the capital as Covid cases continue to rise 'The situation in London is critical with rates of the virus extremely high, which is why it's so important that vulnerable Londoners are given access to the vaccine as soon as possible. 'I have repeatedly called on the Government to scale up the vaccine supply, and will be meeting the Minister for COVID Vaccine Deployment today to ensure that we urgently receive an amount of the vaccine that reflects our size, density and the level of need in our city.' It comes days after the Mayor declared a 'major incident' in the capital as Covid cases continue to rise, when he said the spread of the virus was 'out of control.' The NHS figures, which revealed a regional breakdown of vaccination numbers for the first time, show the Midlands has vaccinated the most people. Numbers up to January 10 reveal that five per cent of people in the North East and Yorkshire one in every 20 people have already been vaccinated against Covid. HOW HAVE REGIONS FARED IN VACCINE ROLL-OUT SO FAR? NHS England and Public Health England data for vaccination first doses up to January 10: Region # of people vaccinated % of local population vaccinated % of over-80s vaccinated East London Midlands North East North West South East South West Other 186,291 199,986 387,647 370,694 266,585 348,863 235,108 2,130 3% 2% 4% 5% 4% 4% 4% N/A 27.9% 29.5% 33.4% 43.8% 35.9% 34.8% 34.3% N/A Advertisement In London, where coverage is lowest, two per cent had been vaccinated by last Sunday one in 50. And the Midlands and the North East & Yorkshire have together used 38 per cent of the vaccines dished out so far. They account for 35 per cent of the population. But despite being home to 27 per cent of the country's population, London and the East of England have only accounted for 19 per cent of people vaccinated so far. They are the regions whose shares of the vaccines are smaller than their shares of the people. The NHS does not give a breakdown of how ages vary across England but regions with more elderly people will get more vaccines in the early stages of the roll-out. Elderly people have been the priority since the vaccine programme started and separate data published by Public Health England shows exactly how many of them are getting vaccinated. PHE figures show that 43.8 per cent of over-80s in the North East & Yorkshire have received a Covid vaccine, compared to 27.9 per cent in the East of England. In London the figure was 29.5 per cent, in the Midlands 33.4 per cent, in the South West 34.3 per cent, in the South East 34.8 per cent and in the North West 35.9 per cent. Yesterday Prime Minister Boris Johnson told MPs: 'There are parts of the country where they have done incredibly well in, for instance, vaccinating the over-80s. 'We are well over 50 per cent now in the North East and Yorkshire; less good in some other parts of the country.' It is not clear whether some regions are vaccinating fewer people because they can't get enough supplies or because they aren't rolling them out quick enough. Cities, for example, were able to start vaccinating sooner than rural areas because the first jabs to be used had to be kept in specialist freezers in hospitals. Since the approval of the Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccine, however, it has been easier to send doses out to care homes, GP surgeries and pharmacies, meaning places where populations are more spread out should be able to speed up. And the acceleration is expected to improve even more next week. Confidential figures accidentally posted online by the Scottish Government suggest that the NHS north of the border could receive 309,382 doses next week which would equal 3.8million for the whole UK, The Times reported. The numbers were later removed from the website as Downing Street continues to refuse to reveal how many doses are being delivered to the NHS in the coming days. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (left), the President of the European Council Charles Michel (centre) and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) are talking to media at the end of the second day of an EU Summit in the Europa EU leaders observe a minute silent in tribute to late French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing prior to a round table meeting during an EU summit at the European Council building A Government source told The Times: 'These figures suggest that we are easily going to meet our target, but there isn't a lot of headroom there. It's a competitive market and things can go wrong in the production process.' Despite supply lines likely being better for cities in the early phases of the roll-out, London has the second lowest number of people vaccinated so far, at 199,986. Around 16 per cent of the country's population lives in the capital but its residents make up only 10 per cent of the people vaccinated by January 10. Mr Khan said he would hold talks with vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi 'to ensure that we urgently receive an amount of the vaccine that reflects our size, density and the level of need in our city'. But the NHS hit back and said the city is getting its 'fair share'. A spokesman for the region's health service said: 'The NHS coronavirus vaccination programme, the biggest in the health service's history, has got off to a strong start with a quarter of a million Londoners receiving their first vaccination against Covid, giving significant protection to those most at risk from the virus. 'We have more than 100 vaccination sites up and running across London, including the NHS Covid-19 vaccination centre in the ExCeL London, and more are opening all the time. 'London is getting its fair share of vaccine supply for the priority groups we have to vaccinate by mid-February.' Boris Johnson confirmed the same, Sky News reported, and his spokesperson told reporters: 'We've rolled out the vaccination programme across the country and we've ensured that every area receives a fair share of the vaccinations and we will continue to do that. 'You will continue to see the vaccination programme accelerate through this month and throughout February and the PM's been clear that we will ensure there is a vaccine centre close to everybody by the end of the month.' Reports from the city suggest that it may not be vaccine supplies holding people up, but issues getting the jabs out. A public health director in Newham, in East London, said they were concerned about people turning down vaccinations. Jason Strelitz told the Evening Standard: 'It is a slow start. We have vaccinated in all of our care homes but we are concerned about uptake and pace. We are already getting information from our local NHS partners about a significant number of people not taking it up.' And the GMB union, which represents healthcare workers, said nearly half of NHS staff in London said they haven't yet been offered a vaccine, despite being in one of the top priority groups. A GMB survey of its members in the NHS in the capital found that 43 per cent had not yet been offered a jab, The Independent reported. The union's Lola McEvoy told the news website: 'They are at breaking point with this new strain and for so many to have not even been invited to be vaccinated with the first jab casts yet another shadow of doubt on the government's ability to protect those risking their lives every day on the frontline.' A cyclist rides across London's deserted Westminster Bridge this morning on another day of the national lockdown A further 10,020 Covid cases were reported in London on Wednesday, bringing the total number of people who have tested positive for the virus in the capital to 538,132. In the worst-hit boroughs, it is feared the rate could be as high as seven in every 1,000 people (pictured) People wearing face masks were seen waiting at a bus stop in London this morning amidst news lockdown restrictions could be tightened further BOOTS AND SUPERDRUG JOIN VACCINE PROGRAMME Boots and Superdrug started dishing out coronavirus vaccines yesterday after No10 finally turned to the high street to help deliver its lockdown-ending promise of immunising almost 14million people by mid-February. MailOnline revealed this week that the Boots store in Halifax and Superdrug branch in Guildford, Surrey, would be included in the first wave of high street chemists to join the national effort. The chains are among six pharmacies across England to be converted into Covid hubs and will be able to administer hundreds of jabs each day between 8am and 8pm. Vaccines are also being dispensed at Andrews Pharmacy in Macclesfield, Cheshire, Cullimore Chemist in Edgware, north London, Woodside Pharmacy in Telford, Shropshire, and Appleton Village pharmacy in Widnes, Cheshire. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the move was 'fantastic' and 'will make a big difference' in ramping up the national jab programme, while a Government source said ministers were on track to reach 3million weekly jabs by the start of February and hit the 13.9m target by next month. The source told the Sun: 'We're in a good place and have enough to meet our pledge, with supply continuously improving. We are already vaccinating more than 200,000 a day and are nowhere near capacity. If things go smoothly we could well be doing 400,000 a day three million a week by the start of February.' But independent chemists who've been begging for months to help chip in said they were 'concerned' the target would be missed unless more of England's 11,500 pharmacies were drafted in. Just 2.6m Brits have been jabbed so far since the national programme launched in early December, a fifth of the 13.9m target by mid-February. Advertisement The East of England, which includes Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, is the only other region to have reached fewer than 200,000 people so far, at 186,291. The largest number of people to have received their first dose of a Covid vaccine was in the Midlands, where 387,647 out of a population of 10.8million have been immunised. London has again become the epicentre of the country's Covid outbreak, with the Office for National Statistics estimating at the turn of the year that a staggering one in every 30 people in the capital was carrying the virus. In the worst-hit boroughs, it is feared the rate could be as high as one in 20 people people with the virus. A further 10,020 Covid cases were reported in London on Wednesday, bringing the total number of people who have tested positive for the virus in the capital to 538,132. But there has been a drop in the number of hospital admissions, with 5,919 coronavirus patients admitted in a week. As of Tuesday there were 7,606 Covid patients in London hospitals, with 1,085 of those patients being treated on ventilators. While official NHS figures show 2,371,407 people have already been given a vaccine in England, according to statistics released by the National Immunisation Management Service. The jabs are currently being distributed predominantly to people aged 80 and over who are deemed to be more vulnerable to the virus. Care home residents and their carers, frontline health and social care workers are also being given priority. But in inner London, over-80s make up only 2.5% of the population, according to the Trust for London charity. London's population is also comparatively young compared to the rest of the country with the average age in the capital reaching 35.6, compared to 40.3 in the UK overall. Despite the shocking figures, rule breakers continued to flout the restrictions. Officers in the capital were said to be 'astounded' after being called to break up a party at an industrial unit in Southwark last night, where they found at least 20 revellers on top of the building. Police were called out to reports of loud music coming from the roof by disgusted residents. Many cheered the police on when they arrived to break up the illegal gathering on Pages Walk, Southwark. Officers found more than 20 people drinking, eating and playing music, leaving one officer 'astounded' at the rule-breaking. Two people were arrested, including one individual on suspicion of carrying an offensive weapon, while another was arrested for suspected drug dealing. A further five people were handed fines for breaching Covid restrictions before the party was fully dispersed around 11.30pm. It led Home Secretary Priti Patel to hit out at those brazenly flouting the restrictions. She warned police will continue to issue fines and enforce against people who are 'flagrantly breaching the rules.' It came as the Home Secretary confirmed the government was not intending to make the lockdown tougher over the next few days. But the Mayor of London has called for tougher restrictions in a big to halt the virus' spread. Announcing the major incident in London last week, Mr Khan called for churches and other places of worship to be closed. In a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he also demanded face masks be worn routinely outside of the home, including in supermarket queues and other places outside that may be crowded. He also wants more financial support for Londoners who need to self-isolate and are unable to work, and for daily vaccination data. In a statement Mr Khan said: 'The situation in London is now critical with the spread of the virus out of control.' Major incidents were declared in London after the Grenfell Tower disaster, the London Bridge and Westminster terror attacks, and the Croydon tram crash in November 2016. [January 15, 2021] Emerald Bioscience to Change Name and Trading Symbol Effective Tuesday, January 19th San Diego, Calif, Jan. 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Emerald Bioscience, Inc. (OTCQB: EMBI) (EMBI or the Company), a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing proprietary, synthetic cannabinoid-derived molecules to treat glaucoma and other diseases with significant unmet need, has changed its name from Emerald Bioscience, Inc. to Skye Bioscience, Inc. The Company will trade under its new ticker symbol, SKYE, on the OTC effective at market open on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. About Emerald Bioscience, Inc. Emerald Bioscience Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company developing differentiated, proprietary cannabinoid-derived molecules to treat diseases with significant unmet needs. The Companys lead molecule, in preclinical studies, has demonstrated potential as a new class of therapy to lower intraocular pressure in patients with glaucoma or elevated intraocular pressure that is superior to currently available drugs. For more information, please visit www.emeraldbio.life . CONTACT Karam Takhar VP, Corporate Development & InvestorRelations ir@emeraldbio.life Phone: +1-949-336-3437 FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our product development, business strategy, relocation of corporate headquarters, timing of clinical trials and commercialization of cannabinoid-based therapeutics. Such statements and other statements in this press release that are not descriptions of historical facts are forward-looking statements that are based on managements current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, our business, operating results, financial condition and stock price could be materially negatively affected. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology including anticipated, contemplates, goal, focus, aims, intends, believes, can, could, challenge, predictable, will, would, may or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. We operate in a rapidly changing environment and new risks emerge from time to time. As a result, it is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements the Emerald may make. Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially include, among others, our capital resources, uncertainty regarding the results of future testing and development efforts and other risks that are described in the Risk Factors section of Emerald most recent annual or quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as expressly required by law, Emerald disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Concerning the Sahara issue, Morocco can count on France, which sees the Kingdom as a reliable strategic partner, said Bruno Fuchs, MoDem Deputy (Presidential Majority). There is no doubt that the Sahara conflict has lasted long enough and it must be ended. It is also certain that the U.S. position to recognize Moroccos sovereignty over the Sahara is a very good initiative and a movement that can be virtuous and must be pursued and accompanied as it is a very important step towards the resolution of this conflict, Fuchs said Thursday in an interview with MAP. Today, France has a very close position he stressed. France, in all the expressions of the Quai dOrsay is very, very close to the process proposed there, insofar as there is a process of autonomy proposed for the Saharawi populations, explained Bruno Fuchs. Today, there is no great divergence. France continues to regard the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco as a fair, realistic and lasting solution to the Sahara conflict. Morocco can count on France, which sees it as an extremely solid, reliable and long-term partner, on a large number of issues, the French MP stated. According to Fuchs, France has been able to integrate more identity-based movements within the framework of the same nation. It is therefore not surprising that France has an obviously very close position to the solution advocated by Morocco. Fuchs also lauded the role played by Morocco in Africa in terms of deployment of the North-South-South relationship. For this reason, we must, along with Morocco, develop and rethink the relationship between Europe, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, the French MP said. In his opinion, the US decision is a way to take a very important step towards the resolution of the Sahara conflict. It will also have positive effects on a number of other issues such as stability and prosperity of the Sahel-Saharan region, he said. The recognition by the US (of the Moroccan Sahara) is a very important point, an essential step towards pacification of the region and building area for greater prosperity. It will also have repercussions on conflicts in the Sahel and the Middle East with the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian the deputy of the presidential majority concluded. When Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein let the United Nations deadline for withdrawing his troops from Kuwait run out, he had to know there would be consequences. Hussein thought the attack would come from an amphibious landing from the Persian Gulf. After all, that's why there were two massive battleships sitting off the coast ... right? The Iowa-class battleships Missouri and Wisconsin were launched in 1944 and 1943, respectively, to fight the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. What other reason could the United States have for them in the Persian Gulf than the ships' massive 16-inch guns? Turns out those old dogs still had some new tricks -- and good teeth. A BGM-109 Tomahawk land-attack missile is fired toward an Iraqi target from the battleship USS Missouri at the start of Operation Desert Storm. (U.S. Navy/Photographer's Mate 3rd Class Brad Dillon) On Jan. 17, 1991, the deadline for Iraqi withdrawal under U.N. Resolution 678 expired, and Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm. The Iraqi forces, though technologically advanced and massive on paper, were battle-hardened veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, which they had just spent a decade fighting. The only problem for Saddam's troops was that Iran never had the airpower of the United States. For 42 days, the U.S. and its coalition partners rained destruction on those troops and on Iraq in a massive air campaign. In 100,000 sorties, allied airpower crippled Iraq's military and civilian infrastructure. The guns of a U.S. battleship lit up an enemy target for the first time since the Vietnam War, when the Wisconsin knocked out Iraqi artillery targets in southern Kuwait. The stage was set for a coalition invasion through an amphibious landing via Kuwait's Faylaka Island. Or so Saddam thought. American troops entered Kuwait in force on Feb. 24, 1991. The night before, the battleships blanketed the coastline and Iraqi positions with heavy naval gunfire to reinforce the idea that the invasion was imminent and would come from the sea. After a night of raining shells on the Iraqis, the Missouri moved into position to support the actual coalition advance, one that came across the land border from Saudi Arabia. USS Missouri firing her 16-inch guns during Desert Storm on Feb. 6. 1991 (U.S. Navy) The 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions poured into Kuwait overland and headed straight for Kuwait City. The U.S. Army's VII Corps, led by the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, hit the Iraqis from the west; the XVIII Corps came at them via the Iraqi Desert; and the 101st Airborne conducted the deepest air assault into enemy territory in history -- just to name a few elements of the invasion. British, French and American ground forces hit the Iraqis hard; within 100 hours, the whole thing was over. Iraq capitulated, and the coalition forces liberated Kuwait. It was the last hurrah for the Iowa-class battleships. The big guns weren't the only contribution made by the aging men o' war, though. Iraqi troops surrendered to the Missouri's Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) during the initial shelling on Feb. 24, as it spotted targets for the mighty battleships. It was the first surrender to a drone on a battlefield. -- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook. Want to Learn More About Military Life? Whether you're thinking of joining the military, looking for post-military careers or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to Military.com to have military news, updates and resources delivered directly to your inbox. Nolan was an artist known for celebrating the human spirit, but the trial compelled him to explore mans lesser nature. Al Alvarez comes to lunch, he wrote on July 23, 1961. He is going to Poland. We talk about concentration camps. If we could paint the subject it would be a duty to do so. During the Eichmann trial The Observer had asked Alvarez to write on the camps and Nolan was invited to illustrate the article. He made up his mind two weeks later: Decide to go to Poland, he wrote in his diary. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Judges and Victims). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 For months before the visit, the camps haunted Nolan and he made notes on how he might paint them. Then, between November 27 and December 10, in the two weeks before Eichmanns judges passed sentence, he filled sheets of paper with the same face and features over and over again recording do 50 today on one day alone. Some were simple outlines, others fully formed, but every image had the same broad forehead, receding hair, thick rounded glasses, thin lips, and in most a collared shirt buttoned to the top. All mirrored photographs of the notorious prisoner. On December 12, 1961, Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Two days after that, Nolan deliberated, I am reluctant in a way to dig deeper into Europe but I do not see how the question of the camps can be forever shelved. Perhaps they will never be the material of art, he wrote. It is impossible to tell. How can a disease be painted? Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 The next day Eichmann was sentenced to death and it provided the release Nolan needed. He immediately switched from Eichmanns face to painting more than a hundred images of Auschwitz and concentration camp inmates, keeping them with the Eichmann portraits in a folder he titled Judges and Victims. There were three distinct groups, dated roughly six days apart. The first was characterised by prison stripes faces sliced by bars or vacant eyes above vertical stripes of the camp uniforms. The next group were wreathed in smoke, which suddenly cleared to expose harsh heads scratched from paint with screaming mouths. Finally, there were skeletal heads tortured and twisted. The evolution was clear and their titles unequivocal: Head of Prisoner Concentration Camp and Skeletal Head in a German Concentration Camp. Nine days passed in peace. Then suddenly more images poured out, a tortured stream of figures crucified on smoking crosses, skeletons overflowing wheelbarrows and bodies laid out in neat rows of death. Nineteen of the pictures were dated January 7, 1962, more than 90 were untitled, and one was reproduced by Londons Marlborough Graphics in 1967. Sidney signed and dated the artists proof, inscribing Auschwitz on the back. His iconography was obvious. More than a million human beings became smoke and ash in the Auschwitz ovens. Faith was death and wheelbarrows were for the living to carry the dead to roll call. With an economy of strokes Nolans pictures were as convincing as photographs. He found nothing to redeem the human race. Nolan travelled to Poland with Alvarez two weeks later. On January 29, 1962, he wrote, Go to Auschwitz. Alvarez recalled: Auschwitz is a difficult experience to handle, even as a tourist. You grab hold of whatever you can to keep your mental balance. He went on to describe what Nolan saw: Mountains of human hair, suitcases, spectacles, shaving brushes, artificial limbs. Great mounds of old shoes reach up like rubble after an air raid, all of it covered in dust and human ash, left as though the owners would momentarily return. In his autobiography, Alvarez remembered that Nolan was upset less by the obvious horrors the crematoria, the mountains of shorn hair, discarded spectacles, suitcases and artificial limbs than by the orderliness of the camps layout. He explained: The interiors of the barracks were dreadful the tiers of bunks in which the prisoners slept, six men to a bunk, like battery hens waiting to be slaughtered but the neat grids in which the buildings were arranged troubled him even more. Turning to Alvarez, Nolan had quietly evoked the disdain his friend and mentor Kenneth Clark had for abstract art and its lack of humanity: It looks like a bloody Mondrian, he said. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 Overwhelmed, Nolan refused to illustrate The Observer article. It was an emotional experience for which he had been completely unprepared and the visit triggered an unexpected and lasting retreat from any direct Auschwitz imagery. Unwilling, or even psychologically unable, to translate the experience into paint, he would avoid speaking of it for more than 20 years. Thirty years later he still remembered the disruption it caused to his long-established habit of mixing music and painting, as he wrote in his diary: I could not listen to music for months after going to Auschwitz. Alvarez added to Nolans emotional turmoil in 1962 by sending a draft of his article. Dear Sid, he wrote, heres a draft much scribbled on. I hope you can make it out. I feel very dissatisfied with it. So do, please, be as ruthless as you can with it. I cant waste this opportunity to get the thing said straight. In his article, Alvarez suggested that in modern times all humanity had the capability to be inhuman. If they [the camps] were simply the playgrounds for sadists who, in another society would have been locked away, then they were an aberration best forgotten, for they prove that our sickest fantasies can be acted out. The Eichmann affair has shown us that they were not. Nolan scrawled on his copy: High civilisation can perish; and when the civilisation is a world one, we cannot afford it ... Art has always been a geiger counter for civilisation. Long committed to literature and religion as symbolic languages, Nolan expressed Auschwitz using one to disguise the other. Six weeks after returning he painted an elephant, using the symbol of freedom conjured in Romain Garys book The Roots of Heaven. Garys lead character, Morel, survived Nazi concentration camps by thinking of elephants. I would close my eyes and think of elephants at liberty, running freely across Africa, hundreds and hundreds of magnificent animals that nothing can resist no cement wall, no barbed wire, nothing ... Thats liberty I tell you! In camps designed to destroy the human spirit we came to look at the SS men with smiles, he said, as we thought how from one moment to the next, this magnificent charge would pass over them. Sidney loved elephants, Nolans widow, Lady Mary Nolan, confirmed in a 2001 interview with curator and researcher Jane Clark. He really did love elephants ... Elephants represented a lot to him. In Garys book elephants had represented the old human rights, the rights of man, and on March 6, 1962, Nolans first major painting after his visit to Auschwitz was an elephant straight from Garys opening chapter describing those noble giants, pressed back more and more towards the marshes and condemned by man to disappear from the earth. It was imagery that allowed Nolan to put symbolic flesh on Auschwitz bones. Youve got to belong to a civilisation thats doomed and express paradise but if you have too much of the Nazis you cant expect to do very well, he said in an interview with British art critic Peter Fuller many years later. Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp). Credit:Photo: Joe Armao. Original work The Sidney Nolan Trust. All rights reserved, DACS/Copyright Agency, 2021 From September 1962, Nolan chased visions of paradise during a three-month trip through Africa. But a deep well of grief ran through the resulting work. There were faces and figures of disenfranchised tribes and races, subjugated by colonial empires. He posed apes as Ecce Homo Christian iconography representing the abasement of human beings in war and floated gorillas in earthen tombs, lamenting, He is a better kind of man. He doesnt make war ... so we kill him off. In 1965, Nolan briefly placed apes and saints on smoking crosses while helmeted Nazis marched beneath or leered at women. Then two years later he revealed to Gavin Souter of the Sydney Morning Herald: When I went to Auschwitz I was struck by the enormity of the scandal of the position of women, and then linked Auschwitz to Dantes Inferno, a nine-panelled painting of female figures stacked like firewood in the streets, telling Hal Missingham, then director of the Art Gallery of NSW, as I painted they levitated ... whirling around in the sky and looked more like ... lost souls. Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, Nolan continued to stare into the pit. Am I moving towards Austwitz [sic] painting at last? he wrote in 1985. I hope not. He deplored human suffering, his friend of 40 years, George Ivan Smith, recalled at Nolans 1993 memorial service. He had raged against human tragedy, Smith said, a painter driven by deep respect for life and by deep grief when [he] sensed that life was being crushed in that eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness. Loading The impact of the Holocaust on Sidney Nolan has remained invisible. But soon after visiting Auschwitz he said, What an artist really wants is to say something which one day out of contemporary context will mean something important. In a world still troubled by genocide, racial disenfranchisement and nationalism, Nolans Holocaust images reflect something he and Alvarez often discussed the arts didnt just reflect society, they were a kind of early warning system. This year, the 60th anniversary of Eichmanns trial, we are well-positioned to exhume and examine Nolans warning. To look back towards the crematoria and barbed wire, and through his exploration of our lesser nature, acknowledge and honour the ghosts pleading to be remembered. This is an adapted extract from Andrew Turleys upcoming book, Nolans Africa. A KLO militant was arrested from Assam's Kokrajhar district by a joint team of the Army and the police, defence sources said on Friday. The Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) militant was apprehended at the Kalipukhuri village in Kokrajhar police station area on Thursday night, they said. He has been identified as Pradip Roy alias Changma. A 7.65 mm pistol with a magazine and six rounds of ammunition were seized from him. The terror group demands a separate 'Kamtapur' nation, comprising parts of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Nepal. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) This is the hilarious moment a little boy turns his spinning sofa into 'the waltzers' during a break from home schooling. Footage shows five-year-old Joey Brookes stood upright on the grey, circular sofa with his hands pressed against the wall at home in Rugby, Warwickshire. The youngster then jogs on the spot as fast as possible sending the chair spinning like a roundabout, to the delight of little brother Reggie, three. Footage shows five-year-old Joey Brookes stood upright on the grey sofa with his hands pressed against the wall, running on the spot, sending the chair spinning like a roundabout Little Reggie is curled up on the bottom of the seat, squealing for the makeshift theme park ride to go faster. In a second clip, the youngster spins his brother round again, and the duo shriek with laughter. Joey then jumps down to join his brother, after building up enough momentum for the pair to enjoy together. Their mother Jenna's funny video has been viewed more than two million times since being uploaded to TikTok. The pair shriek with laughter as Joey spins his little brother Reggie round on the sofa. After building up enough momentum the big brother then collapses to join in the fun Distribution manager Jenna, 35, said: 'The boys are just wild when they're not at school. 'As Joey is diagnosed autistic and I'm a key worker he still attends school but we carry on his learning at the weekends, which can take its toll. 'When Joey doesn't go to school and is out of his usual routine, he has too much energy and does things like this.' Mother Jenna, who uploaded the video, said: 'Joey and Reggie love playing together and they have a fantastic relationship with each other' She added that her son 'doesn't speak so he's very sensory driven' and the spinning helps. She said: 'Joey and Reggie love playing together and they have a fantastic relationship with each other. 'Joey throws all the cushions off and Reggie will climb on board and sit there and shout at him to go. Joey will just go full pelt then until they get bored or tired. The video has been viewed more than two million times since being uploaded on TikTok (pictutred: Mother Jenna Brookes, 35, with daughter Georgia, Reggie, husband Ben, and Joey) 'They've been playing this game for about three months now. It always makes me laugh. If Reggie isn't around, Joey will spin the chair and then sit on it himself. 'They're boys and they're young and they're having fun. That's all that matters. I'll get my house back together when they move out!' The boy's mother uploaded the video, where it has delighted social media users, reminding them of fun times at the fair. One commenter said: 'He would walk the waltzers no problem.' Another added: 'I only noticed halfway through there's another child in there. Reminded me of waltzers at fair when they spun so fast, g force kept you in.' Other commenters said they thought Joey's game counted towards his home-schooling, with one joking: 'At least that's PE done.' The United States is holding accountable the Venezuelan judge and prosecutor who took part in the November 2020 trial and sentencing of six executives from the Houston-based oil company Citgo. Known as the Citgo 6, Tomeu Vadell, Gustavo Cardenas, Jorge Toledo, Alirio Jose Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano and Jose Angel Pereira were sentenced from 8 to 13 years in prison. In 2017, the Citgo 6 were tricked into attending a last-minute business meeting in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. Shortly after their arrival, masked security agents raided the boardroom, detained the men and threw them into the notorious Helicoide prison. These Americans, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement, have been unjustly imprisoned in Venezuela since November 2017 after being lured to Caracas under false pretenses. In August, trials finally began for the six men after being detained for almost 1,000 days. Two officials of the illegitimate Maduro regime, Judge Lorena Carolina Cornielles Ruiz and Prosecutor Ramon Antonio Torres Espinoza, played critical roles in the kangaroo court trials of each of the Citgo executives. These proceedings were marred by a lack of fair trial guarantees and based on politically motivated charges. The trial was not public as guaranteed by the Venezuelan constitution, and media and human rights groups were denied access. The wrongful detention and sentencing of these six U.S. persons further demonstrate how corruption and abuse of power are deeply embedded in Venezuelas institutions, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The United States remains committed to protecting its citizens and targeting those who contribute to the illegitimate Maduro regimes usurpation of power in Venezuela. These six men and their families have suffered long enough, declared Secretary Pompeo. It is time for Maduro to release the Citgo 6 and let them be reunited with their families. New Delhi, Jan 15 : The Delhi government has rationed the tranche of two Covid-19 vaccines it has stocked in 81 hospitals finalised for the launch of a massive immunization drive against the novel coronavirus in the national capital. However, the distribution pattern has raised a few eyebrows as the Cvaccine by Bharat Biotech, Covaxin, has been allotted only to six Centre-run hospitals, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Safdarjung, and Ram Manohar Lohia (RML), a list of hospitals with the vaccines allotted by the Delhi government revealed. Meanwhile, 75 hospitals which include state-run and private hospitals, will receive Covishield, developed by Oxford/AstraZeneca with Serum Institute of India (SII), which is handling its marketing and production in the country. While no official clarification or reason were presented by the Delhi government behind the distribution pattern of the vaccine, a top official from the state health department told IANS that it was done at the Centre's behest. "The vaccine and its doses are allocated as per specific directions from the Central government," the official said. However, the move is expected to court a controversy since the healthcare workers already have a reservation against the Bharat Biotech's Covaxin which received approval for restricted emergency use in clinical trial mode by India's drug regulator without submitting the phase III efficacy data. Many healthcare workers who spoke to IANS also revealed their apprehensions towards the Covaxin. "I'm all in to get vaccinated but would not take Covaxin," an ENT specialist at the Centre-run Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC) said. The healthcare workers of the LHMC will be offered Covaxin as its associated hospital Kalawati Saran is listed in the 6 Centre-run hospitals which would receive the Bharat Biotech's vaccine. Jugal Kishore, Professor and Head, Department of Community Medicine, Safdarjung, said that one vaccine candidate should have been provided to all centres to avoid any controversy. "It would have been better if the government had provided one vaccine candidate to all the centres so that no confusion gets into the minds of the people," he added. However, Kishore also concurred with reservations against the Covaxin seemingly among the healthcare workers. He cited a statement of a leading clinical scientist, Gagandeep Kang, who is also a vice-chairperson of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Inventions (CEPI), a global consortium facilitating promising vaccine candidates for Covid-19. Kang had said that she "would not take Covaxin until its required efficacy data is made public". Covaxin has been in the spotlight of controversy since it was recommended for restricted emergency use by the Subject Expert Committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO). Later, it was approved on January 3 for the roll-out in Covid immunization programme. Its approval for the immunization programme has drawn flak from public health advocacy groups, researchers, scientists and activists in the domain. The concern with the Covaxin largely remains with its approval for inoculation without the data from phase III clinical trials which determine efficacy of the drug since the trials are still ongoing. So far, any data proving the vaccine's efficacy has not been published in the public domain, including any results of an interim analysis. The national capital has received a total 2.84 lakh Covid vaccines in the last two days. On Tuesday, the city received 2.64 lakh doses of Covishield, while a consignment carrying 20,000 doses of Covaxin was delivered to the city's vaccine storage facility on Wednesday. The roll-out of at 81 locations will begin with vaccinating around 2.25 lakh healthcare workers of Delhi in the phase I of the Covid immunization drive. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) 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. Loo Boon Chong had initially been charged with the murder with common intention of 31-year-old Satheesh Noel Gobidass at the entrance of Orchard Towers on 2 July 2019. (Screencaps of CCTV footage, social media) SINGAPORE A man who was involved in the high profile fatal incident at Orchard Towers in 2019 was on Friday (15 January) jailed for five months for obstructing the course of justice by discarding a blood-stained white T-shirt belonging to the alleged murderer. Loo Boon Chong, a 27-year-old Singaporean, had earlier pleaded guilty to the charge, along with one count of unlawful gambling in an unrelated incident for which he was fined $1,000. If he fails to pay the fine he will have to serve another five days in jail. Along with six others, Loo had initially been charged with the murder with common intention of 31-year-old Satheesh Noel Gobidass at the entrance of Orchard Towers on 2 July 2019. About a week later, Loos charge was downgraded to consorting with co-accused Tan Sen Yang, who was carrying a kerambit knife in a public place. The count of consorting with a person in possession of an offensive weapon was considered in sentencing on Friday as part of Loos plea bargain. Of the seven charged, only Tan Sen Yang still faces the charge of murder. His case is pending before the High Court. Four others Joel Tan Yun Sheng, Ang Da Yuan, Natalie Siow, and Chan Jia Xing have been dealt with. The remaining accused, Tan Hong Sheng, is expected to plead guilty next month. About the case On 2 July 2019, Loo went drinking with some friends at a few clubs in the Orchard area. He ended up at the Naughty Girl Club in Orchard Towers with Tan, whom he knew as Ah Boy, after 5am. Loo had known Tan for some three years before the incident. He was aware that Tan had some issues with the police, although he did not know specific details. While at the club, a dispute arose between Loos group of friends and another group of patrons. Loo saw that Tan was armed with a kerambit knife in his right hand and had pointed it at the group of patrons. In the ensuing dispute, two individuals were injured by Tan at the club entrance despite Loos attempt to stop the fight. Story continues After someone shouted police, Loo took a lift to the ground floor of Orchard Towers to leave the place with his group, including Tan. At the ground floor, the group encountered Satheesh, who confronted one member of Loos group over the earlier dispute. Some other members of the group attacked Satheesh, and Tan allegedly inflicted a fatal injury on Satheeshs head and neck area. Loo was not part of the attack. The group then left the area. Loo knew that Satheesh had been critically injured and saw him collapsing at the entrance of the building. Satheesh succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead at about 7.25am the same day. He died from a stab wound to his neck. Loo and several others, including Tan, went to Boon Lay market. Tan then went to Loos house to take a shower. Loo gave Tan a clean shirt, $50 for transport, and a pair of slippers. After Tan left, Loo walked around his flat to check that Tan had not left behind the knife. He threw Tans soiled shirt down the common rubbish chute and it was never recovered. Loo later surrendered himself at Police Cantonment Complex after he was told that the incident had been classified as a murder case. Separately, on 18 February last year, Loo also took part in a game of dice involving money at a flat in Jurong West. The maximum punishment for obstructing, preventing, perverting or defeating the course of justice is a jail term of up to seven years along with a fine. For his gambling offence, Loo could have been fined up to $5,000 and also jailed for up to six months. Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore Related stories Orchard Towers death: AGC explains suspects' different charges AGC flags social media posts alleging racial bias in wake of Orchard Towers case Orchard Towers death: Chan Jia Xing given conditional warning Orchard Towers death: Natalie Siow gets 5 months' jail Orchard Towers death: Natalie Siow claims trial to one charge Orchard Towers murder case: Duo get charges reduced to assault Orchard Towers murder case: Natalie Siow faces 2 new charges Orchard Towers murder case: Natalie Siow faces reduced charge of causing hurt Man who absconded Orchard Towers murder hearing re-arrested, faces fresh rioting charge Orchard Towers death: Three suspects have murder charges withdrawn Orchard Towers assault: 7 charged with murder of 31-year-old man 8 men, women arrested for murder after man collapsed at Orchard Towers and died A Morgan County Sheriff's Office investigator who was attacked by a bull in August is back at work. "I feel great! I mean I really do. A lot better than what I have in the past, that's for sure," said Caleb Brooks,sheriff's office Investigator. It has only been about a month and a half since Brooks received a small intestine transplant after being attacked by a bull. (Read more HERE) "My life is changed forever, medications and stuff like that, but you know it's not, I'm not going to let it get me down, you know, you just try to do the best you can," said Brooks. Brooks did not letting a small intestine transplant get in the way of him being back at the office. "You're supposed to be in the hospital for five to six weeks and I was out in 11 days. The doctors and the nurses, they couldn't believe it. I mean I'm young and I was relatively healthy but it's just a blessing to me," said Brooks. Back in August, Brooks was attacked by a bull. "Put his head right here in the middle of my stomach and started pushing me around and when you have a big old animal that outweighs you three to five times, you know, there's not much you can do. So he pushed me around the pasture and ended up hitting me into a tree," said Brooks. He said doctors locally did all they could, before he went to Ohio. "The surgeon had never seen anything like it and he was able to reach out to Cleveland Clinic and they said that they would accept me because my small intestine was just completely just shot. It was gone. There was nothing they could do to save my intestine," said Brooks. After recovering from the transplant, Brooks said he wanted to get back to the Morgan County Sheriff's Office as soon as he was able. "They welcomed me back with open arms. It was great," said Brooks. Brooks credits God, his wife, kids, family and supporters for his strength to fight back. "I can't, I can't express or even put into words how thankful I am for everybody's support and their prayers. It's just an amazing support system and all the people that have reached out, it's just really keeps you going. It's really one of those things that pushes you...And knowing that God is going to take care of you," said Brooks. The brain strategy for storing memories may lead to imperfect memories, but in turn, allows it to store more memories, and with less hassle than AI. Credit: Shahab Mohsenin In the last decades, artificial intelligence has shown to be very good at achieving exceptional goals in several fields. Chess is one of them: in 1996, for the first time, the computer Deep Blue beat a human player, chess champion Garry Kasparov. A new piece of research shows now that the brain strategy for storing memories may lead to imperfect memories, but in turn, allows it to store more memories, and with less hassle than AI. The new study, carried out by SISSA scientists in collaboration with Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience & Centre for Neural Computation, Trondheim, Norway, has just been published in Physical Review Letters. Neural networks, real or artificial, learn by tweaking the connections between neurons. Making them stronger or weaker, some neurons become more active, some less, until a pattern of activity emerges. This pattern is what we call 'a memory.' The AI strategy is to use complex long algorithms, which iteratively tune and optimize the connections. The brain does it much simpler: each connection between neurons changes just based on how active the two neurons are at the same time. When compared to the AI algorithm, this had long been thought to permit the storage of fewer memories. But, in terms of memory capacity and retrieval, this wisdom is largely based on analyzing networks assuming a fundamental simplification: that neurons can be considered as binary units. The new research, however, shows otherwise: the fewer number of memories stored using the brain strategy depends on such unrealistic assumption. When the simple strategy used by the brain to change the connections is combined with biologically plausible models for single neurons response, that strategy performs as well as, or even better, than AI algorithms. How could this be the case? Paradoxically, the answer is in introducing errors: when a memory is effectively retrieved this can be identical to the original input-to-be-memorized or correlated to it. The brain strategy leads to the retrieval of memories which are not identical to the original input, silencing the activity of those neurons that are only barely active in each pattern. Those silenced neurons, indeed, do not play a crucial role in distinguishing among the different memories stored within a same network. By ignoring them, neural resources can be focused on those neurons that do matter in an input-to-be-memorized and enable a higher capacity. Overall, this research highlights how biologically plausible self-organized learning procedures can be just as efficient as slow and neurally implausible training algorithms. Explore further Stable connections between nerve cells are the basis of memory More information: Francesca Schonsberg et al, Efficiency of Local Learning Rules in Threshold-Linear Associative Networks, Physical Review Letters (2021). Journal information: Physical Review Letters Francesca Schonsberg et al, Efficiency of Local Learning Rules in Threshold-Linear Associative Networks,(2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.018301 In an address at the Army Day parade in the national capital, Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Friday said that the Indian Army gave a "befitting reply" to the "conspiracy" to unilaterally change the status quo on India-China borders . In a clear message to China, Gen Naravane has said that no one should make any mistake of testing India's patience though it is committed to resolve the border standoff along the northern frontier through talks and political efforts. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Gen Naravane said that the sacrifice of the Galwan heroes in eastern Ladakh will not go waste. "We are committed to resolve disputes through talks and political efforts but no one should make any mistake of testing our patience," he said. "I want to assure the country that the sacrifice of the Galwan heroes will not go waste. Indian Army will not allow any harm to the country's sovereignty and security," he added. Twenty Indian Army personnel laid down their lives in a fierce hand-to-hand combat on June 15 last year in Galwan Valley, an incident that marked the most serious military conflicts between the two sides in decades. China is yet to disclose the number of its soldiers killed and injured in the clash though it officially admitted to have suffered casualties. According to an American intelligence report, the number of casualties on the Chinese side was 35 "We are committed to resolve disputes through talks and political efforts but no one should make any mistake of testing our patience," Gen Naravane said. He said eight rounds of military talks were held between India and China to bring the situation under control. "Our efforts will continue to find a solution to the current situation on the basis of mutual and equal security," he said. Referring to cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, he said the neighbouring country continues to provide a safe haven to terrorists. The Army chief talked about the 'nefarious intentions' of the neighbouring country and said around 300-400 terrorists camping near the border wanting to infiltrate the Indian territory. Strong response is being given to the enemy on the other border. Pakistan continues to provide safe haven to terrorists. In the training camps, across the LoC (Line of Control), around 300-400 terrorists are ready to infiltrate," he said. "There was an increase of 40% in the ceasefire violations last year which is the proof of Pakistan's sinister plans. There were also attempts to smuggle weapons using drones," he added. General Naravane further informed that over 200 terrorists were killed by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in different operations last year. With agency inputs Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. 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. Searching for a Houston COVID-19 vaccination hub that's not completely booked up? You could be in luck this weekend. In the push to give Houstonians more access to the vaccine, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced additional appointment times at the Minute Maid Park vaccination megasite this weekend. The Houston Health Department stated in a tweet that COVID-19 vaccinations will be done this Saturday and are by appointment only. On Friday, the department announced that 2,600 new appointment slots had just opened up. Health department officials stated that they are contacting people who have appointments to inform them of the new location. In an effort to accommodate more Houstonians, the Houston Health Department stated that they hope to add more appointments on Saturday. The information would be released on HoustonEmergency.org as soon as more appointment slots are available. Right now, vaccines are administered to people in Phase 1A and Phase 1B, which include health care workers, residents in long-term health facilities and individuals who are 65 years or older, according to the Texas Department of Health Services. Mayor Turner hopes to launch more vaccine sites next week, and instructed the Houston Health Department to get the vaccine doses out to the public as soon as the city receives them in a press briefing on Thursday. The virus is not waiting and because the virus is not waiting, I don't want us to wait," Turner said. "So my plan is you send them, we get them, we dispense them." Last weekend, the Houston Health Department administered nearly 3,800 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at Minute Maid Park. The push to get more Houstonians vaccinated every day is essential to flattening the COVID-19 curve achieving herd immunity, according to Infectious Disease expert Dr. Peter Hotez. "If you look at the numbers right now, it's about 1,000 a day (at new clinic), but we have to figure out a way to vaccinate 10,000 Houstonians from now to the end of the year. The question is how do we do that," Hotez told Chron in a recent interview. EDWARDSVILLE The Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine (SDM) has appointed Dr. Cornell Thomas, DMD, as chief diversity officer and director of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Thomas will maintain his role as assistant dean for Admissions and Student Services, but will place a more focused and sustained emphasis on diversity and equity issues. His dedication to lower barriers not lower standards has been woven in his exemplary efforts to advance the SDM since his tenure began in 1979. Dr. Thomas has led numerous diversity efforts on our campus for several years, but due to his many other duties has not had the opportunity to devote the amount of effort we feel this role deserves, Rotter said. This added emphasis on equity and diversity issues is both extremely important and timely for the future growth and direction of the SDM. Dr. Thomas leadership will positively affect all members of the SDM community. I am honored to serve in this capacity, Thomas said. It is work that I have been doing, but I can now devote more time and energy to focus on this endeavor. I have support from my dean, Dr. Bruce Rotter, who shares in my vision about the work in diversity, equity and inclusion. He has provided the opportunity to move us forward. He has a clear insightfulness to bring change for the betterment of the SDM. With his shared vision, we can make a difference in how we develop and sustain an inclusive environment in which faculty, staff, students, administrators and patients can connect. As the chief diversity officer, Thomas will facilitate communication for SDM to the essential values of anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion for faculty, staff and students. Thomas will provide support for Black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) and historically underrepresented people at the SDM. The DEI Office will provide transparency across and among groups in an effort to increase the numbers of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty, staff and students at the SDM, Thomas explained. The office will empower the campus community to maintain an environment as it relates to honesty, civility and open-mindedness. The officer will strive to dismantle systemic racism and oppression. We can build a sense of togetherness and inclusivity in our teaching, research and service to each other and the communities that we serve. According to Thomas, specific initiatives include: Increase enrollment of URMs at the SDM and increase the number of faculty and staff of color Provide diversity and inclusion training to continue a safe and welcoming environment on our campus Develop and implement a plan to recruit faculty from underrepresented groups Provide advocacy for SDM students, faculty and staff from underrepresented groups, other cultures and genders, races and LGBTQIA groups. Provide mentoring for these groups to thrive in the campus environment In support of Thomas additional roles, Admissions and Records Supervisor Angela Pritchett will take responsibility for the direction of daily operations in the SDM Office of Admissions and Student Services. Disney is ready to experiment with a movie release that is available simultaneously in theaters and on one of its streaming services. The guinea pig film? Nomadland, a modern drama starring Frances McDormand (Fargo), David Strathairn (Lincoln) and three real-life nomads in the US. As The Hollywood Reporter explains, the movie which is being distributed by Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures will debut in select IMAX theaters on January 29th before hitting traditional theaters and Hulu on February 19th. Its already been a hit with the critics, picking up awards at both the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival last year. The strategy should sound familiar. Its the same one that Warner Bros. has adopted for its entire 2021 movie slate. The only difference, of course, is that Warner Bros. is focusing its streaming efforts on HBO Max. Its no surprise that Disney has chosen Hulu over Disney+ for Nomadlands streaming release. Both are owned by the house of mouse, however Hulu has a slightly more grown-up brand. According to Variety, Searchlight Pictures plans to release Nomadland internationally later in the will then be released internationally throughout the spring. Its unclear if the movie will be available to stream in markets where Hulu isnt currently available. Nomadlands release follows a slew of slightly different streaming experiments from Disney. The company rushed Onwards release to Disney+, for instance, once it became clear that the pandemic would limit its box office takings. Mulan was released on Disney+, but with an additional fee attached, and Soul premiered exclusively on the service last month. A number of other movies have been confirmed as straight-to-Disney+ releases, including Pinocchio and Peter Pan & Wendy. The release strategy for higher-profile movies such as Black Widow a Marvel epic thats been delayed several times already is still a mystery, however. 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. In the year to 31 December 2020, Gym Group saw total revenue drop 72.6m from 153.1m to 80.5m. Photo: Getty The Gym Group (GYM.L) announced that its monthly cash burn during the current COVID-19 lockdown is 5m thanks to government support, while the November closures cost 6m. In the year to 31 December 2020, Gym Group saw total revenue drop 72.6m from 153.1m to 80.5m, with 45% of trading days lost due to government restrictions. Year-end non-property net debt was 47m, while the company was cash flow positive during post-lockdown trading periods with 3.8m of deferred rents outstanding at the end of 2020. Gym Group also said that it has started talks with banks over debt covenants. The company said it has significant liquidity available under an existing 100m bank facility. The company, which operates 184 venues across the UK, said that despite the lowered figures it is planning to continue with its expansion, opening three new sites once there is greater visibility about a reopening date for gyms. WATCH: Why can't governments just print more money? READ MORE: UK economy on brink of the first double-dip recession since 1970s The company had all its gym open, under Tier 1-3 restrictions, then it was required to close 162 of its 183 sites when Tier 4 restrictions were introduced in December, then shuttered all its venues on 4 January when the UK government announced a nationwide lockdown. Meanwhile, total year-end membership was 578,000, down from 794,000 in December 2019. The firm has frozen all membership subscriptions since the national lockdown so that members dont pay whilst gyms are closed. Richard Darwin, CEO of The Gym Group, said: 2020 has been a challenging year for our business, our members and our colleagues. Through the outstanding work of our team we provided a COVID-secure exercise environment for our members and demonstrated the resilience of our business model by trading profitably when gyms have been open. Our cash management during the pandemic has ensured we ended 2020 with manageable levels of debt and significant liquidity. At a time when health and fitness has never been more important to the nation, we are ready to emerge from the pandemic and take advantage of the many opportunities available to us." WATCH: Should I pay off debt or save money during the coronavirus pandemic? Scotlands Health Secretary has apologised to Matt Hancock after her vaccine deployment plan mistakenly published sensitive details about supplies from manufacturers. Jeane Freeman said she regrets publishing the figures for weekly supplies, information which UK Government ministers consider to be commercially confidential. The Scottish Conservatives have accused her of breaching the ministerial code, citing the figures in the deployment plan and Ms Freemans mention of a vaccine storage location in England which the Scottish Government later said should not be reported. Scotlands vaccine deployment plan was temporarily taken offline after UK ministers raised concerns, but it has since been republished without the figures relating to expected weekly supplies from manufacturers Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna. The UK Government believes manufacturers may come under pressure from other countries if the UKs allocation of finite supplies is made known. Ms Freeman was asked about the deployment plan during the Scottish Governments coronavirus briefing on Friday. She said: I regret that we published information that the UK Government considers to be sensitive Ive had those conversations with them and respect their view. Weve withdrawn that information and the plan, with that part removed, everything else there is back up on our website. She said the Scottish Government wants to be open with the public about the pandemic, but she takes responsibility for the mistake. She said: From day one, the First Minister said that she wanted to have an adult relationship with the people of Scotland and I think that was exactly the right approach to take. Ms Freeman said she apologised directly to UK Health Secretary Mr Hancock on Thursday evening, saying: I regret that what was done, with the right intentions I firmly believe, has caused some upset and I apologise for that. I am confident that those I have spoken to are now content and we can move on. Story continues It has not damaged the relationships between myself and the Secretary of State at UK Government level or my colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland, and I know that because I spoke to all four of them last night. UK ministers have concerns that the information could put vaccine suppliers under pressure (Matt Alexander/PA) She said decisions relating to alleged breaches of the ministerial code are a matter for the First Minister to consider. The Scottish Conservatives said the code requires those in Government to respect confidentiality and security. The party also referred to a statement Ms Freeman gave in the Scottish Parliament in which she mentioned a vaccine site in England. In a letter to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Tory health spokesman Donald Cameron said: The dissemination of a location involved in the Covid-19 vaccine distribution chain that Scottish Government officials say should not be reported appears to be contrary to the quoted section of the ministerial code. We also have concerns that the publishing of the original Covid-19 vaccination plan, including sensitive figures on the supply of the vaccine, may have also breached the code, particularly since the latest plan states that the Government is unable to provide specific details due to limitations of this being commercially sensitive information. Subscriber content preview SEATTLE A small apartment building at 228 11th Ave. E. sold for almost $3.3 million, according to King County records. The seller was Tobin Properties LLC, a family group that had owned the property for decades. . . . A teenager who fell over a cliff in Glebe while trying to evade police is accused of committing a string of offences including multiple vehicle thefts and leading police on high-speed chases over the past three months, a court has been told. The boy was apprehended in the early hours of Thursday morning after police tried to stop him and a friend, suspected of riding stolen motorbikes, for a breath test. The two boys, who are both aged 17 and cannot be named for legal reasons, allegedly led the police on a short pursuit and, after reaching the end of Toxteth Road, climbed over a barrier before falling a number of metres down the cliff face. The accused teenager sustained only minor injuries in the fall, while his friend was critically injured and remains in a chemically induced coma. A police officer was also injured after going over the cliff. More than 15,000 illegal migrants attempted to cross the Channel last year, police have revealed. The data combined the number of attempted crossings with those who reached Britain from northern France and other points such as Belgium and the Netherlands. Home Office figures show 8,500 migrants reached the UK in 2020 up from 1,850 in the previous 12 months. More than 15,000 illegal migrants attempted to cross the Channel last year, police have revealed. A migrant is seen above being brought ashore by Border Force in the English Channel The number of unsuccessful crossings had not previously been disclosed. The report, published yesterday by European policing agency Europol, said Channel crossings grew as clandestine smuggling in lorries declined due to better security. It stated: From January to mid-December 2020, law enforcement authorities of concerned countries registered more than 1,300 incidents involving more than 15,000 irregular migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats. It said the totals included successful crossings, attempted crossings or discovery of nautical equipment for crossing. The agency, of which the UK is no longer a member following the end of the transition period, said Channel crossings grew as clandestine smuggling in lorries declined, due to better security fencing on the Continent and fewer road freight crossings during the pandemic. Pictured: Migrants arrive at theSovereign Harbour in Eastbourne, East Sussex earlier this month, after a rescue operation was launched to save a boat 'in difficulty' Recent tragedies linked to migrant smuggling in confined compartments may deter migrant smugglers from employing this modus operandi, it said. Migrant smugglers and organised crime groups have once again shown flexibility and adaptability by using small boats instead of lorries. Furthermore, favourable weather conditions during the year, simple practical implementation and a high success rate made this modus operandi even more appealing for organised crime groups. Europol also said: Small boats are not the only type of vessel used by facilitators to smuggle irregular migrants across the Channel to the UK. Registered sailing vessels and motor yachts are also used to transport irregular migrants under the guise of leisure trips, departing from Belgium or the Netherlands. This modus operandi is less visible than departures with small boats since it involves legitimate, registered vessels. It noted the case of 69 Albanian migrants found hiding in a trawler destined for an eastern UK port in November, and arrested after a major maritime operation led by the National Crime Agency. Criminal charges were dropped the following month after a legal bungle, however. Plans to prosecute the 69 men and women for illegal entry to the UK were abandoned because the migrants never set foot on British soil - a key criteria under the law. It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Police have confirmed they believe a fire at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association building was started deliberately. PSNI Chief Inspector Gavin Kirkpatrick said police are also treating the incident as a hate crime. He appealed for anyone with information to come forward and said police had begun an investigation into the fire and were working alongside colleagues in the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS). First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill condemned last nights attack. They said: First and foremost our thoughts are with all those across the community who use the centre. The Belfast Multi-Cultural Association is a vital hub for minority communities in the city, and this mindless destruction will have a huge impact on many peoples lives. This was a despicable attack. It not only caused significant damage to what is a well-used community facility, but it also endangered the lives of the firefighters who had to make sure no one was inside the building and battle to extinguish the blaze. We and our Executive colleagues are committed to doing everything we can to eradicate racism and hate crime. It is vital that everyone in our society makes a stand against such hatred and intolerance, and we would appeal to anyone with information about who may have been responsible for this abhorrent attack to contact the PSNI. Located in the south of the city, the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said it was heartbroken and shocked after a devastating fire broke out at its Belfast building. The organisation said it believed the incident was deliberate. It said it had been on the receiving end of "hostility and Islamophobia for years". A spokesperson for the NIFRS said it responded to a well-developed fire at a building on Donegall Pass around 8.30pm on Thursday. The building, a former Presbyterian Church is occupied by the Belfast Multi Cultural Association and was formerly the home of the now closed Water Margin Chinese restaurant. The building was badly damaged but no one was in the building at the time. Expand Close The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Seven pumping appliances and three specialist appliances were deployed to the scene to deal with the incident. Around 50 personnel were at the scene, breathing apparatus, jets and high reach appliances were used to deal with the fire and bring it under control. Appliance and crew members were reduced but were still at the scene as of 11pm to maintain safety. Frank Belfast's Lord Mayor Frank McCoubrey, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, offered his support to all those affected. I was shocked and saddened to hear news of the fire; while it is a blessing that no one was injured, this is a devastating blow for the volunteers who have been using this base to serve their community and others, and provide much-needed support to some of the most vulnerable in our society, he said. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and it is important that the investigation is completed; but it is sad to hear members of the Association speak this morning of ongoing hostility and tensions. As First Citizen, I want to offer them my support. There is no place in society for hate. Belfast is a diverse city and we are much richer for it. Throughout the ongoing pandemic, I have been heartened by the overwhelming sense of community spirit right across our city and I am certain that the people of south Belfast and beyond will unite in their support of Belfast Multi-Cultural Association, and support them as they work to restore the vital services they provide to the local community. A spokesman for the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said he was told early indications suggested the incident was deliberate. He said the building had been subjected to hate attacks in the past. "It is heartbreaking when the whole building is nearly gone. What we are doing here is to help the community," he told the BBC. "If it is deliberate, it is a really shameful act." In a Facebook post, the organisation added: "We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. Expand Close It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press "We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. "Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all." Sinn Fein MLA Deirdre Hargey said she was shocked to learn of the fire and thanked the fire service for its efforts. The cause of the fire had not yet been determined but this will come as a major blow to the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association and to all those who use its services," she said. Im deeply concerned that people at the centre have been the target of hate crime in recent months. There is an onus therefore on the emergency services to investigate if this devastating fire was started deliberately. Im sure the community in south Belfast will rally round and support them in the time ahead to continue their work. The NIFRS spokesperson added that an investigation would be carried out once the fire was totally extinguished and safe for fire crews to enter. Fire at BMCA Peace be upon you all, Unfortunately tonight we have some awful news, after being at the receiving end of a lot of hostility and Islamophobia for quite some time: tonight BMCA is ablaze. We dont have any details about how this has happened, we will share them as soon as we know. Fortunately none of our volunteers were injured. We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all. BMCA team https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/fire-service-called-tackle-blaze-19629400 Posted by Belfast Multi-Cultural Association on Thursday, January 14, 2021 Thongloun Sisoulith, Prime Minister of Laos virtually addresses the general debate of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, Sept. 26, 2020. Laos ruling Communist Party is set to elevate Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, a veteran official credited with fighting corruption, to party chief and state president to run the one-party state for five years, according to party voting lists announced Thursday. The Soviet-trained Sisoulith, 75, emerged at the top of a list of 71 members of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committee Secretariat, while incumbent LPRP chief and Lao President Bounnhang Vorachith was left off the list, indicating his retirement at 83. In his speech to the Jan 13-15 congress in Vientiane, Sisoulith took aim at poor financial management, debt and murky business practices in the landlocked country of 7.2 million people that has known only LRPR rule since 1975. During the last five years, the debt has not been successfully tackled. Our financial management has failed. The stability of our currency has been delicate and our foreign currency reserves have been lower than planned, he told the congress. Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith (L) shakes hands with China's President Xi Jinping (R) before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Jan. 6, 2020. Sisoulith, who held multiple senior posts in government since 1987 and became prime minister in 2016, said the countrys business culture is lacking transparency while problems included high unemployment, poor job security and illegal immigration. He outlined five-year economic development goals including reducing poverty and inequality; improving access to healthcare and education for the poor; diversifying the economy away from dependence on exploitation of natural resources, reducing debt and financial leaks, and fixing the tax collection system. Thongloun deserves to be at the top because he is very experienced politician, said a local LPRP member in Borikhamxay province, who identified himself by hi nickname, Vong. As prime minister, he has had some success cracking on corruption, illegal logging and banning the export of wood, he said. The departure of Vietnam-trained General Secretary Bounnhang Vorachith was predicted by a party member to RFA early this week, although some observers thought he would follow recent LPRP practice and serve a second five-year term. Bounnhang has made the right decision to step down because he is 83 years old, too old for the top position. However, he may still remain an important adviser to the party for next 4-5 years, said Vong. The general secretary also serves as state president and will appoint a prime minister, to be rubber stamped by the Lao National Assembly, which will be elected next month. Ranking after Thongloun Sisoulith on the leadership slate are Pany Yathotou, chairwoman of Lao National Assembly; deputy prime minister Bounthong Chitmany; and vice-president Phankham Viphavanh. Public opinion is hard to gauge in Laos, where the LPRP monopolizes political power and control of the media, and has jailed citizens for posting mild complaints about the government on Facebook. Some residents of the Lao capital, however, said they were not inspired by the reshuffle, in which only two politburo members were replaced by new faces. Nothing will get better. The Party and government will be led by the same leaders. Thats why Im not interested in Lao politics, said a woman in Vientiane, who withheld her name in order to speak freely. I listened to the prime ministers last-five-year report and new five-year plan; they are all the same. He said the same thing, said another capital resident. Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written by Paul Eckert. The Oregon Health Authority on Thursday reported 1,152 new confirmed or presumptive coronavirus cases and 29 additional deaths. Thursdays figures broke a streak of two days where the state reported more than 40 deaths. At least 1,737 Oregonians have died with COVID-19 so far during the pandemic, with nearly one-third of fatalities in December alone. State officials did not immediately provide details of the deaths reported Thursday. Meanwhile, 10,172 doses of the coronavirus vaccine were administered Wednesday. Another 6,183 vaccine doses were used in previous days but not entered into the states system until now The state said in a statement that it hit Gov. Kate Browns goal of administering 12,000 doses in a single day last week but health leaders want to sustain and expand our daily totals. As The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Thursday, several large Portland hospitals are sitting on sizable vaccine stockpiles and the states tracking system is riddled with errors. Where the new cases are by county: Baker (7), Benton (23), Clackamas (70), Clatsop (11), Columbia (15), Coos (11), Crook (12), Curry (1), Deschutes (82), Douglas (16), Harney (6), Hood River (9), Jackson (75), Jefferson (12), Josephine (18), Klamath (17), Lake (3), Lane (94), Lincoln (2), Linn (23), Malheur (14), Marion (137), Morrow (9), Multnomah (185), Polk (13), Umatilla (60), Union (19), Wasco (14), Washington (162), Wheeler (2) and Yamhill (30). Deaths: Oregons 1,709th COVID-19 death is a 67-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive Nov. 26 and died Nov.30 at her residence. The 1,710th death is a 91-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive Oct.14 and died Nov. 28 at her residence. The 1,711th death is an 85-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive Oct. 29 and died Nov. 19 at her residence. The 1,712th death is a 96-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive Nov. 30 and died Dec. 8 at her residence. The 1,713th death is a 91-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive Nov. 30 and died Dec.15 at Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center. The 1,714th death is a 68-year-old Deschutes County man who tested positive Dec. 7 and died Dec.13 at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend. The 1,715th death is an 81-year-old Hood River County woman who tested positive Dec. 2 and died Dec. 21 at her residence. The 1,716th death is a 76-year-old Jefferson County woman who tested positive Dec.1 and died Dec. 10 at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend. The 1,717th death is a 77-year-old Jackson County woman who tested positive Nov. 10 and died Dec. 12 at her residence. The 1,718th death is a 95-year-old Lane County woman who tested positive Nov. 11 and died Nov. 27 at her residence. The 1,719th death is a 58-year-old Lane County man who tested positive Dec. 16 and died Jan. 11 at Oregon Health Sciences University. The 1,720th death is an 89-year-old Linn County woman who tested positive Nov. 28 and died Dec.12 at her residence. The 1,721st death is an 85-year-old Linn County woman who tested positive Oct. 28 and died Dec. 8 at her residence. The 1,722nd death is a 94-year-old Linn County woman who tested positive Jan. 6 and died Jan. 11 at Albany General Hospital. The 1,723rd death is an 80-year-old Linn County man who tested positive Dec. 22 and died Jan. 1 at Salem Hospital. The 1,724th death is an 83-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Nov. 16 and died Nov. 26 at her residence. The 1,725th death is a 65-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Nov. 20 and died Dec. 6 at Providence Portland Medical Center. The 1,726th death is an 88-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Dec. 2 and died Dec. 13 at her residence. The 1,727th death is a 77-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Nov. 30 and died Dec. 6 at her residence. The 1,728th death is a 98-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Nov. 27 and died Dec. 10 at her residence. The 1,729th death is a 79-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Nov. 21 and died Dec. 6 at her residence. The 1,730th death is a 75-year-old Multnomah County man who tested positive Dec. 7 and died Dec. 17 at his residence. The 1,731st death is an 80-year-old Multnomah County woman who became symptomatic after contact with a confirmed case and died Dec. 3 at her residence. The 1,732nd death is a 60-year-old Umatilla County man who tested positive Dec. 15 and died Dec. 21 at his residence. The 1,733rd death is an 84-year-old Washington County man who tested positive Dec. 9 and died Jan. 12 at his residence. The ,734th death is an 86-year-old Washington County man who tested positive Dec. 25 and died Jan. 12 at his residence. The 1,735th death is an 82-year-old Yamhill County man who tested positive Jan. 8 and died Jan. 11 at his residence. The 1,736th death is a 68-year-old Yamhill County man who tested positive Jan. 4 and died Jan.10 at his residence. The 1,737th death is a 95-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive Dec. 11 and died Dec. 19 at her residence. Each person had underlying medical conditions or state officials were determining if they had underlying conditions. The prevalence of infections: On Thursday, the state reported 1,283 new positive tests out of 21,108 tests performed, equaling a 6.1% positivity rate. Who got infected: New confirmed or presumed infections grew among the following age groups: 0-9 (65); 10-19 (162); 20-29 (202); 30-39 (194); 40-49 (170); 50-59 (160); 60-69 (95); 70-79 (53); 80 and older (34). Whos in the hospital: The state reported 415 Oregonians with confirmed coronavirus infections were currently in the hospital Thursday, 19 fewer than Wednesday. Of those, 101 coronavirus patients were in intensive care units, 2 fewer than Wednesday. Vaccines administered: Oregon has administered 146,137 doses of COVID-19 vaccines out of 321,425 doses delivered to the state, a roughly 45% use rate. New Delhi, Jan 15 : The artisanal, bean-to-bar chocolate making will further gain feet in India in the coming years. An evolving palate of Indian consumers will help the rise of India-made chocolates and brands that use honest, natural ingredients and practise small-batch handcrafting, says Sheetal Saxena, founder of Colocal, an artisanal chocolate brand. Colocal, which has a casual cafe diner and chocolate factory at its flagship in Delhi's Chhatarpur, is a bean-to-bar concept based on strategically sourcing locally grown cacao and transforming it into the finest, skillfully blended chocolate available to all the chocoholics out there in every possible form. The idea behind the brand is to introduce people to the craft chocolate world, where they get to taste the real chocolate with their varied notes, made out of premium quality Indian beans. "There is a growing interest and demand for dark chocolate as people are paying far more attention to health and sugar reduction now. The demand for organic, vegan, sugar-free, and gluten-free in chocolates is increasing rapidly. At Colocal our dark hot chocolates are evidently popular. We offer dark hot chocolate variants in strengths 55 per cent, 64 per cent, 72 per cent and 85 per cent with added flavours like mint, raspberry and chilli, and sea salt," Saxena told IANSlife. Colocal is conceptualised by Sheetal Saxena and Nishant Kumar Sinha, who recently launched the flagship diner in the capital. While serving delicious chocolate-based dishes, the place also has a chocolate factory on the floor above, where diners can experience chocolate being created. The process of making craft chocolates is often seen as the most complex and layered product to work with. The whole process from bean-to-bar is an extensive and far-flung activity, involving a lot of steps before the final bar is produced. The brand sources the Cacao from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the two regions where the best quality cacao is grown in India. Once the beans are plucked from the Cacao tree, they are then taken for fermentation at a high temperature to get the right profile. After fermentation, the beans are left for 3-4 days to dry completely before the process of roasting starts. Roasting is the most important yet momentous part of the entire process. It brings out the desired notes, taste, colour and texture of the cacao beans. Once the beans cool down, they are cracked open and separated. Then the Cacao nibs are crushed and sugar is added to make the final chocolate bars. After the Cacao nibs are crushed and made into chocolate liquor, they are further conched to remove the acidic acids from the bar for a better after-taste. Tempering is the final step and this is what decides the final finish look and taste of the chocolate. All chocolates are tempered at different temperatures and are packaged and distributed around the world. The entire process of making a bar out of roasted cacao beans takes up to 72 hours. The menu at Colocal is handpicked and assorted with a mix of Italian and Continental fare such as sourdough pizzas, handmade Pastas, scrumptious burgers and sandwiches, not to forget the most popular and celebrated Roastery Coffee House coffee beverage menu. It also incorporates delectable drinks and a food menu made using the in-house chocolates like hot chocolate, cold chocolate, cacao cold brew, to name a few. It also offers baked goods and bakery items overwhelmingly revolving around chocolates. The appetizing desserts include Chocolate Souffle, Chocolate Tart, Cakes, Chocolate Babka, Sourdough, Croissant, Pain au chocolat, amongst many more intriguing treats. Where: COLOCAL, Dhan Mill, 100 Feet Road, Chhattarpur, New Delhi (Siddhi Jain can be contacted at siddhi.j@ians.in) The recent banning of Parler from Amazon servers claims it encouraged violence. According to the White House,it sets a grim precedent by Liberal tech firms. It is ominous for free speech as conservative content is shutdown. Big Tech firms act against liberals and have a monopoly on that censor apps according to their whims. Deciding whether the content is violent or not when it is not applied universally has started an adverse chain reaction. The White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Director Peter Navarro cited the Parler free speech app's banning because it won't censor users. When it did not comply, Amazon arbitrarily decides to boot out the app from its servers, reported The Epoch Times. On Fox Business, Navarro said that it is a collusive oligopoly and is not new. He added the fierce attack on the app is chilling. It is an assault on free speech online for conservatives; it is a unitary move where Google and Apple intentionally suppressed the app. The banning shows their overall intent to decide on how appropriate media is for specific sectors they consider as unfit or violates. Recently, Google and Apple took down Parler from online stores, and on Monday, Amazon joined them in the giant push that annihilates the app online. It is also cut access from its conservation users, John Matze, the Parler CEO, condemned this big tech collusion. His app had a massive uptick in traffic when Twitter and FB silenced Trump, which is ominous for free speech. Also read: Big Tech Censorship of Donald Trump, World Leaders Call for Regulation Matze went offensive against Amazon Web Services (AWS) and filed a case against the big tech firm. Adding that he got a text from an Amazon rep to Matze, the text suggested that AWS was not keen on President Trump using it as an alternative to Twitter. Not the violent content as reasoned out, but the need to deny Trump an online audience. Matze said Amazon Web Services (AWS) broke more laws that included the Sherman Antitrust Act when it filed in Washington state. Navarro calls Amazon cutting off its cloud services to the small startup, which could be competition. He added that it was an intention on the big tech Amazon to kill its competition, characteristic of a monopoly. He added and criticized how the former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Communist propaganda is allowed on Twitter. While Trump is banned from it, the CCP and Ayatollah are also against American interests. CEO Jack Dorsey addressed twitter's ban of Trump. Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, defended the banning of the president. He alleged that Trump has divisive comments that affect the public conversation. Claims it divided everyone and is limits everything in how its viewed. Overall, he defines Trump's opinion as dangerous. His comments were met with chastisement from world leaders of many nations, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) saying that big tech cannot say what is right or wrong. Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel of the ACLU, called the banning of Trump a threat to free speech as world leaders. Parler app is essential to free speech, and big tech shutting it down is ominous for free speech, as Navarro implies. Related article: John Matze says Attorneys Leave Parler as the Website Becomes Censored by Big Tech @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Vaccine industry experts have urged Australians not to panic about the limited supply of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine into Australia, arguing the government was always going to face stiff competition for doses. As concerns were raised over whether Australia was relying too heavily on AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine, chief medical officer Paul Kelly said on Wednesday that mRNA vaccine maker Pfizer had told the government it could only allocate 10 million doses to Australia in the first half of 2021. A nurse holds a phial of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine one of two products being rolled out in Australia. Credit:AP Earlier this week, Pfizer's German development partner BioNTech said it had increased its vaccine production targets and could make 2 billion doses for the globe in 2021, up from a projected 1.3 billion. A number of global deals have been signed for these doses to be delivered in 2021 and beyond. The United States has the option to buy up to 600 million doses, the European Commission has now negotiated 600 million doses, Japan has ordered 120 million doses, and the UK 40 million. The number of doses set to run through the COVAX facility for use by developing nations is not yet known. Jim Vertuno, STF / Associated Press In the wake of violence at the U.S. Capitol last week, federal prosecutors in Texas are warning that they plan to prosecute any crimes committed at the state capitol in Austin or any other federal violations ahead of the upcoming presidential inauguration. U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Cox, representing the Eastern District of Texas, signed on to an announcement Wednesday with the three of U.S. Attorneys representing the state, asserting there would be consequences for any actions resembling the breach of the U.S Capitol building by insurrectionists on Jan. 6. NORTH CHICAGO, Ill., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allergan Aesthetics and Allergan, an AbbVie company (NYSE: ABBV), announced today that scientific and clinical experts in the field of neurotoxins will present results from 16 abstracts spanning pre-clinical and clinical studies evaluating key safety and efficacy of BOTOX (onabotulinumtoxinA) across multiple therapeutic and cosmetic indications. Data includes long-term immunogenicity rates across 10 therapeutic and aesthetic indications, analyses from the Adult Spasticity International Registry (ASPIRE) study and Cervical Dystonia Patient Registry for BOTOX Efficacy (CD-PROBE), reviewing adherence to onabotulinumtoxinA treatment in patients with spasticity and efficacy and tolerability in patients with cervical dystonia, respectively. Also to be presented are data on incontinence product use and associated costs in patients with overactive bladder treated with onabotulinumtoxinA. Additionally, results from a randomized controlled clinical trial on the efficacy and safety of three active doses of onabotulinumtoxinA for the treatment of neurogenic detrusor overactivity in children and findings from a study on the safety, pharmacodynamic response and treatment satisfaction, with increasing doses of onabotulinumtoxinA in patients with moderate to severe dynamic glabellar lines will be presented. These data will be presented at the TOXINS 2021 Virtual Conference, organized by The International Neurotoxin Association (INA), January 16-17. "We continue to be deeply committed to advancing research of neurotoxins and are pleased to be able to share the depth and breadth of our latest data on BOTOX and BOTOX Cosmetic at the TOXINS 2021 Virtual Conference," said Mitchell F. Brin, M.D., Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, BOTOX & Neurotoxins, AbbVie. "With over 30 years in the neurotoxin space, we are excited to further build on this heritage as part of AbbVie. It allows us to support health professionals in meeting the individual needs of patients around the world on an even greater scale, both now and in the future." The abstracts are expected to be published online in a supplement of the journal Toxicon on January 16, 2021 with open access for six months after the conference. They will also be presented virtually over the course of the two-day conference. The TOXINS 2021 Virtual Poster Hall opens on January 16 and will remain open to conference attendees for 60 days post-conference. AbbVie abstracts being presented at the conference are outlined below. Adherence to OnabotulinumtoxinA Treatment in Patients with Spasticity from the ASPIRE Study Sustained Efficacy and Tolerability of OnabotulinumtoxinA in Naive and Non-naive Patients with Cervical Dystonia: Preliminary Completer Analysis from CD-PROBE Reduction in Incontinence Product Use and Associated Cost Savings After OnabotulinumtoxinA Treatment in Patients with Overactive Bladder Lower Limb Injections of OnabotulinumtoxinA: Improvement in Gait and Treatment Goal Achievement in Pediatric Patients with Cerebral Palsy Efficacy and Safety of an Alternative OnabotulinumtoxinA Injection Paradigm for Overactive Bladder: Final Double-Blind and Open-Label Results in Female Patients Efficacy and Safety of Three Active Doses of OnabotulinumtoxinA for the Treatment of Neurogenic Detrusor Overactivity in Children: Results of a Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial Real-life Use of OnabotulinumtoxinA for Symptom Relief in Patients with Chronic Migraine: REPOSE Study German Population Safety, Pharmacodynamic Response, and Treatment Satisfaction with OnabotulinumtoxinA 40 U, 60 U, and 80 U in Subjects with Moderate to Severe Dynamic Glabellar Lines Safety and Efficacy of OnabotulinumtoxinA for Treatment of Masseter Muscle Hypertrophy: Results from a Phase 2 Dose-Escalation Study Pregnancy Outcomes Following Exposure to OnabotulinumtoxinA Update: 29 Years of Safety Observation OnabotulinumtoxinA (OnabotA) Exhibits Greater Efficacy Compared with Purified Botulinum Neurotoxin A (BoNT/A-150 kDa) in Peripheral Pain Models Greater Biological Activity of OnabotulinumtoxinA and Non-interchangeability with Vacuum-Dried PrabotulinumtoxinA Botulax displays lower enzymatic activity when compared to onabotulinumtoxinA in a light chain activity assay A Cell-Penetrating Peptide (CPP) Did Not Decrease 150-kDa BoNT/A Toxin Adsorption to Surfaces or Increase Toxin Potency or Duration in a Prototype Formulation Neutralizing Antibody Conversion with OnabotulinumtoxinA from Global Studies Across Multiple Indications in Nearly 30,000 Patient Records: A Meta-Analysis Engineering SNAP23 Specificity into the Highly Selective Clostridium Botulinum Protease About BOTOX BOTOX (onabotulinumtoxinA) U.S. Important Information IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION BOTOX and BOTOX Cosmetic may cause serious side effects that can be life threatening. Get medical help right away if you have any of these problems any time (hours to weeks) after injection of BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic: Problems swallowing, speaking, or breathing, due to weakening of associated muscles, can be severe and result in loss of life. You are at the highest risk if these problems are pre-existing before injection. Swallowing problems may last for several months due to weakening of associated muscles, can be severe and result in loss of life. You are at the highest risk if these problems are pre-existing before injection. Swallowing problems may last for several months Spread of toxin effects. The effect of botulinum toxin may affect areas away from the injection site and cause serious symptoms including: loss of strength and all-over muscle weakness, double vision, blurred vision and drooping eyelids, hoarseness or change or loss of voice, trouble saying words clearly, loss of bladder control, trouble breathing, and trouble swallowing There has not been a confirmed serious case of spread of toxin effect away from the injection site when BOTOX has been used at the recommended dose to treat chronic migraine, severe underarm sweating, blepharospasm, strabismus, or when BOTOX Cosmetic has been used at the recommended dose to treat frown lines, crow's feet lines, and/or forehead lines. Indications BOTOX is a prescription medicine that is injected into specific muscles and used: To treat overactive bladder symptoms such as a strong need to urinate with leaking or wetting accidents (urge urinary incontinence), a strong need to urinate right away (urgency), and urinating often (frequency) in adults 18 years and older when another type of medicine (anticholinergic) does not work well enough or cannot be taken To treat leakage of urine (incontinence) in adults 18 years and older with overactive bladder caused by a neurologic disease who still have leakage or cannot tolerate the side effects after trying an anticholinergic medication To prevent headaches in adults with chronic migraine who have 15 or more days each month with headache lasting 4 or more hours each day in people 18 years or older To treat increased muscle stiffness in people 2 years of age and older with spasticity To treat the abnormal head position and neck pain that happens with cervical dystonia (CD) in people 16 years and older To treat certain types of eye muscle problems (strabismus) or abnormal spasm of the eyelids (blepharospasm) in people 12 years and older BOTOX is also injected into the skin to treat the symptoms of severe underarm sweating (severe primary axillary hyperhidrosis) when medicines used on the skin (topical) do not work well enough in people 18 years and older. BOTOX Cosmetic is a prescription medicine that is injected into muscles and used to temporarily improve the look of moderate to severe forehead lines, crow's feet lines, and frown lines between the eyebrows in adults. It is not known whether BOTOX and BOTOX Cosmetic are safe or effective to prevent headaches in patients with migraine who have 14 or fewer headache days each month (episodic migraine). BOTOX has not been shown to help people perform task-specific functions with their upper limbs or increase movement in joints that are permanently fixed in position by stiff muscles. It is not known whether BOTOX and BOTOX Cosmetic are safe or effective for severe sweating anywhere other than your armpits. It is not known if BOTOX Cosmetic is safe or effective for use more than 1 time every 3 months. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION (continued) BOTOX and BOTOX Cosmetic may cause loss of strength or general muscle weakness, vision problems, or dizziness within hours to weeks of taking BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic. If this happens, do not drive, operate machinery, or do other dangerous activities. Do not receive BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic if you: are allergic to any of its ingredients (see Medication Guide for ingredients); had an allergic reaction to any other botulinum toxin product such as Myobloc (rimabotulinumtoxinB), Dysport (abobotulinumtoxinA), or Xeomin (incobotulinumtoxinA); have a skin infection at the planned injection site. Do not receive BOTOX for the treatment of urinary incontinence if you: have a urinary tract infection (UTI) or cannot empty your bladder on your own and are not routinely catheterizing. Due to the risk of urinary retention (not being able to empty the bladder), only patients who are willing and able to initiate catheterization post-treatment, if required, should be considered for treatment. Patients treated for overactive bladder: In clinical trials, 36 of the 552 patients had to self-catheterize for urinary retention following treatment with BOTOX compared to 2 of the 542 treated with placebo. The median duration of post-injection catheterization for these patients treated with BOTOX 100 Units (n = 36) was 63 days (minimum 1 day to maximum 214 days) as compared to a median duration of 11 days (minimum 3 days to maximum 18 days) for patients receiving placebo (n = 2). Patients with diabetes mellitus treated with BOTOX were more likely to develop urinary retention than nondiabetics. Patients treated for overactive bladder due to neurologic disease: In clinical trials, 30.6% of patients (33/108) who were not using clean intermittent catheterization (CIC) prior to injection, required catheterization for urinary retention following treatment with BOTOX 200 Units as compared to 6.7% of patients (7/104) treated with placebo. The median duration of post-injection catheterization for these patients treated with BOTOX 200 Units (n = 33) was 289 days (minimum 1 day to maximum 530 days) as compared to a median duration of 358 days (minimum 2 days to maximum 379 days) for patients receiving placebo (n = 7). Among patients not using CIC at baseline, those with MS were more likely to require CIC post injection than those with SCI. The dose of BOTOX and BOTOX Cosmetic is not the same as, or comparable to, any other botulinum toxin product. Serious and/or immediate allergic reactions have been reported, including itching, rash, red itchy welts, wheezing, asthma symptoms, dizziness, or feeling faint. Get medical help right away if you experience symptoms; further injection of BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic should be discontinued. Tell your doctor about all your muscle or nerve conditions, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, as you may be at increased risk of serious side effects including difficulty swallowing and difficulty breathing from typical doses of BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic. Tell your doctor if you have any breathing-related problems. Your doctor may monitor you for breathing problems during treatment with BOTOX for spasticity or for detrusor overactivity associated with a neurologic condition. The risk of developing lung disease in patients with reduced lung function is increased in patients receiving BOTOX. Cornea problems have been reported. Cornea (surface of the eye) problems have been reported in some people receiving BOTOX for their blepharospasm, especially in people with certain nerve disorders. BOTOX may cause the eyelids to blink less, which could lead to the surface of the eye being exposed to air more than is usual. Tell your doctor if you experience any problems with your eyes while receiving BOTOX. Your doctor may treat your eyes with drops, ointments, contact lenses, or with an eye patch. Bleeding behind the eye has been reported. Bleeding behind the eyeball has been reported in some people receiving BOTOX for their Strabismus. Tell your doctor if you notice any new visual problems while receiving BOTOX. Bronchitis and upper respiratory tract infections (common colds) have been reported. Bronchitis was reported more frequently in adults receiving BOTOX for upper limb spasticity. Upper respiratory infections were also reported more frequently in adults with prior breathing-related problems with spasticity. In pediatric patients treated with BOTOX for upper limb spasticity, upper respiratory tract infections were reported more frequently. In pediatric patients treated with BOTOX for lower limb spasticity, upper respiratory tract infections were not reported more frequently than placebo. Autonomic dysreflexia in patients treated for overactive bladder due to neurologic disease. Autonomic dysreflexia associated with intradetrusor injections of BOTOX could occur in patients treated for detrusor overactivity associated with a neurologic condition and may require prompt medical therapy. In clinical trials, the incidence of autonomic dysreflexia was greater in patients treated with BOTOX 200 Units compared with placebo (1.5% versus 0.4%, respectively). Tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, including if you: have or have had bleeding problems; have plans to have surgery; had surgery on your face; weakness of forehead muscles; trouble raising your eyebrows; drooping eyelids; any other abnormal facial change; have symptoms of a urinary tract infection (UTI) and are being treated for urinary incontinence (symptoms of a urinary tract infection may include pain or burning with urination, frequent urination, or fever); have problems emptying your bladder on your own and are being treated for urinary incontinence; are pregnant or plan to become pregnant (it is not known if BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic can harm your unborn baby); are breastfeeding or plan to (it is not known if BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic passes into breast milk). Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Using BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic with certain other medicines may cause serious side effects. Do not start any new medicines until you have told your doctor that you have received BOTOX or BOTOX Cosmetic in the past. Tell your doctor if you have received any other botulinum toxin product in the last 4 months; have received injections of botulinum toxin such as Myobloc, Dysport, or Xeomin in the past (tell your doctor exactly which product you received); have recently received an antibiotic by injection; take muscle relaxants; take an allergy or cold medicine; take a sleep medicine; take aspirin-like products or blood thinners. Other side effects of BOTOX and BOTOX Cosmetic include: dry mouth, discomfort or pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, neck pain, eye problems: double vision, blurred vision, decreased eyesight, drooping eyelids, swelling of your eyelids, dry eyes; drooping eyebrows; and upper respiratory tract infection. In people being treated for urinary incontinence other side effects include urinary tract infection, painful urination, and/or inability to empty your bladder on your own. If you have difficulty fully emptying your bladder after receiving BOTOX, you may need to use disposable self-catheters to empty your bladder up to a few times each day until your bladder is able to start emptying again. For more information refer to the Medication Guide or talk with your doctor. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Please see BOTOX full Product Information, including Boxed Warning and Medication Guide. Please see BOTOX Cosmetic full Product Information, including Boxed Warning and Medication Guide Globally, prescribing information varies; refer to the individual country product label for complete information. About Allergan Aesthetics Allergan Aesthetics, an AbbVie company, develops, manufactures, and markets a portfolio of leading aesthetics brands and products. Their aesthetics portfolio includes facial injectables, body contouring, plastics, skin care, and more. Their goal is to consistently provide customers worldwide with innovation, education, exceptional service, and a commitment to excellence, all with a personal touch. www.AllerganAesthetics.com About AbbVie in Neuroscience At AbbVie, our commitment to preserve the personhood of those living with neurological and psychiatric disorders is unwavering. Every challenge in this uncharted territory makes us more determined and drives us harder to discover and deliver solutions for patients, care partners and clinicians. AbbVie's Neuroscience portfolio consists of approved therapies and a robust pipeline in neurological and psychiatric disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, bipolar disorder and depression, major depressive disorder, migraine, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, post-stroke spasticity, schizophrenia, and stroke. We have a strong investment in neuroscience research, with our Foundational Neuroscience Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and our Neuroscience Discovery site in Ludwigshafen, Germany, where our research and resilience in these challenging therapeutic areas is yielding a deeper understanding of the pathophysiology of neurological and psychiatric disorders, and identifying targets for potential disease-modifying therapeutics aimed at making a difference in people's lives. For more information, please visit www.abbvie.com. About AbbVie AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas: immunology, oncology, neuroscience, eye care, virology, women's health and gastroenterology, in addition to products and services across its Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. Forward-Looking Statements Some statements in this news release are, or may be considered, forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project" and similar expressions, among others, generally identify forward-looking statements. AbbVie cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, failure to realize the expected benefits from AbbVie's acquisition of Allergan plc ("Allergan"), failure to promptly and effectively integrate Allergan's businesses, competition from other products, challenges to intellectual property, difficulties inherent in the research and development process, adverse litigation or government action, changes to laws and regulations applicable to our industry and the impact of public health outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics, such as COVID-19. Additional information about the economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors that may affect AbbVie's operations is set forth in Item 1A, "Risk Factors," of AbbVie's 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as updated by its subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. AbbVie undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law. SOURCE AbbVie Related Links abbvie.com Police have apologised to a woman who was left naked in a cell for three hours after she was wrongfully arrested for sitting on the roof of her car as it was about to be towed away. Yvonne Farrell, 52, sued Hertfordshire Constabulary for unlawful arrest after she staged a sit-in on her partner's car in Stevenage when tow-truck operators arrived to clamp it in August 2018. Officers detained her for allegedly committing a public order offence and subsequently threatened to remove her clothing by force if she failed to cooperate with them. When she refused to give her name, Ms Farrell was taken to a 'camera cell' and obliged to strip naked 'to humiliate, distress and embarrass her with a view to forcing her to 'confess' her identity', according to her lawyer. The Rastafarian was then provided with 'hot pants and a crop top' but refused to wear them due to her religious and cultural belief that women should only wear long dresses. She was thrown a blanket before her clothes were eventually returned to her and she was allowed to redress nearly three hours later, before being released after nearly 11 hours of detention. Hertfordshire Police Professional Standards Department then rejected Ms Farrell's complaint before she enlisted the help of solicitor Iain Gould, who specialises in claims against the police. The lawyer pursued court proceedings claiming 'basic, special, aggravated and exemplary damages', and Ms Farrell was offered 45,000 in damages from the force in December - though police did not apologise.' Today Hertfordshire Constabulary issued a grovelling apology, telling Ms Farrell 'we got it wrong' and saying they were 'extremely sorry for any injuries that you suffered' as a result of police action. Yvonne Farrell, 52, sued Hertfordshire Constabulary for unlawful arrest after she staged a sit-in on her partner's car in Stevenage when tow-truck operators arrived to clamp it in August 2018 Mr Gould said he was 'delighted with the terms of the settlement' but said 'all of this was entirely unnecessary and amounts to a vast waste of public money and the time of everybody involved'. He also claimed that Hertfordshire Constabulary 'really doesn't apologise for the most egregious and distressing thing done to Yvonne, namely her being stripped naked'. In the letter of apology, Deputy Chief Constable, Michelle Dunn of Hertfordshire Constabulary said: 'Having investigated the incident, I accept that you should not have been arrested. When you were in custody, the officers were unable to assess whether you were at risk of harming yourself. 'As a result, your clothes were removed from you and you were given a 'safety suit' to wear to preserve your modesty and to ensure that you would not cause yourself any harm with your clothes. 'For religious reasons you were unable to wear that safety suit and as a result, remained unclothed for a period of time. I accept that the removal of your clothes must have been very upsetting. 'I am extremely sorry for any injuries that you suffered as a result of the actions of Hertfordshire police. On this occasion, we got it wrong. I apologise unreservedly.' Ms Farrell had climbed onto the roof of her partner's car when two men operating a tow truck were attempting to clamp it in August 2018. The 52-year-old had pleaded with the men to simply allow her to roll the car less than three yards onto private land - but they refused before officers descended and dragged her off the vehicle. Today Hertfordshire Constabulary issued a grovelling apology, telling Ms Farrell 'we got it wrong' and saying they were 'extremely sorry for any injuries that you suffered' When she refused to give them her name, Ms Farrell was taken to a 'camera cell' and obliged to strip naked 'to humiliate, distress and embarrass her', her lawyer claimed She claimed: 'All I remember was police cars suddenly arriving outside my home. I kept saying I had not done anything wrong. 'This was a civil matter and the police should only be here if I have done something criminal. I said in fact you should be taking my side, I am the public, you're supposed to be here to serve the people.' Wearing a loose fitting summer dress and flip flops on her feet, Ms Farrell refused the officers' request to climb down from the car before she was arrested, allegedly for committing a 'public order offence'. Officers grabbed hold of her arm and leg and she was dragged from the roof of the car, causing her to land awkwardly on the ground. Ms Farrell claimed: 'I was pulled off the car and I went down to the ground. They proceeded to handcuff me really tightly. I was in immense pain, I pleaded with them to loosen the handcuffs but they wouldn't listen to me. 'I was crying out in pain. They didn't tell me where they were taking me and during the journey my dress strap kept dropping down exposing my breast.' She refused to confirm her identity before she was thrown into a cold 'camera cell' and allegedly obliged by officers to remove all of her clothing - including her underwear. A pair of 'hot pants and a crop top' were left in the cell but she refused to wear them due to her beliefs as a Rastafarian. Nearly three hours later, her clothes were returned and she was allowed to redress, before she was finally released at around midnight - almost 11 hours after her arrest. Her lawyer Mr Gould claimed: 'This was nothing less than an act of coercion and humiliation deliberately committed against Yvonne... for the purpose of forcing her to give the Police her personal details'. 'DCC Dunn however goes out of her way to assert that the decision to strip Yvonne of her clothes was an act of 'safeguarding' - and devotes the longest section of her letter to justifying this. 'In this respect therefore, the letter contains at its heart not an apology but an excuse - suggesting that Yvonne has misunderstood the Police's 'good intentions' - and hence, with that failure to accept blame for the worst abuse of Police power perpetrated against Yvonne, does not go nearly far enough. 'As I wrote previously, senior officers and force management are often content to put money where their mouth should be; and it is hard to believe that all the right lessons will in fact be learned, when the Police still seek to deny the most serious wrong.' Hertfordshire Constabulary has been contacted for comment. BOISE - On Thursday, January 14, 25-year-old Alvin Willie George, of Cross City, Florida, pleaded guilty to two counts of cyberstalking, U.S. Attorney Bart M. Davis announced. George was indicted by a federal grand jury sitting in Boise on December 11, 2019. Sentencing is set for April 8, 2021, before U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill at the federal courthouse in Boise. According to court records, in December 1999, in Texas, two female children were attacked in a bedroom. During the attack both children had their throats slit. One child survived the attack, but her friend was killed. The perpetrator of these crimes was convicted. Beginning in or around November 2016, and over the next several months, George reportedly began sending photos from the 1999 crime scene to the surviving victim and her sisters, all of whom live in Idaho. George did not know the surviving victim or her sisters, rather he researched the 1999 murder on the internet and used various Facebook accounts he created to send harassing and intimidating messages to these women, as well as threatening to rape and kill them. The charge of cyberstalking is punishable by up to five years in prison, a maximum fine of $250,000, and up to three years of supervised release, per count. This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Boise Police Department. Tucker Carlson on Thursday let rip at Democrats who he accused of using last weeks Capitol riot to launch an attack on civil liberties and free speech in the most sweeping crackdown in the history of this country. The Fox News host used a segment on his show to call out Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who he branded the Kim Kardashian of Congress as he slammed her suggestion that a government commission is need to 'reign in' the press. AOC has been criticized for what some have dubbed the Ministry of Truth that she recommended in order to stop the spread of 'misinformation. Carlson also blasted AOC and her colleague Ayanna Pressley as hypocrites for their most recent positive comments on Capitol cops, as he claimed they were spreading lies in stating that the MAGA Trump mob was leading an insurrection on the Capitol. He accused AOC and left-wing radicals of using the death of George Floyd in May, in particular, to change this country forever. Scroll down for video Tucker Carlson on Thursday accused Democrats of using last weeks Capitol riot to launch the most sweeping crackdown on civil liberties and free speech in the history of this country Tucker Carlson blasted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (pictured above), in particular, branding her the 'Kim Kardashian of Congress' and a 'moron' Carlson claimed it was 'lies' to claim the riot was an insurrection. Pictured above, Trump supporters enter the US Capitol on January 6 as part of a violent and deadly riot Why are they demanding that you believe those lies? Carlson asked his viewers of the claims that the riot was an insurrection, as he painted the crowds of angry Trump supporters as a mix-mash collection of amateurs. Last week's deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol was not an act of racism, nor was it an insurrection. It was not an armed invasion by a brigade of dangerous White supremacists, he stated. When your doctor claims that your broken arm is stage IV pancreatic cancer, you need a second opinion. When he demands that you get chemotherapy, you need to run away, because something very dark is going on. Indeed, something dark is going on right now, Carlson continued. They're trying to use this moment to increase their own power, so they're lying about what you saw. They're calling it a precisely orchestrated coup attempt. They're telling you the Chewbacca guy you saw on video, the guy with the painted face and the Viking hat, was actually the leader of some super-secret commando unit here to overthrow our government.' Carlson said these claims were absurd and insulting as he branded them an attempt to justify the most sweeping crackdown on civil liberties and free speech in the history of this country. In a at Trump, Carlson called the riot the perfect illustration of why we should oppose all mob action. Left uncontrolled, mobs boil over, violence erupts, and people get killed, he said. That has happened many times through human history. That's the way mobs are. Wise leaders know that, and it's why they don't encourage mobs. Carlson's harshest lines were saved for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) talks with colleagues on the floor of the House Chamber during the first session of the 117th Congress on January 3. She was targeted by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on his Thursday night show for her comments on the Capitol riots Carlson then launched into his attack on AOC and other left-wingers as he fumed about how they had used hysteria to subdue the population in the wake of Floyds death in police custody on May 25. He said that they tried to crush anyone who dared to ask questions about what they were doing as he also accused them of trying to take his show from the air. The conservative host called out New York Times Nick Kristof in particular for a recent column in which he questioned why advertisers dont withdraw from Fox News and said cable providers should be asked why they distribute channels that peddle lies. You won't be surprised to learn that the rest of the media, our competitors, strongly agree with that sentiment: The government needs to shut down Fox News, said an angered Carlson. His harshest comments were saved for AOC, however, who he branded the Kim Kardashian of Congress and a vacuous little totalitarian moron. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been accused of proposing a 'Ministry of Truth' following her suggestion that a government commission needs to 'reign in' the press He said the Congresswoman called Floyds death a national crisis so that she could make herself more powerful. Thats how national crises work. Something bad has happened, therefore, you've got to hand the worst people in the world the keys to your life. Carlson claimed as evidence AOCs recent positive comments about the cops who guarded her during last weeks riots, as opposed to her stance on defunding the police. She likes the cops now, despite the fact they're White supremacists. What a difference a day makes, he said. Ocasio-Cortez has said that she thought she would be killed during the January 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. The Democratic congresswoman - a lightning rod for the president and his followers - said during an Instagram Live broadcast Tuesday that she could not go into detail about her harrowing time inside the Capitol, due to security concerns. But she said she had had a 'very close encounter' with the insurrectionists during which, she said, 'I thought I was going to die.' She added: 'I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive.' Carlson accused Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of the same hypocrisy while calling her out for having attended the single most expensive private school in Chicago growing up. And it was even scarier when she arrived, like her friend Sandy Cortez, on the mean streets of Boston University. Ayanna Pressley knows well what it's like to be persecuted and oppressed, he joked. And that, friends, is why you should no longer be allowed to speak in public or read the websites you like or watch this show.' AOC on Tuesday spoke of her horror as the Capitol came under attack, and members of the House (pictured above) cowered in fear inside the chamber His comments about Ocasio-Cortez came on the same day that she was accused of proposing a 'Ministry of Truth' following her suggestion that a government commission needs to 'reign in' the press in order to stop 'misinformation.' The New York Democrat made the remarks in an Instagram livestream on Tuesday, saying her colleagues in Congress were discussing 'how we rein in our media environment so that you can't just spew disinformation and misinformation.' The comment drew furious backlash from free speech advocates and conservative critics, who accused the self-avowed Democratic Socialist of hatching a dystopian plan to establish government control over news outlets and journalists. Sandy Cortez, by the way, has been thinking about this since sociology class at BU and she has concluded that we need a government commission to shut down media outlets that might criticize her, Carlson continued. You can't just spew disinformation like criticizing Sandy Cortez! It's not like this is a free country with the First Amendment! Well, not anymore. Ocasio-Cortez's comments came towards the end of an hour-long video address to more than 100,000 of her followers. She was responding to a question from a follower about whether Democrats are planning a 'federal truth and reconciliation or media literacy initiatives to help with healing' as their party takes control of the White House and Congress. Carslon on his Thursday's night show also called out the comments of Ayanna Pressley, above 'I can say, there is absolutely a commission being discussed but it seems to be more investigatory, in style rather than truth and reconciliation, so I think thats an interesting concept for us to explore,' she replied. 'And I do think that several members of Congress, in some of my discussions, have brought up media literacy because that is a part of what happened here and were going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you cant just spew disinformation and misinformation,' Ocasio-Cortez said. The American press is specifically protected from government intervention or control by the U.S. Constitution, and critics quickly raised questions about how government 'fact checkers' could politicize the role. Next on Carlsons firing line was social media companies and especially Twitter as he went after CEO Jack Dorsey following Trumps permanent ban from the platform last week. He looks like a pothead, but he's pretty clever and he takes the long view on these things, Carlson said of Dorsey. We know that Jack Dorsey has plans for the rest of us that will extend far beyond the Trump era. Silencing Donald Trump was just the beginning. Guess who's next? You are, Carlson warned, claiming that Twitter actions were about more than silencing just one man. Maybe Jack Dorsey isn't so bright. He just admitted out loud with the rest of them are still denying: This isn't really about Donald Trump, and it never was. It's definitely not about what happened last week at the Capitol. It is about controlling you, and the country you thought was yours, forever, Carlson concluded. Sorry, there's a national crisis going on and we have no choice. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of a school year like no other, Missouri families and educators are gearing up to safely spotlight education options during School Choice Week 2021. Missourians are hosting 729 virtual or at-home celebrations during the Week. One of the state's most notable events will be a virtual rally for charter school families on Jan. 27. In another of the week's activities, students and families from all types of schools around the state will use the Storyvine app to share their school choice story. Taking place annually since 2011, School Choice Week is America's largest celebration of educational choice. While typically the Week is packed with large, in-person events, school choice advocates have adapted to this year's health and safety protocols, opting for drive through scavenger hunts, virtual information sessions and showcases, online contests, drive-in movie screenings, and more. Across the country, more than two dozen iconic U.S. landmarks and notable buildings will light up in special colors to mark the Week. Governor Michael Parson issued an official proclamation recognizing Jan. 24-30 as Missouri School Choice Week. In addition, a growing number of communities have issued proclamations recognizing the Week, including the counties of McDonald, Scott, and Henry and cities O'Fallon, Belton, Wentzville, St. Peters, Berkeley and Glasgow. "Missouri has education options for families, but this past year has shown that families need more flexible choices that work for them," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "This National School Choice Week is a time to set aside politics and talk about real education partnerships, affordable ways that parents and teachers can work together to inspire learning." In Missouri, there are a variety of educational options available including: traditional public schools with some limitations to open enrollment, charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. Missouri families will be raising awareness about these choices at their virtual celebrations, which make up some of the more than 33,000 planned nationwide to spotlight K-12 education options. To download a guide to Missouri school choice, use the Schools Near Me tool to search for schools in your area, or see celebration photos and proclamation updates, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com/missouri. National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort; the Week is nonpartisan, nonpolitical, and not related to any legislative advocacy campaign. Select local celebrants are available to discuss their plans with reporters upon request. For information on celebrations planned near you, reach out to us with information about your coverage area at [email protected]. National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective education options for children and is the world's largest celebration of opportunity in K-12 education. The Week is a not-for-profit effort that focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com Northern Ireland has reached another dark milestone on the coronavirus pandemic with the announcement that another 26 people have died. Its the highest daily number of deaths reported by the Department of Health since the virus took hold across the region. Previously the highest was 22 for the number of deaths in one day. The deaths do not always take place in the 24 hour period the department is reporting on. The Northern Ireland death toll is 1,559, according to the Department of Health. Another 1,052 new cases of the virus have also been reported bringing the total number of confirmed cases since the outbreak to 93,834. Some 7,590 people have tested positive in the last seven days. Of the 26 fatalities, 21 happened within the current reporting period, from 10am on Thursday to 10am on Friday, while the remaining five deaths occurred previously. There are currently 840 Covid patients in hospitals across Northern Ireland, with 63 in intensive care and 47 requiring ventilation. Hospitals are operating at 97% capacity. A total of 139 care homes are dealing with outbreaks of the virus. Health Minister Robin Swann said his "heart sank" when he heard the news about the record number of deaths. "A further 26 families added to those who have already been bereaved by Covid. Once again, I would like to extend my sympathies to all the families that have been devastated throughout the course of the pandemic," Mr Swann said. While there has been some reduction in cases, now is not the time to ease up in our fightback against the virus. Our health service is facing unparalleled pressures and those who work for it are already exhausted and traumatised. The pressures will continue throughout this month and beyond." It comes after the Chief Medical Officers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voiced their concerns over spread of coronavirus, urging everyone to stay home. In a joint statement, Dr Michael McBride and Dr Tony Holohan said they were "gravely concerned about the unsustainably high level of Covid-19 infection" on the island of Ireland. "This is having a significant impact on the health of our population and the safe functioning of our healthcare systems," the medics said. Read More Here's how Friday unfolded: 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. An amusement park in northern Vietnam has been suspended from operation following a roller coaster accident that killed one student and injured two others. Duong Quoc Lam, chairman of the Peoples Committee in Thanh Thuy District, Phu Tho Province, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Friday morning that Dao Ngoc Xanh (Green Pearl Island) Amusement Park had been temporarily closed. Local police have also been charged with determining the cause of the accident, Lam added. A roller coaster previously derailed at Dao Ngoc Xanh around 12:30 pm on Thursday, killing one student and injuring two others. The victims are 11th graders of a high school in Dong Anh District, Hanoi, who were on a trip organized by their school. The two injured students are now being treated at a hospital in the capital. An official of the school confirmed that a student had been killed and two others injured in the accident, but refused to provide further information. Local authorities have offered financial support worth VND5 million (US$216) to family of the deceased and VND2 million ($86) to each injured victim. A probe by Tuoi Tre has revealed that this is not the first accident to have occurred at Dao Ngoc Xanh. In 2014, six students of a Hanoi-based middle school were injured after a Ferris wheel ride had an error and fell to the ground from an altitude of two meters at the same venue. The amusement park is operated by Ao Vua JSC. It was constructed on La Phu Islet in Thanh Thuy District, Phu Tho Province, located in northern Vietnam. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! 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. Berkshires Beat: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service will look different this year throughout the county with COVID-19 altering annual cleanups and gatherings. In North County, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, along with the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition and Williams College, will host the annual Community Day of Service on Jan. 18 from 9 am to 1 pm. Activities will be socially distanced or virtual and include a canned food drive, mittens/socks/hats drive, a letter drive and card-making. The Peacemaker Award Ceremony will be virtual. Those interested in participating or volunteering can call the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition at 413-663-7588 or send an email to csacherski@nbccoalition.org . More information can be found at the Coalition's Facebook page, Facebook.com/nbccoalition In Pittsfield, Berkshire Community College (BCC) plans to hold its annual Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service event completely virtually on Jan. 18. This event is co-sponsored by the Berkshire Branch of the NAACP. "We invite the community to join us for this annual event the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr National Day of Service," Ellen Kennedy, President of the College said. "In light of all that is happening, this is a moment to engage in volunteerism. To connect, to support and to engage to build a better future in the Berkshires. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?' This day allows us to work together to answer that question." The National Day of Service event begins at 9:00 a.m. with a virtual keynote speech by Dr. Chris Himes, author and educator, working with Miss Halls School. Afterward, participants will have an opportunity to connect and share with fellow community members through Zoom breakout rooms. Participants will be able to give back to their community by choosing a service project, including: Craft Valentine's Day cards and notes of appreciation for residents of Berkshire Healthcare Systems nursing homes; Write letters of gratitude to deployed soldiers; or Donate new face masks, new underwear for men and women, small hand sanitizer, disposable menstrual products, individual snacks, and K-cups (coffee) for the re-opened homeless shelter in Pittsfield. Participants may also make a monetary donation to the homeless shelter on https://www.servicenet.org/donate/ and select "Other" from the field "where would you like this gift directed" and then in the field "If other, please add your designation" and specify that it is for Berkshire County Services. The drop off for cards, letters, and donations will be at the BCC Paterson Field House, at 1350 West Street in Pittsfield, at the West Paterson Gymnasium Doors, on Monday, Jan. 18, between 1:00 and 3:00 pm. People heading to campus must fill out the Campus Request Form (found at www.berkshirecc.edu/campusaccess ) for contact tracing, wear a mask, and follow social distancing guidelines. FORUM credit is available for BCC students for attending the keynote and the community volunteering. Also County wide, Berkshire Bounty, Berkshire United Way and Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires are collaborating to assemble and distribute 1,000 bags of nutritious canned and packaged food throughout Berkshire County to celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service Monday, Jan. 18. "When Berkshire Bounty approached us seeking help to organize volunteers to distribute healthy food, I thought it was the perfect service project for MLK Day. There are people still struggling and others who want to volunteer safely, and we are excited to use our volunteer center to coordinate this effort," said Candace Winkler, BUW CEO and president. Financed by Berkshire Bounty, Berkshire Money Management and an anonymous donor, the food distribution will be countywide. Northern Berkshire United Way and Berkshire Community Action Council have identified individuals to receive the food. Guido's Fresh Marketplace has arranged for wholesale pricing and L.P. Adams Co., Inc. has offered their warehouse space for packing and transportation of the 19,000 pounds of food that was purchased. Distribution will take place 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 18 at the Boys & Girls Club of the Berkshires, 16 Melville St., Pittsfield. During those hours, volunteers will place a bag of food in each car. "This is a unique collaboration that will hopefully lead to further countywide programs for the benefit of all of Berkshire County's food insecure population," said Berkshire Bounty Co-Presidents Mark Lefenfeld and Jay Weintraub. Financial donations for future food distribution efforts are needed and can be made at www.berkshire-bounty.org. Volunteers will also deliver food to those who are not able to pick it up themselves. In addition, grocery bags will be provided to Price Memorial AME Zion Church, WIC/CHP, Claire Teague Senior Center and Volunteers in Medicine to distribute bags to their predetermined recipients. Grocery bag packing and distribution will take place in a safe, masked and socially distant manner. Sign up to volunteer at www.volunteerberkshireuw.org . For questions, call Brenda Petell, BUW director of volunteer engagement, at 413-212-1431. "We plan to get the word out through our many active food pantries, but word of mouth is important too," NPC Executive Director Liana Toscanini said. In UP villagers get cocktail vaccine dose: Covishield first, Covaxin next Explained: How vaccine passports for global travel will work TN CM Stalin takes a swipe at Centre over supply of vaccines ICMR to study effectiveness of Covishield, Covaxin in preventing progression of COVID into severe form First batch of COVID-19 vaccine reaches Mizoram India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Aizawl, Jan 15: A consignment of 18,500 COVID-19 vaccines, to be used in the first phase of inoculation, arrived in Aizawl from New Delhi on Thursday, a health department official said. State Immunisation Officer Lalzawmi told PTI a total of 14,607 health workers have registered to receive vaccination. In the first phase, 8,000 of them will get shots of the vaccine, she said. Covid vaccine drive accelerates, doses reach far corners of India Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch India's vaccination drive on Saturday. The state government has set up four camps at Aizawl Civil Hospital, Lunglei Civil Hospital, Kulikawn Sub-District Hospital and Urban Public Health Centre for the first phase of COVID-19 inoculation. Army Day: General Naravane warns China: Don't test patience | Oneindia News Lalzawmi said 500 people, 100 each in five camps, will be vaccinated on Saturday between 10 am and 5 pm. 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. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced earlier this week that the federal government would begin releasing additional COVID-19 vaccines that had been held back for second doses. However, no such reserve remains, according to a report by the Washington Post. Second dose reserves were tapped into at the beginning of December, The Post reported Friday morning, Jan. 15, after speaking with state and federal officials. A spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services couldnt confirm the report Friday afternoon when asked by MLive. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in a joint letter with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers to Azar said she was dismayed to see the report. It has become abundantly clear that not only has the Trump administration botched the rollout of the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, but also that the American people have been misled about these delays, Whitmer, Walz and Evers wrote. Last week, Whitmer and eight other governors sent a joint letter to Azars department requesting that the reserve second doses be released to allow for more vaccinations among the 1A and 1B priority groups. On Tuesday, Azar said, Because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve. The decision appeared to double supplies coming to the states. This next phase reflects the urgency of the situation, Azar said. Every vaccine dose sitting in a warehouse rather than going into an arm could mean one more death that could have been avoided. However, Fridays Washington Post report indicates those doses had already been distributed -- a notion that the Michigan Health & Hospital Association called extremely troubling. Michigan hospitals have been working around the clock to vaccinate more than 243,000 Michiganders for weeks, all while calling for clear and consistent communication from the federal government, reads a statement from Brian Peters, the MHHA CEO. If true, it is a total failure of operational management and communication at the federal level. We call on HHS to immediately clarify what vaccines are available now, and what will be available in the coming days and weeks, so that our hospitals can plan accordingly. In Michigan, state officials have said they initially planned for 300,000 vaccines per week, and have been disappointed when their weekly allotments have been closer to 60,000. Thats in part because the state is only receiving the Pfizer vaccine directly, while the Moderna vaccine is being shipped to national pharmacies to be administered to long-term care facilities across the state. Michigan is scheduled to receive 62,400 doses of the Pfizer vaccine next week, with an equal-sized shipment set aside to be used in three weeks as second doses, according to CDC allocation records. Its unclear when theyll get the second dose batch. Additionally, the state plans to allocate another 60,000 doses of the Moderna shot and send them to enrolled providers in the vaccine program to increase vaccinations next week. Those doses will be reimbursed to the pharmacies bank of vaccines in the future, according to MDHHS. Fridays letter from Whitmer, Walz and Evers asked Azar to purchase all the vaccine allotted to the United States and give states permission to purchase vaccines directly from manufacturers. Without additional supply or authorization to purchase directly, our states may be forced to cancel plans for public vaccination clinics in the coming weeks, which are expected to vaccinate tens of thousands, the governors wrote. As of Thursday, Michigan reported 405,992 doses had been administered, including 62,503 shots in arms over the last two days. Total vaccines distributed across the state were reported at 831,150, though 245,100 doses were controlled by CVS and Walgreens pharmacies through the federal long-term care vaccination program. Read more on MLive: Michigan still expects to vaccinate 70% of adults in 2021, despite early hurdles Why Michigans senior residents are struggling to schedule COVID-19 vaccines Thursday, Jan. 14, coronavirus data by county: 57 counties below 10% positivity rate Latest on COVID-19 vaccination program: What you need to know Emmanuelle Levesque France At the age of 12, during a visit to the Tate Gallery in London, Emmanuelle encountered the first paintings that made her want to paint. The paintings of Van Gogh and Francis Bacon, and the colours of the Fauves and the Expressionists profoundly affected her, and the young artist lived a truly poetic experience. She decided to attend a fine arts workshop outside her regular school curriculum, and after receiving a high school diploma in the arts, she joined the School of Fine Arts. She studied drawing and preferred figurative painting initially. The light of the Brittany coast, always changing and capricious, was a source of inspiration and desires for her. After painting from nature and photos, she decided to give free rein to her imagination and to trust the colours as her only medium, and thus she moved definitively to abstraction. On a trip to Russia she met many passionate artists (musicians, actors, filmmakers), and on returning to France, she became a schoolteacher. The overwhelming artistic imagination of children taught her much and this experience helped her to affirm her own colours as her joie de vivre. She then devoted herself entirely to painting. Today, Emmanuelle uses a knife to maintain a crude gesture, structure the space and give more intensity and energy to the colours. She has chosen abstraction and now, released from the subject, she has become interested in the work of abstract painters from the Parisian School. She particularly likes the colour saturation and sometimes shocking contrasts. Meanwhile, she also admires clean and poetic work. Open to exploring techniques, Emmanuelle shows a predilection for oil painting, which she continually returns to. She develops her own pigments and tries to find new relationships of colour. Following on from the thought of Kandinsky, Emmanuelle never strays from the spirituality of colour and art. When The Evil Dead opened in 1981, nobody could have guessed that the horror movie would go on to be an enduring cult favorite, helping launch a series of sequels, spinoffs and merchandise, along with the careers of director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell. But, thanks to its outrageous energy, the low-budget story of people whose supposed vacation getaway at a mountain cabin turns into a bloody free-for-all, with demons, decapitations, and more has won critical praise and a legion of devoted fans. Campbell, who lives in Southern Oregon, starred as Ash Williams in Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, and the TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, along with his work in such other projects as The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Burn Notice, Bubba Ho-Tep, and My Name is Bruce, filmed around Campbells Oregon property. So, who better to provide commentary on The Evil Dead than Campbell himself? Were the not the only ones to have come up with that idea, obviously, which is why Campbell will host an Evil Dead Watch Party, a worldwide virtual viewing party. A livestream that will also be available on demand after the event, the Evil Dead Watch Party promises to let fans watch the movie with Campbell as he shares memories, stories, and anecdotes from the film, as well as answers some questions. Zero lines. A random Thursday afternoon. Rode my bike here. This must be voting in Oregon! pic.twitter.com/lBoNXdey3n Bruce Campbell (@GroovyBruce) October 22, 2020 The livestream will begin at 6 p.m. Pacific Time (9 p.m. Eastern Time), Saturday, Jan. 23. The video On Demand version will be available to watch for 48 hours following the livestream. Tickets start at $25, and can be purchased at this link: https://www.stellartickets.com/events/watch-with/watch-withbruce-campbell-presents-evil-dead/occurrences/7ea0fb18-0c60-459a-9ec6-e6306f55fbcf As Campbell told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a 2017 phone interview, the Michigan native moved to Southern Oregon in 1998. In one of his memoirs, Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor, the actor wrote about encountering gun-toting neighbors, wayward skunks, severed deer legs, and other Northwest folkways. More of our coverage: Bruce Campbell on his new book, living in Oregon, and the Ashland Elks Lodge Subscribe to our What to Watch newsletter. Email: -- Kristi Turnquist kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist This weekend, the Harris County Jail could run out of room to house inmates. And guards are struggling to pull off quarantines for new arrivals, according to Harris County sheriffs officials. A federal judge seeking to prevent the downtown facility from becoming a killing field amid soaring COVID-19 infections asked state judges, lawyers and court officials on Friday to swiftly review about 2,000 inmates for bail reductions or pretrial or post-conviction releases. However, a civil rights lawyer for indigent defendants said the judges request felt like Groundhog Day, meaning it was reminiscent of a similar attempt that largely failed in the early days of the pandemic. The call to action by Judge Lee H. Rosenthal came in response to concerns from Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who oversees the the nations second largest lockup, that the jail population had surpassed 9,000, beyond its pre-COVID capacity. The chief federal judge for a large swath of Texas addressed the key players who could make this happen the countys felony judges, district attorney and public defender during a hearing on a civil rights case challenging the countys felony bail practices. Rosenthal set the tone at the Zoom gathering with a speech: Nobody on this call wants the Harris County Jail housing people who have been convicted of nothing, who are innocent. We do no want to convert detention into a death sentence. We do not want to infect our civilians, guards, the people who feed and clean and take care of our inmates and go home to their families to put them at risk and the risks of doing that are higher now with the specter of more contagious variants looming. Nobody wants to turn the jail into a killing field. She then opened up the floor for suggestions and quickly dealt out assignments for how officials could process the suggested releases. But the onus is ultimately on criminal judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers to bring the proposed releases to fruition. The measures officials will take in the following days include a review of whether 1,543 people with bail set at $10,000 or lower can be released on a general or nominal bond.`Among that total, the sheriff identified a list of 114 misdemeanor defendants and 906 felony defendants without holds who fit this criteria. District Attorney Kim Ogg agreed to review these cases by early Thursday to determine whether prosecutors want to challenge proposed bond reductions for people who cant come up with $1,000 or less to get themselves out of jail. Rosenthal also asked the DA to review releases for another list of about 360 people the sheriffs office flagged who are awaiting trial on nonviolent offenses. The judge said that Public Defender Alex Bunin must be notified if any of the people being considered for release do not have lawyers assigned. In addition, the federal judge suggested, based on recommendations by plaintiffs counsel for indigent defendants at the jail, that the jail work toward releasing 426 people who are at the jail only because the halfway houses and other post-conviction programs they should be participating in are closed due to COVID. The sheriffs lawyer, Murray Fogler, was hopeful that, This will do some good for some people, but it may not alleviate the entire issue. Neal Manne, a pro bono lawyer for the indigent defendants in the bail lawsuit, said Rosenthal asking these judges to take action doesnt mean they will. He noted that even though Zoom bail hearings were available to judges, only 72 defendants were granted such hearings during a six-month stretch ending in October. Not even if she says, Pretty please? She has said Pretty please? Its like Groundhog Day, Manne said, following the hearing. gabrielle.banks@chron.com 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. 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. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 3 mesi fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global gold nanoparticles market is anticipated to reach USD 1.52 billion by 2026 and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 10.2 % from 2018 to 2026. Gold nanoparticles market is anticipated to witness significant growth over the forecast period. Growing demand for nano technological medical products, inherent advantages of gold nanoparticles, as well as growing application portfolio in medical field are expected to boost market growth. The global growth in the electronics industry are also expected to contribute to the overall market growth. Inefficient tumor therapy, less developed drug targeting methods, drug resistant tumors, are a major cause for rising number of deaths due to cancer ailments. Gold nanoparticle enables efficient drug delivery, enhanced bio-imaging as well as aid in the selectivity of a wide range of drugs. The growing number of cancer ailments combined with the effect of gold nanoparticles is expected to benefit the market demand. Download Sample Copy : https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/gold-nanoparticles-market/request-for-sample Gold nanoparticles exhibit several advantages over their other conventional counterparts. Such advantages include high surface area, unique physical, chemical as well as optical properties, high surface area, biocompatibility, as well as conjugation with other molecules enable their widespread applicability. Such trends are expected to propel market growth. Gold nanoparticles are used as conductors in electronic applications such as electronic chips to conductors. The optimization and miniaturization are the major factors driving the electronics industry. Gold nanoparticles aid in these efforts of the electronics industry. The growth of the electronics industry in regions such as Asia Pacific are expected to aid the global market demand growth. The food & beverage industry utilize the colorimetric sensors manufactured by utilizing these metal nanoparticles. These sensors aid to qualify whether the food is fit for consumption or not. Rising awareness regarding the quality of food, concerns over food quality scams, and prevalent rules and regulations have forced food manufactures to manufacture high quality food. Such trends are expected to drive the gold nanoparticles market demand. Toxicity of gold nanoparticles is expected to restrain market growth. Prescribed regulations aimed at containing this toxicity have to be abided by manufacturers. Industry participants have developed novel manufacturing methods which eliminate the usage of such toxic substances in their manufacturing processes. Do you have questions or special requirements? Ask our industry experts: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/gold-nanoparticles-market/speak-to-analyst Gold nanoparticles are used in memory devices. These products are also used to manufacture insulators which display excellent stability and also contribute to the prevention of charge accumulation. Due to their excellent catalytic as well as conductive properties, electronics industry is widely utilizing this material. Research and Development activities are influencing the market growth. Researchers have developed products which can attract and destroy the viruses in the body. These products mimic the human body cells. These products can also be used to cure antimicrobial diseases. Different materials have also been developed to be used to treat ageing skin diseases. The growing medical industry is benefitting the market demand. The prevalent medical industry in North America, as well as strong presence of industry participants is contributing to the regional demand. Strong demand from countries such as China, India and Japan is propelling the Asia Pacific market growth. Companies are focusing on developing regions to gain market share. Various people were injured after a passenger bus veered off the road and was left hanging off an overpass in New York's Bronx. The New York Police Department told WABC that the incident happened at 11:10 pm Thursday on the Cross Bronx Expressway at University Avenue. WABC confirmed at least seven to eight people, including the bus driver, were injured in the accident. AP Most injuries were minor, though the driver suffered the most severe injuries and is in serious condition. The New York City Fire Department tweeted Friday night that there were nine total injuries, but in a statement they later said only eight people were treated for injuries. "FDNY units are on scene of a motor vehicle accident at University Ave and the Cross Bronx Expressway in the Bronx where a tandem bus has crashed through the barriers and is hanging off the overpass onto the roadway below. There are nine civilian injuries reported at this time," the FDNY wrote on Twitter. FDNY units are on scene of a motor vehicle accident at University Ave and the Cross Bronx Expressway in the Bronx where a tandem bus has crashed through the barriers and is hanging off the overpass onto the roadway below. There are nine civilian injuries reported at this time. pic.twitter.com/00YQ897hhs FDNY (@FDNY) January 15, 2021 "While responding to this incident, I began discussing the information we were receiving, picturing a bus hanging off the edge. We had two scenes here where #Rescue3 began securing the bus up-top while #Engine43 made their way around to begin treatment of the civilian patients. Currently we are making sure all the fuel and other hazardous materials within the vehicle is secured until the bus can be pulled onto the roadway," FDNY Acting Battalion Chief Steven Moore said in a statement later Friday morning. AP Horrible accident on Washington Bridge (Which connects 181st in Manhattan to the Bronx. This is not the GWB.) Tandem bus dangling off edge. Emergency services have closed off the entire area. https://t.co/nOCK9VpNvL Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) January 15, 2021 Officials said the bus fell approximately 50 feet onto the access road. FDNY Deputy Chief Paul Hopper, who oversaw emergency medical treatment and transport at the scene, said: "We assessed and treated a total of eight patients from this accident. The bus fell approximately 50 feet onto the access road. The patients suffered injuries consistent with a fall from such a great height." All those injured have been transported to an area hospital. Authorities said the operator of the MTA Articulated Bus may have experienced some sort of brake failure or didn't properly navigate the turn. AP The bus went over the rail to the ground below, where it had to be secured by the FDNY. Photos shared on social media show it dangling from the overpass. In an audio recording from the FDNY obtained by ABC News, a dispatcher is heard saying, "Continue rescue. We have a tandem bus over the bridge, half of it is hanging off the bridge, there's people inside." The intersection is now shut down and the bus is waiting to be towed. AP Twitter expressed shock over the incident and shared various clips of the crash. WOWWWWWW. BUS IN THE BRONX HOWWWWWWW pic.twitter.com/JGI56gJQFC Javi (@DJKingBori) January 15, 2021 Terrifying MTA bus incident in the Bronx tonight, with an accordion bus hanging off onto the Cross Bronx Expressway from University Ave. [Not my video] pic.twitter.com/tQbf6VFMu7 Cynthia (@cynthia4nyc) January 15, 2021 BREAKING: A city bus crashed on the Alexander Hamilton bridge in the Bronx and is hanging off the overpass. 12 people have been reported as Injured #Bronx #AlexanderHamiltonBridge pic.twitter.com/9hZGGjsPOG Adelle (@AdelleNaz) January 15, 2021 Shout out to all the terrible drivers on the Cross Bronx for staring at a accident and causing even more traffic #keepbeingterrible John LoBello (@johnnylobello19) January 12, 2021 Thats crazy. CinCity (@Cin2112City) January 15, 2021 That's scary, I hope somehow everyone is okay. Chris (@ChrisTorresNY) January 15, 2021 Thankfully there were not many severe injuries. The U.S. Army is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved with the New Year's Day shooting death of a local soldier. Staff Sergeant Jessica Mitchell was found lifeless in her stalled-out 2019 White Dodge Charger on Interstate 10, near Vance Jackson Road, around 2:15 a.m. on New Year's Day. She was last seen 15 minutes earlier at 4th Quarter Sports Bar, located at 8779 Wurzbach Road. Mitchelle was later pronounced dead at University Hospital. The Conroe City Council took its final steps to get the citys former police headquarters repaired in order to find a use for the aging building that has been plagued by numerous structural issues since it was built more than 15 years ago. The council awarded a $317,732 contract to Houston-based ERC Environmental & Construction Services Inc. for the installation of ceiling tiles, insulation and mold remediation. Facilities Manager Tammie Rushing said staff brought in a company to do an inspection which resulted in the discovery of mold in several areas of the building. They recommended we do a complete mold inspection, she said. (This contract) is to fix those concerns. Councilwoman Marsha Porter, who was recently elected to fill the unexpired term of now Mayor Jody Czajkoski, asked if this project would get the building where it could be occupied. This building has always been a problem, thats why I ask, she said. Assistant City Manager and Chief Financial Officer Steve Williams said it would. Built in 2000, the 40,000-square-foot facility located on FM 2854 near Frazier, has remained an albatross for the city. However, Virgadamo said despite the history of the building and its age, it remains an asset for the city. In 2004, the city filed suit against the designer and the builder of the building aimed at recovering money the city has spent for mechanical and structural defects including a heating-ventilation-air conditioning system that left parts of the building too warm, other parts too cool and, at some locations, allows condensation to pool and spill onto ceiling tiles, numerous belts, bearings and valves failed in the system and floors in some areas of the building that slope to the extent that walls have separated. The city was rewarded damages in the suit and that money was used to address the issues. However, over time the building has continued to shift on its foundation. Williams explained in the last couple years the city has invested almost $1.5 million into the building to get it livable. Most significant was the additional of a metal roof and beams and skirting to ensure the foundation remains stable. The city also had many areas of the building corrected to ensure rainwater would run away from the building. A good chunk of (the cost) has been to make sure the roof doesnt leak and water doesnt come in the sides of the building, he said. The building remains unoccupied and city officials have not said what the plan is for the site. The building served as both police station and municipal court until 2016 when the city opened its new $26 million police and municipal court headquarters on Plantation Drive. cdominguez@hcnonline.com 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. The PMO statement said the vaccination programme is based on principles of priority groups to be vaccinated first. (PTI/file) New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch India's COVID-19 vaccination drive on January 16 via video conferencing and adequate doses of the two made-in-India vaccines have been delivered to all states and Union Territories, the government said on Thursday. This will be the world's largest vaccination programme covering the entire length and breadth of the country and all preparations are in place to initiate the programme on the principles of 'Jan Bhagidari', the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. Prime Minister Modi will launch the pan-India rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination drive on January 16 at 10:30 AM via video conferencing, the PMO said. A total of 3,006 session sites across all states and UTs will be virtually connected during the launch and around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on the first day, the statement said. Separately, sources said Modi is likely to interact via video link with some healthcare workers from across the country who will be receiving the shots on the first day. Officials at New Delhi's AIIMS and Safdarjung hospitals, which are among the shortlisted facilities, said they are "ready for a two-way communication". The PMO statement said the vaccination programme is based on principles of priority groups to be vaccinated first. Healthcare workers, both in the government and private sectors, including Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) workers, will receive the vaccine during this phase. The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had earlier this month approved Oxford COVID-19 vaccine Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute, and indigenously developed Covaxin of Bharat Biotech for restricted emergency use in the country, paving the way for a massive inoculation drive. Adequate doses of both Covishield and Covaxin have already been delivered to all states/UTs with the active support of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. These have been further delivered by the State/UT governments to the districts, the PMO said. The vaccination programme will use Co-WIN, an online digital platform developed by the Union Health Ministry, which will facilitate real-time information of vaccine stocks, storage temperature and individualised tracking of beneficiaries for COVID-19 vaccine. This digital platform will assist programme managers across all levels while conducting vaccination sessions, the PMO said. A dedicated 24x7 call centre -- 1075 -- has also been established for addressing the queries related to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine rollout and the Co-WIN software. Earlier in the day, the health ministry said, "The massive countrywide COVID-19 vaccination drive will be rolled out by Prime Minister from January 16.... Therefore, it has been decided by the Ministry of Health in consultation with the office of the President of India to reschedule the Polio vaccination day, also known as the National Immunisation Day (NID) or 'Polio Ravivar' to 31st January." The full initial procurement of 1.65 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines -- Covishield and Covaxin-- has been allocated to all states and UTs in proportion to their healthcare workers database. "Therefore, there is no question of discrimination against any state in the allocation of vaccination doses. This is an initial lot of supply of vaccine doses and would be continuously replenished in the weeks to come. Therefore, any apprehension being expressed on account of deficient supply is totally baseless and unfounded," the ministry said. States and UTs have been advised to utilise a maximum of 10 days in a fortnight for the COVID-19 vaccination. States have been advised to organise vaccination sessions taking into account 10 per cent reserve/wastage doses and an average of 100 vaccinations per session per day. Therefore, any undue haste on the parts of the states to organise unreasonable numbers of vaccination per site per day is not advised, the ministry had said on Wednesday. The states and UTs have also been advised to increase the number of vaccination session sites that would be operational every day in a progressive manner as the vaccination process stabilizes and moves forward. According to the government, the shots will be offered first to an estimated one crore healthcare workers, and around two crore frontline workers, and then to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities. Cost of vaccination of healthcare and frontline workers will be borne by the central government. A Pennsylvania man accused of hurling a fire extinguisher at a group of police officers during last week's Capitol riot has been arrested, authorities said. Robert Sanford, 55, a retired firefighter from the Chester Fire Department, has been charged with four federal counts, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia in Washington said. The fire extinguisher struck an officer who was wearing a helmet in the head, then ricocheted and hit two other officers, one of whom was not wearing a helmet, in the head, prosecutors said. The charges against Sanford are not related to the death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. The Associated Press and The New York Times have reported that Sicknick was struck by a fire extinguisher. Sanford got caught up in the moment and made a "split-second decision," and is very upset, his attorney, Enrique Latoison, said Thursday. "Everyone was in a mob mentality," he said. Latoison said Sanford did not enter the Capitol. He said that the thrown fire extinguisher was empty and that the officers who were struck reported no injuries. Sanford went to Washington to attend President Donald Trump's rally and had no intention of rioting, he said. "Trump says, 'we're going to the Capitol.' Next thing you know, thousands of people are walking," Latoison said. "When he got down there, things got crazy." Sanford was ordered held without bail. He turned himself in to the FBI on Thursday morning as requested by authorities, his attorney said. Sanford was allegedly captured on video throwing an extinguisher at a group of officers after a mob overwhelmed police and broke through barricades. The video allegedly shows him pick up the object from a low terrace and hurl it as the officers are backed against the wall. An FBI affidavit in the case says that a Capitol Police officer "felt a hard strike" to the back of his helmet as he was attempting to control the crowd and saw the extinguisher on the ground. The officer was evaluated and cleared to return to duty. Story continues The riot occurred after Trump encouraged people at the rally to walk to the Capitol on the day Congress was officially counting the electoral votes affirming President-elect Joe Biden's win. The president has been accused of inciting the riot, both with the language at that rally and with his repeated and baseless claims that the election was fraudulent or stolen. Trump had also suggested that Vice President Mike Pence could overturn Biden's victory, which Pence had no power to do. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on Wednesday for "incitement of insurrection." It is the only time in the nation's history that a president has been impeached twice. Authorities have said that five people died in the riot, including Sicknick and a woman who was shot by a Capitol police official inside the building. Three others died of what have been described as medical emergencies. People have been arrested from all over the country following Wednesday's events in Washington, D.C. Kentucky Guardsmen Activated to Provide Security By The Associated Press FRANKFORT - Kentucky governor Andy Beshear says the state is prepared to respond to any threats in its capital city.Beshear said Thursday that state guardsmen will assist with that security. He says about 270 Kentucky National Guard members will also be sent to the nations capital this weekend to assist security operations leading up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration.Beshear says those guardsmen will help ensure the peaceful transfer of power, which he calls a bedrock of American democracy.Beshear didnt offer details of security plans to protect the seat of Kentucky's government from any possible unrest. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Virtual dating is the new norm in India, but real-life connections will pick pace post-pandemic, reiterates Bumble's recent nationwide survey. After connecting with people virtually, 83 per cent of single Indians are comfortable to meet up with their connections in-person. The study also reveals that 40 per cent of single Indians will opt for virtual dating in 2021. Bumble, the women-first social networking app, has revealed how single Indians are planning on dating in 2021 now that India has unlocked and lifted restrictions across states. Indians now going on pre-dates more than ever Single Indians now go on 'pre-dates' where they explore virtual dating for the first time and use video dates to get to know one another before meeting in-person. Bumble's internal research found out that 78 per cent of single Indians feel the need to build trust before meeting in-person, which has given rise to 'slow dating' that means people are taking more time to get to know each other better. Ideal first IRL (in-real-life) dates in 2021 For those who are meeting in person, the pandemic has changed the way they approach dating with a majority (47 per cent) preferring more low-key first IRL dates as staying indoors (at their home, their partner's or a friend's place) is the top choice for first in-person dates. Once comfortable to step out, going on a long drive remains a favourite among single Indians (43 per cent) along with meeting at a local cafe/tea shop. Dinner dates at a restaurant (41 per cent) is the next favourite for a great first IRL date choice. Dating choices and preferences When it comes to making a connection online, education and career choices top the list of preferences that matter most to single Indians, followed by dating intentions. However, the top most deciding factor when meeting someone in-person is compatibility (23 per cent). Making boundaries and comfort levels clear To help navigate new rules of dating in 2021, Bumble's new badges give the Bumble community the opportunity to communicate what kind of dates people are looking for: virtual, socially-distanced, or socially-distanced with masks. This helps with the potentially awkward conversation by allowing the community to search for people who are dating in the same way as them. Globally, more than 1 million people have used Bumble's new feature on their profile. People who share what kind of dates they are comfortable with through the new dating badges see a 43 per cent increase in the average number of monthly matches than those who don't. According to Samarpita Samaddar, Bumble India PR Director, single Indians are now feeling a strong desire to build trust online before meeting in real life with virtual dating becoming the new norm in India. "In fact, over 540 million messages have been sent on Bumble in India between January and November, 2020. We saw a 38 per cent rise in the use of Video Chats and Voice Calls with people in India spending roughly 20 minutes on average on video and voice calls. "As India continues to unlock, we're seeing an emerging trend of people getting excited about the prospect of dating in real life again in 2021. At the same time, there's still nervousness about what the future holds. We will continue to support our Bumble community in India to write their own stories and take charge of their dating journeys." (IANSlife can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in) You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close India has the largest diaspora population in the world with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland in 2020, according to a report by the United Nations, which says the UAE, the US and Saudi Arabia host the largest number of migrants from India. The report 'International Migration 2020 Highlights', by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) released on Friday, said the spatial distribution of transnational populations varies greatly and India's diaspora, the largest in the world, is distributed across a number of major countries of destination. In 2020, 18 million persons from India were living outside their country of birth. Other countries with a large diaspora population included Mexico and Russia (11 million each), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million). India's large diaspora is distributed across the United Arab Emirates (3.5 million), the United States of America (2.7 million) and Saudi Arabia (2.5 million). Other countries hosting large numbers of Indian migrants included Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Kingdom, the report said. China and Russia also have spatially diffused diasporas. Between 2000 and 2020, the size of the migrant population abroad grew for nearly all countries and areas of the world. India experienced the largest gain during that period at nearly 10 million, followed in order of magnitude by Syria, Venezuela, China and the Philippines. The US remained by far the largest country of destination of international migrants with 51 million migrants in 2020, equal to 18 per cent of the world's total. Germany hosted the second largest number of migrants worldwide at around 16 million, followed by Saudi Arabia (13 million), Russia (12 million) and the United Kingdom (9 million). Of the top 20 destinations of international migrants in 2020, all but three were high-income or upper-middle-income countries. The report noted that the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted all forms of human mobility through the closing of national borders and halting of travel worldwide. Preliminary estimates suggest that the pandemic may have slowed the growth in the stock of international migrants by around 2 million by mid-2020, 27 per cent less than the growth expected since mid-2019. The report added that growth in the number of international migrants has been robust over the last two decades, reaching 281 million people living outside their countries of origin in 2020, up from 173 million in 2000 and 221 million in 2010. Currently, international migrants represent about 3.6 per cent of the world's population. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of migrants grew in 179 countries or areas. Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America gained the largest number of migrants during that period. In contrast, 53 countries saw a decline in international migrant population between 2000 and 2020. Armenia, India, Pakistan, Ukraine and the United Republic of Tanzania were among the countries that experienced the most pronounced declines, the report said, adding that in many cases the declines resulted from the old age of the migrant populations or the return of refugees and asylum seekers to their countries of origin. In 2020, 63 million, or 23 per cent of the total international migrants' population, at 281 million, were born in Europe. Central and Southern Asia was the birthplace of the second largest number of international migrants (51 million), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (43 million), Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (38 million), Northern Africa and Western Asia (38 million) and sub-Saharan Africa (28 million). Relatively few migrants globally originated from Northern America (4 million) or Oceania (2 million). In these two decades, some regional migration corridors grew rapidly. The corridor Central and Southern Asia to Northern Africa and Western Asia grew the most, with 13 million migrants added between 2000 and 2020, more than tripling in size. "The majority of that increase resulted from labour migration from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the report said. The report noted that while it is too soon to understand the full extent of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, it may have slowed the growth of this regional migration corridor. In many of the GCC countries, tens of thousands of migrant workers in the construction, hospitality, retail and transportation sectors lost their jobs due to the pandemic and were required to return home. UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Liu Zhenmin said, The report affirms that migration is a part of todays globalised world and shows how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the livelihoods of millions of migrants and their families and undermined progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Diasporas contribute to the development of their countries of origin through the promotion of foreign investment, trade, access to technology and financial inclusion. However, according to projections by the World Bank, the Covid-19 pandemic may reduce the volume of remittances sent to low-and middle-income countries from USD 548 billion in 2019 to USD 470 billion in 2021, a decline of USD 78 billion or 14 per cent. New Delhi, Jan 15 : Samsung on Friday announced that pre-bookings for Galaxy Buds Pro has begun and people can buy it for Rs 15,990 in India. The Buds Pro can be bought from company's exclusive stores, retail stores, Samsung.com and leading online portals. Customers pre-booking Galaxy Buds Pro in India will get a Wireless Powerbank U1200 for Rs 499 (originally priced at Rs 3,699) during the pre-book period, the company said in a statement. "Customers who pre-book the product will get deliveries starting January 29 and it will go on sale in the country on the same day," the company added. The new Galaxy Buds Pro comes with an Intelligent Active Noise Cancellation and feature system in the package which uses a separate woofer and tweeter making it a 2-way speaker. Samsung claimed that the Galaxy Buds Pro can reduce the surrounding noise by up to 99 per cent. In addition to ANC, there is also an ambient mode to let users hear what is happening in their surroundings such as traffic sounds. The TWS headphones feature Samsung's brand new Wind Shield technology so the wind doesn't mess up your calls while outside or while riding your bike. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text President-elect Joe Biden will unveil a stimulus package proposal on Thursday designed to jump-start the economy during the coronavirus pandemic with an economic lifeline that could exceed $1.5 trillion and help minority communities. Biden campaigned last year on a promise to take the pandemic more seriously than President Donald Trump, and the package aims to put that pledge into action with an influx of resources for the coronavirus vaccine rollout and economic recovery. Also Read | Digital bank account sparks off a disruption The incoming administration will work with Congress on the quick stimulus package after Biden takes office on Jan. 20, although the impeachment of Trump threatens to consume lawmakers in the initial weeks. The stimulus package has a price tag above $1.5 trillion and includes a commitment for $1,400 stimulus checks, according to a source familiar with the proposal, and Biden is expected to commit to partner with private companies to increase the number of Americans getting vaccinated. A significant portion of the additional financial resources will be dedicated to minority communities. I think you will see a real emphasis on these underserved communities, where there is a lot of hard work to do," said another transition official. Biden plans to introduce his package during a prime-time address on Thursday evening, underscoring the seriousness of the topic, but he will have to compete for attention with the political drama in Washington. The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump on Wednesday, making him the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. Ten of his fellow Republicans joined Democrats to charge him with inciting an insurrection in last week's deadly rampage in the Capitol. The impeachment proceedings threaten to hang over the beginning of Biden's term. In a statement on Wednesday night, Biden said: "I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their Constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation." The Democratic president-elect said last week the stimulus package would be "in the trillions of dollars" and argued that more spending early on would reduce the long-term economic damage from the shutdowns spurred by the pandemic. He also said there would be billions of dollars" to speed up vaccine distribution, along with money to help reopen schools and for state and local governments to avoid laying off teachers, police officers and health workers. More than 380,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19 during the pandemic, with 22.7 million infected during that time. Pandemic-related shutdowns and restrictions have cost millions of U.S. jobs. Although Trump himself supported $2,000 checks for Americans in the last round of stimulus, many of his fellow Republicans balked at the high amount, settling on $600 checks instead. Biden may face additional opposition from Republicans to his efforts, but he will be helped by the fact that his fellow Democrats will control both the House and the Senate. Biden's incoming White House economic adviser, Brian Deese, told Reuters on Wednesday the president-elect would press Congress to pass immediate stimulus measures and then turn to longer-term economic recovery measures related to healthcare and infrastructure. 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. BROOKINGS, Ore. -- Today the Brookings Harbor School District welcomed the remainder of its students for in-person instruction. School officials say it's the first time all grade levels have been on campus since last March. The district is following a hybrid model, where half of the students are in school buildings at any given time. Schools also have extra staff in hallways to help students follow safety protocols. Superintendent David Marshall says they've received mostly positive responses from families, teachers and staff. Have there been some nerves? Yes, there have. A lot of them were excited but nervous at the same time, but experience has shown us that it works, that the kids want to be there," Marshall said. "It's a whole different setting because you only have half the kids at a given time. Marshall says they don't plan on making any new changes to their learning plans unless advised. Governor Kate Brown and the Oregon Department of Education are expected to provide school guideline updates next Tuesday. Marshall says some students are sticking to distance learning. Out of the district's 1,400 students, roughly 400 have opted for the online academy. Superintendent David Marshall says it's important for the district to give families options on how students attend class. We felt that one, we're already doing the work, so why not have it?" Marshall said. "We're having conversations about continuing that option and what that might look like in future years. Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-14 21:29:14|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WHO experts arrived Thursday in Wuhan, China, to work with Chinese scientists tracing the origin of #COVID19. China will maintain its open, transparent and responsible attitude, and support the global effort to identify the origin of the virus. With some studies suggesting that #COVID19 might have been circulating in some parts of the world earlier than the first cases in China, the world must take a scientific approach to finding the source. #GLOBALink SOURCE: NL TIMES. AMSTERDAM:--- Today the Council of Ministers will make a final decision on whether or not the entire Rutte III cabinet will step down due to the childcare allowance affair. The Ministers separately met with the leaders of their parties VVD, CDA, D66, and ChristenUnie on Thursday night and will discuss how the coalition feels about the situation in the Council of Ministers on Friday. All signs point to the government stepping down, sources in The Hague said to NOS. In the childcare allowance affair, hundreds of parents ended up in serious financial problems after the Tax Authority wrongly labeled them fraudsters and ordered them to repay their childcare allowance. In some cases, this involved tens of thousands of euros. A parliamentary committee of inquiry in December concluded that the Tax Authority breached the fundamentals of the rule of law in its fraud witch hunt and that affected parents faced "unprecedented injustice". The committee harshly criticized the way in which officials, judges, and Ministers handled the wrongly accused parents. Before that, the National Ombudsman said that the Tax Authority put hundreds of families in an impossible situation. And the Children's Ombudsman accused the Tax Authority of ignoring children's rights. On Thursday, Lodewijk Asscher stepped down as the leader of the PvdA and announced that he will not be a candidate in the parliamentary elections in March. As Minister of Social Affairs and Employment between 2012 and 2017, he was a Minister while this witch hunt was happening. He said that he did not want the discussion about his role in this scandal to stand in the way of the PvdA getting a good election result in March. Asscher's resignation puts even more pressure on the cabinet to take responsibility for the scandal. The Ministers already discussed the content of the committee's report multiple times. "The political consequences will be discussed tomorrow," Rutte said to NOS on Thursday evening as he left his office after meeting with the VVD. "I can't say anything about that in the media now." Deputy Prime Minister Carola Schouten of ChristenUnie told the broadcaster that the "line" had been drawn in the consultation with her party. ChristenUnie leader Gert-Jan Segers said that "great injustice" was done to the victims in this scandal. "We want to be accountable." D66 leader Sigrid Kaag told the broadcaster: "We are talking about this in the Council of Ministers and we are clear about it." Political expert Ron Fresen told NOS that it is no surprise that the coalition parties are being emphatically quiet. "They don't want to split up with a fight. The fall of this cabinet must happen without problems and without arguments or clashes of arms. A kind of silent fall." The Council of Ministers meets at the Ministry of General Affairs every Friday afternoon. How long today's meeting will take, is not clear. Dutch Cabinet collapses over childcare allowance scandal The Rutte III cabinet collapsed due to the childcare allowance scandal. Prime Minister Mark Rutte will offer his cabinet's resignation to King Willem-Alexander, was announced on Friday after the Council of Ministers met for 2.5 hours. The Prime Minister will soon give a press conference. Minister Eric Wiebes of Economic Affairs and Climate is stepping down with immediate effect, and will not form part of the outgoing cabinet, which will handle the current affairs until a new cabinet is installed. The four coalition parties agreed that as outgoing cabinet, Rutte III will remain in charge of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, as Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said before the Council of Ministers. "In this area, everything will stay the same. So there will still be a majority for the corona plans in parliament," a source close to the cabinet said to NOS. Sources told RTL Nieuws on Friday morning that the CDA, D66, and ChristenUnie entered the Council of Ministers with the intention of withdrawing from the coalition. They were irritated by the VVD's refusal to resign the cabinet, and especially by Prime Minister Rutte's demand that the Ministers had to guarantee that their parliamentary parties would unanimously support the cabinet, the broadcaster wrote. In the childcare allowance affair, thousands of parents ended up in serious financial problems after the Tax Authority wrongly labeled them fraudsters and ordered them to repay their childcare allowance. In some cases, this involved tens of thousands of euros. The Tax Authority used ethnic profiling in its witch hunt, with dual-nationality being one of the criteria with which potential fraudsters were selected. In December, a parliamentary committee of inquiry presented a report stating that the involved parents faced unprecedented amounts of injustice. And that cabinets, parliaments, and even the judiciary all played a role in the suffering caused to tens of thousands of innocent parents. The committee said that Prime Minister Mark Rutte and members of the government in both the current Rutte III and previous Rutte II cabinets are all partly responsible for the brutal fraud approach that led to this scandal. Lodewijk Asscher, who was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Affairs and Employment in the Rutte II cabinet, announced on Thursday that he was stepping down as leader of the PvdA and would not be running in the upcoming parliamentary election in March. He said he did not want discussions about his role in this scandal to stand in the way of the PvdA getting a good election result. By announcing its resignation, the Rutte III cabinet is now officially an "outgoing cabinet". This means the cabinet resigned but remains in office until a new cabinet is chosen, because someone has to run the country. The cabinet will still deal with current cases - which here means mainly the coronavirus pandemic - but controversial or sensitive subjects will be left to the next cabinet. What is controversial or sensitive will be determined by parliament and the Senate. "Outgoing cabinet" is a state the Dutch political system is used to dealing with, as all cabinets are "outgoing" between the parliamentary election and a new cabinet forming. The Netherlands will be holding parliamentary elections on March 17, with some polling stations opening earlier this year to allow for more social distancing during the pandemic. MBABANE - The countrys tindvuna tetinkhundla will start the year with hefty bank balances. This is because government has approved the payment of their back pay on car allowance which they did not receive last month. The approval means that government will spend an additional over E9 million in salaries to cater for motor vehicle allowance for the tindvuna tetinkhundla this month. This is according to Circular No.2, dated November 18, 2020. Each indvuna yenkhundla is expected to pocket E157 500 before tax this month. The total amount expected to be paid to the tindvuna tetinkhundla is E9 292 500 if the money is back-dated to 12 months. It should be noted that in December last year, the tindvuna tetinkhundla were mistakenly omitted from the car allowances pay. Our sister publication, the Times SUNDAY, reported that government had paid Members of Parliament (MPs) a gross salary of E126 318 each. The amount included 10 per cent back pay for the motor vehicle allowance, plus a basic salary of E46 318. Remuneration Currently, local politicians are paid through Finance Circular No.2 of 2013 as a circular set for the remuneration and perks of the 11th Parliament politicians was suspended. In terms of the circular, both MPs and tindvuna tetinkhundla are entitled to the motor vehicle allowance, maintenance and insurance allowance. It was reported that they were omitted by the payment system and were only paid their salaries of E15 000 each, but were then sent notifications to the effect that they would receive the money this month. Lobamba Indvuna Yenkhundla Bhekisisa Bhembe, who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, confirmed that they had received communication to the effect that they would be paid this month. Yes, it has been confirmed that we will be paid this month. We are so happy because this money will help us a lot. We have many debts which we committed with many financial institutions when we assumed office, he said. Elaborating, Bhembe said the money would ensure that their salaries were not affected as their debts would be catered for. The circular is clear that we are the same as MPs when it comes to car allowance. What happened in December was an oversight. After we communicated with the principal secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Tinkhundla Administration and Development, she assured us that the issue would be rectified this month. We would like to thank her and government as a whole for keeping that promise, said Bhembe. He sang praises to the PS, Nonhlanhla Dlamini, saying she had always welcomed them and they were able to communicate with her directly. Bhembe said even though they had not received a document detailing the back pay format, they were expecting to receive around E129 832 after tax deduction of just above E23 000. I am yet to see the document but we will have it soon. After this, we want to try and engage government on the issue of bucopho. We have scheduled a meeting for January 23, where the leaders of tinkhundla will deliberate on how we can formally submit a request to government on the remuneration of bucopho, he stated. He said they wished that bucopho, could also receive car allowances despite that there were many of them. The country has around 359 bucopho, which means government would have to spend more money to cater for their car allowances. Bhembe said they expected to be paid today while those who got salaries late would get theirs early next week. After the car allowances were not deposited into their accounts last year, some of the tindvuna tetinkhundla shared their disappointment with this publication, saying they had budget for the money. Some of them, having discussed the matter on their WhatsApp group took a resolution to send a representative to the Ministry of Finance to request that it be looked into. They relayed that they had budgeted to buy food hampers for the less privileged and elderly people. Called for comment, Ministry of Finance Communications Officer Setsabile Dlamini, said the ministry was mandated with the issuance of the relevant circular and ministries handled the implementation. In this case, the Ministry of Finance issued the Addendum to Finance Circular No.2 dated November 18, 2020 and the Ministry of Tinkhundla Administration and Development is responsible for the implementation of the vehicle allowances, she said. Maintenance Dlamini reiterated that the circular provided that tindvuna tetinkhundla will receive an annual motor vehicle allowance of E90 000 and motor vehicle maintenance and insurance of E67 500. The effective date of the circular is October 11, 2018 and, therefore, will attract back pay, the communications officer explained. When asked if it was true that tindvuna will receive the money in their January pay, she explained that the Tinkhundla Ministry was in a better position to respond as it was the one that prepared the instrument. The PS confirmed on Wednesday that tindvuna will receive their car allowance back pay in their January salaries. Dlamini said she had sent officials from the Accounts Department and they had confirmed that the money had been deposited into the accounts. What I can confirm is that it will be part of their January pay. When we discovered the error, we could not rest. Upon checking with the Treasury Department, I found that the Accounts Department had sampled some of the accounts and verified that the money was deposited. However, there are many tindvuna tetinkhundla, so I cannot guarantee that all of them will receive it until I receive a report on that, she said. She explained that she had been receiving calls from some of them, enquiring if they would receive the money. I had no problem with those calls because this is their money. I am happy that the preliminary work I have done reflects that the money has been deposited, she said. An indvuna yenkhundla is an elected head of the inkhundla authority. He or she is responsible and accountable to bucopho (inkhundla executive council) and the regional administrator for administrative and policy parameters. Indvuna yenkhundla is the chairperson of the inkhundla and responsible for presiding over all official meetings of the inkhundla, supervising the work of bucopho in the respective chiefdoms and ensuring that decisions that bucopho are implemented. Other responsibilities of tindvuna tetinkhundla include supervising the inkhundla secretary, regularly updating chiefs on all social and economic development projects implemented, ensuring the preparation and implementation of development plans and attending meetings at chiefdoms and when necessary. According to the circular, the money is part of the allowances designed to ensure that parliamentarians are paid and reimbursed for costs properly incurred in the performance of their duties. Allowance The circular states that the motor vehicle allowance is intended to reimburse the parliamentarians for the capital outlay in respect of the acquisition of a private motor vehicle. Such a vehicle, according to the provisions of the circular, may not be bought on a government contract or tender and must be negotiated directly with a particular dealership. It states that government may negotiate discounted rates with certain vehicle manufacturers or dealerships on behalf of the parliamentarians; however, it is the prerogative of the parliamentarian to arrange and negotiate the financing of the motor vehicle. The receipt of the motor vehicle allowance is not entirely subject to the parliamentarian acquiring ownership of a private vehicle. The motor vehicle allowance includes running and maintenance costs, states the circular. It is not just arms and ammunition that provide strength to the Indian Army Soldiers, but dogs as well who have become an integral part of the forces. As we celebrate Army Day on January 15, we should not forget the loyal services of dog soldiers of the Indian Army. The Indian Army deploys the canine unit to take up crucial roles of tracking, guarding, mine detection, explosive detection, infantry patrolling, avalanche rescue operations, search and rescue, and assault and narcotic detection. Dogs trained by the Remount and Veterinary Corps (RVC) of the Indian Army are increasingly in demand from friendly foreign countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, and South Africa. The countries also get their own army personnel trained through dog-handling courses conducted by the Indian Army. Besides RVC, National Training Center for Dogs (NTDC) is also a premier organization famous for giving targeted training to canine soldiers. These institutes provide a rigorous and comprehensive training to dogs, right from breeding and training to rearing and rehabilitation. Last year, on 74th Independence Day, two dogs from the Indian Army, Sophie and Vida, received the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Commendations. Brown Cocker Spaniel of the Special Frontier Force (Bomb Disposal Squad), Sophie, sniffed out the presence of initiator or accelerant during a search operation in Delhi, which could have been quickly used to fabricate an IED. While a black Labrador from an Army Dog Unit in the Northern Command, Vida used his skills to detect five mines and one grenade buried underground. The two brave soldiers were also mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Mann ki Baat address last year in August. Some of the canines are also deployed on the Line of Control (LoC) in North Kashmir, like Buzo, a double-coat German Shepherd. Buzo is one of 150 expert dogs of the Indian Army that guard the LoC as well as the hinterland. These dogs specialize in three skills, assault, as in attacking the enemy, Tracker, as in those who track movements of the enemy, and Explosive Detection Dogs, as in those who sniff explosives. Dogs like Buzo usually belong to the double-coat German Shepherd breed as they are well-suited for the cold climate of the region. Indian Army deploys Labradors in operations that take place in the hinterland. India celebrates Army Day on January 15 because Field Marshal KM Cariappa was appointed as Commander-In-Chief of the Indian Army on January 15, 1949 and was the first Indian to be appointed as Commander-in-Chief. CHICAGO, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hub International Limited (Hub), a leading full-service global insurance broker, announced today that it has acquired the assets of Commercial Insurance Brokers, Inc. (Commercial Insurance Brokers). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Located in El Paso, Texas, Commercial Insurance Brokers is a locally owned, independent insurance agency that provides commercial and personal insurance solutions. Ken Foster, President of Commercial Insurance Brokers, and Vice Presidents Maggie Foster, Richie Grodin and Martha Ramirez, will join Hub Texas and report to Don Margo, President of Hub Texas in El Paso. About Hub's M&A Activities Hub International Limited is committed to growing organically and through acquisitions to expand its geographic footprint and strengthen industry and product expertise. For more information on the Hub M&A experience, visit WeAreHub.com. About Hub International Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Hub International Limited is a leading full-service global insurance broker providing risk management, insurance, employee benefits, retirement and wealth management products and services. With more than 12,000 employees in offices located throughout North America, Hub's vast network of specialists brings clarity to a changing world with tailored solutions and unrelenting advocacy, so clients are ready for tomorrow. For more information, please visit www.hubinternational.com. CONTACT: Media: Marni Gordon Phone: 312-279-4601 [email protected] M&A: Clark Wormer Phone: 312.279.4848 [email protected] SOURCE Hub International Limited Related Links www.hubinternational.com Canadian researchers are concerned about the impact climate change will have on drinking water quality, as warmer temperatures lead to less ice cover on lakes. Canadian researchers are concerned about the impact climate change will have on drinking water quality, as warmer temperatures lead to less ice cover on lakes. The paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, was led by York University science Prof. Sapna Sharma. The research found, across the northern hemisphere, by 2100, 5,700 lakes are likely to stop freezing during the winter. Of those, 179 lakes will lose ice cover by 2030. "We need ice on lakes to curtail and minimize evaporation rates in the winter," Sharma said. "Without ice cover, evaporation rates would increase, and water levels could decline. We would lose freshwater, which we need for drinking and everyday activities. Ice cover is extremely important both ecologically and socio-economically." While water freezes after temperatures reach 0 C, it must be colder still for lakes to have ice cover. The researchers found air temperature needed to be below -0.9 C for most lakes to freeze. The larger or deeper the lake, the colder it needs to be; some need temperatures as low at -4.8 C to freeze. "It is quite dramatic for some of these lakes, that froze often, but within a few decades they stop freezing indefinitely," said co-author and postdoctoral fellow Alessandro Filazzola. "Its pretty shocking to imagine a lake that would normally freeze no longer doing so." Examining the data, Filazzola found no Manitoba lakes on the list of bodies of water expected to stop freezing altogether. Most of the lakes that are expected to remain open year-round are in the southern and coastal regions of the Northern Hemisphere. However, Manitoba lakes will still be affected. "Large lakes, such as Lake Manitoba, Winnipeg, Winnipegosis, and Cedar will each probably experience an increase in ice-free years in the future. I just have no data to support by how much and by when," Filazzola said. The research shows Lake Superior and Lake Michigan could permanently become ice-free by 2055, if nothing is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions, or by 2085 with moderate changes. sarah.lawrynuik@freepress.mb.ca 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 Produced by Ronnie Screwvala & Vidya Balan and directed by Shaan Vyas, Natkhat is a 33-minute short that underlines that home is where we learn the values which shape us and make us who we are. A story framed within a story where a mother (Vidya Balan) notices her young, school-going son Sonu (Sanika Patel) gravitating towards misogyny and disregard for the other gender just like the men in her family. Vidya Balan, who turned producer with this film, is seen playing the role of a homemaker in a patriarchal setup. The film touches upon the sweet mother-son relationship, which quivers with each blow, and settles with a soothing touch. Across the turbulent year of 2020, Natkhat travelled and was screened at prestigious international (virtual) film festivals across the world. It world premiered at Tribeca's We Are One: A Global Film Festival (2nd June 2020) after which it was screened and won the German Star of India Award at the Indian Film Festival Stuttgart (15th - 20th July 2020). The short film was also invited for the London Indian Film Festival in London and Birmingham (17th - 20th Sept 2020), the South Asian Film Festival - Orlando/Florida Film Festival (10th - 11th Oct 2020) and opened the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (16th - 23rd Oct 2020). It was at the Best of India Short Film Festival (7th Nov 2020) that Natkhat was announced the Winner and eligible for Oscar 2021 qualification. But that wasn't its last festival of 2020, the year ended with Natkhat being screened at the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival (4th - 12th Dec 2020) and the International Kids Film Festival (IKFF) (20th Nov 2020). IKFF, conceived by LXL Ideas, is India's largest children's film festival that aims to bring inspiring, meaningful and globally diverse cinema to children in the remotest parts of the world! It was at this festival with an Adult Jury comprising of 12 experts in the fields of film and education, and a Child Jury of 45 members selected from schools in India, Italy, France, South Korea, Taiwan, Kyrgyzstan and the US that Natkhat was presented the award for Best Live Action Short (13+ Years). A child juror, Angelica La Rocca from Giffoni Film Festival, Italy said, "This short film is just perfect. Natkhat reinforces the idea of a possible solution against the social menace of misogyny and patriarchy. It shows that child rearing at home is where you begin the real education, and thanks to the effervescent performances (mainly by the child actors) the message comes out pretty well." Director, Shaan Vyas said, "Natkhat was made with a very naive yet powerful urge to change things. To reach every corner of the earth and tell the world that change begins at home. We are very humbled by this selection for the Oscar race. I feel that the world is yet to discover the excellent quality of Indian films made over the past few years and we hope to revive that interest in our cinema if Natkhat does make it to the shortlist." Soaring into the Oscars 2021 race, actor and producer Vidya Balan said, "After a year that has been turbulent, it feels great to have our film qualify for the Oscars. This film is incredibly close to me since it gave me a chance to play the dual roles of actor and producer." ALSO READ: Birthday Girl Vidya Balan Hopes 2021 Is Kinder To Everyone; Says 'It's Going To Be Happiness & Sunshine Again' Producer, Ronnie Screwvala said, "Even in these times, creativity and content have found ways to thrive and travel. Through innovation and technology international festivals and award ceremonies have continued to advance and bridge the gaps in new and disruptive ways. Our film, Natkhat has travelled the world last year, addressing important issues and providing a powerful message. We are thrilled to be racing for the Oscars 2021." The film is written by Annukampa Harsh and Shaan Vyas with associate producer Sanaya Irani Zohrabi. Natkhat is directed by Shaan Vyas and produced by Vidya Balan and Ronnie Screwvala. ALSO READ: Vidya Balan's Short Film Natkhat Now Eligible For Oscar Nomination The European Union has warned Iran that its decision to increase uranium enrichment could undermine efforts to keep a nuclear deal alive, while diplomatic efforts continue to bring the United States back onboard under a new administration. By Stefan J. Bos European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who supervises the agreement aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear capabilities, has expressed concerns about Tehran's ambitions. In a statement, Borrell called Iran's intention to enrich uranium up to 20 percent at the Fordow underground nuclear facility "a very serious development and a matter of deep concern." He added that this could have "very severe proliferation implications." Borrell stressed that full and timely cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency "remains critical." Last week, Iran began enriching uranium to levels unseen since a nuclear deal was struck in 2015. The agreement offers Iran economic incentives in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. But outgoing US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal. And with the reinstatement of American sanctions, the other signatories China, France, Germany, Russia, and Britain have struggled to provide Iran the assistance it seeks. No longer under obligation? Iran has even argued that it is no longer obliged to respect limits laid out in the pact. Tehran claims President Trump violated it first by pulling the US out of the deal in 2018, which resulted in crippling sanctions on Iran's already troubled economy. Despite Iran's actions, EU Spokesman Peter Stano says Tehran continues to give inspectors full access to its nuclear sites. Heard through an interpreter, he explained that the EU wants to ensure that those inspections continue as part of the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA. "We must highlight that in spite of this regrettable action taken by Iran, the JCPOA contains strict verification measures which are still in place," he stressed. "Based on the ministerial declaration of the participants of the JCPOA, on the first of December, we will strengthen our efforts to maintain the agreement. And make sure that all parties adhere to their commitments," Stano added. The standoff with Iran comes amid hopes within the EU that the United States under President-elect Joe Biden will become part of Iran's nuclear deal again. French English Paris, 15/01/2021 Press release Bouygues Telecom announces its new strategic plan Ambition 2026 To become the number 2 telecoms operator in mobile and a major player in fiber in France For more than five years, Bouygues Telecom has been successfully implementing its sustainable and profitable growth strategy. After having made ambitious pledges to fight against climate change, Bouygues Telecom is now taking a new step by unveiling its strategic plan and targets for 2026. To achieve that ambition, Bouygues Telecom is stepping up its growth in a reinvigorated French market, leveraging the drivers responsible for its success since 2015, its recent acquisition of EIT, new initiatives in its various markets (B2C, B2B and wholesale) and expert skills and dedication of its people. The financial targets of the Ambition 2026 strategic plan are to generate in 2026: over 7 billion in sales from services; EBITDA after Leases of around 2.5 billion with an EBITDA after Leases margin of around 35%; free cash flow1 of around 600 million. Richard Viel, Bouygues Telecoms CEO, said: Bouygues Telecoms strategy since 2015 has been an undisputed success. The business and financial targets set at the time have all been achieved or exceeded, making Bouygues Telecom the operator with the fastest sales growth on the French market and among the very first in Europe. The company is now entering a new phase of its development in order to strengthen its positioning as a full-service operator, strong on all connectivity markets. I am proud to unveil our new Ambition 2026 strategic plan. As announced, Bouygues is today holding a Capital Markets Day specifically for Bouygues Telecom. CEO Richard Viel and Deputy CEO Benoit Torloting, accompanied by CFO Christian Lecoq, will present their vision of the telecoms market and Bouygues Telecoms medium-term strategy and outlook in the context of a new strategic plan, Ambition 2026. Bouygues Telecom, 25 years of innovation 2021 marks Bouygues Telecoms 25th anniversary. The company has been a pioneer in many areas over the last 25 years. In 1996, it made mobile telephony accessible to everyone, for example by offering the first mobile phone bundle, then in 1999 the first mobile phone plan with unlimited voice. From 2010, it has brought connectivity within everyones reach. Bouygues Telecom was the first player on the market to offer a quadruple-play package (mobile, fixed, internet and TV) and a 4G box offering a high-speed internet connection in areas with slow ADSL speeds. It launched the first box on the market to have an incorporated Android TV decoder and was the first operator to offer its customers Netflix. Making sure that its customers get the best digital experience is another key concern. Since 2020, Bouygues Telecom has offered the best Wi-Fi modem on the market2, meeting the expectations of French consumers, 96% of whom consider it essential to have good Wi-Fi at home. It is acknowledged to be the operator that provides its B2B customers with the best service3. And in 2020, for the seventh consecutive year, the French telecoms regulator Arcep confirmed Bouygues Telecoms network as the second-ranked mobile network in mainland France. Bouygues Telecom, a socially responsible player Bouygues Telecom endeavors to offer its customers a high-performance, energy-efficient and sustainable network, aiming to cut its greenhouse gas emissions4 while meeting the expectations of its customers and other stakeholders. It reduces its environmental impacts by improving its products and extending the lifetime of its equipment. Its modems and TV decoders are eco-designed (box, packaging, first virtual box incorporated into the TV set) and their energy consumption is regularly optimized (35% reduction between the Miami box and the Bbox Sensation, and 36% reduction between the Bbox 4k and the Miami box). As the first operator to commit to refurbishing mobile phones back in 2011, Bouygues Telecom has consolidated its leading position in the smartphone circular economy, rolling out a 4R mobile strategy (Repair, Recover, Refurbish, Recycle). It also takes action to encourage more sober use of digital technologies among its customers. Bouygues Telecom has been successfully rolling out its strategy since 2015, making it one of the fastest-growing operators in the sector in Europe over the 2015-2020 period. At its previous Capital Markets Day in October 2015, Bouygues Telecom presented an ambitious strategy for a return to long-term sales and results growth. That strategy has borne fruit and all the commitments made have been achieved or exceeded: Mobile growth: 1 million more customers in 2017 vs end-2014 (achieved a year early) Fixed growth: 1 million more customers in 2017 vs end-2014 (achieved in 2017) EBITDA after Leases margin: 25% in 2017 (exceeded, with 27% in 2017) Between 2015 and 2020, Bouygues Telecom maintained growth momentum on a French market that has stagnated in value terms. Bouygues Telecom added 2.7 million mobile customers excluding MtoM, and 1.6 million fixed customers between end-2014 and Q3 2020 and is by far the operator with the strongest overall sales growth, averaging 7.3% a year between end-2014 and 20205. It more than doubled its EBITDA after Leases over the same period (around 1.5 billion expected in 20205 versus 694 million in 2014) and increased its EBITDA after Leases margin by over 10 points (31% expected in 20205 versus 18% in 2014). This growth has made Bouygues Telecom one of the best-performing operators in France and Europe. The French telecoms market is entering a new phase of growth The French telecoms market will experience a phase of growth between 2021 and 2026, driven by two major ground-breaking technologies FTTH and 5G and a growing need for connectivity. France is one of the most advanced countries in Europe in terms of the roll-out of fiber, which is accelerating. The regulatory environment is generally favorable to 5G, which is just starting. These two new ground-breaking technologies give innovative players unique opportunities to gain market share. In addition, connectivity has become essential for both individuals and businesses, a development amplified by the health crisis. Mobile use increased 1.5x between 2018 and 2020 and is likely to double between 2020 and 2023 and double again between 2023 and 20266. In this context, Bouygues Telecom believes it is the right time to step up its growth. Ambition 2026 aims to speed up growth in order to become the number 2 in mobile and a major player in fiber. This ambition has three strands: Become the number 2 in mobile: Continue the more for more strategy successfully rolled out over the last three years; successfully rolled out over the last three years; Consolidate its position as the second-ranked mobile network in France: increase coverage (target of 28,000 sites in 2023 and around 35,000 in 2026) and quadruple network capacity by 2026; in France: increase coverage (target of 28,000 sites in 2023 and around 35,000 in 2026) and quadruple network capacity by 2026; Capitalize on the integration of EIT, which enables the company to position itself as Frances third-largest operator by market share, adding more than 2 million customers; Benefit from its extended distribution network through the long-term partnership concluded with Credit Mutuel, which will distribute Bouygues Telecoms fixed and mobile products and services in over 4,200 Credit Mutuel and CIC local bank branches; through the long-term partnership concluded with Credit Mutuel, which will distribute Bouygues Telecoms fixed and mobile products and services in over 4,200 Credit Mutuel and CIC local bank branches; Benefit from the brands repositioning On est fait pour etre ensemble7 in 2020, with the aim of becoming the second-ranked operator in terms of prospect purchasing intentions. Gain an additional 3 million FTTH customers: Market high-quality, competitively-priced offers while continuing the more for more strategy ; while continuing the ; Propose innovative, eco-designed, best-in-class fixed devices ; ; Continue to offer a high-quality customer experience ; ; Double FTTH coverage from around 17 million premises marketed at end-20208 to a target of 35 million at end-2026 (with an intermediate target of 27 million at end-2022). Double market share in fixed B2B and become a wholesale fixed player: Consolidate its position as a benchmark in customer relations in B2B; in B2B; Be a leading connectivity operator with enhanced service offerings , either directly or through strategic partnerships ; , either directly or through ; Increase market share in the small-business segment by leveraging a multi-channel distribution network : Bouygues Telecom Entreprises and Nerims direct and indirect sales forces, the Credit Mutuel-CIC distribution network, which has a solid small-business customer base, and digital distribution via Keyyo Communications; : Bouygues Telecom Entreprises and Nerims direct and indirect sales forces, the Credit Mutuel-CIC distribution network, which has a solid small-business customer base, and digital distribution via Keyyo Communications; Monetize its FTTO and FTTA infrastructure in B2B and expand its wholesale fixed offering, capitalizing on its expertise and leading position in wholesale mobile. Ambition 2026 aims to pursue profitable and sustainable growth resulting in a doubling of free cash flow versus 2019. There are robust prospects for profitable and sustainable growth over the period 2021-2026. Bouygues Telecom has set itself the following targets for 2026: sales from services of more than 7 billion vs approx. 4.9 billion in 2020 9 ; vs approx. 4.9 billion in 2020 ; EBITDA after Leases of around 2.5 billion vs approx. 1.5 billion in 2020 9 ; of around vs approx. 1.5 billion in 2020 ; EBITDA after Leases margin of around 35% vs 31% in 2020 9 ; vs 31% in 2020 ; free cash flow of around 600 million vs around 250 million expected in 2020 (and 300 million reported in 2019). This growth is expected to occur in two stages: 2021-2023: faster growth in mobile (including EIT) and FTTH and an increase in fixed ABPU should boost sales from services and EBITDA after Leases. However, the EBITDA after Leases margin is likely to remain stable in 2023 (at around 31%) due to higher costs linked to faster growth in the fixed segment, densification of the mobile network and the initial dilutive effect of integrating EIT. 2024-2026: ongoing growth in mobile and FTTH, expansion of the wholesale fixed offering and higher mobile and fixed ABPU should continue to sustain growth in sales from services and EBITDA after Leases. Bouygues Telecom is aiming for an EBITDA after Leases margin of around 35% in 2026 as a result of economies of scale generated by the integration of EIT, the growth of its customer base and favorable development of the fixed business model. In order to achieve the targets of its Ambition 2026 strategic plan, Bouygues Telecom will accelerate roll-out of its FTTH and 5G infrastructure and invest in mobile radio capacity and fixed devices (modems, TV decoders, etc.) to keep pace with changes in use and a growing customer base. Consequently, the company estimates gross capex of around 1.5 billion a year between 2021 and 2025 and of around 1.4 billion in 2026. These annual amounts include the cost of gradually replacing Huawei equipment, with around 3,000 sites being converted by 2028. The 2021 gross capex guidance includes 140 million for the integration of EIT. Disposals of assets, mostly data centers, are expected at around 200 million in 2021. Overall, Bouygues Telecoms aggregate capex between 2021 and 2026 will create substantial value. financial calendar 18 February 2021: Full-year 2020 results (7.30am CET) The Capital Markets Day presentation will start at 3 pm (CET) on 15 January 2021. Details on how to connect and the presentation will be available on www.bouygues.com. About Bouygues Bouygues is a diversified services group operating in over 90 countries with 130,000 employees all working to make life better every day. Its business activities in construction (Bouygues Construction, Bouygues Immobilier, Colas); media (TF1) and telecoms (Bouygues Telecom) are able to drive growth since they all satisfy constantly changing and essential needs. INVESTORS AND ANALYSTS CONTACT: PRESS CONTACT: investors@bouygues.com Tel.: +33 (0)1 44 20 10 79 presse@bouygues.com Tel.: +33 (0)1 44 20 12 01 BOUYGUES SA 32 avenue Hoche 75378 Paris CEDEX 08 www.bouygues.com GLOSSARY 4G consumption: data consumed on 4G cellular networks, excluding Wi-Fi. 4G users: customers who have used the 4G network during the last three months (Arcep definition). ABPU (Average Billing Per User): - In the mobile segment, it is equal to the total of mobile sales billed to customers (BtoC and BtoB) divided by the average number of customers over the period. It excludes MtoM SIM cards and free SIM cards. - In the fixed segment, it is equal to the total of fixed sales billed to customers (excluding BtoB) divided by the average number of customers over the period. B2B (business to business): when one business makes a commercial transaction with another. EBITDA after Leases: current operating profit after taking account of the interest expense on lease obligations, before (i) net depreciation and amortization expense on property, plant and equipment and intangible assets, (ii) net charges to provisions and impairment losses, and (iii) effects of acquisitions of control or losses of control. Those effects relate to the impact of remeasuring previously-held interests or retained interests. EBITDA margin after Leases (Bouygues Telecom): EBITDA after Leases as a proportion of sales from services. Free cash flow: net cash flow (determined after (i) cost of net debt, (ii) interest expense on lease obligations and (iii) income taxes paid), minus net capital expenditure and repayments of lease obligations. It is calculated before changes in working capital requirements (WCR) related to operating activities and excluding 5G frequencies. Fixed churn: the total number of cancellations in a given month, divided by the total number of subscribers at the end of the previous month. FTTH (Fiber to the Home): optical fiber from the central office (where the operators transmission equipment is installed) all the way to homes or business premises (Arcep definition). FTTH penetration rate: the FTTH share of the total fixed subscriber base (the number of FTTH customers divided by the total number of fixed customers) FTTH premises secured: the horizontal deployed, being deployed or ordered up to the concentration point. FTTH premises marketed: the connectable sockets, i.e. the horizontal and vertical deployed and connected via the concentration point. Mobile churn: the total number of cancellations in a given month, divided by the total number of subscribers at the end of the previous month. MtoM: machine to machine communication. This refers to direct communication between machines or smart devices or between smart devices and people via an information system using mobile communications networks, generally without human intervention. PIN: Public-Initiative Network. Sales from services (Bouygues Telecom) comprise: - Sales billed to customers, which include: - In Mobile: For BtoC customers: sales from outgoing call charges (voice, texts and data), connection fees, and value-added services. For BtoB customers: sales from outgoing call charges (voice, texts and data), connection fees, and value-added services, plus sales from business services. Machine-To-Machine (MtoM) sales. Visitor roaming sales. Sales generated with Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). - In Fixed: For BtoC customers: sales from outgoing call charges, fixed broadband services, TV services (including Video on Demand and catch-up TV), and connection fees and equipment hire. For BtoB customers: sales from outgoing call charges, fixed broadband services, TV services (including Video on Demand and catch-up TV), and connection fees and equipment hire, plus sales from business services. Sales from bulk sales to other fixed line operators. - Sales from incoming Voice and Texts. - Spreading of handset subsidies over the projected life of the customer account, required to comply with IFRS 15. - Capitalization of connection fee sales, which is then spread over the projected life of the customer account. Other sales (Bouygues Telecom): difference between Bouygues Telecoms total sales and sales from services. It comprises: - Sales from handsets, accessories and other - Roaming sales - Non-telecom services (construction of sites or installation of FTTH lines) - Co-financing of advertising Very-high-speed: subscriptions with peak downstream speeds higher or equal to 30 Mbit/s. Includes FTTH, FTTLA, 4G box and VDSL2 subscriptions (Arcep definition). Wholesale: wholesale market for telecoms operators 1 Free cash flow: net cash flow (determined after (i) cost of net debt, (ii) interest expense on lease obligations and (iii) income taxes paid), minus net capital expenditure and repayments of lease obligations. It is calculated before changes in working capital requirements (WCR) related to operating activities and excluding 5G frequencies. 2 Source: 01 Net. 3 Bouygues Telecom Entreprises won the 2021 Customer Service prize awarded by Viseo Customer and BVA. 4 Climate targets for 2030: a 50% reduction in carbon emissions on scopes 1 and 2 and a 30% reduction on scope 3 (vs. 2020), and use of over 50% renewable energy sources. 5 Estimates for 2020 are derived from the Visible Alpha consensus at 7 January 2021 and do not include EIT 6 Source: Ericsson. 7 We are made to be together 8 Company estimate. 9 Estimates for 2020 are derived from the Visible Alpha consensus at 7 January 2021 and do not include EIT. Attachment " " Students with mouth and nose protection work in a seventh grade classroom on Nov. 25, 2020. picture alliance/Getty Images We found that schools can reopen for in-person instruction without further spreading COVID-19 in nearby communities if the number of people with the disease is relatively low. But if there are more than 21 cases per 100,000 people, COVID-19 spread may increase. To reach this conclusion, we used data from September through December 2020 in Michigan and Washington states both of which allowed districts to decide whether or not to offer in-person schooling at that time to analyze how these different instructional decisions affect COVID-19 case rates. It's hard to figure this out because other factors, such as social distancing and the use of masks, could be to blame. So it might appear that going to school in person makes COVID-19 spread, but really it is due to safety habits or the lack thereof especially if those same communities are more likely to send students back to school in person. We tried to address this concern by including information in our statistical analyses on such practices as mask-wearing in a community and how a county voted in 2016. Political preference was an important factor to consider, because Republicans appear less likely than Democrats to comply with COVID-19 safety measures. Republicans are also more likely to encourage in-person instruction during the pandemic. Despite our findings, coronavirus very likely does transmit in schools to some degree. But the spread of COVID-19 there may simply reflect what's going on in the surrounding community. Kids and educators may be just as safe in school buildings or possibly even safer than they would be elsewhere. Advertisement Why It Matters Most districts closed the doors of their school buildings in March and did not reopen them for the remainder of the school year, instead offering students remote instruction. But evidence is growing that remote instruction isn't working well, especially for low-income students and students of color. Given these challenges, many districts chose to offer in-person or hybrid instruction last fall. But as the number of COVID-19 cases rises, districts like Chicago's and others are facing the difficult decision of whether to open schools or to keep them open. To date there has been little data to guide them. Our study provides some of the first U.S.-based evidence to policymakers as they make these difficult choices. Advertisement What Still Isn't Known While we provide specific estimates of when COVID-19 rates are high enough that the virus will likely spread as a result of opening schools, they should be treated with caution because statistical estimates are subject to error. The takeaway is not to focus on specific thresholds but rather to understand that levels exist at which in-person schooling contributes to community spread. Moreover, how schools open and the safety measures they take are likely to play a role in terms of what happens with COVID-19 cases. Schools can, for example, bring back only some students, require masks and keep desks spaced several feet apart from one another. These practices probably reduce transmission of the disease. However, we are not able to assess how much these steps might help because we do not have information on safety protocols in individual schools or whether schools are following those protocols. Advertisement What Other Research Is Being Done So far, while there are some studies on how COVID-19 has affected learning, especially how the pandemic may be disproportionately harming the education of low-income and minority students, there is not much research about how the disease is spreading in U.S. schools. One study found associations between school closures in the spring of 2020 and reductions in COVID-19 deaths. However, other social distancing policies were enacted at the same time, making the contribution of schools unclear. A new study found results similar to ours when examining hospitalizations that in-person instruction was associated with more nearby hospitalizations when existing COVID-19 rates were high, but that there was no such correlation when rates were low. Scott A Imberman, Professor of Education Policy and Economics, Michigan State University. Dan Goldhaber, Director, Center for Education Data & Research, University of Washington. Katharine O. Strunk, Professor of Education Policy and Economics, Michigan State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. You can find the original article here. Dubbed Britain's answer to Tutankhamun, the discovery of an early medieval burial site at Sutton Hoo caused a sensation in 1939. Now the extraordinary events surrounding the excavation of an Anglo-Saxon ship and a wealth of artefacts in Suffolk is being dramatised in a film. With a star-studded cast including Lily James, Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, The Dig tells the story of widow Edith Pretty who employed an amateur archaeologist to investigate 18 mounds of soil on her land near Woodbridge. Lily James, 31, steps into the role of English archaeologist Peggy Piggott, who played a large part in the excavation alongside her first husband Stuart With a star-studded cast including Lily James, Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes (left, playing Basil Brown, right), The Dig tells the story of widow Edith Pretty who employed an amateur archaeologist to investigate 18 mounds of soil on her land near Woodbridge Miss Mulligan, 35, plays Mrs Pretty, who enlisted the help of selftaught, working-class archaeologist Basil Brown (Fiennes) to begin the dig just before the start of the Second World War. Miss James, 31, steps into the role of Peggy Piggott, who played a large part in the excavation alongside her first husband Stuart. In the film, based on a 2007 historical novel by Mrs Piggotts nephew John Preston and set to be released by Netflix on January 29, his aunt has a flirtation with Mrs Prettys nephew, Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn). Writing for the Daily Mail, Mr Preston said Miss James was a joyously unlikely bit of movie casting as his aunt had been a remarkably plain-looking woman. Carey Mulligan, 35, plays Mrs Pretty, who enlisted the help of selftaught, working-class archaeologist Basil Brown (Fiennes) to begin the dig just before the start of the Second World War. Mrs Pretty donated the entire find including a kings ornate iron helmet, pictured to the nation and it went on display at the British Museum in 1951 Sutton Hoo is regarded as one of the most important archaeological finds ever in the UK as it changed perceptions about the Anglo-Saxons, who had been thought to be culturally backwards. Before her death in 1942, Mrs Pretty donated the entire find including a kings ornate iron helmet to the nation and it went on display at the British Museum in 1951. But Browns work went uncredited and he died aged 89 in 1977 a largely forgotten figure. Amid the departure of several longtime confidants and friction with his longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump has gotten back into regular contact with former advisor Steve Bannon. After suffering a rupture following Bannon's cooperation with Michael Wolff's blistering tell-all Fire and Fury, the two men are back in regular communication at a time when Trump has fought to overturn the election results, claimed massive election fraud, and forced out some advisors while watching others head for the door. Sources told Bloomberg Bannon has been counseling Trump on his effort to overturn the election results a push that led to a failed legal effort that culminated Trump supporters rioting in the Capitol when Congress met last week to count the votes of the Electoral College. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon exits Manhattan federal court on Aug. 20, 2020, in New York. Bannon pleaded not guilty to charges he defrauded donors to a $25 million campaign to build a border wall and was released on bond. Trump and Bannon are back in communication Bannon, who helped run Trump's 2016 campaign, came into the White House as chief White House strategist only to be indicted on fraud allegations last year involving the We Build the Wall nonprofit, as been speaking with Trump regularly during the period of the election overturn effort. A source said Trump has been seeking out voices of agreement even as other close advisors like former Attorney General Bill Barr left before Christmas or got pushed out. Three cabinet members resigned following the Capitol riot, and longtime advisor Hope Hicks departed the White House this week. Son-in-law Jared Kushner is still a close advisor, though he was returning from overseas the day of the riot. Trump has reportedly not spoken to Vice President Mike Pence, who did not abide by Trump's demands he find a way not to accept certified votes, and was rushed out of the chamber by security after the Capitol breach, where some rioters were cheering for his hanging. Having Bannon back in the fold is one of many times when Trump has brought advisors back after suffering a break. After Bannon left the White House in 2017 and made highly critical comments on the record, Trump said Bannon had 'lost his mind.' 'Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books,' Trump said in a statement at the time. President Trump is turning to a narrow group of advisors in the final days of his presidency Law professor John Eastman, next to U.S. President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, gestures as he speaks while Trump supporters gather ahead of his speech to contest the certification by the U.S. Congress of the results, in a rally that preceded the Capitol riot President Donald Trump (L-R), joined by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice President Mike Pence, senior advisor Steve Bannon, Communications Director Sean Spicer and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, speaks by phone with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. January 28, 2017 Bannon had helped conceive Trump's 'American carnage' State of the Union speech almost four years ago after advising his campaign. There is uncertainty about the current role of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has been mentioned as a possible leader of his impeachment defense. Giuliani has defended Trump's conduct at his pre-riot speech, despite Democrats impeaching him for 'incitement of insurrection.' Giuliani himself told rally-goers there should be 'trial by combat,' language he said he ripped from HBO's 'Game of Thrones.' The New York Times, which previously reported Giuliani had asked to get paid $20,000 per day for his advice during Trump's bid to overturn the election results, reported Thursday that it was unclear Trump would agree to pay anything more than expenses. Bannon himself has tried to reign in Giuliani on his own podcast Thursday before it got yanked after incendiary comments from Giuliani about the election. 'I dont mind being shut down for my craziness. Im not going to be shut down for yours,' he told him on air. According to CBC reporter Alexander Panetta, who listened to the podcast before it was taken down, Giuliani responded: 'Im really very frustrated. Im not crazy.' 'And I dont say crazy things,' he continued. 'I know. Im just teasing you,' Bannon reassured him. Giuliani defended Trump on a January 8 appearance on the Youtube podcast after the riot, which he blamed on a left wing 'reign of terror.' 'Believe me, Trump people were not scaling the wall. So there's nothing to it that he incited anything,' he said, although authorities have been rolling up Trump supporters who invaded the building. 'But you're not trying to justify it. There's no way to justify the violence,' Bannon interrupted him at one pint. With the president banned from Twitter, Trump advisor Jason Miller tweeted Thursday: 'Just spoke with President Trump, and he told me that @RudyGiuliani is a great guy and a Patriot who devoted his services to the country! We all love Americas Mayor!' following Giuliani's role in both of Trump's impeachments. Life has not been that easy after he left us. Our days have become the gloomiest ever and nights have been the scariest of all. Our flowers do not bloom these days and our sun barely disperses its rays. Only the wind jolts, to and forth. by Anwar A. Khan The 110th birth anniversary of late Chief Justice Sayed Mahbub Murshed, an eminent jurist and one of the greatest constitutional lawyers of the Southeast Asia, was observed on January 11 last. What a good man. Sometimes, when one person is absent, the whole world seems depopulated. - Allphonse de Lamartine Nothing is so strong as gentlenessand nothing is so gentle as real strength. Justice SM Murshed dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. My favourite poem, my favourite poet was also Aeschylus. And he once wrote: Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of a just man. The worldhas produced fewer instances of truly great judges, than he was of a great man inalmost every other department of civil life. Syed Mahbub Murshed (11 January 1911 3 April 1979) was a Bangladeshi lawyer and jurist. He served as the Chief Justice of East Pakistan High Court during 19641967. His life was one of the many versions of the Bengalis dream.Love and death are the two uninvited guests, when they will come nobody knows. But both do the same work, one takes heart and the other takes its beats- Joseph Buluran For less than 70 years of his life could not defend him anymore. Though death has separated him from us, Justice Murshed are together with us by the eternal love and by all those treasured memories. Life has not been that easy after he left us. Our days have become the gloomiest ever and nights have been the scariest of all. Our flowers do not bloom these days and our sun barely disperses its rays. Only the wind jolts, to and forth. Nothing breaks the heart like the void in our lives. But our fate was destined to walk through these sorrows and thrones on the way. All we could do now is to accept this law of nature and move on. We miss him every day. Reminiscing him living a peaceful life, I have understood the power of positivity and kindness. He has taught us that life is all about learning and exploring the dimensions of conscience. Someone rightly said, Those we love dont go away/They walk beside us every day/Unseen, unheard, but always near, /Still loved, still missed and very dear. I think of him in the same way. I remember these lines from Baz Luhrmanns song too, Get to know your parents, you never know when they will be gone for good. Life is unpredictable, cherish the things that we own today.He has always exuded high standard of professionalism in his legal career and maintained an exemplary decorum and remarkable modesty in court. Murshed has always shown high respect to the bench. His immense contribution to the development of the law in Pakistan times in Bangladesh is undisputable and his never-ending quest for justice will be eternally remembered and will continue to inspire legal practitioners. Judiciary has lost a political figure who coloured the nation's political history, in line with the practice of parliamentary democracy. Murshed was born to his parents Syed Abdus Salek, a member of the Bengal Civil Service and Afzalunnessa Begum, a sister of Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq, a giant politician of the Indian sub-continent. Murshed obtained his bachelors in economics from Presidency College, Kolkata in 1931, masters from Kolkata University in 1932, and L.L.B degree in 1933. In 1939, he became a barrister from Lincoln's Inn in London. Murshed became a member of the Kolkata High Court Bar in 1934. Returning from England in 1939, he started practicing as a senior advocate of the Federal Court of India. In 1951, he migrated to the-then Pakistan and joined the Dhaka High Court Bar in 1951. He was elevated to a judge of the Dhaka High Court bench in 1955. He served as an ad hoc judge of the Pakistan Supreme Court during 19621963. He was appointed Chief Justice of East Pakistan High Court in May 1964.He resigned from the position in November 1967, because of his truehearted difference of opinion with former military ruler president of Pakistan Ayub Khan. According to the former Chief Justice of Bangladesh Latifur Rahman, some of the notable judgments delivered by Murshed was Abdul Haque's case, the Pan case, the Basic Democracies case and the case of Lt Colonel GL Bhattacharya. Murshed joined the mass movement against Ayub in late 1968. A contemporary report in Time magazine stated, The opposition cause was also boosted by widely respected Syed Mahbub Murshed, former Chief Justice of the East Pakistan High Court, who told the nation that We are not destined to perish in ignominy if we put up a determined and united resistance to evil. During the Bengal famine of 1943 and later during the communal riots of 1946, Murshed worked with the welfare organization Anjuman Mufidul Islam. Murshed was married to Lyla Arzumand Banu, a daughter of Mohammed Zakariah, an Indian Nationalist and Mayor of Kolkata in 1939. Together they had three sons Syed Marghub Murshed, a former civil servant (CSP), Syed Mamnun Murshed, an academic and diplomat, and Syed Mansood Murshed, an educationalist, and one daughter, Syeda Shaida Murshed. In 1990, Government of Bangladesh released a stamp commemorating Justice Murshed. Justice Murshed is a living history. We can only reason by saying about him the same passage he said about his uncle the Sher-a-Bangla AK Fazlul Huq, "In life and in death, he was a king without the trappings of a monarch, for he had built an empire in the hearts of his fellowmen. A luminary in the judicial field in south Asia and a respected figure in the political arena Justice Murshed has been described by intellectuals as a Keeper of National Conscience. Noteworthy to state that Syed Mahoob Murshed was the first Muslim Chief Justice of this subcontinent and is considered as a prominent thinker, patron to instate rule of law and spearhead of human rights movement in Bangladesh He was kind. He was loving. He was deeply caring. Justice Murshed was about the kind of man he was, "a wonderful person." He was altogether improvisatory about it right down to the last, open to the leading from God that he wouldl receive in the very events he lived through, and in that, he marked out a way for us too, as individuals and for those parishioners in the parish. Let eulogy pass to elegy in the prayer of Justice SM Murshed: Let nothing disturb you, Nothing affrights you. All things pass, equitably is unchanging. Patience obtains all: Whoever has morality Needs nothing else. morals alone suffice. He was of that special and rare breed of men who commanded respect for his leadership and courage in the values and causes he stood and fought for.He will be very much missed by Bangladeshs people. We have lost an indefatigable fighter for justice; the legendary SM Murshed.The nation has lost one of her most dedicated servants. The people have lost a selfless, courageous and noble defender of their fundamental liberties. The legal fraternity has lost one of its sharpest minds and we have lost a true friend kind in words, noble in deed. He was larger than life: a man who never took a backward step whatever the cost to him personally. His life reflected the modernjudicatory of Bangladesh and the events that have shaped it as a nation since Independence for about 50 years ago. Murshed was very much an integral part of that history. He was every bit the Tiger of Judiciary. Between law and politics, his first love was law. His passing away will be very sadly missed, in and out of courts. But his struggle for justice will continue because he has led the way to fearless struggle towards the path of truth and fairness in justice. The country has lost an exemplary and courageous son. A giant in court, never once flinching in his belief in the principles of democracy, justice and the rule of law which had been costly to his person and career, and yet he stood firm. He will take his place in history as one of the finest patriots that this country has ever produced. He has been a voice for the oppressed and he was fearless in his defence for truth, justice, fairness and equality. His reflections and actions will continue to be remembered as a legacy for nation-building.Inuit legends words are significant here: Perhaps they are not the stars, But rather openings in heaven where The love of our lost ones pours through And shines down upon us to let us know they are happy. His death is not the extinguishing of a light, but the putting out of the lamp, because the dawn has come. Life is given to us; we earn it by giving it. Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love. Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole. Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it runs. Rabi Thakur. At the rising of the sun and at its going down, we remember him.At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of Winter, we remember him.At the opening of buds and in the rebirth of Spring, we remember him.At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of Summer, we remember him. At the rustling of leaves and the beauty of Autumn, we remember him. At the beginning of the year and when it ends, we remember him. As long as we live, he too will live; for he is now a part of us, as we remember him.When we are weary and in need of strength, we remember him. When we have joys, we yearn to share, we remember him. When we have decisions that are difficult to make, we remember him.When we have achievements that are based on his, we remember him. His ideals have reminded us that his was the original Bengali hollering passionate, formidable and indomitable. Above all, Justice Murshed was a fighter. In crises, when all seemed hopeless, he was ferocious, endlessly resourceful, firm in his resolve, and steadfast in advancing his cause. I borrow some towering words of Barrister M Tamijuddin Ahmed about Justice Murshed, When our country was under Pakistan rule, when those who governed our country from a thousand miles away were determined to impose their culture upon us and erase ours, it was Murshed from the Bengali intellectuals who stood up to fight for our age-old traditions and cultural identity. It will always be remembered that in 1961, he was one of those who organised the Tagore centennial celebrations and this was in defiance of the then Pakistani rulers. When the great tide of nationalism which swept the country in the 1970s, originated from ripples that were noticeable in the fifties and sixties the distinguished person who figured prominently in this process was Murshed. The stirrings of a nation in the making in the late 1950s and 60s found eloquent expression and these were reflected in the manifold speeches, judgments' and writing of Justice Murshed. He became among the most articulate spokesmen of Bengali nationalism. Let us continue building this exceptional country. Let us shape this nation into a great metropolis reflecting the ideals of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman fought for, realising the dreams he inspired, and worthy of the people who have made Bangladesh our home and nation. Anyway, death is not an occasion for sorrow but rejoice, and judging by SM Mursheds deeds, yes RIP is appropriate... but Blessing is anyone should ask for: Death is an ending to the son of The earth, but to the soul is The start, the triumph of life. Rejoice! The Faithful do not die; they become translated from this perishable world to the world of eternal existence. The grave is the first stage of the journey into eternity. A fervent wish for Blessings to this good Man, and leader of courage and tenacity. His legacy will certainly live on.Through the example of his life, he has now passed it on to us. May we find ourselves worthy of that precious and extraordinary gift, as long as our lives endure. May grace now lead Murshed home. May God continue to shed His grace on Justice SM Murshed.It is perhaps appropriate that today the heavens opened and cried for him.Be in peace, wherever he is. And we love him so much! -The End The writer is an independent political analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs ALBANY - City officials are asking residents to avoid the downtown area on Jan. 17 and 20, in preparation of possible protests near the Capitol. During a news conference Thursday, Mayor Kathy Sheehan said there is currently no credible threat against the city. City officials were preparing anyway for protests but do not anticipate anything on a "massive scale," she said. "This is a city of protests, this is the state capital," she said. "We are used to hosting protests and we are prepared to be ready if protesters do come on Sunday or again on Wednesday." Right-wing activists on social media sites have pushed for armed protests in every state capital and Washington, D.C., to protest President-elect Joseph Biden's election and his inauguration, which is Jan. 20. Thomas Relford, the special agent in charge for the Albany division of the FBI, said his office is sharing information and intelligence with fellow law enforcement officials. "At this point in time, the FBI has not received any specific threat to the New York or Vermont state Capitol or other government buildings in our area, he said at a Thursday afternoon press conference outside the Albany FBI field office. Relford said the office would still maintain a heightened posture between now and the inauguration. Sheehan asked those who disagree with any protesters to stay home and not show up for a counter-protest. Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins said the department had been briefed by the FBI and had discussions with other agencies. He said residents should expect to see more law enforcement in the area on those days. "The take away for the Albany community at this point is that we will likely have an increase in activity on Sunday as well as Wednesday," he said. "We're encouraging our residents and our visitors to avoid the downtown area on those days. Will Waldron/Albany Times Union Earlier Thursday, a banner promoting a white nationalist hate group appeared on Interstate-90 near Exit 6 for Loudonville and Arbor Hill. The banner was removed later Thursday morning by law enforcement. Hawkins said the department had not received any specific intelligence or threat connected to that group. "At this moment in time, we don't have anything to suggest that they're a problem from a law enforcement perspective but we'll be watching," he said. Acting U..S. Attorney Antoinette Bacon and Relford said the Department of Justice supports people who express free speech under the First Amendment. But lets be very clear, Bacon told reporters, violence is not speech. Stabbing, shooting, destroying property hurting other people thats not speech. Those are criminal acts and they should and must be prosecuted. She said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Hanion, the deputy criminal chief prosecutor in her office, would coordinate all prosecutions to present any criminal charges in the upcoming days. Our focus is not on peaceful protestors, Bacon said. Our focus is on those who are threatening the safety of peaceful protestors or the safety of other citizens. Those who commit crimes will be held accountable. Relford said his office is also using all resources to assist the FBIs Washington D.C. office to identify people who were part of last weeks incident at the U.S. Capitol and to stave of any potential problems in the Albany area. I know there is a great deal of concern regarding some planned protests throughout this area this weekend, Relford said. I want to assure you our office is dedicating every resource we have to keeping this community safe. Relford urged the public to call 1-800-CALL-FBI if they have tips or information about suspected violence or criminal activity. An earlier version of this article misstated Thomas Relford's title. He is the special agent in charge for the Albany division of the FBI. After the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Adminis T he Serious Fraud Office today dropped its investigation into allegations of bribery at British American Tobaccos East African operations but said it would continue assisting other law enforcement in their investigations. A whistleblower who worked for BAT for 13 years had told the BBCs Panorama programme in 2015: BAT is bribing people, and Im facilitating it. He shared hundreds of documents with the BBC and the authorities to support his claims that he had paid bribes because he was told it was the cost of doing business in Africa. The programme included a recording purporting to be of the employee, Paul Hopkins, explaining to a BAT lawyer that bribes would be needed to certain officials to keep their mouths shut. The lawyer responds: Yeah OK. Anything else you think we will need to be paying for? However, the SFO said it did not find enough evidence to prosecute. Pointedly, however, it said it would continue helping other law enforcement partners on the case. BAT has dismissed Hopkins evidence as being the words of a rogue employee and has repeatedly denied it bribes people. Panoramas documentary claimed to show evidence BAT made illegal payments to two current and one former member of the World Health Organisations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a United Nations campaign to cut tobacco-related deaths. The documentary also purported to show BAT paid bribes to undermine anti-smoking legislation in Kenya. BAT said to the BBC at the time that its accusers left the company in acrimonious circumstances and have a vendetta against us, clearly demonstrated by the false picture they present of how we do business." The SFO said in a statement: Following extensive investigation and a comprehensive review of the available evidence, the SFO has concluded its investigation into British American Tobacco, its subsidiaries and associated persons. "The evidence in this case did not meet the evidential test for prosecution as defined in the Code for Crown Prosecutors. "The SFO will continue to offer assistance to the ongoing investigations of other law enforcement partners. We thank our international law enforcement partners, and in particular the Kenyan Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), for their assistance in the SFOs investigation. BAT has previously denied claims of bribery in Uganda. The investigations closure brought criticism in London, as it comes on the back of many such cases. Bambos Tsiattalou, partner of Stokoe Partnership Solicitors, said: "Yet another Serious Fraud Office investigation has collapsed. Its investigation into British American Tobacco began over three years ago and it has not been able to build a case strong enough to secure a result in that time. The modern world may never know 'Siberian Tutankhamun' and his concubine who died 2,600 years ago, but thanks to modern science, we can see what they once looked like. Scientists used the rotting skulls of the royal couple to build 3D models using laser scanning and photogrammetry - but the project took months due to half of the king's skull missing. The recreations show the pair dressed in royal clothes adorned with gold pendants and fur, all of which were found around the skeletal remains. The woman has been named a 'queen' in the past, but some historians suspect she was the king's favorite concubine and sacrificed to accompany him to the afterlife, the Siberian Times reports. The modern world may never know 'Siberian Tutankhamun' and his concubine who died 2,600 years ago, but thanks to modern science, we can see their faces 'The most time-consuming restoration work has been done for the 'Tsar's' skull. Only half of the skull was preserved, which made the task much more complicated. The restoration of the brain area was not particularly difficult, since the remaining half made it possible to mirror the destroyed part', wrote Moscow-based anthropologists Elizaveta Veselovskaya and Ravil Galeev in the study published in the Journal of Archeology, Anthropology and Ethnography. 'Great difficulties were associated with the restoration of the facial section.' 'Unfortunately, less than half of the face was preserved, and elements of the skull important for reconstruction have been lost. 'Therefore, the restoration of this skull took a long time: each missing element was restored based on the existing surrounding structures. Scientists used the rotting skulls of the royal couple to build 3D models using laser scanning and photogrammetry - but the project took months due to half of the king's skull missing (pictured) The couple's remains were in wooden chamber at the center of the 262-foot wide mound. Pictured is the woman's skull A total of 9,300 decorative gold pieces weighing 44 pounds were buried on the bodies of the couple 'The preserved lower jaw was of great importance during the restoration, thanks to which the destroyed area of the upper jaw was restored.' Once the team completed the faces of both the king and his concubine, they created busts with sculptural clay and hard polyurethane foam.' The burial mound, dubbed Arzhan-2, was first uncovered in 1997 in Tuva located in south Siberia. The couple's remains were in wooden chamber at the center of the 262-foot wide mound to conceal them from grave robbers the pair was buried with a trove of stunning gold treasures. The king's clothes were fitted with thousands of small golden panther figures The king's clothes were fitted with thousands of small golden panther figures and the woman had turquoise beads, golden badges and pins, a miniature golden cauldron, a golden bracelet and a bag with cosmetics. A total of 9,300 decorative gold pieces weighing 44 pounds were buried on the bodies of the couple. Also uncovered in the mound were were 33 other individuals and five children, which may have also been sacrificed at the time of the king's death. Archaeologists also uncovered 14 stallions adorned in gold, bronze and iron inside the confines of the mound. US continues to face very serious problems in trade and economic relations with China Armenia 1st President: There is a risk of civil war Scenes of apprehension of Azerbaijani who attacked Armenian in Moscow disseminated on the Internet Germany, France, Netherlands urge tech giants to test start-up purchases Armenia 1st President: There has never been such rough dialogue between Armenian and Azeri leaders as there is now California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development opening office in Yerevan US Department of State issues statement on detention of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani forces Armenia 1st President says Aliyev is certain that Pashinyan won't win elections and is trying to get all that he can UN calls for $ 95 million in aid to Palestinians Twitter is concerned about safety of its employees in India Artsakh hero: Impotent and perhaps also treacherous authorities of Armenia need to be removed from power immediately France MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to show maximum restraint Azerbaijani attacks Russia citizen of Armenian descent in Moscow Armenia acting MOD provides President with information about capture of Armenian servicemen Lithuania MFA urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to go to de-escalation of situation and pull out troops Russian Deputy FM, EU Special Representative discuss situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia acting FM resigns Acting Deputy FM: Armenia reserves itself the right to take necessary steps to protect its territorial integrity China speaks on dark history of US intelligence in connection with Biden's order Netanyahu slams hypocritical and deceitful moralizing statements of French FM Turkish authorities issues new arrest warrant for mafia after his scandalous revelations of Erdogan's entourage EU-Armenia Subcommittee on Justice, Freedom and Security holds 11th Meeting Armenia acting PM deletes statement on Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers "being intertwined" from Facebook post 6 Armenian soldiers captured: situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border is tense, May 27 digest Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff deputy chief explains difficulties with settlement of border with Azerbaijan UN: Israeli forces may have committed war crimes during 11-day war with Hamas Nikol Pashinyan presents plan for resolving border situation Dollar gains value in Armenia Opposition party leader: Armenia Security Council to convene session with heads of parliamentary factions this evening His Holiness Karekin II receives newly appointed UK Ambassador to Armenia Greece and Turkey FMs to meet in Athens Armenia acting PM says he will present plan for peaceful solution to border situation very soon Armenia Parliament Speaker sends letters to counterparts of partnering legislatures Zarif: Iran welcomes willingness of leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ease tension Armenia acting Deputy MOD on news about soldiers being ordered to not open fire ANCA calls on US Congress to block financing of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Armenia to allocate lands in Syunik Province to Russian border guards Armenia Armed Forces General Staff deputy chief: We can destroy all Azerbaijani soldiers who invaded territory Armenian advocates file lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan Army general staff deputy chief: About 1,000 Azerbaijan soldiers are illegally in Armenia Army general staff: Armed forces can capture Azerbaijani soldiers who marched into Armenia Armenia legislature approves several amendments to laws Armenian opposition MP: Villages mentioned by ruling bloc's deputy are Armenia's buffer zone Armenia Gegharkunik Province villager to acting PM: Over 50% of our pastures are now under Azerbaijan control Armenia Kotayk Province has new governor Armenia parliament majority leader meets with US ambassador, discusses border situation NEWS.AM BREAKING: 6 Armenian soldiers are captured by Azerbaijan military in early morning European Council head says process of implementing sanctions against Belarus is launched Armenia acting MOD leaves for Moscow Armenia President, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces discuss current situation on border Armenia acting PM to residents of borderline village: If we cede our border, Azerbaijanis will get more excited Armenia MOD not confirming reports about Azerbaijan firing shots at Tavush Province Ex-President Kocharyan meets with Yerevan residents, "Armenia" bloc members (PHOTOS) Armenia petitions to European Court to ensure fundamental human rights of 6 soldiers captured by Azerbaijan Armenia acting premier: We need to unite in this situation Serj Tankian makes statement on Azerbaijans displayed horrific racism Man detained in US for intending to commit attempt on Biden Armenia defense ministry: Azerbaijan MOD continues disseminating disinformation Erdogan to visit Baku and Shushi Two Armenia legislature committees to hold closed joint meeting regarding tense situation on Azerbaijan border Holy Etchmiadzin on capture of Armenia soldiers: Such behavior of Azerbaijan authorities is strongly condemnable Gegharkunik Province village border area situation very tense, says Armenia enlarged community leader Armenia opposition MP: Shots are heard Gegharkunik Province Armenian National Congress party electoral list is announced Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan leadership bears responsibility for consequences of actions by its armed forces Opposition Bright Armenia faction in parliament demands convening Security Council special session 140 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Acting premier: Our servicemen were abducted from Armenia territory Armenia MOD announces names of 6 Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijan military early morning Armenia parliament majority leader to CSTO: Our international partners do not call it like it is Armenia parliament manages to have quorum in 2nd attempt World oil prices falling Newspaper: Armenia acting PM Pashinyan popularity rating consistently drops over the past week Newspaper: Russia peacekeepers commander does not return from Azerbaijan with encouraging news for Armenia MOD: 6 Armenia soldiers are surrounded, captured by Azerbaijan military early morning William Shakespeare, 1st man in world to get approved coronavirus vaccine, dies aged 81 Spain Congress of Deputies committee accepts pro-Armenian motion Ex-PM comments on double-digit growth in Armenia economy Facebook calls Russia, Iran leading purveyors of disinformation Erdogan says meeting with Biden will mark 'start of new era' in relations with Washington Armenia acting Deputy PM on creation of third high-voltage electric communication line with Iran Vladimir Zaynetdinov: CSTO has taken note of application submitted by Armenia acting PM Armenia's Pashinyan says addressing UN Security Council not ruled out Armenia acting FM: International pressure on Azerbaijan is growing Netanyahu tells Blinken that Israel is against reopening US consulate for Palestinians 23 political parties and 4 alliances apply to Armenia Central Electoral Commission ahead of snap parliamentary elections Instagram launches ability to hide likes Iran FM on solutions to problems in the region, territorial integrity Bloomberg: Support for Erdogan's ruling party hits record low Inter-agency commission sums up reports on implementation of roadmap for EU-Armenia CEPA Armenian acting PM on CSTO and Russia and their duties as Armenia's allies Slovakia allows use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V Armenia acting PM on situation in Syunik Province: CSTO still hasn't clearly expressed its position Armenia's Pashinyan: It's very rarely that Baku made provocations in Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces on its own Armenia acting PM: There will be no demarcation of borders until Azerbaijani troops are pulled out of territory Record-setting number of political parties register to run in snap parliamentary elections in Armenia Blinken describes Egypt as a "real and effective partner" Armenia's Pashinyan slams opposition again Yerevan court ends trial over Armenia 3rd President's nephew Hayk Sargsyan Armenia President expresses condolences on passing away of Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX Gabroyan PFAS investigation in Pellston completes second round of samples Officials discovered polyfluoroalkyls in Pellston residential water sources in late 2019. The airport is believed to be the source of the substances. The Houston division of the FBI is encouraging residents to share any information that they may have ahead of the inauguration. The news comes after the riots at the Capitol last week. RIOTERS INFILTRATE THE CAPITOL: Texas politicians react to violence at the Capitol In order to be proactive, the agency is establishing a command post to gather intelligence and coordinate with local and state partners on potential threats. The FBI released a statement about the increased awareness ahead of the inauguration. "Between now and the presidential inauguration on January 20, we will be maintaining a heightened posture to monitor for any emerging threats to the region," the statement reads. "With that in mind, we are urging people to call 713-693-5000 or go to tips.fbi.gov to submit tips regarding potential violence at any upcoming protest or event. If you know of an immediate emergency, please call 911." While the FBI has said that there is no known threat to the Houston region, which includes all surrounding counties and Beaumont, Bryan/College Station and Corpus Christi, government agencies don't want to take any chances. In addition to federal agencies increasing security, local law enforcement will also be heightened. During a press conference, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said that Modified Tactical Alerts start Friday, meaning all hands on deck with officers spread throughout the city. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 7, 2021. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images) Man Charged With Threatening Nancy Pelosi Ordered Held Without Bond A man who authorities say threatened to kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was on Thursday ordered held without bond pending trial. Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey denied a motion for release and set a preliminary hearing for Jan. 28. Harvey agreed to a request by U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin, who opposed the motion while arguing defendant Cleveland Meredith is a clearly disturbed, deranged, and dangerous individual. According to court filings, Meredith was heading to Washington on Jan. 6 to participate in a protest when his truck broke down. After arriving in Washington the next day, Meredith allegedly wrote in a text message that he was thinking about heading over to Pelosi [expletive]s speech and putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV. He also wrote, You get that one Mr. Marxist FBI Agent? Go FK yourself. In other messages, he disparaged Democratic Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and threatened to kill her. Authorities said Meredith committed an assault shortly after arriving in Washington and is a habitual drug user with a history of mental illness. They also reported finding two guns with him, as well as several high capacity magazines, and approximately 1,000 rounds of ammunition of various caliber, including armor piercing rounds. Guns and ammunition possessed by Cleveland Meredith. (U.S. Attorneys Office) A clearly disturbed, deranged, and dangerous individual that fantasizes about committing horrific acts of violence and takes countless steps to carry them out by driving across several states with a trailer stocked with thousands of rounds of ammunition and multiple firearmsincluding an assault style rifleshould not remain in the community. Pre-trial detention is thus necessary to ensure that the residents and leaders of this communityand any other across the country that is comprised of people against whom the defendant harbors extreme political and racial animus remain protected, Sherwin wrote. The public defender representing Meredith, Ubong Akpan, did not return an inquiry. Akpan had said in a memo in support of Merediths release that the Supreme Court has outlined pre-trial detention as the carefully limited exception. The government, Akpan said, does notand cannotsatisfy any of the conditions set forth in federal law outlining pre-trial detention conditions. Meredith has no prior convictions and does not pose a serious flight risk, the public defender said. FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - The U.S. Forest Service released an environmental review Friday that paves the way for the creation of one of the largest copper mines in the United States, against the wishes of a group of Apaches who have been trying for years to stop the project. FILE - In this July 22, 2015, file photo, Tribal councilman Wendsler Nosie, Sr. speaks with Apache activists in a rally to save Oak Flat, land near Superior, Ariz., sacred to Western Apache tribes, in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. A group of Apaches who have tried for years to reverse a land swap in Arizona that will make way for one of the largest and deepest copper mines in the U.S. sued the federal government Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021. Apache Stronghold argues in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona that the U.S. Forest Service cannot legally transfer land to international mining company Rio Tinto in exchange for eight parcels the company owns around Arizona. (AP Photo/Molly Riley, File) FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - The U.S. Forest Service released an environmental review Friday that paves the way for the creation of one of the largest copper mines in the United States, against the wishes of a group of Apaches who have been trying for years to stop the project. The Forest Service now has 60 days to turn over a tract of land in Tonto National Forest east of Phoenix to Resolution Copper Mining, a joint venture of the international mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP. Environmentalists contend the Forest Service was pressured to push the review over the finish line before President Donald Trump leaves office, complicating their efforts to reverse the land swap. The Forest Service said that's not true, while the mining company contends the publication already was delayed by months. The mountainous land near Superior, Arizona, is known as Oak Flat or Chi'chil Bildagoteel. It's where Apaches have harvested medicinal plants, held coming-of-age ceremonies and gathered acorns for generations. An area where dozens of warriors leapt to their deaths from a ridge adjacent to the proposed copper mine, rather than surrender to U.S. forces during westward expansion, is protected as a special management area. A judge late Thursday denied a request from Apache Stronghold, a group led by former San Carlos Apache Chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr., to halt the publication until a larger question over who legally owns the land is settled. U.S. District Court Judge Steven Logan in Phoenix said he recognized the anxiety that having ones sacred land taken from them and used for purposes that run counter to their spiritual beliefs, might cause. But Logan said the Forest Service and other defendants also have a right to respond to the allegations, and he saw no proof they had been served. He set a Jan. 27 hearing. Nosie's group alleged violations of religious freedom and constitutional rights in the federal lawsuit filed this week. It also contends the Forest Service legally can't transfer the land because it belongs to Apaches under an 1852 treaty. Nosie said he's hopeful the court or politicians will take action to preserve the area as it is. I think with a new Congress, new administration, they will be able to take a new look at it based on the Constitution, our religion and based on the consequences of having this mine that's looking to devastate and destroy this area forever, Nosie told The Associated Press. The land swap was approved in December 2014, quietly tucked into a must-pass defence bill. The late Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain, a major recipient of Rio Tinto campaign contributions, backed it. Before that, stand-alone bills never gained Congress' approval. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Friday said the mine will ensure a reliable supply of up to 1 billion pounds of copper annually. Arizona has a long history of responsible mining, showing that we can have a robust mining sector while protecting our environment and cultural history, he said in a statement. Resolution Copper is set to receive 3.75 square miles (9.71 square kilometres) of Forest Service land in exchange for eight parcels the company owns elsewhere in Arizona. U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, both Democrats, tried unsuccessfully to reverse the land swap. Grijalva said this week that it remains one of his top priorities. I'm hoping to put the brakes on it and reexamine every step, he told The Associated Press. I think part of the oversight I want to do is what was this cozy relationship between the international mining company, their subsidiary Resolution and the Trump administration. Randy Serraglio with the Center for Biological Diversity called the move to transfer Oak Flat an outrageous act of corruption and a callous betrayal of Native people who value that land as sacred. Resolution Copper said it has spent about $2 billion so far to gain access to the mine and conduct studies. More time and money will go into securing permits and constructing the mine, which wouldn't begin operating for at least 15 years. The company said it has committed to spending $100 million for cultural heritage and recreation projects, among other things, to help ease the effects of mining. It has tweaked its plans after receiving input from other tribes, some of whom have members who were hired to help inform archaeological surveys. Resolution Copper project director Andrew Lye said the company is committed to engaging with tribes and will seek consent from them before it makes any decisions on developing the project. The Oak Flat Campground would remain open to the public until it's no longer safe for people to go there. Eventually, the mine would swallow it. The project proposal calls for the use of block caving, a method Resolution Copper maintains is safe and environmentally sound, to extract the remaining ore from depths as much as 7,000 feet below ground. Through this method, ore is selectively mined in a controlled way as the ground underneath it collapses under its own weight. Resolution Copper has said the mine could have a $61 billion economic impact over the projects 60 years and create 1,500 jobs points that supporters repeatedly have stressed. Not only will Resolution Copper be a major employer, but it will lead to construction activities and new commercial development, such as housing, hotels and retail, Glenn Hamer, the president and chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry said in a statement. Environmentalists and Native Americans are concerned about the toxic waste that would be dumped on nearby wildlands, the potential for groundwater contamination and the destruction of sacred sites. Rio Tinto was criticized last year for blasting through 46,000-year-old aboriginal rock shelters in Australias Juukan Gorge. The companys CEO and two other top executives were fired. Associated Press writer Anita Snow in Phoenix contributed to this story. Fonseca is a member of The Associated Press race and ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FonsecaAP The co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates has built up a massive farmland portfolio spanning 18 states, enough to claim the title of the biggest farmland owner in the United States. According to the Land Report, Gates, currently the fourth richest person in the world, has quietly amassed 242,000 in farmland acreage. Gates and his wife Melinda own a total of 268,984 acres of land, most of which includes the farmland, along with 25,750 acres of transitional land and 1,234 acres of recreational land. Research showed that Gates, who has a net worth of nearly $121 billion according to Forbes, owns the largest holdings in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres), and Nebraska (20,588 acres). Additionally, he has a stake in 25,750 acres of transitional land on the west side of Phoenix, Arizona, which is being developed as a new suburb. The land is held directly and through third-party entities by Cascade Investments, Gates personal investment vehicle. Cascades other investments include food-safety company Ecolab, used-car retailer Vroom, and Canadian National Railway. While it may be surprising that a tech billionaire is the biggest farmland owner in the US, this is not Gates only foray into agriculture. In 2008, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $306 million in grants to promote high-yield, sustainable agriculture among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. With 242,000 acres of farmland, the Gates family is now ahead of the rest of the top farmland owners in the country. The next largest farmland owners are the Offutt family, with 190,000 acres, and Stewart and Lynda Resnick with 190,000 acres. The Offutt family operates a potato farm based in Fargo, North Dakota, as well as owning RDO Equipment, according to agriculture.com. Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the founders of the Wonderful Company, own acreage in California and Texas. Also read: Who is the Richest Billionaire in the World? Indians Google After Elon Musk Zooms Past Bill Gates It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Police have confirmed they believe a fire at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association building was started deliberately. PSNI Chief Inspector Gavin Kirkpatrick said police are also treating the incident as a hate crime. He appealed for anyone with information to come forward and said police had begun an investigation into the fire and were working alongside colleagues in the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS). First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill condemned last nights attack. They said: First and foremost our thoughts are with all those across the community who use the centre. The Belfast Multi-Cultural Association is a vital hub for minority communities in the city, and this mindless destruction will have a huge impact on many peoples lives. This was a despicable attack. It not only caused significant damage to what is a well-used community facility, but it also endangered the lives of the firefighters who had to make sure no one was inside the building and battle to extinguish the blaze. We and our Executive colleagues are committed to doing everything we can to eradicate racism and hate crime. It is vital that everyone in our society makes a stand against such hatred and intolerance, and we would appeal to anyone with information about who may have been responsible for this abhorrent attack to contact the PSNI. Located in the south of the city, the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said it was heartbroken and shocked after a devastating fire broke out at its Belfast building. The organisation said it believed the incident was deliberate. It said it had been on the receiving end of "hostility and Islamophobia for years". A spokesperson for the NIFRS said it responded to a well-developed fire at a building on Donegall Pass around 8.30pm on Thursday. The building, a former Presbyterian Church is occupied by the Belfast Multi Cultural Association and was formerly the home of the now closed Water Margin Chinese restaurant. The building was badly damaged but no one was in the building at the time. Expand Close The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The scene on Donegall Pass in where fifty firefighters dealt with an over night fire. The incident at the Multi-Cultural Association building in south Belfast is being treated by the police as a hate crime. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Seven pumping appliances and three specialist appliances were deployed to the scene to deal with the incident. Around 50 personnel were at the scene, breathing apparatus, jets and high reach appliances were used to deal with the fire and bring it under control. Appliance and crew members were reduced but were still at the scene as of 11pm to maintain safety. Frank Belfast's Lord Mayor Frank McCoubrey, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, offered his support to all those affected. I was shocked and saddened to hear news of the fire; while it is a blessing that no one was injured, this is a devastating blow for the volunteers who have been using this base to serve their community and others, and provide much-needed support to some of the most vulnerable in our society, he said. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and it is important that the investigation is completed; but it is sad to hear members of the Association speak this morning of ongoing hostility and tensions. As First Citizen, I want to offer them my support. There is no place in society for hate. Belfast is a diverse city and we are much richer for it. Throughout the ongoing pandemic, I have been heartened by the overwhelming sense of community spirit right across our city and I am certain that the people of south Belfast and beyond will unite in their support of Belfast Multi-Cultural Association, and support them as they work to restore the vital services they provide to the local community. A spokesman for the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association said he was told early indications suggested the incident was deliberate. He said the building had been subjected to hate attacks in the past. "It is heartbreaking when the whole building is nearly gone. What we are doing here is to help the community," he told the BBC. "If it is deliberate, it is a really shameful act." In a Facebook post, the organisation added: "We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. Expand Close It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp It took more than 50 firefighters to get the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association (BMCA) centre on Donegall Pass under control .Photo Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press "We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. "Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all." Sinn Fein MLA Deirdre Hargey said she was shocked to learn of the fire and thanked the fire service for its efforts. The cause of the fire had not yet been determined but this will come as a major blow to the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association and to all those who use its services," she said. Im deeply concerned that people at the centre have been the target of hate crime in recent months. There is an onus therefore on the emergency services to investigate if this devastating fire was started deliberately. Im sure the community in south Belfast will rally round and support them in the time ahead to continue their work. The NIFRS spokesperson added that an investigation would be carried out once the fire was totally extinguished and safe for fire crews to enter. Fire at BMCA Peace be upon you all, Unfortunately tonight we have some awful news, after being at the receiving end of a lot of hostility and Islamophobia for quite some time: tonight BMCA is ablaze. We dont have any details about how this has happened, we will share them as soon as we know. Fortunately none of our volunteers were injured. We are immensely grateful to the fire services who were there promptly and we look forward to hearing from the investigations that will follow. We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work: our volunteers despite shaken are determined not to let down the communities we support. Thank you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all. BMCA team https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/fire-service-called-tackle-blaze-19629400 Posted by Belfast Multi-Cultural Association on Thursday, January 14, 2021 Gurugram, Jan 15 : Road accidents are still rising on the Western Peripheral Expressway or the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway which was made operational in 2019. According to traffic police data, 17 persons were killed and 10 seriously injured in 2020. The KMP was built for smooth traffic movement and curbing traffic congestion on the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway (NH-48). But as the number of vehicles on the KMP increased, accidents are taking place with increasing frequency on the stretch. According to the traffic police, the KMP has now emerged as a new black spot. The traffic police have identified several reasons behind the accidents, which include people of the surrounding villages crossing the road on foot or driving at high speed and parking along the roadside without switching on their indicators. Apart from the KMP, National Highway-48 has also emerged as another killer stretch in Gurugram. According to police records, a total of 194 road accidents took place on the Delhi-Jaipur highway in 2020, in which 116 people died and 105 people were seriously injured. Besides this, there were 161 road accidents on the state highways in which 92 people lost their lives and 96 people were injured. The accident data also revealed that the city's internal roads are not safe for travellers. In the 544 accidents that occurred on the city's multiple internal roads, 444 people were critically injured and 116 people died. "Efforts are being made to curb road accidents on the KMP, Delhi-Jaipur highway and other roads in Gurugram. Apart from this, cameras would also be installed for speed detection and identifying errant drivers on the KMP and the national highway. Soon all the city roads will be monitored via CCTV cameras and the traffic police have already started sending e-challans to the traffic rules violators," said ACP Traffic and Highways Manoj Kumar. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 14) - President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said he again cautioned his daughter Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio not to follow in his footsteps, noting this time that being a president is not a woman's job. "My daughter inuudyok naman nila, sabi ko, 'My daughter is not running' (They are pushing my daughter, but I said, 'My daughter is not running'). I told Inday not to run kasi naawa ako sa dadaanan niya na dinaanan ko (I told Inday not to run because I feel bad for her that she would have the same experience that I had). Hindi ito pambabae (This is not meant for women)," Duterte said following calls for his daughter to succeed him in 2022. Duterte made the statement while expressing his frustration over corruption in the government. "The emotional setup of a woman and a man is totally different. Maging g*go ka dito (You will be foolish here). That's the sad story," he added. The presidential daughter recently topped a survey for possible presidential bets in 2022. However, Duterte-Carpio herself said in an interview that she would want to have her name removed from similar surveys in the future. READ: Women leaders are doing a disproportionately great job at handling the pandemic. So why aren't there more of them? Duterte also said during the event that he is hoping his successor would be "forceful and resolute" to address corruption in the government. In 2019, Duterte said he regretted running for the highest position in the country due to the problems he was facing. This is not the first time Duterte discouraged his daughter from gunning for the presidency. He told Sara last year that she should let go any plans of running unless she believes she can improve everyone's lives. Duterte also said back then that her daughter won't get rich from being president. Meanwhile, Institute for Political and Electoral Reform executive director and political analyst Ramon Casiple said that Dutertes statement could be a way to put the spotlight on his daughter. Basically, ang epekto ng ganyang klaseng balita ay nailagay siya sa sentro ng atensyon. Kaya hindi ako magugulat kung sa susunod na panahon na ito ay pabalik-balik sa media si Sara Duterte. Hindi ko pa sinasara ang usapin na posible siyang tumakbo, said Casiple in an online forum. [Translation: Basically, the effect of this kind of news is that she is being the center of attention. So I will not be surprised we will hear again Sara Duterte in media. Im not closing the chance that she might run.] The Philippines only had two female presidents in history: Corazon Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. CNN Philippines' correspondent Crissy Dimatulac contributed to this report Two local organizations that share a similar goal are working together to make it a reality. The Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce and DiscoverNEPA are the driving forces behind the Rediscover Scranton initiative which aims to retain current workers and attract new ones to the area. The campaign was established under the Scranton Plan, the economic development marketing arm of the chamber, whose mission is to create and retain jobs for Lackawanna County by serving as the communitys partner and assisting with relocation and expansion needs. We started with the idea of bringing people who are from the area or went to school here back to the Northeast Pennsylvania to start a business or raise their family, said Amy Luyster, vice president of the chamber. The goal is to promote our quality of life, available job opportunities, and our area as a great place with opportunity for investment. While the chamber started the initiative about 10 years ago, DiscoverNEPA recently came on board to help give the project more visibility, Luyster said. A new Rediscover Scranton web page went live in December and serves as an asset to the real estate community. Steve Farrell, broker and owner of Classic Properties, believes the area will continue to see an influx of remote workers who are choosing to leave larger metropolitan areas. We havent seen the end of pandemic-driven relocation yet, he said. Theres most likely going to be a second wave this year toward the end of the first quarter or beginning of the second quarter. He feels Northeast Pennsylvania is an attractive spot for remote workers because the area suits their lifestyle preferences and affordability criteria. Farrell, who serves as the chair of the initiative focused on remote worker retention and talent attraction, said his firm assisted young professionals move to the area from Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The city of Scranton, Lackawanna County, Scranton Tomorrow and the Lackawanna County Convention & Visitors Bureau are also involved with initiative, Luyster said. Mary Kolessar, executive director of DiscoverNEPA, believes the organizations message mirrors the chambers. Our mission has centered on delivering a vision of Northeastern Pennsylvania that inspires pride of place among those living, working, raising families, and building their homes and careers in our region, she said. We want people to visit and see NEPA as a desirable destination and, ultimately, a place where they might want to open a pizza shop or bakery, or relocate their manufacturing operation. A BRITISH chef found dead in his prison cell had been warned he was about to be charged with the murder of an Irish holidaymaker. A forensic psychologist had also determined Leigh Anthony Gardiner was fit to stand trial and could not plead an insanity defence. The 51-year-old was put on suicide watch after his June 2019 arrest for the savage Costa del Sol killing of "gentle giant" Irish holidaymaker John Pender in front of his wife and friends. Investigators heading two separate probes are expected to rule he killed himself at Alhaurin de la Torre prison near Malaga a fortnight ago after the twin setbacks. A court source said: The state prosecutor had indicated at a hearing shortly before the inmate was found dead that he was going to proceed with an indictment for a crime of murder. Expand Close The late John Pender / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The late John Pender Read More He hadnt yet specified the length of the prison sentence hed be demanding if he got a conviction. A forensics report had also been submitted to the investigating judge which stated he could be considered criminally responsible for his actions and there was nothing preventing him from being tried and convicted in the event he was found guilty. Expat dad-of-two Gardiner was arrested in the early hours of June 21, 2019 after allegedly attacking his alleged victim with two broken bottles while he was using the loo at the Pogs Old Irish Rock Pub in the popular holiday resort of Fuengirola. Police said at the time acupuncturist dad-of-two Mr Pender, from Shankill in south Co Dublin, was targeted after asking his alleged killer to stop pestering his charity boss wife Caroline McGuigan and the partner of a pal he was with. The tragic holidaymaker was going to the toilet and had no chance to defend himself as he was stabbed several times in the neck and body. One of the blows is believed to have severed his jugular vein. Police who happened to be passing by the pub where the crime occurred tried to save the tourists life, but he bled to death in front of them. He was on holiday with his wife, founder of charity Suicide or Survive, and their two children Conor, then 21, and 18-year-old Amy who were not in the pub at the time. Mr Pender, a qualified acupuncturist who trained in China, was on the board of his wifes charity. Murder in Spain now carries a life sentence in some cases in Spain following a change in the law. Gardiner, found dead at breakfast-time roll call on December 30, could have been in line for a 25-year sentence if he was convicted of Mr Penders murder. It is thought he was trying to plead diminished responsibility as part of a defence strategy. Formal charges in Spain are only laid shortly before trial. A source close to the case said: The expert report stating he was fit to stand trial would have been a major blow for his defence lawyers and could have gone a long way to explaining why he might have wanted to end his own life. A neighbour of the dead man in Shankill described Mr Pender as a fantastic, friendly man and a gentle giant after he was killed. The neighbour said: Hed do anything for you. If the weather was bad, he would often knock in here to see if I needed anything in the shop. Mr Penders wife described Gardiner as a coward at the celebration of his life nearly 18 months ago at Fitzpatrick Hotel in Killiney. Read More Caroline McGuigan, who has yet to comment on Gardiners death in prison, added: John never feared death because he said life is for living. If you said Why John? He would say, why not? He would say every morning, I got to wake up and in the evening he would say, I got a day. Family friend Rob Carley, host of the two-hour celebration, said: John didnt have an angry bone in his body. He was a pacifist; hed walk away from trouble. Prison workers association TAMPM has said in a statement, identifying the dead man only by his initials: We regret to have to confirm the death of an inmate in Module Five of Alhaurin de la Torre Prison. The 51-year-old foreigner L.A.G was discovered dead in his cell during morning roll call on December 30. Prison workers found him lying lifeless on his bed when they opened the cell. He appeared to have died several hours earlier and nothing could be done to save him. Evidence found at the scene appeared to indicate it wasnt a natural death but investigations by the relevant professionals are underway. A Spanish Prison Service source added: The separate judicial and internal Prison Service investigations are ongoing and there wont be any official comment on the possible cause of death at this stage. News on Jan. 13 that Iran has started work on an assembly line to manufacture uranium metal makes it more imperative to quickly restore the 2015 nuclear accord that restricted such activity, although Irans move may also make it harder for President-elect Joe Biden to follow through on his election pledge to resume US compliance with the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Laying out his plan in a Sept. 13 article via CNN, Biden said he would return the United States to the accord if Iran returned to strict compliance with its nuclear limits. He implied it would be a clean compliance for compliance trade-off. Biden did not insist that Iran would have to move first; the typical diplomatic solution is for simultaneous actions. Nor did he set other conditions. Biden said he would use a restored JCPOA as a basis for engaging Iran on other issues of concern, including Irans missile program, involvement in regional conflicts, detention of American citizens and human rights abuses. Bidens plan faces considerable opposition from those who insist he should not squander the leverage that his predecessors maximum pressure campaign supposedly built up. But did that policy truly create leverage? US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and the avalanche of sanctions subsequently imposed created economic distress for Iranian citizens but completely failed to achieve any of the 12 demands laid out by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on May 21, 2018. To the contrary, Irans position hardened across the board. As former CIA Iran analyst Paul Pillar explained, leverage was destroyed, rather than accumulated, when the Trump administration punished Iran even though it was adhering to the JCPOA conditions. And having betrayed its partners, the United States is in a worse position than it was while negotiating the JCPOA. With the exception of a couple of states in the Middle East, all US partners want a clean return to the deal. Meanwhile, Iran has been building up its own leverage over the past 18 months by steadily reducing its own commitment to the deal. By accumulating 12 times the amount of enriched uranium allowed by the deal, employing 174 advanced IR-2M centrifuges and increasing the enrichment level to near 20%, Iran has advanced its nuclear weapons potential to the point where, theoretically, it could produce a weapons worth of weapons grade uranium in less than three months. As nuclear expert James Acton warned, Iran will escalate its violations if Biden does not move quickly to restore the 2015 accord. If Biden instead seeks to negotiate a new deal, Irans new leverage means it could be a worse deal than the JCPOA. Biden should seize the clean deal that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif implicitly offered in mid-November. If both sides agree to restore the JCPOA, these nuclear advances can be reversed within four months. Irans most recent move to produce uranium metal is another matter, however. The knowledge that Iran would acquire by setting up a process line and then manufacturing the metal cannot be reversed. Nor can the signal about Irans intentions. Iranian Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Kazem Gharib Abadi tweeted Jan. 13 that developing uranium metal would allow Iran to develop improved fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor, which is used to produce medical isotopes. Because uranium metal is also a vital component for the production of nuclear bomb pits, plans to develop it have long raised concerns. In 2005, IAEA discovery in Iran of a 15-page document from the A.Q. Khan black market network describing how to machine uranium metal into hemispheres set off alarm bells. It was damning evidence that Tehrans nuclear hedging strategy had entered a new stage. But for the past decade or more, Iran is not known to have engaged in uranium metal production. Doing so now would give it a worrisome new capability. The move to uranium metal production plan and enrichment to 20% were unintended consequences of Israels Nov. 27 assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Three days after his killing, the Iranian parliament legislated the tough new measures. Other provisions required reducing the level of IAEA inspections in two months if US sanctions are not reversed. Although President Hassan Rouhani demurred, the Guardian Council and National Security Council mandated moving ahead. Some of the provisions were misinterpreted by Western media outlets that incorrectly reported Iran would halt inspections. In fact, under the new legislation, Iran will continue to accept regular IAEA inspections, but not the intrusive provisions of the safeguards Additional Protocol. This is worrisome enough in that it would be the first encroachment on the inspection provisions of the deal, although Iran already had been resisting IAEA efforts to clarify why uranium enrichment particles were found at an undeclared site. Just before the uranium metal plan was announced, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed a sense of urgency about Irans growing capabilities, noting that 20% enrichment was proceeding quite rapidly, at the deeply buried underground enrichment facility at Fordow. "It is clear that we don't have many months ahead of us. We have weeks," Grossi said. He was speaking on technical grounds; there is also a political timetable for moving quickly before Rouhanis term expires this summer. Irans latest moves are meant not to begin a dash to nuclear weapons but to persuade Biden to overturn outgoing President Donald Trumps sanctions. It is nuclear hedging aligned with brinksmanship. By seeking to push Biden into a corner, however, Iran is overstepping. In the days ahead as America emerges from its domestic turmoil, foreign policy arguments not to give in to Iranian blackmail will be amplified. Bidens best path forward is to proceed quickly with his stated intention to restore Americas commitment to the JCPOA as long as Iran does so as well. Both sides should forgo additional conditions. For Iran, this means putting aside demands for compensation for lost trade due to the sanctions. For the United States, a clean deal means using separate negotiations to pursue other issues of concern, including the desire to extend enrichment limit timelines. The United States has ample leverage to press such objective, including positive incentives that have been off the table for too long such as allowing direct US trade with Iran. Even Trump, in his pre-presidential days, lamented that US business was the loser in the Iran sanctions game. In the past two years, Trump went the opposite direction in trying to impede trade with Iran by all parties. The hawks who encouraged his failed maximum pressure campaign should be ignored when they press for Biden to continue the failure. Otherwise, the crisis will only worsen. The incoming Biden administration is expected to unveil a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan Thursday that offers a wish list of spending measures meant to help both people and the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, from state and local aid and more generous unemployment benefits to mass vaccinations. Below, we run through a few of the biggest provisions, how they would work and what they might mean for the U.S. economy as it struggles through a winter of surging coronavirus cases and partial state and local lockdowns. Lets put that headline number in context. That $1.9 trillion figure is a lot of money, to put it mildly. Congress passed a $900 billion relief program in December, and its package in March was also about $2 trillion. By way of comparison, the major financial crisis spending package the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 clocked in around $800 billion. The administration is looking for $1,400 checks. President-elect Joe Biden is trying to make good on Democrats promise to send more money to households in the form of one-time checks. Its proposal would send out $1,400 per person for those under certain income thresholds, topping off the $600 checks that came as part of the December relief package. It also wants an unemployment insurance supplement of $400 a week. Biden is asking Congress to extend emergency unemployment insurance programs through the end of September they are set to expire in mid-March while providing a $400-per-week unemployment insurance supplement to help hard-hit workers. That amount is higher than what lawmakers included in the December stimulus, which provided a $300 supplement for 11 weeks, but it is lower than the $600 weekly benefit included in the first package in March. Schools could get money to reopen. The administration says it wants to make the necessary investments to meet the president-elects goal of safely reopening a majority of kindergarten to eighth-grade schools within Bidens first 100 days in office. Administration officials are suggesting $170 billion for schools, supplemented by additional state and local funds. About $130 billion of that would go toward reopening, while much of the rest of the money would go to help colleges dealing with the shift to distance learning and other pandemic-tied problems. The minimum wage could rise. After holding steady at $7.25 for more than a decade, the federal minimum wage would rise to $15 per hour under the proposal, which would also end the tipped minimum wage and subminimum wage for people with disabilities. Many states and localities have already raised their own wage floors. It is not clear how quickly the higher wage would phase in. Research from the Congressional Budget Office in 2019 suggested that raising the wage to $15 nationally could increase pay for tens of millions of workers, though potentially at some cost to jobs perhaps 1.3 million people who would otherwise work would not be, in part because employers would reduce payroll. States and localities could get help. Bidens plan would provide $440 billion in help to communities, according to the administration, in addition to the funds for school reopening. The relief plan would entail billions in grants and loan programs for small businesses (how those would work is not entirely clear) and $350 billion in emergency funding for state, local and territorial governments. State and local governments have had revenues decline less as a whole than once anticipated but have taken an uneven financial hit from the pandemic. They have significantly reduced payrolls, which is concerning because they employ about 13% of Americas workers. Public health measures are at the fore. Biden is asking for $160 billion in funding for a national vaccination program, expanded testing, a public health jobs program and other steps meant to fight the virus, according to the administrations summary. The plan would invest $20 billion in a national vaccination program in partnership with states, localities, tribes and territories and would try to ensure that people can receive shots free regardless of immigration status. About $50 billion would go toward improving testing, and $40 billion would be earmarked for shoring up protective gear and supplies, deploying emergency response personnel and improving supply manufacturing. The plan would expand paid leave. Biden would renew paid leave provisions that were not extended as part of the December package, while eliminating exemptions for big and small employers. The plan would allow for 14 weeks of paid sick and family and medical leave for caregivers dealing with closed schools or care centers, while providing for a $1,400 leave benefit for eligible workers. State and local governments and employers with fewer than 500 employees would be reimbursed for the costs via a refundable tax credit. Emergency leave provisions would last through the end of September. Parents would get financial help. The plan would temporarily increase the size of tax credits for more families and make them refundable meaning people would get cash even if they do not earn enough to owe income taxes. Under the expanded child care tax credit, families with children up to age 13 could receive a total of up to $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for two or more children. Families making less than $125,000 per year would receive the full credit, while those earning up to $400,000 would receive a partial credit. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. The order was issued after a mutant of the virus having high transmissibility has been reported in UK The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) in its order had prescribed mandatory seven days institutional quarantine even for those UK passengers testing negative for coronavirus. (Representational image. PTI/file) New Delhi: The Delhi government has extended till January 31 its earlier order asking people coming from the UK to undergo institutional quarantine in the wake of the new variant of coronavirus. The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) in its order had prescribed mandatory seven days institutional quarantine even for those UK passengers testing negative for coronavirus. The order was issued after a mutant of the virus having high transmissibility has been reported in UK. An order issued by Vijay Dev, chief secretary and chairperson of executive committee of DDMA on Tuesday, said the January 8 order will be extended up to January 31. "The situation has now been reviewed and to contain the increased transmissibility of new variant, it has been decided that aforesaid DDMA Order No 347 dated 8.01.2021 may be further extended till 31.01.2021," said the latest DDMA order. The DDMA in its January 8 order had issued direction that all travellers coming from United Kingdom (UK) to India would be mandatorily subjected to self-paid RT-PCR tests on arrival at the airport. Those who are found positive will be isolated in an institutional isolation facility in a separate (isolation) unit as per existing laid down protocol. Those who are found negative will be kept in compulsory institutional quarantine for a period of seven days followed by seven days of home quarantine, the DDMA order had stated. A total of 17 Delhi residents have tested positive for the new coronavirus strain first detected in the UK till Saturday. Further, strict surveillance will be kept on the persons who are in home quarantine after completion of mandatory institutional quarantine, it had directed. The January 8 DDMA order was issued on a trial basis for a period of one week ending on January 14. It stands extended up to January 31 now, the latest DDMA order said. SALEM, Ore. Despite notifying the public of a swift reversal on expanded COVID-19 vaccinations on Friday morning, Governor Kate Brown said later in the day that state officials will still forge ahead with vaccinating educators and seniors on an adjusted timeline. Brown announced the expansion of Oregon's vaccination efforts to include teachers and seniors earlier this week, after the Trump administration said that it would release its full reserve of vaccine doses to the states. But Brown says that state officials recently learned Thursday that the stockpile was "a deception on a national scale." "Last night, I received disturbing news, confirmed to me directly by General Perna of Operation Warp Speed: States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses," Brown said in a statement on Friday morning. RELATED: Promised federal increase in vaccine shipments 'a deception,' Gov. Brown says Federal Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had announced on Tuesday that his agency was making available "the full reserve doses" it had so that states could step up administration of vaccines. After adjusting to Thursday's disappointing news, Governor Brown said that state officials will have to delay vaccinations for seniors by roughly two weeks. Instead of opening vaccinations up to all seniors 65 and older this month, the process will be opened up to seniors 80 and older beginning on February 8. Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen said that the rollout of vaccines to seniors would be done in four stages over time beginning with those 80 and older, followed by 75 and up, 70 and up, and ultimately all seniors 65 and older. With reopening Oregon schools still a major priority, Brown said that educators and school staff can begin getting the vaccine on January 25, if not sooner. Allen mentioned that some counties will be administering vaccines to teachers prior to that date. "As I've said for months, one of my main priorities is getting our kids back to in-person instruction in the classroom, and to protect our educational staff to help achieve this goal," Brown said. The goal is to vaccinate most educators "within two weeks," according to Allen, depending on distribution from the federal government. RELATED: Jackson County drive-in vaccination event going forward without expansion to seniors, educators The Oregon Association of Hospital and Health Systems (OAHHS) released a statement on Friday afternoon, supporting Brown's decision to alter the timeline. When the federal government announced this week that the full reserve of vaccine would be released to states and that Oregon would be offering doses to educators and those aged 65+, we were supportive but skeptical that the supply would meet this massive increase in the number of Oregonians who would become eligible," said OAHHS President and CEO Becky Hultberg. "Now we all have learned that there will be no increase in the number of vaccine doses delivered to Oregon. We support Governor Browns decision to delay the expansion until we can be sure that the doses are in hand to meet this demand." According to OHA's Patrick Allen, about 40 percent of people in Phase 1a had been vaccinated as of Friday. The state expects to have 56 percent of those groups vaccinated by January 25 accounting for roughly 225,000 healthcare workers, first responders, and staff and residents of long-term care facilities. He's the speed demon who led officers on one of the fastest ever police chases. But Marian Dragoi, 19, wasn't quick enough when he attempted to make a fast getaway from court yesterday as he faced jail for riding at 180mph across London and three counties. The boy racer leapt from the dock, vaulting over the barrier and ran out of London's Wood Green Crown Court. Dragoi managed to sprint down four flights of stairs, but he was caught near the court entrance and marched back to the dock, where he was jailed for 46 weeks. The teenager led police on the chase in May, and was only caught when he had to stop for more petrol in Buckinghamshire. Marian Dragoi (above), 19, who faced jail yesterday for riding at 180mph across London and three counties, leapt from the dock and ran out of London's Wood Green Crown Court The pursuit believed to be the fastest in Scotland Yard history saw Dragoi take advantage of the deserted roads to reach breakneck speed on his motorbike. Yesterday, Judge Andrew Holmes told Dragoi that it was one of the worst driving cases he had ever seen. He also banned him from driving for two years and five months after Dragoi admitted charges that included dangerous driving. Nadia Semlali, defending, claimed it was a 'moment of madness' as the teenager had been cooped up in his house due to the lockdown. Dragoi managed to sprint down four flights of stairs, but he was caught near the court entrance and marched back to the dock, where he was jailed for 46 weeks But no sooner had she said that he had learned his lesson than the defendant fled the court. The judge asked police to investigate the matter, which he said amounted to a separate criminal offence. Miss Semlali said: 'He lives with his parents and his autistic younger sister, he takes her to and from school. 'Losing her big brother would have a huge impact on her. The defendant has been working full-time since 17 years old. He pays half the rent together with his father.' Following the sentencing, his distraught mother said: 'He ran for my daughter she's autistic. She cannot live without him.' 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. Sorry, no valid subscriptions were found for this Publication. Please select from an option below to start a subscription. SUBSCRIBE TODAY! 24 Hour Access A Michigan congressman and his colleagues are in fear for their lives in the wake of a vote to impeach President Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Grand Rapids, told MSNBC on Thursday that he and his colleagues are preparing for every scenario by traveling with armed escorts and altering routines. They are also working to procure body armor. Our expectation is that someone might try to kill us, Meijer said during the televised interview. Meijer and nine other Republican representatives, including U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, crossed party lines to vote in favor of impeachment. The others were Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; Rep. Tom Rice, R-South Carolina; Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Washington; Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois; Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio; Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Washington; Rep. John Katko, R-New York; and Rep. David Valadao, R-California. RELATED: Congressman Upton will vote to impeach Trump for inciting Capitol riots All seven of Michigans Democratic representatives voted to impeach the president. RELATED: Michigan Democrats support Trumps removal as House moves to start impeachment With 20,000 National Guard troops deployed to Washington, D.C., theres a feeling that theres no control, Meijer said. We dont know whats going to happen next, he said. In this unprecedented environment with this unprecedented levels of fear, of divisiveness, of hatred, we have to account for every scenario. Meijer, who was inside the House chambers when a pro-Trump mob broke into the Capitol and assaulted police, announced Wednesday that he would vote in favor of impeachment. He said Trump betrayed his oath of office by undermining the 2020 presidential election, and faulted him for refusing to accepted responsibility for the violence his words inspired. RELATED: Congressman Meijer will vote to impeach Trump for inciting Capitol riots I believe the article of impeachment to be accurate, Meijer said in the announcement. The president betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the violent acts of insurrection last week. With a heavy heart, I will vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump. Meijer said he wrestled with the division impeachment will cause but ultimately felt Trump must be held accountable. Meijer said Trump misled millions of supporters with claims of a stolen election and encouraged supporters to fight like hell. The congressman said Trumps remarks in a video released during the Capitol riots expressed admiration for the mob while Congress was still under attack. Five people died in the chaos, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman shot by police. A second Capitol Police officer died by suicide after the riots. Congress reconvened on the evening of Jan. 6 to certify President-elect Joe Bidens victory. He will be inaugurated on Jan. 20. With the vote that took place Wednesday, Trump is the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. READ MORE: D.C. riots inspire six-foot fence around Michigan Capitol before possible armed protests Whitmer authorizes deployment of Michigan National Guard for Bidens inauguration Lansing mayor says Proud Boys, boogaloo groups planning armed protests at Michigan Capitol Biden picks Whitmer for DNC vice chair Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Cypherpunk Holdings Inc. (CSE: HODL) ("Cypherpunk" or the "Company") a sector leader for privacy-technology investments is pleased to announce that, further to its press release of December 23, 2020 it has closed an oversubscribed, non-brokered private placement offering (the "Offering") through the issuance of 19,867,470 Units ("Units") at a price of C$0.15 per Unit for gross proceeds of C$2,980,120. Each Unit is comprised of one common share (each a, "Common Share") in the capital of the Company and one half of one whole Common Share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one additional Common Share at an exercise price of C$0.25 until January 15, 2023. The net proceeds and additional capital from the Offering will be used to continue investing as per the Company's outlined investment strategy in cryptocurrencies, companies, technologies and protocols that enhance or protect privacy often in the blockchain ecosystem. In connection with the Offering, certain eligible finders received cash commissions in the aggregate amount of $17,550. All securities issued in connection with the Offering will be subject to a hold period of four months plus a day from the date of issuance and the resale rules of applicable security legislation. This Offering is subject to final approval of the Canadian Securities Exchange. The Offering 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 2,561,667 Units. 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 Cypherpunk Holdings Inc. Cypherpunk is a company set-up to invest in companies, technologies and protocols, which enhance or protect privacy. Its strategy is to make targeted investments in businesses and assets with strong privacy, often within the blockchain ecosystem, including select cryptocurrencies. Current equity investments include Samourai Wallet, Wasabi Wallet, Chia, NGRAVE, and Hydro 66. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Generally, any statements that are not historical facts may contain forward-looking information, and 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 indicates that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be" taken, "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to the Company's intention to complete the private placement offering and its goal of making investments in the blockchain and other sectors and enhancing value. There is no assurance that the Company's plans or objectives will be implemented as set out herein, or at all. Forward-looking information is based on certain factors and assumptions the Company believes to be reasonable at the time such statements are made and is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as required by law. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. Investor Relations Contacts: Veronika Oswald Cypherpunk Holdings Inc., veronika@cypherpunkholdings.com Office: 416.599.8547 To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72188 You can listen to the latest episode of Today in Pa at this link, or on any of your favorite app including Alexa, Apple, Google, Spotify and Stitcher. Episodes are available every weekday on PennLive. Feel free to subscribe, follow or rate Today in Pa. as you see fit! Today in Pa. Daily Podcast | Jan. 15, 2021 President-elect Joe Biden is looking to expand upon benefits for children in his newly proposed stimulus package. The retired firefighter accused of throwing a fire extinguisher at Capital police denies hes a member of the Proud Boys. Currently, over in Pittsburgh, Netflix is shooting a horror movie. And thousands of snow geese are hanging out in eastern Pennsylvania. Those are the stories we cover in the latest episode of Today in Pa, a daily weekday podcast from PennLive.com and hosted by Claudia Dimuro. Today in Pa is dedicated to sharing the most important and interesting stories pertaining to Pennsylvania that lets you know, indeed, whats happening today in Pa. Todays episode refers to the following articles: If you enjoy Today in Pa, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or on Amazon. Reviews help others find the show and, besides, wed like to know what you think about the program, too. WASHINGTON President Donald Trump will leave Washington next Wednesday morning just before President-elect Joe Bidens inauguration to begin his post-presidential life in Florida. Refusing to abide by tradition and participate in the ceremonial transfer of power, Trump will instead hold his own departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before his final flight aboard Air Force One. Officials are considering an elaborate send-off event reminiscent of the receptions hes received during state visits abroad, complete with a red carpet, color guard, military band and even a 21-gun salute, according to a person familiar with the planning who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement. READ MORE: Vaccine reserve Trump administration vowed to release doesnt exist, dashing hopes of expanded access Trump will become only the fourth president in history to boycott his successors inauguration. And while he has said he is now committed to a peaceful transition of power after months of trying to delegitimize Bidens victory with baseless allegations of mass voter fraud and spurring on his supporters who stormed the Capitol he has made clear he has no interest in making a show of it. He has not invited the Bidens to the White House for the traditional bread-breaking, nor has he spoken with Biden by phone. Vice President Mike Pence has spoken with his successor, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, calling her on Thursday to congratulate her and offer assistance, according to two people familiar with the call. Pence will be attending Bidens inauguration, a move Biden has welcomed. While Trump spends the final days of his presidency ensconced in the White House, more isolated than ever as he confronts the fallout from the Capitol riot, staffers are already heading out the door. Many have already departed, including those who resigned after the attack, while others have been busy packing up their offices and moving out personal belongings souvenirs and taxidermy included. On Thursday, chief of staff Mark Meadows wife was caught on camera leaving with a dead, stuffed bird. And trade adviser Peter Navarro, who defended the presidents effort to overturn the election, was photographed carrying out a giant photo of a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Staff are allowed to purchase the photographs, said White House spokesman Judd Deere.) Also spotted departing the West Wing: a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Stewart D. McLaurin, the president of the White House Historical Association, said he had reached out to the White House chief usher, who manages the buildings artifacts with the White House curator, because of questions raised by the images. Be reminded that staff have items of their own that they brought to the White House and can take those items home as they wish. Some items are on loan to staff and offices from other collections and will be returned to those collections, he said in a statement. Earlier this week, reporters covering the presidents departure from the South Lawn spotted staff taking boxes into the residence for packing up the first familys belongings. And on Friday the packing continued, with moving crates and boxes dotting the floor of the office suite where senior press aides work steps from the Oval Office in the West Wing. Walls in the hallways outside that once featured a rotating gallery of enlarged photographs of the president and first lady framed in gold suddenly were bare, with only the hooks that held the picture frames left hanging. Moving trucks pulled in and out of the driveway outside. While some people have been asked to stick around by the incoming administration, the White House has been reduced to a skeleton crew, with more scheduled to depart on Friday. That includes White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Come Monday, the press staff will be down to two. Trump will leave Washington with his future deeply uncertain, two weeks after his supporters sent lawmakers and congressional staffers scrambling for safety as they tried to halt the peaceful transition of power. While Trump was once expected to leave office as the most powerful voice in the Republican Party and the leading contender for its 2024 nomination, he has been shunned by much of the party over his response to the violence, which left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer. Trump is expected to be joined in Florida by a handful of aides as he mulls his future. New Delhi, Jan 15 : American Gods creator Neil Gaiman feels the world of his story is reflected in present realities, and says he was amazed when diverse casting of the show troubled many people, adding that it is something he wished was not true. Gaiman's novel, on which the show is based, explores the power and conflict that comes with belief, religion and faith. The author is astonished as to how a story he wrote in 1999 is still relevant. Asked how the story has attained a new meaning in the present world, Gaiman told IANS: "When I wrote 'American Gods' in 1999 and in early 2000, had you told me then that in 20 years' time this thing would be much more relevant, I don't think I would have believed you. Had you told me the stuff I was raising in 'American Gods' -- the idea that the past is never dead, and it's always with us, and that a country like America carries its past with it (I wouldn't have believed you). At that time, I felt that the stuff I was writing was big and obvious, and nobody was going to argue with that." "Then, watching people get upset about the fact that we have this huge diverse cast in 'American Gods', and Ricky Whittle as our lead -- watching people having trouble with that, again, is something I would never have imagined 20 years ago," he added. "I didn't ever imagine it would feel as relevant as it does now. I don't know that I'm proud of it. I think I would much prefer to be in a world where we are talking about 'American Gods' and the issues in 'American Gods', and I can say yes, but that was 20 years ago. we've sorted all that stuff out now," asserted Gaiman, who is a master of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films. Set in a fantastical world, American Gods presents a modern-day take on Greek mythology about the power struggle between the traditional gods of mythology from around the world. It depicts a world in which the gods of mythology begin to clash, with humans' new set of gods: technology. Running high on violence and bold sex scenes, the show has a racially diverse cast as it explores a story of how religion underwent change due to immigrants and their beliefs. Asked about the clash between faith and belief at present, the British author said: "I think the biggest problem that we are facing now is actually one of faith and belief. Because we watch people believing and choosing different things to believe in. There are countries right now that believe in science, and have been applying science." "You have strange things (happening) like (in) America where they (people) are going to court for the right to pray together in huge groups and sing together in huge groups and give each other Covid as a religious right," he observed. "For me that feels absolutely straight out of 'American Gods' and straight out of the playbook, because it's what people believe and how they apply those beliefs to their daily life," added Gaiman, who also serves as executive producer on the show. The third season of the show is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. (Sugandha Rawal can be contacted at sugandha.r@ians.in) New Delhi: Realtors' body Naredco on Thursday urged the government to hike deduction on home loan interest to Rs 5 lakh from Rs 2 lakh limit at present and re-introduce subvention scheme in the upcoming Budget to boost sales of residential properties and create housing revolution. The association also sought incentives for rental housing and more stress funds to help complete distressed and stalled projects. "Last three years have been extremely difficult for the real estate industry. The reforms like demonetisation and realty law RERA as well as the liquidity challenges in the NBFCs post-IL&FS crisis hit demand. The industry went through tough times," Naredco National President Niranjan Hiranandani told reporters through a video conference. He said the central government and some states like Maharashtra have taken various decisions to boost housing demand, but more needs to be done. "We want a housing revolution like the IT revolution and green revolution," Hiranandani said. Listing out the association's key pre-Budget demand, the Naredco President said there is a need to rationalise personal taxes as it has been done for corporates. Hiranandani said the deduction on home loan interest should be enhanced to Rs 5 lakh from Rs 2 lakh under section 24 of IT Act 1961 in order to incentivise home buyers. He also recommended long-term capital gains at 10 per cent (on par with the provision of section 112 for equity shares and reduction in the period of holding house property to up to 12 months from existing 24/36 months to qualify as a long-term capital asset. Naredco Chairman Rajeev Talwar said the government should lift the ban on subvention schemes, wherein real estate developers pay home loan interest on behalf of homebuyers for a certain period. In 2019, the National Housing Bank's (NHB) banned lending by housing finance companies under the subvention scheme. The association also pitched for extension of the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS), under which subsidy up to Rs 2.7 lakh is being provided to home buyers. To promote rental housing, the deduction of 30 per cent from the annual rental income (for the purpose of maintenance) should be increased to 50 per cent. Hiranandani complimented the government for establishing the SWAMIH fund worth Rs 25,000 crore to help the real estate sector. However, he said, the Centre should allow more such stress funds to help facilitate the last mile funding for stressed and stalled projects. "Industry demands estimated Rs 1,25,000 crore via many HFCs/NBFCs who are ready to establish such funds for ailing real estate sector. This will allow for faster appraisals and sanctions," the association said. Naredco said the one-time restructuring of loans will play an important role in improving the liquidity situation. "The requirement of the unit being 'standard unit' if done away and restructuring permitted for all units as per mutual agreement with the financing enterprise and the borrower would have a positive impact," it added. Hiranandani said there is a need to boost investment from both the public and private sectors for achieving higher economic growth. My hope is to be able to sit down with the city of Chicago and actually give them an assessment of what we have as far as our income and expenses and hopefully be able to renegotiate a payment structure that Harvey can sustain, he said Wednesday. I believe they are willing to because I believe they are reasonable. A woman who was raised in a polygamous cult has opened up about how she married her second cousin when she was 16 years old and left him nearly two years later after his dad advised him to take a second wife. Kollene Snow, 27, from Salt Lake City, Utah, candidly spoke about trying to run away from home at 15 and being manipulated into thinking that marriage was the only path to freedom in a video shared on her cousin Amanda Rae Grant's YouTube channel. The cousins were born into the Davis County Cooperative Society, a polygamist sect also known as the Kingston Group or The Order. They both escaped the cult right before their 18th birthdays. Scroll down for video Experience: Kollene Snow, 27, from Salt Lake City, Utah, (right) and her cousin Amanda Rae Grant (left) have opened up about their experience in a cult in a rent YouTube video Just wrong: Kollene (pictured on her wedding day) was just 16 when she married her 21-year-old second cousin Kollene's father, John Daniel Kingston has 14 wives, and she is the fifth of her mother Shirley Hansen's 12 children. She explained that they weren't supposed to know who their dad was, only her mom's name is listed on her birth certificate, but it was her older full sister, Escaping Polygamy star Shanell DeRieux, who figured it out. 'We knew we weren't supposed to tell anybody who our dad was,' she said. 'We also knew not to call him dad. We called him by his middle name, which is Daniel.' Kollene admitted she doesn't know how many half-siblings she has, saying she learned that she and her childhood best friend shared a father at a sleepover. 'I was like, "No, that's my dad. You can't have the same dad as me,"' she said, prompting her friend and half-sister to explain polygamy to her. Kollene's father, whom she calls Daniel, already had multiple wives when he started courting her mom, but that didn't prevent them from starting their own relationship. 'While he was courting her, he asked her if she wanted to go to his wedding,' she shared. 'I don't know if my mom went to the wedding. I think she did.' Shirley was the 'middle wife' and all of the other wives picked on her, Kollene explained: 'It's a bloodline thing. They treat you like crap or like royalty depending on what family you were born into.' Daniel's brother Paul Elden Kingston is the leader of The Order, and Amanda noted that the 'less Kingston you have in your bloodline,' the worse you're treated. Kollene was allowed to go to public school when she was in kindergarten, and being in the 'real world' made her realize at a young age that her life in The Order was not normal and that she wanted to leave the sect. Family photo: Kollene's father, John Daniel Kingston has 14 wives, and she is the fifth of her mother Shirley Hansen's 12 children Controlling: They got married in March 2009, but her husband wouldn't let her got to school because he feared someone would 'hit on' her 'When I was 13, they were telling us at Sunday School that that's the most important thing in your life,' she recalled. 'That's when they say start fasting and praying for when you're supposed to marry because that's the most important decision of your life.' Amanda explained that they really encourage you to get married and have babies because that is how they trap you. Kollene ran away from home at 15 but was eventually returned to her mother. She was placed in a 'repentance home' in Idaho, where she worked on a potato farm. She said The Order's leader Paul despised her and only met with her one time when she got engaged. She claimed he once made her friend rescind her invitation to a birthday party and threatened to cancel it if she didn't. Her parents told her that she was a 'bad egg,' and unbeknownst to her at the time, one of her sisters had approached her future husband and suggested he marry her to 'save her' because she wanted to leave The Order. Kollene and her now ex-husband struck up a relationship while working on the potato farm together. 'They had me working under somebody who ended up being my husband. So I guess I married my boss,' she said. Amanda stressed that the rules for courting in The Order are strict: You have to save your first kiss for your wedding day, and you can't hold hands until you're engaged. She was shocked when Kollene admitted that she would sneak off for dates her with her future husband and even French kissed him before they were engaged. 'I had a boy kiss me on the cheek and I felt guilty for three days straight,' Amanda said. 'You feel like you're going to hell.' Kollene didn't want to get married; she wanted to go to high school with her peers, but she was lied to and told that public school would cost her $2,000 money her family didn't have. Amanda explained that The Order coerces young members into marriage by taking away their options. Kollene became determined to get married because she felt it was the only way to escape her current situation. Choices: Kollene tried to get her then-husband to leave The Order with her, but he wouldn't. After their split, she went to beauty school and became an esthetician Moving on: Kollene is still close with her cousin Amanda (far right) and her full sister Shanell DeRieux (far left), who have both left The Order Unlike most of her peers, members of the cult tried to prevent her from getting married as a teen because they feared they would lose control of her. 'Before we got married, I told [my fiance] we're not living polygamy and I am planning on leaving The Order,' she said. 'He knew everything before he jumped in.' Kollene recalled getting into a fight with him about it because he worried that God would 'tell' him to find another wife. They ended up moving forward with the wedding, but Paul did everything he could to make her wedding day miserable. She said he even went as far as changing the location of the ceremony the day before her wedding. Kollene was 16 when she said 'I do' to her 21-year-old groom on March 21, 2009. She hadn't even graduated high school yet. When she tried to return to school, her new husband forbade it. 'He told me he didn't want me to work in the public or go to school because he didn't want anyone to hit on me,' she said. 'He's the chain of the command. You ask your husband, and then he asks his dad, and then his dad asks the leader.' Kollene tried to get her husband to leave The Order with her, but he wouldn't. Married: Shanell (pictured with her then-husband) was forced to marry her first cousin when she was 18 years old Parental consent: Her father Daniel (front and center) signed as a witness to her wedding Helping others: Shanell and her half-sisters Andrea Brewer and Jessica Christensen are the stars of the Lifetime reality series Escaping Polygamy Their relationship reached the tipping point when her husband's father advised him to take a second wife, saying: 'Kollene's not having babies, so you should marry someone else that will.' They filed for divorce about two years after they got married, and as far as Kollene knows, her ex is still in The Order. After their split, she went to beauty school and became an esthetician. Kollene celebrated her 10-year anniversary of leaving The Order in December. She now speaks openly about polygamy and has appeared on her sister Shanell's Lifetime show Escaping Polygamy. The docu-series follows Shanell and her half-sisters Andrea Brewer and Jessica Christensen as they help people leave their own polygamist groups and adjust to their new lives away from their families. Just a year before Kollene got married, Shanell's parents forced her to marry her first cousin Amanda's half brother in Colorado, where it was legal. She was just 18 at the time, and her father was the one who signed as a witness to the weddings. Shanell said her wedding day marked the beginning of abuse and her marriage certificate made it even more difficult for her to leave. 'I didnt choose to get married, I was pushed...I personally dont think first cousins should be married,' she told FOX31 in 2019. The 14 guests who sent screen shots of negative Covid tests to Jordan Scott and Nick Gash before their New Years Eve wedding did so out of devotion to a couple whose love felt worth leaving home for amid a pandemic. But they couldnt have been blamed for expecting to attend a more action-packed celebration than normal. Ms. Scott, 26, and Mr. Gash, 32, have flown over the Hudson River with their legs dangling out of a helicopter. Theyve taken a couples welding class. Theyve visited New York speakeasies, built their own lamp and, since Covid, painted each other in the style of Picasso as part of a virtual art class. For Ms. Scott, the founder and chief executive of Cobble, an app that curates dates for couples who want to avoid the romantic doldrums, knowing how to generate a good time is a calling card. Mr. Gash, whom she met at a dive bar, gets credit for teaching her how. Ms. Scott was an underage New York University student in April 2015 when she was introduced to Mr. Gash at the now-closed Exchange Bar & Grill, in the Gramercy neighborhood of Manhattan. Jordan likes to say it was a dive bar, but to me it was just a very welcoming spot, a neighborhood hangout, Mr. Gash said. On Thursday the Washington Post reported that dozens of people who are currently on the FBIs Terrorist Screening Database were in Washington D.C. to participate in the January 6 coup. An unnamed source told the Post that many are suspected white supremacists who had previously been entered into the database following prior interactions with state agents or informants. The revelation that the domestic intelligence agencies knew that neo-Nazis and fascists were going to be in D.C. further exposes the lying claims of figures such as Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, who stated the day after the coup that no intelligence suggested a threat to the Capitol. There is no doubt that hundreds of people within the sprawling military-intelligence apparatus were aware of who was going to be at the rally and what their intentions were. US Capitol Police at The Supreme Court (Lorie Shaull/Wikimedia Commons) Another unnamed official told the Post that some of the individuals suspected of having taken part in the coup were current and former police and military members as well as senior business executives and middle-aged business owners. The leaking of the investigation to the Post points to the raging conflict within the state, substantial sections of which knowingly withheld intelligence information and additional security resources in order to facilitate President Donald Trumps attempted putsch. So far the Justice Department and the FBI have announced charges against at least 70 individuals and have identified 170 people, a fraction of the thousands who descended on the Capitol, in the hopes of overturning the election. The crowd included members of the fascist Oath Keepers, III Percenters and Proud Boys. In a video showing an Arizona chapter of the group, members are seen without their easily identifiable black and yellow polos. Instead, in an apparent attempt to hide themselves, the group donned blaze orange knit caps as they filmed themselves preparing to take the fing Capitol. In addition to substantial support from high levels of the state, starting from the White House, research conducted by Chainanalysis revealed that over $500,000 in bitcoin digital currency was distributed to 22 fascist and far-right linked online accounts on December 8, 2020. These accounts included the Nazi website Daily Stormer, and anti-immigrant hate group VDARE, as well as America First neo-Nazi, Nick Fuentes. According to Chainanalysis, the deposits seemed to have emanated from a now-deceased French blogger who lamented online on the decline of Western civilization due to the rejection of our ancestors and our heritage, phrases popular with the fascist right. It should be noted that one of the recipients of the digital currency, VDARE, also receives substantial funding from billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer. The Mercers have, unsurprisingly, generously donated to the Republican Party, including $1.5 million to political action committees affiliated with Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward. Ward, along with Arizona representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, has ardently supported Trumps ongoing coup attempt, including by organizing Stop the Steal rallies in Arizona and in D.C. Rebekah Mercer is a close associate of Steve Bannon, the founder of Breitbart News, in which she is a principal investor. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Bannon has spoken repeatedly to Trump, with the latter seeking Bannons advice on how to overturn his re-election defeat. As Trump and his billionaire conspirators, sections of the police and the military-intelligence complex continue to plot their next putsch attempt, further arrests point to the intimate involvement of current and former police and military members in the storming of the Capitol. After being identified on video outside the Capitol last Wednesday, Philadelphia prosecutors asked for bail to be revoked for Navy veteran and founder of Vets for Trump Joshua Macias, age 42. Macias was arrested on November 5 for multiple felony and misdemeanor weapons offenses after the FBI was tipped off that he and an accomplice, Antonio LaMotta, were driving up to the city from their residence in Virginia in order to straighten things out as vote counting continued following the presidential election. Following the election, Macias has made several joint appearances at Stop the Steal rallies with Virginia state senator and prospective 2021 Republican gubernatorial candidate Amanda Chase. An ardent supporter of the fascist QAnon conspiracy theory, Macias appeared on Facebook live-stream with Chase the day before the rally. Chase introduced Macias as an organizer of the rally, who proceeded to spread fascist conspiracy theories warning, the enemy is here, its not just at the gate, its within, we see it everywhere. Two police officers from Rocky Mount, Virginia have also been arrested. Thomas Robertson and Jacob Fracker were both inside the Capitol and took a picture together. Robertson shared a statement with WFXR on Monday, January 11, claiming that he was a patriot, adding, I was let in by Capitol Police, who gave me a bottle of water and told us to stay within the roped areas. Robertson claimed to be a wounded veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Kevin and Hunter Seefried, father and son, were arrested Thursday in Delaware, after Kevin was identified as the man walking inside the Capitol with the Confederate battle flag. According to police who spoke with the New York Times, Hunter bragged to a co-worker that he and his father were inside the Capitol on January 6. Recently retired Pennsylvania firefighter Robert Lee Sanford, 55 of Chester, Pennsylvania was charged on Thursday with impeding officers, civil disorder, trespassing, and violent conduct with a dangerous weapon on the restricted grounds of the Capitol, for throwing a fire extinguisher at police as the mob of Trump supporters was descending on the Capitol. Retired Air Force officer Lt. Colonel Larry Rendall Brock Jr., who was photographed in the Senate Chamber wearing body armor and carrying zip ties, was also arrested this past Sunday. During a Thursday court appearance, Assistant US Attorney Jay Weimer alleged that Brock Jr. intended to take hostages. He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the US government. Another recent retiree arrested this week for his role in the attempted coup was 45-year-old Adam Newbold from Lisbon, Ohio. The Navy has confirmed that Newbold is a retired reserve SEAL special warfare operator. Newbolds new profession is training civilians and police in tactical shooting. In a since-deleted Facebook live stream following after the events last Wednesday, Newbold boasted that he was proud of his actions that day, adding that he hoped it would overturn the election and that those inside the Capitol should think twice about what theyre doing. Newbolds action mirrors the words spoken by incoming North Carolina Republican representative Madison Cawthorn, who was carrying a weapon with him inside the Capitol the day of the insurrection. Cawthorn, who previously claimed that visiting Adolf Hitlers Eagles Nest retreat in the Bavarian mountains was on his bucket list for a while, spoke the morning of the coup attempt, remarking that, this crowd has some fight in it. ... The Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice. Cawthorn also spoke at a Turning Point USA event in December in which he urged attendees to lightly threaten lawmakers if they failed to support Trumps baseless claims of election fraud. Another notable arrest was of Robert Keith Packer, the fascist who was wearing a sweatshirt with a skull and crossbones that read Camp Auschwitz. The bottom of Packers shirt read Work brings freedom, a rough translation of Arbeit macht frei, the German phrase that greeted the 1.1 million Jewish people who were killed at the concentration camp during World War II. The US Army is still investigating the activity of 30-year-old Captain Emily Rainey. Rainey admitted to organizing and leading 100 members of the Moore County Citizens for Freedom to D.C. on the 6th, however, she claims she didnt enter the Capitol. Rainey is assigned to the 4th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg, according to a spokesman for the 1st Special Forces Command. Rainey gained a substantial online following after posting videos on social media in May showing herself ripping caution tape off of a playground set that had been closed due to COVID-19 health restrictions. Facebook has told the High Court a post which former Fianna Fail TD Frank O Rourke claimed defamed him last year has been permanently deleted and cant be located. An internal investigation at Facebook Ireland attempted to locate the post but was unable to do so or who was responsible for it, the court was told on Friday. Facebooks counsel Rossa Fanning SC said it appears the post made in February last year was permanently deleted from the Facebook platform and it is not possible to retrieve a record of it. We believe the post was permanently deleted. We cant find it. Any attempt to identify the poster would be a speculative exercise, he said. Mr ORourke has gone to court seeking an order requiring Facebook to provide details of an account which he claims was responsible for a social media post which allegedly defamed him. In separate actions against Twitter International Company and Facebook Ireland Ltd Mr ORourke required details so he can identify the posters so he can sue them for defamation. He seeks details including the account holders' names and email and IP addresses. Mr O'Rourke previously secured orders against Twitter and Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds was told on Friday by Mr ORourkes counsel Declan Doyle SC his side had obtained the identity of somebody who may have posted or retweeted a matter on Twitter. Representing Fianna Fail, Mr O'Rourke of Dublin Road, Celbridge, was elected as TD for North Kildare in 2016. In last yearselection he lost his seat after finishing fifth in the four-seater constituency. He claims wholly untrue statements posted about him on social media last February were designed "to cause maximum professional damage to me" in the 2020 General Election, at a time when he was going through "a difficult marriage breakdown." He claims members of the public told him that they had seen "horrible stuff" about him on social media and that his political supporters received "negative feedback on the doorsteps of North Kildare" following the publication of the comments. He also alleges that untrue posts were made on Facebook pages on pages associated with the Celbridge area about his family life and his personal financial matters which were designed to show that he was unfit to serve in Dail Eireann. He further claims a tweet put out shortly before the election which called on people not to vote for him, also contained untrue and defamatory statements about his personal life. The court was told Mr ORourke had complained about the post on Facebook within 24 hours of it going up. Ms Justice Reynolds granted an order directing Facebook to give all details of the Facebook account where the alleged post is believed to have come from to Mr ORourkes side. If Facebook cant provide the information the judge said it can set out on affidavit any difficulties it has in complying with the court order. For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. Dallas, Texas--(Newsfile Corp. - January 15, 2021) - Alternet Systems, Inc. (OTC Pink: ALYI) today announced an update from its finance partner, RevoltTOKEN published by the RevoltTOKEN CEO, Henryk Dabrowski. The update is included in its entirety below: RevoltTOKEN CEO Henryk Dabrowski Let me start with a quick refresher on RevoltTOKEN. RevoltTOKEN was formed for the specific purpose of funding the ALYI electric mobility ecosystem. ALYI is building an electric mobility ecosystem to engage electric vehicle industry expert participants in a perpetual electric mobility design and production continuum. The ecosystem has been designed to initiate around a first electric vehicle product launch, specifically an electric motorcycle, and an annual electric mobility symposium with an electric vehicle anchor race event intended to motivate the participation of electric vehicle industry expertise. The ALYI electric mobility ecosystem is further defined by its concentration in Africa where per capita transportation is low. The initial electric motorcycle launch is intended to target the existing motorcycle taxi (boda) market. Delivery vehicles are a second electric vehicle target. The electric vehicle race event in Africa is intended to bring electric vehicle industry expertise from around the world to bear on the African electric vehicle market. RevoltTOKEN is intended to offer entry into the ALYI electric vehicle network. RevoltTOKEN has been established on the Ethereum Blockchain. In other words, RevoltTOKEN is an Ethereum Token. We have designed RevoltTOKEN to be a "utility" token redeemable into components of the ALYI electric vehicle ecosystem to include, for instance, the acquisition of an ALYI Revolt Electric Motorcycle or entrance into one of ALYI's annual electric vehicle symposium and electric vehicle race events or participation in carbon credits resulting from ALYi's electric mobility ecosystem. ALYI has a long-term plan to digitize its stock in the future and in conjunction with that objective, we would plan to include an option to redeem RevoltTOKENs into ALYI digital shares. While we have the technology aspects of RevoltTOKEN under control, our primary task now at hand to prepare for an ICO is to address the cryptocurrency regulatory environment. The first stock exchange was launched in the 1500s. The first cryptocurrency was launched in 2009. There are literally centuries of experience to draw on when structuring regulations to make the trading of stocks fair and legal. Today, a general set of stock exchange rules are universally accepted around the world. When it comes to crypto assets, attitudes and opinions are a bit more chaotic. We are trying to carefully navigate the chaos. Our regulatory approach has been to establish a domicile for RevoltTOKEN within a small country that had prioritized the development of a regulated market for crypto assets. Our objective was to license or register RevoltTOKEN within that small market and then, once established within one market, begin to license or register in additional markets. We explored and evaluated a number of potential initial domiciles to include Malta and Estonia. We decided on Bermuda. Like Estonia and Malta, Bermuda had prioritized the development of a crypto asset market. We were not surprised to find our registration process for RevoltTOKEN in Bermuda took a fair amount of time. We were excited last week when we received indication that our registration was complete. Then we subsequently were informed that our application was not accepted. Early on in my career, a mentor said to me, "the work doesn't begin until someone says 'no'". The idea of overcoming the "no" has stuck with me and I consider the Bermuda's "no" a significant milestone in the advance of RevoltTOKEN toward its ICO. In an environment where rules and regulations are chaotic and new, I argue that getting a "no" is ultimately better than getting a yes. A "no" gives us specific criteria to address. We can be even more confident in the soundness of our eventual license or registration when we respond to and overcome a "no" then if we simply got a yes in response to our initial application. A "no" is a learning opportunity. In addition to responding to Bermuda's response, we are revisiting other previously investigated small domiciles in addition to reconsidering the U.S. as an initial domicile. While we are hesitant to cut our crypto asset regulatory teeth within the U.S. regulatory environment, we have always planned to eventually enter the U.S. market. Toward that end, we recently established a U.S. presence to prepare for our eventual market entry. While the Bermuda response may impact the ICO timeline, we are confident it improves the overall solidity of RevoltTOKEN. Working closely with ALYI to provide necessary funding prior to the planned ICO, we are also confident the potential ICO timeline impact does not jeopardize ALYI's current busines plan outlook. In the meantime, we continue to entrain co-founding investors interested in participating in advance of the RevoltTOKEN ICO launch. Please contact us to learn more about the RevoltTOKEN cofounding program by emailing us at info@RevoltToken.com. For more information and to stay up to date on RevoltTOKEN's latest developments, please visit www.revolttoken.com. For more information and to stay up to date on ALYI's latest developments, please visit www.alternetsystemsinc.com. Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur. Alternet Systems, Inc. Contact: Randell Torno info@lithiumip.com +1-800-713-0297 To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/72153 CIPLA Limited launched its third chapter of the #BerokZindagi campaign with a new digital film aimed to dispel myths and fears regarding asthma and encourage asthmatics to lead a life without limitations. The film highlights the core message, Asthma ke liye, inhalers hain sahi (inhalers are right for asthma3,4,5). India has 37.9 million cases of asthma, despite the number, the usage of inhalers which is the most effective treatment is abysmally low. The digital film is being anchored by youth icon and TIME magazines one of the most influential people in the world, Ayushmann Khurana. Through this film, Ayushmann encourages asthmatics to adopt the right treatment method i.e. inhalers, by narrating the tales of three renowned achievers who did not let asthma stop them from achieving their dreams. The film includes Michelin star Chef Vikas Khanna and Arjuna awardee badminton player Parupalli Kashyap. The Berok Zindagi campaign reinforces the need to create awareness about asthma and inhalation therapy by driving social acceptance for inhalers and by addressing social stigma through education. The campaign is a continuous effort to inspire patients to live a life without barriers and help them build confidence towards use of inhalers. With the success of the previous campaign, there has been an ad recall of 40% and awareness of inhalers have gone up by 10% and consideration of inhalers has gone up by 5%.2 Actor, National Award Winner and Lead Anchor for this year Berok Zindagi Campaign, Ayushmann Khurrana pointed out, Having a good health is most important and it is equally important that we address it in the right way. I am very glad that I could be a part of the initiative with Cipla and this association is my effort to raise awareness on asthma and normalize the use of inhalers in public. With the high prevalence of respiratory illness in India, this campaign is now the need of the hour and I firmly believe in the cause of this campaign. With timely diagnosis and the right treatment, one can manage asthma and live a regular life. I can see around me the social stigma surrounding asthma & inhalers. Together, we all can help remove this stigma, and support asthmatics to live a better life. Dr. Vikas Gupta, Head, India Business Prescription, Cipla Ltd . comments, Cipla's ethos has been firmly rooted in our purpose of Caring for life. Our public awareness campaign Berok Zindagi resonates with our philosophy. We have always placed patient well-being at the core of all our initiatives and this campaign is also centered around the principles of driving awareness about asthma, eliminating the stigma and misconceptions associated with it. Our success in the last two campaigns assured and motivated us that we are on the right path. The third chapter of Berok Zindagi continues to convey the core message that Asthma ke liye Inhalers Hain Sahi (inhalers are right for asthma) and will continue in building awareness and educating everyone about asthma and its right treatment. On the creative aspect, Sahil Shah, Senior Creative Strategist, Schbang, highlighted, My own experience of living with asthma has been the basis for much of what Ayushmann says in this film, which has been written with an aim to connect with asthmatics like myself on a deeply personal level. The intent is not to 'school' asthmatics, but to acknowledge the challenges we face at both a health-related as well as social level with sensitivity and concern, empathize with us and give us hope by narrating the true stories of three extraordinary achievers that a life with asthma holds a lot of promise if only we choose inhalers to manage it well. This digital film was scripted by the creative team at Schbang, directed by Nilay Singh and produced by Abhimanyu Balasubramanyam. The campaign will be amplified on different digital and traditional media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Radio Robert Patrick, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS) A St. Louis-based lawyer for one of the men charged with participating in the U.S. Capitol riot last week says President Donald Trump should pardon his client because he was following Trumps instructions. Lawyer Albert Watkins said in an interview Thursday that Trump invited Jacob A. Chansley and other supporters of the president to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He invited his faithful, those who had been longstanding supporters of him and his cause, those who felt for the first time in their lives that their political voices were being heard, the lawyer said. Hes the president. He can go wherever he wants with those that he invites. Watkins said Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman, did not participate in violent attacks that led to the death of a Capitol Police officer and injuries to other officers. A protester was also fatally shot. Chansley has appeared often at past pro-Trump rallies. Watkins said Chansley was unarmed, nonviolent and did not hide his identity. He also did not break through any barricades, doors or windows, as others did, the lawyer said. He just walked in with the whole crowd that was walking in on the peaceful side of things. Watkins said many Capitol police officers were supportive of the protesters, who gathered by the thousands to condemn presidential election results that they falsely believed included widespread fraud and voting irregularities. President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump and will take the oath of office next Wednesday. Chansley was indicted by a federal grand jury this week on six counts, including violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Charging documents say Chansley was spotted in the hallways and standing on the dais inside the Senate chamber. He was wearing horns, a bearskin headdress and red, white and blue face paint, and was holding a six-foot spear with an American flag tied just below the blade. In a statement, Watkins said, His attire was consistent with his long-held Shaman beliefs. The day after the riot, Chansley, who also goes by Jake Angeli, called the Washington field office of the FBI and admitted being in the Capitol. He said that he came as a part of a group effort, with other patriots from Arizona, at the request of the president that all patriots come to D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, the charging documents say. Chansley turned himself in and will cooperate with the government, Watkins said. Asked whether Chansley adheres to the widely discredited and false QAnon conspiracy theory about widespread voting fraud, Watkins said, I think he was open to the suggestion that the election was rigged and forces were out to get Trump and he believed Trumps statements that this was like Valley Forge all over again. Christ, youve got a president who has been rabble-rousing for six or seven months, Watkins said. Watkins called in to CNN Thursday to defend Chansley on Cuomo Prime Time with host Chris Cuomo. Watkins said his client was answering the call of our president, and likened the relationship between Trump and his followers to the relationship between cult leader Jim Jones and members of the Peoples Temple. In 1978, after convincing members to move to a commune in Guyana, Jones orchestrated a mass suicide among his followers. In a detention motion filed Thursday, prosecutors said Chansley was one of the first rioters in the building, disobeyed a Capitol police officers order to leave and instead went to the Senate floor, where he sat in a seat vacated by Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before. Chansley then wrote Pence a note saying, its only a matter of time, justice is coming, prosecutors said. Chansley, who is unemployed and a regular user of psychedelic drugs, including mushrooms and peyote, also has mental health issues, they said. Chansley has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality, the motion says. Chansley has advocated hanging traitors in the U.S. government. The attack on the Capitol led the House on Wednesday to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection. Chansley, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, is being held in quarantine in a federal facility in Phoenix after surrendering, Watkins said. Given the peaceful and compliant fashion in which Mr. Chansley comported himself, it would be appropriate and honorable for the president to pardon Mr. Chansley and other like-minded, peaceful individuals who accepted the presidents invitation with honorable intentions, Watkins said. Watkins is a veteran of controversial and high-profile cases and has occasionally been criticized for his public statements connected to them. He initially represented Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who waved guns at protesters outside their Central West End home in June. His representation of the husband of the woman with whom former Gov. Eric Greitens had an affair led to the outing of the relationship, and eventually Greitens downfall. He once claimed babies had been stolen from St. Louis historic Black Homer G. Phillips Hospital and sold, before separate investigations by the FBI and the Post-Dispatch refuted the claim. Brussels / MadridSpain will receive 10.5bn more than expected in direct aid from the EU anti-pandemic fund. The final amount increases, as advanced this Thursday by El Mundo and confirmed to ARA by sources from the Ministry of Economy, because the European Commission has updated its calculations with the economic data of the autumn. Spain was to receive 72.7bn in direct aid, that is, funds that do not have to be reimbursed. This figure will rise to 83.2bn. The raw horror you are seeing in the photograph below if you can bear to look is the very last moment on earth of a Jewish family, teetering on the edge of a death pit as Nazi executioners with rifles fire from behind at point-blank range. Gun smoke billowing round her head, the mother in a polka-dot dress clasps the hand of a stumbling, barefoot boy. She stands surprisingly upright rather than slumping to her knees. This is because though it is difficult to spot she is clutching in her lap another child, seemingly a little girl with a scarf round her head. All three are about to be exterminated, put down as Untermenschen literally, subhumans whose lives have no value. A split second later, we can surmise, the back of the womans skull explodes, shattered by a bullet, and she slumps down dead into the mass grave below with the two little ones, their bodies adding to the hundreds of her Jewish friends and neighbours already dispatched. Cartridge casings on the ground show she is not the first to die. But no bullet is wasted on the children that was the SS rule. They die quickly from the fall or slowly, buried alive, crushed and suffocated by the weight of corpses thrown on top of them. The raw horror you are seeing in the photograph if you can bear to look is the very last moment on earth of a Jewish family, teetering on the edge of a death pit as Nazi executioners with rifles fire from behind at point-blank range Here is the Holocaust, close up and personal, as we have rarely seen it before. The despicable murder of millions takes on a powerful, more intimate dimension. The picture shocked even experienced and expert Holocaust historian Professor Wendy Lower when she first saw it. She has come across very few photographs a dozen, no more, she says that show the moment of murder, the killers caught in the very act of genocide. She was so appalled she set out to track down every last detail she could about this scene from 80 years ago: who, where, when. And, after years of research in archives in Eastern Europe, Israel and the U.S. and countless interviews, she lays out her findings in an extraordinary and spell- binding new book, The Ravine, a reference to the forest site in eastern Europe where the killings took place. It is a brilliant piece of dogged detective work but, more importantly, a deeply moving reconstruction of events that day. Lowers quest began a decade ago when two young journalists from Prague brought to her a photograph they had unearthed in security files of the old communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Documentation with it said it was taken on October 13, 1941 outside a small town by the name of Miropol, 135 miles west of Kiev in Ukraine. That year Ukraine had been overrun as German armies swept eastwards into the Soviet Union in the notorious Operation Barbarossa that ended Hitlers 1939 peace pact with Stalin. Following the frontline troops came a second wave of SS death squads with orders to eliminate Ukraines more than one million Jews. Unleashed by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, they pursued their sick mission with brutality and thoroughness, with the result that a quarter of all the six million-plus Holocaust victims were Ukrainian. The picture shocked even experienced and expert Holocaust historian Professor Wendy Lower (pictured) when she first saw it They enlisted local militias, paramilitaries and policemen willing to join in the dirty work like the two riflemen in soft field caps and greatcoats in the foreground of the photograph. The presence of these two men has great significance. These days, some eastern European nations wish to draw a veil over the collaboration of many of their countrymen in the slaughter of the Jews, to the extent, says Lower, of some trying to silence historians who draw attention to it. Here is proof of complicity. They were there and they were active, even enthusiastic, participants. Meanwhile, beyond the militiamen and clearly in charge of the massacre or Aktion as the Nazis called such deliberate, wellplanned atrocities are two figures in unmistakable German uniforms of visor cap, jodhpurs and jackboots, one directly behind the victim, his rifle aimed at the back of her head. They were from a platoon of customs and border guards who happened to be stationed just outside picturesque Miropol when, on Sunday, October 12, three SS officers arrived and took charge, demanding to know why the towns Jewish inhabitants were still alive. They rounded up teenage girls to dig a circular pit in the nearby forest. Then they went to the customs guards barracks on the edge of the town and called for volunteers to take part in the mass killing. Border guards Erich Kuska, a known hater of Jews, and Hans Vogt were among an estimated half-dozen who stepped forward. That night, Miropol was sealed off, with half of the 40-strong local police force forming a cordon round the town, while the rest stormed from house to house forcing the Jews from their homes and herding them into the market place, on the pretext that they were to be sent to neighbouring towns on labour assignments. That year Ukraine had been overrun as German armies swept eastwards into the Soviet Union in the notorious Operation Barbarossa that ended Hitlers 1939 peace pact with Stalin. Pictured: Hitler and Himmler inspecting SS Guard As the Jews made their way through the streets, they looked back in disbelief as their non-Jewish neighbours people they had worked with, been to school with looted their homes, carting away anything that could be carried. In the square, the Jews were pelted with bottles and stones by locals, while armed Ukrainian militia chased those who tried to escape, bludgeoning some to death and shooting those who resisted or could not walk. One old woman was shot dead in her own bed. At dawn, the Jews were ordered to line up in a column. Knowing their fate, many were crying and saying their goodbyes to one another. Chants of kaddish, the death prayer, filled the air. Then they were forced out into the forest, harassed by the militia. Men tried to shield their daughters, wives, sisters and mothers from beatings but anyone who fought back was battered with rifle butts or shot. The victims were held in a hut before being forced out in small groups to stumble the 20 yards to the edge of the pit, where they were forced to their knees and shot in the head. They were taunted by name as Ukrainians unleashed personal resentment against their richer neighbours, their more clever schoolmates, and their bosses in the local paper factory. Small children and babies were grabbed by the legs and their heads smashed against trees. Witnesses recall an elderly grandmother unable to walk, tipped into the pit still lying in her bed. As the pit filled with bodies, it became apparent that the Germans had miscalculated the numbers . The remaining Jewish men were made to dig another mass grave and the firing resumed. The noise alerted a detachment of Slovakian Security Service guards, who were also stationed in town. Their commander sent three men to investigate, including Lubomir Skrovina, a keen photographer, who instinctively grabbed his Zeiss Ikon Contax camera. When they came to the site, he shot off five pictures from 20 ft away one was the photograph that, many years later, launched Lowers investigation. Unleashed by SS leader Heinrich Himmler (left), they pursued their sick mission with brutality and thoroughness, with the result that a quarter of all the six million-plus Holocaust victims were Ukrainian. Pictured: Hitler consulting a geographical survey map with his general staff including Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann Two of the others showed individual women crouching as they are shot in the head from behind; two were of dead bodies. Lying in the pit, the woman in the polka-dot dress could just be made out, still holding the little boys hand. Skrovina took his photographs surreptitiously, not as some sick voyeur but for a laudable reason. He was an anti-Nazi and had set himself a secret mission to document German atrocities. He would later return to Slovakia and join the Resistance there. The killing spree lasted three hours, ending at noon, when Ukrainian policemen took potshots at any bodies that were still moving. But they missed one. As night fell , 13-year- old Ludmilla Blekhman regained consciousness. She crawled out of the pit, pushed upwards, she later recalled, by those who were still alive. She crawled across the moonlit glade strewn with more corpses and fled into the woods, where a forester and his wife agreed to hide her. Ludmilla is the only known survivor of the Miropol massacre. Meanwhile, back in his barracks, the customs guard Kuska was bragging about what it was like to murder Jews aiming at the nape of the neck and pulling the trigger. He would never be brought to account for what he did, nor would any of the Germans involved. After the war, all suspects denied involvement and put the blame on the SS and the Ukrainians, and cases were not pursued on grounds of insufficient evidence. Lower tracked down the Kuska family and telephoned them at their home near Bremen. Whoever answered hung up without a word. They were not interested in dredging up the past, she comments. It was different for the Ukrainian militiamen in the Miropol photograph. They remained unidentified until 1985, when a determined Soviet prosecutor in Ukraine tracked them down. Nikolai Ryback and Dmitri Gynatuk were convicted, sentenced to death and executed in January 1987, probably the Soviet way with a single bullet in the back of the head and fitting because it was how they had carried out the killings all those years earlier at Miropol. Dozens of other collaborators also paid with their lives for their atrocities in Miropol, caught and lynched in the streets by Soviet military tribunals when the Red Army took back Ukraine from the Germans in 1944. In her book, Lower documents all this history in as much detail as she can muster, but one question remains achingly unanswered. Who were the woman and children in the Miropol photograph? They were more than just figures frozen in a brutal landscape. They were real people, with names, personalities and lives to live, until that day the Nazis cut those lives short. Lowers research took her closer as she painstakingly trawled through lists of missing-person files held in archives in Israel, the U.S. and elsewhere, fully aware the names of millions who died were not known, particularly the children. She compiled around 450 names of Jews living in Miropol at the time just half the number believed to have been killed there in pogroms. But information was sparse. She narrowed her search down to a dozen or so families and then pinned her hopes on a family photograph she found in an Israeli archive of missing persons reports. Taken in summer 1941 shortly before the massacre, it was of a group of women, one of whom was Khiva Vaselyuk, a nurse. There were also two children, one in a sailor suit looking uncannily like the stumbling boy at the edge of the pit. He was Boris, Khivas nephew, her sisters son. The other child was her son, Roman, wearing a head band. Was this the child with the scarf the woman was clutching in her lap at the edge of the pit? And not a girl (as Lower had thought) but a boy? Lower rang the relative, Svetlana Budnitskaya, who had made the missing person report years before, by then an elderly woman living in Michigan. The response was an anguished sob. Yes, the fascists shot the little boy Roman, with his mother. And the other child, Boris. There was a pit. It was near the ravine along the river. She described how Khiva and the children were forced to the edge of the pit. Below lay the bloody bodies of fellow Moripol Jews. Some still moved. Many women had jumped in or were shoved in while holding their small children, and were then shot like fish in a barrel. Historian Wendy Lower was so appalled she set out to track down every last detail she could about this scene from 80 years ago: who, where, when. Pictured: Himmler during the 1940s Svetlana added that her own paralysed grandmother had been carried to the pit in her bed and thrown in alive confirmation of another part of the story. Svetlana invited Lower to come to see her, which she did, hopeful that after years of research, she was about to identify the family in the photograph. At Svetlanas home in Detroit, they sat together on a couch to go through Svetlanas collection of pre-war family photographs in Miropol. One was in a forest with a ravine just like the site where the killings had taken place. In another, her mother was wearing a polka-dot dress that matched the fabric of the dress worn by the woman at the moment of her death in 1941. Lower felt herself edging closer towards an answer. But then came the moment of truth, when she pulled out the photograph. Svetlana briefly looked at it and then turned away. She could not, or perhaps did not want to, identify anyone in it. She was growing weary, and wept. I had upset her with this violent image depicting what had happened, possibly to her relatives the woman might have been one of her aunts and the children, her cousins. Lower was forced to admit defeat. She knew the interview was over, and although she had been hoping for a glimmer of recognition something positive to go on, Svetlana had been just five years old in 1941 and would be unable to make a positive identification. Moreover, the victims faces are barely visible. Tragically, and for all her efforts, the mother and children whose savage slaughter was caught in that heart-breaking photograph remain nameless, lost in time. Does it matter? After all, this is just one moment. And Miropol was just one town out of many where the Jews were butchered. The massacre there was replicated hundreds of times in the countryside, forests, riverbanks, and ravines of Ukraine, Lower writes. Nor did the slaughter stop there, rather it worsened. These one-to-one, face-to-face killings proved so time-consuming that they came up with an industrialised method of slaughter: the gas chambers. Yet one picture can tell a bigger story, and this one most certainly does. Dont look away, Lower urges, that would mean we dont care. It should haunt us and shame us even now. And, as she observes, the perpetrators of genocide not only kill but also seek to erase the victims from memory. When we find one trace, we must pursue it, to prevent that intended extinction by countering it with research, education and memorialisation. Here are the Unknown Victims, akin to the Unknown Soldier of World War I, symbolising horrors and hatred of which we still need reminding if we are to avoid going down the same path again. The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lower is published by Head of Zeus on February 4 at 20. Wendy Lower 2021. To order a copy for 17.60 (offer valid to 29/1/21; UK P&P free), go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3308 9193. Steven Spielberg is one of the most iconic and legendary movie directors of the times. Audiences and viewers have gotten to fall in love with Spielbergs talents and skills over the past few decades. The Color Purple, Saving Private Ryan, and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial are just a few of the directors masterpieces. Amongst Spielbergs success is Jurassic Park. The film premiered in 1993 and received a tremendous amount of recognition and awards, but the finished product wasnt the only thing people were enjoying. In order to create Jurassic Park Spielberg had to think outside the box. From the incredibly cool sets to the talented cast members, Spielberg and his team had a lot to consider. Some people might be surprised to learn that the well-known actress Robin Wright actually almost landed a role in the famous film. Robin Wrights journey to fame Robin Wright | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic Wright, a Texas native, was born in 1966. Her father, an executive in the pharmaceutical field, and her mother, a Mary Kay director, raised Wright in San Diego, California. When Wright was a teenager she began pursuing modeling. Wrights early modeling career led her to do work in places like Japan and Paris. After Wrights high school graduation she decided to shift her focuses to acting. In 1984 the young star was cast as Kelly Capwell in Santa Barbara. Her role in the sitcom would be the first of many. A look back at some of Robin Wrights most iconic roles RELATED: All the Original Jurassic Park Stars Returning for Jurassic World 3 (So Far) While Wright was working on the set of Santa Barbara, she began dating her co-star Dane Witherspoon. The two eventually married and had a child together. Though the marriage would only last about two years, Wrights acting career was thriving. The actress appeared in The Princess Bride in 1987 and, just a few years later, she took on the role of Sara in Denial. Around the same time Wright was cast as Tara Maguire in The Playboys which would end up being one of the stars most memorable roles. In 1994 Wright appeared as the complex and compelling Jenny Curran in the blockbuster classic Forrest Gump. It was clear that Wright had a knack for acting, and, luckily for her, many of the stars most celebrated characters and roles were still yet to come. In 2011 Wright blew away audiences everywhere with her performance of Erika Berger in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The actress also received a lot of positive attention for the role of Lieutenant Joshi in Blade Runner 2049. More recently, the world couldnt get enough of Wright as Claire Underwood in Netflixs House of Cards. Just in 2020 the actress took the screen as Antiope in Wonder Woman 1984. It seems like there is nothing Wright cant or isnt willing to do, but, surprisingly enough, there was one legendary role that the actress decided to pass on. Robin Wright could have played an iconic character from Jurassic Park When Wright first entered the acting scene it was obvious she was an actress that everyone wanted, but it was equally obvious that she didnt really care. Wright had no problem turning roles and characters down that she felt didnt suit her. She also has shared that some of her decisions were personal. For instance, Wrights pregnancy was the reason she decided not to participate in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. However, there is one role that many people have a tough time believing Wright walked away from. When it came time to cast for Jurassic Park, Wright was offered the role of Ellie Sattler, but the star politely declined the offer. In the end, Laura Dern was cast as Ellie, and, surprisingly so, Wright doesnt appear to have any regrets over the manner. On January 14, a top scientist in the UK confirmed that one of the novel coronavirus variants found in Brazil had already entered the UK. Prof Wendy Barclay, who heads the G2P-UK National Virology Consortium, told British media outlets that the newly launched project that was aimed at researching the effects of emerging COVID-19 mutations found that one of the two Brazilian variants was already inside the UK. She added that the Brazilian strain will be traced very carefully inside the UK. This comes as the UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told local press that he wasnt aware about the new COVID-19 variants presence inside Britain. The UK banned the South Americans from entering the country amid growing concerns about a mutant coronavirus strain that originated in Brazil. The ban came into force at 4 am on Friday after reports of the new Brazilian variant of coronavirus was detected in the country. UKs restriction covers Portugal due to travel links with Brazil, the Central American state of Panama, and the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde. Shapps told BBC Radio 4s Today 4 that the Brazilian variant detected is completely different from the strains originated in the UK and South Africa. She, however, said that the virus strain has some key mutations and can lead to a huge surge in transmission rate. Read: COVID-19: WHO Deplores 95% Of COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Limited To 10 Countries Read: Nepal Approves Use Of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 Vaccine Covishield Produced In India Portuguese minister condemns UK ban UKs Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the British press that the ban imposed to contain the spread of the new Brazilian variant was extended to Portugal because travellers from Portugal arriving in Europe from South America. Shapps told UKs BBC, that there were no known cases of the Brazilian strain at the moment, and the ban was a precautionary approach. He added that the government wanted to ensure that they do everything possible so that vaccine rollout can continue and the spread of the new variant could be mitigated. Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva reportedly condemned the UKs decision, saying that the ban was without logic. Furthermore, he informed that he would hold talks with his British counterparts about suspending flights from Portugal. Read: Nepal Approves Use Of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 Vaccine Covishield Produced In India Read: Harsh Vardhan Lauds PM & Scientists As 80% Indians Trust COVID Vaccines: Survey (Image Credit: AP) Sir Hilary Beckles has been at the forefront of the demands for reparations for genocide and slavery committed by European nations in the Caribbean. Reverend Al Sharpton, President and Founder of the US National Action Network (NAN), has announced that the organisations Dr Martin Luther King Jr Day awards will be conferred on Professor Sir Hilary Beckles and Dr Anthony Fauci at the annual breakfast event on MLK Day, January 18, 2021. This is the 30th anniversary for the awards by which the work, and the legacy of Dr King are celebrated and persons honoured with a view to refocusing and sustaining his dream. Sir Hilary is recognised for his global advocacy, academic scholarship and intellectual leadership in support of social justice, institutional equity, and economic development for marginalised and oppressed ethnicities and nations. Sir Hilary, Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies, President of Universities Caribbean, Chairman of the Caribbean Examinations Council, Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission and Advisor on Sustainable Development to former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, will receive the "Peace and Freedom Award. Prior awardees include the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton; Berry Gordy, Founder of Motown Music, and the 82nd Attorney General of the USA, Eric Holder. Event speakers have included Vice President-Elect Joe Biden and United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ceremony and awards will be held in Washington, DC on Monday, January 18, 2021 from 8:30 am (EST/Jamaica) / 9:30 am (AST/Eastern Caribbean). The event will be streamed live on UWItvs website www.uwitv.org, cable channels on Flow EVO and Facebook page. The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. As per the Centres India guidelines, the vaccines will not be given to anyone younger than 18 years, women who are pregnant or lactating. (Representational Photo:AFP) Hyderabad: Vaccines approved by the Centre for combating Covid-19 were safe and there was no need for any fear, top health department officials said here on Friday. Health minister Etala Rajendar, who described himself as the captain of the healthcare workers in state, said, It was only after extensive trials that the Drug Controller General of India approved their use. Some people are worried over the side-effects. You should remember that penicillin which has saved tens of crores of lives is never administered even now after, all these decades, without a test shot. Director of Medical Education Dr K. Ramesh Reddy and Director of Health Services Dr G. Srinivasa Rao, who earlier in the day addressed a press conference, also stressed on the safety of the vaccines. Dr Rao pointed out that though lakhs of Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered in 26 countries, there was not a single death on account of any adverse reaction. The economy is hurting. It is time to end the pandemic. We urge the media not to sensationalise any reactions to the vaccines. We should all give confidence to the people, he said. There could be some very common reactions, such as some swelling or pain at the injection site, some may develop some fever just as happens with many other vaccines. Even commonly used medicines for headaches can have side-effects, he said. Dr Ramesh Reddy said as per the Centres India guidelines, the vaccines will not be given to anyone younger than 18 years, women who are pregnant or lactating. This is not because the vaccine is not safe, but it is because these sections of the population were not covered in the trials. Anyone with previous history of severe anaphylactic reactions, will not be given the vaccine, he said. Anyone with issues relating to blood clotting will also not be given the vaccine. Some reactions are inherent to any vaccine and are an indication that the body is reacting to the vaccine and is generating antibodies. When the people take the second dose, the common reactions may be more marked. Some exaggerated reactions might be possible but adverse reactions may be possible at the rate of one in a lakh of people, he said Source: Xinhua| 2021-01-16 02:57:33|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday called for "far greater solidarity" in his video message on the 2 millionth death from the COVID-19 pandemic. "In the memory of those two million souls, the world must act with far greater solidarity. Now is the time," the UN chief said, highlighting the fact that "our world has reached a heart-wrenching milestone: the COVID-19 pandemic has now claimed two million lives." "Behind this staggering number are names and faces: the smile now only a memory, the seat forever empty at the dinner table, the room that echoes with the silence of a loved one," the secretary-general said emotionally. "Sadly, the deadly impact of the pandemic has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort," warned the UN chief. Guterres stressed that safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out -- and the UN is supporting countries to mobilize the largest global immunization effort in history. "We are committed to making sure that vaccines are seen as global public goods -- people's vaccines." "That requires full funding for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator and its COVAX facility -- which is dedicated to making vaccines available and affordable to all," the secretary-general said. Noting that the world's leading economies "have a special responsibility," the UN chief said that "yet today we are seeing a vaccine vacuum." "Vaccines are reaching high income countries quickly, while the world's poorest have none at all. Science is succeeding -- but solidarity is failing," warned the secretary-general. "Some countries are pursuing side deals, even procuring beyond need." The top UN official said that governments have a responsibility to protect their populations, but "vaccinationalism" is self-defeating and will delay a global recovery. "COVID-19 cannot be beaten one country at a time. We need manufacturers to step up their commitment to work with the COVAX facility and countries around the world to ensure enough supply and fair distribution," said the secretary-general. "We need countries to commit now to sharing excess doses of vaccines," said the UN chief. "This would help vaccinate all health care workers around the world on an urgent basis and protect health systems from collapse. Others on the frontline, including humanitarian workers and high-risk populations, must be prioritized." "To gain public trust, we must boost vaccine confidence and knowledge with effective communication grounded in facts," said Guterres. "As the science continues to blaze new trails of hope, let's also remember the simple and proven steps we can all take to keep each other safe: wearing masks, physically distancing and avoiding crowds," he added. The secretary-general underscored that "our world can only get ahead of this virus one way -- together." "Global solidarity will save lives, protect people and help defeat this vicious virus," Guterres noted. Enditem The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. 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. WASHINGTON - Top officials within the Trump administration are warning Mexico it is in violation of their new free trade agreement in favoring state-owned energy companies over American firms that have invested tens of billions of dollar since the nation opened up its energy sector to foreign investment six years ago. In a letter earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said reports the Mexican government was blocking permits for foreign owned firms and writing regulations to favor Pemex and other state-owned companies were, "deeply troubling." "While we respect Mexico's sovereign right to determine its own energy policies, we are obligated to insist that Mexico lives up to its (United States, Mexico Canada Agreement) obligations, in defense of our national interests," the letter reads. RELATED: In Mexico, US energy firms face a 'slow rolling expropriation' The move represented the most forceful intervention to date by the Trump administration in what U.S. observers describe as a devolving situation since the election of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador two years ago. Last month former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza said Obrador was engaging in a "slow rolling expropriation done through Mexicos regulatory bodies, and thats making it increasingly difficult to do business in the country." Since former Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto ended a near century long policy that kept foreign companies out of Mexico oil fields, close to $100 billion is estimated to have been invested in Mexico's energy sector by foreign firms, including Texas companies such as the refiners Phillips 66 and Valero. The trade group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers said last month that U.S.-branded gasoline stations in Mexico are being cited for minor or nonexistent infractions and fuel from U.S. refineries is being held up at the border. In July, the Mexican government ordered Talos Energy to work with Pemex in developing a massive oil field in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Houston firm had discovered three years earlier after winning what had appeared exclusive drilling rights at a government auction. So far Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, has shown no sign of backing down, telling reporters in October that he was willing to roll back the 2014 energy reforms in order to protect Mexican jobs and keep domestic energy prices low. We need to rescue Pemex (and other state energy companies), he said, according to the Mexican newspaper Reforma. If that is not possible under the current legal framework, I will send, if necessary, an initiative to reform the Constitution. Pastor condemned for cursing those who stole election from Trump during service Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Several pastors have spoken out against a Kentucky megachurch pastor who during a worship service Sunday cursed those who stole the 2020 election from President Donald Trump in the name of Jesus. "Father, those that have lied, those that have stolen this election, those that have cheated, I place the curse of God upon them," Rev. Bob Rodgers of Evangel World Prayer Center in Louisville, which claims 9,000 members, said in a video clip from the service shared online. "I curse you with weakness in your body. I curse you with poverty. I cursed you with the worst year you've ever had in the name of the Lord." In another apparent clip from the service, Rodgers, who is also president of Word Broadcasting Network in Louisville and co-hosts a Christian program called Word Alive with his wife, Margaret, said he was told personally by an angel that Trump would have won the election. I had an angel come to me and tell me that Trump was going to be the next president, he said in the clip that could not be independently verified by The Christian Post. And to be honest, he probably had the biggest landslide victory in the history of America. But that doesnt mean we are wrong. It means it isnt over yet. Calls to Rodgers ministry werent immediately returned Thursday. Bob Rodgers is a religious, far-right extremist at Evangel World Prayer Church in Louisville, KY. Its alarming that hes praying for God to destroy peoples livelihoods because they voted against 4 more years of Donald Trump. This is total BS! ???? pic.twitter.com/gTSdS5cyMP Israel McCullough (he/him) (@IsraelMC01) January 10, 2021 A group of Louisville pastors who heard the sermon, however, are now speaking out about the dangers of Rodgers message in the wake of a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. by Trump supporters last Wednesday. The storming of the Capitol delayed for hours the counting of the electoral votes and lead to the deaths of five people. President-elect Joe Biden was later confirmed as the victor of the 2020 election. "Less than a week after we see the violent mob storm the Capitol, and riot and loot, where one police officer was beat to death, and less than a week after that, you're pushing that kind of rhetoric ..." the Rev. Tim Findley of the Kingdom Fellowship Christian Life Center said at a press conference Wednesday, according to local news outlet WHAS11. "I think now you're in an irresponsible, dangerous place." Frank Smith of Christ's Church For Our Community called on Rodgers to apologize and confess that he had gone too far. "Confess that you have gone too far," Smith said. "Lead your people to truly a sound theology not tainted with Democratic patriotism but rather based on the sacrificial blood from the cross." Rodgers argued in an interview Tuesday with the ABC affiliate that his aim wasnt to curse people but to curse the demonic forces working in them. "This is a prayer not to curse people but to curse the demonic forces that people have allowed to rule them that would harm a nation," he was quoted as saying. "I do pray that trouble will come to them if they don't repent and that they will turn from their wicked ways." From yesterday: Christian Nationalism from the pulpit. This is how extremists are made. This is how we get raids on the Capitol. Fellow Christians & Christian leaders- we MUST condemn this. Shame on @DrBobRodgers from @EvangelWPC#ChristianNationalism#TrumpSupporterspic.twitter.com/VbZjonN1qa April Reuning (@aprilajoyr) January 11, 2021 Findley insisted that Rodgers theology needs to be roundly condemned. "The mentality of superiority has invaded the pulpit," he said. "I'm calling on all people to stand up and condemn this kind of language. Why is this so important right now? Because there are alerts going out to law enforcement as we speak alerting people to be on guard because on the day of the inauguration there are planned not protests but violent actions." Rev. Damian Thompson of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Louisville told WDRB.com that Rodgers' comments were "pretty disturbing stuff." He accused the pastor of "promoting a narrative that's not true." "That's false in our country and undermining the overall effects and using Christianity to do that," Thompson said. "It's a problem for me as a leader. It's a problem as a faith leader." Another law expert and professor denounced the Democrat-led impeachment in the House of Representatives against President Donald Trump, saying it is unconstitutional and damaging to America's rule of law, a report said on Wednesday. After national legal adviser and The George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley called the "snap impeachment" a "contradiction of constitutional terms" as a "dangerous precedent" being done by his co-Democrats, comes former Harvard School Law professor Alan Dershowitz who called the impeachment a theatrical display. CBN News cited an interview Dershowitz had with Fox where the renowned U.S. constitutional lawyer said, "The Constitution only empowers Congress to impeach and remove a president from office. Once he's out of office, Congress loses jurisdiction, they can't have a trial." In an article written for the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council website entitled, "Can The Senate Try Private Citizen Trump After He Leaves Office?", Dershowitz stated that the impeachment being done now is "simply wrong as a matter of the Constitutional text and meaning." "The Framers of the Constitution debated impeachment extensively. It is clear that they intended it to apply only to sitting presidents and other office holders and not to private citizens who previously held that office," he stressed. Adding that, "The Framers did, however, regard impeachment and trial as part of one single process, culminating in removal from office. And so, if removal from office is no longer a possibility, it would seem that Congress would have no jurisdiction to impeach." Dershowitz contested that what the Democrats wanted "to do is to impeach President Trump without giving him an opportunity to defend himself at a Senate trial." He explained that this "would be analogous to a prosecutor deciding to indict someone and then deny him a trial at which he could disprove his guilt or prove his innocence." "That would be a core denial of due process, as would impeaching a president based on a majority of the House while denying him a trial in the Senate that requires a two-thirds super majority to remove," he stressed. "This absurd reading of the Constitution shows how far people are willing to go to prevent President Trump from becoming a candidate in 2024," he explained. "Such an interpretation of the Constitution would render the impeachment provisions utterly meaningless." Turley, in addition, tweeted on Thursday that those after Trump's impeachment would have to go through the Supreme Court to actually do so after he leaves the U.S. presidential seat on Jan. 20. "The Senate is now set for one of the most bizarre moments in constitutional history: the removal of someone who has already left office. The planned impeachment trial of Donald Trump after he leaves office would be our own version of the Cadaver Synod," Turley said with a link to his regular column at USA Today where he likened the snap impeachment to Snapchat conversations. The Senate is now set for one of the most bizarre moments in constitutional history: the removal of someone who has already left office. The planned impeachment trial of Donald Trump after he leaves office would be our own version of the Cadaver Synod. https://t.co/NucCIFQUXW Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) January 14, 2021 As per CBS News, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach Trump "to prevent him from ever becoming a president again" based on the remarks of Senate President Nancy Pelosi. "He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love," Pelosi said during the impeachment vote. Trump is the first U.S. President to have faced impeachment twice. In similar news, PBSO News Hour reported that the House of Representatives voted 232-197 last Wednesday to impeach Trump after debating on the account of inciting violence to the U.S. Capitol. The riots lead to the death of four individuals including American Airforce Veteran Ashli Babbitt, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, and three others. A Marine guard stands at the entrance to the West Wing of the White House (Gerald Herbert/AP) The US military has met its goal of reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to about 2,500 by Friday, a drawdown that may have violated a last-minute congressional prohibition. The reduction could complicate matters for the incoming Biden administration, which must determine how to handle a Trump administration commitment to the Taliban to remove all US military, intelligence and contractor personnel from Afghanistan by May as a move to spur peace negotiations. Those talks are in an early stage. Senior US commanders are sceptical of the Talibans stated commitment to peace, although they have said they can accomplish their mission in Afghanistan with 2,500 troops. Christopher Miller, in his final days as the acting secretary of defence, announced on Friday the 2,500 troop level, saying it brings the United States closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war. He said the US remains in position to ensure that Afghanistan is never again used to harbour those who seek to bring harm to the United States of America. President Donald Trump, who ordered the reduction in November, when there were about 4,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said Thursday that troop levels in Afghanistan had reached a 19-year low, although he did not mention a troop number. I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars President Donald Trump Last February his administration struck a deal with the Taliban to reduce American troop levels in phases and to go to zero by May 2021. It is unclear how the incoming Biden administration will proceed. President-elect Joe Biden, who has advocated keeping a small counterterrorism force in Afghanistan as a way to ensure that extremist groups like al Qaida are unable to launch attacks on the United States, faces a number of questions on Afghanistan. One is how and whether to proceed with fledgling peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Mr Trump in his brief statement alluded to his longstanding desire to get out of Afghanistan entirely. I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars, he said, referring to US wars that have dragged on in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq for much of the period since 2003. Although senior military officials had cautioned against speedy troop reductions in Afghanistan, Mr Miller announced on Nov. 17 that he was implementing Mr Trumps order. 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. Anil Agarwal became successful in delisting of his various companies and restructuring of Vedanta Group after multiple attempts and with initial rebukes from investors. His delisting plan for Vedanta Ltd had faced similar drubbing from investors, mainly from LIC of India, which had 6.37 per cent stake in the company. The new open offer plan of Vedanta promoters at Rs 160 a share to buy 10 per cent stake from the public is seen as a renewed attempt towards delisting of Vedanta Ltd. The offer price is lower than the current market price of Rs 175. The state-run insurer LIC had upset the earlier delisting plan in October and submitted all its shares at Rs 320 a piece, which was 267 per cent premium to the earlier floor price of Rs 87.25. LIC's bid price became the discovered price in the reverse book building process, while many others also bid at the price of Rs 320. Another set of investors had tendered the shares at Rs 150-160. The promoters wanted to buy the shares held by public back at a cost of Rs 16,000 crore. The price at which LIC tendered the shares had made the delisting costlier by around Rs 40,000 crore. The open offer is not a surprise for market experts. "The promoters did the creeping acquisition and now looking for open offer to increase their stake. The move may be seen as a precursor to delisting," says a Mumbai-based analyst. However, the official sources say that the open offer has nothing to do with delisting. Agarwal-owned Vedanta Resources along with Twin Star Holdings, Vedanta Holdings Mauritius and Vedanta Holdings Mauritius II has made a fresh open offer to acquire 37.17 crore equity shares representing 10 per cent of its group company Vedanta at Rs160 a share. The company would spend Rs 5,948 crore, if the open offer turns fully executed. The share price was Rs 182 when the offer came to public. JP Morgan India is the manager to the open offer. The promoter group company Vedanta Holdings Mauritius had hiked stake in its subsidiary Vedanta by 4.98 per cent through creeping acquisition with an investment of Rs 2,959 crore. Vedanta Resources had raised $400 million last month through issue of debt papers to an entity of US-based hedge fund Oaktree Capital Group to meet its immediate liquidity requirements. The promoter firms also raised $1 billion through issue of one of the highest yield dollar bond in Asia. The market capitalisation of Vedanta stands above Rs 65,000 crore. The public holds about 49.5 per cent stake in Vedanta. The delisting of Vedanta would have given the company complete control of its cash-rich subsidiary, Hindustan Zinc (HZL), given that Vedanta Resources has debt of about Rs 40,000 crore. Also Read: Forex reserves up by $758 million to lifetime high of $586 billion Also Read: Exports up marginally to $27.15 billion in December Also Read: International coronavirus vaccine poll shows higher mistrust of Russia, China shots GLEN CARBON Work should begin soon on stabilizing a bank of the creek that flows through Miner Park after village trustees gave their approval this week. They approved a landowner agreement with Heartland Conservancy (HLC) to get Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) funding for the work on Tuesday. Last August, the village was inundated with between five and eight inches of rain on a Sunday morning, which caused flash flooding in the areas streams and creeks. The creek escaped its banks and turned much of the park into a temporary lake. The park has been closed for the past five months for three reasons this project; another one to replace a childrens playground; and the pandemics resurgence, which forced closure of the parks restrooms. The intention is to go out to bid at the end of this week, contingent on the IEPA approving the project, which should come by the end of the month, said Village Administrator Jamie Bowden Bowden said the village is looking to bid and start the project in early February. Final approval is still pending. Project completion is anticipated in early April due to the impact on the Miner Park ball diamond. However, an alternate bid is being reviewed to remove the ball diamond portion if the project approval is not received in a timely manner. The project has a total estimated cost of $29,010, which will be paid for by the village. Through this agreement, HLC will reimburse the village up to $14,505 from IEPAs Section 319 program. By March 1, per the agreement, construction should commence, weather permitting and it should be done by May 1, again, weather permitting. Reach reporter Charles Bolinger at 618-659-5735 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. Our collective understanding of the scale and scope of the assault on the Capitol grows by the day, with each new video, every unearthed selfie, and revelation after revelation about the participants dark pasts. The Department of Justice, in a court filing late Thursday, laid out the goal of the attack in uniquely stark terms, saying that there was strong evidence that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government. Eyewitness accounts and videos from the scene on Jan. 6 appeared to show elements of a coordinated, military-style attack, but prosecutors have so far largely refrained from making that assertion as they collected evidence and made arrests around the countryuntil now. Advertisement The American public is now entering a new phase of understanding about the events of last week, and the alleged motive of capturing and assassinating lawmakers is chilling. The allegation that at least some members of the mob that day were engaged in a mass assassination attempt came as part of prosecutors pretrial detention memo, in which they are seeking the detention of Jacob Chansley, the wildly adorned rioter clad in face paint, buffalo horns, and a coyote skin headdress, also known as the QAnon Shaman. Chansley, who was photographed at the vice presidents desk in the Senate chamber, left a note there for Vice President Mike Pence that read its only a matter of time, justice is coming. Chansley called the FBI the day after the siege, prosecutors say, and told them he was glad he sat in the Vice Presidents chair because Vice President Pence is a child-trafficking traitor, but that he did not mean his note to Pence as a threat. A lawyer for Chansley is now reportedly seeking a presidential pardon. 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 true extent of the threat posed by the rioters is becoming more and more clear. We werent battling 50 or 60 rioters in this tunnel, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone told the Washington Post. We were battling 15,000 people. It looked like a medieval battle scene. Officers described being blinded by rioters bear spray and smoke grenades. Everything they did was in a military fashion, Robert Glover, the D.C. police on-scene commander, told the Post. Glover said rioters used hand signals and flags, taking high positions and using wireless communications, as they fanned out in what he described as military formations. Many rioters wore tactical gear, and some brought zip ties, which would appear to further corroborate the belief that at least some rioters intended to take hostages. Advertisement Thank you, but f*ck you for being there Watch every second of this DC metro officers interview with CNN. pic.twitter.com/zUOafxRdBU David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) January 15, 2021 I didnt want to be the guy who starts shooting, because I knew they had gunswe had been seizing guns all day, D.C. police officer Daniel Hodges told the Post. And the only reason I could think of that they werent shooting us was they were waiting for us to shoot first. And if it became a firefight between a couple hundred officers and a couple thousand demonstrators, we would have lost. Update, Jan. 15, 2021: This post was updated after publication with video of Fanones CNN interview. SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Officers are on the ground at the state's capital, patrolling the area and standing by following warnings of possible violence. In an order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Thursday, a six-foot-high fence now surrounds the state capitol, all in preparation for anything, with President-Elect Joe Biden's inauguration just days away. Police cars at every entrance, and officers patrolling the capitol grounds. "We're taking important steps here in California in light of what we saw at our nation's capital just last week," said Newsom in a video addressing the changes made the capitol. The move comes after the FBI warned of possible armed protesters at all 50 state capitols. "It seems a little bit wild to me that there may be some protesting tomorrow about this," said Matt Kinghorn. Kinghorn and Sam Porras were jogging around the newly erected capitol fence. Something they do often. "I live right down the street," said Kinghorn. "So I've seen all of these protests and they're very lively." "Have you ever seen the capitol blocked off like this before?" asked Action News Now Reporter Esteban Reynoso. "No, never," responded Kinghorn. "No, I don't think so. No," replied Porras. "We will respond to any potential violent civil unrest leading up to or during the inaugural if required," said Newsom. The CHP denied a permit for a pro-trump rally at the capitol on Friday, citing COVID-19 protocols after more than 3,000 people were expected to attend. "It's definitely alarming seeing the fence," said Porras. "But I think they're taking the proper precautions because of what we witnessed last week at the national Capitol. I think it's great that they're doing it." On top of the fence and officers, Newsom ordered an initial deployment of 1,000 National Guardsmen. "There will be no tolerance for violence," said Newsom. "That's why today, along with the CHP and office of emergency services I've activated the California National Guard to protect critical state infrastructure in and around the state capitol." CHP Willows confirmed with Action News Now they have sent officers here to the state capitol to assist in patrol. The FBI Sacramento field office released a statement saying it is working with other federal, state and local agencies. It has set up a command post. FBI personnel involved include bomb technicians, tactical teams and intelligence teams. Andersen Global initiates expansion into Sweden with collaborating firm Unum Tax, adding breadth to its European platform. Unum Tax, established in 2019, provides tax services to businesses, organizations and foundations with a primary focus on large and medium-sized companies in all industries. Led by Managing Partner Lynda Ondrasek Olofsson, the Stockholm-based firm specializes in tax consulting, due diligence, transaction support, VAT, income tax and tax structuring. Our firms foundation is built by experienced tax advisors who are passionate about helping clients navigate the ever-changing tax climate, Lynda said. We understand the need for innovative, seamless solutions at the local and international level, and we dedicate ourselves to delivering best-in-class services to ensure comprehensive and customized solutions. We look forward to collaborating with Andersen Global as we share a common vision of serving clients at the highest level. We have already established a working relationship with the firm, and their experience and knowledge of their market enhances our competitive edge in the region, Andersen Global Chairman and Andersen CEO Mark Vorsatz said. The firm shares our organizations commitment to independence and transparency, and provides our organization with another strong building block as we continue to create an even more robust presence in Europe. Andersen Global is an international association of legally separate, independent member firms comprised of tax and legal professionals around the world. Established in 2013 by U.S. member firm Andersen Tax LLC, Andersen Global now has more than 6,000 professionals worldwide and a presence in over 230 locations through its member firms and collaborating firms. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114005275/en/ Irish gov't, Catholic Church apologize for rampant mistreatment of mothers, kids at church-run homes Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Officials representing both the Republic of Ireland and the Irish Catholic Church have officially apologized for the rampant mistreatment of unwed mothers and their children at church-run homes. Recently, Irelands Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes released a report on the homes, examining their operations from 1922 to 1998, with earlier decades showing harsh treatments for residents of said homes. According to the Executive Summary of the report, available for download here, approximately 9,000 children died while at the homes, which equals 15% of all children who lived at the homes. The very high rate of infant mortality (first year of life) in Irish mother and baby homes is probably the most disquieting feature of these institutions, noted the summary. The death rate among illegitimate children was always considerably higher than that among legitimate children but it was higher still in mother and baby homes: in the years 1945-'46, the death rate among infants in mother and baby homes was almost twice that of the national average for illegitimate children. In a speech before Parliament on Wednesday, Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin offered an apology on behalf of the state, which helped to run the homes. Children born outside of marriage were stigmatized and were treated as outcasts in school and in wider society. Some children who were subsequently boarded-out experienced heartbreaking exploitation, neglect and abuse within the families and communities in which they were placed. This was unforgivable. The sense of abandonment felt by many of these children is palpable in the witness accounts," he said. "The circumstances of their birth, the arrangements for their early care, the stigma they experienced and the continuing lack of birth information, is a terrible burden in their lives. I want to offer my own apology to the children who were hidden away, treated as a commodity, or as second-class citizens and to the mothers who for whom there was no other option but to give up their child, Martin continued. Church and State ran these homes together, operating hand in glove, equally culpable, and did so with the full knowledge and acquiescence of wider society. Church and State re-enforced social prejudice and judgement when they should have tried to change it. Martin went on to conclude that now is our opportunity to make restitution on behalf of the generations that preceded us, adding that there were lessons here for us as a society and a State today. Today is a day of atonement, when we express our horror and sorrow at the story of Ireland told in this report, when we promise to do right by those who suffered, he added. Archbishop Eamon Martin, head of the Irish Catholic Church, also released a statement on the report, saying that it showcased a dark chapter in the life of Church and society. I accept that the Church was clearly part of that culture in which people were frequently stigmatized, judged and rejected, the Archbishop said, according to Reuters. For that, and for the long-lasting hurt and emotional distress that has resulted, I unreservedly apologize to the survivors and to all those who are personally impacted by the realities it uncovers. Americas first female vice president-elect will appear on the February cover of Vogue wearing her signature Chuck Taylors and, while it would be hyperbole to suggest this particular sartorial choice is dividing the nation, its certainly dividing social media. Americas first female vice president-elect will appear on the February cover of Vogue wearing her signature Chuck Taylors and, while it would be hyperbole to suggest this particular sartorial choice is dividing the nation, its certainly dividing social media. VOGUE / TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICE Social media users are lambasting Vice President-elect Kamala Harris February 2021 Vogue shoot, decrying its lighting, backdrop and wardrobe direction. The leaked cover of Kamala D. Harris, photographed by Tyler Mitchell, features the soon-to-be madam Vice-President wearing her own clothes, including those low-profile Converse sneakers shes famous for. She looks approachable and friendly, the embodiment of the subhead positioned directly beneath her: "the new America." But she doesnt look like shes about to become second in command. And she doesnt look Vogue. Elected women are damned if they do, damned if they dont. The act of a politician appearing on the cover of a glossy fashion magazine a space usually reserved for models, actors and pop stars with wind-whipped hair and dresses cut to there is already fraught. Look too sexy or too glamorous, show too much decolletage, and your credibility is suddenly called into question. TYLER MITCHELL / VOGUE Vogue published a polished image (left) of U.S. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on the digital cover of their February issue, but opted for a more casual shot in the print version. But even Harris cover was deemed "too" something in this case, "too casual." Some of the covers critics felt that casualness of the clothing, which Harris chose, of the pose undermined Harris power and achievement, even going as far as to say it was disrespectful. "The cover did not give Kamala D. Harris due respect," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic and fashion editor Robin Givhan in the Washington Post. "It was overly familiar. It was a cover image that, in effect, called Harris by her first name without invitation." This is not an unfair assessment. Indeed, Harris a woman who, again, made history deserves a glamorous, powerful, stop-you-in-your-tracks cover. This is Vogue, after all. VANITY FAIR Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York appeared on the December 2020 cover of Vanity Fair looking both confident and glamorous, but social media commentators pounced on the fact she, a self-described democratic socialist, had posed in $14,000 worth of clothing between the cover and the inside spread. But imagine, for a second, the absolute fit people would have thrown if the incoming VP had appeared on the cover of Vogue in couture. Oh wait, we dont need to imagine it: when Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York appeared on the December 2020 cover of Vanity Fair looking both confident and glamorous, social media commentators pounced on the fact she, a self-described democratic socialist, had posed in $14,000 worth of clothing between the cover and the inside spread, as though that suddenly made her Marie Antoinette. (Apparently, some people think one keeps the clothes, which is adorable.) Harris sidesteps those criticisms, but her Vogue moment is lost in the process. No one would accuse Harris of looking too glamourous but the photo doesnt convey her power or the weight of her moment, either. Shes clasping her hands in front of her body in that folded pose favoured by 6 p.m. news anchors the world over, smiling warmly if stiffly. And she looks small, her frame overwhelmed by large bolts of fabric that, while symbolically meaningful the pink and green are the colours of her Howard University sorority look unfortunately like someones unironed drapes. A powerful woman with so many firsts beside her name deserves a commanding cover. Moreover, she deserves to take up space. In an alternate cover photo, which will be used digitally, she looks positively vice-presidential in a powder-blue suit, American flag pin affixed to her lapel. Its certainly the more formal and more polished of the two images but its also the more boring. The safe choice. From an editorial standpoint, its easy to get why Vogue chose the Chuck Taylors shot as the cover: its the more interesting photo and, one suspects, the more "her" photo. Sure, to be photographed for the cover of Vogue in sneakers is perhaps to be underdressed for the moment. But it is memorable, which is a stopover on the way to iconic. Its a photo of a woman wearing exactly what she wants. The power is implied. jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @JenZoratti A teenage girl has died after being pulled unconscious from the water at a public pool in the Hunter region of NSW. The 13-year-old girl was pulled from the pool after getting into trouble in the water at Maitland Aquatic Centre on Les Darcy Drive, Maitland, at about 3.30pm on Friday. Lifeguards tried desperately to revive her with CPR but to no avail. Police and emergency responders at the scene on Friday Maitland Aquatic Centre (pictured) where the tragedy took place on Friday Paramedics took over and she was rushed to John Hunter Hospital in a critical condition where she later died, NSW Police said in a release on Friday evening. The girl is yet to be formally identified and her name has not yet been released. The tragedy took place before a large group of relatives. One woman collapsed from shock. 'It's just a very sad situation for all the people in the pool and particularly the family,' Chief Inspector Tony Townsend told 9News. Paramedics tried to revive the girl as she was rushed to hospital in a critical condition but tragically she died. Pictured: paramedics at the scene on Friday NSW Ambulance Inspector Jamie Warhurst told the Newcastle Herald the scene at the pool had been heartbreaking. 'No words can describe the scene we were faced with this afternoon,' Inspector Warhurst said, before commending lifeguards, bystanders and police for their work in trying to revive the girl. Police are investigating and a report will be prepared for the coroner. 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. The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This weeks issue is written by Yan Zhuang and Damien Cave from the Australia bureau. What happens when a countrys politicians cant agree on the color of the sky? In the midst of all thats been happening in the United States, Australias acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack filling in for Prime Minister Scott Morrison who is on holiday recently defended the right of parliamentarian colleagues to spread misinformation on social media about the coronavirus and the American election by making this comparison: You might look out there and say the sky is blue and I can see from here that its gray, he told local journalists. If we go out from under this rotunda there are probably blue patches. Clearly, as the fallout to last weeks White House siege last week continues in the United States with Donald Trump making history as the first American president to be impeached twice, its effects are also being felt overseas. And in Australia, where the conservative government has been cozying up to President Trump for years and stopped short of directly criticizing him over the White House violence, the presidents suspension from social media platforms seems to have led his allies to issue a surprisingly vocal defense of the right to say whatever you want on social media, even if its not true or so close to untrue as to be a bit absurd. Mr. McCormack seemed to be saying that if there is a tiny patch of blue, however fleeting, that gives someone the right to say it was a beautiful, clear and sunny day. A Madison County man looking for a good deal on a car literally got more than he bargained for when he purchased one through a government auction - about two kilos of heroin, according to authorities. WHNT is reporting that Rick Joyner went to a government auction in Tennessee recently to get his foster son Tyrese Allen a car. Using a government auction site, he purchased a Ford Taurus for $500 that had been taken in a drug seizure. The car was full of junk and all kinds of stuff, Joyner said. But he was told that anything inside was his now, and not to worry. Nah, we got it all; dont worry about it, he was told. After towing the car back to Alabama, they popped the trunk and found a Walmart bag inside, Joyner told the station. Inside the bag were two bundles, heavily taped. I was looking at it and I thought, Something dont look right with this, he said. The bundles were turned over to the Madison County Sheriffs Office, who said they contained about two kilos of heroin worth approximately $300,000. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... There was an era and that era was the 1970s when a Time magazine poll named news anchor Walter Cronkite as the most trusted man in America, and Watergate investigative heroes Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were largely responsible for the occupation of journalist regularly charting near the top of the rankings of most admired professions in the USA. (Even today, 99% of mainstream American journalists remain committed to delivering the truth, despite the delusional cries of Fake news! popularized by certain public figures.) If we were to conduct a poll of the most trusted actors in America, Id argue Tom Hanks would be near the top of that list, and Hanks is perfectly cast as an 1870 news anchor of sorts in Paul Greengrass gritty and visceral and deeply resonant News of the World, a rough-and-tumble Texas road-trip movie that plays like a hybrid of the John Wayne movies The Searchers and True Grit, and even reminded me a little of George Clooneys recent epic The Midnight Sky. Hanks reteams with his Captain Phillips director to play a very different kind of captain one Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a Civil War veteran who fought for the Confederate infantry and suffered injuries both external and internal and has now carved out a unique way of making a living, i.e., he rides from town to town in the raw and rough state of Texas (where many havent fully accepted losing the war, and racially motivated violence is lurking around every corner) and literally reads the news of the world to the townsfolk for 10 cents a head, bringing them the latest developments from near and afar, whether it be an outbreak of meningitis, a coal mine tragedy or a deadly ferry accident. (Hanks is such an all-American actor, and yet this is his first Western.) Jefferson is a stoic man, a widower who keeps to himself, but his solitary, nomad life is upended when he happens across a 10-year-old girl named Johanna (Helena Zengel), who has spent much of her life as a captive of the Kiowa tribe and has been left with the authorities after her captors were killed. Jefferson takes on the responsibility of transporting the girl to her only surviving relatives in the far-off Hill Country town of Castroville, and thus begins a long and arduous journey, made all the more difficult because Johanna is deeply resentful of this strange man, speaks not a word of English and doesnt even understand the concept of a knife and fork. Theres a lot of learning to be had along the way. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ With the lush and moving score by James Newton Howard setting the epic tone, and director of photography Dariusz Wolski providing striking and stark visuals (New Mexico stands in for Texas), News of the World has a rather deliberate pace that allows for the inevitable bonding between the world-weary and tough but good-hearted Jefferson and the wild and rebellious Johanna, who comes to trust perhaps the first adult who has ever shown her compassion and kindness. Jefferson has committed terrible atrocities in his life and has known great tragedy, and Johannas first 10 years on this Earth have been filled with horror and sorrow, and though they dont realize it at first, each is the others last best hope for salvation. We know these two will run into nearly insurmountable obstacles along the way, and director Greengrass does his usual superb job of amping up the suspense, whether Jefferson is dealing with a racist power broker named Mr. Farley (Thomas Francis Murphy) in one town who forces Jefferson to read fake news propaganda, or engaged in a prolonged and deadly shootout with a band of nasty outlaws led by Michael Angelo Covinos suitably hiss-worthy Almay, who wants to capture Johanna and turn her into a child prostitute. (The very dimes Jefferson charges to read the news of the world come in extremely handy during this confrontation, and Ill leave it at that.) Director Greengrass is a master at combining sympathetic character studies with docudrama, staccato action sequences in films ranging from his Matt Damon Bourne trilogy to nonfiction-based films such as Green Zone and United 93 and the aforementioned Captain Phillips, and hes at the top of his game here in this expertly crafted adaptation of the 2016 novel by Paulette Jiles. News of the World works at the highest levels as a story of two lost souls who find each other, and as a crackling good, blood-spattered Western. News of the World 4 stars RATED: PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, mature thematic material and some strong language WHEN: Available on-demand WHERE: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Vudu and Xfinity RTHK: N Korea shows off new submarine-launched missiles North Korea displayed what appeared to be a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) at a parade on Thursday night, state media reported, capping more than a week of political meetings with a show of military might. Clad in a leather coat and fur hat, leader Kim Jong Un smiled and waved as he oversaw the parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square, photos by state media showed. The parade featured rows of marching soldiers, as well as a range of military hardware including tanks and rocket launchers. At the end, a number of what analysts said appeared to be new variants of short-range ballistic missiles and SLBMs rolled into the square on trucks. "The world's most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missiles, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces," news agency KCNA reported. North Korea has test-fired several SLBMs from under water, and analysts say it is seeking to develop an operational submarine to carry the missiles. Photos released by state media showed the SLBM was labelled Pukguksong-5, potentially marking an upgrade over the Pukguksong-4 that was unveiled at a larger military parade in October. "The new missile definitely looks longer," Michael Duitsman, a researcher at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said on Twitter. Unlike that October parade, Thursday's event did not showcase North Korea's largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are believed to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead to anywhere in the United States. The US Department of Defense declined to comment. South Korea's government did not immediately comment on the parade, but the foreign ministry said its top nuclear envoy had discussed North Korea's recent moves with his counterpart in the United States. (Reuters) This story has been published on: 2021-01-15. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. 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. 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. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed before the Delhi High Court against WhatsApp's new privacy policy, that argues that it violates the right to privacy of an individual. The plea filed by Chaitanya Rohilla has said that WhatsApp and Facebook have already been sharing users' data with the third party in unauthorised manner. And now, with the updation in its policy, WhatsApp will be able to look into the virtual activities of the users. The petitioner has contended that WhatsApp rolled out its new policy without seeking permission from the government, and added it will violate the fundamental rights of Indian users. The petition has claimed that WhatsApp has essentially taken away the choice users had till now to not share their data with Facebook and third-party apps. In fact, the messaging app had made it mandatory for its users to accept the new policy by February 8, or else the services and accounts of the respective users would be terminated. The petitioner has expressed fear that the new policy will give Facebook, WhatsApp and third-party apps a high level of insight into a person's private activities without any government oversight and in the absence of a data protection authority. The PIL has sought an immediate stay on the new privacy policy of WhatsApp and has also appealed Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to ensure that WhatsApp's policies don't violate Indian law. The petitioner has pointed to the disparity in the updated privacy policy as it won't apply to the European Region due to the strict GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe is a stringent and robust law protecting the privacy and data of its people, unlike India where the Personal Data Protection bill is yet to be enacted into law. Rohilla has said WhatsApp and Facebook are trying to arbitrarily enforce their policy in India as they see vulnerability in the absence of any comprehensive law in this domain. The High Court is yet to fix a date of hearing on the petition. WhatsApp, on January 4, informed users about the changes in its terms of service and public policy. This led to a user backlash and triggered memes on the internet over WhatsApp's alleged sharing of user information with Facebook. Many users have also started shifting to rival platforms, and apps like Telegram and Signal have seen millions of downloads globally in the immediate aftermath of the event. Messaging service Telegram has crossed the 500-million subscriber mark globally with an addition of 25 million new users in the last few days. While it did not specify India-specific user numbers, Telegram said 38 per cent of the new users are from Asia. Similarly, Signal had said the Indian market has "completely exceeded all expectations" and that the growth in the past few days has driven the company to add capacity to meet the burgeoning demand. Also read: BT Buzz: Why WhatsApp's clarification on privacy policy is misleading Also read: WhatsApp's loss is Telegram's gain; app sees 25 million new users in 3 days Shanghai (Gasgoo)- SAIC-GM-Wuling (SGMW), a joint venture between General Motors and two Chinese automakers, was crowned the No.1 carmaker in China by 2020 all-electric vehicles sales by virtue of its GSEV (Global Small Electric Vehicle) series, said the company. Hongguang MINIEV; photo credit: SGMW According to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), the annual sales of SGMW's GSEV family, which include the Hongguang MINIEV, the New Baojun E300/E300 Plus, the Baojun E100 and the Baojun E200, totaled 174,005 units last year, surging 190% compared to the year-ago period. Notably, the Hongguang MINIEV had a cumulative sales volume of 127,651 units after hitting the market in July 2020. In terms of monthly sales, the mini-sized full-electric model was honored the best-selling new energy vehicle (NEV) model in China for the fourth month in a row as of Dec. 2020. Based on consumers' demands and available scenarios, SGMW builds the GSEV architecture to refine the seating space, safety, energy consumption, power supply and after-sale services for small-sized EVs. Under the GSEV, the likes of the Hongguang MINIEV, the New Baojun E300/E300 Plus all feature minimalist physical platform, open hardware platform, highly-integrated software platform and smart cloud-based platform. Based on the GSEV platform, SGMW has developed its driverless logistics vehicles, smart governmental affair cars, smart mobile temperature measuring cars, and self-driving cars for disinfection and sterilization. New Baojun Smart Magic Cube; photo credit: SGMW In Nov. 2020, SGMW exhibited a mobile intelligent architecture called New Baojun Smart Magic Cube at the Auto Guangzhou 2020, which integrates modules of communications, driving, energy and drivetrain. SGMW said it plowed 380 million yuan ($58.746 million) in a laboratory to push ahead with its development on electrification, intelligence, connectivity and car sharing. Recognized by the CNAS (China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment), the lab is able to conduct testing and validation related to electric motors, batteries, ECUs, high-voltage auto parts, new energy complete vehicles, CAN (controller area network), HIL (Hardware-in-the-loop), intelligent driving and big data. A Black woman who worked in the mail room at a North Carolina hospital said she was subject to a hostile work environment for years at the hands of her white supervisor and colleagues before she was forced to quit in October. Now the hospital faces a federal discrimination lawsuit. Pardee Memorial Hospital in Hendersonville is accused of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as several state equal protection laws in a complaint moved to federal court this week. Court filings show the former employee, Indian Jackson, initially filed the lawsuit in Henderson County Superior Court in November. The constant willful harassment and racially charged commentary... plaintiff endured while employed by defendant constitutes extreme and outrageous conduct that went beyond all possible bounds of decency, the complaint states. An attorney for Jackson did not immediately respond to McClatchy News request for comment Friday. A representative and attorneys for the hospital declined to comment. Pardee Hospital is about 30 minutes south of Asheville and is managed by UNC Health Care, according to its website. Jackson started working in the hospitals emergency room registration unit in 2015 but moved to the mail room the following year. As manager, the complaint said Jackson was denied a key to the mail room and access to certain passwords critical to performing her job. She was also reportedly forced to take her lunch breaks in her office. When Jackson wore her hair naturally to the office, the complaint says a white colleague asked her oh my god why would you wear your hair like that? God made me this way, Jackson reportedly responded. Jackson told her supervisor, but she said nothing was done about it. Instead, on two separate occasions, her supervisor threatened her with 50 lashings if she didnt perform her job duties as mail room manager correctly, the lawsuit said. When Jackson told the companys CEO, the complaint alleges her supervisor began retaliating against her by rifling through her belongings looking for something to try and accuse plaintiff of wrongdoing. Story continues According to the lawsuit, Jacksons colleagues also made racially hostile comments as they watched the video of George Floyds death together. One colleague, who the complaint describes as white, reportedly asked what color is he? Floyd, 46, died in May after now-fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed a knee into his neck for about eight minutes, as three other officers didnt intervene. Jackson took an extended leave of absence under the Family and Medical Leave Act in June, citing the hospitals racially hostile work environment and retaliatory acts. She was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD and forced to leave her job in October, the lawsuit said. The complaint makes claims for violations of the North Carolina Equal Employment Practices Act, the North Carolina Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act and the Civil Rights Act. It also makes claims for a hostile work environment on the basis of race, negligent hiring and supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jackson is seeking a jury trial, compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys fees. MONTPELIER, Vt., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the fourth consecutive year, the last week of January has been officially recognized as Vermont School Choice Week by the state's governor. This year, Gov. Phil Scott's proclamation for the Week recognizes that every child in Vermont deserves access to an effective education, and it is important for parents to explore and identify the best learning option for their child. Around the nation, more than a dozen other governors have proclaimed School Choice Week in their states so far, and hundreds of city, county, and town leaders have proclaimed the Week in their jurisdictions. Parents, schools, and other organizers have planned 69 virtual celebrations across Vermont, ranging from at-home activities to virtual open houses at schools or school spirit days on social media. All activities aim to celebrate school choices and spark conversations about the diverse and innovative learning opportunities that help children succeed. More than 33,000 events have been independently planned for School Choice Week nationwide, which is taking place virtually this year. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool participate in the Week. "School choice is life-changing: It allows families to find educational fits where their children grow academically and personally," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are grateful to Gov. Scott for recognizing this Week and we encourage Vermont families to continue working toward increased learning options for all children." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/vermont . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has refuted allegations that Minister for Niger Delta, Go... The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has refuted allegations that Minister for Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio, bribed him in respect of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Malami was accused of receiving billions to facilitate the appointment of Effiong Okon Akwa as NDDC Sole Administrator. In a statement on Friday, his spokesman, Umar Gwandu, called the claim filthy assumptions of mischief makers and detractors. Gwandu said it was an attempt to cast aspersion on Malami and dent his hard earned reputation with unsubstantiated allegations spread by perfidious elements. The Minister has not collected and does not intend at any time to receive any gratification from any dealing and discharging any function he is constitutionally empowered to perform, he noted. Malami dared individuals who have any information regarding those who facilitated and accepted the purported gratification to come out publicly. The AGF further encouraged them to approach relevant security and anti-corruption agencies with the facts. .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Had it been most any day other than the one following the historic second impeachment of Donald Trump for inciting a riot on Capitol Hill, it likely would have been top of the front page news in New Mexico along with unanswered questions about New Mexicos rollout of the vaccine. So while its understandable it wasnt, the first confirmed case in New Mexico of the more contagious strain of the coronavirus that has led to a new round of lockdowns in the United Kingdom and that is sweeping across Europe is yet another significant and sobering development in a pandemic that has claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 New Mexicans. The state Department of Health announced Wednesday it had identified the new virus variant in a case associated with travel to the UK in December. The person infected is a Bernalillo County man in his 60s who is said to be recovering and is not hospitalized. His recovery is good news. The presence of the more contagious strain is not. Even though it isnt considered more deadly, any dynamic that leads to a significant increase in the number of cases means more hospitalizations and more deaths. Its just plain math. ADVERTISEMENTSkip ................................................................ And its a reminder that we can help ourselves, our colleagues and our loved ones by doubling down on mask-wearing, social distancing and staying home when possible until most of us receive the vaccine which at this point also is considered to be effective against the new strain. Ah yes, the vaccine. The good news is that according to state officials, New Mexico has one of the highest rates of administering the shots in the nation, and was the first to have a vaccine registration website which explains why you dont see the long lines of people waiting hours to get vaccinated here. And Journal readers have submitted letters applauding the state for the ease and efficiency that allowed them to get vaccinated in a timely manner. But there continue to be speed bumps in the rollout. During her news briefing on Thursday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham acknowledged that working the kinks out in the logistics was more complicated than we wanted and that the DOHs call center for those with questions or who are not able to register online was clearly overwhelmed. We can do better she said. We did have some logistics problems we are going to be doing better every day. The state has designated vaccination priority based on four primary groupings. Phase 1A includes front-line health care workers, first responders and residents and staff of long-term care facilities, all of whom are eligible now for the vaccine. Phase 1B includes people over 75 and people with conditions that put them at high risk (these two groups are also eligible now), and caretakers and some front-line essential workers who cant work remotely (these will become eligible soon). Group 1C would include adults over 60 without at-risk conditions and other essential workers who cant work remotely (lawyers and media are examples). Those are scheduled for spring. Then there is Phase 2, which is everybody else. They are scheduled for summer. Lujan Grisham announced Thursday that daily updates regarding the number of vaccines the state has received and administered will be released on a dashboard similar to one that provides daily case counts, hospitalizations and deaths. That is good news, because as one Journal reader pleaded: If I cant get the vaccine, at least give me information. Among other questions: How does DOH prioritize who gets vaccines within each group? Are those with certain chronic conditions given higher priority? How is that determined? How soon will the issues with the overwhelmed call center be resolved? On Thursday, Lujan Grisham urged those with questions to call the DOH line (1-855-600-3453), pledging We will be able to answer your call. The vaccine generally has been considered safe, but is DOH tracking cases of side effects and will it make that information public on a timely basis? Make no mistake. The virus has upended our lives. And the vaccine rollout is a huge task. Lujan Grisham pledged Thursday that many of the issues that have buffeted the rollout will be addressed, and New Mexicans will have access to more information. Lets hope that occurs quickly. Because as the governor said Thursday, this is a life and death matter, and New Mexicans are anxious. They deserve answers. 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. The nationwide COVID vaccine program will be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 10:30 AM tomorrow through video conferencing. Close to 3000 sites have been set up across the nation. Each center will inoculate close to 100 beneficiaries a day. India is all set to begin the worlds largest vaccination drive from tomorrow. The nationwide COVID vaccine program will be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 10:30 AM tomorrow through video conferencing. Close to 3000 sites have been set up across the nation. Each center will inoculate close to 100 beneficiaries a day and approximately 3,00,000 healthcare workers will be given the vaccine on the first day of the drive. These sites would be virtually connected to each other and all vaccine related information will be recorded on the Co-win app to facilitate the whole program. The app has been developed by the Health Ministry and will have real time information about vaccine stock, storage and transportation of vaccine. The beneficiaries who will be vaccinated would also be closely tracked after getting vaccinated. A 247 hotline (1075) has also been established to address all vaccine related queries. With time the number of vaccine sites will be increased to 5,000 and more. Batches of vaccines, both Covishield and Covaxin, have been shipped to 13 cities across the nation and are kept under armed protection. According to the Health Ministry, the beneficiaries will not be given the choice between the vaccines, it will be decided by the health ministry itself as to which vaccine would go to which state depending on the logistics. Also Read: Huaweis Meng Wanzhou lavish lifestyle under scanner: Hearing underway in Canadian court Also Read: US imposes ban on cotton from Chinas Xinjiang region; How will it impact India? The Centre and states are coordinating for the vaccination drive. The government has requested for voters data from the Election Commission for vaccination in the later phases, the process of vaccination is theorized to be similar to voting in elections and citizens will have to present an ID proof at the time of inoculation. Lists of police officers and officials engaged in COVID 19 duty have also been sought. States will link data of healthcare workers and health facilities to facilitate the process. In addition, database of military and paramilitary personnel will be provided by Defence and Home ministries. The whole coordination among various departments and the Centre and States are set to work under the principles of Jan Bhagidaari. Citing precautions and contraindications for Covid-19 vaccination ahead of massive immunisation scheduled from tomorrow, the Union Health Ministry has said that interchangeability of vaccine is not permitted while pregnant and lactating mothers should not receive Covid-19 vaccine at this time. In a letter to the States/Union Territories, the health ministry has shared the competitive factsheet for both the vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin). They contain information on vaccine platform, physical specifications, dosage, cold storage requirements, contraindications and minor AEFIs. Also Read | Covid far from over in some states Covishield and Covaxin: Instructions for states The health ministry has directed the States/UTs to disseminate information to program managers across all levels and through them to call chain handlers and vaccinators for ready reference. Mentioning precautions and contraindications for COVID-19 vaccination, the letter noted: "Under the emergency use authorisation, COVID-19 vaccination is indicated only for 18 years and above. Interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccine is not permitted. The second dose should also be of the same COVID-19 vaccine which was administered as the first dose." In case of co-administration of vaccines: if required, COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines should be separated by an interval of at least 14 days, the ministry said. Explaining contraindication, the letter said, "A person with a history of an anaphylactic or allergic reaction to a previous dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Immediate or delayed onset anaphylaxis or allergic reaction to vaccine or injection able therapies, pharmaceutical products, food items etc." "Pregnancy and lactation: pregnant and lactating women have not been part of any COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial so far. Therefore, women who are pregnant or not sure of the pregnancy, and lactating women should not receive COVID-19 vaccine at this time," the government said. Provisional and temporary contraindications: in these conditions, COVID-19 vaccination is to be deferred for 4 to 8 weeks after recovery. "Persons having active symptoms of SARS-CoV2 to infection. SARS-CoV2 patients who have been given anti-SARS-CoV2 monoclonal antibodies on convalescent plasma. Acutely unwell and hospitalized patients (with or without intensive care) patients due to any illness. Special precautions: vaccine should be administered with caution in persons with a history of any bleeding or coagulation disorder, for example, clotting factor deficiency, coagulopathy or platelet disorder. Following conditions are not contraindicated for COVID-19 vaccines: a person with a past history of SARS-CoV2 infection or and or RTPCR positive illness. History of chronic diseases and comorbidities (cardiac, neurological, pulmonary, metabolic, renal, malignancies). Immuno-deficiency, HIV, patients on immunosuppression due to any condition (response to the Covid vaccine may be less in these individuals.) India has got two Covid-19 vaccines--Covishield and Covaxin Emergency Use Authorisation after meeting going through established safety and immunogenicity through a well prescribed regulatory process. This vaccine may cost in the range of 200 to 295 in India. Earlier in the day, the health ministry said that full initial procurement amount of 1.65 crore doses of COVISHIELD and COVAXIN vaccines have been allocated to all states and Union Territories in the proportion of Health Care Workers database. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. The Government has vowed to 'stimulate business growth' under a potential post-Brexit shake-up of labour laws amid claims ministers could scrap the EU's 48-hour limit on the working week. Labour today accused ministers of planning to 'take a sledgehammer' to workers' rights after the Financial Times reported a raft of changes are being considered. But Number 10 hit back and said there are no plans to 'lower workers' rights'. The Government is said to be looking at tweaking the rules on taking breaks and not including overtime pay when calculating some holiday pay entitlements that guarantee most people 25 days a year. The newspaper also reported ministers want to remove the requirement on businesses to report working hours, in a bid to save an estimated 1billion, and business leaders are said to have been consulted. The Department for Business is putting together a package of measures with the backing of Downing Street, which if approved could lead to a war with Brussels if Eurocrats believe the changes breach the terms of the new post-Brexit trade treaty. No ministers have signed off on the plans yet and the proposals have not been put to Cabinet. But a number of business leaders have been sounded out on the proposals. A spokesman for the Prime Minister said today: 'We are not going to lower workers' rights. We will continue to protect and enhance workers' rights now we have left the EU. That is not something that is going to change. We have one of the best workers' rights records in the world.' The spokesman added: 'We will continue to look at policies to help stimulate business growth, innovation and job creation but those policies would never be at the expense of workers' rights.' Commuters head to London as it emerged the Government is looking at changes to working rules it might bring in after leaving the EU What have ministers discussed reforming after Brexit 48-hour limit on the working week By law an employee cannot work more than an average 48 hours a week as one of the EU's core 'level playing field' rules. Brussels has spent years trying to make it mandatory but many EU members, including Britain before it left, had an opt out. By UK law an employee cannot work more than an average 48 hours a week, unless they agree to work more hours by signing a waiver. Breaks An employee has the right to an uninterrupted break of at least 20 minutes if they work more than 6 hours in a day. In some cases, an employee might have to take this break in different ways. This could be if something happens at work that's unexpected and outside of the employer's control, such as an accident. For example, the break could be taken as 2 separate 10-minute breaks. Overtime/paid holiday A 2017 ruling on overtime and holiday pay means the four weeks of annual leave is a minimum requirement under the Working Time Regulations. UK overtime holiday pay law grants workers and employees additional time. The Working Time Regulations are British law that includes entitlement to an extra 1.6 weeksthat makes 5.6 weeks as a minimum. Advertisement Many Tory MPs are likely to welcome the potential shake-up of the 'working time directive' although any move to do so is likely to infuriate trade union leaders and could risk alienating working class voters, especially in the 'Red Wall' seats the party won in the 2019 election. Some Conservative MPs believe now is the perfect time to improve regulations and do away with red tape so that the economy can recover as quickly as possible post-coronavirus crisis. The Government has made clear that it has no intention of 'lowering workers' rights'. The Department for Business told the FT: 'The UK has one of the best workers' rights records in the world. 'Leaving the EU allows us to continue to be a standard setter and protect and enhance UK workers' rights.' But Ed Miliband, Labour's shadow business secretary, said: 'This leak exposes the truth about the Government's priorities, which are way out of step with the needs of workers and their families. 'In the midst of the worst economic crisis in three centuries, ministers are preparing to tear up their promises to the British people and taking a sledgehammer to workers rights. 'These proposals are not about cutting red tape for businesses but ripping up vital rights for workers. They should not even be up for discussion.' Mr Miliband labelled the proposals a 'disgrace' and said Labour will fight 'tooth and nail' to stop such moves from taking place. After the FT story was published, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng insisted ministers are not planning to 'lower' workers' rights amid reports they are preparing to tear up key protections enshrined in EU law. He insisted that the Government wanted to improve workplace protections - not reduce them. 'We are not going to lower the standards of workers' rights,' he tweeted. 'The UK has one of the best workers' rights records in the world - going further than the EU in many areas. 'We want to protect and enhance workers' rights going forward, not row back on them.' The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said labour market policy was kept under 'regular review' to ensure businesses had the 'appropriate freedoms and flexibility to innovate and grow' while safeguarding protections for workers. It said in the 2019 Queen's Speech, the Government committed to introduce an employment Bill to strike 'the right balance between the flexibility that the economy needs and the security that workers deserve'. Home > 2021 > India Vaccine Rollout Plan Has Serious Shortcomings | Gyan Pathak by Gyan Pathak January 12, 2021 With the launch of the Worlds biggest immunization drive on January 16, India is all set to create a history, but with several ominous signs too. The whole vaccine rollout plan, as stands after the meeting of our Prime Minister and Chief Ministers of the states, sets top priority on perceived threats over the real threats, indicative of someone having laymens ideas calling the shots in the name of experts to prevail over all reasons and common sense. On the one hand some new biological threats, such and new strains of corona virus and bird flu, appear to be increasing, and on the other many vested interest groups are trying to derail Indias vaccination programme. Prime Minister has himself cautioned the Chief Ministers about the threat. The public expectation on PM and CMs meet on January 11 is not met with desired outcome. Our political leadership seemed either blindly relying on so called expert views that formed the basis of the vaccine rollout plan or it has been designed so intentionally on the basis of ideas of someone to appease him and to save themselves from the rigors of the scientific and well thought and planned exercise. Whatever be the case, it is not good for the nation or its people, especially those who are at risk of losing their life. The meeting even seemed to be unaware of the need to tweak both diagnostics and vaccine in the light of spreading new strains as well as changing the response to deal with residual challenges on the ground beyond the present action. At the time when the meeting was been held, there were only 4 lakh live COVID-19 cases, if we are to believe the government data. Who are at real risks of being infected? Not the entire nation but the patients and those who are in their proximity, such as their family members, medical professionals, and other dealing with them. All others are perceived to be at risk not at real risk. In the first state of the vaccine rollout plan one crore healthcare workers are to be vaccinated irrespective of theirs being at risk or not, while others persons at real risk on account of proximity with COVID-19 patients will have to wait. This is clearly not a wise decision, because all the healthcare workers of all the regions of the country are not at all at risk. Prime Minister has informed the chief ministers that the total cost at this stage of vaccination for 3 crore people will be borne by the Union Government, which is a good decision, but spending money from the exchequer not on the people really at risk but on the people who are merely perceived at risk is a bad decision, at a time when there is a short supply of money and vaccines. It also indicates the uncertainties about availability of fund from the Union Government to the fund starved State Governments for the next stages of the vaccination. In the second stage of vaccination of the phase one two crore frontline workers would undergo vaccination. It would also be based on profession and the perceived threat ignoring the real threats to other people. In the third stage, 26 crore people of above 50 years of age will be vaccinated ignoring people of other age groups at real risk, and even those with comorbidities. The people below the age of 50 years with comorbidites, even though at actual risks, will be inoculated in the fourth stage of the first phase, who are about one crore. In the first phase 30 crore people will be inoculated in this manner, which is clearly not based on the real risk and need of the people, but on mere idea of the government that it considers supreme. Vaccine to the people at risk is not seemed to be based on any scientific analysis on the ground, but on other considerations, such as the manner that suits the government and easier to plan and implement in a simplistic manner. The principle of the containment zone has been done away with. With the present plan of action even the people living in the containment zones will not get vaccines if they dont fall the government categories, while the people falling in their categories having no risk of the contagion and living outside the containment zone will get these. The present strategy of prioritization also ignores even 6.5 per cent of adults under 50 years of age having diabetes. Other comorbidities such as high blood pressure, in included, the percentage will be much higher. Since India dont have latest data for all the states, government should have planned with more open mind, to be able to respond to future emergencies and challenges in course of implementation of the drive. The other risk factors are still there because the vaccines still need further trials. Presently, they are approved for only emergency use. Rumours and misinformation about which the Prime Minister has warned the chief ministers revolve round this fact. And there are even corporate rivals too, cautioned our Prime Minister. It is certainly indicative of business interest in the whole affair of this biggest immunization drive of the world. There have already been allegations of money-making conspiracy behind the spread of corona and the manner of the response of the government and other players thereafter. Prime Minister warns about the threat of derailment, but has not revealed what his government has planned to counter this threat, if there is any as he claims. There are more vaccines in the pipeline and are expected to arrive by the time India starts inoculating senior citizens and those with comorbidities. The present stage of implementation will take at least three months if rollout remains smooth with no other new challenges. It required utmost care. Since it is absent from the very action plan of the day, smooth rollout and effective future response is doubtful. Infrastructure and logistics are yet to be improved in the light of the experience of the two dry runs conducted across the country. We have to be more responsible, the Prime Minister said in the meeting, but unfortunately it does not reflect in the present plan of action. (IPA Service) What do members really want? Simply put, they want their credit union to support their financial wellbeing. Members who agree that their credit union looks out for their financial wellbeing are three times more likely to be engaged. And, engaged members are 39% more likely to sign up for new services, 49% more likely to increase balances, and 32% more likely to seek out their credit union first for financial advice. But, often, credit union leaders conflate financial health with financial wellbeing. These are not the same. Financial health is about money; financial wellbeing is about a persons emotional relationship with that money. If you are making decisions for your credit union based on an inaccurate premise of financial health and trying instead to differentiate based on friendly service, youre missing the opportunity to serve members as fully as you could be and will lose members to your banking brethren. Gallup research has found that financial wellbeing does tend to get better with higher income. That might not be surprising; however, our research has also found that is not always the case. It is common that people have high financial health and low financial wellbeing and vice versa. For example, of those earning more than $120,000 per year, 43% are struggling or suffering in their financial wellbeing. As such, there are opportunities across all socioeconomic groups to improve financial wellbeing. Seoul, Jan 15 : A military parade to commemorate the eighth party congress of North Korea was held at the Kim Il Sung Square in central Pyongyang, state media reported on Friday. In a report, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that the country's top leader Kim Jong-un, also the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) who was re-elected at the party congress, appeared on Thursday at the tribune of the square together with members of the party's central leadership body and commanding officials of the military, reports Xinhua news agency. During the military parade, "the world's most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missile, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces", said the KCNA report. There was also formation flying to pay respect to the Party Central Committee and fireworks were set off to brighten the sky, it added. Apart from the military parade, art troupes on Wednesday gave a performance titled "We Sing of the Party" at an indoor stadium in Pyongyang to celebrate the congress. The eight-day congress of the ruling WPK opened on January 5 and concluded on Tuesday. Rakhi Sawant is currently ruling the Bigg Boss 14 house with her funny tactics and super-entertaining andaz. The controversial diva is known for her one-liners and recently, she tried the same on Rubina Dilaik's actor-husband and contestant Abhinav Shukla. In a live feed of Bigg Boss, Rakhi Sawant was seen flirting with Abhinav, as she is completely smitten by his charm. In the live feed, Rakhi Sawant asked Abhinav Shukla about the one thing that attracts him to a woman. To this Abhinav replies, "vichaar (Thoughts)". Overwhelmed with the actor's reply, Rakhi, as usual, threw a very funny line which will leave anyone in splits. Rakhi said, "Woh to mere paas hai hi nahi. Ek kaam karo, Vichaar aap Rubina Dilaik ke dekh lo, Achaar mera dekh lo (I don't have thoughts. Do one thing, take Rubina Dilaik's thoughts and my mannerism.)" Well, Rakhi's one-liners are indeed funny and it can make anyone speechless. Talking about her personal life, Rakhi Sawant reportedly got married to a businessman named Ritesh. The actress has still kept his identity under wraps. If reports are to be believed, he will enter the Bigg Boss 14 house to support his wife. However, there is no official confirmation about the same. Also Read : Bigg Boss 14 January 13 Highlights: Rakhi Woos Abhinav And Wears Sindoor For Him In The Captaincy Task Last week, Rakhi spoke to her mother Jaya Sawant through a video call, as she is hospitalised. In an interview with Times of India, Rakhi's mother revealed that her son-in-law Ritesh is taking care of all her medical expenses. Also Read : Bigg Boss 14: Yashraj Mukhate Remixes Rakhi Sawant's Funny Banter Into A 'Rhythm' [Video] Now, after all the reports, fans are damn excited to see Rakhi Sawant's husband. What about you? Do let us know in the comment section below. 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. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. U.S. Marshals raided a home in New Springville this week where a 22-year-old man tied to a fatal stabbing in Connecticut was taken into custody. Jahleel Bailey is accused of stabbing his sisters husband after a Dec. 13 dispute at the familys home in Bridgeport, Conn., authorities said Thursday. The defendant was taken into custody Monday without incident at a residence near the Heartland Village shopping district, according to a law enforcement source. Bailey will be extradited to Connecticut for an upcoming court appearance. A judge there has set bail at $1 million. Police entrapment operation resulted in acquittal Moscow City Court flickr.com/ Ilya Schurov 15:27 15/01/2021 MOSCOW, January 15 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court has acquitted two persons earlier sentenced to one year in prison each for possession of drugs in the result of a police entrapment operation, the courts press service informs RAPSI on Friday. Yet in 2013, a woman, who is a defendant in the case, purchased a certain quantity of amphetamine and passed it to her acquaintance, who, in turn, sold it to a witness involved in a test purchasing operation by the police. In the course of examination of an appeal of the defendants, the court established that they were actively provoked to purchase and possess the drug by the witness acting in the interests of the police; therefore, the defendants were acquitted for absence of elements of crime in their acts. 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. File Image: Representative Lauren Boebert under fire for sharing details about the location of House Speaker during the Capitol riots (AP) The demand for an investigation into Lauren Boebert gained traction after 68 elected officials from Colorado wrote to House speaker Nancy Pelosi, condemning the representatives alleged association with right-wing groups that supported the insurrection of Capitol Building." Ms Boebert is the representative for Colorado's third congressional district in Congress. We have heard overwhelmingly from our constituents, therefore her constituents, that there is deep concern about her actions leading up to and during the protests that turned into a violent deadly mob," said the letter signed by officials, including mayors, county commissioners and town council members, reported the Steamboat Pilot & Today newspaper. Ms Boebert had tweeted details about the location of Speaker Pelosi during the 6 January attack on the US Capitol that had left five people dead. We were locked in the House Chambers, she wrote, followed shortly with, The Speaker has been removed from the chambers," even as several House members confirmed that they were instructed to not share their location in the building. The lawmaker, who had supported president Donald Trumps claim of election fraud, is also being slammed by local news outlets for her role in the Capitol breach. Boebert is using her office to damage the US. We cant imagine thats what her constituents had in mind when they elected her just a few months ago, wrote the Denver Post, in a stinging editorial on Thursday. Coloradans especially her constituents need definitive answers about whether she was a hapless victim of Trumps actions or whether she was a participant in an effort to prevent the peaceful transition of power, it said. Ms Boebert, while condoning the Capitol riot had said: I denounced the violence over the summer just as I did the recent events at the Capitol. I defended our Constitution and I always will." However, she is under fire for disclosing the location of lawmakers which could have put their lives in danger. Story continues "So were we in the House. @laurenboebert was told by the Sergeant of Arms in the chamber to not make any social media posts. It was said repeatedly. She defied it because she is more closely aligned with the terrorists than the patriots," wrote Representative Eric Swalwell, who was housed with Ms Boebert during the siege. Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii also supported an investigation into congressional members who were coordinating with or aiding the rioters. "Its not clear to what extent the rioters were coordinating operationally with government officials, so we ought to be extremely careful in this line of inquiry," he said. "But we must discover which elected and appointed officials, if any, and which civil servants were helping the coup," Mr Schatz said. Earlier, on 8 January, Colorado House speaker, Russ George, during an interview with The Daily Sentinel, said that her role was unforgivable. Im inclined to hold everybody who had any role in (Wednesdays events) accountable and responsible, and that includes Boebert. Its unforgivable the Republican said. Read More Congresswoman Lauren Boebert refused Capitol security measures Rep Lauren Boebert faces calls to resign after Capitol riot House Latest: Republican Lauren Boebert wins Colorado House A crash Friday morning on Route 33 closed part of the highway and snarled traffic. A van rollover on Route 33 South was reported a little after 10 a.m., just past the Freemansburg Avenue interchange in Bethlehem Township. Nancy Run Fire Company reported they were informed there was a leaking nitrogen cylinder creating a hissing sound in the van. The leak was stopped, but it was not a nitrogen cylinder, they said. Traffic cameras showed a number of emergency vehicles on the right shoulder, with both southbound lanes blocked and traffic getting by on the left shoulder. The resulting backup was already near Easton Avenue by 10:19 a.m. Traffic on Route 33 North was unaffected. Earlier this week, a tractor-trailer exiting from Interstate 78 West to Route 33 North rolled onto its drivers side, right in front of a Honda CR-V. Pennsylvania State Police said the trucks trailer broke apart as it fell to the roadway, and the Honda was caught inside the wreckage. Rescue Engine 1413 and Rescue 1741 are currently operating an accident with rollover at 1.3 on RT 33 South. During... Posted by Nancy Run Fire Company on Friday, January 15, 2021 Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Mann, the national president of Bharatiya Kisan Union, on Thursday expressed gratitude over his nomination into the four-member committee but recused himself saying he would give up any position to prevent farmers' interests from being compromised. New Delhi : Members of the committee appointed by the Supreme Court to resolve farm laws deadlock should follow the suit of Bhupinder Singh Mann and not be on the "wrong side of history", a farmers' union said on Thursday. "Mann's decision is a welcome move. The other three members of the panel, who have shown pro-new farm laws stance should also follow Mann's suit. This ongoing agitation for rollback of the three agri laws is history in the making, and we urge they should not be on the wrong side of history," Bharatiya Kisan Union (Lok Shakti) spokesperson Shailesh Kumar Giri said. Apart from Mann, Shetkari Sanghatana (Maharashtra) president Anil Ghanwat, International Food Policy Research Institute's Pramod Kumar Joshi and agriculture economist Ashok Gulati were appointed on the panel. BKU (Lok Shakti) members have been camping at the Dalit Prerna Sthal in Noida since first week of December to demand withdrawal of the three new contentious laws. Besides BKU (Lok Shakti), members of BKU (Bhanu) are also staying put at Chilla at Noida-Delhi border over the issue. Meanwhile, scores of farmers belonging to the two BKU factions stayed put in Noida on Thursday night after celebrating 'Makar Sankranti' at the protest sites and burning symbolic copies of the new laws. Support also poured in for the BKU (Lok Shakti) as five of its members from Odisha joined the protest which already has farmers from various districts of Uttar Pradesh. "Among those who joined from Odisha are the union's Odisha unit chief Sangram Pillai," Giri said. BKU (Bhanu) and BKU (Lok Shakti) are not a part of the Sanyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella body of 40 farmers unions, which are leading the charge at Delhi's border points in Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur, but have extended their support to the cause. Thousands of farmers are currently staying put at Delhi's borders with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in protest against the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. The protesting farmers have expressed apprehension that these laws would pave the way for the dismantling of the minimum support price system, leaving them at the "mercy" of big corporations. However, the government has maintained that the new laws will bring farmers better opportunities and usher in new technologies in agriculture. 1. Joblessness and job losses are up, again. The Labor Department reported that a total of 1.15 million workers initially filed for state unemployment benefits last week, and another 284,000 claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, an emergency federal program for freelancers, part-time workers and others. The report follows a loss of 140,000 jobs in December. Both numbers are the highest in months, and show that, unsurprisingly, the leisure and hospitality industries are the hardest hit. Were in a deep economic hole, and were digging in the wrong direction, said Daniel Zhao, an economist. Above, a once-bustling corner of Canal Street in Manhattan. On Tuesday, January 19, at 11.00, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference entitled "Political Parties' Ratings, COVID-19 Vaccination" with the participation of political expert, director of the company Robotic Television Systems Anton Sokolov (8/5a Reitarska Street). The press conference will be available on the YouTube channel of Interfax-Ukraine. More info by phone: (095) 178 9787. Los Angeles: Scott Frank, the creator of critically-acclaimed Netflix series The Queens Gambit, has set up his follow-up project at FX. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Frank will be serving as a writer on series adaptation of author Mary Doria Russells novelThe Sparrow. The limited series will be directed by Johan Renck of Chernobyl fame. The Sparrow, which was published in 1996,follows a band of Jesuit priests and scientists, led by linguist Father Emilio Sandoz, who makes first contact with extraterrestrial life. The Vatican backs a secret trip to the distant planet with the purpose of proving the existence of God throughout the universe. Things dont quite go as planned and the trip ends in disaster. Father Sandoz, the only survivor, returns to earth broken both physically and mentally while the Vatican holds an inquiry into the now scandalous misadventure. Frank and Renck will also executive produce the show along with Mark Johnson. FX Productions is backing the series. ONE Tech, a global leader in edge AI technology, today announced the launch of the MicroAI Atom Software Development Kit (SDK), which is now publicly available through the ONE Tech developer portal. This SDK download allows users to implement ONE Techs machine learning platformMicroAI Atomdirectly onto microcontroller unit (MCU)-based hardware. The MicroAI Atom SDK brings intelligence to the endpointthe source of datawhich accelerates machine learning model formation and adoption while lowering overall cost of deploying AI-driven solutions. The MicroAI Atom SDK enables uses cases for assets including: Connected devices (IoT devices, phones, handheld computers) Industrial machinery (robotic arms, welders, material handlers, motors) Utility infrastructure (smart meters, transformers, water treatment facilities) Household appliances (washers, dryers, refrigerators) Automotive (vehicles, heavy equipment) In a manufacturing use case, for example, there is a critical need to bring intelligence to manufacturing facilities, but existing methods require an overhaul of hardwarean expensive proposition. With the MicroAI Atom SDK, these capabilities are available in a low-compute MCU, allowing existing hardware to support machine learning and predictive maintenance to these facilities quickly and cost-effectively. This SDK for MicroAI Atom is one of a kind, greatly improving time to market with asset performance management and predictive maintenance use cases while lowering the overall cost of deployment via elimination of expensive hardware needed to run and train the model, said ONE Tech CEO Yasser Khan. Our team of engineers brought this technology to life and created the framework for developers across the globe to enable intelligence at the asset. For more information about ONE Tech, visit https://developers.onetech.ai/. About ONE Tech ONE Tech is redefining artificial intelligence at the edge, delivering powerful embedded and edge AI solutions that help organizations achieve deeper insights into the behavior of their assets. ONE Techs MicroAI technology curates raw data at the edge rather than in the cloud, helping companies discern valuable data and to quickly resolve anomalies by triggering actionable insights and alerts. Devices are trained in the local environment, allowing for personalization while providing the highest levels of security and privacy. For more information, visit www.onetech.ai, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114005308/en/ Kathmandu, Jan 15 (UNI) The Nepal government has approved the emergency use of Serum Institute of India's COVID-19 vaccine, media reports said on Friday. The India-based company had collaborated with Oxford University and pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca for making the vaccine. India had on January 3 given emergency use authorization to two vaccines. The Nepal's drug regulator had on Wednesday called for vaccine manufacturers to register their products for usage in the country. UNI JAL PS1653 1 of 1 India`s Covid-19 vaccination drive begins tomorrow India will launch its COVID-19 vaccination drive from January 16 in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called the world's largest inoculation programme. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch India's COVID-19 vaccination drive on January 16 via video conferencing, even as adequate doses of Bharat Biotech's 'Covaxin' and Serum Institute's 'Covishield' vaccines have been delivered across the country to all states and Union territories. The Union health ministry has laid down list of precautions and contraindications for the inoculation, along with a comparative factsheet for both the vaccines - Covishield and Covaxin. The Union Health Ministry has informed all states and union territories that interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines is not permitted, and pregnant and lactating women should not be administered the shots as they have not been part of any anti-coronavirus vaccine clinical trial so far. A dose of Covishield and CoVaxin may cost in the range of 200 to 295 in India. The full initial procurement amount of 1.65 crore doses of COVISHIELD and COVAXIN vaccines have been allocated to all states and Union Territories in the proportion of Health Care Workers database, the Health Ministry has said. While his boss approaches an infamous exit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been busily and noisily scorching the earth behind them. Apart from a brief, boilerplate condemnation of the violence on Capitol Hill last week, Mr. Pompeo has shown little remorse or distress over it, and certainly no recognition that President Trump had a central role in inciting the mob. But Mr. Pompeo has not been idle. Over the past week, he unleashed a series of actions whose only real purpose appears to be to make life as difficult as possible for his successor at the State Department. He put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, he plans to designate the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, he eased restrictions on contacts between American diplomats and Taiwan officials and he claimed that Iran is a home base for Al Qaeda. All the while, Mr. Pompeo has been hyperactive on social media, issuing scores of tweets since the start of the year touting the administrations accomplishments abroad. Most of these are regarded by American allies and many State Department professionals as terrible, like withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Paris agreement on climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. 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 The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the third consecutive year, the last week of January has been officially proclaimed Missouri School Choice Week by the state's governor. This year, Gov. Mike Parson's proclamation for the Week recognizes that every Missouri student should have access to an effective education, and that it is important for parents to explore the learning options available to their children. More than a dozen other governors, as well as hundreds of county, city, and town leaders, have officially recognized Jan. 24-30 as School Choice Week. Missouri parents, schools, and other organizers have planned more than 700 virtual, at-home, or socially distanced celebrationsincluding a statewide video contestto show support for choice and spark conversations about the diverse learning opportunities that help children succeed. Nationally, more than 33,000 virtual or socially distanced celebrations have been planned for the Week, raising awareness about K-12 school options. Schools of every type traditional public, public magnet, public charter, private, online, and homeschool will be participating in School Choice Week. "School choice is not simply an idea, it is a transformative force that changes children's lives and the need for it has never been greater," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are grateful for Gov. Parson's recognition of the Week and wish Missourians the best in their National School Choice Week celebrations." National School Choice Week shines a spotlight on effective K-12 education options for children. As a not-for-profit effort, the Week focuses equally on traditional public, charter, magnet, online, private, and home education options. Every January, participants plan tens of thousands of events and activities such as school fairs, open houses, and student showcases to raise awareness about school choice across all 50 states. Year-round, National School Choice Week develops resources and guides to assist families searching for schools or learning environments for their children. The effort is nonpolitical and nonpartisan and does not advocate for legislation. For more information, visit schoolchoiceweek.com/missouri . SOURCE National School Choice Week Related Links www.schoolchoiceweek.com The Daily Beast St. Johns County Sheriff's OfficeThe Florida teenager accused of murdering 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey earlier this month stabbed the cheerleader a staggering 114 times as she fought for her life, then dumped her body in a wooded area, authorities said Thursday.Aiden Fucci, 14, will now be charged as an adult with first-degree murder for Baileys brutal slaying in the early morning of May 9, St. Johns County State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced Thursday. Youve heard our victim was stabbed....to say it was horrific was an understatement, Larizza said during a Thursday press conference. There were 114 stab wounds.The young girl died fighting for her life, he added.Fucci may have randomly chosen Bailey as his victim, as he told other teenagers he planned to kill someone within the month, the prosecutor said. This could simply be a wrong place at the wrong time situation, Larizza said. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office says Baileys family reported her missing at 10 a.m on May 10, prompting a frantic countywide search that ended eight hours later when investigators recovered the seventh graders clothed body in a wooded area near a retention pond on a street close to where she was last seen.Larizza said that the night of the murder, Fucci told people he intended to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them.Cheerleader Tristyn Bailey Was Stabbed to Death by Teenage Boy, Cops SayThe Daily Beast did not initially identify Fucci, who was originally charged with second-degree murder, because prosecutors had not decided whether to charge him as an adult. Online court records show a Thursday notice to transfer Fuccis case to adult court and assign it to Judge R. Lee Smith after he was indicted by a grand jury.The news of his upgraded charges was first reported by ActionNewJax. According to an arrest report, Baileys family last saw the Patriot Oaks Academy cheerleader at around midnight on May 9. An hour later, home surveillance footage near the Durbin North Amenity Center showed Bailey and Fucci walking together, at one point heading east on Saddlestone Drive.Larizza said that while investigators have not determined a motive, he confirmed Baileys encounter with Fucci started out as kids hanging out. He added that theres no evidence anyone else was involved in the grisly crime.At around 3:30 a.m, another video shows Fucci walking alone on Saddlestone Drive and carrying a pair of white shoes with a black Nike logo, the report states.During the frantic search for Bailey the next morning, police brought in Fucci for questioning as a witness. The St. Johns County Sheriffs Office confirmed to The Daily Beast that around the same time, Fucci posted a selfie on social media in a patrol car with the caption, Hey guys has anybody seen Tristyn lately?Under questioning, the arrest report states Fucci changed his story several times and made several admissions that led cops to charge him.Police later found clothing in the boys bedroom that tested positive for blood, the arrest report said. After finding Baileys body, police discovered she had been left only 0.3 miles from where Fucci lived.Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic later concluded that Baileys homicide was caused by a sharp force trauma by stabbing. Larizza said Thursday that about 49 of the defensive stab wounds Bailey suffered were to the hands, arms, and face. He added that witnesses identified a knife that was found in a pond as belonging to Fucci. The knifes tip had broken off and was later found in Baileys skull. The medical examiner said the blood on the weapon matched the victim's.Teenagers are capable of things we never imagined them doing, Larizza added, warning parents in his community to keep tabs on their children.Both Tristyn and Fucci attended Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, though police said it was unclear how they knew each other or if they were in the same class.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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. Story by William Kojah Anthony/Gloriah Efforts to gather as much scientific information as possible on activities at La Soufriere (volcano) have intensified. Not least among those contributing to the effort is Drone Pilot Rommel De Freitas. He strengthens and supports the work of a team of scientists from the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre (SRC), St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. That team is led by Professor Richard Robertson, Geologist attached to the SRU, and includes Instrumentation Engineer Lloyd Lynch, and Engineering Technician Ian Juman. They have been immersed in the task of monitoring developments eruption related activities - at La Soufriere since December 27, 2020. Dr Thomas Christopher and Dr. Adam Stinton of the Montserrat-based Seismic Research Centre arrived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines last Wednesday, and are expected to assist the team already on the ground. And to add to the ongoing effort of gathering "data from the dome and crater through temperature and photogrammetry measurements, a rotary helicopter from the Antigua and Barbuda based Calvin Air fleet, is to be commissioned here. Calvin Air, a private company, boasts experience with volcanoes, having previously provided services to the UWI SRC and the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. The helicopter services are made available through CEDEMA, with funding in the sum of 51,000 provided by the United Kingdom Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. Helicopter services from the France overseas territory of Martinique have also been engaged to strengthen the surveillance exercise. Monitoring the new dome Speaking on NBC Radio on Monday, 11th January, Professor Robertson recognised the support of a large group of people, including the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, who are assisting the effort. Referring to the colleagues from the Montserrat Observatory, Dr. Robertson said, "Were hoping that we will get some equipment . to do some measurements in terms of what kinds of gas is coming out of the volcano and also theyll brings things like a thermal camera to try and estimate temperatures of areas of the dome; also a camera that will help in looking at pictures of the dome so that we could measure its growth. He said that these findings could help the team to determine data like: where the dome is growing, how fast its growing; which areas might become vulnerable as the dome becomes bigger. To date, observations by the team from The UWI SRC have revealed that the dome that broke through the crater floor, on December 27, 2020, on the south-west perimeter of the existing dome, continues to grow within the crater of La Soufriere, and has an ellipsoid shape with growth expanding in a westerly direction. And as the volcano, i.e. the new dome, continues to ooze magma and emit gases, the alert level remains at orange and no evacuation order has been given. Persons are cautioned to stay away from the volcano. Tandav Review: Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia Starrer Aims To Reach The Madness That The Dance Of Fury Has, But Falls Short Let us be honest, we had really been looking forward to watch Tandav. With Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, and Zeeshan Ayyub leading the pack and a host of talents, the ensemble cast was enough to draw the audiences. On top of that, Ali Abbas Zafar is the man behind it and it promised to be a gripping political drama that would feel too close to reality! Well, it was close to reality, but somewhere down the line, it started to get a little absurdish too. Noo, don't get me wrong. I binge-watched the entire show (with the benefit of watching 5 episodes beforehand that was provided to the press) and it had its own interesting parts. But the kind of spike in interest I felt while watching the first two episodes sort of died down by the time it ended. It's open-ended and questions would remain unanswered, but the loopholes in the script got glaringly clear as the show progressed! The show is about the race to power, and to the chair of the PM. There are contenders- like Saif Ali Khan's Samar Pratap Singh and Dimple Kapadia's Anuradha Kishore or Kumud Mishra's Gopal Das Munshi, but only one can rest in the chair (or unrest?) There are also student politics being shown and Zeeshan Ayyub's Shiva Shekhar and Kritika Kamra's Sana Mir are the two biggest players. This is also a thriller, which means revealing any further poses the chance of giving away a spoiler. The race to power has never been easy, and here too, it's a menacing game. But what started off as interesting became somewhat predictable quite early on, and by the time we reached the last few episodes, the balance weighed heavier on the illogical side! *Spoilers ahead* For example, finishing off three students one after the other was so unnecessary. A smart player like Samar shouldn't be doing something like that and raise suspicion. Or the downfall of Anuradha was hurried and too easy! *Spoiler ends* Also, some politicians are shown breaking down at the slightest of things, like negative trends on Twitter and a conspiracy against them! Like really? Don't politicians have skin thicker than rhinos? There is mention of Chanakyaniti, and the fury in Samar to burn everything down, but he seems to be planning just his next move in this game of chess. Worse still, others aren't thinking about their next move too, making him look like some sort of genius! The reference to Tandav is brought in the second last episode, but by then, the fire seems to have fizzled out! Nonetheless, the story holds interest in bits and parts. While we expected fireworks with the pool of talent that this one bragged about, the performances had been fairly good. Saif Ali Khan was early on called a dictator who would burn everything down, but he has his own vulnerability. At times, his naivety would make you question what did his father see in him that the audiences missed? Given his other web performance was playing Sartaj in Sacred Games, the benchmark was set too high! Dimple Kapadia plays a self-declared 'ambitious' woman whose ambition rises after over three decades! Her character had so much scope to be written better because her dialogues make her look like a fool masquerading as a politician and an ambitious woman. She is too gullible, and even breaks down! In fact, most of her thinking seems to be coming from her aide, Maithali played by Gauahar Khan. Zeeshan Ayyub plays a student politician with exceptional oratory skills. He has the fire and the passion but has no direction. The real-life references are too close to miss. Ayyub infuses a lot of life into it. Kritika Kamra plays Sana, the girl with a troubled past who gets blood in her hands in an attempt to save her sister. She is torn, and restless and Kamra does a good job here. The best in the lot and the real revelation was most definitely Sunil Grover. He plays Gurpal, Samar's right hand and the one who does all the dirty work. He is menacing, with his measured expressions and gestures and his laugh would shake you up. He deserves applause for how he made the character his own! Writer Gaurav Solanki could have given some finesse to the work that he did, given it was elaborate and a topic that would never run short of being explored. These touches of brilliance are missing and as soon as your interest gets a little up, there would be something that would make you go 'noooo'. Ali Abbas Zafar had a huge empire to create with this one and his OTT debut was fairly okayish. But sometimes the constant flashbacks were a bit annoying. It has Ali's signature larger-than-life touch, and that too became the problem at times. All in all, this is interesting and pretty binge worthy too. You just have to behave like a layman at times and let a few scenes go. Can be watched once. The Nigerian Armys Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has raised the alarm of insurgents buying fertilizers to make bombs. Coordinator of the Directorate of Defence Media Operations, (DDMO), Maj. Gen. John Enenche disclosed this on Friday January 15 during a media briefing on military operations from January 7 to 13. Eneche stated that the use of fertilisers by criminal gangs threatened the security of the nation. He said; While fertilisers are majorly for agricultural purposes, the possibility of it being acquired by criminal gangs, terrorists and militants for sinister purposes cannot be disregarded as fertiliser has remained a potential component for the fabrication of explosives owing to its content of Ammonium Nitrate. Furthermore, fertiliser poses a security threat considering current security challenges. Source: LIB Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The diplomats stressed Crimea is Ukraine. The Embassy of the United States in Ukraine says it is concerned over the detention of 120 Crimean Tatars in Russian-occupied Crimea. "Very concerned about Russian 'authorities' targeting and detaining 120 Crimean Tatars simply for being concerned about their fellow citizens' illegal detention. We support Ukrainian police in their probe into yet another illegal deprivation of liberties. Crimea is Ukraine," the U.S. diplomats wrote on Twitter on January 15, 2021. Read also Ukrainian police respond to detention of 120 Crimean Tatars in occupied Crimea Background On the evening of January 11, under the pretext of ID and car check, security operatives illegally detained 120 Ukrainians in order to prevent them from attending a court hearing in the "Hizb ut-Tahrir case," which was set to be held that morning in mainland Russia's Rostov-on-Don. The defendants of the Belogorsk group in the so-called "Hizb ut-Tahrir case" are Enver and Riza Omerovs, as well as Ayder Dzhapparov. They were detained in the summer of 2019. On January 12, the court sentenced Enver Omerov to 18 years in prison, his son Riza Omerov to 13 years in prison, and Ayder Dzhapparov to 17 years in prison. Reporting by UNIAN SEATTLE, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Precept Wine, the largest privately held wine producer in the Pacific Northwest and a top 12 American wine producer, is excited to announce the acquisition of the Sheffield Cellars and Fairbanks dessert wine portfolio from E. & J. Gallo Winery (Gallo). Sheffield Cellars and Fairbanks are award winning dessert wines, excellent as an aperitif but also perfect for complimenting many recipes. The wines were launched by Gallo in their early days when the brothers saw a need for domestic aperitif wines. Precept looks forward to continuing to craft these wines in the time-honored tradition for which they are known under the guidance of Precept's acclaimed winemaker Hal Landvoigt. Production is expected to remain in California. Whether for a sweet treat at the end of a fine meal or incorporated into your favorite dishes, Sheffield Cellars and Fairbanks offer exceptional quality at a value-oriented price point. The Sheffield Cellars portfolio includes Tawny Port (1.5L), Cream Sherry (1.5L), Very Dry Sherry (750mL, 1.5L) and Marsala (750mL, 1.5L). The Fairbanks portfolio features Port (750mL, 1.5L, 3L), Sherry (750mL, 1.5L), Cream Sherry (750mL, 1.5L), White Port (1.5L) and Cocktail Pale Dry Sherry 1.5L "I am thrilled to add these versatile wines to Precept's growing portfolio and expand our footprint in the burgeoning dessert wine category. Our sales and marketing teams, along with our wholesale partners, are looking forward to building on the upward momentum of these great brands and categories," commented Andrew Browne, Founder and CEO. "We are glad to have found in Precept a buyer that will respect the history of the Sheffield Cellars and Fairbanks brands and will continue making these quality dessert wines for consumers to enjoy," said Gallo's CEO Ernest J. Gallo. The dessert wine category continues to experience solid growth, up 15% in dollar volume and 10% in case volume. Port (+11%), sherry (+7%) and marsala (+16%) are all on the upswing sparked by the recent increase in at home cocktails and cooking. Additionally, Fairbanks is the second largest dessert wine brand and growing. (Nielsen 52 Weeks Ending 12/26/20 US XAOC + Liquor Plus). Coupled with Precept's iconic Chocolate Shop wine and the recently released A.G. Perino Sweet and Dry Vermouths, the company looks forward to both growing and innovating in the sweet wine and dessert category. Sheffield Cellars and Fairbanks are distributed and available nationally. Seattle-based Precept Wine is the largest privately held wine producer in the Pacific Northwest and a top 12 American wine producer. With deep roots representing more than 30 years of Northwest investments in the wine industry, Precept owns and maintains nearly 4,000 planted vineyard acres across Washington, Idaho, New Mexico and Oregon; such leading wine brands as Waterbrook, Gruet, Browne Family Vineyards, Canoe Ridge Vineyard, House Wine, Pendulum, Primarius, Washington Hills, Battle Creek Cellars, Callaway Cellars, Ste. Chapelle, Cense, Sheffield Cellars, Fairbanks and AG Perino Vermouth, plus tasting rooms and hospitality throughout the Pacific Northwest and New Mexico. Founded in 2003 by Andrew Browne and Dan Baty, the company's wineries have garnered more than 800 combined best buys and critical scores exceeding 90 points. Learn more at www.preceptwine.com. SOURCE Precept Wine Related Links http://www.preceptwine.com